Laws of Nature -2 Page 2

  Prowler, Jack thought, and the idea only solidified as he moved closer to the man, defiantly chal enging him with his steady gaze. The man did not look away.

  Jack took the two steps up to the bar area and stood directly in front of the man, staring down at him.

  "You're pissing her off," Jack told him.

  The man's eyebrows shot up, a glint of amusement in his eyes. It was an arrogant look, and Jack wanted very much to slap it off his face. "I'm sorry? I don't know what you're talkin'

  about."

  Arms crossed, Jack glared at him. "The redheaded waitress, the one you keep staring at. You're pissing her off."

  The guy laughed. "I'm watchin' her. She's pretty tasty-lookin'. No law against watchin'. And I'm wonderin' if maybe it ain't her I'm pissin' off. Otherwise maybe she'd be over here tel in' me herself. Doesn't look like the kind of girl who'd let a guy do her dirty work. Unless maybe she's scared a' me."

  Tasty-looking. The phrase stuck in Jack's mind. It might just be the guy being obnoxious, or it might mean something else entirely.

  "Maybe she is," Jack admitted. "So maybe you should go."

  The guy shook his head in disbelief and stood up. He was a good four inches tal er than Jack, a lot broader, and - Jack had to hand it to him - he was better dressed. He knew how the man must see him: punk nineteen-year-old in a cotton shirt with the name of the pub sewn on the breast, tel ing him what to do?

  "I'm not done with my beer," the guy drawled in his slight southern accent.

  With a frown, Jack tilted his head and regarded the man. "You've never heard of Tanzer, have you?"

  From the flicker of confusion in the guy's eyes, he knew the answer. This man was not a Prowler. Just an arrogant, sexist moron with a chip on his shoulder.

  Jack sighed. Prowlers were one thing. Jerks like this he had to handle just about every day, which got monotonous.

  "You're gonna leave now," Jack told him.

  "Who the hel are you?" the guy scoffed.

  "The owner," Jack said cool y, gazing up at the man. He sniffed with a boredom that was only partial y feigned. "Look, I know you think you're a badass. But you're gonna have to trust me when I say I've dealt with meaner. If you want trouble here, you shouldn't come alone."

  For a few seconds the guy laughed at that. But even as he did, he watched Jack's eyes. Whatever he saw there, something in them convinced him that Jack was speaking true.

  He reached behind the bar and grabbed his mug, sucked back several gulps of beer, then slammed it down hard and stalked off, not looking back.

  When the guy was gone, Danny - who was subbing for the bartender Bil Cantwel - leaned over the bar. "Damn, Jack, I thought for sure we were gonna have to take the big bastard down."

  Jack smiled softly. Danny was al of five eight and maybe one hundred and forty pounds, but he was a scrapper. Like a lot of the pub's staff, he was a Southie boy.

  "He didn't pay," Danny added.

  "Forget it," Jack told him.

  Mol y met him at the steps that separated the bar from the restaurant, a look of consternation on her face.

  "No?" she asked, glancing toward the front door. "No," Jack reassured her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently.

  Mol y cursed under her breath. "After two and a half months I'm stil total y paranoid."

  Jack reached out and tilted her chin up so that their eyes met. "Stay paranoid," he warned. "We have reason to be."

  Though it was wel past eight o'clock, it had only just begun to get dark as Tucker Marshal strode angrily into the street from Bridget's Irisk Rose Pub. He was glad he didn't know anyone in Boston yet. The kid in the pub had embarrassed him. He knew he could have snapped the boy in half if he'd wanted to, but Tucker had come to town to audition for the touring company of the new Lloyd Webber musical and had a cal back in the morning. The last thing he needed was to spend a few days in jail, or worse yet, damage his face.

  The buffalo wings he'd had at the bar sat heavily in his bel y, sloshing around with a couple of mugs of beer. What unsettled him, though, was the anger that stil roiled in him. Tucker wasn't the kind of guy to walk away from a fight. That sweet little redhead at the restaurant had been something, that was for sure. He'd made eye contact, thinking maybe he would start up a conversation. Not a crime, as far as he knew. Women liked guys who were intense, at least in his experience.

  Grumbling, Tucker strode across the street, barely looking where he was going. A car ground to an abrupt halt to avoid hitting him and the driver laid on the horn. Tucker shot him the finger without even looking up. He turned toward Quincy Market, figuring he could work off some of his anger just walking around, maybe get an ice cream or something. There were a lot of beautiful women, both tourists and locals, down around that part of Boston that second week of July. If he could strike up a conversation, get a chance to run his line, talk about being an actor . . . wel , Tucker usual y had good luck reeling in the ladies.

  The sky was dimming quickly now, the sun disappearing behind the cityscape to the west. Tucker gazed a moment in appreciation as the last rays of light shot scythes of gold between the buildings.

  As he was starting to turn his attention back to the sidewalk in front of him, he slammed right into a bald man who was speaking with a friend. The man bumped into his friend and both of them almost fel before regaining their footing.

  "Sorry," Tucker mumbled.

  He started to go around them.

  The guy he'd run into grabbed him by the hair, spun him around and shoved him up against the side of a building hard enough that his head bounced off the bricks with a painful thump.

  Tucker grunted as al the fury that had been building up in him in the previous few minutes combined with a new wave of rage. He forgot al about his audition. Fists bal ed, he cocked his right arm back and threw the first punch.

  "You sorry son-of-a - "

  The powerful hand that gripped his throat choked off his words. The bald guy batted Tucker's fist away with his free hand and leaned in close. His breath was rank with the odor of rotting meat, and his teeth were too sharp.

  That wasn't the only thing Tucker noticed about the bald man in that instant. His teeth, yeah. But his eyes were wrong, too. Not like a person's, but rimmed with red like a wild animal's.

  And his face . . . his face seemed to change, to pulse. He sneered, and for an eyeblink it was almost as though he had the face of an animal, a snout like that of a dog. Or a wolf.

  Hair shot through the man's scalp and his face, but only a quarter inch, just a bristle.

  Impossible.

  "Do you want to die?" the guy, who wasn't bald anymore, snarled.

  Tucker shook his head vigorously.

  "Apologize."

  He was not about to argue that he had already done so. "I'm . . . I wasn't paying attention. I'm sorry." Tucker stared at his shoes a second; his body felt electrified with fear and astonishment. People did not grow hair in front of you. And the teeth . . . and the eyes.

  "Hey."

  The voice was soft and dangerous. Tucker glanced up nervously to see the bald man smiling at him. Normal teeth. Smooth scalp.

  "Watch your goddamn step," the guy warned him. "You just never know who you're going to run into."

  Then he spun Tucker away from the wal and shoved him on his way. Tucker stumbled a few steps and then hurried on without so much as a single glance back.

  As quickly as he could, Tucker made his way toward the North End, where a friend was letting him crash on a futon in the living room. He had forgotten al about cruising Quincy Market, trying to meet women. He had also decided that he did not like Boston.

  Not at al .

  "What the hel are you doing?"

  Braun frowned, glared at Dubrowski, and ran a hand over his hairless scalp. "Guy ran into me, Doobie. Pissed me off. What do you expect, I should let him knock me on my ass and not say sumthin'?"

  Anxious, Dubrowski glanced along the street toward
Quincy Market, watching to make sure the pretty boy had gone on his way. Then he shot a glance in the other direction, toward Bridget's. Nobody had come outside or seemed to have noticed anything. Final y, he turned his withering gaze upon Braun.

  "Go after him. Kil him. Either make it appear to be a simple murder, or, if you must eat, do not leave a body, even if you have to gnaw the bones and toss them in the harbor. After what happened with Tanzer, we cannot afford to have anyone suspect there are those of us who have not fled this city."

  "Fine," Braun said, sniffing petulantly. "Gotta tel ya, though, Doobie, I got no idea why we're stil screwing around here. We oughta take off, find someplace safe to hunt."

  "And so we shal ," Dubrowski promised. His gaze moved back toward Bridget's across the street. "Just as soon as we have tasted blood, in vengeance for the slaughter of Tanzer and the others of the pack."

  With lightning speed, Dubrowski's right hand lashed out, and he scratched deep furrows in Braun's left cheek. Braun hissed with pain and snarled loudly, but resisted making the change that such a break of concentration sometimes brought.

  "What have I told you about cal ing me 'Doobie'?"

  CHAPTER 2

  Once upon a time, the department store on one of the few blocks known locally - and surprisingly with little irony - as "downtown"

  Buckton had been a Woolworth's. The old brownstone building had even had a soda fountain inside, where a root beer float or a thick milk shake could be had for pocket change. The Woolworth's had long since been replaced by Mackeson's. It was also a department store, little different from the old Woolworth's except it was now owned by a local family. And the soda fountain was gone.

  Alan Vance was only twenty-nine years old, but he remembered the soda fountain, and he thought it was a damn shame old Bernard Mackeson had done away with it when he bought the store. He missed it.

  Other than that, however, downtown Buckton looked as it had when Alan was a boy. Some of the storefronts had been freshened up, of course, and new signs added, but Alan never felt very far away from his youth when he walked along Pine Hil Road. Pine Hil - which did not become a hil until a half mile or so west of downtown - was the main street, but he'd always appreciated the fact that it was not called Main Street. It added character.

  Most days, Alan walked through downtown with his chin up. Little Alan Nelson Vance had grown up to be Deputy Vance, and he was proud of it. The uniform felt right on him, the heavy leather belt and holster sat just so on his hip. As a kid, he had never been the best hitter in the bal park, or the last one standing at the Vermont State Spel ing Bee, but while a lot of his peers had been in a rush to leave Buckton, Alan had never wanted to live anywhere else. Even the time he had spent in col ege was too long away from his hometown.

  His town.

  Sheriff John Tackett was a good man, but he was also an old curmudgeon. Not that his being old was an excuse for his being cranky. Tackett had been sheriff for going on thirty years, and Alan had the idea he had been just as crotchety when he first got the job.

  Someday Alan would have that job. Then it real y would be his town. For the most part, he had always been satisfied to wait until that day came. It had been enough to wear the uniform and to patrol the streets of Buckton with the good wil of the townspeople on his side.

  Now, though, as he strol ed past the Jukebox Restaurant, where he'd taken Carrie Dietrich on their first date back in the sixth grade, and Travis Drug, where he had bought comic books every week right up until he left for col ege, Alan no longer felt as if he had the townspeople on his side. Nancy McCabe caught his eye from just inside the Jukebox. She looked sweet in her waitress uniform, and normal y she would have smiled and waved to him.

  Today, she frowned and glanced away.

  A few cars were on the road, but no one honked and slowed down to shoot the breeze with him. On the front step of Travis Drug Aaron Travis and Kenny Oberst sat in beach chairs, just old men soaking up the warm July sun, enjoying the breeze and the heat. Any other day Kenny would have glanced up and grunted the word deputy by way of greeting.

  Not today.

  Alan hitched his heavy belt up a little higher, set his back a little straighter, but his chin was not quite so high and his gaze was not quite so curious now, nor so friendly. He passed by the gorgeous faÆade of the Empire Theatre, and the smel of fresh popcorn wafted out the open front doors. For a moment he was tempted to go inside. Sitting in the dark with a bucket of popcorn would be running away, Alan knew that. But he thought in that moment that if the movie were good, if it distracted him enough, maybe he could forget how cowardly an act that would be.

  "Damn it," he muttered under his breath, and his pace quickened as he kept going right past the Empire.

  With a quick glance in either direction, Alan strode across the street. On the far corner of the intersection of Pine Hil and the Post Road sat the Paperback Diner. These days it would have been more accurate to cal it a cafÈ, but the owner, Trish Scharnhorst, had always loved the place when she was growing up, and had kept it, name and al , just the way it was when she bought it.

  The front door was open - flies or not - and Alan walked in with his hands in his pockets. He was far more subdued than usual, but so was the Paperback. Trish was nowhere to be seen.

  Old Burt Johnston was behind the counter, and the new girl, whose name he could never remember 'cause she wasn't local, was taking orders from the tables. There were maybe a dozen people in the place, al told. Burt was the only one who greeted him, and it wasn't with hel o.

  The old man raised a hand, more of a salute than a wave. "Alan. Anything?"

  "Working on it, Burt," the deputy replied, hating the helpless, useless taste of the words on his lips.

  The Paperback Diner was unique in Alan's experience. It had breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and brunch on Sundays, and it had the best coffee in town, but it also had books. On shelves built around the wide windows and along the back wal , there were hundreds of paperback books, al of which were available to customers. If al one wanted was a cup of coffee and a good book, that was more than acceptable, it was encouraged. The books could be taken home, as long as they were brought back eventual y.

  When Alan surveyed the diner, he spotted Tina Lemoine almost immediately. She sat in a booth against the far wal by an open window, only a glass of water on the table. He could not make out what book she was reading until he moved closer. It was Hemingway. For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  Alan smiled. That was one of the things he loved most about Tina - her intel igence. He had tried reading Hemingway a couple of times but just could not wrap his head around it. But Tina would probably burn through the book in a couple of hours, while other customers at the Paperback engrossed themselves in Daniel e Steel and Louis L'Amour. Not that there was anything wrong with L'Amour. He was a personal favorite of Alan's.

  Tina was just special. She was something else, not like any other girl he had ever known. Ever since junior high school she had been a tiny flame burning in his heart. When she came back to Buckton after col ege, they found that they had their love of their hometown in common. It was the first of many shared passions they had discovered.

  Tina always made Alan feel like the luckiest man on earth. Even after a week like the one he'd been having.

  "Good book?" he asked as he slid into the booth across from her.

  The smile on his face was genuine, an involuntary reaction to being in her presence, but there must have been something of his melancholy lingering, for when she glanced up at him her eyes narrowed, the skin around them crinkling with concern.

  "Oh, Alan," Tina said and sighed. She marked the page in her book and laid it on the table. Then her voice dropped to just above a whisper. "You have just got to stop letting this thing get to you so much."

  "I know." He nodded slowly, letting some of the stress seep out of his joints. "It's just . . . this kinda thing doesn't happen in Buckton. Now, in a week, we've had two . . . murders. God, I
can barely say the word. Nobody liked Foster, true enough, but Phil Garraty was a saint, Tina. Do you realize we hadn't had an honest-to-God murder in this town since 1957? It's like the natural order is suddenly breaking down. People expect me and the sheriff to keep that from happening, and they're taking it out on us."

  Tina sighed. She reached across the table and took his hands in hers. "Alan, nobody blames you for what's happened. People are just upset, that's al . Crimes have been committed, horrible ones, and they look to you and Sheriff Tackett to get to the bottom of them. To find the man responsible."

  "If it was a man," Alan replied with a derisive grunt.

  Immediately he regretted the words. The papers had reported that the murders were savage, but the details were more gruesome than anyone knew. He had been careful not to discuss them even with Tina. Now he saw the stunned, baffled expression on her face and knew he had made a mistake.

  "What do you mean?"

  Alan glanced around anxiously, then leaned toward her. Her hands clasped his a bit tighter, as if in acknowledgement of the secret he was about to share.

  "Mr. Garraty and Foster? Both of them were . . . they were mangled, Tina. Ripped apart. Not the way you see in serial-kil er movies and the like. Just . . . I wish I had better words to describe it," Alan revealed. He shuddered at the memory of the sight of Phil Garraty's body. "Then again, maybe I don't. Never seen anything like it in my life. We're wondering if it wasn't a bear or something. If it was a man, wel , he wasn't alone, and he sure wasn't in his right mind."

  "My lord," Tina rasped, her voice thick with revulsion. Her mouth hung open just enough to make her lower lip bow fetchingly, and her face had gone ghostly pale.

  "Don't worry, honey. The sheriff and I'l get to the bottom of it," Alan vowed, though he did not feel half so confident as he sounded. But when Tina looked at him like that, so sweetly unaware of how amazing she was, he would have told her the Earth was flat if that was what she needed to hear.