Ghouls (45 page)

“Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Maybe never. So far there’s no traceable evidence. There’s nothing we can use to maintain an investigation. All we can hope for is some luck, at least for the time being.”

“The time being? You mean until someone else gets killed.”

Kurt didn’t comment. Her words hissed cynicism, even ridicule. Was she accusing the police of inaction? Was she blaming
him?
No, she just didn’t understand. “Bard thinks that Glen has something to do with it,” he said.

“Glen?
For God’s sake, why?”

“Every time something’s happened, he’s been around.”

“Not those two girls,” Vicky countered. “It said in the paper that their car was found in Bowie.”

“Sure, but what you’re forgetting is that Bowie is right alongside us; actually, the car was discovered less than a mile from where Glen was working that same night. And to make matters worse, he says he caught two girls in a silver sedan trespassing on Belleau Wood a couple of nights earlier. He ran them off and logged their tag number—”

“And the tags were the same?”

“Right down to the last digit. Which means that Glen came in direct contact with the missing girls just a few nights before they disappeared.”

She came forward, the angles of her face sharp from negation. “So you suspect Glen, too?”

“No, no,” he said. “Relax.” In fact, he felt good that someone else agreed with his certainty of Glen’s innocence. He yawned and went on. “Chief Bard was born with a pair of blinders on his face. No offense to the man, now, but he seems to be a little bit wrong about everything. He’s on the right track, just barking up the wrong tree. He’s got Glen pegged as the constant, but there’s one other thing that all the disappearances have in common.”

“What’s that?”

“Belleau Wood.”

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Whizz that one by me again,” Bard was requesting of the phone when Kurt came in. The chief sounded confused; he held the phone as if it were antiquated, a burden to use. “An autopsy preliminary… I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said into the phone. Now his jowls were tensed, like corded suet.

Kurt sat down to wait. He didn’t know why he’d come; boredom, he supposed, had directed him here. The station office was dazzling in the clear light of late morning; it made him feel hot, edgy. Coffee bubbled like pitch from an old burner atop the file cabinet. Its
stenching
aroma hovered about the office, irritating and stiff as tear gas.

“What, right now?” Bard said. “But I don’t have anyone available right n—” He shot a glance to Kurt. “Strike that. I’ll have a man there in twenty minutes,” and then he rang off.

Kurt frowned. “Who was that?”

“South County. The M.E.’s got an autopsy report for us. Your duty of the day is to go and pick it up.”

“They found the bodies of those two girls?”

“No,” Bard said.

“Then what did they do an autopsy on?”

“I don’t know, and neither did the
musclehead
on the phone. He just said they had an autopsy report for us. So go and get it.”

Kurt’s stomach began to remember the last visit. “Look, Chief, I hate to stand in the way of police business, but I’m on suspension, remember? I’m not getting paid—”

“That situation can be arranged permanently, if you like.”

“Come on, seriously. I don’t want to go there again. The place makes me sick. Why should I go to a place I don’t want to go for no pay?”

“Because I told you to.”

“Read my lips, Chief. I-don’t-want-to-go-to-the-goddamned-county-morgue.”

“Read
my
lips,” Bard said. “You-can-go-to-the-goddamn-county-morgue-for-me-or-you-can-seek-future-employment-at-goddamned-Lucky’s-Car-Wash. Your choice.”

“So that’s the game. Employer-employee blackmail.”

Bard grinned. “’
Fraid
so, my boy. I’m too busy with all this paperwork to go myself.” ·

“Yeah, I can see that.” Bard’s desk, of course, was clear, save for April’s
Police Product News.
But Kurt had been blackmailed like this many times by Bard. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go to the—wait a minute. Send Higgins.”

“I can’t send Higgins. He took Glen down to county CID in Forestville about an hour ago.”

“CID? Why?”

“They’re putting Glen on the box,” Bard said.

Christ,
Kurt thought. The box meant polygraph. “They didn’t arrest him, did they?”

“No, they just
asked
him to come down for questioning.” Bard rose to his feet, an effort worthy of applause. He filled a spider-cracked mug with coffee that looked more like very old motor oil. “Glen requested the polygraph—hell, he’s not stupid. Poor son of a bitch looked a wreck, though. That boy must sleep in a cement mixer.”

“He was hung over.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. He didn’t even look fit to drive, so I had Higgins give him a ride.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Chief. You had Higgins take him ’cause you thought he might try to split.”

Bard’s grin turned sly. “Gotta admit, the thought crossed my mind… Coffee?”

“No thanks. I’d need a better life insurance policy before I’d drink that spew. And I really find it hard to believe—”

“Keep your shirt and dick on, Kurt. I’m friends with Glen, too, you know. But I can’t let that obstruct operating procedure.”

Christ,
Kurt thought again.
Next they’ll be wanting me on the box.

Bard’s face shriveled up like wrapping paper when he sipped his coffee. “Anyway,” he said. “You never know. Anything can happen in this world, right? If Glen’s got nothing to hide, then why are you so uptight, or is it just the awesome vision of my presence that’s making you look like you’re about to shit your pants? Now’s his chance to prove he’s clean.”

“This isn’t Russia,” Kurt said. “He shouldn’t have to
prove
anything.”

“You can’t deny he’s been acting a little weird lately.”

“I can deny that easy,” Kurt lied, thinking,
He’s always been a little weird.
“He’s as straight as you or me.”

“Then why is he clamming?”

“He’s not
clamming.
Jesus, you sound like Lew Archer.”

“Lew Archer was a great detective.” Bard sipped more coffee, seeming quite pleased with himself. “Glen’s keeping his trap shut about something. But he won’t be able to do that on the poly.”

“Oh, shit, Chief. Those things are less reliable than Ouija boards.”

“LEAA says they’re ninety-percent-plus effective with an experienced operator.”

“I don’t care if they’re a million-percent effective. The things are a goddamned injustice; they violate civil rights.”

“Sounds like you’re turning hippie on me—”

“And why would Glen
volunteer
for a polygraph if he knows something?”

“It’s common knowledge,” Bard said. “Lots of nuts are subconsciously guided to self-incrimination—deep down they all want to be caught. All I’m saying is that you never know. I’m not shitting on Glen—hell, I’d love to see him come out of this clean as a cat’s ass, too. But just because he’s a friend of ours doesn’t mean he can’t lose an oar. Let’s face it, we don’t know him all that well. He works at night, we hardly ever see him. He could be the screw-loose of the century for all we know. Son of Sam was a security guard once. So was Chapman—”

“Oh, come on—”

“And if it’s not Glen, then who is it?”

The finality of the question lodged in Kurt’s throat. For a moment, he felt utterly displaced, his teeth on edge. He wished he could punch Bard right in his distrusting, smart-ass belly, watch his fist gleefully sink in fat.

“Anyhow,” Bard jabbered on. “We’ll let Glen worry about himself. In the meantime, I think you’ve got a job to do.”

««—»»

Kurt walked down the cold, antiseptic hallway like a man expecting an ambush. The petrifying fumes reached him even here and set off in his stomach an explosion of acid and disgust.

The office door was open; Kurt peeked in and found the pathologist’s anteroom unoccupied. An old
Fedders
air conditioner hummed clamorously from the room’s only window; cold air chilled his face. The door to the autopsy room, he saw, stood ajar. A shadow passed quickly across the drab cement floor. As boldly as he could, Kurt ventured in.

A cadaver enclosed in plastic lay on the autopsy table. A liver in a pan scale swayed slightly to and fro, like a hanging flower pot. From it fluid dripped
pap
pap
pap
onto the plastic. Kurt nearly fell back into the office.

Dr. Greene was lifting a brain from a large white bucket. He looked up, features roughed by fluorescent light, and said in a mock Scottish accent, “
Tep
a the
marnin
’ to
ya
.”

Kurt nodded, swallowing. “I thought you had night duty.”

“We got bodies piled up till next year’s Super Bowl, and my boss decides to take a week off. Somebody’s got to open these dead guys. Might as well be me.” Greene then picked up a long, narrow knife and began cutting the brain into half-inch slices, as one might slice a loaf of pumpernickel. He deposited each slice into another bucket marked HISTO in black magic marker. “Be with you in a minute,” he said.

Kurt looked away, but each time his eyes fell onto some new horror. A Stryker orbital saw hung from a nearby peg, its fine-toothed blade smudged with blood and hair. One shelf was stacked high with boxes of Parke-Davis cadaver bags; another stored cryptic chemicals in dark bottles. The needle on the pan-scale gauge indicated precisely 1601 grams.

“Mind if I smoke?” Kurt asked.

“No, but your lungs do.”

“Don’t I know it,” he muttered. He popped a cigarette into his mouth and lit up.

“Want to quit?”

“I can’t. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Greene pointed across the room, hand dripping. “Look in that white bucket there. The one on the end, third shelf.”

I
asked for this,
he thought. His fingers touched the lid, but didn’t move.

“Go on,” Greene urged. “Open the bucket. Look inside.”

Kurt raised the lid and looked in. Settled at the bottom of the bucket were two blob-shaped objects which resembled giant moldering leeches. They were brown-black and glistening, specked minutely with white.

Greene smiled, still tending to his slices. “They’re
metasticized
lungs.”

“Jesus.”

“Your lungs will look like that if you don’t quit smoking. Cancer’s a hard way to go. It’s like slowly rotting to death from the inside out.”

Greene washed his hands in the big sink, thumping a pink-filled soap dispenser like an inverted service bell. His lab coat bore a craggy reddish stain the shape of North America, and beneath the open coat, a clinging orange T-shirt elucidated washboard abdominals. Kurt dropped his cigarette onto the floor drain and stepped on it. Dizzily, he followed Greene into the office.