Sweet Dreams (7 page)

If by some quirk of nature,
all
those things were somehow combined, joined together by a malevolent force, then one would have a very evil Manitou.

“What you'd have is a bad motherfucker,” the old man said. “Is that what you mean, Bud?”

“My name is Walks-By-Night,” the old Indian said proudly.

“Walks-By-Night,” the old white man said. “Shit! Come nighttime you're too drunk to even crawl, much less walk.”

“That is not what my Indian name means, Leo. And you know it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Big deal. You're a medicine man.” He held out a bottle of wine. “So have some more medicine.”

“Thank you. I believe I shall have a small taste.” Bud tilted the bottle and drank a full third of the fifth.

“And you got a bottomless pit for a gut, too,” Leo observed.

“True. I am a disgrace to my people.”

“You ain't Geronimo, that's for sure.”

The old Indian fixed his friend with a baleful look. “Geronimo was an Apache, fool! I am Osage.”

“Be that as it may, Bud, but you're just like me. Add us both up, and we'd come out to nothing.”

“Yes, for once I fear you are correct.”

“So tell me more about a Manitouy.”

“Manitou!
I have seen several in my lifetime. In visions. They are wonderful. Most awe inspiring.”

“I keep forgetting you went to college. How in the hell did you end up livin' in a teepee by the Mississippi River?”

“I saw one vision too many and became off balance. I lost my center of being.”

“In plain ol' American, you became a fallin' down drunk.”

“Crude, white man. Very crude. But,” he sighed, “reasonably accurate, I suppose.”

“Bud? Now I'm bein' serious. So cut the big words and jokes. You really think that goddamn thing by the railroad tracks is a Manitou?”

“I know it is. It completed its rebirth last evening.”

“Rebirth?”

“Yes. I will try to explain, but it is something few adult white people can understand. White adults have no center of balance, so nature confounds them. I have known for many months the Manitou was attempting to rebirth. However, it was not strong enough. So it took the spirit – the electricity, if you will – of the disembodied head and then the impulses of the young people who go out to view the manifestation. When it had gathered enough energy to once more form, it was reborn.”

“Electricity?”

“All things are nothing more than electricity. There is an old Indian fable that lightning dances in the sky seeking its brothers and sisters still earthbound.”

“Bud . . . I don't know if you're drunk or crazy or both.”

“Perhaps a little of both, Leo.”

“And now that this . . . Manitou is out, what is he – it – going to do?”

“Kill.”

“Kill?”

“Are you both drunk and deaf. Kill. It killed last night.”

“Bullshit, Bud.”

“No, that is the truth. Its force has guided others to kill over the past few months. But it can kill itself. I saw it in a vision. It killed a woman. It ravaged her and took her blood and current. It must kill to survive. It is going to be a bad day for white people.”

“You act like you don't give a damn.”

“Put yourself in my place and then ask that question.”

“Bud, don't start with that crap again. Just don't.”

“Why not? Does the truth offend you?”

Leo sighed. A fellow really had to put up with a lot of shit from drinkin' buddies – especially old Indians. But Bud was a pretty good joe – for an Indian.

“All this land,” Bud said, waving his hand, “once belonged to the Indian. We ...”

Leo tuned him out. It was going to be a bad day, starting out like this.

 

“First of all, Jerry,” Doctor Finley said, “you have my condolences. Secondly, what you've placed in my examining room is unlike anything I have ever seen before.”

“I know,” Jerry said. He looked at Voyles, standing quietly to one side. “You getting all this, Lieutenant?”

“I have been assigned to this case, Doctor Baldwin, whether you like it, or not.”

“Marvelous. You want to sleep at my house, too?”

“You're not my type, Doctor.” For a split second, a faint smile creased the trooper's face. Jerry waited for the man's face to crack from the effort.

“Is Doctor Baldwin a suspect in this case?” Doctor Finley asked.

“Not since you placed the TOD,” Voyles replied. “That cleared him.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Jerry said, a touch of acid in his reply.

“It cleared Doctor Baldwin in the minds of the D.A.s of New Madrid and Mississippi counties,” the Trooper continued. “But I still have some reservations. You're off the hook, Doctor Baldwin, so I can speak frankly. I've seen some cool ol' boys in my time. But you have just got to be the coolest.”

Jerry smiled. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Tell me, are you a traffic officer?”

“All Missouri troopers are trained to handle the highways.”

“But your main function is within the investigative branch of the MHP?”

Voyles smiled faintly. “I cannot tell a lie. Yes, that is true.”

“What happens if you tell a lie?” Doctor Finley asked. “Does your nose grow?”

Voyles looked at him through those smoky eyes. “I don't think Johnny Carson's job is in any danger from you, sir. Why don't we just can any attempts at humor and get on with the autopsy?”

The doctors reached a silent understanding with the trooper: Lieutenant Voyles was going to do his job – his way – whether they liked it or not.

It was a long autopsy, with the M.E., Finley, and his assistant – Jerry helping whenever he was asked to assist – working through the early afternoon hours. Jerry showed no emotion as his wife was literally taken apart from crotch to brain. Voyles watched both Jerry and the autopsy with equal amounts of intense interest.

Doctor Finley finally nodded his head, told his assistant to store the remains, and stripped off his rubber gloves. He told the assistant to forget anything and everything he had seen that afternoon; then he motioned for Jerry and Voyles to follow him. In his office, Finley poured them all fresh coffee and then lit his pipe. When he had puffed to his satisfaction, he looked at Jerry.

“As a doctor, Jerry, you realize what we have just witnessed this afternoon is virtually impossible, don't you?”

Voyles stirred impatiently. “If you don't mind, Doctor Finley, don't ask questions of Doctor Baldwin. Please enlighten
me.”

This time, Voyles had stepped over the line. He met his match with the M.E. The doctor shifted his eyes and said, “Young man,” – Voyles was forty if he was a day – “your attitude is beginning to annoy me. If you are laboring under the misconception that your occupation, uniform, and sidearm somehow impress me, you are badly mistaken. I spent three years in the Pacific during World War Two – as a Marine. I was one of Carlson's Raiders. I've killed more men with knife and piano wire than you've worked wrecks. I was recalled during the Korean War and spent almost a year working up in North Korea with guerrillas. Now you listen to me.
I
run this section of the hospital.
I
give the orders around here, not you. When I am finished with this bit of work, I am going to call the attorney general of the State of Missouri – personally, on this Sunday afternoon – and inform that very close friend of mine that there is
no way
Doctor Jerry Baldwin could have done what has been done to that poor woman now resting in a cooler. Then I am going to
personally
phone the governor, who is married to one of my nieces, and tell him that out of all the hundreds of fine officers he has serving on the Missouri Highway Patrol, I don't know why I had to be saddled with a double-dyed, arrogant, overbearing, totally officious goddamned son of a bitch like you.”

Voyles blinked. He sat speechless for a full fifteen seconds. Then he slowly smiled. He looked at both doctors. When he spoke, his voice was rather subdued. “My apologies, gentlemen. To both of you. I guess I have been coming on pretty hard. If you will both bear with me for one more minute, I'll try to explain my attitude. Doctors, what I am about to tell you should be held in the utmost secrecy. You see,” he said with a sigh, “Mrs. Baldwin is not the first person we've investigated, not the first to die in that area. There have been three others who have disappeared over the past few months. Two were vagrants. The third – we believe – was a young girl, a teenage runaway, hitching her way from South Carolina to California. We've been finding bits and pieces of flesh and bone and clothing in that area. It appears that, uh, the three might have been devoured.”

“Eaten!” Jerry blurted.

“Yes, sir,” Voyles said. Jerry had once more achieved ‘sir' status with the highway cop. “But it's very possible animals may have eaten the bodies and scattered the bones after the victims were killed and dumped. We don't know the identities of the vagrants, but we believe the young girl was a runaway from a school for, ah, troubled children in South Carolina. We were ordered to move rather quietly for fear of creating a panic.”

Jerry grunted. “That plus the fact that no one really gives a damn if two vagrants and a runaway kid got killed or not. Right, Lieutenant?”

“I wouldn't want to put it that way, sir,” the trooper said.

“But there is more,” Doctor Finley said. “Am I correct, Lieutenant?”

Voyles nodded. “Yes, sir. We, that is to say, certain people within the department seem to believe the, ah, light out by the tracks might have some bearing on the case. I don't,” he was quick to add. “Or, I didn't, at least,” he muttered. “Now I don't know what I'm going to put in my report.”

Doctor Finley's smile was rather grim. “Well, you just grab onto the arms of that chair, Lieutenant, 'cause I'm just about to make your day.”

“That is exactly what I was afraid you were going to say,” the cop replied, his tone of voice as grim as the doctor's smile.

Finley looked at Jerry. “You noticed, of course, the abnormal coloration of your wife's brain?”

“Yes. I kept waiting for you to explain it. You never did.”

“Because I don't
know
what caused it, Jerry. I've never seen anything like it. But I can give you both a foolish and very unscientific theory.”

“Here it comes,” Voyles muttered.

They waited while Finley relit his pipe.

“The brain was totally destroyed. Completely,” the M.E. said. “Almost,” he added, “as if the brain had been picked clean and then destroyed.”

“Oh,
fuck!”
Voyles said. “What is this, sci-fi time?”

“Maybe it's the Blob,” Jerry said. “Come on, Doctor Finley. You can't be serious.”

The M.E. was not ruffled by the sarcasm of both men. “After that was done, or perhaps during or before, her blood was drained and then every vital organ was destroyed.”

Jerry sat up straighter, an incredulous look on his face.
“Every
organ?”

“Heart, lungs, liver, spleen, brain, eyes, kidneys, reproductive system – everything. I have never seen anything to match it in thirty-five years as a medical examiner.”

“What the hell am I going to put in my report!” Voyles asked, protest in his voice. “We've asked permission to take over this case, and received it. We'll be working with a special team out of Jeff City.” He did not elaborate. “Picked her brain! Drank her blood! Jesus God, Doc. I put that in my report and I'll be back working traffic in Cabool!”

“I don't know about your report, Lieutenant,” Finley said. “But I want every scrap of bone and hair and flesh md rags you people have in cold storage. And I want them here, in my lab, by eight o'clock in the morning. And if you think I can't go over your head and get them, son, you are sadly mistaken.”

“I believe, I believe!” Voyles said. “I was going to ask if you would work with us on this. Doctor Finley, just off the top of your head, sir, what killed the Baldwin woman?”

“I can tell you my personal opinion. Doctor Baldwin, Lieutenant Voyles, I'm an old man. I've seen many things in this world that I cannot explain. I've come to believe in many things others in my profession scoff at. I don't for one minute believe the races of people populating the earth's surface are the only intelligent beings God created. I am very comfortable accepting both theories on how we came to be, for there is no way of telling how many times the Almighty attempted to make us in His image and failed, no way of knowing how many worlds He populated. I have seen UFOs, as I imagine most people have – whether they realize it or not. And I believe that whatever killed Mrs. Baldwin was not of this world.”

“I'm supposed to put in my report that she was killed by little green men?” Voyles asked, dismay in his voice. “Doc, give me a break. I do that and I may as well get ready for a transfer to Siberia.”

Finley smiled. “Voyles, you may put in your report that Mrs. Lisa Baldwin died of a heart attack brought on by massive amounts of alcohol. I could have retired years ago, so any threats anyone might wish to heap upon my head are meaningless as far as I am concerned.”

The highway cop visibly relaxed. “What about her being sexually molested?”

“What about it?” Finley tossed the question back to the cop. “Fine. She was raped. Put that in your report too. We'll get together in a few days with the whole team and go over the real cause of her death.”

“But you said you didn't know what killed her,” Voyles said.