“Okay, what’s your question, Officer Oswald?”
“This man, this Karl Ruger…”
“Yes?”
“Well, sir, the rumors have been flying all over the station house about him. The others said that this man is supposed to be the Cape May Killer. Is that straight?”
Ferro pursed his lips. “It is a possibility, but no more than that. ”
Oswald gave him a flat stare. “Sir, I don’t mean any disrespect, but if this fellow is the Cape May Killer, shouldn’t we know about it? I know we’re only temporary cops, but we’re still going to be the ones out there, the ones who might have to face him. Shouldn’t we know everything about who we might be up against?” There were some faint and discreet murmurs of agreement.
It took Ferro a long five seconds to make his decision. He looked at Gus, who just spread his hands. “Okay, that’s fair enough, but let me say this. You people took an oath, however temporary. You are bound by policies of confidentiality, and I want each of you to respect that. For the moment, we can’t allow the full facts about this case to come out. There are reasons. Are we clear about that?” They all thought about it, then nodded. “Right, then. Okay, Karl Ruger is wanted for questioning in the Cape May Lighthouse killings. He is not only the prime suspect, he is the only suspect. Am I going to come out and say that he is the Cape May Killer? No, but I would be one very surprised cop if it turned out to be anyone else. Does that answer your question, Officer Oswald?”
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“Yes, sir, it surely does. ”
“Okay then? Any further questions? No? Okay then, listen up for your names and patrol assignments,” Ferro said loudly. “Officer Burke…?”
5
All through the long night and longer day they gave her sedatives and each time she tried to fight the drugs, tried to fight the tentacled pull of sleep; and each time she finally lost the battle and was pulled beneath the surface. Val Guthrie didn’t want to be down there in the darkness. Time and again she would swim upward toward the faint and distant light; time and again she would lose her way and sink back into the darkness. It hurt less in the darkness, but she wanted the light.
There in the dark Karl Ruger smiled at her from out of the shadows. He chased her endlessly though the black stalks of corn, his eyes burning with a hellfire red and his wet teeth glistening and sharp. He chased her and reached for her with impossibly long arms, tore at her with improbably sharp fingers. And as she ran, she would stagger past the bleeding and dying body of her father. No matter which route she took, no matter how far she ran, she would always find him again, lying there, broken, bleeding, face streaked with tears and rain and mud and blood. Every time she stumbled past, her father would reach imploringly for her, his voice pleading with her to stop and help him, to save him. He begged her to get him out of the cold rain, called her name with a mouth that bubbled with fresh blood.
Always she ran on, knowing that Karl Ruger was right behind her.
When she managed to get to the light, to come awake for whatever period of time fatigue and morphine would allow, the specter of Karl Ruger lagged behind, losing her in the maze of cornfields. Yet when she felt herself falling away once more in the darkness, Karl Ruger would be waiting.
It was the chime of the distant bell on City Hall Tower that woke her, a sound she shouldn’t have been able to hear through the distance and the thickness of walls and windows. With each chime, she came one increment closer to the light, one increment further from the darkness and the pursuing monster.
At the tenth chime she was fully awake. The room around her became a realness of machines beeping, tubes dripping, metal gleaming, flowers scenting the air. The tenth chime seemed to echo in her head, and for a few moments she lay there, extending her senses into her corporeal body, feeling the damage and feeling thankful for its realness and weight up there in the light.
There was a soft knock on the door, and after a few tries she managed to find her voice, still weak and hoarse from the assault on her throat.
“Come in!”
She could barely turn her head with the cervical collar, but out of the corner of her eye she could see the door swing silently open, and on the other side of it she could hear the faint scuffling of footsteps. The dragging footsteps of someone, perhaps injured or sick. Immediately she knew who it was.
“Crow?”
The footsteps paused for just the briefest moment, and then resumed. She waited as Crow shuffled into the room, shuffled around the edge of the open door, shuffled into plain view.
Everything in the world froze into a moment of absolute horror.
It was not Crow.
It was Karl Ruger.
He stood there, grinning with wet teeth that were smeared with black mud and dark red blood, his eyes flickering as red as rat’s eyes, his hair in disarray, his skin bled white and crawling with grubs and maggots. He stood swaying at the foot of her bed, his rumpled clothes stained darkly with blood, dotted with bullet holes. With hands that were as white as headstone marble, fingernails that were curiously thick and sharp, Karl Ruger reached for her.
Val felt something heavy in her hand and looked down to see that she was holding Crow’s gun. It hadn’t been there a second ago but it didn’t matter. Fury welled up in her, matching and then overmatching her fear, and she raised the gun, holding it straight out, inches from Ruger’s chest.
“You killed my father!” she shrieked as she pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into Ruger’s chest. She fired again and again, punching bullet after bullet through his black heart.
All he did was laugh, and when the gun was empty he lunged at her.
Val’s scream burned her damaged throat, and suddenly she was surrounded once again by the damp and swirling darkness. The darkness owned her, engulfed her, and she realized that she had never left the darkness at all, had never found the light. The darkness had simply learned how to fool her.