Crimson Shore Page 27

  The additional men, the strangely comforting routine, had helped take some of the edge off Rivera’s undercurrent of tension—not to say anxiety—over just how strange this situation was. Despite everything, they were no closer to understanding what had actually happened, identifying the killer, or understanding his motive. If any of the witnesses were to be believed, it was a monstrous, humanoid creature, naked, filthy, with a snout and tail, that moved as fast as a wolf and dismembered its victims with massive, tearing hands.

  Right.

  Except that they had found countless size 16 footprints—bare—throughout the town, inside the homes that had been invaded, many printed in blood. One killer. Not a crazy mob, not a riot, not a rampaging gang of terrorists. Just one killer seemed to have done all this. As for witness descriptions of that killer, Rivera chalked a fair amount of that up to hysteria and terror. But not all of it. Some crazy, large, and undoubtedly costumed killer had rampaged through town. But who he was, why he had done it, where he had come from, and where he had gone were mysteries yet to be solved.

  One killer. Rivera’s nerves spiked again.

  There had been a crucial development: one bright-eyed officer had noted a security camera in front of a clothing store that the killer must have passed several times. The camera was recording 24/7, and it was low-light capable. Best of all, it switched to battery backup during a power failure. Rivera’s team had broken into the store and collected the digital footage, and they were now processing it at the mobile command center. The footage was overly dark due to the lack of ambient light, but it was currently being enhanced, and it was supposed to be ready…he checked his watch…now.

  Until he could see that footage, Rivera simply refused to speculate on how a single individual, barefoot no less, could have perpetrated all this death and destruction. This was something completely outside his experience, and he needed to reserve judgment…at least until he had seen that footage with his own eyes.

  He raised his radio. “Gil?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Is that footage ready?”

  “Um, well, sort of, but I gotta tell you—”

  “Don’t tell me anything. I want to see it fresh, without any preconceptions.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Gil didn’t sound his usual cocky self. Rivera hung up the radio and walked toward the command center: a mobile container set atop a tractor-trailer rig. He mounted the steps and entered to find things strangely silent. It didn’t take ESP to sense that the level of tension in the room was through the roof.

  “What do you have?” he asked.

  A number of edgy glances were exchanged. Gil, the video operator, nodded toward a screen. “This is the feed from the store camera. It was dark, but all the digital information was there, waiting to come out. It covers the area in front of the store, the sidewalk and part of the street. It caught the, the perp both coming and going down the street. Time stamp’s in the lower-right corner. The first segment starts at 21:23, and the next at 22:04.”

  “Let’s see the first segment.”

  A hesitation. “Okay.”

  Rivera folded his arms and watched the monitor. At first there was nothing to see, just a fish-eye view of the empty sidewalk, the edge of the storefront, and the street. The town was in blackout and there were no streetlights, but the camera had recorded a grainy, reddish image that was surprisingly clear. Suddenly, there was a movement and a figure strode across the monitor. It took less than a second—but that was enough.

  “What the fuck?” Rivera said.

  Silence.

  “It’s a guy in a mask and suit,” Rivera said.

  No one responded until Gil, in a weak voice, said, “I’ll go through it frame by frame.”

  Rivera stared as the feed was rerun and replayed, this time at one frame per second. The perp—if it could be called that—came into view again, walking in a fast shamble down the sidewalk toward town.

  “Freeze it!” Rivera barked.

  Gil froze the image.

  “I don’t believe this. Go one frame back.”

  The operator complied.

  “I don’t fucking believe it. Can you magnify that face?”

  The face was magnified.

  Rivera squinted, looking close. “That’s no mask.”

  “No,” Gil said.

  No one else spoke.

  Rivera licked dry lips. “Continue.”

  He watched the frame-by-frame in deepening shock and disbelief. It was pretty much as the witnesses had said—a deformed monster with a tail. No, he said to himself, not a monster: this was a human being, a freakishly deformed man. The view was from diagonally and above, which accentuated the doglike, bucktoothed snout. But instead of a dog’s nose it had a human nose, squashed like a prizefighter’s. The man’s face was splattered with blood and gore, slowly being washed away by the rain. Its expression positively glowed with hatred, the eyes like slits, the mouth open, showing a swollen pink tongue from which hung a rope of drool. It strode along with a sense of purpose that chilled Rivera to the bone simply because it was so intentional. There was no insanity here, nothing random: this was a brute with a plan. And there they were—those gigantic, splayed bare feet with the three-inch toenails, the tracks of which they’d found everywhere.

  Gil cleared his throat. “I’ll advance it to the next segment, with him coming back after the massacre—”

  Rivera straightened up. “I don’t need to see any more. I want dogs. Tracking dogs. The son of a bitch went into the salt marshes and we’re going after him.”

  “Lieutenant?”

  He turned in time to see a striking, dark-skinned individual—who’d been in a far corner, giving a statement to one of Rivera’s men—step forward.

  “Who are you?” Rivera asked.

  “Paul Silas. Live out past Dill Town. I couldn’t help overhear what you just said. If you’re going into the marshlands, you better have someone who knows his way around or you aren’t ever gonna come out.”

  Rivera looked at the man. He had an air of quiet competence about him. “You telling me you know these marshes?”

  “A bit. Nobody knows it all.”

  “You see that thing on the screen?”

  “I did.”

  “And you still want to help us?”

  Silas cast an eye out the command center, over the darkness of town, then turned back to Rivera. “I surely do.”

  57

  In the perfect dark, Constance listened to the sounds of the struggle. As intently as she listened, she couldn’t determine who the demon was fighting, only that it must be someone tenacious and powerful. But as the clash of battle progressed, as the demon roared in what sounded like increasing triumph, she sensed the monster’s foe was losing—and when the sounds died away and silence returned, it was only the demon’s loud snuffling she heard. The other one was evidently dead, which did not surprise her.

  Constance reviewed her situation. She had spent many of her younger years in a dark basement not unlike this one, and had once possessed an exquisite sense of hearing and smell, as well as keen night vision. She knew how to move in total silence. Those senses, dulled more than she’d expected by normal living, quickened somewhat in the dark and looming danger of the tunnels. She could not see—there was no light at all—but she could hear.

  The creature was snuffling again, loudly, like a dog with its nose in the air, trying to catch a scent—her scent. But the air was dead, with no movement at all; that was to her advantage.

  With extreme care she moved away from the sound, one hand sliding lightly along the wall as she went, feet probing gently ahead so as to make no noise. The wall of the tunnel made a turn, and another turn, and yet another; soon she came to a dead end and had to retrace her steps. At another point, she came to a heap of old bones that quietly crumbled under her touch while she worked her way past them.

  She sensed she had entered an underground maze of crisscrossing tunnels, alcoves,
and culs-de-sac. Again, the air was completely dead, the atmosphere one of staleness and desuetude. There was a lot of old refuse on the ground, and the walls were crawling with centipedes, spiders, and pill bugs. It seemed these were long-abandoned tunnels that, perhaps, the creature might be less familiar with. What she needed to do was maneuver past it, somehow, and then get out—with all possible speed.

  As she listened, she heard more snuffling and labored breathing, and it occurred to her that the demon might be injured. She felt increasingly certain that it was looking for her.

  She began moving again, not knowing where she was going, her aim now merely to keep away from the creature. But even as she moved, the sounds ceased. She continued down one long tunnel segment, then froze: she could hear him moving, breathing hard, ahead of her and headed in her direction. Pressing herself against the wall, she waited, holding her breath. The sounds came closer, along with a grotesque and now-familiar stench that seemed to envelop her…a shuffling of feet on the sandy floor…and then he had passed by, following the path of an intersecting tunnel.

  She exhaled. The demon didn’t seem to have as keen a sense of smell as she had feared. Or had it deliberately passed her by? Either way, this was her chance. If she moved in the direction opposite to the demon, perhaps it would lead her out. At the very least, it would distance her from him. She started forward, faster now—only to suddenly feel a cold, cold hand clamp down over her face and mouth.

  58

  Rivera stood near Chief Mourdock’s squad car, watching the handler work the dogs. The man had arrived in record time, accompanied by two powerful redbone coonhounds, which, he claimed, were especially suited for work in swamps and water. Rivera sure hoped so; even from here, he could see that the tide was coming in fast.

  The enigmatic Paul Silas stood off to one side, tall and silent. Rivera wondered if he’d made the right choice in accepting his help. True, the man did have a faint air of the military about him. And as he looked out again over the dark salt marshes—thrashing in the wind, tatters of mist whisked along in the dying storm—he realized he had no desire to venture into that hell without guidance.

  As he’d waited for the dog handler, he’d worked out the basic sequence. The killer, after first wreaking havoc in the town, had gone on to kill Chief Mourdock here on Dune Road, and then disappeared southward. With much loud baying the dogs had picked up the trail from the squad car and were even now beginning to follow it into the marsh.

  Silas began following the dogs and Rivera hurried to catch up to him, Rivera with a flashlight, Silas with a headlamp. They were preceded by five heavily armed members of the SWAT team and an officer carrying a powerful beacon that shot a brilliant beam of light a hundred yards ahead.

  The dog handler was a big man with a red beard, wearing a Red Sox cap and bundled in a slicker. His name was Mike Kenney and he seemed to know what he was doing. The dogs, too, looked like they meant business. Kenney had them both on long leashes and was firmly in control. The dogs were following the trail without hesitation, charging ahead confidently and pulling Kenney along.

  Rivera continued following the SWAT team, Silas at his side. He had a waterproof GPS that promised to show them exactly where they were.

  “Any idea where he’s headed?” Rivera asked Silas.

  “He seems to be making a beeline across the marshes. Which would bring him out on Crow Island.”

  “And what’s out there?”

  “Nothing but scrub pines, sand dunes, some ruins, and a beach. Most of the island’s a wildlife refuge.”

  “So what’s ahead I ought to know about?” He was staring at his GPS, but he couldn’t seem to translate the neat green-and-yellow map to the howling wilderness they were in. Kenney and the dogs had disappeared into a sea of salt grass, followed by the SWAT team, and he could hear the dogs baying up ahead. As they proceeded, the baying of the dogs seemed to ratchet up a notch.

  “Well,” said Silas, “if he keeps up this line, he’s heading for the Stackyard Channel.”

  “Which is?”

  “That’s the main tidal channel of the marsh. The tide runs through there pretty hard. We’re at three-quarter incoming tide, which is when the current peaks. It’ll be running five, six knots.”

  “Can we wade it?”

  Silas gave a snort. “At this tide you can’t even swim it.”

  “So he’ll be stopped? Turned aside?”

  “If the killer came through an hour or two ago, say, the tide would’ve been a lot lower. So he maybe swam it. We’ll need a boat.”

  Rivera cursed himself for not thinking of this before. He unhooked his radio and called the command center.

  “Barber, I want you to get the two Zodiacs into the water, ASAP. Send them into the Stackyard Channel. You’ll find it on the survey map.”

  He described what he wanted and, using his GPS, emailed waypoints to the command center showing exactly where they would need the boats. At least the team had brought a trailer with the two Zodiacs. They could be put in at the town landing in a matter of minutes, and—with their powerful engines and the tide in their favor—Rivera figured it would take less than ten minutes for them to reach the rendezvous point.

  “Channel’s up ahead,” said Silas.

  A moment later, Rivera and his men emerged onto the channel bank. He looked ahead across fifty feet of powerful, black, swift-moving current, its surface swirling with nasty eddies and upwellings. The wind howled across the water, lashing the cattails and bringing with it a gust of stinging rain. The beacon light pierced the gloom and illuminated the far embankment, where he could make out tracks in the mud.

  “Looks like he swam,” said Silas.

  “It’s going to be a bitch landing a boat along this embankment.”

  Silas nodded.

  “You got any idea why he’s heading out here? Seems he knows where he’s going.”

  Silas shook his head.

  Rivera gestured at the channel. “Any more like this?”

  “Just a lot more marsh grass and a couple mudflats before you reach the scrub.”

  Kenney was struggling with the dogs now, trying to pull them back from the edge. The dogs sounded almost insane with frustration at not being allowed to leap into the water. Kenney, who until now had been speaking to them in a low calm voice, was starting to lose his cool.

  Rivera went over. “We have two boats coming. Zodiacs.”

  “I hope to hell they get here soon,” the handler replied. “I’ve never seen the dogs so excited.”

  More full-throated baying came from the dogs, who were pulling hard on the leashes. Kenney spoke to them sharply. The tide bore along, deep and powerful, between the banks; woe to any dog or man who was caught in it.

  Rivera’s radio crackled. “About half a mile from your waypoint,” said the dispatcher. Rivera looked upstream and after a moment was able to glimpse, through the rain, a white light, flanked by green and red.

  “Kenney,” he said, “you and the dogs get in the first boat. We’ll take the other.”

  “Right.”

  “Be careful. This is going to be a little hairy.”

  The lead Zodiac came into the beam of the beacon, the pilot bringing the boat past their position and then pushing the tiller to the right, turning the boat upcurrent and coming into the embankment at a slower pace, the engine raised slightly and churning the water.

  “Dogs first!” Rivera shouted.

  The boat moved parallel to shore, slipping closer. The dogs, still frenziedly pulling at their leashes, did not look like they knew what to do. Kenney reined the leashes in tight and ordered: “Jump in! Jump in!” For a moment, it looked like both animals were going to leap over the rubber gunnels at the same time, but then—at the last instant—one pulled back. With a shout, Kenney and the dog were thrown into the boiling water.

  “Life ring!” Rivera cried. “Throw him the life ring!” By the harsh light of the beacon, Rivera could see Kenney’s pale face sweeping alon
g with the current. Not far away, the coonhound was paddling furiously and aimlessly, eyes bulging, screeching in terror, paws thumping the water. The dog, dragging its leash, was being spun around in a powerful eddy, its dangling tongue whipsawing, while Kenney tried to swim toward it. The dog’s screech turned into a hideous gargle as the Zodiac pilot gunned the engine and headed toward Kenney, the other dog still in the boat, barking frantically and looking as if it would jump out at any moment. In seconds the Zodiac had closed in on Kenney and the life ring was tossed; Kenney seized it and was pulled close, then bodily hauled over the gunnel by the pilot and mate together.

  “Get the dog!” he screamed.

  The pilot swung the boat around, aiming for the churning, eddying white water. But even before they reached it the dog went under; the last thing Rivera saw were floppy ears and a lolling tongue, glistening in the beacon’s brilliance; then, finally, two rotating paws that were quickly sucked beneath the gray, roiling surface.

  Kenney let out a wail of despair and had to be restrained from jumping into the water after it; the boat circled and circled, but the dog did not reappear.

  Rivera got on the radio. “Bring them to the other side,” he told the pilot. “We’ve got to keep going, even with the one dog.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring the second boat in.”

  The second Zodiac, which had been too far away to assist, came in now and turned upcurrent, easing into shore. The men jumped in, Rivera last, and they set out across the channel. A moment later they buried their nose in the mud of the far embankment, next to the first Zodiac, and in another moment were back on land.

  “My dog!” Kenney was screaming. “We’ve got to go back out and look for my dog!”

  Rivera grabbed him by the arm and shook him. “Your dog’s gone. We’ve got a job to do.”

  The man, his cap dripping wet, his clothes sodden, stared back at him uncomprehendingly. No way was he in any shape to continue. Rivera turned to one of the men. “Okay, take Mr. Kenney back to the command center. We’re keeping the dog.”