When this happened, Ryerson, who usually kept his temper on a very short leash, cut loose with a string of obscenities, because seeing and not seeing at the same time can be very frustrating. "Donkey tits!" he hissed, borrowing, he knew, from the old spook in the cellar of the house in Vermont. "Fairy farts!" Then, "Shit, shit, shit!"
He heard a knock at the door of his room at the Samuelson Guest House. Creosote, who'd been happily and noisily chewing one of Ryerson's argyle socks on the bed, looked at the door and whimpered.
"Who's there?" Ryerson called.
"My name's Ashland," a man's voice called back.
Ryerson got out of his chair, went to the door, and looked through the little security peephole. The young, fresh-faced blond man on the other side of the door was trying very hard to smile amiably, as if he knew he was being watched. "Yes?" Ryerson said through the door. "What can I do for you?"
"I'd like to talk with you a moment, Mr. Biergarten."
"About what?"
"About The Park Werewolf."
Ryerson glanced around at Creosote, who was still whimpering. He said, under his breath, "What do you think, Creosote?" Creosote stopped whimpering and cocked his flat, stubby head to one side. Ryerson tried to read him, could read only something like the snow that comes between channels on TV sets. He shrugged, said "Okay," and opened the door.
The blond man who called himself Ashland extended his hand. Ryerson took it.
"I have some information for you," the man said, still trying very hard to smile amiably, though his palms were sweaty and his eyes darted quickly from one area of the room to another. He was clearly nervous.
"You do?" Ryerson said.
"About The Park Werewolf," the man said and nodded at the oak rocking chair that Ryerson had just gotten out of. "May I?"
"Sure."
The man went quickly to the chair and sat heavily, wearily in it. He let his head fall back and sighed. "My God!" he breathed.
"How'd you find me?" Ryerson asked. "How do you know who I am?"
The man let a quick smile-a smile of self-amusement, Ryerson thought-come and go on his lips. "I followed you here," he answered.
"Oh? Well, that answers my first question-”
“There's an article about you in The D and C."
" 'The D and C'? What's that?"
The man looked offended: " The Democrat and Chronicle -the paper. The Rochester newspaper."
"Oh," Ryerson said again. He was a little miffed. He didn't like publicity, especially in the middle of a case; too often it brought out the loonies, which, he supposed, included this man.
Once more a smile of what Ryerson thought was self-amusement flitted across the man's mouth. "Do you really think there's a werewolf loose in The Park, Mr. Biergarten?"
Ryerson went to the bed and sat next to Creosote. "Why don't you simply tell me, Mr. Ashland, what information you have-"
The man who called himself Ashland cut in, "I know who it is."
"Do you?"
"Yes. I know who it is." He looked quickly at Creosote, who had all but torn the argyle sock in half and was continuing to work happily at it, then looked back at Ryerson. "Do you believe me?"
"Should I?" Ryerson asked.
The man looked stunned by the question. He said nothing for a long moment, then yet another smile appeared; it stayed longer this time, and Ryerson guessed that the man was trying to be coy. "Everything I say… is a lie, Mr. Biergarten."
Ryerson inhaled deeply, let the air out slowly, and said, "Yes, I've heard that one, Mr. Ashland."
He looked offended. "It's a woman."
"The werewolf?"
Ashland nodded vigorously. "Yes. It's a woman." He pushed himself to his feet. "But I can't give you her name. I want to, I really want to. But I can't. I won't." He looked quickly, almost frantically, Ryerson thought, at the door, at Creosote, at Ryerson, back at the door, the window, at Ryerson. "I'm sorry; I've got to leave now. You don't mind, do you?"
Ryerson, still on the bed with Creosote beside him, shook his head and said "No," very matter-of-factly, "I don't mind."
The man who called himself Ashland protested, "I'm not crazy, Mr. Biergarten."
Ryerson said, "Neither am I," which clearly confused the visitor, who shuffled in place for a few moments, then went quickly to the door and left the room.
George Dixon, head of security at Kodak Park, pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer of his big gray metal desk and shrieked. There was a tongue-like a pale, dried red pepper-lying in the drawer on top of an old Playboy magazine.
Dixon slammed the drawer shut, found that his breathing was becoming labored from the quick onrush of adrenaline, and forced himself to breathe slowly, deeply. After a minute his breathing regulated itself, and he put his hand on the drawer handle.
"It's just a tongue," he whispered. "Jesus, everyone has one." He took a breath, pulled the drawer open, studied the tongue for a few moments, then closed the drawer slowly.
Would you know? he wondered. Would you really know? Or would you hide it? Even from yourself? Would you have to hide it, for Christ's sake, so you wouldn't go nutsaronee?! Sure you would.
Maybe you do it while you're asleep. Maybe you get up and you run around in some goddamned wolf suit – He shook his head. "Shit, no!" he breathed. How could he be The Park Werewolf? It was impossible. No way, Jose!
But still, he wrapped the raggedly severed tongue up in a napkin, put it in his black lunch pail, and took it home with him. And that evening he put it in a Baggie, put the Baggie in his lunch pail, took the lunch pail to a stretch of Genesee River that he knew no one ever frequented because it reeked of sewage, and threw the lunch pail in.
And again he whispered to himself, "So, it's a tongue. I don't need one. I got one of my own," grinned a wide, quaking grin, and went back to his apartment house.
Chapter Nine
APRIL 28
"It's unlikely," said Rochester's WROC-TV news anchorperson Mark Wolf, a handsome, square-faced man with sensitive eyes and a narrow, well-groomed mustache, "that too many more days will elapse before the murderer of four at Kodak Park is caught, according to Chief of Detectives Tom McCabe."
The picture cut to a shoulders-up shot of McCabe talking to an unidentified off-camera reporter.
"These are particularly heinous murders," McCabe said, "as all murders are, of course. But these murders are even more heinous than the… average murder because the murderer has chosen to mutilate his victims, much the way that the legendary werewolf does-"
"Are you suggesting," said the male voice of the anonymous off-camera reporter, "that there is something supernatural going on here, Chief?"
He shook his head vigorously. "No. Not at all. Quite the contrary. I'm suggesting that a sick individual, an individual who could appear to be quite normal, as a matter of fact, has… has run amok-"
"Is it true," the reporter cut in, "as the papers have said, that a psychic investigator has been called in to help in this case?"
Again McCabe shook his head. "Ryerson Biergarten is my friend. He's visiting Rochester, and I've asked him to look at some of the evidence-because he is a psychologist, after all-and to give us at the Rochester P.D. his… insights."
"Thank you, Chief."
Mark Wolf came back on the screen. "As expected, absenteeism at Kodak has risen quite dramatically since the murders began, from an average of two percent three weeks ago to more than forty percent today. Additionally, it has been reported that people are moving from place to place in groups of threes and fours, and that security guards-who are posted at all entrances and exits to The Park, anyway-have been told to let regular employees carry Mace, hatpins, and small knives for defense against a possible attack. According to Head of Security George Dixon, however, no unauthorized firearms of any kind have ever been allowed inside Kodak Park, nor will they be allowed now."