Lone Wolves

by Chesbro, George C. ;

  “Aren’t you a little nervous about moving into a haunted house?”

  Luft laughed—a kind of high-pitched giggle. “Are you putting me on? Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts.”

  “Elsie’s willing to sell you the house, for the price you offered—but there’s one condition. If it’s not met, there’s no sale.”

  Luft’s eyes narrowed. “What condition?”

  “You and I may not believe in ghosts, but Elsie does. And she feels responsible for the ghosts in that house. You might say she wants to clean up her home before she sells it to anybody—especially a nice young couple like you and your wife. You and I know it’s crazy, but she insists on it. She wants to exorcise the ghosts, and she intends to do it with a séance. You and your wife must agree to be a part of it, since you’re the ones who’ll be moving into the house.”

  Luft’s dark eyes shone with amusement. “She wants us to meet her ghosts?!”

  “She insists on it. The séance will be tomorrow night, eleven o’clock. I hope you and your wife can be there.”

  “Can we be there?!” Luft threw back his head and laughed, held his stomach. “God, we wouldn’t miss it for the world! Wait until I tell Linda we’re going to a séance tomorrow night in order to clean the ghosts out of our new home. She’ll love it!”

  “I hope so,” Garth replied evenly, and wondered now, as he held the woman’s hand in the restored circle at the candlelit table, if Linda Luft and her husband were enjoying the experience as much as the man had believed they would. The woman’s hand was clammy and trembling, slick with sweat.

  “I feel them coming closer, Mary,” Madame Bellarossa whispered. “Yes,” Mary said in a soft, dreamy voice. “I feel them too … very close. They’re so angry—but not with Elsie. And they’re not the ones who’ve been doing the terrible things to her. There are others … undead. Not dead. Greed; it’s all about greed, incredible selfishness, a young couple who think they’re entitled to anything they want just because they want it, no matter who’s hurt. I see money, pieces of paper … stocks! Yes! The man used to be a stockbroker, but he was fired for churning accounts, and suspicion of embezzlement. He stole … Wait! I see something …”

  Garth looked up as a light began to glow in the darkness near the ceiling. The light resolved into a rectangle, and then became two figures in hooded robes, bathed in moonlight, approaching the house from the beach, opening a basement window. Linda Lull snatched her sweat-soaked hand from Garth’s grip.

  “That’s enough!” John Luft shouted at almost the exact moment when the giant frog sailed out of the darkness and landed in the center of the table, knocking over half the candles, then hopped away toward the living room.

  Garth rose from his chair, reached for the light switch on the wall behind him. The lights in the dining room came on. John and Linda Luft, their faces the color of old parchment, were standing back a pace from their overturned chairs, almost directly beneath the suspended screen with its mounted, remote-controlled rear projector, gaping at the people around the table who stared back at them now with undisguised hostility and contempt.

  “I guess this is the part where we find out if the butler did it,” Mary said in a low, steely voice.

  “I don’t have a butler,” Elsie said, her voice quavering with rage as she glared at the couple across the table from her.

  “That wasn’t us!” John Luft shouted, pointing a trembling finger at the screen above his head. “We didn’t put the robes on un—!”

  “Shut up!” Linda Luft screamed at her husband, punching him in the chest with her fist. “You idiot!”

  John Luft grew even paler, took another step backward, then looked over at Harry Parker, who seemed to have lost interest in the proceedings now that the illusion he had helped create had been played out. He had taken off his shirt and was removing an apparatus of tubes and blood-filled capsules from around his lower waist. “Actually, I kind of like this house,” the big man mumbled to no one in particular. “It has atmosphere. If the frog’s part of the deal, I may buy it myself.”

  Elsie slowly rose from her chair, pointed a finger at the Lufts. Her entire body was trembling with rage. “How could you?!” she said. “How could you be so mean?”

  Now it was Linda Luft’s turn to lose control. Her face turned crimson as she stepped toward Elsie and screamed, “You shut up too, you old bitch! What do you want with the house or the money? You’re going to die soon, you hag! Why can’t you let somebody else enjoy it?”

  John Luft gripped his wife’s shoulders, pulled her back from the table as he glared at Garth. “You set us up, Frederickson!” he said, his voice shimmering with both anger and fear.

  “Set you up?” Garth replied mildly. “You’re damned lucky Elsie didn’t have a heart attack; you’d be facing manslaughter charges.” He paused, nodded toward Jeffrey Bond, who had a deep frown on his face as he stared at the young couple. “I introduced you to Jeff, but I don’t think I mentioned that he’s the Cairn Chief of Police. Madame Bellarossa is his wife, and her real name is Carol. She’s quite a well-known actress. Without her wig and makeup, I’m sure you’d recognize her.”

  “You can’t prove a thing!” the man shouted at Jeffrey Bond.

  “That remains to be seen,” the police chief replied evenly. “We have a videotape of these proceedings, for what that’s worth. Also, my friend Garth found the fellow you paid to mess up that guy’s house that you’re living in now, and then pose as a building inspector to give him the bad news. It seems he kept the sales slips for the acid you had him buy and inject into the wood joints to make it look like the owner had termite damage. The police across the river have a warrant out for your arrest. In addition to that, there’ll be a process server around to see you in the morning. You’re looking at a whopping lawsuit, in addition to any criminal penalties. I think I’ll let Westchester have you for now, and that will give me time to ponder all the charges I’m going to hit you with when they’re done.”

  The lights in the living room came on. John and Linda Luft started, then wheeled around to see two uniformed policemen and the two young stagehands, friends of Carol Bond, who had handled the special effects for the evening’s performance standing in the archway between the two rooms. The giant frog was over in a corner contentedly munching on what appeared to be a mouthful of cockroaches, survivors from the exterminator’s visit earlier in the day.

  “The charges won’t stick!” John Luft screamed at Garth as he and his wife were handcuffed. “They can’t prove anything! You’re going to be sorry! I swear I’ll get you!”

  “Boo,” Garth said.

  THE PROBLEM WITH THE PIGS

  The first of the three shots fired in rapid succession grazed Charlotte’s neck, the second ricocheted off the pavement, and the third hit Garth in the left thigh, just above the knee. As Charlotte squealed in surprise, pain, and anger, Garth clutched his wounded leg, staggered a few steps, and then went down to his knees in the otherwise deserted parking lot at Nyack Beach State Park. He glanced up, squinting in the bright light of the early spring morning, and saw a tall, gaunt man in a ski mask and carrying a rifle leaning on the stone wall beside the narrow road leading down to the beach from Nyack’s Broadway. As Garth watched, the masked gunman straightened up and walked unhurriedly down the road, obviously intending to finish him off at point-blank range. The man was a lousy shot, Garth thought with a grim smile, and this seemed an odd and unprofessional way to carry out an assassination. Not that it made any difference; one assassin’s bullet would do the job just as well as another. He certainly had plenty of enemies who wished him dead, but there weren’t many amateurs in the lot, and he wondered which of these had finally tracked him to Cairn, taken note of his daily six-mile run to the beach and back, and selected this time and place to kill him.

  There had been a time when he had never gone on the street unless he was armed, but those days were past, and now he rarely carried a gun, except on those rare occasions when
he was working a particularly dangerous case. He was helpless now, crippled, and a stationary target in the middle of an empty parking lot. To his left was the Hudson River, its shoreline still clotted with ice. The trees on the side of Hook Mountain, which stretched toward the azure sky on his right, were barren of leaves and would provide no cover even if he could reach them. To his immediate right, perhaps fifty feet away, was the entrance to a two-story building that had once housed a factory for a company that had blasted trap rock from the sides of the mountain, crushed it in the facility, then shipped the scrapple by barge down the river to the stone-hungry boroughs of New York City. The building would surely provide sanctuary, but the wide, swinging doors at its entrance looked to be securely padlocked.

  Garth thought it highly unlikely that the gunman was interested in Charlotte and Precious, but, fearing that the man might kill them anyway, out of spite, he removed the loops of their leashes from his right wrist, then slapped them on their haunches, trying to drive them toward the trail behind him that snaked along the shoreline. They refused to go. Squealing raucously, both pigs nudged at his arms and shoulders, as if to prod him to his feet. Bracing himself on Charlotte’s back and grimacing against the pain that shot through his leg, Garth struggled to his feet, and then lurched toward the entrance to the building. The gunman, who had just entered the parking lot from the road and was perhaps fifty yards away, raised his rifle and fired, but the slug bit into a stone corner of the building, which momentarily shielded Garth from the line of fire. He could hear the man’s running footsteps on the pavement as he lunged at the guardians to the darkness inside where he would be safe. The swinging doors, which had no brace besides the heavy padlock, creaked and gave a bit, but with his wounded leg Garth could not generate sufficient speed and leverage to smash them open. In a few seconds the gunman would round the corner of the building and kill him.

  Garth was preparing to lunge once again when suddenly there was a loud thump below him and the doors shook. He looked down and was astounded to see Charlotte, knocked back on her haunches and the top of her head bleeding from the force of the blow she had delivered, get to her feet. She wobbled a bit, but she backed up, and then once again charged the door, this time with Precious running at her side. Garth timed his lunge with theirs, and the force of his own weight and three hundred pounds of pig did the trick. The old, dry wood around the padlock cracked and gave way, and Garth tumbled after the pigs into the darkness.

  As Charlotte and Precious scampered away toward the opposite end of the building, Garth pulled himself back down a narrow space between two enormous pieces of rusting machinery that appeared to be portable conveyor belts. When he had been swallowed up by darkness, he leaned back against a steel tread, removed his belt, and cinched it around his leg to serve as a tourniquet. Through spaces in the undercarriage of the conveyor belt on his left he could see the bright rectangle of light that was the entrance. The gunman had not appeared in the doorway, and Garth did not expect him to; he would be a fool to stalk a man in darkness, or to hang around. The park was small, and there were houses less than a quarter of a mile away where the shots could have been heard. Hikers and motorists looking for a spectacular view and a break from their day used the park year-round, and both state police and Orangetown cops patrolled the area regularly, as had been the case two weeks earlier when Sam Beeman had eased his cruiser up beside Garth, rolled down the window on the passenger’s side, and called, “How are the girls?”

  “Just fine,” Garth called back. “If you’ve got a minute, I’ll show you their latest accomplishment.”

  “Sure,” the baby-faced Orangetown policeman said, pulling his car over to the side of the road and getting out. “I want to talk to you anyway.”

  Garth pulled two ears of barbecued corn from a plastic bag he carried in his waistpack. Charlotte and Precious pricked their ears and grunted expectantly. “Sit,” he said, and the pigs sat. “Roll over,” he commanded, and, somewhat laboriously, they managed to roll themselves over. Garth fed them the corn, turned to the policeman, and continued, “Pretty impressive, huh?”

  “Damn,” the young policeman said, taking off his cap and running a hand back through his thinning brown hair. “I see they like their corn and the cob. I didn’t know pigs did tricks.”

  “Pigs are smarter than your average dog—just not as eager to please. You need a lot of com, and you have to get them when they’re hungry—not really a problem, since they’re hungry most of the time.”

  “I thought it was your smart little brother who was so good with animals.”

  “He does the big critters—lions, tigers, bears, and elephants. I do pigs.”

  “And a wolf.”

  “Wolves don’t do tricks—but they’re amused when you do.”

  “I also thought Vietnamese potbellied pigs were supposed to be cute little pink things; Charlotte and Precious are two cute big gray things. What do they go, a couple of hundred pounds each?”

  “Bite your tongue, Sam. They do start off as cute little pink things when they’re young, but, like all pigs and people, they get bigger if you feed them. They both weigh in at about a hundred and fifty now. Charlotte was about fifty pounds overweight when Marge bought her a couple of years ago to keep Precious company. That’s when I volunteered to take her out for a fitness trot two or three times a week. Precious insisted on coming along, and it’s become kind of a habit. I get a kick out of them, and I enjoy their company. What did you want to talk to me about, Sam?”

  The policeman sighed, shook his head. “We’ve got a problem with the pigs.”

  “Who’s got a problem?”

  “A guy by the name of Peter Erckmann—just moved to Cairn, bought the old Hurley mansion. He filed a zoning complaint against Marge. Claims the pigs make too much noise and keep him awake at night.”

  “That’s absurd. They don’t make any noise, and they’re probably asleep every night before he is. They don’t bother anyone. Marge got Precious as a piglet for the kids in her day-care center to raise as a pet. Charlotte came along later. The kids love the pigs, and the pigs love them. They’re even housebroken. All they do is wander around in their pen all day, an4 then go to their place in the basement at night. The neighbors around here have never complained, and the Hurley mansion is a block and a half away.”

  Sam Beeman shrugged resignedly. “What can I tell you? Who knows what he’s got against the girls? But there is a zoning ordinance in Cairn that prohibits the keeping of wild or farm animals, so he’s on good legal ground.”

  “Mary and I keep a hybrid wolf that’s a lot more dangerous than Charlotte and Precious. The village board gave us a variance. Why can’t they do the same for Marge?”

  “Maybe they will—but it’s not certain. Your wolf was a special case. You didn’t buy it to keep as a pet—you fished it out of the river. It had been mutilated, and you and that wolf were responsible for saving lives after those neo-Nazis set up shop in the county. People were grateful, and there was a lot of emotion. There was no place to send the wolf, so the board let you and Mary keep it. The variance you got may actually work against Marge; the board may not want to make another exception. Anyway, I just served Marge with notice of the complaint, so you’re going to find she’s upset when you get back with the girls. I figured you’d want to know.”

  Marge Proctor, the pigs’ owner, was indeed upset, and when Garth arrived home he found that his wife, the folksinger Mary Tree, was too. Mary was in their soundproofed music room practicing a new ballad she had written with her band. Garth tapped on the glass and waved as he walked down the hallway outside, then stopped when Mary urgently signaled to him. She put down her guitar, said something to the three people in the room with her, and then hurried out into the hallway. Her long, gray-streaked yellow hair gleamed in the sunlight pouring in through the skylight above their heads, and her blue eyes flashed with anger.

  “Have you heard what that man is trying to do to Charlotte and Precious?”<
br />
  Garth nodded. “I just left Marge.”

  “How can he do that?” Mary snapped, clenching her fists. “Marge’s house is their home. Marge will never find anybody to take them both in, and no other place would be the same anyway. Those are friendly, intelligent, and loving animals, Garth, and they’re so attached to each other! They have feelings, and they’ll be so sad if they’re separated and sent away!”

  “I spend more time with Charlotte and Precious than you do, my love,” Garth said quietly, gently caressing his wife’s cheek. “You don’t have to tell me that they have feelings.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  Garth shrugged. “Marge and I were talking strategy, and we’ll start with a little PR work. We’ll organize a letter-writing campaign; it shouldn’t be hard to get the parents of the children who have been in Marge’s day-care center to speak up in support of Charlotte and Precious, and then the neighbors will testify that the pigs have never bothered anyone. We’ll round up a lot of supporters to attend the next board meeting, and maybe we can persuade the trustees to give Marge the variance she needs.”

  “That’s all?”

  “All? What do you want me to do, Mary?”

  “Your brother would think of more to do.”

  “He might think of it, but he wouldn’t do it. And he wouldn’t want me to do it. In fact, his greatest concern would be that I might overreact. You expect me to go thump on the guy?”

  “I think you and your brother have thumped people for less.”

  Garth frowned slightly as he studied his wife. “Not over pigs and charges of a zoning violation. That’s an odd thing to say to me, Mary.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said softly, averting her gaze as she rested her hand on her husband’s chest.

  “Cairn is our home, Mary, which means Erckmann is our neighbor. I don’t want it to appear as if I’m throwing my weight around, literally or figuratively. I very much value our privacy, and I prefer my famous wife to get all the publicity and attention. The people who’d be interested in me and my whereabouts aren’t exactly fans.”