and wheeled on Weinstock. “This is bullshit, man. This is some kind of stupid Halloween bullshit!”
Weinstock didn’t answer. What could he say? He threw an imploring look at Val and Crow, but she was looking down at the lacings of her shoes and Crow was giving the TV a thousand-yard stare.
Ferro reached a hand out to touch LaMastra on the shoulder, but the younger man just shook it off.
On the TV screen, Cowan had turned away and was lumbering toward Castle. They stood there, regarding each other. Cowan was still smiling, but Castle’s face looked almost sad. It didn’t last, though, as Cowan and he scrutinized each other, the look of sad dismay on Jimmy Castle’s face crumbled and fell away and soon he, too, was smiling. That smile was wrong in every possible way.
Suddenly both men—if men they were—stopped and froze with their heads cocked to listen. They stood like that for a very long time, though the microphone of the security camera picked up no trace at all of anything they might have heard. Their smiles widened, became the leering, grinning mouths of animals, losing any last resemblance to humanity. Then, as if responding to a call, both of them turned and walked toward the door. Walked now, not lumbering like machines. They moved with something approaching grace. It was still not a manlike way of walking, but instead it possessed the smooth stalking fluidity of predatory hunters. They crept to the door, listened, opened it, and vanished into the hall.
Once again the autopsy room was frozen into the silence and immobility of a still photograph except for the constantly changing clock. After a while, Weinstock raised the remote and pressed Stop, reducing the image to static and softly hissing white noise.
He looked at the two detectives, feeling sorry for them, feeling helpless as if showing them this was some kind of betrayal of trust.
Ferro sat with his face in his hands, shaking his head slowly; beside him LaMastra was beating one bunched fist forcefully against his thigh. Weinstock knew that the blows had to hurt. Perhaps LaMastra needed the pain to keep from flying apart. That was something he could well understand.
Without asking he poured them each a measure of Scotch, then walked around the desk to hand one to each, saying, “Here.”
LaMastra took the Scotch and sipped at it, winced and took another sip, letting the alcohol burn play surrogate for the pounding fist.
Ferro looked into the cup and said, “I don’t drink Scotch.” Then he drank it down in two gulps, hissing at the fumes. He held the cup out for a refill, which Weinstock provided.
“There’s more of it,” Weinstock said softly.
“The hell there is!” growled LaMastra. “The bloody hell there is!”
“It shows them coming back. It’s on the next tape. It shows them coming back.” He wiped his mouth with a shaky hand. “It shows them all…bloated. Shows them going back into the cold room.”
“Go fuck yourself!” snarled LaMastra jabbing a finger at Weinstock.
“I’m sorry,” said Weinstock.
LaMastra looked up at him, then he wheeled on Crow and Val and they saw tears in the young man’s eyes. “Why’d you have to do this?” he demanded with as much desperation as ferocity.
There was nothing to say to that, so Weinstock gestured with the bottle. Both detectives held out their cups for more. Weinstock filled the cups and set the bottle down on the edge of the desk. He slumped down on the edge of the desk next to the bottle, arms folded protectively across his chest, ankles crossed, head slumped forward. “I’m sorry.”
“What you showed us…” began Ferro, stopped, tried again. “This is just…”
“I know.”
“This can’t be what it is,” said Ferro, then corrected himself. “What it looks like. That can’t be. It can’t.”
“I know.”
LaMastra wiped angrily at his eyes. “There is just no way I just saw that. You just get that out of your head, Doc.”
Weinstock nodded.
“It’s absurd,” said Ferro, trying for a trace of his air of cool command. “What we saw was some kind of prank. Highly convincing, sure, but not real. No way, not possible.”
“Okay,” said Val softly.
“Just a lot of bullshit!” agreed LaMastra.
“Someone’s idea of a sick joke,” concluded Ferro.
“Sure,” said Crow.
Ferro looked at Weinstock, whose face was weary beyond words, and grave; he looked at LaMastra, who was flushed and fighting to keep tears out of his eyes. He looked at Val, who nodded silently.
“Oh, God…” he said at length.
Chapter 28
(1)
The bottle of Scotch was half empty. Ferro got up and walked over to the couch and stared hard at Crow.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what, Frank?”
Ferro’s hand snaked out and took a fistful of Crow’s shirt and pulled him roughly to his feet. He was six inches taller than Crow and his face was filled with fury. “Why did you bring us into this…this…?”
Crow began to say something but Val stood and put her hand on Ferro’s wrist. “No, Frank,” she said. His eyes snapped toward her and they seemed to generate heat. Val raised her other hand and put her palm on his cheek. “No.”
Ferro’s eyes went moist. He let go of Crow and stepped back.
Val said, “We brought you in because we’re scared and we’re desperate and we didn’t know where else to turn. You and Vince are outsiders, which means we can trust you. We can’t say as much for the police here. Gus is a fool and Polk…well, there’s a possibility that Polk is involved.”
“It was wrong of you to call us,” Ferro insisted, but his voice lacked conviction.
“I won’t apologize, Frank,” Val said. “I’ve lost too many of the people I love to want to play it coy. I’ll do anything I have to do in order to stop this. Anything.”
Ferro tried to hold her gaze, tried to win the contest, but there was just no way. His eyes dropped and he turned away, swatting at the air as if he could put the whole thing behind him.
Crow cleared his throat. “We have other help on this.” He told them about Jonatha Corbiel and filled them in on all of the information she’d dug up. “She’s doing the deep research for us, her and that reporter, Newton. Maybe she’ll come up with something.”
“Frank…Vince,” Val said, “sit down. We have to tell you all of it now. From the very beginning.”
Their faces registered the horror that each of them felt at the thought that there was more, but Val was implacable. She waited them out and they did sit down. Then she and Crow told them about Griswold and what they believed he was; about the Bone Man; about everything they knew and believed. Weinstock brewed a pot of
