“Honey?” From Joy, who knew her husband better than anyone. Knew he’d go for broke if he knew he was broke anyway.
Marty gave him a blue-eyed smile. “You mean like I’d pop you, then drop an unregistered gun in your lap? What kinda cop would I be?”
Todd said “Nah, I don’t think it would go down like that. Not exactly.” He flicked a glance out the rearview at a car or two drifting by. “It’s daylight, a little traffic on the street. And then there’s Joy here. Be hard enough convincing Drake you had to kill me. Add a potentially hostile witness you gotta make dead, now you have to come up with a story that really strains the imagination. We both drew on you?”
McConlon took a small step forward. Just about close enough.
“Drake,” the cop said, snickering. “Yesterday’s news. You ever hear of the title, Chairman Emeritus? He sits on a corporate board.”
Todd shook his head. “I don’t get the Wall Street Journal.” Meaning it in more ways than one.
McConlon laughed. “I guess I was fooled by your new car. Anyway, old bigwig, he can’t find the executive washroom anymore, so they give him a title. Chairman Emeritus, or some such. Means jack shit. Means he no longer remembers to zip up when he’s done, but it’s a title of respect. He gets to keep reporting to work in the morning if he wants to, keeps a bigger office than he needs and the secretaries call him ‘sir.’ You see where I’m going with this, Todd?”
He did, but he didn’t give the cop the satisfaction.
“That’s what I told that pissant department store owner who thought his shit didn’t stink. Couldn’t believe how we had to strong-arm him to get one lousy job out of him, then he refused to continue to cooperate when that job needed…” he grinned, “…filling again. And look how things turned out. Did his buddy Drake save him? Those old fucks couldn’t even handle a simple surprise attack against a bunch of bums in a day-rate motel.”
The cop set his elbows on the window frame and leaned in. No longer so cautious.
“That’s right. I know all about it. Darwin Dukey Gates got quite chatty toward the end. Figuring, I suppose, it’d help his cause.”
After the jolt of fear had spent itself, Todd remembered that Gates and the Santanas had been taken care of in a desolate patch of highway. Not in the middle of town with the sun shining. Not that many of the good citizens of Babylon, Michigan would report the sounds of gunfire.
“Bottom line, you don’t have any protection, Dunbar. Step out of the car and—”
Todd was ahead of him. He’d already thrown open the door, bumping the lawman aside, and was climbing out of the Lexus. The knife spilled out of his waistband and fell harmlessly to the ground. McConlon went for his gun. He looked scared, but he had the nine leveled at Todd’s chest in a two-hand stance, the barrel only wavering slightly.
Todd’s sudden response had played out a whole lot more dramatically in his mind. In reality, the sunlight hit him like a Taser, wobbling him until he thought the most aggressive thing he was going to do was puke on the cop’s shiny black shoes.
McConlon, maybe sensing the same, took a step back. He barked an order Todd didn’t clearly hear.
“Fuck you,” Todd rasped, the searing sun making his legs go rubbery.
Joy called out his name. Hearing it as if from a great distance in time and space, he ignored her, tried to focus on the cop who seemed to be spitting out more commands.
“If you’re not afraid of Drake, shoot me right now, asshole,” Todd choked out.
He reeled, awaiting a bullet and oblivion. Easy to be brave when life itself held so much more terror than death.
“Might be an idea,” said McConlon.
The cop’s eyes flitted to the street at the top of the deep parking lot. Judging the likelihood of witnesses.
Wracked by a lightning bolt of pain that flash-burned his insides, Todd grabbed the door of the Lexus and doubled over. His skin was on fire. He was going to faint, collapse, and then die like a worm caught high and dry after a rainstorm.
“Leave him alone, he’s sick,” said Joy, jumping out of the passenger seat and jogging around the Lexus to join him. “You shoot him, you shoot me,” she said simply.
Todd raised his head and saw McConlon waving his firearm from one Dunbar to the other. He nudged his wife aside, out of the immediate line of fire.
Jaw clenched tight, he said, “What the hell is it you think I got the matter with me, Marty? Can’t you figure it out? Don’t you recognize the symptoms?”
He licked hot sweat from his lips and felt it trickle through his hair and into his ears. It dripped from his nose, spattering the pavement like fat, salty raindrops. “Go ahead, motherfucker. But you better take off my head afterward or I’m coming for you.”
The cop backed up, onto the patch of weeds. Nearly tripped over a picnic table leg.
“If you do score a direct hit, you got Drake coming for you. But that’s right—you’re not afraid of that old man. Can’t even find the washroom. I almost forgot.”
The cop’s gun hand wavered. He flicked his gaze left and right, as though hoping that comment hadn’t been overheard. “No. That can’t be.”
“Drake converted me himself,” Todd said, a go-for-broke lie.
It didn’t make much sense if McConlon stopped to think about it, but Todd bet he wouldn’t. Not if he and Joy gave him no time to do so. He motioned for her to help him into the passenger seat and told her she’d have to drive.
“We’re leaving,” he said over his shoulder, voice cracking like the rest of him.
The cop obviously didn’t know what to do. It was like what Highsmith had said yesterday: the town’s daylighters had been mindless followers for so long they’d lost the ability to think for themselves. So Marty McConlon stood there waving his police-issue nine at them as Joy clumsily reversed the unfamiliar car and got its nose pointing toward the street.
“What now?” she asked, casting nervous glances at the gunman in her mirror.
That was easy. The cop would either holster his weapon or empty its clip into the rear window. Could go either way.
“Just drive.”
Todd slumped low in the seat, trying to escape the sun more than McConlon’s aim. They took a right on Middle View, Joy flicking one more glance in the mirror as they did so.
“He’s just standing there,” she said. “Still holding that gun.”
No bullets flying. Yet.
Chapter Forty-Nine
“Humidity,” Paul murmured. “The door’s just hung up on the floor.”
“Oh…yeah.” Freddie giggled.
Paul recognized the quiet laughter as Freddie’s way of venting terror. He wondered if his friend had been as close to cardiac arrest as he himself had felt when that door had seemingly pushed back when Freddie turned the knob and started to slowly swing it open. Probably.
Now the lawyer gave it a bit of a shoulder and the door popped open. Both men froze at the sight before them.
“It’s too sunny,” Paul whispered.
Not at all what he was expecting. It felt empty as the men began the slow walk-through. But way too light and airy. The place in no way resembled the picture Paul had drawn in his mind, probably after watching too many late-night movies. He’d expected grime, dust and clutter, a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That, or a drafty Transylvanian castle, all black shadows, velvet drapes, damp dungeons. Instead, they wandered through a cheerful albeit tired-looking colonial. The wallpaper looked dingy and forgettable, as did the furnishings, but the house was clean and relatively tidy.
“Books everywhere,” Paul murmured as he followed his hatchet-wielding friend from room to room.
Magazines and newspapers were scattered across many of the flat surfaces and piled in corners. Time. Newsweek. Books jammed in bookcases and stacked three or four deep on the floor. Popular novels, pop histories, coffee table art books. Nothing dedicated to ancient deities or spellcasting.
There was an out-of-fashion nineteen-inch te
levision in one room with a DVD player and a collection of recent movies with stickers identifying them as rentals from the local library. No porn or slasher flicks. It all looked just so…normal.
“You sure we broke into the right house?” Freddie whispered, their thoughts aligned.
“Come on. We’ve got to find him,” Paul said. They stood at the foot of the steep stairwell in the black stone entry foyer. “Let’s go.”
Freddie halted him by touching his chest with the broad side of the hatchet.
“You realize,” he said, the sound barely escaping his throat, “that we’re just putting off the inevitable. He’s not up there. He’s in the basement.”
Sure. Paul had known that all along, but had decided to ignore the fact for now. Start elsewhere, with the cheery kitchen, the sun-drenched, book-strewn living room, the den that looked like everyone else’s. Then try the bedrooms upstairs. It can’t hurt.
But they knew.
Fifteen minutes later, they found that at least the light worked. Not like in the movies where the heroes would click, click the wall switch at the top of the basement stairs and find the bulb was dead—surprise, surprise—and that they had to traipse to the vampire’s lair in the pitch dark.
Paul in the lead, they crept down the brightly lit wooden slats, Freddie gripping Paul’s arm and resting the broad end of the hatchet on his shoulder.
The creaky stairs ended at a large, unlit room as dark and musty as Paul’s imagination had painted it. Freddie pulled the hanging cord of a wobbly bulb that threw down a smeary wash of light. Paul could see a concrete floor that was chipped and cracked. It rose in little hills as though poured over a stormy lake. The room smelled of turpentine and bleach and other strong chemicals, and of dust and age.
We’re trapped down here, Paul thought. Screwed if someone came to block the top of the stairs.
Freddie waved the hatchet at a washer and dryer, at a paint-splattered sink, a rotary-dial telephone attached to one wall.
Paul pointed to a high hump in dirty laundry piled on the floor.
“You think?” said Freddie.
Paul edged closer, meaning to nudge the pile with his toe, but his muscles locked up and his foot refused to raise. Instead, he dragged it toward the lump, imagining a withered hand whipping out and grabbing his ankle.
Paul blinked, mildly surprised that it didn’t happen that way. That the lump remained sentient as his foot snagged it. He toed clothing away until nothing remained of the pile but more clothing, and only then did he let loose a breath he’d forgotten he was holding. It made a small sound, like air escaping an untied balloon.
“The door,” Freddie whispered, laying a hand lightly on his shoulder.
Against a cinderblock wall on the other side of the dank room was an unpainted wooden door sealed flush with the rough wall. It might gain entrance to a storage room, a workshop, rec room…anything.
But it wouldn’t be any of those things.
Paul knew.
Having practiced their procedure on some half-dozen closed doors in upstairs bedrooms, cluttered closets, a bathroom and elsewhere throughout the house, they knew exactly what to do. Paul would press his back to the wall by the frame, take a firm grip on the knob, turn it as quickly and silently as possible and push the door open. Freddie, stationed near the hinge side and holding the hatchet in a two-handed grip, would get to charge in first.
But this one was different. This was the real deal, they both knew. Paul could read it on Freddie’s face as they stared each other down.
Paul made a throat-clearing sound. When he spoke, it was low volume, but not a whisper. Why bother? Either they were already expected on the other side, or they weren’t. “When you’re ready,” he said.
Freddie nodded, absently scraping his whiskers with the back of the blade.
“Me first.” That was a break from the standard routine, but it felt like something Paul had to say. His house, his godforsaken community, his decision to move here.
Freddie didn’t fight him for the honor.
Chapter Fifty
Ponytail Pete obviously loved his assignment. He had the Rambo thing going with a red bandanna tied to his forehead, Judd’s taped baseball bat slung in a homemade sling on his back and Denver’s 30-.30 deer rifle cradled in his arms.
“Nice,” Todd murmured as Pete helped Joy drag him out of the Lexus.
“Where you hit?” the snaggle-toothed driveway sentry asked, his voice sounding hazy, as though coming at him from far away. “They catch you guys, those bastards down by the road? We thought you left us yesterday, man, but Mona tole us you’d be back. You should see what they done to us last night. Poor Tonya dead and Jermaine near crazy. Say, you dint bring any food back, didja? We’re running low.”
The single squad car at the foot of the motel drive had left them alone. Maybe Marty had radioed ahead to make sure the Dunbars were ignored. Or the cops were just too afraid to act without orders. Likelier still, the Sundown was like one of those roach traps that lets you in without a problem. It’s getting out that’s the bitch.
Todd heard Joy from miles and miles away saying no, everything’s fine. Just help me get him in and put him to bed.
“But what happened?” Pete was asking as he tugged on Todd’s sluggish body.
Or maybe it was someone else doing the tugging. It was hard to say, all stimuli fading so fast. His last thoughts before his brain turned off the lights were about how his Sundown friends would react when they found out the truth. Maybe he’d wake up with an ash stake through his heart.
The robbery itself was no problem whatsoever. Just two guys at work and a single customer, a house painter buying solvents. The locals took one look at all the guns pointed their way and got instantly cooperative.
Nope, no objection at all to you boys loading up as many hatchets and chainsaws and fuel drums as you can carry. Hey, we’ll even help you pack up your car. Don’t have one? Why don’t you take the Chevy pickup parked right outside?
Well, maybe not as cooperative as that, but close. The gunmen added flashlights and lanterns, batteries and walkie-talkies to their shopping list, even bags of trail mix on display by the cash register.
The gas station on Third and Main View, same way, but only after D.B., Denver and Jermaine had locked the hardware store people in the basement and cut the phone lines and told them to count real slow to five hundred before coming up.
Things didn’t get complicated till the men in the gas station figured out that the Sundowners needed the fuel pumps turned on, but weren’t going to submit credit cards for payment. They didn’t take well to that, but Jermaine waved that Smith & Wesson of his and everyone went running for cover.
D.B. was keeping everyone cool, especially Jermaine, who looked grim and half spent. D.B. hadn’t even wanted the new widower going along on the raid, but what could he do? There was no stopping the guy.
Then someone said, “Hey, I think he’s coming around.”
Then someone else goes: “The sun’s not even down yet.”
And Joy goes, “Well, you know, he’s not a full-fledged vampire yet, so I guess he don’t follow all the rules.”
Todd in his sorry-ass in-between state thinking, Jesus Christ, you cannot keep that woman quiet.
Todd closed his eyes and opened them again, but no, it wasn’t just a bad dream. D.B. was still there, his pink grinning face all of a foot from his own. The room was dark and stuffy, shades drawn, curtains pulled.
Todd licked his lips, his mouth so dry it felt like he’d swallowed sand. From somewhere beyond D.B.’s big pink face, Mona Dexter was saying, “Sorry about the lack of air conditioning, but they cut the power toward morning.”
Not that he’d experienced a working window unit since they’d gotten there, but the guest room of Mona Dexter’s usually icy apartment felt even stuffier than the Dunbar family’s old rooms.
Joy came into view, sat on the bed and squeezed Todd’s hand. “It’s okay, honey. D.B. and
Mona know what happened.”
“We don’t hold it against you,” D.B. offered.
“Who else?” Todd’s voice sounded rusty to his own ears, like he hadn’t used it for a half-century or so.
“Well, Carl,” Joy admitted. “And he might have mentioned something to Jermaine, thinking he might enjoy someone else’s bad news. You know, so he don’t think he’s the only one suffering.”
“Glad I could help,” Todd grumped. “Then what happened?”
D.B. frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You slipped out of here through the woods to avoid the cops at the end of the drive, stole a pickup and stuck up the hardware store and gas station. What then?”
The group surrounding him stared, wide-eyed.
“Musta heard us talking,” D.B. said.
Once again, Todd had felt himself rising, floating out of his bed and joining the others as an observer. The scene felt disjointed, scenes jumbled and surreal gaps of action missing. Like someone put behind the wheel of a car for the first time and told to take off.
“That must be it,” he said.
He took his first good look around the intensely feminine room. Joy sat on the bed next to him, holding one of his hands in both of hers over the lacy spread. Mona Dexter rocked gently in a rose-painted rocker in one corner while D.B. hovered overhead like a big pink jack o’lantern.
“Water,” Todd croaked.
He felt numb with weariness. He downed the glass passed to him from his wife as he felt the others studying him with concern. Wondering what a vampire looked like up close. Maybe gauging the odds of him ripping their throats out if they strayed too close.
Frankly, he was working himself into enough of a simmering piss fit to consider the same odds.
D.B. said, “Well, picking up where we left off…”
It was a part of the story that had come in to him particularly hazily, so he listened carefully.
Bloodthirst in Babylon Page 33
