He slid carefully over the console between the bucket seats and opened the passenger door. He shone the flashlight around the area of what he supposed was the dog's hind end and, still whispering curses at himself, got out of the Mustang. He left the passenger door open; the light from within the car was comforting.
He took a couple of steps onto the shoulder toward the tall weeds. "Jees, I'm sorry, mutt!" he said.
If he'd been a full-fledged country boy, Larry would have known at once that the thing in the weeds was a raccoon and he'd merely have kicked it farther into the weeds, checked for any damage to the Mustang-a now-you've-got-your-license gift from his father-and driven off. But he was a transplanted city boy from Pittsburgh, and he knew practically nothing about raccoons, only that they had "masks," that they liked to raid garbage cans, and that they washed their paws in streams. So when he bent over and touched this particular raccoon, it was simple human concern that was pushing through him. He'd hit a dog, damnit! He'd hit someone's pet! And that caring, that good feeling would have served him well had the thing that hitched a ride on the raccoon wanted only to hitch a ride on him. Because the thing was repulsed by good feelings; good feelings were like a Star Wars force field against it. The only way it could penetrate them was through the blood.
Through the skin and into the blood.
If, for instance, the raccoon had just enough strength left in it to turn and bite the hand that wanted to help it.
The raccoon had that strength.
And it was fully ten minutes later, when Larry Wilde pulled frantically into his driveway in Edgewater, that he had recovered enough from the shock of being bitten to realize that he'd probably have to have rabies inoculations.
But the raccoon didn't have rabies, of course. It had something far deadlier.
Ryerson had the Erie medical examiner's two autopsy reports on Lila Curtis opened on the desk in front of him-one of them dated February 12, when she'd killed herself, and the other April 17, when Ryerson had discovered her body just inches below ground level at the Edgewater Cemetery. He muttered, "A silver bullet! My God, a silver bullet. The Lone Ranger strikes again." She'd been shot twice, the reports showed. Once on February 12, with a thirty-eight that she'd turned on herself, and then some time later, after she'd been buried, someone had shot her again. This time with a silver bullet.
"Joan," Ryerson whispered, "it was you, wasn't it? You did this." He wondered if he'd ever find out who `Joan' was. He was certain, now, that Greta Lynch was only a very troubled woman who happened to have lived in Erie and had no connection at all with Lila Curtis.
"Why, Joan?" Ryerson went on. It was a method he used occasionally, a kind of conversational self-hypnosis. "Was Lila a threat?" He hesitated, absently stroked Creosote, asleep on his lap. He droned on, "What kind of threat, Joan? And how did you know?" He stopped again, realized-without knowing how he realized it that he was on the wrong track. "What sort of friend were you, Joan? Tell me. And what sort of friend was Lila to you? Did you end her suffering for her? Was that it?" And again he realized he was on the wrong track; he continued absently stroking Creosote. Then, suddenly, he sat bolt upright in the chair, his mouth wide as if in a scream. But he was silent, stiff, for a full minute. "Christ!" he yelled. "Christ, Lila, no!" And his head slumped forward over Creosote.
He heard Loren Samuelson pounding on the door, heard him yelling, "Mr. Biergarten, what's wrong, what are you doing in there?" But it was some time before he was able to call, "I'm okay. It's okay, Mr. Samuelson. It's nothing." He managed to go to the door, and open it.
Samuelson said, "Good heavens, I thought someone was being murdered up here, Mr. Biergarten."
A weary smile creased Ryerson's lips. "No," he assured the old man. "No one's being murdered."
"It was only a figure of speech, Mr. Biergarten. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't allow-"
Ryerson pushed past him into the hallway, Creosote squirming like a piece of living baggage under his arm, the soft plastic duck in his teeth. "I'm sorry," Mr. Samuelson," Ryerson called as he started downstairs, "It won't happen again, I promise."
McCabe held a chicken leg up in front of his face. "Hi," he said to Ryerson at his front door, "you want some? My own recipe."
"We've got to talk; can we talk?" Ryerson asked urgently.
McCabe shrugged. "Sure. Let's go into the den." Again he held up the chicken leg, which had a huge chunk missing from it. "Have some, Rye. It's my own version of Chicken French-"
Ryerson pushed past him into the house. "Where's the den, Tom?"
McCabe motioned to the left, down a short hall-way. "Over here." They started toward it. McCabe said, behind Ryerson, "How about what's-his-name, your mutt?"
"He's fine," Ryerson said over his shoulder.
"I mean, would he like some of my Chicken French?"
"No, Tom. He doesn't eat people food."
"Oh, good." A pause. "To the right, Rye, it's the door at the end of the hallway."
Ryerson looked back. "Why do you live alone in a house this big, Tom?"
McCabe chomped on the chicken leg and answered as he chewed, "Gives me room to breathe, Rye."
Then Ryerson opened the door to the den, and they went in and sat facing each other in two big cream-colored wing chairs. McCabe set his chicken leg down in a floor-standing ashtray near his chair, hunkered forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands elapsed. "Okay, Rye. What's the scoop?"
Ryerson nodded at Creosote. "Do you mind if I put him down, Tom?"
"Does he pee?"
"Outside, yes."
"As long as he doesn't pee on anything, Rye. I have a housekeeper who'd throw a fit if he peed on anything."
Ryerson put Creosote on the floor; the dog looked around for a moment, sniffed at one of the Argyle socks Ryerson was wearing as if it were an old friend, then settled down for a snooze under the chair his master was sitting in. Ryerson sat back, arms flat on the arms of the chair. He said, "I still don't believe in werewolves, Tom."
"That's good to know, Rye." McCabe sat back, too, as if on cue from Ryerson.
Ryerson went on, "But I believe that there are plenty of people out there who do. And I believe that faith can move mountains."
McCabe smiled uneasily. "You've got religion, right, Rye?"
Ryerson shook his head. "No; no more than usual, anyway." He sat forward suddenly, assumed the same position that McCabe had-elbows on his knees, hands clasped. "What I've got is a new way of looking at our murderer. What I've got, Tom, is a new twist to the old werewolf legend."
Chapter Fifteen
Sixteen-year-old Larry Wilde had two hobbies. One was coin-collecting; he was currently into completing his collection of early twentieth-century Lincoln-head pennies. And the other was Great Movie Slashers of the Past. That was, in fact, the title of a book he'd been putting together. Of course, when you're sixteen, "the past" doesn't mean what it means to a thirty-year-old (and when you're thirty, it doesn't mean what it means to a sixty-year-old, either). So, his book began with the faceless drowned adolescent from the original Friday the Thirteenth, proceeded to the equally faceless slasher from the original Halloween (which, he maintained, was worlds better than the losers that followed), and involved itself further with Terror Train and The Fog and The Creeping Dead and a half dozen others. He'd gotten 120 single-spaced typewritten pages done on the book and was beginning to check the current Writer's Market for possible agents and publishers.