Mr. MacGreggor lay in his La-Z-Boy as peaceful as could be—with his jugular vein ripped open. Dried blood stained the side of the chair. It made a dark spot the size of a couch cushion on the light green carpet beneath it.
“Ho-lee shit!” Cox exclaimed.
The two approached the dead man slowly, Cox taking care to keep Morowsky in between. This sight hadn’t set too well with the jelly doughnut he’d had at Thelma’s half an hour earlier. The pastry tasted sour the second time around as he tried to keep it down.
“Somebody cut his throat!” Cox blurted.
“No, this ain’t no cut,” Morowsky said, inspecting the gash. “This looks like—teeth marks. Some kind of animal.” His eyes widened, and he seized the grip of his holstered .40 caliber Glock 22 and scanned the room. “Get out! Get out and call for back up!” he shouted. “I don’t know what the hell did this!”
Cox bolted out the doorway and hurdled the porch steps. He held onto his hat with one hand and, in nervous confusion, pulled out his Glock semi-automatic with the other.
Mrs. Crane sidestepped out of his way and ran toward her porch steps next door.
As he landed on the sidewalk, Cox fumbled his gun. It flipped up, spinning. He slapped it to the concrete, trying to snatch it from midair. The gun bounced once. He met it with the toe of his right foot, kicking it across the yard and under the patrol car.
He went to his hands and knees and groped frantically under the car for the gun.
Hysterical screams came from inside the house. Then a plea, “Help!”
Cox jumped up, his search brief and unsuccessful. “Sarge?” he answered, his high-pitched voice cracking.
He ran toward the house to help his partner, nervously grabbed his empty holster, then ran back to the squad car to radio for help. The young man’s hands trembled out of control as he made the call. His face dripped sweat, and his uniform shirt, crisp and dry moments before, was dark and spotted from perspiration.
“F-f-five Adam Seven to dispatch.”
“This is dispatch,” a voice squawked the calm reply. “Go ahead, Five Adam Seven.”
“Uh, uh. . . . ” Cox knew there must be a number designation for what had happened here, but he couldn’t remember. “We’ve got a, uh, two-eleven, uh, no a five, uh—shit! There’s a dead man. Eleven thirty-seven Whiteside. His throat’s all tore up. We need help, backup, right away!”
Cox threw the microphone back into the car. He needed a gun. He had to find his gun. He stammered like a chicken surrounded by coyotes, jockeying back and forth around the car in indecision.
The rookie took a last, brief look under the car. No luck. He must help his partner. He approached the house in slow stumbling steps. Perspiration spilled from Cox’s pores, running from the sweatband of his cap, down his forehead and into his eyes. His jaw and lip trembled and he breathed from his open mouth. And then he froze. He froze like a statue out on MacGreggor’s lawn, so solidly that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to move even when backup arrived. They’d find him standing there, waiting for pigeons to crap on his shoulders with his partner in some sort of horrifying fix inside the house only thirty feet away. He couldn’t move. Every joint was locked. He tried to force himself but it was like when his father held him down when he was little, covering young Farley’s mouth, forcing him to stop crying. His father’s hand had remained clamped over his mouth no matter how much Farley had gasped, blew mucous out his nose, struggled for air. There aren’t any damn monsters in your damn closet!
Finally, something snapped inside his head, and once again, it was like his father’s fingers, snapping in front of his face, trying to get Farley to move when his dad coached his little-league ball team, Trying to get you to do something—anything, wakeup—Good gawd! his father would say. Cox burst forward and with two leaping strides, he mounted the porch and flung himself flat against the front wall, just left of the door. The old wood-lap siding gave slightly, and the wall shuddered. His lungs coughed out air from the force. He swallowed hard. It hurt, like swallowing a bone chip with sharp edges.
He shifted his eyes toward the door and slowly inched his head to the doorway. He peeked in, wide-eyed. The big sergeant lay motionless on his stomach, feet toward Cox in a narrow hallway leading to the kitchen.
“Sarge,” he whispered, cautious not to alert the sergeant’s attacker.
No response. He must have been knocked unconscious.
He had to help his partner; he just had to. Lt. Simpson was on the way, and backup would be there soon. But would it be soon enough for the sergeant? What would they say when they found out Cox had lost his gun? The guidebook hadn’t covered this. His classroom training left this out. He was alone, now, and unarmed.
Sergeant Morowsky’s gun lay a few inches from the Sarge’s extended hand. The time had come. This was Farley Cox’s chance to prove himself to his father. What he would do next, how he would handle this situation, would either make his father proud or kick the old man square in the balls with shame.
Cox scanned the room. The sergeant’s assailant wasn’t in view. If he could get to Morowsky’s gun, he’d be okay. Maybe it—whatever it was—had gone.
The young officer edged into the house, hands on both sides of the open doorway ready to push start a run in any direction necessary.
A long, crimson line of blood trailed from the sergeant’s body. He’d been dragged. Something like a rope ran along the length of the blood trail. No, it wasn’t a rope—it was a section of the sergeant’s intestines.
The jelly doughnut that had remained at the ready after the last time filled his mouth with the sour taste again, but he choked it back once more.
Cox dropped to all fours and scampered beside a couch opposite the old man in the recliner. He bumped hard into the CD player on a stand nearby. It jacked back and forth briefly. He held his panting to listen for any sounds from his adversary.
Seconds passed. No sound or movement. From his angle, he could only see the big sergeant’s legs in the hallway. Morowsky’s neatly pressed, light brown trousers soaked up the vermilion puddle they lay in. His black, spit-shined shoes were splattered in blood.
The CD player startled the young officer with Enya’s rhythmic Orinoco Flow. She sings of sailing….”
Again he thought of the gun. He had to go for the gun. Gathering his courage, he crawled slowly out into the open toward the hallway and his partner’s motionless body. The hall was six feet long. On the left side was a closed door—probably a closet—a dark open basement doorway on the right. The sergeant’s legs and lower body lay only fifteen feet away, but he couldn’t see his face, or head for that matter, to determine if there might be a sign of life.
“Sarge. Sarge, can you hear me?” Cox whispered. “It’s okay, Sarge. I’m going to get you out of here. Hold on.”
He crawled to the sergeant’s feet and stopped, straining to see down the dark open stairway to the basement.
Enya wants to reach—and beach on Tripoli shores….
No movement, nothing, only darkness.
He looked back.
The gun was six feet in front of him. Then, he saw the reason he couldn’t see the sergeant’s head. It wasn’t there.
His eyes bugged as he held himself back from making any noise. The jelly doughnut came up in full force, filled his cheeks, and flushed through his sinuses, causing them to burn. He gulped the sour cud back, but some escaped through his nose and dripped onto Sergeant Morowsky’s right calf.
Unimaginable. He couldn’t fathom the kind of beast that could have done this. It was the thing of nightmares and ghost stories.
Cox again recalled his father yelling at him when he’d had a nightmare as a young boy. There’s no such thing as monsters! he’d shouted as he brutally tossed little Farley back into bed.
The gun.
He inched forward.
Another trail of blood. Smeared. Large paw prints—very large. They led from the sergeant’s upper torso, around the doorway, into
the kitchen and under a metal table. He glanced to his right side and down the basement stairway once again and then back to the sergeant’s gun.
He moved closer. His eyes followed the trail of blood around the corner. Surely, this thing was in the kitchen or already gone. He’d soon be able to reach the gun and use it if he needed—he guessed the need would come very quickly.
He inched more, close enough to see where the trail ended.
The sergeant’s head looked back at Cox with a terror-stricken face in the middle of the floor.
“Oh, shit, shit, shit!” he said, unable to hold it back.
He lurched for the gun. He surprised himself by not fumbling it. He held it in his trembling right hand, pointing into the kitchen. His knees straddled the sergeant’s body, and he leaned on his left hand for support.
The Sergeant’s still warm blood soaked into the knees of Cox’s trousers, and he felt its stickiness on his hand near the sergeant’s shoulder. The sweet, salty smell of gore filled his lungs. His stomach churned.
Still no movement, no sound. He looked at the blood trail and noticed again how it was smeared. Why is it so smeared, and why does it only go out to Sarge’s head, then stop?
The answer came to him. It came fast and hit him like a bucket of ice water. The paw prints didn’t smear going into the kitchen, they smeared coming out. The prints led back to the right side of the body.
Too late.
A cool breeze pushed up the basement steps, wrapped around his neck and signaled a needling tingle to start from his tailbone and race up his spine. It widened as it raced and slammed into his brain, making his head shudder. Something had come up the basement steps beside him.
A low growl.
Enya wants to crash on your shores….
He rolled his eyes to the dark basement doorway.
The thing was two feet from his face.
Cox didn’t dare move.
It was a dog but not just any dog. Huge and black. Spindly legs. Terrifying dark eyes. Pointed, demon-like ears. Tremendous ivory fangs protruding from a hideous, curled and snarling snout.
John the Man Cox had been wrong. There truly are monsters!
The large black animal opened its mouth and growled again. Cox felt its hot breath on his face and smelled the rancid odor. Strings of saliva stretched from its lower to upper enormous, white fangs. One of the thing’s lower fangs had been broken off. A small, bloody piece of flesh hung from the jagged edge.
Officer Farley Cox knew he’d have to move fast. He’d sit back quickly and shoot.
In the next half second, time slowed in his mind, almost to a stop. His body had no time to react, but his mind saw his doom in slow motion. At the first indication of movement, his first flinch, the incredible canine responded in a blur. Its head lunged forward like a rattlesnake’s and engulfed Cox’s face. One of the monstrous fangs pierced his right temple, and it stung.
For a fraction of a second he was seven again, reaching out to pet a stray dog that wagged its tail in apparent friendship. He had patted its head. It had suddenly snarled and snapped his hand. It had startled him and caused a bitter taste on his tongue. The same bitter taste as now.
Enya finishes, singing of sailing away.
*-*-*
Outside, Lt. Jack Simpson’s unmarked police car screeched to a halt behind the patrol car. He had been nine blocks away when he heard Cox’s radio distress call.
Simpson leaped out and ran into the yard toward the small house with his tie swung over his shoulder and his open, gray sports jacket flapping behind him like a cape.
The patrol car was vacant. The twelve-gage shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot was in easy view, sticking up from the console, still probably locked in its bracket. An elderly neighbor lady peeked from her slightly opened screen door and he waved her back inside as he pulled out his Smith and Wesson .357.
He dropped behind some lilac bushes in front of the house and sat with his back against them as he checked to make sure there were bullets in his gun. Taking a deep breath, he knelt and peered around the edge of the bushes, over the porch and into the house. Squinting to see past the living room and dining room, he could make out a dark shape in the dim hallway.
A huge shadow stood holding the rookie’s limp body by the face. Dark drool dripped from the thing’s chin. The sergeant’s body lay under the rookie with what looked like blood splattered and puddled all around.
“Oh, no! Jeez, what the hell?” Simpson said under his trembling breath. He squinted in an attempt to make out this awful thing he had found.
The shadow shifted its eyes in his direction and acknowledged him with a growl.
Without hesitation, Jack Simpson quickly raised his revolver with both hands, aimed and fired.
CHAPTER 6
At eight-thirty in the morning, Tony Parker leaned to the medicine-cabinet mirror, face freshly lathered with shaving cream. He stood shirtless, still in the Batman boxer shorts that Nicholas had given him last Christmas.
He turned his head, placed his index finger on his sideburn and raised the blue safety razor into place underneath, then took a long, slow swipe at his cheek. Taking his finger away, he noticed the gray hairs starting to infiltrate up the side of his head, getting fewer, but still evident all the way up to his temples. He turned and looked at the other side. It was the same.
He thought about what Sarah had said yesterday—the “gray sprinkled” on his side burns. I can’t be getting gray this young. I’m still a kid, a teenager in an overly used, middle-aged body. It didn’t mean “old man,” she’d said. That was the kind of thing someone said to make another feel better and was always a lie.
“Experienced,” he scoffed. “Experienced old man!”
Parker heard the phone ring as he rinsed the razor and banged it on the side of the sink. Julie’s soft voice answered it in the adjoining master bedroom. He took another swipe with the razor, this time at the other side of his face, wishing he could start at his temple and remove all the gray hair.
Julie’s head peeked around the edge of the half-open door.
“Sweetheart, it’s the dispatcher.” There was a hint of dread in her voice. “I hope they don’t want you to go in today.”
Parker grabbed a towel and wiped off the shaving cream as he hurried to the phone next to the bed.
“This is Parker.”
“Mr. Parker, sorry to bother you at home on a Saturday morning, but Lt. Jack Simpson of the Wichita PD requested we call you,” the voice said.
Something bad was happening. Jack wouldn’t have the dispatcher call otherwise. “That’s okay, Janet. What’s up?”
“There’s been a wild-animal attack at Eleven thirty-seven Whiteside. I don’t have any other information yet.”
“Injuries? What kind of animal?”
“Sorry, Mr. Parker, that’s all I have. He did request an ambulance. I will keep you advised, as soon as I find out anymore.”
“All right, Janet. I’m on my way. I’ll call you from the truck.” Parker hung up and turned to see Julie standing just five feet away with arms crossed. She said nothing.
“I’m sorry, Julie. Jack called in a wild-animal attack and especially requested me.”
“But today we were going to do the shopping for the picnic tomorrow. Remember, our fifteenth anniversary picnic?” She frowned.
Of course, he remembered. She was trying to make him feel guilty if he went.
“Look, Julie, Jack wouldn’t have asked for me unless there was something terribly wrong. There must be somebody hurt. I just hope it wasn’t another pit-bull attack. That’d be perfect timing with my letter to the editor yesterday. I’ve got to go, babe.”
“Oh, I know. I was just hoping we’d have the whole day to ourselves. You won’t be gone all day, will you?”
Parker smiled and caressed her chin gently. “No, I promise. I won’t be long.” *-*-*
“AC One to dispatcher,” Parker called as he backed out of the driveway.
“Dispatcher. Go ahead, Mr. Parker.”
“Yeah, Janet, call Officer Sarah Hill at her apartment and see if she won’t meet me out in front, will you?” Sarah was really concerned about this sort of thing. She’d want to be involved, even on her day off. Besides, he’d enjoy her company.
“Sure, Mr. Parker, hold on.”
“Hey, Top Dog, you read me?” a male voice said over the speaker.
“Yeah, hey, I know that ain’t Janet. Tyrone, what it be, brutha’?”
“Betta watch it, Top Dog. I got your brutha hangin’ right here,” Tyrone answered back with a chuckle. It was incredible what the man got away with on the radio. He’d been reprimanded numerous times. Besides being a damned good dispatcher, Parker figured he had some sort of leverage that kept him on the job and as free as he cared to be with his language. “Lt. Simpson just called in. Looks bad, Tony. The good thing is, it’s all over. The animal is dead. The bad is, Simpson requested the coroner, and there’re three dead bodies.”
“What the hell was it?”
“Don’t know, man. That’s all he said. Oh, and Sarah’s line is busy. Must be rappin’ to one of her boyfriends. You want us to keep trying?”
“No, that’s all right, Tyrone. I’m only a couple of blocks away now. I’ll swing by and pick her up. Sounds like the emergency is over.”
*-*-*
Parker pulled to a screeching stop behind some parked cars in the parking lot on one end of Sarah Hill’s three-story apartment building. He left the truck running with emergency flashers blinking and sprinted to the stairway.
“Third floor,” he complained under his breath as he passed the second level. “Why does she have to have an apartment on the third floor?”
Panting hard as he made the third landing, he noticed Hill’s door ajar six inches. It was a little unnerving, especially considering this morning’s event. He walked slowly to the door, almost expecting to see something wrong. He peeked in at the front room.
The living room lay in shambles.
The coffee table had been thrown on its side. Two of the three cushions from the couch were on the floor beside it. Two wineglasses and an empty bottle lay there also, along with a pizza box trapped under the coffee table. He eased the door open enough to step inside. Parker’s heart already pounded into his throat from the run up the stairs. Now it raced like a top-fuel dragster.
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