“Ah, right. The bone.” The young policeman looked baffled. “What do you mean, lost the hole?”
“That’s just it. The hole was gone the next morning. Completely vanished.”
“That’s a head-scratcher. Maybe the wind filled it in, or the tide came up farther than we thought. But I didn’t come about the bone. Haven’t had the chance yet to send it to the lab. I came about your monster. I’ve got the DB in the back of my rig.”
“DB?” Tim asked.
“Dead body.”
The boys rushed to the window to spy on whatever might be in the squad car.
“You’ve got a monster in there?” Jack Peter asked.
Pollock shifted his weight and slid a thumb into the waistband of his trousers. “Remember how we thought there might be a wild thing roaming around these parts? Well, Mr. Keenan, you weren’t too far off. We’ve found it. It’s in the trunk. If the boys want to come out and see it with you, they can.”
“My son never leaves the house.”
“Ah, right. I’d forget my head sometimes. Then you and the other boy come out and have a look-see.”
Bundled in their coats, Tim and Nick followed Officer Pollock into the yard, stranding Jip like a jailbird in a glass cage. Thick clouds gathered in the west, full of long-promised snow, and Tim’s joints and spine ached with the moist threat of it. In the driveway, the car sat like a cold metal sarcophagus, and as they made their way back to the trunk, Tim couldn’t help but tingle with fear. Suppose the policeman had found the white man and now had bound the creature and stowed it in the back for safekeeping? An image flashed in his mind, the thing that had attacked him on the beach. He could picture the constrained wildness, snarling and straining against the rope at its wrists and ankles, the awful nakedness of the creature, its dead fish smell, its tangled hair and beard, the rotting teeth and filthy nails. Its fearsome prospect thrilled him as well, for he could at last prove that he had not hallucinated and willed the thing into being. He was doubly glad to have Nick along with him as a witness.
“It was frozen when I found it,” Officer Pollock said. “Probably been dead overnight.” He fumbled for the keys to the trunk, and then motioned for them both to stand back, as though he did not believe his own words. They retreated a step and craned their necks to see what might be inside.
The first glimpse of white nearly stopped Tim’s heart, but when the fullness of the color and its nature became apparent, he had to stifle a laugh, despite himself. It was a dead dog, a big white German shepherd curled into a sleeping position, the black nails on its paws ragged and broken, its great pink tongue lolling between two rows of sharp teeth. Lying on a piece of old tarp, the dead body took up virtually the entire space. Were it not for the open eyes, the corpse might be mistaken for merely resting. Nick leaned in close and reached out with tentative fingers, caught between the desire to prove the dogness and revulsion over its deadness.
“Here’s your monster, Mr. Keenan. Found it on the road near the tree line on Mercy.” He took the muzzle in hand and turned the head so a large red contusion could be seen. “Blunt object, if you ask me. Bumper of a car, poor thing, and then it must’ve wandered off to die. But take a good look, Mr. Keenan, that there is bigger than any coyote, big as a wolf. A great white wolf—that explains a lot, I expect.”
“Are you sure it’s dead?” Nick asked.
“Sure as sure can be,” he said. “I had to kinda fold it to get it into the trunk, so you better believe it would have bit me if it had breath. No tags, no collar, who knows how long it was out there, terrifying the public. I guess that’s what you seen, Mr. Keenan. What dug your hole and found that bone. I guess that’s what’s been running round these parts.”
Nick brushed his hands through the dead dog’s fur. The hairs bristled at odd angles, and the body was as cold as a tombstone.
“That’s not it,” said Mr. Keenan. He turned his back on the car and caressed the wounds on his neck. “That’s not what I saw, sorry to say. Or at least, I don’t think so. What I saw was big as a man. That’s quite a large dog, but still—”
“You sure you don’t want another look? If the evidence points in one direction, it’s hard not to trust what’s right in front of your eyes. You said there was something wild roaming about, and I find you a wild thing. Pretty much locks down the case.”
They stood for a while considering the dead animal, like uncertain mourners at a funeral. Nick poked at the corpse as though attempting to get it to move or bark or growl.
“A man,” Mr. Keenan began, but then he cut himself short and just smiled at the trooper. “Could be,” he finally said. “You could be right. Maybe it was just a big white wolf-dog all along. Thanks so much for taking the trouble to bring it by.”
“Knew you and your wife had been concerned.”