T. Wright - The Devouring

Coffman eyed her silently for several seconds. Then he said, "And you think that screwy user number is his-Lucas's?"

"I'm almost positive of it."

Coffman sighed. "Well, for God's sake, Irene, you've got a list of user numbers there; why don't you just find his-"

"I did that, and it didn't work."

"Well then, what you do is, you call up this Captain Lucas and you tell him, 'Captain Lucas, I have a disk here that I believe has your user number on it, but the user number on file doesn't work. Was it changed? Did you change it?' "

She nodded. "I did that, too. He says he doesn't know a damn thing about it-and those were his words exactly. He even ordered me to stop looking into the whole thing."

"Why in hell would he do that if he doesn't know anything about it? It doesn't make sense."

"You're very good at stating the obvious, Glen."

"Uh-huh. So what did you tell him?"

"I told him okay, I'd close down the file, I'd erase it."

"And he believed you?"

"I don't think so. When I got to work this morning, the disk was missing."

"My God-"

She smiled, pleased with herself. "Good thing I took the precaution of making a copy."

~ * ~

At the Tenth Precinct

"Well, where is he then?" Ryerson asked the desk sergeant.

"Listen," the sergeant answered, "all I know is that Captain Lucas left the building at nine-thirty this morning. He didn't tell me where he was going and I didn't ask."

Ryerson shifted Creosote from one arm to the other; Creosote had his soft plastic duck between his teeth and as Ryerson shifted him, the dog growled as if annoyed.

"That's some dog," the desk sergeant quipped.

Ryerson ignored the remark. "Could you tell Captain Lucas that I was here?"

"And you are?"

"My name's Ryerson Biergarten."

The desk sergeant wrote it on a memo pad. "You're that psychic, right?"

Again Ryerson ignored him. "Is there a place called Frank's in Buffalo?"

"Frank's?" said the desk sergeant, turned, and called to a couple of uniformed cops behind him, "Hey, any you guys heard of a place called Frank's?"

One of the cops answered, "You mean Frank's Place? Yeah. It's on Eddy Street."

The desk sergeant turned back to Ryerson. "You got that?"

"I got it," Ryerson said.

"You know where Eddy Street is?"

"No," Ryerson answered, "but I have a map."

The sergeant grinned. "I thought you were psychic." A brief pause. "The hell with the map. What you do is, you go back out to the street, you turn left, you go five blocks, you make another left-" He paused, glanced back at the uniformed cops. "Hey, is Eddy Street north or south of Minerva?"

The same cop answered, "Minerva? Where's that?"

And Ryerson said, "Thanks, anyway. I'll stick with the map."

"Suit yourself," the desk sergeant said. And as Ryerson turned to go, he called, "You ain't gonna like it down there, believe me."

~ *~

The image of a blue sky littered with dark gray smudges was with Ryerson almost constantly now, though he tried hard to put it aside. The blue was still soft, pale, and pretty, but the smudges moved and pulsated as if they were alive. There were perhaps half a dozen of them, Ryerson thought. He wasn't sure of the number because each time he tried to study them-much as he'd study a painting or a photograph-they shifted crazily, like snakes squirming off, and he found that his view of them was always oblique.

His guess was that each of the dark gray smudges represented, as he'd told Captain Lucas the day before, "an entity."

"An entity?" Lucas had said then, his voice dripping with incredulity. "What sort of entity , Mr. Biergarten?"

And despite himself, despite all that he knew about how to approach people like Jack Lucas-people who, as Lucas had put it, believed that "everything's got a logical explanation … if you can't touch it or smell it or taste it or fuck it, then by God it doesn't exist!"-Ryerson had answered, "An evil entity." Which elicited a half minute's worth of hooting laughter from Lucas-laughter so loud and uncontrolled, in fact, that one of the detectives in the outer office had stuck his head in and said, "Is everything okay here?"

But evil entity fit, Ryerson thought now, as he maneuvered the Woody down Minerva Street on his way to Eddy Street, then to Frank's Place, where, he was sure, he'd find Captain Lucas.

But there was this, too; if each of those obscenely pulsating dark gray smudges on a field of soft, pretty pale blue represented an evil entity-or, as Joan preferred it, a demon- then each of those smudges had to signify a person, too. Ryerson knew this as certainly as he knew that the sun would set, though it had taken Joan to make him see it clearly. "I don't know where they come from," she'd told him. "I guess they come from the same place that all suffering and loneliness and pain comes from. From us. From all of us."

He stopped for a red light at the corner of Minerva and Eddy streets. He looked first right, then left, hoping to see a sign that said "Frank's Place," but he saw only a succession of tattered two- and three-story brick buildings in both directions. Near the center of the block to his left there was a sign that read GREYHOUND PACKAGE EXPRESS, and beyond it a neon sign was flashing the word "EAT" in green. On impulse, he turned right.

Upon reflection now, he thought that Jack Lucas had had good reason to toss him out of his office, because he'd handled the whole thing badly. He'd let the grotesque and deadly scenario developing in Buffalo overcome his good sense. Because while "evil entity" had elicited a half minute's worth of hooting laughter from Captain Lucas, "demons" had gotten a full minute's worth of stony silence. Angry and unreadable silence. "I don't be lieve in demons!" he had said finally. "And I think that anyone who does is a child."

"Yes," Ryerson nodded, "I agree-that is, of course, if we're talking about the archetypal demon that climbs out of hell to take possession of us. And I'm not talking about that at all, Captain. I'm talking about the demons we create." That, Ryerson remembered, had clearly touched a raw nerve with Lucas.

"Whatever . . . problems any of us have, Mr. Biergarten," he'd begun, "are ours to deal with in our own way."

"You don't understand; I'm sorry, Captain, you don't understand. I'm not talking about psychic demons; I'm not talking about behavior , I'm talking about things we can touch, and feel, and taste-they're your criteria, after all. I'm talking, for instance, about this woman-"

And that's when Lucas had thrown him out.

~ * ~

Ryerson saw a small, weathered, handmade sign just ahead-dark blue letters on a white background: FRANK'S PLACE it read. He pulled over to the curb, locked all the Woody's doors, glanced about. There were a couple of haggard-looking men on the sidewalk, and, as Ryerson watched, they went into Frank's Place. Moments later he followed.

~ * ~

Benny Bloom knew that most of the kids at Buffalo Pierpont High School thought he was a nerd. But that was okay, because a nerd, by definition, was different, and different was usually better. It was all a matter of perception. Being thought of asa nerd was one thing, but actually being a nerd was something else entirely. Being a nerd was a privilege and an honor. If you were a nerd, it meant that you were above average, it meant that you were superior.

Or so Benny told himself.

In practice, Benny thought, being a nerd was a damned lonely business. The only people who wanted to hang around nerds were other nerds, and nerds as a group were boring.

Nerds didn't get any girls, either. Unless they were girl nerds.