The Beast House (18 page)

He stepped to the threshold. Tyler, along with her three friends, was already out near the ticket booth, heading away. Maybe he could catch up with her at the motel.

He went to the gift shop, and was vaguely relieved to find others inside. Behind the counter stood the gawky, grim-looking fellow who’d taken the tickets and introduced Maggie. As the man rang up a sale, Gorman reached into his pocket and switched off the cassette recorder.

He certainly hoped it had picked up all of Maggie’s spiel. It should’ve worked fine, he assured himself. After all, it was brand new and identical to the one he’d discarded.

He should check the tape, however, as soon as possible. If, for some reason, it hadn’t operated properly, he would have to repeat the tour. He hoped to avoid that.

For the others, the displays must have seemed like grotesque curiosities—the work of a disturbed imagination, a sham to draw tourists. Gorman, however, knew better. For him, the mutilated mannequins seemed no less real than Brian’s body impaled on the fence.

Brian.

Pausing by a shelf of ashtrays and plates, he glanced around at the cashier.

That old geezer, certainly, would be incapable of sticking Brian up there. The same went double for Maggie. Only someone with extraordinary strength could have accomplished that feat, or taken him down again. These two might very well, however, be accomplices. According to the diary, the beast had lived with Elizabeth Thorn for a period of time before she allowed it to slaughter her family. Perhaps Maggie, now, was its mistress. Something to think about.

Wandering among the display tables and shelves, Gorman loaded his arms with souvenir items: a strip of six color slides showing the front of the house and several of the murder scenes; half a dozen picture postcards; the glossy eight-by-ten-inch booket rich with text and photos; a shotglass with a gilt sketch of the house; a coffee mug sporting a color rendition of the house and the legend beast house—malcasa point, calif; a plastic back-scratcher with the same legend along its shaft and a white hand with claws for raking the itch; finally, two bumper stickers—beware of the beast with a hand at each end, claws dripping red blood—and I LOVE BEAST HOUSE with an illustration of the building. Gorman had grinned when he picked up that one.

He browsed the shop for a while longer, but found no more items relating specifically to Beast House. He carried his load to the cashier. Without a word or smile, the man started ringing up the items. He looked frail and oddly prim with his gray workshirt buttoned to the throat, but he’d obviously neglected to shave that morning. His chin was spiky with gray stubble. Gorman cleared his throat to conceal the sound of switching on his recorder. “Have you worked here long?” he asked.

“Long enough.”

“Have you ever seen the beast?”

“Nope.”

“Do you believe it actually exists?”

“You took the tour,” the man said without looking up.

“Yes.”

“Them folks didn’t die of the whooping cough.”

You wouldn’t know, of course, what became of the three bodies I happened to notice behind the house last night? What, he wondered, might the fellow say to that?

“Comes to twenty-nine dollars sixty-eight cents.”

Gorman paid cash. He watched for a receipt, but the tape was still curling out of the cash register when the man crinkled up the top of the loaded bag. “May I have the receipt, please?”

“I got no use for it.” He tore it loose and slapped it down on the counter.

Gorman hurried out of the house. Squinting against the brightness, he looked for Tyler and her friends. They were nowhere in sight.

“Shall I take you back to the motel?” Abe asked.

Tyler, slumped in the passenger seat with her knees propped against the dash, shook her head and slowly unwrapped the stick of Doublemint Nora had given her. “I don’t think so,” she murmured. “I don’t think I want to be alone.”

Abe felt helpless, looking at her. He wished he could make her misery go away. He wanted to hold her gently and tell her it would be all right, but he knew that only time could blunt the shock and sorrow.

“Hey,” Nora said, “why don’t we head over to the beach? I always feel better at the beach when I’m low.”

Tyler folded the chewing gum and put it in her mouth. “I’d like that.”

“My trunks are at the motel,” Jack said.

“We’ll just walk on the sand.”

“I think I might like to swim,” Tyler said.

Her comment surprised Abe and pleased him. Many people in her place would want only to curl up alone with their loss. Her attitude seemed healthier than that. “Swim we shall,” he said.

“We didn’t even bring our suits,” Nora reminded her. “I didn’t, anyway, did you?”

“I want to buy a new one.”

“Sure. Okay. Me too.”

Abe pulled out and drove slowly up the road. “Why don’t we let you off at a store? You can buy your suits. Jack and I’ll go on back to the motel for ours, and we’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes.”

“It may take longer,” Nora said.

On the next block, Abe spotted the sign for Will’s Sporting Goods. White lettering on the display window announced guns, tackle, swimming and camping accessories. “How about there?” he asked.

“We can give it a try,” Nora said.

He pulled to the curb. Tyler met his eyes. “Hurry back,” she told him.

“I will. We’ll meet you right here.”

She opened the door and climbed out. Nora pushed the seat-back forward. She looked at Abe as if about to say something, seemed to change her mind. She joined Tyler on the sidewalk. Abe waited for a car to pass, then swung onto the road.

“Christ,” Jack said. “The poor kid.”

“She’s holding up pretty well.”

“Gutsy.”

“Yeah.”

“Nora said she almost married the guy once. She finally figured she’d screwed up by turning him down, and came here to give him another shot.”

Abe nodded. He scanned the building fronts.

“Nora also said she was having second thoughts about it all. ‘Cause of you.”

Abe said nothing, but he felt his heart speed up.

“She thinks Tyler’s really fallen for you. No taste.”

Abe grinned. Then, down a sidestreet to the right, he spotted a pair of flag standards on the sidewalk. He turned. The gray stone building might be a post office, he realized, but it turned out to be the city hall.

“What are you doing?”

“You take the car. Get the trunks and some towels, and meet me back here. I want to do some checking.”

“On Jenson?”

“You got it.”

He eased in behind a pickup truck, left the keys in the ignition, and handed his room key to Jack. He left the car. He crossed the road at an angle away from the administrative offices’ entrance, heading for a blue, five-pointed star suspended above a set of double glass doors. The doors read, police department malcasa point. Pushing one open, he entered a deserted waiting area. A partition of frosted glass ran the length of the countertop. He stepped up to one of its three windows.

“We’ll want to impound it,” said the man. He was sitting on the corner of a nearby desk, his back to the window.

The female officer nodded. Her tan uniform was too tight across her broad chest and hips. She must be twenty-one, but she didn’t look it. She wore her hair short, in a cut similar to Tyler. Her eyes were on the other cop, and she didn’t notice Abe.

“Have Bix tow it in, but I want you supervising.”

“Oh, great. Bix is my favorite human.”

“Fortunes of war, Lucy. He’s a jerk, that’s why I want you out there. Give him half a chance, he’ll screw up the works just to spite us. Soon as it’s in the yard, let me know. I’ll want to go over it myself.”

“Right.”

“Bix puts a grope on you, you have my permission to deck him.”

She had a nice smile. “I’ll run him in for nauseating a police officer.” She started to turn away, and spotted Abe. With a nod, she signaled that they had a visitor.

The man looked over his shoulder, smiled, and scooted off the desktop as Lucy headed for a side door. He was taller than Abe, with a lean, creased face. His gray hair was long at the sides as if to make up for what he lacked on top. His eyes were the same gray as his hair. Sniper eyes, Abe thought. But cop eyes, too—wary and somewhat bemused.

“Yessir,” he said. “I’m Harry Purcell. What can I do for you?”

“I just finished a tour of Beast House.”

His smile slipped a bit. “Yes?”

“They’ve got Dan Jenson on display over there.”

The smile vanished completely. “I’m aware of that.”

“I was with a young lady who used to know him. Can you tell me what happened to him?”

Purcell’s face pinched up as if he’d stubbed a toe. He said, “Oooh. You mean she didn’t know he was deceased?”

“That’s what I mean. The first she knew was when she found his wax face staring up at her.”

“Oooh. That’s raw, mighty raw. How’s she bearing up?”

“She’s managing.”

“The damn shit house. Sometimes, I think I’d like to torch the place.”

“How was Jenson killed?”

“Went in without a backup. He was on routine patrol, noticed a light in one of the windows. Now, nobody goes in that place at night. Not even Kutch or Hapson. Claim they don’t, anyway. So Jenson suspected prowlers. He radioed for backup, but we haven’t got much personnel. Two-man shifts, and a watch commander on dispatch. Well, Sweeny’d picked that time to stop for a bite. Jenson said he’d wait for him, but then he went on in alone. And he didn’t come out. When Sweeny got there, he found Jenson’s radio car abandoned. He wouldn’t go in the house alone, and I can’t say I blame him. We rousted up the rest of the force, even got the volunteer fire department in on it, and went in. Found his body in the upstairs hallway. His, and the other two. Ziegler and his kid. Searched the place top to bottom, came up zilch.”

“What became of Jenson’s body?”

“He had a sister come for it. Had it sent south. To Sacramento, I believe. It was a real shame. Dan was a fine young man.”

“There was a coroner’s inquest?”

“Sure. Verdict was ‘death at the hands of another’ on all three of them. Trouble was, we couldn’t come up with ‘another.’ We carried out a full investigation, but it ran out of steam. Just wasn’t much to go on. Couldn’t even say for sure it was a man that did it. Might’ve been a wild animal, but we couldn’t think what. We’ve got some coyotes in the hills, but they’re too small. We considered maybe a dog—it’d have to be the size of a mastiff or Dane. We even had some talk of bobcats and bears, though I don’t know where one could’ve come from. But all that’s pretty much ruled out. Those are furry creatures, and the only hairs we picked up in the vacuum were human.”

“Could the wounds have been made by a human?” Abe asked.

The cop shrugged. “If he was mighty strong and had a good set of fingernails.”

“They looked like claw marks on the wax.”

“We had a theory he might’ve used some kind of device, like a spading-fork or maybe a glove fixed up with spikes of some sort. Sounds a bit farfetched, but the whole situation was pretty curious.”

“Think the beast did it?”

“That’s sure what Maggie wants the whole world to think. Her business picked up a hundred percent after the killings. Which gives her something of a motive, in my opinion. If I was to hazard a guess—and I haven’t got a speck of evidence to back it up—I’d say Maggie was in back of it. I think her boy, Axel, is physically capable of ripping a man’s arm out of its socket. Maybe Wick or Maggie were with him. They took care of Ziegler and his kid, killed Dan when he came up, then used something to claw them up to make it look like the work of their beast and hightailed before we got the house surrounded. That’d be my best guess, but like I say, you can’t take a guess into court.”

“What about the other killings?”

He leaned forward, elbows on the counter. “I’ll tell you what I think, and I’m not the only one in town who suspects the same. I say Maggie Kutch, maybe with Wick Hapson’s help, murdered her husband and kids back in ‘31, mutilated the bodies and started up this story about a mysterious creature to tie it in with the old Thorn killings and throw off suspicion. I was just a kid at the time, but I remember there was plenty of talk along those lines. Wick was in high school then and he used to do yard work at the Kutch place. There was talk about him and Maggie even before the killings. They came under plenty of suspicion, but it died down over the years. Started up again in the fifties, after the Bagley boy was murdered in there, but by then they’d been running the tour so long they half had people believing in that beast of theirs. And it didn’t help any that the kid who survived—Maywood—claimed it was some kind of monster that did in his friend. Of course, he was hysterical. It was dark in there. He probably expected to see some kind of hellish creature and his eyes played tricks on him. Then again, maybe it was Wick in some kind of outfit. Who’s to say?”

“You ever hear Captain Frank on the subject of the beast?”

“The old goat’s got himself quite a yarn. What’s he call it, Pogo?”

“Bobo.”

“If that guy told me I’ve got a nose on my face, I’d take a quick peek in the mirror before I’d believe him.”

Abe grinned. “He’s not too reliable?”

“Let’s say he likes to be the center of attention, and he’s figured out that just about everyone—but especially tourists—are as happy as pigs in shit to hear about the beast. He gives them what they want to hear, and he’s center stage for half an hour or so.”

“He said the thing killed his sister.”

“I’ve checked it out. We’ve got files going back to 1853 when the town was founded. According to the reports, his sister was killed by a coyote. His father had been on a trade ship to Australia, but there’s nothing to indicate he brought back an unusual animal. He could’ve, I suppose, but I think it’s more likely Captain Frank just used his father’s voyage to make the story sound good. If the old man had been a miner, he would’ve brought it up out of a shaft.”

“I see what you mean,” Abe said. “I’d better get moving, I’ve got some people waiting for me.” He offered his hand, and the man shook it. “I really appreciate your taking the time to tell me all this.”