Ghouls (40 page)

Before he had time to back out of the drive, six or eight county cruisers flew by one after another, followed by a big, flat-white bus that roared unmercifully. Kurt turned after them and saw that he’d guessed right when all the county vehicles parked at the roadside near the lane which led to Fitzwater’s trailer. There were at least a half dozen more county cars there already. Kurt parked behind the last one, close to disbelief at what he saw beyond his windshield. Fitzwater’s cul-de-sac was crawling with police, and when the bus released several dozen more patrolmen, the scene became
pandemonic
. They must’ve called in a fifth of their day shift.

In the rearview, Kurt saw Bard’s T-bird pull up behind him and stop. Kurt got out and waited at the shoulder as Bard lumbered up, precariously balancing a pack of Hostess Ho Ho’s on a cup of take-out coffee.

“What’s this, the county clambake?” Kurt asked.

“You got your wish,” Bard said. “Choate shit his county trousers when he got word about yesterday. Ordered all available men out here for a class-A inside-out, and he emptied the county training academy for a full day. They’ll search here till noon, then spend the rest of the day on Belleau Wood.”

“Should’ve been done days ago. And they should have state out here, too.”

“Don’t look a gift
headqueen
in the mouth. A freebie’s a freebie, so what more do you want? The national fucking guard? And who needs the state? They’re too busy painting their cruisers the color of my dick; you think they got money to lend us some troopers for something as trivial as a murder investigation? Bugger them.” Bard pressed both of the Ho Ho’s together and ate them as one, in a single bite. “Besides, if these
muzzleheads
can’t find anything with this kind of manpower, there’s probably nothing to find.”

They cut into the woods until stopped by a familiar yellow ribbon. POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS. Past the cordon, several sergeants were lining up rows and rows of patrolmen for what seemed the most massive grid search in the history of law enforcement. The men appeared fidgety; the forest bubbled with nervous chatter. Lieutenant Choate and a pair of TSD technicians looked on
immobilely
from a stand of trees beside the trailer. At their feet were things that resembled small black suitcases.

Kurt glanced closer at the trailer. The door no longer lay where it had yesterday; it and parts of the trailer body itself had been removed to the county criminalistics lab. Footprints had been photographed and cast, leaving fringes of plaster in the yard. A tech plugged a portable UV set into a
powerbox
; the element glowed like neon. Another tech fumed siding with
uranyl
phosphate, which left stains that reminded Kurt of washed-out blood.

“What about the blood?”

Bard sipped the coffee as if it might bite him in the face. “Forestville grouped it down to AB-
duffy
-positive, which matched the blood in the scalp. According to some dog tags they found inside, Fitzwater was AB, so they’re satisfied it’s all his. And no word on prints yet, just that they’re punting them all to state, like last time.”

One county sergeant, with an irate, cherry-pink face, stepped before the rows of men. His voice crackled like splitting wood. “Shut up,” he ordered. “No talking, no jokes, no cocking around. Anyone lights a cigarette, I shove my thermos up his ass. And I don’t want to see any of you guys putting any of that chewing tobacco shit in your mouths. This is a crime scene—don’t fuck it up. I want it nice and slow, hear? If you see something, don’t touch it, just shout it out.” He scowled one last time and then moved his hands forward, toward himself, as if ground-guiding a tractor. The line of men crouched and began to advance evenly along the forest ground. “That’s it,
greendicks
. Nice and slow.”

Bard looked out past the search party. His voice gave a hint of despair. “I remember when the only things that went on around here were kids laying wheel and throwing beer bottles in the road. A downed
powerline
or fallen tree was hot news. Now look what we got… My whole fucking town’s gone right down the pooper in the space of a week.”

Kurt kept silent. He was thinking.

Bard let out a black chuckle. “You know, this job’s making me numb. Somebody’s ripping the shit out of people, and I haven’t even actually realized it until today. You know what I mean? It’s just now sinking in what’s honest to God going on. People are being murdered.”

Kurt nodded, half aware. He looked at the doorway of the trailer and remembered all the blood he’d seen inside.
My God,
he thought.
The blood. So much blood.

He touched his chin, staring. He was trying to remember the last full moon.

««—»»

Kurt went back home when the search at Fitzwater’s had been wrapped up. Nothing had been found in the way of evidence, nothing left behind. He had a feeling that the search at Belleau Wood would yield similar results.

The house was empty. Vicky had left a note stuck to the refrigerator by a plastic parrot magnet, WENT TO BANK, BE BACK SOON, and Melissa had vanished. He began to fry up some canned hash for lunch, but flopped it all into the garbage when he decided he wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t eaten much in the last few days. He didn’t want to; it just didn’t seem worth bothering with. He needed to get back to work. He needed to do something. Even directing traffic or writing SRO’s was better than this.

The emptiness of the house closed in; he could feel it follow him shapelessly up the stairs and into his room, the ghost of himself. The glare of sunlight made him grit his teeth. At least a suggestion of decent weather, but still it depressed him. The
onstart
of a classic headache pulsed behind his eyes.

As he went to close the shades, the phone rang.

“Hello—”

“I’d like to speak to Officer Morris, please.” A woman’s voice, and one he’d heard somewhere before.

“That’s me.”

A pause, as if hesitant, as if the caller were tempted to hang up. “This is Nancy Willard. We met at the house the other day…”

“Oh, yes. What can I do for you, Mrs. Willard?”

“I, uh—” She paused again, this time to lower her voice. “I’d like to talk to you about something. You may be quite interested.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, not over the phone. I mean someplace private.”

“Sure,” Kurt said. “I’ll be over in ten minutes.”

“No, no,” she said. She seemed to speak with great care, holding her voice down. “Not at the house, either, if you don’t mind. It’s kind of involved, and I’d—”

Kurt frowned.

“—just rather it be someplace else, someplace out of the way, if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course it is, Mrs. Willard,” he said. “Name a place.”

“Oh, it really doesn’t matter to me,” she hedged. “Whatever’s convenient, I guess… Oh, how about…”

Jesus,
he thought.
A little early in the day to be drinking, isn’t it, lady?

“How about
Squidd
McGuffy’s
?” she said.

“What
McGuffy’s
?”

“
Squidd
.
Squidd
McGuffy’s
. You’ve never heard of it?”

“Sorry, no. What is it, a fish store or something?”

She laughed shortly. “No, no, it’s a club, a tavern type of place.”

“Okay. Where is it?”

“At Hilltop Plaza, in Bowie, where the bookstore used to be. You can’t miss it. There’s a big sign in front with a squid on it.”

Bowie?
He shook his head, bewildered. “Okay, Mrs. Willard. I’ll find it. What time?”

“Oh, say…six-thirty? Is that all right?”

“No problem at all.
Squidd
McGuffy’s
at six-thirty.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll see you then.”

The line went dead.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Willard measured time with cigarettes; he smoked one every fifteen minutes, so by the accumulation of butts in the ashtray, an hour and a half had passed since Nancy had put down the phone.

The tiny light on the
jackplate
glowed green, indicating LINE CLEAR. In the top drawer of his desk was a UT-55A full-function extension monitor, similar to an answering machine, only quite a bit more complicated and costly. It monitored all incoming and outgoing calls on either extension, and recorded them on an Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder also in the desk. The recorder was activated whenever any phone in the house was picked up.

He’d heard Nancy’s entire conversation with Kurt Morris.

She was upstairs now. She was probably packing her bags, planning to slip out tonight after she’d spoiled everything. She was probably masturbating, eyes closed and her head full of thoughts of the security guard. He’d seen her do this many times.

The study was quiet and comfortably dark, his place of peace. The air-conditioning hummed hypnotically.

Willard lit another cigarette. He realized the obscenity of smoking, but was hooked to it. Nicotine had proved as psychologically addicting as heroin, and cigarettes were the number one preventable cause of premature death in America. Worldwide, 50 million smokers per year contracted a chronic obstructive lung disease; in the United States alone, 14 billion dollars were spent yearly to treat smoking-related ailments. The gas and particulate phases of cigarette smoke contained more than twenty toxic chemicals, carcinogens, ganglionic stimulators, tumor accelerators.
Ciliotoxins
wiped out the body’s primary system for foreign-matter expulsion, clearing the way for myriad
pneumoconioses
. Carbon monoxide interceded oxygen transport and utilization to the brain, causing excess production of hemoglobin and actually dropping the smoker’s intelligence quotient, while nicotine traumatized the cardiovascular system and unnaturally released
catecholamines
in the brain. Cigarettes even contained trace metals and radioactive substances. These were cold, objective facts. It perplexed him then why the government continued to subsidize the tobacco crop and thus corrupt health-care costs to levels unaffordable to the average workingman. Certainly an extended life expectancy and millions saved in health benefits was worth the jobs of an insignificant number of tobacco farmers. Perhaps the tobacco industry was really just a government plot to generate revenue and kill off the elderly before they could collect much Social Security.
Monstrous,
Willard thought.
Monstrous to smoke.
He drew deep and found harsh bliss in the smoke that filled his lungs. Ah, well.

He held one of the small amber bottles up to the desk light. TTX, the label read. FDA CONTROL 4B639, RESEARCH USE ONLY, DO NOT HANDLE, DO NOT FREEZE, AVOID DIRECT SUNLIGHT AND EXCESSIVE HEAT. Doubtfully now, he wondered. God knew he’d tried enough things in his tests. It stunned him, the metabolic tolerance to toxic substances.
Tricothene
, ricin,
triopental
sodium,
tubocurarme
chloride—all of them totally ineffective. A 200,000-parts-per-million carbon monoxide breathing mixture hadn’t even caused unconsciousness. A massive
intracardial
injection of epinephrine had only negligibly increased systolic blood pressure and respiratory expansion. Symptoms had vanished within minutes.

But those had been tests. This was something crucial and called for severe, deliberate measures, now that retrieval seemed hopeless.