The Devil in Gray

by Graham Masterton

  “More coffee, Decker?” Amy called, from behind the counter. As she did so, a young woman in an oddly shaped black beret looked in through the window and gave him a knowing smile. He gave her a questioning look in return and mouthed, What?—but she turned away and disappeared into the crowds, as quickly and completely as if she had been made of nothing more than jigsaw pieces.

  Jesus, Decker, you’re definitely losing it.

  Mayzie was waiting for him at headquarters.

  “You rat, you didn’t show,” she complained, bustling after him into the elevator. “I waited for over a half hour and you didn’t show. Ha! As if I believed that you really would.”

  “I told you, sweetheart, I’m all tied up with the Maitland case. We had witnesses to interview, evidence to look at. Things dragged on much later than I thought they would.”

  “You could at least have called me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”

  “Oh, you’re sorry. Look at your face, all scratches. Who gave you those?”

  “I tripped over. I fell in a bush.”

  “Really? Whose bush? I’d like to know.”

  “Mayzie, I’m sorry-sorry-sorry. How about lunch? I’ll meet you right here in the lobby at twelve.”

  “You’re a rat, do you know that? I don’t even know if I want a child if it’s going to have you as a father.”

  “Well, that makes two of us.”

  “Rat.”

  “I’ll meet you here at twelve, okay? Don’t be late, will you?”

  He left her in the elevator and walked along the corridor to his office. Hicks was already there, talking on the telephone. Hicks jabbed his finger toward the waiting room. Through the glass division Decker could see Eunice Plummer and Sandra sitting side by side. Eunice was reading an old copy of The Carytown Guide while Sandra was playing some sort of game with her fingers.

  Decker took off his sandy-colored coat and dropped it over the back of his chair. His desk was heaped with papers and files and scribbled memos, as well as crumpled-up paper napkins and three Styrofoam cups of cold coffee. But there was also a brass-framed photograph of Cathy. He had taken it the day before she was killed, in a corn field out on Route 5, in Charles County. She was wearing a frayed straw hat that cast a ragged shadow over her face, and she was chewing a stalk of grass. My beautiful hayseed.

  “What were you doing in my nightmares last night?” he asked her, out loud.

  Hicks put down the phone and said, “You okay, Lieutenant?”

  “Sure, I’m fine. Didn’t sleep too good, that’s all.”

  “Your face is all scratched up.”

  Decker touched the scab on his nose. “Yeah … kind of an altercation with the neighbor’s pet cat.”

  “You should get shots for that. You don’t want to get, what is it, rabies?”

  Decker didn’t answer. He didn’t want to have to tell Hicks that it hadn’t been a cat, but a briar, and not only that, an imaginary briar.

  Hicks said, “I was just talking to the ME. She’s pretty sure that Mrs. Maitland’s injuries were caused by a double-edged swordlike weapon, approximately two and a half feet long. She suggested a bayonet, something like that.”

  “A bayonet? Jesus.”

  “I was thinking of drawing up a list of all the places in Richmond that sell bayonets. Like gun shops and military curio stores. Antique markets, too. If we can establish that Maitland actually owned a bayonet, then it won’t matter so much that we haven’t been able to find it.”

  “That’s good thinking, Hicks. Why don’t you start with Billy Joe Bennett at the Rebel Yell on West Cary Street? Believe me—if Robert E. Lee had ever had half as much ordnance as Billy Joe Bennett, he would have won the Civil War in a week.”

  “Okay, Lieutenant. Right on it.” Hicks lifted his coat off the peg beside his desk and picked up his notebook.

  “Hey, hey, slow down, sport,” Decker said. “You don’t need to take this weapon thing so personal. You conducted a thorough search, you couldn’t find it, ergo it wasn’t there. Obviously it’s going to help us if we can produce the weapon in court, and prove that Maitland used it to kill his wife, but it’s not the end of the world if we can’t.”

  “I just like to have things neatly wrapped up,” Hicks admitted. “I mean—how could a two-foot bayonet totally disappear? It isn’t logical.”

  “All right, Mr. Spock,” Decker said. But even as he said it, he thought about the face carved out of slices of raw chicken and banana, lying on his chopping board, and what was logical about that, or even sane?

  He ran his hand through his hair, prinking up his pompadour. “I guess I’d best go see what my visitors want. By the way, how’s your wife liking it here in the city?”

  “Good, fine. She’s okay.”

  “She doesn’t miss Fredericksburg?”

  “Some. I think she misses her friends most.”

  “Well, that’s natural. You ought to bring her out one evening.… I know a couple of girls she’ll really get on with. Does she like Mexican food? We could go to La Siesta.”

  Hicks shrugged. “I’ll ask her. She’s never been much for socializing.”

  “In that case, I insist that she comes. I can’t have my partner’s wife feeling lost and abandoned in the big city.”

  Hicks gave him a tight, unappreciative smile. “I guess not. Thanks. I’ll talk to her about it.”

  He rapped loose-knuckled on the door of the waiting room. Eunice Plummer looked up and beamed at him, and so did Sandra.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting so long.”

  “That’s quite all right. Sandra finished her drawing at seven o’clock last night and she’s been dying to show it to you ever since. She was up at six, all dressed up in her best frock and ready to go.”

  “I could have sent somebody to collect it. Saved you a journey.”

  “I wanted to show you myself,” put in Sandra.

  “Well, Sandra, I really appreciate that. It’s people like you who make our job a whole lot more satisfying.”

  “I want to help you find that So-Scary Man. He looked like this.” With that, Sandra lowered her chin and frowned, and then she made her eyes roll up into her head, so that only the whites showed.

  “Sandra!” Eunice Plummer protested. “You mustn’t make faces! If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that!”

  Sandra clapped her hands in excitement. “He looked just like that! Look at my drawing—look!”

  She handed Decker a rolled-up piece of art paper. Decker sat down next to her and unrolled it. He had expected a stick person in a hat. What she had actually drawn was a highly detailed pencil rendition of the front of 4140 Davis Street, with its iron railings and its Doric-pillared porch and even its carriage lamp. She had included every single brick, and shaded everything. She had even included the decorative lace curtains behind the front parlor window.

  “She has a wonderful memory,” Eunice Plummer said, proudly.

  Decker shook his head in admiration. “Not just that, she’s very talented. I know some professional artists who can’t draw anything like as good as this.”

  Sandra pointed to the tall figure standing on the porch. “That’s him. That’s the scary man.”

  Her impersonation of the So-Scary Man’s face had been disturbingly close to the face she had drawn. He was very tall. He was wearing what looked like a wide-brimmed slouch hat, with straggly black feathers around it, and his beard was black and wild. But it was his eyes that made him look so terrifying. They had no pupils, only whites, like the eyes of a boiled codfish, and yet they had a stare of concentrated fury, as if he were calling down every curse in the world on whoever he was looking at.

  “You’re right.” Decker nodded. “He is pretty scary, isn’t he?”

  The So-Scary Man was wearing a long gray overcoat with a cape, and now Decker understood what Sandra had meant by “wings.” The overcoat was unbuttoned at the front to reveal a long scabbard hanging from the man’s belt.
He wore dark britches and knee-length leather boots.

  Decker studied the drawing for a long time. Then he asked Sandra, “You saw the So-Scary Man—but do you think he saw you?”

  Sandra thought about that and then said, “Yes … I think so. He was looking right at me.”

  “Could that be dangerous?” Eunice Plummer asked, realizing what Decker was asking.

  “I don’t know. This is a very weird situation. This drawing—this likeness—it’s totally amazing. I wish all of our witnesses could draw like this, we wouldn’t need computer composites. But the fact remains that Sandra was the only person who saw this guy, nobody else. We’ve interviewed over thirty people who were walking along Davis Street at the same time you were, and not one of them reported seeing anybody who looked like this … and, let’s face it, he’s pretty darn distinctive, isn’t he?”

  Eunice Plummer took hold of Sandra’s hand and gave it a protective squeeze. “What are you going to do?” she asked, worriedly.

  “I’m going to assume for now that he was real. I have to say that it’s very unlikely that anybody was able to walk out of the Maitland house without being seen by any other passersby, but it’s not one hundred percent impossible. I’m going to assign an officer to keep an eye on Sandra for the next few days, just to be on the safe side.”

  “You don’t think that this man would try to hurt her?”

  “I don’t think she’s in any real danger, Ms. Plummer, to tell you the truth. But I’m going to issue this drawing to the media this afternoon, so that if he does exist he’s pretty soon going to find out that he’s a suspect. If he’s innocent, he’ll most likely come forward so that we can eliminate him from our inquiries. If he’s guilty of any involvement in Mrs. Maitland’s murder, the chances are that he’ll shave off his beard and go on the lam, if he hasn’t done it already. But if he’s aware that Sandra was the only person who actually saw him … well, like I say, there’s no harm in being careful.”

  He turned to Sandra and said, “You turn on your TV tonight, Sandra, and you’ll see your drawing on the news.”

  Sandra smiled and gave him an unexpected high five.

  Decker took them down to the lobby. “I want to thank you again, Sandra. I’ll make sure that you get a special police badge for this.”

  “Thank you,” Sandra said. “I hope you catch the So-Scary Man.”

  “Sure, well, me too.”

  Outside, there was a deafening collision of thunder. Sandra raised her head and said, “Something’s going wrong, isn’t it?”

  “No, no. That’s just an electric storm. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Sandra shook her head. “I don’t mean that. Something’s going wrong.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean. What’s going wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet.”

  “She gets feelings sometimes,” Eunice Plummer explained. “Premonitions, I suppose you’d call them. She had a very bad feeling the night before her father died.”

  Decker put his arm around Sandra’s rounded shoulders. “Don’t you worry, Sandra. Everything’s going to be fine. Come through to the garage and I’ll have a squad car take you and your mommy home.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As he came jogging along the street, his new Nike sneakers slapping on the sidewalk, George Drewry saw lightning flicker in the distance, over the city center. He turned into his driveway and bent over double, his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. He was still bent double when the thunder reached him, and he thought that it sounded like distant cannon fire. This is what it must have sounded like here in Highland Springs in 1864, when Sherman was advancing from Williamsburg.

  The front door opened and Jean came out, in a bright green tracksuit, her white hair wound up in rollers. “George? Are you all right?”

  George slowly straightened his back. He was a big man, six feet three inches, and since his retirement from the army last August he had put on at least twenty pounds. His balding, sunburned head was tied with a red bandanna and he was wearing a khaki T-shirt and a drooping pair of gray jogging pants, both drenched in sweat. He limped toward the house, wiping his forehead with his hairy forearm. “All this exercise is going to be the death of me, do you know that?”

  “Dr. Gassman told you to keep in shape, didn’t he?”

  “I know, but he didn’t actually specify what shape, did he? I mean, pear-shaped is a shape, isn’t it?”

  George limped inside, with Jean following him. He was sixty-two years old, with a long face and wobbly jowls, and very large ears, like a mournful dog. He went into the kitchen, opened up the icebox and took out a large bottle of mineral water.

  “How about a Caesar salad?” Jean asked, watching him gulp.

  “How about some fried chicken and gravy?”

  “You know what Dr. Gassman said about your arteries.”

  “Dr. Gassman is a miserable bastard who is doing everything possible to make me as miserable as him. Why can’t I enjoy my life once in a while?”

  “What’s the point in enjoying your life if you’re dead?”

  George put the water bottle back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “All right, Caesar salad, but don’t be stingy with the ham.”

  He walked along the corridor to the bathroom. The walls were covered with military memorabilia—framed photographs of Wofford’s brigade during the Civil War, engravings of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, as well as three muskets and pennants and badges from TRADOC—the Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe. George had been a soldier since the age of nineteen, ending his career as a major at the Office of the Command Historian, which kept records of U.S. Army history dating back to the earliest colonial militia. He had even written a short history book himself—The Boys In Gray, about the Regulars who fought the British at Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane.

  In the bathroom he stripped off his bandanna and his T-shirt and jogging pants and voluminous Bugs Bunny boxer shorts. He was damned if all this galloping around the neighborhood was doing anything more than making him look like a prize asshole. He always felt like shit when he came back from a run, and he wasn’t even allowed to have a beer. He looked at himself in the mirror and his face was crimson.

  “Look at you,” he told himself. “You’re no damn good to anyone. Not even you.”

  He climbed into the shower and turned on the faucets. He knew that Jean was only trying to take care of him, but her endless fussing was like nettle rash. It was bad enough, not having an office to go to anymore, and no staff to order around. He had always imagined that he would relish his retirement, reading and fishing and giving occasional well-received lectures on military campaigns. But when he had opened his eyes on that very first morning and realized that he wasn’t going to be dressing in uniform anymore, and that he wouldn’t be saluted by everyone he met, he had felt as if he were rendered impotent during the night.

  Now he spent his days moping around the house, while Jean pursued him from room to room with the Hoover.

  “You should take up golf.”

  “Golf is for people who don’t have anything else to do.”

  “But you don’t have anything else to do.”

  “I know, but I’m damned if I’m going to advertise it.”

  Far from bringing him peace and self-fulfillment, retirement had taken away the only thing that had made him proud of himself. He felt so useless sometimes that it made him gasp for breath, as if he were going to start sobbing.

  He was soaping his chest when he felt something cold sliding down his left inside leg. Looking down, he saw that he was bleeding from a long thin cut that ran all the way from his testicles to the side of his knee. Blood was already running down his calf, mingled with foam and water, and swirling into the shower tray.

  How the hell …?

  George reached out of the shower cubicle for his towel. He could tell that the cut must be deep as well as long, because the blood was a rich arterial color, and it w
as flowing out in thick, warm surges.

  “Jean!” he shouted. “Jean, I need some help here!”

  He tugged his towel off the rail and wound it around his thigh as tightly as he could. All the same, it was soaked scarlet in a matter of seconds. “Jean!” he called. “Jean, I’ve cut myself!”

  He lifted his right hand toward the faucets to turn off the water, but as he did so he felt an intense slice across his knuckles, and another cut appeared, so vicious that it almost severed his little finger. He cried out in bewilderment more than pain, and thrust his hand into his mouth, so that it was filled up with the metallic taste of fresh blood.

  Then, with terrible swiftness, his left hand was cut, too, so that he dropped the towel that he was holding against his thigh. The towel blocked up the drain, and it took only a few seconds before the shower tray was brimming with blood and water.

  George staggered sideways. He felt giddy already, as if he had just climbed off a carnival roundabout. The inside of the shower cubicle suddenly went dark, with swarming pinpricks of light. “Jean, I need you!” he shouted, but his voice sounded as if it were coming from the end of a very long pipe.

  He felt a cut across the bridge of his nose, and then three more cuts on his shoulders. He slid down the wall until he was on his knees, leaving a wide streak of blood on the pale green tiles. The water pelted into his face and almost blinded him.

  His back was cut in a series of diagonal slices that went right through to his shoulder blades and his ribs. He actually felt the blade sliding against the bone. He flailed around with his bleeding hands, trying to stop his invisible assailant from cutting him anymore, but there was nobody there, and all he succeeded in doing was decorating the shower cubicle in a ghastly scarlet parody of an action painting.

  “Jean,” he whispered.

  With a soft pop, the point of a blade broke his skin just above his pubic hair. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then the blade itself was pushed in deep through the layers of subcutaneous fat and into his stomach muscles. He cried out, “No-no-no-no-no!” because the blade was so cold and the pain was too much for him to bear. He tried to climb to his feet, his bloody hands sliding frantically against the tiles, and he almost succeeded. But then he slipped and fell down onto his knees again, and as he did so the blade cut his belly wide open all the way to his breastbone, where it stuck for a second before it was pulled out.