There was something that had happened between McMasters and More which Stroud could not place, but the strain now between them was evident. It was sexual in nature, but exactly what, Stroud was unsure. Had McMasters propositioned her, and had she refused? Or had they mutually consented? Knowing McMasters, Stroud went out on a limb and guessed that he'd made a crack about how he'd always wondered how Indian women were in the sack, had pursued the question all day and had finally gotten soundly rejected. At least, this was how Stroud hoped it had gone.
McMasters tossed Cage's report back down on the desk, having only half read it. "Ira, when Cage gets back, maybe we'd best measure him for a straitjacket."
"Captain McMasters," said Ira Howe calmly, "you'd better make it two straitjackets."
"What?"
"I've examined the worst of the wounds to those P.A. guys. I've also come up with similar conclusions to those made by Dr. Cage. We are not dealing with any knowns here. If there is a weapon that simulates the bites and tears of an animal so closely, I do not know what this weapon is."
"You're all..." McMaster's eyes fell on More. "Crazy." He stormed out with the fanfare of a man who'd like to rip a door from its hinges, locate the nearest pub and drink himself to sleep.
"I don't think we're going to get much cooperation from McMasters after tonight," said More. "He really doesn't want to cooperate on police matters ... and if he has anything to say about it, his unit will apprehend Kerac without any further assistance from me."
"I take it you two didn't get on very well."
"Like two rams in the same stall."
"That bad, huh?"
"Don't give me that. You knew the moment you saw us again."
"I had an inkling."
"Your inklings, as you call them, may be our only hope of putting an end to Kerac's newfound career. So, keep inkling, Abe Stroud." There was a weariness in her voice like the strained breath of a racer when it's over and she's trying to recover. "In the meantime, Mac--as he asked me to call him--will be getting nowhere. The man is insufferable."
"At last," said Abe.
"What?"
"We agree on something."
This made her laugh.
"Nice to see you smile," he said.
"You must admit, there hasn't been an awful lot to smile about. You should have seen those nieces and nephews of Kerac's, all skin and bone and big-eyed, staring at me like ... like I was some kind of answer to their prayers."
"Maybe you are."
She laughed again and shook her head. "No, not likely ... although I did slip a twenty to their mother. Kerac's brother, who brought them all here, is out of work, can't hold a job ... lost, like most Indians in a city like this. Does day labor where he can find it. Oldest girl has begun a family of her own."
"Do you think that Kerac will go to them?"
"Who knows?" Her frustration returned to the surface like a surging wave. "Who can read this man's mind? Who can second-guess a madman?"
"Look this report over, Anna," he said to her, "and I'll make some arrangements for dinner, and we'll talk about who can read Kerac's mind."
She stared at him a moment, taking the report in her hands. Howe had had some items to see to in the lab, and he'd faded from the room just after McMasters took his leave.
"There must be something interesting here," she said, going to the desk seat he'd vacated, placing the report below the lamp and taking a deep breath before diving in.
"Yes, there is much of interest in Cage's findings. But McMasters is right. It's near impossible to make any sense of the report."
"Maybe Cage has been in Michigan too long."
Now he laughed. "Could be ... could be. I'll be back in fifteen, twenty minutes."
He left her alone with Cage's bizarre findings. He meant to use them as a path into his own "bizarre" findings. He wanted to share his awful vision at the P.A. car with her. He had to share it with someone, and Cage wouldn't be back for another twenty-four hours.
-9-
The soft light and soothing music provided a relaxing atmosphere, and the food at the Palmer House was the best in the city. Anna More came down in an evening dress which Stroud had left in her room via the bellman. Stroud was a little surprised when he saw her moving across the room in the dress, half certain she'd called room service and was going to stay in. He pictured her tossing the evening gown over the bellman's head as she sent him packing. But here she was, her proud bearing drawing attention to her. She might be a model or a star in town for a shoot, or so people around them must think as she elegantly stepped up to Stroud's table. She certainly didn't look like a cop.
"You look very beautiful," he said to her.
She smiled and slid into the plush seat across from him. "And you have exquisite taste, but how did you know my size?"
"You forget, I was once a detective."
"I can keep no secrets from you, then?"
"Oh, don't be so sure..."
"What?"
"There are many, many things about you I would like to know, but I fear I may never know."
She blushed only slightly under his gaze, the lighting here giving a tinge of turquoise to his eyes. In this light, they shimmered with something undeniably dangerous. "I am famished," she said, trying to avert her eyes from his, and his attention from her, going for the menu.
"I've taken the liberty of ordering for you. I hope you don't mind."
"You always like to take charge, be in control, don't you, Abraham Stroud?"
"It's a flaw, I know."
"Perhaps not, if you ordered well."
"I did, I can assure you."
"So full of assurances, too, aren't you? But tell me, Abraham. What assurances are there at all that we ... you and I ... have any future whatsoever together?"
"None, I'm sure. But tonight, let's be friends and let's enjoy the peace, the bread, the wine."
She smiled at his response, and he returned the smile. "Tonight," she said, lifting her glass as soon as he filled it with a blush zinfandel. "To tonight, then. May it end as peacefully as it has begun."
He accepted the toast, but there was an uneasy pulse beat that ran along his arteries and showed clearly in his eyes. She saw it there and realized the unspoken truth: the night would end in horror for someone outside the huge window where the darkness was accentuated by a million points of light.
"So nice here, like this," she said. "Why can't our lives be forever filled with moments like this, Abe?"
"I couldn't agree with you more."
"But they can't be. It's always out there, isn't it?" she said, indicating the dark just the other side of the huge panes of glass that overlooked the gusty downtown section of Chicago where shadows roamed unchecked.
"Evil is as old as mankind."
"And more clever."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"And it is relentless."
He nodded. "Anna, at the Port Authority, when I ... lost it--"
"Your blackout, yes?"
"Let's call it a trance. Sounds better."
"McMasters said you quit the force because of them."
"McMasters is full of shit. I quit to become what I am, an archeologist."
"He said the ... trances ... were getting in the way of the performance of your duty, and no one wanted to work with you."
"I really don't care to discuss McMasters or my years on the force here."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she replied. "I was ... curious."
"I came out of Vietnam with a steel plate in my head, a band that keeps my skull intact. Ever since, I've had premonitions, nightmares and the occasional blackout. During those blackouts, I am given information..."
"Given information?" She was incredulous. "By whom?"
"I don't know." It was much easier to say this than to go into detail about telepathy or talking ghosts. "All I know, Anna, is that for a brief moment this morning, I ... I was in Kerac's mind."
"What?"
"I connected with him.
I felt him ... felt as if I were him."
She said nothing, sat sipping at the wine, looking off, hoping the food would come, covering her left hand with her right, legs and feet adjusting. Her nervousness with him had begun. "You knew I had some psychic capabilities," he continued. "It could help us locate Kerac, if we can put some of the pieces together."
"The pieces?"
"Fragmented images that I got. Some make no sense whatsoever."
"McMasters told me what you'd told him at the scene."
"And I'm sure he presented it in the worst possible light."
"All right, tell me in your own words."
Their salads arrived, and Stroud waited for the waiter to disappear before he told her all that had gone through his mind. He then added, "And as the day has gone by, other images, bits and pieces, really, have somehow come clear as if rising to the surface after being weighted down, images I had seen but which had been blocked until now."
"Such as?"
"Dead horses ... lots of dead horses, some sheep and cattle, all dead."
She stared at him. "Maybe you're just too clever for your own good, Stroud," she said grimly.
"Why? What do you mean?"
"Someone in Merimac told you; Miller probably. Damn him."
"Wait, whoa, Anna, no one told me a damned thing about dead horses."
She tried to get up from the table, but he reached across and took firm hold of her, their eyes meeting. "I swear, this just came to me ... like a dream."
"Kerac raised horses for a time when he was a teenager ... with his father."
"Something happened to the horses? A disease maybe?"
"Someone systematically destroyed them, killed them. Kerac's herd was small. The loss of a single horse meant a great deal."
"Was this aimed at Kerac? His father?"
"It was random and indiscriminant."
"Other small ranchers, too?"
"With cattle, sometimes goats, sheep."
"How long ago?"
"Two years."
"Then it stopped?"
"Just like that, but not before Kerac was wiped out, his father dead and--" She stopped herself.
He saw the flash of thought go through her mind and finished it for her, "And you left him."
"Yes, and I left him." She was stunned that she had finally made the small confession, and he was equally stunned.
"I see. Were you married or just living together?"
"We planned to marry, but everything started to unravel. He didn't take it too well when I began to earn more money as a deputy than he was ever likely to make. It destroyed us as surely as the carnage to his horses."
"Carnage?"
"Carnage, yes. They were cut open, gutted, the throats slashed. Kerac had had the horses insured, but he never saw a penny of the money."
"Why not?"
"Because someone started a rumor that he had said during a drunk that he ought to go out and destroy all of the rest of his horses; people put two and two together and decided he was just wild enough to kill his own animals."
"Was he?"
"He was desperate ... went strange after his father died. At the point that I left him ... I don't know, but now ... with all that has happened, yes ... yes, he must've destroyed those poor horses."
"Why didn't you confide this to me before?"
"Christ, that was years ago. Kerac disappeared from the home reserve, went off to Chicago with his brother and their family with big plans. Next thing I know he's in Grand Rapids working as a guide, and I'm happy for him, because I hear he's really making a go of it. Then he's in the prison, in the asylum ward for butchering the last group of men he'd taken up into the woods, and the details ... the details remind me of the dead horses."
"None of that explains the cattle and sheep on other farms," said Stroud.
"Story goes that Kerac, to cover his tracks and to collect on the insurance to the horses, went about destroying other animals as well, to make it look good, like the work of wolves or other predators."
"You have wolves up there?"
"We have everything in those woods."
"Do you believe Kerac was clever enough to do what everyone says he did?"
"The Kerac I knew loved horses, but ... but people change. The mind is so fragile, and when people get desperate ... who knows?"
"Was he ever arrested for these animal mutilations?"
"There was an arrest, but he was let go for lack of evidence. There was only hearsay to hold him on."
"And you were one of the cops that had to haul him in?"
"That's the way it went."
"And yet his brother's family today treated you so well?"
"Everyone knew that Johnny was a little different, a little crazy. Crazy Indian ... and everyone accepted it, up to a point. Now, with what's following Johnny wherever he goes, no one knowing him would hesitate to put a bullet through his eyes, including his brother's wife. She's ready for him, if he shows. She intends to protect her children. Yes, they were glad to see me. They think I can stop him. I should be with them now, instead of here."
"Funny..."
"What's that?"
"The dead horses I saw were strangely colored--dead but standing straight up, rigid and silent, eyes wide with fright."
"Strangely colored? Kerac's horses were grays and browns, one or two Appaloosas."
"Spots, right?"
"Across the rump, yes."
"No green ones, huh?"
"Maybe in a UFO." She laughed nervously, afraid she'd said something she shouldn't have. Coming from McMasters, it would have been insulting, but Stroud knew there was no venom in her words.
"Yeah, a UFO horse, maybe."
The steaming vegetables and sumptuous lobster tails arrived, delighting her. Stroud called for more wine. For a time they ate in silence. Halfway through the course, she said, "You certainly have extravagant taste."
"Only when I'm with beautiful women."
"Which is often, I'm sure."
"There is no one quite as lovely as you in my life, Anna."
"Really?"
"Finish your meal."
"Why? Do you have further plans for me?"
"There," he said, pointing toward the four-member band, piano and dance floor, where several couples weaved about in close embrace. "I'd very much enjoy your company on the dance floor."
Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2) Page 9