Prowlers - 1 (7 page)

into his skull. But he could see a figure approaching now, in the dark There was a streetlight far off, and it cast just enough light to throw the figure into a dim, almost phosphorescent silhouette.

Then that silhouette began to change.

There came a shriek of tearing metal nearby, and he heard Kate start to scream. She was conscious now, awake and screaming. Something growled and he heard the sound of snapping bone.

Heart pounding against his rib cage as though it were trying to break free, Artie forced himself up and back. He scrambled on his hands and knees, agony spiking through his head, making it almost impossible for him to stand. Then he did try to stand, but he slipped in his own blood and struck the sidewalk again.

Then it was above him.

Artie's breathing came too fast, and he had the coppery taste of his own blood in the back of his mouth. It had been a man, standing over him. He knew that. But now it was something else. Its eyes blazed orange in the dark, its wet snout gleamed. Its fur was sleek, with muscles rippling beneath it.

It growled. But the growl sounded like a laugh.

Kate had stopped screaming. Now it was Artie's turn.

The wet snout dipped down, and he felt its hot breath on his throat; then teeth ripped his flesh with a sickening tearing sound.

It was the last sound Artie heard.

CHAPTER 3

Every sunday morning Jack woke up early and walked the four blocks to Store 24 to get a chocolate Nestle Quik and the Boston Globe. Most of the time he didn't read the paper, but the Sunday Globe was a sort of tradition in his family, different sections and coupons and the comics spread across the breakfast table. Some people had church. The Dwyers had the Sunday Globe.

Another part of the tradition was an impossibly large stack of pancakes made with Bisquick and served with Log Cabin maple syrup. Not that low-fat stuff, either.

That particular Sunday morning Jack had the pancakes ready at seven-thirty, pats of butter already melting on top, but Courtney had not yet emerged from her bedroom. He had been glancing through the book review section for any new biographies that might be of

interest, but as the butter melted, he frowned and glanced down the hall.

With one last sip of his pulpy orange juice, Jack went and knocked on her door. "Court?"

"Come in," she called with obvious frustration.

Jack pushed open the door and found his sister at the small desk in the corner of her bedroom writing checks, a small stack of bills by her hand.

"Pancakes are going to get cold."

She looked up in surprise, then glanced at her watch. "Damn, we've gotta get going." Courtney signed one last check, slipped it into an envelope, then sealed it. "Smells good," she said as she grabbed her cane. Then she followed him back to the kitchen.

During breakfast she grilled him about his date with Kate the night before, which he had expected, but their talk soon turned to more pressing matters. Pub matters. Jack agreed to prepare the work schedule for the following week, post it downstairs, and then go over the bar orders. Courtney took care of ordering for the restaurant end of their business, but Jack had taken over the actual pub portion of Bridget's Irish Rose Pub when he was a sophomore in high school.

"How's it look outside?" she asked as she rinsed dried syrup from their dishes.

Jack put the syrup bottle and the juice away. "What, you sat in there paying your Macy's and Visa bills and didn't bother to look out the window?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Nice day," he told her, chuckling. "A real nice day,

actually, for April. Gonna be in the sixties, I think, and blue skies. I've got the windows open in my room. Quincy Market'll be packed."

"Then so will the pub," Courtney said, frowning.

"Hello? That's a good thing, isn't it? Kinda what we want? Most Irish pub owners would kill to be swamped at lunch on a Sunday."

Courtney laughed. "Yeah, yeah. I know. Just wondering if I should call Wendy and see if she can come in. I don't want to be caught shorthanded."

"We'll handle it," Jack reassured her. "If things get completely nuts, well, we'll roll with it. That's the best part. Our own circus act."

Courtney rolled her eyes. "Yeah. With no net."

"A net takes all the fun out of it."

"Go take a shower," she said. "We've got work to do."

The TV was on in Jack's bedroom as he got dressed. His hair was still wet from the shower but he pulled a shirt over it anyway. Yet another from his drawer full of short-sleeved, collared polo shirts with three buttons at the throat and "Bridget's Irish Rose Pub" sewn into the breast. This one was the most recent model—burgundy with navy blue stitching. Customers could buy them at the bar for thirty-two dollars. Employees got them at cost.

He pulled a fresh pair of jeans out of the closet just as Sunday Today gave way to five minutes of local news. It was 8:25 A.M. The first story caught his ear, and as he

pulled on his jeans, he turned to the television with the sense of unease that always accompanied news reports of tragedy.

"Two people are dead in Dorchester this morning in what appears to be a savage double murder. Authorities say they believe the victims might have been attacked by a gang. Apparently a large rock was thrown through the windshield of the car, causing the driver to swerve into a telephone pole. The victims were then allegedly dragged from the car, beaten, and mutilated."

Jack winced, horrified. "Oh, my God."

On his nightstand, the phone began to ring. Idly, eyes still riveted to the television screen, he zipped up his pants. He let the phone ring again, ran his hands through his still-damp hair.

"Local authorities believe last night's murders may be related to at least three other killings in the area in the last six weeks, most recently that of Corinne Berdinka, a nurse slain April fourth in the parking lot of New England Medical Center. Thus far, there seem to be no other links between the victims."

The phone rang a third time. This time it caught his attention. Jack blinked, then reached out to answer it. He lifted the handset off its cradle.

"Despite the mutilation of last night's victims," said the newsman, "they have been identified as Katherine Nordling, eighteen, of Boston, and nineteen-year-old Emerson College student Arthur Carroll."

Jack froze. He closed his eyes as he turned, phone gripped so tightly his hand hurt. He felt cold

all over, his

skin seeming to prickle with it, as if there were icicles on him. His chest hurt and he didn't know why; then he realized it was because he couldn't breathe.

Couldn't breathe at all.

He started to shake his head from side to side in a wordless denial. He had heard it wrong. Or it was a dream. Because that just could not be. Then he opened his eyes and saw the pictures on the television screen of his best friend and a girl he had laughed with the night before.

"No. Oh, Jesus no." It was a whisper.

All the strength drained out of his legs and Jack collapsed onto his bed. On the television screen the newscasters had moved on to something else, but the pictures were burned into his head.

He found that he could breathe now. At least enough so that he was able to cry. His chest heaved with nearly silent sobs.

Then he remembered the phone in his hand. He held it up and looked at it as though it were some sort of alien artifact. And then he heard her voice. Molly's voice.

"Jack?"

Pain there, quivering and awful and alone. He lifted the phone to his ear. "Molly?"

"Oh, my God, Jack," she managed, her voice a rasp, as though he could hear the tears rolling down her face.

"Molly. God, Molly, I'm so . . ." He took a hitching breath. "What are we going to do without him?"

Questions. So many questions and not a single one of them seemed to have an answer.

Artie's dead. The words kept resonating in his head but they had an alien quality to them, as though they were written across his mind in some arcane ancient language that not even professors studied anymore.

Numb. Jack was just numb. He had gone into the kitchen to tell Courtney and they had cried together and she had held him so tight it was almost funny—she being so much smaller than he. She had tried to cradle him as she would an infant. Eventually she disentangled herself, reached for her cane, and hobbled across the kitchen to the wall phone. The first call was to Wendy, who agreed to act as assistant manager for the day without even asking why. The second was to Bill Cantwell, to ask him to get one of the part-time bartenders to come in and help out.

Bill asked. Jack could tell the very moment that Bill asked, for in that moment his sister, leaning against the wall with the phone clamped to her ear, had glanced over at him and begun to cry again. Only for a second, then she stood up straight and told Bill exactly what had happened.

Courtney was strong and always had been. It pained Jack to see her so strong, because he knew it did not come naturally to her. She had simply never had any other choice.

Bill got someone to help cover the bar and insisted upon coming in right away, to help them get ready to open.

Bill and Courtney were there now, while Jack sat alone on his bed, staring alternately at the palms of his hands and then at the windows with the sparkling sun and sky beyond. Nothing he saw made any sense to him. Nor did the words that kept echoing in his head.

Artie's dead.

He decided to try to say them aloud, to taste the words to see if that helped him to understand.

'Artie's dead," he told his empty, open hands. Then he glanced out the window and said it again, telling the sky. His world had been irrevocably altered, and yet his own flesh and blood had not been affected in the least, the world outside had not changed. He heard a car horn blaring, a dog barking, and somewhere not too far off, a baby crying.

And that made sense.

It made sense that a baby should cry.

His lost and wandering gaze fell upon the framed photograph of his mother on his bureau. Jack felt compelled to go to it, as though his limbs were not his to control. He rose from the bed and walked over to the bureau and lifted the frame.

Bridget Dwyer, smiling and freckled and tarnished by hard work and a broken heart, but still filled with the faith that her life would be all right. She had the Irish Rose Pub and she had her children, and damn it, she would make sure everything was all right.

And then Jerry Coleman, a fifty-seven-year-old stockbroker with an alcohol problem, had drunkenly tried to change the radio station in his BMW, swerved

across the road, and made a liar out of her. Everything was not going to be all right.

But Courtney and Jack had been their mother's children. His big sister stayed strong, though her leg was ruined and her heart was shattered. Courtney had faith, and Jack knew even at the age of ten that if there was one thing his mother, God rest her soul, would have wanted from him it was that he should have faith as well. Faith that life would be all right. He and Courtney would find a way to survive, even to thrive. They would make a life.

And they did.