“Well, your boys certainly put paid to him,” said Skrolnik. “What do you arm them with, howitzers?”
‘‘We killed him before he could kill Admiral Thorson,’’ said Calsbeek acidly. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Has the coroner been over this body yet?”
“He’s taking it tomorrow. There was a mass poisoning two nights ago at Strawberry Drive, up by the reservoir. His slabs are kind of crowded right now.”
“Well, life’s busy in Encino right now,” remarked Skrolnik. “What are you trying to do, beat out the Los Angeles homicide statistics?”
“Believe me, this is the last thing I want,” grated Calsbeek. “Encino’s supposed to be quiet and neighborly. Neat yards and law-abiding suburbanites. Up until now, the worst crime we’ve had all year has been inconsiderate roller-skating on the sidewalk.”
Skrolnik rolled back the drawer, and the Tengu’s mutilated body disappeared from sight. “Do you want some coffee?” he asked Calsbeek. “Stiffs always make me thirsty.”
Calsbeek gulped a few mouthfuls of scalding machine-made coffee with them, and then left.
Skrolnik and Pullet sat for the next two hours in the reception area, listening to the splash of the illuminated fountain and the syrupy warbling of Muzak, and leafing through copies oi Reader’s Digest and Encino.
“I never realized that Encino was such a goddamned dull place,” said Skrolnik, tossing one of the magazines back onto the table.
Just after midnight, a short, bespectacled doctor with a shock of black wavy hair came scuttling into the reception area to tell them, blinking, that Admiral Thorson would now be available for a short period of police questioning. “As long as you understand that he’s a very sick man, you got me?”
“Yes, sir,” grunted Skrolnik. “Aren’t we all?”
Considering the trauma that he had been through, Admiral Thorson looked remarkably fit. He was no longer the old “Inch-Thick” of Navy days. His eyes were sunken and shadowed. But when Skrolnik and Pullet were shown into his room, he nodded to them alertly and said, “What’s this? More damn fool questions?”
Skrolnik smiled uncomfortably and perched his rump on the edge of an uncomfortable stacking chair. Pullet went across to the other side of the bed and peered with almost morbid interest at the admiral’s cardiopulmonary monitors and electroencephalograph. Skrolnik said, “We won’t keep you very long, sir. We know that you’ve been through a lot. But what happened here at Rancho Encino bears a close resemblance to a homicide we’re investigating in Hollywood.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Admiral Thorson. “Would you mind passing me that glass of lemonade? A man gets damn thirsty all wired up like this, tucked up in bed like a damned invalid.”
Skrolnik passed him the lemonade, and the old man took four or five sips and then handed it back. “Used to be bourbon and branch, in the old days,” he grunted.
Skrolnik said, “What particularly interests us, sir, is that your assailant was Japanese. Detective Pullet here has been theorizing that maybe the attack has something to do with your war record.
We’ve had one or two cases of white people attacking Japanese because they lost somebody they loved during the war; usually when they’re drunk or depressed or suffering from some kind of nervous collapse. But on the face of it, your assailant was psychotic, to say the least, and Detective Pullet thinks that maybe...”
Admiral Thorson looked from Skrolnik to Pullet, and then back again. “Anything that I did during the Second War is faithfully and fully recorded in my memoirs, sergeant. From Saipan to Kyushu with Admiral Knut Tengu Thorson, published by the Institute for Naval Studies. Rather than interview me, and wear out what little there is left of me, I suggest you go buy yourself a copy.”
Skrolnik wedged his fingers together and raised his eyebrows toward Detective Pullet in an expression of testy patience. “What I was trying to get at, Admiral, if you’ll forgive me for pressing you, is whether you were involved in anything personal or private that may have excited some Japanese fruitcake to try to get even with you. I understand that the Japanese have very severe codes of honor and duty; maybe you inadvertently trod on someone’s face during the war, upset them more than you’d meant to. Something to do with a woman, maybe? I’m not trying to pry.”
Admiral Thorson was silent for a moment. Then he gestured toward his bedside cabinet and said to Skrolnik, “Open the top drawer. Take out the letter you’ll find in there.”
Skrolnik did as he was told. He lifted out the faded V-mail envelope and opened it.
“Read it,” said Admiral Thorson.
How can a love so gentle be so fierce? How can a soft caress grip with such strength? How can your tenderest glance so quickly pierce My heart its very depth, my life its length?
Sergeant Skrolnik said cautiously, “It’s poetry.”
‘‘Yes,’’ said Admiral Thorson. “I wrote it to my wife in October 1944, just before the battle of Leyte Gulf. It was one of many. Let me ask you if a man who writes poetry like that to his wife is likely to get involved with a Japanese woman?”
“I’m sorry,” said Skrolnik. “But you understand that I have to chase after every possible idea.’’
“Admiral,” put in Detective Pullet, running his hand through his tangled hair, “was there any other operation you were in charge of, during the war, anything that maybe didn’t get into your memoirs?”
“Anything that didn’t get into my memoirs was excluded for reasons of national security,”
Admiral Thorson answered. “There were one or two operations I was able to write about in the revised edition of my book, in 1968, but since then nothing else, as far as I know, has come off the top-secret list.”
“Was there anything that might have motivated an attack of revenge–the kind of attack that happened here last night?”
Admiral Thorson said, “I can’t discuss anything that isn’t in my memoirs without a specific security clearance from the Secretary of the Navy. I’m sorry.”
Pullet sensed something, he wasn’t at all sure what it was. But the way in which Admiral Thorson had abruptly invoked the rulebook aroused his nose for the obscure and the unusual. Admiral Thorson had an inkling of what had happened to his wife, and why. Pullet was sure of it. And if Pullet knew anything at all about the psychology of retired military commanders, Admiral Thorson wasn’t refusing to discuss it because it was secret. He was refusing to discuss it because he was afraid of being ridiculed. The attack on Rancho Encino Hospital had been pretty wacky, as homicides went, and Pullet was convinced that Admiral Thorson had an equally wacky theory about it.
He said, ‘ This guy who assaulted your wife and the rest of the hospital staff. Did you ever see anyone who looked like him before? All those wounds on his body? Would you have any idea what they were?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” said Admiral Thorson.
“Then you do know something about it?” demanded Pullet.
“I didn’t say that. I simply said that I can’t answer your question.”
“You can’t answer the question because it’s a matter of national security?”
“That’s correct. Now, please...”
Pullet dragged over a chair and sat astride it, frowning at Admiral Thorson with scruffy concern.
“Admiral,” he said, “there was a multiple homicide here last night. Tengu Your own wife was among the victims. Now, if you refuse to discuss what happened here because you believe that it’s going to be an infringement of national security, then you must have some kind of notion what it was all about. I mean, otherwise, how do you know that it’s likely to be an infringement of national security?”
“I’m tired,” said Admiral Thorson. “I’m tired and you’re playing with words. I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Admiral...”
“The man is dead, isn’t he?” Admiral Thorson demanded. “He’s been caught, and executed on the spot. What’s the pur
pose of investigating any further?”
“Admiral,” said Skrolnik as gently as he could, “It’s conceivable that there might have been a conspiracy to attack you, involving a considerable number of people. So far, we don’t have a single clue why. But we believe there are men still at liberty who were concerned in the killing of your wife. We want to catch those men.”
Admiral Thorson shook his head. His voice was hoarse now, and desperate. “You’ll have to leave me alone for now. I’m too tired. Please–will you call the doctor?”
Skrolnik took a deep breath and stood up. “Okay, Admiral. If you don’t want to help, then I guess I can’t force you. Pullet, will you push that bell, please? We’re going to leave the admiral to think things over, see if he can’t come up with some kind of surprise recollection. Something meaningful to add to his memoirs.”
The doctor came in and asked, “All finished now?”
“I hope not,” said Skrolnik.
“You haven’t upset him?” asked the doctor.
“He’s okay, I’m the one who’s upset,” Skrolnik complained.
Skrolnik and Pullet left the hospital and walked out into the warm night air. Skrolnik’s car was being repaired in the police workshop, and he had borrowed a dented black Lincoln Continental from his next-door neighbor. He had parked it on the far side of the hospital parking lot, and so he and Pullet had to cross almost to the perimeter of the hospital to reach it. They were almost there, walking side by side in irritated silence, when Pullet said, “What’s that? Do you see something?”
“Where?” asked Skrolnik.
“Out on the road there, beside those bushes. No–you see that low stone wall. That’s it. There.”
Skrolnik strained his eyes in the darkness, and made out the shape of what appeared to be a man, kneeling in the road. As Skrolnik took two or three steps nearer, he saw that in front of the man there were two smoking bowls, and he also glimpsed what looked like two shiny crossed swords.
Skrolnik immediately hiked out his .38 revolver and released the safety. Pullet did the same.
Without a word, Skrolnik ducked down behind the nearest parked car, ran the length of it with his head bent low, and then crossed the hospital lawn at a quick canter, making obliquely for the bushes beside the road, but keeping a screen of shrubs and trees in between himself and the man with the smoking bowls and the swords.
As he neared the road, Skrolnik waved his arm behind him to indicate to Pullet that he should circle around on the other side. Then, without any hesitation, he hurled himself straight through the bushes, with a crash of leaves and broken branches, and struck a knees-bent stance on the road, his gun held in front of him in both hands, and yelled, “Police! Freeze!”
There was a shot from the other side of the road, and Skrolnik felt the wind of a bullet flash past his cheek. He dropped to the ground and rolled himself back into the bushes again, firing off a quick diversionary shot that hit something on the other side of the road with a sharp spangl of metal.
The man who had been kneeling on the roadway had already scurried crabwise to the protection of the low stone wall. Skrolnik gingerly raised his head and shouted, “Pullet? Where the fuck are you?” but before Pullet could answer there was a roar of an engine starting up, and a large limousine backed out of the trees on the other side of the road, reversed wildly up to the stone wall, its tires smoking and its suspension bucking, and Skrolnik knew that their mysterious suspect was about to make a fast getaway.
He knelt among the dust and the leaves, steadied his hand, and fired off four shots, in what he hoped was a tight cluster, toward the limousine’s front window. There was a crackling of broken glass, but the limousine gunned its engine, and took off down the road with its tail snaking from side to side and its tires screaming like slaughtered pigs-
“Get on the radio!” Skrolnik bellowed at Pullet. “Get an alert out on those jokers! Go on, movel”
Pullet pushed his way out of the bushes and went running back across the lawn to the parking lot, trying to stuff his gun back into his trousers as he went. Skrolnik meanwhile walked along to the place where the man had been kneeling and hunkered down to examine the evidence that he had left there.
One of the bowls had been tipped over, and its contents were strewn across the blacktop. It was still smoldering, though, a grayish powdery substance that looked like incense or charcoal. There was a light, sweetish smell around, which reminded Skrolnik of something he couldn’t immediately put a name to. Something unusual and exotic and, for some reason, very disturbing.
He licked his finger, touched the powder, and tasted it. It could have been dried flowers or the burned gum from some species of tree.
He recognized at once what the two crossed swords were. Samurai swords, curved and sharp and decorated with lacquer and silk bindings. He didn’t touch them; he wanted them photographed and fingerprinted first. But they confirmed what he and Pullet had just been saying to Admiral Thorson. The attack on Rancho Encino had been connected with Thorson’s war record, and his assailants almost certainly wanted revenge. What for, Skrolnik couldn’t even begin to guess. He reloaded and bolstered his gun, and planted his fists on his hips in a gesture of thoughtful determination.
It was a pose that everybody in Skrolnik’s department recognized as a sure sign that – Skrolnik was now going to get tough.
Pullet came running back, breathless.
“You’re out of condition,” said Skrolnik. “Why don’t you take up jogging? Listen, run back to the car and get my accident signs, will you? I don’t want any of this stuff moved until Rabinowitz’s boys have had a go at it.”
Pullet said, “What the hell do you think he was doing? Are those swords?”
“Samurai swords,” Skrolnik nodded. “Whatever he was up to, it was something to do with that attack on Admiral Thorson. Just, for Christ’s sake, don’t ask me what.”
“I’ll get the signs,” said Pullet; but the moment he turned around, every floodlight in the hospital grounds was suddenly switched on, and the alarm began to bellow through the trees. Skrolnik said, “Thorson,” and took out his gun again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They arrived at the doors of the hospital puffing and blowing. But Skrolnik forced his way in, past a screaming nurse and a dazed security officer who was waving his gun around at nobody and nothing, and jogged heavily down the corridor toward Admiral Thorson’s room.
Another security officer came cantering toward them, shouting, “Get back! Get back!” but Skrolnik and Pullet simply dodged aside to let him run past, and he didn’t Tengu even attempt to clear them out of the corridor. “That guy’s frightened,” remarked Skrolnik.
“Aren’t you?” asked Pullet.
They turned the corner and collided with Admiral Thorson’s doctor. His hair seemed to be standing on end, and his eyes were as wild as Harpo Marx’s.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Skrolnik shouted at him, with all the coarseness he could muster. “What the hell is everybody running for?”
“It’s that thing,” garbled the doctor. Then he tore himself free from Skrolnik and ran off toward the hospital lobby.
“That thing, huh?” asked Skrolnik, wiping his nose with the back of his gun hand. “This is beginning to sound like some kind of monster movie. The Thing from Rancho Encino.”
Pullet said, “We’d better go take a look in any case.”
“I was afraid you’d suggest that,” Skrolnik retorted. “You’re becoming far too conscientious for a rookie.”
They turned the last corner, into the corridor that took them directly to Admiral Thorson’s room, and Skrolnik froze. At the end of the corridor was a wired-glass door, and through the distorting, refracting glass he could see a short, bulky shape, like a man with his head bent forward in contemplation. Skrolniksaid, “TheThing?” and Pullet shrugged. “How do I know? I never met a Thing before. Challenge it.”
Skrolnik raised his .38. “You!” he shouted harshly. “Y
ou, behind that door! Come out of there with your hands on your head!’’
For a long moment, the bulky silhouette remained motionless. Skrolnik said, “Cover me,” and took one or two apprehensive steps forward, his gun still raised.
“Do you hear me?” he shouted. “Come on out from behind that door with your hands on your head! You don’t have a chance!”
The silhouette raised its arms, slowly and deliberately. “He’s giving up,” said Pullet, with relief, half-lowering his revolver. But then, with a terrifying, rending smash, the silhouette thrashed its fists into the glass door, tearing it apart in a wreckage of tangled wire, broken glass, and splintered wood.
“ Oh, Jesus,’’ said Pullet.
The creature that forced its way through the broken door may have been human once, but it was human no longer. It was the Tengu from the morgue, revived, and walking, mutilated not only with the scars of Doctor Gempaku’s hooks, but with the gaping bloodless bullet wounds it had sustained from the Encino police. The worst thing of all, though, was that it had no head, only that raw pipe that rose from between its shoulders and the gristly remnants of its neck.
Skrolnik said, “It can’t be. Pullet, that damned thing can’t be.”
The headless Tengu took one heavy step after another, dragging itself clear from the glass and the wire, heading toward Admiral Thorson’s door. It may have been an optical illusion, but Skrolnik could have sworn that he saw tiny blue flames dancing in the air around the Tengu’s shoulders.
He fired into the Tengu’s chest, twice. Dead, white flesh flapped up as the Tengu’s body absorbed the bullets, and the Tengu appeared momentarily to hesitate. But then it continued to shuffle toward Admiral Thorson’s door, and at last it bumped against the oak veneer, its mutilated but muscular shoulder cracking the wood, its hands clawing toward the handle, Skrolnik, white-faced, sweating, fired two more shots, only an inch apart, into the area of the monster’s heart. The Tengu jolted with the impact and swayed, but then continued to beat dully against the admiral’s door. Smoke from the bullets that had entered its chest cavity rose from the open pipe of its severed neck.
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