Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2)

by Walker, Robert W.

  "All right, Abe."

  "And may I call you Anna?"

  She looked across at him. "Why not, since you're ... taking liberties."

  "If Kerac's on foot, as the Indiana State Patrol says, then he couldn't have gotten to Chicago yet."

  "Unless he got another vehicle."

  "All roads in were blocked."

  "Then he'd go for another way in."

  They looked at one another, and Abe said, "Port Authority." Abe instantly made a call to a Chicago police dispatcher he knew. "Hannah! Abe Stroud."

  "Abe, you ol' sonofagun, how are you?"

  "I've got a favor to ask."

  "Shoot."

  He explained that he was with Chief More and that they'd come to the conclusion that the asylum escapee and murderer headed toward Chicago, the subject of a three-state manhunt, might have gotten through by using a boat of some sort. "Has Port Authority been alerted, and if so, how long've they been on the case?"

  "Checking, Abe..."

  The chopper careened onward, the smoke of Chicago coming over their horizon. The dispatcher came back on.

  "Looks like they were alerted a few hours after us. No sweat, they're on the job and have been."

  "Any updates?" he asked. "Any recent killings pan out as our boy's work?"

  "Nothing ... just speculation, Abe. You know how the guys like to place their bets."

  "Thanks, Hannah."

  "Will we see you at Precinct One while you're in town?"

  "I'll make an effort to stop by Out."

  "Looks like traveling with you will have some rewards, after all," said Chief More.

  Stroud only smiled, before moving the helicopter toward downtown Chicago and Meigs, calling for airspace and a landing pad.

  It was Anna Laughing More who spoke next as they were descending. "You are well known here?"

  "Only in police circles."

  "Good, then we can make inroads quickly."

  "That's my hope."

  Her voice took on a curious tone next. "I was told that you solved several crimes through psychic means."

  "That's not entirely accurate, but close enough, I suppose," he replied. He didn't care for the label of psychic.

  "Then the CPD will be pleading for you to help them, I suppose? And the newspapers will want interviews."

  "Not likely. Not if I can help it."

  "They will if Kerac is not caught or killed soon. What do you take me for, a--"

  Stroud's patience snapped. "Chief More, my only concern is that Kerac is stopped before he kills again; that is all!"

  "Really? The same motives as mine?"

  "I'm not here on a joyride or an ego trip," he went on, ignoring her. "I'd much rather be somewhere else, somewhere far away from all this, I assure you."

  Stroud concentrated on setting the bird down, cutting the engine. Chicago was blanketed by a low, gray cloud cover and the wind rose up off the mighty lake beside Meigs Field, finagling its wet, icy way across the landing site and past the slowing rotor blades and into the cockpit, causing them to shiver. It awakened Stroud's senses and made his teeth chatter. He said, "Ahhhh, I'd forgotten ... Chicago in springtime."

  All around them stood the monolithic buildings of Chicago's skyline. He got the impression they didn't mean a thing to Anna Laughing More, but the Indian woman from Merimac stared at them in a stony reverie just the same as she might overhanging cliffs. Only the buzz of the typical, busy air traffic made her look away and into Stroud's eyes.

  "The millions of windows ... like a million lives," she said, "or a million victims for Kerac. I don't know how I know, but he's here," she added.

  Stroud took a deep breath and agreed. "I know."

  A code 10, followed by a code 13--officer down--interrupted the silence that had settled between them. Various responses to the call were now coming over the radio. Police from every sector were converging on an area that Stroud knew, one of the many Chicago ship canals along the Calumet River, slip number 4.

  Some cop was saying, "Awful ... torn to ribbons. Never seen anything like it."

  "Come on," said Stroud. "This could be it."

  -7-

  Stroud had arranged for a car for them at the airport, and they were soon crawling through thick police traffic past a sign for the Chicago Port Authority. While Port Authority cops had their own problems, and their own bureaucracy, the P.A. was closer to Customs than to the CPD. Still, officers of the Authority were considered policemen. They carried .38s, and when one was shot or hurt in some other manner, other cops responded. The place was like a convention, but there was another reason why so many policemen came by. They'd been hearing about the possibility of an escaped lunatic making his way here, and from descriptions over the police band, the extent of the mutilation of the officer down, there was a good bet that the Michigan maniac had come through the back door, taking a water route.

  Stroud and Chief More had listened to the reports as they raced here through traffic. Stroud knew his way around the city well, and they'd made the trip in twenty minutes, catching the Dan Ryan and the Chicago Skyway for the Calumet River exit. For Anna More, it was a dazzling feat. The sheer size and congestion of the city unnerved her, but she said nothing.

  Stroud found a niche for the car, a beige Ford LTD, unmarked police car on lend-lease from the CPD. He got out and went into the thick of the crowd of sailors and merchant marines standing about, emerging on the other side into a police barricade, where he was greeted by some who knew him.

  Phil McMasters, Stroud's former police captain, came directly to him. Stroud extended his hand, but McMasters didn't take it. More caught up to Stroud just in time to see the gesture and to feel the intensity in McMaster's eyes when he said, "I thought we'd seen the last of you, Stroud. What're you doing here? Guy with your bucks ought to be lying out on the sand in Aruba."

  "Good to see you, too, Phil."

  The captain looked squarely at Anna More, a look of admiration in his eyes. "Keeping nice company, at least."

  "This is Chief More from Merimac," Stroud said, calmly turning to her and nodding. "She knew Kerac before he went off the deep end."

  "Indian blood, I understand," said McMasters, interrupting Stroud. "Looks like you're--how do they say it?--both of the same camp?"

  "Brothers of the same campfire," she said without skipping a beat.

  "Then I guess you know what we're up against."

  "She knows what Kerac looks like; she's brought photos," added Stroud.

  "Aren't there any fax machines in Michigan?"

  "We're not here to do battle with you, McMasters," said Anna More firmly. "We're here to help put an end to this before anyone else is killed by this man."

  "You're a little late."

  Stroud pushed past McMasters. They'd never gotten on. Phil McMasters' plans for his own future were heavily laden with Chicago politics, and in political circles you didn't draw attention to yourself, but with Abraham Stroud on his "team" it was inevitable. The brew had really spilled over in the course of the Donovan investigation in which Stroud had all but "conjured" up the killer's image during a trance induced by a seizure, in which Stroud remained completely unconscious. When he had awakened, he not only knew what the killer looked like, but he knew that he went by the nickname of Smitty, wore a navy pea coat, sported a goatee and a single earring and had a missing finger on his left hand. This information led to an arrest. McMasters never forgave him.

  "Go ahead, Stroud," said McMasters loudly, drawing everyone's attention, including reporters, "have a look-see, tell us what we should do next. Give us the benefit of your magic."

  "And I thought I was nasty to you," Chief More said in Abe's ear.

  "He's really a fun guy when you get to know him."

  "I'm sure."

  Others backed away from a Port Authority vehicle, the interior of its windows splattered with an array of blood. Forensics and evidence technicians were at work, and the bodies inside the car had not been moved
or disturbed except by sprays and dustings and sample-takings by these men. One of them, a Dr. Ira Howe, recognized Stroud from his days on the force. They exchanged a quiet greeting. Stroud asked More if she could handle this. She said nothing, going to the windshield and peering through the smeared red screen at the decapitated body of one man and the limbless torso of another. She gasped, turned her eyes away and said, "It's him all right. It's Kerac's doing."

  Stroud put his head in through the door. The odor of blood and destroyed flesh was as heady as the stifling odor of death in a confined place could be. Body parts lay in all sections of the vehicle, the dash, the floorboards, the seats, the back and front. The rear windshield was smashed, the remnant portions dripping with blood. It was like looking at a child's toys that'd been completely destroyed, the corpses like broken dolls, the car itself like a shattered plaything.

  He needed relief from the scene, to get out of here quickly, but his eye was caught by a crystal of light and blood where a jagged edge of glass hung on to a teardrop of blood. Something in the microscopic pieces trapped him. Stroud suddenly slid to his knees, feeling a well of blackness overcome him. He felt someone grab hold of him, trying to help him up, but at the same time he recognized the symptoms of a blackout. They'd been less frequent, and for a time, he thought that he'd been done with them altogether, but the god in his head--the steel plate--worked in mysterious ways. His apparent "faint" before the crowd of cops and reporters being held in check was met with a rumble, a stir and some snickering. McMasters looked on, shaking his head as Chief More held Stroud in her arms there on the dirty, wet Port Authority causeway in sight of fishing trawlers, merchant ships and a naval vessel.

  "Help me get him to a hospital, please!" shouted Anna More at the men who stood around gawking.

  "Give him a few minutes," said McMasters. "He'll come out of it, when he wants. Charlie, Joe! Move him to his goddamned car."

  The uniformed officers McMasters called on moved with alacrity, and these men deposited Stroud in the backseat of the LTD. More remained with him, watching the grimaces that came over his disturbed face. He was a handsome man, broad-shouldered, almost too much for the two cops to carry. He had the look of a man who had once been tortured; certainly, he had faced death before. More raked his long strands of dark hair off his forehead, which was wrinkled in thought. Under the eyelids she saw a kinetic pulse beat as if he were watching a film. She did not understand what was happening to him, and why his former captain was taking this so lightly. Stroud ought to be in a hospital. She lifted his hand in hers and began to think of the hours and tiring work he had put in at the farmhouse, his relentless search for the truth both there and at the prison. He'd stressed himself out over a murder which he claimed called out to him in his sleep some three hundred miles away.

  "Stroud." She spoke his name, and it took on new meaning for her. "I'm here with you, Abe." She squeezed his hand. But Abraham Stroud was not there.

  Stroud was not Stroud; rather, he was seeing and feeling and smelling from the body of another. He smelled blood all around him, as if it clung to him. He smelled an animal musk that made him dizzy, but for some reason it was faintly satisfying and familiar. He felt the movement of water under him, under a platform that moved, gliding over water. He felt alert, every sense as sharp and pointed as an ice pick. He felt things crawling on his body, microscopic things--creatures living off him. He felt threatened and afraid with every noise, every creak of the ship he was ... he was hiding on.

  I am Kerac,

  he told himself.

  Accepting this, Stroud calmed and found the odors and the fear bearable. In flashes of insight he saw a large dark-haired figure coming down a gangplank. Someone, a fisherman, was right behind him. He saw flashes of light and then dark. His next image was of large handcuffs around his wrists. They seemed enormous, and yet they held him prisoner and tore at the hair on his wrists. He saw lots of hair caught in the cuffs, and his head throbbed with pain. Then he felt a surge of energy and power that was undeniable and unbelievable at once. He snapped the cuffs and held someone's cranium in his hairy hands, ripping off the man's head as if it were a twig. He saw blood spewing forth, felt it hitting his face and felt himself lapping at it. The final image was of shattered glass--a million pieces--and in the shattering he saw reflections of himself and Kerac merged as one, and over them both the image of a wild animal that he could not place, but a wild animal with fangs that dripped blood ... like the shattered pane had dripped blood.

  Stroud awoke from the blackout with a shiver and with a fearful insight that he dare not believe.

  More had been shaken by his blackout, and Stroud felt a certain embarrassment with her now, although he could not say why ... machismo, he suspected. Other cops had turned green, some had vomited at the sight of the two Port Authority cops mutilated in their own locked car, but Abe Stroud had been the only one present to "faint." Although he knew that it hadn't been fainting, that it was an uncontrollable affliction triggered by forces he had no control over, linked to the steel in his skull, this did little to quell the sense of shame it brought on under the circumstances.

  He instantly pushed Anna away and got to his feet. Wobbly, a little white, he went for McMasters, Anna More following, telling him to take it easy.

  "The killer came in on the fishing trawler, that one," Abe said, pointing it out. "Stowed away. Someone saw him, alerted the Port Authority. With our bulletin out, they checked it out. One of them, dressed in the fisherman's coat and boots, hit the stowaway over the head before saying a word to him. They cuffed him and put him into the car."

  "Sure, sure," said McMasters. "I'm getting all this."

  "You'll find a pair of cuffs missing from one of the P.A. guys."

  Dr. Howe, listening, said, "We'll see if that can be confirmed."

  "The cuffs are still on the guy."

  "You telling me that this madman killed two men with his hands cuffed?"

  "He snapped the bracelets, but they're still attached. He killed them with his bare hands, and he ... he came through the back window because he didn't know how else to escape a locked car."

  McMasters stared at Stroud a moment before he burst out laughing. But Dr. Howe said to McMasters, "Phil, when we got here, the doors--all four of them--were locked, and the keys were in the ignition. That didn't go out over the wire. There was no way for Dr. Stroud to know this."

  "There's something else," said Stroud.

  "May as well go on," replied McMasters with an impatient wave of his hand.

  "This guy ... he ... he thinks ... he thinks he's an animal."

  "Well, Christ, we know that much."

  "No, you don't get it. I mean he really thinks he is some kind of ... of prehistoric animal. Cage was right."

  "Cage?" asked Dr. Howe. "But he's in southern Illinois on one of his digs."

  "He's in Grand Rapids, Dr. Howe, looking over Kerac's earlier victims."

  "So what do you mean, Cage is right?" asked McMasters.

  "Kerac kills with his teeth and his hands, or what Kerac sees as his ... his claws."

  "This is pretty weird shit, Stroud," McMasters said. "Even if the guy thinks he's a tiger or a lion maybe, Christ ... he couldn't rip a man's head off like that with just his hands and his goddamned teeth."

  McMasters curled his finger at Chief More, asking her to join him in a little private conference. As he took Anna More off a few feet, McMasters stopped to shout orders at the uniforms surrounding them to keep people back. Stroud knew that McMasters wasn't ready to accept him on the case, much less his bizarre theory.