Bloodthirst in Babylon Page 15

  Then there was the older cop saying, out of breath, “Goddammit, Purcell, what the fuck’s the matter with you? Stay away, get back.”

  And another glacier-cold voice, one he knew well from the Dog, saying, “Watch very carefully how you speak to me, Sandy.”

  He heard the cop on top of Todd, the younger one, saying, “Easy, Duane, easy. We’re all cool. It’s just that…so many witnesses. You shoulda…”

  And while he had his cheeks rubbed raw against the sandstone Todd could hear a similar struggle going on right next to him, the older cop having slammed D.B. against the wall, too, and slapping on handcuffs.

  “Not them,” someone shouted, to which the heavy cop, the one addressed earlier as “Sandy” said, “Goddammit, Ernie, I told you to keep these people away.”

  “You got the wrong men, Chief,” the new voice insisted, and Todd got a peek at him because the cop holding him firm against the building turned to see who’d spoken.

  In the act of turning, he twisted his cuffed prisoner with him and Todd caught a glimpse of a man standing tall and tan in khaki shorts and a country club knit shirt.

  “These two here,” the stranger was saying in his strong, clear voice, “had nothing to do with it. They were standing on the front lawn of the municipal building when the screaming started.”

  Todd heard most of this with his eyes closed because he didn’t want to see any more. His mind retained the image of Judd Maxwell lying torn and bloody, parts of him dripping from the jaws of Zeebe and his five insane friends. Blood and steaming entrails and glistening teeth.

  Then the flashing lights strobed the night as a squad car came right up the sidewalk that paralleled this side of the sandstone building and halted with tires squealing in front of him and D.B. He heard the insistent squawk of an ignored radio, and the crowd murmur growing, the older cop saying, “Ernie, keep these fucking people back.” Then Ernie slamming Todd’s face against the rough sandstone like it was his fault he’d gotten yelled at again.

  “What’s back there?” the strong, clear voice said and the older cop said, “Ernie, dammit, these people,” and Todd thinking, here it comes again, but this time the young cop didn’t hurt him.

  Then he lost a slip of time and the next thing he felt was pressure on his head as he was stuffed into the back of the squawking squad car. D.B. was already seated beside him, blinking blood from his eyes.

  Todd blinked, too, and that was like setting off a fresh wrinkle of time, because now he was being yanked and prodded down steep, narrow stairs and into the dark, at which point he recalled the strong, clear voice saying, “I’m not going to allow this, Sandy.” Saying it sometime in the distant or not so distant past, and now, thinking back on it, Todd was wondering who Sandy was. He hadn’t seen a woman on the scene, just a lot of fresh blood and ruined flesh.

  Then came the memory of the strong-voiced man in country club shirt saying, “Nothing had better happen to those two in your custody, Sandy. I’m watching.”

  Only he wasn’t watching as Todd got pulled down a steep, dank flight of stairs, the darkness outlined by naked bulbs on chains high up overhead.

  “D.B.,” Todd shouted. “D.B., where are you?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  A voice he hadn’t heard before. And then he got pushed into a cell and a metal door clanged shut behind him and Todd caught the faint whiff of sewers that must have backed up years ago. He heard harsh, ragged breathing and for a moment thought time had flipped on him again and he was back at the Winking Dog. But they’d left the Dog and Judd was dead and D.B. bleeding like Todd, sitting right there on the thin mattress of the bottom bunk in their black cell.

  And D.B. wasn’t the cause of the ragged breathing. Those sounds, Todd finally realized as he grew accustomed to faint lighting, were coming from the pair of white-lit eyes somewhere in the black shadows where the nearest hanging bulb couldn’t reach.

  The eyes were part of a police officer’s uniform. They remained riveted by the blood dripping from Todd’s scraped face onto the cement floor.

  “I’m right here, man,” D.B. whispered from the bunk, answering a question that had been posed an eternity ago.

  We can do it, Todd thought as he shuffled closer to his friend bleeding with him in the dark. We can survive till dawn.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Daylight came as it always does, no matter how bad the night. With the sun up less than an hour before, Paul Highsmith was back at the police station, having it out with the uncommunicative cop who’d just told him he couldn’t see the new prisoners until Chief Sandy arrived. The catch was, the chief wasn’t expected in till noon or so, having had a particularly hard night.

  “I’ll bet he did,” said Paul. “I had a hard one, too.”

  And he had, his sleep robbed by nightmares of the piercing screams and inhuman growling he’d heard, and by the sight of two innocent men slammed against a wall, bloodied and cuffed and stuffed into a waiting squad car. The evening, which had begun with a pleasant after-dinner stroll, had ended in something foul and unfathomable.

  Paul clicked his tongue impatiently when the young cop continued to stare serenely at him. “If you would just pick up your phone and call your chief at his home—”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.”

  “How’d I know you were going to say that?”

  Okay, rein in the sarcasm, he advised himself as the cop’s expression went hard.

  “Good morning, Mr. Highsmith. How are you doing today?”

  This new lobby arrival also wore a police uniform, along with a smile and an annoyingly chipper manner.

  “Morning,” Paul answered, keeping his expression carefully neutral. “If your co-worker or your underling—whatever he is—can’t call the police chief at his home, will you do so?”

  “I bet you don’t remember me,” the cop practically sang out. “We met the other day under slightly unfortunate circumstances. The name’s Marty—”

  “McConlon,” Paul finished. “Will you call Bill Sandy, please?”

  “Cuppa coffee?”

  Paul stared at a coffeemaker that had probably run continuously since Joe Dimaggio’s final TV commercial, but surprised himself by nodding.

  It was practically a replay of his previous visit to the station, him sitting in front of a table of old magazines and staring at an oversize portrait of Miles Drake, circa 1940, waiting to chat with the police.

  But, as he now reflected, his career had taught him not to fear being a pain in the ass.

  “We had us some disturbance last night, huh?” the pudgy cop said as he handed over a paper mug with a sprinkling of powdered cream that hadn’t noticeably improved the oil-sludge coloration of its contents.

  “I’d like to talk with your chief and then see the two men you dragged in here last night,” Paul said, equally conversationally.

  “Ah, the two men.” McConlon took a seat opposite Paul and balanced a cup in his lap. “That shouldn’t be much of a problem.” He tapped the cup. “Not with the shorter one anyway. I think his name’s Dunbar. He’ll just have to pay some nominal fine, twenty-five, fifty bucks, whatever it is. If there’s a catch to that, it’s just that Judge Mattis won’t be able to see him till Monday, so I’m afraid he might have himself something of a gloomy weekend. No big deal.”

  Paul had so many questions, he barely knew where to start. So he sat and stared at the unruffled cop.

  While the previous night had featured bloodcurdling screams and spine-chilling growls, cops and handcuffs and bloodied and bruised strangers, the crowd had reacted with nervous silence. No questions, no one besides him even trying to trespass on the scene. And this morning he’d listened to the newscast of the one local radio station, and heard not a word of the disturbance make it to the air.

  Paul cleared his throat. “What’s the fine for?” The least complex question he could wrap his mind around at the moment.

  Marty slurped noisily at the sludgy brew. �
�I leave the judging to the judges, but I’m thinking he’s looking at disturbing the peace. Public drunkenness, maybe. Who knows? Nothing real serious.” He chuckled. “We might be a little town in the boondocks, but we outlawed public lynching a year or two ago.”

  “Why was the town taking blood donations late into the night?”

  Paul had meant to shake the pudgy cop by pitching him a question from left field—one that would hit at a tender spot—and he wasn’t disappointed. A look flashed across the cop’s face as he tried to hide his obvious irritation with another long sip.

  “That’s off the subject, isn’t it?” the cop asked, a thin and unfelt smile back in place.

  “For some reason, I didn’t think I’d get an answer. Is Bill Sandy on his way?”

  “He’ll be here.”

  “Yesterday afternoon, I saw mostly young people giving blood, but last night it was mostly old folks entering the building. I’m not sure what they were drinking when they came out.”

  “You’ve got a lot of questions, don’t you?”

  “It was a statement rather than a question. But if you prefer, I’ll ask you one. Do your prisoners’ families know you’re holding them?”

  Marty let out a bark of a laugh. “Prisoners. Like we’re running some sort of penal colony here. Chain gangs, slave labor. What we got is a couple guys who drank too much, got out of hand and are being held till we can sort things out.”

  “I’ll rephrase my question. Have those two wild and crazy guys been given an opportunity to notify their families or seek legal counsel?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” McConlon answered dryly. “I went to bed after the situation died down.”

  “And what situation was that? What exactly happened last night?” The heart of the question. Paul awaited a response he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. In that way, he seemed like much of the rest of the town.

  The cop tapped his cup against his teeth. “What happened,” he said, “was that those two hard-partying boys began to see and very noisily respond to creepy-crawlies as they stumbled home.”

  “I heard the same creepies,” said Paul, “and I hadn’t had a drop.”

  Marty shrugged. “Maybe their drinking buddies were screwing around with them.”

  It wasn’t something he’d considered. It would explain why the police, who had to have investigated, hadn’t found anything suspicious behind the post office, where he’d been stopped from looking.

  Paul sat and sipped his cooling sludge. “You told me that one of the two would soon be free. What about the other one?”

  “Let me answer that one,” a voice boomed from the doorway, and Bill Sandy walked into the lobby.

  He hadn’t shaved and his hair hung flat against his skull. The dark circles under his eyes attested to the fact that he, too, had been pulled from his sleep the previous night. He grabbed a paper cup and poured from the coffee pot. “Damn, I need this. Last night, just a little too much excitement for me.”

  He took the third and final chair and balanced his cup on a knee. Together, they looked like three sleepy men waiting for a dentist.

  “Donald Brandon has an outstanding warrant in Pittsburgh. Grand larceny,” the chief said after a moment. “Seems he stole a load of copper from a construction site. Wrapped it around his waist, under his shirt, and took out a little at a time. Kinda like that Johnny Cash song, I’m thinking. The one about the auto worker who steals a car one part at a time over a period of years.”

  Paul set down his cup on a tattered magazine. As badly as he’d needed a caffeine jolt, he’d barely touched it. “I asked Officer McConlon here whether the suspects had been able to contact their families or lawyers, but I’m not sure I got a response.”

  “I wouldn’t call them suspects,” Sandy said.

  Paul waited for more.

  “We haven’t hidden them from anyone,” the chief grumbled into the heavy silence. “When Mrs. Dunbar called, looking for her wayward husband, she was told that we were holding him and that she could come visit today. She could be here anytime, in fact, though we got the impression she might wait until her mood brightened. Apparently he made her late for a job interview.”

  Job interview. The ancient town fathers wanted Darby and him out, but these people couldn’t fill out job applications fast enough to meet demand. “What about the other one?” Paul asked.

  “The other one, Brandon, all he’s got is an ex-wife. My guess is she’d be as thrilled to hear from him as he would be to get in touch with her.”

  “I want to see them,” Paul said.

  The chief stared at him for several beats. “Why? You’re not a lawyer.”

  “No, but I have one.” Let them take it as a threat if they wanted.

  Paul watched the two cops exchange quick glances. He almost wanted to be turned down. He had no idea what he’d say to the jailed men if given a chance.

  “All right,” Chief Sandy said, nodding slowly. His gray head just kept nodding. “All right,” he said again. “Follow me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The door slammed behind them, trapping Paul, with the police chief, at the top of a flight of stairs that disappeared into the shadows. The light was dim, rough walls pressing in on either side. The smell of mildew hung heavy in the air. He could hear Chief Sandy a step or two above him, the key chain he’d strapped to his belt jingling his presence like a cat with a bell.

  “You’ll see them,” the chief called out, his voice ringing off solid walls. “Down the stairs, cell to the left, halfway down the corridor.”

  Under the occasional hanging bulb, Paul could see a hallway lined with iron-grilled cages. Empty, until he made his way slowly to the fourth holding cell on the left. He went queasy at the sight of the two blood-caked men behind bars. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a bleeding adult, and he’d never viewed anyone in a jail cell before except on screen.

  “G’morning, boys. You got a visitor,” Sandy announced. The undertone of merriment made it seem as though Paul would be a welcome surprise, a special treat for the well-mannered prisoners.

  They showed no reaction. They stood awkwardly, facing the corridor like strangers waiting for a bus, their eyes dark, bodies as rumpled as their clothing.

  The police chief fiddled noisily with the latch, then swung the door wide. It actually screeched on its hinges like dungeon cell doors in some late-night Vincent Price flick. He stood back and waited, his eyes twinkling.

  “Have they seen doctors?” Paul asked.

  “Bumps and bruises,” the cop said, as if that were an answer.

  Paul let himself be locked in with the two. They waited, the three of them listening to the sounds of the chief’s retreating footsteps. Only when the upstairs door slammed shut did Paul begin to study the men in greater detail.

  Their faces really weren’t as bad at he’d first suspected. The blood was dry and scabby. It looked like a little soap and water could wash away most of the evidence of last night’s…whatever.

  He had no idea what to say.

  Once, when he was a kid, Paul had won a job umpiring Little League. He’d spent weeks studying the rulebook so he’d know what to do, and in his very first game, first at-bat, the chattering from the team in the field had ended as soon as the first pitch crossed the plate. It slowly dawned on young Paul that both teams and all of the parents in the rickety stands were awaiting his ball or strike decision—and he couldn’t open his mouth.

  Like now.

  “Can we sit down?” he said, then saw the lunacy of the request. The tiny cell contained one double-stacked bed, a wall-mounted sink and a lidless toilet. “Okay,” he said, but nothing else came out.

  “You a lawyer or a vampire?” It was the shorter of the two, asking the odd question in an Appalachian twang.

  Paul’s shoulder blades pressed the cell bars. He regretted not having first discussed with the town police chief when he’d be released. Now he wished he hadn’t been such a pain in the ass
up there.

  “I’m definitely not a vampire.” He said it straight. They might see sarcasm in his response if they were playing with him, or take him seriously if they were seriously insane.

  “Then you’re a lawyer.”

  Despite his lack of size, this one had a dark-eyed aggressiveness about him that made Paul keep his distance. His cellmate was as tall as Paul, but wider in the shoulders. His complexion was light, his eyes looked painfully rimmed in pink and he had an absence of eyelashes. The hair on his head had the fine texture of a baby’s and his gentle face held a hint of a smile despite the circumstances.

  “Well?” the short one prodded. “Who the hell are you?”

  Paul said, “I’m a witness to what went on last night.”

  The short one’s eyes took on a distant stare as he seemed to consider that. “Yeah,” he finally said, as if Paul had answered correctly. “I remember now.”

  “Sir, do you know where Judd is? What happened to him?” the taller one wanted to know.

  “Judd. That’s your friend, right? The one who screamed. I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  This drew a snort and a sharp head shake from the short one. “Then what good are you?”

  “I was on the sidewalk in front of the municipal building when the screaming and growling started. The two of you were just thirty, forty feet from me, so I know you didn’t do anything if that’s any help.”

  “The perfect witness: you saw nothing. So why’re you here?” asked the shorter one.

  Paul formed his lips around various explanations, none of which seemed adequate. “I was curious,” he finally said.

  If possible, the shorter man’s expression soured even more. “Curious.”

  Paul tried again. “I’ve seen you two and the others at the motel on the edge of town. My family and I are outsiders just like you. There’s something going on here that involves you…and us. I’d like to compare notes.”

  “Yes, we shall compare notes,” the shorter one said in archly formal voice.

  Paul didn’t really blame him. It all sounded so academic, so civilized when played against the screams he’d heard in the dark and the blood still caked on the faces of these two. “And I want to help you find out what happened to your friend,” he added, drawing the first flicker of interest from the two.