Part 19 (1/2)
”I told your deputy what I know, Art,” Tom said. ”I really can't say any more. I'll answer any questions I can, but it has to be this way. What do you want to know?”
Sheriff Jensen sighed and said, ”Okay. Who killed Ted?”
”I don't know.”
”Who do you think killed Ted?”
Now it was Tom's turn to sigh. ”Okay. I think, in the final a.n.a.lysis, the creature that attacked my family killed him.”
”'In the final a.n.a.lysis,'” Sheriff Jensen said, weighing the meaning of the phrase. ”How about in the immediate a.n.a.lysis? His wounds don't bear any resemblance to the wounds on that girl - except for one - the fatal throat wound. The other wounds are particularly disturbing. He was stabbed repeatedly with a knife. His blood is all over your daughter's bedroom, in fact, it's all over your house and property. It would appear that our 'sasquatch' was your brother-in-law in a monkey suit.”
”If you say so,” Tom said.
”Dammit, can't you help me at all?”
”Art, I know this sounds like bulls.h.i.+t, but if I told you what I knew, not only would you not believe me, you'd think I'm crazy.”
”Maybe so, but you're not holding back to maintain my high opinion of you. You're protecting someone.”
Tom pressed his lips together tightly for a moment and said, ”I'm sorry, Art.”
”What was he doing out in the woods at night, three miles from the house?”
”I don't know.”
”Why was he naked?”
”I don't know.”
”Why did you follow him into the woods on the night of the attack?”
”I saw him leave the garage after dark and go into the woods. I wanted to know what was going on.”
”What did you find out?”
”Nothing. He lost me in the woods, and then that . . . thing came after me. I ended up in a tree. I never saw Ted again until the next morning.”
”Uh-huh,” Sheriff Jensen said, pulling a small notebook from his s.h.i.+rt pocket. Reading as he spoke, he said, ”You apparently waited until the officer left that morning, then went back into the woods with a shotgun. An hour or two later, you called my office to report you found Ted's body about three miles from your house. How did you know where to look?”
”Is this really off the record? 'Cause if it is, I don't know why you're asking me questions you already know the answers to. I told your deputy, I followed a trail of blood. And I waited for the sun to come up, not for your deputy to leave. As I recall, your deputies weren't exactly eager to search in the dark.”
”Yes, but my deputies didn't know Ted was out there, and you didn't volunteer that information.”
”I didn't know either. Like I told you, Ted lost me out there. How was I to know he didn't come home while that creature had me treed?”
”But why didn't you mention it to anyone?”
”I had other things on my mind. My family had been attacked, almost killed. I'd forgotten all about Ted.”
”You understand, Tom, I'm just asking what the grand jury is going to ask.”
”Thanks, Art, but don't forget that you're also responsible for finding out what happened, and the jury's going to ask you one or two questions, too.”
”Dammit, Tom, I resent that! I came here to help you, I'm putting my a.s.s on the line just by being here! Now I'm being straight with you, and I'd appreciate it if you could try being straight with me! There's no stenographer here, this is your office, I'm not taking notes, and as a lawyer you know d.a.m.n well I can't use a thing you tell me as evidence. But if it makes you happy, I'll pull out my pen and take notes while I ask you one question on the record. Okay?”
”Shoot.”
”Did you kill Ted?”
Tom laughed out loud.
”You've got to be joking! You want to know if I ripped his throat out with my teeth? You want to check my mouth? Maybe I didn't floss all of his trachea out from between my incisors. Jesus Christ, you must be desperate.”
”Tell me what you know, Tom.”
”Tell me what you know, first.”
”You know I can't do that.”
”Why not? I'm your only suspect, right? So press charges; I'll file under discovery, and you'll have to tell me everything you know. So what do you have to lose?”
Sheriff Jensen thought for a long moment. Finally, he said, ”If I tell you what I know, will you tell me what you know?”
”I'll tell you what I can.”
”Christ, you're really being an a.s.shole about this.”
”I'm sorry, Art, I really am, but it has to be this way.”
Sheriff Jensen stared at him for a moment and said, ”Okay. But I never told you any of this. I came here officially, just asking questions, and you didn't answer any of them, and that's all that happened.”
”That's all that happened,” To agreed.
The sheriff consulted his notebook.
”Whatever happened in Nepal was a major turning point in Ted's life, but when I tried to look into it I ran into a stone wall. I called the Nepalese constable who interrogated him; he insisted on knowing Ted's condition before he'd tell my anything, and when I told him Ted was dead, he just said, 'Then the matter is settled,' and clammed up. He seemed awfully relieved to hear about Ted's demise, and obviously didn't give a d.a.m.n about helping me with my problems.
”In any case, as soon as Ted got back to the States, he put his Seattle home up for sale and moved into his summer cabin permanently - or at least until the hiker's body turned up. But the most revealing change was in his phone bills.
”Before Nepal, all his long-distance calls were either to your house or business-related: magazine editors, foreign emba.s.sies, ticket agents, that kind of thing. After Nepal, all the business calls stopped, but his long-distance bill went up. For the first two months, he called libraries and bookstores almost every day. He started with the biggies: the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and big bookstore chains. By the third week, he'd worked his way down to obscure dealers in out-of-print books, and occult bookstores. Seems he was only interested in the history - not fiction - of werewolves, but none of the books he found satisfied him. Apparently, the folklore says werewolves were witches, warlocks, that kind of thing, and they changed themselves deliberately with potions and spells. He wanted to know about people turning into werewolves after being bitten by one, and there's nothing like that in the literature.
”Eventually his research changed direction. Just curious . . . did Ted ever mention Robert Harris while he was living with you?”
”No. Who is he?” Tom asked.
”He was a Hollywood screenwriter in the 'thirties. I never heard of him myself until I started calling people on Ted's phone bills. It seems Ted became obsessed with this guy, who's been dead for some time, by the way. Ted spent about three solid weeks calling friends, relatives and acquaintances of Harris, starting in Hollywood and going back to the East coast. He wanted to know anything he could find out about Harris' private life. I finally did a little research of my own, and . . . well, it's really kind of stupid, but in 1935, Harris wrote the first Hollywood werewolf movie. A mostly forgotten little effort called The Werewolf of London, in which an Englishman turns into a werewolf after being bitten by one - in Nepal.”