The Howling II (8 page)

Mrs. Jensen went to the front door with them as they left.

“We may be home late,” David said. He turned to smile at Karyn. “We might decide to go out dancing somewhere after dinner.”

Karyn returned his smile.

“I won’t wait up, then,” Mrs. Jensen said.

“You’ll see that Joey gets to bed on time?” Karyn said.

Mrs. Jensen gave her a brief smile that said she had been taking care of Joey before Karyn got there, and could handle it very well now, thank you.

David gave Karyn his arm, and they followed the flagstone walk around to the garage. Halfway there, Karyn pulled up. Had she seen something move in that white Ford parked up the block? Whose car was that, anyway. She was sure it did not belong to any of the neighbors.

“Is something wrong?” David said.

“Nooo,” she said slowly. Then more emphatically. “No. I just caught my heel on the edge of the stone. Let’s go.”

There was nothing moving in the white car now. Probably she had imagined it. The Ford most likely belonged to someone visiting the neighbors. No point in mentioning it to David and getting their evening off to an uncomfortable start.

*****

Mrs. Jensen watched from the doorway as the Richters drove off. It was high time they had an evening out together, she thought. Much of the time she felt Mr. Richter worked too hard. And Mrs. Richter, well, she had her own problems. She closed the door and went inside.

She let Joey stay up to watch “Charlie’s Angels,” which he said he enjoyed because of the pretty girls. Mrs. Jensen left him to enjoy the girls alone while she went to her own room to watch an old Bette Davis movie on another channel. At ten o’clock she sent Joey up to bed, ignoring his pleas to watch “Baretta.” When the boy was tucked in, Mrs. Jensen resumed watching her movie on the larger set in the Richters’ family room.

The movie ended and the eleven o’clock news came on. Mrs. Jensen got up and switched off the set. They never had anything but riots and killings and plane crashes on the news. Mrs. Jensen figured there was enough violence and unhappiness in a person’s everyday life without watching film of it every night on the news before you went to bed. She went back to the little bathroom off her room and began brushing out her hair.

At eleven-thirty, wearing a clean flannel nightgown and with her hair in rollers, she climbed into bed. Sometimes she watched Johnny Carson for an hour or so until she got sleepy, but tonight she was too tired.

Mrs. Jensen closed her eyes and lay warm and cozy under the down comforter

she’d brought with her when she came to work for Mr. Richter. Finding this job after her husband died had been a blessing. She had no other family, and really needed someone to take care of. The house here and Joey were enough to keep her busy, but not more than she could comfortably handle.

She had assumed a sort of housemother position for the man and the boy, which worked out well for all three. When Mr. Richter married his new wife he hastened to assure Mrs. Jensen that her place in the household was secure. Nevertheless, Mrs. Jensen at first had misgivings about the new Mrs. Richter. The slim, pretty blonde from California had seemed too young and unsettled for Mr. Richter. Also, having no children of her own, how was she going to get along with Joey?

As it happened, everything worked out fine. The new Mrs. Richter had turned out to be a lot more mature and sensible than she looked, and she and the boy had taken to each other instantly. And if Mrs. Richter was a tiny touch nervous sometimes, well, that only made Mrs. Jensen feel more useful.

She rolled over onto her back and cleared her mind of all daytime thoughts in’ preparation for going to sleep.

A shadow passed her window.

Mrs. Jensen sat up in bed and stared at the drawn blind.

Nothing.

And yet there had been something. Just outside. She held her breath and listened.

Nothing.

But something had been there, all right. Olivia Jensen was not the kind of woman who imagined shadows in the night. She got up and pulled on her robe, tying the belt securely beneath her bosom. She went to the window and pulled aside the blind. An expanse of lawn, revealing rose bushes and the back of the garage, brightened occasionally as the clouds broke up and the moon came through. But nothing moved.

Leaving her room, Mrs. Jensen went out and began testing the door and windows of the house, even though she was sure she had locked them all before going to bed. When she reached the living room she heard something.

A rustling sound in the shrubbery outside the front door. She looked through the peep-viewer, but could see nothing. She started to back away, then stopped as she heard a kind of snuffling outside. Then a soft scraping sound as of some animal pawing at the door.

Animal? A dog, she thought. Could her sister’s German shepherd have gotten lost and somehow found its way here? It was a long way to where her sister lived, but you read about those things all the time. Maybe it was hurt. Mrs. Jensen opened the door.

The wolf sprang into the air and hit her full in the chest, knocking her to the floor as it tumbled past her into the hallway.

There was no time for Mrs. Jensen to think about what was happening. She could only react by instinct.

The wolf, larger and stronger than any she had seen in the zoo, stood in the hallway, its powerful legs braced. The broad tan head swung to and fro, as, though it were looking for something.

Mrs. Jensen stumbled to her feet. The front door was still open, letting the cold air in. Outside, the night was peaceful and clear; inside was terror.

“Get out of here!” she said to the animal. Her voice sounded small and ineffectual.

The wolf swung its head to look at her. The lips slid back to uncover long killer teeth in a devil’s grin. It growled deep in its chest, a menacing growl that warned her away.

“Is somebody down there?” Joey’s excited treble came clearly from the top of the stairs.

The wolf turned from Mrs. Jensen and looked toward the stairs. With a soft growl it started to move that way.

Acting on the unreasoning instinct to protect the boy, Mrs. Jensen seized the nearest thing at hand that could be used as a weapon - an umbrella from the wooden stand near the door. Brandishing the umbrella like a club, she thrust herself between the wolf and the stairway.

“Joey, get back!” she shouted. “Get in your room and lock the door.”

Upstairs the door to the boy’s room slammed.

The wolf threw her a look of pure animal hatred and lunged to one side of her, trying to get to the stairs. As the animal went past, Mrs. Jensen struck at it with the umbrella, hitting it across the back. The wolf hesitated. Mrs. Jensen threw herself upon it, clubbing at its head.

The impact of her body knocked the wolf off-balance, and they crashed against the end post of the banister. The wolf was back on its feet immediately, teeth bared, snarling.

Mrs. Jensen scrambled away on the floor, holding the umbrella out toward the wolf like a sword. She heard her own voice screaming incoherent things.

The last thing she saw was the open-mouthed leap of the wolf. She went down helplessly under its weight as the beast brushed aside the puny umbrella. The head turned sideways and the cruel teeth clamped onto her throat. One flex of the powerful jaws crushed the thyroid cartilage and destroyed the larynx and esophagus. The teeth ripped through the platysma muscle and severed the carotid artery. Mrs. Jensen’s life ended in a burbling gasp.

The wolf raised its bloody muzzle from the ruined throat and backed away from the body. It turned and started toward the stairs.

ONE POWERFUL BOUND carried the wolf a quarter of the way up the stairs. There he stopped suddenly and listened. Outside there was a growing clamor of voices, as the neighbors, roused by Mrs. Jensen’s screams, ran toward the Richter house to investigate.

Torn by conflicting emotions, part human, mostly animal, the wolf hesitated. The still-bloody muzzle pointed down toward the open front door, then up the stairs. On the landing, the door to the boy’s room was closed. Behind it, the child was crying. The thin wood panel would not keep the huge wolf out for long, but out in front of the house, running feet were already pounding across the lawn.

The wolf chose survival. Leaping gracefully from the stairs, the beast landed on the floor of the hallway just as the first of the neighbors reached the front door. Without pausing, the wolf raced through the living room and sprang into the air, crashing out through a large window at the side of the house. As a babble of voices came from the house, the wolf loped across the lawn, through a border of trimmed shrubbery, and into the trees beyond.

Down the block, unnoticed by the people swarming toward the Richter house, a white Ford started its engine and moved slowly away from the curb without lights.

Inside, the house all was blood and confusion. The first people to come through the door stopped short at the sight of Mrs. Jensen’s torn body. They were jostled forward by those who rushed in after them, and sent skidding off balance on the slippery floor.

A man turned away to vomit.

A woman screamed.

“He went out the window!” someone shouted.

“Let’s go after him!”

“No, wait, maybe he’s got a gun.”

“Somebody call the police.”

A woman standing on the fringe of the milling group turned to the man next to her. “It didn’t look like a man to me,” she said. “It looked like a big dog.”

The man only glanced at her, shook his head irritably, and pushed forward for a closer look.

On the landing above them the door to Joey’s room opened. The boy came out slowly and walked stiff-legged to the head of the stairs. His face was white and puffy, his eyes wide. One of the men stepped gingerly around Mrs. Jensen’s body and ran up the stairs. He picked the boy up in his arms and carried him back into the bedroom.

*****

At one o’clock Karyn and David arrived home to find their street clogged with emergency vehicles, and people swarming over the lawn in front of their house. The mobile-news crew from a local television station had parked its van in the driveway and had set up floodlights illuminating the house and yard. Overhead a police helicopter thundered in a tight circle, sweeping the area with a powerful spotlight.

David jammed to a stop at a wooden police barricade and jumped out of the car. He ran toward the house with Karyn following close behind. A rumpled man with weary eyes headed them off before they reached the front door.

“Just a minute, sir.”

“This is our house,” David said. “We live here. Who are you?”

“I’m Lieutenant MacCready of the Seattle Police. Are you Mr. and Mrs. Richter?”

“Yes. What’s happened?”

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident. A serious accident.”

“Oh, my God, Joey!” Karyn cried. “Something’s happened to Joey!”

“If that’s the little boy, ma’am, he’s all right,” said MacCready. “One of the neighbors took him to their house.”

“What is it, then?” David, demanded.

“There was an older woman living here - “

“Mrs. Jensen,” David said. “She’s our housekeeper.”

“She’s dead, sir. She’s been killed.”

Karyn’s knees turned rubbery for a moment. David put an arm around her shoulder to steady her.

“How did it happen?” he asked the policeman.

“If you could come inside and answer a few questions, you can help us find that out,” MacCready said.

David looked down at Karyn.

“It’s all right,” she said in a small voice.

He turned back to MacCready. “We’ll help in any way we can, Lieutenant.”

Inside, Mrs. Jensen’s body had been taken away and a tarpaulin spread on the floor at the foot of the stairs to cover most of the spilled blood. Lieutenant McCready led the Richters into the family room, out of sight of the blood stains.

Yes, they told him, everything had seemed quite normal when they left the house this evening. No, they had no knowledge of anyone who might want to kill Mrs. Jensen. Yes, she was a careful person, in the habit of keeping the door locked. No, it was not likely she would have admitted a stranger to the house.

Lieutenant MacCready scribbled notes in a spiral-bound pad as Karyn and David answered his questions.

“Have you noticed anyone suspicious hanging around the neighborhood lately?”

Karyn started to speak, then hesitated.

The detective looked up. “Mrs. Richter?”

Karyn saw David’s slight frown, but went ahead anyway. “Well, there has been someone. But I don’t know if it’s relevant.”

“Anything at all you can tell me might help,” MacCready said.

“There’s a woman,” Karyn said, getting the words out in a hurry. “I’ve seen her several times lately. I had the feeling she was following me.”

MacCready’s eyes narrowed. “A woman following you, you say.”

Karyn chewed her lip. She looked over at David. He took her hand.

“Do we have to go through all of this now?” David said to the policeman. “My wife has been under the care of a doctor. For her nerves.”

Karyn stiffened slightly at David’s emphasis on nerves.

“I’ll make it as brief as I can,” MacCready said. “This could be very important if what we have here is an attempted kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping?” Karyn said. “Do you mean someone was trying to take Joey?”

“It’s a possibility. Now, about this woman - “

Karyn told him about the dark-haired woman, and how she’d seen her in the coffee shop, on the street, and again riding in the taxi. As she spoke, Karyn realized how thin it sounded, how little it really was to base a suspicion on.

“Are you sure it was the same woman each time?” MacCready asked, his tone cool and courteous.

“Yes. I’m almost certain it was the same woman.”

“Almost,” the liteutenant repeated under his breath. Karyn could see the interest fade in his eyes. “We’ll check it out,” he said. “I think that’s enough for tonight.” He took a card from his breast pocket and handed it to David. “If anything comes up, give me a call.”

As MacCready closed his notebook and stood up to leave, another uniformed officer came into the room.