Ferro thought about that. He finished his soup, got up, walked over to the stove, and stirred the pot for a few moments. “I had thought we’d be heading home today, Vince.”
LaMastra looked at the wall as if he could see through it and through the timbers of the house and out into the cornfield. “Those poor bastards. That’s no way for cops to go.”
“No way for anyone to go.”
LaMastra grunted and repeated, quietly, “No way for cops to go.”
(2)
Outside the house, on the other side of the kitchen window, Willard Fowler Newton crouched in the shadows cast by the side of the house. He was flushed from nervousness and the cold wind. He had been leaning against the wall for ten minutes listening to Vince LaMastra and Frank Ferro try to work through the killings. His arm ached from holding a small tape recorder up to the window.
As he crouched there he was trying to make sense of what he’d heard, matching it with the info he’d gotten from that kid, Mike Sweeney, last night. The kid had said something about the man who was the center of the police dragnet being the same guy known in the papers as the Cape May Killer, a mass murderer who was the most wanted man in the country. Newton had been excited at first, but when none of the official press releases had even hinted at the connection, he’d dismissed it. Now, however, what he was hearing from these cops was going off like fireworks in his brain.
Willard Fowler Newton was about to break the biggest story of his career, and he knew for sure that it was going to be a total scoop. No one else had a clue about this stuff. No one.
(3)
The Bone Man perched like a crow on a slender branch that reached out from the big oak nearest to the house. All the other branches were filled with night birds, their black-on-black feathers rustling drily in the shadows thrown by the house.
The conversation inside the house ended as the two cops got up and headed back to the crime scene and the reporter crabbed sideways along the house, keeping to the shadows until he could make a break and spring for his car parked out on the road. The Bone Man watched him all the way, and then watched the little car cough and sputter its way up the hill and over; then he stood up, featherlight on the branch, which did not even creak under his weight, and leapt down to the ground. He moved in the opposite direction from Newton, deeper into the corn, past policemen who did not see him and the search dogs who did not smell him—though the oldest of them shivered a bit as he passed, heading deep into the field, and then beyond it to the forest. The stink of blood was overwhelming, and he turned in a full circle, his unblinking eyes penetrating the shadows beneath the trees until he found what he was looking for.
The thing that had once been Kenneth Boyd sat on the rotted trunk of a fallen tree, jaw sagging loose, lips rubber, streamers of flesh caught between misshapen teeth, staring stupidly at the smears of dried blood on its hand, eyes as blank as a doll’s. The Bone Man stood still for a long time, staring at the thing, then as he moved a step forward the creature raised its gory head and looked around slowly until it saw him step into the sunlight. Instantly the vacuous expression transformed into one of feral hate and appalling hunger. Boyd bounded up and lumbered toward the newcomer, staggering on one broken and twisted leg but showing no flicker of pain. Ragged hands that were tipped with black claws reached out toward him as his mouth opened in a guttural scream of rage and hunger.
The Bone Man said nothing, did nothing, just watched as Boyd rushed at him, watched as he swayed from side to side in a parody of drunkenness. Boyd launched forward with unnatural speed, slashing at him with its claws, snapping at the air with his jagged teeth, rushing forward to try and bowl him over, drag him down, overwhelm him with a savage animal rage. The Bone Man did not try to step aside or run; he merely waited as Boyd leapt the last few yards, snarling with fury—and passed straight through him. The Bone Man turned to see the arc of Boyd’s leap end with a bone-snapping impact on the cold ground. Two nails on Boyd’s outstretched right hand were torn from their roots, and the creature made no attempt at all to break his fall. Boyd’s face smashed into the ground, crunching the cartilage in his nose into pulp and driving a tiny twig deep into the iris of his right eye.
The Bone Man smiled the smallest, thinnest smile. “You thirty years too late trying to kill me, you ugly piece of shit,” he said in a voice that was a whispery echo.
The creature bounded forward again, claws tearing the air, and again he passed through the Bone Man as if he were smoke. The monster tumbled to the ground and once more scuttled around to face him again, mouth wrinkled like a dog’s muzzle, eyes blazing with hate. Boyd rose slowly to its feet, standing in a hunchbacked crouch, glaring at him.
