The Changing (The Biergarten Series) (8 page)

~ * ~

When Ryerson
Biergarten
got in the mood, when he sat down, closed his eyes, and cleared his mind as completely as possible of the dregs of the day, he got a psychic, mental picture of The Park Werewolf. But as is true of most such mental pictures, when he tried to
look
at it, when he tried to study it as he would study a photograph or a painting in a gallery, the edges and details blurred, became indistinct, and he wasn't at all sure what he was seeing. So what he could see ultimately, in his mind's eye, was the horrific and nightmarish figure of a werewolf that looked as if it had wriggled into a huge nylon stocking.

When this happened, Ryerson, who usually kept his temper on a very short leash, cut loose with a string of obscenities, because
seeing
and
not
seeing at the same time can be very frustrating. "Donkey tits!" he hissed, borrowing, he knew, from the old spook in the cellar of the house in Vermont. "Fairy farts!" Then, "Shit, shit, shit!"

He heard a knock at the door of his room at the Samuelson Guest House. Creosote, who'd been happily and noisily chewing one of Ryerson's argyle socks on the bed, looked at the door and whimpered.

"Who's there?" Ryerson called.

"My name's Ashland," a man's voice called back.

Ryerson got out of his chair, went to the door, and looked through the little security peephole. The young, fresh-faced blond man on the other side of the door was trying very hard to smile amiably, as if he knew he was being watched. "Yes?" Ryerson said through the door. "What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to talk with you a moment, Mr.
Biergarten
."

"About what?"

"About The Park Werewolf."

Ryerson glanced around at Creosote, who was still whimpering. He said, under his breath, "What do you think, Creosote?" Creosote stopped whimpering and cocked his flat, stubby head to one side. Ryerson tried to read him, could read only something like the snow that comes between channels on TV sets. He shrugged, said "Okay," and opened the door.

The blond man who called himself Ashland extended his hand. Ryerson took it.

"I have some information for you," the man said, still trying very hard to smile amiably, though his palms were sweaty and his eyes darted quickly from one area of the room to another. He was clearly nervous.

"You do?" Ryerson said.

"About The Park Werewolf," the man said and nodded at the oak rocking chair that Ryerson had just gotten out of. "May I?"

"Sure."

The man went quickly to the chair and sat heavily, wearily in it. He let his head fall back and sighed. "My God!" he breathed.

"How'd you find me?" Ryerson asked. "How do you know who I am?"

The man let a quick smile—a smile of self-amusement, Ryerson thought—come and go on his lips. "I followed you here," he answered.

"Oh? Well, that answers my first question—”

“There's an article about you in
The D and C
."

"
'The D and C'
? What's that?"

The man looked offended: "
The Democrat and Chronicle
—the paper. The Rochester newspaper."

"Oh," Ryerson said again. He was a little miffed. He didn't like publicity, especially in the middle of a case; too often it brought out the loonies, which, he supposed, included this man.

Once more a smile of what Ryerson thought was self-amusement flitted across the man's mouth. "Do you really think there's a werewolf loose in The Park, Mr.
Biergarten
?"

Ryerson went to the bed and sat next to Creosote. "Why don't you simply tell me, Mr. Ashland, what information you have—"

The man who called himself Ashland cut in, "I know who it is."

"Do you?"

"Yes. I know who it is." He looked quickly at Creosote, who had all but torn the argyle sock in half and was continuing to work happily at it, then looked back at Ryerson. "Do you believe me?"

"Should I?" Ryerson asked.

The man looked stunned by the question. He said nothing for a long moment, then yet another smile appeared; it stayed longer this time, and Ryerson guessed that the man was trying to be coy. "Everything I say ... is a lie, Mr.
Biergarten
."

Ryerson inhaled deeply, let the air out slowly, and said, "Yes, I've heard that one, Mr. Ashland."

He looked offended. "It's a woman."

"The werewolf?"

Ashland nodded vigorously. "Yes. It's a woman." He pushed himself to his feet. "But I can't give you her name. I want to, I really want to. But I can't. I won't." He looked quickly, almost frantically, Ryerson thought, at the door, at Creosote, at Ryerson, back at the door, the window, at Ryerson. "I'm sorry; I've got to leave now. You don't mind, do you?"

Ryerson, still on the bed with Creosote beside him, shook his head and said "No," very matter-of-factly, "I don't mind."

The man who called himself Ashland protested, "I'm not crazy, Mr.
Biergarten
."

Ryerson said, "Neither am I," which clearly confused the visitor, who shuffled in place for a few moments, then went quickly to the door and left the room.

~ * ~

George Dixon, head of security at Kodak Park, pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer of his big gray metal desk and shrieked. There was a tongue—like a pale, dried red pepper—lying in the drawer on top of an old
Playboy
magazine.

Dixon slammed the drawer shut, found that his breathing was becoming labored from the quick onrush of adrenaline, and forced himself to breathe slowly, deeply. After a minute his breathing regulated itself, and he put his hand on the drawer handle.

"It's just a tongue," he whispered. "Jesus, everyone has one." He took a breath, pulled the drawer open, studied the tongue for a few moments, then closed the drawer slowly.

Would you know?
he wondered.
Would you really know? Or would you hide it? Even from yourself? Would you have to hide it, for Christ's sake, so you wouldn't go
nutsaronee
?! Sure you would.

Maybe you do it while you're asleep. Maybe you get up and you run around in some goddamned wolf suit
--

He shook his head. "Shit, no!" he breathed. How could
he
be The Park Werewolf? It was impossible. No way, Jose!

But still, he wrapped the raggedly severed tongue up in a napkin, put it in his black lunch pail, and took it home with him. And that evening he put it in a Baggie, put the Baggie in his lunch pail, took the lunch pail to a stretch of Genesee River that he knew no one ever frequented because it reeked of sewage, and threw the lunch pail in.

And again he whispered to himself, "So, it's a tongue. I don't need one. I got one of my own," grinned a wide, quaking grin, and went back to his apartment house.

APRIL 28

"It's unlikely," said Rochester's WROC-TV news anchorperson Mark Wolf, a handsome, square-faced man with sensitive eyes and a narrow, well-groomed mustache, "that too many more days will elapse before the murderer of four at Kodak Park is caught, according to Chief of Detectives Tom McCabe."

The picture cut to a shoulders-up shot of McCabe talking to an unidentified off-camera reporter.

"These are particularly heinous murders," McCabe said, "as all murders are, of course. But these murders are even more heinous than the . . . average murder because the murderer has chosen to mutilate his victims, much the way that the legendary werewolf does—"

"Are you suggesting," said the male voice of the anonymous off-camera reporter, "that there is something supernatural going on here, Chief?"

He shook his head vigorously. "No. Not at all. Quite the contrary. I'm suggesting that a
sick
individual, an individual who could appear to be quite normal, as a matter of fact, has . . . has run amok—"

"Is it true," the reporter cut in, "as the papers have said, that a psychic investigator has been called in to help in this case?"

Again McCabe shook his head. "Ryerson
Biergarten
is my friend. He's visiting Rochester, and I've asked him to look at some of the evidence—because he is a psychologist, after all—and to give us at the Rochester P.D. his . . . insights."

"Thank you, Chief."

Mark Wolf came back on the screen. "As expected, absenteeism at Kodak has risen quite dramatically since the murders began, from an average of two percent three weeks ago to more than forty percent today. Additionally, it has been reported that people are moving from place to place in groups of threes and fours, and that security guards—who are posted at all entrances and exits to The Park, anyway—have been told to let regular employees carry Mace, hatpins, and small knives for defense against a possible attack. According to Head of Security George Dixon, however, no unauthorized firearms of any kind have ever been allowed inside Kodak Park, nor will they be allowed now."

The shot cut to young, blond Sandi
Hackman
—whom Jack Youngman had ogled at the Kodak pool. She opened her purse to reveal a can of Mace inside and next to it what looked like a Swiss Army knife. She grinned threateningly; "If he wants me, he'll have to get past
these!
"

"And so," Mark Wolf continued, "the tension mounts. For nearly two weeks, The Park has been quiet, and there is some evidence that things are returning to normal. However, many people see each day that passes without a new atrocity as something of a blessing; these people are convinced that we haven't seen the last of The Park Werewolf.

"They ask, 'How will we slide into May?' Because tomorrow, April twenty-ninth, "—a pause for effect—"the moon will be full!"

~ * ~

Greta Lynch said to Doug Miller, "Do you miss him?"

"Miss who?" Miller asked from behind his desk.

"Walt." A pause. "I kind of miss him."

"Why the hell would you miss that crud?" Miller asked. "I mean, I'm sorry he's dead and everything—I'm sorry, especially, that he had to die like that—"
        
"You can be incredibly callous sometimes, Doug," Greta said. "He
was
another human being, after all."

Miller interrupted with a guffaw.

"And he had his good points," Greta said.

"Oh? Like what?"

She said nothing for a few moments, seemed to be in thought. Then, "Well, like—he never made a pass at me, for one."

This obviously astounded Miller. "Never?"

She shook her head. "Not once." A pause. "Not like
him
."

"Him?"

"Yes," Greta said. "Roger." Roger
Crimm
was the new manager at Emulsion Technology; he'd been called in from Syracuse to take Walt Morgan's place until someone permanent was found to fill the vacancy.

"He makes passes at you, Greta?" Miller's lips got suddenly moist.

"I'm sorry I mentioned it; this isn't some kind of soap opera, Doug."

He shrugged. "Sure it is." He grinned. "Life's a soap opera. Sometimes it's a pretty . . . grisly soap opera—"

"What in the hell are you talking about?"

His grin softened; he tilted his head quickly to one side in a clear effort to dismiss her question. "Nothing." He hesitated. "I made a reservation at The Manhattan. For Friday, eight o'clock."

She nodded slowly. "Good. I hope you enjoy yourself."

He shook his head. "No.
We'll
enjoy ourselves, Greta. You and me."

Again she shook her head. She stood, shook her head again. "No. I like to be asked, Doug.”

“So, I'm asking."

"The answer's still `no,' " she said, and left the office quickly.

Miller called after her, "I
was
going to say it's nice to have you back," because she'd been out ("sick," she'd claimed; "some kind of flu") since April 18, "but now," Miller concluded, "I'm not so sure?"

~ * ~

Ryerson said to Tom McCabe, "You hadn't encountered this case before, then?" They were at a restaurant called
Foggy's
Notion on Rochester's fashionable and self-important Park Avenue. McCabe loved the place; Ryerson thought, secretly, that it was starkly pretentious, that if the owners really had to mix decors, they could have mixed something other than Art Deco, late Victorian, and mid-twentieth-century junk. Behind them, the rear end of a 1960 black Cadillac jutted from the wall; the trunk lid was open and the trunk itself had been made into a small salad bar. The waiters and waitresses were nicely scrubbed young men and women in their early twenties; the men were dressed as members of a barbershop quartet, the women as flappers.

"Only," McCabe explained, "because it happened outside one of the target cities on that list you gave me. I got wind of it because the medical examiner in Erie was called in to do an autopsy, and he filed a report that got put on file there in Erie."

Ryerson had some papers relative to the case on the table in front of him. He checked them over briefly, looked up, and said, "Jesus. A sixteen-year-old girl."