Ryerson went on. "The name of the place doesn't matter much. Whatever it's called, it's what you do there that gives you such a kick, isn't it?"
Lucas hissed, "You son of a bitch!"
Ryerson shook his head. "No, Captain. I just want to get out of here, that's all. And if I have to blackmail you to do it, then I will."
Lucas's cheeks puffed several times with anger and frustration. Finally, he pushed himself violently to his feet, went to the cell door, barked, "Guard! Guard!" glanced around at Ryerson, and said very succinctly-through lips tightly clenched with anger-"You'll be free as soon as I can clear the paperwork. Just don't leave the city."
"I have no intention of leaving the city," Ryerson said. "I've got business to attend to here."
Then the guard came and let the captain out.
Ryerson sighed. He thought that the years he'd spent gambling-which seemed to have gone hand in hand with his drinking-had paid off; at least he'd learned how to bluff. Because what he'd read from Captain Lucas had merely been vague-only that Lucas went to a bar on certain nights and while he was there he did something that made him feel ashamed. Ryerson had read no more than that. He didn't think he'd have been able to, anyway, because whatever it was that Lucas did at the bar made him feel so very ashamed that he pushed it far back into his consciousness and let it lie hidden most of the time.
At 11:00 that morning Ryerson was let out of the holding cell. He located the police matron-who was getting ready to go home-got Creosote back, was told by the desk sergeant that the Woody was at the Buffalo Impound Garage, five blocks away, and was reminded one more time by a growling Captain Lucas, "I don't care what you think you know about me, ace; if you try to go back to Boston or whatever damned hole you climbed out of, I'll haul your bare ass back here personally."
It was 11:25 A.M. when Lucas gave Ryerson this warning.
Not quite five minutes later Laurie Drake, in Room 12 of the hospital wing of the Buffalo City Jail, began to suffer the torments of the damned.
~ * ~
The thing inside Laurie had no color, or shape, or smell, but it did have mass, though very little of it, and weight, about a quarter of a gram, and it traveled about in her veins like a blood clot. Most of the time in the past two months, ever since, on a dare, she'd gone at night into the area called "The District," she had had no idea she was playing host to it; she'd felt a vague discomfort now and again, or her belly ached, and she would think that she was at last beginning to have her period.
And when the change started, pretty, laughing, "academically talented" Laurie Drake was all but squashed by the entity of her own creation. Laurie Drake-who secretly longed for the mama doll she'd carted through infancy and into preadolescence and had at last thrown away to prove she was indeed growing up-was squashed by the tall, buxom, incredibly sensual and murderous woman that lived deep inside her adolescent fantasies. The fantasy she had built up out of a character in a movie.
The thing inside her fed on the darkness in that fantasy. It saw murder there, and built on it; it saw hunger there, and built on it. It changed Laurie Drake inexorably. It changed her into the fantasy that lived and moved at first only inside her head.
And then it made that fantasy into something sensuously and murderously real.
In Room 12 of the hospital wing of the Buffalo City Jail, Laurie Drake again began to change.
But she didn't want to change.
She wanted to stay what she was-the pretty, brown-haired, .twelve-year-old girl who secretly longed for her mama doll. She was tired of being squashed, buried, pushed back.
And so she fought the change. And it fought her.
And the pain therefore was incredible.
Chapter Eleven
The nurse on duty was drinking apple juice. It was lunchtime, and because she was a very health-conscious person, she'd brought a very healthful lunch-a quart of apple juice to keep her regular, sprout sandwiches made with nine-grain bread for iron and protein and B vitamins, and a crunchy granola bar for dessert.
The nurse's name was Tabby (short for Tabitha) Makepeace. She was thirty-one years old, firm of body and mind, and at the moment that she heard the scream from Room 12, she was smiling pleasantly and thinking that her dog really should be getting more bone meal.
She was also in the middle of a long tug on the quart container of apple juice when she heard the scream from Room 12, and the muscle spasm that racked her body made her throat close up, so what was at the top half of her throat got spit out, and what was at the bottom half went down the wrong pipe.
Fully half a minute later, when her gagging and gasping for air had subsided to occasional coughs, she heard another scream, just as loud, and just as pain-ridden as the first. She whispered, "Oh Jesus Lord God in Heaven," jumped to her feet, and moved as fast as her very healthy legs could carry her to Room 12.
And wanted, as soon as she threw the door open and saw what was in the room, to stop and run screaming in the other direction. But because her emotional and physical momentum were simply too great, she half-stumbled, half-ran partway into the room and was there pulled firmly, lovingly, hungrily into the arms of a tall, buxom, and incredibly sensuous woman. And the life was sucked noisily out of her within minutes.
~ * ~
Access to the hospital wing of the Buffalo City Jail was gained through a set of sliding barred doors about thirty feet east of Tabby's station. Sitting near these barred doors was an aging, disease-ridden cop named George Orlando who was, at the time of Tabby's murder, absorbed in the latest issue of the survivalist magazine Exotic Weaponry: smack dab in the middle of the cover there was an ad for the magazine's newest bumper sticker; the bumper sticker read, KILL A COMMIE FOR MOMMY. That tickled George because he'd done a lot of commie killing during the Korean War, and they had been the best years of his life.
Covering the barred doors that let people in and out of the hospital wing, there was a layer of thick, unbreakable glass. This was why George hadn't heard the first screams from Room 12, or the abrupt scream from Tabby Makepeace when the life was sucked from her.
So George, absorbed in his copy of Exotic Weaponry, heard absolutely nothing. Had he been twenty years younger, and his hearing more acute, he would have heard a set of small, shrill, hollow noises that might have gotten his momentary attention.
Besides being racked by various diseases-one was a lingering low-grade hepatitis, still another was psoriasis-George was incredibly nearsighted. Recently, the powers that be had discussed asking him to resign voluntarily because he was in such lousy shape, but it was decided that for the two years remaining until his twenty-five-year retirement, sitting guard at the hospital wing probably wouldn't get him into too much trouble.
So, because he was nearsighted, what he saw when he looked up after sensing movement down the corridor, beyond the glassed and barred doors, was a vague but very suggestive form moving toward him, as if he were looking at a naked woman through a wet, translucent shower curtain.
He stood from his metal stool, a lascivious grin played on his mouth, and he rubbed his eyes hard as if that would help him to see better. And, as a matter of fact, it did, if just briefly, just long enough for him to see that what was moving toward him down the corridor was indeed a naked woman. And had he, for that brief moment, focused on the woman's face instead of on her incredible body, he would have seen that blood ringed her mouth, a mouth that was open wide to reveal the inch-long canines gleaming dully within.