01 - Goblins by Charles Grant - (ebook by Undead) Page A

sitting against
the wall. Even with the rain, it looked like he took a shower in his own blood.”
    Mulder took a single step in and hunkered down, looking at the spot, looking
over and up at the wall. He saw no evidence of the dying, but he could sense it
here just the same.
    Scully stood behind him. “He was killed where?”
    Hawks walked around them and stood about a yard from Mulder. “The way the
blood trail was—and again, remember it was raining—it looked like he was cut
here, took a step or two, maybe trying to get to the street, and ended up there, where Agent Mulder
is.” He moved aside when Scully took his place. “The thing is, those
streetlights don’t reach in very far. A couple of feet at most, and I’ll bet he
wasn’t seeing all that clearly.”
    “Mulder?”
    He rose slowly, watching her turn until her back was against the right-hand
wall.
    “The killer was standing about here.”
    Hawks frowned. “How do you know that?”
    “The autopsy report,” she said, gaze constantly shifting, examining the
ground, the opposite wall, the ground again. “If your Doc Junis is right, he’d
have to be. Can I borrow your pen?”
    The chief, looking for and not getting a reaction from Mulder, handed her a
ballpoint, which she held in her right hand as if it were a knife, not for
stabbing but for cutting.
    “The photographs weren’t all that clear,” she continued, almost as though she
were talking to herself. “But look…” She gestured until Hawks stood with
his back to the street, then stood in front of him and, before he could move,
whipped the pen through the air at his throat.
    He jumped.
    Her apology was a sardonic smile. “No blood on the walls. It was a single
slash, very strong, cutting jugular and carotid. There wouldn’t have been a
gusher, so to speak, but some significant blood would have hit the walls if he’d
been facing in or out.” She handed the pen back. “There was none.” She pointed in. “And
there wasn’t any back there, either.”
    “Rain,” the chief reminded her. “And it was at least an hour before he was
found.”
    She nodded. “But the trail, even after all that time, seemed pretty clear, at
least from the pictures.” She looked up, squinting, using her chin to show the
chief the opposing roofs’ slight overhang, bulging with sagging copper gutters;
it may have been raining, but only a downpour and strong wind would have made
the alley as soaked as the street. Then she looked at Mulder. “He was facing the
wall.”
    And that, Mulder knew, was a hell of a thing.
    If Scully was right, Grady Pierce would have had to have been damn near blind
not to see his attacker.
    Unless the attacker was invisible.
    “No,” she said to the look on his face. “There’s another explanation,
Mulder.”
    He didn’t respond. He walked carefully, slowly, to the back and poked a
finger at the fence. The wood was spongy with rot, and there were no marks on or
in it to indicate anyone had climbed over. Or had tried to.
    So the killer had left the way he had come in.
    “Pierce must have known him,” Scully said as he rejoined them.
    Hawks agreed. “The way it looks, there’s no other reasonable explanation.” He
sniffed, laughed, hitched at his belt. “Unless you believe Elly.”
    “The witness,” Mulder said.
    “If you want to call her that. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, though.” He led
them back to the sidewalk. “See, Elly is what we call in our small town,
scientific jargon, a fruitcake.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “She’s a
dear, Elly Lang is, but she has this theory.”
    “Which is?”
    “Oh, no. I’m not going to spoil it. This is something you have to hear
firsthand.”
     
    The first floor apartment was nearly as dark as the approaching storm.
    A single lamp with a saffron chimney on a tilted end table lit only that part
of the love seat where Elly Lang sat. Hawks stood in the living room entrance,
his back to the tiny foyer; he