Kornwolf (17 page)

Ahead, more buggies topped the hill. The first two drivers were unfamiliar. But Jonas Tulk was manning the third. No doubt about it: Jonas Tulk—and a posse of Amish patrolling the road. Something was happening.

“-*
Officer Beaumont?
*-” Again, the radio.

Rudolf considered not responding. Then came thoughts of the sheriff's orders.

“
Officer Beaumont, where are you?
”

He grabbed the receiver. “En route. Where the hell do you think?”

Kutay sounded ready to cry. “
But I lost you
,” he burbled.

“Try the accelerator.”

One of these seasons, the sheriff would drop dead of colon cancer or high cholesterol. When that happened, Fatty—along with Officer Koch, the sap, would be out of a job: two walking-the-dog-to-the-breadline, no-house, barbecued-pork-eating welfare cheats …

A sizeable crowd of angry locals had gathered in front of the liquor store. The building's center bay had been shattered. Sirens were blaring from wall-mounted horns. Every soul in The Basin was sure to be walking the floors. It sounded like war.

On arrival, Beaumont spotted a figure attempting to climb through the ruined display case. He didn't appear to be looting the store. He seemed to be trying to find the alarm.

As Fatty Kutay pulled in to join them, the crowd turned its anger on both officers.

“Can't you make it
stop?
” one man in camo-fatigue pajamas demanded.

Beaumont walked to the front of the store. What he could see inside was a mess. He climbed through the scattered remains of the main display and hopped in. After a bungled attempt to locate and deactivate the security board, and with no sign of personnel forthcoming, he climbed up onto a crate and proceeded to bash the interior horn with his club. On try number three, he succeeded in tearing it out of the wall, but not killing the siren. The siren jammed on an even higher, more shrill and grating pitch than before. Outside, the locals hollered angrily. They hoisted a cinder block into the display case—“Here, try this, God damn it—hurry!”—while others ran to their pickups for crowbars.

All together, they beat the alarms into silence. The last one sounding was blown from the eastern wall by a shotgun blast. The boom echoed back from a nearby rail yard, reverberating west through the settling calm.

For everyone present, it seemed as though all of creation let out a sight of relief.

Except Fatty: “Who fired that shot?” he demanded.

The crowd ignored him. Instead, someone shouted: “Can't you people control those hippies?”

Cries of disgusted agreement went up.

Beaumont came forward, throwing his shoulders back, warning the group not to test his patience.

“Screw you, Rudolf,” someone replied. “We pay our taxes. You work for
us
.”

Both officers blinked, abruptly aware of the silhouettes tensed in the darkness around them. Officer Kutay's breathing deepened, breaking the otherwise total silence.

Then came a distant barrage of gunfire off to the north. Everyone jumped. Torn from its daze, the crowd had already begun to disperse before Fatty stepped forward. “You people go home. This situation is …”

“Eat shit!” came a call in response. On pulling away, someone yelled from a window: “If you won't do something about it,
we
will.”

Several pickups took off in succession, barreling north toward a stretch of forest from which more gunfire was sounding steadily.

Rudolf and Kutay were left behind in the parking lot, weighing their yearly salaries.

At last, Beaumont spoke. “Go get 'em.”

Kutay blanched. “
You
go get 'em.”

“I will,” said Beaumont. “I'll block the road at Bareville Pike. You drive 'em in.”

Fatty didn't like the sound of that. “No way,” he refused. “You're just gonna leave me with the dirty work again.”

Beaumont shook his head. “You want to block the road yourself?”

“Yes!”

Sucker
.

Rudolf conceded. “Fine with me. Just stay off your radio.”

Kutay got in his cruiser and drove off, easily rid of.

Now for the compound.

Ivan Grabers and Eli Stoltzfus, one with a spade and the other his rifle, stood in the drive of the Tulk estate, looking none too pleased by Beaumont's appearance. Behind them, torches were posted along the outer fence, surrounding the building.

He rolled to a stop and got out of his cruiser, expecting a howling din from the building. Instead, it was quiet. Nary so much as a peep from within. Just the humming of locusts.

Cleon Stoltzfus, with two of his sons, James and Ezekiel, appeared from the shadows. All three of them were carrying rifles. They stopped.

Rudolf approached them, demanding, “What's happening?”

“Nothing,” said Cleon, turning away.

He unlocked the gate to the yard and, speaking no more, walked off.

James and Ezekiel hung back quietly.

Beaumont wrangled a statement from Grabers, who claimed that nothing had happened, as yet. “The hounds went crazy an hour ago.”

“And now they're quiet,” Rudolf observed. He scratched his head, regarding the building. “Where's Bontrager?”

Ezekiel pointed toward the back gate.

“And Tulk's on the road?”

All three of them nodded.

Officer Kutay's voice squawked over the radio, booming from Rudolf's cruiser. “They're shooting again! They're shooting!”—just as a flurry of bursts went up to the west.

Everyone listened intently.

Then more from the radio: talk of “an animal under attack” near Cry in the Dark …

Cry in the Dark was a seasonal (Halloween) theme park open for most of October. Featuring hayrides, a haunted barn and the not-so-impressive hall of mirrors, the park had most recently added a new attraction: the Blue Ball Devil Maze—a complex labyrinth chopped out of two square acres of withering Indian corn.

Beaumont grabbed his receiver. “I'm on it.”

Behind him, Ezekiel Stoltzfus snapped to attention. “What?”

“An attack?” said Grabers.

“In Ronks,” added James, turning away.

As quickly, Beaumont got into his cruiser.

In the headlights, Grabers and both of the boys were already moving to bridle their pacers.

Ronks was fifteen minutes away by buggy.

Beaumont was there in three.

On the way, he attempted to gather more details, but only wound up in the gray as the dispatcher, given no further information, repeated: “-*
an animal under attack
*-”

Before he could make any sense of it, Cry in the Dark loomed up to the side of the road, and, before it, a crowd pointing urgently west. Beaumont took his cue. He pulled onto Dillerville Pike and gunned his engine. He rolled up a hill between plots of forest. On rounding a bend, he nearly flattened them: five or six figures with painted faces, blocking the road in a pitted huddle. They seemed to be kicking the shit out of something. Rudolf screeched to a fish tailed halt. The figures scattered into the woods.

A deposit was left behind on the road. It looked like a heap of quivering rugs. Beaumont got out of his cruiser, holding his pistol in one hand and casting the beam of his flashlight across the road with the other. The beam moved over a mound of fur on the pavement. It seemed to be whimpering lightly.

Rudolf looked closer, not understanding. He poked the deposit of fur with his flashlight.

“Ow!” came a voice in response. “Take it easy!” A bloodied face turned into the beam.

He was seventeen, maybe. His nose had been bloodied. He was wearing a suit.

“What
are
you, a cop?” he said.

Beaumont took hold of the young man's collar and hoisted him, groaning in pain, upright. Something fell to the pavement between them. Not letting go, Rudolf looked down.

A rubber mask lay torn on the road.

“What?” Beaumont looked closer, squinting.

“I work for the park,” the kid announced. His tone was notably apprehensive.

Beaumont nudged the mask with his foot. It turned over. The face of a wolf looked up at him.

“Listen,” the kid pleaded desperately now. “Just call my boss. He'll tell you about it.”

Beaumont unhooked his nightstick.

“My father's a doctor. He won't …”

A blow to the side of his skull put him back on the pavement, unconscious.

As he stood over the motionless body, everything came to Rudolf at once. After three weeks of fruitless, confused pursuit, the “Blue Ball Devil” lay captured before him. The whole thing would now be revealed as a hoax—its perpetrator locked up, caught red-handed. And Beaumont due for some recognition …

As long as Fatty stayed out of the way.

Again, the radio: “*-
Officer Beaumont?
-*”

Headlights approaching from over the hill …

Snapping out of it, Rudolf dragged the kid to his cruiser and threw him in the backseat. A pickup appeared. He waved it onward, then climbed back into his driver's seat.

The western stretch of Dillerville Pike went by like trees on the side of a runway.

“*-
Officer Beaumont
-*”

It was the sheriff.

Rudolf picked up. “Yes, sir?”

“
Where the hell are you?
” Highman screamed. “
Officer Kutay needs your backup
.”

“I've taken a suspect into custody.”

The line went dead. Then: “
What did you say?
”

Beaumont answered: “Sir, it's a kid in a wolfman costume. I'm bringing him in.”

“
In a wolfman costume?
” Highman echoed.

“Affirmative, sir. I'm bringing him in.”

The sheriff's voice trailed off in the background, yelling at a dispatcher: “
Get a load of this!
”

Officer Kutay continued to squawk, as Keiffer chimed in: “
Did you save us some, Rudy?
”

Beaumont turned his radio down.

The media wouldn't bother with Highman.
Rudolf
's name would be the one in the paper. The “
Cop Who Uncovered the Blue Ball Devil
.” With photographs: “
Captor and Prize on Display
,” like a fisherman flaunting his catch on the dock.

In the midst of his reverie, a tree limb dropped to the road in his headlights, directly ahead. Shrieking, Beaumont swerved to avoid it. The cruiser jolted. One of its wheels drifted off the pavement, tearing and grinding.

A voice went up from the backseat: “What are you
doing?
”

The kid was awake.

“You
asshole!
”

Again, the cruiser lurched with a bang.

Rudolf managed to straighten his wheel. He angled his front left tire from the rim of the ditch, then leveled out on the pavement. And no sooner done than the sheriff was back on the radio, yelling—though no more than patches of clarity broke through a wash of static. Beaumont reached for his volume dial, but it didn't help. He pounded the box. Only part of a statement trickled through. “*-
kid
woRks foR
-&%$#@—yOu've
G*t thE
wrong—*#$
”

Beaumont turned his radio off.

“Jesus.” He looked in the rearview mirror, still not clear as to what had just happened.

With Kutay and Highman dropped from the mix, he felt like he'd just boomed out of a dust storm. Dillerville Pike was as calm as before. The sound of his breathing filled the car. He dabbed the clammy sweat from his brow.

The backseat was quiet. He looked around. The kid was unconscious again. What had happened? Another blow to the skull? Or just terror …

Turning to face the road once more, Rudolf's heart continued to race. He shook his head in bewilderment.
Jesus
…

Later that morning, a couple of rum and sodas would go down nicely. Stiff.

The sloping, weed-choked banks to either side of the roadway glowed in the headlights, plunging into the ditches below while rising up to a series of pastures. Gripping the wheel, Beaumont angled his cruiser between them, straight down the middle.

He was plotting his course of return to the precinct, torn between Groffdale and Eby Hess Roads, when everything seemed to go strangely quiet.

It wasn't a drop in sound, or any reduction in visible movement, so much as the sudden, eerie sensation of being watched, and
closely
, that caught his attention. The hairs on the back of his neck had already begun to bristle when something flickered—a flash of movement, off to the left. Just out the window. Directly beside him … Stiff with hesitation, he looked over—slowly turning his head to see. At first, nothing appeared to him clearly. What looked like the lights of a distant radio tower flashed across a lake … (?) … Or
was
that a lake? And, actually, wouldn't those flashing lights have been blocked by the road bank? For that matter, how were they holding steady beside his cruiser for hundreds of yards?

The sudden loss of perspective confounded him.

Then, to skew his bearings further, the “lake” disappeared—as though a haze had drifted across the moon's reflection. That's when
Rudolf nervously started to reconfigure his visual take. What he came up with coursed a chill to the farthest extreme of every appendage. No, that wasn't a radio tower. Those weren't signals off in the distance … No, that was a pair of eyes—red and beaming, directly beside him. And no, that wasn't a lake. That was a tongue, a mouth, glistening, panting—fogging the window, just inches away. A hideous face was staring at
him
. And not just staring, but laughing, cackling …

Paralyzed, Beaumont's stomach dropped. Suspended in breathless, flatline shock, he could only await the return of his senses.

It looked like an overgrown jackrabbit, bounding …

- at sixty miles per hour, at least