Cutler nodded, his face grim.
“This is about as bad a business as we’ve had in Butte for years, Mr. Dalton. Whole town is in a state. Anything you can tell us?”
Dalton looked at Fremont, whose face was rock-hard and set. “I don’t know. What do you have right now?”
“Lone man. Came down from up there near Elk Pass, from the boot trail. Big man, cowboy boots, left one with a worn-down heel. Figure the guy has a limp, pronates the heel a bit. He came in through the window of Mr. Churriga’s room. Patient was alone in the ward, heavily sedated. On a self-monitored morphine drip. His mind was… somewhere else. The cutter buzzed for a nurse, took her as soon as she walked into the room. Went to work on her. Finished up. Buzzed in the other one. Did her out in the hallway. Party time, you follow?”
They followed.
“Then he did something to Mr. Churriga’s IV drip and that brought Churriga up out of it. We figure he spent maybe an hour with Churriga. Cutter had no fear of being caught.”
“Any cameras?” asked Dalton.
Cutler shook his head. “No. It’s a hospice, not a bank.”
“What about the drugs?”
“Yeah, there’s drugs. But no one’s ever made a run at them before. Our Lady of the Rockies has a big facility and of course they have all kinds of security. This is a private clinic, not real well known.”
“He’s breathing,” said Fremont. “Is he awake?”
Cutler shifted in his stance, his face closing. “No. How you can tell? He’s not screaming. The nurses can’t handle that, not anymore, considering. I know you want to bring him up, see what he can say, but we’ve already done that, and to be honest I don’t think any of us has the heart to do it again. All the muscles of his face are sliced off, eyes gouged out, flesh and skin all gone. That’s living bone you’re looking at there. But if you want to, we’ll do it.”
He stopped for a moment, breathing deeply. Then he looked hard at them, from one to the other and back, his pale-blue eyes glittering. “But… it’s not right,” he said finally.
“Was he able to speak?” asked Fremont.
Cutler shook his head. “How could he? No lips. No tongue. Jaw all hacked off.”
“But he gave you something?” said Dalton.
“Yeah. We brought him up far as he could stand it. He’s a brave man. Tougher than I am. One of the nurses held his hand. We asked him questions and he squeezed her hand. Once for yes. Twice for no. Took about an hour and then the nurse had to leave the room because the pain was getting pretty bad and the noises he was making…”
“What did you get?”
“Cutter was male. Big. Not a stranger.”
“Crucio knew him?” said Fremont.
“We think so. We asked him, was it someone from his past, somebody from his work. He indicated yes. We tried to spell it out, you know, start with ‘a’ and work through, but he kept going in and out. We got a few letters, we think. Definitely a ‘g’ and an ‘s.’ That mean anything to you boys?”
Fremont glanced at Dalton and then away.
“No,” said Dalton. “Were you able to establish a perimeter?”
“For what?” asked Cutler. “By the time the nurses came in for midnight, the guy was long gone. In and out. Gone. The cutter was here sometime around dusk Friday. We didn’t even try asking Mr. Churriga for a description until late Saturday afternoon. You heard what we got.”
“Did the cutter leave… anything?”
Cutler gave Dalton a sharp searching look. “Semen on the nurse in the hallway. Prints too.”
“A lot of tissue was taken from Churriga’s face, it looks like.”
Cutler’s expression twisted into a grimace. “Yeah. Several ounces, according to the ME.”
“Where did it go?”
Cutler looked down at his boots and then back up. “You know what ‘anthropophagi’ means?”
Dalton and Fremont looked at the cop for a time.
“Jesus Christ,” said Fremont. “The guy ate it? What the fuck makes you think that?”
“Not all of the tissue taken from Churriga’s face was sliced off. Some of it was torn off. There are teeth marks. On Alice’s body, there’s also some bite marks. Same radius. Same dental pattern. Tissue taken there too. In chunks. Some of it we found elsewhere on the body. Showed signs of being — The docs called it ‘mastication.’”
“Mother of God,” said Fremont, his face bone-white.
“Yeah,” said Cutler. “Me too.”
The image stunned Dalton and Fremont into silence. Cutler let them work it out for a time, and then said, “He left something else.”
“I thought he might have,” said Dalton.
Cutler gave him a sharp searching look. “You want to see it?”
“Yes.”
“Then come with me.”
He turned to leave the room.
Fremont reached out and stopped him, holding his arm.
“What about Crucio? What happens to him?”
“You kin to him, by any chance?”
Fremont shook his head, his eyes red and moist.
“Then he stays where he is until he either dies or a relative shows up and gives us permission to ease him on through. Sorry.”
“Can I stay with him a while?” asked Fremont.
Cutler looked at him steadily, his face softening.
“Sure. Alone?”
“Would that be all right?”
Cutler nodded to the trooper, who picked up his Stetson and left the room. When he was gone, Cutler looked at Fremont for a time. “He was a good friend? Mr. Churriga?”
“Yes,” said Fremont, straightening his spine.
“You ever in the service, Mr. Fremont?”
“He was,” said Dalton.
“Guess I won’t ask which branch,” said Cutler, smiling briefly at Dalton before he looked back at Fremont.
“I can give you fifteen minutes,” he said. “No more. You follow?”
“I follow,” said Fremont.
Cutler turned away and led Dalton out of the room and down the corridor into a dead-end section sealed off with crime scene tape. He lifted the tape and held it while Dalton slipped under it.
“It’s the room at the end there,” said Cutler, leading the way. The door to the ward was closed and sealed with a sticker carrying the crest of the Montana Highway Patrol. Cutler pushed the door open and walked into the ward room. Four stripped beds stood in the center of the room. The room smelled of Lysol and Dustbane.
“It’s in the corner, where his bed was.”
Dalton walked around the beds and over to an open space beside a wide window, through which he could see a broad slope of stone mountain rising up six thousand feet. Halfway up the slope was a tall white statue of the Virgin Mary. He turned away and looked at the thing on the wall above the place where Churriga’s bed had been.
Cutler was standing close behind him now. The man smelled of gun leather, raw anger, and stale cigarette smoke.
“This mean anything to you?” he asked, after a silence.
“Yes,” said Dalton. “You?”
“It looks like sign,” said Cutler. “Indian sign.”
“Indian? What kind of Indian?”
“What kind of Indian?” said Cutler, in a snarl, his barely suppressed rage, his deep resentment of Dalton’s evasive answers, his soul sickness at the horror that had visited his town and left it forever scarred: all of this boiled up in a rush.
“What kind? The twisted motherfucker psycho cannibal kind, I guess. You knew this thing was gonna be here. You’ve seen it before. You got anything useful to say to me, Mr. Dalton? You fucking well better. You better be ready to put me within arm’s reach of this cocksucker so I can rip his own fucking face off and feed it to my dogs. I got two dead girls and a lot of very upset people here. This town will never be the same. Hell, I’ll never be the same.”