Today, she says: "I think people should know how it all was. I think the young should. But I remember my own indifference to memories of the First World War and I understand that they don't—don't understand that one said, 'Meet me at the theatre, and if that's not there I'll go on to the restaurant, if that's still standing...' and it was all just a part of life."
This, then, was the life-style of the 1940s, a dangerous world in every way, into which we step through the pages of _Green for Danger._
With hindsight and today's knowledge, we are prepared for the casual gallantry and stiff upper lip: "Sorry to break up this happy party, but as you may have noticed, there's an air-raid on!" But what could prepare us for the hospital humorist who "sat up in bed and every time a bomb fell tapped himself on the back of the head and made his false teeth shoot out?"
World War II is emerging as a fiction genre of its own these days, but the authentic voice of the time cannot be duplicated and that is what we have in _Green for Danger._
Christianna Brand, after many early struggles with poverty, was a happy bride of a year when war broke out and her husband, a qualifted surgeon, immediately went into the army with the rank of major. She accompanied him on his posting until he was sent overseas.
She says: "He was posted to a military hospital in Woolwich and I took rooms in a little house as close to the hospital walls as possible—of course he had to live in. Woolwich is on the Thames, and harbours the biggest arsenal in the country; when the blitz came, every bomber unloaded a few on us for luck as they went in over London, and anything they had left over, on the way out—they followed the Thames, as the light on the water was impossible to disguise. For five months, we were bombed almost every night. They would drop flares to light up the ground below and then bomb what they saw; what they saw was all too often the hospital; and they had a horrid habit of chaining two bombs together which did make a biggish bang: you saw the flares coming, floating down and then this pretty unearthly scream of the bombs falling and whacko!...
"I got permission to share the V.A.D.'s air-raid shelter—the V.A.D.s, if you don't know, were the young women who came in from every walk of life, got a little bit of training and worked as nurses.... The shelter was tube-shaped, underground, and we slept on straw palliases on wooden bunks. At least the others slept, worn out with their days' hard work, but I was always a damned insomniac anyway, and heard the approach of every bomb. You got so used to it—your stomach used to turn over, but I don't think we ever gave our minds to what might happen, would happen, if we got a direct hit....
"You might remember that all this time we were living on, I think, two ounces of meat a week, two eggs, a small ration* of bread, an ounce or two of butter and of tea and sugar. Anything else you could get, you could have—if you stood in a queue for it. I once walked down Fleet Street holding a lemon which someone had sent from North Africa, and the buses would draw up and the driver call out, 'What did you do to get that, mate?'"
Meanwhile, her first novel, _Death in High Heels_ , was going the dreary rounds of publishers, accumulating fifteen rejections before it was accepted and published and "landed up without a comma changed, as quite a little best seller." _Heads You Lose_ followed and was bought for serialization by _The Saturday Evening Post._
She was informed by authorities that the most valuable war work she could do was to continue with her writing, which was bringing desperately needed foreign currency into the country. (Wars are not cheap.) So, hunched over her typewriter, her tin helmet at the ready, she began what was to be one of the most memorable books of that era, _Green for Danger._
"We all led what had become to us perfectly ordinary lives. I wrote _Green for Danger_ under these circumstances, battering away all day at my typewriter (earning good dollars... much needed in this country) and as soon as light was needed, drawing all the blackout curtains together; one gleam of light and the air raid wardens were at your door. When the air raid syrens [sic] began to howl, as they did every night as dark fell, put on my tin hat—forbidden day and night to go out without it—and collected my lucky chestnut.... Then up about a quarter of a mile to the hospital gates. Our ack-ack guns were shooting up at the bombers and down came a hail of what we used to, incorrectly, call shrapnel—great misshapen lumps of metal, red hot; one hit me once and tore the whole front of a thick woolly jersey away.... But that night, I'd be in my upstairs room, banging away at my typewriter again; and I do mean, thinking nothing of it—life going on. Syrens. Tin hat on. Up through the flak to the shelter again, rather upset because a sherry glass of mine had been broken....
"Of course all the nonsense went on for three or four years afterwards, the doodle-bugs and the huge, silent, terrible rockets and the lot; but _Green for Danger_ had been launched by then."
And what a launch! _Green for Danger_ was to become a major success, both for her and for the British film industry when Alastair Sim brought Inspector Cockrill to vivid life. Not quite the Inspector Cockrill the author had visualized, but "done so beautifully... a marvellous film..." that she was able to forgive the discrepancies. And, of course, the real Inspector Cockrill was still hers—and went on to fresh triumphs, appearing in many subsequent books and short stories.
But it is the Inspector Cockrill—"Cockie"—of _Green for Danger_ that we remember best as he begins his thoroughgoing investigation, perhaps from slightly less than worthy motives. ("The sirens broke belatedly into their unearthly howl; a flare dropped slowly over the downs, out towards Torrington, splitting the early winter darkness with its gradually brightening gleam—and where there are flares, there are very soon going to be bombs. Inspector Cockrill was interested in bombshells and he did not like bombs; and there was a fifteen-mile drive home in the general direction of those flares. 'I'll stay,' he said briefly.")
For the war itself is the motivating force of this entire mystery. Were it not for the war, most of these characters would never have met. They would have continued living their peacetime lives, many miles apart—both geographically and socially—never to have met at all.
But the war came, people were conscripted, volunteered, went into active military and medical duty—and met other people and situations they would never have encountered in their normal peacetime lives. Still, life went on, disrupted though it might have been. Still, people found time for laughter, love... and murder.
Despite the mass murder raining down from the skies, the forces of law and order swung into action when an individual was murdered on the operating table; horrifyingly, by one of the people dedicated to saving and preserving life. How? The operation was a routine one, the patient in good health apart from the fractured femur due to be mended—but the patient died.
Until this, Business as Usual had been the order of the day, but the blitz was one thing, and deliberate murder in their midst was something else. That did what the bombs had not been able to do—disturbed them, upset them, frightened them. As Cockie pointed out, "'You can take the blitz in your stride; but a couple of unexplained deaths, and you all get the jitters.'"
Not unreasonably, the reply was: "'"Unexplained" is the operative word.... I'm much more petrified of the blitz on the nights that it _does_ n't come; once it's there, it's there, but I don't like the uneasy waiting for it to begin; and I don't like waiting to be murdered—or to have my friends murdered.'"
For the second murder had rapidly followed the first: a nurse who had claimed to know the identity of the killer had been stabbed—with a scalpel. There had also been an unsuccessful attempt to kill another nurse by gassing her as she slept. Nerves were fraying, rumors abounded, and the main suspects found themselves not quite ostracized, but definitely set apart from the rest of the staff. ("'I suppose it's all right to let her give the injections? After all she _is_ one of "them"...'"... "'My dear, the inmates of our shelter have petitioned that when there are air-raids, I shall sleep somewhere else; they think I'm going to rise up in the night and set fire to their palliasses with oil from the paraffin lamps!'"... "'The Mess was sitting around uneasily, jiggling their teaspoons in their saucers and jumping whenever we spoke to them, so we made ourselves scarce.'")
Opening in truly classic style, Chapter One introduces us to two victims and a clutch of suspects—all such pleasant and charming people that it seems impossible to imagine any of them in such roles. And yet... buried deep in the life of each of them is a private tragedy, a secret each would rather not have revealed.
Some secrets, of course, were open. Everyone knew that a girl had recently died under the anæsthetic administered by Lieutenant Barnes during one of his last operations as a civilian. He had been attacked by the girl's mother and had even been sent an anonymous letter about it. Sympathy had been on his side—until the fractured femur died under the anæsthetic he was administering.
Kindly Major Moon made no secret of the fact that he had lost a young son in a hit-and-run road accident and now found sad irony in the fact that the war had brought him an unexpected comfort. ("'Well, well—I can find it in my heart now to be grateful, I suppose; now that the war's come, I mean. He'd have been of age, you know; I'd have had to send him off, to see him go off to France or the East or somewhere.... I'd have had to wait and hunger for news of him; he might have been posted missing, perhaps, or killed, and without any news of what had really happened. It's that telegram business.... I don't think I could have borne that.... Who would have thought in all these years that I could ever have found it in my heart to say that I was glad that my boy had been killed?"')
Everywhere they turned, the war and its effects were inescapable. If it hadn't been for the war, all those tablets of morphia wouldn't have been in such wide circulation. But, during the blitz, it seemed a simple and necessary precaution to medical people, who had no difficulty in acquiring such pills. ("'Most of us keep a small dose handy in case of being buried in an air-raid.... If you were trapped and in pain, it would be comforting to have some, and might save another person risking their lives to give you a shot of something.'")
With consummate skill, the author weaves her web of pain and deceit, deadly deeds and twisted motives, catching the reader at every turn. Once you've read it, go back and reread it and see how cleverly all your assumptions have been used against you, how smoothly and inevitably you have been fooled.
Today Christianna Brand lives with her surgeon husband in a beautiful Regency house in the Maida Vale section of London and is a proud grandmother. She has served on the Committee of the Crime Writers' Association and was chairman from 1972 to 1973. Ever mindful of her early struggles, she is endlessly helpful to new authors. Friends who find themselves in hospital (or in jail) are the recipients of a constant flow of cards, verses, and little notes, thoughtfully spaced to keep boredom at bay and ensure that said friend is not lying alone and neglected when the mail is given out. At the monthly meetings of the Crime Writers' Association, just follow the sounds of hilarity and you will find Christianna Brand holding court, the center of a lively and appreciative group of colleagues.
I told her once that I didn't write fan letters—this is the exception that proves the rule.
—Marian Babson
* Actually, bread was not rationed until after the war.
CHAPTER I
Joseph Higgins, postman, pushed his battered red bicycle up the long ascent that leads to Heron's Park, three miles out of Heronsford, in Kent. It had been a children's sanatorium before the war, and now was being hurriedly scrambled into shape as a military hospital. Its buildings stood out big and grey and bleak among the naked winter trees and he cursed them heartily as he toiled up the hill, his bicycle tacking groggily from side to side on the country road. All this for a mere seven letters! Six miles out of his way for a handful of letters that would probably not even be looked at till the morning! He spread them out, fanwise, in one hand, his elbow resting heavily on the handle-bar, and examined them resentfully. The first was addressed to the Commanding Officer. One of the new medicos, guessed Higgins shrewdly, holding it up to the light. A nice linen envelope and a Harley Street postmark; and doctors' handwriting was always illegible....
Gervase Eden had also cursed as he sat in his consulting-room, confirming to the C.O. at Heron's Park that he would report for duty, 'forthwith'. The last of his lovely ladies had just tripped off down the steps in a flutter of cheques and eyelashes and invitations to dinner, and already feeling miraculously better for her _heavenly_ little injection (of unadulterated H2O). He could not flatter himself that the pay of a surgeon in His Majesty's Forces was going to keep him in anything like the luxury to which he was rapidly becoming accustomed; but there it was—one had put one's name down during the Munich crisis, and already it was becoming a tiny bit uncomfortable to be out of uniform.... At least he would be free of the lovely ladies for a spell. For the thousandth time he looked at himself in the mirror, looked at his ugly face and greying hair, at his thin, angular body and restless hands—and wondered what on earth women saw in him, and wished they wouldn't. He rang the bell for his pretty little secretary and asked her to post the letter. She immediately burst into tears at the thought of his going, and after all it was only common charity to spend a few minutes in comforting the poor little soul.
Higgins shuffled over Eden's letter and turned to the next in the bunch. A huge, square envelope, covered with a huge, square handwriting; a woman's handwriting, vigorous, generous, splashed across all the available space; one of the nurses, he supposed....
Jane Woods had written two letters, one to an address to Austria, the other to Heron's Park. She finished off three sketches of delicious, though impractical, syren suits and posted them to Mr. Cecil, of Christophe's in Regent Street (who paid her three guineas apiece for them, and thereafter presented them as his own); and, consigning the rest of her work to the waste-paper-basket, she rang up the circle of delightful riff-raff who constituted her friends, and summoned them to a party. "Eat, drink and sleep together, my loves," cried Miss Woods, "for to-morrow we join the V.A.D.s!" She stood, glass in hand, before the low mantelpiece of her elegant little, modern, one-roomed flat, a big, dark woman of about forty, with a plain, rather raddled face, an enormous bust, and astonishingly lovely legs. "Jane, darling, we _told_ you not to go in for those fantastic lectures!" cried the riff-raff, who were all going in for fantastic lectures themselves; and, "Woody, darling, I simply can't imagine you, sweetie, I mean _bed_ pans and everything!" and, "Woody, darling, what on earth made you _do_ it?" She treated them to a tender little sketch of herself in the character of Florence Nightingale, hanging over the truckle bed of some suffering V.C. ("Is that you again, Flo, with that bloody nightlight?"): and, when at last she was alone, sobbed off her eye-black on to her pillow, because her intolerable conscience had driven her to this tremendous sacrifice; the sacrifice of all the fun and gaiety and luxury of her successful career, in blind atonement for a sin not even of her own commission; a sin, just possibly, not even committed.
The next letter, also, was in a woman's handwriting, a girlish hand, sloping downwards a little at the end of each line. "Sign of depression," said Joseph Higgins to himself, for he had read about that only a day or two ago in the Sunday paper. "Another of the nurses, I expect, and doesn't want to come, poor girl!" But here he was wrong, for Esther Sanson did, very badly, want to go to Heron's Park.
She stood with the letter in her hand, looking down at her mother and laughing, for Mrs. Sanson was deep in the latest drama of the Heronsford Women's Voluntary Service. "... but Mummy she _could_ n't! I mean, not _all_ that baby wool into sailors' stockings for going under seaboots! I don't believe a word of it, darling; you're making it up!"
"On my word of honour, Esther, every spot of it, one pair pale pink and the other pale blue. I couldn't believe my eyes when she showed them to me. 'But Mrs. Huge,' I said to her..."
"Not Mrs. Huge, Mummy—her name _could_ n't be Mrs. Huge?"
"I promise you, darling, Mrs. Huge, or something exactly like it, anyway. 'Mrs. Huge,' I said to her..." She broke off suddenly and all the light and laughter went out of her blue eyes. "Who have you been writing to, Esther? Is it the letter to the hospital?"
"I've said I'll go as 'immobile' V.A. D.," said Esther quickly. "I've said I can't leave Heronsford. I'll only be working at the hospital during the daytime."
"There could easily be an air-raid in the daytime, Esther. Supposing I were caught up here in a top floor flat, in an air-raid; absolutely helpless with my back so ersatz and rotten...."
"Your back's been much better lately, darling; I mean, look how you were able to go out to-day to the W.V.S. meeting."
"Yes, but it's aching dreadfully now, in consequence," said Mrs. Sanson, and immediately, with the strange inner magic of the true hypochondriac, blue shadows were painted about her eyes, and her face was all etched into delicate lines of pain. "Really, Esther, I do think, dearest, that you're sacrificing both of us, unnecessarily; after all, you're _needed_ , here at home." She sat curled up like a kitten on the sofa, watching her daughter from under her long, soft, golden eyelashes; and tried on a little act that never had failed before. "Of course, my darling, if you really _want_ to go..."
Esther stood very still at the window, staring with unseeing eyes at the lovely Kentish countryside rolled out below her, and for the first time in her life she did not respond. She was twenty-seven, tall and too thin, with the narrow feet and slender hands that are supposed to go with good breeding; not beautiful but with the pure oval face and lifeless, leaf-brown hair of a madonna, descended from her niche in the wall of some quiet old church, to walk, gentle and reserved, through the tumult of an unfamiliar world. Unused as she was to opposing her mother's will, she knew that here was a matter in which she must make her own decision; and she said at last, slowly turning away from the window, standing with her back to the light: "It's not that I want to go; but I think I should."
"But, darling, _why_?"
"Because everybody's doing something, Mummy, and I must do my share. Besides, at least it will give me some sort of training, some sort of—well, _I_ don't know—some sort of a life. If anything were to happen to you, darling, think how lost and helpless I should be. I wouldn't have any money, I wouldn't know anything, I wouldn't know anyone. But with this behind me—and I've always wanted to nurse..."
"Oh, well, as to that," said Mrs. Sanson, "you've got a terribly exalted idea of nursing, you know. I mean, it's horrid really, darling, honestly it is; nothing but dirt and squalor and nasty smells."
Since Esther had tenderly nursed her mother through several years of perfect health, there was not very much that she could learn from her on that subject. She merely smiled sadly and said that she would have to risk not liking the work. "I'm not going for pleasure, after all, am I? I shall probably scrub floors all day long and never even get as far as making a bed." She came over suddenly and sat on the floor, leaning her head wearily against her mother's knees. "Darling—be kind to me! Do understand. It isn't that I like to go, but I think I ought to. It's your sacrifice, too, Mummy dearest; we've both got to make it. You're always the brave and gay and strong one; be brave for us both this time, and let me go."
But her mother shrank away from her, curling herself up into a small, frightened ball in the corner of the sofa, covering her big, blue eyes with her little hands. "It's the air-raids, Esther. The airraids! Supposing I were up here, all alone, helpless—and bombs began to fall! How should I manage? What could I do? Esther, don't go, darling, and leave me here alone; tell them you won't go, tell them you can't go—tear the letter up!"
But Esther got to her feet and dragged herself downstairs and posted it.
Higgins knew the handwritings on the next two letters. One was the crabbed old fist of Mr. Moon who had been surgeon in Heronsford as long as one could remember; the other was that of the local anæsthetist, Barnes. "I wonder if that means they're both coming 'ere?" thought Higgins, frowning down upon the two envelopes. "I'd've thought Barnes, at least, would've wanted to go somewhere else. Well, I suppose if they're in the Army they has to go where they're told."
Dr. Barnes said much the same thing to Mr. Moon as, having posted their letters, they walked up the hill together to their several homes. "I've applied to go to Heron's Park so that I can give my father a hand with the practice now and then; but we're in the Army now, sir, whether we like it or not."
"I think I do like it," said Moon, trotting along beside him, but, thanks to conscientious early-morning runs, not puffing at all. He was a stooping, plump little man like a miniature Churchill but with all the pugnacity gone out of him; with soft pink cheeks and fluffy white hair, exceedingly thin on top. His blue eyes twinkled with kindness and he talked into his boots with little exclamations and chuckles, like a character out of Dickens, though with none of the foolish softness of Dickensian benevolence. "I think I do like it; I like it very much."
"It'll make a change," said Barnes.
"I can do with a change you know, Barney," said Moon, with a little twist of his kind old face. "That house of mine—now that I've got a chance to leave it, I wonder how I've endured it all these years. Fifteen years I've lived in that house, all by myself; and I don't think there's been a day that I haven't lifted my head suddenly and listened, thinking that I heard my boy laughing... thinking I heard him come clattering down the stairs. Well, well—I can find it in my heart now to be grateful, I suppose; now that the war's come, I mean. He'd have been of age, you know; I'd have had to send him off, to see him go off to France or the East or somewhere.... I'd have had to wait and hunger for news of him; he might have been posted missing, perhaps, or killed, and without any news of what had really happened. It's that telegram business.... I don't think I could have borne that. I don't think his mother could have borne it, if she'd been alive. The gods act in their own mysterious ways, don't they, Barney? Who would have thought in all these years that I could ever have found it in my heart to say that I was glad that my boy had been killed?"
Barnes was silent, not from any lack of sympathy, but because he was a man who could not easily put his feelings into words. He was in his late thirties, not very tall, not very good-looking, but radiant with the charm of absolute integrity; sensitive, modest, rather shy, honest to an almost painful degree. He, too, was glad to go into the Army. "That Evans girl," he said; "the one who died under the anæsthetic last week—I've had an anonymous letter about her to-day. I think it's a good thing I'm getting out of the practice for a bit; I shall be Brave Lieutenant Barnes, serving his King and Country, and by the time the war's ended the whole thing will have blown over."
"But, my dear boy, the death was no earthly fault of yours."
"Well, we know that now," said Barnes, shrugging his shoulders, "but I couldn't account for it at the time. I got it into my head that I'd seen the tubes crossed during the operation—the oxygen and the nitrous oxide, you know; it must have been my imagination, but I was worrying about what could have gone wrong, and I kept getting a sort of vision of the two tubes crossing instead of being separate. I went into the theatre and asked them to check up; everything had been put away by then, of course, but nobody had noticed anything wrong... only the staff are mostly local people and my asking must have put ideas into their heads, and I suppose they talked. The mother came to me after the inquest and accused me of murdering the girl. It was—oh, it was horrible! Of course they decided that the findings at the inquest had been cooked, to protect me. She said they would get up a round robin or something or other, and hound me out of the town. They could too, you know; that kind of mud sticks in a one-horse place like Heronsford. It's fortunate for me, really, that the war's come when it has, if it had to come; my father can carry on the practice while I'm in the Army, and by the time it's all over the affair will have fizzled out."
"The panel patient is a strange animile," said Moon, pacing along beside him thoughtfully. "When you think of all that you've done for this town, you and your father, Barnes...."
"I wonder if T. Atkins is going to be so very much different," said Barney pessimistically.
Two more letters; both from women. One very neat and correct, a pretty round hand, a pretty grey-blue notepaper, the stamp stuck neatly in the corner; the other on a cheap, white envelope, addressed to the Matron, the Sisters' Mess—the handwriting sputtering across the paper, uncertain and ill at ease. V.A.D. Frederica Linley, and Sister Bates of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, reporting to Heron's Park Military Hospital....
Frederica's father who for thirty years had been a legend in some outpost of Empire, had subsequently settled down in Dinard, where he could by no means be got to appreciate that the inhabitants had not only never heard of the legend, but had never even heard of the Outpost. The war put an end to this embarrassing state of affairs and, on a nightmare voyage to England, he met and affianced himself to a wealthy widow with a proper respect for the pioneers of the East. Frederica received the news with her habitual calm. "I think she's too frightful, Daddy," she said, "but it's you that's got to sleep with her, not me," and she absented herself from the new home upon a series of lectures, and finally wrote off to Heron's Park that she would be arriving for duty on such-and-such a day, as instructed. Since a blowsy trollop of fifty cannot be expected to care for competition from an exquisite, self-possessed little creature of twenty-two, the ex-widow was not sorry to see her go.
The reaction of Sister Bates to her transition from civilian to military nursing, was simple and forthright. She thought: "Perhaps I shall meet some nice officers!" and lest anyone be tempted to despise such single-minded devotion to the opposite sex, it may be pointed out that this innocent aspiration was shared in a greater or less degree, by twenty future members of the Sisters' Mess, and at least fifty V.A.D.s.
Seven letters. Old Mr. Moon and young Dr. Barnes, and Gervase Eden, surgeon, of Harley Street; Sister Marion Bates; Jane Woods and Esther Sanson and Frederica Linley, V.A.D.s. Higgins shuffled the envelopes together impatiently, and wrapped them round with a piece of grubby tape and thrust them into his pocket, plodding on, wheeling his bicycle up the hill. He could not know that, just a year later, one of the writers would die, self-confessed a murderer.
CHAPTER II
1
Sister Bates stood before the shabby plush curtains of the hospital concert hall, singing 'Trees'. Her pretty, foolish face was blank with fright, and her hands hung at her sides like lumps of raw, pinkish meat. Every nore interrupted. He was a corporal in the Company, and nobody knew whether his dress suit was or was not intentionally funny. He held up his hand for silence and announced gloomily: "The Commanding Officer."
Every new Commanding Officer begins his reign by having something repainted. It starts him off with a reputation for efficiency. "... and, my dear, he hadn't been two _days_ in the place before the beds in St. Elmo's had all been enamelled white!" Colonel Beaton had created quite a furore by having the word 'Rubbish' on the bins in the corridor, replaced by the word 'Salvage' in huge black and white letters, and at the moment his popularity was at its height. He reminded one of a bottle with the cork driven in too far. One longed to get hold of his head and pull it out sharply so as to give him a bit more neck. The bottle contained a certain amount of froth and very little else. He made a jolly little man-to-man speech.
"... sorry to break up this happy party, but as you may have noticed, there's an air-raid on! These entertainments are allowed strictly on the understanding that if things get too hot, we must close down." He explained earnestly: "If so many of the personnel were to be killed or injured at one time, it would make things very awkward," and everybody thought this silly and unnecessary because it was perfectly obvious and they all knew it quite well. "Now, I'm afraid there's been a bad show in Heronsford. The Air Raid Precaution centre has been hit, among other places, and there are a lot of casualties. The Cottage Hospital is filling up and we're taking some of the people in here. I want everybody to go to their posts at once." He added automatically: "Without panic," though anything less like panic it would have been difficult to imagine; and continued with a little duck towards Sister Bates who still stood uncertainly at the side of the stage: "We've all enjoyed the 'play' very much indeed; now it's time for work!" He scrambled down from the platform and hurried off out of the hall.
" _I_ didn't see no play," confided the up-patients to each other, quite bewildered.
The hospital was built in the shape of a gigantic wheel, its spokes forming the different departments and, above and below ground level, the wards; its hub a great circular hall, not unlike Piccadilly Circus Tube Station both in shape and purpose, and general appearance of seething activity. The lift ran straight up through the hall, the staircase curling round it in a slow spiral. The main operating theatre was on the ground floor, easily available to all the surgical wards; the emergency theatre in the basement was used only during raids.
Marion Bates was theatre sister at Heron's Park. She scurried down to see that the emergency night staff was prepared, and her mind was the strangest jumble of surgical instruments, 'Song of Songs' and Gervase Eden. She knew that her poor little effort at pleasing him had failed. "Thank God I didn't do the dance," she thought as she dived between the swing doors of the operating theatre. "He wouldn't have liked it. He'd only have laughed." The cold sweat broke out on her forehead at the thought of her madness in ever having supposed that it would impress him. If it had been Frederica Linley, now—but she knew that Frederica would never for a moment have considered so demeaning herself. Anyway, he was not with _her_ this evening. Linley had gone back to her ward and Gervase was strolling across the circular hall with Woods. Woods was forty if she was a day, and she had a face like the back of a cab. "Forceps, retractors, scissors, knives," muttered Sister Bates, checking over instruments in the hot, bright, green-and-silver security of her own domain; "forceps, retractors, scissors, knives. But Woods has marvellous legs!" Outside, the guns thundered and rolled, there was the scream of a bomb and the occasional noisy rattle of machine-gun fire; even down here, twenty feet below ground, the room shook with the crash of every gun. "I wonder what he's saying to Woods," thought Bates, automatically separating the jingling instruments. "I wonder if she's still in the hall with him. I think I'll just slip up and see..."
Frederica had gone back to her ward with Esther who happened to be on day duty there. "I'll stay and give you a hand," said Esther. "There are two empty beds and they're sure to fill them up with casualties. It's already as much as one person can manage in here, now that we're so short of orderlies."
The relieving V.A.D. was glad to see them. "The Orderly Officer hasn't made his round yet, Linley. Sister says when he comes will you ask him for some morphia for the two hernias and the appendix that were done to-day, and to say can he give you something for the asthma in number seven. She's gone down to St. Cat's ward."
"Oh, all right; thank you, Jones. I'll tell him."
"Blast these air-raids," said Jones cheerfully, struggling into her ugly blue outdoor coat for her dash across the grounds to the safety of her shelter. "They keep the men awake."
The ward was on the ground floor, opposite the main operating theatre; a long, high room, the tall windows now blacked out for the night; fifteen beds were ranged down each side, with an aisle down the centre, its narrow tables denuded of their bowls of flowers. The open lockers were tidily packed with the little miscellaneous possessions of the men; on the lower shelves their uniforms were folded into precise, square bundles and their overcoats and caps hung on hooks at the bed-heads. A corner of the ward, near the door, had been partitioned off into a small square 'bunk' for the sister, furnished with a desk and some chairs; here notes were kept, reports written up, discussions held with the medical officers, endless cups of tea consumed, and a good deal of more or less surreptitious entertainment carried on. A large pane of glass had been let into the side facing the ward, so that all that went on there could be seen from the bunk. It frequently escaped the attention of the occupants that, especially when the light was on in the bunk, everything that went on there could be seen from the ward.
The air-raid was becoming very heavy. The droning of aeroplanes overhead was incessant, and the building shook and shuddered with the thundering of the guns in the neighbouring fields, and now and again with the sickening thud of a bomb. The men moved uneasily in their beds and made foolish, defiant little jokes. "Cor that was a near one! Nearly scraped me 'air off, that one did! They've 'eard about the pudding we 'ad to-day, nurse, and they're trying to kill the cook!" The hospital humorist sat up in bed and every time a bomb fell tapped himself on the back of the head and made his false teeth shoot out.
"You have no business to have all these lights on," said Freddi severely, and went round clicking them off.
Night Sister appeared in the doorway. "Oh, Nurse Sanson—are _you_ here?"
"I said I'd stay on and help Nurse Linley, Sister, if that's all right?"
"Yes, of course. I expect she'll be very thankful. I shan't be able to help you much to-night, nurse; we've got four bad casualties in St. Catherine's.... However, if you need anything you must send for me at once. They've just rung through from Reception and there's a man coming in with fractured femur; get him into bed, will you? and just keep him quiet and warm; don't do anything about the leg. Major Eden will be along in a few minutes to see him. Let me know if he wants me." She hurried off again.
"What a flap!" said Frederica calmly, watching her go.
Two civilian stretcher-bearers appeared, carrying a grimy bundle on a canvas stretcher. "Is this right, Miss? The old gent in Reception asked us to bring him straight down here, as he hadn't got any orderlies to send with him."
"Yes, that's right: this corner bed, please. Esther, will you deal with this, while I get the rest of the ward settled? I think that'll be the best way to manage it."
The stretcher-bearers helped to lift the man on to the bed. "Wouldn't they take him in the resuscitation ward?" asked Esther, rather surprised at his condition.
"No, it seems they're filling up there, and he wasn't as badly shocked as some of the others. They've had two deaths there already. Never should have taken 'em in, really, but we thought there might be half a chance. The A.R.R Centre's been hit, and a pub out at Godlistone, and various other places. They're still digging one chap out. Rescue squad they was, waiting to go out on a job. Looks as if he'd needed a bit of rescuing himself!" said the stretcher-bearer cheerfully. He put out his hand and pushed the damp hair off the man's forehead, with the rough, crude gentleness of all his kind. "Poor old boy!" he said, and picked up his stretcher and, whistling softly, went away.
Poor old boy. He lay pathetically still under the blankets, packed in with hot-water bottles, his hands lying loosely at his sides, his eyes closed, his face covered with dirt and dust and grime. His leg was bandaged to a long wooden splint. His boots had been torn off by the blast and his clothes were cut to ribbons, but she made no attempt to undress or wash him till the warmth and rest should have strengthened his pulse and brought back depth to the flickering respirations. She put her hand to his mouth, however, to feel the cold breath on her knuckles, and he must have been unconscious of the gesture, for he moved his head a little, laying his grimy cheek against her forearm with a gesture of trust and dependence, infinitely touching. Tears filled her eyes. "Don't worry. Just lie still. It's all over now. You're safe now. You're going to be all right."
He opened his eyes and she turned away her head, for she knew all too well the expression she would see there. It was only six months since her mother had died. For two days and two nights she had waited in anguish while men toiled unceasingly at the mountain of rubble that had once been a tall block of flats; had torn with her own helpless hands at the beams and girders and concrete that, having proved so frail a shelter, now heaped themselves into so deep a tomb. At the end of the second day, a foreman had come to her and wearily wiping the filth and sweat from his face, had broken it to her that it was useless to go on; at any moment the building would collapse, burying his men with those already dead. The following day the systematic demolition of the building had begun, and after another day and night they had brought her mother out. As they carried her past, she had turned her head very slightly on the stretcher, and her eyes had met Esther's; there had been no smallest gleam of recognition in their depths: only pain and bewilderment and terror and—could it be?—reproach! And so she had died, Mummy who had been so pretty and sweet, so gay and funny, whose little faults of selfishness and petulance had endeared her to a selfless heart, immeasurably more than nobler qualities might have done. Alone in the world, she had gone like an automaton through the heartbreaking details of identification and burial; had sought ease for her aching remorse in the hard, rough, satisfying toil in the wards at the hospital; it was through these first bewildering days when she walked through her work in a dream of hideous unreality and lay, sleepless and haunted through night after endless night, that Woods and Frederica had first come to be her friends; against Freddi's passionless sanity no less than Woody's fond, maternal clucking, she had dashed out the first agony of her mother's death.... "But I was a fool to come back here," she thought, standing with the old man's cheek against her arm. "I was a fool ever to think that I could forget the way she looked, when I see it again and again in the faces of strangers...." In her heart, she reverted unconsciously to the formula of her childhood prayers. "Poor old man. God help him and make him get well."
Frederica came down the ward. "Esther, it's nearly ten and I've just realised I haven't had anything to eat. Could you possibly hold the fort for another ten minutes or so, while I rush out and get something? It's all such a muddle to-night, and the orderly's helping with stretchers, and I probably shan't get another chance and I shall be starving by morning?"
"Yes, of course, darling. Don't hurry. I can cope."
Freddi departed. Gervase Eden, who was Surgeon on Duty, came into the ward. "Sister here, nurse?"
"No, she's on one of the other wards. Shall I go and get her?" Outside the hospital, Eden was Gervase to Esther and Freddi and Woods, but she added the regulation 'Sir'.
"No, never mind. She's probably snowed under with casualties. Major Moon's just admitted a man..."
"Here he is, sir, in the corner bed. The Emergency Post label said, 'fractured pelvis'; he was given a morphia injection two and a half hours ago while they were digging him out. They don't give his name; I suppose they haven't found out yet who he is."
"You haven't cleaned him up?"
"Well, he was still very shocked when they brought him in, so I left him to warm up. That was right, wasn't it?"
"Yes, perfectly right," said Eden. He bent over the man's body, feeling with short, thin fingers deep into the flesh and muscle and down to the bone. The man shrank and groaned. "It's all right, old chap. It won't be long now, and then we'll give you another dose of something and send you off to sleep. It isn't very serious. You're going to be all right." He straightened himself and moved away from the bed. "Fractured his femur all right. Everything else seems to be intact. There's no internal injury." Sister arrived while he was washing his hands in the lavatory outside the ward. "I don't think we'd better touch him to-night," he said, explaining the state of affairs to her there. "He's too badly shocked, and anyway we've got all we can cope with. They've fixed him up with a splint at the Emergency Post and I think we'll leave him undisturbed and have him up to the theatre in the morning. He'll have to be X-rayed first..." He consulted a list. "Major Moon's doing a duodenal ulcer at half-past nine; could you have him ready after that?"
"Yes, sir, of course; it'll just give the X-ray people nice time."
"Well, that's what we'll do then. Leave the leg as it is, nurse; clean him up a bit, but don't worry him; and then you can give him a shot of morphia and I'll see him again in the morning."
"Put a couple of screens round him, nurse," said Sister, "so that the light doesn't disturb him; I'll leave out the morphia for you. Oh, and Major Eden, will you let me have something for the appendix Major Moon did to-day, and those two hernias? And the man in seven, Captain Newsome's cartilage, you know, he's developed a very troublesome asthma..." She drifted away with him, towards the bunk.
2
Frederica returned, still swallowing the last crumbs of her meal. "It's too heavenly of you to have stayed on like this, darling. Have you coped all right?"
"Yes, nothing's happened except a visit from Gervase." She repeated the gist of his instructions. "I'll stay and finish this fractured femur for you. You carry on; I'm perfectly all right."
Frederica whisked off up the ward. The lights flickered with the thudding of the guns. A bomb fell somewhere close. The old man stirred and groaned, "Bombs! Bombs! The bombs!"
"No bombs," said Esther reassuringly. "Only guns; not bombs."
He lost even his feeble interest in the bombs. "The _pain!_ "
"Just bear it for a little bit longer," she said, her hand on his wrist. "Just while I get your clothes off and clean you up a little bit; and then you shall go off to sleep and forget all about it." Standing with the basin balanced on her hip, towels over her arm, she looked down at him pityingly. Poor old boy; poor, frightened, broken, pitiful little old man.... She wrung out a piece of gauze in the hot water, and began gently to wash his face.
3
Night Sister had left out four quarter-grain tablets of morphia on a tray in the little bunk. Frederica looked up the prescriptions book. "Three 'stat' and one 's o s'. Will you give them, Esther? One to your man, and one each to the hernias; the appendix seems to be dozing off, so we'll leave his s o s till he seems to want it. I'll deal with this asthma question. Yes, all right, Wilson, I'm coming!"
Esther lighted the tiny spirit lamp, dropped one of the tablets into a teaspoon, added sterile water and re-sterilised the whole over the flame, mixing in the dissolving tablet with the needle of the hypodermic syringe; sucked up the solution into the syringe and carried it over, with a piece of iodined gauze, to one of the hernia patients. "There you are," she said, smiling at him, dabbing at the tiny puncture with the gauze. "That'll set you up till the morning!"
He smiled back at her hazily. "Thank you, nurse."
She gave the second injection to the other hernia, and a third to the fractured femur. He was becoming increasingly conscious, muttering wildly to himself: "Bombs! The bombs! All gone... all of us gone this time!"
"This will ease the pain now, and make you go to sleep."
"All of us gone; all my mates gone.... All sitting there and the whole place came down on top of us." He struggled up from his pillow, muttering wildly: "It's going to hit us! It's going to hit us..." and after a pause began to mumble softly to himself: "The effete and spineless remnants of Churchill's once-great England... cowering in their rabbit holes from the might of the German air force...."
Frederica came and joined her at the foot of the bed. "What the dickens is he talking about?"
"He seems to be quoting something; I suppose he's a bit lightheaded."
"All gone," insisted the man, moaning to himself. "All gone and me the last!"
Frederica was the perfect nurse. If she was moved by the sight of suffering or sorrow or fear, she gave no sign of it, and her dry, matter-of-fact little manner often brought balm where more gentle methods failed. She said now, softly but quite brusquely: "You mustn't talk any more. Give yourself up to the morphia and let yourself go to sleep. Try not to look forward, try not to think or worry.... Everything's going to be quite all right. Just lie still and let yourself go to sleep." The monotonous repetition, the level voice, soothed and comforted him. He relaxed against his pillow and did not speak again. She clicked off the remaining lights in the ward and arranged a couple of screens round him, leaving him in almost total darkness; on the centre table a lamp shone in an unshadowed pool upon the layer of fine plaster shaken down from the ceiling by the guns and bombs; she passed a cloth over the dust, and five minutes later it had settled there again. The men moved restlessly, resigning themselves to the long night; there were still one or two to call out: "Good-night, nurse! God bless, nurse! Aren't you coming to kiss me good-night, nurse?" Outside the guns grumbled and reverberated round the base of the hill, a flare hung, dripping stars, in the shell-splintered sky, the drone of the bombers was rent now and then by the frightened scream of a falling bomb....
4
Esther replaced the syringe on the tray, blew out the spirit lamp, and wiped the teaspoon clean. "Well, darling, I think my work of mercy is over for the night."
"Yes, and thank you a thousand times, sweetie, for all you've done. They're expecting another in from Resuscitation, and I don't know how I'd have managed without you."
"You're sure you're O.K. now?"
"Oh yes, perfectly, now that I've finally got the ward under control. That's the worst of these blessed air-raids; they do unsettle the men."
"I suppose Woody and I will have to plunge down to that mouldy shelter. The one and only advantage of night duty is that you _can_ stay above ground. Do you think we dare just go to bed and see if we can get away with it?"
"My dear, last time Joan Pierson and Hibbert did that, the Commander routed them out and drove them down to the shelter just as they were, and now everybody knows that Hibbert goes to bed in her vest and knickers."
"Well, _we_ don't go to bed in our vests and knickers. Com's welcome to drive me forth in my Jaeger pyjamas. I hope Woody's got some tea."
"Have some here, Esther, before you go."
"No, no, I'd better go over to quarters; she'll be wondering what's happened to me. Good-night, darling. God bless!"
"Happy sheltering," said Frederica. She added, with rarely spoken sympathy: "You do look tired, my dear; and I'm afraid it's my fault!" and came over and gave her a brief little peck of apology and gratitude.
5
It was long after ten. Esther departed, and Frederica made herself the inevitable cup of tea and settled down to innumerable small jobs left over from the evening's work. A shadow fell across the table. "Hallo, Freddi."
"Oh, hallo, Barney; I wondered if you would come. I saved some tea for you; it's only just made."
"I need it," he said wearily. "We're having a rotten time. Perkins is on his seven days' leave and there's no one else to give anæsthetics, so we've just been working all out in the emergency theatre. Some of the casualties are awfully bad; they've had two deaths already in Resuscitation. You've got another fellow to come in here; did you know? Compound fracture of the tibia and fibula. They've cleaned up the wound and put on an extension; he'll be along very shortly. I thought I'd slip along and see you while we had a little lull." He put his tea down carefully and came round the table and took her into his arms. "Frederica—I just get through my days, waiting for this moment!"
She returned his kisses lightly and pushed him gently away. "You ought to be concentrating on your work, Captain Barnes, not thinking of your young woman!"
If he was hurt he did not show it; but after a moment, as he sat stirring his tea, he said suddenly: "Frederica, you would never let me down? Would you?"
"Of course not, darling," said Freddi; but a little too lightly; a little too readily.
He sat staring at his tea, speaking more to himself than to her. "That would be too much cruelty," he said slowly. "I—I couldn't bear that. Cruelty and dishonesty—those are two things that I just can't stand..."
"Sometimes a person has to—has to chose between them. I mean, sometimes if you don't want to be cruel, you have to tell, or act, some lies."
He went very white and stood up suddenly, looking down into her wide, grey eyes. "Well, Freddi—always remember this: I'd rather have cruelty than dishonesty. I'd rather be hurt than deceived...."
Something broke in her, and she went up close to him, grasping at his coat sleeves with her little hands, straining herself against him as though both giving and taking comfort. "Oh, Barney—I'm sorry, darling. Don't look like that, my dearest; you break my heart, I'll never hurt you _or_ deceive you, Barney, honestly I won't, I swear I won't...."
He looked down at her sadly, at the lovely little face and deep, deep into the limpid eyes. "Oh, Freddi," he said, "my little love—don't frighten me! The bare thought of ever losing you, makes me sick and dizzy.... You're mine, Freddie, aren't you? Promise me you'll always be mine, Freddi, _promise_ me...."
She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. "Yes, darling, I promise you; always, all my life."
A man called from the ward. "All right. I'm coming. Look, Barney, you must go, dearest. The tib. and fib. will be in soon, and I must get all this cleared off.... (Yes, all right, nurse is coming!) Good-night, my love."
The appendicitis case had woken and was in some pain. She gave him the last injection of morphia and went back to the bunk. The casualty in the corner bed was moaning softly; she shone her torch for a moment on his face, but his eyes were closed, and she went back to her work; but again there was a step at the door and Gervase Eden came in. "Hallo, Nurse Linley, my lovely one!"
"Oh, hallo, Gervase," she said uneasily.
"You look like an orchid, Frederica, sitting there with the light shining down on your hair. How do you manage to be so full of colour when you're wearing a plain grey dress?" He saw the look that lit up her eyes and added hastily: "I got that out of a book!"
"And you've been going round looking for a female in a grey dress ever since, to try it out on," said Freddi, laughing; but her heart did a foolish little somersault in her breast.
"Why the devii can't I just ask for Night Sister, and not go and make jokes that they take too seriously?" thought Eden, exasperated with himself. He hastened to ask where Night Sister was.
"On one of the other wards; do you want her?"
"Not a bit," said Eden, and Frederica smiled again. "For a moment, Gervase, you looked at me as if I was Sister Bates!"
"My dear—have I got a special look for Sister Bates?"
"Gervase, of _course_ you have! You look at her all cross and withdrawn, like this!" She assumed an expression of hideous ferocity, screwing up her lovely little face, drawing together the delicate eyebrows, pursing her full, red Burne-Jones mouth, in an effort not to laugh. "Do I look funny, Gervase? Do I? Do I look like you looking at Sister Bates?"
"Oh, Freddi," he said, "you don't look funny at all. You only look adorable...."
Something shivered between them as real and potent as an electric shock; and she was in his arms, pressing her body against him, reaching up to him for kisses that he could not restrain. "Oh, Freddi—Oh, God! Oh, Freddi...." But in a moment he had pushed her away from him, unfastening her hands from his shoulders, shifting away to the other side of the table, nervously fingering his tie. "I'm sorry, my dear. I—I lost control for a moment. I'm sorry; I shouldn't have done it." He stood silent, violently pressing his forehead against the back of his hand. "I feel such a rotter, Freddi. Do forgive me and forget all about it." He ignored the fact that, of the two, it was she who had most completely 'lost control'.
"There's nothing to forgive, Gervase. But as for forgetting...."
He refused to recognise the significance in her tone. "Just let's pretend that it never happened, Freddi. I feel so rotten about it." He said deliberately: "Rotten to Barney, I mean," and added, smiling shakily, "You must obviously never make funny faces again!"
She stood in stricken silence, staring at his face; and, at a step in the passage, escaped into the ward. Sister Bates came into the bunk. She said, spitefully, sick with jealousy and anger: "Oh, there you are, Major Eden! I thought I should find you here!"
"I'm making my rounds," said Eden, who had finished them half an hour ago.
"Do you kiss the nurses in every bunk, when you're making your rounds?" she said furiously, blurting it out in her pain and despair.
"No," he said coolly. "Only the sisters."
He had not meant to say it, like that; he had not meant to refer to the past when she had been on night duty, when she had followed him round from ward to ward, when she had 'happened' to be in every bunk he arrived at. He had only just meant to pass it off as a light joke, to protect Frederica from her jealous curiosity. He said apologetically: "I'm sorry, my dear; I didn't intend any wise-cracks. But I was not making love to Freddi Linley, and, to be honest, I don't know what business of yours it would have been if I had."
She looked at him bleakly. "Oh, Gervase—how can you say such a thing?"
"My God!" thought Eden; but he said, kindly and patiently: "Look, Marion—we must have this out, once and for all. You and I had a little affair. I never pretended to you for a moment that it was more than that. These things can't last for ever, and they don't. It was charming and it was delightful and I'm very grateful for all the fun we had together—but now it's over."
"It isn't over for me," she said desperately. "After all you said to me, Gervase—all you promised me: you can't just leave me flat like this."
"I never said a word to you that you could have taken as a promise of any sort."
"You told me you loved me..."
But he interrupted her, saying sternly: "I never said those words to any woman in all my life."
"Oh, words!" she cried passionately. "Who cares about words? Men think that they can do what they like, can treat you as they like, and as long as they don't say those three magic words, 'I love you', they're free of all responsibility in the matter. Well, you aren't free, Gervase. Kisses can be promises and—and just looks and silences.... Whatever you may have said about loving me, you let me love _you;_ and now I'm not going to be thrown away because you've gone and fallen for a silly little chit like Frederica Linley. I shall go to Barnes and tell him about it. I shall tell him he must put a stop to it, that it's ruining his life and mine.... I won't let you go, Gervase. I can't; it would kill me. I'm not going to...." She broke off and cried, wretched and helpless: "You _can't_ be in love with her!"
"I'm not in love with anyone," he said steadily.
"You're in love with Frederica Linley. I suppose you want to marry her...."
"You know I'm not in a position to marry anyone, Marion," he said impatiently. Once, long ago, one of the lovely ladies had been importunate, and he had not then acquired his skill in evading desperate situations. He had not seen her for several years, but she formed a shield against similar assaults upon his liberty.
"But you don't love _me_ any more?"
"Oh, Marion," he said wearily, "do let's not go over this again. Men fall in love and fall out of love, and that's all there is to it." You could not explain that you had never even fallen in love, that the worst you had done was to accept attentions flung at your defenceless heart. "I—I want to remember our little affair with affection and gratitude; let me do that, my dear. Don't spoil it all by trying to hold on to something that's gone, past recall."
But she looked at him with blue eyes, stupid with pain and misery, defeating her own hopes by her uncontrollable need to put those hopes into words. "All the same, Gervase, I won't let you go; I'll tell everybody how you've treated me, I'll tell everybody how you're letting me down for that Linley girl, I'll _make_ you stay with me...."
He caught her by the wrist, staring down, grim and angry into her frightened face. "Don't you _dare_!" he said.
"I will, Gervase, I swear I will. I'll—I'll sue you for breach of promise.... I'll make it so that everyone thinks what a rotter you are.... All those women in Harley Street...."
He flung her away from him in disgust and marched off out of the bunk and into the hall; she stayed for a moment, leaning against the wall, sick with realisation of her own behaviour; and then crept out after him; neither of them gave a backward glance towards the ward.
Frederica had retreated into the dark recess of the screens round the newcomer's bed; she came to the door and stood there, staring after them. "My God—supposing she does tell Barney!" Their unconsciously raised voices had reached her clearly through the thin partition. "Supposing she tells Barney—he'd never speak to me again; he'd never love me again! I should lose him, and all for a man like Gervase Eden.... Gervase would love me for a week or a month, and then just let me go. 'I want to remember our little affair with affection and gratitude, Freddi; be a little darling, my pet, and let me go!' He has every woman in the place running after him, and he doesn't want any of them... any of the others. But he does want me! It was only because of Barney.... Oh, my God! Barney, why don't I just stick to you, when you're so decent and sweet and you love me so much more than I deserve... but the moment Gervase comes along—he doesn't say anything, he doesn't _do_ anything, he never even touched me before to-night... but my heart turns over and my knees go to water... it's disgusting, really it is, it's nothing but sex, that's all! It's just my misfortune to look like a blinking machine and all the time be a raging furnace underneath. Oh, well!" she shrugged her little shoulders and smoothed down her apron and settled her starched white veil, "I suppose I'd better stop having inhibitions and look to my suffering patients." The man in the corner bed said something as she went over to him, taking his hot hand in her cool and gentle one, she thought: "Anyway, thank goodness Esther and Woody don't know!"
6
Esther had just arrived back from the ward and was sitting in their quarters with Woods, discussing Frederica's infatuation. A benevolent providence had placed a small row of labourer's cottages at the main gates of the park, and here the V.A.D.s were accommodated, three or four to each little two-roomed house. The cottages were small and dark and inconvenient, but the plumbing was adequate and each had a tiny kitchen with a gas stove; to three girls unused to community life and especially to life among sixty women of greatly varying ages and drawn from every imaginable class, their cottage was a haven of privacy and relaxation and peace. Frederica, being on night duty, did Box and Cox with Esther in the room upstairs; Woods had a camp bed in the communal sitting-room.
The whole place rocked with the deafening roar of the guns, but the bombs seemed fewer and the flares were dying down. They sat very comfortably with their feet on the fender, drinking cups of cocoa, in defiance of all orders that nobody was to remain in their quarters after black-out, during a raid. Esther said thoughtfully: "What people can see in Gervase, I never could understand. I mean, he's nice and he's funny, but he's as ugly as anything, so thin and grey and, well, he must be at least forty...."
"Thanks very much," said Woods.
"Well, I don't mean that, darling, you _know_ what I mean. He's not a glamour boy; and he never seems to try and make women like him."
"Ah, but you're a lady icicle, Esther."
"Well, I must be, because I seem to be the only female in the hospital who can see Gervase Eden without swooning at his feet. How did the great Act go to-night?"
Woods grinned. "Not bad at all. I caught up with Casanova as he came out of the concert, and I put on a terrific air of indifference and tried to look anxious to get away, and it was such a change for him, poor lamb, that he fell for it like a log."
"Mind you don't fall yourself, Woody. That would be a laugh!"
"I should say it would," agreed Woods, cackling with ribald mirth. "However, it would do no harm, Esther, and the effect would be the same. Frederica would see that some other female has only to whistle and off he goes like a shot."
"She must know that anyhow; look at poor old Bates."
"Ah, yes, but it's one thing for Gervase to sicken of Bates and turn his attentions to Freddi; and quite another for him to start running after fat old Woody, right in the first stages of his affair with Frederica!"
"Are you so sure it's an affair, darling?"
"Well, Freddi goes round looking like a love-sick hen all the time he's about; and love may be blind, but if it gets any worse, Barney's bound to see it. Barney wouldn't take a thing like this lightly, you know, Esther. It would break his heart, but he'd just write Freddi off for ever: he loves her too much and too sort of _deeply_ , for her to try playing fast and loose with him. It's as much for Barney's sake as Frederica's that I want to put an end to it if I can."
"I hope this won't get you into a mess though, Woody," said Esther, still not satisfied.
Woods sat staring into the fire, a shawl clutched round her bosom, her exquisite legs stretched out towards the blaze; the lines of laughter ironed, for a moment, out of her face. She said slowly: "My dear, I'm past getting into messes. I've led a bit of a comic life, Esther, one way and another, getting in and out of messes and not doing any harm to anyone, that I could see; except perhaps to myself; and even then I don't know—I don't think I'd have it any other way if I could do it all over again. Freddi's different. She's so young and she's so pretty and attractive; she must settle down with Barney, Esther, and run his house and have lots of lovely babies and be a little Madam... the charm about Freddi is that she's so cool and sure and—well, sort of pleased with herself; isn't she? Not in a nasty way, I don't mean, but just rather funny and sweet. If she went and got herself a past, she'd lose all that; she'd lose her faith in herself, and, you know, I don't believe she'd marry Barney. She wouldn't be able to deceive him, and yet she wouldn't be able to confess her weakness by telling him. I don't know. I may be all wrong; I'm rotten about knowing people's characters... but anyway, if I can prevent her from going off the rocks with this Don Juan of hers, by fair means or foul, I will. I don't think there's the earthliest chance of my getting hurt in the process, but if I do, well, I've been hurt before and I can take it again." She belched vigorously and patted her chest. "My Godfathers! That stew!"
"Well, I hope it works, Woody, and I hope you ever get any thanks from Frederica, if it does!"
"I don't want any thanks," said Woods calmly; and Esther, looking at her, sitting there bundled up in shawls, fat and jolly and rather common, with her made-up face and shining, shrewd, dark eyes, said to her lovingly: "No, darling, you never do."
CHAPTER III
1
It was always a miracle, after a heavy raid, to look out in the morning and see one's world still intact about one. Esther walked across the grounds with Woody, wrapped in her short red-lined cape against the cold, dawn air. "I believe there's a new crater in the field over there... that must have been the one that fell at about ten. I could have sworn it was nearer."
"Stick of three," said Woody comfortably, in the familiar jargon of life under the blitz. "Look, there's another one, up in the woods—you can see where it's broken the branches of the trees. Good thing it wasn't a bit more to the left or the third would have given the Sisters' Mess a conk. That would have shaken them up!"
"Never run, except for a land mine!" said Esther, mimicking Matron.
The fractured tib. and fib. was agreeably surprised to see her, on the ward. "Hallo, I haven't met you before!"
"I've met _you_ ," she said, smiling, not pausing in her assault upon his person with a large wet flannel. "I saw you last night being wheeled across from the theatre, but you weren't taking much notice at the time."
I can't have been," he said grinning.
He was a young man, a slim, blond, smiling young man with bright blue eyes and something pleasant and clean and reliable about him. Esther was profoundly bored with dependable young men, but she recognised in him something a little different from the ordinary run. She said kindly: "How are you feeling to-day?"
"Oh, I'm not too bad for seven o'clock in the morning. They say I've fractured my tibia and fibula or something. What does that mean?"
"It means that you've broken the two bones running down the front of your leg; they generally get sort of—overlapping, you know, and you have to have them pulled apart so that the bones can meet and have a chance to unite again. I expect you'll be strung up like this to an extension frame for a little while—several weeks; but it won't hurt, not very much; and then they'll fix you up in a plaster and you'll be able to hop about, and when it comes off it'll just be a matter of getting the leg strong again and you'll never know the difference. It'll take a long time and it isn't exactly heaven, but that's the worst there is to know."
He looked at her intently. "Are you just telling me this?"
"No," said Esther. "I don't 'just tell' people things. Give me your other hand."
"Are you going to hold it for me?" he asked, laughing.
"Only as long as it takes to wash it; and don't try to flirt with me—I don't like it." She pulled down his pyjama sleeve with a jerk and picked up the basin and towels.
"I'm sorry," he said, surprised and rather hurt.
"That's all right." She looked at the remains of his clothing folded away in the locker, at the shoes beneath it, which, though cut and scratched by debris, were of the rich, chestnut colour that only comes of polishing beautiful leather. "Are you a civilian?"
"No, I'm a simple Able Bodied in the Navy. I happened to be home on leave and I was helping out with my old job."
She did not inquire as to what his job had been, but the word 'home' caught her attention. "Do you live in Heronsford?"
"Just outside. I—well, you know the big brewery out at Godli-stone?"
"Good gracious—don't tell me you're a brewer?" she said, laughing.
"I'm afraid I am; does that astonish you?"
"Well, no, not exactly; but you don't—well, you don't _seem_ like a brewer, that's all."
He looked at her with a quizzical smile. "You mean I talk like a pansy?"
She had not met many men in her sheltered life with her mother, in their little flat; not on equal terms, not in easy badinage. She was a little embarrassed and said doubtfully: "No, of course, not that. But... well, one thinks of brewers as large men with brawny arms and red noses."
"Well, I don't know about brawny arms," said the tib. and fib., laughing, looking down at the muscles bulging under the thin sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. "The red nose is only a matter of time, I expect. I have to explain that I'm the sort of King Brewer. I own the place, you see."
"Yes, I see," said Esther.
"So, if you ever want any free beer, you know where to come."
"Well, I'm not very fond of beer," said Esther apologetically.
"That's a pity," said the fractured tib. and fib. He added: "Because you're going to see an awful lot of it in future," but he did not say it out loud.
The sister on day duty came bustling in from the bunk where she had been in consultation with the retiring night sister. "Everything all right, nurse?"
"Yes, Sister, thank you."
"You know number eight is going up for operation at half-past nine?"
"Yes, Sister."
"And the fractured femur after that." She went to the corner bed where the screens had now been moved aside. "Good morning. How are you feeling?"
"I had a terrible night," said the man briefly, opening his heavy eyes and looking at her resentfully.
"Is your name Higgins?"
"Yes, it is," said the man, "who wants to know?"
"Well, we all want to know. They couldn't find out last night. You're a postman, are you?"
"Yes, I am," said Higgins; "at least I was. It doesn't look as if I'll ever be able to do it again."
"Oh, nonsense, of course you will," said Sister brightly. She said to Esther as she hurried on round the ward: "He seems very low. You'd better have a talk to him about his operation while you prepare him for it, or he'll start refusing to have it done or something. By the way, I believe the police rang up to inquire for his wife; if she comes, you'd better let her sit with him before he goes up to the theatre."
"Yes, Sister."
"And you'd better go up with him, Sanson, and stay there and bring him back. By the way, there's that duodenal being done before him. Would you like to watch it? Have you seen any abdominals?"
"Well, no I haven't, Sister. I _would_ like to see it, if I could."
"Yes, all right, then. The other two can manage in here for an hour or so. You can take Higgins up early. It'll keep him from lying here upsetting the others by getting nervy and also get rid of the wife if she turns out to be trying."
Mrs. Higgins turned out to be very trying. She objected to being sent out to the bunk while Barnes came round with his stethoscope, checking up on the patients due for anæsthetic that day; and again while Gervase Eden made a second examination and sat for a little while talking to her husband at his bedside. At nine-thirty, by which time, in a hospital ward, the day seems well advanced, Esther transferred the old man to a trolley with the help of an orderly, and pushed him out of the ward and across the great, circular hall towards the theatre.
2
The modern operating-theatre is no longer a dazzling white, trying to the surgeon's eyes and inclined to tricky shadows, but a restful, rather dark green. The theatre at Heron's Park was a large, square, green-tiled room, with glass cabinets and shelves of metal sterilising drums ranged round its walls; the table was in the centre, under a huge, circular metal lamp, lined with innumerable mirrors so angled that the surgeon's hands cast no shadow across his work. The table itself was of light, strong metal, white-enamelled and hinged at either end; it stood on a thick, central pedestal so that no legs or cross bars should get in the surgeon's way, and was fitted with pedals and handscrews for raising or lowering the whole or either end. It was covered with a thick pad of sorbo rubber, wrapped in a linen sheet. The stretcher was placed over this, and steel supports removed, leaving the patient still lying on the canvas of the stretcher, so that as little lifting as possible need be done after operation. To the patient's right were two small trolleys, presided over by the theatre sister, one with a selection of instruments appropriate to the operation on hand; the other with open troughs of knives and scissors, needles and catgut and swabs. To the left of the table was a tray on a single tall leg so that it could be pulled across the patient's body, to receive the instruments used or still in use; a basin of antiseptic stood ready for rinsing the hands, and a couple of buckets to receive the blood-stained swabs. In a corner of the theatre, a red rubber sheet was spread out on the floor, where the swabs could be counted over and checked and rechecked with a slate hanging on the wall over the sterilising drums from which the swabs were taken. The temperature of the room was kept very high by means of radiators hidden in the walls, and over all was the strong, sweet, sickly smell of ether.
Barney was sitting at the head of the table getting the first patient under, when Esther arrived wheeling Higgins. His trolley stood to his left, a sturdy metal affair with the big iron cylinders of gas and oxygen strapped to one side of it, the water in the glass jar, through which the anæsthetic must pass on its way to the patient, bubbling merrily away at the top. A thick red rubber balloon, in a black net bag, inflated and deflated regularly with the patient's respirations.
Higgins had had his pre-operative injection of morphia and atropine in the ward, and was feeling drowsy and more or less at ease. "You'll have to wait a little while, Higgins," said Esther, wheeling him into the anæsthetic-room, and putting up the catch inside the door to keep him safe from interruption. "Just lie here and keep quite quiet. Do you feel all right?"
"I feel a bit thirsty, miss," said Higgins, licking his dry lips.
"I'm afraid you will; that's the atropine. Now, will you be all right for a minute or two, while I go and get a gown?"
"Yes, I'll be all right, miss," said Higgins indifferently.
Woods was the theatre V.A.D. She and Sister Bates were both in the washroom in long green gowns, tied at the back of the neck and waist with tapes. Woods had a small oblong of green gauze hanging by its strings round her neck, ready to be pulled up over her mouth and nose when she went into the theatre; but Sister Bates wore a more elaborate mask, a sort of yashmak that covered her whole head, and tucked in under the neck of the gown; her eyes, acknowledging Esther through the slit, looked very big and blue against the green. "Get yourself a gown, nurse, if you're going to stay." The mask was sucked in and blown out over her mouth as she spoke.
Major Moon turned away from the washbasins, holding out dripping hands. He was dressed in a white cotton singlet and wore a pair of shrunken white duck trousers and huge ankle-high rubber boots. Woods handed sterile towels and a green gown for him to shuffle his way into, his own hands held stiffly away from his body; she fitted a little round green cap on to his head, and fixed a small head-lamp on a band round his forehead. Woods chucked Esther a gown and an oblong mask like her own, and hurried to pick up the battery attached to the head-lamp; she followed Major Moon into the theatre, carrying the battery at the end of its long flex like a page with a bride's train. Major Moon wriggled his plump little hands into thin brown rubber gloves.
The patient was breathing quietly, his eyes closed, his head lolling a little to one side. Gervase Eden, already masked and gowned, stood at his side, waiting with curbed impatience to get on. Major Moon went over to the sister's trolley and stood looking down at the instruments there. As Esther pushed open the door into the anæsthetic-room to make sure that Higgins was all right, she heard the old surgeon say, in his mumbling voice: "What a rotten collection of stuff we've got in this place; we could do such a lot more if we only had better equipment."
Woody adored Major Moon. He reminded her of Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Churchill was the idol of all Great Britain. She quoted, looking back over her shoulder as she stood at the door of the anæsthetic-room with Esther: "Give us the tools and we will get on with the job!"
Sister Bates bridled. Honestly, these V.A.D.s! Who did they think they were, joking with the officers? After all, V.A.D.s were only 'other ranks'. She said indignantly: "Be quiet, please, nurse! You're not here to..."
But she never finished her sentence, for there was a wild cry from the anæsthetic-room, and Higgins was struggling up to a sitting position on his stretcher, clinging to Esther, staring at the doorway into the theatre, and mumbling over and over and over again: "Where have I heard that voice? Oh, my God, I can't remember! I must remember! Where have I heard that voice...?"
3
Major Moon looked up astonished. He said sharply: "Who's that?"
Woods let the door swing to behind her and leaned back against the wall of the theatre; she said hurriedly: "It's only that man Higgins, sir; the fractured pelvis, your next case. He's—I expect he's excited by the morphia, or something." They could hear Esther's voice in the other room, calming the old man down.
Moon and Eden shrugged their shoulders and went to the patient, now well under the anæsthetic, on the table. Barney pulled down his mask to say kindly: "You look very shaken, Woody. Did he startle you? Are you all right?"
"Yes, yes," she said hastily, "I'm perfectly all right," and, with a glance of purely professional inquiry, stepped forward to pull back the blankets from the patient's body, folding back the grey flannel gown on to his chest, unwrapping the bandages, removing the sterilised towels, and leaving the abdomen bare.
Eden picked up a brush and idly sloshed iodine over the gently heaving patch of flesh; Major Moon came and stood opposite him, and together they arranged the rubber sheets and sterile green cloths across the body, leaving only a naked, yellow-painted square. They looked for all the world like two women helping each other to make a bed. Eden said, grinning: "I regret to inform you, sir, that the patient has a pimple right in the line of fire!"
Moon smiled absently, standing turned a little away from the table, pushing with bunched fingers at the slack stomach. He nodded to Barnes. "Yes, he's very nice," and, without further ado, picked up a knife and made a long, slow, deep slash, apparently at random, across the yellow square. The flesh gaped, fatty white, turning to deep red against the dark green of the surrounding cloths: opening out after the point of the knife like the wash in the wake of a ship. Eden took forceps from Sister Bates' hand and clipped up the blood-vessels, holding each for a moment while Moon tied it off with gut, before dropping it and passing on to the next. There was no flow of blood, but swabs and instruments became stained in ugly patches. Barnes forced open the man's mouth and thrust in a short, red rubber air-way to keep clear the breathing passages.
Moon worked steadily, freeing the adhesions from the slack, veined balloon of the stomach with little half-scraping, half-paring movements of the knife, plunging his whole hand into the wound to feel his knowledgeable way about. He might have been a woman washing out old and fragile lace—his hands moved with the same delicate care, the same scrupulous attention to detail, the same cool competence and freedom from hesitation or strain. When the stomach was finally exposed, they wrapped it up carefully in a wet, green gauze and left it, bubbling pale pink and faintly blue, out on the abdomen, at the edge of the wound. Moon said to Barney, in the voice of a man asking for a little more butter on his bread: "Let's have him a bit slacker, will you?" and Barnes fiddled with a tap. The patient gave a little grunt as though in response, and was silent again.
Major Moon rinsed his hands in the saline at his side, already discoloured with blood from his rubber gloves. Sister Bates said: "Change the basin, nurse." It was an education in itself to watch her handing the instruments, each held so that it presented itself most readily to the surgeon's fingers. Major Moon exposed the duodenum.
Woods tipped blood-stained swabs on to the rubber sheet in the corner of the theatre and began sorting them out. She said, out of the corner of her mouth, to Esther as she slipped back into the theatre: "How's the old boy now?"
"Oh, he's quietened down again. He thought he'd heard your voice somewhere."
"So I gathered," said Woods drily. She crouched on her hams, busily separating swabs with a pair of long-handled forceps, holding them well away from her spotless gown. "How are you liking your first abdominal?"
"I feel a bit sick, to be honest."
"Well, you can't be sick here. You look rather green I must say; it's the heat, I expect. Why don't you sit down?"
Esther moved over to a stool and sat down quietly. Barney looked at her over his mask and raised an eyebrow; he had fastened the rubber mask over the patient's face with wide red rubber bands, which gave a somewhat unattractive, snout-like effect. "They look as though they were slaughtering a pig," thought Esther, revolted.
Major Moon, bending over the body, suddenly straightened himself. "There it is! See it? It was an ulcer, all right.... Just give me a little swab, Sister, will you? Want to have a look, nurse? Wait a moment while I swab. There! You'll never see a prettier example of a duodenal ulcer than that!" Woods peered over his shoulder into the wound. Esther shuddered.
Woody came over and stood beside her, glancing into the anæsthetic-room _en route._ "Your old boy's all right; lying quite dopey and quiet. Didn't you want to see the ulcer?"
"No, I can't take it to-day. It's the heat in here."
"Won't be long now. You'd better wait outside while they're doing Higgins; he won't be very interesting anyway." She clumped off in her big, white rubber boots. Sister Bates broke open little glass phials and threaded up needles with gut. Eden fished out a bluish-pink coil of intestine, holding it clamped to the stomach while Moon cut and stitched. They packed it all into the belly at last and tucked it neatly away. "Won't be long now, Barney. Retract please, Eden. Harder if you can..."
It was over. Major Moon threw the last of the forceps on to the tray and stood looking down at the patient, peeling off his gloves, with an expression of calm satisfaction in his faded blue eyes. All gone off nicely; no strain or fuss; and as pretty an ulcer as he had ever seen. He went out to the washroom, followed by Eden. "I _thought_ it wasn't a diverticulum.... Crossley seemed to think from the X-ray that it might have been a diverticulum..." Sister Bates and Woods bound up the yellow abdomen with its rough, red, five-inch wound all puckered together with stitches and metal clips, tossed aside the rubber sheet and pulled down the blankets, leaving the mouth and nostrils free to the air. Barney tidied up his trolley, got to his feet and stretched himself and went out to the washrooms. Woods scurried about the theatre clearing away swabs and dressings, placing a new basin of saline for the surgeon's hands, staggering across the room with a fresh cylinder of gas clasped like a large, black baby in her arms; tidying away the used tubes and scraps of gauze from the anæsthetist's trolley and placing a fresh airway tube in an enamel bowl. Esther went out to the anæsthetic-room and wheeled Higgins into the theatre; they lifted him on to the table, and slid away the metal poles of the stretcher, leaving the canvas under him, ready for lifting him off again. He stared about him with frightened and clouded eyes.
Barney came over to him and took his hand, speaking to him gently and soothingly. "You're going to be quite O.K., old man. I'll just put a mask over your nose and you'll breathe in and out quietly and you'll soon be fast asleep, and when you wake up you'll be in your bed and it'll all be over...."
Higgins turned his head on the pillow. "Nurse! Nurse!"
"Yes," said Esther. "I'm here. I'm with you."
"I'm going to be all right, nurse, aren't I?"
"Yes, you'll be fine, Higgins, honestly. It's only quite a little operation, hardly anything at all."
"What are they going to do to me?" he said piteously, his eyes roving round the theatre, shying away from the instruments laid out in readiness.
Barney had a fad about using the anæsthetic-room. He preferred to start the anæsthetic with the patient already on the table; but he acknowledged the extra fear and distress involved and he now explained, kindly and gently: "It's really only a very small thing, Higgins; hardly an operation at all. You've broken your femur, that's the thigh bone, and we're going to put a little thin steel pin through, above the knee, to pull the bone into place. That's all there is to it. It won't take very long and it isn't serious a bit—is it, nurse?"
"Not a bit," said Esther.
"There isn't any danger, nurse? I'm going to wake up all right?"
"Oh, Higgins, of course you are. There's nothing to be frightened of."
"Promise me, nurse?" he insisted. " _Promise_ me?"
"Yes, Higgins, of course; there's no danger—I promise you."
"You'll tell the missis, will you, my dear?" he said anxiously. "She's waiting in the hall outside, and she'll be fretting a bit. Tell her there isn't any danger will you, my dear?"
"Yes, all right, Higgins, I will. As soon as you've gone off to sleep."
He relaxed on the pillow, comforted. "Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear." He gave her a little, rather pathetic smile, and Barney put the rubber mask down, gently, over his mouth and nose.
The water bubbled gaily in the little glass jar at the top of the trolley bracket, through which the gas and oxygen pass. "Breathe quite normally, old boy. Don't worry. Relax and breathe gently. No hurry..." Barney's voice was quiet and soothing, but the mask was pressing down more heavily on Higgins' face. "Just quite quiet, old man; nothing to worry about..." Woods stood beside the table, ready to hang on to kicking legs or flailing arms. Major Moon and Eden came back again from the washroom, pulling on fresh rubber gloves.
4
Something was going wrong. Higgins' face was turning from blue to a dark plum colour, showing on the cheek bones and at the edges of the mask. He breathed noisily and under the blankets his limbs jerked convulsively. The line of bubbles in the jar altered as Barnes cut down the gas and increased the oxygen: he looked rather troubled.
Two minutes later the man was still a bad colour, and the red rubber bag in its black net, heaved in and out with the heavy, stertorous breathing. Only the oxygen showed bubbling now in the jar. Major Moon said anxiously: "He's an awful colour."
"I can't make it out," said Barney, his eyes flickering over the apparatus for signs of anything wrong. "He's having nothing but oxygen now."
"There doesn't seem to be any obstruction," said Eden, watching the heaving bag.
"I'll just slip an airway in, to make sure." He caught up the tube from the trolley, dabbled its rubber end in a pot of lubricant, and, removing the mask for a moment, thrust a gag between the teeth to keep the mouth open, and forced the tube down Higgins' throat. Blue lips closed over the metal mouthpiece and Barney replaced the mask. After another half minute the man's breathing changed. The respirations became light and shallow and irregular. The jerkings gave way to little twitchings and jactitations and the livid colour was replaced by a leaden grey, infinitely more horrible. Barney said, staring down at him: "He's collapsed!"
Major Moon flung back the blankets and started artificial respiration, pressing down upon the ribs and relaxing them with a slow rhythmic movement that yet was pregnant with urgency. Barnes plucked open a little bottle and filled a syringe: as he plunged the needle under the rib into the heart he said briefly to Woods: "Give some coramine—intramuscularly."
Even the shallow respirations had now ceased. Major Moon worked on, slowly pressing and relaxing. Barnes stood by helplessly. He said after a minute: "Shall I try more oxygen?"
Eden shrugged his shoulders. "I should shove in some more coramine, intravenously," said Moon, not pausing in his work. He added gravely: "As a last resort."
Barnes found a vein and thrust the needle in. "It's no use, I'm afraid...."
Moon took no notice. It was horrible to see him working so rhythmically, working with that air of panic-stricken calm, on a body now beyond all help. After five whole minutes more of it, he straightened himself and stood erect, his hands on his aching back. "It's no use.... We can't do any more...."
Esther stood frozen with horror at the foot of the table. "There isn't any danger, nurse? I'm going to be all right?" and she had promised him: "Of course you are, Higgins; there's nothing to be frightened of." "You'll tell the missis, my dear, will you? Tell her I'm going to be O.K." "Yes, Higgins, I'll tell her as soon as you've gone off to sleep." "Thank you, my dear," he had said. "God bless you, my dear...." Those were the last words he had spoken; and he had smiled at her and turned his head on the pillow, satisfied to give himself up to the unknown since she had promised him that he would come through 'all right'. "Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear." The last words he had spoken. Joseph Higgins was dead.
CHAPTER IV
1
Not many surgeons remain unmoved by a death 'on the table'. The patient may die on his feet if he will, or in his bed, or even on the trolley bringing him up to the theatre; but to die in that shining little room, with the hot, bright lights beating down upon him, is to cast a gloom over a group of comparative strangers; to clutch icily at hearts that will not be warm again until a succession of straightforward, everyday cases has brought back reassurance and strength. Major Moon said sadly: "First time this has happened since I've been here," and pulled up a blanket over the dead man's face.
They stood round in stricken silence, gazing helplessly at the quiet form. Eden's thin, grey face looked more grey than ever. Barney was white and miserable, Sister Bates' blue eyes round with horror over the green mask; there was a small black speck on the bosom of Woody's gown, and she picked at it with nervous fingers. Moon, who was a Catholic, crossed himself with unobtrusive simplicity and said a little prayer. Two big tears gathered in Esther's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. "Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear...." She could not forget the little smile.
Major Moon pulled himself together. "Eden, perhaps you and Barnes would get him on to the trolley for the girls, would you? Will you be all right, nurse, after that?"
"I'll take him," said Woods, glancing at Esther's face. She added perfunctorily: "If that's all right with you, Sister?"
Bates pulled the mask up over her face and head; she looked very pretty with her ruffled fair hair. "Yes, very well. Sanson can stay and clear up in here." Her tone boded ill for V.A.D.s who were too squeamish to wheel a dead man down to the mortuary.
"We'll close the theatre for to-day," said Moon abruptly. "If there's anything else urgent we can take it to emergency. I—I hope there won't be." He looked very old and shaken.
Woods wheeled the body away without a backward glance. As Bates and Esther went out to the washrooms, the men gathered about the anæsthetic-trolley. Barney said desperately: "I checked up on everything.... There doesn't seem to be anything wrong; and yet—the old boy was all _right_...."
"He was pretty badly shocked when they brought him in last night," said Eden.
"Yes, but he was quite over that. I went over him this morning with the stethoscope and he was as sound as a bell. He should have taken the anæsthetic without turning a hair." He said again, wretchedly: "There doesn't _seem_ to be anything wrong."
"What _could_ be wrong, old boy? The tubes aren't crossed. I looked at them several times while we were working."
Coloured rubber Y-tubes led from the cylinders of nitrous oxide and oxygen and the (unused) central cylinder of carbon dioxide; but there was nothing out of order at all. Barney said: "God knows what went wrong. _I_ don't."
"These things happen, Barney," said Eden. "They seem to be perfectly O.K. but they pip off for no rhyme or reason and you never know exactly why; I don't know why we're all getting quite so het up about it!"
"Such a bother," said Major Moon, suddenly rather careless and offhand. "It will have to be reported to the Coroner, of course, in the ordinary way of things; and it'll mean an inquest and all that. What a pity! These things create such a stink!" He was full of funny little schoolboy expressions, surprising in a man of his age.
"Stink'll be just about the word, as far as I'm concerned," said Barney bitterly.
"You mean because of that other case?" said Eden; and put his hand to his mouth as though he had said too much.
"Yes, I was thinking of that," said Major Moon. "It's all rubbish, of course, because you couldn't be held responsible in either case, my dear boy; but the death took place before we'd even started operating—and people talk."
"Are you telling me?" said Barnes.
"Nobody outside need know anything about it," said Eden.
"My dear fellow—with the local police bumbling round asking the regulation questions! They'll probably all be cousins and brothers-in-law—everybody's related to everybody in a place like this. I was thinking, Barney—if there's an open verdict at the inquest, and there has to be any investigation, I'll ring up Cockrill for you. He's the high ding-a-ding at Torrington, and he'll see that there isn't a lot of undue fuss."
"How can a high ding-a-ding in Devon or Cornwall or whatever it is, be the slightest good to us here?" said Eden.
"Torrington in Kent, not Torrington, Devon," said Moon.
"I didn't know there was one."
"Well, there is. It's in the middle of the downs, and you never heard of downs in Devonshire, did you?"
"No, so I didn't," admitted Eden, laughing.
"Cockrill was on that murder case last year, at Pigeons-ford... there was a terrific fuss in the papers at the time about it; you must remember it?"
"Well, for goodness' sake, this isn't a murder case," said Barney, summoning up a faint smile.
Major Moon turned away towards the washrooms, peeling off his gloves, lifting the head-lamp with a weary gesture, from his forehead. He said, looking back, raising a quizzical eyebrow: "I trust not! The circle of suspects would be rather a narrow one, wouldn't it?"
"What nonsense you two are both talking," said Eden, laughing, following them out.
2
Detective-Inspector Cockrill, arriving at the hospital two days later, could not have been in more entire agreement. "Don't see what all the fuss is about," he grumbled to Moon, fishing for papers and tobacco in the pockets of his disreputable old mackintosh. "Just another anæsthetic death. You doctors slay 'em off in the thousands. However, I know young Barnes's Papa quite well and I happened to be over this way, so I thought I'd look in myself. I suppose you can give me some lunch?"
The Mess Secretary was with difficulty persuaded that rations for twenty might, without positive hardship to anybody concerned, be stretched to supply twenty-one. Afterwards Inspector Cockrill made a tour of the hospital, popping his head into wards and operating theatres in his darting, bird-like way; small and brown and irascible, his shabby old felt hat that crammed sideways on his head in the familiar, Napoleonic fashion; Sergeant Bray following ponderously in his wake, keeping a weather eye open for anything gorgeous in the shape of V.A.D.s. "There's nothing much to be done here, Moon," said Cockrill at last briefly. "I want to get back before the black-out, so I'll just see the widow first, as she seems to be clamouring for audition, and then I'll buzz off home and report that the death was just the private misfortune of the gentleman in question, and that they may as well let the thing drop." He stumped off to the small and dusty office that had been put at his disposal for the afternoon, and, rolling himself a wispy cigarette, flung his hat and mackintosh into a heap on the desk and sat down before it and composed himself to give ear.
A large round black bundle was led in by a stony-faced corporal and dissolved immediately into a flood of tears. "Never a cross word," sobbed Mrs. Higgins, standing patiently with out-thrust behind until somebody should put a chair under her. "Never a cross word in all our thirty-seven year of married life. Thirty-seven year and every year as happy as the year before; and all to end like this, first of all that 'Itler and now this 'ospital, first of all them bombs and now this sinful neglect of my pore old man. For sinful neglect it was, Inspector, and you can take my word for it; the things I've seen in this 'ospital, well you wouldn't believe; the goings _on!_ And now there 'e is, lying there dead in a nasty mortuary, a thing I couldn't abide even to pass, let alone go into one; and all cut up and poked about by a lot of prying people that don't know their own business and wouldn't if they saw it. Thirty-seven year of married life and never a cross word, Inspector, and all to end like this!"
"It's very hard on you, Mrs. Higgins," said Inspector Cockrill, who knew better than to try and stem the flood before the first spate had exhausted itself.
Mrs. Higgins gave a perfectly dreadful sniff. "Hard! Hard it is indeed, Inspector, and worse than hard! Here's my pore old Joe, took in this 'orrible way, and me a widder and my fatherless orphans cast upon the world and what is the Government going to do about _that_ I should like to know?"
As Mrs. Higgins would have a pension from the Post Office where her husband had worked for many years, and as her fatherless orphans were grown men and women, making a nice little thing out of various aspects of the war effort, it was not likely that the Government was going to do very much. "Anyway, I'm glad to have a few words with you, Mrs. Higgins," said the Inspector, crushing out his cigarette without much regard to table, office, Army clerks, for the use of, and immediately lighting another; "I'd like to know if you have any particular complaints to make, or if you know of anything which you think might explain your husband's death..."
Mrs. Higgins had spent a profitable hour at her husband's bedside on the morning of his operation, listening to the account of the sleepless night he had passed. "Goings on, sir! They shove 'im in a corner bed, right next to the little room where them nurses sits; and the goings on in that little room, you wouldn't 'ardly believe." She related them in detail and the Inspector believed about half of it. "'Eard every word, 'e did, and saw everything that went on. Nurses and sisters and all—flirting away with them doctors in a way I wouldn't like to describe," cried Mrs. Higgins, describing it in detail all over again. "Call themselves nurses, indeed! Sluts, more like! And cruel—well! Left 'im lying on 'is bed half an hour or more before they even washed the dirt off of him; never give him a nice cup of tea or anything; just a nasty prick with a needle and told 'im to go to sleep. Sleep! Much sleep he could get with all them goings on to be watched through the window of that little room. And the next morning! Five o'clock they had 'im up and washed his face all over again, as if he could of got dirty, laying there in a nice clean bed; and one miserable cuppa tea, and nothing else till 'e went for 'is operation. I wish I'd of known, I'd of smuggled 'im in somethink, but of course how was I to know he'd have the operation, and it's my belief he'd of been a lot better off without it, anyway; always cutting bits off of you, these doctors are. I don't 'old with it, myself. So there 'e was, 'ungry as a 'unter, pore old boy, and no bloody wonder, well, excuse my language, Inspector, but you know what I mean. I 'adn't 'ardly settled down to have a nice chat with him, when a whole lot of men come in and starts giving him an X-ray, or some such, a nasty looking lamp affair they had with them, and I don't know what all; then they put a lot of screens round him and started getting him ready for the operation; no sooner than I sits down again, and it's one of the doctors comes and wants to listen to 'is chest; and 'e was just going to tell me somethink, I don't know what, and then another one comes and there's a lot more screens put round 'im and I'm turned out again; and two minutes later I'm told, 'You'll 'ave to go now, Mrs. 'Iggins!' 'Well, all right,' I thought to meself, 'I'll go, but I won't go far,' and I stood in that round hall place outside the ward, and I watched them wheel him out on a stretcher thing, all covered up with blankets and 'is pore old face quite red, laying on the pillar. That young 'ussy was wheeling him, that Nurse Samson, they call her; a cruel girl she is, cruel hard to the patients, Inspector, I can tell you that. 'Well,' I thought, 'that's a nice thing,' I thought, 'leaving my pore old man in charge of a chit like that,' and I was just going up and say somethink about it, when another one come up to her, the night nurse, Lingley or some such name. 'Oh,' 'allo, Nesta,' she says..."
"Esther?" interrupted the Inspector, leaning forward with a gleam of interest. "Esther Sanson? Is _she_ here?"
"Well, Esther or Nesta, I don't know and I don't care," said Mrs. Higgins, not pleased to be checked in the narration of her history. "'Oh 'alio, Nesta,' she says, or Esther, if you like, and she stops and says, 'Who's this?' she says, 'is it 'Iggins?' she says, and she stoops down over him and she says, 'Pore old 'Iggins,' she says, 'but don't worry,' she says, 'you're going to be all right,' she says, quite kind like, and then she goes on and she says, 'Oh, Nesta,' she says, 'I'm so tired I don't know what to do with meself. I've been wandering about ever since I came off duty trying to make myself want to go to bed. It was a terrible heavy night last night,' she says; 'but I wanted to tell you that I've taken over our laundry so you don't have to bother about it,' or something of that sort; and then she has another word with Joe, 'don't you worry,' she says, and then off she goes, and the other one wheels him away into the operation theatre and that's the last I see of him...."
"Very sad for you," murmured the Inspector, devoutly hoping that this was the last he would see of Mrs. Higgins.
"... and the next thing is they comes and tells me he's dead," said Mrs. Higgins, beginning to weep again. "And the next thing is they'll have to inform the Coringer. 'I'm not going to 'ave any nasty inquests on my old man,' I says: 'I'm not going to 'ave 'im cut about and that's flat!' 'I'm afraid we can't prevent it,' they says, 'any case of death under annersetic has to be reported to the Coringer, and if he orders a poce mortem there's nothing we can do about it.' So the next thing is there's the inquest, and the next thing is I come up here to find out what's what, not being satisfied with the Coringer's Verdick myself: and now here's Scotland Yard, narking and questioning and bullying and me a pore widder thirty-seven year married and..."
"And never a cross word," finished Cockrill, and bowed the lady out without further narking or bullying.
3
A little group met that afternoon in the central hall of the hospital. "We saw you trotting the Inspector round, Major Moon," said Woods. "What did he say? Is he going to arrest us all for murdering poor old Higgins?"
"Really, Nurse Woods, the way you do talk!" cried Sister Bates, who did not care for this kind of conversation even in fun.
"He looked rather a sweet little man," said Frederica.
Inspector Cockrill was anything but a sweet little man. Major Moon was about to explain this, though carefully exalting his many and genuine virtues, when he was interrupted by one, Sergeant McCoy, who, coming out of the reception-room, hesitated, saluted, and stood respectfully silent until given permission to speak. "What is it, McCoy?" asked Moon.
Sergeant McCoy was Orderly Sergeant on night duty in the reception-room, where, among other things, various keys were kept. He had been greatly excited by the rumour that a detective was going round the hospital, and he now had a tale to relate of which he proposed to make a great deal of capital, though, in his heart, he believed it to be entirely without significance. On the night of the blitz, the night of Higgins' admission, that is to say, a figure, masked and gowned, had come into the reception-room, taken the key of the operating theatre off its hook, and silently glided away: returning sometime later, unseen, and replacing the key on the hook. His expression added: There now! What do you think of _that_?
Major Moon thought very little of it. "Well, what about it, McCoy? You must often have people in their gowns coming in for the key."
"But this was the key of the main theatre, sir; and it wasn't being used that night."
"Well, somebody in the emergency theatre wanted something and sent up for it. Didn't you see who took the key?"
"No, I didn't, sir. I thought it was just one of the nurses, like you say; and then I was busy, sir, with the blitz and all, and so many admissions, and I didn't see anyone put it back."
Sister Bates was up in arms at a fancied reflection on her staff work. "I'm sure there couldn't have been any need to send up from emergency. In fact, I asked the night staff afterwards and they said everything had been quite all right. They'd have told me if they'd had to borrow anything from the main theatre.... I even went down myself and checked up on everything before operating started, though I wasn't on duty; I'm sure there was nothing wrong."
"What about you, nurse? You weren't on duty either, so I suppose you wouldn't know?"
"Well, no, I wasn't, sir," said Woody; she looked at Barney, also standing by. "You would know if anything had been sent for."
"I don't think anything _was_ ," said Barnes.
Sister Bates marched to the telephone and rang across to the Sisters' Mess. "No, definitely nobody left the emergency theatre," she announced triumphantly, rejoining them. "Sister Gibson was on duty and she says they had everything they wanted."
"It seemed a bit funny, sir, being _masked_ ," said McCoy, disappointed by the prosaic turn his blood-curdling story was taking.
"It would if it were any key but the theatre key," said Moon impatiently. All the same it was odd. "What time was this?" he said.
McCoy had no idea what time it had been, but he had noticed the key back on its hook when he went to his meal at midnight. "Was it a man or a woman who came for it?" asked Barney, rather impatiently.
"I don't know, sir," said McCoy, giving it a rather eerie emphasis.
"You don't know?"
"Because of the mask," insisted Sergeant McCoy.
4
Which of the two bombshells it was that kept Detective Inspector Cockrill at the hospital that night, he never knew; or at any rate never acknowledged. He had one leg already in his car when Major Moon arrived to tell him about the first, and when the second crashed, without benefit of air-raid warning, in a neighbouring field. The syrens broke belatedly into their unearthly howl; a flare dropped slowly over the downs, out towards Torrington, splitting the early winter darkness with its gradually brightening gleam—and where there are flares, there are very soon going to be bombs. Inspector Cockrill was interested in bombshells and he did not like bombs; and there was a fifteen-mile drive home in the general direction of those flares. "I'll stay," he said briefly, and withdrew his leg and marched back to his dusty room. Sergeant Bray, rejoicing, made tracks for the Sergeants' Mess.
Sergeant McCoy was astonished beyond measure at the effect of his recital, and hastened to spread the extraordinary news that the detective (who was naturally immediately promoted to Scotland Yard), had actually turned back and was staying for the night; the story lost nothing in the telling and by seven o'clock that evening the original author would have been puzzled to recognise it. The sinister word 'murder' licked through the hospital like a forest fire, and an agitated Commandant summoned the Inspector to the V.A.D. Mess, to calm her young ladies down.
Sixty faces turned towards him through a fog of Irish stew as he made his way to their dining-room and solemnly mounted a chair. He stood before them, completely unselfconscious, his mackintosh hanging in folds about him, his felt hat crushed into a bundle under his arm, ceaselessly rolling a chain of untidy cigarettes, and made them a little speech. He knew how to be charming when he would, and now shamelessly exploited this gift. "You all look like sensible, responsible (and very delightful) young ladies," was the burden of his song. "I'm here on a perfectly ordinary, uninteresting, regulation inquiry into the death of a patient in the operating theatre, and I look to you not to talk a lot of nonsense about it; or better still not to talk about it at all." The unit beamed back into his bright old eyes, and vowed in their hearts that no word about the matter should ever again pass their lips; subsequently, by their mysterious deportment, spreading rumours like wildfire round Heronsford. In response to a further appeal, half a dozen girls who could claim to having had some connection, however slight, with the patient in question, gathered outside the Commandant's office to speak to him; and the rest retired bitterly regretting having had none.
Esther and Frederica and Woods, who usually carried their food to their quarters and there reheated and consumed it, had been obliged to have their supper in the Mess, on account of Cockrill's visit. They assembled with the two V.A.D.s on duty in St. Elizabeth's, who on account of a superficial resemblance were commonly known as Chalk and Cheese; and one, Mary Bell, who had been in the Reception Room when Higgins was admitted. Cockrill saw this lady first, while the others lounged on the bench outside the office complaining about the smell of Irish stew and languidly discussing the case, to the virtuous indignation of Chalk and Cheese, who sat with sealed lips until they should be called in.
Mary Bell emerged from the office. "What's he like?" asked Chalk and Cheese.
"Well, rather an old pet actually; not at all terrifying. There wasn't much I could tell him."
"Why did you volunteer? Because you were there when Higgins was admitted?"
"Yes, I thought I'd better. Of course I didn't even see him actually; Major Moon took him in and sent him straight down to St. Elizabeth's by the outside stretcher-bearers who brought him in the ambulance. Nobody knew his name; we didn't even get it till early in the morning when they rang up asking if any such person had been brought in here. His wife arrived about seven, and I had to cope with her, poor old dear. I was as late as hell going off duty."
"What else did the detective ask you?"
"Well, he wrote down my name and address and he asked me if I'd ever seen or heard of Higgins before, and of course I never had. He said again that there wasn't the slightest suspicion of foul play, as he rather divinely called it, but that he just had to fuss round and see that mistakes weren't being covered up or anything like that. What did you think of the Little Talk?"
"All done by mirrors," said Woody promptly. "He took one look at us, sized us up quite correctly as a horde of sex-Starved women, and exerted his doddering masculine appeal to lull us into a false security."
"Sex-starved yourself!" said Mary Bell, and laughed and went away.
" _Def_ initely not the murderess," said Freddi.
"No, definitely not. Personally I think it was Chalk and Cheese."
Chalk and Cheese were now closeted with the Inspector. "Why on earth them, Woody?" said Esther, laughing.
"I think they gave Higgins the wrong pre-operative injection."
"Oh, nonsense, darling; how could they?"
"Well, I don't know, but it's just the sort of thing they _would_ do."
"No, truly, Woody, you underestimate Chalk and Cheese. They're not bad at all, really they aren't. Besides, the poison cupboards and things were checked directly after Higgins died, and ours were certainly quite all right, because I was there. They couldn't have given an overdose, if that's what you mean; and, anyway, it wouldn't have acted like that on Higgins...."
Chalk and Cheese emerged from the office and closed the door behind them. "My dears, he's too divine; no, honestly, he's a perfect lamb, isn't he, Elsie? He asked us our names and addresses and if we'd ever seen Higgins before, and of course we told him we'd never set eyes on him in our _lives_ , and he asked if we'd nursed him while he was in the ward and of course we said we'd hardly even spoken to him, because as it happens we were off duty by the time he came in, and in the morning you looked after him almost entirely, Sanson, didn't you? and prepared him for operation and all that...."
"So what was the point of your going to the detective at all?" asked Frederica.
"Exactly what _he_ asked us!" cried Chalk and Cheese, much struck by the coincidence.
Cockrill came out of the office. "Now then, who's next? Why, hallo, Esther, my dear? I heard you were here..."
"Hallo, Cockie," said Esther; she went a little white, for Cockrill had known her mother, and immediately a host of tiny memories clamoured for recognition in her sorrowful breast.
For Esther he shed his air of false benignity; he said nothing of sympathy or distress, but deep down in his arid old heart, there burnt a small glow of genuine pity. He took her quietly through the events of the night of the blitz, going with patient precision into every detail of the evening. "All right, my dear; thank you. That's very nice and clear. Send one of the other girls in to see me now, would you?"
"Bags I go next," said Woody, receiving this message. "I won't be long, Freddi, and he'll take hours asking you about Higgins in the ward, and I want to get ready for the party. You don't mind, do you?"
"I couldn't care less, darling," said Frederica, who, being on night duty in the ward, could not go to any party.
Inspector Cockrill was much amused by Frederica when at last she sat before him, tiny, erect, absolutely composed. She gravely related her share in the evening's proceedings up to the time that Esther had left the ward. "After that I went in and looked at Higgins from time to time, and sat by him for a bit now and then and let him grumble."
"Grumble? What about?"
"Oh, just patient's grumble," said Frederica indifferently. "I always let them do it. It keeps their minds off their real troubles. He was a dear old boy, really, but he couldn't sleep, and the pain made him fractious and crotchety. He got an idea into his head that they'd had no business to put him in a military hospital and that he was going to be neglected and would probably die—which seems to have been rather well-founded," added Freddi coolly. "He said the nurses were cruel to him, by which I presume he meant poor Esther because nobody else had looked after him; and who happens to be an absolute angel to the patients, much _too_ kind actually; and he said there were going-ons and he would have it reported; I don't know who to, and I don't suppose he did either." Higgins had probably confided all this to his wife, and if anyone was going to tell the Inspector about it, it had better be oneself.
"What did he mean by goings-on?" asked Cockrill, smiling grimly at this transparent ruse.
"Well, I think he'd seen me kissing my fiancé in the sister's bunk," said Frederica, blushing faintly. She qualified this rather shattering confession by a description of the sister's bunk.
"Oh," said the Inspector. He turned the matter over in his mind for a moment. "Could he, in fact, have reported it to anyone? Is it quite the regulation behaviour to be kissing even one's fiancé in the sister's bunk?"
Frederica reflected solemnly upon this problem. "Well, if it was brought to the notice of the C.O. or Matron, I suppose they would have to make a song about it; but the trouble would be more that you let the patients see you, than what you'd actually done. The bunks are sort of ante-rooms; everybody meets here and talks and has tea and all that kind of thing. The sisters aren't above doing a bit of kissing there themselves, if they have anybody to kiss them, only most of them are such old battle-axes that they haven't."
This was something of a revelation, even to Cockrill, who had believed in common with much of the laity that the nursing services consist of all-powerful, omniscient, stiffly starched automatons, incapable of human emotion other than a rarefied compassion for their patients, and certainly immune from the doubts and fears and disillusions of the everyday human heart. Freddi elaborated, watching his face with a small, ironical smile: "People are—just people, aren't they, where ever you go? I mean, I look upon detectives as superhuman creatures who press buttons and waffle about with a little grey fingerprint powder for a bit, and have their case all solved in half a minute; but I suppose you're really just ordinary people with worries about having a clean collar and eating your breakfast too quickly and things like that; and so are we."
Inspector Cockrill could not imagine Frederica in any difficulty with clean collars or eating her breakfast too quickly, but he bowed to her superior ruling with a quizzical, small smile. Having thus effectively laid a smoke screen across the question of her having kissed anyone other than her fiancé in the sister's bunk, she answered the rest of his questions with serene despatch. No, Higgins had not made any particular accusations, except that there were goings-on. No, he had not told her anything about himself except that he was a postman and that the things people wrote upon postcards you wouldn't believe! Yes, she supposed she could have asked him his name then, but actually she had not thought of it; this had been in the early hours of the morning, and she had already forgotten that they did not as yet know who the old man was. Night sister had done a round at about four o'clock but Higgins had been asleep by then, and she had not disturbed him. She, Frederica, had not left the ward at all from the moment Esther Sanson had gone; an orderly had come on soon after the Surgeon on Duty had made a second round, at about a quarter to eleven (she blushed faintly again at this description of Eden's visit) and he could confirm that she had been there all the time. She raised her golden eyebrows at the necessity for any testimony on this point.
"So that nobody else saw the man until the morning? And then? I understand his wife arrived very early...."
"Yes, she sat beside his bed till he went up to the theatre; he was on the Dangerously Ill list, or the Seriously Ill, I forget which."
Cockrill registered mystification. "The dangerously ill list," explained Frederica patiently, "as opposed to the seriously ill list. If you're on either your relatives can come and see you at any time, not only in the ordinary visiting hours; if you're on the D.I. they get their fares paid; if you're only S.I. they don't."
"It's all very complicated, isn't it?" said Cockrill humbly. She looked at him suspiciously, but there was no sign of a twinkle in his beady eye.
He kept her waiting for several minutes while he read carefully through his notes; and when she thought he had almost forgotten her, said suddenly, sharply, looking up from under his shaggy eyebrows: "What do _you_ think of this case—eh?"
"Who—me?" said Freddi; she considered for a moment. "Well—I just think it isn't a case."
"Not a case?"
"Well, I mean I think Higgins died under the anæsthetic, that's all; and as for McCoy I think he's just talking through his hat."
"And as for me, I'm an old fuss pot," suggested Cockrill grinning horribly. He wagged a pencil at her: "Do you realise, my child, that if this does turn out to be 'a case', you yourself are very intimately concerned?"
"Me? Concerned in the death of old Higgins...?"
The Inspector looked down at his notes again. "Captain Barnes administered the anæsthetic," he said slowly, "so of course we have to put his name on our list; but apart from him, there were only—six—people in this hospital who had anything to do with the man; in fact, only six who knew that he was here. Major Moon admitted him; you and Miss Sanson were in the ward when he arrived; Miss Woods happened to be in the central hall when he was being carried through, talking to Major Eden and Sister Bates. You have told me yourself that nobody came into the ward after that; several people were in the sister's bunk, but Higgins' bed was in darkness and they couldn't have seen who he was. Nobody knew his name. Supposing for the sake of argument, McCoy's story is correct: between ten o'clock and midnight, somebody went into the main operating theatre where Higgins died next day... well, Miss Sanson left the ward a little before half-past ten; she went over to her quarters, but we don't know what she may have done in the meantime.... Sister Bates was free after she left the emergency theatre, Miss Woods says she was sitting in her quarters, but there was nobody there to tell us that this is true; Major Moon was in and out of the reception-room, Major Eden was wandering about the hospital, and Captain Barnes, though he was busy giving anæsthetics, was not doing that all the time, as you yourself know; besides, Captain Barnes is the anaesthetist, anyway.... I don't say that any of these people killed Higgins, of course I don't; I only say that _if_ anybody killed him, it must have been one of these seven; and that includes you."
"Well, I never left the ward that night," said Frederica stubbornly.
"Except before Miss Sanson left, to get yourself some food." He said suddenly: "Where were you that morning—the morning Higgins was having his operation, I mean?"
"I was in bed in my quarters, of course," said Freddi impatiently.
He looked at her intently. "Oh, were you? In bed in your quarters? That's interesting," and added, not thinking: "Alone, of course?"
"Quite alone," said Frederica, and marched out indignantly, her golden head in the air.
5
Barney was also going to the party, and he was not best pleased at being approached by Inspector Cockrill with a request to demonstrate his anæsthetising apparatus. "Wouldn't you rather wait till tomorrow?" he asked politely.
"No, I want to get back to Torrington to-morrow; I wouldn't have stayed at all if it hadn't been for the air-raid... and this business of Sergeant McCoy, of course," added Cockie hurriedly. The airraid was still going on, rather mildly, over their heads, but it was one thing to be in a good solid building, and another to be bucketing along the country roads in a little car, with the guns going off all round you and Jerries overhead. He led the way imperiously to the theatre. "I won't keep you long; I just want to see what you do."
Barney's grave eyes questioned him uncertainly. "If there _was_ anything cockeyed about the man's death, it does seem like that it may have been connected with the anæsthetic, doesn't it?" suggested Cockrill apologetically. "It's really particularly for your sake that we want to get it straight." His own opinion was that it was all a lot of military flammery and red tape.
Barnes led the way over to his trolley, switching on the great overhead lights of the theatre; he sat down on the little round revolving stool and pulled the trolley between his knees. It was green enamelled, about twenty-four inches square, with a bracket across the top from which hung three glass jars; on one side of the trolley were five circular metal bands into which were set the big, cast-iron cylinders of gas and oxygen; two were painted black, two black with a white collar, and one, in the centre, green. Barnes flicked them with a finger nail: "Black nitrous oxide; black and white, oxygen; and green carbon dioxide."
Cockrill stood with his short legs apart, an unlit cigarette between his fingers, still in his droopy mackintosh with his hat on the back of his head. He hated to know less than the man he was talking to; and he had watched young Barnes grow up. He said at last gruffly: "Talk plain English."
Barney smiled up at him suddenly, that rare and charming smile of his, that lit up his face into good humour again. He said apologetically: "Sorry, Cockie; I was being difficult. I want to go to a party"; and elaborated more clearly: "Nitrous oxide is just ordinary gas, like you get at the dentist's. For longer anæsthesia we use it with oxygen; those are the two outside cylinders. The green one in the middle is CO2—carbon dioxide; but we needn't bother about it, because we didn't use it on Higgins, and in fact it very seldom _is_ used, except in special cases."
"Is that why there's only one tube of it, and two of each of the others?"
"Yes, that's right. There's a spare of nitrous oxide and a spare of oxygen; they're connected up, and in emergency you only have to switch on the reducing valve; but, again, they don't concern Higgins, because as it happens we were using fresh cylinders of both, so of course we didn't run short. Anyway, we didn't have time to run short."
"No possibility that the reducing valve wasn't turned off?"
"It wouldn't have made any difference; after all, they were still just gas and oxygen, and the flow is regulated up here." He glanced at the glass jar on the bracket. "But, anyway, they were both firmly turned off, because of course we went over the whole thing afterwards."
Cockie fiddled with his cigarette, longing to light it, but overawed by the formidable cleanliness of his surroundings. He said, rocking backwards and forwards slowly, from his toes to his heels: "What about all these rubber tubes and things?"
The Y-tubes led from the cylinders, black from the nitrous oxide, red from the oxygen and green from the central cylinder of carbon dioxide, to the first of the glass jars hanging from the bracket above the trolley; and each was controlled by a tap. Two of the jars were coloured, but the first was plain; it was half filled with water, and three metal tubes, each with a line of little holes, like a flute, stuck down into the jar and well below the surface of the water. Barney turned a tap and bubbles appeared from the first tube at the water line, and spread down to the bottom of the tube as the tap was turned more fully on. "The nitrous oxide," said Barnes. He left it bubbling and turned on another tap, and the third tube bubbled. "That's the oxygen. They mix above the surface of the water and pass along a single metal pipe to the mask over the patient's face. If we used the carbon dioxide, it would bubble out of the centre tube; but we didn't." He let a line of bubbles run up and down the centre tube for a moment, and then switched off.
"So only these two are being used," summed up Cockrill, pointing to the two outside cylinders with the toe of his shoe. "And only the corresponding outside tubes in the jar are bubbling?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And that's all that was used on this man Higgins?"
"Yes, that's right," said Barney again. He got up off the stool. "You sit down and try."
Cockie sat down, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the sickly familiar smell of ether and antiseptic, but concentrating deeply upon the trolley in front of him. He twiddled the taps for a minute or so, and bubbles played madly up and down the little tubes. "What about all these bits and pieces—bottles and jars and things?"
"Oh, those are mostly emergency stuff; adrenalin and strychnine and so forth; and the usual collection of gags and tongue clips and what-have-you. This funny short, fat red tube is the air-way; we put it down the patient's throat when he's well under, to keep it from closing up or getting obstructed. It's got a metal mouthpiece, you see, to keep him from biting on it and closing it."
"Charming," said Cockrill dryly. He looked at the rows of bottles and jars and instruments. "Which of these was actually used on Higgins?"
"Well, none of them until things began to go wrong. Then I put in the air-way—that's why I mentioned it to you; and, of course, I used a gag between his teeth while I put it in. After that I gave an injection of adrenalin and after that we gave him a shot of coramine, intramuscularly; finally I gave him some into a vein; but it was all no use."
"And these are literally the only things that were used on him?"
"Yes, definitely; unless you count the injection of morphia and atropine an hour before the operation began?"
Cockrill considered. "No, for the moment I'm only interested in what happened here in the theatre."
"Well, that's absolutely all," said Barney, looking surreptitiously at his watch.
Cockrill observed the glance and grinned to himself; he made no comment on it, however, but continued steadily with his questions: "These injections—you gave them all yourself?"
"I gave the adrenalin, and the second lot of coramine, intravenously. The V.A.D. gave the other dose, into the muscle."
"Who, Miss Woods?"
"Yes, that's right." He pointed to a row of little glass ampoules, similar to those sold by tobacconists for filling cigarette lighters. "This is the coramine. You just break the thing open and suck the stuff up into a hypodermic."
"And the adrenalin?"
"In a bottle."
"Could there have been anything wrong with the bottle?"
"There could, I suppose, though heaven knows what or how; but I've used it since, and anyway the man was already collapsing when I gave him the first injection."
"I see. So that all that was used before things began to go wrong was really just the gas and oxygen?"
"That's absolutely all. I gave pure nitrous oxide first, to get him under...."
"The black cylinder," said Cockie, scowling at it.
"That's right; and then added oxygen till the mixture was about fifty-fifty...."
"The black cylinder with the white top...?"
"Yes," said Barney again, grinning faintly at this naïve summary of his lesson.
"And they both passed through the water in the first bottle on the bracket, the clear glass one; bubbling out of the two outside tubes in the bottle, and mixing above the surface of the water and then passing along this big rubber tube to the patient."
"You'd better come and give the next lot yourself, Cockie," said Barney, laughing.
Cockrill made a little movement of irritation at this misplaced levity; he continued stolidly: "And all these tubes from the cylinders to the glass bottle—they definitely weren't crossed or mixed up in any way?"
"No, definitely not. Moon and Eden and I all checked them over till we were blue in the face. There was nothing wrong with the trolley."
Cockrill was silent, swivelling gently to and fro on the stool. He said at last: "I suppose you will think this is funny too—but would it be possible to have the wrong gas in a cylinder? Would it be possible to empty one and fill it with something else?"
Barney, far from being amused, was shocked to the core by such a suggestion. "Good heavens, no. It would be impossible. It takes terrific pressure to fill these things; that's why they're made so strong."
"Oh," said Cockrill, continuing to swivel.
"Even supposing it could happen—supposing you got nitrous oxide in an oxygen cyclinder, for example—it wouldn't work, because the reducing valves of the oxygen and nitrous oxide cylinders are different. The things wouldn't fit and you'd soon find out what was happening."
"What about the green tube in the middle—the carbon dioxide?"
"Well, yes, that's the same size valve," admitted Barney.
"All right then; supposing, just for the sake of argument, that you somehow got carbon dioxide in an oxygen cylinder, a black and white cylinder... supposing the manufacturers made a mistake, for example...."
"My dear Cockie, as if such a thing could happen!"
"I'm not saying it _could_ happen," said Cockrill irritably; "do use your imagination: I say pretending for the sake of argument that it did happen... what then?"
"Well, the carbon dioxide cylinders are very often smaller than the others," said Barnes; "however, in our case, they certainly were all the same size. I suppose—yes, if such a thing happened, you would connect up the cylinder quite cheerfully, and go right ahead."
"And the patient would die?"
"Yes, the patient would die all right. Instead of getting nitrous oxide and oxygen, he'd be getting nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide; and he'd collapse for want of—well, for want of oxygen!"
"But all the little bubbles in the glass jar would appear quite normal?"
"Yes, obviously, because the cylinder would be in the right position with the proper tubes and everything duly connected up."
Cockrill considered again. "Couldn't you smell the wrong gas coming out of the cylinder if such a thing were to happen?"
"No, all the gases are colourless and odourless...."
"I thought you said nitrous oxide was ordinary gas like you get at the dentist's?"
"Well, that doesn't smell."
The bare thought of it sent Cockrill into a sickly warm, swoony daze; for a horrible half second he was fighting against gas, great nauseating waves of it, strong and pungent and thick.... He said indignantly: "It smells like a thousand drains!"
"No, honestly. That's the rubber mask that you smell; nitrous oxide is absolutely odourless."
Cockie remained unconvinced. "It's quite true," said Barney, laughing.
"Well, all right, if you say so; I suppose you should know. And the others don't smell either?"
"Carbon dioxide gives off a little prickly feeling if you get it in a strong enough concentration; like sniffing a glass of soda water; but it doesn't smell."
"Did you sniff at the cylinders after Higgins' death to see if there was any prickly feeling?"
"No, of course I didn't," said Barnes. "The whole thing was properly fixed up, and though we seem to have demonstrated that you could kill a patient by getting carbon dioxide into an oxgyen cylinder, the solid fact remains that it would be physically impossible to get the CO2 into the cylinder in the first place."
Cockrill stood up and stretched himself. "Wouldn't it have been—I don't want to seem offensive, my boy, but other people will ask the same question if anything develops from this inquiry—wouldn't it have been a reasonable precaution to have taken?"
"No, it wouldn't," said Barnes, impatiently. "You couldn't possibly tell by sniffing at a cylinder, what was in it... you have to have a very strong concentration to be able to detect CO2 and smelling the mask or the cylinder certainly wouldn't give it to you. Besides, we were looking for accidents, not miracles; you don't expect an elephant to come out of a rabbit hole. Short of a mistake on the part of the manufacturers, which is out of the question, it would not have been possible to have had anything in the oxygen cylinder but oxygen, and that's flat. You can ask all the anæsthetists in Kent and none of them will say that he would have dreamed of examining the cylinders. Of course there was nothing on earth wrong with them."
"Were these particular cylinders used again?"
"I suppose they were, on the next patients; I don't know anything about that. The theatre staff are responsible for seeing that enough gas is ready on the trolley; we used hardly any nitrous oxide on Higgins, and only a certain amount of oxygen; so I suppose the cylinders will have been practically full, and we're almost sure to have just carried on with them."
"You talk as if I were accusing you of carelessness, my boy," said Cockie, gruffly.
"Well, it's so idiotic to suggest that I neglected to do something which it would have been sheer idiocy to _do_."
"I look at it from the layman's point of view," said Cockrill; it was not like him to be so humble.
Barney cursed all laymen under his breath; and Higgins above all for dying and letting him in for all this maddening heckling; and Cockrill for—for coming to the hospital and doing his best to stop ugly questions about himself! He tried to smile and appear a little more grateful. "Anything else?" The party would be in full swing by now.
"I don't think so. But on our way out," suggested Cockrill with a certain temerity, "you might just show me where the empty cylinders are kept...."
Barney pushed open the door of a big cupboard. "The stock's kept downstairs in the Reserve Medical Store, of course; but we have a certain amount of stuff here for current use." A number of cylinders were ranged on brackets along one wall, and half a dozen lay rolled together on the floor. "These are sent back to the manufacturers for refilling," said Barnes, drubbing his toe against them. "Here's a list of what's in, what's being used, and what's actually been used. It all seems to check up O.K."
The swing doors closed behind them. "If this has been a penance to you, my boy," said Cockrill, fishing for paper and tobacco, rolling a cigarette and slapping his pockets noisily for matches; "it's nothing to what it's been to me." A light flared in the dim hall and he drew deeply on his first cigarette in more than half an hour.
CHAPTER V
1
A routine investigation into an anæsthetic death had seemed to the Commanding Officer insufficient reason for cancelling his seven days' leave; and when the C.O. took his seven days' leave, the Mess automatically threw a party. A large, rather dingy room called the Ladies' Room, was dusted and polished for the first time since the Colonel's last absence, a motley collection of buns and sandwiches was arranged on one of the tables, and a row of bottles stood on the piano top. There was the usual little difficulty as to whether the Sisters would kick up a fuss if V.A.D.s were invited, and the usual decision that this was only an informal do, and it didn't matter in the least whether they did or not; there was the usual mix-up as to who had promised to see about the French chalk, and the usual rejoicing on the part of a lance-corporal who was taken away from some more arduous duty to fix up the radiogram. The older members of the Mess retired to the ante-room and confided to each other that it was difficult to know whether one should shut one's eyes to this kind of thing or just mention it to the C.O. on his return and let him do any blinking that _he_ thought advisable; and ended by agreeing that boys would be boys and, after all, there was no harm in it. As the boys concerned were all qualified doctors and surgeons and included Major Moon who was getting on for sixty, this would appear to have been a rational decision. The officers' wives arrived in full force and there was a little competition in condescension between themselves and the Sisters, for most of the wives were very young and took their husbands' pips or crowns with the utmost solemnity; while the Queen Alexandras, besides ranking as officers themselves, had the unquestionable advantage of being on their own home ground. The younger officers had brought V.A.D.s from their various departments or wards; Barnes, because Frederica was on night duty, had invited Esther; Gervase Eden had for so long produced Sister Bates upon these occasions that it had been impossible to alter his custom; and Major Moon, who steadily went the rounds asking a different person each time so that nobody should feel left out, had brought his own theatre V.A.D., Woods. Woody, in pursuance of her plan, took advantage of Freddi's absence to make hay with Major Eden. She sat on the arm of a chair and ran her hand provocatively from knee to ankle of one of her exquisite, silk-clad legs. He said, at last: "Don't do that; you're driving me crackers."
She stopped and turned towards him, the whole lovely line from ankle to hip exposed. "Am I? I don't see why?"
"Heaven help me!" thought Gervase. "Here I go!" His expression was the expression of a drowning man. He suggested: "Let's go out and get some air."
The black-out curtains were closely drawn, there was no ventilation, and the atmosphere grew hot and full of smoke and the smell of beer. The guns still pounded outside, but the raid had not developed into anything serious. The wives, who had mostly come from a distance, leaving nannies and babies safe in the country for a single night, took advantage of the precious evening to flirt with their own husbands. The Sisters and V.A.D.s whirled round with their chosen officers, laughing and chattering and having a very good time. Marion Bates stood alone by the piano and poured herself out a very large gin. Barnes arriving, saw her there; he made his apologies to his own guest, Esther, who had arrived before him and was sitting with Major Moon, and went over to the mantelpiece. "Hallo, Sister! Aren't you dancing this one?"
"No, I'm drinking it," she said sullenly.
He took the glass out of her hand and put it on a corner of the piano. "It'll keep; come and dance with me."
She danced round in silence, but she was beside herself with jealousy and pain and after a few minutes she burst out: "Why doesn't he come back?"
"I should let him go," said Barney quietly.
She pulled a little way from him and looked into his face, though she continued, automatically, to dance. "How did you know who I was talking about?"
He smiled at her with gentle mockery. "It isn't very difficult to guess. He's only out in the garden, walking up and down with Woody; I saw them as I came in."
"I hate him," she said vehemently.
"There's such a delicate little line of difference between love and hate, isn't there?" said Barney, in his quiet voice. "It's like a sort of circle—you don't quite know where love stops and where hate starts."
"Gervase knows where love stops all right," said Bates angrily. She added, as though struck by an idea: "And he knows where hate starts, too. It starts at you!"
His eyes clouded over, but he said immediately: "Oh, nonsense; why should Eden hate me?"
"Most people hate anyone they do an injury to," she said shrewdly. "It's a sort of protection against their own conscience. And Gervase Eden is doing you an injury all the time. Don't pretend you don't know that."
"Well, never mind," he said. "Don't let's talk about it."
"You _are_ a _fool_ ," she said, her eyes on the door. "You think it's nothing, just a mild little attraction, don't you? Well, you're wrong. I caught him kissing her in the bunk the other night; he swore he wasn't, but I know better—he was. And I saw his face. He never looked like that after he'd kissed _me_. I believe he really is falling in love this time; before you know where you are, he'll be asking her to marry him—and _then_ will she stick to you?"
"I think so," he said gravely, though his heart was cold with dread; he could not bear to discuss it with her, but he felt impelled to argue: "Besides, he's a married man."
"Married my foot," said Bates, with vulgar contempt. "Do you think I don't know that old gag? Oh yes, I fell for it at first; every man who wants a little flirtation with you tells you that he's a married man: he hasn't lived with his wife for years, but the lawyers made a muddle of the divorce and here he is tied to her for life... and now he can't offer you anything but love, baby! Don't tell _me_ —I know!"
He felt sorry for her, for she was not made to be ugly and bitter and vulgar. "Poor little you," he said, looking down at the foolish face and unhappy eyes.
"Poor little you!" she retorted roughly, still watching the door. "Don't you realize that he's rich and glamorous, he's got a marvellous practice in Harley Street...."
"Well, I don't think I'm glamorous," admitted Barney mildly. "But I've got a good practice too, you know, and a nice old house and—well, I don't know, most things a girl could want." He added, laughing: "And anyway, what is all this nonsense about?—he's with Woody now, not Frederica."
The music stopped. He handed her her drink and got one for himself, and they lit cigarettes, and she stood there silently, watching the door like a dog; her fair hair curled itself up in little frizzy tendrils, round her white veil, and her foolish face was ugly with despair. The clock began to strike eleven and she seemed to be taking a resolution; as the last chime died away and still he did not return, she made up her mind. She said, as though casually: "Did you kill a girl last year, during an operation?"
Barney stiffened and went a little white. "I had a girl die under an anæsthetic, yes. I didn't know that anyone here knew about it."
"Gervase knows about it," said Sister Bates.
Eden had referred to it in the theatre; had put his hand to his mouth as though he should not have spoken. "How does he know?" said Barnes.
"Higgins told him," she said steadily, and her eyes were no longer on the door. "Higgins saw you in the ward when you came in to go over him with the stethoscope for the anæsthetic. Gervase examined him afterwards, before operation, and Higgins asked him if you were a doctor in the town, and Gervase said yes, he thought you used to be; and Higgins said that just before the war you'd killed the daughter of a friend of his. He said that it had all been rather forgotten, but that now he knew you were at Heron's Park, they would write up to the War Office about it; he said that the people would hound you out of Heronsford and out of the army, too."
"The death was from natural causes," said Barney shortly. "Every anæsthetist comes across a few cases like that in his career; death was caused as much through the operation as through the anæsthetic, and the coroner exonerated both the surgeon and myself at the inquest. Nobody could say anything against me; they couldn't do me any harm."
"Gervase didn't seem to think that," said Bates. "I know because I went and waited for him outside the ward. He was talking to the man for a long time..."
"About _me_?" said Barney incredulously.
"Well, of course about you; what else? He'll have gone very carefully, naturally; he won't have said very much. But if Higgins had gone back into Heronsford and spread it about that one of the other doctors agreed that there had been some bad mistake about that girl—well, it would have wrecked your practice, wouldn't it?"
"What good on earth would that have done Eden?" protested Barney, whose mind reacted slowly to treachery and guile.
"Then you wouldn't have had 'most things a girl could ask for' to offer to your Frederica," said Sister Bates, and finished the rest of her drink.
2
Esther sat beside Major Moon on a sofa in one corner of the room. She wished she had not started on gin for it always depressed her and made her talk too much. She found herself telling him the long, sad story of her mother's death. "I'm sorry; this isn't much of the party spirit, is it?"
"Don't be sorry, my dear," said Major Moon. "It does us all good to speak of our troubles sometimes; and it's odd, isn't it? how often one feels like doing it to strangers... not that you and I are strangers, of course, but I dare say you can't often open your heart like this even to your more intimate friends...?"
"They have their troubles too," said Esther sombrely; "one can't always be moaning about one's own. Freddi has no home to go back to after the war; her father's married to some awful, common woman, and all her life's sort of fallen apart.... She's engaged now, of course, but—well, I don't know..."
"Don't tell me anything is going wrong with that affair?" said Major Moon anxiously; his eyes went to Barney, dancing round automatically with Sister Bates, talking to her earnestly.
"Oh, I don't think so," said Esther hastily; and because she was afraid of having said too much about Frederica, she sought to cover it by saying more than she might otherwise have done about Woods. "Woody had a younger brother, you know, that she was terribly fond of; but really most _ter_ ribly fond, not like you are of just ordinary brothers and sisters. He was abroad, on the continent when war broke out, and he's never been heard of since." While she was on the subject of Woody, she continued: "Inspector Cockrill has been asking her a lot of questions about the injection of coramine she gave to Higgins in the theatre. I suppose he thinks there might have been some mistake there. Don't you think that's nonsense—how could there have been?"
"There couldn't," said Major Moon promptly. "The coramine's put up in ampoules; there weren't ampoules of anything else on the trolley, and she gave it under Barney's instructions. Besides, the man was dying by then, if he wasn't already dead; we only gave it as a last resort."
"Of _course_!" agreed Esther, enormously relieved.
"He's being very thorough, is old Cockie," said Major Moon, confiding in his toe-caps. "He had every poison cupboard in the place turned out this afternoon, and generally behaves as though one of us had slain old Higgins of malice aforethought. However, the great thing is that, having proved that the whole thing was just a natural death, he'll see that there's no more talk about it; the local people would have bumbled on and poor Barney's name would have suffered...." He suddenly noticed the time: "My goodness! Nearly eleven, and I'm orderly dog to-night. I'd better be going." He trotted off, round and rosy, muttering anxiously to himself about being so late. "However, they'd have sent for me if they'd wanted anything...."
All was quiet in the wards. He left St. Elizabeth's to the last, in the hopes of a private word with Frederica; for he was thrown into a panic at Esther's hint that all might not be well between Barney and his love. He finished his round and sat himself down in the bunk, holding out his toes to the blazing fire. "What about a cup of tea, Nurse Linley, my dear, since I've left a party on purpose to come and talk to you?"
"Me and two hundred patients," said Freddi, laughing.
"Well, I had to do my round, dear, of course; it wouldn't have looked well to just make a bee-line for Linley's ward...."
But with all his little jokes and friendliness, he found Frederica a difficult nut to crack. She sat dispensing tea in her gracious little way, serene and impersonal; friendly without being intimate, a tiny bit smug. He roamed for a long time over a multitude of subjects, before he dared to touch upon her own. "You've got a wonderful man there, Frederica, my dear; one of the very best. In all my experience, I don't think I have ever come across a fellow I liked and respected better than I do Barney."
"Yes, I know," she said soberly.
"He's the sort of a chap that only falls in love once," he went on, mumbling dreamily, staring into the fire. "Oh, he's had affairs, I dare say; he's a man of the world, of course, but there'll only ever be one woman in his life, and that's you, my child. You're a lucky girl: with all your loveliness and charm and—I know—great worth... I still say that _you're_ the lucky one, to have the love of such a man as Barnes."
"I know," said Frederica again.
"You must never fail him," said Major Moon, lifting his head and looking at her almost appealingly, with his kindly, faded blue eyes. "It would be a terrible thing to see Barney lose his faith. I—I don't think I could bear it. But there," he smiled at her fondly: "I don't know why I even say such a thing; for I know you won't let him down."
"No, of course not, Major Moon," said Freddi politely.
In his effort to force her confidence he offered her his own. "A happy married life—that's everything in the world, Frederica, my dear. I—my wife—it wasn't an ideal marriage, but when my son was born that drew us together, and for a little while I knew what real happiness was, real, true actual happiness.... Of course that isn't everything; but I think as a general rule happy people are good people, don't you?"
"I didn't know you were married, Major Moon," said Frederica, evading this direct attempt to draw an opinion from her.
"Well, things are different now, Frederica. My—my little son was killed in an accident, you know. He was everything we had, and we were inclined to cosset him. I persuaded his mother that we should let him make a man of himself, and we bought him a little bicycle, and after a bit he used to go out on the country roads on it. He was knocked down by a man on another bicycle; I saw it all happen, from the top of the hill. The man came tearing round a corner much too fast; he—well, my dear, the boy was flung off his machine and into the ditch. I saw the man pause and stare down at him, and then he jumped on to his own bicycle and rode on down the hill and out of sight. When I got to the corner my boy was dead. My wife—well, she didn't want to live after that. She felt it was my fault that the boy had been killed; she died very soon after...."
"And the man?"
"I knew who the man was, but—I couldn't do anything; there was no proof. If he'd damaged his machine, he'd got it repaired before the police examined it. But I knew. I didn't see his face, but I saw the colour of his bicycle as he stood looking down at what he'd done before he pedalled off, leaving my boy to die like a dog at the side of the road...." All the colour had gone out of his pink cheeks, and the blue eyes were clouded with tears. He said in his low, grumbling old voice: "I'm sorry, child. I didn't mean to say so much. It's all a long time ago...."
She could be demonstrative only in passion; and now her habitual reticence was like a cage about her. She longed to put out her hand to him, to stroke the quivering old face, to wipe away those unashamed tears; but she could not. She sat rigid in her chair, polite, attentive, interested, and after a moment she said, in her crisp little voice: "And what was the colour of the bicycle?"
He got to his feet and blundered out of the room.
3
Marion Bates stared back alone from the party, sore and angry. Eden and Woody had come back to the 'ladies' room' towards the end of the evening looking a trifle foolish, and Eden had done his best to placate his legitimate partner; but Sister Bates now knew for certain that her hope was gone. It was not that Gervase loved Freddi—it was that he no longer loved _her;_ anybody, even that ugly old Woods, was preferable to herself. Too much gin had inflamed her jealousy, and the genuine pathos of her disappointment was overlaid with an ugly spite. She grew loud and quarrelsome. Gervase, conscious of having been in the wrong in spending so much time away from her when she had actually come to the party as his guest, said, uncomfortably: "Come along, Marion, and I'll see you back to your quarters."
"Oh, I know you want to get rid of me," said Bates belligerently. "And I'm going all right—don't worry! But I'll walk back alone, thanks very much—not with you."
"Well, I'm sorry," said Eden briefly, for to argue would only mean a scene. "It was only that I thought you were supposed to be afraid of the dark."
"So I am afraid of the dark," said Sister Bates, who had used this plea often enough to engineer ten minutes alone with her beloved; "but I'd rather have the dark than _you._..."
"I should be petrified of your hospital murderer popping up," said one of the officers' wives, who did not believe in the hospital murderer for one moment, but thought that this unlovely argument should end.
Sister Bates looked at her with tipsy cunning. "Oh, that doesn't worry me; you see I happen to know who the murderer is!"
"Christmas!" thought the officer's wife; "what have I gone and let myself in for now?" She said that in that case Sister Bates ought to rush off this _min_ ute to the police and tell them all.
"You don't believe that there was a murderer, do you?" said Bates defiantly. "But there was. Higgins was murdered. I know."
"Oh, don't be silly, Marion," said Gervase impatiently. "Of course he wasn't. He just couldn't take the anæsthetic, that's all. Come on home like a good girl."
"Then what's a detective-inspector doing down here?" said Bates, ignoring the second part of his speech.
"He came down to get the whole thing properly cleared up, so that people wouldn't go round saying this kind of idiotic thing," said Woody coolly.
Sister Bates' tiddley dignity was affronted beyond bearing. "Kindly remember, Woods, that you're speaking to an officer and you're nothing but a private yourself!"
Woods stared at her for a moment and then went off into fits of laughter. "I'm sorry, Sister, but _hon_ estly..." Words failed her. The officer's wife and her companion moved unobtrusively away. "This is what comes of mixing Sisters and V.A.D.s at parties," said Bates furiously.
"Yes. Next time we mustn't ask any Sisters," said Gervase.
It was too much. She swung round upon him, and her face was livid with rage. "You'll regret that, Gervase! You'll all regret it... my God, I'll see that you all regret it...." She was sobbing with fury and wounded dignity. Eden put out his hand to her. "I'm sorry, Marion. It was horrid of me. You're tired, my dear... we're all tired and cross and horrid.... Come on and I'll see you home..." but she brushed his hand aside and went on hysterically: "You think there wasn't any murder, but there was, and I know who did it and how it was done and everything.... I'll go to the detective to-morrow and tell him everything.... I'll show him the proof of it...." As Woods moved impatiently, she swung round on her. "Oh, yes, you think I haven't got any proof but I have! I've got it hidden away in the theatre. I kept it in case... in case I might want to use it. I'll show it to the detective, I'll take it to him in the morning and tell him.... _He_ 'll believe me, don't worry!"
Eden stepped forward once more pacifically; he saw that she was beyond her own control and he felt a brute. "All right, old girl—you go to him in the morning and tell him everything you know, and show him the proof and all the rest of it. In the meantime it's after twelve and we all want to go to bed. Come along, and I'll take you back to your quarters...."
But she tore herself from his grasp and flounced off by herself, out of the Mess and across the road and into the hospital grounds. The Sisters' Mess lay at the other side of the park. "I'll go down the avenue," she thought; "and cut through the hospital and get—it—and take it to my room with me. It'll be safest there." A shell burst in the sky and there was a booming of distant guns; she almost wished there were flares—it was terribly dark and they did light up the place a bit.
Someone was following her. Someone was dodging from tree to tree of the long, uphill avenues of oaks; dodging quickly from tree to tree and then standing quietly, motionless, peering out at her. She flashed her torch round nervously, half terrified of knowing who was there, half terrified of finding out. She paused and called: "Who is it?" but her voice came out croaking feebly, and seemed to be suffocated in the breathless pounding of her heart. She hurried on, and at once there was a flutter of movement, a whisk of white, an almost soundless brushing of grass and breaking of tiny twigs. She flung herself, panic-stricken, against the huge, friendly, stolid bole of a tree and clung there, sick with dread, calling out again: "Who is it? Who's there? Who's _there_?." The very darkness about her seemed to hold its breath, listening for the reply; but there was no reply—only a creeping of dry leaf against dry leaf, and a stealthy, motionless silence that crawled with fear.
She did not know how long she crouched, her hands fluttering against the rough, hard bark of the oak; but just so long as she was motionless, nothing moved. When she started away from the shelter of the tree, the eerie rustling movement began again. "I must run," she thought; "I can't stay here all night with it; I must make a dash... I must run!" and she clutched her little grey cape about her and took to her heels, running for her life up the long corridor of tree trunks, with the pursuer, unseen, dodging after her through the shadows: catching her up, outstripping her, waiting for her in the gloom ahead. Her mouth was dry and her heart thundering in her bursting breast. She did not know whether she were running away from the enemy now, or towards it; she paused for a moment, trembling horribly, and for that moment all was still; she ran on again, blindly then, her high heels tripping and stumbling in the loose stones; her torch fell from her trembling fingers and crashed to the ground and its tiny light went out, and ahead of her something huge and menacing stepped out of the velvet dark and caught and held her fast—and she was in Major Moon's arms, choking out her terror and relief on his kindly shoulder.
"Good heavens, child," he cried, holding her safe and steady, patting and comforting. "What is all this? What's it all about? Afraid of the dark?—I do believe you were skedaddling up the avenue like a kid afraid of the dark!"
"There's somebody following me!" she cried. "Something's creeping after me. It's because I said I knew who the murderer was."
"The murderer?" said Major Moon.
"Yes, yes, I know, you see. I—I saw something. I didn't realise it at first.... I was just going over the things.... I just took it out to ask her what on earth it was...." She pulled herself together a little. "Well, anyway, when I heard about someone having gone into the theatre the night before, I began to see what had happened. I didn't want to say anything, but after to-night— well, why should _she_ have him? Why should other people have him? Not that I.... Well, I don't care, I'll go to the detective; I'll tell the detective. I think I ought to; I think it's my duty to go to him...." She grasped at the old man's arms, muttering incoherently, looking back over her shoulder into the silent dark.
Major Moon smelt the alcohol on her breath. "Well, now, don't bother too much about it to-night," he said, soothingly. "You go to bed and sleep on it and to-morrow if you still think you have something to tell, you can go and see Cockie and talk it over with him. Meanwhile, I don't think you need worry; there's nobody about to-night, except the military police, and perhaps an occasional Jerry overheard... but we don't let _them_ upset us, do we? I dare say you just heard Sergeant Edwards making his rounds, or Corporal Bevan or someone.... I'll walk over to your Mess with you."
"No, no," she said, frantically. "I must go into the hospital."
"Well, all right, I'll see you to the hospital. But you aren't going to spend the night there?"
"No, but—I expect I'll have a cup of tea with Night Sister on St. Cat's, or something. I don't want you to come with me."
"Well, I'll just see you to the side door," he said, pacifically.
Patients from the ground-floor and upstairs wards, who were not actually bedridden, slept on stretchers in the long corridor that ran through the hospital basement; so as to be fairly safe from bombs. She parted from Major Moon at the door, and made her determined way down this corridor to the central staircase, leading up to the hall. The men slept uneasily on their improvised beds, humped under rough brown army blankets, their arms, outflung in sleep, lying supine across the dusty floor. Here and there a pair of bright eyes gleamed, open and aware; here and there a face was coloured vividly green or purple, where the skin specialists were trying out some new treatment; once she almost collided with a blue-clad figure, its eyes dark hollows in a huge, white bandaged face. She began to panic again, picking her way among the stretchers, stepping over sprawling arms and legs, starting at the sound of a man muttering the name of his wife or his sweetheart in his sleep. The stairs to the ground floor seemed endless in their dim, carefully shielded light. She took them two at a time, and was glad of the brightness and warmth of the reception room, where Sergeant McCoy sat drowsily over a paper.
She took down the key of the main theatre from its hook. "I won't be long, Sergeant; just going in to get something."
There was no reason why the Orderly Sergeant should question the theatre sister's right to enter her own domain. "O.K., Sister," he said, raising himself about three inches off his chair as a happy medium between sitting still and standing to attention when speaking to an officer. "Don't get yourself murdered!" He laughed briefly and went back to the _Kentish Mercury._
Sister Bates pushed open the swing doors of the outer lobby of the operating theatre, felt for familiar switches, and unlocked the inner door. After the terrifying dark, the glaring light of the great central lamp, brought comfort and security. She went straight across to the poison cupboard and, unlocking it, took from a little-used lower shelf the proof of—murder; took it and thrust it into the front of her apron, and locked the cupboard door, quietly and carefully and without haste, and turned back, thankfully, into the calm and sanity of that bright, white overhead light.
A figure, gowned and masked in green, stood in the doorway, watching her; with something gleaming evilly in its gloved right hand.
4
Sergeant McCoy continued listlessly to turn over the abbreviated pages of the _Mercury._ 'Death of Heronsford Man' said a small headline, and added that Joseph Higgins had Given his Life for Others, in a recent air-raid. The sergeant shook his head over this (strictly inaccurate) sub-title, for he was a sentimentalist; he turned lugubriously to the In Memoriam column.
Nurse Woods put her head quietly round the door. "Oh, hallo, McCoy; I thought you were asleep. I—I just want the key of the theatre for half a second." She went over, all careless, to the board, but added sharply: "Good lord—it's not here."
"Sister Bates took it twenty minutes ago," said McCoy, rousing himself dismally from the post-mortem encomiums of Higgins' heartbroken wife, Gert, and of George, Arthur, brothers- and sisters-in-law, and little Ruby.
Woods dithered indecisively. She said at last: "Oh, well, don't bother. Don't mention that I asked you," and went out, but returned a minute later to say, a little anxiously: "There's no light in the theatre, Sergeant. I wonder what she's done with the key."
"She ought to have brought it back here," said McCoy angrily. "She's got no business to lock up the theatre and keep the key. As if there 'asn't been enough fuss over all this other business; I wish I'd never 'ave mentioned it now, the Sergeant Major 'aving me on the mat and seeming to think I ought to have seen more what was going on the other night and who took the key and all, as if I wasn't rushed off me legs, thirty-one admissions in the middle of the night, and the whole place upside down.... I wish people would be a bit more considerate, that's what I wish. I suppose I'd better go and see what she's done with the key; probably gorn off and never locked up at all...." He got up, still grumbling, and went out into the corridor.
There was not a sound in the theatre; and when he turned on the lights in the lobby, still there was no movement or sound. The key was in the door to the theatre itself; and he gave an angry exclamation and turned it and took it out of the lock. "Going off and leaving it like that! I'll report this to-morrow, nurse, you see if I don't! Getting me into more trouble.... I'll report it."
"Perhaps she hasn't finished," said Woods, uncertainly. "She may be coming back or something. Ought you just to take the key away? She may be still there."
"What, sitting in the dark!" said McCoy derisively.
Woody thought it not impossible that Sister Bates might be sitting in the dark, even in the operating theatre; she might have lured Gervase there on one pretext or another, and be having a little petting party with him. She could not help grinning to herself at the thought of the happy couple being locked in to the theatre all night, and of the explanations next morning; but she said, loyally: "I do think you ought to just open the door again, Sergeant, and—make sure there's no one there."
"Well, if there is, why don't they say so?" said McCoy, crossly. He opened the door, however, and switched on the light and poked his head inside. "Nope—no one here...."
But the words froze on his lips; for there was someone in the theatre, after all. Laid out ceremonially on the operating table, rigged up elaborately in a surgical gown and mask and gloves, with huge white rubber boots on her feet, Marion Bates lay very silent and still. There was a jagged tear in the front of the gown, its torn edges wet and sticky with drying blood: and thrust into her breast and deep down into her foolish heart, was the quivering, delicate blade of a surgeon's knife.
CHAPTER VI
1
Cockrill, hastily summoned from his unrestful sleep on an army bed, scrambled into his trousers and a shirt, thrust the mackintosh over these and, issuing a string of instructions, rushed off to the operating theatre. Half an hour later, six cold, shocked and bewildered people sat uneasily round the little office, awaiting his return. Esther was white, with big circles under her eyes, Woody looked ten years older, Barney's grey eyes were desperately troubled, and Gervase sat with his hands between his knees, staring down unseeingly at his shoes. Major Moon was an old, old man, and his fingers trembled as he put his cigarette to his lips. Only Frederica was cool and serene as ever, neat and exquisite, every golden hair in place under her starchy white cap. Her placid little voice grated on their nerves as she said for the hundredth time that she wished the detective would come and get it over with, and let her go back to her ward.
"For God's sake, Freddi—the hospital won't fall _down_ because you're not on duty!"
"But I'm worried about my drip saline, Woody," said Frederica plaintively. "He's awfully ill, and the orderlies are so ham-handed...."
Barney put out his hand to her, wordlessly, and she took it and sat close against him, and he could feel her body tremble. "Only _I_ know her," he thought; "only _I_ know how much goes on under the offhand little air of hers...."
"Give me another cigarette, Gervase, will you?" said Woods.
Eden raised his head and his ugly face was grey with worry and remorse, more purely emotional than anything he had felt for many years. He took a cigarette from his case and handed it to her in his fingers, hardly knowing what he did; she said, pityingly: "Don't take it to heart so much, Gervase. It wasn't your fault."
"Supposing it was suicide," he said.
"My dear, it wasn't suicide. Suicides don't dress themselves up in theatre gear and lay themselves out on the table!"
"You can't say what they do or don't do, Woody," said Barnes. "They do some very odd things sometimes."
"They don't stab themselves twice," said Woods.
"What do you mean—twice?" said Major Moon, looking at her sharply.
"She'd been stabbed twice; I saw it. McCoy left me there with her; I knew she was dead, actually, but I couldn't be certain, could I? I didn't know if I ought to try to get the knife out. I—I sort of bent over and looked at it. There was a big, jagged hole in the gown and you could see two holes under it, through her dress. She couldn't have done it herself, that's flat."
"But who—I mean, Woody, if she didn't do it herself, somebody else must have done it; it means that she was _mur_ dered!"
"Well, what do you think, Freddi?" said Woods, impatiently.
"But Woody—but _Bar_ ney—I mean, _mur_ dered! Here in the hospital! It can't be; she can't have been!"
"You talk as if you'd never heard the word before, Freddi. What do you think the Inspector's been investigating all this time?"
"But _Woody_ —you don't mean you think Higgins was murdered too?"
"Freddi, darling, don't go on and _on_ ," said Esther from her quiet corner.
"What I want to know is, what has it got to do with us?" said Barney. "Why should Cockrill get us all out of bed this time of night? I mean, why us six? Why not Perkins, and Jones and—well, I don't know: Matron or whoever you like?"
"But that's just the point, darling," insisted Frederica. "That's why it's so frightful if it really was murder. Because it would mean that one of us had done it!"
Major Moon paused, lighting his third cigarette. "Oh, nonsense, child; you don't know what you're saying."
"But it's true, Major Moon. Inspector told me so, himself. At least I suppose if Sister Bates was murdered—and I honestly can't.... Well, all right, Woody, say she _was_ murdered then! Anyway, if she was, then I suppose Higgins was too, and the same person must have done them both; and the Inspector told me this evening that if Higgins had been murdered it would have meant that one of us six had done it!"
"How the hell could he work that out?" said Eden.
"No, my dear, really, it's absolutely true; one of us must have. Nobody else knew that night that Higgins was in the hospital."
"Well, if that's all you're going on, you can leave me out," said Woods cheerfully; "I didn't know a thing about him until the next morning."
"But you saw him, Woody. You were talking to Sister Bates and Gervase in the hall when Higgins was carried past on the stretcher, being brought into the ward."
"Good lord, my dear, I saw a sort of bundle of filthy rags; and afterwards Esther told me you'd had a fractured femur in."
"Well, that's what you say, darling; but you _could_ have seen who it was, and so could Gervase and Bates. The point is that nobody else even _could_ have seen him except Esther and me, and Major Moon who took him in."
"And me," said Barney. "I didn't, actually, but I suppose I could have; I was in the bunk talking to you."
"Well, as it happens, you couldn't have, darling, because the corner bed was in pitch darkness, and with the light on in the bunk, you couldn't see a thing. I know, because to see if Higgins was all right, I had to use a torch. For the same reason, Night Sister couldn't have seen him, though she was in and out, and the orderly and people like that."
"Weren't they in the ward?"
"Yes, but Higgins was behind screens and neither of them went in to him... even the outside orderlies didn't see him, because he was brought straight down to the ward by the ambulance people."
"And nobody knew his name," said Esther, in a subdued despairing voice.
They all sat silent, appalled by the reality of this fantastic situation. "One of _us_ —I can't... Well, anyway," said Woody generously: "It lets you out, Barney, dear."
"Actually, Inspector Cockrill said he would have to include Barney because he gave the anæsthetic and I suppose he could have killed Higgins quite easily without us knowing; and without any preparation."
"What do you mean, preparation?"
"Well, the point about us not knowing the night before is that if anybody really did murder Higgins they must have had it all fixed up somehow or other; I mean it couldn't have been done on the spur of the moment...."
"I don't see why not," said Barnes.
"But how could it, darling? I mean, even supposing someone gave him an injection of something peculiar, I don't know what, but just pretend they could have, and that affected him under the anæsthetic—well, even so, it would have to have some preparation, you'd have to know beforehand. And as it happens, only us six did anything for him before his operation; the X-ray people messed about with him of course, and the orderly in the ward probably helped Esther get him on the trolley, and things like that, but it was only sort of last-minute things."
"You seem determined to keep it in the magic circle, Frederica," said Gervase, with a wry smile.
"Well, I'm only telling you what the detective said to me."
Esther had been deep in thought. She said suddenly: "Higgins was alone in the anæsthetic-room while the duodenal ulcer was being done; do you think anyone...?" but as Woods raised her head, she corrected sadly: "No, that's right, darling! Don't say it! I put the catch up on the outside door of the anæsthetic-room, so that nobody should come bursting in on him."
"Besides, it's all hooey about giving him an injection of something," said Gervase flatly.
"And especially as this does look as if there was something in McCoy's story of the masked figure taking the theatre key..."
"And that was before midnight, and before midnight _def_ initely only Major Moon, and us three, Esther and Woody and I, and Gervase and Bates could have known about Higgins having been brought in."
"Perhaps Bates killed Higgins," suggested Woods, suddenly sitting up straight.
"But then who killed Bates?"
"God knows," agreed Woods, giving way immediately.
"And, besides, Bates was killed because she had proof about the murder, and how it was done or who did it or something. I mean, obviously in that case she wasn't the murderer, was she?"
"We had better begin looking to our alibis for this evening," suggested Eden, with bitter humour.
"Well, I haven't got one for a start," said Woody, cheerfully. She sat on a window-sill in the stuffy little room in a favourite attitude, her long legs thrust out in front of her, ankles crossed, her arms folded lightly across her chest, and said to Eden, smiling: "You said you'd come back to the party and see me home, and I hung about for a quarter of an hour at the Mess and you never came, so I went on by myself. Now I shall probably be hanged for a murderer, because of course 1 took care to keep well out of sight, being a mere other-rank and having no right to be there 'unattended by an officer'."
"I went after Bates," said Eden. "I thought she was much too whistled to go across the grounds by herself, and that she'd soon repent of her refusal to let me see her to her quarters. She must have run like a lamp-lighter, because I never caught her up; I went by the path round the hospital, right across to the Sister's Mess, and waited there for about five minutes, but she didn't turn up, so I suppose she must have gone in; I came back the other way, in case she should have gone up the avenue and through the hospital...."
"So she did," said Major Moon. "I met her legging it up like a bird afraid of the dark. She said something was following her; of course I thought it was all imagination; she obviously had a little too much to drink."
"And now it turns out that it wasn't imagination," said Freddi.
They glanced at each other uneasily, and hurriedly looked away, only to find their eyes travelling again to those well-known, those pleasant, familiar, everyday faces. One of them had followed her up the avenue, crept after her, poor fluttered, terrified, panic-stricken girl, like an animal, in the dark; crept up the long avenue of trees, like a beast of prey, pausing, hiding, standing alert and motionless, moving on again in horrible pursuit.... Impossible, horrible, grotesque, and fantastic thought! Little Major Moon, pink and chubby, creeping on his neat small feet with his mild blue eyes gleaming with predatory madness... or Woody, moving catlike on her beautiful legs; or Eden a grey wolf, head thrust forward, hunting down the quarry with relentless ease; or Esther, following with unhurried stealth, quiet, cool—deadly; or Barney, dear Barney, driven by God knew what compulsion, blotting out from his heart the pathos and helplessness of the trembling creature fluttering ahead; or little Frederica, neat, impersonal, fastidious; implacable... Barney, shuddering, put out his hand to her: "At least you're safe, darling; at least it couldn't have been you! You were on the ward, and nobody can question your movements."
"Except that they consisted largely of sitting in the bunk, darling, with everybody sound asleep all round me, and not having the faintest idea of what I was up to!"
"And the theatre so handy, just across the hall," said Woods, grinning.
Barney's face fell. "This is beginning to look rather awkward," said Major Moon. "I went back to my room in the Mess after I met Sister Bates in the avenue; but I can't prove that. Where were you, Barney, my boy?"
Barnes looked uncomfortable. "I'm afraid you'll think it was cheek, Eden, especially as you've just said that you did go after her—but I thought it was wrong to let the girl go off on her own. I thought she was a bit tiddled and over-excited, and she might do something silly or, anyway, get frightened or upset. I'd taken Esther to the party, but she said she'd find Woody and go back with her, and anyway be all right, so I went along to see if I could catch up with Bates, only I took a few minutes explaining to Esther, and I must have missed her."
"Which way did you go?" said Eden.
"The same way as you went, along the path round the hospital."
" _I_ didn't see you," said Gervase.
"Well, for that matter, _I_ didn't see _you_ , old boy," said Barnes apologetically. "I expect you'd hurried on ahead; and it was awfully dark."
"What did you do after that, Barney?" said Woods. Barnes replied that he had come straight back to the Mess and gone to bed; and added, ruefully, that the truth was often a bit lame.
"Well, I think this is fun," said Woody, who did not think it was fun at all. "Every single one of us was lurking about the grounds last night, except Freddi, and she wouldn't have had to lurk. What about you, Esther, darling? I suppose you looked around for me, decided that I'd gone on with—someone or other—and went over to quarters all by your little self?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I did do," said Esther wearily.
"No one saw you come home, I suppose?" suggested Moon.
"No, of course not: Freddi was on duty and Woods was in the hospital, making her great discovery."
"So there isn't one of us that couldn't have been the murderer!" cried Woody gaily.
Esther moved restlessly on her hard office chair, leaning back against the white-washed wall. "No, darling; it's charming."
"Well, I don't want to go all grue," said Woody, somewhat abashed. "But there's no use sitting round having inhibitions about it. Look what good's already come of discussing it."
"You've established that any of us could have murdered Bates, you and Frederica between you; that's about all the good so far!"
"Not all of us; Major Moon couldn't have done it, now that I come to think of it," said Woody, smiling at him.
"Thanks very much," said Major Moon. "But why not me?"
"Because you had no motive."
"What motive did the rest of us have?" said Eden irritably.
"Well, good lord, that's obvious. She knew who had murdered Higgins, and she had the proof and she was going to tell the detective; so, of course, we murdered her to keep her quiet—at least whichever of us murdered her did it for that reason."
"You don't for a moment believe that any of us did it, Woody," said Esther, "or you wouldn't be talking like this about it."
Woods laughed, wagging her head, half defiant, half ashamed. "Well, I do and I don't; my logic tells me that one of us must have; my sentiment tells me that it's quite ridiculous that any of us could have; and my curiosity makes me go on probing about to find out which of us did! Now, for example, we all heard Bates saying she has proof about the murder...."
"Except Freddi," said Barney.
"She dropped into the ward to tell me all about it, darling," said Frederica, laughing.
"Yes, so she did! Well, I mean, she could have; we don't _know_ that she didn't. But we do know that Major Moon wasn't at the party when she made her speech. He was doing his round."
"Actually he was talking to me in the bunk," said Freddi.
"Well, all right, darling, it doesn't matter where he was; the point is that he didn't hear what Bates said about her having discovered the murderer."
"As it happens I did hear it," said Moon mildly; "I heard it from her afterwards; she told me when I met her in the avenue. I thought it was just nonsense."
"So did we all think it was just nonsense," said Gervase wearily. He fished out his case and wordlessly handed round cigarettes.
"Only, of course, it wasn't nonsense, after all," insisted Woods, "and the murderer knew that, and he followed her up the avenue and got ahead of her and hid in the theatre...."
"How did he know she was going to the theatre?"
"My dear, she _told_ us she had it hidden in the theatre! When she went in and got it, he—well, he stabbed her, poor little thing, and took the proof away...."
"And where is it now?" said Frederica.
The 'proof' was at this moment in the operating theatre, right under Cockrill's nose, if he and they had but known it; Gervase said, bursting out with it angrily, as though his nerves would stand no more of this talk and discussion and argument: "You're being very clever and constructive, Woody, my dear, but there's one thing you haven't explained. What were _you_ doing, going to the theatre at midnight? You hadn't left your knitting there, I suppose, or forgotten a book, like they do in the sort of novels women write about country house-parties?"
"Darling—most acid!" said Freddi; but she, too, looked rather strangely at her friend.
"I—I discovered the murder," said Woody uncertainly.
"Yes, we all know you discovered the murder; we're sick of the sound of it," said Eden, with irrational irritation, for she had only told the story once and that under considerable pressure from himself among others. "But that isn't what you originally went to the theatre for, is it? Or is it?"
She looked at him with the oddest expression in her shrewd, dark, mascaraed eyes. "Well, no, Gervase, that's not what I went for."
"Why did you go?" he insisted.
She would have to explain this to the detective too. She improvised hurriedly: "I—I was curious. I couldn't think what the proof could be and I thought it would be fun to see what she was doing there."
" _Woody_ —do you mean to say that it was you, following poor Sister Bates up the avenue?"
Woods looked about her wretchedly; but said at last: "Well, yes, it was me."
"So you will have seen me speaking to her?" asked Moon.
"Yes. Yes, I did, Major Moon."
"Whereabouts was I when I met her?"
Woody gave up the effort. "Under a mastic tree," she said, laughing.
"There isn't such a tree in the grounds," said Frederica.
Woods went off into a cackle of brittle laughter. "Honestly, Freddi darling, you're _per_ fect. You have no sense of humour, have you?"
"No," said Frederica placidly. "I never have had." But Barney could feel the little quiver that ran through her, of hurt surprise at Woody's cruelty.
"She's quoting the _Scrip_ tures, darling. Susannah and the Elders."
"Oh, the _Scrip_ tures," said Freddi. After all, nobody could be expected to see anything funny in the Scriptures.
There was a miserable silence. Woods was stricken with remorse at having been betrayed by her exhausted nerves into such uncalled for sarcasm. Frederica opened her mouth to say once more that she did wish the Inspector would come and get it over with, and let her go back to her drip saline, but shut it again, abruptly. Esther, however, put the same thought into words: "If only he would come and ask us his questions and let us go...."
2
Cockrill came, casting his hat down on to the desk in the centre of the room, shrugging off his mackintosh, feeling in his pockets for tobacco and papers, his bright eyes all the time searching their weary faces. They stared back, anxious and appealing, and he met their questioning glances with a cold hostility. There was none of the 'old pet' about Inspector Cockrill now. He said, at last, grimly: "So Higgins _was_ murdered after all! And now we have a second murder on our hands!"
They had spent half an hour convincing themselves of this; but it did not make it any the less horrible, to hear it put again, bluntly, into words. Shakily and miserably, they recounted again, piece by piece, the history of the evening: of the disastrous party, of the scene at the end of it, of the final departure of Bates into the dark night. He said at last, thoughtfully: "If she knew murder had been committed—why didn't she tell me earlier in the day?"
Nobody appeared to know the answer to that. He asked suddenly: "Does anybody know anything whatsoever about this crime that they haven't yet told me? Because, if they do, I should strongly advise them to speak up now. Sister Bates was obviously killed because she had this knowledge and it wasn't too late to stop her from telling it. Be advised and say everything you have to say, _now!_ That at least would be one danger averted."
"For God's sake, Cockie," said Esther, white and trembling; "there isn't any _more_ danger? This thing isn't going on and _on_...?"
He looked at her briefly but did not reply. Instead he said to Major Moon: "What constitutes a lethal dose of morphia?"
"Morphia?" said Moon, bewildered. He held a little consultation with his feet. "Well, I don't know; what would you say, Eden? Four grains? Five grains?"
"There've been lots of recoveries from that and more," said Barney. "But that would be with treatment."
"Would two grains be fatal?"
"Well, I don't know, Inspector; not necessarily, I shouldn't think."
"Especially on a healthy subject," suggested Eden. "On the other hand there've been deaths from half a grain...."
"And recoveries from twenty grains," said Barney.
Cockrill shook his head impatiently; there should be a lethal dose of a drug and a harmless dose and an in-between dose, and none of this vagueness. He felt disappointed in the medical profession which failed to keep its knowledge in neat little boxes; and said with some asperity: "Have any of you got any morphia in your possession?"
"Oh, hell," said Frederica.
"I _beg_ your pardon, Miss Linley?"
She fished in the recesses of her respirator case and, after some fumbling, produced a small white tablet and laid it on the table before him. "I _thought_ that was coming; and I didn't want to give it up!"
"What is this?" said Cockrill sternly.
"Well, morphia, of course," said Freddi; she put out her hand to take it back: "Don't you want it? Good!"
"Yes, I do most certainly want it; what are you doing with it in your gas mask?"
"Most of us keep a small dose handy in case of being buried in an air-raid," explained Barney, glancing uneasily between Cockrill and Frederica. "If you were trapped and in pain, it would be comforting to have some, and might save another person risking their lives to give you a shot of something. I gave Miss Linley some, and I keep half a grain myself." He produced a tiny box and emptied two little white pills on to the table.
"Here's mine," said Eden, following suit, and as Major Moon also handed over two tablets, he added, grinning: "Come on, Woody—cough up!"
"Must I give you mine?" pleaded Esther, white to the lips.
Her mother had died after three days under the ruins of their home; Cockie looked at her from under his eyebrows and his look was full of pity, but he said, firmly: "I'm afraid you must, Esther, but I'll let you have it back the moment this affair is concluded." He added, looking round at them with an ironical lift of the eyebrow: "I presume your being in possession of this stuff is—unofficial?"
"Just mildly unofficial," agreed Eden, smiling back.
Cockrill gathered up the eleven little tablets and placed them in an envelope in his pocket. "Each of these is a quarter, is it? What's the normal dose?"
"A quarter of a grain," said Moon.
"What _is_ this, anyway?" said Eden suddenly. "What's morphia got to do with Marion Bates? She was stabbed, wasn't she?"
"Yes, she was stabbed." He ground out his cigarette stub on the floor with the heel of his shoe, and immediately began rolling another; intent on the work of his fingers, he said evenly: "She stood with a look of—I think it was incredulity—on her face; and the murderer stabbed her in the breast, striking a little bit downwards to the heart."
"Did you say ' _incredulity_ '?" said Woods, and her voice shook.
He looked at her sharply. "You saw the girl yourself; didn't you notice it?"
She stood like one in a dream, staring at him. "Incredulity! Yes, that was it! That was her expression!" and it seemed as though a great load was lifted from her heart. "She was—astonished!" she said. "She—she looked up and she couldn't believe what she saw!"
They all looked at her curiously. "Would Sister Bates have died at once, Barney?" said Frederica, in that little endearing way she had of asking such questions of him with a childish confidence in his ability to reply.
"If she was stabbed right through to the heart I should think she would," said Barney. "Practically at once, anyway." He glanced at Moon and Eden for collaboration.
Esther started to say something, but stopped. Instead, she asked: "What happened next?"
Cockrill had finished the cigarette, and he sat with his head on one side, watching it smoking wispily between his brown fingers. He said slowly: "What happened next was this. The murderer was dressed in a clean surgical gown, from the linen cupboard, and a mask of the more elaborate type, the kind that covers the whole head and leaves just a slit for the eyes. He had with him, or he went back to the laundry basket and fetched a soiled gown and a small, oblong mask. He took the girl's body and dressed it up in the gown and the mask, and he pulled rubber gloves on to the hands and thrust the feet into rubber boots; he laid the body out on the operating table and then..." He paused for a moment and added deliberately: "Then he stabbed the dead body again."
"Oh, Barney!" said Frederica. He took her little hand and held it warmly in his own.
"Stabbed her a second time—when she was dead?" said Woods, recoiling.
"Yes, she was dead," said Cockrill, drawing on his cigarette. "The second wound was smaller and closer than the first; and it hasn't bled at all."
"How can you know which was first?" said Freddi.
"I happen to be a detective," said Cockie, raising a sardonic eyebrow. "The smaller wound was made after the gown was put on. The first wasn't—there's a big, ragged hole in the gown, and they've tried to make it look as though both wounds were made when she already had the gown on; but I don't think they were. I think the gown was put on after she was dead; and then she was stabbed again."
"But why?" cried Woody, shuddering horribly. " _Why_?"
Cockrill wished he knew; and because he did not know, because he was so anxious and uneasy, so helpless in face of the appalling absence of tangible evidence that confronted him, he grew, as always, nervous and irritable, staring at their pitiful white faces with a sort of irrational enmity. To-morrow there would be work to do, finger-prints to be checked, photographs to be pored over, innumerable answers to be noted and sorted and digested and compared; the whole, familiar, satisfying paraphernalia of police routine. But tonight—to-night there was nothing to be done. He must dismiss these people to their beds, and for all he knew, one of them was a murderer. He said suddenly and harshly: "The killer took two grains of morphia out of the poison cupboard; you'd better look out for yourselves!" and took an almost sadistic pleasure in seeing their faces grow even more white, even more taut with strain.
"The cupboard in the theatre?" said Woody stupidly.
"Yes, the poison cupboard in the theatre. Bates had hidden the 'proof' there. She still had the keys in her hand as she lay dead on the table; but the cupboard was open and there was no morphia there." He swung round upon Woods. "The poisons book show that there should have been two grains of morphia in the cupboard; is that correct?"
"I suppose it's correct, if it says so," said Woods. "I know we were pretty low in morphia; we'd have been stocking up again tomorrow. "
"Perhaps that was the 'proof'," suggested Eden. "The morphia phial, I mean."
Cockrill had finished with them; he turned away to the desk to pick up his mackintosh and cram the old felt hat on to the back of his head, preparatory to another plunge out into the night; and said, giving them only half his attention: "No, no, the morphia wasn't the 'proof'. The morphia was kept on one of the middle shelves. The proof, what ever it was, was hidden on the bottom shelf under some lint and bandages and things; she stooped down to get it... she had her back to the room, all unconscious that she was being watched. But she was. Somebody was standing, masked and gowned, with one gloved hand on the lintel of the door, watching her quietly; and when she turned...."
Esther screamed once; screamed out horribly, and burst into peal upon peal of laughter, hardly less horrible. They stood appalled, staring at her: Eden shuddered and closed his eyes as though he could hardly bear to see the blankness of her eyes and her mirthless, laughing mouth: Moon swayed in a daze of intolerable weariness, Barney put his arm round Frederica, and she turned away her head and stood against his shoulder, erect, but trembling from head to foot; Woody—Woody walked over to Esther and, as though all this terrible evening of fear and horror and suspicion and uncontrol were concentrated in this one action, hit her with all her strength across the face.
The silence that followed was most terrible of all.
3
Esther awoke with a headache, after only a couple of hours' sleep. "What with gin, excitement, and then hysterics," she confided to Woods, as they stood at either side of their room in the cottage, their foreheads butted against the walls, arranging their caps.... "I feel like absolute death. I'm sorry about the outburst, darling; thank you for your rather drastic measure—it certainly did the trick."
"I put all I knew into it," said Woody, laughing. "I was a trifle frayed myself by then with, as you say, gin and shock. Actually the atmosphere at the party was a bit off to begin with, smoke and beer and what not."
"Much you know about it," said Esther, smiling at her. "You weren't in the room more than half an hour all told."
"I was pursuing the plan," said Woods, a trifle shamefaced.
"It begins to look as though the plan were pursuing you. Do go carefully, Woody darling; don't get yourself into a mess. I'm afraid Frederica will take this the wrong way, you know. I really do think it's unwise."
Woods was beginning to think it unwise, also, but not entirely on account of Frederica. She shrugged her plump shoulders, however, and busied herself with their breakfast, confining the conversation to the murder of Sister Bates. "You simply can't _believe_ it, my dear! When I woke up, I had that hideous sort of cloud hanging over me that you do when something ghastly has happened and you can't quite remember what it is.... Then suddenly it absolutely hit me like a hammer.... I mean, who could have dreamt that old Higgins was really killed— _mur_ dered—and here in the hospital; and now poor little Bates.... It's simply fantastic!"
"How on earth can the detective have known all that about what went on in the theatre?" said Esther, pushing aside a plate of untouched food. "It was just as if he'd been there."
"Good lord, no! Utterly elementary, my dear Watson; they work it all out from where the blood was and the direction of the wound and things like that."
"Well, but how does he know where the 'proof' was hidden? I still think it might have been the morphia."
"He said it was on the bottom shelf; if you get a thing from a very low shelf, you squat down and steady yourself with one hand by gripping on one of the upper shelves. These shelves are glass; I expect he could easily see Sister Bates's finger-prints bunched together on the edge of one of them."
"How terribly clever of you, Woody," said Esther, quite impressed.
"Oh, my dear, I'm brilliant. S. Holmes in person. Hell, the gas is running out!"
Esther stood aghast. "My dear, it was my turn to get a shilling and I've quite forgotten!"
"Well, never mind, ducky, I can cope. We'll just have to give Freddi a rather mingy hot-water bottle, that's all." She filled it up from the water remaining in the kettle and trudged upstairs with it.
It was agony to Esther's tidy soul to go away and leave cups and saucers unwashed, but she had adjusted herself to Woody's slapdash habits, and she now tidied the breakfast things neatly away and stacked them on a tray until their return from duty. Woody bundled the knives and forks into a jar of water. "Come on, sweetie, we're terribly late; it's half-past seven."
"All right, half a second." She ran upstairs but reappeared again in a moment. "I thought I'd just shut the window to warm it up a bit for Freddi; but I see you've done it."
"Yes, of course I have; come _on_ , darling!"
Eden and Barnes were both standing at their bedroom windows, in the Officers' Mess, Barney shaving, Eden apparently fully dressed. "They're up early this morning," said Woody, waving to them as they ran in through the main gate to the park.
"I suppose they couldn't sleep either," said Esther. "Heaven knows how any of us are going to get through our duty to-day."
"Thank goodness I'm off this afternoon," said Woods.
They met Major Moon puffing around the park in a vest and running shorts. "You look like a heavenly little steam-roller!" said Woody, laughing at him.
"Got to keep the boiler down," said Major Moon, patting it.
"You don't happen to have a couple of bob for a florin, do you, Major Moon? We've run out of gas, and Frederica won't be able to get her breakfast."
"As if he would in a vest and pants!" protested Esther, laughing. "Don't worry, Major Moon, Frederica can easily get her breakfast in the Mess for once. Oh, gosh, we are late! Come on, Woody...."
Freddi looked tired and nervy and was rather cross. "You're awfully late, Esther, and I'm simply worn out."
"I'm so sorry, pet; and another awful thing is that I forgot about my turn for a shilling in the gas, and we've run out, so you'll have to have your breakfast in the Mess. We've done your h.w.b."
"Oh, well, all right, don't worry; I can manage. I'll get in two or three hours' sleep before I skip up to town."
"I'd forgotten you were going to-day; that's why Barney's up so bright and early."
"He's got to go down to Heronsford and get the car; they're doing something or other to it in the garage and he doesn't think they'll ever have it ready. He's calling for me at half-past eleven."
"Would you like me to come over and wake you up at eleven?"
"It'll be all right. I've got the alarm."
"Well, no alarm would wake _me_ after only two or three hours' sleep on top of night duty; not to count a slight matter of investigation into murder during the night. By the way, will the detective let you go?"
"We won't ask him," said Freddi coolly.
"My dear, he'd be simply livid."
"I couldn't care less," said Frederica. She added: "Don't remind Woody that I'm going. She always thinks I'm going to fade away if I don't have my quota of rest, and she'll get hold of Barney and tell him not to take me. I'm as tough as old boots," said Freddi, wriggling her tiny frame into her hideous outdoor coat; "but Woody likes to think of us both as shrinking violets. It does something cosy to her mother urge." She tripped off out of the ward and across the garden to the V.A.D. Mess.
Gervase Eden was not a man who liked early rising; but he was up and dressed and walking up and down the drive by the main gates, when she went across, after her breakfast, to the cottage. She stopped short in her tracks at the sight of him, but after a moment's hesitation, went steadily forward. He came quickly up to her, putting out his hands in a familiar gesture, but hurriedly drawing them back. "Freddi—I wanted to talk to you for a minute."
"Well, I don't want to talk to you," she said, stonily.
He looked at her, astonished, and said rather sharply: "That hasn't always been the case."
"It's like you to remind me of it, Gervase," said Frederica.
He was obviously puzzled and hurt, but he went on doggedly: "Well, all right, if you feel that way, Freddi, it makes it easier to say what I was going to, or perhaps I needn't say it at all."
"Well, don't then. I don't want to hear it," said Freddi who would, nevertheless, have liked, from sheer curiosity, to know what it was.
His dark eyebrows met together in a frown, half-humorous, half-hurt. "Have it your own way, my dear," he said, and stood aside for her to pass through the gate.
She remained uncertainly on the other side. "Well, come on," he said, surprised. "Aren't you going to your quarters?"
"Yes, I am: when you've gone back to the Mess," said Freddi, remaining where she was.
"My dear, good child—you don't think I'm going to attempt a seduction scene here in the middle of the main high road, at eight o'clock in the morning, do you? Or what on earth's wrong with you?" His face cleared suddenly, and he burst out laughing. "Oh, my lovely Freddi! You couldn't possibly be afraid that I was going to leap upon you with a hypodermic full of morphia, filched from the theatre last night...?"
"Of course not," said Freddi, tossing her head; but she came forward, nevertheless, and, keeping well away from him, passed on towards the cottage. He stood looking after her, still laughing, and the sound of his laughter followed her into the house. "Damn him!" she said, slamming the door after her; and she took off her stiff white cap and flung it on to Woody's bed, and chucked her coat after it, and, unpinning her apron as she went, made her way wearily upstairs.
The window would not open. She struggled with it, standing in her pyjamas on the bed, and finally gave it up. "After all, I shall only be here two or three hours and I can't get up much of a fug in that time." She crawled under the blankets, and the moment her golden head touched the pillow, was sound asleep.
Woods returned to the cottage an hour later. Without hesitation, she went to the kitchen mantelpiece and took a shilling from under the clock there; put it in the meter, and made herself a cup of tea. She sat at the table drinking it, staring ahead of her, with an expression of pain and weariness, a sort of desperate resolution on her face; and, after a quarter of an hour, cleared away the things and, moving very quietly, left the house and walked across the park without a backward glance. The heavy, musty smell of escaping coal gas crept after her down the stairs and was barricaded in by the closing front door. Frederica tossed and muttered in her little bed, and fell back again on her pillow and lay motionless.
4
The patients had been washed and tidied by the time that Esther came on to the ward; they lay dozing in their beds, trying to sleep away a few more minutes of their interminable day. She whisked up and down among them, taking temperatures, counting pulses, measuring out doses, examining dressings. The up-patients in their blue linen suits, were tidying beds or making toast on the gas-cooker in the little kitchen outside. Chalk and Cheese were in a fever of activity at the other end of the ward. The fractured tib. and fib. announced that his behind was aching abominably, and that he would very much like it rubbed.
The oldest patient in every ward is known as 'Pop'; anybody tall is invariably addressed as 'Lofty,' anybody short as 'Tich' and anybody bald as 'Curly'; for the rest the patients are called by their surnames, or in case of sergeants, by their rank; but there is no accounting for the vagaries of the British soldier, and the fractured tib. and fib. was known, for no apparent reason, as William. He had lived down the stigma of his pansy voice, and was popular in the ward; there was a certain amount of competition among the V.A.D.s. to attend to him, for, though every strata of society has been absorbed into the ranks of the Army, the vast majority of soldiers are still drawn from the so-called middle and lower-middle classes; and, as a sophisticated, well-to-do and extremely personable young man, he was vastly interesting to Chalk and Cheese. Esther effectively concealed, even from herself, that she shared in this rivalry but she could not prevent a small sensation of pleasure at observing her colleagues so very busily occupied elsewhere. She advanced with a bottle of methylated spirit in her hand, and, lifting him on one arm, slid away the air cushion, and began to rub his thighs and back.
"That's _quite_ comfortable now," said William with complete truth, seeing that it had never been otherwise.
"You haven't got a trace of bed-sores," she said, unsuspiciously, lowering him again and tucking in his bedclothes.
"Thank you so much," he said; and as she stood by the bed, he took one of her hands in his. "Look at your poor little fingers!"
They were beautiful hands, small and narrow, with tapering fingers and the perfect filbert nail; but rough work and hard water had chafed and stained them, and, with all her care, the nails were broken and blunt. "I'm ashamed of them," she said, putting them behind her back.
"You should be proud. They got that way in a very good cause."
"Well, I suppose so, but—look!" She spread them out in front of her, frowning down on the callouses on her palm. "A hideous great scar where I burnt my finger last week, and a bruise on my wrist, and a horrible black stain round my thumb nail... I used to keep them looking so lovely and now they're just a disgrace; my poor little hands!"
"Could you take them very quickly somewhere else?" said William abruptly.
She stared at him in astonishment. "Why on earth?"
"I'm seized with an irresistible desire to kiss them," said the fractured tib. and fib., "and I'm afraid you might not be pleased...."
She would not have been pleased, and she picked up her bottle of meths. and walked hurriedly away: but a small, bright ember began to glow very warmly in the depths of her desolate heart. She left Chalk and Cheese, however, to attend to the rest of William's needs.
At a quarter to eleven she made an excuse to the Sister, and, hanging her outdoor coat over her shoulders, ran across the grounds to the cottages, where Freddi would be in bed upstairs. At the door she paused and sniffed, in the sitting-room she paused and sniffed again, and a moment later she was running up the narrow stairs. Frederica lay on the little truckle bed; her short heavily curling hair was spread over the pillow in a network of deep gold; her face was scarlet, her arms flung up over her head, the fingers tightly clenched. There was a strong, choking, sickly smell of gas.
5
Panic. The hospital hummed and buzzed and seethed with rumour. Linley's been murdered. Frederica Linley's dead. Somebody left the gas on in the Woodites' quarters, and Freddi was found nearly dead. Esther Sanson saved Frederica's life. Freddi Linley saved Esther Sanson's life. Esther's dead. Freddi's dead. Sister Bates is dead. We're all going to be murdered in our beds.
Cockrill sent for Miss Woods. "I want you to come down to the cottage with me. Miss Linley's too ill and Esther Sanson is sleeping off the shock. Can you get away from your operating theatre for half an hour?"
"I dare say it'll manage to stagger along," said Woody, who was, in fact, off duty.
They walked together across the rough grass, under the tall, bare trees, and along the drive to the gate; a strapping, deep-bosomed woman, and a little brown old man in a droopy mackintosh and a perfectly enormous hat. "I must have picked up my sergeant's by mistake," said Cockie irritably, pushing it up from over his eyes for the fifth time. "I'm always doing it." He was perfectly indifferent to anything but the discomfort involved by this accident. Woods gave a fleeting smile at the thought of the sergeant's probable feelings, but such distractions could not last for long, and she said, vainly trying to steady her voice: "This is all really rather awful, Inspector, isn't it?"
"Getting the wind up, are you?" said Cockrill.
Woody considered. "Well, yes; I think I am."
"You women are all arrant cowards," said Cockie contemptuously.
Woods looked about her at the bomb-scarred landscape and the blast-pitted buildings where she and a hundred other women were voluntarily spending the days of their service to their country; at the fields, pitted with craters, at the gaunt white limbs of trees broken down by a bomb the night before; at the ruins of the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute where a girl called Groves, whom she had hardly known, had been killed by falling masonry; at the patches of dry grass all round her, blackened and scorched by innumerable incendiary bombs; at the jagged fragments of bomb-casing littering the ground at her feet. For a moment she felt the earth shudder and rock beneath her, for a moment the guns thundered in her ears, and the drone of the bombers was torn by the shriek of a falling bomb... Six months of it. Six months of it, day and night, almost incessantly—and in all that time she had not known the meaning of fear; had not seen in the faces about her, the faces of middle-aged women or young girls, a shadow of panic or failure or endurance-at-an-end. One felt it, of _course;_ some people had a queasy sensation when the sirens wailed; some peoples tummies turned over at the sound of a falling bomb; most of them would go through life with a humiliating tendency to fling themselves flat on their faces at any loud noise; but that was all. They were all much too busy and tired to be afraid. She smiled outright this time, and said with a lift of her strong black eyebrow: "Oh yes, we're terrible cowards, there's no doubt of that."
Cockie had followed her glance, but he remained unimpressed. "You can take the blitz in your stride; but a couple of unexplained deaths, and you all get the jitters."
"'Unexplained' is the operative word," said Woody coolly. "Personally, I'm much more petrified of the blitz on the nights that it _does_ n't come; once it's there, it's there, but I don't like the uneasy waiting for it to begin, and I don't like waiting to be murdered—or to have my friends murdered."
"What makes you think they may be?" said Cockrill.
"Two successful murders, one attempted one, and somebody running around with two grains of morphia in their pocket," said Woody succinctly. As they passed through the gate and turned right towards the row of cottages, she added: "Here's our slum—the one this end, nearest the gate. Pardon the squalor, but this is the best that a grateful nation can do for its Florrie Nightingales in the year 1940."
"It looks all right," said Cockie ungraciously. "What are you grumbling about?"
"I'm not grumbling. I haven't got a word to say against it. But I thought you might be a bit surprised and I was being the complete hostess."
"It depends what you're used to, I suppose," said Cockie, standing in the narrow doorway, politely averting his eyes from a line of solid-looking underwear hanging across the little kitchen.
"Well, _I'm_ used to a streamlined flat in town," said Woody abruptly.
"Oh! Are you? Town-bred girl, eh?"
"Mostly," said Woods, automatically picking up a hairbrush and an outsize brassiere and pushing them under a cushion.
"I see. I only wondered," said Cockie, "because there were some people of your name living in these parts once."
"My father did have a house down here once, ages ago, when we were—when I was a child."
"How many ages ago?" said Cockie, lighting a cigarette before getting down to work.
"Well, actually—I mean _that_ was ages ago, when I was a child, of course; but they lived here till—oh, I don't know, four or five years ago."
"I see," said Cockie again. "Quite a short age, really. And where are your parents now?"
"They're dead," said Woody. She dived under the line of washing, holding up a garment for the Inspector to follow her. "Excuse the Jaegar coms and things, but chiffon and _crêpe de chine_ don't quite suit the life of a V. A.D. Sorry about the fug; it's not us—it must be the results of the gas."
"Let's have a look at the meter," said Cockrill.
She opened a cupboard door. "Here it is... Good lord, somebody seems to have been dusting it. It hasn't looked so clean for months."
"My sergeant has been going over it for fingerprints," said Cockrill. "He always clears up after himself."
"We must get him down for the spring cleaning," said Woody equably.
He examined the meter carefully. "I see that there's six shillings in here," he said, peering at the little dials. "Would that be about right, do you know?"
Woods considered this, muttering calculations to herself. "Me and then Freddi and then Esther, and twice three's six, but last week Freddi put in two.... Yes, that's right; we put in the shillings in turns, and it was Esther's turn this time. Actually 1 suddenly remembered that I had put a bob under the clock for emergencies, only I'd forgotten it, so now Esther owes me a shilling."
"It boils down to this, that nobody but yourselves has put any money in the meter since it was last cleared?"
"No such luck," said Woods.
"Well, now, let's go up to the bedroom, shall we? I want to look round up there."
The window had finally been got open and most of the fumes had blown away from the little room. "The tap of the gas fire was turned on," said Cockrill, pointing to it with the toe of his shoe. "The fire wasn't lit, and of course the gas was pouring into the room. I wonder how the tap can have been turned on?"
"Not by accident, for a start," said Woody decidedly. "That tap was always frightfully stiff; and besides, it's very un-get-at-able, isn't it? I mean, nobody could have pushed it on with their foot by mistake, or anything like that."
"Exactly," said Cockie, scattering cigarette ash all over the bedroom floor.
"I came up just before we left the house," went on Woody, "and it certainly wasn't on then, because the gas had only just petered out downstairs, and if it had been on before that, there would have been a smell of gas which there wasn't. Esther came up a few minutes afterwards to close the window, only actually I'd already closed it, but she didn't know that; and _she_ says there wasn't any smell either."
"You both seem very thoughtful of your friend," said Cockie.
Woody smote her large bosom a resounding thud. "Under our mountainous exteriors, we have hearts of gold."
"Oh yes?" said Cockie politely. He produced a little wooden object from his pocket. "I wonder what heart of gold it was that thought of wedging up the window with this, so that it wouldn't open."
Woods stared at it, electrified. "Do you mean to say that that was stuck in the window? It _can't_ have been! It's one of our clothes pegs, out of the kitchen."
"I noticed that one pair of corns was hanging a bit skew-wiff," said Cockrill.
She took the peg from him and stood, leaning back against the dressing-table, turning it over and over between her fingers, looking down at it as though she could not believe her eyes. "I don't understand. This was jammed in the window...? But _why_?"
"It would take a very long time to gas a person in a room with an open window," said Cockrill, sitting on a corner of the bed, looking up at her.
She dropped the peg, as though it had suddenly become contaminated with evil. "It's too horrible... it's inconceivable! Are you telling me that somebody deliberately jammed up the window so that poor little Freddi would be gassed to death? It's too... I..."
He looked at her curiously. "You're so surprised? Yet you knew this was an attempt at murder; you said so yourself, just now."
"Well, I suppose I knew in my mind that it was, but one can't sort of rea _lise_ it, one doesn't really face it..." She broke off" and said wretchedly: "But who could have done such a thing? Who put the shilling in the gas meter, for a start?"
"Well, as for that—you did, didn't you?" said Cockrill, still watching her.
"I? _I_ did?"
"Of course," said Cockie.
"But, Inspector..."
"Miss Woods," said Cockrill patiently, "let's get this straight. At twenty-past seven this morning, the gas died in your meter; we know that the tap up here was not turned on then, because there was no smell of gas. Very well. After that you came up to this room to put a hot-water bottle in Miss Linley's bed, and you closed the window. Later still, Miss Sanson came up to close the window, but found it already shut. At half-past seven you both left the house.
"At about ten to eight, Miss Linley came back and went to bed. She found that she couldn't open the window. That is to say that in the half-hour between the time the gas ran out in the meter, and the time she came back to bed, somebody had jammed up the window, and it's only reasonable to assume that the same person had turned on the gas-tap in here."
"But Freddi would have smelt the gas," protested Woods.
"No, she wouldn't," said Cockie. "There was no gas to smell; there was none coming through the meter—yet."
"My God!" said Woody.
"Yes, it is rather 'my God!' isn't it?" said Cockrill calmly. "It's a very old dodge, of course. At a quarter to nine, by which time Miss Linley would be fast asleep after her heavy night's work, you yourself were all scheduled to come across and make yourself a cup of tea; and that necessitated...?"
"Putting a shilling in the meter," finished Woody obediently.
6
Cockrill finished his cigarette, and ground out the stub in Freddi's little ash-tray. "Do you usually come over and make yourself tea?"
"Yes, I do," said Woody, at once. "I'm the theatre V.A.D., as I suppose you know by now, and I go on duty at half-past seven like the others, and clean up and check instruments, and all the rest of it; but operating doesn't begin till half-past nine, in the ordinary way, so a bit before that I come over and make myself a cuppa, and have a cigarette and put up my feet for twenty minutes or so before the dog-fight. It's all quite fair and above-board; everybody knows I do it."
"Everybody?" said Cockrill.
"Well, actually I meant Theatre Sister and so forth; but now I come to think of it, everybody else does too. All the theatre staff", I mean... Major Moon and Barney, and Gervase—Major Eden, that is. I often walk back with them when they're going on duty after their breakfast. And of course Freddi and Esther; I don't know that anybody else knows."
"Well, those are the ones we're interested in, anyway, aren't they?" said Cockie smoothly.
She leaned back against the dressing-table in her favourite attitude, her lovely long legs stretched out before her, her arms crossed over her breast; and her friendly, intelligent face was drawn with worry. "I suppose they are: Frederica and Esther, and Major Moon and Barney and Gervase—and me.... Nobody else can have known that Higgins was in the hospital; nobody else knew that Sister Bates had the 'proof' of the murder; and now there's this; just those five people knew that I could come across and make myself some tea. It can't be true—and yet it must be true. One of us—one of _us_!" She was silent for a moment, thinking deeply; but at last she cried, raising haggard eyes to his: "But, Inspector, _why_? Why should any of us have done these things? I don't see who would want to. Who would want to kill Higgins, for a start? None of us had ever set eyes on him before; he was just a country postman, and as far as we know, he'd never been out of Kent. Sister Bates came from a London hospital. Frederica had always lived abroad. What was the connection? What was the sort of a—the common denominator between these three? Why should any one person want to kill these three particular people?" She added, suddenly, struck by an idea: "There couldn't be a maniac involved, Inspector Cockrill? You don't think it could be a maniac, or something like that?"
"No, I don't," said Cockie. "Maniacs don't plan murders; at least they don't plan deaths that will take place when they're not there to see. They like killing people; not just having them die. A maniac wouldn't shut anybody up in a gas-filled room and go away. He'd want to see the fun."
"Well, then, all I can say is that it's utterly hideous," said Woody, desperately. "You suggest that one of us, one of my friends, has killed, or tried to kill, three absolutely unrelated people, for no apparent reason.... I mean, supposing for the sake of argument, that Higgins had been blackmailing Major Moon or Barney because he'd been delivering feelthy postcards from Paris at their doors—what could that have to do with Sister Bates? What could it have to do with Freddi?"
"As far as Bates is concerned, we know that she was murdered because of what she could reveal about the original murder," suggested Cockrill, reasonably.
"Well, all right, but that doesn't explain this business of Frederica? What's the connection between her and Higgins?"
"There's one connection that you don't seem to have thought of," said Cockrill, looking up at her from under his eyebrows; "Higgins talked of 'goings-on' in the sisters' bunk that night that he was brought in... there was one other person who could have witnessed those 'goings-on'—and that was your friend Frederica."
The rouge stood out very pink and blotchy on Woody's cheekbones, as the natural colour drained away from beneath the skin; she said, breathlessly: "But—but Freddi herself was mostly connected with the 'goings-on'; I mean, she and Barney were talking in there. So if Freddi's killed—I mean if anyone tries to kill Freddi..."
"I believe Major Eden and Sister Bates were also talking in there."
"Oh, good lord, that was all nothing," said Woods, brushing it aside. "Gervase had a slight affair with Bates, everybody knows that; and he was tired of it and she was full of lamentations and reproaches...."
"And threats?" said Cockie.
She caught her breath; but went on, earnestly, almost at once: "She may have threatened to make a fuss; she was jealous and miserable and perhaps a bit hysterical—but what could she have done? Nothing very dreadful. He's already divorced from his wife, or anyway, separated. There was nothing to be wrecked by a scene with Marion Bates."
"Except his practice," suggested Cockrill. "I understand that Major Eden had a great many women in his practice?"
"He's a general surgeon," said Woods stoutly.
"Largely patronised by women," insisted Cockie; "and though I don't suggest for a moment that Major Eden consciously exercises his charm over these ladies, well, I dare say they wouldn't flock to him if he were old and ugly and disagreeable."
"He _is_ old and ugly and disagreeable," said Woody, impatiently; but she added, ruefully: "At least _rather_ old, and _rather_ ugly...."
"And not at all disagreeable," said Cockie, smiling.
"No, he isn't," admitted Woods, smiling too; a little, affectionate, reminiscent smile that she immediately checked.
"And so I say that, supposing there had been a sordid breach of promise case, or something of that kind—it would have done Major Eden's private practice no good; no good at all."
"What would that matter? He's in the Army now."
"He won't always be," said Cockrill.
She jerked her head impatiently. "Good lord, Inspector, are you seriously suggesting...? It's nonsense. People don't murder people for things like _that!_ "
"People have been known to murder people for a great deal less," said Cockie, grimly ironical.
"But I... But he couldn't...." She said, with belated caution: "I don't know why I should take it upon myself to defend Major Eden like this, but the point is, you're all wrong. He just couldn't have done it. He isn't that kind of person."
"Well, that's a most rational defence, I must say," said Cockie, mockingly. "He isn't that kind of person! Isn't that just like a woman! Now, look here, Miss Woods.... I don't say for a moment that Eden killed Bates and Higgins; but he's one of six equally unlikely people, and he had some sort of motive, which is more than can be said for the rest of them, as far as I can see... and he _could_ have done it. He's accounted to me for the time after he saw Higgins in the ward; but he has no alibis for the time between his seeing the man carried through the hall and the time that he visited the ward."
"Oh, good heavens," cried Woody, impatiently; "what rubbish all this is! Saw the man carried through the hall! We saw a bundle of rags carried through the hall, huddled up on a stretcher with his face all covered with dust and filth and his poor old toes sticking out through the remains of his boots. Are you suggesting that on the strength of that, Gervase made up his mind to commit murder, concocted a deep and elaborate plot, and started the whole thing going? It's nonsense, of course it is. Of course it wasn't Gervase."
Cockrill got up from the bed and stood at the window, looking down at the cold greyness of the park. "Of _course_ it wasn't Gervase," insisted Woody anxiously, frightened at his thoughtful silence.
"Then who was it?" asked Cockrill, turning back from the window. "Who else do you suggest it was? Which of your five friends?"
"I don't know," said Woods helplessly.
"It wasn't you yourself, for example," said Cockrill with a twinkle. "You would hardly be likely to make these elaborate arrangements for gassing Frederica Linley, and then come and put the shilling in the meter yourself! Similarly it couldn't be Miss Linley, could it? for she was one of the victims, or Miss Sanson, because she saved Miss Linley; and it wouldn't be Captain Barnes, for whatever else he may be, he is definitely very sincerely in love with Miss Linley and would never attempt to harm her. You insist that it isn't Major Eden, so that only leaves Major Moon."
"And it couldn't be Major Moon," said Woods, smiling at the bare idea. She added anxiously: "You _don't_ think it could be him?"
"Ah, that would be telling," said Cockie. He flapped with a corner of his mackintosh at the cigarette ash scattered over the window-Sill, and suddenly turned and stumped out of the room and down the narrow stairs.
Woody followed him; she said urgently, her hand gripping the thin wooden bannister: "Does that mean that you know? You know who did it?"
"Of course," said Cockrill. He picked up the hat from the kitchen table and thrust it rakishly on the back of his head.
She stood transfixed, staring at him. "You know, Inspector? But how on earth? I mean, how could you...? what can you...? when did you find out?"
"Oh, just a few minutes ago," said Cockie gaily, and was just in time to wink at her before the hat fell like an extinguisher over his bright brown eyes.
CHAPTER VII
1
The fractured tib. and fib. lay in the corner bed where Higgins had spent his single night in the hospital; the screens round the bed next door cut him off from the rest of the ward. He complained rather plaintively that his leg was hurting a lot; and added incautiously that this time it really was.
"What do you mean?" said Esther innocently. "Doesn't it always?"
"Oh yes, of course, always, abominably," said William hurriedly; but again he could not help laughing and adding, "Though oddly enough, only when _you're_ on duty!"
Esther, having slept off the effects of her rescue work, had, as she had expected, been put on night duty in the ward until Frederica should be fit to work again. She said, uncertainly, standing at his bedside: "Are you trying to flirt with me again?"
"Yes," said William, and caught her hand and kissed it, and turned it over and kissed the palm and each of the fingers, and then lay still with his cheek against it, holding it very closely in both his own; for a moment they were silent in the sweet, warm, infinitely peaceful joy of emotional surrender.
It was true that his leg was hurting more these days; and his back ached and he was bored and miserable and out of sorts, and his ship would sail without him while he lay here in hospital, and all the friends and companions he had made aboard her would sail with her, out of his life; he would be stuck in this gloomy ward for weeks and weeks, and God knew whether, when he finally got out, the Navy would ever take him back again. But, meanwhile, he held this small, slim hand in his own, and looked up into brown eyes suddenly alight with tenderness, and he smiled and said, "Oh _dar_ ling!" and pulled her down to him and held her close to his heart.
Chaos reigned in St. Elizabeth's that evening. "Hey, nurse, you haven't given me my hot drink! Have one of mine, mate, she's given me three! What's this, nurse?—there's nothing but 'ot water in my mug? Oi, nurse, there's only a bit o' cocoa powder in mine!" They laughed and grumbled and argued and pulled her leg. "You must be in love, nurse; that's what it is! Nurse Sanson's in love!"
Nurse Sanson's in love. How warm and comfortable and safe and _final_ it felt, after all the pain and bitterness of the past. William would look after her; she would put her hand in his and wrap herself about in his love and find a refuge there. "I will begin again," she thought; "I won't worry and agonise and crave after Mummy any more. She would want me to forget now, and be safe and happy and contented, and so I will. William will look after me...." And she went back to him and said, "Oh _dar_ ling!" and gave him her hand again, and they gazed for a quite ridiculous length of time into each other's eyes.
"Oh, darling!" said William.
"Oh, _dar_ ling!" said Esther.
"As I can't go on calling you Oh-darling indefinitely," suggested William at last, "I think perhaps, sweetheart, you had better tell me your name."
"Darling, you _can't_ want a girl to marry you when you don't even know her name!"
"Well, tell me your name quickly then," said William.
"My name's Esther, dearest."
"Now, isn't that a coincidence," said William; "I never was in love with a girl called Esther before!"
She sat by his bed for a long time in the darkened ward, jumping up now and then to attend to a patient, sleepless or in pain, but always coming back to sit with her little roughened hands in his; to talk, not of the past, but of the future; not of her mother and the air-raids, but of their life together when the blitz should be a thing of the past. By the time the Orderly Officer was due on his round, they had brought the war to a successful conclusion, had built themselves a white house on the hill overlooking Godlistone, had furnished themselves with three children, two boys and a girl, and were changing the honeymoon two-seater Chrysler for a sedate family Daimler. Esther dragged herself away at last. "You're supposed to be an invalid, my sweet; you really must go to sleep...."
"Talking about sleeping, Esther... have you ever given any serious thought to the double-versus-twin-beds controversy?"
"Oh, William!" she protested, laughing and blushing.
"I think I'm definitely anti-twin," said William, pulling her back to him by the corner of her apron.
2
Night Sister came round with the Orderly Medical Officer. "We had three new operation cases to-day, Major Jones; will you prescribe for them? And one of the hernias that was done yesterday is having a good deal of pain still. The fractured tib. and rib. seems to have been complaining that his leg is hurting him more than it did; how is he to-night, nurse?"
In the brief intervals during which he had had time to notice it, William had said that his leg really was a bit troublesome; he might as well have a good night, anyway, thought Esther, and reported that a sleeping draught would be welcome. The O.M.O. scribbled prescriptions and Sister handed out morphia and sleeping powders from the poison cupboard. Esther, going off up the ward with a syringe in her hand, heard her say to the doctor: "I suppose it's all right to let her give the injections? After all she _is_ one of 'them'..."
Major Moon arrived in the bunk at half-past ten. "Got any tea going, Esther, my dear?" As she assented, smiling, he came up to her suddenly and took her chin in his hand, turning her face to the light. "What's happened to you, child? You look positively lovely to-night!"
"Do I?" she said, foolishly happy.
He took his hand away, but his fingers seemed to linger over the smooth, soft skin. "You always were a beautiful creature, Esther, with that perfect oval face of yours, like a madonna in a church; but to-night the madonna seems to have gone all—fey."
"The madonna's fallen in love," she confessed, laughing.
He caught his breath sharply, but almost at once he said gaily: "In love! You're in love, Esther; that's what it is, it's written all over your face. Tell me about it and who is the lucky young man..."
She told him all about it. William slept peacefully in the bed next door to the bunk and she poured out the happy story of their love affair, of all that it meant to her. "Don't think that the—the security and money and all that mean _any_ thing, Major Moon, compared with just being in love with him; but of course they do count, they must. I was so frightened of the future, because after the war I'd have had to keep myself and I just wouldn't have known where to begin. Mummy had a pension and she lived on that, and—well, you know what mothers are, she didn't want me to work and she always thought I would get married and not have to.... I never had any training, and being a V.A.D. doesn't get you anywhere, though I used to think it would help, that was why I took it up.... But it doesn't does it...? I just don't know how I would have lived. But now... and, oh, Major Moon, he _is_ so sweet and I _am_ so much in love.... It's quite absurd, I know, we've only known each other a week or so, but—well, there it is, these things happen...."
"I'm very glad for you, my dear," he said and he put his arm round her and kissed her on the lips.
It was a tiny shock, for it was not the kiss of an elderly man, saluting a young girl with her heart engaged elsewhere; but of a lover. He released her at once, however, and said humbly: "I'm sorry, Esther; I meant to give you just a fatherly peck and my blessing, and it got out of hand a bit.... You must forgive me; it's your fault—you're so very lovely to-night!"
Woods appeared at the door with her arms outstretched before her, moaning, "Unclean! Unclean!" At sight of Major Moon, she dropped her hands to her sides and said, laughing: "Oh, I'm sorry, sir; I didn't think anyone would be here. But still, you're one of us, too..."
"What _is_ the matter with you, Woody?" said Esther.
"My dear, the inmates of our shelter have petitioned that when there are air-raids, I shall sleep somewhere else; they think I'm going to rise up in the night and set fire to their palliasses with oil from the paraffin lamps!"
"Oh, nonsense, darling...."
"They do really. Can I have some tea? No, honestly, Esther, you and I and Freddi, when she gets well, have got to use the little Anderson shelter outside the cottages. Com thinks we shall 'feel more comfortable' there."
"What happens if we slaughter each other? Nobody cares about that, I suppose?"
"Well, we're all potential criminals and we're supposed to be hardened to attempted murder. Are you an outcast too, Major Moon?"
"There's a tendency to allow Barnes and Eden and me to monopolise the ante-room fire undisturbed," confessed Major Moon. "But everyone is very polite and friendly, and they do make great efforts not to let us feel our position too acutely! The Press is seething round the hospital, and the C.O.s put a sentry on the main gates, and on the gates of the Mess with orders to let nobody in without a pass...."
"What fun we do have," said Woody. She stood with her elbows on the mantelpiece, staring down unhappily into the fire, and repeated what was uppermost in her mind: "The Inspector says it's one of us; and he knows which!"
One of us. One of _us_! "Of course Frederica's out of it," continued Woody, as though it did them any good to narrow the circle even further down, "because she'd hardly have tried to gas herself...."
"No, of course; Freddi's right out of it," said Esther, glad of that, anyway.
"On the other hand, she might have, knowing that she would be rescued; I mean, then all of us would have said, just as we're doing, that of course Freddi couldn't be suspected. For that matter, Esther, so might you have fixed the gas tap, knowing that you would be able to save her, and throw us all off the scent."
"So I might," acknowledged Esther, much struck.
"But how could any of us have wanted to kill Higgins?" cried Major Moon impatiently. "That's the crux of the matter. The attempt on Frederica was probably made because she 'knew too much' as they say in the novels; and the murder of Sister Bates was almost certainly for that reason. But why should any of _us_ have wanted Higgins to die?"
Woody did not repeat her theory of the feelthy postcards. Instead she suggested that perhaps Sister Bates had killed Higgins and somebody had killed _her_ in revenge.
"Oh, nonsense, darling," said Esther. "Why should Bates have wanted to kill Higgins in the first place?"
"Well, because he'd heard a scene between her and Gervase, in here, and he was going to publish it all round the hospital."
"Even if that could have been a motive for either of them, Woody," said Major Moon gravely, "it would be more likely to be Eden."
"Yes, but we know it can't have been Gervase, anyway," protested Woods, "because he certainly wouldn't have tried to kill Frederica, later on. He was terribly keen on Freddi—he'd never have tried to harm her."
"Why do you say he _was_ fond of her?" said Esther.
"Well, is, then, if you like."
"I don't think your defence would cut much ice with Inspector Cockrill, Woody," said Major Moon quietly. He finished his cup of tea and got to his feet and his mild, blue eyes were full of anxiety and distress. "I like Eden," he said, rather inconsequently. "I have always liked him; he's a—he's a charming fellow. I wish... I don't think..."
Esther wished that the conversation might end, for she was dying to tell Woody about William. She said, firmly: "Gervase couldn't have had anything to do with the murders of Higgins or Bates, for the simple reason that he couldn't have had anything to do with the attempt on Freddi, whether he likes her or not. He was nowhere near the cottage this morning; he couldn't have wedged up the window and turned on the gas tap. He didn't know that the meter needed a shilling."
"No," said Major Moon; "of course." But he still stood, looking down miserably at his toes, and he seemed to be on the brink of a resolution. He said at last: "I don't like to say this but.... You girls must look after yourselves.... Esther, you must look after yourself, my dear. I don't want to say a word against Eden, not a word, but... well, after I met you girls in the park this morning, I saw Eden, you know. When I run around the grounds of a morning I take an old tweed coat with me, just to put round my shoulders when I cross the road, back to the Mess. This morning I dropped it down beside a bush; and as I stood there putting it on, Eden came out of the Mess. He—well, Esther, he looked carefully up and down the drive; I don't like to say it, my dear, but he did. Then he went over to your cottage and—he glanced up at the window, stood looking up at the window; and then he pushed open the door and went in. A minute afterwards he came out agan and looked about him; by that time I was at the gates of the Mess and I suppose he didn't see me. But I saw him. Eden may not have known about the shilling, my dear girls, but two minutes before Frederica came off duty and back to her bed—I saw him coming out of your house." He added, heavily, turning to the door: "What worries me is—why hasn't he mentioned it?"
3
William had a visitor on the following afternoon. Detective Inspector Cockrill arrived at the door of the ward, and stood peering in rather nervously, his felt hat crushed into a shapeless bundle under his arm. Cheese appeared at his elbow. "In _spec_ tor—how lovely to see you again!"
"Have I ever seen you before?" said Cockie, bleakly.
"Oh, In _spec_ tor! The first night you came here, don't you remember? My friend and I talked to you in the Com's office, over at the V.A.D. Mess; you were so sweet to us!" said Cheese with a girlish wriggle; and added that she and her friend had been wondering ever since if they could ever dare to ask him for his autograph.
"You'd better not," said Cockie in a fearful voice. "What do you take me for—a film star?" He suddenly waved his stick: "Hallo, my boy! Coming to have a talk with you...!" and marched over to William's bedside, leaving Cheese flat. "Got out of his bed the wrong side, this morning," she confided to an equally disappointed Chalk.
Cockrill had known William's father, as he knew most of the personalities of North Kent. "Hallo, Cockie," said William, struggling up to an almost sitting position. "How ripping to see you!"
"Don't _you_ start asking for my autograph," implored Cockie; he chucked his hat on to the floor beside his chair, and took out a tin of tobacco. "I suppose I can smoke in this vale of antisepsis?"
"Yes, rather, of course you can. Here," said William, producing the three cigarettes remaining out of his daily ration of five; "do have one of mine."
"No thanks, I prefer my own." His nicotined fingers packed and rolled; he said, not looking up from his work: "How's your leg, my boy?"
"Oh, it's quite all right," said William, breezily. "Getting along like a house on fire."
"Are you all right in this place? Do they look after you properly?" "Good lord, yes," said William devoutly. "It's marvellous." Cockrill raised an eyebrow and looked about him. It did not seem so particularly marvellous. The tables down the centre were brightened by a few flowers in an assortment of rather hideous vases, and the up-patients lounged round them in their blue linen coats and trousers, doing jig-saw puzzles or writing letters; or clustered round the beds of those not yet up, playing Housie-housie or Whist. Large notices on the walls forbade gambling for money, under pain of death, so the pennies and ha'pennies were kept tucked away under pillows. A man only just out of bed was being led slowly and with infinite patience and kindliness, by a great lout of a guardsman, up and down the ward. "There you are, mate! Doing fine, you are...." The Red Cross librarian came round with a trolley-load of books. They scrabbled in their lockers for last week's. "Give us a nice bit of blood and thunder, Miss." "You give 'im a love story, Miss, that's what'e wants... a nice bit of romance...." A man lying drowsy from his pre-operative injection was loudly consoled by his friends. "Won't be long now, old boy. Have a nice ride, mate; give our love to the operating theatre." A couple of robots in long, green gowns whisked in with a wheeled white trolley, and bundled him on to it; covered with blankets and with his head wrapped up in a rug, he was wheeled out of the ward. "Good luck, chum!" cried the men, and went back, apparently unmoved, to their Housie-housie. On a bed stripped down to the rubber sheet, a man lay without pillows, coming-to from his anæsthetic. A scarlet face was raised for a moment, two bright eyes looked vacantly into space, and the head dropped back with a heavy thud. "You lay still, mate," yelled half a dozen voices; and a man got up and went over and held the man's wrist for a moment, bending over him. "You lay quiet, boy, and don't keep shoving yer 'ead up." He called down the ward: "Here, nurse; 'e's coming round," and went and sat down to his game again. "Pore beggar; I wouldn't be in 'is shoes! Thank 'eavens, I've got mine over." A man with a broken back, lay on a high, S-shaped bed, staring up at the ceiling as he had lain and stared for six weeks and must lie for many weeks more. Number seven, who still had asthma, inhaled Friar's Balsam in sickly wafts, peering out balefully from under a woolen shawl. Cockrill finished his first cigarette, ground out the butt with his heel, and then respectfully picked it up and put it in the ash-try on William's locker. He said, without preamble: "I suppose you know about these—deaths? Higgins, and the Bates girl."
"Yes I know about them. News travels like wildfire in a place like this, and poor old Higgins was a pal of mine."
"How did you come across him—up at the brewery?"
"No, I worked under him in the A.R.P.," said William. "He was leader of a rescue squad, you know. I didn't get called up for about a year after war broke out, so I thought I would do a bit of voluntary work while I waited, just to prevent the girls from handing me white feathers in the streets, you know. He was a marvellous old boy, was Joe. I went through all the raids with him; we never missed a blitz and we had a lot of fun. When I came back on leave I dropped down to the Town Hall to see him, and got caught in the raid there; we were sitting talking and listening to the radio while he waited to go out on a job, when—whang! a bloody great bomb hit the place smack in the middle and the whole roof caved in. The other three chaps copped it, but Joe and I were protected by a beam or something, I suppose, and lay there trapped by the legs. He asked me if I was O.K. and then I must have passed out, I think; when I came to again we were still there, but he was unconscious. Then the chaps got down to us and hauled us out; they took him first, of course, because I was more or less all right." He added, grinning: "I'd like to be able to tell you that I implored them to leave me and save the old boy and I would stick it out till the end, but I didn't have a chance, because that's exactly what they were going to do anyway! The fantastic thing was that the radio went on working all the time; we'd been listening-in to the German broadcast, and while I lay there in the dark—with water dripping all round me, a gas-escape somewhere not too far away, and my leg caught under a girder and giving me hell—some filth-hound was droning away about how effete and rotten I was, and how we all ought to make friends with Germany before it was too late. There was a frightful din going on outside, and the bombs were dropping down like ripe apples...."
Once, when Cockrill was driving along the Heronsford Road in his car, an incendiary had hit the roof and gone right through to the back seat and set the whole concern on fire; he would dearly have liked to tell about it and about the time he had driven slap into a crater that hadn't been there half an hour before—how if he'd been only twenty minutes earlier, if he hadn't called in at the Black Dog in Pigeonsford village and had a glass of beer with the landlord, if he hadn't stopped to offer a lift to three Auxiliary Territorial Service girls, and gone a few miles out of his way to take them to their station, he might easily have been killed.... But William, having got his own bomb-story off his chest, had returned to Higgins. "I can't think who on earth could have wanted to bump the old boy off; I mean, he was an awfully good fellow, really, one of the best, never did any harm to anyone; you can't go through the raids working for a man, and not know what he's really like." His own part in going through the raids, humbly working 'for' William Higgins, postman, did not appear to impress him as anything particularly praiseworthy.
Cockie started a small conflagration at the wispy end of a new cigarette. "Do you know any of the other people concerned in this case?"
William drew deeply on his own cigarette, and replied that he knew Esther Sanson; she—well, actually she worked in this ward. "And I know little Linley; she was on night-duty here, before she got her head put in the gas-oven; and I've seen Eden in the ward, looking at his cases, and Barnes, of course; and Major Moon looked at my leg this morning, as the surgeon who originally did it is away on leave. He seems a nice old boy. My father used to know him on various committees and things, and Dr. Barnes too—this chap's father."
"Do you know Miss Woods?"
"No. She told Esther—she said she was coming to see me one day and make my acquaintance, but she hasn't turned up. I used to play with some children of that name when I was so-high; I wonder if she'll remember me?"
"I doubt it," said Cockie dryly. As William looked surprised, he added rather quickly: "Tell me about little Miss Linley; you saw a good deal of her, that night you were brought in, I suppose?"
"Yes, she was marvellous to me," said William, at once. "I must have been a frightful nuisance having to be rigged up with this thing in the middle of the night, but she went about it quite calmly and coolly as if she had nothing else to do all night, and of course she was frantically busy really, poor kid. Even Higgins had to admit that she was wonderful, though he didn't have much use for her, having seen her necking with her boy-friends earlier in the evening, in the bunk next door; but he had a terrible night, poor old boy, in a lot of pain, and not able to get any sleep, and he said that she was terribly good to him; she never left the ward for a moment, and he didn't know how she kept it up, a fragile looking little thing like her. She's a funny girl, though; I heard her talking to old Moon, night before last, in the bunk; he was telling her about his child being knocked down and killed by a man on a bicycle; and all she could think of by way of sympathy was to ask him politely what colour the bicycle had been! Esther says it's because she's really shy under all that poise; and rather inarticulate and that she would like to be friendly and sympathetic, but she can't."
Cockrill would never have thought Frederica devoid of self-possession. "She seems rather—hard," he suggested. "Is she a good nurse?"
"Oh, the perfect article," said William immediately. "She talks to you as though you were a naughty and rather mutton-headed little boy, and quite convinces you that your leg doesn't hurt at all, really, and that, if you only knew it, you have a passionate desire to eat your nice ground-rice pudding. She hasn't got any use for weakness or self-pity, but when things are bad... gosh! she's too sweet. The chaps simply love her. Of course she talks as though it were all a perfect bore, and she simply didn't know _what_ she was doing here anyway! but that's just because she doesn't like slop. I must say, I like Frederica. I think she's grand."
A man groaned horribly in a bed half-way up the ward. Cockie shuddered, reaching under his chair for his hat. "Poor devil—what's wrong with him?"
"He gets attacks of pain," said William cheerfully, with the strange, protective indifference that grows up round the hospital patient, against the sufferings of others. "You get used to it. I used to groan a bit myself, and nobody shed tears over _me._ It's awful at night, though; we had two emergency operations yesterday, and the poor devils kept us awake till morning; however, we've got the day to sleep in if we want to. It's extraordinary how you get acclimatised."
A case was brought back from the theatre, having crossed with the gentleman who had just gone up. Cockie blenched slightly as a sickly wave of anæsthetic wafted itself to his nostrils. The head lolled, scarlet faced, on the rubber sheet, mouth open, eyes closed. In a cocoon of blankets, the limp figure was lifted on to the bed and there left to its own resources, a kidney shaped bowl placed handily at one side. The stretcher was just being wheeled off when one of the green-robed figures suddenly jerked itself away and advancing in a dreadful eddy of ether, cried lustily: "Hallo, Inspector! What ever are you a-doing-of here?"
"Oh, hallo, Miss Woods," said Cockie, faintly.
"Keep an eye on him, will you?" said Woods to William, nodding casually in the direction of the prostrate victim in the opposite bed. "If he tries to sit up or anything, yell to him to lie down, and pipe up for the nurse." She ran after the departing trolley, crying gaily: "Oi! Wait for me!"
Cockrill was much relieved to find that the patient was not to be left entirely to the limited ministrations of William, for Chalk—or was it Cheese?—emerged from the bunk and stood over him for a few minutes, flexing an apparently boneless arm, before tucking it away under the blankets, and arranging a couple of fresh hot-water bottles in the bed. He sat silent for a moment, staring down into the crown of his hat, trying to formulate a question to put to William; for he was made very anxious by something the boy had said—or not said; and, finally, looked up suddenly with the query on his lips. But it was never made or answered; for William was sitting erect against his pillows with his hand to his mouth, staring into space, and muttering feverishly: "Oh, my God! Where on earth have I heard that voice?"
CHAPTER VIII
1
Gervase Eden sat on the great wicker laundry basket in the lobby of the operating theatre, and waited for Major Moon. "Where is the silly old beezer? He said he'd be here at seven...." The swing doors had been hooked back, and through the doorway he kept an eye on the main entrance across the hall.
Woods came out of the theatre and locked the door behind her. She pretended not to notice Gervase, sitting in the half-light smoking his cigarette. The act was over. Freddi was, for some reason, refusing to have anything more to do with him; she had seen nobody since her escape from the gas, but Barnes; and Barney had come back, radiant, from their first interview, and confided to Woody that Frederica had, all on her own initiative, suggested that they should get married very soon. There was no longer any need for Gervase to be distracted; she could lapse back into her former indifference and never bother to speak to him again.... But out of the corner of her eye she saw the turn of his head, the line of his thin, angular body, the movement of his nervous fingers as he fumbled his cigarette; and when he said, "Hallo, Woody!" her heart leapt and she said softly: "Hallo, don Juan!" and went over to him.
"Oh, heavens!" thought Eden, appalled by a note in her voice that he had heard in the suddenly exultant voices of too many women. "Oh, gosh! Don't let _her_ start!" He informed her as roughly as he could that she had a dirty mark on her face.
Woody went rather pink. "Oh, Gervase, have I?" She rubbed at it with her handkerchief, standing rather uncertainly before him.
"Yes, you have," he said. "And it looks awful." But it looked very sweet, really, and a little bit pathetic, and he drew her to him and took the handkerchief out of her hand and wiped the mark gently away. "Now you look a clean girl," he said; and he gave her a little shake and added, quite involuntarily: "Oh, Woody—I do like you!"
Woody's heart melted within her. " _Do_ you, Gervase?"
"Yes, I do," he said. "You're so...." He broke off and improved the shining hour by improvising: "You're such a good _friend_ , Woody. You don't get sentimental and silly and take things too seriously; you can have a little petting party in the evening and just be ordinary again, next day. And if a man kisses you, you don't go off the handle and run around screaming that you've been robbed of something above rubies."
"It would be a bit comic if I did," said Woods dryly; "at this stage of my career."
"And above all, you don't let your emotions get tangled up with just having fun," said Gervase, earnestly, in his gratitude persuading himself that this was really so.
"No, darling," said Woody, and she bent forward and kissed him lightly, so that he should not see the tears in her eyes.
Major Moon appeared at a trot, advancing towards them across the circular hall. "Sorry I'm late; hasn't Esther turned up yet?"
"Here she is now," said Eden, as Esther came in at the main door, pulling off her little round outdoor cap.
She came and joined them. "Did you call me?"
"Yes, child, come here. We wanted to catch you before you went on night duty," said Moon, taking her hand and tucking it warmly into his own. He looked at her with troubled blue eyes. "We have a little bit of news for you that you're not going to like very much... no, Woody, you stay, my dear, we're glad to have you.... Now, this isn't serious, Esther, and you mustn't upset yourself; but Eden and I have been talking over your young man's fracture, and we don't quite like the way it's going. We think we ought to have him along to the theatre and open up his leg."
She stared at him, horrified. "Oh Major Moon—no!"
"I'm afraid we must, Esther," said Eden definitely. "There's nothing to worry about, ducky. We think there's a bit of pus there, that's all, and it would be better to take out the stitches and drain the wound."
"Do you mean he's getting an infection?"
"Just a spot, Esther, it so often happens; but we can clear it up all right."
Cockrill passed through the hall still bent upon his ceaseless investigations. He saw Woods among the little group, and, recollecting William's half-recognition of her voice, decided to enter into conversation, in the vague hope of surprising something out of her. In the dim light he did not notice the distress upon Esther's face until it was too late to draw back; Major Moon passed it off with a casual explanation: "She's a little bit upset; we're going to do a small job on her beloved and she doesn't like it; she'll be all right in a minute...."
"It's very silly of me," said Esther, gulping back her tears.
"It's nothing at all to worry about, darling," insisted Woody. "I've seen thousands of them done in the theatre—well, at _least_ four or five—and it's quite a small operation, isn't it, Major Moon?"
"It's not the danger; it's just that I—I can't bear to think of him being ill or in pain...."
"He'll be much more comfortable after this, Esther," promised Gervase.
Cockrill had been putting two and two together. "Is it young Will Ferguson that you're talking about? I was down there seeing him this afternoon...."
"Miss Sanson's engaged to him," explained Eden.
Cockrill turned round upon her. "Are you indeed, Esther? I congratulate you; I've known him since he was a boy—he's a very charming fellow."
"He's a darling, Esther," agreed Woods enthusiastically.
She looked up in surprise. "Have you been to see him at last, Woody?"
"Yes, I introduced myself this evening, after operating had finished in the theatre; he's sweet, darling. He told me he'd been having a chat with you, Inspector."
"I was asking him about Higgins," said Cockrill, who did not think that this was the time to ask Woods if William had remembered where he had heard her voice.
"He didn't know Higgins," said Esther. "He was brought in after him."
"Yes, but only because he took longer to get himself dug out. He used to work for Higgins—they'd been through all the blitzes together, and they were sitting talking about the old days, when the bomb hit them."
"Listening to the German radio," said Cockrill.
"Yes, he was telling me about that," said Woody, rather breathlessly. "It was extraordinary how—how the wireless went on and on talking when everything else all round them had been shattered. I mean, a bit off to have to lie pinned down by debris, heroically waiting to be rescued, while Lord Haw-Haw tells you how effete you are!"
"Was it Lord Haw-Haw?" said Cockrill.
"Well, so William says," replied Woody indifferently.
"Those fellows ought to be hamstrung!" exploded Major Moon. "Of all the filthy treachery, I think that is the worst. A good honest spy is a brave man; he's working for his country in the enemy's country, and if his methods aren't very charming, well it doesn't make him any the less a hero, from his own point of view; but to stand safely in Germany and pour out abuse of your own country... dis _gus_ ting! _Filthy!_ I only hope that at the end of the war we really deal with them as they deserve."
"I feel sorry for their relatives and friends," said Eden mildly, "having to sit here and listen to them telling their German lies!"
"Their relations and friends are probably just as bad as they are," said Major Moon roughly. His kind blue eyes had gone stupid with the natural, unthinking welling-up of his disgust and contempt.
"Not necessarily," said Cockie thoughtfully; "but I dare say a good many people in this country would agree with you." There is nothing like just indignation for fostering unreasoning hate.
Woods looked at her. "Esther, isn't it time you went on duty, my pet?"
"I suppose it is," said Esther, who had been standing by, taking no part in the conversation. "I'd better go. I—I don't know how I'm going to face William!" She stood for a moment with her head bent, her hands pressed against her forehead.
"We've explained everything to him, my dear," said Major Moon. "He's not worrying a bit; it's only a little thing, nothing to be anxious about."
"Higgins's operation was nothing to be anxious about," said Esther suddenly, dropping her hands and staring at them, white faced, with burning eyes. "But _he_ died. Higgins died!"
"But my dear child...!"
"I'm afraid," cried Esther. "I'm terrified! Supposing William were to die too?"
"Oh, nonsense, Esther darling," said Woods. "Why should William die? Who on earth would want to kill him?"
"Who would have wanted to kill Higgins?" said Esther.
"Perhaps you would like to get someone else to do the operation, Esther?" suggested Major Moon gently. "Perkins did him originally, of course, but he's on seven days' leave. We could fix up for Jones to do it, or Colonel Greenaway would if you like."
"No, no, Major Moon, of course you must operate; of course you must! Gervase, you'll be assisting him, _won't_ you?"
"I was supposed to be," said Eden.
"Yes, do; do assist. You must. Please don't think... it's awful of me even to seem to suggest that I don't trust you to do the very best for William. I know you will; of course I do. Do forgive me, everybody; it's only that... I'm sort of upset.... If anything should happen to him..." She left them abruptly and ran off to her ward.
"Poor child; she's so very much in love," said Major Moon, looking after her.
"Is the operation really nothing serious?" asked Cockrill, deeply interested.
"Not serious at all; it would be if it were left, of course. He's developing osteomyelitis, and we must drain the wound, that's all."
"Osteo-what?" said Cockrill crossly; he hated to be ignorant of what other people clearly understood.
"Osteomyelitis—infection of the bone, Inspector. We take out the stitches and pack the wound open so that the pus can't collect; and cover the whole thing with plaster of Paris, instead of having him strung up to an extension."
"Why is he strung up anyway?" said Cockrill.
"Well, the bones are fractured and they were overlapping; that usually happens. The extension pulls them out so that the broken ends can meet and unite again. I think that about explains it, eh, Eden?"
"A most masterly exposition," said Gervase.
"So you see it's all very simple, Cockrill. There is a little infection, pus is forming, and it mustn't be allowed to collect, so we arrange matters so that it can drain away."
"It may sound simple to you, it's double Dutch to me," said Cockie; he added, gently probing: "I can't even visualise how you go about it."
Major Moon fell innocently into the trap. "Come along to the theatre to-morrow and see for yourself."
Cockie affected great astonishment. "Goodness gracious—could I really?"
"Well, of course; we'll rig you up in a gown and you can stand and look on. You'll probably enjoy it."
Cockrill thought it extremely unlikely that he would enjoy it, but he was anxious, for his own reasons, to get into the theatre, and he said cheerfully: "I'll be there!" and as soon as they had dispersed hurried over to his office to give orders to his men. He had known for some time Who; and now he knew Why; but he could not make an arrest until he knew How. It was taking a risk, but perhaps tomorrow would show.
2
Esther had thirty-six hours' leave on the day of William's operation, so as to be ready to switch from night duty to day duty on the following morning. Frederica was by now sufficiently recovered to go back to work. They assembled for one of their rare meals all together, lining up at the serving hatch in a queue of V.A.D.s.
" _Stew!_ " said Frederica.
"What's for pudding?"
"Rice and some rather sordid looking prunes."
Forty girls were already at their lunch, elbow to elbow, round two inadequate tables. Knives screeched against china as they scooped up the thick gravy and scraped it on to their forks, heads poked forward to lessen the distance between their plates and their open mouths. Tongues wagged unceasingly. "Pass the salt, Mabel. Ask Mrs. Brown to shove the bread up this way.... I tell you, Simpson, I simply can't swap duty with you...." There seemed no apparent reason why some should be called by their surnames, some by their Christian names, and some with the added Mrs. or Miss. The Commandant sat at their head looking rather forlorn.
"What about going back to quarters?" said Woods.
"Yes, let's. I can't take this."
The cooks obligingly served all their stew on to one plate and the pudding on to another. "You Woodites! Don't you ever eat in the Mess?"
"No, we'd rather go to the parrot house in the zoo; if we can't get that, we go back to our quarters."
"Well, we don't blame you," said the cooks who, by nature of their calling, ate by themselves when the rest had finished.
"Those Woodites are too toffee-nosed for words," agreed the V.A.D.s, closing up the queue after them when they had gone.
Esther and Freddi and Woods did not care two hoots if the V.A.D.s thought them toffee-nosed. They emptied their plate of stew into a saucepan on the gas-stove in their own little house, and heated up the savoury mess. "It looks too revolting, darling, but it smells all right. What shall we do with the prunes?"
"Put them down the huh-ha," said Frederica.
"Now, Freddi, nonsense; you _must_ eat them—they're good for you."
"They look like little old, old negro gentlemen," said Esther, holding one up on a fork and making it do a little shuffling dance on the plate.
"If only we had some black treacle to heat them up in!"
"And a dollop of Devonshire cream...."
"Well, we haven't," said Woods cheerfully. "And we're not likely to for another million years...." She was glad that Esther had made the little joke about the black gentlemen, for it showed that she was pulling herself together a bit. She seemed to have the willies about this mere little operation on William.
"Well, work again for me to-night," said Freddi, tucking into the stew. "How are my suffering patients, Esther? Tell me the worst."
"Edwards and Smith have gone out. Johnson's up and that old gall-stones, the one Colonel Greenaway did, is getting up tomorrow... what's his name, I never can remember? There's retention of urine, but perhaps he won't still be retaining it by the time you go on this evening, it'll be an all-time record if he is, that's all I can say; and there's an appendix for to-morrow and a hernia. The two hernias Major Moon did the other day seem to be all right. They had a lot of pain, I think; they're always grumbling, so don't take too much notice. Pop's getting on marvellously—he _is_ so sweet; and there's a rather heavenly sailor-with-the-navy-blue-eyes come in for observation, query appendix...."
"And a perfectly divine fractured tib. and fib. in the corner bed," said Woody, laughing.
This was a trifle rash, however, for at mention of William's name Esther's face clouded over; she did not respond, but jumped up from her chair and asked what Freddi had done with the rice.
"It's on the kitchen table. Woody, darling, _need_ I eat these dreary prunes?"
"Yes, Freddi, you must; they're good for you. Esther, you've hardly had any of your stew."
"Well, I can't take it, darling; don't badger me."
Barney appeared at the door. "Hallo, my divinities; can I come in?"
"If you think you will ever be able to love Freddi again, after seeing the squalor in which she eats," said Woods.
"I can just about bear it. Would it be a good idea if I took the saucepan off the table for you, before I sat down?"
"Hoi, no, that's our sweet," said Woody, grabbing it.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and Frederica left the table and perched herself on his knee, putting her arms round his neck and rubbing her golden head against his cheek. " _You_ won't make me eat prunes when we're married, darling, will you?"
"Not if you ask him like that," said Woody, laughing.
Esther sat at the table pushing the prunes around with her fork. "Are you giving William's anæsthetic this afternoon, Barney?"
"Well, that's what I came to ask you about," said Barney. "Would you like somebody else to do it, Esther? Perkins could give it."
"No, no, of course not; I _want_ you to."
"I thought you might prefer it if we didn't have all the original crowd," said Barney carefully.
Esther stopped chivvying the prunes and put down her fork. "Well, Barney, I would have preferred it, in a way, but I couldn't say so, could I? Major Moon and Gervase both offered to arrange for other people to operate, but it seemed so awful to accept. I do genuinely want you to give the anæsthetic, darling. I mean, I know Captain Perkins gives them sometimes, but he's not really an anæsthetist, _is_ he? and I'd much rather you did; but the others... oh, dear, I know I'm being silly, I know Woody and Frederica think I'm making a fuss, but I can't help it...."
"No, we don't, darling; we perfectly understand."
It was possible that Frederica, with that unflurried detachment of hers, 'understood,' but Woods, though she would not have acknowledged it for the world, was irritated by all this display of nerves and hysteria. She had always thought that Esther tended to dramatise her sorrow and sense of loss at her mother's death, and really it was absurd if she were going to get all intense about William and spoil their happiness by developing an anxiety-complex. Woody's mind worked in a direct, straightforward line of solid common sense; she made very little allowance for superabundance of imagination.
Esther turned upon her sorrowful and reproachful eyes. "I know I'm annoying you, Woody; but if you'd been through what I have...."
Woods was overcome by remorse. "Oh, Esther, sweetie, _don't!_ I do understand, honestly I do; and I haven't forgotten a bit about all you've suffered. It's only that it's such a little thing, darling, and it's foolish to get so het up about it and make yourself ill over nothing. You ought to be cheering poor old William up, not going to him with a face like a ghost...."
"I went in and had a look at him this morning," said Barney. "He seemed quite full of beans. Have you seen him, Esther?"
"No, I've only just got up from sleeping-off my night duty. I—I don't seem to want to see him, Barney; I'm afraid of bursting into tears or doing something silly."
"Oh, nonsense, ducky, go along and visit him now. He'll be having his pre-operative injection soon, and I expect he's wondering where on earth you are."
Esther dragged herself to her feet. "Well, all right. I'll see you in the theatre then, Barney?"
"Oh, Esther, you're not coming in?" said Woods.
"Of course," said Esther. "I couldn't let him go all alone. I may not stay while Major Moon's doing him—I can go out to the waiting-room; but I must see him before he goes off. Major Moon won't mind if I come, Barney, will he?"
"Not a bit, I don't suppose," said Barnes. "And if he did, you can wind him round your little finger."
"Yes, I believe the old boy's got quite a crush on her," said Woods, as Esther departed. "It was that night that she and William fixed things up. I went in afterwards and she was in the bunk with Major Moon, and he was looking at her as though she were made of—of treacle and Devonshire cream," said Woody, laughing, harking back to their supper. "I'm not surprised, because she really did look perfectly lovely that night, all lit up like a Christmas tree. Well, I must push off to my arduous duties and leave you two love-birds alone."
Barney could not appear broken-hearted at this suggestion. He sat on the bed with Frederica held closely in his arms, and thought that he had never been so happy in all his life. Even on the night that she had consented to marry him, she had sent a stab of pain and jealousy through his heart with that odd little, sly little glance at Gervase Eden. But now—she refused to have anything to do with Eden, she had promised to marry him, Barney, as soon as they could arrange the wedding.... He took her head in his hands, tilting it back to kiss the long line of her throat. "Oh, Frederica, my little love...." Elusive, detached, inarticulate, it was only in moments such as this that she would ever be entirely his; but now he held her in his arms and kissed her warm throat and the little round chin and the beautiful Burne Jones mouth. "Frederica, I love you, I need you so.... My sweet, my adorable, my desirable one...."
Here was language Frederica understood.
CHAPTER IX
1
William was lying on a wheeled stretcher when Cockrill arrived and, losing his way, blundered into the anæsthetic-room. Sergeant Bray was sitting in a corner in a white coat, counting over instruments with an air of deep concentration and apparently only for the pleasure of jumbling them up together and sorting them out again. He favoured the Inspector with a reassuring nod of the head. Cockie cast his hat and mackintosh into a corner and stood rather uncomfortably looking down at the patient. The etiquette of an operating theatre was outside his sphere of experience. William lifted his head from the pillow, smiled wanly and said: "Hallo!"
"Hallo, my boy," said Cockrill.
"Come to see the execution?" mumbled William. His mouth was dry from the pre-operative atropine.
"That's right," said Cockie. On second thoughts, however, this did not seem the most appropriate reply and he added with a rather ghastly cheerfulness: "That's a fine pair of socks you've got!"
William wriggled his feet in their vast white woollen stockings. He was dressed in a grey flannel nightgown and covered with blankets and looked indescribably helpless and pathetic.
Esther came into the room, thrusting her arms into the sleeves of a green surgical gown as she walked, and looking very white and strained. Barnes followed her, also gowned, his mask hanging by its tapes round his neck. He said, smiling: "Hallo, Inspector."
"Major Moon arranged for me to come in and—watch," said Cockie, glancing apologetically at William.
"Yes, he told me; come along and we'll get you fixed up with a gown."
In the washroom was Woods, assisting Major Moon and Theatre Sister to scrub up. Cockrill scoured his nicotined fingers and submitted to having a sort of green nightgown tied on him and a mask over his mouth and nose. Stumbling slightly over the gown, which was much too long for him, he meandered back to the operating theatre, his bright little eyes peeping over the mask, very bright and alert. Esther came in from the anæsthetic-room; she said, in a low voice: "Thank you for letting the sergeant come up from the ward with him and wait there...."
"William will never be out of his sight or mine," promised Cockrill.
"I can't say 'thank you' enough; I'm being foolish, I know; it's good of you to humour me."
"That's all right; nothing to thank me for," said Cockie brusquely.
"I'm getting them to put out everything fresh," she said, moving restlessly about the big, green, shining room. "Then nothing _can_ go wrong." As Woods came in carrying a cylinder of gas, she said irritably: "Do hurry up, Woody. They'll be starting soon and you simply must have everything ready."
"All right, all right," said Woody equably, balancing on one foot to close the door behind her with the other. "I'm coping."
Cockrill relieved her of her burden and held it while she unclipped one half-used cylinder from the anæsthetic trolley and put the new one in and connected up the tubes. He watched her carefully, checking over in his mind the points of Barney's lesson a few days before. Esther said, fidgeting: "Have you opened a new drum, Woody?"
"Yes, Esther, darling, I'm seeing to all that. I promised I would and I will."
"And fresh bundles of swabs."
"Yes, of course, darling; we would in any case."
"And a new bottle of iodine, Woody; open a new bottle. Have you done Barney's trolley?"
"I'm coming to that, Esther," said Woods, her patience fraying a little. "I can't do everything at once."
"What is it you want, Esther?" asked Barnes, coming into the theatre.
"Oh, Barney, I do want to have everything _fresh_ on your trolley. I want everything brand new so that it can't possibly have been tampered with. I asked Theatre Sister and she said it would be all right. It doesn't involve very much and the other stuff can be used up afterwards. Of course the instruments come straight out of the steriliser—they must be all right, don't you think so, Barney? Don't you think they must be all right?"
"Yes, of course, Esther."
"And the needles and gut and knives and things are in antiseptic.... It's just the bottles, Barney, and your stuff. You don't mind, _do_ you?"
"No, I don't mind in the least, my dear, if it makes you any happier."
"Well, it does. I know I'm foolish," said Esther miserably; "but it makes me feel better to know that there _can't_ be any mistakes."
"I quite understand, Esther. It's perfectly all right with me."
She stood irresolutely beside his trolley, fingering the various bottles and jars. "You won't be using any of these, will you?"
"Not unless anything goes... not for the regular anæsthetic," corrected Barney hastily.
"And no ether or chloroform or anything?"
"No, no, just the ordinary gas and oxygen."
Woods came staggering across the theatre with a second cylinder and Barnes helped her to fit it into its holder. "I'm sorry to give you all this extra trouble, Woody," said Esther humbly.
Cockrill watched the tubes fitted up to his own satisfaction. He said suddenly, darting a finger at the three glass jars suspended over the trolley: "These bottles—the gas and oxygen mix in the first one, above the surface of the water, and pass along a single tube to the patient...?"
"That's right," said Barnes.
"Could anything go wrong there? Are we sure this is water in the bottom of the jars?"
"I don't see what else it could be; but we can jolly soon make sure," said Barney, without excitement. He took down the jars and sniffed at them each in turn. "They seem all right; but still, just in case, you could empty them out, Woody, and put fresh water in."
Cockrill satisfied himself that the jars were replaced with nothing more perilous in them than a little sterile water, and returned to the trolley. He ran over the various points in his mind, trying to eliminate anything irrelevant. "Nothing involved except this one cylinder, black, of nitrous oxide; and this one, black and white, of oxygen. The green cylinder of carbon dioxide in the middle is duly switched off, and so are the spares of gas and oxygen. Everything is connected up properly. The patient has nitrous oxide first and then oxygen as well, and you can judge from the first and third tubes in the clear glass jar over the trolley how much of each he's getting. The gas and oxygen mix in the jar and pass along the single tube to the mask over the patient's face." Put like that, it seemed very simple and straight-forward; he could not see where there could be room for accident. After a moment, however, he said suddenly: "Will you be using this air-way tube?"
"I expect so," said Barnes; "I usually do."
"Didn't you tell me that you dabble the end in lubricant first!"
"Yes, to make it slip into the throat more easily."
"You haven't given us a fresh pot of lubricant, Miss Woods," said Cockie, raising an eyebrow.
Woods came over to the trolley. "No, so I haven't; but surely..."
"I said _e_ verything, Woody," said Esther fretfully.
Woods shrugged her shoulders and went to a cupboard just outside the theatre. "Let's have this pot," suggested Cockrill following her, pointing with a crooked finger at a jar other than that which she was lifting down. "And while we're about it—let's have a different bottle of iodine, shall we, right from the back row...."
Esther put an unsteady hand to the lintel of the door. "Inspector—what are you suggesting?"
"Nothing, nothing, nothing..." But he dropped his air of false jollity and said, glaring at them all from under his eyebrows: "We want no clever tricks; easy enough to force a doctored bottle on us, wouldn't it be? Like a conjurer forcing a card. What else have you put out new, Miss Woods?"
"Only the adrenalin," said Woody, rather shaken. "And of course I've opened a fresh drum of dressings and things."
Cockrill pointed to a bottle of adrenalin still in the cupboard. "Well, take this one instead. We needn't trouble about the dressings."
Woody obeyed, but she said doubtfully: "I don't know what on earth you're suggesting, Inspector. After all, only Esther and I knew that we were going to have everything fresh.''
"I'm suggesting nothing," said Cockie irritably. "For all you know you've been playing into the murderer's hands, arranging to have everything new." His hand went to his side in search of papers and tobacco, but found no pocket in the green gown; the atmosphere of the theatre, the bright light and the heat, and the knowledge that, though he did not really think that there was serious danger, he was taking a risk with a man's life, made him jumpy and on edge. He wished that they would get on with it.
Major Moon, in khaki shirtsleeves, came in from the washroom. "Will you be starting soon, Barney? Eden's here. I'll begin changing now. Oh, hallo, Inspector; everything all right?"
"Well, it's all _right_ ," said Cockie grudgingly, "except that I want a cigarette."
"We won't be long now," promised Major Moon, grinning briefly. "Carry on, Barnes. Esther, my dear, you're not going to stay?"
"No, I'll wait outside, Major Moon, if that's all right with you. Frederica's coming to hold my hand." She smiled at him wanly.
He gave her his gentle smile, and disappeared. Esther went out to the anæsthetic-room; they could hear her speaking quietly to William, and after a minute Sergeant Bray, in his white coat, fastened back the doors, and she wheeled the trolley in; Bray glanced at the Inspector for instructions and, receiving a jerk of the head, assisted her in lifting the stretcher on to the table; she jerked out the crossbars and slid away the steel supports. Woods arranged blankets and cloths. Esther said shakily: "Well, William, I must go along."
"Yes, darling," said William, essaying a smile.
She seemed unconscious of them all, standing there under the big, mirror-lined white light, looking down at him; her eyes were lit by a sort of glory that transfigured the pure, rather colourless oval beauty of her face. She bent down and kissed him gently on the lips and walked away, not looking back; and suddenly terror welled up in Cockie's dry little heart. "Supposing I'm wrong," he thought. "Supposing I've made a mistake. Supposing I've watched the wrong person, and all this time somebody else has been working secretly... and this boy dies. I ought not to have left the place unguarded for a minute last night; I should have stayed here and sent for a man, not gone to fetch one. As it was, there must have been ten minutes after we stood talking in the lobby outside, when anyone could have slipped in...." On the other hand, Barnes and Moon had known for some hours, then, that William was to be operated on next day; and Eden too, probably. Any of them could have made their dreadful arrangements during the morning or afternoon, before he, Cockrill, had known. But what arrangements? He himself had superintended the pre-operative injection in the ward; he, himself, had chosen the jars and bottles of anything that might conceivably be used on the patient in the theatre. The apparatus for anæsthesia was correctly connected up; and he was satisfied that it would be physically impossible to introduce the wrong gas into any of the cylinders. William had been guarded and watched from the moment he left the ward. It was impossible for anything to go wrong; and yet.... he remembered Esther's face as she had kissed her love good-bye; and fear hammered at his heart, driving out reason and responsibility and efficiency, a nameless, uneasy terror of he knew not what. He stared about him at the impersonal, shining room, at the rows of steel instruments, gleaming sadistically, sharpened and hooked and curved to bite into the shrinking flesh; at the writhing red rubber coils of tubing, at the swabs and needles and bundles of sterile gut, at the delicate bubbles playing so innocently up and down the narrow silver tube in the clear glass jar, at all the bright, unfamiliar impediments of surgery; and felt very helpless and very much afraid. There was a little roughness on the palm of his hand; he picked at it nervously with a nicotined fingernail.
Barnes was sitting on his stool, the square of gauze pulled up now, over his mouth and nose, his left hand holding the mask a little away from William's face, the right, passing under the left arm, fiddling with taps and valves. His voice said steadily: "Just breathe normally. Just relax and breathe normally. That's right. No hurry. Just breathe in and out...." Woods stood at the side of the trolley, looked down at the patient quietly. Theatre Sister hovered over her instrument trolley. Eden and Moon came into the theatre pulling on their thin brown gloves, dusted with boracic to a dull grey. William closed lack-lustre eyes and his head fell to one side of the pillow. The line of bubbles increased in the clear glass jar.
Nobody spoke: but outside the theatre they could hear the tap-tap-tap of Frederica's little heels on the stone floor as she joined Esther in the waiting-room. William breathed deeper; his face, at the edges of the rubber mask, was an ugly red. "Is that all right?" asked Cockrill of Barnes, standing behind his shoulder.
"What, his colour? Yes, he's quite normal. It's time for the oxygen." He turned another tap; bubbles appeared at the surface of the water from the third tube in the jar, and crept slowly down. The colour increased and deepened. "Are you sure he's all right?" said Cockrill in an agony of apprehension, picking nervily at the dryness of his palm.
"Just needs more oxygen," said Barnes steadily.
Moon and Eden stood absolutely silent, staring down at the table; Woods' face was lined and heavy; the sister turned back from her instruments to glance at the patient and away again. She was new in the theatre since Sister Bates had died, and the mounting tension of fear and unreason passed her completely by.
The bubbles crept steadily down the third tube, dying away to a pinpoint on the first, as Barnes cut down the gas and poured in more oxygen. A line of sweat appeared across his brow. His face grew suddenly grey. He said in a low voice, but very clearly and distinctly in the silent room: " _My Christ_!" It might have been an oath or it might have been a prayer.
"What's happening?" whispered Moon. "I—I don't like it, Barnes; I don't like his colour..."; and Eden said urgently, putting out a hand to steady the jerky legs: "He's starting jactitations."
Cockrill could not bear to look. His mind, usually so keen and clear, was a dark confusion of terror and self-questioning and hideous anxiety. He had made an experiment, thinking it was all so safe; had taken a terrible gamble with a man's life; and suddenly everything was going wrong. He jerked out abruptly: "Stop giving the anæsthetic! Don't give him any more!"
"I'm not giving him any," said Barnes in a sick voice. "He _must_ have oxygen."
Cockrill wiped damp hands on the sides of his gown, fighting down his panic, fighting to regain his ordinary grim composure, and glanced down, unthinking, at the roughness inside the palm. A little black speck.
A little black speck.
The room reeled about him in a swirl of green and silver, with a small black speck growing larger and larger and larger; blotting it out, blotting out his sight and sound and sense and reason, muffling his brain in soft dark velvet, hammering at his memory with a drumming, thudding, throbbing insistence... a sliver of steel pierced the blackness for a moment, thrust quivering into a bloodstained, torn green gown; his own hands loomed at him out of the mist, pink and clean from the surgeon's washbasin; Woody came staggering towards him, a heavy iron cylinder clasped like a child to her breast... and he was on his knees at Barney's side, clawing like a madman at taps and reducing valves. "Cut it off! Cut the oxygen off! Use the spare cylinder... the spare cylinder of oxygen... give it to him from that..."As Barnes took over, brushing his hands aside, he caught up a pair of scissors from the trolley and ran the blunt outside edge down the black and white oxygen tube. A curl of soft black paint peeled away under the steel. Beneath the black was a layer of shiny green.
2
Carbon dioxide. A cylinder identical, but for its colour, with an oxygen cylinder. A colourless, odourless gas. A cylinder of carbon dioxide with a coat of black paint over its green, placed where an oxygen cylinder should be. Nothing to show, no way of telling; nothing but a speck of sticky black paint on a pair of clean hands; on the front of a surgical gown.
Ten minutes later Barney was saying shakily: "All the time I thought I was pouring oxygen into him, it was CO2!"
"I remember you told me," said Cockrill, mopping his brow, his brown hands very shaky but his eyes bright again and his brain quite cold and clear, "that if it could have been possible for Higgins to have been getting gas and carbon dioxide instead of gas and oxygen, he would have died in very much the same way."
"Of course; asphyxia. He was getting no air."
The terrible colour was fading from William's cheekbones; the jactitations had ceased, the bulging neck muscles relaxed and he began to breathe more normally. They stood motionless gazing down at him; gazing at the livid green scar on the black cylinder. "This doesn't concern you, Sister," said Cockrill going over to the staring woman behind the instrument trolley; "perhaps you'd leave us, would you? And not a word about this outside. Do you hear?" Nobody else moved or spoke. Barnes continued to sit with his right hand heavy on the mask over William's face.
And suddenly Esther was standing in the doorway, with Frederica at her elbow. She looked at their ashen faces, at the quiet form on the table, at the unused instruments and the trolleys pushed aside, and cried in a voice of dreadful despair: "He's dead!"
Woods ran across to her. "No, darling. It's all right. He's safe."
"He's dead," repeated Esther, not even seeing or hearing her, staring straight past her into some private inferno of her own.
Barney looked up for a moment from his work. "No, no, he's perfectly all right, Esther; really he is, he's perfectly all right."
"There has been a little—accident, my dear," said Moon, gently, going over to her and taking her by the arm. "But it's all over now; he's quite all right now."
"An accident?" she said faintly.
"Someone accidentally painted a carbon dioxide cylinder black and white to make it look like oxygen," explained Cockie sweetly.
"Painted.... Carbon dioxide...." She looked at him, trembling, but suddenly burst out, turning on him violently: "Inspector Cockrill— _you_ did this! You let him in for this! You knew it was going to happen...."
"No, I didn't, Esther," said Cockrill coolly. "I was quite sure it wasn't going to happen. He had to have the operation—that was out of my hands, and I thought an attack might be contemplated; but I'd taken every possible precaution.... I didn't think it could be attempted."
"The Inspector saved William's life, Esther," said Major Moon gravely. He moved over and stood beside Cockrill, a little, plump, pink and white old man, looking earnestly into the face of a little, thin, brown one. "You did a marvellous job, Cockie; thank God we had you here."
William breathed steadily and quietly, a million miles away in some dim, dreamless land outside the recollection of man; they talked across him as though he had been a log of wood; but Esther moved over to the table and stood very close to him. Woody said eagerly: "You were terribly quick, Inspector. I saw you suddenly glance at your hand; and it seemed only a second before you had snatched up the spanner and were opening the spare oxygen. You realised it was black paint on your hand, and then ..?"
"Well, then, I knew it must be the cylinder," said Cockie gruffly. "That's all. I hadn't touched anything else since I washed my hands outside; but I did help you carry the cylinder."
"Still, even so..."
"And then there was Sister Bates."
"Sister Bates?" they echoed foolishly, gathering round him, all but Barney who continued steadily to tend his patient.
"There were two things that really interested me about the murder of Sister Bates," said Cockrill. "Two things seemed to hold out some sort of clue to what had happened; and they'd both been done after her death."
"She was stabbed a second time," said Woody. This macabre detail seemed always to hold a special fascination for her.
"Exactly," said Cockrill. "And?"
"And her body was rigged up in the mask and gown and boots."
"Precisely," said Cockie.
Frederica had been standing quietly by, making a little Swiss roll of a corner of her starched white apron, and automatically trying to smooth it out again. She said in her rather dense way: "I don't see what anybody could tell from that."
"Anybody who gave it a moment's thought could tell a great deal from it," said Cockrill, while appearing to watch them all, he studied one face in particular. "First of all—to dress her up like that! That was either the act of a lunatic, or it was done for some reason—some reason worth all the risk of spending extra dangerous minutes on the scene of the crime."
"Perhaps this person's a lunatic then," said Freddi, intent on the little roll.
"No," said Cockrill. "The murderer is not a lunatic. I think he has what they call an _idée fixe_ on just one subject but in everything else he's as sane as—as you or me." He gave a grim little smile, for in addressing them, he was addressing the murderer. Nobody responded. He continued: "Higgins and Williams were attacked for the same reason; Frederica because the murderer was afraid of being caught; Sister Bates because she held tangible proof of the murder... some proof of the murderer's identity or of how the crime had been committed. There was no secret as to how _she_ had died; therefore all the flummery with the mask and gown, and the second stabbing must have been connected, not with her murder, but with this missing proof. That's obvious, isn't it?"
"Clear as daylight," said Eden ironically.
Cockrill caught him suddenly by the shoulder and pushed him in front of the poison cupboard against the wall of the theatre. "Just stand there a minute, Major Eden. That's where Bates was, taking out her 'proof'. The murderer stood here." He went over to the doorway and paused for a moment. "You turn and see me.... I take three paces forward...." He raised his hand dramatically poising an imaginary knife. "You stand staring at me, terrified and incredulous... and I strike!"
"I think this is horrible," said Esther in a low voice.
"I dare say it was horrible at the time," said Cockie briefly. He turned back to his victim who still stood very much alive, in spite of the blow having been struck, with his back to the poison cupboard. "Now—he's dead. What do I do? Do I snatch the proof out of his hand and clear out? No, I don't. I dress the body up first and lay it out on the table. Major Moon—that wound from the knife: it wouldn't have bled very much?"
"Not externally," said Major Moon.
"And the second wound—it would have had to be made very shortly after death, to have bled at all?"
"Almost immediately."
"Yet there was blood all round the edges of the tear in the gown; that means that the gown was put on almost immediately the girl was dead. It wasn't a clean gown; it had been used before. Miss Woods—where would a soiled gown be kept?"
"In the laundry basket," said Woods; "out in the anteroom, waiting to be collected."
"It would have taken a little time to go and get it then?"
"Yes, a minute or two; and the basket would have been fastened... you couldn't get it open all in a second."
"So I should think we might say that the murderer didn't go to the basket for the gown."
"You told us before that the murderer was dressed up in a gown," put in Eden, coming forward from the cupboard. "Perhaps he had also brought a gown along for Sister Bates."
"No, he was wearing a fresh gown and mask from the linen cupboard; we checked that up afterwards. This one was soiled. Besides, I don't think he knew that he was going to need a gown for Sister Bates."
"Well, when did he find out?" said Freddi, impatiently.
"When he saw her standing there with one in her hand," said Cockrill, triumphantly.
There was a startled silence. Woods blurted out at last: "You mean— _that's_ what she had hidden away in the poison cupboard? A surgical gown?"
"Your surgical gown, Miss Woods."
" _Mine_?" said Woody stupidly.
"I only saw Sister Bates once, for a few minutes' interview," said Cockie, turning it over in his mind. "I thought she was a foolish creature; but that's a different thing from being a stupid creature. She saw something that day, after Higgins died, that gave her the whole clue to what had happened.... I dare say she didn't really believe in it, in her heart; she just played about with the idea, pretending to herself that it meant more than she really believed, pretending it was a story to be stored up, to be trotted out one day when it suited her...."
"Why should it ever have suited her?" said Eden, half-contemptuous, half on the defensive.
"I wonder," said Cockrill, lifting a sardonic eyebrow.
Gervase shrugged his shoulders angrily. "The whole suggestion is absurd. How should Bates have noticed anything wrong with the cylinders? She'd have had to see that it had been painted, to understand what had happened. Well, how could she? She wouldn't have been fooling about with it. It isn't the sister's business to deal with the cylinders; the V.A.D. does that.... And anyway, after Higgins died, the cylinders must have been practically full; they wouldn't have needed changing. Why should she have been touching them?"
Esther spoke suddenly, quietly, from her place at William's side. She said: "You're wrong, Gervase. Sister Bates could have noticed the cylinder that day. Don't you remember that Woody took Higgins down to the mortuary and left me to clear up for her? I didn't know the routine of course, and Sister Bates helped me. She may easily have touched the cylinders, or even changed them."
"In fact she must have," said Barnes, who had been sitting silent all this time. "Otherwise the next patient would have died too." He went a little grey again, at this dreadful possibility.
"So you see!" said Cockie.
"I don't see what it had to do with the gown," insisted Woody, who seemed to take it as a personal affront that her gown should be involved.
"Ah, the gown," said Cockie, rocking gently backwards and forwards from his toes to his heels. "The gown was the clue to it all; the really substantial clue. Miss Sanson has shown us that Sister Bates _was_ fussing around in the theatre that morning, after Higgins died; she may have noticed the gown then, or later; we don't know... but at any event, she hid it away in the poison cupboard on a shelf that wasn't much used; and when the murderer found her she was standing there by the cupboard with the gown in her hands. He killed her to get it, but having killed her, he couldn't take it away; he couldn't go marching about the hospital with a soiled surgical gown under his arm, without somebody noticing it. He had to leave it in the theater; and since he had to do that, he had to leave it in such a way that we should not notice it; or noticing it, shouldn't understand its significance. He dressed the body up in it and he added the mask and boots and he laid the poor girl out on the table, to look as though it were some sort of crazy afterthought... some sort of rite or ceremonial that only a lunatic would have thought of...."
"Lunatic's the word," broke in Freddi, impatiently. "Who but a lunatic would have killed Bates to get the gown from her and then gone away and left it. It doesn't make sense. I don't believe a word of it." She dismissed the whole business and marched over to Barney, leaning over his shoulder to look with professional interest at William's face. Barney moved the mask away for a moment, to let her see the improvement in colour, and lifted with a delicate third finger, one of the eyelids. "He's doing _fine_ ," said Frederica, smiling up at Esther reassuringly.
Cockrill entirely ignored this slightly bossy display; but it relieved the tension a little, brought them all down from their high horses of self-defense. Woody smiled indulgently and winked at Gervase; she always adored Freddi when she was showing off. Major Moon pulled off his little, round Chinaman's cap and twiddled it round quite gaily, holding it by its centre. Even Esther faintly smiled. Cockrill brought them all up with a jerk, saying coolly: "And then of course, having laid the body out as we've seen—the murderer stabbed it a second time—through the gown."
Woody recoiled, as ever, from this ugly thought. "But _why_ —that's what I just can't see."
"To make us think that the hole in the green gown had been made when the body was stabbed."
They stared at him. "But wasn't it? When was it made then? And why—why was it made? Surely—surely it must have been made by the knife...?"
He picked up a piece of lint, gingerly fished a surgical knife from a tray of instruments in the trolley, and, with a single gesture, thrust it through the lint. It left a tiny, almost imperceptible slit.
"So what?" said Freddi, remaining unimpressed.
"So the hole in the gown was quite a big, jagged hole. It was made—not by the stabbing; but to cut something away."
Freddi had lost all pretence of interest in the patient now. She came forward slowly from the table, fixing the little Inspector with her big grey eyes. "To cut what away? I don't understand. What did he want to cut away from the gown?"
"A smear of black paint," said Cockrill and Eden and Moon and Barney and Esther and Woody, all impatiently.
3
Barnes announced that William might be taken back to his ward. Cockrill summoned sisters and orderlies and despatched him on a wheeled stretcher; he sent for the Matron and the Commanding Officer and talked to them at length—neither of them had felt so young for years. Finally he withdrew to the anæsthetic-room and went into a consultation with Sergeant Bray. "These six people must be guarded night and day; separately or together; they must never be allowed out of our sight. Never mind if they don't like it—all the better in fact. I want a confession. I've got everything but absolute proof and I must have a confession. Nobody can stand this pace for more than a day or two longer; we must break them down."
"Is it safe to leave it, sir? With all that morphia...?"
"There's more morphia than you know, Bray. No, of course it isn't safe; it's very dangerous, but it's all that I can do. I haven't got a shred of proof, that I could make an arrest on, let alone offer to a jury. There's the motive, of course; there's the half-hour unaccounted for on the night that Higgins was brought in; there's that look of astonishment on Bates's face; there's the fantastic reason for Linley's being gassed; there's the wakefulness of certain patients in St. Elizabeth's ward; and finally there's that strange conversation in the lobby outside the theatre last night. Put them together, and the case is clear as daylight; separate them, and they fall apart in your hands. I've _got_ to wait!"
Bray thought it over, pulling the lobe of his ear. "You couldn't work on a process of elimination, sir? For instance, the Linley girl: she didn't know last night that the operation was to be performed on this chap to-day. The theatre's been watched, sir, from ten minutes after that talk in the lobby, to this very moment. She couldn't have got in and painted the cylinder. She _must_ be out."
"You're working too fast, Sergeant. Barnes met the girl-friend on his way back to dinner in the Mess, told her what was in the wind and went straight on. She _says_ she came over to see Esther Sanson and comfort her, but didn't find her; Woods _says_ she looked for her also, but didn't find her and went back to her quarters; Esther _says_ that was because she crept away to a dark corner somewhere to get herself back under control before she went on duty, which sounds feasible enough; but you see, this way, none of them has an alibi. Barnes and Eden and Moon, of course, had ample opportunity earlier in the day; they knew all about the suggested operation, naturally, and could have slipped into the theatre... it would only have taken a few minutes to coat the thing over with paint. They'd got it all taped; it wasn't the first time...."
"'S'awkward, isn't it?" said Sergeant Bray, his ear by now very pink.
It was a full hour since Cockrill had remembered his desire for a cigarette.
CHAPTER X
1
Barnes and Eden and Moon presented themselves at the cottage that afternoon, for tea. "We thought the band of murderers had better stick together," explained Gervase, sliding a plate of bread and butter from the crook of his arm to the table, and producing a couple of biscuits out of a pocket. "The Mess was sitting around uneasily, jiggling their teaspoons in their saucers and jumping whenever we spoke to them, so we made ourselves scarce. We brought our rations with us." He fished three more biscuits out of another pocket.
"Some rather doubtful sandwiches," said Barney, unwrapping them from the lace paper doyley off a plate.
"And a whole cake," said Major Moon gleefully. "I just picked it up off the table and marched out, and nobody dared to say a word."
Esther lay on the narrow bed in the sitting-room looking very ill; but she smiled gratefully at their rather forced jollity and struggled to her feet. " _I'll_ make tea, Woody."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Woods, pushing her down again. "Come on, Freddi, we'll cope."
Frederica would rather have stayed perched on the edge of Barney's chair and twiddled his soft, fair hair into two little horns to make him look like Pan; but she trotted off obediently and they could hear her plaintive voice saying: "But I don't know where we _keep_ them, darling.... But I never can cut it _straight_ , Woody...." as Woods clattered about among the cups and saucers and issued instructions. Moon sat down on the edge of the bed beside Esther. "How do you feel, my dear?"
"Oh, I'm all right, Major Moon. I had a bit of a shock, that's all. I—I stood there in the doorway, and you were all so still.... You were all standing so still.... I knew something must have gone wrong. I thought he was dead..." She broke off, leaving her sentence in the air.
"Is it true that Cockrill won't let you see William, Esther?" said Barnes.
"He won't let anybody see him. He told me he was going to have him watched night and day, and that it would be better if none of us went near him, even me. It's all so terrifying, Barney!"
"It's over now, Esther," said Eden soothingly. "Now that he knows how it was done, it won't be long...." But that was not a happy thought either, and he went off on a slightly different tangent. "Anyway, we've all got a holiday. Officer Commanding Surgical Division is taking over all the operating lists for the next few days...." He blew out his cheeks in a lightning sketch of Lieutenant Colonel Greenaway taking over the operating lists with much pomp and ceremony: "and Perkins is giving the anæsthetics. Heaven help the patients, that's all I can say."
"Isn't Colonel Greenaway good, Gervase?"
"Oh, he's all right, I suppose. He's so _slow_ he drives you to drink, though.... I assisted him in an emergency appendix the other day...." He drifted off into hospital gossip, and they were deep in reminiscence when Woods and Frederica returned with a large, chipped earthenware teapot and an assortment of cups and plates. "By the way, are _you_ being followed about by coppers, too?" asked Woody, dumping a jug of tinned milk on the table and rummaging in a drawer for knives and spoons.
"Yes, a chap came over here with us; he's walking up and down outside, now."
"Poor pet," said Woody. She filled a cup with tea and tinned milk, grudgingly added some sugar, and went out to the back door. "Oi! You—mister! Want a cuppa?" They could hear her assuring him cheerfully that there was no arsenic in it.
"As far as we know," corrected Freddi, under her breath.
Barnes heard her. He said tenderly: "Darling;—it isn't getting you down? You're not frightened?"
Frederica was practically incapable of being unnerved. It pleased her, however, to parade his little show of tenderness; to demonstrate to Gervase how very much she and Barney were in love. She was uneasily ashamed of her infatuation for Eden and was now seeking, subconsciously, to throw the onus on to him. She sat on the arm of Barney's chair and allowed herself to be made a fuss of. Esther lay on the narrow bed with Major Moon's hand on her wrist. Woody dispensed tea. Nobody made a fuss of her.
Conversation waxed and waned. How long would their enforced holiday last? How would the theatre get on without Major Moon and Barney and Woods? How could St. Elizabeth's survive without Esther and Freddi? How could the surgical division plod along with nobody left but Greenaway and a general duties officer and the orthopod? But they could not keep away for ever from the subject that was in all their minds, and it was Woods who finally said, breaking in upon an impassioned defence of Chalk and Cheese and how marvellously Esther thought they would manage in the ward: "Well, don't let's talk about inanities any longer. Let's talk about black paint."
Perhaps, after all, it would be rather a relief to talk about the black paint. "It was so incredibly simple," said Barney, still apparently lost in astonishment at the trick that had been played on him. "You can't alter the gas in a cylinder; so you alter the cylinder. The gases are colourless and odourless—in a thousand years one couldn't possibly tell."
"Doesn't carbon dioxide prickle, Barney?"
"If you get a strong enough concentration it does; if you could put your nose right into a bowl of it, you'd get a faint sort of creeping sensation like soda water bubbles; but you don't get it through a mask. I couldn't have got it by sniffing round the trolley. Besides, I never even tried. An oxygen cylinder is an oxygen cylinder; one just doesn't doubt it."
"Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much," said Woody.
"I don't protest at all," said Barnes, not too pleased. "There was not the slightest reason to suppose that Higgins had been murdered; and under the circumstances no anæsthetist in the world would have dreamed of questioning the contents of the cylinders. Even if I'd known he'd been killed, that would have been the last thing that would have occurred to me—or to anyone in my position."
"All right, sweetie, no offence meant," said Woody pacifically.
"Cockrill has been doing experiments," said Major Moon. "He seems to have proved to his own satisfaction that the cylinder must have been painted well before midnight, on the night before Higgins died, to have allowed it to dry in the time."
"Of course the theatre's hot..." said Eden.
"He's allowed for all that. He says definitely about twelve hours. That would bring it to about ten o'clock in the evening, or a bit later."
"Which couldn't be more significant," said Freddi.
"Significant—in what way?"
"Only that it proves all over again that it _must_ be one of our lot," said Eden, interpreting Frederica's vague assertion. "At ten o'clock, or even eleven, to be on the safe side, there were definitely only the six of us, and Bates, who could have known that the man was in the hospital...."
They knew it; and yet their minds would not accept it; reason told them that one of themselves was a killer but sentiment rebelled against reason. For, after all, _who_? Not dear old Moon. Not Gervase, with his ugly charm, his bright intelligence, his impatient honesty. And, God knew, not Barney! And not Esther, the gentle and dignified, or Freddi the exquisite, or Woody with her big, warm, generous, laughing heart. "What I can't make out," said Eden, drawing their attention away from these painful thoughts, "is how anyone can have worked it out in the time. Dash it all, Higgins was only brought in at about half-past nine. How can the murderer have made up his mind and evolved the whole plan, all in an hour or so? What gave him the idea?"
"Oh, it was the _sal_ vage tins, _was_ n't it?" said Freddi, as if this must, surely, have been obvious to all.
"The salvage tins? What _are_ you talking about?"
"She's talking about Colonel Beaton having had all the rubbish bins repainted," said Esther. "Ever since he came we've been tripping over tins of black and white paint in the hall and the corridors! Of course the murderer noticed one, and it put the idea into his head. He just took a tin and went into the theatre with it, and then put it back where he'd found it."
"Or rather two tins, because, of course, an oxygen cylinder has a white collar, so he must have used black and white. Well, I think that's brilliant of you, Freddi, to have thought of that, really I do!"
"Good gracious, Woody, I thought of it the minute I knew about the paint having been used."
"How could he be certain it would be used on Higgins, though?" said Esther.
Woods took Barney's cup and filled it; she said, standing over the little table with the tea-pot lolling, forgotten, in her hand: "That would be easy. The more you think of it, the more you see how easy it all was—if it came off. Higgins was second on the operating list. The murderer released some of the oxygen out of the cylinder on the trolley, so that there would be just about enough for one more operation—one long operation like a duodenal ulcer; and he knew we'd be bound to put in a fresh cylinder for the next case. Of course the cylinders come up from the Reserve Medical Store; but we have three or four in the storeroom off the theatre according to what sort of list we have for the day; and he simply put the repainted one on the rack so that I would take that next; naturally I'd choose the one nearest to hand."
"How on earth could he know how much oxygen the duodenal ulcer would take?" said Barney. "I'd be very sorry to have to estimate it, myself."
"Well, he made a guess at it then; and it was a jolly good guess because I remember that the oxygen had run right down after the duodenal was finished. That's why I started off on the new cylinder and didn't just switch to the spare. Of course if it was anyone in the theatre, they could have released the rest of the oxygen while nobody was noticing...."
"And we were all in and out of the theatre between the two operations," pointed out Eden.
"Except Frederica," said Barnes.
"Does that make me a non-suspect?" said Freddi. "How lovely!"
"Wouldn't there have been one too many used oxygen cylinders, Woody," said Eden, "and one too few carbon dioxides?"
"Oh, lawks!" said Woods, pop-eyed. "I wonder if there were!"
"You can bet your life there weren't," said Barney, laughing at her startled face. "Cockrill checked the whole lot over next day. I expect a black one had been painted green, to tally."
"But there isn't any green paint anywhere," said Frederica.
"Well, then, the black paint may have been removed, afterwards; before the empties were counted. Easy enough in a theatre where there's lots of acetone and turpentine and things about; and the stuff wouldn't have hardened yet. It was only just dry."
"Not even quite dry," agreed Eden, "since it left a black mark on the front of Woody's overall."
"Wouldn't the turps have taken off the underneath paint as well?"
"No, it's that hard, shiney, baked-on enamel; it may have marked it a little bit, but those cylinders get awfully shabby and knocked about. Nobody would ever notice it."
"Woody, darling, do put down the tea-pot," said Esther, mildly exasperated. "You're baptizing everything with tea."
"So it couldn't have been me, _anyway_ , Barney, could it?" said Frederica suddenly, having evidently been thinking things over in her mind. "Because all the time the cylinder was being doctored, I was in the ward with my suffering patients."
"Any of the rest of us could have done it, though," said Major Moon reluctantly. "It was such a hell of a night, and nobody would be noticing what anyone else was doing. Woody says she was sitting in the cottage; Esther says she joined her there as soon as she left the ward; Barney was out of the theatre for half an hour or so, soon after Higgins came in, and Eden was doing his night rounds.... I was in Reception, but not solidly all the time."
"Any of us could have done the first murder," said Gervase impatiently; "(all right, Frederica, not you!) and any of us could have killed poor little Bates; but none of us could have tried to kill Freddi with gas, that day. Take me, for example; I couldn't possibly have known that they were short of a shilling; and only anyone who knew that the gas had run out in the meter, could have thought of rigging up the turned-on gas tap and all the rest of it."
There was a short, uncomfortable pause. Everybody remembered that Gervase had been seen coming out of the cottage that morning, and had never acknowledged his presence there; but nobody liked to put it openly into words. He looked round at them with a little, puzzled movement of the eyebrows, but since nobody spoke, he went on: "The same applies for Barney and Moon—they might have done the other things, but they couldn't have tried to kill Freddi. I suppose Esther could have; but it was she who saved Freddi's life; and anyway, she obviously wouldn't have wanted to kill William, later on. As for Woody..."
"What about Woody?" asked Woods, as he paused.
He glanced up at her with his quick smile. "Actually you could have done them all," he pointed out, laughing.
"So I could," said Woody equably.
" _Could_ you, darling?" said Freddi, staring.
"Well, of course. I was sitting here all alone waiting for Esther to come off St. Elizabeth's while the oxygen cylinder was being got ready for Higgins, so I've got no alibi for that time; in any case, I'd have endless opportunities for mucking about in the theatre by myself. I was alone while Sister Bates was being killed, and I could easily have pretended to 'discover' her after she was dead. I knew all about the gas shortage on the morning that Frederica was put to sleep, and though it's true that I did know Barney was taking her up to town, that day, I might easily have forgotten about that, or thought he would be too late to save her. As for William—well, it would have been money for jam; above all, as I said before, I have lots of time all to myself in the operating theatre—for substituting repainted cylinders and seeing that they don't get used again and things like that...."
" _So_ you have," said Frederica.
They glanced at her uneasily, and then at Woody's face, and then at everything or anything in the untidy little room, rather than meet those bright, dark eyes again. Out of a friendly, idle discussion, in mutual confidence, something sharp and ugly had suddenly raised its head. After all, _some_ body had committed these crimes; and Gervase had just illustrated that it could be none of the others. A look of incredulous pain crossed the plain, lined face, and was replaced by one of defiant pride. She said harshly: "And since you all seem so ready to believe that it was me, I'd better give you the motives, too."
Eden flung out a hand. He said sharply: "No, Woody!"
She hesitated for a moment, but took no further notice of him, and said, loudly and crudely: "Higgins and William... when they were buried under the debris, during the air-raid—what was the last thing they heard?"
Esther roused herself from a sort of terrified stupor. She said urgently: "Woody darling; don't tell us anything. Don't say anything. Of course we don't believe it was you. Don't say anything you'll be sorry for afterwards...."
Woods was beyond reason. She repeated violently: "What was the last thing they heard?"
"The radio," said Freddi, gazing with uncontrollable curiosity at Woody's face.
"The German radio," said Woods. "Don't forget that! The German radio, telling them Goebbels' lies. And Higgins when he was going under the anæsthetic—when he was losing his consciousness, when he was in the same mental condition as he must have been in when the debris was falling on him—he heard my voice, he heard me say something about 'Churchill' as I dare say the radio did then... and what did he do? What did he say? Esther, you were there, and you, Barney, and Gervase, and Major Moon—you were all there; what did Higgins say when he heard my voice?"
"He called out that he had heard it somewhere before," said Esther, deliberately quiet and calm.
"William did the same thing afterwards. I passed his bed in the ward and stopped and said something to the Inspector, sitting by his side. I had just brought a case back from the theatre; I was probably smelling of ether—it may have been association of ideas, it may have taken him back to his own operation in the theatre on the night of the blitz when they did his leg, and so back to the time when he lay under the debris listening to the voice... it may have been just my voice, but William sat up in bed and called out, like Higgins had: 'Where have I heard it before'?"
"Well, don't be silly, Woody," said Frederica impatiently. "He hadn't heard _you_ giving out the German broadcasts, I suppose?"
"She once had a very favourite brother," said Major Moon, softly, and Woody sat down at the cluttered little table and put her head in her arms and burst into tears.
2
Esther was up from her bed in a flash, and Frederica off the arm of the chair. " _Dar_ ling Woody...! _Sweetie_ pie...! Woody, _don't_ cry, darling...! Woody, it's terrible for you, pet, but as if it would make any difference to _us_...!" Major Moon broke into their affectionate twitterings, pointing out in his reasonable voice: "This is tragic for you, Woody, my dear; but it needn't have been—your brother—that was talking that night. It might have been Lord Haw-Haw. In fact William said it _was_ Lord Haw-Haw. You told us so outside the theatre, last night."
"I asked William to say it," said Woods, not looking up. "I wouldn't go and see him at first, in case he should recognize my voice—my brother and I have a sort of—family likeness; a sort of way of saying things.... I forgot all about it when I spoke to Inspector Cockrill on the ward; but after William had recognised me, I went and talked to him. I told him—all this, and I asked him not to give me away."
"You talk as though _you_ had done something discreditable, child," said Major Moon.
She lifted her head then and looked at him with her tear-stained eyes. "You're a funny person to talk, Major Moon! It was you who said last night that all such traitors should be ham-strung, and that their relatives and friends were probably just as bad as themselves...."
"Your eye-black's all running, Woody, and you look most pec _u_ liar," said Freddi, into the ensuing silence.
Woods got up without a word and blundered out into the kitchen. Eden gave her two minutes and then followed her. She turned away from the cold water tap, holding a wet cloth to her eyes; he smiled at her and took the cloth away and mopped gently at her face with a dry towel. "My poor old Woody," he said, as though he were speaking to a child.
"So now you know my ugly secret, Gervase," said Woody, smiling bleakly.
"You shouldn't have borne this burden all by yourself, my dear; you should have told your friends."
" _Told_ you?" cried Woody. "Good God, I'd have done anything to keep it a secret!"
"Except murder," suggested Eden, his head on one side.
"That was silly of me," she confessed abruptly. "But for a moment you all looked as though you really thought I had done it. Of course I didn't murder Higgins: he could have given me away and it would all have been horrible and unpleasant and I'd probably have had to leave here.... But it wasn't a motive for murder. And even supposing I _had_ killed him, and tried to kill William for the same reason—why Freddi?"
"And why Marion Bates?" said Eden.
"Ah, well, Bates was different," said Woody honestly. "Of course I could have got hold of the gown any time without having to kill her for that; but I couldn't get rid of the knowledge in her head. If the paint on my gown had been any proof of my being the murderer, it would have been no use my destroying the gown if the knowledge were still in her head."
"Yes, but—well, all right, pretend that you had to kill her that night. What would you have done then? Just put the gown back in the linen basket; picked off the worst of the paint, perhaps, and put it in with the rest. Only _you_ knew how many gowns had been used, how many were to come back clean and all that kind of thing. You could wangle the lists. Was it likely that you were going to spend dangerous minutes dressing her up in the gown, laying her out on the table, adding the boots and the mask to draw attention away from the gown; and stabbing the poor girl a second time, when she was dead... when all you had to do was to dispose of the gown in some other way, which you could easily account for—you being the only person, especially now that Sister Bates was dead, who knew anything about the routine? No, no, Woody; you were the very last person of any of us who could be suspected of having killed Bates." He added curiously: "All the same—I _would_ like to know what the devil you went to the theatre for that night!"
She propped herself up against the little sink, as she so often stood, legs stretched out before her, ankles crossed. They could hear low voices in the adjoining room. She said, looking into his eyes: "Do you really not know that?"
"Well, of course not," he said blankly.
She faced him squarely. "I thought you had killed Higgins!"
" _I_?" he said incredulously.
She turned away her eyes. "Well, Gervase, I didn't know. I couldn't make up my mind. But if you didn't—why was Marion Bates protecting you?"
"Protecting _me_?"
"Darling, don't go on and on saying 'I?' and 'Me?' and things. Surely you must have known that she'd only hidden her precious proof because she thought it was implicating you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Woody," said Eden.
"My dear, that night of the party—she said she knew who'd done the murder; and that she had proof. Well, so she had. Then why hadn't she told the detective? Who was she protecting? Not me, for example! And not Frederica—she had no love for our Freddi! And not Esther, you can bet your life; and why should she go out of her way, make herself accessory after the fact or whatever it's called, to shield Major Moon or Barney? Of course it could only be you. As Inspector Cockrill said, she really only half believed the evidence of her own reason, but she hoarded the 'proof' up so that she could make a scene with you about it one day; and then you were unkind to her on the night of the party and she was angry with you, and decided to give you up to justice! I followed her to the theatre that night to see what she was hiding there."
"You followed her?"
"Oh, not actually. I mean, it wasn't me creeping up the drive after her. I really did wait for you, as I said; and then I decided to go home, but on the way I thought I'd drop in and see what she was up to in the theatre."
"Why on earth?" said Gervase.
Woods fiddled with the tap, running little spurts of water into the sink and turning it off, and running it again. She said, off-handedly: " _I_ don't know—just curiosity."
"Why didn't you tell the Inspector all this?" said Eden.
The tap gave an extra big squirt, deluging her sleeve with water. She said, busily mopping her arm: "Oh well, when he talked to us that night—after she was killed, I mean—I saw that it couldn't have been you."
"Why not?" said Eden.
"Because of the look of astonishment on her face when she died. He said that she looked—incredulous."
"So would you, if you saw a masked and gowned figure standing in the doorway at one o'clock in the morning."
"Yes, in any other doorway. But not in the doorway of an operating theatre! You expect to see masked and gowned figures there. You might be surprised, because you didn't think there was anything going on in the theatre, but you wouldn't be as _ton_ ished; you wouldn't be in _cred_ ulous."
"You would if you realised that this was the murderer."
"Well, she probably did realise that this was the murderer; and that's my point. She was terribly surprised to see who it was."
"You mean...?"
"I mean that she expected it to be you; and if she was astonished, it was because it wasn't."
Eden was silent; after a while he said: "So that convinced you that I wasn't Slayer Eden, the Butcher of Heron's Park?"
"That and—well, next morning it all looked different. It was one thing to have monkeyed about with the anæsthetic in the theatre—or whatever it was that had been done, because of course I didn't know then what had killed Higgins, but quite another to have stabbed poor, silly little Bates; and above all, to have stabbed her the second time, after she was dead. That was so—so cold-blooded and dreadful: I didn't think you could have done a thing like that. Then, afterwards, there was the Freddi affair; and I got all tied up again."
"For heaven's sake, Woody—you didn't think I'd tried to murder Frederica?"
"Well, what were you doing in the cottage that morning, then?" said Woody bluntly.
"In the cottage? Here? That morning? Of course I wasn't...." His face cleared. "Oh, good lord! So I was! At least I wasn't in the cottage at all, actually; but I wanted to speak to Freddi and I watched for her from my window in the Mess; when she didn't appear, I thought I must have missed her—I realised afterwards that she was a bit later than usual because she'd have to have breakfast at the V.A.D. Mess, as the gas had run out in your quarters—anyway, I went to the door, here, and put my head in and called out to see if anyone was in. I didn't get an answer, so I came back to the gate and waited and met her there. I wanted to talk to her about—well, I just wanted to talk to her."
"You must have been very much in love to want to talk to anybody at that hour of the morning," said Woods, with bitter jocularity.
He looked at her, weighing her up, and said, after a moment: "I had some—reparation to make, Woody, I—I like Barney, you know. I think the world of him; and I—well, I lost my head a little a couple of nights before and—and said something to Freddi; and I wished I hadn't. Freddi didn't respond, of course," said Gervase loyally, "but I felt I'd let Barney down. He'd gone off to Heronsford to get his car fixed up and he was taking her to lunch in town, and I thought it would be a marvellous opportunity for them to get really engaged; to buy the ring and all that, you know. It sounds as if I were trying to crash in where angels fear to tread," said Gervase wretchedly; "but I don't mean it like that. I just wanted to apologise to Frederica for having kissed—for having talked to her like I did, and ask her to forget all about it, and say how much I wanted to see her and Barney happy." He broke off miserably.
"In other words you wanted to tell her that you were out of the running, and leave the path clear for Barney," said Woody coolly.
"No, it wasn't that, of _course._..."
"All right, darling, don't bother to put on an act for me. I understand. So then what?"
"Well, then, when Freddi arrived, she wouldn't have anything to do with me anyway; I suppose she'd arrived at the same conclusion as you had, my clever one, and thought I was the big, bad wolf, and she was next on the list."
"It was because of what she overheard between you and Bates, in the bunk," explained Woody. "Bates was threatening you with breach of promise and various other reprisals, and of course Freddi knew Higgins had heard."
"That might have been a motive for my murdering Marion, but hardly for my killing Higgins!"
"Well, our Frederica is not exactly overburdened with the grey matter," said Woody, smiling.
"You all seem to have been very ready to suspect me," said Gervase, bitterly.
"And to protect you," said Woods.
He put his hand under her chin and turned her face so that her eyes met his. She looked plainer than ever, now that the make-up was wiped away by her recent tears; with little smears of mascara still under her eyes, and the crows' feet etched deeply at the outside corners; there was a faint streak of rouge down one cheek. He pulled her to him and held her for a moment close to him, his head thrown back so that he could still look into her eyes. "You're rather a splendid person, aren't you, Woody? All through this hideous time—how loyal you've been!"
"It's easy to be loyal to those you love," said Woody, her shaking hands on his coat sleeves; she felt the twitch of the muscles in his forearms, the almost imperceptible stiffening and drawing away, and added, with hardly a pause: "If you mean that I've been loyal to my brother...."
3
Frederica was tired of sitting in the stuffy little room with Esther and Major Moon. She preferred either to be alone with Barney or to have Gervase there to witness their happiness together. She had quite persuaded her blunt little mind that Eden had been madly in love with her and was now being punished for his temerity by the spectacle of her devotion to Barney, whom he would have betrayed; so did she cast out the uncomfortable memory of her own temporary disloyalty to her love. She said restlessly: "Can't we go for a walk or something, darling? It's so fuggy in here."
"I'll take you for a little run in the car," said Barney immediately.
"Oh, yes, that would be heaven!" She jumped down off his knee and wiggled herself into her long, blue coat, pulling the round V.A.D. cap over her springy gold hair.
"You look like something out of an orphanage," said Barney, laughing at her; "I've never seen anything so pathetic." He hastened to add: "But something quite adorable out of an orphanage!"
Frederica laughed ruefully, rolling up her hair over the edge of the cap, twitching into prominence the scarlet lining of the coat collar. "Well, I _know_ it couldn't be more frightful; sometimes one just can't believe it's oneself in this awful scruffy coat, can one, Esther?"
"It seems like another life, that one had nice tailored coats, and silk frocks and funny little hats with flowers and feathers and things; I've forgotten how to put on anything except this wretched little round cap...."
"What a girl does for King and Country," sighed Frederica. She hitched down a respirator case and tin hat from a hook on the door. "I suppose I'd better take the old gas mask and tin hat."
"That's mine, darling," said Esther.
"No, it isn't. Oh well, it may be; we really must mark these new haversacks, Esther, we're always getting them mixed up. However, I can soon tell." She fished in the recesses of the canvas respirator case, and produced a small glass phial with one white tablet in it. "Yes, it is mine, here's my what-not of morphia."
Esther looked shocked. "Freddi—you didn't get some more? I thought Cockie said we were not to have any."
"No, I didn't get any more; I just kept back half I had," said Frederica, smiling coolly. "I produced a quarter of a grain so smartly that he never thought of asking me if that was the lot. Wasn't I clever? Barney was glaring at me, but he didn't dare to give me away, did you, sweetie? He meekly forked out his own two tablets and so did everyone else; but I only gave up one!"
"I don't know how you put up with her, Barnes," said Major Moon slightly scandalised, but unable to help laughing at her naïve pride in this achievement.
Barnes would willingly have put up with a great deal more from Frederica. "Well, come along, darling."
Freddi picked up the gas mask and tin hat and swung them in her hand, deliberating. "Oh, hell to it! I _can't_ be bothered to take them...." She slung them up on the hook again and took his arm and they went out into the wintry afternoon.
They walked in silence for a minute or two, until Barney suddenly stopped. "Does it look rather rotten to go off for a drive and not to ask them to come? It might do Esther good to go out for a bit; she oughtn't really to mug in there, worrying about William."
Freddi knew that if they were alone, Barney would stop the car somewhere, would take her in his arms and kiss and caress her, would tell her that she was lovely and adorable; emotionally inarticulate, these were the only moments when she could express her very real love for him, and these were the moments she craved. She would not, however, deprive Esther of a little pleasure when Esther needed it so much, and she said immediately: "Darling, of course; go and ask them!" and stood and waited for him while he ran back to the house.
Gervase and Woody were still in the kitchen. Esther was vaguely uncomfortable alone with Major Moon, for though he said not a word that could trouble her, nor, since the night of her engagement, had he ever touched her, there was a helpless and hopeless devotion in his eyes that broke her tender heart; and she was thankful for the invitation to go for a drive. There was a general reshuffle in the little room as Eden and Woods, emerging rather constrained from their conversation at the sink, were informed of the plan. Major Moon went off to fetch the men's gas masks from the Mess having apparently rather more conscience in the matter than Frederica. Barney returned to Freddi, who was walking up and down rather impatiently in the cold park. She was pleased at the information that Gervase and Woody were all going to try and squash in. A policeman, however, stopped them at the gates.
"I beg your pardon, sir; was you thinking of going out?"
"We're going for a drive," said Freddi.
"I'm afraid one of us will have to go along of you," said the policeman apologetically.
"Well, you can't," said Freddi calmly. "There won't be room."
"We can't let you go alone, Miss."
"We're not going alone. We're going with four other people."
"Sorry, Miss," said the policeman stolidly.
They returned disconsolately to the cottage, and the first little murmurings of uneasiness began; the first strange sense of being always watched, of being never alone, of being dogged and harried and badgered, that was to drive them to desperation in the next few days; the first creeping faint irritation of the nerves that was to arise to a hideous crescendo in Cockie's process of 'breaking the criminal down'. They sat about crossly, staring out of the window at a broad back motionless just outside. Freddi said fretfully: "Esther, darling, even _now_ you've gone and got our haversacks mixed up again!"
"I haven't. I took mine out and left yours on the hook."
"Well, this is mine on _your_ hook."
"What the dickens does it matter, anyway?" said Woods impatiently.
"Well, I'm sure Esther's put mine on _her_ hook."
"Oh, for Pete's sake!" said Woody. She got up and went over to the door and took down the respirator case. "You're quite wrong, Freddi; this is Esther's—there isn't any morphia. And here's yours with the bottle in it, so do for goodness' sake stop fussing about it...." She stood with the haversack in one hand and the tiny bottle held out to them in the other.
But the morphia that had been there ten minutes before was gone.
4
The three men walked slowly back to dinner at the Mess. "I don't like to leave those girls alone there," said Moon, shuffling along in the centre with his eyes on his boots. "One doesn't know.... All that morphia."
"Two grains the murderer took from the theatre cupboard...."
"And now he's got two and a quarter; it all adds up."
"Do you think two and a quarter would be fatal, Moon?"
"I suppose it easily might," said Major Moon, shaking his head.
"Surely nobody could possibly want to kill any of those girls, though.... But there," said Eden, shrugging his shoulders, "why go over and over it? Somebody tried to kill Frederica without any apparent motive; and if the creature's mad—why not here again, or either of the others. I suppose he _is_ mad."
"All murderers are a little mad," said Moon. He added abruptly: "I've felt like a murderer myself, and I know."
Barnes looked at the old man affectionately. He was indeed old, aged twenty years before his time. "I can't see _you_ a murderer, I must say," said Barney, smiling.
Major Moon left them rather abruptly and went on into the Mess. "There goes one at least that's innocent," agreed Eden, looking after him.
"If this were a detective story, he'd be the murderer for a certainty, though," said Barnes. "They always pick on the benevolent elderly gent, because you'll never think it _could_ be him!"
"Ah, but nowadays they're more subtle; they know that the reader's wise to that trick and the older and more benevolent a character is, the more he'll be suspected."
"Perhaps it's gone all the way round and come back full cycle," suggested Barney, laughing; "and elderly gents and paralytics in bath chairs are suspects number one all over again because the reader doesn't think the author would be so obvious. Anyway, this isn't a detective story, and it certainly wasn't old Moon."
"So that leaves you and me and the three girls," said Eden, grinning sardonically. "A charming alternative."
Barney jammed his fist down into the pockets of his British Warm. "Oh, that _must_ be rubbish...."
"Cockrill doesn't seem to think so, old boy."
"It's unthinkable," said Barney wretchedly.
"I suppose you'd really like it to be me," said Gervase, watching him half-humorously out of the corner of his eye. "By a process of elimination, I mean. I can't say I wish it was you, Barney; you're the last person I can imagine as an assassin."
"Thanks very much," said Barney. He added, shrugging his shoulders: "Apart from your intuition on the subject, there's the fact that I had no earthly motive for the murders."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Eden, still half-laughing. "What about your discovery by old Higgins as the slayer of his aunt's cousin's sister-in-law's daughter?"
Barney's face changed. He said shortly: "Oh, yes; I heard you were talking to Higgins about that."
"I should say I was. It took me half an hour to convince the old fool that the girl's death was no earthly fault of yours, and that he was going to get himself into a mess if he started uttering libels about a doctor's work. I frightened him out of his wits! I meant to tell you about it afterwards, but that morning the old boy pipped off in the theatre, and I haven't thought of it since."
Barnes looked at him steadily. "Sister Bates had a rather different account of what you said to Higgins."
Gervase looked startled. "Marion Bates? How the hell could she have heard what I said?"
"She was waiting for you outside the ward."
"Well, all the more reason why she couldn't know what I was saying. I hope you didn't take any notice of her tittle-tattle, old boy?"
"Not when I'd thought it over," admitted Barney candidly.
5
A policewoman sat up all night by the fire in the downstairs room at the cottage. When Esther, sleepless, got up for some aspirin, she was up the stairs three at a time, and at her side. "Did you want something?"
"I want some aspirin," said Esther faintly, standing at the dressing-table.
"I see. Very well," said the woman. She took the little tube from the drawer, scrutinised it carefully, and grudgingly doled out two tablets; got the water from the tap in the bathroom, and filled a glass. "You have to commit murder to get yourself waited on in the V.A.D.s," said Freddi, watching them from her bed.
"It's for your own safety," said the policewoman resentfully, and marched downstairs again.
CHAPTER XI
1
The policewoman's name was Miss Pine. "I don't know about pining—I wish to God she would fade away," said Woody crossly, after a full day spent under this lady's observation. "The only place you're private in, is the huh-ha and even then she rattles at the door and asks if you're all right."
"It's for your own safety," said Frederica, mimicking Miss Pine.
Moon and Eden and Barnes were under the care of a gentleman called P. C. Willing, and it became the preoccupation of what Woody called Lepers' Paradise, to promote a love affair between Miss Pine and P. C. Willing. "But Mr. Willing won't," said Woody plaintively, after a long evening spent in this exercise.
"Darling, your puns couldn't be more nauseating," said Frederica.
They played interminable games of Rummy, coining new rules as they went, and often growing acrimonious over fancied injuries. Miss Pine and P.C. Willing took turn about in watching over these games, and if any party left the group for any purpose whatsoever, solemnly accompanied them; though whether to see that their occasions were lawful or to protect them from sudden attack, nobody could determine. Frederica and Woody took much pleasure in suddenly announcing that they were going to be sick and rushing off in opposite directions for the pleasure of watching the indecision of the guardian as to which to follow, nor did a gentleman ever rise in the middle of a game and announce a necessity to wash his hands, unless poor Miss Pine were in charge. It was pitiful to see her, hanging miserably about outside the gentlemen's cloakroom at the Mess. Reinforcements put an end to these delights; but anyway, they had already begun to pall.
It was now getting seriously on their nerves. You might treat it as a joke, but after all, it was not a joke. The men ate wretchedly in their Mess, conscious of the strenuous efforts of their comrades to 'behave as though nothing were wrong'; the girls lived on top of one another in the close little house, making occasional sorties to their own Mess for their rations, dogged by an increasingly obtrusive Miss Pine. "Harass them," had been Cockrill's instructions to Miss Pine and her new colleague Miss Brock. "Never leave them alone for a second. Get on their nerves; drive them to a frenzy." Miss Pine and Miss Brock unconditionally obeyed. Woody made no more puns.
Cockie came down to the cottage on the second evening to prod his victims into a further fever. He felt a brute when he saw the six white faces turned towards him, lit for a moment with hope, falling back, at sight of his grim face, into grey despair; haggard with the strain of keeping back their resentment and irritation, of trying not to visit it on each other, their fellow innocents.... Innocents! Ever there, doubt ravaged them. They looked at each other, uneasily and unhappily. _Some_ one had committed the murders. Someone must be guilty. They formed into changing camps... only faintly inimical, only vaguely suspicious, only unspokenly resentful or irritable or cross. But hostile. Freddi showed off before Gervase, Woody grew annoyed with them both, Barnes was hurt, Gervase himself was not impressed and anything but pleased. Esther was white and on edge; Moon irritated them all with his dotard devotion, following her every movement with dog-like, sad blue eyes. What had seemed to them a rather touching affection, now appeared just the Indian Summer of a doddering old man. They greeted Cockrill with voluble complaint.
"And if you tell us that it's for our own safety," said Frederica, "we shall throw things."
"Well, it _is;_ for five of you," said Cockie, rocking gently with his back to the fireplace, his eyes on their twitching hands.
Frederica always rose to Cockrill's baits. She said, not stopping to think: "And what about the sixth?"
"That's who I'm protecting you from," said Cockie, grinning horribly.
Eden was perfectly aware that the Inspector was trying to goad them into carelessness; but his nerves reacted independently of his intelligence and he burst out testily: "Well, why the hell don't you pick out your murderer and arrest him?"
"Don't worry," said Cockrill equably. "I will."
"I can't see what you're waiting for," said Barnes.
"I'm waiting for him to give himself away."
Even when you were innocent, it was dreadful to be watched like this; to be driven into saying and doing things beyond your own control; to have your behaviour studied as though you were a guinea-pig inoculated with some strange disease and reacting willy-nilly to expectation. Even when you were innocent. The guilty sat with blenching knuckles tightening on the covers of a book; and blurted out, despairingly: "But supposing he doesn't give himself away? Supposing it goes on and on and on? How long have we got to endure this?"
"I've no idea," said Cockrill, apparently all ready to lay siege for months.
"You can't keep us here for ever," cried Major Moon.
"I won't have to," said Cockie, coolly self-confident.
Yet another day passed. The O.C. Surgical Division laboured through the operating lists. Perkins gave blameless anæsthetics, Theatre Sister retailed for the thousandth time the drama of William's collapse. Chalk and Cheese fell gladly upon a deserted William and ministered to him; a friendship of fully three months' duration, foundered upon the rocks of his alternating favours; they vied with each other in their knowledge and appreciation of beer. Esther held occasional miserable interviews with him, Miss Pine or Miss Brock, vigilant at their elbows. The leg had finally been operated on by Colonel Greenaway and was, contrary to all uncharitable expectation, progressing perfectly well. A garbled version had been given to William of his unfavourable reaction to the first anæsthetic.
Another day passed.
There was an air-raid that night. Provision had been made for this eventuality, and the three girls found themselves imprisoned in a small Anderson shelter with Miss Pine. They sat huddled each in a corner, on the narrow wooden seats, unable to reach out their legs without inconveniencing their neighbours, unable to sleep, almost unable to breathe. Miss Pine was on night duty and required to keep awake, regaled them with improbable bomb stories. A man who was a cousin of a gentleman friend of hers, well, not exactly a cousin but a relation by marriage, sort of cousin-in-law she supposed they would call it, had been thrown right into a vat of molten lead at a printing press, and the corpse emerged encased in metal quite like a knight in armour, if they knew what she meant. She had always heard that if you popped your finger very quickly into a thing of lead like that, it didn't hurt at all, but evidently this could not apply if you put more than your finger in, for this poor gentleman, well, really, they had had to bury him just as he was, metal and all, though they did all they could to try and hammer it off, more for salvage than anything else she supposed. Another case she knew of, well, not exactly _knew_ of, but she'd heard on absolutely unimpeachable authority...
A bomb fell very close. Miss Pine flung herself into a crouching huddle at their feet. The three girls sat perfectly still. "We're _trai_ ned to throw ourselves flat," said Miss Pine, scrambling back to her corner, flushed with illogical shame.
"How nice," said Frederica, yanking back the sadly disorganised rugs.
Their backs were aching, their knees were stiff, their necks were all of a sudden too slender to support for a moment longer the weight of their lolling heads. "I think we'd better make a pact not to say another _word_ ," suggested Woody, with laborious tact, "and try and get some sleep." Miss Pine agreed heartily. Nobody else had spoken for the past hour.
The bombers were over their heads again; they could hear the monotonous drm-drm, drm-drm of their engines; they could hear the muffled reverberations of far-off guns, the sharp voices of the men in a neighbouring field, giving the orders to fire. There was a crack and a crash and a loud reverberation of thunder. "That was a near one!" cried Miss Pine.
"It was a gun," said Freddi.
"My dear, do you think I don't know a gun from a _bomb_? After all the bombs _I've_ heard! I remember one evening, patrolling the Heronswater Road..."
"Woody," said Esther in a low voice, "I think I'm going mad."
Woods put a hand out and touched her, gently and reassuringly, in the dark. She said, immediately: "Miss Pine, I honestly think we ought to stop talking and try to get some sleep."
"Just what I was thinking myself," cried Miss Pine. A gun crashed in a nearby field and she added automatically: " _That_ was a near one!"
2
The three men, who would infinitely have preferred to face the bombs and remain in their comfortable beds, slept on straw palliasses in the basement of the Officers' Mess. P.C. Willing spoke not a word all night. He just sat and sucked his teeth.
3
It would have been a relief if, when they all met sick and heavy-eyed after breakfast next morning, they could have let off a little steam by comparing notes; but now Miss Brock was in attendance and a gentleman called Mr. Chinn. Miss Brock was dreadfully bright; she had moreover seized upon one of Frederica's little mannerisms and she used it unstintingly. "I couldn't be more sorry," cried Miss Brock, refusing permission for Barney and Freddi to go for a stroll apart from the rest; and, "I couldn't be more grateful," she assured them when they apathetically fell into line with her commands. "You want to badger 'em a bit more," insisted P.C. Chinn, drawing her apart. "The Inspector won't like it if he hears you being so chummy like." "I couldn't care less," said Miss Brock, definitely.
Three days and three nights of it; of Miss Pine talking, of Miss Brock sparkling, of P.C. Willing sucking his teeth. Not a moment of privacy, not a moment to relax in, to speak openly, to speak confidentially.... Frederica bore it best, for it was her nature to be placid and self-dependent, and she had, moreover, the glorious power to be mildly rude to their tormentors. Eden was sarcastic, but his shafts flashed over their heads and left him impotently fretting. Moon was too kind, Barney too courteous, Esther too gentle and Woody too depressingly conscious that their guardians were doing no more than their duty, to allow them to seek relief in incivility. And all the time, in the background, Cockrill worked unceasingly to track down all he needed—proof!
On the third day, he put a pair of handcuffs into his pocket, demanded the use of the operating theatre for the very last time, and there assembled his victims. "The time has arrived to strike," he said to Sergeant Bray, as they stood waiting under the now familiar central light, in the hot, green room. "And this is the place for it; we want a bit of atmosphere... the spot where the victims died and all that nonsense. Last night's air-raid was a blessing from heaven; they've hardly had a wink of sleep in the last three nights, and they're all at the end of their tethers. The murderer is going to crack to-day, or I'll throw up the case." He said impatiently: "What are you grinning at?"
"It's the first time I ever 'eard an air-raid called a blessing from 'eaven, sir," said Sergeant Bray, apologetically covering up his mouth with a large, red hand. Like many another, impervious to greater dangers, his stomach turned to warm water at the sound of a falling bomb.
The hospital stayed for a moment its work of mercy to look without mercy upon the six poor lepers being driven across the grounds and into the theatre. "I am a fugitive from a chain gang!" said Woody, dodging behind a bush and being chased out again by Miss Brock, who laughed gaily but laughed alone. From the tall windows of the wards, patients in their blue suits stared down; here and there a white veil appeared and stayed for a minute or two before virtuously driving them away. An orderly wheeling a stretcher down to the emergency theatre (grudgingly opened up to give Cockrill the freedom of the theatre proper) paused to look back; even the patient peered out from his blankets and shawls and forgot for a moment the sickening fear of his journey into the unknown, of the smell of the ether and the glimpses of tapered steel, the hot, slow, sliding of the hypodermic needle into reluctant flesh....
Cockrill laid the handcuffs quite openly on the operating table beside him, but did not refer to them by so much as a glance. They stood in a shuffling line, with the great white light beating down on them remorselessly, on every change of expression, on every line and shadow, on every twitch of exasperated nerves. Six worn out, unhappy, exhausted people, and one of them a murderer. Cockrill began.
4
He began very mildly, just talking to them. He leaned back against the operating table and jingled the money in his pocket; now and again he picked up the handcuffs, absent-mindedly, and jingled them instead. He talked about Higgins and the night he had been brought in, of the next day when he had died. "Just be Higgins for a moment, for me, will you, Captain Barnes? Just lie on the table here, and I'll put the mask over your face.... You'd be standing here, Major Moon, and you here, Major Eden? And Miss Woods and Miss Sanson were at the foot of the table, watching him die. Miss Linley—you weren't here to see that, _were_ you? You were over in the cottage, asleep in bed?"
"Yes, I was," said Frederica belligerently, for everything sounded like an accusation the way Inspector Cockrill was saying it.
"That's right. You'd only seen him for a minute, in the central hall, while he was being brought to the theatre, when you leaned over him and spoke to Esther Sanson, half an hour before he died...."
It was strange and horrible to Barney to be lying on the table with the rubber mask over his face—held even lightly, over his face. The smell of the rubber, though familiar, was heavy and sickening. He felt stupefied by it, and said, pushing Cockrill's hand away: "You haven't got any gas turned on, have you?"
"Of course not," said Cockrill innocently.
Certainly the water in the bottle was quiet. He kept his eyes on it, but could not rid himself of the panicky dread that he was getting at least a little gas through the mask. He was shaking all over when at last Cockrill let him get up. Frederica stood shakily beside him with huge, grey, frightened eyes.
Cockrill passed on from Higgins to Sister Bates. "She looked so amazed! As if she'd seen something she simply couldn't believe. What do you suppose that was?"
"I _know_ what it was," said Woody. She advanced her theory about Gervase Eden, but it did not seem so sane and confident now. Cockrill looked at her with interest from under his shaggy brows. "Oh so you had all that worked out, did you? It has only one snag, Miss Woods; how could Bates have known the masked figure wasn't Eden?"
"How could she have known? She could see, couldn't she?"
"She could see a masked figure."
"Oh, for Pete's sake," cried Woody, "don't let's have that masked figure stuff. Of course she could tell who it was. You always can—you can tell—well, _I_ don't know, by the way people walk, by their gestures...."
"But if the murderer was standing in the doorway?"
"Well, I bet she could have told," said Woody stubbornly.
"Let's try," said Cockrill. He chivvied the others into the washroom and mumbled instructions. A figured appeared suddenly, standing stock still at the theatre door. Woody opened her mouth to say that it was Gervase, but closed it again, for it was difficult to judge the height and it might have been Barnes; and then again you really couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman, and Esther was very much the same height as Barnes. The figure walked forwards slowly, and still she could not be sure. The eyes, which might have decided her, were downcast. She thought it was Gervase; she was sure it was Gervase.
"Say what I told you," said Cockrill, and the figure said: "What have you got there?"
It was strangely moving; strangely uncanny. She knew that it was only one of her friends, dressed up, and yet she could not remain quite calm. The voice was muffled by the mask, muffled by the pounding of her own, over-excited heart. She thought it was Gervase; but it might have been Barney. She said "It's you, Gervase!" but added honestly, as he pulled off the mask: "I only just knew."
"And you had time to think," said Cockrill, standing in the doorway, looking pleased. "What's more you weren't in a state of terror. Sister Bates was, poor girl."
They all had a dreadful vision of her crouching there, poor silly, pretty little Bates, hugging the stained gown to her breast, staring at her murderer with astonished, wide blue eyes, trembling still from her panic-stricken scuttle up the drive; of the green-gowned figure, the knife in its upraised hand. Woody said, in a strangled voice: "Twice! He stabbed her twice. He stuck the knife into her after she was dead..." and went and sat down, trembling, on a theatre stool. Barney pulled up another and sat down beside her. "Don't let it get you down, Woody. He's playing with us like a cat with a lot of mice."
"The big cheese," said Woody, managing a shaky smile.
"You look awfully green, ducky."
"You aren't bearing up so terribly well yourself," said Woods, as though this were an accusation.
"That business of making me lie on the table—does he think _I_ poured CO2 down the poor chaps' throat?"
"Well, you did actually, didn't you? I mean, you didn't know you were doing it of course...."
Eden paced restlessly up and down the theatre. "Why the hell should he pick on me to dress up in the gown? Did Woody give him some idea or other, blundering in with her theories? Why _me_? What did he think he was proving?" He wore his customary air of slightly exasperated humor, but his hands were not quiet for a moment. Freddi came over to him. "Do keep still, Gervase, you're getting on my nerves."
"I didn't know you had any nerves," said Eden, for Frederica's placidity had sorely tried him in the last three maddening days.
"Well, I have, and they're somewhat shaken up this morning; what did he mean by saying in that phoney voice that I had talked to Higgins just before he died?"
"Well, so you had, hadn't you?"
"I spoke to Esther while she was wheeling him to the theatre. I just asked Higgins how he felt or something. There was nothing to it."
"Well, all right, then; you haven't got anything to worry about."
"He said it in such a funny _voice_ ," insisted Frederica, jerking nervously at her tie.
Cockrill's funny voice had meanwhile succeeded in reducing Esther to the point of collapse. The theatre was desperately hot and stuffy and there was no window. She said faintly: "I simply must have some air."
Cockrill indicated the open door of the anæsthetic-room. "Go and sit down for a minute." He pushed the door wide open so that he could watch her while she flung up the window and stood drinking in great gulps of the cold outside air. Woody made a movement to go to her, but his eyes said: "No. Stay here." He turned his attention to Major Moon.
Major Moon was not very easy to ruffle. There seemed to be a settled melancholy upon him that was far removed from panic or even unease. He kept his troubled eyes upon Esther as she stood at the window. Cockrill said at last, irritated: "It's all right. She won't run away. It's barred."
It's barred! They all looked up, shuddering, at the crisscrossed, heavy iron. Would one of them be thus caged in for ever, when this interminable scene came at last to an end? Would one of them spend the rest of his life behind bars—the rest of his life, his short life, until the day when he was taken away to a place appointed, and there hanged by the neck.... Freddi's lovely neck, or Esther's, so long and slender, or Woody's where the deepening 'bracelets' gave away her age? Or Major Moon's pink and chubby throat, or Eden's thin one, or Barney's where the little golden hairs grew low at the nape of the neck? Cockrill interrupted their thoughts. He held out his hand suddenly and in it was a tiny glass bottle. "Have you ever seen this before?"
"It's mine," said Frederica. "It's where I used to keep my morphia."
"The morphia you didn't give up to me?"
"Yes," said Freddi sullenly.
"And where is that morphia now?"
"It was stolen," said Freddi, still sullenly. "It was taken out of my haversack the other day."
"Who stole it?"
"I don't know. Anyone might have. We were all in and out of the room."
"Anyone?" said Cockrill.
"Any of us six," corrected Frederica miserably.
There was a frozen silence. Cockrill again broke the tension. He turned and swooped suddenly upon something which he had left in a heap in a corner of the theatre. "Now, Major Moon—have you ever seen this before?"
And suddenly the old man's face was pink and chubby no longer, but a dreadful haggard grey; his hands trembled and his childish blue eyes were full of a stupid wonder. He stammered as though he hardly understood what was said to him: "It's my old tweed coat."
"Which you put on every morning after you run round the grounds? You leave it under a tree and just slip into it while you walk across the main road to the Mess? Is that right?"
"Yes, that's right," mumbled Major Moon.
Cockrill slid a hand into each of the pockets; he placed on the operating table, side by side, a handkerchief, a stub of pencil, a couple of old letters and—two or three coins. "So you _do_ carry money, Major Moon, when you run round the grounds?"
From the window of the anæsthetic-room, Esther swung slowly round and stood staring at them. Moon said, mumbling desperately: "Are you trying to suggest that it was I who gassed Frederica?"
Cockrill picked up the handcuffs. He did not reply.
"But why?" cried Major Moon suddenly, and his voice rose almost to a scream, and he moved across the theatre, crabwise, his eyes fixed on Cockrill's hands. "Why should I? What harm had she ever done me?"
"She had it in her power to do you harm," said Cockrill, standing still, following him round with his eyes. "She had it in her power to tell us something—if only she had thought of it. You wanted to silence her before she should begin to guess...."
Frederica stood, open-mouthed with astonishment. "I? What could I have possibly told about him? What did I know about him? What could I have guessed?"
"His child was killed by a man on a _bicy_ cle," said Cockrill, his eyes on the old man, now standing mumbling foolishly at the door of the anæsthetic-room. He added, his voice loud and harsh, with a sort of rising triumph ringing through his tones: "You could have guessed the colour of his bicycle!"
"His bicycle?" said Frederica stupidly. "His bicycle? What _was_ the colour of his bicycle?"
Esther moved slowly forward from the window of the other room; in another moment she would have spoken, but Moon cried: "No, no! Don't say it. Don't tell them!" and his blue eyes blazed into hers in an agony of supplication, fear and pain. Into the ensuing silence, Cockrill's voice fell like a cold pebble into a sun-drenched pool. He said: "It was a red bicycle."
A red bicycle.
A postman's bicycle.
At that moment Major Moon sprang.
5
Cockrill had been waiting for something, but not for this. As he reached the door of the anæsthetic-room, the key turned in the lock, and he heard the bolts being shot. Esther's voice cried suddenly, filled with terror: "No! _No!_ NO!"
"I must do it, Esther," said the old voice, gentle and mumbling. "I must do it. I can't help myself...."
Cockrill battered with small brown hands at the door. "Major Moon! Moon! Open the door!" Woody screamed, rattling at the handle: "Esther, open the door! Get to the door and open it... !"
"The window!" cried Gervase.
"It's barred," said Cockrill.
"Well—my God, there's the other door! Perhaps he's left the other door unlocked!" They were out of the theatre almost as he spoke. Frederica dropped on to her knees at the foot of the door, prodding through the keyhole with a probe to force out the key. She whispered in a voice of sick horror, peering through the aperture: "He's going across the room towards her.... She's standing with her back to the window, with her arms flung out, beseeching him.... He's got—oh, Woody, he's got a hypodermic in his hand...."
He had forgotten the second door. Cockrill, bursting in with Barnes and Eden and Sergeant Bray at his heels, flung himself across the little room and, with all his wiry strength, tore the syringe out of the old man's shaking hand. It fell to the floor with a little tinkling crash, and the fluid ran, thin and pale, across the tile. "Thank God we were in time," said Cockrill, staring down at it.
"Thank God," echoed Frederica and Woody, crowding into the doorway after them; and Esther, still standing with her back to the window, arms outstretched, crucified against the cold winter sunlight, said with shining eyes: "Thank God! Thank _God_!" Shrinking away into a corner, trembling horribly, Major Moon also mumbled, "Thank God!" to himself; the tears ran unchecked down his pink and white wrinkled old cheeks, and his witless blue eyes were fixed despairingly on her flushed face.
Cockrill put his hand in his pocket and drew out the handcuffs; and she dropped her arms slowly and came forward smiling a little, quite gaily, and held out her wrists.
CHAPTER XII
1
Cockrill slid the steel rings over the narrow hands and clicked-to the catches. He said, turning away his head: "Esther Sanson, I am arresting you for the murder of Joseph Higgins and Marion Bates; and for the attempted murder of William Ferguson; and for causing grievous bodily harm to Frederica Linley. You know that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence..."
Esther acceded to it all quite quietly. To their wordless astonishment, to Woody's noisy protestations, she responded only with a strange little smile. Her eyes were bright and tearless, there was unwonted colour in her cheeks; she seemed lit from within as she had been on the night that William had told her of his love. It was unendurable to see her standing there, so straight and slim, so lovely, so—so gay, with the ugly bracelets over her slender wrists. Into the terrible silence Woody cried: "Esther, say it isn't true! Say this isn't true! I can't bear it, Esther; tell us it wasn't you... !"
"Oh, but it was me, Woody," said Esther, and turned upon her shining bright brown eyes. She said to Cockrill, smiling at him: " _You_ knew, Cockie, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Cockrill. "I knew." He added slowly: "I knew almost from the beginning, but not early enough to prevent Bates being killed. After I understood about the cylinder, of course, I was certain; but I still had no proof."
"It was bad about Bates," said Esther. She passed her tongue over her lips and gave a little shudder. "You—you knew so much about it, Cockie. It was horrible and uncanny the way you kept describing it all, as though you had been there and seen it done. No wonder I had hysterics that night, just afterwards, when you questioned us; Woody explained it all away next morning, but I thought at the time that you must have been watching me... that you were stringing me along."
"I wasn't certain," said Cockrill. "It was her look of astonishment that gave me the first clue. She was expecting—if she was expecting anyone—Eden. Well, what told her in those few moments that it wasn't Eden? She couldn't have recognised the figure; she couldn't have recognised the voice... supposing it had been Barnes or Major Moon; she would have assumed it was Eden speaking."
"Only it was a woman's voice," suggested Esther, still faintly smiling.
"Yes. It was a woman's voice. There was only one thing that, in that brief moment, could have made her look so amazed and incredulous; the figure that she thought was Eden, stepped forward and spoke with a woman's voice."
Woody looked up at her piteously, with streaming eyes. "Oh, Esther... how could you have _killed_ her? How could you have _stabbed_ her? And the second time...?"
"Yes, that was bad," said Esther again, but she spoke with a sort of light-hearted carelessness, a sort of offhand irresponsibility. "Higgins was different, of course; he had to die. It was justice. And William, too, when I knew about him. But Sister Bates knew too much; and I couldn't let her speak. I should have been found out and punished—I should have been punished for doing what I knew was right. I couldn't allow that; it would have—sort of cancelled it out. I had to kill her." She said to Cockrill: "I knew it would be fatal if you discovered about the paint. I had to prevent her from showing you the gown."
Gervase Eden was recovering from the shock. He said, in his quick way: "Did you have to kill the girl, Esther, to prevent them knowing about the paint? It couldn't have told them who altered the cylinder?"
"It could tell them who hadn't," said Esther. "For the paint to be dry, it would have had to be put on at least the night before the cylinder was used. About ten o'clock, the Inspector says. But at ten o'clock that night nobody in this hospital knew who Higgins was."
"Except you," said Cockrill.
"Except me. We didn't get his name until the next morning. Gervase saw him, of course, and any of the others might have seen him before he was brought into the ward; but they couldn't have recognised him. I didn't recognise him myself." She played with them for a moment, deliberately holding their attention, tantalising them; it was almost as though she were enjoying herself, but at last she added softly: "Until I washed his face!"
2
"He was covered with dust and grime," said Frederica, her eyes widening with comprehension. "He looked like—you couldn't have told who he was." She insisted to the others, as though proof were necessary. "It's true. You couldn't have told _who_ he was."
"But Esther cleaned away the dirt," said Cockrill, "and then she knew. None of you saw him after that until the next morning, when it would have been too late to have doctored the cylinder."
"I saw him," said Frederica. "I looked after him during the rest of the night."
"Yes, but in all that time you never left the ward; you went out for twenty minutes to get your supper, but you didn't leave it afterwards; and that was before you could have recognised who he was."
"And Esther...?"
"Esther left the ward at twenty minutes past ten; half an hour later she was only just joining Miss Woods at your quarters. It takes about five minutes to walk across the park." He added, turning to her: "You made a slip when you mentioned to your William that you had seen him being wheeled along to the ward that night; that was thirty-five minutes after you were supposed to have gone to your cottage. I'm sorry, Esther. This is a terrible thing for me to have to do. I knew your mother, and I remember you when you were a little girl; but I must ask you to come along with me."
"Can I have some water first?" she said.
He glanced at her suspiciously, but it was clear that the first flush of strength and excitement was fast ebbing away; her lips were dry and the colour fading from her cheeks. Woody fetched water from the tap, and she drank it gratefully and sank on to a stool, leaning back with a gesture of terrible weariness against the wall. "Just a minute, Inspector, while I pull myself together." She added, with a last sparkle of laughter in her voice: "You can while away the time explaining to them all how clever you've been."
He saw that she would not be fit to walk very far. "Order a car," he said to Sergeant Bray who had stood all this time very pink and excited in the background. While they waited, Freddi said, as though struck suddenly by an idea: "But Esther—do you mean to say that it was you who tried to kill _me_?" and stared at her as though she could not believe her wits.
There was no more laughter now. She lifted sad, heavy eyes and held out her manacled hands in a little gesture that immediately she withdrew. "Oh, Freddi, darling... darling little Freddi—not to kill you; not to _kill_ you! And after all it was I who dragged you into the fresh air. I wouldn't have let you die...."
"She had to have morphia," said Cockrill, since explanations appeared to be unavoidable. "She wanted you out of the way. She didn't want to harm you, only to get you out of the way for a day or two...."
"For a night or two," corrected Esther gently.
"For a night or two. She wanted to go on night duty in the ward."
"They give out so much more morphia at night," said Esther dreamily.
"No wonder the patients on St. Elizabeth's were restless and in pain," said Cockrill. "That first night, after she knew who Higgins was—she kept back his morphia. I think she only wanted to torment him, to have him suffer, but it gave her a quarter of a grain. When she killed Sister Bates, she found more in the poison cupboard. She took that too. She was in danger of being found out, by then, and she wanted it for herself—in case of need. That was two grains and a quarter; but she couldn't be certain that that would be enough; she had to have more. She knew only one way to collect it, and that was to withhold it from the patients. Poor devils—she withheld the doses prescribed for the men on the ward." He pointed with the toe of his shoe to the pool on the floor. "There it is now. Major Moon got here just in time to snatch it from her."
"I saw her just about to use it when you turned your back to pick up my coat," said Moon. He went to Esther and stood by her, putting his arms around her shoulders. She leaned back gratefully against him, closing her weary eyes. Cockrill saw the look on his face and did not interfere. "I—I wanted to save her, even yet," said the old man sadly. "I bolted the door. I didn't have time to think of course, but I had a vague idea of saving her without your knowledge."
She raised her prisoned hands and took one of his and kissed it and held her cheek against it, and said, very softly: "Thank you," and leaned back against him with a little sigh of gratitude, like a child.
Eden pushed forward. He cried eagerly: "William— _William_...! Surely, Inspector, you're not going to accuse her of having tried to kill William? She was in love with him. She was going to marry him...." He added in his impatient way, speaking across the silent Esther as though she had not been there: "You don't suggest that that was all false? You don't suggest that it wasn't true that she loved him?"
"Of course she loved him," said Major Moon sadly, looking down as she sat with closed eyes, her head against his arm. "That night that she became engaged to him—anyone who saw her then must have known that she was happy, and in love. She was transformed. She shone like candlelight in this ugly, grey old place. She forgot the past and looked only to the future, she glowed with gaiety and love and happiness. She was so lovely in her radiance, that I fell in love with her in that one moment; I never knew real love before... but I fell hopelessly in love with her like any callow boy." He looked down at her again and added, with terrible sadness: "Twice a murderess, and, God help me, I love her still...."
"What will poor William do?" cried Woody, her big heart numb with misery for all this sorrow and cruelty and pain.
Frederica shook her head with her own little off-hand, contemptuous gesture. "Oh, William'll be all right; he'll look after himself. He's been getting on perfectly well all this time with Chalk and Cheese, if all I hear is true...."
Sergeant Bray's heavy footfall sounded in the lobby outside. As he appeared at the door, Barney, who had remained quietly in the background, came forward. He put into words what they had all been aching to ask: "But _why_?"
Esther sat with bent head and did not reply. Cockrill and Bray stepped forward. Woody cried, as though to hold them back, as though to postpone for just another few moments that terrible moment to come: "Inspector, you _must_ tell us that; you _must_ explain to us. We—she was our friend. We—we loved her. We knew her so _well_..." She put her hands to her face and burst again into bitter tears.
Cockrill was not sorry to put off, for a little while longer, his ugly duty. He said, pausing: "You should know, Miss Woods, if anyone should. You were there when she told us—almost in so many words; that night when we talked outside the theatre door."
"That night we told her about the operation to William's leg?" said Woody, looking up through her fingers with tear-bright eyes.
"She was worried about the operation," said Cockrill thoughtfully. "She said she couldn't bear to think of him ill and in pain; she said it wasn't the danger—she knew there was no danger. But ten minutes later she was white and trembling, she was saying that William would die under the anæsthetic. She knew he would. She was going to kill him, herself. In that few minutes, she had made up her mind."
"But for heaven's sake—why?"
"Because of something you said."
They had almost forgotten Esther's presence: they spoke of her as though she were not there. Woods blurted out, wretchedly: " _I_ said something? What could I have said?"
"I suppose they hadn't talked very much about the past," said Cockrill, not directly answering her. "She and her William, I mean. He told her the important things, of course, about his private life, and life in the Navy, perhaps; but they didn't have very much time together, and I expect they mostly looked ahead into the future. There was a lifetime ahead to discuss the little things—to tell about the time before he joined up, for example. She didn't know, until you told her that evening, that he'd worked with Higgins...."
"In the rescue squad!" said Woods, hardly above her breath.
"In the rescue squad that left her mother to die," said Cockrill; and Esther slid slowly off the stool and lay in a motionless heap upon the ground.
3
"She's fainted!" said Cockrill.
"She's dead," said Moon, and he added softly: "Thank God!" and crossed himself.
Cockrill flung himself on to his knees beside the limp body. Esther's eyes were half-open, the pupils pin-points of black, her skin was cold and clammy to his touch; even as he knelt beside her the laboured respirations faltered and flickered out. He looked about him wildly: "What is it? What's the matter with the girl?"
"Is she dead?" said Gervase, standing over them.
"She's dying anyway." He cried imperiously to Major Moon: "You know something about this! What is it? What has she done to herself?"
Moon did not seem to hear him. Barnes came over and knelt down and took Esther's hand and pushed aside the steel bracelet and felt her wrist. To Cockrill, fuming impatiently, it seemed an eternity before he said slowly: "It's no use; she's dead."
"For heaven's sake, can't you _do_ something?" cried Cockrill, frantically. "All you doctors and nurses—isn't there anything you can _do_? Can't you give her artificial respiration?" As they remained unmoving, standing in a silent ring, looking down sadly at the body, he flung himself across her and began clumsily to try to revive her himself. Woods started forward, almost as though in protest; but Frederica crouched down beside the body and, stroking with her little hand the shining, colourless hair, said softly: "Don't worry, darling. He can't do anything. She's dead."
Cockrill gave it up. He left the body lying on the floor and, standing over it, faced them all sternly. "This is _your_ doing. You did this! You wanted her to die."
"How could we have borne anything else, Inspector?" said Barnes simply, not contradicting him.
"You knew that she was dying. All of you."
They stood looking down at her silently; Woody with tears running unashamedly down her raddled cheeks, Frederica white and pitiful, Major Moon with bent grey head and shaking hands, Gervase and Barney were quiet and sad, but there was a deliberate determination about their mouths. "This is a very grave matter," said Cockrill, at last. "You've deliberately connived at her death. You've assisted a murderer in evading justice. For all I know you contributed to her death. I can see it now—you've been playing for time. All of you. Every time I tried to speak to her, every time she showed signs of collapse... one of you drew my attention away. You knew from the first—from the moment I accused her...."
"Not from the first; not all of us," said Barnes, glancing around him. "But I suppose, finally, all of us recognised the signs. The excitement, the flushed face, the bright eyes, the dryness of the mouth, the gradual torpor...." He said to Major Moon, as though it were a routine matter of medicine: "Death was extraordinarily rapid, though. It can't be more than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour...."
"She got some into a vein," said Major Moon briefly. "Not all of it; there are two puncture marks—it's not very easy to do on yourself, but she's got good veins... and she must have got a little in."
"You've been supporting her all this time, Moon," cried Cockrill furiously. "Unless you'd held her, she'd have fallen down, long ago!" He swung round upon them all, dancing with impotent rage. "You are accessories after the fact. I shall charge you all with it...."
Major Moon looked up from a consultation with his shoes. "Oh, no, Cockie—I don't think you'll be able to do that."
A brightness came into Eden's eyes, Barney raised his head, the two girls looked up with an air of expectancy at the tone in the old man's voice. He continued blandly: "You haven't even found out yet what she died of."
Flushed face, bright eyes, exhilaration diminishing into unconsciousness, death ensuing with unusual rapidity because 'it' had been given into a vein. Cockrill asked, jerking it out ungraciously, a load of doubt and fear very heavy on his heart: "Very well, then— what did she die of?"
"She died of an injection of morphia—self-administered," said Eden, and could not keep a hint of mocking laughter from his voice.
"Morphia? _Mor_ phia?" He pointed suddenly to the pool on the floor. "Then, for God's sake—what's this?"
"That's the antidote, Inspector," said Major Moon; and added with his gentle smile: "And _you_ knocked it out of my hand!"
CHAPTER XIII
Barney and Frederica sat in the garden of a pleasant little Kentish pub, drinking shandies and waiting for Woody and Eden to arrive. "Is this one of William's beers?" asked Frederica, holding her glass to the light.
"Yes, I suppose it is," said Barney. He added: "Poor William!"
"I don't think he's 'poor William' at all," said Freddi tartly. "Even before—even while we were still all being suspects, he was flirting with Chalk and Cheese; and I saw him the other day walking down the road from Godlistone with some girl hanging on his arm."
"Well, he's still a bit lame, I expect, darling; perhaps she was holding him up."
"Holding him up my foot!" said Mrs. Barnes.
Barney thought it all over quickly. He said, at last: "You know, Freddi, I doubt very much whether William was ever as serious as all that about Esther. He'd known her such a short time! I've always wondered, I wondered even then, if it wasn't more a case of William flirting with her, and Esther taking it all to mean more than it really did. Esther was very inexperienced in the ways of the world. If a young man told her he adored her, she probably thought it couldn't mean anything but that he wanted to marry her. William's a bit of a gay dog with the lovelies; and personally I think Esther took him too seriously. I don't say that he didn't care for her, and wasn't perfectly willing to marry her when he suddenly found himself committed to it; and I may be quite wrong, but I don't believe he was so deeply in love with Esther that he'll never get over it."
"It must have been a dreadful shock to him," acknowledged Frederica.
"Yes, I think it was. Moon had a rotten time breaking the news to him."
"Poor old Major Moon," said Freddi, and now her matter-of-fact little voice did take on a tinge of tenderness, a tear did well up into her wide grey eyes. "Just like him when he was going through hell himself, to take on the job of explaining to William—who didn't care half as much.... I wonder if Woody and Gervase have heard about him?"
Woods and Eden appeared, walking along the road from the hospital. "We ordered a couple of shandies for you," said Barney, pushing the big glass mugs across the wooden table. "Would you rather have something else? _We_ can use these if you would."
The shandies, however, were just right for a summer evening, after a dusty walk. "Have you heard about Major Moon?" asked Woody, as soon as she had gulped down half her pint.
"Yes, we saw it in _The Times_ to-day." Freddi picked up a paper from a neighbouring table. "Here it is again: 'Heroic Surgeon Decorated. Posthumous Reward for Gallantry in Air Raid.' I should think it was gallantry, though it was useless gallantry. He must have known the woman couldn't be alive."
"Higgins' rescue squad 'knew' Esther's mother couldn't be alive," said Eden.
Frederica stared at him. "Do you think that's why he insisted on going? To sort of...? Well, sort of because of Esther?"
"I should think so," said Barney. He added, "I wish to heavens I'd been there."
"I'm very glad you weren't, darling," said Frederica immediately. "What would have happened to me?"
"That is an extremely typical remark, Mrs. Barnes," said Woody, laughing.
"Well, I don't mean that; I meant that a lot of people had something to lose if Barney died; and Major Moon hadn't got any relations or anything, and I don't suppose he minded dying a bit. He was so terribly unhappy after Esther.... It was like seeing a ghost wandering about the hospital, going on doggedly with his work, making his little jokes and smiling his ghastly little smile, and getting paler and thinner and more mumbley every day. Personally I'm glad Major Moon was killed in the air-raid. He died doing something for somebody else, which was just like him, even if it _was_ quite useless; and I'm sure he didn't want to live. He loved Esther too much ever to be happy again after—after we knew."
"Poor Esther," said Woody sadly.
They were all silent for a little while. "Do you think Esther was mad, Barney?" said Frederica at last.
"Major Moon told us once that all murderers are a little mad," he said. "I think she was sane enough on every other point but just this one. She thought she had to revenge her mother's death and on that subject she was mad. She killed Higgins and then she silenced Bates and after that I think she was sliding back into being perfectly normal and happy with William, and then she suddenly learnt that he was one of her mother's 'murderers' too—and I think that did knock her right over the edge, into real insanity. Think of her after that—always white and strained and weeping; nervy and hysterical and not able to eat or sleep.... Of course we put it down to this obsession about William dying under the anæsthetic, but even that was very abnormal, when you come to think of it...."
"She must have been a very good actress to deceive us all for so long."
"Cockrill says that her mother was a terribly theatrical type of woman; she was never on the stage or anything like that, but he says that she was always acting in private life. I suppose it was 'in' Esther to be able to put on a show...."
"But she was so sweet and gentle and everything I mean, that was genuine enough," insisted Frederica. "How could we ever have known that she was—wasn't normal?"
"We might have guessed," said Woods. "She was very queer when she first came back, after her mother was killed, you know, Freddi. She used to forget things terribly and she was vague and nervy and always crying in odd corners; I'm sure she never slept—I used to hear her tossing and turning all night. It got better, of course, and one thought it was just the shock and sorrow and that she would get over it; but she was terribly devoted to her mother and it must have been the most ghastly experience waiting, literally for days, for her to be rescued...."
"Thousands of other peole have had to do the same thing in this filthy war," said Frederica.
"You can't match suffering," said Eden, soberly. "Because thousands of people have had the same experience, it didn't make it any better for Esther. She must have gone through hell. And then, perhaps, when she was getting over it, getting back to normal again, Higgins was brought in, and she recognised him as the foreman who had refused to go on searching for her mother. He was perfectly right, I expect; he couldn't sacrifice his men for a hopeless cause. But of course she would only think that if they hadn't waited for the proper demolition squad, her mother might have been saved—would have been saved, in fact, because she was still alive two days later. What Esther didn't take into account was the fact that the ordinary rescue squad could probably never have got through to her anyway."
"Why didn't Higgins recognise Esther?"
"I suppose she was covered in dust and filth when he spoke to her; she'd been digging with the rest of them. He probably wiped the worst of it off his face before he went to her. William too—he was working there but they didn't ever see each other except coated with filth from the debris."
"I can't understand how she never realised that William had been brought in with Higgins," said Woody. "Everyone else did. I did. I don't know how I did or who told me, but I seem always to have known that the fractured tib. and fib. was one of the lot who were hit in the A.R.P. centre."
"A pub in Godlistone was hit at the same time," suggested Eden. "I expect she vaguely connected it with William and his beer. Her mind would obviously be entirely given up to the problem of Higgins and what to do about him."
"Higgins kept saying that night that all his mates had been killed," said Freddi. "He didn't realise that William was still being dug out, and William was unconscious most of the night with anæsthetic and morphia; by the time he came to, Higgins had screens round him for X-rays and preparation for operation and all that; I don't suppose he ever saw William. He thought he was the last of his squad."
"That may have put the idea into Esther's head: all the others had been punished and Higgins was not to escape retribution either, especially as he had been the one to give the order to cease digging."
"No wonder Higgins heard all that had gone on in the bunk next door to him," said Barney, who still did not know _all_ that had gone on in the bunk. "She withheld the morphia from him. I suppose she just gave him a shot of sterile water, so that he could suffer through a long night of pain as her mother had suffered for three days and three nights.... And then as she left the ward, she saw one of the Colonel's tins of paint; and the whole idea popped into her mind at once."
It seemed awful to order more drinks in the middle of the conversation that had grown up round their innocent evening's amusement, but Eden was hot and thirsty, and he got up, unobtrusively and returned from the bar with four pint pots held groggily by their handles. "... must have been ghastly for her, standing there watching Higgins die," Freddi was saying.
"She looked terrible. I remember during the operation before Higgins, I made her sit down," said Woods. "Of course I thought she just couldn't take it. It was her first abdominal."
"And poor old Higgins was so sort of pathetic with her. He kept calling her 'my dear'."
"Mrs. Higgins told Cockie that Esther was hard and cruel," said Eden. "The old girl must have spotted what all the rest of us missed."
"But Esther wasn't cruel," insisted Woody, earnestly. "She hated doing it. She just had this—Cockrill called it an _idée fixe_ —she thought it was wrong not to revenge her mother."
"She didn't kill Sister Bates to revenge her mother. She killed her so that she herself shouldn't be found out."
"Yes, but you can see how the thing worked in her mind. She thought she'd done right; she thought she ought not to be punished. She sort of owed it to her mother _not_ to be. You see what I mean?"
"No, I don't," said Freddi.
"Yes, _I_ do," said Eden. "It was as if the magic would go out of her revenge if she were found out and punished for it. Of course she was happier, she'd met William by that time, and perhaps she _wanted_ to live; but I think the other was the really important reason, the real reason why she went on fighting discovery. That's why she started collecting the morphia; it had become an obsession with her that she shouldn't be caught and punished for her mother's death; she might kill herself—I don't think she would have minded so much doing that; but she would not accept punishment."
Frederica who was accustomed to refer always to her patients with opprobrium, and to her calling with much humorous contempt, was the first to be scandalised at the breach in the ethics or practices of nursing. "To think that she should let the men suffer, just that she could save some morphia! It was too awful; I can't forgive Esther that part of it; it's the worst of all to me!"
"She gave them a little, Freddi; she gave them half doses and things like that. Altogether in the three nights she was on, she must have had, say eight grains to give out. Suppose she kept back four, with the two original grains and then the extra quarter grain she pinched from your haversack that day we were going for a drive—of course she hadn't known before that you'd got it—she had six and a quarter grains, and there was the original quarter that she didn't give Higgins. That would almost certainly have killed her, quite apart from her having managed to get some into the vein."
"Of course that's why she died so quickly?"
"Of course. It takes hours of coma and what-not in the ordinary way. I don't think Moon would have saved her anyway, with his injection of strychnine; but I suppose the old boy did the first thing that came into his mind. If he could stall Cockrill off for a bit, he might pull her round...."
"And then when Cockie broke in before he could give her the antidote they both said 'Thank God!'"
"Well, yes; Moon must have seen then that the game was up for poor Esther. It was best that she should die."
"But, Gervase, Cockrill obviously knew by then that it was Esther who had—had killed Higgins and Bates...."
"We don't know that Moon realised that. I believe he thought that Cockie really suspected _him._ Don't you remember how he called out to stop Esther from confessing. I believe he'd have given himself up for the murders, to save her. After all, he didn't care about life, very much, even then."
"Of course, it wasn't a postman's bicycle that he saw?"
"No, no, of course it wasn't," said Barnes. "Cockrill was just stringing Esther along, trying to work her up to tell the real truth; though it's true that ten or fifteen years ago, when Moon's child was killed, country postmen did have red bicycles. No, this was a silver-plated thing belonging to a young fellow in the neighbourhood; he saw it gleaming in the sun. He's told me about it, often."
Gervase got to his feet. "Well, what about another?"
"No, oi, Eden; it's my turn."
Woody patted her diaphragm. "Well, personally, I should blow up and go off with a loud bang."
"You always have such pretty little ways, my love," said Gervase.
They strolled off down the road, Freddi and Barney arm in arm. "Tell me about the hospital, Woody darling, and how you're getting on."
"Oh, my dear, it's too grim without you; without you and Esther. I'm sharing the cottage with Mary Bell and a frightful new girl called Bassett. Mary's nice of course, and she washes and does all the sort of normal things like sleeping with her window open, but Bassett's too ghastly. Com tried to wish Hibbert on to us, but I said to her, 'Madame,' I said, 'you _know_ Hibbert goes to bed in her vest and knickers, because I remember you driving her down to the shelter in them one night. You _must_ admit, Madame,' I said, 'that Hibbert would be _too_ much for us to bear!' so she very decently said we could have Bassett instead; but sometimes Mary and I wish we'd had Hibbert, vest and knickers and all."
"What's wrong with Bassett?"
"She snuffles at night, my dear, in the most peculiar way; I suppose that's where her family got the name from. I mean they do sort of sniff their way after things, don't they, Gervase?"
"Don't what sniff their way after what?"
"Bassetts, of course, darling, or Bassett hounds or whatever you call them."
"I don't call them anything, Woody," protested Eden. "You know I'm no good at nature study."
Frederica suddenly stood still in the middle of the road. "Oh, gosh, talking about nature study—I forgot to tell you, Woody. I'm going to have a baby."
Woody thought that Gervase would never stop laughing. "You _are_ awful," she said to him severely as they branched off alone towards the hospital. "It's most serious that Frederica is going to have a baby. You can see dear, old Barney's as proud and pleased as a dog with seventeen tails. What did you want to go and laugh for?"
"It was so absolutely typical of Freddi, the way she came crashing out with it in the middle of a country road; and six months before any nice girl would give away her pretty secret anyway. 'Oh, talking about nature, Woody, I'm going to have a baby!'" He went off into a fresh fit of laughter.
"Well, personally, I think it's heavenly, and I shall start off right away, knitting it a little woolly vest."
"You ought to have a family of your own to knit little vests for, Woody," said Gervase.
"What me, at my age?" said Woody, laughing.
"Yes, it's time you left off nursing and married and settled down. I think you'd have rather nice babies, darling; comic little things with shiny, boot-button eyes and lots of frizzy little curls like piccanninnies. What's more I think you'd make a very nice mother; and a very nice wife."
"Do you, Gervase?" said Woody, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her suit because they had begun to shake.
"Yes, I do," said Gervase.
The apples were young and green upon the boughs and all the air was sweet with the scent of a dying summer day. They walked in silence through the country lane, and in the rich fields the rabbits sat up to watch them, rubbing black noses on little, furry paws. The last soft rays of the sun gleamed on the whitened stems of the trees, and foxglove and ragged robin caught at them as they passed, as though to hold them for a moment longer in the magic of a Kentish twilight. Woody repeated softly: "Do you, Gervase?" and her face was young again with light and hope and tender, incredulous joy.
"Yes, I do," said Gervase. "You're so—well, gallant is an overworked word, but I always think of you as a gallant person, Woody. Gay and gallant. Life isn't very good to you, always, and yet you never show that you're disappointed or hurt or afraid. You stick out your old chin and you make a little joke, and nobody would know that there was anything wrong at all." He bent down to pick up a small stone and threw it at a rabbit, who turned a white scut and hopped leisurely out of the way; and as he took her arm and walked on up the lane, he added smiling: "I think the man who finally marries you is going to be a very lucky fellow."
All the light went out of her face; but she did not falter in her step and if there were tears in her eyes, no tears were shed. "I always think of you as a gallant person, Woody. Gay and gallant." She stuck out her chin and made a little joke, and nobody knew there was anything wrong at all.
Laughing and talking they strolled on up the hill, and if the ghost of an old man toiled ahead of them, carrying in his hand a letter signed with the name of his own murderer—they did not notice him.
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For a good dad and a strong mom.
Part 1 – Two in the Ground
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 1
Part 2 – The Rules of the Scratch
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 2
Part 3 – Nice Work If You Can Get It
An Excerpt from the Diary of J. P. Coddington
Part 4 – Home of the Wolf
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 3
Part 5 – Out of Your System
A Sermon by the Rev. Thomas Rhodes, March 7, 1958
Part 6 – I Saw Red
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 4
Part 7 – All the Comforts of Home
Selections from the Barter County Buck
Part 8 – Bad Language Makes for Bad Feelings
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 5
Part 9 – Things That Will Bite
The Last Will and Testament of William Rhodes
Part 10 – Son of a Bitch
PART 1 - TWO IN THE GROUND
It took a lot for Byron Matzen to admit he had made a mistake, but as his best friends in the world came from his blood, Byron had to admit they might have a point.
Seconds before he had given them absolution, at least as much as he could muster given the circumstances. When they first came to him, armed with the truth, he had cried and he had yelled, he had blamed anyone and everyone in ear shot. He had blamed the devil and his minions, his own damnable weak will and, before the end, he had blamed his friends, telling them they just didn't get it. They didn't know. A town like this couldn't hold a person like him, he was destined for more, for better and he was going to get it, even if it meant...
He didn't finish because, by then, he knew. He could see it in their eyes, a potent mix of disappointment and rage. To put it bluntly, he'd done fucked up and there was no fixing it, no unscrewing this pooch. He had betrayed his friends and he had meant to turn them over to those who would hurt them, maybe kill them and now, brother, the bill was due. And it was steep.
As if outside his body, Byron understood what was going to happen and what his part in it was, and in an act of rare selflessness, he gave it to them.
"Guys," he said, running his hand through his black hair which came away wet with sweat. "Guys, I... um... there's more."
No one prompted him. He had the floor.
"I killed Sandra, like, half an hour ago. Tore her up and left her behind the bar."
There was a gasp and the silence that followed him was deep as he struggled hard for the next series of words and the sweat from his scalp had slid down his minor sideburns and down his cheek.
"I did it because she was going to sell you out. She was going to take all my money and leave me and I don't blame her. I'm a piece of shit. I wouldn't want to run away with me, either. I thought, you know, a young thing like her next to me, money in my pocket, this town in my rear view..."
One of his friends, who had cornered him in his house outside of town, sniffled a bit. It was the closest he got to sympathy that night.
"I just want you to know I'm sorry. I did it all and I'm sorry and I know what you gotta do just..."
The wicked, barbed knot in his throat he had suppressed finally got the better of him and he choked on his own spit and tears, breaking down completely. He cried, bitterly, occasionally getting out a phrase like "we grew up together," and "I love you." It wasn't until he said "where's Josie" that he felt a fist slam into his right eye, driving him hard into a puddle of his own tears and snot that had collected on the concrete floor of the garage where he had been led.
"Please," Byron said. "I know I fucked up. I know you gotta do this but..."
"But what?" The leader of the group said, his voice already changing into something else.
"Please, remember me."
"Oh Byron," the voice said, getting deeper and deeper as it went. "I don't think we're ever going to forget you."
The next hit wasn't with a fist, but with sharp claws that widened into thick talons once inside his skin, as if fed and grown by his blood. The tearing started and the pain increased as his friends descended. Byron screamed and bled and just before one of them took to his neck with their teeth and the end was in sight he tried, one last time, to make it right.
"I'm sorry," he said, half screaming, blood in his throat already threatening to drown him. "I'm so sorry."
The last thing Byron Matzen ever saw was his friend, whom he had wronged, spreading his massive jaws and plunging his top teeth straight into Byron's eyeballs as the bottom teeth did their bloody work piercing the underside of his jaw.
•••
As Byron was meeting his end, there was a full-on party happening a few blocks away.
From the splintering wooden motif on the outside to the inside full of barstools where the padding had worn down to the metal underneath, the lack of amenities at the bar at the end of the road was obvious. But, if those clues didn't do it for you, the name of the place certainly would. It was just called "Bar."
"Bar" was owned by Chuck Nesbit, who had graduated from high school in Cherry, Nebraska, in the late seventies. Chuck joined the Army, he traveled a bit, but when the juice you get with being young and dumb ran out he wandered back home. It was like that for a lot of folks in Cherry. Situated near the middle of the state, Cherry was near the highway, one of those towns people saw when they were going from place to place, but not anywhere they stopped. There was a gas station/grocery store. There were two churches, one Methodist and one E-Free. There were a few businesses along Main Street, an insurance storefront, an antique shop, a Subway. Then, there was "Bar", far away from Main Street, at the end of 3rd Street, half a block of nothing on two sides and trees and dirt on the other two.
Chuck had inherited the place from his dad, Jim. Since the sign that said "Jim's Bar" had lost the "Jim" part due to one particularly stormy spring, Chuck has not replaced it. Why would he? The sign said all it needed to say.
Usually, "Bar" did a fine business in the late afternoons, and always had someone hanging around in the summer, mainly because Chuck had bought a big-screen TV and a subscription to the MLB network. There were a few regulars who kept the place afloat, but Chuck never had anyone waiting to get in when he opened up around 11:00. There were no hours of operation on the door. There was a fish fry on Fridays and the occasional special food item. It kept the doors open. But, on the night of October 3rd, Chuck had gotten a wild hair up his ass and booked a band. He wasn't sure why he did it but it was easy-peasy. Two guys and one pretty red-haired girl formed a nice, solid trio and on the night of October 3rd, the dive bar had transformed into a moderately decent honky-tonk.
The band had started out with a few upbeat numbers, a few modern tunes like you'd hear on Country 96, one of only a few stations in the largely rural area Chuck deemed worth listening to, and then had slowed things down. The guy who sang and played guitar did a respectable "I Love This Bar," and, when the crowd of seventy or so seemed receptive to slow it down, the redhead belted out a "Stand By Your Man" that had beer mugs above heads, swaying in unison. Then, they hit the first few chords of "Friends in Low Places" and Chuck had never seen his bar quite so lively.
Everyone sang the country standard like they were singing from the Gospels, the melody giving way to atonal shouts as everyone strained to hear their own voices over the rest. Then the band took a break. That was when he first clocked Sandra at the jukebox, nestled smack between two halves of the long wooden bar along one side of the establishment. The chattering had died down when the first strains of a song Chuck didn't recognize started filling in the void, and Sandra Riedel, a local girl who did IT and other odd jobs at one of the elevators in town, started shaking her ample hips. The song had a solid, 4/4 time, and her hips hit on 2 and 4 with such precision that Chuck couldn't take his eyes off her. He had thirty years on the girl, easy, but that didn't stop him from looking. Other guys had noticed as well. In the absence of the band, Sandra's hips were, by a wide margin, the most interesting thing in the bar.
It was Byron Matzen who went up to her first, and given the situation, it was a gutsy move. Everyone knew Byron's situation, and they knew the last thing he needed to be doing was hitting on recent divorcees shaking their asses in a small-town bar, but up he went, like it was nothing. He grabbed her from behind and she slung her arm around his neck, looking up at him with her sad blue eyes and by the time the band was back, they were together, nuzzled up in one of Bar's three shabby booths. If it wasn't for the band, this would be big news. If it wasn't for the band, someone probably would have checked in on them. But dammit if that band wasn't really killing it tonight, Chuck thought. Besides, it wasn't his place to get involved. This sort of thing had a way of sorting itself out.
It was during the band's well-received rendition of "Red Solo Cup" that Chuck first noticed Sandra and Byron were gone. And it was a few songs later when they had ventured into rock with "More Than A Feeling" that he got more than a bad feeling. He went out to have a look around a few times, but the parking lot was full and it wasn't hard to see there was nothing going on. The party was inside and the party went and went and went until 12:30 when the band finally packed it up. Chuck paid them, gave them a little extra and hung around until 1:30, blowing another twelve-pack of beer on the band that had brought the folks in, just like they said they would. Then they left, everyone else cleared out and, before heading back to the trailer, he decided to have a good look around.
The parking lot was clear; the font had some vomit on it, but nothing major. The rain or the sun would take care of that, no problem. Chuck slowly strolled the perimeter, going over the night in his head. The image of Sandra's hips had lodged itself in his head as he rounded the corner and came upon the volleyball court. Years ago, a girl he was dating convinced him to put a volleyball court in the back. It had been used a grand total of six times, and cost him eight parking spaces, not that parking was an issue. Even on a busy night like this, the cars lined the streets and no one complained about walking half a block. But it required upkeep and that was something Chuck was not willing to provide, the practical result of which was a giant weed pile on the west side of his property.
That more-than-a-bad feeling started working its way from his stomach to his head and, on instinct, he went back in the bar and grabbed his Maglite. Once back at the volleyball court, it didn't take him long to find what he figured was there.
The weeds were up five feet high, and the blood had spattered all the way to the top of a patch of crabgrass. Chuck stood on the border of the court for a second and listened. He wasn't afraid. He likely knew what was in there and what he would find, plus, if old Byron was still in there and meant to do him harm, Chuck's options consisted of "standing there and taking it" and that was about it. But Byron wasn't in there, Chuck knew. He was long gone. The whole town knew he wasn't sticking around a lot longer, one way or another. Instead of any movement, all he heard was the wind and, for the first time in the season, he saw his breath. Thanks to the miracle of alcohol, Chuck hadn't noticed how cold it was, but it made sense. This was just the sort of night that Byron and his "friends" would love.
Chuck heaved a sigh and waded into the court. Sandra's body wasn't far. One of her arms was gone, torn off at the bicep leaving long strips of flesh, and her head was at an unnatural angle. She had a large gash in the side of her face that was visible, the other half pushed hard into the dirt. Chuck couldn't tell if her eyes were open or not because of all the dirt. He had heard guys in the Army talk about dead bodies, how the eyes haunted you, so Chuck didn't look too high up. He had enough trouble sleeping as it was, due to acid reflux and the likely need for a CPAP machine. He panned his flashlight down past her stomach and the lower half was worse. There was massive tearing below her navel and her thighs and hips and everything in between was torn down to the bone. A few of the gashes were big, but he could tell they had devolved into lots and lots of smaller scratches. The swell of her stomach was perfect, white and inviting but everything below that was bloody and bad. She'd suffered and not a little bit, Chuck thought. Enough of the ground was covered in blood to suggest there had been some thrashing involved. Between the wind hitting the weeds, Chuck heard himself give out a small "oh, Sandra" in his gravelly voice, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
Josie picked up on the third ring. She sounded rough.
"Josie? This is Chuck down at the bar."
"Chuck?"
"Yeah. Listen, I've got a mess over here."
There was some rustling on the other end. She must have been asleep. Chuck briefly pictured her pulling back the sheets of her bed revealing white panties, but banished the thought.
"What are you talking about?"
"Sandra Riedel's body is all torn to shreds outside my bar is what I'm talking about."
More silence. No thoughts of pretty girls in underwear this time.
"Is it obvious what happened? Could she of..."
Josie trailed off. She still sounded scratchy but it was clear to Chuck she had a hold of the situation with both hands.
"It's obvious what happened, girl. I figure you'd best get the boys in because I'm going to have to call the cops on this."
"Can you give me some time?"
"How much time you thinking you need?"
"Hour and a half maybe?"
Chuck exhaled a deep lungful of cold, bracing air.
"Look, I don't want to be a hard-ass here, but it's been a long night and I want to go to bed and..."
"Then call them in the morning, Chuck. Jesus. If you're tired go to bed and tell the cops you saw the body in the morning."
Chuck didn't like being talked down to, but Josie had a point. He was a bit embarrassed he hadn't come up with the solution on his own.
"Yeah, that sounds all right."
"Where'd you find her?"
"In the volleyball court."
"The what?"
"Jesus, girl, the volleyball court. The one Courtney put in a few years back."
"Chuck, that lot full of weeds was a volleyball court for about an hour and a half."
"Call it whatever you want, there's a dead girl in it and I hate dealing with this kind of shit. Good night."
"I'll tell the boys hi for you."
"See that you do."
Annoyed and tired in equal measure, Chuck finished closing up and took the long walk up the flight of stairs to his apartment above "Bar." The apartment was actually rather nice. It used to be Jim's apartment before his heart attack, and Chuck was glad to take it over. It was roomy there was some good furniture had come with it and best of all he hadn't paid rent in over fifteen years. He inherited it free and clear and even made a few modifications. Since he was far away from any streetlights, he had installed two floodlights at great expense and had rewired them to turn off from his apartment. He had bumped his shins and shoulders too many times stumbling around in the dark to not do something about it.
Just before he turned off the light, he snuck one last glance toward the volleyball court. She was out there. He could tell from up here. He couldn't see any body parts, but he could see red stains here and there. Anyone passing by was going to get an eyeful. He would have to get up early, he thought. Then, he thought better of it.
"She's wrong. You can totally tell it's a volleyball court," he said, before the floodlights made a loud, whooshing noise and the dark flooded everything.
•••
It was the morning of October 4th when police found Sandra, and the morning of October 5th when they found Byron and it wasn't pretty. He was in much the same state, only moved around a bit, and they found him in the woods near the Beaver Creek, next to the town's only historic marker, a big piece of granite set deep into the earth. It was quite a production after they found him. Law enforcement, coroners, and other folks had to come from three counties away and they noted there was a lot more slashing on the chest, neck, and head than the girl, but the wounds looked very similar. They were deep and frequent and the victim never stood a chance. He had died quick, but he had suffered. They all agreed on that.
The folks who had to drive across the expanse of highway to reach the small town of Cherry all looked to Grey Allen to lead the investigation. He had no interest in doing anything of the sort. He was pushing seventy, slight and, well, gray and he had worn the same mustache for over thirty years, every single one of them spent in uniform. In some smaller communities, people say things like "he knows everybody" when, in actuality, there are hundreds of people who had never met hundreds of other people. In Cherry and the surrounding county, Grey Allen knew everybody. Barter County had 458 residents and encompassed 134 square miles of land. That's more than a quarter of a mile for every man, woman and child in the county. Grey Allen had driven every mile on every road and knocked on every door. Grey Allen, literally, knew everyone.
Sheriff Allen, who had never campaigned a day in his life and kept the job because no one else wanted it, arrived after everyone else, despite living a few miles away. He was in no hurry, but he was immediately inundated with requests, which did not make him happy. After ten minutes of some State Patrol asshole yelling at him about needing to be "lead on the scene" to the coroner needing him to sign something to trying to answer questions from all the damn people who had gathered, Grey Allen did something he hadn't done while in uniform in years.
He raised his voice.
"Enough of this shit!"
The guy from the State Patrol looked like he was going to start up again, but he saw that the scene and the pressure was giving Grey Allen all the stress he could handle, maybe a bit more, so he backed off. After adjusting his hat and breathing deeply like he had been told to do, Grey Allen finally arrived at the scene of the crime.
"No good, that," he said.
At this point, the guy from the State Patrol could hold his tongue no longer.
"Sheriff Allen..."
"Grey."
"Grey..."
"Grey Allen."
The man looked dumbstruck.
"Sheriff Grey Allen, your most exalted majesty, that's all you've got? That this is 'no good'?"
Grey Allen took a deep breath.
"Well, what else you want?"
"Do you know who he is?"
"Yep."
The man from the Nebraska State Patrol could contain himself no longer. He walked behind Grey Allen and spoke softly, yet quickly into his ear.
"You are half an hour behind the ME and we had to pick up crowd control, we had to set up tape, we had to secure the scene and we had to do all that without a word from you or your department. This is the second body in your county in two days. As a professional courtesy to all these people who are here doing your job for you, would you please knock off the country bumpkin crap and tell us what you know so we can move forward. Please."
"Since you said please."
Grey Allan spit and turned around to face the young man in the slightly rumpled uniform.
"This, here, is Byron Matzen. He's got some land, not too far back off Rural Road 77, over there. Raises cows, plants the odd crop, but not much of a farmer. Big drinker. Never the brightest bulb, but he wasn't likely to hurt nobody."
"You know that for sure?" the State Patrolman asked.
"I know that for sure," Grey Allan said. "I also know he was single. I know he drives a blue Dodge Durango but I'm not sure what year. I know he liked to speed on occasion but a warning would usually take care of it. I know he was at Bar a few nights back and, if I were a betting man, I'd bet he's the guy who killed Sandra Riedel."
"What makes you say that?" the Patrolman said, listening very closely.
"Makes sense. Don't it?"
The Patrolman kept his voice down as to not tip anything to the crowd gathered in the parking lot of the Sinclair station.
"Not really."
"What don't make sense about it?"
"Well, Grey Allen..."
"Sheriff Grey Allen."
"God damn it, Sheriff Grey Allen, you have two dead bodies in three days killed in the same way. Torn to shreds. Doesn't it make sense that someone killed the first victim and then killed a second victim in the same way?"
"Nope."
"I... what?" the Patrolman stumbled. "I... I don't even know what to say to that."
"Looks like this guy killed Sandra and then some animal got at him. I don't know. A bobcat maybe."
"A bobcat? You're not serious?"
"We get bobcats around here."
The Patrolman left Grey Allen to talk to someone with a better disposition. He ranted and raved to the assembled group of investigators, this time not taking the step of lowering his voice. Those gathered in the parking lot of the Sinclair station would report hearing words like "fucking idiot" "mind bending-ly stupid" and "Alzheimer's Disease" thrown about. Grey Allen ignored it all, keeping his eyes on Byron's body. They had really done a number on him. He thought he had this under control and now that it was clear he didn't, there was only one thing left to do.
Grey Allen pulled his old frame up on top of his dusty patrol car. He stood on the hood and immediately felt a rush of shame. What a stupid thing for an old man to do. It didn't take long until all eyes were on him.
"Everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to announce my retirement from Law Enforcement. If you'd all like to send a card, just drop it by the post office and I'll make sure to stop by and pick them up."
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 1
Way before Grey Allen, one of the men who cracked the code of effective law enforcement in Barter County was a lawman by the name of Norbert Farber, a first generation German immigrant who served as Sheriff from 1913 – 1939. Before him, no lawman had lasted longer than a year in the area, though, to be fair, some had joined the military and others had no intention of staying in such a rural area. But others were, to put it kindly, run off.
Immediately upon landing the job, Sheriff Farber decided to track down all those who had left and ask them if they had any advice, insight or could offer any help at all. When no one replied to his repeated letters seeking counsel, he took it upon himself to really dig into his community. He knocked on doors and introduced himself. He asked about concerns. He made his services available. By all accounts, he was the sheriff of a rural but perfectly lawful patch of land but he never stopped looking over his shoulder.
Sheriff Farber's first piece of trouble came in the form of dead animals, often dismembered and scattered, turning up in public places. None of the contacts he had made knew what was happening and any whispers that took place behind the scenes were too quiet for him to make out. Then Alan Caspersen's dog wound up disemboweled but still tied to a leash in the blacksmith's front yard. Mr. Caspersen, not one to stay quiet about any issue on his mind, made the issue the talk of the town and surrounding area. The Caspersen dog would not go unavenged.
One night, out of frustration, Sheriff Farber visited the town bar and found blacksmith Caspersen drowning the memory of his deceased canine. The two got to talking and it wasn't long into conversation when talk turned to devils and demons, men possessed and devoid of the Grace of God, men who ran with the devil, literally, according to Caspersen. Men who had no regard for holiness, charity, or other people's animals.
It didn't matter whether or not the sheriff believed the stories. What mattered was he found the men, had a nice talk with them, and before long order had been restored. Blacksmith Caspersen never forgot the death of his dog, but before long the town moved on, the animal slaughter stopped, and time marched on. Twenty-six years later the sheriff died of a massive heart attack while on the job. In his last will and testament he instructed his wife Millicent to hand deliver to his replacement a set of letters he had written with strict instructions to not read the contents for herself. True to her word, Millicent resisted temptation and delivered the letters to newly minted Sheriff Bradley M. Godfrey who read the letters, took them to heart, and served in the position for eighteen years.
PART 2 - THE RULES OF THE SCRATCH
A week or so had passed between the two bloody nights in Cherry and between the crickets and the birds that don't know what damn time it is and the distant wail of train horns, the country can be a noisy place to try to get some sleep. Add a girl screaming and running out of your house at two in the morning and Dave Rhodes Sr. was in desperate need of coffee. Plus, he had to have a word with the boy.
Dave Jr., who everyone had called Dilly in a nickname whose origin was lost to the ages, wasn't up yet. Josie was up, though. Dave had felt her toss and turn after they heard the girl scream, run out of their house, start up her car and drive away. Both of them were pretty sure what had happened, as it was something they had dealt with in the past. Dave's mind never really calmed down and the night's sleep was restless, the clock on his bedside table particularly bright in the darkness. He woke up thoroughly unrested as he joined his wife in their kitchen.
"Should we get him up? We need to talk to him," Josie said. She had this conversation planned out, Dave could tell. If that woman had a chance to play things out in her head beforehand, she was hard to beat.
"Let's let him sleep for a bit."
"That girl may be hurt, Dave. She might have told her parents about it, they might be on their way over here right now."
"Adam and Charlotte? Not likely. He works at the John Deere, I've met him. He's a levelheaded guy."
"But if she's hurt..."
"Then chances are Dilly would have made sure she's OK. He's a good kid. He's not a monster."
"No, he's a teenage boy and they are hardwired to make bad decisions. Besides, we don't know what happened for sure. Go get him up, please."
They sat in silence for several heavy seconds. Dave took a sip of coffee and stood up.
"Let's get this over with."
Looking at his wife as the morning light beat through the window, Dave felt a pang of nostalgia. She really didn't look all that different from when he met her in high school. She was still beautiful, still unwilling to deal with any of his bullshit. He often had thoughts that, left to his own devices, there was no way he could have carved out the life he had, no way he could have balanced it, without her hand in his life. He walked over and leaned down to kiss her, hoping the coffee would mask his morning breath.
"It's not going to be like you and me," he said. "For one thing, we don't have Willie to worry about. We're going to do this solid."
"We couldn't do much worse than Willie did," she said pulling away and blushing.
"No, we could not."
He wandered down the hall, taking a second to look at the family photos. There was the photo from Disney when Dilly was ten; there was the one with the cutouts that showed his photo from every grade, there was one of Dilly in his baseball uniform. The paint was uneven from where they did some patch work a few years ago, but didn't get the exact right color. Dave paused for a second outside of his son's door, listened and heard the heavy rise and fall of a teenager dead to the world. At least the boy had gotten some sleep. That was a positive.
Dave walked into the room and started to slap Dilly's feet.
"Up," he said. "I know you were up late, but we've got miles to go before we sleep."
"Miles to go before we sleep" was something Dave's dad, Willie, had said to him every morning during his childhood. It wasn't until Dave's brief stint in college that he had learned it was a Robert Frost poem. Dave still had never read the entire thing but it rolled off his tongue every morning, just the same. Dilly let out a long groan, the kind Dave always hoped he would outgrow, but hadn't yet.
"Seriously, kid. Up. Your mom and I need to talk to you."
A couple minutes later, Dave D. Rhodes Jr., all 6'1 and 165 pounds of him, stumbled out of his room in a plain brown T-shirt, blue boxers and socks. He always wore socks. Dave the Senior was convinced he wore them in the shower. He took a hard right into their kitchen from the hall, and took his sweet time pouring coffee, then creamer from the fridge, then sugar, then stirring the mixture and sitting down, all while his parents clocked his every move. It was hard for Dave and Josie to figure why he was taking his time like that. He wasn't the type for a power play. If pinned down, the adjectives his parents would use to describe Dilly would include "tall," "straight forward," "humble," and, if pushed, "shy." He was a boy without an aggressive bone in his body until you put him on the basketball court, then he was an entirely different animal. He had made varsity as a freshman and now, in his junior year, was one of the best players on the team.
Dilly plopped down in his seat and took a sip of his coffee.
"What's up?" Dilly asked. His parents stared, saying nothing.
"She's OK," he said after a long breath. "I mean, I suppose you heard a scream last night."
Josie looked at Dave, telling him to take the lead.
"OK. First off, we like Allie. She's a..." he paused, and looked at Josie who, most definitely, did not like Allie. "She's a sweet girl. But this isn't about her. It's about you and what's happening to you."
Dilly rolled his eyes, but stopped halfway through. They had talked about this and he was showing effort at not rolling his eyes, which meant his mother would not bring it up.
"Is this 'the talk'?" Dilly asked.
"Not exactly," Dave said.
"Then what?"
"How'd you hurt her, Dilly?" Josie asked.
The teenager took a long drink of his coffee, realizing he was cornered.
"I'm not sure you'd get it."
Dave sighed. He had prepared for this. His son wasn't much of a conversationalist, but there were a few issues they connected on: football, movies, fitness. Josie and Dilly liked to garden, but there was a sturdy wall between the two of them that largely went unacknowledged. But Josie wasn't the only one who could game out a conversation.
"It started with your hands, didn't it?
Dilly stared.
"I know because I've been there. Your hands start to tingle at the palms and then spread real quick to your fingers. It goes from tingling to fire until it's all you can think about. You can be kissing the prettiest girl in the world, but your hands are on fire and when you sneak a look at them, they're longer than they were. There are curves in weird places, hair where there wasn't hair before. Then the fire spreads. Am I on base with any of this, Dilly?"
There was a silence only teenagers and parents could understand. Then a faint "yeah, that's how it started."
"You probably wanted to stop," Dave continued. "But maybe things were... heated. Maybe you were in a position where stopping would have been difficult, so you didn't. Then the fire spread from your arms into some place deeper. And when it hit that deeper place, that's when you hurt her, wasn't it?"
Dilly nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, but, no. Not really."
"How was it different?" Dave asked.
"I... damn, this is embarrassing. Could I just talk to Dad about it, or..."
"Hon, this is a family thing," Josie said. "I'm sorry it's embarrassing but we've got a lot to go over and the quicker we get past the embarrassing stuff the better."
She reached out and grabbed Dilly's hand and held it and stared at him until, after a few seconds, he met her gaze.
"This is important," she said.
Dilly exhaled deeply and took a drink of coffee.
"Allie and I were kissing and everything was fine. Nothing was... unusual, I guess. Even though I don't know what usual is in this situation. She's the first girl I've ever done anything like this with."
"We figured," Dave said.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad."
"That's not what I meant. Any girl would be lucky to have you. Now quit ducking and let's get this over with."
"She... she went down on me. I didn't ask her to, but that's when it happened. That's when the fire thing started but it wasn't in my hands. It didn't start there, I mean. It was from the chest and it spread out and, and, this is going to sound like I'm holding something back, but I'm not, I don't even remember hurting her. My hands were, like, on her head and then she's screaming and jumping up and when I... came to, I guess, there were holes in the back of her shirt and blood. Not a lot, but you could see it."
"OK," Dave said. "Is that when she ran out?"
"No, not right away. I apologized right away and I didn't know what to say so I told her she really got me excited and I lost control for a second and that's when she felt the blood."
Dilly took a big drink of his coffee, his job almost done.
"I offered to help her and I was all 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to,' and she saw the blood and saw her ripped shirt and that's when she screamed a little bit and said she was going home and I couldn't stop her."
"That sounds about right," Dave said, tapping Josie with his foot under the table.
"You did OK," Josie said. "But here's the important part, Dilly. Did you feel yourself change? Is it time for us to start exploring that?"
"A little," Dilly said. "You guys know the transforming part really scares me."
"I know," Dave said. "It scared me too the first time."
"Do you think she noticed?" Josie asked, finally getting to the heart of the thing.
"If she did, she was too polite to say anything," Dilly said, running his hand through his sandy blond hair. "She was hurt and mad when she left but I don't think she was freaked out or anything."
Suddenly, the boy's face changed as did his posture. He sat up straighter and leaned forward in a way that suggested a shift from defense to offense.
"Did you guys know this was going to happen?"
The smile across Dave's face was wide. The boy had never been a genius, but he could figure things out. People, too. He was disarming but kind and that combination made people want to talk to him, made him attractive. That was only going to help as he learned to live with this thing that their family was carrying.
"The answer is kind of," Dave said. "You want me to tell you about when I wolfed out on your mom, where she was and what she was doing?"
"God, no!" Dilly said. Back on defense.
"I'm not going to lie. Kenny Kirk, Ron and maybe Carl, that's how they first started with the process. When they were with girls like that. I don't know, kid, it brings something out in us guys. But it's different for everyone so we didn't know for sure."
Dilly opened his mouth but Dave cut him off.
"I know it seems like a risk, but it was a pretty good bet you weren't going to hurt anyone too bad, Dilly. You're not that kind of kid."
His coffee cup empty, Dilly traced the rim of the cup with his index finger.
"I wish you'd have warned me," he said. "I could have been on the lookout. Maybe not ruined Allie's shirt."
"Allie's mom can fix the shirt and scratches heal, hon," Josie said. "But here's the big thing you need to be thinking about. Do you think it's time to go out with the boys?"
All of a sudden, a rush of nostalgia hit Dave so hard it threatened to consume him. He remembered the sheer, heart-pounding terror of walking out to the woods and seeing his dad and all his friends. He remembered how they greeted him, how they embraced and welcomed him to the fold, prompting Willie to say "this ain't so special. Leave him be." He remembered how odd the men looked when they took off their shirts. Then their pants. How all these old men and their old wrinkled bodies weren't that scary, and how it actually calmed him down. Then it started and it wasn't as bad as he'd built it up to be and before he knew it, he was flying through the woods, the fastest among the pack, navigating trees and foliage faster and faster.
The rest of it, the first scent, the first trail, the first blood, the first kill, the noise that came out of his chest like fire and into the cold Nebraska air on a clear Nebraska night where the sky stretched out for eternity. The high he would never capture again. The high his son was now on the path toward. The realization that he would protect this life, that he would work for this life and all the abstractions that came with it all piled into his head so fast he couldn't stop it.
Dave stood up. He needed some air.
"It doesn't need to be this time. Come when you're ready," he told his son. "We're not going anywhere."
Dilly and Josie sat at the table and talked for an hour, carefully avoiding land mines like torn shirts and oral sex. Dilly got all the information fresh, even though he had known of his special situation since he was eight years old. Dave left them, mother and son, with something to talk about. He loaded up some old tires into the back of his pickup as an excuse and headed into town.
•••
"Town," such as it was, consisted of a bar, a church, a small business district with a grocery store, a hardware store, and a repair shop among a few streets dotted with houses in various states of upkeep. One house, damaged by a tornado several years ago, had never been repaired and was now so much a part of the landscape folks were surprised when out-of-towners brought it up. It's not hard to ignore something peculiar when you see it every day.
The shop, known as "Rathman Repair and Service," was owned by Kenneth Rathman, who made a fairly good living because he knew how to repair most tractors. He had grown from "tractor repairman" to general repair of all sorts and now had three men working at the shop full time. There were a few men in town with that much business acumen or his particular skill set, but Kenny Kirk to his friends was easily the fastest, the fairest, and the best in a fifty-mile radius, which is why he got away with being the way he was.
"Where you at, dickface?" Kenny half sang as Dave got out of his truck.
"I was at twenty percent this morning, but it's gotten significantly higher since then. You?"
"Man, I'll tell you, I've been itchy," Kenny said. "A rabbit was in my yard this morning and I swear to God I started at that thing for ten minutes, munching on dandelions, wanting to get at it. Without thinkin' to I had taken my pants off. Gave JoAnn a little bit of a treat."
"So where you at?"
"Let's call it seventy," Kenny said. "I know Ron's up there too, so maybe we start putting it together."
"It's going to be the first time since we had to do that thing."
They both kicked at the dirt, careful not to look at each other.
"Doesn't change nothing," Kenny Kirk said, kicking a rock hard enough to where it flew into the street next to his shop. "And have some decorum, man. Don't just bust that out there. Ask how I'm doing or if JoAnn's OK or about that travesty in Lincoln last week. Don't just jump to that thing. Besides, it's over. Doesn't change a damn thing about how we conduct ourselves."
"I don't think that's right," Dave sighed, mostly to himself.
"That's cause you think too goddamn much, man," Kenny said. "You put it all in, like, this historical context when that ain't what you should be doing. This is a clear-cut case of forward, not back. It's like we all agreed on. It had to happen and it happened. You'd have more luck teaching Josie to barbecue than you would changing what's already been done."
"She made a brisket once. Wasn't too bad."
"Yeah, I'll believe that when I taste it. Last time we let her near the grill half of that chicken she made was burnt to shit and the other half was raw enough to complain about it."
The two men stood in silence, which was exactly what Dave had hoped to avoid. Normally Kenny's mouth was a constant source of focus as he was the kind who talked just to talk. He could be belligerent, he was often crass, he could sometimes come up with a cutting insight but one thing the man was not was quiet. If there was a silence more than a couple of seconds it meant something was wrong.
Dave decided to see if he'd go for ten seconds, counting silently in his head. When he got to twelve, he finally took the bait.
"Something on your mind, Ken?"
"Yeah... um... look, I was talking before about how you overthink things and that is the truth, you ain't changing my mind on that, but maybe you want to call Dilly off for another few weeks, man."
Etiquette was again breached as the silence returned. Dave only gave it five seconds this time.
"You gonna make me guess why you'd say something like that?"
"Well, no, I'm not. But you clearly ain't heard."
"Heard what?"
"Look, I hate to be the guy to tell you, what with Byron and your kid... I mean, those are both more than enough to get that brain of yours working and then there's that thing at your school that's causing all the ruckus..."
Dan furrowed his brow and bugged his eyes at Kenny, who promptly remembered the law he had put down a few nights before.
"Tell me what's going on, Kenny."
"Grey Allen's retiring."
"Wait... the sheriff is stepping down?"
The news out and the hard part done, Kenny's mouth started running again.
"Yeah, man, he did it right there on the scene where they all found Byron in front of the State Patrol and investigators and shit. He stood up on his car, of all the stupid things, and was like 'I'm done. Grey Allen out.' So they're looking for a new guy and they're looking quick."
This was bad on several fronts, but for some reason Dave had started doing math in his head. How long had Grey Allen been the sheriff? How long had he been old? Grey was one of those guys who "has been old forever," as his mother used to say, and picturing Grey Allen as a young man was an endeavor sure to end in laughs if done in a group of friends. But he was a bedrock, a gentleman and, ultimately, a trusted force when trust is in short supply. Plus, his absence complicated things enormously.
"Why the hell didn't I hear about this?"
"Well, we're all dealing in our own way, man. It's not like I'm going to come over to your house and have a beer after Byron. I wanted to be by myself and since this is the first time we've talked since then, I'm guessing you did too. We all kind of... I don't know, went back into our houses and tried to do our own things, I guess. You forget sometimes, man, you're the only one of the boys with a kid to worry about and that means you've got a few distractions that we don't have."
"So because I don't go to the Bar all the damn time I'm out of touch," Dave shot back.
"That's not what I'm saying," Kenny said, drawing the words out for emphasis and maximum redneck drawl. "What I'm saying is we've all got our own shit to deal with and that means your ear ain't as close to the ground as mine or Ron's or Carl's or even Willie's. You get what I'm saying?"
"Yeah, I get what you're saying," Dave said. "Anything else I need to know since my ear is so high up in the air?"
"Don't be like that, you asshole," Kenny said. "And quit taking all this shit personal. Yeah, we're in kind of a tight spot right now but it's not like we're looking at a change in leadership. Carl would piss himself and Willie would run us all off a cliff, man, if he could make it that far. Figured you'd find out sooner or later. Now you know."
Dave had to catch himself from falling into another memory, this one involving his father, specifically his face, twisted and angry. All of a sudden the smells of lunch came wafting from the house down from Kenny's shop—the sandwiches were turkey, the chips sour cream and onion. The wind had kicked up as well, the sound it made through the trees suddenly almost deafening.
"You all right?" Kenny asked.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm at seven or eight now. Let's get the boys together. It's already been too long."
"That sounds about right," Kenny said. "We meeting at your place?"
"Nope," Dave said, sidling up to his truck. "By the creek, please. And tell everyone I'm bringing the meat, the rest of y'all can bring side dishes or chips or something."
"I'm bringing shots."
"If you still need 'em."
"Not for me," Kenny said. "Your boy might need a nip before."
"Let me handle my boy," Dave said, starting the car and kicking up dust that colored the air.
"You're the boss," Kenny muttered.
•••
That night, a black town car pulled up outside of Rathman Repair and Service. The occupant, a tall, lean man dressed for the fall weather in northern Nebraska dress pants and a long-sleeved dress shirt covered by a light windbreaker, saw the windows were dark, got out of the car, and knocked anyway. Then he knocked harder. The man was not accustomed to these sorts of sparsely populated towns, where a long road might have a business, a few houses and nothing else, familiar enough that when a second round of knocking produced nothing, he started pounding.
Before long, a light came on in the yellow house next door. The man continued pounding. The yellow house's owner, Mr. Sidney Layton, retired, came out tying his flannel robe around his gaunt waist.
"Hey, hey, nobody's in there."
The old man made his way down his front steps in a way that was both hurried due to circumstance and slow due to age. The tall man pounded a few more times and turned to face the man he had disturbed.
"Kenny Kirk closes up at six or so," Sidney said. "You're making a racket for no reason."
The man was considerably taller that Mr. Sidney, so much so that he could see the top of his head. When he spoke, the man's voice was calm, deep and smooth, a stark contrast to the old man's.
"Will Mr. Kirk be in tomorrow?"
Sidney took a second, marveling at the way the man drew the last word into the lower register of his voice. It was very slick and not something he was used to.
"Nah, his last name ain't Kirk, it's Rathman. We just call him Kenny Kirk because when he was a kid he..."
"Sir," the man interrupted. "Will this store be open tomorrow?"
"No, it won't," Sidney said. "You need a tow or something?"
"I don't need a tow, thank you," the man said. "What I need to do is speak with the owner. Can you tell me where I can find him?"
Sidney didn't betray anything to the stranger, but he now acutely felt the power shift. At first, he was the disturbed one, ready to help but also to shame this guy for making all the noise. Between the demeanor of the man and the questions he was asking, the justified anger had evaporated.
"Nah," Sidney said. "I don't think Kenny's interested in having visitors tonight. They may open in the morning but they... they don't do a lot of business on the weekends. Not before noon anyways."
The man said nothing.
"If I was you, I'd try maybe after lunch. Kenny'll be in at some point tomorrow."
"Tell me," the man said. "I noticed a good number of storage structures on my way into town, the ones with the white roofs on them, when you're coming in off Highway 21. Do those belong to Mr. Rathman?"
"Yeah, yeah. He's got a few cars in there and a few parts of cars. That sort of thing."
The man reached into his pocket and peeled a fresh, unworn $20 bill from a roll held in place by a rubber band. With a big hand that possessed surprising strength, he grabbed the old man's hand and pressed the bill into it.
"Thank you for your help," the man said in a calm voice.
"I... I don't need your money, mister," Sidney said. The bill was so new he could feel the subtle texture of the bill on his weathered hands.
"You've given me information I need," the man said, not breaking gaze with Sidney. The man's eyes were dark as was his hair. "That's worth paying for. Now, if you were to give me more information, like where Mr. Kirk might be tonight, that would also be worth paying for."
"I... I don't..." Sidney stuttered. He had not anticipated having his scruples questioned while standing outside in his bathrobe.
"I understand," the man said. "That's a bridge too far."
The man turned to get back in his car.
"Mister," Sidney yelled. "If I see Kenny Kir... Mr. Rathman before then, who should I tell was banging on his door?"
"Tell him Mr. Stander came by," the man yelled back. "Tell him to be in his shop. I'll be along."
The tail lights of the town car were very bright, almost fluorescent, Sidney thought. Extremely bright. They stayed bright all the way down the street and the old man clocked them two blocks north after he made the turn that would take him to the highway. After tossing the $20 on the table his wife used for keys and such, he dialed Kenny's cell phone and got his voicemail.
"This is Kenny. If you've got my voicemail I'm probably shit faced somewhere so I'll get to yer call when I sober up."
The voicemail ended with a huge belch, then the beep.
"Kenny, this is Sidney, down by your shop. Look, I know you and the boys are probably out somewhere but you need to give me a call when you get this. There's a weird guy looking for you and I'm thinking you're really going to want to get in front of this. He was asking all sorts of weird stuff about your shop and... give me call, would ya?"
He hung up, went back over and held up the $20.
"Where the hell do you get money like that?" he said, putting the bill up under his bushy grey mustache. "Even smells new."
Sidney did not sleep well that night between his thoughts and the howls off in the distance.
•••
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step one. You break bread.
Most of the time, the boys alternated between backyards and cooked up a giant mess of ribs, burgers, or Nebraska-raised steaks, but this time they'd loaded up Dave's portable grill and gone out to a spot not far from the Beaver Creek that was particularly good for fishing. There were also picnic tables there. No one was sure where they had come from or who they belonged to, but they were frequently used, with paint peeling and grooves carved and by sunset, the smoke was rolling off the grill, like usual.
One time Ron Smith, the guy in the group who had adopted the "biker" look but had a heart of gold, had brought a deer in the back of his truck that he had shot earlier that day and they took turns butchering and grilling. Grilled deer might seem odd but the wood smoke of the grill often overtook the gaminess of the meat, making for a perfectly acceptable meal that left everyone leaning back in their chairs and picking their teeth.
This was also the step where you messed around and joked, but under no circumstances did you raise hackles. If there were sore spots, you didn't apply pressure. If there were land mines, you steered as clear as you could and this evening, there were land mines. Bunches of them. But there would be time for that after, and... well, at this point they knew how this worked. This tradition had been passed down for generations in great detail and with great purpose.
"Did you marinate these at all, Josie? Not that they taste bad..." Carl Eakes asked Josie, who was pulling out plates from the back of the truck while her husband slung the spatula not far away. Carl wasn't much of a talker and was also the youngest of the group, so Josie made sure to answer him. It hit her Carl was the youngest of the group until tonight. Then he would graduate to second youngest.
"Yeah, we used this brown sugar recipe of my mom's," Josie said. "It's got brown sugar, soy sauce, ketchup and a bunch of other stuff."
"Smells good," Carl said and let that sit.
Aside from Dave and Josie, Kenny brought his girlfriend JoAnn with them. Ron's wife, Karen, was on call at the local hospital and couldn't make it out, though there were whisperings that she was avoiding this particular scratch for emotional reasons, which was strictly against the rules. While the group could have easily been mistaken for a group of weekend campers, what was happening was a ritual hundreds of years old. For the people gathered in the clearing, this was church.
Dilly had spent the first part of the evening, while the "men folk" worked on the food, sitting on top of one of the picnic tables staring out into the seemingly endless field of grass and weeds that exist only in rural areas, where you can see for miles and track the wind as it rushes across the flat plains toward a tree line. Josie desperately wanted to go to him. She went to Dave instead.
"You should go say something," she said.
"We will. This is the worst part. Trust me."
"Then go tell him that. He's suffering over there."
The boy had sheepishly told his dad that he wanted to "go out with the boys" the afternoon after they had had their uncomfortable talk. He had tried hard not to seem overly enthusiastic but Dave knew his boy and knew there would be little to no holding him back for much longer. After a short conversation, Josie had given up as well, so here he was.
Dave was about to tell her that Dilly's behavior was perfectly normal, but before he had the chance a blue truck that could have easily been mistaken as missing a muffler pulled up. The stink the truck brought with it, that acrid bouquet topped with a chemical sweetness, lingered as it always did. Willie was late. Willie was usually late. Everyone was OK with Willie being late. As Carl politely observed after one particularly spirited evening, a little bit of Willie went a long way.
William "Willie" Rhodes, all 6'4 of him, seldom did anything quiet. Any subject needing an opinion, Willie would let his be known first, loudest and most often least informed, which, given he had very little by way of a social filter in his old age, often made for uncomfortable moments. Among the boys, the pause in the conversation that frequently accompanied something loud and obnoxious out of Willie's mouth had become known as a "Willie Pause."
Willie and Josie got along like oil and more oil lit on fire and poured onto a pile of gasoline-soaked rags. Things had been particularly rough lately and Dave was hoping his father would suck it up for his grandson. Dave tried to give Josie a smile, but it was too thin and they both knew it.
"Where's Lacy?" Dave asked.
Willie dismissed his son with a wave and laser-focused on Dilly.
"What the hell you mopin' over there for, boy?" Willie said. "Get over here and hug your grandpa."
Dilly obliged as the two had always had a soft spot for each other and were soon embroiled in a conversation about this year's basketball team. Before any tension could manifest, low and behold, the food finished cooking and everyone jammed some in their mouths. Beers were cracked and before long a nice, easy mood settled over the camp as the conversation turned to the most important topic in the world.
"You know what I say," Willie started after wolfing down his trout. "If you gotta get rid of a coach, they couldn't have done it any better. And if that new guy who used to play quarterback knows what's good for him he'll start kicking ass early and often. I remember what that "N" on the side of our helmets used to mean something."
"You gotta give him some time," Dave said. "Let's see what type of team he can put together. Talk to me after in a few years when it's all his guys."
"Actually," Carl jumped in. "He brought over some coaches and recruits so some of them are his guys. Not that you don't have a point, plus he had a great recruiting class."
"He better have a good recruiting class!" Kenny said. "Goddamn Michigan's got that pro coach, the damn... what are they... Ohio State, their guy is the best recruiter in the damn game. We're screwed worse than a..."
Josie shot him a look.
"Worse than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest," Kenny said, making a grand gesture of toning it down.
"He's supposed to be a defensive genius," Ron said, throwing his bulk back against the chair. "If he's a defensive genius I'm Jabba the Hutt."
"Jabba the... what the hell are you talking about?" Willie said.
"He's from Star Wars, Grandpa. He's a giant slug thing," Dilly said.
"Fine, if he's a defensive genius I'm Marilyn Monroe. That more up your alley, Willie?" Ron said to a few chuckles. Tipping the scales at 240, Ron had played football in college but his physique was now more biker than athlete, with the long beard to match.
"I'm gonna stick my foot up your alley if you're not careful," Willie said, followed by a Willie Pause.
The talk continued, drifting from football to gossip to business then back to football and before anyone had time to really get going about anything. The occasion called for camaraderie so no one talked politics. The occasion called for good feelings so no one got up on horses, high or otherwise. The sun had gotten low and it was time. They had gotten to this point without talking about Byron or any of the unprecedented, bloody business of the past few weeks. There was time for that later. The moment felt right and it would be wrong to waste it.
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step two. You go back to nature.
Dave put his arm around Dilly as they walked from the clearing into the woods with the rest of the men. The boy was hot and was trembling slightly. Before they got too far out, he snuck a look back at his mother. She was standing, her hands folded palm to palm in a nervous stance. She didn't make any motion but was wearing her anxiety like an ugly hat.
"Don't worry quite yet," Dave said. "This part isn't anything scary. You're going to lay in the grass, you're going to clear your head and just, listen."
"You've told me what I'm supposed to be listening for but I don't know that I get it," Dilly said. "There's nothing out here."
"That isn't true at all," Dave said. "It's so noisy you almost hear too much. You'll hear when we get there. You're not listening for any one thing, kid. What you're doing is taking in all the sounds and once you get the sounds, then you'll start taking in what makes the sounds and the smells and how everything feels."
"Yeah, but what happens if I don't?" Dilly said.
"Then don't freak out. Relax, breathe and everything will make sense once we're out there. Then it will be time."
They walked far out into the field until the women and the food and the cars and trucks parked along the way were dots on the huge sky horizon. They kept walking into a thick growth of trees until Dave moved to the front of the group, and said "here."
First Willie, then Ron, then Carl, then Kenny Kirk stretched out on the forest floor. Dilly looked at his father hesitantly, but the time for words passed. Dave nodded, which he hoped conveyed to his son that all was well, and Dilly took his spot, stretched out his long frame and folded his hands. Finally, Dave laid down to the loud crunching of grass and leaves.
Once your head is near the dirt, the sounds of the forest become magnified. The wind is as loud as a train, the scuttling of bugs and small animals immediately apparent. As Dilly lay on the cold ground, his dad's prediction came true and suddenly the scent of the Earth underneath him was as strong as coffee in the morning, the prickly feel of the dead leaves under his arms now a persistent poke. The waning sunlight through the trees was getting less and less but somehow seemed more and more and before long, Dilly's head was buzzing with dirt and wind and scents and moss and bark and sweat.
Dilly was also acutely aware of the others as well, particularly their breathing and their scents. His father's scent he knew from home and his grandfather's from when he used to sleep over when he was a kid, but the smells of the other men—oil for Kenny, musk for Ron, a sickly sweet for Carl—suddenly filled his nostrils. The question "what do I smell like?" floated through his head, temporarily dethroning the anxiety that had set up shop there a few weeks earlier.
Then, he caught another scent all together. It was a softer scent, but also a grittier one. It evoked fur and sweet grass tinged with something else. Something that had really grabbed Dilly's attention. He noticed Carl was standing up and soon Willie joined him.
The second Dilly got to his feet, Dave was behind him.
"Don't turn around," he said in a lower voice than normal. "Keep that scent in your head. Feel it, then add to it."
Dilly knew what Dave meant. They had spoken at length about how the transition works and what thoughts and feelings he could use to get there. He knew the thought had to be his own and that he shouldn't share it. Dave had told him sometimes it takes a while to find the one that does it, but once you know what your trigger is, it becomes your best friend and your worst enemy. Dilly had three thoughts to pick from that he had chosen after careful consideration—a time when he was a seven-year-old and got lost at the mall down in Grand Island, the first time he took an elbow to the face during a basketball game and then Allie, that feeling of moist pressure from her mouth on his as they kissed. He had no stronger memories in his entire head than those three and his anxiety rose again, hoping they would do the trick. If they didn't, he was in serious trouble.
The other men had started taking off their clothes, starting with their shirts, their torsos a variety of the rural Caucasian experience. Willie's expansive belly was huge and covered in fine white hair the color of his beard, Kenny Kirk was stick thin with a bit of a sink in his chest. Their smells became much stronger once they lost their clothes and Dilly registered they were all facing the same direction, into the woods. The men were naked in a short period of time, all of them in front of Dilly facing the thick overgrowth except his father, who was behind him.
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step three. You scratched.
Dilly's brain was swimming with smells and sensations, but he was still lucid enough to remember, vividly, that Ron was the one who jerked forward first, as if he had been hit hard in the small of the back. His stomach pitched forward, his face jerking upward, then his body jerked the opposite direction as Kenny Kirk started flailing as well. Carl's arms flew around his body as though unconnected. Willie stood there and it was on his grandfather that Dilly kept his fleeting focus.
Willie was growing hair. He was a hairy dude to start with but his hair was elongating, growing noticeably thicker and shaggier, taking on a different consistency. As Carl, Ron, and Kenny Kirk flailed and jerked around him, Willie stood, his feet planted as his hair, and then his body, began to grow.
At that moment Dilly heard his father's voice, lower than he had ever heard it, whisper and growl.
"Breathe deep. Use your thought. Do it now."
The deep breath in brought all the smells of the men, the forest, the camp and the strange new one which he somehow knew was blood all flooding into his head, each fighting for space, battling to be the predominant scent. As he exhaled, the substantial anxiety Dilly had been carrying for years flooded out of his nostrils and in its place was desire to howl and to run and to get into the fucking forest already. There was only one thing stopping him and he was still conscious enough to know it. He had to use his thought.
He tried thinking of the fear of being alone and helpless. Nothing happened. He jumped around and thought of Allie and her softness, her smells and moans as their tongues intertwined. Nothing happened.
Well, this must be the one, Dilly thought to himself.
The moment was as vivid as any memory he possessed. He was in the middle of a junior varsity game and a player on the Castleville Coyotes had been on his ass from the opening whistle. They had locked horns on a couple of defensive plays and Dilly had still managed to use his height and his arm length to get around the guy and score. He had 12 points and hadn't seen halftime yet when the elbow came, fast and hard and square in the soft part of his nose. If it had been to the side or gotten some of his eye in the shot, Dilly could have been persuaded that it was an accident, but the elbow was square and sharp and Dilly knew, even before he opened his eyes, that there would be blood all down his face.
When Dilly was able to look and shake out the stars that filled his vision, he was the Coyote with a shit-eating grin. I hit you the grin said. And you ain't doing shit about it.
That night, Dilly had done something about it. He had scored 35 more points for a school record. He had played his heart out and his teammates, sensing the energy, had fed him the ball and every time Dilly had it, he took it straight to the Coyote, knocking him down, drawing foul after foul, and winning the game almost singlehandedly. His mother had said she'd never been so proud. His father had said he'd never seen such guts. Dilly knew better. He knew he wanted blood and in this case, blood was humiliating your opponent. Dilly knew who he was that night. He was the guy who got up after you knocked him down while serving you a nice big shitburger in the process. He was a soldier that way. He was merciless. He could bleed and he could make you bleed.
The memory was so fierce that Dilly tasted blood and smelled the leather on the ball and then the first spasm hit. It hurt. Dilly felt his spine shift in ways it never had before, not even close, and the pain that came with it was white hot and unrelenting, only subsiding when pain in his arms and legs took its place. It felt like his back was twisting and pulling muscle and cartilage with it in a sick, unnatural dance. He tried to scream but couldn't as his throat had taken an odd shape and the taste of blood, once in his head, was now very real and tangy as it flowed down his throat. He squeezed tears out of his eyes as his conscious mind shut down and his thoughts and memories left him, his last alert sensation being a strange stretching and tearing sensation accompanied by terrible popping sounds.
Dilly's body continued to spasm and pull and stretch and break. If the boy had been conscious, he would have had to witness his back arch and seemingly gain mass and sprout hair, his nose pull away from his face, his teeth sharpen to razors, his nails grow to claws. The other men around him underwent the same transformation, scratching at the dirt with all their strength, leaving fresh, damp grooves in the floor of the forest but none of them made sounds like the boy, his screams a reflex, his considerable blood loss, a product of his first transformation. By the time the screaming stopped and it was done, steam poured from small pools of blood around where the boy had been.
The Young Wolf emerged from the dirt. Not a wolf, exactly, but long and hairy and lean and hungry, covered in hair and drooling, a creature unfamiliar by man but thousands of years old. The Young Wolf was big yet slightly fragile in his coiled and aggressive stance. Had the wolf stood on its hind legs it would be seven feet of children's nightmare, drooling and snarling and dripping blood.
The new wolf opened its eyes which were yellow and sharp, and scanned the ground for the thing he needed.
Pack. My pack.
From their spots in the grass, the other wolves emerged. One white and big, one thin and fast, one small and straight, one large and ready. The new creature turned around and saw his father, the biggest of the pack. His chest between his front paws was large and heaving, his eyes sharp and his teeth bared. Bigger than any wolf in the wild, or any man, the Lead Wolf, the new wolf's father, reared up his head and started to howl. The other wolves followed and the new wolf heard a sound escape his throat that was perfect and right and carried with it one uncompromising message from the pack.
We are here.
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step four. You run.
The Lead Wolf took off with a speed and dexterity that shocked the Young Wolf. The others followed, fast and hard and soon the new wolf was running as fast as his new body would allow and was having trouble keeping up. He dug in and soon passed the White Wolf and the Thin Wolf and was in line with the Large Wolf when the new smell hit his nose and penetrated all the way down to his heart.
Blood. That way.
This is what they were chasing, why they were here and the Young Wolf suddenly had a purpose. At breakneck speed, he made a long circle, turning to his left and losing ground to the Large Wolf, whose turn was sharp and direct. He almost lost his balance but his back legs were strong and the dirt was thick and supported him. The forest seemed to help as he found a root under his paw that helped him push his weight in a new direction and two trees leading to a clearing seemed to lead him exactly where he wanted to go. The smell was pungent and thick and an unparalleled desire grabbed the new wolf and shook him. He had to have this smell. He was merciless. He could make you bleed.
The Lead Wolf had slowed and was moving in a manner that was curious to the new wolf, not using his unnaturally long, curved nails to dig into the dirt, but pulling them up and using his pads, changing the way his hulking frame moved. The White Wolf, who had snuck up on him, rammed the length of his body into the new wolf, prompting him.
Shhhhhh
Understanding, the Young Wolf began slowing, eventually moving to a crawl with the others. The scent was farther away now, harder to find. His long snout searched the air as did the others, but the Lead Wolf snorted at them and they all fell silent. They had come upon a small clearing and a stream, swollen with water from a late, muddy early fall. The creature giving off the scent, whatever it was, had gone through the stream and the scent had intermingled with moss, very strong moss, and fishy scents and hearty buzzing flies and water. The Young Wolf fixed his new wolf eyes across the river, searching for any sign of movement. It was dark and there was none.
The rest of the pack had begun to turn around when the Young Wolf spotted it, far, far away. A low branch of a tree, with leaves starting to die and turn yellow and smelling sweet in their death, had a branch that was swinging opposite the wind. He saw this small, telltale sign of life and took off running. He was over the river in a second and to the tree branch with the pack behind him, howling in disapproval. He blew past the tree and the second he got to the other side, the scent returned and strengthened and the Young Wolf saw red around the edges of his vision whenever he breathed it in. He then heard the sound of hooves, frantically clopping and could hear the deer, darting around in fits of panic trying to milk every last second of speed from its coiled, tight muscles.
The Young Wolf was aware of his pack behind him when his eyes set upon the deer. She was young, two winters or so, and after running for just a moment the Young Wolf could make out her tail bobbing in between thick patches of leaves and bark. Zeroing in on the movement, focused on nothing else on the planet, he gained ground, plowing through underbrush and causing enough noise to alert every animal in the forest. The deer was already at top speed and losing ground. The Young Wolf was gaining with the pack close behind him when his back paw hit a patch of mud disguised as solid ground and he slipped. His large, long body pitched to one side and crashed into the trunk of a tree, and he let out a yelp as the thundering of the pack ran close by his head.
NO
Up off the ground and angry at the fall, the Young Wolf was now in the back of the pack, struggling, striving to make up any ground he could. The White Wolf was the slowest and was breathing heavily when the Young Wolf passed him without acknowledgment. The Large Wolf was next, and he received a snarl and a small, unconvincing snap as he passed. The Young Wolf was big, but the Large Wolf could have knocked him off course easily. He did not. Ahead of him was the Thin Wolf and his father. They showed no signs of giving ground if they could help it. The three wolves at the head of the pack ran without changing ground for a short time with the Young Wolf not losing steam, but starting to feel the pull of fatigue on his limbs.
The desire to stop became stronger and stronger and just as the Young Wolf was surrendering and slowing down, the scent of blood filled his nostrils again, this time accompanied with a faint sound of the deer's heart as it thumped faster and faster, desperately trying to lose the hunters that were so close on its trail. The sound of the heartbeat locked the Young Wolf's brain like a vice and he pushed himself harder and harder, making his strides longer and growling with genuine aggression as he passed the Thin Wolf, who made a slight bow with his head and dropped back. The fatigue gave way to the hunt and all the rest of the smells and sounds battling their way into the wolves' heightened senses gave way to the hoofbeat of their prey.
The Lead Wolf and the Young Wolf were even now, with the deer just feet away, pumping its legs in fluid motions and gliding over obstacles the forest had placed in its path. The wolves smashed through them, wood splintering, dirt flying off the back of their paws. The deer ran down a slight ravine and kept going, which gave the hunters the opportunity they needed. They both leapt through the air, silhouetted by the sun, low and huge on the horizon, and landed on the deer, the Young Wolf near the head and the Lead Wolf by the haunches.
The Young Wolf was so frenzied that his teeth were in the deer's flesh before he realized he'd missed the neck and bitten into the face. He ripped the flesh away causing the deer to make a half scream but its eyes were still very sharp and focused when the young wolf found the neck and began to bite. Behind him, the Lead Wolf had tasted blood, but stopped to watch his son, his back to the pack, tear at the neck and shake with a ferocity the pack had forgotten. He bit and the deer bled and died, its sharp eyes rolling back and its pain ending, long dead by the time the entire pack had gathered around. The scent gave way to physical fluid as blood poured over the young wolf's face and down his throat, coating it with its viscous saltiness that wild hunters have known for as long as there has been a hunt.
With the wash of blood, the Young Wolf felt a wash of pleasure and accomplishment unlike any he had ever known. If he could have put the feeling into words, he would have said he never felt more at absolute harmony with his body or his soul or the Earth. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to do and he had the bloody snout and the flooded throat to prove it.
The howls began, softly at first, then louder as the circle of ancient and giant and experienced and new wolves screamed in their victory. The moon was barely visible through the light that was giving way to a darkening sky and the Lead Wolf joined the howl.
Smeared in blood, his senses sky high, every beat of his heart pumping royal blood through his mighty veins, the Young Wolf at last raised his head from the carcass and howled the loudest of them all, bellowing to the forest and the state and the world one united message.
Do not fuck with us.
They reveled for a moment then, one by one, ran farther into the woods. There was more to do. They dispersed, but each one was in touch with the pack, each knew not to go too far. After they had taken their own paths, the Lead Wolf took a moment to watch his child enjoy the kill. It was a moment he was envious of and when he finally approached the Young Wolf, still face down in gore, and nudged him on the hind quarters, his message was simple.
Miles to go before we sleep.
The Young Wolf understood and before long they were off, the sun was gone and the wolves of Cherry, Nebraska, ran through the woods, hunting in the thick trees as darkness covered the land.
•••
Depending on the range and atmospheric conditions, the howls could stretch well into Cherry proper. Most of the residents ignored them but no one was more deaf than Chuck Nesbit. He was hard of hearing anyway and, by trade, everything was his business and nothing was.
But the stranger at the bar, he sure as shit heard it.
"You got wolves around here, do you?"
Chuck was making a meal out of cleaning glasses because, as much as he didn't want to admit it, the dude in front of him was interesting. Not that he would let him know that.
The man was lithe and coiled, his leather jacket covering a frame that looked like it had a bit of muscle, but not much. He definitely wasn't from around here and it wasn't just his lack of denim or other fashion choices. He came at Chuck with an intensity he was not used to and had no idea what to do with.
"I didn't hear anything," Chuck said.
"Oh yeah, you did," the man continued. He had an Irish brogue but Chuck wasn't able to identify it primarily out of ignorance.
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"Yeah, you fuckin' do," the man said. "That loud howling sound everyone just heard. Coming from outside. From wolves. Aooooooo, that noise. You follow me?"
Chuck put down his cup, now thoroughly dry, and picked up another one.
"Can I get you anything else?"
"I've still got half a pint left, and don't change the subject. I asked if you had wolves around here."
"Wolves, deer, squirrels, all sorts of things," Chuck said, now actively avoiding the man's intense eye contact.
"I've never heard a wolf make a howl like that. That sounded like something else to me. Are you following?"
"I've got to go do some dishes."
Without breaking the intense eye contact, the man reached over and knocked his beer glass onto the bar, spilling the contents onto the laminated wood.
"Ah shit, sorry about that," the man said. "Could you grab a rag for me please? I'd hate to leave smelling of beer, am I right?"
Suddenly, Chuck didn't find this guy interesting anymore and wanted nothing more than to get in the back and away from his company. He grabbed a rag and quickly tried to mop up the mess. Without warning and with staggering quickness the man grabbed Chuck's arm and quickly applied pressure to his fingers. It wasn't painful particularly, but the promise of pain was there.
"Brother, listen to me. I know you're the stoic sort but I need to find some very special people in this town and I know you know who I'm talking about. It's the same people responsible for those bodies a week or so ago. The ones all ripped all to hell. Now I'm not going to hurt you but what you need to do is write a name on a piece of paper and give it to me. Do that and I'll never darken your door again."
"What happens if I don't?" Chuck said, suddenly defiant.
"Then I'm going to stay for a few more drinks and we'll see where the night takes us."
"Can I finish mopping up your mess first?"
"Please, allow me."
The man with the leather jacket and the Irish brogue snatched the rag out of Chuck's hand and went to work, leaving the barkeep dazed and more than a bit conflicted.
"Just one name," the man said. "I'm not here to hurt them, either."
"Bullshit," Chuck said.
"Your beer, your beer is the real bullshit. Watered down, light as fucking air. How you wash away your troubles without the benefit of a good, stout beer is beyond me."
He smiled and Chuck wrote the name "Kenny Rathman" on a napkin and nearly handed it to him.
"You promise? He's a pain in the ass but he's a friend. I don't mean to send him no trouble."
"My good man, trouble has already found him," the man said. "I'm trying to bail his ass out."
•••
It was around 3:30 in the morning when the men started returning to camp, slowly and teetering from exhaustion, all of them breathing heavy. All except one.
Dilly had done his best to clean up. When he came to, or "got back on the reservation" as Kenny Kirk had put it, he was grotesque. His body was fine, as far as he could tell, and he wasn't all that achy from the transformation and every joint and bone seemed to be well back in place, but he was naked and covered with dirt and blood. There were some other substances as well that he didn't think too hard about, opting, instead, for a quick dip in a shallow, mossy stream that ran near the campsite.
Dilly was splashing water on his neck, doing his best to not freak out over what had just happened, when he realized his grandfather was in the creek as well.
"Hell of a thing, huh, kid," Willie said.
"Yeah," Dilly said, head down, knowing what he said was completely inadequate for the occasion.
"I've got about three memories left floating around in this noggin, and one of them is my first scratch," Willie said. "It was 1970, that or there about. Went down just about like this one. I was wobbly and shaky but I got the job done, believe me."
On the edges of the bank, Ron had found his footing and was walking upright, once again a slightly intimidating middle-aged man. Dilly tried hard not to look at his naked body, but caught a glimpse of Ron's penis which was floppy and surrounded by coarse-looking hair.
"You're awfully quiet," Willie prodded. "Hell of a thing that just happened to you. My first scratch, I couldn't stop talking about it."
"I bet you couldn't," Dilly said.
"Ahhh, don't give me that tone," Willie said. "I'll tell you this—I didn't take down no lily-ass deer. Got me a buck my first time out. Those antlers make a world of difference, boy, believe me."
"I believe you, Grandpa."
"A deer," Willie said, shaking his head, his white beard swaying. "Anyone can take down a deer. They're fast is all. Hell, I'd have been disappointed if you didn't kill a deer. I'd have been worried about having bringing you out with us."
"I'm starting to think the same thing about you."
Dave walked out from behind the bushes, chewing on one of his fingernails.
"You were puffing pretty hard out there."
"Bullshit," Willie said. "I was holding back because of the boy. We all were."
Physically, Dilly made no indication he'd heard. His posture changed just slightly enough for a father to recognize it. To degrade, belittle and generally be a giant asshole was Willie's modus operandi and had been for as long as Dave had been alive. Criticism was the man's life breath and ninety-nine percent of the time, easily dismissed. Dave had hoped against hope that he would tone it down for his son's first run but Willie had been Willie. Of course he had.
"So you're telling me I didn't just blow by you after I tripped on that root?"
Both men turned and looked at Dilly. The boy's head was still down, but Dave could see a little grin working its way around the corners of his mouth.
"You blew by me because I let you," Willie said. "And watch your tone."
"I was just worried about you, Grandpa," Dilly said. "It sounded like your heart was going to explode."
This elicited a snort from several trees away, giving away Ron's position.
"Quit eavesdropping, you asshole," Willie yelled.
Dilly didn't wait around to keep the argument going, laying down in the filthy stream and coming up rubbing his arms and doing his best to clean off. The cold was like a punch that pulled the breath from his body. Willie, clean enough, apparently, got out of the stream, muttering and saying a few choice words to Dave as they passed, but they didn't land. Instead, Dave knelt down by the water, deep shadows of the trees covering him.
"You all right?"
"Yeah, that's just Grandpa," Dilly said.
"That's not what I mean."
"I know."
The only sound was Dilly still trying to get some of the caked-on blood off his shoulders and chest. The water, full of all sorts of crap, was not up to the job.
"Willie was kind of a jerk just now, but he has a point. He said he doesn't remember much, but he remembers what you just did. I remember too. It's one of those things..."
Dilly had stopped washing and turned to look at Dave.
"Every time you go out there, every time we scratch, it's an amazing thing. It's primal and... well, you know now, don't ya. It's a rush. But it's never as much a rush as your first time and it's a high you can never really get back. I guess what I want to tell you is enjoy it. You're going to get older and things are going to be more set and you will have less and less of these moments that make memories like this."
"So... I did OK?"
Dave's eyes welled up at the innocence and sweetness of his kid. After undergoing this truly odd and extraordinary ritual that would change his life forever, all he wanted was his father's approval.
"Son, yes, yes. You did great. There's no real wrong way to do it but I'm proud of you. I'm proud of your bravery, how you were scared of the transformation but did it anyway. I'm proud of how you got back up after tripping. I'm especially proud of you giving Willie the business a couple of minutes ago."
They both chuckled in the deep moonlight. The rest of the pack had moved on.
"We should get back, but you did great. And you'll want to do it again."
"That's what I don't get," Dilly said, getting out of the water. They both headed for camp. "You say everyone gets this urge to scratch every so often and that the whole pack has to go out together. What's it feel like? What should I look out for?"
"It's hard to describe, but you'll know," Dave said. "It usually starts with the senses. You'll smell things you couldn't smell, sounds will really start to bother you. Sometimes it's tied to whatever your thought is. Your emotions go all haywire. It's got nothing to do with the moon like in all those movies and more to do with whatever you're going through at the time. This one time, Ron was going through a rough patch with his first wife and they would fight all the time and he would want to scratch every other night almost. He was really pissed off morning noon and night so we had to put some rules in place and get him some help. The point is he didn't go out alone. No one goes out alone."
Dilly's face was a mask of concern behind spatters of blood and dirt.
"It happens less the older you get. Just, be mindful, I guess. Really get to know yourself and how your brain works and you'll be fine."
"Fine?" Dilly said, taking a moment to let the word dangle and dissolve into the air. "Dad, I know you've been, like, getting me ready for this since I was seven but I just turned into a wolf and bit off a deer's face."
"You found the neck eventually."
"That's not the point!"
This time, Dilly's words did not dangle or dissolve, but pierce. Dave flashed back to watching his son throw temper tantrums as a toddler. His son had been an epic fit thrower, a destroyer of worlds until his face turned red then purple with the pure rage of a child. Then, magically, it stopped over the course of a month and he had been an even-tempered kid ever since. When he exploded, there was a reason.
"Look..." Dave started.
"No, Dad. Just..."
The two men stood, clothed only by the shadows.
"I understand what this costs."
"What do you mean?
"I mean you're right about the high. You're right that I've never felt anything like that. You're right that I want to do this. And you're right that I'm going to understand myself and you guys in a really profound way."
Dilly exhaled hard, his breath visible as the night turned frosty and bitter.
"I also know it means I can never go back."
"How do you mean? What is it you're worried about?"
"Dad, we live in the middle of nowhere. My graduating class is going to be twenty-nine kids. There's one restaurant within twenty miles of here and it's OK but it's the only restaurant for twenty miles. You didn't grow up online, Dad. I know kids from Ecuador and San Francisco and, hell, from Lincoln and Grand Island and they're going away to big schools and they're making big plans. They're going to visit places and meet people and they're going to eat in restaurants that serve amazing food and I'm going to be..."
Dave finished for him.
"... figuring this out."
"Yeah. I'm going to be figuring out how to be whatever it is we are."
Dilly immediately tried to soften the blow.
"I mean, I love you guys and I don't think for a second that I'm taking this for granted..."
The kid had a point. When Dave had learned the rules of the scratch it was presented to him as something like the weather or car maintenance. It was something you had to do and Willie, nurturing father that he was, didn't answer a lot of his son's questions, leaving Dave to figure it out for himself. At the end of the day it had been a good thing and taught the young wolf self-reliance, but on the other hand he didn't realize he would be stuck in Cherry until he was already stuck in Cherry.
"No, I get it," Dave said. "And I don't have an answer for you now because it's going to take a little while to figure things out. But maybe college isn't out of the question for you. Maybe trips and hot foreign girls aren't out of the question."
"Dad, don't be gross."
Dave's hand found Dilly's shoulder in the dark.
"The truth of the matter is we don't know what sort of wolf you're going to be yet, or what sort of man you're going to be. But we'll figure it out together, like we always do."
The sounds of camp, gentle as they were, filled their sensitive ears. Dave stopped them.
"Your mom and I knew this was coming. Don't worry that you're going to hurt our feelings."
Dilly hung his head a bit, exhausted.
"Come on. We've got miles to go."
"You say that too much."
"Yeah, well."
They found their clothes right where they had left them and started putting them on.
"Why doesn't Mom ever come out with us?"
"Because she doesn't have any fun. That's why."
•••
The unofficial "step 5" in the rules of the scratch is you crash hard for at least ten hours and then wake up and go over what went down the night before. By this point Josie and Kenny Kirk's girlfriend JoAnn were used to these sorts of mornings, and had cooked up pancakes and bacon, carbs, and protein. Karen, Ron's (second) wife had shown up after her shift ended and had helped on and off so when the boys started stirring around noon, breakfast was rolling.
The men had all thrown on pants, at the very least, before passing out the night before, and hurriedly went about finding their shirts and other clothing before presenting themselves, all except Willie, who honestly couldn't care less and wore his gut not with pride, exactly, but with something very close to it. He strode up to the women, throwing red suspenders attached to his jeans over his hairy shoulders. For some reason, Josie felt he was giving off a Santa Claus–style vibe.
"Thanks," he grunted, barely audible.
"Rough night, gramps," Josie said.
"You cook these?"
"You know I did, Willie."
"You can't cook for shit."
"Then maybe you should invite Lacy out to cook for you."
Clearly bested and clearly hungry, Willie muttered something and turned toward the picnic table. Lacy, Willie's long-standing, long-suffering girlfriend, did not know about Willie's woodland adventures and was sincerely not bright enough to ask. It was a sore spot with Willie and the group as they had been together for upwards of five years. She should know, but Willie was not going to tell her and Willie was going to do what Willie was going to do. Carl was next in line for late breakfast and was remarkably clean and alert given what he had been up to.
"How about you, Carl Atkins? Rough night?"
"No ma'am, I feel great," Carl said. "That boy of yours sure is fast, though. Drew first blood and everything."
Josie gave a knowing smile. She snuck a look at Dilly who was sitting on top of one of the tables, his long legs pulled up to his chest, his back to the camp. It was impossible to know where he was emotionally, but Josie knew enough to let the boy sit. He'd come over when he got hungry.
"Don't let him threaten you," she said. "You've got experience on your side."
"Oh no, it's not like that," Carl said. "It was nice to have someone who was faster than me. Makes me try harder, right?"
"Suppose so," Josie said, spreading the bacon to the side of the pancakes.
"Thank you, Josie," he said.
Kenny Kirk had cut in line and was trying to wrap his arms around JoAnn, who was fighting it. Not that anyone smelled great after a night of camping and/or transforming into wolves and running through the woods, but Kenny had found some brand-new nasty smell and had made friends with it.
"Come on, baby, it's not that bad," he said as she spun out of his two-armed hug.
"You smell like a big shit took a little shit that grew up to be a bigger shit," JoAnn said. "Get off me you giant freak."
"You like the way I freak," Kenny said, moving closer to her.
"Take some pancakes, you smelly ass," JoAnn said, grabbing the plate Josie held at the ready. "Eat it down wind."
"I'll eat you up later and you'll love it," Kenny said, the lure of the food finally getting the better of him. He straddled one of the picnic table seats, put his food in front of him on the seat and dug in with his fingers.
"I don't know how you keep your hands off that," Josie said. "He's too much man for me."
Kenny shot both girls a quick middle finger, his mouth full.
Ron was shambling up, a little slower than the others. Usually when one of the boys hurt themselves as a wolf, they were able to shake it off when they changed back, but Ron was clearly limping, his broad shoulders drooped as he winced every time his thick left leg struck the ground.
"What's with your hitch, there?" Josie asked, handing him a plate.
"That kid of yours, he blew past me out there. Knocked me into a tree. I'm still feeling it."
To demonstrate, Ron shook his leg and rolled his ankle. He winced when the roll reached the top.
"I'll talk to him. Sorry about that."
"He'll hear from me," Ron said. "Newbie or not."
"Don't be like that."
"I'm already not like that. I'm calm as a fuckin' cucumber, Josie, but I can't let it stand without saying anything. If Willie had done it I'd still be knocking the teeth out of his idiot head. Point is, he'll hear from me and that will be that."
"That will be that," Josie repeated, squeezing syrup out of the bottle a little too vigorously. "He's a good kid and he doesn't know his own strength, Ron. Never has."
"Doesn't change nothin'," Ron said. "My leg still hurts. Besides, how else is he going to learn?"
Ron limped off and before long, Dave trudged up by himself to the table. Josie had always kind of loved the way Dave looked the morning after a scratch. His hair found ways of shooting off in different directions and his eyes were stubborn and refused to open all the way. After being married for twenty years she had seen her husband get up and out of bed literally thousands of times and in dozens of conditions—tired, rested, hung over, mad, thrilled, horny, sick—but he never looked the same way he did after a night out with the boys. It was a unique look for him and only she knew what it looked like.
It didn't hurt that Dave had aged remarkably well. He was an athlete in high school and never lost the habit of running and watching his diet, so even at the ripe old age of forty-two he was lean and toned. For some reason he disliked going without a shirt, something that no doubt tied back to living in a house with Willie for eighteen years, but when he did she still found herself tracing the veins from his arms to his shoulder, then following the hair down his chest to his navel and beyond.
"Morning, pretty girl," he said, using a line he'd used longer than he cared to admit. "Make mine to go, I've got a wife to get home to."
Josie ignored his good mood and got straight to it.
"Dilly bumped Ron last night and Ron's gunning for him."
"It's worse than that," Dave said. "Willie wants to bring up Byron. Wants to hash it all out over pancakes."
"But Dilly..."
"Yep."
"We have to..."
"Do what? What happens if we run him home now? Do you think Willie won't bring it up on the way to the car?"
"Dave, I don't want him to know that yet."
"I know."
"He's just gone through it for the first time. He's a beginner. He doesn't need to deal with this. Not yet."
"Try telling that to Willie."
"I just... I will."
"You'd get further trying to get that rock over there to buy you a beer."
He was right, of course. Once Willie's mind was made up, he would stick to his guns and would stick to them harder if you gave him a good reason why he was being a jackass. When Dilly was a boy, Willie decided he was too old to believe in Santa Claus and proudly told Dave he intended to relieve the boy of his childhood belief. Dave told Josie and the two of them caught Willie before he'd had the chance. What resulted was a knock down drag out fight where the phrases "you have no right," "this is not your job," and "we're his fucking parents" were all but screamed, eventually waking Dilly from his nap. All of these were excellent, rational points but, sure enough, Willie walked right into Dilly's room, sat on the corner of his grandson's bed, explained to him that Santa was "bullshit" and "a lie" and then asked what was for dinner as if the fight had never happened. This was not a matter of being cruel. It was a matter of Willie knowing better than anyone else on the planet.
After the Santa Incident, Dave and Josie kept him away from Willie for two months, a huge feat in a town the size of Cherry but, eventually, he showed up little by little and by March things were more or less back to normal. Willie never apologized. Now, Willie had made up his mind that it was time to air some of the family's dirty laundry, no matter how inappropriate, damaging or confusing this information might be and nothing short of the Voice of God was going to change his mind. Maybe not even that.
"Can you get to him before Willie brings it up?" Josie said, her eyes blazing.
"Maybe," Dave said between bites of pancake. "My guess is we have a little time. He wouldn't start some shit until everyone had a chance to eat, right?"
"All right, listen up!" Willie yelled loud enough for the camp to hear. "We need to hash this Byron thing out if things are going to get back to normal."
Cries of "aw Jesus," "we're still eating," and general groans met the old man, but he plowed on, undeterred.
"No, no, I get that this is touchy for all you ladies, but we did something serious a few days ago and we got to reckon for it."
The combination of words had broken through whatever haze Dilly was in and he turned around to join the group.
"Knock it off you old fart. I still got syrup on my fingers," Kenny Kirk shouted back.
"Then talk about this with sticky fingers," Willie said. "We got to get this out in the open."
"What part of this isn't out in the open?" Dave piped up. Josie was glad to hear it. When Willie got rolling it was easy to look for an escape hatch and let him rant and it wasn't unheard of for Dave to turn back into a little boy and cower before his father. But Dave was running at him head-on, not raising his voice but not backing down either.
"Byron made his choices and we made ours. We talked about it for a while and it weighed on all of us, Willie. Don't you remember all that talking we did?"
"I remember you running your damn mouth all night, I remember that."
"Fuck you," Dave said, escalating quickly. "If you don't remember that meeting where everyone said their piece..."
"Not everyone..." Willie stammered, shocked at being knocked back.
"Where EVERYONE said their piece, you included, if you don't remember that then you've come down with Alzheimer's or some shit because we did that together. We did that as a pack."
"That's how you remember it?"
"That's how it was, Willie."
"That's how it was," Willie repeated, chewing the words. "Cause I remember you going on and on about how he was 'threatening this whole thing' and how 'something had to be done.' I remember you pushing for it cause you never liked Byron. Not since you caught him and Josie..."
"You shut your fucking mouth old man," Dave said, moving fast toward Willie. "You shut your fu..."
Before he could get there, Ron had grabbed one arm and clamped down hard, pulling Dave back. Both father and son had cut loose now and were screaming at each other, producing a large garbled ball of hate. Ron gave one hard pull and Dave spun around, running his punching hand through his spiked hair.
"What's everyone talking about?"
Josie closed her eyes. If Dilly hadn't brought it up they could have gotten him home, gotten their version of events into his head first, told him the history he needed to know and left out the history he didn't. Now they had to do it in front of the camp with Willie barking behind them. Dilly had hopped off the table, still bare chested, walking to stand between Dave and Willie.
"Dad, don't say F-you to grandpa. What's going on?"
Willie shot Dave a look ten times worse than anything he could have said.
"He's my boy. I'll talk to him."
"He's in our pack. Tell him now," Willie said.
Dave plopped down on a bench and reckoned with the tightness in his chest and the low, deep hurt in the pit of his stomach.
"You all see it that way?" he asked.
"Of course they do, don't be an idiot," Willie barked.
Dave stood up and got very close to Willie.
"I will tell him but you will keep your fool mouth shut while I do. Anything you got to add, you do so when I'm done, is that clear?"
"What you gonna do if I don't," Willie asked. "You gonna yell more curse words at me?"
"I'll do more than that," Dave said, sitting back down.
"Dad, I feel really left out here," Dilly said, smiling awkwardly. He was trying to crack a joke to relieve the obvious tension in the camp, but hadn't bothered to say anything funny.
Dave snuck one more look at Josie, who was already choking back tears, and launched in.
"Well, Dilly, your Uncle Byron was not a very nice man."
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 2
Of course, the rumors of creatures in the woods exist through the history of Cherry township. Since the community was founded in 1873, the farmers and ranchers had whispered of strange sounds coming from the woods with the occasional sighting of a hairy blur here or a disembowled animal there. But after a while, it faded into the background and became part of the scenery, something you knew about that made you a local, that gave your town some flavor.
The only officially recorded case of an "unusual sighting" came in the spring of 1922 by Mr. RJ Meyer and his family. They were on a nature hike, which was a popular activity for children of the time, and reported to the local weekly paper they had seen a "devilish creature" that was easily eight feet tall and was clearly of the devil. The Meyers implored the local churches of the area to organize a posse, to come to the woods and help rid the community of this demonic influence. The family even co-signed a Letter To The Editor of the Barter County Buck calling for righteous men to take up arms and protect their community. Nothing came of it.
It should be said the Meyers were not well respected in the community and after the community leaders paid them a kindly visit, they promptly dropped their alarmist calls. In particular, it was the influence of Mrs. Erma K. Rhodes, the wife of Pastor Kane F. Rhodes, that apparently changed the mind of the Meyer clan. Later, they recanted, saying their youngest, Samuel, had made up the story and was so convincing that the family had believed him. Plus, good Christians must be on the lookout for demonic influences, wherever they may appear.
To pour through the official history of Cherry, the Meyer incident, as it was known, was not only the only mention of "the W word" in the record, but was likely the most exciting thing to happen to Cherry in a hundred years. Yes, there was the tornado of 1981 that destroyed a grain silo and took the roof off several houses. Yes, there was a high-speed chase in 1992 that involved the Nebraska State Patrol and ended with the suspect running into a cornfield. And, yes, there was the time in 1997 when young Mr. Cronk bedded the new science teacher in town and the scandal lasted well past the school year. But you would be hard-pressed to find a quieter place to live in the whole of the United States.
Roswell had aliens. Loch Ness had Nessie. Boggy Creek had the mighty Sasquatch.
Cherry did not have werewolves.
That didn't, however, stop the Nebraska State Historical Society from putting up a historical marker just outside of town in the early 1960s commemorating the Meyers and their claim. The historical marker, made of granite and buried deep, gets the occasional traveler off the Interstate and into town but, like most historic markers, you've got to be looking for it if you want to see it at all.
PART 3 - NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
Stuart Dietz wasn't a broken man.
Sure, his girlfriend had left him a couple of months ago without as much as a raised voice or a shattered dish. Sure, he had been dismissed from the Detroit Police Department after all but being laughed off the force. Sure, as the subject of a viral video he had been both publicly and privately shamed and couldn't get a goddamn drink in a bar without having someone point and laugh or, worse, point and whisper. Sure, he had devolved from a man hanging on week to week, month to month, into a man who had procured the bitter stank of failure and desperation, a man whose very existence was an apology.
But Stuart Dietz wasn't a broken man. At this point, he wasn't much of anything.
After seven years on the Detroit Police Department, Stu had run into what fellow officers affectionately called a "very bad day." It started with a drug bust gone wrong where a suspected drugs dealer had removed the "suspected" part of his title by throwing his stash in the air after Stu had tried to arrest him. The stash became airborne and Stu, being a human who breathed, had started the day unexpectedly high, his gums numb and heart racing. His partner, a sensible spark plug of a woman named Officer Regan Anson, but "Regs" to her friends, had tried to send him home but Stu was having none of it. He would power through. It was the sort of cop he was.
A domestic dispute later that morning ended with a drunk man vomiting on Stu, which ended up being a nice appetizer for the main course of his "very bad day." They rolled up on a grade-school-age child who was standing in the middle of the road with a very real gun, waving it around. The boy had screamed about his mother taking away his iPad, and Stu had done his best to calm him, which gave onlookers time to gather and fire up their smart phones. Footage of the incident existed from multiple angles and they all showed Stu trying to calm the kid down but failing as the kid continued to scream and gesture with the gun. By the time the kid shot himself in the chest, there were more than a dozen cameras trained on the boy and then on the cop who tried, desperately, to perform CPR and bring the boy back.
What Stu remembered, more than anything, was something the camera couldn't show. The moment after the gun went off the boy, pudgy and dirty, clearly a product of neglect, had widened his eyes and stared at Stu, every part of him screaming "I wish I could take this back." Memories of the boy's eyes had burrowed into Stu's psyche and stayed there, returning again and again, giving the cop no respite, hollowing him out emotionally. Then came the aftermath.
Of course, there was an official investigation that basically cleared him of wrongdoing, but it wasn't the official stuff that really twisted Stu's guts, it was the everyday stuff. It ruined his day when people yelled at him from passing cars on the street. It sucked in a big bad way when his Facebook profile was hacked and flooded with photos of the dead kid in the middle of the road. And he drank a little more the night his mother told him the ladies at the church were "talking." But, as he told his sister over the phone, it was happening to him but in some way it felt like it was really happening to somebody else.
"They're only clichés because they work," she had said. And she was right. Like always.
Since they were kids, Stu and his sister Dana had shared an odd relationship. She was two years older and while Stu had always been solid, if a little timid as a boy, it was clear from the time she was a toddler that Dana could track, kill, and eat her own food. She was the person you wanted on your side in a fight as long as you were absolutely sure that she was going to land on your side. One defining moment in their relationship centered around Stu getting in a scuffle at school in a hallway where bad things frequently happened. He was giving as good as he got in the way boys fight to maximize movement but minimize the possibility of someone actually getting hit. The fight was almost over and Stu was started to let up only to be jerked up by his hair, hard, by Dana and thrown into the corner. She was mad at him for making a scene and embarrassing her, so she decided to end it. The kid Stu was fighting had run off and dinner was a very awkward affair that night.
But they had been in good shape for a while. Dana had come out to her parents when she was twenty and seeing how she handled an awkward and potentially explosive situation had been something Stu remembered, even years later. Dana had laid out the facts in a reasonable manner—she was a girl and her romantic partners were going to be girls and she had known this was the way things were going to be for quite some time—and shut down all the stupid questions her mom and dad had thrown at her while answering the smart ones. Stu, who was seventeen at the time, was listening from down the hall and started to really admire the way Dana could deflect all the bullshit she must have known was coming her way.
"Maybe this is a phase" was met with "I don't believe that's the case and regardless, this is the way things are for now and you need to accept that."
"What about a family" was met with "I'm not interested in a family but if I was, adoption is a very good option, given the number of children who need stable homes."
"You're going against God's law," from their mother was met with "this conversation is done until you can accept me for who I am." And then she followed up, not speaking to her folks for two years, during which Stu was the go-between. It was during this time they established their rapport that carried them into adulthood. Stu had learned to accept that Dana, strong, confident Dana, was right about most things and the things she was wrong about sounded pretty decent and logical coming out of her mouth.
"Do you think your life is viable there anymore?" she had asked him about a week after the incident had made his life nearly intolerable. "Can you live this down and if you do, what are you left with?"
"I'm definitely not living it down," Stu said. "The thing that sucks most about it is, if you look at the rules, I'm in the clear. I didn't do anything wrong, you know?"
"That's good as far as it goes but I'm talking about you," Dana said, bringing it back. "What I'm talking about is making a clean start somewhere else. You don't have much tying you to Detroit anymore. Not Mom and Dad, that's for sure."
"I'm not moving to Florida," Stu said. "Speaking of clichés."
Their parents were exactly where retired people of moderate resources ended up—a Florida retirement community. Stu hadn't been down in a year and even then buoyed the chore by promising himself and his then girlfriend an afternoon at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
"I don't want to sound like the cranky lesbian Mom thinks I am, but here's what I see. I see my brother without a job he enjoys, without a girlfriend, and the frequent target for people who throw things from their car. Get outta there, Stu."
"And go where? You think this isn't going to follow me?"
"Sure it'll follow you," she said. "So you find something out of the way, you do that job for five years or so until this blows over, more or less, and then you're back doing what you want to do by the time you're forty."
Again, she sounded reasonable.
"I guess," Stu said. "But I don't know where to start."
"That's kind of what I called to talk to you about," Dana said, showing her first sign of hesitancy. "There's this job down here..."
"No. No. I am not moving to Nebraska. Nobody lives in Nebraska."
"That's the whole damn point, brother!"
"I am not living anywhere where I can't get a decent sandwich twenty-four hours."
"Don't be a snob."
"I'm not a snob. You know I don't have any money saved up."
"Being a snob isn't about money, you idiot. It's about your attitude. You think because you can see live music on a Tuesday or ride a bus or get a sandwich at four in the morning, which is awful for you by the way, that somehow makes you superior to people who live in the sticks? What an asshole thing to think. I can tell you a thousand good things about living here. First and foremost is that there are not a lot of people to bother you, which is something you need right now, and second, your big sister lives in the sticks and is more than happy to help you get back on your feet."
"I thought snob meant rich."
"Yeah, you're wrong on that."
Stu had ended the call in a good place but totally, unequivocally sure that he was not moving to Nebraska, much less rural Nebraska. He spent the next day online, avoiding news sites and looking for jobs in law enforcement. Then in law enforcement support. Then he widened his search and, by the time the next day rolled around, the little bomb his sister had implanted in his head had started to make little explosions in his brain. Maybe he needed a clean break. Maybe the sticks wouldn't be so bad. Maybe he could order the makings of a decent sandwich online or something. He held out another day and then called Dana back.
"Knew you'd call," she said, not bothering with any sort of greeting. "You held out longer than I thought."
"Yeah," he said. "You're always right."
•••
The interview for Sheriff Grey Allen's position was an easy one being that there were not a lot of applicants and those who had applied were not the sort of folk you'd want mowing your lawn, much less wearing a badge. Two applicants had criminal records, one had a warrant out for his arrest ("it was only a speeding ticket"), one gentleman might have worked if not for his need to take harvest season off and then there was Stu. Tack on to that the need for someone on the job ASAFP, the fact that he had law enforcement training equivalent to what was needed in the job and was willing to relocate and the whole incident in Detroit was overlooked.
That's how it came to be that Stu found himself with his sister's arms around him being welcomed into her home just two months and a week after watching a boy die. Dana and her wife Robin had their own business roasting very specific sorts of coffee which they sold online. Apparently things had been going well because they had added on to their house which sat on about ten acres of land about a mile and a half off the highway.
"I'm glad you're here," she said, continuing the big hug born more out of sympathy than affection, Stu figured. She smelled like coffee in a very pleasant way.
"Good to be here, I guess," Stu said. "I wish it was under better circumstances. Hey, Robin!"
Robin had poked her head out from the house and waved. Short-haired, slim and always impeccably put together, Robin was one of the cutest women, in Stu's estimation, that had ever walked on two legs. She was overly friendly and a great cook, something Stu was hoping would come into play shortly. Before leaving Detroit he had tried to make a tour of his favorite eateries only to get variations of the "whisper and point" wherever he went. Apparently he was still big news. The bottom line was he had eaten Subway and its analogs for most of the past week and a half.
"Hey Stu!" Robin yelled back. "I'd come give you a hug, too, but I'm setting the table. Come eat."
Magic words. He did eat, a lovely spread starting with walnut and cranberry salad leading into a fantastic pasta dish with some sort of cream sauce and mushrooms and topped with strawberries on a biscuit. Stu was about ready to pop by the time Dana handed him a beer and told him to come out to the porch, an expansive affair that ran the length of the house. They settled onto chairs with metal lattice backs and Stu took a long swig of the beer.
"Lucky Bucket," Dana said. "Brewed about a hundred miles from here, give or take. You still a beer guy?"
"At this point I'm an 'anything I can drink' sort of guy."
"Don't be like that," she said. "If you turn into a drunk I'm going to beat the shit out of you and bury you neck deep in my garden until you come out of it. No rehab for you, my friend. It's the garden all the way and the snails and birds will be your only companions."
"Good to know someone's looking out for me, I suppose."
"So, do you want to address this 'woe is me thing' for a little longer or do you want me to tell you about the job you start on Monday?" Dana said. "Cause I can do either one. Or both, but I'm going to need more beer."
"I think I've got some 'woe is me' coming," he said. "Or didn't you watch the video."
Dana had never actually brought up the specifics of "the incident" other than to offer some much welcomed sympathy. The truth of the matter was Stu was feeling sorry for himself but he had three excellent reasons, to his mind, a pity party made all sorts of sense.
Reason one was the obvious. He had left his job, his girlfriend had left and he couldn't go out in public without significant negative attention from strangers. Reason two played into the fears he had always harbored about himself. Stu didn't have the highest self-esteem but being a cop was something he was good at and was one of the cornerstones he had built his identity on. Technically he was a cop again, but by all accounts a disgraced cop, a failed cop, a cop who took a risk during a precarious situation and paid a price for it.
It was the third reason that he hadn't reckoned with yet. Post-traumatic stress was something Stu had been tested for before he had unceremoniously left the Detroit Police Department and he wasn't sure what he was experiencing was covered by that particular diagnosis anyway. If he were to be dramatic about it he would say his experience was less "traumatic stress" and more "being haunted." Between six and twenty times a day, the face of the boy, his eyes extremely wide in surprise and pain, floated into his mind's eye.
I want to take this back. I want to take this back.
He had been living with the "haunting" for long enough to notice a few patterns. He would know by the time he plugged in his electric shaver in the morning whether it was going to be a good day or a bad day. On a good day, the kid's face would float and he would feel a familiar dropping sensation in his stomach just a few times and it wasn't enough to significantly affect his mood. On a bad day he would have to roll with it, play out scenarios in his head, letting the scene play out over and over throughout the day. He would think what he could have done differently and how it would have played out with a pain and anxiety that, after a time, got to be familiar. He even started actively thinking about his "haunting" while he worked out and the pain and drive it gave him, plus the extra time he had on his hands, had put Stu in the best shape of his life. He had thought of some of these scenarios so often that they almost seemed like a well-worn VHS tape he would play a dozen times when he was a kid and the pain was not friendly, exactly, but more safe.
While, outwardly, the "haunting" didn't change anything about his day-to-day routine, it was making him pretty damn miserable. The worst kind of pain, Stu figured, was the kind that made no mark and couldn't be shared with anyone else. Even his sister.
"Of course I watched the video," she said after a longer than usual silence for her. "It was awful, Stu."
For a moment, all that was audible was the wind in the trees, making a rustling that was loud when you stopped to listen to it. For the first time in a long time, Stu's mind was blank, then he realized the silence was going on for too long and something probably should be said.
"Thanks."
"For what?"
"For saying it was awful," Stu said. "No one does that. I get a lot of 'you did what you could's and a few 'you should've done that's but no 'that's awful.' Thanks."
Another couple of seconds, another big gust rattled a thousand leaves into a loud burst of sound. It wasn't unlike a scream, Stu thought.
"Are the trees always this loud?"
"Yeah," Dana said. "It was one of the first things I noticed when we moved out here. Nature is not a quiet lady."
"Neither are you," Stu said.
"Got that right, brother. I have a lot of friends back East and they all have opinions about living in Nebraska. I remember this one girl, Taylor Gainsberg, you remember her?"
Stu shook his head.
"She wasn't gay but was very touchy feely in high school... anyway, she had this loud nasal voice..."
"Wait, was she the 'Mr. Daaaaavidson' girl?" Stu suddenly recalled a birthday party where one of the guests had latched on to a funny vocal affectation and ran with it the entire night. In his memory the girls had made fun of a teacher named Mr. Davidson and one girl had drawn the name out so it took three or four seconds to say, all at a high, nasal pitch. It had become a family joke, briefly, until their mother had shut it down.
"Yeah, that was her. I remember running in to her last time I was back East and she asked where I was living and after I told her she said "Nebraaaaaskaaaa, nobody lives in Nebraaaaskaaa."
Stu smiled and leaned back on the warm metal of the lattice chair.
"I told her I live in Nebraaaaaskaaa. I said it just like that but in my normal tone of voice, and she kind of got pissy and left. You basically said the same thing on the phone a few weeks back."
Dana swigged her beer and Stu felt sufficiently sheepish.
"Point of the story is most folks can't fathom living out here. There are only a few restaurants in driving distance, only one grocery store worth going to, there are bugs and deer and you can get where you're going in five minutes. Truth of the matter is I've only been out here a few years and I can't imagine not living here."
"Really?" Stu asked.
"Really really," Dana said. "If I had to move back to Detroit... hell, if I had to move up to Sioux Falls, I think I'd be miserable real quick."
"Why? You can sit on a porch in a city. You can see a movie in the morning, you can see live music on a Tuesday night, you can..."
"All that shit is secondary, man," Dana said, waving his argument off with her beer bottle. "All that shit, that's just to feel important. People think that if they're surrounded by people doing interesting and important things they'll be interesting and important when the opposite is true. You can waste your life in a city the way you could never, ever waste it out here. This..."
She paused for effect. The wind cooperated.
"This, you and me sitting out on a porch listening to the wind, this is just as important as any of that meaningless crap you just said. Out here you've got to reckon with yourself. Out here, you can figure out who you are. Or you can perfect it. Ahh, speaking of perfect..."
Robin had made her way out to the porch and had pulled up a chair. Dana scooched over and put her arm around her wife.
"I was just giving Stu the 'why we live in the country speech.'"
"Did you pause for effect?"
"Sure did."
"Do you think he bought it?" Robin said, her big brown eyes looking Stu up and down for what he would mistake as attraction if he didn't know better.
"Hard to see. He's stubborn."
"He's also about done with this beer," Stu said. "I would stipulate to all your points if I had another beer in my hand in the next five minutes."
•••
There's being full, and then there's what Stu would refer to in the future as being "Robin Full."
Regular full was having eaten until it was prudent to stop. "Robin Full" involved shoveling food hard and fast for an extended period of time because it was so fresh, so flavorful, so sweet, so perfect that stopping just didn't make sense. Then, after the food was gone, you regretted it.
In the following week, dinner had been at Dana and Robin's three times and Stu had eaten more than was socially acceptable ("are you kidding me with this guy?" Robin had asked) at each sitting. He was staying in a bed and breakfast, about fifteen miles away from Cherry in a town called Springview so it wasn't that much of a trek, although he couldn't drink more than a few beers before hitting the road. The owner of the B&B had big dreams of something called "Sandhills Tourism." Stu found her friendly and strange.
There were very few apartments to speak of in the town of Cherry and during the interview for the Sheriff's position he had stopped at the local bar/diner, named "Bar," and asked around. The bartender, a gruff guy named Chuck, had served him a reasonable hamburger and given him three numbers of people who had space to rent. One number was disconnected, the second had seemed promising, and the third was answered by a gentleman who asked Stu if he was "a Jew."Stu had hung up without giving the man any information, ethnic or otherwise.
The second phone number belonged to Carol Cryer, a nice young woman with a two-year-old daughter named Cassidy who seemed permanently affixed to the top of her hip. Her husband was a soldier, off on deployment, and they had a guest house in the back that was bigger than any apartment Stu had ever lived in. It was dingy and slightly depressing but it was big—three rooms, a bathroom, a full kitchen—the kind of apartment that would go for several thousand a month in parts of Detroit.
Stu took the "guest house" and Carol expressed happiness at "having a man around, especially one with a gun."
"My Fred, he can shoot the wings off a fly at one hundred yards," she bragged. "He's still got thirteen months left on his deployment and we've gotten along, but it'll be nice to have someone close by."
"I'm not nearly that good a shot, but I'm glad it worked out, ma'am," Stu said. He almost never used the term "ma'am," considering it more of a little kid thing to say, but it felt appropriate. Carol smiled and bopped back into her house and Stu drove to pick up his stuff. A quick trip to the Shopman's Market in Springview for supplies and a six-pack of Lucky Bucket and he was something resembling settled. Stu had moved enough to know home didn't really feel like home until the TV was plugged in and the wifi was working.
Unfortunately, no one from the cable company would be out until mid-week (though he was surprised at how fast and cheap the available Internet connections were) so he was stuck with his meager DVD collection. On a whim he popped in Robocop and almost instantly regretted it as the connection of "ultraviolence" and "Detroit" brought his "haunting" around. He shut off the movie and dove into his six-pack. Beer dulled the feelings a bit but by the time he finally fell asleep the clock on his bedside was spinning and his last thought was "I hope I'm not hung over the morning I meet the guy I'm replacing."
No luck.
Grey Allen was ancient. In his ten years as a law enforcement officer, Stu had never seen quite so old a man still in uniform, which hung off Grey Allen like he was a hanger. To his credit, the old Sheriff immediately stood up, firmly shook Stu's hand and exchanged pleasantries before offering Stu a seat.
"Not much to it, I suppose," Grey Allen said. "The holding cell is over there. This key opens and locks the cell. There's a computer over there if you can figure out what the hell to do with it. I sure can't."
"So you don't have electronic files or access to any national databases or anything like that?" Stu asked, realizing how dire the situation was. "What if you have to file a warrant or something?"
"I call Lynda down in Basset off Highway 20, there. She does all that computer stuff for me. Let's see..."
Grey Allen stood up and Stu kept his breathing shallow for fear that a sharp breath might knock the old fart over.
"I'll issue you your weapon. That's important. Every now and again you... you get a call from the State Troopers and you gotta deal with that."
There was a long, long pause as Grey Allen scratched his head and tried to think about what else his job entailed.
"There's a lawnmower in the shed out back. You're responsible for that."
"I have to mow the lawn?" Stu asked.
"You have to mow the lawn, yes," Grey Allen said. "The toilet in the back is a bit sticky, too, you might want to look at that if you have any..."
He trailed off again. Stu stared at him expectantly.
"... any plumbing expertise," he finished.
Stu had been nervous meeting the sheriff whose job he would be taking over, but never in his life would he have come up with this scenario. This wasn't law enforcement as he knew it. As near as he could tell, it wasn't law enforcement as it had once been. There were no computers, very little paperwork that Grey Allen had deemed important enough to tell him about, and a lawn to mow. The theme song from Gilligan's Island popped into Stu's head—"no lights, no phones, no motorcars, not a single luxury."
"Like Robinson Crusoe..." Stu said under his breath.
"What about Robinson Crusoe?" Grey Allen asked, his hearing still sharp.
"Nothing, sir. I have a question for you and I'm trying to figure out how to say it as respectfully as I can."
"Just go," Grey Allen said. "No point pussy footing around."
Stu drew a breath and neither pussy nor footed.
"How do you spend most of your time?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I was in Detroit I spent some time on patrol, some on paperwork for patrol, I did some investigating using online tools and databases, I spent some time training. I don't see anything like that here and I'm wondering..."
"What I do here?"
"Yes, sir," Stu said, careful to add the "sir" lest he seem disrespectful.
"I can tell you," Grey Allen said, pulling up a chair and slouching down low like an old-fashioned baseball manager. "I always figured a bad day out of the office was better than a good day in it so I spent most of my time out there in my truck. I logged over 350,000 miles on this job just driving around town, driving out to see folks I know, driving back. I know everyone in this county by sight, Mr. Dietz. Every single person is known to me and I'm known to them. That's how I get around all that paperwork bullshit, to be honest. People know who I am and I know them."
"I understand the concept but you've got to keep records, sir. You've got to have arrest records, traffic stop records, you've got to have warrants and paperwork for the courts. I don't see any of that."
"Nope," Grey Allen said.
"Nope? That's not a question you answer with 'nope.'"
Grey Allen smiled, stood and put a withered hand on Stu's shoulder.
"I'm sure you'll get us all up to speed, then," he said. "If you run into any problems, you seem smart. You can figure them out."
Grey Allen made for the door and his feet were hitting the dirt outside until Stu realized he meant to leave and, likely, never return.
"Wait!" Stu said, out of his chair so quick it threatened to tip over. "That can't be it. You... you're not going to help me any more than that?"
Grey Allen turned around and looked at Stu with tired eyes. The wrinkled bags seemed to almost glow in the hard light of the autumn afternoon.
"You're on your own, kid," he said. "Anything else I could tell you, you'd brush it off. Best figure it out on your own."
"You're not staying around town then?"
"Nope," Grey Allen said. "I promised myself a long vacation a while back. It's time to collect."
Grey Allen seemed to shrink as he got closer and closer to his truck and Stu, not sure what to do either in the situation or at the job in general, stood and watched him go. It took the old-timer almost a minute to open the door to his truck, push it, and climb in before he shot Stu a look and one pearl of wisdom.
"I'm getting out of here," he said. "This town's not cursed exactly... but... I don't know. Something isn't right."
The door creaked shut, his tires crunched on gravel, and Grey Allen drove away, never to be heard from again.
•••
It took a day or two for the word to get out that Grey Allen was gone, but once it was official Stu's phone did not stop ringing. First it was the County Attorney who had long ago given up the idea of working with the Barter County Sheriff's Department.
"That man," the Attorney, a nice man named Michael Gatliss with a fast mouth and a sharp tongue, said. "He was a son of a bitch, is what he was, if you'll pardon me. I tried to work with him and I tried to work with him and I tried to work with him and he would never return my calls. How do you run a Sheriff's office if there's no office to speak of? How the hell do you do that?"
Stu had assured him he didn't know but he looked forward to working with Mr. Gatliss and that he would value any advice he could give him. The man calmed down and said he would send him over some documents.
"You could email them to me," Stu said.
"Email? Email? Are you playing with me?"
"No," Stu said surely, not sure how to take it.
"That's fantastic!" Mr. Gatliss almost yelled. "I will send you an email. Sweet baby Jesus, yes, I will send you an email."
"That's... that's great," Stu offered, not nearly as enthusiastic.
"It's a brand-new day," Gatliss said before hanging up.
This conversation, more or less, played out a dozen or so times in Stu's first few days of duty. Someone would call, feel Stu out, learn he wasn't a technological neophyte or someone hell-bent on obstruction, they would be thrilled and then they would hang up. In between time, Stu did a few patrols, answered a few service calls, though fewer than he had anticipated, and mowed the lawn. It was a small lawn and the mower was well taken care of.
He was on call, more or less, during the evening hours and he slept with his phone close to his bed. It hardly ever rang and if it did it was most likely Dana. In his fourth day he was called down to "Bar" over a dispute concerning a tab, but once he walked through the door all the yelling stopped and things got resolved pretty fast. In between he would visit his sister, who seemed to genuinely like having him around, he would exercise by running some of the flattest land he had ever run, and once cable and Internet got hooked up he spent time in the embrace of serialized television. Even Carol the landlady came by on occasion, once with homemade casserole with bits of Doritos mixed in it. No one bothered him much, no one asked too many questions and most importantly, he didn't have to deal with "the look" once. He had one bad day when his "curse" wouldn't leave him alone but beyond that he was getting the distinct feeling like this move had been good for him.
The only meeting of note came when a Mister Stander showed up, in person, at his office for no reason Stu could discern. The man, who was tall and thin but very polite, sharp in his light-colored suit and bow tie, said he was a visitor to Cherry, there on business, and wasn't having any luck tracking down some of the people he was trying to find. Stu had told him he was new and that he was still learning everyone's names and would be little to no help at the present time.
"I would put you on to the former Sheriff, but I got the impression he's left town for good," Stu said. "Seemed eager to put us in his rear view."
Since he started his life in Cherry, Stu had found himself slipping into colloquialisms with more and more frequency. Phrases like "in his rear view" had crept in there but he seemed to be delivering them well. If he sounded like a moron, no one had mentioned it.
"You're not the first one to say that," Mr. Stander said in a voice that was both gravel and silk at the same time. "Sheriff Grey Allen was well known but, as I understand it, he's not missed."
"No, I get that impression too," Stu said. "What are the names of the men you're looking for again?"
"Two men," Mr. Stander said. "A Mr. Kenny Rathman, known as Kenny Kirk, who owns the local garage and a Mr. Ron Smith, who works with the local grain elevator."
"Give me a month on the job and I bet I could help you, but I'm not part of the community just yet," Stu said. "You've driven by their houses, obviously."
"It seems I always just miss them," Mr. Stander said, his voice a fascinating combination of nasal and bass. He sounded like a radio announcer.
"Right," Stu said. "What's your business with these men?"
"There's no way to say this without sounding mysterious, but it's business between my employer and Mr. Rathman and Mr. Smith," Stander said. "It's nothing sinister, I assure you, but it's nothing that I want out in the community. I'm sure you understand. Keeping secrets in a small community is... extremely difficult."
"Yeah," Stu said, standing up. "I understand. If I meet these men I will make sure to mention you. Do you have a card or something I can give them?"
"No," Mr. Stander said. "Thank you for your help."
And, like that, he was out the door.
The conversation had sat with Stu all day and the more he thought about it the stranger and stranger it seemed. He had made a point to jot down Mr. Stander's Seattle license plate as he left and ran it the following day on the computer system he had spent half a day getting up and running. It was a personal car and Mr. Stander (first name William) had no outstanding warrants or traffic citations. Not only was he clean, he was cleaner than most.
Aside from that little mystery, things rolled along for a week, two weeks, then three. He met people, but didn't make any friends. He spent time on Facebook, he ran through all the seasons of Game of Thrones he had missed, he tried online dating but the nearest match was over fifty miles away. They had a date planned for later in the month and didn't have much in common.
But the longer he spent in basic isolation, the more he had come to the conclusion that Dana had been right. He was healing. He could feel it. The constant reminders of his curse were gone, his sleep patterns were returning, and he made a conscious effort to cut down on beer, though he and Dana had gotten rip-snorting drunk one night and Robin had tucked them into bed on the floor of the living room. Stu had brought up Mr. Stander to Dana and she had given him some good advice, but in the morning it was gone and replaced with headache, nausea and, eventually, vomiting.
If he had remembered his sister's advice, things would have gone a lot smoother in the long run.
"You've done your job," she told him between sips of a particularly stiff amaretto and cream. "What you shouldn't do is let it bug you. What you shouldn't do is let that whole thing set up shop in that head of yours. You should do your job and not get involved with strange men in bow ties."
•••
The reason Mr. Stander couldn't find Kenny was that he had left.
After the events following the scratch, it seemed like the right call. They had all watched Willie pick a fight, Dave take the bait, and things get really ugly, and that's saying something from a guy who had killed a rabbit with his teeth just a few hours earlier.
Part of being in the pack and living with the world-altering secret that you could turn into a wolf was controlling when you "scratched." When you have the ability to turn into a hulking creature capable of doing unspeakable things to small woodland creatures, not to mention human beings, it makes sense to keep that power in check. That's why they broke bread before heading out into the woods, that's why they checked with each other as to how badly they wanted to "go out," it's why they were absolutely honest with each other. Holding back, even with good intentions, could mean both an unwanted transformation and exposure to the outside. Fear of unintentionally killing and/or being found out was what kept them all in check, and honesty and camaraderie were the glue that made those checks possible.
Willie had twisted the system into an outcome no one felt good about. Dave had to confess to his son that he and the rest of them had killed Byron, a family friend that Dilly had known since he was old enough to know anyone. On top of that, Willie had forced Dave's hand and he had confessed that Byron and Josie were lovers in high school before he was born and that they had rekindled that relationship not that long ago. And that the decision to kill Byron was a group decision that had nothing to do with the affair and everything to do with something else, something darker, something that threatened to expose that secret and God knows what else.
Dilly didn't stick around to hear the "something else," opting to run into the woods in his human form to be alone after Dave told him the truth while Josie stifled tears. Afterward, Dave sat at one end of a picnic table, Josie at the other, both with their heads down, the damage done. The rest of the pack, save Willie, kicked at the dirt and tried to figure out a way to leave.
It was Kenny Kirk who figured it out first.
"To hell with this bullshit," he said. "JoAnn, come on."
"I think we've got business to discuss," Ron started.
"Ya heard me say 'to hell with this bullshit,' didn't you?" Kenny said back. "Nothing's getting solved today, not with everyone flipping the fuck out every five minutes. Nah, we're getting out of town."
"We are?" JoAnn asked. "Where we going?"
"We're going to the corner of the highway and we're turning left or right, I don't care which," Kenny said, almost over his shoulder as he headed to his car, JoAnn running to catch up. "I'm done with this soap opera bullshit."
Dave said nothing. Seconds later Kenny's late model Mustang fired up.
"You just gonna let him leave like that?" Willie asked. "I figured you had sack enough to deal with Kenny Kirk throwin' a hissy fit."
"No, he's right," Ron said. "We aren't solving anything today. Especially not you, Willie."
"Whaddya mean, especially not me? All I said was what we were all thinking. Dave's acting like a pussy over there..."
"If I were you I'd head on home before Carl and I shut your mouth for you," Ron said, cutting Willie off. Carl took his place next to Ron, who raised his eyebrow at his friend's assertiveness.
"That's how it is, then?"
"That's how it is," Ron said.
"It's amazing you all lasted this long," Willie said, heading to his truck. "Bunch of pussies, the whole lot of you."
Willie ranted and swore all the way to his blue and rust-colored truck, occasionally stopping to see if there was a way he hadn't thought of to get under Dave's skin. But Dave was already broken and Ron and Carl held firm on getting Willie out of there. Two minutes later, Willie was on the road headed back to town.
The minute the old man turned onto the road, Ron whispered something to Carl and they were off as well. There were sympathetic looks, but no words spoken between the group. Dave and Josie stayed in their positions at opposite ends of the picnic table for what seemed like a long time.
"One of us is going to have to go after him," Josie finally said in a soft voice.
"I'd like it to be you, if you don't mind," Dave said. "He's heard my side."
Dave stood up and started walking.
"Home is six miles, Dave," Josie said. "Don't walk that far."
"Not going home," Dave said.
"Then what are you doing?" she asked, but Dave was already fifteen yards away, not turning around. He knew his house was six miles away, but "Bar" was only four and some change.
•••
It was into the late lunch rush when Dave got to "Bar" and most of the regulars had cleared out. He was muddy and gross, he was deep inside his own head (the last two blocks had been tough with swatted-away dueling scenarios concerning his wife and Byron having sex and murdering Willie) but most of all, he was hungry. For a brief second he had panicked thinking his wallet was still at the campsite, but found where he had left it before the "scratch" the night before.
Chuck Nesbit was working the grill and his hearing wasn't so great. Dave had to yell to get his attention.
"CHUCK. Come on, man! I need some food."
Chuck, forever putting the customer first, wandered over about two minutes later.
"Burger?"
"Three of them. Plus fries and beer."
"Someone was out late," Chuck said. "Missed your breakfast, did you?"
"Shut up, asshole," Dave muttered as Chuck got back to the grill. Dave did whatever he could to distract his mind, which was producing new and original dark thoughts every couple of minutes. Unfortunately, "Bar" was not a place to go for distraction. There was a television playing college football, which helped, but Dave was beyond caring about the fate of any team from the SCC (much less two of them). That left the other patrons to look at, but there were fewer and fewer of those all the time as lunch was ending. That left staring at the bottles on the wall and vivid, vivid thoughts of sex, violence, and pain.
It was a relief when a new customer walked in wearing a uniform.
"Hey Chuck!" the man yelled. "The grill still going?"
"What's it look like?" Chuck yelled back from the grill, smoke rising over his wrinkly head.
"Looks like you're in a peachy mood," Stu said under his breath, then, much louder, "I'd like a burger and fries please."
"Yep," Chuck said. "Good thing, too. I'm almost out of patties thanks to Dave, there."
Dave looked up from the bar at the new sheriff, his hair flecked with mud, his clothes wrinkled. He was surely putting off a smell. None the less he stood up.
"How you doing, I'm Dave Rhodes. I'm not sure we've had a chance to meet yet."
"Stuart Dietz. I go by Stu. I took over for Grey Allen a couple of weeks ago."
They shook hands.
"You been camping, there, Dave?"
"Yeah," Dave said, running his hand through his brown hair. "I would have showered if I knew I was making a first impression today. That doesn't happen here too often."
"I get that," Stu said. "Mind if I sit?"
"No, go ahead," Dave said. "Glad for the company, to be honest."
Chuck plopped two plates in front of Dave, one with two burgers and one with the third burger and fries. They made the resounding, heavy clash of sturdy dish wear and Chuck went back to the kitchen without a word.
"That's... a good bit of food, there, Dave."
A sheepish "yeah" was all Dave could muster before diving in. Between bite two and three, when it was obvious the new sheriff wasn't just sitting there to be polite, but to get to know one of his constituents, Dave slowed down enough to talk.
"You liking town so far?"
"Yeah, it takes some adjustments, but I'm doing all right. It's a different pace than what I'm used to."
"I bet," Dave said. "I've always said this is a great place to live if you already know everybody and are into classic rock."
"I noticed that!" Stu said. "I was expecting everyone to be a country music fan out here but all I hear is that one station, what is it... "105.3 The Wolf?"
"That's right. I haven't heard so much Aerosmith in my life."
"That sounds about right. I heard you were from Detroit, right?"
"Worked there a while, yeah," Stu said, going into the spiel he had done several dozen times at this point. "It's been an adjustment, but I'm finding things pretty interesting around here. There's certainly a lot to do. Grey Allen wasn't... how do I put this... he didn't do things in a very modern way."
"I bet," Dave said, shoveling in fries three at a time.
"So I've been getting the computer up and running and I've been... I'm sorry. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone eat like that."
Dave had gotten the first burger and all the fries down and was working on the second. He wasn't usually a glutton, but there were times, especially after a night out in the woods, where his body absolutely demanded food. During those times, consuming calories was like coming up for air after several minutes underwater.
"I'm sorry," Dave said. I don't usually eat this fast."
Chuck took the opportunity to slam Dave's beer on the counter and return to the kitchen, again, without a word.
"I get it," Stu said. "Sometimes you just gotta get some food in you. Can I ask what you do around here, Dave?"
"Yeah, absolutely," Dave said, being much more conscious as to his food intake. "I'm a teacher and a coach at Cody-Kilgore High, about fifteen miles away. I coach volleyball and teach a little bit of everything, but math, mainly."
"Mild-mannered math teacher," Stu said. "And Barter County hamburger-eating champion."
For some reason, Dave found that particularly funny and a laugh bubbled out of his mouth before he could stop it. A chunk of bun went flying from Dave's mouth and both men decided to ignore it.
"Man," Dave said. "I needed that. I know about ten high schoolers who could eat me under the table, though. My kid is one of them."
"How many kids you have?"
"Just the one," Dave said. "Dave Junior."
"Cool," Stu said. "Hey, before I get my food, there's a question I'm asking a lot of the folks I run into and was wondering if I could ask you."
"Shoot."
"Well, Grey Allen was around here a long time and he told me the way he did things was to get involved. He said he knew everyone personally, right? That's going to take me some time to manage, so what I'm asking everyone to do is to give me some time to get to know you all and to kind of keep their eyes open in the meantime. If there's anything I need to know, give me a call or look me up. If there's anything Grey Allen did that I'm doing differently, tell me so I can see if it makes sense for me to do, too. Basically, this one guy did this job for a long time and now we all need to do this job for a little while until I get situated. Does that make sense?"
Stu's lunch clattered on the counter and Chuck went back to the kitchen.
"Yeah, that makes sense," Dave said. "I imagine there are all sorts of things that Grey Allen dealt with that aren't in any files anywhere."
"Exactly," Stu said. "I'm basically setting up from scratch. But don't tell anyone I said that."
"Mum's the word," Dave said, but with a mouthful of chewed food it came out as "mumbs da word."
Stu's food hit the table with the same clatter as before but this time Chuck didn't head back to the kitchen.
"What y'all talking about?" he asked.
"I'm introducing myself," Stu said. "Trying to get to know everybody. Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing?"
"I figure," Chuck said, now eager for conversation. "I imagine you would have met Dave by now, unless it's that time of the month."
Dave's face was full of fries, which was good because had it not been stuffed he might have told Chuck to shut his face, making himself look more suspicious. Instead he drew in air and some fried potato into his throat and started coughing.
"That... uh, that wasn't exactly politically correct," Stu said, slapping Dave on the back. "Why would you say something like that, man?"
Over fits of coughing Dave shot Chuck a look that said "I'm not in the practice of killing people, but in your case..."
"I didn't mean nothing by it," Chuck said. "I've, uh... dishes."
As he beat his retreat, Dave cleared his throat a few times and smiled at Stu.
"Small towns, huh?"
"Yeah, I guess."
After sitting for a second, Stu started eating and Dave took a long draft of his beer and reverted to the only neutral territory available after making such a distinguished first impression.
"So," Dave said. "You a Cornhusker football fan?"
•••
A few hours later after Stu had headed out on patrol and Dave had returned home to an empty house, Kenny Kirk and JoAnn were still on the road. Although he was financially comfortable and owned several businesses vital to the community, the house he and JoAnn shared was humble, old, and lived in. The staircase creaked whenever anyone got near it, the fuses blew with alarming regularity, and one of the bathrooms on the second floor had a noticeable sag in the middle, denoting structural decay. The consequence of the house's age was it groaned and squeaked anywhere you went and it was very hard to sneak up on someone.
This made it particularly surprising that Mr. Stander had been able to break into the house and sit in a chair without making so much as a peep or alerting any of the neighbors. Kenny and JoAnn were gone, of course, and would stay gone for a bit, much to Mr. Stander's increasing frustration.
He was a patient man, but even this was pushing it. After sitting in the house from the late afternoon until after sunset, the tall man in the bow tie let out a long sigh and pulled himself out of the (admittedly very comfortable) lounger in the living room.
"No wonder no one's found them yet," he said to the empty room. "Who in their right mind would want to spend time in such a dump?"
Stander made no effort to not set off the symphony high-pitched squeaks as he tread the floor out of the living room and out the back door.
AN EXCERPT FROM THE DIARY OF J.P. CODDINGTON BARTER COUNTY, 1876
June 22, 1867
I fear the loss of the Railroad will be the death of this town.
The county elders lobbied for the Railroad to come through, but there was resistance, particularly from Homer Rhodes and his group. There was ample discussion in the First Baptist Church over the weekend and much was discussed, but not decided. There was talk of what the Railroad would bring, both good and bad, and how we might grow prosperous with or without the tracks going just south of town, but I do not think the arguments against the train hold any water at all.
Homer Rhodes swears there is oil under the ground and that the right men with the right equipment might get at that oil quickly. Once the wells are built it would be a "short road to progress and prosperity" he said. Neither I, nor my friends have ever heard of oil being found here in this part of the country and his promises rang hollow in my ears. The Railroad is a known thing, proven to be a boost to the towns and counties they encounter. Why a man would push against such progress is a mystery to me.
I was going to say as much in the meeting, but Mr. Rhodes and his crew of men are a boorish lot. They silenced many a naysayer yelling such phrases as "we've been over this" and "next question" to the point where civilized discourse, even among the educated, was a fool's errand. I left frustrated to a point as did Mr. O'Conner, Mr. Smith and several others. We commiserated at the local bar a bit later, and I'm afraid I had too many drinks and am paying the toll for it today in a sour stomach, among other ailments.
To add misery to my condition, I also found the oddest pile of animal remains very near the doorstep of my home this morning. If I'm not mistaken, it was a deer at one time but whatever had taken after the pitiful creature left some doubt. The head was either gone or in such small pieces as to be unrecognizable. The hide had been torn open, as if all at once. I am at a loss to what force on heaven or Earth could do such a thing or how the doomed creature ended up on my doorstep, for all intents and purposes.
Needless to say the entire scene churned my stomach and I vomited on the mass. After a few shovelfuls of dirt I composed myself and was able to move the carcass to a more suitable location.
May my fortunes improve.
PART 4 - HOME OF THE WOLF
Carl Eakes was not much of a talker in the normal course of affairs, but he was one hell of a gardener.
As a vocation, he owned a small towing business that Kenny Kirk had helped him get started. He had a good-sized wrecker, bigger than any in the area, and the boy knew how to drive it. When he was in high school he had dreamed basic dreams—diesel mechanic, law enforcement, something with computers. While he had gone to school and was a diesel mechanic (one dream down!), he hadn't taken to working on the clock for a number of reasons. One was his garden.
He owned a modest home in "town" with a two-acre-wide backyard where he grew vegetables, flowers and had a very small orchard. When late March rolled around and the temperature was tolerable he lit outside and would check his compost piles, start tilling and fertilizing the soil and making ready. In the spring it was planting then constant watering, weeding, watering, separating, watering, pruning and watering. By July the harvests started. By September there were buckets and buckets of tomatoes and cucumbers, squash and potatoes, melons, carrots, onions, peppers and anything else you'd want from a garden.
Then there were the flowers. Peonies, mums, roses, lilies and so much more, rows and rows of fragrance and color that led to an entire insect infrastructure of bees and hummingbirds and yellow jackets and mantises and ants and spiders. Everywhere in Carl's garden was life and when the life started to fall away and peel back as the weather got cold again, Kenny ate fresh salsa and crunchy salads and cut sweet melons and put strawberries on his ice cream. He even fermented some of his apples into the best goddamn cider in a three-county area, but he didn't tell too many people about that. There might be laws and such.
His neighbors always knew he was in the garden because Carl was a loyal listener of 105.3, The Wolf, Central Nebraska's Classic Rock. The station was sometimes hard to get in Cherry, but Carl had rigged up a 25-foot antenna to his shed and was able to play The Wolf at a reasonable volume any time he wanted. His neighbors were cool with it, so his backyard was Carl's favorite place in the world. It was him, his plants, and AC/DC, Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rush, Styx and even the occasional foray into Metallica. When James Hetfield would come through his speaker system, Carl swore the whole garden lit up.
It was mid-October when Dilly had his first "scratch" so his garden was producing a fermented smell that you get when plants die. Two days after they had run in the woods then fought at the campground, Ron was the first to come by and he specifically asked for some cider.
"Where you at?" Ron said.
"Not close. Maybe a three."
"Well I'm at a six and I need something to drink. Normally I don't," Ron said. "But I think this calls for it. Don't you?"
"Probably," Carl said. "It's been a good year for apples."
"That's not why I want to drink."
"I know."
"It's because we're cracking up."
"I know."
"It's because that's about as nasty and mean as I've ever seen Willie and I don't know if all of us are going to be together much longer. Something's bothering Willie and it ain't about Byron. We all agreed on that."
"Yeah, we did," Carl said. He stood up and headed into the kitchen, returning with a pint glass full of homemade hard cider. He handed it to Ron, who was off again. The big man didn't usually talk but when he did it came in torrents making it very hard for the much smaller Carl to get a word in edgewise.
"It was kind of brilliant what he did, really," Ron said, as if Carl was unaware. "He knew he had Dave by the balls, man. He knew he would have to tell Dilly everything in front of the pack. Willie knew he had him and he may have just destroyed that family tonight. Plus, I don't know if Dave will ever run with Willie again after what he did."
"I don't know," Carl said. "People fight all the time. They get over things."
"How the hell does a man get over that?" Ron said. "I couldn't promise I wouldn't have killed Willie where he stood if I was Dave."
"Yep," Carl said.
"Instead, there's a guy who's been cheated on and second-guessed and forced to kill one of his friends and his son has to hear about the two worst things in his life back to back. I couldn't get over that."
"So whatdya think will happen?"
Ron was now up wandering the garden, going full blast, his volume and hackles up. Carl had been friends with Ron for coming up on fifteen years but they were friends in the way that Marcie and Peppermint Patty were friends in the Peanuts cartoons. Not quite bad enough to be a motormouth like Kenny Kirk, Ron could get worked up and go for a while, and Carl knew it was best to let him go, kicking at decaying plants as he went.
"If Dave had just said 'I'm breaking the rules right now for obvious reasons' no one would have thrown up a fuss. They would have still had to talk to Dilly but they could have done it on their own terms, I guess. That's damn sure better than what happened. What do you put on these melons, Carl, they are fantastic?"
"It's about the soil," Carl said. "It's not what you put on them."
"Yeah I guess," Ron said, having talked himself out. "The cider is good. How much did you make?"
"More than I should've," Carl said. "You can take a jug home if you want."
"I'd appreciate that, man," Ron said. Having talked himself out and checked on his friend, Kenny was alone in his garden ten minutes later, a gallon growler of cider gone from his fridge. It wasn't half an hour later that Kenny Kirk showed up, leading with "That was a complete whirlwind of a train wreck of a shit show out there," before he had made it inside the door.
"Where you at?"
"Three, maybe."
"Well, I'm about with you but I'm worried we might not get another chance anytime soon. I know Willie used to run lead and I know Dave took it from him but goddammit, man, get over it. This isn't... God, it's not King Lear... what's the one where they all conspire to murder the king?"
"Macbeth, maybe? Shakespeare liked that storyline."
"Yeah, that might be it. Wasn't there one where the king had a bunch of kids and they were conspiring against him and he was really old? What you got to drink around here?"
"Got some cider in the fridge."
"Damn, Carl, you're a good dude. That's why I tell people that Carl Eakes is a good dude. You never let a man go thirsty."
"Where's JoAnn?"
"Dropped her off at the house. We've talked this to death. I need some fresh ears."
The same-sized growler disappeared from Carl's fridge, but this time it went straight down Kenny Kirk's throat. The two wandered in the garden, Kenny stopping every so often to wildly gesticulate. He spoke twice as much as Ron had and said just about the same amount.
"What do you think we should do?" Carl finally asked, when the dire nature of the situation had been suitably articulated.
"You asked me that when we were talking about Byron."
"I'm not good at hard decisions."
"Well, then you're lucky to have a friend like me to figure it all out. The way I figure, Willie and Dave are done. Done-sky. Caput. They're never running together again."
"I don't know..."
"Well I do know, goddammit, and you've gotta make up your mind on which pack you're going to run with. And what you're prepared to do to run with them."
"It's not going to come to that."
"Do you see Dave forgiving Willie? Do you see him going 'no biggie, you made me confess to murder and your mother's adultery to our kid after one of the seminal moments of his life? How about some pie?' You see that happening?"
"No," Carl said. "But... I don't know."
"Well, I do."
"Family does some crazy things," Carl said, measuring his words to not get immediately shot down by Kenny. "And that's without the weird part of turning into wolves and chasing deer through the woods."
"All I'm saying is get comfortable with two packs or one pack trying to kill the other pack or... shit I don't know. That was some great cider."
"Take some home."
"Thank you, I will. JoAnn needs to chill out on a few things and this might help."
"JoAnn is great. Don't talk like that."
"Yeah, you're right," Kenny said, stumbling toward the fridge. "I'll tell her you said so. Catch you later."
•••
The sun was setting when there was a final knock on the door. Carl half expected Kenny Kirk to be back peddling another theory or begging for more cider, but got a deep, sinking feeling in his gut when he opened the door to find Dilly. The kid looked worn and defeated.
"Hi, Carl."
"Dilly."
"Can I come in?"
"Yeah. Come sit in the back."
The sickly sweet smell was always worse in the evening for some reason and Carl noticed it was worse than just an hour ago when he and Kenny had been strolling. Dilly plopped in one of Carl's white, plastic chairs that wobbled under the size of a tall, gangly teen.
"Sorry I didn't call first."
"No problem," Carl said, easing into his own chair. "No one ever does."
"I... uh... it's been a rough couple of days."
"I figure."
"I've got a lot of new information I'm trying to figure out."
"Yes, you have."
A wind cut through the garden carrying away the scent of Carl's plants and bringing in grasses and dirt, trees and something that smelled dimly of fire. It reminded Carl, as new scents always did, that he was not a normal guy. He was a guy with responsibilities, a guy who had to be in control of himself and had to be part of a group that controlled each other. If they didn't do that, they risked hurting more than each other and if one of them went rogue, then it would be Byron all over again.
"So, where you at, Dilly?"
"Huh?"
His dad should have explained this by now, Carl thought, then felt weird about being critical of the guy running lead.
"All of us, we are always checking in about how bad we want to... go for a run."
"Oh," Dilly said.
"We usually use a one to ten scale so if I meet up with Kenny or Ron the first thing I always ask them is "where you at?" They give me a number and that helps us figure out how bad one of our brothers needs to run."
"How do you know how bad you need it?"
"Your dad should probably tell you that."
"My dad's not here," Dilly said with a sneer. His tone was, by far, the meanest Carl had ever heard from the boy.
"That doesn't mean it's my place."
"I'm asking you," Dilly said. "I'm asking you how you know because... because it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. I felt like I could face down a hurricane. I felt... I don't know how to put it..."
"You felt your ancestors in your blood. Felt like you were part of something that was ancient and powerful and badass."
"Yeah," Dilly said, not acknowledging Carl's uncharacteristic eloquence. "Nailed it."
"I don't know how it's going to work for you," Carl said. "It's different for everybody. For Willie, it comes on fast. You talk to him in the morning and he's a two, then he gets in a fight with Lacy and he's suddenly at a seven or an eight and you gotta change your plans. All I can tell you is figure out your rhythms and the way your brain works with this new thing and you'll be fine."
Dilly shifted in his seat.
"OK, this is a... this is a hard question, but, does it always feel this good? Is it always such a rush?"
"It's great every single time," Carl said. "You know Ron. He don't look it with his beard and his gut but he's a stone-cold genius. With computers, there ain't nothing he can't get them to do and he's working in a grain elevator. Kenny Kirk, with a mouth like that? He could be running something. I don't know what, but something."
Dilly laughed the laugh of a kid still trying to figure out what his laugh sounded like.
"Hell, Dilly, your dad, and I know you don't want to hear this right now, but your dad was a beast on the football field. He could have gone to college and played football and gone on to better things and your mom? Your mom studied chemistry for a semester, did you know that? She wanted to go be a pediatrician and she could have done it, too. JoAnn wanted to write for a newspaper. Karen could have been in the ballet, I swear. I could have left this town and found someone to be with. Why do you think all these people who could have gone on to better things in bigger places, why are they here? What's keeping them in podunk Cherry, Nebraska?"
Carl had intended to let his speech hang for a second and let the glory of it wash over the new recruit, but Dilly ruined it and started to cry. It started when he tilted his head at a strange angle, then sniffled a little too hard. By the time Carl turned his head, Dilly was full-on trying to stop crying. He wiped tears with the heel of his hand, and Carl gave him a long time to speak.
"Sorry," Dilly said. "It's too much."
"What's too much?"
"You're telling me this is it. This is my life? My mom and my dad and my grandpa and their friends and, oh yeah, by the way we might kill people you know from time to time and your mom's a whore and your dad is a fucking pussy and this's it? This and the woods, this is what I get?"
"Dilly, you gotta talk to your dad about this."
"FUCK HIM!" Dilly yelled, the veins standing out strong along his neck.
Carl stood up and walked inside, reemerging soon thereafter with two glasses of cider. He placed the glasses on the wrought iron table, flaking paint but sturdy, and spoke to his young guest in a serious, clipped tone he saved for special occasions.
"A couple things, Dilly," he said. "And if you tell your dad I told you any of this or that I gave you this cider I'm going to deny it and he's going to believe me. One, calling women 'whores' is a nasty habit and one you should break toot suite. It's ugly and sexist and nothing a man of substance does. Second, next time you see Willie, ask him how big a pussy your dad is. You don't get to run lead unless you earn it. Third, you don't know the whole story about Byron so I would strongly suggest you reserve judgment, as hard as that is, until you know all the facts. And most importantly this isn't all there is. You think we're trapped here? You think I couldn't move to Omaha or Kansas City or Nova Scotia or Germany or some place? I can leave any time I want. I choose to stay here because I'm part of something and being part of something, that ain't nothing."
Carl threw back his cider. Dilly watched him do it and then followed suit, shutting his eyes hard after it hit the back of his throat. He let out a couple of short coughs.
"What's the matter kid? Never drank before?"
"No," Dilly said. "As a matter of fact this was the first time."
"Well, now I've done it," Carl said, grabbing the glasses. Dilly followed him into the house and made for the door.
"I won't tell Dad I came here," he said.
"I'd appreciate it," Carl said. "I wish I had more advice for you, but it's different for all of us. What works for me, that ain't going to work for you."
Dilly nodded and made his way to the road. There was no car in the driveway, which put him a good mile from home on foot. He had plenty to think about, Carl figured.
In a rare act brought on by a rare time, Carl poured himself a second, much taller glass of cider and sat himself on his couch opposite the biggest window in the house. He had had enough of the smell outside for one day.
He played through everything again in his head—Ron's panic, Kenny Kirk's fatalism, Dilly's discovery, his own ability to give halfway decent advice. All in all, he concluded, things were bad, but things looked like they could get better. The train wasn't all the way off the tracks.
"But if Willie shows up tonight, he's not getting any cider," Carl said to the long, deep shadows that had taken residence in his living room.
•••
The night after the "scratch" that led to the blowup, Dilly had gone straight to his room and shut the door. With a kid not talking to her and a husband who was out somewhere for an indefinite amount of time, Josie found herself alone in the house. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence but the empty house that was sometimes her friend was certainly not in this instance. The silence was screaming and work or family was not there to distract her.
There were dishes to do. There was always laundry. She had three books in varying states of completion. At one point, she thought it would be fun to go punch something until her knuckles bled, that way there would at least be some sort of physical component to the soul-shaking pain she was going through, but there would be questions and blood to clean up. There was only one thing left to do.
Without a word to Dilly, she laced up her shoes, fired up her music player and was off, the fall air cutting into her lungs. Josie was a nurse by trade, a mother, a wife and a keeper of some very big secrets (fewer of late). These things would come and go. But the one thing she had been since she was thirteen years old was a runner.
There was a treadmill in their house and on certain days when the weather would freeze her to the bone or melt her into a puddle, it made sense to trek into the basement and spend some time on the bulky machine. But if it was at all possible, Josie wrestled with asphalt and gravel, traffic and road signs. She hadn't grown up in Cherry but Lincoln, an entirely different world by comparison. The first time she ran in Cherry, two very kind people stopped their cars and asked if she needed a ride someplace.
By now she was a fixture on the roads, usually in the early morning hours, but it was not uncommon to see her out after dinner. What was uncommon was the volume of the music in her ears, the pace she was pushing, and the distance she ran. The night and day flashed in her head and scenarios, conversations, what she would say to Dave when they finally talked, how they would deal with Dilly, how she might murder Willie and get away with it, all of it and much more flashed in her brain, blotting out everything but the road and blur of her feet underneath her until her run was over. Then she did it again. She ran ten miles and by the time she came back to the house, Dilly was watching TV, her iPod was drained of its battery and she felt better. Not good, but certainly not the wreck she had been a few hours earlier.
"Dilly," she yelled down the hall. "I'm getting in the shower and then we should talk. Don't go anywhere, please."
There was no response, so she made it to her room and stripped off her gear. Her left sock was bloody from the run with one toe and the heel of the foot shredded and sacrificed to the endorphin gods. The shower was long but not too long and when she got out, Dilly was there, like the good boy he was.
"Where's Dad?" he asked.
"I don't know. He walked off and I was hoping he'd be back by now."
"When's he going to be home?"
"You know as much as I do, Dilly."
In her mind's eye as she ran, Josie had pictured this going differently. If Dave had been there, they could have put their own feelings aside for an hour or so for the sake of the boy, they could have made sure he understood what was happening, why it had happened and what happens from here, but Dave was out sulking God knows where and Josie made the decision right then and there that this talk could not wait.
"Do you understand what happened a few days ago?"
Dilly stared at her, not really grasping what she was getting at.
"Do you understand why we told you all that stuff? Do you understand we didn't have a choice because of how this thing of ours works?"
"I understand you slept with another man and Dad killed him."
"Then you don't get it at all," Josie said, wincing a bit. "You didn't even get the facts right, sweetie."
"I think I got the gist," Dilly said, turning back to the TV. She was losing him.
"There's a ton we have to sort through here, but right now there's one really, really important thing I need you to understand about our group. What Willie did..."
"Grandpa."
"What Willie did was use a bond that we all share to pick at your dad and me. He knew, better than anyone, that in order for all this to work we have to be one hundred percent honest with each other. We have to be rock solid. There cannot be secrets and there cannot be grudges because if either of those things happen when you boys are out in the woods there's going to be so much blood, Dilly. So much blood."
He had turned back around and was at least listening.
"This thing of ours, it goes back hundreds of years that we can figure out and some of the other packs, I guess you could call them, they would write down what worked for them and what didn't work for them, what their problems were and how they solved it. Stay here, just a sec."
Josie got up, the lactic acid in her legs already settled and inducing a decent amount of pain as she got to her feet. A couple of minutes later she was back from her scrapbooking area with a leather-bound book she kept in a drawer.
"This is a history of our group. It goes back all the way to 1870 when this guy, Homer Rhodes, started keeping a journal about his group."
"They ever kill anyone?" Dilly asked sharply.
"Yeah," Josie said. "Three of them. Turns out there was a big fight about the Railroad they couldn't get over so they sort of... had a wolf fight. It was a bad idea. They destroyed three buildings and were seen by half the town."
"Whoa," Dilly said.
"Homer Rhodes wrote in his diary that he had to use all his power to keep everyone quiet. Then it became a thing people accepted and then it sort of became part of the town. And here we are."
"Great history lesson, Mom. What's that have to do with anything?"
"Because Homer Rhodes wrote down the rules, you smart ass," Josie said. Her tone was playful but they both knew she was serious about not being pushed. "The rules of the scratch, he called them. And rule number one, and this has always been rule number one, is there are no secrets in the pack. No matter how much pain, no matter how many hurt feelings, the survival in society depends on everyone knowing what's going on. There are no secrets between any of us, and like it or not, kiddo, you're one of us now."
"OK," Dilly said. "You need me to be honest with you?"
"Dilly..."
"Honestly, I'm thinking I need to get out of the house for a bit. Maybe go for a run, like you did. That OK?"
"Yeah, that's fine, but we do need to talk."
"Let's wait for Dad."
Dilly was out of his seat before Josie could stop him, grabbing a jacket (he wasn't a stupid kid) and heading out the door.
Even though Josie got it, she understood, that didn't make the house any less empty or her head any less full. She hobbled over to the kitchen sink to start the water for dishes and then made her way to the bathroom to get some bandages for her swelling foot.
•••
It's stupid, the thing that goes through a man's head when he feels sorry for himself. Can I start a new life in another town? Maybe I'll sleep tonight in some inexpensive hotel, that'll show her. Suicide, if done right, might not be so bad.
Truth of the matter is, Dave was in a stupor. He had spent the past few nights at "Bar" and had exhausted its limited pleasures. He was exhausted and wanted his own bed or, failing that, the couch. It was time to go home.
"Thanks for the place to crash, Chuck," Dave said, standing up.
"Yeah," Chuck grunted. "I don't mind your money, but it's probably better if we see less of each other."
"Rejected by my bartender," Dave said, tossing a few dollars on the bar. "New rock bottom."
Another fun thing about Cherry was since Dave and his crew didn't keep secrets from each other, the whole town basically knew when something was up. He knew what Chuck knew—Byron, who was his responsibility, had slaughtered a girl out back and ruined his evening. A graceful man would have said nothing. Chuck had brought it up at least three times that night alone. For some reason, the decreased dependability of his air conditioner was somehow tied to the incident. It was really time for Dave to go home.
Josie had the car, so Dave got set for a long walk back to the house. Cherry was not populous, but it was big, with houses running north to south for about a three-mile swath. Dave's house was somewhere in the middle so he had a fifteen-to-twenty-five-minute walk in front of him. Turned out it would be longer.
As Dave rounded the building and pointed himself toward home, a man in a light-colored suit and a bow tie was standing beside a black sedan. He waited for Dave, not giving a hint as to his intention, but simply watching the whole time. It was when the men were fifteen feet apart that the man spoke.
"Mr. Rhodes. Good evening."
Dave had not had much to drink, one beer after the one with dinner, which he had nursed as a football game finished up on Bar's shitty TV, but the combination of fatigue and emotional pain had left him a bit loopy. Initially, the fact the stranger knew his name didn't register. Dave, being a polite fellow, stopped anyway.
"Lovely night," Dave said.
"If you mean the weather, then yes. It's quite temperate, Mr. David Rhodes."
It stuck this time, as did the man's formal tone and odd, deep voice.
"I... uh... are you a parent of a student of mine? I'm sorry, I don't recognize you."
"No, I'm not. My name is William Stander and I need to talk to you."
"What do you need to talk to me about?"
Before William Stander, the man in the light-colored suit and sharp bow tie could answer, another car whipped around the corner running parallel to "Bar" and onto the street. The car was low, sporty and coming very fast. Before Dave could get a bead on what was happening, the car had pulled into the narrow space between him and Mr. Stander, squealing tires. From inside, loud hip-hop was blaring and as the passenger side door flew open it clipped Dave in the lower torso. Inside was a thin man with wild, brown hair and an unmatched scraggly beard who Dave had never seen before.
"Get inside, you fucking idiot," the man yelled over the music. "Right now before he says another word."
Mr. Stander was already moving to the other side of the car, but his long legs proved more hindrance than help as he had a short distance to cover because of the car's sporty frame. Dave, not accustomed to being called an idiot, stood there dumbfounded.
"Fine," the man in the car said and, in one swift motion, reached over, grabbed Dave by the shirt and dragged him into the car. Mr. Stander was around the car at that point and had a hand on Dave's arm.
"I implore you, Mr. Rhodes, it is very important you hear what I have to say."
"Fuck off then fuck off some more you dandy!" the man in the car yelled over the thump of the music, pulling on Dave the whole time. After a few seconds, the man hit the gas and Dave, half in and half out of the car, had to make a choice—get in the car or bail.
"Come on, Dave!" the man yelled. "Make a good decision for once."
"I will make you richer than you can imagine," Mr. Stander yelled as Dave hopped in the sports car. They were half a block away from Mr. Stander when he finally shut the door. The second the door's locking mechanism clicked into place, the man tromped on the gas and they were gone into the Nebraska night, sputtering gravel behind them.
The man with the beard turned on the dome light, took one look at Dave and cranked the music louder. It was impossible for Dave to communicate with the man until he suddenly slammed on the brakes in the middle of a dirt road about a mile away, shut the car off and turned to Dave. The dirt roads surrounding the town always reminded him of his younger days when Dave and his dates would drive to the middle of nowhere and have at each other. On their anniversary a few years back, Josie had taken him out to the dirt roads far beyond the streetlights to that special sort of dark you could only get in the country and screwed his brains out. None of this came to mind tonight."Oh my, Dave, you've made a fucking mess of it, haven't you?"
Now that the music had died down and it was just the man talking, Dave could make out the man's accent. It was Irish, he figured. The Irish flag tattoo the man sported on the back of his left hand confirmed his suspicions. In fact, the man had a few tattoos but in the low light, Dave was having a hard time making them out.
"Respond to me, please," the man said. "Or are you too fucking stupid to speak, because, to be honest, I kind of think you are."
"OK, hello, I'm Dave, why am I in your car?" Dave said, torn between wanting to be polite and his fatigue.
"Ahh, the leader finally speaks. Good for you. I've got a lot of work to do on account of your dumb ass, so if you'll sit and listen..."
"STOP!" Dave yelled as the rage he had been sucking on all day finally found an outlet. "Just... stop. I am going to need your name and I'm going to need to know what the hell we're doing here in the middle of nowhere. And how you know my name. And how you know where to find me! And how you're Irish... you're Irish. I've never met anyone from Ireland much less one that knows my name and pulls me into his car and drives me to the middle of nowhere."
The man in the beard raised his eyebrows but didn't budge.
"So what do you want?" the man asked.
"What the fuck just happened?" Dave said, breathing hard. "Give me something to hold on to because I feel like I'm falling right now."
Things got a lot brighter as the man opened the door and got out. The car was still running, though the music was mercifully turned off, and the man walked in front of the car so the headlights could hit him. The man began to twitch.
Dave's eyes got wider as the man started sprouting hair, hunching his posture and growing, or more accurately, stretching into a familiar form, but somehow different than the one Dave was used to. It took the stranger a mere ten seconds to go from man to wolf and once the transformation was complete, the Irish Wolf stood on his hind legs, walked over to Dave's car door, opened it and in a deep, devilish growl, spoke.
"Like I said," the Irish Wolf spat, "you've made a big, fucking mess."
•••
Dave and the man spoke into the night and less than an hour later, he dropped Dave off at his house with strict instructions to not open the door for anyone other than his pack, and even then, beware. Things were about to get complicated, he said. He was right.
More than two miles away in his rented space, Stu was getting ready to plow through another Netflix original series when his cell phone rang.
"Hello, Sheriff. It's William Stander. We met several days ago."
"Yes, hello. You've caught me at home. How did you get this number?"
"If I had a tip for you about something very odd happening in your town, would you be interested?"
"Yes. Can we talk at the station tomorrow?"
"I'm not coming in to the station," Mr. Stander said. "What I will tell you is I believe I know the identity of the person who killed Sandra Riedel and Byron Matzen."
Stu scrambled to find his note pad and something to write with.
"That's... um, yeah. That's definitely something I'm interested in. Where are you?"
"I'm not at liberty to tell you that, I'm sorry," Mr. Stander said. "I know I'm being cryptic, but it's absolutely necessary, as is this. Do you have a pencil and paper?"
"Yes," Stu said.
"Would you meet me at the following address tomorrow evening at 7:15? I will be there in person and alone."
Mr. Stander gave the address which Stu didn't recognize (to be fair, he didn't know his own address well at this point), but wrote down.
"Mr. Stander, can you give me any more information? This all strikes me as odd and slightly alarming."
"Good," Mr. Stander said. "You are in the proper frame of mind. Until tomorrow night."
He hung up and Stu immediately put on his uniform, got into his car and drove to the address. When his GPS barked that he had "reached his destination," he double-checked to be sure. It was an old picnic area right off the highway with nothing but a few picnic tables and some debris from previous campers to make it stand out from the miles and miles of grassland surrounding it. Stu spent about twenty minutes walking around inspecting the area. He found nothing of interest, but did find a good hiding place in a tree stump about twenty-five feet into the wooded area. He could see the entire area, see who was approaching and even had the drop on them should they decide to run.
"Man," Stu said. "That guy is never going to see me coming."
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 3
Adam Rhodes was born in 1897 and grew into a strapping young boy. At twelve, he was both smart, winning the admiration of his teachers, and a fiercely physical boy, winning the respect of his coaches. He could keep up on the track with high schoolers, he could hit harder than any bully and he was popular with both boys and girls. As he entered his high school years he even managed to fit business into his busy schedule, working at Shreiner's Grocery and Goods in downtown Cherry. The Governor of Nebraska, Ashton C. Shallenberger, once visited Cherry and tipped young Adam a dime for taking care of his car.
When World War I rolled around, Adam, who was of prime military age, dutifully and proudly enlisted. His brother Kane was too young, but would eventually become a minister at the urging of his mother, who could not stand for her only children to both be overseas fighting a war. She was rumored to suffer from a condition of the nerves and Adam being overseas did nothing to improve her health.
As in all things before, Adam proved a smart, physical and adept soldier. While it was very uncommon for a "grunt" to rise through the ranks, Adam was able to do just that, moving from Private to Sergeant First Class by the time the war ended. To hear his men tell it, Sergeant Rhodes could outrun a bullet, he could inspire a coward, and he could tear a man apart with his hands. Only one of these things was hyperbole.
Sergeant First Class Rhodes came home to a hero's welcome straight out of American lore. He never paid for a meal and he raised the flag at sporting events for years to come. He married his high school sweetheart, a girl named Nellie Buxton, in 1919, a year to the day after he returned home from the war. Through it all, Adam never once showed any desire other than to stay in his town and make it strong. He purchased Shreiner's Grocery and Goods, the place he had worked as a boy, and turned it into the shopping destination for miles around by adding more variety and household items that old Mr. Shreiner had refused to stock. The result was a booming business, a young wife and, quickly, a child on the way.
When Adam's body was found in a ditch, torn apart by what appeared to be wild animals, it tore the town apart. Men wept, women wept, children wept and a malaise descended over the town, from which it never recovered. Nellie miscarried their child out of grief. At Adam's funeral, Kane gave the eulogy and opined that his brother's death "would leave a mark on this town that may never fully heal."
His words were prophetic. Shreiner's closed six months after Adam's death and other businesses followed suit. Even the happy occasion of Adam's son Bruce being born could not make a dent in the town's mood. Things continued, but growth all but stopped.
Some in the town looked to Kane for leadership and on a spiritual level, he provided. His church thrived during hard times and eight months after his brother's death he married Nellie Buxton Rhodes, his brother's widow. It was looked upon, by most in the community, as an act of charity in line with biblical teachings. They had two sons and a daughter, Adam, Thomas and Sarah. Thomas followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a pastor, marrying young and having two boys and a daughter, naming them Thomas Jr., William and Cynthia.
PART 5 – OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM
The man with the Irish accent was expected to speak in front of the assembled group in the "family room" of Dave and Josie's house, but he had not yet arrived. Ron and Carl were on one couch section, Dilly and Josie on the other. Kenny Kirk and JoAnn were hanging out by the television, Dave not far away. Willie was off by the laundry room. No one was having fun.
It was a rare day when Dave called everyone together for something other than a scratch but the socializing was part of the comfortable routine they had all fallen into during their time together. They would see each other socially, they would talk one on one or in small groups but the only time they were all in one place was when they scratched. It wasn't policy or for any particular purpose, so the gathering was an odd one. No one was talking and no one wasn't looking at the stranger in their midst.
"You should have made some food," Willie barked out of nowhere. "I'm hungry."
"You know, little smokies wouldn't have gone awry," Ron said.
"Yeah, shut up," Dave said. "This isn't a tailgate."
"What the hell is it then?" Willie said. "Are we gonna all get in touch with our feelings now? Is that what this is about?"
"I've told you the story, Willie. That's what I know."
"Your story has the whiff of bullshit if you ask me," Willie said.
Dave turned away from him and exhaled deeply, trying to regain his composure.
"Tell you what. It's 7:30 right now. If he's not here by 7:45, leave."
"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Willie said, and left it at that. He didn't have a firm hold of the thread and his mouth had gotten ahead of him.
But 7:45 came. Then 7:50 and at five before 8:00 there was finally a knock on the door. Dave went to open it and everyone peered from their seats to get a good look at the man. He was wearing a leather jacket over his thin T-shirt and whispered something to Dave, who whispered back. Even with their above-average hearing, no one in the room heard what was being said.
"OK, everyone," Dave said. "Conall Brennan, the man I was telling you about."
"The man who saved your ass from a businessman then turned into a wolf, right?" Willie said.
"I'm sure your son-in-law's ass would have been fine, but things would have been a lot more complicated," Conall said. "Can you save your questions until I get the intro out at least, or are you too much of a tough guy to sit and listen?"
Willie started to answer but couldn't come up with anything. Conall stared at the old man, raising his eyebrows and leaning forward, almost willing him to come to some sort of point. When he didn't, the newcomer made a big point of turning away before getting down to business.
"Yes, I'm like you in that I can transform into a wolf. I've been doing it since my early teen years, much like you, there, son," he said, nodding to Dilly. "You didn't think you were the only ones in the world, did you?"
"We never really got around to researching it," Ron said.
"Well, you fucking well should of, shouldn't ya?" Conall spit back. "I mean, it just makes sense that in a world of seven or eight billion people, you're not the most special group on the planet. Are you the least curious people on the planet or the dumbest?"
"Hey," Josie said, loud enough to startle the room. "No need for that in my house. You're a guest here and, to your point, things were going fine. We didn't need any help."
"I hate to say this, Josie, is it, but you need help now. You're all in shit up to your belly buttons and you're just now asking what that smell is."
"Why are we in trouble?" Dilly said.
"Because everyone, and I mean everyone knows where you are. Look, I've got to back up a bit and I can do without all the jabbering and interruptions."
"You're the one asking questions," Josie snarled. Dilly put his hand on his mom's shoulder and she let him.
"I'm sorry, you're right," Conall said, softening. "I'm in your home. I have a bit of temper and I will try to keep it in check. So please, Josie, may I get back to it?"
"That's what Byron said," Willie mumbled.
The room exploded with noise and everyone started moving at once. Dave lunged for his father trying to tackle him but Dilly, who had the height but not the weight advantage, tried to hold him back. By and large, he succeeded. Carl, ever the pragmatist, put himself in front of Willie while Ron yelled from the couch. Kenny Kirk unscrewed a flask, offered some to JoAnn, who demurred, then took a long dreg. It took a good fifteen seconds of yelling before anyone could make out anything resembling a word in English.
"... KING BEAT YOU TO FUCKING DEATH," Dave yelled.
"You ain't got the balls you pussy!" Willie yelled back, less convincingly.
"E FUCKING NOUGH!" Conall yelled over the fray. "You fucking bunch of American fucking psychopaths are going to sit your asses down and listen to me for the love of fucking God Almighty!"
The profanity mixed with the volume cut through the room and everyone sat. Conall was now quick with his words and harsh with his tone.
"I don't know what sort of family drama I've stumbled into but I was wrong. You are special because I've never seen a pack act as stupid as your lot. So I'm going to give you one more chance. You're going to sit, quietly, and let me lay out your situation. If you have questions, keep your fucking mouth shut until the end. If you have something you want to mutter that's going to piss everyone off, keep your fucking mouth shut until the end. If you have anything to say at all, for any reason, keep your fucking mouth shut until the end. I'm trying to help you and you treat me like your fucking therapist. Christ almighty."
Conall tested the rules he had just put down by stalking around the room, staring at each person. Everyone got a wild-eyed stare from Conall, and when he got to Willie and didn't get any lip, he nodded.
"OK, then. Off we fucking go."
•••
As far back as the seventh century, art depicts man who could transform his features. Despite extensive study into the topic, no one is sure how this ability came about. Speculation is rampant, lore is detailed and abundant, but facts on this topic are very hard to come by. Complicating matters from a Paleolithic standpoint was the fact that most of those affected with this "gift" didn't share it. Getting lost in feudal times or the pre-electric age was not a difficult task.
Similarly, it's unknown when the first communities of the "gifted" began. It might have been much earlier, but the first record was in Ireland in the late twelfth century. This group employed the services of a brotherhood of monks to record the names of their family and the dates in which they "changed." These records indicate three vitally important details about these early people.
1) They exclusively changed their form into that of a wolf and were able to do so at will.
2) They were at war with other groups of "changelings" who opted for a variety of animal forms but most often a bear.
3) Both sides of this conflict were very careful not to alert the general population, as whispers of their abilities were already rumor and myth. They felt the revelation of their abilities would make them targets for religious punishment or fearful destruction by governing institutions.
The Bear Wars, as the monks wrote, were long and protracted and both sides saw casualties. But the bears were fewer in number and the wolves, who were fleet and never attacked alone, eventually won out. It was written that the last bear was brought to the camp of the wolves, fed a huge meal, poured the finest alcohol in the land and, only after they had cheered and toasted the last of his kind did the wolves kill him. The scene is written of warmly, the death and end of the last bear an afterthought.
The monks, who had taken vows of silence, were good stewards of these secrets. The invention of the printing press in the 1600s presented the "gifted," now calling themselves "The Warry Ones," with a difficult choice. They could be loyal to these men who had collected their history but who knew their secret, or they could kill them and begin the Age of the Written Word with all their history in their total control. No records exist of how the decision was made, but "The Warry Ones" silenced the monks through tooth and claw.
It wasn't until the 1600s that the histories show other groups with similar gifts beginning to make themselves known. Many had similar stories of battle with others of similar ability, with wolves always winning the battles and the wars. Stories also emerged of those who dared reveal themselves or who were discovered. They always ended with pitchforks or bonfires.
By 1800, wolves were living in secret in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Germany, Russia, China, India and Japan. These groups would send ambassadors to the area and tell tales of their native lands to the delight of the others. Their numbers were small, by all accounts leaving a problem as to how to identify wolves when entering a new area. It was the Irish who came up with a code. The "Warry Ones" was shortened over the years to "Ware" and combined with "wolves" to form a nonsense word to those who didn't understand it. If you walked into a town in the 1600s and asked the bartender at the local tavern if he'd ever heard of "werewolves," he would give you a hearty "no" and go about his business. Within the next day, you would invariably find the group you were looking for.
So it went for many years, with groups finding each other, sharing knowledge about their gifts and forming communities. There were no records of wars among wolves with the exception of internal conflicts that had little to no bearing on the larger picture. A "governing body" was eventually formed based on the need to stay hidden, particularly from the Catholic Church. This group, referred to just as "The Council," met once every two years and their recommendations soon became best practices. Rules about how to best enjoy the transformation without rousing suspicion and how to deal with local authorities were soon adopted.
When the new world was discovered, The Council saw a unique opportunity to set up communities of only "werewolves" where land to run was plentiful and intrusion was minimal. That dream was never realized. The communities in Europe and Asia had heard rumors of many "gifted" among the Native population (with one rumor that a pack of "man bears" was responsible for the disappearance of the Roanoke colony in 1587) and contact was made. Indeed, there were many wolves, bears and even a few eagles, a phenomenon never before seen. A small community was established but the language barrier was an impediment. Soon, tensions flared and communication was suspended. The governments of England, France and eventually the United States would make sure the breadth of the Native community was never to be known and communication with the larger community was never reestablished.
There was not a mass migration to the "new world" as many in the werewolf community had set up very comfortable situations in their countries, but a few were established. The Northwest and northern part of the United States, as well as central and southern Canada had, and have, very robust communities living in basic secrecy. Based on the best practices set forth by The Council, success of these communities depends on their access to open, wooded land and a rural community where secrecy or acceptance is possible.
In their known history the most important "best practice" put forth by The Council was a strict census. Every pack had to be accounted for and when new wolves were born, The Council marked their date of birth and their first transformation. These records were exact and one member of each pack was responsible to The Council to provide this census. To this day, the census is taken very seriously by the community, but in the age before electricity with thousands of miles of ocean separating individual packs from their central governing body, there were gaps.
•••
"That's where you all come in," Conall said. He had all their attention. The reality of their situation had sunk in. They were a rogue pack, a group that had been operating independently, doing their own thing and existing in a bubble for over a hundred years. That bubble had just popped.
"You always think you've got everyone accounted for, then, all of a sudden, two people are ripped apart by wolves in the span of a week and it makes the news and the floodgates open, don't they?"
There was a lot of murmuring and agreement. In retrospect it was obvious. Of course Byron killing Sandra and the pack killing Byron would draw attention. They just hadn't figured on what kind.
"Who is Mr. Stander?" Dave asked.
"Put two and two together please," Conall said. "I don't know you. I don't know your situation. But I've got a really, really good guess as to how he got here."
"So, what, he's not with you then?" Kenny Kirk blurted.
"No, he's not with me you idiot," Conall said. "I can imagine why he's looking for you, though. You a big fan of medical tests? Having your nuts cut open with a scalpel and examined? How about your blood and bone harvested while you're kept alive and kicking? You a big fan of that?"
Kenny Kirk looked at Dave, who became keenly aware that everyone was looking to him. Dilly looked like he was about to cry.
"OK, Conall. Two things right off the bat. I know you've got a temper and I know you're pissed at us, but we're going to do our very, very best to keep a civil tone and I ask the same from you. No more name calling from us, or from you. At least for tonight."
"OK," Conall said. "So long as you understand how fucking stupid you all are, I don't need to point it out."
Everyone looked at Conall.
"Fine, fine," he said. "It's out of my system."
"Second thing. You've found us at a very difficult time. We recently made a decision, as a pack, that is tearing us apart. I know this pack has existed for over two hundred years and with everything I know I can't remember a time when things have been this difficult. I know you're here to help... at least I hope you're here to help, and we want that help. But things are tense right now and if you could keep that in mind, we'll get a lot further than if you don't."
"Fair enough," Conall said. "Tell you what. We're all going to take about ten or fifteen minutes here. We're going to get some food if you're hungry, you're going to smoke if that's your thing and we're going to meet back here at 9:00 and we're going to talk this out. Be prepared for a long night and maybe think about calling in sick tomorrow to work. We've got a lot to go over and not that much time to go over it."
It took a solid beat, but eventually everyone got up and, with the exception of Josie and Dave who stayed in the house to make some food, headed outside.
•••
"Jesus Christ on a cracker with some Tropical Punch Kool-Aid," Kenny Kirk said as he, JoAnn, and Ron walked around the back of the Rhodes' house. "How in the hell, I mean, how in the hell did we not know about this? We sound like a bunch of amateurs, man. It's amateur hour over here. This guy comes in and if you believe Dave he can talk when he's wolfing out and we're over here unable to wipe our asses properly. Like we're a bunch of backwoods yokels, man."
"We are a bunch of backwoods yokels, Kenny," Ron said. "That's kind of our thing. We did that on purpose."
"I know that, man, but, I don't know. It's shitty when someone else says it."
"I've always wanted to go to France," JoAnn said. "This might be a good excuse to go travel a bit."
"There's a silver lining for you," Kenny Kirk said. "It's attached to a big dark cloud that might turn into a tornado and kill everyone in its path, but that is a hell of a silver lining."
Ron was tickled by the comment so much that his chuckle had turned into more of a solid laugh. Before long Kenny had picked it up, too.
"I could be an American werewolf in London," Ron said, his laugh picking up steam.
"I love French bread, man. I wolf it down," Kenny Kirk said, getting them both rolling. JoAnn was not nearly as amused, her dark hair framing a face that was not happy with the men in her life.
"You're a bunch of assholes," she said. "You all are just as sick of this place as I am. Don't pretend that you aren't."
"It's not that, darlin'," Kenny said. "This, here, I think is what you call 'gallows humor.' See, we are good and proper fucked right now if this guy can't help us. It looks like Byron may have screwed us worse than we initially thought."
"Yeah," Ron said. "Sorry, JoAnn. I didn't mean anything by it."
"That's OK," she said. "I get it. I get we're in trouble. I always was kind of jealous of you guys, going out there, running, having a good time. It's not the same for me or Josie. It sucks for us, you know? And now we get all of the bad shit and none of the good. You don't realize what you guys have. Or how much watching Dilly get out there has been hard for us."
Kenny Kirk put his arm around JoAnn as she stared into the dark behind the house. Ron, suddenly feeling as if he was imposing on a private moment, shut his mouth and let them have it. Losing a kid is something you never get over, he figured, but being reminded of how old that kid would have been had he survived, that was something else entirely. Suddenly Ron felt the passage of time acutely and focused for a second on his back, which had been giving him trouble lately. He was getting old and he felt it. He hoped, quietly, staring into the dark, that he had more fight left in him.
•••
Carl and Dilly immediately walked over to Conall as he smoked a cigarette.
"I wanted to say hi," Carl said. "I'm... um, I'm Carl and this is Dave Jr. and... um... we are really happy you are here."
"You need something?" Conall asked.
"Well, I wanted to let you know I had my first run yesterday," Dilly said. "I'm the newbie. Um... it was great and I can't wait to... learn more, I guess."
Conall, remembering his vow of civility, gave a weak smile to the kid, then blew a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth.
"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" he said. "How old are you, boy?"
"Just turned sixteen," Dilly said.
"You know, that's about right," Conall said. "There's been a push to go younger and younger, so kids can control it but I say let a kid get some time under his or her belt before having to deal with all this. Am I right?"
"Yeah," Carl said. "That seems right."
"You know, it amazes me," Conall continued. "You guys are cut off, completely. You're free range, yet here you are, making some of the right calls. It's impressive is what it is."
"Thank you," Carl said.
"That doesn't mean you haven't pulled some massive fucking boners out here, but we'll get you through that," Conall said, patting Dilly on the shoulder. "See you inside, then."
They watched him head back inside, his heavy boots crunching the gravel around their back door. He flicked the cigarette a good eight feet as only an experienced smoker can do and pulled out his cell phone. They could hear him talking but not make out what he was saying.
"It's weird how you can't understand what he's saying, but you still hear his accent," Dilly said.
"Yeah," Carl replied.
"He says 'fuck' a lot," Dilly said.
"Watch your mouth," Carl countered. "And yeah. He does."
"What do you think is going to happen?"
"I'm not your dad, Dilly," Carl said. "Go ask him those sorts of questions, OK. But if I were you, I'd stay close. I'm guessing something bad is going to happen soon."
•••
Willie sat on the back porch in a chair. No one spoke to him.
•••
Dave and Josie spoke in short, whispered tones as they went about the ritual of preparing snacks. Over the seventeen years they had been married they knew subconsciously which way the other was going to go, especially in the kitchen. Dave would grab the chips and cut right to the counter, Josie would work the fridge and cut left to the table, they would both take a load to the living room before returning for drinks. This was the way they had done it literally thousands of times, but the ritual of preparing food gave no comfort from the panic both of them felt.
"Jesus, Dave, medical experiments? What are we going to do?"
"We're going to hear this guy out. I'm not sure I trust him one hundred percent but I've seen him change with my own two eyes. He's one of us, I promise."
"He is not one of us. He certainly doesn't talk like one of us. If we weren't all scared shitless I'd have kicked that guy out of my house by now."
"I get that," Dave said. "Hang on a little longer, OK?"
They both loaded up their hands and arms with food, made a trip to the living room and returned for drinks. For a moment, they worked in silence.
"Did you mean what you said back there?" Josie said. "About us being in the worst place we've ever been?"
"Not the time, Josie."
"Just a yes or no answer is all I need."
"As a pack, we're in a bad place and it's because of Willie. He's making this thing impossible."
"What about with us?"
"We've talked about this," Dave said. "Things are tense but OK, right?"
He put down his drinks and walked up to her, putting his hand on her back.
"Time will pass and the tension will go away and we'll be OK. I meant it when I said it back in January and I mean it now. Things are rough but I'm not going anywhere. Obviously."
"OK," she said. "Let's get through this."
Dave watched her walk out of the kitchen and grabbed the drinks.
•••
"OK, welcome back," Conall said. "First thing's first. I've gotten the OK from The Council to share with you a couple of protocols. They wanted me to make sure that this pack is interested in meeting with other representatives from our group after you are out of harm's way. Is that accurate?"
"Yes," Dave said. "That's accurate."
"The hell it is," Willie said from across the room. "How do you know they're not going to make us pledge allegiance to some faggy goat God or something?"
"Willie, man, the time has long past come and gone for you to shut up," Kenny Kirk said, shooting Dave a quick glance as he finished talking.
"... meeting with other representatives from our group. We are not forcing you to do anything nor are we requiring membership. We will come and talk. That's the only commitment you're giving right now," Conall said. "Clear?"
The group nodded and murmured in agreement.
"Good. The next thing. The man who approached you, Dave, he works for one of three groups as near as we can figure. Two of them are bio medical companies who have been chasing us for years for research purposes. The other is a nasty group of religious zealots who feel we are of the devil and must be destroyed. I have to say, if it were those nut balls they would have come in guns blazing right away, so I don't think that's it."
There was a lot of looking across the room to gauge everyone's reaction. So far everyone was holding it together. Even Willie was holding his tongue.
"Second thing, these murders happened a few weeks ago, correct?"
Josie, who was always on top of scheduling, was on it.
"Sandra died just under two weeks ago. Byron the same night but they didn't find him until the day after."
"OK," Conall said. "So it took Mr. Stander about a week to find you which, to be honest, is quicker than I would have liked. We pride ourselves on having very advanced algorithms that track the sort of news stories and keywords that would point toward a group of your sort. What we didn't count on was that you'd be in a place so remote that you barely have media."
"The newspaper is a weekly," Carl added.
"And they don't have a fucking website... sorry, a website so you can't set keywords for content that isn't there. Anyway, they found you fast which means, if we're lucky, the second wave won't be here for another twelve hours or so now that he has confirmation of contact."
"Second wave?" Dave asked.
"They try to buy you and if that doesn't work they try to trap you. I got to you before you could consider the ridiculous amount of money he was going to offer you to come with him. Believe me, Dave, once you agreed and showed up at their facility, all his promises are worth fuck all."
"How much money?" Willie asked.
"Do you like having your nutsack cut open, old man?" Conall finally snapped. "I'm talking about this group harvesting your corneas. I've seen their plans myself and there's not enough money in the world for some of the shit they're going to do to ya if they get the chance."
"So what do we do?" Dave asked.
"Do you have a place that you go when you change? A place where you run? Are you catching my drift?"
"Yeah," Dilly said. "It's up by..."
"Don't tell me," Conall said. "I don't want to hear it but I want you all to think of it. If something goes bad or if you're attacked or if you feel like you're in danger, that's where you meet to regroup. Second thing, we need to get you all out of here."
"Out of here," Willie said. "That ain't happening."
"It's not permanent," Conall said. "In eight or twelve hours when the men with the guns show up..."
"I thought you said we have eight hours," Dave said over Conall. "... you will not want to be here. Once you're safe we'll figure out what to do."
"Can we call the police?" Josie asked.
"And tell them what, exactly?" Conall said. "Officer so and so, a group of biomedical researchers are coming with guns to try and capture my friends and family and harvest my eyeballs because I do this little parlor trick, you see..."
"Grey Allen couldn't do shit anyway," Willie added.
"Grey Allen isn't the sheriff anymore," Kenny Kirk said. "Keep up, man."
"I don't disagree with anything you've said," Ron piped up. "But you're asking us to put our lives in your hands and all we have is Dave's word that you're like us."
Conall took a moment to turn and look at Dave for a long beat.
"The word of your alpha isn't enough for you?"
No one said a word as the question made the air thick and every noise amplified. Carl shifted in his seat and the sound of denim on a fake leather was suddenly deafening.
"I kind of want to see a talking wolf," Dilly said.
The laugh started with Kenny Kirk and rolled around the room. Within ten seconds everyone was at least chuckling and Willie sat in the corner with a big grin on his face. Conall tapped Dilly on the shoulder.
"All right, then, boy."
Conall walked over to the two smaller windows in the living room and drew the shades. Then he arched his back into a hunched position, then pulled up hard, suddenly taller. He didn't scream or yell as the boys of Cherry sometimes did and when the hair sprouted it was thick and fast. Aside from the quick rustling of the transformation, the loudest sound was the stretch of the Irish Wolf's fingernails as they lengthened and cracked, eventually sharpening into claws. The man's clothing stretched with his changing body as it was designed to do.
The result was very similar in shape to what the pack from Cherry looked like, but the posture was different and the eyes sharper and brighter. He was more frightening than Dilly had expected because, he figured out later, he looked like a beast that would chase you. Also, the sight of a snarling creature in a domestic setting accentuated just how big he was and, somehow, how terrible.
"I... speak," the Irish Wolf said in a growl so low and awful that everyone had to focus, hard, to understand him. "It's easier when I'm... angry. Is this enough for you? Does this make you... trust me?"
No one spoke, but they all nodded and the Irish Wolf, having sharp eyes, registered them all. Suddenly the wolf started twitching and banged his head against the wall in one smooth, violent motion.
"I must run," the Irish Wolf continued. "I will return... be ready. We leave soon."
The living room in the Rhodes household was sunken from the kitchen and bedroom area, leaving the Irish Wolf with the difficult task of walking up the five stairs to the front door on padded feet bent at odd angles. He would have leapt up the stairs easily, Dave figured, but the ceiling was too low.
Dave tried to help but the Irish Wolf snapped at him, crawled his way up the stairs and turned back at the group, who were transfixed.
"Sorry... about the... door."
With that the beast gave a hard push off the carpeted floor and exploded through the Rhodes' front door, pieces raining and glass smashing and crunching. Dilly ran to the window only to catch a glimpse of the Irish Wolf's hindquarters as he ran down the street and disappeared into the woods to the south of town. Pieces of door were still falling from the sky when Kenny Kirk broke the seal.
"Holy shit, man," he said. "I cannot believe that. Can you believe that? I can't believe that. I can't believe he can chat looking like that, I can't believe he busted your door into a million pieces, I can't believe we need to run for our lives, man."
"We don't need to run," Willie said. "We just need to scratch. Let them take their shot. They'll end up dead in the woods somewhere."
"We need to think about this," Ron said.
"Yeah," Dave said. "Because no one will notice a paramilitary group prowling around the woods with guns and no one will notice eight or ten dead bodies in the damn woods. Use your brain, Willie."
"If you had used your brain, we wouldn't be in this mess," Willie said.
"I don't want to kill anyone," Dilly added.
"No one's going to make you kill anyone," Josie said. "We'd never do anything like that so don't worry."
"You should damn well worry about it," Willie said. "So, he can turn into a wolf. That doesn't mean anything he's said is true. All it means is that there are more of us out there. That is it."
"Why would he reveal himself like that?" Ron said. "Why would he save Dave from that guy in the bow tie?"
"I don't know," Willie said. "I'm following my instincts. It's all I got and something doesn't seem right about that Irish fella."
"I think he's telling the truth, Grandpa," Dilly said.
"Look, Dilly, you're smart, but I swear to you if we go with that guy nothing good is gonna come of it. I've got a bad feeling."
The group continued on for ten minutes about the pros and cons, some pacing the room, some staying put, afraid to move. Things got heated, but just when they started to calm down, three things happened in rapid succession.
The first thing was Josie feeling as if something was deeply wrong. It's the feeling she got sometimes when Dilly left the door open, only much stronger. One night in the house Dilly had come home after basketball practice and left the door open for an hour as snow poured in their front door, ruining part of their flooring. During that entire time when she was upstairs, she sensed something was wrong and couldn't put her finger on it. The part of her brain that told her "the door is open" suddenly caught fire.
The second thing was Willie started changing. He gasped a very human, terrified gasp that ended in a growl. His arms started lengthening, then his legs in a transformation that was unlike any the group had ever seen. Instead of a smooth, all at once sort of process, Willie's arms went first, then his legs, then his head in an uneven and awful sequence. His growl turned into a yelp and the White Wolf collapsed on the ground, whimpering in pain and unable to stand.
The third thing was the yelling. Three men in black tactical gear, complete with helmets, bulletproof vests and what looked like assault rifles, came tearing down the stairs ordering everyone on the ground. The sound of the guns being discharged filled the room, but they were not gunshots. They were darts shooting at the group and only the odd layout of the room and the limited space prevented anyone else from being hit.
When the first man came around the corner, Dave was struck by violent inspiration and kicked at the man's knee as hard as he could. His heavy boot struck its target and the man went down, adding another layer of screams to the noise. He grabbed at the man's gun but the man held on. Dave pulled on the weapon, the effect of which was to bring the intruder's entire body up just in time to catch three darts in the back. The man screamed and Dave could hear the scream devolve into wet gurgling behind the visor.
Josie had grabbed Dilly, Ron had run to Dave's side, and Carl and JoAnn were helping Willie, who was in rough shape. The men had taken up residence at the top of the stairs and started crafting their random yelling into instructions.
"GET OUT OF THERE," one man yelled.
"Come up the stairs and we won't make you transform," another yelled in a slightly more reasoned but still hostile tone.
Dave threw the man he was holding down and dead weight hit the floor. The only entrance to the living room (aside from the entrance through the laundry room) was blocked by the man's body. If the two men at the top tried to come down they would have to vault their fallen comrade, losing their tactical advantage. For the time being, there was a stalemate.
"You're in my house," Dave yelled. "Get out."
"Your friend there," one of the men yelled. "The furry one? He's not long for this world. You gotta get him help or he's going to die." The man's voice was gruff and he delivered the words like he meant them and had probably said them before.
Part of Dave thought "good" when they threatened Willie, but then he heard Dilly sniffle. He was now at his grandfather's side as the White Wolf labored to breathe. Seeing Willie, or anyone in his condition, on the ground instead of on the hunt was odd in a specific way for Dave, especially since his father was a scrapper and fighter as a human and otherwise.
"You've got about half an hour before he's dead," the man upstairs yelled. The White Wolf's eyes shot open.
"You're just delaying it," the man continued. "Get up here and we won't make you transform. It's your only option."
The White Wolf growled.
Josie, who was now over by her son, looked at Dave, pleading with her eyes to make this end. JoAnn and Kenny were holding each other as she had started to sob, quietly, into Kenny's skinny shoulder.
The White Wolf looked at Dave.
Dave gave a small nod.
"Quit stall..." the man began.
In a fraction of a second, the White Wolf moved to put his paws underneath him and launched himself up the narrow stairway and right into one of the men. The other recoiled backward out of surprise and panic, tripped over his own feet and fell, hard. Everyone heard him fall and Carl made a move as if to capitalize, but Dave made a motion to hold him back.
"Not yet," Dave said. "Not until the screaming stops."
Upstairs, the powerful jaws of the White Wolf had bit through the hard plastic and metal of the first man's helmet, puncturing his head enough to cause bleeding, but not enough to do any major damage. Unfortunately for the man, he was unable to push the White Wolf off him as the beast was heavy but also hard to grab onto and it wasn't long until the helmet finally stuck to one of the powerful incisors of the beast and came tumbling off. Before the killing bite, the wolf paused for just a moment to survey his prey. He had done this dozens and dozens of times in the woods. Creatures who are about to die fight and fight until the life leaves them and the White Wolf savored that last bit of fight before they went limp.
The man did not disappoint. In this case he screamed and thrashed and kicked his feet but it wasn't anywhere near enough. The White Wolf got his entire jaws around the man's head and bit, ripping the flesh and crushing the skull. The screaming continued and the White Wolf tasted all the blood he wanted, and then something more metallic and singular as the brain was exposed and gave way. A few bites later the fighting stopped, the kicking ceased and the White Wolf pulled up hard to see what had happened to the second man, and what he saw amused him, if such a thing was possible.
He was frozen in fear. The second man was still sitting, his hands desperately trying to load live ammunition in his gun, which was loaded with darts. The fear of the wolf was consuming him and the man's hands weren't working and he dropped bullets all over the floor. The man's eyes were wide and his whole body was shaking.
The White Wolf, with a grunt, turned his body toward the other man. Instead of screaming, like the first one, this man started pleading.
"Oh Jesus," the man said over and over again. "Please no, oh Jesus oh God no. I... I, no no NO!"
The man got louder the closer the White Wolf got, and in the end the great beast destroyed the man more to shut him up than anything. He would have liked to play around with him a bit, given the chance, but his whining was enough to annoy the White Wolf into granting a quick death. When he was done, having destroyed the second man in the same manner as the first, the wolf noticed the man had peed on the floor. Not your territory anymore, the wolf thought.
Slowly, the rest of the party emerged from the basement and were met with blood, bodies, and the smell of evacuated bowels. The White Wolf growled at them, but it was never in his mind to strike.
"What do we do now?" Ron asked.
As if to answer, the White Wolf collapsed again, the momentary blast of energy and vengeance having run out. The creature looked frail again as Dilly approached it.
"What's wrong with him?" Dilly asked. "How do we make him better?"
"What do we do with the bodies?" Josie asked.
"Where the hell is Conall?" Kenny Kirk wondered aloud.
"I don't know, the bodies aren't going anywhere and Conall can take care of himself," Dave said. "Ron, help me get Willie into your truck."
"Where are we going?"
"We're heading to the woods."
•••
Seven o'clock had come and gone and Stu sat, behind a tree, desperately wishing for something more substantial than sunflower seeds. He had picked up the habit when he had first rolled in to Cherry, having discovered ranch-flavored sunflower seeds at a gas station about ten miles away. He had never seen anything but regular, salted seeds in the various gas stations throughout his life and was confronted with a whole new world. On the spot he had bought ranch-, dill pickle- and bacon-flavored and proceeded to chow down during the day, so much so that he often skipped lunch, having filled up on seeds. Turned out, he thought as he leaned against the bark of a big cottonwood, that plan didn't work for dinner.
Still, there were worse ways to be spending an evening. The air was cool and pleasant, the air smelled wonderful, and the forest was blazing with fall colors. The yellows and reds of the season was something Stu had seen, but never been enveloped by. There was a girl on one of the dating sites that he had been messaging quite a bit and he decided, then and there, he was going to take the plunge and ask her to go for a hike with him through the woods.
Nah, he thought. That might seem a bit "murder-y."
He had been listening for the crunch of tires on the nearby gravel and was hoping to spy on Mr. Stander a bit before revealing himself. The best-case scenario, Stu figured, was to overhear a conversation that would shed light on who the hell this stranger was and how he knew about the two murders. But, as the sun set and the colors of the forest faded, Stu started to feel stupid. With the feeling came pieces of his "curse," and before long he was reliving dying children and remembering comments he would have been better not to have read.
"There goes my night," Stu said out loud. A loud whoosh answered him.
Stu had been listening for car tracks on the crunchy gravel but instead of car tracks, he heard something else. It was a quick yet thick sound of something moving very fast in such a way he couldn't tell where it was coming from. He heard the sound three times, each time thinking it was coming from somewhere different.
Then the sound of crunching gravel filled his ears, and he stood up and peered around the corner of the tree. It was hard to make out exactly what was happening, but he caught snippets of conversation.
"I don't see how this is going to help, even a little bit," a man was saying, running his mouth so fast he barely paused for breath. "We get him out to the woods and then what, man? The magic fairy nymphs take the poison or whatever the hell is in his system away and he lives for another decade?"
There was more mumbling followed by the motor mouth getting more upset. Stu was aware of three cars now pulling into the area. As far as he could tell in the low light, Mr. Stander wasn't among them.
"Tell me what you're thinking, man!" the motor mouth yelled. "Tell anyone what you're thinking? We're all confused as hell, here!"
People were piling out of cars and Stu lost count of how many there were. It was also hard to nail down faces in the dark, especially ones he was still committing to memory, but he did recognize Dave, the high school teacher. He was moving something with another man that was wrapped up in a sheet. It was far too long to be a human body, Dave thought.
The heavy whoosh returned and suddenly a different voice appeared from the other side of the campground.
"Aye!" the voice yelled, thick with what Stu identified as an Irish accent. "Good thinking. Bring him this way!"
"WHY!" the motor mouth yelled. "Are you a damn wolf doctor?"
Stu ventured a little farther past the trunk of the tree to take in the scene, but the scene had moved. The whole group was moving in a bunch, without any stragglers, into the woods and right past Stu. He repositioned himself and heard a few more words and phrases that made no sense to him as they passed. No one gave a glance backward, so he followed, being careful to make as little noise as possible.
The group was loud enough through their feverish and rapid conversation to make following easy and about ten minutes later they stopped by the banks of a small stream. Careful to keep his distance, Stu listened and, because it was better to be safe than sorry, undid the strap that held his gun securely in its holster.
"... you're his son. You should be the one to do it."
"Does it matter that I don't want to?"
"Not in the least."
"But I can't control it. Not like you can."
"Look, I get it. I'm going to transform too and between me and your mates we'll be able to take what we need and keep everyone safe."
"If I lose it, my family is here."
None of this made any sense from a logical standpoint, but Stu was reasonably sure something bad was about to happen. He started thinking about when to reveal himself and what he would do when that happened. He was a decent shot but he was alone, in the dark woods with a bunch of strangers doing something bad. To turn around now would draw more attention. He suddenly, and rightfully, felt trapped.
"Dave," Stu heard the man with the accent say. "You have my word, my word, that I will keep your family safe. Trust me, I can destroy your ass if necessary."
There was a smattering of laughter among the group and suddenly Stu heard an odd howling sound that he couldn't identify. It warbled and faded into a sad moan and it chilled him, but for some reason, didn't scare him. The sound was coming from whatever was underneath the sheet, which rose and fell sharply as something twitched underneath it.
"OK," Stu heard Dave said. "OK. I'm ready. You go first."
It was dark and Stu was scared and behind a tree, but by the light left in the sky and from the sounds of crunching and muffled screams, he put together that something unnatural and terrifying was happening thirty feet or so from him and he was struck with a full body desire to run. It was almost impossible to overcome, his feet begging, screaming to move, but his brain applying all the brakes they possibly could.
If he moved he would be seen.
•••
Conall had met them, in human form, the moment they arrived at the campsite. Dave was relieved to see him. The rest of the pack, not so much. But, they had worked through it and on their way into the woods Conall had told them the plan.
Packs were bonded, Conall told him, on a biological level. If you're near someone when they transform for a long period of time, you "get used to them" in a very ingrained way. Werewolves or whatever you call them were vulnerable during the change and that, mixed with others being vulnerable beside them, created a mix of sorts.
"The long story short is that you can heal each other," Conall said. "But only in the wolf form. We can't change... what's his name there?"
"Willie," Dave said. "He's my dad."
"OK, then. We can't change Willie back and if we did it could be a bad situation because I'm not sure what the bloody hell is wrong with him. Our best bet is to go out, have one of you transform and then..."
Conall paused, trying to come up with the words.
"Bleed a little, I guess."
"You need blood?" Dave said, incredulous.
"Look, I don't make the rules, Dave," Conall said. "I've seen it work and I'm telling you if you transform and we take some of your blood and give it to Willie, it'll fix everything from poison to losing an arm. It works. I've seen it."
Dave fell silent and Conall, in an act of European sensibilities, came close to Dave and put his weighty hands on his shoulders.
"You can save your father, Dave. You can do it."
So, off into the woods they went, all of them trudging across the suddenly cold plain of grass and leaves. Once they hit a clearing they worked it out—Conall would go first since he had more control. Dave would go second and the boys would work to try to keep him at bay. This was odd for several reasons, the biggest one being group transformation was the one and only way they had ever transformed. Going it alone was strictly forbidden for a number of very good reasons and here was Dave, about to break their cardinal rule.
Add to the situation the fact that Conall expected Dave to have some modicum of control after he transformed, and the whole thing seemed like a terrible idea to Dave. He pulled Josie aside and told her to take Dilly and leave, but Conall nixed it.
"Dave, you have my word, my word, that I will keep your family safe," Conall said loud enough for everyone to hear. Trust me, I can destroy your ass if necessary."
It was little comfort and Dave walked back to Josie and put his head over her left shoulder so they could whisper to each other.
"I'm worried about you," he said.
"I'm not the one bleeding," she pointed out.
"Willie's an asshole."
"No doubt. Willie's your father and Willie is Dilly's grandpa."
"What if something goes wrong?"
"Things have already gone wrong."
He took her meaning, macro and micro, and walked over to Conall.
"OK, I'm ready," Dave said. "You go first."
Conall kicked, fell and the group heard several loud pops and something akin to tearing. Less than thirty seconds later the Irish Wolf stood up, and immediately started sniffing the air.
"Someone's here," the wolf growled.
Quickly everyone started looking around until the Irish Wolf threw his nose, violently, in the direction of a bank of trees. Everyone took his meaning and began moving. JoAnn always carried a .38 in her purse and retrieved it.
"Just a second," Dave yelled when he saw the gun. Then Dave raised his voice and yelled at the trees. "Whoever you are, please come out. If you don't, I can't promise your safety."
Behind the tree, Stu had locked up for a second, but the sound of Dave's voice shook him loose. Without giving it much thought he quickly shifted his whole weight from one leg to another, moving clear of the protective cover. Stu didn't know what to say, so he said nothing.
"Shit," he heard Dave said.
"HE CAN'T BE HERE," the Irish Wolf yelled, almost howling. "LEAVE!"
Dave quickly came up on Stu and held his arms out to keep everyone back.
"Stu," Dave said. "This is... awkward. But I'm going to get you out of here if you let me."
Stu was getting his first, good look at the Irish Wolf and was doing the best he could to not shut down. The beast was large, but in the dark its eyes were the most prominent thing and they were full of murder. Stu was suddenly hyper aware of his body, his heart pounding very hard, his mouth producing more saliva than usual, his nose grabbing scents from the air, but he was almost oblivious to everything else. Dave might as well have promised him a lobster dinner and no funny business afterward.
"STU!" Dave yelled, snapping his fingers. "You gotta stay with me, buddy."
Stu came around to consciousness but still felt nothing but fear.
"Do you see the nice guy over there next to the woman with the gun?" Dave asked. "He's going to come and walk you back to the clearing, and you're going to wait there. He's going to make sure you wait right there. Then we're going to talk. Is that OK?"
Wet mouth but dry throat, eyes stinging from how wide they were open, Stu managed a nod. Words were not coming anytime soon.
"OK," Dave said. "Kenny, take him to your truck, please. Keep him there."
"I heard you," Kenny said. "JoAnn's coming with me."
"We might need her gun."
"Then give it to someone else, she ain't staying here when this shit goes down."
"Excuse me, who said I'm not?" JoAnn said. "Just take him, Kenny. I'll be fine. You're in more danger than I am."
"GO!" the Irish Wolf screamed, clearly struggling to not tear the intruder to shreds.
Kenny took the cue and put both hands on Stu's shoulders, whipped him around and started marching him through the woods. If Stu was beyond words, Kenny had enough for both of them.
"This is the biggest goddamn mess I've ever seen, man. Irish dudes and cops and a fucking SWAT team and Irish dudes and Willie on his way out. This is not how I wanted to spend my evening, man. I had plans."
"We don't have a SWAT team," Stu said, half under his breath, not sure what else to say.
"No, you don't have a SWAT team, man. This was a different thing. We're going to get you sat down in my truck and we'll talk. Although, to be honest with you, I don't have a real good grasp on this whole thing, man. I know about, like, seventy percent of what's going on. Maybe less. Maybe sixty but that sounds like I don't know anything."
Stu was happy for the distraction and was led, happily, into the passenger seat of Stu's truck.
A couple hundred yards away the Irish Wolf continued yelling.
"YOU BECOME WOLF!" it yelled, deep and guttural and pissed off. "NOW!"
Not unlike Stu, Dave had limited experience looking at a wolf when he wasn't one himself, and the Irish Wolf's screams were not putting him in a contemplative head space. He had a go-to thought for when he scratched involving pain—an injury when he was a kid where he busted his leg open. The panic of the bloody mess staining his socks and shoes got him started and the memory of digging deep and pulling himself home dragging one dead leg behind him usually got him over the falls and into the transformation. Conall had asked him to be both passionate and controlled as possible. Well, Dave thought, he was going to get one of those things.
The moment he made the decision to give up on control his brain flooded with thoughts he had pushed down. The confusion and pain of the past few hours melted and Dave suddenly remembered how he had found out about Josie's infidelity, the moment he put the pieces together, the little clues that added up to one big hole that ate his heart, brain, and soul. He remembered when she tried to play it off, to call him paranoid and jealous. He remembered the lies he eventually trapped her in. He remembered how the most fundamental thing in his life was undone by something as trivial as sex, how the rock where his life had been built had split wide and dumped him into the foggy, cold, unforgiving sea.
He remembered almost losing his son.
He hadn't forgiven her. He hadn't forgotten. He hadn't put his family before himself, he hadn't done the good Christian act of forgiveness, he hadn't let bygones be bygones and he sure as hell hadn't gotten this out of his system. He had put a cap on it is all. He had suffered in silence and the Irish Wolf, that intruder, was going to know what it meant when that suffering exploded all over these woods and the state and the fucking world for all Dave cared.
Without even realizing it, Dave let out a scream, which was not his normal ritual, then collapsed, twitched and kept screaming all the way through the transformation. Dilly instinctively walked behind his mom and she reached out and took his hand. From under the tarp, the White Wolf let out a long whine.
It took ninety seconds or more of loud, violent thrashing and noise but the Lead Wolf eventually rose from the dirty, leaf-strewn ground. Steam rose off him and he turned to face the Irish Wolf.
Dave Rhodes was forty-two. He had first scratched at fifteen. The Lead Wolf had only been lead for a little over two years. It had been a hard, ugly fight but he had won and now, when he rose, he was as hungry as he'd ever been. Hungry for flesh. Hungry for battle. Hungry as fuck. He turned to face the Irish Wolf and if the stranger could have smirked, he would have. The lead wolf growled and wrestled the sound as if it caught in his throat and croaked out a word.
"Blood," the Lead Wolf growled. Then, much louder, "BLOOOOOOD!" The two wolves leapt, hurtling toward each other with ferocious speed, claws out, teeth bared, intent unsheathed. Everyone ran for cover yelling and crouching as they went and as the wolves collided high in the air, lit by the moon, the force of their impact could be felt all the way back at an old rusted truck with the most confused and scared cop in the world in the passenger side, begging to be delivered from this new, fresh hell.
A SERMON BY THE REV. THOMAS RHODES  
March 7, 1958
It's a difficult thing to love your neighbor.
Sometimes your neighbor is petulant. Sometimes he is brash and braggadocian, engaging in all manner of prideful thoughts and actions. I know of one man who wooed and bedded his neighbor's wife. Ask that husband if it's easy to love your neighbor. I bet you, brothers and sisters, will all get the same answer. It is not easy.
Your family, that's supposed to be another story. Your father and your mother, they are the ones who bring you into this world, that nurture you, that raise you up right in the word of God in a Godly household and if you stray, they are the ones who feel God's spirit moving through you and put you back in line. Your brothers and your sisters – your actual brothers and sisters, not what we call each other every Sunday – your brothers and sisters are your first friends, your allies and your co-conspirators. [laughter]
If you'll allow me, you know my brother and sister, Willie and Cindy. There they are, fourth pew from the back, like they always are. We grew up with a harsh father, Rev. Kane as you all knew him. He was a good man in his heart and from the pulpit but he could be a cruel man when his temper got the better of him, and because of that, Willie and Cindy, they looked up to me to protect them. I can see Willie smiling from here. I remember once we were playing in the living room and we knocked over the radio and broke it. This was the most expensive item in our modest house. A radio that brought the outside world into our home. We begged and begged mother for it and she talked good old Rev. Kane into it, even though it "could be used by the devil."
We broke that radio. On accident, as children do sometimes. And when my father, the Reverend, came home he asked who had done it. I told him it was me and he took after me with a vengeance, yes he did. Willie... Willie even tried to talk some sense into my father and he regretted it. But, it was all over soon enough. We had dinner that night, as a family if I recall, me with an ice pack on my eye.
My point, brothers and sisters, is not to ask for your pity for me but to illustrate, in a real and substantial way, that loving your family can be just as hard as loving your neighbor. It can be a brutal affair, family and Jesus, he knew it. And he knew why. Family can hurt you like no one else can hurt you because family are the ones who are your own flesh and your own blood and are supposed to be your own soul. Family are part of you that can betray you as no one else can – not a wife, not a friend, not an old Army buddy or the newest of lovers can hurt you like a family can hurt you.
But it can go the other way, too, can't it? You know it can, brothers and sisters, you know it can. Because just as I stepped in front of a flurry of fists from the good Reverend for Willie and for Cindy, I know they would step in front of an oncoming bus for me if I needed them to. I know that the three of us have a bond so strong that my wife, the person with whom I choose to share my life, she'll never equal it. Family is hard. But family is, sometimes, the only thing that can save us.
With that, consider today's reading. Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own he cannot be My disciple."
Think on that, ponder on that, brothers and sisters. Think of what Jesus is saying because this isn't a verse with hidden meaning. This isn't a puzzler. This is black and white, people of God. This is clear as clear can be and as plain and plain can be out of the mouth of Jesus himself. If you are to be my disciple, Jesus says, you must hate... hate your family. You must take that which is closest to you, that which feeds you and nourishes you, that which you value and you understand better than anything else on this Earth and you need to throw it away. Discard it. Leave it. Hate it. Jesus is saying compared to the best Earth can give you, compared to the most perfect and amazing love a human can offer, it is nothing, it is contemptible, it is rubbish compared to what being a disciple of Jesus can be.
Family is hard. Loving your neighbor is hard. But I look at you, my neighbors, and I look at Willie and at Cindy and I tell you with a swelling heart and tears in my eyes that it is worth it. It is worth every heartbreak and every betrayal and every wrong turn and every misstep to be your neighbor and to be your brother and to be your sister. It is worth it. It is worth it.
Being a disciple of Jesus, that's more than a man can hope to accomplish in one, small, meager lifetime, but the reward, brothers and sisters, is eternal life on the other side. Eternal glory and a seat at the heavenly banquet. What more can man ask for?
Amen.
PART 6 – I SAW RED
"Bar" was still open. That was good.
That was about all for the "good" column.
Dave's shirt was gone. That was the first thing a bystander might notice. He was the lone shirtless guy sitting in the back, part of a group of a dozen or so people occupying the rear of the bar. They had pushed a bunch of tables together and, one bare-chested dude aside, they wouldn't be too conspicuous on first glance.
But if you spent a few seconds you might notice the blood. The shirtless guy was bleeding, more than a little. He was holding a bag of ice to a nasty gash on his chest and the red blood had seeped around the bag even though the man was holding it tightly. Closer inspection would reveal another man with his hand wrapped with bloodstains sprouting up in random intervals along the white fabric. Then, if you kept looking, you would notice how rough everyone else looked. There was an old man, white hair and beard, who had flecks of leaves and dirt visible and looked like he had just been hit by a truck. There was a young man, next to him, with visible tear marks down his cheeks. A group of three clustered in one corner, not talking or drinking. And there was a woman at the end of the table who, in direct contrast to everyone else, could not keep still.
Finally, if you'd taken all that in, you might have noticed the Barter County Sheriff, sitting away from the group, staring at a wall.
But no one else was there. Even Chuck had stayed in the back, coming only when called.
Josie took turns between being uncomfortable sitting and being uncomfortable standing. She had never been this frightened in her life. She finally walked over to Dave.
"You have to talk to him," she said. "He saw."
"I know he saw."
"Then you have to talk to him."
"I know."
"Would you go over there and talk to him then?"
Dave looked up at her and gave her a bleary look. He was just about done.
"If you don't go over there now," Josie said. "Think about what happens next."
He would call other cops, of course. Or would he? Dave thought. What would he tell them? He would definitely lock Dave up, or maybe not. Come to think of it, Dave had no idea what would happen next.
"Nothing good happens next," Josie said, reading the look on his face. "He could arrest us, he could detain us, he could decide to shoot us. I hate to say this, but you gotta win him over. We can't leave here enemies."
Dave pulled himself up with a groan, careful to keep the ice pack hard against his chest and staggered over to the bar, yelling for Chuck. He whispered something, disappearing into the back, and soon Chuck came out with a shirt, a pitcher of beer, and two glasses. Dave patted Chuck on the shoulder, then put on the shirt, wincing through the process. The cut Conall had given him was deep and would require medical care at some point but as his wife had said, there was something else he had to attend to.
Slowly, Dave took the long walk from the bar to Stu's table. Stu had been dutiful and had stayed in the truck back at the campground, only to be rewarded by getting a close-up look at the fight between the Lead Wolf and the Irish Wolf. The blast radius of their fight had taken them deep into the woods, then toward the road and finally, after The Irish Wolf tried to change the direction of the fight, back to the truck. The Lead Wolf had been beaten, knocked unconscious after the Irish Wolf ran him, full force, into the truck's grill. The howl of the Irish Wolf's victory had drowned out the screams from the sheriff and the headlights had given him a good, long, detailed look at exactly what he was dealing with.
Stu had not said a word since that scream.
On his way to the table, Conall grabbed Dave's arm.
"Have you thought through this course of action, there?" he asked. "This could go very wrong very fast."
"I know you're trying to help us but with all due respect, I think I'm done taking advice from you for tonight," Dave said.
Conall went back to staring at his beer as Dave sat down with Stu, letting the two glasses clank loudly on the old, wooden table. He set the pitcher of beer down more gingerly. All of his angry energy was basically gone, but his internal rebellion was still calling the shots. He was going to handle it his way. If anyone had a problem with it, they could take a shot at being Alpha.
"Sheriff," Dave said. "Tough night."
Stu didn't say anything.
"I don't want to sound pushy, all right, but this is what's going to happen. There's this pitcher of beer and there are two glasses. I'm going to start drinking here in a second and I'm going to pour you a drink and you're going to drink with me. I insist."
Stu didn't say anything.
"As long as there is beer in this pitcher, there is no question I'm not going to answer. Ask me anything about what you've seen tonight. I will not lie to you and I will not hide the truth. If I don't know something, I'll tell you that. As long as there's beer in that pitcher, ask me anything."
Stu didn't say anything.
"When the beer is gone, I'm done answering questions and hopefully I'll have talked you into letting me and my family live in peace. If you decide you're not thirsty or talkative, I'm going to drink this pitcher by myself and you'll never have this chance again. Ever."
Stu didn't say anything.
"I'm going to need some sort of sign that you understand what I'm saying to you."
Flashes of teeth, fur, and blood filled Stu's brain, and he batted them away. The memories of his past trauma, his "curse," had given him training in this regard. There were so many times in public where he had zoned out, completely lost in the fog of his trauma. He had imaginary conversations with the boy who had shot himself, run the scenario a million times and, he had learned, there were times when you shoved those memories to the side and got some damn work done. This was different, obviously. But the process was the same.
In a moment, Stu snapped his working brain back into place and grabbed his cup.
"Pour the beer," he said.
"Thank you," Dave said and used the side of the pitcher instead of the spout, something he had done many times throughout the years, to pull a wide stream of beer into the glass, filling it in less than two seconds. The head rose and formed a bubble shape around the top of the glass. Just when it looked like spillage was imminent, the head held and started to slowly, slowly roll back.
"I guess my first question is why shouldn't I shoot you right now."
"In front of my family? I don't think I have you pegged that wrong."
"Fine then. Let me shoot your Irish friend over there and I'll take him to the nearest city with a university and they can figure this out."
Conall heard his name and turned around, raising his glass.
"Try it, mate!" he yelled.
"Don't look at him," Dave said. "Look at me. Conall, let the Sheriff and I talk, please."
Conall gave a slight shrug and turned back around. Both Dave and Stu were aware that everyone could hear them. Hell, Chuck could probably hear them in the back. It was just as well. This was a private conversation about a public truth.
"You shouldn't shoot me because we haven't done anything wrong."
"Excuse me," Stu said.
"If you exclude the little party trick you saw there, what did we do?"
"OK," Stu said, speaking rapidly and ticking his points off on his fingers. "Assault, destruction of property, attempted murder..."
"No one was trying to kill you, Stu."
"Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace... no license for your animal, I don't fucking know. The point is that little 'party trick'... I don't even know. What the hell..."
Stu was starting to lose it again and Dave saw his opening.
"What you saw, Sheriff, was something that's been happening around here for, literally, hundreds of years. There are groups all over the world that do this, if you believe Conall over there. What I know and what I can tell you for certain is I've been doing this for over twenty years and I have never... I've never been a danger to anyone."
Dave was going to say he had never hurt anyone, but everyone in the bar knew that was a lie. By now, Stu had certainly put together that the two unsolved murders in his county were a result of the local pack and it was still the rawest of nerves among the group.
"Two bodies," Dave said. "That one blonde girl and that dude... Matzen. You and your people killed them."
Both men took a long drink of their beer.
"Truth is, Sheriff, you're half right. I told you I wouldn't lie to you and I'm not going to, so I'm about to tell you something really personal that's hard to talk about. I have no reason to lie..."
"Out with it," Stu said. "Don't tell me you're telling the truth. Liars tend to do that."
"Fair enough. Byron was part of our pack. He was a friend of mine and he's an ex-boyfriend of my wife, Josie, over there."
She looked up and gave a nod. It didn't register with Stu that the entire bar was listening to them.
"We all loved Byron," Dave continued. "But he got himself in some trouble. This thing, that we do, it's a high. It makes you feel incredible but we have rules in place because it's gotta be regulated. If it was one guy who could do this, they'd hurt somebody, they'd lose control. That's why we're a group. So we can help each other keep control."
The mood in the back of the bar immediately changed and softened. The group never talked about this part of the process. It was understood and refined by years of "scratches" and everything that went with it—the breaking bread, the absolute honesty. After you've seen someone turn into a wolf, how much more intimate can you get? But words about the process, spoken aloud, hit Ron and Carl and Willie and Josie.
"Are you a hunter, Sheriff?"
"No. I grew up in the city. Never got the chance."
"There's this teacher I work with, Mr. Shank, and Mr. Shank and his wife had a kid and one of the first things he said when that kid was born was 'I can't wait to take him hunting.' I asked him why and he said he remembered the first time his dad put a rifle in his hands. How careful he had to be and how closely he had to listen and then his dad took him out and showed him how to attract a deer and how to flush it out and they were outside and bonding. It was an experience he associated most closely with family."
"This thing we do, it's like that only a million times more potent," Dave continued. "My dad did it. His dad did it. I just... I just showed my son how this works," Dave said and stopped. He had started to choke up but quickly pulled himself together. "This is why we're here. This is as much who we are as anything on this planet. This is sacred to us. Those woods, that's our sanctuary. We have rituals we go through and we do it to keep the folks in this town safe."
"And Mr. Matzen?" Stu asked. "He wasn't safe."
"He did that to himself," Dave said. "The scratch wasn't enough for him, so he started messing around with drugs. Got himself addicted and then he did what an addict does."
"He was going to sell you out, wasn't he," Stu said.
"He was."
"What was he going to do?"
Dave took another large swallow of beer.
"Byron always was an attention whore," Dave said, letting it fly a little more. "If he wasn't getting attention when he wanted it, he would do anything to make sure he got it. He'd sing karaoke every week and if that didn't do it he'd go down to the school and play the pianos and sing to the kids. They all thought he was the best. If he was feeling low he'd get on the Internet and talk shit and message ex-girlfriends and anything he could to get that attention. He was an asshole."
Across the bar, Josie winced a bit.
"What was he going to do?" Stu repeated.
"He was with that girl, Sandra Riedel? They were together because of course they were. Fucker could charm the pants off anyone he wanted. So one night, Sandra comes to Ron over there and asks him if he can set up a secure webcam and make sure that no one else around could hack their signal. He asks why and it comes out that he's become a wolf in front of Sandra and now he's going to do it on webcam because he's a giant attention whore."
"I thought you said he was on drugs?" Stu asked.
"That was part of it, turns out," Dave said. "Ron, he goes along with it and finds out from Sandra that they've both been doing meth for a few months. She says that she can't keep up with him and that he does it almost every other day. So Ron digs a little more and it turns out he's not just cam whoring, he's trying to win something. Ever heard of the JREF prize?"
"No," Stu said.
"The James Randi Educational Foundation has promised one million dollars for whoever can prove existence of the supernatural. Byron was going to take him up on it. Apparently he was going to webcam with someone from their group and then go in and do it in person. Then he was out of here."
"What happened?"
"Ron got all this out of Sandra and then we all went and confronted him about it. He denied the whole thing and the next morning, Sandra was dead."
"What happened, Dave?"
"Sandra double-crossed him. She was going to take the money for herself and hang Byron out to dry. That's what he told us and I believe him. And we have rules and rituals for one reason and one reason only."
"To maintain control," Stu said.
"Exactly," Dave said, running his fingers through his hair and draining his beer glass. "If he can kill a member of this community and get away with it ain't nobody safe here. And we will never make our neighbors feel unsafe. Never."
That sat for a while. Dave poured two more glasses and Willie, who was in the corner, held his tongue. The phrase "there's more to it than that" was raging in his brain, but given how he felt and the current state of things, he fought the urge and kept it to himself.
"Did you kill him?" Stu asked.
"It was a group thing," Dave replied. "In full honesty, we all came at him at once."
"As wolves?"
"Yeah," Dave said. "As wolves."
By now the two men were drinking at fairly regular intervals and it was no longer a standoff, but a conversation. In that way, Dave had succeeded. His family and friends had gone from monsters back to people in the sheriff's mind, but the next step was going to be a lot harder.
"Shit," Stu said. "How do you do that?"
"What?"
"You know damn well what."
"I don't know if I can give you a good answer," Dave said. "I can tell you what it's like. I can tell you we've been doing it in this part of the country since pioneer days. I can tell you it hurts but you get used to it. I can tell you me and my family are in complete control over this thing and Byron's death, while tragic, was a rare thing."
"You'll understand if I'm having a bit of trouble believing you."
Dave sat back in his chair. The pitcher was more than half empty. Time to go for broke, he thought.
"Here's a question for you, Sheriff. How many people have you met on this job?"
"I don't know. A hundred or so."
"You've met Chuck there behind the bar. You've met the Meyers, the Chandlers, you've met Pastor Matt down at the church and Amy who manages the gas station?"
"Yeah," Stu said. "I've met all of them."
"So do you think that Chuck and the Meyers and the Chandlers and Pastor Matt and Amy and everyone else in this town would hesitate, even for a second, to tell the world there were werewolves living next door if they thought they were in any danger?"
Stu took a drink and leaned forward to meet Dave's gaze.
"You think this is the first time I've had this conversation, Sheriff?" Dave said. "You think most people around here don't know?"
Suddenly, a lot of things clicked into place for Stu, like every single time someone from the area asked him if they had met Dave yet or the multiple times he'd heard phrases like "you'll find some odd folks around here," or "this isn't your normal sort of town." Even Chuck, trying desperately to look like he wasn't listening, had made several out and out references to wolves that flew right over Stu's head. Of course, if he had known he was dealing with werewolves...
"The point," Dave continued, "is here's what we tell people."
Dave stood up for effect. The rest of the group behind him stood up as well and Conall, taking his cue about five seconds late, followed suit.
"I tell people that we are decent, hard-working folks who go to our jobs, pay our taxes, sing in the church choir and go out into the woods once or twice a month and do our thing. We're careful and we care. This here, this is our home. This is our refuge. If you're scared, we understand that, believe me. This is a scary thing. But give us a chance to prove ourselves. Get to know us. Don't be afraid because, if all goes well, you'll never have to encounter this thing that we do and if, by some chance, you do, we will do everything in our power to make it right."
"Plus, think of the absolute thunderstorm of bullshit that happens if you blow the whistle on us, man," Kenny Kirk chimed in from behind. "I mean, seriously, dark thunderclouds of thick, viscous shit coming down on this town in sheets."
"Vividly put," Ron snorted.
Dave sat back down and the rest of the group took the opportunity to start talking amongst themselves, and there was plenty to discuss. Josie started grilling Conall on the other packs in the United States and Europe, Kenny and JoAnn were talking quietly in a corner, and Carl tried to ignore Dilly's continued questions. No one spoke to Willie and he was fine with that.
"Nice speech," Stu said once Dave's butt hit the seat. "It doesn't change anything."
"I didn't expect it to," Dave said. "And, to be honest, we're in uncharted waters here. Usually when someone finds out about us it's because they've asked around and maybe are even trying to find us. You saw us at our worst. But here's what I'm asking—don't blow the whistle on us. At least not yet."
Dave refilled the glasses for the final time.
"I can solve two murders, here," Stu said. "Why shouldn't I do that right now?"
The correct answer to that question, Dave thought, was that they were not getting locked up tonight. There would be blood before that happened, especially given the circumstances, but he was also smart enough to know that would only put them on the run and make things a hundred times harder.
"Please don't," Dave said. "We were attacked tonight. I wish I could tell you the specifics of who attacked us and why but there's a really good chance it has to do with what Byron did. There are people after us, Sheriff. We're in danger and it might come down to the fact that we need your help."
"That's not my problem," Stu said. "I don't want to sound like a hard ass here, but—"
"YOU LEAVE THEM ALONE!"
All noise in the bar ceased and all heads swiveled to look at Chuck. He had slammed a thick glass mug down on the wooden bar which gave his yelling a nice, thud accent. This was "Bar" and Chuck had the floor.
"I've heard you, Sheriff Dietz. You go on and on about how you want folks to trust you. Well let me tell you, if you lock up Dave and you start screaming from the damn roof about werewolves, you ain't never getting anyone to trust you ever again."
No one in the bar could remember the last time Chuck had strung together that many words about anything other than Nebraska football or politics. Get him going about the coaching staff or what so and so was doing in office and he was worse than a radio announcer on Red Bull, but try to get him to talk about community or family or something important and it was like pulling teeth.
Not tonight, though.
"The Rhodes, they built this town. Hell, they built this county," the barkeep continued. "They've been pastors and businessmen and teachers and all of them have been wolves. They don't hurt nobody. What the hell, man?"
And with that, Chuck was back in the kitchen doing something else.
"That," Dave said, "was new."
"Not exactly a ringing endorsement," Kenny Kirk chimed in. "I'm not big on speeches from a guy who picks his nose as he serves your drink."
"One time, I saw him spit in the dishwater then use it to clean out a glass," Ron said.
"My friend at school found fingernail clippings in his burger once," Dilly added.
"That was only one time and you can all shut your damn mouths!" Chuck yelled from the kitchen.
It was Ron who started chuckling. Carl picked it up and within seconds, the table was laughing. A few seconds later, they were roaring and Dave, weary and beaten up and desperate for the safety of his family, couldn't help but be swept up in the wave. They laughed and laughed, Willie's big whooping guffaw raising above the rest.
The strange nature of the situation suddenly struck Stu in the face. A year ago he had been a cop in Detroit. Now, after time as a national punchline, he was in a dingy bar in the middle of nowhere, recovering from the trauma of watching supernatural beasts do battle. And now they were making fun of an old barkeep.
Life is weirder than you think it's going to be.
Almost against his will, Stu started laughing as well. The faces of the group were the opposite of threatening. They were not laughing for the same reasons, but when he started laughing, Stu found it hard to stop. Before long, they were all wiping tears from their eyes.
"Welcome to Cherry," Dave said through a few remaining chuckles. "You're one of us now that you've made fun of Chuck."
"You can all kiss my ass," Chuck yelled from the kitchen, setting off the entire group again.
The room sighed as the laughter died, an unspoken social sign the party was over and it was time for everyone to leave. Before that happened, Stu leaned across the table and motioned for Dave to do the same.
"I'm not going to arrest you right now," Stu almost whispered. "But you and your people have committed a crime and that will not stand."
"I get that," Dave countered. "But I'm going to protect the people I love at all costs. That's all I know how to do."
Stu gave a knowing smile and downed the last of his beer. Dave did the same and their eyes locked for a moment.
Dave's eyes said "We never speak of this again."
We'll see about that, Stu thought.
•••
Once Stu left, the pack met in front of "Bar" to plan out what happened next. No one had a good feeling about it.
"I don't think we can go back to our houses," Josie said. "Whoever attacked us obviously knows where we live."
"I'll do you one better, dearie," Conall said. "You've all got to get your asses out of town. Given your run-in with law enforcement, it makes all the sense in the world. Seriously, I thought you were all heading out of there in handcuffs."
"I'm gonna die running but I sure as shit ain't running away, if you get what I mean," Willie said.
"That's obvious from your substantial girth," Conall said. "But you're hurt and those men with rifles are coming back and they are coming back hard. Maybe think of it as regrouping."
"Or not standing in front of a truck coming right at you," Ron said.
"You didn't get shot and turned, asshole. That was me."
"Well at least you're back to your old self," Dave said. "I don't want to run either, but let's just hear Conall out. What are you thinking?"
It had started to drizzle and the cold was starting to get to the group. JoAnn was huddled into a ball and even the warm-blooded Dilly was rubbing his bare arms. Dave had borrowed a shirt from Chuck that was ill-fitting, thin, and smelled of God knows what.
"The first thing we do is get a few clicks down the road. Then I'll make some calls. Is there one of those god-awful shopping monstrosities you Americans have every few miles around here?"
"What, like a Walmart?" Kenny Kirk said.
"Yeah, something like that," Conall said. "I want to get some place public, some place warm, and somewhere we can buy some supplies. If there's a place we could all sit and talk, that would be stellar."
"The nearest place like that is in Kearney. That's forty-five minutes away or so," Josie said. "Kenny, you still got the van?"
"Yeah, it's by the shop."
"No," Conall said. "I know this sounds paranoid but any car you drive they might very well have a tracker in by now. I don't mean to frighten you, but there are very high stakes here for these people and anything licensed in your name is unsafe at this point. I've got a car that can take four. What else can we borrow?"
As various options started shooting around the group of whose car they could beg, borrow, or steal, the weight of what was happening came crashing down on Dave. Less than two days ago life was on the mend and back in a routine, his biggest problem being whether or not to bring his son into the fold. It had gone well and then Willie and then Conall and then everything else. Now his pack was being hunted and his family was in shambles. He was doing a hell of a job leading.
Whenever self-doubt crept in, Dave always felt the urge to act. It was a stereotypical male trait and one that annoyed Josie to no end, but the urge this time was too strong to stifle but strong enough to shake him out of his head and into the present.
"Let's take Chuck's Pathfinder. He has it out back that can carry seven of us if we pack in. With Conall's car, that's more than enough."
"Sold," Conall said. "We keep each other in sight the entire time. We can't lose each other. I don't think it will but if anything happens on the road, I'm in front and you follow my lead. Is that understood?"
The group nodded, even Willie.
"We meet in the parking lot of the shopping monstrosity in Kearney... where the hell am I going?"
"I'll ride with you," Josie said. "Me and Dilly."
"Fine," Conall said. "Who's driving the big van thingee?"
"I'll drive," Dave said.
"Of course you will," Conall said. "The rest of you, sleep if you can. You might not get another chance for a while."
Conall's car was out front and the three passengers piled in as the rest of the group walked to the back of "Bar."
"You gonna tell Chuck we're taking his Pathfinder?" Kenny Kirk asked.
"We'll leave him a note," Dave said. "I've already got a cop threatening us with murder charges. Borrowing a car I think we can get away with."
"Hope you're right," Kenny said. "Old Chuck holds a grudge like... like I don't know man. I can't think of anything funny to say. My brain is on autopilot."
"Yeah, I'm kind of running on adrenaline," Dave said.
"We'll stop and get you a Red Bull or something, man. You drink those things? They make you feel like you want to go out dancing or something. I never feel like going out but I drink one of those and I'm like 'what you all doing? Let's go do something.' It's crazy. JoAnn says I need to stop drinking them. "
"I think I'll be OK," Dave said. "Plenty on my mind."
•••
The trip passed without incident, unless you count Willie complaining the entire way. Dave, Kenny, JoAnn, Ron and Carl were all too tired to give him any attention and after a while the dark and the humming of the highway knocked the old guy out. All of the passengers fell asleep, with the exception of Carl, who was in the front seat next to Dave, who was nostalgic.
"I remember the first time you scratched," Dave said. "You were younger than Dilly, weren't you?"
"Yeah," Carl said. "It wasn't my first time, but my first time with you guys, I was nervous."
"Really?" Dave said. "I didn't know that."
If you don't count Dilly, who had his spot in the pack predestined from birth, Carl was the newest member and Willie never let him forget it. Until several nights back Carl had been the target of Willie's barbs and for no reason other than his father, Jim. They used to run together, both literally and figuratively, or so Carl had heard. Then there was a falling out, some punches were thrown, some claws were unsheathed and when Carl was three years old his family moved away from Cherry.
They had settled in Kearney, a town far to the south of Nebraska along Interstate 80 and there Carl had gone to school, grown up, and eventually come out as gay. Jim had thrown a giant fit about that, even going so far as to say he regretted ever having a son if he was going to turn out that way. But Carl had been quietly strong, taking all the barbs his father had thrown at him, absorbing them and turning them inward. He had learned to hate himself and when his father died of a stroke six years ago, Carl had grieved and cried and, suddenly, turned into a wolf. It was quite a surprise.
After it happened, Carl started feverishly trying to figure out what he was and it was his mother, who sensed something had changed, that clued him in to Cherry. She had begged him not to go meet with Willie, the only contact she still had up there, but Carl didn't stay away long. The moment his mother looked away he packed the car and headed up there. He had a long talk with Willie, who wasn't hard to track down. It did not go well.
"I turned one time in Kearney and then tracked down your father," Carl said to Dave. "He called me a 'faggot' within two minutes of meeting me."
"I would apologize for Willie but that's a full-time job," Dave said.
"But he introduced me to you guys," Carl said. "I'm thankful for that."
They drove in silence before Carl, uncharacteristically, started a conversation.
"Dilly is really confused," Carl said. "He's freaking out and he doesn't feel like you can help him."
The words hit Dave in the chest and the emotional wound bled down into his stomach and extremities. He knew this, of course, but to hear the soft-spoken Carl articulate it with such brevity somehow amplified the blow.
"He's been staying away from me," Dave said. "Josie's trying to get closer to him. I'm hoping she can pick up the slack."
"Some things he needs to hear from you," Carl said. "Especially about what we are."
"I'm not sure what we are," Dave said. "Forty-eight hours ago I thought I knew. I thought life was plugging along just fine, you know? But now maybe there's a lot more of us all across the world. I don't know how to feel about that."
"You don't know how to feel about that?" Carl said. "You? Your kid is terrified. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but pull your head out of your ass, man. Your family needs you."
With that, Carl shifted his weight and looked out the window at that special dark you only get when there's little to no light pollution. The Pathfinder, which smelled like ass, chugged on and Dave felt like the most selfish person on the planet.
•••
They pulled in to the Walmart parking lot at around two in the morning. There are not too many places as sad at that time of night. There were only a few cars, belonging to employees, that littered the parking lot and the loudest noise by a country mile was the buzzing of the streetlights.
"I've never seen one up close," Conall said, getting out of his sports car and stretching. "It's even worse than I imagined."
"Walmarts ain't that bad, man," Kenny Kirk said as the group coalesced and began walking forward. "You can buy a pair of pants and some string cheese and an X-box and a deck of cards all in one place. Where else can you do that?"
"You already have an X-box," Dilly said.
"That's not the point, man," Kenny shot back. "Not even close."
The group trudged toward the automatic doors, their weariness evident, Conall the only one clearly energized by the experience.
"You ever hear about something like... like Bruce Springsteen. You hear forever and ever about Bruce Springsteen and how he's the best and you go 'yeah yeah yeah,' but then you hear 'Born to Run' and suddenly it all makes sense."
The harsh light from the sign illuminated Conall, making him look even more wild.
"It makes sense now."
"You said we're here to buy supplies," Dave said. "What did you have in mind?"
"Nothing special," Conall said. "Food, water, maybe a few changes of clothes."
"I thought you were talking about guns and bullets and shit," Kenny Kirk said.
"They sell guns here!" Conall said, and plowed headlong into the store without looking back.
Josie shot Dave a look that said "he won't get far" and grabbed a shopping cart. Like most retail establishments open twenty-four hours, this megastore took on a very different tone in the wee morning hours. The lack of customers and employees, with the exception of the one open lane, put an ominous sheen on the whole experience. A zombie shambling down the meat aisle would not seem out of place.
Dave tried to keep his eyes open but the combination of the home invasion, wolf fight, the confrontation with Stu, and the drive had put the zap on him. He was done. Like most Walmarts, there was a Subway in the front part of the store next to a phone shop and a salon. The sandwich shop was shuttered and dark.
"I'm going to pull up a booth and grab a quick nap," Dave told Josie. "You OK?"
She nodded and Dave noticed the lines in her face and the wideness of her eyes and knew she was worried, probably about him in part, but more so for Dilly. After worshipping her face while they dated and knowing her face and its idiosyncrasies and tics after years and years of loving that face, he knew when something was up. He clasped her shoulder to offer some semblance of reassurance and then made for the booth in the restaurant, thick with the smell of meat and some sort of sauce Dave couldn't identify, and promptly fell asleep.
While he was out, he had a dream. It was not uncommon for the first sleep after a scratch to feature a "wolf dream," a point of view experience where you were running, leaping, bounding and occasionally fighting. One odd part about "wolf dreams" was that while the actions in the dream were personalized, the dream was always set in the same place for everyone in the pack—a wide open grassy field under an intense blue sky. Also, they sometimes got weird.
This was one of the weird ones.
It started in the field. Normally he would pick up a scent and chase something, but not today. The air was still and even the wind carried no scent of living things beyond grass and clover, trees and plant rot. His head on a swivel, the Lead Wolf looked to the left and the right and saw nothing, but straight ahead of him was a large outcropping of stones. They were arranged in an odd way that was clearly not natural. The stones were in a crude ring with a pile in the center about two feet high.
On swift legs the wolf ran to the staged scene and stopped on the edge of the ring. Something told him not to go inside, but dream logic compelled him. Even as he stepped over the ring's edge the human voice inside his head, all but gone when in this state, was screaming to turn back and his stomach sank and bubbled in fear. But his path was set. The wolf stepped over the edge and to the center.
Several long sniffs revealed nothing. The wind had picked up but still carried no information. With hesitant claws, the wolf touched the stones and when he did, the world changed.
The wind was thick with scents of blood, the sky darkened an unnatural shade of blue with orange hues and the rocks started to melt into something resembling lava. The pile of rocks quickly descended into steaming goo and started rolling and changing, rising out of the ground five feet or so and began to morph and change. At first it was long and then round, then a face appeared in the lava. It was no one's face, the features smooth and indistinguishable, but the expression was one of rage. The face trembled and sputtered and the Lead Wolf, with his powerful legs and claws that could tear and rip could not make himself do anything other than stare at the face.
The bubbling goo got closer and closer until it blocked out all else—a fiery face of rage staring at the wolf. It exploded.
Dave woke up hard as Kenny was shaking his shoulder. He looked as white as a sheet.
"Dave, man, get up right now," he said. "Help me find everyone. You need to hear this right now, man."
Kenny's voice was low and panicked, all pretense of the fun-loving motor mouth gone. His heart beating so fast he feared for his health, Dave stood up, took a few deep breaths and steadied himself.
"What's going on?"
"There's a message on my phone," Kenny said. "It's from them."
•••
Conall took the longest to find. He was near the Home and Garden center, staring at the fish.
"Why in the name of Mary do they sell fish?" he asked Kenny, who was racing around the store gathering everyone. "As pets? Are they a pet store too? What is this place?"
Kenny eventually got the Irishman removed from the pet aisle and they all gathered at two booths in the sandwich shop. No one was around and no one was in earshot. In the center of the table was Kenny's phone (Samsung S9 and he told anyone who asked) and he turned the speaker phone on, cycled through the options and played old messages.
"Hello, Mr. Rathman, this is Mr. Stander. You met my men earlier tonight. Your friend, Mr. Rhodes, doesn't seem to want to speak with me and I'm hoping you're a more reasonable fellow. We've created a website for you and I'm wondering if you'd give it a look. Please get a pen ready and write this down."
A URL that was a string of letters and numbers followed.
"Watching this video will give you a much better idea of who we are and, more importantly, where you stand. You can call me back at this number. Good-bye."
Silence hung heavy. Not only did they have Kenny's number and knew who he was, but someone had made a video? That meant resources, expertise, will. Any way you sliced it, this portended doom.
"If you watch the video, they'll know where you are," Conall said, plainly. "They'll be able to track the data signal at the very least. Don't be a fool."
"You're right," Ron said. "But we need to know what it says, don't we?"
"Can we watch it while driving?" Dilly suggested. "That might make it harder for them to find us."
"That won't work," Ron said. "But I think I might be able to rig something up. Come on."
Ron led the group through the sad, sad clothes aisles past the toy section and into the aisle where the laptop computers were on display. Some of them were on.
"If I can get into their wi-fi I might be able to mask our IP address so they don't see where we're coming from. At least not right away."
The clicks of Ron's fast fingers filled the aisles and after a minute or so, he started chuckling.
"Their wi-fi password is 'password,' " he said. "What else do you expect from Walmart?"
Before long he had worked his magic and turned to the group and heaved a sigh.
"You guys ready?"
"I've seen these before," Conall said. "They'll be some threats, some promises of monetary gain. Typically their first volley isn't full of blood and guts. Don't let it rattle you."
A few keystrokes later, which echoed in the empty aisle, a plain, white page with a video embedded on the screen. Ron hit play, cranked the volume and pulled up the full screen. It didn't seem like a video at first but more of a live stream with all the choppy skips and poor resolutions of something happening in the moment. From off camera someone yelled "Sir, they're on" and the camera shook wildly for a moment. Then it stabilized and focused on Mr. Stander, who was clearly outside.
"Don't worry," Ron said. "I turned off the webcam. They can't see or hear us."
"This is odd," Mr. Stander started. "I was hoping for more of a real conversation. You're also blocking your location, but you're probably in a Walmart somewhere. They're the only places open at this time of night."
His tone was far less formal than Dave had remembered. The man's bow tie stood out even more in the dead of night.
"I'll get right to it. We are very motivated to find you and I'm afraid the possibility of giving you generous compensation for your cooperation has passed. You proved that when you killed several of my men. That's not something I take lightly nor something my employers are going to forgive. So that's how it is."
The camera then moved from Stander to reveal their location. They were in front of Dave and Josie's house.
"I'll admit, we know less than we'd like at this point," Stander said. "But we do know a lot. We know about the Rhodes and their family. And where you live. We also know Mr. Rathman and his partner JoAnn are part of your group. There's a very good chance William Rhodes is also with you. From there, it's speculation."
The camera moved back to Stander.
"As for your Irish friend, I can be fairly certain he was sent by The Council. And that he knows how outmatched he is right now."
Everyone turned and looked at Conall who did not betray what he was thinking.
"I'm going to be frank with all of you. I'm not usually an emotional man but the way I've been treated has been absolutely beyond the pale. This town, this nowhere, I can see why no one's found you because who would come to such a place? It smells of cattle and desperation and I do not like it. But, I know, for some reason, that you do, so, hopefully, you understand what's about to happen."
The camera cut to a wide shot of the Rhodes household. "Oh God," Josie said, putting her hands to her mouth.
The smoke started slowly coming out of the doors but within thirty seconds the accelerants had ignited and the house started to burn. Fire was visible through the windows and through the open door and smoke ran along the roof, rolling over the shingles and flying up through the dark of the night sky.
Dilly started to cry and Josie joined him. Dave went over and encircled them both with his arms, his eyes never leaving the screen for a second. He saw into the living room where their television was melting and saw the fire had already spread down the hall, eating up their bedroom, Dilly's bedroom, Josie's work room with the scrapbooks. Mr. Stander stepped into the frame.
"We are going to go do the same to Mr. Kirk's garage here in a couple of hours, then his house. Then we're going to burn down that shithole bar and the church and the gas station and every other building that means anything to you until you turn yourselves in. I am not exaggerating nor am I bluffing. I am going to burn down your lives to the foundations unless you return. I'm going to give you until sunup and then the fires start. There might be a few deaths sprinkled here and there given that we are going to meet very little resistance from local law enforcement."
The fire had moved shockingly fast and Josie was sobbing, taking in giant gulps of air to feed the sound escaping her soul. Dilly was little better, but not by much as he watched the only home he'd ever lived in consumed. Dave's eyes never left the screen. His eyes were on the kitchen table where he and Josie and Dilly had sat just a few days before and decided to take him out to the woods. The table where Dave and Josie had almost ended their marriage. The table where they would have put their Thanksgiving turkey in a few weeks and have the entire pack over and eat and drink and watch football. The table from which all good things came was burning and would soon be gone.
"My entire job right now is to bring you pain, Mr. Rhodes," Mr. Stander continued. "My job requires me to wear many hats. This is one I enjoy putting on. It's time to come home and meet with me. The sooner you do so, the less pain I will inflict. This is non-negotiable. Good-bye."
The feed ended abruptly and Ron closed the page. The hum of the lights and Josie's echoing sobs were the only noise. At the end of the aisle, something moved.
"Do you folks need help finding anything?" a hard-looking woman in a Walmart smock asked.
"No," Ron said. "We're fine. Thanks."
"People come here to cry all the time," the woman said. "Usually they're alone."
"We're fine," Ron said again with a touch more force.
The woman vanished and Willie walked very slowly over to Dave, Josie, and Dilly who were clutching each other. His big arms suddenly closed in over Dave and Dilly, and soon Ron and Carl and JoAnn followed suit until the family was encircled. Conall stayed to the side, visibly uncomfortable.
"We'll get him," Willie whispered, though everyone could hear. "We'll get that son of a bitch. No one hurts my family like that. No one."
"No one but you," Dilly said through tears, and a few laughs echoed through the sobs and the unrelenting buzz of the lights echoing against stone walls.
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 4
In the 1970s, Cherry had seen its boom and was starting to see its regression. The age of Main Street had come and gone and while you could still find several small businesses in downtown Cherry—a Ben Franklin, a small grocery store—none of them would survive any later than 1988. Throughout the 1970s, the decay that would lead to the abandonment of downtown was starting to peek through the cracks and make itself known.
The 1970s were also the first decade where the people of Cherry realized their young people were not going to stay. Generations of farmers saw their children leave for larger cities and population centers, even go to college. It was the sort of shift that left a generation rattled. Beyond that, however, the town was pretty much the same. Quiet, slow, full of people who valued their church, community, and privacy.
It was these three elements of community life that converged in 1978 to create an incident that was spoken of for years afterward. It involved the First Baptist Church in Cherry, overseen by the Rev. Thomas Rhodes. He decided, one Sunday, to try something he had heard about from his peers but had never been tried before in the town. This new innovation in worship was known as an "Altar Call" and consisted of the pastor or some other church leader offering public absolution and counsel for those with troubled souls.
Logistically that would mean the pastor saying something to the effect of "if you feel Jesus moving in your heart tonight, asking you to make a change, come to the altar and receive his forgiveness." The language varied from time to time and even though the nature of what brought them to the altar was kept private, the act of absolution, that you had something to confess or that needed changing in your life, was deliberately a public part of the process.
When Pastor Rhodes first tried an altar call, things went about as well as could be expected. During that time he was presiding over a fairly large congregation for the area and routinely saw over one hundred parishioners come to Sunday service. Some of those who attended the first altar call were no surprise—the woman who had well-known problems with money, the man who had been seen drinking too much in public, a child whose parents urged him to go. The second altar call drew an unexpected person—the pastor's own brother, William.
At that point William was known as a hard-working, solid individual. He wasn't the pillar of the community that his brother was, but he was known and if not liked, tolerated. Some had seen his temper. None had seen him seek any sort of absolution.
But this Sunday he was seeking forgiveness, guidance and, if reports are to be believed, a handkerchief. The altar call came and William, tears flowing down his clean-shaven face, stumbled to the front of the church and threw himself prostrate near the altar. One of the aldermen came to help but Willie had descended into sobs.
Reports of the next few minutes vary, but the story that was told throughout the community involved William's tearful confession that his wife, Jessica, had left him. Details were confessed, loudly and publicly, as Rev. Thomas tried to console his brother. Finally, several volunteers from the congregation led William away through the side door, but not before he had confessed to ignoring his wife, not caring enough about her and, most embarrassingly, not being able to provide her with more than one child.
People in small towns have long memories and the whispers of that day followed William throughout his life in Cherry.
Rev. Thomas, a large man who famously enjoyed butter, pork and cigarettes, died on January 4, 1981. His brother attended the funeral but did not cry. Several in the town wondered afterward what sort of man would blubber about the end of his marriage in front of the entire town, but would suppress his grief when confronted with the death of his brother. Some even more cruelly suggested maybe the wrong brother had died, or that something was wrong with William.
Of course, others in the town knew something else about Willie, as he started calling himself. That his dealings out in the woods had been met with mutiny and the group had split. Maybe the next generation would be better, some thought, but never said out loud. After all, that would be an invasion of privacy.
PART SEVEN \- ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME
Conall made his calls and went shopping while everyone got control of themselves. The huddle hadn't lasted long and when it broke everyone sort of wandered until they found themselves back in the dank-smelling Subway. By now it was almost 3 a.m.
Going through the check-out line Conall gave a quick whistle which made everyone look up. He held up a rifle that he had apparently just purchased and was grinning widely at the cashier. The look on his face was one of unbridled joy.
"Something's wrong with that guy," Dilly said.
"I always wanted to visit Ireland," Willie said. "That guy's making me rethink it."
"I would go," JoAnn said. "Looks like we might get the chance."
"Cart before horse, darlin'," Kenny said. "We've got a situation to deal with first. Right Dave?"
"Yeah, we do, but think I need some sleep and a shower first," Dave replied. Sleep was the last thing on Dave's mind but he was pretty sure he had miles to go, as it were, and would need any sleep he could get. Things were already a little fuzzy.
Before long, Conall was back, the rifle slung over his shoulder in a cloth cover.
"I do not believe this country, brother," he said to no one in particular. "Everyone and their mums have guns in Ireland but to go buy one in the middle of the night? Wow."
The eight pairs of bloodshot eyes staring up at him, unimpressed, gave Conall a pretty good hint to get on with it.
"Right," he said. "I've arranged safe lodging. What we're going to do is load back up and drive twenty miles south and there's a hotel that we can get some sleep. Tomorrow after breakfast or lunch or whatever, we'll lay out your options."
"You mean how I'm gonna go back to town and rip that stupid bow tie off Stander's neck with my teeth," Kenny said.
"We will go through all the options and you'll make a decision then. We need a bit of shut-eye, don't you think?"
No one argued and they piled back into the cars. Half an hour later they were checked in to a bare bones Day's Inn. Conversation was slim to none.
•••
Surprisingly, Dave did get some sleep but his dreams wouldn't let him be. The same images of bubbling rage filled his head and he woke with a start after only a few hours. The sun was just coming up and Josie was out cold, next to him. Dilly was in the room's second twin bed, snoring.
Using skills he had acquired through years of staying in a hotel with his family, Dave dressed as quietly as he could and made his way out the front door, careful to lessen any loud sounds the door would make by moving slowly. He walked around to the back of the hotel where light was just starting to creep into the jet black sky, enough to give him a sense of where they were. The hotel was off the highway and, like so many others in the area, catered largely to truckers and those traveling east to west across the state. You could make it in about four hours, all told, but he'd heard that hotels did well in locations such as this. The miles and miles of corn and ranches tended to do in even the most stout of travelers.
Behind the hotel was a field, vast and undeveloped. Even with the little bit of light available to him, Dave could see the acres of grassland before him, even catching glimpses of the sharp October wind blowing through, creating waves, just like back home. Just like the home he'd likely never go back to.
"Figured you'd be up, brother."
Dave turned to see Conall sitting on a makeshift picnic area. There were two rusted iron chairs next to a tiny table, only big enough to set maybe two glasses. In the dim light, Dave could see the glow of something Conall was smoking and laying over the chair, his left leg up high over the armrest. How European, Dave thought.
"Come, sit, please," he said. "I need to address the alpha."
"Jesus," Dave said. "You make it sound so formal."
Plopping down in the chair, Dave was hit with the thick smoke of a cigar. The smell stuck to the inside of his nose and his body thought about coughing but retreated out of courtesy, catching it in his throat and swallowing it.
"You want one?" Conall said. "You Americans make the worst beer in the entire world but you're aces at cigars."
From his thin fingers, Conall held out a long, somewhat thin, cigar. Dave thought about defending American beer, especially some of the fine microbreweries that had popped up in the past few years, but he let it sit.
"I'm not sure how you do that," Dave said. "I smell triple what everyone else does. If I smoked one of those it would be stuck in my nose for days."
"That's sort of the point, isn't it?" Conall said. "Mark my words, you're going to want it. If not now, maybe in a couple of minutes."
The cigar continued hanging from Conall's fingers until Dave, after a few seconds, grabbed it. It felt lighter than he was anticipating with the paper wrapper thin. The smell was almost overpowering without the aid of fire and smoke.
"I haven't had one of these since... God, maybe since Dilly was born."
"Yeah, what is the boy's name?" Conall asked. "Surely you didn't doom the poor boy by naming him after a pickled vegetable."
"He's Dave Junior. We called him Dilly because he couldn't get 'Willie' right when he was a toddler."
"Fucking adorable," Conall said, bringing the cigar up to his mouth. He took a long drag and blew a smoke ring into the air that stayed long past the expiration date of a normal smoke ring. It rolled on and on before eventually expanding too far, the smoke giving up the shape and dissipating into the early morning sky.
"I need to level with you," Conall said. "You're in trouble."
Dave said nothing, letting the silence be his tacit endorsement of the statement.
"I'm not sure what you think about us, about The Council, but we are, in a sense, only human. We're in the middle of nowhere which means no cavalry is coming and even if it were, your group is not part of our group. You follow me?"
"I follow."
"Good. Then how about this—even if a plane full of wolves showed up in your town tomorrow and killed Stander and every single one of his men, you are now a known quantity. People who track this stuff know there are wolves in Cherry and those people tend to be highly motivated by one thing or another."
Conall's affect was flat, his tone even as he stared out into the field.
"Even if you got rid of this problem, things will never be the same for you and your pack ever again. You get that, right? That part has sunk in?"
"Yeah. I get that."
"Good. You want me to light that cigar now?"
As much as he hated to admit it, Conall was right. Dave wanted the cigar.
"Might as well," Dave said, leaning forward as Conall produced a lighter from his pocket and flicked it open with expert efficiency. The brightness of the flame highlighted how dark it still was, though Dave's eyes had adjusted and were far better than normal people. He put the tip to the flame and took three long puffs before turning over the end and looking at it to make sure the fire had taken. It had.
"There's so much you don't know," Conall continued. "I've been sitting here thinking of an analogy and you know the best I've come up with?"
"What?"
"You're like a kid's football club who's been thrown in against the pros."
"We're not amateurs at this thing."
"The fuck you're not," Conall said, his voice affecting for the first time since they sat down. "When you're a kid learning football, you learn how to pass and you learn the positions. You don't learn formations. You don't learn how to pick your matchups or any of the strategy that wins league matches. And your opponents, they aren't amateurs either. You're like a bunch of kids thrown into a match and you know the ball is round and that's about fucking all."
"You're saying we're going to lose," Dave said, the bitter taste of the cigar raging through his mouth and nose.
"I'm saying you're going to lose," Conall said. "But here's the thing. You don't have to stay amateurs. You've got talent on your squad, you've got youth. Hell, you've even got a leader who doesn't shit himself when confronted and can put up a decent fight. There's potential but you've got to get coached up. If you go out there, you're going to get murdered."
Conall tossed his leg from around the armrest and sat in a proper fashion, took a pull on his cigar and let it out, no ring this time.
"My inelegant analogy aside, Dave, your family is in trouble and if you don't come with me, they're going to die," Conall said. "I need to take you somewhere where you can learn. Somewhere you can train. Somewhere you can be a pack who can survive these sorts of attacks because they're coming at you for the rest of your lives and that's a fact."
On some level, this was inevitable. From the moment Conall had changed and spoken to him as the Irish Wolf, Dave knew life would never be the same, but he hadn't expected total destruction of his life in two days. The old feelings of failure and inadequacy started to creep into the back of his brain and the front of his stomach.
"Running feels like failure," Dave said.
"It is, on some level," Conall replied. "But nobody wins all the time."
"Do you have a family?"
"No," he said. "Nor am I going to. My line we... there's only so far we can go. That's for another time. Plus I travel around too much."
"Then you're going to have a hard time understanding how losing our home and our town and our lives as we know them feels like a colossal failure," Dave said, his voice raising. "I have two jobs on this planet. Provide for my family and keep them safe, and I am failing, miserably, at that last one."
"So your solution is to get them killed on your own terms?" Conall said, his voice also rising. "Pardon me, Dave, but that's really stupid."
The insult landed and all of a sudden Dave felt the hairs on his arms standing up and his nails starting to grow. He was transforming, almost against his will.
"Look at you!" Conall shouted. "You're at the end of your rope, brother. You can't even control the beast anymore. How in the hell are you going to fight Stander and his men?"
Gulping air and staring at the field now streaked with echoes of the big, impending sunrise, Dave tried to get his head under control. He thought of his son and his wife, but other ideas kept plowing through—the fight with the Irish Wolf, his miserable father, his unfaithful wife, his dead piece of shit friend...
Dave felt his leg start to stretch.
"Don't do it," Conall said. "I'll put you down. You know I will."
Confronted with his impending transformation and limited options, Dave thought fast. During the scratch, transformation was the point so feeling the change come was welcome and something not to be fought. Trying to turn back, that's something no one in the Rhodes tribe had ever had to deal with.
The enhanced senses that came with the change were already well upon Dave, and he smelled the smoke, heard the rustling wind and the animals in the woods, felt the fibers of his clothes and the heat in one leg. The cigar was burning through the jeans of Dave's right leg where he had set it moments earlier. Without thinking he grabbed the thin stogie and jammed it into his forearm, letting out a yelp not much louder than the hiss of fire on flesh.
Conall had risen from his seat but now watched Dave with fascination. Using pain to beat a transformation wasn't something many were capable of doing as it was a high-level move. But here he was, pulling it off.
The wind picked up as Dave got control over his brain. He swatted away a couple errant thoughts, focusing instead on the intense pain right below his wrist and the smell of his own skin, cooked and smoldering. The stretching stopped, the hair rolled back and he leaned back in his chair, panting.
"That was quite a thing," Conall said.
"That," Dave said, panting, "hurt."
The sun broke the seemingly endless Nebraska skyline and the dark reds and blacks and oranges bowed to the bright yellow. In his heightened state, Dave could hear the sunrise. It wasn't the sun itself or the heat, but the entire living infrastructure buzzed when the sun hit it from the grass to the trees to the men smoking in chairs outside a shitty hotel off the highway.
"I've never seen a sunrise like that," Conall said after a few minutes had passed. "Not on the hills or the moors. Never."
They watched and it was beautiful.
"What happens after we leave with you?" Dave said. "What happens to us and to our town?"
"The world will open to you and your family in ways you can't even imagine," Conall said. "And Stander will destroy your town, person by person, until it doesn't exist anymore."
"He'll kill people?" Dave asked.
"Yes, David. And if you go back he'll kill you. And if I let you go back, he'll capture you, torture you, perform medical experiments on you, learn all he can about how you work, then throw the spent husk of your body out in the back dumpster. No member of our group has ever been captured like that. And no one ever will."
They sat in silence until the sun started to burn their eyes, then went inside to catch the continental breakfast.
•••
One advantage of being a wolf with experience is knowing how to avoid detection by other wolves. Lay in the ground, become one with the Earth, employ a few tricks of the trade to mask your breath and your sweat and if no one is looking for you, no one is going to find you.
The minute everyone ran to their rooms to grab as much sleep as they could, Willie had found himself some dirt and leaves, settled in and made himself as comfortable as his lumbago would allow. He nodded off a few times, weary from the transformation but the minute Conall lit up his cigar he was alert. He heard it all and made a decision on this spot.
The minute the men left for breakfast, he jimmied the lock on an Accord in the hotel parking lot, hot-wired the engine, and started driving back toward Cherry.
•••
Ron was having no luck trying to get his shirt clean.
When he was a kid, his mother had shown him laundry basics by hand but it had been years. He had gone to the University of Nebraska where there had been machines and he bought a used one and brought it with him when he moved back to Cherry. His setup now featured a top of the line Maytag and, being a single gentleman, he could play that machine like a fiddle. Now he was back to scrubbing and doing a pretty poor job of it when he was startled by a few sharp raps on the door.
He didn't have another shirt to reach for so whoever was knocking was going to get him in all his bare-chested glory. It was Carl, who immediately looked sheepish when he saw Ron's condition.
"Sorry I... uh, I saw your light on."
"Trying to get my shirt clean. Come on in."
The door creaked shut and Carl stood, for a second, and went to sit on the bed while Ron went back to working his shirt in the tiny sink. He listened for a second to the swishing of water and rub of damp fabric.
"Washing my shirt is not that interesting," Ron said. "What do you want?"
"I want to know what you think about going back."
While in the car on the way to the hotel, everyone had been too wiped out to talk, likewise when they fled Cherry for the friendly confines of a Walmart at three in the morning. Normally Carl and Ron dissected their scratches and would grab drinks. On rare occasion Ron would come over and help with the harvest.
"Jesus," Ron said. "We are like an old married couple."
"We fight less," Carl came back.
Throughout their friendship, Ron had divined that Carl was not the talkative type, but also could tell when he had something to say. Usually, he responded as opposed to volunteered conversation, so Ron let it rip.
"I believe Stander is going to kill a bunch of people," Ron said. "I don't think that new sheriff can do much by way of stopping it unless he calls in the National Guard and we're so isolated they might as well be on the moon. If we leave, we're condemning everyone we work with and hang out with to something rotten and maybe something worse. If it was just me taking my licks, I'd go back, but it's not just that. I think we could come up with a plan and make a good run at these assholes and I think that's what we should do."
"I figured that's where you'd land," Carl said.
"Are we about to have our first fight?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"So tell me, then, why should we run?"
"Easy. I'll give you two really good reasons. We can't win and I really, really want to."
Ron had figured this was coming as he knew Carl had larger aspirations. They had talked about it a few times and Carl would take time away from his job to travel and always came back with great stories and photos and an itch to go to the next place. Ron traveled too, particularly to Chicago and Las Vegas, but always felt much happier when he could return home.
While his position wasn't a surprise to Ron, that didn't mean he liked it.
"So you'd toss us all away for some new place, just like that?"
"That's not what I'm saying," Carl said, visibly uncomfortable.
"But it's what you'd be doing, isn't it?" Ron asked. "You'd be telling all of us to fuck off while you went and traveled the world and learned about being a wolf, is that about right?"
"We could all do it," Carl said, his voice rising. "We could all go our separate ways for a bit and come back. We could learn and grow and still be a pack. Just not in Cherry."
Backing off, Ron thought for a second. There was something else here, something Ron had vowed didn't matter and he didn't want to talk about. Still, it caused him to back off and try to put himself in Carl's shoes. He was scared, he was lonely, and he was confronted with the rest of his life being a desperate mission or a grand adventure. At his age he knew what he would have chosen.
"I see where you're coming from," Ron said, trying to even his voice. "Hell, it'd be fun to travel a bunch and even when this is over, things aren't going to be the same. But what about everyone in Cherry? What about that guy you like, that guy who works for Kenny Kirk at the garage, what's his name?"
"Nicholas," Carl said.
"Nicholas," Ron said. "If Nicholas was hurt and you were the only one who could help him, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose," Carl said.
Crossing the room, Ron put his hand on Carl's shoulder and stared him, cold, in the face.
"You would," Ron said. "You're one of the most generous guys I know. You'd help anyone you could and right now, people need your help."
"Yeah," Carl said.
"Besides," Ron finished, walking over to the door and opening it. "It's going to be a group decision."
"Last one of those we had didn't turn out so well," Carl said.
•••
Inside the hotel room, the steam from Josie's and Dilly's showers had created its own atmosphere. The humidity was a sharp, wet contrast to the dry fall and Dave was glad to see Josie in a towel and Dilly nowhere to be found. A few days ago, he thought, his reasons would have been very different for finding his wife alone and nearly naked. Now, that was the furthest thing from his mind.
"Dilly getting breakfast?"
"Yeah, he and Willie are down there now. Where did you go?"
Suddenly feeling the pain in his legs and his forearm, Dave took a seat on the edge of the bed farthest from his wife. The bed gave a huge, disproportionate creak.
"Conall and I have been talking," Dave said. "He... he laid it all out for me."
"Laid what out?" Josie asked, drying her hair. She had turned from the mirror and was sitting on the bed, giving her full attention. "Have you been smoking?"
"Conall was," Dave said.
"No, you were. I can smell it."
"Yeah, fine," Dave said, trying to dismiss his lie. "The gist is we have to go with him. If we go home he thinks Stander and his men are going to kill us."
He let the phrase hang for a second, hoping it would hit hard. When Josie merely continued drying her hair, he continued.
"He also said he can't let us go back. That Stander wants to experiment on us and what he might learn is why he's so anxious to get us back to town. Apparently they've been trying to capture someone like us for a long time and finding a group not connected to Conall and his people is their best bet."
At this Josie stopped drying her hair and put her hand behind her neck and left it there. It was a posture she often struck when they were arguing or when she was in a particularly bad mood.
"So going back is not an option?"
"I don't see how."
"What happens to everyone in town?" she asked.
"Nothing good," Dave said. "Conall thinks Stander is going to do everything he can to get us back, so he'll hurt people and he'll burn down buildings. Just like he says he will."
The words echoed and bounced around the room long after Dave had said them. Neither of them spoke for what felt like a minute. The hand dropped from the back of Josie's neck and she rested her head on her hand. A few seconds later, Dave realized she was crying. Given her near nakedness and the sudden burst of emotion, Dave decided to not go over to the bed and comfort her. Turned out, that was the right decision.
"God damn you," she said.
"What?"
"I said god damn you. This is your fault you child. You fucking child. This is your fault and now all our friends are going to die and it's your fault."
Her voice did not raise and her fists did not clench but tears were now flowing down her cheeks. Dave had known this was coming for a while. After years of intense familiarity and intimacy, Dave knew she felt this way and that knowledge had been a bomb in the back of his head, waiting to go off. He knew she blamed him, knew he was the root of all the problems in her mind and now he had been proven right.
The night they had decided to "take care" of Byron for his many sins, they held a vote on what to do. It had to be unanimous, Dave said, because this decision was monumental. He had made a case, but had tried his best to make it clear any dissent in the ranks would mean finding another path. Josie had been the third person in line and the third "yes" vote.
"You voted with me to take care of Byron. Don't you put that decision on me," Dave said.
"What the hell was I supposed to do? Not support you? I already had them looking at me like I was some whore thanks to you. Willie was already openly mocking me and you weren't doing anything about it. What the hell was I supposed to do?"
"You were supposed to be honest," Dave said. "That's the core of all we do..."
"Don't give me that alpha shit," she said. "My husband decided to kill one of our closest friends and got everyone else to come along."
"That's right, Josie," Dave said. "Charming, funny, perfect Byron did nothing to bring that on himself. He didn't sell us out. He didn't kill that girl. He's perfectly innocent. He's a saint, if you think about it."
"We're not in high school anymore and look where your decision got us!" Josie shot back, letting the towel drop and running into the bathroom to grab a purple T-shirt that she flung on with vigorous speed. Even in the heat of battle, Dave couldn't help notice her nipples straining at the cheap material. "Our house is gone and all our friends are about to die because of you."
"Fine, what would you have done?" Dave said, bringing his tone back down. "Send him off with a wave and a smile to go find the nearest place he could sell us out and get someone else killed, send him off to find someone like Stander? Maybe give him one more good fuck for the road?"
"One, don't be gross," Josie spat back. "And two, you promised me, you promised me that had nothing to do with your decision. You said this was about the future, NOT the past."
"My decision wasn't about you sleeping with Byron," Dave said. "I've said this over and over again."
"Then how come I don't believe you?"
"Because you're sorry he's gone," Dave said, really seeing red now and keeping a close eye for signs of change in his trembling body. "Because you wish he was still here so you could get what you really want instead of what you're stuck with."
Josie's mouth hung open and her eyes narrowed as the tears came again. She sat hard on the hotel room's other bed which did not make weird creaks.
"You never wanted me and you prove that to me every day," Dave said, now staring at the floor. "You love the kid and I'm thankful for that and you are fine with your life but you aren't fine with me. You think I don't see that? You think I don't know you? I know you and I know you don't love me."
It hurt to say, more than Dave thought it would.
"I've said this a thousand times," Dave continued, "but Byron had decided to leave. He was out. He had betrayed us and he was going to betray us if he was left alive and that's the hard truth of the matter. Yes, I might have had a hand in driving him away and yes, I am not blameless and yes, I can be childish sometimes but letting him go gets us right here in this hotel room, just a few weeks earlier. Maybe worse people are after us. Maybe someone gets killed."
"Someone did get killed," Josie said. Dave ignored her.
"I appreciate your support and I'm going to need it a little longer, but once we're clear of this thing you're going to go your own way. I heard you and Conall talking and I think I know what you mean to do. The only question is 'is Dilly coming with you' and I guess that's a decision he's going to make."
The two sat, apart, not looking at each other. After a moment, Josie stood up and sat on the bed next to Dave. She sat, staring at her husband. He had aged well, she thought. His hair was still there, his body was still fairly lean save the love handles. He worked hard and they had years of history gluing them together and yet, he was right. She was mad and resentful and wasn't sure she loved him. He was good enough and now Conall had promised a world where she could travel, she could meet others beyond their town, she could be the person she always thought she would end up being. And Dave? What of him, she thought. This big bag of daddy issues would get along fine. In the end he'd be miserable with her or without her.
But in the back of her mind, she felt a twitch.
This did not happen often. The last time she had this twitch was four months ago and she had gone out, made the transformation and ran through the woods, feeling, thinking, running. The pain was excruciating, paralleled only by childbirth, but once she had done it the vast expanse of woods had been her playground. And she had taken Dilly out with her, talked to him, shown him the woods and what he would be doing when he was ready. She remembered her life as a mother and a wolf and as a member of the pack and as a woman whose house had just burned down.
Oh yeah, she thought. I'm really, really angry.
Sitting, staring at Dave, she wondered if this was the man who could keep her and Dilly safe. He would die for them, but so would every husband, so he says, and at the end of the day that's a bunch of bullshit. Would he fight for her, not in the romantic sense but in the practical sense? Was he smart enough to win? Would he lead them all to certain death and dismemberment in a lab?
She took a deep breath. Time to find out.
"We're not done yet," she said. "You and me. We have a lot to talk about and we're not done yet but if you think you know me and you think you know my heart, than what do I want to do right now, more than anything else on the planet?"
A jab about sleeping with Byron flickered across Dave's brain and prudently got caught in several filters.
"You're pissed about your work room," Dave said.
"I am pissed about my work room," she answered, a smile flickering on her lips. "And I need a guy who's going to make that right."
"You're behind me? For the time being?"
"I am behind you," she said.
"Good enough."
Dave stood up and opened the door to the hotel room, exposing the bright sun and activity out in the parking lot.
"You realize we're going to need to go to therapy after this, right?" Dave said.
"One problem at a time, please."
•••
Dave found Conall who asked him to knock on doors and get everyone down to the lobby. A few minutes later most everyone had gathered for a few stale bagels, pre-made pancakes, and rubbery sausage in the hotel's lobby. Whether they were eating was a different matter.
JoAnn had plowed through her food but Kenny Kirk hadn't eaten a thing and his face was drained.
"He's been calling me," Kenny said. "Leaving messages. Stander's got my number."
"He probably has all your numbers," Conall said, shoveling sausage into his mouth. "He's calling you for a reason. Probably thinks he can hurt you the most."
"Did you listen to any of them?" Ron asked between bites of biscuits and very suspect gravy.
"Yeah, man, I did," Kenny said. "Bastard says he's at my garage in town that's burning down. He sent a picture. It's hard to make out, but yeah. It's gone."
In a situation one quarter this exciting Kenny would be running his mouth as fast as he could, but not this morning. His words were exact. One by one everyone gathered around to see the photo on Kenny's phone and a few profanities and pats on the shoulder later, everyone was back in the seats more demoralized than before.
Everyone ate in silence for a moment until the real Kenny Kirk returned with a vengeance.
"What is this bullshit, man," he started. "What is this sitting around eating shitty food waiting for some Irish weirdo to tell us what to do? That asshole burned down my garage, burned down Dave and Josie's house, man. That was a nice house!"
"Your garage wasn't nice," Ron said, treading dangerous ground, praying he was on the right side of it. "All the oil on the ground it probably went up fast."
"See, now this is your problem, saying shit like that," Kenny said, a slight twinkle in his eye. "Your brain ain't got no filter on it, man, and you're missing my point. My point isn't whether he's burning down a garage full of oily rags..."
"You kept them in a big pile in the corner," Carl chimed in.
"OK, OK, let's all agree that my garage was full of oil and oily rags..."
"And you kept that nudie calendar on the wall," Josie chimed in.
"I kept asking him to take that down," JoAnn said and by then, any hope of a Braveheart-style speech was gone. Kenny waved his arms to get everyone's attention.
"MY POINT," he yelled over the chatter, regaining attention momentarily, "is that we need to go back."
Everyone fell silent.
"We need to go back and deal with this."
"The hell you do, there Kenneth," Conall said. "These bastards who work for the biomedical companies, they're coming at you hard because they've never captured one of us before. If they got their hands on just one of you it would be terrible. They could start tracking people like us, profiling people like us. Hunting us if they wanted. I told Dave this earlier but I cannot, under any circumstances, let that happen."
"So Cherry burns," Ron asked.
"So Cherry burns," Conall answered. "I wish there was something I could do, sincerely. But it isn't the first town to burn, as you put it, and likely won't be the last."
"And if we try to go back, what you gonna do then, man?" Kenny said.
"Let's not go down that road, please," Conall said. "I don't mean to get all technical on the lot of you, but I've beaten your Alpha."
This was the first time it had occurred to anyone in the group that, yes, the Irish Wolf had kicked the Lead Wolf's ass, hard, the previous evening. While some of the rules were for the good of the pack, the line of leadership succession had been passed down from the very first pack of wolves in Cherry. The rule was the Alpha is the strongest and when someone beats the strongest wolf in the pack, they were the new Alpha. There had only been seven Alphas in the entire history of this pack. Now there were eight.
"So, yeah," Conall said, scooping some eggs onto a fork and wolfing them down.
"Well dammit!" Kenny Kirk said.
"Wait, Dad's not in charge anymore?" Dilly asked.
Everyone around the table braced for the inevitable comment from Willie about how his son had never really been in charge, but it didn't come. Willie wasn't there and this was the first time anyone had noticed.
"Where the hell is Willie?" Dave asked. "Was he staying with anyone?"
"Like anyone's going to share a room with Willie," JoAnn said.
Conall was riffling through his pockets looking for the receipts. He had paid for the rooms, generously, and was doing a quick count in his head.
"Oh fuck me," he said, recounting. "... two, three four... FUCK!" he slammed his hand down on the table."I didn't even get him a fucking room. He could be in Mexico by now for all we know."
Murmurs spread around the group and Josie immediately went over to the front desk, which was in earshot of Conall's language and volume. Ron stood next to Conall, going over the receipts again. Dilly went over to his father, who gave him a hug, which was awkward since he was shorter than the boy. A few feet away, Kenny Kirk was letting out a stream of profanity himself. A few moments later, Josie came back.
"Someone stole a car from the parking lot early this morning," she said. "That girl at the front desk, she said it had been a crazy morning."
"All right, here's what's happening," Conall said. "I want you all to really think about Willie and use your noses. We have to track him down or at least get some sort of idea where he's headed."
"What if he's headed back to Cherry?" Carl asked, almost panicked.
"One problem at a time, brother," Conall said. "Everyone fan out. Track him if you can. Meet back here in five minutes. Go!"
Most of the group ran outside, Kenny with his nose literally in the air. Dilly went to his mother who came over, put her arm around Dave and led them down one of the narrow hallways of the hotel.
"Grandpa went back, didn't he?" Dilly said.
"Yes," Josie said. "He probably did.
"Are you guys going to go get him?"
It was one thing to be confronted with the possibility of harm to your family, but quite another to have your hand forced. The pit in Dave's stomach that had been building for the past couple days was roaring now and every bit of instinct he had was screaming not to put his family in harm's way, especially not for an asshole like Willie.
Back when Dave was getting ready for his first scratch, Willie had already made the turn from respected businessman toward town crank and had given Dave very little direction on what to do. When he turned sixteen he asked Willie, over and over, if it was time for him to go out on a run yet and after a few rounds, Willie had been so annoyed he shouted at Dave "if you want to be a man, make decisions like a man." In what was the boldest move in his life up until that point, Dave showed up the next time he knew Willie was going out and that was his first experience. He was embraced with open arms and still looked up on that victory as one of his greatest achievements. He knew he was ready and he showed up and proved it to everyone.
While he firmly believed his father had acted like an asshole, Dave now realized that his logic had been sound. This wasn't something that could be given to him. It was something he had to take.
"Dilly," Dave said. "The next few hours are going to be hard. Your mother and I are going to make our own decisions about what to do and I want you to listen to me. You are a part of this pack. In your heart, you know what's right. I believe that as much as I believe anything. It's going to be hard, but we're not going to tell you what to do. Consider the consequences of your actions and make your own choices. Think them over, make sure it's what your heart says is right and do it. You understand?"
Dilly's eyes were wide and his mouth open a bit. He had just been hit with a bomb and knew it. Josie lent her support.
"Your father and I are proud of the man you're becoming," she said. "These decisions are going to shape who you are. I know you'll make the right ones."
"OK," he said after a few seconds. "I'll do what I think is right but I'm going to follow your lead."
Patting his son's shoulder, Dave dared a quick glance at his wife. She had an excellent poker face.
"Good boy," he said. "Let's see if we can find your grandpa."
•••
It didn't take long for Ron to find the note. He figured Willie had never checked in and immediately went to the outskirts of the hotel property and started sniffing around. He picked up Willie's pungent scent in short order and the path he followed led him to a clearing where he saw a waffle house in the distance. He jogged over and sure enough ,Willie had left a note. A couple minutes after they had split up, the pack was sitting in and around the lifted Pathfinder as Conall read the note, silently.
"Dammit man, out with it," Kenny said. "What'd he do?"
"He went back to your dumpy little town," Conall said, anger rising. "He went back knowing that you all would chase after him."
"Then let's go," Dilly said. "Let's go get him."
"No," Conall said, flatly. His tone was unwavering and had an air of finality to it.
"Wait a second," Dave started. "Let's talk this out a bit..."
"No," Conall cut him off. "They've already got one of us. I'm not giving him six."
"You don't think we can get him?" Ron asked.
"Are you joking with me?" Conall said. "You'll have to pardon me, sometimes American humor goes right over my head."
"I think we could get him," Ron said.
"And I know you're wrong, you idiot," Conall shot back. A few of the pack started to protest the breach of protocol but Conall was off to the races, running his mouth, venting his frustration into the bitter wind. "You have no training, you can barely control yourselves, you treat your women like shite, you've never been outside your black hole of a town and you've never killed anyone. You're up against men with guns... lots of them with training and armor. I feel like I've been over this. You're outmatched. You're outgunned and you're outsmarted. You have no chance of getting that bearded moron back and the sooner we can start the damage control on this giant cluster fuck the better off we're all going to be."
Silence was the only response Conall received to his rant which he had used all his limbs to articulate. He stared from person to person, partly begging for a challenge and partly begging for an idea, any idea, that would make this situation better.
"I've got to make some calls," Conall said and started walking off.
"We have home field advantage," Ron yelled as he started walking away.
"What are you on about?"
"You know that term? Home field advantage? It means that you're right. It means we've never left our black hole of a town but it also means we know every paved street, every access road. It means we know where the potholes are and how deep that historic marker is buried. We've lived on those roads. It means that we might not be trained but if there's anywhere we can fight it's in our town."
As he picked up steam Ron grinned at his own tenacity and the fact that he had a killer closing line.
"And we might not be killers, but I have a guess there are a few of us that wouldn't mind being killers by the end of the day."
"That's right. That's goddamn right," Kenny Kirk said, not one to miss out on a speech. "Home field advantage, man. Ron's probably got a plan in his head right now."
Ron nodded and Kenny walked up to stand next to him, shoulder to shoulder.
"And we don't treat our women like shit, which is how it's pronounced, by the way."
"Sometimes you do," JoAnn said, loud enough to be heard.
If the group expected Conall to come over to their side, they were very wrong. The Irishman's eyes, which were always a little sharp, were piercing as he looked over Ron and Kenny. He couldn't hide his anger in pitch darkness.
"I've got calls to make," he spit.
"I think you should hear them out," Dave said, standing directly in Conall's path.
"And I think I've already kicked your ass," Conall said. "Move before I do it again."
"You should hear them out," Dave repeated. He crossed his arms in hopes it would hide his shaking hands.
Conall threw a long, arching shot with his right fist but Dave got his elbow up and it glanced off. As the shouting started Conall threw a quick left hand to Dave's stomach and caught him, forcing him to the ground gasping for air.
"I can beat you here or there," Conall said, glancing toward the woods behind the hotel. Dave took advantage of the momentary loss of eye contact by getting his legs under him and pushing off, hard, catching Conall with a shoulder to the lower chest and taking him down. The men started rolling on the ground, Dave more on the defensive than not.
"You... fucking... dirty fighter!" Conall yelled between blows. Dilly noticed his voice getting a little deeper and started to worry and the others gathered around, trying to figure out when and if they needed to jump in. Dilly backed away, slowly so his mother wouldn't notice, and started for the back of the hotel, never losing sight of his father, who was now on the end of an ass-kicking.
"Basketball, basketball, basketball," Dilly chanted to himself, trying not to hear his father gasp and yelp in pain.
Dilly wasn't entirely sure what he was doing and sure as hell hadn't given it much thought, but he knew what was about to happen. He knew he had to help and the only way to make any sort of difference, to help his dad, to save his grandpa, to be the man he wanted to be, was to do this. It only made sense, so much sense that thought would have only gotten into the way. The tall teenager, strapping and shaking and scared and tired, shut his eyes and tried to focus.
The second he got hold of the memory, of being hungry for the defeat of another and feeling the rush of wanting blood, the impact knocked him off his feet and onto his back. He had made it to the grass and he physically forced himself to a kneeling position and yelled the only word he could think to yell, the only word that would get the Irishman to stop beating his father and tearing apart his family.
"ALPHA!" he yelled. The deep, guttural sound that came out of Dilly's mouth sounded absolutely badass and only puffed the boy up a bit more.
Conall was already showing signs of transformation, though muted. His eyes had started to change and hair had begun to sprout but he was still a human, still kicking Dave in the legs and ribs. A gash had opened on one side of Dave's head and a long scratch mark on his neck was bleeding enough to stain his shirt.
"Dilly... Dilly." Josie realized what was happening and started running toward her son. He was just twenty yards away or so and was not moving, but by the time she turned around and had covered less than half the distance she felt a whoosh beside her as the Irish Wolf blew past her on his way to destroy her child.
The Young Wolf's transformation wasn't complete by the time the Irish Wolf tackled him, taking him all the way from the mowed and tended lawn at the back of the hotel parking lot into the woods. The pack ran over and saw nothing but rustling leaves and the sound of snapping wood, brittle and dry in mid-fall weather. Soon those sounds were accompanied by chatter and sobbing and the anguished cry of a mother in a complete panic over her son.
Once they were out of sight the Irish Wolf, as was the way of his people, stood aside and let his opponent finish his transformation.
"This... is the only... mercy... you get," the Irish Wolf growled.
The part of Dilly's brain that would comprehend language was no longer functioning but as the Young Wolf found his footing and slowly rose to all fours, he understood. This was not a tussle or a row, a match or a contest. This was about blood and fangs.
And he was ready.
Immediately the Young Wolf bolted in the direction of some thick foliage, away from the road and the hotel and the crying mother. He had guessed, correctly, that speed would be his weapon and size would be his defense. The wolves were not evenly matched in terms of size with the Young Wolf standing taller than the Irish Wolf, but just barely. Not that it mattered. The Young Wolf felt stronger than his first time out and the fear, confusion, grief and rage he had inside him had informed his transformation, sharpening him, making him bloom into a bloody flower made of the guts of his enemies. He ran, sensing the Irish Wolf behind him but knowing he could run as long as he needed and avoid the fight. He was younger and he was faster and he could run and run and run. That was not what he wanted to do.
Remembering his failure when chasing the deer, the Young Wolf was able to pivot on his new paws and start leading his pursuer in a long, arching turn. He had no idea where he was going but knew water wasn't far and his instincts were telling him to get there. His conscious mind flashed, ever so briefly, on the image of his father telling him something while they were both in a pond and then rocketed back to the terrain in front of him. He dodged and evaded, he weaved and launched himself. The pleasure of the run was not lost on the Young Wolf, but he did not like being chased.
The stream quickly came up in front of him and at full speed the Young Wolf leapt over the water, turned his body around and caught himself in a crouching position on the other end of the bank. The Irish Wolf was not even a second behind him. In one fluid motion, the Young Wolf caught himself on the bank and launched himself in the air, meeting the Irish Wolf in air and landing with a thud and a snarl in the center of the stream.
The Young Wolf's instincts served him well, even if it only went so far. Initially, the shock of the water distracted the Irish Wolf, who spun around to take in his surroundings after they had landed, giving his opponent a chance to strike, biting deep into his shoulder. The Irish Wolf howled for a moment and swatted the Young Wolf, hard in the head, but he did not break the bite. Both creatures, moving at extreme speed, spun and shook and the Irish Wolf realized for a moment that he had underestimated the ability and tenacity of the creature latched on to his shoulder.
Not knowing much about the water underneath him, the Irish Wolf was desperate to get out of the stream and he ran full force into the bank forcing the Young Wolf to finally let go. He climbed out of the embankment and took a moment to examine his wound. It was deep and blood was escaping, but not so much that he would stop fighting. His intention was to scan for the Young Wolf but the instant he raised his head, his opponent crashed into him, throwing them both into the thick of the forest.
As they tumbled, a memory flashed through Conall's mind. He had been in fights (never two in twenty-four hours) and had enjoyed most of them. He was one of three boys, all of whom went through transformations, and when their dear mother had died they went out into the woods and had at each other. The pain and grief of their mother's death, so toxic in human form, had proven freeing in the woods. They were lighter and sharper, they fought harder and bled more, and he had never enjoyed a fight like that before or since.
With claws moving so fast the Alpha hardly had time to mount a defense, the Young Wolf slashed and snapped with the rage of youth. The Irish Wolf was able to get his paws up and absorb most of the blows with his flesh, finally punching upward into the Young Wolf's chest and stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Quickly getting to his feet, the Irish Wolf saw that his opponent could dish it out, but couldn't take it. The Young Wolf was down, taking giant gulps of air and trying to get to his feet.
The Irish Wolf reared up, hoping to inspire the youngster to action. It sort of worked as the Young Wolf did get to his feet and mount a weak attack of his own. The two locked front paws and while the Young Wolf was strong, he was still recovering and not nearly as strong as he needed to be to ward off an attack from an experienced, strong, and amused attacker. The Irish Wolf pushed the Young Wolf down and bit him in the same shoulder he had been wounded in earlier, partly out of spite. The Young Wolf howled long and hard, which echoed.
Standing atop his prize, the Irish Wolf gave up his bite, held the Young Wolf down and spoke to him again.
"Weak. Sad." It snarled. "Like... your... family."
He meant to scare the child. He meant to mark him. He had been challenged and he wanted others to know the victor. Slowly, the Irish Wolf brought his bloodstained claw up to the Young Wolf's face. He meant to tear part of his cheek off but the moment his intention was clear he was knocked off his feet and into the woods. He tumbled and tumbled for what seemed like a minute, each time thinking he would come to a stop on the forest floor only to be hit again and knocked farther into the woods. Somewhere in his mind, he knew one of his hind legs had broken.
Finally, finally, he stopped and was greeted to a gravely, leathery interpretation of a woman's voice.
"Get off him or I will kill you."
It was Josie, of course, but she had changed. When the Irish Wolf lifted his head and shook it to clear his senses he saw Josie, partially concealed in shadow. The part he could see was covered in coarse brown hair. The shirt she had been wearing was still on but she had lost her pants as her bottom half had grown and elongated. She sported powerful hind legs with muscles that bulged and flexed and visibly sharp, curved claws and was hunched in a way that resembled a feral cat. There was no mistaking the anger in her body language and when the Irish Wolf made it up to her face he saw nothing but dark eyes with darker intent staring back at him.
The Irish Wolf tried to stand but his left back leg couldn't support his wait and he crumpled, letting out a sharp yelp he immediately regretted. Realizing he was in no condition to fight, Josie stepped out of the shadows and toward him. He noticed she was holding a large rock in one hand.
"We can both speak," she said, her diction slightly clouded by her fangs. "I want to smash you with this rock until I see brains."
Threats were something the Irish Wolf could handle. The sight in front of him was far more interesting.
"How?" the Irish Wolf asked. "Others... cannot."
"WHY SHOULDN'T I KILL YOU?" Josie yelled with such force birds fled from treetops nearby.
"Without me... you... die," the Irish Wolf answered. The yelling had focused him, and all the memories of romping with his brothers were long gone. He didn't know what she was capable of but was pretty sure she was true to her word and looking for an excuse to kill him.
And yet, what an amazing creature. Conall's mind was starting to return and with it, the implication of what it was he was seeing. There were rumors but he had never seen a woman who could transform. This was, strictly, a male endeavor and he marveled both at this discovery and at the form. She wasn't nearly as stringy and skinny as her male counterparts but much more catlike but in a fiercer, deadlier way. Based on what she had done to him, she must have exceptional speed as well, he thought, and as he did so Josie walked, slowly, maintaining eye contact with the Irish Wolf, past his head and toward his broken leg. She then lifted the rock and slammed it onto his broken bone.
The first scream was punctuated by more howls and then whining pain ruled the Irish Wolf, blotting out all other influences. When his vision finally came back after nothing but white-hot agony clouding his vision, he saw Josie again with the rock over her head ready to strike.
"NO!" the Irish Wolf screamed. "NO! ANYTHING!"
"Change," Josie said in a measured tone. "Change back now."
"Trying..." the Irish Wolf pleaded. They both knew it was not that simple and some part of the process had to run its course. Rolling his head up at the sky, trying to get over the pain that still consumed his lower half, the Irish Wolf shut his eyes, hoping it would buy him some time.
Conall's mind came back almost at once, which was welcomed, and immediately started racing. He needed to call The Council directly, something he had never had cause to do. He needed to get the R&D team on this right away and he needed to make sure, above all, that this group was safe and sound. As the thoughts of his business intruded, his wolf mind started shrinking and shrinking, and soon, too, did Conall's body. The transformation back caused him to scream again as his broken leg settled into its human mold and by the time he was a recognizable human again, he was screaming and weeping in pain.
"I bet that hurt," Josie said through thick fangs.
"Yes," Conall said, panting. "It did."
She leaned close to the Irishman's face to give him a good look. Her eyes were even darker when he could see them and her features even more frightening. Her hair also stood up instead of falling around her neck giving, the illusion of armor or the back of a cape. She made a gesture toward the man's busted leg.
"That was for my son," she said.
"I'm sure you understand why..." Conall started.
"And this is for my husband," Josie said and threw the rock at Conall's broken leg, full force. He saw the rock fly through the air, heard the thud and passed out before the pain hit.
It was a good call.
SELECTIONS FROM THE BARTER COUNTY BUCK
November 11, 1995
Front Page
Headline: Cherry Man Opens Garage
Kenneth Rathman, 3404 Rural Road 6, has opened a garage in Cherry Township and hopes to drum up businesses fixing cars, trucks and service vehicles.
The garage, located on Main Street in Cherry, will take over the old Chapman building and opened at the end of last week.
"I hate having to drive 30 miles to get my vehicles serviced," Rathman said. "It's crazy. There are more cars in this town than people, so I ought to do OK."
A graduate of Central Community College's Diesel Mechanics program, Rathman said he is willing to take a look at anything and that no one should feel shy about bringing in their vehicle.
"Chances are I can make it run," Rathman said. "I can at least give it a look."
March 4, 1997
Front Page
Headline: Lady Bucks Lose Class D Finals
The Consolidated High Lady Bucks almost made the most out of their trip to the Class D State Championships on Friday night in Lincoln, but fell just short of a title, losing to Pius X by a score of 61-59.
Leading for most of the game, the Lady Blue Knights made a comeback in the final quarter, outshooting Consolidated and drawing more fouls.
"I'm very proud of these girls," Coach Dave Rhodes said. "We lost our cool down the stretch but making it to State was always our goal."
"We'll get them next year," Rhodes added.
Consolidated's leading scorer, Janice Hogarth, scored 29 of the Lady Bucks 51 points and fouled out of the game in the fourth quarter.
March 11, 1997
Page 3
Cops and Courts Report
William "Willie" Rhodes, 50, of Cherry, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence on the evening of March 5. The report says Rhodes was driving from his son's house where he had ingested "a few beers" and was belligerent to the arresting officer Grey Allen. This is Rhodes' third drunk driving arrest and his license will be suspended for three months and he will be fined $2,000 plus court costs.
December 14, 1999
Front Page
Headline: Local Man Brings Laughs at Chamber Christmas Party
The Barter County Chamber of Commerce held their annual Holiday Gala on Friday night and while business was on the agenda, laughs were the highlight of the night.
Local Coop manager Byron Matzen was the host of the event and immediately had the crowd in stitches with his take on local and national politics. At one point Matzen sat at a piano and played a medley of pop songs as outgoing president Bill Clinton. His targets also included current Nebraska Football head coach Frank Solich, Chamber President Alan Cratch and Dave Rhodes, whose Lady Bucks basketball team failed to make it to State this year.
"We knew Byron was the man for the job," Alan Cratch, President of the Chamber, said. "He's always cracking people up. He did a great job."
"I've got performing in my blood," Matzen said. "Plus, everyone I was making fun of makes it easy."
The group discussed several agenda items including the importance of bringing in new business, maintaining funding through grants and working with farmers to create an attractive environment for their crops.
May 22, 1999
Front Page
Headline: Local Man Forms Motorcycle Club For A Good Cause
Ron Smith has always loved motorcycles, but never gave any thought to starting a club. His friend, Carl Eakes, spurred him on.
"Carl was always asking me why we didn't do poker runs and tours of the state and stuff like that," Smith, an IT specialist for the Greater Barter County Coop, said. "I never had a good answer for him."
This weekend the Barter Coyotes Wolves Motorcycle Club, founded by Smith, will host a poker run that spans 120 miles in northern Nebraska. All proceeds from the run will benefit the Barter County Community Hospital and the Red Cross. Those wishing to participate can contact Smith at the Coop.
"It will be fun," he said. "The weather's supposed to be great."
PART 8 – BAD LANGUAGE MAKES FOR BAD FEELINGS
For Stuart Dietz's eighth birthday, he and his friends went bowling. There was cake, there was pop (a rare treat in the household), there was Dana walking around like she owned the place. But the biggest takeaway from the party wasn't the presents or the eighty-one he bowled or the caffeine buzz that kept him up late into the night. For a young Stuart, the highlight was a trip to the bathroom and a peek at another world.
Super Bowl-O-Rama was one part of a block-long entertainment complex outside of Detroit that included a skating rink and a five-screen movie theater located upstairs. Young Stuart had bugged his father to take him to movies, but the elder Kline hadn't budged. They had a TV at home, why pay to go to a movie? His mother, slightly more open-minded, took her kids to G-rated fare like the re-release of Snow White, The Aristocats and the like.
The bathroom at the Bowl-O-Rama was right next to the stairs leading up to the movie theater and when no one was looking, young Stuart took the stairs two at a time to catch a glimpse of the movie posters before he had to go back. That trip would change his life, though it would be embarrassing to admit it.
Hanging over the stairs was the biggest banner for a movie Stu had ever seen. It covered an entire side of one staircase and in Stu's line of sight was one big, metal foot connected to a metal leg attached to the meanest, sleekest creature imaginable. Wide-eyed, the young Stuart followed all the way up to the metal visor, the huge gun in one hand and finally drank the entire image into his consciousness. The creature was getting out of a car, gun ready for action, wearing a look of indestructability on the lower half of his face.
Before Stu knew much in this world, he knew he wanted to be RoboCop.
Of course, he begged his mom to take him to the movie and she, prudently, said no. It was rated R for a long list of reasons and that was a line not to be crossed. Such was his desire and mania for all things RoboCop, that Stu asked his sister to sneak him in to the movie theater. She promptly told on him and that was the end of that.
Over the years he saw several posters for more RoboCop movies come and go and his desire only grew until, at the tender age of thirteen, Stu committed his first crime. The Motor City Video Emporium was one of those VHS rental stores that made the crucial mistake early on of putting the physical videos in clear plastic behind the cases. If the tape wasn't there, it was checked out. Stu had his friend Ally cause a distraction by knocking over a candy display, and he grabbed the video and hightailed it out of there. She never told anyone and he had a stolen copy of RoboCop in his room, tucked under his mattress later that night.
Stu waited and waited for a time when everyone had left the house so he could watch and finally had to fake being sick from school so he could view his stolen treasure. He waited a long time to make sure parents and sisters hadn't forgotten anything (thought he was sure Dana was on to at least part of his plan) and after breakfast, he popped in the tape.
Regardless of what the movie turned out to be, RoboCop was already part of Stu's origin story, so the fact that the film was excessively violent and bloody, mean-spirited and ass-kicking, only added to the legend. An adult Stu knew the movie by heart and all of it, stealing the tape, getting his first blast of cinema and how much he loved that flick made him smile, ever so slightly, before another right hand landed to his cheekbone, sending him into increasingly more agony.
"I don't like having you beaten, Mr. Dietz, but at this point, what choice do I have?" Stander said. They were in Stu's office and had been for so long that Stu had lost track. It was light out so he knew it had been more than twelve hours, but beyond that he was at a loss. Getting the shit beaten out of you tends to suppress your appetite and make regular body functions less important, so he couldn't even use hunger or the need to pee as markers for the passage of time.
They had come in the middle of the knight, Stander and his men. After the events at "Bar" Stu had welcomed his bed, as his head was swimming with all manner of societal, sociological, scientific and religious questions. He had headed straight for his bed and what seemed like a few short moments later, was being manhandled and pulled up hard to his feet, slapped around, forced to dress and taken to his office. Stu hadn't had the wherewithal to put up a fight at the time and now he was handcuffed to a chair suffering his third round of fists to the face and stomach in... at least twelve hours. Maybe more.
"What you've told us just doesn't make sense," Stander said, walking a lazy circle around Stu's chair. "Think of it from our perspective. This man, Mr. Rhodes, tells you his family's deepest, darkest, most destructive secret and then lets you walk away? He doesn't protect himself? He trusts you, a stranger, with this secret? Tell me, Mr. Dietz, if I were a suspect and I came to you with such a story, would you believe me?"
That last punch was a weak one and Stu could tell that Stander's men weren't looking to hurt him in a lasting way, but they were loyal. They all seemed to hop to it whenever they were given an order and there were whispers of consequences that Stu hadn't been able to fully comprehend.
Just because they weren't looking to hurt him permanently didn't mean they wouldn't soon. Or that the punches didn't really sting on his already bruised and tender skin.
Stu spit and there was a bit of blood mixed in with his saliva. It looked tough, he figured.
"I don't know how to convince you that I'm not lying," Stu said. "If I were you, you know what I'd do?"
"Enlighten me," Stander said.
"I would look for inconsistencies in my story," Stu said. "It's one of the main tools used in interrogation. If a person is making up the story on the spot or even if they've made it up before getting in that room they are going to forget stuff. Little details, sequences of events, stuff like that."
"Mm hmmm," Stander said, his arms crossed.
"So I'll tell you what I know again and if it's different than what I've told you before, hit me with that. Because I'm going to tell you what I know and it's the same as the last two times, I promise you."
"No need," Stander said. "At this point I know your story, Mr. Dietz and I know it's consistent."
Stu started to get a sinking feeling in his guts, but wasn't sure why. Nothing had changed except for something in the air.
"What is surprising to me is you think you're getting out of that chair."
Stander knew enough to let his threat sit a second before continuing on. He pulled up his own chair from behind Stu's desk and straddled it so the two men's faces were inches from each other and Stander's anger suddenly started pouring out in quiet, punctuated bursts of speech.
"I can see it in your eyes, Mr. Dietz. You're trying to figure the magic words to get me to uncuff you and let you go but you must be so dense that you honestly don't realize what's going on here, so let me tell you. My men and I have already razed two buildings, committed three murders and are detaining upwards of twenty people. We have a plan in place to burn this blank spot on the map into nothingness, Mr. Dietz, even though it's basically there already. I will destroy each and every thing that Dave Rhodes and his compatriots hold dear until they come back here and when they get back I will tranquilize them and load them into trucks and ship them across the country where they will live the rest of their lives in Old Testament-style suffering."
The pit in Stu's stomach had already turned to full-blown panic that he was working hard to suppress.
"I don't mean to be vulgar with you, Mr. Dietz, but if it means getting one more, even one more nugget of information out of you that will lead me to these people, I will shoot your chest and fuck the wound until you bleed out. Do you understand?"
Stu managed a nod. Stander resumed his standing, arms-crossed position.
Somewhere, deep inside Stu's consciousness, something started to stir. It started logically—why was this man so hell-bent on finding Dave and his pack? Money didn't engender this sort of rage, so what was it? Dave was a good person, as far as Stu could tell, if a little wimpy at times. There must be more to this if Stander was starting to lose his cool now after several weeks of hunting.
Then, deeper in Stu's mind, he was thirteen, several weeks after watching RoboCop for the first time. His friend, Rick, had rented RoboCop 2 while his parents were away for the weekend. The boys huddled in the basement and watched the sequel in a moment of joy so pure, its memory pierced the panic, fear and pain.
"Bad language makes for bad feelings," Stu said.
One of the henchmen punched him again. Stander's face was unchanged.
"I have a business call to make right now," Stander said. "Or else things would escalate. As it stands, you have probably around an hour before I come back and when I do you are going to deeply, deeply regret your insolence."
He walked away, his expensive shoes clattering on the linoleum. His men followed.
"Have a nice day," Stu said, and gave his cuffs a hard tug. The cuffs and the chair were solid.
•••
Across the street from the Sheriff's office was a building that had recently been abandoned. While the fixtures had been pulled, the tile on the floor gave off the impression that the place had been a restaurant of some kind. Frankly, Stander couldn't have cared less. His eyes were glued to his watch, a high-end number he purchased for himself his third week on the job. He was to take a call at precisely 11:30 a.m. Central Time and for the people he was about to speak with, "precisely" meant something.
He watched the second hand click, heard the tick as there was no sound to distract from it, and pulled out his phone with ten seconds to spare. On the nose, the phone's simple, strong ringer went off.
"Stander speaking," he answered.
"Any progress?"
"Not yet."
"Any leads?"
"Several."
"Any need to remind you of the stakes involved?"
"No. I fully understand."
"You will take another call at 3:00 p.m. Central Time. Understood?"
"Understood."
The line went dead. As was his habit, Stander checked the length of time the call had taken. It had been fourteen seconds.
The company man let himself have a moment of humanity. His bosses would not have sent him if they didn't have faith he could accomplish the task at hand, but their support waned. Now it was time to deliver and receive the reward or fail and face the consequences.
He stared at the walls in the room where he stood. The patterns on the floor suggested tables and chairs had been there at some point and the northwestern corner showed signs that it had once been a kitchen. He let out a long sigh but before the breath had finished exiting his body, his phone rang again.
"Stander speaking."
"Sir, we have eyes on William Rhodes."
"You do? Where is he?"
"He's currently on Highway 11, four miles outside of Cherry."
Stander started to move his body before his mind had commanded it. His walk was slightly awkward as he wasn't in a full-blown run but certainly was moving about that fast.
"I want three units on him. Set up a roadblock on Main Street, I will be there to direct myself momentarily."
Stander was two blocks away and already saw movement down the street, which was pleasing. He moved as fast as he could, leaving Stu Dietz handcuffed to a chair behind him.
•••
Willie smelled them first, the smell of plastic and gun oil and unfamiliar thread.
"Here we go," he said to himself and gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly, putting his foot further down on the accelerator, feeling the pressure and acceleration.
As far as plans go, Willie didn't have one. Not really. A good part of him wanted to go out in a blaze of glory but he figured that wouldn't accomplish much. They'd still have his body and something told him they wouldn't let Dave go, so his idea was to get captured. At the very least, it would force Dave to finally do something.
But as he got closer and smelled the strangers to his town, the thinking changed as his temper flared. Willie decided to make them work for it.
By the time he was rolling around toward Main Street, a car was behind him blaring its sirens and Willie was going seventy miles an hour. By the time he saw the checkpoint, he was going eighty.
"Suck on this, fuckers," Willie said to the empty car, pulling on his seat belt over his round belly.
The checkpoint didn't look like much—a few sawhorses and barrels, probably full of water. What Willie hadn't counted on were the spike strips that punctured all four of his tires a half mile away from the checkpoint, slowing him significantly. He started losing speed right as he neared the checkpoint as the weight of the burst rubber pulled and dragged the car. His "making them work for it" amounted to crashing into a few water-filled barrels at forty miles an hour or so, sending water spraying everywhere and knocking the wind out of the old man.
Before he knew it, the doors were open and men were pointing guns at him and screaming. He was foggy from the impact and tasted blood in his mouth, but knew he was basically OK. And he immediately regretted his decision.
"Shit," Willie muttered and spit blood before putting up his hands. One of the men in combat gear reached toward him with a knife and cut the seat belt. For a brief second, Willie contemplated biting him, but he wasn't sure all his teeth were still in his head.
The front of the car was smoking and before they pulled Willie from the car and pushed him, hard, onto the gravel road he was able to make out a man with a bow tie and a wide grin walking toward the car. A combination of his injuries from the crash and his sudden meeting with the ground caused him to black out.
•••
It hadn't hurt as bad this time.
As she watched Ron and Kenny Kirk move Conall (not nearly as gingerly as they could have, but still), the truth struck her and the implications burned through her mind.
It hadn't felt good, obviously, but Josie had only transformed twice in the past five years, and even then it was out of urging from the pack to make sure she could still do it. The transformations were immensely painful for her, rivaling childbirth but this time it had seemed like a more natural thing. It was less a ripping and more a deep, painful stretch, and once it was done she had been ready to kick ass.
She hadn't felt that way in a long time.
What happens now? Would it always be like this? Would she get the "hunger" her husband and his friends were always talking about? The possibilities were running ragged through her mind when Dave put a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him noticing the deep bruises already forming along one cheek and eye socket and a few cuts visible from the beating he had taken at the hands of the Irishman.
"You OK?" he asked.
It was too simplistic a question, obviously.
"How do you mean?"
"I guess, for right now, are you OK physically?"
"Never better," Josie said. "I kicked his ass."
"Yes, you did."
"He kicked your ass then I kicked his ass. Does that make me the Alpha?"
She was half teasing but by the time the words were out of her mouth, she realized it was a serious question. Was she in the lead now? And if so, what the hell was she going to do with that?
"I think you're the Alpha if you want to be," Dave said, not reading her mind but sensing her unease. "But if I could give you a bit of advice, I think we're way past any sort of chain of command thing. I think this is a group deal."
She nodded, then got an idea.
"Can you cover for me for about fifteen minutes?"
"Yeah, what do you need?
"I need to go test something out. Get the guys together, take care of Conall and I'll be there soon, OK?"
Dave nodded and went off to do his job, leaving Josie on the edge of the woods, the wind starting to pick up, blowing a symphony of sound through the trees and grass. Her clothes were ruined. The T-shirt she had on was still basically sound but the jeans had ripped and torn in multiple places exposing her legs all the way up to her panties, which were also full of tears. She remembered when her mother did the laundry when Josie was a little girl, she called them "church underwear" because they were "hole-y."
Josie took her clothes off and folded them, placing the pile beside a tree, then took off running. Barefoot and naked, the run was initially awkward as she was used to having support in places that were now unencumbered, but she got the hang of it, until she was in tune with the sounds of her bare feet hitting the leaves. She gave intense focus to not stepping on roots and rocks and after a few hundred feet it became a natural state.
Then she turned to her memory.
Before, her memory was weak. It involved a time an ex-boyfriend had called her a cow and she had knocked him over, twisted his arm, gotten right in his face and said "moo." She had never felt so powerful as at that moment, and that feeling of anger-fueled power had given her the kick she needed to transform, but now something was different. When she had taken after Dilly and Conall, what brought about the transformation wasn't a thought, but a need. It was the urgency of needing to save her son, to keep him from danger that he was smack in the middle of.
Feet pumping and chest heaving, she tapped back into that feeling of primal urgency, of a mother protecting her son, and soon she was a wolf mother protecting her cub. The transformation was swift and while the pain was there, the running and the urgency helped push it away and her brain, focused on nothing but protection, stayed sharp and unaffected by the massive changes happening to the body. By the time Josie came to a stop, she had become the Mother Wolf without breaking stride, something that would have seemed impossible just a day earlier.
The Mother Wolf pivoted and began running, full speed, back the way she had come. The woods yielded to her movements creating a sleek, elegant harmony between wolf and trees, wolf and ground, wolf and stone. She glided with a never-before-felt sense of harmony and agility, mixed with the panic of her thoughts and the anger that fueled them all. By the time she reached the edge of the woods she could see her family and her pack gathered and, on a whim, decided to run up the side of a large pine tree and vault from the edge of the woods into view, landing with a gentle thud a few feet from where they were standing.
Kenny Kirk let out a "holy shit," when she landed and she could sense apprehension in everyone present.
"How's the Irishman?" she growled, her voice still feminine but many times more threatening.
"He's fine," Dave said, stepping up. "We laid him down in his hotel room. His leg is pretty messed up and he's not walking for a week or so..."
"His fault," the Mother Wolf interrupted. "Ron, you have a plan to get those fuckers out of our town?"
Dilly blushed after hearing his mother swear. She was the sort who let the occasional profanity out, but never an f-bomb and certainly not in his presence. She was different, Dilly figured, and after this was done, they all would be different too.
"Yeah," Ron said, sensing the urgency. "I know when and I think I know how if we can get to that garage of Kenny's a few miles outside of town."
"I think we can," Kenny said. "It's not on the books anywhere. I mean, JoAnn, you know about it..."
"You've taken me there once," she said. "Remember, when we were dating? What do you call it? Is it a Batman thing?"
"Superman, darling," Kenny said. "It's the Fortress of Solitude."
"Who gives a fuck?" the Mother Wolf swore. Her heart was still beating very fast and very hard and her desire to get something done was paramount. "If we get there, what do we do?"
Over the next half hour Ron laid out his plan to the group. It was a good one but a dangerous one on several levels. As his explanation went on it was tweaked and details were added and subtracted. Josie hardly noticed it, but she had begun to change back, realizing it only when the cold of the morning hardened her nipples, which were suddenly back where they usually were. She hopped off to find her clothes, hoping no one had noticed. By the time she got back, the plan had been set.
"I hate to be the one to bring this up," Dave said, "but before we do this we need to do something. I need everyone to think this through, really think about it, and decide if they're in or out. Some of you have a lot to live for, except Kenny."
Dave had planned that joke out before he started talking, knowing he'd get as good as he gave.
"Fuck you and your weird-ass wife, man," Kenny said, true to form.
"My point is if we do this, we all do this," Dave said. "We do it as a pack or not at all."
"I guess that means you're riding point?" Ron asked.
"Yeah, I'm riding point," Dave said. "I'm gonna insist on that."
"When was the last time you were on a motorcycle, Dad?" Dilly asked.
Well, Dave thought, at least he was acting as an equal part of the group.
"I got it, I promise," Dave said, half to Dilly and half to the group.
"How about this," Josie said. "I need to go talk to JoAnn and Dave needs to talk to Conall. If you're on board, meet out front in twenty minutes and we'll head for the Batcave or whatever."
"Fortress of Solitude. Jesus," Kenny said.
"If you're coming, do what you need to do. If you're not coming, don't show up. You won't have to face us. We'll make it easy for you. Sound good?"
Everyone nodded in agreement and the meeting started breaking up. Josie made a bee-line for JoAnn.
"Come here, darling," she said, making fun of Kenny's affectionate term. "I think I figured something out."
•••
Dave could hear, even before he got to the door, that Conall was on the phone and he was pissed. He waited outside the door to see what snippets of conversation he could hear.
"Come in, you asshole. I smelled you when you turned the corner," Conall yelled.
So much for that.
The Irishman was laying on the bed, his leg propped on several pillows, the legs of his pants cut open so some future medical care could be administered. Dave hadn't had a good look at the injury, but based on the coloring alone he knew something gnarly was going on under the skin. Conall caught him looking.
"Your psycho wife did a real number on me," he said.
"It'll heal," Dave said.
"That's not what I'm talking about, brother," Conall replied. "I find the clues, I come out to the middle of bumblefucky Nebraska and what do I find? One of the worst pack leaders I've ever met and his wife who can do something I've only read about on parchment. I mean, do you realize what this means? Do you have a clue?"
"There's a lot I don't know," Dave said. "But I know how special that woman is."
"I fucking doubt it," Conall said, shifting his weight and letting out a brief gasp of pain. "Because you've got your little slice of the world and that's all you know. If you knew what I know, you'd be freaking out right now and begging me for my protection."
"She looks like she can handle herself," Dave said, nodding at Conall's leg.
"Well, I'm glad you're so full of confidence," Conall said. "Because here's just a taste of what I know. I know that if Stander and his men get hold of her, she might very well be the key to figuring out what we are and weaponizing it. They could use her, most likely, to end our species or to turn soldiers into wolves or something worse. She is the missing link that we didn't know was out there, David, and on a global scale, this is a giant deal but let me make it personal for you. If you're captured, they are going to poke you and prod you and figure out everything they can and you and your friends will all suffer. But Josie? They will keep her alive until they figure it out. They will savage her like nothing you can imagine. If whatever your plan is doesn't work, you will all suffer but none will suffer as greatly as your wife."
For a moment, flashes of Josie on the table being cut up rushed into Dave's head, but he batted them away and attempted to change the subject.
"Who was that on the phone?"
"Did you hear what I just told you?"
"Yes," Dave said, leaning heavily on the word. "I heard you. And I get it. I get that this is stupid and I get there's no net and I get that you can't help us."
"... and that your family suffers and dies if you fail..."
"Right," Dave said.
"... and that you can leave Willie, get in the car and drive with me to places you've never been, where you can meet more of your kind and have your world opened in a way you can't imagine. You get all that."
"Do you even want to hear the plan?"
"NO!" Conall said, yelling hard enough to make him wince in pain. "Because I have zero confidence in you and your mate's ability to pull it off. Your father did something stupid, and that's unfortunate, but make the right decisions, goddammit and load up the car and come with me!"
It struck Dave, at that moment, that while his brain had weighed the options of going with Conall, his heart had not, and he gave in to his fantasy for a good, long moment. He pictured Dilly meeting a British wolf his own age, pictured Kenny running his mouth at the Tower of London, himself kissing Josie under the Eiffel Tower. And more than just travel, he imagined the freedom that would come from shaking Cherry off, starting clean, feeling the mass of possibility in front of him. He let the fantasy linger so long his heart began to ache and his pulse started to quicken.
Thoughts of Willie muscled their way in, some warm and some vile, then the vision of the old man on a table, being cut open and tortured. The excitement in his stomach turned, hard, and all the arguments came rushing back through his brain and out his mouth.
"Would you condemn your father to torture and death?"
"If it meant keeping my family safe, I believe I would."
"I don't believe you're that cruel."
"I am."
In truth, Conall had seen crack teams of wolves fly through the forest with speed and force. He had defeated enemies and beaten all comers in competition. He was an elite fighter in the world of wolves, but that woman had handily beaten him. Conall motioned for Dave to come closer.
"I've already failed at my mission, David," he said. "They already have a wolf. That's something they've never had before, so this situation is already fucked up beyond all reason and I can see your mind's already made up, so fuck it. And, if you breathe a word of this to anyone I will deny it and deny it until my final breath, but with Josie on your side, you might have a shot."
The two men spent the next half hour going over "the plan" and Dave left Conall with his foot up and an ever so slight smirk on his face.
•••
Josie looked for her son in the room, by the edge of the forest and even behind cars and trucks in the hotel parking lot. His scent was strong but either he was moving or she was missing something. Kenny and JoAnn were jabbering in the parking lot with Ron and Carl, and just as Josie was about to get really annoyed, she heard her son's deeper voice boom in laughter.
He was joking around with everyone.
"... so he's up on the bridge, right, and the rope is tied around his chest," Kenny Kirk was saying. "And we had added about ten feet of rope. He was going to swing down and we added the rope, right, and he took this running swing thinking the rope would catch and he'd go right back up and his stupid ass lands half in the water and the other half hits the bank—BAM!..."
Everyone was laughing and Kenny was rolling on the story. Dilly was between Ron and Carl and hadn't noticed her yet, so she watched him. He was tall, he was handsome, he was brave, he was loyal and while he still had a lot to learn, he was quite the kid, she decided. And he had saved his father. She couldn't bear to lose him, but maybe he was ready for something like this.
Just as Kenny was finishing his story, the boy noticed his mother and his smile faded. He gave a look around the circle.
"Well, go, man," Kenny said. "I'm not saying anything important here."
Dilly lumbered over, his head down.
"So, am I getting yelled at?" he asked, still a few huge steps away.
"A little," Josie said. "I'd certainly be in my rights to ask you what you were thinking, attacking a strange wolf who could have very easily killed you. But you held your own."
"A few more transformations and I think I've got him," Dilly said. "I'm faster than he is, Mom. If I can get the speed working with my attack, then..."
"You're not as fast as I am," she interrupted. "And you made your own decision. I'm proud of you for that. But my God, Dilly, he could have killed you."
"Like those guys in our house? Those guys who are hunting us right now?"
"Yes, like them, and what's your point?"
"My point is I'm already in danger," Dilly said. "And if we're going to go get Grandpa, I'm going to need all the practice I can get."
He was planning to take part and planning to fight, Josie thought. No other option had occurred to him.
"Listen to me," Josie started. "I want you to really give thought to not coming with us."
"I've given it thought and I've made my own decision," Dilly said. "Just like you and Dad told me to do, so instead of trying to protect me, start thinking about how you can use me, OK? This isn't me saying 'I'm not a kid anymore Mom!' This is me saying I'm part of this family and part of this pack and I'm going to go rescue my grandpa."
"Yeah," Kenny yelled from the circle a few feet away. "I mean, all hell, Josie, I mean yeah. He was talking loud and he's right and he was talking really loud."
Kenny shut up as Josie had given him an icy stare, the price for eavesdropping. Dilly had already turned around and was walking back toward the group.
"Dilly, come here," she shouted.
He reluctantly stopped in his tracks and started to trudge back. She met him halfway.
"Never run as fast as you can," she said. "If you're in a fight, you don't want your opponent to know how fast you can go. Save that until you absolutely need it."
She threw her arm around his waist and led him back to the circle where Kenny told him about what the claws were good for, Carl talked about the deceptively small spaces a wolf can fit into and Ron gave the young soon to be wolf advice on how best to use your jaws without doing any permanent damage.
•••
It took Conall and Dave forty-five minutes to come out of the hotel room and when they did, Conall was on a makeshift crutch made out of the shower-curtain rod and a shampoo bottle. His non-crutch hand was around Dave, who was walking him toward his car.
"Leg's busted, huh?" Kenny said, smiling.
"Yeah, golly gee," Conall said, doing an impression of Kenny's twang. "Leg's busted."
"You blimey twat," Kenny shot back in a terrible brogue, smiling the whole time.
Conall steadied himself up against a wall and made a motion for everyone to gather round. Instinctively, they looked at Dave who gave a small nod and they all squeezed in making a suspicious-as-hell semicircle around the Irishman.
"Dave told me what you're going to do," he said. "So I want to give you a piece of information and a piece of advice. Then someone take me to my car and get me the hell back to civilization. Agreed?"
Everyone muttered in agreement or nodded their head.
"OK, then. I've made a few calls to my people and they are still too far out to help. The nearest group is about four hours away and Willie will be dead by then, I assure you. But my people are also tracking the company that has occupied your town. They are a group called Hartman Corp. and they are sending reinforcements and an extraction unit, most likely to collect the lot of you. My people aim to stop them."
No one said a word but the air shifted mightily around the circle. This was the first time in the past godforsaken week that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. They could fight and if they could win, outside forces might win as well. Conall sensed the optimism and quickly squashed it.
"Don't think for a second this means all you have to do is kill Stander and his men," Conall said. "My people might not be able to stop the Hartman Corp. goons. A few might get through. Or, much more likely, you are all currently about to ride to your deaths."
"Thanks for the confidence, man," Kenny said. Conall ignored him.
"So go, fight for your town if you must. But I need you to know and understand down to your very soul that you are never safe there again. Others are going to come looking for you."
"About that," Ron said. "I think I might have an idea." He was met with Dave giving him a short head nod, as if to say "we'll deal with that in a bit."
"I can't tell you what to do anyway, which brings me to my piece of advice," Conall said. "My job is to go find people like you, but I've been places and I've done things. I've killed and while not pleasant, the impact of it doesn't hit you until you've become human again. You will be bloodthirsty and you will be vicious and I have no doubt that each and every one of you will kill if you must but when it's over..."
Conall tapped his makeshift crutch as if searching for the right phrase.
"When it's over remember this: There is more to come. You may feel like there's a hole, slowly eating you from the inside but there's more to come. It doesn't make sense now, but as someone who's been on the path you're about to walk, it will make sense."
He paused, raised his head, and took the time to meet the eyes of everyone in the half circle.
"There's more to come."
The wind chose that moment to blow, hard, tousling the hair and stinging the skin of the gathered and carrying with it the smells of the forest. The decay of the leaves mixed with the sunlight and undergrowth to form a sickly sweet aroma tinged with the earth, bark, and animal waste.
"One of you grisly bastards help me to my car, please."
Dave did the honors and Conall let out a short gasp of pain when starting off.
"Will we ever see you again?" JoAnn asked.
"Chances are you're riding to your deaths, so no."
They watched him in silence as Dave opened the door and helped him in and watched him lean over and whisper something. Dave seemed taken aback but before he had time to react Conall had shut the door, started the engine and put his car into gear. The engine chugged and kicked and before Dave could make it back to the group, all that was left of Conall was tail lights obscured by dust.
"What'd he say?" Kenny Kirk asked.
"I... I'm not sure it would make sense if I told you," Dave said. "I'm not trying to be an asshole but I'm not sure I get it."
Kenny kicked the dirt, like he had done a few days earlier in front of his shop. Was it still there? Was anything still there? The rest were similarly lost, wondering what had become of their town and it was Dilly who broke the silence.
"So," he said, in a clear, low tone. "What number y'all at?"
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 5
There is no consensus at all among those at the Barter County Historical Society about how the town of Cherry got its name. The several older ladies who make up the group had never considered the question nor given it serious study. Had they bothered, they would have found the following story in the book Of Mountains and Plains: The Diary of a Mountain Man by Rex Leschinsky.
In the book, Leschinksy attempts to interpret the writings of Elliot Goodchild, a "Mountain Man" who lived alone on the Nebraska plains and spent a number of years with the Native American tribes that had resettled there. From his book:
The diary entry on January 18 proves his relationship with the Chocktaw tribe was one of mutual curiosity, if not respect. Goodchild recounts being around the campfire and hearing a remarkable tale of forbidden love told around a crackling fire in the dead of winter. He writes "with a clear head, this story would never have been told. Bitter cold clouds the senses, if not loosens the tongue."
The story is of a spirit of the woods that guarded and protected the tribe. The spirit was ancient and when it saw a white woman, it fell in love. Having no form, the spirit chose that of a wolf and attempted to get close to the woman, but she ran for help and soon the wolf/spirit was being hunted by white men with guns. The spirit knew the woods and was wise and soon overpowered the men, killing them. The woman was so terrified by this that she found herself lost in the woods.
Any time the wolf/spirit tried to approach the woman she would scream and cry and so it went into the night and the next day. The woman was tired, hungry and exhausted so the wolf/spirit went to a very special part of the woods and harvested some chokecherries for the woman to eat, placing them gently in his mouth and depositing them a few yards away from her.
She was so hungry and desperate that she ate the cherries and upon doing so her mood improved. She still wouldn't get close to the wolf, so he brought her more and she ate them and he got closer still. Finally, after several trips to bring the woman chokecherries, she touched the wolf/spirit, who was more happy than he had ever been. She stroked his fur and hugged him, then offered him some of the cherries. The wolf/spirit ate them, not knowing they were deadly to animals. Soon, the wolf died and the woman was left alone.
The story, as told by the tribe, was meant to symbolize how changes to one's fundamental nature never end well. As Goodchild wrote in his diary, "the moral was to be hearty and do your job."
This story was a favorite of Nicholas Caspersen, a founding father of the town, so much so that he had part of the story inscribed on a historical marker just off the highway. The marker, made of solid granite and weighing well over a ton, marked your entry into the town and it made Caspersen immensely proud, partly because of the name he chose and helped foster. Instead of naming the new burg "Wolfwood" or something similarly silly, he opted for "Cherry," a simple, poignant reminder to the town of the fundamental nature of its founders.
Or it could have meant, as Mountain Man Goodchild so eloquently put it, "do your job."
PART 9 – THINGS THAT WILL BITE
It was not professional at all, the way Stander had forgotten about Stu, tied up in the Sheriff's office. The fact that he had allowed him to escape was nothing short of negligence. To be fair, operations had never been his strong suit. To be realistic, that didn't matter to those in charge.
Stander had started as a "number cruncher," which was a term he hated but wasn't at all apt. His job had very little to do with numbers and much more to do with computer coding and pattern recognition, both of which were vital to basic intelligence work. "Number cruncher" denoted he sat in an office all day pouring over budgets when, in actuality, he led a team of intelligent, diligent programmers whose job it was to search for patterns when they emerged from a wide variety of sources. No one but Stander had the full picture of what they were looking for, exactly, but his team was not dumb and had caught on. A week or so ago, when his team had put together enough data points to present to upper management, they had given him a silver bullet on a necklace as a "going away present." Everyone in the team had been awarded six-figure bonuses for interpreting the data so quickly in addition to their already-handsome salary, so champagne had been popped and backs had been slapped, which was a rare state of social affairs for a bunch of "number crunchers." He had been told multiple times to "stay safe out there," like he was going to some war torn nation. It had caused him to reflect on how he had gotten to where he was.
When Stander had been recruited from Wall Street where he had headed one of the R&D Departments at a large bank, the process of interviewing with HartmanCorp included much more than your usual Non Disclosure Agreement. It included a battery of psychological tests, a physical test and veiled talk stretching the law, if not breaking it.
Stander had gone along with it all and even embellished his bona fides because was bored. He was rich, his job was unfulfilling and an odd and exotic group promising adventure, if nothing else, had reached out to him. After agreeing to take a job analyzing data, he had been singled out for leadership, which meant learning more about the company, what it did and how it did it. The bottom line, Stander found out, was HartmanCorp was in the business of industrial espionage, among other services. If a company wanted something badly, like a sustained lobbying effort or a public information campaign, they could do that themselves. If they needed really nasty opposition research, there were places for that as well. If they wanted someone found, or lost, if a competitor was about to crush a company and they had no other option or if, say, a small town needed to shaken to its core in order to flush out a few special citizens, that was when you called HartmanCorp.
Sure enough, it had been fun. Stander had trained for a "leadership position" by tagging along on several paramilitary escapades disguised as "safety and protection" services. He had learned and knew the game, but was never able to shake the feeling that, while he was in a leadership position, that he was seen as nothing but a 'number cruncher". His affinity for bow ties and straight posture didn't help matters, so when the call came that he was under consideration to lead the Barter County operation, he lobbied, actively.
•••
He had convinced his superiors he was "the man" and the minute the party with his department was over and all the backs had been slapped, Stander had been whisked away to meet his Operations Team. In short order he determined he may have made a mistake as he was not his "intellectual safe space".
The problems started almost immediately with the "intel and prep" team. These men, who were a bit more physically intense than Stander was used to, were prepped and ready to invade the entirety of Barter County, knock on every door, beat every bush and get the information within 48 hours. Stander had said no. The operation could not, under any circumstances, draw undo attention unless there was no other option. He pared down the force and did a lot of the leg work himself, which prompted his first meeting with management.
The organizational chart at HartmanCorp was more or less a mystery. Employees knew who they reported to and who those superiors reported to but only a select few could go far up the ladder, so it was to Stander's dismay when a man calling himself Simmons called him on his company issued phone to discuss strategy.
"What department are you from, exactly," Stander had asked.
"Unimportant," Simmons said. "I'm talking to you because you are going against procedure and by going against procedure you are taking a risk, Mr. Stander. Either that risk pays off and you are rewarded or it does not pay off and you suffer consequences."
"I see," Stander said. He didn't know what it was, but the combination of the man's stern voice, his use of language which mimicked corporate speak within the company and his insistence on results convinced him that the man on the other end of the phone did work for his employer. And that his threats were backed up.
Over the course of five brief minutes, Stander explained his strategy and why he had broken protocol. "Simmons" offered no encouragement or excoriation, waiting until Stander stopped talking to respond.
"Your plan is acceptable for now," he said. "The less you talk to me the better your operation is going. Endeavor not to speak to me again."
The moment he hung up he received a text message from an unfamiliar number saying his phone was to stay on during the entirely of the operation. Failure to answer the phone when it rang was a failure to be met with "consequences."
He had been warned, of course. During the training his instructors had explained the importance of protocol but far more importantly, the importance of success. Each "operation" had parameters and those parameters were the be all and end all of his existence during the time he was operation leader. Failure was not acceptable in the field, he was told. Now he was being threatened via phone somewhere, but the threats were starting to creep up Stander's spine and were making way for his brain.
Before he received the bad news that Stu had escaped, Stander had already convinced himself that if he failed, it would be the last thing he ever did. When he got the news, his anger took over, which was an exceedingly rare thing. The last time he had given himself over to anger so completely was in high school when his girlfriend continued to deny his physical advances. He had called her every name he could think of and made her exit his car in the middle of a busy intersection with no ride home. He had paid consequences for that lapse in calm and had vowed never to do it again.
Vows were meant to be broken, apparently.
"Let me ask you," Stander said, speaking quietly and quickly, pacing around the room where an empty chair with a cut pair of zip tie hand cuffs on them were the central feature. "You've been trained by HartmanCorp, correct?"
"Yes," the man said. He was white, or possibly light skinned Latino, dressed in a Kevlar vest and other pieces of riot gear. Stander didn't care, but did note the man didn't address him as "sir," which was part of their paramilitary training.
"Forensic deconstruction is part of your training, is it not?"
"It is."
"Then tell me what happened here, please."
The man looked from the cut zip tie hand cuffs to Stander and back at the cuffs.
"How did he get out of them, you giant fucking idiot!" Stander screamed.
"This was the first outward sign of anger from Stander, but inside, he was already out of control. The man stammered and his body language reverted to that of a child in trouble.
"He...he cut them."
It took Stander significant restraint to not commit murder on the spot.
"How?" he asked, his voice again quiet and fast. "How did he cut them."
"Well," the man walked over to the cuffs and bent down, looking at them and the old chair they were on with a scientific eye. "It looks like he was able to rub them on something metal and cut them."
"So your answer is 'something metal?'"
The man in the riot gear looked up and gave a shrug.
"I guess so."
Stander walked over to the chair and bent over in the same position as the man. He studied the cuffs closely.
"What do you think it could have been?" he asked.
Before the man could answer, Stander put both hands on either side of his head and started pushing his eye toward the edge of the wooden chair. The man jerked, but the element of surprise was firmly in Stander's corner, and he quickly maneuvered the man's head until his right eye socket was pressing hard into the edge of the chair. The man attempted to overpower Stander, but any show of force was met with sudden and unrelenting pain as he pushed the edge of the chair further into the man's ocular cavity.
The scream of surprise heard outside the room turned into a shrieks of pain and Stander's anger took more and more control and the edge of the chair sank deeper and deeper, pushing the man's eye further and further back.
"Is there any reason..." Stander panted "that I shouldn't shove your eye all the way into your incompetent fucking brain? ANY REASON AT ALL?"
The answer was a pained scream as the pitch of the man's voice continued to rise, giving Stander all the fuel he needed to keep pushing. This man was the embodiment of apathy, the embodiment of arrogance, the embodiment of why he was failing and in a moment he wouldn't have thought possible a short few months ago, Stander punched the man in the back of his head, as hard as he could. There was a squish and a pop before the screaming started and the moment Stander released his grip the man bolted from the building, screaming and crying and carrying on.
"Piece of shit," Stander said under his breath. The other men in the room were actively trying to not react, which was a reaction in and of itself. He turned to one of them.
"Do we still have the Sheriff's sister in custody or are we too incompetent to detain a fat lesbian housewife?"
"She's at the town hall, sir," the man said. This was the first time Stander had ever been called "sir" by someone not in the service industry.
"Fetch her, please," he said. "I need her here and I need Mr. Rhodes here as well."
"Right away, sir," the man said. There was a hustle in his step as he started on his errand.
Outside, the first man was receiving medical attention. There was gauze being applied and even through the window, Stander could see a man off to the side, filling out a report. The man with the eye injury was describing how he got the wound, and there were a few glances back at Stander. When the man with the papers and the man applying first aid looked, it occurred to Stander to do something even more out of character, even more brash, in some ways, than physically assaulting one of his own men.
He smiled and waved. The crew quickly looked away.
•••
The minute Conall had driven away, Kenny Kirk's mouth had started running and given his sheer word per minute output, there were bound to be some negative runs in there. By the time they pulled up on his storage unit, the whole pack was irritated.
"I remember the last time you rode a motorcycle it did not go well, man. It did not go well. I remember you wrecked that one time, you remember, it was a clear day and it had rained just a little and you ate it, hard, on one of those turns down by Rural Road 104. That was under the best conditions, man, so I don't know how you think you're going to pull this off, especially since you haven't been riding in, like, a year."
"I got it," Dave said. "If I don't got it, you have my permission to tell me 'I told you so' after you save my ass."
"Well that's just it. I don't want to tell you 'I told you so.' I want this to work and a big part of it working is you driving that motorcycle and not wrecking the damn thing if there's a puddle or a slight gust of wind or something."
Kenny and JoAnn had made a quick run to a friend who lived not far from the hotel and had borrowed a Suburban from his house. The seven of them in two cars were barreling down the highway, and Dave had done the chivalrous and honorable thing and volunteered to ride with Kenny.
"Let's worry about that in a minute," Dave said. "Right now let's just get the vehicles and go from there."
"I'm more concerned about your wife, if you don't mind me saying," Ron said from the shotgun seat. "I mean, she's bad ass, don't get me wrong, but she's got a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it."
"She knows," Dave said.
"That's not reassuring, man, not in the least," Kenny said. "I don't know how she's going to pull it off and I've been thinking about it. I mean, we don't even know if they're going to bite, much less how many guys they're going to bring. And then what? How is she going to..."
Dave cut Kenny off. He had been supremely patient up until this point but it was getting harder and harder to deal with the yammering.
"There are parts of this that are going to be rough," he said. "But let's get the bikes and go from there, please."
Kenny took the hint and they rode the last half mile in silence. The first part of the plan involved getting hold of two motorcycles and three cars, all of which were stored in Kenny's shed about eight miles outside of town. The shed was purposefully remote but off the highway, so they didn't know whether or not any of Stander's men would be staking it out. A quick glance of the road around the place showed that they weren't. There were no tracks in the dirt surrounding the shed.
"Looks good," Ron said.
"I don't know, what if they came in by helicopter or something," Kenny said. "I've heard of, like, really big companies having those helicopters with four propellers, one on each end, what do you call them?"
"Quadcopters," Ron said.
"Yeah, man, quadcopters. I've heard of those things equipped with guns and cameras and lasers and all sorts of shit," Kenny said. "If I hear a buzzing when I go in there I'm throwing one of you down and making for the truck."
"Why would you throw one of us down? It's in the sky, Kenny, it's not a bear," Ron said.
"I'll use the time they spend shooting you on the ground to get to the truck. Why is that so hard to understand?" Kenny said, unlocking the shed and pulling open the door. The contents inside were covered in dust, but they were there – one 58 Ford Mustang with a growl so loud the filter was just a formality, 82 Corvette that Kenny had spent years restoring and one big ass Harley Davidson motorcycle, twin cams and not enough to be garish.
The three vehicles were loud. That was the important thing.
"They got gas in them?" Ron asked.
"Gas and I put new tires on them not all that long ago," Kenny said. "They ought to work."
"They'll work, Dave said, and walked over to the Harley. He ran his fingers along the black leather seat, tracking a think line of clean in a cloud of dust. The bike had been Dave's and for years he loved riding it, giving it up only when Dilly had been born. He'd sold it to Kenny for a couple hundred dollars and though he never regretted it, seeing the bike in a minor state of disrepair was enough to hurt.
Dave took a second to let his mind drift on how it was kind of fitting he might go out sitting on top of his motorcycle. He had started riding when he and Josie had been newlyweds. She had no interest, but one Christmas had conspired with her family and friends to buy him a beaten up old bike, and he had spent time in the garage getting it up and running. By the time he sold it, he had spent more to restore the thing than a new motorcycle would have cost, but he knew every crack and shimmy the machine would dish out. At least he did. He didn't regret giving it up when the kid was born but he never felt quite as good as when he was riding it in those early days. Dave breathed a noticeable sigh at how complicated things had become.
"Hey, I took care of her," Kenny started. "It's just dusty is all. I've got some Armor All in the corner over there..."
"Keys," Dave said. "We've got to meet up with the others."
"I call the 'Vette," Ron said.
"You don't get to come in to a man's garage and start telling him what's what," Kenny said. "You'll ride out of her on my nephew's tricycle if you keep that shit up."
A few admonitions from Kenny later, and they were on the road. Dave had found a helmet that sort of fit, but had thrown it off when they started riding. The wind felt amazing in his hair and if he crashed and died before getting to where he was going, that would just have to be the way of things.
•••
The zip-tie holding Stu's hand had been cut by metal molding on Grey Allen's old desk. Stu had first noticed it after he had been worked over the first time, his whole face throbbing in pain and one of his eyes already starting to swell. The metal molding, sometimes seen on very, very old desks, looked worn and Stu had theorized there might be enough wear to create a couple of wicked sharp spots he could use to cut the cuffs.
He was right, but he had sustained a nasty cut along the palm of his right hand in the process, giving one final push so the plastic would give way. He had bandaged his hand the best he could with spare scraps of uniform, figuring the worst thing he could do is leave a bloody trail straight to wherever he decided to hide. A few minutes later, with his hand pulsing and stinging like crazy, Stu realized "hiding" was a relative term. He couldn't go out onto the street because most of Stander's men were that direction. The office had no "back way" leaving "up" as his only option.
Before he made his way to the roof, he grabbed a spare revolver he knew was in the desk. The occupiers hadn't thought to look through the desk, so in theory, Stu was armed. After making his way up on the roof, staying low and moving as quietly as he could, he tried testing out his firing hand only to find the cut was giving him a lot of trouble, throbbing and weak as it was. He could shoot, but it wouldn't be accurate, it would hurt like hell and he was not good enough with his left hand to make any sort of go of it. He had tried shooting left handed on a dare once at the shooting range in Detroit and was met with laughter and derision by his fellow officers, plus a sore shoulder the next morning to boot.
From his perch on the roof, Stu was able to listen and mark the moment they knew he was gone from the office. A few minutes later he heard screaming from down below and figured punishment had been meted out for his escape. No one thought to check the roof because, he reasoned, it was a stupid place to go – no escape, no utility, no real threat. He had even left the hatch to the roof partially open so he didn't get locked up there. Stu wasn't sure what he would do if they did check, but it was a cool day, he was armed, and the bleeding was under control. As far as murderous bands of cut throat occupiers went, things could be going a lot worse, plan or not.
As he sat and reflected on his relative good fortune, he realized the yelling from below had changed. It was higher now and as he focused, Stu realized the man had stopped screaming and a woman had started. And the screaming sounded familiar.
"You assholes!" the woman said between screams. "Damn it, you know I can't tell you..."
The words turned abruptly to a howl Stu recognized as Dana, his sister. His heart panicked while his brain reasoned that, of course they would go after Dana. He was lucky it had taken them this long. As her yelling sustained, the brain shut down and despair mixed with the panic as two extremely potent urges collided. He couldn't let them continue to hurt his sister, but there was nothing substantial he could do without getting recaptured and likely killed. The sounds of Dana's suffering did not abate.
"Damn you!" she had started chanting when words were possible between bouts of screaming. Over and over she said "damn you, damn you," until it started to sound like a prayer. After a while, she started crying, a high whimper Stu had only heard on rare occasions as a child and only then when extreme pain was involved. Dana had been in a car crash as a teen and had shattered a bone in her arm. The recovery was long and intense and she would whimper during the physical therapy that was part of "getting better". Now Stu heard it again and before his mind could tell him not to, he was on his feet.
He carefully lifted the hatch to the roof and eased his body down the ladder, painstakingly avoiding any sudden movements or unnecessary sound. The hatch was at the end of the back hallway of the Sheriff's Office with the bathroom and breakroom on either side. The corridor was long enough to conceal him from view, and as he crept closer, his movements hidden by the sound of torture, he gripped the pistol with both hands, down low, muzzle down like he had been taught as a young recruit.
The plan, as it was, was to grab a quick glance of the room and then come out blazing. He had seven shots with the pistol (he had checked the bullets while on the roof), and after he cleared the room, he would get Dana out of there. Past that, there was no plan. Dana could not keep suffering, Stu thought, even if the consequences were a bit hazy. Whatever they were doing to Dana was winding down as Stu peered around the corner, and the screams gave way to heavy breathing, which still masked the other sounds in the room well enough.
When he finally worked up the courage to look around the corner, Stu saw three men standing around his sister, two of which were very intently listening to the radio. The crackling, electronic tinged voice wasn't audible to Stu, in fact he hadn't heard it at all until his head was around the corner of the hallway wall, but whatever was being said had the men's full attention. Stu waited, getting a good sense of the room and hid back behind the wall.
"We gotta go," one of the men said. "You watch her, keep on her if you want to, but she stays here. Under no circumstances does she move from this chair. You get me?"
"Yeah," another man said. "I got it."
"If you lose her, we're both up shit creek, man," the first man said. "You saw what happened to Chris."
"Chris was an asshole," the first man said.
"You're an asshole," Dana said, weakly, followed by a spitting sound.
This brought a good chuckle from the three men, a few choice comments and a few seconds later Stu heard the bell on the door ding, meaning the door had opened and one or more men had left. This was a stroke of improbably luck, Stu thought, but then he remembered he had been attacked by a werewolf the day before. Probability was relative at this point.
Given his new found luck, Stu waited to see if he could determine how many men were now holding Dana. He figured two men had left, but he wanted to be sure. His answer came soon enough.
"How long you think they'll be gone?" Stu heard a man say.
"I want to light you on fire," Dana replied. Stu grinned despite himself.
"See, that's just it," the man said, taking a conversational tone. "You don't know how this thing works, lady. You think being tough is going to accomplish something. Torture always works. No one lasts forever, no matter how tough they are. We're going to hurt you until you tell us anything and everything about your piece of shit brother and then we'll be done with you. I don't know what happens to you then."
"I get to fuck your mother?" Dana shot back.
"No, probably not that," the man said. "I'm thinking they'll make you vanish, along with the rest of this town."
There was a creak as the man sat down in Stu's chair, an ancient rolling metal deal with a green cracked plastic seat covering. The first time Stu had sat in it, he had almost fallen out but hadn't replaced it as there was no furniture store for over 50 miles, but because of the squeak and noises that accompanied it, Stu suddenly knew exactly where the man was – on the side of the desk closest to the hallway, facing the door. And he wasn't paying attention.
"How about I cut you?" the man said. "I mean, have you ever been cut? A lot of people have accidentally cut themselves or had surgery or whatever but have you ever watched your own flesh get split with a knife, feel the blood? You kinky like that? That sound like fun?
"Untie me and give it a shot," Dana said.
"Or I could go get Robin, is that her name? I could go get her and bring her in here and cut into her while you watch. Maybe there's this moment, right..."
The chair squeaked as the man leaned forward, really getting in to his story. Stu crept very slowly from around the corner and raised the pistol.
"...I've cut into her a few times, arms or legs maybe and then I make a cut that won't heal. That won't get better. I cut a little too deep or a little too far and all of a sudden there's more blood than you know what to do this and you know she's not coming back from it. You know she's either going bleed to death or lose a limb or something.
Stu was clear of his cover and crept slowly toward the man, the pistol outstretched, awestruck by his luck. Dana had seen him and, to her credit, had kept the same look on her face. She didn't flinch or give up anything happening behind the man, whose rape fantasy was about at an end.
"...and she's bleeding and thrashing and the life is seeping out of her and there's blood pooling on the floor. She's dying, badly, and you have to watch and there's NOTHING you can do about it!"
The man suddenly bolted out of the chair and right in to Dana's face, his back still to Stu. The sudden movement sent a jolt through all of Stu's nervous system, that warm uncomfortable tingle that starts in the chest and goes all the way down, but he didn't jump or move, continuing his slow creep toward the man. Given his position, leaning right in to Dana, Stu wasn't sure how he could shoot the man and not hurt his sister as well.
"Do you suppose you'd talk after that?"
"I know where my brother is," Dana said, a wide grin spreading across her face.
The admission caused the man to stand up.
"You do? Then why in the..."
The pistol went off and the bullet clearing the man's head and lodging in the wood paneling of the wall near the window. It was a lucky shot that it didn't break the window, drawing even more attention than a gun going off. The man fell forward, but his smooth angle of descent was interrupted by his legs completely crumpling. From the back, his fall looked like a rubber mannequin had been thrown across the room, and there was nothing graceful or cinematic about the way he fell, or the way he twitched once he had hit the floor. After his face hit the ground, the man was able to turn part way on his side and begin kicking his top leg in a spasmic rhythm. Of course, his eyes were open and Stu immediately flashed back to the kid and the stains on his shirt and the screaming and the look on his face that said "I want to take it back."
Only, this man didn't look like that. There was no emotion in his face, just spasms in his muscles as the brain quit working because Stu had put a bullet where vital matter had once been. While part of Stu's brain flashed back and brought up all the old pain, there was a small part of him that thought "this is not as bad."The blood, the dead eyes, the sick dance...it wasn't that bad.
He held on to that, for what seemed like minutes, but in reality was just a second or two. He held on to the man's face not as a horror or a fault in himself but as just a moment, a terrible moment but one that was not part of him but part of his experience. It's a big difference, he would later think.
Plus, the guy was an asshole who had beaten and threatened his sister. So there was that.
While this psychodrama only took a second or so to play out in real time, it didn't take Dana nearly as long to react.
"THAT'S RIGHT!" she yelled. "DIE!"
Stu snapped to attention and gave his sister a quick hug.
"I'm sorry," he said as he grabbed on to her.
"Yeah, but you're a good shot," she said, quickly, stifling a quick sob. "Get me the hell out of here."
One quick snap of a utility knife later and Dana was right behind Stu as they headed toward the back. The gun shot hadn't appeared to draw much attention and no one had come storming in to the Sheriff's Office. The radio on the man's hip was silent, and Stu quickly snagged it, hoping it would come in handy later. Dana grabbed his gun. It struck Stu as lucky, and being lucky has an expiration date.
As they went down the hall toward the back, Dana attempted to grab Stu's right hand and he yelped in pain. Her hand came away bloody and Stu shook it as the pain came rushing in. After a few shakes, blood was dripping from the bandage.
"What'd you do?"
"Cut it escaping the first time," Stu said. "It hurts but it's OK."
"We are going to go out this door and to the left to the abandon tire store, you know the one?"
Stu shook his head as Dana disappeared into the break room for a second and came back with a first aid kit he hadn't known was there.
'Then I'm going to fix that hand and we'll figure out our next move."
"Where the hell..."
"You do the cop lookout thing. I'm behind you. Ready?"
"...where was it?"
"STU!" Dana said, snapping her fingers. "Head in the game, bud."
He held up the pistol and felt a stream of blood slide down his sleeve to his elbow.
"How are we getting in the abandoned tire shop?"
"Through the front door," Dana said. "Well, there used to be a front door. There's no door there but there are rooms and places to hide."
"OK," Stu said. "Dana for the win."
Luck held a little longer as they made it to the abandoned building and a few minutes later, Stu had a fresh bandage, a grateful sister, and absolutely no idea about what to do next.
•••
Stander had received another call.
This time there was progress to report. They had captured William Rhodes and while the others were in the wind, this result made the operation a rousing success of historic proportion. Hartman Corp had samples of blood and tissue, they had basic physiology, but it had all proved fruitless and frustrating. The goal was to discover what made transformation happen as the possible applications were astounding – tissue regeneration and transformation, instantaneous healing, weaponization. But all the samples they had added up to exactly nothing. Dead tissue went far, but not nearly far enough. They needed a live sample for the work to begin.
And they'd gotten close. There was the live subject who committed suicide in Helsinki, the live subject from Vladivostok who actually made it to the lab before succumbing to alcohol poisoning, the wolf who turned out to be something completely different all together. Then there was Byron Matzen.
It had all happened through deep, back channels through simple pharmaceutical reps. There wasn't a doctor's office in the nation that didn't deal with pharmaceutical reps and those reps were overseen by companies who had members of Hartman Corp. on their boards and in their administrative offices. Their network was vast and so when Mr. Matzen went only one step above the rep who dealt with the small clinic 45 miles East of town, the news made its way up the ranks quickly. The strategy had been to treat this contact, the first of its kind in the storied history of the organization, as a Faberge egg, the slightest sudden movement might send the entire thing shattering into pieces that could not be salvaged.
There were negotiations. Mr. Matzen was one of the "affected" but he would deliver other subjects. He would deliver one subject to them, he would be substantially rewarded and he and his friends and community were to be spared. The company was OK with this. The information had remained proprietary, the terms were generous and if things went wrong they had the firepower to erase this man and everyone he had ever met from the face of the planet.
Then, Byron Matzen was killed.
In the aftermath of this development, two camps within Hartman Corp had fiercely competed for their point of view to win the day. The first wanted to continue to handle things delicately. There were obviously "affected" in this small community that the larger groups of "affected" were unaware of their existence. They were also sure none of their competitors had this information and that none of the other various groups of interest were anywhere near this part of the world. They didn't have to hurry, the argument went. This could be handled.
The other school of thought wanted to go in with guns blazing. Yes, there was time, but that wouldn't last. They would go in with a paramilitary strike team, get the necessary intel and lay waste to anyone who could bear witness. There was no one in the vicinity to stop them (or even notice, as the argument went) so why not? Get the prize and get out.
It was Stander who had bridged the gap and won the position of lead on the operation. His argument had been to combine the two ideas – go in soft then go in hard but most importantly, do it quickly. Two weeks was the window of time, he had argued. The board, desperate for a compromise between warring factions, agreed. And they were on the phone.
"How soon will the subject be ready for transport?" the voice on the other end of the phone asked. It was not "Simmons" as before, but someone different.
"Two hours," Stander said. "I received word that the medical transport vehicle is on the road as we speak. We can't load him into the back of a truck in case there are any incidents during transport."
"Good," the voice said. "They are transporting him to our facility in Kansas City and from there he will be secure. What's the status of the town?"
"Taken care of," Stander said. "As soon as Mr. Rhodes is out of town, we will take care of the witnesses."
"Any word from the others?"
"No, sir."
"Be advised things are happening around you," the voice said.
Stander blinked.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand," he said.
"An outside group is working to block our resources and cut off routes for Mr. Rhodes to leave the area," the voice said. "We don't know who they are but they are quite effective. We are losing resources but all this is happening over 100 miles away. Continue to do your job."
"Yes, sir," Stander said.
"I will call ever hour for progress reports," the voice said. "Answer the phone."
"Yes, sir," Stander said. The line went dead.
The implications were huge – a group attacking the resources of Hartman Corp? That meant they had knowledge of the operations, had engaged in industrial espionage and, most importantly, were highly organized. It's one thing to learn there is an enemy you didn't know existed. It was another to know they were bad asses.
Stander's phone rang again.
"This is Stander," he said.
"This is Dave Rhodes."
It was a red letter day for surprising phone calls, Stander thought.
"Hello, Mr. Rhodes. I'm surprised to hear your voice."
"You have my father."
"I do."
"I would like to talk to you about a trade."
This had, of course, been a possibility the moment William Rhodes crashed his car into Stander's custody. Contingencies had been prepared and Stander knew where to take the conversation.
"What is your offer?" Stander asked.
"I would like to take his place."
"I see. And how do you propose to do that?"
"You will take my father to the corner of Rural Road 11 and the highway, near Beaver Creek. Do you know the place?"
"I do," Stander said.
"Take him there at precisely 3 p.m. I will be watching. Let him go and I will be along."
"So your proposal, as I understand it, is for me to let William go at a time and place you designate and then 'you'll be along?' You'll see how those terms might not be acceptable, Mr. Rhodes."
"You're not understanding me, Stander. That's where we go to..."
"Do you're little trick," Stander finished.
"Yes, that's our usual spot. If I'm not there at 3 pm you take Willie and leave. If I'm there, let him transform and head out into the woods. Either way, you'll have one of us to bring back."
"That seems almost too simple."
"Why make it complicated?"
"May I ask you a personal question, Mr. Rhodes?"
Dave caught the condescension in Mr. Stander's voice. He had him.
"Sure."
"Your father is awful, by all accounts. He's rude, churlish, he has hurt you quite a bit from what I hear?"
"Yes."
"And from the research we've done, it seems he's been difficult most of his life. I'm having trouble comprehending why you would change places with him. In fact, part of me thinks you've got something ulterior in mind."
"As to my father, yes, he's an asshole. But if there's someone from this family who has to bare this burden, it's not him. I'm the head of the pack and while I don't expect you to understand what that means within our group, I do expect you to take it as an answer. I'm the leader. End of story."
Dave deliberately waited a beat before moving on.
"As for an ulterior motive, you know about us. Do you think there are any circumstances where, even as wolves, we could make a dent in your security? We turn in to animals, Stander, not soldiers. Worry all you want, bring all the guys you want. This is a simple exchange. You have my word."
If things were going to fall apart, now is where it would happen and Stander took his damn sweet time responding. During that time, Dave tried, consciously, to control his breathing and modulate his voice as to project a heightened sense of calm.
"All right, Mr. Rhodes. You're right, I don't understand your...customs nor do I think what you're doing is particularly admirable. If you were to ask me I'd say your father deserves what's coming far more than you do, but at the end of the day I don't care. I'll leave you with this. If I get a sense that anything is amiss, if I feel threatened or if you fail to live up to your part of this exchange in any way, I will see you dead. Is that clear?"
"Yes."
"Good. My clock says 1:15 which gives you a little under two hours to get your ass to Beaver Creek. One minute late and your father goes to the lab minus his tongue."
Stander hung up. It felt good to be the one ending the call, he thought. He immediately got on the radio and called for all available personnel to come to the center of town to discuss the latest development. He didn't think for a second this was a clean exchange and he would have guns on hand and men by his side who know how to pull the trigger.
•••
"We on?" Kenny asked. "We doin' this?"
"Yep, Dave said. We're doin' this. Let's get everyone together. Right now."
•••
The sky does something strange when it's starting to get colder, Dilly noticed. The cloud cover hangs a bit different. In the winter, you can definitely see it because even though it might be sunny, the sky seems thicker, the blues less sharp. Now, when it was starting to get colder, the effect wasn't as pronounced but it was starting. The blues weren't the same color they were just a month ago and the trees around them were starting to get bare around the middle, a true sign of fall.
The young man had time to ponder as he and his mom were sitting on their car on a dirt road, nearly 15 miles away from Kenny's shed where he kept his cars. She was doing that thing some moms do when they want to talk – she would start talking about something else hoping to get things rolling and then steer the conversation. He was in a "yup" and "nope" mood, so he stared at the sky.
Finally, Josie came out with it.
"I saw you out there. You're different than your dad."
It was something he had felt, too. Every time Dave had talked to Dilly about being a wolf, it sounded to him what it must feel like to be the Incredible Hulk. He had pictured destructive power and little to no control, but in the two times he had transformed, that's not what he felt. The first time it was all about getting his bearings but when he had challenged Conall and taken off into the woods, it had been a night and day difference. He felt in control, focused and with more of his human brain working than he would have thought.
"I think I could have said something if I tried," Dilly said.
"Like Conall did?"
"Yeah, like Conall. There's more of me in the wolf than I thought there'd be."
Dilly was on the trunk of the car, his mom pacing the five to six steps on front, her arms folded like she was trying to solve a math problem.
"So you think you're more like me?"
"I think so."
"You want to try it out?"
"What?"
"It's not like you can only do it once, kid-o. We're out in the middle of nowhere. Why don't you try it? Transform and see what you can do."
At first, this seemed like a terrible idea for several reasons, one of the big ones being he'd have to get naked in front of his mom, but it didn't take Dilly long to figure out why she was pushing.
"You think I might be able to come with you?"
"Yes."
"To Beaver Creek to..."
"Yes."
"And with the..."
"Yes, Dilly. I want to see if you can do it. We've got about half an hour to figure this out. Come on already."
Dilly immediately tried to calm his mind a little bit as it was racing. Dad always said never to go out without the pack, that this was a group activity not a solitary thing. Now mom was giving him the opposite advice. It was a lot to process.
"Are you going to turn too?"
"I don't think so," she said. "It's harder for me. It hurts a lot."
"But when we get to Beaver Creek..."
"Don't worry about that now. Focus."
Instead of looking at his mother, Dilly turned around and looked back out at the fields and the sky when a thought occurred to him that had never taken root before, a nasty, evil little thought that seized his insides and thrilled him from his brain on down. He was the alpha. There wasn't a person, place or thing in this place that could stop him. His will was law, his whim was edict. He was stronger than his father and his friends and soon he would be stronger than his mother. Dilly shut his eyes and before he even willed it to happen, the transformation started.
"Dilly, your shirt," his mom said, but it was too late. The hair was sprouting, the bones were creaking, the teeth were returning to their rightful place and for the third time, the Young Wolf stretched toward the sky, pulling to the full length of its height and howling in the mid-day sun. The shirt was toast.
This was the second time Josie had seen her son like this and he was all the more impressive in the harsh light of the sun – tall and skinnier and sleeker than the others. She caught her breath and remembered their mission.
"Are you there, Dilly? Can you talk to me?"
The Young Wolf whipped its head around and sniffed hard at the woman. The scent caught in his nostrils and he took a few steps toward her.
"Yaaaaoooooooessssss," the creature struggled. The words were growly but Dilly's unsure, strong voice was there if you really listened.
"You want to run, don't you?" she asked.
"Yeeessss," he hissed, a little more strongly.
"OK. You see that tree over there?"
She pointed at a tree, the first that led to an outcropping about 400 yards away. It was a solid tree, but not a big one that was the first step into the forest.
"Go take it down," she said. "Destroy it and come back to me."
The Young Wolf gave a snarl, resenting the instruction, but was on his way seconds later, taking giant bounds, leaving deep grooves in the earth, leaping 10 feet, 15 feet at a time. As he closed on the tree, the Young Wolf started thinking strategy. He couldn't just hit the tree with his shoulder as that would hurt him and likely not take the tree down. Instead, as impact became imminent, he pushed hard with his front paws, propelling himself through the air and sending his hind legs straight into one side of the tree's trunk.
The side of the tree exploded on impact with the sharp and hard paw of the wolf, and sent him barreling on his back, hard. He immediately flopped and squirmed to his feet and took another run at the tree, from a shorter distance, with his claws out. The hack and slash of the claws sent saw dust flying and sticking into his coarse, black fur. After a minute or so, he decided it was time to end it.
The Young Wolf took a running start and leapt as high as he could onto the tree, landing 10 feet up near the top of the tree and hearing the satisfying crack and waver that signified structural failure. The tree waved but the wolf pushed his weight against the trunk over and over until it cracked more and started to fall. As the tree gave way, the wolf rode it down, leaping away a second or so before it hit the cold but soft dirt below. He stopped to admire his work for a moment, then took off, panting hard, back to the car and the woman.
Seconds later he was back and he stood, proud, slightly bruised and pulsing with energy and anger. He had destroyed the tree in less far less time than Josie thought he would, if he was able to do it at all.
"THERE!" he yelled. "DONE!"
Even with this creeky nature of the speech and the struggle the Young Wolf had to put out, the annoyance in his voice was clear and for the first time, Josie felt a twinge of fear. She would not be able to transform in time if he decided to lay into her. He needed to be calmed.
"You did great," Josie said. "You're using your brain but you're angry, aren't you?"
"YES!" the creature yelled, the sound louder than before and echoing off the vast space.
"Good!" Josie said, speaking quickly but trying to keep the panic out of her voice. "I need you angry and you'll have your chance."
He started to twitch and move his head in agitation, unable to keep still. In a strange, melancholy moment, Josie recognized the movement in both her son as a child and her husband as a wolf. The Young Wolf reared up to his full height, spread his arms as wide as they would go and let loose with a howl that sent vibrations through the ground and filled the sky with frightened birds. The fear Josie had felt before spread through her body and as she bent her knees and her arms went up to shield herself, her brain went through every time she had scolded him or fought with him. If the current of emotion grabbed him too hard, he could tear the animal in front of him to shreds, mother or not.
The howl ended and echoed. Josie kept her eyes on the wolf's face and was able to see his reaction when he tilted his head downward and saw his cowering mother. The wolf immediately shrank, going down on all fours and changing his expression to one of deference and concern.
"Mom," the wolf said, the voice more like Dilly than ever before. "Mom. It's OK."
To her surprise, the howl had sent Josie into a shaking fit, part from the cold and fatigue but mostly in fear. The situation had turned so quickly her body had reacted and she was shaking almost uncontrollably.
The Young Wolf nuzzled her with his large, shaggy head. The harsh fur, not soft but more like nettles, irritated Josie's skin and helped her grab on to something in her fight through her fear and back in to her thinking self. Reflexively her hand went out to stroke the head of the wolf, and he whimpered, softly at her tough.
"You're so strong," Josie said, feeling the sting of tears on her face but not remembering the act of crying. "How'd you get so strong."
"Strong...mom," the wolf said.
The wolf stayed still and the woman stroked its head for a few minutes until they heard the rumble of cars in the distance.
•••
At some point, Stu got it in his head that he needed to get back to his house and get his phone. He could pretend to be Robocop all he wanted, but it was time to call in the cavalry. Carol Cryer's guest house was about four blocks away, but those blocks were covered with dozens of men with guns. It was unlikely they'd get there, but the alternative was to sit.
"I don't think I can do anything but sit," Dana said. "That fucker busted up my already bad leg. A big girl limping around is probably going to draw some attention."
"I'd prefer you hide," Stu said. "I'm going to take a shot. My odds are better if I'm by myself."
Stu was staring out the hole in the wall that used to be a window, trying to discern any sort of pattern to who was walking by and when. There was no pattern to be found and very little activity to draw from. The radio was another story. Every two minutes or so it crackled to life and provided a lot of information. Being a private enterprise, the lingo they used was not indecipherable, and in their 20 minutes or so sitting in the abandoned tire shop, Stu had learned some things.
There was something important happening at 3 p.m., and it was all hands on deck. With the exception of a few men who were "holding down the fort," everyone would be down by Beaver Creek to provide "operational support." Again, not hard to decipher. There had also been talk of "clearing the town" at the end of the day, which had sent worried looks between the Dietz siblings, especially since Dana had no idea where Robin was. Stu would have liked to think that with a clock ticking toward the death of most everyone in his town, he would have come up with a better plan than "get to a phone." But here they were.
"You've only got about an hour before three," Dana said. "And even if you make it, how do you know your phone will be where you left it?"
"It's not a perfect plan," Stu said. "But maybe there's a phone in Carol's house or something. If I don't try..."
"Yeah, I know," Dana finished. "I know this is the best idea we've got but I don't want you to go out there."
Dana did not cry easily, if at all, but the pain cocktail she was on had cracked the code. Tears flowed liberally down her cheeks and dripped onto her T-shirt, leaving dark, temporary stains. Stu went over, careful not to expose his position out the window, and put his hand on her shoulder.
"I'm not going to lie and say 'I'll be fine,' but I will be careful. And strong. And brave, if I can be. You're the only one who believed I was any of those things."
They hugged and Stu couldn't help notice Dana trying to pull the tears back, even now.
"I know you're a tough son of a bitch," she said. "I beat on you for years. Go get 'em."
Making a quick calculation and turning the radio off (he had been holding it to his ear and keeping the volume low), Stu gave his sister one last glance back and headed out.
No one had yet to notice the body in the Sheriff's Department, so the idea was to keep low, use alleys when possible and go slow. With his pulse high and his head pounding from the day's earlier beating, Stu was having a hard time with that last part. He wanted to sprint, wanted to shoot, but both of those things meant torture and death so he concentrated on his breathing and took it as slow as he possibly could.
His first challenge was crossing the main street in town, which was oddly wide given the complete lack of traffic. There was parking on both sides and even a stoplight in the center of town that had blinked yellow as long as Stu had been there. His strategy was to head south to "Bar" which seemed to have little to no activity around it, make the crossover there and head to his guest house apartment. The plan was a solid one and hopping from alley to house proved an effective method. No one was looking out for him and everyone seemed otherwise occupied.
When he got to "Bar" it was empty, but unlocked and, on a whim, he went inside. In a flash of inspiration, he grabbed a bottle of vodka off the shelf and poured it on his hand, something he had seen in a movie once, hoping there would be some disinfectant value. Based on the stinging and throbbing that accompanied the vodka, it was working. He thought briefly of starting a fire to draw attention away, but just as he was pondering it, he heard yelling from the north.
Clicking on his radio, he was instantly met with yelling.
"...gun and radio are gone. Repeat, man down, the Sheriff and his sister are on the loose and they are armed. They are armed. Everyone proceed with caution."
"Do we need parties to start sweeping buildings?"
Stu held his breath but heard Stander on the radio next.
"No parties. Everyone keep an eye out but stick to the plan. Shoot first and shoot often. We don't need them anymore. I expect everyone to be near Beaver Creek in 20 minutes."
The radio was filled with chatter of reports from various locations. Stu exhaled deeply, happy that Dana would be somewhat safe if she stayed put. His apartment, on the other hand, might as well have been on the mythical land of Asgaard. Breathing slowly, shutting his eyes for a moment, it came to Stu in a flash—if he could get to his cruiser, he could use the radio to call other law enforcement. This, of course, was what he should have been doing all along but it hadn't occurred to him between the beatings and the werewolves and the town under siege and the werewolves and the tortured sibling and the bleeding hand and the werewolves.
Unfortunately, he had put himself several blocks farther away from his goal than when he started and the town was full of armed men looking for him, so he would have to make another run for it. With the adrenaline flowing and nowhere to direct his energy, Stu started riffling through the contents of "Bar" looking for anything that might be able to help him. He went in the back, thinking there would be knives or maybe another gun (and along with that thought, a brief, John Woo-style fantasy of firing two guns while jumping through the air) when he saw it.
A land line.
Tentatively, as if by providence, Stu walked over to the phone on the wall, picked it up, held it to his ear and heard a dial tone.
"No fucking way," he muttered, and dialed 9-1-1. He knew, by course of being on the job for a few weeks, that the 9-1-1 call center was 26 miles away in another county, as was the nearest ambulance service. It occurred to him as the phone picked up on the other end that he didn't have the slightest idea how to explain the situation.
"911, please state the nature of your emergency".
"OK, this is Sheriff Dietz in Barter County and I'm going to need you to keep an open mind as I tell you what's going on here." Stu was trying to keep his voice steady and slow but everything was coming out fast and warbly.
"OK, Stuart, we're here. Where are you right now?"
Alarm bells went off in Stu's head. He hadn't told them his first name, he sure as hell wasn't on a first name basis with anyone at the emergency management center a county away. Plus, the question didn't seem like any 911 call he'd ever heard, so he decided to play it safe.
"I'm in a house...I don't know who it belongs to but there are men in Cherry with guns. Lots of them."
"Can you describe the house," the voice on the other end said. "The color? The street?"
Damn.
"Do me a favor, Stu," the voice on the other end continued. "Don't run."
Stu tossed the phone back into the cradle and moved away from it like it was radioactive. Of course they'd tap the land lines. Cell lines, too.
"But they wouldn't be able to block the law enforcement radio," Stu said to himself, his voice sounding small in the big, empty bar. "Not without raising suspicion."
He decided to set his watch for five minutes, then leave "Bar" just in case there were eyes on the place or they expected him to run screaming into the street. Then he would head back toward the station and (unfortunately) Dana, and he spent that time rummaging around "Bar." He was opening cabinet doors behind the bar when his hand brushed against something long and metal that instantly felt familiar. His hands came back from the doors with a Remington Model 870 pistol grip shotgun.
"Oh, Chuck. I hope you have a permit for this."
Even though he was already armed, the gun's considerable heft gave him a shot of confidence he had been lacking. Who needed a plan when you had this sort of fire power? He rummaged around a bit more and found shells in the cabinet, loaded them and stuffed his pockets with more. After checking his watch (5 minutes 32 seconds), he peeked out the window and everything looked relatively clear. Plus, folks were a lot less likely to pick on a guy with a shotgun.
•••
Stander was on the phone.
"Did you expect to hear from the others?" the voice asked. It was different this time but still prickly and masculine.
"No, we did not."
"And you did nothing to facilitate this?"
"Nothing."
"How do you plan to proceed?"
"I'm going to go ahead with the exchange," Stander said. "If anything unexpected happens we're going to kill them all."
"Except for Mr. Rhodes."
"You will receive a live sample on schedule. I understand the consequences if I don't."
Stander couldn't help but notice how the dynamics had changed. He was used to being threatened and second-guessed. This new person was grasping, trying to grab more information. If he had to guess, things were not going well over at corporate.
"Good, good," the voice said. "And you've received no outside interference? This has been a successful black box operation? No recording equipment, no leaks?"
"We've dealt with the locals, they are all detained and there will be no one to bear witness..."
When he thought of it later, Stander wouldn't say he "snapped" at that moment. He simply ran out of patience for going over and over the same set of expectations. The voice had shown signs of weakness. It was time for him to show signs of strength.
"... and if I could add some of the personnel I've been provided are substandard. They're not seasoned or trained properly, they're not prepared to make any sort of decision and I've had to make an example or two."
The voice didn't respond.
"Despite piss poor staffing and doing all the prep and intelligence work myself, I've managed to get this done. And I'm going to continue until you have your sample and at that point I believe we need to talk about substantial compensation for my contributions up until this point. Am I clear?"
"Yes," the voice said.
"Good. I will be waiting in an hour with an update. Make sure to call on time."
It felt particularly good to be the one to end the conversation and Stander couldn't help let a slight smirk creep on to his face. For the first time since taking this assignment, the idea of shopping Willie around to another company crossed his mind. He batted it away, and then brought it back. He had been treated poorly during this operation, he had been second-guessed at every turn and he was no longer interested in dealing with this bullshit. Maybe he would become indescribably rich, stick it to his company and live out the rest of his life...
The rest of that sentence had no finish. He was a company man, a man who was lost without a goal to strive for. He would deliver Willie, he would receive his increased compensation and he would move on to the next thing the company wanted to do. And he'd do it with a smile, knowing he was the competent one, the reasonable one, the best one.
He put his phone in his pocket and actually struck up a whistle as he strolled around the camp that had been set up around Beaver Creek. There were 22 men, all armed, with hand guns, all semi-well trained and all with eyes on either side of the road, where Dave Rhodes would likely appear in 22 minutes. They had orders to wait until he reached a certain point and then open fire. It didn't matter who they brought in or how they brought them in or, for that matter, who they shot and killed in the process.
He walked the length of his forces, everyone snapping to attention when he walked by. The message had spread—he's in charge and not to be messed with. To a person postures were straight and when anyone spoke it was all business.
Except for one.
"Got 'em whipped, don't ya, asshole?" Willie said through a blood and bile speckled beard, his body tied to a chair in the center of the group.
"God, I can't wait to get out of this place," Stander said with a heavy sigh, the wind catching the leaves of the trees behind him.
•••
With twenty minutes to go before 3:00, Dave saw no reason to do anything differently.
Step one, you break bread. Even if there was nothing to eat.
"Anybody want a mint?" Dave asked. He usually carried them around after Josie had told him his breath got a little gamey by the time he got home from work. Everyone lined up and took one, more or less understanding the ritual.
"My breath is like a minty meadow," Kenny said. "I'm only taking cause you offered."
"That isn't true and you know it," JoAnn said. It was the first words she'd spoken in a while and of all the moving parts of this particular operation, she was, by far, the squeakiest. "Your breath smells like vinegar most of the time."
"Damn, girl, not nice," Kenny said, twirling the keys to the Mustang. The car was red, though it had been blue originally, and had more metal in it than the storage unit it was taken from. Kenny would drive the 'Stang, Ron in the 'Vette, Carl was driving the Suburban swiped from a neighbor and JoAnn would follow in the Pathfinder taken from "Bar." Dave was on the Harley and Josie was going a different direction.
JoAnn, who was a great bookkeeper and a "hell of a cook," according to her favorite apron, was not much of a driver. And she was nervous about it. Her part in the operation was simple and she could do it, but she had been clinging closer to Kenny than usual and the group had felt her anxiety. It gave Dave an idea.
"Everyone," he said, a bit louder than his normal speaking voice, giving his words some formality. "Come out to the field with me please."
The crunching of shoes and boots on gravel gave way to a softer clunk and squish as they left the road and ventured into the field. The prairie grass had been high this year but was starting to roll back and once they got 40 feet out or so, it was like a different world. There were still bugs, though most had gone back to the hell that spawned them, and there were plants with spikes and bright purple flowers, loose strife prairie flowers and so much more. In the midst of the death that comes with mid-fall the field was still teaming with life.
Dave stopped, and grabbed Josie's hand. She grabbed Dilly and on down the line until the group was in a circle.
"Ashes, ashes, we all fall down," Dave said, and dropped to the earth. Everyone followed, staring at the bright, blue and whispy white of the big Nebraska sky. When someone spoke, the words floated as if on the breeze, not connected to a face or an expression, devoid and free of body language. Dave hadn't planned this, but it couldn't have been more perfect.
"I'm gonna miss you guys," Kenny started.
"Where am I going?" Ron said. There were a few murmurs of agreement.
"Paris or Rome or some shit," Kenny said. "If we get through this, and I think we're gonna, every single one of you is going to shake the dust of Cherry off your sandles. Even if it's just for a little while."
"Things change," Josie said. "Can't change that."
"But this never did," Kenny continued. His voice was slower, more modulated and free of the "like"s and "man"s that peppered most of his conversations. It was a voice he didn't use much outside of the house.
"This was what I could count on. No matter what happened I knew I could depend on all of you. And you could count on me and it felt..."
The motormouth's voice cracked.
"Special," Dave finished.
"Yeah, special," Kenny said.
"Things were different before Stander showed up," Dave said. "Things were different because of Byron. And because of me."
Dave tried to feel any shift in the way his wife was holding his hand. She didn't react.
"I thought, for so long, that I made the right call for all of us. I was wrong. The truth is I had two impossible choices to make and I made the one I thought was best."
"Best for us?" Ron said.
"I don't know," Dave said. "I've thought about it and thought about it and there were things I could have done better. Lots of things. But I don't know I'd ever come to a different decision."
"Rock and a hard place," JoAnn said.
"Between a boulder and a boner," Carl said.
"Between a stone and a stiffee," Kenny said.
The laugh started slow and rolled and this time Dave felt Josie's hand squeeze and release as her chest heaved with laughter. He snuck a peek at her as she laughed and remembered how beautiful he still found her. The laughter lasted long and died slow.
"Do you think we're doing the right thing now?" Dilly asked after quiet settled back in. "I mean, we're going to..."
"Dilly, I know you're of a tender age, but fuck those guys."
Everyone was a little shocked to hear Carl speak up, much less show any aggression or drop the "f" bomb. But here they were.
"These people came in to our town and want to capture us, detain us, experiment on us, eventually kill us, terrorize everyone in town and take our lives completely away in every sense I can think of. They think we're morons and beneath them because of where we live. They think they can come and destroy a small town and get away with it. I'm sure some of them are only in it for a paycheck and that's their bad luck, but the people they came to Cherry to find the monsters. I say they found 'em."
"Yeah," Dave said.
"YEAH!" Kenny said.
"Fuck yeah!" Dilly yelled, His mother did nothing but squeeze his hand tighter.
"It's almost three o'clock. Everyone ready to do this?"
There was a round of whoops and hollers as everyone stood and started embracing. These weren't timid hugs or the kind of hugs exchanged daily, but the hugs of family who were fired up, an aggressive tenderness if such a thing exists. They were holding on tightly to the only thing that could get them through this. They were grabbing, desperately, to the only thing that could get them home.
When Dave came to Dilly, he already had tears in his eyes. He tried to remember the last time his son had seen him cry and couldn't come up with a time. They grabbed each other, Dilly taller than his father.
"Dad," he whispered. 'I'm going with mom. I'm going to fight."
"I know," Dave said. "You stay safe, son. You are precious to me."
He heard his son gasp for air as the tears racked his chest. They held on a long time and as he kept going, it was clear Josie was going to be last. When he finally got to her, he grabbed the small of her back and pulled upward, popping her back in a way he used to do when they were younger. It was that perfect moment of affection, something no one else can see you do that holds resonance for the person you're doing it to.
"He's coming with," Josie said.
"I know," Dave said.
She was crying, too.
"Your life is in our hands, you know?" she said, half laughing half crying.
"There's nowhere else I'd rather put it."
"We aren't done yet," she whispered into his ear. He felt the hot splash of her tears on his jaw as she leaned up.
"We aren't done yet," he said back. And meant it.
"It's almost 3!" Kenny was yelling "Giddyap!"
As they walked to their cars, Carl caught up with Dave.
"Can I make a phone call?"
"I don't see any reason why not," Dave said. "This is about over, they know we're coming. Doesn't much matter that they know where we are."
"Cool."
Carl swiped, dialed and smiled as he did.
"Hey, Steve," Carl said. "I'd like to request a song. This is a real special case. Any chance I could talk you in to playing it in the next little bit?"
•••
At no point in the history of luck had anyone been this lucky. A gambler hitting on 00 while fucking a cocktail waitress while missing his flight that crashes over the ocean wasn't this lucky.
Stu had managed to make it back down the street from "Bar," check on Dana ("you're doubling back? Are you a genius or an idiot?") and get back in to the Sheriff's Department office where the body had been removed but the keys to his patrol car had not. He had run in to one member of the occupying forces who would have seen him had he not gotten a call over the radio and high tailed it back the way he came. And now, as he gingerly approached the car, parked on a gravel road behind the Sheriff's office, there was no one in sight. Not a soul.
"I am the luckiest son of a bitch..." Stu said to himself as he got in the driver's side. Then, as quickly and fiercely as it had arrived, his luck ran out.
The first bit of bad luck was the radio was gone. Whoever had removed it had done a thorough, if rough job by seemingly ripping the entire console out. Wires were hanging and when he started the car, a spark shot from one of side of the gap where the radio had been.
The second bit of bad luck was that whoever had ripped out the radio had also turned the lights and sirens on. Stu should have checked but was caught up in the moment and, to be honest, the feeling of confidence that came with being so lucky for so long. The second he turned the key in the ignition the cherries shot to life and the sirens screamed and everyone in a three mile radius knew exactly what was happening and why.
The third bit of bad luck came when he actually tried to start the car and it didn't turn over. Upon hearing the sirens he shot in to action and tried to start the car, his blood immediately racing faster and his face flushing with embarrassment at being so goddamn stupid.
"Oh hell," Stu said to the sputtering engine. "No, no, no, turn over..."
But, luck is fickle and it smiled one more time and did as he asked.
"Yeah!" Stu yelled in the shortest lived triumph of the day as seconds after the engine started, bullets hit the passenger side, shattering the window and making an unmistakable "thunk" against the door. Three men were running toward the car, eager to take responsibility.
Stu laid on the gas, catching gravel and shooting it behind the car as he sputtered to make a fast getaway. The tires caught and he took off but not before losing another window and hearing the whiz of a bullet flying past his head. His plan was to get in the car and use the radio to call for help. His reality was driving a car with sirens going through a town barricaded off from the outside world. In other words, he was going to have to bust through at least one road block to get out.
At least they wouldn't be looking for Dana, he thought.
The whizzing and thunking stopped, at least for the moment, as Stu put distance between himself and the gunmen and barreled down the street toward "Bar". He hadn't grown up around here but he knew enough to know the roads in the direction he was going ended soon and his cruiser was not equipped for off-roading on gravel, so he whipped a hard right and headed toward the first barricade, the one that had caught Willie a few hours earlier.
Stu had seen the barricade, but from a distance, so he wasn't sure what sort of chance he had. At normal speed, would have probably been able to figure out the barrels were likely filled with water and that leaving out Main Street was a nonstarter, but as he rocketed forward, his decisions already blunted by fatigue and pain and fear, he crashed headlong into the barrels, splaying the hood straight up and sending Stu into an air bag, knocking him unconscious.
"That was a swing and a miss," one of the men said, running up on the car and the unconscious law man.
"That is one unlucky dude," a second said.
"Stander wants him down at the encampment. Can the car drive?"
"Block looks in tact," the second man answered. "Car looks fine. Driver, not so much."
The men didn't bother to move Stu from the seat, instead putting the car in neutral and giving it a quick push the two blocks toward Beaver Creek, joking all the way.
•••
The seat of the Harley felt exactly like Dave remembered. He had an "uncle" who had once driven up on a loud motorcycle, hopped off and talked to an 11-year-old Dave extensively about the bike, the experience, the culture.
"Every single person who rides one of these things has a little bit of outlaw in him," the family friend had told him. "It may be way down deep, but it's there. Reasonable people, they drive a car. The troublemakers..."
He gestured at the bike and as soon as Dave could drive, he had started begging, begging for a motorcycle. Willie hadn't been a big fan, nor had his mother, but in the end he got a job and bought one himself. Then he started racing them and by the time he had a wife and family, he was a regular at the race track 70 miles to the South. He always relished that ride to and from the race, his mind blank, melding with the machine that was moving him down the road like the little troublemaker he was.
Then, one day, he lost the taste for it. The death of his "biker" self was not gradual. One day, he didn't feel like riding and he didn't feel like fighting Josie over the bike anymore. Kenny gladly took it off his hands and he never looked back and seldom missed it. That is, until he got back on.
"You remember what you're doing?" Kenny said. "I can do it. I won't like it but I know I can do it."
Dave didn't say anything, instead spending his time relishing the moment, the feel of the seat beneath his ass and the stance he had to strike to grab both handles. He put the keys in the ignition and looked toward the road.
"Dilly and Josie?"
"They ought to be about where we need 'em," Kenny said. "You got this?" Fixing a hard stare on the road ahead, Dave didn't move a muscle. He was in front with five cars piloted by five of the most important people in his life sat, engines off, waiting to follow his lead. Behind him, Carl gave a small "whoop" noise and turned the radio way up in the Suburban so everyone could hear.
"We don't usually do this," the DJ was saying, "but I've got a good friend who's about to do something stupid and he's made a request. You all oughtta know this one. Be careful, fellas."
Jason Newstead's full, confident bass filled the speakers as Metallica began their Sisyphussian climb that was "Enter Sandman." No one acknowledged the radio shout out. All eyes were on Dave who was still atop his motorcycle. The bass started driving, Lars started his equally full pedal work and by the time the first, big chord thundered through the speakers of the Suburban courtesy of Kirk Hammett's 1987 ESP KH-2, Dave had fired up the Harley and revved it as loud as it would go. The engine thundered and was followed by the unmuffled roar of the Mustang, the higher but bad ass squeal of the Vet and the other vehicles, all hitting a crescendo in time with the music.
As Metallica began their final run before the chorus, Dave hit the gas having never once looked behind him, trusting in his crew, his boys, his pack and his faith was rewarded with squealing tires and screaming engines. He heard Kenny and Ron scream out the open windows of their cars, a war whoop if there ever was one, but Dave betrayed none of the fire in his guts that were burning intense and violent. The Harley would it for him and James Hetfield singing along wouldn't hurt a goddamn thing.
They rode toward town, in a straight line toward Beaver Creek.
•••
Stander's watch beeped. It was 3:00.
"Not very punctual," Stander said to the man next to him.
"Go fuck yourself!" Willie yelled from his position a few yards back, toward the forest.
The men, all dressed in similar blue paramilitary style uniforms, each carrying assault rifles, waited for an order. Or failing that, a cue. Instead, the man in charge stood, silently watching the road, his radio up to his ear in case any news were to come across, leaving his men to ponder his final instruction.
"If you see anything that resembles a wolf, shoot it until it stops moving."
•••
Part of the plan was to be loud. To that end, the operation was a complete success.
Dave led the pack down the Highway, not languishing, but not rushing either. Still, at 45 mph or so, the five vehicles sounded like a natural disaster, some swirling, kicking accident of nature come to fuck up your house and kill your livestock. That's how they sounded. That's how they felt.
The sound was so much it drown out the radios, which were cranked in all the cars (except JoAnne's, who was far too sensible for loud music). Dave didn't hear Hetfield invite everyone to "exit light." It didn't matter if he had. They were coming up on Beaver Creek and everyone needed to focus.
•••
"Here they come."
Stander was annoyed anyway, but particularly annoyed at Willie. If the old man wasn't his ace in the hole, his insurance policy and his ultimate victory, he would have shot the old coot cold between the eyes and shut that stupid mouth of his.
That being said, he had a point.
"What are they doing, sir?" one of his underlings asked.
"I'm not sure," Stander said. "But it doesn't change anything. Follow your orders."
In his brain, Stander was running possibilities as fast as he could. What were they doing? He didn't know and not knowing was starting to put a pit in his stomach. Even though the temperature was in the low 50s, a bead of sweat formed on the man's brow and glistened in the sun.
•••
Josie heard the cars and their deliberate, deafening approach. The young wolf was with her and he was starting to get antsy.
"Nnnnow?" he growled, the drool hanging from one side of his mouth in a thick, viscous rope.
"No," Josie said. "Wait."
The Young Wolf continued to shift and dance, threatening to make noise in what had otherwise been a silent approach.
"Please," Josie said, turning to face him. "Follow me."
"Yes," the Young Wolf said. He crouched, a coiled mass of energy waiting, and was as silent as possible.
"Good boy," Josie said, mainly to herself.
The noise from the engines were getting louder and Josie realized she had overestimated her ability to gauge how far away everyone was. Timing was important. Going too early meant bad things. Going to late meant equally bad things. She needed to use her brain, but her animal brain was screaming for blood, screaming for vengeance. Moments started flashing in her mind of their house burning down, the small kitchen in that house where she had cooked Thanksgiving dinner aflame, the entry way where they had set their son after bringing him home from the hospital, split and blackened. She couldn't take it, whipping around and making contact with the powerful animal behind her.
"Now."
•••
The first two disappeared quickly, pulled behind the trees. With all eyes on the road and all ears on the radio, no one saw and no one heard, even when the two unfortunate HartmanCorp employees were thrown against a tree trunk and their throats ripped out. The tearing and gurgling were no match for the roar of classic care engines and a bad ass outlaw motorcycle. Not even close.
Two more, lined up against the trees, vanished next. This time one person heard and one person saw. Willie's nose had been twitching but what it told him made no sense – that Dilly was in the woods with someone he didn't recognize. It wasn't that piece of shit Irishman, it was sharper and sweeter. It was someone else, so he kept his eyes sharp and tried to track any movement. He didn't see who pulled the next two guards into the woods, but he saw their bodies snap as if pulled by an invisible string tied to the bumper of a big invisible truck.
Willie wanted to cheer, wanted to cry out, but thought better of it. Instead, he took a quick survey of what was around him even as his nose caught the first strong whiff of blood that was splattering a few feet into the woods. There were a dozen men, all with their fingers on the triggers of some nasty looking, well-oiled and sleek assault rifles. Most of them were in front of him, watching the road but two more were hanging back, facing the same direction. They were also quickly pulled behind the trees and this time Willie saw the Young Wolf, pulling each grown man into the woods with one hand. They locked eyes for a an instant before the creature vanished back into the thicket.
"Damn," Willie said under his breath. "Strong kid."
The engines were now roaring as the convoy was in sight, Dave in front astride his Harley. Six men down, about, 10 or so to go, plus that asshole Stander, all facing the road. This had to be part of the plan.
Pretty quickly, Willie put it together. The Young Wolf was going to snipe as many of the soldiers of fortune as he could, giving his pack a fighting chance.
The old man couldn't have been more wrong.
•••
"What the hell are they doing, sir?" one of the men asked Stander, who had donned his sunglasses to counteract the harsh glare coming off the road.
"Doesn't matter," Stander said. "You have your orders."
"But they're driving right in to our fire. Doesn't that concern you?"
"Not in the least. Now kindly shut up and do your job."
The man complied, staring at the horizon and the approaching vehicles, right up until he heard the screams behind him.
•••
"Be fast," Josie growled. "Be clean. Guns first, then blood. Do you understand."
"Yes...mm.mmom," the Young Wolf growled. The rope of saliva was gone and he was already breathing heavy from the exertion of pulling six men into the forest and helping dispatch them.
"Follow me. Be fast," Josie said again. She needed that part to get through.
She stared at the backs of the men with guns at the ready. She could get to them and take out at least two before they knew what happened. Dilly could probably do the same and then it was six on two with the six armed to the teeth. Fear drove her heart rate up in a weak sort of beat that made her legs feel weak.
Those men, she thought, trying to refocus, broke in to my house. Those men burned my home. Those men shot my father-in-law, which might not be such a bad thing. She grinned, then thought that those men would kill her and her son and everyone she loved if there was money in it. They would destroy her if she stood in the comfort of the woods. They crossed a line and if there was one thing being a wolf meant, it meant being dangerous. Being a wolf had hurt her marriage and hurt her child and brought these men.
Time for her to bring the hurt for once.
•••
Willie smelled the blood before he saw the wolves burst out of the forest. He had learned to identify some emotions by scent, bloodlust being the most obvious. The smell poured from the woods and when he saw The Young Wolf and his daughter-in-law (THAT was the smell!) burst from the woods at a full run, descending upon throng of rent-a-guns with the force of a demon bent on destroying the world.
The Young Wolf, good to his word, almost split one of the men in half with his right hand, and half punching/half shoving a second man so hard that his neck made a sick, moist crunching sound as cartilage and bone rubbed and snapped in unnatural ways. The men didn't have time to scream, just bleed and fall and die. Josie was almost as lucky, slashing one man's chest as he screamed and fell and punching a second so hard that her fist got stuck in the gory mess that used to be his head.
The scream woke the remaining men (10 down, six or so to go) and Willie got the distinct pleasure of seeing Stander's eyes get big, his face register panic and his constitution totally fail him as he involuntarily vomited while trying to scream. Willie took a second to register the sound and take immense pleasure from it.
A third man on the Young Wolf's side went down quickly after having his arms torn off his body, his screams loud, then quieter as gallons of blood left his body on either side. Dilly was so fast and so strong, faster and stronger than any wolf Willie had ever seen and Willie felt a twinge in his guts as his transformation started. The shooting also started and the Young Wolf held the armless, screaming man in front of him as the five men turned and started shooting in the same direction out of instinct.
Panic is a hell of a thing, Willie thought, as one of the men shot another in the melee, plugging him square in the back of the head causing blood and brain to splatter on the man in front of him. By this time, Josie had retreated, pulled her hand clear of the bloody head from where it had stuck and charged again taking another man down by biting his neck in a pose that might have been two lovers, if not for the screaming and splatter.
The bullets were mainly hitting the center mass of the man without arms, but a few of them hit the Young Wolf in the shoulders, causing him to howl in pain. That howl, coupled with the site of his grandson's wounds was enough to put Willie over the edge and he sprouted and stretched and screamed as the White Wolf pulled free of his bonds and threw the chair he had been on directly at one of the men. The chair hit him square and sent him completely off balance, his gun flying from his hands. The White Wolf began running at the man only to draw the fire of two remaining soldiers.
The shots whizzed by the White Wolf's ear and he felt one hit his shoulder and another penetrate, deeply, into the meat of his left leg before he made his final leap. In the air, he was grazed in the side and hit square in the chest but landed on the man in the uniform and sank his teeth deep into his cranium, biting hard and hearing the cracks of skull and squish of brains. Out of the corner of his eye, the White Wolf saw the Young Wolf tearing the last man apart in a bloody decoupage, blood and shit spraying across the dirt and into the road.
Inspired, the White Wolf tore the soldier's head from his body and threw it toward the Young Wolf who howled, screaming at the sky. The White Wolf joined him in a powerful, tearing roar high pitched enough to rise above the roaring engines but low enough to rattle the dirt beneath their feet in one, unified, powerful message.
DO NOT FUCK WITH US!
•••
Josie had not taken any hits but had seen Dilly's arms and noticed the blood. When Willie broke free and drew all their fire, she had batted clean up, making sure everything else went to plan. Her son hurt but was going to be OK. That was the important part.
Stander had bolted toward the only shelter open to him – Stu's banged up police cruiser with Stu in the backand she thought she had seen one of the men get in as well. They had switched places so Stander wasn't driving when Josie jumped on the roof and started dragging her nails along the ceiling. As expected, gun fire came from inside the car, with Josie rolling out of the way and the car taking off, spitting gravel fishtailing a bit.
Moments later, the convoy blew by and took their positions around the town car.
"All yours," Josie said, smiling to herself.
•••
"What the fuck just happened!" Stander screamed. The man behind the wheel, a muscular, tattooed sort named Antonio, was in just as much shock. The gunshots toward the ceiling were stilling ringing, loud and long and unbroken in Stander's ears. Part of him was in full panic mode while part of his brain was trying, desperately, to process what it was that had happened. He glanced in the rear view mirror, hoping to not see any carnage or a small convoy of country hicks in loud cars bearing down on him.
He saw both.
"What do you want me to do, sir?" Antonio asked.
"Drive, DRIVE" Stander screamed through clenched teeth. "How the FUCK did that happen? Are you all fucking stupid!?"
The cruiser was OK after the earlier crash and the duo were thrown back as Antonio hit the gas, then thrown forward and he slammed the break, missing the back of Carl's Suburban by centimeters.
"Go around him!" Stander yelled, and Antonio jerked the wheel until he heard metal grinding. Kenny was in the Mustang and the Mustang had more metal in it than most newly constructed houses. It wasn't going anywhere and when JoAnn pulled up behind them in the pathfinder, it was obvious they weren't going backward either. The passenger side of the car hovered along the shoulder, veering close to an off road of nothing but dirt, plants and other material unhospitable to the town car.
Through the rolled up windows, both men could hear the roar of the engines and something higher pitched with a distinct melodic quality. Antonio narrowed his eyes.
"Is that a guitar solo?"
"Who gives a fuck?" Stander yelled, throwing all décor out the window as he started rummaging in the back seat for one of the assault rifles. All he found was the semi-conscious body of Sheriff Stuart Dietz.
"Why is he still back here?" Stander asked as the Pathfinder plowed into them from behind. JoAnn was starting to have fun.
"We had no place else to put him, sir," Antonio said, panic clinging to his voice. "We weren't supposed to kill him yet."
"DAMMIT!" Stander yelled. He was down to one guy, one car and no guns and he had lost the upper hand in about a minute and a half. He swung his eyes from window to window, his brain running through every scenario he could think of, every option and tool at his disposal. He could see no way out and could see nothing but the Suburban, the Pathfinder, the Mustang and the shoulder, whizzing by them as the convoy pushed the cruiser faster and faster.
"Sir!" Antonio yelled. "The van is...signaling."
Sure enough, the Suburban's left turn signal was blinking a fluorescent red, made all the harsher by proximity.
"He's not going to turn," Stander said, leaning forward in his seat. "What the hell is he doing?"
Slowly, and as if merging politely into traffic, the Suburban started changing lanes but before Antonio or his boss could see an inch of daylight, the motorcycle who was leading the pack roared to take its place. The motorcycle rider didn't turn around, confident in his bearings and in that moment Stander no longer cared about what the hell they were doing. There was sky in front of him and Stander wanted to seize it.
"HIT HIM!"
•••
The switch was as smooth as if they had practiced it. Carl swerved, Dave got in front and the second he heard the cruiser's engine rev, he accelerated, his eyes hard and focused in front of him. He had driven this road literally thousands of times and knew every slight turn, every crack in the pavement.
Every historical marker made of granite and weighing well over a ton and buried deep.
Dave also knew, all too well, that when the sun was starting its descent, it was sometimes hard to see. He had almost hit the damn thing dozens of times. Now his life depended on a stranger making the same mistake.
The granite marker came up fast, faster than Dave had anticipated. The plan was to stay on his wheels as long as he could, but to lay the bike down in the soft Earth off the road if that wasn't possible. Everything happened so fast that Dave immediately knew he'd have to lay the bike down, and slammed on the break for as one of the longest seconds of his life, then turned hard away from the marker. The bike immediately went down, sliding along the Earth that was now decidedly not so soft, and Dave slide for a few meters before going in to a roll. He spun and spun, his arms up next to his head.
•••
If anyone had a great view of the action, it was Ron. He was the support car and his job was to "play the invariables." If anyone got hurt, his job was to help. If gunfire were needed, he and his revolver riding in the passenger seat (shotgun! Ha!), could handle that as well. As it stood, he saw Dave come up on the marker, saw him lay the bike down and tumble, and saw Stander and crew plow, head long and at a speed of roughly 45 miles an hour, square in to the thing. The car hit the marker on its driver's side, crushing the headlight and hood and sending it spinning across the other lanes. The ditch was a little higher on that part of the road, so when the cruiser spun at high speed into the ditch, the car tipped over on its side. Momentum continued carrying them over on the hood and come to a rest, wheels spinning, engine smoking and a dank smell of oil coming up from the scene.
For the monument's part, the car took a big chunk out of one side. Other than that, it wasn't going anywhere.
Ron checked on Dave first and was surprised to see him already up and walking toward the road. He pulled over along the side.
"You OK?"
"That was...a ride," Dave said.
"Bleeding or anything?"
"I'm sure I am somewhere," he said, knowing full well his chest wound from earlier had torn open and was bleeding badly. "Let's move. Nobody's getting away today."
Ron suppressed a smile as he hopped out of his car and followed. The other cars had pulled around by this point and were making their way back to the wreck. On the way, JoAnn drove up and rolled down the window.
"Everyone OK?"
"Yeah," Ron said. "You might as well drive off. You're not going to want to see this."
The windows on all sides of the cruiser had shattered from the impact, and Stander had already exited the car and was crawling, fist over fist, through the wet dirt and grass that had survived the cold of the season. One leg was at a terrible angle, obviously broken and the other seemed fine, but Ron wasn't about to ask why he wasn't using it. Kenny pulled up next, followed by Carl who had the windows down and the radio cranked. That was fine, Ron thought. Covering up the screams was probably a better idea than not. Besides, he had always loved this song, even the creepy kid prayer at the end.
If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take...
Stander never stopped crawling, even when Dave and Ron and Carl and Kenny made their way down in to the ditch, but crawling is a slow way to move and the men, wearing big smiles and removing their shirts, caught up to him in a few steps. The company man was grunting with exertion and pain, his face caked in blood and dirt. His bow tie was nowhere to be seen.
From inside the car, Stu had awoken with a jolt to find himself in a crunched and leaking car and staring out the window at the naked backs of four men. And hearing Metallica for some reason.
Hush little baby, don't say a word
He felt the presence of the men behind him and even sensed that they had begun to change but the company man on the ground continued to claw big fistfuls of mud in an attempt to pull himself somewhere, anywhere other than where he was. He knew something very bad had happened to his leg, but didn't want to see. Tears came to his eyes, partly from pain and partly because he didn't even want this, didn't want this job or this life. He wasn't a killer, not a bad guy. He had a temper, sure...
...and never mind that noise you heard
Inside the car, Stu's memories flooded back and while he couldn't yet put two and two together, he remembered the danger, the sneaking around, the torture, his sister and all the rest. He also saw the man in the driver's seat start to mess with his door.
It's just the beasts under your bed...
For most of their lives, the pack had to draw on very specific memories in order to transform. That was not the case anymore. There was prey, wounded and supine in front of them, bleeding and desperate. They transformed quickly and without pain.
In your closet, in your head...
Stu saw the wolves lunge in one, fluid motion at whatever was on the ground. One of them threw what looked like a body, hard, against a nearby telephone pole while another grabbed the body in its jaws and threw it back toward the car. Then they all descended, mouths open, latching on to arms, legs, shoulders, thighs and any center mass they could find to tear skin away and feast on the blood that gushed forth. Every part of the body was covered in fur and teeth, except the head. Stu was able to see Stander's face as he was torn apart by the wolves, as chunks flew off he was able to make a last, fleeting eye contact with Stu and convey one final message.
It was something Stu had seen once before.
"I want to take this back." That was the understatement of the decade.
A sharp sound drew Stu's attention away from the carnage as Antonio, the driver, was making a break for it, managing to shimmy out through the broken window. The driver was limping, badly but was moving quietly, trying not to draw the attention of the wolves who were currently feasting on their boss.
Stu looked at the door, tried it and saw found that it was undamaged and opened easily. He was even more surprised when he realized a shotgun, which must have belonged to one of Stander's men, was among the debris inside the car.
...grain of sand...
Testing his tender and sore joints and muscles, Stu rolled onto the pavement, gingerly stood up, aimed his weapon and shot Antonio in the back as he fled. The man went down and a split second later, one of the wolves had left the snarling mass in the ditch and was investigating the noise. The beast, large and lean and savage, poked at the body before grabbing it in its jaws and tossing it, easily 20 feet, to the rest of the pack.
Stu got his first long, full lit look at the wolf. The creature was tall, easily over seven feet, but hunched and ready to leap or run. There was blood across its snout and his claws were covered in viscera, but the eyes were another story. The eyes weren't desperate or murderous.
They were proud. Most likely, it was Dave, Stu thought.
The wolf gave Stu a quick snort and joined the rest in giving Antonio the same treatment they had given Stander just moments before. The "wolf who was probably Dave" gave a loud, long howl as "Enter Sandman" faded into nothing and the wolves took off across the field at a high rate of speed, back toward Beaver Creek. There were two bloody spots in the road, a couple of cars pulled off the Highway, and an overturned cruiser that Stu had no idea how he was going to deal with.
"Hope that went well, fellas," the radio DJ was saying. "Either way, we're back after the break with some Rush and maybe some Van Halen if you're lucky."
•••
The Lead Wolf ran at a full clip toward his mate and his child and found them cradling the White Wolf. He was bleeding badly.
The Thin Wolf slightly whimpered. The Young Wolf, also bleeding, held his grandfather in his wounded arms that were still strong despite being torn up. Josie noted that some of the Young Wolf's bullet hole injuries had already stopped bleeding and were starting to heal.
Josie had been trying to fix this, trying to figure out what to do, but there were so few options and she didn't do her best thinking as a wolf. Every time the problem solving part of her brain would engage, she would smell something or hear something and any serious thought fluttered away. She had tried to transform back, but too much adrenaline was coursing through her. She was stuck, and so was Willie, who let out a yelp of pain every so often.
The Young Wolf looked at his mother.
"Help," he said. "Mmmom, help."
The other wolves started lightly howling as well, trying to speak but unable.
"He needs to change back," Josie said, surprised by the tightness in her chest that was making it hard to speak. "If we changed back, I could get him to a hospital."
At the word "hospital" the White Wolf's eyes shot open and he stretched his neck so he could see who had said the word. Josie ran through the pack to get in his line of sight.
"No," the White Wolf said. He attempted to raise his paw, failing at first then summoning more strength so he could gesture at the ground.
"Here," he said.
His meaning was clear but it caused the Young Wolf to throw his grandfather to the ground and scream.
"NO! NO! NOT HERE! NOT HERE!"
Thrashing, his long limbs pawing at the ground, the Young Wolf clawed and slashed at the air in his grief. The Lead Wolf rose up, just as high as his son, taller than he'd stood in a long time, and roared back at him. The Young Wolf howled but complied and fell to all fours as the rest of the pack gathered around and pressed their noses and bodies to his fur.
"Not here," he said, the "here" trailing into a howl.
His breath starting to rattle, the White Wolf got to his feet. The fall had knocked the air out of him and he was lucky to have gotten it back, but he was on his feet. Josie could see his hind legs drag and his front legs quiver.
He fixed the Young Wolf with a stare and the howling stopped. It was as if exerting some control gave him strength and his legs stopped shaking.
"A wolf dies... running," he said. "We die running."
The voice that came out was as much William Rhodes as it was the White Wolf, the growl modulated to a higher timber. It was the voice of a man speaking on his own terms and a wolf being gentle with those he loved. He whispered something else in a different language that the Young Wolf didn't understand but carried with it ancient meaning, a benediction with meaning only to him.
"Taimid bas ag rith."
Without warning, the White Wolf ran in to the woods, stumbling ever step or so but with a speed the pack hadn't seen out of him in years. He was 20 yards away before they followed, tearing through branches, leaves, spitting dirt and mud behind them. They all caught up and kept pace, the seven of them in almost a line broken only by terrain or tree. They ran until the White Wolf started to fall away. They heard the gurgles of fluid in his breath and the beating of his paws start to slow until they finally heard the thud of his body as it hit the earth.
The pack kept running, at a trot. The Young Wolf started the howl, followed by Josie, then the Thin Wolf, the Straight Wolf, the Large Wolf and finally the Lead Wolf howled and ran sending a cloud of sound past the tree line and into the sky. They howled because they were no longer what they had been. They howled for loss and for the change and for the blood they had to shed. But mostly, they howled out of pain. It all hurt and howling was the only thing that made any sense.
They ran until they collapsed, exhausted, by a stream where they stopped howling and turned into humans once again.
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF WILLIAM RHODES CREATED AND CO-SIGNED JANUARY 11, 2011
I, William James Rhodes, presiding at 104 Rural Route 118, Cherry, Nebraska, declare this to be my Will and I revoke any and all wills and codicils I previously made.
Article 1 – Burial
I couldn't care less. Bury me in a pine box or leave me to rot. Don't give a shit.
Article 2 – Distribution of assets
Lacy gets the house and the car and all that. She can give what she wants to anyone she wants except for my asshole brother. I leave him sole possession of my diddly squat and he's lucky he's getting that.
Signed and notarized.
PART 10 – SON OF A BITCH
The people of Cherry were pretty accommodating, considering their town had been taken over and by men with guns.
Phrases like "something like this was bound to happen" or "we knew you boys would handle it" or even the odd "well, that's all over with now,' were bandied about the usual gathering places. Chuck had run interference with a lot of his regular customers at "Bar" and possibly spun a tall tale or two in the process. Not that the actual story wasn't exciting enough.
"All those bodies, they had been ripped apart and their guts laid end to end to spell "Stay Out," Chuck had told Stu over a hamburger lunch. "I swear that's what I heard."
This was the fullest and most complete sentence Stu had ever heard Chuck utter, and he smiled.
"I don't doubt it for a second," Stu said. "I'm sure a drone or something picked up the message."
"Damn right it did," Chuck said. "Those things are everywhere."
In reality, Stu had limped back to Dana, gotten her and Robin home safe and then slept for a good 12 hours in their guest room, waking only to receive medical attention from Robin. Diligent, tender Robin with a great bedside manner and the kind of eyes that would make a man work hard to get better. Of course, she was not interested in him "that way," nor he in her (not really, as the consequences would be more than several humans could handle), but it had been a long time since he had any sort of female companionship in his life and he was starting to feel it. Plus the whole "fearing for your life, surviving torture and being pushed hard enough to shoot a man in the back" thing really made him wish he had someone to share the experience with.
But, for now, all he had was Chuck and the hamburger. It would have to do.
"The drones, they can be tiny. They can be in your car and you wouldn't know it," Chuck was droning on. "They know everything you're doing and if you don't believe that, you're an idiot."
"I don't know," Stu said between mouthfuls. "I still think there are places where you can keep a low profile if you want to."
He got three-fourths of the way through his burger before Dave walked in and saddled up next to him.
"Got time for a beer, Sheriff?"
"I'm on the clock, but meet me after? Six-ish work for you?"
"If it's OK with the bartender."
Chuck gave them a look and walked back to the kitchen without saying a word.
"Six o'clock, then," Dave said.
Stu pulled himself off his bar stool with a grunt. It had been two weeks since the torture and car wreck and other car wreck and he was beginning to think the soreness was going to stick around forever like an unwanted cousin sleeping on your couch.
"I won't have any trouble staying busy till then," Stu said and it was the truth. He had made the decision, with the blessing of his sister and his sister's beautiful partner, to pretend the last week had never happened, to clean up as much as he could and to go around to the community and talk with everyone he could to make sure things were cool. But not using the word "cool." The phrase he had come up with was "are you OK after the recent nastiness last week" and go from there.
So far, everyone he had spoken to had been "OK" and everyone had an opinion on why the town had been overrun, ranging from "it was the government coming for our guns" to "it was the United Nations coming from our guns" to "wanna see my guns?" Stu would have felt terror at the future of his country had each person not been friendly, hearty and understanding. No one threatened to use said guns and no one seemed overly afraid of something as monumental as a siege happening again. No one blamed the Rhodes and their friends.
One conversation in particular had stuck with him. Sidney Layton, who lived next to Kenny's repair shop, had seen Stu coming and waved him off.
"I don't need you stopping by," he said. "I heard all about it, you sneaking around, trying to get help. You did good. Don't worry about it."
Stu slowed his approach but he still wanted to talk a bit and Sidney let him up on the porch of his shabby home. The older man threw himself on an old rocking chair that creaked and shifted under his weight but held.
"I'm making sure everyone is OK after last week," Stu said, going in to his stump speech.
"Got roughed up a bit," Sidney said. "So I'm not asking questions about where everyone went. Figured I'd find some bodies if I went looking for 'em. I ain't looking."
"That's good," Stu said. "I want you to know we're working to make sure nothing like this ever happens again."
"Save it. If it happens, it happens."
"Even if..." Stu said, asking a leading question.
"Kenny Kirk once drove six miles in a blizzard to come save my ass when I got stuck. Ron, he set up the wifi in the house. Didn't charge me. That smaller fella, he mows the lawn at the church. Nobody asked him to. He just does it plus he gives me a big bag of cucumbers every August. He heard somewhere I like cucumbers and I do. Love em. Put them in a bowl with vinegar, water and a pinch of sugar and it's the one snack by doctor says I can still eat."
A chilly wind blew across the porch. October had given way to November and November in Nebraska means the slight nip in the air turns serious. Sidney rubbed his arms.
"Truth is when you're in the middle of nowhere you don't get to pick your neighbors. But that doesn't make them any less your neighbors."
With that, Sidney stood up and walked back in to the house without saying another word. Stu still had a couple dozen houses left to visit at that point, but he had a feeling Sidney had summed it up. Something also felt a little dirty about hearing it said out loud. Of course no one was going to run to the press or the government or the United Nations or whoever because sometime, someday soon, they would need their neighbor's help.
Stu saved the hardest conversation for last, which was why he was in "Bar" eating a so so hamburger. Dave walked in around five minutes late with a backpack slung over his shoulder and sat next to Stu at the bar.
"Sheriff," he said.
"You want another pitcher of beer?" Stu asked.
"No, not today. But we can definitely head to that booth in the back."
Chuck made a slight guttural sound to express his disapproval as Stu grabbed his plate and headed to the other end of the building. Dave plopped down and ran his fingers through his facial hair, which he had started growing out since Willie's death.
"We probably need to get some things straight."
"OK. Shoot."
"Well, if I were a pessimist, here's how I would sum up last week. I would think that local law enforcement knew a secret about me and my family and that I had no assurances that he would be keeping that secret. I'd also think that he saw, first hand, a lot of death and violence that we might have been responsible for. And, if I were a real pessimist, I would worry that he would blame me, personally, for the takeover of his town and all the pain and suffering that it brought."
Stu finished up his fries and Dave laid it out.
"Good thing I'm not a pessimist."
The heavy glass plate made a loud noise as Stu shoved it aside and put his elbows on the table, meeting Dave's gaze. Eye contact had never been his strong suit but Stu held this time. He felt it was important.
"I've spent the last couple weeks talking to people about what happened. A lot of people have vouched for you."
"That's good."
"I don't know if you know how I ended up here, but something very bad happened to me where I used to work."
"I heard about that."
"I had a real rough go of things and got a lot of advice but there was only one thing that anybody said that helped me out. A therapist told me that being in pain and constantly feeling like shit was a good thing. He said it was proof that I cared about the people I had hurt and if I cared about the people I had hurt, I couldn't be a bad person. Bad people hurt others and don't care or don't even remember it. Good people care."
"I think that's right," Dave said.
"I don't know you or your folks very well, but I've heard from a lot of people that you care."
"Again, that's good."
"I also heard why folks think this happened and it goes back to those first two murders. Those assholes coming to town, shutting everything down, kidnapping and beating people, all of that, nobody blames you for that and I guess I don't either. But one of your own killing some local girl and then you guys taking the law into your own hands? You can see where that might be a problem moving forward."
"Sure."
"Plus those two killings put you on Stander's radar, didn't it? Even if people don't blame you, it's not a huge leap."
"Not a huge leap at all."
"So you can see my problem."
"Yes, I can."
Stu kept unbroken eye contact while Dave got a stupid grin on his face.
"Something funny?" Stu asked.
"I'm just sitting here thinking," Dave said. "I'm thinking of all the guys like me who have sat across the table from guys like you. How this is such a complicated thing but it's been done, dozens of times for hundreds of years. I've never had to have this conversation and you've never had to have this conversation but what we're doing, it ain't new. Not even a little."
Dave reached into his backpack and pulled out a worn, leather bound book, the pages dry and flaky. It hit the table with a light thud and Dave started opening pages.
"I found this when we were going through Willie's things. It's a history of sorts. I never knew it existed until a few days ago and I've been reading over it."
As he watched the pages flip, Stu could see a variety of different handwritings on the yellow pages, all of which were incomprehensible upside down.
"Sometimes there were bribes involved. Sometimes, and it says this here, the police were 'bound by the constraints of polite society.' That's an A+ phrase, right there. Sometimes the local law enforcement were relatives, sometimes there were some other type of quid pro quo..."
"What are you getting at?" Stu said.
"Nobody ever threatened anyone," Dave said. "I've looked and looked and at no point has anyone like me said 'keep this secret or we'll hurt you.' Never. And this book goes back a ways."
"Were you thinking of threatening me?"
"No, I wasn't, but I think there's a bigger point here. I think what this means is our thing and...your thing, it can coexist in this place. I don't think that's true everywhere but in Cherry, I don't know. It works."
"It just works?"
"I think so."
Stu let his brain wander for a second to what would have happened in Detroit or Minneapolis or Sterling or Tallahassee or Burbank if one of their law enforcement had set upon a seven-foot-tall wolf creature. Someone would have been there with a camera phone or a dash cam. Someone would have uploaded a video and it would have broken the Internet. Someone would have made a meme about werewolves and it would have turned into a joke before the actual event could be processed.
Here, it just worked.
"Of course," Dave continued, "you came to us at a rough time. This book shows that there have been other times when we had to police ourselves, so to speak. What we're dealing with is not uncommon, but we have to worry about things my ancestors never had to. I would love to give you my word that our town is safe and you won't have to worry about us anymore, but it's looking less and less likely that I can do that."
"Then let me police things for you," Stu said, moderately shocked that the words had come out of his mouth. "If I'm your neighbor than that's not a half way thing. If you need help, even with your werewolf whatever-the-hell-you-call-yourselves problems, come to me. Or at least keep me in the loop."
The stupid grin returned to Dave's face.
"I can give you my word on that, Sheriff."
Stu smiled too.
"Thank you, citizen."
They left with a handshake and a promise to have Robin cook for the lot of them sometime in the spring. Dave said he had somewhere to be and beat it after a few more minutes of bullshitting and Stu was on the way out before Chuck gave him a quick whistle.
"Sheriff," Chuck said. "You didn't pay for your burger."
"Sorry, sorry," Stu said, fishing out his wallet.
"I'm not running a charity, here,"
"Of course not," Stu said, smiling before adding one more word.
"Neighbor."
•••
Dilly had taken his grandfather's death hard. Josie could tell because it lit a fire under his ass.
He had never been a lazy kid but after "the incident" (a term that the group had once used to describe what happened to Byron and now used for the occupation of the town), he started working around the clock as if he were going to war. They were homeless, of course, and had no worldly possessions to their name, so the first 48 hours were spent gathering up donations from neighbors and getting the basics in place. Willie's place was now vacant and even though it was the last place they wanted to stay, given the circumstances, it was by far the most convenient.
After a day or two's worth of grieving and depression that came with having committed several murders and losing your grandfather, Josie found her son up early one morning doing reps on a set of dumbbells that had either been donated or abandoned by Willie.
"Hitting the weights a little early?" she had asked.
"It's the only time I have," he said. "I've got school, practice and then the other practice with dad later."
"You guys are going out?"
"I told him we need to. All of us. We need to get back to doing it for ourselves, you know?"
Josie did know. Since "the incident" things had changed significantly for her, as well. Her transformations had once been excruciating and traumatizing; now she was mildly looking forward to the next one. There was also a sense, growing every day in her mind, that Dilly was something special in the wolf world and she wanted to explore that and work with him but had decided at this point not to press the issue too hard.
"If you want, we can go out together without dragging everyone else in to it."
"I'll talk to dad and let you know," he said between grunts as he started a set of arm curls. "But that sounds good."
"I'm stronger than them, you know," he said just as Josie was leaving the room.
"I know. They know it too. But it doesn't mean you get to stop listening to them," she replied, dead serious, and was met with grunts and the clanking of metal.
Willie's death had the same impact on Dave, but in a different way. He was motivated but it was out of anger, not preparation, youthful drive, hormones or whatever else Dilly was on. Dave had lost the chance to reconcile with his father and that meant short fuses and cold shoulders. It also meant they had yet to really discuss what came next. They had never needed to have a discussion more but they kept putting it off.
Dave was spending a lot of time over at Willie's house going through his mountains of stuff and when he found the unmarked diary detailing the history of wolves in Cherry, he immersed himself in it. He would spend long nights at the kitchen table making notes, trying to figure out who had made particular entries, what codes meant and going over every line like it was some sort of code. They hadn't gone to sleep at the same time since the night Willie died, where they had held each other tightly in the guest bedroom, both wracked with equal parts gratitude and depression. Since that night it had spent most of his time at the table and on phone calls he didn't want Josie to know he was having.
It was Dave who eventually came to her, two weeks or so into their stay at casa de Willie, as Josie was getting ready for bed.
"I've been going over this book."
"Yes you have."
"Know what I haven't found?"
She put down her book and rolled on her side to face him.
"What?"
"Anything like you."
"What are you talking about?"
Dave stepped inside the door frame and sat on the bed.
"It's stupid, but I always figured Kenny's mom and Ron's mom and all these families who do what we do, I always figured they were male wolves and female wolves, right? I mean, my mom, I knew she could change but Willie never let her run with us and she died so suddenly I never got to talk to her about it."
"Right."
"And when you started to change after Dilly was born, I figured that's how it worked. I remember asking Willie once and he told me that's how it worked and I took it for granted. But I've been over this book twice and I think I understand what I'm reading and there's no mention of female wolves in there. None at all."
"That kind of makes sense," Josie said. "Women weren't always equal, right? Maybe they were just omitted."
"I thought that too, but look..."
He crossed over and carefully opened the book. Even with ginger handling, a few pieces of the old pages broke off the edges as he sat.
"There's a census in here, a list of all our people starting all the way back in pioneer days, like the 1860s or so. Apparently when a man took a wife and started a family, sometimes the male heirs would be able to make the transformation and others wouldn't. They would mark it, here..."
He leaned forward and pointed at the one piece of scribbled writing.
"...that symbol, see it? That means they could make the transformation. Even if they didn't do it very often, they got the mark. There's one section..."
Dave flipped through the pages, concentrating hard.
"...here. Some of us who could make the transformation moved away and they had to make a promise they'd never transform again. There's a whole section on it, the oath they had to take and everything. But they still got the mark next to their name."
"And no women ever had that mark?"
"None."
Josie was suddenly very aware of her heartbeat. Willie was the only one who had access to this information and hadn't shared it with his pack. It's anyone's guess if he wanted the information out at all. The fact that he had been trying to keep this from her for unclear purposes sent waves of anxiety crashing in her mind.
"So I did something," Dave said.
"What did you do?"
"I called Connall."
Conall had not contacted anyone in the group since driving away with a busted leg, but his presence had been felt. There had been strange text messages that had come to all their phones from unknown numbers offering vague words of encouragement. One read "Thanks for handling things on your end" and another "Way to kick ass, green horns". Two days before, a cryptic message reading "whenever you're ready, there's a whole world out here" was delivered, and everyone was waiting for Dave to call a meeting and discuss how to respond.
"Is he still pissed about the leg?"
"He's still pissed about a lot of things," Dave said.
"Don't attack my kid."
"No argument here, but I went ahead and asked him about female wolves. Turns out, you're special."
"Really?"
"Really special," Dave said. "So special Conall said he needs to see us, in Ireland as soon as we can get there. He doesn't want to put pressure on us, which is why he's kept his distance, but he wants you, me and Dilly on a plane."
"We don't have a house. How are we going to afford plane tickets to Ireland?"
"He and his group are paying."
"OK."
"He's willing to pay for more than just a plane trip. He said he'll 'set us up' somewhere. If we want, we can pick somewhere else to live and Conall and his group will set us up with housing, cars, jobs. Whatever we want."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Does that offer stand for everyone?"
"I didn't ask."
"Why can't he 'set us up' here?"
"Because he said this place is compromised. The company that sent Stander and all of them, they know we're here and so do other groups."
"What other groups?"
"He didn't specify, but he said there are other groups that would want to track us down and he didn't know how well he'd be able to protect us if we stay."
For the first half of her life, Josie couldn't wait to get out of Cherry, out of the State, maybe further. Her parents had once told her they didn't care where she lived as long as it was close to an airport and she had big dreams of living abroad, getting to know exotic locales intimately and finding a man from outside her culture. These were dreams she'd often revisited, particularly in her youth. Then Dave and Dilly kept her in Cherry and while her fantasies never left, she accepted that they were fantasies and would never be reality.
But around the time she hit her early 30s, her mood started to shift. She loved her job. She loved her family. Her situation was unique and while she hated driving 30 miles for basics like food, her roots were deep and set. Every time she visited a city, the crowds and traffic drove her nuts and slowly but surely, the worldly woman she had envisioned had turned into the comfortable Nebraskan she had become.
Byron had been her last shot at the fantasy, the attractive, charismatic man who could whisk her away to different places and different experiences, at least, that's what he had promised. Part of her had wanted that so intensely she considered leaving her child and abandoning her husband to torture and death to attain it. But in the end she hadn't. She had said "yes" to running away with Byron and changed her mind almost immediately. He didn't take the rejection well, as most charismatic people don't. Later she learned he was already in over his head and if she had gone with him, it would have come with a cost that would have consumed her.
She took a second to look at Dave. He was a little fat, a little homely and while he was often in a good mood, the heat he gave off would never be enough for her. She would never want him. She loved who he was but would never love him. But Dave had come up with the plan to stop Stander, Dave had pulled it off, Dave had stepped up and while he was never going to be a good leader, he might be the guy who could lead everyone well enough to get the job done.
Maybe that was close enough to love for the time being.
"Let's go to Ireland," she said. "But tell him we're all coming. We'll hear what he has to say and then come back to Cherry."
"That's what I was thinking."
"Good. Tell him."
"What about us," Dave said. "What about you and me?"
"We'll come back to Cherry," Josie said. "We'll figure it out."
Dave left the room and in a flash, Josie followed, spun him around, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. Her mouth opened to Dave's surprise and their tongues touched, then came into full contact as the kisses got deeper. They made love in the guest room of Willie's house, the future uncertain but for a few moments feeling like they were home with each other.
•••
A long time ago, Dave loved his job. Before last week, he sort of tolerated it, a victim of routine. After Willie's death going to work seemed like a completely necessary and wholly honorable waste of his time. The kids annoyed him more, the paperwork drove him nuts and he couldn't keep some of the images from the siege – the dead bodies, the gore in his living room, the smell of gun powder and radiator fluid and blood from flooding his nostrils.
It was those memories that led Dave to keep his phone in his pocket instead of his desk, just in case something went wrong and he needed to leave. He didn't have to wait long. During third period on his third day back, the phone rang and the number had one or two too many numbers in it. He was in the middle of class so it went to voicemail, but the same number called again and again and again until he finally excused himself and stepped into the hall.
"Conall?" he said, taking a very educated guess.
"So I was in my ceremonial robes, I hate the ceremonial attire. It's green and uncomfortable and itches like hell. So I'm talking to the Council, right, in the main hall and all these arsholes are staring at me..."
"I'm kind of busy right now."
"Teaching? You're blowing me off for your job? Fuck you, man."
"Just..." Dave floundered around, trying to not make things worse. "Move it along, man."
"Right," Conall said. "Wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your boss. You might rip his throat out and have a good gargle with his O negative."
"Conall..."
"Right, so I'm in these hideous green felt robe that's got some sort of significance and the council calls me forward and you know what I do?"
"Does it involve the 'F' word?" Dave asked.
"Strangely, yes, but not the one you think. I fart really loud, just lay it all out there. Kaboom, you know. Everyone starts making a stink, as it were, and even those thick green robes can't hide the smell.
Dave pictured a huge, Catholic style cathedral complete with the smell of smoke and oil and thick tapestries hanging from the balcony of the hall. The juxtaposition of the setting and the action made a smile tug at the edges of his mouth.
"Why did you do that?"
"The call of nature, as it were."
"What'd they say?" Dave asked.
"The leader was all 'for God's sake, boy, show some decorum."
They both chuckled, Conall's laugh still full of brogue. Dave was happy for the break and to hear from his friend.
"They've got the wrong guy if decorum is what they're looking for," Dave said.
"Fuckin' a. You know why I was there? Talking to the Council?"
"I'm guessing it was about us."
"Two for two, sort of," Conall said. "I was there talking to them about your wife."
For a moment, Dave flashed back to the previous night where Josie had been all over him, her hands constantly moving and grasping as if he was about to disappear.
"What about her?"
"Well, you know that little trick she can do? The one where she grows hair all over her body and totally kicks my ass? That one?"
"Yeah," Dave said. "She's pretty special."
"I'm not sure you realize just how special," Conall said. "I'm pretty plugged in over her and I've only heard whispers of women that can do what your Josie can do and I had never seen it with my own eyes until she kicked my ass and busted my leg."
Putting two and two together, Dave's heart started to race.
"So you went to talk to The Council?"
"I went to talk to The Council."
"And what did they say?"
"Dave, my friend," Conall said. "I'd like to tell you about the legend of the Alpha Prime."
Today, she says: "I think people should know how it all was. I think the young should. But I remember my own indifference to memories of the First World War and I understand that they don't—don't understand that one said, 'Meet me at the theatre, and if that's not there I'll go on to the restaurant, if that's still standing...' and it was all just a part of life."
This, then, was the life-style of the 1940s, a dangerous world in every way, into which we step through the pages of _Green for Danger._
With hindsight and today's knowledge, we are prepared for the casual gallantry and stiff upper lip: "Sorry to break up this happy party, but as you may have noticed, there's an air-raid on!" But what could prepare us for the hospital humorist who "sat up in bed and every time a bomb fell tapped himself on the back of the head and made his false teeth shoot out?"
World War II is emerging as a fiction genre of its own these days, but the authentic voice of the time cannot be duplicated and that is what we have in _Green for Danger._
Christianna Brand, after many early struggles with poverty, was a happy bride of a year when war broke out and her husband, a qualifted surgeon, immediately went into the army with the rank of major. She accompanied him on his posting until he was sent overseas.
She says: "He was posted to a military hospital in Woolwich and I took rooms in a little house as close to the hospital walls as possible—of course he had to live in. Woolwich is on the Thames, and harbours the biggest arsenal in the country; when the blitz came, every bomber unloaded a few on us for luck as they went in over London, and anything they had left over, on the way out—they followed the Thames, as the light on the water was impossible to disguise. For five months, we were bombed almost every night. They would drop flares to light up the ground below and then bomb what they saw; what they saw was all too often the hospital; and they had a horrid habit of chaining two bombs together which did make a biggish bang: you saw the flares coming, floating down and then this pretty unearthly scream of the bombs falling and whacko!...
"I got permission to share the V.A.D.'s air-raid shelter—the V.A.D.s, if you don't know, were the young women who came in from every walk of life, got a little bit of training and worked as nurses.... The shelter was tube-shaped, underground, and we slept on straw palliases on wooden bunks. At least the others slept, worn out with their days' hard work, but I was always a damned insomniac anyway, and heard the approach of every bomb. You got so used to it—your stomach used to turn over, but I don't think we ever gave our minds to what might happen, would happen, if we got a direct hit....
"You might remember that all this time we were living on, I think, two ounces of meat a week, two eggs, a small ration* of bread, an ounce or two of butter and of tea and sugar. Anything else you could get, you could have—if you stood in a queue for it. I once walked down Fleet Street holding a lemon which someone had sent from North Africa, and the buses would draw up and the driver call out, 'What did you do to get that, mate?'"
Meanwhile, her first novel, _Death in High Heels_ , was going the dreary rounds of publishers, accumulating fifteen rejections before it was accepted and published and "landed up without a comma changed, as quite a little best seller." _Heads You Lose_ followed and was bought for serialization by _The Saturday Evening Post._
She was informed by authorities that the most valuable war work she could do was to continue with her writing, which was bringing desperately needed foreign currency into the country. (Wars are not cheap.) So, hunched over her typewriter, her tin helmet at the ready, she began what was to be one of the most memorable books of that era, _Green for Danger._
"We all led what had become to us perfectly ordinary lives. I wrote _Green for Danger_ under these circumstances, battering away all day at my typewriter (earning good dollars... much needed in this country) and as soon as light was needed, drawing all the blackout curtains together; one gleam of light and the air raid wardens were at your door. When the air raid syrens [sic] began to howl, as they did every night as dark fell, put on my tin hat—forbidden day and night to go out without it—and collected my lucky chestnut.... Then up about a quarter of a mile to the hospital gates. Our ack-ack guns were shooting up at the bombers and down came a hail of what we used to, incorrectly, call shrapnel—great misshapen lumps of metal, red hot; one hit me once and tore the whole front of a thick woolly jersey away.... But that night, I'd be in my upstairs room, banging away at my typewriter again; and I do mean, thinking nothing of it—life going on. Syrens. Tin hat on. Up through the flak to the shelter again, rather upset because a sherry glass of mine had been broken....
"Of course all the nonsense went on for three or four years afterwards, the doodle-bugs and the huge, silent, terrible rockets and the lot; but _Green for Danger_ had been launched by then."
And what a launch! _Green for Danger_ was to become a major success, both for her and for the British film industry when Alastair Sim brought Inspector Cockrill to vivid life. Not quite the Inspector Cockrill the author had visualized, but "done so beautifully... a marvellous film..." that she was able to forgive the discrepancies. And, of course, the real Inspector Cockrill was still hers—and went on to fresh triumphs, appearing in many subsequent books and short stories.
But it is the Inspector Cockrill—"Cockie"—of _Green for Danger_ that we remember best as he begins his thoroughgoing investigation, perhaps from slightly less than worthy motives. ("The sirens broke belatedly into their unearthly howl; a flare dropped slowly over the downs, out towards Torrington, splitting the early winter darkness with its gradually brightening gleam—and where there are flares, there are very soon going to be bombs. Inspector Cockrill was interested in bombshells and he did not like bombs; and there was a fifteen-mile drive home in the general direction of those flares. 'I'll stay,' he said briefly.")
For the war itself is the motivating force of this entire mystery. Were it not for the war, most of these characters would never have met. They would have continued living their peacetime lives, many miles apart—both geographically and socially—never to have met at all.
But the war came, people were conscripted, volunteered, went into active military and medical duty—and met other people and situations they would never have encountered in their normal peacetime lives. Still, life went on, disrupted though it might have been. Still, people found time for laughter, love... and murder.
Despite the mass murder raining down from the skies, the forces of law and order swung into action when an individual was murdered on the operating table; horrifyingly, by one of the people dedicated to saving and preserving life. How? The operation was a routine one, the patient in good health apart from the fractured femur due to be mended—but the patient died.
Until this, Business as Usual had been the order of the day, but the blitz was one thing, and deliberate murder in their midst was something else. That did what the bombs had not been able to do—disturbed them, upset them, frightened them. As Cockie pointed out, "'You can take the blitz in your stride; but a couple of unexplained deaths, and you all get the jitters.'"
Not unreasonably, the reply was: "'"Unexplained" is the operative word.... I'm much more petrified of the blitz on the nights that it _does_ n't come; once it's there, it's there, but I don't like the uneasy waiting for it to begin; and I don't like waiting to be murdered—or to have my friends murdered.'"
For the second murder had rapidly followed the first: a nurse who had claimed to know the identity of the killer had been stabbed—with a scalpel. There had also been an unsuccessful attempt to kill another nurse by gassing her as she slept. Nerves were fraying, rumors abounded, and the main suspects found themselves not quite ostracized, but definitely set apart from the rest of the staff. ("'I suppose it's all right to let her give the injections? After all she _is_ one of "them"...'"... "'My dear, the inmates of our shelter have petitioned that when there are air-raids, I shall sleep somewhere else; they think I'm going to rise up in the night and set fire to their palliasses with oil from the paraffin lamps!'"... "'The Mess was sitting around uneasily, jiggling their teaspoons in their saucers and jumping whenever we spoke to them, so we made ourselves scarce.'")
Opening in truly classic style, Chapter One introduces us to two victims and a clutch of suspects—all such pleasant and charming people that it seems impossible to imagine any of them in such roles. And yet... buried deep in the life of each of them is a private tragedy, a secret each would rather not have revealed.
Some secrets, of course, were open. Everyone knew that a girl had recently died under the anæsthetic administered by Lieutenant Barnes during one of his last operations as a civilian. He had been attacked by the girl's mother and had even been sent an anonymous letter about it. Sympathy had been on his side—until the fractured femur died under the anæsthetic he was administering.
Kindly Major Moon made no secret of the fact that he had lost a young son in a hit-and-run road accident and now found sad irony in the fact that the war had brought him an unexpected comfort. ("'Well, well—I can find it in my heart now to be grateful, I suppose; now that the war's come, I mean. He'd have been of age, you know; I'd have had to send him off, to see him go off to France or the East or somewhere.... I'd have had to wait and hunger for news of him; he might have been posted missing, perhaps, or killed, and without any news of what had really happened. It's that telegram business.... I don't think I could have borne that.... Who would have thought in all these years that I could ever have found it in my heart to say that I was glad that my boy had been killed?"')
Everywhere they turned, the war and its effects were inescapable. If it hadn't been for the war, all those tablets of morphia wouldn't have been in such wide circulation. But, during the blitz, it seemed a simple and necessary precaution to medical people, who had no difficulty in acquiring such pills. ("'Most of us keep a small dose handy in case of being buried in an air-raid.... If you were trapped and in pain, it would be comforting to have some, and might save another person risking their lives to give you a shot of something.'")
With consummate skill, the author weaves her web of pain and deceit, deadly deeds and twisted motives, catching the reader at every turn. Once you've read it, go back and reread it and see how cleverly all your assumptions have been used against you, how smoothly and inevitably you have been fooled.
Today Christianna Brand lives with her surgeon husband in a beautiful Regency house in the Maida Vale section of London and is a proud grandmother. She has served on the Committee of the Crime Writers' Association and was chairman from 1972 to 1973. Ever mindful of her early struggles, she is endlessly helpful to new authors. Friends who find themselves in hospital (or in jail) are the recipients of a constant flow of cards, verses, and little notes, thoughtfully spaced to keep boredom at bay and ensure that said friend is not lying alone and neglected when the mail is given out. At the monthly meetings of the Crime Writers' Association, just follow the sounds of hilarity and you will find Christianna Brand holding court, the center of a lively and appreciative group of colleagues.
I told her once that I didn't write fan letters—this is the exception that proves the rule.
—Marian Babson
* Actually, bread was not rationed until after the war.
CHAPTER I
Joseph Higgins, postman, pushed his battered red bicycle up the long ascent that leads to Heron's Park, three miles out of Heronsford, in Kent. It had been a children's sanatorium before the war, and now was being hurriedly scrambled into shape as a military hospital. Its buildings stood out big and grey and bleak among the naked winter trees and he cursed them heartily as he toiled up the hill, his bicycle tacking groggily from side to side on the country road. All this for a mere seven letters! Six miles out of his way for a handful of letters that would probably not even be looked at till the morning! He spread them out, fanwise, in one hand, his elbow resting heavily on the handle-bar, and examined them resentfully. The first was addressed to the Commanding Officer. One of the new medicos, guessed Higgins shrewdly, holding it up to the light. A nice linen envelope and a Harley Street postmark; and doctors' handwriting was always illegible....
Gervase Eden had also cursed as he sat in his consulting-room, confirming to the C.O. at Heron's Park that he would report for duty, 'forthwith'. The last of his lovely ladies had just tripped off down the steps in a flutter of cheques and eyelashes and invitations to dinner, and already feeling miraculously better for her _heavenly_ little injection (of unadulterated H2O). He could not flatter himself that the pay of a surgeon in His Majesty's Forces was going to keep him in anything like the luxury to which he was rapidly becoming accustomed; but there it was—one had put one's name down during the Munich crisis, and already it was becoming a tiny bit uncomfortable to be out of uniform.... At least he would be free of the lovely ladies for a spell. For the thousandth time he looked at himself in the mirror, looked at his ugly face and greying hair, at his thin, angular body and restless hands—and wondered what on earth women saw in him, and wished they wouldn't. He rang the bell for his pretty little secretary and asked her to post the letter. She immediately burst into tears at the thought of his going, and after all it was only common charity to spend a few minutes in comforting the poor little soul.
Higgins shuffled over Eden's letter and turned to the next in the bunch. A huge, square envelope, covered with a huge, square handwriting; a woman's handwriting, vigorous, generous, splashed across all the available space; one of the nurses, he supposed....
Jane Woods had written two letters, one to an address to Austria, the other to Heron's Park. She finished off three sketches of delicious, though impractical, syren suits and posted them to Mr. Cecil, of Christophe's in Regent Street (who paid her three guineas apiece for them, and thereafter presented them as his own); and, consigning the rest of her work to the waste-paper-basket, she rang up the circle of delightful riff-raff who constituted her friends, and summoned them to a party. "Eat, drink and sleep together, my loves," cried Miss Woods, "for to-morrow we join the V.A.D.s!" She stood, glass in hand, before the low mantelpiece of her elegant little, modern, one-roomed flat, a big, dark woman of about forty, with a plain, rather raddled face, an enormous bust, and astonishingly lovely legs. "Jane, darling, we _told_ you not to go in for those fantastic lectures!" cried the riff-raff, who were all going in for fantastic lectures themselves; and, "Woody, darling, I simply can't imagine you, sweetie, I mean _bed_ pans and everything!" and, "Woody, darling, what on earth made you _do_ it?" She treated them to a tender little sketch of herself in the character of Florence Nightingale, hanging over the truckle bed of some suffering V.C. ("Is that you again, Flo, with that bloody nightlight?"): and, when at last she was alone, sobbed off her eye-black on to her pillow, because her intolerable conscience had driven her to this tremendous sacrifice; the sacrifice of all the fun and gaiety and luxury of her successful career, in blind atonement for a sin not even of her own commission; a sin, just possibly, not even committed.
The next letter, also, was in a woman's handwriting, a girlish hand, sloping downwards a little at the end of each line. "Sign of depression," said Joseph Higgins to himself, for he had read about that only a day or two ago in the Sunday paper. "Another of the nurses, I expect, and doesn't want to come, poor girl!" But here he was wrong, for Esther Sanson did, very badly, want to go to Heron's Park.
She stood with the letter in her hand, looking down at her mother and laughing, for Mrs. Sanson was deep in the latest drama of the Heronsford Women's Voluntary Service. "... but Mummy she _could_ n't! I mean, not _all_ that baby wool into sailors' stockings for going under seaboots! I don't believe a word of it, darling; you're making it up!"
"On my word of honour, Esther, every spot of it, one pair pale pink and the other pale blue. I couldn't believe my eyes when she showed them to me. 'But Mrs. Huge,' I said to her..."
"Not Mrs. Huge, Mummy—her name _could_ n't be Mrs. Huge?"
"I promise you, darling, Mrs. Huge, or something exactly like it, anyway. 'Mrs. Huge,' I said to her..." She broke off suddenly and all the light and laughter went out of her blue eyes. "Who have you been writing to, Esther? Is it the letter to the hospital?"
"I've said I'll go as 'immobile' V.A. D.," said Esther quickly. "I've said I can't leave Heronsford. I'll only be working at the hospital during the daytime."
"There could easily be an air-raid in the daytime, Esther. Supposing I were caught up here in a top floor flat, in an air-raid; absolutely helpless with my back so ersatz and rotten...."
"Your back's been much better lately, darling; I mean, look how you were able to go out to-day to the W.V.S. meeting."
"Yes, but it's aching dreadfully now, in consequence," said Mrs. Sanson, and immediately, with the strange inner magic of the true hypochondriac, blue shadows were painted about her eyes, and her face was all etched into delicate lines of pain. "Really, Esther, I do think, dearest, that you're sacrificing both of us, unnecessarily; after all, you're _needed_ , here at home." She sat curled up like a kitten on the sofa, watching her daughter from under her long, soft, golden eyelashes; and tried on a little act that never had failed before. "Of course, my darling, if you really _want_ to go..."
Esther stood very still at the window, staring with unseeing eyes at the lovely Kentish countryside rolled out below her, and for the first time in her life she did not respond. She was twenty-seven, tall and too thin, with the narrow feet and slender hands that are supposed to go with good breeding; not beautiful but with the pure oval face and lifeless, leaf-brown hair of a madonna, descended from her niche in the wall of some quiet old church, to walk, gentle and reserved, through the tumult of an unfamiliar world. Unused as she was to opposing her mother's will, she knew that here was a matter in which she must make her own decision; and she said at last, slowly turning away from the window, standing with her back to the light: "It's not that I want to go; but I think I should."
"But, darling, _why_?"
"Because everybody's doing something, Mummy, and I must do my share. Besides, at least it will give me some sort of training, some sort of—well, _I_ don't know—some sort of a life. If anything were to happen to you, darling, think how lost and helpless I should be. I wouldn't have any money, I wouldn't know anything, I wouldn't know anyone. But with this behind me—and I've always wanted to nurse..."
"Oh, well, as to that," said Mrs. Sanson, "you've got a terribly exalted idea of nursing, you know. I mean, it's horrid really, darling, honestly it is; nothing but dirt and squalor and nasty smells."
Since Esther had tenderly nursed her mother through several years of perfect health, there was not very much that she could learn from her on that subject. She merely smiled sadly and said that she would have to risk not liking the work. "I'm not going for pleasure, after all, am I? I shall probably scrub floors all day long and never even get as far as making a bed." She came over suddenly and sat on the floor, leaning her head wearily against her mother's knees. "Darling—be kind to me! Do understand. It isn't that I like to go, but I think I ought to. It's your sacrifice, too, Mummy dearest; we've both got to make it. You're always the brave and gay and strong one; be brave for us both this time, and let me go."
But her mother shrank away from her, curling herself up into a small, frightened ball in the corner of the sofa, covering her big, blue eyes with her little hands. "It's the air-raids, Esther. The airraids! Supposing I were up here, all alone, helpless—and bombs began to fall! How should I manage? What could I do? Esther, don't go, darling, and leave me here alone; tell them you won't go, tell them you can't go—tear the letter up!"
But Esther got to her feet and dragged herself downstairs and posted it.
Higgins knew the handwritings on the next two letters. One was the crabbed old fist of Mr. Moon who had been surgeon in Heronsford as long as one could remember; the other was that of the local anæsthetist, Barnes. "I wonder if that means they're both coming 'ere?" thought Higgins, frowning down upon the two envelopes. "I'd've thought Barnes, at least, would've wanted to go somewhere else. Well, I suppose if they're in the Army they has to go where they're told."
Dr. Barnes said much the same thing to Mr. Moon as, having posted their letters, they walked up the hill together to their several homes. "I've applied to go to Heron's Park so that I can give my father a hand with the practice now and then; but we're in the Army now, sir, whether we like it or not."
"I think I do like it," said Moon, trotting along beside him, but, thanks to conscientious early-morning runs, not puffing at all. He was a stooping, plump little man like a miniature Churchill but with all the pugnacity gone out of him; with soft pink cheeks and fluffy white hair, exceedingly thin on top. His blue eyes twinkled with kindness and he talked into his boots with little exclamations and chuckles, like a character out of Dickens, though with none of the foolish softness of Dickensian benevolence. "I think I do like it; I like it very much."
"It'll make a change," said Barnes.
"I can do with a change you know, Barney," said Moon, with a little twist of his kind old face. "That house of mine—now that I've got a chance to leave it, I wonder how I've endured it all these years. Fifteen years I've lived in that house, all by myself; and I don't think there's been a day that I haven't lifted my head suddenly and listened, thinking that I heard my boy laughing... thinking I heard him come clattering down the stairs. Well, well—I can find it in my heart now to be grateful, I suppose; now that the war's come, I mean. He'd have been of age, you know; I'd have had to send him off, to see him go off to France or the East or somewhere.... I'd have had to wait and hunger for news of him; he might have been posted missing, perhaps, or killed, and without any news of what had really happened. It's that telegram business.... I don't think I could have borne that. I don't think his mother could have borne it, if she'd been alive. The gods act in their own mysterious ways, don't they, Barney? Who would have thought in all these years that I could ever have found it in my heart to say that I was glad that my boy had been killed?"
Barnes was silent, not from any lack of sympathy, but because he was a man who could not easily put his feelings into words. He was in his late thirties, not very tall, not very good-looking, but radiant with the charm of absolute integrity; sensitive, modest, rather shy, honest to an almost painful degree. He, too, was glad to go into the Army. "That Evans girl," he said; "the one who died under the anæsthetic last week—I've had an anonymous letter about her to-day. I think it's a good thing I'm getting out of the practice for a bit; I shall be Brave Lieutenant Barnes, serving his King and Country, and by the time the war's ended the whole thing will have blown over."
"But, my dear boy, the death was no earthly fault of yours."
"Well, we know that now," said Barnes, shrugging his shoulders, "but I couldn't account for it at the time. I got it into my head that I'd seen the tubes crossed during the operation—the oxygen and the nitrous oxide, you know; it must have been my imagination, but I was worrying about what could have gone wrong, and I kept getting a sort of vision of the two tubes crossing instead of being separate. I went into the theatre and asked them to check up; everything had been put away by then, of course, but nobody had noticed anything wrong... only the staff are mostly local people and my asking must have put ideas into their heads, and I suppose they talked. The mother came to me after the inquest and accused me of murdering the girl. It was—oh, it was horrible! Of course they decided that the findings at the inquest had been cooked, to protect me. She said they would get up a round robin or something or other, and hound me out of the town. They could too, you know; that kind of mud sticks in a one-horse place like Heronsford. It's fortunate for me, really, that the war's come when it has, if it had to come; my father can carry on the practice while I'm in the Army, and by the time it's all over the affair will have fizzled out."
"The panel patient is a strange animile," said Moon, pacing along beside him thoughtfully. "When you think of all that you've done for this town, you and your father, Barnes...."
"I wonder if T. Atkins is going to be so very much different," said Barney pessimistically.
Two more letters; both from women. One very neat and correct, a pretty round hand, a pretty grey-blue notepaper, the stamp stuck neatly in the corner; the other on a cheap, white envelope, addressed to the Matron, the Sisters' Mess—the handwriting sputtering across the paper, uncertain and ill at ease. V.A.D. Frederica Linley, and Sister Bates of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, reporting to Heron's Park Military Hospital....
Frederica's father who for thirty years had been a legend in some outpost of Empire, had subsequently settled down in Dinard, where he could by no means be got to appreciate that the inhabitants had not only never heard of the legend, but had never even heard of the Outpost. The war put an end to this embarrassing state of affairs and, on a nightmare voyage to England, he met and affianced himself to a wealthy widow with a proper respect for the pioneers of the East. Frederica received the news with her habitual calm. "I think she's too frightful, Daddy," she said, "but it's you that's got to sleep with her, not me," and she absented herself from the new home upon a series of lectures, and finally wrote off to Heron's Park that she would be arriving for duty on such-and-such a day, as instructed. Since a blowsy trollop of fifty cannot be expected to care for competition from an exquisite, self-possessed little creature of twenty-two, the ex-widow was not sorry to see her go.
The reaction of Sister Bates to her transition from civilian to military nursing, was simple and forthright. She thought: "Perhaps I shall meet some nice officers!" and lest anyone be tempted to despise such single-minded devotion to the opposite sex, it may be pointed out that this innocent aspiration was shared in a greater or less degree, by twenty future members of the Sisters' Mess, and at least fifty V.A.D.s.
Seven letters. Old Mr. Moon and young Dr. Barnes, and Gervase Eden, surgeon, of Harley Street; Sister Marion Bates; Jane Woods and Esther Sanson and Frederica Linley, V.A.D.s. Higgins shuffled the envelopes together impatiently, and wrapped them round with a piece of grubby tape and thrust them into his pocket, plodding on, wheeling his bicycle up the hill. He could not know that, just a year later, one of the writers would die, self-confessed a murderer.
CHAPTER II
1
Sister Bates stood before the shabby plush curtains of the hospital concert hall, singing 'Trees'. Her pretty, foolish face was blank with fright, and her hands hung at her sides like lumps of raw, pinkish meat. Every nore interrupted. He was a corporal in the Company, and nobody knew whether his dress suit was or was not intentionally funny. He held up his hand for silence and announced gloomily: "The Commanding Officer."
Every new Commanding Officer begins his reign by having something repainted. It starts him off with a reputation for efficiency. "... and, my dear, he hadn't been two _days_ in the place before the beds in St. Elmo's had all been enamelled white!" Colonel Beaton had created quite a furore by having the word 'Rubbish' on the bins in the corridor, replaced by the word 'Salvage' in huge black and white letters, and at the moment his popularity was at its height. He reminded one of a bottle with the cork driven in too far. One longed to get hold of his head and pull it out sharply so as to give him a bit more neck. The bottle contained a certain amount of froth and very little else. He made a jolly little man-to-man speech.
"... sorry to break up this happy party, but as you may have noticed, there's an air-raid on! These entertainments are allowed strictly on the understanding that if things get too hot, we must close down." He explained earnestly: "If so many of the personnel were to be killed or injured at one time, it would make things very awkward," and everybody thought this silly and unnecessary because it was perfectly obvious and they all knew it quite well. "Now, I'm afraid there's been a bad show in Heronsford. The Air Raid Precaution centre has been hit, among other places, and there are a lot of casualties. The Cottage Hospital is filling up and we're taking some of the people in here. I want everybody to go to their posts at once." He added automatically: "Without panic," though anything less like panic it would have been difficult to imagine; and continued with a little duck towards Sister Bates who still stood uncertainly at the side of the stage: "We've all enjoyed the 'play' very much indeed; now it's time for work!" He scrambled down from the platform and hurried off out of the hall.
" _I_ didn't see no play," confided the up-patients to each other, quite bewildered.
The hospital was built in the shape of a gigantic wheel, its spokes forming the different departments and, above and below ground level, the wards; its hub a great circular hall, not unlike Piccadilly Circus Tube Station both in shape and purpose, and general appearance of seething activity. The lift ran straight up through the hall, the staircase curling round it in a slow spiral. The main operating theatre was on the ground floor, easily available to all the surgical wards; the emergency theatre in the basement was used only during raids.
Marion Bates was theatre sister at Heron's Park. She scurried down to see that the emergency night staff was prepared, and her mind was the strangest jumble of surgical instruments, 'Song of Songs' and Gervase Eden. She knew that her poor little effort at pleasing him had failed. "Thank God I didn't do the dance," she thought as she dived between the swing doors of the operating theatre. "He wouldn't have liked it. He'd only have laughed." The cold sweat broke out on her forehead at the thought of her madness in ever having supposed that it would impress him. If it had been Frederica Linley, now—but she knew that Frederica would never for a moment have considered so demeaning herself. Anyway, he was not with _her_ this evening. Linley had gone back to her ward and Gervase was strolling across the circular hall with Woods. Woods was forty if she was a day, and she had a face like the back of a cab. "Forceps, retractors, scissors, knives," muttered Sister Bates, checking over instruments in the hot, bright, green-and-silver security of her own domain; "forceps, retractors, scissors, knives. But Woods has marvellous legs!" Outside, the guns thundered and rolled, there was the scream of a bomb and the occasional noisy rattle of machine-gun fire; even down here, twenty feet below ground, the room shook with the crash of every gun. "I wonder what he's saying to Woods," thought Bates, automatically separating the jingling instruments. "I wonder if she's still in the hall with him. I think I'll just slip up and see..."
Frederica had gone back to her ward with Esther who happened to be on day duty there. "I'll stay and give you a hand," said Esther. "There are two empty beds and they're sure to fill them up with casualties. It's already as much as one person can manage in here, now that we're so short of orderlies."
The relieving V.A.D. was glad to see them. "The Orderly Officer hasn't made his round yet, Linley. Sister says when he comes will you ask him for some morphia for the two hernias and the appendix that were done to-day, and to say can he give you something for the asthma in number seven. She's gone down to St. Cat's ward."
"Oh, all right; thank you, Jones. I'll tell him."
"Blast these air-raids," said Jones cheerfully, struggling into her ugly blue outdoor coat for her dash across the grounds to the safety of her shelter. "They keep the men awake."
The ward was on the ground floor, opposite the main operating theatre; a long, high room, the tall windows now blacked out for the night; fifteen beds were ranged down each side, with an aisle down the centre, its narrow tables denuded of their bowls of flowers. The open lockers were tidily packed with the little miscellaneous possessions of the men; on the lower shelves their uniforms were folded into precise, square bundles and their overcoats and caps hung on hooks at the bed-heads. A corner of the ward, near the door, had been partitioned off into a small square 'bunk' for the sister, furnished with a desk and some chairs; here notes were kept, reports written up, discussions held with the medical officers, endless cups of tea consumed, and a good deal of more or less surreptitious entertainment carried on. A large pane of glass had been let into the side facing the ward, so that all that went on there could be seen from the bunk. It frequently escaped the attention of the occupants that, especially when the light was on in the bunk, everything that went on there could be seen from the ward.
The air-raid was becoming very heavy. The droning of aeroplanes overhead was incessant, and the building shook and shuddered with the thundering of the guns in the neighbouring fields, and now and again with the sickening thud of a bomb. The men moved uneasily in their beds and made foolish, defiant little jokes. "Cor that was a near one! Nearly scraped me 'air off, that one did! They've 'eard about the pudding we 'ad to-day, nurse, and they're trying to kill the cook!" The hospital humorist sat up in bed and every time a bomb fell tapped himself on the back of the head and made his false teeth shoot out.
"You have no business to have all these lights on," said Freddi severely, and went round clicking them off.
Night Sister appeared in the doorway. "Oh, Nurse Sanson—are _you_ here?"
"I said I'd stay on and help Nurse Linley, Sister, if that's all right?"
"Yes, of course. I expect she'll be very thankful. I shan't be able to help you much to-night, nurse; we've got four bad casualties in St. Catherine's.... However, if you need anything you must send for me at once. They've just rung through from Reception and there's a man coming in with fractured femur; get him into bed, will you? and just keep him quiet and warm; don't do anything about the leg. Major Eden will be along in a few minutes to see him. Let me know if he wants me." She hurried off again.
"What a flap!" said Frederica calmly, watching her go.
Two civilian stretcher-bearers appeared, carrying a grimy bundle on a canvas stretcher. "Is this right, Miss? The old gent in Reception asked us to bring him straight down here, as he hadn't got any orderlies to send with him."
"Yes, that's right: this corner bed, please. Esther, will you deal with this, while I get the rest of the ward settled? I think that'll be the best way to manage it."
The stretcher-bearers helped to lift the man on to the bed. "Wouldn't they take him in the resuscitation ward?" asked Esther, rather surprised at his condition.
"No, it seems they're filling up there, and he wasn't as badly shocked as some of the others. They've had two deaths there already. Never should have taken 'em in, really, but we thought there might be half a chance. The A.R.R Centre's been hit, and a pub out at Godlistone, and various other places. They're still digging one chap out. Rescue squad they was, waiting to go out on a job. Looks as if he'd needed a bit of rescuing himself!" said the stretcher-bearer cheerfully. He put out his hand and pushed the damp hair off the man's forehead, with the rough, crude gentleness of all his kind. "Poor old boy!" he said, and picked up his stretcher and, whistling softly, went away.
Poor old boy. He lay pathetically still under the blankets, packed in with hot-water bottles, his hands lying loosely at his sides, his eyes closed, his face covered with dirt and dust and grime. His leg was bandaged to a long wooden splint. His boots had been torn off by the blast and his clothes were cut to ribbons, but she made no attempt to undress or wash him till the warmth and rest should have strengthened his pulse and brought back depth to the flickering respirations. She put her hand to his mouth, however, to feel the cold breath on her knuckles, and he must have been unconscious of the gesture, for he moved his head a little, laying his grimy cheek against her forearm with a gesture of trust and dependence, infinitely touching. Tears filled her eyes. "Don't worry. Just lie still. It's all over now. You're safe now. You're going to be all right."
He opened his eyes and she turned away her head, for she knew all too well the expression she would see there. It was only six months since her mother had died. For two days and two nights she had waited in anguish while men toiled unceasingly at the mountain of rubble that had once been a tall block of flats; had torn with her own helpless hands at the beams and girders and concrete that, having proved so frail a shelter, now heaped themselves into so deep a tomb. At the end of the second day, a foreman had come to her and wearily wiping the filth and sweat from his face, had broken it to her that it was useless to go on; at any moment the building would collapse, burying his men with those already dead. The following day the systematic demolition of the building had begun, and after another day and night they had brought her mother out. As they carried her past, she had turned her head very slightly on the stretcher, and her eyes had met Esther's; there had been no smallest gleam of recognition in their depths: only pain and bewilderment and terror and—could it be?—reproach! And so she had died, Mummy who had been so pretty and sweet, so gay and funny, whose little faults of selfishness and petulance had endeared her to a selfless heart, immeasurably more than nobler qualities might have done. Alone in the world, she had gone like an automaton through the heartbreaking details of identification and burial; had sought ease for her aching remorse in the hard, rough, satisfying toil in the wards at the hospital; it was through these first bewildering days when she walked through her work in a dream of hideous unreality and lay, sleepless and haunted through night after endless night, that Woods and Frederica had first come to be her friends; against Freddi's passionless sanity no less than Woody's fond, maternal clucking, she had dashed out the first agony of her mother's death.... "But I was a fool to come back here," she thought, standing with the old man's cheek against her arm. "I was a fool ever to think that I could forget the way she looked, when I see it again and again in the faces of strangers...." In her heart, she reverted unconsciously to the formula of her childhood prayers. "Poor old man. God help him and make him get well."
Frederica came down the ward. "Esther, it's nearly ten and I've just realised I haven't had anything to eat. Could you possibly hold the fort for another ten minutes or so, while I rush out and get something? It's all such a muddle to-night, and the orderly's helping with stretchers, and I probably shan't get another chance and I shall be starving by morning?"
"Yes, of course, darling. Don't hurry. I can cope."
Freddi departed. Gervase Eden, who was Surgeon on Duty, came into the ward. "Sister here, nurse?"
"No, she's on one of the other wards. Shall I go and get her?" Outside the hospital, Eden was Gervase to Esther and Freddi and Woods, but she added the regulation 'Sir'.
"No, never mind. She's probably snowed under with casualties. Major Moon's just admitted a man..."
"Here he is, sir, in the corner bed. The Emergency Post label said, 'fractured pelvis'; he was given a morphia injection two and a half hours ago while they were digging him out. They don't give his name; I suppose they haven't found out yet who he is."
"You haven't cleaned him up?"
"Well, he was still very shocked when they brought him in, so I left him to warm up. That was right, wasn't it?"
"Yes, perfectly right," said Eden. He bent over the man's body, feeling with short, thin fingers deep into the flesh and muscle and down to the bone. The man shrank and groaned. "It's all right, old chap. It won't be long now, and then we'll give you another dose of something and send you off to sleep. It isn't very serious. You're going to be all right." He straightened himself and moved away from the bed. "Fractured his femur all right. Everything else seems to be intact. There's no internal injury." Sister arrived while he was washing his hands in the lavatory outside the ward. "I don't think we'd better touch him to-night," he said, explaining the state of affairs to her there. "He's too badly shocked, and anyway we've got all we can cope with. They've fixed him up with a splint at the Emergency Post and I think we'll leave him undisturbed and have him up to the theatre in the morning. He'll have to be X-rayed first..." He consulted a list. "Major Moon's doing a duodenal ulcer at half-past nine; could you have him ready after that?"
"Yes, sir, of course; it'll just give the X-ray people nice time."
"Well, that's what we'll do then. Leave the leg as it is, nurse; clean him up a bit, but don't worry him; and then you can give him a shot of morphia and I'll see him again in the morning."
"Put a couple of screens round him, nurse," said Sister, "so that the light doesn't disturb him; I'll leave out the morphia for you. Oh, and Major Eden, will you let me have something for the appendix Major Moon did to-day, and those two hernias? And the man in seven, Captain Newsome's cartilage, you know, he's developed a very troublesome asthma..." She drifted away with him, towards the bunk.
2
Frederica returned, still swallowing the last crumbs of her meal. "It's too heavenly of you to have stayed on like this, darling. Have you coped all right?"
"Yes, nothing's happened except a visit from Gervase." She repeated the gist of his instructions. "I'll stay and finish this fractured femur for you. You carry on; I'm perfectly all right."
Frederica whisked off up the ward. The lights flickered with the thudding of the guns. A bomb fell somewhere close. The old man stirred and groaned, "Bombs! Bombs! The bombs!"
"No bombs," said Esther reassuringly. "Only guns; not bombs."
He lost even his feeble interest in the bombs. "The _pain!_ "
"Just bear it for a little bit longer," she said, her hand on his wrist. "Just while I get your clothes off and clean you up a little bit; and then you shall go off to sleep and forget all about it." Standing with the basin balanced on her hip, towels over her arm, she looked down at him pityingly. Poor old boy; poor, frightened, broken, pitiful little old man.... She wrung out a piece of gauze in the hot water, and began gently to wash his face.
3
Night Sister had left out four quarter-grain tablets of morphia on a tray in the little bunk. Frederica looked up the prescriptions book. "Three 'stat' and one 's o s'. Will you give them, Esther? One to your man, and one each to the hernias; the appendix seems to be dozing off, so we'll leave his s o s till he seems to want it. I'll deal with this asthma question. Yes, all right, Wilson, I'm coming!"
Esther lighted the tiny spirit lamp, dropped one of the tablets into a teaspoon, added sterile water and re-sterilised the whole over the flame, mixing in the dissolving tablet with the needle of the hypodermic syringe; sucked up the solution into the syringe and carried it over, with a piece of iodined gauze, to one of the hernia patients. "There you are," she said, smiling at him, dabbing at the tiny puncture with the gauze. "That'll set you up till the morning!"
He smiled back at her hazily. "Thank you, nurse."
She gave the second injection to the other hernia, and a third to the fractured femur. He was becoming increasingly conscious, muttering wildly to himself: "Bombs! The bombs! All gone... all of us gone this time!"
"This will ease the pain now, and make you go to sleep."
"All of us gone; all my mates gone.... All sitting there and the whole place came down on top of us." He struggled up from his pillow, muttering wildly: "It's going to hit us! It's going to hit us..." and after a pause began to mumble softly to himself: "The effete and spineless remnants of Churchill's once-great England... cowering in their rabbit holes from the might of the German air force...."
Frederica came and joined her at the foot of the bed. "What the dickens is he talking about?"
"He seems to be quoting something; I suppose he's a bit lightheaded."
"All gone," insisted the man, moaning to himself. "All gone and me the last!"
Frederica was the perfect nurse. If she was moved by the sight of suffering or sorrow or fear, she gave no sign of it, and her dry, matter-of-fact little manner often brought balm where more gentle methods failed. She said now, softly but quite brusquely: "You mustn't talk any more. Give yourself up to the morphia and let yourself go to sleep. Try not to look forward, try not to think or worry.... Everything's going to be quite all right. Just lie still and let yourself go to sleep." The monotonous repetition, the level voice, soothed and comforted him. He relaxed against his pillow and did not speak again. She clicked off the remaining lights in the ward and arranged a couple of screens round him, leaving him in almost total darkness; on the centre table a lamp shone in an unshadowed pool upon the layer of fine plaster shaken down from the ceiling by the guns and bombs; she passed a cloth over the dust, and five minutes later it had settled there again. The men moved restlessly, resigning themselves to the long night; there were still one or two to call out: "Good-night, nurse! God bless, nurse! Aren't you coming to kiss me good-night, nurse?" Outside the guns grumbled and reverberated round the base of the hill, a flare hung, dripping stars, in the shell-splintered sky, the drone of the bombers was rent now and then by the frightened scream of a falling bomb....
4
Esther replaced the syringe on the tray, blew out the spirit lamp, and wiped the teaspoon clean. "Well, darling, I think my work of mercy is over for the night."
"Yes, and thank you a thousand times, sweetie, for all you've done. They're expecting another in from Resuscitation, and I don't know how I'd have managed without you."
"You're sure you're O.K. now?"
"Oh yes, perfectly, now that I've finally got the ward under control. That's the worst of these blessed air-raids; they do unsettle the men."
"I suppose Woody and I will have to plunge down to that mouldy shelter. The one and only advantage of night duty is that you _can_ stay above ground. Do you think we dare just go to bed and see if we can get away with it?"
"My dear, last time Joan Pierson and Hibbert did that, the Commander routed them out and drove them down to the shelter just as they were, and now everybody knows that Hibbert goes to bed in her vest and knickers."
"Well, _we_ don't go to bed in our vests and knickers. Com's welcome to drive me forth in my Jaeger pyjamas. I hope Woody's got some tea."
"Have some here, Esther, before you go."
"No, no, I'd better go over to quarters; she'll be wondering what's happened to me. Good-night, darling. God bless!"
"Happy sheltering," said Frederica. She added, with rarely spoken sympathy: "You do look tired, my dear; and I'm afraid it's my fault!" and came over and gave her a brief little peck of apology and gratitude.
5
It was long after ten. Esther departed, and Frederica made herself the inevitable cup of tea and settled down to innumerable small jobs left over from the evening's work. A shadow fell across the table. "Hallo, Freddi."
"Oh, hallo, Barney; I wondered if you would come. I saved some tea for you; it's only just made."
"I need it," he said wearily. "We're having a rotten time. Perkins is on his seven days' leave and there's no one else to give anæsthetics, so we've just been working all out in the emergency theatre. Some of the casualties are awfully bad; they've had two deaths already in Resuscitation. You've got another fellow to come in here; did you know? Compound fracture of the tibia and fibula. They've cleaned up the wound and put on an extension; he'll be along very shortly. I thought I'd slip along and see you while we had a little lull." He put his tea down carefully and came round the table and took her into his arms. "Frederica—I just get through my days, waiting for this moment!"
She returned his kisses lightly and pushed him gently away. "You ought to be concentrating on your work, Captain Barnes, not thinking of your young woman!"
If he was hurt he did not show it; but after a moment, as he sat stirring his tea, he said suddenly: "Frederica, you would never let me down? Would you?"
"Of course not, darling," said Freddi; but a little too lightly; a little too readily.
He sat staring at his tea, speaking more to himself than to her. "That would be too much cruelty," he said slowly. "I—I couldn't bear that. Cruelty and dishonesty—those are two things that I just can't stand..."
"Sometimes a person has to—has to chose between them. I mean, sometimes if you don't want to be cruel, you have to tell, or act, some lies."
He went very white and stood up suddenly, looking down into her wide, grey eyes. "Well, Freddi—always remember this: I'd rather have cruelty than dishonesty. I'd rather be hurt than deceived...."
Something broke in her, and she went up close to him, grasping at his coat sleeves with her little hands, straining herself against him as though both giving and taking comfort. "Oh, Barney—I'm sorry, darling. Don't look like that, my dearest; you break my heart, I'll never hurt you _or_ deceive you, Barney, honestly I won't, I swear I won't...."
He looked down at her sadly, at the lovely little face and deep, deep into the limpid eyes. "Oh, Freddi," he said, "my little love—don't frighten me! The bare thought of ever losing you, makes me sick and dizzy.... You're mine, Freddie, aren't you? Promise me you'll always be mine, Freddi, _promise_ me...."
She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. "Yes, darling, I promise you; always, all my life."
A man called from the ward. "All right. I'm coming. Look, Barney, you must go, dearest. The tib. and fib. will be in soon, and I must get all this cleared off.... (Yes, all right, nurse is coming!) Good-night, my love."
The appendicitis case had woken and was in some pain. She gave him the last injection of morphia and went back to the bunk. The casualty in the corner bed was moaning softly; she shone her torch for a moment on his face, but his eyes were closed, and she went back to her work; but again there was a step at the door and Gervase Eden came in. "Hallo, Nurse Linley, my lovely one!"
"Oh, hallo, Gervase," she said uneasily.
"You look like an orchid, Frederica, sitting there with the light shining down on your hair. How do you manage to be so full of colour when you're wearing a plain grey dress?" He saw the look that lit up her eyes and added hastily: "I got that out of a book!"
"And you've been going round looking for a female in a grey dress ever since, to try it out on," said Freddi, laughing; but her heart did a foolish little somersault in her breast.
"Why the devii can't I just ask for Night Sister, and not go and make jokes that they take too seriously?" thought Eden, exasperated with himself. He hastened to ask where Night Sister was.
"On one of the other wards; do you want her?"
"Not a bit," said Eden, and Frederica smiled again. "For a moment, Gervase, you looked at me as if I was Sister Bates!"
"My dear—have I got a special look for Sister Bates?"
"Gervase, of _course_ you have! You look at her all cross and withdrawn, like this!" She assumed an expression of hideous ferocity, screwing up her lovely little face, drawing together the delicate eyebrows, pursing her full, red Burne-Jones mouth, in an effort not to laugh. "Do I look funny, Gervase? Do I? Do I look like you looking at Sister Bates?"
"Oh, Freddi," he said, "you don't look funny at all. You only look adorable...."
Something shivered between them as real and potent as an electric shock; and she was in his arms, pressing her body against him, reaching up to him for kisses that he could not restrain. "Oh, Freddi—Oh, God! Oh, Freddi...." But in a moment he had pushed her away from him, unfastening her hands from his shoulders, shifting away to the other side of the table, nervously fingering his tie. "I'm sorry, my dear. I—I lost control for a moment. I'm sorry; I shouldn't have done it." He stood silent, violently pressing his forehead against the back of his hand. "I feel such a rotter, Freddi. Do forgive me and forget all about it." He ignored the fact that, of the two, it was she who had most completely 'lost control'.
"There's nothing to forgive, Gervase. But as for forgetting...."
He refused to recognise the significance in her tone. "Just let's pretend that it never happened, Freddi. I feel so rotten about it." He said deliberately: "Rotten to Barney, I mean," and added, smiling shakily, "You must obviously never make funny faces again!"
She stood in stricken silence, staring at his face; and, at a step in the passage, escaped into the ward. Sister Bates came into the bunk. She said, spitefully, sick with jealousy and anger: "Oh, there you are, Major Eden! I thought I should find you here!"
"I'm making my rounds," said Eden, who had finished them half an hour ago.
"Do you kiss the nurses in every bunk, when you're making your rounds?" she said furiously, blurting it out in her pain and despair.
"No," he said coolly. "Only the sisters."
He had not meant to say it, like that; he had not meant to refer to the past when she had been on night duty, when she had followed him round from ward to ward, when she had 'happened' to be in every bunk he arrived at. He had only just meant to pass it off as a light joke, to protect Frederica from her jealous curiosity. He said apologetically: "I'm sorry, my dear; I didn't intend any wise-cracks. But I was not making love to Freddi Linley, and, to be honest, I don't know what business of yours it would have been if I had."
She looked at him bleakly. "Oh, Gervase—how can you say such a thing?"
"My God!" thought Eden; but he said, kindly and patiently: "Look, Marion—we must have this out, once and for all. You and I had a little affair. I never pretended to you for a moment that it was more than that. These things can't last for ever, and they don't. It was charming and it was delightful and I'm very grateful for all the fun we had together—but now it's over."
"It isn't over for me," she said desperately. "After all you said to me, Gervase—all you promised me: you can't just leave me flat like this."
"I never said a word to you that you could have taken as a promise of any sort."
"You told me you loved me..."
But he interrupted her, saying sternly: "I never said those words to any woman in all my life."
"Oh, words!" she cried passionately. "Who cares about words? Men think that they can do what they like, can treat you as they like, and as long as they don't say those three magic words, 'I love you', they're free of all responsibility in the matter. Well, you aren't free, Gervase. Kisses can be promises and—and just looks and silences.... Whatever you may have said about loving me, you let me love _you;_ and now I'm not going to be thrown away because you've gone and fallen for a silly little chit like Frederica Linley. I shall go to Barnes and tell him about it. I shall tell him he must put a stop to it, that it's ruining his life and mine.... I won't let you go, Gervase. I can't; it would kill me. I'm not going to...." She broke off and cried, wretched and helpless: "You _can't_ be in love with her!"
"I'm not in love with anyone," he said steadily.
"You're in love with Frederica Linley. I suppose you want to marry her...."
"You know I'm not in a position to marry anyone, Marion," he said impatiently. Once, long ago, one of the lovely ladies had been importunate, and he had not then acquired his skill in evading desperate situations. He had not seen her for several years, but she formed a shield against similar assaults upon his liberty.
"But you don't love _me_ any more?"
"Oh, Marion," he said wearily, "do let's not go over this again. Men fall in love and fall out of love, and that's all there is to it." You could not explain that you had never even fallen in love, that the worst you had done was to accept attentions flung at your defenceless heart. "I—I want to remember our little affair with affection and gratitude; let me do that, my dear. Don't spoil it all by trying to hold on to something that's gone, past recall."
But she looked at him with blue eyes, stupid with pain and misery, defeating her own hopes by her uncontrollable need to put those hopes into words. "All the same, Gervase, I won't let you go; I'll tell everybody how you've treated me, I'll tell everybody how you're letting me down for that Linley girl, I'll _make_ you stay with me...."
He caught her by the wrist, staring down, grim and angry into her frightened face. "Don't you _dare_!" he said.
"I will, Gervase, I swear I will. I'll—I'll sue you for breach of promise.... I'll make it so that everyone thinks what a rotter you are.... All those women in Harley Street...."
He flung her away from him in disgust and marched off out of the bunk and into the hall; she stayed for a moment, leaning against the wall, sick with realisation of her own behaviour; and then crept out after him; neither of them gave a backward glance towards the ward.
Frederica had retreated into the dark recess of the screens round the newcomer's bed; she came to the door and stood there, staring after them. "My God—supposing she does tell Barney!" Their unconsciously raised voices had reached her clearly through the thin partition. "Supposing she tells Barney—he'd never speak to me again; he'd never love me again! I should lose him, and all for a man like Gervase Eden.... Gervase would love me for a week or a month, and then just let me go. 'I want to remember our little affair with affection and gratitude, Freddi; be a little darling, my pet, and let me go!' He has every woman in the place running after him, and he doesn't want any of them... any of the others. But he does want me! It was only because of Barney.... Oh, my God! Barney, why don't I just stick to you, when you're so decent and sweet and you love me so much more than I deserve... but the moment Gervase comes along—he doesn't say anything, he doesn't _do_ anything, he never even touched me before to-night... but my heart turns over and my knees go to water... it's disgusting, really it is, it's nothing but sex, that's all! It's just my misfortune to look like a blinking machine and all the time be a raging furnace underneath. Oh, well!" she shrugged her little shoulders and smoothed down her apron and settled her starched white veil, "I suppose I'd better stop having inhibitions and look to my suffering patients." The man in the corner bed said something as she went over to him, taking his hot hand in her cool and gentle one, she thought: "Anyway, thank goodness Esther and Woody don't know!"
6
Esther had just arrived back from the ward and was sitting in their quarters with Woods, discussing Frederica's infatuation. A benevolent providence had placed a small row of labourer's cottages at the main gates of the park, and here the V.A.D.s were accommodated, three or four to each little two-roomed house. The cottages were small and dark and inconvenient, but the plumbing was adequate and each had a tiny kitchen with a gas stove; to three girls unused to community life and especially to life among sixty women of greatly varying ages and drawn from every imaginable class, their cottage was a haven of privacy and relaxation and peace. Frederica, being on night duty, did Box and Cox with Esther in the room upstairs; Woods had a camp bed in the communal sitting-room.
The whole place rocked with the deafening roar of the guns, but the bombs seemed fewer and the flares were dying down. They sat very comfortably with their feet on the fender, drinking cups of cocoa, in defiance of all orders that nobody was to remain in their quarters after black-out, during a raid. Esther said thoughtfully: "What people can see in Gervase, I never could understand. I mean, he's nice and he's funny, but he's as ugly as anything, so thin and grey and, well, he must be at least forty...."
"Thanks very much," said Woods.
"Well, I don't mean that, darling, you _know_ what I mean. He's not a glamour boy; and he never seems to try and make women like him."
"Ah, but you're a lady icicle, Esther."
"Well, I must be, because I seem to be the only female in the hospital who can see Gervase Eden without swooning at his feet. How did the great Act go to-night?"
Woods grinned. "Not bad at all. I caught up with Casanova as he came out of the concert, and I put on a terrific air of indifference and tried to look anxious to get away, and it was such a change for him, poor lamb, that he fell for it like a log."
"Mind you don't fall yourself, Woody. That would be a laugh!"
"I should say it would," agreed Woods, cackling with ribald mirth. "However, it would do no harm, Esther, and the effect would be the same. Frederica would see that some other female has only to whistle and off he goes like a shot."
"She must know that anyhow; look at poor old Bates."
"Ah, yes, but it's one thing for Gervase to sicken of Bates and turn his attentions to Freddi; and quite another for him to start running after fat old Woody, right in the first stages of his affair with Frederica!"
"Are you so sure it's an affair, darling?"
"Well, Freddi goes round looking like a love-sick hen all the time he's about; and love may be blind, but if it gets any worse, Barney's bound to see it. Barney wouldn't take a thing like this lightly, you know, Esther. It would break his heart, but he'd just write Freddi off for ever: he loves her too much and too sort of _deeply_ , for her to try playing fast and loose with him. It's as much for Barney's sake as Frederica's that I want to put an end to it if I can."
"I hope this won't get you into a mess though, Woody," said Esther, still not satisfied.
Woods sat staring into the fire, a shawl clutched round her bosom, her exquisite legs stretched out towards the blaze; the lines of laughter ironed, for a moment, out of her face. She said slowly: "My dear, I'm past getting into messes. I've led a bit of a comic life, Esther, one way and another, getting in and out of messes and not doing any harm to anyone, that I could see; except perhaps to myself; and even then I don't know—I don't think I'd have it any other way if I could do it all over again. Freddi's different. She's so young and she's so pretty and attractive; she must settle down with Barney, Esther, and run his house and have lots of lovely babies and be a little Madam... the charm about Freddi is that she's so cool and sure and—well, sort of pleased with herself; isn't she? Not in a nasty way, I don't mean, but just rather funny and sweet. If she went and got herself a past, she'd lose all that; she'd lose her faith in herself, and, you know, I don't believe she'd marry Barney. She wouldn't be able to deceive him, and yet she wouldn't be able to confess her weakness by telling him. I don't know. I may be all wrong; I'm rotten about knowing people's characters... but anyway, if I can prevent her from going off the rocks with this Don Juan of hers, by fair means or foul, I will. I don't think there's the earthliest chance of my getting hurt in the process, but if I do, well, I've been hurt before and I can take it again." She belched vigorously and patted her chest. "My Godfathers! That stew!"
"Well, I hope it works, Woody, and I hope you ever get any thanks from Frederica, if it does!"
"I don't want any thanks," said Woods calmly; and Esther, looking at her, sitting there bundled up in shawls, fat and jolly and rather common, with her made-up face and shining, shrewd, dark eyes, said to her lovingly: "No, darling, you never do."
CHAPTER III
1
It was always a miracle, after a heavy raid, to look out in the morning and see one's world still intact about one. Esther walked across the grounds with Woody, wrapped in her short red-lined cape against the cold, dawn air. "I believe there's a new crater in the field over there... that must have been the one that fell at about ten. I could have sworn it was nearer."
"Stick of three," said Woody comfortably, in the familiar jargon of life under the blitz. "Look, there's another one, up in the woods—you can see where it's broken the branches of the trees. Good thing it wasn't a bit more to the left or the third would have given the Sisters' Mess a conk. That would have shaken them up!"
"Never run, except for a land mine!" said Esther, mimicking Matron.
The fractured tib. and fib. was agreeably surprised to see her, on the ward. "Hallo, I haven't met you before!"
"I've met _you_ ," she said, smiling, not pausing in her assault upon his person with a large wet flannel. "I saw you last night being wheeled across from the theatre, but you weren't taking much notice at the time."
I can't have been," he said grinning.
He was a young man, a slim, blond, smiling young man with bright blue eyes and something pleasant and clean and reliable about him. Esther was profoundly bored with dependable young men, but she recognised in him something a little different from the ordinary run. She said kindly: "How are you feeling to-day?"
"Oh, I'm not too bad for seven o'clock in the morning. They say I've fractured my tibia and fibula or something. What does that mean?"
"It means that you've broken the two bones running down the front of your leg; they generally get sort of—overlapping, you know, and you have to have them pulled apart so that the bones can meet and have a chance to unite again. I expect you'll be strung up like this to an extension frame for a little while—several weeks; but it won't hurt, not very much; and then they'll fix you up in a plaster and you'll be able to hop about, and when it comes off it'll just be a matter of getting the leg strong again and you'll never know the difference. It'll take a long time and it isn't exactly heaven, but that's the worst there is to know."
He looked at her intently. "Are you just telling me this?"
"No," said Esther. "I don't 'just tell' people things. Give me your other hand."
"Are you going to hold it for me?" he asked, laughing.
"Only as long as it takes to wash it; and don't try to flirt with me—I don't like it." She pulled down his pyjama sleeve with a jerk and picked up the basin and towels.
"I'm sorry," he said, surprised and rather hurt.
"That's all right." She looked at the remains of his clothing folded away in the locker, at the shoes beneath it, which, though cut and scratched by debris, were of the rich, chestnut colour that only comes of polishing beautiful leather. "Are you a civilian?"
"No, I'm a simple Able Bodied in the Navy. I happened to be home on leave and I was helping out with my old job."
She did not inquire as to what his job had been, but the word 'home' caught her attention. "Do you live in Heronsford?"
"Just outside. I—well, you know the big brewery out at Godli-stone?"
"Good gracious—don't tell me you're a brewer?" she said, laughing.
"I'm afraid I am; does that astonish you?"
"Well, no, not exactly; but you don't—well, you don't _seem_ like a brewer, that's all."
He looked at her with a quizzical smile. "You mean I talk like a pansy?"
She had not met many men in her sheltered life with her mother, in their little flat; not on equal terms, not in easy badinage. She was a little embarrassed and said doubtfully: "No, of course, not that. But... well, one thinks of brewers as large men with brawny arms and red noses."
"Well, I don't know about brawny arms," said the tib. and fib., laughing, looking down at the muscles bulging under the thin sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. "The red nose is only a matter of time, I expect. I have to explain that I'm the sort of King Brewer. I own the place, you see."
"Yes, I see," said Esther.
"So, if you ever want any free beer, you know where to come."
"Well, I'm not very fond of beer," said Esther apologetically.
"That's a pity," said the fractured tib. and fib. He added: "Because you're going to see an awful lot of it in future," but he did not say it out loud.
The sister on day duty came bustling in from the bunk where she had been in consultation with the retiring night sister. "Everything all right, nurse?"
"Yes, Sister, thank you."
"You know number eight is going up for operation at half-past nine?"
"Yes, Sister."
"And the fractured femur after that." She went to the corner bed where the screens had now been moved aside. "Good morning. How are you feeling?"
"I had a terrible night," said the man briefly, opening his heavy eyes and looking at her resentfully.
"Is your name Higgins?"
"Yes, it is," said the man, "who wants to know?"
"Well, we all want to know. They couldn't find out last night. You're a postman, are you?"
"Yes, I am," said Higgins; "at least I was. It doesn't look as if I'll ever be able to do it again."
"Oh, nonsense, of course you will," said Sister brightly. She said to Esther as she hurried on round the ward: "He seems very low. You'd better have a talk to him about his operation while you prepare him for it, or he'll start refusing to have it done or something. By the way, I believe the police rang up to inquire for his wife; if she comes, you'd better let her sit with him before he goes up to the theatre."
"Yes, Sister."
"And you'd better go up with him, Sanson, and stay there and bring him back. By the way, there's that duodenal being done before him. Would you like to watch it? Have you seen any abdominals?"
"Well, no I haven't, Sister. I _would_ like to see it, if I could."
"Yes, all right, then. The other two can manage in here for an hour or so. You can take Higgins up early. It'll keep him from lying here upsetting the others by getting nervy and also get rid of the wife if she turns out to be trying."
Mrs. Higgins turned out to be very trying. She objected to being sent out to the bunk while Barnes came round with his stethoscope, checking up on the patients due for anæsthetic that day; and again while Gervase Eden made a second examination and sat for a little while talking to her husband at his bedside. At nine-thirty, by which time, in a hospital ward, the day seems well advanced, Esther transferred the old man to a trolley with the help of an orderly, and pushed him out of the ward and across the great, circular hall towards the theatre.
2
The modern operating-theatre is no longer a dazzling white, trying to the surgeon's eyes and inclined to tricky shadows, but a restful, rather dark green. The theatre at Heron's Park was a large, square, green-tiled room, with glass cabinets and shelves of metal sterilising drums ranged round its walls; the table was in the centre, under a huge, circular metal lamp, lined with innumerable mirrors so angled that the surgeon's hands cast no shadow across his work. The table itself was of light, strong metal, white-enamelled and hinged at either end; it stood on a thick, central pedestal so that no legs or cross bars should get in the surgeon's way, and was fitted with pedals and handscrews for raising or lowering the whole or either end. It was covered with a thick pad of sorbo rubber, wrapped in a linen sheet. The stretcher was placed over this, and steel supports removed, leaving the patient still lying on the canvas of the stretcher, so that as little lifting as possible need be done after operation. To the patient's right were two small trolleys, presided over by the theatre sister, one with a selection of instruments appropriate to the operation on hand; the other with open troughs of knives and scissors, needles and catgut and swabs. To the left of the table was a tray on a single tall leg so that it could be pulled across the patient's body, to receive the instruments used or still in use; a basin of antiseptic stood ready for rinsing the hands, and a couple of buckets to receive the blood-stained swabs. In a corner of the theatre, a red rubber sheet was spread out on the floor, where the swabs could be counted over and checked and rechecked with a slate hanging on the wall over the sterilising drums from which the swabs were taken. The temperature of the room was kept very high by means of radiators hidden in the walls, and over all was the strong, sweet, sickly smell of ether.
Barney was sitting at the head of the table getting the first patient under, when Esther arrived wheeling Higgins. His trolley stood to his left, a sturdy metal affair with the big iron cylinders of gas and oxygen strapped to one side of it, the water in the glass jar, through which the anæsthetic must pass on its way to the patient, bubbling merrily away at the top. A thick red rubber balloon, in a black net bag, inflated and deflated regularly with the patient's respirations.
Higgins had had his pre-operative injection of morphia and atropine in the ward, and was feeling drowsy and more or less at ease. "You'll have to wait a little while, Higgins," said Esther, wheeling him into the anæsthetic-room, and putting up the catch inside the door to keep him safe from interruption. "Just lie here and keep quite quiet. Do you feel all right?"
"I feel a bit thirsty, miss," said Higgins, licking his dry lips.
"I'm afraid you will; that's the atropine. Now, will you be all right for a minute or two, while I go and get a gown?"
"Yes, I'll be all right, miss," said Higgins indifferently.
Woods was the theatre V.A.D. She and Sister Bates were both in the washroom in long green gowns, tied at the back of the neck and waist with tapes. Woods had a small oblong of green gauze hanging by its strings round her neck, ready to be pulled up over her mouth and nose when she went into the theatre; but Sister Bates wore a more elaborate mask, a sort of yashmak that covered her whole head, and tucked in under the neck of the gown; her eyes, acknowledging Esther through the slit, looked very big and blue against the green. "Get yourself a gown, nurse, if you're going to stay." The mask was sucked in and blown out over her mouth as she spoke.
Major Moon turned away from the washbasins, holding out dripping hands. He was dressed in a white cotton singlet and wore a pair of shrunken white duck trousers and huge ankle-high rubber boots. Woods handed sterile towels and a green gown for him to shuffle his way into, his own hands held stiffly away from his body; she fitted a little round green cap on to his head, and fixed a small head-lamp on a band round his forehead. Woods chucked Esther a gown and an oblong mask like her own, and hurried to pick up the battery attached to the head-lamp; she followed Major Moon into the theatre, carrying the battery at the end of its long flex like a page with a bride's train. Major Moon wriggled his plump little hands into thin brown rubber gloves.
The patient was breathing quietly, his eyes closed, his head lolling a little to one side. Gervase Eden, already masked and gowned, stood at his side, waiting with curbed impatience to get on. Major Moon went over to the sister's trolley and stood looking down at the instruments there. As Esther pushed open the door into the anæsthetic-room to make sure that Higgins was all right, she heard the old surgeon say, in his mumbling voice: "What a rotten collection of stuff we've got in this place; we could do such a lot more if we only had better equipment."
Woody adored Major Moon. He reminded her of Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Churchill was the idol of all Great Britain. She quoted, looking back over her shoulder as she stood at the door of the anæsthetic-room with Esther: "Give us the tools and we will get on with the job!"
Sister Bates bridled. Honestly, these V.A.D.s! Who did they think they were, joking with the officers? After all, V.A.D.s were only 'other ranks'. She said indignantly: "Be quiet, please, nurse! You're not here to..."
But she never finished her sentence, for there was a wild cry from the anæsthetic-room, and Higgins was struggling up to a sitting position on his stretcher, clinging to Esther, staring at the doorway into the theatre, and mumbling over and over and over again: "Where have I heard that voice? Oh, my God, I can't remember! I must remember! Where have I heard that voice...?"
3
Major Moon looked up astonished. He said sharply: "Who's that?"
Woods let the door swing to behind her and leaned back against the wall of the theatre; she said hurriedly: "It's only that man Higgins, sir; the fractured pelvis, your next case. He's—I expect he's excited by the morphia, or something." They could hear Esther's voice in the other room, calming the old man down.
Moon and Eden shrugged their shoulders and went to the patient, now well under the anæsthetic, on the table. Barney pulled down his mask to say kindly: "You look very shaken, Woody. Did he startle you? Are you all right?"
"Yes, yes," she said hastily, "I'm perfectly all right," and, with a glance of purely professional inquiry, stepped forward to pull back the blankets from the patient's body, folding back the grey flannel gown on to his chest, unwrapping the bandages, removing the sterilised towels, and leaving the abdomen bare.
Eden picked up a brush and idly sloshed iodine over the gently heaving patch of flesh; Major Moon came and stood opposite him, and together they arranged the rubber sheets and sterile green cloths across the body, leaving only a naked, yellow-painted square. They looked for all the world like two women helping each other to make a bed. Eden said, grinning: "I regret to inform you, sir, that the patient has a pimple right in the line of fire!"
Moon smiled absently, standing turned a little away from the table, pushing with bunched fingers at the slack stomach. He nodded to Barnes. "Yes, he's very nice," and, without further ado, picked up a knife and made a long, slow, deep slash, apparently at random, across the yellow square. The flesh gaped, fatty white, turning to deep red against the dark green of the surrounding cloths: opening out after the point of the knife like the wash in the wake of a ship. Eden took forceps from Sister Bates' hand and clipped up the blood-vessels, holding each for a moment while Moon tied it off with gut, before dropping it and passing on to the next. There was no flow of blood, but swabs and instruments became stained in ugly patches. Barnes forced open the man's mouth and thrust in a short, red rubber air-way to keep clear the breathing passages.
Moon worked steadily, freeing the adhesions from the slack, veined balloon of the stomach with little half-scraping, half-paring movements of the knife, plunging his whole hand into the wound to feel his knowledgeable way about. He might have been a woman washing out old and fragile lace—his hands moved with the same delicate care, the same scrupulous attention to detail, the same cool competence and freedom from hesitation or strain. When the stomach was finally exposed, they wrapped it up carefully in a wet, green gauze and left it, bubbling pale pink and faintly blue, out on the abdomen, at the edge of the wound. Moon said to Barney, in the voice of a man asking for a little more butter on his bread: "Let's have him a bit slacker, will you?" and Barnes fiddled with a tap. The patient gave a little grunt as though in response, and was silent again.
Major Moon rinsed his hands in the saline at his side, already discoloured with blood from his rubber gloves. Sister Bates said: "Change the basin, nurse." It was an education in itself to watch her handing the instruments, each held so that it presented itself most readily to the surgeon's fingers. Major Moon exposed the duodenum.
Woods tipped blood-stained swabs on to the rubber sheet in the corner of the theatre and began sorting them out. She said, out of the corner of her mouth, to Esther as she slipped back into the theatre: "How's the old boy now?"
"Oh, he's quietened down again. He thought he'd heard your voice somewhere."
"So I gathered," said Woods drily. She crouched on her hams, busily separating swabs with a pair of long-handled forceps, holding them well away from her spotless gown. "How are you liking your first abdominal?"
"I feel a bit sick, to be honest."
"Well, you can't be sick here. You look rather green I must say; it's the heat, I expect. Why don't you sit down?"
Esther moved over to a stool and sat down quietly. Barney looked at her over his mask and raised an eyebrow; he had fastened the rubber mask over the patient's face with wide red rubber bands, which gave a somewhat unattractive, snout-like effect. "They look as though they were slaughtering a pig," thought Esther, revolted.
Major Moon, bending over the body, suddenly straightened himself. "There it is! See it? It was an ulcer, all right.... Just give me a little swab, Sister, will you? Want to have a look, nurse? Wait a moment while I swab. There! You'll never see a prettier example of a duodenal ulcer than that!" Woods peered over his shoulder into the wound. Esther shuddered.
Woody came over and stood beside her, glancing into the anæsthetic-room _en route._ "Your old boy's all right; lying quite dopey and quiet. Didn't you want to see the ulcer?"
"No, I can't take it to-day. It's the heat in here."
"Won't be long now. You'd better wait outside while they're doing Higgins; he won't be very interesting anyway." She clumped off in her big, white rubber boots. Sister Bates broke open little glass phials and threaded up needles with gut. Eden fished out a bluish-pink coil of intestine, holding it clamped to the stomach while Moon cut and stitched. They packed it all into the belly at last and tucked it neatly away. "Won't be long now, Barney. Retract please, Eden. Harder if you can..."
It was over. Major Moon threw the last of the forceps on to the tray and stood looking down at the patient, peeling off his gloves, with an expression of calm satisfaction in his faded blue eyes. All gone off nicely; no strain or fuss; and as pretty an ulcer as he had ever seen. He went out to the washroom, followed by Eden. "I _thought_ it wasn't a diverticulum.... Crossley seemed to think from the X-ray that it might have been a diverticulum..." Sister Bates and Woods bound up the yellow abdomen with its rough, red, five-inch wound all puckered together with stitches and metal clips, tossed aside the rubber sheet and pulled down the blankets, leaving the mouth and nostrils free to the air. Barney tidied up his trolley, got to his feet and stretched himself and went out to the washrooms. Woods scurried about the theatre clearing away swabs and dressings, placing a new basin of saline for the surgeon's hands, staggering across the room with a fresh cylinder of gas clasped like a large, black baby in her arms; tidying away the used tubes and scraps of gauze from the anæsthetist's trolley and placing a fresh airway tube in an enamel bowl. Esther went out to the anæsthetic-room and wheeled Higgins into the theatre; they lifted him on to the table, and slid away the metal poles of the stretcher, leaving the canvas under him, ready for lifting him off again. He stared about him with frightened and clouded eyes.
Barney came over to him and took his hand, speaking to him gently and soothingly. "You're going to be quite O.K., old man. I'll just put a mask over your nose and you'll breathe in and out quietly and you'll soon be fast asleep, and when you wake up you'll be in your bed and it'll all be over...."
Higgins turned his head on the pillow. "Nurse! Nurse!"
"Yes," said Esther. "I'm here. I'm with you."
"I'm going to be all right, nurse, aren't I?"
"Yes, you'll be fine, Higgins, honestly. It's only quite a little operation, hardly anything at all."
"What are they going to do to me?" he said piteously, his eyes roving round the theatre, shying away from the instruments laid out in readiness.
Barney had a fad about using the anæsthetic-room. He preferred to start the anæsthetic with the patient already on the table; but he acknowledged the extra fear and distress involved and he now explained, kindly and gently: "It's really only a very small thing, Higgins; hardly an operation at all. You've broken your femur, that's the thigh bone, and we're going to put a little thin steel pin through, above the knee, to pull the bone into place. That's all there is to it. It won't take very long and it isn't serious a bit—is it, nurse?"
"Not a bit," said Esther.
"There isn't any danger, nurse? I'm going to wake up all right?"
"Oh, Higgins, of course you are. There's nothing to be frightened of."
"Promise me, nurse?" he insisted. " _Promise_ me?"
"Yes, Higgins, of course; there's no danger—I promise you."
"You'll tell the missis, will you, my dear?" he said anxiously. "She's waiting in the hall outside, and she'll be fretting a bit. Tell her there isn't any danger will you, my dear?"
"Yes, all right, Higgins, I will. As soon as you've gone off to sleep."
He relaxed on the pillow, comforted. "Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear." He gave her a little, rather pathetic smile, and Barney put the rubber mask down, gently, over his mouth and nose.
The water bubbled gaily in the little glass jar at the top of the trolley bracket, through which the gas and oxygen pass. "Breathe quite normally, old boy. Don't worry. Relax and breathe gently. No hurry..." Barney's voice was quiet and soothing, but the mask was pressing down more heavily on Higgins' face. "Just quite quiet, old man; nothing to worry about..." Woods stood beside the table, ready to hang on to kicking legs or flailing arms. Major Moon and Eden came back again from the washroom, pulling on fresh rubber gloves.
4
Something was going wrong. Higgins' face was turning from blue to a dark plum colour, showing on the cheek bones and at the edges of the mask. He breathed noisily and under the blankets his limbs jerked convulsively. The line of bubbles in the jar altered as Barnes cut down the gas and increased the oxygen: he looked rather troubled.
Two minutes later the man was still a bad colour, and the red rubber bag in its black net, heaved in and out with the heavy, stertorous breathing. Only the oxygen showed bubbling now in the jar. Major Moon said anxiously: "He's an awful colour."
"I can't make it out," said Barney, his eyes flickering over the apparatus for signs of anything wrong. "He's having nothing but oxygen now."
"There doesn't seem to be any obstruction," said Eden, watching the heaving bag.
"I'll just slip an airway in, to make sure." He caught up the tube from the trolley, dabbled its rubber end in a pot of lubricant, and, removing the mask for a moment, thrust a gag between the teeth to keep the mouth open, and forced the tube down Higgins' throat. Blue lips closed over the metal mouthpiece and Barney replaced the mask. After another half minute the man's breathing changed. The respirations became light and shallow and irregular. The jerkings gave way to little twitchings and jactitations and the livid colour was replaced by a leaden grey, infinitely more horrible. Barney said, staring down at him: "He's collapsed!"
Major Moon flung back the blankets and started artificial respiration, pressing down upon the ribs and relaxing them with a slow rhythmic movement that yet was pregnant with urgency. Barnes plucked open a little bottle and filled a syringe: as he plunged the needle under the rib into the heart he said briefly to Woods: "Give some coramine—intramuscularly."
Even the shallow respirations had now ceased. Major Moon worked on, slowly pressing and relaxing. Barnes stood by helplessly. He said after a minute: "Shall I try more oxygen?"
Eden shrugged his shoulders. "I should shove in some more coramine, intravenously," said Moon, not pausing in his work. He added gravely: "As a last resort."
Barnes found a vein and thrust the needle in. "It's no use, I'm afraid...."
Moon took no notice. It was horrible to see him working so rhythmically, working with that air of panic-stricken calm, on a body now beyond all help. After five whole minutes more of it, he straightened himself and stood erect, his hands on his aching back. "It's no use.... We can't do any more...."
Esther stood frozen with horror at the foot of the table. "There isn't any danger, nurse? I'm going to be all right?" and she had promised him: "Of course you are, Higgins; there's nothing to be frightened of." "You'll tell the missis, my dear, will you? Tell her I'm going to be O.K." "Yes, Higgins, I'll tell her as soon as you've gone off to sleep." "Thank you, my dear," he had said. "God bless you, my dear...." Those were the last words he had spoken; and he had smiled at her and turned his head on the pillow, satisfied to give himself up to the unknown since she had promised him that he would come through 'all right'. "Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear." The last words he had spoken. Joseph Higgins was dead.
CHAPTER IV
1
Not many surgeons remain unmoved by a death 'on the table'. The patient may die on his feet if he will, or in his bed, or even on the trolley bringing him up to the theatre; but to die in that shining little room, with the hot, bright lights beating down upon him, is to cast a gloom over a group of comparative strangers; to clutch icily at hearts that will not be warm again until a succession of straightforward, everyday cases has brought back reassurance and strength. Major Moon said sadly: "First time this has happened since I've been here," and pulled up a blanket over the dead man's face.
They stood round in stricken silence, gazing helplessly at the quiet form. Eden's thin, grey face looked more grey than ever. Barney was white and miserable, Sister Bates' blue eyes round with horror over the green mask; there was a small black speck on the bosom of Woody's gown, and she picked at it with nervous fingers. Moon, who was a Catholic, crossed himself with unobtrusive simplicity and said a little prayer. Two big tears gathered in Esther's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. "Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear...." She could not forget the little smile.
Major Moon pulled himself together. "Eden, perhaps you and Barnes would get him on to the trolley for the girls, would you? Will you be all right, nurse, after that?"
"I'll take him," said Woods, glancing at Esther's face. She added perfunctorily: "If that's all right with you, Sister?"
Bates pulled the mask up over her face and head; she looked very pretty with her ruffled fair hair. "Yes, very well. Sanson can stay and clear up in here." Her tone boded ill for V.A.D.s who were too squeamish to wheel a dead man down to the mortuary.
"We'll close the theatre for to-day," said Moon abruptly. "If there's anything else urgent we can take it to emergency. I—I hope there won't be." He looked very old and shaken.
Woods wheeled the body away without a backward glance. As Bates and Esther went out to the washrooms, the men gathered about the anæsthetic-trolley. Barney said desperately: "I checked up on everything.... There doesn't seem to be anything wrong; and yet—the old boy was all _right_...."
"He was pretty badly shocked when they brought him in last night," said Eden.
"Yes, but he was quite over that. I went over him this morning with the stethoscope and he was as sound as a bell. He should have taken the anæsthetic without turning a hair." He said again, wretchedly: "There doesn't _seem_ to be anything wrong."
"What _could_ be wrong, old boy? The tubes aren't crossed. I looked at them several times while we were working."
Coloured rubber Y-tubes led from the cylinders of nitrous oxide and oxygen and the (unused) central cylinder of carbon dioxide; but there was nothing out of order at all. Barney said: "God knows what went wrong. _I_ don't."
"These things happen, Barney," said Eden. "They seem to be perfectly O.K. but they pip off for no rhyme or reason and you never know exactly why; I don't know why we're all getting quite so het up about it!"
"Such a bother," said Major Moon, suddenly rather careless and offhand. "It will have to be reported to the Coroner, of course, in the ordinary way of things; and it'll mean an inquest and all that. What a pity! These things create such a stink!" He was full of funny little schoolboy expressions, surprising in a man of his age.
"Stink'll be just about the word, as far as I'm concerned," said Barney bitterly.
"You mean because of that other case?" said Eden; and put his hand to his mouth as though he had said too much.
"Yes, I was thinking of that," said Major Moon. "It's all rubbish, of course, because you couldn't be held responsible in either case, my dear boy; but the death took place before we'd even started operating—and people talk."
"Are you telling me?" said Barnes.
"Nobody outside need know anything about it," said Eden.
"My dear fellow—with the local police bumbling round asking the regulation questions! They'll probably all be cousins and brothers-in-law—everybody's related to everybody in a place like this. I was thinking, Barney—if there's an open verdict at the inquest, and there has to be any investigation, I'll ring up Cockrill for you. He's the high ding-a-ding at Torrington, and he'll see that there isn't a lot of undue fuss."
"How can a high ding-a-ding in Devon or Cornwall or whatever it is, be the slightest good to us here?" said Eden.
"Torrington in Kent, not Torrington, Devon," said Moon.
"I didn't know there was one."
"Well, there is. It's in the middle of the downs, and you never heard of downs in Devonshire, did you?"
"No, so I didn't," admitted Eden, laughing.
"Cockrill was on that murder case last year, at Pigeons-ford... there was a terrific fuss in the papers at the time about it; you must remember it?"
"Well, for goodness' sake, this isn't a murder case," said Barney, summoning up a faint smile.
Major Moon turned away towards the washrooms, peeling off his gloves, lifting the head-lamp with a weary gesture, from his forehead. He said, looking back, raising a quizzical eyebrow: "I trust not! The circle of suspects would be rather a narrow one, wouldn't it?"
"What nonsense you two are both talking," said Eden, laughing, following them out.
2
Detective-Inspector Cockrill, arriving at the hospital two days later, could not have been in more entire agreement. "Don't see what all the fuss is about," he grumbled to Moon, fishing for papers and tobacco in the pockets of his disreputable old mackintosh. "Just another anæsthetic death. You doctors slay 'em off in the thousands. However, I know young Barnes's Papa quite well and I happened to be over this way, so I thought I'd look in myself. I suppose you can give me some lunch?"
The Mess Secretary was with difficulty persuaded that rations for twenty might, without positive hardship to anybody concerned, be stretched to supply twenty-one. Afterwards Inspector Cockrill made a tour of the hospital, popping his head into wards and operating theatres in his darting, bird-like way; small and brown and irascible, his shabby old felt hat that crammed sideways on his head in the familiar, Napoleonic fashion; Sergeant Bray following ponderously in his wake, keeping a weather eye open for anything gorgeous in the shape of V.A.D.s. "There's nothing much to be done here, Moon," said Cockrill at last briefly. "I want to get back before the black-out, so I'll just see the widow first, as she seems to be clamouring for audition, and then I'll buzz off home and report that the death was just the private misfortune of the gentleman in question, and that they may as well let the thing drop." He stumped off to the small and dusty office that had been put at his disposal for the afternoon, and, rolling himself a wispy cigarette, flung his hat and mackintosh into a heap on the desk and sat down before it and composed himself to give ear.
A large round black bundle was led in by a stony-faced corporal and dissolved immediately into a flood of tears. "Never a cross word," sobbed Mrs. Higgins, standing patiently with out-thrust behind until somebody should put a chair under her. "Never a cross word in all our thirty-seven year of married life. Thirty-seven year and every year as happy as the year before; and all to end like this, first of all that 'Itler and now this 'ospital, first of all them bombs and now this sinful neglect of my pore old man. For sinful neglect it was, Inspector, and you can take my word for it; the things I've seen in this 'ospital, well you wouldn't believe; the goings _on!_ And now there 'e is, lying there dead in a nasty mortuary, a thing I couldn't abide even to pass, let alone go into one; and all cut up and poked about by a lot of prying people that don't know their own business and wouldn't if they saw it. Thirty-seven year of married life and never a cross word, Inspector, and all to end like this!"
"It's very hard on you, Mrs. Higgins," said Inspector Cockrill, who knew better than to try and stem the flood before the first spate had exhausted itself.
Mrs. Higgins gave a perfectly dreadful sniff. "Hard! Hard it is indeed, Inspector, and worse than hard! Here's my pore old Joe, took in this 'orrible way, and me a widder and my fatherless orphans cast upon the world and what is the Government going to do about _that_ I should like to know?"
As Mrs. Higgins would have a pension from the Post Office where her husband had worked for many years, and as her fatherless orphans were grown men and women, making a nice little thing out of various aspects of the war effort, it was not likely that the Government was going to do very much. "Anyway, I'm glad to have a few words with you, Mrs. Higgins," said the Inspector, crushing out his cigarette without much regard to table, office, Army clerks, for the use of, and immediately lighting another; "I'd like to know if you have any particular complaints to make, or if you know of anything which you think might explain your husband's death..."
Mrs. Higgins had spent a profitable hour at her husband's bedside on the morning of his operation, listening to the account of the sleepless night he had passed. "Goings on, sir! They shove 'im in a corner bed, right next to the little room where them nurses sits; and the goings on in that little room, you wouldn't 'ardly believe." She related them in detail and the Inspector believed about half of it. "'Eard every word, 'e did, and saw everything that went on. Nurses and sisters and all—flirting away with them doctors in a way I wouldn't like to describe," cried Mrs. Higgins, describing it in detail all over again. "Call themselves nurses, indeed! Sluts, more like! And cruel—well! Left 'im lying on 'is bed half an hour or more before they even washed the dirt off of him; never give him a nice cup of tea or anything; just a nasty prick with a needle and told 'im to go to sleep. Sleep! Much sleep he could get with all them goings on to be watched through the window of that little room. And the next morning! Five o'clock they had 'im up and washed his face all over again, as if he could of got dirty, laying there in a nice clean bed; and one miserable cuppa tea, and nothing else till 'e went for 'is operation. I wish I'd of known, I'd of smuggled 'im in somethink, but of course how was I to know he'd have the operation, and it's my belief he'd of been a lot better off without it, anyway; always cutting bits off of you, these doctors are. I don't 'old with it, myself. So there 'e was, 'ungry as a 'unter, pore old boy, and no bloody wonder, well, excuse my language, Inspector, but you know what I mean. I 'adn't 'ardly settled down to have a nice chat with him, when a whole lot of men come in and starts giving him an X-ray, or some such, a nasty looking lamp affair they had with them, and I don't know what all; then they put a lot of screens round him and started getting him ready for the operation; no sooner than I sits down again, and it's one of the doctors comes and wants to listen to 'is chest; and 'e was just going to tell me somethink, I don't know what, and then another one comes and there's a lot more screens put round 'im and I'm turned out again; and two minutes later I'm told, 'You'll 'ave to go now, Mrs. 'Iggins!' 'Well, all right,' I thought to meself, 'I'll go, but I won't go far,' and I stood in that round hall place outside the ward, and I watched them wheel him out on a stretcher thing, all covered up with blankets and 'is pore old face quite red, laying on the pillar. That young 'ussy was wheeling him, that Nurse Samson, they call her; a cruel girl she is, cruel hard to the patients, Inspector, I can tell you that. 'Well,' I thought, 'that's a nice thing,' I thought, 'leaving my pore old man in charge of a chit like that,' and I was just going up and say somethink about it, when another one come up to her, the night nurse, Lingley or some such name. 'Oh,' 'allo, Nesta,' she says..."
"Esther?" interrupted the Inspector, leaning forward with a gleam of interest. "Esther Sanson? Is _she_ here?"
"Well, Esther or Nesta, I don't know and I don't care," said Mrs. Higgins, not pleased to be checked in the narration of her history. "'Oh 'alio, Nesta,' she says, or Esther, if you like, and she stops and says, 'Who's this?' she says, 'is it 'Iggins?' she says, and she stoops down over him and she says, 'Pore old 'Iggins,' she says, 'but don't worry,' she says, 'you're going to be all right,' she says, quite kind like, and then she goes on and she says, 'Oh, Nesta,' she says, 'I'm so tired I don't know what to do with meself. I've been wandering about ever since I came off duty trying to make myself want to go to bed. It was a terrible heavy night last night,' she says; 'but I wanted to tell you that I've taken over our laundry so you don't have to bother about it,' or something of that sort; and then she has another word with Joe, 'don't you worry,' she says, and then off she goes, and the other one wheels him away into the operation theatre and that's the last I see of him...."
"Very sad for you," murmured the Inspector, devoutly hoping that this was the last he would see of Mrs. Higgins.
"... and the next thing is they comes and tells me he's dead," said Mrs. Higgins, beginning to weep again. "And the next thing is they'll have to inform the Coringer. 'I'm not going to 'ave any nasty inquests on my old man,' I says: 'I'm not going to 'ave 'im cut about and that's flat!' 'I'm afraid we can't prevent it,' they says, 'any case of death under annersetic has to be reported to the Coringer, and if he orders a poce mortem there's nothing we can do about it.' So the next thing is there's the inquest, and the next thing is I come up here to find out what's what, not being satisfied with the Coringer's Verdick myself: and now here's Scotland Yard, narking and questioning and bullying and me a pore widder thirty-seven year married and..."
"And never a cross word," finished Cockrill, and bowed the lady out without further narking or bullying.
3
A little group met that afternoon in the central hall of the hospital. "We saw you trotting the Inspector round, Major Moon," said Woods. "What did he say? Is he going to arrest us all for murdering poor old Higgins?"
"Really, Nurse Woods, the way you do talk!" cried Sister Bates, who did not care for this kind of conversation even in fun.
"He looked rather a sweet little man," said Frederica.
Inspector Cockrill was anything but a sweet little man. Major Moon was about to explain this, though carefully exalting his many and genuine virtues, when he was interrupted by one, Sergeant McCoy, who, coming out of the reception-room, hesitated, saluted, and stood respectfully silent until given permission to speak. "What is it, McCoy?" asked Moon.
Sergeant McCoy was Orderly Sergeant on night duty in the reception-room, where, among other things, various keys were kept. He had been greatly excited by the rumour that a detective was going round the hospital, and he now had a tale to relate of which he proposed to make a great deal of capital, though, in his heart, he believed it to be entirely without significance. On the night of the blitz, the night of Higgins' admission, that is to say, a figure, masked and gowned, had come into the reception-room, taken the key of the operating theatre off its hook, and silently glided away: returning sometime later, unseen, and replacing the key on the hook. His expression added: There now! What do you think of _that_?
Major Moon thought very little of it. "Well, what about it, McCoy? You must often have people in their gowns coming in for the key."
"But this was the key of the main theatre, sir; and it wasn't being used that night."
"Well, somebody in the emergency theatre wanted something and sent up for it. Didn't you see who took the key?"
"No, I didn't, sir. I thought it was just one of the nurses, like you say; and then I was busy, sir, with the blitz and all, and so many admissions, and I didn't see anyone put it back."
Sister Bates was up in arms at a fancied reflection on her staff work. "I'm sure there couldn't have been any need to send up from emergency. In fact, I asked the night staff afterwards and they said everything had been quite all right. They'd have told me if they'd had to borrow anything from the main theatre.... I even went down myself and checked up on everything before operating started, though I wasn't on duty; I'm sure there was nothing wrong."
"What about you, nurse? You weren't on duty either, so I suppose you wouldn't know?"
"Well, no, I wasn't, sir," said Woody; she looked at Barney, also standing by. "You would know if anything had been sent for."
"I don't think anything _was_ ," said Barnes.
Sister Bates marched to the telephone and rang across to the Sisters' Mess. "No, definitely nobody left the emergency theatre," she announced triumphantly, rejoining them. "Sister Gibson was on duty and she says they had everything they wanted."
"It seemed a bit funny, sir, being _masked_ ," said McCoy, disappointed by the prosaic turn his blood-curdling story was taking.
"It would if it were any key but the theatre key," said Moon impatiently. All the same it was odd. "What time was this?" he said.
McCoy had no idea what time it had been, but he had noticed the key back on its hook when he went to his meal at midnight. "Was it a man or a woman who came for it?" asked Barney, rather impatiently.
"I don't know, sir," said McCoy, giving it a rather eerie emphasis.
"You don't know?"
"Because of the mask," insisted Sergeant McCoy.
4
Which of the two bombshells it was that kept Detective Inspector Cockrill at the hospital that night, he never knew; or at any rate never acknowledged. He had one leg already in his car when Major Moon arrived to tell him about the first, and when the second crashed, without benefit of air-raid warning, in a neighbouring field. The syrens broke belatedly into their unearthly howl; a flare dropped slowly over the downs, out towards Torrington, splitting the early winter darkness with its gradually brightening gleam—and where there are flares, there are very soon going to be bombs. Inspector Cockrill was interested in bombshells and he did not like bombs; and there was a fifteen-mile drive home in the general direction of those flares. "I'll stay," he said briefly, and withdrew his leg and marched back to his dusty room. Sergeant Bray, rejoicing, made tracks for the Sergeants' Mess.
Sergeant McCoy was astonished beyond measure at the effect of his recital, and hastened to spread the extraordinary news that the detective (who was naturally immediately promoted to Scotland Yard), had actually turned back and was staying for the night; the story lost nothing in the telling and by seven o'clock that evening the original author would have been puzzled to recognise it. The sinister word 'murder' licked through the hospital like a forest fire, and an agitated Commandant summoned the Inspector to the V.A.D. Mess, to calm her young ladies down.
Sixty faces turned towards him through a fog of Irish stew as he made his way to their dining-room and solemnly mounted a chair. He stood before them, completely unselfconscious, his mackintosh hanging in folds about him, his felt hat crushed into a bundle under his arm, ceaselessly rolling a chain of untidy cigarettes, and made them a little speech. He knew how to be charming when he would, and now shamelessly exploited this gift. "You all look like sensible, responsible (and very delightful) young ladies," was the burden of his song. "I'm here on a perfectly ordinary, uninteresting, regulation inquiry into the death of a patient in the operating theatre, and I look to you not to talk a lot of nonsense about it; or better still not to talk about it at all." The unit beamed back into his bright old eyes, and vowed in their hearts that no word about the matter should ever again pass their lips; subsequently, by their mysterious deportment, spreading rumours like wildfire round Heronsford. In response to a further appeal, half a dozen girls who could claim to having had some connection, however slight, with the patient in question, gathered outside the Commandant's office to speak to him; and the rest retired bitterly regretting having had none.
Esther and Frederica and Woods, who usually carried their food to their quarters and there reheated and consumed it, had been obliged to have their supper in the Mess, on account of Cockrill's visit. They assembled with the two V.A.D.s on duty in St. Elizabeth's, who on account of a superficial resemblance were commonly known as Chalk and Cheese; and one, Mary Bell, who had been in the Reception Room when Higgins was admitted. Cockrill saw this lady first, while the others lounged on the bench outside the office complaining about the smell of Irish stew and languidly discussing the case, to the virtuous indignation of Chalk and Cheese, who sat with sealed lips until they should be called in.
Mary Bell emerged from the office. "What's he like?" asked Chalk and Cheese.
"Well, rather an old pet actually; not at all terrifying. There wasn't much I could tell him."
"Why did you volunteer? Because you were there when Higgins was admitted?"
"Yes, I thought I'd better. Of course I didn't even see him actually; Major Moon took him in and sent him straight down to St. Elizabeth's by the outside stretcher-bearers who brought him in the ambulance. Nobody knew his name; we didn't even get it till early in the morning when they rang up asking if any such person had been brought in here. His wife arrived about seven, and I had to cope with her, poor old dear. I was as late as hell going off duty."
"What else did the detective ask you?"
"Well, he wrote down my name and address and he asked me if I'd ever seen or heard of Higgins before, and of course I never had. He said again that there wasn't the slightest suspicion of foul play, as he rather divinely called it, but that he just had to fuss round and see that mistakes weren't being covered up or anything like that. What did you think of the Little Talk?"
"All done by mirrors," said Woody promptly. "He took one look at us, sized us up quite correctly as a horde of sex-Starved women, and exerted his doddering masculine appeal to lull us into a false security."
"Sex-starved yourself!" said Mary Bell, and laughed and went away.
" _Def_ initely not the murderess," said Freddi.
"No, definitely not. Personally I think it was Chalk and Cheese."
Chalk and Cheese were now closeted with the Inspector. "Why on earth them, Woody?" said Esther, laughing.
"I think they gave Higgins the wrong pre-operative injection."
"Oh, nonsense, darling; how could they?"
"Well, I don't know, but it's just the sort of thing they _would_ do."
"No, truly, Woody, you underestimate Chalk and Cheese. They're not bad at all, really they aren't. Besides, the poison cupboards and things were checked directly after Higgins died, and ours were certainly quite all right, because I was there. They couldn't have given an overdose, if that's what you mean; and, anyway, it wouldn't have acted like that on Higgins...."
Chalk and Cheese emerged from the office and closed the door behind them. "My dears, he's too divine; no, honestly, he's a perfect lamb, isn't he, Elsie? He asked us our names and addresses and if we'd ever seen Higgins before, and of course we told him we'd never set eyes on him in our _lives_ , and he asked if we'd nursed him while he was in the ward and of course we said we'd hardly even spoken to him, because as it happens we were off duty by the time he came in, and in the morning you looked after him almost entirely, Sanson, didn't you? and prepared him for operation and all that...."
"So what was the point of your going to the detective at all?" asked Frederica.
"Exactly what _he_ asked us!" cried Chalk and Cheese, much struck by the coincidence.
Cockrill came out of the office. "Now then, who's next? Why, hallo, Esther, my dear? I heard you were here..."
"Hallo, Cockie," said Esther; she went a little white, for Cockrill had known her mother, and immediately a host of tiny memories clamoured for recognition in her sorrowful breast.
For Esther he shed his air of false benignity; he said nothing of sympathy or distress, but deep down in his arid old heart, there burnt a small glow of genuine pity. He took her quietly through the events of the night of the blitz, going with patient precision into every detail of the evening. "All right, my dear; thank you. That's very nice and clear. Send one of the other girls in to see me now, would you?"
"Bags I go next," said Woody, receiving this message. "I won't be long, Freddi, and he'll take hours asking you about Higgins in the ward, and I want to get ready for the party. You don't mind, do you?"
"I couldn't care less, darling," said Frederica, who, being on night duty in the ward, could not go to any party.
Inspector Cockrill was much amused by Frederica when at last she sat before him, tiny, erect, absolutely composed. She gravely related her share in the evening's proceedings up to the time that Esther had left the ward. "After that I went in and looked at Higgins from time to time, and sat by him for a bit now and then and let him grumble."
"Grumble? What about?"
"Oh, just patient's grumble," said Frederica indifferently. "I always let them do it. It keeps their minds off their real troubles. He was a dear old boy, really, but he couldn't sleep, and the pain made him fractious and crotchety. He got an idea into his head that they'd had no business to put him in a military hospital and that he was going to be neglected and would probably die—which seems to have been rather well-founded," added Freddi coolly. "He said the nurses were cruel to him, by which I presume he meant poor Esther because nobody else had looked after him; and who happens to be an absolute angel to the patients, much _too_ kind actually; and he said there were going-ons and he would have it reported; I don't know who to, and I don't suppose he did either." Higgins had probably confided all this to his wife, and if anyone was going to tell the Inspector about it, it had better be oneself.
"What did he mean by goings-on?" asked Cockrill, smiling grimly at this transparent ruse.
"Well, I think he'd seen me kissing my fiancé in the sister's bunk," said Frederica, blushing faintly. She qualified this rather shattering confession by a description of the sister's bunk.
"Oh," said the Inspector. He turned the matter over in his mind for a moment. "Could he, in fact, have reported it to anyone? Is it quite the regulation behaviour to be kissing even one's fiancé in the sister's bunk?"
Frederica reflected solemnly upon this problem. "Well, if it was brought to the notice of the C.O. or Matron, I suppose they would have to make a song about it; but the trouble would be more that you let the patients see you, than what you'd actually done. The bunks are sort of ante-rooms; everybody meets here and talks and has tea and all that kind of thing. The sisters aren't above doing a bit of kissing there themselves, if they have anybody to kiss them, only most of them are such old battle-axes that they haven't."
This was something of a revelation, even to Cockrill, who had believed in common with much of the laity that the nursing services consist of all-powerful, omniscient, stiffly starched automatons, incapable of human emotion other than a rarefied compassion for their patients, and certainly immune from the doubts and fears and disillusions of the everyday human heart. Freddi elaborated, watching his face with a small, ironical smile: "People are—just people, aren't they, where ever you go? I mean, I look upon detectives as superhuman creatures who press buttons and waffle about with a little grey fingerprint powder for a bit, and have their case all solved in half a minute; but I suppose you're really just ordinary people with worries about having a clean collar and eating your breakfast too quickly and things like that; and so are we."
Inspector Cockrill could not imagine Frederica in any difficulty with clean collars or eating her breakfast too quickly, but he bowed to her superior ruling with a quizzical, small smile. Having thus effectively laid a smoke screen across the question of her having kissed anyone other than her fiancé in the sister's bunk, she answered the rest of his questions with serene despatch. No, Higgins had not made any particular accusations, except that there were goings-on. No, he had not told her anything about himself except that he was a postman and that the things people wrote upon postcards you wouldn't believe! Yes, she supposed she could have asked him his name then, but actually she had not thought of it; this had been in the early hours of the morning, and she had already forgotten that they did not as yet know who the old man was. Night sister had done a round at about four o'clock but Higgins had been asleep by then, and she had not disturbed him. She, Frederica, had not left the ward at all from the moment Esther Sanson had gone; an orderly had come on soon after the Surgeon on Duty had made a second round, at about a quarter to eleven (she blushed faintly again at this description of Eden's visit) and he could confirm that she had been there all the time. She raised her golden eyebrows at the necessity for any testimony on this point.
"So that nobody else saw the man until the morning? And then? I understand his wife arrived very early...."
"Yes, she sat beside his bed till he went up to the theatre; he was on the Dangerously Ill list, or the Seriously Ill, I forget which."
Cockrill registered mystification. "The dangerously ill list," explained Frederica patiently, "as opposed to the seriously ill list. If you're on either your relatives can come and see you at any time, not only in the ordinary visiting hours; if you're on the D.I. they get their fares paid; if you're only S.I. they don't."
"It's all very complicated, isn't it?" said Cockrill humbly. She looked at him suspiciously, but there was no sign of a twinkle in his beady eye.
He kept her waiting for several minutes while he read carefully through his notes; and when she thought he had almost forgotten her, said suddenly, sharply, looking up from under his shaggy eyebrows: "What do _you_ think of this case—eh?"
"Who—me?" said Freddi; she considered for a moment. "Well—I just think it isn't a case."
"Not a case?"
"Well, I mean I think Higgins died under the anæsthetic, that's all; and as for McCoy I think he's just talking through his hat."
"And as for me, I'm an old fuss pot," suggested Cockrill grinning horribly. He wagged a pencil at her: "Do you realise, my child, that if this does turn out to be 'a case', you yourself are very intimately concerned?"
"Me? Concerned in the death of old Higgins...?"
The Inspector looked down at his notes again. "Captain Barnes administered the anæsthetic," he said slowly, "so of course we have to put his name on our list; but apart from him, there were only—six—people in this hospital who had anything to do with the man; in fact, only six who knew that he was here. Major Moon admitted him; you and Miss Sanson were in the ward when he arrived; Miss Woods happened to be in the central hall when he was being carried through, talking to Major Eden and Sister Bates. You have told me yourself that nobody came into the ward after that; several people were in the sister's bunk, but Higgins' bed was in darkness and they couldn't have seen who he was. Nobody knew his name. Supposing for the sake of argument, McCoy's story is correct: between ten o'clock and midnight, somebody went into the main operating theatre where Higgins died next day... well, Miss Sanson left the ward a little before half-past ten; she went over to her quarters, but we don't know what she may have done in the meantime.... Sister Bates was free after she left the emergency theatre, Miss Woods says she was sitting in her quarters, but there was nobody there to tell us that this is true; Major Moon was in and out of the reception-room, Major Eden was wandering about the hospital, and Captain Barnes, though he was busy giving anæsthetics, was not doing that all the time, as you yourself know; besides, Captain Barnes is the anaesthetist, anyway.... I don't say that any of these people killed Higgins, of course I don't; I only say that _if_ anybody killed him, it must have been one of these seven; and that includes you."
"Well, I never left the ward that night," said Frederica stubbornly.
"Except before Miss Sanson left, to get yourself some food." He said suddenly: "Where were you that morning—the morning Higgins was having his operation, I mean?"
"I was in bed in my quarters, of course," said Freddi impatiently.
He looked at her intently. "Oh, were you? In bed in your quarters? That's interesting," and added, not thinking: "Alone, of course?"
"Quite alone," said Frederica, and marched out indignantly, her golden head in the air.
5
Barney was also going to the party, and he was not best pleased at being approached by Inspector Cockrill with a request to demonstrate his anæsthetising apparatus. "Wouldn't you rather wait till tomorrow?" he asked politely.
"No, I want to get back to Torrington to-morrow; I wouldn't have stayed at all if it hadn't been for the air-raid... and this business of Sergeant McCoy, of course," added Cockie hurriedly. The airraid was still going on, rather mildly, over their heads, but it was one thing to be in a good solid building, and another to be bucketing along the country roads in a little car, with the guns going off all round you and Jerries overhead. He led the way imperiously to the theatre. "I won't keep you long; I just want to see what you do."
Barney's grave eyes questioned him uncertainly. "If there _was_ anything cockeyed about the man's death, it does seem like that it may have been connected with the anæsthetic, doesn't it?" suggested Cockrill apologetically. "It's really particularly for your sake that we want to get it straight." His own opinion was that it was all a lot of military flammery and red tape.
Barnes led the way over to his trolley, switching on the great overhead lights of the theatre; he sat down on the little round revolving stool and pulled the trolley between his knees. It was green enamelled, about twenty-four inches square, with a bracket across the top from which hung three glass jars; on one side of the trolley were five circular metal bands into which were set the big, cast-iron cylinders of gas and oxygen; two were painted black, two black with a white collar, and one, in the centre, green. Barnes flicked them with a finger nail: "Black nitrous oxide; black and white, oxygen; and green carbon dioxide."
Cockrill stood with his short legs apart, an unlit cigarette between his fingers, still in his droopy mackintosh with his hat on the back of his head. He hated to know less than the man he was talking to; and he had watched young Barnes grow up. He said at last gruffly: "Talk plain English."
Barney smiled up at him suddenly, that rare and charming smile of his, that lit up his face into good humour again. He said apologetically: "Sorry, Cockie; I was being difficult. I want to go to a party"; and elaborated more clearly: "Nitrous oxide is just ordinary gas, like you get at the dentist's. For longer anæsthesia we use it with oxygen; those are the two outside cylinders. The green one in the middle is CO2—carbon dioxide; but we needn't bother about it, because we didn't use it on Higgins, and in fact it very seldom _is_ used, except in special cases."
"Is that why there's only one tube of it, and two of each of the others?"
"Yes, that's right. There's a spare of nitrous oxide and a spare of oxygen; they're connected up, and in emergency you only have to switch on the reducing valve; but, again, they don't concern Higgins, because as it happens we were using fresh cylinders of both, so of course we didn't run short. Anyway, we didn't have time to run short."
"No possibility that the reducing valve wasn't turned off?"
"It wouldn't have made any difference; after all, they were still just gas and oxygen, and the flow is regulated up here." He glanced at the glass jar on the bracket. "But, anyway, they were both firmly turned off, because of course we went over the whole thing afterwards."
Cockie fiddled with his cigarette, longing to light it, but overawed by the formidable cleanliness of his surroundings. He said, rocking backwards and forwards slowly, from his toes to his heels: "What about all these rubber tubes and things?"
The Y-tubes led from the cylinders, black from the nitrous oxide, red from the oxygen and green from the central cylinder of carbon dioxide, to the first of the glass jars hanging from the bracket above the trolley; and each was controlled by a tap. Two of the jars were coloured, but the first was plain; it was half filled with water, and three metal tubes, each with a line of little holes, like a flute, stuck down into the jar and well below the surface of the water. Barney turned a tap and bubbles appeared from the first tube at the water line, and spread down to the bottom of the tube as the tap was turned more fully on. "The nitrous oxide," said Barnes. He left it bubbling and turned on another tap, and the third tube bubbled. "That's the oxygen. They mix above the surface of the water and pass along a single metal pipe to the mask over the patient's face. If we used the carbon dioxide, it would bubble out of the centre tube; but we didn't." He let a line of bubbles run up and down the centre tube for a moment, and then switched off.
"So only these two are being used," summed up Cockrill, pointing to the two outside cylinders with the toe of his shoe. "And only the corresponding outside tubes in the jar are bubbling?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And that's all that was used on this man Higgins?"
"Yes, that's right," said Barney again. He got up off the stool. "You sit down and try."
Cockie sat down, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the sickly familiar smell of ether and antiseptic, but concentrating deeply upon the trolley in front of him. He twiddled the taps for a minute or so, and bubbles played madly up and down the little tubes. "What about all these bits and pieces—bottles and jars and things?"
"Oh, those are mostly emergency stuff; adrenalin and strychnine and so forth; and the usual collection of gags and tongue clips and what-have-you. This funny short, fat red tube is the air-way; we put it down the patient's throat when he's well under, to keep it from closing up or getting obstructed. It's got a metal mouthpiece, you see, to keep him from biting on it and closing it."
"Charming," said Cockrill dryly. He looked at the rows of bottles and jars and instruments. "Which of these was actually used on Higgins?"
"Well, none of them until things began to go wrong. Then I put in the air-way—that's why I mentioned it to you; and, of course, I used a gag between his teeth while I put it in. After that I gave an injection of adrenalin and after that we gave him a shot of coramine, intramuscularly; finally I gave him some into a vein; but it was all no use."
"And these are literally the only things that were used on him?"
"Yes, definitely; unless you count the injection of morphia and atropine an hour before the operation began?"
Cockrill considered. "No, for the moment I'm only interested in what happened here in the theatre."
"Well, that's absolutely all," said Barney, looking surreptitiously at his watch.
Cockrill observed the glance and grinned to himself; he made no comment on it, however, but continued steadily with his questions: "These injections—you gave them all yourself?"
"I gave the adrenalin, and the second lot of coramine, intravenously. The V.A.D. gave the other dose, into the muscle."
"Who, Miss Woods?"
"Yes, that's right." He pointed to a row of little glass ampoules, similar to those sold by tobacconists for filling cigarette lighters. "This is the coramine. You just break the thing open and suck the stuff up into a hypodermic."
"And the adrenalin?"
"In a bottle."
"Could there have been anything wrong with the bottle?"
"There could, I suppose, though heaven knows what or how; but I've used it since, and anyway the man was already collapsing when I gave him the first injection."
"I see. So that all that was used before things began to go wrong was really just the gas and oxygen?"
"That's absolutely all. I gave pure nitrous oxide first, to get him under...."
"The black cylinder," said Cockie, scowling at it.
"That's right; and then added oxygen till the mixture was about fifty-fifty...."
"The black cylinder with the white top...?"
"Yes," said Barney again, grinning faintly at this naïve summary of his lesson.
"And they both passed through the water in the first bottle on the bracket, the clear glass one; bubbling out of the two outside tubes in the bottle, and mixing above the surface of the water and then passing along this big rubber tube to the patient."
"You'd better come and give the next lot yourself, Cockie," said Barney, laughing.
Cockrill made a little movement of irritation at this misplaced levity; he continued stolidly: "And all these tubes from the cylinders to the glass bottle—they definitely weren't crossed or mixed up in any way?"
"No, definitely not. Moon and Eden and I all checked them over till we were blue in the face. There was nothing wrong with the trolley."
Cockrill was silent, swivelling gently to and fro on the stool. He said at last: "I suppose you will think this is funny too—but would it be possible to have the wrong gas in a cylinder? Would it be possible to empty one and fill it with something else?"
Barney, far from being amused, was shocked to the core by such a suggestion. "Good heavens, no. It would be impossible. It takes terrific pressure to fill these things; that's why they're made so strong."
"Oh," said Cockrill, continuing to swivel.
"Even supposing it could happen—supposing you got nitrous oxide in an oxygen cyclinder, for example—it wouldn't work, because the reducing valves of the oxygen and nitrous oxide cylinders are different. The things wouldn't fit and you'd soon find out what was happening."
"What about the green tube in the middle—the carbon dioxide?"
"Well, yes, that's the same size valve," admitted Barney.
"All right then; supposing, just for the sake of argument, that you somehow got carbon dioxide in an oxygen cylinder, a black and white cylinder... supposing the manufacturers made a mistake, for example...."
"My dear Cockie, as if such a thing could happen!"
"I'm not saying it _could_ happen," said Cockrill irritably; "do use your imagination: I say pretending for the sake of argument that it did happen... what then?"
"Well, the carbon dioxide cylinders are very often smaller than the others," said Barnes; "however, in our case, they certainly were all the same size. I suppose—yes, if such a thing happened, you would connect up the cylinder quite cheerfully, and go right ahead."
"And the patient would die?"
"Yes, the patient would die all right. Instead of getting nitrous oxide and oxygen, he'd be getting nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide; and he'd collapse for want of—well, for want of oxygen!"
"But all the little bubbles in the glass jar would appear quite normal?"
"Yes, obviously, because the cylinder would be in the right position with the proper tubes and everything duly connected up."
Cockrill considered again. "Couldn't you smell the wrong gas coming out of the cylinder if such a thing were to happen?"
"No, all the gases are colourless and odourless...."
"I thought you said nitrous oxide was ordinary gas like you get at the dentist's?"
"Well, that doesn't smell."
The bare thought of it sent Cockrill into a sickly warm, swoony daze; for a horrible half second he was fighting against gas, great nauseating waves of it, strong and pungent and thick.... He said indignantly: "It smells like a thousand drains!"
"No, honestly. That's the rubber mask that you smell; nitrous oxide is absolutely odourless."
Cockie remained unconvinced. "It's quite true," said Barney, laughing.
"Well, all right, if you say so; I suppose you should know. And the others don't smell either?"
"Carbon dioxide gives off a little prickly feeling if you get it in a strong enough concentration; like sniffing a glass of soda water; but it doesn't smell."
"Did you sniff at the cylinders after Higgins' death to see if there was any prickly feeling?"
"No, of course I didn't," said Barnes. "The whole thing was properly fixed up, and though we seem to have demonstrated that you could kill a patient by getting carbon dioxide into an oxgyen cylinder, the solid fact remains that it would be physically impossible to get the CO2 into the cylinder in the first place."
Cockrill stood up and stretched himself. "Wouldn't it have been—I don't want to seem offensive, my boy, but other people will ask the same question if anything develops from this inquiry—wouldn't it have been a reasonable precaution to have taken?"
"No, it wouldn't," said Barnes, impatiently. "You couldn't possibly tell by sniffing at a cylinder, what was in it... you have to have a very strong concentration to be able to detect CO2 and smelling the mask or the cylinder certainly wouldn't give it to you. Besides, we were looking for accidents, not miracles; you don't expect an elephant to come out of a rabbit hole. Short of a mistake on the part of the manufacturers, which is out of the question, it would not have been possible to have had anything in the oxygen cylinder but oxygen, and that's flat. You can ask all the anæsthetists in Kent and none of them will say that he would have dreamed of examining the cylinders. Of course there was nothing on earth wrong with them."
"Were these particular cylinders used again?"
"I suppose they were, on the next patients; I don't know anything about that. The theatre staff are responsible for seeing that enough gas is ready on the trolley; we used hardly any nitrous oxide on Higgins, and only a certain amount of oxygen; so I suppose the cylinders will have been practically full, and we're almost sure to have just carried on with them."
"You talk as if I were accusing you of carelessness, my boy," said Cockie, gruffly.
"Well, it's so idiotic to suggest that I neglected to do something which it would have been sheer idiocy to _do_."
"I look at it from the layman's point of view," said Cockrill; it was not like him to be so humble.
Barney cursed all laymen under his breath; and Higgins above all for dying and letting him in for all this maddening heckling; and Cockrill for—for coming to the hospital and doing his best to stop ugly questions about himself! He tried to smile and appear a little more grateful. "Anything else?" The party would be in full swing by now.
"I don't think so. But on our way out," suggested Cockrill with a certain temerity, "you might just show me where the empty cylinders are kept...."
Barney pushed open the door of a big cupboard. "The stock's kept downstairs in the Reserve Medical Store, of course; but we have a certain amount of stuff here for current use." A number of cylinders were ranged on brackets along one wall, and half a dozen lay rolled together on the floor. "These are sent back to the manufacturers for refilling," said Barnes, drubbing his toe against them. "Here's a list of what's in, what's being used, and what's actually been used. It all seems to check up O.K."
The swing doors closed behind them. "If this has been a penance to you, my boy," said Cockrill, fishing for paper and tobacco, rolling a cigarette and slapping his pockets noisily for matches; "it's nothing to what it's been to me." A light flared in the dim hall and he drew deeply on his first cigarette in more than half an hour.
CHAPTER V
1
A routine investigation into an anæsthetic death had seemed to the Commanding Officer insufficient reason for cancelling his seven days' leave; and when the C.O. took his seven days' leave, the Mess automatically threw a party. A large, rather dingy room called the Ladies' Room, was dusted and polished for the first time since the Colonel's last absence, a motley collection of buns and sandwiches was arranged on one of the tables, and a row of bottles stood on the piano top. There was the usual little difficulty as to whether the Sisters would kick up a fuss if V.A.D.s were invited, and the usual decision that this was only an informal do, and it didn't matter in the least whether they did or not; there was the usual mix-up as to who had promised to see about the French chalk, and the usual rejoicing on the part of a lance-corporal who was taken away from some more arduous duty to fix up the radiogram. The older members of the Mess retired to the ante-room and confided to each other that it was difficult to know whether one should shut one's eyes to this kind of thing or just mention it to the C.O. on his return and let him do any blinking that _he_ thought advisable; and ended by agreeing that boys would be boys and, after all, there was no harm in it. As the boys concerned were all qualified doctors and surgeons and included Major Moon who was getting on for sixty, this would appear to have been a rational decision. The officers' wives arrived in full force and there was a little competition in condescension between themselves and the Sisters, for most of the wives were very young and took their husbands' pips or crowns with the utmost solemnity; while the Queen Alexandras, besides ranking as officers themselves, had the unquestionable advantage of being on their own home ground. The younger officers had brought V.A.D.s from their various departments or wards; Barnes, because Frederica was on night duty, had invited Esther; Gervase Eden had for so long produced Sister Bates upon these occasions that it had been impossible to alter his custom; and Major Moon, who steadily went the rounds asking a different person each time so that nobody should feel left out, had brought his own theatre V.A.D., Woods. Woody, in pursuance of her plan, took advantage of Freddi's absence to make hay with Major Eden. She sat on the arm of a chair and ran her hand provocatively from knee to ankle of one of her exquisite, silk-clad legs. He said, at last: "Don't do that; you're driving me crackers."
She stopped and turned towards him, the whole lovely line from ankle to hip exposed. "Am I? I don't see why?"
"Heaven help me!" thought Gervase. "Here I go!" His expression was the expression of a drowning man. He suggested: "Let's go out and get some air."
The black-out curtains were closely drawn, there was no ventilation, and the atmosphere grew hot and full of smoke and the smell of beer. The guns still pounded outside, but the raid had not developed into anything serious. The wives, who had mostly come from a distance, leaving nannies and babies safe in the country for a single night, took advantage of the precious evening to flirt with their own husbands. The Sisters and V.A.D.s whirled round with their chosen officers, laughing and chattering and having a very good time. Marion Bates stood alone by the piano and poured herself out a very large gin. Barnes arriving, saw her there; he made his apologies to his own guest, Esther, who had arrived before him and was sitting with Major Moon, and went over to the mantelpiece. "Hallo, Sister! Aren't you dancing this one?"
"No, I'm drinking it," she said sullenly.
He took the glass out of her hand and put it on a corner of the piano. "It'll keep; come and dance with me."
She danced round in silence, but she was beside herself with jealousy and pain and after a few minutes she burst out: "Why doesn't he come back?"
"I should let him go," said Barney quietly.
She pulled a little way from him and looked into his face, though she continued, automatically, to dance. "How did you know who I was talking about?"
He smiled at her with gentle mockery. "It isn't very difficult to guess. He's only out in the garden, walking up and down with Woody; I saw them as I came in."
"I hate him," she said vehemently.
"There's such a delicate little line of difference between love and hate, isn't there?" said Barney, in his quiet voice. "It's like a sort of circle—you don't quite know where love stops and where hate starts."
"Gervase knows where love stops all right," said Bates angrily. She added, as though struck by an idea: "And he knows where hate starts, too. It starts at you!"
His eyes clouded over, but he said immediately: "Oh, nonsense; why should Eden hate me?"
"Most people hate anyone they do an injury to," she said shrewdly. "It's a sort of protection against their own conscience. And Gervase Eden is doing you an injury all the time. Don't pretend you don't know that."
"Well, never mind," he said. "Don't let's talk about it."
"You _are_ a _fool_ ," she said, her eyes on the door. "You think it's nothing, just a mild little attraction, don't you? Well, you're wrong. I caught him kissing her in the bunk the other night; he swore he wasn't, but I know better—he was. And I saw his face. He never looked like that after he'd kissed _me_. I believe he really is falling in love this time; before you know where you are, he'll be asking her to marry him—and _then_ will she stick to you?"
"I think so," he said gravely, though his heart was cold with dread; he could not bear to discuss it with her, but he felt impelled to argue: "Besides, he's a married man."
"Married my foot," said Bates, with vulgar contempt. "Do you think I don't know that old gag? Oh yes, I fell for it at first; every man who wants a little flirtation with you tells you that he's a married man: he hasn't lived with his wife for years, but the lawyers made a muddle of the divorce and here he is tied to her for life... and now he can't offer you anything but love, baby! Don't tell _me_ —I know!"
He felt sorry for her, for she was not made to be ugly and bitter and vulgar. "Poor little you," he said, looking down at the foolish face and unhappy eyes.
"Poor little you!" she retorted roughly, still watching the door. "Don't you realize that he's rich and glamorous, he's got a marvellous practice in Harley Street...."
"Well, I don't think I'm glamorous," admitted Barney mildly. "But I've got a good practice too, you know, and a nice old house and—well, I don't know, most things a girl could want." He added, laughing: "And anyway, what is all this nonsense about?—he's with Woody now, not Frederica."
The music stopped. He handed her her drink and got one for himself, and they lit cigarettes, and she stood there silently, watching the door like a dog; her fair hair curled itself up in little frizzy tendrils, round her white veil, and her foolish face was ugly with despair. The clock began to strike eleven and she seemed to be taking a resolution; as the last chime died away and still he did not return, she made up her mind. She said, as though casually: "Did you kill a girl last year, during an operation?"
Barney stiffened and went a little white. "I had a girl die under an anæsthetic, yes. I didn't know that anyone here knew about it."
"Gervase knows about it," said Sister Bates.
Eden had referred to it in the theatre; had put his hand to his mouth as though he should not have spoken. "How does he know?" said Barnes.
"Higgins told him," she said steadily, and her eyes were no longer on the door. "Higgins saw you in the ward when you came in to go over him with the stethoscope for the anæsthetic. Gervase examined him afterwards, before operation, and Higgins asked him if you were a doctor in the town, and Gervase said yes, he thought you used to be; and Higgins said that just before the war you'd killed the daughter of a friend of his. He said that it had all been rather forgotten, but that now he knew you were at Heron's Park, they would write up to the War Office about it; he said that the people would hound you out of Heronsford and out of the army, too."
"The death was from natural causes," said Barney shortly. "Every anæsthetist comes across a few cases like that in his career; death was caused as much through the operation as through the anæsthetic, and the coroner exonerated both the surgeon and myself at the inquest. Nobody could say anything against me; they couldn't do me any harm."
"Gervase didn't seem to think that," said Bates. "I know because I went and waited for him outside the ward. He was talking to the man for a long time..."
"About _me_?" said Barney incredulously.
"Well, of course about you; what else? He'll have gone very carefully, naturally; he won't have said very much. But if Higgins had gone back into Heronsford and spread it about that one of the other doctors agreed that there had been some bad mistake about that girl—well, it would have wrecked your practice, wouldn't it?"
"What good on earth would that have done Eden?" protested Barney, whose mind reacted slowly to treachery and guile.
"Then you wouldn't have had 'most things a girl could ask for' to offer to your Frederica," said Sister Bates, and finished the rest of her drink.
2
Esther sat beside Major Moon on a sofa in one corner of the room. She wished she had not started on gin for it always depressed her and made her talk too much. She found herself telling him the long, sad story of her mother's death. "I'm sorry; this isn't much of the party spirit, is it?"
"Don't be sorry, my dear," said Major Moon. "It does us all good to speak of our troubles sometimes; and it's odd, isn't it? how often one feels like doing it to strangers... not that you and I are strangers, of course, but I dare say you can't often open your heart like this even to your more intimate friends...?"
"They have their troubles too," said Esther sombrely; "one can't always be moaning about one's own. Freddi has no home to go back to after the war; her father's married to some awful, common woman, and all her life's sort of fallen apart.... She's engaged now, of course, but—well, I don't know..."
"Don't tell me anything is going wrong with that affair?" said Major Moon anxiously; his eyes went to Barney, dancing round automatically with Sister Bates, talking to her earnestly.
"Oh, I don't think so," said Esther hastily; and because she was afraid of having said too much about Frederica, she sought to cover it by saying more than she might otherwise have done about Woods. "Woody had a younger brother, you know, that she was terribly fond of; but really most _ter_ ribly fond, not like you are of just ordinary brothers and sisters. He was abroad, on the continent when war broke out, and he's never been heard of since." While she was on the subject of Woody, she continued: "Inspector Cockrill has been asking her a lot of questions about the injection of coramine she gave to Higgins in the theatre. I suppose he thinks there might have been some mistake there. Don't you think that's nonsense—how could there have been?"
"There couldn't," said Major Moon promptly. "The coramine's put up in ampoules; there weren't ampoules of anything else on the trolley, and she gave it under Barney's instructions. Besides, the man was dying by then, if he wasn't already dead; we only gave it as a last resort."
"Of _course_!" agreed Esther, enormously relieved.
"He's being very thorough, is old Cockie," said Major Moon, confiding in his toe-caps. "He had every poison cupboard in the place turned out this afternoon, and generally behaves as though one of us had slain old Higgins of malice aforethought. However, the great thing is that, having proved that the whole thing was just a natural death, he'll see that there's no more talk about it; the local people would have bumbled on and poor Barney's name would have suffered...." He suddenly noticed the time: "My goodness! Nearly eleven, and I'm orderly dog to-night. I'd better be going." He trotted off, round and rosy, muttering anxiously to himself about being so late. "However, they'd have sent for me if they'd wanted anything...."
All was quiet in the wards. He left St. Elizabeth's to the last, in the hopes of a private word with Frederica; for he was thrown into a panic at Esther's hint that all might not be well between Barney and his love. He finished his round and sat himself down in the bunk, holding out his toes to the blazing fire. "What about a cup of tea, Nurse Linley, my dear, since I've left a party on purpose to come and talk to you?"
"Me and two hundred patients," said Freddi, laughing.
"Well, I had to do my round, dear, of course; it wouldn't have looked well to just make a bee-line for Linley's ward...."
But with all his little jokes and friendliness, he found Frederica a difficult nut to crack. She sat dispensing tea in her gracious little way, serene and impersonal; friendly without being intimate, a tiny bit smug. He roamed for a long time over a multitude of subjects, before he dared to touch upon her own. "You've got a wonderful man there, Frederica, my dear; one of the very best. In all my experience, I don't think I have ever come across a fellow I liked and respected better than I do Barney."
"Yes, I know," she said soberly.
"He's the sort of a chap that only falls in love once," he went on, mumbling dreamily, staring into the fire. "Oh, he's had affairs, I dare say; he's a man of the world, of course, but there'll only ever be one woman in his life, and that's you, my child. You're a lucky girl: with all your loveliness and charm and—I know—great worth... I still say that _you're_ the lucky one, to have the love of such a man as Barnes."
"I know," said Frederica again.
"You must never fail him," said Major Moon, lifting his head and looking at her almost appealingly, with his kindly, faded blue eyes. "It would be a terrible thing to see Barney lose his faith. I—I don't think I could bear it. But there," he smiled at her fondly: "I don't know why I even say such a thing; for I know you won't let him down."
"No, of course not, Major Moon," said Freddi politely.
In his effort to force her confidence he offered her his own. "A happy married life—that's everything in the world, Frederica, my dear. I—my wife—it wasn't an ideal marriage, but when my son was born that drew us together, and for a little while I knew what real happiness was, real, true actual happiness.... Of course that isn't everything; but I think as a general rule happy people are good people, don't you?"
"I didn't know you were married, Major Moon," said Frederica, evading this direct attempt to draw an opinion from her.
"Well, things are different now, Frederica. My—my little son was killed in an accident, you know. He was everything we had, and we were inclined to cosset him. I persuaded his mother that we should let him make a man of himself, and we bought him a little bicycle, and after a bit he used to go out on the country roads on it. He was knocked down by a man on another bicycle; I saw it all happen, from the top of the hill. The man came tearing round a corner much too fast; he—well, my dear, the boy was flung off his machine and into the ditch. I saw the man pause and stare down at him, and then he jumped on to his own bicycle and rode on down the hill and out of sight. When I got to the corner my boy was dead. My wife—well, she didn't want to live after that. She felt it was my fault that the boy had been killed; she died very soon after...."
"And the man?"
"I knew who the man was, but—I couldn't do anything; there was no proof. If he'd damaged his machine, he'd got it repaired before the police examined it. But I knew. I didn't see his face, but I saw the colour of his bicycle as he stood looking down at what he'd done before he pedalled off, leaving my boy to die like a dog at the side of the road...." All the colour had gone out of his pink cheeks, and the blue eyes were clouded with tears. He said in his low, grumbling old voice: "I'm sorry, child. I didn't mean to say so much. It's all a long time ago...."
She could be demonstrative only in passion; and now her habitual reticence was like a cage about her. She longed to put out her hand to him, to stroke the quivering old face, to wipe away those unashamed tears; but she could not. She sat rigid in her chair, polite, attentive, interested, and after a moment she said, in her crisp little voice: "And what was the colour of the bicycle?"
He got to his feet and blundered out of the room.
3
Marion Bates stared back alone from the party, sore and angry. Eden and Woody had come back to the 'ladies' room' towards the end of the evening looking a trifle foolish, and Eden had done his best to placate his legitimate partner; but Sister Bates now knew for certain that her hope was gone. It was not that Gervase loved Freddi—it was that he no longer loved _her;_ anybody, even that ugly old Woods, was preferable to herself. Too much gin had inflamed her jealousy, and the genuine pathos of her disappointment was overlaid with an ugly spite. She grew loud and quarrelsome. Gervase, conscious of having been in the wrong in spending so much time away from her when she had actually come to the party as his guest, said, uncomfortably: "Come along, Marion, and I'll see you back to your quarters."
"Oh, I know you want to get rid of me," said Bates belligerently. "And I'm going all right—don't worry! But I'll walk back alone, thanks very much—not with you."
"Well, I'm sorry," said Eden briefly, for to argue would only mean a scene. "It was only that I thought you were supposed to be afraid of the dark."
"So I am afraid of the dark," said Sister Bates, who had used this plea often enough to engineer ten minutes alone with her beloved; "but I'd rather have the dark than _you._..."
"I should be petrified of your hospital murderer popping up," said one of the officers' wives, who did not believe in the hospital murderer for one moment, but thought that this unlovely argument should end.
Sister Bates looked at her with tipsy cunning. "Oh, that doesn't worry me; you see I happen to know who the murderer is!"
"Christmas!" thought the officer's wife; "what have I gone and let myself in for now?" She said that in that case Sister Bates ought to rush off this _min_ ute to the police and tell them all.
"You don't believe that there was a murderer, do you?" said Bates defiantly. "But there was. Higgins was murdered. I know."
"Oh, don't be silly, Marion," said Gervase impatiently. "Of course he wasn't. He just couldn't take the anæsthetic, that's all. Come on home like a good girl."
"Then what's a detective-inspector doing down here?" said Bates, ignoring the second part of his speech.
"He came down to get the whole thing properly cleared up, so that people wouldn't go round saying this kind of idiotic thing," said Woody coolly.
Sister Bates' tiddley dignity was affronted beyond bearing. "Kindly remember, Woods, that you're speaking to an officer and you're nothing but a private yourself!"
Woods stared at her for a moment and then went off into fits of laughter. "I'm sorry, Sister, but _hon_ estly..." Words failed her. The officer's wife and her companion moved unobtrusively away. "This is what comes of mixing Sisters and V.A.D.s at parties," said Bates furiously.
"Yes. Next time we mustn't ask any Sisters," said Gervase.
It was too much. She swung round upon him, and her face was livid with rage. "You'll regret that, Gervase! You'll all regret it... my God, I'll see that you all regret it...." She was sobbing with fury and wounded dignity. Eden put out his hand to her. "I'm sorry, Marion. It was horrid of me. You're tired, my dear... we're all tired and cross and horrid.... Come on and I'll see you home..." but she brushed his hand aside and went on hysterically: "You think there wasn't any murder, but there was, and I know who did it and how it was done and everything.... I'll go to the detective to-morrow and tell him everything.... I'll show him the proof of it...." As Woods moved impatiently, she swung round on her. "Oh, yes, you think I haven't got any proof but I have! I've got it hidden away in the theatre. I kept it in case... in case I might want to use it. I'll show it to the detective, I'll take it to him in the morning and tell him.... _He_ 'll believe me, don't worry!"
Eden stepped forward once more pacifically; he saw that she was beyond her own control and he felt a brute. "All right, old girl—you go to him in the morning and tell him everything you know, and show him the proof and all the rest of it. In the meantime it's after twelve and we all want to go to bed. Come along, and I'll take you back to your quarters...."
But she tore herself from his grasp and flounced off by herself, out of the Mess and across the road and into the hospital grounds. The Sisters' Mess lay at the other side of the park. "I'll go down the avenue," she thought; "and cut through the hospital and get—it—and take it to my room with me. It'll be safest there." A shell burst in the sky and there was a booming of distant guns; she almost wished there were flares—it was terribly dark and they did light up the place a bit.
Someone was following her. Someone was dodging from tree to tree of the long, uphill avenues of oaks; dodging quickly from tree to tree and then standing quietly, motionless, peering out at her. She flashed her torch round nervously, half terrified of knowing who was there, half terrified of finding out. She paused and called: "Who is it?" but her voice came out croaking feebly, and seemed to be suffocated in the breathless pounding of her heart. She hurried on, and at once there was a flutter of movement, a whisk of white, an almost soundless brushing of grass and breaking of tiny twigs. She flung herself, panic-stricken, against the huge, friendly, stolid bole of a tree and clung there, sick with dread, calling out again: "Who is it? Who's there? Who's _there_?." The very darkness about her seemed to hold its breath, listening for the reply; but there was no reply—only a creeping of dry leaf against dry leaf, and a stealthy, motionless silence that crawled with fear.
She did not know how long she crouched, her hands fluttering against the rough, hard bark of the oak; but just so long as she was motionless, nothing moved. When she started away from the shelter of the tree, the eerie rustling movement began again. "I must run," she thought; "I can't stay here all night with it; I must make a dash... I must run!" and she clutched her little grey cape about her and took to her heels, running for her life up the long corridor of tree trunks, with the pursuer, unseen, dodging after her through the shadows: catching her up, outstripping her, waiting for her in the gloom ahead. Her mouth was dry and her heart thundering in her bursting breast. She did not know whether she were running away from the enemy now, or towards it; she paused for a moment, trembling horribly, and for that moment all was still; she ran on again, blindly then, her high heels tripping and stumbling in the loose stones; her torch fell from her trembling fingers and crashed to the ground and its tiny light went out, and ahead of her something huge and menacing stepped out of the velvet dark and caught and held her fast—and she was in Major Moon's arms, choking out her terror and relief on his kindly shoulder.
"Good heavens, child," he cried, holding her safe and steady, patting and comforting. "What is all this? What's it all about? Afraid of the dark?—I do believe you were skedaddling up the avenue like a kid afraid of the dark!"
"There's somebody following me!" she cried. "Something's creeping after me. It's because I said I knew who the murderer was."
"The murderer?" said Major Moon.
"Yes, yes, I know, you see. I—I saw something. I didn't realise it at first.... I was just going over the things.... I just took it out to ask her what on earth it was...." She pulled herself together a little. "Well, anyway, when I heard about someone having gone into the theatre the night before, I began to see what had happened. I didn't want to say anything, but after to-night— well, why should _she_ have him? Why should other people have him? Not that I.... Well, I don't care, I'll go to the detective; I'll tell the detective. I think I ought to; I think it's my duty to go to him...." She grasped at the old man's arms, muttering incoherently, looking back over her shoulder into the silent dark.
Major Moon smelt the alcohol on her breath. "Well, now, don't bother too much about it to-night," he said, soothingly. "You go to bed and sleep on it and to-morrow if you still think you have something to tell, you can go and see Cockie and talk it over with him. Meanwhile, I don't think you need worry; there's nobody about to-night, except the military police, and perhaps an occasional Jerry overheard... but we don't let _them_ upset us, do we? I dare say you just heard Sergeant Edwards making his rounds, or Corporal Bevan or someone.... I'll walk over to your Mess with you."
"No, no," she said, frantically. "I must go into the hospital."
"Well, all right, I'll see you to the hospital. But you aren't going to spend the night there?"
"No, but—I expect I'll have a cup of tea with Night Sister on St. Cat's, or something. I don't want you to come with me."
"Well, I'll just see you to the side door," he said, pacifically.
Patients from the ground-floor and upstairs wards, who were not actually bedridden, slept on stretchers in the long corridor that ran through the hospital basement; so as to be fairly safe from bombs. She parted from Major Moon at the door, and made her determined way down this corridor to the central staircase, leading up to the hall. The men slept uneasily on their improvised beds, humped under rough brown army blankets, their arms, outflung in sleep, lying supine across the dusty floor. Here and there a pair of bright eyes gleamed, open and aware; here and there a face was coloured vividly green or purple, where the skin specialists were trying out some new treatment; once she almost collided with a blue-clad figure, its eyes dark hollows in a huge, white bandaged face. She began to panic again, picking her way among the stretchers, stepping over sprawling arms and legs, starting at the sound of a man muttering the name of his wife or his sweetheart in his sleep. The stairs to the ground floor seemed endless in their dim, carefully shielded light. She took them two at a time, and was glad of the brightness and warmth of the reception room, where Sergeant McCoy sat drowsily over a paper.
She took down the key of the main theatre from its hook. "I won't be long, Sergeant; just going in to get something."
There was no reason why the Orderly Sergeant should question the theatre sister's right to enter her own domain. "O.K., Sister," he said, raising himself about three inches off his chair as a happy medium between sitting still and standing to attention when speaking to an officer. "Don't get yourself murdered!" He laughed briefly and went back to the _Kentish Mercury._
Sister Bates pushed open the swing doors of the outer lobby of the operating theatre, felt for familiar switches, and unlocked the inner door. After the terrifying dark, the glaring light of the great central lamp, brought comfort and security. She went straight across to the poison cupboard and, unlocking it, took from a little-used lower shelf the proof of—murder; took it and thrust it into the front of her apron, and locked the cupboard door, quietly and carefully and without haste, and turned back, thankfully, into the calm and sanity of that bright, white overhead light.
A figure, gowned and masked in green, stood in the doorway, watching her; with something gleaming evilly in its gloved right hand.
4
Sergeant McCoy continued listlessly to turn over the abbreviated pages of the _Mercury._ 'Death of Heronsford Man' said a small headline, and added that Joseph Higgins had Given his Life for Others, in a recent air-raid. The sergeant shook his head over this (strictly inaccurate) sub-title, for he was a sentimentalist; he turned lugubriously to the In Memoriam column.
Nurse Woods put her head quietly round the door. "Oh, hallo, McCoy; I thought you were asleep. I—I just want the key of the theatre for half a second." She went over, all careless, to the board, but added sharply: "Good lord—it's not here."
"Sister Bates took it twenty minutes ago," said McCoy, rousing himself dismally from the post-mortem encomiums of Higgins' heartbroken wife, Gert, and of George, Arthur, brothers- and sisters-in-law, and little Ruby.
Woods dithered indecisively. She said at last: "Oh, well, don't bother. Don't mention that I asked you," and went out, but returned a minute later to say, a little anxiously: "There's no light in the theatre, Sergeant. I wonder what she's done with the key."
"She ought to have brought it back here," said McCoy angrily. "She's got no business to lock up the theatre and keep the key. As if there 'asn't been enough fuss over all this other business; I wish I'd never 'ave mentioned it now, the Sergeant Major 'aving me on the mat and seeming to think I ought to have seen more what was going on the other night and who took the key and all, as if I wasn't rushed off me legs, thirty-one admissions in the middle of the night, and the whole place upside down.... I wish people would be a bit more considerate, that's what I wish. I suppose I'd better go and see what she's done with the key; probably gorn off and never locked up at all...." He got up, still grumbling, and went out into the corridor.
There was not a sound in the theatre; and when he turned on the lights in the lobby, still there was no movement or sound. The key was in the door to the theatre itself; and he gave an angry exclamation and turned it and took it out of the lock. "Going off and leaving it like that! I'll report this to-morrow, nurse, you see if I don't! Getting me into more trouble.... I'll report it."
"Perhaps she hasn't finished," said Woods, uncertainly. "She may be coming back or something. Ought you just to take the key away? She may be still there."
"What, sitting in the dark!" said McCoy derisively.
Woody thought it not impossible that Sister Bates might be sitting in the dark, even in the operating theatre; she might have lured Gervase there on one pretext or another, and be having a little petting party with him. She could not help grinning to herself at the thought of the happy couple being locked in to the theatre all night, and of the explanations next morning; but she said, loyally: "I do think you ought to just open the door again, Sergeant, and—make sure there's no one there."
"Well, if there is, why don't they say so?" said McCoy, crossly. He opened the door, however, and switched on the light and poked his head inside. "Nope—no one here...."
But the words froze on his lips; for there was someone in the theatre, after all. Laid out ceremonially on the operating table, rigged up elaborately in a surgical gown and mask and gloves, with huge white rubber boots on her feet, Marion Bates lay very silent and still. There was a jagged tear in the front of the gown, its torn edges wet and sticky with drying blood: and thrust into her breast and deep down into her foolish heart, was the quivering, delicate blade of a surgeon's knife.
CHAPTER VI
1
Cockrill, hastily summoned from his unrestful sleep on an army bed, scrambled into his trousers and a shirt, thrust the mackintosh over these and, issuing a string of instructions, rushed off to the operating theatre. Half an hour later, six cold, shocked and bewildered people sat uneasily round the little office, awaiting his return. Esther was white, with big circles under her eyes, Woody looked ten years older, Barney's grey eyes were desperately troubled, and Gervase sat with his hands between his knees, staring down unseeingly at his shoes. Major Moon was an old, old man, and his fingers trembled as he put his cigarette to his lips. Only Frederica was cool and serene as ever, neat and exquisite, every golden hair in place under her starchy white cap. Her placid little voice grated on their nerves as she said for the hundredth time that she wished the detective would come and get it over with, and let her go back to her ward.
"For God's sake, Freddi—the hospital won't fall _down_ because you're not on duty!"
"But I'm worried about my drip saline, Woody," said Frederica plaintively. "He's awfully ill, and the orderlies are so ham-handed...."
Barney put out his hand to her, wordlessly, and she took it and sat close against him, and he could feel her body tremble. "Only _I_ know her," he thought; "only _I_ know how much goes on under the offhand little air of hers...."
"Give me another cigarette, Gervase, will you?" said Woods.
Eden raised his head and his ugly face was grey with worry and remorse, more purely emotional than anything he had felt for many years. He took a cigarette from his case and handed it to her in his fingers, hardly knowing what he did; she said, pityingly: "Don't take it to heart so much, Gervase. It wasn't your fault."
"Supposing it was suicide," he said.
"My dear, it wasn't suicide. Suicides don't dress themselves up in theatre gear and lay themselves out on the table!"
"You can't say what they do or don't do, Woody," said Barnes. "They do some very odd things sometimes."
"They don't stab themselves twice," said Woods.
"What do you mean—twice?" said Major Moon, looking at her sharply.
"She'd been stabbed twice; I saw it. McCoy left me there with her; I knew she was dead, actually, but I couldn't be certain, could I? I didn't know if I ought to try to get the knife out. I—I sort of bent over and looked at it. There was a big, jagged hole in the gown and you could see two holes under it, through her dress. She couldn't have done it herself, that's flat."
"But who—I mean, Woody, if she didn't do it herself, somebody else must have done it; it means that she was _mur_ dered!"
"Well, what do you think, Freddi?" said Woods, impatiently.
"But Woody—but _Bar_ ney—I mean, _mur_ dered! Here in the hospital! It can't be; she can't have been!"
"You talk as if you'd never heard the word before, Freddi. What do you think the Inspector's been investigating all this time?"
"But _Woody_ —you don't mean you think Higgins was murdered too?"
"Freddi, darling, don't go on and _on_ ," said Esther from her quiet corner.
"What I want to know is, what has it got to do with us?" said Barney. "Why should Cockrill get us all out of bed this time of night? I mean, why us six? Why not Perkins, and Jones and—well, I don't know: Matron or whoever you like?"
"But that's just the point, darling," insisted Frederica. "That's why it's so frightful if it really was murder. Because it would mean that one of us had done it!"
Major Moon paused, lighting his third cigarette. "Oh, nonsense, child; you don't know what you're saying."
"But it's true, Major Moon. Inspector told me so, himself. At least I suppose if Sister Bates was murdered—and I honestly can't.... Well, all right, Woody, say she _was_ murdered then! Anyway, if she was, then I suppose Higgins was too, and the same person must have done them both; and the Inspector told me this evening that if Higgins had been murdered it would have meant that one of us six had done it!"
"How the hell could he work that out?" said Eden.
"No, my dear, really, it's absolutely true; one of us must have. Nobody else knew that night that Higgins was in the hospital."
"Well, if that's all you're going on, you can leave me out," said Woods cheerfully; "I didn't know a thing about him until the next morning."
"But you saw him, Woody. You were talking to Sister Bates and Gervase in the hall when Higgins was carried past on the stretcher, being brought into the ward."
"Good lord, my dear, I saw a sort of bundle of filthy rags; and afterwards Esther told me you'd had a fractured femur in."
"Well, that's what you say, darling; but you _could_ have seen who it was, and so could Gervase and Bates. The point is that nobody else even _could_ have seen him except Esther and me, and Major Moon who took him in."
"And me," said Barney. "I didn't, actually, but I suppose I could have; I was in the bunk talking to you."
"Well, as it happens, you couldn't have, darling, because the corner bed was in pitch darkness, and with the light on in the bunk, you couldn't see a thing. I know, because to see if Higgins was all right, I had to use a torch. For the same reason, Night Sister couldn't have seen him, though she was in and out, and the orderly and people like that."
"Weren't they in the ward?"
"Yes, but Higgins was behind screens and neither of them went in to him... even the outside orderlies didn't see him, because he was brought straight down to the ward by the ambulance people."
"And nobody knew his name," said Esther, in a subdued despairing voice.
They all sat silent, appalled by the reality of this fantastic situation. "One of _us_ —I can't... Well, anyway," said Woody generously: "It lets you out, Barney, dear."
"Actually, Inspector Cockrill said he would have to include Barney because he gave the anæsthetic and I suppose he could have killed Higgins quite easily without us knowing; and without any preparation."
"What do you mean, preparation?"
"Well, the point about us not knowing the night before is that if anybody really did murder Higgins they must have had it all fixed up somehow or other; I mean it couldn't have been done on the spur of the moment...."
"I don't see why not," said Barnes.
"But how could it, darling? I mean, even supposing someone gave him an injection of something peculiar, I don't know what, but just pretend they could have, and that affected him under the anæsthetic—well, even so, it would have to have some preparation, you'd have to know beforehand. And as it happens, only us six did anything for him before his operation; the X-ray people messed about with him of course, and the orderly in the ward probably helped Esther get him on the trolley, and things like that, but it was only sort of last-minute things."
"You seem determined to keep it in the magic circle, Frederica," said Gervase, with a wry smile.
"Well, I'm only telling you what the detective said to me."
Esther had been deep in thought. She said suddenly: "Higgins was alone in the anæsthetic-room while the duodenal ulcer was being done; do you think anyone...?" but as Woods raised her head, she corrected sadly: "No, that's right, darling! Don't say it! I put the catch up on the outside door of the anæsthetic-room, so that nobody should come bursting in on him."
"Besides, it's all hooey about giving him an injection of something," said Gervase flatly.
"And especially as this does look as if there was something in McCoy's story of the masked figure taking the theatre key..."
"And that was before midnight, and before midnight _def_ initely only Major Moon, and us three, Esther and Woody and I, and Gervase and Bates could have known about Higgins having been brought in."
"Perhaps Bates killed Higgins," suggested Woods, suddenly sitting up straight.
"But then who killed Bates?"
"God knows," agreed Woods, giving way immediately.
"And, besides, Bates was killed because she had proof about the murder, and how it was done or who did it or something. I mean, obviously in that case she wasn't the murderer, was she?"
"We had better begin looking to our alibis for this evening," suggested Eden, with bitter humour.
"Well, I haven't got one for a start," said Woody, cheerfully. She sat on a window-sill in the stuffy little room in a favourite attitude, her long legs thrust out in front of her, ankles crossed, her arms folded lightly across her chest, and said to Eden, smiling: "You said you'd come back to the party and see me home, and I hung about for a quarter of an hour at the Mess and you never came, so I went on by myself. Now I shall probably be hanged for a murderer, because of course 1 took care to keep well out of sight, being a mere other-rank and having no right to be there 'unattended by an officer'."
"I went after Bates," said Eden. "I thought she was much too whistled to go across the grounds by herself, and that she'd soon repent of her refusal to let me see her to her quarters. She must have run like a lamp-lighter, because I never caught her up; I went by the path round the hospital, right across to the Sister's Mess, and waited there for about five minutes, but she didn't turn up, so I suppose she must have gone in; I came back the other way, in case she should have gone up the avenue and through the hospital...."
"So she did," said Major Moon. "I met her legging it up like a bird afraid of the dark. She said something was following her; of course I thought it was all imagination; she obviously had a little too much to drink."
"And now it turns out that it wasn't imagination," said Freddi.
They glanced at each other uneasily, and hurriedly looked away, only to find their eyes travelling again to those well-known, those pleasant, familiar, everyday faces. One of them had followed her up the avenue, crept after her, poor fluttered, terrified, panic-stricken girl, like an animal, in the dark; crept up the long avenue of trees, like a beast of prey, pausing, hiding, standing alert and motionless, moving on again in horrible pursuit.... Impossible, horrible, grotesque, and fantastic thought! Little Major Moon, pink and chubby, creeping on his neat small feet with his mild blue eyes gleaming with predatory madness... or Woody, moving catlike on her beautiful legs; or Eden a grey wolf, head thrust forward, hunting down the quarry with relentless ease; or Esther, following with unhurried stealth, quiet, cool—deadly; or Barney, dear Barney, driven by God knew what compulsion, blotting out from his heart the pathos and helplessness of the trembling creature fluttering ahead; or little Frederica, neat, impersonal, fastidious; implacable... Barney, shuddering, put out his hand to her: "At least you're safe, darling; at least it couldn't have been you! You were on the ward, and nobody can question your movements."
"Except that they consisted largely of sitting in the bunk, darling, with everybody sound asleep all round me, and not having the faintest idea of what I was up to!"
"And the theatre so handy, just across the hall," said Woods, grinning.
Barney's face fell. "This is beginning to look rather awkward," said Major Moon. "I went back to my room in the Mess after I met Sister Bates in the avenue; but I can't prove that. Where were you, Barney, my boy?"
Barnes looked uncomfortable. "I'm afraid you'll think it was cheek, Eden, especially as you've just said that you did go after her—but I thought it was wrong to let the girl go off on her own. I thought she was a bit tiddled and over-excited, and she might do something silly or, anyway, get frightened or upset. I'd taken Esther to the party, but she said she'd find Woody and go back with her, and anyway be all right, so I went along to see if I could catch up with Bates, only I took a few minutes explaining to Esther, and I must have missed her."
"Which way did you go?" said Eden.
"The same way as you went, along the path round the hospital."
" _I_ didn't see you," said Gervase.
"Well, for that matter, _I_ didn't see _you_ , old boy," said Barnes apologetically. "I expect you'd hurried on ahead; and it was awfully dark."
"What did you do after that, Barney?" said Woods. Barnes replied that he had come straight back to the Mess and gone to bed; and added, ruefully, that the truth was often a bit lame.
"Well, I think this is fun," said Woody, who did not think it was fun at all. "Every single one of us was lurking about the grounds last night, except Freddi, and she wouldn't have had to lurk. What about you, Esther, darling? I suppose you looked around for me, decided that I'd gone on with—someone or other—and went over to quarters all by your little self?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I did do," said Esther wearily.
"No one saw you come home, I suppose?" suggested Moon.
"No, of course not: Freddi was on duty and Woods was in the hospital, making her great discovery."
"So there isn't one of us that couldn't have been the murderer!" cried Woody gaily.
Esther moved restlessly on her hard office chair, leaning back against the white-washed wall. "No, darling; it's charming."
"Well, I don't want to go all grue," said Woody, somewhat abashed. "But there's no use sitting round having inhibitions about it. Look what good's already come of discussing it."
"You've established that any of us could have murdered Bates, you and Frederica between you; that's about all the good so far!"
"Not all of us; Major Moon couldn't have done it, now that I come to think of it," said Woody, smiling at him.
"Thanks very much," said Major Moon. "But why not me?"
"Because you had no motive."
"What motive did the rest of us have?" said Eden irritably.
"Well, good lord, that's obvious. She knew who had murdered Higgins, and she had the proof and she was going to tell the detective; so, of course, we murdered her to keep her quiet—at least whichever of us murdered her did it for that reason."
"You don't for a moment believe that any of us did it, Woody," said Esther, "or you wouldn't be talking like this about it."
Woods laughed, wagging her head, half defiant, half ashamed. "Well, I do and I don't; my logic tells me that one of us must have; my sentiment tells me that it's quite ridiculous that any of us could have; and my curiosity makes me go on probing about to find out which of us did! Now, for example, we all heard Bates saying she has proof about the murder...."
"Except Freddi," said Barney.
"She dropped into the ward to tell me all about it, darling," said Frederica, laughing.
"Yes, so she did! Well, I mean, she could have; we don't _know_ that she didn't. But we do know that Major Moon wasn't at the party when she made her speech. He was doing his round."
"Actually he was talking to me in the bunk," said Freddi.
"Well, all right, darling, it doesn't matter where he was; the point is that he didn't hear what Bates said about her having discovered the murderer."
"As it happens I did hear it," said Moon mildly; "I heard it from her afterwards; she told me when I met her in the avenue. I thought it was just nonsense."
"So did we all think it was just nonsense," said Gervase wearily. He fished out his case and wordlessly handed round cigarettes.
"Only, of course, it wasn't nonsense, after all," insisted Woods, "and the murderer knew that, and he followed her up the avenue and got ahead of her and hid in the theatre...."
"How did he know she was going to the theatre?"
"My dear, she _told_ us she had it hidden in the theatre! When she went in and got it, he—well, he stabbed her, poor little thing, and took the proof away...."
"And where is it now?" said Frederica.
The 'proof' was at this moment in the operating theatre, right under Cockrill's nose, if he and they had but known it; Gervase said, bursting out with it angrily, as though his nerves would stand no more of this talk and discussion and argument: "You're being very clever and constructive, Woody, my dear, but there's one thing you haven't explained. What were _you_ doing, going to the theatre at midnight? You hadn't left your knitting there, I suppose, or forgotten a book, like they do in the sort of novels women write about country house-parties?"
"Darling—most acid!" said Freddi; but she, too, looked rather strangely at her friend.
"I—I discovered the murder," said Woody uncertainly.
"Yes, we all know you discovered the murder; we're sick of the sound of it," said Eden, with irrational irritation, for she had only told the story once and that under considerable pressure from himself among others. "But that isn't what you originally went to the theatre for, is it? Or is it?"
She looked at him with the oddest expression in her shrewd, dark, mascaraed eyes. "Well, no, Gervase, that's not what I went for."
"Why did you go?" he insisted.
She would have to explain this to the detective too. She improvised hurriedly: "I—I was curious. I couldn't think what the proof could be and I thought it would be fun to see what she was doing there."
" _Woody_ —do you mean to say that it was you, following poor Sister Bates up the avenue?"
Woods looked about her wretchedly; but said at last: "Well, yes, it was me."
"So you will have seen me speaking to her?" asked Moon.
"Yes. Yes, I did, Major Moon."
"Whereabouts was I when I met her?"
Woody gave up the effort. "Under a mastic tree," she said, laughing.
"There isn't such a tree in the grounds," said Frederica.
Woods went off into a cackle of brittle laughter. "Honestly, Freddi darling, you're _per_ fect. You have no sense of humour, have you?"
"No," said Frederica placidly. "I never have had." But Barney could feel the little quiver that ran through her, of hurt surprise at Woody's cruelty.
"She's quoting the _Scrip_ tures, darling. Susannah and the Elders."
"Oh, the _Scrip_ tures," said Freddi. After all, nobody could be expected to see anything funny in the Scriptures.
There was a miserable silence. Woods was stricken with remorse at having been betrayed by her exhausted nerves into such uncalled for sarcasm. Frederica opened her mouth to say once more that she did wish the Inspector would come and get it over with, and let her go back to her drip saline, but shut it again, abruptly. Esther, however, put the same thought into words: "If only he would come and ask us his questions and let us go...."
2
Cockrill came, casting his hat down on to the desk in the centre of the room, shrugging off his mackintosh, feeling in his pockets for tobacco and papers, his bright eyes all the time searching their weary faces. They stared back, anxious and appealing, and he met their questioning glances with a cold hostility. There was none of the 'old pet' about Inspector Cockrill now. He said, at last, grimly: "So Higgins _was_ murdered after all! And now we have a second murder on our hands!"
They had spent half an hour convincing themselves of this; but it did not make it any the less horrible, to hear it put again, bluntly, into words. Shakily and miserably, they recounted again, piece by piece, the history of the evening: of the disastrous party, of the scene at the end of it, of the final departure of Bates into the dark night. He said at last, thoughtfully: "If she knew murder had been committed—why didn't she tell me earlier in the day?"
Nobody appeared to know the answer to that. He asked suddenly: "Does anybody know anything whatsoever about this crime that they haven't yet told me? Because, if they do, I should strongly advise them to speak up now. Sister Bates was obviously killed because she had this knowledge and it wasn't too late to stop her from telling it. Be advised and say everything you have to say, _now!_ That at least would be one danger averted."
"For God's sake, Cockie," said Esther, white and trembling; "there isn't any _more_ danger? This thing isn't going on and _on_...?"
He looked at her briefly but did not reply. Instead he said to Major Moon: "What constitutes a lethal dose of morphia?"
"Morphia?" said Moon, bewildered. He held a little consultation with his feet. "Well, I don't know; what would you say, Eden? Four grains? Five grains?"
"There've been lots of recoveries from that and more," said Barney. "But that would be with treatment."
"Would two grains be fatal?"
"Well, I don't know, Inspector; not necessarily, I shouldn't think."
"Especially on a healthy subject," suggested Eden. "On the other hand there've been deaths from half a grain...."
"And recoveries from twenty grains," said Barney.
Cockrill shook his head impatiently; there should be a lethal dose of a drug and a harmless dose and an in-between dose, and none of this vagueness. He felt disappointed in the medical profession which failed to keep its knowledge in neat little boxes; and said with some asperity: "Have any of you got any morphia in your possession?"
"Oh, hell," said Frederica.
"I _beg_ your pardon, Miss Linley?"
She fished in the recesses of her respirator case and, after some fumbling, produced a small white tablet and laid it on the table before him. "I _thought_ that was coming; and I didn't want to give it up!"
"What is this?" said Cockrill sternly.
"Well, morphia, of course," said Freddi; she put out her hand to take it back: "Don't you want it? Good!"
"Yes, I do most certainly want it; what are you doing with it in your gas mask?"
"Most of us keep a small dose handy in case of being buried in an air-raid," explained Barney, glancing uneasily between Cockrill and Frederica. "If you were trapped and in pain, it would be comforting to have some, and might save another person risking their lives to give you a shot of something. I gave Miss Linley some, and I keep half a grain myself." He produced a tiny box and emptied two little white pills on to the table.
"Here's mine," said Eden, following suit, and as Major Moon also handed over two tablets, he added, grinning: "Come on, Woody—cough up!"
"Must I give you mine?" pleaded Esther, white to the lips.
Her mother had died after three days under the ruins of their home; Cockie looked at her from under his eyebrows and his look was full of pity, but he said, firmly: "I'm afraid you must, Esther, but I'll let you have it back the moment this affair is concluded." He added, looking round at them with an ironical lift of the eyebrow: "I presume your being in possession of this stuff is—unofficial?"
"Just mildly unofficial," agreed Eden, smiling back.
Cockrill gathered up the eleven little tablets and placed them in an envelope in his pocket. "Each of these is a quarter, is it? What's the normal dose?"
"A quarter of a grain," said Moon.
"What _is_ this, anyway?" said Eden suddenly. "What's morphia got to do with Marion Bates? She was stabbed, wasn't she?"
"Yes, she was stabbed." He ground out his cigarette stub on the floor with the heel of his shoe, and immediately began rolling another; intent on the work of his fingers, he said evenly: "She stood with a look of—I think it was incredulity—on her face; and the murderer stabbed her in the breast, striking a little bit downwards to the heart."
"Did you say ' _incredulity_ '?" said Woods, and her voice shook.
He looked at her sharply. "You saw the girl yourself; didn't you notice it?"
She stood like one in a dream, staring at him. "Incredulity! Yes, that was it! That was her expression!" and it seemed as though a great load was lifted from her heart. "She was—astonished!" she said. "She—she looked up and she couldn't believe what she saw!"
They all looked at her curiously. "Would Sister Bates have died at once, Barney?" said Frederica, in that little endearing way she had of asking such questions of him with a childish confidence in his ability to reply.
"If she was stabbed right through to the heart I should think she would," said Barney. "Practically at once, anyway." He glanced at Moon and Eden for collaboration.
Esther started to say something, but stopped. Instead, she asked: "What happened next?"
Cockrill had finished the cigarette, and he sat with his head on one side, watching it smoking wispily between his brown fingers. He said slowly: "What happened next was this. The murderer was dressed in a clean surgical gown, from the linen cupboard, and a mask of the more elaborate type, the kind that covers the whole head and leaves just a slit for the eyes. He had with him, or he went back to the laundry basket and fetched a soiled gown and a small, oblong mask. He took the girl's body and dressed it up in the gown and the mask, and he pulled rubber gloves on to the hands and thrust the feet into rubber boots; he laid the body out on the operating table and then..." He paused for a moment and added deliberately: "Then he stabbed the dead body again."
"Oh, Barney!" said Frederica. He took her little hand and held it warmly in his own.
"Stabbed her a second time—when she was dead?" said Woods, recoiling.
"Yes, she was dead," said Cockrill, drawing on his cigarette. "The second wound was smaller and closer than the first; and it hasn't bled at all."
"How can you know which was first?" said Freddi.
"I happen to be a detective," said Cockie, raising a sardonic eyebrow. "The smaller wound was made after the gown was put on. The first wasn't—there's a big, ragged hole in the gown, and they've tried to make it look as though both wounds were made when she already had the gown on; but I don't think they were. I think the gown was put on after she was dead; and then she was stabbed again."
"But why?" cried Woody, shuddering horribly. " _Why_?"
Cockrill wished he knew; and because he did not know, because he was so anxious and uneasy, so helpless in face of the appalling absence of tangible evidence that confronted him, he grew, as always, nervous and irritable, staring at their pitiful white faces with a sort of irrational enmity. To-morrow there would be work to do, finger-prints to be checked, photographs to be pored over, innumerable answers to be noted and sorted and digested and compared; the whole, familiar, satisfying paraphernalia of police routine. But tonight—to-night there was nothing to be done. He must dismiss these people to their beds, and for all he knew, one of them was a murderer. He said suddenly and harshly: "The killer took two grains of morphia out of the poison cupboard; you'd better look out for yourselves!" and took an almost sadistic pleasure in seeing their faces grow even more white, even more taut with strain.
"The cupboard in the theatre?" said Woody stupidly.
"Yes, the poison cupboard in the theatre. Bates had hidden the 'proof' there. She still had the keys in her hand as she lay dead on the table; but the cupboard was open and there was no morphia there." He swung round upon Woods. "The poisons book show that there should have been two grains of morphia in the cupboard; is that correct?"
"I suppose it's correct, if it says so," said Woods. "I know we were pretty low in morphia; we'd have been stocking up again tomorrow. "
"Perhaps that was the 'proof'," suggested Eden. "The morphia phial, I mean."
Cockrill had finished with them; he turned away to the desk to pick up his mackintosh and cram the old felt hat on to the back of his head, preparatory to another plunge out into the night; and said, giving them only half his attention: "No, no, the morphia wasn't the 'proof'. The morphia was kept on one of the middle shelves. The proof, what ever it was, was hidden on the bottom shelf under some lint and bandages and things; she stooped down to get it... she had her back to the room, all unconscious that she was being watched. But she was. Somebody was standing, masked and gowned, with one gloved hand on the lintel of the door, watching her quietly; and when she turned...."
Esther screamed once; screamed out horribly, and burst into peal upon peal of laughter, hardly less horrible. They stood appalled, staring at her: Eden shuddered and closed his eyes as though he could hardly bear to see the blankness of her eyes and her mirthless, laughing mouth: Moon swayed in a daze of intolerable weariness, Barney put his arm round Frederica, and she turned away her head and stood against his shoulder, erect, but trembling from head to foot; Woody—Woody walked over to Esther and, as though all this terrible evening of fear and horror and suspicion and uncontrol were concentrated in this one action, hit her with all her strength across the face.
The silence that followed was most terrible of all.
3
Esther awoke with a headache, after only a couple of hours' sleep. "What with gin, excitement, and then hysterics," she confided to Woods, as they stood at either side of their room in the cottage, their foreheads butted against the walls, arranging their caps.... "I feel like absolute death. I'm sorry about the outburst, darling; thank you for your rather drastic measure—it certainly did the trick."
"I put all I knew into it," said Woody, laughing. "I was a trifle frayed myself by then with, as you say, gin and shock. Actually the atmosphere at the party was a bit off to begin with, smoke and beer and what not."
"Much you know about it," said Esther, smiling at her. "You weren't in the room more than half an hour all told."
"I was pursuing the plan," said Woods, a trifle shamefaced.
"It begins to look as though the plan were pursuing you. Do go carefully, Woody darling; don't get yourself into a mess. I'm afraid Frederica will take this the wrong way, you know. I really do think it's unwise."
Woods was beginning to think it unwise, also, but not entirely on account of Frederica. She shrugged her plump shoulders, however, and busied herself with their breakfast, confining the conversation to the murder of Sister Bates. "You simply can't _believe_ it, my dear! When I woke up, I had that hideous sort of cloud hanging over me that you do when something ghastly has happened and you can't quite remember what it is.... Then suddenly it absolutely hit me like a hammer.... I mean, who could have dreamt that old Higgins was really killed— _mur_ dered—and here in the hospital; and now poor little Bates.... It's simply fantastic!"
"How on earth can the detective have known all that about what went on in the theatre?" said Esther, pushing aside a plate of untouched food. "It was just as if he'd been there."
"Good lord, no! Utterly elementary, my dear Watson; they work it all out from where the blood was and the direction of the wound and things like that."
"Well, but how does he know where the 'proof' was hidden? I still think it might have been the morphia."
"He said it was on the bottom shelf; if you get a thing from a very low shelf, you squat down and steady yourself with one hand by gripping on one of the upper shelves. These shelves are glass; I expect he could easily see Sister Bates's finger-prints bunched together on the edge of one of them."
"How terribly clever of you, Woody," said Esther, quite impressed.
"Oh, my dear, I'm brilliant. S. Holmes in person. Hell, the gas is running out!"
Esther stood aghast. "My dear, it was my turn to get a shilling and I've quite forgotten!"
"Well, never mind, ducky, I can cope. We'll just have to give Freddi a rather mingy hot-water bottle, that's all." She filled it up from the water remaining in the kettle and trudged upstairs with it.
It was agony to Esther's tidy soul to go away and leave cups and saucers unwashed, but she had adjusted herself to Woody's slapdash habits, and she now tidied the breakfast things neatly away and stacked them on a tray until their return from duty. Woody bundled the knives and forks into a jar of water. "Come on, sweetie, we're terribly late; it's half-past seven."
"All right, half a second." She ran upstairs but reappeared again in a moment. "I thought I'd just shut the window to warm it up a bit for Freddi; but I see you've done it."
"Yes, of course I have; come _on_ , darling!"
Eden and Barnes were both standing at their bedroom windows, in the Officers' Mess, Barney shaving, Eden apparently fully dressed. "They're up early this morning," said Woody, waving to them as they ran in through the main gate to the park.
"I suppose they couldn't sleep either," said Esther. "Heaven knows how any of us are going to get through our duty to-day."
"Thank goodness I'm off this afternoon," said Woods.
They met Major Moon puffing around the park in a vest and running shorts. "You look like a heavenly little steam-roller!" said Woody, laughing at him.
"Got to keep the boiler down," said Major Moon, patting it.
"You don't happen to have a couple of bob for a florin, do you, Major Moon? We've run out of gas, and Frederica won't be able to get her breakfast."
"As if he would in a vest and pants!" protested Esther, laughing. "Don't worry, Major Moon, Frederica can easily get her breakfast in the Mess for once. Oh, gosh, we are late! Come on, Woody...."
Freddi looked tired and nervy and was rather cross. "You're awfully late, Esther, and I'm simply worn out."
"I'm so sorry, pet; and another awful thing is that I forgot about my turn for a shilling in the gas, and we've run out, so you'll have to have your breakfast in the Mess. We've done your h.w.b."
"Oh, well, all right, don't worry; I can manage. I'll get in two or three hours' sleep before I skip up to town."
"I'd forgotten you were going to-day; that's why Barney's up so bright and early."
"He's got to go down to Heronsford and get the car; they're doing something or other to it in the garage and he doesn't think they'll ever have it ready. He's calling for me at half-past eleven."
"Would you like me to come over and wake you up at eleven?"
"It'll be all right. I've got the alarm."
"Well, no alarm would wake _me_ after only two or three hours' sleep on top of night duty; not to count a slight matter of investigation into murder during the night. By the way, will the detective let you go?"
"We won't ask him," said Freddi coolly.
"My dear, he'd be simply livid."
"I couldn't care less," said Frederica. She added: "Don't remind Woody that I'm going. She always thinks I'm going to fade away if I don't have my quota of rest, and she'll get hold of Barney and tell him not to take me. I'm as tough as old boots," said Freddi, wriggling her tiny frame into her hideous outdoor coat; "but Woody likes to think of us both as shrinking violets. It does something cosy to her mother urge." She tripped off out of the ward and across the garden to the V.A.D. Mess.
Gervase Eden was not a man who liked early rising; but he was up and dressed and walking up and down the drive by the main gates, when she went across, after her breakfast, to the cottage. She stopped short in her tracks at the sight of him, but after a moment's hesitation, went steadily forward. He came quickly up to her, putting out his hands in a familiar gesture, but hurriedly drawing them back. "Freddi—I wanted to talk to you for a minute."
"Well, I don't want to talk to you," she said, stonily.
He looked at her, astonished, and said rather sharply: "That hasn't always been the case."
"It's like you to remind me of it, Gervase," said Frederica.
He was obviously puzzled and hurt, but he went on doggedly: "Well, all right, if you feel that way, Freddi, it makes it easier to say what I was going to, or perhaps I needn't say it at all."
"Well, don't then. I don't want to hear it," said Freddi who would, nevertheless, have liked, from sheer curiosity, to know what it was.
His dark eyebrows met together in a frown, half-humorous, half-hurt. "Have it your own way, my dear," he said, and stood aside for her to pass through the gate.
She remained uncertainly on the other side. "Well, come on," he said, surprised. "Aren't you going to your quarters?"
"Yes, I am: when you've gone back to the Mess," said Freddi, remaining where she was.
"My dear, good child—you don't think I'm going to attempt a seduction scene here in the middle of the main high road, at eight o'clock in the morning, do you? Or what on earth's wrong with you?" His face cleared suddenly, and he burst out laughing. "Oh, my lovely Freddi! You couldn't possibly be afraid that I was going to leap upon you with a hypodermic full of morphia, filched from the theatre last night...?"
"Of course not," said Freddi, tossing her head; but she came forward, nevertheless, and, keeping well away from him, passed on towards the cottage. He stood looking after her, still laughing, and the sound of his laughter followed her into the house. "Damn him!" she said, slamming the door after her; and she took off her stiff white cap and flung it on to Woody's bed, and chucked her coat after it, and, unpinning her apron as she went, made her way wearily upstairs.
The window would not open. She struggled with it, standing in her pyjamas on the bed, and finally gave it up. "After all, I shall only be here two or three hours and I can't get up much of a fug in that time." She crawled under the blankets, and the moment her golden head touched the pillow, was sound asleep.
Woods returned to the cottage an hour later. Without hesitation, she went to the kitchen mantelpiece and took a shilling from under the clock there; put it in the meter, and made herself a cup of tea. She sat at the table drinking it, staring ahead of her, with an expression of pain and weariness, a sort of desperate resolution on her face; and, after a quarter of an hour, cleared away the things and, moving very quietly, left the house and walked across the park without a backward glance. The heavy, musty smell of escaping coal gas crept after her down the stairs and was barricaded in by the closing front door. Frederica tossed and muttered in her little bed, and fell back again on her pillow and lay motionless.
4
The patients had been washed and tidied by the time that Esther came on to the ward; they lay dozing in their beds, trying to sleep away a few more minutes of their interminable day. She whisked up and down among them, taking temperatures, counting pulses, measuring out doses, examining dressings. The up-patients in their blue linen suits, were tidying beds or making toast on the gas-cooker in the little kitchen outside. Chalk and Cheese were in a fever of activity at the other end of the ward. The fractured tib. and fib. announced that his behind was aching abominably, and that he would very much like it rubbed.
The oldest patient in every ward is known as 'Pop'; anybody tall is invariably addressed as 'Lofty,' anybody short as 'Tich' and anybody bald as 'Curly'; for the rest the patients are called by their surnames, or in case of sergeants, by their rank; but there is no accounting for the vagaries of the British soldier, and the fractured tib. and fib. was known, for no apparent reason, as William. He had lived down the stigma of his pansy voice, and was popular in the ward; there was a certain amount of competition among the V.A.D.s. to attend to him, for, though every strata of society has been absorbed into the ranks of the Army, the vast majority of soldiers are still drawn from the so-called middle and lower-middle classes; and, as a sophisticated, well-to-do and extremely personable young man, he was vastly interesting to Chalk and Cheese. Esther effectively concealed, even from herself, that she shared in this rivalry but she could not prevent a small sensation of pleasure at observing her colleagues so very busily occupied elsewhere. She advanced with a bottle of methylated spirit in her hand, and, lifting him on one arm, slid away the air cushion, and began to rub his thighs and back.
"That's _quite_ comfortable now," said William with complete truth, seeing that it had never been otherwise.
"You haven't got a trace of bed-sores," she said, unsuspiciously, lowering him again and tucking in his bedclothes.
"Thank you so much," he said; and as she stood by the bed, he took one of her hands in his. "Look at your poor little fingers!"
They were beautiful hands, small and narrow, with tapering fingers and the perfect filbert nail; but rough work and hard water had chafed and stained them, and, with all her care, the nails were broken and blunt. "I'm ashamed of them," she said, putting them behind her back.
"You should be proud. They got that way in a very good cause."
"Well, I suppose so, but—look!" She spread them out in front of her, frowning down on the callouses on her palm. "A hideous great scar where I burnt my finger last week, and a bruise on my wrist, and a horrible black stain round my thumb nail... I used to keep them looking so lovely and now they're just a disgrace; my poor little hands!"
"Could you take them very quickly somewhere else?" said William abruptly.
She stared at him in astonishment. "Why on earth?"
"I'm seized with an irresistible desire to kiss them," said the fractured tib. and fib., "and I'm afraid you might not be pleased...."
She would not have been pleased, and she picked up her bottle of meths. and walked hurriedly away: but a small, bright ember began to glow very warmly in the depths of her desolate heart. She left Chalk and Cheese, however, to attend to the rest of William's needs.
At a quarter to eleven she made an excuse to the Sister, and, hanging her outdoor coat over her shoulders, ran across the grounds to the cottages, where Freddi would be in bed upstairs. At the door she paused and sniffed, in the sitting-room she paused and sniffed again, and a moment later she was running up the narrow stairs. Frederica lay on the little truckle bed; her short heavily curling hair was spread over the pillow in a network of deep gold; her face was scarlet, her arms flung up over her head, the fingers tightly clenched. There was a strong, choking, sickly smell of gas.
5
Panic. The hospital hummed and buzzed and seethed with rumour. Linley's been murdered. Frederica Linley's dead. Somebody left the gas on in the Woodites' quarters, and Freddi was found nearly dead. Esther Sanson saved Frederica's life. Freddi Linley saved Esther Sanson's life. Esther's dead. Freddi's dead. Sister Bates is dead. We're all going to be murdered in our beds.
Cockrill sent for Miss Woods. "I want you to come down to the cottage with me. Miss Linley's too ill and Esther Sanson is sleeping off the shock. Can you get away from your operating theatre for half an hour?"
"I dare say it'll manage to stagger along," said Woody, who was, in fact, off duty.
They walked together across the rough grass, under the tall, bare trees, and along the drive to the gate; a strapping, deep-bosomed woman, and a little brown old man in a droopy mackintosh and a perfectly enormous hat. "I must have picked up my sergeant's by mistake," said Cockie irritably, pushing it up from over his eyes for the fifth time. "I'm always doing it." He was perfectly indifferent to anything but the discomfort involved by this accident. Woods gave a fleeting smile at the thought of the sergeant's probable feelings, but such distractions could not last for long, and she said, vainly trying to steady her voice: "This is all really rather awful, Inspector, isn't it?"
"Getting the wind up, are you?" said Cockrill.
Woody considered. "Well, yes; I think I am."
"You women are all arrant cowards," said Cockie contemptuously.
Woods looked about her at the bomb-scarred landscape and the blast-pitted buildings where she and a hundred other women were voluntarily spending the days of their service to their country; at the fields, pitted with craters, at the gaunt white limbs of trees broken down by a bomb the night before; at the ruins of the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute where a girl called Groves, whom she had hardly known, had been killed by falling masonry; at the patches of dry grass all round her, blackened and scorched by innumerable incendiary bombs; at the jagged fragments of bomb-casing littering the ground at her feet. For a moment she felt the earth shudder and rock beneath her, for a moment the guns thundered in her ears, and the drone of the bombers was torn by the shriek of a falling bomb... Six months of it. Six months of it, day and night, almost incessantly—and in all that time she had not known the meaning of fear; had not seen in the faces about her, the faces of middle-aged women or young girls, a shadow of panic or failure or endurance-at-an-end. One felt it, of _course;_ some people had a queasy sensation when the sirens wailed; some peoples tummies turned over at the sound of a falling bomb; most of them would go through life with a humiliating tendency to fling themselves flat on their faces at any loud noise; but that was all. They were all much too busy and tired to be afraid. She smiled outright this time, and said with a lift of her strong black eyebrow: "Oh yes, we're terrible cowards, there's no doubt of that."
Cockie had followed her glance, but he remained unimpressed. "You can take the blitz in your stride; but a couple of unexplained deaths, and you all get the jitters."
"'Unexplained' is the operative word," said Woody coolly. "Personally, I'm much more petrified of the blitz on the nights that it _does_ n't come; once it's there, it's there, but I don't like the uneasy waiting for it to begin, and I don't like waiting to be murdered—or to have my friends murdered."
"What makes you think they may be?" said Cockrill.
"Two successful murders, one attempted one, and somebody running around with two grains of morphia in their pocket," said Woody succinctly. As they passed through the gate and turned right towards the row of cottages, she added: "Here's our slum—the one this end, nearest the gate. Pardon the squalor, but this is the best that a grateful nation can do for its Florrie Nightingales in the year 1940."
"It looks all right," said Cockie ungraciously. "What are you grumbling about?"
"I'm not grumbling. I haven't got a word to say against it. But I thought you might be a bit surprised and I was being the complete hostess."
"It depends what you're used to, I suppose," said Cockie, standing in the narrow doorway, politely averting his eyes from a line of solid-looking underwear hanging across the little kitchen.
"Well, _I'm_ used to a streamlined flat in town," said Woody abruptly.
"Oh! Are you? Town-bred girl, eh?"
"Mostly," said Woods, automatically picking up a hairbrush and an outsize brassiere and pushing them under a cushion.
"I see. I only wondered," said Cockie, "because there were some people of your name living in these parts once."
"My father did have a house down here once, ages ago, when we were—when I was a child."
"How many ages ago?" said Cockie, lighting a cigarette before getting down to work.
"Well, actually—I mean _that_ was ages ago, when I was a child, of course; but they lived here till—oh, I don't know, four or five years ago."
"I see," said Cockie again. "Quite a short age, really. And where are your parents now?"
"They're dead," said Woody. She dived under the line of washing, holding up a garment for the Inspector to follow her. "Excuse the Jaegar coms and things, but chiffon and _crêpe de chine_ don't quite suit the life of a V. A.D. Sorry about the fug; it's not us—it must be the results of the gas."
"Let's have a look at the meter," said Cockrill.
She opened a cupboard door. "Here it is... Good lord, somebody seems to have been dusting it. It hasn't looked so clean for months."
"My sergeant has been going over it for fingerprints," said Cockrill. "He always clears up after himself."
"We must get him down for the spring cleaning," said Woody equably.
He examined the meter carefully. "I see that there's six shillings in here," he said, peering at the little dials. "Would that be about right, do you know?"
Woods considered this, muttering calculations to herself. "Me and then Freddi and then Esther, and twice three's six, but last week Freddi put in two.... Yes, that's right; we put in the shillings in turns, and it was Esther's turn this time. Actually 1 suddenly remembered that I had put a bob under the clock for emergencies, only I'd forgotten it, so now Esther owes me a shilling."
"It boils down to this, that nobody but yourselves has put any money in the meter since it was last cleared?"
"No such luck," said Woods.
"Well, now, let's go up to the bedroom, shall we? I want to look round up there."
The window had finally been got open and most of the fumes had blown away from the little room. "The tap of the gas fire was turned on," said Cockrill, pointing to it with the toe of his shoe. "The fire wasn't lit, and of course the gas was pouring into the room. I wonder how the tap can have been turned on?"
"Not by accident, for a start," said Woody decidedly. "That tap was always frightfully stiff; and besides, it's very un-get-at-able, isn't it? I mean, nobody could have pushed it on with their foot by mistake, or anything like that."
"Exactly," said Cockie, scattering cigarette ash all over the bedroom floor.
"I came up just before we left the house," went on Woody, "and it certainly wasn't on then, because the gas had only just petered out downstairs, and if it had been on before that, there would have been a smell of gas which there wasn't. Esther came up a few minutes afterwards to close the window, only actually I'd already closed it, but she didn't know that; and _she_ says there wasn't any smell either."
"You both seem very thoughtful of your friend," said Cockie.
Woody smote her large bosom a resounding thud. "Under our mountainous exteriors, we have hearts of gold."
"Oh yes?" said Cockie politely. He produced a little wooden object from his pocket. "I wonder what heart of gold it was that thought of wedging up the window with this, so that it wouldn't open."
Woods stared at it, electrified. "Do you mean to say that that was stuck in the window? It _can't_ have been! It's one of our clothes pegs, out of the kitchen."
"I noticed that one pair of corns was hanging a bit skew-wiff," said Cockrill.
She took the peg from him and stood, leaning back against the dressing-table, turning it over and over between her fingers, looking down at it as though she could not believe her eyes. "I don't understand. This was jammed in the window...? But _why_?"
"It would take a very long time to gas a person in a room with an open window," said Cockrill, sitting on a corner of the bed, looking up at her.
She dropped the peg, as though it had suddenly become contaminated with evil. "It's too horrible... it's inconceivable! Are you telling me that somebody deliberately jammed up the window so that poor little Freddi would be gassed to death? It's too... I..."
He looked at her curiously. "You're so surprised? Yet you knew this was an attempt at murder; you said so yourself, just now."
"Well, I suppose I knew in my mind that it was, but one can't sort of rea _lise_ it, one doesn't really face it..." She broke off" and said wretchedly: "But who could have done such a thing? Who put the shilling in the gas meter, for a start?"
"Well, as for that—you did, didn't you?" said Cockrill, still watching her.
"I? _I_ did?"
"Of course," said Cockie.
"But, Inspector..."
"Miss Woods," said Cockrill patiently, "let's get this straight. At twenty-past seven this morning, the gas died in your meter; we know that the tap up here was not turned on then, because there was no smell of gas. Very well. After that you came up to this room to put a hot-water bottle in Miss Linley's bed, and you closed the window. Later still, Miss Sanson came up to close the window, but found it already shut. At half-past seven you both left the house.
"At about ten to eight, Miss Linley came back and went to bed. She found that she couldn't open the window. That is to say that in the half-hour between the time the gas ran out in the meter, and the time she came back to bed, somebody had jammed up the window, and it's only reasonable to assume that the same person had turned on the gas-tap in here."
"But Freddi would have smelt the gas," protested Woods.
"No, she wouldn't," said Cockie. "There was no gas to smell; there was none coming through the meter—yet."
"My God!" said Woody.
"Yes, it is rather 'my God!' isn't it?" said Cockrill calmly. "It's a very old dodge, of course. At a quarter to nine, by which time Miss Linley would be fast asleep after her heavy night's work, you yourself were all scheduled to come across and make yourself a cup of tea; and that necessitated...?"
"Putting a shilling in the meter," finished Woody obediently.
6
Cockrill finished his cigarette, and ground out the stub in Freddi's little ash-tray. "Do you usually come over and make yourself tea?"
"Yes, I do," said Woody, at once. "I'm the theatre V.A.D., as I suppose you know by now, and I go on duty at half-past seven like the others, and clean up and check instruments, and all the rest of it; but operating doesn't begin till half-past nine, in the ordinary way, so a bit before that I come over and make myself a cuppa, and have a cigarette and put up my feet for twenty minutes or so before the dog-fight. It's all quite fair and above-board; everybody knows I do it."
"Everybody?" said Cockrill.
"Well, actually I meant Theatre Sister and so forth; but now I come to think of it, everybody else does too. All the theatre staff", I mean... Major Moon and Barney, and Gervase—Major Eden, that is. I often walk back with them when they're going on duty after their breakfast. And of course Freddi and Esther; I don't know that anybody else knows."
"Well, those are the ones we're interested in, anyway, aren't they?" said Cockie smoothly.
She leaned back against the dressing-table in her favourite attitude, her lovely long legs stretched out before her, her arms crossed over her breast; and her friendly, intelligent face was drawn with worry. "I suppose they are: Frederica and Esther, and Major Moon and Barney and Gervase—and me.... Nobody else can have known that Higgins was in the hospital; nobody else knew that Sister Bates had the 'proof' of the murder; and now there's this; just those five people knew that I could come across and make myself some tea. It can't be true—and yet it must be true. One of us—one of _us_!" She was silent for a moment, thinking deeply; but at last she cried, raising haggard eyes to his: "But, Inspector, _why_? Why should any of us have done these things? I don't see who would want to. Who would want to kill Higgins, for a start? None of us had ever set eyes on him before; he was just a country postman, and as far as we know, he'd never been out of Kent. Sister Bates came from a London hospital. Frederica had always lived abroad. What was the connection? What was the sort of a—the common denominator between these three? Why should any one person want to kill these three particular people?" She added, suddenly, struck by an idea: "There couldn't be a maniac involved, Inspector Cockrill? You don't think it could be a maniac, or something like that?"
"No, I don't," said Cockie. "Maniacs don't plan murders; at least they don't plan deaths that will take place when they're not there to see. They like killing people; not just having them die. A maniac wouldn't shut anybody up in a gas-filled room and go away. He'd want to see the fun."
"Well, then, all I can say is that it's utterly hideous," said Woody, desperately. "You suggest that one of us, one of my friends, has killed, or tried to kill, three absolutely unrelated people, for no apparent reason.... I mean, supposing for the sake of argument, that Higgins had been blackmailing Major Moon or Barney because he'd been delivering feelthy postcards from Paris at their doors—what could that have to do with Sister Bates? What could it have to do with Freddi?"
"As far as Bates is concerned, we know that she was murdered because of what she could reveal about the original murder," suggested Cockrill, reasonably.
"Well, all right, but that doesn't explain this business of Frederica? What's the connection between her and Higgins?"
"There's one connection that you don't seem to have thought of," said Cockrill, looking up at her from under his eyebrows; "Higgins talked of 'goings-on' in the sisters' bunk that night that he was brought in... there was one other person who could have witnessed those 'goings-on'—and that was your friend Frederica."
The rouge stood out very pink and blotchy on Woody's cheekbones, as the natural colour drained away from beneath the skin; she said, breathlessly: "But—but Freddi herself was mostly connected with the 'goings-on'; I mean, she and Barney were talking in there. So if Freddi's killed—I mean if anyone tries to kill Freddi..."
"I believe Major Eden and Sister Bates were also talking in there."
"Oh, good lord, that was all nothing," said Woods, brushing it aside. "Gervase had a slight affair with Bates, everybody knows that; and he was tired of it and she was full of lamentations and reproaches...."
"And threats?" said Cockie.
She caught her breath; but went on, earnestly, almost at once: "She may have threatened to make a fuss; she was jealous and miserable and perhaps a bit hysterical—but what could she have done? Nothing very dreadful. He's already divorced from his wife, or anyway, separated. There was nothing to be wrecked by a scene with Marion Bates."
"Except his practice," suggested Cockrill. "I understand that Major Eden had a great many women in his practice?"
"He's a general surgeon," said Woods stoutly.
"Largely patronised by women," insisted Cockie; "and though I don't suggest for a moment that Major Eden consciously exercises his charm over these ladies, well, I dare say they wouldn't flock to him if he were old and ugly and disagreeable."
"He _is_ old and ugly and disagreeable," said Woody, impatiently; but she added, ruefully: "At least _rather_ old, and _rather_ ugly...."
"And not at all disagreeable," said Cockie, smiling.
"No, he isn't," admitted Woods, smiling too; a little, affectionate, reminiscent smile that she immediately checked.
"And so I say that, supposing there had been a sordid breach of promise case, or something of that kind—it would have done Major Eden's private practice no good; no good at all."
"What would that matter? He's in the Army now."
"He won't always be," said Cockrill.
She jerked her head impatiently. "Good lord, Inspector, are you seriously suggesting...? It's nonsense. People don't murder people for things like _that!_ "
"People have been known to murder people for a great deal less," said Cockie, grimly ironical.
"But I... But he couldn't...." She said, with belated caution: "I don't know why I should take it upon myself to defend Major Eden like this, but the point is, you're all wrong. He just couldn't have done it. He isn't that kind of person."
"Well, that's a most rational defence, I must say," said Cockie, mockingly. "He isn't that kind of person! Isn't that just like a woman! Now, look here, Miss Woods.... I don't say for a moment that Eden killed Bates and Higgins; but he's one of six equally unlikely people, and he had some sort of motive, which is more than can be said for the rest of them, as far as I can see... and he _could_ have done it. He's accounted to me for the time after he saw Higgins in the ward; but he has no alibis for the time between his seeing the man carried through the hall and the time that he visited the ward."
"Oh, good heavens," cried Woody, impatiently; "what rubbish all this is! Saw the man carried through the hall! We saw a bundle of rags carried through the hall, huddled up on a stretcher with his face all covered with dust and filth and his poor old toes sticking out through the remains of his boots. Are you suggesting that on the strength of that, Gervase made up his mind to commit murder, concocted a deep and elaborate plot, and started the whole thing going? It's nonsense, of course it is. Of course it wasn't Gervase."
Cockrill got up from the bed and stood at the window, looking down at the cold greyness of the park. "Of _course_ it wasn't Gervase," insisted Woody anxiously, frightened at his thoughtful silence.
"Then who was it?" asked Cockrill, turning back from the window. "Who else do you suggest it was? Which of your five friends?"
"I don't know," said Woods helplessly.
"It wasn't you yourself, for example," said Cockrill with a twinkle. "You would hardly be likely to make these elaborate arrangements for gassing Frederica Linley, and then come and put the shilling in the meter yourself! Similarly it couldn't be Miss Linley, could it? for she was one of the victims, or Miss Sanson, because she saved Miss Linley; and it wouldn't be Captain Barnes, for whatever else he may be, he is definitely very sincerely in love with Miss Linley and would never attempt to harm her. You insist that it isn't Major Eden, so that only leaves Major Moon."
"And it couldn't be Major Moon," said Woods, smiling at the bare idea. She added anxiously: "You _don't_ think it could be him?"
"Ah, that would be telling," said Cockie. He flapped with a corner of his mackintosh at the cigarette ash scattered over the window-Sill, and suddenly turned and stumped out of the room and down the narrow stairs.
Woody followed him; she said urgently, her hand gripping the thin wooden bannister: "Does that mean that you know? You know who did it?"
"Of course," said Cockrill. He picked up the hat from the kitchen table and thrust it rakishly on the back of his head.
She stood transfixed, staring at him. "You know, Inspector? But how on earth? I mean, how could you...? what can you...? when did you find out?"
"Oh, just a few minutes ago," said Cockie gaily, and was just in time to wink at her before the hat fell like an extinguisher over his bright brown eyes.
CHAPTER VII
1
The fractured tib. and fib. lay in the corner bed where Higgins had spent his single night in the hospital; the screens round the bed next door cut him off from the rest of the ward. He complained rather plaintively that his leg was hurting a lot; and added incautiously that this time it really was.
"What do you mean?" said Esther innocently. "Doesn't it always?"
"Oh yes, of course, always, abominably," said William hurriedly; but again he could not help laughing and adding, "Though oddly enough, only when _you're_ on duty!"
Esther, having slept off the effects of her rescue work, had, as she had expected, been put on night duty in the ward until Frederica should be fit to work again. She said, uncertainly, standing at his bedside: "Are you trying to flirt with me again?"
"Yes," said William, and caught her hand and kissed it, and turned it over and kissed the palm and each of the fingers, and then lay still with his cheek against it, holding it very closely in both his own; for a moment they were silent in the sweet, warm, infinitely peaceful joy of emotional surrender.
It was true that his leg was hurting more these days; and his back ached and he was bored and miserable and out of sorts, and his ship would sail without him while he lay here in hospital, and all the friends and companions he had made aboard her would sail with her, out of his life; he would be stuck in this gloomy ward for weeks and weeks, and God knew whether, when he finally got out, the Navy would ever take him back again. But, meanwhile, he held this small, slim hand in his own, and looked up into brown eyes suddenly alight with tenderness, and he smiled and said, "Oh _dar_ ling!" and pulled her down to him and held her close to his heart.
Chaos reigned in St. Elizabeth's that evening. "Hey, nurse, you haven't given me my hot drink! Have one of mine, mate, she's given me three! What's this, nurse?—there's nothing but 'ot water in my mug? Oi, nurse, there's only a bit o' cocoa powder in mine!" They laughed and grumbled and argued and pulled her leg. "You must be in love, nurse; that's what it is! Nurse Sanson's in love!"
Nurse Sanson's in love. How warm and comfortable and safe and _final_ it felt, after all the pain and bitterness of the past. William would look after her; she would put her hand in his and wrap herself about in his love and find a refuge there. "I will begin again," she thought; "I won't worry and agonise and crave after Mummy any more. She would want me to forget now, and be safe and happy and contented, and so I will. William will look after me...." And she went back to him and said, "Oh _dar_ ling!" and gave him her hand again, and they gazed for a quite ridiculous length of time into each other's eyes.
"Oh, darling!" said William.
"Oh, _dar_ ling!" said Esther.
"As I can't go on calling you Oh-darling indefinitely," suggested William at last, "I think perhaps, sweetheart, you had better tell me your name."
"Darling, you _can't_ want a girl to marry you when you don't even know her name!"
"Well, tell me your name quickly then," said William.
"My name's Esther, dearest."
"Now, isn't that a coincidence," said William; "I never was in love with a girl called Esther before!"
She sat by his bed for a long time in the darkened ward, jumping up now and then to attend to a patient, sleepless or in pain, but always coming back to sit with her little roughened hands in his; to talk, not of the past, but of the future; not of her mother and the air-raids, but of their life together when the blitz should be a thing of the past. By the time the Orderly Officer was due on his round, they had brought the war to a successful conclusion, had built themselves a white house on the hill overlooking Godlistone, had furnished themselves with three children, two boys and a girl, and were changing the honeymoon two-seater Chrysler for a sedate family Daimler. Esther dragged herself away at last. "You're supposed to be an invalid, my sweet; you really must go to sleep...."
"Talking about sleeping, Esther... have you ever given any serious thought to the double-versus-twin-beds controversy?"
"Oh, William!" she protested, laughing and blushing.
"I think I'm definitely anti-twin," said William, pulling her back to him by the corner of her apron.
2
Night Sister came round with the Orderly Medical Officer. "We had three new operation cases to-day, Major Jones; will you prescribe for them? And one of the hernias that was done yesterday is having a good deal of pain still. The fractured tib. and rib. seems to have been complaining that his leg is hurting him more than it did; how is he to-night, nurse?"
In the brief intervals during which he had had time to notice it, William had said that his leg really was a bit troublesome; he might as well have a good night, anyway, thought Esther, and reported that a sleeping draught would be welcome. The O.M.O. scribbled prescriptions and Sister handed out morphia and sleeping powders from the poison cupboard. Esther, going off up the ward with a syringe in her hand, heard her say to the doctor: "I suppose it's all right to let her give the injections? After all she _is_ one of 'them'..."
Major Moon arrived in the bunk at half-past ten. "Got any tea going, Esther, my dear?" As she assented, smiling, he came up to her suddenly and took her chin in his hand, turning her face to the light. "What's happened to you, child? You look positively lovely to-night!"
"Do I?" she said, foolishly happy.
He took his hand away, but his fingers seemed to linger over the smooth, soft skin. "You always were a beautiful creature, Esther, with that perfect oval face of yours, like a madonna in a church; but to-night the madonna seems to have gone all—fey."
"The madonna's fallen in love," she confessed, laughing.
He caught his breath sharply, but almost at once he said gaily: "In love! You're in love, Esther; that's what it is, it's written all over your face. Tell me about it and who is the lucky young man..."
She told him all about it. William slept peacefully in the bed next door to the bunk and she poured out the happy story of their love affair, of all that it meant to her. "Don't think that the—the security and money and all that mean _any_ thing, Major Moon, compared with just being in love with him; but of course they do count, they must. I was so frightened of the future, because after the war I'd have had to keep myself and I just wouldn't have known where to begin. Mummy had a pension and she lived on that, and—well, you know what mothers are, she didn't want me to work and she always thought I would get married and not have to.... I never had any training, and being a V.A.D. doesn't get you anywhere, though I used to think it would help, that was why I took it up.... But it doesn't does it...? I just don't know how I would have lived. But now... and, oh, Major Moon, he _is_ so sweet and I _am_ so much in love.... It's quite absurd, I know, we've only known each other a week or so, but—well, there it is, these things happen...."
"I'm very glad for you, my dear," he said and he put his arm round her and kissed her on the lips.
It was a tiny shock, for it was not the kiss of an elderly man, saluting a young girl with her heart engaged elsewhere; but of a lover. He released her at once, however, and said humbly: "I'm sorry, Esther; I meant to give you just a fatherly peck and my blessing, and it got out of hand a bit.... You must forgive me; it's your fault—you're so very lovely to-night!"
Woods appeared at the door with her arms outstretched before her, moaning, "Unclean! Unclean!" At sight of Major Moon, she dropped her hands to her sides and said, laughing: "Oh, I'm sorry, sir; I didn't think anyone would be here. But still, you're one of us, too..."
"What _is_ the matter with you, Woody?" said Esther.
"My dear, the inmates of our shelter have petitioned that when there are air-raids, I shall sleep somewhere else; they think I'm going to rise up in the night and set fire to their palliasses with oil from the paraffin lamps!"
"Oh, nonsense, darling...."
"They do really. Can I have some tea? No, honestly, Esther, you and I and Freddi, when she gets well, have got to use the little Anderson shelter outside the cottages. Com thinks we shall 'feel more comfortable' there."
"What happens if we slaughter each other? Nobody cares about that, I suppose?"
"Well, we're all potential criminals and we're supposed to be hardened to attempted murder. Are you an outcast too, Major Moon?"
"There's a tendency to allow Barnes and Eden and me to monopolise the ante-room fire undisturbed," confessed Major Moon. "But everyone is very polite and friendly, and they do make great efforts not to let us feel our position too acutely! The Press is seething round the hospital, and the C.O.s put a sentry on the main gates, and on the gates of the Mess with orders to let nobody in without a pass...."
"What fun we do have," said Woody. She stood with her elbows on the mantelpiece, staring down unhappily into the fire, and repeated what was uppermost in her mind: "The Inspector says it's one of us; and he knows which!"
One of us. One of _us_! "Of course Frederica's out of it," continued Woody, as though it did them any good to narrow the circle even further down, "because she'd hardly have tried to gas herself...."
"No, of course; Freddi's right out of it," said Esther, glad of that, anyway.
"On the other hand, she might have, knowing that she would be rescued; I mean, then all of us would have said, just as we're doing, that of course Freddi couldn't be suspected. For that matter, Esther, so might you have fixed the gas tap, knowing that you would be able to save her, and throw us all off the scent."
"So I might," acknowledged Esther, much struck.
"But how could any of us have wanted to kill Higgins?" cried Major Moon impatiently. "That's the crux of the matter. The attempt on Frederica was probably made because she 'knew too much' as they say in the novels; and the murder of Sister Bates was almost certainly for that reason. But why should any of _us_ have wanted Higgins to die?"
Woody did not repeat her theory of the feelthy postcards. Instead she suggested that perhaps Sister Bates had killed Higgins and somebody had killed _her_ in revenge.
"Oh, nonsense, darling," said Esther. "Why should Bates have wanted to kill Higgins in the first place?"
"Well, because he'd heard a scene between her and Gervase, in here, and he was going to publish it all round the hospital."
"Even if that could have been a motive for either of them, Woody," said Major Moon gravely, "it would be more likely to be Eden."
"Yes, but we know it can't have been Gervase, anyway," protested Woods, "because he certainly wouldn't have tried to kill Frederica, later on. He was terribly keen on Freddi—he'd never have tried to harm her."
"Why do you say he _was_ fond of her?" said Esther.
"Well, is, then, if you like."
"I don't think your defence would cut much ice with Inspector Cockrill, Woody," said Major Moon quietly. He finished his cup of tea and got to his feet and his mild, blue eyes were full of anxiety and distress. "I like Eden," he said, rather inconsequently. "I have always liked him; he's a—he's a charming fellow. I wish... I don't think..."
Esther wished that the conversation might end, for she was dying to tell Woody about William. She said, firmly: "Gervase couldn't have had anything to do with the murders of Higgins or Bates, for the simple reason that he couldn't have had anything to do with the attempt on Freddi, whether he likes her or not. He was nowhere near the cottage this morning; he couldn't have wedged up the window and turned on the gas tap. He didn't know that the meter needed a shilling."
"No," said Major Moon; "of course." But he still stood, looking down miserably at his toes, and he seemed to be on the brink of a resolution. He said at last: "I don't like to say this but.... You girls must look after yourselves.... Esther, you must look after yourself, my dear. I don't want to say a word against Eden, not a word, but... well, after I met you girls in the park this morning, I saw Eden, you know. When I run around the grounds of a morning I take an old tweed coat with me, just to put round my shoulders when I cross the road, back to the Mess. This morning I dropped it down beside a bush; and as I stood there putting it on, Eden came out of the Mess. He—well, Esther, he looked carefully up and down the drive; I don't like to say it, my dear, but he did. Then he went over to your cottage and—he glanced up at the window, stood looking up at the window; and then he pushed open the door and went in. A minute afterwards he came out agan and looked about him; by that time I was at the gates of the Mess and I suppose he didn't see me. But I saw him. Eden may not have known about the shilling, my dear girls, but two minutes before Frederica came off duty and back to her bed—I saw him coming out of your house." He added, heavily, turning to the door: "What worries me is—why hasn't he mentioned it?"
3
William had a visitor on the following afternoon. Detective Inspector Cockrill arrived at the door of the ward, and stood peering in rather nervously, his felt hat crushed into a shapeless bundle under his arm. Cheese appeared at his elbow. "In _spec_ tor—how lovely to see you again!"
"Have I ever seen you before?" said Cockie, bleakly.
"Oh, In _spec_ tor! The first night you came here, don't you remember? My friend and I talked to you in the Com's office, over at the V.A.D. Mess; you were so sweet to us!" said Cheese with a girlish wriggle; and added that she and her friend had been wondering ever since if they could ever dare to ask him for his autograph.
"You'd better not," said Cockie in a fearful voice. "What do you take me for—a film star?" He suddenly waved his stick: "Hallo, my boy! Coming to have a talk with you...!" and marched over to William's bedside, leaving Cheese flat. "Got out of his bed the wrong side, this morning," she confided to an equally disappointed Chalk.
Cockrill had known William's father, as he knew most of the personalities of North Kent. "Hallo, Cockie," said William, struggling up to an almost sitting position. "How ripping to see you!"
"Don't _you_ start asking for my autograph," implored Cockie; he chucked his hat on to the floor beside his chair, and took out a tin of tobacco. "I suppose I can smoke in this vale of antisepsis?"
"Yes, rather, of course you can. Here," said William, producing the three cigarettes remaining out of his daily ration of five; "do have one of mine."
"No thanks, I prefer my own." His nicotined fingers packed and rolled; he said, not looking up from his work: "How's your leg, my boy?"
"Oh, it's quite all right," said William, breezily. "Getting along like a house on fire."
"Are you all right in this place? Do they look after you properly?" "Good lord, yes," said William devoutly. "It's marvellous." Cockrill raised an eyebrow and looked about him. It did not seem so particularly marvellous. The tables down the centre were brightened by a few flowers in an assortment of rather hideous vases, and the up-patients lounged round them in their blue linen coats and trousers, doing jig-saw puzzles or writing letters; or clustered round the beds of those not yet up, playing Housie-housie or Whist. Large notices on the walls forbade gambling for money, under pain of death, so the pennies and ha'pennies were kept tucked away under pillows. A man only just out of bed was being led slowly and with infinite patience and kindliness, by a great lout of a guardsman, up and down the ward. "There you are, mate! Doing fine, you are...." The Red Cross librarian came round with a trolley-load of books. They scrabbled in their lockers for last week's. "Give us a nice bit of blood and thunder, Miss." "You give 'im a love story, Miss, that's what'e wants... a nice bit of romance...." A man lying drowsy from his pre-operative injection was loudly consoled by his friends. "Won't be long now, old boy. Have a nice ride, mate; give our love to the operating theatre." A couple of robots in long, green gowns whisked in with a wheeled white trolley, and bundled him on to it; covered with blankets and with his head wrapped up in a rug, he was wheeled out of the ward. "Good luck, chum!" cried the men, and went back, apparently unmoved, to their Housie-housie. On a bed stripped down to the rubber sheet, a man lay without pillows, coming-to from his anæsthetic. A scarlet face was raised for a moment, two bright eyes looked vacantly into space, and the head dropped back with a heavy thud. "You lay still, mate," yelled half a dozen voices; and a man got up and went over and held the man's wrist for a moment, bending over him. "You lay quiet, boy, and don't keep shoving yer 'ead up." He called down the ward: "Here, nurse; 'e's coming round," and went and sat down to his game again. "Pore beggar; I wouldn't be in 'is shoes! Thank 'eavens, I've got mine over." A man with a broken back, lay on a high, S-shaped bed, staring up at the ceiling as he had lain and stared for six weeks and must lie for many weeks more. Number seven, who still had asthma, inhaled Friar's Balsam in sickly wafts, peering out balefully from under a woolen shawl. Cockrill finished his first cigarette, ground out the butt with his heel, and then respectfully picked it up and put it in the ash-try on William's locker. He said, without preamble: "I suppose you know about these—deaths? Higgins, and the Bates girl."
"Yes I know about them. News travels like wildfire in a place like this, and poor old Higgins was a pal of mine."
"How did you come across him—up at the brewery?"
"No, I worked under him in the A.R.P.," said William. "He was leader of a rescue squad, you know. I didn't get called up for about a year after war broke out, so I thought I would do a bit of voluntary work while I waited, just to prevent the girls from handing me white feathers in the streets, you know. He was a marvellous old boy, was Joe. I went through all the raids with him; we never missed a blitz and we had a lot of fun. When I came back on leave I dropped down to the Town Hall to see him, and got caught in the raid there; we were sitting talking and listening to the radio while he waited to go out on a job, when—whang! a bloody great bomb hit the place smack in the middle and the whole roof caved in. The other three chaps copped it, but Joe and I were protected by a beam or something, I suppose, and lay there trapped by the legs. He asked me if I was O.K. and then I must have passed out, I think; when I came to again we were still there, but he was unconscious. Then the chaps got down to us and hauled us out; they took him first, of course, because I was more or less all right." He added, grinning: "I'd like to be able to tell you that I implored them to leave me and save the old boy and I would stick it out till the end, but I didn't have a chance, because that's exactly what they were going to do anyway! The fantastic thing was that the radio went on working all the time; we'd been listening-in to the German broadcast, and while I lay there in the dark—with water dripping all round me, a gas-escape somewhere not too far away, and my leg caught under a girder and giving me hell—some filth-hound was droning away about how effete and rotten I was, and how we all ought to make friends with Germany before it was too late. There was a frightful din going on outside, and the bombs were dropping down like ripe apples...."
Once, when Cockrill was driving along the Heronsford Road in his car, an incendiary had hit the roof and gone right through to the back seat and set the whole concern on fire; he would dearly have liked to tell about it and about the time he had driven slap into a crater that hadn't been there half an hour before—how if he'd been only twenty minutes earlier, if he hadn't called in at the Black Dog in Pigeonsford village and had a glass of beer with the landlord, if he hadn't stopped to offer a lift to three Auxiliary Territorial Service girls, and gone a few miles out of his way to take them to their station, he might easily have been killed.... But William, having got his own bomb-story off his chest, had returned to Higgins. "I can't think who on earth could have wanted to bump the old boy off; I mean, he was an awfully good fellow, really, one of the best, never did any harm to anyone; you can't go through the raids working for a man, and not know what he's really like." His own part in going through the raids, humbly working 'for' William Higgins, postman, did not appear to impress him as anything particularly praiseworthy.
Cockie started a small conflagration at the wispy end of a new cigarette. "Do you know any of the other people concerned in this case?"
William drew deeply on his own cigarette, and replied that he knew Esther Sanson; she—well, actually she worked in this ward. "And I know little Linley; she was on night-duty here, before she got her head put in the gas-oven; and I've seen Eden in the ward, looking at his cases, and Barnes, of course; and Major Moon looked at my leg this morning, as the surgeon who originally did it is away on leave. He seems a nice old boy. My father used to know him on various committees and things, and Dr. Barnes too—this chap's father."
"Do you know Miss Woods?"
"No. She told Esther—she said she was coming to see me one day and make my acquaintance, but she hasn't turned up. I used to play with some children of that name when I was so-high; I wonder if she'll remember me?"
"I doubt it," said Cockie dryly. As William looked surprised, he added rather quickly: "Tell me about little Miss Linley; you saw a good deal of her, that night you were brought in, I suppose?"
"Yes, she was marvellous to me," said William, at once. "I must have been a frightful nuisance having to be rigged up with this thing in the middle of the night, but she went about it quite calmly and coolly as if she had nothing else to do all night, and of course she was frantically busy really, poor kid. Even Higgins had to admit that she was wonderful, though he didn't have much use for her, having seen her necking with her boy-friends earlier in the evening, in the bunk next door; but he had a terrible night, poor old boy, in a lot of pain, and not able to get any sleep, and he said that she was terribly good to him; she never left the ward for a moment, and he didn't know how she kept it up, a fragile looking little thing like her. She's a funny girl, though; I heard her talking to old Moon, night before last, in the bunk; he was telling her about his child being knocked down and killed by a man on a bicycle; and all she could think of by way of sympathy was to ask him politely what colour the bicycle had been! Esther says it's because she's really shy under all that poise; and rather inarticulate and that she would like to be friendly and sympathetic, but she can't."
Cockrill would never have thought Frederica devoid of self-possession. "She seems rather—hard," he suggested. "Is she a good nurse?"
"Oh, the perfect article," said William immediately. "She talks to you as though you were a naughty and rather mutton-headed little boy, and quite convinces you that your leg doesn't hurt at all, really, and that, if you only knew it, you have a passionate desire to eat your nice ground-rice pudding. She hasn't got any use for weakness or self-pity, but when things are bad... gosh! she's too sweet. The chaps simply love her. Of course she talks as though it were all a perfect bore, and she simply didn't know _what_ she was doing here anyway! but that's just because she doesn't like slop. I must say, I like Frederica. I think she's grand."
A man groaned horribly in a bed half-way up the ward. Cockie shuddered, reaching under his chair for his hat. "Poor devil—what's wrong with him?"
"He gets attacks of pain," said William cheerfully, with the strange, protective indifference that grows up round the hospital patient, against the sufferings of others. "You get used to it. I used to groan a bit myself, and nobody shed tears over _me._ It's awful at night, though; we had two emergency operations yesterday, and the poor devils kept us awake till morning; however, we've got the day to sleep in if we want to. It's extraordinary how you get acclimatised."
A case was brought back from the theatre, having crossed with the gentleman who had just gone up. Cockie blenched slightly as a sickly wave of anæsthetic wafted itself to his nostrils. The head lolled, scarlet faced, on the rubber sheet, mouth open, eyes closed. In a cocoon of blankets, the limp figure was lifted on to the bed and there left to its own resources, a kidney shaped bowl placed handily at one side. The stretcher was just being wheeled off when one of the green-robed figures suddenly jerked itself away and advancing in a dreadful eddy of ether, cried lustily: "Hallo, Inspector! What ever are you a-doing-of here?"
"Oh, hallo, Miss Woods," said Cockie, faintly.
"Keep an eye on him, will you?" said Woods to William, nodding casually in the direction of the prostrate victim in the opposite bed. "If he tries to sit up or anything, yell to him to lie down, and pipe up for the nurse." She ran after the departing trolley, crying gaily: "Oi! Wait for me!"
Cockrill was much relieved to find that the patient was not to be left entirely to the limited ministrations of William, for Chalk—or was it Cheese?—emerged from the bunk and stood over him for a few minutes, flexing an apparently boneless arm, before tucking it away under the blankets, and arranging a couple of fresh hot-water bottles in the bed. He sat silent for a moment, staring down into the crown of his hat, trying to formulate a question to put to William; for he was made very anxious by something the boy had said—or not said; and, finally, looked up suddenly with the query on his lips. But it was never made or answered; for William was sitting erect against his pillows with his hand to his mouth, staring into space, and muttering feverishly: "Oh, my God! Where on earth have I heard that voice?"
CHAPTER VIII
1
Gervase Eden sat on the great wicker laundry basket in the lobby of the operating theatre, and waited for Major Moon. "Where is the silly old beezer? He said he'd be here at seven...." The swing doors had been hooked back, and through the doorway he kept an eye on the main entrance across the hall.
Woods came out of the theatre and locked the door behind her. She pretended not to notice Gervase, sitting in the half-light smoking his cigarette. The act was over. Freddi was, for some reason, refusing to have anything more to do with him; she had seen nobody since her escape from the gas, but Barnes; and Barney had come back, radiant, from their first interview, and confided to Woody that Frederica had, all on her own initiative, suggested that they should get married very soon. There was no longer any need for Gervase to be distracted; she could lapse back into her former indifference and never bother to speak to him again.... But out of the corner of her eye she saw the turn of his head, the line of his thin, angular body, the movement of his nervous fingers as he fumbled his cigarette; and when he said, "Hallo, Woody!" her heart leapt and she said softly: "Hallo, don Juan!" and went over to him.
"Oh, heavens!" thought Eden, appalled by a note in her voice that he had heard in the suddenly exultant voices of too many women. "Oh, gosh! Don't let _her_ start!" He informed her as roughly as he could that she had a dirty mark on her face.
Woody went rather pink. "Oh, Gervase, have I?" She rubbed at it with her handkerchief, standing rather uncertainly before him.
"Yes, you have," he said. "And it looks awful." But it looked very sweet, really, and a little bit pathetic, and he drew her to him and took the handkerchief out of her hand and wiped the mark gently away. "Now you look a clean girl," he said; and he gave her a little shake and added, quite involuntarily: "Oh, Woody—I do like you!"
Woody's heart melted within her. " _Do_ you, Gervase?"
"Yes, I do," he said. "You're so...." He broke off and improved the shining hour by improvising: "You're such a good _friend_ , Woody. You don't get sentimental and silly and take things too seriously; you can have a little petting party in the evening and just be ordinary again, next day. And if a man kisses you, you don't go off the handle and run around screaming that you've been robbed of something above rubies."
"It would be a bit comic if I did," said Woods dryly; "at this stage of my career."
"And above all, you don't let your emotions get tangled up with just having fun," said Gervase, earnestly, in his gratitude persuading himself that this was really so.
"No, darling," said Woody, and she bent forward and kissed him lightly, so that he should not see the tears in her eyes.
Major Moon appeared at a trot, advancing towards them across the circular hall. "Sorry I'm late; hasn't Esther turned up yet?"
"Here she is now," said Eden, as Esther came in at the main door, pulling off her little round outdoor cap.
She came and joined them. "Did you call me?"
"Yes, child, come here. We wanted to catch you before you went on night duty," said Moon, taking her hand and tucking it warmly into his own. He looked at her with troubled blue eyes. "We have a little bit of news for you that you're not going to like very much... no, Woody, you stay, my dear, we're glad to have you.... Now, this isn't serious, Esther, and you mustn't upset yourself; but Eden and I have been talking over your young man's fracture, and we don't quite like the way it's going. We think we ought to have him along to the theatre and open up his leg."
She stared at him, horrified. "Oh Major Moon—no!"
"I'm afraid we must, Esther," said Eden definitely. "There's nothing to worry about, ducky. We think there's a bit of pus there, that's all, and it would be better to take out the stitches and drain the wound."
"Do you mean he's getting an infection?"
"Just a spot, Esther, it so often happens; but we can clear it up all right."
Cockrill passed through the hall still bent upon his ceaseless investigations. He saw Woods among the little group, and, recollecting William's half-recognition of her voice, decided to enter into conversation, in the vague hope of surprising something out of her. In the dim light he did not notice the distress upon Esther's face until it was too late to draw back; Major Moon passed it off with a casual explanation: "She's a little bit upset; we're going to do a small job on her beloved and she doesn't like it; she'll be all right in a minute...."
"It's very silly of me," said Esther, gulping back her tears.
"It's nothing at all to worry about, darling," insisted Woody. "I've seen thousands of them done in the theatre—well, at _least_ four or five—and it's quite a small operation, isn't it, Major Moon?"
"It's not the danger; it's just that I—I can't bear to think of him being ill or in pain...."
"He'll be much more comfortable after this, Esther," promised Gervase.
Cockrill had been putting two and two together. "Is it young Will Ferguson that you're talking about? I was down there seeing him this afternoon...."
"Miss Sanson's engaged to him," explained Eden.
Cockrill turned round upon her. "Are you indeed, Esther? I congratulate you; I've known him since he was a boy—he's a very charming fellow."
"He's a darling, Esther," agreed Woods enthusiastically.
She looked up in surprise. "Have you been to see him at last, Woody?"
"Yes, I introduced myself this evening, after operating had finished in the theatre; he's sweet, darling. He told me he'd been having a chat with you, Inspector."
"I was asking him about Higgins," said Cockrill, who did not think that this was the time to ask Woods if William had remembered where he had heard her voice.
"He didn't know Higgins," said Esther. "He was brought in after him."
"Yes, but only because he took longer to get himself dug out. He used to work for Higgins—they'd been through all the blitzes together, and they were sitting talking about the old days, when the bomb hit them."
"Listening to the German radio," said Cockrill.
"Yes, he was telling me about that," said Woody, rather breathlessly. "It was extraordinary how—how the wireless went on and on talking when everything else all round them had been shattered. I mean, a bit off to have to lie pinned down by debris, heroically waiting to be rescued, while Lord Haw-Haw tells you how effete you are!"
"Was it Lord Haw-Haw?" said Cockrill.
"Well, so William says," replied Woody indifferently.
"Those fellows ought to be hamstrung!" exploded Major Moon. "Of all the filthy treachery, I think that is the worst. A good honest spy is a brave man; he's working for his country in the enemy's country, and if his methods aren't very charming, well it doesn't make him any the less a hero, from his own point of view; but to stand safely in Germany and pour out abuse of your own country... dis _gus_ ting! _Filthy!_ I only hope that at the end of the war we really deal with them as they deserve."
"I feel sorry for their relatives and friends," said Eden mildly, "having to sit here and listen to them telling their German lies!"
"Their relations and friends are probably just as bad as they are," said Major Moon roughly. His kind blue eyes had gone stupid with the natural, unthinking welling-up of his disgust and contempt.
"Not necessarily," said Cockie thoughtfully; "but I dare say a good many people in this country would agree with you." There is nothing like just indignation for fostering unreasoning hate.
Woods looked at her. "Esther, isn't it time you went on duty, my pet?"
"I suppose it is," said Esther, who had been standing by, taking no part in the conversation. "I'd better go. I—I don't know how I'm going to face William!" She stood for a moment with her head bent, her hands pressed against her forehead.
"We've explained everything to him, my dear," said Major Moon. "He's not worrying a bit; it's only a little thing, nothing to be anxious about."
"Higgins's operation was nothing to be anxious about," said Esther suddenly, dropping her hands and staring at them, white faced, with burning eyes. "But _he_ died. Higgins died!"
"But my dear child...!"
"I'm afraid," cried Esther. "I'm terrified! Supposing William were to die too?"
"Oh, nonsense, Esther darling," said Woods. "Why should William die? Who on earth would want to kill him?"
"Who would have wanted to kill Higgins?" said Esther.
"Perhaps you would like to get someone else to do the operation, Esther?" suggested Major Moon gently. "Perkins did him originally, of course, but he's on seven days' leave. We could fix up for Jones to do it, or Colonel Greenaway would if you like."
"No, no, Major Moon, of course you must operate; of course you must! Gervase, you'll be assisting him, _won't_ you?"
"I was supposed to be," said Eden.
"Yes, do; do assist. You must. Please don't think... it's awful of me even to seem to suggest that I don't trust you to do the very best for William. I know you will; of course I do. Do forgive me, everybody; it's only that... I'm sort of upset.... If anything should happen to him..." She left them abruptly and ran off to her ward.
"Poor child; she's so very much in love," said Major Moon, looking after her.
"Is the operation really nothing serious?" asked Cockrill, deeply interested.
"Not serious at all; it would be if it were left, of course. He's developing osteomyelitis, and we must drain the wound, that's all."
"Osteo-what?" said Cockrill crossly; he hated to be ignorant of what other people clearly understood.
"Osteomyelitis—infection of the bone, Inspector. We take out the stitches and pack the wound open so that the pus can't collect; and cover the whole thing with plaster of Paris, instead of having him strung up to an extension."
"Why is he strung up anyway?" said Cockrill.
"Well, the bones are fractured and they were overlapping; that usually happens. The extension pulls them out so that the broken ends can meet and unite again. I think that about explains it, eh, Eden?"
"A most masterly exposition," said Gervase.
"So you see it's all very simple, Cockrill. There is a little infection, pus is forming, and it mustn't be allowed to collect, so we arrange matters so that it can drain away."
"It may sound simple to you, it's double Dutch to me," said Cockie; he added, gently probing: "I can't even visualise how you go about it."
Major Moon fell innocently into the trap. "Come along to the theatre to-morrow and see for yourself."
Cockie affected great astonishment. "Goodness gracious—could I really?"
"Well, of course; we'll rig you up in a gown and you can stand and look on. You'll probably enjoy it."
Cockrill thought it extremely unlikely that he would enjoy it, but he was anxious, for his own reasons, to get into the theatre, and he said cheerfully: "I'll be there!" and as soon as they had dispersed hurried over to his office to give orders to his men. He had known for some time Who; and now he knew Why; but he could not make an arrest until he knew How. It was taking a risk, but perhaps tomorrow would show.
2
Esther had thirty-six hours' leave on the day of William's operation, so as to be ready to switch from night duty to day duty on the following morning. Frederica was by now sufficiently recovered to go back to work. They assembled for one of their rare meals all together, lining up at the serving hatch in a queue of V.A.D.s.
" _Stew!_ " said Frederica.
"What's for pudding?"
"Rice and some rather sordid looking prunes."
Forty girls were already at their lunch, elbow to elbow, round two inadequate tables. Knives screeched against china as they scooped up the thick gravy and scraped it on to their forks, heads poked forward to lessen the distance between their plates and their open mouths. Tongues wagged unceasingly. "Pass the salt, Mabel. Ask Mrs. Brown to shove the bread up this way.... I tell you, Simpson, I simply can't swap duty with you...." There seemed no apparent reason why some should be called by their surnames, some by their Christian names, and some with the added Mrs. or Miss. The Commandant sat at their head looking rather forlorn.
"What about going back to quarters?" said Woods.
"Yes, let's. I can't take this."
The cooks obligingly served all their stew on to one plate and the pudding on to another. "You Woodites! Don't you ever eat in the Mess?"
"No, we'd rather go to the parrot house in the zoo; if we can't get that, we go back to our quarters."
"Well, we don't blame you," said the cooks who, by nature of their calling, ate by themselves when the rest had finished.
"Those Woodites are too toffee-nosed for words," agreed the V.A.D.s, closing up the queue after them when they had gone.
Esther and Freddi and Woods did not care two hoots if the V.A.D.s thought them toffee-nosed. They emptied their plate of stew into a saucepan on the gas-stove in their own little house, and heated up the savoury mess. "It looks too revolting, darling, but it smells all right. What shall we do with the prunes?"
"Put them down the huh-ha," said Frederica.
"Now, Freddi, nonsense; you _must_ eat them—they're good for you."
"They look like little old, old negro gentlemen," said Esther, holding one up on a fork and making it do a little shuffling dance on the plate.
"If only we had some black treacle to heat them up in!"
"And a dollop of Devonshire cream...."
"Well, we haven't," said Woods cheerfully. "And we're not likely to for another million years...." She was glad that Esther had made the little joke about the black gentlemen, for it showed that she was pulling herself together a bit. She seemed to have the willies about this mere little operation on William.
"Well, work again for me to-night," said Freddi, tucking into the stew. "How are my suffering patients, Esther? Tell me the worst."
"Edwards and Smith have gone out. Johnson's up and that old gall-stones, the one Colonel Greenaway did, is getting up tomorrow... what's his name, I never can remember? There's retention of urine, but perhaps he won't still be retaining it by the time you go on this evening, it'll be an all-time record if he is, that's all I can say; and there's an appendix for to-morrow and a hernia. The two hernias Major Moon did the other day seem to be all right. They had a lot of pain, I think; they're always grumbling, so don't take too much notice. Pop's getting on marvellously—he _is_ so sweet; and there's a rather heavenly sailor-with-the-navy-blue-eyes come in for observation, query appendix...."
"And a perfectly divine fractured tib. and fib. in the corner bed," said Woody, laughing.
This was a trifle rash, however, for at mention of William's name Esther's face clouded over; she did not respond, but jumped up from her chair and asked what Freddi had done with the rice.
"It's on the kitchen table. Woody, darling, _need_ I eat these dreary prunes?"
"Yes, Freddi, you must; they're good for you. Esther, you've hardly had any of your stew."
"Well, I can't take it, darling; don't badger me."
Barney appeared at the door. "Hallo, my divinities; can I come in?"
"If you think you will ever be able to love Freddi again, after seeing the squalor in which she eats," said Woods.
"I can just about bear it. Would it be a good idea if I took the saucepan off the table for you, before I sat down?"
"Hoi, no, that's our sweet," said Woody, grabbing it.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and Frederica left the table and perched herself on his knee, putting her arms round his neck and rubbing her golden head against his cheek. " _You_ won't make me eat prunes when we're married, darling, will you?"
"Not if you ask him like that," said Woody, laughing.
Esther sat at the table pushing the prunes around with her fork. "Are you giving William's anæsthetic this afternoon, Barney?"
"Well, that's what I came to ask you about," said Barney. "Would you like somebody else to do it, Esther? Perkins could give it."
"No, no, of course not; I _want_ you to."
"I thought you might prefer it if we didn't have all the original crowd," said Barney carefully.
Esther stopped chivvying the prunes and put down her fork. "Well, Barney, I would have preferred it, in a way, but I couldn't say so, could I? Major Moon and Gervase both offered to arrange for other people to operate, but it seemed so awful to accept. I do genuinely want you to give the anæsthetic, darling. I mean, I know Captain Perkins gives them sometimes, but he's not really an anæsthetist, _is_ he? and I'd much rather you did; but the others... oh, dear, I know I'm being silly, I know Woody and Frederica think I'm making a fuss, but I can't help it...."
"No, we don't, darling; we perfectly understand."
It was possible that Frederica, with that unflurried detachment of hers, 'understood,' but Woods, though she would not have acknowledged it for the world, was irritated by all this display of nerves and hysteria. She had always thought that Esther tended to dramatise her sorrow and sense of loss at her mother's death, and really it was absurd if she were going to get all intense about William and spoil their happiness by developing an anxiety-complex. Woody's mind worked in a direct, straightforward line of solid common sense; she made very little allowance for superabundance of imagination.
Esther turned upon her sorrowful and reproachful eyes. "I know I'm annoying you, Woody; but if you'd been through what I have...."
Woods was overcome by remorse. "Oh, Esther, sweetie, _don't!_ I do understand, honestly I do; and I haven't forgotten a bit about all you've suffered. It's only that it's such a little thing, darling, and it's foolish to get so het up about it and make yourself ill over nothing. You ought to be cheering poor old William up, not going to him with a face like a ghost...."
"I went in and had a look at him this morning," said Barney. "He seemed quite full of beans. Have you seen him, Esther?"
"No, I've only just got up from sleeping-off my night duty. I—I don't seem to want to see him, Barney; I'm afraid of bursting into tears or doing something silly."
"Oh, nonsense, ducky, go along and visit him now. He'll be having his pre-operative injection soon, and I expect he's wondering where on earth you are."
Esther dragged herself to her feet. "Well, all right. I'll see you in the theatre then, Barney?"
"Oh, Esther, you're not coming in?" said Woods.
"Of course," said Esther. "I couldn't let him go all alone. I may not stay while Major Moon's doing him—I can go out to the waiting-room; but I must see him before he goes off. Major Moon won't mind if I come, Barney, will he?"
"Not a bit, I don't suppose," said Barnes. "And if he did, you can wind him round your little finger."
"Yes, I believe the old boy's got quite a crush on her," said Woods, as Esther departed. "It was that night that she and William fixed things up. I went in afterwards and she was in the bunk with Major Moon, and he was looking at her as though she were made of—of treacle and Devonshire cream," said Woody, laughing, harking back to their supper. "I'm not surprised, because she really did look perfectly lovely that night, all lit up like a Christmas tree. Well, I must push off to my arduous duties and leave you two love-birds alone."
Barney could not appear broken-hearted at this suggestion. He sat on the bed with Frederica held closely in his arms, and thought that he had never been so happy in all his life. Even on the night that she had consented to marry him, she had sent a stab of pain and jealousy through his heart with that odd little, sly little glance at Gervase Eden. But now—she refused to have anything to do with Eden, she had promised to marry him, Barney, as soon as they could arrange the wedding.... He took her head in his hands, tilting it back to kiss the long line of her throat. "Oh, Frederica, my little love...." Elusive, detached, inarticulate, it was only in moments such as this that she would ever be entirely his; but now he held her in his arms and kissed her warm throat and the little round chin and the beautiful Burne Jones mouth. "Frederica, I love you, I need you so.... My sweet, my adorable, my desirable one...."
Here was language Frederica understood.
CHAPTER IX
1
William was lying on a wheeled stretcher when Cockrill arrived and, losing his way, blundered into the anæsthetic-room. Sergeant Bray was sitting in a corner in a white coat, counting over instruments with an air of deep concentration and apparently only for the pleasure of jumbling them up together and sorting them out again. He favoured the Inspector with a reassuring nod of the head. Cockie cast his hat and mackintosh into a corner and stood rather uncomfortably looking down at the patient. The etiquette of an operating theatre was outside his sphere of experience. William lifted his head from the pillow, smiled wanly and said: "Hallo!"
"Hallo, my boy," said Cockrill.
"Come to see the execution?" mumbled William. His mouth was dry from the pre-operative atropine.
"That's right," said Cockie. On second thoughts, however, this did not seem the most appropriate reply and he added with a rather ghastly cheerfulness: "That's a fine pair of socks you've got!"
William wriggled his feet in their vast white woollen stockings. He was dressed in a grey flannel nightgown and covered with blankets and looked indescribably helpless and pathetic.
Esther came into the room, thrusting her arms into the sleeves of a green surgical gown as she walked, and looking very white and strained. Barnes followed her, also gowned, his mask hanging by its tapes round his neck. He said, smiling: "Hallo, Inspector."
"Major Moon arranged for me to come in and—watch," said Cockie, glancing apologetically at William.
"Yes, he told me; come along and we'll get you fixed up with a gown."
In the washroom was Woods, assisting Major Moon and Theatre Sister to scrub up. Cockrill scoured his nicotined fingers and submitted to having a sort of green nightgown tied on him and a mask over his mouth and nose. Stumbling slightly over the gown, which was much too long for him, he meandered back to the operating theatre, his bright little eyes peeping over the mask, very bright and alert. Esther came in from the anæsthetic-room; she said, in a low voice: "Thank you for letting the sergeant come up from the ward with him and wait there...."
"William will never be out of his sight or mine," promised Cockrill.
"I can't say 'thank you' enough; I'm being foolish, I know; it's good of you to humour me."
"That's all right; nothing to thank me for," said Cockie brusquely.
"I'm getting them to put out everything fresh," she said, moving restlessly about the big, green, shining room. "Then nothing _can_ go wrong." As Woods came in carrying a cylinder of gas, she said irritably: "Do hurry up, Woody. They'll be starting soon and you simply must have everything ready."
"All right, all right," said Woody equably, balancing on one foot to close the door behind her with the other. "I'm coping."
Cockrill relieved her of her burden and held it while she unclipped one half-used cylinder from the anæsthetic trolley and put the new one in and connected up the tubes. He watched her carefully, checking over in his mind the points of Barney's lesson a few days before. Esther said, fidgeting: "Have you opened a new drum, Woody?"
"Yes, Esther, darling, I'm seeing to all that. I promised I would and I will."
"And fresh bundles of swabs."
"Yes, of course, darling; we would in any case."
"And a new bottle of iodine, Woody; open a new bottle. Have you done Barney's trolley?"
"I'm coming to that, Esther," said Woods, her patience fraying a little. "I can't do everything at once."
"What is it you want, Esther?" asked Barnes, coming into the theatre.
"Oh, Barney, I do want to have everything _fresh_ on your trolley. I want everything brand new so that it can't possibly have been tampered with. I asked Theatre Sister and she said it would be all right. It doesn't involve very much and the other stuff can be used up afterwards. Of course the instruments come straight out of the steriliser—they must be all right, don't you think so, Barney? Don't you think they must be all right?"
"Yes, of course, Esther."
"And the needles and gut and knives and things are in antiseptic.... It's just the bottles, Barney, and your stuff. You don't mind, _do_ you?"
"No, I don't mind in the least, my dear, if it makes you any happier."
"Well, it does. I know I'm foolish," said Esther miserably; "but it makes me feel better to know that there _can't_ be any mistakes."
"I quite understand, Esther. It's perfectly all right with me."
She stood irresolutely beside his trolley, fingering the various bottles and jars. "You won't be using any of these, will you?"
"Not unless anything goes... not for the regular anæsthetic," corrected Barney hastily.
"And no ether or chloroform or anything?"
"No, no, just the ordinary gas and oxygen."
Woods came staggering across the theatre with a second cylinder and Barnes helped her to fit it into its holder. "I'm sorry to give you all this extra trouble, Woody," said Esther humbly.
Cockrill watched the tubes fitted up to his own satisfaction. He said suddenly, darting a finger at the three glass jars suspended over the trolley: "These bottles—the gas and oxygen mix in the first one, above the surface of the water, and pass along a single tube to the patient...?"
"That's right," said Barnes.
"Could anything go wrong there? Are we sure this is water in the bottom of the jars?"
"I don't see what else it could be; but we can jolly soon make sure," said Barney, without excitement. He took down the jars and sniffed at them each in turn. "They seem all right; but still, just in case, you could empty them out, Woody, and put fresh water in."
Cockrill satisfied himself that the jars were replaced with nothing more perilous in them than a little sterile water, and returned to the trolley. He ran over the various points in his mind, trying to eliminate anything irrelevant. "Nothing involved except this one cylinder, black, of nitrous oxide; and this one, black and white, of oxygen. The green cylinder of carbon dioxide in the middle is duly switched off, and so are the spares of gas and oxygen. Everything is connected up properly. The patient has nitrous oxide first and then oxygen as well, and you can judge from the first and third tubes in the clear glass jar over the trolley how much of each he's getting. The gas and oxygen mix in the jar and pass along the single tube to the mask over the patient's face." Put like that, it seemed very simple and straight-forward; he could not see where there could be room for accident. After a moment, however, he said suddenly: "Will you be using this air-way tube?"
"I expect so," said Barnes; "I usually do."
"Didn't you tell me that you dabble the end in lubricant first!"
"Yes, to make it slip into the throat more easily."
"You haven't given us a fresh pot of lubricant, Miss Woods," said Cockie, raising an eyebrow.
Woods came over to the trolley. "No, so I haven't; but surely..."
"I said _e_ verything, Woody," said Esther fretfully.
Woods shrugged her shoulders and went to a cupboard just outside the theatre. "Let's have this pot," suggested Cockrill following her, pointing with a crooked finger at a jar other than that which she was lifting down. "And while we're about it—let's have a different bottle of iodine, shall we, right from the back row...."
Esther put an unsteady hand to the lintel of the door. "Inspector—what are you suggesting?"
"Nothing, nothing, nothing..." But he dropped his air of false jollity and said, glaring at them all from under his eyebrows: "We want no clever tricks; easy enough to force a doctored bottle on us, wouldn't it be? Like a conjurer forcing a card. What else have you put out new, Miss Woods?"
"Only the adrenalin," said Woody, rather shaken. "And of course I've opened a fresh drum of dressings and things."
Cockrill pointed to a bottle of adrenalin still in the cupboard. "Well, take this one instead. We needn't trouble about the dressings."
Woody obeyed, but she said doubtfully: "I don't know what on earth you're suggesting, Inspector. After all, only Esther and I knew that we were going to have everything fresh.''
"I'm suggesting nothing," said Cockie irritably. "For all you know you've been playing into the murderer's hands, arranging to have everything new." His hand went to his side in search of papers and tobacco, but found no pocket in the green gown; the atmosphere of the theatre, the bright light and the heat, and the knowledge that, though he did not really think that there was serious danger, he was taking a risk with a man's life, made him jumpy and on edge. He wished that they would get on with it.
Major Moon, in khaki shirtsleeves, came in from the washroom. "Will you be starting soon, Barney? Eden's here. I'll begin changing now. Oh, hallo, Inspector; everything all right?"
"Well, it's all _right_ ," said Cockie grudgingly, "except that I want a cigarette."
"We won't be long now," promised Major Moon, grinning briefly. "Carry on, Barnes. Esther, my dear, you're not going to stay?"
"No, I'll wait outside, Major Moon, if that's all right with you. Frederica's coming to hold my hand." She smiled at him wanly.
He gave her his gentle smile, and disappeared. Esther went out to the anæsthetic-room; they could hear her speaking quietly to William, and after a minute Sergeant Bray, in his white coat, fastened back the doors, and she wheeled the trolley in; Bray glanced at the Inspector for instructions and, receiving a jerk of the head, assisted her in lifting the stretcher on to the table; she jerked out the crossbars and slid away the steel supports. Woods arranged blankets and cloths. Esther said shakily: "Well, William, I must go along."
"Yes, darling," said William, essaying a smile.
She seemed unconscious of them all, standing there under the big, mirror-lined white light, looking down at him; her eyes were lit by a sort of glory that transfigured the pure, rather colourless oval beauty of her face. She bent down and kissed him gently on the lips and walked away, not looking back; and suddenly terror welled up in Cockie's dry little heart. "Supposing I'm wrong," he thought. "Supposing I've made a mistake. Supposing I've watched the wrong person, and all this time somebody else has been working secretly... and this boy dies. I ought not to have left the place unguarded for a minute last night; I should have stayed here and sent for a man, not gone to fetch one. As it was, there must have been ten minutes after we stood talking in the lobby outside, when anyone could have slipped in...." On the other hand, Barnes and Moon had known for some hours, then, that William was to be operated on next day; and Eden too, probably. Any of them could have made their dreadful arrangements during the morning or afternoon, before he, Cockrill, had known. But what arrangements? He himself had superintended the pre-operative injection in the ward; he, himself, had chosen the jars and bottles of anything that might conceivably be used on the patient in the theatre. The apparatus for anæsthesia was correctly connected up; and he was satisfied that it would be physically impossible to introduce the wrong gas into any of the cylinders. William had been guarded and watched from the moment he left the ward. It was impossible for anything to go wrong; and yet.... he remembered Esther's face as she had kissed her love good-bye; and fear hammered at his heart, driving out reason and responsibility and efficiency, a nameless, uneasy terror of he knew not what. He stared about him at the impersonal, shining room, at the rows of steel instruments, gleaming sadistically, sharpened and hooked and curved to bite into the shrinking flesh; at the writhing red rubber coils of tubing, at the swabs and needles and bundles of sterile gut, at the delicate bubbles playing so innocently up and down the narrow silver tube in the clear glass jar, at all the bright, unfamiliar impediments of surgery; and felt very helpless and very much afraid. There was a little roughness on the palm of his hand; he picked at it nervously with a nicotined fingernail.
Barnes was sitting on his stool, the square of gauze pulled up now, over his mouth and nose, his left hand holding the mask a little away from William's face, the right, passing under the left arm, fiddling with taps and valves. His voice said steadily: "Just breathe normally. Just relax and breathe normally. That's right. No hurry. Just breathe in and out...." Woods stood at the side of the trolley, looked down at the patient quietly. Theatre Sister hovered over her instrument trolley. Eden and Moon came into the theatre pulling on their thin brown gloves, dusted with boracic to a dull grey. William closed lack-lustre eyes and his head fell to one side of the pillow. The line of bubbles increased in the clear glass jar.
Nobody spoke: but outside the theatre they could hear the tap-tap-tap of Frederica's little heels on the stone floor as she joined Esther in the waiting-room. William breathed deeper; his face, at the edges of the rubber mask, was an ugly red. "Is that all right?" asked Cockrill of Barnes, standing behind his shoulder.
"What, his colour? Yes, he's quite normal. It's time for the oxygen." He turned another tap; bubbles appeared at the surface of the water from the third tube in the jar, and crept slowly down. The colour increased and deepened. "Are you sure he's all right?" said Cockrill in an agony of apprehension, picking nervily at the dryness of his palm.
"Just needs more oxygen," said Barnes steadily.
Moon and Eden stood absolutely silent, staring down at the table; Woods' face was lined and heavy; the sister turned back from her instruments to glance at the patient and away again. She was new in the theatre since Sister Bates had died, and the mounting tension of fear and unreason passed her completely by.
The bubbles crept steadily down the third tube, dying away to a pinpoint on the first, as Barnes cut down the gas and poured in more oxygen. A line of sweat appeared across his brow. His face grew suddenly grey. He said in a low voice, but very clearly and distinctly in the silent room: " _My Christ_!" It might have been an oath or it might have been a prayer.
"What's happening?" whispered Moon. "I—I don't like it, Barnes; I don't like his colour..."; and Eden said urgently, putting out a hand to steady the jerky legs: "He's starting jactitations."
Cockrill could not bear to look. His mind, usually so keen and clear, was a dark confusion of terror and self-questioning and hideous anxiety. He had made an experiment, thinking it was all so safe; had taken a terrible gamble with a man's life; and suddenly everything was going wrong. He jerked out abruptly: "Stop giving the anæsthetic! Don't give him any more!"
"I'm not giving him any," said Barnes in a sick voice. "He _must_ have oxygen."
Cockrill wiped damp hands on the sides of his gown, fighting down his panic, fighting to regain his ordinary grim composure, and glanced down, unthinking, at the roughness inside the palm. A little black speck.
A little black speck.
The room reeled about him in a swirl of green and silver, with a small black speck growing larger and larger and larger; blotting it out, blotting out his sight and sound and sense and reason, muffling his brain in soft dark velvet, hammering at his memory with a drumming, thudding, throbbing insistence... a sliver of steel pierced the blackness for a moment, thrust quivering into a bloodstained, torn green gown; his own hands loomed at him out of the mist, pink and clean from the surgeon's washbasin; Woody came staggering towards him, a heavy iron cylinder clasped like a child to her breast... and he was on his knees at Barney's side, clawing like a madman at taps and reducing valves. "Cut it off! Cut the oxygen off! Use the spare cylinder... the spare cylinder of oxygen... give it to him from that..."As Barnes took over, brushing his hands aside, he caught up a pair of scissors from the trolley and ran the blunt outside edge down the black and white oxygen tube. A curl of soft black paint peeled away under the steel. Beneath the black was a layer of shiny green.
2
Carbon dioxide. A cylinder identical, but for its colour, with an oxygen cylinder. A colourless, odourless gas. A cylinder of carbon dioxide with a coat of black paint over its green, placed where an oxygen cylinder should be. Nothing to show, no way of telling; nothing but a speck of sticky black paint on a pair of clean hands; on the front of a surgical gown.
Ten minutes later Barney was saying shakily: "All the time I thought I was pouring oxygen into him, it was CO2!"
"I remember you told me," said Cockrill, mopping his brow, his brown hands very shaky but his eyes bright again and his brain quite cold and clear, "that if it could have been possible for Higgins to have been getting gas and carbon dioxide instead of gas and oxygen, he would have died in very much the same way."
"Of course; asphyxia. He was getting no air."
The terrible colour was fading from William's cheekbones; the jactitations had ceased, the bulging neck muscles relaxed and he began to breathe more normally. They stood motionless gazing down at him; gazing at the livid green scar on the black cylinder. "This doesn't concern you, Sister," said Cockrill going over to the staring woman behind the instrument trolley; "perhaps you'd leave us, would you? And not a word about this outside. Do you hear?" Nobody else moved or spoke. Barnes continued to sit with his right hand heavy on the mask over William's face.
And suddenly Esther was standing in the doorway, with Frederica at her elbow. She looked at their ashen faces, at the quiet form on the table, at the unused instruments and the trolleys pushed aside, and cried in a voice of dreadful despair: "He's dead!"
Woods ran across to her. "No, darling. It's all right. He's safe."
"He's dead," repeated Esther, not even seeing or hearing her, staring straight past her into some private inferno of her own.
Barney looked up for a moment from his work. "No, no, he's perfectly all right, Esther; really he is, he's perfectly all right."
"There has been a little—accident, my dear," said Moon, gently, going over to her and taking her by the arm. "But it's all over now; he's quite all right now."
"An accident?" she said faintly.
"Someone accidentally painted a carbon dioxide cylinder black and white to make it look like oxygen," explained Cockie sweetly.
"Painted.... Carbon dioxide...." She looked at him, trembling, but suddenly burst out, turning on him violently: "Inspector Cockrill— _you_ did this! You let him in for this! You knew it was going to happen...."
"No, I didn't, Esther," said Cockrill coolly. "I was quite sure it wasn't going to happen. He had to have the operation—that was out of my hands, and I thought an attack might be contemplated; but I'd taken every possible precaution.... I didn't think it could be attempted."
"The Inspector saved William's life, Esther," said Major Moon gravely. He moved over and stood beside Cockrill, a little, plump, pink and white old man, looking earnestly into the face of a little, thin, brown one. "You did a marvellous job, Cockie; thank God we had you here."
William breathed steadily and quietly, a million miles away in some dim, dreamless land outside the recollection of man; they talked across him as though he had been a log of wood; but Esther moved over to the table and stood very close to him. Woody said eagerly: "You were terribly quick, Inspector. I saw you suddenly glance at your hand; and it seemed only a second before you had snatched up the spanner and were opening the spare oxygen. You realised it was black paint on your hand, and then ..?"
"Well, then, I knew it must be the cylinder," said Cockie gruffly. "That's all. I hadn't touched anything else since I washed my hands outside; but I did help you carry the cylinder."
"Still, even so..."
"And then there was Sister Bates."
"Sister Bates?" they echoed foolishly, gathering round him, all but Barney who continued steadily to tend his patient.
"There were two things that really interested me about the murder of Sister Bates," said Cockrill. "Two things seemed to hold out some sort of clue to what had happened; and they'd both been done after her death."
"She was stabbed a second time," said Woody. This macabre detail seemed always to hold a special fascination for her.
"Exactly," said Cockrill. "And?"
"And her body was rigged up in the mask and gown and boots."
"Precisely," said Cockie.
Frederica had been standing quietly by, making a little Swiss roll of a corner of her starched white apron, and automatically trying to smooth it out again. She said in her rather dense way: "I don't see what anybody could tell from that."
"Anybody who gave it a moment's thought could tell a great deal from it," said Cockrill, while appearing to watch them all, he studied one face in particular. "First of all—to dress her up like that! That was either the act of a lunatic, or it was done for some reason—some reason worth all the risk of spending extra dangerous minutes on the scene of the crime."
"Perhaps this person's a lunatic then," said Freddi, intent on the little roll.
"No," said Cockrill. "The murderer is not a lunatic. I think he has what they call an _idée fixe_ on just one subject but in everything else he's as sane as—as you or me." He gave a grim little smile, for in addressing them, he was addressing the murderer. Nobody responded. He continued: "Higgins and Williams were attacked for the same reason; Frederica because the murderer was afraid of being caught; Sister Bates because she held tangible proof of the murder... some proof of the murderer's identity or of how the crime had been committed. There was no secret as to how _she_ had died; therefore all the flummery with the mask and gown, and the second stabbing must have been connected, not with her murder, but with this missing proof. That's obvious, isn't it?"
"Clear as daylight," said Eden ironically.
Cockrill caught him suddenly by the shoulder and pushed him in front of the poison cupboard against the wall of the theatre. "Just stand there a minute, Major Eden. That's where Bates was, taking out her 'proof'. The murderer stood here." He went over to the doorway and paused for a moment. "You turn and see me.... I take three paces forward...." He raised his hand dramatically poising an imaginary knife. "You stand staring at me, terrified and incredulous... and I strike!"
"I think this is horrible," said Esther in a low voice.
"I dare say it was horrible at the time," said Cockie briefly. He turned back to his victim who still stood very much alive, in spite of the blow having been struck, with his back to the poison cupboard. "Now—he's dead. What do I do? Do I snatch the proof out of his hand and clear out? No, I don't. I dress the body up first and lay it out on the table. Major Moon—that wound from the knife: it wouldn't have bled very much?"
"Not externally," said Major Moon.
"And the second wound—it would have had to be made very shortly after death, to have bled at all?"
"Almost immediately."
"Yet there was blood all round the edges of the tear in the gown; that means that the gown was put on almost immediately the girl was dead. It wasn't a clean gown; it had been used before. Miss Woods—where would a soiled gown be kept?"
"In the laundry basket," said Woods; "out in the anteroom, waiting to be collected."
"It would have taken a little time to go and get it then?"
"Yes, a minute or two; and the basket would have been fastened... you couldn't get it open all in a second."
"So I should think we might say that the murderer didn't go to the basket for the gown."
"You told us before that the murderer was dressed up in a gown," put in Eden, coming forward from the cupboard. "Perhaps he had also brought a gown along for Sister Bates."
"No, he was wearing a fresh gown and mask from the linen cupboard; we checked that up afterwards. This one was soiled. Besides, I don't think he knew that he was going to need a gown for Sister Bates."
"Well, when did he find out?" said Freddi, impatiently.
"When he saw her standing there with one in her hand," said Cockrill, triumphantly.
There was a startled silence. Woods blurted out at last: "You mean— _that's_ what she had hidden away in the poison cupboard? A surgical gown?"
"Your surgical gown, Miss Woods."
" _Mine_?" said Woody stupidly.
"I only saw Sister Bates once, for a few minutes' interview," said Cockie, turning it over in his mind. "I thought she was a foolish creature; but that's a different thing from being a stupid creature. She saw something that day, after Higgins died, that gave her the whole clue to what had happened.... I dare say she didn't really believe in it, in her heart; she just played about with the idea, pretending to herself that it meant more than she really believed, pretending it was a story to be stored up, to be trotted out one day when it suited her...."
"Why should it ever have suited her?" said Eden, half-contemptuous, half on the defensive.
"I wonder," said Cockrill, lifting a sardonic eyebrow.
Gervase shrugged his shoulders angrily. "The whole suggestion is absurd. How should Bates have noticed anything wrong with the cylinders? She'd have had to see that it had been painted, to understand what had happened. Well, how could she? She wouldn't have been fooling about with it. It isn't the sister's business to deal with the cylinders; the V.A.D. does that.... And anyway, after Higgins died, the cylinders must have been practically full; they wouldn't have needed changing. Why should she have been touching them?"
Esther spoke suddenly, quietly, from her place at William's side. She said: "You're wrong, Gervase. Sister Bates could have noticed the cylinder that day. Don't you remember that Woody took Higgins down to the mortuary and left me to clear up for her? I didn't know the routine of course, and Sister Bates helped me. She may easily have touched the cylinders, or even changed them."
"In fact she must have," said Barnes, who had been sitting silent all this time. "Otherwise the next patient would have died too." He went a little grey again, at this dreadful possibility.
"So you see!" said Cockie.
"I don't see what it had to do with the gown," insisted Woody, who seemed to take it as a personal affront that her gown should be involved.
"Ah, the gown," said Cockie, rocking gently backwards and forwards from his toes to his heels. "The gown was the clue to it all; the really substantial clue. Miss Sanson has shown us that Sister Bates _was_ fussing around in the theatre that morning, after Higgins died; she may have noticed the gown then, or later; we don't know... but at any event, she hid it away in the poison cupboard on a shelf that wasn't much used; and when the murderer found her she was standing there by the cupboard with the gown in her hands. He killed her to get it, but having killed her, he couldn't take it away; he couldn't go marching about the hospital with a soiled surgical gown under his arm, without somebody noticing it. He had to leave it in the theater; and since he had to do that, he had to leave it in such a way that we should not notice it; or noticing it, shouldn't understand its significance. He dressed the body up in it and he added the mask and boots and he laid the poor girl out on the table, to look as though it were some sort of crazy afterthought... some sort of rite or ceremonial that only a lunatic would have thought of...."
"Lunatic's the word," broke in Freddi, impatiently. "Who but a lunatic would have killed Bates to get the gown from her and then gone away and left it. It doesn't make sense. I don't believe a word of it." She dismissed the whole business and marched over to Barney, leaning over his shoulder to look with professional interest at William's face. Barney moved the mask away for a moment, to let her see the improvement in colour, and lifted with a delicate third finger, one of the eyelids. "He's doing _fine_ ," said Frederica, smiling up at Esther reassuringly.
Cockrill entirely ignored this slightly bossy display; but it relieved the tension a little, brought them all down from their high horses of self-defense. Woody smiled indulgently and winked at Gervase; she always adored Freddi when she was showing off. Major Moon pulled off his little, round Chinaman's cap and twiddled it round quite gaily, holding it by its centre. Even Esther faintly smiled. Cockrill brought them all up with a jerk, saying coolly: "And then of course, having laid the body out as we've seen—the murderer stabbed it a second time—through the gown."
Woody recoiled, as ever, from this ugly thought. "But _why_ —that's what I just can't see."
"To make us think that the hole in the green gown had been made when the body was stabbed."
They stared at him. "But wasn't it? When was it made then? And why—why was it made? Surely—surely it must have been made by the knife...?"
He picked up a piece of lint, gingerly fished a surgical knife from a tray of instruments in the trolley, and, with a single gesture, thrust it through the lint. It left a tiny, almost imperceptible slit.
"So what?" said Freddi, remaining unimpressed.
"So the hole in the gown was quite a big, jagged hole. It was made—not by the stabbing; but to cut something away."
Freddi had lost all pretence of interest in the patient now. She came forward slowly from the table, fixing the little Inspector with her big grey eyes. "To cut what away? I don't understand. What did he want to cut away from the gown?"
"A smear of black paint," said Cockrill and Eden and Moon and Barney and Esther and Woody, all impatiently.
3
Barnes announced that William might be taken back to his ward. Cockrill summoned sisters and orderlies and despatched him on a wheeled stretcher; he sent for the Matron and the Commanding Officer and talked to them at length—neither of them had felt so young for years. Finally he withdrew to the anæsthetic-room and went into a consultation with Sergeant Bray. "These six people must be guarded night and day; separately or together; they must never be allowed out of our sight. Never mind if they don't like it—all the better in fact. I want a confession. I've got everything but absolute proof and I must have a confession. Nobody can stand this pace for more than a day or two longer; we must break them down."
"Is it safe to leave it, sir? With all that morphia...?"
"There's more morphia than you know, Bray. No, of course it isn't safe; it's very dangerous, but it's all that I can do. I haven't got a shred of proof, that I could make an arrest on, let alone offer to a jury. There's the motive, of course; there's the half-hour unaccounted for on the night that Higgins was brought in; there's that look of astonishment on Bates's face; there's the fantastic reason for Linley's being gassed; there's the wakefulness of certain patients in St. Elizabeth's ward; and finally there's that strange conversation in the lobby outside the theatre last night. Put them together, and the case is clear as daylight; separate them, and they fall apart in your hands. I've _got_ to wait!"
Bray thought it over, pulling the lobe of his ear. "You couldn't work on a process of elimination, sir? For instance, the Linley girl: she didn't know last night that the operation was to be performed on this chap to-day. The theatre's been watched, sir, from ten minutes after that talk in the lobby, to this very moment. She couldn't have got in and painted the cylinder. She _must_ be out."
"You're working too fast, Sergeant. Barnes met the girl-friend on his way back to dinner in the Mess, told her what was in the wind and went straight on. She _says_ she came over to see Esther Sanson and comfort her, but didn't find her; Woods _says_ she looked for her also, but didn't find her and went back to her quarters; Esther _says_ that was because she crept away to a dark corner somewhere to get herself back under control before she went on duty, which sounds feasible enough; but you see, this way, none of them has an alibi. Barnes and Eden and Moon, of course, had ample opportunity earlier in the day; they knew all about the suggested operation, naturally, and could have slipped into the theatre... it would only have taken a few minutes to coat the thing over with paint. They'd got it all taped; it wasn't the first time...."
"'S'awkward, isn't it?" said Sergeant Bray, his ear by now very pink.
It was a full hour since Cockrill had remembered his desire for a cigarette.
CHAPTER X
1
Barnes and Eden and Moon presented themselves at the cottage that afternoon, for tea. "We thought the band of murderers had better stick together," explained Gervase, sliding a plate of bread and butter from the crook of his arm to the table, and producing a couple of biscuits out of a pocket. "The Mess was sitting around uneasily, jiggling their teaspoons in their saucers and jumping whenever we spoke to them, so we made ourselves scarce. We brought our rations with us." He fished three more biscuits out of another pocket.
"Some rather doubtful sandwiches," said Barney, unwrapping them from the lace paper doyley off a plate.
"And a whole cake," said Major Moon gleefully. "I just picked it up off the table and marched out, and nobody dared to say a word."
Esther lay on the narrow bed in the sitting-room looking very ill; but she smiled gratefully at their rather forced jollity and struggled to her feet. " _I'll_ make tea, Woody."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Woods, pushing her down again. "Come on, Freddi, we'll cope."
Frederica would rather have stayed perched on the edge of Barney's chair and twiddled his soft, fair hair into two little horns to make him look like Pan; but she trotted off obediently and they could hear her plaintive voice saying: "But I don't know where we _keep_ them, darling.... But I never can cut it _straight_ , Woody...." as Woods clattered about among the cups and saucers and issued instructions. Moon sat down on the edge of the bed beside Esther. "How do you feel, my dear?"
"Oh, I'm all right, Major Moon. I had a bit of a shock, that's all. I—I stood there in the doorway, and you were all so still.... You were all standing so still.... I knew something must have gone wrong. I thought he was dead..." She broke off, leaving her sentence in the air.
"Is it true that Cockrill won't let you see William, Esther?" said Barnes.
"He won't let anybody see him. He told me he was going to have him watched night and day, and that it would be better if none of us went near him, even me. It's all so terrifying, Barney!"
"It's over now, Esther," said Eden soothingly. "Now that he knows how it was done, it won't be long...." But that was not a happy thought either, and he went off on a slightly different tangent. "Anyway, we've all got a holiday. Officer Commanding Surgical Division is taking over all the operating lists for the next few days...." He blew out his cheeks in a lightning sketch of Lieutenant Colonel Greenaway taking over the operating lists with much pomp and ceremony: "and Perkins is giving the anæsthetics. Heaven help the patients, that's all I can say."
"Isn't Colonel Greenaway good, Gervase?"
"Oh, he's all right, I suppose. He's so _slow_ he drives you to drink, though.... I assisted him in an emergency appendix the other day...." He drifted off into hospital gossip, and they were deep in reminiscence when Woods and Frederica returned with a large, chipped earthenware teapot and an assortment of cups and plates. "By the way, are _you_ being followed about by coppers, too?" asked Woody, dumping a jug of tinned milk on the table and rummaging in a drawer for knives and spoons.
"Yes, a chap came over here with us; he's walking up and down outside, now."
"Poor pet," said Woody. She filled a cup with tea and tinned milk, grudgingly added some sugar, and went out to the back door. "Oi! You—mister! Want a cuppa?" They could hear her assuring him cheerfully that there was no arsenic in it.
"As far as we know," corrected Freddi, under her breath.
Barnes heard her. He said tenderly: "Darling;—it isn't getting you down? You're not frightened?"
Frederica was practically incapable of being unnerved. It pleased her, however, to parade his little show of tenderness; to demonstrate to Gervase how very much she and Barney were in love. She was uneasily ashamed of her infatuation for Eden and was now seeking, subconsciously, to throw the onus on to him. She sat on the arm of Barney's chair and allowed herself to be made a fuss of. Esther lay on the narrow bed with Major Moon's hand on her wrist. Woody dispensed tea. Nobody made a fuss of her.
Conversation waxed and waned. How long would their enforced holiday last? How would the theatre get on without Major Moon and Barney and Woods? How could St. Elizabeth's survive without Esther and Freddi? How could the surgical division plod along with nobody left but Greenaway and a general duties officer and the orthopod? But they could not keep away for ever from the subject that was in all their minds, and it was Woods who finally said, breaking in upon an impassioned defence of Chalk and Cheese and how marvellously Esther thought they would manage in the ward: "Well, don't let's talk about inanities any longer. Let's talk about black paint."
Perhaps, after all, it would be rather a relief to talk about the black paint. "It was so incredibly simple," said Barney, still apparently lost in astonishment at the trick that had been played on him. "You can't alter the gas in a cylinder; so you alter the cylinder. The gases are colourless and odourless—in a thousand years one couldn't possibly tell."
"Doesn't carbon dioxide prickle, Barney?"
"If you get a strong enough concentration it does; if you could put your nose right into a bowl of it, you'd get a faint sort of creeping sensation like soda water bubbles; but you don't get it through a mask. I couldn't have got it by sniffing round the trolley. Besides, I never even tried. An oxygen cylinder is an oxygen cylinder; one just doesn't doubt it."
"Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much," said Woody.
"I don't protest at all," said Barnes, not too pleased. "There was not the slightest reason to suppose that Higgins had been murdered; and under the circumstances no anæsthetist in the world would have dreamed of questioning the contents of the cylinders. Even if I'd known he'd been killed, that would have been the last thing that would have occurred to me—or to anyone in my position."
"All right, sweetie, no offence meant," said Woody pacifically.
"Cockrill has been doing experiments," said Major Moon. "He seems to have proved to his own satisfaction that the cylinder must have been painted well before midnight, on the night before Higgins died, to have allowed it to dry in the time."
"Of course the theatre's hot..." said Eden.
"He's allowed for all that. He says definitely about twelve hours. That would bring it to about ten o'clock in the evening, or a bit later."
"Which couldn't be more significant," said Freddi.
"Significant—in what way?"
"Only that it proves all over again that it _must_ be one of our lot," said Eden, interpreting Frederica's vague assertion. "At ten o'clock, or even eleven, to be on the safe side, there were definitely only the six of us, and Bates, who could have known that the man was in the hospital...."
They knew it; and yet their minds would not accept it; reason told them that one of themselves was a killer but sentiment rebelled against reason. For, after all, _who_? Not dear old Moon. Not Gervase, with his ugly charm, his bright intelligence, his impatient honesty. And, God knew, not Barney! And not Esther, the gentle and dignified, or Freddi the exquisite, or Woody with her big, warm, generous, laughing heart. "What I can't make out," said Eden, drawing their attention away from these painful thoughts, "is how anyone can have worked it out in the time. Dash it all, Higgins was only brought in at about half-past nine. How can the murderer have made up his mind and evolved the whole plan, all in an hour or so? What gave him the idea?"
"Oh, it was the _sal_ vage tins, _was_ n't it?" said Freddi, as if this must, surely, have been obvious to all.
"The salvage tins? What _are_ you talking about?"
"She's talking about Colonel Beaton having had all the rubbish bins repainted," said Esther. "Ever since he came we've been tripping over tins of black and white paint in the hall and the corridors! Of course the murderer noticed one, and it put the idea into his head. He just took a tin and went into the theatre with it, and then put it back where he'd found it."
"Or rather two tins, because, of course, an oxygen cylinder has a white collar, so he must have used black and white. Well, I think that's brilliant of you, Freddi, to have thought of that, really I do!"
"Good gracious, Woody, I thought of it the minute I knew about the paint having been used."
"How could he be certain it would be used on Higgins, though?" said Esther.
Woods took Barney's cup and filled it; she said, standing over the little table with the tea-pot lolling, forgotten, in her hand: "That would be easy. The more you think of it, the more you see how easy it all was—if it came off. Higgins was second on the operating list. The murderer released some of the oxygen out of the cylinder on the trolley, so that there would be just about enough for one more operation—one long operation like a duodenal ulcer; and he knew we'd be bound to put in a fresh cylinder for the next case. Of course the cylinders come up from the Reserve Medical Store; but we have three or four in the storeroom off the theatre according to what sort of list we have for the day; and he simply put the repainted one on the rack so that I would take that next; naturally I'd choose the one nearest to hand."
"How on earth could he know how much oxygen the duodenal ulcer would take?" said Barney. "I'd be very sorry to have to estimate it, myself."
"Well, he made a guess at it then; and it was a jolly good guess because I remember that the oxygen had run right down after the duodenal was finished. That's why I started off on the new cylinder and didn't just switch to the spare. Of course if it was anyone in the theatre, they could have released the rest of the oxygen while nobody was noticing...."
"And we were all in and out of the theatre between the two operations," pointed out Eden.
"Except Frederica," said Barnes.
"Does that make me a non-suspect?" said Freddi. "How lovely!"
"Wouldn't there have been one too many used oxygen cylinders, Woody," said Eden, "and one too few carbon dioxides?"
"Oh, lawks!" said Woods, pop-eyed. "I wonder if there were!"
"You can bet your life there weren't," said Barney, laughing at her startled face. "Cockrill checked the whole lot over next day. I expect a black one had been painted green, to tally."
"But there isn't any green paint anywhere," said Frederica.
"Well, then, the black paint may have been removed, afterwards; before the empties were counted. Easy enough in a theatre where there's lots of acetone and turpentine and things about; and the stuff wouldn't have hardened yet. It was only just dry."
"Not even quite dry," agreed Eden, "since it left a black mark on the front of Woody's overall."
"Wouldn't the turps have taken off the underneath paint as well?"
"No, it's that hard, shiney, baked-on enamel; it may have marked it a little bit, but those cylinders get awfully shabby and knocked about. Nobody would ever notice it."
"Woody, darling, do put down the tea-pot," said Esther, mildly exasperated. "You're baptizing everything with tea."
"So it couldn't have been me, _anyway_ , Barney, could it?" said Frederica suddenly, having evidently been thinking things over in her mind. "Because all the time the cylinder was being doctored, I was in the ward with my suffering patients."
"Any of the rest of us could have done it, though," said Major Moon reluctantly. "It was such a hell of a night, and nobody would be noticing what anyone else was doing. Woody says she was sitting in the cottage; Esther says she joined her there as soon as she left the ward; Barney was out of the theatre for half an hour or so, soon after Higgins came in, and Eden was doing his night rounds.... I was in Reception, but not solidly all the time."
"Any of us could have done the first murder," said Gervase impatiently; "(all right, Frederica, not you!) and any of us could have killed poor little Bates; but none of us could have tried to kill Freddi with gas, that day. Take me, for example; I couldn't possibly have known that they were short of a shilling; and only anyone who knew that the gas had run out in the meter, could have thought of rigging up the turned-on gas tap and all the rest of it."
There was a short, uncomfortable pause. Everybody remembered that Gervase had been seen coming out of the cottage that morning, and had never acknowledged his presence there; but nobody liked to put it openly into words. He looked round at them with a little, puzzled movement of the eyebrows, but since nobody spoke, he went on: "The same applies for Barney and Moon—they might have done the other things, but they couldn't have tried to kill Freddi. I suppose Esther could have; but it was she who saved Freddi's life; and anyway, she obviously wouldn't have wanted to kill William, later on. As for Woody..."
"What about Woody?" asked Woods, as he paused.
He glanced up at her with his quick smile. "Actually you could have done them all," he pointed out, laughing.
"So I could," said Woody equably.
" _Could_ you, darling?" said Freddi, staring.
"Well, of course. I was sitting here all alone waiting for Esther to come off St. Elizabeth's while the oxygen cylinder was being got ready for Higgins, so I've got no alibi for that time; in any case, I'd have endless opportunities for mucking about in the theatre by myself. I was alone while Sister Bates was being killed, and I could easily have pretended to 'discover' her after she was dead. I knew all about the gas shortage on the morning that Frederica was put to sleep, and though it's true that I did know Barney was taking her up to town, that day, I might easily have forgotten about that, or thought he would be too late to save her. As for William—well, it would have been money for jam; above all, as I said before, I have lots of time all to myself in the operating theatre—for substituting repainted cylinders and seeing that they don't get used again and things like that...."
" _So_ you have," said Frederica.
They glanced at her uneasily, and then at Woody's face, and then at everything or anything in the untidy little room, rather than meet those bright, dark eyes again. Out of a friendly, idle discussion, in mutual confidence, something sharp and ugly had suddenly raised its head. After all, _some_ body had committed these crimes; and Gervase had just illustrated that it could be none of the others. A look of incredulous pain crossed the plain, lined face, and was replaced by one of defiant pride. She said harshly: "And since you all seem so ready to believe that it was me, I'd better give you the motives, too."
Eden flung out a hand. He said sharply: "No, Woody!"
She hesitated for a moment, but took no further notice of him, and said, loudly and crudely: "Higgins and William... when they were buried under the debris, during the air-raid—what was the last thing they heard?"
Esther roused herself from a sort of terrified stupor. She said urgently: "Woody darling; don't tell us anything. Don't say anything. Of course we don't believe it was you. Don't say anything you'll be sorry for afterwards...."
Woods was beyond reason. She repeated violently: "What was the last thing they heard?"
"The radio," said Freddi, gazing with uncontrollable curiosity at Woody's face.
"The German radio," said Woods. "Don't forget that! The German radio, telling them Goebbels' lies. And Higgins when he was going under the anæsthetic—when he was losing his consciousness, when he was in the same mental condition as he must have been in when the debris was falling on him—he heard my voice, he heard me say something about 'Churchill' as I dare say the radio did then... and what did he do? What did he say? Esther, you were there, and you, Barney, and Gervase, and Major Moon—you were all there; what did Higgins say when he heard my voice?"
"He called out that he had heard it somewhere before," said Esther, deliberately quiet and calm.
"William did the same thing afterwards. I passed his bed in the ward and stopped and said something to the Inspector, sitting by his side. I had just brought a case back from the theatre; I was probably smelling of ether—it may have been association of ideas, it may have taken him back to his own operation in the theatre on the night of the blitz when they did his leg, and so back to the time when he lay under the debris listening to the voice... it may have been just my voice, but William sat up in bed and called out, like Higgins had: 'Where have I heard it before'?"
"Well, don't be silly, Woody," said Frederica impatiently. "He hadn't heard _you_ giving out the German broadcasts, I suppose?"
"She once had a very favourite brother," said Major Moon, softly, and Woody sat down at the cluttered little table and put her head in her arms and burst into tears.
2
Esther was up from her bed in a flash, and Frederica off the arm of the chair. " _Dar_ ling Woody...! _Sweetie_ pie...! Woody, _don't_ cry, darling...! Woody, it's terrible for you, pet, but as if it would make any difference to _us_...!" Major Moon broke into their affectionate twitterings, pointing out in his reasonable voice: "This is tragic for you, Woody, my dear; but it needn't have been—your brother—that was talking that night. It might have been Lord Haw-Haw. In fact William said it _was_ Lord Haw-Haw. You told us so outside the theatre, last night."
"I asked William to say it," said Woods, not looking up. "I wouldn't go and see him at first, in case he should recognize my voice—my brother and I have a sort of—family likeness; a sort of way of saying things.... I forgot all about it when I spoke to Inspector Cockrill on the ward; but after William had recognised me, I went and talked to him. I told him—all this, and I asked him not to give me away."
"You talk as though _you_ had done something discreditable, child," said Major Moon.
She lifted her head then and looked at him with her tear-stained eyes. "You're a funny person to talk, Major Moon! It was you who said last night that all such traitors should be ham-strung, and that their relatives and friends were probably just as bad as themselves...."
"Your eye-black's all running, Woody, and you look most pec _u_ liar," said Freddi, into the ensuing silence.
Woods got up without a word and blundered out into the kitchen. Eden gave her two minutes and then followed her. She turned away from the cold water tap, holding a wet cloth to her eyes; he smiled at her and took the cloth away and mopped gently at her face with a dry towel. "My poor old Woody," he said, as though he were speaking to a child.
"So now you know my ugly secret, Gervase," said Woody, smiling bleakly.
"You shouldn't have borne this burden all by yourself, my dear; you should have told your friends."
" _Told_ you?" cried Woody. "Good God, I'd have done anything to keep it a secret!"
"Except murder," suggested Eden, his head on one side.
"That was silly of me," she confessed abruptly. "But for a moment you all looked as though you really thought I had done it. Of course I didn't murder Higgins: he could have given me away and it would all have been horrible and unpleasant and I'd probably have had to leave here.... But it wasn't a motive for murder. And even supposing I _had_ killed him, and tried to kill William for the same reason—why Freddi?"
"And why Marion Bates?" said Eden.
"Ah, well, Bates was different," said Woody honestly. "Of course I could have got hold of the gown any time without having to kill her for that; but I couldn't get rid of the knowledge in her head. If the paint on my gown had been any proof of my being the murderer, it would have been no use my destroying the gown if the knowledge were still in her head."
"Yes, but—well, all right, pretend that you had to kill her that night. What would you have done then? Just put the gown back in the linen basket; picked off the worst of the paint, perhaps, and put it in with the rest. Only _you_ knew how many gowns had been used, how many were to come back clean and all that kind of thing. You could wangle the lists. Was it likely that you were going to spend dangerous minutes dressing her up in the gown, laying her out on the table, adding the boots and the mask to draw attention away from the gown; and stabbing the poor girl a second time, when she was dead... when all you had to do was to dispose of the gown in some other way, which you could easily account for—you being the only person, especially now that Sister Bates was dead, who knew anything about the routine? No, no, Woody; you were the very last person of any of us who could be suspected of having killed Bates." He added curiously: "All the same—I _would_ like to know what the devil you went to the theatre for that night!"
She propped herself up against the little sink, as she so often stood, legs stretched out before her, ankles crossed. They could hear low voices in the adjoining room. She said, looking into his eyes: "Do you really not know that?"
"Well, of course not," he said blankly.
She faced him squarely. "I thought you had killed Higgins!"
" _I_?" he said incredulously.
She turned away her eyes. "Well, Gervase, I didn't know. I couldn't make up my mind. But if you didn't—why was Marion Bates protecting you?"
"Protecting _me_?"
"Darling, don't go on and on saying 'I?' and 'Me?' and things. Surely you must have known that she'd only hidden her precious proof because she thought it was implicating you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Woody," said Eden.
"My dear, that night of the party—she said she knew who'd done the murder; and that she had proof. Well, so she had. Then why hadn't she told the detective? Who was she protecting? Not me, for example! And not Frederica—she had no love for our Freddi! And not Esther, you can bet your life; and why should she go out of her way, make herself accessory after the fact or whatever it's called, to shield Major Moon or Barney? Of course it could only be you. As Inspector Cockrill said, she really only half believed the evidence of her own reason, but she hoarded the 'proof' up so that she could make a scene with you about it one day; and then you were unkind to her on the night of the party and she was angry with you, and decided to give you up to justice! I followed her to the theatre that night to see what she was hiding there."
"You followed her?"
"Oh, not actually. I mean, it wasn't me creeping up the drive after her. I really did wait for you, as I said; and then I decided to go home, but on the way I thought I'd drop in and see what she was up to in the theatre."
"Why on earth?" said Gervase.
Woods fiddled with the tap, running little spurts of water into the sink and turning it off, and running it again. She said, off-handedly: " _I_ don't know—just curiosity."
"Why didn't you tell the Inspector all this?" said Eden.
The tap gave an extra big squirt, deluging her sleeve with water. She said, busily mopping her arm: "Oh well, when he talked to us that night—after she was killed, I mean—I saw that it couldn't have been you."
"Why not?" said Eden.
"Because of the look of astonishment on her face when she died. He said that she looked—incredulous."
"So would you, if you saw a masked and gowned figure standing in the doorway at one o'clock in the morning."
"Yes, in any other doorway. But not in the doorway of an operating theatre! You expect to see masked and gowned figures there. You might be surprised, because you didn't think there was anything going on in the theatre, but you wouldn't be as _ton_ ished; you wouldn't be in _cred_ ulous."
"You would if you realised that this was the murderer."
"Well, she probably did realise that this was the murderer; and that's my point. She was terribly surprised to see who it was."
"You mean...?"
"I mean that she expected it to be you; and if she was astonished, it was because it wasn't."
Eden was silent; after a while he said: "So that convinced you that I wasn't Slayer Eden, the Butcher of Heron's Park?"
"That and—well, next morning it all looked different. It was one thing to have monkeyed about with the anæsthetic in the theatre—or whatever it was that had been done, because of course I didn't know then what had killed Higgins, but quite another to have stabbed poor, silly little Bates; and above all, to have stabbed her the second time, after she was dead. That was so—so cold-blooded and dreadful: I didn't think you could have done a thing like that. Then, afterwards, there was the Freddi affair; and I got all tied up again."
"For heaven's sake, Woody—you didn't think I'd tried to murder Frederica?"
"Well, what were you doing in the cottage that morning, then?" said Woody bluntly.
"In the cottage? Here? That morning? Of course I wasn't...." His face cleared. "Oh, good lord! So I was! At least I wasn't in the cottage at all, actually; but I wanted to speak to Freddi and I watched for her from my window in the Mess; when she didn't appear, I thought I must have missed her—I realised afterwards that she was a bit later than usual because she'd have to have breakfast at the V.A.D. Mess, as the gas had run out in your quarters—anyway, I went to the door, here, and put my head in and called out to see if anyone was in. I didn't get an answer, so I came back to the gate and waited and met her there. I wanted to talk to her about—well, I just wanted to talk to her."
"You must have been very much in love to want to talk to anybody at that hour of the morning," said Woods, with bitter jocularity.
He looked at her, weighing her up, and said, after a moment: "I had some—reparation to make, Woody, I—I like Barney, you know. I think the world of him; and I—well, I lost my head a little a couple of nights before and—and said something to Freddi; and I wished I hadn't. Freddi didn't respond, of course," said Gervase loyally, "but I felt I'd let Barney down. He'd gone off to Heronsford to get his car fixed up and he was taking her to lunch in town, and I thought it would be a marvellous opportunity for them to get really engaged; to buy the ring and all that, you know. It sounds as if I were trying to crash in where angels fear to tread," said Gervase wretchedly; "but I don't mean it like that. I just wanted to apologise to Frederica for having kissed—for having talked to her like I did, and ask her to forget all about it, and say how much I wanted to see her and Barney happy." He broke off miserably.
"In other words you wanted to tell her that you were out of the running, and leave the path clear for Barney," said Woody coolly.
"No, it wasn't that, of _course._..."
"All right, darling, don't bother to put on an act for me. I understand. So then what?"
"Well, then, when Freddi arrived, she wouldn't have anything to do with me anyway; I suppose she'd arrived at the same conclusion as you had, my clever one, and thought I was the big, bad wolf, and she was next on the list."
"It was because of what she overheard between you and Bates, in the bunk," explained Woody. "Bates was threatening you with breach of promise and various other reprisals, and of course Freddi knew Higgins had heard."
"That might have been a motive for my murdering Marion, but hardly for my killing Higgins!"
"Well, our Frederica is not exactly overburdened with the grey matter," said Woody, smiling.
"You all seem to have been very ready to suspect me," said Gervase, bitterly.
"And to protect you," said Woods.
He put his hand under her chin and turned her face so that her eyes met his. She looked plainer than ever, now that the make-up was wiped away by her recent tears; with little smears of mascara still under her eyes, and the crows' feet etched deeply at the outside corners; there was a faint streak of rouge down one cheek. He pulled her to him and held her for a moment close to him, his head thrown back so that he could still look into her eyes. "You're rather a splendid person, aren't you, Woody? All through this hideous time—how loyal you've been!"
"It's easy to be loyal to those you love," said Woody, her shaking hands on his coat sleeves; she felt the twitch of the muscles in his forearms, the almost imperceptible stiffening and drawing away, and added, with hardly a pause: "If you mean that I've been loyal to my brother...."
3
Frederica was tired of sitting in the stuffy little room with Esther and Major Moon. She preferred either to be alone with Barney or to have Gervase there to witness their happiness together. She had quite persuaded her blunt little mind that Eden had been madly in love with her and was now being punished for his temerity by the spectacle of her devotion to Barney, whom he would have betrayed; so did she cast out the uncomfortable memory of her own temporary disloyalty to her love. She said restlessly: "Can't we go for a walk or something, darling? It's so fuggy in here."
"I'll take you for a little run in the car," said Barney immediately.
"Oh, yes, that would be heaven!" She jumped down off his knee and wiggled herself into her long, blue coat, pulling the round V.A.D. cap over her springy gold hair.
"You look like something out of an orphanage," said Barney, laughing at her; "I've never seen anything so pathetic." He hastened to add: "But something quite adorable out of an orphanage!"
Frederica laughed ruefully, rolling up her hair over the edge of the cap, twitching into prominence the scarlet lining of the coat collar. "Well, I _know_ it couldn't be more frightful; sometimes one just can't believe it's oneself in this awful scruffy coat, can one, Esther?"
"It seems like another life, that one had nice tailored coats, and silk frocks and funny little hats with flowers and feathers and things; I've forgotten how to put on anything except this wretched little round cap...."
"What a girl does for King and Country," sighed Frederica. She hitched down a respirator case and tin hat from a hook on the door. "I suppose I'd better take the old gas mask and tin hat."
"That's mine, darling," said Esther.
"No, it isn't. Oh well, it may be; we really must mark these new haversacks, Esther, we're always getting them mixed up. However, I can soon tell." She fished in the recesses of the canvas respirator case, and produced a small glass phial with one white tablet in it. "Yes, it is mine, here's my what-not of morphia."
Esther looked shocked. "Freddi—you didn't get some more? I thought Cockie said we were not to have any."
"No, I didn't get any more; I just kept back half I had," said Frederica, smiling coolly. "I produced a quarter of a grain so smartly that he never thought of asking me if that was the lot. Wasn't I clever? Barney was glaring at me, but he didn't dare to give me away, did you, sweetie? He meekly forked out his own two tablets and so did everyone else; but I only gave up one!"
"I don't know how you put up with her, Barnes," said Major Moon slightly scandalised, but unable to help laughing at her naïve pride in this achievement.
Barnes would willingly have put up with a great deal more from Frederica. "Well, come along, darling."
Freddi picked up the gas mask and tin hat and swung them in her hand, deliberating. "Oh, hell to it! I _can't_ be bothered to take them...." She slung them up on the hook again and took his arm and they went out into the wintry afternoon.
They walked in silence for a minute or two, until Barney suddenly stopped. "Does it look rather rotten to go off for a drive and not to ask them to come? It might do Esther good to go out for a bit; she oughtn't really to mug in there, worrying about William."
Freddi knew that if they were alone, Barney would stop the car somewhere, would take her in his arms and kiss and caress her, would tell her that she was lovely and adorable; emotionally inarticulate, these were the only moments when she could express her very real love for him, and these were the moments she craved. She would not, however, deprive Esther of a little pleasure when Esther needed it so much, and she said immediately: "Darling, of course; go and ask them!" and stood and waited for him while he ran back to the house.
Gervase and Woody were still in the kitchen. Esther was vaguely uncomfortable alone with Major Moon, for though he said not a word that could trouble her, nor, since the night of her engagement, had he ever touched her, there was a helpless and hopeless devotion in his eyes that broke her tender heart; and she was thankful for the invitation to go for a drive. There was a general reshuffle in the little room as Eden and Woods, emerging rather constrained from their conversation at the sink, were informed of the plan. Major Moon went off to fetch the men's gas masks from the Mess having apparently rather more conscience in the matter than Frederica. Barney returned to Freddi, who was walking up and down rather impatiently in the cold park. She was pleased at the information that Gervase and Woody were all going to try and squash in. A policeman, however, stopped them at the gates.
"I beg your pardon, sir; was you thinking of going out?"
"We're going for a drive," said Freddi.
"I'm afraid one of us will have to go along of you," said the policeman apologetically.
"Well, you can't," said Freddi calmly. "There won't be room."
"We can't let you go alone, Miss."
"We're not going alone. We're going with four other people."
"Sorry, Miss," said the policeman stolidly.
They returned disconsolately to the cottage, and the first little murmurings of uneasiness began; the first strange sense of being always watched, of being never alone, of being dogged and harried and badgered, that was to drive them to desperation in the next few days; the first creeping faint irritation of the nerves that was to arise to a hideous crescendo in Cockie's process of 'breaking the criminal down'. They sat about crossly, staring out of the window at a broad back motionless just outside. Freddi said fretfully: "Esther, darling, even _now_ you've gone and got our haversacks mixed up again!"
"I haven't. I took mine out and left yours on the hook."
"Well, this is mine on _your_ hook."
"What the dickens does it matter, anyway?" said Woods impatiently.
"Well, I'm sure Esther's put mine on _her_ hook."
"Oh, for Pete's sake!" said Woody. She got up and went over to the door and took down the respirator case. "You're quite wrong, Freddi; this is Esther's—there isn't any morphia. And here's yours with the bottle in it, so do for goodness' sake stop fussing about it...." She stood with the haversack in one hand and the tiny bottle held out to them in the other.
But the morphia that had been there ten minutes before was gone.
4
The three men walked slowly back to dinner at the Mess. "I don't like to leave those girls alone there," said Moon, shuffling along in the centre with his eyes on his boots. "One doesn't know.... All that morphia."
"Two grains the murderer took from the theatre cupboard...."
"And now he's got two and a quarter; it all adds up."
"Do you think two and a quarter would be fatal, Moon?"
"I suppose it easily might," said Major Moon, shaking his head.
"Surely nobody could possibly want to kill any of those girls, though.... But there," said Eden, shrugging his shoulders, "why go over and over it? Somebody tried to kill Frederica without any apparent motive; and if the creature's mad—why not here again, or either of the others. I suppose he _is_ mad."
"All murderers are a little mad," said Moon. He added abruptly: "I've felt like a murderer myself, and I know."
Barnes looked at the old man affectionately. He was indeed old, aged twenty years before his time. "I can't see _you_ a murderer, I must say," said Barney, smiling.
Major Moon left them rather abruptly and went on into the Mess. "There goes one at least that's innocent," agreed Eden, looking after him.
"If this were a detective story, he'd be the murderer for a certainty, though," said Barnes. "They always pick on the benevolent elderly gent, because you'll never think it _could_ be him!"
"Ah, but nowadays they're more subtle; they know that the reader's wise to that trick and the older and more benevolent a character is, the more he'll be suspected."
"Perhaps it's gone all the way round and come back full cycle," suggested Barney, laughing; "and elderly gents and paralytics in bath chairs are suspects number one all over again because the reader doesn't think the author would be so obvious. Anyway, this isn't a detective story, and it certainly wasn't old Moon."
"So that leaves you and me and the three girls," said Eden, grinning sardonically. "A charming alternative."
Barney jammed his fist down into the pockets of his British Warm. "Oh, that _must_ be rubbish...."
"Cockrill doesn't seem to think so, old boy."
"It's unthinkable," said Barney wretchedly.
"I suppose you'd really like it to be me," said Gervase, watching him half-humorously out of the corner of his eye. "By a process of elimination, I mean. I can't say I wish it was you, Barney; you're the last person I can imagine as an assassin."
"Thanks very much," said Barney. He added, shrugging his shoulders: "Apart from your intuition on the subject, there's the fact that I had no earthly motive for the murders."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Eden, still half-laughing. "What about your discovery by old Higgins as the slayer of his aunt's cousin's sister-in-law's daughter?"
Barney's face changed. He said shortly: "Oh, yes; I heard you were talking to Higgins about that."
"I should say I was. It took me half an hour to convince the old fool that the girl's death was no earthly fault of yours, and that he was going to get himself into a mess if he started uttering libels about a doctor's work. I frightened him out of his wits! I meant to tell you about it afterwards, but that morning the old boy pipped off in the theatre, and I haven't thought of it since."
Barnes looked at him steadily. "Sister Bates had a rather different account of what you said to Higgins."
Gervase looked startled. "Marion Bates? How the hell could she have heard what I said?"
"She was waiting for you outside the ward."
"Well, all the more reason why she couldn't know what I was saying. I hope you didn't take any notice of her tittle-tattle, old boy?"
"Not when I'd thought it over," admitted Barney candidly.
5
A policewoman sat up all night by the fire in the downstairs room at the cottage. When Esther, sleepless, got up for some aspirin, she was up the stairs three at a time, and at her side. "Did you want something?"
"I want some aspirin," said Esther faintly, standing at the dressing-table.
"I see. Very well," said the woman. She took the little tube from the drawer, scrutinised it carefully, and grudgingly doled out two tablets; got the water from the tap in the bathroom, and filled a glass. "You have to commit murder to get yourself waited on in the V.A.D.s," said Freddi, watching them from her bed.
"It's for your own safety," said the policewoman resentfully, and marched downstairs again.
CHAPTER XI
1
The policewoman's name was Miss Pine. "I don't know about pining—I wish to God she would fade away," said Woody crossly, after a full day spent under this lady's observation. "The only place you're private in, is the huh-ha and even then she rattles at the door and asks if you're all right."
"It's for your own safety," said Frederica, mimicking Miss Pine.
Moon and Eden and Barnes were under the care of a gentleman called P. C. Willing, and it became the preoccupation of what Woody called Lepers' Paradise, to promote a love affair between Miss Pine and P. C. Willing. "But Mr. Willing won't," said Woody plaintively, after a long evening spent in this exercise.
"Darling, your puns couldn't be more nauseating," said Frederica.
They played interminable games of Rummy, coining new rules as they went, and often growing acrimonious over fancied injuries. Miss Pine and P.C. Willing took turn about in watching over these games, and if any party left the group for any purpose whatsoever, solemnly accompanied them; though whether to see that their occasions were lawful or to protect them from sudden attack, nobody could determine. Frederica and Woody took much pleasure in suddenly announcing that they were going to be sick and rushing off in opposite directions for the pleasure of watching the indecision of the guardian as to which to follow, nor did a gentleman ever rise in the middle of a game and announce a necessity to wash his hands, unless poor Miss Pine were in charge. It was pitiful to see her, hanging miserably about outside the gentlemen's cloakroom at the Mess. Reinforcements put an end to these delights; but anyway, they had already begun to pall.
It was now getting seriously on their nerves. You might treat it as a joke, but after all, it was not a joke. The men ate wretchedly in their Mess, conscious of the strenuous efforts of their comrades to 'behave as though nothing were wrong'; the girls lived on top of one another in the close little house, making occasional sorties to their own Mess for their rations, dogged by an increasingly obtrusive Miss Pine. "Harass them," had been Cockrill's instructions to Miss Pine and her new colleague Miss Brock. "Never leave them alone for a second. Get on their nerves; drive them to a frenzy." Miss Pine and Miss Brock unconditionally obeyed. Woody made no more puns.
Cockie came down to the cottage on the second evening to prod his victims into a further fever. He felt a brute when he saw the six white faces turned towards him, lit for a moment with hope, falling back, at sight of his grim face, into grey despair; haggard with the strain of keeping back their resentment and irritation, of trying not to visit it on each other, their fellow innocents.... Innocents! Ever there, doubt ravaged them. They looked at each other, uneasily and unhappily. _Some_ one had committed the murders. Someone must be guilty. They formed into changing camps... only faintly inimical, only vaguely suspicious, only unspokenly resentful or irritable or cross. But hostile. Freddi showed off before Gervase, Woody grew annoyed with them both, Barnes was hurt, Gervase himself was not impressed and anything but pleased. Esther was white and on edge; Moon irritated them all with his dotard devotion, following her every movement with dog-like, sad blue eyes. What had seemed to them a rather touching affection, now appeared just the Indian Summer of a doddering old man. They greeted Cockrill with voluble complaint.
"And if you tell us that it's for our own safety," said Frederica, "we shall throw things."
"Well, it _is;_ for five of you," said Cockie, rocking gently with his back to the fireplace, his eyes on their twitching hands.
Frederica always rose to Cockrill's baits. She said, not stopping to think: "And what about the sixth?"
"That's who I'm protecting you from," said Cockie, grinning horribly.
Eden was perfectly aware that the Inspector was trying to goad them into carelessness; but his nerves reacted independently of his intelligence and he burst out testily: "Well, why the hell don't you pick out your murderer and arrest him?"
"Don't worry," said Cockrill equably. "I will."
"I can't see what you're waiting for," said Barnes.
"I'm waiting for him to give himself away."
Even when you were innocent, it was dreadful to be watched like this; to be driven into saying and doing things beyond your own control; to have your behaviour studied as though you were a guinea-pig inoculated with some strange disease and reacting willy-nilly to expectation. Even when you were innocent. The guilty sat with blenching knuckles tightening on the covers of a book; and blurted out, despairingly: "But supposing he doesn't give himself away? Supposing it goes on and on and on? How long have we got to endure this?"
"I've no idea," said Cockrill, apparently all ready to lay siege for months.
"You can't keep us here for ever," cried Major Moon.
"I won't have to," said Cockie, coolly self-confident.
Yet another day passed. The O.C. Surgical Division laboured through the operating lists. Perkins gave blameless anæsthetics, Theatre Sister retailed for the thousandth time the drama of William's collapse. Chalk and Cheese fell gladly upon a deserted William and ministered to him; a friendship of fully three months' duration, foundered upon the rocks of his alternating favours; they vied with each other in their knowledge and appreciation of beer. Esther held occasional miserable interviews with him, Miss Pine or Miss Brock, vigilant at their elbows. The leg had finally been operated on by Colonel Greenaway and was, contrary to all uncharitable expectation, progressing perfectly well. A garbled version had been given to William of his unfavourable reaction to the first anæsthetic.
Another day passed.
There was an air-raid that night. Provision had been made for this eventuality, and the three girls found themselves imprisoned in a small Anderson shelter with Miss Pine. They sat huddled each in a corner, on the narrow wooden seats, unable to reach out their legs without inconveniencing their neighbours, unable to sleep, almost unable to breathe. Miss Pine was on night duty and required to keep awake, regaled them with improbable bomb stories. A man who was a cousin of a gentleman friend of hers, well, not exactly a cousin but a relation by marriage, sort of cousin-in-law she supposed they would call it, had been thrown right into a vat of molten lead at a printing press, and the corpse emerged encased in metal quite like a knight in armour, if they knew what she meant. She had always heard that if you popped your finger very quickly into a thing of lead like that, it didn't hurt at all, but evidently this could not apply if you put more than your finger in, for this poor gentleman, well, really, they had had to bury him just as he was, metal and all, though they did all they could to try and hammer it off, more for salvage than anything else she supposed. Another case she knew of, well, not exactly _knew_ of, but she'd heard on absolutely unimpeachable authority...
A bomb fell very close. Miss Pine flung herself into a crouching huddle at their feet. The three girls sat perfectly still. "We're _trai_ ned to throw ourselves flat," said Miss Pine, scrambling back to her corner, flushed with illogical shame.
"How nice," said Frederica, yanking back the sadly disorganised rugs.
Their backs were aching, their knees were stiff, their necks were all of a sudden too slender to support for a moment longer the weight of their lolling heads. "I think we'd better make a pact not to say another _word_ ," suggested Woody, with laborious tact, "and try and get some sleep." Miss Pine agreed heartily. Nobody else had spoken for the past hour.
The bombers were over their heads again; they could hear the monotonous drm-drm, drm-drm of their engines; they could hear the muffled reverberations of far-off guns, the sharp voices of the men in a neighbouring field, giving the orders to fire. There was a crack and a crash and a loud reverberation of thunder. "That was a near one!" cried Miss Pine.
"It was a gun," said Freddi.
"My dear, do you think I don't know a gun from a _bomb_? After all the bombs _I've_ heard! I remember one evening, patrolling the Heronswater Road..."
"Woody," said Esther in a low voice, "I think I'm going mad."
Woods put a hand out and touched her, gently and reassuringly, in the dark. She said, immediately: "Miss Pine, I honestly think we ought to stop talking and try to get some sleep."
"Just what I was thinking myself," cried Miss Pine. A gun crashed in a nearby field and she added automatically: " _That_ was a near one!"
2
The three men, who would infinitely have preferred to face the bombs and remain in their comfortable beds, slept on straw palliasses in the basement of the Officers' Mess. P.C. Willing spoke not a word all night. He just sat and sucked his teeth.
3
It would have been a relief if, when they all met sick and heavy-eyed after breakfast next morning, they could have let off a little steam by comparing notes; but now Miss Brock was in attendance and a gentleman called Mr. Chinn. Miss Brock was dreadfully bright; she had moreover seized upon one of Frederica's little mannerisms and she used it unstintingly. "I couldn't be more sorry," cried Miss Brock, refusing permission for Barney and Freddi to go for a stroll apart from the rest; and, "I couldn't be more grateful," she assured them when they apathetically fell into line with her commands. "You want to badger 'em a bit more," insisted P.C. Chinn, drawing her apart. "The Inspector won't like it if he hears you being so chummy like." "I couldn't care less," said Miss Brock, definitely.
Three days and three nights of it; of Miss Pine talking, of Miss Brock sparkling, of P.C. Willing sucking his teeth. Not a moment of privacy, not a moment to relax in, to speak openly, to speak confidentially.... Frederica bore it best, for it was her nature to be placid and self-dependent, and she had, moreover, the glorious power to be mildly rude to their tormentors. Eden was sarcastic, but his shafts flashed over their heads and left him impotently fretting. Moon was too kind, Barney too courteous, Esther too gentle and Woody too depressingly conscious that their guardians were doing no more than their duty, to allow them to seek relief in incivility. And all the time, in the background, Cockrill worked unceasingly to track down all he needed—proof!
On the third day, he put a pair of handcuffs into his pocket, demanded the use of the operating theatre for the very last time, and there assembled his victims. "The time has arrived to strike," he said to Sergeant Bray, as they stood waiting under the now familiar central light, in the hot, green room. "And this is the place for it; we want a bit of atmosphere... the spot where the victims died and all that nonsense. Last night's air-raid was a blessing from heaven; they've hardly had a wink of sleep in the last three nights, and they're all at the end of their tethers. The murderer is going to crack to-day, or I'll throw up the case." He said impatiently: "What are you grinning at?"
"It's the first time I ever 'eard an air-raid called a blessing from 'eaven, sir," said Sergeant Bray, apologetically covering up his mouth with a large, red hand. Like many another, impervious to greater dangers, his stomach turned to warm water at the sound of a falling bomb.
The hospital stayed for a moment its work of mercy to look without mercy upon the six poor lepers being driven across the grounds and into the theatre. "I am a fugitive from a chain gang!" said Woody, dodging behind a bush and being chased out again by Miss Brock, who laughed gaily but laughed alone. From the tall windows of the wards, patients in their blue suits stared down; here and there a white veil appeared and stayed for a minute or two before virtuously driving them away. An orderly wheeling a stretcher down to the emergency theatre (grudgingly opened up to give Cockrill the freedom of the theatre proper) paused to look back; even the patient peered out from his blankets and shawls and forgot for a moment the sickening fear of his journey into the unknown, of the smell of the ether and the glimpses of tapered steel, the hot, slow, sliding of the hypodermic needle into reluctant flesh....
Cockrill laid the handcuffs quite openly on the operating table beside him, but did not refer to them by so much as a glance. They stood in a shuffling line, with the great white light beating down on them remorselessly, on every change of expression, on every line and shadow, on every twitch of exasperated nerves. Six worn out, unhappy, exhausted people, and one of them a murderer. Cockrill began.
4
He began very mildly, just talking to them. He leaned back against the operating table and jingled the money in his pocket; now and again he picked up the handcuffs, absent-mindedly, and jingled them instead. He talked about Higgins and the night he had been brought in, of the next day when he had died. "Just be Higgins for a moment, for me, will you, Captain Barnes? Just lie on the table here, and I'll put the mask over your face.... You'd be standing here, Major Moon, and you here, Major Eden? And Miss Woods and Miss Sanson were at the foot of the table, watching him die. Miss Linley—you weren't here to see that, _were_ you? You were over in the cottage, asleep in bed?"
"Yes, I was," said Frederica belligerently, for everything sounded like an accusation the way Inspector Cockrill was saying it.
"That's right. You'd only seen him for a minute, in the central hall, while he was being brought to the theatre, when you leaned over him and spoke to Esther Sanson, half an hour before he died...."
It was strange and horrible to Barney to be lying on the table with the rubber mask over his face—held even lightly, over his face. The smell of the rubber, though familiar, was heavy and sickening. He felt stupefied by it, and said, pushing Cockrill's hand away: "You haven't got any gas turned on, have you?"
"Of course not," said Cockrill innocently.
Certainly the water in the bottle was quiet. He kept his eyes on it, but could not rid himself of the panicky dread that he was getting at least a little gas through the mask. He was shaking all over when at last Cockrill let him get up. Frederica stood shakily beside him with huge, grey, frightened eyes.
Cockrill passed on from Higgins to Sister Bates. "She looked so amazed! As if she'd seen something she simply couldn't believe. What do you suppose that was?"
"I _know_ what it was," said Woody. She advanced her theory about Gervase Eden, but it did not seem so sane and confident now. Cockrill looked at her with interest from under his shaggy brows. "Oh so you had all that worked out, did you? It has only one snag, Miss Woods; how could Bates have known the masked figure wasn't Eden?"
"How could she have known? She could see, couldn't she?"
"She could see a masked figure."
"Oh, for Pete's sake," cried Woody, "don't let's have that masked figure stuff. Of course she could tell who it was. You always can—you can tell—well, _I_ don't know, by the way people walk, by their gestures...."
"But if the murderer was standing in the doorway?"
"Well, I bet she could have told," said Woody stubbornly.
"Let's try," said Cockrill. He chivvied the others into the washroom and mumbled instructions. A figured appeared suddenly, standing stock still at the theatre door. Woody opened her mouth to say that it was Gervase, but closed it again, for it was difficult to judge the height and it might have been Barnes; and then again you really couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman, and Esther was very much the same height as Barnes. The figure walked forwards slowly, and still she could not be sure. The eyes, which might have decided her, were downcast. She thought it was Gervase; she was sure it was Gervase.
"Say what I told you," said Cockrill, and the figure said: "What have you got there?"
It was strangely moving; strangely uncanny. She knew that it was only one of her friends, dressed up, and yet she could not remain quite calm. The voice was muffled by the mask, muffled by the pounding of her own, over-excited heart. She thought it was Gervase; but it might have been Barney. She said "It's you, Gervase!" but added honestly, as he pulled off the mask: "I only just knew."
"And you had time to think," said Cockrill, standing in the doorway, looking pleased. "What's more you weren't in a state of terror. Sister Bates was, poor girl."
They all had a dreadful vision of her crouching there, poor silly, pretty little Bates, hugging the stained gown to her breast, staring at her murderer with astonished, wide blue eyes, trembling still from her panic-stricken scuttle up the drive; of the green-gowned figure, the knife in its upraised hand. Woody said, in a strangled voice: "Twice! He stabbed her twice. He stuck the knife into her after she was dead..." and went and sat down, trembling, on a theatre stool. Barney pulled up another and sat down beside her. "Don't let it get you down, Woody. He's playing with us like a cat with a lot of mice."
"The big cheese," said Woody, managing a shaky smile.
"You look awfully green, ducky."
"You aren't bearing up so terribly well yourself," said Woods, as though this were an accusation.
"That business of making me lie on the table—does he think _I_ poured CO2 down the poor chaps' throat?"
"Well, you did actually, didn't you? I mean, you didn't know you were doing it of course...."
Eden paced restlessly up and down the theatre. "Why the hell should he pick on me to dress up in the gown? Did Woody give him some idea or other, blundering in with her theories? Why _me_? What did he think he was proving?" He wore his customary air of slightly exasperated humor, but his hands were not quiet for a moment. Freddi came over to him. "Do keep still, Gervase, you're getting on my nerves."
"I didn't know you had any nerves," said Eden, for Frederica's placidity had sorely tried him in the last three maddening days.
"Well, I have, and they're somewhat shaken up this morning; what did he mean by saying in that phoney voice that I had talked to Higgins just before he died?"
"Well, so you had, hadn't you?"
"I spoke to Esther while she was wheeling him to the theatre. I just asked Higgins how he felt or something. There was nothing to it."
"Well, all right, then; you haven't got anything to worry about."
"He said it in such a funny _voice_ ," insisted Frederica, jerking nervously at her tie.
Cockrill's funny voice had meanwhile succeeded in reducing Esther to the point of collapse. The theatre was desperately hot and stuffy and there was no window. She said faintly: "I simply must have some air."
Cockrill indicated the open door of the anæsthetic-room. "Go and sit down for a minute." He pushed the door wide open so that he could watch her while she flung up the window and stood drinking in great gulps of the cold outside air. Woody made a movement to go to her, but his eyes said: "No. Stay here." He turned his attention to Major Moon.
Major Moon was not very easy to ruffle. There seemed to be a settled melancholy upon him that was far removed from panic or even unease. He kept his troubled eyes upon Esther as she stood at the window. Cockrill said at last, irritated: "It's all right. She won't run away. It's barred."
It's barred! They all looked up, shuddering, at the crisscrossed, heavy iron. Would one of them be thus caged in for ever, when this interminable scene came at last to an end? Would one of them spend the rest of his life behind bars—the rest of his life, his short life, until the day when he was taken away to a place appointed, and there hanged by the neck.... Freddi's lovely neck, or Esther's, so long and slender, or Woody's where the deepening 'bracelets' gave away her age? Or Major Moon's pink and chubby throat, or Eden's thin one, or Barney's where the little golden hairs grew low at the nape of the neck? Cockrill interrupted their thoughts. He held out his hand suddenly and in it was a tiny glass bottle. "Have you ever seen this before?"
"It's mine," said Frederica. "It's where I used to keep my morphia."
"The morphia you didn't give up to me?"
"Yes," said Freddi sullenly.
"And where is that morphia now?"
"It was stolen," said Freddi, still sullenly. "It was taken out of my haversack the other day."
"Who stole it?"
"I don't know. Anyone might have. We were all in and out of the room."
"Anyone?" said Cockrill.
"Any of us six," corrected Frederica miserably.
There was a frozen silence. Cockrill again broke the tension. He turned and swooped suddenly upon something which he had left in a heap in a corner of the theatre. "Now, Major Moon—have you ever seen this before?"
And suddenly the old man's face was pink and chubby no longer, but a dreadful haggard grey; his hands trembled and his childish blue eyes were full of a stupid wonder. He stammered as though he hardly understood what was said to him: "It's my old tweed coat."
"Which you put on every morning after you run round the grounds? You leave it under a tree and just slip into it while you walk across the main road to the Mess? Is that right?"
"Yes, that's right," mumbled Major Moon.
Cockrill slid a hand into each of the pockets; he placed on the operating table, side by side, a handkerchief, a stub of pencil, a couple of old letters and—two or three coins. "So you _do_ carry money, Major Moon, when you run round the grounds?"
From the window of the anæsthetic-room, Esther swung slowly round and stood staring at them. Moon said, mumbling desperately: "Are you trying to suggest that it was I who gassed Frederica?"
Cockrill picked up the handcuffs. He did not reply.
"But why?" cried Major Moon suddenly, and his voice rose almost to a scream, and he moved across the theatre, crabwise, his eyes fixed on Cockrill's hands. "Why should I? What harm had she ever done me?"
"She had it in her power to do you harm," said Cockrill, standing still, following him round with his eyes. "She had it in her power to tell us something—if only she had thought of it. You wanted to silence her before she should begin to guess...."
Frederica stood, open-mouthed with astonishment. "I? What could I have possibly told about him? What did I know about him? What could I have guessed?"
"His child was killed by a man on a _bicy_ cle," said Cockrill, his eyes on the old man, now standing mumbling foolishly at the door of the anæsthetic-room. He added, his voice loud and harsh, with a sort of rising triumph ringing through his tones: "You could have guessed the colour of his bicycle!"
"His bicycle?" said Frederica stupidly. "His bicycle? What _was_ the colour of his bicycle?"
Esther moved slowly forward from the window of the other room; in another moment she would have spoken, but Moon cried: "No, no! Don't say it. Don't tell them!" and his blue eyes blazed into hers in an agony of supplication, fear and pain. Into the ensuing silence, Cockrill's voice fell like a cold pebble into a sun-drenched pool. He said: "It was a red bicycle."
A red bicycle.
A postman's bicycle.
At that moment Major Moon sprang.
5
Cockrill had been waiting for something, but not for this. As he reached the door of the anæsthetic-room, the key turned in the lock, and he heard the bolts being shot. Esther's voice cried suddenly, filled with terror: "No! _No!_ NO!"
"I must do it, Esther," said the old voice, gentle and mumbling. "I must do it. I can't help myself...."
Cockrill battered with small brown hands at the door. "Major Moon! Moon! Open the door!" Woody screamed, rattling at the handle: "Esther, open the door! Get to the door and open it... !"
"The window!" cried Gervase.
"It's barred," said Cockrill.
"Well—my God, there's the other door! Perhaps he's left the other door unlocked!" They were out of the theatre almost as he spoke. Frederica dropped on to her knees at the foot of the door, prodding through the keyhole with a probe to force out the key. She whispered in a voice of sick horror, peering through the aperture: "He's going across the room towards her.... She's standing with her back to the window, with her arms flung out, beseeching him.... He's got—oh, Woody, he's got a hypodermic in his hand...."
He had forgotten the second door. Cockrill, bursting in with Barnes and Eden and Sergeant Bray at his heels, flung himself across the little room and, with all his wiry strength, tore the syringe out of the old man's shaking hand. It fell to the floor with a little tinkling crash, and the fluid ran, thin and pale, across the tile. "Thank God we were in time," said Cockrill, staring down at it.
"Thank God," echoed Frederica and Woody, crowding into the doorway after them; and Esther, still standing with her back to the window, arms outstretched, crucified against the cold winter sunlight, said with shining eyes: "Thank God! Thank _God_!" Shrinking away into a corner, trembling horribly, Major Moon also mumbled, "Thank God!" to himself; the tears ran unchecked down his pink and white wrinkled old cheeks, and his witless blue eyes were fixed despairingly on her flushed face.
Cockrill put his hand in his pocket and drew out the handcuffs; and she dropped her arms slowly and came forward smiling a little, quite gaily, and held out her wrists.
CHAPTER XII
1
Cockrill slid the steel rings over the narrow hands and clicked-to the catches. He said, turning away his head: "Esther Sanson, I am arresting you for the murder of Joseph Higgins and Marion Bates; and for the attempted murder of William Ferguson; and for causing grievous bodily harm to Frederica Linley. You know that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence..."
Esther acceded to it all quite quietly. To their wordless astonishment, to Woody's noisy protestations, she responded only with a strange little smile. Her eyes were bright and tearless, there was unwonted colour in her cheeks; she seemed lit from within as she had been on the night that William had told her of his love. It was unendurable to see her standing there, so straight and slim, so lovely, so—so gay, with the ugly bracelets over her slender wrists. Into the terrible silence Woody cried: "Esther, say it isn't true! Say this isn't true! I can't bear it, Esther; tell us it wasn't you... !"
"Oh, but it was me, Woody," said Esther, and turned upon her shining bright brown eyes. She said to Cockrill, smiling at him: " _You_ knew, Cockie, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Cockrill. "I knew." He added slowly: "I knew almost from the beginning, but not early enough to prevent Bates being killed. After I understood about the cylinder, of course, I was certain; but I still had no proof."
"It was bad about Bates," said Esther. She passed her tongue over her lips and gave a little shudder. "You—you knew so much about it, Cockie. It was horrible and uncanny the way you kept describing it all, as though you had been there and seen it done. No wonder I had hysterics that night, just afterwards, when you questioned us; Woody explained it all away next morning, but I thought at the time that you must have been watching me... that you were stringing me along."
"I wasn't certain," said Cockrill. "It was her look of astonishment that gave me the first clue. She was expecting—if she was expecting anyone—Eden. Well, what told her in those few moments that it wasn't Eden? She couldn't have recognised the figure; she couldn't have recognised the voice... supposing it had been Barnes or Major Moon; she would have assumed it was Eden speaking."
"Only it was a woman's voice," suggested Esther, still faintly smiling.
"Yes. It was a woman's voice. There was only one thing that, in that brief moment, could have made her look so amazed and incredulous; the figure that she thought was Eden, stepped forward and spoke with a woman's voice."
Woody looked up at her piteously, with streaming eyes. "Oh, Esther... how could you have _killed_ her? How could you have _stabbed_ her? And the second time...?"
"Yes, that was bad," said Esther again, but she spoke with a sort of light-hearted carelessness, a sort of offhand irresponsibility. "Higgins was different, of course; he had to die. It was justice. And William, too, when I knew about him. But Sister Bates knew too much; and I couldn't let her speak. I should have been found out and punished—I should have been punished for doing what I knew was right. I couldn't allow that; it would have—sort of cancelled it out. I had to kill her." She said to Cockrill: "I knew it would be fatal if you discovered about the paint. I had to prevent her from showing you the gown."
Gervase Eden was recovering from the shock. He said, in his quick way: "Did you have to kill the girl, Esther, to prevent them knowing about the paint? It couldn't have told them who altered the cylinder?"
"It could tell them who hadn't," said Esther. "For the paint to be dry, it would have had to be put on at least the night before the cylinder was used. About ten o'clock, the Inspector says. But at ten o'clock that night nobody in this hospital knew who Higgins was."
"Except you," said Cockrill.
"Except me. We didn't get his name until the next morning. Gervase saw him, of course, and any of the others might have seen him before he was brought into the ward; but they couldn't have recognised him. I didn't recognise him myself." She played with them for a moment, deliberately holding their attention, tantalising them; it was almost as though she were enjoying herself, but at last she added softly: "Until I washed his face!"
2
"He was covered with dust and grime," said Frederica, her eyes widening with comprehension. "He looked like—you couldn't have told who he was." She insisted to the others, as though proof were necessary. "It's true. You couldn't have told _who_ he was."
"But Esther cleaned away the dirt," said Cockrill, "and then she knew. None of you saw him after that until the next morning, when it would have been too late to have doctored the cylinder."
"I saw him," said Frederica. "I looked after him during the rest of the night."
"Yes, but in all that time you never left the ward; you went out for twenty minutes to get your supper, but you didn't leave it afterwards; and that was before you could have recognised who he was."
"And Esther...?"
"Esther left the ward at twenty minutes past ten; half an hour later she was only just joining Miss Woods at your quarters. It takes about five minutes to walk across the park." He added, turning to her: "You made a slip when you mentioned to your William that you had seen him being wheeled along to the ward that night; that was thirty-five minutes after you were supposed to have gone to your cottage. I'm sorry, Esther. This is a terrible thing for me to have to do. I knew your mother, and I remember you when you were a little girl; but I must ask you to come along with me."
"Can I have some water first?" she said.
He glanced at her suspiciously, but it was clear that the first flush of strength and excitement was fast ebbing away; her lips were dry and the colour fading from her cheeks. Woody fetched water from the tap, and she drank it gratefully and sank on to a stool, leaning back with a gesture of terrible weariness against the wall. "Just a minute, Inspector, while I pull myself together." She added, with a last sparkle of laughter in her voice: "You can while away the time explaining to them all how clever you've been."
He saw that she would not be fit to walk very far. "Order a car," he said to Sergeant Bray who had stood all this time very pink and excited in the background. While they waited, Freddi said, as though struck suddenly by an idea: "But Esther—do you mean to say that it was you who tried to kill _me_?" and stared at her as though she could not believe her wits.
There was no more laughter now. She lifted sad, heavy eyes and held out her manacled hands in a little gesture that immediately she withdrew. "Oh, Freddi, darling... darling little Freddi—not to kill you; not to _kill_ you! And after all it was I who dragged you into the fresh air. I wouldn't have let you die...."
"She had to have morphia," said Cockrill, since explanations appeared to be unavoidable. "She wanted you out of the way. She didn't want to harm you, only to get you out of the way for a day or two...."
"For a night or two," corrected Esther gently.
"For a night or two. She wanted to go on night duty in the ward."
"They give out so much more morphia at night," said Esther dreamily.
"No wonder the patients on St. Elizabeth's were restless and in pain," said Cockrill. "That first night, after she knew who Higgins was—she kept back his morphia. I think she only wanted to torment him, to have him suffer, but it gave her a quarter of a grain. When she killed Sister Bates, she found more in the poison cupboard. She took that too. She was in danger of being found out, by then, and she wanted it for herself—in case of need. That was two grains and a quarter; but she couldn't be certain that that would be enough; she had to have more. She knew only one way to collect it, and that was to withhold it from the patients. Poor devils—she withheld the doses prescribed for the men on the ward." He pointed with the toe of his shoe to the pool on the floor. "There it is now. Major Moon got here just in time to snatch it from her."
"I saw her just about to use it when you turned your back to pick up my coat," said Moon. He went to Esther and stood by her, putting his arms around her shoulders. She leaned back gratefully against him, closing her weary eyes. Cockrill saw the look on his face and did not interfere. "I—I wanted to save her, even yet," said the old man sadly. "I bolted the door. I didn't have time to think of course, but I had a vague idea of saving her without your knowledge."
She raised her prisoned hands and took one of his and kissed it and held her cheek against it, and said, very softly: "Thank you," and leaned back against him with a little sigh of gratitude, like a child.
Eden pushed forward. He cried eagerly: "William— _William_...! Surely, Inspector, you're not going to accuse her of having tried to kill William? She was in love with him. She was going to marry him...." He added in his impatient way, speaking across the silent Esther as though she had not been there: "You don't suggest that that was all false? You don't suggest that it wasn't true that she loved him?"
"Of course she loved him," said Major Moon sadly, looking down as she sat with closed eyes, her head against his arm. "That night that she became engaged to him—anyone who saw her then must have known that she was happy, and in love. She was transformed. She shone like candlelight in this ugly, grey old place. She forgot the past and looked only to the future, she glowed with gaiety and love and happiness. She was so lovely in her radiance, that I fell in love with her in that one moment; I never knew real love before... but I fell hopelessly in love with her like any callow boy." He looked down at her again and added, with terrible sadness: "Twice a murderess, and, God help me, I love her still...."
"What will poor William do?" cried Woody, her big heart numb with misery for all this sorrow and cruelty and pain.
Frederica shook her head with her own little off-hand, contemptuous gesture. "Oh, William'll be all right; he'll look after himself. He's been getting on perfectly well all this time with Chalk and Cheese, if all I hear is true...."
Sergeant Bray's heavy footfall sounded in the lobby outside. As he appeared at the door, Barney, who had remained quietly in the background, came forward. He put into words what they had all been aching to ask: "But _why_?"
Esther sat with bent head and did not reply. Cockrill and Bray stepped forward. Woody cried, as though to hold them back, as though to postpone for just another few moments that terrible moment to come: "Inspector, you _must_ tell us that; you _must_ explain to us. We—she was our friend. We—we loved her. We knew her so _well_..." She put her hands to her face and burst again into bitter tears.
Cockrill was not sorry to put off, for a little while longer, his ugly duty. He said, pausing: "You should know, Miss Woods, if anyone should. You were there when she told us—almost in so many words; that night when we talked outside the theatre door."
"That night we told her about the operation to William's leg?" said Woody, looking up through her fingers with tear-bright eyes.
"She was worried about the operation," said Cockrill thoughtfully. "She said she couldn't bear to think of him ill and in pain; she said it wasn't the danger—she knew there was no danger. But ten minutes later she was white and trembling, she was saying that William would die under the anæsthetic. She knew he would. She was going to kill him, herself. In that few minutes, she had made up her mind."
"But for heaven's sake—why?"
"Because of something you said."
They had almost forgotten Esther's presence: they spoke of her as though she were not there. Woods blurted out, wretchedly: " _I_ said something? What could I have said?"
"I suppose they hadn't talked very much about the past," said Cockrill, not directly answering her. "She and her William, I mean. He told her the important things, of course, about his private life, and life in the Navy, perhaps; but they didn't have very much time together, and I expect they mostly looked ahead into the future. There was a lifetime ahead to discuss the little things—to tell about the time before he joined up, for example. She didn't know, until you told her that evening, that he'd worked with Higgins...."
"In the rescue squad!" said Woods, hardly above her breath.
"In the rescue squad that left her mother to die," said Cockrill; and Esther slid slowly off the stool and lay in a motionless heap upon the ground.
3
"She's fainted!" said Cockrill.
"She's dead," said Moon, and he added softly: "Thank God!" and crossed himself.
Cockrill flung himself on to his knees beside the limp body. Esther's eyes were half-open, the pupils pin-points of black, her skin was cold and clammy to his touch; even as he knelt beside her the laboured respirations faltered and flickered out. He looked about him wildly: "What is it? What's the matter with the girl?"
"Is she dead?" said Gervase, standing over them.
"She's dying anyway." He cried imperiously to Major Moon: "You know something about this! What is it? What has she done to herself?"
Moon did not seem to hear him. Barnes came over and knelt down and took Esther's hand and pushed aside the steel bracelet and felt her wrist. To Cockrill, fuming impatiently, it seemed an eternity before he said slowly: "It's no use; she's dead."
"For heaven's sake, can't you _do_ something?" cried Cockrill, frantically. "All you doctors and nurses—isn't there anything you can _do_? Can't you give her artificial respiration?" As they remained unmoving, standing in a silent ring, looking down sadly at the body, he flung himself across her and began clumsily to try to revive her himself. Woods started forward, almost as though in protest; but Frederica crouched down beside the body and, stroking with her little hand the shining, colourless hair, said softly: "Don't worry, darling. He can't do anything. She's dead."
Cockrill gave it up. He left the body lying on the floor and, standing over it, faced them all sternly. "This is _your_ doing. You did this! You wanted her to die."
"How could we have borne anything else, Inspector?" said Barnes simply, not contradicting him.
"You knew that she was dying. All of you."
They stood looking down at her silently; Woody with tears running unashamedly down her raddled cheeks, Frederica white and pitiful, Major Moon with bent grey head and shaking hands, Gervase and Barney were quiet and sad, but there was a deliberate determination about their mouths. "This is a very grave matter," said Cockrill, at last. "You've deliberately connived at her death. You've assisted a murderer in evading justice. For all I know you contributed to her death. I can see it now—you've been playing for time. All of you. Every time I tried to speak to her, every time she showed signs of collapse... one of you drew my attention away. You knew from the first—from the moment I accused her...."
"Not from the first; not all of us," said Barnes, glancing around him. "But I suppose, finally, all of us recognised the signs. The excitement, the flushed face, the bright eyes, the dryness of the mouth, the gradual torpor...." He said to Major Moon, as though it were a routine matter of medicine: "Death was extraordinarily rapid, though. It can't be more than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour...."
"She got some into a vein," said Major Moon briefly. "Not all of it; there are two puncture marks—it's not very easy to do on yourself, but she's got good veins... and she must have got a little in."
"You've been supporting her all this time, Moon," cried Cockrill furiously. "Unless you'd held her, she'd have fallen down, long ago!" He swung round upon them all, dancing with impotent rage. "You are accessories after the fact. I shall charge you all with it...."
Major Moon looked up from a consultation with his shoes. "Oh, no, Cockie—I don't think you'll be able to do that."
A brightness came into Eden's eyes, Barney raised his head, the two girls looked up with an air of expectancy at the tone in the old man's voice. He continued blandly: "You haven't even found out yet what she died of."
Flushed face, bright eyes, exhilaration diminishing into unconsciousness, death ensuing with unusual rapidity because 'it' had been given into a vein. Cockrill asked, jerking it out ungraciously, a load of doubt and fear very heavy on his heart: "Very well, then— what did she die of?"
"She died of an injection of morphia—self-administered," said Eden, and could not keep a hint of mocking laughter from his voice.
"Morphia? _Mor_ phia?" He pointed suddenly to the pool on the floor. "Then, for God's sake—what's this?"
"That's the antidote, Inspector," said Major Moon; and added with his gentle smile: "And _you_ knocked it out of my hand!"
CHAPTER XIII
Barney and Frederica sat in the garden of a pleasant little Kentish pub, drinking shandies and waiting for Woody and Eden to arrive. "Is this one of William's beers?" asked Frederica, holding her glass to the light.
"Yes, I suppose it is," said Barney. He added: "Poor William!"
"I don't think he's 'poor William' at all," said Freddi tartly. "Even before—even while we were still all being suspects, he was flirting with Chalk and Cheese; and I saw him the other day walking down the road from Godlistone with some girl hanging on his arm."
"Well, he's still a bit lame, I expect, darling; perhaps she was holding him up."
"Holding him up my foot!" said Mrs. Barnes.
Barney thought it all over quickly. He said, at last: "You know, Freddi, I doubt very much whether William was ever as serious as all that about Esther. He'd known her such a short time! I've always wondered, I wondered even then, if it wasn't more a case of William flirting with her, and Esther taking it all to mean more than it really did. Esther was very inexperienced in the ways of the world. If a young man told her he adored her, she probably thought it couldn't mean anything but that he wanted to marry her. William's a bit of a gay dog with the lovelies; and personally I think Esther took him too seriously. I don't say that he didn't care for her, and wasn't perfectly willing to marry her when he suddenly found himself committed to it; and I may be quite wrong, but I don't believe he was so deeply in love with Esther that he'll never get over it."
"It must have been a dreadful shock to him," acknowledged Frederica.
"Yes, I think it was. Moon had a rotten time breaking the news to him."
"Poor old Major Moon," said Freddi, and now her matter-of-fact little voice did take on a tinge of tenderness, a tear did well up into her wide grey eyes. "Just like him when he was going through hell himself, to take on the job of explaining to William—who didn't care half as much.... I wonder if Woody and Gervase have heard about him?"
Woods and Eden appeared, walking along the road from the hospital. "We ordered a couple of shandies for you," said Barney, pushing the big glass mugs across the wooden table. "Would you rather have something else? _We_ can use these if you would."
The shandies, however, were just right for a summer evening, after a dusty walk. "Have you heard about Major Moon?" asked Woody, as soon as she had gulped down half her pint.
"Yes, we saw it in _The Times_ to-day." Freddi picked up a paper from a neighbouring table. "Here it is again: 'Heroic Surgeon Decorated. Posthumous Reward for Gallantry in Air Raid.' I should think it was gallantry, though it was useless gallantry. He must have known the woman couldn't be alive."
"Higgins' rescue squad 'knew' Esther's mother couldn't be alive," said Eden.
Frederica stared at him. "Do you think that's why he insisted on going? To sort of...? Well, sort of because of Esther?"
"I should think so," said Barney. He added, "I wish to heavens I'd been there."
"I'm very glad you weren't, darling," said Frederica immediately. "What would have happened to me?"
"That is an extremely typical remark, Mrs. Barnes," said Woody, laughing.
"Well, I don't mean that; I meant that a lot of people had something to lose if Barney died; and Major Moon hadn't got any relations or anything, and I don't suppose he minded dying a bit. He was so terribly unhappy after Esther.... It was like seeing a ghost wandering about the hospital, going on doggedly with his work, making his little jokes and smiling his ghastly little smile, and getting paler and thinner and more mumbley every day. Personally I'm glad Major Moon was killed in the air-raid. He died doing something for somebody else, which was just like him, even if it _was_ quite useless; and I'm sure he didn't want to live. He loved Esther too much ever to be happy again after—after we knew."
"Poor Esther," said Woody sadly.
They were all silent for a little while. "Do you think Esther was mad, Barney?" said Frederica at last.
"Major Moon told us once that all murderers are a little mad," he said. "I think she was sane enough on every other point but just this one. She thought she had to revenge her mother's death and on that subject she was mad. She killed Higgins and then she silenced Bates and after that I think she was sliding back into being perfectly normal and happy with William, and then she suddenly learnt that he was one of her mother's 'murderers' too—and I think that did knock her right over the edge, into real insanity. Think of her after that—always white and strained and weeping; nervy and hysterical and not able to eat or sleep.... Of course we put it down to this obsession about William dying under the anæsthetic, but even that was very abnormal, when you come to think of it...."
"She must have been a very good actress to deceive us all for so long."
"Cockrill says that her mother was a terribly theatrical type of woman; she was never on the stage or anything like that, but he says that she was always acting in private life. I suppose it was 'in' Esther to be able to put on a show...."
"But she was so sweet and gentle and everything I mean, that was genuine enough," insisted Frederica. "How could we ever have known that she was—wasn't normal?"
"We might have guessed," said Woods. "She was very queer when she first came back, after her mother was killed, you know, Freddi. She used to forget things terribly and she was vague and nervy and always crying in odd corners; I'm sure she never slept—I used to hear her tossing and turning all night. It got better, of course, and one thought it was just the shock and sorrow and that she would get over it; but she was terribly devoted to her mother and it must have been the most ghastly experience waiting, literally for days, for her to be rescued...."
"Thousands of other peole have had to do the same thing in this filthy war," said Frederica.
"You can't match suffering," said Eden, soberly. "Because thousands of people have had the same experience, it didn't make it any better for Esther. She must have gone through hell. And then, perhaps, when she was getting over it, getting back to normal again, Higgins was brought in, and she recognised him as the foreman who had refused to go on searching for her mother. He was perfectly right, I expect; he couldn't sacrifice his men for a hopeless cause. But of course she would only think that if they hadn't waited for the proper demolition squad, her mother might have been saved—would have been saved, in fact, because she was still alive two days later. What Esther didn't take into account was the fact that the ordinary rescue squad could probably never have got through to her anyway."
"Why didn't Higgins recognise Esther?"
"I suppose she was covered in dust and filth when he spoke to her; she'd been digging with the rest of them. He probably wiped the worst of it off his face before he went to her. William too—he was working there but they didn't ever see each other except coated with filth from the debris."
"I can't understand how she never realised that William had been brought in with Higgins," said Woody. "Everyone else did. I did. I don't know how I did or who told me, but I seem always to have known that the fractured tib. and fib. was one of the lot who were hit in the A.R.P. centre."
"A pub in Godlistone was hit at the same time," suggested Eden. "I expect she vaguely connected it with William and his beer. Her mind would obviously be entirely given up to the problem of Higgins and what to do about him."
"Higgins kept saying that night that all his mates had been killed," said Freddi. "He didn't realise that William was still being dug out, and William was unconscious most of the night with anæsthetic and morphia; by the time he came to, Higgins had screens round him for X-rays and preparation for operation and all that; I don't suppose he ever saw William. He thought he was the last of his squad."
"That may have put the idea into Esther's head: all the others had been punished and Higgins was not to escape retribution either, especially as he had been the one to give the order to cease digging."
"No wonder Higgins heard all that had gone on in the bunk next door to him," said Barney, who still did not know _all_ that had gone on in the bunk. "She withheld the morphia from him. I suppose she just gave him a shot of sterile water, so that he could suffer through a long night of pain as her mother had suffered for three days and three nights.... And then as she left the ward, she saw one of the Colonel's tins of paint; and the whole idea popped into her mind at once."
It seemed awful to order more drinks in the middle of the conversation that had grown up round their innocent evening's amusement, but Eden was hot and thirsty, and he got up, unobtrusively and returned from the bar with four pint pots held groggily by their handles. "... must have been ghastly for her, standing there watching Higgins die," Freddi was saying.
"She looked terrible. I remember during the operation before Higgins, I made her sit down," said Woods. "Of course I thought she just couldn't take it. It was her first abdominal."
"And poor old Higgins was so sort of pathetic with her. He kept calling her 'my dear'."
"Mrs. Higgins told Cockie that Esther was hard and cruel," said Eden. "The old girl must have spotted what all the rest of us missed."
"But Esther wasn't cruel," insisted Woody, earnestly. "She hated doing it. She just had this—Cockrill called it an _idée fixe_ —she thought it was wrong not to revenge her mother."
"She didn't kill Sister Bates to revenge her mother. She killed her so that she herself shouldn't be found out."
"Yes, but you can see how the thing worked in her mind. She thought she'd done right; she thought she ought not to be punished. She sort of owed it to her mother _not_ to be. You see what I mean?"
"No, I don't," said Freddi.
"Yes, _I_ do," said Eden. "It was as if the magic would go out of her revenge if she were found out and punished for it. Of course she was happier, she'd met William by that time, and perhaps she _wanted_ to live; but I think the other was the really important reason, the real reason why she went on fighting discovery. That's why she started collecting the morphia; it had become an obsession with her that she shouldn't be caught and punished for her mother's death; she might kill herself—I don't think she would have minded so much doing that; but she would not accept punishment."
Frederica who was accustomed to refer always to her patients with opprobrium, and to her calling with much humorous contempt, was the first to be scandalised at the breach in the ethics or practices of nursing. "To think that she should let the men suffer, just that she could save some morphia! It was too awful; I can't forgive Esther that part of it; it's the worst of all to me!"
"She gave them a little, Freddi; she gave them half doses and things like that. Altogether in the three nights she was on, she must have had, say eight grains to give out. Suppose she kept back four, with the two original grains and then the extra quarter grain she pinched from your haversack that day we were going for a drive—of course she hadn't known before that you'd got it—she had six and a quarter grains, and there was the original quarter that she didn't give Higgins. That would almost certainly have killed her, quite apart from her having managed to get some into the vein."
"Of course that's why she died so quickly?"
"Of course. It takes hours of coma and what-not in the ordinary way. I don't think Moon would have saved her anyway, with his injection of strychnine; but I suppose the old boy did the first thing that came into his mind. If he could stall Cockrill off for a bit, he might pull her round...."
"And then when Cockie broke in before he could give her the antidote they both said 'Thank God!'"
"Well, yes; Moon must have seen then that the game was up for poor Esther. It was best that she should die."
"But, Gervase, Cockrill obviously knew by then that it was Esther who had—had killed Higgins and Bates...."
"We don't know that Moon realised that. I believe he thought that Cockie really suspected _him._ Don't you remember how he called out to stop Esther from confessing. I believe he'd have given himself up for the murders, to save her. After all, he didn't care about life, very much, even then."
"Of course, it wasn't a postman's bicycle that he saw?"
"No, no, of course it wasn't," said Barnes. "Cockrill was just stringing Esther along, trying to work her up to tell the real truth; though it's true that ten or fifteen years ago, when Moon's child was killed, country postmen did have red bicycles. No, this was a silver-plated thing belonging to a young fellow in the neighbourhood; he saw it gleaming in the sun. He's told me about it, often."
Gervase got to his feet. "Well, what about another?"
"No, oi, Eden; it's my turn."
Woody patted her diaphragm. "Well, personally, I should blow up and go off with a loud bang."
"You always have such pretty little ways, my love," said Gervase.
They strolled off down the road, Freddi and Barney arm in arm. "Tell me about the hospital, Woody darling, and how you're getting on."
"Oh, my dear, it's too grim without you; without you and Esther. I'm sharing the cottage with Mary Bell and a frightful new girl called Bassett. Mary's nice of course, and she washes and does all the sort of normal things like sleeping with her window open, but Bassett's too ghastly. Com tried to wish Hibbert on to us, but I said to her, 'Madame,' I said, 'you _know_ Hibbert goes to bed in her vest and knickers, because I remember you driving her down to the shelter in them one night. You _must_ admit, Madame,' I said, 'that Hibbert would be _too_ much for us to bear!' so she very decently said we could have Bassett instead; but sometimes Mary and I wish we'd had Hibbert, vest and knickers and all."
"What's wrong with Bassett?"
"She snuffles at night, my dear, in the most peculiar way; I suppose that's where her family got the name from. I mean they do sort of sniff their way after things, don't they, Gervase?"
"Don't what sniff their way after what?"
"Bassetts, of course, darling, or Bassett hounds or whatever you call them."
"I don't call them anything, Woody," protested Eden. "You know I'm no good at nature study."
Frederica suddenly stood still in the middle of the road. "Oh, gosh, talking about nature study—I forgot to tell you, Woody. I'm going to have a baby."
Woody thought that Gervase would never stop laughing. "You _are_ awful," she said to him severely as they branched off alone towards the hospital. "It's most serious that Frederica is going to have a baby. You can see dear, old Barney's as proud and pleased as a dog with seventeen tails. What did you want to go and laugh for?"
"It was so absolutely typical of Freddi, the way she came crashing out with it in the middle of a country road; and six months before any nice girl would give away her pretty secret anyway. 'Oh, talking about nature, Woody, I'm going to have a baby!'" He went off into a fresh fit of laughter.
"Well, personally, I think it's heavenly, and I shall start off right away, knitting it a little woolly vest."
"You ought to have a family of your own to knit little vests for, Woody," said Gervase.
"What me, at my age?" said Woody, laughing.
"Yes, it's time you left off nursing and married and settled down. I think you'd have rather nice babies, darling; comic little things with shiny, boot-button eyes and lots of frizzy little curls like piccanninnies. What's more I think you'd make a very nice mother; and a very nice wife."
"Do you, Gervase?" said Woody, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her suit because they had begun to shake.
"Yes, I do," said Gervase.
The apples were young and green upon the boughs and all the air was sweet with the scent of a dying summer day. They walked in silence through the country lane, and in the rich fields the rabbits sat up to watch them, rubbing black noses on little, furry paws. The last soft rays of the sun gleamed on the whitened stems of the trees, and foxglove and ragged robin caught at them as they passed, as though to hold them for a moment longer in the magic of a Kentish twilight. Woody repeated softly: "Do you, Gervase?" and her face was young again with light and hope and tender, incredulous joy.
"Yes, I do," said Gervase. "You're so—well, gallant is an overworked word, but I always think of you as a gallant person, Woody. Gay and gallant. Life isn't very good to you, always, and yet you never show that you're disappointed or hurt or afraid. You stick out your old chin and you make a little joke, and nobody would know that there was anything wrong at all." He bent down to pick up a small stone and threw it at a rabbit, who turned a white scut and hopped leisurely out of the way; and as he took her arm and walked on up the lane, he added smiling: "I think the man who finally marries you is going to be a very lucky fellow."
All the light went out of her face; but she did not falter in her step and if there were tears in her eyes, no tears were shed. "I always think of you as a gallant person, Woody. Gay and gallant." She stuck out her chin and made a little joke, and nobody knew there was anything wrong at all.
Laughing and talking they strolled on up the hill, and if the ghost of an old man toiled ahead of them, carrying in his hand a letter signed with the name of his own murderer—they did not notice him.
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For a good dad and a strong mom.
Part 1 – Two in the Ground
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 1
Part 2 – The Rules of the Scratch
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 2
Part 3 – Nice Work If You Can Get It
An Excerpt from the Diary of J. P. Coddington
Part 4 – Home of the Wolf
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 3
Part 5 – Out of Your System
A Sermon by the Rev. Thomas Rhodes, March 7, 1958
Part 6 – I Saw Red
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 4
Part 7 – All the Comforts of Home
Selections from the Barter County Buck
Part 8 – Bad Language Makes for Bad Feelings
A Selective History of Barter County, Part 5
Part 9 – Things That Will Bite
The Last Will and Testament of William Rhodes
Part 10 – Son of a Bitch
PART 1 - TWO IN THE GROUND
It took a lot for Byron Matzen to admit he had made a mistake, but as his best friends in the world came from his blood, Byron had to admit they might have a point.
Seconds before he had given them absolution, at least as much as he could muster given the circumstances. When they first came to him, armed with the truth, he had cried and he had yelled, he had blamed anyone and everyone in ear shot. He had blamed the devil and his minions, his own damnable weak will and, before the end, he had blamed his friends, telling them they just didn't get it. They didn't know. A town like this couldn't hold a person like him, he was destined for more, for better and he was going to get it, even if it meant...
He didn't finish because, by then, he knew. He could see it in their eyes, a potent mix of disappointment and rage. To put it bluntly, he'd done fucked up and there was no fixing it, no unscrewing this pooch. He had betrayed his friends and he had meant to turn them over to those who would hurt them, maybe kill them and now, brother, the bill was due. And it was steep.
As if outside his body, Byron understood what was going to happen and what his part in it was, and in an act of rare selflessness, he gave it to them.
"Guys," he said, running his hand through his black hair which came away wet with sweat. "Guys, I... um... there's more."
No one prompted him. He had the floor.
"I killed Sandra, like, half an hour ago. Tore her up and left her behind the bar."
There was a gasp and the silence that followed him was deep as he struggled hard for the next series of words and the sweat from his scalp had slid down his minor sideburns and down his cheek.
"I did it because she was going to sell you out. She was going to take all my money and leave me and I don't blame her. I'm a piece of shit. I wouldn't want to run away with me, either. I thought, you know, a young thing like her next to me, money in my pocket, this town in my rear view..."
One of his friends, who had cornered him in his house outside of town, sniffled a bit. It was the closest he got to sympathy that night.
"I just want you to know I'm sorry. I did it all and I'm sorry and I know what you gotta do just..."
The wicked, barbed knot in his throat he had suppressed finally got the better of him and he choked on his own spit and tears, breaking down completely. He cried, bitterly, occasionally getting out a phrase like "we grew up together," and "I love you." It wasn't until he said "where's Josie" that he felt a fist slam into his right eye, driving him hard into a puddle of his own tears and snot that had collected on the concrete floor of the garage where he had been led.
"Please," Byron said. "I know I fucked up. I know you gotta do this but..."
"But what?" The leader of the group said, his voice already changing into something else.
"Please, remember me."
"Oh Byron," the voice said, getting deeper and deeper as it went. "I don't think we're ever going to forget you."
The next hit wasn't with a fist, but with sharp claws that widened into thick talons once inside his skin, as if fed and grown by his blood. The tearing started and the pain increased as his friends descended. Byron screamed and bled and just before one of them took to his neck with their teeth and the end was in sight he tried, one last time, to make it right.
"I'm sorry," he said, half screaming, blood in his throat already threatening to drown him. "I'm so sorry."
The last thing Byron Matzen ever saw was his friend, whom he had wronged, spreading his massive jaws and plunging his top teeth straight into Byron's eyeballs as the bottom teeth did their bloody work piercing the underside of his jaw.
•••
As Byron was meeting his end, there was a full-on party happening a few blocks away.
From the splintering wooden motif on the outside to the inside full of barstools where the padding had worn down to the metal underneath, the lack of amenities at the bar at the end of the road was obvious. But, if those clues didn't do it for you, the name of the place certainly would. It was just called "Bar."
"Bar" was owned by Chuck Nesbit, who had graduated from high school in Cherry, Nebraska, in the late seventies. Chuck joined the Army, he traveled a bit, but when the juice you get with being young and dumb ran out he wandered back home. It was like that for a lot of folks in Cherry. Situated near the middle of the state, Cherry was near the highway, one of those towns people saw when they were going from place to place, but not anywhere they stopped. There was a gas station/grocery store. There were two churches, one Methodist and one E-Free. There were a few businesses along Main Street, an insurance storefront, an antique shop, a Subway. Then, there was "Bar", far away from Main Street, at the end of 3rd Street, half a block of nothing on two sides and trees and dirt on the other two.
Chuck had inherited the place from his dad, Jim. Since the sign that said "Jim's Bar" had lost the "Jim" part due to one particularly stormy spring, Chuck has not replaced it. Why would he? The sign said all it needed to say.
Usually, "Bar" did a fine business in the late afternoons, and always had someone hanging around in the summer, mainly because Chuck had bought a big-screen TV and a subscription to the MLB network. There were a few regulars who kept the place afloat, but Chuck never had anyone waiting to get in when he opened up around 11:00. There were no hours of operation on the door. There was a fish fry on Fridays and the occasional special food item. It kept the doors open. But, on the night of October 3rd, Chuck had gotten a wild hair up his ass and booked a band. He wasn't sure why he did it but it was easy-peasy. Two guys and one pretty red-haired girl formed a nice, solid trio and on the night of October 3rd, the dive bar had transformed into a moderately decent honky-tonk.
The band had started out with a few upbeat numbers, a few modern tunes like you'd hear on Country 96, one of only a few stations in the largely rural area Chuck deemed worth listening to, and then had slowed things down. The guy who sang and played guitar did a respectable "I Love This Bar," and, when the crowd of seventy or so seemed receptive to slow it down, the redhead belted out a "Stand By Your Man" that had beer mugs above heads, swaying in unison. Then, they hit the first few chords of "Friends in Low Places" and Chuck had never seen his bar quite so lively.
Everyone sang the country standard like they were singing from the Gospels, the melody giving way to atonal shouts as everyone strained to hear their own voices over the rest. Then the band took a break. That was when he first clocked Sandra at the jukebox, nestled smack between two halves of the long wooden bar along one side of the establishment. The chattering had died down when the first strains of a song Chuck didn't recognize started filling in the void, and Sandra Riedel, a local girl who did IT and other odd jobs at one of the elevators in town, started shaking her ample hips. The song had a solid, 4/4 time, and her hips hit on 2 and 4 with such precision that Chuck couldn't take his eyes off her. He had thirty years on the girl, easy, but that didn't stop him from looking. Other guys had noticed as well. In the absence of the band, Sandra's hips were, by a wide margin, the most interesting thing in the bar.
It was Byron Matzen who went up to her first, and given the situation, it was a gutsy move. Everyone knew Byron's situation, and they knew the last thing he needed to be doing was hitting on recent divorcees shaking their asses in a small-town bar, but up he went, like it was nothing. He grabbed her from behind and she slung her arm around his neck, looking up at him with her sad blue eyes and by the time the band was back, they were together, nuzzled up in one of Bar's three shabby booths. If it wasn't for the band, this would be big news. If it wasn't for the band, someone probably would have checked in on them. But dammit if that band wasn't really killing it tonight, Chuck thought. Besides, it wasn't his place to get involved. This sort of thing had a way of sorting itself out.
It was during the band's well-received rendition of "Red Solo Cup" that Chuck first noticed Sandra and Byron were gone. And it was a few songs later when they had ventured into rock with "More Than A Feeling" that he got more than a bad feeling. He went out to have a look around a few times, but the parking lot was full and it wasn't hard to see there was nothing going on. The party was inside and the party went and went and went until 12:30 when the band finally packed it up. Chuck paid them, gave them a little extra and hung around until 1:30, blowing another twelve-pack of beer on the band that had brought the folks in, just like they said they would. Then they left, everyone else cleared out and, before heading back to the trailer, he decided to have a good look around.
The parking lot was clear; the font had some vomit on it, but nothing major. The rain or the sun would take care of that, no problem. Chuck slowly strolled the perimeter, going over the night in his head. The image of Sandra's hips had lodged itself in his head as he rounded the corner and came upon the volleyball court. Years ago, a girl he was dating convinced him to put a volleyball court in the back. It had been used a grand total of six times, and cost him eight parking spaces, not that parking was an issue. Even on a busy night like this, the cars lined the streets and no one complained about walking half a block. But it required upkeep and that was something Chuck was not willing to provide, the practical result of which was a giant weed pile on the west side of his property.
That more-than-a-bad feeling started working its way from his stomach to his head and, on instinct, he went back in the bar and grabbed his Maglite. Once back at the volleyball court, it didn't take him long to find what he figured was there.
The weeds were up five feet high, and the blood had spattered all the way to the top of a patch of crabgrass. Chuck stood on the border of the court for a second and listened. He wasn't afraid. He likely knew what was in there and what he would find, plus, if old Byron was still in there and meant to do him harm, Chuck's options consisted of "standing there and taking it" and that was about it. But Byron wasn't in there, Chuck knew. He was long gone. The whole town knew he wasn't sticking around a lot longer, one way or another. Instead of any movement, all he heard was the wind and, for the first time in the season, he saw his breath. Thanks to the miracle of alcohol, Chuck hadn't noticed how cold it was, but it made sense. This was just the sort of night that Byron and his "friends" would love.
Chuck heaved a sigh and waded into the court. Sandra's body wasn't far. One of her arms was gone, torn off at the bicep leaving long strips of flesh, and her head was at an unnatural angle. She had a large gash in the side of her face that was visible, the other half pushed hard into the dirt. Chuck couldn't tell if her eyes were open or not because of all the dirt. He had heard guys in the Army talk about dead bodies, how the eyes haunted you, so Chuck didn't look too high up. He had enough trouble sleeping as it was, due to acid reflux and the likely need for a CPAP machine. He panned his flashlight down past her stomach and the lower half was worse. There was massive tearing below her navel and her thighs and hips and everything in between was torn down to the bone. A few of the gashes were big, but he could tell they had devolved into lots and lots of smaller scratches. The swell of her stomach was perfect, white and inviting but everything below that was bloody and bad. She'd suffered and not a little bit, Chuck thought. Enough of the ground was covered in blood to suggest there had been some thrashing involved. Between the wind hitting the weeds, Chuck heard himself give out a small "oh, Sandra" in his gravelly voice, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
Josie picked up on the third ring. She sounded rough.
"Josie? This is Chuck down at the bar."
"Chuck?"
"Yeah. Listen, I've got a mess over here."
There was some rustling on the other end. She must have been asleep. Chuck briefly pictured her pulling back the sheets of her bed revealing white panties, but banished the thought.
"What are you talking about?"
"Sandra Riedel's body is all torn to shreds outside my bar is what I'm talking about."
More silence. No thoughts of pretty girls in underwear this time.
"Is it obvious what happened? Could she of..."
Josie trailed off. She still sounded scratchy but it was clear to Chuck she had a hold of the situation with both hands.
"It's obvious what happened, girl. I figure you'd best get the boys in because I'm going to have to call the cops on this."
"Can you give me some time?"
"How much time you thinking you need?"
"Hour and a half maybe?"
Chuck exhaled a deep lungful of cold, bracing air.
"Look, I don't want to be a hard-ass here, but it's been a long night and I want to go to bed and..."
"Then call them in the morning, Chuck. Jesus. If you're tired go to bed and tell the cops you saw the body in the morning."
Chuck didn't like being talked down to, but Josie had a point. He was a bit embarrassed he hadn't come up with the solution on his own.
"Yeah, that sounds all right."
"Where'd you find her?"
"In the volleyball court."
"The what?"
"Jesus, girl, the volleyball court. The one Courtney put in a few years back."
"Chuck, that lot full of weeds was a volleyball court for about an hour and a half."
"Call it whatever you want, there's a dead girl in it and I hate dealing with this kind of shit. Good night."
"I'll tell the boys hi for you."
"See that you do."
Annoyed and tired in equal measure, Chuck finished closing up and took the long walk up the flight of stairs to his apartment above "Bar." The apartment was actually rather nice. It used to be Jim's apartment before his heart attack, and Chuck was glad to take it over. It was roomy there was some good furniture had come with it and best of all he hadn't paid rent in over fifteen years. He inherited it free and clear and even made a few modifications. Since he was far away from any streetlights, he had installed two floodlights at great expense and had rewired them to turn off from his apartment. He had bumped his shins and shoulders too many times stumbling around in the dark to not do something about it.
Just before he turned off the light, he snuck one last glance toward the volleyball court. She was out there. He could tell from up here. He couldn't see any body parts, but he could see red stains here and there. Anyone passing by was going to get an eyeful. He would have to get up early, he thought. Then, he thought better of it.
"She's wrong. You can totally tell it's a volleyball court," he said, before the floodlights made a loud, whooshing noise and the dark flooded everything.
•••
It was the morning of October 4th when police found Sandra, and the morning of October 5th when they found Byron and it wasn't pretty. He was in much the same state, only moved around a bit, and they found him in the woods near the Beaver Creek, next to the town's only historic marker, a big piece of granite set deep into the earth. It was quite a production after they found him. Law enforcement, coroners, and other folks had to come from three counties away and they noted there was a lot more slashing on the chest, neck, and head than the girl, but the wounds looked very similar. They were deep and frequent and the victim never stood a chance. He had died quick, but he had suffered. They all agreed on that.
The folks who had to drive across the expanse of highway to reach the small town of Cherry all looked to Grey Allen to lead the investigation. He had no interest in doing anything of the sort. He was pushing seventy, slight and, well, gray and he had worn the same mustache for over thirty years, every single one of them spent in uniform. In some smaller communities, people say things like "he knows everybody" when, in actuality, there are hundreds of people who had never met hundreds of other people. In Cherry and the surrounding county, Grey Allen knew everybody. Barter County had 458 residents and encompassed 134 square miles of land. That's more than a quarter of a mile for every man, woman and child in the county. Grey Allen had driven every mile on every road and knocked on every door. Grey Allen, literally, knew everyone.
Sheriff Allen, who had never campaigned a day in his life and kept the job because no one else wanted it, arrived after everyone else, despite living a few miles away. He was in no hurry, but he was immediately inundated with requests, which did not make him happy. After ten minutes of some State Patrol asshole yelling at him about needing to be "lead on the scene" to the coroner needing him to sign something to trying to answer questions from all the damn people who had gathered, Grey Allen did something he hadn't done while in uniform in years.
He raised his voice.
"Enough of this shit!"
The guy from the State Patrol looked like he was going to start up again, but he saw that the scene and the pressure was giving Grey Allen all the stress he could handle, maybe a bit more, so he backed off. After adjusting his hat and breathing deeply like he had been told to do, Grey Allen finally arrived at the scene of the crime.
"No good, that," he said.
At this point, the guy from the State Patrol could hold his tongue no longer.
"Sheriff Allen..."
"Grey."
"Grey..."
"Grey Allen."
The man looked dumbstruck.
"Sheriff Grey Allen, your most exalted majesty, that's all you've got? That this is 'no good'?"
Grey Allen took a deep breath.
"Well, what else you want?"
"Do you know who he is?"
"Yep."
The man from the Nebraska State Patrol could contain himself no longer. He walked behind Grey Allen and spoke softly, yet quickly into his ear.
"You are half an hour behind the ME and we had to pick up crowd control, we had to set up tape, we had to secure the scene and we had to do all that without a word from you or your department. This is the second body in your county in two days. As a professional courtesy to all these people who are here doing your job for you, would you please knock off the country bumpkin crap and tell us what you know so we can move forward. Please."
"Since you said please."
Grey Allan spit and turned around to face the young man in the slightly rumpled uniform.
"This, here, is Byron Matzen. He's got some land, not too far back off Rural Road 77, over there. Raises cows, plants the odd crop, but not much of a farmer. Big drinker. Never the brightest bulb, but he wasn't likely to hurt nobody."
"You know that for sure?" the State Patrolman asked.
"I know that for sure," Grey Allan said. "I also know he was single. I know he drives a blue Dodge Durango but I'm not sure what year. I know he liked to speed on occasion but a warning would usually take care of it. I know he was at Bar a few nights back and, if I were a betting man, I'd bet he's the guy who killed Sandra Riedel."
"What makes you say that?" the Patrolman said, listening very closely.
"Makes sense. Don't it?"
The Patrolman kept his voice down as to not tip anything to the crowd gathered in the parking lot of the Sinclair station.
"Not really."
"What don't make sense about it?"
"Well, Grey Allen..."
"Sheriff Grey Allen."
"God damn it, Sheriff Grey Allen, you have two dead bodies in three days killed in the same way. Torn to shreds. Doesn't it make sense that someone killed the first victim and then killed a second victim in the same way?"
"Nope."
"I... what?" the Patrolman stumbled. "I... I don't even know what to say to that."
"Looks like this guy killed Sandra and then some animal got at him. I don't know. A bobcat maybe."
"A bobcat? You're not serious?"
"We get bobcats around here."
The Patrolman left Grey Allen to talk to someone with a better disposition. He ranted and raved to the assembled group of investigators, this time not taking the step of lowering his voice. Those gathered in the parking lot of the Sinclair station would report hearing words like "fucking idiot" "mind bending-ly stupid" and "Alzheimer's Disease" thrown about. Grey Allen ignored it all, keeping his eyes on Byron's body. They had really done a number on him. He thought he had this under control and now that it was clear he didn't, there was only one thing left to do.
Grey Allen pulled his old frame up on top of his dusty patrol car. He stood on the hood and immediately felt a rush of shame. What a stupid thing for an old man to do. It didn't take long until all eyes were on him.
"Everyone. I would like to take this opportunity to announce my retirement from Law Enforcement. If you'd all like to send a card, just drop it by the post office and I'll make sure to stop by and pick them up."
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 1
Way before Grey Allen, one of the men who cracked the code of effective law enforcement in Barter County was a lawman by the name of Norbert Farber, a first generation German immigrant who served as Sheriff from 1913 – 1939. Before him, no lawman had lasted longer than a year in the area, though, to be fair, some had joined the military and others had no intention of staying in such a rural area. But others were, to put it kindly, run off.
Immediately upon landing the job, Sheriff Farber decided to track down all those who had left and ask them if they had any advice, insight or could offer any help at all. When no one replied to his repeated letters seeking counsel, he took it upon himself to really dig into his community. He knocked on doors and introduced himself. He asked about concerns. He made his services available. By all accounts, he was the sheriff of a rural but perfectly lawful patch of land but he never stopped looking over his shoulder.
Sheriff Farber's first piece of trouble came in the form of dead animals, often dismembered and scattered, turning up in public places. None of the contacts he had made knew what was happening and any whispers that took place behind the scenes were too quiet for him to make out. Then Alan Caspersen's dog wound up disemboweled but still tied to a leash in the blacksmith's front yard. Mr. Caspersen, not one to stay quiet about any issue on his mind, made the issue the talk of the town and surrounding area. The Caspersen dog would not go unavenged.
One night, out of frustration, Sheriff Farber visited the town bar and found blacksmith Caspersen drowning the memory of his deceased canine. The two got to talking and it wasn't long into conversation when talk turned to devils and demons, men possessed and devoid of the Grace of God, men who ran with the devil, literally, according to Caspersen. Men who had no regard for holiness, charity, or other people's animals.
It didn't matter whether or not the sheriff believed the stories. What mattered was he found the men, had a nice talk with them, and before long order had been restored. Blacksmith Caspersen never forgot the death of his dog, but before long the town moved on, the animal slaughter stopped, and time marched on. Twenty-six years later the sheriff died of a massive heart attack while on the job. In his last will and testament he instructed his wife Millicent to hand deliver to his replacement a set of letters he had written with strict instructions to not read the contents for herself. True to her word, Millicent resisted temptation and delivered the letters to newly minted Sheriff Bradley M. Godfrey who read the letters, took them to heart, and served in the position for eighteen years.
PART 2 - THE RULES OF THE SCRATCH
A week or so had passed between the two bloody nights in Cherry and between the crickets and the birds that don't know what damn time it is and the distant wail of train horns, the country can be a noisy place to try to get some sleep. Add a girl screaming and running out of your house at two in the morning and Dave Rhodes Sr. was in desperate need of coffee. Plus, he had to have a word with the boy.
Dave Jr., who everyone had called Dilly in a nickname whose origin was lost to the ages, wasn't up yet. Josie was up, though. Dave had felt her toss and turn after they heard the girl scream, run out of their house, start up her car and drive away. Both of them were pretty sure what had happened, as it was something they had dealt with in the past. Dave's mind never really calmed down and the night's sleep was restless, the clock on his bedside table particularly bright in the darkness. He woke up thoroughly unrested as he joined his wife in their kitchen.
"Should we get him up? We need to talk to him," Josie said. She had this conversation planned out, Dave could tell. If that woman had a chance to play things out in her head beforehand, she was hard to beat.
"Let's let him sleep for a bit."
"That girl may be hurt, Dave. She might have told her parents about it, they might be on their way over here right now."
"Adam and Charlotte? Not likely. He works at the John Deere, I've met him. He's a levelheaded guy."
"But if she's hurt..."
"Then chances are Dilly would have made sure she's OK. He's a good kid. He's not a monster."
"No, he's a teenage boy and they are hardwired to make bad decisions. Besides, we don't know what happened for sure. Go get him up, please."
They sat in silence for several heavy seconds. Dave took a sip of coffee and stood up.
"Let's get this over with."
Looking at his wife as the morning light beat through the window, Dave felt a pang of nostalgia. She really didn't look all that different from when he met her in high school. She was still beautiful, still unwilling to deal with any of his bullshit. He often had thoughts that, left to his own devices, there was no way he could have carved out the life he had, no way he could have balanced it, without her hand in his life. He walked over and leaned down to kiss her, hoping the coffee would mask his morning breath.
"It's not going to be like you and me," he said. "For one thing, we don't have Willie to worry about. We're going to do this solid."
"We couldn't do much worse than Willie did," she said pulling away and blushing.
"No, we could not."
He wandered down the hall, taking a second to look at the family photos. There was the photo from Disney when Dilly was ten; there was the one with the cutouts that showed his photo from every grade, there was one of Dilly in his baseball uniform. The paint was uneven from where they did some patch work a few years ago, but didn't get the exact right color. Dave paused for a second outside of his son's door, listened and heard the heavy rise and fall of a teenager dead to the world. At least the boy had gotten some sleep. That was a positive.
Dave walked into the room and started to slap Dilly's feet.
"Up," he said. "I know you were up late, but we've got miles to go before we sleep."
"Miles to go before we sleep" was something Dave's dad, Willie, had said to him every morning during his childhood. It wasn't until Dave's brief stint in college that he had learned it was a Robert Frost poem. Dave still had never read the entire thing but it rolled off his tongue every morning, just the same. Dilly let out a long groan, the kind Dave always hoped he would outgrow, but hadn't yet.
"Seriously, kid. Up. Your mom and I need to talk to you."
A couple minutes later, Dave D. Rhodes Jr., all 6'1 and 165 pounds of him, stumbled out of his room in a plain brown T-shirt, blue boxers and socks. He always wore socks. Dave the Senior was convinced he wore them in the shower. He took a hard right into their kitchen from the hall, and took his sweet time pouring coffee, then creamer from the fridge, then sugar, then stirring the mixture and sitting down, all while his parents clocked his every move. It was hard for Dave and Josie to figure why he was taking his time like that. He wasn't the type for a power play. If pinned down, the adjectives his parents would use to describe Dilly would include "tall," "straight forward," "humble," and, if pushed, "shy." He was a boy without an aggressive bone in his body until you put him on the basketball court, then he was an entirely different animal. He had made varsity as a freshman and now, in his junior year, was one of the best players on the team.
Dilly plopped down in his seat and took a sip of his coffee.
"What's up?" Dilly asked. His parents stared, saying nothing.
"She's OK," he said after a long breath. "I mean, I suppose you heard a scream last night."
Josie looked at Dave, telling him to take the lead.
"OK. First off, we like Allie. She's a..." he paused, and looked at Josie who, most definitely, did not like Allie. "She's a sweet girl. But this isn't about her. It's about you and what's happening to you."
Dilly rolled his eyes, but stopped halfway through. They had talked about this and he was showing effort at not rolling his eyes, which meant his mother would not bring it up.
"Is this 'the talk'?" Dilly asked.
"Not exactly," Dave said.
"Then what?"
"How'd you hurt her, Dilly?" Josie asked.
The teenager took a long drink of his coffee, realizing he was cornered.
"I'm not sure you'd get it."
Dave sighed. He had prepared for this. His son wasn't much of a conversationalist, but there were a few issues they connected on: football, movies, fitness. Josie and Dilly liked to garden, but there was a sturdy wall between the two of them that largely went unacknowledged. But Josie wasn't the only one who could game out a conversation.
"It started with your hands, didn't it?
Dilly stared.
"I know because I've been there. Your hands start to tingle at the palms and then spread real quick to your fingers. It goes from tingling to fire until it's all you can think about. You can be kissing the prettiest girl in the world, but your hands are on fire and when you sneak a look at them, they're longer than they were. There are curves in weird places, hair where there wasn't hair before. Then the fire spreads. Am I on base with any of this, Dilly?"
There was a silence only teenagers and parents could understand. Then a faint "yeah, that's how it started."
"You probably wanted to stop," Dave continued. "But maybe things were... heated. Maybe you were in a position where stopping would have been difficult, so you didn't. Then the fire spread from your arms into some place deeper. And when it hit that deeper place, that's when you hurt her, wasn't it?"
Dilly nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, but, no. Not really."
"How was it different?" Dave asked.
"I... damn, this is embarrassing. Could I just talk to Dad about it, or..."
"Hon, this is a family thing," Josie said. "I'm sorry it's embarrassing but we've got a lot to go over and the quicker we get past the embarrassing stuff the better."
She reached out and grabbed Dilly's hand and held it and stared at him until, after a few seconds, he met her gaze.
"This is important," she said.
Dilly exhaled deeply and took a drink of coffee.
"Allie and I were kissing and everything was fine. Nothing was... unusual, I guess. Even though I don't know what usual is in this situation. She's the first girl I've ever done anything like this with."
"We figured," Dave said.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad."
"That's not what I meant. Any girl would be lucky to have you. Now quit ducking and let's get this over with."
"She... she went down on me. I didn't ask her to, but that's when it happened. That's when the fire thing started but it wasn't in my hands. It didn't start there, I mean. It was from the chest and it spread out and, and, this is going to sound like I'm holding something back, but I'm not, I don't even remember hurting her. My hands were, like, on her head and then she's screaming and jumping up and when I... came to, I guess, there were holes in the back of her shirt and blood. Not a lot, but you could see it."
"OK," Dave said. "Is that when she ran out?"
"No, not right away. I apologized right away and I didn't know what to say so I told her she really got me excited and I lost control for a second and that's when she felt the blood."
Dilly took a big drink of his coffee, his job almost done.
"I offered to help her and I was all 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to,' and she saw the blood and saw her ripped shirt and that's when she screamed a little bit and said she was going home and I couldn't stop her."
"That sounds about right," Dave said, tapping Josie with his foot under the table.
"You did OK," Josie said. "But here's the important part, Dilly. Did you feel yourself change? Is it time for us to start exploring that?"
"A little," Dilly said. "You guys know the transforming part really scares me."
"I know," Dave said. "It scared me too the first time."
"Do you think she noticed?" Josie asked, finally getting to the heart of the thing.
"If she did, she was too polite to say anything," Dilly said, running his hand through his sandy blond hair. "She was hurt and mad when she left but I don't think she was freaked out or anything."
Suddenly, the boy's face changed as did his posture. He sat up straighter and leaned forward in a way that suggested a shift from defense to offense.
"Did you guys know this was going to happen?"
The smile across Dave's face was wide. The boy had never been a genius, but he could figure things out. People, too. He was disarming but kind and that combination made people want to talk to him, made him attractive. That was only going to help as he learned to live with this thing that their family was carrying.
"The answer is kind of," Dave said. "You want me to tell you about when I wolfed out on your mom, where she was and what she was doing?"
"God, no!" Dilly said. Back on defense.
"I'm not going to lie. Kenny Kirk, Ron and maybe Carl, that's how they first started with the process. When they were with girls like that. I don't know, kid, it brings something out in us guys. But it's different for everyone so we didn't know for sure."
Dilly opened his mouth but Dave cut him off.
"I know it seems like a risk, but it was a pretty good bet you weren't going to hurt anyone too bad, Dilly. You're not that kind of kid."
His coffee cup empty, Dilly traced the rim of the cup with his index finger.
"I wish you'd have warned me," he said. "I could have been on the lookout. Maybe not ruined Allie's shirt."
"Allie's mom can fix the shirt and scratches heal, hon," Josie said. "But here's the big thing you need to be thinking about. Do you think it's time to go out with the boys?"
All of a sudden, a rush of nostalgia hit Dave so hard it threatened to consume him. He remembered the sheer, heart-pounding terror of walking out to the woods and seeing his dad and all his friends. He remembered how they greeted him, how they embraced and welcomed him to the fold, prompting Willie to say "this ain't so special. Leave him be." He remembered how odd the men looked when they took off their shirts. Then their pants. How all these old men and their old wrinkled bodies weren't that scary, and how it actually calmed him down. Then it started and it wasn't as bad as he'd built it up to be and before he knew it, he was flying through the woods, the fastest among the pack, navigating trees and foliage faster and faster.
The rest of it, the first scent, the first trail, the first blood, the first kill, the noise that came out of his chest like fire and into the cold Nebraska air on a clear Nebraska night where the sky stretched out for eternity. The high he would never capture again. The high his son was now on the path toward. The realization that he would protect this life, that he would work for this life and all the abstractions that came with it all piled into his head so fast he couldn't stop it.
Dave stood up. He needed some air.
"It doesn't need to be this time. Come when you're ready," he told his son. "We're not going anywhere."
Dilly and Josie sat at the table and talked for an hour, carefully avoiding land mines like torn shirts and oral sex. Dilly got all the information fresh, even though he had known of his special situation since he was eight years old. Dave left them, mother and son, with something to talk about. He loaded up some old tires into the back of his pickup as an excuse and headed into town.
•••
"Town," such as it was, consisted of a bar, a church, a small business district with a grocery store, a hardware store, and a repair shop among a few streets dotted with houses in various states of upkeep. One house, damaged by a tornado several years ago, had never been repaired and was now so much a part of the landscape folks were surprised when out-of-towners brought it up. It's not hard to ignore something peculiar when you see it every day.
The shop, known as "Rathman Repair and Service," was owned by Kenneth Rathman, who made a fairly good living because he knew how to repair most tractors. He had grown from "tractor repairman" to general repair of all sorts and now had three men working at the shop full time. There were a few men in town with that much business acumen or his particular skill set, but Kenny Kirk to his friends was easily the fastest, the fairest, and the best in a fifty-mile radius, which is why he got away with being the way he was.
"Where you at, dickface?" Kenny half sang as Dave got out of his truck.
"I was at twenty percent this morning, but it's gotten significantly higher since then. You?"
"Man, I'll tell you, I've been itchy," Kenny said. "A rabbit was in my yard this morning and I swear to God I started at that thing for ten minutes, munching on dandelions, wanting to get at it. Without thinkin' to I had taken my pants off. Gave JoAnn a little bit of a treat."
"So where you at?"
"Let's call it seventy," Kenny said. "I know Ron's up there too, so maybe we start putting it together."
"It's going to be the first time since we had to do that thing."
They both kicked at the dirt, careful not to look at each other.
"Doesn't change nothing," Kenny Kirk said, kicking a rock hard enough to where it flew into the street next to his shop. "And have some decorum, man. Don't just bust that out there. Ask how I'm doing or if JoAnn's OK or about that travesty in Lincoln last week. Don't just jump to that thing. Besides, it's over. Doesn't change a damn thing about how we conduct ourselves."
"I don't think that's right," Dave sighed, mostly to himself.
"That's cause you think too goddamn much, man," Kenny said. "You put it all in, like, this historical context when that ain't what you should be doing. This is a clear-cut case of forward, not back. It's like we all agreed on. It had to happen and it happened. You'd have more luck teaching Josie to barbecue than you would changing what's already been done."
"She made a brisket once. Wasn't too bad."
"Yeah, I'll believe that when I taste it. Last time we let her near the grill half of that chicken she made was burnt to shit and the other half was raw enough to complain about it."
The two men stood in silence, which was exactly what Dave had hoped to avoid. Normally Kenny's mouth was a constant source of focus as he was the kind who talked just to talk. He could be belligerent, he was often crass, he could sometimes come up with a cutting insight but one thing the man was not was quiet. If there was a silence more than a couple of seconds it meant something was wrong.
Dave decided to see if he'd go for ten seconds, counting silently in his head. When he got to twelve, he finally took the bait.
"Something on your mind, Ken?"
"Yeah... um... look, I was talking before about how you overthink things and that is the truth, you ain't changing my mind on that, but maybe you want to call Dilly off for another few weeks, man."
Etiquette was again breached as the silence returned. Dave only gave it five seconds this time.
"You gonna make me guess why you'd say something like that?"
"Well, no, I'm not. But you clearly ain't heard."
"Heard what?"
"Look, I hate to be the guy to tell you, what with Byron and your kid... I mean, those are both more than enough to get that brain of yours working and then there's that thing at your school that's causing all the ruckus..."
Dan furrowed his brow and bugged his eyes at Kenny, who promptly remembered the law he had put down a few nights before.
"Tell me what's going on, Kenny."
"Grey Allen's retiring."
"Wait... the sheriff is stepping down?"
The news out and the hard part done, Kenny's mouth started running again.
"Yeah, man, he did it right there on the scene where they all found Byron in front of the State Patrol and investigators and shit. He stood up on his car, of all the stupid things, and was like 'I'm done. Grey Allen out.' So they're looking for a new guy and they're looking quick."
This was bad on several fronts, but for some reason Dave had started doing math in his head. How long had Grey Allen been the sheriff? How long had he been old? Grey was one of those guys who "has been old forever," as his mother used to say, and picturing Grey Allen as a young man was an endeavor sure to end in laughs if done in a group of friends. But he was a bedrock, a gentleman and, ultimately, a trusted force when trust is in short supply. Plus, his absence complicated things enormously.
"Why the hell didn't I hear about this?"
"Well, we're all dealing in our own way, man. It's not like I'm going to come over to your house and have a beer after Byron. I wanted to be by myself and since this is the first time we've talked since then, I'm guessing you did too. We all kind of... I don't know, went back into our houses and tried to do our own things, I guess. You forget sometimes, man, you're the only one of the boys with a kid to worry about and that means you've got a few distractions that we don't have."
"So because I don't go to the Bar all the damn time I'm out of touch," Dave shot back.
"That's not what I'm saying," Kenny said, drawing the words out for emphasis and maximum redneck drawl. "What I'm saying is we've all got our own shit to deal with and that means your ear ain't as close to the ground as mine or Ron's or Carl's or even Willie's. You get what I'm saying?"
"Yeah, I get what you're saying," Dave said. "Anything else I need to know since my ear is so high up in the air?"
"Don't be like that, you asshole," Kenny said. "And quit taking all this shit personal. Yeah, we're in kind of a tight spot right now but it's not like we're looking at a change in leadership. Carl would piss himself and Willie would run us all off a cliff, man, if he could make it that far. Figured you'd find out sooner or later. Now you know."
Dave had to catch himself from falling into another memory, this one involving his father, specifically his face, twisted and angry. All of a sudden the smells of lunch came wafting from the house down from Kenny's shop—the sandwiches were turkey, the chips sour cream and onion. The wind had kicked up as well, the sound it made through the trees suddenly almost deafening.
"You all right?" Kenny asked.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm at seven or eight now. Let's get the boys together. It's already been too long."
"That sounds about right," Kenny said. "We meeting at your place?"
"Nope," Dave said, sidling up to his truck. "By the creek, please. And tell everyone I'm bringing the meat, the rest of y'all can bring side dishes or chips or something."
"I'm bringing shots."
"If you still need 'em."
"Not for me," Kenny said. "Your boy might need a nip before."
"Let me handle my boy," Dave said, starting the car and kicking up dust that colored the air.
"You're the boss," Kenny muttered.
•••
That night, a black town car pulled up outside of Rathman Repair and Service. The occupant, a tall, lean man dressed for the fall weather in northern Nebraska dress pants and a long-sleeved dress shirt covered by a light windbreaker, saw the windows were dark, got out of the car, and knocked anyway. Then he knocked harder. The man was not accustomed to these sorts of sparsely populated towns, where a long road might have a business, a few houses and nothing else, familiar enough that when a second round of knocking produced nothing, he started pounding.
Before long, a light came on in the yellow house next door. The man continued pounding. The yellow house's owner, Mr. Sidney Layton, retired, came out tying his flannel robe around his gaunt waist.
"Hey, hey, nobody's in there."
The old man made his way down his front steps in a way that was both hurried due to circumstance and slow due to age. The tall man pounded a few more times and turned to face the man he had disturbed.
"Kenny Kirk closes up at six or so," Sidney said. "You're making a racket for no reason."
The man was considerably taller that Mr. Sidney, so much so that he could see the top of his head. When he spoke, the man's voice was calm, deep and smooth, a stark contrast to the old man's.
"Will Mr. Kirk be in tomorrow?"
Sidney took a second, marveling at the way the man drew the last word into the lower register of his voice. It was very slick and not something he was used to.
"Nah, his last name ain't Kirk, it's Rathman. We just call him Kenny Kirk because when he was a kid he..."
"Sir," the man interrupted. "Will this store be open tomorrow?"
"No, it won't," Sidney said. "You need a tow or something?"
"I don't need a tow, thank you," the man said. "What I need to do is speak with the owner. Can you tell me where I can find him?"
Sidney didn't betray anything to the stranger, but he now acutely felt the power shift. At first, he was the disturbed one, ready to help but also to shame this guy for making all the noise. Between the demeanor of the man and the questions he was asking, the justified anger had evaporated.
"Nah," Sidney said. "I don't think Kenny's interested in having visitors tonight. They may open in the morning but they... they don't do a lot of business on the weekends. Not before noon anyways."
The man said nothing.
"If I was you, I'd try maybe after lunch. Kenny'll be in at some point tomorrow."
"Tell me," the man said. "I noticed a good number of storage structures on my way into town, the ones with the white roofs on them, when you're coming in off Highway 21. Do those belong to Mr. Rathman?"
"Yeah, yeah. He's got a few cars in there and a few parts of cars. That sort of thing."
The man reached into his pocket and peeled a fresh, unworn $20 bill from a roll held in place by a rubber band. With a big hand that possessed surprising strength, he grabbed the old man's hand and pressed the bill into it.
"Thank you for your help," the man said in a calm voice.
"I... I don't need your money, mister," Sidney said. The bill was so new he could feel the subtle texture of the bill on his weathered hands.
"You've given me information I need," the man said, not breaking gaze with Sidney. The man's eyes were dark as was his hair. "That's worth paying for. Now, if you were to give me more information, like where Mr. Kirk might be tonight, that would also be worth paying for."
"I... I don't..." Sidney stuttered. He had not anticipated having his scruples questioned while standing outside in his bathrobe.
"I understand," the man said. "That's a bridge too far."
The man turned to get back in his car.
"Mister," Sidney yelled. "If I see Kenny Kir... Mr. Rathman before then, who should I tell was banging on his door?"
"Tell him Mr. Stander came by," the man yelled back. "Tell him to be in his shop. I'll be along."
The tail lights of the town car were very bright, almost fluorescent, Sidney thought. Extremely bright. They stayed bright all the way down the street and the old man clocked them two blocks north after he made the turn that would take him to the highway. After tossing the $20 on the table his wife used for keys and such, he dialed Kenny's cell phone and got his voicemail.
"This is Kenny. If you've got my voicemail I'm probably shit faced somewhere so I'll get to yer call when I sober up."
The voicemail ended with a huge belch, then the beep.
"Kenny, this is Sidney, down by your shop. Look, I know you and the boys are probably out somewhere but you need to give me a call when you get this. There's a weird guy looking for you and I'm thinking you're really going to want to get in front of this. He was asking all sorts of weird stuff about your shop and... give me call, would ya?"
He hung up, went back over and held up the $20.
"Where the hell do you get money like that?" he said, putting the bill up under his bushy grey mustache. "Even smells new."
Sidney did not sleep well that night between his thoughts and the howls off in the distance.
•••
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step one. You break bread.
Most of the time, the boys alternated between backyards and cooked up a giant mess of ribs, burgers, or Nebraska-raised steaks, but this time they'd loaded up Dave's portable grill and gone out to a spot not far from the Beaver Creek that was particularly good for fishing. There were also picnic tables there. No one was sure where they had come from or who they belonged to, but they were frequently used, with paint peeling and grooves carved and by sunset, the smoke was rolling off the grill, like usual.
One time Ron Smith, the guy in the group who had adopted the "biker" look but had a heart of gold, had brought a deer in the back of his truck that he had shot earlier that day and they took turns butchering and grilling. Grilled deer might seem odd but the wood smoke of the grill often overtook the gaminess of the meat, making for a perfectly acceptable meal that left everyone leaning back in their chairs and picking their teeth.
This was also the step where you messed around and joked, but under no circumstances did you raise hackles. If there were sore spots, you didn't apply pressure. If there were land mines, you steered as clear as you could and this evening, there were land mines. Bunches of them. But there would be time for that after, and... well, at this point they knew how this worked. This tradition had been passed down for generations in great detail and with great purpose.
"Did you marinate these at all, Josie? Not that they taste bad..." Carl Eakes asked Josie, who was pulling out plates from the back of the truck while her husband slung the spatula not far away. Carl wasn't much of a talker and was also the youngest of the group, so Josie made sure to answer him. It hit her Carl was the youngest of the group until tonight. Then he would graduate to second youngest.
"Yeah, we used this brown sugar recipe of my mom's," Josie said. "It's got brown sugar, soy sauce, ketchup and a bunch of other stuff."
"Smells good," Carl said and let that sit.
Aside from Dave and Josie, Kenny brought his girlfriend JoAnn with them. Ron's wife, Karen, was on call at the local hospital and couldn't make it out, though there were whisperings that she was avoiding this particular scratch for emotional reasons, which was strictly against the rules. While the group could have easily been mistaken for a group of weekend campers, what was happening was a ritual hundreds of years old. For the people gathered in the clearing, this was church.
Dilly had spent the first part of the evening, while the "men folk" worked on the food, sitting on top of one of the picnic tables staring out into the seemingly endless field of grass and weeds that exist only in rural areas, where you can see for miles and track the wind as it rushes across the flat plains toward a tree line. Josie desperately wanted to go to him. She went to Dave instead.
"You should go say something," she said.
"We will. This is the worst part. Trust me."
"Then go tell him that. He's suffering over there."
The boy had sheepishly told his dad that he wanted to "go out with the boys" the afternoon after they had had their uncomfortable talk. He had tried hard not to seem overly enthusiastic but Dave knew his boy and knew there would be little to no holding him back for much longer. After a short conversation, Josie had given up as well, so here he was.
Dave was about to tell her that Dilly's behavior was perfectly normal, but before he had the chance a blue truck that could have easily been mistaken as missing a muffler pulled up. The stink the truck brought with it, that acrid bouquet topped with a chemical sweetness, lingered as it always did. Willie was late. Willie was usually late. Everyone was OK with Willie being late. As Carl politely observed after one particularly spirited evening, a little bit of Willie went a long way.
William "Willie" Rhodes, all 6'4 of him, seldom did anything quiet. Any subject needing an opinion, Willie would let his be known first, loudest and most often least informed, which, given he had very little by way of a social filter in his old age, often made for uncomfortable moments. Among the boys, the pause in the conversation that frequently accompanied something loud and obnoxious out of Willie's mouth had become known as a "Willie Pause."
Willie and Josie got along like oil and more oil lit on fire and poured onto a pile of gasoline-soaked rags. Things had been particularly rough lately and Dave was hoping his father would suck it up for his grandson. Dave tried to give Josie a smile, but it was too thin and they both knew it.
"Where's Lacy?" Dave asked.
Willie dismissed his son with a wave and laser-focused on Dilly.
"What the hell you mopin' over there for, boy?" Willie said. "Get over here and hug your grandpa."
Dilly obliged as the two had always had a soft spot for each other and were soon embroiled in a conversation about this year's basketball team. Before any tension could manifest, low and behold, the food finished cooking and everyone jammed some in their mouths. Beers were cracked and before long a nice, easy mood settled over the camp as the conversation turned to the most important topic in the world.
"You know what I say," Willie started after wolfing down his trout. "If you gotta get rid of a coach, they couldn't have done it any better. And if that new guy who used to play quarterback knows what's good for him he'll start kicking ass early and often. I remember what that "N" on the side of our helmets used to mean something."
"You gotta give him some time," Dave said. "Let's see what type of team he can put together. Talk to me after in a few years when it's all his guys."
"Actually," Carl jumped in. "He brought over some coaches and recruits so some of them are his guys. Not that you don't have a point, plus he had a great recruiting class."
"He better have a good recruiting class!" Kenny said. "Goddamn Michigan's got that pro coach, the damn... what are they... Ohio State, their guy is the best recruiter in the damn game. We're screwed worse than a..."
Josie shot him a look.
"Worse than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest," Kenny said, making a grand gesture of toning it down.
"He's supposed to be a defensive genius," Ron said, throwing his bulk back against the chair. "If he's a defensive genius I'm Jabba the Hutt."
"Jabba the... what the hell are you talking about?" Willie said.
"He's from Star Wars, Grandpa. He's a giant slug thing," Dilly said.
"Fine, if he's a defensive genius I'm Marilyn Monroe. That more up your alley, Willie?" Ron said to a few chuckles. Tipping the scales at 240, Ron had played football in college but his physique was now more biker than athlete, with the long beard to match.
"I'm gonna stick my foot up your alley if you're not careful," Willie said, followed by a Willie Pause.
The talk continued, drifting from football to gossip to business then back to football and before anyone had time to really get going about anything. The occasion called for camaraderie so no one talked politics. The occasion called for good feelings so no one got up on horses, high or otherwise. The sun had gotten low and it was time. They had gotten to this point without talking about Byron or any of the unprecedented, bloody business of the past few weeks. There was time for that later. The moment felt right and it would be wrong to waste it.
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step two. You go back to nature.
Dave put his arm around Dilly as they walked from the clearing into the woods with the rest of the men. The boy was hot and was trembling slightly. Before they got too far out, he snuck a look back at his mother. She was standing, her hands folded palm to palm in a nervous stance. She didn't make any motion but was wearing her anxiety like an ugly hat.
"Don't worry quite yet," Dave said. "This part isn't anything scary. You're going to lay in the grass, you're going to clear your head and just, listen."
"You've told me what I'm supposed to be listening for but I don't know that I get it," Dilly said. "There's nothing out here."
"That isn't true at all," Dave said. "It's so noisy you almost hear too much. You'll hear when we get there. You're not listening for any one thing, kid. What you're doing is taking in all the sounds and once you get the sounds, then you'll start taking in what makes the sounds and the smells and how everything feels."
"Yeah, but what happens if I don't?" Dilly said.
"Then don't freak out. Relax, breathe and everything will make sense once we're out there. Then it will be time."
They walked far out into the field until the women and the food and the cars and trucks parked along the way were dots on the huge sky horizon. They kept walking into a thick growth of trees until Dave moved to the front of the group, and said "here."
First Willie, then Ron, then Carl, then Kenny Kirk stretched out on the forest floor. Dilly looked at his father hesitantly, but the time for words passed. Dave nodded, which he hoped conveyed to his son that all was well, and Dilly took his spot, stretched out his long frame and folded his hands. Finally, Dave laid down to the loud crunching of grass and leaves.
Once your head is near the dirt, the sounds of the forest become magnified. The wind is as loud as a train, the scuttling of bugs and small animals immediately apparent. As Dilly lay on the cold ground, his dad's prediction came true and suddenly the scent of the Earth underneath him was as strong as coffee in the morning, the prickly feel of the dead leaves under his arms now a persistent poke. The waning sunlight through the trees was getting less and less but somehow seemed more and more and before long, Dilly's head was buzzing with dirt and wind and scents and moss and bark and sweat.
Dilly was also acutely aware of the others as well, particularly their breathing and their scents. His father's scent he knew from home and his grandfather's from when he used to sleep over when he was a kid, but the smells of the other men—oil for Kenny, musk for Ron, a sickly sweet for Carl—suddenly filled his nostrils. The question "what do I smell like?" floated through his head, temporarily dethroning the anxiety that had set up shop there a few weeks earlier.
Then, he caught another scent all together. It was a softer scent, but also a grittier one. It evoked fur and sweet grass tinged with something else. Something that had really grabbed Dilly's attention. He noticed Carl was standing up and soon Willie joined him.
The second Dilly got to his feet, Dave was behind him.
"Don't turn around," he said in a lower voice than normal. "Keep that scent in your head. Feel it, then add to it."
Dilly knew what Dave meant. They had spoken at length about how the transition works and what thoughts and feelings he could use to get there. He knew the thought had to be his own and that he shouldn't share it. Dave had told him sometimes it takes a while to find the one that does it, but once you know what your trigger is, it becomes your best friend and your worst enemy. Dilly had three thoughts to pick from that he had chosen after careful consideration—a time when he was a seven-year-old and got lost at the mall down in Grand Island, the first time he took an elbow to the face during a basketball game and then Allie, that feeling of moist pressure from her mouth on his as they kissed. He had no stronger memories in his entire head than those three and his anxiety rose again, hoping they would do the trick. If they didn't, he was in serious trouble.
The other men had started taking off their clothes, starting with their shirts, their torsos a variety of the rural Caucasian experience. Willie's expansive belly was huge and covered in fine white hair the color of his beard, Kenny Kirk was stick thin with a bit of a sink in his chest. Their smells became much stronger once they lost their clothes and Dilly registered they were all facing the same direction, into the woods. The men were naked in a short period of time, all of them in front of Dilly facing the thick overgrowth except his father, who was behind him.
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step three. You scratched.
Dilly's brain was swimming with smells and sensations, but he was still lucid enough to remember, vividly, that Ron was the one who jerked forward first, as if he had been hit hard in the small of the back. His stomach pitched forward, his face jerking upward, then his body jerked the opposite direction as Kenny Kirk started flailing as well. Carl's arms flew around his body as though unconnected. Willie stood there and it was on his grandfather that Dilly kept his fleeting focus.
Willie was growing hair. He was a hairy dude to start with but his hair was elongating, growing noticeably thicker and shaggier, taking on a different consistency. As Carl, Ron, and Kenny Kirk flailed and jerked around him, Willie stood, his feet planted as his hair, and then his body, began to grow.
At that moment Dilly heard his father's voice, lower than he had ever heard it, whisper and growl.
"Breathe deep. Use your thought. Do it now."
The deep breath in brought all the smells of the men, the forest, the camp and the strange new one which he somehow knew was blood all flooding into his head, each fighting for space, battling to be the predominant scent. As he exhaled, the substantial anxiety Dilly had been carrying for years flooded out of his nostrils and in its place was desire to howl and to run and to get into the fucking forest already. There was only one thing stopping him and he was still conscious enough to know it. He had to use his thought.
He tried thinking of the fear of being alone and helpless. Nothing happened. He jumped around and thought of Allie and her softness, her smells and moans as their tongues intertwined. Nothing happened.
Well, this must be the one, Dilly thought to himself.
The moment was as vivid as any memory he possessed. He was in the middle of a junior varsity game and a player on the Castleville Coyotes had been on his ass from the opening whistle. They had locked horns on a couple of defensive plays and Dilly had still managed to use his height and his arm length to get around the guy and score. He had 12 points and hadn't seen halftime yet when the elbow came, fast and hard and square in the soft part of his nose. If it had been to the side or gotten some of his eye in the shot, Dilly could have been persuaded that it was an accident, but the elbow was square and sharp and Dilly knew, even before he opened his eyes, that there would be blood all down his face.
When Dilly was able to look and shake out the stars that filled his vision, he was the Coyote with a shit-eating grin. I hit you the grin said. And you ain't doing shit about it.
That night, Dilly had done something about it. He had scored 35 more points for a school record. He had played his heart out and his teammates, sensing the energy, had fed him the ball and every time Dilly had it, he took it straight to the Coyote, knocking him down, drawing foul after foul, and winning the game almost singlehandedly. His mother had said she'd never been so proud. His father had said he'd never seen such guts. Dilly knew better. He knew he wanted blood and in this case, blood was humiliating your opponent. Dilly knew who he was that night. He was the guy who got up after you knocked him down while serving you a nice big shitburger in the process. He was a soldier that way. He was merciless. He could bleed and he could make you bleed.
The memory was so fierce that Dilly tasted blood and smelled the leather on the ball and then the first spasm hit. It hurt. Dilly felt his spine shift in ways it never had before, not even close, and the pain that came with it was white hot and unrelenting, only subsiding when pain in his arms and legs took its place. It felt like his back was twisting and pulling muscle and cartilage with it in a sick, unnatural dance. He tried to scream but couldn't as his throat had taken an odd shape and the taste of blood, once in his head, was now very real and tangy as it flowed down his throat. He squeezed tears out of his eyes as his conscious mind shut down and his thoughts and memories left him, his last alert sensation being a strange stretching and tearing sensation accompanied by terrible popping sounds.
Dilly's body continued to spasm and pull and stretch and break. If the boy had been conscious, he would have had to witness his back arch and seemingly gain mass and sprout hair, his nose pull away from his face, his teeth sharpen to razors, his nails grow to claws. The other men around him underwent the same transformation, scratching at the dirt with all their strength, leaving fresh, damp grooves in the floor of the forest but none of them made sounds like the boy, his screams a reflex, his considerable blood loss, a product of his first transformation. By the time the screaming stopped and it was done, steam poured from small pools of blood around where the boy had been.
The Young Wolf emerged from the dirt. Not a wolf, exactly, but long and hairy and lean and hungry, covered in hair and drooling, a creature unfamiliar by man but thousands of years old. The Young Wolf was big yet slightly fragile in his coiled and aggressive stance. Had the wolf stood on its hind legs it would be seven feet of children's nightmare, drooling and snarling and dripping blood.
The new wolf opened its eyes which were yellow and sharp, and scanned the ground for the thing he needed.
Pack. My pack.
From their spots in the grass, the other wolves emerged. One white and big, one thin and fast, one small and straight, one large and ready. The new creature turned around and saw his father, the biggest of the pack. His chest between his front paws was large and heaving, his eyes sharp and his teeth bared. Bigger than any wolf in the wild, or any man, the Lead Wolf, the new wolf's father, reared up his head and started to howl. The other wolves followed and the new wolf heard a sound escape his throat that was perfect and right and carried with it one uncompromising message from the pack.
We are here.
By now, they all knew how this worked. Step four. You run.
The Lead Wolf took off with a speed and dexterity that shocked the Young Wolf. The others followed, fast and hard and soon the new wolf was running as fast as his new body would allow and was having trouble keeping up. He dug in and soon passed the White Wolf and the Thin Wolf and was in line with the Large Wolf when the new smell hit his nose and penetrated all the way down to his heart.
Blood. That way.
This is what they were chasing, why they were here and the Young Wolf suddenly had a purpose. At breakneck speed, he made a long circle, turning to his left and losing ground to the Large Wolf, whose turn was sharp and direct. He almost lost his balance but his back legs were strong and the dirt was thick and supported him. The forest seemed to help as he found a root under his paw that helped him push his weight in a new direction and two trees leading to a clearing seemed to lead him exactly where he wanted to go. The smell was pungent and thick and an unparalleled desire grabbed the new wolf and shook him. He had to have this smell. He was merciless. He could make you bleed.
The Lead Wolf had slowed and was moving in a manner that was curious to the new wolf, not using his unnaturally long, curved nails to dig into the dirt, but pulling them up and using his pads, changing the way his hulking frame moved. The White Wolf, who had snuck up on him, rammed the length of his body into the new wolf, prompting him.
Shhhhhh
Understanding, the Young Wolf began slowing, eventually moving to a crawl with the others. The scent was farther away now, harder to find. His long snout searched the air as did the others, but the Lead Wolf snorted at them and they all fell silent. They had come upon a small clearing and a stream, swollen with water from a late, muddy early fall. The creature giving off the scent, whatever it was, had gone through the stream and the scent had intermingled with moss, very strong moss, and fishy scents and hearty buzzing flies and water. The Young Wolf fixed his new wolf eyes across the river, searching for any sign of movement. It was dark and there was none.
The rest of the pack had begun to turn around when the Young Wolf spotted it, far, far away. A low branch of a tree, with leaves starting to die and turn yellow and smelling sweet in their death, had a branch that was swinging opposite the wind. He saw this small, telltale sign of life and took off running. He was over the river in a second and to the tree branch with the pack behind him, howling in disapproval. He blew past the tree and the second he got to the other side, the scent returned and strengthened and the Young Wolf saw red around the edges of his vision whenever he breathed it in. He then heard the sound of hooves, frantically clopping and could hear the deer, darting around in fits of panic trying to milk every last second of speed from its coiled, tight muscles.
The Young Wolf was aware of his pack behind him when his eyes set upon the deer. She was young, two winters or so, and after running for just a moment the Young Wolf could make out her tail bobbing in between thick patches of leaves and bark. Zeroing in on the movement, focused on nothing else on the planet, he gained ground, plowing through underbrush and causing enough noise to alert every animal in the forest. The deer was already at top speed and losing ground. The Young Wolf was gaining with the pack close behind him when his back paw hit a patch of mud disguised as solid ground and he slipped. His large, long body pitched to one side and crashed into the trunk of a tree, and he let out a yelp as the thundering of the pack ran close by his head.
NO
Up off the ground and angry at the fall, the Young Wolf was now in the back of the pack, struggling, striving to make up any ground he could. The White Wolf was the slowest and was breathing heavily when the Young Wolf passed him without acknowledgment. The Large Wolf was next, and he received a snarl and a small, unconvincing snap as he passed. The Young Wolf was big, but the Large Wolf could have knocked him off course easily. He did not. Ahead of him was the Thin Wolf and his father. They showed no signs of giving ground if they could help it. The three wolves at the head of the pack ran without changing ground for a short time with the Young Wolf not losing steam, but starting to feel the pull of fatigue on his limbs.
The desire to stop became stronger and stronger and just as the Young Wolf was surrendering and slowing down, the scent of blood filled his nostrils again, this time accompanied with a faint sound of the deer's heart as it thumped faster and faster, desperately trying to lose the hunters that were so close on its trail. The sound of the heartbeat locked the Young Wolf's brain like a vice and he pushed himself harder and harder, making his strides longer and growling with genuine aggression as he passed the Thin Wolf, who made a slight bow with his head and dropped back. The fatigue gave way to the hunt and all the rest of the smells and sounds battling their way into the wolves' heightened senses gave way to the hoofbeat of their prey.
The Lead Wolf and the Young Wolf were even now, with the deer just feet away, pumping its legs in fluid motions and gliding over obstacles the forest had placed in its path. The wolves smashed through them, wood splintering, dirt flying off the back of their paws. The deer ran down a slight ravine and kept going, which gave the hunters the opportunity they needed. They both leapt through the air, silhouetted by the sun, low and huge on the horizon, and landed on the deer, the Young Wolf near the head and the Lead Wolf by the haunches.
The Young Wolf was so frenzied that his teeth were in the deer's flesh before he realized he'd missed the neck and bitten into the face. He ripped the flesh away causing the deer to make a half scream but its eyes were still very sharp and focused when the young wolf found the neck and began to bite. Behind him, the Lead Wolf had tasted blood, but stopped to watch his son, his back to the pack, tear at the neck and shake with a ferocity the pack had forgotten. He bit and the deer bled and died, its sharp eyes rolling back and its pain ending, long dead by the time the entire pack had gathered around. The scent gave way to physical fluid as blood poured over the young wolf's face and down his throat, coating it with its viscous saltiness that wild hunters have known for as long as there has been a hunt.
With the wash of blood, the Young Wolf felt a wash of pleasure and accomplishment unlike any he had ever known. If he could have put the feeling into words, he would have said he never felt more at absolute harmony with his body or his soul or the Earth. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to do and he had the bloody snout and the flooded throat to prove it.
The howls began, softly at first, then louder as the circle of ancient and giant and experienced and new wolves screamed in their victory. The moon was barely visible through the light that was giving way to a darkening sky and the Lead Wolf joined the howl.
Smeared in blood, his senses sky high, every beat of his heart pumping royal blood through his mighty veins, the Young Wolf at last raised his head from the carcass and howled the loudest of them all, bellowing to the forest and the state and the world one united message.
Do not fuck with us.
They reveled for a moment then, one by one, ran farther into the woods. There was more to do. They dispersed, but each one was in touch with the pack, each knew not to go too far. After they had taken their own paths, the Lead Wolf took a moment to watch his child enjoy the kill. It was a moment he was envious of and when he finally approached the Young Wolf, still face down in gore, and nudged him on the hind quarters, his message was simple.
Miles to go before we sleep.
The Young Wolf understood and before long they were off, the sun was gone and the wolves of Cherry, Nebraska, ran through the woods, hunting in the thick trees as darkness covered the land.
•••
Depending on the range and atmospheric conditions, the howls could stretch well into Cherry proper. Most of the residents ignored them but no one was more deaf than Chuck Nesbit. He was hard of hearing anyway and, by trade, everything was his business and nothing was.
But the stranger at the bar, he sure as shit heard it.
"You got wolves around here, do you?"
Chuck was making a meal out of cleaning glasses because, as much as he didn't want to admit it, the dude in front of him was interesting. Not that he would let him know that.
The man was lithe and coiled, his leather jacket covering a frame that looked like it had a bit of muscle, but not much. He definitely wasn't from around here and it wasn't just his lack of denim or other fashion choices. He came at Chuck with an intensity he was not used to and had no idea what to do with.
"I didn't hear anything," Chuck said.
"Oh yeah, you did," the man continued. He had an Irish brogue but Chuck wasn't able to identify it primarily out of ignorance.
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"Yeah, you fuckin' do," the man said. "That loud howling sound everyone just heard. Coming from outside. From wolves. Aooooooo, that noise. You follow me?"
Chuck put down his cup, now thoroughly dry, and picked up another one.
"Can I get you anything else?"
"I've still got half a pint left, and don't change the subject. I asked if you had wolves around here."
"Wolves, deer, squirrels, all sorts of things," Chuck said, now actively avoiding the man's intense eye contact.
"I've never heard a wolf make a howl like that. That sounded like something else to me. Are you following?"
"I've got to go do some dishes."
Without breaking the intense eye contact, the man reached over and knocked his beer glass onto the bar, spilling the contents onto the laminated wood.
"Ah shit, sorry about that," the man said. "Could you grab a rag for me please? I'd hate to leave smelling of beer, am I right?"
Suddenly, Chuck didn't find this guy interesting anymore and wanted nothing more than to get in the back and away from his company. He grabbed a rag and quickly tried to mop up the mess. Without warning and with staggering quickness the man grabbed Chuck's arm and quickly applied pressure to his fingers. It wasn't painful particularly, but the promise of pain was there.
"Brother, listen to me. I know you're the stoic sort but I need to find some very special people in this town and I know you know who I'm talking about. It's the same people responsible for those bodies a week or so ago. The ones all ripped all to hell. Now I'm not going to hurt you but what you need to do is write a name on a piece of paper and give it to me. Do that and I'll never darken your door again."
"What happens if I don't?" Chuck said, suddenly defiant.
"Then I'm going to stay for a few more drinks and we'll see where the night takes us."
"Can I finish mopping up your mess first?"
"Please, allow me."
The man with the leather jacket and the Irish brogue snatched the rag out of Chuck's hand and went to work, leaving the barkeep dazed and more than a bit conflicted.
"Just one name," the man said. "I'm not here to hurt them, either."
"Bullshit," Chuck said.
"Your beer, your beer is the real bullshit. Watered down, light as fucking air. How you wash away your troubles without the benefit of a good, stout beer is beyond me."
He smiled and Chuck wrote the name "Kenny Rathman" on a napkin and nearly handed it to him.
"You promise? He's a pain in the ass but he's a friend. I don't mean to send him no trouble."
"My good man, trouble has already found him," the man said. "I'm trying to bail his ass out."
•••
It was around 3:30 in the morning when the men started returning to camp, slowly and teetering from exhaustion, all of them breathing heavy. All except one.
Dilly had done his best to clean up. When he came to, or "got back on the reservation" as Kenny Kirk had put it, he was grotesque. His body was fine, as far as he could tell, and he wasn't all that achy from the transformation and every joint and bone seemed to be well back in place, but he was naked and covered with dirt and blood. There were some other substances as well that he didn't think too hard about, opting, instead, for a quick dip in a shallow, mossy stream that ran near the campsite.
Dilly was splashing water on his neck, doing his best to not freak out over what had just happened, when he realized his grandfather was in the creek as well.
"Hell of a thing, huh, kid," Willie said.
"Yeah," Dilly said, head down, knowing what he said was completely inadequate for the occasion.
"I've got about three memories left floating around in this noggin, and one of them is my first scratch," Willie said. "It was 1970, that or there about. Went down just about like this one. I was wobbly and shaky but I got the job done, believe me."
On the edges of the bank, Ron had found his footing and was walking upright, once again a slightly intimidating middle-aged man. Dilly tried hard not to look at his naked body, but caught a glimpse of Ron's penis which was floppy and surrounded by coarse-looking hair.
"You're awfully quiet," Willie prodded. "Hell of a thing that just happened to you. My first scratch, I couldn't stop talking about it."
"I bet you couldn't," Dilly said.
"Ahhh, don't give me that tone," Willie said. "I'll tell you this—I didn't take down no lily-ass deer. Got me a buck my first time out. Those antlers make a world of difference, boy, believe me."
"I believe you, Grandpa."
"A deer," Willie said, shaking his head, his white beard swaying. "Anyone can take down a deer. They're fast is all. Hell, I'd have been disappointed if you didn't kill a deer. I'd have been worried about having bringing you out with us."
"I'm starting to think the same thing about you."
Dave walked out from behind the bushes, chewing on one of his fingernails.
"You were puffing pretty hard out there."
"Bullshit," Willie said. "I was holding back because of the boy. We all were."
Physically, Dilly made no indication he'd heard. His posture changed just slightly enough for a father to recognize it. To degrade, belittle and generally be a giant asshole was Willie's modus operandi and had been for as long as Dave had been alive. Criticism was the man's life breath and ninety-nine percent of the time, easily dismissed. Dave had hoped against hope that he would tone it down for his son's first run but Willie had been Willie. Of course he had.
"So you're telling me I didn't just blow by you after I tripped on that root?"
Both men turned and looked at Dilly. The boy's head was still down, but Dave could see a little grin working its way around the corners of his mouth.
"You blew by me because I let you," Willie said. "And watch your tone."
"I was just worried about you, Grandpa," Dilly said. "It sounded like your heart was going to explode."
This elicited a snort from several trees away, giving away Ron's position.
"Quit eavesdropping, you asshole," Willie yelled.
Dilly didn't wait around to keep the argument going, laying down in the filthy stream and coming up rubbing his arms and doing his best to clean off. The cold was like a punch that pulled the breath from his body. Willie, clean enough, apparently, got out of the stream, muttering and saying a few choice words to Dave as they passed, but they didn't land. Instead, Dave knelt down by the water, deep shadows of the trees covering him.
"You all right?"
"Yeah, that's just Grandpa," Dilly said.
"That's not what I mean."
"I know."
The only sound was Dilly still trying to get some of the caked-on blood off his shoulders and chest. The water, full of all sorts of crap, was not up to the job.
"Willie was kind of a jerk just now, but he has a point. He said he doesn't remember much, but he remembers what you just did. I remember too. It's one of those things..."
Dilly had stopped washing and turned to look at Dave.
"Every time you go out there, every time we scratch, it's an amazing thing. It's primal and... well, you know now, don't ya. It's a rush. But it's never as much a rush as your first time and it's a high you can never really get back. I guess what I want to tell you is enjoy it. You're going to get older and things are going to be more set and you will have less and less of these moments that make memories like this."
"So... I did OK?"
Dave's eyes welled up at the innocence and sweetness of his kid. After undergoing this truly odd and extraordinary ritual that would change his life forever, all he wanted was his father's approval.
"Son, yes, yes. You did great. There's no real wrong way to do it but I'm proud of you. I'm proud of your bravery, how you were scared of the transformation but did it anyway. I'm proud of how you got back up after tripping. I'm especially proud of you giving Willie the business a couple of minutes ago."
They both chuckled in the deep moonlight. The rest of the pack had moved on.
"We should get back, but you did great. And you'll want to do it again."
"That's what I don't get," Dilly said, getting out of the water. They both headed for camp. "You say everyone gets this urge to scratch every so often and that the whole pack has to go out together. What's it feel like? What should I look out for?"
"It's hard to describe, but you'll know," Dave said. "It usually starts with the senses. You'll smell things you couldn't smell, sounds will really start to bother you. Sometimes it's tied to whatever your thought is. Your emotions go all haywire. It's got nothing to do with the moon like in all those movies and more to do with whatever you're going through at the time. This one time, Ron was going through a rough patch with his first wife and they would fight all the time and he would want to scratch every other night almost. He was really pissed off morning noon and night so we had to put some rules in place and get him some help. The point is he didn't go out alone. No one goes out alone."
Dilly's face was a mask of concern behind spatters of blood and dirt.
"It happens less the older you get. Just, be mindful, I guess. Really get to know yourself and how your brain works and you'll be fine."
"Fine?" Dilly said, taking a moment to let the word dangle and dissolve into the air. "Dad, I know you've been, like, getting me ready for this since I was seven but I just turned into a wolf and bit off a deer's face."
"You found the neck eventually."
"That's not the point!"
This time, Dilly's words did not dangle or dissolve, but pierce. Dave flashed back to watching his son throw temper tantrums as a toddler. His son had been an epic fit thrower, a destroyer of worlds until his face turned red then purple with the pure rage of a child. Then, magically, it stopped over the course of a month and he had been an even-tempered kid ever since. When he exploded, there was a reason.
"Look..." Dave started.
"No, Dad. Just..."
The two men stood, clothed only by the shadows.
"I understand what this costs."
"What do you mean?
"I mean you're right about the high. You're right that I've never felt anything like that. You're right that I want to do this. And you're right that I'm going to understand myself and you guys in a really profound way."
Dilly exhaled hard, his breath visible as the night turned frosty and bitter.
"I also know it means I can never go back."
"How do you mean? What is it you're worried about?"
"Dad, we live in the middle of nowhere. My graduating class is going to be twenty-nine kids. There's one restaurant within twenty miles of here and it's OK but it's the only restaurant for twenty miles. You didn't grow up online, Dad. I know kids from Ecuador and San Francisco and, hell, from Lincoln and Grand Island and they're going away to big schools and they're making big plans. They're going to visit places and meet people and they're going to eat in restaurants that serve amazing food and I'm going to be..."
Dave finished for him.
"... figuring this out."
"Yeah. I'm going to be figuring out how to be whatever it is we are."
Dilly immediately tried to soften the blow.
"I mean, I love you guys and I don't think for a second that I'm taking this for granted..."
The kid had a point. When Dave had learned the rules of the scratch it was presented to him as something like the weather or car maintenance. It was something you had to do and Willie, nurturing father that he was, didn't answer a lot of his son's questions, leaving Dave to figure it out for himself. At the end of the day it had been a good thing and taught the young wolf self-reliance, but on the other hand he didn't realize he would be stuck in Cherry until he was already stuck in Cherry.
"No, I get it," Dave said. "And I don't have an answer for you now because it's going to take a little while to figure things out. But maybe college isn't out of the question for you. Maybe trips and hot foreign girls aren't out of the question."
"Dad, don't be gross."
Dave's hand found Dilly's shoulder in the dark.
"The truth of the matter is we don't know what sort of wolf you're going to be yet, or what sort of man you're going to be. But we'll figure it out together, like we always do."
The sounds of camp, gentle as they were, filled their sensitive ears. Dave stopped them.
"Your mom and I knew this was coming. Don't worry that you're going to hurt our feelings."
Dilly hung his head a bit, exhausted.
"Come on. We've got miles to go."
"You say that too much."
"Yeah, well."
They found their clothes right where they had left them and started putting them on.
"Why doesn't Mom ever come out with us?"
"Because she doesn't have any fun. That's why."
•••
The unofficial "step 5" in the rules of the scratch is you crash hard for at least ten hours and then wake up and go over what went down the night before. By this point Josie and Kenny Kirk's girlfriend JoAnn were used to these sorts of mornings, and had cooked up pancakes and bacon, carbs, and protein. Karen, Ron's (second) wife had shown up after her shift ended and had helped on and off so when the boys started stirring around noon, breakfast was rolling.
The men had all thrown on pants, at the very least, before passing out the night before, and hurriedly went about finding their shirts and other clothing before presenting themselves, all except Willie, who honestly couldn't care less and wore his gut not with pride, exactly, but with something very close to it. He strode up to the women, throwing red suspenders attached to his jeans over his hairy shoulders. For some reason, Josie felt he was giving off a Santa Claus–style vibe.
"Thanks," he grunted, barely audible.
"Rough night, gramps," Josie said.
"You cook these?"
"You know I did, Willie."
"You can't cook for shit."
"Then maybe you should invite Lacy out to cook for you."
Clearly bested and clearly hungry, Willie muttered something and turned toward the picnic table. Lacy, Willie's long-standing, long-suffering girlfriend, did not know about Willie's woodland adventures and was sincerely not bright enough to ask. It was a sore spot with Willie and the group as they had been together for upwards of five years. She should know, but Willie was not going to tell her and Willie was going to do what Willie was going to do. Carl was next in line for late breakfast and was remarkably clean and alert given what he had been up to.
"How about you, Carl Atkins? Rough night?"
"No ma'am, I feel great," Carl said. "That boy of yours sure is fast, though. Drew first blood and everything."
Josie gave a knowing smile. She snuck a look at Dilly who was sitting on top of one of the tables, his long legs pulled up to his chest, his back to the camp. It was impossible to know where he was emotionally, but Josie knew enough to let the boy sit. He'd come over when he got hungry.
"Don't let him threaten you," she said. "You've got experience on your side."
"Oh no, it's not like that," Carl said. "It was nice to have someone who was faster than me. Makes me try harder, right?"
"Suppose so," Josie said, spreading the bacon to the side of the pancakes.
"Thank you, Josie," he said.
Kenny Kirk had cut in line and was trying to wrap his arms around JoAnn, who was fighting it. Not that anyone smelled great after a night of camping and/or transforming into wolves and running through the woods, but Kenny had found some brand-new nasty smell and had made friends with it.
"Come on, baby, it's not that bad," he said as she spun out of his two-armed hug.
"You smell like a big shit took a little shit that grew up to be a bigger shit," JoAnn said. "Get off me you giant freak."
"You like the way I freak," Kenny said, moving closer to her.
"Take some pancakes, you smelly ass," JoAnn said, grabbing the plate Josie held at the ready. "Eat it down wind."
"I'll eat you up later and you'll love it," Kenny said, the lure of the food finally getting the better of him. He straddled one of the picnic table seats, put his food in front of him on the seat and dug in with his fingers.
"I don't know how you keep your hands off that," Josie said. "He's too much man for me."
Kenny shot both girls a quick middle finger, his mouth full.
Ron was shambling up, a little slower than the others. Usually when one of the boys hurt themselves as a wolf, they were able to shake it off when they changed back, but Ron was clearly limping, his broad shoulders drooped as he winced every time his thick left leg struck the ground.
"What's with your hitch, there?" Josie asked, handing him a plate.
"That kid of yours, he blew past me out there. Knocked me into a tree. I'm still feeling it."
To demonstrate, Ron shook his leg and rolled his ankle. He winced when the roll reached the top.
"I'll talk to him. Sorry about that."
"He'll hear from me," Ron said. "Newbie or not."
"Don't be like that."
"I'm already not like that. I'm calm as a fuckin' cucumber, Josie, but I can't let it stand without saying anything. If Willie had done it I'd still be knocking the teeth out of his idiot head. Point is, he'll hear from me and that will be that."
"That will be that," Josie repeated, squeezing syrup out of the bottle a little too vigorously. "He's a good kid and he doesn't know his own strength, Ron. Never has."
"Doesn't change nothin'," Ron said. "My leg still hurts. Besides, how else is he going to learn?"
Ron limped off and before long, Dave trudged up by himself to the table. Josie had always kind of loved the way Dave looked the morning after a scratch. His hair found ways of shooting off in different directions and his eyes were stubborn and refused to open all the way. After being married for twenty years she had seen her husband get up and out of bed literally thousands of times and in dozens of conditions—tired, rested, hung over, mad, thrilled, horny, sick—but he never looked the same way he did after a night out with the boys. It was a unique look for him and only she knew what it looked like.
It didn't hurt that Dave had aged remarkably well. He was an athlete in high school and never lost the habit of running and watching his diet, so even at the ripe old age of forty-two he was lean and toned. For some reason he disliked going without a shirt, something that no doubt tied back to living in a house with Willie for eighteen years, but when he did she still found herself tracing the veins from his arms to his shoulder, then following the hair down his chest to his navel and beyond.
"Morning, pretty girl," he said, using a line he'd used longer than he cared to admit. "Make mine to go, I've got a wife to get home to."
Josie ignored his good mood and got straight to it.
"Dilly bumped Ron last night and Ron's gunning for him."
"It's worse than that," Dave said. "Willie wants to bring up Byron. Wants to hash it all out over pancakes."
"But Dilly..."
"Yep."
"We have to..."
"Do what? What happens if we run him home now? Do you think Willie won't bring it up on the way to the car?"
"Dave, I don't want him to know that yet."
"I know."
"He's just gone through it for the first time. He's a beginner. He doesn't need to deal with this. Not yet."
"Try telling that to Willie."
"I just... I will."
"You'd get further trying to get that rock over there to buy you a beer."
He was right, of course. Once Willie's mind was made up, he would stick to his guns and would stick to them harder if you gave him a good reason why he was being a jackass. When Dilly was a boy, Willie decided he was too old to believe in Santa Claus and proudly told Dave he intended to relieve the boy of his childhood belief. Dave told Josie and the two of them caught Willie before he'd had the chance. What resulted was a knock down drag out fight where the phrases "you have no right," "this is not your job," and "we're his fucking parents" were all but screamed, eventually waking Dilly from his nap. All of these were excellent, rational points but, sure enough, Willie walked right into Dilly's room, sat on the corner of his grandson's bed, explained to him that Santa was "bullshit" and "a lie" and then asked what was for dinner as if the fight had never happened. This was not a matter of being cruel. It was a matter of Willie knowing better than anyone else on the planet.
After the Santa Incident, Dave and Josie kept him away from Willie for two months, a huge feat in a town the size of Cherry but, eventually, he showed up little by little and by March things were more or less back to normal. Willie never apologized. Now, Willie had made up his mind that it was time to air some of the family's dirty laundry, no matter how inappropriate, damaging or confusing this information might be and nothing short of the Voice of God was going to change his mind. Maybe not even that.
"Can you get to him before Willie brings it up?" Josie said, her eyes blazing.
"Maybe," Dave said between bites of pancake. "My guess is we have a little time. He wouldn't start some shit until everyone had a chance to eat, right?"
"All right, listen up!" Willie yelled loud enough for the camp to hear. "We need to hash this Byron thing out if things are going to get back to normal."
Cries of "aw Jesus," "we're still eating," and general groans met the old man, but he plowed on, undeterred.
"No, no, I get that this is touchy for all you ladies, but we did something serious a few days ago and we got to reckon for it."
The combination of words had broken through whatever haze Dilly was in and he turned around to join the group.
"Knock it off you old fart. I still got syrup on my fingers," Kenny Kirk shouted back.
"Then talk about this with sticky fingers," Willie said. "We got to get this out in the open."
"What part of this isn't out in the open?" Dave piped up. Josie was glad to hear it. When Willie got rolling it was easy to look for an escape hatch and let him rant and it wasn't unheard of for Dave to turn back into a little boy and cower before his father. But Dave was running at him head-on, not raising his voice but not backing down either.
"Byron made his choices and we made ours. We talked about it for a while and it weighed on all of us, Willie. Don't you remember all that talking we did?"
"I remember you running your damn mouth all night, I remember that."
"Fuck you," Dave said, escalating quickly. "If you don't remember that meeting where everyone said their piece..."
"Not everyone..." Willie stammered, shocked at being knocked back.
"Where EVERYONE said their piece, you included, if you don't remember that then you've come down with Alzheimer's or some shit because we did that together. We did that as a pack."
"That's how you remember it?"
"That's how it was, Willie."
"That's how it was," Willie repeated, chewing the words. "Cause I remember you going on and on about how he was 'threatening this whole thing' and how 'something had to be done.' I remember you pushing for it cause you never liked Byron. Not since you caught him and Josie..."
"You shut your fucking mouth old man," Dave said, moving fast toward Willie. "You shut your fu..."
Before he could get there, Ron had grabbed one arm and clamped down hard, pulling Dave back. Both father and son had cut loose now and were screaming at each other, producing a large garbled ball of hate. Ron gave one hard pull and Dave spun around, running his punching hand through his spiked hair.
"What's everyone talking about?"
Josie closed her eyes. If Dilly hadn't brought it up they could have gotten him home, gotten their version of events into his head first, told him the history he needed to know and left out the history he didn't. Now they had to do it in front of the camp with Willie barking behind them. Dilly had hopped off the table, still bare chested, walking to stand between Dave and Willie.
"Dad, don't say F-you to grandpa. What's going on?"
Willie shot Dave a look ten times worse than anything he could have said.
"He's my boy. I'll talk to him."
"He's in our pack. Tell him now," Willie said.
Dave plopped down on a bench and reckoned with the tightness in his chest and the low, deep hurt in the pit of his stomach.
"You all see it that way?" he asked.
"Of course they do, don't be an idiot," Willie barked.
Dave stood up and got very close to Willie.
"I will tell him but you will keep your fool mouth shut while I do. Anything you got to add, you do so when I'm done, is that clear?"
"What you gonna do if I don't," Willie asked. "You gonna yell more curse words at me?"
"I'll do more than that," Dave said, sitting back down.
"Dad, I feel really left out here," Dilly said, smiling awkwardly. He was trying to crack a joke to relieve the obvious tension in the camp, but hadn't bothered to say anything funny.
Dave snuck one more look at Josie, who was already choking back tears, and launched in.
"Well, Dilly, your Uncle Byron was not a very nice man."
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 2
Of course, the rumors of creatures in the woods exist through the history of Cherry township. Since the community was founded in 1873, the farmers and ranchers had whispered of strange sounds coming from the woods with the occasional sighting of a hairy blur here or a disembowled animal there. But after a while, it faded into the background and became part of the scenery, something you knew about that made you a local, that gave your town some flavor.
The only officially recorded case of an "unusual sighting" came in the spring of 1922 by Mr. RJ Meyer and his family. They were on a nature hike, which was a popular activity for children of the time, and reported to the local weekly paper they had seen a "devilish creature" that was easily eight feet tall and was clearly of the devil. The Meyers implored the local churches of the area to organize a posse, to come to the woods and help rid the community of this demonic influence. The family even co-signed a Letter To The Editor of the Barter County Buck calling for righteous men to take up arms and protect their community. Nothing came of it.
It should be said the Meyers were not well respected in the community and after the community leaders paid them a kindly visit, they promptly dropped their alarmist calls. In particular, it was the influence of Mrs. Erma K. Rhodes, the wife of Pastor Kane F. Rhodes, that apparently changed the mind of the Meyer clan. Later, they recanted, saying their youngest, Samuel, had made up the story and was so convincing that the family had believed him. Plus, good Christians must be on the lookout for demonic influences, wherever they may appear.
To pour through the official history of Cherry, the Meyer incident, as it was known, was not only the only mention of "the W word" in the record, but was likely the most exciting thing to happen to Cherry in a hundred years. Yes, there was the tornado of 1981 that destroyed a grain silo and took the roof off several houses. Yes, there was a high-speed chase in 1992 that involved the Nebraska State Patrol and ended with the suspect running into a cornfield. And, yes, there was the time in 1997 when young Mr. Cronk bedded the new science teacher in town and the scandal lasted well past the school year. But you would be hard-pressed to find a quieter place to live in the whole of the United States.
Roswell had aliens. Loch Ness had Nessie. Boggy Creek had the mighty Sasquatch.
Cherry did not have werewolves.
That didn't, however, stop the Nebraska State Historical Society from putting up a historical marker just outside of town in the early 1960s commemorating the Meyers and their claim. The historical marker, made of granite and buried deep, gets the occasional traveler off the Interstate and into town but, like most historic markers, you've got to be looking for it if you want to see it at all.
PART 3 - NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
Stuart Dietz wasn't a broken man.
Sure, his girlfriend had left him a couple of months ago without as much as a raised voice or a shattered dish. Sure, he had been dismissed from the Detroit Police Department after all but being laughed off the force. Sure, as the subject of a viral video he had been both publicly and privately shamed and couldn't get a goddamn drink in a bar without having someone point and laugh or, worse, point and whisper. Sure, he had devolved from a man hanging on week to week, month to month, into a man who had procured the bitter stank of failure and desperation, a man whose very existence was an apology.
But Stuart Dietz wasn't a broken man. At this point, he wasn't much of anything.
After seven years on the Detroit Police Department, Stu had run into what fellow officers affectionately called a "very bad day." It started with a drug bust gone wrong where a suspected drugs dealer had removed the "suspected" part of his title by throwing his stash in the air after Stu had tried to arrest him. The stash became airborne and Stu, being a human who breathed, had started the day unexpectedly high, his gums numb and heart racing. His partner, a sensible spark plug of a woman named Officer Regan Anson, but "Regs" to her friends, had tried to send him home but Stu was having none of it. He would power through. It was the sort of cop he was.
A domestic dispute later that morning ended with a drunk man vomiting on Stu, which ended up being a nice appetizer for the main course of his "very bad day." They rolled up on a grade-school-age child who was standing in the middle of the road with a very real gun, waving it around. The boy had screamed about his mother taking away his iPad, and Stu had done his best to calm him, which gave onlookers time to gather and fire up their smart phones. Footage of the incident existed from multiple angles and they all showed Stu trying to calm the kid down but failing as the kid continued to scream and gesture with the gun. By the time the kid shot himself in the chest, there were more than a dozen cameras trained on the boy and then on the cop who tried, desperately, to perform CPR and bring the boy back.
What Stu remembered, more than anything, was something the camera couldn't show. The moment after the gun went off the boy, pudgy and dirty, clearly a product of neglect, had widened his eyes and stared at Stu, every part of him screaming "I wish I could take this back." Memories of the boy's eyes had burrowed into Stu's psyche and stayed there, returning again and again, giving the cop no respite, hollowing him out emotionally. Then came the aftermath.
Of course, there was an official investigation that basically cleared him of wrongdoing, but it wasn't the official stuff that really twisted Stu's guts, it was the everyday stuff. It ruined his day when people yelled at him from passing cars on the street. It sucked in a big bad way when his Facebook profile was hacked and flooded with photos of the dead kid in the middle of the road. And he drank a little more the night his mother told him the ladies at the church were "talking." But, as he told his sister over the phone, it was happening to him but in some way it felt like it was really happening to somebody else.
"They're only clichés because they work," she had said. And she was right. Like always.
Since they were kids, Stu and his sister Dana had shared an odd relationship. She was two years older and while Stu had always been solid, if a little timid as a boy, it was clear from the time she was a toddler that Dana could track, kill, and eat her own food. She was the person you wanted on your side in a fight as long as you were absolutely sure that she was going to land on your side. One defining moment in their relationship centered around Stu getting in a scuffle at school in a hallway where bad things frequently happened. He was giving as good as he got in the way boys fight to maximize movement but minimize the possibility of someone actually getting hit. The fight was almost over and Stu was started to let up only to be jerked up by his hair, hard, by Dana and thrown into the corner. She was mad at him for making a scene and embarrassing her, so she decided to end it. The kid Stu was fighting had run off and dinner was a very awkward affair that night.
But they had been in good shape for a while. Dana had come out to her parents when she was twenty and seeing how she handled an awkward and potentially explosive situation had been something Stu remembered, even years later. Dana had laid out the facts in a reasonable manner—she was a girl and her romantic partners were going to be girls and she had known this was the way things were going to be for quite some time—and shut down all the stupid questions her mom and dad had thrown at her while answering the smart ones. Stu, who was seventeen at the time, was listening from down the hall and started to really admire the way Dana could deflect all the bullshit she must have known was coming her way.
"Maybe this is a phase" was met with "I don't believe that's the case and regardless, this is the way things are for now and you need to accept that."
"What about a family" was met with "I'm not interested in a family but if I was, adoption is a very good option, given the number of children who need stable homes."
"You're going against God's law," from their mother was met with "this conversation is done until you can accept me for who I am." And then she followed up, not speaking to her folks for two years, during which Stu was the go-between. It was during this time they established their rapport that carried them into adulthood. Stu had learned to accept that Dana, strong, confident Dana, was right about most things and the things she was wrong about sounded pretty decent and logical coming out of her mouth.
"Do you think your life is viable there anymore?" she had asked him about a week after the incident had made his life nearly intolerable. "Can you live this down and if you do, what are you left with?"
"I'm definitely not living it down," Stu said. "The thing that sucks most about it is, if you look at the rules, I'm in the clear. I didn't do anything wrong, you know?"
"That's good as far as it goes but I'm talking about you," Dana said, bringing it back. "What I'm talking about is making a clean start somewhere else. You don't have much tying you to Detroit anymore. Not Mom and Dad, that's for sure."
"I'm not moving to Florida," Stu said. "Speaking of clichés."
Their parents were exactly where retired people of moderate resources ended up—a Florida retirement community. Stu hadn't been down in a year and even then buoyed the chore by promising himself and his then girlfriend an afternoon at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
"I don't want to sound like the cranky lesbian Mom thinks I am, but here's what I see. I see my brother without a job he enjoys, without a girlfriend, and the frequent target for people who throw things from their car. Get outta there, Stu."
"And go where? You think this isn't going to follow me?"
"Sure it'll follow you," she said. "So you find something out of the way, you do that job for five years or so until this blows over, more or less, and then you're back doing what you want to do by the time you're forty."
Again, she sounded reasonable.
"I guess," Stu said. "But I don't know where to start."
"That's kind of what I called to talk to you about," Dana said, showing her first sign of hesitancy. "There's this job down here..."
"No. No. I am not moving to Nebraska. Nobody lives in Nebraska."
"That's the whole damn point, brother!"
"I am not living anywhere where I can't get a decent sandwich twenty-four hours."
"Don't be a snob."
"I'm not a snob. You know I don't have any money saved up."
"Being a snob isn't about money, you idiot. It's about your attitude. You think because you can see live music on a Tuesday or ride a bus or get a sandwich at four in the morning, which is awful for you by the way, that somehow makes you superior to people who live in the sticks? What an asshole thing to think. I can tell you a thousand good things about living here. First and foremost is that there are not a lot of people to bother you, which is something you need right now, and second, your big sister lives in the sticks and is more than happy to help you get back on your feet."
"I thought snob meant rich."
"Yeah, you're wrong on that."
Stu had ended the call in a good place but totally, unequivocally sure that he was not moving to Nebraska, much less rural Nebraska. He spent the next day online, avoiding news sites and looking for jobs in law enforcement. Then in law enforcement support. Then he widened his search and, by the time the next day rolled around, the little bomb his sister had implanted in his head had started to make little explosions in his brain. Maybe he needed a clean break. Maybe the sticks wouldn't be so bad. Maybe he could order the makings of a decent sandwich online or something. He held out another day and then called Dana back.
"Knew you'd call," she said, not bothering with any sort of greeting. "You held out longer than I thought."
"Yeah," he said. "You're always right."
•••
The interview for Sheriff Grey Allen's position was an easy one being that there were not a lot of applicants and those who had applied were not the sort of folk you'd want mowing your lawn, much less wearing a badge. Two applicants had criminal records, one had a warrant out for his arrest ("it was only a speeding ticket"), one gentleman might have worked if not for his need to take harvest season off and then there was Stu. Tack on to that the need for someone on the job ASAFP, the fact that he had law enforcement training equivalent to what was needed in the job and was willing to relocate and the whole incident in Detroit was overlooked.
That's how it came to be that Stu found himself with his sister's arms around him being welcomed into her home just two months and a week after watching a boy die. Dana and her wife Robin had their own business roasting very specific sorts of coffee which they sold online. Apparently things had been going well because they had added on to their house which sat on about ten acres of land about a mile and a half off the highway.
"I'm glad you're here," she said, continuing the big hug born more out of sympathy than affection, Stu figured. She smelled like coffee in a very pleasant way.
"Good to be here, I guess," Stu said. "I wish it was under better circumstances. Hey, Robin!"
Robin had poked her head out from the house and waved. Short-haired, slim and always impeccably put together, Robin was one of the cutest women, in Stu's estimation, that had ever walked on two legs. She was overly friendly and a great cook, something Stu was hoping would come into play shortly. Before leaving Detroit he had tried to make a tour of his favorite eateries only to get variations of the "whisper and point" wherever he went. Apparently he was still big news. The bottom line was he had eaten Subway and its analogs for most of the past week and a half.
"Hey Stu!" Robin yelled back. "I'd come give you a hug, too, but I'm setting the table. Come eat."
Magic words. He did eat, a lovely spread starting with walnut and cranberry salad leading into a fantastic pasta dish with some sort of cream sauce and mushrooms and topped with strawberries on a biscuit. Stu was about ready to pop by the time Dana handed him a beer and told him to come out to the porch, an expansive affair that ran the length of the house. They settled onto chairs with metal lattice backs and Stu took a long swig of the beer.
"Lucky Bucket," Dana said. "Brewed about a hundred miles from here, give or take. You still a beer guy?"
"At this point I'm an 'anything I can drink' sort of guy."
"Don't be like that," she said. "If you turn into a drunk I'm going to beat the shit out of you and bury you neck deep in my garden until you come out of it. No rehab for you, my friend. It's the garden all the way and the snails and birds will be your only companions."
"Good to know someone's looking out for me, I suppose."
"So, do you want to address this 'woe is me thing' for a little longer or do you want me to tell you about the job you start on Monday?" Dana said. "Cause I can do either one. Or both, but I'm going to need more beer."
"I think I've got some 'woe is me' coming," he said. "Or didn't you watch the video."
Dana had never actually brought up the specifics of "the incident" other than to offer some much welcomed sympathy. The truth of the matter was Stu was feeling sorry for himself but he had three excellent reasons, to his mind, a pity party made all sorts of sense.
Reason one was the obvious. He had left his job, his girlfriend had left and he couldn't go out in public without significant negative attention from strangers. Reason two played into the fears he had always harbored about himself. Stu didn't have the highest self-esteem but being a cop was something he was good at and was one of the cornerstones he had built his identity on. Technically he was a cop again, but by all accounts a disgraced cop, a failed cop, a cop who took a risk during a precarious situation and paid a price for it.
It was the third reason that he hadn't reckoned with yet. Post-traumatic stress was something Stu had been tested for before he had unceremoniously left the Detroit Police Department and he wasn't sure what he was experiencing was covered by that particular diagnosis anyway. If he were to be dramatic about it he would say his experience was less "traumatic stress" and more "being haunted." Between six and twenty times a day, the face of the boy, his eyes extremely wide in surprise and pain, floated into his mind's eye.
I want to take this back. I want to take this back.
He had been living with the "haunting" for long enough to notice a few patterns. He would know by the time he plugged in his electric shaver in the morning whether it was going to be a good day or a bad day. On a good day, the kid's face would float and he would feel a familiar dropping sensation in his stomach just a few times and it wasn't enough to significantly affect his mood. On a bad day he would have to roll with it, play out scenarios in his head, letting the scene play out over and over throughout the day. He would think what he could have done differently and how it would have played out with a pain and anxiety that, after a time, got to be familiar. He even started actively thinking about his "haunting" while he worked out and the pain and drive it gave him, plus the extra time he had on his hands, had put Stu in the best shape of his life. He had thought of some of these scenarios so often that they almost seemed like a well-worn VHS tape he would play a dozen times when he was a kid and the pain was not friendly, exactly, but more safe.
While, outwardly, the "haunting" didn't change anything about his day-to-day routine, it was making him pretty damn miserable. The worst kind of pain, Stu figured, was the kind that made no mark and couldn't be shared with anyone else. Even his sister.
"Of course I watched the video," she said after a longer than usual silence for her. "It was awful, Stu."
For a moment, all that was audible was the wind in the trees, making a rustling that was loud when you stopped to listen to it. For the first time in a long time, Stu's mind was blank, then he realized the silence was going on for too long and something probably should be said.
"Thanks."
"For what?"
"For saying it was awful," Stu said. "No one does that. I get a lot of 'you did what you could's and a few 'you should've done that's but no 'that's awful.' Thanks."
Another couple of seconds, another big gust rattled a thousand leaves into a loud burst of sound. It wasn't unlike a scream, Stu thought.
"Are the trees always this loud?"
"Yeah," Dana said. "It was one of the first things I noticed when we moved out here. Nature is not a quiet lady."
"Neither are you," Stu said.
"Got that right, brother. I have a lot of friends back East and they all have opinions about living in Nebraska. I remember this one girl, Taylor Gainsberg, you remember her?"
Stu shook his head.
"She wasn't gay but was very touchy feely in high school... anyway, she had this loud nasal voice..."
"Wait, was she the 'Mr. Daaaaavidson' girl?" Stu suddenly recalled a birthday party where one of the guests had latched on to a funny vocal affectation and ran with it the entire night. In his memory the girls had made fun of a teacher named Mr. Davidson and one girl had drawn the name out so it took three or four seconds to say, all at a high, nasal pitch. It had become a family joke, briefly, until their mother had shut it down.
"Yeah, that was her. I remember running in to her last time I was back East and she asked where I was living and after I told her she said "Nebraaaaaskaaaa, nobody lives in Nebraaaaskaaa."
Stu smiled and leaned back on the warm metal of the lattice chair.
"I told her I live in Nebraaaaaskaaa. I said it just like that but in my normal tone of voice, and she kind of got pissy and left. You basically said the same thing on the phone a few weeks back."
Dana swigged her beer and Stu felt sufficiently sheepish.
"Point of the story is most folks can't fathom living out here. There are only a few restaurants in driving distance, only one grocery store worth going to, there are bugs and deer and you can get where you're going in five minutes. Truth of the matter is I've only been out here a few years and I can't imagine not living here."
"Really?" Stu asked.
"Really really," Dana said. "If I had to move back to Detroit... hell, if I had to move up to Sioux Falls, I think I'd be miserable real quick."
"Why? You can sit on a porch in a city. You can see a movie in the morning, you can see live music on a Tuesday night, you can..."
"All that shit is secondary, man," Dana said, waving his argument off with her beer bottle. "All that shit, that's just to feel important. People think that if they're surrounded by people doing interesting and important things they'll be interesting and important when the opposite is true. You can waste your life in a city the way you could never, ever waste it out here. This..."
She paused for effect. The wind cooperated.
"This, you and me sitting out on a porch listening to the wind, this is just as important as any of that meaningless crap you just said. Out here you've got to reckon with yourself. Out here, you can figure out who you are. Or you can perfect it. Ahh, speaking of perfect..."
Robin had made her way out to the porch and had pulled up a chair. Dana scooched over and put her arm around her wife.
"I was just giving Stu the 'why we live in the country speech.'"
"Did you pause for effect?"
"Sure did."
"Do you think he bought it?" Robin said, her big brown eyes looking Stu up and down for what he would mistake as attraction if he didn't know better.
"Hard to see. He's stubborn."
"He's also about done with this beer," Stu said. "I would stipulate to all your points if I had another beer in my hand in the next five minutes."
•••
There's being full, and then there's what Stu would refer to in the future as being "Robin Full."
Regular full was having eaten until it was prudent to stop. "Robin Full" involved shoveling food hard and fast for an extended period of time because it was so fresh, so flavorful, so sweet, so perfect that stopping just didn't make sense. Then, after the food was gone, you regretted it.
In the following week, dinner had been at Dana and Robin's three times and Stu had eaten more than was socially acceptable ("are you kidding me with this guy?" Robin had asked) at each sitting. He was staying in a bed and breakfast, about fifteen miles away from Cherry in a town called Springview so it wasn't that much of a trek, although he couldn't drink more than a few beers before hitting the road. The owner of the B&B had big dreams of something called "Sandhills Tourism." Stu found her friendly and strange.
There were very few apartments to speak of in the town of Cherry and during the interview for the Sheriff's position he had stopped at the local bar/diner, named "Bar," and asked around. The bartender, a gruff guy named Chuck, had served him a reasonable hamburger and given him three numbers of people who had space to rent. One number was disconnected, the second had seemed promising, and the third was answered by a gentleman who asked Stu if he was "a Jew."Stu had hung up without giving the man any information, ethnic or otherwise.
The second phone number belonged to Carol Cryer, a nice young woman with a two-year-old daughter named Cassidy who seemed permanently affixed to the top of her hip. Her husband was a soldier, off on deployment, and they had a guest house in the back that was bigger than any apartment Stu had ever lived in. It was dingy and slightly depressing but it was big—three rooms, a bathroom, a full kitchen—the kind of apartment that would go for several thousand a month in parts of Detroit.
Stu took the "guest house" and Carol expressed happiness at "having a man around, especially one with a gun."
"My Fred, he can shoot the wings off a fly at one hundred yards," she bragged. "He's still got thirteen months left on his deployment and we've gotten along, but it'll be nice to have someone close by."
"I'm not nearly that good a shot, but I'm glad it worked out, ma'am," Stu said. He almost never used the term "ma'am," considering it more of a little kid thing to say, but it felt appropriate. Carol smiled and bopped back into her house and Stu drove to pick up his stuff. A quick trip to the Shopman's Market in Springview for supplies and a six-pack of Lucky Bucket and he was something resembling settled. Stu had moved enough to know home didn't really feel like home until the TV was plugged in and the wifi was working.
Unfortunately, no one from the cable company would be out until mid-week (though he was surprised at how fast and cheap the available Internet connections were) so he was stuck with his meager DVD collection. On a whim he popped in Robocop and almost instantly regretted it as the connection of "ultraviolence" and "Detroit" brought his "haunting" around. He shut off the movie and dove into his six-pack. Beer dulled the feelings a bit but by the time he finally fell asleep the clock on his bedside was spinning and his last thought was "I hope I'm not hung over the morning I meet the guy I'm replacing."
No luck.
Grey Allen was ancient. In his ten years as a law enforcement officer, Stu had never seen quite so old a man still in uniform, which hung off Grey Allen like he was a hanger. To his credit, the old Sheriff immediately stood up, firmly shook Stu's hand and exchanged pleasantries before offering Stu a seat.
"Not much to it, I suppose," Grey Allen said. "The holding cell is over there. This key opens and locks the cell. There's a computer over there if you can figure out what the hell to do with it. I sure can't."
"So you don't have electronic files or access to any national databases or anything like that?" Stu asked, realizing how dire the situation was. "What if you have to file a warrant or something?"
"I call Lynda down in Basset off Highway 20, there. She does all that computer stuff for me. Let's see..."
Grey Allen stood up and Stu kept his breathing shallow for fear that a sharp breath might knock the old fart over.
"I'll issue you your weapon. That's important. Every now and again you... you get a call from the State Troopers and you gotta deal with that."
There was a long, long pause as Grey Allen scratched his head and tried to think about what else his job entailed.
"There's a lawnmower in the shed out back. You're responsible for that."
"I have to mow the lawn?" Stu asked.
"You have to mow the lawn, yes," Grey Allen said. "The toilet in the back is a bit sticky, too, you might want to look at that if you have any..."
He trailed off again. Stu stared at him expectantly.
"... any plumbing expertise," he finished.
Stu had been nervous meeting the sheriff whose job he would be taking over, but never in his life would he have come up with this scenario. This wasn't law enforcement as he knew it. As near as he could tell, it wasn't law enforcement as it had once been. There were no computers, very little paperwork that Grey Allen had deemed important enough to tell him about, and a lawn to mow. The theme song from Gilligan's Island popped into Stu's head—"no lights, no phones, no motorcars, not a single luxury."
"Like Robinson Crusoe..." Stu said under his breath.
"What about Robinson Crusoe?" Grey Allen asked, his hearing still sharp.
"Nothing, sir. I have a question for you and I'm trying to figure out how to say it as respectfully as I can."
"Just go," Grey Allen said. "No point pussy footing around."
Stu drew a breath and neither pussy nor footed.
"How do you spend most of your time?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, when I was in Detroit I spent some time on patrol, some on paperwork for patrol, I did some investigating using online tools and databases, I spent some time training. I don't see anything like that here and I'm wondering..."
"What I do here?"
"Yes, sir," Stu said, careful to add the "sir" lest he seem disrespectful.
"I can tell you," Grey Allen said, pulling up a chair and slouching down low like an old-fashioned baseball manager. "I always figured a bad day out of the office was better than a good day in it so I spent most of my time out there in my truck. I logged over 350,000 miles on this job just driving around town, driving out to see folks I know, driving back. I know everyone in this county by sight, Mr. Dietz. Every single person is known to me and I'm known to them. That's how I get around all that paperwork bullshit, to be honest. People know who I am and I know them."
"I understand the concept but you've got to keep records, sir. You've got to have arrest records, traffic stop records, you've got to have warrants and paperwork for the courts. I don't see any of that."
"Nope," Grey Allen said.
"Nope? That's not a question you answer with 'nope.'"
Grey Allen smiled, stood and put a withered hand on Stu's shoulder.
"I'm sure you'll get us all up to speed, then," he said. "If you run into any problems, you seem smart. You can figure them out."
Grey Allen made for the door and his feet were hitting the dirt outside until Stu realized he meant to leave and, likely, never return.
"Wait!" Stu said, out of his chair so quick it threatened to tip over. "That can't be it. You... you're not going to help me any more than that?"
Grey Allen turned around and looked at Stu with tired eyes. The wrinkled bags seemed to almost glow in the hard light of the autumn afternoon.
"You're on your own, kid," he said. "Anything else I could tell you, you'd brush it off. Best figure it out on your own."
"You're not staying around town then?"
"Nope," Grey Allen said. "I promised myself a long vacation a while back. It's time to collect."
Grey Allen seemed to shrink as he got closer and closer to his truck and Stu, not sure what to do either in the situation or at the job in general, stood and watched him go. It took the old-timer almost a minute to open the door to his truck, push it, and climb in before he shot Stu a look and one pearl of wisdom.
"I'm getting out of here," he said. "This town's not cursed exactly... but... I don't know. Something isn't right."
The door creaked shut, his tires crunched on gravel, and Grey Allen drove away, never to be heard from again.
•••
It took a day or two for the word to get out that Grey Allen was gone, but once it was official Stu's phone did not stop ringing. First it was the County Attorney who had long ago given up the idea of working with the Barter County Sheriff's Department.
"That man," the Attorney, a nice man named Michael Gatliss with a fast mouth and a sharp tongue, said. "He was a son of a bitch, is what he was, if you'll pardon me. I tried to work with him and I tried to work with him and I tried to work with him and he would never return my calls. How do you run a Sheriff's office if there's no office to speak of? How the hell do you do that?"
Stu had assured him he didn't know but he looked forward to working with Mr. Gatliss and that he would value any advice he could give him. The man calmed down and said he would send him over some documents.
"You could email them to me," Stu said.
"Email? Email? Are you playing with me?"
"No," Stu said surely, not sure how to take it.
"That's fantastic!" Mr. Gatliss almost yelled. "I will send you an email. Sweet baby Jesus, yes, I will send you an email."
"That's... that's great," Stu offered, not nearly as enthusiastic.
"It's a brand-new day," Gatliss said before hanging up.
This conversation, more or less, played out a dozen or so times in Stu's first few days of duty. Someone would call, feel Stu out, learn he wasn't a technological neophyte or someone hell-bent on obstruction, they would be thrilled and then they would hang up. In between time, Stu did a few patrols, answered a few service calls, though fewer than he had anticipated, and mowed the lawn. It was a small lawn and the mower was well taken care of.
He was on call, more or less, during the evening hours and he slept with his phone close to his bed. It hardly ever rang and if it did it was most likely Dana. In his fourth day he was called down to "Bar" over a dispute concerning a tab, but once he walked through the door all the yelling stopped and things got resolved pretty fast. In between he would visit his sister, who seemed to genuinely like having him around, he would exercise by running some of the flattest land he had ever run, and once cable and Internet got hooked up he spent time in the embrace of serialized television. Even Carol the landlady came by on occasion, once with homemade casserole with bits of Doritos mixed in it. No one bothered him much, no one asked too many questions and most importantly, he didn't have to deal with "the look" once. He had one bad day when his "curse" wouldn't leave him alone but beyond that he was getting the distinct feeling like this move had been good for him.
The only meeting of note came when a Mister Stander showed up, in person, at his office for no reason Stu could discern. The man, who was tall and thin but very polite, sharp in his light-colored suit and bow tie, said he was a visitor to Cherry, there on business, and wasn't having any luck tracking down some of the people he was trying to find. Stu had told him he was new and that he was still learning everyone's names and would be little to no help at the present time.
"I would put you on to the former Sheriff, but I got the impression he's left town for good," Stu said. "Seemed eager to put us in his rear view."
Since he started his life in Cherry, Stu had found himself slipping into colloquialisms with more and more frequency. Phrases like "in his rear view" had crept in there but he seemed to be delivering them well. If he sounded like a moron, no one had mentioned it.
"You're not the first one to say that," Mr. Stander said in a voice that was both gravel and silk at the same time. "Sheriff Grey Allen was well known but, as I understand it, he's not missed."
"No, I get that impression too," Stu said. "What are the names of the men you're looking for again?"
"Two men," Mr. Stander said. "A Mr. Kenny Rathman, known as Kenny Kirk, who owns the local garage and a Mr. Ron Smith, who works with the local grain elevator."
"Give me a month on the job and I bet I could help you, but I'm not part of the community just yet," Stu said. "You've driven by their houses, obviously."
"It seems I always just miss them," Mr. Stander said, his voice a fascinating combination of nasal and bass. He sounded like a radio announcer.
"Right," Stu said. "What's your business with these men?"
"There's no way to say this without sounding mysterious, but it's business between my employer and Mr. Rathman and Mr. Smith," Stander said. "It's nothing sinister, I assure you, but it's nothing that I want out in the community. I'm sure you understand. Keeping secrets in a small community is... extremely difficult."
"Yeah," Stu said, standing up. "I understand. If I meet these men I will make sure to mention you. Do you have a card or something I can give them?"
"No," Mr. Stander said. "Thank you for your help."
And, like that, he was out the door.
The conversation had sat with Stu all day and the more he thought about it the stranger and stranger it seemed. He had made a point to jot down Mr. Stander's Seattle license plate as he left and ran it the following day on the computer system he had spent half a day getting up and running. It was a personal car and Mr. Stander (first name William) had no outstanding warrants or traffic citations. Not only was he clean, he was cleaner than most.
Aside from that little mystery, things rolled along for a week, two weeks, then three. He met people, but didn't make any friends. He spent time on Facebook, he ran through all the seasons of Game of Thrones he had missed, he tried online dating but the nearest match was over fifty miles away. They had a date planned for later in the month and didn't have much in common.
But the longer he spent in basic isolation, the more he had come to the conclusion that Dana had been right. He was healing. He could feel it. The constant reminders of his curse were gone, his sleep patterns were returning, and he made a conscious effort to cut down on beer, though he and Dana had gotten rip-snorting drunk one night and Robin had tucked them into bed on the floor of the living room. Stu had brought up Mr. Stander to Dana and she had given him some good advice, but in the morning it was gone and replaced with headache, nausea and, eventually, vomiting.
If he had remembered his sister's advice, things would have gone a lot smoother in the long run.
"You've done your job," she told him between sips of a particularly stiff amaretto and cream. "What you shouldn't do is let it bug you. What you shouldn't do is let that whole thing set up shop in that head of yours. You should do your job and not get involved with strange men in bow ties."
•••
The reason Mr. Stander couldn't find Kenny was that he had left.
After the events following the scratch, it seemed like the right call. They had all watched Willie pick a fight, Dave take the bait, and things get really ugly, and that's saying something from a guy who had killed a rabbit with his teeth just a few hours earlier.
Part of being in the pack and living with the world-altering secret that you could turn into a wolf was controlling when you "scratched." When you have the ability to turn into a hulking creature capable of doing unspeakable things to small woodland creatures, not to mention human beings, it makes sense to keep that power in check. That's why they broke bread before heading out into the woods, that's why they checked with each other as to how badly they wanted to "go out," it's why they were absolutely honest with each other. Holding back, even with good intentions, could mean both an unwanted transformation and exposure to the outside. Fear of unintentionally killing and/or being found out was what kept them all in check, and honesty and camaraderie were the glue that made those checks possible.
Willie had twisted the system into an outcome no one felt good about. Dave had to confess to his son that he and the rest of them had killed Byron, a family friend that Dilly had known since he was old enough to know anyone. On top of that, Willie had forced Dave's hand and he had confessed that Byron and Josie were lovers in high school before he was born and that they had rekindled that relationship not that long ago. And that the decision to kill Byron was a group decision that had nothing to do with the affair and everything to do with something else, something darker, something that threatened to expose that secret and God knows what else.
Dilly didn't stick around to hear the "something else," opting to run into the woods in his human form to be alone after Dave told him the truth while Josie stifled tears. Afterward, Dave sat at one end of a picnic table, Josie at the other, both with their heads down, the damage done. The rest of the pack, save Willie, kicked at the dirt and tried to figure out a way to leave.
It was Kenny Kirk who figured it out first.
"To hell with this bullshit," he said. "JoAnn, come on."
"I think we've got business to discuss," Ron started.
"Ya heard me say 'to hell with this bullshit,' didn't you?" Kenny said back. "Nothing's getting solved today, not with everyone flipping the fuck out every five minutes. Nah, we're getting out of town."
"We are?" JoAnn asked. "Where we going?"
"We're going to the corner of the highway and we're turning left or right, I don't care which," Kenny said, almost over his shoulder as he headed to his car, JoAnn running to catch up. "I'm done with this soap opera bullshit."
Dave said nothing. Seconds later Kenny's late model Mustang fired up.
"You just gonna let him leave like that?" Willie asked. "I figured you had sack enough to deal with Kenny Kirk throwin' a hissy fit."
"No, he's right," Ron said. "We aren't solving anything today. Especially not you, Willie."
"Whaddya mean, especially not me? All I said was what we were all thinking. Dave's acting like a pussy over there..."
"If I were you I'd head on home before Carl and I shut your mouth for you," Ron said, cutting Willie off. Carl took his place next to Ron, who raised his eyebrow at his friend's assertiveness.
"That's how it is, then?"
"That's how it is," Ron said.
"It's amazing you all lasted this long," Willie said, heading to his truck. "Bunch of pussies, the whole lot of you."
Willie ranted and swore all the way to his blue and rust-colored truck, occasionally stopping to see if there was a way he hadn't thought of to get under Dave's skin. But Dave was already broken and Ron and Carl held firm on getting Willie out of there. Two minutes later, Willie was on the road headed back to town.
The minute the old man turned onto the road, Ron whispered something to Carl and they were off as well. There were sympathetic looks, but no words spoken between the group. Dave and Josie stayed in their positions at opposite ends of the picnic table for what seemed like a long time.
"One of us is going to have to go after him," Josie finally said in a soft voice.
"I'd like it to be you, if you don't mind," Dave said. "He's heard my side."
Dave stood up and started walking.
"Home is six miles, Dave," Josie said. "Don't walk that far."
"Not going home," Dave said.
"Then what are you doing?" she asked, but Dave was already fifteen yards away, not turning around. He knew his house was six miles away, but "Bar" was only four and some change.
•••
It was into the late lunch rush when Dave got to "Bar" and most of the regulars had cleared out. He was muddy and gross, he was deep inside his own head (the last two blocks had been tough with swatted-away dueling scenarios concerning his wife and Byron having sex and murdering Willie) but most of all, he was hungry. For a brief second he had panicked thinking his wallet was still at the campsite, but found where he had left it before the "scratch" the night before.
Chuck Nesbit was working the grill and his hearing wasn't so great. Dave had to yell to get his attention.
"CHUCK. Come on, man! I need some food."
Chuck, forever putting the customer first, wandered over about two minutes later.
"Burger?"
"Three of them. Plus fries and beer."
"Someone was out late," Chuck said. "Missed your breakfast, did you?"
"Shut up, asshole," Dave muttered as Chuck got back to the grill. Dave did whatever he could to distract his mind, which was producing new and original dark thoughts every couple of minutes. Unfortunately, "Bar" was not a place to go for distraction. There was a television playing college football, which helped, but Dave was beyond caring about the fate of any team from the SCC (much less two of them). That left the other patrons to look at, but there were fewer and fewer of those all the time as lunch was ending. That left staring at the bottles on the wall and vivid, vivid thoughts of sex, violence, and pain.
It was a relief when a new customer walked in wearing a uniform.
"Hey Chuck!" the man yelled. "The grill still going?"
"What's it look like?" Chuck yelled back from the grill, smoke rising over his wrinkly head.
"Looks like you're in a peachy mood," Stu said under his breath, then, much louder, "I'd like a burger and fries please."
"Yep," Chuck said. "Good thing, too. I'm almost out of patties thanks to Dave, there."
Dave looked up from the bar at the new sheriff, his hair flecked with mud, his clothes wrinkled. He was surely putting off a smell. None the less he stood up.
"How you doing, I'm Dave Rhodes. I'm not sure we've had a chance to meet yet."
"Stuart Dietz. I go by Stu. I took over for Grey Allen a couple of weeks ago."
They shook hands.
"You been camping, there, Dave?"
"Yeah," Dave said, running his hand through his brown hair. "I would have showered if I knew I was making a first impression today. That doesn't happen here too often."
"I get that," Stu said. "Mind if I sit?"
"No, go ahead," Dave said. "Glad for the company, to be honest."
Chuck plopped two plates in front of Dave, one with two burgers and one with the third burger and fries. They made the resounding, heavy clash of sturdy dish wear and Chuck went back to the kitchen without a word.
"That's... a good bit of food, there, Dave."
A sheepish "yeah" was all Dave could muster before diving in. Between bite two and three, when it was obvious the new sheriff wasn't just sitting there to be polite, but to get to know one of his constituents, Dave slowed down enough to talk.
"You liking town so far?"
"Yeah, it takes some adjustments, but I'm doing all right. It's a different pace than what I'm used to."
"I bet," Dave said. "I've always said this is a great place to live if you already know everybody and are into classic rock."
"I noticed that!" Stu said. "I was expecting everyone to be a country music fan out here but all I hear is that one station, what is it... "105.3 The Wolf?"
"That's right. I haven't heard so much Aerosmith in my life."
"That sounds about right. I heard you were from Detroit, right?"
"Worked there a while, yeah," Stu said, going into the spiel he had done several dozen times at this point. "It's been an adjustment, but I'm finding things pretty interesting around here. There's certainly a lot to do. Grey Allen wasn't... how do I put this... he didn't do things in a very modern way."
"I bet," Dave said, shoveling in fries three at a time.
"So I've been getting the computer up and running and I've been... I'm sorry. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone eat like that."
Dave had gotten the first burger and all the fries down and was working on the second. He wasn't usually a glutton, but there were times, especially after a night out in the woods, where his body absolutely demanded food. During those times, consuming calories was like coming up for air after several minutes underwater.
"I'm sorry," Dave said. I don't usually eat this fast."
Chuck took the opportunity to slam Dave's beer on the counter and return to the kitchen, again, without a word.
"I get it," Stu said. "Sometimes you just gotta get some food in you. Can I ask what you do around here, Dave?"
"Yeah, absolutely," Dave said, being much more conscious as to his food intake. "I'm a teacher and a coach at Cody-Kilgore High, about fifteen miles away. I coach volleyball and teach a little bit of everything, but math, mainly."
"Mild-mannered math teacher," Stu said. "And Barter County hamburger-eating champion."
For some reason, Dave found that particularly funny and a laugh bubbled out of his mouth before he could stop it. A chunk of bun went flying from Dave's mouth and both men decided to ignore it.
"Man," Dave said. "I needed that. I know about ten high schoolers who could eat me under the table, though. My kid is one of them."
"How many kids you have?"
"Just the one," Dave said. "Dave Junior."
"Cool," Stu said. "Hey, before I get my food, there's a question I'm asking a lot of the folks I run into and was wondering if I could ask you."
"Shoot."
"Well, Grey Allen was around here a long time and he told me the way he did things was to get involved. He said he knew everyone personally, right? That's going to take me some time to manage, so what I'm asking everyone to do is to give me some time to get to know you all and to kind of keep their eyes open in the meantime. If there's anything I need to know, give me a call or look me up. If there's anything Grey Allen did that I'm doing differently, tell me so I can see if it makes sense for me to do, too. Basically, this one guy did this job for a long time and now we all need to do this job for a little while until I get situated. Does that make sense?"
Stu's lunch clattered on the counter and Chuck went back to the kitchen.
"Yeah, that makes sense," Dave said. "I imagine there are all sorts of things that Grey Allen dealt with that aren't in any files anywhere."
"Exactly," Stu said. "I'm basically setting up from scratch. But don't tell anyone I said that."
"Mum's the word," Dave said, but with a mouthful of chewed food it came out as "mumbs da word."
Stu's food hit the table with the same clatter as before but this time Chuck didn't head back to the kitchen.
"What y'all talking about?" he asked.
"I'm introducing myself," Stu said. "Trying to get to know everybody. Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing?"
"I figure," Chuck said, now eager for conversation. "I imagine you would have met Dave by now, unless it's that time of the month."
Dave's face was full of fries, which was good because had it not been stuffed he might have told Chuck to shut his face, making himself look more suspicious. Instead he drew in air and some fried potato into his throat and started coughing.
"That... uh, that wasn't exactly politically correct," Stu said, slapping Dave on the back. "Why would you say something like that, man?"
Over fits of coughing Dave shot Chuck a look that said "I'm not in the practice of killing people, but in your case..."
"I didn't mean nothing by it," Chuck said. "I've, uh... dishes."
As he beat his retreat, Dave cleared his throat a few times and smiled at Stu.
"Small towns, huh?"
"Yeah, I guess."
After sitting for a second, Stu started eating and Dave took a long draft of his beer and reverted to the only neutral territory available after making such a distinguished first impression.
"So," Dave said. "You a Cornhusker football fan?"
•••
A few hours later after Stu had headed out on patrol and Dave had returned home to an empty house, Kenny Kirk and JoAnn were still on the road. Although he was financially comfortable and owned several businesses vital to the community, the house he and JoAnn shared was humble, old, and lived in. The staircase creaked whenever anyone got near it, the fuses blew with alarming regularity, and one of the bathrooms on the second floor had a noticeable sag in the middle, denoting structural decay. The consequence of the house's age was it groaned and squeaked anywhere you went and it was very hard to sneak up on someone.
This made it particularly surprising that Mr. Stander had been able to break into the house and sit in a chair without making so much as a peep or alerting any of the neighbors. Kenny and JoAnn were gone, of course, and would stay gone for a bit, much to Mr. Stander's increasing frustration.
He was a patient man, but even this was pushing it. After sitting in the house from the late afternoon until after sunset, the tall man in the bow tie let out a long sigh and pulled himself out of the (admittedly very comfortable) lounger in the living room.
"No wonder no one's found them yet," he said to the empty room. "Who in their right mind would want to spend time in such a dump?"
Stander made no effort to not set off the symphony high-pitched squeaks as he tread the floor out of the living room and out the back door.
AN EXCERPT FROM THE DIARY OF J.P. CODDINGTON BARTER COUNTY, 1876
June 22, 1867
I fear the loss of the Railroad will be the death of this town.
The county elders lobbied for the Railroad to come through, but there was resistance, particularly from Homer Rhodes and his group. There was ample discussion in the First Baptist Church over the weekend and much was discussed, but not decided. There was talk of what the Railroad would bring, both good and bad, and how we might grow prosperous with or without the tracks going just south of town, but I do not think the arguments against the train hold any water at all.
Homer Rhodes swears there is oil under the ground and that the right men with the right equipment might get at that oil quickly. Once the wells are built it would be a "short road to progress and prosperity" he said. Neither I, nor my friends have ever heard of oil being found here in this part of the country and his promises rang hollow in my ears. The Railroad is a known thing, proven to be a boost to the towns and counties they encounter. Why a man would push against such progress is a mystery to me.
I was going to say as much in the meeting, but Mr. Rhodes and his crew of men are a boorish lot. They silenced many a naysayer yelling such phrases as "we've been over this" and "next question" to the point where civilized discourse, even among the educated, was a fool's errand. I left frustrated to a point as did Mr. O'Conner, Mr. Smith and several others. We commiserated at the local bar a bit later, and I'm afraid I had too many drinks and am paying the toll for it today in a sour stomach, among other ailments.
To add misery to my condition, I also found the oddest pile of animal remains very near the doorstep of my home this morning. If I'm not mistaken, it was a deer at one time but whatever had taken after the pitiful creature left some doubt. The head was either gone or in such small pieces as to be unrecognizable. The hide had been torn open, as if all at once. I am at a loss to what force on heaven or Earth could do such a thing or how the doomed creature ended up on my doorstep, for all intents and purposes.
Needless to say the entire scene churned my stomach and I vomited on the mass. After a few shovelfuls of dirt I composed myself and was able to move the carcass to a more suitable location.
May my fortunes improve.
PART 4 - HOME OF THE WOLF
Carl Eakes was not much of a talker in the normal course of affairs, but he was one hell of a gardener.
As a vocation, he owned a small towing business that Kenny Kirk had helped him get started. He had a good-sized wrecker, bigger than any in the area, and the boy knew how to drive it. When he was in high school he had dreamed basic dreams—diesel mechanic, law enforcement, something with computers. While he had gone to school and was a diesel mechanic (one dream down!), he hadn't taken to working on the clock for a number of reasons. One was his garden.
He owned a modest home in "town" with a two-acre-wide backyard where he grew vegetables, flowers and had a very small orchard. When late March rolled around and the temperature was tolerable he lit outside and would check his compost piles, start tilling and fertilizing the soil and making ready. In the spring it was planting then constant watering, weeding, watering, separating, watering, pruning and watering. By July the harvests started. By September there were buckets and buckets of tomatoes and cucumbers, squash and potatoes, melons, carrots, onions, peppers and anything else you'd want from a garden.
Then there were the flowers. Peonies, mums, roses, lilies and so much more, rows and rows of fragrance and color that led to an entire insect infrastructure of bees and hummingbirds and yellow jackets and mantises and ants and spiders. Everywhere in Carl's garden was life and when the life started to fall away and peel back as the weather got cold again, Kenny ate fresh salsa and crunchy salads and cut sweet melons and put strawberries on his ice cream. He even fermented some of his apples into the best goddamn cider in a three-county area, but he didn't tell too many people about that. There might be laws and such.
His neighbors always knew he was in the garden because Carl was a loyal listener of 105.3, The Wolf, Central Nebraska's Classic Rock. The station was sometimes hard to get in Cherry, but Carl had rigged up a 25-foot antenna to his shed and was able to play The Wolf at a reasonable volume any time he wanted. His neighbors were cool with it, so his backyard was Carl's favorite place in the world. It was him, his plants, and AC/DC, Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rush, Styx and even the occasional foray into Metallica. When James Hetfield would come through his speaker system, Carl swore the whole garden lit up.
It was mid-October when Dilly had his first "scratch" so his garden was producing a fermented smell that you get when plants die. Two days after they had run in the woods then fought at the campground, Ron was the first to come by and he specifically asked for some cider.
"Where you at?" Ron said.
"Not close. Maybe a three."
"Well I'm at a six and I need something to drink. Normally I don't," Ron said. "But I think this calls for it. Don't you?"
"Probably," Carl said. "It's been a good year for apples."
"That's not why I want to drink."
"I know."
"It's because we're cracking up."
"I know."
"It's because that's about as nasty and mean as I've ever seen Willie and I don't know if all of us are going to be together much longer. Something's bothering Willie and it ain't about Byron. We all agreed on that."
"Yeah, we did," Carl said. He stood up and headed into the kitchen, returning with a pint glass full of homemade hard cider. He handed it to Ron, who was off again. The big man didn't usually talk but when he did it came in torrents making it very hard for the much smaller Carl to get a word in edgewise.
"It was kind of brilliant what he did, really," Ron said, as if Carl was unaware. "He knew he had Dave by the balls, man. He knew he would have to tell Dilly everything in front of the pack. Willie knew he had him and he may have just destroyed that family tonight. Plus, I don't know if Dave will ever run with Willie again after what he did."
"I don't know," Carl said. "People fight all the time. They get over things."
"How the hell does a man get over that?" Ron said. "I couldn't promise I wouldn't have killed Willie where he stood if I was Dave."
"Yep," Carl said.
"Instead, there's a guy who's been cheated on and second-guessed and forced to kill one of his friends and his son has to hear about the two worst things in his life back to back. I couldn't get over that."
"So whatdya think will happen?"
Ron was now up wandering the garden, going full blast, his volume and hackles up. Carl had been friends with Ron for coming up on fifteen years but they were friends in the way that Marcie and Peppermint Patty were friends in the Peanuts cartoons. Not quite bad enough to be a motormouth like Kenny Kirk, Ron could get worked up and go for a while, and Carl knew it was best to let him go, kicking at decaying plants as he went.
"If Dave had just said 'I'm breaking the rules right now for obvious reasons' no one would have thrown up a fuss. They would have still had to talk to Dilly but they could have done it on their own terms, I guess. That's damn sure better than what happened. What do you put on these melons, Carl, they are fantastic?"
"It's about the soil," Carl said. "It's not what you put on them."
"Yeah I guess," Ron said, having talked himself out. "The cider is good. How much did you make?"
"More than I should've," Carl said. "You can take a jug home if you want."
"I'd appreciate that, man," Ron said. Having talked himself out and checked on his friend, Kenny was alone in his garden ten minutes later, a gallon growler of cider gone from his fridge. It wasn't half an hour later that Kenny Kirk showed up, leading with "That was a complete whirlwind of a train wreck of a shit show out there," before he had made it inside the door.
"Where you at?"
"Three, maybe."
"Well, I'm about with you but I'm worried we might not get another chance anytime soon. I know Willie used to run lead and I know Dave took it from him but goddammit, man, get over it. This isn't... God, it's not King Lear... what's the one where they all conspire to murder the king?"
"Macbeth, maybe? Shakespeare liked that storyline."
"Yeah, that might be it. Wasn't there one where the king had a bunch of kids and they were conspiring against him and he was really old? What you got to drink around here?"
"Got some cider in the fridge."
"Damn, Carl, you're a good dude. That's why I tell people that Carl Eakes is a good dude. You never let a man go thirsty."
"Where's JoAnn?"
"Dropped her off at the house. We've talked this to death. I need some fresh ears."
The same-sized growler disappeared from Carl's fridge, but this time it went straight down Kenny Kirk's throat. The two wandered in the garden, Kenny stopping every so often to wildly gesticulate. He spoke twice as much as Ron had and said just about the same amount.
"What do you think we should do?" Carl finally asked, when the dire nature of the situation had been suitably articulated.
"You asked me that when we were talking about Byron."
"I'm not good at hard decisions."
"Well, then you're lucky to have a friend like me to figure it all out. The way I figure, Willie and Dave are done. Done-sky. Caput. They're never running together again."
"I don't know..."
"Well I do know, goddammit, and you've gotta make up your mind on which pack you're going to run with. And what you're prepared to do to run with them."
"It's not going to come to that."
"Do you see Dave forgiving Willie? Do you see him going 'no biggie, you made me confess to murder and your mother's adultery to our kid after one of the seminal moments of his life? How about some pie?' You see that happening?"
"No," Carl said. "But... I don't know."
"Well, I do."
"Family does some crazy things," Carl said, measuring his words to not get immediately shot down by Kenny. "And that's without the weird part of turning into wolves and chasing deer through the woods."
"All I'm saying is get comfortable with two packs or one pack trying to kill the other pack or... shit I don't know. That was some great cider."
"Take some home."
"Thank you, I will. JoAnn needs to chill out on a few things and this might help."
"JoAnn is great. Don't talk like that."
"Yeah, you're right," Kenny said, stumbling toward the fridge. "I'll tell her you said so. Catch you later."
•••
The sun was setting when there was a final knock on the door. Carl half expected Kenny Kirk to be back peddling another theory or begging for more cider, but got a deep, sinking feeling in his gut when he opened the door to find Dilly. The kid looked worn and defeated.
"Hi, Carl."
"Dilly."
"Can I come in?"
"Yeah. Come sit in the back."
The sickly sweet smell was always worse in the evening for some reason and Carl noticed it was worse than just an hour ago when he and Kenny had been strolling. Dilly plopped in one of Carl's white, plastic chairs that wobbled under the size of a tall, gangly teen.
"Sorry I didn't call first."
"No problem," Carl said, easing into his own chair. "No one ever does."
"I... uh... it's been a rough couple of days."
"I figure."
"I've got a lot of new information I'm trying to figure out."
"Yes, you have."
A wind cut through the garden carrying away the scent of Carl's plants and bringing in grasses and dirt, trees and something that smelled dimly of fire. It reminded Carl, as new scents always did, that he was not a normal guy. He was a guy with responsibilities, a guy who had to be in control of himself and had to be part of a group that controlled each other. If they didn't do that, they risked hurting more than each other and if one of them went rogue, then it would be Byron all over again.
"So, where you at, Dilly?"
"Huh?"
His dad should have explained this by now, Carl thought, then felt weird about being critical of the guy running lead.
"All of us, we are always checking in about how bad we want to... go for a run."
"Oh," Dilly said.
"We usually use a one to ten scale so if I meet up with Kenny or Ron the first thing I always ask them is "where you at?" They give me a number and that helps us figure out how bad one of our brothers needs to run."
"How do you know how bad you need it?"
"Your dad should probably tell you that."
"My dad's not here," Dilly said with a sneer. His tone was, by far, the meanest Carl had ever heard from the boy.
"That doesn't mean it's my place."
"I'm asking you," Dilly said. "I'm asking you how you know because... because it was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me. I felt like I could face down a hurricane. I felt... I don't know how to put it..."
"You felt your ancestors in your blood. Felt like you were part of something that was ancient and powerful and badass."
"Yeah," Dilly said, not acknowledging Carl's uncharacteristic eloquence. "Nailed it."
"I don't know how it's going to work for you," Carl said. "It's different for everybody. For Willie, it comes on fast. You talk to him in the morning and he's a two, then he gets in a fight with Lacy and he's suddenly at a seven or an eight and you gotta change your plans. All I can tell you is figure out your rhythms and the way your brain works with this new thing and you'll be fine."
Dilly shifted in his seat.
"OK, this is a... this is a hard question, but, does it always feel this good? Is it always such a rush?"
"It's great every single time," Carl said. "You know Ron. He don't look it with his beard and his gut but he's a stone-cold genius. With computers, there ain't nothing he can't get them to do and he's working in a grain elevator. Kenny Kirk, with a mouth like that? He could be running something. I don't know what, but something."
Dilly laughed the laugh of a kid still trying to figure out what his laugh sounded like.
"Hell, Dilly, your dad, and I know you don't want to hear this right now, but your dad was a beast on the football field. He could have gone to college and played football and gone on to better things and your mom? Your mom studied chemistry for a semester, did you know that? She wanted to go be a pediatrician and she could have done it, too. JoAnn wanted to write for a newspaper. Karen could have been in the ballet, I swear. I could have left this town and found someone to be with. Why do you think all these people who could have gone on to better things in bigger places, why are they here? What's keeping them in podunk Cherry, Nebraska?"
Carl had intended to let his speech hang for a second and let the glory of it wash over the new recruit, but Dilly ruined it and started to cry. It started when he tilted his head at a strange angle, then sniffled a little too hard. By the time Carl turned his head, Dilly was full-on trying to stop crying. He wiped tears with the heel of his hand, and Carl gave him a long time to speak.
"Sorry," Dilly said. "It's too much."
"What's too much?"
"You're telling me this is it. This is my life? My mom and my dad and my grandpa and their friends and, oh yeah, by the way we might kill people you know from time to time and your mom's a whore and your dad is a fucking pussy and this's it? This and the woods, this is what I get?"
"Dilly, you gotta talk to your dad about this."
"FUCK HIM!" Dilly yelled, the veins standing out strong along his neck.
Carl stood up and walked inside, reemerging soon thereafter with two glasses of cider. He placed the glasses on the wrought iron table, flaking paint but sturdy, and spoke to his young guest in a serious, clipped tone he saved for special occasions.
"A couple things, Dilly," he said. "And if you tell your dad I told you any of this or that I gave you this cider I'm going to deny it and he's going to believe me. One, calling women 'whores' is a nasty habit and one you should break toot suite. It's ugly and sexist and nothing a man of substance does. Second, next time you see Willie, ask him how big a pussy your dad is. You don't get to run lead unless you earn it. Third, you don't know the whole story about Byron so I would strongly suggest you reserve judgment, as hard as that is, until you know all the facts. And most importantly this isn't all there is. You think we're trapped here? You think I couldn't move to Omaha or Kansas City or Nova Scotia or Germany or some place? I can leave any time I want. I choose to stay here because I'm part of something and being part of something, that ain't nothing."
Carl threw back his cider. Dilly watched him do it and then followed suit, shutting his eyes hard after it hit the back of his throat. He let out a couple of short coughs.
"What's the matter kid? Never drank before?"
"No," Dilly said. "As a matter of fact this was the first time."
"Well, now I've done it," Carl said, grabbing the glasses. Dilly followed him into the house and made for the door.
"I won't tell Dad I came here," he said.
"I'd appreciate it," Carl said. "I wish I had more advice for you, but it's different for all of us. What works for me, that ain't going to work for you."
Dilly nodded and made his way to the road. There was no car in the driveway, which put him a good mile from home on foot. He had plenty to think about, Carl figured.
In a rare act brought on by a rare time, Carl poured himself a second, much taller glass of cider and sat himself on his couch opposite the biggest window in the house. He had had enough of the smell outside for one day.
He played through everything again in his head—Ron's panic, Kenny Kirk's fatalism, Dilly's discovery, his own ability to give halfway decent advice. All in all, he concluded, things were bad, but things looked like they could get better. The train wasn't all the way off the tracks.
"But if Willie shows up tonight, he's not getting any cider," Carl said to the long, deep shadows that had taken residence in his living room.
•••
The night after the "scratch" that led to the blowup, Dilly had gone straight to his room and shut the door. With a kid not talking to her and a husband who was out somewhere for an indefinite amount of time, Josie found herself alone in the house. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence but the empty house that was sometimes her friend was certainly not in this instance. The silence was screaming and work or family was not there to distract her.
There were dishes to do. There was always laundry. She had three books in varying states of completion. At one point, she thought it would be fun to go punch something until her knuckles bled, that way there would at least be some sort of physical component to the soul-shaking pain she was going through, but there would be questions and blood to clean up. There was only one thing left to do.
Without a word to Dilly, she laced up her shoes, fired up her music player and was off, the fall air cutting into her lungs. Josie was a nurse by trade, a mother, a wife and a keeper of some very big secrets (fewer of late). These things would come and go. But the one thing she had been since she was thirteen years old was a runner.
There was a treadmill in their house and on certain days when the weather would freeze her to the bone or melt her into a puddle, it made sense to trek into the basement and spend some time on the bulky machine. But if it was at all possible, Josie wrestled with asphalt and gravel, traffic and road signs. She hadn't grown up in Cherry but Lincoln, an entirely different world by comparison. The first time she ran in Cherry, two very kind people stopped their cars and asked if she needed a ride someplace.
By now she was a fixture on the roads, usually in the early morning hours, but it was not uncommon to see her out after dinner. What was uncommon was the volume of the music in her ears, the pace she was pushing, and the distance she ran. The night and day flashed in her head and scenarios, conversations, what she would say to Dave when they finally talked, how they would deal with Dilly, how she might murder Willie and get away with it, all of it and much more flashed in her brain, blotting out everything but the road and blur of her feet underneath her until her run was over. Then she did it again. She ran ten miles and by the time she came back to the house, Dilly was watching TV, her iPod was drained of its battery and she felt better. Not good, but certainly not the wreck she had been a few hours earlier.
"Dilly," she yelled down the hall. "I'm getting in the shower and then we should talk. Don't go anywhere, please."
There was no response, so she made it to her room and stripped off her gear. Her left sock was bloody from the run with one toe and the heel of the foot shredded and sacrificed to the endorphin gods. The shower was long but not too long and when she got out, Dilly was there, like the good boy he was.
"Where's Dad?" he asked.
"I don't know. He walked off and I was hoping he'd be back by now."
"When's he going to be home?"
"You know as much as I do, Dilly."
In her mind's eye as she ran, Josie had pictured this going differently. If Dave had been there, they could have put their own feelings aside for an hour or so for the sake of the boy, they could have made sure he understood what was happening, why it had happened and what happens from here, but Dave was out sulking God knows where and Josie made the decision right then and there that this talk could not wait.
"Do you understand what happened a few days ago?"
Dilly stared at her, not really grasping what she was getting at.
"Do you understand why we told you all that stuff? Do you understand we didn't have a choice because of how this thing of ours works?"
"I understand you slept with another man and Dad killed him."
"Then you don't get it at all," Josie said, wincing a bit. "You didn't even get the facts right, sweetie."
"I think I got the gist," Dilly said, turning back to the TV. She was losing him.
"There's a ton we have to sort through here, but right now there's one really, really important thing I need you to understand about our group. What Willie did..."
"Grandpa."
"What Willie did was use a bond that we all share to pick at your dad and me. He knew, better than anyone, that in order for all this to work we have to be one hundred percent honest with each other. We have to be rock solid. There cannot be secrets and there cannot be grudges because if either of those things happen when you boys are out in the woods there's going to be so much blood, Dilly. So much blood."
He had turned back around and was at least listening.
"This thing of ours, it goes back hundreds of years that we can figure out and some of the other packs, I guess you could call them, they would write down what worked for them and what didn't work for them, what their problems were and how they solved it. Stay here, just a sec."
Josie got up, the lactic acid in her legs already settled and inducing a decent amount of pain as she got to her feet. A couple of minutes later she was back from her scrapbooking area with a leather-bound book she kept in a drawer.
"This is a history of our group. It goes back all the way to 1870 when this guy, Homer Rhodes, started keeping a journal about his group."
"They ever kill anyone?" Dilly asked sharply.
"Yeah," Josie said. "Three of them. Turns out there was a big fight about the Railroad they couldn't get over so they sort of... had a wolf fight. It was a bad idea. They destroyed three buildings and were seen by half the town."
"Whoa," Dilly said.
"Homer Rhodes wrote in his diary that he had to use all his power to keep everyone quiet. Then it became a thing people accepted and then it sort of became part of the town. And here we are."
"Great history lesson, Mom. What's that have to do with anything?"
"Because Homer Rhodes wrote down the rules, you smart ass," Josie said. Her tone was playful but they both knew she was serious about not being pushed. "The rules of the scratch, he called them. And rule number one, and this has always been rule number one, is there are no secrets in the pack. No matter how much pain, no matter how many hurt feelings, the survival in society depends on everyone knowing what's going on. There are no secrets between any of us, and like it or not, kiddo, you're one of us now."
"OK," Dilly said. "You need me to be honest with you?"
"Dilly..."
"Honestly, I'm thinking I need to get out of the house for a bit. Maybe go for a run, like you did. That OK?"
"Yeah, that's fine, but we do need to talk."
"Let's wait for Dad."
Dilly was out of his seat before Josie could stop him, grabbing a jacket (he wasn't a stupid kid) and heading out the door.
Even though Josie got it, she understood, that didn't make the house any less empty or her head any less full. She hobbled over to the kitchen sink to start the water for dishes and then made her way to the bathroom to get some bandages for her swelling foot.
•••
It's stupid, the thing that goes through a man's head when he feels sorry for himself. Can I start a new life in another town? Maybe I'll sleep tonight in some inexpensive hotel, that'll show her. Suicide, if done right, might not be so bad.
Truth of the matter is, Dave was in a stupor. He had spent the past few nights at "Bar" and had exhausted its limited pleasures. He was exhausted and wanted his own bed or, failing that, the couch. It was time to go home.
"Thanks for the place to crash, Chuck," Dave said, standing up.
"Yeah," Chuck grunted. "I don't mind your money, but it's probably better if we see less of each other."
"Rejected by my bartender," Dave said, tossing a few dollars on the bar. "New rock bottom."
Another fun thing about Cherry was since Dave and his crew didn't keep secrets from each other, the whole town basically knew when something was up. He knew what Chuck knew—Byron, who was his responsibility, had slaughtered a girl out back and ruined his evening. A graceful man would have said nothing. Chuck had brought it up at least three times that night alone. For some reason, the decreased dependability of his air conditioner was somehow tied to the incident. It was really time for Dave to go home.
Josie had the car, so Dave got set for a long walk back to the house. Cherry was not populous, but it was big, with houses running north to south for about a three-mile swath. Dave's house was somewhere in the middle so he had a fifteen-to-twenty-five-minute walk in front of him. Turned out it would be longer.
As Dave rounded the building and pointed himself toward home, a man in a light-colored suit and a bow tie was standing beside a black sedan. He waited for Dave, not giving a hint as to his intention, but simply watching the whole time. It was when the men were fifteen feet apart that the man spoke.
"Mr. Rhodes. Good evening."
Dave had not had much to drink, one beer after the one with dinner, which he had nursed as a football game finished up on Bar's shitty TV, but the combination of fatigue and emotional pain had left him a bit loopy. Initially, the fact the stranger knew his name didn't register. Dave, being a polite fellow, stopped anyway.
"Lovely night," Dave said.
"If you mean the weather, then yes. It's quite temperate, Mr. David Rhodes."
It stuck this time, as did the man's formal tone and odd, deep voice.
"I... uh... are you a parent of a student of mine? I'm sorry, I don't recognize you."
"No, I'm not. My name is William Stander and I need to talk to you."
"What do you need to talk to me about?"
Before William Stander, the man in the light-colored suit and sharp bow tie could answer, another car whipped around the corner running parallel to "Bar" and onto the street. The car was low, sporty and coming very fast. Before Dave could get a bead on what was happening, the car had pulled into the narrow space between him and Mr. Stander, squealing tires. From inside, loud hip-hop was blaring and as the passenger side door flew open it clipped Dave in the lower torso. Inside was a thin man with wild, brown hair and an unmatched scraggly beard who Dave had never seen before.
"Get inside, you fucking idiot," the man yelled over the music. "Right now before he says another word."
Mr. Stander was already moving to the other side of the car, but his long legs proved more hindrance than help as he had a short distance to cover because of the car's sporty frame. Dave, not accustomed to being called an idiot, stood there dumbfounded.
"Fine," the man in the car said and, in one swift motion, reached over, grabbed Dave by the shirt and dragged him into the car. Mr. Stander was around the car at that point and had a hand on Dave's arm.
"I implore you, Mr. Rhodes, it is very important you hear what I have to say."
"Fuck off then fuck off some more you dandy!" the man in the car yelled over the thump of the music, pulling on Dave the whole time. After a few seconds, the man hit the gas and Dave, half in and half out of the car, had to make a choice—get in the car or bail.
"Come on, Dave!" the man yelled. "Make a good decision for once."
"I will make you richer than you can imagine," Mr. Stander yelled as Dave hopped in the sports car. They were half a block away from Mr. Stander when he finally shut the door. The second the door's locking mechanism clicked into place, the man tromped on the gas and they were gone into the Nebraska night, sputtering gravel behind them.
The man with the beard turned on the dome light, took one look at Dave and cranked the music louder. It was impossible for Dave to communicate with the man until he suddenly slammed on the brakes in the middle of a dirt road about a mile away, shut the car off and turned to Dave. The dirt roads surrounding the town always reminded him of his younger days when Dave and his dates would drive to the middle of nowhere and have at each other. On their anniversary a few years back, Josie had taken him out to the dirt roads far beyond the streetlights to that special sort of dark you could only get in the country and screwed his brains out. None of this came to mind tonight."Oh my, Dave, you've made a fucking mess of it, haven't you?"
Now that the music had died down and it was just the man talking, Dave could make out the man's accent. It was Irish, he figured. The Irish flag tattoo the man sported on the back of his left hand confirmed his suspicions. In fact, the man had a few tattoos but in the low light, Dave was having a hard time making them out.
"Respond to me, please," the man said. "Or are you too fucking stupid to speak, because, to be honest, I kind of think you are."
"OK, hello, I'm Dave, why am I in your car?" Dave said, torn between wanting to be polite and his fatigue.
"Ahh, the leader finally speaks. Good for you. I've got a lot of work to do on account of your dumb ass, so if you'll sit and listen..."
"STOP!" Dave yelled as the rage he had been sucking on all day finally found an outlet. "Just... stop. I am going to need your name and I'm going to need to know what the hell we're doing here in the middle of nowhere. And how you know my name. And how you know where to find me! And how you're Irish... you're Irish. I've never met anyone from Ireland much less one that knows my name and pulls me into his car and drives me to the middle of nowhere."
The man in the beard raised his eyebrows but didn't budge.
"So what do you want?" the man asked.
"What the fuck just happened?" Dave said, breathing hard. "Give me something to hold on to because I feel like I'm falling right now."
Things got a lot brighter as the man opened the door and got out. The car was still running, though the music was mercifully turned off, and the man walked in front of the car so the headlights could hit him. The man began to twitch.
Dave's eyes got wider as the man started sprouting hair, hunching his posture and growing, or more accurately, stretching into a familiar form, but somehow different than the one Dave was used to. It took the stranger a mere ten seconds to go from man to wolf and once the transformation was complete, the Irish Wolf stood on his hind legs, walked over to Dave's car door, opened it and in a deep, devilish growl, spoke.
"Like I said," the Irish Wolf spat, "you've made a big, fucking mess."
•••
Dave and the man spoke into the night and less than an hour later, he dropped Dave off at his house with strict instructions to not open the door for anyone other than his pack, and even then, beware. Things were about to get complicated, he said. He was right.
More than two miles away in his rented space, Stu was getting ready to plow through another Netflix original series when his cell phone rang.
"Hello, Sheriff. It's William Stander. We met several days ago."
"Yes, hello. You've caught me at home. How did you get this number?"
"If I had a tip for you about something very odd happening in your town, would you be interested?"
"Yes. Can we talk at the station tomorrow?"
"I'm not coming in to the station," Mr. Stander said. "What I will tell you is I believe I know the identity of the person who killed Sandra Riedel and Byron Matzen."
Stu scrambled to find his note pad and something to write with.
"That's... um, yeah. That's definitely something I'm interested in. Where are you?"
"I'm not at liberty to tell you that, I'm sorry," Mr. Stander said. "I know I'm being cryptic, but it's absolutely necessary, as is this. Do you have a pencil and paper?"
"Yes," Stu said.
"Would you meet me at the following address tomorrow evening at 7:15? I will be there in person and alone."
Mr. Stander gave the address which Stu didn't recognize (to be fair, he didn't know his own address well at this point), but wrote down.
"Mr. Stander, can you give me any more information? This all strikes me as odd and slightly alarming."
"Good," Mr. Stander said. "You are in the proper frame of mind. Until tomorrow night."
He hung up and Stu immediately put on his uniform, got into his car and drove to the address. When his GPS barked that he had "reached his destination," he double-checked to be sure. It was an old picnic area right off the highway with nothing but a few picnic tables and some debris from previous campers to make it stand out from the miles and miles of grassland surrounding it. Stu spent about twenty minutes walking around inspecting the area. He found nothing of interest, but did find a good hiding place in a tree stump about twenty-five feet into the wooded area. He could see the entire area, see who was approaching and even had the drop on them should they decide to run.
"Man," Stu said. "That guy is never going to see me coming."
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 3
Adam Rhodes was born in 1897 and grew into a strapping young boy. At twelve, he was both smart, winning the admiration of his teachers, and a fiercely physical boy, winning the respect of his coaches. He could keep up on the track with high schoolers, he could hit harder than any bully and he was popular with both boys and girls. As he entered his high school years he even managed to fit business into his busy schedule, working at Shreiner's Grocery and Goods in downtown Cherry. The Governor of Nebraska, Ashton C. Shallenberger, once visited Cherry and tipped young Adam a dime for taking care of his car.
When World War I rolled around, Adam, who was of prime military age, dutifully and proudly enlisted. His brother Kane was too young, but would eventually become a minister at the urging of his mother, who could not stand for her only children to both be overseas fighting a war. She was rumored to suffer from a condition of the nerves and Adam being overseas did nothing to improve her health.
As in all things before, Adam proved a smart, physical and adept soldier. While it was very uncommon for a "grunt" to rise through the ranks, Adam was able to do just that, moving from Private to Sergeant First Class by the time the war ended. To hear his men tell it, Sergeant Rhodes could outrun a bullet, he could inspire a coward, and he could tear a man apart with his hands. Only one of these things was hyperbole.
Sergeant First Class Rhodes came home to a hero's welcome straight out of American lore. He never paid for a meal and he raised the flag at sporting events for years to come. He married his high school sweetheart, a girl named Nellie Buxton, in 1919, a year to the day after he returned home from the war. Through it all, Adam never once showed any desire other than to stay in his town and make it strong. He purchased Shreiner's Grocery and Goods, the place he had worked as a boy, and turned it into the shopping destination for miles around by adding more variety and household items that old Mr. Shreiner had refused to stock. The result was a booming business, a young wife and, quickly, a child on the way.
When Adam's body was found in a ditch, torn apart by what appeared to be wild animals, it tore the town apart. Men wept, women wept, children wept and a malaise descended over the town, from which it never recovered. Nellie miscarried their child out of grief. At Adam's funeral, Kane gave the eulogy and opined that his brother's death "would leave a mark on this town that may never fully heal."
His words were prophetic. Shreiner's closed six months after Adam's death and other businesses followed suit. Even the happy occasion of Adam's son Bruce being born could not make a dent in the town's mood. Things continued, but growth all but stopped.
Some in the town looked to Kane for leadership and on a spiritual level, he provided. His church thrived during hard times and eight months after his brother's death he married Nellie Buxton Rhodes, his brother's widow. It was looked upon, by most in the community, as an act of charity in line with biblical teachings. They had two sons and a daughter, Adam, Thomas and Sarah. Thomas followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a pastor, marrying young and having two boys and a daughter, naming them Thomas Jr., William and Cynthia.
PART 5 – OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM
The man with the Irish accent was expected to speak in front of the assembled group in the "family room" of Dave and Josie's house, but he had not yet arrived. Ron and Carl were on one couch section, Dilly and Josie on the other. Kenny Kirk and JoAnn were hanging out by the television, Dave not far away. Willie was off by the laundry room. No one was having fun.
It was a rare day when Dave called everyone together for something other than a scratch but the socializing was part of the comfortable routine they had all fallen into during their time together. They would see each other socially, they would talk one on one or in small groups but the only time they were all in one place was when they scratched. It wasn't policy or for any particular purpose, so the gathering was an odd one. No one was talking and no one wasn't looking at the stranger in their midst.
"You should have made some food," Willie barked out of nowhere. "I'm hungry."
"You know, little smokies wouldn't have gone awry," Ron said.
"Yeah, shut up," Dave said. "This isn't a tailgate."
"What the hell is it then?" Willie said. "Are we gonna all get in touch with our feelings now? Is that what this is about?"
"I've told you the story, Willie. That's what I know."
"Your story has the whiff of bullshit if you ask me," Willie said.
Dave turned away from him and exhaled deeply, trying to regain his composure.
"Tell you what. It's 7:30 right now. If he's not here by 7:45, leave."
"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Willie said, and left it at that. He didn't have a firm hold of the thread and his mouth had gotten ahead of him.
But 7:45 came. Then 7:50 and at five before 8:00 there was finally a knock on the door. Dave went to open it and everyone peered from their seats to get a good look at the man. He was wearing a leather jacket over his thin T-shirt and whispered something to Dave, who whispered back. Even with their above-average hearing, no one in the room heard what was being said.
"OK, everyone," Dave said. "Conall Brennan, the man I was telling you about."
"The man who saved your ass from a businessman then turned into a wolf, right?" Willie said.
"I'm sure your son-in-law's ass would have been fine, but things would have been a lot more complicated," Conall said. "Can you save your questions until I get the intro out at least, or are you too much of a tough guy to sit and listen?"
Willie started to answer but couldn't come up with anything. Conall stared at the old man, raising his eyebrows and leaning forward, almost willing him to come to some sort of point. When he didn't, the newcomer made a big point of turning away before getting down to business.
"Yes, I'm like you in that I can transform into a wolf. I've been doing it since my early teen years, much like you, there, son," he said, nodding to Dilly. "You didn't think you were the only ones in the world, did you?"
"We never really got around to researching it," Ron said.
"Well, you fucking well should of, shouldn't ya?" Conall spit back. "I mean, it just makes sense that in a world of seven or eight billion people, you're not the most special group on the planet. Are you the least curious people on the planet or the dumbest?"
"Hey," Josie said, loud enough to startle the room. "No need for that in my house. You're a guest here and, to your point, things were going fine. We didn't need any help."
"I hate to say this, Josie, is it, but you need help now. You're all in shit up to your belly buttons and you're just now asking what that smell is."
"Why are we in trouble?" Dilly said.
"Because everyone, and I mean everyone knows where you are. Look, I've got to back up a bit and I can do without all the jabbering and interruptions."
"You're the one asking questions," Josie snarled. Dilly put his hand on his mom's shoulder and she let him.
"I'm sorry, you're right," Conall said, softening. "I'm in your home. I have a bit of temper and I will try to keep it in check. So please, Josie, may I get back to it?"
"That's what Byron said," Willie mumbled.
The room exploded with noise and everyone started moving at once. Dave lunged for his father trying to tackle him but Dilly, who had the height but not the weight advantage, tried to hold him back. By and large, he succeeded. Carl, ever the pragmatist, put himself in front of Willie while Ron yelled from the couch. Kenny Kirk unscrewed a flask, offered some to JoAnn, who demurred, then took a long dreg. It took a good fifteen seconds of yelling before anyone could make out anything resembling a word in English.
"... KING BEAT YOU TO FUCKING DEATH," Dave yelled.
"You ain't got the balls you pussy!" Willie yelled back, less convincingly.
"E FUCKING NOUGH!" Conall yelled over the fray. "You fucking bunch of American fucking psychopaths are going to sit your asses down and listen to me for the love of fucking God Almighty!"
The profanity mixed with the volume cut through the room and everyone sat. Conall was now quick with his words and harsh with his tone.
"I don't know what sort of family drama I've stumbled into but I was wrong. You are special because I've never seen a pack act as stupid as your lot. So I'm going to give you one more chance. You're going to sit, quietly, and let me lay out your situation. If you have questions, keep your fucking mouth shut until the end. If you have something you want to mutter that's going to piss everyone off, keep your fucking mouth shut until the end. If you have anything to say at all, for any reason, keep your fucking mouth shut until the end. I'm trying to help you and you treat me like your fucking therapist. Christ almighty."
Conall tested the rules he had just put down by stalking around the room, staring at each person. Everyone got a wild-eyed stare from Conall, and when he got to Willie and didn't get any lip, he nodded.
"OK, then. Off we fucking go."
•••
As far back as the seventh century, art depicts man who could transform his features. Despite extensive study into the topic, no one is sure how this ability came about. Speculation is rampant, lore is detailed and abundant, but facts on this topic are very hard to come by. Complicating matters from a Paleolithic standpoint was the fact that most of those affected with this "gift" didn't share it. Getting lost in feudal times or the pre-electric age was not a difficult task.
Similarly, it's unknown when the first communities of the "gifted" began. It might have been much earlier, but the first record was in Ireland in the late twelfth century. This group employed the services of a brotherhood of monks to record the names of their family and the dates in which they "changed." These records indicate three vitally important details about these early people.
1) They exclusively changed their form into that of a wolf and were able to do so at will.
2) They were at war with other groups of "changelings" who opted for a variety of animal forms but most often a bear.
3) Both sides of this conflict were very careful not to alert the general population, as whispers of their abilities were already rumor and myth. They felt the revelation of their abilities would make them targets for religious punishment or fearful destruction by governing institutions.
The Bear Wars, as the monks wrote, were long and protracted and both sides saw casualties. But the bears were fewer in number and the wolves, who were fleet and never attacked alone, eventually won out. It was written that the last bear was brought to the camp of the wolves, fed a huge meal, poured the finest alcohol in the land and, only after they had cheered and toasted the last of his kind did the wolves kill him. The scene is written of warmly, the death and end of the last bear an afterthought.
The monks, who had taken vows of silence, were good stewards of these secrets. The invention of the printing press in the 1600s presented the "gifted," now calling themselves "The Warry Ones," with a difficult choice. They could be loyal to these men who had collected their history but who knew their secret, or they could kill them and begin the Age of the Written Word with all their history in their total control. No records exist of how the decision was made, but "The Warry Ones" silenced the monks through tooth and claw.
It wasn't until the 1600s that the histories show other groups with similar gifts beginning to make themselves known. Many had similar stories of battle with others of similar ability, with wolves always winning the battles and the wars. Stories also emerged of those who dared reveal themselves or who were discovered. They always ended with pitchforks or bonfires.
By 1800, wolves were living in secret in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Germany, Russia, China, India and Japan. These groups would send ambassadors to the area and tell tales of their native lands to the delight of the others. Their numbers were small, by all accounts leaving a problem as to how to identify wolves when entering a new area. It was the Irish who came up with a code. The "Warry Ones" was shortened over the years to "Ware" and combined with "wolves" to form a nonsense word to those who didn't understand it. If you walked into a town in the 1600s and asked the bartender at the local tavern if he'd ever heard of "werewolves," he would give you a hearty "no" and go about his business. Within the next day, you would invariably find the group you were looking for.
So it went for many years, with groups finding each other, sharing knowledge about their gifts and forming communities. There were no records of wars among wolves with the exception of internal conflicts that had little to no bearing on the larger picture. A "governing body" was eventually formed based on the need to stay hidden, particularly from the Catholic Church. This group, referred to just as "The Council," met once every two years and their recommendations soon became best practices. Rules about how to best enjoy the transformation without rousing suspicion and how to deal with local authorities were soon adopted.
When the new world was discovered, The Council saw a unique opportunity to set up communities of only "werewolves" where land to run was plentiful and intrusion was minimal. That dream was never realized. The communities in Europe and Asia had heard rumors of many "gifted" among the Native population (with one rumor that a pack of "man bears" was responsible for the disappearance of the Roanoke colony in 1587) and contact was made. Indeed, there were many wolves, bears and even a few eagles, a phenomenon never before seen. A small community was established but the language barrier was an impediment. Soon, tensions flared and communication was suspended. The governments of England, France and eventually the United States would make sure the breadth of the Native community was never to be known and communication with the larger community was never reestablished.
There was not a mass migration to the "new world" as many in the werewolf community had set up very comfortable situations in their countries, but a few were established. The Northwest and northern part of the United States, as well as central and southern Canada had, and have, very robust communities living in basic secrecy. Based on the best practices set forth by The Council, success of these communities depends on their access to open, wooded land and a rural community where secrecy or acceptance is possible.
In their known history the most important "best practice" put forth by The Council was a strict census. Every pack had to be accounted for and when new wolves were born, The Council marked their date of birth and their first transformation. These records were exact and one member of each pack was responsible to The Council to provide this census. To this day, the census is taken very seriously by the community, but in the age before electricity with thousands of miles of ocean separating individual packs from their central governing body, there were gaps.
•••
"That's where you all come in," Conall said. He had all their attention. The reality of their situation had sunk in. They were a rogue pack, a group that had been operating independently, doing their own thing and existing in a bubble for over a hundred years. That bubble had just popped.
"You always think you've got everyone accounted for, then, all of a sudden, two people are ripped apart by wolves in the span of a week and it makes the news and the floodgates open, don't they?"
There was a lot of murmuring and agreement. In retrospect it was obvious. Of course Byron killing Sandra and the pack killing Byron would draw attention. They just hadn't figured on what kind.
"Who is Mr. Stander?" Dave asked.
"Put two and two together please," Conall said. "I don't know you. I don't know your situation. But I've got a really, really good guess as to how he got here."
"So, what, he's not with you then?" Kenny Kirk blurted.
"No, he's not with me you idiot," Conall said. "I can imagine why he's looking for you, though. You a big fan of medical tests? Having your nuts cut open with a scalpel and examined? How about your blood and bone harvested while you're kept alive and kicking? You a big fan of that?"
Kenny Kirk looked at Dave, who became keenly aware that everyone was looking to him. Dilly looked like he was about to cry.
"OK, Conall. Two things right off the bat. I know you've got a temper and I know you're pissed at us, but we're going to do our very, very best to keep a civil tone and I ask the same from you. No more name calling from us, or from you. At least for tonight."
"OK," Conall said. "So long as you understand how fucking stupid you all are, I don't need to point it out."
Everyone looked at Conall.
"Fine, fine," he said. "It's out of my system."
"Second thing. You've found us at a very difficult time. We recently made a decision, as a pack, that is tearing us apart. I know this pack has existed for over two hundred years and with everything I know I can't remember a time when things have been this difficult. I know you're here to help... at least I hope you're here to help, and we want that help. But things are tense right now and if you could keep that in mind, we'll get a lot further than if you don't."
"Fair enough," Conall said. "Tell you what. We're all going to take about ten or fifteen minutes here. We're going to get some food if you're hungry, you're going to smoke if that's your thing and we're going to meet back here at 9:00 and we're going to talk this out. Be prepared for a long night and maybe think about calling in sick tomorrow to work. We've got a lot to go over and not that much time to go over it."
It took a solid beat, but eventually everyone got up and, with the exception of Josie and Dave who stayed in the house to make some food, headed outside.
•••
"Jesus Christ on a cracker with some Tropical Punch Kool-Aid," Kenny Kirk said as he, JoAnn, and Ron walked around the back of the Rhodes' house. "How in the hell, I mean, how in the hell did we not know about this? We sound like a bunch of amateurs, man. It's amateur hour over here. This guy comes in and if you believe Dave he can talk when he's wolfing out and we're over here unable to wipe our asses properly. Like we're a bunch of backwoods yokels, man."
"We are a bunch of backwoods yokels, Kenny," Ron said. "That's kind of our thing. We did that on purpose."
"I know that, man, but, I don't know. It's shitty when someone else says it."
"I've always wanted to go to France," JoAnn said. "This might be a good excuse to go travel a bit."
"There's a silver lining for you," Kenny Kirk said. "It's attached to a big dark cloud that might turn into a tornado and kill everyone in its path, but that is a hell of a silver lining."
Ron was tickled by the comment so much that his chuckle had turned into more of a solid laugh. Before long Kenny had picked it up, too.
"I could be an American werewolf in London," Ron said, his laugh picking up steam.
"I love French bread, man. I wolf it down," Kenny Kirk said, getting them both rolling. JoAnn was not nearly as amused, her dark hair framing a face that was not happy with the men in her life.
"You're a bunch of assholes," she said. "You all are just as sick of this place as I am. Don't pretend that you aren't."
"It's not that, darlin'," Kenny said. "This, here, I think is what you call 'gallows humor.' See, we are good and proper fucked right now if this guy can't help us. It looks like Byron may have screwed us worse than we initially thought."
"Yeah," Ron said. "Sorry, JoAnn. I didn't mean anything by it."
"That's OK," she said. "I get it. I get we're in trouble. I always was kind of jealous of you guys, going out there, running, having a good time. It's not the same for me or Josie. It sucks for us, you know? And now we get all of the bad shit and none of the good. You don't realize what you guys have. Or how much watching Dilly get out there has been hard for us."
Kenny Kirk put his arm around JoAnn as she stared into the dark behind the house. Ron, suddenly feeling as if he was imposing on a private moment, shut his mouth and let them have it. Losing a kid is something you never get over, he figured, but being reminded of how old that kid would have been had he survived, that was something else entirely. Suddenly Ron felt the passage of time acutely and focused for a second on his back, which had been giving him trouble lately. He was getting old and he felt it. He hoped, quietly, staring into the dark, that he had more fight left in him.
•••
Carl and Dilly immediately walked over to Conall as he smoked a cigarette.
"I wanted to say hi," Carl said. "I'm... um, I'm Carl and this is Dave Jr. and... um... we are really happy you are here."
"You need something?" Conall asked.
"Well, I wanted to let you know I had my first run yesterday," Dilly said. "I'm the newbie. Um... it was great and I can't wait to... learn more, I guess."
Conall, remembering his vow of civility, gave a weak smile to the kid, then blew a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth.
"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" he said. "How old are you, boy?"
"Just turned sixteen," Dilly said.
"You know, that's about right," Conall said. "There's been a push to go younger and younger, so kids can control it but I say let a kid get some time under his or her belt before having to deal with all this. Am I right?"
"Yeah," Carl said. "That seems right."
"You know, it amazes me," Conall continued. "You guys are cut off, completely. You're free range, yet here you are, making some of the right calls. It's impressive is what it is."
"Thank you," Carl said.
"That doesn't mean you haven't pulled some massive fucking boners out here, but we'll get you through that," Conall said, patting Dilly on the shoulder. "See you inside, then."
They watched him head back inside, his heavy boots crunching the gravel around their back door. He flicked the cigarette a good eight feet as only an experienced smoker can do and pulled out his cell phone. They could hear him talking but not make out what he was saying.
"It's weird how you can't understand what he's saying, but you still hear his accent," Dilly said.
"Yeah," Carl replied.
"He says 'fuck' a lot," Dilly said.
"Watch your mouth," Carl countered. "And yeah. He does."
"What do you think is going to happen?"
"I'm not your dad, Dilly," Carl said. "Go ask him those sorts of questions, OK. But if I were you, I'd stay close. I'm guessing something bad is going to happen soon."
•••
Willie sat on the back porch in a chair. No one spoke to him.
•••
Dave and Josie spoke in short, whispered tones as they went about the ritual of preparing snacks. Over the seventeen years they had been married they knew subconsciously which way the other was going to go, especially in the kitchen. Dave would grab the chips and cut right to the counter, Josie would work the fridge and cut left to the table, they would both take a load to the living room before returning for drinks. This was the way they had done it literally thousands of times, but the ritual of preparing food gave no comfort from the panic both of them felt.
"Jesus, Dave, medical experiments? What are we going to do?"
"We're going to hear this guy out. I'm not sure I trust him one hundred percent but I've seen him change with my own two eyes. He's one of us, I promise."
"He is not one of us. He certainly doesn't talk like one of us. If we weren't all scared shitless I'd have kicked that guy out of my house by now."
"I get that," Dave said. "Hang on a little longer, OK?"
They both loaded up their hands and arms with food, made a trip to the living room and returned for drinks. For a moment, they worked in silence.
"Did you mean what you said back there?" Josie said. "About us being in the worst place we've ever been?"
"Not the time, Josie."
"Just a yes or no answer is all I need."
"As a pack, we're in a bad place and it's because of Willie. He's making this thing impossible."
"What about with us?"
"We've talked about this," Dave said. "Things are tense but OK, right?"
He put down his drinks and walked up to her, putting his hand on her back.
"Time will pass and the tension will go away and we'll be OK. I meant it when I said it back in January and I mean it now. Things are rough but I'm not going anywhere. Obviously."
"OK," she said. "Let's get through this."
Dave watched her walk out of the kitchen and grabbed the drinks.
•••
"OK, welcome back," Conall said. "First thing's first. I've gotten the OK from The Council to share with you a couple of protocols. They wanted me to make sure that this pack is interested in meeting with other representatives from our group after you are out of harm's way. Is that accurate?"
"Yes," Dave said. "That's accurate."
"The hell it is," Willie said from across the room. "How do you know they're not going to make us pledge allegiance to some faggy goat God or something?"
"Willie, man, the time has long past come and gone for you to shut up," Kenny Kirk said, shooting Dave a quick glance as he finished talking.
"... meeting with other representatives from our group. We are not forcing you to do anything nor are we requiring membership. We will come and talk. That's the only commitment you're giving right now," Conall said. "Clear?"
The group nodded and murmured in agreement.
"Good. The next thing. The man who approached you, Dave, he works for one of three groups as near as we can figure. Two of them are bio medical companies who have been chasing us for years for research purposes. The other is a nasty group of religious zealots who feel we are of the devil and must be destroyed. I have to say, if it were those nut balls they would have come in guns blazing right away, so I don't think that's it."
There was a lot of looking across the room to gauge everyone's reaction. So far everyone was holding it together. Even Willie was holding his tongue.
"Second thing, these murders happened a few weeks ago, correct?"
Josie, who was always on top of scheduling, was on it.
"Sandra died just under two weeks ago. Byron the same night but they didn't find him until the day after."
"OK," Conall said. "So it took Mr. Stander about a week to find you which, to be honest, is quicker than I would have liked. We pride ourselves on having very advanced algorithms that track the sort of news stories and keywords that would point toward a group of your sort. What we didn't count on was that you'd be in a place so remote that you barely have media."
"The newspaper is a weekly," Carl added.
"And they don't have a fucking website... sorry, a website so you can't set keywords for content that isn't there. Anyway, they found you fast which means, if we're lucky, the second wave won't be here for another twelve hours or so now that he has confirmation of contact."
"Second wave?" Dave asked.
"They try to buy you and if that doesn't work they try to trap you. I got to you before you could consider the ridiculous amount of money he was going to offer you to come with him. Believe me, Dave, once you agreed and showed up at their facility, all his promises are worth fuck all."
"How much money?" Willie asked.
"Do you like having your nutsack cut open, old man?" Conall finally snapped. "I'm talking about this group harvesting your corneas. I've seen their plans myself and there's not enough money in the world for some of the shit they're going to do to ya if they get the chance."
"So what do we do?" Dave asked.
"Do you have a place that you go when you change? A place where you run? Are you catching my drift?"
"Yeah," Dilly said. "It's up by..."
"Don't tell me," Conall said. "I don't want to hear it but I want you all to think of it. If something goes bad or if you're attacked or if you feel like you're in danger, that's where you meet to regroup. Second thing, we need to get you all out of here."
"Out of here," Willie said. "That ain't happening."
"It's not permanent," Conall said. "In eight or twelve hours when the men with the guns show up..."
"I thought you said we have eight hours," Dave said over Conall. "... you will not want to be here. Once you're safe we'll figure out what to do."
"Can we call the police?" Josie asked.
"And tell them what, exactly?" Conall said. "Officer so and so, a group of biomedical researchers are coming with guns to try and capture my friends and family and harvest my eyeballs because I do this little parlor trick, you see..."
"Grey Allen couldn't do shit anyway," Willie added.
"Grey Allen isn't the sheriff anymore," Kenny Kirk said. "Keep up, man."
"I don't disagree with anything you've said," Ron piped up. "But you're asking us to put our lives in your hands and all we have is Dave's word that you're like us."
Conall took a moment to turn and look at Dave for a long beat.
"The word of your alpha isn't enough for you?"
No one said a word as the question made the air thick and every noise amplified. Carl shifted in his seat and the sound of denim on a fake leather was suddenly deafening.
"I kind of want to see a talking wolf," Dilly said.
The laugh started with Kenny Kirk and rolled around the room. Within ten seconds everyone was at least chuckling and Willie sat in the corner with a big grin on his face. Conall tapped Dilly on the shoulder.
"All right, then, boy."
Conall walked over to the two smaller windows in the living room and drew the shades. Then he arched his back into a hunched position, then pulled up hard, suddenly taller. He didn't scream or yell as the boys of Cherry sometimes did and when the hair sprouted it was thick and fast. Aside from the quick rustling of the transformation, the loudest sound was the stretch of the Irish Wolf's fingernails as they lengthened and cracked, eventually sharpening into claws. The man's clothing stretched with his changing body as it was designed to do.
The result was very similar in shape to what the pack from Cherry looked like, but the posture was different and the eyes sharper and brighter. He was more frightening than Dilly had expected because, he figured out later, he looked like a beast that would chase you. Also, the sight of a snarling creature in a domestic setting accentuated just how big he was and, somehow, how terrible.
"I... speak," the Irish Wolf said in a growl so low and awful that everyone had to focus, hard, to understand him. "It's easier when I'm... angry. Is this enough for you? Does this make you... trust me?"
No one spoke, but they all nodded and the Irish Wolf, having sharp eyes, registered them all. Suddenly the wolf started twitching and banged his head against the wall in one smooth, violent motion.
"I must run," the Irish Wolf continued. "I will return... be ready. We leave soon."
The living room in the Rhodes household was sunken from the kitchen and bedroom area, leaving the Irish Wolf with the difficult task of walking up the five stairs to the front door on padded feet bent at odd angles. He would have leapt up the stairs easily, Dave figured, but the ceiling was too low.
Dave tried to help but the Irish Wolf snapped at him, crawled his way up the stairs and turned back at the group, who were transfixed.
"Sorry... about the... door."
With that the beast gave a hard push off the carpeted floor and exploded through the Rhodes' front door, pieces raining and glass smashing and crunching. Dilly ran to the window only to catch a glimpse of the Irish Wolf's hindquarters as he ran down the street and disappeared into the woods to the south of town. Pieces of door were still falling from the sky when Kenny Kirk broke the seal.
"Holy shit, man," he said. "I cannot believe that. Can you believe that? I can't believe that. I can't believe he can chat looking like that, I can't believe he busted your door into a million pieces, I can't believe we need to run for our lives, man."
"We don't need to run," Willie said. "We just need to scratch. Let them take their shot. They'll end up dead in the woods somewhere."
"We need to think about this," Ron said.
"Yeah," Dave said. "Because no one will notice a paramilitary group prowling around the woods with guns and no one will notice eight or ten dead bodies in the damn woods. Use your brain, Willie."
"If you had used your brain, we wouldn't be in this mess," Willie said.
"I don't want to kill anyone," Dilly added.
"No one's going to make you kill anyone," Josie said. "We'd never do anything like that so don't worry."
"You should damn well worry about it," Willie said. "So, he can turn into a wolf. That doesn't mean anything he's said is true. All it means is that there are more of us out there. That is it."
"Why would he reveal himself like that?" Ron said. "Why would he save Dave from that guy in the bow tie?"
"I don't know," Willie said. "I'm following my instincts. It's all I got and something doesn't seem right about that Irish fella."
"I think he's telling the truth, Grandpa," Dilly said.
"Look, Dilly, you're smart, but I swear to you if we go with that guy nothing good is gonna come of it. I've got a bad feeling."
The group continued on for ten minutes about the pros and cons, some pacing the room, some staying put, afraid to move. Things got heated, but just when they started to calm down, three things happened in rapid succession.
The first thing was Josie feeling as if something was deeply wrong. It's the feeling she got sometimes when Dilly left the door open, only much stronger. One night in the house Dilly had come home after basketball practice and left the door open for an hour as snow poured in their front door, ruining part of their flooring. During that entire time when she was upstairs, she sensed something was wrong and couldn't put her finger on it. The part of her brain that told her "the door is open" suddenly caught fire.
The second thing was Willie started changing. He gasped a very human, terrified gasp that ended in a growl. His arms started lengthening, then his legs in a transformation that was unlike any the group had ever seen. Instead of a smooth, all at once sort of process, Willie's arms went first, then his legs, then his head in an uneven and awful sequence. His growl turned into a yelp and the White Wolf collapsed on the ground, whimpering in pain and unable to stand.
The third thing was the yelling. Three men in black tactical gear, complete with helmets, bulletproof vests and what looked like assault rifles, came tearing down the stairs ordering everyone on the ground. The sound of the guns being discharged filled the room, but they were not gunshots. They were darts shooting at the group and only the odd layout of the room and the limited space prevented anyone else from being hit.
When the first man came around the corner, Dave was struck by violent inspiration and kicked at the man's knee as hard as he could. His heavy boot struck its target and the man went down, adding another layer of screams to the noise. He grabbed at the man's gun but the man held on. Dave pulled on the weapon, the effect of which was to bring the intruder's entire body up just in time to catch three darts in the back. The man screamed and Dave could hear the scream devolve into wet gurgling behind the visor.
Josie had grabbed Dilly, Ron had run to Dave's side, and Carl and JoAnn were helping Willie, who was in rough shape. The men had taken up residence at the top of the stairs and started crafting their random yelling into instructions.
"GET OUT OF THERE," one man yelled.
"Come up the stairs and we won't make you transform," another yelled in a slightly more reasoned but still hostile tone.
Dave threw the man he was holding down and dead weight hit the floor. The only entrance to the living room (aside from the entrance through the laundry room) was blocked by the man's body. If the two men at the top tried to come down they would have to vault their fallen comrade, losing their tactical advantage. For the time being, there was a stalemate.
"You're in my house," Dave yelled. "Get out."
"Your friend there," one of the men yelled. "The furry one? He's not long for this world. You gotta get him help or he's going to die." The man's voice was gruff and he delivered the words like he meant them and had probably said them before.
Part of Dave thought "good" when they threatened Willie, but then he heard Dilly sniffle. He was now at his grandfather's side as the White Wolf labored to breathe. Seeing Willie, or anyone in his condition, on the ground instead of on the hunt was odd in a specific way for Dave, especially since his father was a scrapper and fighter as a human and otherwise.
"You've got about half an hour before he's dead," the man upstairs yelled. The White Wolf's eyes shot open.
"You're just delaying it," the man continued. "Get up here and we won't make you transform. It's your only option."
The White Wolf growled.
Josie, who was now over by her son, looked at Dave, pleading with her eyes to make this end. JoAnn and Kenny were holding each other as she had started to sob, quietly, into Kenny's skinny shoulder.
The White Wolf looked at Dave.
Dave gave a small nod.
"Quit stall..." the man began.
In a fraction of a second, the White Wolf moved to put his paws underneath him and launched himself up the narrow stairway and right into one of the men. The other recoiled backward out of surprise and panic, tripped over his own feet and fell, hard. Everyone heard him fall and Carl made a move as if to capitalize, but Dave made a motion to hold him back.
"Not yet," Dave said. "Not until the screaming stops."
Upstairs, the powerful jaws of the White Wolf had bit through the hard plastic and metal of the first man's helmet, puncturing his head enough to cause bleeding, but not enough to do any major damage. Unfortunately for the man, he was unable to push the White Wolf off him as the beast was heavy but also hard to grab onto and it wasn't long until the helmet finally stuck to one of the powerful incisors of the beast and came tumbling off. Before the killing bite, the wolf paused for just a moment to survey his prey. He had done this dozens and dozens of times in the woods. Creatures who are about to die fight and fight until the life leaves them and the White Wolf savored that last bit of fight before they went limp.
The man did not disappoint. In this case he screamed and thrashed and kicked his feet but it wasn't anywhere near enough. The White Wolf got his entire jaws around the man's head and bit, ripping the flesh and crushing the skull. The screaming continued and the White Wolf tasted all the blood he wanted, and then something more metallic and singular as the brain was exposed and gave way. A few bites later the fighting stopped, the kicking ceased and the White Wolf pulled up hard to see what had happened to the second man, and what he saw amused him, if such a thing was possible.
He was frozen in fear. The second man was still sitting, his hands desperately trying to load live ammunition in his gun, which was loaded with darts. The fear of the wolf was consuming him and the man's hands weren't working and he dropped bullets all over the floor. The man's eyes were wide and his whole body was shaking.
The White Wolf, with a grunt, turned his body toward the other man. Instead of screaming, like the first one, this man started pleading.
"Oh Jesus," the man said over and over again. "Please no, oh Jesus oh God no. I... I, no no NO!"
The man got louder the closer the White Wolf got, and in the end the great beast destroyed the man more to shut him up than anything. He would have liked to play around with him a bit, given the chance, but his whining was enough to annoy the White Wolf into granting a quick death. When he was done, having destroyed the second man in the same manner as the first, the wolf noticed the man had peed on the floor. Not your territory anymore, the wolf thought.
Slowly, the rest of the party emerged from the basement and were met with blood, bodies, and the smell of evacuated bowels. The White Wolf growled at them, but it was never in his mind to strike.
"What do we do now?" Ron asked.
As if to answer, the White Wolf collapsed again, the momentary blast of energy and vengeance having run out. The creature looked frail again as Dilly approached it.
"What's wrong with him?" Dilly asked. "How do we make him better?"
"What do we do with the bodies?" Josie asked.
"Where the hell is Conall?" Kenny Kirk wondered aloud.
"I don't know, the bodies aren't going anywhere and Conall can take care of himself," Dave said. "Ron, help me get Willie into your truck."
"Where are we going?"
"We're heading to the woods."
•••
Seven o'clock had come and gone and Stu sat, behind a tree, desperately wishing for something more substantial than sunflower seeds. He had picked up the habit when he had first rolled in to Cherry, having discovered ranch-flavored sunflower seeds at a gas station about ten miles away. He had never seen anything but regular, salted seeds in the various gas stations throughout his life and was confronted with a whole new world. On the spot he had bought ranch-, dill pickle- and bacon-flavored and proceeded to chow down during the day, so much so that he often skipped lunch, having filled up on seeds. Turned out, he thought as he leaned against the bark of a big cottonwood, that plan didn't work for dinner.
Still, there were worse ways to be spending an evening. The air was cool and pleasant, the air smelled wonderful, and the forest was blazing with fall colors. The yellows and reds of the season was something Stu had seen, but never been enveloped by. There was a girl on one of the dating sites that he had been messaging quite a bit and he decided, then and there, he was going to take the plunge and ask her to go for a hike with him through the woods.
Nah, he thought. That might seem a bit "murder-y."
He had been listening for the crunch of tires on the nearby gravel and was hoping to spy on Mr. Stander a bit before revealing himself. The best-case scenario, Stu figured, was to overhear a conversation that would shed light on who the hell this stranger was and how he knew about the two murders. But, as the sun set and the colors of the forest faded, Stu started to feel stupid. With the feeling came pieces of his "curse," and before long he was reliving dying children and remembering comments he would have been better not to have read.
"There goes my night," Stu said out loud. A loud whoosh answered him.
Stu had been listening for car tracks on the crunchy gravel but instead of car tracks, he heard something else. It was a quick yet thick sound of something moving very fast in such a way he couldn't tell where it was coming from. He heard the sound three times, each time thinking it was coming from somewhere different.
Then the sound of crunching gravel filled his ears, and he stood up and peered around the corner of the tree. It was hard to make out exactly what was happening, but he caught snippets of conversation.
"I don't see how this is going to help, even a little bit," a man was saying, running his mouth so fast he barely paused for breath. "We get him out to the woods and then what, man? The magic fairy nymphs take the poison or whatever the hell is in his system away and he lives for another decade?"
There was more mumbling followed by the motor mouth getting more upset. Stu was aware of three cars now pulling into the area. As far as he could tell in the low light, Mr. Stander wasn't among them.
"Tell me what you're thinking, man!" the motor mouth yelled. "Tell anyone what you're thinking? We're all confused as hell, here!"
People were piling out of cars and Stu lost count of how many there were. It was also hard to nail down faces in the dark, especially ones he was still committing to memory, but he did recognize Dave, the high school teacher. He was moving something with another man that was wrapped up in a sheet. It was far too long to be a human body, Dave thought.
The heavy whoosh returned and suddenly a different voice appeared from the other side of the campground.
"Aye!" the voice yelled, thick with what Stu identified as an Irish accent. "Good thinking. Bring him this way!"
"WHY!" the motor mouth yelled. "Are you a damn wolf doctor?"
Stu ventured a little farther past the trunk of the tree to take in the scene, but the scene had moved. The whole group was moving in a bunch, without any stragglers, into the woods and right past Stu. He repositioned himself and heard a few more words and phrases that made no sense to him as they passed. No one gave a glance backward, so he followed, being careful to make as little noise as possible.
The group was loud enough through their feverish and rapid conversation to make following easy and about ten minutes later they stopped by the banks of a small stream. Careful to keep his distance, Stu listened and, because it was better to be safe than sorry, undid the strap that held his gun securely in its holster.
"... you're his son. You should be the one to do it."
"Does it matter that I don't want to?"
"Not in the least."
"But I can't control it. Not like you can."
"Look, I get it. I'm going to transform too and between me and your mates we'll be able to take what we need and keep everyone safe."
"If I lose it, my family is here."
None of this made any sense from a logical standpoint, but Stu was reasonably sure something bad was about to happen. He started thinking about when to reveal himself and what he would do when that happened. He was a decent shot but he was alone, in the dark woods with a bunch of strangers doing something bad. To turn around now would draw more attention. He suddenly, and rightfully, felt trapped.
"Dave," Stu heard the man with the accent say. "You have my word, my word, that I will keep your family safe. Trust me, I can destroy your ass if necessary."
There was a smattering of laughter among the group and suddenly Stu heard an odd howling sound that he couldn't identify. It warbled and faded into a sad moan and it chilled him, but for some reason, didn't scare him. The sound was coming from whatever was underneath the sheet, which rose and fell sharply as something twitched underneath it.
"OK," Stu heard Dave said. "OK. I'm ready. You go first."
It was dark and Stu was scared and behind a tree, but by the light left in the sky and from the sounds of crunching and muffled screams, he put together that something unnatural and terrifying was happening thirty feet or so from him and he was struck with a full body desire to run. It was almost impossible to overcome, his feet begging, screaming to move, but his brain applying all the brakes they possibly could.
If he moved he would be seen.
•••
Conall had met them, in human form, the moment they arrived at the campsite. Dave was relieved to see him. The rest of the pack, not so much. But, they had worked through it and on their way into the woods Conall had told them the plan.
Packs were bonded, Conall told him, on a biological level. If you're near someone when they transform for a long period of time, you "get used to them" in a very ingrained way. Werewolves or whatever you call them were vulnerable during the change and that, mixed with others being vulnerable beside them, created a mix of sorts.
"The long story short is that you can heal each other," Conall said. "But only in the wolf form. We can't change... what's his name there?"
"Willie," Dave said. "He's my dad."
"OK, then. We can't change Willie back and if we did it could be a bad situation because I'm not sure what the bloody hell is wrong with him. Our best bet is to go out, have one of you transform and then..."
Conall paused, trying to come up with the words.
"Bleed a little, I guess."
"You need blood?" Dave said, incredulous.
"Look, I don't make the rules, Dave," Conall said. "I've seen it work and I'm telling you if you transform and we take some of your blood and give it to Willie, it'll fix everything from poison to losing an arm. It works. I've seen it."
Dave fell silent and Conall, in an act of European sensibilities, came close to Dave and put his weighty hands on his shoulders.
"You can save your father, Dave. You can do it."
So, off into the woods they went, all of them trudging across the suddenly cold plain of grass and leaves. Once they hit a clearing they worked it out—Conall would go first since he had more control. Dave would go second and the boys would work to try to keep him at bay. This was odd for several reasons, the biggest one being group transformation was the one and only way they had ever transformed. Going it alone was strictly forbidden for a number of very good reasons and here was Dave, about to break their cardinal rule.
Add to the situation the fact that Conall expected Dave to have some modicum of control after he transformed, and the whole thing seemed like a terrible idea to Dave. He pulled Josie aside and told her to take Dilly and leave, but Conall nixed it.
"Dave, you have my word, my word, that I will keep your family safe," Conall said loud enough for everyone to hear. Trust me, I can destroy your ass if necessary."
It was little comfort and Dave walked back to Josie and put his head over her left shoulder so they could whisper to each other.
"I'm worried about you," he said.
"I'm not the one bleeding," she pointed out.
"Willie's an asshole."
"No doubt. Willie's your father and Willie is Dilly's grandpa."
"What if something goes wrong?"
"Things have already gone wrong."
He took her meaning, macro and micro, and walked over to Conall.
"OK, I'm ready," Dave said. "You go first."
Conall kicked, fell and the group heard several loud pops and something akin to tearing. Less than thirty seconds later the Irish Wolf stood up, and immediately started sniffing the air.
"Someone's here," the wolf growled.
Quickly everyone started looking around until the Irish Wolf threw his nose, violently, in the direction of a bank of trees. Everyone took his meaning and began moving. JoAnn always carried a .38 in her purse and retrieved it.
"Just a second," Dave yelled when he saw the gun. Then Dave raised his voice and yelled at the trees. "Whoever you are, please come out. If you don't, I can't promise your safety."
Behind the tree, Stu had locked up for a second, but the sound of Dave's voice shook him loose. Without giving it much thought he quickly shifted his whole weight from one leg to another, moving clear of the protective cover. Stu didn't know what to say, so he said nothing.
"Shit," he heard Dave said.
"HE CAN'T BE HERE," the Irish Wolf yelled, almost howling. "LEAVE!"
Dave quickly came up on Stu and held his arms out to keep everyone back.
"Stu," Dave said. "This is... awkward. But I'm going to get you out of here if you let me."
Stu was getting his first, good look at the Irish Wolf and was doing the best he could to not shut down. The beast was large, but in the dark its eyes were the most prominent thing and they were full of murder. Stu was suddenly hyper aware of his body, his heart pounding very hard, his mouth producing more saliva than usual, his nose grabbing scents from the air, but he was almost oblivious to everything else. Dave might as well have promised him a lobster dinner and no funny business afterward.
"STU!" Dave yelled, snapping his fingers. "You gotta stay with me, buddy."
Stu came around to consciousness but still felt nothing but fear.
"Do you see the nice guy over there next to the woman with the gun?" Dave asked. "He's going to come and walk you back to the clearing, and you're going to wait there. He's going to make sure you wait right there. Then we're going to talk. Is that OK?"
Wet mouth but dry throat, eyes stinging from how wide they were open, Stu managed a nod. Words were not coming anytime soon.
"OK," Dave said. "Kenny, take him to your truck, please. Keep him there."
"I heard you," Kenny said. "JoAnn's coming with me."
"We might need her gun."
"Then give it to someone else, she ain't staying here when this shit goes down."
"Excuse me, who said I'm not?" JoAnn said. "Just take him, Kenny. I'll be fine. You're in more danger than I am."
"GO!" the Irish Wolf screamed, clearly struggling to not tear the intruder to shreds.
Kenny took the cue and put both hands on Stu's shoulders, whipped him around and started marching him through the woods. If Stu was beyond words, Kenny had enough for both of them.
"This is the biggest goddamn mess I've ever seen, man. Irish dudes and cops and a fucking SWAT team and Irish dudes and Willie on his way out. This is not how I wanted to spend my evening, man. I had plans."
"We don't have a SWAT team," Stu said, half under his breath, not sure what else to say.
"No, you don't have a SWAT team, man. This was a different thing. We're going to get you sat down in my truck and we'll talk. Although, to be honest with you, I don't have a real good grasp on this whole thing, man. I know about, like, seventy percent of what's going on. Maybe less. Maybe sixty but that sounds like I don't know anything."
Stu was happy for the distraction and was led, happily, into the passenger seat of Stu's truck.
A couple hundred yards away the Irish Wolf continued yelling.
"YOU BECOME WOLF!" it yelled, deep and guttural and pissed off. "NOW!"
Not unlike Stu, Dave had limited experience looking at a wolf when he wasn't one himself, and the Irish Wolf's screams were not putting him in a contemplative head space. He had a go-to thought for when he scratched involving pain—an injury when he was a kid where he busted his leg open. The panic of the bloody mess staining his socks and shoes got him started and the memory of digging deep and pulling himself home dragging one dead leg behind him usually got him over the falls and into the transformation. Conall had asked him to be both passionate and controlled as possible. Well, Dave thought, he was going to get one of those things.
The moment he made the decision to give up on control his brain flooded with thoughts he had pushed down. The confusion and pain of the past few hours melted and Dave suddenly remembered how he had found out about Josie's infidelity, the moment he put the pieces together, the little clues that added up to one big hole that ate his heart, brain, and soul. He remembered when she tried to play it off, to call him paranoid and jealous. He remembered the lies he eventually trapped her in. He remembered how the most fundamental thing in his life was undone by something as trivial as sex, how the rock where his life had been built had split wide and dumped him into the foggy, cold, unforgiving sea.
He remembered almost losing his son.
He hadn't forgiven her. He hadn't forgotten. He hadn't put his family before himself, he hadn't done the good Christian act of forgiveness, he hadn't let bygones be bygones and he sure as hell hadn't gotten this out of his system. He had put a cap on it is all. He had suffered in silence and the Irish Wolf, that intruder, was going to know what it meant when that suffering exploded all over these woods and the state and the fucking world for all Dave cared.
Without even realizing it, Dave let out a scream, which was not his normal ritual, then collapsed, twitched and kept screaming all the way through the transformation. Dilly instinctively walked behind his mom and she reached out and took his hand. From under the tarp, the White Wolf let out a long whine.
It took ninety seconds or more of loud, violent thrashing and noise but the Lead Wolf eventually rose from the dirty, leaf-strewn ground. Steam rose off him and he turned to face the Irish Wolf.
Dave Rhodes was forty-two. He had first scratched at fifteen. The Lead Wolf had only been lead for a little over two years. It had been a hard, ugly fight but he had won and now, when he rose, he was as hungry as he'd ever been. Hungry for flesh. Hungry for battle. Hungry as fuck. He turned to face the Irish Wolf and if the stranger could have smirked, he would have. The lead wolf growled and wrestled the sound as if it caught in his throat and croaked out a word.
"Blood," the Lead Wolf growled. Then, much louder, "BLOOOOOOD!" The two wolves leapt, hurtling toward each other with ferocious speed, claws out, teeth bared, intent unsheathed. Everyone ran for cover yelling and crouching as they went and as the wolves collided high in the air, lit by the moon, the force of their impact could be felt all the way back at an old rusted truck with the most confused and scared cop in the world in the passenger side, begging to be delivered from this new, fresh hell.
A SERMON BY THE REV. THOMAS RHODES  
March 7, 1958
It's a difficult thing to love your neighbor.
Sometimes your neighbor is petulant. Sometimes he is brash and braggadocian, engaging in all manner of prideful thoughts and actions. I know of one man who wooed and bedded his neighbor's wife. Ask that husband if it's easy to love your neighbor. I bet you, brothers and sisters, will all get the same answer. It is not easy.
Your family, that's supposed to be another story. Your father and your mother, they are the ones who bring you into this world, that nurture you, that raise you up right in the word of God in a Godly household and if you stray, they are the ones who feel God's spirit moving through you and put you back in line. Your brothers and your sisters – your actual brothers and sisters, not what we call each other every Sunday – your brothers and sisters are your first friends, your allies and your co-conspirators. [laughter]
If you'll allow me, you know my brother and sister, Willie and Cindy. There they are, fourth pew from the back, like they always are. We grew up with a harsh father, Rev. Kane as you all knew him. He was a good man in his heart and from the pulpit but he could be a cruel man when his temper got the better of him, and because of that, Willie and Cindy, they looked up to me to protect them. I can see Willie smiling from here. I remember once we were playing in the living room and we knocked over the radio and broke it. This was the most expensive item in our modest house. A radio that brought the outside world into our home. We begged and begged mother for it and she talked good old Rev. Kane into it, even though it "could be used by the devil."
We broke that radio. On accident, as children do sometimes. And when my father, the Reverend, came home he asked who had done it. I told him it was me and he took after me with a vengeance, yes he did. Willie... Willie even tried to talk some sense into my father and he regretted it. But, it was all over soon enough. We had dinner that night, as a family if I recall, me with an ice pack on my eye.
My point, brothers and sisters, is not to ask for your pity for me but to illustrate, in a real and substantial way, that loving your family can be just as hard as loving your neighbor. It can be a brutal affair, family and Jesus, he knew it. And he knew why. Family can hurt you like no one else can hurt you because family are the ones who are your own flesh and your own blood and are supposed to be your own soul. Family are part of you that can betray you as no one else can – not a wife, not a friend, not an old Army buddy or the newest of lovers can hurt you like a family can hurt you.
But it can go the other way, too, can't it? You know it can, brothers and sisters, you know it can. Because just as I stepped in front of a flurry of fists from the good Reverend for Willie and for Cindy, I know they would step in front of an oncoming bus for me if I needed them to. I know that the three of us have a bond so strong that my wife, the person with whom I choose to share my life, she'll never equal it. Family is hard. But family is, sometimes, the only thing that can save us.
With that, consider today's reading. Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own he cannot be My disciple."
Think on that, ponder on that, brothers and sisters. Think of what Jesus is saying because this isn't a verse with hidden meaning. This isn't a puzzler. This is black and white, people of God. This is clear as clear can be and as plain and plain can be out of the mouth of Jesus himself. If you are to be my disciple, Jesus says, you must hate... hate your family. You must take that which is closest to you, that which feeds you and nourishes you, that which you value and you understand better than anything else on this Earth and you need to throw it away. Discard it. Leave it. Hate it. Jesus is saying compared to the best Earth can give you, compared to the most perfect and amazing love a human can offer, it is nothing, it is contemptible, it is rubbish compared to what being a disciple of Jesus can be.
Family is hard. Loving your neighbor is hard. But I look at you, my neighbors, and I look at Willie and at Cindy and I tell you with a swelling heart and tears in my eyes that it is worth it. It is worth every heartbreak and every betrayal and every wrong turn and every misstep to be your neighbor and to be your brother and to be your sister. It is worth it. It is worth it.
Being a disciple of Jesus, that's more than a man can hope to accomplish in one, small, meager lifetime, but the reward, brothers and sisters, is eternal life on the other side. Eternal glory and a seat at the heavenly banquet. What more can man ask for?
Amen.
PART 6 – I SAW RED
"Bar" was still open. That was good.
That was about all for the "good" column.
Dave's shirt was gone. That was the first thing a bystander might notice. He was the lone shirtless guy sitting in the back, part of a group of a dozen or so people occupying the rear of the bar. They had pushed a bunch of tables together and, one bare-chested dude aside, they wouldn't be too conspicuous on first glance.
But if you spent a few seconds you might notice the blood. The shirtless guy was bleeding, more than a little. He was holding a bag of ice to a nasty gash on his chest and the red blood had seeped around the bag even though the man was holding it tightly. Closer inspection would reveal another man with his hand wrapped with bloodstains sprouting up in random intervals along the white fabric. Then, if you kept looking, you would notice how rough everyone else looked. There was an old man, white hair and beard, who had flecks of leaves and dirt visible and looked like he had just been hit by a truck. There was a young man, next to him, with visible tear marks down his cheeks. A group of three clustered in one corner, not talking or drinking. And there was a woman at the end of the table who, in direct contrast to everyone else, could not keep still.
Finally, if you'd taken all that in, you might have noticed the Barter County Sheriff, sitting away from the group, staring at a wall.
But no one else was there. Even Chuck had stayed in the back, coming only when called.
Josie took turns between being uncomfortable sitting and being uncomfortable standing. She had never been this frightened in her life. She finally walked over to Dave.
"You have to talk to him," she said. "He saw."
"I know he saw."
"Then you have to talk to him."
"I know."
"Would you go over there and talk to him then?"
Dave looked up at her and gave her a bleary look. He was just about done.
"If you don't go over there now," Josie said. "Think about what happens next."
He would call other cops, of course. Or would he? Dave thought. What would he tell them? He would definitely lock Dave up, or maybe not. Come to think of it, Dave had no idea what would happen next.
"Nothing good happens next," Josie said, reading the look on his face. "He could arrest us, he could detain us, he could decide to shoot us. I hate to say this, but you gotta win him over. We can't leave here enemies."
Dave pulled himself up with a groan, careful to keep the ice pack hard against his chest and staggered over to the bar, yelling for Chuck. He whispered something, disappearing into the back, and soon Chuck came out with a shirt, a pitcher of beer, and two glasses. Dave patted Chuck on the shoulder, then put on the shirt, wincing through the process. The cut Conall had given him was deep and would require medical care at some point but as his wife had said, there was something else he had to attend to.
Slowly, Dave took the long walk from the bar to Stu's table. Stu had been dutiful and had stayed in the truck back at the campground, only to be rewarded by getting a close-up look at the fight between the Lead Wolf and the Irish Wolf. The blast radius of their fight had taken them deep into the woods, then toward the road and finally, after The Irish Wolf tried to change the direction of the fight, back to the truck. The Lead Wolf had been beaten, knocked unconscious after the Irish Wolf ran him, full force, into the truck's grill. The howl of the Irish Wolf's victory had drowned out the screams from the sheriff and the headlights had given him a good, long, detailed look at exactly what he was dealing with.
Stu had not said a word since that scream.
On his way to the table, Conall grabbed Dave's arm.
"Have you thought through this course of action, there?" he asked. "This could go very wrong very fast."
"I know you're trying to help us but with all due respect, I think I'm done taking advice from you for tonight," Dave said.
Conall went back to staring at his beer as Dave sat down with Stu, letting the two glasses clank loudly on the old, wooden table. He set the pitcher of beer down more gingerly. All of his angry energy was basically gone, but his internal rebellion was still calling the shots. He was going to handle it his way. If anyone had a problem with it, they could take a shot at being Alpha.
"Sheriff," Dave said. "Tough night."
Stu didn't say anything.
"I don't want to sound pushy, all right, but this is what's going to happen. There's this pitcher of beer and there are two glasses. I'm going to start drinking here in a second and I'm going to pour you a drink and you're going to drink with me. I insist."
Stu didn't say anything.
"As long as there is beer in this pitcher, there is no question I'm not going to answer. Ask me anything about what you've seen tonight. I will not lie to you and I will not hide the truth. If I don't know something, I'll tell you that. As long as there's beer in that pitcher, ask me anything."
Stu didn't say anything.
"When the beer is gone, I'm done answering questions and hopefully I'll have talked you into letting me and my family live in peace. If you decide you're not thirsty or talkative, I'm going to drink this pitcher by myself and you'll never have this chance again. Ever."
Stu didn't say anything.
"I'm going to need some sort of sign that you understand what I'm saying to you."
Flashes of teeth, fur, and blood filled Stu's brain, and he batted them away. The memories of his past trauma, his "curse," had given him training in this regard. There were so many times in public where he had zoned out, completely lost in the fog of his trauma. He had imaginary conversations with the boy who had shot himself, run the scenario a million times and, he had learned, there were times when you shoved those memories to the side and got some damn work done. This was different, obviously. But the process was the same.
In a moment, Stu snapped his working brain back into place and grabbed his cup.
"Pour the beer," he said.
"Thank you," Dave said and used the side of the pitcher instead of the spout, something he had done many times throughout the years, to pull a wide stream of beer into the glass, filling it in less than two seconds. The head rose and formed a bubble shape around the top of the glass. Just when it looked like spillage was imminent, the head held and started to slowly, slowly roll back.
"I guess my first question is why shouldn't I shoot you right now."
"In front of my family? I don't think I have you pegged that wrong."
"Fine then. Let me shoot your Irish friend over there and I'll take him to the nearest city with a university and they can figure this out."
Conall heard his name and turned around, raising his glass.
"Try it, mate!" he yelled.
"Don't look at him," Dave said. "Look at me. Conall, let the Sheriff and I talk, please."
Conall gave a slight shrug and turned back around. Both Dave and Stu were aware that everyone could hear them. Hell, Chuck could probably hear them in the back. It was just as well. This was a private conversation about a public truth.
"You shouldn't shoot me because we haven't done anything wrong."
"Excuse me," Stu said.
"If you exclude the little party trick you saw there, what did we do?"
"OK," Stu said, speaking rapidly and ticking his points off on his fingers. "Assault, destruction of property, attempted murder..."
"No one was trying to kill you, Stu."
"Disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace... no license for your animal, I don't fucking know. The point is that little 'party trick'... I don't even know. What the hell..."
Stu was starting to lose it again and Dave saw his opening.
"What you saw, Sheriff, was something that's been happening around here for, literally, hundreds of years. There are groups all over the world that do this, if you believe Conall over there. What I know and what I can tell you for certain is I've been doing this for over twenty years and I have never... I've never been a danger to anyone."
Dave was going to say he had never hurt anyone, but everyone in the bar knew that was a lie. By now, Stu had certainly put together that the two unsolved murders in his county were a result of the local pack and it was still the rawest of nerves among the group.
"Two bodies," Dave said. "That one blonde girl and that dude... Matzen. You and your people killed them."
Both men took a long drink of their beer.
"Truth is, Sheriff, you're half right. I told you I wouldn't lie to you and I'm not going to, so I'm about to tell you something really personal that's hard to talk about. I have no reason to lie..."
"Out with it," Stu said. "Don't tell me you're telling the truth. Liars tend to do that."
"Fair enough. Byron was part of our pack. He was a friend of mine and he's an ex-boyfriend of my wife, Josie, over there."
She looked up and gave a nod. It didn't register with Stu that the entire bar was listening to them.
"We all loved Byron," Dave continued. "But he got himself in some trouble. This thing, that we do, it's a high. It makes you feel incredible but we have rules in place because it's gotta be regulated. If it was one guy who could do this, they'd hurt somebody, they'd lose control. That's why we're a group. So we can help each other keep control."
The mood in the back of the bar immediately changed and softened. The group never talked about this part of the process. It was understood and refined by years of "scratches" and everything that went with it—the breaking bread, the absolute honesty. After you've seen someone turn into a wolf, how much more intimate can you get? But words about the process, spoken aloud, hit Ron and Carl and Willie and Josie.
"Are you a hunter, Sheriff?"
"No. I grew up in the city. Never got the chance."
"There's this teacher I work with, Mr. Shank, and Mr. Shank and his wife had a kid and one of the first things he said when that kid was born was 'I can't wait to take him hunting.' I asked him why and he said he remembered the first time his dad put a rifle in his hands. How careful he had to be and how closely he had to listen and then his dad took him out and showed him how to attract a deer and how to flush it out and they were outside and bonding. It was an experience he associated most closely with family."
"This thing we do, it's like that only a million times more potent," Dave continued. "My dad did it. His dad did it. I just... I just showed my son how this works," Dave said and stopped. He had started to choke up but quickly pulled himself together. "This is why we're here. This is as much who we are as anything on this planet. This is sacred to us. Those woods, that's our sanctuary. We have rituals we go through and we do it to keep the folks in this town safe."
"And Mr. Matzen?" Stu asked. "He wasn't safe."
"He did that to himself," Dave said. "The scratch wasn't enough for him, so he started messing around with drugs. Got himself addicted and then he did what an addict does."
"He was going to sell you out, wasn't he," Stu said.
"He was."
"What was he going to do?"
Dave took another large swallow of beer.
"Byron always was an attention whore," Dave said, letting it fly a little more. "If he wasn't getting attention when he wanted it, he would do anything to make sure he got it. He'd sing karaoke every week and if that didn't do it he'd go down to the school and play the pianos and sing to the kids. They all thought he was the best. If he was feeling low he'd get on the Internet and talk shit and message ex-girlfriends and anything he could to get that attention. He was an asshole."
Across the bar, Josie winced a bit.
"What was he going to do?" Stu repeated.
"He was with that girl, Sandra Riedel? They were together because of course they were. Fucker could charm the pants off anyone he wanted. So one night, Sandra comes to Ron over there and asks him if he can set up a secure webcam and make sure that no one else around could hack their signal. He asks why and it comes out that he's become a wolf in front of Sandra and now he's going to do it on webcam because he's a giant attention whore."
"I thought you said he was on drugs?" Stu asked.
"That was part of it, turns out," Dave said. "Ron, he goes along with it and finds out from Sandra that they've both been doing meth for a few months. She says that she can't keep up with him and that he does it almost every other day. So Ron digs a little more and it turns out he's not just cam whoring, he's trying to win something. Ever heard of the JREF prize?"
"No," Stu said.
"The James Randi Educational Foundation has promised one million dollars for whoever can prove existence of the supernatural. Byron was going to take him up on it. Apparently he was going to webcam with someone from their group and then go in and do it in person. Then he was out of here."
"What happened?"
"Ron got all this out of Sandra and then we all went and confronted him about it. He denied the whole thing and the next morning, Sandra was dead."
"What happened, Dave?"
"Sandra double-crossed him. She was going to take the money for herself and hang Byron out to dry. That's what he told us and I believe him. And we have rules and rituals for one reason and one reason only."
"To maintain control," Stu said.
"Exactly," Dave said, running his fingers through his hair and draining his beer glass. "If he can kill a member of this community and get away with it ain't nobody safe here. And we will never make our neighbors feel unsafe. Never."
That sat for a while. Dave poured two more glasses and Willie, who was in the corner, held his tongue. The phrase "there's more to it than that" was raging in his brain, but given how he felt and the current state of things, he fought the urge and kept it to himself.
"Did you kill him?" Stu asked.
"It was a group thing," Dave replied. "In full honesty, we all came at him at once."
"As wolves?"
"Yeah," Dave said. "As wolves."
By now the two men were drinking at fairly regular intervals and it was no longer a standoff, but a conversation. In that way, Dave had succeeded. His family and friends had gone from monsters back to people in the sheriff's mind, but the next step was going to be a lot harder.
"Shit," Stu said. "How do you do that?"
"What?"
"You know damn well what."
"I don't know if I can give you a good answer," Dave said. "I can tell you what it's like. I can tell you we've been doing it in this part of the country since pioneer days. I can tell you it hurts but you get used to it. I can tell you me and my family are in complete control over this thing and Byron's death, while tragic, was a rare thing."
"You'll understand if I'm having a bit of trouble believing you."
Dave sat back in his chair. The pitcher was more than half empty. Time to go for broke, he thought.
"Here's a question for you, Sheriff. How many people have you met on this job?"
"I don't know. A hundred or so."
"You've met Chuck there behind the bar. You've met the Meyers, the Chandlers, you've met Pastor Matt down at the church and Amy who manages the gas station?"
"Yeah," Stu said. "I've met all of them."
"So do you think that Chuck and the Meyers and the Chandlers and Pastor Matt and Amy and everyone else in this town would hesitate, even for a second, to tell the world there were werewolves living next door if they thought they were in any danger?"
Stu took a drink and leaned forward to meet Dave's gaze.
"You think this is the first time I've had this conversation, Sheriff?" Dave said. "You think most people around here don't know?"
Suddenly, a lot of things clicked into place for Stu, like every single time someone from the area asked him if they had met Dave yet or the multiple times he'd heard phrases like "you'll find some odd folks around here," or "this isn't your normal sort of town." Even Chuck, trying desperately to look like he wasn't listening, had made several out and out references to wolves that flew right over Stu's head. Of course, if he had known he was dealing with werewolves...
"The point," Dave continued, "is here's what we tell people."
Dave stood up for effect. The rest of the group behind him stood up as well and Conall, taking his cue about five seconds late, followed suit.
"I tell people that we are decent, hard-working folks who go to our jobs, pay our taxes, sing in the church choir and go out into the woods once or twice a month and do our thing. We're careful and we care. This here, this is our home. This is our refuge. If you're scared, we understand that, believe me. This is a scary thing. But give us a chance to prove ourselves. Get to know us. Don't be afraid because, if all goes well, you'll never have to encounter this thing that we do and if, by some chance, you do, we will do everything in our power to make it right."
"Plus, think of the absolute thunderstorm of bullshit that happens if you blow the whistle on us, man," Kenny Kirk chimed in from behind. "I mean, seriously, dark thunderclouds of thick, viscous shit coming down on this town in sheets."
"Vividly put," Ron snorted.
Dave sat back down and the rest of the group took the opportunity to start talking amongst themselves, and there was plenty to discuss. Josie started grilling Conall on the other packs in the United States and Europe, Kenny and JoAnn were talking quietly in a corner, and Carl tried to ignore Dilly's continued questions. No one spoke to Willie and he was fine with that.
"Nice speech," Stu said once Dave's butt hit the seat. "It doesn't change anything."
"I didn't expect it to," Dave said. "And, to be honest, we're in uncharted waters here. Usually when someone finds out about us it's because they've asked around and maybe are even trying to find us. You saw us at our worst. But here's what I'm asking—don't blow the whistle on us. At least not yet."
Dave refilled the glasses for the final time.
"I can solve two murders, here," Stu said. "Why shouldn't I do that right now?"
The correct answer to that question, Dave thought, was that they were not getting locked up tonight. There would be blood before that happened, especially given the circumstances, but he was also smart enough to know that would only put them on the run and make things a hundred times harder.
"Please don't," Dave said. "We were attacked tonight. I wish I could tell you the specifics of who attacked us and why but there's a really good chance it has to do with what Byron did. There are people after us, Sheriff. We're in danger and it might come down to the fact that we need your help."
"That's not my problem," Stu said. "I don't want to sound like a hard ass here, but—"
"YOU LEAVE THEM ALONE!"
All noise in the bar ceased and all heads swiveled to look at Chuck. He had slammed a thick glass mug down on the wooden bar which gave his yelling a nice, thud accent. This was "Bar" and Chuck had the floor.
"I've heard you, Sheriff Dietz. You go on and on about how you want folks to trust you. Well let me tell you, if you lock up Dave and you start screaming from the damn roof about werewolves, you ain't never getting anyone to trust you ever again."
No one in the bar could remember the last time Chuck had strung together that many words about anything other than Nebraska football or politics. Get him going about the coaching staff or what so and so was doing in office and he was worse than a radio announcer on Red Bull, but try to get him to talk about community or family or something important and it was like pulling teeth.
Not tonight, though.
"The Rhodes, they built this town. Hell, they built this county," the barkeep continued. "They've been pastors and businessmen and teachers and all of them have been wolves. They don't hurt nobody. What the hell, man?"
And with that, Chuck was back in the kitchen doing something else.
"That," Dave said, "was new."
"Not exactly a ringing endorsement," Kenny Kirk chimed in. "I'm not big on speeches from a guy who picks his nose as he serves your drink."
"One time, I saw him spit in the dishwater then use it to clean out a glass," Ron said.
"My friend at school found fingernail clippings in his burger once," Dilly added.
"That was only one time and you can all shut your damn mouths!" Chuck yelled from the kitchen.
It was Ron who started chuckling. Carl picked it up and within seconds, the table was laughing. A few seconds later, they were roaring and Dave, weary and beaten up and desperate for the safety of his family, couldn't help but be swept up in the wave. They laughed and laughed, Willie's big whooping guffaw raising above the rest.
The strange nature of the situation suddenly struck Stu in the face. A year ago he had been a cop in Detroit. Now, after time as a national punchline, he was in a dingy bar in the middle of nowhere, recovering from the trauma of watching supernatural beasts do battle. And now they were making fun of an old barkeep.
Life is weirder than you think it's going to be.
Almost against his will, Stu started laughing as well. The faces of the group were the opposite of threatening. They were not laughing for the same reasons, but when he started laughing, Stu found it hard to stop. Before long, they were all wiping tears from their eyes.
"Welcome to Cherry," Dave said through a few remaining chuckles. "You're one of us now that you've made fun of Chuck."
"You can all kiss my ass," Chuck yelled from the kitchen, setting off the entire group again.
The room sighed as the laughter died, an unspoken social sign the party was over and it was time for everyone to leave. Before that happened, Stu leaned across the table and motioned for Dave to do the same.
"I'm not going to arrest you right now," Stu almost whispered. "But you and your people have committed a crime and that will not stand."
"I get that," Dave countered. "But I'm going to protect the people I love at all costs. That's all I know how to do."
Stu gave a knowing smile and downed the last of his beer. Dave did the same and their eyes locked for a moment.
Dave's eyes said "We never speak of this again."
We'll see about that, Stu thought.
•••
Once Stu left, the pack met in front of "Bar" to plan out what happened next. No one had a good feeling about it.
"I don't think we can go back to our houses," Josie said. "Whoever attacked us obviously knows where we live."
"I'll do you one better, dearie," Conall said. "You've all got to get your asses out of town. Given your run-in with law enforcement, it makes all the sense in the world. Seriously, I thought you were all heading out of there in handcuffs."
"I'm gonna die running but I sure as shit ain't running away, if you get what I mean," Willie said.
"That's obvious from your substantial girth," Conall said. "But you're hurt and those men with rifles are coming back and they are coming back hard. Maybe think of it as regrouping."
"Or not standing in front of a truck coming right at you," Ron said.
"You didn't get shot and turned, asshole. That was me."
"Well at least you're back to your old self," Dave said. "I don't want to run either, but let's just hear Conall out. What are you thinking?"
It had started to drizzle and the cold was starting to get to the group. JoAnn was huddled into a ball and even the warm-blooded Dilly was rubbing his bare arms. Dave had borrowed a shirt from Chuck that was ill-fitting, thin, and smelled of God knows what.
"The first thing we do is get a few clicks down the road. Then I'll make some calls. Is there one of those god-awful shopping monstrosities you Americans have every few miles around here?"
"What, like a Walmart?" Kenny Kirk said.
"Yeah, something like that," Conall said. "I want to get some place public, some place warm, and somewhere we can buy some supplies. If there's a place we could all sit and talk, that would be stellar."
"The nearest place like that is in Kearney. That's forty-five minutes away or so," Josie said. "Kenny, you still got the van?"
"Yeah, it's by the shop."
"No," Conall said. "I know this sounds paranoid but any car you drive they might very well have a tracker in by now. I don't mean to frighten you, but there are very high stakes here for these people and anything licensed in your name is unsafe at this point. I've got a car that can take four. What else can we borrow?"
As various options started shooting around the group of whose car they could beg, borrow, or steal, the weight of what was happening came crashing down on Dave. Less than two days ago life was on the mend and back in a routine, his biggest problem being whether or not to bring his son into the fold. It had gone well and then Willie and then Conall and then everything else. Now his pack was being hunted and his family was in shambles. He was doing a hell of a job leading.
Whenever self-doubt crept in, Dave always felt the urge to act. It was a stereotypical male trait and one that annoyed Josie to no end, but the urge this time was too strong to stifle but strong enough to shake him out of his head and into the present.
"Let's take Chuck's Pathfinder. He has it out back that can carry seven of us if we pack in. With Conall's car, that's more than enough."
"Sold," Conall said. "We keep each other in sight the entire time. We can't lose each other. I don't think it will but if anything happens on the road, I'm in front and you follow my lead. Is that understood?"
The group nodded, even Willie.
"We meet in the parking lot of the shopping monstrosity in Kearney... where the hell am I going?"
"I'll ride with you," Josie said. "Me and Dilly."
"Fine," Conall said. "Who's driving the big van thingee?"
"I'll drive," Dave said.
"Of course you will," Conall said. "The rest of you, sleep if you can. You might not get another chance for a while."
Conall's car was out front and the three passengers piled in as the rest of the group walked to the back of "Bar."
"You gonna tell Chuck we're taking his Pathfinder?" Kenny Kirk asked.
"We'll leave him a note," Dave said. "I've already got a cop threatening us with murder charges. Borrowing a car I think we can get away with."
"Hope you're right," Kenny said. "Old Chuck holds a grudge like... like I don't know man. I can't think of anything funny to say. My brain is on autopilot."
"Yeah, I'm kind of running on adrenaline," Dave said.
"We'll stop and get you a Red Bull or something, man. You drink those things? They make you feel like you want to go out dancing or something. I never feel like going out but I drink one of those and I'm like 'what you all doing? Let's go do something.' It's crazy. JoAnn says I need to stop drinking them. "
"I think I'll be OK," Dave said. "Plenty on my mind."
•••
The trip passed without incident, unless you count Willie complaining the entire way. Dave, Kenny, JoAnn, Ron and Carl were all too tired to give him any attention and after a while the dark and the humming of the highway knocked the old guy out. All of the passengers fell asleep, with the exception of Carl, who was in the front seat next to Dave, who was nostalgic.
"I remember the first time you scratched," Dave said. "You were younger than Dilly, weren't you?"
"Yeah," Carl said. "It wasn't my first time, but my first time with you guys, I was nervous."
"Really?" Dave said. "I didn't know that."
If you don't count Dilly, who had his spot in the pack predestined from birth, Carl was the newest member and Willie never let him forget it. Until several nights back Carl had been the target of Willie's barbs and for no reason other than his father, Jim. They used to run together, both literally and figuratively, or so Carl had heard. Then there was a falling out, some punches were thrown, some claws were unsheathed and when Carl was three years old his family moved away from Cherry.
They had settled in Kearney, a town far to the south of Nebraska along Interstate 80 and there Carl had gone to school, grown up, and eventually come out as gay. Jim had thrown a giant fit about that, even going so far as to say he regretted ever having a son if he was going to turn out that way. But Carl had been quietly strong, taking all the barbs his father had thrown at him, absorbing them and turning them inward. He had learned to hate himself and when his father died of a stroke six years ago, Carl had grieved and cried and, suddenly, turned into a wolf. It was quite a surprise.
After it happened, Carl started feverishly trying to figure out what he was and it was his mother, who sensed something had changed, that clued him in to Cherry. She had begged him not to go meet with Willie, the only contact she still had up there, but Carl didn't stay away long. The moment his mother looked away he packed the car and headed up there. He had a long talk with Willie, who wasn't hard to track down. It did not go well.
"I turned one time in Kearney and then tracked down your father," Carl said to Dave. "He called me a 'faggot' within two minutes of meeting me."
"I would apologize for Willie but that's a full-time job," Dave said.
"But he introduced me to you guys," Carl said. "I'm thankful for that."
They drove in silence before Carl, uncharacteristically, started a conversation.
"Dilly is really confused," Carl said. "He's freaking out and he doesn't feel like you can help him."
The words hit Dave in the chest and the emotional wound bled down into his stomach and extremities. He knew this, of course, but to hear the soft-spoken Carl articulate it with such brevity somehow amplified the blow.
"He's been staying away from me," Dave said. "Josie's trying to get closer to him. I'm hoping she can pick up the slack."
"Some things he needs to hear from you," Carl said. "Especially about what we are."
"I'm not sure what we are," Dave said. "Forty-eight hours ago I thought I knew. I thought life was plugging along just fine, you know? But now maybe there's a lot more of us all across the world. I don't know how to feel about that."
"You don't know how to feel about that?" Carl said. "You? Your kid is terrified. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but pull your head out of your ass, man. Your family needs you."
With that, Carl shifted his weight and looked out the window at that special dark you only get when there's little to no light pollution. The Pathfinder, which smelled like ass, chugged on and Dave felt like the most selfish person on the planet.
•••
They pulled in to the Walmart parking lot at around two in the morning. There are not too many places as sad at that time of night. There were only a few cars, belonging to employees, that littered the parking lot and the loudest noise by a country mile was the buzzing of the streetlights.
"I've never seen one up close," Conall said, getting out of his sports car and stretching. "It's even worse than I imagined."
"Walmarts ain't that bad, man," Kenny Kirk said as the group coalesced and began walking forward. "You can buy a pair of pants and some string cheese and an X-box and a deck of cards all in one place. Where else can you do that?"
"You already have an X-box," Dilly said.
"That's not the point, man," Kenny shot back. "Not even close."
The group trudged toward the automatic doors, their weariness evident, Conall the only one clearly energized by the experience.
"You ever hear about something like... like Bruce Springsteen. You hear forever and ever about Bruce Springsteen and how he's the best and you go 'yeah yeah yeah,' but then you hear 'Born to Run' and suddenly it all makes sense."
The harsh light from the sign illuminated Conall, making him look even more wild.
"It makes sense now."
"You said we're here to buy supplies," Dave said. "What did you have in mind?"
"Nothing special," Conall said. "Food, water, maybe a few changes of clothes."
"I thought you were talking about guns and bullets and shit," Kenny Kirk said.
"They sell guns here!" Conall said, and plowed headlong into the store without looking back.
Josie shot Dave a look that said "he won't get far" and grabbed a shopping cart. Like most retail establishments open twenty-four hours, this megastore took on a very different tone in the wee morning hours. The lack of customers and employees, with the exception of the one open lane, put an ominous sheen on the whole experience. A zombie shambling down the meat aisle would not seem out of place.
Dave tried to keep his eyes open but the combination of the home invasion, wolf fight, the confrontation with Stu, and the drive had put the zap on him. He was done. Like most Walmarts, there was a Subway in the front part of the store next to a phone shop and a salon. The sandwich shop was shuttered and dark.
"I'm going to pull up a booth and grab a quick nap," Dave told Josie. "You OK?"
She nodded and Dave noticed the lines in her face and the wideness of her eyes and knew she was worried, probably about him in part, but more so for Dilly. After worshipping her face while they dated and knowing her face and its idiosyncrasies and tics after years and years of loving that face, he knew when something was up. He clasped her shoulder to offer some semblance of reassurance and then made for the booth in the restaurant, thick with the smell of meat and some sort of sauce Dave couldn't identify, and promptly fell asleep.
While he was out, he had a dream. It was not uncommon for the first sleep after a scratch to feature a "wolf dream," a point of view experience where you were running, leaping, bounding and occasionally fighting. One odd part about "wolf dreams" was that while the actions in the dream were personalized, the dream was always set in the same place for everyone in the pack—a wide open grassy field under an intense blue sky. Also, they sometimes got weird.
This was one of the weird ones.
It started in the field. Normally he would pick up a scent and chase something, but not today. The air was still and even the wind carried no scent of living things beyond grass and clover, trees and plant rot. His head on a swivel, the Lead Wolf looked to the left and the right and saw nothing, but straight ahead of him was a large outcropping of stones. They were arranged in an odd way that was clearly not natural. The stones were in a crude ring with a pile in the center about two feet high.
On swift legs the wolf ran to the staged scene and stopped on the edge of the ring. Something told him not to go inside, but dream logic compelled him. Even as he stepped over the ring's edge the human voice inside his head, all but gone when in this state, was screaming to turn back and his stomach sank and bubbled in fear. But his path was set. The wolf stepped over the edge and to the center.
Several long sniffs revealed nothing. The wind had picked up but still carried no information. With hesitant claws, the wolf touched the stones and when he did, the world changed.
The wind was thick with scents of blood, the sky darkened an unnatural shade of blue with orange hues and the rocks started to melt into something resembling lava. The pile of rocks quickly descended into steaming goo and started rolling and changing, rising out of the ground five feet or so and began to morph and change. At first it was long and then round, then a face appeared in the lava. It was no one's face, the features smooth and indistinguishable, but the expression was one of rage. The face trembled and sputtered and the Lead Wolf, with his powerful legs and claws that could tear and rip could not make himself do anything other than stare at the face.
The bubbling goo got closer and closer until it blocked out all else—a fiery face of rage staring at the wolf. It exploded.
Dave woke up hard as Kenny was shaking his shoulder. He looked as white as a sheet.
"Dave, man, get up right now," he said. "Help me find everyone. You need to hear this right now, man."
Kenny's voice was low and panicked, all pretense of the fun-loving motor mouth gone. His heart beating so fast he feared for his health, Dave stood up, took a few deep breaths and steadied himself.
"What's going on?"
"There's a message on my phone," Kenny said. "It's from them."
•••
Conall took the longest to find. He was near the Home and Garden center, staring at the fish.
"Why in the name of Mary do they sell fish?" he asked Kenny, who was racing around the store gathering everyone. "As pets? Are they a pet store too? What is this place?"
Kenny eventually got the Irishman removed from the pet aisle and they all gathered at two booths in the sandwich shop. No one was around and no one was in earshot. In the center of the table was Kenny's phone (Samsung S9 and he told anyone who asked) and he turned the speaker phone on, cycled through the options and played old messages.
"Hello, Mr. Rathman, this is Mr. Stander. You met my men earlier tonight. Your friend, Mr. Rhodes, doesn't seem to want to speak with me and I'm hoping you're a more reasonable fellow. We've created a website for you and I'm wondering if you'd give it a look. Please get a pen ready and write this down."
A URL that was a string of letters and numbers followed.
"Watching this video will give you a much better idea of who we are and, more importantly, where you stand. You can call me back at this number. Good-bye."
Silence hung heavy. Not only did they have Kenny's number and knew who he was, but someone had made a video? That meant resources, expertise, will. Any way you sliced it, this portended doom.
"If you watch the video, they'll know where you are," Conall said, plainly. "They'll be able to track the data signal at the very least. Don't be a fool."
"You're right," Ron said. "But we need to know what it says, don't we?"
"Can we watch it while driving?" Dilly suggested. "That might make it harder for them to find us."
"That won't work," Ron said. "But I think I might be able to rig something up. Come on."
Ron led the group through the sad, sad clothes aisles past the toy section and into the aisle where the laptop computers were on display. Some of them were on.
"If I can get into their wi-fi I might be able to mask our IP address so they don't see where we're coming from. At least not right away."
The clicks of Ron's fast fingers filled the aisles and after a minute or so, he started chuckling.
"Their wi-fi password is 'password,' " he said. "What else do you expect from Walmart?"
Before long he had worked his magic and turned to the group and heaved a sigh.
"You guys ready?"
"I've seen these before," Conall said. "They'll be some threats, some promises of monetary gain. Typically their first volley isn't full of blood and guts. Don't let it rattle you."
A few keystrokes later, which echoed in the empty aisle, a plain, white page with a video embedded on the screen. Ron hit play, cranked the volume and pulled up the full screen. It didn't seem like a video at first but more of a live stream with all the choppy skips and poor resolutions of something happening in the moment. From off camera someone yelled "Sir, they're on" and the camera shook wildly for a moment. Then it stabilized and focused on Mr. Stander, who was clearly outside.
"Don't worry," Ron said. "I turned off the webcam. They can't see or hear us."
"This is odd," Mr. Stander started. "I was hoping for more of a real conversation. You're also blocking your location, but you're probably in a Walmart somewhere. They're the only places open at this time of night."
His tone was far less formal than Dave had remembered. The man's bow tie stood out even more in the dead of night.
"I'll get right to it. We are very motivated to find you and I'm afraid the possibility of giving you generous compensation for your cooperation has passed. You proved that when you killed several of my men. That's not something I take lightly nor something my employers are going to forgive. So that's how it is."
The camera then moved from Stander to reveal their location. They were in front of Dave and Josie's house.
"I'll admit, we know less than we'd like at this point," Stander said. "But we do know a lot. We know about the Rhodes and their family. And where you live. We also know Mr. Rathman and his partner JoAnn are part of your group. There's a very good chance William Rhodes is also with you. From there, it's speculation."
The camera moved back to Stander.
"As for your Irish friend, I can be fairly certain he was sent by The Council. And that he knows how outmatched he is right now."
Everyone turned and looked at Conall who did not betray what he was thinking.
"I'm going to be frank with all of you. I'm not usually an emotional man but the way I've been treated has been absolutely beyond the pale. This town, this nowhere, I can see why no one's found you because who would come to such a place? It smells of cattle and desperation and I do not like it. But, I know, for some reason, that you do, so, hopefully, you understand what's about to happen."
The camera cut to a wide shot of the Rhodes household. "Oh God," Josie said, putting her hands to her mouth.
The smoke started slowly coming out of the doors but within thirty seconds the accelerants had ignited and the house started to burn. Fire was visible through the windows and through the open door and smoke ran along the roof, rolling over the shingles and flying up through the dark of the night sky.
Dilly started to cry and Josie joined him. Dave went over and encircled them both with his arms, his eyes never leaving the screen for a second. He saw into the living room where their television was melting and saw the fire had already spread down the hall, eating up their bedroom, Dilly's bedroom, Josie's work room with the scrapbooks. Mr. Stander stepped into the frame.
"We are going to go do the same to Mr. Kirk's garage here in a couple of hours, then his house. Then we're going to burn down that shithole bar and the church and the gas station and every other building that means anything to you until you turn yourselves in. I am not exaggerating nor am I bluffing. I am going to burn down your lives to the foundations unless you return. I'm going to give you until sunup and then the fires start. There might be a few deaths sprinkled here and there given that we are going to meet very little resistance from local law enforcement."
The fire had moved shockingly fast and Josie was sobbing, taking in giant gulps of air to feed the sound escaping her soul. Dilly was little better, but not by much as he watched the only home he'd ever lived in consumed. Dave's eyes never left the screen. His eyes were on the kitchen table where he and Josie and Dilly had sat just a few days before and decided to take him out to the woods. The table where Dave and Josie had almost ended their marriage. The table where they would have put their Thanksgiving turkey in a few weeks and have the entire pack over and eat and drink and watch football. The table from which all good things came was burning and would soon be gone.
"My entire job right now is to bring you pain, Mr. Rhodes," Mr. Stander continued. "My job requires me to wear many hats. This is one I enjoy putting on. It's time to come home and meet with me. The sooner you do so, the less pain I will inflict. This is non-negotiable. Good-bye."
The feed ended abruptly and Ron closed the page. The hum of the lights and Josie's echoing sobs were the only noise. At the end of the aisle, something moved.
"Do you folks need help finding anything?" a hard-looking woman in a Walmart smock asked.
"No," Ron said. "We're fine. Thanks."
"People come here to cry all the time," the woman said. "Usually they're alone."
"We're fine," Ron said again with a touch more force.
The woman vanished and Willie walked very slowly over to Dave, Josie, and Dilly who were clutching each other. His big arms suddenly closed in over Dave and Dilly, and soon Ron and Carl and JoAnn followed suit until the family was encircled. Conall stayed to the side, visibly uncomfortable.
"We'll get him," Willie whispered, though everyone could hear. "We'll get that son of a bitch. No one hurts my family like that. No one."
"No one but you," Dilly said through tears, and a few laughs echoed through the sobs and the unrelenting buzz of the lights echoing against stone walls.
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 4
In the 1970s, Cherry had seen its boom and was starting to see its regression. The age of Main Street had come and gone and while you could still find several small businesses in downtown Cherry—a Ben Franklin, a small grocery store—none of them would survive any later than 1988. Throughout the 1970s, the decay that would lead to the abandonment of downtown was starting to peek through the cracks and make itself known.
The 1970s were also the first decade where the people of Cherry realized their young people were not going to stay. Generations of farmers saw their children leave for larger cities and population centers, even go to college. It was the sort of shift that left a generation rattled. Beyond that, however, the town was pretty much the same. Quiet, slow, full of people who valued their church, community, and privacy.
It was these three elements of community life that converged in 1978 to create an incident that was spoken of for years afterward. It involved the First Baptist Church in Cherry, overseen by the Rev. Thomas Rhodes. He decided, one Sunday, to try something he had heard about from his peers but had never been tried before in the town. This new innovation in worship was known as an "Altar Call" and consisted of the pastor or some other church leader offering public absolution and counsel for those with troubled souls.
Logistically that would mean the pastor saying something to the effect of "if you feel Jesus moving in your heart tonight, asking you to make a change, come to the altar and receive his forgiveness." The language varied from time to time and even though the nature of what brought them to the altar was kept private, the act of absolution, that you had something to confess or that needed changing in your life, was deliberately a public part of the process.
When Pastor Rhodes first tried an altar call, things went about as well as could be expected. During that time he was presiding over a fairly large congregation for the area and routinely saw over one hundred parishioners come to Sunday service. Some of those who attended the first altar call were no surprise—the woman who had well-known problems with money, the man who had been seen drinking too much in public, a child whose parents urged him to go. The second altar call drew an unexpected person—the pastor's own brother, William.
At that point William was known as a hard-working, solid individual. He wasn't the pillar of the community that his brother was, but he was known and if not liked, tolerated. Some had seen his temper. None had seen him seek any sort of absolution.
But this Sunday he was seeking forgiveness, guidance and, if reports are to be believed, a handkerchief. The altar call came and William, tears flowing down his clean-shaven face, stumbled to the front of the church and threw himself prostrate near the altar. One of the aldermen came to help but Willie had descended into sobs.
Reports of the next few minutes vary, but the story that was told throughout the community involved William's tearful confession that his wife, Jessica, had left him. Details were confessed, loudly and publicly, as Rev. Thomas tried to console his brother. Finally, several volunteers from the congregation led William away through the side door, but not before he had confessed to ignoring his wife, not caring enough about her and, most embarrassingly, not being able to provide her with more than one child.
People in small towns have long memories and the whispers of that day followed William throughout his life in Cherry.
Rev. Thomas, a large man who famously enjoyed butter, pork and cigarettes, died on January 4, 1981. His brother attended the funeral but did not cry. Several in the town wondered afterward what sort of man would blubber about the end of his marriage in front of the entire town, but would suppress his grief when confronted with the death of his brother. Some even more cruelly suggested maybe the wrong brother had died, or that something was wrong with William.
Of course, others in the town knew something else about Willie, as he started calling himself. That his dealings out in the woods had been met with mutiny and the group had split. Maybe the next generation would be better, some thought, but never said out loud. After all, that would be an invasion of privacy.
PART SEVEN \- ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME
Conall made his calls and went shopping while everyone got control of themselves. The huddle hadn't lasted long and when it broke everyone sort of wandered until they found themselves back in the dank-smelling Subway. By now it was almost 3 a.m.
Going through the check-out line Conall gave a quick whistle which made everyone look up. He held up a rifle that he had apparently just purchased and was grinning widely at the cashier. The look on his face was one of unbridled joy.
"Something's wrong with that guy," Dilly said.
"I always wanted to visit Ireland," Willie said. "That guy's making me rethink it."
"I would go," JoAnn said. "Looks like we might get the chance."
"Cart before horse, darlin'," Kenny said. "We've got a situation to deal with first. Right Dave?"
"Yeah, we do, but think I need some sleep and a shower first," Dave replied. Sleep was the last thing on Dave's mind but he was pretty sure he had miles to go, as it were, and would need any sleep he could get. Things were already a little fuzzy.
Before long, Conall was back, the rifle slung over his shoulder in a cloth cover.
"I do not believe this country, brother," he said to no one in particular. "Everyone and their mums have guns in Ireland but to go buy one in the middle of the night? Wow."
The eight pairs of bloodshot eyes staring up at him, unimpressed, gave Conall a pretty good hint to get on with it.
"Right," he said. "I've arranged safe lodging. What we're going to do is load back up and drive twenty miles south and there's a hotel that we can get some sleep. Tomorrow after breakfast or lunch or whatever, we'll lay out your options."
"You mean how I'm gonna go back to town and rip that stupid bow tie off Stander's neck with my teeth," Kenny said.
"We will go through all the options and you'll make a decision then. We need a bit of shut-eye, don't you think?"
No one argued and they piled back into the cars. Half an hour later they were checked in to a bare bones Day's Inn. Conversation was slim to none.
•••
Surprisingly, Dave did get some sleep but his dreams wouldn't let him be. The same images of bubbling rage filled his head and he woke with a start after only a few hours. The sun was just coming up and Josie was out cold, next to him. Dilly was in the room's second twin bed, snoring.
Using skills he had acquired through years of staying in a hotel with his family, Dave dressed as quietly as he could and made his way out the front door, careful to lessen any loud sounds the door would make by moving slowly. He walked around to the back of the hotel where light was just starting to creep into the jet black sky, enough to give him a sense of where they were. The hotel was off the highway and, like so many others in the area, catered largely to truckers and those traveling east to west across the state. You could make it in about four hours, all told, but he'd heard that hotels did well in locations such as this. The miles and miles of corn and ranches tended to do in even the most stout of travelers.
Behind the hotel was a field, vast and undeveloped. Even with the little bit of light available to him, Dave could see the acres of grassland before him, even catching glimpses of the sharp October wind blowing through, creating waves, just like back home. Just like the home he'd likely never go back to.
"Figured you'd be up, brother."
Dave turned to see Conall sitting on a makeshift picnic area. There were two rusted iron chairs next to a tiny table, only big enough to set maybe two glasses. In the dim light, Dave could see the glow of something Conall was smoking and laying over the chair, his left leg up high over the armrest. How European, Dave thought.
"Come, sit, please," he said. "I need to address the alpha."
"Jesus," Dave said. "You make it sound so formal."
Plopping down in the chair, Dave was hit with the thick smoke of a cigar. The smell stuck to the inside of his nose and his body thought about coughing but retreated out of courtesy, catching it in his throat and swallowing it.
"You want one?" Conall said. "You Americans make the worst beer in the entire world but you're aces at cigars."
From his thin fingers, Conall held out a long, somewhat thin, cigar. Dave thought about defending American beer, especially some of the fine microbreweries that had popped up in the past few years, but he let it sit.
"I'm not sure how you do that," Dave said. "I smell triple what everyone else does. If I smoked one of those it would be stuck in my nose for days."
"That's sort of the point, isn't it?" Conall said. "Mark my words, you're going to want it. If not now, maybe in a couple of minutes."
The cigar continued hanging from Conall's fingers until Dave, after a few seconds, grabbed it. It felt lighter than he was anticipating with the paper wrapper thin. The smell was almost overpowering without the aid of fire and smoke.
"I haven't had one of these since... God, maybe since Dilly was born."
"Yeah, what is the boy's name?" Conall asked. "Surely you didn't doom the poor boy by naming him after a pickled vegetable."
"He's Dave Junior. We called him Dilly because he couldn't get 'Willie' right when he was a toddler."
"Fucking adorable," Conall said, bringing the cigar up to his mouth. He took a long drag and blew a smoke ring into the air that stayed long past the expiration date of a normal smoke ring. It rolled on and on before eventually expanding too far, the smoke giving up the shape and dissipating into the early morning sky.
"I need to level with you," Conall said. "You're in trouble."
Dave said nothing, letting the silence be his tacit endorsement of the statement.
"I'm not sure what you think about us, about The Council, but we are, in a sense, only human. We're in the middle of nowhere which means no cavalry is coming and even if it were, your group is not part of our group. You follow me?"
"I follow."
"Good. Then how about this—even if a plane full of wolves showed up in your town tomorrow and killed Stander and every single one of his men, you are now a known quantity. People who track this stuff know there are wolves in Cherry and those people tend to be highly motivated by one thing or another."
Conall's affect was flat, his tone even as he stared out into the field.
"Even if you got rid of this problem, things will never be the same for you and your pack ever again. You get that, right? That part has sunk in?"
"Yeah. I get that."
"Good. You want me to light that cigar now?"
As much as he hated to admit it, Conall was right. Dave wanted the cigar.
"Might as well," Dave said, leaning forward as Conall produced a lighter from his pocket and flicked it open with expert efficiency. The brightness of the flame highlighted how dark it still was, though Dave's eyes had adjusted and were far better than normal people. He put the tip to the flame and took three long puffs before turning over the end and looking at it to make sure the fire had taken. It had.
"There's so much you don't know," Conall continued. "I've been sitting here thinking of an analogy and you know the best I've come up with?"
"What?"
"You're like a kid's football club who's been thrown in against the pros."
"We're not amateurs at this thing."
"The fuck you're not," Conall said, his voice affecting for the first time since they sat down. "When you're a kid learning football, you learn how to pass and you learn the positions. You don't learn formations. You don't learn how to pick your matchups or any of the strategy that wins league matches. And your opponents, they aren't amateurs either. You're like a bunch of kids thrown into a match and you know the ball is round and that's about fucking all."
"You're saying we're going to lose," Dave said, the bitter taste of the cigar raging through his mouth and nose.
"I'm saying you're going to lose," Conall said. "But here's the thing. You don't have to stay amateurs. You've got talent on your squad, you've got youth. Hell, you've even got a leader who doesn't shit himself when confronted and can put up a decent fight. There's potential but you've got to get coached up. If you go out there, you're going to get murdered."
Conall tossed his leg from around the armrest and sat in a proper fashion, took a pull on his cigar and let it out, no ring this time.
"My inelegant analogy aside, Dave, your family is in trouble and if you don't come with me, they're going to die," Conall said. "I need to take you somewhere where you can learn. Somewhere you can train. Somewhere you can be a pack who can survive these sorts of attacks because they're coming at you for the rest of your lives and that's a fact."
On some level, this was inevitable. From the moment Conall had changed and spoken to him as the Irish Wolf, Dave knew life would never be the same, but he hadn't expected total destruction of his life in two days. The old feelings of failure and inadequacy started to creep into the back of his brain and the front of his stomach.
"Running feels like failure," Dave said.
"It is, on some level," Conall replied. "But nobody wins all the time."
"Do you have a family?"
"No," he said. "Nor am I going to. My line we... there's only so far we can go. That's for another time. Plus I travel around too much."
"Then you're going to have a hard time understanding how losing our home and our town and our lives as we know them feels like a colossal failure," Dave said, his voice raising. "I have two jobs on this planet. Provide for my family and keep them safe, and I am failing, miserably, at that last one."
"So your solution is to get them killed on your own terms?" Conall said, his voice also rising. "Pardon me, Dave, but that's really stupid."
The insult landed and all of a sudden Dave felt the hairs on his arms standing up and his nails starting to grow. He was transforming, almost against his will.
"Look at you!" Conall shouted. "You're at the end of your rope, brother. You can't even control the beast anymore. How in the hell are you going to fight Stander and his men?"
Gulping air and staring at the field now streaked with echoes of the big, impending sunrise, Dave tried to get his head under control. He thought of his son and his wife, but other ideas kept plowing through—the fight with the Irish Wolf, his miserable father, his unfaithful wife, his dead piece of shit friend...
Dave felt his leg start to stretch.
"Don't do it," Conall said. "I'll put you down. You know I will."
Confronted with his impending transformation and limited options, Dave thought fast. During the scratch, transformation was the point so feeling the change come was welcome and something not to be fought. Trying to turn back, that's something no one in the Rhodes tribe had ever had to deal with.
The enhanced senses that came with the change were already well upon Dave, and he smelled the smoke, heard the rustling wind and the animals in the woods, felt the fibers of his clothes and the heat in one leg. The cigar was burning through the jeans of Dave's right leg where he had set it moments earlier. Without thinking he grabbed the thin stogie and jammed it into his forearm, letting out a yelp not much louder than the hiss of fire on flesh.
Conall had risen from his seat but now watched Dave with fascination. Using pain to beat a transformation wasn't something many were capable of doing as it was a high-level move. But here he was, pulling it off.
The wind picked up as Dave got control over his brain. He swatted away a couple errant thoughts, focusing instead on the intense pain right below his wrist and the smell of his own skin, cooked and smoldering. The stretching stopped, the hair rolled back and he leaned back in his chair, panting.
"That was quite a thing," Conall said.
"That," Dave said, panting, "hurt."
The sun broke the seemingly endless Nebraska skyline and the dark reds and blacks and oranges bowed to the bright yellow. In his heightened state, Dave could hear the sunrise. It wasn't the sun itself or the heat, but the entire living infrastructure buzzed when the sun hit it from the grass to the trees to the men smoking in chairs outside a shitty hotel off the highway.
"I've never seen a sunrise like that," Conall said after a few minutes had passed. "Not on the hills or the moors. Never."
They watched and it was beautiful.
"What happens after we leave with you?" Dave said. "What happens to us and to our town?"
"The world will open to you and your family in ways you can't even imagine," Conall said. "And Stander will destroy your town, person by person, until it doesn't exist anymore."
"He'll kill people?" Dave asked.
"Yes, David. And if you go back he'll kill you. And if I let you go back, he'll capture you, torture you, perform medical experiments on you, learn all he can about how you work, then throw the spent husk of your body out in the back dumpster. No member of our group has ever been captured like that. And no one ever will."
They sat in silence until the sun started to burn their eyes, then went inside to catch the continental breakfast.
•••
One advantage of being a wolf with experience is knowing how to avoid detection by other wolves. Lay in the ground, become one with the Earth, employ a few tricks of the trade to mask your breath and your sweat and if no one is looking for you, no one is going to find you.
The minute everyone ran to their rooms to grab as much sleep as they could, Willie had found himself some dirt and leaves, settled in and made himself as comfortable as his lumbago would allow. He nodded off a few times, weary from the transformation but the minute Conall lit up his cigar he was alert. He heard it all and made a decision on this spot.
The minute the men left for breakfast, he jimmied the lock on an Accord in the hotel parking lot, hot-wired the engine, and started driving back toward Cherry.
•••
Ron was having no luck trying to get his shirt clean.
When he was a kid, his mother had shown him laundry basics by hand but it had been years. He had gone to the University of Nebraska where there had been machines and he bought a used one and brought it with him when he moved back to Cherry. His setup now featured a top of the line Maytag and, being a single gentleman, he could play that machine like a fiddle. Now he was back to scrubbing and doing a pretty poor job of it when he was startled by a few sharp raps on the door.
He didn't have another shirt to reach for so whoever was knocking was going to get him in all his bare-chested glory. It was Carl, who immediately looked sheepish when he saw Ron's condition.
"Sorry I... uh, I saw your light on."
"Trying to get my shirt clean. Come on in."
The door creaked shut and Carl stood, for a second, and went to sit on the bed while Ron went back to working his shirt in the tiny sink. He listened for a second to the swishing of water and rub of damp fabric.
"Washing my shirt is not that interesting," Ron said. "What do you want?"
"I want to know what you think about going back."
While in the car on the way to the hotel, everyone had been too wiped out to talk, likewise when they fled Cherry for the friendly confines of a Walmart at three in the morning. Normally Carl and Ron dissected their scratches and would grab drinks. On rare occasion Ron would come over and help with the harvest.
"Jesus," Ron said. "We are like an old married couple."
"We fight less," Carl came back.
Throughout their friendship, Ron had divined that Carl was not the talkative type, but also could tell when he had something to say. Usually, he responded as opposed to volunteered conversation, so Ron let it rip.
"I believe Stander is going to kill a bunch of people," Ron said. "I don't think that new sheriff can do much by way of stopping it unless he calls in the National Guard and we're so isolated they might as well be on the moon. If we leave, we're condemning everyone we work with and hang out with to something rotten and maybe something worse. If it was just me taking my licks, I'd go back, but it's not just that. I think we could come up with a plan and make a good run at these assholes and I think that's what we should do."
"I figured that's where you'd land," Carl said.
"Are we about to have our first fight?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"So tell me, then, why should we run?"
"Easy. I'll give you two really good reasons. We can't win and I really, really want to."
Ron had figured this was coming as he knew Carl had larger aspirations. They had talked about it a few times and Carl would take time away from his job to travel and always came back with great stories and photos and an itch to go to the next place. Ron traveled too, particularly to Chicago and Las Vegas, but always felt much happier when he could return home.
While his position wasn't a surprise to Ron, that didn't mean he liked it.
"So you'd toss us all away for some new place, just like that?"
"That's not what I'm saying," Carl said, visibly uncomfortable.
"But it's what you'd be doing, isn't it?" Ron asked. "You'd be telling all of us to fuck off while you went and traveled the world and learned about being a wolf, is that about right?"
"We could all do it," Carl said, his voice rising. "We could all go our separate ways for a bit and come back. We could learn and grow and still be a pack. Just not in Cherry."
Backing off, Ron thought for a second. There was something else here, something Ron had vowed didn't matter and he didn't want to talk about. Still, it caused him to back off and try to put himself in Carl's shoes. He was scared, he was lonely, and he was confronted with the rest of his life being a desperate mission or a grand adventure. At his age he knew what he would have chosen.
"I see where you're coming from," Ron said, trying to even his voice. "Hell, it'd be fun to travel a bunch and even when this is over, things aren't going to be the same. But what about everyone in Cherry? What about that guy you like, that guy who works for Kenny Kirk at the garage, what's his name?"
"Nicholas," Carl said.
"Nicholas," Ron said. "If Nicholas was hurt and you were the only one who could help him, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose," Carl said.
Crossing the room, Ron put his hand on Carl's shoulder and stared him, cold, in the face.
"You would," Ron said. "You're one of the most generous guys I know. You'd help anyone you could and right now, people need your help."
"Yeah," Carl said.
"Besides," Ron finished, walking over to the door and opening it. "It's going to be a group decision."
"Last one of those we had didn't turn out so well," Carl said.
•••
Inside the hotel room, the steam from Josie's and Dilly's showers had created its own atmosphere. The humidity was a sharp, wet contrast to the dry fall and Dave was glad to see Josie in a towel and Dilly nowhere to be found. A few days ago, he thought, his reasons would have been very different for finding his wife alone and nearly naked. Now, that was the furthest thing from his mind.
"Dilly getting breakfast?"
"Yeah, he and Willie are down there now. Where did you go?"
Suddenly feeling the pain in his legs and his forearm, Dave took a seat on the edge of the bed farthest from his wife. The bed gave a huge, disproportionate creak.
"Conall and I have been talking," Dave said. "He... he laid it all out for me."
"Laid what out?" Josie asked, drying her hair. She had turned from the mirror and was sitting on the bed, giving her full attention. "Have you been smoking?"
"Conall was," Dave said.
"No, you were. I can smell it."
"Yeah, fine," Dave said, trying to dismiss his lie. "The gist is we have to go with him. If we go home he thinks Stander and his men are going to kill us."
He let the phrase hang for a second, hoping it would hit hard. When Josie merely continued drying her hair, he continued.
"He also said he can't let us go back. That Stander wants to experiment on us and what he might learn is why he's so anxious to get us back to town. Apparently they've been trying to capture someone like us for a long time and finding a group not connected to Conall and his people is their best bet."
At this Josie stopped drying her hair and put her hand behind her neck and left it there. It was a posture she often struck when they were arguing or when she was in a particularly bad mood.
"So going back is not an option?"
"I don't see how."
"What happens to everyone in town?" she asked.
"Nothing good," Dave said. "Conall thinks Stander is going to do everything he can to get us back, so he'll hurt people and he'll burn down buildings. Just like he says he will."
The words echoed and bounced around the room long after Dave had said them. Neither of them spoke for what felt like a minute. The hand dropped from the back of Josie's neck and she rested her head on her hand. A few seconds later, Dave realized she was crying. Given her near nakedness and the sudden burst of emotion, Dave decided to not go over to the bed and comfort her. Turned out, that was the right decision.
"God damn you," she said.
"What?"
"I said god damn you. This is your fault you child. You fucking child. This is your fault and now all our friends are going to die and it's your fault."
Her voice did not raise and her fists did not clench but tears were now flowing down her cheeks. Dave had known this was coming for a while. After years of intense familiarity and intimacy, Dave knew she felt this way and that knowledge had been a bomb in the back of his head, waiting to go off. He knew she blamed him, knew he was the root of all the problems in her mind and now he had been proven right.
The night they had decided to "take care" of Byron for his many sins, they held a vote on what to do. It had to be unanimous, Dave said, because this decision was monumental. He had made a case, but had tried his best to make it clear any dissent in the ranks would mean finding another path. Josie had been the third person in line and the third "yes" vote.
"You voted with me to take care of Byron. Don't you put that decision on me," Dave said.
"What the hell was I supposed to do? Not support you? I already had them looking at me like I was some whore thanks to you. Willie was already openly mocking me and you weren't doing anything about it. What the hell was I supposed to do?"
"You were supposed to be honest," Dave said. "That's the core of all we do..."
"Don't give me that alpha shit," she said. "My husband decided to kill one of our closest friends and got everyone else to come along."
"That's right, Josie," Dave said. "Charming, funny, perfect Byron did nothing to bring that on himself. He didn't sell us out. He didn't kill that girl. He's perfectly innocent. He's a saint, if you think about it."
"We're not in high school anymore and look where your decision got us!" Josie shot back, letting the towel drop and running into the bathroom to grab a purple T-shirt that she flung on with vigorous speed. Even in the heat of battle, Dave couldn't help notice her nipples straining at the cheap material. "Our house is gone and all our friends are about to die because of you."
"Fine, what would you have done?" Dave said, bringing his tone back down. "Send him off with a wave and a smile to go find the nearest place he could sell us out and get someone else killed, send him off to find someone like Stander? Maybe give him one more good fuck for the road?"
"One, don't be gross," Josie spat back. "And two, you promised me, you promised me that had nothing to do with your decision. You said this was about the future, NOT the past."
"My decision wasn't about you sleeping with Byron," Dave said. "I've said this over and over again."
"Then how come I don't believe you?"
"Because you're sorry he's gone," Dave said, really seeing red now and keeping a close eye for signs of change in his trembling body. "Because you wish he was still here so you could get what you really want instead of what you're stuck with."
Josie's mouth hung open and her eyes narrowed as the tears came again. She sat hard on the hotel room's other bed which did not make weird creaks.
"You never wanted me and you prove that to me every day," Dave said, now staring at the floor. "You love the kid and I'm thankful for that and you are fine with your life but you aren't fine with me. You think I don't see that? You think I don't know you? I know you and I know you don't love me."
It hurt to say, more than Dave thought it would.
"I've said this a thousand times," Dave continued, "but Byron had decided to leave. He was out. He had betrayed us and he was going to betray us if he was left alive and that's the hard truth of the matter. Yes, I might have had a hand in driving him away and yes, I am not blameless and yes, I can be childish sometimes but letting him go gets us right here in this hotel room, just a few weeks earlier. Maybe worse people are after us. Maybe someone gets killed."
"Someone did get killed," Josie said. Dave ignored her.
"I appreciate your support and I'm going to need it a little longer, but once we're clear of this thing you're going to go your own way. I heard you and Conall talking and I think I know what you mean to do. The only question is 'is Dilly coming with you' and I guess that's a decision he's going to make."
The two sat, apart, not looking at each other. After a moment, Josie stood up and sat on the bed next to Dave. She sat, staring at her husband. He had aged well, she thought. His hair was still there, his body was still fairly lean save the love handles. He worked hard and they had years of history gluing them together and yet, he was right. She was mad and resentful and wasn't sure she loved him. He was good enough and now Conall had promised a world where she could travel, she could meet others beyond their town, she could be the person she always thought she would end up being. And Dave? What of him, she thought. This big bag of daddy issues would get along fine. In the end he'd be miserable with her or without her.
But in the back of her mind, she felt a twitch.
This did not happen often. The last time she had this twitch was four months ago and she had gone out, made the transformation and ran through the woods, feeling, thinking, running. The pain was excruciating, paralleled only by childbirth, but once she had done it the vast expanse of woods had been her playground. And she had taken Dilly out with her, talked to him, shown him the woods and what he would be doing when he was ready. She remembered her life as a mother and a wolf and as a member of the pack and as a woman whose house had just burned down.
Oh yeah, she thought. I'm really, really angry.
Sitting, staring at Dave, she wondered if this was the man who could keep her and Dilly safe. He would die for them, but so would every husband, so he says, and at the end of the day that's a bunch of bullshit. Would he fight for her, not in the romantic sense but in the practical sense? Was he smart enough to win? Would he lead them all to certain death and dismemberment in a lab?
She took a deep breath. Time to find out.
"We're not done yet," she said. "You and me. We have a lot to talk about and we're not done yet but if you think you know me and you think you know my heart, than what do I want to do right now, more than anything else on the planet?"
A jab about sleeping with Byron flickered across Dave's brain and prudently got caught in several filters.
"You're pissed about your work room," Dave said.
"I am pissed about my work room," she answered, a smile flickering on her lips. "And I need a guy who's going to make that right."
"You're behind me? For the time being?"
"I am behind you," she said.
"Good enough."
Dave stood up and opened the door to the hotel room, exposing the bright sun and activity out in the parking lot.
"You realize we're going to need to go to therapy after this, right?" Dave said.
"One problem at a time, please."
•••
Dave found Conall who asked him to knock on doors and get everyone down to the lobby. A few minutes later most everyone had gathered for a few stale bagels, pre-made pancakes, and rubbery sausage in the hotel's lobby. Whether they were eating was a different matter.
JoAnn had plowed through her food but Kenny Kirk hadn't eaten a thing and his face was drained.
"He's been calling me," Kenny said. "Leaving messages. Stander's got my number."
"He probably has all your numbers," Conall said, shoveling sausage into his mouth. "He's calling you for a reason. Probably thinks he can hurt you the most."
"Did you listen to any of them?" Ron asked between bites of biscuits and very suspect gravy.
"Yeah, man, I did," Kenny said. "Bastard says he's at my garage in town that's burning down. He sent a picture. It's hard to make out, but yeah. It's gone."
In a situation one quarter this exciting Kenny would be running his mouth as fast as he could, but not this morning. His words were exact. One by one everyone gathered around to see the photo on Kenny's phone and a few profanities and pats on the shoulder later, everyone was back in the seats more demoralized than before.
Everyone ate in silence for a moment until the real Kenny Kirk returned with a vengeance.
"What is this bullshit, man," he started. "What is this sitting around eating shitty food waiting for some Irish weirdo to tell us what to do? That asshole burned down my garage, burned down Dave and Josie's house, man. That was a nice house!"
"Your garage wasn't nice," Ron said, treading dangerous ground, praying he was on the right side of it. "All the oil on the ground it probably went up fast."
"See, now this is your problem, saying shit like that," Kenny said, a slight twinkle in his eye. "Your brain ain't got no filter on it, man, and you're missing my point. My point isn't whether he's burning down a garage full of oily rags..."
"You kept them in a big pile in the corner," Carl chimed in.
"OK, OK, let's all agree that my garage was full of oil and oily rags..."
"And you kept that nudie calendar on the wall," Josie chimed in.
"I kept asking him to take that down," JoAnn said and by then, any hope of a Braveheart-style speech was gone. Kenny waved his arms to get everyone's attention.
"MY POINT," he yelled over the chatter, regaining attention momentarily, "is that we need to go back."
Everyone fell silent.
"We need to go back and deal with this."
"The hell you do, there Kenneth," Conall said. "These bastards who work for the biomedical companies, they're coming at you hard because they've never captured one of us before. If they got their hands on just one of you it would be terrible. They could start tracking people like us, profiling people like us. Hunting us if they wanted. I told Dave this earlier but I cannot, under any circumstances, let that happen."
"So Cherry burns," Ron asked.
"So Cherry burns," Conall answered. "I wish there was something I could do, sincerely. But it isn't the first town to burn, as you put it, and likely won't be the last."
"And if we try to go back, what you gonna do then, man?" Kenny said.
"Let's not go down that road, please," Conall said. "I don't mean to get all technical on the lot of you, but I've beaten your Alpha."
This was the first time it had occurred to anyone in the group that, yes, the Irish Wolf had kicked the Lead Wolf's ass, hard, the previous evening. While some of the rules were for the good of the pack, the line of leadership succession had been passed down from the very first pack of wolves in Cherry. The rule was the Alpha is the strongest and when someone beats the strongest wolf in the pack, they were the new Alpha. There had only been seven Alphas in the entire history of this pack. Now there were eight.
"So, yeah," Conall said, scooping some eggs onto a fork and wolfing them down.
"Well dammit!" Kenny Kirk said.
"Wait, Dad's not in charge anymore?" Dilly asked.
Everyone around the table braced for the inevitable comment from Willie about how his son had never really been in charge, but it didn't come. Willie wasn't there and this was the first time anyone had noticed.
"Where the hell is Willie?" Dave asked. "Was he staying with anyone?"
"Like anyone's going to share a room with Willie," JoAnn said.
Conall was riffling through his pockets looking for the receipts. He had paid for the rooms, generously, and was doing a quick count in his head.
"Oh fuck me," he said, recounting. "... two, three four... FUCK!" he slammed his hand down on the table."I didn't even get him a fucking room. He could be in Mexico by now for all we know."
Murmurs spread around the group and Josie immediately went over to the front desk, which was in earshot of Conall's language and volume. Ron stood next to Conall, going over the receipts again. Dilly went over to his father, who gave him a hug, which was awkward since he was shorter than the boy. A few feet away, Kenny Kirk was letting out a stream of profanity himself. A few moments later, Josie came back.
"Someone stole a car from the parking lot early this morning," she said. "That girl at the front desk, she said it had been a crazy morning."
"All right, here's what's happening," Conall said. "I want you all to really think about Willie and use your noses. We have to track him down or at least get some sort of idea where he's headed."
"What if he's headed back to Cherry?" Carl asked, almost panicked.
"One problem at a time, brother," Conall said. "Everyone fan out. Track him if you can. Meet back here in five minutes. Go!"
Most of the group ran outside, Kenny with his nose literally in the air. Dilly went to his mother who came over, put her arm around Dave and led them down one of the narrow hallways of the hotel.
"Grandpa went back, didn't he?" Dilly said.
"Yes," Josie said. "He probably did.
"Are you guys going to go get him?"
It was one thing to be confronted with the possibility of harm to your family, but quite another to have your hand forced. The pit in Dave's stomach that had been building for the past couple days was roaring now and every bit of instinct he had was screaming not to put his family in harm's way, especially not for an asshole like Willie.
Back when Dave was getting ready for his first scratch, Willie had already made the turn from respected businessman toward town crank and had given Dave very little direction on what to do. When he turned sixteen he asked Willie, over and over, if it was time for him to go out on a run yet and after a few rounds, Willie had been so annoyed he shouted at Dave "if you want to be a man, make decisions like a man." In what was the boldest move in his life up until that point, Dave showed up the next time he knew Willie was going out and that was his first experience. He was embraced with open arms and still looked up on that victory as one of his greatest achievements. He knew he was ready and he showed up and proved it to everyone.
While he firmly believed his father had acted like an asshole, Dave now realized that his logic had been sound. This wasn't something that could be given to him. It was something he had to take.
"Dilly," Dave said. "The next few hours are going to be hard. Your mother and I are going to make our own decisions about what to do and I want you to listen to me. You are a part of this pack. In your heart, you know what's right. I believe that as much as I believe anything. It's going to be hard, but we're not going to tell you what to do. Consider the consequences of your actions and make your own choices. Think them over, make sure it's what your heart says is right and do it. You understand?"
Dilly's eyes were wide and his mouth open a bit. He had just been hit with a bomb and knew it. Josie lent her support.
"Your father and I are proud of the man you're becoming," she said. "These decisions are going to shape who you are. I know you'll make the right ones."
"OK," he said after a few seconds. "I'll do what I think is right but I'm going to follow your lead."
Patting his son's shoulder, Dave dared a quick glance at his wife. She had an excellent poker face.
"Good boy," he said. "Let's see if we can find your grandpa."
•••
It didn't take long for Ron to find the note. He figured Willie had never checked in and immediately went to the outskirts of the hotel property and started sniffing around. He picked up Willie's pungent scent in short order and the path he followed led him to a clearing where he saw a waffle house in the distance. He jogged over and sure enough ,Willie had left a note. A couple minutes after they had split up, the pack was sitting in and around the lifted Pathfinder as Conall read the note, silently.
"Dammit man, out with it," Kenny said. "What'd he do?"
"He went back to your dumpy little town," Conall said, anger rising. "He went back knowing that you all would chase after him."
"Then let's go," Dilly said. "Let's go get him."
"No," Conall said, flatly. His tone was unwavering and had an air of finality to it.
"Wait a second," Dave started. "Let's talk this out a bit..."
"No," Conall cut him off. "They've already got one of us. I'm not giving him six."
"You don't think we can get him?" Ron asked.
"Are you joking with me?" Conall said. "You'll have to pardon me, sometimes American humor goes right over my head."
"I think we could get him," Ron said.
"And I know you're wrong, you idiot," Conall shot back. A few of the pack started to protest the breach of protocol but Conall was off to the races, running his mouth, venting his frustration into the bitter wind. "You have no training, you can barely control yourselves, you treat your women like shite, you've never been outside your black hole of a town and you've never killed anyone. You're up against men with guns... lots of them with training and armor. I feel like I've been over this. You're outmatched. You're outgunned and you're outsmarted. You have no chance of getting that bearded moron back and the sooner we can start the damage control on this giant cluster fuck the better off we're all going to be."
Silence was the only response Conall received to his rant which he had used all his limbs to articulate. He stared from person to person, partly begging for a challenge and partly begging for an idea, any idea, that would make this situation better.
"I've got to make some calls," Conall said and started walking off.
"We have home field advantage," Ron yelled as he started walking away.
"What are you on about?"
"You know that term? Home field advantage? It means that you're right. It means we've never left our black hole of a town but it also means we know every paved street, every access road. It means we know where the potholes are and how deep that historic marker is buried. We've lived on those roads. It means that we might not be trained but if there's anywhere we can fight it's in our town."
As he picked up steam Ron grinned at his own tenacity and the fact that he had a killer closing line.
"And we might not be killers, but I have a guess there are a few of us that wouldn't mind being killers by the end of the day."
"That's right. That's goddamn right," Kenny Kirk said, not one to miss out on a speech. "Home field advantage, man. Ron's probably got a plan in his head right now."
Ron nodded and Kenny walked up to stand next to him, shoulder to shoulder.
"And we don't treat our women like shit, which is how it's pronounced, by the way."
"Sometimes you do," JoAnn said, loud enough to be heard.
If the group expected Conall to come over to their side, they were very wrong. The Irishman's eyes, which were always a little sharp, were piercing as he looked over Ron and Kenny. He couldn't hide his anger in pitch darkness.
"I've got calls to make," he spit.
"I think you should hear them out," Dave said, standing directly in Conall's path.
"And I think I've already kicked your ass," Conall said. "Move before I do it again."
"You should hear them out," Dave repeated. He crossed his arms in hopes it would hide his shaking hands.
Conall threw a long, arching shot with his right fist but Dave got his elbow up and it glanced off. As the shouting started Conall threw a quick left hand to Dave's stomach and caught him, forcing him to the ground gasping for air.
"I can beat you here or there," Conall said, glancing toward the woods behind the hotel. Dave took advantage of the momentary loss of eye contact by getting his legs under him and pushing off, hard, catching Conall with a shoulder to the lower chest and taking him down. The men started rolling on the ground, Dave more on the defensive than not.
"You... fucking... dirty fighter!" Conall yelled between blows. Dilly noticed his voice getting a little deeper and started to worry and the others gathered around, trying to figure out when and if they needed to jump in. Dilly backed away, slowly so his mother wouldn't notice, and started for the back of the hotel, never losing sight of his father, who was now on the end of an ass-kicking.
"Basketball, basketball, basketball," Dilly chanted to himself, trying not to hear his father gasp and yelp in pain.
Dilly wasn't entirely sure what he was doing and sure as hell hadn't given it much thought, but he knew what was about to happen. He knew he had to help and the only way to make any sort of difference, to help his dad, to save his grandpa, to be the man he wanted to be, was to do this. It only made sense, so much sense that thought would have only gotten into the way. The tall teenager, strapping and shaking and scared and tired, shut his eyes and tried to focus.
The second he got hold of the memory, of being hungry for the defeat of another and feeling the rush of wanting blood, the impact knocked him off his feet and onto his back. He had made it to the grass and he physically forced himself to a kneeling position and yelled the only word he could think to yell, the only word that would get the Irishman to stop beating his father and tearing apart his family.
"ALPHA!" he yelled. The deep, guttural sound that came out of Dilly's mouth sounded absolutely badass and only puffed the boy up a bit more.
Conall was already showing signs of transformation, though muted. His eyes had started to change and hair had begun to sprout but he was still a human, still kicking Dave in the legs and ribs. A gash had opened on one side of Dave's head and a long scratch mark on his neck was bleeding enough to stain his shirt.
"Dilly... Dilly." Josie realized what was happening and started running toward her son. He was just twenty yards away or so and was not moving, but by the time she turned around and had covered less than half the distance she felt a whoosh beside her as the Irish Wolf blew past her on his way to destroy her child.
The Young Wolf's transformation wasn't complete by the time the Irish Wolf tackled him, taking him all the way from the mowed and tended lawn at the back of the hotel parking lot into the woods. The pack ran over and saw nothing but rustling leaves and the sound of snapping wood, brittle and dry in mid-fall weather. Soon those sounds were accompanied by chatter and sobbing and the anguished cry of a mother in a complete panic over her son.
Once they were out of sight the Irish Wolf, as was the way of his people, stood aside and let his opponent finish his transformation.
"This... is the only... mercy... you get," the Irish Wolf growled.
The part of Dilly's brain that would comprehend language was no longer functioning but as the Young Wolf found his footing and slowly rose to all fours, he understood. This was not a tussle or a row, a match or a contest. This was about blood and fangs.
And he was ready.
Immediately the Young Wolf bolted in the direction of some thick foliage, away from the road and the hotel and the crying mother. He had guessed, correctly, that speed would be his weapon and size would be his defense. The wolves were not evenly matched in terms of size with the Young Wolf standing taller than the Irish Wolf, but just barely. Not that it mattered. The Young Wolf felt stronger than his first time out and the fear, confusion, grief and rage he had inside him had informed his transformation, sharpening him, making him bloom into a bloody flower made of the guts of his enemies. He ran, sensing the Irish Wolf behind him but knowing he could run as long as he needed and avoid the fight. He was younger and he was faster and he could run and run and run. That was not what he wanted to do.
Remembering his failure when chasing the deer, the Young Wolf was able to pivot on his new paws and start leading his pursuer in a long, arching turn. He had no idea where he was going but knew water wasn't far and his instincts were telling him to get there. His conscious mind flashed, ever so briefly, on the image of his father telling him something while they were both in a pond and then rocketed back to the terrain in front of him. He dodged and evaded, he weaved and launched himself. The pleasure of the run was not lost on the Young Wolf, but he did not like being chased.
The stream quickly came up in front of him and at full speed the Young Wolf leapt over the water, turned his body around and caught himself in a crouching position on the other end of the bank. The Irish Wolf was not even a second behind him. In one fluid motion, the Young Wolf caught himself on the bank and launched himself in the air, meeting the Irish Wolf in air and landing with a thud and a snarl in the center of the stream.
The Young Wolf's instincts served him well, even if it only went so far. Initially, the shock of the water distracted the Irish Wolf, who spun around to take in his surroundings after they had landed, giving his opponent a chance to strike, biting deep into his shoulder. The Irish Wolf howled for a moment and swatted the Young Wolf, hard in the head, but he did not break the bite. Both creatures, moving at extreme speed, spun and shook and the Irish Wolf realized for a moment that he had underestimated the ability and tenacity of the creature latched on to his shoulder.
Not knowing much about the water underneath him, the Irish Wolf was desperate to get out of the stream and he ran full force into the bank forcing the Young Wolf to finally let go. He climbed out of the embankment and took a moment to examine his wound. It was deep and blood was escaping, but not so much that he would stop fighting. His intention was to scan for the Young Wolf but the instant he raised his head, his opponent crashed into him, throwing them both into the thick of the forest.
As they tumbled, a memory flashed through Conall's mind. He had been in fights (never two in twenty-four hours) and had enjoyed most of them. He was one of three boys, all of whom went through transformations, and when their dear mother had died they went out into the woods and had at each other. The pain and grief of their mother's death, so toxic in human form, had proven freeing in the woods. They were lighter and sharper, they fought harder and bled more, and he had never enjoyed a fight like that before or since.
With claws moving so fast the Alpha hardly had time to mount a defense, the Young Wolf slashed and snapped with the rage of youth. The Irish Wolf was able to get his paws up and absorb most of the blows with his flesh, finally punching upward into the Young Wolf's chest and stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Quickly getting to his feet, the Irish Wolf saw that his opponent could dish it out, but couldn't take it. The Young Wolf was down, taking giant gulps of air and trying to get to his feet.
The Irish Wolf reared up, hoping to inspire the youngster to action. It sort of worked as the Young Wolf did get to his feet and mount a weak attack of his own. The two locked front paws and while the Young Wolf was strong, he was still recovering and not nearly as strong as he needed to be to ward off an attack from an experienced, strong, and amused attacker. The Irish Wolf pushed the Young Wolf down and bit him in the same shoulder he had been wounded in earlier, partly out of spite. The Young Wolf howled long and hard, which echoed.
Standing atop his prize, the Irish Wolf gave up his bite, held the Young Wolf down and spoke to him again.
"Weak. Sad." It snarled. "Like... your... family."
He meant to scare the child. He meant to mark him. He had been challenged and he wanted others to know the victor. Slowly, the Irish Wolf brought his bloodstained claw up to the Young Wolf's face. He meant to tear part of his cheek off but the moment his intention was clear he was knocked off his feet and into the woods. He tumbled and tumbled for what seemed like a minute, each time thinking he would come to a stop on the forest floor only to be hit again and knocked farther into the woods. Somewhere in his mind, he knew one of his hind legs had broken.
Finally, finally, he stopped and was greeted to a gravely, leathery interpretation of a woman's voice.
"Get off him or I will kill you."
It was Josie, of course, but she had changed. When the Irish Wolf lifted his head and shook it to clear his senses he saw Josie, partially concealed in shadow. The part he could see was covered in coarse brown hair. The shirt she had been wearing was still on but she had lost her pants as her bottom half had grown and elongated. She sported powerful hind legs with muscles that bulged and flexed and visibly sharp, curved claws and was hunched in a way that resembled a feral cat. There was no mistaking the anger in her body language and when the Irish Wolf made it up to her face he saw nothing but dark eyes with darker intent staring back at him.
The Irish Wolf tried to stand but his left back leg couldn't support his wait and he crumpled, letting out a sharp yelp he immediately regretted. Realizing he was in no condition to fight, Josie stepped out of the shadows and toward him. He noticed she was holding a large rock in one hand.
"We can both speak," she said, her diction slightly clouded by her fangs. "I want to smash you with this rock until I see brains."
Threats were something the Irish Wolf could handle. The sight in front of him was far more interesting.
"How?" the Irish Wolf asked. "Others... cannot."
"WHY SHOULDN'T I KILL YOU?" Josie yelled with such force birds fled from treetops nearby.
"Without me... you... die," the Irish Wolf answered. The yelling had focused him, and all the memories of romping with his brothers were long gone. He didn't know what she was capable of but was pretty sure she was true to her word and looking for an excuse to kill him.
And yet, what an amazing creature. Conall's mind was starting to return and with it, the implication of what it was he was seeing. There were rumors but he had never seen a woman who could transform. This was, strictly, a male endeavor and he marveled both at this discovery and at the form. She wasn't nearly as stringy and skinny as her male counterparts but much more catlike but in a fiercer, deadlier way. Based on what she had done to him, she must have exceptional speed as well, he thought, and as he did so Josie walked, slowly, maintaining eye contact with the Irish Wolf, past his head and toward his broken leg. She then lifted the rock and slammed it onto his broken bone.
The first scream was punctuated by more howls and then whining pain ruled the Irish Wolf, blotting out all other influences. When his vision finally came back after nothing but white-hot agony clouding his vision, he saw Josie again with the rock over her head ready to strike.
"NO!" the Irish Wolf screamed. "NO! ANYTHING!"
"Change," Josie said in a measured tone. "Change back now."
"Trying..." the Irish Wolf pleaded. They both knew it was not that simple and some part of the process had to run its course. Rolling his head up at the sky, trying to get over the pain that still consumed his lower half, the Irish Wolf shut his eyes, hoping it would buy him some time.
Conall's mind came back almost at once, which was welcomed, and immediately started racing. He needed to call The Council directly, something he had never had cause to do. He needed to get the R&D team on this right away and he needed to make sure, above all, that this group was safe and sound. As the thoughts of his business intruded, his wolf mind started shrinking and shrinking, and soon, too, did Conall's body. The transformation back caused him to scream again as his broken leg settled into its human mold and by the time he was a recognizable human again, he was screaming and weeping in pain.
"I bet that hurt," Josie said through thick fangs.
"Yes," Conall said, panting. "It did."
She leaned close to the Irishman's face to give him a good look. Her eyes were even darker when he could see them and her features even more frightening. Her hair also stood up instead of falling around her neck giving, the illusion of armor or the back of a cape. She made a gesture toward the man's busted leg.
"That was for my son," she said.
"I'm sure you understand why..." Conall started.
"And this is for my husband," Josie said and threw the rock at Conall's broken leg, full force. He saw the rock fly through the air, heard the thud and passed out before the pain hit.
It was a good call.
SELECTIONS FROM THE BARTER COUNTY BUCK
November 11, 1995
Front Page
Headline: Cherry Man Opens Garage
Kenneth Rathman, 3404 Rural Road 6, has opened a garage in Cherry Township and hopes to drum up businesses fixing cars, trucks and service vehicles.
The garage, located on Main Street in Cherry, will take over the old Chapman building and opened at the end of last week.
"I hate having to drive 30 miles to get my vehicles serviced," Rathman said. "It's crazy. There are more cars in this town than people, so I ought to do OK."
A graduate of Central Community College's Diesel Mechanics program, Rathman said he is willing to take a look at anything and that no one should feel shy about bringing in their vehicle.
"Chances are I can make it run," Rathman said. "I can at least give it a look."
March 4, 1997
Front Page
Headline: Lady Bucks Lose Class D Finals
The Consolidated High Lady Bucks almost made the most out of their trip to the Class D State Championships on Friday night in Lincoln, but fell just short of a title, losing to Pius X by a score of 61-59.
Leading for most of the game, the Lady Blue Knights made a comeback in the final quarter, outshooting Consolidated and drawing more fouls.
"I'm very proud of these girls," Coach Dave Rhodes said. "We lost our cool down the stretch but making it to State was always our goal."
"We'll get them next year," Rhodes added.
Consolidated's leading scorer, Janice Hogarth, scored 29 of the Lady Bucks 51 points and fouled out of the game in the fourth quarter.
March 11, 1997
Page 3
Cops and Courts Report
William "Willie" Rhodes, 50, of Cherry, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence on the evening of March 5. The report says Rhodes was driving from his son's house where he had ingested "a few beers" and was belligerent to the arresting officer Grey Allen. This is Rhodes' third drunk driving arrest and his license will be suspended for three months and he will be fined $2,000 plus court costs.
December 14, 1999
Front Page
Headline: Local Man Brings Laughs at Chamber Christmas Party
The Barter County Chamber of Commerce held their annual Holiday Gala on Friday night and while business was on the agenda, laughs were the highlight of the night.
Local Coop manager Byron Matzen was the host of the event and immediately had the crowd in stitches with his take on local and national politics. At one point Matzen sat at a piano and played a medley of pop songs as outgoing president Bill Clinton. His targets also included current Nebraska Football head coach Frank Solich, Chamber President Alan Cratch and Dave Rhodes, whose Lady Bucks basketball team failed to make it to State this year.
"We knew Byron was the man for the job," Alan Cratch, President of the Chamber, said. "He's always cracking people up. He did a great job."
"I've got performing in my blood," Matzen said. "Plus, everyone I was making fun of makes it easy."
The group discussed several agenda items including the importance of bringing in new business, maintaining funding through grants and working with farmers to create an attractive environment for their crops.
May 22, 1999
Front Page
Headline: Local Man Forms Motorcycle Club For A Good Cause
Ron Smith has always loved motorcycles, but never gave any thought to starting a club. His friend, Carl Eakes, spurred him on.
"Carl was always asking me why we didn't do poker runs and tours of the state and stuff like that," Smith, an IT specialist for the Greater Barter County Coop, said. "I never had a good answer for him."
This weekend the Barter Coyotes Wolves Motorcycle Club, founded by Smith, will host a poker run that spans 120 miles in northern Nebraska. All proceeds from the run will benefit the Barter County Community Hospital and the Red Cross. Those wishing to participate can contact Smith at the Coop.
"It will be fun," he said. "The weather's supposed to be great."
PART 8 – BAD LANGUAGE MAKES FOR BAD FEELINGS
For Stuart Dietz's eighth birthday, he and his friends went bowling. There was cake, there was pop (a rare treat in the household), there was Dana walking around like she owned the place. But the biggest takeaway from the party wasn't the presents or the eighty-one he bowled or the caffeine buzz that kept him up late into the night. For a young Stuart, the highlight was a trip to the bathroom and a peek at another world.
Super Bowl-O-Rama was one part of a block-long entertainment complex outside of Detroit that included a skating rink and a five-screen movie theater located upstairs. Young Stuart had bugged his father to take him to movies, but the elder Kline hadn't budged. They had a TV at home, why pay to go to a movie? His mother, slightly more open-minded, took her kids to G-rated fare like the re-release of Snow White, The Aristocats and the like.
The bathroom at the Bowl-O-Rama was right next to the stairs leading up to the movie theater and when no one was looking, young Stuart took the stairs two at a time to catch a glimpse of the movie posters before he had to go back. That trip would change his life, though it would be embarrassing to admit it.
Hanging over the stairs was the biggest banner for a movie Stu had ever seen. It covered an entire side of one staircase and in Stu's line of sight was one big, metal foot connected to a metal leg attached to the meanest, sleekest creature imaginable. Wide-eyed, the young Stuart followed all the way up to the metal visor, the huge gun in one hand and finally drank the entire image into his consciousness. The creature was getting out of a car, gun ready for action, wearing a look of indestructability on the lower half of his face.
Before Stu knew much in this world, he knew he wanted to be RoboCop.
Of course, he begged his mom to take him to the movie and she, prudently, said no. It was rated R for a long list of reasons and that was a line not to be crossed. Such was his desire and mania for all things RoboCop, that Stu asked his sister to sneak him in to the movie theater. She promptly told on him and that was the end of that.
Over the years he saw several posters for more RoboCop movies come and go and his desire only grew until, at the tender age of thirteen, Stu committed his first crime. The Motor City Video Emporium was one of those VHS rental stores that made the crucial mistake early on of putting the physical videos in clear plastic behind the cases. If the tape wasn't there, it was checked out. Stu had his friend Ally cause a distraction by knocking over a candy display, and he grabbed the video and hightailed it out of there. She never told anyone and he had a stolen copy of RoboCop in his room, tucked under his mattress later that night.
Stu waited and waited for a time when everyone had left the house so he could watch and finally had to fake being sick from school so he could view his stolen treasure. He waited a long time to make sure parents and sisters hadn't forgotten anything (thought he was sure Dana was on to at least part of his plan) and after breakfast, he popped in the tape.
Regardless of what the movie turned out to be, RoboCop was already part of Stu's origin story, so the fact that the film was excessively violent and bloody, mean-spirited and ass-kicking, only added to the legend. An adult Stu knew the movie by heart and all of it, stealing the tape, getting his first blast of cinema and how much he loved that flick made him smile, ever so slightly, before another right hand landed to his cheekbone, sending him into increasingly more agony.
"I don't like having you beaten, Mr. Dietz, but at this point, what choice do I have?" Stander said. They were in Stu's office and had been for so long that Stu had lost track. It was light out so he knew it had been more than twelve hours, but beyond that he was at a loss. Getting the shit beaten out of you tends to suppress your appetite and make regular body functions less important, so he couldn't even use hunger or the need to pee as markers for the passage of time.
They had come in the middle of the knight, Stander and his men. After the events at "Bar" Stu had welcomed his bed, as his head was swimming with all manner of societal, sociological, scientific and religious questions. He had headed straight for his bed and what seemed like a few short moments later, was being manhandled and pulled up hard to his feet, slapped around, forced to dress and taken to his office. Stu hadn't had the wherewithal to put up a fight at the time and now he was handcuffed to a chair suffering his third round of fists to the face and stomach in... at least twelve hours. Maybe more.
"What you've told us just doesn't make sense," Stander said, walking a lazy circle around Stu's chair. "Think of it from our perspective. This man, Mr. Rhodes, tells you his family's deepest, darkest, most destructive secret and then lets you walk away? He doesn't protect himself? He trusts you, a stranger, with this secret? Tell me, Mr. Dietz, if I were a suspect and I came to you with such a story, would you believe me?"
That last punch was a weak one and Stu could tell that Stander's men weren't looking to hurt him in a lasting way, but they were loyal. They all seemed to hop to it whenever they were given an order and there were whispers of consequences that Stu hadn't been able to fully comprehend.
Just because they weren't looking to hurt him permanently didn't mean they wouldn't soon. Or that the punches didn't really sting on his already bruised and tender skin.
Stu spit and there was a bit of blood mixed in with his saliva. It looked tough, he figured.
"I don't know how to convince you that I'm not lying," Stu said. "If I were you, you know what I'd do?"
"Enlighten me," Stander said.
"I would look for inconsistencies in my story," Stu said. "It's one of the main tools used in interrogation. If a person is making up the story on the spot or even if they've made it up before getting in that room they are going to forget stuff. Little details, sequences of events, stuff like that."
"Mm hmmm," Stander said, his arms crossed.
"So I'll tell you what I know again and if it's different than what I've told you before, hit me with that. Because I'm going to tell you what I know and it's the same as the last two times, I promise you."
"No need," Stander said. "At this point I know your story, Mr. Dietz and I know it's consistent."
Stu started to get a sinking feeling in his guts, but wasn't sure why. Nothing had changed except for something in the air.
"What is surprising to me is you think you're getting out of that chair."
Stander knew enough to let his threat sit a second before continuing on. He pulled up his own chair from behind Stu's desk and straddled it so the two men's faces were inches from each other and Stander's anger suddenly started pouring out in quiet, punctuated bursts of speech.
"I can see it in your eyes, Mr. Dietz. You're trying to figure the magic words to get me to uncuff you and let you go but you must be so dense that you honestly don't realize what's going on here, so let me tell you. My men and I have already razed two buildings, committed three murders and are detaining upwards of twenty people. We have a plan in place to burn this blank spot on the map into nothingness, Mr. Dietz, even though it's basically there already. I will destroy each and every thing that Dave Rhodes and his compatriots hold dear until they come back here and when they get back I will tranquilize them and load them into trucks and ship them across the country where they will live the rest of their lives in Old Testament-style suffering."
The pit in Stu's stomach had already turned to full-blown panic that he was working hard to suppress.
"I don't mean to be vulgar with you, Mr. Dietz, but if it means getting one more, even one more nugget of information out of you that will lead me to these people, I will shoot your chest and fuck the wound until you bleed out. Do you understand?"
Stu managed a nod. Stander resumed his standing, arms-crossed position.
Somewhere, deep inside Stu's consciousness, something started to stir. It started logically—why was this man so hell-bent on finding Dave and his pack? Money didn't engender this sort of rage, so what was it? Dave was a good person, as far as Stu could tell, if a little wimpy at times. There must be more to this if Stander was starting to lose his cool now after several weeks of hunting.
Then, deeper in Stu's mind, he was thirteen, several weeks after watching RoboCop for the first time. His friend, Rick, had rented RoboCop 2 while his parents were away for the weekend. The boys huddled in the basement and watched the sequel in a moment of joy so pure, its memory pierced the panic, fear and pain.
"Bad language makes for bad feelings," Stu said.
One of the henchmen punched him again. Stander's face was unchanged.
"I have a business call to make right now," Stander said. "Or else things would escalate. As it stands, you have probably around an hour before I come back and when I do you are going to deeply, deeply regret your insolence."
He walked away, his expensive shoes clattering on the linoleum. His men followed.
"Have a nice day," Stu said, and gave his cuffs a hard tug. The cuffs and the chair were solid.
•••
Across the street from the Sheriff's office was a building that had recently been abandoned. While the fixtures had been pulled, the tile on the floor gave off the impression that the place had been a restaurant of some kind. Frankly, Stander couldn't have cared less. His eyes were glued to his watch, a high-end number he purchased for himself his third week on the job. He was to take a call at precisely 11:30 a.m. Central Time and for the people he was about to speak with, "precisely" meant something.
He watched the second hand click, heard the tick as there was no sound to distract from it, and pulled out his phone with ten seconds to spare. On the nose, the phone's simple, strong ringer went off.
"Stander speaking," he answered.
"Any progress?"
"Not yet."
"Any leads?"
"Several."
"Any need to remind you of the stakes involved?"
"No. I fully understand."
"You will take another call at 3:00 p.m. Central Time. Understood?"
"Understood."
The line went dead. As was his habit, Stander checked the length of time the call had taken. It had been fourteen seconds.
The company man let himself have a moment of humanity. His bosses would not have sent him if they didn't have faith he could accomplish the task at hand, but their support waned. Now it was time to deliver and receive the reward or fail and face the consequences.
He stared at the walls in the room where he stood. The patterns on the floor suggested tables and chairs had been there at some point and the northwestern corner showed signs that it had once been a kitchen. He let out a long sigh but before the breath had finished exiting his body, his phone rang again.
"Stander speaking."
"Sir, we have eyes on William Rhodes."
"You do? Where is he?"
"He's currently on Highway 11, four miles outside of Cherry."
Stander started to move his body before his mind had commanded it. His walk was slightly awkward as he wasn't in a full-blown run but certainly was moving about that fast.
"I want three units on him. Set up a roadblock on Main Street, I will be there to direct myself momentarily."
Stander was two blocks away and already saw movement down the street, which was pleasing. He moved as fast as he could, leaving Stu Dietz handcuffed to a chair behind him.
•••
Willie smelled them first, the smell of plastic and gun oil and unfamiliar thread.
"Here we go," he said to himself and gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly, putting his foot further down on the accelerator, feeling the pressure and acceleration.
As far as plans go, Willie didn't have one. Not really. A good part of him wanted to go out in a blaze of glory but he figured that wouldn't accomplish much. They'd still have his body and something told him they wouldn't let Dave go, so his idea was to get captured. At the very least, it would force Dave to finally do something.
But as he got closer and smelled the strangers to his town, the thinking changed as his temper flared. Willie decided to make them work for it.
By the time he was rolling around toward Main Street, a car was behind him blaring its sirens and Willie was going seventy miles an hour. By the time he saw the checkpoint, he was going eighty.
"Suck on this, fuckers," Willie said to the empty car, pulling on his seat belt over his round belly.
The checkpoint didn't look like much—a few sawhorses and barrels, probably full of water. What Willie hadn't counted on were the spike strips that punctured all four of his tires a half mile away from the checkpoint, slowing him significantly. He started losing speed right as he neared the checkpoint as the weight of the burst rubber pulled and dragged the car. His "making them work for it" amounted to crashing into a few water-filled barrels at forty miles an hour or so, sending water spraying everywhere and knocking the wind out of the old man.
Before he knew it, the doors were open and men were pointing guns at him and screaming. He was foggy from the impact and tasted blood in his mouth, but knew he was basically OK. And he immediately regretted his decision.
"Shit," Willie muttered and spit blood before putting up his hands. One of the men in combat gear reached toward him with a knife and cut the seat belt. For a brief second, Willie contemplated biting him, but he wasn't sure all his teeth were still in his head.
The front of the car was smoking and before they pulled Willie from the car and pushed him, hard, onto the gravel road he was able to make out a man with a bow tie and a wide grin walking toward the car. A combination of his injuries from the crash and his sudden meeting with the ground caused him to black out.
•••
It hadn't hurt as bad this time.
As she watched Ron and Kenny Kirk move Conall (not nearly as gingerly as they could have, but still), the truth struck her and the implications burned through her mind.
It hadn't felt good, obviously, but Josie had only transformed twice in the past five years, and even then it was out of urging from the pack to make sure she could still do it. The transformations were immensely painful for her, rivaling childbirth but this time it had seemed like a more natural thing. It was less a ripping and more a deep, painful stretch, and once it was done she had been ready to kick ass.
She hadn't felt that way in a long time.
What happens now? Would it always be like this? Would she get the "hunger" her husband and his friends were always talking about? The possibilities were running ragged through her mind when Dave put a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him noticing the deep bruises already forming along one cheek and eye socket and a few cuts visible from the beating he had taken at the hands of the Irishman.
"You OK?" he asked.
It was too simplistic a question, obviously.
"How do you mean?"
"I guess, for right now, are you OK physically?"
"Never better," Josie said. "I kicked his ass."
"Yes, you did."
"He kicked your ass then I kicked his ass. Does that make me the Alpha?"
She was half teasing but by the time the words were out of her mouth, she realized it was a serious question. Was she in the lead now? And if so, what the hell was she going to do with that?
"I think you're the Alpha if you want to be," Dave said, not reading her mind but sensing her unease. "But if I could give you a bit of advice, I think we're way past any sort of chain of command thing. I think this is a group deal."
She nodded, then got an idea.
"Can you cover for me for about fifteen minutes?"
"Yeah, what do you need?
"I need to go test something out. Get the guys together, take care of Conall and I'll be there soon, OK?"
Dave nodded and went off to do his job, leaving Josie on the edge of the woods, the wind starting to pick up, blowing a symphony of sound through the trees and grass. Her clothes were ruined. The T-shirt she had on was still basically sound but the jeans had ripped and torn in multiple places exposing her legs all the way up to her panties, which were also full of tears. She remembered when her mother did the laundry when Josie was a little girl, she called them "church underwear" because they were "hole-y."
Josie took her clothes off and folded them, placing the pile beside a tree, then took off running. Barefoot and naked, the run was initially awkward as she was used to having support in places that were now unencumbered, but she got the hang of it, until she was in tune with the sounds of her bare feet hitting the leaves. She gave intense focus to not stepping on roots and rocks and after a few hundred feet it became a natural state.
Then she turned to her memory.
Before, her memory was weak. It involved a time an ex-boyfriend had called her a cow and she had knocked him over, twisted his arm, gotten right in his face and said "moo." She had never felt so powerful as at that moment, and that feeling of anger-fueled power had given her the kick she needed to transform, but now something was different. When she had taken after Dilly and Conall, what brought about the transformation wasn't a thought, but a need. It was the urgency of needing to save her son, to keep him from danger that he was smack in the middle of.
Feet pumping and chest heaving, she tapped back into that feeling of primal urgency, of a mother protecting her son, and soon she was a wolf mother protecting her cub. The transformation was swift and while the pain was there, the running and the urgency helped push it away and her brain, focused on nothing but protection, stayed sharp and unaffected by the massive changes happening to the body. By the time Josie came to a stop, she had become the Mother Wolf without breaking stride, something that would have seemed impossible just a day earlier.
The Mother Wolf pivoted and began running, full speed, back the way she had come. The woods yielded to her movements creating a sleek, elegant harmony between wolf and trees, wolf and ground, wolf and stone. She glided with a never-before-felt sense of harmony and agility, mixed with the panic of her thoughts and the anger that fueled them all. By the time she reached the edge of the woods she could see her family and her pack gathered and, on a whim, decided to run up the side of a large pine tree and vault from the edge of the woods into view, landing with a gentle thud a few feet from where they were standing.
Kenny Kirk let out a "holy shit," when she landed and she could sense apprehension in everyone present.
"How's the Irishman?" she growled, her voice still feminine but many times more threatening.
"He's fine," Dave said, stepping up. "We laid him down in his hotel room. His leg is pretty messed up and he's not walking for a week or so..."
"His fault," the Mother Wolf interrupted. "Ron, you have a plan to get those fuckers out of our town?"
Dilly blushed after hearing his mother swear. She was the sort who let the occasional profanity out, but never an f-bomb and certainly not in his presence. She was different, Dilly figured, and after this was done, they all would be different too.
"Yeah," Ron said, sensing the urgency. "I know when and I think I know how if we can get to that garage of Kenny's a few miles outside of town."
"I think we can," Kenny said. "It's not on the books anywhere. I mean, JoAnn, you know about it..."
"You've taken me there once," she said. "Remember, when we were dating? What do you call it? Is it a Batman thing?"
"Superman, darling," Kenny said. "It's the Fortress of Solitude."
"Who gives a fuck?" the Mother Wolf swore. Her heart was still beating very fast and very hard and her desire to get something done was paramount. "If we get there, what do we do?"
Over the next half hour Ron laid out his plan to the group. It was a good one but a dangerous one on several levels. As his explanation went on it was tweaked and details were added and subtracted. Josie hardly noticed it, but she had begun to change back, realizing it only when the cold of the morning hardened her nipples, which were suddenly back where they usually were. She hopped off to find her clothes, hoping no one had noticed. By the time she got back, the plan had been set.
"I hate to be the one to bring this up," Dave said, "but before we do this we need to do something. I need everyone to think this through, really think about it, and decide if they're in or out. Some of you have a lot to live for, except Kenny."
Dave had planned that joke out before he started talking, knowing he'd get as good as he gave.
"Fuck you and your weird-ass wife, man," Kenny said, true to form.
"My point is if we do this, we all do this," Dave said. "We do it as a pack or not at all."
"I guess that means you're riding point?" Ron asked.
"Yeah, I'm riding point," Dave said. "I'm gonna insist on that."
"When was the last time you were on a motorcycle, Dad?" Dilly asked.
Well, Dave thought, at least he was acting as an equal part of the group.
"I got it, I promise," Dave said, half to Dilly and half to the group.
"How about this," Josie said. "I need to go talk to JoAnn and Dave needs to talk to Conall. If you're on board, meet out front in twenty minutes and we'll head for the Batcave or whatever."
"Fortress of Solitude. Jesus," Kenny said.
"If you're coming, do what you need to do. If you're not coming, don't show up. You won't have to face us. We'll make it easy for you. Sound good?"
Everyone nodded in agreement and the meeting started breaking up. Josie made a bee-line for JoAnn.
"Come here, darling," she said, making fun of Kenny's affectionate term. "I think I figured something out."
•••
Dave could hear, even before he got to the door, that Conall was on the phone and he was pissed. He waited outside the door to see what snippets of conversation he could hear.
"Come in, you asshole. I smelled you when you turned the corner," Conall yelled.
So much for that.
The Irishman was laying on the bed, his leg propped on several pillows, the legs of his pants cut open so some future medical care could be administered. Dave hadn't had a good look at the injury, but based on the coloring alone he knew something gnarly was going on under the skin. Conall caught him looking.
"Your psycho wife did a real number on me," he said.
"It'll heal," Dave said.
"That's not what I'm talking about, brother," Conall replied. "I find the clues, I come out to the middle of bumblefucky Nebraska and what do I find? One of the worst pack leaders I've ever met and his wife who can do something I've only read about on parchment. I mean, do you realize what this means? Do you have a clue?"
"There's a lot I don't know," Dave said. "But I know how special that woman is."
"I fucking doubt it," Conall said, shifting his weight and letting out a brief gasp of pain. "Because you've got your little slice of the world and that's all you know. If you knew what I know, you'd be freaking out right now and begging me for my protection."
"She looks like she can handle herself," Dave said, nodding at Conall's leg.
"Well, I'm glad you're so full of confidence," Conall said. "Because here's just a taste of what I know. I know that if Stander and his men get hold of her, she might very well be the key to figuring out what we are and weaponizing it. They could use her, most likely, to end our species or to turn soldiers into wolves or something worse. She is the missing link that we didn't know was out there, David, and on a global scale, this is a giant deal but let me make it personal for you. If you're captured, they are going to poke you and prod you and figure out everything they can and you and your friends will all suffer. But Josie? They will keep her alive until they figure it out. They will savage her like nothing you can imagine. If whatever your plan is doesn't work, you will all suffer but none will suffer as greatly as your wife."
For a moment, flashes of Josie on the table being cut up rushed into Dave's head, but he batted them away and attempted to change the subject.
"Who was that on the phone?"
"Did you hear what I just told you?"
"Yes," Dave said, leaning heavily on the word. "I heard you. And I get it. I get that this is stupid and I get there's no net and I get that you can't help us."
"... and that your family suffers and dies if you fail..."
"Right," Dave said.
"... and that you can leave Willie, get in the car and drive with me to places you've never been, where you can meet more of your kind and have your world opened in a way you can't imagine. You get all that."
"Do you even want to hear the plan?"
"NO!" Conall said, yelling hard enough to make him wince in pain. "Because I have zero confidence in you and your mate's ability to pull it off. Your father did something stupid, and that's unfortunate, but make the right decisions, goddammit and load up the car and come with me!"
It struck Dave, at that moment, that while his brain had weighed the options of going with Conall, his heart had not, and he gave in to his fantasy for a good, long moment. He pictured Dilly meeting a British wolf his own age, pictured Kenny running his mouth at the Tower of London, himself kissing Josie under the Eiffel Tower. And more than just travel, he imagined the freedom that would come from shaking Cherry off, starting clean, feeling the mass of possibility in front of him. He let the fantasy linger so long his heart began to ache and his pulse started to quicken.
Thoughts of Willie muscled their way in, some warm and some vile, then the vision of the old man on a table, being cut open and tortured. The excitement in his stomach turned, hard, and all the arguments came rushing back through his brain and out his mouth.
"Would you condemn your father to torture and death?"
"If it meant keeping my family safe, I believe I would."
"I don't believe you're that cruel."
"I am."
In truth, Conall had seen crack teams of wolves fly through the forest with speed and force. He had defeated enemies and beaten all comers in competition. He was an elite fighter in the world of wolves, but that woman had handily beaten him. Conall motioned for Dave to come closer.
"I've already failed at my mission, David," he said. "They already have a wolf. That's something they've never had before, so this situation is already fucked up beyond all reason and I can see your mind's already made up, so fuck it. And, if you breathe a word of this to anyone I will deny it and deny it until my final breath, but with Josie on your side, you might have a shot."
The two men spent the next half hour going over "the plan" and Dave left Conall with his foot up and an ever so slight smirk on his face.
•••
Josie looked for her son in the room, by the edge of the forest and even behind cars and trucks in the hotel parking lot. His scent was strong but either he was moving or she was missing something. Kenny and JoAnn were jabbering in the parking lot with Ron and Carl, and just as Josie was about to get really annoyed, she heard her son's deeper voice boom in laughter.
He was joking around with everyone.
"... so he's up on the bridge, right, and the rope is tied around his chest," Kenny Kirk was saying. "And we had added about ten feet of rope. He was going to swing down and we added the rope, right, and he took this running swing thinking the rope would catch and he'd go right back up and his stupid ass lands half in the water and the other half hits the bank—BAM!..."
Everyone was laughing and Kenny was rolling on the story. Dilly was between Ron and Carl and hadn't noticed her yet, so she watched him. He was tall, he was handsome, he was brave, he was loyal and while he still had a lot to learn, he was quite the kid, she decided. And he had saved his father. She couldn't bear to lose him, but maybe he was ready for something like this.
Just as Kenny was finishing his story, the boy noticed his mother and his smile faded. He gave a look around the circle.
"Well, go, man," Kenny said. "I'm not saying anything important here."
Dilly lumbered over, his head down.
"So, am I getting yelled at?" he asked, still a few huge steps away.
"A little," Josie said. "I'd certainly be in my rights to ask you what you were thinking, attacking a strange wolf who could have very easily killed you. But you held your own."
"A few more transformations and I think I've got him," Dilly said. "I'm faster than he is, Mom. If I can get the speed working with my attack, then..."
"You're not as fast as I am," she interrupted. "And you made your own decision. I'm proud of you for that. But my God, Dilly, he could have killed you."
"Like those guys in our house? Those guys who are hunting us right now?"
"Yes, like them, and what's your point?"
"My point is I'm already in danger," Dilly said. "And if we're going to go get Grandpa, I'm going to need all the practice I can get."
He was planning to take part and planning to fight, Josie thought. No other option had occurred to him.
"Listen to me," Josie started. "I want you to really give thought to not coming with us."
"I've given it thought and I've made my own decision," Dilly said. "Just like you and Dad told me to do, so instead of trying to protect me, start thinking about how you can use me, OK? This isn't me saying 'I'm not a kid anymore Mom!' This is me saying I'm part of this family and part of this pack and I'm going to go rescue my grandpa."
"Yeah," Kenny yelled from the circle a few feet away. "I mean, all hell, Josie, I mean yeah. He was talking loud and he's right and he was talking really loud."
Kenny shut up as Josie had given him an icy stare, the price for eavesdropping. Dilly had already turned around and was walking back toward the group.
"Dilly, come here," she shouted.
He reluctantly stopped in his tracks and started to trudge back. She met him halfway.
"Never run as fast as you can," she said. "If you're in a fight, you don't want your opponent to know how fast you can go. Save that until you absolutely need it."
She threw her arm around his waist and led him back to the circle where Kenny told him about what the claws were good for, Carl talked about the deceptively small spaces a wolf can fit into and Ron gave the young soon to be wolf advice on how best to use your jaws without doing any permanent damage.
•••
It took Conall and Dave forty-five minutes to come out of the hotel room and when they did, Conall was on a makeshift crutch made out of the shower-curtain rod and a shampoo bottle. His non-crutch hand was around Dave, who was walking him toward his car.
"Leg's busted, huh?" Kenny said, smiling.
"Yeah, golly gee," Conall said, doing an impression of Kenny's twang. "Leg's busted."
"You blimey twat," Kenny shot back in a terrible brogue, smiling the whole time.
Conall steadied himself up against a wall and made a motion for everyone to gather round. Instinctively, they looked at Dave who gave a small nod and they all squeezed in making a suspicious-as-hell semicircle around the Irishman.
"Dave told me what you're going to do," he said. "So I want to give you a piece of information and a piece of advice. Then someone take me to my car and get me the hell back to civilization. Agreed?"
Everyone muttered in agreement or nodded their head.
"OK, then. I've made a few calls to my people and they are still too far out to help. The nearest group is about four hours away and Willie will be dead by then, I assure you. But my people are also tracking the company that has occupied your town. They are a group called Hartman Corp. and they are sending reinforcements and an extraction unit, most likely to collect the lot of you. My people aim to stop them."
No one said a word but the air shifted mightily around the circle. This was the first time in the past godforsaken week that there might be light at the end of the tunnel. They could fight and if they could win, outside forces might win as well. Conall sensed the optimism and quickly squashed it.
"Don't think for a second this means all you have to do is kill Stander and his men," Conall said. "My people might not be able to stop the Hartman Corp. goons. A few might get through. Or, much more likely, you are all currently about to ride to your deaths."
"Thanks for the confidence, man," Kenny said. Conall ignored him.
"So go, fight for your town if you must. But I need you to know and understand down to your very soul that you are never safe there again. Others are going to come looking for you."
"About that," Ron said. "I think I might have an idea." He was met with Dave giving him a short head nod, as if to say "we'll deal with that in a bit."
"I can't tell you what to do anyway, which brings me to my piece of advice," Conall said. "My job is to go find people like you, but I've been places and I've done things. I've killed and while not pleasant, the impact of it doesn't hit you until you've become human again. You will be bloodthirsty and you will be vicious and I have no doubt that each and every one of you will kill if you must but when it's over..."
Conall tapped his makeshift crutch as if searching for the right phrase.
"When it's over remember this: There is more to come. You may feel like there's a hole, slowly eating you from the inside but there's more to come. It doesn't make sense now, but as someone who's been on the path you're about to walk, it will make sense."
He paused, raised his head, and took the time to meet the eyes of everyone in the half circle.
"There's more to come."
The wind chose that moment to blow, hard, tousling the hair and stinging the skin of the gathered and carrying with it the smells of the forest. The decay of the leaves mixed with the sunlight and undergrowth to form a sickly sweet aroma tinged with the earth, bark, and animal waste.
"One of you grisly bastards help me to my car, please."
Dave did the honors and Conall let out a short gasp of pain when starting off.
"Will we ever see you again?" JoAnn asked.
"Chances are you're riding to your deaths, so no."
They watched him in silence as Dave opened the door and helped him in and watched him lean over and whisper something. Dave seemed taken aback but before he had time to react Conall had shut the door, started the engine and put his car into gear. The engine chugged and kicked and before Dave could make it back to the group, all that was left of Conall was tail lights obscured by dust.
"What'd he say?" Kenny Kirk asked.
"I... I'm not sure it would make sense if I told you," Dave said. "I'm not trying to be an asshole but I'm not sure I get it."
Kenny kicked the dirt, like he had done a few days earlier in front of his shop. Was it still there? Was anything still there? The rest were similarly lost, wondering what had become of their town and it was Dilly who broke the silence.
"So," he said, in a clear, low tone. "What number y'all at?"
A SELECTIVE HISTORY OF BARTER COUNTY, PART 5
There is no consensus at all among those at the Barter County Historical Society about how the town of Cherry got its name. The several older ladies who make up the group had never considered the question nor given it serious study. Had they bothered, they would have found the following story in the book Of Mountains and Plains: The Diary of a Mountain Man by Rex Leschinsky.
In the book, Leschinksy attempts to interpret the writings of Elliot Goodchild, a "Mountain Man" who lived alone on the Nebraska plains and spent a number of years with the Native American tribes that had resettled there. From his book:
The diary entry on January 18 proves his relationship with the Chocktaw tribe was one of mutual curiosity, if not respect. Goodchild recounts being around the campfire and hearing a remarkable tale of forbidden love told around a crackling fire in the dead of winter. He writes "with a clear head, this story would never have been told. Bitter cold clouds the senses, if not loosens the tongue."
The story is of a spirit of the woods that guarded and protected the tribe. The spirit was ancient and when it saw a white woman, it fell in love. Having no form, the spirit chose that of a wolf and attempted to get close to the woman, but she ran for help and soon the wolf/spirit was being hunted by white men with guns. The spirit knew the woods and was wise and soon overpowered the men, killing them. The woman was so terrified by this that she found herself lost in the woods.
Any time the wolf/spirit tried to approach the woman she would scream and cry and so it went into the night and the next day. The woman was tired, hungry and exhausted so the wolf/spirit went to a very special part of the woods and harvested some chokecherries for the woman to eat, placing them gently in his mouth and depositing them a few yards away from her.
She was so hungry and desperate that she ate the cherries and upon doing so her mood improved. She still wouldn't get close to the wolf, so he brought her more and she ate them and he got closer still. Finally, after several trips to bring the woman chokecherries, she touched the wolf/spirit, who was more happy than he had ever been. She stroked his fur and hugged him, then offered him some of the cherries. The wolf/spirit ate them, not knowing they were deadly to animals. Soon, the wolf died and the woman was left alone.
The story, as told by the tribe, was meant to symbolize how changes to one's fundamental nature never end well. As Goodchild wrote in his diary, "the moral was to be hearty and do your job."
This story was a favorite of Nicholas Caspersen, a founding father of the town, so much so that he had part of the story inscribed on a historical marker just off the highway. The marker, made of solid granite and weighing well over a ton, marked your entry into the town and it made Caspersen immensely proud, partly because of the name he chose and helped foster. Instead of naming the new burg "Wolfwood" or something similarly silly, he opted for "Cherry," a simple, poignant reminder to the town of the fundamental nature of its founders.
Or it could have meant, as Mountain Man Goodchild so eloquently put it, "do your job."
PART 9 – THINGS THAT WILL BITE
It was not professional at all, the way Stander had forgotten about Stu, tied up in the Sheriff's office. The fact that he had allowed him to escape was nothing short of negligence. To be fair, operations had never been his strong suit. To be realistic, that didn't matter to those in charge.
Stander had started as a "number cruncher," which was a term he hated but wasn't at all apt. His job had very little to do with numbers and much more to do with computer coding and pattern recognition, both of which were vital to basic intelligence work. "Number cruncher" denoted he sat in an office all day pouring over budgets when, in actuality, he led a team of intelligent, diligent programmers whose job it was to search for patterns when they emerged from a wide variety of sources. No one but Stander had the full picture of what they were looking for, exactly, but his team was not dumb and had caught on. A week or so ago, when his team had put together enough data points to present to upper management, they had given him a silver bullet on a necklace as a "going away present." Everyone in the team had been awarded six-figure bonuses for interpreting the data so quickly in addition to their already-handsome salary, so champagne had been popped and backs had been slapped, which was a rare state of social affairs for a bunch of "number crunchers." He had been told multiple times to "stay safe out there," like he was going to some war torn nation. It had caused him to reflect on how he had gotten to where he was.
When Stander had been recruited from Wall Street where he had headed one of the R&D Departments at a large bank, the process of interviewing with HartmanCorp included much more than your usual Non Disclosure Agreement. It included a battery of psychological tests, a physical test and veiled talk stretching the law, if not breaking it.
Stander had gone along with it all and even embellished his bona fides because was bored. He was rich, his job was unfulfilling and an odd and exotic group promising adventure, if nothing else, had reached out to him. After agreeing to take a job analyzing data, he had been singled out for leadership, which meant learning more about the company, what it did and how it did it. The bottom line, Stander found out, was HartmanCorp was in the business of industrial espionage, among other services. If a company wanted something badly, like a sustained lobbying effort or a public information campaign, they could do that themselves. If they needed really nasty opposition research, there were places for that as well. If they wanted someone found, or lost, if a competitor was about to crush a company and they had no other option or if, say, a small town needed to shaken to its core in order to flush out a few special citizens, that was when you called HartmanCorp.
Sure enough, it had been fun. Stander had trained for a "leadership position" by tagging along on several paramilitary escapades disguised as "safety and protection" services. He had learned and knew the game, but was never able to shake the feeling that, while he was in a leadership position, that he was seen as nothing but a 'number cruncher". His affinity for bow ties and straight posture didn't help matters, so when the call came that he was under consideration to lead the Barter County operation, he lobbied, actively.
•••
He had convinced his superiors he was "the man" and the minute the party with his department was over and all the backs had been slapped, Stander had been whisked away to meet his Operations Team. In short order he determined he may have made a mistake as he was not his "intellectual safe space".
The problems started almost immediately with the "intel and prep" team. These men, who were a bit more physically intense than Stander was used to, were prepped and ready to invade the entirety of Barter County, knock on every door, beat every bush and get the information within 48 hours. Stander had said no. The operation could not, under any circumstances, draw undo attention unless there was no other option. He pared down the force and did a lot of the leg work himself, which prompted his first meeting with management.
The organizational chart at HartmanCorp was more or less a mystery. Employees knew who they reported to and who those superiors reported to but only a select few could go far up the ladder, so it was to Stander's dismay when a man calling himself Simmons called him on his company issued phone to discuss strategy.
"What department are you from, exactly," Stander had asked.
"Unimportant," Simmons said. "I'm talking to you because you are going against procedure and by going against procedure you are taking a risk, Mr. Stander. Either that risk pays off and you are rewarded or it does not pay off and you suffer consequences."
"I see," Stander said. He didn't know what it was, but the combination of the man's stern voice, his use of language which mimicked corporate speak within the company and his insistence on results convinced him that the man on the other end of the phone did work for his employer. And that his threats were backed up.
Over the course of five brief minutes, Stander explained his strategy and why he had broken protocol. "Simmons" offered no encouragement or excoriation, waiting until Stander stopped talking to respond.
"Your plan is acceptable for now," he said. "The less you talk to me the better your operation is going. Endeavor not to speak to me again."
The moment he hung up he received a text message from an unfamiliar number saying his phone was to stay on during the entirely of the operation. Failure to answer the phone when it rang was a failure to be met with "consequences."
He had been warned, of course. During the training his instructors had explained the importance of protocol but far more importantly, the importance of success. Each "operation" had parameters and those parameters were the be all and end all of his existence during the time he was operation leader. Failure was not acceptable in the field, he was told. Now he was being threatened via phone somewhere, but the threats were starting to creep up Stander's spine and were making way for his brain.
Before he received the bad news that Stu had escaped, Stander had already convinced himself that if he failed, it would be the last thing he ever did. When he got the news, his anger took over, which was an exceedingly rare thing. The last time he had given himself over to anger so completely was in high school when his girlfriend continued to deny his physical advances. He had called her every name he could think of and made her exit his car in the middle of a busy intersection with no ride home. He had paid consequences for that lapse in calm and had vowed never to do it again.
Vows were meant to be broken, apparently.
"Let me ask you," Stander said, speaking quietly and quickly, pacing around the room where an empty chair with a cut pair of zip tie hand cuffs on them were the central feature. "You've been trained by HartmanCorp, correct?"
"Yes," the man said. He was white, or possibly light skinned Latino, dressed in a Kevlar vest and other pieces of riot gear. Stander didn't care, but did note the man didn't address him as "sir," which was part of their paramilitary training.
"Forensic deconstruction is part of your training, is it not?"
"It is."
"Then tell me what happened here, please."
The man looked from the cut zip tie hand cuffs to Stander and back at the cuffs.
"How did he get out of them, you giant fucking idiot!" Stander screamed.
"This was the first outward sign of anger from Stander, but inside, he was already out of control. The man stammered and his body language reverted to that of a child in trouble.
"He...he cut them."
It took Stander significant restraint to not commit murder on the spot.
"How?" he asked, his voice again quiet and fast. "How did he cut them."
"Well," the man walked over to the cuffs and bent down, looking at them and the old chair they were on with a scientific eye. "It looks like he was able to rub them on something metal and cut them."
"So your answer is 'something metal?'"
The man in the riot gear looked up and gave a shrug.
"I guess so."
Stander walked over to the chair and bent over in the same position as the man. He studied the cuffs closely.
"What do you think it could have been?" he asked.
Before the man could answer, Stander put both hands on either side of his head and started pushing his eye toward the edge of the wooden chair. The man jerked, but the element of surprise was firmly in Stander's corner, and he quickly maneuvered the man's head until his right eye socket was pressing hard into the edge of the chair. The man attempted to overpower Stander, but any show of force was met with sudden and unrelenting pain as he pushed the edge of the chair further into the man's ocular cavity.
The scream of surprise heard outside the room turned into a shrieks of pain and Stander's anger took more and more control and the edge of the chair sank deeper and deeper, pushing the man's eye further and further back.
"Is there any reason..." Stander panted "that I shouldn't shove your eye all the way into your incompetent fucking brain? ANY REASON AT ALL?"
The answer was a pained scream as the pitch of the man's voice continued to rise, giving Stander all the fuel he needed to keep pushing. This man was the embodiment of apathy, the embodiment of arrogance, the embodiment of why he was failing and in a moment he wouldn't have thought possible a short few months ago, Stander punched the man in the back of his head, as hard as he could. There was a squish and a pop before the screaming started and the moment Stander released his grip the man bolted from the building, screaming and crying and carrying on.
"Piece of shit," Stander said under his breath. The other men in the room were actively trying to not react, which was a reaction in and of itself. He turned to one of them.
"Do we still have the Sheriff's sister in custody or are we too incompetent to detain a fat lesbian housewife?"
"She's at the town hall, sir," the man said. This was the first time Stander had ever been called "sir" by someone not in the service industry.
"Fetch her, please," he said. "I need her here and I need Mr. Rhodes here as well."
"Right away, sir," the man said. There was a hustle in his step as he started on his errand.
Outside, the first man was receiving medical attention. There was gauze being applied and even through the window, Stander could see a man off to the side, filling out a report. The man with the eye injury was describing how he got the wound, and there were a few glances back at Stander. When the man with the papers and the man applying first aid looked, it occurred to Stander to do something even more out of character, even more brash, in some ways, than physically assaulting one of his own men.
He smiled and waved. The crew quickly looked away.
•••
The minute Conall had driven away, Kenny Kirk's mouth had started running and given his sheer word per minute output, there were bound to be some negative runs in there. By the time they pulled up on his storage unit, the whole pack was irritated.
"I remember the last time you rode a motorcycle it did not go well, man. It did not go well. I remember you wrecked that one time, you remember, it was a clear day and it had rained just a little and you ate it, hard, on one of those turns down by Rural Road 104. That was under the best conditions, man, so I don't know how you think you're going to pull this off, especially since you haven't been riding in, like, a year."
"I got it," Dave said. "If I don't got it, you have my permission to tell me 'I told you so' after you save my ass."
"Well that's just it. I don't want to tell you 'I told you so.' I want this to work and a big part of it working is you driving that motorcycle and not wrecking the damn thing if there's a puddle or a slight gust of wind or something."
Kenny and JoAnn had made a quick run to a friend who lived not far from the hotel and had borrowed a Suburban from his house. The seven of them in two cars were barreling down the highway, and Dave had done the chivalrous and honorable thing and volunteered to ride with Kenny.
"Let's worry about that in a minute," Dave said. "Right now let's just get the vehicles and go from there."
"I'm more concerned about your wife, if you don't mind me saying," Ron said from the shotgun seat. "I mean, she's bad ass, don't get me wrong, but she's got a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it."
"She knows," Dave said.
"That's not reassuring, man, not in the least," Kenny said. "I don't know how she's going to pull it off and I've been thinking about it. I mean, we don't even know if they're going to bite, much less how many guys they're going to bring. And then what? How is she going to..."
Dave cut Kenny off. He had been supremely patient up until this point but it was getting harder and harder to deal with the yammering.
"There are parts of this that are going to be rough," he said. "But let's get the bikes and go from there, please."
Kenny took the hint and they rode the last half mile in silence. The first part of the plan involved getting hold of two motorcycles and three cars, all of which were stored in Kenny's shed about eight miles outside of town. The shed was purposefully remote but off the highway, so they didn't know whether or not any of Stander's men would be staking it out. A quick glance of the road around the place showed that they weren't. There were no tracks in the dirt surrounding the shed.
"Looks good," Ron said.
"I don't know, what if they came in by helicopter or something," Kenny said. "I've heard of, like, really big companies having those helicopters with four propellers, one on each end, what do you call them?"
"Quadcopters," Ron said.
"Yeah, man, quadcopters. I've heard of those things equipped with guns and cameras and lasers and all sorts of shit," Kenny said. "If I hear a buzzing when I go in there I'm throwing one of you down and making for the truck."
"Why would you throw one of us down? It's in the sky, Kenny, it's not a bear," Ron said.
"I'll use the time they spend shooting you on the ground to get to the truck. Why is that so hard to understand?" Kenny said, unlocking the shed and pulling open the door. The contents inside were covered in dust, but they were there – one 58 Ford Mustang with a growl so loud the filter was just a formality, 82 Corvette that Kenny had spent years restoring and one big ass Harley Davidson motorcycle, twin cams and not enough to be garish.
The three vehicles were loud. That was the important thing.
"They got gas in them?" Ron asked.
"Gas and I put new tires on them not all that long ago," Kenny said. "They ought to work."
"They'll work, Dave said, and walked over to the Harley. He ran his fingers along the black leather seat, tracking a think line of clean in a cloud of dust. The bike had been Dave's and for years he loved riding it, giving it up only when Dilly had been born. He'd sold it to Kenny for a couple hundred dollars and though he never regretted it, seeing the bike in a minor state of disrepair was enough to hurt.
Dave took a second to let his mind drift on how it was kind of fitting he might go out sitting on top of his motorcycle. He had started riding when he and Josie had been newlyweds. She had no interest, but one Christmas had conspired with her family and friends to buy him a beaten up old bike, and he had spent time in the garage getting it up and running. By the time he sold it, he had spent more to restore the thing than a new motorcycle would have cost, but he knew every crack and shimmy the machine would dish out. At least he did. He didn't regret giving it up when the kid was born but he never felt quite as good as when he was riding it in those early days. Dave breathed a noticeable sigh at how complicated things had become.
"Hey, I took care of her," Kenny started. "It's just dusty is all. I've got some Armor All in the corner over there..."
"Keys," Dave said. "We've got to meet up with the others."
"I call the 'Vette," Ron said.
"You don't get to come in to a man's garage and start telling him what's what," Kenny said. "You'll ride out of her on my nephew's tricycle if you keep that shit up."
A few admonitions from Kenny later, and they were on the road. Dave had found a helmet that sort of fit, but had thrown it off when they started riding. The wind felt amazing in his hair and if he crashed and died before getting to where he was going, that would just have to be the way of things.
•••
The zip-tie holding Stu's hand had been cut by metal molding on Grey Allen's old desk. Stu had first noticed it after he had been worked over the first time, his whole face throbbing in pain and one of his eyes already starting to swell. The metal molding, sometimes seen on very, very old desks, looked worn and Stu had theorized there might be enough wear to create a couple of wicked sharp spots he could use to cut the cuffs.
He was right, but he had sustained a nasty cut along the palm of his right hand in the process, giving one final push so the plastic would give way. He had bandaged his hand the best he could with spare scraps of uniform, figuring the worst thing he could do is leave a bloody trail straight to wherever he decided to hide. A few minutes later, with his hand pulsing and stinging like crazy, Stu realized "hiding" was a relative term. He couldn't go out onto the street because most of Stander's men were that direction. The office had no "back way" leaving "up" as his only option.
Before he made his way to the roof, he grabbed a spare revolver he knew was in the desk. The occupiers hadn't thought to look through the desk, so in theory, Stu was armed. After making his way up on the roof, staying low and moving as quietly as he could, he tried testing out his firing hand only to find the cut was giving him a lot of trouble, throbbing and weak as it was. He could shoot, but it wouldn't be accurate, it would hurt like hell and he was not good enough with his left hand to make any sort of go of it. He had tried shooting left handed on a dare once at the shooting range in Detroit and was met with laughter and derision by his fellow officers, plus a sore shoulder the next morning to boot.
From his perch on the roof, Stu was able to listen and mark the moment they knew he was gone from the office. A few minutes later he heard screaming from down below and figured punishment had been meted out for his escape. No one thought to check the roof because, he reasoned, it was a stupid place to go – no escape, no utility, no real threat. He had even left the hatch to the roof partially open so he didn't get locked up there. Stu wasn't sure what he would do if they did check, but it was a cool day, he was armed, and the bleeding was under control. As far as murderous bands of cut throat occupiers went, things could be going a lot worse, plan or not.
As he sat and reflected on his relative good fortune, he realized the yelling from below had changed. It was higher now and as he focused, Stu realized the man had stopped screaming and a woman had started. And the screaming sounded familiar.
"You assholes!" the woman said between screams. "Damn it, you know I can't tell you..."
The words turned abruptly to a howl Stu recognized as Dana, his sister. His heart panicked while his brain reasoned that, of course they would go after Dana. He was lucky it had taken them this long. As her yelling sustained, the brain shut down and despair mixed with the panic as two extremely potent urges collided. He couldn't let them continue to hurt his sister, but there was nothing substantial he could do without getting recaptured and likely killed. The sounds of Dana's suffering did not abate.
"Damn you!" she had started chanting when words were possible between bouts of screaming. Over and over she said "damn you, damn you," until it started to sound like a prayer. After a while, she started crying, a high whimper Stu had only heard on rare occasions as a child and only then when extreme pain was involved. Dana had been in a car crash as a teen and had shattered a bone in her arm. The recovery was long and intense and she would whimper during the physical therapy that was part of "getting better". Now Stu heard it again and before his mind could tell him not to, he was on his feet.
He carefully lifted the hatch to the roof and eased his body down the ladder, painstakingly avoiding any sudden movements or unnecessary sound. The hatch was at the end of the back hallway of the Sheriff's Office with the bathroom and breakroom on either side. The corridor was long enough to conceal him from view, and as he crept closer, his movements hidden by the sound of torture, he gripped the pistol with both hands, down low, muzzle down like he had been taught as a young recruit.
The plan, as it was, was to grab a quick glance of the room and then come out blazing. He had seven shots with the pistol (he had checked the bullets while on the roof), and after he cleared the room, he would get Dana out of there. Past that, there was no plan. Dana could not keep suffering, Stu thought, even if the consequences were a bit hazy. Whatever they were doing to Dana was winding down as Stu peered around the corner, and the screams gave way to heavy breathing, which still masked the other sounds in the room well enough.
When he finally worked up the courage to look around the corner, Stu saw three men standing around his sister, two of which were very intently listening to the radio. The crackling, electronic tinged voice wasn't audible to Stu, in fact he hadn't heard it at all until his head was around the corner of the hallway wall, but whatever was being said had the men's full attention. Stu waited, getting a good sense of the room and hid back behind the wall.
"We gotta go," one of the men said. "You watch her, keep on her if you want to, but she stays here. Under no circumstances does she move from this chair. You get me?"
"Yeah," another man said. "I got it."
"If you lose her, we're both up shit creek, man," the first man said. "You saw what happened to Chris."
"Chris was an asshole," the first man said.
"You're an asshole," Dana said, weakly, followed by a spitting sound.
This brought a good chuckle from the three men, a few choice comments and a few seconds later Stu heard the bell on the door ding, meaning the door had opened and one or more men had left. This was a stroke of improbably luck, Stu thought, but then he remembered he had been attacked by a werewolf the day before. Probability was relative at this point.
Given his new found luck, Stu waited to see if he could determine how many men were now holding Dana. He figured two men had left, but he wanted to be sure. His answer came soon enough.
"How long you think they'll be gone?" Stu heard a man say.
"I want to light you on fire," Dana replied. Stu grinned despite himself.
"See, that's just it," the man said, taking a conversational tone. "You don't know how this thing works, lady. You think being tough is going to accomplish something. Torture always works. No one lasts forever, no matter how tough they are. We're going to hurt you until you tell us anything and everything about your piece of shit brother and then we'll be done with you. I don't know what happens to you then."
"I get to fuck your mother?" Dana shot back.
"No, probably not that," the man said. "I'm thinking they'll make you vanish, along with the rest of this town."
There was a creak as the man sat down in Stu's chair, an ancient rolling metal deal with a green cracked plastic seat covering. The first time Stu had sat in it, he had almost fallen out but hadn't replaced it as there was no furniture store for over 50 miles, but because of the squeak and noises that accompanied it, Stu suddenly knew exactly where the man was – on the side of the desk closest to the hallway, facing the door. And he wasn't paying attention.
"How about I cut you?" the man said. "I mean, have you ever been cut? A lot of people have accidentally cut themselves or had surgery or whatever but have you ever watched your own flesh get split with a knife, feel the blood? You kinky like that? That sound like fun?
"Untie me and give it a shot," Dana said.
"Or I could go get Robin, is that her name? I could go get her and bring her in here and cut into her while you watch. Maybe there's this moment, right..."
The chair squeaked as the man leaned forward, really getting in to his story. Stu crept very slowly from around the corner and raised the pistol.
"...I've cut into her a few times, arms or legs maybe and then I make a cut that won't heal. That won't get better. I cut a little too deep or a little too far and all of a sudden there's more blood than you know what to do this and you know she's not coming back from it. You know she's either going bleed to death or lose a limb or something.
Stu was clear of his cover and crept slowly toward the man, the pistol outstretched, awestruck by his luck. Dana had seen him and, to her credit, had kept the same look on her face. She didn't flinch or give up anything happening behind the man, whose rape fantasy was about at an end.
"...and she's bleeding and thrashing and the life is seeping out of her and there's blood pooling on the floor. She's dying, badly, and you have to watch and there's NOTHING you can do about it!"
The man suddenly bolted out of the chair and right in to Dana's face, his back still to Stu. The sudden movement sent a jolt through all of Stu's nervous system, that warm uncomfortable tingle that starts in the chest and goes all the way down, but he didn't jump or move, continuing his slow creep toward the man. Given his position, leaning right in to Dana, Stu wasn't sure how he could shoot the man and not hurt his sister as well.
"Do you suppose you'd talk after that?"
"I know where my brother is," Dana said, a wide grin spreading across her face.
The admission caused the man to stand up.
"You do? Then why in the..."
The pistol went off and the bullet clearing the man's head and lodging in the wood paneling of the wall near the window. It was a lucky shot that it didn't break the window, drawing even more attention than a gun going off. The man fell forward, but his smooth angle of descent was interrupted by his legs completely crumpling. From the back, his fall looked like a rubber mannequin had been thrown across the room, and there was nothing graceful or cinematic about the way he fell, or the way he twitched once he had hit the floor. After his face hit the ground, the man was able to turn part way on his side and begin kicking his top leg in a spasmic rhythm. Of course, his eyes were open and Stu immediately flashed back to the kid and the stains on his shirt and the screaming and the look on his face that said "I want to take it back."
Only, this man didn't look like that. There was no emotion in his face, just spasms in his muscles as the brain quit working because Stu had put a bullet where vital matter had once been. While part of Stu's brain flashed back and brought up all the old pain, there was a small part of him that thought "this is not as bad."The blood, the dead eyes, the sick dance...it wasn't that bad.
He held on to that, for what seemed like minutes, but in reality was just a second or two. He held on to the man's face not as a horror or a fault in himself but as just a moment, a terrible moment but one that was not part of him but part of his experience. It's a big difference, he would later think.
Plus, the guy was an asshole who had beaten and threatened his sister. So there was that.
While this psychodrama only took a second or so to play out in real time, it didn't take Dana nearly as long to react.
"THAT'S RIGHT!" she yelled. "DIE!"
Stu snapped to attention and gave his sister a quick hug.
"I'm sorry," he said as he grabbed on to her.
"Yeah, but you're a good shot," she said, quickly, stifling a quick sob. "Get me the hell out of here."
One quick snap of a utility knife later and Dana was right behind Stu as they headed toward the back. The gun shot hadn't appeared to draw much attention and no one had come storming in to the Sheriff's Office. The radio on the man's hip was silent, and Stu quickly snagged it, hoping it would come in handy later. Dana grabbed his gun. It struck Stu as lucky, and being lucky has an expiration date.
As they went down the hall toward the back, Dana attempted to grab Stu's right hand and he yelped in pain. Her hand came away bloody and Stu shook it as the pain came rushing in. After a few shakes, blood was dripping from the bandage.
"What'd you do?"
"Cut it escaping the first time," Stu said. "It hurts but it's OK."
"We are going to go out this door and to the left to the abandon tire store, you know the one?"
Stu shook his head as Dana disappeared into the break room for a second and came back with a first aid kit he hadn't known was there.
'Then I'm going to fix that hand and we'll figure out our next move."
"Where the hell..."
"You do the cop lookout thing. I'm behind you. Ready?"
"...where was it?"
"STU!" Dana said, snapping her fingers. "Head in the game, bud."
He held up the pistol and felt a stream of blood slide down his sleeve to his elbow.
"How are we getting in the abandoned tire shop?"
"Through the front door," Dana said. "Well, there used to be a front door. There's no door there but there are rooms and places to hide."
"OK," Stu said. "Dana for the win."
Luck held a little longer as they made it to the abandoned building and a few minutes later, Stu had a fresh bandage, a grateful sister, and absolutely no idea about what to do next.
•••
Stander had received another call.
This time there was progress to report. They had captured William Rhodes and while the others were in the wind, this result made the operation a rousing success of historic proportion. Hartman Corp had samples of blood and tissue, they had basic physiology, but it had all proved fruitless and frustrating. The goal was to discover what made transformation happen as the possible applications were astounding – tissue regeneration and transformation, instantaneous healing, weaponization. But all the samples they had added up to exactly nothing. Dead tissue went far, but not nearly far enough. They needed a live sample for the work to begin.
And they'd gotten close. There was the live subject who committed suicide in Helsinki, the live subject from Vladivostok who actually made it to the lab before succumbing to alcohol poisoning, the wolf who turned out to be something completely different all together. Then there was Byron Matzen.
It had all happened through deep, back channels through simple pharmaceutical reps. There wasn't a doctor's office in the nation that didn't deal with pharmaceutical reps and those reps were overseen by companies who had members of Hartman Corp. on their boards and in their administrative offices. Their network was vast and so when Mr. Matzen went only one step above the rep who dealt with the small clinic 45 miles East of town, the news made its way up the ranks quickly. The strategy had been to treat this contact, the first of its kind in the storied history of the organization, as a Faberge egg, the slightest sudden movement might send the entire thing shattering into pieces that could not be salvaged.
There were negotiations. Mr. Matzen was one of the "affected" but he would deliver other subjects. He would deliver one subject to them, he would be substantially rewarded and he and his friends and community were to be spared. The company was OK with this. The information had remained proprietary, the terms were generous and if things went wrong they had the firepower to erase this man and everyone he had ever met from the face of the planet.
Then, Byron Matzen was killed.
In the aftermath of this development, two camps within Hartman Corp had fiercely competed for their point of view to win the day. The first wanted to continue to handle things delicately. There were obviously "affected" in this small community that the larger groups of "affected" were unaware of their existence. They were also sure none of their competitors had this information and that none of the other various groups of interest were anywhere near this part of the world. They didn't have to hurry, the argument went. This could be handled.
The other school of thought wanted to go in with guns blazing. Yes, there was time, but that wouldn't last. They would go in with a paramilitary strike team, get the necessary intel and lay waste to anyone who could bear witness. There was no one in the vicinity to stop them (or even notice, as the argument went) so why not? Get the prize and get out.
It was Stander who had bridged the gap and won the position of lead on the operation. His argument had been to combine the two ideas – go in soft then go in hard but most importantly, do it quickly. Two weeks was the window of time, he had argued. The board, desperate for a compromise between warring factions, agreed. And they were on the phone.
"How soon will the subject be ready for transport?" the voice on the other end of the phone asked. It was not "Simmons" as before, but someone different.
"Two hours," Stander said. "I received word that the medical transport vehicle is on the road as we speak. We can't load him into the back of a truck in case there are any incidents during transport."
"Good," the voice said. "They are transporting him to our facility in Kansas City and from there he will be secure. What's the status of the town?"
"Taken care of," Stander said. "As soon as Mr. Rhodes is out of town, we will take care of the witnesses."
"Any word from the others?"
"No, sir."
"Be advised things are happening around you," the voice said.
Stander blinked.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand," he said.
"An outside group is working to block our resources and cut off routes for Mr. Rhodes to leave the area," the voice said. "We don't know who they are but they are quite effective. We are losing resources but all this is happening over 100 miles away. Continue to do your job."
"Yes, sir," Stander said.
"I will call ever hour for progress reports," the voice said. "Answer the phone."
"Yes, sir," Stander said. The line went dead.
The implications were huge – a group attacking the resources of Hartman Corp? That meant they had knowledge of the operations, had engaged in industrial espionage and, most importantly, were highly organized. It's one thing to learn there is an enemy you didn't know existed. It was another to know they were bad asses.
Stander's phone rang again.
"This is Stander," he said.
"This is Dave Rhodes."
It was a red letter day for surprising phone calls, Stander thought.
"Hello, Mr. Rhodes. I'm surprised to hear your voice."
"You have my father."
"I do."
"I would like to talk to you about a trade."
This had, of course, been a possibility the moment William Rhodes crashed his car into Stander's custody. Contingencies had been prepared and Stander knew where to take the conversation.
"What is your offer?" Stander asked.
"I would like to take his place."
"I see. And how do you propose to do that?"
"You will take my father to the corner of Rural Road 11 and the highway, near Beaver Creek. Do you know the place?"
"I do," Stander said.
"Take him there at precisely 3 p.m. I will be watching. Let him go and I will be along."
"So your proposal, as I understand it, is for me to let William go at a time and place you designate and then 'you'll be along?' You'll see how those terms might not be acceptable, Mr. Rhodes."
"You're not understanding me, Stander. That's where we go to..."
"Do you're little trick," Stander finished.
"Yes, that's our usual spot. If I'm not there at 3 pm you take Willie and leave. If I'm there, let him transform and head out into the woods. Either way, you'll have one of us to bring back."
"That seems almost too simple."
"Why make it complicated?"
"May I ask you a personal question, Mr. Rhodes?"
Dave caught the condescension in Mr. Stander's voice. He had him.
"Sure."
"Your father is awful, by all accounts. He's rude, churlish, he has hurt you quite a bit from what I hear?"
"Yes."
"And from the research we've done, it seems he's been difficult most of his life. I'm having trouble comprehending why you would change places with him. In fact, part of me thinks you've got something ulterior in mind."
"As to my father, yes, he's an asshole. But if there's someone from this family who has to bare this burden, it's not him. I'm the head of the pack and while I don't expect you to understand what that means within our group, I do expect you to take it as an answer. I'm the leader. End of story."
Dave deliberately waited a beat before moving on.
"As for an ulterior motive, you know about us. Do you think there are any circumstances where, even as wolves, we could make a dent in your security? We turn in to animals, Stander, not soldiers. Worry all you want, bring all the guys you want. This is a simple exchange. You have my word."
If things were going to fall apart, now is where it would happen and Stander took his damn sweet time responding. During that time, Dave tried, consciously, to control his breathing and modulate his voice as to project a heightened sense of calm.
"All right, Mr. Rhodes. You're right, I don't understand your...customs nor do I think what you're doing is particularly admirable. If you were to ask me I'd say your father deserves what's coming far more than you do, but at the end of the day I don't care. I'll leave you with this. If I get a sense that anything is amiss, if I feel threatened or if you fail to live up to your part of this exchange in any way, I will see you dead. Is that clear?"
"Yes."
"Good. My clock says 1:15 which gives you a little under two hours to get your ass to Beaver Creek. One minute late and your father goes to the lab minus his tongue."
Stander hung up. It felt good to be the one ending the call, he thought. He immediately got on the radio and called for all available personnel to come to the center of town to discuss the latest development. He didn't think for a second this was a clean exchange and he would have guns on hand and men by his side who know how to pull the trigger.
•••
"We on?" Kenny asked. "We doin' this?"
"Yep, Dave said. We're doin' this. Let's get everyone together. Right now."
•••
The sky does something strange when it's starting to get colder, Dilly noticed. The cloud cover hangs a bit different. In the winter, you can definitely see it because even though it might be sunny, the sky seems thicker, the blues less sharp. Now, when it was starting to get colder, the effect wasn't as pronounced but it was starting. The blues weren't the same color they were just a month ago and the trees around them were starting to get bare around the middle, a true sign of fall.
The young man had time to ponder as he and his mom were sitting on their car on a dirt road, nearly 15 miles away from Kenny's shed where he kept his cars. She was doing that thing some moms do when they want to talk – she would start talking about something else hoping to get things rolling and then steer the conversation. He was in a "yup" and "nope" mood, so he stared at the sky.
Finally, Josie came out with it.
"I saw you out there. You're different than your dad."
It was something he had felt, too. Every time Dave had talked to Dilly about being a wolf, it sounded to him what it must feel like to be the Incredible Hulk. He had pictured destructive power and little to no control, but in the two times he had transformed, that's not what he felt. The first time it was all about getting his bearings but when he had challenged Conall and taken off into the woods, it had been a night and day difference. He felt in control, focused and with more of his human brain working than he would have thought.
"I think I could have said something if I tried," Dilly said.
"Like Conall did?"
"Yeah, like Conall. There's more of me in the wolf than I thought there'd be."
Dilly was on the trunk of the car, his mom pacing the five to six steps on front, her arms folded like she was trying to solve a math problem.
"So you think you're more like me?"
"I think so."
"You want to try it out?"
"What?"
"It's not like you can only do it once, kid-o. We're out in the middle of nowhere. Why don't you try it? Transform and see what you can do."
At first, this seemed like a terrible idea for several reasons, one of the big ones being he'd have to get naked in front of his mom, but it didn't take Dilly long to figure out why she was pushing.
"You think I might be able to come with you?"
"Yes."
"To Beaver Creek to..."
"Yes."
"And with the..."
"Yes, Dilly. I want to see if you can do it. We've got about half an hour to figure this out. Come on already."
Dilly immediately tried to calm his mind a little bit as it was racing. Dad always said never to go out without the pack, that this was a group activity not a solitary thing. Now mom was giving him the opposite advice. It was a lot to process.
"Are you going to turn too?"
"I don't think so," she said. "It's harder for me. It hurts a lot."
"But when we get to Beaver Creek..."
"Don't worry about that now. Focus."
Instead of looking at his mother, Dilly turned around and looked back out at the fields and the sky when a thought occurred to him that had never taken root before, a nasty, evil little thought that seized his insides and thrilled him from his brain on down. He was the alpha. There wasn't a person, place or thing in this place that could stop him. His will was law, his whim was edict. He was stronger than his father and his friends and soon he would be stronger than his mother. Dilly shut his eyes and before he even willed it to happen, the transformation started.
"Dilly, your shirt," his mom said, but it was too late. The hair was sprouting, the bones were creaking, the teeth were returning to their rightful place and for the third time, the Young Wolf stretched toward the sky, pulling to the full length of its height and howling in the mid-day sun. The shirt was toast.
This was the second time Josie had seen her son like this and he was all the more impressive in the harsh light of the sun – tall and skinnier and sleeker than the others. She caught her breath and remembered their mission.
"Are you there, Dilly? Can you talk to me?"
The Young Wolf whipped its head around and sniffed hard at the woman. The scent caught in his nostrils and he took a few steps toward her.
"Yaaaaoooooooessssss," the creature struggled. The words were growly but Dilly's unsure, strong voice was there if you really listened.
"You want to run, don't you?" she asked.
"Yeeessss," he hissed, a little more strongly.
"OK. You see that tree over there?"
She pointed at a tree, the first that led to an outcropping about 400 yards away. It was a solid tree, but not a big one that was the first step into the forest.
"Go take it down," she said. "Destroy it and come back to me."
The Young Wolf gave a snarl, resenting the instruction, but was on his way seconds later, taking giant bounds, leaving deep grooves in the earth, leaping 10 feet, 15 feet at a time. As he closed on the tree, the Young Wolf started thinking strategy. He couldn't just hit the tree with his shoulder as that would hurt him and likely not take the tree down. Instead, as impact became imminent, he pushed hard with his front paws, propelling himself through the air and sending his hind legs straight into one side of the tree's trunk.
The side of the tree exploded on impact with the sharp and hard paw of the wolf, and sent him barreling on his back, hard. He immediately flopped and squirmed to his feet and took another run at the tree, from a shorter distance, with his claws out. The hack and slash of the claws sent saw dust flying and sticking into his coarse, black fur. After a minute or so, he decided it was time to end it.
The Young Wolf took a running start and leapt as high as he could onto the tree, landing 10 feet up near the top of the tree and hearing the satisfying crack and waver that signified structural failure. The tree waved but the wolf pushed his weight against the trunk over and over until it cracked more and started to fall. As the tree gave way, the wolf rode it down, leaping away a second or so before it hit the cold but soft dirt below. He stopped to admire his work for a moment, then took off, panting hard, back to the car and the woman.
Seconds later he was back and he stood, proud, slightly bruised and pulsing with energy and anger. He had destroyed the tree in less far less time than Josie thought he would, if he was able to do it at all.
"THERE!" he yelled. "DONE!"
Even with this creeky nature of the speech and the struggle the Young Wolf had to put out, the annoyance in his voice was clear and for the first time, Josie felt a twinge of fear. She would not be able to transform in time if he decided to lay into her. He needed to be calmed.
"You did great," Josie said. "You're using your brain but you're angry, aren't you?"
"YES!" the creature yelled, the sound louder than before and echoing off the vast space.
"Good!" Josie said, speaking quickly but trying to keep the panic out of her voice. "I need you angry and you'll have your chance."
He started to twitch and move his head in agitation, unable to keep still. In a strange, melancholy moment, Josie recognized the movement in both her son as a child and her husband as a wolf. The Young Wolf reared up to his full height, spread his arms as wide as they would go and let loose with a howl that sent vibrations through the ground and filled the sky with frightened birds. The fear Josie had felt before spread through her body and as she bent her knees and her arms went up to shield herself, her brain went through every time she had scolded him or fought with him. If the current of emotion grabbed him too hard, he could tear the animal in front of him to shreds, mother or not.
The howl ended and echoed. Josie kept her eyes on the wolf's face and was able to see his reaction when he tilted his head downward and saw his cowering mother. The wolf immediately shrank, going down on all fours and changing his expression to one of deference and concern.
"Mom," the wolf said, the voice more like Dilly than ever before. "Mom. It's OK."
To her surprise, the howl had sent Josie into a shaking fit, part from the cold and fatigue but mostly in fear. The situation had turned so quickly her body had reacted and she was shaking almost uncontrollably.
The Young Wolf nuzzled her with his large, shaggy head. The harsh fur, not soft but more like nettles, irritated Josie's skin and helped her grab on to something in her fight through her fear and back in to her thinking self. Reflexively her hand went out to stroke the head of the wolf, and he whimpered, softly at her tough.
"You're so strong," Josie said, feeling the sting of tears on her face but not remembering the act of crying. "How'd you get so strong."
"Strong...mom," the wolf said.
The wolf stayed still and the woman stroked its head for a few minutes until they heard the rumble of cars in the distance.
•••
At some point, Stu got it in his head that he needed to get back to his house and get his phone. He could pretend to be Robocop all he wanted, but it was time to call in the cavalry. Carol Cryer's guest house was about four blocks away, but those blocks were covered with dozens of men with guns. It was unlikely they'd get there, but the alternative was to sit.
"I don't think I can do anything but sit," Dana said. "That fucker busted up my already bad leg. A big girl limping around is probably going to draw some attention."
"I'd prefer you hide," Stu said. "I'm going to take a shot. My odds are better if I'm by myself."
Stu was staring out the hole in the wall that used to be a window, trying to discern any sort of pattern to who was walking by and when. There was no pattern to be found and very little activity to draw from. The radio was another story. Every two minutes or so it crackled to life and provided a lot of information. Being a private enterprise, the lingo they used was not indecipherable, and in their 20 minutes or so sitting in the abandoned tire shop, Stu had learned some things.
There was something important happening at 3 p.m., and it was all hands on deck. With the exception of a few men who were "holding down the fort," everyone would be down by Beaver Creek to provide "operational support." Again, not hard to decipher. There had also been talk of "clearing the town" at the end of the day, which had sent worried looks between the Dietz siblings, especially since Dana had no idea where Robin was. Stu would have liked to think that with a clock ticking toward the death of most everyone in his town, he would have come up with a better plan than "get to a phone." But here they were.
"You've only got about an hour before three," Dana said. "And even if you make it, how do you know your phone will be where you left it?"
"It's not a perfect plan," Stu said. "But maybe there's a phone in Carol's house or something. If I don't try..."
"Yeah, I know," Dana finished. "I know this is the best idea we've got but I don't want you to go out there."
Dana did not cry easily, if at all, but the pain cocktail she was on had cracked the code. Tears flowed liberally down her cheeks and dripped onto her T-shirt, leaving dark, temporary stains. Stu went over, careful not to expose his position out the window, and put his hand on her shoulder.
"I'm not going to lie and say 'I'll be fine,' but I will be careful. And strong. And brave, if I can be. You're the only one who believed I was any of those things."
They hugged and Stu couldn't help notice Dana trying to pull the tears back, even now.
"I know you're a tough son of a bitch," she said. "I beat on you for years. Go get 'em."
Making a quick calculation and turning the radio off (he had been holding it to his ear and keeping the volume low), Stu gave his sister one last glance back and headed out.
No one had yet to notice the body in the Sheriff's Department, so the idea was to keep low, use alleys when possible and go slow. With his pulse high and his head pounding from the day's earlier beating, Stu was having a hard time with that last part. He wanted to sprint, wanted to shoot, but both of those things meant torture and death so he concentrated on his breathing and took it as slow as he possibly could.
His first challenge was crossing the main street in town, which was oddly wide given the complete lack of traffic. There was parking on both sides and even a stoplight in the center of town that had blinked yellow as long as Stu had been there. His strategy was to head south to "Bar" which seemed to have little to no activity around it, make the crossover there and head to his guest house apartment. The plan was a solid one and hopping from alley to house proved an effective method. No one was looking out for him and everyone seemed otherwise occupied.
When he got to "Bar" it was empty, but unlocked and, on a whim, he went inside. In a flash of inspiration, he grabbed a bottle of vodka off the shelf and poured it on his hand, something he had seen in a movie once, hoping there would be some disinfectant value. Based on the stinging and throbbing that accompanied the vodka, it was working. He thought briefly of starting a fire to draw attention away, but just as he was pondering it, he heard yelling from the north.
Clicking on his radio, he was instantly met with yelling.
"...gun and radio are gone. Repeat, man down, the Sheriff and his sister are on the loose and they are armed. They are armed. Everyone proceed with caution."
"Do we need parties to start sweeping buildings?"
Stu held his breath but heard Stander on the radio next.
"No parties. Everyone keep an eye out but stick to the plan. Shoot first and shoot often. We don't need them anymore. I expect everyone to be near Beaver Creek in 20 minutes."
The radio was filled with chatter of reports from various locations. Stu exhaled deeply, happy that Dana would be somewhat safe if she stayed put. His apartment, on the other hand, might as well have been on the mythical land of Asgaard. Breathing slowly, shutting his eyes for a moment, it came to Stu in a flash—if he could get to his cruiser, he could use the radio to call other law enforcement. This, of course, was what he should have been doing all along but it hadn't occurred to him between the beatings and the werewolves and the town under siege and the werewolves and the tortured sibling and the bleeding hand and the werewolves.
Unfortunately, he had put himself several blocks farther away from his goal than when he started and the town was full of armed men looking for him, so he would have to make another run for it. With the adrenaline flowing and nowhere to direct his energy, Stu started riffling through the contents of "Bar" looking for anything that might be able to help him. He went in the back, thinking there would be knives or maybe another gun (and along with that thought, a brief, John Woo-style fantasy of firing two guns while jumping through the air) when he saw it.
A land line.
Tentatively, as if by providence, Stu walked over to the phone on the wall, picked it up, held it to his ear and heard a dial tone.
"No fucking way," he muttered, and dialed 9-1-1. He knew, by course of being on the job for a few weeks, that the 9-1-1 call center was 26 miles away in another county, as was the nearest ambulance service. It occurred to him as the phone picked up on the other end that he didn't have the slightest idea how to explain the situation.
"911, please state the nature of your emergency".
"OK, this is Sheriff Dietz in Barter County and I'm going to need you to keep an open mind as I tell you what's going on here." Stu was trying to keep his voice steady and slow but everything was coming out fast and warbly.
"OK, Stuart, we're here. Where are you right now?"
Alarm bells went off in Stu's head. He hadn't told them his first name, he sure as hell wasn't on a first name basis with anyone at the emergency management center a county away. Plus, the question didn't seem like any 911 call he'd ever heard, so he decided to play it safe.
"I'm in a house...I don't know who it belongs to but there are men in Cherry with guns. Lots of them."
"Can you describe the house," the voice on the other end said. "The color? The street?"
Damn.
"Do me a favor, Stu," the voice on the other end continued. "Don't run."
Stu tossed the phone back into the cradle and moved away from it like it was radioactive. Of course they'd tap the land lines. Cell lines, too.
"But they wouldn't be able to block the law enforcement radio," Stu said to himself, his voice sounding small in the big, empty bar. "Not without raising suspicion."
He decided to set his watch for five minutes, then leave "Bar" just in case there were eyes on the place or they expected him to run screaming into the street. Then he would head back toward the station and (unfortunately) Dana, and he spent that time rummaging around "Bar." He was opening cabinet doors behind the bar when his hand brushed against something long and metal that instantly felt familiar. His hands came back from the doors with a Remington Model 870 pistol grip shotgun.
"Oh, Chuck. I hope you have a permit for this."
Even though he was already armed, the gun's considerable heft gave him a shot of confidence he had been lacking. Who needed a plan when you had this sort of fire power? He rummaged around a bit more and found shells in the cabinet, loaded them and stuffed his pockets with more. After checking his watch (5 minutes 32 seconds), he peeked out the window and everything looked relatively clear. Plus, folks were a lot less likely to pick on a guy with a shotgun.
•••
Stander was on the phone.
"Did you expect to hear from the others?" the voice asked. It was different this time but still prickly and masculine.
"No, we did not."
"And you did nothing to facilitate this?"
"Nothing."
"How do you plan to proceed?"
"I'm going to go ahead with the exchange," Stander said. "If anything unexpected happens we're going to kill them all."
"Except for Mr. Rhodes."
"You will receive a live sample on schedule. I understand the consequences if I don't."
Stander couldn't help but notice how the dynamics had changed. He was used to being threatened and second-guessed. This new person was grasping, trying to grab more information. If he had to guess, things were not going well over at corporate.
"Good, good," the voice said. "And you've received no outside interference? This has been a successful black box operation? No recording equipment, no leaks?"
"We've dealt with the locals, they are all detained and there will be no one to bear witness..."
When he thought of it later, Stander wouldn't say he "snapped" at that moment. He simply ran out of patience for going over and over the same set of expectations. The voice had shown signs of weakness. It was time for him to show signs of strength.
"... and if I could add some of the personnel I've been provided are substandard. They're not seasoned or trained properly, they're not prepared to make any sort of decision and I've had to make an example or two."
The voice didn't respond.
"Despite piss poor staffing and doing all the prep and intelligence work myself, I've managed to get this done. And I'm going to continue until you have your sample and at that point I believe we need to talk about substantial compensation for my contributions up until this point. Am I clear?"
"Yes," the voice said.
"Good. I will be waiting in an hour with an update. Make sure to call on time."
It felt particularly good to be the one to end the conversation and Stander couldn't help let a slight smirk creep on to his face. For the first time since taking this assignment, the idea of shopping Willie around to another company crossed his mind. He batted it away, and then brought it back. He had been treated poorly during this operation, he had been second-guessed at every turn and he was no longer interested in dealing with this bullshit. Maybe he would become indescribably rich, stick it to his company and live out the rest of his life...
The rest of that sentence had no finish. He was a company man, a man who was lost without a goal to strive for. He would deliver Willie, he would receive his increased compensation and he would move on to the next thing the company wanted to do. And he'd do it with a smile, knowing he was the competent one, the reasonable one, the best one.
He put his phone in his pocket and actually struck up a whistle as he strolled around the camp that had been set up around Beaver Creek. There were 22 men, all armed, with hand guns, all semi-well trained and all with eyes on either side of the road, where Dave Rhodes would likely appear in 22 minutes. They had orders to wait until he reached a certain point and then open fire. It didn't matter who they brought in or how they brought them in or, for that matter, who they shot and killed in the process.
He walked the length of his forces, everyone snapping to attention when he walked by. The message had spread—he's in charge and not to be messed with. To a person postures were straight and when anyone spoke it was all business.
Except for one.
"Got 'em whipped, don't ya, asshole?" Willie said through a blood and bile speckled beard, his body tied to a chair in the center of the group.
"God, I can't wait to get out of this place," Stander said with a heavy sigh, the wind catching the leaves of the trees behind him.
•••
With twenty minutes to go before 3:00, Dave saw no reason to do anything differently.
Step one, you break bread. Even if there was nothing to eat.
"Anybody want a mint?" Dave asked. He usually carried them around after Josie had told him his breath got a little gamey by the time he got home from work. Everyone lined up and took one, more or less understanding the ritual.
"My breath is like a minty meadow," Kenny said. "I'm only taking cause you offered."
"That isn't true and you know it," JoAnn said. It was the first words she'd spoken in a while and of all the moving parts of this particular operation, she was, by far, the squeakiest. "Your breath smells like vinegar most of the time."
"Damn, girl, not nice," Kenny said, twirling the keys to the Mustang. The car was red, though it had been blue originally, and had more metal in it than the storage unit it was taken from. Kenny would drive the 'Stang, Ron in the 'Vette, Carl was driving the Suburban swiped from a neighbor and JoAnn would follow in the Pathfinder taken from "Bar." Dave was on the Harley and Josie was going a different direction.
JoAnn, who was a great bookkeeper and a "hell of a cook," according to her favorite apron, was not much of a driver. And she was nervous about it. Her part in the operation was simple and she could do it, but she had been clinging closer to Kenny than usual and the group had felt her anxiety. It gave Dave an idea.
"Everyone," he said, a bit louder than his normal speaking voice, giving his words some formality. "Come out to the field with me please."
The crunching of shoes and boots on gravel gave way to a softer clunk and squish as they left the road and ventured into the field. The prairie grass had been high this year but was starting to roll back and once they got 40 feet out or so, it was like a different world. There were still bugs, though most had gone back to the hell that spawned them, and there were plants with spikes and bright purple flowers, loose strife prairie flowers and so much more. In the midst of the death that comes with mid-fall the field was still teaming with life.
Dave stopped, and grabbed Josie's hand. She grabbed Dilly and on down the line until the group was in a circle.
"Ashes, ashes, we all fall down," Dave said, and dropped to the earth. Everyone followed, staring at the bright, blue and whispy white of the big Nebraska sky. When someone spoke, the words floated as if on the breeze, not connected to a face or an expression, devoid and free of body language. Dave hadn't planned this, but it couldn't have been more perfect.
"I'm gonna miss you guys," Kenny started.
"Where am I going?" Ron said. There were a few murmurs of agreement.
"Paris or Rome or some shit," Kenny said. "If we get through this, and I think we're gonna, every single one of you is going to shake the dust of Cherry off your sandles. Even if it's just for a little while."
"Things change," Josie said. "Can't change that."
"But this never did," Kenny continued. His voice was slower, more modulated and free of the "like"s and "man"s that peppered most of his conversations. It was a voice he didn't use much outside of the house.
"This was what I could count on. No matter what happened I knew I could depend on all of you. And you could count on me and it felt..."
The motormouth's voice cracked.
"Special," Dave finished.
"Yeah, special," Kenny said.
"Things were different before Stander showed up," Dave said. "Things were different because of Byron. And because of me."
Dave tried to feel any shift in the way his wife was holding his hand. She didn't react.
"I thought, for so long, that I made the right call for all of us. I was wrong. The truth is I had two impossible choices to make and I made the one I thought was best."
"Best for us?" Ron said.
"I don't know," Dave said. "I've thought about it and thought about it and there were things I could have done better. Lots of things. But I don't know I'd ever come to a different decision."
"Rock and a hard place," JoAnn said.
"Between a boulder and a boner," Carl said.
"Between a stone and a stiffee," Kenny said.
The laugh started slow and rolled and this time Dave felt Josie's hand squeeze and release as her chest heaved with laughter. He snuck a peek at her as she laughed and remembered how beautiful he still found her. The laughter lasted long and died slow.
"Do you think we're doing the right thing now?" Dilly asked after quiet settled back in. "I mean, we're going to..."
"Dilly, I know you're of a tender age, but fuck those guys."
Everyone was a little shocked to hear Carl speak up, much less show any aggression or drop the "f" bomb. But here they were.
"These people came in to our town and want to capture us, detain us, experiment on us, eventually kill us, terrorize everyone in town and take our lives completely away in every sense I can think of. They think we're morons and beneath them because of where we live. They think they can come and destroy a small town and get away with it. I'm sure some of them are only in it for a paycheck and that's their bad luck, but the people they came to Cherry to find the monsters. I say they found 'em."
"Yeah," Dave said.
"YEAH!" Kenny said.
"Fuck yeah!" Dilly yelled, His mother did nothing but squeeze his hand tighter.
"It's almost three o'clock. Everyone ready to do this?"
There was a round of whoops and hollers as everyone stood and started embracing. These weren't timid hugs or the kind of hugs exchanged daily, but the hugs of family who were fired up, an aggressive tenderness if such a thing exists. They were holding on tightly to the only thing that could get them through this. They were grabbing, desperately, to the only thing that could get them home.
When Dave came to Dilly, he already had tears in his eyes. He tried to remember the last time his son had seen him cry and couldn't come up with a time. They grabbed each other, Dilly taller than his father.
"Dad," he whispered. 'I'm going with mom. I'm going to fight."
"I know," Dave said. "You stay safe, son. You are precious to me."
He heard his son gasp for air as the tears racked his chest. They held on a long time and as he kept going, it was clear Josie was going to be last. When he finally got to her, he grabbed the small of her back and pulled upward, popping her back in a way he used to do when they were younger. It was that perfect moment of affection, something no one else can see you do that holds resonance for the person you're doing it to.
"He's coming with," Josie said.
"I know," Dave said.
She was crying, too.
"Your life is in our hands, you know?" she said, half laughing half crying.
"There's nowhere else I'd rather put it."
"We aren't done yet," she whispered into his ear. He felt the hot splash of her tears on his jaw as she leaned up.
"We aren't done yet," he said back. And meant it.
"It's almost 3!" Kenny was yelling "Giddyap!"
As they walked to their cars, Carl caught up with Dave.
"Can I make a phone call?"
"I don't see any reason why not," Dave said. "This is about over, they know we're coming. Doesn't much matter that they know where we are."
"Cool."
Carl swiped, dialed and smiled as he did.
"Hey, Steve," Carl said. "I'd like to request a song. This is a real special case. Any chance I could talk you in to playing it in the next little bit?"
•••
At no point in the history of luck had anyone been this lucky. A gambler hitting on 00 while fucking a cocktail waitress while missing his flight that crashes over the ocean wasn't this lucky.
Stu had managed to make it back down the street from "Bar," check on Dana ("you're doubling back? Are you a genius or an idiot?") and get back in to the Sheriff's Department office where the body had been removed but the keys to his patrol car had not. He had run in to one member of the occupying forces who would have seen him had he not gotten a call over the radio and high tailed it back the way he came. And now, as he gingerly approached the car, parked on a gravel road behind the Sheriff's office, there was no one in sight. Not a soul.
"I am the luckiest son of a bitch..." Stu said to himself as he got in the driver's side. Then, as quickly and fiercely as it had arrived, his luck ran out.
The first bit of bad luck was the radio was gone. Whoever had removed it had done a thorough, if rough job by seemingly ripping the entire console out. Wires were hanging and when he started the car, a spark shot from one of side of the gap where the radio had been.
The second bit of bad luck was that whoever had ripped out the radio had also turned the lights and sirens on. Stu should have checked but was caught up in the moment and, to be honest, the feeling of confidence that came with being so lucky for so long. The second he turned the key in the ignition the cherries shot to life and the sirens screamed and everyone in a three mile radius knew exactly what was happening and why.
The third bit of bad luck came when he actually tried to start the car and it didn't turn over. Upon hearing the sirens he shot in to action and tried to start the car, his blood immediately racing faster and his face flushing with embarrassment at being so goddamn stupid.
"Oh hell," Stu said to the sputtering engine. "No, no, no, turn over..."
But, luck is fickle and it smiled one more time and did as he asked.
"Yeah!" Stu yelled in the shortest lived triumph of the day as seconds after the engine started, bullets hit the passenger side, shattering the window and making an unmistakable "thunk" against the door. Three men were running toward the car, eager to take responsibility.
Stu laid on the gas, catching gravel and shooting it behind the car as he sputtered to make a fast getaway. The tires caught and he took off but not before losing another window and hearing the whiz of a bullet flying past his head. His plan was to get in the car and use the radio to call for help. His reality was driving a car with sirens going through a town barricaded off from the outside world. In other words, he was going to have to bust through at least one road block to get out.
At least they wouldn't be looking for Dana, he thought.
The whizzing and thunking stopped, at least for the moment, as Stu put distance between himself and the gunmen and barreled down the street toward "Bar". He hadn't grown up around here but he knew enough to know the roads in the direction he was going ended soon and his cruiser was not equipped for off-roading on gravel, so he whipped a hard right and headed toward the first barricade, the one that had caught Willie a few hours earlier.
Stu had seen the barricade, but from a distance, so he wasn't sure what sort of chance he had. At normal speed, would have probably been able to figure out the barrels were likely filled with water and that leaving out Main Street was a nonstarter, but as he rocketed forward, his decisions already blunted by fatigue and pain and fear, he crashed headlong into the barrels, splaying the hood straight up and sending Stu into an air bag, knocking him unconscious.
"That was a swing and a miss," one of the men said, running up on the car and the unconscious law man.
"That is one unlucky dude," a second said.
"Stander wants him down at the encampment. Can the car drive?"
"Block looks in tact," the second man answered. "Car looks fine. Driver, not so much."
The men didn't bother to move Stu from the seat, instead putting the car in neutral and giving it a quick push the two blocks toward Beaver Creek, joking all the way.
•••
The seat of the Harley felt exactly like Dave remembered. He had an "uncle" who had once driven up on a loud motorcycle, hopped off and talked to an 11-year-old Dave extensively about the bike, the experience, the culture.
"Every single person who rides one of these things has a little bit of outlaw in him," the family friend had told him. "It may be way down deep, but it's there. Reasonable people, they drive a car. The troublemakers..."
He gestured at the bike and as soon as Dave could drive, he had started begging, begging for a motorcycle. Willie hadn't been a big fan, nor had his mother, but in the end he got a job and bought one himself. Then he started racing them and by the time he had a wife and family, he was a regular at the race track 70 miles to the South. He always relished that ride to and from the race, his mind blank, melding with the machine that was moving him down the road like the little troublemaker he was.
Then, one day, he lost the taste for it. The death of his "biker" self was not gradual. One day, he didn't feel like riding and he didn't feel like fighting Josie over the bike anymore. Kenny gladly took it off his hands and he never looked back and seldom missed it. That is, until he got back on.
"You remember what you're doing?" Kenny said. "I can do it. I won't like it but I know I can do it."
Dave didn't say anything, instead spending his time relishing the moment, the feel of the seat beneath his ass and the stance he had to strike to grab both handles. He put the keys in the ignition and looked toward the road.
"Dilly and Josie?"
"They ought to be about where we need 'em," Kenny said. "You got this?" Fixing a hard stare on the road ahead, Dave didn't move a muscle. He was in front with five cars piloted by five of the most important people in his life sat, engines off, waiting to follow his lead. Behind him, Carl gave a small "whoop" noise and turned the radio way up in the Suburban so everyone could hear.
"We don't usually do this," the DJ was saying, "but I've got a good friend who's about to do something stupid and he's made a request. You all oughtta know this one. Be careful, fellas."
Jason Newstead's full, confident bass filled the speakers as Metallica began their Sisyphussian climb that was "Enter Sandman." No one acknowledged the radio shout out. All eyes were on Dave who was still atop his motorcycle. The bass started driving, Lars started his equally full pedal work and by the time the first, big chord thundered through the speakers of the Suburban courtesy of Kirk Hammett's 1987 ESP KH-2, Dave had fired up the Harley and revved it as loud as it would go. The engine thundered and was followed by the unmuffled roar of the Mustang, the higher but bad ass squeal of the Vet and the other vehicles, all hitting a crescendo in time with the music.
As Metallica began their final run before the chorus, Dave hit the gas having never once looked behind him, trusting in his crew, his boys, his pack and his faith was rewarded with squealing tires and screaming engines. He heard Kenny and Ron scream out the open windows of their cars, a war whoop if there ever was one, but Dave betrayed none of the fire in his guts that were burning intense and violent. The Harley would it for him and James Hetfield singing along wouldn't hurt a goddamn thing.
They rode toward town, in a straight line toward Beaver Creek.
•••
Stander's watch beeped. It was 3:00.
"Not very punctual," Stander said to the man next to him.
"Go fuck yourself!" Willie yelled from his position a few yards back, toward the forest.
The men, all dressed in similar blue paramilitary style uniforms, each carrying assault rifles, waited for an order. Or failing that, a cue. Instead, the man in charge stood, silently watching the road, his radio up to his ear in case any news were to come across, leaving his men to ponder his final instruction.
"If you see anything that resembles a wolf, shoot it until it stops moving."
•••
Part of the plan was to be loud. To that end, the operation was a complete success.
Dave led the pack down the Highway, not languishing, but not rushing either. Still, at 45 mph or so, the five vehicles sounded like a natural disaster, some swirling, kicking accident of nature come to fuck up your house and kill your livestock. That's how they sounded. That's how they felt.
The sound was so much it drown out the radios, which were cranked in all the cars (except JoAnne's, who was far too sensible for loud music). Dave didn't hear Hetfield invite everyone to "exit light." It didn't matter if he had. They were coming up on Beaver Creek and everyone needed to focus.
•••
"Here they come."
Stander was annoyed anyway, but particularly annoyed at Willie. If the old man wasn't his ace in the hole, his insurance policy and his ultimate victory, he would have shot the old coot cold between the eyes and shut that stupid mouth of his.
That being said, he had a point.
"What are they doing, sir?" one of his underlings asked.
"I'm not sure," Stander said. "But it doesn't change anything. Follow your orders."
In his brain, Stander was running possibilities as fast as he could. What were they doing? He didn't know and not knowing was starting to put a pit in his stomach. Even though the temperature was in the low 50s, a bead of sweat formed on the man's brow and glistened in the sun.
•••
Josie heard the cars and their deliberate, deafening approach. The young wolf was with her and he was starting to get antsy.
"Nnnnow?" he growled, the drool hanging from one side of his mouth in a thick, viscous rope.
"No," Josie said. "Wait."
The Young Wolf continued to shift and dance, threatening to make noise in what had otherwise been a silent approach.
"Please," Josie said, turning to face him. "Follow me."
"Yes," the Young Wolf said. He crouched, a coiled mass of energy waiting, and was as silent as possible.
"Good boy," Josie said, mainly to herself.
The noise from the engines were getting louder and Josie realized she had overestimated her ability to gauge how far away everyone was. Timing was important. Going too early meant bad things. Going to late meant equally bad things. She needed to use her brain, but her animal brain was screaming for blood, screaming for vengeance. Moments started flashing in her mind of their house burning down, the small kitchen in that house where she had cooked Thanksgiving dinner aflame, the entry way where they had set their son after bringing him home from the hospital, split and blackened. She couldn't take it, whipping around and making contact with the powerful animal behind her.
"Now."
•••
The first two disappeared quickly, pulled behind the trees. With all eyes on the road and all ears on the radio, no one saw and no one heard, even when the two unfortunate HartmanCorp employees were thrown against a tree trunk and their throats ripped out. The tearing and gurgling were no match for the roar of classic care engines and a bad ass outlaw motorcycle. Not even close.
Two more, lined up against the trees, vanished next. This time one person heard and one person saw. Willie's nose had been twitching but what it told him made no sense – that Dilly was in the woods with someone he didn't recognize. It wasn't that piece of shit Irishman, it was sharper and sweeter. It was someone else, so he kept his eyes sharp and tried to track any movement. He didn't see who pulled the next two guards into the woods, but he saw their bodies snap as if pulled by an invisible string tied to the bumper of a big invisible truck.
Willie wanted to cheer, wanted to cry out, but thought better of it. Instead, he took a quick survey of what was around him even as his nose caught the first strong whiff of blood that was splattering a few feet into the woods. There were a dozen men, all with their fingers on the triggers of some nasty looking, well-oiled and sleek assault rifles. Most of them were in front of him, watching the road but two more were hanging back, facing the same direction. They were also quickly pulled behind the trees and this time Willie saw the Young Wolf, pulling each grown man into the woods with one hand. They locked eyes for a an instant before the creature vanished back into the thicket.
"Damn," Willie said under his breath. "Strong kid."
The engines were now roaring as the convoy was in sight, Dave in front astride his Harley. Six men down, about, 10 or so to go, plus that asshole Stander, all facing the road. This had to be part of the plan.
Pretty quickly, Willie put it together. The Young Wolf was going to snipe as many of the soldiers of fortune as he could, giving his pack a fighting chance.
The old man couldn't have been more wrong.
•••
"What the hell are they doing, sir?" one of the men asked Stander, who had donned his sunglasses to counteract the harsh glare coming off the road.
"Doesn't matter," Stander said. "You have your orders."
"But they're driving right in to our fire. Doesn't that concern you?"
"Not in the least. Now kindly shut up and do your job."
The man complied, staring at the horizon and the approaching vehicles, right up until he heard the screams behind him.
•••
"Be fast," Josie growled. "Be clean. Guns first, then blood. Do you understand."
"Yes...mm.mmom," the Young Wolf growled. The rope of saliva was gone and he was already breathing heavy from the exertion of pulling six men into the forest and helping dispatch them.
"Follow me. Be fast," Josie said again. She needed that part to get through.
She stared at the backs of the men with guns at the ready. She could get to them and take out at least two before they knew what happened. Dilly could probably do the same and then it was six on two with the six armed to the teeth. Fear drove her heart rate up in a weak sort of beat that made her legs feel weak.
Those men, she thought, trying to refocus, broke in to my house. Those men burned my home. Those men shot my father-in-law, which might not be such a bad thing. She grinned, then thought that those men would kill her and her son and everyone she loved if there was money in it. They would destroy her if she stood in the comfort of the woods. They crossed a line and if there was one thing being a wolf meant, it meant being dangerous. Being a wolf had hurt her marriage and hurt her child and brought these men.
Time for her to bring the hurt for once.
•••
Willie smelled the blood before he saw the wolves burst out of the forest. He had learned to identify some emotions by scent, bloodlust being the most obvious. The smell poured from the woods and when he saw The Young Wolf and his daughter-in-law (THAT was the smell!) burst from the woods at a full run, descending upon throng of rent-a-guns with the force of a demon bent on destroying the world.
The Young Wolf, good to his word, almost split one of the men in half with his right hand, and half punching/half shoving a second man so hard that his neck made a sick, moist crunching sound as cartilage and bone rubbed and snapped in unnatural ways. The men didn't have time to scream, just bleed and fall and die. Josie was almost as lucky, slashing one man's chest as he screamed and fell and punching a second so hard that her fist got stuck in the gory mess that used to be his head.
The scream woke the remaining men (10 down, six or so to go) and Willie got the distinct pleasure of seeing Stander's eyes get big, his face register panic and his constitution totally fail him as he involuntarily vomited while trying to scream. Willie took a second to register the sound and take immense pleasure from it.
A third man on the Young Wolf's side went down quickly after having his arms torn off his body, his screams loud, then quieter as gallons of blood left his body on either side. Dilly was so fast and so strong, faster and stronger than any wolf Willie had ever seen and Willie felt a twinge in his guts as his transformation started. The shooting also started and the Young Wolf held the armless, screaming man in front of him as the five men turned and started shooting in the same direction out of instinct.
Panic is a hell of a thing, Willie thought, as one of the men shot another in the melee, plugging him square in the back of the head causing blood and brain to splatter on the man in front of him. By this time, Josie had retreated, pulled her hand clear of the bloody head from where it had stuck and charged again taking another man down by biting his neck in a pose that might have been two lovers, if not for the screaming and splatter.
The bullets were mainly hitting the center mass of the man without arms, but a few of them hit the Young Wolf in the shoulders, causing him to howl in pain. That howl, coupled with the site of his grandson's wounds was enough to put Willie over the edge and he sprouted and stretched and screamed as the White Wolf pulled free of his bonds and threw the chair he had been on directly at one of the men. The chair hit him square and sent him completely off balance, his gun flying from his hands. The White Wolf began running at the man only to draw the fire of two remaining soldiers.
The shots whizzed by the White Wolf's ear and he felt one hit his shoulder and another penetrate, deeply, into the meat of his left leg before he made his final leap. In the air, he was grazed in the side and hit square in the chest but landed on the man in the uniform and sank his teeth deep into his cranium, biting hard and hearing the cracks of skull and squish of brains. Out of the corner of his eye, the White Wolf saw the Young Wolf tearing the last man apart in a bloody decoupage, blood and shit spraying across the dirt and into the road.
Inspired, the White Wolf tore the soldier's head from his body and threw it toward the Young Wolf who howled, screaming at the sky. The White Wolf joined him in a powerful, tearing roar high pitched enough to rise above the roaring engines but low enough to rattle the dirt beneath their feet in one, unified, powerful message.
DO NOT FUCK WITH US!
•••
Josie had not taken any hits but had seen Dilly's arms and noticed the blood. When Willie broke free and drew all their fire, she had batted clean up, making sure everything else went to plan. Her son hurt but was going to be OK. That was the important part.
Stander had bolted toward the only shelter open to him – Stu's banged up police cruiser with Stu in the backand she thought she had seen one of the men get in as well. They had switched places so Stander wasn't driving when Josie jumped on the roof and started dragging her nails along the ceiling. As expected, gun fire came from inside the car, with Josie rolling out of the way and the car taking off, spitting gravel fishtailing a bit.
Moments later, the convoy blew by and took their positions around the town car.
"All yours," Josie said, smiling to herself.
•••
"What the fuck just happened!" Stander screamed. The man behind the wheel, a muscular, tattooed sort named Antonio, was in just as much shock. The gunshots toward the ceiling were stilling ringing, loud and long and unbroken in Stander's ears. Part of him was in full panic mode while part of his brain was trying, desperately, to process what it was that had happened. He glanced in the rear view mirror, hoping to not see any carnage or a small convoy of country hicks in loud cars bearing down on him.
He saw both.
"What do you want me to do, sir?" Antonio asked.
"Drive, DRIVE" Stander screamed through clenched teeth. "How the FUCK did that happen? Are you all fucking stupid!?"
The cruiser was OK after the earlier crash and the duo were thrown back as Antonio hit the gas, then thrown forward and he slammed the break, missing the back of Carl's Suburban by centimeters.
"Go around him!" Stander yelled, and Antonio jerked the wheel until he heard metal grinding. Kenny was in the Mustang and the Mustang had more metal in it than most newly constructed houses. It wasn't going anywhere and when JoAnn pulled up behind them in the pathfinder, it was obvious they weren't going backward either. The passenger side of the car hovered along the shoulder, veering close to an off road of nothing but dirt, plants and other material unhospitable to the town car.
Through the rolled up windows, both men could hear the roar of the engines and something higher pitched with a distinct melodic quality. Antonio narrowed his eyes.
"Is that a guitar solo?"
"Who gives a fuck?" Stander yelled, throwing all décor out the window as he started rummaging in the back seat for one of the assault rifles. All he found was the semi-conscious body of Sheriff Stuart Dietz.
"Why is he still back here?" Stander asked as the Pathfinder plowed into them from behind. JoAnn was starting to have fun.
"We had no place else to put him, sir," Antonio said, panic clinging to his voice. "We weren't supposed to kill him yet."
"DAMMIT!" Stander yelled. He was down to one guy, one car and no guns and he had lost the upper hand in about a minute and a half. He swung his eyes from window to window, his brain running through every scenario he could think of, every option and tool at his disposal. He could see no way out and could see nothing but the Suburban, the Pathfinder, the Mustang and the shoulder, whizzing by them as the convoy pushed the cruiser faster and faster.
"Sir!" Antonio yelled. "The van is...signaling."
Sure enough, the Suburban's left turn signal was blinking a fluorescent red, made all the harsher by proximity.
"He's not going to turn," Stander said, leaning forward in his seat. "What the hell is he doing?"
Slowly, and as if merging politely into traffic, the Suburban started changing lanes but before Antonio or his boss could see an inch of daylight, the motorcycle who was leading the pack roared to take its place. The motorcycle rider didn't turn around, confident in his bearings and in that moment Stander no longer cared about what the hell they were doing. There was sky in front of him and Stander wanted to seize it.
"HIT HIM!"
•••
The switch was as smooth as if they had practiced it. Carl swerved, Dave got in front and the second he heard the cruiser's engine rev, he accelerated, his eyes hard and focused in front of him. He had driven this road literally thousands of times and knew every slight turn, every crack in the pavement.
Every historical marker made of granite and weighing well over a ton and buried deep.
Dave also knew, all too well, that when the sun was starting its descent, it was sometimes hard to see. He had almost hit the damn thing dozens of times. Now his life depended on a stranger making the same mistake.
The granite marker came up fast, faster than Dave had anticipated. The plan was to stay on his wheels as long as he could, but to lay the bike down in the soft Earth off the road if that wasn't possible. Everything happened so fast that Dave immediately knew he'd have to lay the bike down, and slammed on the break for as one of the longest seconds of his life, then turned hard away from the marker. The bike immediately went down, sliding along the Earth that was now decidedly not so soft, and Dave slide for a few meters before going in to a roll. He spun and spun, his arms up next to his head.
•••
If anyone had a great view of the action, it was Ron. He was the support car and his job was to "play the invariables." If anyone got hurt, his job was to help. If gunfire were needed, he and his revolver riding in the passenger seat (shotgun! Ha!), could handle that as well. As it stood, he saw Dave come up on the marker, saw him lay the bike down and tumble, and saw Stander and crew plow, head long and at a speed of roughly 45 miles an hour, square in to the thing. The car hit the marker on its driver's side, crushing the headlight and hood and sending it spinning across the other lanes. The ditch was a little higher on that part of the road, so when the cruiser spun at high speed into the ditch, the car tipped over on its side. Momentum continued carrying them over on the hood and come to a rest, wheels spinning, engine smoking and a dank smell of oil coming up from the scene.
For the monument's part, the car took a big chunk out of one side. Other than that, it wasn't going anywhere.
Ron checked on Dave first and was surprised to see him already up and walking toward the road. He pulled over along the side.
"You OK?"
"That was...a ride," Dave said.
"Bleeding or anything?"
"I'm sure I am somewhere," he said, knowing full well his chest wound from earlier had torn open and was bleeding badly. "Let's move. Nobody's getting away today."
Ron suppressed a smile as he hopped out of his car and followed. The other cars had pulled around by this point and were making their way back to the wreck. On the way, JoAnn drove up and rolled down the window.
"Everyone OK?"
"Yeah," Ron said. "You might as well drive off. You're not going to want to see this."
The windows on all sides of the cruiser had shattered from the impact, and Stander had already exited the car and was crawling, fist over fist, through the wet dirt and grass that had survived the cold of the season. One leg was at a terrible angle, obviously broken and the other seemed fine, but Ron wasn't about to ask why he wasn't using it. Kenny pulled up next, followed by Carl who had the windows down and the radio cranked. That was fine, Ron thought. Covering up the screams was probably a better idea than not. Besides, he had always loved this song, even the creepy kid prayer at the end.
If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take...
Stander never stopped crawling, even when Dave and Ron and Carl and Kenny made their way down in to the ditch, but crawling is a slow way to move and the men, wearing big smiles and removing their shirts, caught up to him in a few steps. The company man was grunting with exertion and pain, his face caked in blood and dirt. His bow tie was nowhere to be seen.
From inside the car, Stu had awoken with a jolt to find himself in a crunched and leaking car and staring out the window at the naked backs of four men. And hearing Metallica for some reason.
Hush little baby, don't say a word
He felt the presence of the men behind him and even sensed that they had begun to change but the company man on the ground continued to claw big fistfuls of mud in an attempt to pull himself somewhere, anywhere other than where he was. He knew something very bad had happened to his leg, but didn't want to see. Tears came to his eyes, partly from pain and partly because he didn't even want this, didn't want this job or this life. He wasn't a killer, not a bad guy. He had a temper, sure...
...and never mind that noise you heard
Inside the car, Stu's memories flooded back and while he couldn't yet put two and two together, he remembered the danger, the sneaking around, the torture, his sister and all the rest. He also saw the man in the driver's seat start to mess with his door.
It's just the beasts under your bed...
For most of their lives, the pack had to draw on very specific memories in order to transform. That was not the case anymore. There was prey, wounded and supine in front of them, bleeding and desperate. They transformed quickly and without pain.
In your closet, in your head...
Stu saw the wolves lunge in one, fluid motion at whatever was on the ground. One of them threw what looked like a body, hard, against a nearby telephone pole while another grabbed the body in its jaws and threw it back toward the car. Then they all descended, mouths open, latching on to arms, legs, shoulders, thighs and any center mass they could find to tear skin away and feast on the blood that gushed forth. Every part of the body was covered in fur and teeth, except the head. Stu was able to see Stander's face as he was torn apart by the wolves, as chunks flew off he was able to make a last, fleeting eye contact with Stu and convey one final message.
It was something Stu had seen once before.
"I want to take this back." That was the understatement of the decade.
A sharp sound drew Stu's attention away from the carnage as Antonio, the driver, was making a break for it, managing to shimmy out through the broken window. The driver was limping, badly but was moving quietly, trying not to draw the attention of the wolves who were currently feasting on their boss.
Stu looked at the door, tried it and saw found that it was undamaged and opened easily. He was even more surprised when he realized a shotgun, which must have belonged to one of Stander's men, was among the debris inside the car.
...grain of sand...
Testing his tender and sore joints and muscles, Stu rolled onto the pavement, gingerly stood up, aimed his weapon and shot Antonio in the back as he fled. The man went down and a split second later, one of the wolves had left the snarling mass in the ditch and was investigating the noise. The beast, large and lean and savage, poked at the body before grabbing it in its jaws and tossing it, easily 20 feet, to the rest of the pack.
Stu got his first long, full lit look at the wolf. The creature was tall, easily over seven feet, but hunched and ready to leap or run. There was blood across its snout and his claws were covered in viscera, but the eyes were another story. The eyes weren't desperate or murderous.
They were proud. Most likely, it was Dave, Stu thought.
The wolf gave Stu a quick snort and joined the rest in giving Antonio the same treatment they had given Stander just moments before. The "wolf who was probably Dave" gave a loud, long howl as "Enter Sandman" faded into nothing and the wolves took off across the field at a high rate of speed, back toward Beaver Creek. There were two bloody spots in the road, a couple of cars pulled off the Highway, and an overturned cruiser that Stu had no idea how he was going to deal with.
"Hope that went well, fellas," the radio DJ was saying. "Either way, we're back after the break with some Rush and maybe some Van Halen if you're lucky."
•••
The Lead Wolf ran at a full clip toward his mate and his child and found them cradling the White Wolf. He was bleeding badly.
The Thin Wolf slightly whimpered. The Young Wolf, also bleeding, held his grandfather in his wounded arms that were still strong despite being torn up. Josie noted that some of the Young Wolf's bullet hole injuries had already stopped bleeding and were starting to heal.
Josie had been trying to fix this, trying to figure out what to do, but there were so few options and she didn't do her best thinking as a wolf. Every time the problem solving part of her brain would engage, she would smell something or hear something and any serious thought fluttered away. She had tried to transform back, but too much adrenaline was coursing through her. She was stuck, and so was Willie, who let out a yelp of pain every so often.
The Young Wolf looked at his mother.
"Help," he said. "Mmmom, help."
The other wolves started lightly howling as well, trying to speak but unable.
"He needs to change back," Josie said, surprised by the tightness in her chest that was making it hard to speak. "If we changed back, I could get him to a hospital."
At the word "hospital" the White Wolf's eyes shot open and he stretched his neck so he could see who had said the word. Josie ran through the pack to get in his line of sight.
"No," the White Wolf said. He attempted to raise his paw, failing at first then summoning more strength so he could gesture at the ground.
"Here," he said.
His meaning was clear but it caused the Young Wolf to throw his grandfather to the ground and scream.
"NO! NO! NOT HERE! NOT HERE!"
Thrashing, his long limbs pawing at the ground, the Young Wolf clawed and slashed at the air in his grief. The Lead Wolf rose up, just as high as his son, taller than he'd stood in a long time, and roared back at him. The Young Wolf howled but complied and fell to all fours as the rest of the pack gathered around and pressed their noses and bodies to his fur.
"Not here," he said, the "here" trailing into a howl.
His breath starting to rattle, the White Wolf got to his feet. The fall had knocked the air out of him and he was lucky to have gotten it back, but he was on his feet. Josie could see his hind legs drag and his front legs quiver.
He fixed the Young Wolf with a stare and the howling stopped. It was as if exerting some control gave him strength and his legs stopped shaking.
"A wolf dies... running," he said. "We die running."
The voice that came out was as much William Rhodes as it was the White Wolf, the growl modulated to a higher timber. It was the voice of a man speaking on his own terms and a wolf being gentle with those he loved. He whispered something else in a different language that the Young Wolf didn't understand but carried with it ancient meaning, a benediction with meaning only to him.
"Taimid bas ag rith."
Without warning, the White Wolf ran in to the woods, stumbling ever step or so but with a speed the pack hadn't seen out of him in years. He was 20 yards away before they followed, tearing through branches, leaves, spitting dirt and mud behind them. They all caught up and kept pace, the seven of them in almost a line broken only by terrain or tree. They ran until the White Wolf started to fall away. They heard the gurgles of fluid in his breath and the beating of his paws start to slow until they finally heard the thud of his body as it hit the earth.
The pack kept running, at a trot. The Young Wolf started the howl, followed by Josie, then the Thin Wolf, the Straight Wolf, the Large Wolf and finally the Lead Wolf howled and ran sending a cloud of sound past the tree line and into the sky. They howled because they were no longer what they had been. They howled for loss and for the change and for the blood they had to shed. But mostly, they howled out of pain. It all hurt and howling was the only thing that made any sense.
They ran until they collapsed, exhausted, by a stream where they stopped howling and turned into humans once again.
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF WILLIAM RHODES CREATED AND CO-SIGNED JANUARY 11, 2011
I, William James Rhodes, presiding at 104 Rural Route 118, Cherry, Nebraska, declare this to be my Will and I revoke any and all wills and codicils I previously made.
Article 1 – Burial
I couldn't care less. Bury me in a pine box or leave me to rot. Don't give a shit.
Article 2 – Distribution of assets
Lacy gets the house and the car and all that. She can give what she wants to anyone she wants except for my asshole brother. I leave him sole possession of my diddly squat and he's lucky he's getting that.
Signed and notarized.
PART 10 – SON OF A BITCH
The people of Cherry were pretty accommodating, considering their town had been taken over and by men with guns.
Phrases like "something like this was bound to happen" or "we knew you boys would handle it" or even the odd "well, that's all over with now,' were bandied about the usual gathering places. Chuck had run interference with a lot of his regular customers at "Bar" and possibly spun a tall tale or two in the process. Not that the actual story wasn't exciting enough.
"All those bodies, they had been ripped apart and their guts laid end to end to spell "Stay Out," Chuck had told Stu over a hamburger lunch. "I swear that's what I heard."
This was the fullest and most complete sentence Stu had ever heard Chuck utter, and he smiled.
"I don't doubt it for a second," Stu said. "I'm sure a drone or something picked up the message."
"Damn right it did," Chuck said. "Those things are everywhere."
In reality, Stu had limped back to Dana, gotten her and Robin home safe and then slept for a good 12 hours in their guest room, waking only to receive medical attention from Robin. Diligent, tender Robin with a great bedside manner and the kind of eyes that would make a man work hard to get better. Of course, she was not interested in him "that way," nor he in her (not really, as the consequences would be more than several humans could handle), but it had been a long time since he had any sort of female companionship in his life and he was starting to feel it. Plus the whole "fearing for your life, surviving torture and being pushed hard enough to shoot a man in the back" thing really made him wish he had someone to share the experience with.
But, for now, all he had was Chuck and the hamburger. It would have to do.
"The drones, they can be tiny. They can be in your car and you wouldn't know it," Chuck was droning on. "They know everything you're doing and if you don't believe that, you're an idiot."
"I don't know," Stu said between mouthfuls. "I still think there are places where you can keep a low profile if you want to."
He got three-fourths of the way through his burger before Dave walked in and saddled up next to him.
"Got time for a beer, Sheriff?"
"I'm on the clock, but meet me after? Six-ish work for you?"
"If it's OK with the bartender."
Chuck gave them a look and walked back to the kitchen without saying a word.
"Six o'clock, then," Dave said.
Stu pulled himself off his bar stool with a grunt. It had been two weeks since the torture and car wreck and other car wreck and he was beginning to think the soreness was going to stick around forever like an unwanted cousin sleeping on your couch.
"I won't have any trouble staying busy till then," Stu said and it was the truth. He had made the decision, with the blessing of his sister and his sister's beautiful partner, to pretend the last week had never happened, to clean up as much as he could and to go around to the community and talk with everyone he could to make sure things were cool. But not using the word "cool." The phrase he had come up with was "are you OK after the recent nastiness last week" and go from there.
So far, everyone he had spoken to had been "OK" and everyone had an opinion on why the town had been overrun, ranging from "it was the government coming for our guns" to "it was the United Nations coming from our guns" to "wanna see my guns?" Stu would have felt terror at the future of his country had each person not been friendly, hearty and understanding. No one threatened to use said guns and no one seemed overly afraid of something as monumental as a siege happening again. No one blamed the Rhodes and their friends.
One conversation in particular had stuck with him. Sidney Layton, who lived next to Kenny's repair shop, had seen Stu coming and waved him off.
"I don't need you stopping by," he said. "I heard all about it, you sneaking around, trying to get help. You did good. Don't worry about it."
Stu slowed his approach but he still wanted to talk a bit and Sidney let him up on the porch of his shabby home. The older man threw himself on an old rocking chair that creaked and shifted under his weight but held.
"I'm making sure everyone is OK after last week," Stu said, going in to his stump speech.
"Got roughed up a bit," Sidney said. "So I'm not asking questions about where everyone went. Figured I'd find some bodies if I went looking for 'em. I ain't looking."
"That's good," Stu said. "I want you to know we're working to make sure nothing like this ever happens again."
"Save it. If it happens, it happens."
"Even if..." Stu said, asking a leading question.
"Kenny Kirk once drove six miles in a blizzard to come save my ass when I got stuck. Ron, he set up the wifi in the house. Didn't charge me. That smaller fella, he mows the lawn at the church. Nobody asked him to. He just does it plus he gives me a big bag of cucumbers every August. He heard somewhere I like cucumbers and I do. Love em. Put them in a bowl with vinegar, water and a pinch of sugar and it's the one snack by doctor says I can still eat."
A chilly wind blew across the porch. October had given way to November and November in Nebraska means the slight nip in the air turns serious. Sidney rubbed his arms.
"Truth is when you're in the middle of nowhere you don't get to pick your neighbors. But that doesn't make them any less your neighbors."
With that, Sidney stood up and walked back in to the house without saying another word. Stu still had a couple dozen houses left to visit at that point, but he had a feeling Sidney had summed it up. Something also felt a little dirty about hearing it said out loud. Of course no one was going to run to the press or the government or the United Nations or whoever because sometime, someday soon, they would need their neighbor's help.
Stu saved the hardest conversation for last, which was why he was in "Bar" eating a so so hamburger. Dave walked in around five minutes late with a backpack slung over his shoulder and sat next to Stu at the bar.
"Sheriff," he said.
"You want another pitcher of beer?" Stu asked.
"No, not today. But we can definitely head to that booth in the back."
Chuck made a slight guttural sound to express his disapproval as Stu grabbed his plate and headed to the other end of the building. Dave plopped down and ran his fingers through his facial hair, which he had started growing out since Willie's death.
"We probably need to get some things straight."
"OK. Shoot."
"Well, if I were a pessimist, here's how I would sum up last week. I would think that local law enforcement knew a secret about me and my family and that I had no assurances that he would be keeping that secret. I'd also think that he saw, first hand, a lot of death and violence that we might have been responsible for. And, if I were a real pessimist, I would worry that he would blame me, personally, for the takeover of his town and all the pain and suffering that it brought."
Stu finished up his fries and Dave laid it out.
"Good thing I'm not a pessimist."
The heavy glass plate made a loud noise as Stu shoved it aside and put his elbows on the table, meeting Dave's gaze. Eye contact had never been his strong suit but Stu held this time. He felt it was important.
"I've spent the last couple weeks talking to people about what happened. A lot of people have vouched for you."
"That's good."
"I don't know if you know how I ended up here, but something very bad happened to me where I used to work."
"I heard about that."
"I had a real rough go of things and got a lot of advice but there was only one thing that anybody said that helped me out. A therapist told me that being in pain and constantly feeling like shit was a good thing. He said it was proof that I cared about the people I had hurt and if I cared about the people I had hurt, I couldn't be a bad person. Bad people hurt others and don't care or don't even remember it. Good people care."
"I think that's right," Dave said.
"I don't know you or your folks very well, but I've heard from a lot of people that you care."
"Again, that's good."
"I also heard why folks think this happened and it goes back to those first two murders. Those assholes coming to town, shutting everything down, kidnapping and beating people, all of that, nobody blames you for that and I guess I don't either. But one of your own killing some local girl and then you guys taking the law into your own hands? You can see where that might be a problem moving forward."
"Sure."
"Plus those two killings put you on Stander's radar, didn't it? Even if people don't blame you, it's not a huge leap."
"Not a huge leap at all."
"So you can see my problem."
"Yes, I can."
Stu kept unbroken eye contact while Dave got a stupid grin on his face.
"Something funny?" Stu asked.
"I'm just sitting here thinking," Dave said. "I'm thinking of all the guys like me who have sat across the table from guys like you. How this is such a complicated thing but it's been done, dozens of times for hundreds of years. I've never had to have this conversation and you've never had to have this conversation but what we're doing, it ain't new. Not even a little."
Dave reached into his backpack and pulled out a worn, leather bound book, the pages dry and flaky. It hit the table with a light thud and Dave started opening pages.
"I found this when we were going through Willie's things. It's a history of sorts. I never knew it existed until a few days ago and I've been reading over it."
As he watched the pages flip, Stu could see a variety of different handwritings on the yellow pages, all of which were incomprehensible upside down.
"Sometimes there were bribes involved. Sometimes, and it says this here, the police were 'bound by the constraints of polite society.' That's an A+ phrase, right there. Sometimes the local law enforcement were relatives, sometimes there were some other type of quid pro quo..."
"What are you getting at?" Stu said.
"Nobody ever threatened anyone," Dave said. "I've looked and looked and at no point has anyone like me said 'keep this secret or we'll hurt you.' Never. And this book goes back a ways."
"Were you thinking of threatening me?"
"No, I wasn't, but I think there's a bigger point here. I think what this means is our thing and...your thing, it can coexist in this place. I don't think that's true everywhere but in Cherry, I don't know. It works."
"It just works?"
"I think so."
Stu let his brain wander for a second to what would have happened in Detroit or Minneapolis or Sterling or Tallahassee or Burbank if one of their law enforcement had set upon a seven-foot-tall wolf creature. Someone would have been there with a camera phone or a dash cam. Someone would have uploaded a video and it would have broken the Internet. Someone would have made a meme about werewolves and it would have turned into a joke before the actual event could be processed.
Here, it just worked.
"Of course," Dave continued, "you came to us at a rough time. This book shows that there have been other times when we had to police ourselves, so to speak. What we're dealing with is not uncommon, but we have to worry about things my ancestors never had to. I would love to give you my word that our town is safe and you won't have to worry about us anymore, but it's looking less and less likely that I can do that."
"Then let me police things for you," Stu said, moderately shocked that the words had come out of his mouth. "If I'm your neighbor than that's not a half way thing. If you need help, even with your werewolf whatever-the-hell-you-call-yourselves problems, come to me. Or at least keep me in the loop."
The stupid grin returned to Dave's face.
"I can give you my word on that, Sheriff."
Stu smiled too.
"Thank you, citizen."
They left with a handshake and a promise to have Robin cook for the lot of them sometime in the spring. Dave said he had somewhere to be and beat it after a few more minutes of bullshitting and Stu was on the way out before Chuck gave him a quick whistle.
"Sheriff," Chuck said. "You didn't pay for your burger."
"Sorry, sorry," Stu said, fishing out his wallet.
"I'm not running a charity, here,"
"Of course not," Stu said, smiling before adding one more word.
"Neighbor."
•••
Dilly had taken his grandfather's death hard. Josie could tell because it lit a fire under his ass.
He had never been a lazy kid but after "the incident" (a term that the group had once used to describe what happened to Byron and now used for the occupation of the town), he started working around the clock as if he were going to war. They were homeless, of course, and had no worldly possessions to their name, so the first 48 hours were spent gathering up donations from neighbors and getting the basics in place. Willie's place was now vacant and even though it was the last place they wanted to stay, given the circumstances, it was by far the most convenient.
After a day or two's worth of grieving and depression that came with having committed several murders and losing your grandfather, Josie found her son up early one morning doing reps on a set of dumbbells that had either been donated or abandoned by Willie.
"Hitting the weights a little early?" she had asked.
"It's the only time I have," he said. "I've got school, practice and then the other practice with dad later."
"You guys are going out?"
"I told him we need to. All of us. We need to get back to doing it for ourselves, you know?"
Josie did know. Since "the incident" things had changed significantly for her, as well. Her transformations had once been excruciating and traumatizing; now she was mildly looking forward to the next one. There was also a sense, growing every day in her mind, that Dilly was something special in the wolf world and she wanted to explore that and work with him but had decided at this point not to press the issue too hard.
"If you want, we can go out together without dragging everyone else in to it."
"I'll talk to dad and let you know," he said between grunts as he started a set of arm curls. "But that sounds good."
"I'm stronger than them, you know," he said just as Josie was leaving the room.
"I know. They know it too. But it doesn't mean you get to stop listening to them," she replied, dead serious, and was met with grunts and the clanking of metal.
Willie's death had the same impact on Dave, but in a different way. He was motivated but it was out of anger, not preparation, youthful drive, hormones or whatever else Dilly was on. Dave had lost the chance to reconcile with his father and that meant short fuses and cold shoulders. It also meant they had yet to really discuss what came next. They had never needed to have a discussion more but they kept putting it off.
Dave was spending a lot of time over at Willie's house going through his mountains of stuff and when he found the unmarked diary detailing the history of wolves in Cherry, he immersed himself in it. He would spend long nights at the kitchen table making notes, trying to figure out who had made particular entries, what codes meant and going over every line like it was some sort of code. They hadn't gone to sleep at the same time since the night Willie died, where they had held each other tightly in the guest bedroom, both wracked with equal parts gratitude and depression. Since that night it had spent most of his time at the table and on phone calls he didn't want Josie to know he was having.
It was Dave who eventually came to her, two weeks or so into their stay at casa de Willie, as Josie was getting ready for bed.
"I've been going over this book."
"Yes you have."
"Know what I haven't found?"
She put down her book and rolled on her side to face him.
"What?"
"Anything like you."
"What are you talking about?"
Dave stepped inside the door frame and sat on the bed.
"It's stupid, but I always figured Kenny's mom and Ron's mom and all these families who do what we do, I always figured they were male wolves and female wolves, right? I mean, my mom, I knew she could change but Willie never let her run with us and she died so suddenly I never got to talk to her about it."
"Right."
"And when you started to change after Dilly was born, I figured that's how it worked. I remember asking Willie once and he told me that's how it worked and I took it for granted. But I've been over this book twice and I think I understand what I'm reading and there's no mention of female wolves in there. None at all."
"That kind of makes sense," Josie said. "Women weren't always equal, right? Maybe they were just omitted."
"I thought that too, but look..."
He crossed over and carefully opened the book. Even with ginger handling, a few pieces of the old pages broke off the edges as he sat.
"There's a census in here, a list of all our people starting all the way back in pioneer days, like the 1860s or so. Apparently when a man took a wife and started a family, sometimes the male heirs would be able to make the transformation and others wouldn't. They would mark it, here..."
He leaned forward and pointed at the one piece of scribbled writing.
"...that symbol, see it? That means they could make the transformation. Even if they didn't do it very often, they got the mark. There's one section..."
Dave flipped through the pages, concentrating hard.
"...here. Some of us who could make the transformation moved away and they had to make a promise they'd never transform again. There's a whole section on it, the oath they had to take and everything. But they still got the mark next to their name."
"And no women ever had that mark?"
"None."
Josie was suddenly very aware of her heartbeat. Willie was the only one who had access to this information and hadn't shared it with his pack. It's anyone's guess if he wanted the information out at all. The fact that he had been trying to keep this from her for unclear purposes sent waves of anxiety crashing in her mind.
"So I did something," Dave said.
"What did you do?"
"I called Connall."
Conall had not contacted anyone in the group since driving away with a busted leg, but his presence had been felt. There had been strange text messages that had come to all their phones from unknown numbers offering vague words of encouragement. One read "Thanks for handling things on your end" and another "Way to kick ass, green horns". Two days before, a cryptic message reading "whenever you're ready, there's a whole world out here" was delivered, and everyone was waiting for Dave to call a meeting and discuss how to respond.
"Is he still pissed about the leg?"
"He's still pissed about a lot of things," Dave said.
"Don't attack my kid."
"No argument here, but I went ahead and asked him about female wolves. Turns out, you're special."
"Really?"
"Really special," Dave said. "So special Conall said he needs to see us, in Ireland as soon as we can get there. He doesn't want to put pressure on us, which is why he's kept his distance, but he wants you, me and Dilly on a plane."
"We don't have a house. How are we going to afford plane tickets to Ireland?"
"He and his group are paying."
"OK."
"He's willing to pay for more than just a plane trip. He said he'll 'set us up' somewhere. If we want, we can pick somewhere else to live and Conall and his group will set us up with housing, cars, jobs. Whatever we want."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Does that offer stand for everyone?"
"I didn't ask."
"Why can't he 'set us up' here?"
"Because he said this place is compromised. The company that sent Stander and all of them, they know we're here and so do other groups."
"What other groups?"
"He didn't specify, but he said there are other groups that would want to track us down and he didn't know how well he'd be able to protect us if we stay."
For the first half of her life, Josie couldn't wait to get out of Cherry, out of the State, maybe further. Her parents had once told her they didn't care where she lived as long as it was close to an airport and she had big dreams of living abroad, getting to know exotic locales intimately and finding a man from outside her culture. These were dreams she'd often revisited, particularly in her youth. Then Dave and Dilly kept her in Cherry and while her fantasies never left, she accepted that they were fantasies and would never be reality.
But around the time she hit her early 30s, her mood started to shift. She loved her job. She loved her family. Her situation was unique and while she hated driving 30 miles for basics like food, her roots were deep and set. Every time she visited a city, the crowds and traffic drove her nuts and slowly but surely, the worldly woman she had envisioned had turned into the comfortable Nebraskan she had become.
Byron had been her last shot at the fantasy, the attractive, charismatic man who could whisk her away to different places and different experiences, at least, that's what he had promised. Part of her had wanted that so intensely she considered leaving her child and abandoning her husband to torture and death to attain it. But in the end she hadn't. She had said "yes" to running away with Byron and changed her mind almost immediately. He didn't take the rejection well, as most charismatic people don't. Later she learned he was already in over his head and if she had gone with him, it would have come with a cost that would have consumed her.
She took a second to look at Dave. He was a little fat, a little homely and while he was often in a good mood, the heat he gave off would never be enough for her. She would never want him. She loved who he was but would never love him. But Dave had come up with the plan to stop Stander, Dave had pulled it off, Dave had stepped up and while he was never going to be a good leader, he might be the guy who could lead everyone well enough to get the job done.
Maybe that was close enough to love for the time being.
"Let's go to Ireland," she said. "But tell him we're all coming. We'll hear what he has to say and then come back to Cherry."
"That's what I was thinking."
"Good. Tell him."
"What about us," Dave said. "What about you and me?"
"We'll come back to Cherry," Josie said. "We'll figure it out."
Dave left the room and in a flash, Josie followed, spun him around, wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. Her mouth opened to Dave's surprise and their tongues touched, then came into full contact as the kisses got deeper. They made love in the guest room of Willie's house, the future uncertain but for a few moments feeling like they were home with each other.
•••
A long time ago, Dave loved his job. Before last week, he sort of tolerated it, a victim of routine. After Willie's death going to work seemed like a completely necessary and wholly honorable waste of his time. The kids annoyed him more, the paperwork drove him nuts and he couldn't keep some of the images from the siege – the dead bodies, the gore in his living room, the smell of gun powder and radiator fluid and blood from flooding his nostrils.
It was those memories that led Dave to keep his phone in his pocket instead of his desk, just in case something went wrong and he needed to leave. He didn't have to wait long. During third period on his third day back, the phone rang and the number had one or two too many numbers in it. He was in the middle of class so it went to voicemail, but the same number called again and again and again until he finally excused himself and stepped into the hall.
"Conall?" he said, taking a very educated guess.
"So I was in my ceremonial robes, I hate the ceremonial attire. It's green and uncomfortable and itches like hell. So I'm talking to the Council, right, in the main hall and all these arsholes are staring at me..."
"I'm kind of busy right now."
"Teaching? You're blowing me off for your job? Fuck you, man."
"Just..." Dave floundered around, trying to not make things worse. "Move it along, man."
"Right," Conall said. "Wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your boss. You might rip his throat out and have a good gargle with his O negative."
"Conall..."
"Right, so I'm in these hideous green felt robe that's got some sort of significance and the council calls me forward and you know what I do?"
"Does it involve the 'F' word?" Dave asked.
"Strangely, yes, but not the one you think. I fart really loud, just lay it all out there. Kaboom, you know. Everyone starts making a stink, as it were, and even those thick green robes can't hide the smell.
Dave pictured a huge, Catholic style cathedral complete with the smell of smoke and oil and thick tapestries hanging from the balcony of the hall. The juxtaposition of the setting and the action made a smile tug at the edges of his mouth.
"Why did you do that?"
"The call of nature, as it were."
"What'd they say?" Dave asked.
"The leader was all 'for God's sake, boy, show some decorum."
They both chuckled, Conall's laugh still full of brogue. Dave was happy for the break and to hear from his friend.
"They've got the wrong guy if decorum is what they're looking for," Dave said.
"Fuckin' a. You know why I was there? Talking to the Council?"
"I'm guessing it was about us."
"Two for two, sort of," Conall said. "I was there talking to them about your wife."
For a moment, Dave flashed back to the previous night where Josie had been all over him, her hands constantly moving and grasping as if he was about to disappear.
"What about her?"
"Well, you know that little trick she can do? The one where she grows hair all over her body and totally kicks my ass? That one?"
"Yeah," Dave said. "She's pretty special."
"I'm not sure you realize just how special," Conall said. "I'm pretty plugged in over her and I've only heard whispers of women that can do what your Josie can do and I had never seen it with my own eyes until she kicked my ass and busted my leg."
Putting two and two together, Dave's heart started to race.
"So you went to talk to The Council?"
"I went to talk to The Council."
"And what did they say?"
"Dave, my friend," Conall said. "I'd like to tell you about the legend of the Alpha Prime."
