The Wolfman

“Arright. Well, first I want to apologize for the inconvenience. Your wife didn’t want you seeing me in the house. But basically, I’m going to need you to do a couple of favors for me.”

“Me? Do favors for you? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m for real, man. The way I see it, you pissed me off good and proper. Came into my home, cuffed me, treated me like a fucking scoundrel. Threatened me, even. You were the one making all those crazy phone calls, and you busted into my house and left that fucking note. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one bit. You and I gotta even up.”

“I don’t owe you shit, Higgins.”

I fired a shot into the trees. He jumped. It was time to spin my web of lies and hope he fell for it. “You do owe me, cop. You have no idea. You see, I know you take crazy pills, and something up in your brain is way offtrack. You’ve been dedicating all this time to my ass when you could have been tracking down the killer. Instead you’ve been satisfying your dementia, and innocent people have died. All the while you’ve just been making things more complicated than they ever had to be.”

“Who told you about my medication?”

“I got sources, you prick. I’ll run it down for you. The arrangement Pearce and I had? You wanna know what it was? You wanna know how we were in cahoots? I was his garbage man,” I said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“All those cases you boneheads never solved? I solved ‘em. Motherfuckers never got brought in, but they got taken down all the same, and they’re all buried in these woods. Every single one of them.”

“My God.”

The gullible prick.

“Yeah, that’s right. You think you’re dealing with some run-of-the-mill punk? No, I’ve killed more men than you’ve ever talked

to.”

“You sick … bitch.”

“I’m not sick. I’m a public servant, just like you. Vietnam made me a machine. I’m just doing my job for America. Making the community safe. This shit with the Rose Killer has gone on long enough. Pearce knew it. He knew the feds couldn’t get the job done. That’s why he enlisted my aid, man. I’m gonna end it, and you’re gonna help me. Pearce was helping me, now it’s your turn.”

“Fuck you.”

“You wanted to know the deal, now you know. What are you gonna do? Play high-and-mighty with me? I think not. You’re not Mr. Untouchable yourself. Your prints are in my house, as are your handcuffs, also with your prints on ‘em. How’d they get there? You’re gonna fuck with me, I’ll fuck you right back. You can’t turn me in, because the second you do I’ll bring this town to its fucking knees. How do you think the public will react when they find out their tax dollars have been going to an executioner? You can’t do that to Pearce’s memory, man. You can’t do that to his wife. His unborn child.”

A minute passed.

He said, “What do you want?”

“I want your wallet.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Gimme the fucking wallet.”

He fished out his wallet, then threw it to me. I took out his license, pretty much just for show. I looked around in the sleeves a little more, then chucked it into the open car door.

“Now I know where you live,” I said, “and I know what your kid looks like.”

“Okay,” he said, “that’s enough.”

“What’s the boy’s name?”

“That’s enough!”

“Not quite. You’re going to get me the information I need, just like Danny did. If you don’t, or if you fuck with me in any way, I have a number of bombs—I won’t tell you how many—planted throughout this town. A signal needs to be sent to these bombs every twelve hours. When a signal isn’t sent, say, if I’m arrested and unable to, or injured, or something like that, then the bombs kind of take it upon themselves to blow up. You copy?”

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “You’re the goddamn devil, Higgins.”

“Only if one of those bombs happened to be planted in the school where your little boy learns his letters, Van Buren.”

“Monster.”

“You have no idea,” I said, “but at least my first name ain’t Clancy. You must have gotten beat up a lot as a kid.”

“Shut up.”

“You may not want to help me. You may want this to be personal. But if you feel like you can still be a hero in this, just think of the hundreds of innocent people in this town that will die by fire if my bombs go off. Now, I need to know everything there is to know about that Polaroid box they found up at the Crowley property. Everything. And I need to know if a church break-in occurred on the same night as all the murders.”

“A church break-in?”

“Yeah. It happened this time, with Betsy Ratner, and with Josie Jones and Gloria Shaw. The same thing also happened over in Edenburgh. You fuckers have the resources to go through the archives of all these cities to see if this correlation goes all the way back.”

“Shit … you’re right. It did happen last time, didn’t it? Let’s say I get this information for you. Then what?”

“That’s it. I take care of business, and whatever happens after that happens. This evil prick might kill me, or I might kill him. If it’s the latter, I’ll get out of Evelyn before his body goes cold, you have my word on that, but this thing I’m doing, I’m doing it for Danny. When this is over, no matter how it plays out, I sure as hell won’t be a problem for you. I guarantee you that much. We can pretend this little meeting of the minds never happened.”

“You take care of business? What about the case?”

“Fuck the case. You see, that’s why Pearce was a good man. He put his job aside for this business on the side. What I do … what we did … it wasn’t for any case, it wasn’t for his job, it was for the greater good. One less disease in the world. You understand that?” It was close enough to the truth that I didn’t need a poker face.

“When do you need this by?” he asked.

“What? Pal, we’re going back to the precinct right now.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” I said, leveling the gun at his privates, “and don’t give me that shit about your wife missing you….”

“No, Higgins. I can’t go back now. I punched out and I’ve been fucking shot at. I can’t go snooping through the fucking computers without one of the feds seeing me, asking me what the fuck I’m doing back so soon. I’ll do what you’re asking, but I’m not going to lie to the feds for you.”

I thought for a second. There were less than forty-eight hours until that full moon started to shine. Shit was coming to a head.

“Fine. Tomorrow. I’ll call for you, we’ll meet somewhere. No funny business.”

“Fine,” he said.

I popped the clip out of his gun and ejected the cartridge in the chamber, threw it all into the dirt.

“Be good,” I said, and I walked back down the road.

TWENTY-THREE

I watched from the shadows as Van Buren got in his car and took off. I didn’t trust him, but he felt like my only hope. With any luck, he’d take my insane blackmailing scam seriously, and do what he was told to do.

After he was gone, I walked across Old Sherman and went a few blocks east to where I had my own truck stashed. On the passenger seat, under a blanket, was my rifle. The extra shells were in the glove, as was Van