Night Howl (20 page)

“For now,” Gerson muttered and reluctantly followed behind.

The Fallsburg Central Elementary School bus made the turn onto Lake Street. There were only two children on it. Lisa and Bobby Kaufman were the last children on the run. As soon as the bus made the turn, they moved up to the front seats as they always did. Normally, Ed Tooey yelled if any of his children got up out of their seats while the bus was still in motion, but he permitted the Kaufman kids this little divergence from the rule. The bus moved very slowly at this point and he knew how anxious the children were to get home. He smiled and shifted up gear as he finished the turn and went into the straightaway.

Ed Tooey had been driving a school bus for nearly thirty years now, and he never ceased to be fascinated
by the faces of children, especially grade school children. There was an innocence and excitement in their faces that made every day bright for him. Other bus drivers, the newer ones mostly, constantly complained about the noise and the roughhousing on their buses. They acted as though the runs were hell for them. He concluded that most of them didn’t like children and even if the children sat like zombies, these drivers would still complain.

Tooey took pride in the fact that he developed a good rapport with many of his wards. He made it a point to talk with the children every chance he got, to learn something personal about them. Many times elementary schoolchildren’s parents were waiting outside their homes when the school bus pulled up. He always spoke a few words with those who did. Consequently, his runs ran the longest. School administrators had grown used to him over the years, but recently, a new business administrator, with a coldly efficient manner, had been critical of him and the time it took him to complete his route. The business manager had clocked every mile himself and determined with computer accuracy just how long it should take.

“I’m not a piece of machinery,” Tooey told him when he was called in for a conference about it. He wasn’t exactly insubordinate, but the new business manager was beginning to pressure him into thinking about retirement. He had already threatened to put him on a different run, a high school run that was shorter.

“So how’d you do in school today?” he asked Bobby after the little boy took his new seat.

“Okay.”

“He’s not havin’ any more of those nightmares, is he?” he asked Lisa.

“No.”

“That’s good. Nightmares ain’t nothin’ anyway. I
usta have ‘em all the time because I ate all sorts of stuff right before I went to sleep. Now I just have hot milk,” he said and laughed. “I’m a regular senior citizen.”

“I don’t like hot milk,” Bobby said.

“I’m not crazy about it either, but it sure helps me fall asleep,” Tooey said. “Your daddy gettin’ you another dog someday?” he asked.

“No,” Lisa said quickly.

“My dog’s still here,” Bobby said.

“Still here? What’s he mean, still here?”

“It’s a dream he thinks was real,” Lisa said.

“Oh.”

“It
was
real,” Bobby said. “It was.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Tooey said. He slowed down as the Kaufman house came into view. There was no traffic on the street in either direction, but he turned his warning lights on anyway. By the book, he thought. He always did things by the book. “Looks like you got a visitor,” he announced, seeing Carlson’s car in the driveway. The two children sat up and strained their necks to look out over the front of the school bus. Tooey brought it to a stop and opened the doors. “Last stop!” he announced. “All off who’s going off!”

The children stood up hesitantly. Tooey noticed that the sight of the strange car put a heaviness in their steps.

“Maybe it’s a traveling salesman or an uncle. Watch your step, kids.”

“So long, Mr. Tooey,” Lisa said, remembering to look back. Bobby couldn’t take his eyes off the car. When the school bus door closed behind them, they started up their driveway slowly. Ed Tooey did not pull away immediately. He watched them for a few moments and then shook his head. He had heard about the terrible incident with their dog, and he thought it
had put such fear into the children that it made everything look ominous, even a strange car parked in the driveway.

He shifted into first and accelerated. It was only when he was half a mile or so down the street that he realized Mrs. Kaufman hadn’t come out to greet her children. She didn’t even appear in the doorway to wave at him. It was something she always did; she was one of those kinds of parents who showed concern. He called them old-fashioned parents.

Oh well, he thought, so she wasn’t there. At least she was there most of the time. He looked at his watch. He was a good ten minutes behind schedule. It wouldn’t surprise him, he thought, to find the business manager waiting at the school bus garage, a stopwatch in his hand and a smirk on his face. Well that’s just too bad, Tooey thought. I’m cartin’ people around, not baggage. He deliberately slowed down so he could relax the rest of the way.

Bobby stopped to take Lisa’s hand before going any farther toward their house. It was an instinctive action that Lisa did not question. She seemed to expect it or welcome it. They both looked at the doghouse as though they wanted to confirm the reality of what had happened. Then they went right to their front entrance. They paused on the patio when they saw the front door was partly opened.

“Where’s Mommy?” Bobby asked.

“Inside, silly,” Lisa said and bravely stepped forward to enter the house first.

S
ID
K
AUFMAN PUT
down his clipboard and wiped his face with his handkerchief. He had been working steadily ever since he’d left George Friedman’s office. He had decided even to skip lunch, knowing that the moment he paused, he would dwell on the situation back home and lose his concentration. He looked at his watch and nodded to himself. This was a good time to call Clara. She was sure to be home since the kids would be coming home on the school bus any minute.

He went back to Friedman’s office. George smiled with expectation as Sid approached. He was talking with his secretary and she looked up at Sid with almost as much anticipation.

“How’s it going?”

“Good,” Sid said. “I’m afraid I have to ask a favor of you.”

“Sure.”

“I need to use your phone. It’s imperative that I call home now,” he added, not realizing how intensely he spoke.

“No problem. Go right on in.”

“I’ll use my credit card,” Sid added as he went by them.

“Whatever you want,” George said.

Sid went in and took the seat behind George’s desk. After he reached the operator, he debated whether or not he should mention the basement door to Clara. After all, he was adding worries without his being there to comfort and support her. As long as she locked the door now and kept it locked, he thought. He heard the first ring.

He heard the second and the third and shifted the receiver nervously to his other ear as the phone rang again and again and again. After the tenth ring produced no answer, Sid hung up. He looked at his watch again to be sure he hadn’t misread the time. He hadn’t. She had to be home now. It was not like Clara to let the kids come home to an empty house. She was always complaining about those “latchkey kids” and “absentee parents.” She would be home today, especially, he thought, considering all that had happened.

George Friedman’s knocking on his own office door almost made Sid jump in the chair.

“Everything all right?” George said, peering in.

“No answer,” Sid said as though George knew it all.

“Oh. Is that a problem?” He came further into the office.

Sid looked up at him. Despite his desire to maintain strong selfcontrol, he couldn’t help having a quickened heartbeat. He had had a sick feeling come over him ever since leaving the house. He knew it was the result of guilt and worry. There was nothing he wanted more now than to hear Clara’s voice.

“My wife should have answered. Our kids are due home from school any moment now. She’d be there.”

“Maybe she’s outside and can’t hear the phone.”

“No. You can hear it fifty feet from the house.”

George nodded and took the seat in front of his desk. Sid, lost in his own thoughts, didn’t realize he was still in the factory owner’s chair.

“You have a special reason to be concerned?”

“What’s that? Oh, yes. Oh, here, George, take your seat.”

“No, that’s all right. Sit, sit,” he said, waving Sid back down. “You wanna talk about it, or is it private?”

“Private? No. We had some wild things happen recently and it makes you worry,” he said. He leaned back in the chair. George looked as if he had nothing else to do but listen, so Sid began to relate the story to him. He had been talking for nearly ten minutes straight before he realized it. Must’ve been therapy for me, he thought.

“I don’t know that much about dogs,” George said when Sid paused, “but what you’re describing doesn’t seem natural.”

“That’s what I’ve been gathering.”

“What else are you going to do about it?”

“I’m not sure. I was thinking that after I finished here, I would go up to Boston University to try to talk to some expert in animal behavior.”

“Oh, I know someone up there. I can make a call for you. My nephew’s wife teaches English.”

“Great. I’d appreciate it,” Sid said. He looked at the phone again.

“Wait a few minutes and call again.”

“I will.”

“So, while you wait,” George said, folding his arms across his chest and sitting back, “maybe you’ll tell me some of your initial observations.”

Sid smiled. “It wouldn’t be fair to make any conclusions just yet, George. There’s a lot more to your operation for me to see.” Friedman’s face registered his disappointment. “But we can make some preliminary comments, if you want.”

“Sure.”

“With the understanding that I might reverse something later on.”

“Of course.”

“You’re kind of top-heavy in your intake department. Those shifts are too short and they’re short because you’ve got so many men doing that work. I saw the stockpiles. They’re actually slowing themselves down because if they didn’t, the backup of materials would require another warehouse.”

“Really?”

“You need a foreman there, but why two at that price? Your split shift is weak on the downside. I don’t think you have to go sixteen hours there. Go twelve and promote someone to assistant foreman to run the other four.” Sid looked at his notes for a moment, almost glad that he had agreed to give George his preliminary observations. It was something he didn’t like to do, but in this case it was helping pass some very nerve-racking time.

“Assistant foreman, huh?”

“Yes, and even though I didn’t watch him enough to make a solid judgment, I think that Crowley fellow looked like the hardest worker in that department. He seemed serious and intent on what he was doing while the others were jawing away and looking at the clock.”

“Yes,” Friedman said, his face reflecting how impressed he was, “Tom Crowley is a good man. You’re a pretty observant fellow, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they pay me to do, George.”

“I bet you’d make a good detective.”

“Oh, I dont know. I’m having some difficulty solving a case right now,” he said.

“Try again,” George said, nodding toward the phone. Sid dialed the operator and went through the process once more. George watched him closely as he listened to the ringing. Sid looked at his watch again. “Maybe your wife had to meet them at school for
some reason. Was this some kind of conference day or parent visitation day?”

“No, she’d have mentioned it,” Sid said as he put the receiver down. “We have a bulletin board for those things and there was nothing like that on it.”

“What do you want to do?” George asked.

“Go back to work, wait a while longer, and call again. What else can I do?”

“That’s probably best,” George said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Sid got up but looked down at the phone again. He wished he could crawl through the wires as fast as his voice could travel and be beside Clara and the kids. It was so frustrating. For a moment he thought of Clara and recalled her waving good-bye from the garage. The image left him with such a sense of foreboding that he had to do everything he could to get back to the job at hand.

Lisa hesitated in the entranceway of the house and listened hard for a moment. She was unaccustomed to such complete silence when she and her brother arrived at home after school.

“Mommy?” she called. She felt Bobby’s hand on her back.

“My stitches hurt,” he said. “I want Mommy.”

“Shh.” Lisa walked further into the house. When she looked into the kitchen and saw the mess on the floor, she stopped. Bobby was right beside her.

“What happened?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s Mommy? I want Mommy.”

“Okay, okay. Do you have to be such a whine baby?”

“I’m not a whine baby.”

They both turned sharply when they heard something from the area of the bedrooms. Instinctively,
Lisa put her arm around her brother. She placed her school books on the table quietly and then, nudging Bobby, indicated that they should head for that part of the house. He didn’t move.

“Mommy!”
he screamed.
“Where are you?”

“You don’t have to yell, Bobby. You’ll frighten her.”

“I will not.
Mommy!”

“Stop it,” she said. His shouting was really frightening her. She released her grip on him and started away, herself. He followed slowly. She looked into the living room and saw the smashed lamp. Then she looked down the hallway to the bedrooms. She thought she heard the sound of heavy breathing. It was actually more like . . . like a dog panting. She recalled how King panted sometimes after running around the house with Bobby. After following him into the living room, King breathed so hard he looked as if he would drop on the spot. Usually Lisa or her mother bawled Bobby out for overheating the dog.

“Do you hear that?” Bobby said, coming up beside her. “It sounds like King.”

“Stop that. You know King’s dead.
Mom!”
This time she couldn’t help sounding the note of hysteria in her voice. When Bobby yelled again, she didn’t chastize him.