The Changing (The Biergarten Series) (9 page)

McCabe nodded. "Lila Curtis. Poor kid."

"Yeah. Both of them," Ryerson said. Apparently Lila had killed her boyfriend, Tom
Muggins
, using an M.O. similar, but not identical to The Park Werewolf—then had turned a gun on herself. He pulled a single sheet of paper with the Eastman Kodak logo at the top from underneath the sheets dealing with the murder-suicide near Erie. "And who is it," he said, as much to himself as to McCabe, "that comes from Erie?"

From nearby they heard a loud screech of pain. They looked. A waiter had backed into one of the Cadillac's fins. "Happens all the time," McCabe said. "I'm not sure that car was such a good idea."

"Greta Lynch," Ryerson said.

"Sorry," McCabe said.

"Greta Lynch. She works in Emulsion Technology." He hesitated, thought a moment, went on, "Hey, wait a minute; wasn't that Walt Morgan's section?" He hurriedly got out some more papers with the Kodak logo at the top. He studied one, then another, and another. Finally he said, "Sure. Here it is." He turned the paper toward McCabe, who glanced at it, and said, "Yeah, and?"

"And there's a connection, Tom," Ryerson concluded. "Not only in the fact that this Greta Lynch used to live in Erie, but in the fact that she worked for the third victim, Walt Morgan, as well." He studied Greta's employment sheet for a good half minute, then said, "I'd like to talk with her, Tom. If I could talk with her, I'd—"

McCabe was shaking his head. "I'm sorry, Rye. I can't do that. If she
is
connected somehow to these murders, you might tip her off." He sipped a Coke. "Of course, I'd say the chances are awfully slim, Rye, that she's connected in any way—"

"Because she's a woman?"

"Yes."

"You're living in another century, my friend."

McCabe smiled knowingly. "And I'm better off for it, Rye." Once again, Ryerson got a fleeting glimpse of something slippery and secretive from McCabe. And though he had a chance to study it more closely this time—the image was stronger, less slippery than when he'd interrupted McCabe's sleep with a phone call—he backed off. McCabe was a friend, and was deserving of his privacy, after all.

Their lunch came. Ryerson had a tuna melt on whole wheat, a small salad, and a glass of milk. McCabe had his Coke, the soup of the day—cream of cauliflower—“Chicken Italian," and a medium-sized green salad. "What happened to your appetite, Tom?" Ryerson teased.

McCabe patted his all-too-obvious belly. "Doctor says if I don't lose weight I'll end up on a slab by the time I'm fifty. I don't want to end up on a slab by the time I'm fifty, so I'm trying to cut out a thousand calories or so a day."

"Uh-huh," Ryerson said. As far as he was concerned, people like McCabe were hooked on eating, and though their intentions might be noble, their stomachs still were masters of their spirits. "Why'd you leave me dangling, Tom?"

"Sorry?" He looked confused. Ryerson knew it was an act.

"Why'd you leave me dangling when you left Rochester? Why couldn't you have instructed your people to cooperate with me, for Christ's sake?!" He felt a fit of anger taking hold, fought it back. He didn't want to get on the subject of where McCabe had been for the last two weeks. He knew where he'd been, though McCabe hadn't told him. He'd been resting at his lakeside cottage in the Adirondacks. He had felt the hard, cold touch of reality on his head and had needed, simply and desperately, to run from it, to take a few days of "rejuvenation," to "sweep away the cobwebs"—phrases, Ryerson knew, McCabe would have used if the subject had been broached. But Ryerson wasn't about to broach it. He knew that McCabe had been walking a very thin line, knew that the man had needed the time off, regardless of what was happening in Rochester. And he also knew that the fact was a source of keen embarrassment for him.

"Sorry," McCabe said. "I should have told my people to cooperate with you, I know. It was ... an oversight, and it won't happen again. That's a promise, Rye."

Ryerson sighed. "Yes. Thanks for that, anyway, Tom."

McCabe nodded; then, clearly anxious to change the subject, went on, "I've got a telephone-answering machine at home, you know."

"Yes, I know that, Tom. And?"

"And when I got back I found a couple of … messages on it."

"Oh? What kind of messages?"

McCabe shrugged. "The usual kind. People confessing in great, but unfortunately inaccurate, detail to the murders, people claiming to have information they'll release if the reward money's right. Those kinds of messages."

Ryerson cocked his head knowingly. "You're keeping something from me, aren't you, Tom?"

McCabe grinned. "How could I, even if I wanted to?" He paused. "Yes, I've gotten a couple of other messages, too. Messages from someone who won't identify himself, I'm afraid. Someone who knows things that only the murderer—or someone who happened by the murder scenes before anyone else—would know."

"What kinds of things, Tom?"

He shrugged. "Like the fact that one of the victims had her tongue ripped out. That was Tammy Levine, I think—it's hard to keep track of these things without a scorecard." He smiled grimly. "And this ... person—I can't tell, Rye, if it's a man or a woman—says that I've got three good suspects, so why aren't they in jail?"

"Oh?" Ryerson said. "Does he name them?"

McCabe nodded. "Yes. Two of them, anyway. But I'm afraid I can't share those names with you, Rye. I've got them under observation, anyway—"

Ryerson cut in, "Two men and a woman? Am I right?"

McCabe shook his head incredulously. "Stay the hell out of my brain, Rye!" He meant it, Ryerson knew. "Yes. Two men and a woman. I don't have the woman's name. This ... person who calls tells me to find out
her
name myself, that it's my
job!
The creep—telling me what my damned
job
is! And the most I can tell you, Rye—for all kinds of reasons—is that this person names two men. If you can pick my brain for their names, go ahead. But I wish you wouldn't."

Ryerson shrugged. "Sure, Tom. Anything for the sake of friendship."

And McCabe said, "Tell me why I don't believe you."

Ryerson answered, smiling, "Because you're a professional skeptic, Tom." His smile altered; he went on, his tone dripping with sincerity, "If you want me to stay out of your brain, Tom, then I will." And he meant it, although, much to his chagrin, when he had tried moments earlier to peer into McCabe's brain for the names he knew were probably swimming around in it, he had seen little more than what he sometimes saw in Creosote's brain—snow, interference, a haze—and it made the psychologist in him wonder and worry that Rochester's chief of detectives was losing his grip.

~ * ~

The letter Greta Lynch got that night was written in bold block print, and it was unsigned.

My Dear Greta,

  
Love's a strange thing, isn't it? I used to believe that it was the ultimate driving force in a person's life, that we will do
anything
to get it, or keep it.

  
And I was right. Because I know about you, Greta, my love. I know about you, I know what your compulsions are, I know what you've done, and what you
have
to do. And I'm not going to tell a soul. It'll be our little secret. Then, one day, when you have shaken this "need," we can be together. That is my hope.

She stared blankly at the note for quite a long time, until Linda
Bowerman
came into the hallway.

"Hello, Greta." Linda got no reply and added, "Something wrong? Bad news from home?"

Greta answered, her voice weak, "No. Just a prank. Someone's idea of a joke," and she went upstairs quickly, with agitation, into her apartment.

It was the blood, of course. He'd seen the blood. She hadn't gotten it all off. Some of it had clung around her fingernails, maybe, or in the lines on her palm, or in her shoes—God knew where!

And that meant, simply, that she'd have to scrub harder, much harder. And then she'd have to look very, very closely, with a magnifying glass, into each pore, into each cell if she could.

Damn him! Goddamn him!

She turned the shower on. Hot. And got in.

Eugene
Conkey
figured the chances were about the same that The Park Werewolf would get him as they were that he'd win The New York State Lottery (into which he had faithfully, and in vain, plugged fifty dollars a month for the past six years). Number one, it was called "The
Park
Werewolf" because its territory was Kodak Park, not here, five miles away on
Bayview
Drive. Number two, even if it
strayed
out of The Park for some reason, Christ, it had a couple of hundred square miles to mess around in; the chances that it would somehow find
him
were about the same as the chances that a meteorite would plummet from the sky and take his ear off. And number three, he was prepared. If any creep who thought he was a
werewolf
interrupted his nightly jogging routine, then he'd find his guts somewhere far behind him in the weeds. Sure the forty-five was illegal, sure it was hard to run with it tucked into his jogging pants, sure he'd never used one before. But those were small considerations indeed in the face of his own self-defense.

Eugene heard a car round the bend a hundred yards behind him. He glanced back into the car's headlights, saw they were on high beam. "Fuck you!" he breathed. The headlights dimmed. He looked back at the road in front of him—poorly lighted because here, in Irondequoit, one of Rochester's more fashionable neighborhoods, streetlamps were looked upon as a little gauche; no one
walked
anywhere anymore—and angled to his right, onto the shoulder, just in case the car's driver didn't see him. He was thankful there was a full moon tonight; it lit the gravel shoulder well enough that he could see the occasional pothole or rock.

He idly watched the car as it passed him. He saw that it was dark gray in color (though that was hard to tell in the dark, he realized) and that it had a whip antenna on the back—an unmarked police car, he decided, and felt grateful that it was prowling the neighborhood. He watched it round the corner onto
Briarcliffe
, which ran into
Bayview
, then he angled back onto the road.

The neighborhood was awfully quiet. He'd noticed that as soon as he'd left his house, because at this hour—it was 9:30—there was usually still a good amount of traffic—people coming and going to the big twenty-four-hour grocery,
Wegman's
, at the Culver Ridge Shopping Plaza or heading to one of the half dozen bars that dotted the area or to one of the five theaters at
Eastway
Plaza just a couple miles north. He liked the quiet, especially for jogging, because he jogged not only, he claimed, "for the health of it," but also, "for the peace of it," and the roads had rarely been as peaceful as they were to-night, with most people shut up in their houses away from the threat of the full moon. He thought, wryly, that there was some good to be found in any situation.

His breathing as he jogged was heavy, especially toward the end of his routine, and the sound of it often covered up small sounds around him.

So he didn't hear the low, ragged growling from the weeds just to his right. Or the weeds themselves being squashed underfoot. Or the gravel at the shoulder of the road crunching under an awful weight. And by then he was past the thing that was making all this noise, so he didn't see it, either, as it fell in behind him and kept pace with him just a couple of arm's lengths away.

And when the thing was nearly upon him his nose twitched, because the smell wafting over him reminded him of the open sewers in Williamson, New York where he'd grown up. Then he felt only the whisper of a touch—like the touch of a butterfly—at the side of his throat. Then the top of his spinal column was ripped away, and he tumbled head over heels and lay with his arms and legs wide, his head at an impossible angle, and these words spilling incoherently from his lips: "The
peace
of it, the
peace
of it, the
peace
of it . . ."

~ * ~

Jack Youngman stared for a long time into the trunk of his Marquis and at last convinced himself that there was no blood left in it. He'd cleaned it very thoroughly two weeks before, when he'd first found the blood. And then again when it had come back a week later. And now today, the day after Eugene
Conkey's
murder, which had been discovered several hours earlier and so had been part of the morning TV and radio newscasts but hadn't yet hit the newspapers. He closed the trunk quietly, though he was in his garage and the door was shut. You never knew about neighbors; one day they could be as warm as toast, and the next day they could turn you in for cheating on your income taxes. Or one of them might phone the cops anonymously and say, "Hey, I got this neighbor and he's been acting real peculiar; he cleans the trunk of his car
all
the time, you know."

Because maybe, just maybe, Jack had decided,
he
was The Park Werewolf. He was big enough, after all. And strong enough. And what did it matter if he couldn't
remember
killing anyone? If he was nuts, if he went around taking people's heads off, then the chances were pretty damned good that he
wouldn't
remember it. Shit, why would he want to? Or maybe he had two or three personalities. Maybe during the day he was Big Jack Youngman, gruff and unapproachable—Big Jack Youngman, who was really made of mush on the inside and didn't want people to get too close to him because all that mush would come out. And then at night, during the full moon, he changed. He became a rock-hard, drooling killer.