Ghouls (11 page)

He fastened his portable to his belt, then rapped gently on Glen’s storm door. Glen appeared almost instantly, as if he’d been waiting all along, and instead of inviting Kurt in, he stepped outside and walked straight to the new cruiser.

“So here’s the new patrol car,” Glen said. He looked at it appraisingly. “What a beaut.”

“How did you know about it?” Kurt asked.

“Higgins told me this morning when I got off.”

“When Bard found out how much it would cost to repair the old one, he decided to just go for it all. The old one was breaking down anyway. I’d sure like to know how he wrangled the extra cash out of the town council.”

“Probably had to spend some time on his knees.”

Kurt smiled at the insinuation, but then he darkened at the next thought. “I guess Higgins told you the rest, too.”

Glen was peeking in at the dash, shading his eyes with his hand. “Huh? Oh, yeah—about Swaggert. That’s spread all over town by now. What do you think happened to him?”

“That’s what I came to ask you. Did you see him last night?”

“Nope, and that’s strange because he usually stops by Belleau Wood to bullshit for a few minutes. But not last night, I didn’t see hide nor hair of the guy. Could he have been thrown clear when he wrecked the car, or maybe crawled away?”

“No,” Kurt said, “no way. He climbed out the passenger door. Besides, we checked the whole area right up to the Belleau Wood property line. If he was hurt, he wouldn’t have crawled into the woods.”

Glen was standing now, leaning against the car door. He slipped his hands in his jeans pockets and looked thoughtfully into the trees behind the bungalows. “You think he bolted?”

“Not me. That’s the last thing Swaggert would do.”

“Well let me tell you what I think happened. I think he went after poachers and maybe got lost in the woods, or worse, got himself shot.”

“How would that explain the wrecked cruiser?” Kurt asked.

“Maybe one of the poachers was crossing the road same time Swaggert came around the bend; Swaggert can either dump the cruiser or run the guy down, so he dumps the cruiser. Then the guy takes off into the woods and Swaggert takes off after him, fixing to kick his ass and haul him in.”

Kurt gave the idea some thought. “Merkel’s field isn’t too far from Belleau Wood. Did you hear any shots?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything; Belleau Wood is huge, and I spend most of my time up near the house. I wouldn’t necessarily be able to hear shots as far down as Merkel’s field.”

“Yeah, but I just can’t see Swaggert getting lost in the woods. He’s a born pathfinder.”

“I don’t care if he’s Daniel Boone back from the dead. Without a compass, a guy can get lost quick as shit back there. Some of the thickest, hairiest woods in the state. And there’s always the quicksand on the other side of the Route.”

“Quicksand?”

“Hell, yes. The marsh is full of it. Animals sinking in the stuff all the time. Once I saw this beautiful ten- or fifteen-point buck go down in the shit. Funniest damn thing I ever saw—two big old antlers sticking up out of the marsh.”

Kurt pictured a different image, a
hand
sticking up out of the marsh.

“Anyway,” Glen said, “that’s my two-cents’ worth. Swaggert chasing poachers.”

“Probably Stokes or one of his friends,” Kurt considered. “Jacking deer’s his bread and butter, next to dealing.”

“Might be a good idea to ask Vicky if he was home last night. Wouldn’t mean anything if he wasn’t, but it sure couldn’t hurt.”

Kurt nodded, trapped by a meld of thoughts. Just as he was about to ask Glen who owned the black sports car, the portable radio on his hip crackled and spat: “Two-zero-seven.”

Oh, hell,
he thought.
Bard probably wants more doughnuts.
He keyed the radio. “Two-zero-seven, go ahead.”

“Two-zero-seven, go to 2-8-1-9, MSR 154; citizen reports possible signal 85.”

“Ten-four.”

“What’s a signal 85?” Glen queried.

“Missing person. We seem to be having a lot of those all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, a cop and a corpse. What next?”

“I’ll let you know,” Kurt said, and slipped into the new car.

Glen waved and went back into the bungalow. Kurt popped the portable back into the dash-charger, then started the engine and cut the wheel. He looked up then, turning a hard circle around the parking court. A quick slither at Glen’s front window caught his eye; the drapes pulled back from the inside, and he could now see a face behind the pane. It wasn’t Glen’s face, it was a woman’s. He stopped and stared, almost rudely. In the gap between the curtains he also could see a tapered slice of the woman’s breast, abdomen, and thigh; she was nude. But in less time than it took to frown, the drapes fell back across the glass, and the figure was gone.

Kurt drove away to his call, duped by what he’d just seen. This was the second time he’d caught a glimpse of the girl, and the second time Glen had failed to acknowledge her. He wondered what it was Glen didn’t want him to know.

Back on 154, he slowed to a crawl, driving on the shoulder and craning his neck to read the addresses on the postboxes. Finally he found it, 2819 stenciled across the body of a very large mailbox corroded by rust. He turned and drove at least fifty yards into the woods, along a typical tree-walled dirt road, until he came to the house.
What else could I expect?
he thought. The house was not a house, but a long, white trailer set up on a foundation of cinderblocks—the crudest of dwellings, yet so familiar to him. Like many of the secret homes off the Route, this was surrounded by heaps of refuse and at least eight ancient automobiles, all in varying states of dilapidation. A fat-bellied cat chased famished chickens across the front yard, and faded articles of laundry flapped at him from a makeshift clothesline, like a string of lunatic signal flags. He heard dogs barking nearby as he got out, hand on his mace, but there were no dogs that he could see, just the chickens clucking and tracking circles around the yard in sheer terror. When he was halfway to what he presumed to be the front door, a voice carried out from the side, “Hey there.”

A man had just turned the corner of the trailer and was approaching in strange, quick strides.

“You reported a missing person?” Kurt asked.

“That’s right. Name’s Harley Fitzwater, an’ my
daughta
, Donna…she been kidnapped.”

He’d heard this before. A second look at Fitzwater showed a man who was probably not old—he just looked that way, weathered, taut, with skin like canvas. He wore a T-shirt and overalls, and looked starved in them. His eyes were squinting slits; his face reminded Kurt of the bottom of a deformed foot. Like lots of the poor in this part of Maryland, Fitzwater was one who lived off the land and water, who made cash selling skins and meat, who shivered in the winter and dripped sweat in the summer. A survivor.

“Kidnapped, you say?”

“That’s right. When I came back from the lake, she was gone.”

“Does your wife—”

“Ain’t got no wife, she been dead years. Jus me an’ Donna.”

Parents, no matter how destitute, could never be reasoned with about such things. “Perhaps it’s hasty to suspect kidnapping at this point, Mr. Fitzwater. How old is Donna?”

Fitzwater’s face seemed to pucker as he thought. “
Twunee
-two, I think… That’s right,
twunee
-two.”

“Have you talked to any of her friends, a boyfriend, maybe?”

“Donna ain’t got no friends.
Sure’s
hell got no boyfriend.”

“Well, isn’t it likely that she just went off for a walk someplace?”

“No,” Fitzwater said. His answer was icy, unhesitant. His eyes looked more like an animal’s than a man’s. “No,” he said again.

“How can you be sure?”

“’Cos Donna’s got no
feelin
’ from the waist down. Can’t walk, been that way since she was little.”

Kurt tensed. He felt like he’d just been hit in the head with a box of nails.

“Her chair’s still inside. Right ‘side the bed. Somebody took her outa her bed while I was gone.”

“Where were you?” Kurt asked, grateful Fitzwater had cut in again.

“I went out to the lake ‘bout an hour ‘fore sunup,
stringin
’
fer
white perch and cat. I got back a little while ago an’ Donna was gone.”

Kurt took out a missing person card, the first he’d ever used, and began to fill it out with data provided by Fitzwater. Later, the information would be transferred to Maryland State Police Form MPD A-1A. Fitzwater answered the series of questions sharply and with primitive reserve. There was no display of grief here, nothing chipped away by emotions. Very clearly Kurt sensed the focus in Fitzwater’s existential reaction; he wanted something done now, with as little time wasted as possible.

“You find my Donna,” Fitzwater said.

“We’ll do everything we can, sir. I’ll forward this report to the county and state police right away. Do you have a photograph of Donna, preferably a recent one?”

“No,” Fitzwater said. “None.”

“We’ll need your phone number so we can contact you.”

“Ain’t got no phone. I hitchhiked to the Liquor Mart and back, used the pay phone there to call
y’awl
. Got no need for a phone.”

Kurt clapped his metal report book shut. “I’ll come back when things start to develop.”

It was almost scary the way Fitzwater looked at him then— a deserted, definitive gaze, like being evaluated by a statue. “I don’t care,” Fitzwater said. “You just find my Donna.”

««—»»

Four
a.m.
crept up with the stealth of a snake. His first twelve-hour shift in years, yet it seemed to have passed in a handful of hours. Earlier he’d processed the missing persons report through the county and state, glad that the unusual aspects of Donna Fitzwater’s disappearance would expedite the 85. The remainder of his shift had elapsed in a black lament; his mind forced thoughts of Cody Drucker, of Swaggert, of the paralyzed girl. The Fitzwater case pushed Drucker to a back burner; it was abduction, Kurt knew, not kidnapping. No one would kidnap the daughter of a man who had no money to forfeit for ransom. Kurt suspected darker motives here, motives that made him sick; the possibility was heinously typical—Donna Fitzwater would probably turn up in a few days, murdered, sexually mauled. Cheap tabloid headlines stretched across his mind: CRIPPLED GIRL FOUND DEAD IN CULVERT, or something
hackishly
similar. TORTURED WITH COAT HANGERS AND RAPED FOR DAYS. And of course Swaggert, more than likely lying dead somewhere in the dripping woods. Kurt couldn’t escape the sinister hint; whatever had happened to Swaggert could just as easily happen to him.

His headlights swept across the house. He pulled up and parked the Ford, expecting to find the house dark; but then he saw the familiar dull orange light filling one of the downstairs windows. So far his attempts to break Melissa of television addiction had failed utterly. He knew she was up right now, no doubt transfixed by the all-night horror movies on cable.

He used his flashlight to show him the way up the porch steps. Melissa must’ve heard him park; she opened the door and let him in before he even had his keys out. The TV muttered from the family room, throwing slants of ghostly, shifting color onto the walls.

Melissa locked the door at once. She seemed distracted by some complex worry; her face had lost the mischievous smirk he was so used to. Her long ink-black hair shivered as she turned, her thin body moving wraithlike under a dreary white nightgown. The flickering light from the other room lit points in her eyes like sparks.