“Past week or so I been hearin’ noises just outside the house at night,” Minsky explained while Ben sat across from him in a wingback chair in the old man’s parlor. Both Haggis and Platt loitered in the hallway, half listening and dripping rainwater onto the carpet. They all held steaming cups of freshly brewed coffee. “In the mornings, I can tell someone’s been in the yard. There’s things moved around, some plants trampled, that sort of thing. Down at the barn one morning, it looked like someone tried to get in the night before. The doors were pulled outward but still locked, so ain’t no one gettin’ in or out, but someone sure as hell tried.”
“When was this?” Ben asked.
“The thing with the barn was sometime last week. Don’t recall the exact night.” Minsky leaned forward in his chair, the mug of coffee held between his knobby knees in two hands. “Other times, I’ve heard this, well, sort of
scraping
noise against the windows.”
Ben nodded, prompting the old man to continue.
“Then, two nights ago,” Minsky went on, “I’m sitting right here watching the tube, and I hear someone outside walking around the wraparound porch. I mean, I hear the boards a-creakin’ sure as I’m sitting here talkin’ to you fellas. I go out and check but don’t see nothing. I go down by the barn, too, because I don’t need nobody messing with my livelihood. But the barn looks fine so I come back up to the house.”
Minsky set his coffee mug on a nearby end table. The old man’s hand trembled as it retreated into his lap.
“But I’d left the door to the house open, and when I come back in, I’m suddenly sure whoever had been
outside
was now
inside.
Well, I get the Louisville from the hall closet and go through the house, knocking the Louisville against doorframes and peeking under beds and those sorts of things.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “I was in there when I heard the door slam against the frame and footsteps racing around the porch.”
“Jesus,” Haggis said from the doorway.
Minsky nodded. “I hurried back in here and that’s when I saw the face.” He pointed to a window beside an antique mahogany cabinet which housed a prehistoric Zenith. “Right outside, pressed right against the glass, lookin’ in at me.”
“Who was it?” Ben asked. “Did you recognize the person?”
“Well, see, he disappeared just as quick, and I didn’t get a real good look. But it was a young boy.”
“A boy,” Ben echoed.
“I could tell that much.”
“Could you describe him?”
“Well,” Minsky said, his eyes shifting uncomfortably about the room now. He was lost in recollection and, judging by the pained expression on his face, Ben didn’t think the old man liked what he saw. “He was white. Like, pale.” Those unsettled eyes finally settled on Ben. “He looked like a corpse, Sergeant Journell.”
No one said a word for several seconds. From out in the hall, Ben could hear a grandfather clock mocking the silence.
“I thought it might’ve been a prank, seein’ how close we are to Halloween,” Minsky went on eventually. “But after I seen my goats this evening…well…I don’t know nobody thinks somethin’ like that’s a prank. Back in my day, we strung toilet paper in people’s trees and lit bags of dog shit on fire on their front porches. You hear what I’m saying?”
“I do,” Ben said after sharing a look with his two officers in the doorway.
Minsky leaned closer to Ben in his chair. This close, Ben could see the large pores in the man’s thick nose, the network of red threads in his eyes, and the peppery tufts of hair that sprouted from the man’s ear canals like kudzu. “You tell me, Sergeant Journell,” said Minsky. “What kind of kid does somethin’ like that to goats?”
Ben could only shake his head. He had no answer for the man.
Chapter Seven
1
Monday was Ben Journell’s day off. He spent the morning jogging along Full Hill Road, crossing from shoulder to shoulder in the spot where Maggie Quedentock claimed to have struck a pedestrian with her car last Friday night. All evidence, or lack thereof, led to the fact that Maggie had most likely hit a deer which then bounded far off into the woods. It was even probable that she had hit nothing at all, that she had enjoyed a few too many drinks at Crossroads on someone else’s tab and nothing more. The dent in the car’s hood and the broken grille, which he had observed when he showed up on scene, could have been there all along, as far as Ben knew. And to top it all off, the guys over in Cumberland probably thought he was an overreacting moron.
It was on his third pass around the bend where the supposed accident had taken place that something occurred to him. He paused beside a stand of leafless trees and checked his pulse while his breathing regulated. Overhead, predatory birds circled like tireless acrobats. Full Hill Road ran from midtown straight up into the undulating foothills, which was where Ben stood now. After looping around a few remote farmhouses up here, the road continued toward the mountains where it eventually denigrated to a muddy service road dead-ended into the trees. Though he wasn’t sure on exactly which street the Quedentocks lived, he knew they were somewhere around midtown. Crossroads—the tavern Maggie had claimed to be coming from—was only a few blocks outside midtown. What in the world had she been doing way up here?
A squirrel loped out into the middle of the roadway. It stood abruptly on its hind legs, its hands held together before it in a mockery of prayer, and surveyed its surroundings. When it spied Ben, it froze, though its tail continued to twitch spasmodically.
Was he reading too much into Maggie Quedentock’s statement? Should he swing by her place later, ask her a few more questions? He supposed he could, although that wouldn’t help alleviate the thing that was bugging him, even more than the rash of mutilated livestock. Eleven-year-old Matthew Crawly was still missing and, with each passing day, the outcome became bleaker and bleaker.
When he returned to the old farmhouse on Sideling Road, he took a long shower, dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and made himself a hearty breakfast of four scrambled eggs, sausage links, toasted Italian bread, and strong Brazilian coffee. Outside, the temperature simmered at around the seventy-degree mark so he carried his breakfast to the back porch that overlooked the southern field. The air smelled swampy from the previous night’s storm and large black crows drank out of puddles in the marshy topsoil. When he was a boy, this field had brought forth countless crops, lush and Edenic in all its greenness. Now, it was a desolate, barren landscape, the only foliage being the spiraling helixes of vines that grew around the fenceposts. Somewhere over time, the soil had adopted a grayish hue, and looked no more fertile than a sand dune. The previous spring, overcome by grief at the loss of his father, Ben had planted some seeds: cucumber, tomato, squash, parsley. Nothing unmanageable. Yet the land had yielded nothing. Some nights, he would dream of the seeds hatching just beneath the soil, the tendrils of their fragile roots seeking out one another like hands uniting, until they formed a firm network under the earth. In these dreams, vines like the tentacles of a giant squid would burst from the ground in a shower of dirt and stones and engulf the farmhouse, wrapping it up like a gift. Then, gradually, the farmhouse would be pulled down beneath the ground, Ben still inside it, screaming, until only the stone chimney protruded from the dirt. And after time, even that too would be sucked down until nothing remained except a flat, empty, desolate plot of land.
After breakfast, he read a book for a bit, but he became too antsy as his mind began to wander and he found himself rereading the same paragraphs over and over again without retaining any of it. Finally he closed the book and went to the bedroom down the hall that, in his youth, had belonged to him. Since then, he had fashioned it into a comfortable little home office, completed with a handsome desk, two leather chairs studded with brass tacks, and a bookcase containing various law books and awards. Some of his father’s medals from Vietnam hung on the wall in shadow boxes.
There was a Rolodex on the desk. Ben flipped through it until he found the card he was looking for. He punched the numbers into his cell phone and waited.
“Lieutenant Davenport,” said the man on the other end of the line after a series of rings.
“Hey, Paul, it’s Ben Journell over in Stillwater.”
“Hey, buddy. How’ve you been?”
They engaged in idle chitchat for a few minutes before Ben asked about the mountain lion.
“Damnedest thing,” Davenport told him over the line. “I mean, it didn’t really look that big when you just saw it out walking, but when you see it up close, well, it’s something else, man. Teeth like carpentry nails.”
“So the rumors are true. Eddie La Pointe told me about it but I didn’t really believe him.”
“Oh, it was true, all right. Damn thing had everybody talkin’, and half the town scared to go out after dusk.”
“It still doesn’t?”
“Not no more,” Davenport said.
“You mean the thing’s dead?” Ben asked. “You guys killed it?”
“Three days ago,” said Davenport. That would have been on Friday. “Wasn’t us, though. We just responded to the call after it had been shot. Turned out the damn thing had gotten into someone’s garage through an open window, but got stuck and couldn’t get out. Some locals went out and fired a few rounds at it with a goddamn Glock, of all things.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, well, I’m guessing they didn’t want to mess it up too badly, figuring they’d take it to a taxidermist and have it stuffed or whatever. Either way, by the time we got there, the sucker’s days of digging through people’s garbage cans was over.”
“Had it been attacking any livestock?”
“Livestock? No, man—just knocking over Dumpsters and shit. Pulled some dead rabbits out of a trap, too, I think. They’re actually pretty timid and don’t like to get too close to humans.” Davenport cleared his throat. “Why? You got livestock being killed out that way, Ben?”
Ben’s laugh held no humor. “Right now, I’ve got two farmers in town looking to hang me up by my suspenders if I don’t figure out what’s going on out here.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s just…I’ve never seen anything like it. You know of any animal that goes after another animal’s brain?”
“Shit. You’re talking parasites.”
“No, Paul. I mean cracking the fucking skulls apart and eating what’s inside.”
“Jesus in a sidecar.” Davenport whistled. “You’re putting me on, right? What does something like that?”
“You tell me.”
“Wish I could, Ben.”
“And it’s the way they’re killed. It’s like the flesh around the wound is…I don’t know…”
“Yeah?”
“Dissolved.”
Davenport made a breathy acknowledgment that wasn’t actually a word.
“I don’t know what to do about it, or even where to start, really,” Ben said. “I figured I’d just give you guys a call, see if you were experiencing the same thing.”
“Sorry I can’t help you, Ben.”
Ben sucked on his lower lip for a second. “You think that mountain lion would attack a kid?”
“Wow. I guess it’s possible. If it was provoked or really hungry, I guess. But it seemed more frightened of people than anything else. Why do you ask?”
“I’m probably overthinking things,” Ben said. “We got a missing boy out here. I’m just turning over every stone.”
“Oh boy. When’d he go missing?”
“Between Friday evening and Saturday morning.”
The silence on Davenport’s end of the line was telling.
“About what time did those guys shoot the thing on Friday night?”
“It was late,” Davenport said, knowing it wasn’t the information Ben wanted to hear. “The bar had let out. Two in the morning, or thereabout.”
“Do you still have the carcass?”
“Couple guys from Fish and Wildlife picked it up this morning. Were you thinking about opening up its stomach and seeing what’s inside?”
“If it had eaten anything…suspicious…I would think…”
“Christ, Ben. I’m thinking of that scene in
Jaws
where they slice that shark open on the pier and that license plate comes out.”
“You have the number to those Fish and Wildlife guys?”
“Sure do, but it’s back at the office. I’m on my cell now.”
“Could you call me back with it when you get the chance?”
“Of course. And I’m sure you’re right, that you’re just overreacting. This kid will probably pop up anytime now.”
“Thanks. You’re probably right.”
“And hey, Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“I was sorry to hear about your old man. I’d been meaning to call out there after I heard but, well, you know how it is…”
“Thanks, Paul. I appreciate it.”
“You take care, all right?”
“You too.”
He hung up the phone, feeling no better and no worse.
Later that afternoon, he went into town to pick up some Halloween candy to leave on the front porch for the trick-or-treaters at the end of the week. He would be working Halloween night and knew from experience that a dark house with no candy on the porch suffered the wrath of neighborhood children scorned. Down at Lomax’s, he picked up a few bags of the pocket-sized Snickers and Butterfinger bars, some M&M’s, and an assorted pack of hard, sugary candies. He’d leave them all out in a big Tupperware bowl on the porch with the porch lights on, bright as day. He had made the mistake of taping a sign to the bowl last year recommending each trick-or-treater take just one candy bar each, but for all the good that did he could have left a sign that said
PLEASE TAKE ALL MY CANDY THEN THROW THE BOWL INTO A TREE.
He’d learned his lesson on that one.