He slowly turned his head to look at the place where Margo had been standing when his memories ended—there, by the window, the one that was broken. No sign of her. His gut was clenched so tight, he couldn’t even release the prayer at the center of it.
Please God. . . .
He took one more step and brought his gaze around to the opposite wall. That’s when he found her.
Margo had tried to escape down the hallway to the guest bedroom. There she still was, what was left of her, which wasn’t much. She was now little more than a red smear from one end of the blue-walled corridor to the other. She was raw meat and splayed viscera in gory piles at stations along the way. She was bones, some of them chillingly white and clean. Even her face, Zach saw, had been ripped to tatters. Only an eyeless patch of her features still adorned her shattered skull. A silky hank of yellow hair hung twisted down the side, the end plastered to the bloody corner of what was left of her mouth.
But it wasn’t the carnage that made his gorge rise. He’d seen plenty of carnage. It was the full moral understanding of what had happened, of who he was now, what he was now—that’s what filled him with sudden, staggering nausea. He—Zach Adams—had done this thing. To Margo, who had been vivid and beautiful not seven hours ago, who had been angry and calculating and self-assured and in emotional pain, whose body and manner—not very long ago at all—had been alluring enough to make him draw her warm flesh against him and press his body inside hers in at least a semblance of passion and affection. He—federal Agent Zach Adams—had transformed that human being with all her attractions and flaws and feelings and points of view into these smears of blood, these empty piles of bone and flesh, this dead ruin haunted by the thought of her. That—that understanding—not the gore itself—was what made him stagger across the hall to the bathroom door. That’s what made him drop to his knees on the elegant parquet flooring in front of the toilet. And when he saw what he vomited into the bowl, the horror was complete, the realization was sealed, the new nightmare of his existence enveloped him wholly, the old reality gone forever.
Gone forever. When he was finished, he stood up slowly. He looked around him, and everything was different. He was different, and that changed everything else. He had passed from his fears and his desperate prayers into full knowledge—the full knowledge that he was not the man he had been seven hours ago. He was not a man at all anymore.
He was a monster.
19
THE DEAD MAN IN THE BACK SEAT
Zach had killed twice before in his life. Once, as a young patrolman in Houston, he had exchanged gunfire with a rapist punk who had been terrorizing the Trey. Everyone in the neighborhood saw the shootout and no one was sorry when the kid went down. Then, of course, there was Ray Mima, the crazed kidnapper of five-year-old Emily Watson.
When you kill someone, Zach had found, he becomes part of you. Ever after, his soul runs in your veins. The rapist punk—Trevor Standard, his name was—and Ray Mima—they never left him. In the flesh, he had encountered each of them for mere frozen seconds of live-or-die danger: good guy—bad guy—bang, bang, bang. But afterward, when they lived inside him, he came to know them in their full humanity. Their sorrow and pain, their yearning and love, their wickedness and cruelty and their thwarted desire for the life he had taken away from them—all these stared out at the world through his eyes. They deepened his sense of pity, his sense of connection to his fellow travelers from the universal cradle to the universal grave.
With Margo, it was different. It was murder, first of all—at least, he felt it was. And whereas Standard and Mima, whom he’d killed in self-defense, had more or less dissolved into him, melded with him, their sin and suffering and desire becoming part and parcel of his own, Margo remained whole unto herself, a thing apart. She stood like a ghost inside him, a motionless figure, staring at him, staring at his spirit from within. Her hollow and accusing gaze was unrelenting. Unbearable. He knew he was not going to be able to live with what he had done to her.
An hour after he found her remains spread over the hallway, he stepped out of her house into the drive, leaving the front door open behind him. It was past two A.M. now. He was wearing nothing but a bath towel of Margo’s he had wrapped around his middle. He was carrying the tatters of his clothes in one of her garbage bags. He was carrying his car keys and his cell phone and his wallet and his spare change in his other hand.
He moved to the Ford. He used the button on his keychain to pop open the trunk. Take a change of clothes, Grace had said to him when he’d left the house yesterday evening—and there it was in his gym bag. Is that woman the perfect wife, or what? He made the joke to himself humorlessly. Unsmiling, he proceeded to climb into fresh underwear, his suit pants, and a clean white shirt. Margo, the inner ghost of Margo, stared at him, stared into him, the whole time.
He had cleaned the death scene and the surrounding grounds. He had retraced his footsteps and removed as many signs of his presence as he could find, including the muddy footprints on the floor and on the front step and in the driveway gravel. It wasn’t a perfect job, nowhere near it, he knew that. But he also knew it didn’t have to be. Margo had not been killed by a man. Only an animal could have torn her to pieces that way—anyone could see that, and the forensics would confirm it. Even if the police found out he had been here, he doubted they would suspect him of anything. They might not even bother to track him down.
And even if they did find him, even if they did suspect him, it didn’t matter, he didn’t care. As long as he could hold them off just a couple of days, it would be all right. A couple of days was all he wanted—it was all he needed to try to do what he meant to do. It was all he was going to be able to stand, in any case.
He finished dressing, closed the car trunk, took one last look around at the scene, then got into his car. The headlights came on with the engine. He backed the car up, swinging it around. Then he faced front—and saw the shadow of a man in the headlight beams.
Zach gasped, and braked and stared through the windshield. The man was gone, just like that. Zach put the car in PARK. Pushed the door open. Stood up with one foot out of the car on the gravel and peered into the early-morning darkness. No one was there.
His heart beating hard, Zach lowered himself unsteadily behind the wheel again and shut the door.
He drove back up to the dirt road and motored under the canopied branches toward town and the highway. About a half mile on, he saw the shadowy man again. He was standing just within the trees now. A heavy-set man dressed in black, bald with a fringe of gray hair and a sharp gray goatee. His eyes followed Zach eerily as Zach drove by him.
Zach’s heart sped up again at the sight of him, but his mind remained clear and calm. It was a false calm, he knew that. It was the calm of shock. He had suppressed his intolerable feeling of guilt at killing Margo, and as a result he couldn’t feel anything. Still, whatever caused it, his thoughts were cool and crystalline and bright, like diamonds in the black setting of a jewelry box.
He thought: History is in my blood, and the sins of history. I’m one of them now.
He reached the end of the dirt road, paused on the brink of the two-lane. He checked to the left and right. The way was clear. He was about to step on the gas when his nostrils filled with the smell of rank and awful death. He looked up into his rearview mirror and saw the man sitting in his back seat, gazing at him.
It was a jolt. He was startled. But he wasn’t surprised.
I’m one of them.
He said nothing. He started driving again, past the mansions in the forest toward the center of town. He was sick with the smell of the corpse behind him.
“We all want to die at first,” said the dead man in the back seat. He was speaking a foreign language. German, probably. Sounded like it. But somehow Zach understood him. The words weren’t translated exactly, and yet his brain comprehended their meaning instantly, as they were spoken. It was more like seeing than hearing.
Zach bu
zzed one of the back-seat windows down halfway. The smell of rotted flesh was just too much. He cracked his own window open a little and the cold night air washed in, refreshing him. He looked out the windshield at the two-lane in the headlights, but he knew the man was still sitting behind him.
Raising his voice above the sound of the rushing wind at the windows, he said, “Look, I know what y’all want me to do. And I’ll try, I will. But I can’t live with this, not for long. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
“It is dreadful, isn’t it?” said the dead man. “I have killed many men. Women too. With my sword. With ropes and hot pincers. Sometimes I crushed them to pieces with a wagon wheel. They were deemed criminals and I was an executioner. This was the law in those days. And everyone I killed, I carried with me afterward. They made me wiser somehow, in a dark, sad way.”
“I know,” said Zach. “I’ve killed men too. But this is different.”
“Yes,” answered the man simply. “The innocents. After the curse first began . . . I remember: it was intolerable.”
“That’s right,” said Zach. “That’s the word. Intolerable.”
“And yet,” said the man with a sigh. “And yet, you must tolerate it. For as long as you can. You must. The rules of what is real have changed for you, but the rules of good and evil are everlasting. You are one of us now. You are the werewolf. But you are still the lawman too, as was I. That is why Dankl chose you. And you must do what it is given you to do.”
The Ford was moving through the town center now, back past the stately Civil War-era clapboard houses. All of them dark, quiet. Everyone sleeping.
“But you already know all this,” said the corpse in the back seat. “This is why you cleaned the house, yes?”
“I guess. But that won’t hold them off for long. Maybe a day or two. We have science these days. There are always traces. They can always find them. They’ll come for me soon enough.”
Zach glanced up into the rearview just as the Ford passed the darkened shopping mall and moved beneath the town’s only street lamp. He had a moment’s clear view of the executioner’s face. Horrible. His flesh was somehow whole and rotting at the same time, a shifting kaleidoscopic image of vitality and decay, much more terrible together than either one or the other would have been by itself.
The executioner gave a heavy Germanic shrug. “Even science sees only what men see, and men see only what they believe. Science makes their vision even more narrow, in fact, like a bright torch in the night. Everything it doesn’t illuminate sinks into even deeper darkness, yes? All that mystery you become blind to—my Jesus, but it’s vast! This too you know now, eh? About the mystery.”
Zach turned the car onto the highway, bringing it smoothly up to speed. The air washed in through the open windows in a noisy rush. The smell of the executioner’s decay grew even thinner, for which Zach was grateful.
He glanced at the dashboard clock. Nearly two-thirty now. The road before him was all but empty. With clear driving, he’d be home in an hour at the most. Then there would be all Grace’s questions to deal with. Why hadn’t he answered her text messages last night? Why was he all scratched up? Where were the clothes he’d worn? There’d be all those clumsy, implausible lies he’d have to come up with, and God, it hurt to lie to her, as trusting as she was. . . .
“It doesn’t matter,” he said aloud. “Whether they find me or not. I can’t live like this. With the guilt, with the lies. I can’t. I won’t. I understand what you want. Only the wolf can defeat Abend, right? Is that the deal? Well, there are two more nights of the full moon and I’ll do my best. But if I can’t find Abend in that time, I won’t live as a murderer. I won’t live as—”
“No, no, no,” said the man in the back seat. His voice seemed farther away under the noise of the air from the windows, and yet Zach realized it was as close as his own thoughts. “You do not understand. Abend is only a part of it. There have been many Abends. I myself have killed a few.”
“But Professor Dankl said—”
“Yes, yes, I know. That is what she told herself at the end. Many have told themselves something like it at the end. But she knew better. We all know better. The Abends of the world—they come and go. It is the baselard you must confront!”
“The dagger? What about it?”
“It is the baselard,” the executioner murmured again, and then fell silent.
Zach glanced up into the rearview and saw that the dead man was gone.
He looked ahead, frowning grimly through the windshield at the open road. The blankness inside him was giving way to bitterness. That is why Dankl chose you. Yes, he could see it now. Now that his denial was gone, now that he knew it had all been real and no dream, he remembered his last encounter with Gretchen Dankl clearly. He remembered that moment when he had fallen underneath the raging beast she had become. He remembered how the great wolf had hesitated then, and how, in that moment of her hesitation, he had gotten away from her and grabbed the gun—the gun she had given him herself. He understood now. She had meant for him to kill her. Worn out by her failed quest and in despair, Dankl had been looking for a candidate to take her place. She had gone after Bernard Albright first, Imogen Storm’s fiancé. She had tried to pass the curse on to him; but either he had failed to destroy her or had chosen not to and, in the grip of the wolf’s bloodlust, she had slaughtered him instead. Then she had heard that Zach was on Abend’s trail, and she had chosen him next. She had passed on the executioner’s curse and freed herself by his hand—suicide by cop. And now look what she had turned him into! Look what he had done to Margo! It was so unfair. It was just as the executioner had said: intolerable.
Intolerable, yes. Zach could not live with this. He wanted to die—right now, right this minute. He wanted to floor the gas and drive the speeding car into a tree or a wall. Why not? He deserved it. Only the thought of Abend stopped him. The thought of what Abend had done to Europe. Of what he was doing now to the city. Of what he would do to the country if he was not stopped. The executioner was right. Whatever else Zach had become, he was still a lawman. . . .
Two nights, he thought. Two more nights of the full moon. I will try to find him; but after that, either way, I will end this.
He drove on through the darkness.
The rest of that awful morning, luck was weirdly with him—the luck of the devil, he thought bitterly. The devil’s blessing on his own. For instance: he tossed the garbage bag full of torn clothes in a dumpster about a mile from his house, and the sanitation truck came to collect it even as he drove away. As he neared home, he spotted not one car or pedestrian on the streets surrounding his. All his neighbors’ windows were dark. He showered and went to bed without rousing anything more than a sleeping murmur from Grace. The luck of the devil.
Tired as he was, he lay awake a long time. The ghost of Margo stared at him from within, her ruined face, the eyeless scrap of flesh on her stripped skull, the hank of hair plastered to all that was left of her mouth. Unbearable. All the while, he was painfully aware of the scent of Grace beside him, that mysterious atmosphere she gave off. The way he felt now, her presence struck him like the memory of a long-lost country, so far away that he knew he’d never touch its shores again. It was an agony to be so close to her and feel so far. Unbearable. Again and again, as the slow night hours passed, he resolved to die, to destroy himself whether he tracked down Abend and his baselard or not.
When the alarm went off, his devilish luck continued. Grace was in a rush because Tom’s kindergarten class was going on a field trip and she had to get him to school early.
“You must have really been wrapped up in your work. You didn’t even answer my messages!” she said with good humor as she hurried into the bathroom.
She was downstairs before he got out of bed himself. And when he came down for breakfast, she was darting around so much, she didn’t even notice the scratches and bruises on him: they were mostly covered by his clothes now anyway.
When she and
the kids were gone, he used the family computer in the kitchen nook to check for news. He didn’t want to search for Margo’s name or visit the police pages or do anything that might leave any kind of suspicious trail at all, so he simply checked the standard news sites. There was nothing there. Either they hadn’t found the body yet or hadn’t publicized it. But then, it was still early.
He listened to all-news radio as he drove the Ford into Manhattan. Nothing about Margo there either. Hard to tell what that meant. The riots in London and Amsterdam and the widespread persecution of Jewish people in France had grown so dramatic, they were now dominating the reports, sweeping local stories aside. He could have tuned in to Westchester police bands; but again he didn’t want to do anything suspicious, not for the next two days at least.
As he pulled up outside the one-six, the radio anchorwoman handed the broadcast over to the sports reporter. So that was it for now, no more news. Zach snapped the radio off and killed the engine. He fetched his messenger bag out of the trunk and went into the precinct.
He wasn’t planning to stay long. He wanted to find out if he had missed any weekend developments in the case; then he was going to head out to Long Island to see Angela Bose again, to try to browbeat the truth out of her. That had to be his focus now; all his focus: finding Abend. He wasn’t sure what the executioner had meant about “confronting the baselard,” but he thought he was close to Abend now—very close—and he knew he didn’t have much time.
As he was riding up in the elevator, he was trying to think about Goulart—what he was going to tell Goulart—but he was distracted by the uniforms standing on either side of him. He had that criminal sense that his guilt was obvious to them, that Margo’s blood was practically dripping from his fingertips for all to see. He wished to God that he had no conscience. His conscience was killing him.