The Beast of Barcroft (10 page)

Exhausted and full, they pulled into Ben's driveway near midnight.

“You sure you're okay to drive? You can crash on the couch.” He touched his heart and held his hand up.

She laughed. “I'll be back in Georgetown in ten minutes.” She remembered his break-in and the prints in his basement then. “You want me to walk
you
in?”

Ben shook his head. “No girl has ever offered to walk me to my doorstep before.” A wry smile touched his lips. “No, I'm fine.”

They got out of the car, both of them looking around instinctively. When they each realized what the other was doing they laughed. Lindsay crossed the lawn toward her car and Ben headed toward the door. He called after her.

“Other than the horribly awkward kiss, the discovery of human remains, and the mountain lion attack, it was a pretty good day.”

“I thought we weren't going to mention the kiss.”

He smiled. “Oh, I can mention it. You're forbidden.”

Suddenly, she ran to him and threw her arms around him, squeezing him hard. “Thank you,” she said, then jogged back to the driver's side of her car before he could hug her back.

She started the car and he tapped the window.

He gave her a kind smile and his brow, normally tense, relaxed. “Honestly,” he said, “I don't remember the last time I spent all day outside. In the fresh air. Just because. And I want you to know: I'll never pull that again.”

Lindsay laughed. “Asshole.”

“Take your pills.”

“You too. And you watch your back.”

There was no traffic at that hour and she crossed the Key Bridge in minutes and was parked at her building on N Street just after midnight. She let herself into her apartment and went to each room, turning on all of the lights, slipping off Ben's clothes as she went. She thought that he was wrong.
He may have saved my life, but he's still wrong
. An animal didn't need to be special to lash out. She knew that well enough. She'd known it since Baltimore. And she should have known better today.

She wanted Faith. She wanted to fall asleep next to her, but she had no phone with which to call her or send a message. For a brief moment, she thought about driving over to her place, but she was bone tired now. And miserable.

She found some of her own pajamas, and crawled into bed with the lights still on. She turned on the television to take her mind off the drainpipe. Finally, the day began to slip away. She felt herself dozing off. As her eyelids drooped, her vision constricted. It resembled a receding circle of light, just out of reach. She felt herself being drawn deeper into that dark tunnel until she flailed in bed, jarring herself awake. She sobbed for a long time then, but afterward, near daybreak, fell into a dreamless sleep.

M
ONDAY,
N
OVEMBER 17

It was after midnight by the time Lindsay left and Ben walked inside. He was welcomed with a noxious smell and a wet foot as soon as he passed through the doorway. That damn cat had pissed on the doorjamb.

“God damn it!”

He stormed into the kitchen and snatched some paper towels off the counter. As he rummaged under the sink for disinfectant, he detected, by smell, another puddle by the back door. After cleaning up both messes, he tromped up the stairs looking for the culprit. He found the cat sprawled on his bed again. The cat beheld him from the center of the bed with a regal air. It lifted its bushy tail and let it float back to the bed lazily.

“Like I need anything else to contend with today, you asshole. You want to take your chances outside?”

The cat curled into a tight ball, then unfurled itself in a giant stretch. It showed Ben its belly. Now that it was bathed, Ben had to admit the Maine coon was a handsome creature.

He sighed. Along with his breath, he expelled any anger or leftover adrenaline remaining from the long day. He kicked off his shoes and flopped onto the bed. The cat did not budge. Something sharp poked his thigh and he removed his father's badge from his pocket.

“Some good luck charm.”

The cat meowed, loud and demanding. It continued to lie as if it had turned itself inside out. Ben relented and scratched its belly. The cat purred.

He looked over and thought of the rats invading Hazel's house and what they had done to her. Having a cat might not be such a bad idea, he thought.

“The enemy of my enemy is my pet,” he said. “Just use the box next time, all right?”

The cat nudged his hand with its nose.

Ben stared at the ceiling, agitated. Too much coffee, he told himself, but he kept replaying the day over in his mind. The kiss.
Horrifying
. The attack.
Slightly more horrifying
. And his conversation with Lindsay in the diner. Was he attributing human motives to a wild animal? He had watched an apex predator take down a huge, muscular greyhound—his beloved companion—with no more trouble than Bucky himself had taken down a rabbit years before on Thanksgiving. Wasn't that terrible enough without ascribing some malevolence or deeper meaning to it?

Before he realized what was happening, he felt his heart begin to pound. Faster, harder. It became difficult to breathe. He knew precisely what was happening, but he bolted upright in bed anyway, panicked.

“Again?” he gasped. “Seriously?”

The cat jumped off the bed and scurried beneath it. He bolted from the bed and threw open the window, letting the cool night air into his suddenly hot, claustrophobic bedroom. He tried to stop his mind from tumbling from one nightmare to the next, but he could not. It was as if his subconscious were on its hands and knees in front of a closet, reaching in and pulling terrible thoughts out like garments, only to fling them over its shoulder to plunge even deeper inside. The attacks. Bucky. Rachel. Dad. Nothing was too small or insignificant to be pulled out and examined. Even more mundane worries, by comparison, were dragged out and into the light, examined, then tossed aside to add to the mounting anxiety pile. A report due at work that he was woefully behind on. The mortgage he signed based on two incomes and that he now had to carry alone. Alone—how he would end up if he survived, because on top of all of his other problems, now he had to contend with panic attacks too.
If he survived?
Where the hell did that come from?
he asked himself. It's not like he was being hunted, he told himself. He had survived a brush with death and, like an idiot, he pressed his luck. End of story.

He consciously tried to throw up roadblocks to slow the runaway train that was his brain. He focused on his father, but even that had its drawbacks. “Big Ben” had battled cancer over the years without complaint. When he thought of his father's resilience and grace in the face of it, it shamed him.
I can't even manage a breakup without happy pills and now I'm blowing a gasket
. Big Ben had been a rock, and just thinking about him halted the spiral and he found himself leveling off. He left the window open and collapsed into bed again, letting the night air dry his skin. He thought of his father, and he thought of Bucky, and his mind wandered back to the rabbit. That day had been the first time he had truly seen Bucky for the powerful creature that he was, and the last time he had seen his father that way.

He had been in New Jersey, visiting Big Ben for Thanksgiving. It was the name everyone called him, which always amused Ben because his father was a short guy. This holiday, though, he seemed even smaller. It had been a couple of months after one of his father's early surgeries. He had been split up the middle so the doctors could get at the cancer and his insides had been completely reconfigured, and it had been a long, painful recovery. But recover he did and by the holiday he was moving around well enough. Before dinner, they sat together on the back porch and watched Bucky run his figure eights in the yard. By accident, in his mad running, the greyhound had flushed a rabbit. It surprised the dog. The rabbit bolted, but Bucky, already in motion, overcame his own surprise quickly, banked, and overtook the smaller creature before it could dart under the fence to safety. Bucky pounced on top of it and shook it by the neck like a chew toy.

Ben and his father tumbled off the back porch, yelling. His father got there first. In that moment, Ben marveled: Bucky was not Bucky, the harmless, overgrown puppy. He was no longer even a racing dog. He was a wild animal. A perfect, streamlined predator, ninety pounds of fang and claw and pure, rippling muscle. The men's shouting had startled Bucky off the rabbit for a moment, but his entire body quivered with bloodlust, and he started back to finish the job.

Without hesitation, Big Ben threw himself between this beast and the broken rabbit. He planted his feet and he flung his open hand over his head. In that moment, all of the sickness and the operations and the infections fell away. Ben stared at him in wonder. His father was restored. In a stance as powerful as any comic book superhero, his hand raised like an angry god's. Zeus ready to hurl a thunderbolt.

Faced with an alpha, Bucky ducked his head. He whimpered, then cantered off to the side and away.

Now both of them are gone,
Ben thought,
picked off by predators
. As much as he liked remembering his father that way, when he thought of that day, he thought of the rabbit too. Ben had corralled his dog and led him inside, and when he came back outside, his father was by the fence. He joined Big Ben and they stood over the rabbit, still alive and shaking with the pounding of its tiny heart. It was on its side, its neck broken. Its back legs twitched as if trying to right itself, its mouth opened wide in a silent scream, and then the light went out in its eyes.

Ben shot upright in bed.
Its eyes
.

The alarm clock on the bedside table read 2:45
A.M.
He bolted out of bed and was halfway down the stairs before running back up and grabbing the flashlight from the drawer of the bedside table and the baseball bat propped against it. He pulled on some fresh jeans and his boots, zipped up a jacket, and with his torch and bat, stepped out his back door. The motion sensor detected his movement and bathed the backyard in thousands of lumens. He scanned his yard, then cast a quick glance toward the fence that bordered Madeleine's. Was that woman still there, skulking around in the basement? In her strange garb, alone with the rats? When he satisfied himself that his own yard was empty, he moved toward the fence bordering Hazel's property.

Once he was out of range of the motion detector, the lights turned off and the darkness rushed in again, but he was already through Hazel's yard now, sweeping his beam from side to side. On the other side of her house, he crossed the street, continuing the route he had taken with Lindsay earlier that day and when pursuing the cat before that.

The neighborhood was as still as he had ever seen it. Streetlamps and front-porch lights burned, but they were isolated circles in an otherwise black landscape. He looked up at the sky. Yesterday had been a clear day, but low clouds raced overhead now, hiding the moon somewhere to the west. He crept through yards, careful not to make noise to alert his neighbors, or anything else, until he reached the yard where he had given up the chase only a week ago. He hopped over the final fence where he had, out of breath, cursed his dog's killer that night. In the yard, he pointed his light at the last section of fence where the cat had leapt over with Bucky, then doubled back to menace him. Ben took a deep breath and turned off his flashlight.

Immediately, he heard a faint scratching behind him.

He whirled around, swinging his bat at the air and nearly dropping his light as he fumbled to turn it on. A fat possum waddled down the fence line, crossing the section he had just clambered over. When it could go no farther, it dropped into a pile of leaves.

“Relax, McKelvie,” he whispered to himself. “You're not on the fucking moor.”

He tightened his grip on the bat and turned off his light again. The night plunged back into total darkness. He heard the rustling continue for a moment, then stop. As his eyes began to adjust, he caught the pale form of the possum disappear beneath a shed in a neighboring yard. There were no sounds then. No cars passing, no barking dogs. Just a light breeze through the trees.

He walked to the spot where the cat had stopped to size him up. He looked in every direction. The yard was bordered by trees, in deep shadow. No lights from the house. No streetlights. No lights at all.

Dread flooded him then like a dark tide.

Lindsay's bear story had loosened it, but it was the rabbit. Just as Bucky had flushed it into the open, that memory of it had flushed what had been hiding in his subconscious for a week.
The light went out of the rabbit's eyes
. But there was not a light, not really. It was just something people said. It was life that had left, not a light.

Except for the cat. Its eyes gleamed with light.
No,
Ben thought,
they burned
. He looked overhead, hoping the moon would show itself, but in his heart he knew that even the biggest, brightest harvest moon in the clearest night sky could not explain those eyes. They glowed of their own accord, in reflection of nothing. They glowed from within.

T
HURSDAY,
N
OVEMBER 20

It had been four days since Ben and Lindsay's encounter in the drainpipe, and though Ben had told no one, it was all over the neighborhood, and the little converted chapel that was the Barcroft Community House was standing room only for the next meeting. Ben had wondered how everyone knew, but as he watched Jim assail Sissy Chapman, it fell into place. Jim organized the block party every year. It was Jim who had organized Ben and the others against Madeleine. Jim who greeted everyone after work from his lawn at the top of the street as they drove home, as he played catch with his two boxers and a tennis ball. Lisa had told him about Lindsay's hospital visit, and Jim had simply done his thing.

Yesterday, Ben had called the Arlington Police Department for the second time in as many days, asking for the detectives who were assigned to the case of the body in the drainpipe. He had given his name and explained that he was one of the people who had discovered the victim. The desk sergeant had asked if he had any new information to share.

“Well…no, not new information necessarily, but I was told I—”

“Sir, we appreciate your call, but this is an active investigation and we can't divulge any details to the public.”

“No, no, I get it, but I'm not the public. My friend and I actually discovered the body. We were attacked. My dog was already killed. I'm just looking to confirm some things. Officer Cushing promised the department would keep me posted.”

He realized as soon as he said it out loud how ridiculous it sounded. She had only been trying to keep him quiet. He had been had.

“Sir, I don't care if Eliot Ness himself promised you information, Arlington PD does not comment on active investigations.”

“May I speak to Officer Cushing then?”

“Again, sir, if you'll leave your name and information I'll have someone call you back when they get a chance.”

“Your noncommittal response does not fill me with confidence that a reply is forthcoming, Sergeant.”

“Everyone's a little busy right now, sir, what with the protecting and the serving and all. Have a nice day.”

Today, as expected, no return call had come and Ben was more than happy to let Jim, as he had long promised, huff and puff and blow the whole damn house down.

Ben leaned against the wall next to the front door of the Community House with his arms folded. Despite his anger, he was exhausted. Even with motion sensors, locks, an alarm system, and a new guard cat who continued to piss around the doors and windows with a flagrant disregard for the litter box, sleep was short and fitful. He had been consumed with research, spending extra hours at work scouring the Internet for big cats with glowing eyes. On Monday night, he finally dropped all pretense and eliminated the “cats” portion of his search and just focused on the glowing eyes. The folklore he found was ridiculous—pure fiction—but it did not help him sleep. He knew what he had seen.

He turned his attention to the show at the front of the room. Sissy Chapman wore a darker, more somber suit than her usual reds and pinks, but her makeup remained unchanged, propping up a strained smile that edged toward maniacal. She tried to convey great depth and sympathy with her eyes, but with that fixed smile it looked as if she were wincing in anticipation of a blow.

This time, Sissy came with heavier reinforcements than Lindsay, who had clearly gone off Sissy's script the week before. Flanking the councilwoman was a senior Arlington police officer who wore a stern expression and whose name tag read
PASKO
and a no-nonsense gray-haired woman in charge of the Department of Human Services, which included the Public Health Division. Ben spied Cushing off to the side. They made eye contact for a chilly moment until she joined Officer Pasko.

The crowd was already agitated, and Jim's incendiary questions were not helping the situation.

“My wife is a nurse and she stitched up a young lady this weekend who was mauled by a mountain lion. Apparently, I now live at the corner of Rat Road and Bobcat Boulevard. I want to know, should I just move?”

Laughter, gasps, and murmured assent rose from the crowd.

A middle-aged woman stood up. “I heard the attack happened on Four Mile Run. In broad daylight! I live right up against the Run. What is going on?”

Sissy stepped forward, waving her hands. “Everyone, please settle down. I appreciate your concerns, but if—”

Jim cut her off. “We're long past the ‘if everyone does their part' bullshit.
What is the county doing about this?
”

Officer Pasko stepped forward and looked at the middle-aged woman.

“Ma'am, Arlington PD has increased the number of patrols in the neighborhood, concentrating on those streets immediately bordering Four Mile Run. We're working very closely with the Department of Human Services to ensure that traps are set for the vermin, which could be a possible food source. We are—”

“No offense,” a young mother said, “but what do the police know about animal control? What happened to that woman who was here last week from the zoo? Can't they do something?”

“Who do you think got attacked on the trail?” someone yelled.

The crowd gasped. Word had spread. Jim looked back at Ben and winked.
He lives for this shit,
Ben thought.

Questions came out in a jumble from the crowd and any semblance of order was lost immediately. A man yelled, “Are you going to close the beaches?” and some in the crowd laughed, while others shouted him down. Sissy's grin was frozen in place, but her brow was knotted as if she was fighting a migraine. Ben pushed himself off the wall, put two fingers into his mouth, and whistled. In the closed space, it sounded like a bottle rocket launching.

“Was that Manny Benavides in the drain?”

The crowd fell silent.

Cushing whispered something in Pasko's ear. He looked at her and nodded. She looked at Ben with daggers in her eyes. Neither Ben nor Lindsay had mentioned the body to the nurses. He had not even mentioned it to Jim. Ben had told Cushing that night, and promised that he would not mention it to anyone until they were able to positively identify the body and inform Manny's wife. But that was days ago and no one had bothered to keep him informed.

“I'm not at liberty to discuss the particulars right now, only to say that there was a victim of an animal attack.”

“Murder.”

“We're investigating just how and where it occurred, but animals don't murder, Mr. McKelvie.”

“I'm sure Mrs. Benavides will be comforted by that.”

Pasko ignored the barb and focused his attention on the young mother again. “And yes, ma'am, the department
is
working with the National Zoo. They have agreed to send,” he continued, glancing at Ben, “a
qualified
representative to help us in capturing this animal. We're using the full resources of the department and taking every available measure to neutralize this animal.”

When Ben realized he wasn't going to get any answers, he left. He made it to the parking lot when Cushing called after him.

“Hey! Are you fucking happy?”

“Not particularly, no. What's your problem?”

“You said you weren't going to mention anything.”

“Four days ago.”

“So you throw the department under the bus, so, what, you can scare the shit out of everyone?”

“We found the guy! Doesn't that entitle me to be kept in the loop?”

“Do you give a shit that there's an active investigation, that his family might not have been notified yet, or that they could have been in that meeting?”

“Is any of that true?”

“No, but that's not my point. I'm asking if you
care
about any of that. Or do you only care about being right?”

Ben had opened his car door, but slammed it shut and spun around. “I care about being taken seriously, because I
am
right. I asked you that first night if Manny had gotten taken by that thing and you looked at me like I had a penis growing out of my forehead. Now, is it him?”

“We've already established that you looked half-crazy and smelled like piss. And you acted like an asshole, so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised now that you truly
are
an asshole.”

“I'm sorry I fell into a puddle of greyhound piss when a fucking mountain lion killed my dog, Officer! Now, was it Manny?”

She stared at him, eyes blazing with fury, but she said, “Yes.” Then, in a low, controlled tone, “You want to be in the loop? Fine. The body had his identification in a zippered pocket. What clothes we could recover off the body matched his wife's description. She was notified a few days ago, but at her request, it's been kept out of the papers. It's horrific to them, the particulars. She doesn't want her kids to hear about how it went down. Now everyone and their brother knows thanks to your little stunt in there. How long do you think it'll take for her kids to hear about it on the playground?”

Ben took a deep breath. “Look, I'm sorry about that. I am. But I am telling you there is something very strange going on here. First, Manny. Then a few days later, Hazel. All inside a couple of weeks. That's not to mention my dog and the dozens of other pets,” he said, pointing to the bulletin board at the front of the Barcroft Community House, crammed with flyers of missing cats and dogs. As he pointed, Jim emerged from inside the building, looking around. He nodded and started toward them.

“Something is preying on this neighborhood.”

Cushing sighed. “Yes, a mountain lion!
I get it
. I believe you now, are you happy? And in Hazel's case, it was probably heart disease.”

“So the rats came after she died? You know that for a fact?”

“What, you think they killed her before she died? Invaded her home en masse and attacked in a swarm?”

“Maybe.” It was Ben's turn to stare at her. “Yeah.”

Cushing chuckled. “Okay,
X-Files.
”

He wanted to tell her about the eyes, but every time he opened his mouth, he lost more credibility. He considered pushing the rat issue, but she would tell him that it was a code enforcement matter, and he would retort that his code enforcement contact was, until a few days ago, rotting in a drain. Over Cushing's shoulder, Jim called out, “Where are you going? It's just getting good!” and a massive shape shot across the street and tore out his throat.

Jim never saw it coming. The blur spun him 360 degrees and when he whirled back around, his torso was ripped open and blood coursed down the front of his shirt.

The blur had torn Jim's windpipe as it sailed past him. His throat looked black in the night, save for the flashes of crimson caught by the streetlights. For a moment, Jim's disbelieving eyes met Ben's, then he crumpled in the middle of the street.

Ben tried to speak but the words careened in his head like lotto balls, and he could not draw one into the chute and out of his mouth. He heard gurgling and a whistling sound, then nothing but the staccato clacking of claws landing and recovering on the blacktop. Unaware of the danger, Cushing continued to glare at Ben, ready to counter his next slight. By the time she sensed the commotion behind her, the beast was on Jim again, burying its large, heavy head in his neck and thrashing.

“Shoot!” yelled Ben finally.

At that, the creature bolted down the sloped street, toward the dead end of the woods, Jim clamped in its long muzzle. Ben charged after them. To Cushing's credit, she recovered quickly and was a half-step behind him as he ran. “Shoot, God damn it, shoot!” he yelled again. No sound came from Jim. No screams, no curses, no pleading.
How could he?
thought Ben.
With what?
Ben chased after the beast, screaming at Cushing. But when he noticed Jim's lifeless body floundering, doll-like, in the beast's maw, he knew it was too late. All that mattered now was stopping the killer before it escaped into the woods at the bottom of the lane.

Cushing must have felt the same way. In one fluid motion, she stopped, drew her sidearm, sighted, and fired two rounds at the blur. Ben saw the leaves rustle on either side of the mound of fur.
Warning shots, to scare it off
.

The beast stopped just before the dense tree line of Four Mile Run. It dropped Jim and spun around, its back arched and hackles raised. It emitted a low growl and bared its fangs, and Ben saw that it was not a mountain lion at all but a massive wolf.

Screams from the top of the hill. The Community House emptied, the people from the meeting drawn by the gunshots. They stumbled into the street to discover the avenue wet with gore. Instead of slipping into the woods at its back, the wolf charged.

Cushing sidestepped and followed it with her weapon, but the wolf darted between them, ruining her shot. Ben dodged and watched it pass. The long muzzle, the heavy head, the massive shoulders—from his nature shows, he recognized it as a gray wolf. Its body was slender but powerful, easily twice the size his dog had been, and in the profile of that broad, heavy head burned a single, orange eye. Ben caught a smell like that of a swamp and then the beast was gone, pumping up the hill, back toward the Community House.

Cushing pivoted and bolted after the creature, leaving Ben at the dark end of the street. But there was nothing he could do. Neither for her nor for Jim. Jim's head, barely attached to the rest of his body, lolled in the direction of the woods. Ben walked around to that side and crouched beside his friend. His clothes were soaked through with blood, making the places on his torso, neck, and face that had been ripped apart indistinguishable from the places that had not. The windpipe was laid bare, the carotid artery torn, and just above the bloody mess, Jim's eyes, stark white and wide, stared out in shock.

Ben could not see over the rise in the road, but he could imagine his neighbors' terror at the hellhound bearing down on them. He imagined them scattering, the wolf darting among them, changing directions on a dime. He thought of Lisa then, six blocks over from this very spot, completely unaware and waiting for her husband to come home from a mundane neighborhood meeting. Or was she at work tonight? Is that how she would find out, when the ambulance brought her husband in on a stretcher like so much meat?