The Wolf Gift (20 page)

Nonsense. What had Phil said about evil? “It’s blunders, people making blunders, whether it’s raiding a village and killing all the inhabitants, or killing a child in a fit of rage. Mistakes. Everything is simply a matter of mistakes.”

Maybe somehow this was a matter of blunders, too. And he’d been lucky, damned lucky, that the people he’d so thoughtlessly slaughtered had been “guilty” in the eyes of the world.

What if a brute beast was responsible for the bite that had changed him—not some wise man wolf, but simply an animal—like this famous mountain lion? What then? But he didn’t believe that at all. How many human beings since the dawn of time have been attacked by beasts? They don’t turn into monsters.

At nine o’clock, he woke up in the big leather chair behind the desk. His shoulders and neck were stiff and his head aching.

He had an e-mail from Grace. She’d spoken again to “that specialist in Paris.” Would Reuben please call?

Specialist in Paris? What specialist in Paris? He didn’t call. Quickly, he typed out an e-mail. “Mom, I don’t need to see a specialist in anything. I am well. Love, R.”

I am after all sitting here in my new house waiting patiently to turn into a werewolf. Love, your son
.

He felt restless, hungry, but not hungry for food. It was something much worse. He looked around him at the big dark room with its crowded bookcases. The fire had gone out. He felt anxious, as though he had to move, had to get out, had to be somewhere.

He could hear the soft murmuring sounds of the forest, the lisping of the rain falling through the dense branches. He could not hear a large animal. If there was a mountain lion out there, perhaps she was fast asleep with her cubs. Whatever the case she was a wild thing, and he was a human being waiting, waiting in a house with glass walls.

He e-mailed Galton a list of things to buy for the house, though probably most of the stuff was there. He wanted a lot of new plants for the conservatory—orange trees, ferns, and bougainvillea—could Galton handle that? What else? There had to be something else. The restlessness was driving him crazy.

He went online and ordered a laser printer for this library, and a desktop Mac to be delivered as soon as possible, and a number of Bose CD players, and a whole slew of Blu-ray. Bose CD players were the only obsolete technology he loved.

He unpacked the Bose players he’d brought—both of which were also radios—and put one in the kitchen and the other in the library on the desk.

He was not hearing any voices. The night was empty around him.

And the change was not happening to him.

For a while he drifted about the house, pondering, talking aloud to himself, thinking. He had to keep moving. He put signs where the televisions should be installed. He’d sit down, get up, pace, climb the stairs, roam the attics, come down.

He went outside into the rain, roaming the back part of the house. Under the overhang he looked into the various lower bedrooms of the servants’ quarters, each of which had a door and a window on the stone walkway. All seemed in order, with simple somewhat rustic furnishings.

At the end of the wing he found the shed, stacked with a huge amount of firewood. A worktable ran along one side, with axes and saws hung on hooks on the wall. There were other tools, anything a man might need for repairs large and small.

Reuben had never held an ax in his hands. He took down the largest of the axes—it had a three-foot wooden handle—and felt the edge of the blade. The blade itself must have weighed about five pounds and was a good five inches long. And sharp. Very sharp. All his life he’d seen men in movies and television programs splitting logs with an ax like this. He wondered how he might like doing that out here himself. The handle itself didn’t weigh much at all; and surely the weight of the blade gave the ax its force. If it hadn’t been raining, he would have looked for the place where the wood had been split.

But something else occurred to him—that this was the only weapon he had.

He carried the ax back into the house with him and set it down
beside the fireplace in the big room. It looked simple enough there—the paint had long ago peeled from the wooden handle—between the pile of firewood and the fire, almost out of sight.

He felt he could get to that quickly enough if he ever had a need. Of course—before some two weeks ago, it had never occurred to him that he could defend himself with any weapon, but he had not the slightest qualm now.

The restlessness was almost unsupportable.

Was he resisting the change? Or was it just too damned early? It had never come on him this early. He had to wait.

But he couldn’t wait.

His hands and feet were tingling. The rain was acutely loud now, and he thought he could hear the surf again, but he wasn’t sure.

He couldn’t bear it here any longer. He made a decision. He had no choice.

He took off his clothes, hung them up neatly in the closet, and put on the big loose clothing he’d bought in Santa Rosa.

He was swallowed by the giant hooded sweatshirt and oversized pants, but it didn’t matter. The brown trench coat was simply too big to wear, but he’d take it with him.

He took off his shoes and slipped into the huge rain boots. He put the scarf around his neck, tucked it in, and put the sunglasses in the coat pocket along with his phone and his wallet and his keys, and picking up the ski mittens, and his computer, he went out.

He almost forgot to set the alarm, but he remembered it and punched in the code.

All the lights were still on.

As he drove away, he could see in his rearview mirror the lights burning all over the first and second floors. He liked it. The house looked alive and safe and good to him.

Oh, this was glorious to own this house, to be here in this dark forest once again, to be close to this immense mystery. It felt good to work his feet as he drove. He stretched his fingers, then closed them tight on the leather-covered steering wheel.

The rain was washing over the windshield of the Porsche, but he could see through it quite easily. His headlamps flashed over the uneven bumpy road ahead, and he found himself singing as he rode along, pushing the speedometer as high as he dared to go.

Think. Think like a kidnapper who has to hide forty-two children. Think like a ruthless tech genius that can bludgeon a little girl to death and throw her on a lonely spit of beach in the rain, and get back to where he’s warm and comfortable, where he’s got his computer handy for routing his bank demands and his calls.

Why, those kids are probably right under everybody’s nose.

R
EUBEN KNEW THE BACK ROADS
of Marin County the way he knew the streets of San Francisco. He’d grown up visiting friends in Sausalito and Mill Valley, and taking the inevitable hikes on Mount Tamalpais and through the breathtaking paths of Muir Woods.

He didn’t need to visit the sheriff’s office before beginning his little dragnet, but he did it anyway, because he was hearing the voices now clearly, all around him, and he knew he’d be able to hear their voices inside without their ever knowing it, of course, and they just might know something they were not telling the world.

He parked near the San Rafael Civic Center and took up his stand in the trees, far from the gaggle of reporters camped before the doors.

His shut his eyes, and sought with all his will to home in on the voices within the office, surfing for the likely words these people would be repeating, and within seconds he was picking up the threads. Yes, the kidnappers had called again, and they weren’t going to tell that to the public, no matter who was demanding it. “We tell what serves a purpose!” a man insisted. “And there is no purpose.” “And they’re threatening to kill another child.”

Babble and protest; point and counterpoint. The bank in the Bahamas would give them absolutely no cooperation, but in truth their hackers weren’t finding out anything there that was helpful on their own.

But the body of the little girl, rain or no rain, surf or no surf, had yielded soil samples from shoes and clothing that connected her to Marin. Of course that wasn’t conclusive; but the absence of any other soil samples was a good sign.

And it was all Reuben needed to confirm what he already suspected.

Cop cars were crawling the forest and mountain roads.

There were random checkpoints and house-to-house searches.

So law enforcement was his only enemy now as he began his search.

He was getting back in the car when something caught him off guard. It was the scent—the scent of evil that had been so unmistakable in the nights before.

He turned his head, uncertain, not willing to be drawn off on any errand other than the kidnap, and then the voices came clear to him from the melee of the reporters—two youthful, mocking voices, offering innocent questions, relishing answers that gave them information they already possessed. Sinister, particular, undeniable. “For our school paper, we just thought we’d come out here.…”

“And did they really just beat her to death, poor little girl!”

He felt the tingling all over the surface of his skin, as sweet and pervasive as the revulsion.

“Well, we’re off now, we have to get back to San Francisco.…” But that wasn’t where they were going!

He went to the edge of the little thicket in which he’d been hiding. He saw the two young men—Princeton haircuts, blue blazers—waving good-bye cheerily to their reporter comrades.

They were hurrying across the parking lot towards a waiting Land Rover with its lights on. Driver inside anxious, scared out of his wits,
Will you come on!

It was all a matter of sharp ugly musical sounds to him, the snickering, boasting. The syllables were almost unimportant. How they were wallowing in the excitement, the intrigue, as they piled into the car. The driver was a sniveling coward without a particle of empathy for the victims. He could smell that too.

He sped around the periphery of the parking lot, easily picking up their trail as they headed towards the coast.

He had no need to see their taillights; he could hear every word of their ugly banter.
No one knows shit!

The driver was near hysterical. He didn’t like this, he wished to God he’d never got into it. He was stammering that he wasn’t going back there, no matter what they said. That was just nuts, driving up there, and mingling with the reporters. The other two ignored him, congratulating each other on a triumph.

The scent was in the wind and the scent was strong.

On through the night Reuben followed them. The conversation had turned to technicalities. Should they dump the body now tonight on the Muir Woods Road or wait a few hours, maybe closer to dawn?

The body; Reuben caught the scent of it; they had it in the car with them. Another child. His vision sharpened; he saw them up ahead in the blackness, saw the silhouette of one laughing young man against the back window; caught the frantic curses of the driver who struggled to see through the rain.

“I’m telling you Muir Woods Road is too damn close,” said the driver. “You’re pushing it, just pushing it.”

“Hell, the closer the better. Don’t you see the perfection of it? We should dump it across the street from the house.” Laughter.

Reuben brought the car up closer, caught the scent so thick he could scarce breathe. And the smell of decomposition. It made him gag.

His skin was crawling with sensation. He felt the spasms in his chest, the riot of pleasurable feeling in his scalp. The hair was coming slowly all over his body. It felt like loving hands were everywhere stroking him, coaxing the power.

The Land Rover picked up speed.

“Look, we’ll give them till five a.m. If they haven’t responded by then by e-mail, we dump the body. It will make it seem like we just killed him.”

So it was a little boy.

“And if there’s nothing by noon, I say we dump the teacher with the long hair.”

Good God, were they all already dead?

No, that wasn’t possible. They just weren’t making any distinction between the living and the dead because they were planning to kill all of them.

On he drove as his rage mounted.

He was sitting higher in the seat, and his hands were covered in hair. Hold on, hold on tight. His fingers were retaining their shape. But the mane had come down around his shoulders, and his vision was growing ever sharper, clearer. He felt he could hear every single sound for miles.

The car seemed to be driving itself.

The Land Rover made a sharp turn up ahead. They were cruising now into the deeply wooded town of Mill Valley, following a winding road.

Reuben dropped back.

Then another chorus of sounds flooded his ears.

It was the children, the children crying, and sobbing, and the women’s
voices crooning to them, singing, comforting them. They were in an airless place. Some of them were coughing, others moaning. He had a sense of utter darkness. He was almost there!

The Land Rover again picked up speed and turned down a neglected dirt road. The trees swallowed the red taillights.

Reuben knew exactly where the children were. He could feel it.

He pulled the Porsche over into a thicket of oaks on a bluff quite high above the deep valley into which the Land Rover had gone.

He got out of the car, and stripped off the awkward uncomfortable clothes and boots. The change had now taken full possession of him, with the inevitable wash of ecstasy.

He had to force himself to hide the clothing inside the car, but he knew that was essential, just as it was to lock the car, and hide the key in the roots of the nearby tree.

The Land Rover was way down there, just turning into the grassy clearing before a large impressive house with sprawling decks off each of its three well-lighted stories. Beside the house, and to the rear of the property, shrouded by trees, stood an old vine-covered barn.

The children and the teachers were in the barn.

The mingled voices of the kidnappers rose like smoke to his nostrils.