He reached the lobby, noting the pair of teens lingering near the fountain that dominated the middle of the space. He was about to tell them to move along, when a woman approached from the corridor.
She cast him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I know they aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He nodded and watched as she hustled the kids back toward the corridor. “Just make sure they get to school.”
“I will sheriff.” The relief on her face indicated that she expected a lecture, but Wilder had other things on his mind.
He reached the main doors and stepped out.
It was raining, again. A haze of drizzle that made being outside just miserable enough to make one think twice. He hurried to the sheriff department’s only car, a Jeep Cherokee parked in one of the two spots reserved for official vehicles near the tower’s main entrance, and slipped behind the wheel, slamming the door. He reversed out of the space, and then pointed the car toward the docks, driving through town at a slow pace until he reached the road that ran parallel to Baldwin Bay.
As he drove along, he glanced out of his side window toward the mountains that ringed the bay and the vast expanse of frigid gray water. Visibility was poor, with low-lying cloud cover that swathed everything in a muted cloak. He spotted a couple of large boats in the mist, trawlers most likely, on their way out to fish the deep waters of the Pacific, beyond the safety of the bay. He didn’t envy them their job. Commercial fishing was a hard, thankless task, and dangerous to boot. More than one boat had returned to shore missing a man, and sometimes a boat just didn’t come back at all. The weather could turn deadly with little notice in this frozen landscape.
Wilder turned his attention back to the road ahead. He could see the docks now, the jetty that stuck out with yachts and skiffs moored on both sides. A few men hurried about their business near the boats, but otherwise the docks were deserted.
He arrived at the bait and tackle shop and eased the Jeep up next to the building. He climbed out, pulled his coat tight against the wind and rain, and walked around to the front of the store, nodding as he passed a group of fishermen heading the other way through the parking lot, deep in conversation, their words lost on the breeze.
When he reached the front of the building he was surprised to find the store locked up, a closed sign hanging askew in the window. He leaned close and peered through the glass but could not see much in the dim interior.
He glanced toward the dock. Verne’s boat, a small single engine cabin cruiser, was there, as was his beat up Ford Bronco, tucked into a space between the dumpsters and a weathered fence that hid several racks of propane canisters.
Wilder reached for his cell phone and found the number for the store. It was unlike Verne not to open. Most of the trawlers and charter boats left early, and he wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to sell a cooler of bait or squeeze a few dollars out of some tourist for a rod.
Wilder lifted the phone to his ear and waited.
It rang once, twice, then three times.
After the fourth ring there was an audible click and Verne’s voice filled the speaker. For a moment Wilder thought the ex-marine had picked up, but then he realized it was just voicemail.
He cursed and ended the call.
Something was not right.
In all the years he’d lived in Shackleton, the bait shop was never closed when there was business to be had. Besides, Verne didn’t oversleep, ever. He was still stuck in Iraq, at least in his head, and now sleep was his enemy.
Wilder cupped his hands and peered through the window a second time. He pulled the flashlight from his belt and clicked it on, holding it close to the glass and shinning the beam into the gloomy interior. Now he could see a lot more detail, and this time he noticed something out of place. Toward the back of the store, near the counter, a rack full of lures lay scattered across the floor, the rack itself leaning at an angle, its fall stopped only by the shelves lining the aisle. A growing feeling of dread wormed its way into Wilder’s gut. There was something wrong here, very wrong indeed. All thought of Decker and the illicit gun was pushed from his mind now, replaced by the pressing need to locate the bait shop owner. He needed to get inside.
Wilder stepped back for a moment. He took a deep breath, calming himself, and then approached the window once more. He turned the flashlight so that the grip faced forward, took aim, and brought the hilt down on the glass. The metal shaft made contact near the frame, the window breaking into a spider web of cracks. He tapped again, knocking the shards away, and then, careful not to cut himself, reached around and found the deadbolt holding the door closed. He groped for a moment until he found the knob. He snapped it left to release the bolt, and withdrew his arm.
With the door unlocked, he stepped inside, turning the beam of the flashlight frontward again, and picked his way through the store, his unease growing with every step.
35
Dominic Collins sat on a metal chair placed in the corridor outside of the furthest cell in the quarantine wing and watched the creature within consume a pile of raw meat.
It ate with gusto, tearing off huge chunks of the flesh and gulping them down, a look of contentment in its eyes. Blood smeared its chin and hands, not to mention the floor of the cell.
The meat came from a cold storage locker stocked by Adam Hunt, who had left specific instructions to feed the beast four times daily, with the last meal at midnight. This sated the creature and kept it docile, although that was a relative term. It still lunged at the glass at every opportunity, and Dominic was sure that it would just as happily munch on him as the chuck steak.
He stood and inched closer, able to see into the cell thanks to a halogen work lamp positioned in the corridor. The cells were fitted with a sedation system that pumped gas into the room, allowing for easy access, but changing the bulb was pointless since the creature would just break the light again as soon as it woke up, so the halogen lamp stayed, even though it pumped out enough heat to make the corridor uncomfortable.
On the other side of the chair stood a tripod with a small digital camcorder attached. Dominic had set it up the previous evening and left it running all night, even when the halogen lamp was turned off. Thanks to the array of infrared LED’s attached to the top of the camera, he was able to record even in total darkness, and this gave him a record of the creature’s behavior over a full cycle. It also freed him up to spend time preparing his lab for the harder work which was to come. He was not looking forward to that work, which included taking blood samples, skin scrapings, and doing a full analysis of the creature’s physiological makeup. The thought of being in the same room with the beast, even though it would be heavily sedated, was not an appealing one. For one thing, they had no idea how long the gas, pumped through vents in the ceiling of the quarantine chamber, would last. He would need to run several tests to ensure that the creature remained asleep throughout the entire time it was outside of the cell, and even then, there was no guarantee that something would not go wrong. Those tests would take a couple of days, since putting the creature under too many times within the same twenty-four hour period might adversely affect it. That was fine with Dominic. The longer he could delay going hands on with the thing, the better. Not for the first time he wondered why his employer had selected him for this job. He spent most of his time peering into microscopes, and he was sure there were other scientists in the fold, people with experience working with large animals, who could have done the job. Was he the only available person, or had he pissed someone off enough to land an assignment that could end with a set of sharp teeth ripping out his windpipe?
The creature had finished eating now.
It sat on its haunches and observed him, a baleful, sad, look in its eyes. Dominic stood for a moment longer, meeting its gaze.
A shudder ran through Dominic, and he turned away.
Something about the way it looked at him, about that unblinking stare, made him feel odd. It w
as as if there was still some vestige of the person it once was behind those eyes. Dominic could not explain it, but he felt as though the man was a prisoner trapped within a body he could not control, a slave to the new, depraved instincts that now controlled him.
When Dominic turned back toward the cell, the creature had moved away, slinking back into a corner of the small room and curling up in a fetal ball, its head tucked down. This was nothing unusual, at least so far as Dominic could tell. The beast was in that position most of the time, except when it saw him and lunged for the glass, which it did with a little less gusto now. It was as if the damn thing knew that its attempts to break out were futile, and that realization frightened Dominic more than anything. Even if it was a violent monster with a raging temper, it must still have some form of rudimentary intelligence. He didn’t know if any of the human reasoning and intellect remained locked in the beast’s brain, but he did know that he must be careful. He had no idea what the creature was capable of, and until it was proven otherwise, he must assume that it still had access to some degree of human thought.
Dominic folded the metal chair and placed it against the wall. He glanced at the camera for a moment, at the red light that blinked just above the lens, and then turned toward the door. Let the camera keep watch; he had better things to do.
36
Sheriff Don Wilder stepped into the bait and tackle store and closed the door behind him.
“Hello?” he called out, swinging his flashlight around the place, noting the toppled display stand, but not seeing much else out of place. “Verne, you in here?”
Empty silence greeted him.
Wilder moved deeper into the store, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. “Verne, it’s the sheriff. Are you in here?”
There was still no reply.
Dammit, the sheriff thought. It was just typical that he came down here with a bug in his ear, ready to let Verne Nolan have a piece of his mind, only to find the man absent from his own store. Something was not right though. Wilder could sense it. In all the years Nolan had owned the shop he’d never once stayed closed past six in the morning. Hell, the man hadn’t ever taken a day off during peak season as far as Wilder knew. He opened seven days a week, worked twelve hour shifts, and saved his recreation time for the winter when the tourists were gone and the summer charters had fled back south to more favorable climates like San Francisco and Seattle.
This was about as far from normal as you could get.
Wilder reached down and unclipped his holster. He rested his hand on the butt of the gun, not sure yet if he needed the weapon, but wanting it available at a moment's notice if he did.
He reached the rear of the store and paused, taking a moment to glance around, looking for anything that might give him some idea what was going on. He leaned over and checked behind the counter, half expecting to see Verne lying dead of a heart attack, but the narrow aisle was empty, much to his relief. Still, that didn’t preclude the possibility that Verne was incapacitated somewhere else in the building. His eyes settled on the stairs leading to the second floor, and the small apartment. Since there was no sign of Verne in the store, that meant that either he was not here at all, which was unlikely given that both his boat and car were still outside, or that he was in one of the cramped second floor rooms. The fact that he hadn’t answered the sheriff’s calls did not bode well for a good outcome, however, and Wilder hesitated. In the four years he had been doing this job he’d dealt with six corpses – two natural deaths, a couple of drowning victims, and the two recent murders. He had no desire to add another corpse to that list, but he had a feeling he was about to.
He moved toward the stairs, hand still resting on his gun, and was about to mount the first step when something odd caught his eye. There, in the wood frame surrounding the doorway, was a splintered hole.
Wilder recognized the damage right away. He reached out and touched the hole, noting that the bare wood was bright and clean. This was fresh.
He took a knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and carved the frame away to expose the side of the hole, then dug the point deep. A few moments later, something hard and metallic fell free, a short brass cylinder with a flattened, lead colored end. He took a napkin from his pocket and bent over, plucking the object from the floor. He held the damaged bullet up and examined it for a moment, then wrapped it in the napkin and pushed it into the breast pocket of his shirt. When he looked back toward the door frame he noticed another hole a little higher, an almost exact copy of the first one. His apprehension turned to cold hard fear. What on earth was Verne firing at? More to the point, why hadn’t he called for help?
Wilder looked up toward the apartment. The answer was somewhere up there, he was sure of it. Even though he didn’t want to, there was no choice but to investigate further.
Not without some protection though.
He drew his gun and made sure the safety was off, then placed a foot on the stairs and began the climb to the second floor. What he found when he reached the top sent a shiver of fear through him and added body number seven to the list of corpses Wilder had seen since taking the job of sheriff.
Verne Nolan was a mess.
He lay in the middle of the cramped living room, surrounded by the shattered remains of an outdated coffee table. Wilder knew it was Verne despite half his face being gone, the skin and muscle ripped away to reveal the white bone underneath. One accusing eye looked at the sheriff through the blood and gore, while the other lay a few feet away, a round white orb with some of the connective tissue still attached, resting on its stalk in a miniature red lake.
Wilder brought his hand up to suppress a gag and turned away for a moment. When he looked back the sight was no better. Wilder now noticed deep gouges on the man’s chest and arms, which the sheriff recognized as defensive wounds. At least the man had put up a fight. Not that it had helped him much.
Wilder swore.
There was no way this was an animal attack. The worker in the tunnel, maybe, and even the maintenance man, but how could something kill Verne Nolan in a locked building? That raised another question. How could the killer have left the building if it was locked up tight?
The sudden realization that the killer might still be hiding somewhere inside the building sent a shudder through the sheriff. He back peddled toward the stairs, his gun raised, the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up.
He heard the floorboards creak to his left.
Wilder spun around, his finger tightening on the trigger, as a large shape lunged from the shadows toward him.
37
Decker was showered, dressed, and already sipping his second cup of coffee when Mina arrived at his door. He let her in and then resumed his position at the table, noting the pile of books she clutched in her arms. “What are all those?” he asked as she placed them down on the table and turned to pour herself a coffee.
“A little research material.”
“Looks like a lot of research material to me.” Decker eyed the books, reading the spines. Two were about Alaskan myths and legends. Another was a history of the State’s native people, while the fourth book documented naval activities in the State. “How is this going to help us?”
“There are a lot of rumors swirling about the spate of recent killings. Some of the residents are talking about the old legends, the tales told by the Inuit.”
“Hayley mentioned that. She spoke of a mythical creature that was supposed to live near the water. I can’t remember what she called it.”
“The qalupalik,” Mina said. “Parents would use it to ensure their children behaved. If they stepped out of line the qalupalik would come for them, take them back to the ocean to raise as their own.”
“Sounds just like the loup garou.”
“I don’t understand.” Mina shot him a quizzical glance.
“The Cajuns use the loup garou the same way. If children misbehave, or break the rules of Lent, it will come to take them.”<
br />
“Makes sense.” Mina nodded. “Be good or the bogeyman will get you.”
“Exactly,” Decker said. “Only in my case the bogeyman was real. I know because I killed it.”
“So you think this Qalupalik might be real too?”
“After what I’ve seen I wouldn’t rule anything out.” Decker sipped his coffee. “But the killings don’t quite match the creature’s M.O. since it’s not dragging off children.”
“Neither was your loup garou. It killed a teenager, but no kids.”
“True. But there are many different myths surrounding the Cajun werewolf, and keeping naughty children in line is just one of them.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I don’t know. Something big and powerful killed the maintenance man, and it didn’t look like the work of a human to me.” What he didn’t mention was how familiar the wounds looked. He’d seen the same kind of damage before, back in Wolf Haven, the previous summer when the loup garou was on the prowl. If he closed his eyes he could still picture the mutilated body of Jake Barlow, and the wounds on the corpse he’d witnessed in the sub-basement bore a striking resemblance. He shuddered and pushed the grisly picture from his mind.
“Well, if it isn’t the qalupalik, there are a couple of other unlikely suspects in these books.” Mina tapped the stack of volumes. “Even if you don’t find your murderer in their pages, it will give you an idea of the type of superstitions you are dealing with and the history of the area.”
“And the other book, the one about the Navy?”
Cold Sanctuary (John Decker Series Book 2) Page 13