Ravenous (14 page)

“Oh, Christ,” Hurley whispered. “Oooh, dear
Christ
,” he barked, turning away from the body, hands on his hips. He turned to George then. “What ... what the hell are we dealing with, here?”

“I gotta get him on the table before I can even guess,” George said, “but this looks exactly like Deputy Garrett's body. I bet I'll find the same fang marks on this guy.”

“You're
sure
they were fangs?” Hurley said.

“They were either fangs or long, slightly curved, sharply-pointed teeth.”

Hurley's eyebrows huddled together. “That's ... the same thing.”

“My point exactly.” He stepped closer to Hurley and lowered his voice. “Listen, Ferrell. It's not like someone put on some artificial fangs and went to work on this guy. I mean, hell, that wouldn't even
work
. The positioning of the teeth, the shape of the jaw—there's no way a human being could fake that, Ferrell.” George hunkered down beside the corpse and turned his flashlight onto it. “Look at this, the same as before—the throat, the abdomen. It's almost identical to—”

When George said nothing more for a long moment, Hurley said, “What's wrong?”

“Found something.”

Hurley hunkered down at George's side.

George took a pen from his pocket and pointed at a small, dark tuft of fur caught on the zipper of the man's jacket. “Anybody got a baggie?”

A moment later, one of the deputies came to him with a small plastic evidence bag. George put away his pen, took a long pair of tweezers from his pocket, then carefully plucked the tuft of fur off the zipper. He dropped the fur in the bag, then stood as he put away the tweezers. He offered the bag to Hurley.

“You think that came off a person?” George said.

“Okay,” Hurley said quietly, taking the baggie. “Maybe Lenny doesn't know what he's talking about.”

“The lab in Eureka will be able to tell you what kind of animal it is from this fur, or from saliva found on the corpse. I'd take the lab results over anything Lenny says.”

Hurley handed the baggie to a passing deputy and said, “Give this to someone in the Eureka Crime Scene Unit when they get here.” He turned to Deputy Kopechne. “Any witnesses?”

“The people in the next house made the call when they heard a man screaming,” Kopechne said. “I'm sure they weren't the only ones. We haven't canvassed the neighborhood yet.”

“That house there?” Hurley said, pointing.

“Yes.”

Hurley walked down the sidewalk to the next house. There was no fence around the yard, just a concrete path that cut across the lawn to the small screened-in porch. Hurley tried the screen door, but it was locked. He knocked hard on the door's frame and called, “Hello?”

A moment later, the front door opened and a man in a robe came out and stood at the screen door. “Yes?” he said.

“I'm Sheriff Hurley. You called about someone screaming earlier?”

“Oh, yeah. Come on in.”

The man unlocked the screen door and opened it. Hurley crossed the porch and followed the man into the house.

It was dark in the living room, with only one lamp on at the end of the couch glowing a pale yellow, and the television running quietly, spreading its shimmer out over the floor. A woman sat on the couch, also in a robe. She held a glass of some amber beverage. Her blonde hair was mussed, as if she'd already been in bed for awhile.

Hurley turned to the man. “I need to know everything you heard, Mr.—?”

“Arden. David Arden. My wife Maxine.”

Hurley smiled. “Why don't we sit down and get comfortable?”

“Yeah, sure,” Arden said, gesturing toward a wingback chair. Then he went to the couch and sat down at the other end from his wife.
 

“Now, what did you hear tonight, Mr. and Mrs. Arden?” Hurley asked.

“Maxine was already asleep, but I was lying awake in bed,” Arden said. “I heard this scream. Not a typical scream, because it wasn't a woman. It was clearly the sound of someone in pain. I got up, went out on the porch and looked around.”

“See anything?”

“Not at first. I heard something, though. Somewhere out front, it came from the left—” He gestured with one hand. “—over by the corner of Magnolia and Manzanita.”

“What kind of sound was it?”

“Well, it's hard to describe. Grunting? Movement? It was a combination of things. When I heard it, I knew something was happening just up the sidewalk. I left the porch and went out to the mailbox, looked up the sidewalk, and I saw this ... well, it was like ... somebody on the ground and—”

“It was a person?”

Arden frowned. “Of course. It took me awhile to figure out what I was seeing because it wasn't much more than a silhouette, but I realized it was somebody lying on the sidewalk, and somebody else, somebody big, hunched down over him. Or her.”

“And you're sure that what you saw was a
person
hunched over this body?”

He frowned again. “Well,
yes
. I mean, he was huge. Way too big to be an animal. Unless we've got some animals around here that I don't know about.”

“Yes, you and me both,” Hurley said. “What did you do then?”

“I ran in the house and called you.”

Maxine took a couple swallows of her drink, then shook her head. “I can't believe you went out there. What
possessed
you to actually ...
do
something for a change?” She was an attractive woman, but as she spoke, her face became ugly with a twisted, bitter expression.

“Why don't you go to bed?” Arden said quietly.

“You woke me up, and I'm awake now,” she said. She took another drink.

“Is it possible for you to be awake and
not
drink?” Arden whispered harshly.

“Um, excuse me,” Hurley said, “but if I could just ask a few more questions, then I won't bother you anymore.”

“I'm sorry, Sheriff,” Arden said.

“While you were out there, did you notice any cars parked on the street that aren't normally there?”

“Cars?” Arden said, squinting a little. “Not that I remember. I wasn't really paying any attention to the cars.”

“Was there anyone else around, maybe someone standing or walking nearby?”

Arden turned his head back and forth. “No. It was very quiet. This is a quiet neighborhood, especially late at night. It's mostly families, some senior citizens. Not much going on after nine. Tonight was no different.”

“Actually, that's the neighborhood my husband would
like
to live in,” Maxine said, “not the one we
really
live in. There are a lot of teenagers in this neighborhood, and right here on Magnolia, and they're anything
but
quiet.”

“Maxine,” Arden said.

She leaned forward. “We've got pregnant teenagers on this street, we've got a registered sex offender a block over, a
child
molester.”

Through clenched teeth, Arden said quietly, “Maxine, will you just shut up and go to bed? Can't we do this later?”

“Plenty of your deputies have been to this street time and again,” Maxine said to Hurley. “Mostly because of the teenagers, but once they came because Millie Pruitt, across the street and a few houses down, finally stabbed her abusive husband.” She sat back and turned to Arden. “Oh, yes, this is a quiet neighborhood. A
great
place to live.” Then she added, with a sneer in her voice, “And the best we can do.” She tipped her glass back and emptied it. She got up off the sofa and shuffled out of the room.

Arden's head drooped for several seconds as he leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, hands locked together. Then he sat up and said, “Again, I'm sorry, Sheriff. You came on a bad night.”

Hurley hoped to finish the questions before Maxine came back and continued whatever domestic squabble was going on between them. “If we could get back to what you saw. This person who was hunched over the body on the sidewalk—was there anything distinctive about this person, anything at all?”

Arden frowned as he thought about it. Finally, he shook his head, “I can't think of anything, except that it was somebody big. And maybe muscular. Well ... either muscular or fat, but ... well, I just didn't get the
sense
that it was a fat person, you know what I mean?”

Hurley nodded.

“It didn't
move
like a fat person.”

“How did it move?”

“Well, it didn't move much at all,” Arden said with a shrug. “It kept making a ... well, this jerking-like motion, but with its head. I
think
. Like I said, it was just a silhouette. All I knew was, it didn't look right, which is why I called you. Because it looked somehow ... violent. Also because that scream sounded like someone was hurt pretty bad.”

Hurley nodded, then stared at the floor for a little while. He was disappointed. He'd been hoping for something solid from David Arden. What he'd gotten so far didn't add up to much. But it suggested one thing—George Purdy's wild animal was most likely a person. A serial killer?

That's
just
what I need,
Hurley thought.

He stood and said, “All right, Mr. Arden.”

Arden stood, too.

“You'll get a visit from one of my deputies in the next day or so. Tell them what you told me. And if you remember anything else, please tell the deputy, okay? Or—” He reached into his shirt pocket under his jacket and produced his card, which he handed to Arden. “—give me a call.”

“Will do,” Avery said, taking the card. He went to the front door and opened it.

Out on the porch, Hurley nodded to Arden and said, “My best to your wife.” Outside, he went along the sidewalk to the spot where the horribly mutilated body lay. Hurley walked over to George, who stood beside his SUV talking to a deputy.

“Well, our witness doesn't help your animal theory any, George,” he said. He told George what Arden had said.

George frowned and said, “Too
big
to be an animal?”

“That's what he said.”

“Then how do you explain that bit of fur I found? You wait and see, the lab will tell you what that fur came off of, and
that
will be your killer. It's obvious your witness has his head up his ass.”

Hurley sighed as he looked in the direction of the Arden house. What was he to think? A witness told him a
person
had been hunched over the body, and the deputy coroner, and perhaps a tuft of fur, insisted it was the work of a savage animal. Whatever it was, apparently it had killed two people so far.

He hoped—he
prayed
—that it was an animal. Hurley did not want to have to deal with the kind of monstrous person who could do such a thing to a fellow human being.

 

 

 

20

 

Empty House, Empty Bed

 

 

Thursday

 

Hugh Crane sat in his car across the street from the house on Clauson shortly before noon on Thursday, waiting. He'd gone into the house as soon as he arrived and spread a blanket he'd bought that day at Wal-Mart over the immaculately made bed. He did not want to leave behind any unseemly stains.

Emily almost had not let him out of the house. He'd mentioned going back to work that day, and she'd practically had a tantrum, so he'd decided to take one more day off. But he told her he wanted to go down to the office to pick up some files he needed to work on, and he promised not to be gone more than an hour.

“An hour?” she'd said as he shaved at the bathroom mirror, her arms wrapped around his waist, chin resting on his shoulder, breasts pressed against his back. She was warm against him. “Why so long? It doesn't take an hour to get there and back.”

“Well, I'm sure people will ask about you. I'll want to answer them, won't I? Then I thought I'd stop and pick us up some fish and chips at Blue Cove for lunch.”

“Really? I'm not hungry, though.”

“You will be when lunchtime rolls around.”

“No, I mean, I haven't been hungry. It's like the ... like it killed my appetite.”

“You had a horrible experience, Emily. I really think you ought to call that counselor. Hey, that's a good idea—why don't you call her, have her come over while I'm gone. You two can talk.”

“I suppose I could do that.” Then, with a smile: “Or ... you could stay here and we could fuck some more.” She laughed.

Hugh smiled at her in the mirror and lowered the razor for a moment. “I must admit,” he said, “I'm a little surprised to find you so ... horny all of a sudden.”

“How do you know it's sudden? Maybe I've been feeling this way for a long time and it just finally came out.”

“
Have
you?”

She giggled. “No, it
was
sudden. But I think it has something to do with wanting to get that ... that horrible man, that
creature
, out of my mind, to fill that space with something good, you know? I need you to erase all that.”

He nodded. “Okay. I've never heard of such a thing, but I guess it makes sense.” He continued shaving.

“But that's not really the reason, either,” she said. “I ... I don't know what brought this on. But it's overpowering, Hugh. Last night, when I came out of that bathroom, I had to have you. It wasn't just an urge, it was an all-consuming
need
. I
had
to have you. I think I would've gone insane if you'd pushed me away. And I need it again.” She reached down and grabbed his crotch.

He jumped a little and jerked the razor away from his throat. “Jeez, Emily, you trying to make me open a vein, here?”

“But I want it again,” she said, squeezing his penis rhythmically until it began to harden.