"I don't even know if it's relevant," I answered.
Madden glared back at me. The look on his face indicated that he thought I was holding something back from him.
Even with that I was reluctant to parade out my theory. I wasn't even sure I believed it.
"Tell you what I'll do, Jake. If we make it through the night, I'll run out to the motel in the morning and get the tape for you. Then you can judge for yourself. Deal?"
Madden nodded and motioned for me to follow. "Come on," he grunted, "we're servin' as back-up for all the patrols. It's gonna be a long night."
PART 7
It was a long night. The patrols, much to my surprise, performed with admirable precision, and by the time that the first shift change was effected in the early hours of the morning, a good deal of the early apprehension had dissipated. In one of the groups there was actually an exchange of some light-hearted banter.
Kendall had put the less experienced Constable Gregory in charge of the command post. He was a tall, blond, angular young man with piercing blue eyes and a quick, flirtatious smile. I am told some women actually find that type appealing. And each time that Madden and I checked in, Brenda had discovered a new way of fawning over the young officer. She had regaled him with coffee, some cookies from Palmer's rapidly depleting shelves, some clever repartee, and was now dazzling him with her multifaceted personality. All of which wasn't lost on Madden; with each report, the big man became a little more surly.
Twice following the two o'clock shift change we altered our patrol routine, once to check with Hawkins and Caleb Hall, who were working the four square block eastern quadrant of the village, and the other to briefly check out the darkened marina.
Kendall's makeshift communications network was more than adequate. We were working with standard 40 channel citizens band units of the hand-held variety, and the patch-through buddy system had effectively kept everyone in touch. The too frequent, too nervous, too excited transmissions of the early evening had settled into a series of terse, almost laconic "all's quiet" and "nothing to report" static-laden crackles. Still, Madden manfully monitored each and every one of them. He systematically recorded each one on a battered clipboard that lay on the front seat beside him.
The frequency of conversation between Jake and myself had deteriorated over the course of the long night until it became little more than a series of cryptic grunts. The coffee was gone, and I was down to my last cigarette.
The creature had simply vanished.
By the time the first faint traces of dawn began to penetrate the long hours of fog and darkness, Jake had parked the four-by-four at what the patrols had been referring to as quadrant W.E. He turned off the ignition, slumped down behind the steering wheel and shoved his hat forward down over his eyes. The look of exhaustion had crept over his lined face. "Well, Researcher, it looks like we're goin' to make it," he sighed.
I was still gratefully fondling the arrival of the new day, and it was easy to agree with him. Somehow the threatening combination of darkness and fog and knowing that the foul-smelling thing was still freely roaming around out there in the shadows had made the night seem all the longer. I had already seen the monster muscle his way through one brick wall, and it was a sight I had no desire to witness a second time. So it was symbolic, if nothing else, that the darkness was giving way to the dawn; one of the three obstacles to survival had been, at least temporarily, overcome.
Through it all, it occurred to me that I still knew very little about the mountain of a man who sat slumped in the seat beside me. I had developed a great deal of respect for Jake Madden over the past few hours. If he was going to be accurately characterized in whatever this affair turned out to be, I had to know a great deal more about him.
"Are you a native to these parts, Jake?" It was the kind of question that doesn't change anything. One man's assessment of another is based, to a large extent, on what he sees, and what I had seen in the way of actions from the man indicated integrity, concern and commitment — solid elements, indeed.
Jake pursed his lips and took his time unwrapping a small cheroot. Like everything else the man did, it evolved into a kind of miniature ritual. He tucked the cellophane in his shirt pocket, used his pocket knife to cut off the tip, wet it, lit it and took a deep drag.
"Naw," he drawled, "come from up north of Calgary. Used to be a Mountie myself. Came home one night and found this note on the door — she was gone. She'd had enough of it. Can't say as I blame her. It's no life for a woman, especially a pretty one who likes female doo-dads." His gruff voice trailed off, and he took a drag on his cheroot.
When a man begins poking around in the attic of his memory, you give him time. For most of us it's a little like probing the old body the morning after a street fight. It's done with a great deal of caution, gingerly testing the bruised areas, seeing how much they hurt. Then, and only then, does a man determine how much further he is willing to probe, how much he's willing to reveal. Some old hurts never heal.
"I was thirty-seven at the time. Saddle sore. Broke. And just beginning to come to grips with the fact that I was a natural-born loner. So one morning I just marched into the Detco and resigned. He had me fill out a bunch of forms, and when I was done with all that nonsense, I crawled into my old pickup truck and headed east. Oh, I stopped a couple of times along the way, got to know a few people, spent a little time in Winnipeg — and then one day I landed here in Chambers Bay."
"Why did you stay in Chambers Bay?"
Madden gave me a sideways glance and an easy smile. I had the feeling it wasn't the first time he had been asked that question.
"It was a Sunday mornin'," he reflected. "I'd been drivin' all night and had stopped down at Vernice's diner, the same place where I met you folks. When I went back out to my truck I had a flat tire. There I was, my right rear flatter than a fritter, the gas tank empty, and I had three dollars to my name. Even if I solved one problem, I still had the other — so I just stayed."
"And?" I knew there was a bottom line, and I instinctively knew I was supposed to ask.
"'Bout a year later, four bikers showed up, real bad dudes. They strutted around, raised a little hell, intimidated a couple of the local folk and started bustin' up Vernice's diner. I was washin' dishes in the back at the time. When I heard the ruckus they was raisin' I went out the back door, out to the shed, got myself a crowbar and pried the spokes out of the wheels of their bikes. They didn't like that much and got a little surly about the whole affair, so I used the bar on them."
He took time out to enjoy another drag.
"Harlan saw the whole thing, and the next thing I know the village council was offerin' me eight hundred and fifty bucks a month to sorta keep the lid on things around here. Up until now it ain't been all that much trouble."
"Do you like it?"
Jake shrugged. "What the hell," he groused, "it's a job, and a man's gotta do somethin' with his time. Never have found a substitute for eatin'."
The interlude was interrupted by the crackling of the radio. Jake was suddenly alert again. A voice began transmitting without identifying itself. "Just checked with Ben Hart who says his gear's out. Says he ain't seen nothin'."
Jake depressed the transmit button on the side of his unit. "Where are you, Phil?"
"On Chestnut, down by the stone quarry."
"Seen anything?"
"Nothin' but the goddamn fog," the man snapped.
Madden grunted, released the button and laid the mike on the dashboard. For a moment or two he stared off in the grayness. "Know what Vernice told me?
"I shook my head.
"She says you not only research this weird stuff. She says that when you figure out what s happenin' and come up with some logical explanation for it you write about it. That true? Do you write about ghosts and stuff like that?"