Kellogg looked open-mouthed, first at the transparency, then at Ryerson, then back at the transparency. At last he said, "What did you do that for?"
Ryerson grinned. "No more Park Werewolf," he said and, at a fast run, exited the plant in search of a phone booth.
Douglas Miller's brain, the brain that used to sort things out quite well for him, where his ABC's were filed away, where he had kept "Miss Fox" his kindergarten teacher separate from "Miss Fox" his mother's friend who had told him, when he was barely into puberty, that he had "bedroom eyes"; the brain that enjoyed high school chemistry and hated high school English, the brain that had tried more than once to hide the truth from him-about his father, who was basically worthless; about his first love, who didn't love him back; about his future, which he had admitted only within the past year probably wouldn't be as grand as he'd hoped; and now about the incredible and vicious entity that dwelt within him-that brain was now a mass of frayed synapses and collapsed cell walls and midbrain, left brain, right brain all trying to keep themselves separate and at the same time to integrate, to come together, to make sense out of the mush that the whole had become.
And there was, for the first time, an exquisite pain attached to that degeneration. A pain unlike any other that Douglas Miller had ever known. A pain that was at once the pain of birth and the pain of death. A pain that wrapped him up and tugged his flesh hard across the bones and tissue, as if trying to free something that dwelt deep within the marrow.
It was a pain that shot out from within each of his cells as they were transformed, stretched, coaxed back from shapes that Mother Nature never intended.
He did scream, but it didn't sound much like a scream. It sounded more like a loud, extended burp that didn't fit at all with the creature it had come out of, the huge, hideous thing that stood crazily triumphant over George Dixon's shattered body.
Then, within moments, the creature that recognized itself as Douglas Miller reappeared, and Douglas Miller whispered to what was left of George Dixon, "See, confession is good for the soul, George. It releases it."
He took a long shower in Dixon's cramped bathroom until he at last felt clean again. Then he put on a pair of Dixon's pants and one of Dixon's Eastman Kodak Security shirts, which fit him poorly-too small at the chest (which were so overdeveloped that Miller's second victim had even seen, in his agony, the breasts of a woman there), and too large at the stomach.
And he went to tell Tom McCabe that his two chief suspects in The Park Werewolf murders were dead.
Under "D. Miller" in the Rochester Telephone Directory, Ryerson Biergarten found eight listings, including a "D. A. Miller." Under "Douglas Miller" he found six listings, three with middle initials other than "A" and one listed as "Douglas and Mary Ellen Miller," which he dismissed immediately. He called all the others, got no answer from two of the "D. Millers"- the "D. A. Miller" turned out to be a woman-and no answer from "Douglas Miller" on Electric Avenue, a street name that seemed strangely familiar to him. He called the operator, asked how he could find out where Electric Avenue was, and was told to call the Rochester Public Library. He called the library and got a Mrs. Bodega, who told him, "According to my Rochester Street Directory, Electric Avenue runs parallel, sir, with Seneca Parkway on the south and Landsdowne Lane on the North. Fairview Heights, Ellicot Street, and Stecko Avenue run into it from the south, and-" That was all Ryerson needed to hear.
Greta Lynch's apartment was on Fairview Heights.
Chapter Nineteen
Tom McCabe didn't trust the smiling, muscle-bound, poorly dressed young man at his door. He wasn't sure why, because the man appeared harmless enough, like an aging Boy Scout who was rapidly getting hooked on religion and had stopped caring what he looked like.
"Yes?" McCabe said, voice warbling because he was still sick to his stomach; within the past hour a genuine hummer of a headache had started as well.
"You don't know me, Mr. McCabe," said the man at the door. "But I know you, and I'd like it very much if we could talk."
McCabe shook his head wearily. "Listen, I'm sick, I don't have time to hear a sales pitch, so if you don't mind-" He began to close the door. The young man's hand shot out and stopped it.
"It's about The Park Werewolf, Mr. McCabe."
McCabe gave the young man's hand a quick, condemning glance. Then he looked him hard in the eye: "I told you, I'm sick, I don't feel like talking." Another nut case! "If you have a confession to make, or a finger to point, please do it at the Public Safety Building, Room two twenty-three. That's why it's there." Again he glanced at the young man's arm. "Now take that away or I'll chop it off."
"My name's Miller," the young man said.
"And I'm the Queen of France," McCabe said and pushed hard enough and quickly enough on the door that Miller's arm buckled and the door slammed shut.
It was dusk and the sky was threatening rain when Ryerson found Miller's apartment house on Electric Avenue. It was typical, except for its color, of houses in the area-a late Victorian, three-story, wood-frame house, but this one was painted a bright yellow, and it had just a touch of gingerbread near the roofline.
"Help you there?" called a man in a rocking chair on the house's front porch. Ryerson guessed that the man was in his eighties, at least.
"Yes, my name's Biergarten, I'm working with the Rochester Police Department-"
The man cut in, "Never had no trouble with the po lice, never want no trouble with the po lice."
"No," Ryerson said, climbing the steps, "you don't understand. I'm looking for a man named Miller. He lives here."
The old man, who was now within arm's reach of Ryerson, nodded slowly. "That's right. Douglas. I call him Douglas. He likes to be called Douglas. Says 'Doug' is for a kid and 'Mr. Miller' ain't right'specially from someone my age to someone his age-so I call him Douglas. He in trouble?"
"No," Ryerson answered, and regretted telling the man he was with the police. It probably would have been smarter, he thought, to have said he was related to Miller and wanted to surprise him. "I only want to talk to him. I'd like to see his room, if I may." Maybe, just maybe, he thought, the quick, direct, and casual approach might work.
"Not unless you got a warrant," the old man said.
And Ryerson began, "I can-"
The old man interrupted, "I'll let you see it, sure. But there ain't no way in hell you're gonna search it or nothin' unless you got a warrant."
Ryerson smiled companionably. "That's all I want to do, sir. I just want to look. I'm glad you know the law; I wish more people did."
"Country's built on laws," the old man said as he rose slowly from his rocking chair. "Got to have laws if you got people enough to obey 'em and people enough to break 'em. Otherwise you got"-he opened the front door of the house; held it for Ryerson-"you got," he repeated, "ant-arky, and when you got ant-arky you got yourself some heap of trouble."
"Yes, sir; I agree," Ryerson said and followed the man up to Miller's apartment on the second floor.
McCabe wanted only to sleep, wanted to drift away from the nausea and headache and overall sick-as-a-dog feeling that had come over him today. But sleep was eluding him. He'd begin to drift, feel his eyes closing, the bedroom wafting away, and then-Wham!-he was awake again.
He knew why sleep was eluding him. It was because deep down he thought he was malingering-playing at being sick, even fooling himself, just to get out of the responsibilities of his job.
And there was the young man who'd come to the door fifteen minutes earlier, too. What a spooky son of a bitch he'd been! Even if he knew nothing at all about The Park Werewolf he was just spooky enough, just off-key enough that maybe he-McCabe-should have taken him in hand. Driven him downtown. Had a good long talk with him to find out just exactly what his real problem was. Hell, he'd done it before, more than once. The poor slobs usually ended up at the State Hospital on Crittenden Boulevard. But at least they were off the streets.