by Ray Garton
“It goes, George, it goes. You got Emily Crane’s attacker down here?”
George nodded, swallowed his food. “Yeah, he just came in. A John Doe.”
“No ID on him?”
“Nothin’ on him but his torn and filthy clothes. A transient, I think. The victim sure did a number on him. Took his left eyeball right out of the socket.” He put his sandwich down on a piece of paper towel and brushed his hands together a few times to rid them of crumbs. “You wanna see him?”
“Yes, please.”
George stood and jerked his head toward the doors. “C’mon in. I haven’t had time to cut him open yet. I was gonna do that after my break.”
George pushed through the door on the left and Hurley followed him in.
Only half of the overhead fluorescents were on in the morgue. It was dim and cool and shadowy. On the right wall were a few large chrome-fronted drawers. George led him to the left, around a pale green curtain that hung from a track on the ceiling. On the right were two chrome tables with shallow gutters on the edges and a scale hanging above each. To the left were two gurneys with white sheets on them. On the far gurney, the sheet rose up over the fat belly of the body it covered.
Hurley caught a smell in the room—a harsh, stinging body odor.
George froze in place and made an abrupt coughing sound of shock in his throat.
The gurney closest to them was empty. The sheet had been thrown back, and whoever had been lying there was gone.
“Holy shit,” George said, his voice suddenly hoarse and breathy. He stared at the empty gurney with his mouth hanging open. “He’s gone,” he said in an almost-whisper.
“Who?” Hurley said.
“The John Doe.” He held out his arms at the gurney, palms up. “He was here, right here! Where the hell did he go?”
“Would someone move him?” Hurley asked.
“Who? Why? I’ve been here all along, nobody could get in or out without me seeing them.”
Concern wrinkled Hurley’s forehead—he’d never seen George Purdy look so upset. “Well, someone had to take it, right?” Hurley said. “Because he was dead ... right? George? He was dead.”
“Yes, of course he was dead. You think they send living people down here?”
“Well, he didn’t just sit up and walk out, did he? I mean, he was naked, right?”
George nodded as he gawked at the empty table. “I cut his clothes off and threw them away. What there was of them.”
“What’s the protocol when this happens?” Hurley said.
George shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s never happened before. Every once in awhile, somebody gets funny and pulls a hoax—they move a body around, or something. Change the toe tags, maybe, to make my life miserable. But never anything like this.”
As George spoke, Hurley heard something. It took him a moment to identify it. He had to shift his attention from what George was saying to focus on the sound—the quiet smack of bare feet on the tile floor. Hurley frowned. While George was still talking, Hurley turned, went to the curtain, and peered around the edge. He was just in time to see the left door swing the last few inches until it was closed. Someone had just quietly sneaked out of the morgue, someone wearing no shoes.
Hurley moved around the curtain and pushed through the door. He looked left, then to the right, where he caught the briefest glimpse of someone rounding the corner in the corridor—a foot, a flash of long, stringy, dark hair.
He started walking quickly toward the corner. He could hear the bare footfalls—the person was running. Hurley broke into a jog and rounded the corner.
It was a straight stretch down to the end of the corridor—no one was there. He hurried to the elevator and looked up at the numbers above the doors. The elevator was not moving. The barefoot runner had taken the stairs.
Hurley went through the door to the left of the elevators—a rectangular plastic plaque beneath the door’s square window read “STAIRS”. He heard the slapping footsteps up above. Seconds after Hurley started jogging up the stairs, he heard the door open and close up on the first floor. He picked up his pace and reached the door in no time, pulled it open so hard it slammed against the wall, and threw himself through it.
He looked both directions in the corridor but saw nothing. He stopped and listened a moment and heard shouting in the Emergency Room waiting area. He ran in that direction and ducked through the open door into the waiting room.
Hugh Crane was standing in there, his youngest girl in his arms, the other two children staring open-mouthed at the door that led outside. The door was slowly swinging closed.
“Did somebody just run through here?” Hurley said.
Hugh Crane nodded frantically and said, “Yeah, a naked man! Your deputy saw him and just went running after him out that door.”
Getting winded, Hurley ran across the waiting room, nicked his leg on the corner of a chair bolted to a whole row of chairs, and nearly fell on his face. Pain radiated up and down his leg from the point of impact. He pushed through the door and limped outside into the cold, wet night.
The parking lot hissed with falling rain. Off in the distance, in the dark, beyond the glow of the Emergency Room sign overhead, he heard footsteps fading rapidly. Hurley started running again, but instead of following the footsteps, he ran to his SUV and opened the door, reached in for the flashlight. He slammed the door and turned around, clicked the light on.
He swept the beam back and forth slowly, but there was no sign of Garrett or the naked man. He could no longer hear them, either. He saw no sense in running after them himself. For one thing, he didn’t know where they’d gone, and he was sure Garrett could take care of himself.
He was rapidly getting wet in the rain. He returned to the truck and put his flashlight back on the passenger seat, closed the door. He was walking back to the Emergency Room at a good clip when he heard something that made his scrotum shrivel up—from somewhere nearby came a high, piercing howl that sharply cut through the night. He froze a moment, then spun around and looked in the direction of the sound, into the darkness.
It had been close, and it definitely had been a howl.
A coyote, he thought. It’s got to be a coyote. Hell, we don’t have wolves around Big Rock. Do we?
Coyotes were common around the area. But Hurley rejected that theory almost as quickly as it had occurred to him. Coyotes did not howl so much as they yipped. And the sound they made was not as strong, not as throaty and full, not as sustained.
A dog, he thought. Maybe it was a dog. Dogs howl, too.
He stood there in the rain, getting soaked, and waited for it to sound again. But it did not. All he heard was the rain. There was a white blink of lightning a good distance away. A low growl of distant thunder rolled through the clouds, like God clearing His throat.
Finally, Hurley turned and went back inside, dripping wet.
Hugh Crane was seated now, still holding his little girl, who appeared to be asleep. The other two children were across the room rummaging through some magazines. There were some storybooks on the table as well, and the little boy was looking them over.
Hurley lowered himself into the chair across from Hugh and leaned forward, put his elbows on his spread knees and dangled his hands between them.
“How’s Emily?” he said.
Hugh shrugged. “They took her over to radiology for some X-rays. Her ribs, she hurt them, and they want to see if any are broken. I’m just waiting for her to get back.”
“Can you tell me what the man looked like?” Hurley said. “The man who ran through here?”
“Well, like I said, he was naked as a jaybird, of all things. He had long hair and a kind of stubbly beard. And boy, did he smell bad.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, he ran through here pretty fast. Your deputy took a dive for him and almost knocked him over, but he missed by an inch or so and he fell on the floor. But he got right up and ran after him.”
Hurley s
hook his head. A naked man. And he’d run out of the morgue, where a naked corpse was missing.
“One thing,” Hugh said. “There was something wrong with his left eye. Looked all bloody.”
Hurley frowned.
Took his left eyeball right out of the socket, George had said.
“Thanks, Hugh.” Hurley stood and left the waiting room, went back down to the morgue.
He found George back at the desk, putting his lunch back in its bag. “I can’t finish my lunch,” he said, frowning. “I’ve never lost a body before, man, I mean ... a whole body, just gone. You’re wet.”
“What did your John Doe look like, George?” Hurley said.
George leaned back in his chair, frowning thoughtfully. “Well, he was gangly, medium height, long hair, unshaved.” He shook his head. “I’m flummoxed. I got a missing corpse, and I’m supposed to—”
“He stank?”
“Yeah, he was pretty ripe. And like I said, his left eye was gone.”
“The man who left your morgue ran upstairs and through the ER waiting room. My deputy chased him outside. A man in the waiting room—the husband of the victim of your missing John Doe—told me he had long hair and beard stubble, that he smelled bad, and that there was something wrong with his left eye. And did I mention he was naked?”
George stared at Hurley for a long time, lips parted, forehead creased. Finally, he said, “Then that had to be the guy.”
“Your guy, you mean?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t dead. That’s the only explanation. But why the hell did he run out of here like that? Naked, for crying out loud.”
“He woke up in a morgue. What would you do? Did you check for a pulse when you got him?”
“Hell, no. I figure if they bring ‘em down here, they’re pretty damned sure they’re dead. All I did was remove and dispose of his filthy clothes.” He ran a hand back through his hair and sighed. “I’m gonna talk to the big boss when he comes in tomorrow morning. I don’t know what I’m going to say—one of our bodies got up and ran out? Sir?—but I’m gonna talk to him.” George’s entire face darkened. Almost whispering, he said, “Jesus ... thank God he got up and ran out before I cut him open.”
“You don’t even want to think about the lawsuit that would’ve brought down on the hospital,” Hurley said with a smirk.
“I’ll have nightmares about it.”
Hurley pushed away from the desk. “Okay. I’m going back upstairs to see if my deputy caught the naked corpse.”
“Good luck.”
Back in the waiting room, Garrett had not yet returned.
Hugh had not moved from his seat and still held his little girl. He stared up at the television, but his eyes did not seem to be focused on it—he seemed lost in thought. The other two children had returned to their seats—the girl was reading a Highlights magazine while the boy read a storybook.
“My deputy come back through here yet?” Hurley asked.
Hugh blinked a few times and looked at Hurley. “Uh, no, not yet. At least, I didn’t see him. I haven’t been paying much attention to anything.”
Hurley went back outside. The rain had receded to a light sprinkle. He went to his truck and got the flashlight again. There was a small umbrella on the floor, but he saw no point in using it now—he was already soaked, his khaki uniform dark with water.
He turned on the flashlight and walked toward the entrance to the parking lot. The road to the hospital forked, with one side coming to the ER parking lot, the other going to the parking lot in front of the building. He walked all the way to that fork, his shoes crunching over grit on the wet pavement.
A blue Ford Focus came up the hill and took the left side of the fork. Hurley stepped out of its way as it drove into the Emergency Room parking lot.
Hurley saw no sign of Garrett. He called his name once, twice, then turned and went back to the parking lot. He turned left and went to the lot’s edge. The pavement ended and rocky earth took over. It sloped down steeply into bushes and a few pines. On the other side of that patch of sloping woods was the road that led up to the hospital.
He heard something. It was so quiet that, had it been raining any harder, he never would have heard it. It was a distinct, wet, slurping and smacking, accompanied by an occasional low, quiet growl.
“Garrett?” Hurley called. “Garret!” he shouted, louder this time.
The sound stopped. It was replaced by a frantic rustling in the bushes, a sound that faded quickly down the slope.
Hurley started down the slope, stepping carefully, but trying to hurry. The ground was wet and muddy, slippery under his feet. Once, the mud gave way beneath him and he started sliding down, out of control. He took another quick two steps and came out of the slide, continued down. He zigzagged around bushes, ferns, stood against the trunk of a pine tree for a moment, then went farther down.
He tripped over Garrett and fell flat on his face in the mud. He clutched the flashlight hard as he rolled, until his back slammed against the trunk of a pine tree, sending sharp pain up and down his spine.
Leaning heavily on the tree, Hurley climbed to his feet, covered with mud. He turned and shone the flashlight back up the slope. It fell on Garrett. Hurley trudged back up the muddy slope and stopped at the prone figure of his deputy.
Garrett’s leather jacket had been pulled half off, his spread arms almost completely out of the sleeves. The shirt of his uniform had been torn open. The undershirt beneath it had been ripped to shreds. So had Garrett’s abdomen. Ropes of intestines hung out of the great hole that was his torso. Hurley moved the flashlight’s beam up to Garrett’s face and saw that his throat had been torn out. His eyes and mouth were open wide.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Garrett,” Hurley said, his voice broken. His stomach turned over inside and for a moment, he thought he was going to vomit. But he swallowed frantically and held it down.
Then he stopped moving, stopped breathing, and listened.
No more rustling bushes, no sounds of movement. Only the gentle whisper of the drizzling rain, the dripping of rainwater from the branches of trees.
Hurley was alone in the patch of woods with his eviscerated deputy.
3
An Animal
An hour later, three Sheriff’s Department cruisers were parked in the Emergency Room parking lot, and four deputies were spread out, looking for the naked man. Sharp flashlight beams cut through the rainy night in the strip of woods on the slope that ran down to Finch Road—the road that led up to the hospital—as well as across the road in another patch of woods. So far, no sign of the man had been found—except for Deputy Garrett’s eviscerated corpse.
Hurley sat at the desk outside the morgue, listening to his deputies communicate on his portable radio, waiting for word that the man had been found, and waiting for George Purdy to finish the autopsy on Garrett. George had invited Hurley to observe the autopsy, but he wasn’t up to it—finding Garrett as he had was enough for one night.
He heard the door push open and turned to see George come out of the morgue in a long white smock stained with blood. He wiped his hands on a strip of paper towel as he smiled down at Hurley.
“Well, that’s done,” George said.
Hurley stood. “So, what’s the story?”
“It’s a strange story, Sheriff,” George said. “Very strange.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“From what I found, Sheriff, you shouldn’t be looking for a man. You should be looking for an animal.”
“An animal?”
George took in a deep breath as he nodded. With the wadded paper towel in his right hand, he put his fists on his hips, elbows out at his sides. “Your deputy was partially eaten, Sheriff. His insides and his throat were torn by fangs, and his intestines and other organs were partially eaten. By something.”
Hurley frowned as he looked at the deputy coroner, tilted his head to one side. Before he could speak, George continued:
“There’s no way
my John Doe could have done what was done to your deputy, Sheriff. It was an animal, most likely a large animal.”
“Like what? A ... a bear, maybe?”
“Possibly. A bear, a mountain lion, something big and strong, with claws and fangs.”
“We don’t have bears around here.”
George shrugged. “You’ve got something out there, Sheriff—something big and hungry, now with a taste for people. You hear stories all the time these days about wild animals showing up in all kinds of places. Civilization spreads and drives animals out of their natural homes and into towns and cities. Surely there are bears up in these mountains, right? It wouldn’t be impossible for one to make its way down here.”
Hurley remembered the howling he’d heard earlier that night. He was just as certain there were no wolves around Big Rock as he was that there were no bears, so he decided not to mention it. It probably was, after all, a dog. But he filed it away in the back of his mind.
“You’re sure it couldn’t have been done by your John Doe?” Hurley asked.
“My John Doe was unarmed—he was naked, remember—and he didn’t have fangs. It took fangs to tear your deputy open like that, Sheriff, fangs made the bites on that body. It wasn’t done with a knife, or any other weapon. There are bite marks around the edges of the openings in both the throat and the abdomen and on the arms, bite marks made by large jaws—marks no human could make.”
Hurley nodded as he slowly stood. “So I’m looking for an animal.”
“That’s right. You might want to tell your deputies who are out there searching tonight. They could be in danger.”
“Thank you, George. I appreciate it.”
“No problem, Sheriff.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“Not too soon, I hope. It’s never anything good that brings us together.”
They shook hands and George went back through the swinging double doors.
As Hurley started down the corridor, he took the microphone clipped to his shoulder. Its curly black cord was attached to the radio on his belt. He depressed the button with his thumb and said, “This is Hurley. Come on in, all of you. I’ll meet you at my rig in the parking lot.”