But all that was before Bill. He trusted me to be better, and for him I was. And I will be now, for these people.
‘Terry Maitland didn’t murder Frank Peterson and Heath Holmes didn’t murder the Howard girls. Those murders were committed by an outsider. He uses our modern science – our modern forensics – against us, but his real weapon is our refusal to believe. We’re trained to follow the facts, and sometimes we scent him when the facts are conflicting, but we refuse to follow that scent. He knows it. He uses it.’
‘Ms Gibney,’ Jeannie Anderson said, ‘are you saying the murders were committed by a supernatural creature? Something like a vampire?’
Holly considered the question, biting at her lips. At last she said, ‘I don’t want to answer that. Not yet. I want to show you some of the movie I brought first. It’s a Mexican film, dubbed in English and released as part of drive-in double features in this country fifty years ago. The English title is Mexican Wrestling Women Meet the Monster, but in Spanish—’
‘Oh, come on,’ Ralph said. ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘Shut up,’ Jeannie said. She kept her voice low, but they all heard the anger in it. ‘Give her a chance.’
‘But—’
‘You weren’t there last night. I was. You need to give this a chance.’
Ralph crossed his arms over his chest, just as Samuels had. It was a gesture Holly knew well. A warding-off gesture. An I won’t listen gesture. She pushed on.
‘The Mexican title is Rosita Luchadora e Amigas Conocen El Cuco. In Spanish it means—’
‘That’s it!’ Yune shouted, making them all jump. ‘That’s the name I couldn’t get when we were eating at that restaurant on Saturday! Do you remember the story, Ralph? The one my wife’s abuela told her when she was just peque?a?’
‘How could I forget?’ Ralph said. ‘The guy with the black bag who kills little kids and rubs their fat …’ He stopped, thinking – in spite of himself – of Frank Peterson and the Howard girls.
‘Does what?’ Marcy Maitland asked.
‘Drinks their blood and rubs their fat on him,’ Yune said. ‘It supposedly keeps him young. El Cuco.’
‘Yes,’ Holly said. ‘He’s known in Spain as El Hombre con Saco. The Man with the Sack. In Portugal he’s Pumpkinhead. When American children carve pumpkins for Halloween, they’re carving the likeness of El Cuco, just as children did hundreds of years ago in Iberia.’
‘There was a rhyme about El Cuco,’ Yune said. ‘Abuela used to sing it sometimes, at night. Duérmete, ni?o, duérmete ya … can’t remember the rest.’
‘Sleep, child, sleep,’ Holly said. ‘El Cuco’s on the ceiling, he’s come to eat you.’
‘Good bedtime rhyme,’ Alec commented. ‘Must have given the kids sweet dreams.’
‘Jesus,’ Marcy whispered. ‘You think something like that was in our house? Sitting on my daughter’s bed?’
‘Yes and no,’ Holly said. ‘Let me put on the movie. The first ten minutes or so should be enough.’
9
Jack dreamed he was driving a deserted two-lane highway with nothing but empty on both sides and a thousand miles of blue sky above. He was at the wheel of a big truck, maybe a tanker, because he could smell gasoline. Sitting beside him was a man with short black hair and a goatee. Tattoos covered his arms. Hoskins knew him, because Jack visited Gentlemen, Please frequently (although rarely in his official capacity), and had had many pleasant conversations with Claude Bolton, who had a record but was not a bad fellow at all since he’d cleaned up his act. Except this version of Claude was a very bad fellow. It was this Claude who had pulled back the shower curtain enough for Hoskins to be able to read the word on his fingers: CANT.
The truck passed a sign reading MARYSVILLE, POP. 1280.
‘That cancer’s spreading fast,’ Claude said, and yes, it was the voice that had come from behind the shower curtain. ‘Look at your hands, Jack.’
He looked down. His hands on the wheel had turned black. As he stared at them, they fell off. The tanker truck ran off the road, tilted, started to go over. Jack understood that it was going to explode, and he hauled himself out of the dream before that could happen, gasping for breath and staring up at the ceiling.
‘Jesus,’ he whispered, checking to make sure his hands were still there. They were, and so was his watch. He had been asleep less than an hour. ‘Jesus Chri—’
Someone moved on his left. For a moment he wondered if he had brought the pretty bartender with the long legs home with him, but no, he’d been alone. A fine young woman like that wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him, anyway. To her he would just be an overweight, fortysomething drunk who was losing his h—
He looked around. The woman in bed with him was his mother. He only knew it was her because of the tortoiseshell clip dangling from the few remaining strings of her hair. She had been wearing that clip at her funeral. Her face had been made up by the mortician, kind of waxy and doll-like, but on the whole not too bad. This face was mostly gone, the flesh putrefying off the bone. Her nightgown clung to her because it was drenched with pus. There was the stench of rotting meat. He tried to scream, couldn’t.
‘This cancer is waiting for you, Jack,’ she said. He could see her teeth clacking, because her lips were gone. ‘It’s eating into you. He can take it back now, but soon it will be too late even for him. Will you do what he wants?’
‘Yes,’ Hoskins whispered. ‘Yes, anything.’
‘Then listen.’
Jack Hoskins listened.
10
There was no FBI warning at the front of Holly’s film, which didn’t surprise Ralph. Who would bother to copyright such an elderly artifact, when it was trash to begin with? The music was a hokey mixture of wavering violins and jarringly cheerful norte?o accordion riffs. The print was scratchy, as if it had been run many times by long-dead projectionists who hadn’t given much of a shit.
I can’t believe I’m sitting here, Ralph thought. This is loonybin stuff.
Yet both his wife and Marcy Maitland were watching with the concentration of students preparing for a final exam, and the others, although clearly not so invested, were paying close attention. Yune Sablo had a faint smile on his lips. Not the smile of a person who feels what he’s seeing is ridiculous, Ralph thought, but of a man glimpsing a bit of the past; a childhood legend brought to life.
The movie opened on a nighttime street where all the businesses seemed to be either bars or whorehouses or both. The camera followed a pretty woman in a low-cut dress, walking hand-in-hand with her daughter, who looked to be about four. This evening stroll through a bad part of town with a kid who should have been in bed might have been explained later in the film, but not in the part Ralph and the others saw.
A drunk wavered up to the woman, and while his mouth said one thing, the voice actor dubbing his voice said, ‘Hey, baybee, want a date?’ in a Mexican accent that made him sound like Speedy Gonzales. She brushed him off and walked on. Then, in a shadowy area between two streetlights, a dude in a long black cloak straight out of a Dracula film swooped from an alley. He had a black bag in one hand. With the other, he snatched up the kiddo. Mom screamed and gave chase, catching him under the next streetlight and grabbing at his bag. He whirled around, the convenient streetlight illuminating the face of a middle-aged man with a scar on his forehead.