“No!” he shouted. “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
Trusting my own instincts this time, I didn’t answer, letting my anger drain away. The chief remained silent.
That day, I learned that it’s never pretty to watch someone break down entirely. Matthew Mollenkamp began to shiver, breathing fast and shallow, sweat dampening his hair. He picked up the soda can, but his hand was shaking so badly he had to set it back down. He closed his eyes and began murmuring under his breath, rocking back and forth in his chair.
It took me a moment to recognize the words to the Lord’s Prayer.
The chief let him finish. “All right, son,” he said in a gentle voice. “How did you get drawn into this mess?”
Mollenkamp’s lips moved soundlessly. He paused, then tried again, the words emerging in a faint whisper. “There was a website.”
Chief Bryant shot me an inquiring look, and I shook my head. I had no idea what he was talking about. “What website?”
“Jesus!” Mollenkamp pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then took a deep breath. “Oh, God!” He lowered his hands. “Okay. Okay. It’s called Schtupernatural-dot-com.”
“Are you serious?” The words escaped before I could censor them. “Is it what it sounds like?”
He looked at me, his mouth clenching in a rictus. “Yeah. It’s a forum where anyone can post about sexual encounters with . . . things that aren’t human. Photos, too. And, um, want ads, I guess you’d call them.”
My tail lashed in a violent reaction. “That’s sick!”
“I guess.” He shrugged wearily. “What do you want? It’s human nature to wonder about it.”
The chief pushed a notepad across the table toward me. “So what happened?”
I fished a pen from my purse and jotted down Schtupernatural .com with a note to confirm the spelling.
Avoiding our eyes, Matthew Mollenkamp stared at the ceiling. “We used to check it out, try to guess which shots were real and which were Photoshopped. It was kind of a running joke. One day, a couple of months ago, there was a post about a Schtupernatural opportunity in Pemkowet.”
Bit by bit, as the chief questioned him, the details unfolded.
The gist of it was that for three thousand dollars, the bartender at the Wheelhouse with the spiderweb tattoo would provide the buyer with a phone number and a money-back-guaranteed opportunity to fuck a real live mermaid.
La Sirena, the mermaid. It really had been right in front of me all along.
“You spent three thousand dollars on a phone number?” I murmured.
Mollenkamp lowered his gaze to give me a sickly look. “Yeah. Me and Ron. You met him last night. Three grand apiece.”
“Was it worth it?” I asked.
He swallowed hard and shook his head. “No. No. It was . . . horrible. But we got what we paid for.”
“And you told Thad Vanderhei and the others it was worth it,” I said quietly. “Didn’t you?”
He nodded. “What else was I supposed to do?”
I couldn’t even begin to reply.
“Walk us through the sequence of events,” Chief Bryant suggested. “Step by step, starting with the phone call.”
Although I had high hopes, unfortunately Matthew Mollenkamp’s candor was circumscribed by the reality of his limited information. He’d made the call and spoken to a man who called back after confirming that Matt and Ron had made the required payment to the bartender. A midnight rendezvous in the parking lot of the East Pemkowet public beach was arranged. The Wheelhouse matchbook with the phone number served as proof of their identity and their admission ticket to the main attraction. From the parking lot, Matt and Ron were blindfolded, ushered into a truck, and driven to an unknown destination.
There, their business was concluded. And the less said about that, the better.
The two things Mollenkamp was able to confirm were Ray D’s identity and the fact that there was also a female ghoul present at the scene, presumably Mary Sudbury. Now that he was being honest, it was obvious that the ghouls had shaken him deeply.
“The sick thing is, we needed them there,” he said, licking lips gone dry. “To take away the . . . horror. I couldn’t have gone through with it otherwise.”
“Poor baby,” I said without sympathy. “Your precious horror was just a fucking appetizer. It’s her suffering that’s keeping them fed.”
Mollenkamp looked away.
The chief scratched one ear, tugged on a thick lobe. “So you told your fraternity brothers you had a fine old time becoming Masters of the Universe, and they decided to follow in your footsteps?”
Closing his eyes, he shook his head. “Only a few, only the ones who claimed they had access to that kind of money. But when Thad called the number, it was out of service.” He was silent a moment. “He accused me of bullshitting him, of making the whole thing up. I should have let him think it.”
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“No.” Mollenkamp opened his eyes. “I told him to go down to that fucking ghoul bar and ask for Ray D himself.”
“Did he?” the chief prompted him.
“Yeah.” He licked his lips again. “Him and Mike. That bartender, the guy with the spider tattoo, he told them to shut the fuck up, that that wasn’t how it worked. That he’d give them Ray D’s number, his new number, for the cash. I didn’t think. . . . I don’t know.” His voice cracked a little. “Is that what got him in trouble? Is that why they killed him? For asking about that ghoul?”
“Is that what you think happened?” Chief Bryant asked. “You think they killed him on purpose? That it wasn’t an accident?”
“I don’t know!” Matthew Mollenkamp took a deep, shaking breath. “I don’t; I really don’t. I swear to God, I don’t know anything about what happened that night. For Christ’s sake, I thought Thad drowned in the river! I thought maybe . . . I thought maybe it was an accident that happened afterward, or maybe . . . maybe he just couldn’t live with it.”
“So Thad and Mike paid the bartender for the new number?” I asked him. “And they set up a meeting with Ray D?”
“Yeah.” He turned his gaze back to me, eyes dull. “They did. Three grand apiece for the two of them and Kyle. It took them a couple of weeks to work up the nerve to make the call.”
“Bet you gave them a hard time about that,” I murmured.
Matt didn’t answer.
I was pretty sure it was true. And I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be easy to live with, either.
It damn well shouldn’t be.
Thirty-two
After having exhausted Matthew Mollenkamp’s store of information, we cut him loose. He declined the offer of a ride home, preferring to call a friend.
In the conference room, Cody slid into a seat beside me. “So what do we know?”
“Well, he confirmed a lot of what we suspected,” I said. “Two ghouls, one Ray D and one unnamed female matching the description of Mary Sudbury. And they were working with Jerry Dunham.” I glanced at the chief. “Do you think there’s any chance Thad was killed for asking about Ray D?”
“No.” Chief Bryant’s rebuttal was immediate and certain. “It doesn’t add up. No reason to let the others live if it were. I’m sure we’re looking at an accidental death and a cover-up. And I’m afraid Daisy was right.”
“They’ve got a mermaid?” Cody asked in a tense tone.
“Yeah.” I felt sick all over again, a leaden weight in my belly. I shouldn’t have eaten that hot dog. “They’ve got a mermaid. That’s how you become a Master of the Universe and a true son of Triton.”
Green flared behind his eyes, and his voice dropped to a fierce growl. “Where?”
“Take it easy, Cody,” the chief said to him. “Keep a cool head. Don’t let it get personal.”
He struggled to contain himself. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not sure that’s possible. I’m not sure you can understand.”
I wondered whether Chief Bryant knew Cody had lost a girl he might have loved, a girl whose killer would never be brought to justice because she was a wolf when he shot her.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, son.” By the compassion in the chief’s voice, maybe he did. “We don’t have a where. The boys were blindfolded and driven to the destination. Daisy?”
I consulted my notes. “Mollenkamp said it was maybe a ten-, fifteen-minute drive from the parking lot of the East Pemkowet beach. The vehicle made a lot of turns, so they could have been driving in circles. He remembers hearing the wind rustling in the trees when they got out of the truck, so we’re looking for a wooded area.”
“That doesn’t exactly narrow it down,” Cody muttered. “What about the site?”
“Ground floor of a residence,” I said. “He said it looked like a high-end rec room, the kind you’d design if money was no object. Pool table, built-in bar, home theater . . . and an industrial-size fish tank that wasn’t part of the original design.”
Cody looked as sick as I felt. “Jesus!”
“I’m thinking they must be squatting somewhere,” Chief Bryant said. “My best guess would be a house for sale that’s been off the market since the spring. Or maybe an unoccupied summer home.”
“Any way to get a list of those?” Cody asked.
The chief shrugged. “Start calling local Realtors. As far as summer homes go, other than the local grapevine, not much way to tell as long as they’re paying their property taxes. Maybe try the township clerk, see if anyone’s delinquent. That could be an indicator.”
“Okay. Okay.” Cody ran a hand over his bronze-stubbled chin. “What about the Vanderhei kid’s friends? At this point, we’ve got more than enough evidence to subpoena them.”