The Beast of Barcroft (7 page)

F
RIDAY,
N
OVEMBER 14

It was already dark when Ben pulled into his driveway after work and saw the rear half of his house awash in blue police lights. That would be impossible, he thought, unless cruisers had driven right into his backyard. He turned off his car and sat for a moment, regarding the lights, then Madeleine's house. He had more to contend with than rats and bobcats now.

That morning, he had left Madeleine's for home, locked all the doors and windows, and spent an hour in the shower, scrubbing the filth off him. Even in his cubicle, hours later, he was convinced he could smell animal urine, no longer certain if it was in his nostrils or just his mind. Should he call the police, he wondered? If that half-ass witch was telling the truth and truly was Madeleine's mother, she had more of a right to be there than he did, which was no right at all. It took effort, but he tried to look at things from her perspective—crazy, certainly, but grieving. Would he have reacted the same way if someone came into his house uninvited? Then he thought of the state of the house, and his disgust for someone capable of staying there overrode his tenuous empathy. In the light of day, it seemed so unreal, but that morning in the predawn, he had feared for his life. And now it was dark again.

He got out of the car and walked into the backyard. He scanned the lawn and the corners as he approached the fence between his house and Hazel's behind him. If there were any lingering animals, he figured the commotion would have scared them away. Several police cars were parked on the street behind his, and one still had its lights on. He was about to call Hazel from his cellphone when he saw an officer exit the back door, lean forward, and put her hands on the tops of her thighs. It was Cushing. He watched her take deep breaths for a few moments, then called out.

“Is Hazel okay?”

She shot up.

“I didn't see you.”

“What's going on?”

She walked to the fence. By the time she reached it, she had collected herself.

“Were you friends with Ms. Bennett?”

“I'd say more like allies.”

“Allies?”

Ben jerked his thumb toward Madeleine's house. “Is she okay?”

“No,” she said, looking back at the house. “She's definitely not okay.”

“Oh.” Both were quiet for a minute. “That's really sad. I just saw her last night too. What happened exactly?”

“That's what we're trying to determine. What time was it that you saw her?”

“Around eight or eight thirty. At the Community House on South Buchanan.”

Officer Cushing removed her notepad again. “Did she have anyone who would want to see her hurt?”

“Enemies? Jesus, it wasn't a heart attack?”

“Please answer the question.”

“I would say she probably considered a lot of people enemies. I don't know how many people considered her one though. Or considered her at all.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She was the neighborhood's prickly old lady. The kind who always had something to say about your grass being too tall or where you parked your car. You know, ‘get off my lawn' and all that.”

“Did you ever have any run-ins with her?”

“I suppose that's the single benefit of living next door to Little Shop of Horrors over there. Hazel and I had a common enemy. Hence, allies. So it was foul play?”

“We're trying to figure that out.”

“Something shook you up. Just tell me.”

“ ‘Shook me up'?”

“Should I say you look like hell?”

She turned. “Have a good evening, Mr. McKelvie.”

“Come on, I'm going to find out anyway.”

“I'm sure you will, sir.”

She was almost at the house.

He called after her. “Hey, can you at least tell me if it's something the rest of us should worry about?”

She paused on the back step, and for a moment Ben thought she would answer, then she disappeared inside.

“The rats, partner.
Rats
.”

Ben and Jim sat in the Lost Dog Cafe on Columbia Pike an hour later. The walls were adorned with crude paintings of anthropomorphized dogs wearing suits, eating pizza, and shooting pool. Ben noticed the other diners looking at their table.

“You're using the R-word in a crowded restaurant,” said Ben.

“Listen. Lisa said her paramedic friend said he had never seen anything like it in his life. They went to
town
on her, partner. Hundreds and hundreds of bites, chewed down to the bone.” Jim lifted a folded slice to his mouth. “There was barely anything left of her. Half the cops blew chunks, the other half came by just to see it.”

Ben pushed his pizza away.

“How is that even possible?” he asked. “It's not like she was dead a week. We just saw her last night. So, what, she had a heart attack or fell and hit her head, then the rats did that in less than a day? Something's weird.”

“I guess the moral of the story is ‘don't die.' ”

“I could understand if it was a while. The smell might attract…”

“Yeah, yeah. What I want to know is how it went with that zoo lady?” Jim raised his eyebrows twice in quick succession.

Ben told him of his talk with Lindsay and his rescue mission for the cat. By the time he finished recounting his standoff with the woman in the basement, Jim was frozen with his slice halfway to his mouth. He stared at Ben, astonished, until the cheese slid off his pizza.

“Did you call the cops?”

“I was debating it.”

“
Debating
it? Someone throws you down a flight of stairs—”

“She didn't
throw
me…”

“—then pulls a knife on you, and you don't even call the cops? You didn't even need to use the phone, all you had to do was lean over the fence!”

“She had a claim to be there. I didn't. Technically, I was breaking and entering. Well, the door was unlocked, so…entering.”

“How do you know she was her mother? She could be anyone.”

“I didn't ask her for ID.”

“Call the cops, Ben.”

“They have their hands full.”

“There's more than one of them. You pay taxes.”

“I only ever see one and I don't think I'm her favorite citizen right now.”

“Who?”

“An officer named Cushing.”

“Cushing? She's a friend of Lisa's,” said Jim, grinning. His eyebrows danced again. “She's nice.”

“She is nice, if today is opposite day.”

“Cute though.”

“So are mountain lions in the right light. When I called about mine she was less than pleasant. And again today. Now you want I should call about some crazy witch-looking woman on the same day rats chew my neighbor to pieces? I'm starting to sound like the boy who cried wolf.”

“Bullshit.” He pointed at Ben. “
You
are the wolf. We're the Big Bad Wolves, remember? So get mad. Huff and puff, man.”

Ben looked up at the wall where a dog wearing sunglasses drove into the sunset. “That's not something you need to worry about.”

“You couldn't have at least brought some rat poison inside the house with you?”

Ben shrugged. “I admit it was not a well-thought-out operation.”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“I don't know. Watching the Discovery Channel. Rat-proofing. The usual.”

“Jesus Christ, you're sad. Come out. Lisa has some birthday party in Shirlington for one of her nurse friends. There's going to be lots of caring, idealistic young ladies there.”

Ben shifted in his seat. “I don't know, man. I'm not really up for that now.”

“Sack up. You've been saying that for months. If you're not at Busboys and Poets at seven o'clock, I will revoke your testicles. Fuck it, I'll even drive you.”

Ben sighed. “Fine. Can I eat now?”

“ ‘Watching the Discovery Channel' is code for Internet porn, isn't it?”

“I said I'll go.”

Ben opened the door and his security system beeped in incessant greeting until he punched in the code. It had been a concession to Rachel, who insisted on installing one after finding Madeleine in their driveway one afternoon, on all fours, scrubbing. When Rachel tried to drive up, Madeleine blocked the driveway and started yelling at the car. “I'm scrubbing the poop, but what do you want me to do, cut down the trees?” The crazed woman stood her ground and Rachel put the car in reverse, drove around the block, and called Ben from her cell. He was ready for a confrontation by the time he reached home from work, but Madeleine had pulled her garden hose into his yard and was spraying soapsuds from the driveway. She was all smiles.

“I know there's been some problems with the birds…I'm really sorry…I'm scrubbing the poop.”

“You don't have to scrub our driveway.”

“I think the sparrows like that tree right here and…”

“Madeleine.”

“…there's this telephone line too, runs right over your driveway, and the sparrows like to sit there in the mornings and I think—”

“It's not the fucking sparrows!”

Her eyes stopped darting and she looked at him for the first time.

“Look at my house.” He gestured to the side of the house facing hers, speckled with bird droppings. “Look at my car. Look around
your
house. It's the fucking pigeons!”

“Really?”

“You heap mounds of birdseed onto your porch, which draws the pigeons, which in turn draws the rats. I can't believe I actually have to verbalize this, but stop scrubbing my driveway and stop feeding the fucking rats, the ones with and without wings. Just stop!”

Madeleine looked perplexed, not upset, as she dragged her hose home.

Ben pushed the memory aside. It had been a long, bizarre day and he had spent enough time thinking about that woman, her house, or her crazy witch mother. And now poor Hazel…He just wanted to turn off his brain. He thought of falling onto the couch and turning on the television, but he went into the basement instead. The few months they lived together, Rachel had taken over the bedroom closet and the upstairs bathroom, so he had made the basement his own. Even after she left, the bulk of his stuff remained subterranean. He passed the bookshelf containing old detective stories, a jar for coins, and one shelf reserved as a shrine to his father. He paused for a moment and looked at the framed photographs—black-and-white pictures from when his father was a kid, in uniform by his first patrol car, modern pictures with his hair gray and a paunch. He looked healthy, robust. Ben's eyes drifted over the miscellaneous items. The silver nameplate his dad wore over his breast pocket while on the job. The copper badge he had worn over the other. The pewter urn. Ben continued to the bathroom.

Even though he had scrubbed himself pink that morning, after hearing about Hazel, he decided on another shower. Despite his attempts not to think about her, the memory of Madeleine in his driveway returned. She had freaked Rachel out that afternoon, and he had been pissed at the time—about that, about the state of the house, his crumbling relationship, his father's passing—but he wondered if he could have handled it differently. Not at the time, he thought. But now? Had they not had things in common? He knew what it was like to lose parents. He pushed the thought aside. No, he was not wrong, he thought. How could he be wrong? In his defense, Exhibit A was Bucky, Exhibit B was poor Hazel. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to find Madeleine's grave and yell at her some more.

He dried off, put on some gym clothes, and walked upstairs. From the kitchen, he looked through the window at Madeleine's house. No lights were on except for the perpetual Halloween glow of the front porch lantern.
No one pays attention to the scary things after Halloween,
he thought out of the blue. He wondered if kids in the neighborhood would play hopscotch and sing songs about her house one day. They should. Call the cops, Jim had told him. But it had been a long day. Instead, he dumped a can of tuna into a bowl and filled another with water and carried them to the back door.

He scanned the yard for movement.

“Hey, cat!”

The wind whipped the leaves in the backyard and chilled him. The cat did not come.

“Here, kitty kitty,” he called, softer, then set the bowls down and went back inside.

S
ATURDAY,
N
OVEMBER 15

Jim was true to his word. The bar at Busboys and Poets was lined with drunk nurses. The place was a bizarre hybrid of restaurant and bookstore, with one section for a bar and another, larger performance space for poetry readings and events. As the night progressed, the thoughtful hipsters were steadily drowned out by the nurses, who carried on as if it was a bachelorette party. Ben and Jim sat at the corner of the bar, with Jim facing the revelers and Ben doing his best to keep his back to them. A drunk nurse bumped him.

Ben made a face.

“That's good,” said Jim. “Chicks dig assholes.”

“Asshole?”

“Fine, aloof. You like aloof better? It won't kill you to talk to someone.”

“I'm talking to you.”

“You're fucking hopeless.” Suddenly, his face brightened. He straightened in his chair and waved someone over.

Ben looked absently toward the door to see Officer Cushing approaching.

He spun on Jim.
“You motherfucker.”

“Who, me? This is a public place in a free country.”

“You knew she was going to be here,” he said, seething. “You set me up.”

“Technically it was Lisa's idea, but I am enjoying this thoroughly. Stacy!”

To her credit, she did not break stride when she spotted him. She looked momentarily startled, but she had a strong chin that did not dip for an instant. With her chestnut hair down and makeup on, and out of her police uniform, she had a nice figure, Ben noticed. And no longer suppressed by a bulletproof vest, she was a little buxom even. She looked very stylish in a short leather jacket and heels. She gave Jim a hug and a kiss, keeping her eyes on Ben the whole time as if he might try to steal her purse. Just then, Lisa came up. Both women made a high-pitched noise and hugged. Ben mouthed “motherfucker” to Jim, who was beaming.

Lisa looked at Ben. “So, Jim tells me you two have met before?”

“That we did,” said Ben.

“I almost arrested him,” said Cushing. Everyone but Ben laughed.

“Jim, will you help me with something?” said Lisa, and then they were gone, leaving Ben alone at the bar with Cushing.

As soon as Jim and Lisa were gone, he expected the officer to bolt. Instead, she sat down and flagged the bartender over. Ben stared at the bar top. “I smell a setup.”

“Well, I don't smell piss. That's an improvement, I guess.”

Despite himself, Ben smiled.

“Look, I'm…you didn't catch me at my best. I just watched something kill my dog. I apologize if I came across—”

“Like an asshole.”

Ben gritted his teeth. “Yes.”

“I suppose I'd be a little fucked-up too.”

“Thanks.” He held out his hand. “Ben.”

“Stacy.”

“No offense, Stacy, but I still intend to get even with Jim and Lisa.”

“Hear, hear.” She grinned and raised her glass. “I'm going to add their car to the Stolen Vehicle Database.”

They talked for two hours, until the nurses left. When she said she had an early shift in the morning, he was drunk enough to follow her outside. He felt good, better than he had for as long as he could remember. He would still yell at Jim and Lisa, though, even if their intentions were pure.

“You okay to drive, good citizen?” she asked.

Ben smiled. “Jim and Lisa drove. I fully intend to make the short ride as painful as possible.”

“Even though I'm fucking awesome?”

“Even so.” Ben nodded, smiling. “It's the principle of it.”

“Don't be too clever, Mr. McKelvie.” She smiled, then crossed the street.

“Can I call you?” he called after her.

She spun on him with imaginary pistols in both hands, like a gunslinger. “Just dial 911.”

Ben laughed.
Well, then,
he thought.