Then something hit him.
“Come on! Good Christ, kid, what the hell’s got into you?” Becky? Becky was shaking him.
“Now, now calm down—here, sit him down. It’s a stress reaction, that’s all. Call his name, don’t let him get away.”
“Wilson!”
“Wha—”
“Call a doctor, you jerk! What the hell’s the matter, he acts like he’s made of rubber!”
“Stress did it, extreme stress. Keep calling him, he’s coming back.”
“Wilson, you motherfucker, wake up!” In response he pulled her down to the chair and clumsily embraced her, held her against him. A choked noise started in his chest. She felt his stubbly beard rub against her cheek, felt his dry lips come into contact with her neck, felt his body trembling, smelled his sour, rumpled jacket. After a moment she drew back, pushing at his shoulders, and was immediately released.
“God, I feel awful.”
Ferguson gave him some water in a little paper cup, which he spilled at once. “Hell, I—”
“Take it easy. Something happened to you.”
“It was a stress reaction,” Ferguson said. “It’s not uncommon. People in crashing planes, burning buildings, trapped people, experience it. If the situation isn’t terminal, the condition passes.” Ferguson was trying to smile but his face was too pale to make it seem very real. “I’ve read about it, but I’ve never seen it before,” he added lamely.
Wilson closed his eyes, bowed his head and put his fists to his temples. He looked like a man shielding himself from an explosion.
“Goddamn, I wish to hell we were out of this!” He had shouted it so loud that the faint hubbub beyond the tiny office came to a halt.
“Please,” Ferguson said, “you could cause me problems.”
“Sorry, Doctor, excuse me.”
“Well, you have to admit—”
“Yeah, yeah, save it. Becky, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry too.” His eyes pleaded up at her, and she met them with what she hoped was a look of reassurance.
“Don’t think about death. You thought about death. Think about—our camera. Tonight we’ll get our pictures and then things’ll start to move. All the evidence, plus the pictures—nobody will be able to deny it.”
“And we’ll get some protection?”
“Damn right. Whatever the hell happens, it’ll be something. Better than this, God knows.”
For the first time Becky allowed herself to imagine it What form would protection take? A cold stab of realization went through her—about the only thing that would help would be virtual imprisonment. At first it would mean a good night’s sleep, but then it would get stifling, finally unendurable, and she would give it up—and every moment outside would hold danger, every shadow the potential to kill. It was hard to turn her mind away from this train of thought. And now death flashed into her own imagination—how does it feel to be ripped to pieces: will there be desperate agony or will some mechanism of the brain provide relief?
She couldn’t think about that either. Think about the next moment, not the future. Think about the camera. Men in battle must do it that way, keeping their minds fixed on the next shell hole, shutting out the deadly whisper of bullets, the groans of the unlucky, until they themselves…
She turned her mind from it again and said in a tired voice, “Dick probably has the camera by now. It’s nearly three. What say we get over there and plan the stakeout? It’s gonna be a long night.”
Ferguson smiled a little. “Frankly, I think it’ll be exciting. Obviously there’s danger. But my God, look at the magnitude of the discovery! All of history mankind has been living in a dream, and suddenly we’re about to discover reality. It’s an extraordinary moment.”
Both the detectives stared at him in amazement. Their lives and habits of thought emphasized the danger of the quest, not its beauty. Ferguson’s words made them realize that there was beauty there too. The presence of the werewolf, once proven, would completely change the life of man. Of course there would be panic and terror—but there would also be the new challenge. Man the hunted—and his hunter, so skilled, so perfectly equipped that he seemed almost supernatural. Man had always confronted nature by beating it down. This was going to require something new—the werewolf would have to be accepted. He wasn’t likely to submit to a beating.
Becky felt her inner resolve strengthening. She knew the feeling. It often came when they were confronting a particularly rough case, the kind of case where you really wanted to find the killer. The ones where a drug pusher was knocked off or some other scum—those you didn’t really care about. But when it was an innocent, a child, an old person— you got this feeling, like you were going to make that collar. Vengeance, that’s what it was. And Ferguson’s words had that effect. It damn well was an extraordinary moment. Mankind was already in this situation and didn’t know it, and had a right to know. There might not be much that could be done about it, not at first, but the victims at least had the right to see the face of their attacker. “Let’s call Dick, make sure he’s ready. No point in moving through the streets until we have to.” She picked up the phone.
“Make sure he’s got walkie-talkies,” Wilson rumbled. “Civilian models. I don’t want them on the police band.”
Dick answered on the first ring. He sounded grim. His voice was subdued as he answered Becky’s questions. Unspoken was the fact that he also had heard of Evans’s death and knew what had killed him. She concluded the brief conversation and put down the phone. “He’s got the camera. The radios he’ll pick up this afternoon. A couple of hand-held CB’s.” Becky had felt something new when she heard Dick’s voice. There was a strong warmth in her, a sensation of closeness that she never remembered, not even when they were first married. If he had been here she would have embraced him just to feel the solid presence of his body. Too bad for Dick, he was a better human being than he was a cop. Too good to tough out life on the force, that was Dick. God knows it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to the Board of Inquiry when it came along, but there was a hell of a lot of justice to shaking down organized crime to help an old man in an honest nursing home. His old man. It was going to be hard when he got his Board, Goddamn hard.
Wilson was now staring off into space, vacillating between competent involvement and numbness.
“Come on, George, snap out of it! You’re a million miles away. If we’re gonna organize a stakeout we’d better get it together. We need to take sightings with that camera, set up observation points that are damn well covered, all of that. We’d better go over there and do what’s gotta be done before it gets dark.”
Becky hadn’t allowed herself to think about all that had to be done because it meant leaving the momentary safety of the museum and facing the streets. But it looked like nobody was going to think about it if she didn’t. Wilson sure as hell better hold up his end later, when it was going to count.
“I hadn’t realized we were so close to leaving,” Ferguson said. “There are some things I want to know from you two. A couple of things I don’t quite understand. I’d like to get them cleared up before we move. It might be important.”
Becky raised her eyebrows. “So OK, shoot.”
“Well, I don’t quite understand the sequence of events this morning. How exactly did Evans get killed?”
Becky didn’t say so, but she would be glad to hear Wilson’s explanation as well. The werewolves were obviously superb hunters, but how exactly they had accomplished their feats this morning was still fuzzy in her mind.
Wilson replied, his voice a monotone. “It must have started when we were at Central Park West and Seventy-second investigating one of their homicides. Obviously, they had us under observation at that time.” A chill went through Becky, remembering the morning, the crowd of men and cars, the blood-soaked bench. All that had saved them was the presence of so many other cops. Wilson went on. “They knew that they couldn’t get to us easily unless we were in a more isolated situation. So they arranged a lure. It’s a technique human hunters have used for generations. And it worked beautifully in this instance. They went into the park, found an isolated patrolman beating the bushes for evidence and wounded him. The fact that he died later made no difference to them. In Africa hunters tether wildebeest to lure lions. The wildebeest might think it’s unfair, but they aren’t expected to survive. Neither was our lure. As soon as our car pulled up, the werewolves must have started creeping toward it. When we returned to it they would have been underneath, jumped out and—two dead detectives. I guess I got it figured just in time.” He fumbled in his pockets. Becky handed him a cigarette. Something seemed to be coming over him. For a long moment his face kept getting grayer and grayer, then he took a deep, ragged breath and continued. “I was lucky, but them leaving that guy half-killed just didn’t add up. Then I figured it. We were in their trap. That was when I told Becky to take off on the scooter.”