Wolf's Bane td-132 Page 6

  He knew it when he crossed the threshold, entering a little claustrophobic place that some would call the mud room, but was more a skimpy corridor than any kind of room at all. The house was quiet, as he had expected, but it was not sleeping quiet. Rather, it felt dead, abandoned, vacant.

  No, he thought. The kitchen still bore cooking smells-another man who ruined his meat with fire-and there was glassware in the cupboards, silverware and other items in the drawers that flanked the rather dingy sink. He moved beyond the kitchen, traveling silently in darkness, and turned left down a corridor that took him to the living room. The place was fully furnished down to magazines splayed on the coffee table, and smelled strongly of cigar smoke.

  He didn't possess his quarry's scent. The men who hired him didn't work that way, but they had left him photographs instead. It mattered not that they were out of date. The leader of the pack would know his prey on sight, and that was all he needed. Still...

  He knew the feel of houses that have been abandoned. Something left them when the people departed, beyond the noise and everyday aromas that life generated: sweat, urine, feces, sex, the rest. When houses stood unoccupied, the smells began to fade, a little at a time, but there was more to it than that. An empty house felt empty, and it made no difference how much furniture was left behind to clutter up the lifeless rooms.

  Could he have missed his final target? It defied all logic, but his senses told him that the man was gone. It seemed impossible, but life had taught him early on that anything could happen, and the worst shit came upon you when you least expected it.

  Damn! The last one on his list before he went back home, and now the hunt would have to be prolonged. Worse, he had exhausted all the helpful information his employers could provide. Once he left Omaha behind, he wouldn't have the faintest glimmer of a clue where he should look.

  He was a werewolf, damn it, not a fortune-teller. Maybe visiting? he asked himself, and clutched the slender reed of hope in shaggy, taloned hands. There was no rule that said his quarry could not have a friend, unknown to those who paid to have him killed. The others had their women, one with children who were tender and delicious in the end. Who said the final target couldn't have a-

  No.

  He knew that it was wrong. The house didn't feel gone-to-visit empty, waiting for the occupant's return. The ceiling, floor and walls boxed in dead air. Not long dead, granted-maybe no more than a day or two, but it may just as well have been a year. In his world, gone meant gone, and he couldn't pursue the stranger on his own without a scent.

  Keep looking.

  He pretended there was still a chance that he might be mistaken, moving back along the silent corridor in the direction he had come from. Past the doorway to the kitchen, past a bathroom on his left. Its door stood open, showing him a sink and toilet. There was no need for a light to prove the indoor privy was unoccupied.

  There were two bedrooms at the south end of the house. He tried the smaller of them first, eliminating possibilities, and found the room unfurnished, used for storage, several stacks of boxes standing shoulder-high. One of them had been neatly labeled with a black marker, the name R. Baker printed on the side directly facing him.

  He didn't know the quarry's name, but guessed it wasn't Baker. Something French, he would have wagered, for the moneymen had set him hunting Cajuns this time, targets who had scattered from the bayou country, moving north, then east or west, and covering their tracks.

  But not quite well enough.

  One room remained, and his last hope of an easy kill evaporated as he turned the doorknob, stepped across the threshold into darkness. Nothing, even though the bed was rumpled and a night light burned inside a small adjacent bathroom, barely large enough to hold the mandatory sink and toilet.

  Gone. His frustration and his unsated hunger brought on the rage. First he felt the burning in his stomach, then the too-familiar clenched-fist feeling in his chest-yet he kept his balance, lashing out in blind, instinctive fury at the nearest objects he could reach. Trashing his quarry's lair, in case the yellow bastard ever tried to move back in.

  When he was finished, he would mark his territory, urinating on the walls and doorjambs, defecating in the middle of the living room. But first...

  He couldn't see the moon, but he could feel it, tugging at the tide within his body as he ran amok, gouged flimsy plaster walls with jagged fingernails, grabbed bits and pieces of his quarry's wasted life, destroyed each object in its turn and flinging it aside.

  And somewhere in the middle of it, he began to howl.

  "GODDAMN DOMESTIC BEEFS!"

  Patrolman Roger Miller was responding to the code-two call-with flashing lights, no siren-but he didn't like it one damn bit. Domestics were the worst, especially at night or in the early-morning hours, when the parties had had all day to let their ancient bullshit grudges marinate in alcohol. You never knew what you were walking into, whether one or both of the belligerents would turn on you and vent their rage against the uniform. A little change of pace from beating on their spouse or lover, maybe reaching for a pistol or a butcher knife to make the point.

  I oughta call for backup, Miller thought, but didn't. He would take a gander at the situation first. If the racket was enough to wake the neighbors, he should have a fair idea of whether help was needed by the time he rang the doorbell.

  Anyway, it broke up the monotony of what had been a long, dull night. He had the eight-to-four this week and next, before he cycled back to days, and while the graveyard shift meant nonstop action in some precincts, Miller's beat was strictly middle class. No drive-by shootings, only one convenience store to watch, no bars or teenage hangouts where the booze and blow made tempers short, drove pimply punks and Milquetoast working men to raucous feats of derring-do. Most nights he had it easy to the point that he was bored out of his freaking mind. But not this night.

  He had been counting on the usual: some moving violations, maybe a white-collar DUI, perhaps a residential burglary discovered once the perps were long gone with their swag. There was a curfew on the books these days, as well, and that meant rousting kids on Friday night or Saturday, but weeknights were a snooze.

  The young policeman-twenty-six come next July-knew that he should have thanked his lucky stars for the assignment. Others from his graduating class at the academy had gone directly to the ghetto, hassling with the brothers every night, chasing graffiti taggers, dodging bricks and bottles-sometimes filled with gasoline-as they were watching out for car thieves, crackheads, any kind of human garbage you could name. The white-trash precincts were no better, stupid rednecks with their stringy hair, motheaten beards and blue jeans frayed in back from dragging on the pavement when they walked, their John Deere caps on backward. Up close, they smelled like beer and cigarettes, teeth stained orange and brown from packing snuff.

  Patrolman Miller used his spotlight, mounted on the driver's door, to check house numbers as he rolled along the quiet residential street. On either side, the reflections of his own blue-and-white emergency flashers bounced back at him with a strobelight effect, distorting shadows so that they appeared to take on life and dance in weird, surrealistic shapes.

  He found the number he was looking for and pulled into the driveway, switching off the flashers as he killed the engine. Miller took a moment to inform the radio dispatcher that he had arrived. Still no request for backup, as he sat there with his window down and listened to the night.

  There was no racket emanating from the house in question, damn it. Miller wondered if he had been called out on a wild-goose chase, some idiot's idea of an amusing prank. Dispatch would have a record of the caller's number and a tape recording of the call, but you could always phone in from a public booth, disguise your voice and give a bogus name. It was like sending taxis or a dozen pizzas to a neighbor who had pissed you off somehow. Embarrassment was all that counted, never mind the waste of time for a patrolman who could otherwise be elsewhere, maybe interrupting crimes in progress.<
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  Right, thought Miller. Like they caught me in the middle of a freakin' crime wave.

  Darkened windows all around and silence on the block. Miller was just about to write it off and check back with dispatch, when someone turned the porch light on next door. A yellow bulb, to keep the bugs away. He glanced in that direction, saw a stocky woman in a quilted bathrobe waving at him.

  "Jesus H."

  He stepped out of his cruiser, gave the silent house in front of him another glance, then moved across the intervening strip of grass between two driveways, toward the woman on the porch next door.

  "It stopped just when I saw your lights," she said.

  "What did?"

  "'The noise I called about. It sounded like somebody screaming, only different. For just a minute there, it could have been some kind of animal."

  "The people here keep dogs?" he asked.

  "Not people," said the woman. "Just one man, by himself. No dogs at all. I would have seen or heard them, don't you think? I mean, he's lived there for eleven months."

  "And you are... ?"

  "Lucy Kravitz," said the woman. "My husband Joe's away on business, or he would have-"

  "What's your neighbor's name?" asked Miller, interrupting her.

  "Well, I'm not sure."

  "How's that, ma'am?"

  "We haven't actually met, you understand, but still-"

  ''I see."

  She doesn't know his name, thought Miller, but she's positive he lives alone and doesn't have a dog. Another freakin' busybody. Christ!

  "And when I heard these sounds, the shouting and the crashing noise-"

  "A crashing noise?"

  "Like someone was destroying all the furniture!" she said.

  "Okay," he said reluctantly. "Why don't you go on back inside. I'll check it out."

  "Well, if you think-"

  The sudden crashing sound made Miller jump. He covered it by pointing to the Kravitz woman's open door and telling her again to get inside. Backtracking toward the darkened house next door, he was beside his cruiser when the growling started, loud enough to reach his ears from somewhere in the house, but muffled somewhat by the intervening walls. Sure didn't sound much like a freakin' dog.

  Patrolman Miller thought about the backup one more time, but he was already embarrassed by his first reaction to the noises from the house. Old biddy next door had to be thinking he was yellow, and he would confirm her judgment if he called for help. It was a rule, of course, to call for backup, but the rules were bent or broken every day.

  He drew his pistol, making sure he had the safety off, and eased around the south side of the house. The noise was coming from a room in back somewhere, and Miller didn't feel like leaning on the doorbell when he could retain the prime advantage of surprise.

  It was pitch-black behind the house, a bank of clouds obscuring the moon, but they began to break up moments later, letting Miller find his way. The noises from the house were growing closer, louder. Christ, forget the dog. It sounded like a freakin' leopard in the house, or something.

  Maybe I should go back for the 12-gauge, Miller thought, and then the back door blasted off its hinges with a crash, propelled halfway across the scruffy yard. A walking nightmare followed it outside, half crouching, shoulders hunched. Patrolman Miller took it for a burly man until the moonlight fell across its face.

  By that time it had spotted Miller and was rushing toward him, snarling as it came, with outstretched talons.

  And there wasn't even time to scream.

  Chapter 6

  The federal penitentiary outside Atlanta, Georgia, was among the toughest in the nation. There was nothing to suggest the "easy ride" or "country club" approach to housing prisoners so often noted in the press and by potential office-holders in election years, when fear of crime translated to votes. Atlanta's federal pen received no white-collar swindlers, kinky televangelists or presidential campaign managers who got caught with their fingers in the public cookie jar. At one time, it housed Al Capone, before he was transferred to Alcatraz-the Rock-but Alcatraz was now a kind of morbid theme park, while Atlanta's federal prison endured.

  Atlanta's clientele included drug dealers, bank robbers, kidnappers, self-styled gangstas. A majority of those confined were black, but there was also room for redneck "soldiers" in a race war of their own imagining, a handful of Sicilian mafiosi, certain careless Teamsters, Cubans and Colombians, a spy or two.

  And Armand Fortier.

  The Cajun godfather was in a bad mood when his lawyer came to visit him on Saturday. It always pissed him off to see the shyster who was charging him three hundred bucks an hour while he sat in prison on a bullshit RICO charge that should have been thrown out at the preliminary hearing. Fortier had canned his trial attorney-literally, at a plant outside Metairie, where they turned decrepit horses into dog food. But the new guy hadn't shown results, either, in their pursuit of an appeal. He had a new-trial motion bogged down somewhere in the system, plus a handful of concocted "evidence" so thin you could have read the Sunday funnies through it, but the key was getting rid of those who had betrayed Armand the first time out. The traitors who had sold him down-no, up-the river to Atlanta in the first place. Scumbag ingrates.

  Fortier had put his best man on it-if you thought of Leon Grosvenor as a man-and he had thought that things were working out all right.

  Until today.

  "What you mean, he missed them?" Fortier demanded, leaning forward with his broad, big-knuckled hands spread on the table that was bolted to the floor inside the room reserved for inmate visits with attorneys. Theoretically, the room was soundproof and the screws were barred from eavesdropping, but Armand kept his voice down all the same, despite a sudden urge to scream.

  The lawyer swallowed hard, as if he had a fish bone or a little piece of oyster shell lodged in his throat. "Um, well, I mean there was a problem. The fellow seems to have, um, well, moved on."

  "What the hell you mean, moved on?" the Cajun snarled. "Cost me two hundred grand to find out where they at, them dickwads, and you tellin' me it's wasted."

  "Well," the lawyer said, frowning, "three out of four-"

  "Ain't good enough!" said Fortier.

  "But if the man has disappeared-"

  "Feds hid him one time, they can hide him twice. What you use for brains there, little man?"

  An angry flush suffused the lawyer's cheeks, but he didn't possess the courage to reply in kind. Instead, he tried to humor Fortier, play to his mood. "We found him once before, we can-"

  "We found him?" Fortier was staring at him with the rapt attention of an entomologist who has unearthed a new and unexpected insect species. "I hear you said we found him? Make it sound like you been out there lookin', instead of sittin' on your ass and billing me for shit, half the time I don't know what."

  The lawyer found a thimbleful of nerve. "If you're in any way dissatisfied-"

  "I'm in a damn zoo with crazy blacks and a bunch a guys that think they Hitler. Now you want me to be satisfied?"

  "I meant-"

  "Screw what you meant," the Cajun said. "I tell you something true, I guarantee. You don't mean shit, hear what I'm sayin'? You take my money, say you going to do certain things for me, I expect them things to be done. You come round here with sad old stories, asking for more money, I start thinking maybe you be screwin' me."

  "No, sir, I can assure you that-"

  "Thing is, when I get screwed, I wanna know it's comin', see? That way I can enjoy it, like. Your way, it's just a big pain in the ass."

  "He can't go far," the lawyer said.

  "You know that for a fact? He call you up and say, 'I don't be going far'?"

  "Well, no, but-"

  "What you do is listen now, and do just what I say."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Reach out for Leon and remind his hairy ass he still owes me a pelt. He let me down on this, it be wolf season where he at, I guarantee. Then next thing, you call up that boy what took two hu
ndred grand to do a job that still ain't done. Feds got old Jean, I wanna know the zip code by this time tomorrow."

  "Suppose the Feds don't have him?" asked the lawyer, "What shall I do then?"

  "You bring your high-rent ass back here and tell me that. What you use for brains, boy? Seem like chicken gumbo."

  A GUARD ESCORTED Fortier back to his cell in Ad-Seg, which he understood was fedspeak for administrative segregation. Once upon a time, they used to call it solitary, and it was reserved for punishment of prisoners who broke the rules. These days, Ad-Seg still housed its share of troublemakers, but it also held inmates who were isolated for their own protection: snitches, racial activists, high-profile cons whose very notoriety had made them targets for the rank and file of mainline prisoners who hoped to build a rep by shanking someone famous. They were strictly one-man cells in Ad-Seg, and the chosen few were fed right where they lived, without exposure to potential dangers in the mess hall. When they exercised, it was in groups of three or four, a private corner of the joint where they were safe from shivs and prying eyes. The Cajun's closest neighbors on the cell block were a former agent of the CIA who sold out brother agents to the Russians in the last days of the cold war and a transient pedophile who sometimes killed and ate his victims as he roamed from state to state. They both seemed nice enough, but Fortier wasn't concerned with making friends.

  He wanted out, and soon. The wheels were greased, but he could never make it work while any of the witnesses who sent him to Atlanta in the first place were alive.

  Three down and one to go.

  He meant to see it done, or know the reason why. And if the plan fell through, there would be one extremely sorry loup-garou to answer for it.

  "No more Mr. Nice Guy," Fortier informed his empty cell. "I guarantee."

  REMO COULD SMELL the stagnant swamps ahead of him before the interstate conveyed them out of darkest Mississippi and into bayou country. Everything from that point on would have a kind of continental flavor once removed, which made Louisiana stand out from the other Deep South states. It was the only state in Dixie where the Roman Catholic Church claimed a majority of Christians, counties were called parishes and everything from food to architecture had a strong French accent. The swamps were "bayous" here, and many residents still put their faith in voodoo-from the French voudun-regardless of their race or ethnic origin. If there was any place in the United States today where legends of medieval lycanthropes still clung tenaciously to life, Louisiana fit the bill.