Pulling off one of his boots, Ben looked at Eddie and said, “Yeah?”
Eddie waved a hand at him. “Forget it. He’s pulling your leg.”
Mike Keller laughed. “Show him,” he chided. “He solved the case, Ben. Big goddamn detective. Come on, Eddie!” Before Eddie could respond, Mike was out of his chair and digging through the stack of magazines on Eddie’s desk. Eddie slapped his hands away, looking wholly disgusted. “Show him,” Mike insisted.
“Go sit the fuck down,” Eddie told him.
Snatching one of Eddie’s magazines off his desk, Mike flipped through it as he carried it over to where Ben sat. Chuckling, he folded the pages back and handed the magazine to Ben. It was one of Eddie’s horror magazines, Ben saw, and this particular article detailed the recent killings in a small Mexican village by a creature called the
chupacabra
.
“What the hell is this?” Ben asked, scanning the article.
“Sure,” Eddie said, “you guys make fun, but that stuff is real.”
“What
is
it?” Ben asked.
“A Mexican vampire. Eats livestock. The descriptions of the attacks are just like what we saw at Porter Conroy’s farm last night.”
Ben tossed the magazine aside. “We’re not in Mexico, Eddie.”
Eddie sat up straight in his chair. “That’s just what they’re called. Who says they can’t come north? Read the article.”
“I think I might head out to Full Hill Road instead,” Ben said.
“You still worried about what Maggie Quedentock said last night?” Eddie asked. “Ben, you spent half the day today checking out those woods. There’s no one there. She didn’t hit anything. And if she did, it was just a deer, and the fucking thing already bounded off through the woods.”
Ben nodded absently, frowning. He was thinking about Matthew Crawly.
Shirley Bennice, the dispatcher, appeared in the doorway. She was a squat woman in her sixties who had the pleasant, comforting face of a grandmother even though she had no children or grandchildren of her own. “You boys afraid of the rain or something?” she said, walking down the aisle of cubicles.
“Hey, Shirl,” said Eddie. “Do me a favor and tell Ben here how he’s gotta keep an open mind to things.”
“Arguably, he kept an open mind when he had the chief hire you,” Shirley responded without missing a beat. She stopped before Ben’s cubicle and handed him a yellow Post-it note.
“What’s this?”
“Deets over at the county morgue in Cumberland called for you earlier. He said to call him back when you got in. He said he had a possible ID on that kid that was found in Wills Creek.”
Indeed, John Deets’s number was scrawled in Shirley’s handwriting on the Post-it. “No kidding? Great. Thanks, Shirl. Anything else going on?”
“Cumberland sent over some new equipment. Well,” she added quickly, “new for us, anyway. Some handhelds, boxes of ammunition, and a vehicle-tracking GPS.”
Mike laughed. “For all the vehicular tracking we do, huh?”
“They’re freebies,” she said. “I ain’t turning my nose up at charity from the county.”
Ben leaned over and snatched the receiver off the phone, pressing it to his ear. He punched in Deets’s number and listened as the line rang. He glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was too late and Deets was probably long gone by now. Also, it was Saturday night.
“You believe in the supernatural, Shirl?” Eddie asked.
“You mean like ghosts?”
“He means vampires that eat tacos and shake maracas,” Mike said, grinning.
“You just wait and see,” Eddie said, tossing the handball back to Mike. “Chupacabra’s responsible, all right. That’s Spanish for
goatsucker
.”
Again, Mike Keller laughed.
“You’re
a goatsucker,” he told Eddie.
On the line, Ben got Deets’s voice mail. He left a cursory message, including his personal cell phone number, then hung up. Something had settled down into the back of his brain and was now nagging him. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He picked up Eddie’s stupid magazine and looked at the glossy photo of what appeared to be a hairless coyote, staring at the camera with golden eyes and ears like satellite dishes. It was most obviously Photoshopped.
He could still hear Wendy Crawly’s voice, as clear and sharp as a whip-crack, in his head:
The creek has been flooding and the Narrows are like rapids, Ben.
He didn’t like the fact that the kid had been missing all day. Again, his mind returned to Maggie Quedentock. What had she hit last night on Full Hill Road? What had she
thought
she had hit?
Turning around in the cube, Ben powered up the computer. When the Google home page came up, he typed “livestock mutilation” into the search bar then hit Search. The first hit was a Wikipedia entry on something called “bovine excision” which was defined as the apparent killing and mutilation of cattle under unusual or inexplicable circumstances. Ben scrolled through the web page, reading the text with mounting curiosity. He read an account of a horse named Lucy who had been found by her owners dead in a field, her head and neck removed of its flesh. According to the horse’s owner, there was a strong medicinal smell in the air.
“That’s what it was,” Ben muttered to himself.
Both Eddie and Mike turned to look at him. “Talking to yourself now, Sarge?” Mike said.
“That smell last night in Porter’s field,” Ben said to Eddie. “Remember it?”
“Burned my nose,” said Eddie.
“How would you describe it?”
Eddied shrugged and frowned, which was his way of contemplating a question, Ben knew. Eventually, he said, “I guess it smelled like something dead and rotting.”
“Did it?” Ben asked. “Are you sure? Or do you just think that because that’s what you expected to smell?”
For whatever reason, Mike laughed again. The sound of it was beginning to grate on Ben’s nerves.
Sucking at his lower lip, Eddie thought for a few more seconds. Then he said, “I guess it smelled like…well, it reminded me of maybe the locker room at the YMCA over in Garrett, you know what I mean? How sometimes the smell of the locker room stings your eyes.”
“Gross,” Mike Keller grumbled.
“Yes,” Ben said. “Exactly.”
“What are you getting at?” Eddie asked.
Ben turned back to the computer. “I’m not sure yet.”
He continued to read, only to learn that Lucy’s owner later brought other farmers to the field to examine the dead horse’s remains. What they discovered that day were hunks of horse flesh scattered around the field. When one of the other farmers touched one of the pieces, the article attested that the hunk of flesh exuded a greenish sludge that burned the farmer’s hand. The medicinal odor had lessened by this point, though the smell of it was still in the air.
Ben sat up straighter in his chair. He was thinking of the foamy, green goop that had hung from the broken half of skull, and how some of it had crusted to a hard web in the cow’s large eyelashes.
“What time did the guys leave for the Shultz farm?” Ben asked.
“Just before you came in,” said Mike. “You probably passed them out on Belfast when you pulled in here.”
Ben stood, grabbing his campaign hat off the desk.
“Where you going?” Eddie asked.
“Home, to get some sleep. I’ll be in early tomorrow. I want to call over to the sheriff’s department in Cumberland, see if they’ll lend us some bodies to do a search of the woods around the Crawly place.”
“You really think something happened to that kid?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
Eddie frowned. “What should we do?”
“Make some calls to Mexico. See if you can track down this Mexican vampire.”
Mike Keller laughed.
5
It was twelve thirty when Tom Schuler’s 1972 Ford Maverick pulled into the Quedentocks’ driveway. Leprous with rust, the car belched black clouds of exhaust, and had the words
SCHULER’S AUTOMOTIVE
stenciled on the doors, an irony that was lost on most everyone who utilized Tom Schuler’s services.
The rain was coming down in cloudy torrents. Maggie saw the Maverick’s headlights pull into the driveway and curve around the side of the house. She’d turned off the floodlights in the backyard by this point, not wanting to see the whitish figure that had been crouched on the hood of the Pontiac anymore. The Maverick’s headlamps blew twin cones of yellowish light into the shadows as it circled around the dirt turnabout and came to a stop between the back patio and the Pontiac.
When Maggie opened the door, she was still holding the shotgun.
“Jesus,” Tom said, rainwater pouring down his face. “Put that thing down, Mags.”
“Get in here,” she said, grabbing him by the lapel of his dungaree jacket and yanking him inside. She slammed the door shut and locked it behind him. Then, standing on her toes, she peered out into the darkness. “It might be gone,” she muttered.
“What’s that?” said Tom. He was pooling water on the floor, standing there like someone rescued from a sinking ship.
Maggie whirled around. The intense look on her face froze Tom in his tracks. He looked powerless to move.
“You didn’t see anything out there?” she asked him.
“See what?”
“Anything,” she said. “Something that looked like a child but wasn’t.”
Tom chuckled nervously. “Hon, you okay? Put the gun down, please.”
Maggie thought,
More pls!
and shuddered.
Dripping water on the floor, Tom went to one of the living room windows and brushed aside the curtain. He peered out into infinite blackness. “Doll, there ain’t nothin’ out there.”
“Don’t tell me what’s out there,” she said.
“What’d you think you saw?”
“I hit a kid with my car leaving your place last night,” she blurted, frightened by how close she was to tears. “I mean, it looked like a kid, but I don’t think it was. Not really. Because he’s come back and he’s out there.”
“Maggie…”
“It has skin as white as paper. I don’t think he was…wearing any clothes…”
“A naked kid,” Tom muttered, still peering out the window. “Don’t that beat all…”
“I’m serious.”
Tom turned away from the window. His sandy hair was plastered to his head and his light eyes, set deeply into the pockets of his skull, looked the way she imagined a blind person’s eyes to look. “Seriously. Put the fucking gun down, Maggie, before you blow a hole in the floor. You’re freaking me out.”
She laid the gun down on the couch.
Tom sighed. “Thank you.”
“I don’t know why I told you to come over. I guess I was scared.”
“I know why you told me to come over.” He took a step toward her.
“Please, Tom. I’m not thinking right.”
“Whoever is?” He laughed. It was a shrill, mechanical sound. Had she really allowed this man’s mouth on her body? Had she really accommodated his erection, taking it inside her, laughing drunkenly the whole time? She suddenly loathed herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “I shouldn’t have told you to come over.”
Tom peeled his wet jean jacket off. He tossed it onto the couch, where it soaked through the fabric, though he didn’t seem to notice. Maggie didn’t have it in her to tell him to move it.
“If you’re worried about Evan finding out,” he began, but she cut him off.
“Stop. This has nothing to do with you and me. I was scared, that’s all. Do you understand that?”
“Sure. But I’m here now. Things are okay.”
No,
Maggie thought.
No, they’re not. Not by a long shot.
Tom took another step toward her. She lifted up both hands, palms out toward him. Tom froze. “What?” he said. “What is it?”
“This should have never happened,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
The pleasant, helpful look on Tom Schuler’s face quickly faded. It was replaced by a look of pure agitation—a look that spoke of a lifetime of betrayal and distrust. What had she done? Traded one abusive lunatic for another?
Then Tom’s face softened. Holding up his own hands, he said, “Listen, Mags. You’re upset. Something frightened you. That’s cool, I can dig it. Just relax, keep calm. Let’s sit on the couch and talk, okay?”
She didn’t want to sit on the couch with him. She didn’t want to talk.
Again, thunder crashed and shook the house. Lightning illuminated the yard, causing Maggie to whirl around and stare out the crescent of glass in the door. As if in the explosion of a flashbulb, she saw the silhouette of the boy back on the roof of the Pontiac, there and then gone in the brief flash of light, and she screamed.
Tom came up from behind her and wrapped his arms around her. One of his big hands covered her mouth. She felt his body against her back and winced.
“Quiet,” he said. “Okay? Quiet, Mags. What is it? What’s wrong?”
His hand dropped away from her mouth.
“It’s back,” she panted. Her whole body trembled. “It’s in the yard, on the car.”