The Frenzy Way (26 page)

Tonight he slept on a wooden bench at the southern end of the cavernous number one downtown platform. Lying on his side with his back to the rails, he did not see the black shape that leapt out of the tunnel onto the platform, moving toward him on four legs, like a great panther.

Awaking with a start, Alberto Santana thought he heard glass breaking. Lying faceup in bed, with his chin on his chest, he held his breath and listened with great concentration. Hearing nothing, he reached over to the bedside table and put on his thick horn-rimmed glasses. He had lived in this neighborhood for thirty years and remembered when it had been called “up-and-coming,” a euphemism for
ghetto.
But in the last decade, it up and came—gentrification had set in, driving out brown faces and welcoming in white faces. The racial ratio was even now, something he wished his wife, Evedania, had lived to see.

But crime plagued the neighborhood, which was why he had analarm system installed in the brownstone he had purchased at a time when even Manhattan real estate was at an all-time low. He knew he could sell the property for a small fortune now and retire to Puerto Rico, but since breast cancer had claimed his beloved Evedania, the people who brought their pets to his practice meant more to him than anyone else. He didn’t know what he would do without them, and if he wished to remain in his home, he needed to continue working. The property taxes were too high for him to contemplate retirement.

His heart skipped a beat when he heard glass crash to the floor. That was in the basement!

Bolting upright, Alberto shifted his gaze to the telephone on the nightstand. He lifted the wireless phone from its cradle.
No dial tone.
Could that be why the alarm hadn’t alerted him to a break-in? Had someone cut the lines coming into the house? Or was he being paranoid? He tried the switch on the tableside lamp, and soft light illuminated the bedroom. The brownstone still had power, just not a working telephone.

Throwing back the covers, he climbed out of bed and lifted a wooden baseball bat from its hiding place behind the end table. He crept to the bedroom door and down the stairs, dressed in pin-striped flannel pajamas and a red plaid bathrobe. His descent caused the steps to squeak, but he heard no other sounds.

Perhaps he had only heard a bottle smashing outside. After all, his hearing had stopped serving him well long ago. At sixty-seven, he felt physically fit, but his body had been in decline for several years now. At the bottom of the stairs, he stood facing the front door with the living room behind him. A streetlight shone through the curtains. He had a difficult choice to make: should he go outside and search for a pay phone that still worked or investigate the basement himself? Clutching the bat’s handle in both hands, he chose the latter. If anyone had broken into his office, it was likely a crackhead searching for medications. He had never bowed to vermin, and he did not intend to start now. This house belonged to him.

Alberto padded to the kitchen, opened the basement door, and gazed into darkness. Wishing to keep his presence a secret from anyone who might be down there, he refrained from flipping the light switch as he descended the wooden stairs, his knees making more racket than his footsteps. Outside the door to his office, he waited, listening again. He thought he heard the sound of metal scraping against metal, but he couldn’t be sure. Then he noticed the fluorescent light outlining the door from the other side.

Someone really is in there!
Steeling his nerves, he released the bat with one hand, gripped the doorknob, and flung the door open.

A figure clad in bloody rags, hunched over the far counter with his back to him, tore through the contents of a drawer.

Just as I suspected
, he thought, readying the bat.

The intruder whirled around, and Alberto gasped. The Caucasian man’s features twisted into a snarl, lips pulled back to reveal his gums, and the taut fingers of his left hand clawed the air. His right hand clutched his left shoulder, dark blood flowing over his fingers. For an instant, Alberto doubted the ragged figure before him was even human. Then the man stood straight, a full six feet tall, and bounded toward him. Alberto swung the bat at the man’s head with all his strength, but the man snatched it from his hands and hurled it against a wall, splintering its wood. The man seized Alberto’s throat with his left hand, and Alberto gagged on the rancid stench emanating from his attacker’s clothing.

“What do you want?” Alberto managed to say.

The intruder shoved Alberto into the office, standing between him and the doorway, trapping him like a rat. He removed his hand from his wounded shoulder and said, “I’ve been shot. I want you to remove the bullet.”

Alberto stared at the man in disbelief. “But I’m only a veterinarian!”

The intruder moved closer, a menacing expression on his perspiring face. “You’ll do just fine.”

Alberto took an instinctive step back. “W-who shot you?”

“A very
bad
man.”

Alberto swallowed. “What if I refuse?”

The intruder smiled. “It’ll be the last mistake you ever make.”

Alberto recoiled as if he had been struck. What could he do? He was a prisoner in his own home. “Very well. Get on the examining table.” He gestured at the stainless steel table, which the man leapt atop with surprising grace. Then Alberto reached for a syringe and a bottle of clear fluid.

“What are you doing?” the intruder said.

“Preparing a local anesthetic.”

The man shook his head. “No anesthesia.”

Alberto could barely believe his ears. “But the pain—”

“No anesthesia!”
As the man snarled the words, the brown irises of his eyes expanded, blotting out the whites.

Diablo!
With a terrified shriek, Alberto dropped the syringe on the floor and fled across the room. Before he could reach the doorway, however, the terrifying man threw himself inside it, blocking Alberto’s escape route. The man grabbed Alberto’s throat and dug his fingers deep into his flesh, then hurled Alberto against a wall.

“Please,” Alberto said, gasping, “just get out …”

Grinning, the intruder snatched a scalpel from a nearby tray and raised it for Alberto to see. He flipped the instrument into the air and caught its blade, extending the handle to Alberto with its tip aimed at his own heart. His grin stretched wider and his teeth flexed. “Now
do
it.”

Alberto reached for the scalpel with trembling fingers.

Mace stood on the grimy 181st and Broadway subway station platform in the Three-Four Precinct, gazing at a blood-drenched wooden bench. Sinewy muscle and pink flesh glistened beneath the fluorescent bulbs, and two words had been scrawled on the filthy wall in thick, juicy lettering:
Ookami otoko.

Japanese wolf man
, Mace thought without consulting the list in his pocket.

“The head’s over here,” Detective Sanchez said. The stocky man pointed over the platform’s edge at the tracks below.

Mace followed the direction of the man’s chubby finger to a crimson-colored shape wedged between one rail and a trestle. The head appeared to have been casually discarded. At the mouth of the tunnel to their left, steam billowed from a waiting train. He shifted his gaze to the trail of blood leading to the platform’s opposite end.

“It—
he
—came up onto the platform there,” he said to the detective and uniforms. “The vic was asleep on the bench. The perp attacked him, left this message, and tossed the head just to let us know that he could have taken it if he wanted to.”
The bastard ran all the wayuptown through the tunnels!

“Why didn’t he take it?” Sanchez said.

“Because he’s wounded. A PO shot him downtown. He still made his point.”

“So why did he attack this sorry son of a bitch?”

“Because he needed his clothes.” Before Sanchez could ask another question, Mace said, “Have your men bag the head and get it out of there before rats get to it. You’ll have to shut down this track so CSU can follow that blood trail. Have MTA send some emergency buses for the commuters. We’ll have more DNA than forensics can handle. And turn that train around.” Facing the wall, he gestured at the bloody message on its tiled surface. “No one else comes down here, and no one sees that. Call in extra men to keep the press away. I want a total lockdown.”

Sanchez waved to the transit cop stationed near the stairs, who nodded and headed up to the next level.

A trilling filled the air, and Sanchez answered his cell phone. Looking at Mace, his face turned pale.

What now? Mace wondered.

Loup-garou
said the dripping red letters on the wall of Alberto Santana’s examining room.

French
, Mace thought, recalling the interview with Aishe Petulengro in Queens.

“A veterinarian,” Sanchez said. “Maybe the perp
is
a werewolf.”

Mace looked at the bloodied corpse lying on the examining table. The man’s clothing, which had been sliced open and peeled away from his body, dripped off the edges of the table like melting candle wax. So did his flesh, which had been flayed. Only his face and fingertips remained, in stark contrast to his bloody infrastructure. The face almost resembled a mask.

“He didn’t rip him to pieces. Instead, he took his time. He hacked him apart with that scalpel on the floor, then used his hand to make the graffiti.” He held his own hand near the bloody lettering. The length from the bottom of his palm to the tip of his middle finger was nearly identical to the width of the lettering.
A human hand.

“Why did he leave his face and fingertips like that?” Sanchez said.

“So we can identify him.” Mace pointed at the heap of filthy rags on the floor. “You’ll find the blood on those clothes matches the blood back on the platform. He wore them to get here.” Turning, he eyed the bloody footprints on the floor. “Then stole some of Dr.—?”

Sanchez consulted his notes. “Santana.”

“—Santana’s clothes before he left. Those footprints lead to a bedroom closet, I’ll bet.”

“On the second floor,” a PO said.

Sanchez locked his eyes on Mace. “So the perp killed this veterinarian for his clothes?”

“No, he killed that vagrant for
his
clothes. He killed Dr. Santana for knowing too much. He came here to have this bullet removed.” Mace pointed at the bloody .9mm round on the counter. “The change of fresh clothes was just a bonus.”

“Three homicides in one night at three different sites,” Sanchez said. “One officer-related. Respectfully, I’d hate to be in your shoes.”

I don’t blame you, Mace thought.

Five hours later, Mace sat before Deputy Police Commissioner Patrick Dunegan in his wide office at One Police Plaza. Steve Chiles, the chief of departments, wore a crisp blue uniform, and Dennis Hackley, the chief of detectives, sat behind them and off to the side, while Carl Stokes stood at the sunlit window behind Dunegan, gazing at the plaza below.

“To call this operation a complete disaster is an understatement,” Dunegan said, clipping his words. “It’s not the first time an undercover officer’s been killed in the line of duty, but under
these
circumstances …”