T. Wright - The Devouring

And the woman whispered at him, "Hey, honey, those two don't have nothin' to do with this." A wide smile parted her lips. She grabbed his erect penis with her right hand, and with her left she reached around and caressed his buttocks. She whispered, "C'mon now, Benny, push it in, bend down a little"-he did-"and push it in. That's right. That's good. Oh, damn, Benny, that's so good!"

~ * ~

"Creosote's sick," Ryerson said. The dog was asleep on his lap, its breathing shallow and irregular.

Joan, seated next to Ryerson on the couch, said, "What did you see at that house, Rye? Please tell me."

He shook his head. "I don't know what I saw, Joan." A short pause. "I saw demons. I don't believe in demons, but I saw demons there."

Joan nodded. "Yes, I saw them, too."

He looked questioningly at her.

She explained, "I saw some thing, Rye. I saw shadows." A pause. "I saw moving shadows."

He looked away. "I-I don't . . ." he stammered.

"No," she said. "I don't understand it, either."

He smiled. "You're getting pretty good at this, Joan."

"I don't welcome it," she said.

Ryerson stood, Creosote cradled in his arms. "I'd like you to stay here, Joan. At the house. Please don't come looking for me; I think you'll be much safer here.

"Do you know how paternal and sexist that sounds, Rye? Who had to rescue whom today?"

He grinned at her. "You're right, of course. I'm sorry. But I would still like you to stay here. And please don't ask why.'

"Why?" she said.

He sighed. "Why should you stay here? Or why shouldn't you ask why you should stay here?"

"You're a real card, Ryerson Biergarten. This isn't some grade B western, and I'm not some quivering southern belle who needs to be protected from … from whatever it is"-she waved at the air-"that you want to protect me from. I'm an adult, I'm smart, I'm strong, and I'm fully capable of taking care of myself."

Ryerson hesitated; something cold and threatening had just passed through him. He shook his head, tried to get it back because he wanted to look at it, wanted to examine it, and find its focus. But it was gone. He grinned at Joan, feigned a casual shrug, and said, "Well, I really wasn't intimating anything at all-"

"Oh, c'mon, Rye-you were too. Now, I know that you're going to take Creosote to the vet. But I don't know where you're going after that."

Ryerson sighed. "To a bar called Frank's Place," he answered.

"Okay," she said. "I could use a drink."

An hour later Ryerson had, reluctantly, given Creosote over for the night to Dr. Craig Gibson, D.V.M. "I'll run some tests on him, Mr. Biergarten," Gibson explained. "I suspect an allergy."

"Do what you feel is necessary," Ryerson had said, then, after assuring Creosote that he wasn't abandoning him, that he'd be back the next day, he went, with Joan, to Frank's Place.

Officer Leonard McGuire appeared from within the Janus kitchen and motioned to Guy Mallory, standing in the foyer with the woman from the Medical Examiner's Office. The woman said to Mallory, whose attention was on her, "I think, that cop wants to talk to you," and nodded at McGuire.

Mallory looked over at him. "Yeah, what is it, McGuire?"

"There's some trouble at the hospital, Sergeant," McGuire answered.

"What hospital?"

"Buffalo Memorial, sir."

"What kind of trouble?"

McGuire looked mystified. "What kind of trouble, sir?" He paused; his look of mystification grew stronger. "I don't know, sir. All I know is they've got trouble there. I don't know what kind of trouble it is."

Two morgue attendants came down the stairs carrying the body of Frank Janus on a stretcher. "Step aside, please," said the lead man, and Mallory and the woman from the M.E.'s office moved out of the foyer, closer to McGuire. McGuire backed quickly away from them.

Mallory asked him, "What are you-nervous?"

"No, sir," he answered.

"Well, you look nervous; you look like you've got ants in your pants."

"No, sir. I'm only doing my job, sir."

Mallory grimaced. "I asked you before not to call me 'sir.' "

McGuire nodded quickly, stiffly. "Yes. Certainly."

Mallory studied McGuire's face closely, then said, "Listen, I think you're having a rough time of it here. Why don't you go back to the station, fill out your report, and call it a day."

McGuire clicked his heel on the floor. "Yes, sir." He saluted.

Mallory shook his head resignedly. "Go on now," he said, "get outta here. And take the long way back if you want; collar a few jaywalkers, run down a few speeders. I think you could use a break from all this crap, Officer McGuire."

"Yes, sir," McGuire barked, and with another click of the heel, and another salute, he moved quickly past them, through the foyer, around the men bearing the stretcher down the sidewalk, to his squad car. He got in, slammed the door, fired up the engine, and roared away from the curb.

Mallory turned to the woman from the M.E.'s office. "Jesus," he said, "that man's on a ragged edge for sure."

And the woman from the M.E.'s office said, "That man should be given an immediate leave of absence, Detective. If you ask me, he's on the verge of a breakdown."

~ * ~

All his life Leonard McGuire wanted only to do what he was told to do because that made life easier for him. At home his father took all of Leonard's decision-making on his own shoulders because, he assured Leonard, "you certainly can't make decisions yourself." And in school Leonard, who was not at all stupid, did precisely what he was told by his teachers and made it through twelve grades with hassles to no one. Then, several years after getting out of the Marines, he was hired by the Buffalo Police Department. And, much to his surprise, he found that he could make decisions. Most of them were right; some of them weren't. And after a while, the ones that weren't began to turn the tide, began to convince him yet again that, as his father said, he didn't have the brains that God gave geese. Then his decisions became momentous and nerve-jarring, and he longed to have them made for him.

Then he was there in "The District" when Detective Third Grade Andrew Spurling launched himself into the abandoned tank tread factory, there at the ready with a flashlight, there when the beam of the flashlight fell on that incredibly beautiful and hungry woman.

There when she put her mouth first on Spurling, then on Mathilde, then on him. There when she stepped back from them and proclaimed, "You have so much life in you, so much life in you!"

And that's when he began to change. When he began to revert to what he knew, deep in his heart, was the only thing he could be-a programmable cop.

Collar a jaywalker , he'd been told. Run down a speeder , he'd been told.

~ * ~

The middle-aged woman on Greeley Place glanced at her speedometer; it read thirty-five. Wasn't that the speed limit? She glanced about, saw a speed limit sign. It read thirty. "Oh, heavens," she muttered, and realized sinkingly that the cop behind her was indeed stopping her, not someone else, not, for instance, those awful motorcycle hoodlums who'd passed her a few minutes before.

She pulled her Dodge Diplomat over to the curb, brought it to a jarring halt because she was nervous-it was the first time she'd been stopped in nearly forty years of driving, a fact she intended to share quite vocally with the policeman who'd stopped her.

She glanced around at the patrol car parked a good two car lengths behind her, saw the cop sitting behind the wheel, and stared at him a few moments. She decided he was probably "running a make" (as they said on the TV cop shows) on her license number and would be getting out of his car momentarily. She opened her purse, dug around in her Kleenex mini-tissues, her lipsticks, compacts, receipts, loose change, and other assorted odds and ends until she came up with her wallet. She got her license from it, studied it closely to be sure it hadn't expired. It hadn't. She sighed, relieved, opened the glove box, and poked around in the profusion of junk in there until she found her insurance card. Then, happy that all her paperwork seemed to be in order, she glanced out her side window, thinking that surely the cop would be standing next to the car by now. But he wasn't. She glanced back at his car, saw that he was still behind the wheel, and that there was a strange fixed stare in his eyes. She put her hand on the door handle. She hesitated, sensed that something was not quite right. Then she opened her door and stepped out onto the pavement.