Alberto reached for the scalpel with trembling fingers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Mace stood on the grimy 181st and Broadway subway station platform in the Three-Four Precinct, gazing at a blood-drenched wooden bench. Sinewy muscle and pink flesh glistened beneath the fluorescent bulbs, and two words had been scrawled on the filthy wall in thick, juicy lettering: Ookami otoko.
Japanese wolf man, Mace thought without consulting the list in his pocket.
“The head’s over here,” Detective Sanchez said. The stocky man pointed over the platform’s edge at the tracks below.
Mace followed the direction of the man’s chubby finger to a crimson-colored shape wedged between one rail and a trestle. The head appeared to have been casually discarded. At the mouth of the tunnel to their left, steam billowed from a waiting train. He shifted his gaze to the trail of blood leading to the platform’s opposite end.
“It—he—came up onto the platform there,” he said to the detective and uniforms. “The vic was asleep on the bench. The perp attacked him, left this message, and tossed the head just to let us know that he could have taken it if he wanted to.” The bastard ran all the wayuptown through the tunnels!
“Why didn’t he take it?” Sanchez said.
“Because he’s wounded. A PO shot him downtown. He still made his point.”
“So why did he attack this sorry son of a bitch?”
“Because he needed his clothes.” Before Sanchez could ask another question, Mace said, “Have your men bag the head and get it out of there before rats get to it. You’ll have to shut down this track so CSU can follow that blood trail. Have MTA send some emergency buses for the commuters. We’ll have more DNA than forensics can handle. And turn that train around.” Facing the wall, he gestured at the bloody message on its tiled surface. “No one else comes down here, and no one sees that. Call in extra men to keep the press away. I want a total lockdown.”
Sanchez waved to the transit cop stationed near the stairs, who nodded and headed up to the next level.
A trilling filled the air, and Sanchez answered his cell phone. Looking at Mace, his face turned pale.
What now? Mace wondered.
Loup-garou said the dripping red letters on the wall of Alberto Santana’s examining room.
French, Mace thought, recalling the interview with Aishe Petulengro in Queens.
“A veterinarian,” Sanchez said. “Maybe the perp is a werewolf.”
Mace looked at the bloodied corpse lying on the examining table. The man’s clothing, which had been sliced open and peeled away from his body, dripped off the edges of the table like melting candle wax. So did his flesh, which had been flayed. Only his face and fingertips remained, in stark contrast to his bloody infrastructure. The face almost resembled a mask.
“He didn’t rip him to pieces. Instead, he took his time. He hacked him apart with that scalpel on the floor, then used his hand to make the graffiti.” He held his own hand near the bloody lettering. The length from the bottom of his palm to the tip of his middle finger was nearly identical to the width of the lettering. A human hand.
“Why did he leave his face and fingertips like that?” Sanchez said.
“So we can identify him.” Mace pointed at the heap of filthy rags on the floor. “You’ll find the blood on those clothes matches the blood back on the platform. He wore them to get here.” Turning, he eyed the bloody footprints on the floor. “Then stole some of Dr.—?”
Sanchez consulted his notes. “Santana.”
“—Santana’s clothes before he left. Those footprints lead to a bedroom closet, I’ll bet.”
“On the second floor,” a PO said.
Sanchez locked his eyes on Mace. “So the perp killed this veterinarian for his clothes?”
“No, he killed that vagrant for his clothes. He killed Dr. Santana for knowing too much. He came here to have this bullet removed.” Mace pointed at the bloody .9mm round on the counter. “The change of fresh clothes was just a bonus.”
“Three homicides in one night at three different sites,” Sanchez said. “One officer-related. Respectfully, I’d hate to be in your shoes.”
I don’t blame you, Mace thought.
Five hours later, Mace sat before Deputy Police Commissioner Patrick Dunegan in his wide office at One Police Plaza. Steve Chiles, the chief of departments, wore a crisp blue uniform, and Dennis Hackley, the chief of detectives, sat behind them and off to the side, while Carl Stokes stood at the sunlit window behind Dunegan, gazing at the plaza below.
“To call this operation a complete disaster is an understatement,” Dunegan said, clipping his words. “It’s not the first time an undercover officer’s been killed in the line of duty, but under these circumstances …”
Mace crossed his legs. “We ran the plan through the chief of departments office.”
“Oh, blame it on me,” Chiles said. “If you hadn’t—”
“I’m not blaming Detective Lane’s murder on anyone but the perp,” Mace said. “I’m just pointing out that we followed proper procedure and went through proper channels on this.”
“How very fucking proper of you.”
“There was no way for any of us to know—”
“That the same thing would happen to Lane that happened to the previous three vics?” Stokes turned from the window. “Why the hell didn’t you think that? Our body count doubled last night!”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Mace said in an even tone as his neck grew hot. Tired from lack of sleep, his body protested yet another day without exercise. He hadn’t even gone home to shower. “I was there. I saw the remains of all three bodies. Did you?”
Stokes’s features drew back into a tight mask. “Spare me your macho TV cop rhetoric—”
Dunegan raised one hand, signaling silence, but his eyes remained focused on Mace. “All right. Enough. There’s plenty of blame to go around. The question is, where do we go from here? This is the biggest media story in the country right now.”
“As of last night, I’m the primary on this case,” Mace said. Feeling responsible for Patty’s murder, he had vowed to catch her killer.
Dunegan glanced at Hackley. “Dennis?”
“Tony’s the man for the job,” Hackley said. “He’s got my complete support.”
I bet I do, Mace thought. He felt the target on his back growing larger by the second. His closest supporters had lined up behind him and seemed poised to push him over the edge of a cliff.
Stokes smiled. “Finally, a little marquee value. A famous face toidentify with this case. ‘Tony Mace, the hero who brought down the Full Moon Killer, sets his sights on the Manhattan Werewolf. News at eleven.’ It will be an honor to have you standing at that podium with me, Tony. But you can leave my name out of this book.”
Mace ignored the comment.
“What I want to know is what we’re doing to apprehend this disturbed individual.” Dunegan scanned the faces in the room. “We are in agreement that we’re in pursuit of a human being, right?”
Someone offered a nervous chuckle.
Stokes said, “Tell us your plan, Tony.”
Mace eyed each man in the room. “We have more than enough blood for genetic testing, and we lifted clean fingerprints from Dr. Santana’s office. They match the prints on the transit card we found in Lane’s vehicle. If our man has a record, we’ll score a positive match. So far, we’ve got nothing on that front. The video feed of Patty’s—Detective Lane’s—murder is inconclusive, but it will enable one of our artists in Imaging to create a reasonably close portrait. The tracks at the homicide scenes prove that last night’s murders were all committed by a single unknown subject.”
Dunegan’s eyebrows came together. “How is that possible?”
Before Mace could answer, Hackley spoke up. “Who knows? Remember PCP? Maybe prolonged abuse of steroids. That would explain the anger and strength.”
“But not the fixation on werewolves,” Stokes sai
d.
“So he’s crazy. Isn’t that much obvious?”
“How many witnesses are we looking at this time?” Dunegan said.
“We’ve had more than thirty reports from people who claim they were in Astor Place last night and saw this thing,” Mace said. “And another forty from people on subway station platforms between Astor and 181st street. With more coming in.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“They all say they saw the same thing: a big, black animal running on all fours.”
“Fuck us.”
“The good news is that this thing is so fast no one had time to take any photos or videos of it.”
Dunegan’s face tightened. “These witnesses claim they saw some kind of animal, and you just called it ‘a thing.’ Yet you agree that we’re hunting a man. How do you reconcile these different points of view?”
“I don’t.” Mace held Dunegan’s gaze. “I can’t.”
Stokes said, “You’ll have to do better than that. You utter those words on TV and we’re cooked.”
“The footprints in Santana’s house are those of a biped, not a four-legged animal. The bloody message in Santana’s house was written by a human hand. The video was shot in night vision, with wide-angle distortion, but it’s plain that the perp’s a Caucasian male with short dark hair who stands six feet or taller.”
Dunegan said, “Then how do we qualify these witness claims?”
“With six murders, an elaborate hoax is out,” Hackley said. “Mass hysteria?”
Stokes gesticulated. “Eighty-three witnesses and counting. Do you know how many people they’ll tell? We’ll have real mass hysteria by the end of the day if we don’t clamp down on this before it gets any bigger. I don’t think I have to underscore for anyone in this room that a lot of careers are now at stake over this.”
Mace had grown tired of hearing that. “The guys in Imaging are working the frames right now to give us a portrait we can disseminate to the press. I’d call that a pretty significant lead. We also have audio from last night. By six o’clock tonight everyone in this city will know what our boy looks and sounds like.” Even as he spoke these words, he recalled the snarling sounds during Patty’s murder.
“Thank God for that,” Hackley said with pronounced relief.
“I’m encouraged,” Dunegan said. “Anything you need, Tony, just say the word. Manpower, media, extra support, you name it. This department is behind you 100 percent.”
That doesn’t make me feel better, Mace thought. “What about this tribal policeman?” Stokes said. “New York One reported that we have a suspect in custody.”
“He’s not a suspect,” Mace said. “Just an interested party.”
“What’s his interest?”
“As far as I can tell, he believes in werewolves.” Blank faces stared back at him.
“I’d better get to the squad room,” he said, rising. As he left the office, he felt every eye in the room on his back.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“You know, there is nothing on earth like a lone wolf call—it makes you draw a little closer to the fire, dig a little deeper into your blanket, and shudder, knowing in your heart the many things you’ll never know.”
—Wyoming trapper Herbert Andrus during the Great Plains expansion
Angela awoke with the sunrise and saw that Stalk had not returned. Resisting the urge to worry—he was more than able to take care of himself—she walked barefoot to the kitchenette and filled one metal bowl with bottled water and another with ground beef. Carrying the bowls to the steel door, she saw that Stalk had left several metal cases on the living room floor. She unlocked the door with a skeleton key and entered the second bedroom, which was more like a small storage room, but she had managed to fit a cot in there.
Her eyes settled on Angus, who lay sprawled on the floor as usual, but she froze in her tracks. He had stopped breathing. Setting the bowls on the cot, she kneeled beside the still figure and ran one handthrough the once great Wolf’s thick gray fur. Tears welled in her eyes, which she squeezed shut, her chest swelling. She remained there for several minutes, then returned to the living room, where she picked up her cell phone and called Gabriel, her oldest brother.
“Angus is dead,” she said in a controlled voice. “You and Raphael have to come get his body so I can open the shop.”
Climbing the half flight of concrete steps that led to the sidewalk, Angela considered closing Synful Reading for the day. After all, her father had started the business, and maybe she and her brothers could comfort each other. But she knew better: relations between them had been strained for several years, ever since they had discovered her relationship with Stalk. So she unlocked the padlocks on the security gate that protected the storefront, raised it, and unlocked the door.
Inside, she keyed in her alarm’s keypad security code, then closed and locked the door behind her. In the back of the shop, she flipped the breaker switches that turned on the overhead lights. Then she switched on the small fountain nestled on one side of the store and the cash register. Although there was a safe in the office, she left a two-hundred dollar bank in the cash drawer overnight. As she double counted the drawer, she heard a light rapping on the glass door.
Damn it. She hated when customers arrived early and expected her to open just for them. But a glance at the clock beside the register reminded her that she was running late this morning. Wishing she had stayed home after all, she circled the counter and unlocked the front door. A heavyset bald man with thick lips like a fish stood there.
“Good morning, Joel,” Angela said.
“I came at nine but you weren’t open,” the regular said, entering.
“I’m sorry. I’m behind schedule. Personal business.” She tried to block out his foul cologne, but there was no avoiding it.
“You should get some help here. That way you’d have more time for yourself.”
She returned to the safety of the checkout counter. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She had thought of hiring a part-time worker ever since her father had retired, but that simply wasn’t feasible from an economic standpoint. The landlord had recently doubled their rent, imperiling the shop’s future.
“That was crazy last night, wasn’t it?”
Angela knew from experience that it was useless to try to avoid conversation with Joel. “Yes, it was.” Thinking of the news reports she had seen on TV made her worry about Stalk again. Stop it. He’s not your concern. You have bigger worries.
The bell over the door jingled, and another customer entered.
“I wonder when the police will catch him.” Joel stood there, waiting for her reply as the newcomer moved down the aisle.
“I don’t know,” Angela said.
“Do you believe it’s a werewolf?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you?”
It was like dealing with a child, not a fifty-year-old man. Joel still lived at home with his mother, which Angela knew because he had brought his mother to the shop more than once. “Because I don’t believe in werewolves.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t exist.”
“You sell books about them, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. I also sell books about witches and demons, and I don’t believe in them, either.”
“I do. I believe in them.” Smiling, he turned to browse the store even though he knew the inventory as well as she did.
I know you do, Angela thought.
A few minutes later, the other customer came up to the counter.
He wore his dark hair slicked back, and Angela’s heart skipped a beat when she saw his nostrils flare at her. One of us. “Can I help you?”
The man smiled, his brown eyes staring into hers. “I hope so. Last week I saw a book in here that I wanted, but I didn’t have enough money to buy it. I do now, and I can’t find the book.”
He’s lying. Although he seemed familiar to her, she had never seen him in the store before. “Wh
at book are you looking for?”
“Transmogrification in Native American Mythology.”
Of course. “I’m sorry. We’ve just sold out of that.”
He held her gaze. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Ghoulish fascination, right? I can’t find it anywhere in the city.”
Angela smiled in response. It’s him. It has to be him.
“Perhaps you have a store copy lying around somewhere?”
“I did, but I’m afraid I gave it to another gentleman yesterday.”
Something stirred in the man’s eyes. Anger? Or just curiosity? “Do you happen to have his name or address? I’d be happy to buy it from him.”
“No,” Angela said, even though Captain Mace’s business card lay right before her next to the cash register. “I’m afraid we don’t keep records on our customers. Would you like me to order you a copy of the book, Mr.—?”
“No, that won’t work. I’m anxious to read it now.”
“Perhaps if you left your name …”
“I don’t think so.” His smile widened, revealing sharp white teeth, and he turned on one heel and strode from the store.
Angela hurried around the counter and peered out the glass door, but she saw no trace of the man.
She could not shake the notion that she had met him once before a long time ago.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Eighteen years earlier
Julian Fortier squeezed his eyes shut and clawed at the blanket his mother had pulled up to his chin before she left his bedroom. He counted to ten, then opened his eyes again and cast a terrified glance through the darkness. The creature remained perched on his desk chair by the window, staring at him with enormous eyes and a drooling mouth.
“I eat little shitheads like you for late-night snacks,” it said in a low, raspy voice.
With his body rigid, Julian opened his mouth and screamed, “Mom!”
“Go ahead. Scream for Mommy,” the creature said. “I’ll eat her too!”
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