The Howling III (14 page)

Bibles were also a hot item, with King James topping the list, but even the updated versions were outselling the newest Garfield book in La Reina County. Enterprising roadside peddlers appeared with pictures and statuettes representing Jesus, Mary, and a variety of saints, and were doing fine business until local authorities clamped down. From outward appearances, La Reina County was the scene of the greatest Christian revival since Billy Graham filled the LA Coliseum.

*****

As if all this were not enough to add grey hairs to the head of Sheriff Ramsay, Holly Lang was after him continually to devote more of his efforts to locating the missing boy, Malcolm. The sheriff was trying to maintain an expression of gentle concern on an early morning several days after the killing as Holly stood across the desk from him gesticulating angrily.

“Damn it, Gavin, that weasel Pastory is keeping him somewhere,” she insisted. For a moment Ramsay thought she was going to pound on the desk, but she brought herself under control. “Why aren’t you doing something? Why aren’t you looking for him? You’re supposed to be the sheriff.”

“Comments from the public are always welcome,” Ramsay said. “Maybe you will be kind enough to suggest where I might look.”

“That’s just it. I’ve talked to everybody at the hospital, and nobody knows where this mysterious clinic of Pastory’s it, or if it even exists.”

“Ah, then you see part of my problem.”

“Problem, hell. I want to hear solutions from you.” “I am doing the best I can, Holly,” Gavin said with all the patience he could muster. “I have a warrant out on Pastory as a material witness. His relatives, of which there seem to be very few, deny all knowledge of his whereabouts.” He pulled a sheet of paper from an overflowing basket on his desk. “To quote his brother Kyle in Boise, Idaho: “I don’t know where the s.o.b. is and I don’t give a damn.” His clinic is not listed with the California Medical Association or any other group that I’ve been able to turn up.”

“So what are you doing now?”

“Right now I am doing what I can to find the killer of Dr Dennis Qualen.”

“So, are you making any progress?”

“I have before me reports of all killings in the western United States during the past five years that were in any way similar to that of Dr Qualen.”

“And?”

“And you’d be surprised how many people are ripped to pieces. When I eliminate the chainsaws and the axes and the certified mad dogs and the circus maulings and one farmer in Oregon who seems to have been eaten by his pigs, do you know what’s left?”

“Please tell me,” Holly said.

“Drago.”

“Oh, Jesus!” she said in exasperation.

“Amen,” he added piously.

“I trust, Sheriff, that you won’t mind if I do what I can on my own to locate Dr Pastory and Malcolm.”

“Holly, I hope you are not going to get a gun and go rushing off like a crazed vigilante.”

“I do not believe in guns,” she said.

“I am relieved to hear that. As long as you stay within the law, I can do nothing to stop you. I have to insist, however, that you will in no way interfere with the actions of legitimate police officers.”

“That sounds like something you memorized,” she said.

“It is,” he admitted, “but I mean it.”

“Good enough, Sheriff. You go your way and I’ll go mine.”

She turned smartly and marched out of the office, giving him no chance for a reply.

What reply could be make, anyway? Everything she said was essentially correct. He was the sheriff, and he was doing a lousy job. Moreover, this business had split him and Holly apart just when he was thinking something good might develop there. It was with an honest feeling of loss that Ramsay watched her climb into the little Volkswagen Rabbit with the Greenpeace emblem and drive off scattering as much gravel as she could manage with the underpowered car.

*****

Holly was so angry when she left Gavin Ramsay that she had to exert a force of will to pull her foot up off the accelerator. She felt like the fabled knight who leaped on his horse and rode madly off in all directions. This was not like her. She was a calm, reasonable woman, always in control of her emotions. What right did that Gavin Ramsay have, anyway, keeping her awake nights thinking about the way they had kissed at her door.

All right. She would handle it. She got the Rabbit down to an acceptable speed and headed west on Highway 126 that ran along the Santa Clara River. She kept the window on her side rolled down to let the moist morning air flow in and cool her feverish face.

She drove through Fillmore and on toward Santa Paula, taking deep breaths, feeling the muscles at the back of her neck and along her shoulders gradually relax as she ordered her mind, putting everything into its proper compartment.

Number One. She was worried about Malcolm. The boy had special qualities that she had only begun to discover. In time she would have found out who he was and what he was, and helped him to live with it. That time had been stolen from her.

It hurt to know that she had been gaining the boy’s trust.

It was she he had first spoken to. She for whom he had called when he was hurting. What must he think of his new friend now?

Number Two. She was mad as hell at Gavin Ramsay. He brushed off her suggestions and her requests like the Heatings of some hysterical woman. Well, maybe that was overstating the case. Nevertheless, he was a whole lot more interested in catching his Werewolf Killer, as the media were now calling it, than he was in locating a missing boy. But wait, she cautioned herself, isn’t Gavin doing his job the very best way he can? Was she being unfair? Maybe so, but what the hell, life was unfair. If he was going to treat her like some addled, helpless female, then to hell with him.

By the time she pulled into Ventura and parked on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Holiday Inn, she was under control and feeling better. She had a plan.

The foremost supplier of medical equipment in the area, Landrud & Co., was located in Ventura. If Wayne Pastory had ordered anything medical for this phantom clinic of his, it would have been from Landrud.

Holly restarted the engine and drove until she found a Texaco station with public telephones. She riffled through the Yellow Pages and located the number for Landrud & Co. She dropped a coin into the slot, punched out the number and asked the switchboard operator to connect her with the Sales Department.

“Hello,” she said, making her voice brusque and businesslike when she was put through. “This is Dr Hollanda Lang of La Reina County Hospital. I wonder if I might see someone there about an order for new laboratory equipment.”

“Of course, Dr Lang,” came the answer. “We’ll be glad to talk to you. Would you like to come in this afternoon, or any time tomorrow, at your convenience?”

“As a matter of fact, I’m rather pressed for time, and if possible I’d like to make it sooner. I’m only about ten minutes away from your building right now.”

She could almost hear the salesman calculating the probable commission on the other end. “Well, yes, I’m sure that would be possible. I can reschedule one of my own appointments and see you right away.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that. Your name is?”

“Schaeffer. Olan Schaeffer. I’ll leave word with the receptionist to expect you.”

“Very good. I’ll see you in a few minutes, then, Mr Schaeffer.”

Holly replaced the receiver and drew a deep breath. She had managed a couple of white lies there without even flinching. And Gavin Ramsay thought she would get in the way of his police work. Hah!

Damn, why did she keep thinking about the loose-jointed sheriff with those hard blue eyes that could soften like anything sometimes? So what if he was one hell of a kisser? Nuts to him.

Landrud & Co. was in a low, unimaginative cinderblock building with lots of glass around the entrance and some fake-looking greenery in front to soften the antiseptic effect. Holly parked brazenly in a slot marked Customer, and entered the chrome-modern reception area.

She handed her business card to a lacquered receptionist and said, “I believe Mr Schaeffer is expecting me.”

“Oh, yes, Dr Lang. He asked me to tell him at once when you got here.” The receptionist smiled with several thousand dollars worth of porcelain and touched a button on her telephone panel. Maintaining the smile for Holly she said into the mouthpiece, “Dr Lang is here, Mr Schaeffer.” A moment’s pause. “He’ll be right out, Doctor.”

Olan Schaeffer was a short, ruddy-faced man with thinning hair and cigar breath which he disguised inadequately with Tic-Tacs. His suit was a muted sharkskin as befitted the serious nature of the product he sold, but he allowed himself a touch of playfulness in the orange and blue figured tie.

“Well, Dr Lang,” he said after seating her in his compact office, “I believe you said you were interested in laboratory equipment. I have our catalogue here, and several brochures you might want to glance through.”

“Actually, that won’t be necessary,” Holly said, wishing she had better prepared her story. “I’d like to talk to you about equipment ordered by a colleague of mine, Dr Wayne Pastory.”

Schaeffer’s smile slipped a notch as though he felt his commission shrinking. “Uh, was that order placed for La Reina County?”

“No. Dr Pastory is associated with us, but the equipment I’m interested in was ordered for his own private clinic”

“I see,” Schaeffer said, not seeing at all. “May I ask specifically what it is you want to know?”

“We’ve had excellent reports at La Reina County,” Holly improvised, “about the quality of Dr Pastory’s equipment. And the price offered by you people, of course.”

They exchanged little insider smiles.

“Our board of directors is interested in making a similar purchase for a new wing we have under construction.”

“Ah, yes, I see. Excellent.” The commission light returned to the salesman’s eyes. “Well, we’ll just punch it up on the old computer here, and see what we shall see.”

He swivelled his chair around and lifted the dust cover from a computer terminal as though unveiling a prized objet d’art. “Everything’s done on the computer nowadays. Sometimes I kind of miss poking through the old filing cabinets, but I guess that’s progress.”

Holly forced herself to sit quietly and smile while Schaeffer flipped on the terminal and waited for the screen to come to life. She crossed her legs to give the man something to look at other than her smile, which was becoming strained.

The computer beeped politely and prompted him in pale green characters to get on with it.

“Would you spell the doctor’s name for me?” he asked.

Holly wrote it out for him on a desk pad. Stiff-fingered he punched the proper command keys, then spelled out WAYNE PASTORY, MD. The computer beeped and buzzed and Holly began rehearsing her exit in case no information came up on Pastory. She needn’t have worried, for after a final buzz and beep the screen was filled with pale green readout that listed dates, medical apparatus, prices, and other coded information.

“Dr Pastory has been quite a good customer,” Schaeffer said. “Especially in the last month.”

“Ah, yes, that’s what I understand,” Holly said, leaning forward trying to decipher the computer language on the screen.

“Can you tell me specifically what pieces of equipment you’re interested in? Or I could run a printout of the whole file, if that would help.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure it would, but I want to be certain this is not material the doctor ordered for La Reina. It’s his own clinic that I’m interested in.”

“Of course. The computer knows all, tells all.” Schaeffer tapped several additional keys. “No, all this was shipped to his clinic up near Bear Paw. Is that the place?”

Holly almost laughed with relief. “Yes, Bear Paw. A funny name that I can never remember. That’s the place.”

“Not much of a town, from what I hear,” said the helpful Schaeffer. “A few skiers in the winter is about it. Anyway, they’ve got a post office and your Dr Pastory’s clinic.”

Holly stood up. “Thank you so much, Mr Schaeffer. I can’t tell you how helpful you’ve been.”

The salesman scrambled to his feet. “But the equipment? Didn’t you want to go over the list?”

“Why don’t you run off that printout and send it to me in care of La Reina County Hospital? I look forward to doing business with you.”

Holly made her second hasty exit of the morning, leaving a befuddled Olan Schaeffer wondering whether his commission had just sailed out the door.

While Holly Lang took hasty leave of the offices of Landrud & Co. in Ventura, Abe Craddock was draining a can of Coors in the old Whitaker place. It was a falling-down cabin set well back in the trees at the south end of Pinyon, and had not been used since old George Whitaker’s Dodge slipped off a jack while he was under it down at Art Moore’s Exxon station.

The cabin had been rented from old George Whitaker’s widow by a smart-talking writer fella from Los Angeles who was doing a story for one of the scandal sheets they sold over at the Safeway where you paid for your groceries. This so-called writer had bailed Abe Craddock out of jail and promised him a cool thousand dollars just for telling him the story of what happened in the woods that day with Curly Vane and the wolf thing. The catch was that Craddock would tell his story to no one else.

Abe figured he flat had it made. Not only was he living fairly comfortably in the cabin with Betty out of his hair, he was taking this smart-ass LA writer for all the booze he could drink, and figured he could probably up the dollar price on him, too. As for the manslaughter charge against him for blowing up Jones, that was no sweat any more. With the kid gone and Curly nothing but raw meat, there were no witnesses. It was an accident pure and simple. Yes, things were surely going old Abe Craddock’s way for a change.

The LA writer, Louis Zeno by name, was hammering away at the old typewriter he’d brought with him like he was trying to set the thing on fire. Abe had never in his life seen a man who could type so fast.

Zeno ripped out the page he was working on and handed it over to Craddock. “All right, Abe, I want you to take a look at this and see if it sounds all right. Remember, this is supposed to be you telling the story, and I want to be sure the facts are reasonably close to what really happened.”