Wolfman - Art Bourgeau

by Art Bourgeau

  "There are a few million people in this city. You haven't given me one solid reason to think he's the person responsible," she said.

  "Margaret, take off the blinders. This is, as you've said, a severely disturbed person, and one who fits the profile. The last time you were together he tried to assault you sexually, then he hit you. You’ve rebuked and rejected him, or so he must feel, sent him away. To him you are no longer his protector. You know what this means . . . If he is the one he might well come after you next. You owe it to yourself to be sure. Give me his name. He will not be mistreated, I promise, but we must know."

  She thought about Loring, the gentleness she had seen in him. The aloneness and fear. Charles was wrong. He could not kill or mutilate. Such were not in his makeup. If there was anyone she was no longer sure about, it was Charles. For some unknown reason he was terribly prejudging a man he had never even met. She would not be a party to it, to the destruction of poor Loring . . .

  "I’m sorry," she said. "The answer is no. Period."

  CHAPTER 23

  AT THE Park Station Detective Mary Kane thought about Sloan's instructions. He had been very specific, no officer was to go out without a partner until the killer was caught. Her usual partner was Spivak, but he was busy at the Roundhouse fielding the calls from worried citizens. If she had her choice Mercanto was the one she would team up with today, but Sloan had already nixed that, banishing him from the case.

  She couldn’t understand why Sloan was on his back. Everyone knew the details of Rudy Gunther’s death. Mercanto wasn't to blame. He was a damn good cop. She only hoped Sloan would come to realize that.

  Her temporary partner was a red-haired uniformed officer named Donovan from the Park Squad. Together now they began to help in the house-to-house canvas of the assigned area between the stables and the Valley Green parking lot. Their section comprised the houses nearest the creek on the West Mt. Airy side. From there the search would move outward. The morning went slowly. Alarmed by the newspaper stories, someone at each house seemed to have something or someone suspicious to report. Mostly noises in the night, but Kane and Donovan dutifully made notes, mainly to reassure the homeowners that the police were on the job and took them seriously.

  It was mid-morning when they knocked on the door of a stone colonial and a woman in her mid-forties, dressed in wool slacks, answered. When they explained what they were doing she hesitated for a moment, then invited them in.

  "I'm Mona Seidenberg . . . I don’t know if this is helpful, but I did see something. Only it wasn't a few nights ago, it was last night, or early this morning to be truthful."

  "Tell us about it," Mary Kane said.

  She led them to the kitchen and pointed to the window over the sink that faced the park. "I don’t know what time it happened exactly," she said, "but it was sometime near dawn. Like always, I was having trouble sleeping so I came in here to get something to drink and have a cigarette. I know, I should quit but . . . well, anyway, when I looked out the window I saw, or at least thought I saw, a man out there at the edge of the woods . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "It scared me. I mean, these days with people getting killed and all, their houses burglarized . . . Anyway, I woke my husband and told him to come and see, but by the time he got here the man was gone." She laughed self-consciously. "He accused me of seeing things, of jumping at shadows, and went back to bed. But I’m sure someone was out there."

  "Can you describe him?" Mary asked.

  "Not very well, I’m afraid. It was pretty dark, and he was wearing dark clothing."

  "What about his hair?"

  "You mean what color? I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t even say for sure if he was white or black. I only saw him for a moment, and he was moving. That's probably the only reason I saw him at all . . . the movement caught my eye."

  They went into the backyard together and the woman directed them to the spot. From where they were standing it was easy to see she was telling the truth. A crude path of broken branches and trampled bushes led into the woods. Someone had very recently been there, as the woman said, and from the direction it seemed he was headed toward the creek. Donavan turned to the woman. "You can go back in the house, ma’am. We’re just going to have a look around and see where this leads."

  After she’d gone Kane said, "Don't you think we should call it in before we do anything?"

  "We’d look bad if it turns out to be nothing," he said.

  She agreed. Out of sight of the house, each had the same thought and drew a gun. They followed the trail as well as they could, but about two or three hundred yards in the brush thinned out and they lost it.

  "Let’s try the neighbors, see if they know anything, then we'll call it in," Kane said.

  They retraced their steps to the blue-and-white and moved on. No one home at the next house, but two down they met up with a man dressed nattily in a charcoal pin striped suit who was about to get into his Mercedes.

  "Hello, there, can we speak to you a moment?" Donovan said as they got out of their car.

  The man looked surprised for a moment, then shut the door to his car. He was afraid, but Abaddon’s voice told him he had "nothing to fear, the wolf was hidden from them." He felt safe, they could watch all they wanted but they would never see . . .

  "Do you live here?" Donovan asked, pointing his nightstick at the cottage.

  The man's eyes followed the gesture. "Yes, yes I do."

  "Could we have your name, please?"

  He hesitated, momentarily startled. But there was nothing to fear. "Weatherby," he said.

  "First name, Mr. Weatherby?" Kane asked.

  "What? Oh, yes, of course. Loring. Loring Weatherby. Why do you ask, officer?"

  "It’s routine, Mr. Weatherby. All the excitement around here lately, we’re just checking."

  Mary Kane watched him closely as they talked. Blond hair, that at least fit the profile, but hardly anything else did. And blond hair was not exactly a crime. "What do you do for a living, Mr. Weatherby?"

  "I’m a securities analyst," he said. Sounded better than stock broker, he had always thought.

  Just another businessman, hardly a homicidal nut-case who liked to chew on his victims. Still, maybe he had seen or heard something, or his wife had . . . "We’re investigating the report of a prowler at one of your neighbors’, sir, although that's confidential. Happened around dawn. Did you or your wife happen to notice anything unusual last night?"

  He smiled inwardly at the mention of "his wife." Still, why not? He did love Margaret. If only she . . .

  "Unfortunately my wife, Margaret, is not here just now. She's a psychologist and had an early appointment, but yes, we did have an incident sometime around then. We were both asleep when a loud crash woke us up. Naturally I went to see what was happening. . ." He was enjoying this.

  He pointed to the side of the house. "Apparently someone tried to break in. When they did they broke the bird feeder outside the window. That’s what the crash was. By the time I got there, whoever did it was gone."

  Kane and Donovan looked at each other. This seemed to tie in with the story of the woman down the street.

  "Mind if we see?" Donovan said.

  "Please, please do," Loring said, intrigued by the abrupt image of horns passing so close to him. Strange. And he felt a sudden chill come over him.

  As they walked around the outside of the house Mary Kane asked, "Did you report this disturbance, Mr. Weatherby?"

  "No, no, we did not. We considered it, but since nothing was taken, no real damage . . ."

  It was the usual and understandable reaction, the officers felt.

  On the ground by the window they found the smashed glass of the bird feeder. They did not notice nearby in the tall grass the headless body of an arrogant blackbird. Loring remembered, pleased with himself, knowing it was the only way to keep the other birds safe from the other's hateful presence.

  "Yeah, well, after the noise scared him off, that’s when
your neighbor saw him on the edge of the woods," Donovan said.

  As they walked back to the car Loring said, "This seems quite a lot of trouble to go to over a prowler." He was reluctant to give up the exhilaration from this close contact with his enemies.

  "Have you seen the papers yet?" Mary asked.

  "Only the Wall Street Journal," he said. "Why?"

  "Well, sir," Donovan said, "we don’t want to upset you, but you should know that another person was killed in the park. A teen-age boy. We have to track down any possible lead."

  "Yes, yes, and you think this prowler might be . . ." Loring allowed himself the memory of the boy's struggles, and the cleansing good of it.

  The officers got into the blue-and-white and Donovan said, "We're not sure, probably not, but to be on the safe side it’d be a good idea to keep your doors and windows locked, and be sure to report anything suspicious."

  "We will," Loring assured him.

  * * *

  He watched them drive away, then got into his own car, his thoughts on his "wife," on Margaret. Abaddon's command sounded again . . . She, too, had the mark on her, she too had been corrupted. How else could she have tricked him into believing she was his mother. If he loved her, there was no alternative. His course of action was clear.

  CHAPTER 24

  ERIN HAD to admit she was excited as they neared the police station — it seemed her experience and background might help the investigation. She looked at Mercanto driving, and felt exhilarated to be with this man, even be part of his work. Whenever he was around, things certainly seemed to happen. A relief from the static environs of museums and academia.

  "What do you think they'll do when you tell them about what we've found out?" she asked, curious about how their information would be used.

  Mercanto glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Don't know. I’ve never had any experience with this sort of thing before. It's another piece of the puzzle, a reason for what he's doing, but it doesn't identify him. It helps, though . . ."

  One of the things she liked best about him was his lack of pretense. If he knew something he said it, if he didn't he said that too.

  As they passed the turn-off to the parking lot in the Valley Green section he pointed. "Down there is where I found the first body."

  She shivered slightly at the memory of his description of that night.

  * * *

  At the station house he told her that he and Lieutenant Sloan didn't get on too well. He didn't elaborate. Once inside, Mercanto asked the desk sergeant where Sloan was. "Upstairs with the drug people, they just brought in the stuff on your boy Rashid/' the sergeant told him.

  Maybe the case was finally breaking. "Come on," he told Erin, taking her by the arm.

  They hurried upstairs to where Sloan was talking to two detectives Mercanto did not recognize. Both were in their late twenties, unshaven and dressed for the street. One wore a leather jacket, the other a dirty navy peacoat.

  When Sloan spotted Mercanto he said, "Come on in, I want you to hear this," and added when he’d taken in the young woman with the schoolboy glasses, "who’s that?"

  Mercanto introduced Erin, saying that she was the Caribbean expert from the museum.

  "Ask her to wait outside."

  Erin could understand why Mercanto and this Sloan didn't get along, but she did as she was asked.

  After she had gone, Sloan said to the other two detectives, "Okay, let's have it, what have you got on this Rashid."

  The one in the peacoat said, "They found him earlier this week in a crack house near Twentieth and Diamond.

  Somebody had pumped a couple of .357’s into him. The reason for the delay is that nobody identified the body until today. For such a high roller he was a low-profile guy."

  Mercanto held his breath as Sloan asked, "What about the body, was it mutilated?"

  "Not more than you would expect from a couple of .357’s," said the one in the peacoat.

  Disappointment crossed Sloan's face. Mercanto felt the same way.

  The leather jacket said, "Hey, lieutenant, what's the big deal? You're looking for a blond. This guy was anything but a blond."

  "I think we know that already from his name," Sloan said. "What we were hoping was to tie it in to one of his associates. Both victims were users. We’re sure in the first he was the seller. In the second we're not so sure but it looks right."

  "Believe me, lieutenant," said the one in the leather jacket, "this guy had no blond companions. In the circles he traveled in a blond would stick out like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

  "You're sure?"

  "Positive," said peacoat. "Is that all you need from us?" When Sloan nodded they stood up. "We’ll be going then. Good luck on this case. Everyone wants to see this guy caught. If you need anything more from us, give a holler."

  When they had gone Sloan rubbed his hand over his bald head, as though there was still some hair there. "A damned dead-end. There goes the closest thing we've had to a lead."

  He looked at Mercanto. In spite of what he'd felt since the Rudy Gunther investigation, he did have to admire Mercanto's thick-skinned, bulldog tenacity. "Look, Mercanto, I was rough on you this morning."

  "Forget it."

  "Yeah, we both just want this guy caught."

  Sloan nodded. "Why did you bring that woman here?"

  "We've just come from the psychiatrist’s office. He's on his way here to confirm what she’s going to tell you."

  "Okay, bring her in." Hell, at this point he was willing to listen to anything. Time was their enemy. The psychiatrist had said the ki1ler’s rational periods would get shorter and shorter. Which meant he would soon be ready to kill again-maybe even tonight.

  * * *

  "I know the voodoo angle didn’t work out, but after this morning I felt there was still something I was missing so I went back to the museum," Mercanto said when Erin had joined them. "Where I'd gone wrong was, I wasn't asking the right questions. I was concentrating on Jamaica instead of Haiti."

  None of this was making any sense to Sloan. "Wait, you said you told this to the psychiatrist and he’s coming out to confirm it . . ."

  "That’s right, Dr. Foster. Why don’t you pick it up, Erin?"

  For the third time in as many hours Erin went through her story about the Haitian shaman, his ceremony, and what he had done that ended in his death by the villagers, being very careful not to use the word "werewolf." She was just finishing the story of Jean Grenier, the French boy who had been sentenced to the monastery instead of prison, when Dr. Foster arrived.

  "You've heard all this . . ." Sloan said.

  Foster nodded. "Yes, and because of the rareness of the disorder I have to admit it didn’t occur to me, but everything she says makes very good sense. In fact, I'm sure she's right. It's a very unusual form of schizophrenia, only two or three known cases in the past decade or so."

  Sloan looked at Erin. "You say the killer believes he’s some sort of beast, a wolf? Come on, I can't buy that. It's out of an old Lon Chaney flick."

  Dr. Foster got up and made sure the door was securely closed. "It's no Lon Chaney movie, believe me. We're talking about the disease the werewolf legend is based on."

  "Are you crazy? The three of you are sitting here trying to tell me we have a damned werewolf loose in Fairmount Park? I've got days, maybe only hours to stop a nut before he kills again, and you come to me with a cockamamie story about some guy covered in hair howling at the moon. This is bullshit."

  Foster raised a hand. "You misunderstand. We said this disorder is what the werewolf legend is based on, not that he was one. He does not grow hair or fangs. You were right, that’s in the movies. But schizophrenia in this form is a problem of perception accompanied by hallucinations. When, for example, he looks in the mirror he thinks he is actually turning into a wolf, with hair and the rest, but of course he is not. It is in his mind, in his altered perception of reality. That's what the disease is about," he said. As he talked
he could not help thinking about Margaret's patient, the incident in the clothing store . . . He hoped she was right in her defense of him. But if not . . .

  Sloan sat back in his chair. "Okay, I don't believe it, but assuming what you say is true, how does it help us catch him? Does it, say, make him any more predictable?"

  "Explainable, not necessarily more predictable. There is a cause and effect relationship not always present in other paranoid schizophrenics. The wolf aspect takes over only when he feels threatened by guilt, usually associated with early sexual experiences."

  "So he might have longer periods when he's normal than you thought this morning? As long as he's not threatened?" asked Sloan.

  "Yes, that's right."

  "Well, I guess that's something . The only thing to do is continue with our plans for the park and hope if he tries it again we can catch him at it. Meanwhile, I don't want this stuff to leave this room. You can imagine what the papers would do with it. First a cannibal, now a werewolf. Sweet Jesus."

  As they were about to leave Sloan said, "Mercanto, I want to see you a minute . . . alone." After Erin and the doctor were gone, he said, "There's nothing I can do to keep you out of this case, is there? Okay, you’re back in it. Officially. Be back here at midnight in plain clothes. You're going into the park. Maybe if I keep you up all night I can stop you from bringing in some other crackpot scientist to tell us Frankenstein’s monster is our killer."

  Mercanto smiled. "I’ll be here."

  Erin was waiting for him in the hallway. Dr. Foster had already gone.

  "Where's the doctor?" he asked.

  "He said something about doing more research, then he's coming back. Well, what did the lieutenant want?"

  "Just to give me my orders. I have to be back at midnight to go on patrol."

  "Patrol where?"

  "The park, maybe I can turn up Frankenstein's monster."

  "Don't joke." She took his arm in an instinctive gesture, the hard muscle beneath his sleeve felt reassuring. Ordinarily she had no doubt he could take care of himself, but this was different. She had, after all, seen the type of man they were after. "Be careful," she said. "I mean it."