Wolfman - Art Bourgeau (26 page)

"Is there someplace we can talk? Get a cup of
coffee or something?"

She hesitated, saw the seriousness in his face. "In
my office," she said.

Her office was small and cramped. He took a seat
while she went to pour coffee from the pot on top of a filing
cabinet. In this light he could see she looked tired. "Hard
night?" he asked.

"The opening party"

"Did you have a good time?" he said, making
conversation before he got to it.

"I guess so, considering that my date vanished
on me."

"What do you mean, vanished?"

"One minute he's there, the next he's gone . .
."

"How did you get home?" He was concerned at
the thought of her being stranded, just as he was jealous, admit it,
that she'd had a "date." Cut it out, he told himself.

"Friends," she replied . . . "What was
it you wanted to see me about?"

"Did you read the morning paper?" When she
said no he showed it to her with its gruesome headline. He told her
about the boy's body, and what had happened since their last meeting.
She listened intently as he went into detail about the wounds, the
crime scene.

"The psychiatrist, the lieutenant, nobody buys
my theory about the drug dealer. I know what you said about the
voodoo, but I feel that there's something else. Something I missed.

She was silent for several moments, then said, "Tell
me about the wounds again, in both cases."

He did.

"And what did the psychiatrist think?"

"He said the killer was probably a schizophrenic
with paranoid delusions. I’m not too clear on all that."

"Yes, I guess that would figure — "

"What do you mean?"

After several more moments of hesitation she said,
"Have you ever heard the term lycanthropy?"

He said he hadn’t, what was it?

"It's a very rare form of schizophrenia. I saw
it once in Haiti . . . You remember I said schizophrenics are often
made shamen in primitive societies . . . Well, this one was afflicted
with lycanthropy, and he did ultimately kill some people in just the
way you've described." She set her coffee down. "Come with
me and I'll show you something that belonged to him."

As they went downstairs he said, "Why didn’t
you tell me about this before?"

"Because you were so specific about Jamaica and
voodoo. This happened in Haiti, and it’s such a rare thing I didn’t
see how it could apply . . . not then, at least."

In the main hall there was a glass case with a single
mask in it, a mask with tracks of rhinestone tears coming down from
the eye holes. "This was his," Erin said.

Mercanto could see the pain in it. "Tell me
about it."

"Some people believe lycanthropy is the oldest
psychosis known to man, that it dates all the way back to when man
made the break between being a farmer and a hunter. When roving bands
of men, like wolf packs, preyed on the farmers, killing them, raping
their women, cannibalizing them. There's data for both sides, but
after seeing this man, I made a small study of it," she said,
pointing to the case.

"Go on," he said, more curious than excited
by what she was saying.

"The oldest recorded example of it is in the Old
Testament book of Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar went into a seven-year
depression during which he thought he was an ox and would only eat
grass. Some people say that Lot’s wife tuming into a pillar of salt
is another example but I don't see it. Anyway, mention of the disease
later turned up in the medical writings of Paulus Aegineta during the
Roman Empire — "

"Wait a minute, are you saying the killer thinks
he's an animal and acts like one?"

"If he's suffering from lycanthropy, the answer
is yes. And if so, most likely he thinks he's a wolf. That's what
this shaman thought he was."

"Why a wolf?"

"Well, there are several theories. In primitive
societies the wolf epitomized hunting prowess. It was supposed to
bring good luck if the hunter dressed in a wolf pelt. By wearing it
he would become like the wolf and be successful in his hunt."

Mercanto remembered the looks of that dead boy, the
teeth marks . . . "It sounds pretty farfetched," he said,
"but still. . ."

"You haven't heard the half of it. Which is why
I didn’t want to bring it up . . . In the Middle Ages it became the
basis of the werewolf legend. The term lycanthropy comes from the
Latin for manwolf . . . Are you bored, still with me?"

"
I'm trying, go on."

"Okay . . . well, during this time, especially
during the Inquisition, the recorded cases took on a much stronger
religious tone. Emphasis shifted from God’s punishment, like in the
case of Nebuchadnezzar, to demonic possession"

"You mean like witches?"

"Exactly. All throughout Europe there were
stories and supposed sightings of men who had become part or wholly
wolves, and the idea of the wolf changed from the ultimate hunter
endowed with desirable traits to the concept of the wolf as a servant
of Satan preying on God’s flock . . . And so, the notion of the
werewolf. A human cursed, and whose obsessive desire, need, was to
kill and eat human flesh."

"It sounds crazy — "

"Yes, I know. . . Of course, these people didn’t
actually turn into wolves, but they thought they did. That’s what
lycanthropy is all about. There were two especially famous examples.
The first, Stubbe Peeter, occurred in Germany in the late 1500s. He
supposedly was a cruel man who made a pact with the devil and was
given a girdle made from a wolf skin that turned him into one when he
wore it."

"What happened to him?"

"Before he was caught he killed animals, over a
dozen children and two pregnant women, cannibalizing them all,
including the unborn babies. During the trial it came out that he had
been committing incest with his daughter. They were both tortured to
death as punishment."

"And the other one?" Mercanto asked, not
sure he wanted to hear.

"A Frenchman named lean Grenier. In the early
1600s. His case marked the turning point between the werewolf legend
and the idea of lycanthropy. He was tried for murdering and
cannibalizing several young girls in his village. Like Stubbe Peeter,
he claimed to have been changed into a wolf by the devil. The judge,
even then, didn’t buy it. He said men could not be turned into
wolves. They were imaginings, what we call hallucinations. Rather
than send an insane Grenier to prison or execute him, he was
sentenced to life in a monastery for religious instruction. That
wasn’t an easy sentence in those days. He died there two years
later, but the important thing is that this was possibly the first
time in history when alternative incarceration was used for the
mentally unbalanced. Looking back, we can see what a milestone that
was."

Mercanto shook his head. "Now tell me about the
one you saw."

"
I told you, he was a shaman of a village in
Haiti. They don't call them shamen, but that’s what he was. This
wasn’t the village he was from originally so I don't know much
about his past history. One day he just wandered in and began telling
everyone about the devil and that he was a wolf. . ."

"Wasn't anyone skeptical? I mean, these are the
1980s, not the l600s."

"You have to understand something about the
shaman concept to know what I’m saying." She paused to collect
her thoughts. "In the Oriental culture and sometimes in the
Caribbean, too, a shaman is believed to be a reincarnate, someone who
has had communication with a so-called higher power. Traditionally
he's a person of powerful spirituality who has had an emotional
experience so strong that it has caused him to . . . to become
noticeably different from those around him. And this experience is
the basis of his teachings. If people like his teaching they listen.
If not, they get rid of him."

"And he was popularizing the devil?"

"Right! It fit in perfectly with a culture that
embraces voodoo and zombies . . . you know, the undead. It was just
what they wanted to hear . . . that is, until people began
disappearing from the village, and they found he was killing them and
cannibalizing them . . . exactly like you described."

"How did he act when you saw him? I mean, was he
crazy all the time or what?"

"I only saw him once. By the time I heard what
happened to him he was already dead. The villagers had killed him.
When I saw him it was during a ceremony. He didn’t go into a trance
or anything, but let's just say he wasn’t with us. He stalked,
howled and in general acted out the part of the wolf. He killed an
animal with his hands and ate it. It was, I assure you, scary as
hell. There's not much else I can add."

Mercanto shook his head. What she was saying was
extreme, weird, but, damn it, it did provide the missing link, the
explanation for the mutilations. But he also knew what it was going
to sound like when he brought it to Sloan. Still, he had to do it. .
.

An idea came to him, he wouldn’t start with Sloan.
"Would you be willing to go with me and talk about this with the
psychiatrist on the case?" he asked.

She hesitated, then agreed.

"This means a lot to me," he said as he
took her arm and helped her up. "Have you a phone book handy?"

While she got it for him she wondered just what this
man was doing in her life. Was it only professional? Stop worrying it
to death, she told herself as he looked up Dr. Foster's number and
made the call, asking to see the psychiatrist immediately.

They took the elevator down and went to where
Mercanto was parked. His car did not exactly surprise her. A beat-up
old Camaro was him. And she liked it. She got in on the passenger
side and cleared a place for her feet among the empty coffee cups,
Burger King wrappers and newspapers. He pulled away from the curb in
a hurry. As he drove he thought over what she’d just told him.
Suddenly something else came to mind. "You said the first guy,
this Stubbe Peeter, killed animals too, and you said the same thing
about the guy you saw, right?"

She turned to look at him as he drove. "That's
right."

"
Before we found the first body we had some
things happen with animals in the park. Ducks killed. We thought it
was a dog from the way they were torn up. But now . . . well, it
might have been this guy."

She noted the excitement
in his voice, and liked it. "Yes, it might have been," she
said.

* * *

At the psychiatrists office building near Jefferson
Hospital, Mercanto parked beside a fire hydrant and they hurried
inside. Mercanto showed his badge to the receptionist, who said,
"He's waiting for you, go right in." A patient in the
waiting room glared at them as they went in.

Dr. Foster looked up from some papers he was reading,
his all-purpose pipe in his mouth.

"Sorry to break in on you like this . . ."
Mercanto began.

"Quite all right. If it will help us to catch
this man . . ."

Mercanto made the introductions, Dr. Foster nodded
and asked what they had found out.

"I think Erin, Miss Fraser, can explain it
better than I can. She's the one who understands it."

Foster waited.

"
I'm an anthropologist, the curator at the
Braddon Museum, shamanism is my specialty," she began. "Recently
Detective Mercanto came to me for information about voodoo. He said
it might be a factor in these murders. I couldn't help him then, but
when he came back today he told me some things that lead me to
believe I might be helpful . . . Have you ever heard, doctor, of
lycanthropy?"

"Certainly," replied Dr. Foster. "Every
first-year medical student knows something about lycanthropy and
porphyria. It's a joke among the first-year people."

Mercanto gave Erin a quizzical look.

"Porphyria is the Dracula disease," she
told him. "It's hereditary, a person’s teeth fill up with
blood. He also develops acute sensitivity to light. Some think Vlaid
the Impaler, the role model for Dracula, had it."

"I'm impressed," Foster said.

She looked hard at him. "Neither one is a joke,
doctor. They are both real diseases."

"Agreed. Still, the rareness of them . . ."

"The facts of the murders fit the disease,"
Erin said. And she repeated the story about the Haitian shaman. When
she was finished he said, "Yes, they do seem to fit . . .
somewhat."

He got up from his desk and went to one of the
bookcases lining the wall of his office. "Understand, I've never
had any personal experience with lycanthropy. It occurs so
infrequently . . ." He took down a volume of bound journals and
brought it back to his desk. As he thumbed through it he said, "If
memory serves, there have only been two, perhaps three, recorded
cases in the last decade or so." When he found what he was
looking for he said, "Ah, yes, I thought I remembered an article
about it in one of the British journals. Give me a minute to refresh
my memory."