Greely's Cove (31 page)

“Now, be a good girl and heel,” he ordered Katharine, “and don’t be slobbering on the carpets, damn it. I had to talk my ass off to get you in here, told all kinds of lies about how clean and quiet you are.”

The huge dog whimpered and fell in beside him, a model of good behavior.

The parking lot of the West Cove Motor Inn was a dreamscape of fog—not Carl Sandburg’s fog on cat’s paws, but a grainy and coarse-textured cloud that lay heavy on the land. Robbie made his way carefully to his Volkswagen Vanagon, which he had parked in a space reserved for handicapped people, and waited while Katharine did her morning duty in the shrubbery that bordered the lot.

After letting her into the van through its cargo door, he undertook the task of positioning himself in the driver’s seat. A push of a button activated a motorized lift that rotated a wheelchair and lowered it to street-level from its spot behind the steering wheel. Robbie sat down in the chair, pushed the button again, and rode upward and into the cab of the van, where the chair locked into place. On the steering wheel were two movable grips—one for the throttle and another for the brakes—which let him drive solely with his hands, since his feet and legs were virtually useless. These expensive modifications were a gift from the International Association of Chiefs of Police in recognition of Robbie’s long and illustrious service to the criminal justice system, a gift that he could never have afforded to give himself and one that provided a measure of freedom that he otherwise could only have dreamed about.

Robbie started the engine. In accordance with the desk clerk’s directions, he went south on Frontage Street toward City Hall and the Greely’s Cove Police Department, driving at a snail’s pace through the drizzly fog, past storefronts and shops that would have looked at home in any small American town. Something in the atmosphere disturbed him: an arctic silence that seemed unnatural even on a sleepy Saturday morning, an insulating numbness that voided the sun, the sky, even the hush of the tart breeze.

He thought of the island in
The Tempest
, of the beastlike Caliban’s lament in Act II: “All the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats...” He cut himself off upon discovering that he was reciting the lines aloud.

Infections.
The town was a capsule in a dream and, like Caliban’s island, saturated with a feeling of enchantment. An
island:
the thought made him uncomfortable.

Tucked away in the bowels of City Hall, the police department had all the trappings of its counterparts throughout small-town America, except for its lack of a wheelchair ramp alongside the damp concrete steps that descended to its main entrance. The heavy door was yet another barrier to be surmounted, and he nearly lost his balance as he heaved it open. With Katharine at his heel, he approached the walk-up window and waited for the dispatcher to finish on the telephone. A musty, basementlike smell hung in the air. Taped to the colorless plaster walls were posters that pleaded for support of the local police, vigilance against neighborhood crime, contributions to the March of Dimes.

“How-do, sweet thing,” said Robbie to the dispatcher after she hung up the telephone, “my name’s Sparhawk. This here’s Katharine”—Bonnie Willis rose from her seat to peer over the counter at the huge dog who stood at Robbie’s side—“and we’re here to see the police chief. I think he’s expecting us.” Bonnie’s eyes, apparently, had never beheld a canine of Katharine’s proportions, for they grew big as half-dollars.

“Oh, you must be—” She sat down again. Did the rules allow dogs in the station house? Or small horses?

“I’m the psychic y’all sent for. And don’t worry about Katharine—friendliest little old pooch you ever saw.”

Bonnie ushered man and dog into the squad room, where a grim-faced Washington State Patrol sergeant and a pair of official-looking civilians were hunched over a table. None of the three gave more than a quick glance at the visitors. Splayed before them were topographical maps that flopped over the edges of the table, leading Robbie to suppose that they were coordinating the search for the town’s missing citizens. The dispatcher disappeared briefly through a door at the end of a short hallway, then reappeared to motion Robbie in.

“Mr. Sparhawk, I’m Stu Bromton,” said the mountainous, blunt-featured man who rose from his desk in the tiny office. “Welcome to Greely’s Cove. This is Officer Dean Hauck, sort of my right-hand man.”

Robbie leaned on his right crutch and shook the offered hands, grinning from ear to ear. “Right pleased to meet you both. This here’s Katharine, named after Katharine Hepburn, prettiest woman alive except for Miss Willis here, whose first name I’m sad to say I don’t know.”

Bonnie Willis fingered her plastic name tag and blushed hotly while Stu introduced her. “I’ll get some coffee,” she said, after shaking Robbie’s hand, and hurried out. Officer Hauck positioned a chair for Robbie in front of the chief’s desk, and all three sat.

“Mind if I stink up your office?” asked Robbie, pulling a aim-soaked cheroot from his shirt pocket.

“Not at all,” said Stu. “Maybe it’ll deaden the taste of the coffee.” Robbie chuckled and wondered aloud why the worst coffee in the continental United States was found in police-station houses. Hauck jumped from his chair to fetch an ashtray.

“I hope you’ll forgive my informality,” said Stu, alluding to the stained sweat suit he was wearing in place of a police uniform. “Just got back from my morning run. I was about to hit the shower when you got here.”

“You run in this pea soup?” asked Robbie, lighting up. “Sounds like a good way to get hit by a truck.”

“If I didn’t run, I’d weight about six hundred pounds,” said the chief. “It’s also a good way to unwind, burn off a little anxiety. God knows I’ve got enough of
that
.”

Robbie nodded with sympathy and decided that he liked Bromton. Here was a strong man who was not afraid to admit his weaknesses, and he had a sense of humor to boot.

Bonnie administered coffee, and the men got down to business. After going over the terms of Robbie’s payment in return for services, Stu recounted with more detail than Robbie needed the tragic story that had begun in June of the previous year, nearly nine months past, a story of people who simply vanished on a monthly basis—normal, everyday people who had lived quiet, unremarkable lives. Good folks, all of them: high-school kids like Jennifer Spenser, Josh Jemburg, and Teri Zolten; an old widow like Elvira Cashmore, who had left a rhubarb pie in the oven; hardworking, salt-of-the-earth citizens like Monty Pirtz, the disabled Vietnam vet, and Wendell Greenfield and Peggy Birch and Elizabeth Zaske. The most recent disappearance, that of Sandy Zolten, had occurred a mere ten days after her daughter’s.

“I don’t think I’m overstating the situation when I say that you just might be our last hope,” concluded Stu. “The State Patrol is on the scene in force now, but they haven’t done any better than we have, and quite frankly, Mr. Sparhawk, I don’t expect them to.”

“Not being one to stand on ceremony, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Robbie,” said the psychic, “and if you don’t mind, I’ll call you Stu.”

Then he fell silent, gazing into space while stroking his chin, thinking. The worming anxiety that he had felt during the drive from the motel worsened: This case was unnervingly unique. In all the other serial murder cases he’d undertaken, there were rigid patterns. The victims of homicidal sex maniacs, for example, were all of the same sex, had the same color hair, or were of the same age or build or occupation (prostitutes, notably). Their killers kept to an unbending routine that had major motivational significance. Not that Robbie ever brought these patterns into play: He merely used feeling—not rationale or deduction—in locating bodies or material evidence. His psychic gift did not require reasoning.

That this case apparently had no discernible pattern to it, except for the monthly regularity of the disappearances—and even this pattern had recently fallen apart—bothered him. Patterns, after all, lead to explanations that normal men can understand. Sexual and mental derangement, schizophrenia, and all the other psychoses that drive child-killers and rapists and ax-murderers are explicable, if no less heinous. But this case had no pattern, suggesting that there may be no reason for the tragedies other than pure evil.

An old witch’s warning rang in his mind.

“So where do we start?” asked Stu, sipping his coffee. “How do you usually approach these things?”

“Normally we start with the physical evidence,” answered Robbie. “I take a look at it, paw through it, if that’s possible, and wait for the feelings to hit me. If there’s no physical evidence to speak of, then I ask for items that belonged to the victims, and I go through the same routine. Simple as that.” Dean Hauck, who had been sitting quietly, as though waiting for an opportunity to fetch more coffee or to empty Robbie’s ashtray, spoke up for the first time!

“I’ve been doing some reading about your cases, Mr. Sparhawk, and I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what you need. For the last couple of days I’ve been collecting things that belonged to the missing people—clothes, jewelry, tools, stuff like that—and I’ve stored them in the evidence locker. Would you like to see them?”

Robbie smiled at the young cop and said, “Sounds good to me, son. Stu here told me on the phone that it was your idea to give me a call. That so?”

“Yes, sir. I first heard about you at the law-enforcement academy. You’re pretty famous, you know.”

Robbie’s smile broadened. In Hauck’s young, earnest face he saw competence and dedication, the makings of a police chief someday, maybe even a politician.

“Let’s start with any evidence found at the scenes of the disappearances—assuming you found some.”

“There isn’t much,” said Stu. “All we have is some kind of gooey slime that was on the seat of a car, the same stuff we found later on the walls of a closet in the motel office, where Sandy Zolten was last seen. We sent it to the crime lab in Seattle, and they sent it back with a short report. Why don’t you bring it in, Dean? It’s in the refrigerator.”

Officer Dean Hauck leapt to the errand.

He returned shortly with a pair of petri dishes in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other: the physical evidence and the report from the crime lab. Robbie suffered a minor thrill of apprehension as Hauck set the petri dishes on the desk before him. What was it, he wondered—the first inkling of psychic impression, even before the lids were off the petri dishes? This seemed unlikely. He bent over the dishes, and Hauck offered him the lab report.

“Do you mind reading it to me, son?” he asked the young cop. “I left my specs in the van.”

Hauck read aloud from the neatly typewritten forms.

“‘Subject: semisolid, moldlike substance taken from passenger seat of automobile belonging to Mrs. Anita Solheim of Greely’s Cove, Washington,’ and it goes on about the dates, locations, and everything. Here we go.

“‘Sample contains several varieties of live Schizomycetic bacterial colonies of filamentous and single-celled bodies, of the kinds associated with the putrefactive process in postmortem vertebrates, particularly mammals; sample also contains several varieties of Mu—’” Hauck stumbled over the tough scientific jargon. “‘Mucoralic fungus (mold) consistent with organic decay; also traces of soil, soft-wood fiber, water and human blood. Though the analysis proved inconclusive with respect to the origin of the sample...’”

Robbie peeled away the cellophane tape that held the lid to one of the dishes, then removed the lid and set it down. Inside was a moist, brownish-green substance that looked as though it had been scraped from the bottom of a septic tank. Suddenly his eyes blurred, and his stomach wrenched. A dull, hot ache spread from the base of his skull to the back of his eyes.

“... Its components compare positively to known substances found on the clothing of deceased human remains. The results of the analysis do not rule out, however, that the sample could have come from an injured or dying vertebrate, the condition of which would accommodate the specified organic and inorganic materials and specimens.’”

The sick knot in Robbie’s guts was the one he had felt years before while looking over the transom of a boat into the water of Carlyle Lake, near the innocent town of Keyesport, Illinois, where something not so innocent had taken away three little girls and a little boy over two months’ time. Where Robbie had been drawn to the water—to a feeling of freezing, stinking blackness.

The feeling washed over him now, spiking his head with pain.
It knew why he had come. And it wanted him, just as it had wanted the children.

Just as it had taken the citizens of Greely’s Cove.

The petri dish fell from his hands. Robbie convulsed and shuddered in his chair. Before Stu Bromton or Dean Hauck could move to help him, his stomach erupted, and he vomited his Belgian waffle and morning coffee all over his hands, his lap, the surface of Stu’s desk. Katharine yipped and whined with fright. Hauck just managed to throw an arm around Robbie’s shoulders to stop him from careening off his chair to the floor.

In the emergency room of the tiny but well-equipped hospital in Poulsbo, Washington, which was only a short drive northwest of Greely’s Cove, a young physician named Hei-necke pronounced Robinson Sparhawk healthy, if empty of stomach. Food poisoning was the tentative diagnosis. Heinecke suggested a day of rest, plenty of liquids, and call-me-in-the-morning-if-you’re-not-better. Stu Bromton drove Robbie and his dog back to their room at the West Cove Motor Inn.

“We’ll keep your van at the station house until you’re well enough to pick it up,” said Stu, after helping the psychic onto the queen-size bed and stacking pillows for him to lean on. “I’ll drop by for you in the morning.”

“I’m well enough
now,
God damn it,” said Robbie, lighting a cigar. “You heard the doc: It was only a little food poisoning. I reckon I should stop rooting around in garbage cans. Anyway, I sure appreciate all the trouble you boys have gone to.”

Stu drew a chair up next to the bed and sat down, which Katharine took as an invitation to lay her chin on his knee. He scratched her ear while she drooled on his sweatpants.