Ghouls

CHAPTER NINE

Earlier, before the storm and about an hour after Kurt Morris had properly reported Glen Rodz’s findings, a white Dodge panel wagon passed through Belleau Wood entrance number 2. This vehicle was unusually long; its doors bore small, familiar seals and the words PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY POLICE TECHNICAL SERVICES.

The crime scene had been promptly designated; stoic county uniforms waited like wraiths as the wagon pulled to a stop. From the vehicle two men emerged, one in street clothes, the other in dark utilities. Their faces were both white, and seemed as bereft of life as masks. The uniforms parted, insensate. The man in street clothes had cameras around his neck. He complained palely about the light and asked for case numbers. Then, with a black Nikon F3T, he snapped innumerable photographs of the coffin, the corpse, and the glove which contained Officer Douglas P. Swaggert’s right hand.

The sky rumbled. The man in utilities looked up in horror. He hastily doled out evidence gloves, and then everyone began moving. The smaller objects (the hand and the arm) were sealed in translucent carriers, carded with the tech’s signature, and placed in cold cans. As the coffin parts were loaded into the wagon, a county ambulance arrived, and from it stepped a young, overly muscled man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that read ARE WE NOT MEN? WE ARE DEVO. He was the deputy medical examiner; no corpus delicti could be moved, touched, or transported without his authorization. He laughed mightily when he inspected the corpse; his laughter shook the woods. He laughed harder as the corpse was put into the ambulance, and he continued to laugh, to wail, really, even after he got back in himself and rode away.

The sky rumbled once more; the man in utilities seemed hyper. Contact zones were tarp-covered and staked with black 10-mil plastic sheet. The area was cordoned. Then the sky cracked open and poured rain. Uniformed officers flipped coins to see who would take the first watch.

At eight o’clock the next morning, fifteen more county officers gathered at Belleau Wood entrance number 2. They stood closely around the gate. They swapped revolting sexual jokes, and some complained with great hostility about being forbidden to smoke on a crime scene, until Bard and a county lieutenant from Hyattsville took charge. Mark Higgins joined moments later, and then the crowd of blue and gray uniforms was led into the woods to the place where Glen Rodz had found Cody Drucker and Doug Swaggert’s gloved hand. From there they made a systematic grid search of the crime scene, standing in a line one arm’s length apart and scanning the forest ground in a westerly direction to a depth of one hundred yards. Then they repeated this procedure northerly, but turned up no material clues to help explain the events which broke apart a coffin and removed an arm from a corpse and a hand from a living man. Chief Bard swore at no one in particular. The county field commander, Lieutenant Choate, extended the limits of the search perimeter identically on three sides. They searched this way all morning and well into the afternoon and found nothing.

In the meantime, at 3:00 p.m., Kurt Morris put on his uniform and drove directly to the city of Forestville, where he received the preliminary evidence report at the criminalistics facility. Then he returned to Tylersville to relieve Higgins of his shift.

A strange scene awaited him when he arrived at Belleau Wood. County police cars crowded both shoulders of the road. Radio noise filled the air, empty distant voices merged with static. Bruised colors lurked in the sky, an unbroken swath of very low clouds and the promise of more rain very soon. Bard was standing by the open gate, staring at a phone pole on the other side of the road. He stood perfectly still, like an artifact in a museum. Kurt was just a few feet away when Bard finally broke his gaze and noticed him.

The report drooped in Kurt’s hand when he held it out. “How’s the search? Found anything?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Bard said. He took the report and riffled through it, frowning. “How am I supposed to understand this shit? I’m a police chief, not a medical dictionary. What did the M.E. say?”

“The M.E. hasn’t looked at anything yet; this report’s just a preliminary. But one of the evidence technicians told me that Swaggert’s hand was bitten off.”

“Bitten? Fuck. What about Drucker’s arm? Don’t tell me that was bitten off, too.”

“No, no it wasn’t. It was pulled off.”

Bard’s face seemed to stretch like rubber.

Kurt continued. “He also said that the incisor marks on Swaggert’s hand are probably the same as the bite mark on Drucker’s arm. But he’s got no idea what kind of animal did it.”

“Figures… What about prints? What about the coffin? There must’ve been prints on the fucking coffin.”

“Sure,” Kurt said. “Lots of prints. Pallbearers, funeral staff, the backhoe crew. It’ll take some time to sort them out and see what’s left over. The odd smudges are what get me.”

“Odd smudges?”

“It’s all in the report,” Kurt reminded him. “‘Odd smudges.’ The tech said he’s never seen anything like it on lacquered wood before. Could be a reaction to condensation and direct sunlight, but he doubts it. The coffin wasn’t there long enough.”

“Those dickbrains,” Bard said. “They’re probably just old latents.”

“Nope.”

“What do you mean nope?”

“The tech said they weren’t old latents; I asked him. And he doesn’t think they’re glove prints, either. We’ll just have to give them time.”

Bard uttered an unbecoming remark and scanned again through the report. Kurt looked questioningly into the woods. He caught movement in his direct line of vision—a series of gray blurs which seemed to hover between the trees; they were barely moving if at all. In a moment Kurt realized that the blurs were county police officers searching the woods.

“So I guess we can all use this report to wipe our dicks with,” Bard said with lowering disgust. “A fucking sheaf of shit. It tells us nothing.”

“Well, like I said, it’s not official till the M.E. has a look. But nine times out of ten—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Now the blurs seemed to be congregating, their shapes merged together as a shadowed, gray mass.

A voice cracked out of the woods like a pistol shot. “Chief Bard! Over here!”

“They’ve found something,” Bard muttered. “Come on.”

Kurt followed Bard about ten yards down the access road. Then they turned and marched directly into the forest, wending a long, irregular path through the trees. Gray shirts and faces turned as they approached. The search assignment formed a rough circle around a red-haired, red-mustached officer who knelt before a bare spot on the ground. Behind him stood Lieutenant D. Choate, the county F.O.D., a lean, melancholic figure with graying short hair. His shirt was white, not gray, and he wore a hat with gold gilding on the brim, while the others wore no hats at all. He looked down as if viewing something long dead.

“What is it?” Bard asked, shouldering in.

Choate handed Bard a plastic envelope sealed with yellow evidence tape. Inside was a black plastic cylinder an inch wide, with a silver knob on it.

Bard looked at it crookedly. “A fucking speed loader.” Then, to Kurt: “Did Swaggert use speed loaders?”

Kurt answered with a dejected nod. “I’m not sure what brand, but he did use them. He was always complaining about the release. Said it’d probably get him killed someday.”

“Maybe it did.”

“And, Chief,” Choate said, pointing down. “Dead brass.”

“How many?” Kurt asked.

“Six.”

Kurt looked down. By the red-haired man’s right foot were six empty pistol cartridges. The red-haired man (R. Elliot TSD, according to his poorly aligned name tag) picked up one of the cartridges very carefully with forceps and passed it to Bard.

“Plus P’s,” Elliot said.

Then Choate: “Is that the kind of ammo Swaggert loaded?”

Both Kurt and Bard squinted at the silver casing. On the flanged end, stamped in tiny letters around the dented cap, they saw: …S&W…38SPL + P.

“Yeah,” Bard answered. “These are his loads, for sure. Semijacketed hollow points. We all carry them.”

The search team exchanged vapid looks and silence. Someone coughed. Elliot took the forceps from Bard, then one by one dropped each cartridge into a separate plastic envelope. He said, “It’s about fifty yards from here to the spot where the hand was found.”

“And we have to assume,” said the lieutenant, “that Officer Swaggert was moving into the woods.”

“Swaggert was right-handed,” Kurt said.

The lieutenant adjusted his hat. “Of course. And it was his right hand that was found in the road.”

“Then unless someone jerked it from him,” Bard edged in, “Swaggert’s piece has to be somewhere between here and the road. It fucking has to be.”

“Line up” came the lieutenant’s next order. “I want it tight, shoulder to shoulder. We’ll find this thing or else.”

Now the search had direction. The men formed a wall of gray, standing so close that the sides of their arms touched. They stooped down and advanced slowly toward the point where the hand was found, parting only to skirt trees. An inch at a time they combed the forest floor in a lateral line. Eyes held fast to the ground. Fingers pushed through wet leaves and pine needles and mulched soil. Some of the men actually crawled along on hands and knees.

In a minute, Kurt and the cop next to him shouted “Here!” at the same time. Instantly the men broke from the search line and drew together into another huddled circle.

The pistol lay half covered by leaves, and it seemed partly pushed into the ground, as if stepped on. It was a Smith & Wesson model 10, with a four-inch barrel and worn walnut grips. Swaggert’s service revolver.

Kurt stepped back to make way. Elliot squeezed through the crowd, slipping his hands into a pair of acetate gloves. He picked up the weapon carefully by the top of its frame.

“Open it,” the lieutenant said.

Elliot pushed the gridded cylinder latch with the eraser end of a pencil. The cylinder slid open with an oiled click, and out fell six more cartridges, all of which had been fired.

««—»»

“It still tells us nothing,” Bard was saying several hours later at the station. Kurt sat opposite him, in his favorite fold-down metal chair, next to the burned-out coffeepot. Shortly after they’d found Swaggert’s pistol, the county lieutenant had terminated the search. He’d concluded that Swaggert was dead, and that his body had been transported out of the vicinity. Extending the search limits, he deduced, would’ve been a waste of county time and money.

Kurt was staring out the window, only half listening to Bard. “What’s that, Chief?”

“I said, it still tells us nothing, at least nothing important. We find the motherfucker’s hand, and we find his piece, and we find some loads. What’s all that tell us? Not a goddamned thing, that’s what… We can only guess what happened.”

Kurt lounged back against the chair. “Okay, what’s your guess?

“My guess…shit. All right, here’s what I think happened. Swaggert’s driving down the Route and he spots a suspicious vehicle—probably a pickup truck full of hippies or something— and it’s got something big and bulky in the back, like maybe a coffin. Whatever it is, there’s just something not right about the vehicle, so Swaggert chases the fuckers, pedal to the metal, and he winds up losing control and dumps the cruiser in the gulch, okay? He climbs out of the car and sees the pickup turning into entrance number 2—hell, it’s only a couple hundred yards from where he crashed; he could see taillights turning at that distance, easy. Anyway, Swaggert’s a hellion, and he’s hot, so he runs into the woods, hoping to cut the truck off at the access road. He opens fire on the dudes in the truck, and they fire back and they kill him. They get scared ’cause they just smoked a cop, so they dump the coffin and scram. Later a dog or something comes along and fucks with Drucker’s corpse, bites Swaggert’s hand off, and drags him away. So there’s my guess.”

Kurt immediately bent over in his chair, honking laughter. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, huh, Chief? Yes, sir, ‘dudes’ in a pickup truck. I’ll bet you went to school for years to think of that.”

“Well, fuck you then, smart boy. You got all the brains, you tell me what happened.”

“We’ll never know unless we find Swaggert’s body, and we’ll never find his body unless we search.”

Bard scowled. “You heard the duck. The search is over.”

“Belleau Wood has got to be searched. Not just some of it. All of it. Merkel’s field, too.”

Bombast lightened Bard’s eyes, his turn to laugh. “Do you know how big Belleau Wood is? Do you know how long it would take to cover it all? Hell, some of the woods back there are so thick you probably couldn’t get through them with a machete. If the county doesn’t think a second search is practical, then there ain’t gonna be a second search.”

“Fine,” Kurt said. “So I guess we can just sit back and forget it ever happened. Somebody out there means business, Chief. Digging up coffins, abducting crippled girls, and wasting veteran cops isn’t my idea of Friday night out with the boys.”

“You bitch like my fucking mother.”

Kurt was pricked by a sudden chill, the one facet of all this that bothered him most. “And you’re not even considering the scariest part. If this was some greenhorn fresh out of the academy I’d almost understand. But we’re not talking about green. We’re talking about Swaggert. ”

“Big deal. Any cop can fuck up.”

“Swaggert was the best pistol shot I ever saw. You tell me how he managed to pop twelve caps at something and miss twelve times.”

“It was night,">“It Bard said.

“So what? Swaggert ate night-fire ranges for breakfast, and any other kind of pistol range you can name—the guy’s won enough shooting trophies to fill the back of a dump truck. Every year for as long as I’ve known him he’s outshot the best shooters in the state. No one could touch him, day or night.”

“But he was also wearing knuckle saps,” Bard countered. “That’s bound to off his aim.”

“Not Swaggert’s, not twelve times. His saps had nylon trigger fingers; they’re made so you can shoot with them on, and he practiced with them half the time, anyway. So I don’t care if he was wearing boxing gloves that night—Swaggert was an expert. I’ve seen him blow the 10x circles out of competition targets at fifty feet, groups the size of a quarter, Chief, firing double-action. You know it as well as I do. Swaggert was just too goddamned good to get blown away by punks.”

Bard’s lips puckered as if he’d just bitten into a lime. He began to bend back the shiny corners of his desk blotter, unconsciously ruining it. “I ain’t gonna argue with you, ‘cause you’re probably right. So fuck it. I’m gonna go home and eat and worry about it tomorrow.”

Kurt stood up, keys jingling. “I’ll stick close to Belleau Wood till Glen comes on.”

“Good idea… One thing, though. For God’s sake keep on your toes. I’ve already lost one officer, I sure as hell don’t need to lose two.”

“Calm yourself, boss,” Kurt assured. “There’s no way anyone’s going to kill me this close to payday.” He exited the office, just as Bard began to tear pieces off the blotter.

««—»»

On patrol, Kurt faltered at the look of the sky; it reminded him of El Greco’s view of Toledo. Purpled, pregnant clouds piled up on the horizon as a limitless mass. A breeze blew dead and tepid, and dusk continued to slide overhead. He could feel another storm coming, a storm worse than yesterday’s.

The headlights glared out before him, bringing out peripheral trees and bushes and high weeds in crisp-white relief. Shadows clung to the woodline, a hulking ebon wall to the left and right. Several white-faced possums congregated at the shoulder, watching incuriously as he passed. A baby marsh rabbit froze in the headlight glare, then dashed across the road like a bullet.

Kurt took the frequent bends of 154 easily, almost enjoying the ride. He lit a cigarette and let the breeze sift his hair and billow his shirt. The radio hissed mutely, not even the dispatcher’s voice to break the calm. Listlessly he wondered what he would do with the rest of his shift.

He glimpsed a far-off glare, and a quick blink of luminous red dots. Without having to think, he looked high down the road, then he tromped the gas and snapped on the revolving blue fireball on the cruiser’s roof. Less than a quarter mile ahead, a vehicle turned out of Belleau Wood entrance number 2.

Thirty-five. Forty. Then fifty miles per hour. Now the wood-line was soaring past on both sides, the blue globe sweeping feverish arcs of light as he sped on. The vehicle vanished around another bend, but reappeared a moment later when he screeched through the turn, breaking sixty. Kurt was closing in, like a pilot on a slow target. He squinted to make the vehicle type (car, truck, van?) and maybe a partial tag. Now that the flashing blue light was obvious, he wondered if the driver would pull over or go for it. With a touch of shame, Kurt hoped for the latter.

The vehicle pulled over. Kurt braked, then came to a full stop. He parked directly behind the vehicle, and three feet into the road, leaving what was known as a proper “sideswipe margin.” Then he “held” the tag number with the dispatcher, grabbed his flashlight, and got out.

The vehicle was a new Chrysler New Yorker, liquid-black, with an atrocious red pinstripe along the side. Kurt’s hopes melted at once. This would be just another routine traffic stop, a drunk or some joker out for a drive, who didn’t realize Belleau Wood was private property.

Kurt took himself through the expected motions, walking up to the car in a slow, gauged stride, and letting his face fall into the typical expression of affect. He popped the thumbsnap on his holster and stood immediately behind the open driver’s window. The occupant was just a face to him in the beam of his flash; Kurt noted refinement, and something perhaps scholarly. Curly dark gray hair, gold wire rims, and a short, meticulously trimmed beard with the same salt-pepperishness of the hair. The face looked up at Kurt, almost amused in wonder, and there was a grin so subtle it may have been mocking.

“Driver’s license and registration, please,” Kurt said, cold monotone.

“Yes, of course.” The bearded face turned into darkness, then reappeared. A similarly intangible hand offered a Maryland operator’s license and a pink MVA registration certificate. “You must be one of the town policemen,” the driver commented. “Those county fellows all seem to be quite stout about the waist. Terribly fat, some of them… Have I done something wrong?”

Kurt managed not to smile at the crack about the county. He took the cards and said, “That road you just pulled off of, are you aware that it’s private property?”

“Why, yes,” the driver said.

“Then how come you were on it?”

“Because I own it. I own the road, the gate posts, the trees, and the accommodating acres, which number in the hundreds.”

Kurt read the tiny laminated license, then matched it to the registration. CHRY 4DR CHARLES RICHARD WILLARD. Kurt handed the cards back instantly. “Sorry, Dr. Willard. I didn’t mean to hassle you. I’m not familiar with your vehicle, and since I’ve never actually met you, I had to check.”

Now Willard’s smile seemed approving. “I understand, Officer, especially with all the nastiness that’s popped up on or around my property as of late. Actually I’m pleased to see that the local police are keeping an eye on Belleau Wood’s outer reaches when my guard isn’t on duty. You may know him— Glen Rodz.”

“Yeah, Glen and I have been friends for a long time. I’m Kurt Morris, by the way. I was with Glen yesterday when he found Officer Swaggert’s…hand.”

“Strange business, I’ll tell you,” Willard said, the smile dissolving. “I wish you luck in tracking them down. Why they chose to do their dirty work on my land I’ll never know. I can understand the poaching and beer drinking. That’s gone on for years, I expect it. But this…” Willard shook his head. “Anyway, in case you’re wondering what I’m doing driving around on dirt roads at this hour—my dog seems to have gotten out, a treacherous white French poodle. I’ve been looking for him for several days now, but so far not a trace. I suspect he’s answered the call of the wild. Ah, well. In any case, if you happen to see the little bugger, grab him for me, will you? There’s a reward. He answers to the name Vladimir.”

“Vladimir. Right,” Kurt said, but to him Willard seemed the very last person to tolerate pets, particularly a poodle. “If I spot him, I’ll pick him up for you.”

A mounting roar came up behind them, and the sudden flash of headlights crossed with the bright blue throb from Kurt’s cruiser. A car had whipped around the bend, well past the posted speed limit, and was gone down the road before Kurt could blink. He had only time to make the passing vehicle as a dark (probably black) foreign sports car. One he’d seen before. In the corner of his eye, though, he saw Willard wave.

“My wife,” Willard said.

“Pardon?”

“That thoughtful, law-abiding person who just flew by like some winged thing out of Hades was my wife. I must apologize for her driving habits, and I’ll speak to her directly when I get home. One day she’ll learn that Route 154 isn’t her own personal autobahn.”

Kurt didn’t care. “What kind of car was that? A foreign make?”

“Yes,” Willard droned. “A Porsche. Last year’s Christmas present. She whines like the devil at the mere thought of driving an automobile that costs less than forty thousand dollars. But it was what she wanted, so I gave in. Six months from now she’ll be wanting something else.”

“That’s one nice set of wheels,” Kurt remarked as he watched the Porsche’s taillights fade.

“Not quite so nice when you consider the price of a tune-up,” Willard laughed. “Well, I should be going. It was good to meet you, Officer Morris. Have a nice evening.”

“You, too.”

Kurt stood there thinking to himself as Willard drove away. The revolving light on his roof pulsed eerie silent blue into the night, intensifying what he knew now must be fact. He was sure he’d seen the same Porsche parked at Glen’s bungalow the day they’d gotten the new cruiser. Now he knew why Glen had refused to explain his mysterious girlfriend, because she was another man’s wife.

Another set of headlights appeared, this time from the oncoming lane. A vehicle slowed and stopped on the opposite shoulder. Glen Rodz got out of his security truck and hustled across the street just as Kurt reached into the cruiser and turned off the light.

“Love that wicked blue light,” Glen said. “You just finish writing someone up?”

Kurt shook his head and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. “I saw some guy turn out of the access road, so I pulled him over. It turned out to be Dr. Willard.”

“No shit? I’ll bet he loved that, getting pulled over for driving on his own land.”

“Yeah, it’s not every day I get to make a dick out of myself in front of one of the richest men in the county.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Seems like an all right guy. Shifty, though. Something shifty about him, but then everybody’s shifty to me nowadays.” Kurt’s face turned orange when he lighted his cigarette. He wanted to mention seeing Willard’s wife pass by, to catch Glen’s reaction, but decided it was none of his business.

“I wonder why Willard was cruising around out here this late,” Glen said.

“He was looking for his dog. Said it got away a couple days back.”

“That’s funny.”

“Why?” Kurt asked.

“Willard doesn’t have a dog. He hasn’t owned a pet since he had Vladimir put to sleep four years ago.”

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