Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you (9 page)

guy sitting there.

He sat in my recliner, making himself right at home. Probably 40 or so years old, dark hair with a little gray at the temples,

about three days' growth of beard stubble that followed an angular jawline. He had a chin butt. He wore a leather jacket

that had been manufactured specifical y to look worn and faded right off the rack, over a button-up shirt that sat open at

the collar with the top three buttons undone. He wore jeans and cowboy boots, legs crossed casually. He looked like he

had been clipped out of a catalog.

I said, "I think you wandered into the wrong house, buddy."

He did exactly what I knew he was going to do, which is reach into an inside pocket and pul out a little leather ID wallet.

He flipped it open.

"Good morning, Mr. Wong. I'm Detective Vance Falconer. You and I are gonna have a talk."

Molly went right to the stranger in my living room. He scratched her behind the ears, then she curled up at his feet.

"Pretty dog. How long have you had her?"

I hesitated, thinking at first this question was some kind of a trap. He was a cop, after all. Then I decided that was silly and that he was just trying to be polite. Then I realized his being polite was itself a method of getting me relaxed and

accustomed to answering his questions, and that in fact it was part of a trap.

"She's my girlfriend's dog."

Vance Falconer glanced over at a framed picture propped on a little stand on top of my television. It was a picture of me,

looking chubby and pale and my hair standing like it was being blown around in a hurricane, standing behind Amy with my

arms wrapped around her, looking over her, her mop of red hair under my chin. She wore sunglasses and a huge smile, I

wore the expression of a man worried that a stranger was about to steal my camera.

"That your girl?"

"Yeah. Amy Sullivan. We're engaged."

"She live here?"

Get to the point, asshole. I don't have all day.

"She's away at school. Learning to be a programmer."

"Can I ask what happened to her hand?"

The guy was good. Amy's normal right hand was visible in the picture, holding a stuffed elephant I had won her at a

carnival game. Her left arm hung down almost out of frame. But if you were observant, down at the very edge of the photo

you could see a little sliver of blue sky where the arm ended at the wrist.

"She lost it in a car accident when she was a kid."

"Did you go to see her last night? Is that where you've been?"

"No."

"Well, you've been gone al night," Falconer said. "Where you go?"

I felt my heart start to thump. Animal reaction to being pushed toward a corner.

"A friend's house. What did you do, break in?"

"Door was unlocked. I had reason to think you had been the victim of a violent crime so I let myself in."

"I'm pretty sure you can't do that, Detective."

"I'll give you a phone number where you can call to complain. I have my own entry on the voice mail tree. You probably

heard about the incident down at St. Francis. Since this address was the scene of the very last call Franky Burgess took

before he went on his shooting rampage, I thought maybe he had started with you. I was worried you may be in here

bleeding to death."

"That's very kind, thank you. I'll give you a call if this sort of thing happens again. That door you came in works as an exit, too."

"A moment of your time, please. You understand we're in the middle of the biggest manhunt this state has ever seen. I

don't see a whole lot of chance Franky is still drawing breath but you can imagine why we'd like to find him and put

everybody's fears to rest."

"Why aren't you out helping them?"

"I had to make sure he wasn't here, didn't I?"

"Well, you're free to have a look around. I just got home myself."

"Thank you, I did. He's not here. But I'm still working on it. Only instead of wandering around the woods and abandoned

trailers and empty storefronts of this shitty town, I've decided to work backwards, try to get inside Franky's broken head.

Maybe shed some light on this nightmare. He was here last night, though, wasn't he?"

"Yeah."

"Right before he started shooting and biting people at the hospital. Just minutes before, in fact. About three in the

morning, right?"

"Yeah."

"And was he acting strange at all?"

I could feel my face getting hot, the heat radiating up from my jawbone.

Maybe you should have said Franky was never here...

"No, he wasn't ranting or anything. He didn't say much."

"He was responding to a call from a neighbor saying you were making lots of noise and screaming..."

"Yeah. I mean, it wasn't all that. There was a thing in my house, it woke me up. Bit me."

"A 'thing?'"

"Yeah. I think it was a squirrel or a raccoon or something."

"Big difference between a squirrel and a raccoon."

"It was dark."

"Hey, could have been a stray cat. Or a beaver."

"I don't know. Anyway. It got in the house somehow and bit me and I freaked out. Neighbor cal ed, Franky came to make

sure I was okay."

"What happened to the animal?"

"Oh. I don't know. Ran outside I guess. I, uh, chased it around."

"Is that when you hurt your head there?"

He waved a finger toward my forehead. I touched the Band-Aid there.

"Oh, yeah. It bit me."

"It got close enough to bite your face but you still couldn't see it well enough to know if it was a cat or a beaver?"

"I'm sorry, are you investigating the beaver problem in this town or the killing spree at the hospital?"

"When officer Burgess left here last night, he seemed normal?"

"Yeah, yeah, like I said. Just told me to be careful. He was more worried about me than anything."

"And you and your friend John didn't drive Franky to the hospital? Because four witnesses saw you. And your friend even

talked to a member of the staff. He said Franky had some kind of seizure."

"Oh, right, right. That's right."

"But you said he seemed normal when he left."

"I mean... he was normal when he walked out. It was out by his car, he started having problems. We loaded him in his car

and drove him to the hospital."

"Nothing led up to the seizure? No strange behavior? No tics or spasms or words not making sense?"

"No, no. He seemed fine. You know, he didn't seem like he was on drugs or anything."

"Drugs? Who mentioned drugs?"

"Come on, detective. What are you doing?"

"People rarely just 'go crazy' Mr. Wong. I mean, it seems like it to us because most of us are self-centered assholes who

can't identify another human in pain. But afterward, you look back, we see all the warning signs. Especially if you were

there ten seconds before the breakdown."

"Okay."

"But Franky seemed okay when he was here."

"Yeah."

"What was in his throat?"

I was taken aback. I had been looking around the room, avoiding the detective's eyes. But when he said that, my attention

snapped right to him. He noticed.

"What do you mean?"

"Your friend, John, he told the staff to check Frank's throat."

"Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know, when he started having his seizure or whatever, he started grabbing at his throat. Like he

was choking."

"Had he been eating something?"

"No."

"Smoking a big cigar, maybe? Got surprised and swallowed it? Maybe he had a wad of chewing tobacco?"

"I don't know, I don't know. We were just trying to help."

"Why are you lying?"

"I'm
NOT
."

I almost screamed it.

"Come on. You haven't offered a damned thing. If I'd played it like I didn't know Franky had been here, you'd have let me

walk out without saying a word about it. Why?"

"I'm just freaked out about this thing, like everybody."

"No, you're concealing something. Have you heard of the Leonard Farmhand case?"

"No. Wait... was that the guy that was kidnapping women and performing surgery on them in his basement? Up in

Chicago?"

"That's right. Well, I caught Farmhand. He had an IQ of 175 but I caught him. And do you know why? Because I got in the

same room with Farmhand. That's al it took. See, I have an internal bullshit sensor that has yet to be beaten. And every

time you open your mouth, Wong, it blinks red."

"So you're saying I need a lawyer."

"Only if you're guilty."

Falconer rose from the chair. He was a good four inches tal er than me, even without the cowboy boots.

He continued, "Here's my theory, as it stands right now. I think you knew Franky somehow, before al this. And I think you

had something to do with his going bananas."

"Well, that's your opinion," I said, lamely. "Seriously, we didn't know each other. I hadn't seen him in six or seven years, probably since high school. You can verify that easy enough. And how exactly do you think I went about driving Franky

crazy? Mind control?"

That's right, have fun connecting these dots, asshole. Stick your hand in this hole and you'll draw back a bloody stump.

"Maybe he wasn't a friend. Maybe he was a fan."

"I don't have fans, detective. I work in a video store. John does, he has a band."

"He has a blog, too."

I shrugged, said, "Doesn't everybody?"

"When I came down last night, the first thing the local cops did was ask me to read it."

"You've read it more than I have, then."

"Really? Because your name is on every page. David Wong."

"Okay."

"What's 'the fifth wall?'"

"What?"

"He uses that phrase al the time. It's the name of John's blog. 'The Fifth Wall.'"

"Oh. It's hard to explain."

"So you guys believe this town is haunted?"

I sighed.

"No."

"Really? You and John don't talk about this? Because he says that sometimes you guys see dead people. Like that kid in

the movie. And demons. And monsters."

"It's just something he wrote."

"What's Zyprexa?"

"What?"

"You have it in your medicine cabinet."

"Oh. Yeah. That was... that was nothing. I saw a guy this summer. I had some problems, stress and, just, it was bul shit.

They listen to your problems and then they throw pills at you. It's the lowest dosage they give out, he said I probably didn't

even need them."

"That's why you're not taking them? By my count only three were gone."

"Everything worked out. On its own. I'm fine now."

"But you see monsters."

"That's John's thing. His blog and al that, like you said."

"The people posting at that blog seem to think it's real. They organize trips here, to this shitty town, hoping to see the

freak show. The guys down at the station, hearing them talk about you, they think you're in some kind of a cult. They say

three neighbors moved away in the last year alone, because they were scared of you."

"People are retarded."

"You know, at the hospital Franky tore out an old woman's throat with his teeth."

I felt myself take an unconscious step back toward the door. I was feeling more trapped in here by the second.

"Is that right? That's terrible."

"He was also heard speaking another language."

I didn't answer.

"So here's my theory, Wong. My theory is that last night wasn't Franky's first visit out here. I think he's a part of your little cult fol owing, and I think you did what two-bit cult leaders have been doin' since we emerged from the caves. I think you

scrambled his brain, convinced him he was a vampire or a demon or whatever your mythology is built around. I think he

came here and whatever was said after he arrived set him off. And I think he killed a whole bunch of people because of

it."

"That's not what happened. And if it did happen, I'm not even sure that crime is on the books."

"And yet, you're lying to me. That's what's got me stumped. You know the thing about the crazy people, they don't know

when to lie, they don't know exactly what to lie about. So you've got something up your sleeve. I'm gonna find out what it

is. So why don't you tell me the truth so I can go back to doing real police work?"

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"About Franky?"

"No. About me and John. About this town. About this world. About the Fifth Wal , all that. So why don't you just write us off as crazy and go on about your day. The world's full of crazy people, right? And they're not worth listening to. So I'm not

gonna waste the breath."

"Try me."

"Really?"

"I'm not
asking
."

I shrugged.

"Okay. Come with me."

It turned out the porsche was his. I have no idea how he afforded such a car and I thought it would be impolite to ask.

Maybe he sold drugs on the side.

The thing sat so low to the ground you had to squat to get into it. The interior smelled like the leather shop at the mall. I

saw I had dragged some muddy leaves from outside onto the spotless carpet and I felt like I had desecrated it. How could

you drive a car like this without going nuts with worry? How could you eat a burrito in this thing? You'd be in constant fear

of squirting refried beans everywhere.

"Go up and take a left at the sign," I said. "We're going to the mall."

We drove across town. From a quarter mile away we could see the swarm of construction workers crawling over the

sprawling decay of the city's abandoned shopping mall. The half-finished building sat empty for a total of seven years, rain

water collecting on the floors and squirrels nesting in a mil ion square feet of retail space that was supposed to rent for