Jack Youngman stared for a long time into the trunk of his Marquis and at last convinced himself that there was no blood left in it. He'd cleaned it very thoroughly two weeks before, when he'd first found the blood. And then again when it had come back a week later. And now today, the day after Eugene Conkey's murder, which had been discovered several hours earlier and so had been part of the morning TV and radio newscasts but hadn't yet hit the newspapers. He closed the trunk quietly, though he was in his garage and the door was shut. You never knew about neighbors; one day they could be as warm as toast, and the next day they could turn you in for cheating on your income taxes. Or one of them might phone the cops anonymously and say, "Hey, I got this neighbor and he's been acting real peculiar; he cleans the trunk of his car all the time, you know."
Because maybe, just maybe, Jack had decided, he was The Park Werewolf. He was big enough, after all. And strong enough. And what did it matter if he couldn't remember killing anyone? If he was nuts, if he went around taking people's heads off, then the chances were pretty damned good that he wouldn't remember it. Shit, why would he want to? Or maybe he had two or three personalities. Maybe during the day he was Big Jack Youngman, gruff and unapproachable-Big Jack Youngman, who was really made of mush on the inside and didn't want people to get too close to him because all that mush would come out. And then at night, during the full moon, he changed. He became a rock-hard, drooling killer.
But when he thought about it, he didn't believe a word of it. Actually, he realized, he didn't want to believe a word of it. But there was the evidence of the blood, after all.
THAT EVENING: 7:30
"Poor slob," Tom McCabe said to Ryerson. They were standing several feet from an autopsy table at the Monroe County Medical Examiner's office. Dr. Peter B. Taub, a balding, thin, no-nonsense man in his early fifties, was performing the autopsy on Eugene Conkey. Detective Bill Andrews, who'd been brought in to help on The Park Werewolf case after Walt Morgan's murder, stood just behind Ryerson and McCabe, his eyes averted.
Creosote had been left in what Ryerson hoped were the capable hands of Loren Samuelson, the owner of the guest house where he was staying.
Creosote had apparently not been feeling well lately, and Ryerson wanted to keep him out of the chill, moist Rochester air. He looked at McCabe: "Thanks for getting me in here, Tom."
"No problem," McCabe said. Then, to Dr. Taub,
"Can you give me a cause of death, Pete?"
"Take your pick," Taub said dryly. "Broken neck, severed spinal column, lacerated trachea-"
Detective Andrews, who had been trying to ignore what was happening and so hadn't realized the doctor was talking, cut in. "He won the lottery, you know.”
“Sorry?" McCabe said.
"Mr. Conkey won the New York State Lottery. I heard it on the radio on the way in this evening."
Taub harrumphed; "I guess this was supposed to be his day."
"It kind of was," Ryerson said.
"Poor slob," McCabe said again.
And Detective Andrews said, "Mind if I leave?" and before getting an answer, turned and quickly left the room.
"Greta, Greta, my love," Doug Miller breathed-once, then again and again, deeply and with an almost overpowering sense of urgency. Then his orgasm was done and he stood from his bed, wadded up the soiled toilet paper in his hand, and tossed it idly into the wastebasket nearby. He pulled his pants up, zippered and buttoned them, and sat again, exhausted.
He put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and took several long, deep breaths. "Greta, Greta, Greta," he whispered into his hands. He sighed.
For God's sake, she would love him someday! He would make her love him! What else did he have to do to show her that he loved her? He followed her around like a damned puppy dog, didn't he? He walked her to her car every night, even though-and she knew this-his own car, a dark blue Plymouth Fury, was in the other parking lot. Hell, hadn't he even moved from his big house in Pittsford (which had been left to him upon his mother's death three years earlier) to this crummy apartment just a block away from her?
And there was the best evidence of all-the evidence that he couldn't yet share with her, but that he would share in time-the evidence of his faithfulness. The evidence of his fidelity to her, even though she wasn't yet his. His fidelity not only in the fact that he'd kept himself clean for her, but also that he was keeping her secret. Her awful, nightmarish secret.
He stood and went to the window that looked out on Fairview Heights. He could see Greta's house from that window. He could see that the lights in her third-floor apartment were on, and he wondered if she were there in the apartment, thinking about him.
"Greta, my love," he whispered, "I'll always keep your secret."
Chapter Eleven
Ryerson felt awful about having Creosote here, making his abominable noises in the midst of this poor couple's grief. He apologized often, but he also felt relieved that getting the dog away from Rochester had, in a manner of speaking, brought him back to life.
"She ran away?" Ryerson asked Will Curtis, who was seated across from him at the aluminum and glass dining table. The man's wife, Frances, sat with Ryerson and her husband. Each of them had a cup of cocoa to drink and a plate of D'Oro Cookies to pick at, but though the Curtises had told Ryerson "Eat, please eat!" several times, they had all let their cocoa get cold and hadn't touched the plate of cookies.
"Yes," said the man, his voice weary with several kinds of pain, "as many children do today, Lila ran away." He paused and smiled, though it was a smile as weak and pain-ridden as his voice. "But she came back, Mr. Biergarten. Lila came back."
"And she was…" Ryerson paused; he could sense the anguish in the small, memorabilia-cluttered dining room; it was an anguish, he knew, that had grown not only from loss but from confusion and, as well, from a strange, lingering fear. "She acted… oddly when she came back?"
The woman, Frances, nodded slowly. She had her small, pale hands clasped on the tabletop in front of her cup of cocoa, and her gaze was lowered, as if she were looking somewhere between her hands and the cup. She said, "Lila was sixteen, and I know that sixteen-year-old girls are full of the devil-" She stopped and appeared unable to go on. A tear slid down her cheek; she swiped at it, continued, "I was when I was sixteen. But Lila-" She stopped again.
Her husband took over for her. "Lila was a very confused girl, Mr. Biergarten. Maybe it was because we were… older when we became parents. Frances was well into her thirties, you see-"
Frances cut in, a little sharply, "Our age has nothing to do with it, Will. Lila was confused for her own reasons; we were good parents, damnit, we were the very best parents we could be."
Creosote cut loose with a lengthy bout of snorting, belching, and benign growling. "I'm sorry, forgive me," Ryerson pleaded. He got Creosote's soft plastic duck from the pocket of his cream-colored bulky-knit sweater and stuck it in the dog's mouth. Creosote began working at it happily.
Will Curtis waved Ryerson's words awry. "Nothing to forgive; I had four Boston bull terriers when I was growing up, Mr. Biergarten. Fine animals. Noisy, sure, but still fine animals. Smart as a whip, and loyal as your shadow-"
"Lila was cursed," Frances cut in.
Ryerson studied the woman's eyes for several seconds; he saw the same anguish in them that filled the room, but he saw resolve, too, and an almost painful sort of honesty. He said, "How was she cursed?"