The Wolf Gift (27 page)

She laughed harder and harder. It was a great release, this laughter. And she obviously couldn’t hold it in.

He was baffled, uncomfortable. “What is it?” he asked.

“Well, you have to see the humor of this surely,” she said. “Look at you. Look at who you are.”

His heart sank.

She stopped laughing abruptly. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small crestfallen voice. “It wasn’t right to laugh, was it? I shouldn’t have laughed. It’s not a time for laughing at all. It’s just, well, let me put it this way: you’ve got to be one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh,” he whispered. He couldn’t look at her. Well, at least she hadn’t called him a kid or a boy. “Is that good?” he asked. “Or is that bad?”

“You serious?”

He shrugged.

“Well, it’s just surprising,” she confessed. “I’m sorry, Reuben. I shouldn’t have laughed.”

“It’s all right. It’s not important, is it?”

They had reached her gravel driveway. He turned to her. She looked so genuinely concerned. He couldn’t help but smile to reassure her, and at once her face brightened.

“You know,” she said with the utmost sincerity. “In the story of the prince and the frog, there’s always a frog. This story … it has no frog.”

“Hmmm. It’s a different story, Laura,” he responded. “It’s
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
.”

“No, it’s not,” she said reprovingly. “I don’t think it’s that story at all. It’s not ‘Beauty and the Beast’ either. Maybe it’s a new story.”

“Yes, a new story,” he agreed eagerly. “And I think the next line of the story is ‘Get the hell out of Dodge now.’ ”

She leaned forward and kissed him—him; not the big hairy wolf-beast, but him.

He took her face in both hands and kissed her slowly, lovingly. It was altogether different, the old rhythm, the old way of things, and oh, so indefinably sweet.

I
T TOOK HER LESS
than fifteen minutes to pack and call a neighbor who would pick up her car downtown and check on her house while she was gone.

The drive to Nideck Point took almost four hours, just as it had before, largely due to the rain.

On the way, they talked nonstop.

Reuben told her everything that had happened. He explained it all from the start, and in minute detail.

He told her who he’d been before it ever began—all about his family, about Celeste, about Jim, and a multitude of other things, the stories tumbling out effortlessly and sometimes without coherence, her questions always sensitive, and only slightly probing, her fascination obvious even with the things of which he’d always been a little embarrassed or downright ashamed.

“It was a fluke that I got hired by the
Observer
. Billie knows my mother and it started out as a favor. Then she actually liked what I wrote.”

He explained how he was Sunshine Boy to Celeste, and Baby Boy to his mother, and Little Boy to Jim, and lately his editor, Billie, had been calling him Boy Wonder, and only his father called him Reuben. She broke into laughter again over that and had a bit of a time stopping herself.

But it was easy to talk to her, and agreeable to listen to her, too.

Laura had seen Dr. Grace Golding on the morning talk shows. She’d met Grace once at a black-tie benefit. The Goldings supported wildlife causes. “I’ve read all your articles in the
Observer
,” she said. “Everybody likes what you write. I started reading you because somebody told me about your pieces.”

He nodded. That might have meant something if all of this had not happened.

They talked about Laura’s years at Radcliffe, her late husband, and briefly the kids. She wasn’t going to linger on those things; Reuben picked up on that quickly. She spoke of her sister, Sandra, as if Sandra were still living. Sandra had been her best friend.

Her dad was the mentor of her life. She and Sandra had grown up in Muir Woods, gone off to eastern schools in their teens, to Europe during the summers, but the rich, near-fantastical paradise of Northern California had been their sustaining life.

Yes, she’d imagined Reuben a wild man come down out of the northern forests, some secret species at one with nature and caught off guard by the routine horrors of urban life.

The little house in the forest had belonged to her grandfather, and he’d still been alive when she was a little girl. There were four bedrooms on the second floor, all empty now. “My boys got to play in the woods for one summer,” she said in a small voice.

Their stories poured out of them easily and completely.

He talked about his Berkeley days and the digs overseas, about his love of books, and she talked about her time in New York, and how her husband had swept her off her feet. As for her father, she’d been utterly devoted to him. And he’d never uttered a word of criticism of her for marrying Caulfield Hoffman against his candid but gentle advice.

She’d lived a life of parties, concerts, operas, receptions, and benefits in New York with Caulfield that now seemed like a dream. Their town house on Central Park East, the nannies, the frantic pace and richness of life, all of that was like something that had never happened. Hoffman had been ruined when he killed himself and the children. Everything they’d owned together had been lost. Every single thing.

She woke in the night sometimes unable to believe that her children had ever really existed, let alone died in those cruel ways.

They went back to the mysterious life in which Reuben now found himself, and to the night Reuben had been attacked in the hallway of the Mendocino house. They speculated on what might have happened.

He confided to her his wild theories about the name Nideck, but the connection seemed quite feeble. He circled back to the fact that the creature who’d passed on the “gift” to him, as he called it, might well
have been a vagrant monster passing through this part of the world on a journey to parts unknown.

He went over every detail of the transformation. He recounted his confession with his brother, Jim.

She wasn’t Catholic. She didn’t really trust the Seal of the Confessional, but she accepted that he and Jim believed in it, and she certainly respected his love for Jim.

She had a slightly better grasp of science than he did, but said several times that she was no scientist. She asked questions about the DNA testing that had been done which he couldn’t answer. He figured he’d left DNA evidence at the scene of every little massacre over which he’d presided. He couldn’t begin to understand what the tests would reveal.

They both agreed that the DNA testing was the most dangerous tool that others possessed against him. And neither of them knew what he should do.

Certainly going to the Mendocino house was the best thing right now. If the creature was up there, if the creature had secrets to divulge, well, then they should give the creature a chance.

Yet Laura was fearful.

“I wouldn’t assume,” she said, “that this thing is capable of love and conscience as you are. That might not be true at all.”

“Well, why not?” Reuben asked. What could that mean—that he himself perhaps was progressing beyond conscience and emotion? That was his worst fear.

They stopped for supper in a little inn on the coast right before dark. It was a glorious spot, even with the relentless rain and the featureless gray skies. They had a table by a window over the sea, and a view of desolate yet majestic rocks.

The tables were draped in lavender linen, with lavender napkins, and the food was subtly spiced, special. He ate ravenously, consuming everything offered down to the last crumb of bread.

The place was rustic with a low sloping ceiling, the expected roaring fireplace, and old weathered plank floors.

It comforted him, made him a little too happy. Then there came the inevitable gloom.

The sea beyond the glass was darkening. The waves below looked black with silvery-white foam.

“You realize what I’ve done to you,” he whispered.

Her face had a soft radiance in the light of the candles. Her eyebrows were just dark enough to give her a definite serious expression and her blue eyes were always beautiful even when they looked a bit cold. He’d seldom seen blue eyes so light yet so intense. Her face was wonderfully expressive, full of obvious fascination and what certainly seemed to be love.

“I knew the things you’d done when I first saw you,” she said.

“You’re an accessory now, after the fact.”

“Hmmm, to a very strange series of violent incidents, indeed.”

“This is not a fantasy.”

“Who knows that better than me?”

He sat there in silence wondering, inevitably, if he left her now would she be free? He had a vague sense that it would be a disaster for her if he left her. But maybe he was simply confused. It would be a disaster for him if he were to lose her.

“Some mysteries are simply irresistible,” she said. “They have components that alter a life.”

He nodded.

He realized he felt utterly possessive of her, proprietary, in a way he’d never felt with anyone, not even Celeste. It was stoking his passion to think of it. There were rooms upstairs in this inn. He wondered what it would be like, the two of them just as they were.

But how long did he have tonight? He was longing for the transformation; he was yearning to be more fully and completely himself.

Now that was one horrible revelation. She was saying something but he didn’t hear her. Who and what am I now, he thought, if the other is my true self?

“… ought to get going now.”

“Yes,” he said.

He stood to help her with her chair, to hold her coat.

She seemed touched by these gestures. “Who taught you your Old-World manners?” she asked.

I
T WAS NINE O’CLOCK
.

They were sitting on the leather couch in the library, with the fire going, watching the large television to the left of the fireplace. Laura had changed into one of her white nightgowns. And he’d put on one of his old sweaters and a pair of old jeans.

The man in the red tie on the television screen was in deadly earnest.

“This is the worst kind of psychopath,” he said. “There can be no doubt of it. He thinks he’s on our side. The public adulation is no doubt feeding his obsessions and his pathology. But let’s be very clear on this: he rips his victims apart without mercy; he devours human flesh.”

The man’s name and credentials flashed beneath his picture:
CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGIST
. The camera cut to the interviewer, a familiar face on CNN news, though at the moment Reuben could not recall his name:

“But what if this is some sort of mutation—?”

“Out of the question,” said the expert. “This is a human being like you or me, using a series of sophisticated methods to surround his killings with the aura of an animal attack. The DNA is unequivocal. He’s human. Oh, yes, he has access to the bodily fluids of animals—this is most certainly true. He’s contaminated the evidence. And certainly he’s using prosthetic teeth, or fangs. That part is certain. Some sort of sophisticated mask covers his entire head. But he’s a human being, and probably the most dangerous human being that criminal pathology has seen in recent times.”

“But what accounts for the man’s strength?” asked the commentator. “I mean this man clearly overpowers two and three people at a time. How is a man in an animal mask supposed to—.”

“Well, the element of surprise, for one thing,” said the expert, “but his strength has probably been wildly exaggerated.”

“But the evidence, I mean three bodies left mangled and one decapitated—.”

“Again, we are rushing to conclusions here.” The expert was getting testy. “He may well use some sort of gas to disorient or disable his victims.”

“Yes, but he threw a woman out of a window so that she landed over seventy-five feet from the house—.”

“It does us no good to hyperbolize what this man is capable of. Witnesses can’t be counted on—.”

“And you’re confident that they are telling us everything they know about the creature’s DNA.”

“No, not at all,” said the expert. “Undoubtedly they’re withholding information, trying to make sense of the data they have. And they’ve got their hands full trying to quell the hysteria. But the rhapsodic nonsense in the press about this individual is completely irresponsible and likely to goad him into even more vicious attacks.”

“But how does he find his victims?” asked the commentator. “That’s what is so baffling here. How did he find a woman on the third floor of a San Francisco house or a homeless man being attacked in Golden Gate Park?”

“Oh, he’s been lucky, that’s all.” The expert was becoming visibly disgusted. “And we don’t know how long he trolled for these people or stalked them before closing in.”

“But the kidnappers, he found the kidnappers in Marin County when no one else could—.”

“For all we know he may have been connected with the kidnapping,” said the commentator. “There was nobody left alive there to explain anything let alone who all was involved. Or maybe it was sheer luck.”

Reuben hit the remote for another channel.

“I’m sorry, I can’t listen to that,” he said.

At once, a woman’s face filled the screen. She was a picture of grief and distress. “I don’t care what my son did,” she said. “He was entitled to due process of law like any other American; he didn’t deserve to be torn limb from limb by a monster who holds himself to be judge, jury, and executioner. And now people are singing the praises of his killer.” She started to sob. “Has the world gone mad?”

Cut away to the news anchor, a long-haired dark-skinned woman with a rich mellow voice.

“Who is this mysterious being now known around the globe as the San Francisco Man Wolf—who comforts little children, carries a homeless man back to his hiding place, and frees an entire busload of kidnap victims after setting off an alarm to summon help? Right now authorities have more questions than they have answers. [Shots of City Hall, officials gathered before microphones.] But one thing is certain. People do not fear the San Francisco Man Wolf. They are celebrating him, bombarding the Internet with sketches of him, poems to him, even songs.”