Patricia Cornwell - Black Notice

The so-called Loup-Garou couldn't have been pleased about what was being said, assuming he had access to a radio or television.

"… been described as stocky, maybe six feet tall, maybe bald. According to the chief medical examiner, Dr. Scarpetta, he may have a rare disease that causes excess hairiness and a deformed face and teeth..:'

Thanks a lot, Harris, I thought. He had to pin all that on me.

"… are urged to exercise extreme care. Don't answer the door until you're sure who it is."

Harris was right about one thing, though. People were going to panic. My phone rang at almost ten.

"Hey," Lucy said, and she sounded more cheerful than I'd heard her in a while.

"Are you still at MCV?" I asked.

"Closing up things here. You see the snow out there? It's coming down like a bitch. We should be home in about an hour."

"Drive carefully. Call me when you pull up so I can help get Jo inside."

I put two more logs on the fire, and no matter how secure my fortress was, I started to feel scared. I tried to distract myself by watching an old Jimmy Stewart movie on HBO while I paid bills. I thought of Talley and got depressed again, and I was angry with him. No matter my ambivalence, he hadn't really given me a chance. I had tried to get in touch with him, and he hadn't bothered to call back.

When the phone rang again, I jumped and a stack of bills fell off my lap.

"Yes?" I said.

"The son of a bitch's been staying there, all right," Marino exclaimed. "But he ain't there now. Trash, food wrappers, crap all over the place. And hairs in the damn bed. The sheets stink like a dirty, wet dog."

Electricity crackled up my veins.

"HIDTA's got a squad out somewhere, and I've got cops all over the place. He takes one dip in the river and we got his ass."

"Lucy's bringing Jo home, Marino," I said. "She's out there, too."

"You're by yourself?" he blurted out.

"Inside, locked up, alarm on, pistol on the table."

"Well, you stay right where you are, you hear me!"

"Don't worry."

"One good thing is, it's snowing really hard. About three inches already, and you know how snow lights up everything. Ain't a good time for him to be out wandering around."

I hung up and skipped from channel to channel, but nothing interested me. I got up and wandered into my office to check my e-mail.but didn't feel like answering any of it. I picked up the jar of formalin and held it up to the light, looking at those small yellow eyes that were really gold dots reduced in size, and I thought about how off-base I'd been about so much. I anguished over every slow step and every wrong turn I'd taken. Now two more women were dead.

I set the jar of formalin on the coffee table in the great room. At eleven I turned to NBC to watch the news. Of course, it was all about this evil man, this Loup-Garou. As I changed to another channel, I was shocked by my burglar alarm. The remote control fell to the floor as I jumped up and fled to the back of the house. My heart was coming out of my chest. I locked my bedroom door and grabbed my Glock, waiting for the phone to ring. Minutes later it did.

"Zone six, the garage door," I was told. "Do you want the police?"

"Yes! I want them now!" I said.

I sat on my bed and let the alarm beat my eardrums as it hammered and hammered. I kept an eye on the Aiphone monitor, and then remembered it would not work if the police didn't ring the bell. And, as I knew so well, they never did. I had no choice but to turn the alarm off and reset it and sit and wait in silence, straining so hard to hear every sound that I imagined I could hear the snow falling.

Barely ten minutes later, there was a sharp rapping on my front door and I hurried down the hallway as a voice on the porch loudly called'out "Police."

With great relief I placed my pistol on the dining-room table and said, "Who is it?"

I wanted to be sure.

"Police, ma'am. We're responding to your alarm."

I opened the door and the same two officers from several nights before knocked snow off their boots and came in.

"You've not been having a good time of it lately, have you?" Officer Butler said as she pulled off her gloves, her eyes moving around. "You might say we've taken a personal interest in you."

"Garage door this time," McElwayne, her partner, said. "Okay, let's take a look."

I followed them through the mud room and into _ the garage, and instantly knew this was no false alarm. The garage door had been pried up about six inches, and when we got down to look through the opening, we saw footprints in the snow leading to the door and then away from it. There were no apparent tool marks except for scrapes on the rubber strip at the bottom of the door. The footprints were lightly dusted with snow. They- had been left recently, and that was consistent with when the alarm had gone off, McElwayne got on the radio and requested a B amp;E detective, who showed up twenty minutes later and took photographs of the door and footprints and dusted for fingerprints. But once again, there really was nothing more the police could do other than follow the trail of footprints. It led along the edge of my yard and out to the street, where the snow was chopped up by tires.

"All we can do is step up patrol around here," Butler told me as they left. "We'll keep an eye on your house as best we can, and if anything else happens, call nine-one-one right away. Even if it's just a noise that bothers you, okay?"

I paged Marino. By now it was midnight.

"What's going on?" he asked.

I told him.

"I'm coming over right now."

"Listen, I'm all right," I said. "Battled, but all right. I'd rather you stay out there looking for him instead of coming here to baby-sit me,°"

He seemed unsure. I knew what he was thinking.

"It doesn't seem his style is to break in anyway;" I added.

Marino hesitated, then he said, "There's something you ought to know. I didn't know if I should tell you. Talley's here."

I was stunned.

"He's the head of the squad HIDTA sent in."

"How long has he been here?" I tried to sound curious and nothing more.

"Couple days."

"Tell him hello," I said as if Talley meant very little tу me anymore.

Marino wasn't fooled.

"Sorry he turned out to be such an asshole;" he said.

The minute I hung up, I contacted the orthopedic unit at MCV and the nurse on duty didn't know who I was and wouldn't release any information about anything. I wanted to talk to Senator Lord. I wanted to talk to Dr. Zenner, to Lucy, to a friend, to someone who cared, and at that moment I missed Benton so acutely I thought I couldn't go on. I thought of being buried in the wreckage of my life. I thought of dying.

I tried to revive the fire, but it was stubborn because the wood I'd carried in was damp. I stared at the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table but didn't have the energy to light one up. I sat on the couch and buried my face in my hands until the spasms of grief subsided. When a sharp rapping sounded on the door again, my nerves ached tut I was just so tired.

"Police," a male voice said from outside as he rapped again with something hard like a nightstick or blackjack.

"I didn't call the police," I said through the door.

"Ma'am, we've gotten a call about a suspicious person on your property," he said. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes," I said as I turned off the alarm and opened the door to let him in.

My porch fight was out, and it had never occurred to me he might be able to speak without a French accent, and I smelled that dirty, wet doglike smell as he pushed his way in and shut the door with a back-kick. I choked on the scream in my throat as he smiled his hideous smile and reached out a hairy hand to touch my cheek, as if his feelings for me were tender.