Darkfall

just don't buy that explanation. Because what we're talking about here is a whole pack of creatures slithering in that way, one behind the other, like a commando team, for God's sake. Rats just aren't that smart or that… determined. No animal is. It doesn't make sense.”

The thought of Vastagliano wrapped in a cloak of swarming, biting rats had caused Jack's mouth to go dry and sour. He had to work up some saliva to unstick his tongue. Finally he said, “Another thing. Even if Vastagliano and his bodyguard were overwhelmed by scores of these… these things, they'd still have killed a couple — wouldn't they? But we haven't found a single dead rat or a single dead anything else — except, of course, dead people.”

“And no droppings,” Goldbloom said.

“No what?”

“Droppings. Feces. If there were dozens of animals involved, you'd find droppings, at least a few, probably piles of droppings.”

“If you find animal hairs—”

“We'll definitely be looking for them,” Goldbloom said. “We'll vacuum the floor around each body, of course, and analyze the sweepings. If we could find a few hairs, that would clear up a lot of the mystery.” The assistant medical examiner wiped one hand across his face, as if he could pull off and cast away his tension, his disgust. He wiped so hard that spots of color actually did rise in his cheeks, but the haunted look was still in his eyes. “There's something else that disturbs me, too. The victims weren't… eaten. Bitten, ripped gouged… all of that… but so far as I can see, not an ounce of flesh was consumed. Rats would've eaten the tender parts: eyes, nose, earlobes, testicles…. They'd have torn open the body cavities in order to get to the soft organs. So would any other predator or scavenger. But there was nothing like that in this case. These things killed purposefully, efficiently, methodically… and then just went away without devouring a scrap of their prey. It's unnatural. Uncanny. What motive or force was driving them? And why?”

IV

After talking with Ira Goldbloom, Jack and Rebecca decided to question the neighbors. Perhaps one of them had heard or seen something important last night.

Outside Vastagliano's house, they stood on the sidewalk for a moment, hands in their coat pockets.

The sky was lower than it had been an hour ago. Darker, too. The gray clouds were smeared with others that were soot-dark.

Snowflakes drifted down; not many; they descended lazily, except when the wind gusted, and they seemed like fragments of burnt sky, cold bits of ash.

Rebecca said, “I'm afraid we'll be pulled off this case.”

“You mean… off these two murders or off the whole business?”

“Just these two. They're going to say there's no connection.”

“There's a connection,” Jack said.

“I know. But they're going to say Vastagliano and Ross are unrelated to the Novello and Coleson cases.”

“I think Goldbloom will tie them together for us.”

She looked sour. “I hate to be pulled off a case, damnit. I like to finish what I start.”

“We won't be pulled off.”

“But don't you see? If some sort of animal did it…”

“Yes?”

“Then how can they possibly classify it as murder?”

“It's murder,” he said emphatically.

“But you can't charge an animal with homicide.”

He nodded. “I see what you're driving at.”

“Damn.”

“Listen, if these were animals that were trained to kill, then it's still homicide; the trainer is the murderer.”

“If these were dog bites that Vastagliano and Ross died from,” Rebecca said, “then maybe you might just be able to sell that theory. But what animal — what animal as small as these apparently were — can be trained to kill, to obey all commands? Rats? No. Cats? No. Gerbils, for God's sake?”

“Well, they train ferrets,” Jack said. “They use them for hunting sometimes. Not game hunting where they're going after the meat, but just for sport, 'cause the prey is generally a ragged mess when the ferret gets done with it.”

“Ferrets, huh? I'd like to see you convince Captain Gresham that someone's prowling the city with a pack of killer ferrets to do his dirty work for him.”

“Does sound far-fetched,” Jack admitted.

“To say the least.”

“So what does that leave us with?”

She shrugged.

Jack thought about Baba Lavelle.

Voodoo?

No. Surely not. It was one thing to propose that Lavelle was making the murders look strange in order to frighten his adversaries with the threat of voodoo curses, but it was quite something else to imagine that the curses actually worked.

Then again… What about the locked bathroom? What about the fact that Vastagliano and Ross hadn't been able to kill even one of their attackers? What about the lack of animal droppings?

Rebecca must have known what he was thinking, for she scowled and said, “Come on. Let's talk to the neighbors.”

The wind suddenly woke, breathed, raged. Spitting flecks of snow, it came along the street as if it were a living beast, a very cold and angry wind.

V

Mrs. Quillen, Penny's teacher at Wellton School, was unable to understand why a vandal would have wrecked only one locker.

“Perhaps he intended to ruin them all but had second thoughts. Or maybe he started with yours, Penny dear, then heard a sound he couldn't place, thought someone was coming, got frightened, and ran. But we keep the school locked up tight as a drum at night, of course, and there's the alarm system, too. However did he get in and out?”

Penny knew it wasn't a vandal. She knew it was something a whole lot stranger than that. She knew the trashing of her locker was somehow connected with the eerie experience she'd had last night in her room. But she didn't know how to express this knowledge without sounding like a child afraid of boogeymen, so she didn't try to explain to Mrs. Quillen those things which, in truth, she couldn't even explain to herself.

After some discussion, much sympathy, and even more bafflement, Mrs. Quillen sent Penny to the basement where the supplies and spare textbooks were kept on well-ordered storage shelves.

“Get replacements for everything that was destroyed, Penny. All the books, new pencils, a three-ring notebook with a pack of filler, and a new tablet. And don't dawdle, please. We'll be starting the math lesson in a few minutes, and you know that's where you need to work the hardest.”

Penny went down the front stairs to the ground floor, paused at the main doors to look through the beveled glass windows at the swirling puffs of snow, then hurried back the hall to the rear of the building, past the deserted gymnasium, past the music room where a class was about to begin.

The cellar door was at the very end of the hallway.