The Changing (The Biergarten Series) (16 page)

~ * ~

Sure
, George Dixon was thinking.
Sure, I'm The Park Werewolf
. The cops wouldn't be tailing him otherwise (and having once been a cop himself, he could easily spot a tail).
Where there's smoke there's
…

And so what if he didn't remember anything?! Who'd want to remember something like that?! Slam, barn, thank you, ma'am! Rip the head off, tear out the tongue, have your fun. Then forget it.

Sure. Like when he'd been in 'Nam. Plenty of stuff he did there he'd just as soon forget. And nearly had forgotten now—so many years later. Sure. You forget. You
try
to forget. You push the shit back where it doesn't smell so bad and where it's not so noticeable. Sure.

He was The Park Werewolf.

He was the lunatic who went around tearing people up.

He put their tongues in his lunch pail, for Christ's sake.

He was The Park Werewolf! So what was he going to do about it? Turn himself in? Tear up a few more people, and
then
turn himself in?

Maybe, he decided, maybe for now he'd have some lunch and think about it.

AT STRONG MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: EMERGENCY ROOM 4

And there, thought Douglas Miller, was the best evidence of all—the evidence that he couldn't yet share with her, but that he would share in time—the evidence of his faithfulness. The evidence of his fidelity to her, even though she wasn't yet his.

His fidelity not only in the fact that he'd kept himself clean for her (even when he'd had that little runaway in the car two months earlier, and they were going at it so hot and heavy—damned little bitch
bit
him, he remembered—and he'd actually stopped, had actually
pulled out
of her), but also that he was keeping her secret. Her awful, nightmarish secret.

"Mr. Miller?"

And that was the real proof of his love, wasn't it? That he'd keep her secret forever! No matter what they might do to him, he'd keep her secret. Let her go on killing; what did it matter? Everyone died sooner or later.

"Mr. Miller? I'd like to talk with you."

Death was just and fair; death was democratic. Death was peace. And it came to everyone; better that it came through her, from that marvelous body, through those moist lips, than through accident or disease.

"What's wrong with him, doctor?"

"I don't know, Mr.
Biergarten
. He was fine a few moments ago, before you came in."

"Please talk to me, Mr. Miller."

"Greta?" Miller said.

"No. Ryerson
Biergarten
. I'd like to talk with you, Mr. Miller."

"Greta."

Like dark water
, Ryerson thought.
His mind's like dark water—it's opaque, impenetrable
. "Was it Greta you were telling me about two weeks ago?"

Miller said nothing.

"Talk to me, please!"

Still, Miller said nothing. He was on his back and was wearing a white hospital gown. His eyes were on the ceiling, his gaze steady, unblinking.

"Tell me about Greta," Ryerson coaxed. And for the barest fraction of a moment, the dark water cleared and Ryerson saw . . . His brow furrowed. He wasn't sure what he saw, had
seen
, because then it was gone. A woman's face, he guessed, but it was
Picassoesque
, a mass of bright colors and harsh angles—eyes wide, nostrils flaring, she looked for all the world like a strange, angular horse. Ryerson thought that that was a very odd way for a man to see a woman, even in his imagination. He repeated, "Tell me about Greta, Mr. Miller."

"I love Greta," Miller whispered.

"Yes. Good. Why do you love her?"

"And I will"—Miller started getting an erection; the gown in the area of his groin began to lift, like some hibernating animal waking slowly under a blanket of snow—"I will keep her secret. I love her."

The doctor said to a nurse standing by, "Throw something on that, would you?" meaning a blanket or a sheet, because, Ryerson knew, the doctor, for one reason or another, did not want that distraction.

"Throw something on what, Doctor?" the nurse asked.

The doctor's eyes rolled. He nodded at the abundant evidence of Miller's now-complete erection. "That!" he said.

The nurse looked. "What did you want me to throw on it, Doctor?" She paused very briefly. Ryerson read embarrassment and confusion in her, but also a hint of titillation and amusement. "Cold water or something?"

Ryerson said, smiling despite himself, "No. I think he means a sheet, nurse."

And the nurse said, still as if confused, "Well, sure, but it'll still
be
there, won't it? I mean, we'll still
see
it."

The doctor said, "Oh come now, nurse—"

And Ryerson thought,
That's a setup if I ever heard one!

But it was Miller who came. Hard and long. So hard and long, in fact, that Ryerson, who knew something about physiological reactions to orgasm, began to worry about Miller's heart. And his throat, too. Because Miller was making a hell of a lot of noise. The same sort of noise, in fact, that Creosote made most of the time—a deep growling, hacking sound, but much louder, deeper and more self-involved than Creosote could ever hope for.

Ryerson glanced at the doctor, who was clearly trying very hard to retain the facade, at least, of professional self-control.

The nurse, at the other side of the bed, was grimacing, as if at some distasteful joke.

And Miller, after what seemed like several minutes—though Ryerson knew this was impossible; even one minute's worth of orgasm would probably kill most men—was at last quieting. And when he was quiet, when he'd fallen into a quick sleep, although his breathing remained labored for some time, the doctor glanced quizzically at Ryerson and said, "That was amazing. That was just simply amazing. I don't believe I've ever encountered anything—in my research," he added hastily, "quite like it." He looked at the nurse. "Nurse, did you keep track of the time that Mr. Miller was experiencing that orgasm?"

The nurse looked flustered and put-upon. She shook her head; "No, I'm sorry, Doctor—I didn't think—"

The doctor turned quickly to Ryerson. "How about you, Mr.
Biergarten
?"

Ryerson shook his head. "No, but I'd guess it was less than a minute. These things don't—"

The doctor cut in, "It was longer than a minute. It was two minutes, anyway. Maybe three. Good Lord, that's simply impossible." He looked at Miller, still asleep, breathing heavily. He leaned over, put a stethoscope to Miller's chest, listened for a few seconds, straightened. "His heartbeat's slightly erratic; nothing to worry about. But my God, the man should have no heartbeat at all after that—"

The nurse gasped. Ryerson looked at her, then looked at the spot she was pointing at so stiffly—the area below Miller's waist, where the gown was just now becoming stained with a milky-reddish excretion that was spreading quickly, moving outward from Miller's pubic area like a tide, and promising to stain most of the lower half of the gown before it was done.

The doctor wasted no time. He ordered Ryerson out of the room, then as Ryerson was leaving, barked at the nurse, "Did you get his blood type?"

"Of course," she answered. "It's A negative. We've got some on hand—"

"Good," the doctor said, "He's going to need it—" Which was the last that Ryerson heard before he left the room.

~ * ~

Miller was released three hours later, which surprised the hell out of Ryerson, who'd been waiting in the hospital lobby for word about Miller's condition.

"What do you mean he's been released?" he said to the admitting nurse—the same Nurse
Belgetti
who'd refused to give him Miller's real name several hours earlier. "The man's . . ." The phrase
A basket case
came to him, but he found it distasteful, so he said, "The man's in no condition—"

"Mr.
Biergarten
," Nurse
Belgetti
interrupted, "are we going to have another go-around here? I am telling you what
I've
been told by people who have no need or desire to lie to me, and that is that Mr. Miller was released twenty-five minutes ago. He was ambulatory; he was in control of his faculties; he could make decisions for himself. Under those conditions, we have no right to keep any patient against his will."

Ryerson looked at her for several moments. He wanted to say,
Hey, I like you. I really do!
Thought there were probably better times and better conditions under which to get acquainted with Nurse
Belgetti
, and said merely, "Thanks. You wouldn't know where he went, would you?"

She
pursed
her lips and shook her head slowly, impatiently. "Now why," she said, "would I have that information?"

~ * ~

He tried to call McCabe at his office but was told by the same lieutenant who'd given a hard time weeks earlier that McCabe had taken the day off. "Touch of the flu, I believe, Mr.
Biergarten
."

"Then he's at home?"

"Yes."

"Thanks."

"Uh—Mr.
Biergarten
?—I'm sorry, about that last time I talked to you. Tell me, are you really psychic?"

"No," Ryerson answered wearily. "I get hunches. Everyone gets hunches. Thank you, lieutenant." He started to hang up, heard the lieutenant hurrying on about "a horse at Aqueduct," then said, interrupting, "I'm sorry, I don't play the horses; I only play the tuba," which made him grin, and hung up.
Have to remember that one
, he told himself.

~ * ~

McCabe looked like hell. His color was a light grayish-pink, his eyes looked like half-squashed cherries, and his breath smelled like a mixture of cold medicine and old straw. He was dressed in a huge red-and-black checkered robe, and when he answered his door in response to Ryerson's knock, he had a glass of what looked to Ryerson like weak tea in hand.

"Jesus," Ryerson said, "you really are sick, aren't you?"

"God, yes," McCabe groaned. He motioned for Ryerson to come in. "I feel like I look, Rye."

Ryerson quipped, "I hope not, Tom," and followed him into the den; they sat in the same big wing chairs they'd used before.

"Got this from my nephew," McCabe explained. "Little twerp sneezed right in my damned face a couple days ago. Had 'the croup,' they said, said I'd probably be all right. I think I'll sue." He paused. "Where's your little dog, what's-his-name?"

"Creosote. He's with the owner of the place where I'm staying." Ryerson paused. "Tom, I went to see Greta Lynch today at Strong Memorial."

McCabe took a long, slow breath, let it out slowly, shook his head. "Rye, you're going to get into trouble pulling that crap. I admit she was damned lucky"—he paused, hacked a little, drank some of his weak tea, went on—"damned lucky you went to her place, and damned lucky you got that . . . feeling, or whatever you call it—"

Ryerson waved away what McCabe was saying. "Tom, I don't suspect Greta Lynch. Whatever her problems are, they have nothing to do with our werewolf. I'm sure of that."

McCabe eyed him suspiciously. "Oh?" he said. "That's a first."

"What's a first?"

"That you'll say you're
sure
of something. You're always so damned equivocal—"

"This is a complex world we live in, Tom—"

"Yeah, yeah; I know—I've heard it before." He coughed, drank some more of his weak tea, and continued, "So if you don't think it's Greta, who do you think it is, Rye?"

Ryerson shook his head. "It could be anybody, Tom. I haven't a clue." He grinned. "It isn't me, I know that. And I don't think it's you, though I wouldn't stake my life on it."

"Come off it, Rye." McCabe was clearly upset.

"I'm only telling you the truth, Tom. As I see it."

"And that's the point, my friend. Because you"—he coughed, swiped at his nose with a Kleenex he got from the pocket of his robe—"you
see
a shitload more than the rest of us, and if I was this nutcase who's running around carving people up—"

"He's not 'carving' anyone up, Tom. You know that. He's
tearing
them up."

"So let's get into an argument about semantics now. I'm really in the mood to argue with you about
words
—"

Ryerson stood. "Sorry, Tom. We can pick this up some other time . . ."

McCabe stood, body shaking with anger. "Is it because of what I told you, Rye? About the god-damned little naked men? Christ, I knew I should have kept that to myself, I knew the goddamned
psychologist
in you would have a fucking field day with that—"

"No, Tom. No!" Ryerson heard a tightness in his own voice that was close to anger, too. He tried to soften it. "What you told me has nothing to do with anything. I do not suspect you. I suspect no one. I believe in possibilities, and probabilities. And I believe that whoever this 'nutcase' is, as you so eloquently put it, he or she probably believes himself to be as innocent as the next guy; he probably looks over his shoulder, too. He probably even has a mental list of people he suspects—" He stopped suddenly. "My God," he breathed.