Chapter 3

Mike O’Donnell hated this part of his daily journey. The streets around here were sullen, dangerous and empty. Openings in the ruined buildings exhaled the stench of damp rot and urine. O’Donnell liked the bustling crowds a few blocks away, but on the money a blind man made you couldn’t take cabs through these areas, you had to walk. Over the years the deadly stillness had grown like a cancer, replacing the noisy, kindly clamor that Mike remembered from his childhood. Now it was almost all like this except the block where Mike lived with his daughter and the block near the subway station a twenty-minute walk away.

Those twenty minutes were always bad, always getting worse. Along this route he had encountered addicts, muggers, perverts—every kind of human garbage. And he had survived. He let them shake him down. What could he lose, a few dollars? Only once had he been struck, that by some teenagers, children really. He had appealed to their manhood, shamed them out of their plan to torture him in one of the empty buildings.

Mike was tough and resilient. Sixty sightless years in the Bronx left him no other choice. He and his beloved daughter were on welfare, home relief. She was a good girl with bad taste in husbands. God knows, the kind of men… smelling of cologne and hair grease, moving around like cats through the apartment, voices that sneered every word… actors, she said. And she was an actress, she said… he groped his way along with his cane trying to put trouble out of his mind, not wanting to bring his feelings home, start an argument.

Then he heard a little sound that made the hairs rise along the back of his neck. It didn’t quite seem human, yet what else could it be? Not an animal— too much like a voice, too little like a growl.

“Is somebody there?”

The sound came again, right in front of him and down low. He sensed a presence.

Somebody was there, apparently crouching close to the ground. “Can I help you? Are you hurt?”

Something slid along the pavement. At once the strange sound was taken up from other points—behind him, in the abandoned buildings beside him, in the street. There was a sense of slow, circling movement.

Mike O’Donnell raised his cane, started to swing it back and forth in front of him. The reaction was immediate; Mike O’Donnell’s death came so suddenly that all he registered was astonishment.

They worked with practiced efficiency, pulling the body back into the abandoned building while blood was still pumping out of the throat. It was a heavy, old body, but they were determined and there were six of them. They worked against time, against the ever-present danger of being discovered at a vulnerable moment.

Mike O’Donnell hadn’t understood how completely this neighborhood had been abandoned in recent years, left by all except junkies and other derelicts, and the ones who were attracted to them for their weakness. And now Mike O’Donnell had joined the unnumbered corpses rotting in the abandoned basements and rubble of the empty neighborhood.

But in his case there was one small difference. He had a home and was missed. Mike’s daughter was frantic. She dialed the Lighthouse for the Blind again. No, they hadn’t seen Mike, he had never appeared for his assigned duties. Now it was six hours and she wasn’t going to waste any more time. Her next call was to the police.

Because missing persons usually turn up on their own or don’t turn up at all, and because there are so many of them, the Police Department doesn’t react instantly to another such report. At least, not unless it concerns a child or a young woman who had no reason to leave home, or, as in the case of Mike O’Donnell, somebody who wouldn’t voluntarily abandon the little security and comfort he had in the world. So Mike O’Donnell’s case was special and it got some attention. Not an overwhelming amount, but enough to cause a detective to be assigned to the case. A description of Mike O’Donnell was circulated, given a little more than routine attention. Somebody even questioned the daughter long enough to draw a map of Mike’s probable route from his apartment to the subway station. But the case went no farther than that; no body turned up, the police told the daughter to wait, not to give up hope. A week later they told her to give up hope, he wasn’t going to be found. Somewhere in the city his body probably lay moldering, effectively and completely hidden by whoever had killed him. Mike O’Donnell’s daughter learned in time to accept the idea of his death, to try to replace the awful uncertain void with the comfort of certainty. She did the best she could, but all she really came to understand was that her father had somehow been swallowed by the city.

During these weeks Neff and Wilson worked on other assignments. They heard nothing about the O’Donnell case; they were investigating another murder, locked in the endless, sordid routine of Homicide. Most crimes are no less commonplace than the people who commit them, and Wilson and Neff weren’t being assigned to the interesting or dramatic cases these days. It wasn’t that they were being muscled aside, but word was out that the Chief of Detectives wasn’t exactly in love with them. He knew that they didn’t like his handling of the DiFalco/Houlihan murders and he didn’t want to be reminded of it, primarily because he didn’t like it any more than they did. He was a more literal man than they were and much more concerned with his own potential appointment to the job of Police Commissioner than with following up bizarre theories about what genuinely looked to him like an even more bizarre accident. So the two detectives were kept away from big cases, effectively buried in the sheer size of the New York City Police Department.

The first words Becky Neff heard about Mike O’Donnell came from the Medical Examiner. “I thought you two had retired,” he said over the phone. “You got a heavy case?”

“The usual. Not a lot of action.” Beside her Wilson raised his eyebrows. The phone on her desk hadn’t been ringing too often; an extended conversation like this was of interest.

“I’ve got a problem up here I’d like you two to take a look at.”

“The Chief—’”

“So take a coffee break. Just come up here. I think this might be what you’ve been waiting for.”

“What’s he got?” Wilson asked as soon as she put down the phone.

“He’s got a problem. He thinks it might interest us.”

“The Chief—”

“So he said take a coffee break and come up to see him. I think it’s a good idea.”

They pulled on their coats; outside it was a bright, blustery December afternoon and the cold wind coming around the buildings carried a fierce chill. The cold had been so intense for the past three days, in fact, that there weren’t even many cars on the street.

The usual afternoon jams were gone, replaced by a smattering of taxis and buses with great plumes of condensing exhaust behind them. The M. E. had been circumspect on the phone, no doubt savoring what little bit of drama might be in this for him.

They didn’t speak as the car raced up Third Avenue. In the past few weeks Wilson had become more than usually taciturn; that was fine with Becky, she had problems enough of her own without listening to him complain about his. The last month with Dick had been stormy, full of pain and unexpected realizations. She knew now that Dick was taking money under the table. Strangely enough the money wasn’t from narcotics but from gambling. He had tracked a heroin network into an illicit gambling casino about a year ago. Dick’s father was in a nursing home, he was sick of the bills, he was sick of the treadmill; he collared the junkies but left the gambling establishment alone—for a few thousand dollars. “It’s gambling,” he had argued; “what the hell, it shouldn’t even be a crime.” But since it was, he might as well let it pay the six hundred a month his father was costing. God knows, they might even be able to put enough aside for a decent apartment one of these days.

It hurt her to see this happening to Dick. The truth was, she had sniped at him for it but she hadn’t tried to stop him and she hadn’t turned him in. Nor would she. But Dick was a corrupt cop, the one thing she had sworn she would never be, the one thing she had sworn she would never allow him to be. Well, he hadn’t asked permission.

She had always assumed that she would never give in to the temptations that were so common on the police force—and he had sworn it too. But he had and by not stopping him she had too. Now they bickered, each unwilling to confront the real reason for their anger.

They should have had the courage to stop; instead they had let things happen. They had disappointed one another and were bitter about it.

Bitter enough to spend more and more time apart. Often it was days between shared evenings or monosyllabic breakfasts. They used to work their schedules to fit; now they worked them to be apart. Or at least as far as Becky was concerned she just stopped making an effort with her schedule. She drew what she drew, and overtime was just fine.

Eventually there would be a confrontation, but not now, not today —today she was heading up to the M. E.’s office to be let in on a new case, maybe something really interesting for the first time in too damn long.

Evans was waiting for them in the reception area. “Don’t take off your coats,” he said,

“we’re going to the freezer.” That meant the remains were in an advanced state of deterioration. The Medical Examiner’s office had a claustrophobic freezer compartment with room enough for three surgical tables and a few people squeezed in tight. Wilson’s eyes roved as they went down the disinfectant-scented hall toward the freezer; his claustrophobia had a field day in the thing. More than once he had commented to Becky that the freezer had figured in his nightmares.

“It’s rough stuff again,” the M. E. said conversationally. “I only call you folks in when I’ve got some real gore. Hope you don’t mind.” It could be that Evans lacked taste or it could just possibly be an attempt at banter. Becky didn’t bother to laugh; instead she asked a question.

“What are we going to see?”

“Three DOA’s, very decomposed.” He ushered them into the starkly lit freezer and pulled the door shut behind them. He didn’t need to say more; the bodies had clearly been attacked the same way DiFalco and Houlihan were attacked. There was something chilling about seeing the same type of scrape marks on the bones, the same evidence of gnawing. Becky was frightened, too deeply frightened to really understand her feelings.

But she knew the moment she saw these corpses that the Chief of Detectives had made exactly the mistake they had feared he was making—this was not an ordinary murder case and it was not a fluke.

“Goddamn,” Wilson said.

The Medical Examiner smiled, but this time it was without mirth. “I don’t know how to explain these bodies. The condition makes no sense.”

“It makes sense,” Becky said, “as soon as you assume that they weren’t killed by human beings.”

“What then?”

“That’s what’s to be found out. But you’re wasting your time with us, Underwood took us off the case.”

“Well, he’ll put you back on.”

“There are a lot of detectives in this department,” Wilson put in. “I’m sure he’ll find others. And it’s likely he’ll want more. This is going to be a big embarrassment for him.”

Wilson shook his head. “A hell of an embarrassment. Let’s get out of this icebox. We’ve seen all we need to see.”

Evans opened the door. “You’ll get back on,” he said, “I’ll make sure of that. So start to work. You need a solution.”

They didn’t bother to ask the M. E. how the bodies had come in; instead they called headquarters and got referred to the right precinct. As soon as he was off the phone to headquarters Wilson called the 41st Precinct in the South Bronx and asked to speak to the Captain. Sure they could come up, but there were already detectives on the case.

“Might be a tie-in to another case, one of ours.” He put down the phone. “Let’s move.”

They battled their way across town to the FDR Drive. Despite the fact that the weather had reduced the amount of traffic in the city, getting across town was still difficult. “I read somewhere that it takes longer to cross town in a car today than it used to in a carriage.”

“And longer than that when I’m driving, right?”

“Yeah, if you say so.”

“Goddamn brass,” Becky growled.

“Hey, getting our dander up, my dear.”

“Damn right I am. Here we’ve got two cops buried and forgotten and we knew damn well something wasn’t right—damn these politicking bastards. It’s a black day when the NYPD won’t even mount a proper investigation when officers are killed. Seedman never would have done this.”

Wilson sighed, expressing in that single sound all the feelings he could or would not express about the Police Department he so loved to hate. The department had hurt him as well as helped him; in the past few years he had seen its emphasis shift away from solving crimes toward preventing them. Citizens demanded protection in the streets; the once-proud Detectives diminished and foot patrol became the thing. The old-timers were fewer and fewer; Wilson was one, sharp-eyed and careful. And the fact that his young partner was a woman was just another sign of the deterioration of the department. He stared out the window. Becky couldn’t see his face but she knew what the expression contained. She knew also that there was no sense in talking to him now; he was beyond communication.

They made their way through the devastated streets of the 41st Precinct, past the vacant brick-strewn lots, the empty buildings, the burned, abandoned ruins, the stripped cars, the dismal, blowing garbage in the streets. And Becky thought, “Somewhere, something is here. It is here.” She knew it. And by the way Wilson changed, the stiffening of his posture, the darkening of his face, the little turning-down of the edges of his mouth, she saw that he also had the same feeling.

“Every time I’m up here this place looks worse.”

“What street was it again, George?”

“East One Hundred and Forty-fourth Street. Old One Forty-four. Sure is a mess now.”

Wilson was in the neighborhood of his childhood, looking at the ruins of where he had been a boy. “It was a pretty good place then, not the greatest, but it sure wasn’t like this.

Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Becky tried to leave him alone with his thoughts. Considering that the little upstate town where she had grown up was still exactly as it had been, still and seemingly forever, she couldn’t imagine what seeing this place must do to Wilson.

“God, I can’t believe I’m fifty-four,” he said. “I’d swear I was sitting on that stoop last night.” He sighed. “We’re there,” he said, “the old Forty-first.” The precinct house was a dismal fortress, an unlikely bastion of reasonable decay in the surrounding ruins. A neighborhood of unabandoned houses clustered around it. The danger and destruction were beyond. In fact, with the strange fecundity of the Bronx, this immediate two blocks showed signs of mild prosperity. There was traffic in the streets, neatly swept sidewalks, curtains in windows, and a well-kept Catholic church on the corner. People were few because of the cold, but Becky could imagine what the area was like when the weather was good—filled with kids on the sidewalks and their parents on the stoops, full of liveliness and noise and the sheer exuberance that can infect city neighborhoods.

The Captain of the 41st Precinct looked up from his desk when Neff and Wilson were shown in. It was clear at once that he still didn’t know exactly why they were there.

Normally detectives from another borough would have nothing to do with this case— and as far as the Captain was concerned it probably wasn’t much of a case. Just another couple of rotting junkie corpses and a poor old man. About the score for the South Bronx these days. Becky knew instinctively to let Wilson handle the Captain. He was the infighter, the resident expert on departmental politics. Look where his political skill had gotten him. The best detective in New York City at dead end. First Grade, true, but never a division, never a district of his own.

“We got a suggestion from Evans,” Wilson said by way of explaining their presence to the Captain.

“Evans pulled rank on the Bronx Medical Examiner and got those cadavers down to Manhattan. We don’t know why he did that.” There was acid in the man’s voice. He didn’t like a case being taken from him without a good reason. And it was obvious that so far nobody had given him one.

“He did that because the marks on them were similar to the marks on the DiFalco-Houlihan remains.”

The Precinct Captain stared. “That case still open?”

“It is now. We’ve got a new lead.”

“Jesus. No wonder you guys are all over us.” He stood up from his desk. “We got the scene in good shape,” he said. “You want to go over there?”

Wilson nodded. As they followed the Captain out of his office, Becky was exultant. The man had never thought to call downtown to check on Neff and Wilson. If he had he would have found out that they weren’t even on the case anymore. But why should he? It would never even occur to him.

The area where the bodies had been found was roped off and plastered with Crime Scene stickers. It was guarded by two patrolmen. “The bodies were found by a gypsy cab driver who stopped to fix a flat and smelled something. He came to us, we were lucky.

Usually those guys don’t even bother.”

The bodies had been found in the basement of an abandoned apartment house. Becky took her flashlight out of her bag and went in under the decaying stoop. Lights had been set up in the dirty room, but the rest of the building was in boarded-up darkness. The flashlight played along the floor, in the unlit corners, up the stairs that led to the first floor. “Door locked?” Wilson asked as Becky shone her light on its blackened surface.

“Haven’t been up there,” the Captain said. “Remember, we thought this was routine until this morning when the Bronx M. E. told us that Evans had snatched his bodies.”

“Ha ha, that was funny,” Wilson said tonelessly. The Captain glowered. “Let’s go up, partner. We might as well make the search.”

They all heard it; a footstep on the stair. They looked to their leader. His hair rose and theirs did too. They functioned with one emotion, one will, one heart. What did the footsteps mean? Obviously, the ones in the basement had decided to come upstairs. And they were familiar. The sound of their tread, their rising smell, their voices were remembered from the dump. As the elders had feared, the killings of young humans had caused an investigation. And these two had been at that investigation. Now they were here, obviously following the pack.

Their scent became more powerful as they drew nearer: an old man and a young woman. No danger, they would be an easy kill.

The leader made a sound that sent the pack into motion.

They were hungry, the children were cold and hungry. Food was needed. Today a new hunt would have begun. Maybe it would be unnecessary, this kill would both remove danger and provide meat But the strong young woman would have to be separated from the weak old man. How to do that? Their scents revealed the fact that they were partners, and the way their voices sounded as they talked to one another said that they had worked together a long time. How do you separate such people even for a moment, especially when both recognize danger? The scents became sharp with the smell of fear as the two humans groped through the darkness. It made digestive juices flow and hearts beat faster with lust for the hunt. The leader warned, hold back, hold back. In this situation he sensed hidden dangers. Suddenly he hated the place. He loathed it, despised it. It was thick with humanity. There were strong, young ones outside and these two inside and another old one in the basement Before there had been many more in the basement. “Our young must not kill their young,” he thought fiercely. He found himself moving slowly toward the door of the room they inhabited, moving against his judgment, attracted by the need to kill the two who knew enough of the pack to follow it here. Now the others moved behind him, stealthy, efficient, padding quickly down the darkened hall, down the black stairway toward the wonderful scents, moving too close to humanity and yet only close enough to get what they needed. “Must find a way to split them up,” the leader thought. Then he stopped. His whole body seethed with desire to go on, to finish the attack, to feel the death of the prey in his mouth. But he thought carefully, his mind turning over the problem and coming to the solution.

Certain sounds attracted humans. This fact was often used in hunting. A little cry, like one of their children, would bring even the most fearful within range of attack. And the child’s cry was most easily heard by the women.

“Sh!”

“What?”

“Listen.” It came again, the unmistakable groan of a child. “You hear that?”

“No.”

Becky went to the stairwell. She heard it more clearly, coming from above. “Wilson, there’s a kid up there.” She shone her light into the dimness. “I’m telling you I hear a child.”

“So go investigate. I’m not going up there.”

The sound came again, full of imperative need.

She found herself standing on the first step, moving upward almost against her own will. Above her the decoy put his heart into the sounds, making them as plaintive and compelling as he could. He imagined himself a helpless little human child lying on the cold floor weeping, and the sound that came out of him was like such a child.

The others moved swiftly to the opposite stairwell and started down. They sensed the positions of the prey. The strong young woman starting up the stairs, the weak old man standing in the dark hallway behind her. “Come up, come up,” the decoy pleaded to her in his mind, and made the little sound. It had to be right, to be perfect, just enough to attract her, not enough to let her decide what she wanted to decide—that it was the wind, a creaking board, or something dangerous.

As she reached one landing the hunters reached its twin at the opposite end of the hall.

As she rose toward the decoy they descended toward Wilson. As they got closer they became more careful. Hidden strength under the smells of fear and decay. They would have to hit this man with devastating force to get him, hit as hard as they had hit the two young ones at the dump. But their prize would be great; he was heavy and well-fed, unlike the ones they had found among these empty buildings. There was no starvation in him and no sickness to make him dangerous to consume. They loved him, lusted after him, moved closer to him. And they saw his dim shadow, his heavy slow body standing in the dark.

Then standing in a flickering blaze of light.

“What are you doing, George?”

“Lighting a Goddamn cigarette.”

Becky came down toward him flashing her light in his face. “You are lighting a cigarette. I’ll be damned. Where did you get a cigarette?”

“I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

“And now is a special occasion?”

He nodded, his face like stone. “I’ll be frank with you, Becky, I’ve got the creeps. I’m scared to death. I won’t get out of here without you but I think we ought to leave—now.”

“But there’s a child—”

“Now! Come on.” He grabbed her wrist, pulled her toward the basement door.

“There’s something upstairs,” he said to the Precinct Captain, who was standing in the middle of the basement as if he had been undecided about whether or not to follow the two detectives upstairs.

“I’m not surprised. The building is probably full of junkies.”

“It sounded like a child,” Becky said. “I’m sure that’s what it was.”

“That’s possible too,” the Captain said mildly. “I’ll order up a search party if you think I should. But don’t do it with just two people. It’ll take ten men with carbines, I think that ought to do it”

Becky acknowledged the wisdom of this plan. No doubt there had been a pack of junkies at the top of the stairs waiting to jump her. Or perhaps there was actually a child.

If that was so the ten minutes it would take to assemble the search party would make little difference.

They went outside and got into the Captain’s car. As soon as they left, the two patrolmen who had been guarding the scene moved swiftly to their own car and got in to shield themselves from the cold. They turned on their radio so that they would again have advance warning of visits from the precinct and settled back in the warmth.

For this reason they did not hear the howl of rage and frustration that rose from the upper reaches of the tenement. Nor did they see the exodus that took place, a line of gray shadows jumping one by one across the six feet of space that separated this building from the next one.

It didn’t take long to assemble the search party. It was now four o’clock and the night men were coming on duty. Three patrol cars returned to the building. With the two men on duty there plus Wilson and Neff there would be exactly ten officers for the search. Of course as soon as the cars drew up to the front of the building you could assume that any junkies in it slipped out the back. But murder had been done here and the precinct so far hadn’t mounted a proper search. Pictures had been taken of the victims and a cursory dusting of the area for fingerprints, but that was all. In this part of the city a committed crime was just another statistic. Nobody bothered to find out the circumstances that led to the deaths of a few derelicts. And nobody doubted that the blind man had gotten mugged and then dragged off the street to die. And nobody was right about what happened.

During the search Wilson and Neff were silent. The rooms of the old tenement still bore the marks of the last residents—graffiti on the walls, shreds of curtains in the windows, yellowing wallpaper here and there. Even, in one room, the remains of a carpet.

But there was no child, and there were no traces of recent human habitation.

Wilson and Neff made the reluctant patrolmen scoop up some of the fecal matter that was found. They put it in a plastic bag.

“Empty upstairs,” a voice called as a group of five came from searching up to the roof.

“Nothing suspicious.”

What the hell did that mean? These men wouldn’t know evidence from cauliflower.

“Take us through,” Wilson growled. “We’ve gotta see for ourselves.”

The patrolmen went with them, the whole crowd going floor to floor. Becky saw the empty rooms in better light, but her mind could not blot out those plaintive cries.

Something was up here just a few minutes ago, something that had left without a trace.

They looked carefully in all the rooms but found nothing.

When they got back to the basement Wilson was shaking his head. “I don’t get it,” he said, “I know you heard something.”

“You do?”

“I heard it too, you think I’m deaf?”

Becky was surprised, she hadn’t realized that he also had heard the sound. “Why didn’t you go up with me then?”

“It wasn’t a child.”

She looked at him, at the cold fear in his face. “OK,” she said, swallowing her intended challenge, “it wasn’t a child. What was it?”

He shook his head and pulled out his cigarettes. “Let’s get the shit to the lab for analysis. That’s all we can do now.”

They left the house with the clomping horde of patrolmen. With their meager evidence tightly enclosed in plastic bags they headed back to Manhattan.

“You think this will reopen the DiFalco case?” Becky asked.

“Probably.”

“Good, then we won’t be moonlighting on it anymore.”

“As I recall we got taken off that case. Or do you recall something else?”

“Well, yeah, but in view of—”

“In view of nothing. We’re going to be the scapegoats now. Neff and Wilson get case.

Carbon monoxide and wild dogs. Neff and Wilson close case. New evidence comes in. Case reopened. Neff and Wilson scapegoats for closing it in the first place.” His throat rumbled in a suppressed cough. “Goddamn Luckies,” he said. “Goddamn, you know I could be resigning soon.”

“You won’t resign.”

“No, not voluntarily. But it depends on how hard Underwood wants to stick me with blame for misunderstanding the case.”

“But it’s only one damn case.”

“It’s police officers killed in the line of duty. If it gets out that Underwood himself closed the case he’ll lose his shot at Commissioner. Therefore you and yours truly are going to be blamed. Might as well relax and enjoy the fun.” His shoulders shook with mirthless laughter.

“Maybe there’s something more conclusive. If there is it’ll help a little.” She paused.

The silence grew. “Who do you think is doing it?” she asked.

“Not who—what. It’s not human.”

Now he had said the words, words they had previously been unwilling to face. Not human. Could not be human. “What makes you so sure?” Becky asked, half-knowing the answer.

Wilson looked at her in surprise. “Why, the noise, of course. It wasn’t human.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? It sounded perfectly human to me.” Or had it? Becky remembered it now like something that had taken place in a dream, a child’s voice or…

something else. Every few seconds it was as if she woke up and heard it again— horrible, inhuman parody full of snarling menace… then child again, soft, wounded, dying.

“Look out!”

She slammed on the brakes. She had been about to glide broadside into the traffic of Third Avenue. “Sorry. Sorry, George, I—”

“Pull over. You’re not in good shape.”

She obeyed him. Despite the. fact that she felt fine, there was no denying what she had almost done. Like the little cries were still taking place, but in a dream. “I feel OK, I don’t know what came over me.”

“You acted hypnotized,” he said.

She heard the noises again, feral, snarling, monstrous. Sweat popped out all over her.

She felt cold, her flesh crawling. Her mind turned back to the stair, to the terrible danger that had been waiting for her, the same as the torn, bloodied corpses, the jagged bones and skulls.

With her hands over her mouth she fought not to scream, to give up completely to the terror.

Wilson came across the seat as if he had been waiting for this. He took her in his arms; her body rattled against his thick shoulders; she pressed her face into the warm, scruffy smell of his ancient white shirt, distantly she felt him kissing her hair, her ear, her neck, and felt waves of comfort and surprise overcoming and pushing back the panic. She wanted to pull away from him but she also wanted to do what she did, which was lift her face. He kissed her hard and she accepted it, passively at first, then giving in to the relief of it, and kissed him back.

Then they separated, propelled apart by the fact that they were in a car recognizable to any policeman. Becky put her hands on the steering wheel. She felt sick and sad, as if something had just been lost.

“I’ve been wanting to get that out of my system,” Wilson said gruffly. “I’ve been—”

Then his voice died away. He clutched the dashboard and laid his head on his arm. “Oh, hell, I love you, dammit.” She started to talk. “No, don’t say it. I know what you’ll say. But just let it be known and leave it like that. We go on like we were. Unrequited love won’t kill me.”

She looked at him, amazed that he could bring up something so… extraneous. She had always wondered if he loved her. She loved him in a way. But that wasn’t important, it had been accepted a long time ago. And their relationship was established. Certainly it shouldn’t intrude now. When he turned his face toward her he registered shock. She knew her mascara must be running with the tears, she knew her face must be twisted in fear.

“What happened to me?” she asked. Her voice was not her own, so distorted was it by the rush of emotions. “What was going on back there?”

“Becky, I don’t know. But I think we’d better find out.”

She laughed. “Oh, that’s for sure! I just don’t know if I can handle it. We’ve really got some problems here.”

“Yeah. One of them is you. I don’t mean that harshly, but I’m going to have to break my cardinal rule at this time. Let’s change sides, I’m going to drive.”

She hid her amazement. In all the years they had worked together, this was an absolute first. “I must be falling apart,” she said as she sank into Wilson’s usual seat. “This is really a big deal.”

“It’s no big deal. You’re rattled. But you know you shouldn’t be. I mean, you weren’t the one in danger. It was me.”

“You! I was being lured upstairs.”

“To get you away from me.”

“Why do you even say that? You’re a man, a lot heavier than me, not an obvious target.”

“I heard noises on the stairs at the other end of the hall. Breathing noises, like something hungry slavering over its food.” The tone of his voice frightened her. She laughed nervously in self defense, the sound pealing out so suddenly that it startled Wilson visibly. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye but kept the car moving.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re the last person I’d think of as one of their victims.”

“Why?”

“Well, they eat them, don’t they? Isn’t that what it’s all about? Everybody they’ve hit has been eaten.”

“Old men, junkies, two cops in a hell of a lonely place. The weak and the isolated. I fitted two key criteria in that house—older man, isolated from all except you. And they damn near lured you away upstairs. You ever go hunting?”

“I don’t like it. I’ve never been.”

“When I was a kid I hunted with my father. We went after moose up north. We used to track for days sometimes. One summer we tracked for a week. And finally we got on to our moose, a big old bull that moved with a slanty track. A wounded bull. Weak, ready for the slaughter. I’ll never forget it. There we were just getting ready to take a shot when wolves stole out of the shadows all around us. They went right past us into the clearing where the moose was grazing. My dad cursed under his breath—those wolves were going to scare our trophy away. But they didn’t. That big bull moose looked down at those scrawny wolves and just snorted. They moved in closer and he stopped grazing and stared at them. You’d never believe it. The damn wolves wagged their tails! And the moose let out a great roar and they jumped him. They tore at him, bled him to death. We were fascinated, we were rooted to the spot. But it was like they agreed together that the killing be done. The wolves and the moose agreed. He couldn’t make it anymore, they needed meat. So he let them take him. And those timber wolves are scrawny. They’re like German shepherds. They look like they’d never be able to bring down a full-grown bull moose. And they wouldn’t, unless he agreed to let them try.” He was watching her again, barely keeping an eye on traffic. He was no better a driver today than she was.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m the bull moose in this version of the story. I wasn’t scared, but I knew they were coming down those stairs. If they had gotten any closer to me, I think I would have been a goner.”

“But you didn’t want them to kill you! We’re not like animals, we want to survive.”

“I don’t know what was going on in my mind,” he said. By the choked gruffness of his voice she knew that if he hadn’t been Wilson he would be sobbing. “All I know is, if they had come any closer I’m not so sure I could have even tried to stop them.”