Eugene Conkey figured the chances were about the same that The Park Werewolf would get him as they were that he'd win The New York State Lottery (into which he had faithfully, and in vain, plugged fifty dollars a month for the past six years). Number one, it was called "The Park Werewolf" because its territory was Kodak Park, not here, five miles away on Bayview Drive. Number two, even if it strayed out of The Park for some reason, Christ, it had a couple of hundred square miles to mess around in; the chances that it would somehow find him were about the same as the chances that a meteorite would plummet from the sky and take his ear off. And number three, he was prepared. If any creep who thought he was a werewolf interrupted his nightly jogging routine, then he'd find his guts somewhere far behind him in the weeds. Sure the forty-five was illegal, sure it was hard to run with it tucked into his jogging pants, sure he'd never used one before. But those were small considerations indeed in the face of his own self-defense.
Eugene heard a car round the bend a hundred yards behind him. He glanced back into the car's headlights, saw they were on high beam. "Fuck you!" he breathed. The headlights dimmed. He looked back at the road in front of him-poorly lighted because here, in Irondequoit, one of Rochester's more fashionable neighborhoods, streetlamps were looked upon as a little gauche; no one walked anywhere anymore-and angled to his right, onto the shoulder, just in case the car's driver didn't see him. He was thankful there was a full moon tonight; it lit the gravel shoulder well enough that he could see the occasional pothole or rock.
He idly watched the car as it passed him. He saw that it was dark gray in color (though that was hard to tell in the dark, he realized) and that it had a whip antenna on the back-an unmarked police car, he decided, and felt grateful that it was prowling the neighborhood. He watched it round the corner onto Briarcliffe, which ran into Bayview, then he angled back onto the road.
The neighborhood was awfully quiet. He'd noticed that as soon as he'd left his house, because at this hour-it was 9:30-there was usually still a good amount of traffic-people coming and going to the big twenty-four-hour grocery, Wegman's, at the Culver Ridge Shopping Plaza or heading to one of the half dozen bars that dotted the area or to one of the five theaters at Eastway Plaza just a couple miles north. He liked the quiet, especially for jogging, because he jogged not only, he claimed, "for the health of it," but also, "for the peace of it," and the roads had rarely been as peaceful as they were to-night, with most people shut up in their houses away from the threat of the full moon. He thought, wryly, that there was some good to be found in any situation.
His breathing as he jogged was heavy, especially toward the end of his routine, and the sound of it often covered up small sounds around him.
So he didn't hear the low, ragged growling from the weeds just to his right. Or the weeds themselves being squashed underfoot. Or the gravel at the shoulder of the road crunching under an awful weight. And by then he was past the thing that was making all this noise, so he didn't see it, either, as it fell in behind him and kept pace with him just a couple of arm's lengths away.
And when the thing was nearly upon him his nose twitched, because the smell wafting over him reminded him of the open sewers in Williamson, New York where he'd grown up. Then he felt only the whisper of a touch-like the touch of a butterfly-at the side of his throat. Then the top of his spinal column was ripped away, and he tumbled head over heels and lay with his arms and legs wide, his head at an impossible angle, and these words spilling incoherently from his lips: "The peace of it, the peace of it, the peace of it…"
Jack Youngman stared for a long time into the trunk of his Marquis and at last convinced himself that there was no blood left in it. He'd cleaned it very thoroughly two weeks before, when he'd first found the blood. And then again when it had come back a week later. And now today, the day after Eugene Conkey's murder, which had been discovered several hours earlier and so had been part of the morning TV and radio newscasts but hadn't yet hit the newspapers. He closed the trunk quietly, though he was in his garage and the door was shut. You never knew about neighbors; one day they could be as warm as toast, and the next day they could turn you in for cheating on your income taxes. Or one of them might phone the cops anonymously and say, "Hey, I got this neighbor and he's been acting real peculiar; he cleans the trunk of his car all the time, you know."
Because maybe, just maybe, Jack had decided, he was The Park Werewolf. He was big enough, after all. And strong enough. And what did it matter if he couldn't remember killing anyone? If he was nuts, if he went around taking people's heads off, then the chances were pretty damned good that he wouldn't remember it. Shit, why would he want to? Or maybe he had two or three personalities. Maybe during the day he was Big Jack Youngman, gruff and unapproachable-Big Jack Youngman, who was really made of mush on the inside and didn't want people to get too close to him because all that mush would come out. And then at night, during the full moon, he changed. He became a rock-hard, drooling killer.
But when he thought about it, he didn't believe a word of it. Actually, he realized, he didn't want to believe a word of it. But there was the evidence of the blood, after all.
THAT EVENING: 7:30
"Poor slob," Tom McCabe said to Ryerson. They were standing several feet from an autopsy table at the Monroe County Medical Examiner's office. Dr. Peter B. Taub, a balding, thin, no-nonsense man in his early fifties, was performing the autopsy on Eugene Conkey. Detective Bill Andrews, who'd been brought in to help on The Park Werewolf case after Walt Morgan's murder, stood just behind Ryerson and McCabe, his eyes averted.
Creosote had been left in what Ryerson hoped were the capable hands of Loren Samuelson, the owner of the guest house where he was staying.
Creosote had apparently not been feeling well lately, and Ryerson wanted to keep him out of the chill, moist Rochester air. He looked at McCabe: "Thanks for getting me in here, Tom."
"No problem," McCabe said. Then, to Dr. Taub,
"Can you give me a cause of death, Pete?"
"Take your pick," Taub said dryly. "Broken neck, severed spinal column, lacerated trachea-"
Detective Andrews, who had been trying to ignore what was happening and so hadn't realized the doctor was talking, cut in. "He won the lottery, you know.”
“Sorry?" McCabe said.
"Mr. Conkey won the New York State Lottery. I heard it on the radio on the way in this evening."
Taub harrumphed; "I guess this was supposed to be his day."
"It kind of was," Ryerson said.
"Poor slob," McCabe said again.
And Detective Andrews said, "Mind if I leave?" and before getting an answer, turned and quickly left the room.
"Greta, Greta, my love," Doug Miller breathed-once, then again and again, deeply and with an almost overpowering sense of urgency. Then his orgasm was done and he stood from his bed, wadded up the soiled toilet paper in his hand, and tossed it idly into the wastebasket nearby. He pulled his pants up, zippered and buttoned them, and sat again, exhausted.
He put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and took several long, deep breaths. "Greta, Greta, Greta," he whispered into his hands. He sighed.
For God's sake, she would love him someday! He would make her love him! What else did he have to do to show her that he loved her? He followed her around like a damned puppy dog, didn't he? He walked her to her car every night, even though-and she knew this-his own car, a dark blue Plymouth Fury, was in the other parking lot. Hell, hadn't he even moved from his big house in Pittsford (which had been left to him upon his mother's death three years earlier) to this crummy apartment just a block away from her?
And there was the best evidence of all-the evidence that he couldn't yet share with her, but that he would share in time-the evidence of his faithfulness. The evidence of his fidelity to her, even though she wasn't yet his. His fidelity not only in the fact that he'd kept himself clean for her, but also that he was keeping her secret. Her awful, nightmarish secret.
He stood and went to the window that looked out on Fairview Heights. He could see Greta's house from that window. He could see that the lights in her third-floor apartment were on, and he wondered if she were there in the apartment, thinking about him.
"Greta, my love," he whispered, "I'll always keep your secret."