The Changing (The Biergarten Series) (11 page)

"Sometimes it's a half hour or more," Will said.

"And sometimes it's an hour," Frances said.

"Sometimes you can understand her," Will said.

"And sometimes you can't," Frances said.

"Sometimes it's gibberish. It sounds like ..." Will faltered.

Frances suggested, "Birds. It sounds like birds sometimes."

Will nodded. "
Bluejays
," he said. "It's raucous. Like
bluejays
are."

"Yes, of course," Ryerson said, distractedly. He was thankful for the full moon. He could see well enough by its light, but if a cloud covered it, he'd be all but blind here, he realized.

Lila's grave was at the extreme northeast perimeter of the small cemetery. Just a couple of yards beyond it, the six-foot-high wrought-iron fence stood straight and dark, its pitted and rusted surfaces reflecting the moonlight dully. Beyond the fence, the same fields of chickweed and clover stretched to a horizon that, at the northeast, was a light bluish-green; Erie, Ryerson supposed, sketching a quick map of the area in his mind.
Where Greta Lynch came from
, he reminded himself. He said, to either of the
Curtises
who might answer him, "Could you tell me something about your daughter's friends?"

"Boyfriends, you mean?" Will asked, a small tremor of suspicion in his voice.

Frances offered sharply, "She had lots of boyfriends, Mr.
Biergarten
."

"None that mattered," Will maintained steadfastly.

"Not boyfriends, particularly," Ryerson said. "I'm talking more about . . .
friends
—girlfriends, teachers." He paused only briefly, went on, "Did she have any women friends?"

"Sorry," Frances said, "I don't understand that," and her tone announced clearly that she hoped he wasn't asking what she thought he was asking.

Ryerson shook his head urgently. "No, not that kind of woman friend. I'm sorry. I mean, an older woman friend. A woman in her twenties, for instance. Someone she . . . talked to; like a big sister." His uneasiness doubled.

Will and Frances fell silent for several moments. Then Will said, "Yes," and Frances said, almost at the same time, "She had a friend named Joan. Near Erie."

"Joan?" Ryerson asked. "Do you remember her last name?"

And there was movement in the dirt over the grave. "Good Lord," Ryerson breathed.

Will nodded urgently. "She's gonna talk to us, Mr.
Biergarten
. Lila's gonna talk to us." He looked at his wife. "Frances, our Lila's gonna talk to us."

"Yes," Frances said matter-of-factly. "I can hear her humming."

"She hums first, Mr.
Biergarten
," Will said.

"Like a singer warming up her pipes," Frances said, smiling slightly, as if pleased with the image.

The ground quieted. Ryerson heard, from within the grave, what sounded for all the world like someone humming. But it was strained and tight, like air being let out of a balloon.

The humming stopped.

And Ryerson saw, for the first time, that the ground over the grave was quite a bit more disturbed than it should have been. He asked, "How long ago did you say it was that your daughter was buried?"

"Two months," Will answered.

While Creosote whimpered raggedly in his arms—because the dog wouldn't let go of his treasured soft plastic duck—Ryerson knelt over the grave and touched the earth. It was moist, as if it had been freshly turned. He looked up at Frances and Will Curtis, who were looking quizzically down at him. "I . . ." he began, and wasn't sure what to say next. He looked quickly, anxiously back at the grave.

Will Curtis said, his voice tentative and unsure, "That ground's not settled yet, Mr.
Biergarten
."

The humming started again, lower in pitch, as if the balloon were running out of air.

"There," Frances said, "Lila's talking to us."

Ryerson glanced at her, shook his head. "No," he whispered. "No, I'm sorry, no," and he looked yet again at the grave and cocked his head to one side to get a better fix on the source of the humming noise. He looked again at Frances and Will Curtis. "I assume that Lila was embalmed."

Frances shook her head. "No, she wasn't. Joan said not to, and the medical examiner in Erie said that was okay if her coffin was closed, which it was—"

"My God," Ryerson breathed; he held Creosote in his left hand and stuck his right hand six or seven inches into the sort earth. He touched something. It felt like the skin that forms on Jell-O that's allowed to harden uncovered. He recoiled, reached into the earth again, let his fingers linger on the thing he was touching there. He
kneaded
it experimentally and heard the same high, humming sound he'd heard

moments earlier, like air escaping from a balloon.

"She's
talking
to us," Will Curtis cried happily.

"No, I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, I'm sorry—”

“She's talking to us, our Lila is talking to us!"

"She'd been dug up," Ryerson said, "and then reburied, though not quite deep enough, I'm afraid." Tom McCabe shook his head in disbelief.

"And I'm awfully damned sure this friend of Lila's, the woman Frances referred to as ‘Joan,' did it, though I couldn't get much out of Frances or her husband—they were both in a state of shock. He had to be sedated, and she simply refused to talk."

"In time," McCabe suggested.

"We can live in hope, Tom. I'll go back down there in a few days, unless you have some objections."

"No, I don't. I'd like to go with you, though, to sort of keep the whole thing as ... official as we can."

"Sure."

"How's the pooch, Rye?"

"I don't know. It was as if
he
went into shock, too. The vet says he'll be all right, which—"

McCabe, who clearly had asked about Creosote purely from courtesy, broke in. "So you think this `Joan' woman is Greta Lynch?"

Ryerson exhaled slowly, a kind of extended sigh. "I don't know," he said. They were at
Foggy's
Notion; Ryerson had ordered a scotch and soda, though it wasn't yet noon, and he rarely drank at all, let alone before noon. He'd downed half the drink and could already feel it working on him. "I think there's a good chance that `Joan' and Greta Lynch are the same person. Maybe I
want
to believe it, because it would start bringing things together for me."

"Oh?" McCabe was intrigued. "How?"

Ryerson took a sip of the drink, set the glass down. "Okay, we know that Greta worked in Erie, right?"

"Right."

"And we know that poor Lila Curtis killed her boyfriend using an M.O. similar to that of The Park Werewolf."

"Uh-huh. Right."

"Okay, now Lila Curtis lived in Edgewater, which is only twenty miles from Erie, and Lila Curtis also had a friend named Joan who may or may not have come from Erie."

"Sure, Rye. But it's damned tenuous. You know that, don't you?"

Ryerson nodded. "If you're saying we can't get a conviction on it, I'm aware of that. We're also not going to get a conviction if we go to a judge and say, 'Judge, a werewolf did these murders.'

McCabe grinned. "So, you've settled on that, huh? That it's a werewolf?"

Ryerson grimaced. "Don't make it sound so melodramatic, Tom. I told you once that I'm not sure I believe in werewolves, and that still goes. I'm not sure
what
we're dealing with here. First I say that he's got his mythology all wrong, that he's doing his killing not only at times when there's no full moon, but during the
day
as well, and then this poor bastard—
Conkey
—gets it under a full moon. I don't know, Tom. I really do not know. And it's frustrating the hell out of me."

"You and me, both, Rye. But off the record—and this goes nowhere but into my head for now—you're saying that what we've got is a genuine, Hammer-films-variety, snarling, gut-eating werewolf. Is that right?"

"That's right," Ryerson answered simply. He stood. "But I wouldn't bet my ass on it, Tom. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to see a man about a dog."

~ * ~

Greta held the sealed envelope in her hand for a full minute before she opened it. It had only her name on it, no stamp, no return address, so whoever had written it had put it in her mailbox himself—and that made her feel more apprehensive than if the mailman had brought it.

When she did open it, she saw the same dark block lettering that had been used in the first letter:

My Dearest Greta,

  
Our little secrets are what make us human. Animals have no secrets from each other, beyond where they've hidden their stash of food, and under what logs their dens lie.

  
So, if we are animal, and human, at the same time, then the things that the animal inside us has to do, to survive, become the human's awful secrets. Because the animal knows no shame. It knows only its needs, and how to satisfy them.

  
But secrets like that, Greta, can make us sick and depressed. They can eat away at us and make our human world a place of horror.

  
Share your secrets, Greta. Bring them out, into the light, for me. Then, together, we can make them right and good.

Greta crumpled the letter in her fist and cursed savagely beneath her breath, just as Linda
Bowerman
appeared from inside the house, her little two-wheel grocery cart in hand.

"Come to the store with me, Greta?" she asked. Greta shook her head, eyes closed.

"Can I get you anything, then? It's no problem."

Again Greta shook her head; she opened her eyes, looked at Linda. "No, thank you. I don't need anything."

Linda shrugged. "Okay, suit yourself." She descended the porch steps, looked back, waved, and said, "See you later."

"Sure," Greta called back, and went sullenly up to her apartment.

~*~

It was simply furnished, because she was a woman of simple tastes. In her move from Erie, Pennsylvania, she'd either discarded or given to the Salvation Army a number of things that she and her estranged husband had shared and that he had—with unusual magnanimity, she thought at the time—let her keep. Things like a portable stereo, a ten-year-old color TV, two cherry end tables, a super-8-min movie camera and projector, which they'd used quite a lot during the first year of their marriage, and several boxes of essentially useless odds and ends.

She'd had to acquire a number of things when she'd moved to Rochester and settled into her apartment on Fairview Heights: furniture, cooking utensils, a bed. She bought them all in one day, using her savings to buy only the best, if not the best-looking, stuff she could find. Form, she believed, followed function; if something looked nice but didn't work, what good was it?

She also read quite a lot, and had built quite an impressive library. Her tastes were eclectic; the only sort of books she didn't read were modern romances. She read
historicals
, westerns and spy thrillers, horror, poetry, mainstream fiction, psychological fiction, self-help, and current events. She had all of the Arthur Conan Doyle books, all of Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, John Updike, T. M. Wright, Shirley Jackson, Richard
Brautigan
, Paula Fox, and Peter S. Beagle, to name a few of her favorite authors. And she read every night.

Tonight she would not read. Tonight she would spend her evening hours agonizing, in vain, over the "goddamned, cowardly bastard"—as she thought of him—who was writing her these anonymous, sophomorically philosophical, and weirdly accusative letters. Why, if he knew her awful secret, didn't he simply share it with her personally? That would be better. That would be better for both of them. Her anxiety followed her to bed and then into sleep.

~ * ~

The following morning, Saturday, May 3, was warm, dry, and cloudless, and Ryerson
Biergarten
thought there were places he'd rather be than trying to pump a possible murder suspect; the psychic effort always left him weary.

With Creosote tucked snorting under his arm, he knocked firmly on the massive oak door—there was a window in the middle of it covered by a sheer curtain—at 8 Fairview Heights, saw a doorbell, used it. Seconds later he watched as a short, square-faced, dark-haired woman in a long green terrycloth robe appeared from an inner room, moved to the front door, parted the sheer curtains, and peered out.

"Yes?" said the woman.

"I'd like to speak to Greta Lynch," Ryerson called through the closed door.

"Greta's asleep. Could you come back later, please?"

Ryerson checked his watch. "You're sure she's asleep? It is 10:30, you know."

"Yes. I know what time it is."

"Could I leave her my card, then?"

The woman looked confused. "Your what?”

“My card. Could I leave it with you to give to her?"