The Frenzy Way (9 page)

His cell phone rang as he unlocked his apartment door.

“We’ve got about a dozen witnesses so far,” Gibbons said on the other end.

Stepping inside, Mace said, “And?”

“You’re not going to believe this.”

He closed the door. “Try me.”

“They all claim they saw more or less the same thing: a big black dog broke through the window, landed on the sidewalk, and ran away—on two legs.”

Mace hesitated before locking the door. “Are you serious?”

“As serious as a wake. What scares me is that they’re serious too.”

“Do they know each other? Maybe they’re pulling our detectives’ legs.”

“Some, not all. You home yet?”

“Just walked in.”

“Go to our favorite channel.”

Entering the living room, Mace picked up the remote control and aimed it at the TV, which brightened to New York One News. He saw Connie Kellog, an attractive brunette who had replaced Cheryl, standing outside Sarah Harper’s building, surrounded by a crowd.

“—that’s right, ‘nahual,’ the Mexican word for ‘werewolf.’ This is Connie Kellog, New York One News.”

Damn it!
Someone had already leaked to the press. “Something tells me CSU hasn’t finished at the crime scene yet.”

“According to Diega, they’re just setting up now. Patty’s making a list of all the uniforms who saw the writing on the wall.”

“Forget about that. It could have been the landlady or another tenant.”

“What do you want them to do?”

“Have them bring those witnesses into the squad room. Maybe they’ll tell you what they really saw—if they really saw
anything
—when they’re sitting in an interview room.”

“Copy that.”

“I’ll be in before shift change. No one signs out. I’m authorizing the OT.” As Mace shut off his cell phone, he heard a creak behind him.

Turning, he saw Cheryl standing in the bedroom doorway, dressed in her robe.

“This is going to be a bad one, isn’t it?”

“It already is.”

Exhausted after a twelve-hour day, Peter Danior drove his unlicensed gypsy cab over the Queens Bridge to Long Island City at around 5:00
AM
. He had earned three hundred dollars for the day, better than usual. Once he deducted his gas money, food expenses, and coffee tab, he had just over two hundred dollars left in his pocket. Aishe would be pleased, though he doubted she’d show it.

His beautiful wife still had too much of the old country in her blood. While Peter had lived in the United States since he was twelve, Aishe had arrived only two years earlier, her marriage to him arranged by their parents a decade earlier. They were Gitanos: Roma people. Gypsies. Peter’s family lived in Spain, Aishe’s in France. Peter had been thrilled to learn Aishe would be his bride, but marriage had proven difficult. Money preoccupied his wife, who made as much telling fortunes part-time as he did driving his cab full-time. They constantly bickered about financial matters.

Aishe refused to take an American name, as he had, and insisted on calling him
Pitti
rather than Peter. She hated New York City and wanted to own a house in what she called “the real suburbs.” Peter hadlived in Queens most of his adult life and had no desire to leave. But if moving would bring peace to his marriage, he was willing to work hard to buy her a home wherever she desired. He wanted a son and hoped he’d grow up in a stable, loving environment.

Peter drove through his neighborhood, which had become crowded and noisy over the years. Beyond the elevated train tracks, Manhattan gleamed beneath a full moon. He pulled into his driveway and shut off the engine. Getting out, he faced the white siding on his little house and sauntered from side to side as he mounted the concrete steps leading to the front door.

Aishe had turned on the kitchen light, and he heard bacon sizzling in a frying pan. Unzipping his green army jacket, he hung it on a coat hook and walked through the dark hallway to the kitchen. Aishe moved into his vision, her back to him, dressed in a baize robe. Her long, curly black hair hung down to the middle of her back, and he admired the shape of her ass. Feeling himself growing hard, he appreciated their life together when they weren’t fighting.

“Aishe?”

She looked over her shoulder, a startled expression on her face. “Oh, Pitti, you frightened me! I didn’t hear you come in.” She spoke in a heavy French accent.

He stared past her at the frying pan. “You’re cooking for me.”

“Is that so unusual?”

Yes
, he thought. She never got up early to feed him, so he usually cooked for himself. Pulling a chair across the linoleum, he sat at the table. She had laid the early morning edition of the
New York Post
on the table for him.

What’s gotten into her? She must want something. But what? She had her own money.

Aishe served him a cup of black coffee, then returned to the stove.

Peter sipped the bitter liquid and set the cup back down on its saucer. Taking the tabloid in both hands, he gazed at the headline:“Werewolf” Stalks City! A photo of a smiling blonde woman faced him from beneath the lurid headline. The image blurred and he felt light-headed. As he wrinkled his brow, he heard what sounded like a footstep behind him. With Aishe standing before him, he knew that was impossible.

Lowering the paper, he saw the upside-down reflection of a man in the polished surface of the silver fruit bowl on the table. He turned to identify the intruder, but a wire garotte ensnared his throat and he gasped for air. Clawing at the wire as the garotte crushed his windpipe, he stared at the reflection.

Djordje
, his brother-in-law! With his face turning scarlet, he kicked at the edge of the table, knocking over the fruit bowl to catch Aishe’s attention.

Turning off the stove, his wife opened the silverware drawer. Then she faced him with a silver carving knife clutched in her right hand. What in God’s name was happening? Aishe approached him with the knife poised to strike.

“You think I didn’t know?” Aishe said. “I knew. So did my brother. We always suspected. You just couldn’t control yourself, could you?”

Peter’s head felt ready to explode. If he could just loosen the garotte …

“You monster!”

Aishe drove the knife straight into his heart, and he stared down at her hand with disbelieving eyes. Raising them once more, he gaped at her snarling features as she twisted the blade.

“Loup-garou!”

“The Custer Wolf, Phantom, Rags the Digger, Three Toes, Bigfoot, Digger—these were the true legends of the Old West. Collectively, these rogue wolves destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of livestock owned by settlers, and it took as long as ten years for bounty hunters to kill some of them. They were known on the plains as ‘outlaws,’ ‘monsters,’ and ‘criminals.’”

—Transmogrification in Native American Mythology
, Terrence Glenzer

Mace stood in the center of the squad room, with Patty on his right and Landry on his left. Willy stood leaning on the water cooler, nibbling on a Pop-Tart, and detectives crowded the bull pen. Mace had skipped his morning run again, but at least he’d caught a few hours of sleep. He held up a copy of
The News
for everyone to see. “As hard as it may be to swallow, we have reason to believe that Glenzer and Harper were each murdered by a single perp.”

This generated skeptical whispers.

“And as this morning’s headlines suggest, this nut thinks he’s a werewolf, or he wants us to think he is.”

A sea of heads shook in unison.

“Don, would you mind telling us all what ‘nahual’ means?”

Don Gibbons stepped forward. The sergeant, who had already stayed well beyond the end of his shift, had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Large sweat stains spread from his underarms.

“‘Nahual’ is a South American term,” he said before focusing on the printout in his hand. “According to Aztec and Mayan mythology, it means a ‘spirit being,’ like the animal totem of North American Indians. Everyone has a nahual watching over them and protecting them, like a guardian angel. In Mexico, shamans, mystics, and healers are sometimes called
nahuales.
The Aztecs believed that a nahual had the power to turn into a were-creature, like a wolf, a jaguar, or a coyote. Aztec hunters claimed that when they sometimes killed an animal during the night, it turned into a human corpse the next day. The nahual can only transform at night. The Santa Inquisition hunted nahuales for many years.”

As Gibbons spoke, Mace saw Carl Stokes enter the squad room and stand at the back, unnoticed by the detectives. As CPI—Commissioner of Public Information—Stokes cut a sharp figure: tall and well dressed, the former TV crime reporter knew how to project a commanding image. He had been appointed CPI, a civilian position, by Deputy Commissioner Patrick Dunegan, and he served his master well.

Scanning the dumbfounded expressions of the murder police, Mace said, “Questions?”

Dana Weeds, detective second grade, who was bucking for first grade before retirement, raised his hand. His hair matched his dirty white shirt. Mace found him fat, lazy, and cynical, a veteran who had been on the force too long.

“Yeah, do we have to listen to this bullshit, Tony?”

Mace refrained from sighing. He didn’t mind when his detectivesused his first name in private conversations, but he found it disrespectful in the context of a squad meeting.

Patty crossed her arms. “You have to listen if you’re going to help on the case, Weeds. The perp left that term on a wall of vic number two’s apartment. We need to know what’s going through his head.”

Weeds rolled his eyes. “This is some kind of elaborate hoax.”

“Sure, the fairy-tale aspects are. But an old man and a young woman were literally torn to pieces in our jurisdiction. In each case, the vic’s head was nowhere to be found. That sound like a hoax to you? View the crime scene video.”

Weeds looked down at his desk like a scolded schoolchild, his jaw tightening.

Mace said, “Willy, run down Sarah Harper’s stats.”

Willy opened a folder and read from its contents. “‘Sarah Bridget Harper, age twenty-one. Grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. Third year at NYU—art history major. She took Glenzer’s class as an elective. No steady boyfriend. Survived by her parents and two sisters.”’

“The other thing linking these murders,” Mace said, “is that each one occurred at night during a full moon. Tonight is the third and final full moon of this cycle. If our perp strikes again—and we have no reason to believe he won’t—he just might disappear for a whole month, like Rodrigo Gomez did. To prevent that from happening, we need to know if there’s a stronger connection between Glenzer and Harper.”

Patty said, “I want the teams who interviewed Glenzer’s students from this semester to re-interview those same students today. Get their take on Sarah.”

Groans filled the room.

Mace said, “The coroner will be working on both victims all week, so don’t expect any helpful tips from them immediately. Landry, we’ve got two werewolf references now. I want you to put together a glossary in case we get another message.”

Landry noted Mace’s directive.

Patty eyed the men. “Share nothing—and I mean
nothing
—with the press, or your ass will be mine.”

Muted chortles.

An edge crept into Mace’s voice. “If I learn of anyone in this squad leaking information, I’ll have their shield. Don’t doubt it for one minute.”

Patty said, “You’re bound to encounter citizens who are understandably curious about our perp’s fascination with supernatural monsters. Don’t feed that curiosity. Don’t even joke to each other that we’re regarding these messages as anything other than an attempt to create an atmosphere of fear.” She gave each detective a hard look. “Your assignments are posted. Willy and I will be in the field too. Stay in touch with me no matter how insignificant a detail may seem.”

“Good hunting,” Mace said.

Inside Mace’s office, with the door closed, Stokes said, “Am I to understand Detective Lane is the primary on this investigation?”