One of the maggots jumped at her.
Or maybe it just fell, really fast.
Maddy started to scream. She tried to step back and slam the door and run, all at the same time. The kid was faster, and knew what he was doing. He had hold of her arm and yanked her in like she was made of straw. She tumbled onto Duane’s dead body. She tried to scream, but there was something dry and sticky going over her mouth.
Duct tape.
She tried to kick.
She wished for a fry pan.
The kid was leaning on her and talking.
“Hang on, lady,” he said. “You and me are going to have us some fun.”
The car door slammed behind her.
CHAPTER 13
Wilfred Comes Clean
* 1 *
Earl had never seen anything like it.
Clavis looked like he’d lost a fight with a threshing machine.
Wilfred looked worse, standing there with that pitchfork in his hand.
“Did you find a fork in the road?” Earl asked.
Wilfred threw him a go-to-hell look. “Anyone ever tell you you’re about as funny as a leaky colostomy sack?”
“I didn’t hear you drive in,” Wendy Joe said. “Where’s the squad car?”
“It started making funny banging sounds, so I parked it in Barrand’s Hardware for a tune up.”
“How’s that?”
He shoved Clavis towards Earl.
“Lock him up.”
“I ought to hose him down first. What the hell is that reek? And shouldn’t I call a doctor about his hand? You both look near to death.”
“Lock him up. We’ll get him to the clinic when I’m good and ready.”
“Better be soon,” Earl noted. “The last thing we need is old Clavis to die on us.”
Wilfred glowered at him.
“You figure you’re police chief, all of a sudden?”
Earl grabbed a quick I-told-you-so glance from Wendy Joe, then back to Wilfred.
“Just saying is all,” Earl explained. “A dead body in the jail would make for a hell of a scandal. You know how they get. Lawyers and newspapers are like elephants. Big and gray, and they never forget.”
Wendy Joe saw the argument coming and did her best to get between it.
“Never mind fussing Earl,” she said. “So what happened, anyway?”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
He strode into the bathroom like a deposed king, and slammed the door behind himself.
“So what do we do?” Earl asked.
Wendy Joe shrugged.
“Like the man said, lock him up.”
She sat down to wait out the storm.
* 2 *
“Where do you live?” Helliard shouted.
Maddy lay in the car, face pushed against the shot-up remains in the passenger seat. There were maggots crawling in the corpse’s flesh. Some of them crawled on her. She felt them moving. Were they tasting her, or just trying her on for size?
“Where the hell do you live?”
She pointed at the duct tape.
“You can point, can’t you?”
She stubbornly kept pointing at the duct tape.
He yanked it off. It felt as if he’d taken nearly half her cheek with it.
“Where do you live?” he repeated.
“A little farmhouse,” she said. “Two miles up the road.”
“I need somewhere to hide out for a while. I need some food. I need a bed – and maybe somebody to lay in it with me.”
What the hell could she do?
“You’re more than welcome,” she said wryly.
He laughed at that.
A harsh laugh, like metal grating against stone.
“I figured that.”
They drove on down the road, moving towards the house and the field.
The morning moved on.
* 3 *
A splash of tap water and a cup of cold coffee later, Wilfred started to talk.
Wendy Joe and Earl sat and listened.
“I would have nailed the bastard, if he’d given me a chance to get my gun out.”
He patted his Colt.
Earl laughed.
“Jesus, Wilfred,” he said. “When are you going to donate that antique to a museum and get yourself a real gun?”
Earl had a Glock. He’d paid for it himself, naturally. The town budget barely covered ballpoint pens. Council didn’t figure their police force needed much more than paperwork. Wilfred carried his revolver because he was Chief. His Daddy had owned the pistol before him. He’d probably stolen it off of his Great Granddaddy.
It was that old.
Earl was only a deputy, which, according to the town council, meant that he didn’t rate a piece. There just wasn’t that much call for shooting speeders and drunks. But that wasn’t the point. Earl served his first year on the force by keeping his police jacket buttoned snug, whatever the weather, to conceal his lack of a gun. Then his uncle died and left Earl with a half-interest in a fish plant. The inheritance left him with enough expendable money to afford his first real gun.
So Earl had bought himself a Glock. He liked the sound of the name. Thick and gutteral, like the sound he imagined a suspect might make after being shot in the throat. Since then he’d added a few more pieces of hardware to the Crossfall arsenal. Just in case.
Some of it was legal, some less than so.
Earl was a believer in preparedness.
“My Colt’s got more power,” Wilfred argued.
“For shooting car horns, maybe,” Earl replied. “My Glock’s got as much oomph as that caveman Colt. I can get it out a hell of a lot faster, and I’ve got fifteen rounds to play with.”
“Fellow shoots one straight the first time, he don’t need to worry playing with anything.”
Wendy Joe figured Earl was just compensating for his lack of altitude.
She didn’t blame him. At five foot nothing, he had a lot to make up for.
“You two cowboys eat way too much red meat,” she decided. “What I want to know is what Ivan thinks about his new drive through.”
Wilfred shrugged.
“I think we came to an understanding.”
“I doubt it,” she shook her head. “He’ll be calling the mayor next.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Barrand. He’s all foam, no beer. He’ll call, make a fuss, then fix the window and forget about it.”
Wilfred grinned at the thought and began to calm down.
“Earl, you’re right,” he went on. “Why don’t you take Clavis down to the clinic and get him checked over?”
“And when he’s through?”
“Bring him back here. I’ve still got to book him. I can’t set him free until I figure he’s forgotten his ambitions of two-by-four martyrdom.”
“Good word.”
“I read it yesterday in Reader’s Digest. I’ve been dying to use it ever since,” Wilfred went on. “Why don’t you take that pitchfork back to Barrand while you’re at it. You talk nice to him. You never can tell. He just might take it in his head to sue us, and we don’t need that kind of bull crap.”
He breathed a long, slow breath.
He wasn’t done eating crow yet.
“Wendy Joe? You better call the Mounties. You tell them what happened. Tell them their boy got away.”
She nodded.
“No need of telling them everything.”
“Tell them what you need to tell.”
Earl came out of the lockup with Clavis.
“You better head on home, chief,” Earl said. “You look beat.”
Wilfred thought about the empty house.
The cellar stairs.
The freezer.
“Is Emma still at her mom’s place?” Wendy Joe asked, like she read his mind.
“Yep,” Wilfred nodded, glad of the interruption. “No doubt the two of them are plotting my downfall.”
It was a safe enough lie. If anyone called to check, Emma’
s mother suffered from Alzheimer’s bad enough to never give the same answer twice. Maybe that’s what I need, Wilfred thought. A case of instant amnesia. Forget about the past, completely. Right in the moment, whereever you were.
Hell.
This couldn’t go on forever.
Sooner or later someone would find out.
Wilfred wondered what they’d do, when they finally find her down in the freezer.
“I believe I’ll take a nap,” he said.
He laid his head down on his desk and was gone, unaware of just how closely Wendy Joe was watching over him.
* 4 *
“So what the hell made you do it?” Earl asked Clavis as they drove towards the clinic.
“I don’t know,” Clavis answered honestly. “Some voice spoke, and it was like I couldn’t do nothing but what I did. It was like somebody hotwired my soul.”
Crossfall’s sole medical clinic occupied a three-floor walk-up. Seventy years past, the building had housed the town’s only brothel. Earl pulled his squad car to the curb.
“Damn. Look at that, Clavis,” Earl said. “Did you ever see the like?”
Marvin Pusser’s postal van was parked in front of the clinic. It was mostly red and looked like somebody dropped an indelible watermelon on it. There was red paint smeared across the windshield that looked just like blood.
“Wait a minute, Clavis. I got to check something out.”
Earl walked upstairs. It was probably a bad idea to leave Clavis like that, but he seemed harmless enough.
Earl walked slowly up a flight of stairs.
Up the wrong way.
He knew damn well he was heading the wrong way.
He was doing it on purpose.
Earl walked down the hall. He hated halls like this, with no way out and just a long tunnel. The place was probably a lot more fun back when it was a cathouse. He pushed the examination room door open, without knocking, and there was Marvin.
“Holy red flying shit,” Earl said.
It looked like the mailman was covered in blood.
“Jesus Christ, Marvin,” Earl said. “Were you run over by a tomato juice truck?”
The doctor looked up, peering over a pair of wired glasses.
“Can I help you, Earl?”
“Did Lily do that to you, Marvin?”
Marvin just glowered.
“Can I help you, Earl?” the doctor repeated.
“I was just looking for the waiting room.”
“We haven’t moved it.”
Earl gave the doctor his best winning smile.
Marvin leaned over past the doctor and slammed the door shut.
Earl shrugged.
He’d seen what he’d come for.
It was probably nothing, just a cranky, red-faced mailman. Still, he was the town law and it was his job to know what was going on. If Lily was dumping paint on folks, he needed to know.
He went downstairs and helped Clavis from the car. Then he sat in the waiting room, ignoring the curious look he drew from the grandmother with the ongoing gallbladder issues.
He needed to get this over with fast.
Whether Wilfred liked it or not, Earl had some hunting to do.
CHAPTER 14
The Color of Brains
* 1 *
The dead body stunk like summer fertilizer.
Maddy did her best to breathe through her mouth but it didn’t help much.
It would have been good to get to the house just to get out of the stinking car, even if all she had to look forward to was rape and maybe death. Compared to riding in this car almost anything would be a treat.
Helliard parked the car in the barn. The horses didn’t like it but Helliard didn’t seem to be much worried about livestock, or live anything for that matter.
“You get many visitors?” he asked.
“The place is a regular tourist trap, lately.”
“It sure looks like it. Real nice. Early colonial crapmeat. Why don’t you help me lug Duane into the house?”
“Who?”
“The body, stupid. His name is Duane. I’m Helliard. What the fuck do they call you when they want you in out of the rain?”
“Maddy.”
“What kind of fucking name is that?”
“Same kind of name as Helliard. Something made up by my Mom and Dad. It’s short for Madigan.”
“Mad Again? Heh, you sure look it, girl. Grab his feet, or do you prefer head?”
He sniggered.
Maddy grabbed Duane’s feet, ignoring the dirty joke. Being dead, Duane was the easiest one to handle, but she wasn’t scared. She had already fry-panned one man to death this weekend. The first chance she got she’d bake Helliard’s beans, but good.
They went in the back door.
“Sweet Jesus, what’s that reek?”
“Brains,” Maddy answered. “I figured a smart fella like you’d recognize it.”
Zigger started growling, just as soon as they got in.
Helliard pulled his pistol.
“I can get him outside.” Maddy said, reaching for the old dog’s collar. “You don’t need to shoot him.”
“It’d probably be a mercy,” Helliard pointed out. “My fuck, he is an ugly hound.”
Maddy shoved the dog out the door.
“You’re one to talk,” she said.
“Ooh, that hurt. Ain’t you got a sharp tongue?”
They carried Duane into the kitchen.
“We got company?” Bluedaddy asked.
He was sitting in the rocking chair, only Helliard didn’t seem to notice, so Maddy decided to ignore the old ghost too.
“Set him on the table,” she said.
She didn’t really want that shot-up corpse on her dining room table, but she did want to hide Vic’s leftover brain stains.
Helliard shook his head no.
Maddy had the feeling that he enjoyed being argumentative with her.
“Just prop him in the rocking chair,” Helliard said. “I might want to eat at the table, or fuck on it.”
Then he noticed the newspapers, spread to cover the freshly spilled brains.
“What’s this?” he asked.
He dropped Duane’s body. The carcass made a meaty splat as the bits of shot-out skull hit the floor.
Then he lifted the newspaper.
“Damn,” he swore. “You weren’t kidding about the brains. And that’s puke on top of it. I guess you didn’t like what you’d done, did you?”
He stuck his finger in the mess and stirred it like he was finger painting.
“Look at them maggots. They look just like rice pudding.”
He tasted his finger.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to clean up after killing a body to death?”
Helliard leered at her like he approved of her bad habits.
Maddy found the leer almost refreshing. She still planned to fry-pan the bastard as soon as she got the chance, but appreciated his earnest practicality.
“My guess is you won’t be calling no policeman too soon, will you?” Helliard noted.
“I might,” Maddy allowed. “Might be I’ll tell them that you killed him.”
“Where’s his body?”
“Where you buried him.” she said, with a smug grin.
He shook his head.
“Nice try but the timing’s all wrong,” he told her. “I didn’t hit this part of the country until long after his meat cooled. Good try though. Now help me with Duane.”
He leaned the body towards the chair.
“Hey, don’t be doing that,” Bluedaddy said. “Laying a body on top of an old man. That ain’t hardly right.”
But Helliard couldn’t see Bluedaddy any more than Vic had.
He was Maddy’s private phantom.
“There,” Helliard said. “He’s cozy.”
He took a step towards Maddy.
“Why don’t we get cozy, too?”
He grabbed her left tit. A smear of Vic’s brain
s stained his index finger.
“If there’s gonna be some fooling around, can I watch?” asked Bluedaddy from inside the blue tattering remains of Duane.
Maddy yanked herself free. She took a step towards the counter and contemplated her options. There was a butcher knife in the drawer, a cleaver by the sink, a rolling pin next to the flour, and the fry pan in the sink.
She liked the fry pan best.
“What will you do here?” she asked.
“Anything I want to.“
He caught her in a rough embrace.
He pulled her close and dragged a stubblish kiss across her right cheek. Maddy didn’t want any of it. She threw her knee upwards but Helliard blocked the knee with his thigh and kick-shoved her backwards sprawling on the table.
Damn.
She couldn’t reach anything from where he’d pinned her and he was too heavy and strong to move.
As she lay there it seemed as if Vic’s brains were laughing at her. Bluedaddy was laughing at her from out of the corpse’s mouth.
Maddy tried to scream.
Helliard pushed a greasy palm over her mouth.
“Uh-uh,” he cautioned. “We wouldn’t want the neighbors to hear.”
She bit at his hand but he was too quick for her. All that her teeth caught was her tongue and it hurt like a bastard.
She spat at him.
He laughed and pulled her into another bullied kiss.
She wrapped her arm about his neck.
“Getting to like it now, ain’t you?” Bluedaddy crow-called from the corpse. “I always knew you were that kind of a girl.”
“That’s more like it,” Helliard growled.
She yanked his head close, twisted and sank her teeth into his right ear. Helliard swore and tried to drag himself free. Maddy hung on like grim blue death, working her teeth hard, tugging side to side and gnawing on the ear. The ear tasted of dirt and the sour rank flavor of uncultivated ear wax. She used her neck muscles, twisting and tearing at the flap of meat.
Helliard socked her hard in the belly.
Two more blows and she had to let go.
“Now we’re even,” she said, spitting a gob of blood at his face.
She took a swing at him that would have broken his nose. He dodged and caught her hand, twisted it and forced her down to the kitchen floor.
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