She stopped him with a wave of her hand. He realized too late that he’d made her angry.
“I’ve got four friends lying dead out there and you’re feeding me some X-Files bullshit. Jesus! Go and talk to Dick North…he’ll like you.”
With one smooth movement she stood, lifted her coffee. She threw it full in his face.
He was still dripping as the diner door closed behind her.
Cole ruefully wiped off the coffee, thanking his lucky stars that it had cooled during the conversation. But he had something to go on…a name, and a possible sympathetic ear…Dick North.
* * *
“Okay, Tom,” Mike said. “Wanna tell me how all those media types and gawkers got past you?”
He was back at the gates. Two hours had passed. He was tired, pissed off, and ready to chew somebody out.
“Must have slipped in when I wasn’t looking,” Old Tom said.
He did the thing with his teeth.
“I’m an old man. I have to siphon the python every ten minutes or so these days. They could have got in anytime.”
Mike sighed.
“How much did you get?”
The old man cackled.
“Around a grand all told. Not bad for a morning’s work. I told you that you should have joined me in the guard room. You could have had a cut.”
“You know me better than that, Tom,” Mike said.
The old man nodded, looking suddenly serious.
“What happened out on the dock, Mikey? I heard it was bad. Bad and weird.”
“Yep. Both of those. But you know Hunter’s Dock…there’s always something different.”
“Don’t I know it,” Tom said. “I remember when…”
Mike nipped that in the bud. Old men who started sentences with those three words needed to be closed down quickly, lest they steamroll you into an afternoon of anecdotes. Not that Tom’s storytelling was necessarily a bad thing. Mike had spent many a long hour sitting in bars and diners listening to the old man; tales of One-Armed Tommy, the first policeman to patrol the docks, stories about Sad Sam, and his partner Itchy Nose, the most cunning of a long line of thieves in the history of Hunter’s Dock. He told stranger stories yet, of Indian drums in the night when the skies were clear and the air was cold. The allure of the tales was still as strong now, many years after their first telling. Mike would gladly down a couple of beers about now to listen to some of them again.
But duty calls.
“Can’t wait, Tom. I need to pay a call on BJ.”
“The big man? He’s involved?”
“His name came up, that’s all.”
“With BJ, that’s never all,” Tom said. “Best find him quick. If he hears he’s in the frame he’ll be off and away. You remember how good he is at running?”
“I remember,” Mike said softly. “How could I forget?”
Mike headed off across the dock, leaving the old man counting a pile of cash. He disagreed with Old Tom. Brian Johnson, the big man, BJ to his friends, wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Not that Mike thought that Johnson was guilty…not of murder anyway. He might lean on people sometimes, especially those that were costing him money, but murder was beyond him. He had to question him though…his name had come up in a witness statement.
At least Mike knew where the big man would be. There was a new warehouse development going up on the adjoining dock to the murder scene. Johnson had been bragging about the size of the contract he’d been awarded the last time they’d met for a beer. That’s where his boys would be working.
And that’s where he found the man himself, just ten minutes later.
He heard him before he saw him, the booming voice echoing among the partially constructed buildings.
“Anderson! I swear, if you don’t get your ass in gear, I’m going to kick it from here to eternity.”
Mike came up behind Johnson and clapped him on the shoulder. “How are they hanging, big man?”
“Like a pair of badly coordinated coconuts,” Johnson replied. “How are you doing, Mikey? Looking for a real job?”
“The day I agree to work for you is the day you’ll know I’m ready for the funny farm.”
“Is that what they call the precinct these days?”
Mike had known the big man most of his life. Even at eight years old Johnson had been big. He’d learned early that bulk meant strength in the pecking order that existed in the school. Unfortunately, picking on a young Mike Kaminski was a big mistake. What Mike had lacked in bulk, he more than made up for in temper. He’d pounded Johnson’s face into the dirt, and then helped the big boy home so that he could apologize to Johnson’s mum for ruining his school clothes. From that day on they’d been friends, not as close as some, closer than others. They met up about once a month for a couple of beers and a pizza, both gently pumping the other for information, neither really caring much about any that they got.
“You’re here about the dig site?” Johnson said, having to shout to make himself heard above the clang of metal on metal and the rough hum of cranes and forklifts.
Mike nodded.
“Walk with me,” he shouted back. “We need to talk.”
They walked out onto the dockside where the noise dimmed to almost tolerable levels. Across the dock the tarpaulin above the dig blew in the wind. There was still a lot of activity over there, but most of the gawkers had already drifted off, bored with the lack of excitement. Mike could have told the crowd hours ago that there would be nothing to see. Crime scenes were places that had already seen too much excitement. All that was left was routine and ball-breaking work.
“It’s been a lot of years since Hunter’s Dock saw that much activity,” Johnson said. He took a crumpled, hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear, straightened it out, and lit up. “What happened? Did the old dock collapse? I told them it wasn’t safe…I said to that North…”
“It wasn’t the dock,” Mike said softly.
He looked Johnson in the eye.
“It was a multiple homicide. A bad one. Your name came up in conversation.”
Johnson stopped in mid-puff, almost choking.
“Me? You don’t think that I had anything to do with it? You know me better than that, Mikey…”
Mike patted the big man on the arm.
“No. I don’t think you had anything to do with it. There was blood. Lots of it. I remember all too well your reaction to that.”
Indeed, at the very mention of it, Johnson went white as a sheet, his eyes threatening to roll up in their sockets…just like when they were eight years old and Mike had given him a nosebleed.
“Hey,” Mike said. “Come back here.” He grabbed the big man’s nose and pinched, hard.
Johnson shook his head violently. His eyes came back into focus. He took a long drag from the cigarette, holding the smoke in as if it would somehow steady him.
“Sorry, Mikey. You know how it is?”
“Yep. I know. That’s how I know it couldn’t have been you. But your name came up. There are four people dead, and a lot of media interest. So spill, what have you been up to?”
“Mea culpa,” Johnson said. “So maybe I leaned on them a little. I’m losing a grand for every day late on the contract while they fiddle with their bits of rotted wood and old bones. What’s a man to do?”
“Stay within the law would be a start?”
“It was only a gentle lean…I never threatened anyone, just made my displeasure clear.”
“I can imagine. You’re a bit on the heavy side for even gentle leaning. It looks bad, BJ.”
“I’m telling you straight Mikey. It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have been able to get the men to work there anyway…not on Hunter’s Dock.”
Something went ping on Mike’s cop radar.
“What do you mean?”
Before replying, Johnson put the cigarette out with his fingertips and let the remnants scatter in the wind.
“You must remember?” he said. “
That dock’s been bad news since we were kids. Hell, from a long time before that.”
“Fairy tales and hocus-pocus, big man. I didn’t have you down as the type to scare easily.”
“You’ve been off the dock too long, Mikey. Work enough nights down here and you’ll get to believe almost anything.”
“So what are you telling me? Old Joe Doyle is back eighty years after the mob made him some concrete shoes?”
Mike laughed, but the big man didn’t join in.
“All I can tell you is that my men won’t work on Hunter’s Dock…not even for double pay. Hell, it’s hard enough getting them to work nights way over here. Speaking of which…listen to that.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s what I mean. I’ve got to get back. The slackers down-tools every time my back is turned.”
Johnson turned to walk away.
“We’ll probably have to talk again,” Mike shouted after him. “Officially this time.”
“You keep right on talking, Mikey,” Johnson called back. “That’s all you were really good for anyway.”
Mike watched the big man until he was back in the skeleton of the warehouse.
He took one last look back at the dig before leaving. The tarpaulin stretched in the wind.
A cold chill washed across the dock.
* * *
Mina got the first of the bodies onto the slab in the morgue less than twenty minutes after leaving the crime scene.
Jon, her senior lab technician, helped her lift the body off the gurney. It felt unnaturally heavy. Cold seeped from it, even through the plastic sheeting.
“This is going to be a bad one,” Jon said, looking along the line of trolleys. At the moment all four of the bodies were covered, but Mina knew that very soon now she would have to lift a sheet and get to work.
“It’s no worse than that street crawler we had in last week,” Mina said. “At least this time the smell won’t be quite so bad.”
Jon paled at the memory.
“Do you need me for the first one?” he asked. “I’ve got tissue samples from under the nails of one of the deceased…the woman. I was hoping to get them analyzed straight away.”
“Get on with that then,” Mina replied. “I’ll be fine on my own for a while. I need to concentrate on these bodies. There’s going to be shit coming down from high places at some point soon. I’d rather have a strong umbrella when it happens.”
Jon moved off, but Mina had already stopped noticing him. She tied her hair back into a tight ponytail, put on her white coat, and snapped on the latex gloves. She was ready for work.
She lifted the sheet to reveal the first of the bodies.
It was the oriental male. The body was headless. For that she was almost grateful…she’d seen the bizarre totem pole. That was more than enough for one day. The image of the penis jutting, stiff and glistening, from the mouth, might yet put her off sex for a month of Sundays.
She’d been wrong about the smell. Even on the short journey back from the dock the body had thawed rapidly. The tell-tale odor of decay rose, thick, almost chewable, from the body. All of the exposed skin was black with frostbite. She touched a patch on the chest. It slid off under her finger, grey dead flesh slipping across a still frozen spot beneath it.
“Jon,” she called out. He lifted his head from where he’d been looking down a microscope. “Find out what the temperature got down to overnight last night.”
Another thought struck her.
“And find out if there was any liquid nitrogen on that site. Archaeologists sometimes freeze delicate finds…and these frost burns are far too extensive to be anything else.”
“Is that what you think caused this?” Jon asked.
Mina stayed silent.
“Maybe there was an accident,” somebody said at the far end of the room.
“I think three accidental decapitations might be stretching that theory a bit,” Mina said. There was some nervous laughter, but Mina didn’t join in. She was already back working on the body.
The three headless bodies had been found, totally nude, lined up side by side at the bottom of the trench, looked over by their disembodied heads.
Whatever had taken the heads off, it hadn’t been clean. Back at the scene Mina thought they might even have been torn off, forcibly. She’d get to that, eventually. First she wanted to have a closer look at the other wounds. They’d been too solidly frozen at the site to examine properly, but now in the relative heat of the lab, she could have a closer look.
She examined the exterior of the first body. It was hard to determine anything through the frostbite. The main thing she noticed was a gaping, ragged hole in the groin, where the organs had been roughly torn from the body. That, or the decapitation, or the freezing itself, were all possible candidates for cause of death.
Or maybe he died peacefully in his sleep.
She learned a long time ago not to jump to conclusions…she left that to the media, and the cops.
She’d heard the speculation back at the dig…everything from chemical spill to aliens. And the press, starved of any input, were making their own leaps of fancy. None of their musings came close to matching the reality, but it was only a matter of time until there was a leak. Then the shit really would hit the fan. This case already had all the hallmarks of turning into a media feeding frenzy. She was determined not to be eaten.
Mike had asked for an early heads-up, but even he didn’t get preferential treatment once the body was on the slab. The dead deserved respect. Mina made sure they got it.
She turned her attention back to the body. Taking a scalpel, she made a Y-incision. She stripped back the skin. The top layers peeled back easily, but beneath that everything was still frozen solid, like a beef joint just removed from the freezer.
The only way I’m going to get through that is with a pick-axe.
She checked the rest of the bodies. Under the top layers of skin all of them were as hard as stone…frozen to the core.
“Somebody has screwed up,” Jon said at her shoulder. “The only way these bodies could get like this is to have spent a week in the freezer.”
Mina shook her head.
“I checked with the detectives. They say the victims all came on shift on schedule last night.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know…yet,” she replied. She went back to work.
She examined the area around the torn groin. There were several pieces of ripped and mangled flesh around the wound. When she looked closer her suspicions were confirmed. The wounds had been caused by teeth.
“Have a look at this,” she said to the technician, pointing at a ragged piece of flesh.
The technician bent and peered at the wound.
“Bites?” he said. He went pale again.
“Yes,” she replied. “And I’ll bet you a beer that they’re human.”
* * *
Mike Kaminski arrived at the morgue in the late afternoon.
“Hi handsome,” Mina said.
Mike merely grunted in reply. They were alone in Mina’s office. Normally by now he’d have Mina in his arms, but today had started badly and got steadily worse.
“It’s not going well?” Mina asked.
“It’s hardly going at all,” Mike replied. “I let a possible suspect give me the slip, another, the archaeologists’ boss, has gone AWOL, the Lieutenant wants to core me a new ass, and there’s a howling pack of reporters just waiting for me to fuck up. I need good news, and I need it two hours ago.”
“No,” Mina said. “I know what you need.”
She came to him. Mike raised his arms for a hug, but dropped them again when he saw her checking the window to make sure no one was watching.
“Still ashamed of me, huh?” he said. He backed away.
She kept coming, and grabbed him round the waist.
“It’s not that,” she said into his chest. “You know it’s not. It’s just that I�
�m the boss…someone’s got to maintain some decorum around here.”
“I don’t think the stiffs care,” he said, ruffling her hair. Her hug was having the desired effect. The hard ball of tension in his gut eased, for the first time since he left the dockside.
He returned the hug, but Mina backed off.
“Later,” she said. She straightened her hair and stood back, pretending to look at something on her desk. Mike turned. Jon, the senior technician, stood at a microscope adjusting the focus.
It was a new thing, this romance. Mike was struggling to define their terms of engagement. Here in the lab everything was prim and proper, sewn up tight as a drum. But last night, for the first time, she’d been like a tigress, all over him. Now it was back to square one again. He knew it was the work…she was just so damned serious about it. He might wish she’d loosen up more, but he didn’t think it would happen anytime soon.
He took his lead from her.
“So, have you got anything to show me?”
“Plenty,” she said. “And you’re not going to like any of it.”
She led him through to where the bodies were laid out.
Mike held his nose.
“That bad huh?” he asked.
“We’ve got the recyclers turned right up,” Mina said. “But some smells just seem to linger.”
“So, was the freezing natural or not?” Mike asked.
“Definitely not,” she replied. “At first I thought it must have been a liquid nitrogen spill…”
“I thought of that. I had it checked. There were no canisters at the scene,” Mike interrupted.
“No. There wouldn’t be,” Mina continued. “This was something else.”
She led Mike to a body that had been stripped open; ribs cracked and forced wide exposing the chest cavity.
“Have a look,” she said.
“I’d rather not,” he said, trying to get a smile from her, and failing.
“You need to see this. It’s important.”
“He’s dead. What more do I need to know.”
“Are you going to look or not?”
Night of the Wendigo Page 3