“Well, I never saw him after Thanksgiving and I watch.”
“When was Hafiz killed?” I asked.
“He was found the Monday after Thanksgiving, but I think he’d been dead a day or two,” Sandy said, thinking aloud. “The body was under some tree limbs that fell off the plane trees here in the windstorm.”
“He was killed by the falling boughs?”
“Oh, no. They just hid the body.”
We kept chatting with the three until our toes were numb in our boots and we couldn’t feel our faces, but nothing else useful emerged. As Quinton and I walked on to find more undergrounders, he said, “Tandy and Lass used to drink together a lot—but Tandy did drink with pretty much anyone, as Sandy said.”
“So he could have been with Bear and Jolene or he could have been with anyone else whom we haven’t talked to yet.”
“But the fact that he disappeared just before the leg was found makes him prime suspect to be the owner of that leg.”
I shivered. “Ugh. So that would make Tandy the first to disappear, then Hafiz was killed—but he seems universally disliked—then what?”
“After that, Jan and Go-cart were both found dead—in that order. But there was a good lag between Hafiz and Jan.”
“Who disappeared between those?”
“I’m not sure. I’d guess the order was probably… Jheri, then Jolene… then Jan was killed… then Bear and Felix disappeared, and Go-cart died. And Jenny.”
“That’s about one a week, average. Pretty hungry monster.”
“Yeah.”
I paused, frowning and thinking there had to be a connection I wasn’t making. “I want to talk to Lass. His name keeps coming up. Then we might want to go back to Tanker.”
“You think Tanker knows something he hasn’t told us?”
“Someone knows something, and the only people who can be ruled out are the confirmed dead.”
We walked around the area for a while but didn’t have much luck finding Lassiter, so we went below.
Down in the bricks, we found Tall Grass, raging in a corner and waving a soft brown object in the air. When he spotted us, he raced down the crumbling floor and shoved the object into my hands. “You wanted it! You take it! Take it away!”
He shook me, shouting into my face.
“Grass, Grass, calm down,” Quinton murmured. “They’ll hear. Be quiet.”
Tall Grass turned on Quinton. “You brought her down here. She wanted the hat. It’s your fault! It’s your fault Jenny’s dead!”
Quinton pulled his face back from the other man’s. “Grass, you’re out of your head. It’s not our fault. Something or someone killed Jenny, but it’s not me or Harper. And it’s not you.”
“It’s that hat!”
“Damn it, Grass, get a grip. It’s not the hat.”
“It was Bear’s hat. Bear’s dead. It was Jenny’s hat. Jenny’s dead,” Tall Grass babbled, his voice cracking toward hysteria.
“Grass. How do you know Bear’s dead? We don’t know Bear’s dead. He’s just—”
“I saw it! I saw his spirit! And the creature—the monster—I saw! I saw!” He was hyperventilating. Then he began to scream, staring at nothing at all, bellowing in terror, his eyes rolling up to show too much white.
“Damn it,” Quinton muttered. Then Tall Grass gulped, fainted, and slumped to the floor.
Quinton looked down at him. “I was never glad to see someone faint before.”
“Hey…”
We both looked around. Someone had stuck their head around the corner. When we caught sight of it, the head pulled back.
“Don’t run off, Lass!” Quinton hissed. He motioned with his head for me to catch Lass.
I sprinted down the rough walkway, feeling sudden twinges in my bad knee, and collared Lass less than ten feet down the Occidental side. “C’mon and lend a shoulder, Lass,” I suggested. “We have to get Tall Grass out of here.”
Lassiter goggled at me, shaking. His hands crabbed for his pockets.
“Don’t reach for that,” I told him. “I don’t go down easily and I’ll take you with me. Not going to hurt you if you come help Quinton and me out.”
He shuffled reluctantly ahead of me to where Quinton was trying to get Tall Grass up. The Indian was unconscious and limp.
Quinton looked hard at Lass and told him, “Put your shoulder under his armpit and get him up. We’ll have to carry him up the Cadillac stairs and hope we can find a place to leave him.”
“Why not here?” Lass whined. “Who cares? Why are we risking our necks for him?”
“Because if he stays down here while he’s like this, he might die. I helped you. Now you help me. Or I won’t be doing you any favors in the future, Lass. Get me?”
“OK, OK. I got you.”
Lass helped lift Tall Grass and the two men carried him like a sack between them to the bottom of the stairs that came up beside the Cadillac Hotel. I scouted up the stairs and peeked out, waiting until I was sure the street was empty to hiss at them to come up.
Tall Grass was making noises and trying to move by the time we reached the street. Quinton set him on the sidewalk and hunched down beside him. I grabbed Lassiter’s wrist before he could hare off.
While Quinton checked on Grass and muttered to him, I interrogated Lass a bit.
“What were you doing down there?”
“I–I live down there.”
“Not right there…”
“Not all the time, no. I–I heard something. I heard Grass talking to himself. He’s on drugs, man!”
“Surprise, surprise. He thinks he saw a monster eat John Bear.”
“I told you—he’s flipped out.”
“I’m not sure he didn’t see a monster down there.”
“What?”
“You see monsters. I heard you say so.”
He looked startled and glanced around but I was blocking his only line of escape.
“Did you see the monster that ate Bear?”
“I seen things…”
“What did you see and where did you see it?”
“I seen—I seen a… lot of scary dudes. They hurt us… That’s what Q-man gave me the stunner for.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet you’ve seen more than that, or you wouldn’t be so scared.”
“I seen… a snake. Big snake.”
I looked skeptical—not that I didn’t believe him, I just wanted to make this insecure man talk, and nothing starts some people off like the idea that others don’t believe them.
“I did! It was as big as a car! It had a whole man in its mouth—like when a rattlesnake tries to swallow an egg.”
“Where did you see it?”
“Uh… Under the Square.”
“You can’t get under the Square.”
“Yeah, you can! Behind the Pioneer Building there’s a grate down in the alley. You just lift it up and go in the hole!”
“When did you see the snake there?”
“I can’t remember! Leave me alone!” He shoved at me and bolted past my shoulder.
I could have stopped him, but he needed to salvage some pride and I didn’t mind letting him think he’d gotten away with it. I thought I knew where to find him later.
I turned back to Quinton and Tall Grass, who was fighting his way back to his feet.
“Get away,” Grass snapped.
“You gonna be all right?” Quinton asked him.
“I’m fine.”
“You were pretty hysterical…”
He glared at Quinton and stared around. Seeing me with the hat still in one hand, he darted over and snatched it from me. “That’s Jenny’s hat.”
“You said it was Bear’s hat.”
Tall Grass looked trapped, his eyes shifting restlessly between us. Its not.
“C’mon, Grass,” Quinton went on. “We all know it was Bear’s hat. You said you saw him get eaten by a monster.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Yes, you did. We want to stop it. We want to find the thing that ate Jenny.”
“I didn’t see the S-s — … I didn’t see it eat her!” Grass wailed. He leaned against the nearest wall and buried his face in the cap in his hands. “We were sleeping and it came in the dark. Like rushing water. And she made a noise and then… then I felt something cold and it smelled rotten and stinking. I opened my eyes and saw it swimming away through the walls. It swam through rock! All I had left was this stupid, stupid hat! And tonight I saw John Bear. Bear’s ghost. Walking through the bricks and he stopped and looked at me and said, ‘You keep the hat.’ Then he left. He left me with this hat. He cursed me with it.” Even with his voice muffled by the fur of the hat, I could hear him sobbing, and his shoulders shook with the spasms.