She hesitated answering. He pushed for a reply. She finally dropped her gaze and said, “I dared not share the journal with them.”
He paced. “This is so bizarre… . unbelievably ahh… ahh—”
“X-Files, I know!”
“More like The Fringe.”
“David, I know it’s a terrible shock, and a great deal to take in at once; you need to read the journal.”
He leaned against a wall as if seeking something solid.
“Will you please assure me that I can count on you to watch my back?”
“You intend to combat this thing alone?”
“Oh God, finally… you finally acknowledge there is a threat.”
“Just… just answer the question.”
“Once I determine who on board is the carrier, I’m prepared to kill it.”
“With what? How?”
“An experimental weapon.”
“Experimental? You don’t have a clue then, do you?”
“Not entirely, no. But I know from Declan’s journal that it can’t stand cold. Still, I admit, liquid Freon is not always at hand.” She indicated a canister of Freon in her duffle bag, and he examined it.
“This is the same stuff used by dermatologists to kill ring worms under the skin.”
“That’s right. Manufactured by Johnson & Johnson.”
“It’d take you some time to get this operational and pointed.” It came in a canister with a puncturing tube to insert in the spray head, much like WD-40 oil but there was no using this stuff without inserting the tube. A person could be overpowered before she got the thing working. “You might do better with mace,” he offered.
“Whatever we use, I can’t do this alone.”
“We now is it?”
“Yes, we! David, I need you desperately.”
“In another context, I’d take that as a wonderful thing but this… . Kelly, why me, why burden me with this?”
“From infancy, I’ve learned to read people, and I get nothing but positive vibes coming from you, and you look me in the eyes when you speak.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m a student of body language, the unspoken gesture; I find you sincere and easy to read.”
“Are you saying I’m easy?”
“Confess, before this, you just wanted to get into my pants, but now you don’t want to take advantage of the mentally challenged, right?”
“Hold on… I just wanted to get to know you.”
“Now you’re lying.” She smiled and slapped his shoulder. “Come clean.”
“Well, of course, I had thoughts.”
“I’m flattered, but your attention held no evil, ulterior motive—just sex on your mind, eh sailor?”
“OK, I can’t deny it, but why not? I’m single, you’re single—you are single, aren’t you?” His eyes met her emerald irises.
“Yes, I am single.”
“And you kissed me, remember, and you invited me here to your room, as I recall.”
“I did, and I stand guilty of manipulating you.”
“I confess I’d been wanting to hear that invitation to your cabin since we boarded, but now…”
“It’s important you get the full story, David; of all the divers, I chose you to watch my back—I trust you alone.”
“So now what?”
“You need to read the journal! Read Declan’s words, I implore you.” She poured him a second drink.
He started reading the 1912 journal from page one.
Tim McAffey’s dead features were intact beneath the bark-hardened exterior, at least enough to identify him, and still no sign of the other man, Francis. Also lying here was the mysterious, ancient wolf-like creature with its enormous haunches and hair as thick and matted as a woolly mammoth. The creature was stiff as old tree bark. It looked like a once muscular, energy-charged, huge, long dead and dehydrated beastie of fable.
All this lay before them. Thomas Coogan had returned with his professor and mentor, Dr. Enoch Bellingham and a tall, imposing Chief Inspector Ian Reahall.
Reahall quickly sized up the situation as Ransom studied him and the professor. Bellingham looked uncomfortable, shaky—his thin frame hardly capable of holding his coat on his shoulders. In fact, the good doctor, perhaps in his late fifties, looked sickly and appeared somewhat corpselike himself, but he at least had his color. Dr. Bellingham or Dr. B as everyone was calling him tentatively knelt over McAffey’s dessicated body.
Ransom quickly concluded that Reahall, a man slightly larger than Ransom himself and looking like he enjoyed three meals a day, was most assuredly given to a bad habit he’d found in most police investigators—a preference for wild conjecture over fact. Ransom recalled fashioning the facts to fit the crime; it was a dangerous practice and could lead a man down a primrose lane faster than falling down a rabbit hole.
“Enoch,” Reahall said to Dr. Bellingham and Ransom noted the two were on a first name basis. 'The dead man must have been attacked by the missing O’Toole who appears to’ve used a blow torch as his weapon to so disfigure a man! You know, the sort used at the shipyards by the riveters and steel workers.”
While it sounded just dandy, Ransom knew the local constable was drawing at straws and hoping for quick corroboration from the doctor.
“We find O’Toole,” continued Reahall, “and by God, we find the weapon, case closed.” Reahall’s self-assured tone had the effect of getting a nod from everyone except Ransom and Declan, and why not? It answered the unsettling thoughts, the unfamiliar odors, and unheard of sights before them; in a word it made sense—converted the unknown to the known and so fended off unreasonable fear.
Usually a good approach, but in this case, Ransom knew better, and so he guessed, did Declan. The details simply did not fit with Reahall’s ‘facts’. Still, the others quickly grasped at the proffered straw.
“And what of the beast?” asked Ransom with a kick at the animal corpse which he immediately regretted as he shouted in pain shooting through his toe. Once he regained his composure, he said to his Belfast counterpart, “Constable, really how can a torch do this kind of damage to a man? It’s not burns; you’d smell the flesh if it’d been caused by fire—and look at the man’s clothes! Untouched by fire. No, this… this is something I’ve never encountered, sir. Have you? Have you really?”
“I know of you, sir. Mr. Private Detective, and I know you were once yourself on the Pinkerton payroll—as strike breaker, correct?”
Like most men, Reahall’s tone made it clear that a strike breaker was a creature of the lowest depths, worthy only of contempt, but Ransom had only hired on in Dublin for a month so as not to starve. The Constable’s done some digging about, like a pig at truffles, Ransom thought but said, “Wyland, sir, Wyland’s the name, but that’s hardly the question before us, inspector.”
“Constable… here in Belfast it is constable. I understand until recently a select few detectives in Chicago were called inspectors—masters at their work, I understand?”
Ransom fought an urge to scratch his ear or head, thinking if not careful down to each word that this man smelling of cheap cologne had him dead-to-rights. “I wouldn’t know about that, Constable!” He gave out with a laugh. “A-And no, sir, never with the Pinkertons.”
“I have a report of a Wyland in Dublin at a mine there working for the Pinkertons.”
“I applied once, but flatly turned down. Something about my drinking turned up in a background check, and those Pinkerton executives are sorely conservative fellows. Wouldn’t have the likes of me, no sir, so—” he continued to fabricate. “Not me, no. This old man…”
