But he knew it was extremely important to go to work, to get out of this room and out of himself and at least show up for Billie Kale, and for his mother and his father.
But never had he wanted so much to be alone, to be studying, thinking, searching for answers to the mystery that was engulfing him.
Chapter Six
REUBEN DROVE THE PORSCHE too fast on the way to work. The car was always a chained lion in the city. With all his heart, he wanted to be on the road to the Mendocino forest behind Marchent,s house, but he knew it was way too soon for that. There was much more he had to know before he went searching for the monster who had done this to him.
Meanwhile the radio news was filling him in on the Goldenwood school bus kidnapping. No ransom call had been received, and there were still no leads as to who had taken the busload of children or where.
He made a quick call to Celeste. "Sunshine Boy," she said, "where the hell have you been? The town,s forgotten about the children. It,s Werewolf Fever. If one more person asks me, ,What does your boyfriend have to say about this?, I,m going to cut out of here and barricade myself in my apartment." She went on and on about the "crackpot" woman from North Beach who thought she,d been saved by a combination of Lon Chaney Jr. and the Abominable Snowman.
Billie was texting him, "Get in here."
He could hear the mingled voices of the city room before he got out of the elevator. He made straight for Billie,s office.
He recognized the woman sitting in front of Billie,s desk. But for a moment he couldn,t place her. At the same time there was a scent in the room that was distinctly familiar and connected to something out of the ordinary, but what? It was a good scent. The scent of the woman, of course. And he could detect Billie,s scent, too. Quite distinctive. In fact, he was picking up all kinds of scents. He could smell coffee and popcorn the way he,d never smelled them before. He was even picking up the scents from the nearby bathrooms, and they weren,t particularly unpleasant!
So it,s going to be like this, he figured. I,m going to pick up scents like a wolf, and sounds, too, no doubt.
The woman was petite, brunette, and crying. She was dressed in a light wool suit, with her neck covered by a tightly wound silk scarf. One eye was swollen shut.
"Thank God you,re here," she said the minute she saw Reuben. He smiled as he always did.
She immediately grabbed for his left hand, and almost pulled him down in the chair next to her. Her eyes welled with tears.
Good God, it,s the woman from the alleyway.
Billie,s words came as if from a blast furnace.
"Well, you took your sweet time getting in here, and Ms. Susan Larson here doesn,t want to talk to anyone else but you. Small wonder, isn,t it, with the entire city making fun of her."
She threw the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle at him. "That,s the extra that hit the streets while you were getting your beauty sleep, Reuben. ,Woman Saved by Wolf Man., CNN went with ,Mysterious Beast Attacks Rapist in San Francisco Alleyway., This went viral right after noon. We,re getting calls from Japan!"
"Can you start at the beginning?" Reuben said. But he understood only too well.
" ,The beginning,?" Billie demanded. "What,s with you, Reuben? We,ve got a busload of kids missing, and a blue-eyed beast creature stalking the back alleys of North Beach, and you ask me to start from the beginning?"
"I,m not insane," said the woman. "I saw what I saw. Just like you saw it up there in Mendocino County. I read your description of what happened to you!"
"But I didn,t see anything up there," said Reuben. He hated this. Was he going to try to make her think she was crazy?
"It was the way you described it!" the woman said. Her voice was thin and hysterical. "The panting, the snarls, the sound of the thing. But it wasn,t an animal. I saw it. It was a beast man, all right. I know what I saw." She moved to the edge of the chair, and stared into his eyes. "I,m not talking to anybody but you," she said. "I,m sick of being laughed at and made fun