The Totem

by David Morrell

  "A little," Dunlap said.

  "Yeah, I felt that way myself at first."

  Dunlap shook his head. "At first?"

  "I came here from Detroit. Five years ago. A little while out here, and you can get to like the easy way of life."

  Which Dunlap didn't buy, so Slaughter didn't try to sell it anymore. Slaughter had been just about as friendly as he'd planned, but he had other things to occupy him, and he didn't have the time to give this man a guided tour.

  They passed the police car Rettig had brought, walking toward the porch, and Slaughter saw that the medical examiner was up there, drinking beer, talking to the new man. Slaughter was just about to ask if Dunlap wanted any beer when the medical examiner interrupted him.

  "Your man here says it's still down in that hollow. Look, I want to know if that thing bit you."

  "No, I thought about it, and I checked," Slaughter said. I even took my clothes off back here, and the only mark is where it scratched me." The scab was thick on Slaughter's cheek.

  The medical examiner persisted. "Scratched, not bit you?" "Does this mark look like it bit me? No, I'm certain." "Well, I want to check that cat regardless. Cats don't go at people that way."

  "Some cats do. When I was in Detroit, I had my share of bites and scratches. Cats gone wild and living in abandoned tenements. I know exactly what you mean, though. This is different. Cats might fight back, but they don't come looking to attack you."

  And the five of them were silent. Dunlap had been listening with interest. Slaughter turned to him. He noticed that both Rettig and the new man had been looking at him, too.

  "You're right," he told the medical examiner and then explained to Dunlap, "You see, we've got a situation here, but it's not the reason you're invited. I could ask you to go in the house and have a beer, but then you'd think that we were hiding something from you. So I'm going to let you stay. But understand this. Anything about the commune, that's your story. What we're saying now is strictly off the record." Slaughter waited.

  "Sure. I guess you have your reasons."

  "You'll know soon enough." Slaughter turned toward the medical examiner again. "My handgun's a.357. I loaded magnums before going in that field. I told you, when I shot that cat, I blew its fucking head apart. I'm no pathologist, but I'm aware of this much. If you want to check for rabies in an animal, you run some tests on portions of its brain."

  "That's correct."

  "Well, brain, hell I can give you all the brain you want. It's scattered, bits and pieces, all across that goddamn field. But they'll be so contaminated, you won't have a use for them." Slaughter pivoted toward Dunlap. 'There. I've said it. Now you understand. If word about rabies ever gets through town, there'll be a panic."

  Dunlap's face was ashen. "That's what happened to this fellow Clifford?"

  Slaughter studied him. "You do your job. I'll give you that. No, we're not sure about him. We've been edging around this subject since last night." He asked the medical examiner, "You're sure it was a dog that killed him, not a cat?"

  "I told you."

  "Swell." Slaughter stared down at the porch. "I need a beer. He looked around.

  "Sure," Dunlap told him. "I'll take one."

  Rettig: "Me as well."

  The new man and the medical examiner already had one.

  "I'll just bring a cooler." Slaughter entered the house.

  SEVEN

  Christ, what's the matter with you? Slaughter thought, trembling once the door was closed. You're damn near cracking up. A cat attacks you, and it's like you never used a gun before. What's happening to you?

  I'm out of practice.

  Weak and soft is more the truth. That easy life you told that guy about-you really fell for it. Hell, life's so easy for you that you lose your nerve when some stray cat jumps at you.

  No, that isn't true. I do my job. I'm good at it.

  But you know you're lying. You can go through years and years of doing what you think must be your best. But then you get in some real trouble, and you understand that you were coasting, and you didn't even know it.

  Hell, I don't know why I even bother trying.

  Sure you do. That emptiness inside. That grocery store. Those two kids. What they did to you.

  You want to prove yourself.

  And that purely was the truth.

  He stood inside his small, neat kitchen, staring at two coolers filled with ice and beer, and he was thinking that he'd open one can right away. But that would be a public show of weakness, drinking before he brought out the cooler for the others. Maybe not in their eyes weakness. But in his. So he lifted one of the coolers and returned to the porch.

  They didn't even look at him, just concentrated on the cooler as he opened it, the glinting ice, the cans of Bud. They made a ritual, all snapping tabs at once and raising beers as if in toast, then sipping.

  "All right, so what do you suggest?" Slaughter asked the medical examiner. He hoped the beer would relax him.

  "Well, no matter what you say, I want to see that cat. Tell your men to keep watching for animals that act strangely. I'll check the hospital for anyone who comes in bitten. The truth is, though, there's not a lot we can do until we have another incident."

  "That's if. "Rettig hadn't spoken in some time.

  "Right. That's not until but if. Let's hope at least," Slaughter said.

  "Don't wait for a dog or cat that's foaming at the mouth. A symptom like that shows up late," the medical examiner said. "What we're looking for is an attack without a reason. Totally irrational aggression."

  Something clicked in Slaughter's mind. "That's funny."

  "What?"

  "You said the same about those dogs up in the hills."

  And everyone became silent.

  Too much so, Slaughter realized. It wasn't only them but everything around them. Sure. The men had stopped shooting. They were walking past the barn now, laughing, holstering their weapons as they joked among themselves and came near, rubbing their hands together as they stepped up for a beer.

  "Who died?" one of them asked, noticing how somber everyone was.

  "We've got a little problem. Did you pick up the empty cartridges?"

  They nodded.

  "Good. When you get a chance, reload them. We might need them."

  And they paused where they were reaching for the beer.

  "I have to check the horses," Slaughter said. "Let's take a walk. I'll tell you all about it."

  He stepped from the porch. "There isn't much to tell," he heard behind him and saw where Rettig had moved back a little, talking now with Dunlap.

  Rettig evidently noticed how Slaughter looked at him. "You're sure it's all right if I talk to him about what happened at the commune."

  "Hell, I don't care." You're getting jumpy, Slaughter told himself and walked with the other men to reach the horses.

  EIGHT

  Rettig watched them go, then again faced Dunlap. "Really. There's not much more to tell." Despite permission to discuss this, he was nonetheless reluctant. He still remembered the secrecy with which the case had been conducted. There had been such trouble in the town, such bad publicity that summer, that the council had arranged for secret sessions to discuss this new development. Parsons had been mayor then, as he still was, and the general agreement had been to keep news about the murder quiet. Otherwise those hippies might come back, and those reporters, and the trouble might begin again. The trial had been delicate, the matter kept within the valley, with some understanding from the nearby towns beyond the mountains, and the valley had gone back to being normal. Even though the state police had jurisdiction in the case, and they were separate from the town, they had nonetheless cooperated with the town, realizing that the valley was related to the town, and Rettig in particular had been warned to keep his mouth shut. Oh, nobody ever said that quite so forcefully, but the implication had been clear, and he was very careful. It was twenty-three years now since he'd thought about the case, but he rem
embered the way things had been back then, and it was hard for him to break his habit. "Really. Not too much. You figured most of it already."

  "But the son? What happened to the son?" Dunlap took his coat off, setting it across a chair on the porch.

  "He was fine. I went up with another man and searched the compound. The rest of the men stayed back to get the hippies' version of what had happened. Wheeler had cracked up by then, and they were helping him into a cruiser. We went and-" "Tell me what it looked like."

  "Oh, not much. I'd heard too many rumors, and the place seemed ordinary by comparison. Just rows of barracks lined up to form streets. Like in the Army but more like migrant work-camps. Like in the Depression. Pathetic, really. There were gardens by each bunkhouse, dying flowers in them, but the flowers never really had a chance up there. All that shade, the thin air, and the lousy ground. The worst part was the fields they'd tried to plant with corn and beans, tomatoes, stuff like that. They'd put the seed in too late, and a farm crop never does well, even down here in the valley, so I can't imagine why they thought that corn would do well in the mountains. It was awful, all these little stumps of corn that never quite developed, little ears on them, all browned by the early frosts. They had a mess hall, I remember that, crude log tables in there, and they had a kind of officer's command post with a sort of square in front where people must have stood to get their orders, but it was obvious that things weren't going well up there, and I couldn't help wondering what they were going to do when winter hit. Oh, yeah, we found another building that was like a big garage."

  "The Corvette."

  "What?"

  "The red Corvette. The classic 1959 that Quiller drove. You found it?"

  "I remember hearing about that. No, we never found it. Oh, we found a van and then a pickup truck. But that was all. No red Corvette. Believe me, I'd remember it."

  "Christ, what the hell is going on?"

  Rettig stared at him.

  "I've done some checking," Dunlap said, "and as far as I can tell, Quiller never sold it. But I know he took it up there. What in God's name did he do with it?"

  "You've got me," Rettig said. "All I'm telling you is what I saw. If I'd been looking for that car, I might have found it. But I had my mind on searching for the boy."

  "You found him?"

  "In a while. It took us quite & while. We checked the buildings and the forest. If I hadn't stopped to take a leak, I maybe never would have found him even then. But I went over by an outhouse, and I found him in a trench. He sure was dirty. I remember that. And scared, although he never said what happened to him in the compound. Mostly he was scared about his father. Even when we brought the boy down to the cruisers, he refused to get in with his father. We were forced to drive them separately."

  "And what did Quiller have to say?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Quiller."

  Rettig shrugged. "Nobody ever saw him."

  "What? You searched the compound, and you never saw him?"

  "No one did."

  "Well, where could he have hidden? Why would he have hidden in the first place?"

  "Don't ask me. He might have been out in the forest. I don't see the difference it makes."

  "No, I don't either," Dunlap told him, frowning. "But there's something strange about all this, and I wish I understood it."

  "Are you getting what you wanted?" a voice interrupted.

  Dunlap turned to where Slaughter stood beside the porch, his deputies with him after they had come back from the horses.

  "Mostly," Dunlap said. "There are still a few loose ends."

  "Well, tie them up. We want you satisfied."

  You bastard, Dunlap thought. Putting on this country show for me. You're ten times more sophisticated than you pretend. He glanced at Rettig. "So what about the trial? I never read the end of it."

  "Oh, Wheeler was convicted," Rettig said.

  Dunlap nodded. Sure, the coverup was just to keep the town safe from another bunch of hippies coming through. If Wheeler had been freed and word had gotten out, there really would have been some trouble then. The town had done the wisest thing.

  "His lawyer tried to plead insanity, but people here don't understand that sort of thing," Rettig said. "The charge was manslaughter, extenuating circumstances, and the son was such a prick when he was on the stand, clearly out to get his father, that the jury sympathized with Wheeler, recommending that the judge go easy. Two years was the sentence, and the day the trial was over, Wheeler's son got out of here. The town police had kept a watch on him to make sure he didn't leave before then. Also to protect him. There were plenty of ugly feelings toward him, people angered by the painful choices he had caused, and he just packed his gear and left. Some people figured that he went back to the compound. But I always doubted that. Once his father was released, the father surely would go looking for him again. The kid was scared enough that he would want to run much farther than the compound. He would want to put a lot of miles between him and his father."

  Slaughter stepped up on the porch. "All that happened here? I take it back about country life being easy." He stooped to pick up another beer, then restrained his impulse. "Look, I think we'd better break this up. If we've got the trouble I think we have, we should all be on duty. Grab that phone," he told the new man. It was ringing inside, and as the new man went in, Slaughter faced the rest of his men. "You know what to do." He told the medical examiner, "I'll go with you to get the cat I shot." Then he told Dunlap, "How else can I help you?"

  "Well, I'd like to see the compound, talk to Wheeler-"

  "I don't understand what you're looking for, but you can see the problems I've got. I'll make a deal. You let me have today, and I'll go out with you tomorrow."

  "Can somebody drive me back to town?" Dunlap asked. "I'd like to examine the records in your office."

  You're pushing, Slaughter thought. You know I don't have time to watch you. He was just about to answer when the new man appeared in the doorway.

  "That's the state police," the new man said, and Slaughter felt his apprehension intensify. His mind seemed to tilt, and he knew that normalcy was on the other side now.

  "Did you phone them yesterday about a rancher named Bodine?" the new man continued.

  "That's right. Damn it, tell me what they want."

  "Well, the ranch is still deserted. Not only that, but…"

  When Slaughter heard the rest of it, he murmured, 'Jesus," and rushed in toward the telephone.

  NINE

  The helicopter circled high above the foothills. It was just a speck up there, and Slaughter barely heard it as he sped across the bumpy rangeland, squinting upward, then glancing straight ahead to make sure he didn't hit a rock or a clump of sagebrush or a gulch he wouldn't see until he was almost on it. He glanced to the left as well, worried by the wide, deep drywash over there, and hoped that he'd made the proper choice when he drove down along this side instead of heading across the bridge back near the ranch and moving down along the opposite side. He was aiming toward the helicopter, closer to it, closer to the dry-wash too and worried that he'd have to stop the cruiser soon, to cross the gully on foot and walk the rest of the way.

  He didn't have to. One bend in the wash, and then it straightened, almost in a line up toward the helicopter high above the foothills. He was taking chances, speeding faster.

  "Aren't you worried that you'll break an axle?" Dunlap asked beside him.

  "Not in this car. It's designed to go through anything. I made sure we got the best."

  Slaughter concentrated on the bumpy terrain. Bringing Dunlap with him was something he regretted. But he hadn't wanted Dunlap going through his files when he wasn't around, and certainly he hadn't wanted Dunlap asking people questions about what was happening in town-that would surely start the panic Slaughter wanted to avoid-and so he'd made a quick decision, taking Dunlap with him. Slaughter told himself that there was no place where Dunlap would be harmless. At least this way the man w
ould be in sight. But Slaughter wasn't confident. Of all the weekends for a reporter to arrive, he thought, and he was speeding faster toward the helicopter high above the foothills.

  "What about that cow the medical examiner mentioned?" Dunlap asked.

  "The steer."

  "I beg your pardon."

  "Out here they call beef cattle 'steers'."

  "I didn't know."

  "It's all right. I called them 'cows' too many times myself. It takes a while to get adjusted."

  Maybe I've changed the subject, Slaughter hoped. The night before, he'd told the medical examiner to check the steer that had been found next to old Doc Markle's corpse. But it turned out that someone at the veterinary clinic had mistakenly had the carcass incinerated. Slaughter had been furious. Wasn't anything about this trouble going to work out easily?

  "But what about the steer?" Dunlap asked.

  So the subject hadn't been changed, after all.

  "A different problem," Slaughter told him. "Something got a steer two nights ago. We don't know what did it."

  "The steer was Sam Bodine's?"

  And how did you know that? Slaughter thought. "Yes, that's right. Bodine's."

  "So then this problem isn't really different from the other."

  The helicopter now was lower as the foothills loomed before them. Slaughter had to look away, the helicopter in a straight line with the blazing sun, and then he saw the state-police cars where the rangeland ended at the bottom of the thickly wooded slope. He drove as far as he was able, stopping by the other cars, his bumper up against some sagebrush, and he scrambled out, putting on his hat, holding it as dust was swirled up by the helicopter coming down. He looked around, puzzled, wondering where everybody from the cruisers had gone.