Julie leaned over to see what Paul had found, and the canoe tipped precariously to that side. Paul shifted to compensate the weight change and when he leaned back, Julie saw the bloated body of a cat drift by the canoe. Julie’s first thought was that it had drowned but then he saw the fish swirling around the half-submerged body, nibbling at the entrails that were hanging from a gaping wound in the cat’s belly. It looked like it didn’t have all of its paws, either. Julie groaned and swallowed bile, willing herself not to hurl all over the place.
“What the hell did that?”
“Let’s get to the dock.” Paul began paddling faster. Julie jumped onto the dock and felt her world shift. There were no sleeping cats on the dock but instead there were mangled cat parts strewn about. A head of one of the old tiger cats lolled near Julie’s feet, its unseeing eyes cast upward to Julie, or the sky. The deck was slippery with blood and viscera. Julie almost lost her footing; fear of landing on the gore prevented her from falling more than her sense of balance did. She staggered off the dock and onto the firm sand, bending down to the water, checking first for any dead cats before reaching in to splash her face.
“Paul, what the hell is going on?” Paul had tied the canoe up and joined her. Julie figured he had seen a lot worse things in prison than a few dead cats.
“Let’s go, Julie. We don’t want to be around here when the police come.” They made their way up the Cat-woman’s backyard, avoiding the mangled pieces of her cats along the way. Paul stopped abruptly, causing Julie to almost collide into his back, and then he was off, running across the grass toward the house. Julie broke into a run behind him. When he stopped he was standing over another body. This time it wasn’t a cat. It was the Cat-woman.
Paul bent down to roll her over. Another light breeze caused her to shiver, this time it carried the sickly-sweet smell of blood. When Paul got the Cat-woman onto her back, Julie turned and gagged again. She was mutilated. Most of her insides were hanging out of her wide-open stomach. There was nothing left of her neck or face; the white of her cheekbones was blinding in the hot sun. Her pale legs jutted awkwardly from beneath her tattered housecoat. “Let’s go,” Paul said again, staring at the Cat-woman’s body.
Julie couldn’t speak. Her mind was trying to process what she had just witnessed. She grabbed Paul’s arm, pulling him around to look him in the eye. She tried to speak, to yell, but nothing would come. Paul bent down to Julie’s height and that’s when Julie knew. In Paul’s eyes she could see the knowledge, the recognition. This wasn’t the first time Paul had been so close to death. He had held the dying girl in his arms in 1961, trying to save her. Or was he?
“Julie, you’ve got to hold yourself together.” Paul grasped Julie’s shoulders. “Julie, do you understand?”
Greymore’s eyes had turned to a blue like nothing Julie had ever seen before, so deep, bottomless. She felt her head nodding. Finally she was able to speak. “Paul, what happened here? You know. I can see it in your eyes.”
“There’s no time to explain, we’ve got to get out of here before Crawford gets here.” As if to emphasize his point, the roar of a muscle car cut through the heavy silence. Neither doubted it was a Mustang.
Julie nodded. “We’ll go to Denny’s house. Come on, we’ll cut through the woods, there’s a trail.”
(86)
Crawford slammed the cruiser into park and threw the door open. The humid air slapped him as he strode purposefully toward the other officers on the scene. “What the hell have we got?” he grumbled. Things were starting to get to him. In ’61 he had been the hero, arresting Greymore and ending the summer-long killing spree. Nothing less was expected of him now. Sweat began to run down his face, his shirt already soaked through.
Officer Ortiz stepped up and gave him the report. “Doris Lovell is dead, apparently from loss of blood. She was mutilated. There are dozens of dead cats around here, ripped to pieces, some flayed right down to the bone.”
“Cats? Jesus Christ, what next?” Crawford wiped his face with a sweat-stained handkerchief and started moving. He walked around to the back of the house and quickly took in the sight. Ortiz wasn’t exaggerating; there were a lot of cats’ bodies. What a mess. Why would Greymore do this? It must have taken quite a while to do this kind of damage; he must have completely snapped. “Ortiz, I want every available officer looking for Greymore, enlist civilians if you have to.”
“Chief, we’ve already had one lynch mob. I think…”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think, Ortiz. I want Greymore tonight, dead or alive.” Crawford continued around to where Doris Lovell’s body was being bagged by the coroner. “Hold on a minute, let me see her.” Crawford leaned over to get a good look at the body. He wanted to see the work of this madman, to feel personally the horror he had inflicted. Mutilated? Christ she was gutted, he almost said aloud. Just before he stood he noticed her legs. He saw what Greymore had seen just a short time before him: a straight line of large red welts running across her thigh. Like a symmetrical row of bee stings. Crawford stood unsteadily. He had seen those before and he knew exactly where and when. Greymore and the Larsen girl had both had the same markings when Crawford found them. The information was never leaked to the press and existed only in the police reports. And in Crawford’s memory.
“I want a full autopsy,” he snapped at the medical examiner. “I want to know what made those marks.” He walked down to the edge of the lake where there was a small dock with a canoe tied to it. In the water he could see more dead cats floating around. “What the hell is going on around here?” he whispered.
As he stared out over the lake he went back to the night he found Greymore with the girl.
It had been pouring rain, the first rain in weeks. Before that it had been hot as Hell. Someone had called in reporting a boater out on the lake. Not a good idea the way the lightning was touching down. He had been pissed that he had to go out and check it out. He had stopped at the Barrows’ place and seen the canoe himself through the blinding rain. He saw it heading for the next house up the street. He got back into his car, thinking that whoever it was would be okay once they hit shore. They could call from the house, or maybe they even lived there. Lightning flashed, followed instantly be a sharp crack of thunder. Shit, how would it look on a report if he didn’t follow up? He drove up the hill to the next driveway and pulled in. Having to struggle to push open his door in the howling wind, he was met by a pelting of cold rain. Goddammit, why me? Hunched over against the wind, he went around back, furious at whoever was making him be out in this. I hope they’ve been drinking, he thought, I’ll haul them in for sure. He moved toward the back, the lake now coming into his view. It looked more like the ocean, the wind causing whitecaps to pound the shore. He saw the canoe, drifting a few feet off-shore. Shit! If I have to go in and drag somebody out of the lake…
His thought was cut short when he saw the heap half-way between the lake and the house. As he got closer he could see it was two bodies, an adult and a child. Maybe they’d been hit by lightning he thought. He kneeled down to check it out. The little girl was in bad shape, blood everywhere on her clothes. The guy was a mess in a different way. His face was scarred badly, disfigured to the point of horrible ugliness. He felt for a pulse on the guy and found it weak and irregular. The girl’s was the same. Suddenly her eyes snapped open. They locked on Crawford but he knew instantly they weren’t seeing him. She looked crazed, like a rabid animal, her eyes open wide in spite of the rain that was pelting them. “The monster, keep it away. Please.” She said it so calmly, like she was asking for a piece of pie after dinner. Then her eyes had slowly shut. Crawford checked her pulse but this time found none. He quickly started CPR, thunder and lightning crashing around him, rain beating him. But it was no use. He couldn’t bring her back. A touch of sadness came over him. Not for the girl but for the lost opportunity. He would have been a hero, saving a little girl’s life in these conditions. He looked at her face, serene in death, the wildness of a few moments ago gone. An idea jolted him as though he’d been struck by the lightning that danced all around him. He looked again at the wounds, the blood, and suddenly he knew. The Butcher. “The monster,” she had said. He turned to look at the body of the man beside her. His face was gruesome, monstrous to a little girl. He slapped his cuffs on the unconscious man and hurried back to the car to radio for help. A blessing in disguise, he thought to himself, well worth getting a little wet over.