Kolchak: The Night Stalker: A Black and Evil Truth (17 page)

He looked in the bathroom. The mirror on the medicine cabinet had been shattered and removed with bits of the glass still lying on the floor. Inside the cabinet was a collection of every well-known mouthwash and breath spray on the market. Not that it seemed to have done much good.

On the floor behind the door was a large metal box which, when pried open, revealed a complete set of theatrical greasepaints, pancake makeup, pan-sticks, adhesives, hairsprays of various colors, several bottles of spirit gum and various small moustaches and beards of the kind sold now in barber supply houses. There were also two men’s stretch wigs and a collection of eyeglasses, clear and dark, all nonprescription. Jenks also found the two medical bags behind the door, one inside the other, while I was looking again at the now-empty bed.

The thought was sickening. Shelley Katz and Carolyn Riegel had been used as living hosts… blood factories for Skorzeny. He’d been feeding off their bodies slowly, keeping them just barely alive with the stolen glucose water solution. Why he had bothered and what other purposes he had kept them for, naked, I didn’t even want to consider.

Across from the bed was a crude six-drawer dresser with the mirror turned on its ancient swivel-hinges toward the wall. While Jenkins pulled out drawers one by one, I wrestled the dresser away from the wall and found that this mirror was also shattered. Inside the drawers were all sorts of documents (probably forged), several medical degrees, purportedly from Heidelberg and London, a police-constable’s ID papers from Vancouver, British Columbia, and the Western Airline envelope from his Vancouver-Las Vegas flight on April 10.

We moved back out to the living room and into the kitchen. There wasn’t one scrap of food to be found anywhere. But the refrigerator was filled from bottom to top with containers of blood. There were no more glucose water bottles on the premises and it would seem that when this blood supply was gone, Skorzeny would have to rob and kill again. Jenks was already closing up the back door and trying to hide any obvious traces of our uninvited entrance. He motioned for me to leave and I told him to hold it.

“The coffin,” I said. “His native soil. We’ve got to empty it.”
He regarded me for a moment and then opened the back door. Together we wrestled the crate to the doorway and ragged it down the stairs. We upended the crate and he grabbed at the coffin, tipping it out so that the dried dirt spilled onto the dusty ground. I stepped around and mixed it in with the native soil of Clark County. Then we put the coffin back into the crate and dragged it back inside, setting it up as we’d found it. I asked him for his Holy Water and poured both his tubes over the bottom of the coffin. Jenks just looked at me and said, “You really believe all this bull, don’t you?” I didn’t answer.

In a later investigation of the premises, deputies, digging in the backyard, discovered the bodies of some thirty-five dogs of various sizes, from a Doberman listed missing from McWilliams Street at the other side of town, to an ugly white Bull Terrier reported stolen from nearby Ottawa Street. They also found remnants of Skorzeny’s burned, blood-spattered shirts in the barbecue as well as some unburned buttons.

After we had set everything up as we’d found it, stuffing several blankets in the bed and covering them, hooking the tubes into their sides, we resumed our positions outside, across Viking Road. It was now about 12:45 A.M. We sat listening to scattered reports on Skorzeny as they came in. He had prowled around Deauville and then left on foot and entered the Aladdin, circled the casino twice and returned to the Deauville’s lot to retrieve his (stolen) Buick. Then he drove along the Strip heading toward downtown. He must have spotted the unmarked cars tailing him because he never stopped. He just drove to Casino Center and prowled up and down Fremont Street for about an hour before returning to the Strip and stopping at the gas station next to the Desert Inn to refuel.

Then he moved on to Caesars Palace and was followed in by two detectives, one of whom alerted the blue-uniformed security guards as to what was going on. Somewhere along the line, however, he gave them the slip. He was spotted fifteen minutes later by an alert security guard at the Dunes who had been briefed by Masterson when the detectives reported they’d lost their quarry.

He now knew for sure he was being watched and took an elevator to the fourteenth floor of the Dunes Tower with the guards in hot pursuit. It was later discovered (from the testimony of a maid) that he’d abandoned the elevator and taken one of the inside stairwells down to another floor. From there he took the service elevator to the basement, walked along the hallway to yet another stairwell, regained the ground level, and forced his way out a pair of doors at the Tower’s freight and receiving area at the front of the building, adjacent to the shopping mall.

All this did him little good because he was spotted by a guard as he departed the Dunes. The guard, following instructions, hung back and reported by phone that Skorzeny was headed back to Caesar’s Palace by way of the adjoining parking lot.

It was now 4:30 and Skorzeny was in obvious distress. Radio reports had him roaring up and down the Strip but officers were cautioned not to stop him. Finally, he turned down Sahara and drove to Maryland Parkway, then south to Flamingo Road. We assumed he was heading home. We were wrong. He just drove around the homes lining the Stardust Golf Course. Masterson ordered unmarked cars to cover as much of the area as possible from parked positions. This time, it seems Skorzeny didn’t spot them. It was obvious he was not exercising any caution. Finally, toward dawn, he approached the house, barreling down Viking at almost fifty miles an hour. His car came sliding to rest at the south end of the house and he leaped out, pausing to gaze toward Sunrise Mountain, directly to the east. A thin streak of light could just be seen lining the mountain ridges. In another few minutes the sun would be starting over the horizon.

Growling low in his throat like some ravening wolf, Skorzeny approached the front door. He discovered almost at once that it had been forced, looked around quickly, then ran inside. In seconds we heard his enraged scream. He came barrelling out the front door all the way to the middle of the road muttering in some strange language. His fists opened and closed convulsively. His entire body jerked. He looked on the brink of a grand mal epileptic seizure. Again he looked toward Sunrise Mountain and he hesitated, his body visibly stiffening. He was just starting to turn back to the house when he spotted one of the deputies who had jumped the gun and had broken cover in order to get a closer look.

Skorzeny’s lip curled back in a vicious, red-rimmed snarl. His fang-like teeth were plainly visible. He started toward the deputy and Jenks switched on the headlights and spotlight beam.

Skorzeny froze and whirled, facing our position, his features working into a grimace of pure hate. Other lights flashed on. He started toward us and the deputies began to move forward. Then he hesitated again, looking toward Sunrise Mountain. He swayed as if caught between the two desires–to kill us and to gaze at the slowly brightening dawn. Again he turned toward us and, with a gesture of supreme disgust, turned and strode back toward the house.

Jenks grabbed his bullhorn and bellowed, “Get those crosses handy! Get your stakes and Holy Water and move in… slow… take your time!”

He might not believe in my so-called “fairytale” but he wasn’t taking any chances either, I noticed. Slowly, all fifteen of us came out of our positions as the rapidly lightening eastern sky cast a pinkish gray pallor over the whole scene.

At the words “crosses, stakes and Holy Water” Skorzeny had actually flinched. He was beginning to get the message. He spun away from the door and snarled. Skorzeny saw the tiny crosses in our hands as he looked from one man to another, finally staring with wide, reddened eyes directly at me. Then he saw the stakes and hammers. His face resumed the same mask of fury that I’d seen at Old Town Hospital when he’d been deprived of blood. He started backing slowly toward the door, glancing first at us and then back at Sunrise Mountain. Then, slowly, his face began to change and took on the trapped look I’d seen on cornered animals in laboratories and on hunting trips. I saw it once on the face of a convict at a death house execution as the guards had closed the door on the gas chamber. His expression changed from hate to one of betrayal. Then it progressed to abject fear, very startling on him and very human.

We were within twenty feet of him when, with one final hiss, he spun around and ran inside, slamming the door which bounced back open, its lock already broken by our previous entrance. Jenks yelled to his man on the east side of the house to shotgun the windows while he opened fire with his Python on the window facing us. The explosions were deafening and in seconds the windows had all been demolished.

As we headed around to the house’s east face, we heard another shriek of agony and surprise and looked in to see him literally leap from his coffin as though shot in the can with buckshot. He screamed in pain and slapped at his seat and legs where he’d lain in the Holy-Water-soaked coffin.

I dug Jenks in the ribs and yelled, “You see! The Holy Water. It works like acid!”

Skorzeny stopped slapping at his clothing long enough to shoot one last look at the sun as it broke cover over Sunrise Mountain. He shrieked again, threw his hands up to shield his face and bolted for the bedroom.

We moved in, Jenks jumping up over the window sill with me right at his heels, followed by four more deputies. There must have been a dozen of us all crowded into the living room. Jenks and I rushed into the bedroom followed by two deputies. We found Skorzeny huddled in the closet just to the right of the bedroom door. He was writhing on the floor in a tangle of his dark suits and shoes, his face white as a sheet, his eyes blood red, his mouth working convulsively like a beached shark’s, full of guttural noises and fangs.

I looked away from this squirming thing at my feet and turned to Jenks who ordered the other deputies from the room and slammed the door. I looked back at Skorzeny. Even in his agony and apparent helplessness he still scared me silly. I was afraid he’d find some way to outsmart us no matter what we did.

Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole then hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny’s body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes.

I was paralyzed. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn’t described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray.

I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline bag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow puss from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame.

Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. “Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.” I declined, turning away.

Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man’s chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand.

“Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it… now!” And he stepped away.

I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up.

When I looked back, Skorzeny’s hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake.

Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn’t paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame. Then he came back and grabbed his radio mike, talking quietly with Masterson back at headquarters.

I got up and started wiping my mouth with a handkerchief. Finally, Jenks said “Ten-Four” and dropped the mike on the car seat. He came over to me and said, “The gentlemen downtown would like you to come back with me. They want to talk to you.”

That seemed rather unnecessary as I certainly wasn’t going to walk back to the courthouse. I got in the car and slouched down in the seat. I don’t even remember the ride back. I was just glad it was all over.