The Wolfen

v2.0

October 2006

The Wolfen

Whitley Strieber

IT HAPPENS IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

A series of killings with bizarre characteristics that have the police baffled. When the news becomes public, people in the city begin living in terror.

THE WOLFENThere is no defense…

contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

THE WOLFEN

A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with

William Morrow and Company, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY

Morrow edition published August 1978

Bantam edition / July 1979

2nd printing… July 1979 4th printing… July 1979

3rd printing… July 1979 5th printing…December 1979

6th printing…August 1981

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1978 by Whitley Strieber.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by

mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: William Morrow and Company, Inc.,

103 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

ISBN 0-553-20268-5

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and In other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

For Anne

Since all is well, keep it so: Wake not the sleeping wolf.—Shakespeare Henry IV, Part 2

Chapter 1

^ »

In Brooklyn they take abandoned cars to the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound adjacent to the Fountain Avenue Dump. The pound and the dump occupy land shown on maps as “Spring Creek Park (Proposed).” There is no spring, no creek, and no park.

Normally the pound is silent, its peace disturbed only by an occasional fight among the packs of wild dogs that roam there, or perhaps the cries of the sea gulls that hover over the stinking, smoldering dump nearby.

The members of the Police Auto Squad who visit the pound to mark derelicts for the crusher do not consider the place dangerous. Once in a while the foot-long rats will get aggressive and become the victims of target practice. The scruffy little wild dogs will also attack every so often, but they can usually be dealt with by a shot into the ground. Auto-pound duty consists of marking big white X’s on the worst of the derelicts and taking Polaroids of them to prove that they were beyond salvage in case any owners turn up.

It isn’t the kind of job that the men associate with danger, much less getting killed, so Hugo DiFalco and Dennis Houlihan would have laughed in your face if you told them they had only three minutes to live when they heard the first sound behind them.

“What was that?” Houlihan asked. He was bored and wouldn’t have minded getting a couple of shots off at a rat.

“A noise.”

“Brilliant. That’s what I thought it was too.”

They both laughed. Then there was another sound, a staccato growl that ended on a murmuring high note. The two men looked at one another. “That sounds like my brother singing in the shower,” DiFalco said.

From ahead of them came further sounds—rustlings and more of the unusual growls. DiFalco and Houlihan stopped. They weren’t joking anymore, but they also weren’t afraid, only curious. The wet, ruined cars just didn’t seem to hold any danger on this dripping autumn afternoon. But there was something out there.

They were now in the center of a circle of half-heard rustling movement. As both men realized that something had surrounded them, they had their first twinge of concern. They now had less than one minute of life remaining. Both of them lived with the central truth of police work—it could happen anytime. But what the hell was happening now?

Then something stepped gingerly from between two derelicts and stood facing the victims.

The men were not frightened, but they sensed danger. As it had before in moments of peril, Hugo DiFalco’s mind turned to a brief thought of his wife, of how she liked to say “We’re an us.” Dennis Houlihan felt a shiver of prickles come over him as if the hair all over his body was standing up.

“Don’t move, man,” DiFalco said.

It snarled at the voice. “There’s more of ’em behind us, buddy.” Their voices were low and controlled, the tone of professionals in trouble. They moved closer together; their shoulders touched. Both men knew that one of them had to turn around, the other keep facing this way. But they didn’t need to talk about it; they had worked together too long to have to plan their moves.

DiFalco started to make the turn and draw his pistol. That was the mistake.

Ten seconds later their throats were being torn out. Twenty seconds later the last life was pulsing out of their bodies. Thirty seconds later they were being systematically consumed.

Neither man had made a sound. Houlihan had seen the one in front of them twitch its eyes, but before he could follow the movement there was a searing pain in his throat and he was suddenly, desperately struggling for air through the bubbling torrent of his own blood.

DiFalco’s hand had just gripped the familiar checkered wooden butt of his service revolver when it was yanked violently aside. The impression of impossibly fast-moving shapes entered his astonished mind, then something slammed into his chest and he too was bleeding, in his imagination protecting his throat as in reality his body slumped to the ground and his mind sank into darkness.

The attackers moved almost too quickly, their speed born of nervousness at the youth of their victims. The shirts were torn open, the white chests exposed, the entrails tugged out and taken away, the precious organs swallowed. The rest was left behind.

In less than five more minutes it was over. The hollow, ravaged corpses lay there in the mud, two ended lives now food for the wild scavengers of the area.

For a long time nothing more moved at the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound. The cries of gulls echoed among the rustling hulks of the cars. Around the corpses the blood coagulated and blackened. As the afternoon drew on, the autumn mist became rain, covering the dead policemen with droplets of water end making the blood run again.

Night fell.

Rats worried the corpses until dawn.

The two men had been listed AWOL for fourteen hours. Most unusual for these guys. They were both family types, steady and reliable. AWOL wasn’t their style. But still, what could happen to two experienced policemen on marking duty at the auto pound? That was a question nobody would even try to answer until a search was made for the men.

Police work might be dangerous, but nobody seriously believed that DiFalco and Houlihan were in any real trouble. Maybe there had been a family emergency and the two had failed to check in. Maybe a lot of things. And maybe there was some trouble. Nobody realized that the world had just become a much more dangerous place, and they wouldn’t understand that for quite some time. Right now they were just looking for a couple of missing policemen. Right now the mystery began and ended with four cops poking through the auto pound for signs of their buddies.

“They better not be sleeping in some damn car.” Secretly all four men hoped that the two AWOL officers were off on a bender or something. You’d rather see that than the other possibility.

A cop screamed. The sound stunned the other three to silence because it was one they rarely heard.

“Over here,” the rookie called in a choking voice.

“Hold on, man.” The other three converged on the spot as the rookie’s cries sounded again and again. When the older men got there he slumped against a car.

The three older cops cursed.

“Call the hell in. Get Homicide out here. Seal the area. Jesus Christ!”

They covered the remains with their rainslickers. They put their hats where the faces had been.

The police communications network responded fast; fellow officers were dead, nobody wasted time. Ten minutes after the initial alarms, had gone out the phone was ringing in the half-empty ready-room of the Brooklyn Homicide Division. Detective Becky Neff picked it up. “Neff,” the gruff voice of the Inspector said, “you and Wilson’re assigned to a case in the Seventy-fifth Precinct.”

“The what?”

“It’s the Fountain Avenue Dump. Got a double cop killing, mutilation, probable sex assault, cannibalism. Get the hell out there fast.” The line clicked.

“Wake up, George, we’ve got a case,” Neff growled. “We’ve got a bad one.” She had hardly absorbed what the Inspector had said—mutilation and cannibalism? What in the name of God had happened out there? “Somebody killed two cops and cannibalized them.”

Wilson, who had been resting in a tilted-back chair after a grueling four-hour paperwork session, leaned forward and got to his feet.

“Let’s go. Where’s the scene?”

“Fountain Avenue Dump. Seventy-fifth Precinct.”

“Goddamn out-of-the-way place.” He shook his head. “Guys must have gotten themselves jumped.”

They went down to Becky Neff’s old blue Pontiac and set the flasher up on the dashboard. She pulled the car out of its parking place and edged into the dense traffic of downtown Brooklyn. Wilson flipped on the radio and reported to the dispatcher. “Siren’s working,” Wilson commented as he flipped the toggle switch. The siren responded with an electronic warble, and he grunted with satisfaction; it had been on the blink for over a month, and there had been no response from the repair unit. Budget cuts had reduced this once-efficient team to exactly twelve men for the entire fleet of police vehicles. Unmarked cars were low on the list of precedence for flasher and siren repairs.

“I fixed it,” Becky Neff said, “and I’m damn glad now.” The ride to the car pound would be made much easier by the siren, and time could not be wasted.

Wilson raised his eyebrows. “You fixed it?”

“I borrowed the manual and fixed it. Nothing to it.” Actually she had gotten a neighborhood electronics freak to do the job, a guy with a computer in his living room. But there was no reason to let Wilson know that.

“You fixed it,” Wilson said again.

“You’re repeating yourself.”

He shook his head.

As the car swung onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway he used the siren, flipping the toggle to generate a series of startling whoops that cleared something of a path for them. But traffic was even worse as they approached the Battery Tunnel interchange, and the siren did little good in the confusion of trucks and buses. “Step on it, Becky.”

“I’m stepping. You’re working the siren.”

“I don’t care what you do, but move!”

His outburst made her want to snap back at him, but she understood how he felt. She shared his emotions and knew his anger was directed at the road. Cop killings made you hate the world, and the damn city in particular.

Wilson leaned out of his window and shouted at the driver of a truck stuck in the middle of the lane. “Police! Get that damn thing moving or you’re under arrest!”

The driver shot the finger but moved the vehicle. Becky Neff jammed her accelerator to the floor, skidding around more slowly moving traffic, at times breaking into the clear, at times stuck again.

As the dashboard clock moved through the better part of an hour they approached their destination. They got off the B-Q-E and went straight out Flatbush Avenue, into the sometimes seedy, sometimes neat residential areas beyond. The precincts rolled by, the 78th, the 77th, the 73rd. Finally they entered the 75th and turned onto Flatlands Avenue, a street of nondescript shops in a racially mixed lower- and middle-income neighborhood. The 75th was as average a precinct as there was in New York. About a hundred thousand people lived there, not many poor and not many rich, and about evenly divided between black, white, and Hispanic.

The 75th was the kind of precinct you never read about in the papers, the kind of place where policemen lived out good solid careers without ever shooting a man—not the kind of place where they got killed, much less mutilated and cannibalized.

Finally they turned onto Fountain Avenue. In the distance a little clutch of flashers could be seen in the dismal autumn light—that must mark the official vehicles pulled up to the entrance of the Automobile Pound. The scene of the crime. And judging from the news cars careening down the street, the 75th Precinct wasn’t going to be an obscure place much longer.

“Who’s Precinct Captain?” Neff asked her superior officer. Wilson was senior man on the team, a fact which he was careful to make sure she never forgot. He also had a terrific memory for details.

“Gerardi, I think, something Gerardi. Good enough cop. The place is tight s’far as I know. Nothin’ much going on. It’s not Midtown South, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” What Wilson meant was that this precinct was clean—no bad cops, no mob connections, no serious graft. Unlike Midtown South there wasn’t even the opportunity.

“Sounds like it’s a psycho case to me,” Neff said. She was always careful to pick her words when she theorized around Wilson. He was scathing when he heard poorly thought out ideas and had no tolerance for people with less skill than he himself possessed. Which was to say, he was intolerant of almost the entire police force. He was probably the best detective in Homicide, maybe the best on the force. He was also lazy, venal, inclined toward a Victorian view of women, and a profound slob. Except for their abilities in the craft of police detection, Becky liked to think they had nothing in common. Where Wilson was a slob, Becky tended to be orderly. She was always the one who kept at the paperwork when Wilson gave up, and who kept the dreary minutiae of their professional lives organized.

She and Wilson didn’t exactly dislike one another —it was more than that, it was pure hate laced with grudging respect. Neff thought that Wilson was a Stone Age chauvinist and was revolted by the clerical role he often forced her to play—and he considered her a female upstart in a profession where women were at best a mistake.

But they were both exceptional detectives, and that kept them together. Neff couldn’t help but admire her partner’s work, and he had been forced to admit that she was one of the few officers he had encountered who could keep up with him.

The fact that Becky Neff was also not a bad-looking thirty-four had helped as well. Wilson was a bachelor, over fifty and not much more appealing physically than a busted refrigerator (which he resembled in shape and height). Becky saw from the first that she was attractive to him, and she played it up a little, believing that her progress in her career was more important than whether or not she let Wilson flirt with her. But it went no further than that. Becky’s husband Dick was also on the force, a captain in Narcotics, and Wilson wouldn’t mess around with another cop’s wife.

The idea of Wilson messing around with anybody was ridiculous anyway; he had remained a bachelor partly out of choice and partly because few women would tolerate his arrogance and his sloppy indifference to even the most fundamental social graces, like taking the meat out of a hamburger and eating it separately, which was one of his nicer table manners.

“Let’s just go blank on this one, sweetheart,” Wilson rumbled. “We don’t know what the hell happened out there.”

“Cannibalism would indicate—”

“We don’t know. Guys are excited, maybe it was something else. Let’s just find what we find.”

Becky pulled the car in among the official vehicles and snapped her folding umbrella out of her purse. She opened it against the rain and was annoyed to see Wilson go trudging off into the mud, pointedly ignoring his own comfort. “Let the bastard catch pneumonia,” she thought as she huddled forward beneath the umbrella. Wilson was a great one for appearances —he gets to the scene wet, indifferent to his own comfort, concerned only with the problem at hand, while his dainty little partner follows along behind with her umbrella, carefully mincing over the puddles. Ignoring him as best she could, she set off toward the kliegs that now lit the scene of the murders some fifty yards into the area.

As soon as she saw the mess she knew that this was no normal case. Something that made you break out in a sweat even in this weather had happened to these men. She glanced at Wilson, surprised to see that even old super-pro’s eyes were opened wide with surprise. “Jesus,” he said, “I mean… what?”

The Precinct Captain came forward. “We don’t know, sir,” he said to Wilson, acknowledging the other man’s seniority and fame on the force. And he also eyed Becky Neff, well-known enough in her own right as one of the most visible female officers in New York. Her picture had appeared in the Daily News more than once in connection with some of her and Wilson’s more spectacular cases. Wilson shunned the photographers himself—or they shunned him, it was hard to say which. But Becky welcomed them, highly conscious of her role as living and visible proof that female officers could work the front lines as well as their male counterparts.

Taking a deep breath she knelt down beside the corpses while Wilson was still registering his shock. Every fiber of her body wanted to run, to get away from the unspeakable horror before her—but instead she looked closely, peering at the broken, gristle-covered bones and the dark lumps of flesh that seemed almost to glow beneath the lights that had been set up by the Forensics officers.

“Where the hell’s the Medical Examiner?” Wilson said behind her. A voice answered. Wilson did not come any closer; she knew that he wasn’t going to because he couldn’t stomach this sort of thing. Clenching her teeth against her own disgust, she stared at the bodies, noting the most unusual thing about them —the long scrape marks on the exposed bones and the general evidence of gnawing. She stood up and looked around the desolate spot. About a quarter of a mile away the dump could be seen with huge flocks of sea gulls hovering over the mounds of garbage. Even over the hubbub of voices you could hear the gulls screaming. From here to the dump was an ocean of old cars and trucks of every imaginable description, most of them worthless, stripped hulks. A few nearby had white X’s on the windshields or hoods, evidence of the work DiFalco and Houlihan had been doing when the attack occurred.

“They were gnawed by rats,” Becky said in as level a tone as she could manage, “but those larger marks indicate something else—dogs?”

“The wild dogs around here are just scrawny little mutts,” the Precinct Captain said.

“How long were these men missing before you instituted a search, Captain?” Wilson asked.

The Captain glanced sharply at him. Neff was amazed; nobody below the rank of Inspector had the right to ask a captain a question like that, and even then not outside of a Board of Inquiry. It was a question that belonged in a dereliction of duty hearing, not at the scene of a crime.

“We need to know,” Wilson added a little too loudly.

“Then ask the M. E. how long they’ve been dead. We found them two hours ago. Figure the rest out for yourself.” The Captain turned away, and Becky Neff followed his gaze out over the distant Atlantic, where a helicopter could be seen growing rapidly larger. It was a police chopper and it was soon above them, its rotor clattering as it swung around looking for a likely spot to land.

“That’s the Commissioner and the Chief,” Wilson said. “They must have smelled newsmen.” In January a new mayor would take office, and senior city officials were all scrambling to keep their jobs. So these normally anonymous men now jumped at the possibility of getting their faces on the eleven o’clock news. But this time they would be disappointed—because of the unusually hideous nature of the crime, the press was being kept as far away as possible. No pictures allowed until the scene was cleared of the bodies.

At the same time that the Chief of Detectives and the Commissioner were getting out of their helicopter, the Medical Examiner was hurrying across the muddy ground with a newspaper folded up and held over his head against the rain. “It’s Evans himself,” Wilson said. “I haven’t seen that man outdoors in twenty years.”

“I’m glad he’s here.”

Evans was the city’s Chief Medical Examiner, a man renowned for his ingenious feats of forensic detection. He rolled along, shabby, tiny, looking very old behind his thick glasses.

He had worked with Wilson and Neff often and greeted them both with a nod. “What’s your idea?” he said even before examining the bodies. Most policemen he treated politely enough; these two he respected.

“We’re going to have a problem finding the cause of death,” Wilson said, “because of the shape they’re in.”

Evans nodded. “Is Forensics finished with the bodies?” The Forensics team was finished, which meant that the corpses could be touched. Dr. Evans rolled on his black rubber gloves and bent down. So absorbed did he become that he didn’t even acknowledge the approach of the brass.

The group watched Evans as he probed gingerly at the bodies. Later he would do a much more thorough autopsy in his lab, but these first impressions were important and would be his only on-site inspection of the victims.

When he backed away from the bodies, his face was registering confusion. “I don’t understand this at all,” he said slowly. “These men have been killed by… something with claws, teeth. Animals of some kind. But what doesn’t make sense is—why didn’t they defend themselves?”

“Their guns aren’t even drawn,” Becky said through dry lips. It was the first thing she had noticed.

“Maybe that wasn’t the mode of death, Doctor,” Wilson said. “I mean, maybe they were killed first and then eaten by the animals around here. There’s rats, gulls, also some wild dogs, the precinct boys say.”

The doctor pursed his lips. He nodded. “We’ll find out when we do the autopsy. Maybe you’re right, but on the surface I’d say we’re looking at the fatal wounds.”

The Forensics team was photographing and marking the site, picking up scattered remains and vacuuming the area as well as possible considering the mud. They also took impressions of the multitude of pawprints that surrounded the bodies.

The Precinct Captain finally broke the silence. “You’re saying that these guys were killed by wild dogs, and they didn’t even draw their guns? That can’t be right. Those dogs are just little things— they’re not even a nuisance.” He looked around. “Anybody ever hear of a death from wild dogs in the city? Anybody?”

The Chief and the Commissioner were now standing nearby swathed in heavy coats, shrouded by their umbrellas. Nobody spoke or shook hands. “We’ll give you whatever you need to solve this case,” the Commissioner said to nobody in particular. Up close his face was almost lifeless, the skin hanging loosely on the bones. He had a reputation for long hours and honest work; unlike many of his predecessors he had attained the respect of the department by his interest in police affairs and his disinterest in politics. For that reason his job was now on the line. He was under criticism for allegedly allowing corruption, for taking cops off the street, for ignoring black and Hispanic neighborhoods, for all the things that usually get police commissioners in trouble. By contrast Chief of Detectives Underwood was pink, fat and rather merry. He was a born politician and was ready to redecorate the Commissioner’s office to his own taste. His eyes were watery and he had a nervous cough. He stamped his feet and glanced quickly around, barely even seeing the bodies; it was obvious that he wanted to get back to the comfort of headquarters as soon as he could. “Any leads?” he said, looking at Wilson.

“Nothing.”

“Right now it looks like their throats were torn out,” the Medical Examiner said, “but we’ll reserve judgment until the autopsy.”

“A dog theory won’t make it,” Wilson muttered.

“I never said that,” the M. E. flared. “All I said was the probable cause of death is massive insult to the throat caused by teeth and claws. I don’t know about dogs and I don’t care to speculate about dogs.”

“Thank you, Doctor Evans,” Wilson said in a staccato voice. Evans was not numbered among Wilson’s few friends despite the professional respect.

The Commissioner stared a long time at the corpses. “Cover ’em up,” he said at last, “get ’em out of here. Come on, Herb, let’s let these men do their jobs.”

The two officials trudged back to their helicopter.

“Morale,” the Precinct Captain said as the chopper began to start “A visit from those two sure charges you up.”

The Medical Examiner was still fuming over his run-in with Wilson. “If it was dogs,” he said carefully, “they’d have to be seventy, eighty pounds or more. And fast, they’d have to be fast.”

“Why so fast?” Becky asked.

“Look at DiFalco’s right wrist. Torn. He was going for his pistol when something with teeth hit his arm hard. That means whatever it was, it was damn fast.”

Becky Neff thought immediately of the dogs her husband Dick often worked with on the Narcotics Squad. “Attack dogs,” she said, “you’re describing the work of attack dogs.”

The Medical Examiner shrugged. “I’m describing the condition of the bodies. How they got that way is your business, Becky—yours and His Excellency’s.”

“Screw you too, Evans.”

Becky tried to ignore Wilson—she was used to his sour disposition. As long as people like Evans kept working with him it didn’t really matter. Sometimes, though, it was nice to see that others disliked him as much as she did.

“If we can establish that attack dogs did this,” she said, “then we can narrow our search considerably. Most attack dogs don’t kill.”

“If the good doctor says they were able to do… that, then you might have a point. Let’s talk to Tom Rilker, get ourselves a little education on the subject.” Rilker trained dogs for the department.

Becky nodded. As usual when they got going, she and Wilson started thinking together. They headed back toward their car. The first step was now clear— they had to find out if attack dogs were involved. If they were, then this was a first—policemen had never been murdered with dogs before. In fact, dogs were an uncommon weapon because it took the work of a skilled professional to train them to kill human beings. And skilled professionals didn’t train up dogs for just anybody. If you had gotten a dog trained into a killer, the man who did it would remember you for sure. Most so-called “attack dogs” are nothing more than a loud bark and maybe a bite. The ones that actually go for the throat are not very common. A dog like that is never completely controllable, always a liability unless it is absolutely and essentially needed.

Back in the car, Wilson began to recite what he remembered about cases involving killer dogs. “October, 1966, a pedestrian killed by a dog in Queens. Dog was untrained, believed to have been an accident. I worked that case, I always thought it was fishy but I never got a decent lead. July, 1970, an attack dog escaped from the Willerton Drug Company warehouse in Long Island City and killed a seventeen-year-old boy. Another accident. April, 1973—our only proved murder by dog. A hood named Big Roy Gurner was torn apart by three dogs, later traced to the Thomas Shoe Company, which was a front for the Carlo Midi family. I got close to netting Midi in that one, but the brass removed me from the case. Corrupt bastards. That’s my inventory on dogs. You got anything?”

“Well, I don’t remember any dog cases since I’ve been a detective. I’ve heard about the Gurner thing of course. But the scuttlebutt was you got paid off the case.” She watched him pull his chin into his neck at that—it was his characteristic gesture of anger.

And she realized that she shouldn’t have goaded him; Wilson was one honest cop, that much was certain. He hated corruption in others and certainly would never bend himself. It was a nasty crack, and she was sorry for it. She tried to apologize, but he wouldn’t acknowledge. She had made her mistake; there was no point in continuing to talk about it. “My husband works with dogs all the time,” she said to change the subject. “Some attack dogs, but mostly just sniffers. They’re his best weapon, so he says.”

“I hear about his dogs. All of them are supposedly trained to kill despite that ‘sniffer’ bullshit. I’ve heard the stories about those dogs.”

She frowned. “What stories?”

“Oh, nothing much really. Just that those dogs sometimes get so excited when they sniff out a little dope that they just happen to kill the jerk they find it on… sometimes. But I guess you husband’s told you all about that.”

“Let’s drop it, Wilson. We don’t need to go at each other like this. My husband hasn’t told me anything about dogs that kill suspects. It sounds pretty outlandish if you ask me.”

Wilson snorted, said nothing more. But Becky had heard the rumors he was referring to, that Dick’s team sometimes used dogs on difficult suspects. “At least he’s not on the take,” Becky thought. “I hope to God he’s not.” Then she thought of a certain problem they used to have paying for his father’s nursing home, a problem that seemed to have disappeared—but she refused to think about it

Corruption was the one thing about police work she hated. Many officers considered the money part of the job, rationalizing it with the idea that their victims were criminals anyway and the payoffs were nothing more than a richly deserved fine. But as far as Becky Neff was concerned, that was crap. You did your job and got your pay, that ought to be enough. She forced herself not to rise to Wilson’s bait about her husband, it would probably start a shouting argument.

“Stories aside, I’ve heard a lot about Tom Rilker. Dick thinks damn highly of him. Says he could train a dog to walk a tightrope if he wanted to.” Thomas D. Rilker was a civilian who worked closely with the NYPD, the FBI, and U. S. Customs training the dogs they used in their work. He also did private contract work. He was good, probably the best in the city, maybe the best in the world. His specialty was training dogs to sniff. He had dope dogs, fire dogs, tobacco dogs, booze dogs, you name it. They worked mostly for the Narcotics Squad and the customs agents. They had revolutionized the technique of investigation in these areas and greatly reduced the amount of drugs moving through the port of New York. Becky knew that Dick thought the world of Tom Rilker.

“Keep this damn car moving, sweetheart. You ain’t in a parade!”

“You drive, Wilson.”

“Me? I’m the damn boss. Oughta sit in back.”

She pulled over to the curb. “You don’t like my driving, you do it yourself.”

“I can’t, dearest—my license lapsed last year.”

“When you teamed up with me, dip.”

“Thank you, I’ll make a note of that.”

Becky swung the car out into traffic and jammed the accelerator to the floor. She wasn’t going to let him get to her. Part of the reason he was like this was because she had forced herself on him. Between her husband Dick and her uncle Bob she had exerted plenty of pull to get herself into Homicide and to land a partner once she got there. It took the pull of her husband’s captaincy and her uncle’s inspectorship to move her out of the secretary syndrome and onto the street. She had done well as a patrolman and gotten herself promoted to Detective Sergeant when she deserved it. Most of the women she knew on the force got their promotions at least two or three years late, and then had to fight to avoid ending up on some rotten squad like Missing Persons, where the only action you ever saw was an occasional flat tire on an unmaintained squad car.

So here came Becky Neff just when George Wilson’s most recent partner had punched him in the face and transferred to Safes and Locks. Wilson had to take what he could get, and in this situation it was a rookie detective and, worse, a woman.

He had looked at her as if she had contagious leprosy. For the first six weeks together he had said no more than a word a week to her—six words in six weeks, all of them four-letter. He had schemed to get her out of the division, even started dark rumors about a Board of Inquiry when she missed an important lead in what should have been an easy case.

But gradually she had become better at the work, until even he had been forced to acknowledge it. Soon they were making collars pretty often. In fact they were getting a reputation.

“Women are mostly awful cops,” were his final words on the subject, “but you’re unique. Instead of being awful, you’re just bad.”

Coming from Wilson that was a compliment, perhaps the highest he had ever paid a fellow officer. After that his grumbling became inarticulate and he let the partnership roll along under its own considerable steam.

They worked like two parts of the same person, constantly completing each other’s thoughts. People like the Chief Medical Examiner started requesting their help on troublesome cases. But when their work started to reach the papers, it was invariably the attractive, unusual lady cop Becky Neff who ended up in the Daily News centerfold. Wilson was only another skilled policeman; Becky was interesting news. Wilson, of course, claimed to hate publicity. But she knew he hated even more the fact that he didn’t get any.

“You’re making a wrong turn, Becky. We’re supposed to be stopping at the Seventy-fifth to get pictures. of the bodies and pawprints for Rilker. Give him something to work with.”

She wheeled the car around and turned up Flatlands Avenue toward the station house. “Also we ought to call ahead,” she said, “let him know we’re coming.”

“You’re sure we trust him? I mean, what if he’s doing a little work on the side, like for somebody bad. Calling ahead’ll give him time to think.”

“Rilker’s not working for the Mafia. I don’t think that’s even worthy of consideration.”

“Then I won’t consider it.” He slumped down in the seat, pushing his knees up against the glove compartment and letting his head lean forward against his chest. It looked like agony, but he closed his eyes. Becky lit a cigarette and drove on in silence, mentally reviewing the case. Despite the fact that it looked like they were on a good lead she could not dismiss the feeling that something was wrong with it. Some element didn’t fit. Again and again she reviewed the facts but she couldn’t come up with the answer. The one thing that worried her was the lack of resistance. It had happened so fast that they hadn’t appeared dangerous until the very last moment.

Did attack dogs lay ambushes? Could they move fast enough to kill two healthy policemen before they even had time to unholster their pistols?

She double-parked the car in front of the 75th Precinct.

Leaving Wilson snoring lightly she hurried up the worn concrete steps of the dingy red-brick building and introduced herself to the desk sergeant. He called Lieutenant Ruiz, who was responsible for the material she needed. He was a six-footer with a trim black mustache and a subdued smile. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Detective Neff,” he said with great f formality.

“We need pictures and copies of the prints you took.”

“No problem, we’ve got everything you could want. It’s a rotten mess.”

A leading statement, but Becky didn’t pick up on it That part of the investigation would come later. Before they identified a motive for the murders they had to have a mode of death.

Sergeant Ruiz produced eleven glossies of the scene, plus a box of plasticasts of the pawprints that had been found surrounding the bodies. “There isn’t a single clear print in that box,” he said, “just a jumble. If you ask me those prints haven’t got a thing to do with it. Just the wild dogs doing a little scavenging. They sure as hell couldn’t be responsible for killing those guys, they just came and got their share after the real work was done.”

“Why do you say that?” She was examining the photographs as she talked. Why had he handed her one of the less grisly shots?

“The dogs—I’ve seen them. They’re little, like cockers or something, and they’re shy as hell. And by the way, I wonder if you could autograph that picture for my daughter.” He paused, then added shyly, “She thinks the world of you.”

Becky was so pleased by his admiration that she didn’t notice Wilson standing behind her.

“I thought we weren’t going to give out any more autographs,” he said curtly.

“When did we decide not to? I don’t remember that.”

“Right now. I just decided. This isn’t some kind of a game.” His hand moved toward the picture but Ruiz’s was quicker.

“Thanks, Miss Neff,” he said, still smiling. “My daughter’ll be thrilled.”

Becky gathered the rest of the photographs and picked up the box of prints to lug to the car. She knew without asking that Wilson wouldn’t touch it, and she wasn’t sure she wanted him to.

“By the way, it’s Sergeant Neff,” she said over her shoulder to Ruiz, who was still standing there staring.

“Let me help you,” he said.

Becky was already out the door and putting the box into the back seat of the car. Wilson followed, got in, and slammed his door. Becky settled herself into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition.

“I just don’t want this to be a circus,” he said as they headed toward Manhattan. “This case is going to be the most sensational thing we’ve ever worked on. Reporters are gonna be crawling out of your nightgown in the morning.”

“I don’t wear a nightgown.”

“Whatever, we’re gonna have ’em all over us. The point is, it’s a serious case and we want to treat it serious.”

Wilson could be sententious, but this was ridiculous. She forced herself not to say she knew how serious the case was. If she did he would then launch into a tirade about lady cops, probably ending with a question about her competence or some new criticism of her work. She decided to ignore him and make him shut up as well. To do this she drove like a madwoman, careening down the streets, making hairpin turns, weaving in and out of the traffic at fifty miles an hour. Wilson at first sat with his shoulders hunched and his hands twisted together in his lap, then started using the siren.

“Rilker give you some kind of deadline?”

“No.” She had forgotten to call Rilker, dammit. If he wasn’t there she’d have to suffer more flak from Wilson.

She lit another cigarette. Smoking was one pleasure that she had really begun to enjoy since the doctor had made Wilson stop.

His response was prompt. “You’re polluting.”

“Draw an oxygen mask if you don’t like it I’ve told you that before.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

She wished that she smoked cigars.

Chapter 2

« ^ »

Tom Rilker stared at the pictures the two detectives showed him. His face registered disbelief and what looked to Becky Neff like fear. She had never met him before and was surprised to discover that he was old, maybe seventy-five. From her husband’s description she had assumed he was a young man. Rilker’s hair was white and springy like frayed wool; his right hand shook a little and made the pictures rustle together; his brows knit, the salt-and-pepper eyebrows coming close together, heightening the expression now on his face. “This is impossible,” he finally said. The moment he spoke Becky knew why Dick always portrayed him as young—he sounded like a much younger man. “It’s completely incredible.”

“Why is that?” Wilson asked.

“Well, a dog wouldn’t do this. You’d have to train it. These men have been gutted, for God’s sake. You can train a dog to kill, but if you wanted it to do this to its victims, you’d have to train it very, very well.”

“But it could be done.”

“Maybe, with the right breed and the right dog. But it wouldn’t be easy. You’d need… human models for the dog to work on if you wanted it to be reliable.”

“What if you just starved the dog?”

“A dog would eat muscle tissue—ma’am, if this bothers you—”

“No,” Becky snapped. “You were saying, a dog would eat muscle tissue?”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t actually—gut somebody. That isn’t the way they feed, not even in the wild state.” He picked up the pawprints and shook his head. “These all the prints?”

“How big a dog would it have taken?” Wilson asked. Becky noticed that his questions were becoming gentle but insistent; he must sense that the sight of the pictures had put Rilker under a considerable strain. The man’s face was indeed getting flushed, and a band of sweat was appearing on his forehead. He kept giving his head a little toss as if to knock a wisp of hair back. The hand was shaking harder.

“A monster. Something big and fast and mean enough to accept this kind of training. Not all breeds would.”

“What breeds?”

“Close to the wild, huskies, German shepherds. Not many. And I’ve got to tell you, in all my years I’ve never seen anything like this done by dogs. I think its—

He grabbed a cast of some of the pawprints and peered at it, then fumbled with the lamp on his desk and looked closely in the light. “These are not dog prints.”

“What are they then?”

“I don’t know. Something very strange.”

“Why so?”

Tom Rilker paused, then spoke with exaggerated calm. “These prints have circules, like human hands and feet. But they are clearly pawprints.”

“Some kind of animal, other than a dog?”

“I’m sorry to tell you that no animal has prints like this. In fact nothing does. Nothing that I have ever heard of, that is, in fifty years of working with animals.”

Becky had to say it: “Werewolves?” She resigned herself to the inevitable scoffing that would come from Wilson later.

Surprisingly, Rilker took some time to dismiss the question. “I don’t think such things are possible,” he said carefully.

“Well—are they or aren’t they?”

Rilker smiled sheepishly. Becky realized that he was being kind. She could see the glee in Wilson’s eyes. It was all her partner could do not to whoop with laughter, damn him.

“I don’t believe in werewolves either, Mr. Rilker,” Becky said. “Frankly, I wanted to know if you did.”

“Why?”

“Because if you had, we wouldn’t have to trust the rest of what you’re saying. As it is, you look like a creditable expert who’s just given us a very nasty problem.”

“A nasty problem in what way?”

Now Wilson did scoff—but at Rilker. “Well, for one thing, we must proceed under the assumption that these two fully armed police officers were killed by animals. OK, that’s not so good. But we’ve also got to assume that the animals are of an unknown species. That’s pretty bad. And now, to cap it all off, we’ve got to believe that this unknown species of man-killing animals is running free in Brooklyn and nobody knows about it. That I cannot accept.”

Becky’s mind was racing—this new theory plugged holes but it also had some great big ones of its own. “If it’s true, we’ve got to move fast. Brooklyn’s a crowded place.”

“Come on, Becky, stop it. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got real work to do.”

“Wait a minute, Detective, I’m not sure I like your tone.” Rilker stood up and thrust one of the casts in Wilson’s face. “Those pawprints were not made by anything that I have ever heard of. By nothing whatsoever. Not even by a species of monkey—I already thought of that.” He fumbled for his phone. “I’ll call a friend up at the Museum of Natural History. He’ll tell you these prints weren’t made by any known animal. You’re dealing with something highly unusual, that’s for damn sure.”

Becky felt her heart sink. Wilson had angered Rilker. Rilker’s voice rose as his fingers fumbled at the telephone. “Maybe my word isn’t good enough for you sharpie cops—but this guy up at the museum’s a real expert. He’ll tell you bastards I’m right!”

Wilson jerked his head in the direction of the door. ‘We don’t need any help from a museum,“ he muttered. Becky followed him out, carrying the pictures but leaving the pawprints behind because Rilker seemed to have taken possession of the box. The door to his office slammed behind them with an ear-shattering jolt. His voice rose to a frustrated screech and abruptly ended.

“I hope we didn’t give him a coronary,” Becky said as they returned to the street.

“You did good, kid,” Wilson said. “If you hadn’t asked him about the werewolves he would have pulled it off.”

“I can hardly believe that was the Tom Rilker I’ve heard Dick talk about. But I guess he must be a little senile.”

“I guess so. Where are the casts?”

“Still in his office. You want them?” Becky dropped her purse in through the window of the car.

“Yeah. We might need them.”

“Fine, you go up and get them.”

Wilson snorted. “We’ll get more from the Seventy-fifth Precinct. You know something?”

“What?”

“You’re losing your mascara. You’re sweating.”

She laughed as she started the car. “I’ve got to hand it to you, George, you really know how to set a girl up. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a year.”

“Well… you’re… you know, when your stuff gets messed up I notice.”

“Good for you. That’s the first sign you’re becoming human.” She pulled out into traffic, heading automatically for what she knew would be their next stop, the office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The autopsies were due to start in half an hour and it was now all the more important to be there. Unless a cause of death came out in autopsy they were going to be forced to conclude the impossible—that the killings had been done by dogs. And that is a very unlikely way for a policeman to die.

Becky could not dispel the growing feeling of sick fear that this case was giving her. She kept imagining the two cops out there in the drizzle, facing whatever in the name of God they had faced . . and dying with the secret. At times like this she wished she and Dick worked more closely together. He would understand the source of her feeling in a way Wilson never could. She took her cases very personally, it was one of her worst failings (and also the reason she was often so successful, she felt), and each case affected her differently. This one, with its overtones of horror, was going to be unusually hard on her. What had happened to those two cops was the stuff of nightmares…

“You’re muttering.”

“I am not.”

“You’re muttering, you’re getting crazy.”

“I am not! You better keep your mouth shut.”

“All right, but I’m telling you that this case is going to eat away at you.” He suddenly turned to face her. The movement made her swerve the car— she had the absurd notion that he was going to kiss her. But his face was twisted into a look almost of pain. “It’s eating at me is the reason I say that. I mean, I don’t know what happened out there but it’s really getting to me.”

“You mean you’re pissed off about it, scared of it—what?”

He considered for a moment, then said very quietly, “It scares me.” Never before had Wilson said such a thing. Becky kept her eyes on the traffic, her face without expression.

“Me too,” she said, “if you want to know. It’s a weird case.” Extreme caution was called for in this conversation—Wilson could be telling the truth or he could be egging her on, trying to get her to reveal her inner emotions, to force her to admit that she was overinvolved in her work in an unprofessional way. Although she felt secure enough in their partnership she could never be certain that Wilson hadn’t concocted some plot to get rid of her. Not that it mattered —nowadays they were waiting in line to work with her, but somehow she wanted to keep the partnership going. Wilson was hard to take but the two of them were so good together it was worth preserving. “It’s hard but it’s good,” he said suddenly. “What’re you talking about?”

“Us. You’re thinking about us, aren’t you?” The way he sounded they might as well have been lovers. “Yes, I am.”

“See, that’s why it’s good. If it wasn’t so good, I never would have known.”

She took a deep breath. “We’re here. Maybe we’ll find out they were poisoned and this’ll turn into a normal case again.”

“We won’t.”

“Why not? I don’t think we can assume—oh, of course, the dogs ate the organs and there are no dead dogs, therefore there was no poison in the organs, therefore et cetera.”

“You got it, sweetheart. Let’s go up and watch old prickface pretend to be a master sleuth.”

“Oh, Wilson, why don’t you let the poor man alone. He’s just as good at what he does as we are at what we do. Your whole thing with him is personalities.”

“Can’t be. He hasn’t got one.” The Chief Medical Examiner’s office was housed in a gleaming modern building across the street from Bellevue Hospital. This “office” was really a factory of forensic pathology, equipped with every conceivable piece of equipment and chemical that could be of use in an autopsy. Literally everything there was to know about a corpse could be discovered in this building. And the Medical Examiner had been responsible for solving many a murder with his equipment and his most considerable skill. Bits of hair, flecks of saliva, fingernail-polish fragments—all had figured prominently in murder trials. A conviction had once been obtained on the basis of shoe polish left on the lethal bruises of a woman who had been kicked to death.

The Chief M. E. excelled at making such findings. And if there was anything to be found in this case, he would surely uncover it. He and his men would go over the bodies inch by inch, leaving nothing to chance. Still, there was that fear…

“They’d better come up with something or this case is going to drive me crazy,” Becky said on the way up in the elevator. It was new and rose silently with no sense of motion.

“I hate this elevator. Every time I ride in it it scares the hell out of me.”

“Imagine how it would be to be trapped in this elevator, Wilson, no way out—”

“Shut up! That’s unkind.” Wilson was mildly claustrophobic, to add to his list of petty neuroses.

“Sorry, just trying to amuse you.”

“You tell me I’m such an s.o.b., but you’re really the nasty side of this partnership. That was a rotten thing to do to me.”

The doors opened and they stepped into the odor of disinfectant that pervaded the M. E.’s office. The receptionist knew them, and waved them past her desk. Doctor Evans’s incredibly cluttered office was open but he wasn’t inside. House rules were that you didn’t go any farther into the complex without an escort, but as usual there wasn’t a soul to be seen or heard. They started toward the operating room when the receptionist yelled Wilson’s name. “Yeah?”

“You got a message,” she hollered. “Call Underwood.”

“OK!” He stared at Becky. “Underwood wants me? Why the hell does Underwood want me? I don’t remember trying to get you fired recently.”

“Maybe you did and forgot.”

“Better call, better call.” He picked up the phone in Evans’s office and dialed the Chief of Detectives. The conversation lasted about a minute and consisted on Wilson’s part of a series of yessirs and thankyous. “Just wanted to tell us we’re a special detail now, reporting directly to him, and we have the facilities of the department at our disposal. We move to an office at Police Headquarters in Manhattan.”

“That’s very nice. We get carte blanche as long as some of the credit rubs off on him, and the Commissioner gets left in his ivory tower.”

Wilson snorted. “Listen, as long as it looks like this case is solvable every parasite from here to the Bulgarian Secret Service is going to try to horn in on the credit. But you just wait. If we don’t get it together, we’ll be all alone.”

“Let’s go to the autopsy. I can hardly wait.” Her voice was bitter; what Wilson had said could not have been more true.

“Come on, ghoul.”

On the way to the operating room Becky wished to hell that Wilson would pull out a bottle of something alcoholic. Unfortunately he rarely drank, and certainly never while he was working—unless events called for it, which they often did about six P.M. But now it was after six.

“I thought you people didn’t come back here unless you were invited,” Evans growled. He was on his way into the surgery. He stank of chemical soap; his rubber gloves were dripping. “Or don’t those rules count where you two are concerned?”

“This is the man who invites us on his cases. How sweet.”

“I only give you cases that are too easy for me to bother with. Now come on in if you want to, but it won’t do a bit of good. And I warn you, they’re fragrant.”

Becky thought immediately of the families. When she was a child she had been at a funeral where you could smell the corpse—but nowadays they had things for that, didn’t they? And anyway, the coffins wouldn’t be opened. But still… oh, God.

The two bodies lay on surgical tables under merciless lights. There was none of the haphazardness and confusion of the scene out at the auto pound; here everything was neat and orderly except the bodies themselves, which carried their violence and horror with them.

Becky was struck by the sheer damage—this attack had been so unbelievably savage. And somehow she found that reassuring; nothing from nature would do this. It had to be the work of human beings, it was too terrible to be anything else.

“The Forensics lab hasn’t found a single thing except dog hairs, rat hairs and feathers,” Doctor Evans said mildly. He was referring to the results of the examination of the area where the deaths had occurred at the auto pound. “No human detritus that didn’t belong to the victims.”

“OK,” Wilson said, but he took the information like a blow. It was not good news.

Evans turned to Becky. “Look, we’re about to start. What do you think it’ll take to get Wilson out of here?”

“You can’t. There might be something,” she replied.

“Something I’d miss?”

“Something we’d see.”

“But not him. He won’t be able to take it.”

“I’ll be fine. Just do your job, Doctor.”

“There will be no repeat of the Custin mess, Detective Wilson.” During the Maude Custin autopsy Wilson had lost his lunch. The reference to his embarrassment hurt his feelings, but he was too proud to acknowledge it before Evans.

“I’ll leave if it gets to me,” he said, “but not unless it does. We’ve gotta be here and you know it.”

“Just trying to help you, trying to be accommodating.”

“Thank you. Why don’t you get going?”

“That’s what I am doing.”

Evans picked up a scalpel and commenced taking a series of tissue samples. An assistant prepared slides of them at a side table, and sent the slides to the lab. The autopsy proceeded swiftly—there was pitifully little to examine. “The main thing we’re hunting for is signs of poison, suffocation, anything that would give us a more plausible cause of death,” Evans said as he worked. “That good for you two?”

“That’s good for us.”

“Well, we’ll find out all about it from the lab. Look at this.” He held up a sharp white tooth. “Embedded in that busted wrist. You know what it means —really what it confirms?”

“The man was alive when his wrist was bitten. Otherwise the tooth wouldn’t have been wrenched loose.”

“That’s right, which confirms that this one was definitely alive when the dogs attacked him.”

There was a long silence in the room. Wilson seemed to sink into himself, becoming smaller and more square than he already was. Becky felt a dull powerlessness. As the vague outlines of what they were confronting began to take shape Becky could see all lands of nasty problems, not the least of which would be simple crowd control. What do people do when they discover a thing like this in their midst? Their placid, workaday lives are suddenly disrupted by a new terror of the most dangerous type—the unknown. And if it can kill two healthy, alert, armed policemen, the run-of-the-mill citizen isn’t going to have a prayer.

“I think we’d better get downtown as soon as the lab results are in,” Becky said. “Why bother to wait?”

“Confirming, just so we won’t have any loose ends.” Convincing Underwood of this wasn’t going to be especially easy. She didn’t want there to be any stray questions unanswered that might allow him to put off the inevitable decision—admit what killed the cops, seal the area, and kill everything in it that looked faintly like a dog—wild or trained.

The two detectives returned to the M. E.’s office before the autopsies were completed; they didn’t spend any more time observing than they had to. Wilson was visibly grateful to leave; Becky was glad to follow.

Wilson seemed unusually quiet, almost chastened. “What do you think Underwood will do?” she asked just to break the silence.

Wilson shrugged. “Two cops got killed by some kind of dogs. It’s a pretty flimsy story, you ask me. No matter what’s been confirmed, I think we’ve got to keep digging. Somehow or other we’ll uncover a real motive and a real crime.”

Becky felt a twinge of concern—didn’t Wilson believe the evidence? “But if it was dogs and we don’t act pretty fast there could be more deaths. I think we’ve got to make that assumption. That’s certainly where the facts are leading us.”

Wilson nodded. If she wasn’t sure that it couldn’t be true, she almost would have suspected Wilson of knowing something about the case that she didn’t. But they had not been apart since it had happened, not for a minute. Whatever information he had, she also had.

“You know,” he said in a low, angry tone, “you damn well never get over smoking. If you weren’t armed I’d mug you for your cigarettes right now.”

She didn’t reply; she was staring past him, toward the door of the office. Evans walked in carrying a clipboard. “Lab says we might have carbon monoxide poisoning as a secondary factor,” he said, “but the basic cause of death was the injuries. Primarily the throats in both cases.”

“Carbon monoxide? Could those men have been impaired by it?”

“Normally I wouldn’t say so. The levels are very low, just residual. You’ve both probably got higher levels right now just from your drive over here. But it’s absolutely the only abnormal thing we found about these men.”

“Could it have been higher when they were killed and then dissipated?”

“Not likely. These guys were functioning normally when they were hit. It’s just the only other thing.”

Wilson seemed greatly relieved; at the moment Becky couldn’t understand exactly why this was so.

The Chief Medical Examiner put down his clipboard. “It’s as strange as they come,” he said, “the strangest case I have worked on in my entire career.”

“Why so?” Wilson tried and failed to sound unconcerned.

“Well, they were supposedly killed by dogs, right?”

The detectives nodded like twins; Becky was secretly amused by the similarity of the gesture. She wondered what it was that brought the two of them so close to one another. God knows you couldn’t call it love.

“The dogs had to be very unusual. Their mode of attack was extremely clever. It wasn’t until DiFalco went for his gun that they attacked.”

“So what?”

“So when did you ever hear about a dog smart enough to grab a man’s wrist to prevent him from unholstering his gun? Never, is the answer. Dogs don’t think like that. They don’t know what the hell guns are.”

“Maybe and maybe not.”

“Oh, come on, they don’t know. Point a pistol at a dog’s head and not a damn thing will happen. He certainly won’t try to defend himself. Whoever heard of dogs working like that?”

“It was a lucky coincidence. The dog went for the movement of the hand, not to prevent it from reaching the gun. I think we can assume that.” Wilson picked up the phone. “I’m calling Underwood to tell him we’re on the way. His nibs is awaiting us.”

“Now don’t go running him down, Wilson. Word is he’s got the inside track to the big job. Your next Commissioner.”

Wilson dialed. “A lot of difference it makes to me. I’ve been on the promotion list for at least ten years.”

Becky was surprised to hear her partner admit this. His own complete inability to handle department politics had assured that he would never move beyond Detective Lieutenant. No matter the level of his achievement; while good work counted in the scramble for top jobs, pull and ass-kissing counted more. And with Wilson not only did he not try to ass-kiss, people were afraid even to let him try. You don’t let a guy like that get into the delicate politics of the Police Department. Next thing, he’d unwittingly uncover some scandal and embarrass everybody.

That made him a less than ideal senior partner. The brass would hesitate to promote Becky around Wilson. It just wasn’t done unless the senior was completely incompetent—which was far from the case here. So she’d have to sit around as a Detective Sergeant until either she or Wilson rotted, or she was transferred away from him and that was one thing the department would never do. Only Wilson himself in his wisdom would ever consider such a thing. She hated the thought of it right now, too; it could easily mean being moved away from the action, back into the obscurity of a more typical policewoman job.

Wilson muttered into the phone, using no more than a few monosyllables. He had informed the Chief of Detectives that they were coming with just about as much grace as he would inform his building superintendent of a stopped-up toilet.

A wet, shuddering north wind hit them as they left the building; the drizzling cold of the past few days had finally given way to the first real touch of winter. It was seven-thirty and already dark. Thirtieth Street was quiet, with the wind clattering in the skeletons of scrawny trees up and down the block. A few pedestrians hurried past, and out on Fifth Avenue many more figures could be seen amid the flashing lights and the shapes of cars moving slowly downtown. Becky watched the people they passed on their way to her car, looking at the gray, blank faces, thinking about the lives hidden behind those faces, and of how what she and Wilson would soon be telling the Chief of Detectives would affect those lives.

In police work you gradually acquire a distance from nonpolicemen. People on the outside have such a limited concept of what you really do that they might as well know nothing at all. They see only the headlines, the endless propagandizing of the newspapers. Crimes are reported, their solution is not. As a result the people you meet outside of the force see you as incompetent. “You’re a cop? Why don’t you get the muggers off the street? I never see a cop on the street. I thought that’s what we paid you for.” Then you might see that same person dead somewhere, the victim of the very crime he said you wouldn’t protect him from. It does something to you to realize that you aren’t going to protect everybody, you aren’t going to make the world a hell of a lot safer by your work. You are there to hold life together, not to bring on the millennium. When you see the incredible suffering and degradation, you begin to realize the truth of that. Sooner or later crooks and victims all merge together into one miserable, bloody mass of whining, twisted bodies and fear-glazed eyes. Murder after murder comes before you, each with its sordid tale of failed lives…

And then you get a thing like this. It doesn’t make sense, it scares you. There’s a chilly feeling that something wrong has happened but you don’t quite know what it is. You want like hell to solve the crime because the victims were your people. The twisted bodies were from the inside, from the real world of the department, not from that chaos that swirls around outside.

Usually there is no mystery to a cop’s death. He knocks on a door and a junkie blows him away. He hollers freeze at some kid running out of a liquor store and gets a bullet in the face. That’s the way cops get killed, suddenly and without mystery. Death in the line of duty—rare, but it happens.

“Here’s the car,” Wilson said. Becky had walked right past it; she had been too deeply engrossed in her thoughts. But she got in, drove mechanically through the increasingly heavy rain, listening to it drum on the roof, listening to the wind soughing past the closed windows, feeling the pervasive dirty damp of the afternoon.

Headquarters was dark and gray, standing like some black monument in the storm. They pulled into the garage beneath the building, into the sudden flood of fluorescent lights, the squeal of brakes and tires as they maneuvered through the garage and found a parking space in the area marked off for the Homicide Division.

Underwood was not alone in his office. With him was a young man in a polyester suit and round rimless glasses. For an instant Becky was reminded of John Dean, then the face looked up and the impression of boyishness disappeared: the man’s eyes were cold, his face thinner than it should be, his lips set in a terse line.

“Good afternoon,” Underwood said stiffly, half rising from behind his deck, “this is Assistant District Attorney Kupferman.” He then introduced Neff and Wilson. The two detectives pulled up chairs; this was going to be a work session and there was no time to stand on formality.

Becky relaxed into the comfortable leather wing chair Wilson had gotten for her. The Chief’s office was all leather and paneling; it looked like an expensive private library without books. Hunting scenes were hung on the wall a pewter chandelier from the ceiling. The whole impression was one of subdued bad taste—a sort of subtle and completely unintentional self-mockery.

“Let’s go,” Underwood said. “I told the papers we’d have a statement tonight. Was I right?”

“Yeah,” Wilson said. He looked at the assistant DA. “You’re chewing. Got any gum?” The man held out a pack of sugar-free gum. “Thanks. I’m not supposed to smoke.”

“I want to know if you’ve found out anything about those guys that might justify us getting into the act,” the assistant DA said.

So that was what he was here for. He was the District Attorney’s little watchdog, sent here to sniff out any departmental wrongdoing. Maybe the two dead cops were bent, the thinking would go, maybe that’s why they were dead.

“There’s nothing like that,” Wilson said. “These guys were Auto Squad, not Narcotics. They weren’t into anything.”

Becky’s mind flashed to her husband Dick, to the Narcotics Squad. Just as quickly she pulled her thoughts away, returning them to this conversation. What was it that made her worry so about Dick, especially lately? She couldn’t allow herself to think about it now. As firmly as she could, she returned her thoughts to the question at hand.

“You’re sure?”

“We haven’t investigated that aspect,” Becky put in. “We’ve just now established a cause of death.”

This was obviously the part Underwood wanted to hear about. He leaned forward and made a little pulling motion with his hands. “It was the dogs,” Wilson said tonelessly.

“Oh, no, you can’t tell me that! I can’t have that!”

“It’s the truth as far as we know. They were killed by dogs.”

“Hell no. That’s completely unacceptable. I’m not putting that in any press releases. Let the damn Commissioner do it, it’s his responsibility.”

The way he began to back off would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad. He had called them down here hoping to get some glory thrown his way when they solved the crime; but now that it looked like this he wasn’t so eager to be associated with it. Let the Commissioner tell the world that two fully armed policemen got themselves killed by a bunch of dogs; Underwood sure as hell wasn’t going to do it.

“We didn’t believe it ourselves,” Becky said, “but Evans is sure. The only thing out of the ordinary was some residual carbon monoxide—”

“Carbon monoxide! That’s incapacitating! Then it makes some sense, the guys were out cold. Now that’s better, why didn’t you start off telling me that?” He glared an instant at Wilson. “That’s the crucial piece of change, as far as I’m concerned. Did the M. E. say where they got it?”

“Background atmosphere,” Wilson cut in. “It’s not important. There are probably higher levels in your blood right now.”

“Did anybody check their car, find out if the exhaust system was defective?”

Wilson laughed, a sneering little noise in the back of his throat. Becky wished to God he had never made that sound. “The CO count wasn’t high enough.”

“It’s an angle, man! If I can use that, I don’t have to put this case down to The Unexplained. Think about what we’re confronting here! Cops were killed by dogs. It’s stupid. It’s bad for the department, it makes the men look like a bunch of jerkoffs, getting themselves killed by a pack of mutts. You don’t tell the papers, yeah, here are a couple of dopes who got themselves done in by a bunch of dogs, didn’t even have the sense to defend themselves. I can’t make a statement like that.”

“Which is why you’ll try to get the Commissioner to make the statement. You don’t want to be associated with it.”

“It’s his responsibility, Detective. And I don’t think I like your attitude!”

“Thank you.”

The Chief’s eyes bored into Wilson’s impassive face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Thank you. Nothing more or less. I’ve told you all I know about this case. Give me a few more days and a little luck and I’ll know more. As far as the cause of death is concerned, it appears to have been the dogs. I don’t like it any more than you do, I’ve got to tell you. But those are the facts. If you want a statement for the press, that’s got to be it.”

“The hell. The carbon monoxide did it. Had to. And that’s damn well what I’m going to say.”

“Have you considered the consequences, sir?” Becky said. She had, and a statement like the one Underwood planned to make was a serious mistake, even a dangerous one.

“Like?”

“Well, if the men were conscious—and we all know they probably were—it means that we’ve got something very dangerous out there. Something the public ought to be made aware of, and the police ought to take steps to eliminate.”

“Yeah, but that’s no problem because I intend to order that damn dump cleared of wild dogs. I’ll send in the Tactical Patrol Force and clean it out. There won’t be another problem no matter how those dogs got to DiFalco and Houlihan. Even if the men were conscious it doesn’t make any difference because by this time tomorrow the dogs are going to be dead. I’m going to say that the officers were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning and were attacked by the dogs while they were unconscious or semiconscious.” He cleared his throat. “All right with you?”

“It’s your statement, Chief,” Wilson said.

“OK, don’t you do or say anything to contradict it, you understand. Just keep your problems to yourself. And as of right now you’re off the case.”

Becky was astonished. This had never happened to them before; people always put up with Wilson, endured him. Being pulled off this case was a blow to his prestige and to hers. She could have kicked him for his Goddamn bullheadedness.

“It won’t last, Underwood,” Wilson said quietly. “You can kick us around and you can make any damn statement you want, but in the end you’re going to be embarrassed. This thing isn’t going to go away.”

“The hell it isn’t. You wait and see.”

“Something damn strange happened out there.”

“Nothing the TPF can’t deal with.” His face was getting blotchy; this was almost too much for his temper. “Nothing we can’t deal with! Unlike you! You two can’t seem to put this case together! Dogs indeed —that’s ludicrous. It isn’t even a good excuse, much less a solution. Here I’ve got this whole town screaming at me for a solution and you give me bullshit!” Suddenly he glared at Becky. “And another thing, sweetheart. I’ve heard the rumors about your sweet husband. This DA ought to be doing a little investigating into the Neff family instead of trying to dig up some kind of organized crime links to supply motive for the killers of DiFalco and Houlihan. We’ve got a bent cop’s wife right here—or is it a family affair, dear?”

The Assistant DA remained tight-lipped, staring like a statue at the Oriental rug. At the Chief’s words the whole room seemed to sway; Becky felt her head tightening, the blood rushing, her heart thundering. What in the name of God was he implying! Was Dick in trouble? She knew that she herself was an honest cop. And Dick had to be too. Had to be. Like Wilson. He had to be as honest as Wilson.

“You think we’re incompetent,” Wilson said mildly, “why not convene a Board of Inquiry? Present your facts.”

“Shut up and get out. Your superior officers will handle this from now on.”

“Which means there’s going to be a Board?”

“Shut up and get out!”

They left, even Wilson perceiving that the meeting was terminated. “I’m going home,” Becky said to her boss as the elevator dropped toward the garage. “Want a lift?”

“Nah. I’m gonna go over to Chinatown, get some supper. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“See you.”

That was that for today. Another charming day in the life of a lady cop.

Traffic was heavy and she had missed the evening news by the time she got home. No matter, the Chief’s statement wouldn’t make it on the air until eleven o’clock.

When she arrived at their small upper East Side apartment, Becky was disappointed that Dick wasn’t there. Mechanically she ran the Phone-Mate. Dick’s voice said he’d be in about three A.M. Great. A lonely night just when you need it the most.

At eleven the Chief appeared with his terse statement—carbon monoxide, wild dogs, TPF roundup of dogs, case closed in one day.

The hell it is, she thought, the hell it is.

Chapter 3

« ^ »

Mike O’Donnell hated this part of his daily journey. The streets around here were sullen, dangerous and empty. Openings in the ruined buildings exhaled the stench of damp rot and urine. O’Donnell liked the bustling crowds a few blocks away, but on the money a blind man made you couldn’t take cabs through these areas, you had to walk. Over the years the deadly stillness had grown like a cancer, replacing the noisy, kindly clamor that Mike remembered from his childhood. Now it was almost all like this except the block where Mike lived with his daughter and the block near the subway station a twenty-minute walk away.

Those twenty minutes were always bad, always getting worse. Along this route he had encountered addicts, muggers, perverts—every kind of human garbage. And he had survived. He let them shake him down. What could he lose, a few dollars? Only once had he been struck, that by some teenagers, children really. He had appealed to their manhood, shamed them out of their plan to torture him in one of the empty buildings.

Mike was tough and resilient. Sixty sightless years in the Bronx left him no other choice. He and his beloved daughter were on welfare, home relief. She was a good girl with bad taste in husbands. God knows, the kind of men… smelling of cologne and hair grease, moving around like cats through the apartment, voices that sneered every word… actors, she said. And she was an actress, she said… he groped his way along with his cane trying to put trouble out of his mind, not wanting to bring his feelings home, start an argument.

Then he heard a little sound that made the hairs rise along the back of his neck. It didn’t quite seem human, yet what else could it be? Not an animal— too much like a voice, too little like a growl.

“Is somebody there?”

The sound came again, right in front of him and down low. He sensed a presence. Somebody was there, apparently crouching close to the ground. “Can I help you? Are you hurt?”

Something slid along the pavement. At once the strange sound was taken up from other points—behind him, in the abandoned buildings beside him, in the street. There was a sense of slow, circling movement.

Mike O’Donnell raised his cane, started to swing it back and forth in front of him. The reaction was immediate; Mike O’Donnell’s death came so suddenly that all he registered was astonishment.

They worked with practiced efficiency, pulling the body back into the abandoned building while blood was still pumping out of the throat. It was a heavy, old body, but they were determined and there were six of them. They worked against time, against the ever-present danger of being discovered at a vulnerable moment.

Mike O’Donnell hadn’t understood how completely this neighborhood had been abandoned in recent years, left by all except junkies and other derelicts, and the ones who were attracted to them for their weakness. And now Mike O’Donnell had joined the unnumbered corpses rotting in the abandoned basements and rubble of the empty neighborhood.

But in his case there was one small difference. He had a home and was missed. Mike’s daughter was frantic. She dialed the Lighthouse for the Blind again. No, they hadn’t seen Mike, he had never appeared for his assigned duties. Now it was six hours and she wasn’t going to waste any more time. Her next call was to the police.

Because missing persons usually turn up on their own or don’t turn up at all, and because there are so many of them, the Police Department doesn’t react instantly to another such report. At least, not unless it concerns a child or a young woman who had no reason to leave home, or, as in the case of Mike O’Donnell, somebody who wouldn’t voluntarily abandon the little security and comfort he had in the world. So Mike O’Donnell’s case was special and it got some attention. Not an overwhelming amount, but enough to cause a detective to be assigned to the case. A description of Mike O’Donnell was circulated, given a little more than routine attention. Somebody even questioned the daughter long enough to draw a map of Mike’s probable route from his apartment to the subway station. But the case went no farther than that; no body turned up, the police told the daughter to wait, not to give up hope. A week later they told her to give up hope, he wasn’t going to be found. Somewhere in the city his body probably lay moldering, effectively and completely hidden by whoever had killed him. Mike O’Donnell’s daughter learned in time to accept the idea of his death, to try to replace the awful uncertain void with the comfort of certainty. She did the best she could, but all she really came to understand was that her father had somehow been swallowed by the city.

During these weeks Neff and Wilson worked on other assignments. They heard nothing about the O’Donnell case; they were investigating another murder, locked in the endless, sordid routine of Homicide. Most crimes are no less commonplace than the people who commit them, and Wilson and Neff weren’t being assigned to the interesting or dramatic cases these days. It wasn’t that they were being muscled aside, but word was out that the Chief of Detectives wasn’t exactly in love with them. He knew that they didn’t like his handling of the DiFalco/Houlihan murders and he didn’t want to be reminded of it, primarily because he didn’t like it any more than they did. He was a more literal man than they were and much more concerned with his own potential appointment to the job of Police Commissioner than with following up bizarre theories about what genuinely looked to him like an even more bizarre accident. So the two detectives were kept away from big cases, effectively buried in the sheer size of the New York City Police Department.

The first words Becky Neff heard about Mike O’Donnell came from the Medical Examiner. “I thought you two had retired,” he said over the phone. “You got a heavy case?”

“The usual. Not a lot of action.” Beside her Wilson raised his eyebrows. The phone on her desk hadn’t been ringing too often; an extended conversation like this was of interest.

“I’ve got a problem up here I’d like you two to take a look at.”

“The Chief—‘”

“So take a coffee break. Just come up here. I think this might be what you’ve been waiting for.”

“What’s he got?” Wilson asked as soon as she put down the phone.

“He’s got a problem. He thinks it might interest us.”

“The Chief—”

“So he said take a coffee break and come up to see him. I think it’s a good idea.”

They pulled on their coats; outside it was a bright, blustery December afternoon and the cold wind coming around the buildings carried a fierce chill. The cold had been so intense for the past three days, in fact, that there weren’t even many cars on the street. The usual afternoon jams were gone, replaced by a smattering of taxis and buses with great plumes of condensing exhaust behind them. The M. E. had been circumspect on the phone, no doubt savoring what little bit of drama might be in this for him.

They didn’t speak as the car raced up Third Avenue. In the past few weeks Wilson had become more than usually taciturn; that was fine with Becky, she had problems enough of her own without listening to him complain about his. The last month with Dick had been stormy, full of pain and unexpected realizations. She knew now that Dick was taking money under the table. Strangely enough the money wasn’t from narcotics but from gambling. He had tracked a heroin network into an illicit gambling casino about a year ago. Dick’s father was in a nursing home, he was sick of the bills, he was sick of the treadmill; he collared the junkies but left the gambling establishment alone—for a few thousand dollars. “It’s gambling,” he had argued; “what the hell, it shouldn’t even be a crime.” But since it was, he might as well let it pay the six hundred a month his father was costing. God knows, they might even be able to put enough aside for a decent apartment one of these days.

It hurt her to see this happening to Dick. The truth was, she had sniped at him for it but she hadn’t tried to stop him and she hadn’t turned him in. Nor would she. But Dick was a corrupt cop, the one thing she had sworn she would never be, the one thing she had sworn she would never allow him to be. Well, he hadn’t asked permission.

She had always assumed that she would never give in to the temptations that were so common on the police force—and he had sworn it too. But he had and by not stopping him she had too. Now they bickered, each unwilling to confront the real reason for their anger. They should have had the courage to stop; instead they had let things happen. They had disappointed one another and were bitter about it.

Bitter enough to spend more and more time apart. Often it was days between shared evenings or monosyllabic breakfasts. They used to work their schedules to fit; now they worked them to be apart. Or at least as far as Becky was concerned she just stopped making an effort with her schedule. She drew what she drew, and overtime was just fine. Eventually there would be a confrontation, but not now, not today —today she was heading up to the M. E.’s office to be let in on a new case, maybe something really interesting for the first time in too damn long.

Evans was waiting for them in the reception area. “Don’t take off your coats,” he said, “we’re going to the freezer.” That meant the remains were in an advanced state of deterioration. The Medical Examiner’s office had a claustrophobic freezer compartment with room enough for three surgical tables and a few people squeezed in tight. Wilson’s eyes roved as they went down the disinfectant-scented hall toward the freezer; his claustrophobia had a field day in the thing. More than once he had commented to Becky that the freezer had figured in his nightmares.

“It’s rough stuff again,” the M. E. said conversationally. “I only call you folks in when I’ve got some real gore. Hope you don’t mind.” It could be that Evans lacked taste or it could just possibly be an attempt at banter. Becky didn’t bother to laugh; instead she asked a question.

“What are we going to see?”

“Three DOA’s, very decomposed.” He ushered them into the starkly lit freezer and pulled the door shut behind them. He didn’t need to say more; the bodies had clearly been attacked the same way DiFalco and Houlihan were attacked. There was something chilling about seeing the same type of scrape marks on the bones, the same evidence of gnawing. Becky was frightened, too deeply frightened to really understand her feelings. But she knew the moment she saw these corpses that the Chief of Detectives had made exactly the mistake they had feared he was making—this was not an ordinary murder case and it was not a fluke.

“Goddamn,” Wilson said.

The Medical Examiner smiled, but this time it was without mirth. “I don’t know how to explain these bodies. The condition makes no sense.”

“It makes sense,” Becky said, “as soon as you assume that they weren’t killed by human beings.”

“What then?”

“That’s what’s to be found out. But you’re wasting your time with us, Underwood took us off the case.”

“Well, he’ll put you back on.”

“There are a lot of detectives in this department,” Wilson put in. “I’m sure he’ll find others. And it’s likely he’ll want more. This is going to be a big embarrassment for him.” Wilson shook his head. “A hell of an embarrassment. Let’s get out of this icebox. We’ve seen all we need to see.”

Evans opened the door. “You’ll get back on,” he said, “I’ll make sure of that. So start to work. You need a solution.”

They didn’t bother to ask the M. E. how the bodies had come in; instead they called headquarters and got referred to the right precinct. As soon as he was off the phone to headquarters Wilson called the 41st Precinct in the South Bronx and asked to speak to the Captain. Sure they could come up, but there were already detectives on the case. “Might be a tie-in to another case, one of ours.” He put down the phone. “Let’s move.”

They battled their way across town to the FDR Drive. Despite the fact that the weather had reduced the amount of traffic in the city, getting across town was still difficult. “I read somewhere that it takes longer to cross town in a car today than it used to in a carriage.”

“And longer than that when I’m driving, right?”

“Yeah, if you say so.”

“Goddamn brass,” Becky growled.

“Hey, getting our dander up, my dear.”

“Damn right I am. Here we’ve got two cops buried and forgotten and we knew damn well something wasn’t right—damn these politicking bastards. It’s a black day when the NYPD won’t even mount a proper investigation when officers are killed. Seedman never would have done this.”

Wilson sighed, expressing in that single sound all the feelings he could or would not express about the Police Department he so loved to hate. The department had hurt him as well as helped him; in the past few years he had seen its emphasis shift away from solving crimes toward preventing them. Citizens demanded protection in the streets; the once-proud Detectives diminished and foot patrol became the thing. The old-timers were fewer and fewer; Wilson was one, sharp-eyed and careful. And the fact that his young partner was a woman was just another sign of the deterioration of the department. He stared out the window. Becky couldn’t see his face but she knew what the expression contained. She knew also that there was no sense in talking to him now; he was beyond communication.

They made their way through the devastated streets of the 41st Precinct, past the vacant brick-strewn lots, the empty buildings, the burned, abandoned ruins, the stripped cars, the dismal, blowing garbage in the streets. And Becky thought, “Somewhere, something is here. It is here.” She knew it. And by the way Wilson changed, the stiffening of his posture, the darkening of his face, the little turning-down of the edges of his mouth, she saw that he also had the same feeling.

“Every time I’m up here this place looks worse.”

“What street was it again, George?”

“East One Hundred and Forty-fourth Street. Old One Forty-four. Sure is a mess now.” Wilson was in the neighborhood of his childhood, looking at the ruins of where he had been a boy. “It was a pretty good place then, not the greatest, but it sure wasn’t like this. Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Becky tried to leave him alone with his thoughts. Considering that the little upstate town where she had grown up was still exactly as it had been, still and seemingly forever, she couldn’t imagine what seeing this place must do to Wilson.

“God, I can’t believe I’m fifty-four,” he said. “I’d swear I was sitting on that stoop last night.” He sighed. “We’re there,” he said, “the old Forty-first.” The precinct house was a dismal fortress, an unlikely bastion of reasonable decay in the surrounding ruins. A neighborhood of unabandoned houses clustered around it. The danger and destruction were beyond. In fact, with the strange fecundity of the Bronx, this immediate two blocks showed signs of mild prosperity. There was traffic in the streets, neatly swept sidewalks, curtains in windows, and a well-kept Catholic church on the corner. People were few because of the cold, but Becky could imagine what the area was like when the weather was good—filled with kids on the sidewalks and their parents on the stoops, full of liveliness and noise and the sheer exuberance that can infect city neighborhoods.

The Captain of the 41st Precinct looked up from his desk when Neff and Wilson were shown in. It was clear at once that he still didn’t know exactly why they were there. Normally detectives from another borough would have nothing to do with this case— and as far as the Captain was concerned it probably wasn’t much of a case. Just another couple of rotting junkie corpses and a poor old man. About the score for the South Bronx these days. Becky knew instinctively to let Wilson handle the Captain. He was the infighter, the resident expert on departmental politics. Look where his political skill had gotten him. The best detective in New York City at dead end. First Grade, true, but never a division, never a district of his own.

“We got a suggestion from Evans,” Wilson said by way of explaining their presence to the Captain.

“Evans pulled rank on the Bronx Medical Examiner and got those cadavers down to Manhattan. We don’t know why he did that.” There was acid in the man’s voice. He didn’t like a case being taken from him without a good reason. And it was obvious that so far nobody had given him one.

“He did that because the marks on them were similar to the marks on the DiFalco-Houlihan remains.”

The Precinct Captain stared. “That case still open?”

“It is now. We’ve got a new lead.”

“Jesus. No wonder you guys are all over us.” He stood up from his desk. “We got the scene in good shape,” he said. “You want to go over there?”

Wilson nodded. As they followed the Captain out of his office, Becky was exultant. The man had never thought to call downtown to check on Neff and Wilson. If he had he would have found out that they weren’t even on the case anymore. But why should he? It would never even occur to him.

The area where the bodies had been found was roped off and plastered with Crime Scene stickers. It was guarded by two patrolmen. “The bodies were found by a gypsy cab driver who stopped to fix a flat and smelled something. He came to us, we were lucky. Usually those guys don’t even bother.”

The bodies had been found in the basement of an abandoned apartment house. Becky took her flashlight out of her bag and went in under the decaying stoop. Lights had been set up in the dirty room, but the rest of the building was in boarded-up darkness. The flashlight played along the floor, in the unlit corners, up the stairs that led to the first floor. “Door locked?” Wilson asked as Becky shone her light on its blackened surface.

“Haven’t been up there,” the Captain said. “Remember, we thought this was routine until this morning when the Bronx M. E. told us that Evans had snatched his bodies.”

“Ha ha, that was funny,” Wilson said tonelessly. The Captain glowered. “Let’s go up, partner. We might as well make the search.”

They all heard it; a footstep on the stair. They looked to their leader. His hair rose and theirs did too. They functioned with one emotion, one will, one heart. What did the footsteps mean? Obviously, the ones in the basement had decided to come upstairs. And they were familiar. The sound of their tread, their rising smell, their voices were remembered from the dump. As the elders had feared, the killings of young humans had caused an investigation. And these two had been at that investigation. Now they were here, obviously following the pack.

Their scent became more powerful as they drew nearer: an old man and a young woman. No danger, they would be an easy kill.

The leader made a sound that sent the pack into motion.

They were hungry, the children were cold and hungry. Food was needed. Today a new hunt would have begun. Maybe it would be unnecessary, this kill would both remove danger and provide meat But the strong young woman would have to be separated from the weak old man. How to do that? Their scents revealed the fact that they were partners, and the way their voices sounded as they talked to one another said that they had worked together a long time. How do you separate such people even for a moment, especially when both recognize danger? The scents became sharp with the smell of fear as the two humans groped through the darkness. It made digestive juices flow and hearts beat faster with lust for the hunt. The leader warned, hold back, hold back. In this situation he sensed hidden dangers. Suddenly he hated the place. He loathed it, despised it. It was thick with humanity. There were strong, young ones outside and these two inside and another old one in the basement Before there had been many more in the basement. “Our young must not kill their young,” he thought fiercely. He found himself moving slowly toward the door of the room they inhabited, moving against his judgment, attracted by the need to kill the two who knew enough of the pack to follow it here. Now the others moved behind him, stealthy, efficient, padding quickly down the darkened hall, down the black stairway toward the wonderful scents, moving too close to humanity and yet only close enough to get what they needed. “Must find a way to split them up,” the leader thought. Then he stopped. His whole body seethed with desire to go on, to finish the attack, to feel the death of the prey in his mouth. But he thought carefully, his mind turning over the problem and coming to the solution.

Certain sounds attracted humans. This fact was often used in hunting. A little cry, like one of their children, would bring even the most fearful within range of attack. And the child’s cry was most easily heard by the women.

“Sh!”

“What?”

“Listen.” It came again, the unmistakable groan of a child. “You hear that?”

“No.”

Becky went to the stairwell. She heard it more clearly, coming from above. “Wilson, there’s a kid up there.” She shone her light into the dimness. “I’m telling you I hear a child.”

“So go investigate. I’m not going up there.”

The sound came again, full of imperative need.

She found herself standing on the first step, moving upward almost against her own will. Above her the decoy put his heart into the sounds, making them as plaintive and compelling as he could. He imagined himself a helpless little human child lying on the cold floor weeping, and the sound that came out of him was like such a child.

The others moved swiftly to the opposite stairwell and started down. They sensed the positions of the prey. The strong young woman starting up the stairs, the weak old man standing in the dark hallway behind her. “Come up, come up,” the decoy pleaded to her in his mind, and made the little sound. It had to be right, to be perfect, just enough to attract her, not enough to let her decide what she wanted to decide—that it was the wind, a creaking board, or something dangerous.

As she reached one landing the hunters reached its twin at the opposite end of the hall. As she rose toward the decoy they descended toward Wilson. As they got closer they became more careful. Hidden strength under the smells of fear and decay. They would have to hit this man with devastating force to get him, hit as hard as they had hit the two young ones at the dump. But their prize would be great; he was heavy and well-fed, unlike the ones they had found among these empty buildings. There was no starvation in him and no sickness to make him dangerous to consume. They loved him, lusted after him, moved closer to him. And they saw his dim shadow, his heavy slow body standing in the dark.

Then standing in a flickering blaze of light.

“What are you doing, George?”

“Lighting a Goddamn cigarette.”

Becky came down toward him flashing her light in his face. “You are lighting a cigarette. I’ll be damned. Where did you get a cigarette?”

“I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

“And now is a special occasion?”

He nodded, his face like stone. “I’ll be frank with you, Becky, I’ve got the creeps. I’m scared to death. I won’t get out of here without you but I think we ought to leave—now.”

“But there’s a child—”

“Now! Come on.” He grabbed her wrist, pulled her toward the basement door.

“There’s something upstairs,” he said to the Precinct Captain, who was standing in the middle of the basement as if he had been undecided about whether or not to follow the two detectives upstairs.

“I’m not surprised. The building is probably full of junkies.”

“It sounded like a child,” Becky said. “I’m sure that’s what it was.”

“That’s possible too,” the Captain said mildly. “I’ll order up a search party if you think I should. But don’t do it with just two people. It’ll take ten men with carbines, I think that ought to do it”

Becky acknowledged the wisdom of this plan. No doubt there had been a pack of junkies at the top of the stairs waiting to jump her. Or perhaps there was actually a child. If that was so the ten minutes it would take to assemble the search party would make little difference.

They went outside and got into the Captain’s car. As soon as they left, the two patrolmen who had been guarding the scene moved swiftly to their own car and got in to shield themselves from the cold. They turned on their radio so that they would again have advance warning of visits from the precinct and settled back in the warmth.

For this reason they did not hear the howl of rage and frustration that rose from the upper reaches of the tenement. Nor did they see the exodus that took place, a line of gray shadows jumping one by one across the six feet of space that separated this building from the next one.

It didn’t take long to assemble the search party. It was now four o’clock and the night men were coming on duty. Three patrol cars returned to the building. With the two men on duty there plus Wilson and Neff there would be exactly ten officers for the search. Of course as soon as the cars drew up to the front of the building you could assume that any junkies in it slipped out the back. But murder had been done here and the precinct so far hadn’t mounted a proper search. Pictures had been taken of the victims and a cursory dusting of the area for fingerprints, but that was all. In this part of the city a committed crime was just another statistic. Nobody bothered to find out the circumstances that led to the deaths of a few derelicts. And nobody doubted that the blind man had gotten mugged and then dragged off the street to die. And nobody was right about what happened.

During the search Wilson and Neff were silent. The rooms of the old tenement still bore the marks of the last residents—graffiti on the walls, shreds of curtains in the windows, yellowing wallpaper here and there. Even, in one room, the remains of a carpet. But there was no child, and there were no traces of recent human habitation.

Wilson and Neff made the reluctant patrolmen scoop up some of the fecal matter that was found. They put it in a plastic bag.

“Empty upstairs,” a voice called as a group of five came from searching up to the roof. “Nothing suspicious.”

What the hell did that mean? These men wouldn’t know evidence from cauliflower. “Take us through,” Wilson growled. “We’ve gotta see for ourselves.”

The patrolmen went with them, the whole crowd going floor to floor. Becky saw the empty rooms in better light, but her mind could not blot out those plaintive cries. Something was up here just a few minutes ago, something that had left without a trace.

They looked carefully in all the rooms but found nothing.

When they got back to the basement Wilson was shaking his head. “I don’t get it,” he said, “I know you heard something.”

“You do?”

“I heard it too, you think I’m deaf?”

Becky was surprised, she hadn’t realized that he also had heard the sound. “Why didn’t you go up with me then?”

“It wasn’t a child.”

She looked at him, at the cold fear in his face. “OK,” she said, swallowing her intended challenge, “it wasn’t a child. What was it?”

He shook his head and pulled out his cigarettes. “Let’s get the shit to the lab for analysis. That’s all we can do now.”

They left the house with the clomping horde of patrolmen. With their meager evidence tightly enclosed in plastic bags they headed back to Manhattan.

“You think this will reopen the DiFalco case?” Becky asked.

“Probably.”

“Good, then we won’t be moonlighting on it anymore.”

“As I recall we got taken off that case. Or do you recall something else?”

“Well, yeah, but in view of—”

“In view of nothing. We’re going to be the scapegoats now. Neff and Wilson get case. Carbon monoxide and wild dogs. Neff and Wilson close case. New evidence comes in. Case reopened. Neff and Wilson scapegoats for closing it in the first place.” His throat rumbled in a suppressed cough. “Goddamn Luckies,” he said. “Goddamn, you know I could be resigning soon.”

“You won’t resign.”

“No, not voluntarily. But it depends on how hard Underwood wants to stick me with blame for misunderstanding the case.”

“But it’s only one damn case.”

“It’s police officers killed in the line of duty. If it gets out that Underwood himself closed the case he’ll lose his shot at Commissioner. Therefore you and yours truly are going to be blamed. Might as well relax and enjoy the fun.” His shoulders shook with mirthless laughter.

“Maybe there’s something more conclusive. If there is it’ll help a little.” She paused. The silence grew. “Who do you think is doing it?” she asked.

“Not who—what. It’s not human.”

Now he had said the words, words they had previously been unwilling to face. Not human. Could not be human. “What makes you so sure?” Becky asked, half-knowing the answer.

Wilson looked at her in surprise. “Why, the noise, of course. It wasn’t human.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? It sounded perfectly human to me.” Or had it? Becky remembered it now like something that had taken place in a dream, a child’s voice or… something else. Every few seconds it was as if she woke up and heard it again— horrible, inhuman parody full of snarling menace… then child again, soft, wounded, dying.

“Look out!”

She slammed on the brakes. She had been about to glide broadside into the traffic of Third Avenue. “Sorry. Sorry, George, I—”

“Pull over. You’re not in good shape.”

She obeyed him. Despite the. fact that she felt fine, there was no denying what she had almost done. Like the little cries were still taking place, but in a dream. “I feel OK, I don’t know what came over me.”

“You acted hypnotized,” he said.

She heard the noises again, feral, snarling, monstrous. Sweat popped out all over her. She felt cold, her flesh crawling. Her mind turned back to the stair, to the terrible danger that had been waiting for her, the same as the torn, bloodied corpses, the jagged bones and skulls.

With her hands over her mouth she fought not to scream, to give up completely to the terror.

Wilson came across the seat as if he had been waiting for this. He took her in his arms; her body rattled against his thick shoulders; she pressed her face into the warm, scruffy smell of his ancient white shirt, distantly she felt him kissing her hair, her ear, her neck, and felt waves of comfort and surprise overcoming and pushing back the panic. She wanted to pull away from him but she also wanted to do what she did, which was lift her face. He kissed her hard and she accepted it, passively at first, then giving in to the relief of it, and kissed him back.

Then they separated, propelled apart by the fact that they were in a car recognizable to any policeman. Becky put her hands on the steering wheel. She felt sick and sad, as if something had just been lost.

“I’ve been wanting to get that out of my system,” Wilson said gruffly. “I’ve been—” Then his voice died away. He clutched the dashboard and laid his head on his arm. “Oh, hell, I love you, dammit.” She started to talk. “No, don’t say it. I know what you’ll say. But just let it be known and leave it like that. We go on like we were. Unrequited love won’t kill me.”

She looked at him, amazed that he could bring up something so… extraneous. She had always wondered if he loved her. She loved him in a way. But that wasn’t important, it had been accepted a long time ago. And their relationship was established. Certainly it shouldn’t intrude now. When he turned his face toward her he registered shock. She knew her mascara must be running with the tears, she knew her face must be twisted in fear. “What happened to me?” she asked. Her voice was not her own, so distorted was it by the rush of emotions. “What was going on back there?”

“Becky, I don’t know. But I think we’d better find out.”

She laughed. “Oh, that’s for sure! I just don’t know if I can handle it. We’ve really got some problems here.”

“Yeah. One of them is you. I don’t mean that harshly, but I’m going to have to break my cardinal rule at this time. Let’s change sides, I’m going to drive.”

She hid her amazement. In all the years they had worked together, this was an absolute first. “I must be falling apart,” she said as she sank into Wilson’s usual seat. “This is really a big deal.”

“It’s no big deal. You’re rattled. But you know you shouldn’t be. I mean, you weren’t the one in danger. It was me.”

“You! I was being lured upstairs.”

“To get you away from me.”

“Why do you even say that? You’re a man, a lot heavier than me, not an obvious target.”

“I heard noises on the stairs at the other end of the hall. Breathing noises, like something hungry slavering over its food.” The tone of his voice frightened her. She laughed nervously in self defense, the sound pealing out so suddenly that it startled Wilson visibly. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye but kept the car moving.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re the last person I’d think of as one of their victims.”

“Why?”

“Well, they eat them, don’t they? Isn’t that what it’s all about? Everybody they’ve hit has been eaten.”

“Old men, junkies, two cops in a hell of a lonely place. The weak and the isolated. I fitted two key criteria in that house—older man, isolated from all except you. And they damn near lured you away upstairs. You ever go hunting?”

“I don’t like it. I’ve never been.”

“When I was a kid I hunted with my father. We went after moose up north. We used to track for days sometimes. One summer we tracked for a week. And finally we got on to our moose, a big old bull that moved with a slanty track. A wounded bull. Weak, ready for the slaughter. I’ll never forget it. There we were just getting ready to take a shot when wolves stole out of the shadows all around us. They went right past us into the clearing where the moose was grazing. My dad cursed under his breath—those wolves were going to scare our trophy away. But they didn’t. That big bull moose looked down at those scrawny wolves and just snorted. They moved in closer and he stopped grazing and stared at them. You’d never believe it. The damn wolves wagged their tails! And the moose let out a great roar and they jumped him. They tore at him, bled him to death. We were fascinated, we were rooted to the spot. But it was like they agreed together that the killing be done. The wolves and the moose agreed. He couldn’t make it anymore, they needed meat. So he let them take him. And those timber wolves are scrawny. They’re like German shepherds. They look like they’d never be able to bring down a full-grown bull moose. And they wouldn’t, unless he agreed to let them try.” He was watching her again, barely keeping an eye on traffic. He was no better a driver today than she was.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m the bull moose in this version of the story. I wasn’t scared, but I knew they were coming down those stairs. If they had gotten any closer to me, I think I would have been a goner.”

“But you didn’t want them to kill you! We’re not like animals, we want to survive.”

“I don’t know what was going on in my mind,” he said. By the choked gruffness of his voice she knew that if he hadn’t been Wilson he would be sobbing. “All I know is, if they had come any closer I’m not so sure I could have even tried to stop them.”

Chapter 4

« ^ »

Becky Neff awoke suddenly out of a restless sleep. She felt that there had been a noise, yet now there was no sound except the wind, and a little snow whispering on the windowpane. The glow from the streetlights far below shone on the ceiling. In the distance a truck clattered its way down Second Avenue. The hands of the clock showed three forty-five. She had been asleep four hours. She remembered a hint of dream—a flash of blood, a sickly feeling of menace. Perhaps that had awakened her. Dick’s steady breathing in the bed beside her was a reassurance. If there had been an unusual noise he would be awake too. Gently she touched him, thinking as she did of how things had been between them such a short time ago, and of how change seeps into even the strongest love. She became sad and afraid. The apartment was cold, the morning heat not yet up. “Dick,” she said softly.

There was no response. She hadn’t really said it loud enough to wake him; she didn’t say it again. Then she leaned over to get her cigarettes from the night table and froze. There was a shadow on the ceiling. She watched it move slowly along, a low lump like something crawling on its belly across the bedroom terrace. Her mind raced to the sliding doors— locked? She had no idea.

Then the shadow was gone and she found she was still lying on her back, not reaching across the bed at all. In the manner of bad nightmares this one had continued even after she seemed to be awake. With the thought her heart stopped pounding. Of course it had been a dream. Nothing could climb sixteen stories to an apartment terrace. And nothing could have followed her. Yet she couldn’t quite overcome the feeling that something was out there. Something, after all, must have sparked the dream. Something must have waked her up.

The mutilated faces of DiFalco and Houlihan flickered in her mind’s eye. She thought of them staring up from the muddy ground. And she thought of Mike O’Donnell, the old blind man dying in his own darkness.

How did the killers look? She had assumed that they would look like wolves, but maybe not. Wolves, she knew, have never been implicated in a human killing. They are generally no more dangerous to man than are dogs. Wolves were interested in moose and deer. Man probably frightened them more than they did him.

A little sound from the terrace made her mind go blank, a shivering coldness pass through her body. It was a growl, very low and indistinct. They were here! Somehow they had done the impossible, had followed her here. They must have scented her at the house in the Bronx and followed the trail. They were hunting her, down! She felt frozen, as if she could neither speak nor move. This was fear, she knew, so intense that it left her mind floating in a strange, precise world of its own, looking from a distance at her body. Her hand moved across the bed and began shaking her husband’s shoulder. She heard her voice saying his name again and again with urgent, whispered intensity.

“What—”

“Don’t make a sound. Something’s outside.”

He slipped his service revolver out of his night-table drawer. Only then did it occur to her to do the same. Her own gun felt good in her hand. “On the terrace,” she said.

Very quietly he got up and went to the door. He moved fast then, pulling back the curtains and stepping outside. The terrace was empty. He turned toward her, his shadow shrugging. “Nothing’s here.”

“There was something.” The conviction grew in her when she said it. A few moments ago she had seen the shadow, heard the growl—and they were certainly real.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of an animal.”

“A cat?”

“I don’t think so.”

He came back to bed, crawling in beside her. “You’re really wound up in this case, aren’t you, honey?” The gentleness in his voice cut into her, making her feel more lonely than ever. Despite the urge she felt to embrace him, she stayed on her side of the bed.

“It’s a strange case, Dick.”

“Don’t get overinvolved, honey. It’s just another case.”

That statement caused anger to replace fear. “Don’t criticize me, Dick. If you were working on murders like these you’d feel exactly the same way— if you were honest with yourself.”

“I wouldn’t get worked up.”

“I’m not worked up!”

He laughed, a condescending chuckle. The great stone policeman with his tender bride. “You take it easy kid,” he said, pulling the quilt up over his head. “Take a Valium if you’re upset.”

The man was infuriating.

“I’m telling you, George, I know what the hell I saw!”

He stared across the room toward the bleary window. They had been given an office belonging to the Manhattan South Detective Division despite the fact that they were still not officially assigned to it. “It’s pretty hard to believe,” Wilson said. “Sixteen stories is a long way up.” His eyes were pleading when he looked at her—she had to be wrong or else they would be dealing with a force of completely unmanageable proportions.

“All I can say is, it happened. And even if you don’t believe me it wouldn’t hurt to take precautions.”

“Maybe and maybe not. We’ll know better what we’re up against when we talk to the guy we’re supposed to see.”

“What guy?”

“A guy that Tom Rilker gave some of those pawprint casts to. You remember Tom Rilker?”

“Sure, the kook with the dogs.”

“Well, he gave the prints we left behind in his office to another kook who wants us to go interview him. So maybe he’ll tell us what you saw.”

“Goddamn it, you have the sneakiest way of slipping things in. When do we see this genius?”

“Ten-thirty, up at the Museum of Natural History. He’s an animal stuffer or something.”

They drove up in silence. The fact that they were even trying this angle testified to their increasing desperation. But at least it meant doing something on the case instead of letting more time slip by. And time seemed to be terribly important.

“At least they aren’t throwing other assignments at us these days,” Becky said to break the silence. Since this case has been “closed” she and Wilson hadn’t exactly been getting more big jobs. Sooner or later they would be transferred somewhere definite instead of remaining in the limbo of reporting directly to the Chief of Detectives. Probably go back to Brooklyn for all the difference it made. At least out there they wouldn’t be victimized by high-level departmental politics.

“Underwood knows what we’re doing.”

“You think so?”

“Of course. Why do you think we’re not getting other cases? Underwood’s playing it by ear. If we turn up something he can use, OK. If we foul things up, we can always be reprimanded for insubordination.” He laughed. “He knows exactly what we’re doing.”

“Evans told him, I suppose.”

Wilson smiled. “Sure. He probably called up and told Underwood he’d better leave us alone if he knew what was good for him. Underwood might not like it since he closed the DiFalco case himself but he’s afraid of Evans, so the result is we end up in a vacuum. Damned if we do and et cetera.”

“Here’s the Goddamn museum.”

They went up the wide stone steps past the statue of Teddy Roosevelt and into the immense dim hall that formed the lobby.

“We’re here to see a Doctor Ferguson,” Wilson said to the woman sitting behind the information counter. She picked up a telephone and spoke into it for a moment, then smiled up at them.

The workrooms of the museum were a shock. There were stacks of bones, boxes of feathers, beaks, skulls, animals and birds in various states of reconstruction on tables and in cases. The chaos was total, a welter of glue and paint and equipment and bones. A tall young man in a dirty gray smock appeared from behind a box of stuffed owls. “I’m Carl Ferguson,” he said in a powerful, cheery voice. “We’re preparing the Birds of North America, but that’s obviously not why I called you.” For an instant Becky saw something chill cross his face, then it was replaced again by the smile. “Let’s go into my office, such as it is. I’ve got something to show you.”

It sat on the desk in the office on a piece of plastic. “Ever seen anything like it?”

“What the hell is it?”

“A composite I constructed from the pawprint casts Tom Rilker gave me. Whatever made those prints has paws very much like this one.”

“My God. It looks so—”

“Lethal. And that’s exactly what it is. An efficient weapon. One of the best I’ve ever seen in nature, as a matter of fact.” He picked it up. “These long, jointed toes can grasp, I think, quite well. And the claw retracts. Very beautifully and very strange.” He shook his head. “Only one thing wrong with it.”

“Which is?”

“It can’t exist. Too perfect a mutation. No defects at all. Plus it’s at least three steps ahead of its canine ancestors. Maybe if it was a single mutation it would be acceptable, but there are the prints of five or six different animals in here. There must be a pack of these things.” He turned the plaster model in his hand. “The odds against this are billions—trillions— to one.”

“But not impossible?”

He held the model out to Wilson, who stared but didn’t touch. “We have the evidence right here. And I want to know more about the creatures that made these prints. Rilker couldn’t give me a damn bit of information. That’s why I called you. I didn’t want to get involved, but frankly I’m curious.”

Wilson put on a sickly smile. “You’re curious,” he said. “That’s very nice. We’re all curious. But we can’t help you. You’ve just told us a lot more than we knew. You’re the one who can answer questions.”

The scientist looked puzzled and a little sad. He took his glasses off, then dropped into his chair and put the plaster model back on the desk. “I’m sorry to hear that. I had hoped you’d have more information for me. But I don’t think you realize how little I know. Where did the prints come from—can you tell me that?”

“The scene of a crime.”

“Oh come on, George, don’t be so close-mouthed. They came from the scene of the DiFalco-Houlihan murders out in Brooklyn.”

“The two policemen?”

“Right. They were found all around the bodies.”

“What’s being done about this?”

“Exactly nothing,” Wilson snapped. “At the moment the case is officially closed.”

“But what about these prints? I mean, here’s clear evidence that something out of the ordinary is at work. This is no dog or wolf paw, you realize that? Surely somebody must be doing something about it.”

Wilson shot Becky a glance and kept staring as if surprised. The feeling that she experienced confused and pleased her—not because of what the look communicated but because of the way his eyes lingered. “Nobody’s doing anything about it, Doctor,” she said. “That’s why we’re here. We are the only two police officers in New York on this case and we’re about to be reassigned.”

“You understand that this claw belongs to a fearsome killer.” He said it like it was a revelation.

“We know,” Becky replied patiently. In her mind’s eye she once again saw the faces of the dead.

Doctor Ferguson seemed to withdraw into himself. His hands hung down at his sides, his head bowed. Becky had seen this kind of reaction to stress before, usually in those who have been unexpectedly close to murderers. “How many have died?” he asked.

“Five so far that we know about,” Wilson replied.

“There’ve probably been more,” Ferguson said faintly, “maybe many more, if what I suspect is right.”

“Which is?”

He frowned. “I can’t say right now. I’m not sure about it. If I’m wrong it could harm my career. We could be dealing with some kind of murderers hoax. I don’t want to get taken in by a hoax.”

Wilson sighed. “You got any cigarettes?” he asked. Ferguson produced a pack. Wilson took one, tore off the filter and lit up. He did this all very quickly so that Becky wouldn’t have a chance to stop him. “You know, you shouldn’t clam up on us. If you don’t tell us what you think we aren’t going to be able to help you.”

The scientist stared at them. “Look, if I get tripped up by a hoax—if I go out on a limb about this thing and it turns out to be a fake—I would lose my reputation. I don’t know what would become of me. Or I guess I do. Teaching at some backwoods college and never quite reaching tenure.” He shook his head. “It’s not much of a career.”

“You’re not presenting a paper here. You’re talking confidentially to two New York City policemen. There’s a difference.”

“True enough. Maybe I’m exaggerating.”

“So tell us your theory. For God’s sake help us!” The words came out of Wilson like a bark, causing a sudden pause in the bustle of the workroom beyond the little office. “I’m sorry,” he said more softly, “I guess I’m a little upset. Me and my partner here, we’re the only ones who even suspect what we’re up against. And we’ve had some bad experiences.”

Becky broke in. “These things don’t just kill. They hunt. They nearly got us in a house up in the Bronx a few days ago. They hid on an upper floor. One of them tried to lure me with the cries of a baby while the others—”

“Stalked me. They tried to separate us.”

“And I think they might have been outside my apartment last night.”

The words had come in a rush out of both of them, driven by their rising sense of isolation. Now Ferguson was looking at them with unabashed horror, almost as if they themselves bore some loathsome mark.

“You must be mistaken. They can’t be as intelligent as all that.”

Becky blinked with surprise—she had never realized that. Not only were they deadly, they were smart! They had to be damn smart to lure her and Wilson into that stairway, and to seek out her apartment. They had to understand who the enemy was, and know the importance of destroying him before he revealed their presence to the world.

Wilson moved like a man in a dream, his hand gliding up to touch his cheek, the fingers running down the rough line of the throat, down to the seedy brown necktie and back to his lap. As the realization grew also in him his eyes hooded in a deep frown, his mouth opened almost sensually, as if he had fallen asleep and was dreaming of love. “I was beginning to suspect that they were intelligent, too. No matter what you say, Doctor Ferguson, what happened is what happened. You know something—I’ll bet they didn’t pop out of the ground yesterday either. If they’re that smart, they know how to stay well hidden—and they know how important that is, too. That’s my thought.”

“Well, that’s pretty much the theory I didn’t want to tell you, too. You’ve got to get me a cranium or a head, though. Then I can give you an idea of the intelligence. But don’t worry about it, I’m sure we’re much smarter.”

“Doctor, what would a chimp be like if it had the senses of a dog?”

“Lethal—oh God, I see what you mean. If their senses are highly developed enough they don’t need our intelligence to best us. I suppose that’s right. It’s very disturbing, the idea of canine senses and a primate brain.”

“And it’s more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jesus Christ, I thought she just told you she was hunted!” His vehemence surprised her. The layers of calm professionalism were stripped away, revealing a Wilson underneath that she had never seen before. Here was a man of intensity and great feeling, protective, angry, full of violence. The cynical surface was gone. What ran beneath was burning with pain.

“Please keep your voice down. I can’t have a disturbance in here. So I’ll agree that she was hunted. You do something about the problem, you’re the police.”

“Crap. We don’t know what the hell we’re confronting.”

“And I can’t help you unless I’ve got more information. I’m not going to go spouting out suppositions that could get quoted in the papers. Anyway it’s your problem to protect the community, so protect it. My interest is strictly scientific. So bring me a head. If I’m going to give you your answers, I’ve got to have a head.”

Wilson’s chin was pulled in, his shoulders were hunched. “Hell, you can count on us! Bring you a head—we can’t possibly bring you a head and you know it. Nobody’s ever caught one of these things. Even if they’ve evolved at absolute top speed, how long have they been around?”

“At the very least—and this seems next to impossible—give them ten thousand years.”

“Longer than recorded history and you want us to bring you a head! Let’s get out of here, Detective Neff, we’ve got work to do.” He got up and left.

“Just one more thing,” Becky said as she was leaving, “just one thing I’d like you to think about. If they are following us, they probably know we came to see you.” She went out behind Wilson, leaving the scientist staring at the door.

Wilson didn’t speak again until they had passed back through the nearly empty museum and were in the car. “That was bullshit you fed that schmuck,” he said. “He won’t believe us no matter how close to home you try to take it.”

“Maybe not. It sure would help us though, to get a Ph.D. behind us. Think of what would happen if that guy went to Underwood and said these two cops might have a point.”

“Don’t, Becky. It isn’t going to happen that way.” They rode on in silence for a few minutes. “Maybe we’re spooked,” Wilson said. “Maybe it was just our imagination last night.”

“Our?”

“I saw something too.” He said it as if he didn’t want to. “Something watched me from a fire escape when I was on my way to my rooming house. It was a damn strange-looking dog. I only got a glimpse and then it was gone. I’ve never seen a face like that on a dog—so intense. In fact I’ve never seen a face like that before except once, when I collared a maniac. He looked at me like that. It was because the bastard was about to pull a hidden shiv on me.”

“Why didn’t you say something about this earlier?”

“I was wishing it was my imagination. I guess we’re in trouble, Becky.” This last he said softly, almost in awe of the words. They both knew exactly what the stakes were. Becky felt sick. Wilson, sitting beside her as solid as a statue, had never seemed so frail. She found herself wanting to protect him. She could imagine the thing on the fire escape—she could picture the eager, intent eyes, sense the frustration at the crowds on the sidewalk, imagine the silent anger it felt as Wilson went unmolested on his way, protected by all the unsuspecting witnesses.

“George, I just can’t believe it. It’s so hard to make it seem real. And if it isn’t totally real, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to deal with it.”

“It’s happened before, Becky. There are even legends about it.” She waited eagerly for more but he seemed to see no need to continue. Typical of him to lapse into silence after making a leading statement like that.

“So go on. What are you driving at?”

“I was just thinking—you remember what you said to Rilker about werewolves? You might not have been too far wrong.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Not really. Say they’ve existed throughout recorded history. If they really are as smart as we think, people in the past would have believed that they were men turned into wolves.”

“Then what happened? Why did the legends die out?”

He braced his knee against the glove compartment and slumped in the seat. “Maybe the reason is that the population of the world grew. Back in the past their hunts were noticed because there were so few people. But as the population got bigger they started concentrating on the dregs, the isolated, the forgotten—people who wouldn’t be missed. Typical predators in that respect—they only take the weak.”

She glanced at him as she drove. “I think that’s a hell of an idea,” she said. “I don’t think it’s very good news for you and me, though.”

He laughed. “We’re not weak. That probably means they’ll be very careful. There also isn’t any knowledge about them at all, which must mean that they’re very thorough about covering their tracks.”

He means that they hunt down people like us, Becky thought as she guided the car through the traffic. It was like being in a bad dream, this feeling of being hunted. Her mind kept going back to the shadow on the ceiling, the shadow on the ceiling… the patient shadow waiting for that single, perfect instant when it could destroy the woman who knew its secret. The world was whirling around her, around her and Wilson, a world of lights and voices and warmth—except for the darting shape, the shadow leaping in pursuit.

“It’s a shame nobody believes us,” Wilson said. “I mean, it’s a shame the… things are wasting their time hunting us down, seeing as how we couldn’t reveal them even if we wanted to.” He rubbed his face. “Except maybe to Rilker and Evans. Even Ferguson if he’ll quit worrying about what they’ll say in Science News. But we just might be able to convince Rilker and Evans—hell, I don’t care what they decide is after us, I just want them to know we’re in danger and give us a hand!” He turned his head, looking at her with a haggard face. “You know, that Ferguson was a prize jerk. I think he was attracted to you.”

He’s jealous, she thought, and he doesn’t even know it. “I could tell he was a jerk from the first moment I saw him,” she said; “he looked like one.” There, Wilson will like that. True to her expectations he put his arm out along the seat.

“I like it when you wear that smell.”

“I’m not wearing any perfume.”

“Must be your deodorant then. It’s very nice.”

“Thank you.” The poor man, his best efforts were so terrible. She felt a twinge of sorrow for him; his loneliness was becoming more and more obvious to her. “You’re very sweet to say that,” she heard herself say, but the words sounded false.

Apparently they did to him, too, because he didn’t say anything more. When they reached Police Headquarters Becky pulled the car to a stop on a crowded nearby street rather than risk the big, empty garage beneath the building.

“We’ve got to try and get Underwood to assign a special detail,” she said when they were back in their office. Wilson nodded. He sat down at their desk and shuffled through the papers heaped on top of it: a day-old Times covered with coffeecup rings, a copy of the New York magazine crossword, half a dozen departmental memos.

“Nobody ever calls us,” he said.

“So let’s call Underwood ourselves. We’ve got to do something, we can’t just let ourselves rot.”

“Don’t say that! It does bad things to my gut. Why don’t you call Underwood? Hello, this is the Detective with a capital D. You know the one? Well, please assign me a special protective detail. You see, I’m being chased by these werewolves. That’ll get action.”

“An invitation from Psychiatric Services and a little confidential note in the old personnel file. I know. But we don’t want protection, we want to eliminate the menace!”

“You think we can, Becky?”

“We’ve got to try.”

“So we’ll call Evans and Rilker and try to get them on our side. And maybe even the scientist will put his two cents in if Rilker pushes him. Stranger things have happened. Maybe we’ll at least get a scratch squad together, enough men to uncover some positive evidence.”

Becky didn’t feel particularly confident but she got on the phone. Wilson didn’t even offer to lend a hand; they both knew that his services were, at best, counterproductive in the area of convincing people to give him help.

Evans listened to the story.

Rilker said he had suspected something like that.

Ferguson was willing to attend the meeting as long as absolutely everything was off the record. Becky considered offering him the loan of a false beard and dark glasses but let it go.

“Three hits,” Wilson said, “they can’t resist you.”

“Now, now, don’t get jealous. All that’s left is for you to get an appointment with Underwood.”

Despite his lack of skill with people, there was no way that Wilson could avoid being the one to call Underwood. He was senior man on the team, and their mere connection with the Chief of Detectives was a major disruption of the chain of command. Officially Neff and Wilson weren’t assigned at the moment to any particular division. The Chief was keeping them in cold storage until he was sure the DiFalco case held no further surprises. Obviously he wasn’t completely convinced that his quick closing of the case had been wise. With Neff and Wilson apparently still assigned to it he could keep them from uncovering embarrassing new evidence and also cover himself if that happened some other way, because he could always say that the department had kept a special team active on the case the whole time. He didn’t want the case reopened, but if it was he was prepared.

For him it was a very economical solution to a problem. For Neff and Wilson it was agony—they didn’t know where they stood and neither did anybody else. This meant that they could get nothing done. The resources of Manhattan South were not theirs to use—except for a dingy office. And the Brooklyn Division considered them off its roster. So they had only each other, and whatever help they could get outside the department.

It wasn’t going to be enough, that had become very clear.

Underwood was polite, when Wilson finally got through. He set a meeting for three o’clock and didn’t even ask what it was about And why should he—he knew that there could be only two topics of conversation. Either they wanted to reopen the DiFalco case or they wanted to be reassigned. And he had one simple answer for both questions. It was no.

“We’ve got a couple of hours, we might as well go up to Chinatown for lunch.”

Wilson glanced out the window. “Looks like plenty of people in the streets. I guess we can go.”

They took a cab. Despite the crowds it seemed the safest thing to do. Pell Street, the center of Chinatown, was cheerfully crowded. They left the cab, Becky feeling a little more at ease, Wilson nervously studying the fire escapes and alleyways. Becky chose a restaurant that was neither familiar from her courting days with Dick nor one of the dingy chop suey parlors Wilson would have selected. He liked to eat lunch for under two dollars. And when he was treating he would go even cheaper unless his victim was very alert.

Becky was very alert. During lunch they spoke little because he was pouting at the cost. Or at least that was what she assumed until he finally did speak. “I wonder what it’ll feel like.”

“What in the world makes you say something like that!”

“Nothing. Just thinking is all.” She saw that he was ashen. In his left hand he held his napkin pressed against the middle of his chest as if he was stopping a wound. “I can’t get that damn claw out of my mind.” Now his lips drew back across his teeth, sweat popped out on his cheeks and forehead. “I just keep thinking of it snagging my shirt, grabbing at me. God knows you couldn’t do a thing once something like that was in you.”

“Now wait a minute. Just listen to me. You’re getting scared. I don’t blame you, George, but you can’t afford it. You cannot afford to get scared! We can’t let that happen to us. They’ll move right in if it does. I’ve got a feeling the only thing that’s kept them from doing it before is the fact that we haven’t been scared.”

He smiled his familiar sickly smile.

“Don’t do that, I expect you to take me seriously. Listen to me—without you I haven’t got any hope at all.” Her own words surprised her. How deeply did she mean that? As deep as her very life came the instant answer. “We’ll get through this.”

“How?”

It was an innocent enough question, but under the circumstances it exposed a weakness she wished wasn’t there.

“However the hell we can. Now shut up and let me finish my lunch in peace.”

They ate mechanically. To Becky the food tasted like metal. She wanted desperately to turn around, to see whether the doorway behind her led to the kitchen or to the basement. For Wilson’s sake, though, she did not. There was no sense compounding his fear with her own.

“Maybe that claw is what we need. When the Chief sees it maybe he’ll figure things more our way.”

“I didn’t even remember to ask Ferguson to bring the damn thing.”

“But he will. He’s very proud of that claw.”

“I don’t blame him. He can carry it instead of a shiv.”

Wilson chuckled and sipped the last of his tea, his fears seemingly forgotten. But the napkin was still clasped convulsively against his chest.

As soon as they got back to headquarters they went to Underwood’s office. It was actually a suite of offices, and in the outer office was the kind of policewoman Becky most disliked, the typist in uniform. “You’re Becky Neff,” the woman said as soon as the two of them came in; “the Chief of Detectives said you’d be coming up. I’m so pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you too, Lieutenant,” Becky muttered. “This is my partner, Detective Wilson.” Wilson stood uncertainly staring past them. There was nothing on the wall he was staring at except a hunting scene. “Wilson—you’re being introduced.”

“Oh! Yeah, hiya. You got any cigarettes?”

“I don’t smoke, the Chief doesn’t like it.”

“Yeah. What’s he doing? We’re supposed to see him at three.”

“It’s only two forty-five. He’s still in his other meeting.”

“Still at lunch, you mean. Why don’t you let me sleep on that couch he’s got in his office. I gotta sleep off about three pounds of chicken chow mein.”

The lieutenant glanced at Becky, but continued without a pause: “No, he’s really in there. He’s got some people from the Museum of Natural History and Doctor Evans—”

They went in.

“Sorry we’re late,” Wilson growled. “We got slowed down by your house genius.”

“Well, you’re not late. Still fifteen minutes to go. But since these men were all here, I thought we’d get started. Everybody knows everybody?”

“We know them,” Wilson said. “Anybody in here smoke?”

“I don’t have any ashtrays,” Underwood said firmly. Wilson pulled up a chair, crossed his legs, and sighed.

There was a silence. The silence got longer. Becky looked from face to face. Rigid, expressionless, Evans a little embarrassed. She felt herself slump into the chair. This silence could only mean that they didn’t believe. These men thought of the two detectives as being a little off their rockers. Two famous detectives driven a little crazy. Worse things have happened, more unlikely things.

“Apparently you gentlemen don’t know what it is to be hunted,” Wilson said. Becky was amazed— when he was up against the wall he revealed hidden resources. “And since you don’t know, you can’t imagine the state me and Neff are in. We are being hunted, you know. Sure. By things that have claws like this.” With a swift motion he picked it up. “Can you imagine how it would feel to get one of these in the chest? Rip your heart right out. Hell, you might look at the sunset out there and think it’s beautiful. And it was for us too, until last night. Now we don’t look at a sunset that way anymore. We look at it the way deer and moose do—with fear. How do you think that feels, eh? Any of you know?”

“Detective Wilson, you’re overwrought—”

“Shut up, Underwood. I’m maybe making my last speech and I want to be heard.” He waved the claw as he spoke, and measured his words with uncharacteristic care. “We are being hunted down by whatever has these claws. They exist, don’t forget that! They have for thousands of years. We have seen them, gentlemen, and they are very ugly. They are also very fast, and very smart. People used to call them werewolves. Now they don’t call them anything because they’ve gotten so damn good at covering their tracks that there are no legends left. But they’re here. They damn well are here.”

The two who had to be killed were hard to find. They had been scented clearly as they walked through the house where the pack had been feeding. Their car had been seen as it left, and seen again a few days later, this time far down Manhattan toward the sea. Patience had been needed. The man was watched as he went through the streets, and his house was finally discovered. The woman also was followed, and her scent traced into a building with many stories. It was watched until they knew that the bedroom behind one of the balconies must certainly hold her.

They were not rightful prey, but they had to be taken. If their knowledge of this pack spread, all the race would suffer. First, the many packs in this city would be hurt, then others nearby, and finally all everywhere. Better that man not know of the packs. If the numberless hordes of men knew of the many packs that thrived on them, they would surely resist. Essential that man not know.

Whenever man came close this was done. It had always been thus, and that was the first law of caution. For many years they had roamed free in the world and they had prospered. There was so much humanity that packs were growing through the world, in every one of the human cities. When they were occasionally glimpsed by man the pack passed as a group of stray dogs. Normally they hunted at night. By day they slept in lairs so carefully concealed—in basements, abandoned buildings, wherever they could find a spot—that man never realized they were there. Dogs also posed no problem. To them the scent of the packs was a familiar part of city life and they ignored it

Now these two humans had to die else they go among all the human cities and warn them of the presence of death in their midst.

So they had followed the scent of the two humans, they had followed this scent through the streets, tracked it until it entered a great gray building in lower Manhattan. When it came out again and separated they split up, following both parts.

The man’s lair was easy to find. It was close to the ground, in a house with weak outer doors and an easily accessible basement. But the man’s own room was locked and barred, with gates on the windows. The whole place stank of fear. This man lived in a fortress. Even the chimney leading to his fireplace had been blocked up long ago. It was pitiful to see one so sick and full of fear, sitting his nights away in a chair with all the lights in his room on. Such a one needed death, and the pack longed to take him not only because he was potentially dangerous but because he was in the condition of prey. He needed death, this one, and they all hoped to give it to him.

And they had found a way to move against him.

The woman lived far up in her building. Not all of the pack were adept climbers, but some were and one of them climbed. He moved from balcony to balcony, grasping with his forepaws, hauling himself up, doing it again and again. Below him the rest of the pack stood in the black alley longing with their hearts to howl their joy at his heroism, at his true love for all of his kind. But they kept their voices still. It was unnecessary anyway—even as he climbed he would scent the respect and gladness of those far below him.

And he climbed toward the smell of the human woman. She was here, closer and closer. He climbed, he longed to reach her, to feel her blood pouring down his throat, to taste the meat of her, to feel as her body died and the threat to the race ended. The pack was glad he could climb, and he was glad to climb for them!

When he got to her balcony he moved as softly as he could. But not softly enough. One of his toenails clicked against the glass door as he tested the lock. To him the sound was bell-clear. Had the humans inside heard it? Had she heard it?

Her scent changed from the thickness of sleep to the sharpness of fear. The accursed creature had heard him! Slowly he inched across the balcony. She knew he was out here. Now the sound of her breath changed. She was growing so terribly afraid that he longed to help her into death even though she was not weak enough to be prey. But this was so dangerous. If they opened that curtain, he would be seen. You cannot be seen by those who will live! To avoid that he was prepared to throw himself off the balcony. Or was he? Die, for that? His own heart began to pound. She made a little cry—she had seen his shadow on the ceiling. His instincts screamed at him —growl, lunge, kill—but all that came out was a tiny noise.

A noise which she heard.

Now it was too late! They were getting up. He glanced at the light fixture in the ceiling of the balcony. The turning of a switch inside would reveal him! Desperately he climbed up to the next floor, and not a moment too soon. He heard the sliding door scrape, a footfall on her balcony. Her male companion looked about, moving through the dense body-heat and smell of himself and, in the marvelous blindness of humans, not even noticing. These poor creatures were blind in all except the visual sense. Nose-blind, ear-blind, touch-blind. They were the best prey in the world.

When the man went back inside and all once again fell into darkness he returned to the alley. His heart was full of sorrow. When he faced the pack—he had failed, she still lived.

But they found a way to move against her also, and now they were ready.

Chapter 5

« ^ »

Carl Ferguson had gone back to his office. His lamp provided the last glimmer of light in the empty workrooms of the museum basement. Beyond his open door the evening shadows spread slowly across the workbenches, turning the half-finished specimens into indistinct, angular shapes.

Under his light Ferguson held the model he had constructed of the paw.

The paw. He turned it in his hands, looking at its supple efficiency for the hundredth time. He placed it on the desk, then picked it up again and ran its claws along his cheek. It would do its job well, this paw. The long toes with their extra joints. The broad, sensitive pads. The needle-sharp claws. Almost… what a human being might have if people had claws. It had the same functional beauty as a hand, a lethal one.

Suddenly he frowned. Wasn’t that a noise? He jumped up and started toward his door—then saw that some moving air was ruffling a box of feathers.

“I’m getting crazy,” he said aloud. His voice had a flat echo in the empty space beyond his office.

Ferguson glanced at his watch. Seven P.M. It was dark, the winter sun had set. He was tired, exhausted from the harrowing meeting downtown and from his own hectic schedule. The new exhibit was going to be a great achievement, one that would be sure to get him tenure at the museum. A beautiful concept— the birds of North America. Not just static cases but a whole room of meticulous reconstructions, soaring, wonderful creatures… he looked at some of them, their great wings spread in the darkness, barely visible, in the process of being feathered quill by careful quill.

But where did this—thing—belong among the creatures of North America? What the hell was it, dammit!

The detectives had babbled about werewolves… superstitious fools. But they certainly had uncovered a problem. Surely the city police could capture one of the things, bring it in, let him evaluate it more thoroughly. Judging from this paw it was on the large side, maybe bigger than a wolf. Possibly a hundred and eighty pounds. Even alone such a creature could be extremely dangerous, highly so in a pack. Unlikely it was a mutant wolf, they were too radically adapted to their traditional prey. Coyotes—too much of a size variance. Whatever had a paw like this had split off from the canine mainstream a long time ago, and had reached a very, very high level of evolution.

Which brought up the question of why there were no bones, no specimens, nothing.

It was uncanny and chilling to think that a whole subspecies of canine carnivore existed without even a hint of it in science.

He jumped again—this time he heard a scraping sound. Now he took it seriously. “Luis,” he said, hoping it was the night man coming down to check on the light, “it’s me, Carl Ferguson.” The scraping continued, insistent, patient… something trying to worry one of the basement windows open.

He looked at the paw. Yes, it could do that.

He turned out his lamp, closed his eyes to hasten their getting used to the dark. He stood up from his desk swaying, his skin crawling.

The scraping stopped, was followed by a slight creak. A puff of icy air made the box of feathers in the hallway rustle again. There was a sliding sound and a thump as something came in the window, then another.

Then there was silence. Carl Ferguson stood with his plaster paw in his hand, his throat and mouth agonizingly dry.

“Somebody’s over there.”

A light flashed in the scientist’s eyes.

“Hello, Doctor,” said a gruff voice. “Sorry we startled you.”

“What the hell—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, don’t go off half-cocked. We’re cops, this is an investigation.”

“What in hell do you mean coming in here like this? You—you scared me! I thought—”

“It was them?” Wilson flipped a bank of switches flooding the basement with a stark neon glow. “I don’t blame you for being afraid, Doctor. This place is spooky.”

Becky Neff pulled the window closed. “The truth is, Doctor, we were looking for you. We figured we’d find you here, that’s why we came.”

“Why didn’t you come in the damn front door? My heart’s still pounding, for God’s sake! I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared.”

“Think how we feel, Doctor. We feel that way all the time. At least I do. I don’t know about Detective Wilson.”

Wilson pulled his chin into his chest and said nothing.

“Well, you could have come in the right way. I don’t think that’s asking too much.” He was angry and aggrieved. They had no right to do this to him! Typical cops, completely indifferent to the law. They didn’t even have a right to be here! “I think you should leave.”

“No, Doctor. We came here to talk to you.” She said it sweetly, but the way she and Wilson advanced toward him made him take an involuntary step back. When he did Wilson sighed, long, ragged and sad— and Ferguson saw for an instant how tired the man was, how tired and afraid.

“Come into my office, then. But I fail to see what you’re expecting to get out of me.”

They pulled up chairs in the tiny office. Ferguson noticed that Wilson lingered at the door, Neff sat so that she was looking out. Together they had most of the workroom in view. “Those are easy windows,” Wilson murmured, “very easy windows.”

“The museum has guards.”

“Yeah, we figured that out.”

“All right, what is it you want—but don’t think I’m going to let this matter drop. I want you to know I’m calling the Police Complaint Department in the morning.”

“The Police Department doesn’t have a complaint department.”

“Well, I’m calling somebody. Cops don’t run around breaking and entering without citizen complaint. You people get away with enough as it is.”

Wilson remained silent. Becky took over. “We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t desperate,” she said softly. “And we realize that you’ve told us all the facts you know, that’s not what we want. We want your theories, Doctor, your speculations.”

“Anything might help us stay alive, Doctor,” Wilson added. “We are going to have a hard time doing that as things stand now.”

“Why?”

Becky closed her eyes, ignored the question. “Imagine, Doctor,” she said, “what these creatures might want, what they might need—if they are as we say they are.”

“You mean intelligent, predatory, all that.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s barely a hypothesis.”

“Try it.”

“Detective Neff, I cannot try it. It’s worse than a hypothesis, it’s rank speculation.”

“Please, Doctor.”

“But what if I’m wrong—what if I confuse you more than you’ve already confused yourselves? Can’t you see the risk that’s involved? I can’t work on unfounded imagination, I’m a scientist! The truth is I want to help you. I really do! But I can’t. I know that this damn paw is something special but I don’t know how to apply that knowledge! Can’t you understand?”

Becky watched him, her eyes filled with the desperation that she felt. Wilson covered their backs, listening to every word but watching the long row of black windows at the far end of the workroom. From the sound of Ferguson’s voice, she knew that he was telling the truth. No longer was he holding back to protect his reputation. Now, in the dead of night when the three of them were alone and the customary bustle of his little kingdom around him was missing, he had forgotten worries of reputation and was forced to face the real truth—that the two cops needed help that he could not give.

Or could he? Often the trouble with scientists is that they do not realize how little others really know. “Anything you can say might be of help to us, Doctor,” Becky said with what she hoped was gentle calmness. “Why not tell us about something you do understand.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like the sense of smell. How effective is it and what can we do to cover our trails?”

“It varies greatly. A bloodhound might be seven or eight times more effective than a terrier—”

“Assume the bloodhound,” Wilson said from the doorway. “Assume the best, the most sensitive.”

“It’s a very extraordinary organ, a bloodhound’s nose. What it is, basically, is a concentration of nerve endings that fill the whole muzzle, not just the tip, although the tip is the most sensitive. For a bloodhound, you’ve got about a hundred million separate cells in the olfactory mucosa. For a terrier, twenty-five million.” He looked to Becky as if to ask if this sort of thing was any help.

“If we understood their capabilities we might be able to throw them off our tracks,” Becky said. She wished that the man would explain how the hell the sense of smell worked—if she understood it she would think of something, or Wilson would.

Wilson. His instinct had told them that they would find Ferguson sitting in here worrying about his plaster paw. Wilson had very good instincts. Now added to them was the overriding feeling of desperation, the certain knowledge that something was following them now. From the way he was beginning to twist the edge of the blotter on his desk Ferguson was having the same thought. If so, he didn’t acknowledge it directly. “You want me to tell you how to throw the… animals off your tracks?”

Becky nodded. “Give me a cigarette,” Wilson growled. “I don’t think I’m gonna like what the doctor’s gonna say.”

“Well, I’m afraid you won’t. A lot of people have tried to figure out how to shake a tracking hound. Not much will do it except rain and a lot of wind.”

“How about snow? It’s snowing now.”

“A bloodhound in Switzerland once followed a track that had been under snow for forty-seven days. Heavy snow. A massive blizzard, in fact. Snow isn’t going to stop a bloodhound.”

“Doctor,” Becky said, “maybe we ought to approach this from another angle. Why can’t anything stop a hound from tracking?”

“Aside from rain and wind? Well, it’s because of their sensitivity and the long-lasting nature of odors.”

“How sensitive are they?”

“Let me see if I can quantify it for you. The nose of a bloodhound is perhaps one hundred million times more sensitive than that of a man.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“I’m not surprised, Lieutenant Wilson. It’s a very difficult number to grasp. Look at it this way.” He went outside and returned with a tiny pinch of oily-looking powder between his fingers. “This is about one milligram of brown paint pigment. Now visualize a hundred million cubic centimeters of air—about as much air as covers Manhattan. A good bloodhound could detect this amount of pigment in that amount of air.”

Becky felt as if she had been hit. They were that sensitive! She had never realized just what an animal’s sense of smell meant before now. She fought to stay calm, her eyes darting toward the windows that revealed only the reflection of the workroom itself. Wilson got his cigarette lit and drew on it, exhaling with a long sigh. “What if you neutralized the odor, if you covered it with ammonia, say?”

“Makes absolutely no difference. The dog won’t like it but it will still be able to distinguish the odor. People have tried everything to break track, but very little works. One thing—floating down a river, completely submerged, with the wind going in the same direction as the water. If you can make it half a mile without putting your head out of water you might break track. I say might because a single breath coming up through the water could be enough for a dog if the wind wasn’t too strong.”

“Breath?”

“We don’t know the exact mechanism of a dog’s scent, but we believe that they track by body oils and exhaled breath. They may also go by the odor of clothing.”

“There’s nothing you can do to yourself to nullify your odor?”

“Sure. Take a bath. You’ll be safe for a while as long as you don’t put on your clothes.”

Wilson raised his eyebrows. “How long?”

“A good three or four minutes. Until your skin oils start replacing themselves.”

“Wonderful! That’s very helpful.” There was a ragged edge in Wilson’s voice that Becky didn’t like.

“There must be something, something you haven’t mentioned that would help us. If we can’t get rid of our odor, what about neutralizing their sense of smell?”

“Good question. You can cause osmoanaesthesia with something like cocaine, although I’ve never heard of a dog that would inhale it willingly. Also, you could use a phenamine. You’d get a temporary paralysis of the olfactory sense with that, too, and administration would be a little easier. That stuff you could disguise in meat. It doesn’t have to be inhaled, just eaten.”

“Here doggie, have a little snacker!”

“Shut up, George. We might learn something if you’d just keep your trap shut!”

“Oh, Little Miss Muffet becomes Dragon Lady. So solly, missy!” He bowed, his hands folded across his belly, his eyes in a mocking squint. Then he froze. His hand dropped to the Colt he was carrying under his jacket

“What?” Becky was on her feet, her own pistol in her hand.

“Good heavens, put those things—”

“Shut up, Sonny! I saw something at that window, Becky.” The mocking tone was gone, the voice was grave and a little sad. “Something pressing against it, gray fur. Like something had banged against the glass and gone off into the night.”

“We would have heard it.”

“Maybe. How thick is the glass in those windows?”

“I have no idea. It’s just glass.”

Becky remembered back to their entry. “It’s thick,” she said, “about a quarter inch.”

Wilson suddenly holstered his gun. “Saw it again. It’s a bush blowing against the glass. Sorry for the false alarm.”

“Keep your shirt on, Detective,” Becky said “I can’t handle many more of those.”

“Sorry. Lucky I was wrong.”

Left unsaid was the fact that they had now been here a long time, longer than must be safe. The plan was to keep to the car, keep moving. That way at least they’d be harder to follow. In fact now that she thought of it, Becky didn’t know how they could be tracked at all if they were in a car. She asked the question.

“The tires. Each set of tires has a distinctive odor. Tracking dogs can follow bicycles, cars, even carriages with iron wheels. In fact it’s easier in some cases than following people on foot There’s more odor laid down.”

“But in the city—hundreds of thousands of cars I—It seems almost impossible.”

Ferguson shook his head. “It’s difficult but not out of the question. And if you two are right about being followed all the way from the Bronx our specimens are quite capable of doing it.”

“So let’s sum up. We can’t get rid of our odors. We can’t neutralize their noses without getting a hell of a lot closer than we want to be. Is there any other bad news?”

“Is he always this acerbic, Miss Neff?”

“It’s Mrs. And the answer is ‘yes.’ ”

Ferguson held his eyes on her a moment, as if to ask something more. She stared right back at him. In an instant he looked away, faintly confused by the challenge. Becky did not like men to strip her with their eyes, and when they did she stripped right back. Some it turned on, some it frightened, some it angered. She really didn’t care how they reacted, although from the way Ferguson both crossed his legs and brushed his hand along his cheek it looked as if he had been turned on and frightened at the same time. He was scared of a lot of things, this scientist. His face was powerful, only the eyes giving away the inner man. Yet there was also something else about him—a sort of buried competence that Becky felt was a positive factor in his makeup. He must be very professional and very smart. Too bad, it probably meant he was giving them the best information they were going to get

“I wonder what it’s like,” Wilson said, “to have a sense of smell like that.”

Ferguson brightened. “I’ve been extremely interested in that, Lieutenant. I think I can give you something of an idea. Canine intelligence is of intense interest to me. We’ve studied dogs here at the museum.”

“And cats.”

Becky winced. The Museum of Natural History had been embroiled in a violent controversy about some experiments using live cats, which Wilson naturally brought up.

“That’s irrelevant,” Ferguson said quickly, “another department. I’m in exhibits. My work on dogs ended in 1974 when the Federal money ran out. But up to then we were making great strides. I worked very closely with Tom Rilker.” He raised his eyebrows. “Rilker’s a hell of a dog man. We were trying to breed increased sensitivity to certain odors. Drugs, weapons—bred right in, no training needed.”

“Did you succeed?”

He smiled. “A secret. Classified information, compliments of Uncle Sam. Sadly enough, I cannot even publish a paper on it.”

“You were telling us about canine intelligence.”

“Right. Well, I think dogs know a lot more about the human world than we do about theirs. The reason is that their sensory input is so different. Smell, sound—those are their primary senses. Sight is a distant third. For example, if you put on a friend’s clothes your dog won’t recognize you until you speak. Then he’ll be confused. The same way if you take a bath and walk out naked without talking your dog won’t know who, or necessarily what, you are. He’ll see a shape moving, smell the water. He might attack. Then when he hears your voice he’ll be very relieved. Dogs can’t stand the unknown, the unfamiliar. They have a tremendous amount of information pouring in through their noses and ears. Under certain circumstances it’s more than they can handle. For example, a bloodhound will get completely exhausted on a track long before he would if he was just running free. It’s psychic exhaustion. Generally the more intelligent the dog, the more all this data coming through the nose means. To a wolf, for example, it all means much more than to a dog.”

“A wolf?”

“Sure. They’re much more intelligent and more sensitive than dogs. A good bloodhound might have a nose a hundred million times more sensitive than a human nose. A wolf would be two hundred million times more sensitive. And wolves are correspondingly more intelligent, to handle the data. But even so there’s a tremendous richness of data, more than their minds can possibly assimilate.”

Wilson moved from his spot by the door and picked up the plaster paw model. “Is this closer to a wolf or a dog?”

“A wolf, I’d say. Actually it does look more like the paw of a giant wolf—except for those extended toes. The toes are really wonderful. A marvelous evolution. They are beyond canine, as I understand the genus. That’s why I keep asking you for a head. I just can’t do more with this thing unless I get more of the body. It’s too new, too extraordinary. Right now whatever made those pawprints is outside of science. That’s why I’m asking for more.”

“We can’t give you more, Doctor,” Becky said, it seemed for the hundredth time. “You know the trouble we’re in. We’d be lucky even to get a picture.”

“We wouldn’t, and live,” Wilson put in. “These things are too vicious for that.”

He signaled Becky with his eyes. He wanted to get moving. Since night had fallen Wilson had kept on the move. Officially they were on an eight-to-four, but neither of them was recognizing duty hours right now. They had been cut loose from their division, their squad, their block and put on this thing alone. Nobody was marking their names on a blotter. Nobody was counting their presence or giving them calls.

They were on the case because the Chief felt there was a remote chance that something unusual was indeed happening. Not enough to really do anything about, just enough to keep the wheels turning very, very slowly. Which meant a single team, alone, digging as best they could. And being available as scapegoats—if needed.

“We ought to go,” Becky said to Ferguson. “Wë figure our best bet is to keep on the move.”

“You’re probably right.”

Wilson stared at him. “Sorry about the way we came in. No other way to reach you, the museum was closed.”

Ferguson smiled. “What if I hadn’t been here?”

“No chance. You’re really running after this. It’s got under your skin. I knew you’d be here.”

Ferguson walked with them through the dim corridors, to a side door where a single guard nodded under a small light. “I’m leaving with you,” he said. “I haven’t had a bite to eat since lunch and I don’t think I can accomplish anything just sitting and staring at that paw.”

Their feet crunched in the snow as they crossed the quiet grounds of the museum. Becky could see their car on Seventy-seventh Street where they had left it, now covered with a dusting of snow. They had perhaps twenty yards to walk up a disused driveway before they reached the safety of the car. Nothing seemed to be moving among the shadows of the trees that surrounded the museum, and there were no tracks visible in the new snow. The wind was blowing softly, adding the crackle of bare limbs to the hiss of the falling snow. The clouds hung low, reflecting the light of the city and covering everything with a green glow stronger than moonlight. Even so, the trip to the car seemed long. By the position of his hand Becky knew Wilson felt the same way: he was touching the butt of the pistol he kept holstered under his jacket.

As they reached the car Ferguson turned, saying he was going to take the Number 10 bus up Central Park West to his apartment. They let him go.

“I wonder if we should have done that,” Becky said as she started the car.

“What?”

“Let him go off on his own. We have no way of knowing how much danger he’s in. If they were watching us, they saw us with him. What would that mean to them? Kill him too, maybe? I think he’s in more danger than he knows.”

“Get moving. Put on the damn radio. Let’s listen to the traffic.”

“You handle the radio, man, you’re not doing anything else.”

He flipped it on and settled with his knee against the dash. “It’s too cold for junkies on the streets, it’ll be a quiet night.”

They listened to a rookie call and immediately cancel a signal 13 at Seventy-second and Amsterdam. But you can’t cancel an assist officer call just like that. Guys would move in on him anyway and then rib him about it later. “What made him jump, you suppose?” Wilson asked. He didn’t really expect an answer and Becky didn’t talk. Who the hell cared about some rookie and his erroneous 13. Becky headed the car east across Central Park on the Seventy-ninth Street transverse. She was heading toward a Chinese restaurant in her home neighborhood the other side of the park. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but they had to eat. And what they would do after that, how they would pass the night she had no idea. And what about the days and nights to come, what about the future?

“What the hell are they going to do about us?”

“Do, Becky? Not a damn thing. They’re just gonna leave us hanging on this here string. Hey, where’re you going—you live over here, don’t you?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not taking you to my place. We’re going to stop for a little supper. We need to eat, remember.”

“Yeah. Anyway, the brass isn’t going to do a damn thing about us. They’re too busy pushing paper and worrying—who has this division, who has that precinct, who’s moving up, who’s getting flopped. That’s their whole career, that and figuring who has the biggest hook, who is the biggest hook for that matter. You know that’s what they do. That’s about it in Commissioner country.”

“Bitter boy. I think maybe Underwood actually thinks we belong on the case. He respects us.”

“Who belongs on a closed case? Oh Jesus, Becky, this is a Szechwan restaurant—I can’t eat here.”

She double-parked the car and pulled out the key. “You can eat here. Just ask them to hold the hot sauce on your chow mein.”

“I can’t even get Goddamn chow mein in a place like this,” he sulked.

She got out of the car and he followed reluctantly. They entered the dimly lit restaurant knocking snow off their clothes. “Getting heavier?” the coat-check girl asked.

“Heavier,” Wilson said. “Becky, this place is going to cost a fortune. It’s got a hatcheck girl. I never eat in places with hatcheck girls.” He followed her into the restaurant still complaining, but he subsided into subvocal grumbling when he received the menu. She could see the gears turning over as he calculated whether he could eat for less than two dollars.

“I’ll order for both of us since I’ve been here before,” she said, taking his menu. “I’ll get you out for five bucks.”

“Five!”

“Maybe six. I hope you’re not too hungry though, because it’ll only be one dish.”

“What?”

The waiter came. She ordered prawns in garlic sauce for Wilson and Chicken Tang for herself. At least she would enjoy what could easily be her last meal. But she stopped that line of thought—you think that way, it happens. She also ordered a drink, and Wilson got beer. “A buck for a Bud,” he muttered. “Goddamn Chinks.”

“Come on, relax. You’ll enjoy the food. Let’s talk about it.”

“What Ferguson said?”

“What he said. What ideas did it give you?”

“We could set up living quarters in Evans’s meat locker.”

“It gave me a better idea than that. It’s something I think we’ve got to do if we’re going to survive. Obviously it’s only a matter of time before our friends see their chance and move in. Sooner or later the two of us are going to join DiFalco and Houlihan. Then the department will wade into this thing all the way. But it won’t make a damn bit of difference to us.”

“Insufficient evidence, that’s what’s got the wheels gummed up. We have provided theories, hearsay, suppositions and a funny-looking piece of plaster of Paris made by Doctor Whozis.”

“So why not provide photographs. Pictures. It’s not a cadaver but it sure would improve our case.”

“How do you photograph what you never see? If there’s light enough for a picture there’s too much light. These things won’t get close to us in light Although we could use infrared equipment. Special Services could probably give us the loan of a scope. But it’s bulky stuff—hard to handle.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Narcotics has been experimenting with computerized image intensification equipment, stuff developed during the Vietnam war. We can get a really super picture even in total darkness with it. Dick’s unit’s been using it experimentally.”

“What’s involved, a support truck or something?”

“Not at all. The whole thing looks like an oversize pair of binoculars. Camera’s built in. You just look through the thing and what you can see you can photograph.”

“What you can see? There’s the hole in the idea. We have to be close enough to see them.”

“Not so close. You’ve got a five-hundred-millimeter lens.”

“My God, that’s the damnedest thing I ever heard of. We could be a quarter of a mile away.”

“Like staked out on the roof of my building watching the alley, watching for them to come back.”

“Yeah, we could do that. We could get our pictures and pull out before they even started climbing the terraces.”

“There’s only one small hitch. Dick’s got to be convinced to help us. He’s got to give us the equipment, and it’s classified.”

Wilson frowned. It meant a departmental infraction, something he didn’t need. He had too many enemies to be able to afford getting things like that in his file. “Goddamn, the PD’d classify mechanical pencils if they had time. I don’t like to get into that kind of stuff, it’s not going to help me.”

“Dick owes you a favor, George.”

“Why?”

“You know perfectly well why.” She said it lightly but felt the anger nevertheless. Her staying in Detectives had depended on finding a place in a block of four men, and to do that you had to get one of those men as a partner. Wilson had taken her on and she had not been shunted off into administration like many lady cops. And Wilson had taken her on because Dick Neff had asked him to.

“He may think it was a favor, but it wasn’t.”

“Jesus. You’re going to seed, Wilson. You actually complimented my police work just then.”

He laughed, his face breaking for a few moments into a mass of merry wrinkles, then as abruptly returning to its usual glower. “You got some good points,” he said, “but I guess you’re right. Taking you on was a favor to Dick when I did it. Maybe he’ll let me collect.”

Becky excused herself and called ahead to the apartment. She wanted to be sure Dick was there; she didn’t want to end up alone with Wilson in the apartment. It wouldn’t look good, especially if Dick came home.

He was there, his voice sounding thick. She wanted to ask him what was wrong but she held back. When she told him she was bringing Wilson over his only comment was a noncommittal grunt.

They ate their food in silence, Wilson digging into his with glazed indifference. If you fed him silage, he’d probably eat it exactly the same way.

Becky was excited about the idea of getting photographs of the animals; excited and worried. The whole situation contained menace, every part of it. There was something about the way these creatures; killed—the extreme violence of it—that made it impossible to put the problem out of your mind even for a short time. You just kept turning it over and over… and Becky had a recurring picture of what they must look like with their long toes that ended in delicate pads and were tipped by claws, with their razor-sharp teeth, and their heavy bodies. But what were their faces like? Human beings had such complex faces, not at all like the more-or-less frozen expressions of animals; would these creatures also have such faces, full of emotion and understanding? And if so, what would those faces tell their victims?

“Look we just come right out and ask Dick— right? Just ask him without fooling around?”

“You mean no diplomatic subtleties?”

“Not my strong point.”

“So we just ask. Everybody’s heard rumors about the optical gear Special Services is using. Just logical that a Narcotics wire man could get his hands on it, isn’t it? We don’t have to tell him we know the stuff is classified. Maybe he’ll never even bring the matter up, just give us the damn thing and not think any more about it. That’s what I’m hoping anyway.”

But that wasn’t what happened. As soon as she opened the door to their apartment, Becky felt something was wrong. She left Wilson in the hall while she went to Dick in the living room. “Why’d you pick tonight to bring that old fart up here?” were his first words.

“I had to, honey. It can’t wait.”

“I got burned.”

There it was, as simple as that. To undercover cops like Dick getting burned meant being recognized as police officers by their suspects. “Bad?”

“Real bad. Some sonofabitch really put it on me. I might as well graduate to the Goddamn movies.”

“Dick, that’s terrible! How—”

“Never mind how, honey. Just say it was two years of work blown to hell. And I think I’ve got a shoofly on my ass, too.”

She leaned down and kissed his hair. He was slumped into the couch, staring at the TV. “You’re clean, aren’t you?” But her heart was sinking, she knew something was wrong. And the inspectors from the Internal Affairs Division knew it too or they wouldn’t have put a man on him—shoofly was what cops called other cops who investigated them.

“You know damn well I’m not clean.” He said it with such infinite tiredness that she was surprised. And he looked older, more hollow, than she had ever seen him before. “Look, let’s get drunk or something later, celebrate my early retirement, but bring Wilson in now, let him do his thing.”

“It’s not much, won’t take a second.” She called Wilson, who moved forward from the foyer where he had been standing.

They shook hands. Dick offered him a beer. They settled into the living room, the TV cut down but not off. Becky closed the curtains.

“What’s up?” Dick said.

“We need your help,” Wilson replied. “I gotta get some pictures, I need your night-vision camera.”

“What night-vision camera?”

“The one you can get from Special. The five-hundred-mil lens, the image-intensification circuit. You know what camera.”

“Why not order it up yourself?” He looked at Becky, a question in his eyes.

“We haven’t got authorization, honey,” she said. “We need it for the creatures.”

“Oh, Christ almighty, that bullshit again! Can’t you get off that? What are you two, nuts or something? I can’t get that Goddamn camera, not while I’ve got shooflies hanging from my Goddamn ears. Come on, lay off it. Why don’t you two earn your damn salaries instead of monkeyin’ around with that shit.”

“We need your help, Neff.” Wilson sat hunched in his chair, his eyes glistening like dots beneath the heavy folds of his brows. “I helped you.”

“Oh, Christ.” He smiled, turned his head away. “Oh, Christ, the favor. The great big favor. Let me tell you, Wilson, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your big favor. That’s not a factor.”

“That camera could solve this case for us, honey, get the damn thing out of our hair. We only need it for a night or so.”

“You need more than the camera, you need me to work the damn thing. It’s balky as hell, you gotta know how to use it.”

“You can teach us.”

He shook his head. “Took me weeks to learn. You don’t get it just right you don’t get any picture.”

She stared at him. “Dick, please. Just one night is all we ask.”

He frowned at her, as if asking “Is this for real?” She nodded gravely. “A night, then,” he said, “maybe it’ll be a few laughs.”

So he agreed, just like that. She wished she felt more than grateful, but she didn’t. His anger and tiredness made her wish to hell that she would not have to spend the rest of this night with him.

She showed Wilson to the door. “See you at headquarters,” she said as he pulled on his coat. “Eight o’clock?”

“Eight’s fine.”

“Where are you going now, George?”

“Not home. You’re crazy to stay here, as a matter of fact.”

“I don’t know where else I’d go.”

“That’s your business.” He stepped out into the hallway and was gone. She started to wonder if she would ever see him alive again, then stopped herself. Not allowed. She turned, took a deep breath, and prepared to face the rest of the night with her husband.

Chapter 6

« ^ »

They were hungry, they wanted food. Normally they preferred the darker, desolate sections of the city, but their need to follow their enemies had brought them into its very eye. Here the smell of man lay over everything like a dense fog, and there was not much cover.

But even the brightest places have shadows. They moved in single file behind the wall that separates Central Park from the street. They did not need to look over the wall to know that few of the benches that lined the other side were occupied—they could smell that fact perfectly well. But they also smelled something else, the rich scent of a human being perhaps a quarter of a mile farther on. On one of the benches a man was sleeping, a man whose pores were exuding the smell of alcohol. To them the reek meant food, easily gotten.

As they moved closer they could hear his breathing. It was long and troubled, full of age. They stopped behind him. There was no need to discuss what they would do; each one knew his role.

Three jumped up on the wall, standing there perfectly still, balanced on the sharply angled stone. He was on the bench below them. The one nearest the victim’s head inclined her ears back. She would get the throat. The other two would move in only if there was a struggle.

She held her breath a moment to clear her head. Then she examined her victim with her eyes. The flesh was not visible—it was under thick folds of cloth. She would have to jump, plunge her muzzle into the cloth and rip out the throat all at once. If there were more than a few convulsions on the part of the food she would disappoint the pack. She opened her nose, letting the rich smells of the world back in. She listened up and down the street. Only automobile traffic, nobody on foot for at least fifty yards. She cocked her ears toward a man leaning in a chair inside the brightly lit foyer of a building across the street. He was listening to a radio. She watched his head turn. He was glancing into the lobby.

Now. She was down, she was pushing her nose past cloth, slick hot flesh, feeling the vibration of sub-vocal response in the man, feeling his muscles stiffening as his body reacted to her standing on it, then opening her mouth against the flesh, feeling her teeth scrape back and down, pressing her tongue against the deliciously salty skin and ripping with all the strength in her jaws and neck and chest, and jumping back to the wall with the bloody throat in her mouth. The body on the bench barely rustled as its dying blood poured out.

And the man in the doorway returned his glance to the street. Nothing had moved, as far as he was concerned. Ever watchful, she scented him and listened to him. His breathing was steady, his smell bland. Good, he had noticed nothing.

Now her job was over, she dropped back behind the wall and ate her trophy. It was rich and sweet with blood. Around her the pack was very happy as it worked. Three of them lifted the body over the wall and let it drop with a thud. The two others, skilled in just this art, stripped the clothing away. They would carry the material to the other side of the park, shred it and hide it in shrubs before they returned to their meal.

As soon as the corpse was stripped it was pulled open. The organs were sniffed carefully. One lung, the stomach, the colon were put aside because of rot.

Then the pack ate in rank order.

The mother took the brain. The father took a thigh and buttock. The first-mated pair ate the clean organs. When they returned from their duty the second-mated pair took the rest. And then they pulled apart the remains and took them piece by piece and dropped them in the nearby lake. The bones would sink and would not be found at least until spring, if then. The clothing they had shredded and scattered half a mile away. And now they kicked as much new snow as they could over the blood of their feast. When this was done they went to a place they had seen earlier, a great meadow full of the beautiful new snow that had been falling.

They ran and danced in the snow, feeling the pleasure of their bodies, the joy of racing headlong across the wide expanse, and because they knew that no human was in earshot they had a joyous howl full of the pulsing rhythm they liked best after a hunt. The sound rose through the park, echoing off the buildings that surrounded it. Inside those buildings a few wakeful people stirred, made restive by the cold and ancient terror that the sound communicated to man.

Then they went to a tunnel they had slept in these past four nights and settled down. By long-learned habit they slept in the small hours of the morning when men mostly did not stir. During daylight, man’s strongest time, they remained awake and alert and rarely broke cover unless they had to. In the evening they hunted.

This traditional order of life went back forever.

Before sleeping the second-mated pair made love, both to entertain the others and to prepare for spring. And afterward the father and mother licked them, and then the pack slept.

But they did not sleep long, not until the hour before dawn as was their custom. This night they still had something to accomplish, and instead of sleeping through the wee hours they left their hiding place and moved out into the silent streets.

Becky listened to the phone on the other end of the line ring once, twice, three times. Finally Wilson picked up. He had gone home after all. “Yeah?”

“You OK?” she asked.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Now now, don’t get sarcastic. Just bedchecking.”

He hung up. The thought of slamming down the phone crossed her mind but what good would it do? She returned the receiver to its cradle and went back into the living room. Dick had not heard her and she paused behind him. Sitting slumped in his chair he seemed smaller than life—diminished. She would have to do everything she could to help him defeat the investigation. She had to; by simply being his wife she was implicated. “You knew he was getting extra money,” they would say. “Where did you think it was coming from?” And there could only be one answer to that question.

It wasn’t that she minded helping him, either. He had been a good husband for a long time and she supposed that what was happening between them was very sad. The trouble was she didn’t care. The intimacy that had once united them had died through inattention. Where once she had been full of love there was now just stone boredom. There wasn’t even a sense of loss. Or maybe—just maybe—there was a sense of loss, for a love that had never been real.

She had to ask herself, if a love can die like this, was it ever real? She remembered the long happiness of the past, the happiness that had seemed so eternal. When they had gone sleigh riding up in the Catskills five Christmases ago, the love they shared had been real. And in the hard times before she was a cop, that love had been very real indeed. It wasn’t just that Dick was a good lover, it was that he was a partner and friend of a deep and special kind. “You’re beautiful,” he would say, “you’re wonderful.” And it had meant more than the physical. Maybe the waning of his enthusiasm was inevitable as she reached middle age. But his enthusiasm wasn’t the problem, it was hers. Try as she might she could not love Dick Neff anymore.