Ghouls

didn’t release to the press was that, though no bodies were found, two piles of organs were discovered near the car. A couple of county techs brought the stuff in yesterday for me to identify. That’s what this lab report’s about.”

“Organs,” Kurt said vacantly.

“Stomachs, uteri, livers, some mesentery—most of the lower G.I. tract.”

“I don’t understand,” Kurt said. He was distracted, confused. The humming seemed to grow louder, pressing his eardrums like a quick pressure drop.

“They were eviscerated.”

Kurt wanted to leave. This was too much for one week. This was madness. Bard was right in his cynicism. Things just got worse and worse. The world was a slaughterhouse, a black playground for every psychopath on two legs.

“The two girls were eviscerated,” Greene said again. “Tox screen read negative for drugs. They were a little lit, though; .02 blood-alcohol content—there was beer in the car. Couldn’t find any semen in the mess. Lots of pubes, but they were all white/female, according to the core index. One of the detectives told me there was blood all over the place—”

Kurt thought of the blood in Fitzwater’s trailer. All over the place. All over—

“—all over the ground, the car, the glass. Everywhere. Doors locked, driver’s window smashed in. Purses, wallets, and money still inside; no one touched any of it. State criminalistics told me they’re having all kinds of problems with prints. Tomorrow they’re transporting the car’s hood and fenders to University of Maryland for an SEM scan. Can you imagine that, needing an SEM to get prints off of polished metal?”

Kurt didn’t know what an SEM was, and he didn’t care. There hadn’t been one good print since any of this had started. “What else do you know that I don’t?”

“Go read the county II report. They’ll release it to you, they have to. It’s your jurisdiction. They said it looked like the girls had been dragged away—some tracks and blood lines led into the woods.”

“Which way did the tracks lead?” Kurt asked.

“Across the boundary, into Tylersville.”

Greene crossed his arms, as if impatient. Like this his massive shoulders and back seemed on the verge of splitting his lab coat apart at the stitches. His hazel eyes reflected nothing even remotely receptive; Kurt guessed the base nature of his job had left him with the emotions of a cement statue. Must be itching to get back to his brains. Jesus, what a job. “Thanks for your time,” Kurt ended. “We’ll get back to you.”

“Oopie doop. Catch’ya later,” and Greene went back to the autopsy room.

Before he even crossed the threshold, Kurt stopped. He’d reached into his jacket pocket for his keys but pulled out a scrap of paper instead. On it, he recognized the scrawl of his own hand—TTX—from his eavesdrop on Willard and Nancy.

When Kurt slipped back in, Greene had already opened the top of the cadaver bag and was plugging the saw into a table-mounted outlet.

“One last thing, Dr. Greene,” Kurt said, keeping his eyes well away from the nefarious metal table and what lay on it. “You ever hear of something called TTX?”

The pathologist’s response was instant. “Sure. It stands for tetrodotoxin.”

“What is it?”

“One of the deadliest solid poisons known to man, about three hundred times more toxic than cyanide. They use it for research mainly to isolate desired cellular components by blocking undesired ones. It comes from the Japanese fugufish. Very, very nasty material… Where’d you dig that one up?”

“Just something I overheard,” Kurt said. He was trying to think. Poison. What would they want… “How does this stuff affect humans?”

“It blocks nerve-synaptic transmissions, eventually producing complete paralysis of the involuntary muscle groups. Even a minuscule amount will kill an average-sized man in about thirty minutes or so.”

“Is it easy to get?”

“No, TTX is highly controlled. Not the kind of thing you’d find in a Gilbert chemistry set, if that’s what you want to know.”

“But if a person really wanted to get some, even illegally, where would he be able to get it?”

Greene didn’t flinch at the roundhouse of questions; if anything, he enjoyed this. “Unless you wanted to go fishing in Japan, you’d have to go to the manufacturer, and most drug companies have security about like that of the White House. I don’t know about distributors. The easiest place, I guess, would be a neurotoxicology lab.”

“Are there any around here?”

“Sure, plenty. Private sector and government. I used to work as a lab tech at N.I.H. in Bethesda; I know for a fact they’ve got a neurotox unit there.”

N.I.H., Kurt thought. National Institutes of Health. Didn’t Glen say Nancy Willard worked there once? “How long ago did you work at this place?”

“Five, six years ago. Summer work while I was in school.”

“Did you know a woman named Nancy Willard?”

Greene’s eyes thinned behind his thick glasses. He held the orbital saw pistol-like toward the ceiling and revved it twice for the hell of it. The sound made Kurt’s scalp shrivel.

“Nancy…King,” Greene said, after a meditative pause. “Nancy King. Real fun to look at. She married a guy named Willard, if I remember right.”

“And you knew her?”

“I knew of her is about all. The name rings a bell only because I remember reading a couple of papers she wrote. But I didn’t really know her. I worked in microbiology, never had much chance to talk to her.”

“What department did she work in?”

Greene’s brow lifted in a very competent imitation of Mr. Spock. “Neurotoxicology,” he said.

««—»»

Bewilderment infected him now so emphatically that he could barely clear his head enough to drive. Heading back toward town, Kurt speculated that all of his recent revelations could be, and probably were, meaningless. There was no basis for the thoughts which now ate at him; he just couldn’t let it go. Information he thought of as vital dangled before him like bait on hooks, yet all the lures seemed to hang from Belleau Wood.

He left the lab report on Bard’s desk (the chief was gone, probably buying out the doughnut rack at the Jiffy- Stop) and next found himself back on 154, heading north. The radio squawked at him unintelligibly. Cars passed, but he didn’t see them. His most rudimentary impulses had taken over; he supposed he’d known all along where he was going.

Willard’s Chrysler was parked askew in the cul-de-sac, as if abandoned. The security truck sat begrudgingly off to the side of the separate garage.

Kurt’s knock was answered almost at once.

“Hope I’m not interrupting—”

“Good that you stopped by,” Willard cut in. His face was unaccountably grave. “I’ve been wanting to call you, the police, that is. But I was afraid of being premature.”

“I don’t follow,” Kurt said.

Willard let him in, leading through the darkened hall to the kitchen. “My wife seems to have vanished,” he said. “I mean, I’m not quite sure how to interpret it. She didn’t inform me that she’d be going anywhere for any length of time. I’m worried.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“She left early last evening, about six. I haven’t seen her since then.”

On her way to McGuffy’s? Kurt wondered. If so, then why hadn’t she shown?

“She’s never done anything like this before,” Willard said, opening curtains over the kitchen window. Daylight blazed in, and Willard’s face seemed to wither. “She’s been known to take in an occasional late movie by herself,