Skull Moon (6 page)

And now after all the killing he'd done, all the men he'd tracked, all the convicts and murderers he'd brought in, Longtree was going after something a little different.

A killer that acted like a man.

But sported the hungers of an animal.

It was late when Longtree found the body.

He was just making his way down a slope of scrub oak towards the outskirts of Wolf Creek when he saw what might have been an arm covered with a light dusting of snow. Bringing his gelding to an abrupt halt, Longtree dismounted and fought through the snowdrifts to what he'd seen. The wind was blowing with fierce raw-edged gusts that whistled through the hills. His long buffalo coat flapped around him as he bent down and began to dig through the drifts to expose the rest of the corpse.

He got his oil lantern out and lit it.

The corpse wasn't worth revealing.

Especially on this night of black, howling wind and bitter flurries. Longtree judged the man to be in his mid-forties and this was about all he could tell. The body was mutilated, chest and belly gouged open. The flesh clawed and shredded to the point that it and the ripped garments it wore were knotted into each other. Both legs were snapped off below the knees, skin stripped free. The head was twisted around so it was face down in the snow. Both arms had been pulled off. One was missing, the other nearby, mangled and punctured with teeth marks, a Colt pistol frozen in its red fist.

Longtree tried to turn the remains over, but they were frozen into the earth. He poked and prodded gently in the snow with his gloved fingers. There was very little blood around, most of it frozen into sparkling crystals.

Not enough for a slaughter of this magnitude.

Longtree surmised from this that the man had been killed somewhere else and dragged here, gutted and dismembered on the spot.

He looked around for the remains of the cadaver's legs, but they were gone.

He studied the body again in the dancing light.

It was hard to say exactly how the man had died, such was the nature of the carnage. His throat was torn out. Little remained of it but a twisted spiral ladder of vertebrae and hacked ligament. He had been opened up in countless places and could've bled to death from any of a dozen wounds. Longtree figured the attack must've been sudden and vicious. But not too sudden; the man had drawn his gun, precious little good it had done him.

The initial attack must've been savage. Brutal beyond comprehension. The man was dead long before he was dumped here and cannibalized.

Longtree examined the wounds the best he could in the flickering light.

From the teeth and claw marks there was no doubt in his mind: Only an animal could have done this. A huge and powerful beast with iron hooks for claws and jaws like razored bear traps. No man possessed the strength. No insane mind, regardless how fevered, could've summoned up the strength to pull a man literally apart. And the tools that would've been needed to create such injuries would have been complex beyond reason.

The killer in Wolf Creek was an animal.

Type: unknown.

Clenching his teeth and sucking in icy air, Longtree picked up the severed arm. It was much like handling a frozen leg of lamb. Wedging the limb between his knees, he began the grisly task of pulling the fingers free of the gun. He had to know if it had been fired. Rigor mortis and the freezing temperatures had turned the hand into an ice sculpture. The fingers snapped like pretzel rods as he forced them away from the Colt. Two popped off completely and fell in the snow.

It was gruesome work.

But it wouldn't be the first time Longtree had done such things. A man in his line of work spent a lot of time urging the dead to give up their secrets.

The gun had been fired; only three bullets remained in the chambers.

He set the arm and weapon next to the body.

Mounting his horse, he rode into a little arroyo that was protected by a wall of pines. He tethered the black to a tree and gathered up some firewood with his hatchet. The wind was reduced to a gentle breeze in the gully and Longtree got the fire going right away. He would spend the night here. In the morning, he would drag the body into Wolf Creek and begin the job he'd come to do.

He unhitched his saddle from the black and jerked the saddle blanket off, stretching it over some rocks to let it dry; it was damp with the horse's perspiration. Longtree curled up before the blazing fire and chewed some jerky from his grub sack.

He dozed.

He didn't sleep long.

Sometime after midnight he heard horses coming up the trail that cut down the slope below him and led in the direction of Wolf Creek. He heard at least a half dozen of them come within three-hundred yards of his position, the riders dismounting. They must've seen the smoke from his fire.

He pulled himself free from his bedroll and swigged from his canteen.

In silence, he waited.

He heard them coming, stumbling through the snow to the pines that sheltered his arroyo. They were a noisy lot. Had to be whites. They stomped forward, chatting and arguing.

Longtree strapped on his nickel-plated Colt .45 Peacemakers and drew his Winchester from the saddle boot. Then he waited. They were coming down now. Longtree positioned himself away from the glow of the fire, leaning against a shelf of rocks, hidden in shadow.

They came down together, six men
in heavy woolen coats. They sported shotguns and pistols and one even had an ancient Hawken rifle. They plowed down, packed together. Very unprofessional. It would've been easy killing the lot of them.

"You got business here?" Longtree called from the darkness.

They looked startled, hearing a voice echoing, but unable to pinpoint it. They scanned their guns in every which direction. Longtree smiled.

"Identify yourselves or I'll start shooting," he called out.

The men looked around, bumping into each other.

"Bill Lauters," a big man said. "Sheriff, Wolf Creek." He tapped a badge pinned to his coat.

Longtree sighed. He knew who Lauters was.

He stepped out of the shadows and moved noiselessly to them. He was almost on top of them before they saw him and then their guns were on him.

"Who the hell are you?" one of them said.

"Easy, Dewey," Lauters said.

"Longtree, deputy U.S. Marshal," he said in an even tone, showing his own badge. "You were wired about--"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it all right. I know who you are and why you're here." Lauters said this as if the idea were beneath contempt. "You can just ride right back out again far as I'm concerned. We don't need no damn federal help."

"Regardless, Sheriff, you're going to get it."

"Where the hell's Benneman?" the one called Dewey asked. "He's the federal marshal in these parts."

"John Benneman got shot up," Longtree explained. "He'll be out of action a while."

Lauters spit a stream of tobacco juice in the snow. "And we're really lucky, boys, cause we got us a
special
U.S. Marshal here," he said sarcastically. "I guess we can just hang up our guns now."

Longtree smiled thinly. "I'm not taking over your investigation, Sheriff. I'm just here to help."

"My ass you are," one of them muttered.

"Nothing but trouble," another said.

Lauters nodded. "We don't need your help."

"Don't you?"

"Ride out," Lauters said. "Ride the hell out of here."

"Never happen," Longtree assured him.

The guns weren't lowered; they were raised now, if anything.

"I'm here to help. Nothing more." Longtree fished out a cigar and lit it with an ember from the fire. "Course," he said, "if you boys would rather stand around and argue like a bunch of schoolboys while more people are killed, that's your own affair."

"Who the hell you think you're talking to here?" Lauters snapped, taking a step forward.

Longtree stood up, pushing aside his coat and resting his hand on the butt of a Colt. They all saw this and he wanted them to. "I think I'm talking to a man with a strong like of himself."

Lauters' face went slack and then tight in the blink of an eye. "Listen, you sonofabitch!" he barked. "I don't need your goddamn help! I'm the law in this town! Not you, not the U.S. Marshals Office! If you're coming into my town, then you do what I say when I say to do it! Understand?"

Longtree remained impassive. "All I understand, Sheriff, is that you've got five dead men on your hands and if you keep this up, you'll have more." Longtree let that sink in. "Maybe if we work together, we can stop these killings."

There was no arguing with that.

"You just keep out of my way, Longtree. I don't need your damn help."

Longtree nodded. "That's fine, Sheriff. That's just fine. I'll do my own investigation. But I sure would appreciate your help."

Lauters gave him an evil stare. "Forget it. We don't need outsiders making any more of a mess of this."

"Sheriff," the one called Dewey said calmly. "We got six murders, here, for the love of God. If he can help--"

"Shut up, Dewey." Lauters turned his back on all of them and started up out of the gully.

"Who's the sixth?" Longtree asked.

"Nate Segaris," one of the men replied. "Got killed right in his house."

"Ripped to shreds," another said.

Longtree took a drag off his cigar. "Before you boys head back," he said, "you ought to know there's a seventh."

Everyone stared at him.

And in the distance, a low mournful howling rose up and died away.

The good Reverend Claussen, scarf wrapped around his throat, fought through the biting wind to the undertaking parlor. He paused in the street outside of a peeling gray building. A wooden, weathered sign read: J. SPENCE, UNDERTAKER. It was barely readable. Too many seasons of harsh winters and blistering summers had faded the black lettering to a drab leaden color.

Clenching his teeth against the elements, Claussen went in.

He went directly into the back rooms where the bodies were prepared.

In there were Wynona Spence, Sheriff Lauters, and Dr. Perry.

The reverend eyed them all suspiciously. "Why is it," he said in his New England twang, "that I wasn't told of another death? Why must I learn these things by word of mouth, by rumor?"

"Keep your shirt on, Father," Lauters said. "I--"

"I'm not a Catholic, sir. Please address me accordingly."

Lauters scowled, fished a plug of tobacco from his pouch and inserted it in his cheek. "What I was
trying
to say, Reverend, was that this here is Curly Del Vecchio. Or what there's left of him. Curly wasn't what you'd call a religious man."

Claussen, his close-cut steel-gray hair bristling, said, "The dead are granted certain considerations, Sheriff. By the grace of God let me give this poor man spiritual absolution."

Dr. Perry, standing next to the sheeted form on the table shrugged and pulled the sheet away.

Reverend Claussen paled and averted his eyes.

"Not very pretty, is it?" Wynona Spence said, her pursed lips pulled into a thin purple line which might have been a smile. "But beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Claussen glared at her. He saw no humor in death.

Wynona Spence inherited the business from her ailing father. Being a female, she was a rarity in the business. But truth be told, she was the perfect undertaker. God molds men and women for certain tasks in life, the reverend knew, and she could have been nothing but what she was. Cadaverous, tall, bony with tight colorless flesh and bulging watery eyes, she was the very image of her father. Only the drab gray dresses and the tight bun her colorless hair was drawn into marked her as a woman. Her voice was deep and velvety, her face hard and narrow. Unmarried, she lived in rooms above the funeral parlor with another woman...and the gossip took off from there.

Claussen went through the ritual over the body almost mechanically.

The words flowed from his lips like wine with the perfect intonation and breath control, but he was not aware of them. He saw only the plucked, slit, and hacked thing laid out before him staring up with blanched, bloodless eyeballs.

Claussen completed the ritual with a few prayers and an "amen". He turned and faced Lauters with a bizarre species of contempt on his rosy features. "The members of my congregation want something done, Sheriff. They demand resolution."

Lauters stared at him with unblinking, dead eyes. "We're doing all we can."

"Do more! Do it in the name of our Lord!" the Reverend exclaimed piously. "The dead deserve justice! The living, protection!"

Dr. Perry folded his arms and turned away, hiding a smile.

Wynona leaned forward, lifeless eyes examining a new type of insect.

"We're doing our best," was Lauters' only comment. He was visibly trembling, not the sort of man who liked to be told his job.

"One would think your best isn't good enough," Claussen said dryly.

Lauters face went red. "Now, listen here, Reverend. My mother taught me to respect the clergy. God knows I do my best. But don't you dare tell me my goddamn job," he said, finger stabbing the air. "I don't tell you how to pray, so don't you tell me how to run the law around here."

The reverend, electric with religious zeal and self-imposed holiness, stepped forward. "Perhaps someone should."

"Listen
, you little sonofabitch, I've had all I'm going to fucking take--"

"Your profanities fall on deaf ears. Such talk is the work of a weak mind."

Lauters grabbed him by the arm, not too roughly. "That's it, Claussen. March your holier-than-thou butt right out the door before I kick your teeth so far down your God-loving throat that you--"

"Sheriff," Perry said, flashing him a warning look.

Claussen, his eyes bulging in fear, rushed out the door like something was biting his backside.

Wynona giggled. "My goodness."