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V

There is an average of five million car crashes across the USA every year. 30,000 of them are fatal, making up a total of 47,000 corpses because people don't like to die alone. Tonight, Chad Scanlon added to that statistics by ramming his rented Pontiac, fender first into a Vaccu-Fix on the corner of Rose and Mason.

The rain had washed away most of the blood by the time chief inspector Amari Quinn arrived on the scene. But the interior of the Pontiac remained a shattered world of twisted steel and broken limbs.

Quinn pointed his flashlight into the car where the corpse of Chad Scanlon sat upright in the driver's seat. It was held in place by the seat belt, eyes half open and tongue lolling out as if he forgot to close his mouth after a yawn. A Motorola cell phone was in his lap where he dropped it during his final call to emergency.

Quinn handed his paper cup of tepid coffee to jr. officer O'Hare and touched Scanlon's neck. The corpse was still warm with signs of pallor mortis setting in.

"We lost him by... dunno, five minutes," Quinn grunted and sniffed the air." I can't get a proper scent in this rain."

"scent, Chief?"

"and the rain is diluting my coffee."

Quinn unfastened the seat belt, and the corpse of Chad Scanlon slumped over the steering wheel like a dead drunk.

A high-speed impact can kill you in two ways:

The impact shakes your brain loose, plucking it off its stem like an overripe cherry, or the steering wheel crushes your chest, shattering the ribs and causes fatal bleeding. In Scanlon's case, it was death by steering wheel.

Must have been one hell of a __n impact. Quinn held up a finger at arms length to judge the skid-marks on the asphalt. The vehicle sped down Mason and turned south on Rose, doing at least one-fifty. Scanlon had slammed the brakes too late and came to a full stop in the downtown appliance outlet, narrowly missing a $1899 Rainbow E2. He kept a driving license in the left pocket of his sports jacket, registered to_Thomas J Watts._ Scanlon's wallet contained two thousand dollars in cash and a receipt from a local Red Roof Inn_ ,_ also paid for in cash. He also carried a gun belt around the waist, holstering a loaded Kahr Desert Eagle.

No Credit cards, huh? This guy was flying under the radar.

Quinn took off his coat and handed it to O'Hare.

"Don't want to get blood all over me," he grunted and reached for the cellphone in the corpse's lap. It was smeared in gore that leaked into the speaker and made the keys stick. Quinn pressed the call button a few times, before dropping the phone into a zip-lock bag.

"Dead, like its owner."

Officer O'Hare shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. He was soaked and uncomfortable, and the chief replied only with grunts. "What are we looking for, chief? Drugs?"

"Anything worth killing for."

The trunk contained a cabin-sized leather suitcase, forty boxes of cal. 357 bullets, a second Desert Eagle and six loaded clips. Quinn bowed down and put his nose to both pistols. He made a rapid series of sniffs, sampling the odor of the guns, like any scent-reliant animal.

Officer O'Hare squeezed the water from his cap with his free hand. "This is no usual speed freak," he observed. "With two thousand rounds in his trunk, you'd think he was starting a war."

Quinn slammed the trunk shut and reached for his coffee. It was cold and watered down by the rain, but at two thirty in the morning, cold coffee was the best you could ask for. He swirled the cup around and studied the black liquid where two drowning gnats with flailing legs and wings, fought to stay afloat.

"The guns are clean," he said. "If Scanlon was preparing a war, it was lost before he fired the opening shot."

---

VI

I was alone in the kitchen, opening a pack of chicken filet strips when the first signs of an episode set in. The meatwas sealed in_a protective atmosphere_ to keep it from going off, but asense of repulsionwas growing inside my brain;

the fillet strips didn't look right.

I couldn't point my finger at what was wrong with them, but my every fiber screamed that chicken casserole would be off the menu tonight. I tilted the package and the strips tumbled like pale, naked humans, twisting and embracing one another as protecting themselves from an impending disaster. Like the contorted victims of Pompeii when toxic gas and ash descended on them, choking and burning its way through house and men. The more I looked at the chicken pieces, the more they resembled skinless torsos.

I can't eat this! I objected_. I don't eat humans._

Sweating profoundly, I turned on the fan and caught my own reflection in the polished steel faucet. My face was twisted and out of proportion. But it was a human face staring back, not the hateful leonine face with horns and fangs that claims to be part of me.

"I am not demon-kin," I told my reflection. I'm just a guy who is schizoing out again."

I took a deep breath and convinced myself there was nothing wrong with the food;

it was edible, dead tissue, nothing more.

Remember, it's all because of a chemical imbalance in your brain, I commanded.So get a grip and make the damn incision.

I meant to say casserole, but as I held the package in my hand I was convinced I was holding my own head and I was about to give myself a lobotomy by slicing through the plastic cover.

"It's NOT my brain!" I shouted. "It's meat, and opening it up won't hurt."

Icutthrough the tough dura mater with the tip of a knife,whena thick, oily stench escaped the pack with an audible hiss. Soon the kitchen was filled with an overpowering stench of magnolia blooms soaked in cod liver oil. It was the stench of disease and tumorousspecimens donated to science andswimmingin formaldehyde. I gaggedand turned the extractor hood tofull blast, I opened the windows and reached for a spray can of ocean breeze, but nothing could drown out the vileness erupting from the rotting chicken.

Three down, one to go.

The thought came out of nowhere and filled my mind like a thunderclap. "THREE... DOWN."

The words, first a thought only, flowed from my mind and materialized into the deep unnatural voice of a hill giant gurgling razor blades.

"THREE!" roared the voice.

"Three WHAT?" I clenched my ears and screamed.

Irene heard my screams and stormed into the kitchen.

"ONE..."

"It's the damn chicken!" I shouted, still covering my ears.

Irene put her nose to the fillets. "You're right," she said.

"TO..."

"they have a bit of an off smell."

"GO!"

"They are evil!" I cried. "We gotta stop them."

Irene took the meat outside and dumped it in the trash bin. She returned moments later and looked at me in silence, arms akimbo.

"You're dropped your medication." She stated bluntly.

I sat on the counter, resting my head against the wall.

"I can't investigate when I'm on meds. I need my senses, even if I can't trust half of them."

"Don't DO this to yourself," shouted Irene. "Keep this up, and you'll end up in the nuthouse."

"Already been there," I groaned. "And we need the money."

Irene lit two cigarettes and offered me one. I sucked the life out of the smoke like a calf to an udder, reveling in every atom of nicotine.

"Mo-ther-FUCK! I needed that," I rasped on the retro-hale. Slowly, the world returned to normal.

"What did you... see?" Irene asked quietly.

"I'm not sure," I replied. "Something about three out of four being dead."

"Three?" Irene said thoughtfully. "Quinn said he had a triple murder for you."

"I guess that leaves one future victim."

Irene grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes.

"Look, I want to keep the Phantom Cat as much as you do -maybe even more. But it's not worth losing your mind over. "

"I can handle it," I lied. "I'll do this last case for Quinn. Then I'll call it the quits."

"Promise?"

"On my mother's grave."

"Your mother is fine."

"On my sister's honor, then?"

Irene sighed. "Just be careful."

I grabbed my coat and was on my way out of the door, when it struck me that Irene could have used her talent for messing with people's minds to make me reconsider. But I didn't feel her presence inside my mind.

"You could have stopped me."

"I know," said Irene. "But I made a promise too."

---

VII

"You've dialed 9-1-1; what's the address of the emergency?"

"City of Oakenford. Not sure where."

"I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific than that, Sir."

"There's a church on one side and... I'm in some kind of shop."'

"You're calling from a shop sir?"

"Vacuum cleaners. They have vacuum cleaners here."

"Why would you be in a shop past midnight."

"I drove too fast... Missed the turn and crashed my damn car into this place. Oh God, I'm bleeding bad."

"I've traced your call to the corner of East Mason and Rose St."

*Cough*

"OK, I've got an officer on the way. What is your name, Sir?"

"Tell the police, they have to stop them..."

"Sir, I need your name."

"It's Scanlon, Chad Scanlon. I'm bleeding out... I gotta warn you."

"Now Sir, If you will only take it easy, a patrol car will..."

"Listen! they're HERE... in Oakenford! I've seen them."

"Please calm down, Sir. All will be taken care of."

" For the love of God, you have to stop them."

Quinn stopped playback of the_9-1-1_ recording when Chad Scanlon's words turned into intelligible moaning.

"You don't need to hear the last seconds," he said." They're not pretty."

I nodded, knowing the sound of a death rattle all too well.

"He was on the lam?"

"You don't crash your car into a Vaccu-Fix to buy a pack of smokes," grunted Quinn. "Let's see what was so important, our victim was ready to die for it."

He put Scanlon's leather briefcase on the desk. It was new, expensive and secured with a three-tumbler clasp lock. Quinn slid an angled razor blade into the groove right of the third tumbler and watched it sink in, one eighth of an inch before it met resistance. He turned the dial, one digit at a time, letting out an annoyed sniff every time the razor blade scraped against the locking pin.

"Can't you just crack it open with a screwdriver?"

Quinn paused for a moment to scratch his red beard.

"Very likely, but it's against regulations to destroy evidence."

He gave the dial another notch and the razor sunk half an inch.

"Ha! Found the groove; the last digit is... TWO."

Quinn focused on picking the lock. He was quiet, and I was restless and edgy. The sound of traffic pouring in from the window, the clicking of cops typing their reports, the roar of the air conditioning units, all were growing louder and intrusive, my senses sharpening by the half-life of the_Olanzapine_ in my bloodstream.

"Why am I here?" I asked. "You told me you had a murder case for me, not some daredevil whose luck ran out."

"You don't do one-fifty down Mason in a rented Pontiac for kicks," replied Quinn. "Something scared the crap out of Scanlon; something he wasn't ready for."

Quinn returned to picking the lock while I restarted the 911 recording. This time I let it play to the end. Quinn was right -the last ten seconds were unpleasant. They brought back memories of my earlier encounters with MI-16 who decided the country would be a better place without me. But I never gave their agents time to call 911 and plead for help.

"Scanlon didn't ask for help," said Quinn. "He was trying to warn us, but he didn't come unprepared." Quinn placed a small cardboard box on the table; light brown with no markings or writing of any kind. "Open it," Invited Quinn. The box contained fifty caliber 357 rounds, hollow point and neatly stacked. The bullets were heavier than I expected, and had a strange, metallic sheen to them.

"He died with forty boxes of these in the boot of his car. That's two thousand rounds in total."

"All no-name brands?"

"Of course," said Quinn. "Mag-tech don't make silver bullets."

"Silver, huh? Scanlon was a werewolf-hunter?"

"Well he ain't the Lone Ranger."

If Scanlon had started a solo war with werewolves, I was not going to blame them for responding in the way they knew best. I would have done the same thing if some vigilante showed up at my door with an Uzi.

"Three-one-two, there ya' go!" grinned Quinn when the lock sprang open. "That's the combination - and you're wrong, by the way.

I shrugged." I wasn't suggesting..."

"Werewolves don't chase down humans in packs of thousands," said Quinn.

"Maybe a gang of weres went rogue?" I suggested." They would have the upper hand in a street war.?"

Quinn went quiet for a moment. I knew the thought had crossed his mind.

"We're two weeks from the annual were-summit in Idaho. The last thing we need is public exposure."

I knew werewolves was a sensitive subject to Quinn. What I didn't know was how many of their kind there were left in the world, let alone Oakenford, but I was pretty sure a loose cannon with sixty pounds of silver in his trunk could make one hell of a dent in their population. We returned our attention to the suitcase, maybe looking for answers, maybe just looking to change the subject.

The suitcase contained a wide selection of banknotes; English pound sterling, US Dollars, Euros, Israeli shekels, Danish Kroner, gold Krugerrand... Scanlon was loaded. Maybe not to the point of checking in at the Waldorf every night, but enough to get by in every major city, without flashing a credit card. Enough for a hotel room, a couple of drinks and a hooker. In this respect, Scanlon was much like any traveling sales representatives I've met. Only, Scanlon had more passports than samples in his suitcase, all issued to different names: Tom __my_ Greene, William Doyle, Fred Wills,_ Bernard Schwartz; t_his guy had more aliases than _the Jackal.

"The city has CCTV that cover every inch in the midtown area," I said. "Maybe we can see who was chasing him?"

Quinn lifted an eyebrow and browsed through a folder of files on his hard drive.

"Already been there. Don't you think I would have told you if we'd found something?"

There was nothing to see on the CCTV footage, apart from Scanlon screeching down Mason at breakneck speed and out of control. Even a pro driver like _Bernard La Salle_could not have made that turn in the rain. We let the footage run for minutes, in case Scanlon's invisible pursuer needed time to develop. But the street remained empty and wet, long after Scanlon had left the frame.

"He must have shaken them off," I said.

"Are you on meds?" Quinn asked suddenly.

"I stopped taking _Olanzapine_the moment you called."

"The voices back yet?"

I shook my head. "No... but my chicken had gone bad last night."

"Bad chicken?"

"Bad, as in evil."

"That's great!" beamed Quinn. "Then you'll solve this case in a flash."

He unscrewed a plastic vial and several tablets rolled onto the desk.

"Dexies?"

"Our friend Scanlon had expensive habits," said Quinn. "There was enough road-dope in his blood to keep him awake until Christmas eve."

"He'd gone paranoid," I said." Now, that's my turf."

If Scanlon was hallucinating from amphetamine psychosis, at least we had one thing in common. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was sixteen. That's been ten years worth of hearing voices, seeing things... and fear. I've come to terms with my condition. I check everything I see against my "reality list." If it's on that list, it's probably for real. Dead babies crawling across the supermarket floor are not on the list, so I step over them. I feed my cat until he scales the wall. Then I get a broom, because hallucinations don't eat Purina.

The human brain is not without its flaws. But even when it invents unwanted company, I can only see things my mind can imagine. The people I see are always male, they wear long trench-coats and dark fedoras. Their faces are gaunt and malevolent, and they are always tall and slim. Imagine an army of_Aristide Bruant_ clones that want to strangle you with their scarves. That's how limited an imagination I have.

"You want me to track where Scanlon got the silver bullets?" I asked, but Quinn waved me off.

"Scanlon was hunting down MY people; that makes it MY case."

Quinn took out three envelopes of crime scene photos from his desk drawer. "HERE is your case." The pictures all looked the same, simply showing the charred remains of living rooms, and of the people who had lived there. There wasn't much left of either.

"I want you to hunt down the_desk-light bomber_."

"He's got a name, already?"

"The name is all we have," sighed Quinn. "The MO is always the same: he loads C4 into desk lamps and waits. He waits for his victims to buy the lamps, waits for them to turn them on, waits for them to die. Then he moves on."

There are many ways to bump someone off, guns being the most popular, with knives coming in at a close second. Booby-trapped reading lamps had to be way down on the list of how-to kill, along with murder by trained gorilla. The idea was so insane, I almost laughed out loud, but managed to twist my improper outburst into a strangled cough.

"Gesundheit!" Said Quinn.

Apart from living in Oakenford, the murderer's targets didn't seem to have anything in common. He'd already blown up a writer and a part-time postal worker. And last night, a flight attendant returned home early when her plane was canceled. She found out, somebody had checked her in for the long haul when she turned on the light. The Desklight _bomber_had claimed three lives within a week and Quinn was frustrated. He guzzles coffee by the gallon when he's working on a case, but now he was worked up to the point of eating dry grounds by the spoonful. At this time most serial killers would have contacted the newspapers to brag about their ingenuity and how they escape the cops. Or a dozen terrorist groups would claim every victim a victory for their case.

But so far the killings had attracted only radio silence.

There were no ransom notes, no blackmail, no political manifestos, no calling card... in short: no contact and no clues. The desklight bomber wasn't looking for money or fame. He was a predator, patiently stalking his prey. He was in it for the kill.

I checked my watch. It was half past eleven and the sun would set around nine. That gave me less than ten hours before the fourth victim would flick a switch.

"Nine hours to catch a killer!" I sneered. "That's not humanly possible."

"Exactly!" said Quinn, and for the first time today, I saw him smile. "That's why I'm making it your case."

---