Creepers (8 page)

"You crazy, Willie?" Miguel hissed after a moment "You know what happened to Slade foolin' around like this."

"I don't know what happened and that's what I'm bound to find out." Willie peered over his shoulder to be sure another train wasn't bearing down on him. Rush hour was approaching, and with it came extra traffic. Convinced he was safe, he eased himself off the catwalk down onto the roadbed. "Keep a watch out for the TA," he admonished Miguel.

"Get outta there, man, you gonna get yourself killed. Forget the fuckin' TA." Miguel felt a trickle of sweat sluice down his back, leaving a cold trail. Jumping down onto the tracks was exactly what Ted Slade had done-- and that crazy sonofabitch had never returned to tell of it.

"You jes' watch out for Miguel Esperanza," Willie shouted over his shoulder as he moved in deeper. "And for Christ's sake, if some cop starts snoopin' around, don't stand there lookin' at me like you see some naked broad in here. Play it cool. Dogs of Hell ain't no dummies, remember."

Willie had to talk big to cover his own mounting fear. The tunnel was dark and dank, and the series of signal lights along the wall cast an eerie light into the tunnel. Had it not been for his grudging affection for Slade, nothing could have enticed Willie into any subway tunnel. As a child he'd had an uncontrollable fear of the dark and the terrible things that inhabited it. Now, alone as the thick darkness closed in around him, the old fear took hold.

"Sheeeit," Willie yelled as he stumbled into an ankle-deep puddle of stagnant water. He was ill-prepared for roughing it in his running shoes, and as the water soaked his foot, he wondered if being here was such a smart idea, after all. Well, it was too late to turn back now.

The flickering halo of light at the Eighty-sixth Street station off in the distance was a beacon to follow. Willie hugged the west wall, always mindful that the third rail, which carried enough electricity to kill him in a second, was opposite him under a protective cover, like a snake hiding under a rock. A vague rustling sound behind him, an intimation that someone else was near, sent a bolt of terror through Willie. He turned around quickly, just in time to see something dart into the shadows; not a figure, exactly, more like a different texture of darkness.

Willie stopped moving entirely. He had to be imagining things. He was alone in the tunnel; he had to be. But just to be sure, he squinted his eyes to help improve his vision; then he scanned the area between the local and express tracks where he thought he'd seen the movement. There was nothing to see. Nothing to be afraid of except his own fear.

"Man, you gettin' as flaky as Miggie," he joked aloud to break the tension. "You better get on with it or your ass will be grass." He knew the local tracks would soon be crowded with trains and that getting out of the tunnel in one piece would be a tough job.

Miguel's voice, reverberating down from the station, shattered the heavy silence of the tunnel. "Willie, there's a train coming!"

Willie turned and, once again, saw a flicker of movement behind him; closer now than before. But his attention was drawn back toward the platform by another call from Miguel. "Shut up, Miggie," Willie complained under his breath. If that damned fool kept up the yelling he would attract undue attention.

And as the thought passed through Willie's mind, he saw a TA cop in the distance join Miguel on the platform. The cop leaned forward, visored his eyes with his hand, then pushed Miguel out of the way. "Get outta there, you dumb fuck!" the cop screamed.

The policeman opened his mouth again, but his voice was drowned out by the clattering thunder of an approaching local train. Willie hadn't seen it because he'd been too interested in the cop. But he saw it now and he was so suddenly afraid that he fought to keep back a scream. What the hell was he doing down here? What did he expect to find that was worth risking his own life? Ted Slade hadn't been seen in two days, but that didn't mean he'd walked into this tunnel and never walked out. If he'd been bit by a train, it would have been reported and made all the newspapers. But it hadn't been. And as far as Willie knew, that was the only bad thing that could happen to you down here. So far as he knew.

After narrowly escaping the train by jumping onto the express track, Willie felt his resolve to pursue his goal weaken momentarily. "Why am I standing here peeing in my pants?" he asked himself aloud. And as quickly as the question was posed, it was answered: "Because somethin' bad's happened to my main man. And Willie Hoyte don't desert his friends."

He was about to continue his exploration when he saw the cop speaking into his walkie-talkie. That was bad news. He was probably alerting his buddies, signaling the TA control center to shut off the power in that section of the track so he could chase Willie. And, sure enough, thirty seconds later, the cop jumped down onto the roadbed and started running toward Willie like he had a personal grudge against him and was about to collect.

Willie turned tail and started to run full-out. The Eighty-sixth Street station was his only hope of escape. But it was still a long way, and running down here was tough; it meant leaping over ties, keeping a sure footing on the loose gravel and slick sludge of the roadbed. And most of all it meant keeping away from the deadly third rail. But getting away from the TA was more important than thinking about how tough it was. If that cop caught him, Willie Hoyte would be crucified once and for all. Willie Hoyte, founder of Dogs of Hell--nothing more than a dumb bastard who endangers his own life and that of other subway passengers to play on the tracks. That's what the TA would say. Damn! He could almost read the headlines now.

The cop was gaining on him. Willie had no idea how far he'd run, but the configuration of the tunnel was changing. Ahead, the wall seemed to fall away into an inky pit of darkness. It looked like a disused station, but Willie'd been riding this line for years and had never seen it before. He knew there were abandoned stations throughout the city, stations that had been closed down because they no longer served any useful purpose. Willie'd seen them but he'd never seen one here. Had Slade seen it? Had Slade seen that gray thing creeping along the tracks toward this station? Was that why he'd come here?

The cop was now so close Willie could hear his labored breathing. And as he looked over his shoulder to get a bead on him, Willie's foot caught on a tie and he fell, tumbling out of control. He reached out, frantically grabbing for something to stop his forward motion. His fingers entwined around something soft and slick, something with enough weight behind it to halt his forward roll. Willie held tight until he stopped; then he turned and stared into the darkness, trying to discern what had stopped him.

At first it looked like a pile of rags. Or a collection of shopping bags carried around by the crazies in the street. On closer inspection, Willie saw it was a body--a crumpled-up body with its head tucked down, knees drawn up to its chest in a gruesome imitation of a fetus. Willie's mouth filled with salty bile. He swallowed to keep back the fear. The body was clad in a Dogs of Hell jacket. And Willie knew that he'd found Ted Slade.

"Don't move, you shithead," the cop screamed as he ground to a halt just behind Willie. "I'm gonna bust your ass, you crazy nigger." The cop's hateful eyes followed Willie's stare to the body by the tracks. "What the hell is that?"

He stepped forward, but Willie caught him by the ankle and stopped him. "Stay away, you. That's one of my men."

"What the hell are you talking about?" The cop kicked Willie's hand away.

"I'm Willie Hoyte and that's one of my Dogs of Hell." He dragged himself up to face the cop. "I come down here lookin' for him. And now I found him."

"You stay right there, mister," the cop commanded. He stepped around Willie and went to the body. He stared down at it a moment, deciding his next move; then, with the tip of his shoe angled under the corpse's elbow, he tipped it to its side. Rigor mortis had long since set in, and the body retained its infantile position as it rocked onto its back. The cop pulled a flashlight from his belt and shone it directly at Ted Slade's head; then he looked away in disgust and turned oft the light. But not fast enough. Not before Willie saw his friend and began screaming.

Ted Slade's face was gone.

September 5

Wednesday

Chapter 4

Corelli's footsteps made dull, thudding sounds as he walked mechanically down the subterranean corridor of New York Mercy Hospital toward its morgue. He remembered those lifeless footsteps; it could have been five years before, when he'd come here to identify Jean's body. The presence of Death in this part of the hospital, its absolute supremacy over the living, pulled any joy from anyone who entered the precincts. Voices grew muted, smiles quivered on nervous lips, then faded, and gestures became self-conscious.

That was how it seemed to Corelli, at any rate. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he'd already lost too much down here to react any other way. One thing was for sure: he hated being here.

The report of Willie Hoyte's arrest and the discovery of Slade's body was filed while Corelli was off-duty the night before. He hadn't read it until that morning, but five minutes later he was out of the office and on his way uptown to talk to a Mercy Hospital pathologist about Slade. Quinn was covering at the office for Frank, but it was no good this time. Dolchik was downtown on some official business, and the minute he got back and discovered Corelli was AWOL again, the shit would hit the fan.

In the meantime, Corelli returned the missing-persons file--after making a copy--and now had a couple of hours' leeway before the captain's return to do some investigating on his own. Hoyte's statement last night indicated that Slade had disappeared into the subway two, three days before. At least he seemed convinced that's where he'd gone. Corelli knew this might just be coincidence, but his gut feeling was that the late Mr. Ted Slade was the most recent victim of the same person or persons who had grabbed Lisa Hill. And Penny Comstock.

Corelli sharply turned a corner and was confronted with an unmarked gray door at the end of the corridor. He fought the urge to turn and run out of the hospital without looking back; but the only indication of his emotional turmoil was a tenseness of the muscles along his jaw. Coolheadedness in a crisis was one of the traits that made Frank Corelli a good cop. He paused a minute, then opened the door. He was immediately assailed by a sickly-sweet smell he knew to be a combination of chemicals and death; the morgue's anteroom reeked of it. For a moment he faltered in his determination to continue. Five years before, Corelli had stood exactly here in the muted antiseptic haze of the lowered lights as a disinterested pathologist lifted a sheet from Jean's face.

Corelli let the memories wash over him. He'd be okay--in a minute. In romantic fiction, Death arrives as the final messenger with promises of peaceful eternity. Etched on the deceased's features is the sure sign that he will be waiting patiently for his loved ones beyond the veil. In reality, death can be violent, ugly. It had taken Jean ten minutes to die. Ten minutes in terminal pain and terror. The struggle to survive was carved on her twisted death mask. Corelli had seen that anguish no mortician could disguise. His fiancee's life had been wrenched from her, stolen viciously even as she fought in vain to save it; fought to stay alive for Frank, to bear their children, to grow old with him. But Jean had lost. Her body had been too severely attacked; her will had been broken.

"Detective Corelli?"

Frank was so startled by the man suddenly next to him that he jumped.

The intruder smiled ruefully. "Sorry if I startled you. I'm Dr. Geary. Tom Geary." He extended his hand. "Charming place, isn't it?"

"I've seen better," Corelli admitted.

"Haven't we all? So, what's your interest up here? I thought the big boys downtown were handling all cases like this." Geary's voice was cozily confidential.

Corelli was immediately on his guard. "Sure they are, but I've been watching these Dogs of Hell ever since they got started--I knew Slade." Corelli didn't know who the "big boys" were, but there was no need for the doctor to know that; he'd string him along as far as he could.

"Hope he wasn't a close friend. He got it pretty bad." Dr. Geary turned and led Corelli through a second door into the mortuary proper. Geary was younger than Corelli, but his salt-and-pepper hair pegged him as years older. It was his manner that betrayed his youth; he had a snippy, superior attitude that Frank instantly disliked. Geary was a smart-ass, probably fresh from his residency. But why anyone would choose a career in pathology was beyond Corelli. Either the guy was a creep or, more likely, he'd performed so wretchedly on the living that he'd been relegated to working on the dead.

"Welcome to the end of the rainbow," Geary said cheerfully as they entered the main mortuary. Here the cadavers were stored behind a patchwork of refrigerator doors that covered the far wall. Geary went to one and flung it open.

Corelli swallowed hard as an icy draft of air from the compartment wrapped itself around his shoulders and snaked down his body until it held him prisoner. The air smelled of plastic, of shrouds--a scent, once smelled, never forgotten. Involuntarily Corelli shuddered while Geary withdrew the shallow metal tray on which Ted Slade's body rested. Bloody drainage had seeped through the shroud; it had collected and solidified around the body in a gelatinous mass.

"You want to look at him here? Or shall I put him on a stretcher so you can have a real good look?"