He sighed.
How long has it been? Three days? Four?
Days melded together without cigarettes, days of shit and hell, of screaming kids and a screaming wife. But now, tucked in an alcove behind the Wellwood Elementary School with his back pressed against the brown bricks and one foot hiked up behind him, he heard nothing. He felt nothing. Except, of course, the surge of nicotine in his lungs and then in his blood.
Pete sighed again, then turned the cigarette in his hand, staring into the hypnotizing red cherry as it ebbed and sparked the thin white paper.
When he could no longer hold his breath, he exhaled a thick cloud of blue smoke that engulfed his head.
He waved the smoke away from his face, and when it cleared he saw a tall woman with long blonde hair spilling in large curls meant to hide ears that were slightly too big, with a lopsided grin on her very red and very plump lips that stood out like a beacon.
“Shit.”
He thrust the cigarette to the ground, pulling his foot away from the wall and stomping the smoke from which he had only taken one drag.
One drag.
Pete turned his head to one side and exhaled heavily, trying to force any residual smoke from his lungs.
When he turned back to face the woman, she was approaching fast on her tall black pumps, which, not accidentally, matched her skirt that was probably an inch too short for an elementary school teacher. As she made her way toward him, the woman shifted her shoulders slightly and the wind caught her sheer blouse, flipping it open to reveal the shoulder strap and the top of a nude-colored bra.
Pete Devereaux—or Mr. Dev, as his students called him—couldn’t help the smile that formed on her lips. The woman caught this smirk and returned it in spades. A quick glance over her shoulder, and the woman’s pace quickened until she was within a foot of him.
“Petie,” she whispered, pressing a hand against his hip.
This aggressiveness, so much unlike her, startled Pete, and he instinctively pulled away—or at least he tried to, but she wouldn’t let him go. Instead, the woman tightened her grip on his hip and pulled him in closer, driving his thigh between her legs. Even through her black skirt, he could feel her warmth.
“Janet,” he said.
It was meant as an admonition, but, feeling that all too familiar warmth, it came out more like a moan. Janet took this as encouragement and bent toward his neck and nibbled on his ear.
The sweet scent of honeysuckle wafted up to him and he felt the front of his slacks tighten.
When Janet snaked her tongue behind his ear, and then traced a line partly down his jaw, he placed his hand on top of hers on his hip and pried it off him, gently pushing her away in the process.
“Janet,” he repeated, “what’s gotten into you?”
He only said the words because he thought them appropriate. Truth was, he liked this new, aggressive Janet.
The woman’s plump lips turned into a pout.
“I want you,” she whispered and leaned into him again, her tongue darting from between her lips.
Pete smiled.
“I want you too, babe,” he started, playing along, “but we can’t. Shit, what about the kids? They’re supposed to be learning about agriculture. Plants.”
The woman turned her head and peered over her shoulder. Pete followed her gaze.
About fifty yards behind them, a dozen children between the ages of five and eight were hunched around a small patch of vegetables in a garden cut out from the grass. It wasn’t as if they were alone, left to fiddle with the carrots and lettuce completely unsupervised; no, they weren’t that irresponsible. Mrs. Biggan was there as well, with her wide hips and frumpy sweater, standing with her hands crossed over her ample bosom. The woman had her back to them, but he knew what face she was making: she was scowling, as she was apt to do. No, there was Mrs. Biggan, but still…
“They are learning about planting,” Janet whispered as she leaned in again. This time, her hand fell on his crotch, her thin fingers grabbing the tightness there. “And you need to learn about planting your seed.”
With seed she squeezed, and Pete felt a tingling in his balls.
What the fuck has gotten into you, Janet? he thought, and then, Keep it up and something else will get into you.
“Mr. Dev?” a small voice asked, and Pete immediately went to push Janet away, but he missed; her hand had already fallen away from his crotch and she had seamlessly put two feet between them. He glanced at her quickly and her tongue darted just a fraction of an inch out from between her full red lips.
Pete shifted his hips, trying to hide the bulge in his pants, and turned to the boy.
“Yes, Dave,” he asked, staring at the boy with the thick thatch of messy, dark hair on his head.
Dave looked up at him with equally dark eyes.
“Um, Mr. Dev? Robbie found something in the garden… looks like a crab, or something.”
The boy looked away when he said this, as if he thought that he might get in trouble. Dave was one of the more timid of the boys, and he always had a hard time making friends.
Robbie’s probably just teasing him.
Pete squatted so that he was at eye level with the boy.
“A crab? What do you mean a crab, Dave?”
Wellwood Elementary was not far from the lake—in fact, not much of Askergan County was far from the lake—but despite having been born in Askergan and having spent all of his twenty-eight years here, Pete had never seen a crab. Crayfish, snails, muscles, catfish, sure, but never a crab.
“I dunno,” the shy boy replied, once again looking at the ground. He shrugged. “It looks like a crab. Robbie found it in the lettuce.”
Pete glanced up at Janet and was surprised, and more than a little disappointed, that her once lewd expression had transformed into one of concern.
“Show me,” she said, reaching for the boy’s hand.
Dave nodded and took Janet’s hand, and together they made their way back to the garden with Pete in tow.
When they were halfway to the cluster of students, they heard another boy shout.
“I found one too!”
Pete immediately picked up his pace. When another child, a girl this time, also shouted, he broke into a run.
He made it to the first boy, Robbie, before either Janet or Dave. Crouching as he had done before, he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Robbie turned to him, his eyes wide in surprise.
“Mr. Devereaux,” he exclaimed, barely able get the words out without stuttering, his excitement was so palpable. “I found a crab!”
Pete’s gaze followed the boy’s outstretched hand, his eyes scanned the patch of lettuce in front of him.
At first he saw nothing, and he crept forward on his haunches a few feet.
“Where, Robbie?”
“There!”
The boy pointed again.
“I don’t see—” But then he did see.
Tucked behind one of the heads lettuce was a round white shape that kind of looked like a crab shell.
What the fuck?
Pete crept forward some more, then used his right hand to sweep the head of lettuce to one side.
He froze.
It looked like a crab—a milky white crab—but it wasn’t. For one, it didn’t have any eyes or claws. Instead, the thing had six legs, six knobby appendages, and… and that was pretty much it.
“What the fuck is that?” he whispered, trying to scramble to his feet.
His foot caught in the loose soil, and he fell on his ass, knocking Robbie to the ground when his arm swept out from his side in a failed attempt of maintaining his balance.
Then he heard the six distinct cracks.
“Janet?” he shouted, his voice taking on a shrill quality that he was unfamiliar with.
Before the woman could answer, a seventh crack, this one much louder, much more distinct, resonated from the lettuce patch. A split second later, the thing was airborne.
It all happened so quickly that Pete Devereaux never even had a chance to bring a hand up in front of his face before the thing landed directly on his mouth, smothering him. The last thought that ran through his head before his skin was suctioned against the cracker was about his last cigarette.
It had been a good drag, he thought as his eyes rolled back in his head. Maybe the best.
PARTI I– SHEDDING
19.
Sheriff Paul White sat at his desk, his hand hovering over the black phone. It had been a long day, one that had started fucked up and had only gotten considerably worse ever since. He knew that he should head back out to the Wharfburn Estate, and intended to do so right after Coggins either returned his calls or made it back to the station himself. He just didn’t trust his people alone with the enigmatic Walter Wandry, even if he was locked up.
His next move should have been to pick up the phone and call the neighboring counties to see if they had any missing children as well, but he was hesitant. It wasn’t only that he thought it would be a fruitless endeavor, but this whole thing had started six years ago with that phone—with the black phone that had once been Sheriff Dana Drew’s, but was now his—ringing with a call from the inexorable Mrs. Wharfburn.
Sheriff White’s eyes drifted from the black phone to the two desks across from him. One was Deputy Williams’, which was clearly identifiable by the way the papers scattered across the surface—a messy man was he—but it was the other one, the one that was completely empty, devoid of even a notepad or a pen, that held his attention.
Deputy Bradley Coggins’ desk.
The words sounded strange after all this time.
Deputy Coggins.
It wasn’t the first time that he considered that calling his old friend and partner had been a mistake. He recalled the way the man had started to sweat as soon as they had approached the Wharfburn Estate, and again how he had nearly collapsed in a fit when Paul had thrown the cracker out of the basement, although that might have been warranted.
Yeah, he thought, still staring at the empty desk. Maybe it was a mistake. And where the hell is he?
‘I need to take care of something,’ the man had said, but what?
Coggins had been gone for over six years, with only a smattering of sightings in and about town, usually around the holidays. Other than that, nada. No phone call, no letter, nothing.
But now he suddenly had something to take care of? Now, of all times?
Paul wondered why he had let the man go, why he hadn’t pressed a little harder. He supposed that he had been scared of Brad’s shaky demeanor, thinking that if he did press, the man might very well crack.
Which brought him full circle, wondering why the fuck he had gone and rescued him from the horrible biker bar just outside of town.
The sheriff instinctively rubbed his right fist where the knuckles were still raw from decking one of the bikers. Then he remembered grabbing Walter Wandry’s throat with that same hand when he had called him a pig.
You’re losing it, Paul.
There was another shout from just outside the room, one that Paul recognized, as it had been occurring intermittently for at least the last hour.
He heard Deputy Williams’ voice next, demanding that the man be quiet, that he shut up and eat his dinner without disturbing them.
And there was that: Walter Wandry.
The sheriff had never met the man before, but a cursory search of his person had produced a wallet with a license indicating that he was from neighboring Pekinish County. Walter was clearly a junkie, a meth head, a heroin addict, but that wasn’t the most off-putting part about the rail-thin man with the grey beard, and it had nothing to do with his similarity to the bikers at the bar. No, it was the callousness with which he spoke of his son—of Tyler Wandry—who was still missing. The man didn’t care about what happened to the boy, but rather appeared to want the boy to be dead, some ridiculousness of needing a body to claim some sort of insurance money.
The sheriff pushed a thumb and forefinger into his eyes.
Damnit. I’m not ready for this.
It had been six years since he had taken over as sheriff, and although by all indications—and Mrs. Drew’s biased opinion—he was doing an adequate job, until today he hadn’t had to deal with anything out of the ordinary—with anything like this.
I’m not ready.
And he probably wasn’t. For one, he knew he should be back out at the Wharfburn Estate continuing to follow up on finding anything there that might indicate where the boy might have gone. At present, it was just a missing persons case, despite the story that Kent Griddle had told them and the strange eggs and skins that he had found in the Wharfburn basement.
His eyes drifted back to the phone.
He felt like calling Nancy up to vent, maybe ease some of the anxiety that welled within. But he couldn’t do that. They had been together informally for the better part of a year, but there was—and likely always would be—a divide between them, a line that could not be crossed. Nancy had made it abundantly clear that while she liked him, her reporting came first.
Enough.
He pulled his fingers from his eyes and looked at the black phone on his desk.
It’s time to make some calls.
* * *
“Detective Kipling Marshall, Pekinish PD,” a tired voice on the other end of the line said.
Sheriff White cleared his throat.
“Mr. Marshall, this is Sheriff White over in Askergan County.”
“Call me Kip, please,” the man said, his voice coming alive.
“And you can call me Paul,” the sheriff responded in kind before quickly continuing, “We are having a bit of a problem up in Askergan and I was wondering if you could help me out with a few things.”
There was a short pause.
“Sure,” the man answered, his voice changing once again. “Anything to help out. What’s up?”
“Well, two days ago a boy…” Paul let the sentence trail off. There was something about the way the man had said ‘anything to help out’ that didn’t quite jive with him. His voice had seamlessly transitioned to an ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’ tone—and that bothered the sheriff.
He decided to play this a little closer to the chest than he had initially planned.
“Have any boys gone missing from Pekinish lately?”
There was a long pause.
“Boys?” the man answered at long last.
The sheriff nodded.
“Yep, boys.”
Kip’s answer was immediate.
“No boys. But as you probably know, we had a bunch of young girls—seven, sometimes eight years old—go missing a number of years back. Turned the whole county upside down, but even when the feds came in they left empty-handed. Other than that, no. And no boys. And not recently.”
The sheriff made a face. Something about this man, this Kip, continued to seem off to him. He bit his lip before continuing.
“Thanks, Detective Marshall. Just one more thing, do you know a Walter Wandry?”
Again, the man answered without hesitation.
“Of course, why do you ask?”
“Well, his son’s gone missing and he’s causing a real stink here. Keeping him in the cell until we find out what to do with him.”
“Walter’s a piece of work; he’s in or out of here once or twice a week. Fucking junkie—piece of shit womanizer, too. A real piece of work.”
There was a pause before the man continued.
“We can always come pick him up, if you want. I assume he has at least a few outstanding warrants.”
The sheriff shook his head. Even though Pekinish had at least five times the population of Askergan County, and had an actual jail instead of the single holding cell that he commanded over, his intuition—the skill he had somehow absorbed once Sheriff Dana Drew had passed—was indicating strongly that inviting this man to Askergan, especially with the fucked-up things
that were going on, was not a good idea.
“We’ll bring him to you,” he said at last, “but we have to find his son first.”
20.
It was never Corina’s intention to steal the police car, but in the end it made sense; after all, she had no vehicle of her own, and a quick look at Kent Griddle’s file showed that the boy didn’t even live in Askergan—he lived in a neighboring county at least an hour away.
Still, jumping into that police car and backing out of the parking lot with the lights off felt surreal.
Corina had gone too far this time, she knew it, but she had only done what needed to be done. She had to find out what the fuck was going on in Askergan, and if Deputy Bradley Coggins wasn’t around to tell her, then she would find out for herself.
Corina’s bright green eyes flicked up in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see the lights of another police car—this one driven by an actual officer of the law—pulling up behind her and signaling for her to pull over. But all she saw was dirt and road.
The thrill of having stolen the car wore off when she made it onto Highway 2 and started heading west, her sights aimed on Pekinish County. As she drove, she flipped the manila file on the passenger seat and glanced over at it periodically.
Kent Griddle: 16 years old.
Her eyes darted to the picture. Kent was a cute boy with short red hair, which was obvious even though the picture paper-clipped to the folder was black and white, with a smattering of freckles on his small nose.
That was all she could glean from the folder—the rest of the time she just kept her eyes on the road.
Corina Lawrence pushed the gas pedal a little harder and the car lurched forward.
If I can’t find Deputy Coggins, then maybe you can help me, Kent.
* * *
The door opened on the second knock, and although the boy that stared back at her looked a little thinner and worse for wear than the face in the black-and-white photo, Corina had no doubt that Kent Griddle stood before her.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 47
