Full Wolf Moon (13 page)
"It was her throat, actually," Pierce said suddenly, oddly clinical.
Doris was struck dumb by the change. Finally, she asked, "What?"
He looked at her, the pain glistening in his eyes. Then the pain was in his voice again, too, as if it had been someone else who had commented only seconds ago.
"As far as could be told, Annie must have slipped. Something may have startled her. They found some animal tracks. She fell forward and gashed her throat on something. Unconscious, so near the rim, she just..."
Doris was spellbound, suddenly forgetting to be gentle. "Can they tell such a thing so precisely? I mean, she must have collided with several objects during the fall. How could they tell which strike it was, whether the cause of death was her falling forward on her throat or backward on her head?"
Pierce took off his glasses and rubbed at his ear again, clearly worn from the telling. But Doris was only vaguely aware, her mind whirring with a peculiar unrest.
"The coroner was the forensics expert, Mrs. Tebbe, not me," he replied with irritation. "It's in the report somewhere, I'm sure." He looked at Doris now, his eyes red and tearless, his face looking older. "All I know is I'm without her. No matter how it happened."
Could I be any more of a tactless idiot? "Yes, of course. Captain ... I'm so sorry."
She reached an unsure hand toward Pierce and patted his arm tentatively, hoping it was the right gesture. He smiled, seemed a little embarrassed now that it was all over, and finished off his cocktail.
"Well," he said, putting on his glasses, then standing to pull on his jacket. "Thanks for being my mother confessor. I didn't really mean to bend your ear so long and hard."
Doris stood quickly, happy to take the cue to leave. "It's important to get it out, Captain, I know."
"Well ... thanks, all the same."
They walked silently toward the car. The corporal saw them coming and stepped over to open the back door for Doris But just before they were within earshot of the driver, Pierce paused, his face troubled again.
"What did you do, Mrs. Tebbe, to get through it? That's what I really meant to ask you tonight. How did you manage to stop this...damn pain?"
Doris met his eyes evenly for a moment or two. "I worked, Captain. I just never stopped working long enough to think."
/ / / /
Doris found Arthur in his block's recreation hall, bent over a game of go with a fellow resident of Four's bachelor barracks. She was sure he was ignoring her as she walked the long hall all the way to his table. He was the only one who didn't gawk at her; the resented Center Administrator, shoes knocking the rough wood floor for what may as well have been a full mile.
When her shadow darkened the Japanese checkerboard, Arthur finally looked up, smiling as pleasantly and distantly as when they had first met.
"Good evening, Mrs. Tebbe."
"Mr. Satsugai." She looked to his playing partner, who nodded at her but didn't smile. "Mr. Sugano."
"Something I can do for you?" Arthur asked.
"I'd like a word, if I may."
"Certainly." He turned his attention to the flat little disks that patterned the board. He picked up a white piece from the bowl at his right hand and slid it into place. "We're just about to finish. If you'll give me a minute."
He took ten before escorting Doris outside, where they were alone in the dusty lane. The cast off glow of barracks windows lit their way in the moonless night.
"I'm sorry we don't have much time to talk, Mrs. Tebbe. The curfew, you know..."
"Cut it out, Arthur." She stopped and faced him. "Just get to the point and tell me why you're angry."
The light was dim, but Doris could see the challenge in his gently canted eyes. She was expecting him to say something ridiculous like, "Do I seem angry?" Instead, without warning, he stepped closer, caressed her neck and pressed his lips to hers. Doris was shocked. Her lips parted.
It was Arthur who was the first to pull away, and he said, "That's why I'm angry."
"I...I don't understand..."
"Damn it!"Both his cursing and the sudden heat in his voice startled her."Doris, you do understand. Damn it!"
He turned away and paced a time or two before walking back. "You just won't listen to yourself, will you? It's easier, it's safer to shut it out, shut if off, turn your eyes back to your desk and away from the sunset. How do you live like that!"
From the corner of her eye, Doris could see a silhouette in the nearest window, clearly curious about the commotion.
"I don't have to stand here and listen to this," she said, her voice strong and proud, thank Heaven. A grand lie.
Arthur stared at her as if she were some hopeless cause. "No, you don't," he replied. "You can be anywhere you please."
He closed his eyes a moment, and when he looked at her again there really wasn't a need for him to say what he was about to say. "You just stood there, Doris. You just stood there while he threw me out."
"That shouldn't have happened," she said quickly, and she so desperately wanted to say, I'm sorry! Arthur, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be ashamed. But she wasn't going to say it. Why couldn't she say it?
She swallowed. "I came to see if you were still going to be at the meeting Tuesday."
He said nothing. She swallowed again. "Are you?"
"Sure. It's my responsibility."
"I'll see you then," Doris replied, but Arthur already had his back turned and was walking down the path.
Chapter 17
David Alma Curar's Shack
Five miles south of Tulenar Internment Camp
Night. First Quarter Moon.
Dream, sweet dream, with his fingers trailing down her coppery arm to drift across her breast. Circling its roundness, coming to center, teasing the nipple. Against his thigh her wetness, the dark, downy nest pressing rhythmically. He covers her mouth with his own and searches for her tongue.
Sweet, sweet dream. He can whisper her name, even with his mouth full of her; lips, then soft jaw line, then neck. He lets his fingers glide up to her arm once again. And he's whispering her name over and over. She sighs, he growls low in reply.
His fingers drift downward again, against the soft flesh of her arm and she moans, he growls and he feels her soft flesh give under his nails. She struggles beneath him, her moans becoming louder until she's shrieking as the long, black claws rake the blood out of her arm and scrape across her breast ...
David Alma Curar no longer jolted out of his nightmares. Rather, he had to pull himself out, heavily, as if his dreams were a collective tar pit. He left his narrow cot and shuffled over to the eastern window of his little cabin. The sash was propped open with a stick wedged against the frame but, still half-drugged from sleep, David couldn't recall opening it. A thin, chill, midnight breeze whispered down the foothills. The half moon gave the conifers just enough light to cast shaggy, weak shadows against the ground.
Now came the horror. Soon to follow would be the depression. David bowed his head in a paradox of dread and welcome. After all this time, he knew the value of allowing them both their say. But he was not so strong that he could deny a longing for the sweetness of his old amnesia, for the peacefulness of the walled away mind.
Standing at the window, he worked his hand between his tee shirt and the band of his boxers. His fingers traced the heavy cord of scar tissue on his abdomen and he thought of Stanislov. Then his gaze wandered to the stack of old Arizona newspapers setting near the cabin door. For a moment, just a very brief moment, he allowed himself to envy Maxwell Pierce his amnesia.
Chapter 18
Tulenar Internment Camp
Morning. Waxing Gibbous Moon.
The blurred activity before Max's sedan was a hodge-podge of press people and militant, misguided citizens, just shy of the government property line that protected Tulenar. Max didn't have to see well to know that. It had been the standard scene since the Tamura crisis. Soldiers stood watch behind sawhorse barricades blocking the road, and a handful of dust-caked Packards and Buicks were parked offsides.
With the Tamura crisis half way into its second week, however, the numbers had dwindled. The press corps had shrunk to a few maintenance reporters, and the citizens' convictions were losing against boredom and desert heat.
But as Max's sedan approached, everyone perked up, sudden alertness in their ranks, even though they must know that this time would be just like the other times. The waiting soldiers parted the sawhorses and Max ordered his driver to pass through. The citizens bobbed their pickets and demanded justice for the "imprisoned," the press shouted questions with no hope of getting answers. Their bulky cameras were poised, small, round-headed cyclopses. All this in the futile hope that Max might roll down his window to comment, letting the cameras waste their one good eye of a flash bulb.
The people and their screeching disappeared behind the sedan's billowing red tail. Not far up the road, two soldiers were escorting a reporter by his shirt collar, the camera firmly held at its neck by one of them. Its belly would already be empty of any film, ripped out, per Max's orders.
He smiled, and then had the sense to be surprised at the contentment he felt in the midst of this whole mess. As his sedan reached the main entrance of Tulenar, he thought this satisfaction was due to the answers he'd found. He had challenged them these many days, testing each against time and evidence -or the lack thereof- and judged them sound. Now he was ready to share them with Mrs. Tebbe.
/ / / /
With a quick wave, Max strode past Harriet Haku. Since the Tamura crisis, Mrs. Tebbe and he had relaxed the protocol of formal announcement and subsequent escort to the C.A.'s office. Max still called ahead, of course, but the routine afterward was reduced to giving Mrs. Tebbe's door a couple of sharp raps before walking straight in.
That's what he did this time, too, and entered just as Mrs. Tebbe was closing a file folder on her desk. Something in her movement seemed furtive, her gesture too quick. This, in spite of the fact she greeted Max casually as she slipped the folder to her right.
"I'm assuming," he began, "that nothing turned up last night."
Mrs. Tebbe nodded, and the look in her eyes told him she knew what he was about to say. One hundred people had been searching for Mrs. Tamura's body twelve hours a day for ten days.
"It's time," he said simply.
The C.A. nodded again, then tilted her face upward and sighed. She looked tired. The soft skin beneath her cool, little eyes was faintly gray. Her hair seemed heavier in the snood's dark net.
Max went on. "I have a theory, Mrs. Tebbe. I've been giving it a lot of thought over the past two weeks. Now I think it's solid."
Mrs. Tebbe looked at him and must have seen the excitement he was trying hard to repress. She offered one of her wry smiles.
"I knew you were up to something this whole time."
"I think we've got a live one right here in Tulenar. Not even a simple fifth columnist. A true, professional operative."
The C.A. looked at Max for several long seconds. Finally she asked evenly, without the least rancor, "Why that angle, Captain?"
"Accessibility, timing, procedure."
"Accessibility. Meaning the nut brigade in Disjunction Lake is too far away."
"That's correct."
"What about setting up camp closer in?"
"And in the past week and a half not a single trace of evidence to that effect."
She fell silent again, and Max knew she would be going over the same questions he had asked himself as the days of the search had drawn on. At last she said, "The attacks were swift. Very precise."
"Professional's the word. Not even a footprint to go by."
"How do you figure that?"
"I'm guessing he -or they- drag the victim right over their own tracks. That's the least of the mysteries, here. People have covered their tracks since Heaven-knows-when."
"So you don't think he's acting alone."
Max tried to gauge the impact of his next statement. "I think he's controlling the Inu Hunters."
Mrs. Tebbe's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"Think about it. What part of the camp population could he hope to manipulate? Young, angry Nisei boys."
"So you're saying these kids are Japanese insurgents..."
"No. I'm saying they're being played for saps."
"But...why, Captain? Why wouldn't this operative just escape instead of...God Almighty, these are his people."
"No. No, they're not. In his opinion, they're part of the United States government. Mr. Ataki was a block manager. Mrs. Tamura was a nurse at the camp hospital. Every one of the Inu Hunters' targets are employed by the WRA or involved in camp politics."
"Captain, I just don't know..."
"How else, Mrs. Tebbe, can you explain the swiftness and precision of the attacks? How did the killer get to and from the camp?"
"The 'why' still bothers me..."
"If he escaped, what would be the point? The whole west coast would be looking for him, U.S. and Canada both. Where could he go and still hope to do as much damage to the Ally war effort as he's doing right here?"
"But, to kill so brutally. You read the coroner's report on Ataki, head trauma, the brain was removed immediately..."
Max was shaking his head before Mrs. Tebbe had even finished. "I'm skeptical of how well a rural county coroner, even though he's doing his best, can gauge something like that. It's not what he's used to seeing, is it? But if the coroner is right, his findings only back up my theory. To kill, then extract the brain ...very ritualistic, isn't it?"
Doris was struck dumb by the change. Finally, she asked, "What?"
He looked at her, the pain glistening in his eyes. Then the pain was in his voice again, too, as if it had been someone else who had commented only seconds ago.
"As far as could be told, Annie must have slipped. Something may have startled her. They found some animal tracks. She fell forward and gashed her throat on something. Unconscious, so near the rim, she just..."
Doris was spellbound, suddenly forgetting to be gentle. "Can they tell such a thing so precisely? I mean, she must have collided with several objects during the fall. How could they tell which strike it was, whether the cause of death was her falling forward on her throat or backward on her head?"
Pierce took off his glasses and rubbed at his ear again, clearly worn from the telling. But Doris was only vaguely aware, her mind whirring with a peculiar unrest.
"The coroner was the forensics expert, Mrs. Tebbe, not me," he replied with irritation. "It's in the report somewhere, I'm sure." He looked at Doris now, his eyes red and tearless, his face looking older. "All I know is I'm without her. No matter how it happened."
Could I be any more of a tactless idiot? "Yes, of course. Captain ... I'm so sorry."
She reached an unsure hand toward Pierce and patted his arm tentatively, hoping it was the right gesture. He smiled, seemed a little embarrassed now that it was all over, and finished off his cocktail.
"Well," he said, putting on his glasses, then standing to pull on his jacket. "Thanks for being my mother confessor. I didn't really mean to bend your ear so long and hard."
Doris stood quickly, happy to take the cue to leave. "It's important to get it out, Captain, I know."
"Well ... thanks, all the same."
They walked silently toward the car. The corporal saw them coming and stepped over to open the back door for Doris But just before they were within earshot of the driver, Pierce paused, his face troubled again.
"What did you do, Mrs. Tebbe, to get through it? That's what I really meant to ask you tonight. How did you manage to stop this...damn pain?"
Doris met his eyes evenly for a moment or two. "I worked, Captain. I just never stopped working long enough to think."
/ / / /
Doris found Arthur in his block's recreation hall, bent over a game of go with a fellow resident of Four's bachelor barracks. She was sure he was ignoring her as she walked the long hall all the way to his table. He was the only one who didn't gawk at her; the resented Center Administrator, shoes knocking the rough wood floor for what may as well have been a full mile.
When her shadow darkened the Japanese checkerboard, Arthur finally looked up, smiling as pleasantly and distantly as when they had first met.
"Good evening, Mrs. Tebbe."
"Mr. Satsugai." She looked to his playing partner, who nodded at her but didn't smile. "Mr. Sugano."
"Something I can do for you?" Arthur asked.
"I'd like a word, if I may."
"Certainly." He turned his attention to the flat little disks that patterned the board. He picked up a white piece from the bowl at his right hand and slid it into place. "We're just about to finish. If you'll give me a minute."
He took ten before escorting Doris outside, where they were alone in the dusty lane. The cast off glow of barracks windows lit their way in the moonless night.
"I'm sorry we don't have much time to talk, Mrs. Tebbe. The curfew, you know..."
"Cut it out, Arthur." She stopped and faced him. "Just get to the point and tell me why you're angry."
The light was dim, but Doris could see the challenge in his gently canted eyes. She was expecting him to say something ridiculous like, "Do I seem angry?" Instead, without warning, he stepped closer, caressed her neck and pressed his lips to hers. Doris was shocked. Her lips parted.
It was Arthur who was the first to pull away, and he said, "That's why I'm angry."
"I...I don't understand..."
"Damn it!"Both his cursing and the sudden heat in his voice startled her."Doris, you do understand. Damn it!"
He turned away and paced a time or two before walking back. "You just won't listen to yourself, will you? It's easier, it's safer to shut it out, shut if off, turn your eyes back to your desk and away from the sunset. How do you live like that!"
From the corner of her eye, Doris could see a silhouette in the nearest window, clearly curious about the commotion.
"I don't have to stand here and listen to this," she said, her voice strong and proud, thank Heaven. A grand lie.
Arthur stared at her as if she were some hopeless cause. "No, you don't," he replied. "You can be anywhere you please."
He closed his eyes a moment, and when he looked at her again there really wasn't a need for him to say what he was about to say. "You just stood there, Doris. You just stood there while he threw me out."
"That shouldn't have happened," she said quickly, and she so desperately wanted to say, I'm sorry! Arthur, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be ashamed. But she wasn't going to say it. Why couldn't she say it?
She swallowed. "I came to see if you were still going to be at the meeting Tuesday."
He said nothing. She swallowed again. "Are you?"
"Sure. It's my responsibility."
"I'll see you then," Doris replied, but Arthur already had his back turned and was walking down the path.
Chapter 17
David Alma Curar's Shack
Five miles south of Tulenar Internment Camp
Night. First Quarter Moon.
Dream, sweet dream, with his fingers trailing down her coppery arm to drift across her breast. Circling its roundness, coming to center, teasing the nipple. Against his thigh her wetness, the dark, downy nest pressing rhythmically. He covers her mouth with his own and searches for her tongue.
Sweet, sweet dream. He can whisper her name, even with his mouth full of her; lips, then soft jaw line, then neck. He lets his fingers glide up to her arm once again. And he's whispering her name over and over. She sighs, he growls low in reply.
His fingers drift downward again, against the soft flesh of her arm and she moans, he growls and he feels her soft flesh give under his nails. She struggles beneath him, her moans becoming louder until she's shrieking as the long, black claws rake the blood out of her arm and scrape across her breast ...
David Alma Curar no longer jolted out of his nightmares. Rather, he had to pull himself out, heavily, as if his dreams were a collective tar pit. He left his narrow cot and shuffled over to the eastern window of his little cabin. The sash was propped open with a stick wedged against the frame but, still half-drugged from sleep, David couldn't recall opening it. A thin, chill, midnight breeze whispered down the foothills. The half moon gave the conifers just enough light to cast shaggy, weak shadows against the ground.
Now came the horror. Soon to follow would be the depression. David bowed his head in a paradox of dread and welcome. After all this time, he knew the value of allowing them both their say. But he was not so strong that he could deny a longing for the sweetness of his old amnesia, for the peacefulness of the walled away mind.
Standing at the window, he worked his hand between his tee shirt and the band of his boxers. His fingers traced the heavy cord of scar tissue on his abdomen and he thought of Stanislov. Then his gaze wandered to the stack of old Arizona newspapers setting near the cabin door. For a moment, just a very brief moment, he allowed himself to envy Maxwell Pierce his amnesia.
Chapter 18
Tulenar Internment Camp
Morning. Waxing Gibbous Moon.
The blurred activity before Max's sedan was a hodge-podge of press people and militant, misguided citizens, just shy of the government property line that protected Tulenar. Max didn't have to see well to know that. It had been the standard scene since the Tamura crisis. Soldiers stood watch behind sawhorse barricades blocking the road, and a handful of dust-caked Packards and Buicks were parked offsides.
With the Tamura crisis half way into its second week, however, the numbers had dwindled. The press corps had shrunk to a few maintenance reporters, and the citizens' convictions were losing against boredom and desert heat.
But as Max's sedan approached, everyone perked up, sudden alertness in their ranks, even though they must know that this time would be just like the other times. The waiting soldiers parted the sawhorses and Max ordered his driver to pass through. The citizens bobbed their pickets and demanded justice for the "imprisoned," the press shouted questions with no hope of getting answers. Their bulky cameras were poised, small, round-headed cyclopses. All this in the futile hope that Max might roll down his window to comment, letting the cameras waste their one good eye of a flash bulb.
The people and their screeching disappeared behind the sedan's billowing red tail. Not far up the road, two soldiers were escorting a reporter by his shirt collar, the camera firmly held at its neck by one of them. Its belly would already be empty of any film, ripped out, per Max's orders.
He smiled, and then had the sense to be surprised at the contentment he felt in the midst of this whole mess. As his sedan reached the main entrance of Tulenar, he thought this satisfaction was due to the answers he'd found. He had challenged them these many days, testing each against time and evidence -or the lack thereof- and judged them sound. Now he was ready to share them with Mrs. Tebbe.
/ / / /
With a quick wave, Max strode past Harriet Haku. Since the Tamura crisis, Mrs. Tebbe and he had relaxed the protocol of formal announcement and subsequent escort to the C.A.'s office. Max still called ahead, of course, but the routine afterward was reduced to giving Mrs. Tebbe's door a couple of sharp raps before walking straight in.
That's what he did this time, too, and entered just as Mrs. Tebbe was closing a file folder on her desk. Something in her movement seemed furtive, her gesture too quick. This, in spite of the fact she greeted Max casually as she slipped the folder to her right.
"I'm assuming," he began, "that nothing turned up last night."
Mrs. Tebbe nodded, and the look in her eyes told him she knew what he was about to say. One hundred people had been searching for Mrs. Tamura's body twelve hours a day for ten days.
"It's time," he said simply.
The C.A. nodded again, then tilted her face upward and sighed. She looked tired. The soft skin beneath her cool, little eyes was faintly gray. Her hair seemed heavier in the snood's dark net.
Max went on. "I have a theory, Mrs. Tebbe. I've been giving it a lot of thought over the past two weeks. Now I think it's solid."
Mrs. Tebbe looked at him and must have seen the excitement he was trying hard to repress. She offered one of her wry smiles.
"I knew you were up to something this whole time."
"I think we've got a live one right here in Tulenar. Not even a simple fifth columnist. A true, professional operative."
The C.A. looked at Max for several long seconds. Finally she asked evenly, without the least rancor, "Why that angle, Captain?"
"Accessibility, timing, procedure."
"Accessibility. Meaning the nut brigade in Disjunction Lake is too far away."
"That's correct."
"What about setting up camp closer in?"
"And in the past week and a half not a single trace of evidence to that effect."
She fell silent again, and Max knew she would be going over the same questions he had asked himself as the days of the search had drawn on. At last she said, "The attacks were swift. Very precise."
"Professional's the word. Not even a footprint to go by."
"How do you figure that?"
"I'm guessing he -or they- drag the victim right over their own tracks. That's the least of the mysteries, here. People have covered their tracks since Heaven-knows-when."
"So you don't think he's acting alone."
Max tried to gauge the impact of his next statement. "I think he's controlling the Inu Hunters."
Mrs. Tebbe's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"Think about it. What part of the camp population could he hope to manipulate? Young, angry Nisei boys."
"So you're saying these kids are Japanese insurgents..."
"No. I'm saying they're being played for saps."
"But...why, Captain? Why wouldn't this operative just escape instead of...God Almighty, these are his people."
"No. No, they're not. In his opinion, they're part of the United States government. Mr. Ataki was a block manager. Mrs. Tamura was a nurse at the camp hospital. Every one of the Inu Hunters' targets are employed by the WRA or involved in camp politics."
"Captain, I just don't know..."
"How else, Mrs. Tebbe, can you explain the swiftness and precision of the attacks? How did the killer get to and from the camp?"
"The 'why' still bothers me..."
"If he escaped, what would be the point? The whole west coast would be looking for him, U.S. and Canada both. Where could he go and still hope to do as much damage to the Ally war effort as he's doing right here?"
"But, to kill so brutally. You read the coroner's report on Ataki, head trauma, the brain was removed immediately..."
Max was shaking his head before Mrs. Tebbe had even finished. "I'm skeptical of how well a rural county coroner, even though he's doing his best, can gauge something like that. It's not what he's used to seeing, is it? But if the coroner is right, his findings only back up my theory. To kill, then extract the brain ...very ritualistic, isn't it?"
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