Mulengro, page 24
He’d been in Ottawa when the other killings had taken place. He was a Gypsy himself. His house had been burned down and the symbol painted on its walls connected him to the murders. His car had been found abandoned in Perth—meaning the odds were good that he’d been here himself—and look what had happened. There was little doubt in Briggs’ mind that Owczarek was their man. He’d killed Gypsies, two hookers, a wino, and now a cop. They’d had him and let him slip right through their fingers. Now the sucker was still out there somewhere and who knew where the hell he’d turn up next?
The man talking to Will by the trailer was Phillip Archambault, the OPP officer in charge of the case. Frederick Butler, Perth’s Chief of Police, was standing with them. The case was out of Butler’s jurisdiction as well, since the slaughter had taken place outside of the town limits, but Constable Finlay had been one of his men and who was going to tell Butler that his help wasn’t wanted?
It was weird, Briggs thought, how something like this dissolved all the rivalry and friction between the various police forces. There were even a couple of horsemen here—being helpful, not lording it over the rest of them because they were federal, like they usually did. In different circumstances . . . It could be a kidnapping and every-body’d be screaming about jurisdiction, or a drug bust and they’d all be stepping on each other’s toes, but as soon as a cop bought it, as soon as it was one of their own being taken away in the green bag, the rivalry vanished like it had never existed. It was kind of sad that it took something like this to bring them all together. They were all supposed to be working towards the same thing, after all. But Briggs knew himself how hard it was to take the RCMP when they were playing king shit on turd hill. And he hadn’t exactly been easy on Finlay when he was talking to him this afternoon. Now Finlay was dead—his ghost joining the others inside Briggs—while Owczarek was running free.
Briggs sighed. He stuffed his cold pipe into his jacket and, hands in his pockets, wandered over to where Will stood to see how things were coming along.
“Hell,” Archambault, the OPP officer was saying. “We don’t even know if he has a vehicle. There haven’t been any stolen cars reported and Finlay impounded Owczarek’s Chev this afternoon—”
“I tell you, he’s taken to the bush,” Butler said. The Perth Chief of Police was a stocky man, balding and broad-faced. He’d been at a barbecue when the call came in and was still wearing an apron that said: “DON’T TELL ME HOW YOU WANT IT, FM THE CHEF!” He looked, Briggs decided, like a man who wasn’t about to take shit from anyone.
“Maybe he did,” Archambault began, “but—”
“We need dogs to hunt the bastard down,” Butler insisted, “and if you’re not going to provide them, I know a lot of good men who will.”
“Fred,” Archambault said. “We’ve got enough problems without bringing civilians into it.”
“Then do something! He was my man, for Christ’s sake.”
“And I’m damn sorry that he bought it, but I’m still not having some lynch mob out there beating the bush, ready to blow away anything that moves funny—do you understand?” Archambault immediately regretted snapping at the police chief. “Look, Fred. I’m sorry. We’re all jumpy. We’re going to nail this sucker—you’ve got my word on it—but let’s just keep it in the family, okay? I’d just as soon see him blown away as brought to court and maybe get off— but we can’t work it that way.”
Briggs glanced back to the police barricades that kept a crowd of gawking onlookers at bay and was happy it was up. Wouldn’t do to let the press get within earshot with this kind of shit going down. He caught Will’s eye and nodded to have him come over to where he was standing.
“Doesn’t look so good, does it?” he said.
Will sighed. “Well, they’re trying, Paddy, but it’s got everybody shook up. Christ, I thought the victims we had looked bad.”
Briggs nodded, remembering. Owczarek had slaughtered them. “Any more word on the girl or this Owen fellow?” he asked.
Will shook his head. “Archambault’s got an APB out on all three of them and his people are cruising the backroads, but shit, Paddy, have you seen a road map of this area? They could be anywhere— right out of the county by now—and no one would have spotted them. I don’t think—”
Briggs held up his hand. “Hang on,” he said as Archambault called him over. The OPP officer was a lean Frenchman, dark-haired and wiry. There was no trace of an accent when he spoke.
“Is this all you have on Owczarek?” he asked as Briggs stepped up. He held the slim file that Briggs and Will had brought down with them in his hand.
“What’re you looking for?”
“Well, you say he’s a concert violinist—but that doesn’t tell me much. What I want to know is, has he had any experience in the woods? Can he handle weapons? Could he take to the bush and live off it for however long he needs to get away? You see what I’m getting at? I need more than just a name and what’s in here. I need to know how he thinks.”
Briggs nodded. He understood that need. The faceless man that had been haunting him had finally turned from the dark end of his mental street and shown his face—Owczarek’s face.
“He’s a Gypsy,” Briggs said simply, “and that means we don’t know anything about him except that we should expect him to be capable of anything. We can trace him back three years and all that comes up is clean living. We’re still working at putting him in those other cities at the same time as the murders took place in them, but we’ve had trouble getting hold of his agent and her records.”
“A Gypsy,” Archambault repeated. “What the hell does that tell us?”
Briggs understood the frustration in the officer’s voice and knew it wasn’t directed at himself. “What it means,” he said, “is that they’re like chameleons—they can fit in anywhere. Will’s been studying up on them and if you want to know whether Owczarek can survive out in the bush—even without bringing any supplies in with him—the answer’s yes. If you want my advice, you’ll get the dogs up here as soon as you can. Your witness only heard Constable Finlay’s car, right?”
“Yeah. But that’s not to say Owczarek didn’t just park a vehicle down the road a-ways and head back to it over the fields after he finished here. He could’ve parked a mile away and by the time he reached it and started her up, this place would’ve been in such an uproar. . . .“
“The dogs’ll tell us that, won’t they?”
Archambault nodded. “Yeah. I’ve already put in a call for them. They’ll be here in about twenty minutes or so.” He paused, his gaze drawn to the blood-stained dirt. “Thing I don’t understand is . . . Owczarek’s not that big a guy, right? Duncan said his wife got here seconds after the first scream and he was right on her heels. The bodies were already torn up like you saw them and our boy was gone. If they’ve got their timing right, this boy’s got to be fast. Strong as a fucking bear and fast!”
“Plus we’ve got two victims in Ottawa that we know he did something to, but they didn’t have a mark on them.”
Archambault frowned. “First you’re telling me about leopard cults—now you’re talking, what? Voodoo?”
“I never said it made any sense,” Briggs said softly.
“Yeah. You never did,” Archambault turned to his forensic team. “Are you just about finished here?”
Briggs returned to Will’s side. He glanced at the Perth police chief. Butler was sitting on a lawn chair, hands cupping his chin, just staring off into the night. He’s hurting bad, Briggs thought. And he’s got one hell of a mad on. There were about a dozen other policemen around the trailer—in uniform and out—and anger was the predominant emotion. It crackled in the air like a physical presence. Owczarek was going to be lucky to survive the “resisting arrest” that’d be entered on his file when those boys got through with him. Briggs wasn’t sure he wanted to be any part of that kind of thing until he remembered the victims. Red-eye Cleary. The hookers. Finlay. The other Gypsies. Their ghosts flitted like trapped bats through his thoughts, coloring the way he saw things.
“Are we sticking this out?” Will asked.
“I’ve got to,” Briggs said. “I’ve got to see him brought in with my own two eyes. I don’t want to read about it in the papers or in some report. I want to know he’s finished.” Because otherwise, he thought, the ghosts might never leave . . . Will nodded. “You know what scares me the most?”
“What?”
“The juju, Paddy. I’ve got the bad feeling that this guy’s not even human.”
Images of the dismembered corpses of Owczarek’s latest victims floated into Briggs’ mind, mingling with the ghosts of the other victims that had already taken up residence there. Owczarek. Even with a club like those cat cults used, or a shuko . . . The sheer ferocity of the man’s attack . . . his strength . . . to leave them looking
like that . . . He suppressed a shiver of cold dread. And then there
were the ones who had died, that he hadn’t even touched. . . .
“Don’t start,” he said softly to his partner. “Don’t even start me thinking along those lines.”
He tried to turn his thoughts to a more pleasant line of thinking, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was a dark street and Owczarek walking down it towards him. Around his neck he wore a necklace of tiny shrunken heads. They weren’t all shriveled like the kind you’d see in a movie about head-hunters. They were just tiny heads, like Indian coups, hanging around his neck, and the one in the center, the one that was opening its eyes, had Briggs’ own face. . . . He
shook his head roughly, trying to dislodge the image.
“Paddy?” Will began.
“I’m okay. Let’s go see if they’ve got any more coffee left.”
He turned away from the scene of the murders and headed past the barricades. Will had a last look, then slowly followed. Both men ignored the microphones that were thrust into their faces by reporters, eager for a personal statement from the investigating officers.
thirty
Friday night in Lanark County.
In Tinkers, Toby Finnegan was finishing up his third set of the night. He put his fiddle away in its case and wandered over to the bar with his guitarist, Jessie Briton. She ordered a draft while he settled for a cup of tea. The restaurant was quiet tonight with less than fifteen people scattered at the various tables. Across the street in The Zoo the action was heavier, even if the Gourlays weren’t there to add their usual bravado to the mayhem. The only person who missed them was one of the waitresses, Cathy Chambers, who thought Stan was a pretty funny guy, what with all his jokes and wisecracks. In the Perth Hotel, the Wide Acre Boys were in the middle of a laid-back version of “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” while the crowd at the Rideau Ferry Inn was talking over the piano that Hugh Tibbs played quietly in the corner, Tibbs letting his fingers walk over the black and white keys and thinking more about what he was going to do in the morning than about what he was playing.
Beyond the night spots, televisions flickered in living rooms, lights went out as the older folks went to bed, some hot-and-heavy backseat loving was happening in laneways, and there was a significantly larger proportion of police vehicles patrolling the roads. Beyond the cottages and houses, the night life carried on as usual, ignorant of the affairs of men. Bats flitted in the dark air, hunting grasshoppers and moths. An owl fed on a fieldmouse, one claw holding the tiny corpse in place as its beak tore at the flesh. A fox stalked a nervous hare, a mole thrust a quivering nose out of the dark earth, looking for grubs, and mosquitos hunted anything with blood flowing through its veins.
On a dirt road, his black boots grey with the dust they scuffed up, Mulengro walked steadily, paradoxically aware yet oblivious to everything the night held. The mosquitos hummed around him, but did not alight, as though sensing a madness like poison in his veins. The mind of the drabarni he sought drew him on through the darkness. He saw her as a gold flare—now vague and flickering like feux-follets or the reflection of a cat’s eyes, now a sparkling pulse like a tiny star in the distance, glittering like fool’s fire. Her draba drew him. It would aid him in his work.
He thought of the shanglo who had tried to stop him from that work earlier this evening. The uniform had been too much like the uniforms of the guards in the hospital where the doctors prodded and pried him, filling him with Gaje drugs. He could hear their voices still sometimes, on nights like this, when the silence drew heavy across the woods. They had a hundred terms for his illness— an illness that he knew was caused only by the confinement and the drugs. When the mule freed him, the dark terrors fled. The madness was gone. He knew his work and he set about it sanely. As God brought the mule to him, so God had shown him what must be done that the Rom be freed of their marhime, that they would be loved in His eyes once more, as they had been before.
No, he was no longer mad. Not when he was finally free of the hospital and the last traces of the Gaje drugs had fled his system. Only the Rom who embraced their marhime were mad. And the Gaje who tried to stop him from his work.
In the beginning, in those first weeks of freedom, he’d thought the task set to him to be an easy one. The Nazis had done much of his work for him and not many of the Rom he first encountered needed cleansing. It was not until he left Europe, until he came to the Americas, that he understood the full scope of what he had undertaken. The Rom here had forsaken their vurdon for metal Gaje vehicles, had forsaken the old ways for those of a society that had no use for them.
He thought of the policeman again—the blond shanglo with his gun. He knew the time would come when he would have to deal with the Gaje as well—not to cleanse them, for they could never be other than marhime, but to end their influence over the weaker Rom who fell prey to the temptations that the Gaje offered them. Houses, when all a Rom needed was the sky above his head. Cars, when a horse-drawn vurdon moved as swiftly as any phral should rightfully wish to travel. Oh, yes. The Gaje had so much to offer: glitter and lights and drugs, a lack of morals, a lack of cleanliness.
His mouth tightened into a thin-lipped frown. The mule he had would not be enough to complete his work for, with every Rom he cleansed, a dozen more marhime arose in their place. He let his mind taste again the drabarni’s potency. Her muli would be strong— stronger than the mule he had serving him now. If he could seek out other drabarne and use their strengths in his work, as he used the mule he had already, as he used himself. . . .
He paused on the road. The mule gathered in a thick fog about his calves. Before him stood a stiff-legged dog, ears laid back against the sides of its head, lips drawn back in a soundless snarl, baring teeth. The creature’s fur was matted and hung with burrs and its body was hungry-lean, gaunt ribs showing their ridges along its back. A second and a third drifted from the woods to either side of the road, silent as the mule that writhed about Mulengro’s legs. The man smiled and held in check the mule that had begun to drift between the threat of the feral dogs and himself. These were not Rom, nor could he use their mule, if mule they had, but he could use them still. He needed only their names.
Dogs that once were pets but have gone wild are an unexplained biological phenomenon. Most are small packs of strays that gather together simply to survive, growing bolder as their conquests multiply. Others are pets deserted by cottagers during the week when they return to the city to earn the money that allows them to spend their weekends boating, fishing and, once in a while, wondering what happened to the friendly family pooch. And in each pack of feral dogs there can always be seen one or two sleek well-fed beasts who obviously leave their homes to only periodically run with the pack. Some of these might even return to their owners’ porches in the morning, spent from the night’s exertions. But the pack that faced the man in black tonight was all feral.
As he watched, their number grew to seven. Lean and wary, they studied the lone man with his hungry eyes. There was game to run down in the forest and men were to be avoided at all costs—they learned that lesson far quicker than their domesticated brothers learned to fetch a paper and obey a sharply spoken “Sit” or “Stay”—but now something drew them from their normal haunts to seek the man in black who dared to walk alone along this dirt road that cut through their hunting ground, at this time of night, a time that belonged to them.
Mulengro took a step towards the pack leader, smiling as it sank into a crouch. The dog’s snarl became audible, gained in volume. A red fire in the back of its brain told it to attack, but the victim was a man—to be feared—and the stink of fear that normally drove dogs wild was not on him. The remainder of the pack slunk to either side of Mulengro, enclosing him in a rough circle.
“I know you,” he said to the pack leader, his voice dry and harsh. Unafraid.
Uncertainty flickered in the dog’s eyes. It knew it should flee now, could not understand why it was here on this road, facing this hated man—letting the two-legged monster approach. . . .
Suddenly Mulengro was upon it. He caught it by the scruff of its neck and half lifted it from the ground so that its hind legs could get no purchase on the dirt road and its forepaws only scrabbled at the air. Mulengro held it at arm’s length, grinning into its feral face. The rest of the pack hesitated between attacking and fleeing. They watched the mule taking shape, drifting between themselves and safety, between themselves and the man in black. Mulengro’s grin broadened as the pack leader fought his grip.
“I do know you,” he said. “All but your name.”
His free hand snapped out, closing over the top of the dog’s head, covering its eyes. He shut his gaze to the struggling creature and the night and let his mind touch the incoherent babble of the dog’s panic and feral rage, sifting through and weighing the various facets of its being until he understood it and had its name. It was not a word in the sense of the languages that mankind used, but a sound that summed up the animal’s essence. Mulengro spoke it aloud and the dog stopped its struggling. He took his hand from its eyes and it stared at him, losing its gaze in the pale-blue eyes that burned above Mulengro’s scarred cheeks. The man in black loosened his grip and let the animal drop to the ground. It staggered, confusion reigning in its dim mind.
