All the Rave

by Bob DeMoss

  From this vantage point, she could see through a doorway into the kitchen. Her eyes zeroed in on a crack of light beneath a door at the far end. Since it was the only light on in the whole place, she figured it was worth exploring.

  Jodi left the steps and walked into the kitchen, across the badly stained linoleum floor to the door. She reached for the handle, her heart on full alert, ready to jump out of her chest, and then opened the door. A narrow wooden staircase led to the basement below. The odor she’d first smelled was definitely more intense here at the top of the steps.

  “Reverend Bud? You home?”

  Jodi took a tentative step down. And then another. And another. She reached the bottom of the stairs and stood on the black-and-red-tiled floor. The air was cooler than upstairs, but it had a damp, musty edge to it. She saw a giant cockroach scamper across the floor. She clutched the railing and called again. “Listen, I . . . I came just as you asked.”

  Still no response. Maybe she had missed him. Maybe he’d ducked out for a pizza. Maybe he was sleeping. Or maybe this was his idea of a game. Whatever the reason, her nervous system was about to short-circuit. She was grateful that the naked light bulb, suspended from the low ceiling by an extension cord, was on.

  She quickly scanned her surroundings. If Reverend Bud’s place was anything like her history teacher’s row home, to her left would be the door to the garage and beyond that the alley. To her right would be a space for a small storage area or home office. Straight ahead she could see the washer and dryer.

  She walked to the right and stood in the doorway. She leaned her head into the room and saw Reverend Bud. She stifled a gasp, covering her mouth with her hand.

  Reverend Bud was lying on a sofa. One arm rested across his chest, the other dangled over the edge of the sofa. His fingers held something loosely by the floor. An ashtray filled with cigarette butts rested near his hand. Smoke spiraled upward from the end of a smoldering butt.

  She cleared her throat. “Hello?” Jodi tapped lightly on the doorframe. She couldn’t tell if he was sleeping, or, more likely, from what she knew of him, tripping. His long brown hair covered his face like a sheepdog. His chest rose and fell with each breath. He was still wearing the Got E? T-shirt from last night. “Hey, Reverend Bud, I . . .”

  This wasn’t part of the plan. She thought she was going to be handed the pictures, hear what he had to say, then leave. When he didn’t respond, Jodi decided to scope out the room for herself. She hoped to find the photos and then get out as fast as possible.

  The cramped space resembled an office. A nondescript-looking lamp stood in the corner, casting its meager light about the room. The walls, covered with a cheap brown paneling, appeared buckled in places. A calendar was pinned directly to the paneling. His desk, a smallish, almost kid-size piece, was covered with papers stacked in no apparent order.

  Jodi moved toward the desk, an eye still focused in his direction. She reached out and gently lifted a few papers. To free up both hands, she tucked her iPhone into the front pocket of her blue jeans. As she worked, she started to feel lightheaded from the stench in the room. She looked around for a window to open for some fresh air, but there were none.

  After what felt like an eternity, Jodi spotted the edge of the familiar yellow-and-red InstyFoto envelope. Could they be her pictures? She reached for the packet, opened it, careful not to draw attention to her activity, and then thumbed through the contents.

  Excitement, like a flood, rushed through her veins. They were indeed her pictures—including several of Todd Rice. This was exactly what she needed. What more could she want? She tucked the envelope in her rear pocket and then turned to leave. Behind her, Jodi heard a groan. Her heart jumped into her throat.

  She jerked her head around and saw Reverend Bud, still in the prone position, running his fingers through his hair. His head rolled slowly in her direction. His matted beard was damp with the saliva that dripped from the edge of his mouth. Their eyes met, although his eyes appeared to be unfocused and red around the edges.

  “Jodi? Don’t leave,” Reverend Bud said, his voice groggy. He attempted to sit up, but settled for leaning on one arm. “Not yet . . . not before you know everything.”

  24

  Saturday 1:58 PM

  Jodi couldn’t think of one good reason to hang around, but plenty of reasons to get out of that basement cave pronto. She had the pictures, and if she had an ounce of good sense, she’d hoof it up the steps before something did happen. Jodi twirled a few strands of hair around her fingers.

  “I really don’t know what to say.” Jodi took another step toward the door.

  “I can see you’re outta here,” Reverend Bud said, now sitting fully upright on the sofa, although hunched over. “I dig it. But listen.” He coughed, followed by a heavy dry heave. “See, it won’t be long before I . . . assume room temperature.” He held up the item in his hand for her to see.

  Jodi placed a hand on the doorjamb to help steady her emotions. He was holding a hypodermic needle. She had an idea of what he might mean, but she didn’t want to believe it.

  “I . . . I’m not sure I follow,” Jodi said.

  He sighed and then started to rock in place. “I just took . . . my last trip this side of glory—”

  “An overdose? You took an overdose on purpose?”

  Reverend Bud waved her off. “Yeah, I’m glory bound,” he said. “Got the whole LSD-heroin-ecstasy combo pack starting to flow through my veins. But let’s not waste time with that, man. Do you know if . . . if you were followed?”

  Jodi hesitated, partly out of concern over the fact that a man might actually be dying in front of her, and partly out of a fresh concern for her own safety.

  “By whom?”

  “Dr. B. . . . I heard him . . . he asked the Russians to keep an eye on you.”

  Jodi blinked wide eyes. “Dr. B.? You mean Dr. Blackstone?”

  He nodded. “Julius—his bad, beastly self.”

  “What Russians?”

  He answered softly. “You don’t know . . . about all that, then, do you?” He brushed the hair away from his face with a slow, unsteady movement of his hand.

  She wasn’t sure how much to say she knew or didn’t know. She folded her arms. “Maybe. What if I do?”

  He laughed. A tired, sad laugh. “Oh, like if you did, you’d only find a cave in the jungle to hide out. They’re animals, man, that’s all.” He reached down to the ashtray on the floor to retrieve the smoldering cigarette stub. He brought it to his dry lips for a drag, like a condemned man savoring his final cigarette.

  Although Jodi stood just ten feet away, she was having a difficult time hearing Reverend Bud. His words slurred and ran into each other like a multi-car accident. She crossed the room and stood near him at the end of the sofa, now that he seemed about as threatening as a houseplant.

  “Listen, Reverend,” Jodi said. She felt like a kid in the zoo standing next to the lions’ cage. She forced herself to remain calm. “I’m really confused here. Do you work for Dr. Blackstone?”

  “We’re partners, sort of. Man, things were so . . . groovy for a while. I thought I was hooked up with the cosmological program, you dig?”

  “Actually, no.” Jodi was about to sit down, but one look at the condition of the sofa changed her mind.

  “See, I was doing the raves . . . I picked the locations . . . booked the bands . . . did all that jive on my own.” Reverend Bud’s hand trembled as he held the cigarette. “The peeps came to expand their minds . . . through the healing powers of music and ecstasy. I got to spread PLUR my way, you dig?”

  Jodi nodded. She didn’t want to interrupt his flow especially since she wasn’t sure how long he’d remain coherent.

  “’Cause I’m the Evangelist of Ecstasy,” Reverend Bud said proudly. “Then Dr. B. came along and things got crazy,” he continued, stroking his beard. “The guy’s a freakin’ genius. Bam-o! Just like that . . . the crowds got huge. See, he had the cash and the idea
s to help me promote my shows until the crowds went from a few hundred to thousands.”

  “So, what’s in it for him?” Jodi said, her eyebrow in a knot. “I mean, he owns a vet clinic.”

  Reverend Bud heaved out a cough and laughed at the same time. “Plenty, man. Dig this. The guy’s like a mad scientist . . . got more brews and magical potions than a witch doctor on acid.” Reverend Bud flashed a toothy grin.

  Jodi had had a firsthand experience with one of Dr. Blackstone’s brews but decided not to bring it up.

  “And that clinic,” Reverend Bud said, “it’s just a cover. It’s a front for his main gig. He mixes up Special K . . . and we sell it to the peeps and split the bread. I figure anything to help them party . . . to expand their minds to higher levels of consciousness . . . to be one with the greater cosmos . . . Man, I really believed we had a good thing going.”

  “So last night, did the police know all this?” Jodi folded her arms. She pushed the embarrassing memory out of her mind.

  “Some things . . . like, the drug part, yes. Man, we’ve been paying them to chill out for a year. You know, to look the other way—”

  “So why’d you steal my pictures?”

  He closed his eyes. His face scrunched in pain. “Had to get them before Dr. B. . . . he was gonna destroy them . . . he hated loose ends . . . sent his his secretary to get ’em.”

  “I don’t get it.” Jodi shook her head, confused. The fumes from his cigarette weren’t helping, either. “The cops were on your payroll, so, how would pictures of the needle and the dead boy matter?”

  “Listen, babe.” He looked up at her, his eyelids drooping halfway across his eyes. “Everything was cool until you zapped a picture of that kid. See, there was no way to trace anything to the upstanding, honorable Dr. B. Then you came along. Instant bad karma for the doctor. Plus,” he took a deep breath as he scratched the side of his head, “hand me my cellphone.”

  Jodi tossed him a puzzled look.

  “Babe, in my top desk drawer . . . go snag my phone, dig?”

  Jodi stepped lightly across the room, hooked her hair around her ears and then opened the center desk drawer. She held it up. “Got it.” She drifted back to his side, closer this time.

  “No, you keep it . . . on the side, check out the little black button . . . it’s got the tape-looking thingy on it.”

  “Right here,” Jodi said, examining the phone. “I see it. What about it?”

  “Cool . . . oh, it’s just a groovy feature . . . lets you record, like, five minutes of whatcha call it? Personal memos or whatever?”

  “Really?” Jodi had never heard of that option before.

  “Let’s just say I happened to record my speaks with Dr. B. the other day.” Reverend Bud held his cigarette in front of his mouth as he talked. He chuckled. “Boy, Dr. B. will pee his pants with what’s on there . . . like the Good Book says, ‘By your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned.’”

  “That’s from Matthew,” Jodi said.

  “Give the lady a prize . . .”

  “Gee, what am I missing here?” Jodi ran her fingers through her hair. “Why would you help me and then—” She paused, not knowing how to put it.

  “Kill myself?” Reverend Bud finished her sentence. His face appeared drawn and ghostly pale.

  “Well, yeah.” Jodi’s heart was on maximum spin. What could be so awful that a man would take his own life to avoid?

  “Jodi—do you believe in God?” His eyes were suddenly enlarged.

  “Huh?” Jodi guessed he must be tripping out. “Well, sure, actually I do. I believe in Jesus, too.”

  “I . . . I just pray Jesus can forgive me . . . for what I’ve done.” Reverend Bud blew a cloud of smoke out through his nose and then dropped the butt in the ashtray. He leaned against the sofa back, hands resting in his lap.

  “See, I can’t keep going with Dr. B.’s bad trip,” Reverend Bud said in quiet, confessional tones. “It’s a nasty scene . . . Blackstone’s a monster and unfortunately I can’t walk away with what I know . . . not with the Russian barbarians—”

  “What about them?” Jodi asked, afraid Reverend Bud would pass out.

  “The bodies . . . what we did with . . . the bodies. It’s flipped out, man . . . that kid in the picture? . . . I’m so sorry . . . he’s next . . . just dropped him at Dr. B.’s, dig?” Reverend Bud’s head rolled forward. His chin settled on his chest. “Me? I’m expendable. You just don’t double-cross Dr. Blackstone.” With that, Reverend Bud slumped back on the sofa, lifeless as a doll.

  Jodi gasped. She could barely contain what she’d just heard. She couldn’t tell if Reverend Bud was hallucinating and making the whole wild story up or worse—he was telling the truth. If what he said was true, she was in way over her head.

  She didn’t want to leave him this way, but she knew she couldn’t stay.

  Still holding his cellphone and, with the photos tucked safely in her back pocket, she dashed out of the room, stumbled twice as she sprinted up the stairs and then had to slow her pace in the darkness of the main floor. She bumped into the dining room table, fumbled her way through the den like a blind man, and managed to find the front door.

  As Jodi burst out the door from darkness to light, fresh, pure air greeted her thankful lungs. Like a husky in deep snow, Jodi bounded across the street to her car. She was shuffling through her keys, when a ray of sunlight, reflecting off the windshield of a black Suburban, caught her eye. She jerked her head around and noticed the SUV had turned onto Rawle Street.

  It was headed in her direction.

  Something about it seemed vaguely familiar. Maybe the heavily tinted windows. Maybe the oversize tires. She couldn’t quite pinpoint when she’d seen it last. She looked back at the jumble of keys she held with hands that were sticky with sweat. She trembled as she tried to identify the correct one.

  As sudden as a bolt of lightning, the memory flashed back into her mind. She had seen the imposing vehicle as she had tried to back out of Dr. Blackstone’s clinic earlier that morning.

  A coincidence?

  Her racing heart voted against that likelihood.

  Jodi hopped in her car and pounced on the door lock.

  25

  Saturday 2:23 PM

  Jodi closed her eyes for a moment, her mind on maximum spin. Reverend Bud had said she was being watched, but it was only now, with the armadillo-looking Suburban moving toward her, that the implication of her situation dawned on her. What if they were the Russians?

  A sudden wave of panic washed over her. These were shark-infested waters. Her only chance at survival was to get out of harm’s way, but how?

  A new thought surfaced. It was entirely possible whoever was driving that beast came to inflict serious pain not on her, but on Reverend Bud. After all, she reasoned, nobody knew she was coming to visit Reverend Bud, except for Reverend Bud—and Bruce. She was fairly sure neither would have told a soul. What sense would it make for Reverend Bud to help her and then turn her over to the Russians?

  Then again, maybe she was overreacting. What if they happened to live here? Could be a couple of kids out joyriding. There could be a thousand perfectly normal explanations for the presence of the Suburban. But Jodi didn’t care to wait around to find out. As far as she was concerned, they were the Russians.

  Jodi fired up the engine, snapped on her seat belt and then checked her mirror. She saw the Suburban crawling slowly down the street. She guessed the driver was checking the street numbers.

  Jodi gripped the wheel, paralyzed by fear for her safety and, at the same time, her concern for Reverend Bud. How could she just leave him like that? Was he dead? What if he was still alive, but just unconscious? If the Russians had come for him, he wouldn’t have a chance, not in that condition.

  She kicked herself for not checking his pulse.

  A voice inside her head said, “What are you waiting for? Go! GO! GO!!”

  Jodi put the car in gear and pul
led away from the curb. Five seconds later, Jodi checked her mirror and noticed that the Suburban, now a half block behind her, had stopped in the middle of the street adjacent to Reverend Bud’s house. She watched as both the driver and the passenger doors opened. Two men in black suits climbed out.

  Jodi fished her cellphone out of her front pocket, swerving slightly as she did. Her hands shook as she tried to steer and dial 911 simultaneously. She hit the SEND button.

  It rang forever, or so it seemed.

  Jodi said out loud, “Come on, come on, come on. Today already!”

  A dispassionate voice finally filled the earpiece.

  “911 Operator. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “There’s a guy at 73 Rawle Street.” Jodi’s voice cracked as she spoke. “He’s taken a lethal drug overdose.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  Jodi was wearing her watch, but she had no sense of time. “I really can’t say for sure. Maybe, half an hour ago?”

  “Is the individual conscious?”

  “No, ma’am.” Jodi stopped at a stop sign. She used the moment to steal a look in the mirror. The two men pointed at the house and then in her direction before climbing back into their vehicle.

  “Is he breathing?” The 911 operator’s voice jarred her back into the conversation.

  “I . . . I don’t know for sure.” Jodi’s eyes danced between the road in front of her and the action in her rearview mirror.

  “All right. Help is on the way. Where is he in the house?”

  “Oh, he’s in the basement in an office . . . and you better hurry, ’cause I think there’s some people coming to hurt him.” Although, at the moment, it appeared the Russians were changing plans.

  “Are you still with him?” The voice had no emotion.