Danny felt the sun and the smell go to work on his skinful of booze, sandpapering him. “I’m a Sheriff’s Homicide detective. Are you Thomas Cormier?”
“I am indeed, and I’ve never killed anyone and I don’t associate with killers. I’ve got some killer mustelids, but they only kill the rodents I feed them. If that’s a crime, I’ll take the blame. I keep my mustelidae in captivity, so if they called a bum tune, I’ll pay the piper.”
The man looked too intelligent to be an outright loony. Danny said, “Mr. Cormier, I heard you’re an expert on wolverines.”
“That is the God’s truth. I have eleven in captivity right this instant, my baby refrigeration unit keeping them nice and cool, the way they like it.”
Danny queased on cigar smoke and halitosis; he willed himself pro. “This is why I’m here, Mr. Cormier. Four men have been killed between New Year’s and now. They were mutilated by a man wearing denture plates with wolverine teeth attached. There’s a dental lab several blocks from here–the only one in LA that manufactures actual animal dentures. I think that’s a strange coincidence, and I thought maybe you could help me out with it.”
Thomas Cormier snuffed his cigar and pocketed the butt. “That is just about the strangest thing I have heard in my entire time on this planet, which dates back to 1887. What else have you got on your killer?”
Danny said, “He’s tall, middle-aged, gray-haired. He knows the jazz world, he can purchase heroin, he knows his way around male prostitutes.” He stopped, thinking of Reynolds Loftis, wondering if he’d get anything that wasn’t circumstantial on him. “And he’s a homosexual.”
Cormier laughed. “Sounds like a nice fellow, and sorry I can’t help you. I don’t know anybody like that, and if I did, I think I’d keep my back to the wall and my trusty rifle out when he came to call. And this fellow’s enamored of Gulo luscus?”
“If you mean wolverines, yes.”
“Lord. Well, I admire his taste in mustelids, if not the way he displays his appreciation.”
Danny sighed. “Mr. Cormier, do you know anything about the Joredco Dental Lab?”
“Sure, just down the street. I think they make animal choppers.”
A clean take. Danny saw takes from Claire De Haven’s movie, pictured HIM seeing it, getting aroused, wanting more. “I’d like to see your wolverines.”
Cormier said, “Thought you’d never ask,” and walked ahead of Danny to the refrigeration shed. The air went from warm to freezing; the yapping became snarling; dark shapes lashed out and banged the mesh fronts of their pens. Cormier said, “Gulo luscus. Carcajou–evil spirit–to the Indians. The most insatiable carnivore alive and pound for pound the meanest mammal. Like I said, I admire your killer’s taste.”
Danny found a good sun angle–light square on a middle pen; he squatted down and looked, his nose to the wire. Inside, a long creature paced, turning in circles, snapping at the walls. Its teeth glinted; its claws scraped the floor; it looked like a coiled muscle that would not stop coiling until it killed and slept in satiation– or died. Danny watched, feeling the beast’s power, feeling HIM feeling it; Cormier talked. “Gulo luscus is two things: smart and intractable. I’ve known them to develop a taste for deer, hide in trees and toss nice edible bark down to lure them over, then jump down and rip the deer’s jugular out clean to the windpipe. Once they get a whiff of blood, they will not stop persisting. I’ve heard of wolverines stalking cougars wounded in mating battles. They’ll jab them from behind, take nips out and run away, a little meat here and there until the cougar nearly bleeds to death. When the poor fellow’s almost dead, Gulo attacks frontally, claws the cougar’s eyes out of his head and eats them like gumballs.”
Danny winced, transposing the image: Marty Goines, HIM, the creature he was watching. “I need to look at your records. All the wolverines you’ve lent out to movies and animal shows.”
Cormier said, “Officer, you can’t lend Gulos out, much as I’d like to make the money. They’re my private passion, I love them and I keep them around because they shore up my reputation as a mustelidologist. You lend Gulos out, they’ll attack anything human or animal within biting range. I had one stolen out of its pen five or six years ago, and my only consolation was that the stealer sure as hell got himself mangled.”