Ghouls (53 page)

“Save the comedy for Eddie Murphy,” Kurt retorted, gathering up his keys. “You can both sit on stick shifts for all I care. If my uniform’s not good enough for you, then move.”

He went out of the house, shoulders hunched at the riot of female laughter that followed him. Once in the driveway, he appraised his reflection in the Ford’s windshield. Was his uniform really that dumb looking? He scowled at his glass-warped image, and admitted that it probably was.

New wave scoutmaster,
he thought, and started up the Ford.
That’s what I get for committing myself to public service.

He lead-footed it to work. It was two minutes to six; being late on his first shift back would not overly delight Higgins, who’d covered so many of his hours these past few days. He exceeded the speed limit without hesitation—occupational immunity from traffic laws was at least one advantage to his job. Who was going to give him a ticket in his own town?

The state police cruiser seemed to appear on his tail from nowhere, lights flashing, siren whooping to wake the dead. Kurt pulled over, enraged at his luck. Now he was really going to be late.

A state trooper with a face like carved wood walked up and stood just behind Kurt’s window. “Driver’s license, registration, please.”

Kurt flashed his badge. “Morris, Tylersville PD.”

The trooper seemed
incomprehending
as a puppet. “Driver’s license, registration, please.”

“Oh, come on, cut me some slack. I’m a town cop.”

“I don’t care if you’re the little Dutch boy on your way to the dike. There’s no excuse for speeding. Just ‘cause you’ve got a badge doesn’t mean you’re entitled to piss all over the state traffic laws.”

The ultimate humiliation. Slouched low, Kurt went through a familiar sequence of events, only this time in reverse. Eventually he applied his full signature to the oblong Uniform Maryland Complaint and Citation, and was then given the underlying pink copy to keep. The trooper snapped his aluminum ticket book shut, bidding with a perfectly blank face, “Have a nice evening.”

Your mother sucks
bullpeckers
in hell,
Kurt came dangerously close to saying.

««—»»

The town cruiser wasn’t in the lot when he finally made it to the station. By them it was a quarter after; Higgins had missed
shiftchange
for the first time in years.

With his own key, Kurt let himself into the office. Empty, as expected. Higgins’s street gear still hung from the corner of his open locker door.

He’ll be along in a minute. Probably lost track of time at the Jiffy-Stop, eyeballing the boppers behind the counter.

The office silence made him tense. To pass time he flipped through one of Bard’s
Hustlers.
The pictures glared up at him, a glossy collage of vivid, hot colors, crystal pinks, and glimmers on flesh like shards of glass. He actually shuddered at the total effect, wondering what had happened to the mystery, and even the elegance, of erotic photography. He could remember when men’s magazines weren’t allowed to show even pubic hair— now the layouts had degenerated to visions of outright
vaginoscopy
. These women would have to turn their bodies inside out to reveal any more of themselves. He put the magazine away, depressed.

Next, he sat up on the desk, disgustedly staring at the ticket. Prudential would love this, an ideal excuse to milk more money out of him. He tried to banish the scene from his mind—his first traffic fine since high school. Bard would laugh the stationhouse down if he ever found out.

Ten more minutes passed. Where the hell was Higgins?

Now Kurt was pacing the office, though not really aware of it yet. He went to pour himself some coffee, but found the bottom of the pot encrusted by a coat of dried black sediment. The smell made his eyes water.

By 7:00
p.m.,
Higgins had still not surfaced. Kurt glowered out the front window a few times, speculating.
Not another departmental wreck,
he pleaded to himself. Bard would go into convulsions.
Maybe he broke down somewhere.
After ten minutes more, Kurt dialed P.G. Police Headquarters. He counted seven rings before a clone-voiced desk sergeant answered, “County police nonemergency.”

“Extension 345, please.”

“Are you a police officer?”

“Morris, Tylersville. ID 8.”

“Hold.”

A full minute must’ve ticked by during the technical oblivion of “hold.” Kurt leaned over and turned on Bard’s base station police monitor, wincing at the sudden upsurge of corroded voices and
intermodulative
static. When the phone line was reconnected, a young, personable voice answered, “Zone B dispatch.”

“I need you to have 207 landline his station.”

“Hang on.”

Then the same man’s voice crackled out of the radio: “Two-zero-seven.”

Seconds lapsed, with no reply.

Again: “Two-zero-seven.”

No answer.

The dispatcher came back on the phone. “He’s not copying. Must be cooping someplace.”

“No way, not this guy.”

“How late is he?”

“A little over an hour,” Kurt said, but now he was worried. It was one thing to miss shift change, but failing to answer the radio was a serious matter ninety percent of the time. “Is he 10-8?”

Kurt heard a faint plastic plunking, computer keys. Then the dispatcher said, “No.”

“What’s his last call?”

More plunking. “10-6 to Belleau Wood, access number 4. Time, 15:58.”

Over three hours?
Now Kurt’s worry transposed to alarm. It was not uncommon for an officer to forget to radio in 10-8 after a call—Kurt had done it several times himself—nor was it terribly unheard of for routine police business to consume several hours. What Kurt didn’t like was Belleau Wood sitting in the middle of it all.

“Want me to start a missing unit call?”

“Let me check it out first,” Kurt said. “I’ll get back to you if there’s trouble,” but just at that moment, Higgins’s voice broke over the air—“Two-zero-seven.”

Kurt relaxed, sighing into the phone. The dispatcher answered, “Two-zero-seven, we’ve been unable to raise. Are you in need of assistance?”

“No, no, I went into low ground without realizing it.”

“Your station’s on line.”

“Good. Have him go to 3.”

“10-4,” the dispatcher acknowledged. Then, back to Kurt on the phone, he said, “Did you get that?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Kurt hurried. He hung up and turned the radio knob to Channel 3, which police referred to as the “jabber
freek
.” This was the
commo
zone’s free, unmonitored frequency, operating to keep the main county band clear when two or more separated units needed to transmit back and forth for extended periods. Kurt quickly cut down the offending blare of squelch, waiting for Higgins to break.

“You there, Kurt?”

“Yeah. I called dispatch when you didn’t show at six. He gave me your twenty. What’s going on out there?”

Higgins’s voice was fading in and out. The static sounded like a violent, pounding surf. “About four I noticed the last chain down, the fourth one. So I decided to cruise in for the hell of it—I’d never seen that side of Belleau Wood before…” There was a long, crackling pause. Then: “This could be something big.”

“What, Mark?”

“Just come out and see for yourself. I need some help anyway.”

“Shouldn’t we call the county?”

Higgins’s voice rose to near-panic. “No, Christ no. I don’t want those dough-heads scarfing my find. Don’t even call Bard, not till after we check it out.”

“Okay,” Kurt went along, though Higgins’s refusal to specify left him mildly peeved. “How do I find you?”

“Just go to the fourth entrance and follow it all the way back till you see the cruiser. I’ll be waiting for you. But before you come out… I’ll need you to bring some things.”

“What things?”

“See if you can find those dick walkie-talkies Bard bought a couple summers ago. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Yeah,” Kurt droned. Bard had purchased the radios for T/A and open-building checks. To Kurt’s knowledge, though, they’d never been used more than once or twice. “They’re around here someplace,” Kurt answered. “I’ll find them.”

“Good. And pick up some batteries on the way. We’ll also need some heavy gloves, a couple of good flashlights, and about a hundred feet of good, thick rope.”

Kurt frowned into the radio set. “What do you have in mind, a safari?”

“Just bring the stuff. We’ll need it.”

“Where am I gonna find a hundred feet of rope?”

“I don’t know,” Higgins said. He seemed confident that Kurt could conjure it up by magic. “Try tying a bunch of cordons together. Hell, buy it if you have to; I’ll pay you back. And it wouldn’t hurt to bring along a third person, extra muscle in case we have to haul something up.”

Haul something…up?
Kurt decided not to even ask. “That all?”

“Yeah. See you in a few.”

Kurt turned off the set, more annoyed than confused. What nonsense was this? But he admitted to himself that his curiosity was growing acute. He found the walkie-talkies in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. There were three of them, still packed neatly in their box. The nylon cordons—stowed in the same drawer with a fingerprint template, some Peerless leg irons, and other junk they never used—were frayed and even if knotted together would not amount to anything close to a hundred feet.

He kicked the drawer closed, leaving a black mark on the paint.
What does he want so much rope for?
he asked himself.

I went into low ground without realizing it,
Higgins had said. And:

…
in case we have to haul something up.

The answer came like a good, hard jolt.

— | — | —

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Vicky sat on the passenger side. She was remarkably staunch considering that his request for her to come along had caused her to miss the end of
Dynasty
(which Kurt, in his loathing for television, preferred to think of as
Vaginasty
).
Vicky was all the “extra muscle” he could drum up on such short notice. She would have to do.

He’d picked up three 9-volt batteries at the Jiffy, for the walkie-talkies; and at the house, he’d scrounged some old gardening gloves and several working flashlights. Lastly, a quick stop at Worden’s Hardware for one hundred feet of half-inch sisal rope, at eighteen cents per foot.

Vicky opened the new batteries for the G.E. walkie-talkies. She glanced up at him now and again, her lips turned to the suggestion of a smile. “How come you’re not saying anything?” she asked.

“Thinking. I’m not sure I like this.”