Ghouls

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kurt walked cheerily into the kitchen, for once at grips with his “five days suspension without pay.” He’d get over it. Bright morning light blazed in through the sliding door. Melissa was seated on a stool at the counter, talking on the phone. As she spoke, though, she spun smoothly on the stool and watched Kurt advance toward the coffeepot.

“Just make sure you’re in the house by sunset,” she was saying. There was a pause, a matter-of-fact nod, then she continued. “Oh, sure, tent stakes will work. Broom handles, pool sticks—anything, just as long as it’s made of wood.”

Kurt poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup and reluctantly held it to his nose.

”Uh huh,” Melissa went on. “Just hold a mirror up to her face. If there’s no reflection, then you’ve got one… Okay, yeah. Garlic works, too, but not as good as a cross… Sure, sure, I’ll see if I can.” Then she hung up and stared widely at Kurt.

“Is this coffee fresh?” he asked.

“Yep. Just made it”

Kurt took a sip and immediately spat it into the sink.

“Fooled you.” She giggled impishly. “Some people will believe anything.”

“Buttbrain,” he said. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Jenny. She thinks her sister is one.”

“One what?”

“One of the vampires.”

“And I suppose she’s gonna drive a tent stake through her sister’s heart.”

“Only if she doesn’t pass the mirror test.” Melissa turned again on her stool as Kurt went to get his keys off the kitchen table. Grinning, she said, “I guess you’re gonna go do some job-hunting today, huh?”

“What?”

“Job hunting,” she repeated. “Everybody’s heard.”

“Melissa, what the fu— What the heck are you talking about? Why would I need to go job hunting?”

Her grin widened to the extent of perversion. “Well, I heard that you got kicked off the police department for crushing Lenny Stokes’s head with a croquet mallet.”

Kurt looked at her, his eyes drooping. “Who told you that?”

“Jenny. The whole town’s talking about it.”

“I can always count on the Tylersville grapevine to get the story straight. Jesus.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not true,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to mimic her voice. “I was suspended for five days, not fired. And I didn’t crush his head with a croquet mallet, I punched him in the face.”

“Why?”

Kurt’s cheeks were beginning to redden. “Because he’s a pri— he’s a coc— Because I felt like it, that’s why.”

Melissa seemed disappointed. “You mean he’s not in critical condition?”

He shoved the question away with a groan, the conversation now thoroughly corroded. Melissa continued to revolve on the stool, her arms crisscrossed between her legs. “Wanna do me a favor?” she asked.

“No.”

“Drive me and Jenny to Foos Fun?”

“No.”

“Come on, please…”

“No, Iy">

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“Out of range of your mouth!”

Kurt blew out of the kitchen, feeling unbearably cramped. Melissa pouted at him from her stool, probably aching to release cuss words. Kurt left the house as if yanked by an invisible tether.

The little that remained of his mood collapsed completely once he was outside. The sky dulled to a wash of gray, clouds mounting suddenly, and he shivered at an even more sudden chill; he was beginning to think that God had decided to extend winter at the last minute, for laughs. Starting the Ford, he pictured Vicky pale and battered in her hospital bed. He wanted to go there now and see her—Shit on Bard and his busy work, I’m not even getting paid—but that would be more irresponsibility, and he’d been irresponsible enough lately. Had belting Stokes in the face really been worth it? He rubbed his knuckles and smiled.

The beltway clicked by in a long, empty blur. He hoped the radio might disengage his thoughts, but the stations drifted maddeningly in and out of static until he was forced to click it off. In stages, the day seemed to darken as he drew closer to Reisterstown Road. This town depressed him, worse than Baltimore. Soon he spotted the sign PIKESVILLE BARRACKS and the immense lot filled with the new flesh-colored cruisers. Kurt had liked the old pale yellow state cars; this new color, designated supposedly to make the cars less conspicuous, stepped well past the bounds of ridiculousness. Perhaps next they’d change to flesh-colored uniforms, too—a nude police force.

Maryland State Police Headquarters reminded him more of a college campus than anything else. It was a condensed quadrant of land surrounded by buildings of varying style and age. He spotted the helipad, the fuel unit, and a steel skeletal radio tower whose peak was lost in the sky’s murk. Mist and rain clung to his face, deepening his annoyance. From one facade to the next, he found himself wandering, until he noticed a transom plate which read CRIMINALISTICS.

Inside, a preposterously large state trooper stared at him from behind bulletproof glass. Kurt’s street clothes made him feel uneasy in this regimented, spotless place; the trooper continued to glare until Kurt produced a badge and ID and stated his business.

Baritone instructions led him to an echoic far wing and a door of lacteal glass labeled POROSCOPY. Kurt entered, balking, and at once detected sharp chemical scents and something sooty. Ranks of glassware racks divided the room into sections; it brought back memories of tenth-grade biology class, and a teacher whose nickname had been “sweetlegs,” with good reason. High shelves of graduates, Erlenmeyer flasks, and Pyrex beakers glinted immaculately. To the right, a flank of cabinets and more signs: XYLENE, ANTHRACENE, SILVER NITRATE, LAMPBLACK. Mysterious machines on dollies crowded the other side of the room; the hatch of a Mosler arc furnace hung open like a mindless, obscene mouth. Through the room’s two meshed windows, dumpsters hulked en masse, and a tall, brick incinerator slowly oozed black smoke. Kurt lit a cigarette in the blue flame of an unattended Bunsen burner.

“There’s no smoking here” came a reedy, toneless voice behind him. Startled, Kurt turned to face a deviantly thin woman in a lab coat which seemed large enough for someone twice her size. Her hair was flat ashen brown and hung nearly to her waist; he doubted that she weighed a hundred pounds. In one hand she held a polycarbonate clipboard, and in the other a fat camel’s hair brush.

“But that’s all right, I won’t tell. I don’t trust a cop who doesn’t smoke.” Her voice droned, vaguely sexless, like a minister with sinus trouble; her brittle smile somehow intimated a subtle depravity. She set the clipboard down carefully and donned a pair of unbecoming glasses. “You’re the guy from— what?—Tylersville, is it?”

“Right. Kurt Morris.”

She extended her hand, which Kurt shook. It was like shaking hands with a glove full of ice water. “I’m Jan Beck,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”

Let’s not be hasty, he thought. “I came to pick up the evidence report on the stuff the county sent you.”

She gave a vacant chuckle that made Kurt’s scalp shrink. He sensed something abstrusely disturbing about this woman—her benign appearance and manner seemed a camouflage net for something atrocious. She made Kurt wonder about Melissa’s obsession with vampires. “Yes, the evidence report,” she said. “Let’s just hope you have a versatile sense of humor.”

“Why? Problems?”

She grinned, and Kurt found himself contemplating the length of her cuspids. “I’ve seen funny things in this business,” she said, “but I’ll let you be the judge.” Absently, she coiled a tress of hair around her finger; the finger was white, like bone. “I’ll give you the dull stuff first… Whenever we get something that involves a missing police officer, we tend to suspect the very worst, and spend a little extra time on the preliminaries. Fortunately, the level of decomposition on the hand wasn’t severe—the primary friction ridges were still in great shape—”

Kurt found it easy to picture her inking up Swaggert’s severed hand. “It was Swaggert’s hand, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and all the partials on the brass, the speedloader, and the Smith were Swaggert’s, too. No one else handled any of that stuff before or after he put on the sand gloves.” She pointed placidly to the black-topped counter where she’d set the clipboard. Beside a suds-filled sink lay a plastic bag containing wads of cotton stained with something orange, like Mercuro-chrome. She went on to explain. “Neutron-activation analysis on the glove itself found heavy traces of fresh antimony.”

Kurt was puzzled. “Why bother? Isn’t it assumed—”

“We don’t assume anything here,” she almost snapped. “Leave that to the other departments, the three-ring circuses. The first step was to determine that Swaggert had definitely discharged the weapon. This state is famous for police officers shot with their own guns. Shades of Terrence Johnson.”

“But that still doesn’t prove he wasn’t wasted by his own piece.”

“Theoretically, no. But statistically it does, almost without a doubt. Once a cop gets his hands on his weapon, no one ever takes it away. It’s not the cops that are the problem, it’s the holsters. All this quick-draw nonsense, open-tops, friction holsters, thumb-snaps. Dead meat. Cops should have their guns handcuffed to their wrists at the start of every shift. What kind of holster do you use?”

Kurt looked to the floor. “Uh, thumb-snap.”

“Then I guess you also carry around a banner that says TAKE MY GUN AND KILL ME WITH IT,” Jan Beck said, and scowled. “But to get back on track, next I tried to get a type and an Rh from the bitemark on Drucker’s arm, but the saliva had oxidized by the time I got to it. County ding-dongs don’t know how to preserve evidence. Antigen test was no-go, so was the antihuman serum test. And no chance for a good dental print. It was a lousy bite, not at all pronounced.”

Kurt couldn’t believe his ears. “We had assumed that the bitemark was from an animal after the fact. You think it was human?”

“I’m not paid to think. I run tests, and anything with a bodily secretion in it I check. You’d be surprised at the number of human bitemarks we get in here, and you’d be even more surprised at how many autopsies and stomach pumps bring up human tissue. We check every angle, every imaginable possibility, no matter how remote.”

Suddenly the lights went out, and Kurt shuddered when this woman actually took his arm and guided him across the room.

“Now the fun begins.” She took him to a viewing partition, where sat a Sirchie slide comparator. There was a sliding click; the twin screens flashed white, then darkened, bearing odd shapes. In the left block was a single enlarged fingerprint. The right block contained a dark oval. Jan Beck hovered over the screen, pointing the camel’s hair brush in the fashion of a knife.

“In the left box, we have a normal lampblack fingerprint, and in the right a tape-lift of one of the latents on the coffin. As you can see, they’re quite different from each other. The image in the right box possesses none of the qualities associated with latent fingerprints. No loops, no whorls, no bifurcations—no ridge patterns whatsoever.”

Kurt pinched his chin, thinking. Jan Beck stared at him as if in wait of a natural response. Finally, he said, “Porous glove smear?”

“No. It’s a fingerprint.”

“But you just said—”

She grinned in the uplit darkness, to a hideous effect. The comparator hummed. “It’s a fingerprint devoid of most normal, expected characteristics. In other words, what you’re seeing is a photograph of an actual latent deposit.”

“I don’t understand.”

Unconsciously, she caressed the brush handle, in a way that made Kurt think of his first date at Palmer’s Drive-in. She went on, “A latent fingerprint is composed of a bunch of things, perspiration, sebaceous and fatty secretions, chloride ions, residual alpha amino acids. It’s these substances that form the actual latent ridge patterns we use for comparison and identification. What I’m saying is that the image in the right box is a normal deposit of common fingerprint residue, yet there is no observable ridge pattern.”

“How often does this happen?” Kurt asked.

“Never.”

The screens glowed. He dragged his cigarette and muttered an inconclusive “Shit.”

”Uh huh,” she replied. She turned off the left screen; a new slide popped into the right—a luminous blue oval. “Here’s a fluorescent dust job under ultraviolet. Still no ridge pattern.”

The screen changed again, now a pink blob on a gray background. “This one’s a Neohydrin-acetone treatment. Nothing.”

The next slide showed a glistening, brownish splotch on a white background. “When I got really desperate, I did this silver nitrate transfer, also under UV light. The silver chloride reaction barely even showed up.”

Kurt flicked ashes on the floor when she wasn’t looking. “Maybe the guy did something to his fingertips.”

Her face seemed to tweak, as though he’d insulted her. “Only idiots do that; it happens more in the movies than anywhere else. Sure, there have been a fair number of bozos who’ve cut off their fingerprints, or burned them off, but what they’re too stupid to realize is that fingerprints are genetically unalterable; the ridge patterns always come back after healing, along with scars which are even more identifiable. Besides, if these were mutilated fingerprints, then the pore patterns would be obviously deformed. And they aren’t. Look.”

The next slide was completely filled with an orange smear and darker orange spots. “At least the coffin was jet lacquered,” she said. “The ideal surface for pore schemes, next to glass. Here’s an iodine fume, a perfect sebaceous print.” Next slide. “And a mercuric oxide blow. Perfect.” Now her eyes were large and off focus. She turned to him and said, “Everyone who touched the surface of this coffin left perfect pore patterns but no ridges. Why?”

Kurt squashed his cigarette out under his Adidas, dismayed. “The coffin was sitting in the woods for at least twenty-four hours,” he reminded her.

“Big deal,” she said. “Granted, sodium chloride residuum will diffuse after a short time. But the point is the sebaceous secretions are still wholly intact, and amino acid deposits have been known to last for years, decades in some instances. And it doesn’t make a poop streak’s worth of difference anyway”—she tapped the screen rapidly with her brush—“because the pore patterns are still there.”

She seemed winded now, all at once having worked herself into a delicate frenzy. Aggravation brought color to her face, and she continued to fondle the brush handle as though it were a penis. A leak of sexual repression? Kurt thought. Or just wishful thinking?

“I’ve done everything I know,” she said, looking off in a fog. “You’re missing the gist of what I’m telling you. I know I’m not the most imposing person in the world, and I suppose it might be hard for you to take me seriously; but if I didn’t know what I was doing, then I wouldn’t be here. I’m an evidence technician by design, and a poroscopist by specialty. I do good work, and I know what I’m talking about, and let me tell you, quite professionally—it’s goddamned fucking impossible to leave perfect pore configurations with no ridge patterns.”

Kurt let out a slow breath. He thought he was beginning to understand. “Like pushing a penny into clay and getting the date, but not a trace of Lincoln’s face.”

“Exactly.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do with just the pore patterns?”

“No. Not in this situation anyway. As a rule, pore schemes are used to link good ridge patterns with bad. By themselves, they’re almost never admissible in court—you can run fingerprints, but you can’t run pore patterns. Without any suspects, these things are useless.”

Neither of them spoke for a time, but when their silence became edgy, she punched the slide button again. She seemed to be squeezing the brush handle as hard as she could. “Here’s another dust job with anthracene. I upped the UV to 380 nanometers, to make it pretty.”

Kurt’s face screwed up in confusion. The screen captured a bright, glowing blue outline against a flat gray background, like a phosphorescent inkblot of a man with one arm and no head.

“How do you like it?” she asked. Her face was beaming now in the fragmented darkness. She brought the tip of the brush handle to her mouth and bit down, delighted at Kurt’s bewilderment.

“What is it?”

“A palm print,” she said. “I found six complete palm prints on the coffin. I treated and photographed two of them. Here’s the second one.” The comparator churned and spat the last slide into the slot. Now the screen held a similar outline, but with reversed polarity.

Kurt stared at her. It couldn’t be what he was thinking. “Tell me,” he said.

“The first slide was a right hand, the second a left. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Only three fingers on each hand?”

“Uh huh. And if that’s not balled up enough, consider the physical measurements. The average handspread of an adult Caucasian male, that is minimus to opposable thumb, is roughly nine and a half inches. The same measurement on this print is over twelve.”

Kurt looked at his own hand and tried to envision the difference. He gulped.

“Which means,” she went on, “that this person is big, real big.”

Kurt’s eyes darted from her to the screen, then back to her again. “But this is crazy.”

“And there’s no way that an accident can account for the missing fingers on each hand. The palmer outlines are too natural, the spaces between the metacarpals too wide, too even. It’s got to be some kind of birth defect or something.” She jammed the brush into the hole of a test-tube rack, and left it there. “I’m going to send some of this stuff to the bureau, see what they say about it. Count on a six-week wait. In the meantime…” She extended a white, tiny hand to the screen.

Kurt stared at the illumined, blue image. It seemed to waver in space, as if three dimensional. “At least I got a good lead.”

“Yeah, knock yourself out. How hard can it be to spot a guy with three fingers on each hand and a notable case of acromegaly?” Laughter fluttered up between Jan Beck’s words. “It’s either that, or spacemen have landed in Tylersville.”

««—»»

Bard seemed to have grown into his office chair; its confines were filled by the sheer girth of his body, his buttocks and belly handles settling there like a big bag of mud. Kurt thought if the chief didn’t get out of that chair soon, he’d have to have it surgically removed. It was no wonder the man had a bad heart and blood pressure high enough to spin a turbine.

Seated, Kurt faced him. He reached shakily for a cigarette and almost broke it getting it out of the pack. All the while Bard’s face filled with hot blood as he scanned the forensic findings from Pikesville. Severe dissatisfaction raised a nearly palpable blockade across the desk, and with excruciating slowness, Bard’s eyes tracked up from the report and found Kurt’s, like a pair of ice picks.

“What is this shit you bring me?”

Kurt shrugged, trying to pretend nonchalance. He felt strangely as though the evidence findings were his fault, much the same as the aide must’ve felt who had waked Hitler to tell him that Europe was being invaded. Kurt pointed his finger like a gun. “Don’t blame me, boss. You told me to pick up the evidence report, so that’s what I did.”

“This isn’t an evidence report.” Bard wagged the sheaf of papers vigorously in the air. “This is science fiction; it’s worse than the one from the county. I can’t do anything with this except wrap fish. These people were supposed to give us a set of professional, scientific conclusions, from which we can take proper investigative action. Instead they give us shit.”

“I wouldn’t call it shit,” Kurt dared to say. “Her conclusions are pretty clear under the circumstances, with a great lead. We shouldn’t have a whole lot of trouble finding a guy with acromegaly.”

Bard’s face creased, an image of slits in clay. “What the fuck is that?”

“Some kind of pituitary disease. Makes you grow more than you’re supposed to. Real tall, real long bones, big face. Like that guy Lurch on the Addams Family.”

Bard rubbed his face and let out a pained chuckle. “Jesus, I knew I should’ve stayed in the pool-cleaning business. I got a dug-up coffin, a missing officer, an abducted crippled girl, and if that’s not enough, now I got a guy who looks like fucking Lurch on the Addams Family.”

Kurt stood up quickly, struggling to remove his car keys. He sensed the approach of one of Bard’s outbursts; he didn’t want to be around when it happened. “Time for me to book, Chief. I might as well earn my pay, even though I’m not getting any.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Start looking for Lurch. What else?”

««—»»

Kurt drove north on 154. He didn’t put much stock in the “Lurch” angle, but any lead was better than none; giants with three fingers on each hand weren’t easily forgotten, though in this town who could tell? It was something to ask around about, and he decided he’d start asking at the first logical place.

All but one of Belleau Wood’s chain gates was open. Kurt entered cautiously, puzzled that a millionaire couldn’t provide a smoother access to his own house. This particular road led straight into the forest. Bloodroot blossoms and Queen Anne’s lace bowed aside from the brush. As he passed, animals watched from safe distances, then meandered away, uninterested. The woods seemed to compress as he went on. It made him feel strange, it made him feel alone (but he knew he was alone) and still there was something threatening and utterly present about the forest’s depth. The dark day, perhaps, or the silence. If something happened to him (Something. What?) it might be hours or even days before he’d be found. (Found? Found. Like Drucker. Like Swaggert. “Chief Bard? Yeah, this is Glen. I just found Kurt.”) His hands tightened on the wheel. Against his will he glanced inadvertently into the rearview. Ahead of him he swore he could see shapes peering back from between the trees, configurations suspiciously human, and when he strained to focus his eyes they were gone. It was easy now to perceive the forest as something more than that. It was a maze of shadows and brooding light and paths which twisted away into nowhere. This was not a forest, but an interstice where men were not wanted, a hunting ground for ghosts.

He sighed at his own self-conscious reflections. His grip loosened on the wheel, and he relaxed. Daylight broke on his face. While he’d been busy speculating the woods and the horrors of the mind’s eye, the road had led him out.

He saw now how nature had made a fortress of Belleau Wood. Hills broke within the dense, surrounding forest, and through the center a cramped, almost perfectly square clearing sloped unevenly to the east. The property past the tree belt glowed in the light as a spread of thickets and waist-tall rye. At the summit of the fattest hill, the mansion could be seen.

A gravel-scratch road wound up the rise. Crookedly, a single row of telephone poles led to the mansion, each looming like a crucifix as he passed. He saw birds perched high and still on the power lines, like sentinels on a rampart. When he’d finally gained the hill, he felt let down. The house looked awkward to him, and rather small now that he was so close. It seemed built as two separate layers. The upper story rose bare in the stealing, gray light, yet the lower level spanned fat and dark under the overhang of shadow cast by the eaved wraparound porch. Kurt parked by the four-car garage, next to Willard’s glinting black Chrysler and the black Porsche. He felt a doubtless, straining urge to hesitate as he got out of the Ford, an invitation, he considered, to turn around and go home. In the yard a congregation of squirrels disbanded into opposite directions. A herring gull floated overhead, its wings completely still. Mounting the steps, the porch shadow overwhelmed him, and he felt an odd tingle at the back of his neck, as though a beetle crawled there.

He held off knocking. He heard voices from somewhere, but his attention was drawn first to the door knocker—an arcane, pallid face of stained metal. The face seemed to be masked, for only the eyes were visible, and they looked back at him in sheer, abyssal blankness. What an ugly piece of shit to hang on a door, he thought.

He looked left and noticed an intercom by the doorframe, and a tubular keyplate for a burglar alarm. The manufacturer of the alarm was one of the better companies. Further along the wall was an open window. The voices persisted, begged him to listen in:

“—an’t believe you could be that stupid, Charles. Do you have any idea what kind—” It was a woman’s voice, clearly infuriated. “—idiot. How could you be such an idiot?”

Now a man’s voice. Willard’s. “What else could I expect from you? Something goes wrong and you pass the buck, that’s just what I need. I’m standing in the middle of a crisis, and all you do is sit upstairs with those ridiculous dumbbells and exercise your breasts. Excellent. Superb. We have to do something about this, and the longer we wait, the worse it will get.”

Kurt leaned sideways, and froze to pick up more bits of conversation. At the same instant, though, a stiff wind gusted up the hill through the porch, reducing most of the next few sentences to gibberish.

“Owlong ‘ve oo in itting…iss?”

“Outtaeek, I pose.”

“Oopid ick! An oo dit ‘av…ucking ense oooell ee oudit ill ow?”

Kurt strained against the wall, trying to decipher the words. If only Dad could see me now, he thought.

“—ifference does it ake?” Willard muttered. “I ought I ould andle it i-self without larming you.”

The voices seemed to slide closer to the window. The wind died.

“You sure you didn’t lose your brains the last time you blew your goddamn nose? All this time I thought you knew what you were doing… Jesus, Charles, what are we going to do?”

Willard’s voice drifted in and out. Kurt ground his teeth at the words he missed.

“—nation, maybe. Laying it out would be easy.”

“Yes, but will it work?”

“It should. I hate to take the loss, though.”

The woman’s voice grew inflamed. “Fuck the loss, Charles. My God, I can’t believe you. We can take the loss…” Then, softer: “What are we going to use?”

“Something reputable. I was thinking of tee tee exx.”

Now the woman’s voice smoothed out. “Good idea. And I still know some people in Bethesda.”

“Yes, you’ve told me all about them, remember? The cucumber-and-Crisco contests, oral-sex poker, and the one young fellow whose nickname was ‘Hang Ten.’ A fine bunch.”

The woman was laughing. “I meant I still have contacts. People in the trade.”

“You’ll have to be careful. You can’t just walk in there and ask for it.”

Wearily now: “I know, Charles. I’m not stupid.”

Tee tee exx? Kurt thought. What was going on? He jotted the letters TTX on a piece of paper and stuck it in his jacket. Next, the woman’s voice was going on: “—about the meantime? There’s got to be something we can tell the—”

“And you call me an idiot.”

“We have to at least tell Glen. Something, anyway.”

“He’s a bright boy, and always very careful. We’ll tell him nothing.”

A quick rustling of trees obscured most of the next line. Kurt was able to decipher only one word.

“—killed.”

There was a brief impasse. Then Willard said, “This inordinate concern for Glen surprises me. I wonder about that.”

“And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just not overly pleased by the way he looks at you on occasion. Like a big, sad-eyed mongrel.”

Kurt shook his head. This seemed as good a time as any to make himself known, now that the conversation had wilted. He rapped vigorously on the door with the knocker handle. The sound was puny and weak.

Only silence now from the window. Several seconds unwound, then the door opened.

Willard stood darkened by the foyer; he looked at Kurt with a lowered brow, as if searching for something minute, and then he brightened as recognition was made. “Ah, Officer Morris,” Willard said through too broad a smile. “I didn’t recognize you without your uniform.”

Kurt didn’t care to explain the reason he was not in uniform. “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “I’d just like to ask you a few things, if you’ve got the time.”

“Certainly, come on in,” Willard offered, and stepped back. Kurt entered a cramped, poorly lit foyer. Before him stretched a hallway he could not see the end of. This guy must be allergic to daylight, he thought, reacting to the hall’s drastic darkness. And fresh air, too. The air reeked heavily of fetid scents.

Willard wore casual, neat gray slacks, suede loafers, and a western-cut shirt with pens stuffed in the top pocket. Hair the color of lead spilled out the open V of the shirt.

“Can I get you a drink?” Willard closed the door. He seemed to be in a hurry to shut out the light. “A beer or something? I have Kirin, Old Peculier, and Iron City.”

Before he could answer, Kurt was caught off guard by one of many paintings on the wall. It was a large, age-tinted portrait of an old man whose head was bald as a light bulb, and who wore a tuxedo like something out of the gangbuster era. The old man’s face sagged around a tight, disapproving scowl. Uriah Heep on a bad day, Kurt reflected. You have a good one, too, you old plucked buzzard.

Willard was smiling, as if secretly bemused. Was he? The strangeness of the house made Kurt feel detached, while the ghastly portrait had sidetracked him further. Suddenly he wanted very much to leave.

“Kind of lost my train of thought,” he said, not soon enough. “That painting caught my eye.”

Willard’s smile peaked to sarcastic crispness. “Yes, that’s my late great father, Richard Harcourt Willard. I’m sorry to say that what he lacked in looks was not compensated for in kindness. He was as friendly as a mad dog…” Cracks formed around Willard’s eyes; the thought of his father seemed aggravating. Had Kurt struck a nerve by mentioning the portrait? Willard continued. “He inherited a fortune and increased it tenfold by the time he died. His rivals and associates alike referred to him as ‘The Castrator.’” Willard then tossed his head back and laughed.

What am I doing here? Kurt thought. For a moment he forgot why he’d come. In the portrait he now detected a ruined likeness, and Dorian Gray came to mind.

“You haven’t met my wife,” Willard was saying next. With a jolt, Kurt noticed a figure standing in a doorless, black entry to the left. Had the figure been standing there all along?

“Nancy, this is Officer Morris. He works for the local police department here in town.”

Kurt’s jaw nearly hit the floor. The figure came through a block of shadow and revealed itself as a taller than average woman with very dark, lank hair cut in a perfect line at the base of her neck. She was shocking to look at, a robust, athletic physique made lascivious by the bizarre light and an equally bizarre outfit. She wore a white leather skirt, net stockings, and a strange tabard-style waistcoat joined only by a single black button at the navel. The waistcoat was bright red, and its opened flare exposed so much of her chest that Kurt wondered what kept her breasts from popping out at any given moment. Alternative fashion is one thing, he thought, but this is exhibitionism.

“Pleased to know you,” she said. The voice from the porch. She raised a fine, red-nailed hand. “Have we met?”

Not really, Kurt thought. Not unless you consider me seeing you nude in Glen’s window an introduction. Lady, I never forget a cleavage. “No, I don’t think so. I only just met your husband the other day, as a matter of fact.” He shook her hand and found it curiously moist. Why should she be nervous?

“I was just telling Officer Morris about my father,” Willard said, indicating the portrait. He took his wife’s side, an act which seemed thoroughly incongruous. This was a hard couple for Kurt to picture married. They went together like a new wave cycle slut and a professor of geology.

Nancy Willard smiled, but the smile gave way to a tic. “That’s one subject worth avoiding in this house. The stories my husband tells about his father make Ivan the Terrible seem like Mister Rogers.”

“Sorry I never got to meet him,” Kurt said, thinking: Jesus, have I died and gone to a hell of small talk?

Willard glanced at his wife’s chest and frowned. “You mentioned wanting to ask us a few things?”

“That’s right,” Kurt said. “I’m sure you remember that recently a casket was stolen from Beall Cemetery and later found on your property—”

“Any leads?” Willard cut in. The universal question.

“Well, kind of. See, they found some fingerprints on it, but they were very unusual fingerprints, so unusual that we believe one of the persons involved probably has some physical problems that would be easily noticed.”

Nancy Willard’s voice turned limp, something which Kurt found very interesting. “What do you mean?” she said. “There was something wrong with the fingerprints?”

More curiosity. Willard’s eyes thinned, and his smile grew tight. Had his wife’s response displeased him?

“What I mean,” Kurt continued, now paying deliberate attention to their faces, “is that the size and nature of the fingerprints suggests a person who is physically abnormal, even deformed, at least by way of the extremities. For instance, unless we’re grossly mistaken, this person only has three fingers on each hand.”

“Very strange,” Willard commented. “By means of some accident?”

“No, we don’t think so. I’m not an expert, I’m just telling you what I was told. But the state police are sure it’s a deformity from birth, and they also think it’s an individual of great physical size, like someone with a pituitary disorder.”

Kurt paused for further comment, and to watch their faces, but this ploy failed as his eyes were repeatedly lured to Nancy Willard’s near-bare chest. The red waistcoat was obscene. Either button the goddamned thing up, or take it off. he wished he could say. Glinting, a ruby and diamond heart on a necklace lay in the cleft of her breasts.

The Willards remained silent; a sudden stiffness made them both seem taller. Kurt went on. “I just thought that if either of you have seen anyone like this, you might let us know. It’s a reasonable bet that whoever took that coffin is at least slightly familiar with the layout of your property. Loggers, or something. Hunters, maybe.”

“Well, I don’t allow any logging,” Willard said. “And I’m afraid the only hunting that goes on is entirely without my permission—poaching has always been a problem. The resource police come out whenever we report gunshots, though they’ve yet to catch a poacher. Once in a while a tree will go down near one of the access roads, and I’ll hire someone to cut it up and take it away. But in all that I certainly don’t recall anyone with the physical characteristics you’ve mentioned.” Willard looked up contemplatively, thinking through a squint. He stroked his trimmed beard. “The only contractors I’ve had out here were the people who constructed my garage, but that was years ago.”

“What about groundskeepers, lawn care?”

“Town boys mow the grass and keep up the yard around the house as needed. But we’re quite familiar with them.” Willard glanced to his wife. “Can you think of anything, dear?”

“No,” she said. “If I’d seen someone like that, I’m sure I’d have taken notice.”

“Well, anyway,” Kurt told them. “I just wanted to let you know. If you do see anyone meeting a description like that, or anyone suspicious for any reason, let us know. And of course any time you spot a vehicle other than Glen’s truck on your land, give us a call quick.”

“We certainly will,” Willard assured him. “Anything we can do to help. We’ll all rest easier when these people are found. It’s quite frightening to know that as we sleep there’s a troop of weirdos milling around my property.”

By now Kurt’s vision had partly adjusted to the poor light. Just past where Willard stood was a heavily banistered staircase. Crowded into the upper corner of the second-floor landing, Kurt recognized three things: a motion-detection alarm, a bracket-mounted sealed-beam floodlight, and a pan/tilt RCA CCTV camera. Then he noticed an identical motion detector at the end of the hallway.

“Well, I better take off now.”

“We’re grateful you took the time to come out,” Willard added.

He managed to resist a final glance at Nancy Willard’s chest. “It was my pleasure. You all have a good day, and it was nice meeting you, Mrs. Willard.” Brother, don’t I know it.

When Kurt was at last out of the house, he felt the relief of a claustrophobe just freed from a footlocker. He looked up when crossing the front porch and noticed still another motion detector. That irked him, as he paced back to the Ford. True, there was nothing out of the ordinary about home burglar alarms, but this bordered on paranoia. He’d seen at least three thousand dollars’ worth of security equipment in the space of thirty seconds.

The Ford started eagerly, as if it, too, wished to get away from the macabre house. Kurt lit a cigarette and stared straight ahead as he drew the first puff. He saw two squat objects protruding from Willard’s side yard. They seemed to be large cylinders with teepee-like crowns of weathered metal. They reminded him of ventilators, but the notion was lost at once as he wound down the high hill and away, back toward home.

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