Wilding Nights

by Lee Killough

Hertzel shook his head. “Never mind. I mean your killer used his teeth...just like he did in the first murder.”

  He must be kidding. Except Hertzel’s voice carried no hint of humor in it, and Zane remembered the damage teeth inflicted on Demry’s body. “Does the human jaw have the power to bite through a spine?”

  Hertzel picked up the head again and ran a finger across bone protruding from the torn flesh. “Maybe if you have enough adrenaline. Hyenas’ jaws are that strong...and in Nam I saw a sentry dog decapitate another dog in one bite.”

  “But the human mouth won’t fit over a human neck.”

  Hertzel shrugged. “This cervical vertebra has been sheared through.” He rotated the head several times, squinting at the neck. “My guess is he severed the spine, then ripped apart the soft tissue in another couple of bites.”

  All while on the run. Cold ran through Zane.

  His phone chimed in his pocket.

  “Zane...it’s Kirsten.” As always, she managed to take an accent that oozed like honey and still sound coolly sophisticated. “I should be insulted that you’re calling me just about a painting.”

  He doubted she felt any insult. While the two of them had similar tastes in art and music and enjoyed each other’s company on a date, both recognized that ended at the door to home. He could not relax in the polished decor of her condo, while in her one visit to his loft she kept politely using the word “potential”, and suggesting wall treatments that could be applied once the “clutter”–the bookshelves--was removed.

  “Ah...your question about the value of a painting by Honora Goodnight?” Her voice went smoothly casual. “If you’re asking about that big landscape of yours, we would have to examine it to see if it’s truly a Goodnight. Even then being unsigned...” Zane pictured her shrugging.

  A studied nonchalance that kindled excitement in him. If she were trying to hide her interest, the painting must be worth something.

  “Honora told me it’s one of hers, and while it isn’t signed, it’s inscribed to a lover.”

  “She told--just a minute.” Sound went dead. She must have hit the Mute button. A minute later Kirsten came back on the line. “That changes the situation. Provenance is everything. While she’s still producing work your painting isn’t worth as much as it may be when she’s dead, of course, but if you’re lucky, to be crass about it, you won’t have to wait long for it to appreciate.”

  Zane frowned. “You expect her to die soon?”

  “Well...she’s in her nineties after all.”

  What? He stared at the phone. “Come on. She’s nowhere near that age.”

  Kirsten’s voice took on the tone of someone speaking to a difficult child. “Mr. Wyner--that is, the elder Mr. Wyner who first opened the gallery--sold some of her first paintings in the late twenties. She was quite notorious, he says...a big reason the twenties roared on the Gulf Coast. She partied all night, drank like a fish, smoked cigars, wore men’s clothes, and slept with anything that had a dick.”

  Zane felt stunned. How was that possible? “But I’ve seen–” Belatedly, he realized Kirsten had gone on talking.

  She sighed. “Try staying on this planet, darlin’. Even though Ms. Goodnight is still living, Mr. Wyner, my boss, would like to see the landscape. He might feel it worth making an offer for.”

  “Tell Mr. Wyner thank you but I’m not interested in selling.” The fact he wanted the painting told Zane volumes about its value, however. “Look, I’ve got to go, but, Kirsten, thank you very much for the information.” He made a mental note to send her flowers, something in a minimalist Japanese arrangement.

  Although he returned to watching the autopsy, Zane saw only the image of Honora last night. Some women did not look their age, but...that much younger? Maybe, he mused, she had a self-portrait somewhere growing ever more decrepit...like the fictional Dorian Gray. Or the elder Mr. Wyner had gone ga-ga and remembered incorrectly.

  Well, he had one way to check. He looked up the number for the county treasurer’s office and called it, asking for Stacie Eimers. She clerked in the office. They dated a few times last year and had fun as long as they never came back to his place. She saw Satan in the painting, à la Disney’s “A Night On Bald Mountain,” and it gave her the creeps.

  “Stacie, this is Zane Kerr. A case I’m on has raised questions about some local real estate. Can you help me?”

  At the end of the room Pedicaris opened the cooler door. She and her assistant pulled out a gurney and rolled it toward the second autopsy table. Surrette’s body? Zane tried to keep watching both her and Hertzel.

  Stacie said, “What do you need?”

  “To know who has the title to the property at 1200 North Parkview, and how long they’ve had it.”

  “Oh, that should be easy enough. I’ll get back to you.”

  Pedicaris and her assistant slid their draped body onto the autopsy table.

  “I’ll never again be able to think of biting someone’s head off as just a figure of speech,” Hertzel said wryly. “But this is what’s really scary.” He picked up the severed hand, frozen in a clutching position. “See these ligaments hanging out? They’ve been stretched until they tore, not bitten through. The skin is torn, too. The only way I see that happening is your victim was gripping the car door and killer jerked him away so hard and fast the arm just ripped free of the hand. I can’t imagine the strength that takes.” He shook his head. “Knowing this freak is running around makes me want to send my family far out of town.”

  The cold turned into ice. If that feeling spread through town...

  Then he forgot everything else as Pedicaris stripped the drape her body. Bright tattoos covered it from neck to thighs and down his arms over muscular biceps to where a t-shirt sleeve would end.

  Hertzel whistled.

  “He is beautiful, isn’t he,” Pedicaris said. “Almost makes me want to turn ghoul and save his skin.” She ran a gloved hand down across his chest and down his biceps, sighing. “What a bod, too. We should all be in such good shape at forty-five. Killing him really is criminal.”

  Edging near that table so he could look the body over, Zane saw why the Sheriff’s Department labeled Surrette a shark victim. The right leg ended raggedly at mid-thigh. The left leg had suffered a similar traumatic amputation just above the knee. Most of his hands and face were gone, too, leaving visible the blood-flecked foam in his mouth and remains of his nose, a clear sign of drowning.

  Maybe a shark did attack him. Zane had witnessed phenomenal strength in people but... biting through an adult male femur? Surely the attacker’s anatomy would fail first...his teeth break, his jaw dislocate, something.

  Pedicaris picked up one arm and rotated it, studying the wrist. “Jeff, get a picture of these marks.” She tapped the linear, parallel abrasions on his wrist. Marks Zane recognized instantly. “The ones on his other wrist, too.” She looked around at Zane. “This man--”

  “Has been handcuffed.” “Taken” Allison had said. The victim had been taken in front of Rick’s. Did she see the handcuffs in her vision and just not mention them? Or not want to mention them, perhaps. Peter Makepeace had ready access to handcuffs.

  Pedicaris continued her preliminary examination of the body, then suddenly straightened and glanced around. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  He tried to sound innocent. “What do you mean?”

  “It seemed strange you’d be breathing down my neck for a drowning and shark attack, but now when I see these aren’t shark bites, I can’t help wondering if you suspected that already.”

  He shrugged. “We thought there might be a chance he was connected to our case...but I don’t see how it’s possible. If a shark isn’t responsible maybe he got caught by a boat propeller?” Zane realized he wanted it to be a propeller...something logical.

  Hertzel strolled over and peered at the stumps. “No...that isn’t propeller trauma, and you’re right, Zena, it isn’t a shark bite either. Whatever did this took a bunch of sm
aller bites, chewing its way through--son of a bitch!” He looked up at her. “It’s that same bite mark.”

  She nodded.

  Goosebumps rippled down Zane’s arms. “Are you sure?”

  Pedicaris grimaced. “Pretty sure. Jeff, pictures of this bite mark and....” She leaned down close to the other stump and examined the remains of each hand in turn. “This left hand, too. Nice clear bite there. It looks like a second conical cusp before we see a molar.” She straightened. “Kerr, don’t try arresting this guy, okay? Just stand well back and blow him away. Then let me do the autopsy. I want to see his choppers.”

  Zane’s phone chimed.

  Stacie Eimers said, “The property belongs to Honora Goodnight. It transferred to her from Olivia Goodnight in 1935.”

  So unless Honora was a toddler when the title transferred, that substantiated the claim of her age.

  “And...I don’t know if you need this, but it’s interesting. This family’s a plank owner.”

  He blinked at the phone. “A what?”

  “Plank owner. They helped build Arenosa. Honora Goodnight is just the third name on the title and they’ve all been Goodnights. Olivia took over title in 1899 from Ophelia Goodnight, who was granted the land in 1867. That’s about as early as you’ll find titles around here.”

  It was interesting. Did it mean anything?

  After calling a florist and ordering flowers for Kirsten and Stacie before he forgot, he went back to the autopsies and stood staring at Surrette’s legs, the image of the alien hunter rising up against the sky in his mind. No man could bit off those legs. Impossible. What were they dealing with?

  And what did Allison know about it?

  3.

  Garroway waved his ID card in front of the A & I door reader. “Being outraged and grim about these murders is all very well but we’ll need some meat to throw the wolves tomorrow.”

  “How about activating a major case squad?” Dan Browning, the Information Officer, said. “That will show mobilization of our forces and our recognition of the gravity of the situation.”

  Allison winced. “Additional bodies can’t do more than Kerr and I are now.” Not human bodies, or else more bodies might be exactly what she ended up with.

  Garroway grunted. “Then the two of you, Carillo, and I need to huddle and come up with a new game plan. We’ve got to nail this bastard before the media and this town spiral into panic.” He stalked on toward his office. “Whether you sleep or eat from now on I leave to your own conscience.”

  Speaking of not sleeping. She stepped into an interview room, where she could call Gary Golden in private.

  “I’m looking, I’m looking!” Gary said sullenly. “It isn’t easy. His girlfriends are night people and pissed I’m waking them up.” He paused. “But I have a lead. One says Peter talked last week about a fancy place he had temporary access to...somewhere on the bay.” He paused again. “You know there’s an ATL on Peter’s car?”

  Kerr’s doing of course. “No problem. You keep digging so we don’t see that turn into a murder warrant.”

  She tried Peter’s number again, left another message, more emphatic than the last one, then called Kerr.

  He said, “John Surrette drowned, but he has bite marks like Demry’s.” He paused. “How do you suppose it’s possible for the killer to have bitten off Surrette’s legs?”

  The question, asked as though he expected her to have an answer, caught her enough by surprise that she did not have to pretend to be startled. “He did what? Holy shit.” Son of a bitch! Was the rogue trying to destroy them all?

  Allison wanted to shred something in frustration at her impotence. This had to stop...before more butchery, before the human population panicked. Before they remembered their old rivals.

  “I’ll have a look at the Sheriff’s file. You stay--”

  “Why don’t I meet you downstairs so we can both look it over,” he said.

  How close was Kerr to connecting with primal memory? Maybe close enough that for both their sakes she ought to keep him with her. “Sure. Before you leave there, though, ask Hertzel to please not change the tag on Surrette for the time being...and ask him, as a favor to me, to drag their feet on writing up the autopsy report. Let’s delay knowledge of a third victim for a while.”

  Before heading downstairs, she stopped in the office to pick up the fax from Coral Gables and the copy of the receipt from Rick’s.

  Carillo leaned out of his office. “Undersheriff Swann called. He said your suggestion to check the bay for that shark victim’s car paid off. The chopper spotted something on the bottom off the end of the ferry landing and divers from the Marine Unit confirmed it’s a Mercedes. Did you have one of your hunches?”

  “Not exactly.” She spoke over her shoulder as she headed for the door. They had probably started recovery of the vehicle. “I’ll explain later.”

  She skipped the elevator and took the stairs, shortcutting by vaulting the central handrails and dropping a flight at a time. On the Patrol level, she put her head into Andy Swann’s office on the Sheriff’s side long enough to tell him they would take over Surrette’s case because she had confirmed that the rogue killed him. Andy’s curse of dismay followed her next door into the deputies’ squadroom.

  Kerr was just sitting down at a desk with a sheaf of paper-clipped pages.

  “If you didn’t sign for that, do it,” she said. “We’ll take it along.”

  He hurried after her toward the rear entrance. “Where are we going?”

  “For a look at Surrette’s car.”

  The ferry landing had a spectator event in full swing‑‑a crowd of curious onlookers pressed up against a barrier of orange and white sawhorses and spread along the quay, television cameras, and someone from the ferry office periodically announcing over a bullhorn that the ferry runs would resume when police recovery operations finished. The TV crews in town for the wilding murder circus recorded a floating crane from Hilst Basin easing toward the ferry landing, a silver Mercedes dangling motor-down on its cable. Rather than call the crews’ attention to her by using the siren to force her way through the onlookers, Allison parked across the street. They worked their way on foot through the onlookers to the barrier, hanging their badge cases on the breast pocket of their coats. By the time someone on the TV crews spotted her and called her name, they were inside the barrier and on their way along the landing.

  Allison shouldered between clustered officers to Karl Muncie, the Watch Two shift sergeant. “We need to preserve the vehicle for Ident. At the very least it was stolen from Mr. Surrette and likely that the thief played a role in his death.” Enough truth for now.

  Muncie glanced sideways. “In his own, too, if that’s the case. At far out as that baby landed, it was going like a bat out of hell when it launched off the dock. Someone had to be behind the wheel driving it...which means they rode it into the water. And you know that thing went nose down and lit on its roof. It was upside down on the bottom.”

  The crane reached the dock. The operator of the waiting tow truck ran up to hook his cable under the front end of the car so he could pull it forward as crane lowered it.

  Muncie called a warning for no one to touch the car unless necessary, then turned back to Allison. “You’re sure the owner wasn’t driving? We checked a tide table. It was going out during the time the car must have gone in, from midnight to after seven in the morning, and the next high tide came at close to four in the afternoon...running perfect to put his body on the beach.”

  “You think our tides could suck someone out of the car, carry him down the bay around the Basin and deep water piers, then out the channel past Lacabra into the Gulf...without hanging up anywhere?” Kerr asked.

  Allison cocked a brow at Muncie. They all knew a selling point for visitors here was the choice between surf on the Gulf side of Lacabra and the quiet water in the bay.

  Once the car had come to rest on the dock they walked around it, hands behind them, peering throu
gh the open driver and passenger windows into the empty front and rear seats.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Muncie said. “The guy not only survived the impact...he got out!”

  Between Shifting and the airbag and safety belt, which both dangled limp, not at all unbelievable. Allison looked for anything Blondie might have left behind, but saw nothing obvious. Water remained in the foot wells. Something might turn up there once they had drained.

  She turned away. “I’ve seen enough for now. Let’s go, Kerr.”

  A glance at her watch brought a rush of anxiety and anger. No word from Gary. No word from Peter. Call, Peter, damn you! Call!

  The press caught them at the barrier. “Is this car connected to the Wilding Killer? Has there been another victim?”

  She gritted her teeth behind her cop mask and kept her voice neutral. “There is no one in the vehicle. Excuse me.”

  A couple of microphones persisted tempting her to give them a shot of Shift halo to make them fall back. A temptation she resisted with Kerr behind her. Better not risk exposing him to a repeat of the experience outside Jorge’s. So she just shouldered past the reporters.

  Reaching the car, she tossed the keys over her shoulder to him and slid into the passenger seat so she could read the Surrette file while he drove. “Head for 1813 Huron. We’re going to talk to Surrette’s wife.”

  “Another Laguna address.” Kerr’s brows rose. “Blondie likes his victims well heeled.” He put the car in gear and made a U turn across West Bayside. “What does the file say about Tuesday night?”

  She read it all off to him. Surrette’s wife had come to the front counter of the LEC at six o’clock yesterday morning to report her husband missing. The Patrol officer meeting with her explained that an adult could not be declared missing just because he had gone out of touch for a few hours, but after taking down her story, he had the Attempt To Locate issued.

  The deputy who went to inform Morgan Surrette of her husband’s death and bring her to the morgue for a positive identification, also took a statement from her. According to Mrs. Surrette, the couple had spent the evening at the Coronado Yacht Club attending a party on the boat of visiting friends. As the evening progressed, the party grew by accretion and liquor ran low. Surrette, who had drunk very little, volunteered to go for more. He left between one and one-thirty. When he had not returned in an hour, his wife began calling his cell phone but never received an answer. When party folded about four o’clock, she caught a ride home to pick up another car, then proceeded to hunt for her husband. She drove by Rick’s, her husband’s announced destination, then visited Anson-Bauer’s emergency room, and stopped at the Law Enforcement Center to ask if there had been a fatal traffic accident involving a silver Mercedes S-class sedan. She also continued calling her husband’s cell phone, with no success. At dawn she returned to the LEC to report him missing.