The Narrows(40)

Ben leaned over and snatched the receiver off the phone, pressing it to his ear. He punched in Deets’s number and listened as the line rang. He glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was too late and Deets was probably long gone by now. Also, it was Saturday night.

“You believe in the supernatural, Shirl?” Eddie asked.

“You mean like ghosts?”

“He means vampires that eat tacos and shake maracas,” Mike said, grinning.

“You just wait and see,” Eddie said, tossing the handball back to Mike. “Chupacabra’s responsible, all right. That’s Spanish for goatsucker.”

Again, Mike Keller laughed. “You’re a goatsucker,” he told Eddie.

On the line, Ben got Deets’s voice mail. He left a cursory message, including his personal cell phone number, then hung up. Something had settled down into the back of his brain and was now nagging him. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He picked up Eddie’s stupid magazine and looked at the glossy photo of what appeared to be a hairless coyote, staring at the camera with golden eyes and ears like satellite dishes. It was most obviously Photoshopped.

He could still hear Wendy Crawly’s voice, as clear and sharp as a whip-crack, in his head: The creek has been flooding and the Narrows are like rapids, Ben. He didn’t like the fact that the kid had been missing all day. Again, his mind returned to Maggie Quedentock. What had she hit last night on Full Hill Road? What had she thought she had hit?

Turning around in the cube, Ben powered up the computer. When the Google home page came up, he typed “livestock mutilation” into the search bar then hit Search. The first hit was a Wikipedia entry on something called “bovine excision” which was defined as the apparent killing and mutilation of cattle under unusual or inexplicable circumstances. Ben scrolled through the web page, reading the text with mounting curiosity. He read an account of a horse named Lucy who had been found by her owners dead in a field, her head and neck removed of its flesh. According to the horse’s owner, there was a strong medicinal smell in the air.

“That’s what it was,” Ben muttered to himself.

Both Eddie and Mike turned to look at him. “Talking to yourself now, Sarge?” Mike said.

“That smell last night in Porter’s field,” Ben said to Eddie. “Remember it?”

“Burned my nose,” said Eddie.

“How would you describe it?”

Eddied shrugged and frowned, which was his way of contemplating a question, Ben knew. Eventually, he said, “I guess it smelled like something dead and rotting.”

“Did it?” Ben asked. “Are you sure? Or do you just think that because that’s what you expected to smell?”

For whatever reason, Mike laughed again. The sound of it was beginning to grate on Ben’s nerves.

Sucking at his lower lip, Eddie thought for a few more seconds. Then he said, “I guess it smelled like…well, it reminded me of maybe the locker room at the YMCA over in Garrett, you know what I mean? How sometimes the smell of the locker room stings your eyes.”

“Gross,” Mike Keller grumbled.

“Yes,” Ben said. “Exactly.”

“What are you getting at?” Eddie asked.

Ben turned back to the computer. “I’m not sure yet.”

He continued to read, only to learn that Lucy’s owner later brought other farmers to the field to examine the dead horse’s remains. What they discovered that day were hunks of horse flesh scattered around the field. When one of the other farmers touched one of the pieces, the article attested that the hunk of flesh exuded a greenish sludge that burned the farmer’s hand. The medicinal odor had lessened by this point, though the smell of it was still in the air.

Ben sat up straighter in his chair. He was thinking of the foamy, green goop that had hung from the broken half of skull, and how some of it had crusted to a hard web in the cow’s large eyelashes.

“What time did the guys leave for the Shultz farm?” Ben asked.

“Just before you came in,” said Mike. “You probably passed them out on Belfast when you pulled in here.”

Ben stood, grabbing his campaign hat off the desk.

“Where you going?” Eddie asked.

“Home, to get some sleep. I’ll be in early tomorrow. I want to call over to the sheriff’s department in Cumberland, see if they’ll lend us some bodies to do a search of the woods around the Crawly place.”

“You really think something happened to that kid?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”

Eddie frowned. “What should we do?”

“Make some calls to Mexico. See if you can track down this Mexican vampire.”

Mike Keller laughed.



5



It was twelve thirty when Tom Schuler’s 1972 Ford Maverick pulled into the Quedentocks’ driveway. Leprous with rust, the car belched black clouds of exhaust, and had the words SCHULER’S AUTOMOTIVE stenciled on the doors, an irony that was lost on most everyone who utilized Tom Schuler’s services.

The rain was coming down in cloudy torrents. Maggie saw the Maverick’s headlights pull into the driveway and curve around the side of the house. She’d turned off the floodlights in the backyard by this point, not wanting to see the whitish figure that had been crouched on the hood of the Pontiac anymore. The Maverick’s headlamps blew twin cones of yellowish light into the shadows as it circled around the dirt turnabout and came to a stop between the back patio and the Pontiac.