Wolfman - Art Bourgeau (28 page)

"Yes, there was. The police managed to keep it
quiet. This morning I met with the people from homicide and told
them, based on what I was able to piece together, that the killer was
probably a paranoid schizophrenic."

When he saw her about to interrupt he raised his
hand.

"Hear me out. After the meeting one of the
detectives, a man named Mercanto, came to see me. He brought along an
anthropologist who specializes in shamanism, someone he’d already
consulted with about a voodoo angle in the case." He paused. "Do
you know anything about lycanthropy?"

Her eyes widened. "At lunch you tried to tell me
he was a schizophrenic, now you’re trying to tell me he's a . . . a
werewolf? Charles, please. I may have handled him wrong, but he's
neither of these things. He's an hysteric, deeply troubled, I agree,
but — "

"I felt the same way at first, but the
anthropologist had seen an actual lycanthropic, a Haitian shaman, so
I looked it up in the journals. The facts fit the killer too well."

She went back to her desk and lit a cigarette.
"Assuming what you’re saying is correct, you’re talking
about the killer, not my patient."

"Margaret, believe me, I hope I’m wrong . . .
but we can’t ignore the possibility that they might be one and the
same person — "

"No, goddamn it — "

"Forget the term . . . werewolf. Look at the
facts with me. We are talking about a psychosis rooted in the guilt
of an early passive sexual situation, usually prepubertal or early
pubertal. The personality splits off, with one part assuming the
identity of a predatory beast, giving it qualities the conscious
personality cannot accept — a means of coming to terms with that
guilt without acknowledging it. When we talked you said there was a
sexual abnormalcy . . ."

True, and she thought about what his stepfather had
done. But this wasn't enough. "Inexperience is not sexual
abnormalcy," she said, choosing not to mention what Loring had
told her at his house. "What he attempted with me doesn't fit
that pattern at all. To the contrary, it showed him at least striving
for a normal relationship. Nearly all of our patients have a sexual
problem of one type or another. The statistics have it that one in
four women has been sexually abused and one in ten men. None of which
turns them into lycanthropics."

"
But the schizophrenia. . ."

She shook her head. "Charles, I'm surprised.
You're trying to do what you lecture against — diagnose from afar.
A couple of articles, a lunch conversation, a session with the police
and some anthropologist aren't enough. I know this man. I've spent
time with him. He is not schizophrenic."

"Yes, you’ve spent time with him, but don't
you see, that's just it . . . when he was with you it wouldn't reveal
itself. It would only come out when he felt threatened, as the time
when he thought he was shrinking. And when you rejected him, he
thought but didn’t say. With you, he felt protected, even loved. It
wouldn't show. You were the one person he could trust." He
paused. "I know this is difficult, but I want his name. You
won’t be involved, we’ll see to it that your name never comes up
— "

"Absolutely not," she said, sorry now that
she had even let his first name slip. "I might not be his
therapist any longer but I will not violate his confidence like that,
and you shouldn’t ask me to."

"Of course, under almost any other circumstances
I would agree with you. But sometimes, Margaret, all our fine rules
and principles need to be bent for a larger purpose. There will be no
railroading. We will check him out carefully. If he is not the one,
that is the end of it. If he is, well, he has already killed twice,
and will keep on doing it until he is stopped. You do not want that
on your conscience."

"There are a few million people in this city.
You haven't given me one solid reason to think he's the person
responsible," she said.

"Margaret, take off the blinders. This is, as
you've said, a severely disturbed person, and one who fits the
profile. The last time you were together he tried to assault you
sexually, then he hit you. You’ve rebuked and rejected him, or so
he must feel, sent him away. To him you are no longer his protector.
You know what this means . . . If he is the one he might well come
after you next. You owe it to yourself to be sure. Give me his name.
He will not be mistreated, I promise, but we must know."

She thought about Loring, the gentleness she had seen
in him. The aloneness and fear. Charles was wrong. He could not kill
or mutilate. Such were not in his makeup. If there was anyone she was
no longer sure about, it was Charles. For some unknown reason he was
terribly prejudging a man he had never even met. She would not be a
party to it, to the destruction of poor Loring . . .

"I’m sorry," she said. "The answer
is no. Period."
 

CHAPTER 23

AT THE Park Station Detective Mary Kane thought about
Sloan's instructions. He had been very specific, no officer was to go
out without a partner until the killer was caught. Her usual partner
was Spivak, but he was busy at the Roundhouse fielding the calls from
worried citizens. If she had her choice Mercanto was the one she
would team up with today, but Sloan had already nixed that, banishing
him from the case.

She couldn’t understand why Sloan was on his back.
Everyone knew the details of Rudy Gunther’s death. Mercanto wasn't
to blame. He was a damn good cop. She only hoped Sloan would come to
realize that.

Her temporary partner was a red-haired uniformed
officer named Donovan from the Park Squad. Together now they began to
help in the house-to-house canvas of the assigned area between the
stables and the Valley Green parking lot. Their section comprised the
houses nearest the creek on the West Mt. Airy side. From there the
search would move outward. The morning went slowly. Alarmed by the
newspaper stories, someone at each house seemed to have something or
someone suspicious to report. Mostly noises in the night, but Kane
and Donovan dutifully made notes, mainly to reassure the homeowners
that the police were on the job and took them seriously.

It was mid-morning when they knocked on the door of a
stone colonial and a woman in her mid-forties, dressed in wool
slacks, answered. When they explained what they were doing she
hesitated for a moment, then invited them in.

"I'm Mona Seidenberg . . . I don’t know if
this is helpful, but I did see something. Only it wasn't a few nights
ago, it was last night, or early this morning to be truthful."

"Tell us about it," Mary Kane said.

She led them to the kitchen and pointed to the window
over the sink that faced the park. "I don’t know what time it
happened exactly," she said, "but it was sometime near
dawn. Like always, I was having trouble sleeping so I came in here to
get something to drink and have a cigarette. I know, I should quit
but . . . well, anyway, when I looked out the window I saw, or at
least thought I saw, a man out there at the edge of the woods . . ."

"
Yes?"

"It scared me. I mean, these days with people
getting killed and all, their houses burglarized . . . Anyway, I woke
my husband and told him to come and see, but by the time he got here
the man was gone." She laughed self-consciously. "He
accused me of seeing things, of jumping at shadows, and went back to
bed. But I’m sure someone was out there."

"Can you describe him?" Mary asked.

"Not very well, I’m afraid. It was pretty
dark, and he was wearing dark clothing."

"What about his hair?"

"
You mean what color? I couldn’t tell. I
couldn’t even say for sure if he was white or black. I only saw him
for a moment, and he was moving. That's probably the only reason I
saw him at all . . . the movement caught my eye."

They went into the backyard together and the woman
directed them to the spot. From where they were standing it was easy
to see she was telling the truth. A crude path of broken branches and
trampled bushes led into the woods. Someone had very recently been
there, as the woman said, and from the direction it seemed he was
headed toward the creek. Donavan turned to the woman. "You can
go back in the house, ma’am. We’re just going to have a look
around and see where this leads."

After she’d gone Kane said, "Don't you think
we should call it in before we do anything?"

"
We’d look bad if it turns out to be nothing,"
he said.

She agreed. Out of sight of the house, each had the
same thought and drew a gun. They followed the trail as well as they
could, but about two or three hundred yards in the brush thinned out
and they lost it.

"Let’s try the neighbors, see if they know
anything, then we'll call it in," Kane said.

They retraced their steps to the blue-and-white and
moved on. No one home at the next house, but two down they met up
with a man dressed nattily in a charcoal pin striped suit who was
about to get into his Mercedes.

"Hello, there, can we speak to you a moment?"
Donovan said as they got out of their car.

The man looked surprised for a moment, then shut the
door to his car. He was afraid, but Abaddon’s voice told him he had
"nothing to fear, the wolf was hidden from them." He felt
safe, they could watch all they wanted but they would never see . . .

"Do you live here?" Donovan asked, pointing
his nightstick at the cottage.

The man's eyes followed the gesture. "Yes, yes I
do."

"Could we have your name, please?"

He hesitated, momentarily startled. But there was
nothing to fear. "Weatherby," he said.

"
First name, Mr. Weatherby?" Kane asked.

"What? Oh, yes, of course. Loring. Loring
Weatherby. Why do you ask, officer?"

"
It’s routine, Mr. Weatherby. All the
excitement around here lately, we’re just checking."

Mary Kane watched him closely as they talked. Blond
hair, that at least fit the profile, but hardly anything else did.
And blond hair was not exactly a crime. "What do you do for a
living, Mr. Weatherby?"

"I’m a securities analyst," he said.
Sounded better than stock broker, he had always thought.

Just another businessman, hardly a homicidal nut-case
who liked to chew on his victims. Still, maybe he had seen or heard
something, or his wife had . . . "We’re investigating the
report of a prowler at one of your neighbors’, sir, although that's
confidential. Happened around dawn. Did you or your wife happen to
notice anything unusual last night?"

He smiled inwardly at the mention of "his wife."
Still, why not? He did love Margaret. If only she . . .

"Unfortunately my wife, Margaret, is not here
just now. She's a psychologist and had an early appointment, but yes,
we did have an incident sometime around then. We were both asleep
when a loud crash woke us up. Naturally I went to see what was
happening. . ." He was enjoying this.

He pointed to the side of the house. "Apparently
someone tried to break in. When they did they broke the bird feeder
outside the window. That’s what the crash was. By the time I got
there, whoever did it was gone."

Kane and Donovan looked at each other. This seemed to
tie in with the story of the woman down the street.

"Mind if we see?" Donovan said.

"Please, please do," Loring said, intrigued
by the abrupt image of horns passing so close to him. Strange. And he
felt a sudden chill come over him.

As they walked around the outside of the house Mary
Kane asked, "Did you report this disturbance, Mr. Weatherby?"

"No, no, we did not. We considered it, but since
nothing was taken, no real damage . . ."

It was the usual and understandable reaction, the
officers felt.

On the ground by the window they found the smashed
glass of the bird feeder. They did not notice nearby in the tall
grass the headless body of an arrogant blackbird. Loring remembered,
pleased with himself, knowing it was the only way to keep the other
birds safe from the other's hateful presence.

"Yeah, well, after the noise scared him off,
that’s when your neighbor saw him on the edge of the woods,"
Donovan said.

As they walked back to the car Loring said, "This
seems quite a lot of trouble to go to over a prowler." He was
reluctant to give up the exhilaration from this close contact with
his enemies.

"Have you seen the papers yet?" Mary asked.

"Only the Wall Street Journal," he said.
"Why?"

"
Well, sir," Donovan said, "we don’t
want to upset you, but you should know that another person was killed
in the park. A teen-age boy. We have to track down any possible
lead."

"
Yes, yes, and you think this prowler might be .
. ." Loring allowed himself the memory of the boy's struggles,
and the cleansing good of it.

The officers got into the blue-and-white and Donovan
said, "We're not sure, probably not, but to be on the safe side
it’d be a good idea to keep your doors and windows locked, and be
sure to report anything suspicious."