Bestial (30 page)

As he went from channel to channel, looking for something interesting, he remembered that he had agreed to meet Bob at the diner for lunch at one. That left him less than an hour to wake up, dress, and drive over to the diner. He took a bite of his toast, found an old Abbott and Costello movie, and rested his chin in his hand to watch sleepy-eyed as the boys ran from Boris Karloff. His head bobbed as he chewed.

He had known Bob since they were six years old. He loved the guy, but he got so frustrated with him. Royce had put his Seventh-day Adventist upbringing behind him after the horrible treatment he’d received from the church and his family in response to his work. There was no love lost between Royce and Adventism—or, as he called it, the Seventh-day Adventist cult. But the church still had a ring through Bob’s nose, and his mother and grandmother led him around by it gleefully. Bob’s life was dominated by guilt, shame, self-hatred, and fear, all of which had been drummed into him by his Adventist upbringing, from which he had never escaped. While Royce had rebelled against all that, Bob had been cowed by it, hobbled and whipped into submission. Royce tried to stir some of that rebellion in him. Sometimes he saw sparks of it in Bob, but the flame was never quite ignited. Royce tried to reason with him, and sometimes it seemed he was getting somewhere. But before long, Bob’s fear fell like a shadow over his face and reason was smothered in the lack of light.

It had been a long time since Royce had gone anywhere near the Berens household—Bob’s mother and grandmother and sister were so hateful in their Adventist arrogance, they could anger him almost to the point of violence. Bob was their whipping boy and they seemed to take pleasure in beating him down until he could barely function anymore. The last time Royce had been there, Bob’s mom had shouted that he was a bad influence on her boy while Grandma had called for the wrath of God to come down on his head. That had been six years ago, and he had not gone back since. If he still believed in a God, Royce would pray for both of those miserable women to get crotch-rot and die. But he had given up God the way he had given up Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and faith in America’s alleged two-party system of government.

He finished his toast and washed the last bite down with a gulp of coffee. His coffee was cooling off, so he got up to freshen it. He was halfway across the kitchen when he heard a car approaching rapidly outside. Tires squealed against pavement and a heavy, crunching
thunk
sounded directly in front of his house.

“What the hell,” he said as he put his cup down on the counter and peered out the window over the sink.

Bob’s station wagon was parked half on his driveway and half on his lawn. His mailbox lay on the grass like a corpse, its wooden post bent and splintered near the middle with dirt still clinging to its base. Bob sat at the wheel with his mouth open, the engine idling. For a moment, Royce wondered if his friend, who had never tasted alcohol, were drunk. Pulling his robe together in front and tightening the belt, Royce hurried out of the kitchen, into the small foyer, and out the front door.

“It’s a good thing my car was in the garage!” he shouted as he approached the idling station wagon. Bob’s window was rolled down and Royce leaned toward it, both hands on the door. “If it had been in the driveway, you’d be lying on your hood right now, we’d have a real—” He got a good look at Bob’s face and lost his joking tone. “What’s wrong?”

Looking close to tears, Bob killed the engine and clumsily struggled to open the door. He repeated a word several times, but his voice was so hoarse and breathy that Royce could not understand what he was saying.

“What?” Royce said, stepping back so Bob could open the door. “Wait a second, calm down, what’re you saying, I can’t—”

”I said
werewolves
!” Bob shouted.

Royce started to smile as he blurted a nervous laugh, but Bob was not joking.

Oh, my God,
Royce thought,
he’s snapped. Those two miserable Adventist cunts have pushed him over the edge.

Bob pushed him out of the way and hurried to the open front door. Royce quickly followed him. Inside the house, Royce closed the door as Bob paced in the foyer. Then Bob went to the door and locked it.

“What is
wrong
with you?” Royce said with real concern.

Bob put his hands on the sides of his head and walked into the kitchen. Royce followed.

“The sheriff,” Bob said breathlessly. “I saw him. He changed. Into a-a-a... it was a-a werewolf. A
werewolf
.”

Royce began to get very concerned. Bob was not joking, and he did not seem to be in the grip of some kind of breakdown. He was simply very scared.

“Calm down, Bob. Really. Stop for a second and just calm down, take some deep breaths.” Royce turned to the counter, snatched a glass from the cupboard, and poured some whisky into it. “Here, drink some of this.”

Bob kept pacing. “It happened right in front of me. And if the sheriff is-is-is... then what... what about Vanessa and all his other—” Bob stopped and closed his eyes. “Oh, God, it was just like the buh-baby last night, that horrible baby, it was—”

“What baby are you—look, Bob, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Here
,” he said firmly. “Take a couple swallows of this.”

Barely glancing at the drink, Bob took the glass and swallowed some whisky. He burst into a fit of gagging coughs and handed the drink back to Royce.

“That’s
awful
,” he said. “How do can
drink
this stuff?”

“Take a few more swallows and you’ll see.”

Royce took Bob to the bar, seated him on a stool, and slowly began to extract from him everything that had happened to him recently.

“It seems the only thing we’ve really accomplished on this trip is moving from room to room,” Karen said as they entered their new room at the Rocking R Motel. She put her bag on the bed and Gavin set his down in front of the dresser.

Warren Zevon began to sing about werewolves again, this time from Gavin’s pocket. He took the phone out and answered.

As Gavin listened to the caller, Karen lit a cigarette and looked around the room. The Rocking R was a little run-down place just outside of Big Rock. It looked like it had been built sometime in the early fifties, and had last been cared for well and cleaned regularly sometime in the early seventies.

“Wait, slow down,” Gavin said, “I can’t understand what you’re—”

Karen turned to him. A frown darkened his face as he listened and he gave her a look that let her know something was up.

“You’re saying the
sheriff
was—”

She could hear the pinched sound of the voice on the phone as it interrupted Gavin and kept talking.

“Hold it a second, Bob,” Gavin said. “Where are you? Right now, where are you calling from?” He looked at Karen and made a writing gesture with his free hand.

She quickly took a pad and pen from her purse and placed them on the dresser.

Gavin bent over slightly and wrote as he listened. Then he dropped the pen and stood. “Listen, Bob, I want you to stay right there, okay? Don’t leave. We’re going to come over right now. You can tell me the rest when we get there, okay?”

A moment later, Gavin pocketed his phone. He grabbed Karen’s cigarette, took a drag, then stabbed it into the ashtray on the dresser until it was dead.

“What’s going on?” Karen said.

Gavin tore the page from the notebook and took his keys from his pocket. “That was Bob, our friend from last night. He just watched as Sheriff Irving Taggart turned into a monster and terrorized the pastor of Bob’s church. He’s a wreck. Let’s go.”

They left the room, got into the SUV, and fastened their seatbelts. Gavin started the engine, then handed her the notebook page and said, “Enter that address for me.” As Karen entered the address into the navigational system, Gavin pulled out of the motel parking lot and headed back to Big Rock. “If the sheriff and his friends know that Bob has seen what he says he’s seen, then Bob won’t be long for this world.”

“What was the sheriff doing with Bob’s pastor?”

“Bob told me last night that Taggart is a member of his church. Seventh-day Adventist. I’m just guessing, but it kind of looks like Taggart wants to use the church somehow, and he’s using the pastor to do that.”

“Then Bob could be in danger right now.”

“Yes.” Gavin removed the cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Karen. “Call the number Bob just called from. Tell him everything we know so far, everything. Then find out if he’s had sex recently with anyone who might be connected to Taggart in some way.”

Karen frowned as she thought about Bob. “You think that’s likely?”

“Is what likely?”

“That he’s had sex with... well, anyone?”

Gavin chuckled. “Just to be safe.”

Karen called the number. While she talked with Bob, Gavin drove into Big Rock. Karen had difficulty getting Bob to quiet down and listen to her at first, but he finally calmed and she talked at length.

It was a hot day, and humidity was setting in. The air conditioner gave them relief from the heat.

“What does sex have to do with anything?” Bob said on the phone.

“I just told you,” Karen replied. “This is a sexually transmitted virus. If you’ve had sex with anyone who might be connected to the sheriff somehow, you might have contracted that virus. Do you understand?”

Bob became very quiet. Finally, he whispered, “Vanessa.”

“Who’s Vanessa?”

“Uh... nobody.”

“She’s
somebody
, Bob, or you wouldn’t have mentioned her. If we’re going to help you, we need you to be honest with us.”

“She’s someone from my church. A... a friend of... “

”A friend of the sheriff’s?”

“Yes.”

“And have you had sex with her?”

He sighed, a sound that contained both relief and frustration. “No, I haven’t. But she’s been, um... trying.”

“Trying? To seduce you, you mean?”

“Yes. But I... know better now.”

“Good. When you were at the church this morning, did the sheriff—”

”Oh, shit,” Gavin said, suddenly slowing down the SUV.

Karen turned him. He was scowling at the rearview mirror. She looked out the window at the side view mirror and saw the right side of a Sheriff’s Department cruiser behind them, the bar of lights across its roof pulsing.

“Oh, shit,” Karen said.

“Excuse me?” Bob said.

“Look, Bob, I’ll have to call you back. If I don’t, then we should be showing up soon. And if we don’t... well, you need to find something made of silver that can be used as a weapon, like I told you.”

“You mean you might not come?” Bob said, a note of panic in his voice.

“We’re being pulled over by a deputy, Bob,” she said.

Bob’s words were spoken in a breath: “Oh no.”

“We’ll do our best to get there, but we’ve got other things to worry about right now. Remember what I told you. Talk to you later.”

Karen closed the phone as Gavin pulled the SUV over to the shoulder and slowed to a stop.

“What do we do?” Karen said quietly, trying to keep her fear and tension out of her voice.

Gavin said, “Call Burgess. Right now. Leave the line open, tell him to listen. That way if we’re... if the worst happens, he’ll know about it.”

Karen made the call. Burgess answered after one ring.

“We’ve been pulled over by a deputy,” she said quietly. “I’m going to leave the phone on. Listen closely. This... may not end well.” She placed the phone on the center console between the seats.

The cruiser’s door opened and out stepped a tubby deputy whose uniform was a bit too snug. He slowly made his way forward to the SUV as Gavin rolled down his window.

The deputy peered in through the window, looking the interior over closely before saying a word. Karen read the name on his badge: Deputy Maurice Eckhart.

“The speed limit through here is forty-five,” he said. “You were doing fifty-seven, did you know that?”

Gavin smiled and said pleasantly, “Sorry, I was in a hurry and I guess I just wasn’t paying attention.” He produced his wallet and opened it.

“License and registration,” Eckhart said.

Gavin handed over the license, got the registration from the glove box, and passed that through the window, too.

Eckhart’s eyes narrowed as they went back and forth between the license and Gavin’s face. “Gavin... how’s that pronounced?”

“
Kee
-off.”

“Gavin Keoph, huh?” More looking back and forth as a frown set in. “Gavin... Keoph.” He looked beyond Gavin at Karen. “And who might you be?”

Gavin said, “This is my—”

”I wasn’t talking to you,” Eckhart said abruptly. “Your name, ma’am?”

“Karen Moffett. Well, Karen Moffett-Keoph now.” She smiled. “We’re on our honeymoon.”

Eckhart nodded slowly as a smirk turned up one corner of his mouth. “On your honeymoon, huh? I see.” He stood up straight, arched his back a little, and for a moment the buttons of his shirt looked ready to pop. “Gavin Keoph and Karen Moffett, huh?” he said as the smirk became a smile. “On your honeymoon here in Big Rock. Well, how about that. Tell you what. Why don’t you two just sit tight here for a second while I call this in?” He gave them a nod, then headed back to his cruiser.