high with nerves, “Just because you’re good-lookin’ doesn’t mean I’m gonna tell you anythin’, mister.”
This was a kick. “Hey, my wife thinks I’m good-looking, but I’m wondering, since you said it, if you’re just trying to butter me up.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “you’re good-lookin’ all right, and I heard one of the lady cops on the airplane say you’re a hunk. They were thinkin’ that a sexy guy will make me talk, so they got you.”
“Well,” Savich said, “just maybe that’s so.” He paused a fraction of a second, then said, his voice unexpectedly hard, “Have you ever seen the Ghouls, Marilyn?”
He thought she’d keel over in her chair. So she knew about the Ghouls. She paled to a sickly white, looked ready to bolt.
“They’re not here, Marilyn.”
She shook her head back and forth, back and forth, whispering, “There’s no way you could know about the Ghouls. No way at all. Ghouls are bad, real bad.”
“Didn’t Tammy tell you that I was there in the barn, that I saw them, even shot at them?”
“No, she didn’t tell me… ah, shit. I don’t know nothin’, you hear me?”
“Okay, she didn’t tell you that I saw them and she didn’t tell you my name, which is interesting since she knows it. But she did tell you that she wanted to have at me, didn’t she?”
Marilyn’s lips were seamed tight. She shook her head and said “Oh, yeah, and she will. She called you that creepy FBI fucker. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me that you saw the Ghouls.”
“Maybe she doesn’t trust you.”
“Oh, yeah, Tammy trusts me. She doesn’t have anybody else now. She’ll get you, mister, she will.”
“Just so you know, Marilyn, I’m the one who shot her, the one who killed Tommy. I didn’t want to, but they left me no choice. They had two kids there, and they were going to kill them. Young boys, Marilyn, and they were terrified. Tommy and Tammy had kidnapped them, beaten them, and they were going to murder them, like they’ve murdered many young boys all across the country. Did you know that? Did you know your cousins were murderers?”
Marilyn shrugged. Savich saw a rip beneath the right arm of her brown, cracked leather jacket. “They’re my kin. I could miss Tommy-seein’ as how he’s dead now-but he killed our baby, cracked its poor little head right open, so I was really mad at him for a long time. Tommy was hard, real hard. He was always doin’ things you didn’t expect, mean things, things to make you scream. You killed him. He was one of a kind, Tommy was. Tammy’s right, you’re a creepy fucker.”
Savich didn’t respond, just nodded, waiting.
“You shouldn’t have shot Tammy like you did, tearing her arm all up so they had to saw it off. You shouldn’t have been there in my barn in the first place. It wasn’t none of your damned business.”
He smiled at her, sat forward, his palms flat on his desk. “Of course it’s my business. I’m a cop, Marilyn. You know, I could have killed Tammy, not just shot her arm off. If I had killed her in the barn then she wouldn’t have killed that little boy outside Chevy Chase. Either she did it or the Ghouls did it. Maybe the Ghouls did kill the boy, since there was a circle. Do the Ghouls have to have a circle, Marilyn? You don’t know? Were you with her when she took that boy? Did you help her murder him?”
Marilyn shrugged her shoulders again. “Nope, I didn’t even know what she was going to do, not really. She left me at this grungy motel on the highway and told me to stay put or she’d bang me up real bad. She looked real happy when she got back. There was lots of blood on her nurse’s uniform; she said she’d have to find somethin’ else to wear. She thought it was neat that there was blood on the uniform, said it was a-pro-pos or somethin’ like that. Now, I’m not goin’ to say any more. I already said too much. I want to leave now.”
“You know, Marilyn, your cousin’s very dangerous. She could turn on you, like this.” He snapped his fingers, saw her cower in the chair, saw her shudder. He said, “How would you like to be ripped apart?”
“She wouldn’t turn on me. She’s known me all my life. I’m her cousin, her ma and mine were sisters, at least half-sisters. They wasn’t real sure since their pa was always cattin’ around.”
“Why did Tammy pretend to be Timmy?”
Marilyn focused her eyes on the pile of books along the side wall of the office and didn’t answer. Savich started to leave it for the moment since it obviously upset her, when she burst out, “She wanted me, you know, but she weren’t no dyke and so she played with me only when she was dressed like Timmy, but never when she was Tammy.”
For an instant, Savich was too startled to say a word. What a wild twist. He said finally, “Okay then, tell me what kind of shape Tammy is in right now.”
That brought Marilyn up straight in her chair. “No thanks to you she’s going to be okay, at least she kept telling me that. But she hurts real bad and her shoulder looks all raw and swollen. She went to a pharmacy late one night, just when they was closing, and got the guy to give her some antibiotics and pain pills. He nearly puked when he saw her shoulder.”
“I didn’t hear about any robbery in a pharmacy,” Savich said slowly. They’d been looking, but hadn’t gotten any news as yet.
“That’s because Tammy whacked the guy after she got the medicine from him, tore the place up. She said that’d make the cops go after the local druggies.”
“Where was this, Marilyn?”
“In northern New Jersey somewhere. I don’t remember the name of that crummy little town.”
Local law enforcement hadn’t connected the pharmacist’s murder to the Tammy Tuttle bulletin the FBI had circulated all over the eastern seaboard. Well, at least now they’d find out everything the local cops had on the murder. He said, “Where did Tammy go after you went off to Bar Harbor?”
“She said she wanted some sun so’s it would heal her shoulder. She was going down to the Caribbean to get herself well. No, I don’t know where; she wouldn’t tell me. She said there were lots of islands down there and she’d just find the one that was best for her. Of course she didn’t have enough money, so she robbed this guy and his wife in a real fancy house in Connecticut. Got three thousand and change. That’s when she told me she’d be all right and I could take off.”
“Naturally she’s going to call you, let you know how she’s doing?”
Marilyn nodded.
“Where will she call you?”
“At my boyfriend’s, in Bar Harbor. But I’m not there anymore, am I? My boyfriend will tell her that the cops came around and I left.”
That was true enough, Savich thought, no hope for it. He just hoped that Tammy wouldn’t call until they’d found out where she was in the Caribbean.
Marilyn said, “I’ll bet she really wants to kill you bad because of what you done to her. She’ll come back when she’s really well, and she’ll take you down. Tammy’s the meanest female in the world. She beat the shit out of me every time I saw her when we was growin’ up. She’ll get you, Dillon Savich. You’re nuthin’ compared to Tammy.”
“What are the Ghouls, Marilyn?”
Marilyn Warluski seemed to grow smaller right in front of him. She was pressed against the back of her chair, her shoulders hunched forward. “They’re bad, Mr. Savich. They’re really bad.”
“But what are they?”
“Tammy said she found them when she and Tommy were hiding out in some caves in the Ozarks a couple years ago. That’s in Arkansas, you know. It was real dark, she told me, real dark in that stinkin’ cave, smelled like bat shit, and Tommy was out takin’ a leak, and she was alone and then, all of a sudden, the cave filled with weird white light and then the Ghouls came.”
“They didn’t hurt her?”
Marilyn shook her head.
“What else did she say?”
“Said she knew they were the Ghouls, just knew, that somehow they’d got inside her head and told her their name, then told her that they needed blood, lots of young blood, and then they laughed and told her they were counting on her, and then they just winked out. That’s what Tammy said: they laughed, spoke in her head, and just ‘winked out.’ ”
“But what are they, Marilyn? Do you have any idea?”
