Tengu by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

of
forensic men around them, with their aluminum attache cases of fingerprint
powder and litmus lying open on the path.
    “Okay,” said
Skrolnik, “let’s see that lock.”
    The forensic
men stood aside. They all wore dark sunglasses and short-sleeved tennis shirts,
and one of them had a bronzed bald head that gave off a dazzling reflection.
    Skrolnik and
Pullet bent forward and peered at the gate. The lock was a hefty five-lever
deadlock with steel plates bolted onto either side to prevent housebreakers
from drilling into the mechanism. It was welded into the decorative
wrought-iron frame of the gate on all four sides. In normal conditions,
Skrolnik would have pronounced it pretty well unbustable.
    But this
morning, someone or something had bent it inward, so
that its reinforced tongue had been pulled clear of the plate on the opposite
gate. Not just an inch or two, which would have been quite sufficient to open
the gates without any trouble at all, but almost nine inches.
    Skrolnik stood
straight and glanced toward the sloping street.
    “Now, if this
lock had been bent outward’’ he said, “I would have guessed that someone tied a
rope around it, and fixed the other end to the back of a car. But inward...”
    “Like it’s been
pushed,” said Pullet. “Or maybe punched.” The forensic
men looked at each other in their dark glasses. Skrolnik looked at Pullet. The
crowd looked at all of them, like baffled spectators at a tennis tournament,
and didn’t understand for a moment the strange fear they were feeling.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T he coroner’s report was part nightmare, part fact. It said that
Sherry Cantor had probably died from brain damage following irreparable damage
to the central nervous system. Any one of her other injuries, however, could
have killed her almost immediately. Her right leg had been severed by twisting,
and there were bruise marks on the thigh and calf which indicated clearly that
the twisting had been done by a man’s hands.
    Her abdomen had
been torn open from her vagina upward, and again the indications were clear
that the tearing had been done by hand. Her facial flesh had been pulled clear
of the bone in the same manner. The coroner guessed that most of the
disfigurement had been done after Sherry Cantor had died. He hadn’t been able
to resist adding, “Thank God.”
    That afternoon,
the television stations began to carry reports that a “King Kong Killer” was
loose in the Hollywood hills, and that single women should take extra care to
lock and bolt their apartments at night. Sergeant Skrolnik spent twenty minutes
on the telephone to Blooming-ton, Indiana, and afterward went across the street
to Matty’s Cocktail Lounge and swallowed two Old Crows, straight up, no ice.
    Pullet said, “I
can’t help thinking about that darned orangutan.’’

CHAPTER SIX
    H e was driving back from his weekly hour with the analyst when he
turned the corner and found the whole street jammed with police cars and
ambulances and jostling crowds. He slowed down, and a policeman came across and
told him: “You can’t come up here, mister. Not a hope.”
    “I live here,”
he said. “What’s going on?”
    The policeman
laid a hand on the windowsill of his car. “Hold it right here,” he ordered. He
beckoned across the street to a young ginger-haired detective in a splashy
red-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt. The detective came over and said: “Who’s this?”
    “I live here.
Number Eleven. Would you mind telling me what’s going on here?”
    The detective
took a notebook out of his hip pocket and thumbed through it. “Number Eleven ,” he repeated. “That’s Jerry Sennett, right?”
    ‘‘That’s
right,’’ Jerry told him. ‘‘Is something wrong?”
    The detective
put away the notebook. “I have to ask you some questions. Would you care to
pull your car into your driveway? The officer will help you through the crowd.
Take it slow, please.”
    Jerry nudged
his eleven-year-old Dodge