“Don’t make me,” cried Pearce. “Don’t fucking move.”
The beast howled in his face. There was no more mission. No more target. Just the core-deep cry of its purpose. To kill. That’s all there was inside it. Everything else, in that moment, was gone. The beast felt nothing but the need for blood, nothing but hunger, and the flesh in front of it that could satiate that calling. Pearce was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone.
The beast got into a striking stance and lunged. Pearce yelled my name, “Marley,” and his finger tightened around the trigger. “No!”
The sound of metal moving inside the gun was like a spring being compressed in a mattress. He was not fast enough to fire a single shot. He died quickly.
The beast bit into him and drank as the life force evaporated from Pearce’s body. In its bones, the beast could hear—feel—his dying pulse. The smell of shit filled the air. The beast gnashed, lost in it, and when it drew back its head to catch the moonlight in its scarlet eyes, it moaned with what I could only call sadness. It did what its nature made it do, but it knew somewhere in its hide that it had done wrong. Still, it could not stop. Like a glutton, it lapped at the hot blood around the corners of its mouth and went back to work on the body.
The spell broke. I was shocked back to reality as if I’d been hit by lightning. I was shaking, and I couldn’t stop. I needed a drink, but there would be no more of that. I lit a smoke to calm my nerves.
Why couldn’t the beast get the scent? It certainly had tried. It had something to do with those church break- ins, I was sure of it. I needed those police files, or at least a man on the inside, like Pearce was. Someone who could feed me the information I needed. Someone to check back and go through all those Rose murders to see if a church break-in coincided with all of them and if anything was ever boosted from any of these places. Maybe nothing was stolen, but maybe something was left behind at one of these churches, some clue as to who this man was. Maybe someone had been caught at some point busting into a church. Maybe it was the Rose Killer.
The church angle was a lead, as was this Polaroid box that was found up at the Crowley property. I couldn’t count on the beast with this next full moon, that much was clear, and it wasn’t even the monster’s fault. This target was a wraith. A fog. A ghost. He had some kind of trick up his sleeve that protected him from the wolf. I wasn’t used to being proactive—Lord knows I wasn’t good at it—but for me, for the girls, and for Pearce, I was going to get the Rose Killer. The only question was how.
I put my cigarette out, lit another, and came up with a plan. Just like Nancy Drew.
I tore the envelope, the pictures, and reports to shreds and put them in the fireplace. I lit a match and watched it all burn.
TWENTY-TWO
Detective Van Buren arrived at the Evelyn Police Station just after nine. It was a two- story building erected in the forties, and up on the second floor was where the Rose Killer Task Force was situated. That’s where he was off to, I supposed. I was watching him from across the street, blended into the crowd of television and radio reporters who had set up tents outside the front of the building. When they were on the air, it was from the “frontlines.”
I watched Van Buren get out of his car and go in. I had no idea where he lived—he wasn’t in the phone book, and after riffling through Pearce’s memories I couldn’t come up with it—but I needed him, so I at least had to know which car was his.
It was a maroon-colored Ford hatchback with a bumper sticker that read “Life’s a Beach.” Just for that and that alone I wanted to punch the guy in the stomach until I broke all the bones in my hand. But again, I needed him, and in order to get him to help me, I was going to have to lie through my teeth.
When it got dark out, I snuck into the precinct parking lot and jimmied open the door of his car by sticking a hooked wire between the window and the frame. I thought it was great, me breaking into a car after so many years, and where was it? A cop parking lot. Better still, it was a cop’s car, and he hadn’t even set the alarm. I couldn’t help but laugh. I had a sharp knife on me from my kitchen drawer. All I had to do was wait.
He came out through the back door at midnight. He looked exhausted. His black suit was wrinkled, and even in the dim light of the parking lot the bags under his eyes were evident enough that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. I felt pretty bad too, having spent one whole evening hiding in the back of a car, but I’d gotten good at hiding out the last few weeks anyway, so it could have been worse.
He got to the car, got his keys out of his inside jacket pocket, unlocked the door, and got in the driver’s seat. He started it up, then tapped on the radio. Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” came on.
The idiot sighed.
Before he switched into drive, I got up off the backseat and sprang forward. He saw movement in the rearview mirror and went for his piece, but I was already upon him, the tip of the knife poking a tiny little hole into the underside of his neck.
He stopped breathing.
“Higgins,” he sneered, “you motherfucker. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, chief, just keep your hands on the wheel.”
“I told you you’d fuck up, and guess what? You just did. I’ll kill you for this.”
“Not if I kill you first.”
I put more pressure on the knife.
“Okay, okay,” he grunted. “What the hell do you want?”
“Well, I want you to drive, man. Get us outta here. There’s too many cops here.”
“Oh, really? At a police station? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me….”
“Can the sarcasm. It doesn’t go with the suit. Drive. And don’t do any bullshit signaling to anybody. No flashing headlights, no secret wave, none of that, cuz I’ll cut your fucking head off. You copy that?”
“Yeah, I copy.”
He put the car in drive and eased out of the space. We got to the street, and without direction from me, he made a left, avoiding the circus show outside the precinct. When we got a little farther away, I reached into his jacket with my free hand and relieved him of his piece. With that, I put the knife in my back pocket and sat back with the gun trained on the side of his head.
“You’re not such a big man now, are you? Not without your fucking gun.”
“Fuck you, Higgins.”
“No,” I said, “you won’t be doing that today. Keep going till we get to Old Sherman. From there, I’ll direct you further.”
“My wife knows I’m on the way home. She knows my schedule.”
“Tight leash, eh?”
“Higgins …”
“Just drop it, okay? You’ll be getting home soon enough, given you don’t fuck with me. Now, just focus on the road. Safe driving saves lives, you know.”
We got to Old Sherman Road. We took that about a mile north to where there was this little dirt road that went about a hundred yards into the woods and ended in the middle of nowhere. Why it was there in the first place was anyone’s guess. We took that little road to the end of the line, and then I ordered him out of the car. The point of the gun never strayed from his body. I came around and stood about ten paces in front of him.
It was pretty funny, if you got to thinking about it. In the last few weeks I’d held guns on more people than I ever had in my entire life.
We were in the middle of darkness, perfectly concealed. The only light came from the car, and I think this made Van Buren a little more nervous than he was when we were driving. For all he knew, there were wild dogs in those woods. Dogs that … well …
“Black Is Black” started playing on the car radio.
“I love that song,” I said.
“Okay already,” said Van Buren. “Get to it.”
