Ghouls (55 page)

“No plates,” Higgins said.

“Shit.”

“No registration in the glove compartment, either.”

“You didn’t touch anything, did you?”

“No, all the glass is broken. Glove compartment was hanging open.”

The list was getting shorter. “Check for a VIN number,” Kurt told him.

“Where is it?”

“Far left corner of the dashboard. There’s a seal that whitens if it’s tampered with.”

Another grim pause. Then Higgins said, “It’s not here. There’s just a hole.”

Ripped out,
Kurt thought. The only other accessible VIN number would be etched on the engine block, but Kurt didn’t know exactly where, and he doubted that it mattered. Whoever ditched this car obviously knew what he was doing. “Take a quick look around,” he told Higgins, “then come on back up.”

“What happens now?” Vicky asked.

“We call the county lab. Somebody gave that car the works, so it’s probably wiped clean, too. But most American cars have VIN numbers all over the place, they’re just hard to get to. Even a pro wouldn’t be able to get all the VIN’s without taking most of the engine, trans, and drive-train apart. Unless this guy happens to work for Ford, the chances of him getting all the VIN’s are slim. If it’s Glen’s car, the
county’ll
be able to find out. It just might take a while.”

The rope pulled taut against the dredge idler. Higgins was climbing up.

“And if it is Glen’s car,” Vicky said, “then I guess it’s realistic to assume that he’s—”

Kurt only nodded.

The sound of Higgins clambering back up grew louder. But abruptly the sound stopped. All they heard was the unsteady dripping from below. Kurt looked over the edge of the cause-walk, trailing the rope with his light. Higgins was angling himself into one of the stopes.

“Mark, what the hell are you doing?” Kurt said into the radio.

Reception was weaker now. “I’m in the second…what did you call it?”

“
Stope
. What are you doing there?”

“I thought I…”

“What?”

“I’m sure I heard something.”

“Don’t go in there. It could cave in.”

Higgins wouldn’t hear of it. Reception worsened as he went deeper into the
stope
, his voice warbling in and out of waves of static. “Goddamn flashlight’s starting to poop out… Can’t see much—Christ, it stinks, you wouldn’t believe it.” Higgins began to cough violently, like someone who’d just stepped into a draft of riot gas.

“Forget it, Mark. Come on, back up. We’ll punt the dirty work to the county.”

Now Higgins’s voice was nearly indistinguishable through the blurring, crackling transmission; he was coughing asthmatically.
“Jesus,
that smell…worse than a fucking slaughterhouse. “I—holy shit, holy fucking shit…”

“Mark, what is it?”

“The walls, my God, the walls—they’re…” But then Higgins’s voice withered off into a staccato of electric
jibberish
.

“I’m not reading you, Mark. The
stope’s
blocking our reception—you’ve gone in too far.”

There was a break, a few bursts of static.

Futilely, Kurt continued to key his walkie-talkie. “Damn it, I can barely hear you. Come out of there.”

The words that followed were faint and eroded, but Kurt was able to decipher most of them. It sounded like: “There’s someone down here, Kurt. Someone’s coming down the—”

“Get out of there, Mark! Get out of there right now!”

A shriek exploded up the shaft and wound around them in an endless echo. Kurt knew only one thing—that the sound couldn’t possibly be human.

Pistol shots rang out, six of them, all
thunderingly
amplified.

And after that came a second scream, mindless, ripping, insane. It was a man’s scream. It was Higgins.

Vicky was stepping back, hands pressed against her ears. Kurt reached for the rope, but then it jerked tight. The scream drew on, spiraling out of the pit. Kurt watched in consternation, watched the rope pull tighter and tighter until it snapped and burned out of his hands.

“Get out of here!” Kurt shouted at Vicky. He stuffed his light into his belt and kneeled at the
causewalk
, looking down. A rusted ring ladder pointed up.

“You’re out of your mind!” Vicky screamed, pulling his collar.

He shoved her back. “Get out!”

“That
ladder’ll
never hold you! The bolts are rusted!”

Kurt swung himself over, tested the first step with his foot. “I’ve got to try. Go to the cruiser and take the radio out of the slot. Hold the button in and say 207 signal 13. Say it over and over till you get an acknowledgment. Then give the dispatcher our location and wait for them.”

The ladder ground out an inch under his full weight. Vicky continued to scream at him. The bolts of the third step snapped like a shot. He could feel the ladder shaking now, the pitons grinding out of their seats in the rock.
Looks like school’s out for me,
he thought, and his fingers hooked back onto the edge of the
causewalk
just as the ladder fell out from under him. It toppled down the incline with a deafening crash.

His biceps cramped as he hung. He glanced over his shoulder into oblivion. Vicky helped pull him up by the seat of his pants.

Beside them, one of the stulls fell over and hit the ground with a vibrating thud. Dust sifted out of the ceiling like snow. Kurt grabbed Vicky’s hand and together they raced stumblingly out toward the vague square of dying sunlight, at the end of the manway.

Outside, he bent over the hood of the cruiser. Skirting death so narrowly had bleached him white. Vicky sat on the ground, angled against the grill. They were both smudged and sweating, taking in ravenous breaths. Kurt’s ears throbbed numbly from the previous avalanche of sound.

There was no time to even contemplate what had happened; Higgins was still down there, dying or dead.

“Got to call a thirteen in to the county,” Kurt muttered, but when he opened the cruiser door, he felt himself shrink. The recharge socket for the portable radio was empty. Higgins still had the police radio on his belt.

“Get in!” he yelled. “The goddamn radio’s not here.” He started the engine; Vicky hauled her door closed and they wheeled out of the clearing, accelerating back down the road.

“What about these?” Vicky asked, holding up a walkie-talkie.

“They’re useless. They’re only two-way.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Stop at the first house with a phone,” he said, and then the image of Willard’s mansion blinked in his mind. He turned reckless into the next access, and in what seemed moments later, he was jamming the brakes in Willard’s cul-de-sac. “Wait here,” he told her.

He jumped out and raced up the porch steps. He pounded on the door, yelling into the intercom, only then noticing the red light on the alarm jack.
Don’t tell me he’s not home.
He looked behind him; Willard’s car was not in the court.

He’d have to kick the door in, which was never an easy thing, he knew firsthand. He might need tools to break a door as solid as this. But just as he backed up for the first try, a block of light swung across the porch. He turned and looked into a wave of dazzle. Willard had just pulled up next to the garage.

“Life or death emergency,” Kurt called as Willard got out of his black Chrysler. “I need to use your phone.”

Willard read Kurt’s urgency. He jogged up the steps, thrust a bag of Chinese carry-out into Kurt’s arms, then turned off the alarm system and unlocked the front door. They both rushed in. “To your left, in my study,” Willard directed, turning on a floor lamp. “The phone’s on the desk.”

Kurt picked up the receiver and punched in 911. “We found Glen Rodz’s car in one of the mines,” he said quickly to Willard. “Something happened to the dayshift officer.”

Willard approached the desk, strangely aghast at Kurt’s brief explanation. “You mean you were
in
the mine? At
this
hour?”

“Yeah,” Kurt said. “It was awful. I think someone—” but then the line was answered. Kurt spoke very carefully, “Officers in need of assistance at—”

Willard’s hand shot down and hit one of the extension buttons, severing Kurt’s connection. Then he snatched the receiver away and hung it up.

“What the hell are you doing!” Kurt snapped. “I gotta call the county!”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that,” Willard said, and raised a small black automatic pistol with a sound suppressor screwed into the barrel. He aimed for the center of Kurt’s chest.

“You fucking nut,” Kurt said. “Higgins could be dead back there.”

“I’m afraid there are no could
be’s
about it. You’re very lucky to have gotten out alive yourself.”

Kurt was waylaid, infuriated by this challenge. He felt his gun hand open at his side.

Willard said, “Please do not make any sudden movements. I can pull this trigger much faster than you can draw. Now listen carefully. I want you to place your right hand on the top of the desk.”

“Suck my dick,” Kurt said.

Willard fired one shot a few inches over Kurt’s head.

Kurt placed his right hand on the top of the desk.

“Now with your left hand I want you to reach around and unsnap your holster.”

Kurt did it, thinking,
Son of a bitch, son of a stupid fucking bitch!

“With your left index finger and thumb I want you to remove your service revolver by the tip of the hammer and place it on the desk.”

Kurt’s gun clunked on the blotter.

He pleaded with Willard, “Listen, Doctor, I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t really care. My partner’s back there in that mine, and I have to get help. You have to let me call the county police. I’m
begging
you.”

Willard dropped Kurt’s gun into his pocket. He’d been relaxed through the entire ordeal. “I already told you, your partner is dead, rest assured. If you only knew how close you came to death yourself… Less than the width of a particularly fine hair, I’d say.” His voice thickened very subtly. “Death beyond anything you could imagine.”

Kurt felt stripped, an impotent failure, having been disarmed by this eloquent wiseass twice his age. A pain spurred his chest when he remembered Higgins’s screams.

“So it was you who pushed Glen’s car into the shaft.”

“Of course,” Willard admitted, a coy lift to his brow. “Unlike yourself, though, I went into the mine during the day, when it’s much safer. And please know that it gives me no pleasure in telling you that Glen, too, is quite dead. There were no alternatives.”

“You murdered him.”

“More or less.” Willard removed cartons from the bag. “Help yourself, there’s plenty for both of us.
Sha
Cha beef, Szechuan vegetables in hot sauce, and the best shrimp toast you’ve ever had in your life.”

“You can blow it all up your ass with a funnel and shit it out your mouth. You’ve just confessed to murdering my best friend. Aren’t you going to tell me why?”

“Yes, you are due an explanation.” Willard munched pieces of shrimp toast as he spoke. “I couldn’t quite call it
murder;
I was merely preserving something far more important than a single human life. Look at it all as in the best interests of science. Glen nearly ruined my plans. I should have done away with him weeks ago.”