The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

TWO

When Sheriff Dwight Cole stepped through the jailhouse door at seven-thirty the following morning, Deputies Jerry Rutherford and Ben Hastings looked up from their checker game and said simultaneously, “We didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.”

Sheriff Cole sighed. He hadn’t been getting much sleep lately. Seven-thirty in the a. m., and he hadn’t even had a cup of java or a decent breakfast, because he’d been steering clear of the diner for the last couple weeks.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t smell trouble in the air. “Vin Miller?” he asked.

“Yep,” Hastings said. ‘Your big old meat-on-the-hoof Charles Atlas deputy has about done it this time.”

Rutherford nodded. “I ain’t gonna say I told you so, Dwight… but I told you that you shouldn’t never leave a gorilla in charge of the zoo.”

Rutherford laughed at his own joke. Hastings joined in.

Dwight Cole didn’t.

“That musclebound Barney Fife of yours figured he’d take my pelt,” the prisoner said. “I gotta admit he did a pretty fair job. It’s a good thing that I’m a fast healer.”

Dwight cringed. The kid’s face was one big welt — green and blue and purple and red all at the same time. The kid could hardly breathe through his nose — which was surely busted — and his voice sounded like a gurgling echo that came from a deep well down in his gut.

“I’ll get Doc Rivers to look at you,” Dwight said.

The kid barked a short laugh. “Forget the doc. Better make it a vet, Sheriff. Or have you already forgotten my warning?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Dwight said. “You’re a werewolf. When the full moon rises tonight, you’ll change. And then you’re gonna make mincemeat out of me and my deputies and my jailhouse.”

“Unless you let me out of here right now,” the kid added. “Not very likely.”

“No way I can get you to change your mind?”

“Nope.”

The kid shook his swollen head. “Let me tell you something else about werewolves,” he said. “We ain’t much different from real wolves. We run in packs.”

“Is that so?”

‘Yep. And we can pick up a scent.” He lay a slim finger along the swollen sausage that bisected his face. “Even through a busted nose. And you know what I can smell right now, Sheriff?”

“I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”

“Well… it’s one mean aroma. Motorcycles and blood and misery, all mixed up. There’s twelve of ‘em, and right now they’re real close. I’m number thirteen, you see. We’re like little pieces of a puzzle, and we all fit together. They’re already in your town, Sheriff. I can smell ‘em. They want that missing piece, and you’d better give it to ‘em, or else this quiet little Mayberry of yours is gonna be a slaughterhouse when the full moon rises. If you’ve got an Opie and an Aunt Bee at home, you’d better say your prayers — ”

“I’m a confirmed bachelor,” the sheriff interrupted. “Look… I’m sorry about what happened to you. Soon as I find him, that deputy is going to be in the cell right next to yours. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and listen while you spin campfire stories. You might scare a moron like Vin Miller, but you won’t scare me.”

“Even so, Sheriff, you take my advice about those prayers. Not that prayin’ ever helped me any… You know what they say, Even a man who is pure at heart, and says his prayers by night… ”

But the sheriff was already moving away from the cell. “I’ll send the doctor,” he said.

The kid answered, “You send the vet.”

The barber had one in the chair and four waiting. Between them, the men had maybe thirty hairs on their heads. None of them really needed to part with the six bits that they were about to blow. But one of the men was sure that he was in love, and two were widowers who were much too bashful to consider such emotions, and the other was haunted by pure, unadulterated lust.

Sheriff Cole had, at one time or another, experienced all these emotions when it came to the barber. Liz Bentley had a way of getting into a man’s thoughts and staying there. She wasn’t young — though she wasn’t exactly old — and she wasn’t pretty — though she certainly was a long way from ugly — but there was just something about being around Liz Bentley that made a man feel like he should suck in his gut, and that was for damn sure.

Dwight took off his hat as he stepped into the barber shop. One of the customers was jabbering on about Vin Miller and the werewolf, telling how the deputy had single-handedly captured the thing at the banker’s house. “I believe that man is just what he claims to be. I hear he ate Missus Rosewell’s Chihuahua, Speedy Gonzalez, right there in her rose garden. Ate the dog raw, alive and breathin’, yippin’ and kickin’. Now what kind of a man would do that?” He shook his head, as if amazed. “Missus Rosewell saw that poor little creature bark its last and she fainted at the horror of it, I hear tell, and old Vin had to give her mouth-to-mouth reinvigoration. Now that’s a job I wouldn’t have minded one bit!”

“Morning, Sheriff,” the barber said, tipping the storyteller to the lawman’s presence.

The customer shut up instantly. “Morning, Liz,” the sheriff said, distressed that his voice quavered just like a schoolboy’s.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

Dwight’s thumbs worked over the brim of his Smokey Bear hat. “He been in?”

Liz’s long, dark hair danced in a half-dozen mirrors as she shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “First day in three months your deputy’s missed his morning shave.” She winked at her attentive audience. “I just don’t know how I’ll make it through the day without that fifty cent tip of his.”

The men chuckled at that, but Dwight cut them short. “Yeah… well… I need to find him. Any ideas?”

Now the barber winked at Dwight. “Let me tell you about your deputy, Sheriff. I mean, let me give you a woman’s view. You know, women can tell a lot about a man, just by the way he dresses.” Dwight’s fingers dug into the brim of his hat. The lady barber’s eyes were hard on him, and so were the eyes of her balding audience, and he suddenly felt naked.

“Take Vin Miller, for instance. He’s a bantam rooster. Just like a lot of soldiers who lift weights, he picked up what I like to call the uniform trick while he was in the service. He buys his clothes one size too small, hoping that the ladies will swoon over his manly physique.”

Dwight swallowed hard, trying not to think about the tight pants he was wearing. Probably just as well he’d skipped the diner’s lumberjack breakfast special the last couple weeks. He could stand to lose a few of the pounds he’d packed on eating under Vera Marlowe’s watchful eye.

Liz clipped leisurely, taking her time with each one of her customer’s nine hairs. “Anyway,” she continued, “a bantam rooster like Vin Miller doesn’t strut his stuff for just one hen. I hear he’s been leaving big tips all over town. And he’s the type that expects those tips are going to add up to something, sooner or later.”

“You’re gonna make me ask, aren’t you?”

“It’s no big secret,” Liz said. “Seems that Vera called in sick over at the diner this morning. And I hear Vin Miller’s been leaving big tips for her, too.”

Dwight put on his Smokey Bear hat. “How come every time I’ve got a question, you’ve got the answer?”

“Us working girls, we get together and compare notes.” Liz lathered her customer’s neck, flicked open a silver-handled straight razor, and went to work. “And you know how women are, Dwight. We just can’t seem to keep our mouths shut. Especially when a bantam rooster like Vin Miller comes to town.”

“Right.” The sheriff whirled and was out the door before the lady barber could nail him with the biggest wink of all.