CHAPTER SIX
At first, Kurt thought he was dreaming about burglar alarms. That’s what the noise reminded him of—a loud, jarring bell-sound that screamed in his ear and through his head. But then he turned, senseless; his eyes fluttered, and as he gradually came awake, he realized it was only the telephone.
One eye opened on the clock, focusing, and unmentionable phrases came to mind when he saw the time—5:00 a.m. His hand crawled out and took up the receiver.
“Yeah.”
“Kurt, it’s me. We got trouble out at Merkel’s cornfield.”
Kurt rubbed his brow, trying to make his brain work. It took several seconds to figure out that me was Chief Bard. His answer came thick as mud. “Merkel’s, huh? Someone ripped off the scarecrow again, right? Want me to call the FBI?”
“No, funny boy. I want you to get your hand out of your shorts, your ass out of bed, and meet me there in fifteen minutes,” Bard cracked. “I gotta be around when the tow truck arrives.”
Kurt nodded groggily, said, “Right, Merkel’s in fifteen—” But then he thought: What did he…tow truck? “Wait a minute, Chief. Did you say—”
“Just shut up and be there as soon as you can,” Bard cut in. “No time to explain now, Higgins is here. Gotta go.”
Click.
Kurt dropped the phone back in its cradle. He sat up and shook his head, mystified as the edges of sleep drifted off. What do they need a tow truck for at Merkel`s cornfield? For a dumb, misted moment, he wondered if he had dreamed the phone call from Bard.
Getting dressed, he felt like something risen from a lime pit. He staggered out to the Ford, buttoning up one of his father’s old coal shirts. The fresh air cleared his senses, and the cogs turned at last. It must’ve been a car wreck out at Merkel’s, and Bard needed him to help direct traffic. But when he started up and pulled out onto 154, his cop’s curiosity turned dark. His mind flashed a tumult of glaring images, like scenes from a driver’s training film, only these images he had witnessed for real. Cars crushed to twisted hulks, some tipped over, some burning greedily. Windshields spiderwebbed, blown out, safety glass spread across the road like halite. Bloodless faces agape in death, or worse, crisped black, and the endless pools of blood turning brown on the asphalt. Kurt had seen it all before, and he steeled himself as he drove on, knowing that he’d probably see it all again in a few minutes.
The road curved gently but steadily each way; trees passed in a whoosh of morning-dark green. The dead possums he’d noticed yesterday no longer littered the shoulder. There would be more, he knew—people would be running them down and smashing them flat for the next five months, but at least the first wave had been cleaned up. It was odd, though. The sun was just now peeking over the horizon; he’d never known the animal control crew to come through at night.
Another few bends in the road, and he could see Merkel’s field in the gray morning darkness. The cornfield had always baffled them; there was no one in town named Merkel, and nobody really knew who owned or worked the field. The corn would grow heartily all summer, then would suddenly be gone, as if harvested overnight, all without a single sign of farmers. Every so often kids would steal or dismember the scarecrow, but there would always be a new one up the next day.
Kurt stopped on the shoulder just past the farthest boundary of the field, where the break in the forest ended and the trees began again. Parked directly ahead of him was Bard’s T-bird, the hazard flashers blinking rhythmically on and off. Bard and Mark Higgins stood off to the side, arms crossed contemplatively, their figures pale in the gray light. Swaggert and the town cruiser were not to be seen, nor was there any sign of the mangling car crash he’d envisioned earlier.
Bard greeted him with his usual inexplicable question. “Was Swaggert fucked up last night at shift change?”
“No,” Kurt said, and arched a brow. It was a question without pretense; Doug Swaggert was straight and everyone knew it. “Swaggert doesn’t drink, and he doesn’t do dope, either. That’s common knowledge.”
Bard glared at Kurt, then at Higgins. His face seemed to be giving off heat. Kurt could tell he was fired up about something.
Higgins said, “Christ.”
“If he wasn’t shitfaced, then he must’ve fallen asleep at the wheel, the dumb fuck. Take a look at that.” Bard pointed down into the narrow gulch that descended off the shoulder.
The town patrol car was settled there at the bottom, as if dropped. Kurt could see that the entire left of it was crumpled in; the car lay on its side so that the two right wheels hung aloft in the air. Dew beaded on the shiny metal and glass, sparkling. The passenger door was cocked open, precariously defying gravity.
“Holy shit,” Kurt said. “Where’s Swaggert?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“There’s no blood inside,” Higgins told him. “Whatever happened, he walked away from it.”
“Did you call South County General?”
Higgins nodded. “Not admitted. And the dispatcher says she didn’t hear from him all night.”
“He must’ve bolted,” Bard said. “Probably thought I’d hold him responsible for the car, so he just took off and left town.”
“No way, Chief,” Kurt said. “If Swaggert wrecked the car through his own negligence, he’d own up to it. He’s not the kind of guy to head for the hills just because of one departmental.”
They all turned their heads then, exactly at the same time. The sudden whine of an engine tore through the dawn silence, and a tow truck from DeHenzel’s Texaco appeared from around the bend. Gears ground as it jerked to a halt. The driver got out and looked into the gulley; he was young, lanky, frighteningly tall, and had freckles and bright blond hair. Frowning, he nodded dumbly, then hitched the cruiser up and hauled it out of the ditch. Bard’s distress shone plainly on his face; he nearly fell over when he got full view of the cruiser’s damage—body work alone would kill the emergency fund, in addition to the cost of a new front end, a new visibar, and probably a new radiator. Damn crying shame, Kurt thought; it had been a good cruiser. But it was better the car than Swaggert, wherever he was.
“I’ll probably have to buy a whole new cruiser,” Bard said after the tow truck had left. “The mayor’s gonna shit bowling pins… Wait’ll I get my hands on that fuckin’ Swaggert. I’ll murder him.”
Higgins was leaning back on Bard’s fender; he ran a tiny comb through his mustache. “I have to agree with Kurt, Chief. Swaggert didn’t do this and run off. We all know him better than that.”
Bard and Higgins began to bicker back and forth, making liberal use of four-letter words. Kurt wandered out to the yellow line ten or fifteen yards back. Two even black slashes streaked diagonally across the line; they led toward the gulley where the cruiser had been. cruiserOver here,” he called out.
They walked over sullenly. Bard stooped and put his hands on his knees, a physical act that Kurt could scarcely believe.
“Skidmarks,” Bard said. “How did I miss them?”
Try opening your eyes, Kurt thought. “Swaggert didn’t nod at the wheel. Something made him slam on his brakes and cross the yellow line. Then he lost control.”
“We can guess all we want,” Higgins said, “but the only way we’re going to know for sure is to ask Swaggert.”
Bard’s heavy face now glittered an amazing shade of pink. “Yeah, but first we have to find the son of a bitch.”
Birds chirped around them, reveling in the joy of a new day. As the sun cleared the edge of the earth, pouring light, the three men faced each other, suddenly unable to speak. Kurt felt a spark of dread in his gut; next to Cody Drucker’s disentombment, he couldn’t imagine anything so wrong. Doug Swaggert, it seemed, had simply vanished.
««—»»
Kurt hadn’t been to Glen’s for so long that he nearly forgot the way. Glen lived in a drab little bungalow just beyond town limits, in Annapolis. When he finally found the place, he parked the new cruiser next to Glen’s Pinto. Six bungalows formed a horseshoe shape around a communal parking oval. They all looked the same—gray and squat and forsaken, windows blank in afternoon shadow. Heaps of leaves lay still between the bungalows, crabgrass crawled out through cracks in sidewalks. Another car was parked two spaces down, a black, nameless foreign make; its sleek curves, tinted glass, and sharp-sloped front end reminded Kurt of a shark. He thought he heard its engine ticking as he walked across the cul-de-sac.
He fastened his portable to his belt, then rapped gently on Glen’s storm door. Glen appeared almost instantly, as if he’d been waiting all along, and instead of inviting Kurt in, he stepped outside and walked straight to the new cruiser.
“So here’s the new patrol car,” Glen said. He looked at it appraisingly. “What a beaut.”
“How did you know about it?” Kurt asked.
“Higgins told me this morning when I got off.”
“When Bard found out how much it would cost to repair the old one, he decided to just go for it all. The old one was breaking down anyway. I’d sure like to know how he wrangled the extra cash out of the town council.”
“Probably had to spend some time on his knees.”
Kurt smiled at the insinuation, but then he darkened at the next thought. “I guess Higgins told you the rest, too.”
Glen was peeking in at the dash, shading his eyes with his hand. “Huh? Oh, yeah—about Swaggert. That’s spread all over town by now. What do you think happened to him?”
“That’s what I came to ask you. Did you see him last night?”
“Nope, and that’s strange because he usually stops by Belleau Wood to bullshit for a few minutes. But not last night, I didn’t see hide nor hair of the guy. Could he have been thrown clear when he wrecked the car, or maybe crawled away?”
“No,” Kurt said, “no way. He climbed out the passenger door. Besides, we checked the whole area right up to the Belleau Wood property line. If he was hurt, he wouldn’t have crawled into the woods.”
Glen was standing now, leaning against the car door. He slipped his hands in his jeans pockets and looked thoughtfully into the trees behind the bungalows. “You think he bolted?”
“Not me. That’s the last thing Swaggert would do.”
“Well let me tell you what I think happened. I think he went after poachers and maybe got lost in the woods, or worse, got himself shot.”
“How would that explain the wrecked cruiser?” Kurt asked.
“Maybe one of the poachers was crossing the road same time Swaggert came around the bend; Swaggert can either dump the cruiser or run the guy down, so he dumps the cruiser. Then the guy takes off into the woods and Swaggert takes off after him, fixing to kick his ass and haul him in.”
Kurt gave the idea some thought. “Merkel’s field isn’t too far from Belleau Wood. Did you hear any shots?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything; Belleau Wood is huge, and I spend most of my time up near the house. I wouldn’t necessarily be able to hear shots as far down as Merkel’s field.”
“Yeah, but I just can’t see Swaggert getting lost in the woods. He’s a born pathfinder.”
“I don’t care if he’s Daniel Boone back from the dead. Without a compass, a guy can get lost quick as shit back there. Some of the thickest, hairiest woods in the state. And there’s always the quicksand on the other side of the Route.”
“Quicksand?”
“Hell, yes. The marsh is full of it. Animals sinking in the stuff all the time. Once I saw this beautiful ten- or fifteen-point buck go down in the shit. Funniest damn thing I ever saw—two big old antlers sticking up out of the marsh.”
Kurt pictured a different image, a hand sticking up out of the marsh.
“Anyway,” Glen said, “that’s my two-cents’ worth. Swaggert chasing poachers.”
“Probably Stokes or one of his friends,” Kurt considered. “Jacking deer’s his bread and butter, next to dealing.”
“Might be a good idea to ask Vicky if he was home last night. Wouldn’t mean anything if he wasn’t, but it sure couldn’t hurt.”
Kurt nodded, trapped by a meld of thoughts. Just as he was about to ask Glen who owned the black sports car, the portable radio on his hip crackled and spat: “Two-zero-seven.”
Oh, hell, he thought. Bard probably wants more doughnuts. He keyed the radio. “Two-zero-seven, go ahead.”
“Two-zero-seven, go to 2-8-1-9, MSR 154; citizen reports possible signal 85.”
“Ten-four.”
“What’s a signal 85?” Glen queried.
“Missing person. We seem to be having a lot of those all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, a cop and a corpse. What next?”
“I’ll let you know,” Kurt said, and slipped into the new car.
Glen waved and went back into the bungalow. Kurt popped the portable back into the dash-charger, then started the engine and cut the wheel. He looked up then, turning a hard circle around the parking court. A quick slither at Glen’s front window caught his eye; the drapes pulled back from the inside, and he could now see a face behind the pane. It wasn’t Glen’s face, it was a woman’s. He stopped and stared, almost rudely. In the gap between the curtains he also could see a tapered slice of the woman’s breast, abdomen, and thigh; she was nude. But in less time than it took to frown, the drapes fell back across the glass, and the figure was gone.
Kurt drove away to his call, duped by what he’d just seen. This was the second time he’d caught a glimpse of the girl, and the second time Glen had failed to acknowledge her. He wondered what it was Glen didn’t want him to know.
Back on 154, he slowed to a crawl, driving on the shoulder and craning his neck to read the addresses on the postboxes. Finally he found it, 2819 stenciled across the body of a very large mailbox corroded by rust. He turned and drove at least fifty yards into the woods, along a typical tree-walled dirt road, until he came to the house. What else could I expect? he thought. The house was not a house, but a long, white trailer set up on a foundation of cinderblocks—the crudest of dwellings, yet so familiar to him. Like many of the secret homes off the Route, this was surrounded by heaps of refuse and at least eight ancient automobiles, all in varying states of dilapidation. A fat-bellied cat chased famished chickens across the front yard, and faded articles of laundry flapped at him from a makeshift clothesline, like a string of lunatic signal flags. He heard dogs barking nearby as he got out, hand on his mace, but there were no dogs that he could see, just the chickens clucking and tracking circles around the yard in sheer terror. When he was halfway to what he presumed to be the front door, a voice carried out from the side, “Hey there.”
A man had just turned the corner of the trailer and was approaching in strange, quick strides.
“You reported a missing person?” Kurt asked.
“That’s right. Name’s Harley Fitzwater, an’ my daughta, Donna…she been kidnapped.”
He’d heard this before. A second look at Fitzwater showed a man who was probably not old—he just looked that way, weathered, taut, with skin like canvas. He wore a T-shirt and overalls, and looked starved in them. His eyes were squinting slits; his face reminded Kurt of the bottom of a deformed foot. Like lots of the poor in this part of Maryland, Fitzwater was one who lived off the land and water, who made cash selling skins and meat, who shivered in the winter and dripped sweat in the summer. A survivor.
“Kidnapped, you say?”
“That’s right. When I came back from the lake, she was gone.”
“Does your wife—”
“Ain’t got no wife, she been dead years. Jus me an’ Donna.”
Parents, no matter how destitute, could never be reasoned with about such things. “Perhaps it’s hasty to suspect kidnapping at this point, Mr. Fitzwater. How old is Donna?”
Fitzwater’s face seemed to pucker as he thought. “Twunee-two, I think… That’s right, twunee-two.”
“Have you talked to any of her friends, a boyfriend, maybe?”
“Donna ain’t got no friends. Sure’s hell got no boyfriend.”
“Well, isn’t it likely that she just went off for a walk someplace?”
“No,” Fitzwater said. His answer was icy, unhesitant. His eyes looked more like an animal’s than a man’s. “No,” he said again.
“How can you be sure?”
“’Cos Donna’s got no feelin’ from the waist down. Can’t walk, been that way since she was little.”
Kurt tensed. He felt like he’d just been hit in the head with a box of nails.
“Her chair’s still inside. Right ‘side the bed. Somebody took her outa her bed while I was gone.”
“Where were you?” Kurt asked, grateful Fitzwater had cut in again.
“I went out to the lake ‘bout an hour ‘fore sunup, stringin’ fer white perch and cat. I got back a little while ago an’ Donna was gone.”
Kurt took out a missing person card, the first he’d ever used, and began to fill it out with data provided by Fitzwater. Later, the information would be transferred to Maryland State Police Form MPD A-1A. Fitzwater answered the series of questions sharply and with primitive reserve. There was no display of grief here, nothing chipped away by emotions. Very clearly Kurt sensed the focus in Fitzwater’s existential reaction; he wanted something done now, with as little time wasted as possible.
“You find my Donna,” Fitzwater said.
“We’ll do everything we can, sir. I’ll forward this report to the county and state police right away. Do you have a photograph of Donna, preferably a recent one?”
“No,” Fitzwater said. “None.”
“We’ll need your phone number so we can contact you.”
“Ain’t got no phone. I hitchhiked to the Liquor Mart and back, used the pay phone there to call y’awl. Got no need for a phone.”
Kurt clapped his metal report book shut. “I’ll come back when things start to develop.”
It was almost scary the way Fitzwater looked at him then— a deserted, definitive gaze, like being evaluated by a statue. “I don’t care,” Fitzwater said. “You just find my Donna.”
««—»»
Four a.m. crept up with the stealth of a snake. His first twelve-hour shift in years, yet it seemed to have passed in a handful of hours. Earlier he’d processed the missing persons report through the county and state, glad that the unusual aspects of Donna Fitzwater’s disappearance would expedite the 85. The remainder of his shift had elapsed in a black lament; his mind forced thoughts of Cody Drucker, of Swaggert, of the paralyzed girl. The Fitzwater case pushed Drucker to a back burner; it was abduction, Kurt knew, not kidnapping. No one would kidnap the daughter of a man who had no money to forfeit for ransom. Kurt suspected darker motives here, motives that made him sick; the possibility was heinously typical—Donna Fitzwater would probably turn up in a few days, murdered, sexually mauled. Cheap tabloid headlines stretched across his mind: CRIPPLED GIRL FOUND DEAD IN CULVERT, or something hackishly similar. TORTURED WITH COAT HANGERS AND RAPED FOR DAYS. And of course Swaggert, more than likely lying dead somewhere in the dripping woods. Kurt couldn’t escape the sinister hint; whatever had happened to Swaggert could just as easily happen to him.
His headlights swept across the house. He pulled up and parked the Ford, expecting to find the house dark; but then he saw the familiar dull orange light filling one of the downstairs windows. So far his attempts to break Melissa of television addiction had failed utterly. He knew she was up right now, no doubt transfixed by the all-night horror movies on cable.
He used his flashlight to show him the way up the porch steps. Melissa must’ve heard him park; she opened the door and let him in before he even had his keys out. The TV muttered from the family room, throwing slants of ghostly, shifting color onto the walls.
Melissa locked the door at once. She seemed distracted by some complex worry; her face had lost the mischievous smirk he was so used to. Her long ink-black hair shivered as she turned, her thin body moving wraithlike under a dreary white nightgown. The flickering light from the other room lit points in her eyes like sparks.
“What are you doing up?” Kurt demanded, trying to sound harsh. He felt obligated to scold her with her father away. His only chance to play big brother.
Her face looked tiny in the half-light, her hair more like black silk draped over her head. “I think I figured it out,” she said, lips barely moving as though she spoke through a mask.
“Figured out what?”
“Vampires.”
Kurt stared a moment, then wearily rubbed his eyes. “Damn it, Melissa. You’ve been into your father’s liquor cabinet again, haven’t you?”
“I’m serious, Kurt. That’s how come Swaggert disappeared. Vampires got him.”
“Sure, vampires. I suppose they dug up Cody Drucker’s body, too, right? Just what every vampire needs.”
“Dummy,” she said. “They didn’t want his body; they wanted his coffin. Vampires sleep in coffins—everybody knows that. If I were you, I’d get some protection fast.” From under the top of her nightgown she slipped out a small, chained crucifix and let it swing from her fingers. “See? I got nothing to worry about, ’cause vampires can’t face the sign of the cross.”
“What did I tell you about those horror movies you watch?” he said. “They’re making you retarded.”
“You think I’m joking, but just you wait. This time tomorrow I’ll bet you have yourself a mouthful of fangs.”
He turned for the stairs, waving her away like a bad joke. “Go to bed before you become a battered child.”
“Not so fast, you have a visitor. In the den.”
At this hour? “Who?”
An impish grin suddenly darkened Melissa’s face. “That girl you have a crush on. She’s been here almost two hours, said she’d wait. She seemed kind of uptight about something.”
Kurt stood on the first step, puzzled. “It’s four in the morning. I wonder what she wants.”
“You’re never going to find out unless you ask her, putz.”
Kurt stepped for the door to the den, but Melissa grabbed his arm first, tugging him back. “Be careful,” she said.
“Why?”
Melissa lowered her voice to an exasperated whisper. “She might be one of the vampires, stupid.”
“I’ll vampire you if you don’t get your butt in bed,” he had to restrain from shouting. “And I mean now.”
In the den, dark yellow incandescence filled most of the room from a single shaded lamp in the corner. Uncle Roy’s Carpathian Elm grandfather clock ticked softly opposite. Vicky was sitting in the recliner beside the lamp, a book opened in her lap, and her head nodding forward. She was asleep.
Kurt gently prodded her shoulder, certain he would see new bruises on her face, but when she opened her eyes and looked up, he found none.
“Kurt,” she said. “I must’ve dozed off.” She winced and tried to blink the sleep from her eyes.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes…well, no. Something…”
He took the book out of her lap and put it aside. “Lenny didn’t—”
“No, no,” she said, now finally coming awake. “It’s not Lenny. I haven’t seen him in a day and a half, thank God.”
“What then?”
“I really shouldn’t even be bothering you about something dumb,” she said, and nervously pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Never mind about bothering me. What happened?”
Vicky took a heavy breath, her eyes fixed bleakly on the window. “It must’ve happened last night… After I’d gone to bed, I heard noises in the backyard, so I got up and looked out—and I saw someone back there standing just in front of the trees. I was really scared at first, but whoever it was left a second later, and I figured it was just some kids or something.” She was tying her jacket cord into useless knots; she scarcely blinked. “Remember I told you Brutus died the other day? Well, I buried him in the backyard, about the same place I saw this person.”
“Yeah?”
“Kurt, somebody dug up my dog.”
— | — | —