The Howling III (11 page)

“Good morning, Mr Derak,” said Qualen with just the right mixture of cordiality and restraint. “What can I do for you?”

“You have a boy here. I understand he was found wandering in the forest and was brought in by deputy sheriffs.”

“Ah, yes,” Qualen said, after a pause to indicate he was trying to remember the case.

“I’d like to see him.”

“Mr Derak, visits with patients are handled through the desk in the main lobby. You must have passed it when you came in.”

“I talked to the woman there, and I talked to her supervisor. I could not get satisfactory answers from them. They suggested I see you.” A rather unpleasant note crept into Derak’s voice.

Qualen resolved to have a talk with that woman and her supervisor at the first opportunity. He said, “You are a relative of… ” making a show of looking through the papers on his desk’… Malcolm.”

“In a way.”

The doctor looked up, expecting a further explanation. Derak offered none. His green-eyed gaze was uncomfortably direct.

“As it happens,” Qualen said, “that patient has been transferred.”

“Transferred?” Derak took a step closer to the desk. “He was here last night.”

“That’s true. The transfer was effected early this morning.”

The sandy-haired man became agitated. One hand pulled loose the knot of his necktie. “Where was he taken?” His voice sounded different. Coarser.

“I’m really not at liberty to say. If you will leave your name and address with my - “

“You will tell me now,” said Derak. The voice had roughened into a growl.

Dr Qualen stared at the man in astonishment. He had thrown off his jacket and was actually tearing at his shirt. And his face, my God, it was twisting itself into something quite inhuman.

The doctor reached for the intercom box. Derak’s hand clamped on to his wrist with a grip that crackled the bones. Qualen stared at the hand. Before his bulging eyes it changed. Grew into a terrible mutant paw. Thick wiry hair sprouted from the back. The nails thickened and pushed out into claws. Qualen looked up at the face.

Even as he began to scream, the doctor knew the acoustic walls would let no more than a murmur escape to Mrs Thayer outside.

With a strength born of terror, Qualen wrenched his wrist free of the terrible grip. He ran around his desk and tried to make it to the door. Derak, or whatever this thing was that Derak had become, was faster. He threw himself past the doctor and used that misshapen hairy paw to roll the dead bolt home, locking them in.

The only other way out was the window of reinforced glass, and that gave on a sheer drop of twenty feet to the concrete parking lot. Qualen backed away, watching in horrified fascination the transformation taking place before him.

The man’s body twisted and swelled and grew to a height that towered over the six-foot doctor. There was a terrible cracking as the skeleton reshaped itself inside the creature. The face… the face was all muzzle and teeth and burning eyes of green hellfire.

In a movement too swift for him to follow, Qualen felt himself seized under the arms and lifted clear of the floor. His shrieks echoed dully off the soundproofed walls. He felt the hot breath of the creature as the great jaws opened, smelled the stench of it. There was a moment of searing agony as the teeth sank into his throat. A hot gush of his life’s blood. A last roar in his ears. Then blackness and oblivion.

*****

It was the faint but unmistakeable crash of glass from inside Dr Qualen’s office that roused Mrs Thayer. The only thing in there that could make a crash like that was the window. She buzzed the intercom, but got no answer. With mounting unease, Mrs Thayer rose from her chair, walked to the door of Dr Qualen’s office, and tried the knob. Locked. She rapped lightly; then again, louder. There was no response. Something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

Mrs Thayer snatched the telephone from her desk and punched out the internal emergency code. In less than a minute two burly orderlies came running in from the corridor outside.

“There’s trouble in Dr Qualen’s office,” she cried. “The door’s locked and he won’t answer me.”

The orderlies hesitated only a moment, then attacked the door while Mrs Thayer stood back out of the way. The door soon splintered under their combined assault. The men rushed inside, stopping as though they had hit a wall when they saw the bloody thing sprawled over the desk of the administrative chief. Behind them Mrs Thayer started into the room, then gave a little cry and backed away, her hand covering her mouth.

At the same moment the men turned toward the broken window. They crossed the room together and looked out, scanning the parking lot below. Nothing.

One of them pointed up at the hillside. “Look!”

The other followed his pointing finger. “What is it? I don’t see anything.”

“I thought… for a minute it looked like something up there. Running.”

“A man? What?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see it now. It was more like a big dog. Or… Christ, I don’t know. Let’s get help.”

Later, of all the ghastly events of that morning, the two men would remember the sound they heard from somewhere up on the wooded hill. They would remember the howling.

The people at the hospital provided Ramsay with a small unused office at the rear of the first floor, next to the kitchen, to use for his interviews with the staff and employees. It had only a desk, two chairs, a file cabinet that would not open, and a hastily installed telephone. There was also a pervasive smell of bland hospital cooking coming in through the single window.

One of the chairs was occupied by a stenographer on loan from Ventura County. She took rapid, silent notes as Mrs Audrey Thayer, secretary and receptionist for the late Dr Qualen, answered the sheriffs questions.

Through the window Ramsay could see search parties labouring up the thickly wooded hillside, where the suspect may or may not have been seen running by one of the orderlies who found the body. Overhead was the persistent thrum of helicopters. There was one from the Ventura County sheriffs office, and several from television news departments.

The media had appeared miraculously less than two hours after Ramsay had received the report of Dr Qualen’s murder. So far he had been able to avoid them with the help of Deputies Nevins and Fernandez, who stood out in the hallway looking as mean as they could manage.

Sooner or later he would have to talk to them, but Ramsay was determined to get as much as he could of his real work done first. Like most lawmen, he had a healthy distrust of reporters, a distrust he knew was mutual.

“Is there anything more you can tell me about this Mr Derak?” Ramsay asked the woman across from him. “Any little thing, no matter how unimportant it seemed at the time, might be helpful.”

Mrs Thayer frowned thoughtfully and shook her head. Her hands were busy twisting a flowered hankie into a snake. “I’m sorry, Sheriff, but there really isn’t anything more than what I’ve already told you. He was just an ordinary-looking man. Rather pleasant, he seemed at the time. Very insistent, though, about seeing Dr Qualen.”

At the mention of her late employer, Mrs Thayer’s ample chest convulsed in a sob. She unwound the hankie and dabbed at her eyes. Ramsay waited for the spasm to pass before he went on.

“And he said nothing to you about what business he had with the doctor?”

“Only that he was sent up there by Eleanor Chung. She supervises the admission desk in the lobby.”

Ramsay nodded. He had already talked to Miss Chung and the woman who was on duty when Derak came in. They said he insisted on seeing the patient known as Malcolm in Room 108. Since he could show no evidence that he was related, they explained he would have to wait until regular visiting hours, then clear it with the doctor assigned to Malcolm’s case. They declined to give him any more information, and when the man refused to leave, referred him to Dr Qualen.

“How long was he in the office with Dr Qualen before you heard the crash of the window breaking?”

“Not long. Not more that fifteen minutes. I don’t see how he could have… could have…”

Ramsay spoke up quickly to head off another outburst of sobs. “And you heard nothing before that because of the soundproof construction of the walls, is that correct?”

“Nothing. Once, very faint, I thought I heard a voice, but I couldn’t be sure.”

Milo Fernandez entered, glanced at Mrs Thayer and spoke to Ramsay. “Dr Underwood is outside with his report.”

“Good. Thank you very much, Mrs Thayer. That’ll be all for now.”

“You’ll catch the… the terrible person who did this, won’t you, Sheriff?”

“Yes, we will,” Ramsay said with a lot more conviction that he felt. “He won’t get away.”

Reassured, Mrs Thayer gave him a teary smile and left the office. Ramsay told the stenographer to take a break, and sat back waiting for the pathologist.

Neal Underwood was a man happy in his work. He was plump and pleasant and had thinning blond hair that still had a curl to it. His biggest satisfaction in recent years had been the cancellation of Quincy, the farfetched television show that had a choleric pathologist rushing around shouting at everyone, solving crimes, making fools out of doctors and police alike. Dr Underwood did his job in a quiet and efficient manner, and had far more friends than enemies. He could make small jokes about how his patients never complained, and he did not even mind being referred to around the hospital as Dr Underground.

He took the chair across from Ramsay and laid a folder on the desk between them.

“As savage a killing as I’ve seen in some time,” the pathologist said pleasantly.

“What was the cause of death?”

“My preliminary findings show it to be loss of blood from a severed jugular. The lower face, throat, and upper chest were severely lacerated. Many of the wounds, I’m relieved to say, probably occurred after the victim was already dead. He died very quickly.”

“Any guess as to the weapon?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

“Teeth.”

Ramsay let several seconds go by while he held the pathologist’s mild gaze. “Teeth?”

“I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

“Human teeth?”

“Not likely. The human jaw is not constructed for attack. To kill with its teeth, an animal needs a protruding muzzle. That allows the jaws to open like this.” Underwood demonstrated with his two hands, touching at the heel, making teeth of his fingers.

“What kind of an animal might that be?”

“Oh, lots of them. Shark, alligator, tiger, hyena… “

Ramsay saw him hesitate. “And?”

“And a wolf.”

“Uh-huh. Would you say it’s possible to construct a weapon that would make wounds like that, resembling teeth?”

“I suppose it would be possible, but it would make a damned inefficient weapon. It would be an awkward thing to carry around too. Impossible to conceal.”

Ramsay pinched the bridge of his nose. He felt a headache coming on, but the next question had to be asked.

“Have you seen a killing like this before, Doctor?”

Underwood nodded slowly. He was no more eager to answer than Ramsay was to ask. “Similar. Several of them.”

“Like to tell me where and when?”

“Right here. Last year. During the business at Drago.”

Ramsay groaned inwardly. The damned dead village of Drago was destined to haunt him. “What do you think killed those people?”

“Wolves,” Dr Underwood said without hesitation. “Yes, I know there hasn’t been a wolf sighted around here since the turn of the century, and I know none was ever found, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Wolves. Where they came from, where they went, that’s not my problem.”

“You heard the stories?”

“Werewolves? Sure, I heard them. Who didn’t? But if you think I am going to write werewolves and witches and fairies into my reports… well, forget it.”

“It was no wolf that walked into Dr Qualen’s office,” Ramsay said quietly. “A man walked in there. One man. He carried no visible weapon.”

“Sheriff, I don’t envy you your job.” Underwood slapped the folder he had laid on the desk. “There’s my preliminary report. Make out of it what you will. Beyond the medical facts and observations contained therein, I have nothing to offer.”

“Easy,” Ramsay said. “Believe me, Doctor, I don’t want werewolves any more than you do. I’ve just got to come up with some answer as to how a single man could do that kind of damage in a short space of time, then jump through a reinforced plate glass window to a concrete slab twenty feet down, then run off up into the woods and somehow elude a professional ground and air search party.”

Underwood gave him a sympathetic smile. “Sheriff, I’ll bet nobody told you it was going to be easy. Are you through with me?”

Ramsay waved him away. “Yeah, thanks, Doctor. I’ll be down to talk to you later. Try not to mention you-know-what to our reporter friends, will you?”

“Are you kidding? I walked past a bunch of them in the lobby, and all they’re talking about is werewolves. I even saw a couple of them sharpening wooden stakes.”

Ramsay could not resist a smile. “That shows how much they know. Stakes are for vampires.”

Dr Underwood nodded sagely and left the office.

It was past two o’clock and Ramsay had not eaten since a coffee and donut early this morning. His stomach rumbled, reminding him of the omission. He got up and went to the door where the deputies stood guard. To Fernandez he said, “How about seeing if you can scrounge something to eat. I’m not ready to run the gauntlet in the lobby yet.”

Before the young deputy could answer, Holly Lang appeared wheeling one of the hospital food carts.

“I thought you men might be getting hungry,” she said.

“You’re magic,” Ramsay told her.

She gave a tray to each of the deputies and wheeled the cart into the office. Ramsay closed the door behind her.

On covered plates there was coleslaw, roast beef, hot rolls, mashed potatoes, and peas. There was Jello for dessert and a flask of coffee.

“Not exactly cordon bleu, but nutritious, or so they tell me in the cafeteria.”