Authors: Jonathan Maberry
The man seated in the other chair—a straight-backed wooden chair with knobbed legs—just stared at him, his eyes flat and without expression, his face wax-white, the skin of his cheeks sucked in and moistureless, his mouth nothing more than a red slit.
“I feel…strange,” Karl Ruger said, and his voice was a dry whisper in his throat.
“No kidding.” Vic took another drag. “I’m curious…does any of this shit hurt?”
“Hurt?”
“Yeah. You’re just about as jacked up as anyone I’ve ever seen, sport. You had the shit kicked out of you, you been shot more times than Bonnie and Clyde, and you slept in a refrigerator for a couple of nights. That can’t feel good.”
“No,” said Ruger, looking down at his hands. They were as white as cream except for some streaks of dirt, though the fingernails had thickened and grown dark, almost black. Ruger flexed them. With the loss of so much fluid—almost all of his blood and water—his hands were unnaturally thin, almost delicate. Even all that he had taken from that cop, Golub, hadn’t done much to flesh him out. “No—no pain.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Vic said with a nasty grin.
Ruger raised his eyes. They were no longer without expression. “Kiss my ass.”
His gaze was hard on Vic for a while and then drifted sideways to scan the room. As that stare left him, Vic could feel a change in frequency or perhaps of vibration, and he noted it down in his mental filing cabinet. He watched as Ruger assessed the basement—Vic’s domain. It was Vic’s totally private space, hallowed ground where Lois and Mike were never allowed to set foot. The basement was partitioned in a mirror-image of the partitions in Vic’s own mind, and he was aware of it—and was aware of what the basement and its contents were telling Ruger. There were gun racks heavy with rifles, shotguns, and pistols; along one wall there were stacks of unopened boxes of Panasonic DVD players, HD and plasma TVs, Black and Decker microwave ovens, and Craig CD players.
In the far corner was a computer workstation with a laser printer next to which stood a tall stack of yellow leaflets bearing a crudely drawn caricature of a Jewish man who looked shifty and avaricious, cringing beneath a bold, black swastika. In the opposite corner was a complex telephone rerouting and answering system that serviced several different lines: Vic Wingate’s Gun Repair, White America, the Aryan Brotherhood, the National Socialist Party, and a pornography distributorship called V.W. Enterprises. At this end of the basement was a second computer workstation and a Mission table that was piled high with bundled stacks of money that were splotched with reddish-brown stains. Old blood. Ruger sniffed the air as he looked at the bills and Vic noted just the smallest lift of one of Ruger’s eyebrows. He filed that away, too. Ruger turned to face Vic but let his gaze linger significantly on the money before shifting back to meet Vic’s assessing stare. “That looks familiar,” he said mildly.
“Finders keepers,” Vic said. “Guess you’re shit outta luck.”
A shrug. “I can always get more.” As he said this he flexed his thin white hands.
Vic said, “Tell me something else, sport…how’s the old noggin’ working? You know who you are?”
“I know.”
“Can you tell me your name.”
“Blow me.”
“Fair enough.” Vic thought for a moment. “The Man wants me to determine whether you’re damaged goods or not. You understand what I mean by that?”
Ruger said nothing, but he smiled. A tiny lift of cold lips.
“He and I have gone to a lot of effort to bring you to this moment, right here, right now. I want you to pay attention now ’cause this shit’s important.”
“I’m listening,” Ruger said softly. His gray tongue flicked over his dry red lips.
In one smooth movement Vic picked up his pistol and pointed it at Ruger. “If it turns out that your brain’s turned to mush just like your buddy’s then I hate to break the news but it’s beddy-bye time, you dig? And don’t get any ideas about leaping over and trying to wrestle this away from ol’ Vic. That would be the last stupid move you ever made, ’cause I made these loads myself and if you were to guess that they’re
special
then you’d be right. Am I making myself clear?”
“As glass,” Ruger said. He never even glanced at the gun. His black-within-red-within-black eyes were fixed on Vic’s.
There was a sound above them—Lois’s footfalls as she walked from the study to the kitchen. A pause, then a
thunk
as the refrigerator door closed, and her footfalls retreated back down the hall. Lois getting more ice for her drink. Vic and Ruger both stared at the ceiling and then lowered their eyes at the same time, reestablishing contact. “Just so we both understand who’s in charge here.”
“Your house, your rules,” Ruger said.
“Just what I wanted to hear.”
“What happened to Boyd? Why’s he so messed up?”
Vic shrugged. “Not exactly sure. Theoretically he should have turned out like you, but for some reason his brain turned to mush. Basically he’s cold cuts with teeth, and even though the Man was able to dial up his wits a notch or two he’s as close to brain dead as one of you clowns can be and still walk around.”
Ruger was still smiling. “Why?”
“Don’t know. Not even sure if the Man knows.”
“I thought
he
knew everything.”
Vic’s eyes became slits. “He knows everything that matters.” He raised the barrel of the pistol until it pointed at Ruger’s face. “And let’s be clear on one more thing, sport—it’ll help us get along. You don’t make any wise-ass comments about the Man. Not ever, you read me loud and clear?”
Ruger’s eyes glittered. “Griswold is my God,” he said.
Vic looked at him for a long time, trying to read those eyes, looking for mockery, looking for a lie, but finding neither. He set the pistol down, stubbed out his cigarette, and then leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Then we have a lot to talk about.”
(1)
Terry arrived at the hospital at the same time as Gus, Saul Weinstock, and Frank Ferro, the four of them converging in the parking lot and then heading downstairs to where Jerry Head was standing vigil on one side of a streamer of yellow crime scene tape that was stretched across the doorway. Other cops thronged the hall, and from the inside of the room there were flashes as the criminalists took photos and documented the scene. “What the hell happened here?” Terry snapped before Ferro could open his mouth.
“Pretty much what I told you on the phone, sir.” Head looked as tired as Terry felt. “The night patrol was making its regular sweep of the back lot, where deliveries and such are made. It was supposed to be closed and locked at eleven. They said that they noticed that the chain on one of the gates looked funny and—”
“Funny how?” asked Ferro.
“They said it wasn’t hanging the same way that they had left it. They stopped to investigate and found that the chain had been cut, probably with bolt cutters, and that it was just looped through the bars. They called it into the head of security—”
“Brad Maynard,” Weinstock provided.
“—and Mr. Maynard came out to investigate, verified what the security guys said, and they did a full sweep of the parking lot. At first they didn’t see anything out of place, then when they went around and tried every door they found that one of them was unlocked.” He tilted his head toward the left end of the corridor. “That’s the door right there. Where bodies are wheeled out by funeral directors and such.”
“Was the door unlocked,” asked Ferro, “or had it been forced?”
“Unlocked,” Head said, and there was a moment of silence while everyone digested the implications of this. Terry rubbed his eyes and he suddenly looked about ten years older.
Weinstock was shaking his head. He was wearing sweats and sneakers—the easiest stuff to jump into after he’d gotten the call. “That door is always locked and there’s a security alarm on it that goes off if it’s opened without a key. There are only a few keys, and they’re registered and numbered.”
“That’ll help,” Ferro said. “Go ahead, Jerry.”
“Well, as you know most of us out-of-town cops have been using the hospital cafeteria as a kind of mess hall during all this stuff, so when the break-in was noticed they sent someone to see if there were any of us there. I was just sitting down to eat but I came down here right away to check it out and secure the scene, which is when I called it in to Pine Deep PD. While I was waiting for them to show, I verified that the door was, in fact, unlocked, and from what I can tell there’s no sign of forced entry. No scratches on the lock, nothing bent out of place. Door and lock are sound, just unlocked. I saw some footprints, kind of muddy, coming in from outside. They kind of fade out halfway down the hall, and I have them taped out and Dixie McVey’s standing over them to make sure no one scuffs them up.”
“Good job. What else?”
“By this time Jim Polk showed up and he and I began checking all of the rooms on this level. When we found that the morgue door was unlocked, we investigated and found that someone had definitely been in there. Like the exterior door, there were no signs of forced entry. We checked it out and saw that most of the doors to those drawers where the bodies are kept were standing open, and three of the drawers had been pulled out.”
“Whose?” Weinstock demanded.
Head looked at him. “Well, Ruger’s of course, and the two officers, Castle and Cowan.”
“Son of a bitch!” Gus said. “Was Ruger’s the only body missing?”
Head nodded. “The only way we even knew it was his was because of the toe tag. It had been ripped in half and the pieces were lying on top of the rubber sheet that I guess had been over the body.”
“Isn’t there supposed to be video surveillance of this room?” Ferro asked, turning to Weinstock.
“Yes, there is, but—”
Head cut him off. “Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Maynard went up to the security office and did a playback. He said that the camera does a slow pan back and forth every sixty seconds, so the picture changes and it’s fixed focus so the resolution is crap, but even so we have pretty clear video images of what appears to be Kenneth Boyd opening the drawers and bending over all three bodies. Then the camera pans away and when it comes back Boyd’s got Ruger slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and he’s limping out of the room.”
“You’re sure it’s Boyd?” Terry and Gus asked at the same time.
“No question. I’ve got that asshole’s face burned into my brain. Mind you, the guy looks really messed up, but it’s him. He was all filthy, covered in mud and stuff like he’s been hiding out in the woods, like we thought. Stringy hair, lot of visible cuts, and something’s wrong with his right leg. It was all twisted and if he hadn’t been carrying Ruger I’d had bet the leg was broken.”
“Ruger told Val that Boyd’s leg was broken,” Terry observed.
“Apparently Ruger was not a doctor,” Weinstock said. “You have a broken leg you don’t carry a full-grown man around over your shoulder, and before you ask, being hyped on coke wouldn’t make a difference, it’s a matter of structural integrity.”
“Point is,” said Ferro, “he has some kind of injury to his leg—which our criminalists will be able to tell us more about once they’ve had a chance to look at the footprints in the hall—but it isn’t serious enough to have prevented him from breaking in here and stealing Ruger’s body.”
“Didn’t slow him up from attacking those cops either,” Terry said bitterly.
“Or maybe it happened during that attack,” Ferro said. “Anything else, Jerry?”
“No, once we determined that Boyd was not in the morgue, I sealed the scene and made some more calls. The rest you know.”
Gus said, “What the Christ does he want with Ruger’s body? I mean…Ruger
is
actually dead, right?” Weinstock just gave him a look. “They why risk breaking in here to steal a corpse?”
“Gus,” Ferro said wearily, “I am so far beyond understanding what’s going on in this psycho son of a bitch’s head that I don’t know what to think. First he leaves town, gets clean away, and then comes back to kill a couple of cops and steal his accomplice’s body. If there is a logic to any of that, then it escapes me.”
“I’m with you on that,” Weinstock said.
“Jerry, I want to see the shift roster for tonight,” Ferro said. “No one goes home before I get a chance to talk to them, and that means everybody had better be able to account for every second of their shift. Somebody unlocked that door, so maybe we can pin down who it was and find out why they’d be helping a meltdown like Boyd.”
“Are you suggesting that someone in town has a connection with Ruger and Boyd?” Gus asked.
“I’m open to other suggestions if you have them, Chief.” His eyes were hard. “Okay, let’s go take a look.”
The morgue was just as Head had described it, with many of the cold-storage drawers opened and three of the tables pulled out. The sheets that had been on Castle and Cowan were hanging off, the ends trailing to the floor, and the bodies of the officers left in horrid display, their torn and bloodless flesh wretchedly exposed. The eyes of the officers were partially open, lids uneven, dead stares empty and disturbing. Ruger’s drawer was empty, the rubber sheet heaped on the floor. The two halves of the toe tag that Head had found on the sheet had been placed in plastic evidence bags, their locations noted with flagged markers. The lead criminalist, a state cop named Judy Sanchez, came over to greet Ferro and the others. She had worked the double murders at the Guthrie farm and already met everyone. She was about five-six, with kinky dark brown hair cut short and a spray of dark freckles across her nose that did nothing at all to make her look girlish. She had flat black eyes and a hard mouth and gave the men a curt nod as she stripped off a pair of latex gloves. “What do you have, Judy?” Ferro asked.
“Not a lot, Frank. The videotape is the real find. Pretty much tells us what we need to know. Brad Maynard is dubbing a copy right now. We’ll leave the dub here and take the original and dump it to digital so we can use the filters on it to clean it up for court, in case it gets that far.”
“Any doubt that it was Boyd?” Gus asked.
“Oh, hell, no,” she said. “Regardless, I’d like Dr. Weinstock to look at it. There are some anomalies.”
“I told them about the leg,” Head told her.
“I watched that tape five times, and unless I’m beginning to lose it that leg definitely looks broken, though how in hell he’s walking on it is beyond me. I’ll let you form your own opinions, though. As for this,” she jerked her chin toward the empty table. “This is kind of odd. Looks like Boyd started at one end and kept opening doors until he found Ruger, and he clearly pulled out the drawers of Castle and Cowan, pulled the sheets back, and there is some indication that he did some damage to each body.”
“What?” all of the men said it in a shocked chorus, even Head, and she held up a hand.
“From what I can see—and Dr. Weinstock will have to verify this in a postmortem—it looks like Boyd may have intentionally damaged the already torn flesh on the throats of both corpses.”
Terry blanched. “But…
why
?”
Sanchez shrugged. “My guess? He may have been trying to disfigure the bodies to make identification of the murder weapon more difficult.”
“You’ve lost me,” Terry said.
Weinstock was nodding. “All weapons, even very sharp knives, leave trace elements in the wounds, and by manipulation of the wounds we can often get a fairly clear picture of the type of weapon used in the murder—smooth-edged knife, serrated knife, garden trowel, what have you. Microscopic traces will tell metal from plastic from wood, and so on.”
“It helps in court,” Ferro added. “If the suspect is found in possession of a weapon and that weapon can be matched to the wounds…well, there you go.”
“Okay, I get it.” Terry looked at Sanchez. “So you’re saying that Boyd messed with the wounds to disguise the weapon he might have used? Wouldn’t he just have tossed the weapon away by now if he was concerned with that sort of thing?”
“Mr. Mayor,” Sanchez said, “I’m no forensic psychologist, but I don’t think we’re dealing with a rational mind here. There’s also some indication of ritual, and we might need a psychologist to take a look at that.”
“What do you mean by ‘ritual’?” Terry asked.
“Boyd apparently dribbled blood onto the faces and throats of both corpses. There’s no pattern I can see except that there are a few drops of blood on the lips of each and more on the throats of each.”
“Holy Mother of God,” Gus whispered and his face went gray.
Ferro grunted. “Sounds like Boyd’s really lost it. Extreme violence, apparently senseless acts such as stealing Ruger’s body, and now blood rituals.”
“I’ll back you up on that,” Weinstock said. “In purely clinical terms I think it’s safe to say that this Boyd character is a total freak-job.”
Sanchez nodded. “That part of it will be up to you to sort out, Doc. For my part, I also took some measurements of footprints and such.”
“The ones in the hall?” Head asked doubtfully.
She shook her head. “No, there was some water on the floor and he walked through it. Clear limp evidenced by the gait and spacing, and a step-scuff pattern that suggests he was partially dragging his right leg.”
“And yet he carried a two-hundred-pound man out of here over his shoulder?” Terry asked skeptically.
“If we hadn’t had that tape, sir,” Sanchez said, “I’d have argued pretty strongly for an accomplice, but the tape is the tape. You should watch it.”
They did, crowding into the small morgue office. Brad Maynard came down with a copy and they played it half a dozen times. On the sixth replay Vince LaMastra joined them, his face still puffy from sleep, his square jaw rimed with yellow fuzz. He watched the tape over Ferro’s shoulder and when Boyd, disheveled and very clearly limping on a twisted right leg, staggered out with Ruger’s body slung over his shoulder, he said, “That’s sick. He looks dead.”
“He is dead,” Terry snapped. “That’s why he was in the damn morgue.”
“No,” LaMastra said, reaching out to tap the screen. “Him. Boyd. He looks dead. It’s weird.”
They watched the tape a seventh time, and Boyd looked dead that time, too. No one said anything for a while. Finally Gus murmured, “I wish to hell he
was
dead, the bastard.”
Later three of them—Ferro, LaMastra, and Gus met in the doctors’ lounge. Terry left for home, and Weinstock was overseeing the post-forensic restoration of his morgue. Gus made a pot of coffee and they settled down with cups, looking over the staff rosters for that evening. “Most of the staff don’t have access to the door keys and security codes,” Gus said. “That leaves the maintenance staff, the security people, a few of the top docs, and the officers eating in the cafeteria—Head and Chremos from Crestville. And Jim Polk, who was here visiting Rhoda Thomas.” He consulted a chart. “Call it twelve people in all who were here at the time of the break-in.”
“Okay, then we need to interview each one,” Ferro said.
Each person with potential access was brought in separately and interviewed by the three of them, with Ferro taking point on most of the interrogations. No one admitted to having tampered with the codes, and when asked to turn out their pockets—a request that was met with flat hostility by almost everyone except Head, who understood the drill—no keys turned up that shouldn’t be there. Each person was made to write out a detailed list of where they were all night and who they spoke with. “So where does that leave us?” LaMastra asked in disgust as the last of the interviewees left.
“Nowhere,” Ferro said with a sigh.
“God,” murmured LaMastra, “I love police work.”
(2)
When the car passed Vic rose up out of the tall weeds and continued moving down the bank to where the iron leg of the bridge was fitted into its massive concrete boot. He paused for a moment and took set down his backpack, unzipped it, and then removed first a pair of 12-power binoculars and then a high-resolution Nikon digital camera with a telephoto lens. He sat down with the weeds above shoulder height and put the binoculars to his eyes so he could study the old bridge that linked Pine Deep to Black Marsh. The bridge was a two-lane affair with close-fitted railroad ties stuffed between steel I-beams. It was sturdy enough, and though it rattled and shook, it would probably not even need rebuilding for another decade. That thought caused Vic to smile. He set the binoculars down and picked up the digital camera. It was very expensive, with a two-gigabyte memory card that took ten-megapixel images. Vic rested his elbows on his knees to study the camera and then took over fifty ultra-close-up photos of the bridge and each of its supports. The morning sun was clear and bright, perfect for high-res photography.