Carol had thought about it and the more she'd thought about it, the more she liked it. Why the hell hadn't they gone to a big city right away? They had been so distraught during their initial flight to get out of California that getting out had meant going anywhere, even if it had meant hiding in a little roadside lodge in bumfuck Missouri.
So Chicago it was, then. They had left the diner at a little past ten o'clock on a cold, sunny morning. Mark had said he felt fine; the curse had hardly bugged him last night and now that the lunar cycle was on its downswing it would affect him less and less in the next few nights. On the drive out Carol had asked him what he would do next month when they were in a big city: how would he handle the curse then? "The same way I handled it in Califor nia," he'd said. "Hopefully head out of the city for at least one night and let it run its course. I've managed to survive the last eight years that way. I suppose I can survive the next eight in the Windy City the same way."
"Maybe once we're settled we can try to find a way to beat this thing," Carol had said. She had volunteered to drive the first few hours, and she'd kept the Suburban at a steady sixty miles per hour. The rays of sun had reflected off white landscapes of snow that had covered farmers' fields and the woods surrounding the interstate. "From what you described there has to be some way to cure it. I mean, you weren't bitten or attacked by a werewolf before this happened, right? Isn't that one of the ways you become a werewolf?"
"According to movies, yeah," Mark had said from the passenger side.
"What about, like, wolfsbane? Isn't that another way to become one?"
"Yeah, if the area I lived in had any growing around there," Mark had said, chuckling softly. "I hardly think that wolfsbane is growing wild in Gardena, California, though."
Carol nodded, her forehead creased in thought. "Well, we'll think of something. Don't worry, honey, we're in this together now. We'll find a way to beat this."
They made small talk for the rest of the drive. They'd stopped in St. Louis for lunch, then crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois around three. Mark had driven from there, giving Carol a chance to lean back in her seat and catnap as Mark drove, the radio turned to whatever rock station he'd found on the dial.
Now in their motel room Carol wanted to doze again, but tried to fight back the exhaustion as the shower trickled off. She sat up on the bed and rubbed her eyes. Maybe they should stay one more night in Springfield to give them a chance to catch up on all the sleep they had missed. Mark said he hadn't slept well last night himself and they could both use it. They might as well; they had all the time in the-
There was a thundering crash that startled Carol so badly she literally jumped off the bed. Her scream lodged in her throat at the suddenness of it and she whirled around as a sharp crack blasted through the quiet din, splintering the door to their room. She jumped back, her mind spinning. It was happening so fast that her whirling mind was having a hard time tracking the events; the sudden crash, the sharp report and the cracking, splintering door, then the door bursting open and a man staggering in with a large handgun gripped in his right fist. She looked up at the man and while she recognized him as Bernard Roberts, her mind refused to believe it. We left him in the dust back in California! How the hell could he have-
Bernard Roberts loomed over her, his once handsome features now twisted by some insane evil. He grinned. "Step aside, bitch."
Now she found that she could act and she rose to her feet, the adrenaline suddenly hitting her. "What the hell are you doing here? Get the fuck out-"
"I said step aside!" Bernard yelled. He backhanded her with the fist that held the gun and she felt the heaviness of the weapon behind the fist smack into her left cheek so hard that it knocked her onto the bed, then spilled her onto the floor. The blow sent her reeling, making her dizzy, and her legs were all scrambled. She fought the dizziness, tried to fight the pain as she attempted to lift herself up off the floor. She watched everything in a sort of bizarre slow-motion as Bernard lunged toward the rear of the motel room where the bathroom was; then Mark threw the bathroom door open and she caught a glimpse of his naked form for just a fraction of a second before all hell broke loose.
Mark stood there, his lips curling back from his teeth as Bernard smiled and advanced toward him. Mark looked beautiful standing there; his naked form pure and perfect in the harsh fluorescent of the bathroom light. He stood in the bathroom doorway as if guarding it from entry and then everything slowed down even more. She was able to witness everything clearly and concisely. It seemed to go slowly, as if it was being stretched out just to torture her, but when she later thought back on it she supposed it all really went down in a matter of seconds.
Bernard stepped closer to Mark and smiled. "Now it's time to send you to the hell you came from."
Mark's upper lip curled back to reveal a mouthful of teeth that should have come from the jaws of a large wolf. Then the snarl came from deep within his throat as his muscles twitched, his body primed to spring.
Bernard's face changed briefly; it bore a trace of remorse as he raised the weapon and pointed it at Mark. "It was a pleasure working with you, Mark. For a while there, we made a great team."
Mark snarled-it was not the sound of a human being-and then he changed so fast that Carol barely had time to recover. He seemed to instantly change right before her eyes, to shimmer from human-form to wolf-form within seconds, changing effortlessly with no sign of the pain of transformation she had witnessed before. He changed so fast that he even took Bernard by surprise. He leaped at Bernard, who stepped back in surprise as the gun went off and the two crashed to the floor.
There was a yell amid snarls of rage and pain and then the gun went off three more times. More yelling, this time loud bellowing. Carol had been frozen in shock on the floor and now she sprang to her feet and rushed over to where they had come together. She almost stumbled over them. Bernard was pushing at Mark's prone form, trying to roll him over and yelling at the same time. Blood was rapidly spreading below them, staining the tancolored carpet.
"Mark! Mark!" Carol was frantic. For a moment the scene was so chaotic that she didn't know what she was seeing. Mark's wolf-form lay on the floor, pinning Bernard to the ground as the executive struggled. Carol watched in a kind of numb fascination as blood spread rapidly along the carpet, staining it a deep crimson. Then, as abruptly as he had changed to his wolf form, Mark changed back; the thick fur along his back, arms, and legs retreated inward, the hunched muscles shrivelled, the arms and fingers shrank into themselves and the head reformed.
Leaving Mark's nude, prostrate body on the ground, gasping for breath.
"Mark!" Carol dropped to her knees, bending over Mark as he struggled to get up.
Bernard got to his feet. Carol wasn't even paying attention to him. If she had, she would have seen Bernard stand behind her and point the barrel of the pistol at the back of her head.
"Mark!" Carol sobbed, cradling his head in her arms. There were three large exit wounds on his back, one of them the size of her fist. Blood squished beneath her feet and knees as she bent over him. "Mark ... oh, my God, Mark..."
Mark's eyes turned up to her. His mouth opened and through her blurred vision she thought he was trying to say something to her. Then he opened his mouth again and began taking deep breaths, as if he were hyperventilating. His right arm pawed wildly at her as she gently lifted him up and held him close, not even noticing the blood that spilled out of him and onto her jeans and blouse.
Behind her, Bernard said, "Say good-bye to your boyfriend, Carol."
Another voice cut through the din, but Carol wasn't listening. Her mind was whirling with a thousand memories as she held Mark and rocked him slowly back and forth. There was a loud, explosive pop, and then the sudden surge of running feet and angry voices. She was dimly aware of something going on around her, but she huddled over Mark, protecting him from the storm. It's going to be okay, baby, it's going to be okay. She cried harder, holding his broken fo
rm, not even aware that his life had already left him, leaving behind an empty shell with empty, brown eyes.
After that, things got even fuzzier. Even when the police came and tried to gently pry her away from Mark Wiseman, whom she still cradled in her arms.
Chapter Thirty
She had been thinking of a thousand ways to do it and finally settled on one that she felt fairly certain would go down painlessly, with little to no suffering.
She palmed the bottle of Valium in her left fist as she sat on her bed in her apartment, her mind wandering. Ever since Bernard's trial had ended, she had been inching closer and closer to this decision and now she had finally made it. It was a decision that would be permanent.
No turning back.
Carol Emrich stood up and walked into the living room. She turned her stereo on and then bent over to the CD rack that rested beside the stereo. She ran one finger along the spines of the CD's until she found the one she wanted to fall asleep listening to. She pulled it out and turned it over, her heart swelling with the memories this band's music had on her childhood.
The CD was The Best of Sweet, and it had all her fa vorite songs on it: "Little Willy," "Wig-Wam Bam," "The Ballroom Blitz," "Fox on the Run." She had been ten years old when she first saw them on some television show, it was either Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, or Saturday Night Live; she didn't remember which. But she knew the song they had played on the show-"Ballroom Blitz"-because they played it on the radio all the time in that long-ago summer of 1975. Sporting coifed, shoulder-length hair and flamboyant costumes, she'd fallen instantly into puppy-love with the band members. In an age when all her girlfriends were all either into David Cassidy, or the Bay City Rollers, or KC and the Sunshine Band, Sweet was both slightly bubblegum enough to win the respect of her girlfriends, but snotty enough in their lyrics to win the disdain of her parents, yet they weren't as threatening as, say, Alice Cooper or Black Sabbath, which her older brother Joey was into. She had had all of the band's albums and wore out the stylus on the turntable her parents got her so often that she'd had to retire it two years later. A few years later, Styx and Journey had taken Sweet's place, but they'd never entirely left that spot in her heart. They'd always remained in that one secret spot, a place she could visit again and again when the mood struck to reminisce.
Now she had this CD compilation, the only CD of the band's recordings she had. Weird to think she had been such a big fan of them when she was a kid-she'd had all their albums, all the magazine articles she could find, had even seen them on their 1978 world tour-but as an adult she was reduced to this one CD of their "greatest hits." How time flies.
She turned the CD player on and opened up the cradle that would hold the CD. She placed the disc in, pressed the button that retracted the cradle and set the compact disc into motion, then adjusted the volume. When the first song came on-"Little Willy"-she smiled and began to hum along with it. She stood there for a moment humming along, suddenly ten years old again and playing with her friends under a warm, Nebraska summer sun.
There were sixteen tracks on the CD, more than enough to provide the soundtrack for her send-off. She briefly debated on whether she should replace the CD with something else: Ozzy Osborne or Judas Priest perhaps? She had CDs of both artists. After all, how many people committed suicide while listening to bubblegum '70s glam rock?
She headed back to her bedroom and stopped for a moment, debating on whether or not she should change into something more comfortable. She frowned. She had read somewhere that when somebody dies that their sphincter muscle relaxes, voiding whatever is in the bowel. She didn't want to leave a big mess for whoever would come in to place her in the standard body bag, but then she supposed she shouldn't really care about that. After all, she would be dead. She surely wasn't going to be embarrassed by the fact that whoever picked her up off the bed was not only going to be dealing with picking up a rather attractive woman (and yes, she was attractive, she told herself this morning as she looked in the mirror and got ready; I guess I'm really not so bad looking after all), but they might have to be dealing with whatever she had involuntarily shit out of herself as she died. But again, she wouldn't be around to hear the complaints, or be embarrassed by it. She would be dead. End of story.
The decision to take her own life had been one she had wrestled with over the past fifteen months, ever since the evening of February 12, when Bernard Roberts had burst into their room just off the interstate in Springfield, Illinois and killed Mark Wiseman with four shots from a .38 revolver. Mark had died almost instantly, but he had still tried to fight Bernard off. He had fought bravely until the end, facing Bernard Roberts and the gun, lunging at him, taking him down as Bernard fired again and again into Mark's vulnerable belly.
Carol hated thinking about that. Thankfully most of the incident, and what had happened afterward, would soon be gone from her memory.
She remembered the endless questioning. She remembered being taken to Springfield, a two-hour drive, and being interrogated at the police department there. She'd later learned that since Mark's murder had occurred in rural Springfield County that the state police had to be involved, hence the drive to the state capital. She had been hysterical and a day later she had talked to somebody from the FBI, a guy named Agent Strong. She remembered him as being very kind, if not somewhat confusedlooking and jumpy. He kept hedging around whether Mark and Bernard had known each other, if she knew of any possible criminal activity Mark might have been involved in. That had stopped her, made her evaluate her options. Her first instinct had been to deny that she knew anything, and she had done so right then and there. Agent Strong had asked her if she was sure. She'd said yes, nodding emphatically She had had no idea Mark and Bernard had known each other.
If that was the case, why would Bernard Roberts come two thousand miles just to kill him? Agent Strong had asked.
Carol had tried to come up with an answer, but Agent Strong had beaten her to the punch. I'm sure you don't want to be accused as an accessory to the murders of Mr. Samuels, John, and Krueger, nor to the attempted murder of Mr. Fielding. Because that's what this is shaping up to be, Miss Emrich. Frankly, I don't want to have to hold this over your head, but we need your cooperation. Mark Wiseman must have told you something, and if he did and you didn't do anything about it, that's called accessory after-the-fact. That could mean a tenyear prison term, Miss Emrich. So I think you should think long and hard before you answer any of my questions. We don't really want to give you any trouble, but we do need your help in helping to connect Mark Wiseman with the crimes that Bernard Roberts is being accused of in California. You do want him put away for a long time, don't you?
He had looked at her with a questioning gaze and she had been stiff with fear, her heart beating hard in her ribcage. She'd nodded. Agent Strong had smiled and patted her hands. Good. Thankfully, we have him on first-degree murder. That's pretty much open and shut. But if we can get him on the other murders, say as the mastermind behind them, we can put him away for a very long, long time, Miss Emrich. Surely you would like to see that, wouldn't you?
Carol had nodded again because she wanted to see that. She wanted Bernard Roberts to suffer for what he had done. That was when she had become the crucial witness in two cases: the State of Illinois versus Bernard Roberts in the first-degree murder of Mark Wiseman; and the State of California versus Bernard Roberts in embezzling, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to embezzle from a corporation, and conspiracy to commit murder.
Carol went to the closet and opened it. She decided she would slip into her nightgown. As long as she was going to go to sleep, she might as well dress comfy. She pulled out a red satin nightgown and laid it on the bed. Then she slipped out of her faded blue jeans, her white blouse, her bra, and her white cotton panties. She put the bra and panties in her laundry basket and then she folded the clothes and placed those at the foot of her bed. She went into the master bathroom and took out her earrings; then she slipped the on
e ring she wore off her right ring finger and placed it on the bathroom counter. She combed her hair and brushed her teeth, capping it off with a gargle of mint-flavored Listerine. She briefly debated on whether she should take a shower, but decided not to. She had taken a shower this morning and she hadn't really done enough to work up a sweat to justify a shower. Instead, she applied another layer of deodorant on her underarms and dabbed some perfume along the nape of her neck, between her breasts, and behind each ear. Just a touch. She stepped back from the bathroom mirror and smiled. She looked and smelled just fine. Of course that wouldn't matter if she was found two weeks from now and she smelled like rotting meat, but she was hoping that wouldn't happen. But then, why worry about it? She would be dead.
Sweet was blasting through "The Ballroom Blitz." Carol breezed back into the bedroom and slipped into the red satin nightgown. Then she went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. She returned to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the bottle of Valium. She had gotten the prescription from her psychiatrist; she had been going for the last four months, and the Valium had been prescribed to help her sleep and to steady her nerves. She hadn't been able to sleep the past six months, especially during the trial. The Valium had proven to be a godsend.
She opened the bottle and shook a handful out. She stared at them in the palm of her hand, then looked up at the bureau and the large mirror mounted above it. She wondered if she should pee first before embarking on this last trip. Sometimes when she went to bed without going to the bathroom her bladder woke her up, even if she only had to pee a drop. She had to get out of bed and shuck over to the bathroom and squat on the toilet and let that one drop trickle out before she could drift off to sleep. Otherwise her fucking bladder wouldn't let her sleep.
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