He just gives me a quick look and a nod while the boat tugs away, heading toward the bay. I can see it through the open door of the ambulance.
“Your vitals look good.” Keith breathes deeply for a second, sits back on one of the built-in benches, and says, “Where the hell were you, Betty?”
She meets his eyes and lies without twitching. “I don’t remember.”
There’s a pause. The sounds of the boat’s motor fade.
“Nothing?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “Nothing. Just came to in the harbor, naked as the day as I was born.”
“And you?” he asks me.
“Zara had a hunch,” Betty says. “She’s like that. Cop gut on that one. She’s all instincts.”
Keith shuts the door of the ambulance, closing out the cold, and gives Betty his own straight-on glare. His buzz cut is covered by a knit hat, but he has the attitude of a guy who has had enough. He says, “You are going to tell me and you are going to tell me right now, Betty White.”
“Tell you what?” she asks, all innocent, crossing her arms in front of her.
“You’re the damn tiger, aren’t you?” he says. He actually points his finger at her.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I’m a hamster.”
He says it so deadpan that I don’t know what to think. I have no idea if he’s kidding or not, and neither does Gram, I don’t think, because she snatches his sleeve and barks out, “Don’t you mock me.”
“Just tell me you aren’t the one making all the kids go missing.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest.
“You know that’s not me,” she snaps back. “I was with you when that call on the Sumner bus came in.”
You can tell that she wants to call him an idiot, but she’s holding back. Keith’s focus seems to turn inward. The “accident” was really a pixie attack on a bus full of Sumner High School band kids. It was a blood bath.
“You’re right,” Keith finally says. “But I still think you’re that tiger.”
“You’re crazy,” Betty retorts, adjusting her blanket. “Zara, tell the man he’s crazy.”
“You’re crazy,” I say in a computerized, flat voice that hopefully shows I’m not supporting either side.
“I don’t think so.” He hands Betty another blanket. “You were standing out there buck naked in the cold. Your core temperature is still in normal range when you should be hypothermic. Your feet should be blue. You have been missing for days. You should have frostbite. Yet you’re only shivering and only a tiny bit. That’s not normal human behavior.”
“So you think I’m a tiger.”
“No, I know you’re a tiger.”
“And how do you know that, Mr. Delusional?” Betty asks.
He opens the ambulance door and points up at a telephone pole. “There’s a camera there now, Betty. Josie monitors it at dispatch. It caught you turning back.”
“Crap,” Betty says, noticeably upset, which is unusual for her, but what’s also unusual is how calm and accepting Keith is being, given the fact that his partner is a human who morphs into a large feline. Props to him. He’s not even batting an eyelash.
“It’s okay, Gram,” I say, trying to soothe her by petting her knee. “It’s just Josie and Keith. They’re your friends. They won’t tell anyone they saw you.”
I fix Keith with a death glare, which hopefully conveys how I will kill him if he loses his mellow about this and tells.
“Ah, I know that, Zara. I’m not worried about that.” She puts her head in her hands.
“Then what are you worried about?” Keith asks.
“That everyone saw me naked.”
Keith mutters a curse and shuts the ambulance door, shaking his head like she’s nuts, which maybe she is. Maybe we all are, but when Betty lifts up her head and starts laughing, Keith and I start laughing too.
Betty takes a long shower and I order pizza, which we gulp down in two bites. It’s so good to have her back, even if her eyes are haunted and she seems older, more fragile.
“Why didn’t you come back, Gram?” I whisper. We’re sitting together on the couch, an empty pizza box in front of us.
Tears form at the edge of her eyes. After a few moments she turns and looks at me. “I thought I’d do more good killing than riding around in an ambulance most of the time. I don’t know. I just … When she died … You have no idea how hard it was not staying tiger,” she says. “I just wanted to stay feral and kill and not think. Still want to.”
Sighing, I close the pizza box. “Not thinking sounds very nice.”
“Not thinking is for wimps,” she says after a moment. “I was a wimp.”
“You were in pain.”
She scoffs. “You’re supposed to battle through it, not give in.”
“Maybe that’s how you had to battle through it,” I say. “It wasn’t the right way or the wrong way, just the Betty White way.”
That’s enough emotion for the both of us. Nick and I are scheduled to canvas again tonight, but he’s not at the house at six, so I plow the driveway and shovel the steps for the eight thousandth time and head out alone. Then all hell breaks loose. Literally. It starts when I smell that same horrible smell—rotting and death. And it continues with a fist to my head and a fall into the snow.
FBI INTERNAL MEMO
The incidences of lost children seem to coincide with an influx of visitors to the town. All hotels are filled to capacity, which I have been assured is highly unusual for the month of December. Are these two things related? —AGENT WILLIS
“Get up!”
Broken and silent, I’ve fallen onto the snow, knocked down onto the ground between the tall pine trees. My vision blurs and shifts, but if I squint really hard I can see a half-rotting human foot as it gets ready to place another kick.
It smells of death.
It smells of vanilla.
This is what’s been following me, and this is not a pixie. This? I have no idea how to fight this. I don’t know what this thing is and I don’t have time to wonder about it because one more kick might kill me, break me forever. Blood gushes out of a cut on the back of my head, pooling into the snow. That’s where it struck first. That’s what knocked me down. It was a surprise attack. I must have twisted as I fell, because even in the moonlight, I can make out the rotting skin. The monstrous thing is standing on two legs, barefoot in the snow. It pulls the other foot back to kick me again. This foot isn’t rotting at all. It looks female somehow. Maybe it’s the black toenail polish and slender toes.