Tommy
I stumbled, half-awake,through coffee,
a shower, perfunctory makeup and hair. A glance in the mirror did
nothing to reassure me. Rather than the occasional disturbing report
of, “A little more you,” the mirror’s message today was just
the opposite. My pencil skirt hung rather than clung, and my
sharpening collar bones did nothing to enhance my v-neck tee. I was
getting visibly thinner, and it didn’t look good on me. There were
circles under my eyes, and my expression looked glum. I covered the
whole thing in a baggy blazer; maybe not flattering, but
professional.
“Why didn’t I turn off the CD player,” I whined, as, starting up my car, the book-on-tape storyline picked up the familiar Romeo and Juliet tale of the Twilight series, its supernatural forbidden love theme doing nothing to cheer me up.
Normally, I enjoyed the ride to town to my job at a mid-market television station, but today I felt as though I was living in the boondocks – I felt as though I was isolated and alone. Normally, facing a day of news, deadlines, stand-ups and quick turnaround packages would be energizing. Now I just felt disconnected, tired, and uncertain.
The white full moon was visible, rising in the daylight sky, and the sight of it brought my foot down on the brake, hard. Luckily for me, the road was empty in both directions. I sat, staring. A full moon. It meant nothing good for me. And nothing good for Tommy.
Once upon a time, the full moon was just something beautiful in the night sky – a mark of the passing days and weeks of each month; light to stroll the hills by of an evening; a stunning backdrop when shooting a night-time story. Now it was bad. Each night, I had watched with growing distress, watched this bad moon, rising each night, inexorably, inevitably, one step closer to full each evening.
How did this start?
If you go back far enough, it started with a jealous boyfriend.
Marcus was intense from the beginning. Compact, muscular, piercing blue eyes, and every inch of him quivering with masculine energy. He didn't so much date as cull a female from the herd; isolate her; stalk her; patiently trail her, all the while keeping her just a bit apart from the others, a little off-center, a tiny bit fearful and that fear putting a sexual edge on everything. He hunted. He wore her down, tired her out, jazzed her up, and eventually, the kill was pretty spectacular for both parties.
That prey, of course, was me.
It's a little strange to write those words, because I've prided myself on my intellect, my cool discernment, and my street smarts. I was brought up short on all counts when I met Marcus. And of course there was the fact that Marcus was entirely the wrong kind of guy to help me get ahead - blue collar, unpredictable, and not known for his intellect.
Still, it might have gone on longer but for Marcus' jealousy. Hey, jealousy isn't unnatural - but when you couple it with a mean streak, and a complete lack of inhibition, the stage is set for a blowup.
Ours happened one hot summer night. It was the ritual Friday night gathering of the young and unattached. Newly minted adults, we still had some of the unflagging energy of teens, and the expendable income of the well-employed, and we took unbridled pleasure in getting together to show both off every chance we got.
The room - a king-size-bed-wide sliver of a bar on a side street (you had to know what you were looking for, which only added to the cachet) - was redolent of expensive perfume and warm youth. It was crowded enough that the only way to move about was to press bodies with strangers. If you lingered just a bit longer than you needed, or happened to look up just as you were passing this close to that handsome guy with the deep brown eyes - well, that wasn't your fault, was it?
But for Marcus, it was all my fault: my shoulder length blonde hair, my slightly pouty upper lip, my preference for button-up blouses that strained just the least little bit at the top button. For Marcus' comfort, I'd have gone into hiding, or become an appendage once we started dating.
And while part of me enjoyed his absurd medieval attitude, another part of me could only scoff at the idea that someone as public as I was - a TV personality, for Pete's sake - could ever hide in plain sight. I was good at my career, and I relished both the public eye, and the whole art of gathering and telling a story that went with it. I wasn't about to disappear into shapeless shifts and Marcus' kitchen, even if that kitchen came with bedroom privileges.
"I sell wireless systems," the funky man-boy with the blonde hair and big blue eyes was explaining, while I listened, sipping my New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and nodding up at him. "I'm on the road to Chicago tomorrow, big hospital complex up there we're pitching."
He sucked on his long-necked beer and I couldn't help but admire his Johnny-Depp-quality lips.
"And what do you do, beautiful?"
I was just launching into my well-rehearsed, slightly arrogant, slightly humble (I had worked hard to develop just the right tone) description of my high-profile job when Marcus showed up. I was expecting him, of course; most Friday nights we met up at some point in the evening. He was just a little earlier than usual. I usually made it a point to disengage from the man-du-soir around eight and find a girlfriend to chat up before he arrived. But it was only 7:30 or so this particular night.
Marcus lasered his admittedly astonishing blue eyes around the room, and found me as if I wore an RFID chip. And he didn't look happy.
"Oops, gotta go," I explained quickly to baffled Mr. Wireless, and I slipped away through the press of bodies toward Marcus. I could see bad things were going to happen tonight, and I wanted to move the action out of the public bar.
I greeted Marcus with as much enthusiasm as the watching crowd warranted, and then dragged him toward the door.
"Let's go, sweetie, I'd like to get something to eat, is that ok?" I said.
Marcus ripped his arm from my hand. Not a good sign.
"Come on, Marcus, I was just waiting for you to get here," I sighed, affecting a casual tone, but inwardly cringing. I wasn't afraid of Marcus, exactly - but I did have a reputation to protect, and I didn't want him to cause a scene.
"Who is that guy?" Marcus demanded.
"Let's just go, Marcus, ok?” I urged, putting my arm around his waist and trying to refocus him. I'd have as much chance of refocusing a Rottweiler.
"I'm serious, who is that guy? Are you seeing him behind my back or what?" Marcus was glaring at the poor blonde, who, turned away from us, had no idea he was having holes burned in his back.
"Ok, fine, Marcus. You stay here and worry about somebody I don't even know. If you want me, I'll be outside. That's where I'll be, ok?"
I stomped off, opting for a quick escape, and hoping that Marcus would choose to follow me, rather than confront the innocent bar boy.
It was no doubt a struggle, but after a few steps forward, a glance at me, and a glance back at the offender, Marcus finally opted to follow me out into the hot night. I wasn't sure whether to be glad, or sorry I didn't make a clean getaway.
Marcus waited until we were almost a block away when he finally slammed me against the wall of the alley we were passing.
"What the fuck was that?" he demanded, pressing me hard into the bricks.
"What are you talking about?" I said, with as much outrage as I could summon. "Marcus, nothing was going on, trust me. I was just passing the time."
Then he slapped me. Hard. Twice, once with his palm, and then on the return swing, with the back of his hand.
I really wasn't expecting it. We'd had a few of these little dust-ups before, with the end product being some very gratifying makeup sex. And while I wasn't exactly thrilled with that entire scenario, it was new enough - and Marcus was still exciting enough - that I hadn't yet realized what a bad scene this really was.
For once in my life, I had absolutely nothing to say.
Humiliatingly, I began to cry.
And that's when Tommy arrived.
Tall, slender, but muscled - he had a swimmer's build - Tommy wasn't there one moment, and the next moment Marcus was flat on his back, and Tommy was leading me away from the alley, his arm protectively around my waist.
"Who is that guy?" he asked, and I started to laugh at the irony of that question. Ok, maybe I was a little hysterical, too. Maybe I knew how much trouble I had been in with Marcus. Maybe I'd known all along, but I was intrigued by the danger of it.
Tommy looked at me quizzically, but didn't comment. I guess hysterical women weren't alien to him.
I made an effort, calmed down, dried my eyes - and I knew I was feeling better because I started to worry if my mascara was all over my eyes. And I looked at my rescuer.
I'm not sure how I would have described him had he disappeared at that moment. The tall part I've already noted - my head reached his collarbone. Slender almost to the point of thinness, but with the long, lean muscles of the naturally fit. He was fair, but in a sun-dusted way: brown hair glinting with the gold that comes of long days in the sun; light brown eyes with gold flecks in them; a soft tan and a fine coating of gold hair. Gold. That was the word, and that's how I would remember him.
He didn't say much. He introduced himself. Tom McCandless. He'd been passing the alley and saw I was in trouble. He made it sound simple; he offered no opinions about my taste in men. He didn't ask my name, which didn't directly bother me, until I realized he was leading me unerringly toward my car. This clearly wasn't the first time Tom McCandless has seen me tonight.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Lock your car doors when I'm gone," he said, ignoring my question. "Do you have a girlfriend you can stay with tonight?"
I shook my head.
He stared for a moment. And just like that, he was gone.
I'm sure I saw him go, but it seemed that he was there one moment, and gone the next, and I was standing next to my car with my mouth open and my keys out.
I drove home, went inside, locked the doors, checked the windows, went to bed, and assumed I'd wake up and realize the whole thing was a dream - or discover that I'd just had too much to drink and my imagination had taken over.
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It took Marcus a week to start up; it took me another couple of weeks to find out that Tommy was a werewolf.
I know, I know. Werewolves and vampires are all over pop literature these days. Sexy supes are the stuff of modern chick-porn. A few years ago it was time-traveling Scots, a while before that it was tortured Byronic noblemen, and earlier still, tall, laconic cowboys.
Once I began to suspect what he really was, I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or check myself in to a mental hospital.
By then, I was also not sure if I was going to have more trouble with Marcus or with Tommy. Not that Tommy did anything but be there at just the right moment - but it was his being there that was just not normal, not expected.
Marcus didn't take his humiliation well. He left me alone for a few days after I told him we were through, nursing his ego - and probably a sore chin - for a while. And, no doubt, nursing a serious grudge.
If he'd taken it up with Tommy, I might have thought he warranted my sympathy. But he opted for the more cowardly approach. That is, threatening me.
He was waiting for me late one night when I got home. I started to pull into my driveway - I lived in a small rental property near a tiny town just outside the city where I worked, on what had once been a working dairy and beef farm, complete with barns and assorted outbuildings, now closed up - and realized his car was by the side of the road, and worse, that he was sitting in it, in the dark. I thought about it for a fraction of a second, and decided the right course of action was to get out of there. I was starting to pull back out of the drive when headlights flashed into my rear view mirror, blinding me for a moment.
A car door opened and shut behind me, and I sat open-mouthed, watching Tommy's tall shape glide by the rear window. I saw him lay an arm over the roof of Marcus' car, and watched him bend over to look in the driver's window. I half expected Marcus to throw open the door, pull a gun, shoot Tommy point blank, and come after me. And there I was, Ace Reporter, intrepid roaring woman, frozen in my car, my hands locked white-knuckled on the steering wheel. I'm not kidding, I remember looking at them, and almost laughing because my knuckles really were white in the moonlight.
What happened next I'll never forget. And I'll never quite believe. There was a crack, like localized thunder and lightning all at once, and a moment of stomach unsettling movement, and then Tommy was gone. I swear this is true, though I don't remember and can't envision the moment of his disappearing. All I know is, something else was in his place. And that something scared the living devil out of me.
Devil may be exactly right, but if Tommy was the devil, he was the devil in disguise. Whatever this was that had taken his place had no place in this world. So much so that I almost didn't see It. Scientists have done studies on primitive people, and they learned that when these people are first shown things, like televisions and clocks, for which they have no frame of references, they simply disappear into the noise. They don't really exist outside of their context. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I knew it was an animal; but the only thing I can imagine is that had I suddenly seen a wooly mammoth, or a pterodactyl, I might have had a similar experience. These creatures simply can't exist in this world.
At any rate, shortly after the shift - now I understand why all the shapeshifter fiction uses that word - Marcus' car sped away, careening wildly. A few days later, Marcus himself disappeared. I didn't ask where.
And after Marcus drove away that night, I was alone. Completely alone, in my car, in the driveway, with the bright silver light of the moon pouring in through my windows, my knuckles white on the steering wheel, my stomach in my throat, vying for space with my heart.
A few days later I was at work when Tommy called. I was in the edit suite rough cutting a story on the Avid. I had no idea how he'd gotten my cell number. I was a little too flustered to wonder - yeah, me, flustered. It happens.
"Are you ok?" he asked, without preamble,without identifying himself. The number he was calling from was blocked. How did he know I'd know who it was? How did he know I wouldn't call the cops on him? Or that I hadn't already?
He knew.
Again, the first thing that came to my mind wasn't, who is this monster? Or, am I in danger? Or even, how did he do that? It was, he's done this before with some other woman. What a sick twist, I thought, having at least the presence of mind to know that I was in deep, deep trouble. So I did just what I always do when I sense danger: I ran right in. Into the fire; into the deep end; off the cliff; toward the lit firecracker.
"When can I meet you?" I said, breathlessly, afraid that he'd tell me, terrified that he wouldn't.
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That night I had a dream so vivid that when I woke up I expected to have to clean shattered glass off the floor.
I was home on a dark evening with two children. They'd just come home from school. The house was shadowed and quiet; there were pools of yellow light from a few lamps lit to push back the gloom. From a second floor window, I could see another pool of light - a streetlamp doing its best against the gathering dark outside. And then I saw the huge wolf walk into the light, his eyes intent on the window from which I watched.
"He knows where we are," I hissed to the children.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," blubbered the boy. "He heard me say our address, I didn't mean to let him know!"
"Turn off the lights," I said, rushing to shut off the lamps, and pull the shades. But I knew it was too late; I knew he'd seen me. I knew he knew where I was.
I had just turned off the last lamp. I had just pulled the last shade - it was over the front door window. It was one of those huge, heavy old oak doors with a full window of beveled glass for a top pane. When had they stopped making front doors like that, I wondered with that complete lack of connection panic sometimes breeds. I had just turned away from the door, when the massive, oddly beautiful wolf crashed through it, his leap both powerful as he shattered the heavy glass, and light, as he landed almost delicately amid the shards that sparkled in the light that streamed in from the porch.
I woke in terror.
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I should have known Marcus wasn't really gone.
I came home from work one evening about a month after the dream to find a note stuck to my front door with gum. That was a definite touch of Marcus. "Don't you forget about me," was scrawled across the paper, in plain sight of the neighbors and God. In crayon. It was so Marcus.
I was more disgusted than nervous, at first. But the more I thought about it, the more relieved I was that Tommy was going to meet me for a drink that night.
How do you dress for a date with the strangest person - person? - you've ever met. I was always conflicted when I got ready for a date with a man I wanted to impress. Seduction, or romance? My ego was always leaning toward seduction; my "I'm a woman and I want to get married I can't help it it's in my genes" side said, go slow, he may be "the one."
But the notion of a romance with a man who wasn't quite clearly a man was just plain silly.
So, of course, I fell in love with him.
I don't think I would have necessarily gone down that path; I do have a practical side, and I have trained myself to apply it when I have to. But when he arrived to pick me up, he put his arms around me so gently, as if I might break. Even that wasn't enough to overcome my common sense. It was when he stroked my hair, deliberately, carefully, the way you might pet a cautious cat, that undid me. Once, twice, three times, I lost count. Just that firm but gentle stroke from the crown of my head to the ends of my hair somewhere around my shoulder-blades, a pause, then again. And again.
I had a boyfriend for a few minutes who told me once that every time we got together he had to spend the first twenty minutes calming me, the way you might a not-quite-broken horse. He said I was all nerves and skittishness the first half hour or so, but if he was patient and approached me only obliquely, that I would settle down and relax. I was amused, but I had always known that I also prowled a new room, sniffing into corners and examining objects until I was satisfied. I've watched cats and some dogs do something similar - when you bring them to a new house, they'll examine the space carefully. I always assumed they were getting the lay of the land, looking for predators - friends or foes - and cataloging the smells. I suppose I was doing something similar.
Tommy seemed to intuit that I needed this gentling. Oh, hell, he had me sussed out probably long before I knew him. He was onto all my tricks. My defenses were meaningless - he was past them without even the pretense of an effort.
We never made it out for the drink; I showed him the note from Marcus. He read it carefully, but said nothing. I talked. And talked, and talked. Yeah, I'm the reporter, and I don't think I got a single question in. He found out everything about me; I ended up knowing less than nothing about him. Oh, I observed plenty. That gold aura about him; his casual chic clothing: blue jeans, plaid shirt, leather jacket and boots; long, slender, well-shaped hands; sun-flecked brown eyes; a deep, soft, unaccented voice. I think I was asleep when he left. All I know is, I woke up in bed, all tucked up, in my underwear, my hands and face clean, and no sign that Tommy had ever been with me.
That was the day the murders began.
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I woke up that morning slightly hung over. I hadn't had anything to drink, I'd just slept so deeply and soundly it took me a while to completely come to. Normally my morning routine is so standard I don't have to think about it; today I was forgetting the sweetener in my coffee, I half made the bed, and got distracted, I couldn't find my second earring. Where do the lost ones go, I mused, thinking that some day I'd put on a sweater and would find it caught on the cowl neck. For now, I uncharacteristically went without them. I studied my face in the mirror and decided that if I did a stand-up today, I'd have to make it a wide shot. My face couldn't stand my trademark closeup.
I also forgot to turn on the news - unheard of. And oddly, I'd not gotten a call in the night about the first murder. I think it was partly because that wasn't my usual beat. And the other reason, I'm sure, was that the victim was Marcus.
His body was found in an alley, stripped of all identification, and torn limb from limb.
The newsroom was full of activity and chatter, which tended to die down when I entered a room. Still, I heard the buzz, and as soon as I'd made it abundantly clear that I could handle talking about it, the talk was all about how the wounds weren't totally consistent with the evident murder weapon. And there appeared to be bite marks on the body. Human bite marks.
It struck me as I listened to the newsroom chatter that I had no way of reaching Tommy. When I checked my cell phone - he had called me a few times, after all - the number was, as I'd noted, blocked. Nothing particularly mysterious in that, it's as simple as dialing *67 before he dialed my number. But why? And what should I do with the note Marcus had left on my front door? Was it material evidence, and was I withholding something I shouldn't be?
And then there was the side of me that saw that note as a ticket: all it took to get out of this godforsaken market and into one of the top twenty was one good national story. And this one had the makings: a grisly murder, a nasty weapon, and bite marks, for God's sake. And I was savvy enough to know that there was nothing the public liked better than a pretty girl who was in just the slightest bit of danger. After all, how many horror movies and Gothic romances were based on just that storyline? Damsel in distress. Even better if she wasn't completely helpless, but showed pluck and resourcefulness, but was nevertheless just a bit vulnerable? I was exactly the right person to follow this story - even more so because of my prior relationship to Marcus. Now we'd added an element of heartbreak.
I wasn't stupid, I took the facts to my news editor and laid it out for him; he wasn't stupid, and within minutes, I was on the story full time, with two photogs, one for day and one for night, on call to me 24 hours a day.
We started immediately, at the scene of the crime discovery. It was an alley I knew all too well.
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The familiar yellow crime scene tape was strung across the entry to the blind alley, and while the bulk of the activity had died down, there was still an officer on duty at the open end of the alley, and a few other investigators poking around. There were markers on the ground, indicating where Marcus's body had been found - or perhaps I should say the assorted and disassembled parts of Marcus's body.
The alley was clean, as alleys go; the trash cans had been photographed in place, their outlines taped, and removed to be combed through carefully under controlled conditions. Any surface that might hold prints had been dusted, and every square inch of the alley had been carefully examined for traces of blood or other body fluids. It's pretty difficult in a location where street people hole up, stray animals eat, sleep, and defecate, and organic garbage is tossed daily from neighboring restaurants, to isolate and make sense of scraps of biological evidence.
Needless to say, the press liaison didn't have much to tell me. In fact, what was more interesting about this crime scene was the distinct lack of evidence.
The body parts were naked, and the pieces were scattered all over the alley: ripped, hacked, torn. It was an orgy of dismemberment. But otherwise, it was clean. Literally, clean. No blood, nothing under the fingernails. There was no blood around the body pieces - he had been bled out wherever he was killed. In fact, it appeared that his body had been washed down carefully before being carried here and strewn on the ground.
Marcus didn't have any family that I knew of, and I was on the list to be questioned, as someone who had been, to put it delicately, intimate with him recently. It should have come as no surprise that the list of us wasn't as small as my ego would have preferred. In fact, it felt a little like a casting call as I waited on a hard chair in the hallway of the police precinct for my turn with the detectives. More and more like a casting call, I realized, as all of us looked more than a little alike. Marcus had had a type, it appears. I guess his crazy jealousy made sense: if you're a cheater yourself, you tend to see the world through that lens. And Marcus, if not a professional, was one of the world's ranking amateurs.
The detectives knew me, of course, and had the grace to be slightly embarrassed that we all found ourselves in this awkward position. So they manfully shouldered their way through the required questions, and I artfully sidestepped any that would have traced a trail to Tommy.
How long had I known Marcus? About six months.
Had I been to his apartment? Of course. But we usually met out, then got together at my place. But had we ever been to his place? I let the question pass by, but knew I'd have to look at my datebook to figure it out later.
They understood Marcus has a temper. He did, indeed. He'd slapped me once. Could anyone confirm that? I doubted it, it was outside a bar on the street.
When was the last time I saw him? That same night, a couple of weeks ago.
And what did you do when he slapped you? I left, went home, stopped seeing him. All true. Just not all the truth.
They ran out of questions, and while I was an interesting suspect from a slightly salacious point of view, I wasn't terribly interesting from the standpoint of giving them much to go on. So I went home with the usual warning about letting them know my whereabouts just in case they needed to question me further.
I walked out of the precinct, and was walking slowly back toward my car when Tommy fell into step beside me.
"Are you ok?" he demanded.
"Fine. I didn't tell them anything about you."
He looked slightly relieved, I think. But it was more a flicker than a true expression.
"Did you do it?" I asked.
"Do what?"
"Don't. Did you?"
"Why would you think that? I just gave him a warning not to bother you any more. Guy like that must have had more than a few enemies, male and female."
And of course I wanted to believe him. I remember my mom telling me to marry a Catholic. I thought she was crazy, like most moms of teenage girls are crazy. Only much later did I realize that what she was telling me was, look for a boy or man who shares your values, who was brought up the way you were. I had a history of choosing someone who was, as they say, mad, bad and dangerous to know - and thinking that for me, he would turn into a perfectly domesticated husband and father. Clearly, it was not my mom who was crazy.
So here is a man I've just barely met, who finds me locked in mortal combat with a sleazy if sexy boyfriend in a dark alley, who sends him off nursing a jaw and a grudge, about whom I know next to nothing, and I trust him with my life and my heart.
Yep, makes sense to me.
"Well, if you didn't do it," I said, "then we need to find out who did."
Tommy didn't reply. He just folded my hand around his long, lean arm, and led me safely to my car. And once again, in the morning, when I woke up, I was tucked up in bed, and alone.
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I became consumed with tracking Marcus's killer. Partly because I felt somehow responsible. Even if it wasn't Tommy who did it, I had put Marcus into a state, and who knows what he might have done? Picked another fight, bought drugs, had too much to drink and ended up in bed with someone's girlfriend.
“Why didn’t I turn off the CD player,” I whined, as, starting up my car, the book-on-tape storyline picked up the familiar Romeo and Juliet tale of the Twilight series, its supernatural forbidden love theme doing nothing to cheer me up.
Normally, I enjoyed the ride to town to my job at a mid-market television station, but today I felt as though I was living in the boondocks – I felt as though I was isolated and alone. Normally, facing a day of news, deadlines, stand-ups and quick turnaround packages would be energizing. Now I just felt disconnected, tired, and uncertain.
The white full moon was visible, rising in the daylight sky, and the sight of it brought my foot down on the brake, hard. Luckily for me, the road was empty in both directions. I sat, staring. A full moon. It meant nothing good for me. And nothing good for Tommy.
Once upon a time, the full moon was just something beautiful in the night sky – a mark of the passing days and weeks of each month; light to stroll the hills by of an evening; a stunning backdrop when shooting a night-time story. Now it was bad. Each night, I had watched with growing distress, watched this bad moon, rising each night, inexorably, inevitably, one step closer to full each evening.
How did this start?
If you go back far enough, it started with a jealous boyfriend.
Marcus was intense from the beginning. Compact, muscular, piercing blue eyes, and every inch of him quivering with masculine energy. He didn't so much date as cull a female from the herd; isolate her; stalk her; patiently trail her, all the while keeping her just a bit apart from the others, a little off-center, a tiny bit fearful and that fear putting a sexual edge on everything. He hunted. He wore her down, tired her out, jazzed her up, and eventually, the kill was pretty spectacular for both parties.
That prey, of course, was me.
It's a little strange to write those words, because I've prided myself on my intellect, my cool discernment, and my street smarts. I was brought up short on all counts when I met Marcus. And of course there was the fact that Marcus was entirely the wrong kind of guy to help me get ahead - blue collar, unpredictable, and not known for his intellect.
Still, it might have gone on longer but for Marcus' jealousy. Hey, jealousy isn't unnatural - but when you couple it with a mean streak, and a complete lack of inhibition, the stage is set for a blowup.
Ours happened one hot summer night. It was the ritual Friday night gathering of the young and unattached. Newly minted adults, we still had some of the unflagging energy of teens, and the expendable income of the well-employed, and we took unbridled pleasure in getting together to show both off every chance we got.
The room - a king-size-bed-wide sliver of a bar on a side street (you had to know what you were looking for, which only added to the cachet) - was redolent of expensive perfume and warm youth. It was crowded enough that the only way to move about was to press bodies with strangers. If you lingered just a bit longer than you needed, or happened to look up just as you were passing this close to that handsome guy with the deep brown eyes - well, that wasn't your fault, was it?
But for Marcus, it was all my fault: my shoulder length blonde hair, my slightly pouty upper lip, my preference for button-up blouses that strained just the least little bit at the top button. For Marcus' comfort, I'd have gone into hiding, or become an appendage once we started dating.
And while part of me enjoyed his absurd medieval attitude, another part of me could only scoff at the idea that someone as public as I was - a TV personality, for Pete's sake - could ever hide in plain sight. I was good at my career, and I relished both the public eye, and the whole art of gathering and telling a story that went with it. I wasn't about to disappear into shapeless shifts and Marcus' kitchen, even if that kitchen came with bedroom privileges.
"I sell wireless systems," the funky man-boy with the blonde hair and big blue eyes was explaining, while I listened, sipping my New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and nodding up at him. "I'm on the road to Chicago tomorrow, big hospital complex up there we're pitching."
He sucked on his long-necked beer and I couldn't help but admire his Johnny-Depp-quality lips.
"And what do you do, beautiful?"
I was just launching into my well-rehearsed, slightly arrogant, slightly humble (I had worked hard to develop just the right tone) description of my high-profile job when Marcus showed up. I was expecting him, of course; most Friday nights we met up at some point in the evening. He was just a little earlier than usual. I usually made it a point to disengage from the man-du-soir around eight and find a girlfriend to chat up before he arrived. But it was only 7:30 or so this particular night.
Marcus lasered his admittedly astonishing blue eyes around the room, and found me as if I wore an RFID chip. And he didn't look happy.
"Oops, gotta go," I explained quickly to baffled Mr. Wireless, and I slipped away through the press of bodies toward Marcus. I could see bad things were going to happen tonight, and I wanted to move the action out of the public bar.
I greeted Marcus with as much enthusiasm as the watching crowd warranted, and then dragged him toward the door.
"Let's go, sweetie, I'd like to get something to eat, is that ok?" I said.
Marcus ripped his arm from my hand. Not a good sign.
"Come on, Marcus, I was just waiting for you to get here," I sighed, affecting a casual tone, but inwardly cringing. I wasn't afraid of Marcus, exactly - but I did have a reputation to protect, and I didn't want him to cause a scene.
"Who is that guy?" Marcus demanded.
"Let's just go, Marcus, ok?” I urged, putting my arm around his waist and trying to refocus him. I'd have as much chance of refocusing a Rottweiler.
"I'm serious, who is that guy? Are you seeing him behind my back or what?" Marcus was glaring at the poor blonde, who, turned away from us, had no idea he was having holes burned in his back.
"Ok, fine, Marcus. You stay here and worry about somebody I don't even know. If you want me, I'll be outside. That's where I'll be, ok?"
I stomped off, opting for a quick escape, and hoping that Marcus would choose to follow me, rather than confront the innocent bar boy.
It was no doubt a struggle, but after a few steps forward, a glance at me, and a glance back at the offender, Marcus finally opted to follow me out into the hot night. I wasn't sure whether to be glad, or sorry I didn't make a clean getaway.
Marcus waited until we were almost a block away when he finally slammed me against the wall of the alley we were passing.
"What the fuck was that?" he demanded, pressing me hard into the bricks.
"What are you talking about?" I said, with as much outrage as I could summon. "Marcus, nothing was going on, trust me. I was just passing the time."
Then he slapped me. Hard. Twice, once with his palm, and then on the return swing, with the back of his hand.
I really wasn't expecting it. We'd had a few of these little dust-ups before, with the end product being some very gratifying makeup sex. And while I wasn't exactly thrilled with that entire scenario, it was new enough - and Marcus was still exciting enough - that I hadn't yet realized what a bad scene this really was.
For once in my life, I had absolutely nothing to say.
Humiliatingly, I began to cry.
And that's when Tommy arrived.
Tall, slender, but muscled - he had a swimmer's build - Tommy wasn't there one moment, and the next moment Marcus was flat on his back, and Tommy was leading me away from the alley, his arm protectively around my waist.
"Who is that guy?" he asked, and I started to laugh at the irony of that question. Ok, maybe I was a little hysterical, too. Maybe I knew how much trouble I had been in with Marcus. Maybe I'd known all along, but I was intrigued by the danger of it.
Tommy looked at me quizzically, but didn't comment. I guess hysterical women weren't alien to him.
I made an effort, calmed down, dried my eyes - and I knew I was feeling better because I started to worry if my mascara was all over my eyes. And I looked at my rescuer.
I'm not sure how I would have described him had he disappeared at that moment. The tall part I've already noted - my head reached his collarbone. Slender almost to the point of thinness, but with the long, lean muscles of the naturally fit. He was fair, but in a sun-dusted way: brown hair glinting with the gold that comes of long days in the sun; light brown eyes with gold flecks in them; a soft tan and a fine coating of gold hair. Gold. That was the word, and that's how I would remember him.
He didn't say much. He introduced himself. Tom McCandless. He'd been passing the alley and saw I was in trouble. He made it sound simple; he offered no opinions about my taste in men. He didn't ask my name, which didn't directly bother me, until I realized he was leading me unerringly toward my car. This clearly wasn't the first time Tom McCandless has seen me tonight.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Lock your car doors when I'm gone," he said, ignoring my question. "Do you have a girlfriend you can stay with tonight?"
I shook my head.
He stared for a moment. And just like that, he was gone.
I'm sure I saw him go, but it seemed that he was there one moment, and gone the next, and I was standing next to my car with my mouth open and my keys out.
I drove home, went inside, locked the doors, checked the windows, went to bed, and assumed I'd wake up and realize the whole thing was a dream - or discover that I'd just had too much to drink and my imagination had taken over.
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It took Marcus a week to start up; it took me another couple of weeks to find out that Tommy was a werewolf.
I know, I know. Werewolves and vampires are all over pop literature these days. Sexy supes are the stuff of modern chick-porn. A few years ago it was time-traveling Scots, a while before that it was tortured Byronic noblemen, and earlier still, tall, laconic cowboys.
Once I began to suspect what he really was, I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or check myself in to a mental hospital.
By then, I was also not sure if I was going to have more trouble with Marcus or with Tommy. Not that Tommy did anything but be there at just the right moment - but it was his being there that was just not normal, not expected.
Marcus didn't take his humiliation well. He left me alone for a few days after I told him we were through, nursing his ego - and probably a sore chin - for a while. And, no doubt, nursing a serious grudge.
If he'd taken it up with Tommy, I might have thought he warranted my sympathy. But he opted for the more cowardly approach. That is, threatening me.
He was waiting for me late one night when I got home. I started to pull into my driveway - I lived in a small rental property near a tiny town just outside the city where I worked, on what had once been a working dairy and beef farm, complete with barns and assorted outbuildings, now closed up - and realized his car was by the side of the road, and worse, that he was sitting in it, in the dark. I thought about it for a fraction of a second, and decided the right course of action was to get out of there. I was starting to pull back out of the drive when headlights flashed into my rear view mirror, blinding me for a moment.
A car door opened and shut behind me, and I sat open-mouthed, watching Tommy's tall shape glide by the rear window. I saw him lay an arm over the roof of Marcus' car, and watched him bend over to look in the driver's window. I half expected Marcus to throw open the door, pull a gun, shoot Tommy point blank, and come after me. And there I was, Ace Reporter, intrepid roaring woman, frozen in my car, my hands locked white-knuckled on the steering wheel. I'm not kidding, I remember looking at them, and almost laughing because my knuckles really were white in the moonlight.
What happened next I'll never forget. And I'll never quite believe. There was a crack, like localized thunder and lightning all at once, and a moment of stomach unsettling movement, and then Tommy was gone. I swear this is true, though I don't remember and can't envision the moment of his disappearing. All I know is, something else was in his place. And that something scared the living devil out of me.
Devil may be exactly right, but if Tommy was the devil, he was the devil in disguise. Whatever this was that had taken his place had no place in this world. So much so that I almost didn't see It. Scientists have done studies on primitive people, and they learned that when these people are first shown things, like televisions and clocks, for which they have no frame of references, they simply disappear into the noise. They don't really exist outside of their context. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I knew it was an animal; but the only thing I can imagine is that had I suddenly seen a wooly mammoth, or a pterodactyl, I might have had a similar experience. These creatures simply can't exist in this world.
At any rate, shortly after the shift - now I understand why all the shapeshifter fiction uses that word - Marcus' car sped away, careening wildly. A few days later, Marcus himself disappeared. I didn't ask where.
And after Marcus drove away that night, I was alone. Completely alone, in my car, in the driveway, with the bright silver light of the moon pouring in through my windows, my knuckles white on the steering wheel, my stomach in my throat, vying for space with my heart.
A few days later I was at work when Tommy called. I was in the edit suite rough cutting a story on the Avid. I had no idea how he'd gotten my cell number. I was a little too flustered to wonder - yeah, me, flustered. It happens.
"Are you ok?" he asked, without preamble,without identifying himself. The number he was calling from was blocked. How did he know I'd know who it was? How did he know I wouldn't call the cops on him? Or that I hadn't already?
He knew.
Again, the first thing that came to my mind wasn't, who is this monster? Or, am I in danger? Or even, how did he do that? It was, he's done this before with some other woman. What a sick twist, I thought, having at least the presence of mind to know that I was in deep, deep trouble. So I did just what I always do when I sense danger: I ran right in. Into the fire; into the deep end; off the cliff; toward the lit firecracker.
"When can I meet you?" I said, breathlessly, afraid that he'd tell me, terrified that he wouldn't.
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That night I had a dream so vivid that when I woke up I expected to have to clean shattered glass off the floor.
I was home on a dark evening with two children. They'd just come home from school. The house was shadowed and quiet; there were pools of yellow light from a few lamps lit to push back the gloom. From a second floor window, I could see another pool of light - a streetlamp doing its best against the gathering dark outside. And then I saw the huge wolf walk into the light, his eyes intent on the window from which I watched.
"He knows where we are," I hissed to the children.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," blubbered the boy. "He heard me say our address, I didn't mean to let him know!"
"Turn off the lights," I said, rushing to shut off the lamps, and pull the shades. But I knew it was too late; I knew he'd seen me. I knew he knew where I was.
I had just turned off the last lamp. I had just pulled the last shade - it was over the front door window. It was one of those huge, heavy old oak doors with a full window of beveled glass for a top pane. When had they stopped making front doors like that, I wondered with that complete lack of connection panic sometimes breeds. I had just turned away from the door, when the massive, oddly beautiful wolf crashed through it, his leap both powerful as he shattered the heavy glass, and light, as he landed almost delicately amid the shards that sparkled in the light that streamed in from the porch.
I woke in terror.
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I should have known Marcus wasn't really gone.
I came home from work one evening about a month after the dream to find a note stuck to my front door with gum. That was a definite touch of Marcus. "Don't you forget about me," was scrawled across the paper, in plain sight of the neighbors and God. In crayon. It was so Marcus.
I was more disgusted than nervous, at first. But the more I thought about it, the more relieved I was that Tommy was going to meet me for a drink that night.
How do you dress for a date with the strangest person - person? - you've ever met. I was always conflicted when I got ready for a date with a man I wanted to impress. Seduction, or romance? My ego was always leaning toward seduction; my "I'm a woman and I want to get married I can't help it it's in my genes" side said, go slow, he may be "the one."
But the notion of a romance with a man who wasn't quite clearly a man was just plain silly.
So, of course, I fell in love with him.
I don't think I would have necessarily gone down that path; I do have a practical side, and I have trained myself to apply it when I have to. But when he arrived to pick me up, he put his arms around me so gently, as if I might break. Even that wasn't enough to overcome my common sense. It was when he stroked my hair, deliberately, carefully, the way you might pet a cautious cat, that undid me. Once, twice, three times, I lost count. Just that firm but gentle stroke from the crown of my head to the ends of my hair somewhere around my shoulder-blades, a pause, then again. And again.
I had a boyfriend for a few minutes who told me once that every time we got together he had to spend the first twenty minutes calming me, the way you might a not-quite-broken horse. He said I was all nerves and skittishness the first half hour or so, but if he was patient and approached me only obliquely, that I would settle down and relax. I was amused, but I had always known that I also prowled a new room, sniffing into corners and examining objects until I was satisfied. I've watched cats and some dogs do something similar - when you bring them to a new house, they'll examine the space carefully. I always assumed they were getting the lay of the land, looking for predators - friends or foes - and cataloging the smells. I suppose I was doing something similar.
Tommy seemed to intuit that I needed this gentling. Oh, hell, he had me sussed out probably long before I knew him. He was onto all my tricks. My defenses were meaningless - he was past them without even the pretense of an effort.
We never made it out for the drink; I showed him the note from Marcus. He read it carefully, but said nothing. I talked. And talked, and talked. Yeah, I'm the reporter, and I don't think I got a single question in. He found out everything about me; I ended up knowing less than nothing about him. Oh, I observed plenty. That gold aura about him; his casual chic clothing: blue jeans, plaid shirt, leather jacket and boots; long, slender, well-shaped hands; sun-flecked brown eyes; a deep, soft, unaccented voice. I think I was asleep when he left. All I know is, I woke up in bed, all tucked up, in my underwear, my hands and face clean, and no sign that Tommy had ever been with me.
That was the day the murders began.
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I woke up that morning slightly hung over. I hadn't had anything to drink, I'd just slept so deeply and soundly it took me a while to completely come to. Normally my morning routine is so standard I don't have to think about it; today I was forgetting the sweetener in my coffee, I half made the bed, and got distracted, I couldn't find my second earring. Where do the lost ones go, I mused, thinking that some day I'd put on a sweater and would find it caught on the cowl neck. For now, I uncharacteristically went without them. I studied my face in the mirror and decided that if I did a stand-up today, I'd have to make it a wide shot. My face couldn't stand my trademark closeup.
I also forgot to turn on the news - unheard of. And oddly, I'd not gotten a call in the night about the first murder. I think it was partly because that wasn't my usual beat. And the other reason, I'm sure, was that the victim was Marcus.
His body was found in an alley, stripped of all identification, and torn limb from limb.
The newsroom was full of activity and chatter, which tended to die down when I entered a room. Still, I heard the buzz, and as soon as I'd made it abundantly clear that I could handle talking about it, the talk was all about how the wounds weren't totally consistent with the evident murder weapon. And there appeared to be bite marks on the body. Human bite marks.
It struck me as I listened to the newsroom chatter that I had no way of reaching Tommy. When I checked my cell phone - he had called me a few times, after all - the number was, as I'd noted, blocked. Nothing particularly mysterious in that, it's as simple as dialing *67 before he dialed my number. But why? And what should I do with the note Marcus had left on my front door? Was it material evidence, and was I withholding something I shouldn't be?
And then there was the side of me that saw that note as a ticket: all it took to get out of this godforsaken market and into one of the top twenty was one good national story. And this one had the makings: a grisly murder, a nasty weapon, and bite marks, for God's sake. And I was savvy enough to know that there was nothing the public liked better than a pretty girl who was in just the slightest bit of danger. After all, how many horror movies and Gothic romances were based on just that storyline? Damsel in distress. Even better if she wasn't completely helpless, but showed pluck and resourcefulness, but was nevertheless just a bit vulnerable? I was exactly the right person to follow this story - even more so because of my prior relationship to Marcus. Now we'd added an element of heartbreak.
I wasn't stupid, I took the facts to my news editor and laid it out for him; he wasn't stupid, and within minutes, I was on the story full time, with two photogs, one for day and one for night, on call to me 24 hours a day.
We started immediately, at the scene of the crime discovery. It was an alley I knew all too well.
------------------------
The familiar yellow crime scene tape was strung across the entry to the blind alley, and while the bulk of the activity had died down, there was still an officer on duty at the open end of the alley, and a few other investigators poking around. There were markers on the ground, indicating where Marcus's body had been found - or perhaps I should say the assorted and disassembled parts of Marcus's body.
The alley was clean, as alleys go; the trash cans had been photographed in place, their outlines taped, and removed to be combed through carefully under controlled conditions. Any surface that might hold prints had been dusted, and every square inch of the alley had been carefully examined for traces of blood or other body fluids. It's pretty difficult in a location where street people hole up, stray animals eat, sleep, and defecate, and organic garbage is tossed daily from neighboring restaurants, to isolate and make sense of scraps of biological evidence.
Needless to say, the press liaison didn't have much to tell me. In fact, what was more interesting about this crime scene was the distinct lack of evidence.
The body parts were naked, and the pieces were scattered all over the alley: ripped, hacked, torn. It was an orgy of dismemberment. But otherwise, it was clean. Literally, clean. No blood, nothing under the fingernails. There was no blood around the body pieces - he had been bled out wherever he was killed. In fact, it appeared that his body had been washed down carefully before being carried here and strewn on the ground.
Marcus didn't have any family that I knew of, and I was on the list to be questioned, as someone who had been, to put it delicately, intimate with him recently. It should have come as no surprise that the list of us wasn't as small as my ego would have preferred. In fact, it felt a little like a casting call as I waited on a hard chair in the hallway of the police precinct for my turn with the detectives. More and more like a casting call, I realized, as all of us looked more than a little alike. Marcus had had a type, it appears. I guess his crazy jealousy made sense: if you're a cheater yourself, you tend to see the world through that lens. And Marcus, if not a professional, was one of the world's ranking amateurs.
The detectives knew me, of course, and had the grace to be slightly embarrassed that we all found ourselves in this awkward position. So they manfully shouldered their way through the required questions, and I artfully sidestepped any that would have traced a trail to Tommy.
How long had I known Marcus? About six months.
Had I been to his apartment? Of course. But we usually met out, then got together at my place. But had we ever been to his place? I let the question pass by, but knew I'd have to look at my datebook to figure it out later.
They understood Marcus has a temper. He did, indeed. He'd slapped me once. Could anyone confirm that? I doubted it, it was outside a bar on the street.
When was the last time I saw him? That same night, a couple of weeks ago.
And what did you do when he slapped you? I left, went home, stopped seeing him. All true. Just not all the truth.
They ran out of questions, and while I was an interesting suspect from a slightly salacious point of view, I wasn't terribly interesting from the standpoint of giving them much to go on. So I went home with the usual warning about letting them know my whereabouts just in case they needed to question me further.
I walked out of the precinct, and was walking slowly back toward my car when Tommy fell into step beside me.
"Are you ok?" he demanded.
"Fine. I didn't tell them anything about you."
He looked slightly relieved, I think. But it was more a flicker than a true expression.
"Did you do it?" I asked.
"Do what?"
"Don't. Did you?"
"Why would you think that? I just gave him a warning not to bother you any more. Guy like that must have had more than a few enemies, male and female."
And of course I wanted to believe him. I remember my mom telling me to marry a Catholic. I thought she was crazy, like most moms of teenage girls are crazy. Only much later did I realize that what she was telling me was, look for a boy or man who shares your values, who was brought up the way you were. I had a history of choosing someone who was, as they say, mad, bad and dangerous to know - and thinking that for me, he would turn into a perfectly domesticated husband and father. Clearly, it was not my mom who was crazy.
So here is a man I've just barely met, who finds me locked in mortal combat with a sleazy if sexy boyfriend in a dark alley, who sends him off nursing a jaw and a grudge, about whom I know next to nothing, and I trust him with my life and my heart.
Yep, makes sense to me.
"Well, if you didn't do it," I said, "then we need to find out who did."
Tommy didn't reply. He just folded my hand around his long, lean arm, and led me safely to my car. And once again, in the morning, when I woke up, I was tucked up in bed, and alone.
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I became consumed with tracking Marcus's killer. Partly because I felt somehow responsible. Even if it wasn't Tommy who did it, I had put Marcus into a state, and who knows what he might have done? Picked another fight, bought drugs, had too much to drink and ended up in bed with someone's girlfriend.
And I also knew that it would be the
makings of my career.
I got to work immediately on my role of Brenda Starr, reporter. I did a stand-up piece from the alley where Marcus was found.
I deliberately looked a little pale, a little disheveled. The camera "caught" me standing in the dark alley, and slowly moving towards its entrance.
"A few short days ago, a man was found dead in this alley. A man I knew. A man I cared for." I talked – close to tears - them through the basics of the murder, and wound up, "There aren't many clues to go on, but my station and I are determined that this crime won't go unsolved. We'll find this killer, and see to it that Marcus's death doesn't go unpunished." And I signed off.
But there really weren't any clues, and I didn't have much information to get started with. So the only logical place to start was with Marcus himself.
I had a list of all the women who had been questioned at the station, along with Marcus's employer (he sold roofing products), and one of his few male friends, a bartender named Cal.
Because I usually get along better with men than women, I decided to start with Cal. We met for lunch at an artsy bistro downtown. I had been introduced to Cal once when Marcus and I were out, so I had some idea of what to expect. Cal had been in love with Marcus.
Marcus was one of those self-absorbed macho types who has no gaydar. He is so fixated on women and their adoration of him that he really can't see it coming the other way. I knew within moments of meeting him why Cal had eventually broken from Marcus, hurt and frustrated.
Cal was an exceptionally good-looking guy, but he was also so blatantly gay I was still bemused that Marcus had never figured it out. Or maybe, I thought suddenly, he had.
"How have you been, Cal?" I asked when he arrived and joined me at our table.
"I've been better," he sighed. "I was terribly shattered by the news."
"Me, too," I commiserated. "That's why I'm determined I'm going to find out who did this."
"I heard that. I saw your standup. You looked a little pasty, girlfriend," he tsked.
"Had to strike the right note," I explained, knowing he'd understand. "So when is the last time you saw Marcus?"
Cal looked at me for a moment, sizing up my question. "About a week before the murder," he finally said. That was now several weeks ago."We had drinks. He told me about what happened with you two," he added. "You really pissed him off."
"You knew Marcus. He was always pissed off at something."
"Yeah, part of his charm, I guess."
"So, did you know anybody who might have been pissed off at him?"
"That was the weird part about Marcus," Cal said. "No matter what he did, people still liked him. I mean, he had ex-girlfriends who had a love-hate thing for him, and more than one of their boyfriends who wanted to kick his ass for screwing their women, but all in all I can't think of anybody who'd want to kill him. Especially not like that," he shuddered delicately. "Is it true he was ripped apart?"
"Yeah," I said. "It was horrible. But the odd thing is, it appears it was done somewhere else. There was no blood at the scene, and, well, he was in at least six pieces."
"Like I said, while I might have felt like ripping something off of him from time to time – and I promise you it wasn't his arm or anything – I just can't imagine anybody being that mad at the boy. He was just a roofing supply sales guy, not a pimp or drug dealer or something."
"But he did use sometimes, right?"
"Just pot, as far as I know. And he never dealt. He hardly even shared!” Cal sighed and slipped a forkful of salad into his mouth. “Our Marcus wasn't a straight arrow, that's true, but he wasn't as bad as he wanted you to think he was, either. He mainly just liked to intimidate women. Heightened the orgasm, you know." He leered, elegantly.
"I mean, could he have gotten himself in over his head with anyone? Gambling? A boyfriend or husband?"
"I doubt it. Of course you never know with a boyfriend or something, but it's hard for me to believe they'd fucking dismember him just for screwing their girlfriend or wifie."
"I know," I said, glumly studying my wineglass. "Who else should I talk to, Cal? Was there another woman besides me he was tight with? Don't spare my feelings on this one, either."
"The ugly truth is, girlfriend, his stable was never less than three or four deep, but there was always a central player - that would be you - and some backups. Right now he was seeing that girl Carol, the woman who tends bar at the club. But that was strictly booty call, and she did have a regular boyfriend, but not the macho man type. And," his voice dropped, and he glanced at the nearby tables for effect, "he was seeing a married woman." His eyebrows waggled in unfeigned malicious delight.
"Oh yeah? Whom?" I said, with the presence of mind to be grammatically correct.
"I don't know her name. He brought her - well, he met her at the club a couple of times. Very expensive looking, if you know what I mean. Definitely older, richer, but not, apparently, wiser." He chuckled.
"Her husband?"
"I don't know that much about her, but I can find out," he said. "If you want."
"Of course I want, Cal."
"Then buy me another Cab as a down payment," he said, tossing his head at the two young working class studly men who had sat down at the bar.
I signaled the waitress, and prayed for a violent, jealous husband.
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Tommy and I were spending time together, but I can't say exactly what we did.
In a way, our budding relationship reminded me of those montages they create in romance movies where the couple's courtship is condensed into a two-minute music video, full of walks in the park, laughter while cooking, passionate kisses on the beach, and great outfits. We seemed to spend time together, and we seemed to do things, but when I'd try to reconstruct a conversation, or a day spent together, I'd get vague on the details. I'm glad my mom didn't know I was seeing a new man. She always wanted to specifics: what did he wear? How had he said that? What do his people do? Is he a Catholic? And while I was pretty sure I could supply some answers, I'd realize that I had more of a general impression of the man and our growing attachment than I did details.
He was a writer, that much I knew. He was new in town, having moved from California. His family was all back in California. He just wanted a change of pace, new scenery, a way to charge up his imagination.
Other than that, he was warm, gentle, kind, and he made me feel as though I was made out of crystal.
He happened to be with me at the house when Cal called with the information about Marcus's married honey. His other married honey. I was walking Tommy around the old farmstead. Only one of the buildings - the tenant farmer's cottage I rented - was occupied. The main house, the cow barn, and the garage (complete with overhead lift and pit) the milk house, the slaughter house and the farm stand were empty, as were the hen house and the apple barn. It was a big property, and most of the acreage still produced crops, including the old orchards. Normally, I loved the peace and quiet. Now, I was starting to think of it as isolation.
My cell phone rang just as we were looping back to the main farmyard from the orchard.
"Her name - get this - was Tiffany,” Cal said, explaining that the older married woman was married to a man who was wheel-chair bound, which put her, or at least the husband, out of the immediate pool of suspects. Marcus evidently appreciated the value of a husband lurking in the background. “Tiffany Edwards. How's that for central casting?"
"Wait... Tiffany Edwards?" I said, practically hissing it. "The bimbo on News Ten Now?"
"The very one," Cal cooed. "She is a little slutty looking."
"I didn't know she was married."
"You and nobody else in this town. I guess she felt it wasn't good for her career to be known as a married woman. Her husband's a lawyer. You know the guy - Hurt in a Car? Doesn't even live in this town, that's how they played it so cool."
"Oh, stop," I groaned. "So, did you talk to her? Will she talk to me about Marcus?"
"You meet her at the club tomorrow night - only you - and only if you swear that's as far as it goes. She says she can't get involved, but she says she wants Marcus' killer found. Honestly, you'd think she cared about the little prick or something," Cal laughed bitchily. "Ok, that's my good deed for the week, sweetheart. See you tomorrow." And he rang off.
Tommy, eyes shaded with his hands, was peering into the window of the slaughterhouse. At some point, this farm had been a thriving operation, producing and selling fruits, vegetables, pork, beef, and milk. At some point, the owner, a man in his mid-fifties at that time, had suffered a midlife crisis. He left his wife, sold the farm, moved to California and started teaching college-level history, starting a whole new family with a much younger woman. The new owners couldn't make a go of the farm, so they rented out the buildings and moved to town.
"Ok, Cal says the married honey – the second married honey – will talk to me," I reported to Tommy, who turned slowly, and studied me with narrowed eyes. "What's up?" I added, as he continued to stare. Not saying anything, he stepped aside and motioned to the grimy window he'd been looking into moments before.
I stepped up to it curiously, and mimicked his posture, hands shading my eyes, letting my vision adjust to the dimmer light of the interior. The room I was looking into was small and tiled-lined, with long, stainless steel tables and sinks along three walls. The fourth was a large, sliding door that led to the room where the actual slaughtering took place. This room was where they cut and prepared the meat. And it was covered in blood.
"What the..." my head whipped around to meet Tommy's gaze. "Blood? But that room hasn't been used in years," I trailed off. "Marcus?" I gulped. "Holy mother of God."
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Of course our lead story was the discovery of the site of Marcus' murder. If it hadn't been so ghastly, I might have been silently crowing with delight over the drama of the story. And then, of course, there was the uncomfortable little fact that the murder had taken place perilously close to my home, but I was fairly certain I could turn that to my advantage - and add a lot more excitement to the tale.
My stand-up took place in front of the abattoir - yeah, I got that word into my story. Take that, Tiffany. And I was called in a second time to talk to the investigating officers about where I had been and what I had been doing that night.
Why didn't I tell them about Tommy? He was my alibi, so it only made sense to say we had been together, and he had left after I fell sound asleep. By then, of course, implausible as was, I had begun to believe that there was something unnatural about him. Try as I might, I couldn't locate him, online or any other way. He came and went as he chose, and even though he called me frequently, I was unable to return his calls. I was afraid to ask him to stop blocking me, assuming he was doing it deliberately, because for the first time in my self-absorbed life, I was afraid someone might walk away from me if I seemed too needy.
And by then, of course, I had begun to believe that he had killed Marcus.
One of the reasons the police weren't more suspicious of me was the sheer athleticism of the murder. Perhaps if Marcus had been cut up; but no, he was ripped apart, except for the head, which it did appear was severed with some sharp implement. There were many of those in the meat processing room, but needless to say, pretty much everything in the room had been exposed to blood - it was spattered everywhere. And evidently there had been no attempt to clean the room after the last animals were slaughtered and processed there, as there was both human and animal DNA, making it all the more difficult to get good evidence from the scene.
My package was on the six news, and within minutes, my cell phone rang. It was Tiffany.
"I'd really love to meet you," she purred, "But tonight I can't find the time to. Tell you what, how about tomorrow, your place?"
I played along. No way she was going to meet me at my place. She didn't want to be involved, but she had to know my house was now part of the news photog's routine. There was always somebody parked nearby, waiting for me to come or go, waiting for the cops to leave the murder scene so they could swoop down with questions. I don't think I'd ever had so much exposure; this story had made both state and national news, print and electronic. No way she was horning in on that.
"Ok," I said, equally sugary. "What time works for you?"
We agreed on noon, so now I knew what was up. She was going to meet me, alright. With her camera crew. Scoop the scooper. So all I had to do was show up with my crew, and it was a standoff.
That night, I had a late fire to report on, and then I spent some time with Tommy walking and talking by the lake. In spite of my suspicions about him, my feelings for him were deeper and more complex than ever. What was that all about? My rebel heart was just not going along with my reporter head. I didn't really know who he was, we never went anywhere with anyone and were rarely even in public places together. He seemed to appear out of nowhere just when I needed him most, and he had a knack for knowing exactly what I wanted when I wanted it. Sex was phenomenal. (Isn't there a better word for really great sex? Awesome? Amazing? Breathtaking? It all sounds so juvenile. And predictable. Maybe transcendent would work.) While I loved it, it seemed almost too good to be true - as if he were anticipating what I wanted him to do next at every turn.
But while he always called me, I had no way to reach him. I'd never seen his house. He didn't seem to keep any kind of regular schedule, and whenever we spent the night at my house, I'd wake up neatly tucked up in bed, and he was gone.
I knew in my bones that something was wrong, I knew I was walking, without a flashlight, into the basement of the spooky house where the demented serial killer lived. And I was doing it anyway. No, not just "anyway." I was doing it on purpose; I was doing it - gleefully.
And the next day, when noon rolled around, and my crew showed up, and Tiffany's crew showed up, but no Tiffany, I finally decided it was time to be scared.
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They found Tiffany's dismembered body in the dumpster behind the News Ten Now building. It had been, like Marcus's, savagely dismembered, almost - butchered. And the bite marks were there, too.
My producer didn't know whether to shoot me... or shoot me. The footage of me waiting for Tiffany outside the slaughter house at my home was the stuff news producer's dream of: feisty girl reporter waits for uppity rival who never shows. FGR looks annoyed, then confused, finally calls the station who says UR never showed up for work that day, and never called her crew.
I was both a leading suspect and the leading lady. They had nothing specific to tie me to either murder except that I knew both victims, and they had both been sliced up on my property. And in both cases, the only real alibi I had was a man nobody had ever met but me, whom I had never mentioned.
The only person I felt I could confide in was Cal, so I called him. He was a little reluctant to meet me, but finally his flair for the fantastic won out over his caution. We met at a bar called Union Station, a renovated old railroad station with high ceilings and marble tiled floors. All very chi-chi, and just the kind of place Cal loved to be seen. So of course, if he was going to be seen with me, he was going to go all the way.
No slinking into a corner booth for us - nope, Cal swooped across the room, trailing a white trench coat tossed theatrically across his shoulders, arms widespread to envelop me in two flamboyant air kisses. You have no idea what it's like to be air kissed by a huge gay man.
"So, there's this guy, Cal," I said, getting right to the point. "His name is Tommy."
Cal raised his eyebrows delicately. "Tommy" isn't exactly the kind of name you want to give the dark villain or the romantic hero.
"When Marcus was giving me a hard time one night, Tommy showed up and knocked him down. Then Marcus started to get threatening with me. Then Marcus.... well, you know."
"Ok," Cal drawled. "So, what do you know about this - Tommy?"
"That's the problem, Cal. Not that much. I mean, oh, fuck it, Cal, I'm in love with him. I don't know where he lives; he says he writes and he's from California but he doesn't really know anyone around here. We haven't hung out with any of my friends, but you know how that is, I don't either, I work too much. I think that's why there was always a guy like Marcus around - he had his own stuff going on so he didn't ask too much time of me."
"Ok, let me meet this Tommy," Cal said, sipping his Cab.
I considered this. Cal was gay, yes, and full of precious mannerisms he loved to be in your face about, but he was also big, powerful, and street tough. He was anything but a wimp, and anyone who trusted his fey posturing more than his left hook made a big miscalculation.
"There's something else I have to tell you, " I said. How was I going to sound sane? How do you say, "Well, the thing is, I think he's not human," and have it sound like anything but you're on some serious drugs - or should be. So I said, "Well, the thing is, I think he's not human."
I rarely saw Cal lose his cool. His trademark reaction to the most absurd situation or remark was to raise one eyebrow, with an ever-so-slight smirk beneath it. This time he choked on his wine.
"Say that again?"
I told Cal all about seeing Tommy and his confrontation with Marcus; about Tommy's unpredictable comings and goings; and about how I was getting into some deep shit myself because here I was with the murder of a man I was involved with taking place on the isolated property where I lived; another one in which the victim was not just my professional rival, but the secret lover of my dead boyfriend and just happened to have had a meeting planned with me.
"And so your conclusion from all this is not that your boyfriend is psychopathic murderer, but that he's a werewolf?"
"I told you what I saw that night!"
"Sweetie, have you considered, well, you know, talking to someone? Someone professional." Cal could put words in italics better than anyone I'd ever met.
"Stop it, Cal. You know I'm not nutty."
"No, you're not nutty. But you have been, shall we say, stressed of late?" He swirled his glass, made a pretty little moue - which isn't easy for a big guy who lifts weights - and signaled the black-and-white clad waitress for another round.
"No, seriously, Cal. I'm not kidding. Something is wrong with this picture. It's too perfect. And too impossible." I took a deep breath, a swig from my fresh glass of Albarino, and admitted, "And I don't want to ruin it by finding out who he really is."
"Well this is easy, girlfriend," drawled Cal, shaking his head at me as if I'd lost whatever marbles I may have once had. "I meet him. Make a date."
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The rising moon wasn't quite full, but Tommy was clearly agitated when I suggested that he and Cal meet and have a talk about Marcus. I explained to him that Cal knew as much as anybody about Marcus, and maybe there was something I'd neglected to ask, some clue I'd overlooked.
The police had done all they could with the crime scene - including the slaughter house on the farm. Needless to say, both the alley and the dumpster where the body parts had been discovered were completely contaminated with trash, biological residue, even chemicals of all kinds. And while it was clear that the slaughter house had been where Marcus had met his end, that building, too, was full of material that made identifying much beyond Marcus' own DNA difficult.
All of the outbuildings on the farm had been scoured and secured, and the property's owner - now in California - had an unimpeachable alibi. I was offered, but declined, an escort to my little rental house each night. I didn't want anything to interfere with my evenings with Tommy.
We were sitting on the porch glider together, listening to the late summer cicadas, and I had had far too much of a bottle of wine. Tommy, it hadn't surprised me to learn, didn't drink.
"Why don't I know anything about you?" I blurted out, after a lengthy, uncomfortable silence.
"Like what?"
"Like, ok, you said you're from California. Is your family still there?"
"Don't have any left."
"What happened to them?"
"There was just my mom, and she's gone."
"So why did you come here?"
"It's quiet."
I admit it, I snorted with laughter over that one. Quiet, yes. But just lately we'd made even more national news. They were calling this The Full Moon Murders, since both Marcus and Tiffany had died during a full moon. Unfortunately, I think it was one of my stories that called attention to that fact, and I have to admit it had probably taken the story to the top of the pile. Murder wasn't exactly rare in this country. Murder with a fillip of the supernatural - that was a story. I hadn't said anything in my pieces, but I did make sure the photog tilted up on me from a curious set of dog prints. Canid prints? Lupus?
"So, why don't you want to meet Cal? He's a good guy. And that's another thing," I said, now slurring slightly. "I don't know any of your friends. You don't know any of mine. Well, if I had any," I laughed again, my nose in my glass, heading down the road of drunk self-pity.
"I don't want to get involved in any of this. I came here for quiet," Tommy said, looking at me with a little dismay. Or was that disgust?
"And why don't you ever stay over? We go to bed together," I am certain I leered, and maybe even waggled my eyebrows, to my everlasting shame, "but we never wake up together. Why is that?"
"I like to sleep alone."
We were quiet. An owl hooted. The glider squeaked. I drank some more.
"Well I want you to meet Cal, ok?" I said finally, trying to focus on his face, and losing the battle spectacularly as my eyes crossed. I then fell all the way to disgrace as I started hiccuping, then laughing, perilously close to hysterics.
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I won't say it was a panic, but stopping for drinks with my co-workers the next evening after work, we found the bar almost empty. Nobody but the most die-hard drinkers - us - and a few others wanted to risk being out in the streets that night. It was the night before the full moon.
Since it was, after all, my murderer, I had taken to calling him - or her - the "Claire de Lune Killer." It had a more interesting ring than Full Moon Murderer. Made it almost romantic, somehow. And it put me in a league far ahead of the typical young hot-chick reporter. I had class; I had style.
We'd done another stand-up report near the alley where Marcus had been found, me ghoulishly lit by an overhead streetlamp and the rising moon, stating the obvious - that nothing more was really known about the killer, or whether he'd kill again. I deliberately didn't use the he-or-she construction. I didn't need any more speculation about me as murderer, just me as potential victim. Brave reporter.
I was dressed in black, and I walked and talked slowly, somberly, and we closed the package with a dramatic closeup. Otherwise, the news was pretty dull lately. Summer had waned into early fall, dry leaves were skittering on the October roads as I dutifully made my rounds of fires, burglaries, the occasional white collar crime. But the Claire de Lune Killer seemed to have dropped from page one on the national news, and me along with it. Still, here in town, news rooms were resurrecting the story each month, just in case.
Cal flew in to the bar with his usual entourage, tonight effecting a biker boy look.
"Well?" he demanded when the kissing and banter and subsided and my photog had drifted off to home and bed and my producer and editor were snuggling - illicitly, may I add - in a corner booth. Cal's cronies were at the bar, drinking beer tonight, as they were in full-on biker mode.
"He isn't happy about it but he says he'll come by tomorrow. My place," I added, a little apologetically.
"Ooo-ooh," Cal cooed. "How dramatic, darling! And it's all hush-hush, Scout's Honor,” he crossed his pecs with one finger.
"Well, seriously, Cal," I said, admonishing him. "Tomorrow is a full moon."
"Uh-huh. And I'm the Prince of Darkness. I'll be there," he said, signaling his friends that they were on to the next watering hole. "With a cape." He gave me a vampire face, and then, laughing, headed out the door.
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"What's wrong with him?" I was yelling at Tommy. I don't know why I was suddenly aware of standing in my living room, Cal's body slumped on my couch, unmoving, and Tommy standing over him in that graceful, still way he had.
"He's sleeping," Tommy said. "Help me."
"Help you what?"
"Move him. We have to hurry. He won't be out long."
"Out? What are talking about?"
I remembered that there was supposed to be a meeting. I don't know why everything leading up to that meeting was a blur. Cal and Tommy were going to meet. At my house. So Cal could see for himself what Tommy was - or wasn't. And here I was, and here Tommy was, and here Cal was. Dead. Or drugged. Or something.
I leaned in and I could hear his faint breaths. I could smell whiskey on his breath; he'd had a drink - the glass was sitting half full on the coffee table.
"Wash that," Tommy said, nodding toward the glass.
"What did you do?" I mewled, but nevertheless picking up the glass and heading toward the kitchen.
"He can't find out about me," Tommy called to me as I washed the glass and polished it dry. "You know that better than anyone."
"Find out what about you, exactly?" I said, returning to the room, where Tommy had maneuvered Cal to the floor, wrapping his legs in the black belt he'd worn. He nodded to me to help him, and together we dragged the inert Cal toward the kitchen door. Tommy was silent, and so was I, then. Our breathing was ragged as we dragged Cal - he was a big man - toward his car. Where was Tommy's car? What was Tommy's car? Had I ever seen it, or been in it?
"Just over the hood, we're not going far," Tommy instructed as we hauled Cal up over the hood of Cal's BMW. "Now, drive him to the garage. No, no that one. The big one," Tommy instructed as I put the car in gear and started toward the friendly little two car garage with the sliding doors. He wanted me to go to the professional garage, the big dark cement block building that I never went in.
"I don't even know if it's unlocked," I said.
"It is," Tommy replied. And of course, he was right. It wasn't just unlocked, it was open. We pulled in - the garage was big enough for at least two farm vehicles to park end to end inside.
Tommy walked beside the car as I drove in, and he signaled me to stop over the first lift.
"What are you doing?" I demanded, climbing out of the car, and watching as he dragged the overhead crane toward the car, chains and hooks dangling from it.
"What do you think?" he said, lining the lift up with Cal's body. Cal still hadn't stirred. For that matter, Tommy wasn't exactly "stirring" much, either. As I watched him efficiently attach Cal's trussed up legs to the overhead crane's chains, I realized that for all the delight I took in him, Tommy rarely showed any emotion. Smooth, gilded, elegant - and still. Like a photograph of the perfect man, not the man himself.
Just as Tommy was hauling Cal up by the ankles on the crane, Cal began to stir ever so slightly. Tommy paused, locked the lift mechanism, and pulled a hypodermic out of his pocket. Without even a slight hesitation he drilled the needle into Cal's neck, and Cal was still.
"Please, Tommy," I said, wondering if I could get to my iPhone without him noticing. It was just in my pocket, it always was on my person, or near it. Even when - well, you know.
"Please?" he repeated, continuing to drag Cal upward til he was about navel level with Tommy's eyes.
"Please, tell me what you're doing," I said.
He turned to me and smiled that gentle, sweet smile; but when he parted his lips it became a wolfish grin. And I swear, I promise, I saw his canines glint in the dim light of the moon. He would not turn the light on in the garage, or use the power crane, because we both knew the police ran patrols by my house from time to time since the murders. He halted the lift again, and pulled me to him. He was incredibly strong, always his lean, muscled body had more strength than seemed possible, but tonight he felt positively lethal. His arms felt like iron wrapped around me; I could feel his teeth behind his lips as he kissed me, then nipped at my lips and neck.
"Let's not hurt Cal," I breathed into his ear. "This is a bad idea."
He paused in his exploration of my neck and exposed chest. Though the night was cool I was only wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and it had taken him only a moment to pull the zipper part way down. He stared in my eyes with those odd, gold-flecked brown eyes of his.
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?" I said, wrenching away and pulling up my zipper. The zipper of my ...coveralls. My filthy, oil and bloodstained coveralls. "Because then I'm involved, and I don't want to be involved."
He grinned that terrible, feral grin again, and began to pull the clothing from Cal's body, shredding and tearing it where it didn't slide off easily. He used those magnificent teeth to rip a hole in Cal's pants, ripping the inseam, and as I watched him whip the belt from the loops, I noticed he was wearing gloves.
I noticed that we were both wearing gloves. I stared down at them dumbly.
"That's right, sweetheart," he said, tossing Cal's rent underwear into the pile with the rest of his clothes. And for the first time I realized that the clothes were being collected on a plastic shower curtain, which was spread out beneath Cal's inverted, pendant body.
Except for his shoes and socks, Cal was naked. He was a marvelously well-muscled man, I noted. Kind of a waste, really, though the he-man look had never been my style.
"How do I explain this?" I said, circling the tarp, and watching, fascinated, as Tommy bit deeply into Cal's shoulder, his thigh, and tore a finger from his hand using just his teeth. I licked my lips.
"You don't have to. You were asleep. Cal came out, he went home. His car isn't here. You talked, you had a lot to drink."
"I've got to tell them about you, don't you think?"
"Maybe. Just not everything about me." Tommy said. He pulled a switchblade from his sweatshirt pocket, and flicked it open. It was bigger than I'd expected. He dug it deeply into Cal's throat, but he'd been prepared for the arterial spray. He held a large sponge, the kind you use to wash a car, up to the wound, and from somewhere he materialized a bucket into which he directed the spurting fluid. I licked my lips again, running my tongue across my teeth. It must be fear, I reasoned. My mouth was so dry.
"You mean, what you are?"
He grinned again, his teeth and lips etched with the blood from the bites, and I could see that awful movement of muscle and sinew. He would change. I glanced at the windows, set high up in the upper story of the building. The full moon threw a river of pale light into the room, falling, as if planned, onto Cal's terribly white body. Even in his drugged stupor, Cal's body twitched as his lifeblood drained and his heart began to fail.
I know it's trite, but it is amazing how much blood a human body can hold. Tommy was holding a 5 gallon bucket, and it was about a third full, I'd guess. Warm, sloshing blood. When he was satisfied that Cal was drained - and quite obviously, dead - he carefully dumped the contents of the bucket into the oil pit, where it mixed with dirty motor oil from years of oil changes on farm equipment. The he pulled a hose over, and began to spray down Cal's lifeless body.
This would make such amazing footage, I thought. It's so - almost artistic in a way. He's thought it all out; every detail. How many times had he done this? My fingers were itching for my iPhone again.
And then he began to dismember Cal's body.
He used the big knife to start the process, but with the help of a rubber mallet, he shredded the joints, pulling hand from wrist, forearm from upper arm at the elbow; even the tougher shoulder joints parted under repeated blows. Each body part was dumped into one of several trash bags he had waiting. The trash bags were wrapped and carefully placed in the trunk of Cal's car.
"What if Cal told someone about this? About meeting you, here?"
"You told him not to."
I got to work immediately on my role of Brenda Starr, reporter. I did a stand-up piece from the alley where Marcus was found.
I deliberately looked a little pale, a little disheveled. The camera "caught" me standing in the dark alley, and slowly moving towards its entrance.
"A few short days ago, a man was found dead in this alley. A man I knew. A man I cared for." I talked – close to tears - them through the basics of the murder, and wound up, "There aren't many clues to go on, but my station and I are determined that this crime won't go unsolved. We'll find this killer, and see to it that Marcus's death doesn't go unpunished." And I signed off.
But there really weren't any clues, and I didn't have much information to get started with. So the only logical place to start was with Marcus himself.
I had a list of all the women who had been questioned at the station, along with Marcus's employer (he sold roofing products), and one of his few male friends, a bartender named Cal.
Because I usually get along better with men than women, I decided to start with Cal. We met for lunch at an artsy bistro downtown. I had been introduced to Cal once when Marcus and I were out, so I had some idea of what to expect. Cal had been in love with Marcus.
Marcus was one of those self-absorbed macho types who has no gaydar. He is so fixated on women and their adoration of him that he really can't see it coming the other way. I knew within moments of meeting him why Cal had eventually broken from Marcus, hurt and frustrated.
Cal was an exceptionally good-looking guy, but he was also so blatantly gay I was still bemused that Marcus had never figured it out. Or maybe, I thought suddenly, he had.
"How have you been, Cal?" I asked when he arrived and joined me at our table.
"I've been better," he sighed. "I was terribly shattered by the news."
"Me, too," I commiserated. "That's why I'm determined I'm going to find out who did this."
"I heard that. I saw your standup. You looked a little pasty, girlfriend," he tsked.
"Had to strike the right note," I explained, knowing he'd understand. "So when is the last time you saw Marcus?"
Cal looked at me for a moment, sizing up my question. "About a week before the murder," he finally said. That was now several weeks ago."We had drinks. He told me about what happened with you two," he added. "You really pissed him off."
"You knew Marcus. He was always pissed off at something."
"Yeah, part of his charm, I guess."
"So, did you know anybody who might have been pissed off at him?"
"That was the weird part about Marcus," Cal said. "No matter what he did, people still liked him. I mean, he had ex-girlfriends who had a love-hate thing for him, and more than one of their boyfriends who wanted to kick his ass for screwing their women, but all in all I can't think of anybody who'd want to kill him. Especially not like that," he shuddered delicately. "Is it true he was ripped apart?"
"Yeah," I said. "It was horrible. But the odd thing is, it appears it was done somewhere else. There was no blood at the scene, and, well, he was in at least six pieces."
"Like I said, while I might have felt like ripping something off of him from time to time – and I promise you it wasn't his arm or anything – I just can't imagine anybody being that mad at the boy. He was just a roofing supply sales guy, not a pimp or drug dealer or something."
"But he did use sometimes, right?"
"Just pot, as far as I know. And he never dealt. He hardly even shared!” Cal sighed and slipped a forkful of salad into his mouth. “Our Marcus wasn't a straight arrow, that's true, but he wasn't as bad as he wanted you to think he was, either. He mainly just liked to intimidate women. Heightened the orgasm, you know." He leered, elegantly.
"I mean, could he have gotten himself in over his head with anyone? Gambling? A boyfriend or husband?"
"I doubt it. Of course you never know with a boyfriend or something, but it's hard for me to believe they'd fucking dismember him just for screwing their girlfriend or wifie."
"I know," I said, glumly studying my wineglass. "Who else should I talk to, Cal? Was there another woman besides me he was tight with? Don't spare my feelings on this one, either."
"The ugly truth is, girlfriend, his stable was never less than three or four deep, but there was always a central player - that would be you - and some backups. Right now he was seeing that girl Carol, the woman who tends bar at the club. But that was strictly booty call, and she did have a regular boyfriend, but not the macho man type. And," his voice dropped, and he glanced at the nearby tables for effect, "he was seeing a married woman." His eyebrows waggled in unfeigned malicious delight.
"Oh yeah? Whom?" I said, with the presence of mind to be grammatically correct.
"I don't know her name. He brought her - well, he met her at the club a couple of times. Very expensive looking, if you know what I mean. Definitely older, richer, but not, apparently, wiser." He chuckled.
"Her husband?"
"I don't know that much about her, but I can find out," he said. "If you want."
"Of course I want, Cal."
"Then buy me another Cab as a down payment," he said, tossing his head at the two young working class studly men who had sat down at the bar.
I signaled the waitress, and prayed for a violent, jealous husband.
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Tommy and I were spending time together, but I can't say exactly what we did.
In a way, our budding relationship reminded me of those montages they create in romance movies where the couple's courtship is condensed into a two-minute music video, full of walks in the park, laughter while cooking, passionate kisses on the beach, and great outfits. We seemed to spend time together, and we seemed to do things, but when I'd try to reconstruct a conversation, or a day spent together, I'd get vague on the details. I'm glad my mom didn't know I was seeing a new man. She always wanted to specifics: what did he wear? How had he said that? What do his people do? Is he a Catholic? And while I was pretty sure I could supply some answers, I'd realize that I had more of a general impression of the man and our growing attachment than I did details.
He was a writer, that much I knew. He was new in town, having moved from California. His family was all back in California. He just wanted a change of pace, new scenery, a way to charge up his imagination.
Other than that, he was warm, gentle, kind, and he made me feel as though I was made out of crystal.
He happened to be with me at the house when Cal called with the information about Marcus's married honey. His other married honey. I was walking Tommy around the old farmstead. Only one of the buildings - the tenant farmer's cottage I rented - was occupied. The main house, the cow barn, and the garage (complete with overhead lift and pit) the milk house, the slaughter house and the farm stand were empty, as were the hen house and the apple barn. It was a big property, and most of the acreage still produced crops, including the old orchards. Normally, I loved the peace and quiet. Now, I was starting to think of it as isolation.
My cell phone rang just as we were looping back to the main farmyard from the orchard.
"Her name - get this - was Tiffany,” Cal said, explaining that the older married woman was married to a man who was wheel-chair bound, which put her, or at least the husband, out of the immediate pool of suspects. Marcus evidently appreciated the value of a husband lurking in the background. “Tiffany Edwards. How's that for central casting?"
"Wait... Tiffany Edwards?" I said, practically hissing it. "The bimbo on News Ten Now?"
"The very one," Cal cooed. "She is a little slutty looking."
"I didn't know she was married."
"You and nobody else in this town. I guess she felt it wasn't good for her career to be known as a married woman. Her husband's a lawyer. You know the guy - Hurt in a Car? Doesn't even live in this town, that's how they played it so cool."
"Oh, stop," I groaned. "So, did you talk to her? Will she talk to me about Marcus?"
"You meet her at the club tomorrow night - only you - and only if you swear that's as far as it goes. She says she can't get involved, but she says she wants Marcus' killer found. Honestly, you'd think she cared about the little prick or something," Cal laughed bitchily. "Ok, that's my good deed for the week, sweetheart. See you tomorrow." And he rang off.
Tommy, eyes shaded with his hands, was peering into the window of the slaughterhouse. At some point, this farm had been a thriving operation, producing and selling fruits, vegetables, pork, beef, and milk. At some point, the owner, a man in his mid-fifties at that time, had suffered a midlife crisis. He left his wife, sold the farm, moved to California and started teaching college-level history, starting a whole new family with a much younger woman. The new owners couldn't make a go of the farm, so they rented out the buildings and moved to town.
"Ok, Cal says the married honey – the second married honey – will talk to me," I reported to Tommy, who turned slowly, and studied me with narrowed eyes. "What's up?" I added, as he continued to stare. Not saying anything, he stepped aside and motioned to the grimy window he'd been looking into moments before.
I stepped up to it curiously, and mimicked his posture, hands shading my eyes, letting my vision adjust to the dimmer light of the interior. The room I was looking into was small and tiled-lined, with long, stainless steel tables and sinks along three walls. The fourth was a large, sliding door that led to the room where the actual slaughtering took place. This room was where they cut and prepared the meat. And it was covered in blood.
"What the..." my head whipped around to meet Tommy's gaze. "Blood? But that room hasn't been used in years," I trailed off. "Marcus?" I gulped. "Holy mother of God."
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Of course our lead story was the discovery of the site of Marcus' murder. If it hadn't been so ghastly, I might have been silently crowing with delight over the drama of the story. And then, of course, there was the uncomfortable little fact that the murder had taken place perilously close to my home, but I was fairly certain I could turn that to my advantage - and add a lot more excitement to the tale.
My stand-up took place in front of the abattoir - yeah, I got that word into my story. Take that, Tiffany. And I was called in a second time to talk to the investigating officers about where I had been and what I had been doing that night.
Why didn't I tell them about Tommy? He was my alibi, so it only made sense to say we had been together, and he had left after I fell sound asleep. By then, of course, implausible as was, I had begun to believe that there was something unnatural about him. Try as I might, I couldn't locate him, online or any other way. He came and went as he chose, and even though he called me frequently, I was unable to return his calls. I was afraid to ask him to stop blocking me, assuming he was doing it deliberately, because for the first time in my self-absorbed life, I was afraid someone might walk away from me if I seemed too needy.
And by then, of course, I had begun to believe that he had killed Marcus.
One of the reasons the police weren't more suspicious of me was the sheer athleticism of the murder. Perhaps if Marcus had been cut up; but no, he was ripped apart, except for the head, which it did appear was severed with some sharp implement. There were many of those in the meat processing room, but needless to say, pretty much everything in the room had been exposed to blood - it was spattered everywhere. And evidently there had been no attempt to clean the room after the last animals were slaughtered and processed there, as there was both human and animal DNA, making it all the more difficult to get good evidence from the scene.
My package was on the six news, and within minutes, my cell phone rang. It was Tiffany.
"I'd really love to meet you," she purred, "But tonight I can't find the time to. Tell you what, how about tomorrow, your place?"
I played along. No way she was going to meet me at my place. She didn't want to be involved, but she had to know my house was now part of the news photog's routine. There was always somebody parked nearby, waiting for me to come or go, waiting for the cops to leave the murder scene so they could swoop down with questions. I don't think I'd ever had so much exposure; this story had made both state and national news, print and electronic. No way she was horning in on that.
"Ok," I said, equally sugary. "What time works for you?"
We agreed on noon, so now I knew what was up. She was going to meet me, alright. With her camera crew. Scoop the scooper. So all I had to do was show up with my crew, and it was a standoff.
That night, I had a late fire to report on, and then I spent some time with Tommy walking and talking by the lake. In spite of my suspicions about him, my feelings for him were deeper and more complex than ever. What was that all about? My rebel heart was just not going along with my reporter head. I didn't really know who he was, we never went anywhere with anyone and were rarely even in public places together. He seemed to appear out of nowhere just when I needed him most, and he had a knack for knowing exactly what I wanted when I wanted it. Sex was phenomenal. (Isn't there a better word for really great sex? Awesome? Amazing? Breathtaking? It all sounds so juvenile. And predictable. Maybe transcendent would work.) While I loved it, it seemed almost too good to be true - as if he were anticipating what I wanted him to do next at every turn.
But while he always called me, I had no way to reach him. I'd never seen his house. He didn't seem to keep any kind of regular schedule, and whenever we spent the night at my house, I'd wake up neatly tucked up in bed, and he was gone.
I knew in my bones that something was wrong, I knew I was walking, without a flashlight, into the basement of the spooky house where the demented serial killer lived. And I was doing it anyway. No, not just "anyway." I was doing it on purpose; I was doing it - gleefully.
And the next day, when noon rolled around, and my crew showed up, and Tiffany's crew showed up, but no Tiffany, I finally decided it was time to be scared.
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They found Tiffany's dismembered body in the dumpster behind the News Ten Now building. It had been, like Marcus's, savagely dismembered, almost - butchered. And the bite marks were there, too.
My producer didn't know whether to shoot me... or shoot me. The footage of me waiting for Tiffany outside the slaughter house at my home was the stuff news producer's dream of: feisty girl reporter waits for uppity rival who never shows. FGR looks annoyed, then confused, finally calls the station who says UR never showed up for work that day, and never called her crew.
I was both a leading suspect and the leading lady. They had nothing specific to tie me to either murder except that I knew both victims, and they had both been sliced up on my property. And in both cases, the only real alibi I had was a man nobody had ever met but me, whom I had never mentioned.
The only person I felt I could confide in was Cal, so I called him. He was a little reluctant to meet me, but finally his flair for the fantastic won out over his caution. We met at a bar called Union Station, a renovated old railroad station with high ceilings and marble tiled floors. All very chi-chi, and just the kind of place Cal loved to be seen. So of course, if he was going to be seen with me, he was going to go all the way.
No slinking into a corner booth for us - nope, Cal swooped across the room, trailing a white trench coat tossed theatrically across his shoulders, arms widespread to envelop me in two flamboyant air kisses. You have no idea what it's like to be air kissed by a huge gay man.
"So, there's this guy, Cal," I said, getting right to the point. "His name is Tommy."
Cal raised his eyebrows delicately. "Tommy" isn't exactly the kind of name you want to give the dark villain or the romantic hero.
"When Marcus was giving me a hard time one night, Tommy showed up and knocked him down. Then Marcus started to get threatening with me. Then Marcus.... well, you know."
"Ok," Cal drawled. "So, what do you know about this - Tommy?"
"That's the problem, Cal. Not that much. I mean, oh, fuck it, Cal, I'm in love with him. I don't know where he lives; he says he writes and he's from California but he doesn't really know anyone around here. We haven't hung out with any of my friends, but you know how that is, I don't either, I work too much. I think that's why there was always a guy like Marcus around - he had his own stuff going on so he didn't ask too much time of me."
"Ok, let me meet this Tommy," Cal said, sipping his Cab.
I considered this. Cal was gay, yes, and full of precious mannerisms he loved to be in your face about, but he was also big, powerful, and street tough. He was anything but a wimp, and anyone who trusted his fey posturing more than his left hook made a big miscalculation.
"There's something else I have to tell you, " I said. How was I going to sound sane? How do you say, "Well, the thing is, I think he's not human," and have it sound like anything but you're on some serious drugs - or should be. So I said, "Well, the thing is, I think he's not human."
I rarely saw Cal lose his cool. His trademark reaction to the most absurd situation or remark was to raise one eyebrow, with an ever-so-slight smirk beneath it. This time he choked on his wine.
"Say that again?"
I told Cal all about seeing Tommy and his confrontation with Marcus; about Tommy's unpredictable comings and goings; and about how I was getting into some deep shit myself because here I was with the murder of a man I was involved with taking place on the isolated property where I lived; another one in which the victim was not just my professional rival, but the secret lover of my dead boyfriend and just happened to have had a meeting planned with me.
"And so your conclusion from all this is not that your boyfriend is psychopathic murderer, but that he's a werewolf?"
"I told you what I saw that night!"
"Sweetie, have you considered, well, you know, talking to someone? Someone professional." Cal could put words in italics better than anyone I'd ever met.
"Stop it, Cal. You know I'm not nutty."
"No, you're not nutty. But you have been, shall we say, stressed of late?" He swirled his glass, made a pretty little moue - which isn't easy for a big guy who lifts weights - and signaled the black-and-white clad waitress for another round.
"No, seriously, Cal. I'm not kidding. Something is wrong with this picture. It's too perfect. And too impossible." I took a deep breath, a swig from my fresh glass of Albarino, and admitted, "And I don't want to ruin it by finding out who he really is."
"Well this is easy, girlfriend," drawled Cal, shaking his head at me as if I'd lost whatever marbles I may have once had. "I meet him. Make a date."
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The rising moon wasn't quite full, but Tommy was clearly agitated when I suggested that he and Cal meet and have a talk about Marcus. I explained to him that Cal knew as much as anybody about Marcus, and maybe there was something I'd neglected to ask, some clue I'd overlooked.
The police had done all they could with the crime scene - including the slaughter house on the farm. Needless to say, both the alley and the dumpster where the body parts had been discovered were completely contaminated with trash, biological residue, even chemicals of all kinds. And while it was clear that the slaughter house had been where Marcus had met his end, that building, too, was full of material that made identifying much beyond Marcus' own DNA difficult.
All of the outbuildings on the farm had been scoured and secured, and the property's owner - now in California - had an unimpeachable alibi. I was offered, but declined, an escort to my little rental house each night. I didn't want anything to interfere with my evenings with Tommy.
We were sitting on the porch glider together, listening to the late summer cicadas, and I had had far too much of a bottle of wine. Tommy, it hadn't surprised me to learn, didn't drink.
"Why don't I know anything about you?" I blurted out, after a lengthy, uncomfortable silence.
"Like what?"
"Like, ok, you said you're from California. Is your family still there?"
"Don't have any left."
"What happened to them?"
"There was just my mom, and she's gone."
"So why did you come here?"
"It's quiet."
I admit it, I snorted with laughter over that one. Quiet, yes. But just lately we'd made even more national news. They were calling this The Full Moon Murders, since both Marcus and Tiffany had died during a full moon. Unfortunately, I think it was one of my stories that called attention to that fact, and I have to admit it had probably taken the story to the top of the pile. Murder wasn't exactly rare in this country. Murder with a fillip of the supernatural - that was a story. I hadn't said anything in my pieces, but I did make sure the photog tilted up on me from a curious set of dog prints. Canid prints? Lupus?
"So, why don't you want to meet Cal? He's a good guy. And that's another thing," I said, now slurring slightly. "I don't know any of your friends. You don't know any of mine. Well, if I had any," I laughed again, my nose in my glass, heading down the road of drunk self-pity.
"I don't want to get involved in any of this. I came here for quiet," Tommy said, looking at me with a little dismay. Or was that disgust?
"And why don't you ever stay over? We go to bed together," I am certain I leered, and maybe even waggled my eyebrows, to my everlasting shame, "but we never wake up together. Why is that?"
"I like to sleep alone."
We were quiet. An owl hooted. The glider squeaked. I drank some more.
"Well I want you to meet Cal, ok?" I said finally, trying to focus on his face, and losing the battle spectacularly as my eyes crossed. I then fell all the way to disgrace as I started hiccuping, then laughing, perilously close to hysterics.
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I won't say it was a panic, but stopping for drinks with my co-workers the next evening after work, we found the bar almost empty. Nobody but the most die-hard drinkers - us - and a few others wanted to risk being out in the streets that night. It was the night before the full moon.
Since it was, after all, my murderer, I had taken to calling him - or her - the "Claire de Lune Killer." It had a more interesting ring than Full Moon Murderer. Made it almost romantic, somehow. And it put me in a league far ahead of the typical young hot-chick reporter. I had class; I had style.
We'd done another stand-up report near the alley where Marcus had been found, me ghoulishly lit by an overhead streetlamp and the rising moon, stating the obvious - that nothing more was really known about the killer, or whether he'd kill again. I deliberately didn't use the he-or-she construction. I didn't need any more speculation about me as murderer, just me as potential victim. Brave reporter.
I was dressed in black, and I walked and talked slowly, somberly, and we closed the package with a dramatic closeup. Otherwise, the news was pretty dull lately. Summer had waned into early fall, dry leaves were skittering on the October roads as I dutifully made my rounds of fires, burglaries, the occasional white collar crime. But the Claire de Lune Killer seemed to have dropped from page one on the national news, and me along with it. Still, here in town, news rooms were resurrecting the story each month, just in case.
Cal flew in to the bar with his usual entourage, tonight effecting a biker boy look.
"Well?" he demanded when the kissing and banter and subsided and my photog had drifted off to home and bed and my producer and editor were snuggling - illicitly, may I add - in a corner booth. Cal's cronies were at the bar, drinking beer tonight, as they were in full-on biker mode.
"He isn't happy about it but he says he'll come by tomorrow. My place," I added, a little apologetically.
"Ooo-ooh," Cal cooed. "How dramatic, darling! And it's all hush-hush, Scout's Honor,” he crossed his pecs with one finger.
"Well, seriously, Cal," I said, admonishing him. "Tomorrow is a full moon."
"Uh-huh. And I'm the Prince of Darkness. I'll be there," he said, signaling his friends that they were on to the next watering hole. "With a cape." He gave me a vampire face, and then, laughing, headed out the door.
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"What's wrong with him?" I was yelling at Tommy. I don't know why I was suddenly aware of standing in my living room, Cal's body slumped on my couch, unmoving, and Tommy standing over him in that graceful, still way he had.
"He's sleeping," Tommy said. "Help me."
"Help you what?"
"Move him. We have to hurry. He won't be out long."
"Out? What are talking about?"
I remembered that there was supposed to be a meeting. I don't know why everything leading up to that meeting was a blur. Cal and Tommy were going to meet. At my house. So Cal could see for himself what Tommy was - or wasn't. And here I was, and here Tommy was, and here Cal was. Dead. Or drugged. Or something.
I leaned in and I could hear his faint breaths. I could smell whiskey on his breath; he'd had a drink - the glass was sitting half full on the coffee table.
"Wash that," Tommy said, nodding toward the glass.
"What did you do?" I mewled, but nevertheless picking up the glass and heading toward the kitchen.
"He can't find out about me," Tommy called to me as I washed the glass and polished it dry. "You know that better than anyone."
"Find out what about you, exactly?" I said, returning to the room, where Tommy had maneuvered Cal to the floor, wrapping his legs in the black belt he'd worn. He nodded to me to help him, and together we dragged the inert Cal toward the kitchen door. Tommy was silent, and so was I, then. Our breathing was ragged as we dragged Cal - he was a big man - toward his car. Where was Tommy's car? What was Tommy's car? Had I ever seen it, or been in it?
"Just over the hood, we're not going far," Tommy instructed as we hauled Cal up over the hood of Cal's BMW. "Now, drive him to the garage. No, no that one. The big one," Tommy instructed as I put the car in gear and started toward the friendly little two car garage with the sliding doors. He wanted me to go to the professional garage, the big dark cement block building that I never went in.
"I don't even know if it's unlocked," I said.
"It is," Tommy replied. And of course, he was right. It wasn't just unlocked, it was open. We pulled in - the garage was big enough for at least two farm vehicles to park end to end inside.
Tommy walked beside the car as I drove in, and he signaled me to stop over the first lift.
"What are you doing?" I demanded, climbing out of the car, and watching as he dragged the overhead crane toward the car, chains and hooks dangling from it.
"What do you think?" he said, lining the lift up with Cal's body. Cal still hadn't stirred. For that matter, Tommy wasn't exactly "stirring" much, either. As I watched him efficiently attach Cal's trussed up legs to the overhead crane's chains, I realized that for all the delight I took in him, Tommy rarely showed any emotion. Smooth, gilded, elegant - and still. Like a photograph of the perfect man, not the man himself.
Just as Tommy was hauling Cal up by the ankles on the crane, Cal began to stir ever so slightly. Tommy paused, locked the lift mechanism, and pulled a hypodermic out of his pocket. Without even a slight hesitation he drilled the needle into Cal's neck, and Cal was still.
"Please, Tommy," I said, wondering if I could get to my iPhone without him noticing. It was just in my pocket, it always was on my person, or near it. Even when - well, you know.
"Please?" he repeated, continuing to drag Cal upward til he was about navel level with Tommy's eyes.
"Please, tell me what you're doing," I said.
He turned to me and smiled that gentle, sweet smile; but when he parted his lips it became a wolfish grin. And I swear, I promise, I saw his canines glint in the dim light of the moon. He would not turn the light on in the garage, or use the power crane, because we both knew the police ran patrols by my house from time to time since the murders. He halted the lift again, and pulled me to him. He was incredibly strong, always his lean, muscled body had more strength than seemed possible, but tonight he felt positively lethal. His arms felt like iron wrapped around me; I could feel his teeth behind his lips as he kissed me, then nipped at my lips and neck.
"Let's not hurt Cal," I breathed into his ear. "This is a bad idea."
He paused in his exploration of my neck and exposed chest. Though the night was cool I was only wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and it had taken him only a moment to pull the zipper part way down. He stared in my eyes with those odd, gold-flecked brown eyes of his.
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?" I said, wrenching away and pulling up my zipper. The zipper of my ...coveralls. My filthy, oil and bloodstained coveralls. "Because then I'm involved, and I don't want to be involved."
He grinned that terrible, feral grin again, and began to pull the clothing from Cal's body, shredding and tearing it where it didn't slide off easily. He used those magnificent teeth to rip a hole in Cal's pants, ripping the inseam, and as I watched him whip the belt from the loops, I noticed he was wearing gloves.
I noticed that we were both wearing gloves. I stared down at them dumbly.
"That's right, sweetheart," he said, tossing Cal's rent underwear into the pile with the rest of his clothes. And for the first time I realized that the clothes were being collected on a plastic shower curtain, which was spread out beneath Cal's inverted, pendant body.
Except for his shoes and socks, Cal was naked. He was a marvelously well-muscled man, I noted. Kind of a waste, really, though the he-man look had never been my style.
"How do I explain this?" I said, circling the tarp, and watching, fascinated, as Tommy bit deeply into Cal's shoulder, his thigh, and tore a finger from his hand using just his teeth. I licked my lips.
"You don't have to. You were asleep. Cal came out, he went home. His car isn't here. You talked, you had a lot to drink."
"I've got to tell them about you, don't you think?"
"Maybe. Just not everything about me." Tommy said. He pulled a switchblade from his sweatshirt pocket, and flicked it open. It was bigger than I'd expected. He dug it deeply into Cal's throat, but he'd been prepared for the arterial spray. He held a large sponge, the kind you use to wash a car, up to the wound, and from somewhere he materialized a bucket into which he directed the spurting fluid. I licked my lips again, running my tongue across my teeth. It must be fear, I reasoned. My mouth was so dry.
"You mean, what you are?"
He grinned again, his teeth and lips etched with the blood from the bites, and I could see that awful movement of muscle and sinew. He would change. I glanced at the windows, set high up in the upper story of the building. The full moon threw a river of pale light into the room, falling, as if planned, onto Cal's terribly white body. Even in his drugged stupor, Cal's body twitched as his lifeblood drained and his heart began to fail.
I know it's trite, but it is amazing how much blood a human body can hold. Tommy was holding a 5 gallon bucket, and it was about a third full, I'd guess. Warm, sloshing blood. When he was satisfied that Cal was drained - and quite obviously, dead - he carefully dumped the contents of the bucket into the oil pit, where it mixed with dirty motor oil from years of oil changes on farm equipment. The he pulled a hose over, and began to spray down Cal's lifeless body.
This would make such amazing footage, I thought. It's so - almost artistic in a way. He's thought it all out; every detail. How many times had he done this? My fingers were itching for my iPhone again.
And then he began to dismember Cal's body.
He used the big knife to start the process, but with the help of a rubber mallet, he shredded the joints, pulling hand from wrist, forearm from upper arm at the elbow; even the tougher shoulder joints parted under repeated blows. Each body part was dumped into one of several trash bags he had waiting. The trash bags were wrapped and carefully placed in the trunk of Cal's car.
"What if Cal told someone about this? About meeting you, here?"
"You told him not to."
“Since when did Cal ever listen?”
“And you're counting on that, right?”
he said, looking at me with not a trace of humor. “He met me.
You'll be found after your emergency call, full of scopolamine. I'll
be gone,” he slammed the trunk lid down. Then he stripped off his
coveralls and gloves, and after that mine, and added them to the pile
of clothing in the shower curtain. This whole mess he wrapped tightly
in a bundle, and dropped into the oil pit. That was followed by a
match.
"So you're not a werewolf?" I said..
"You tell me," he said, panting a little from the effort of carting Cal's magnificently chiseled arms, legs, and other muscle groups to the trunk of the car.
I considered. I smirked. I got in behind the wheel to drive the parts to the lake, where they would be found, tossed in a cold fury along the shoreline. His car would be deep in the water. And I would be doing my stand-up there in a couple of days, still in shock and ill from the lingering effects of the scopolamine.
"Nah," I said, with a sigh, as Tommy popped out of sight. "There's no such thing as werewolves."
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