He couldn’t make out their faces from his distance, but his gaze didn’t linger long. His eyes flicked along the perimeter fence, searching for bikers standing guard.
He was looking for Mickey.
At first he saw no one and his heart sank. But then he saw the flick of a lighter, and a second later the unmistakable red glow of a cigarette cherry.
There was a man standing apart from the others, leaning against the corner of the fence, his face shrouded in shadows.
Dirk’s hand went to the gun in his waistband, but then he pulled it back again.
The thin frame, the long ponytail looked like Mickey, and that was Mickey’s post, but Dirk couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure. Instead of pulling the gun, his hand snaked down to his boot and closed around the handle of his trusty blade.
If it wasn’t Mickey and he had to shoot the man, Dirk was as good as dead. Even if it was Mickey, he couldn’t be certain that the man wouldn’t move to take him out anyway. But if Dirk had to do it, if it was a do or die situation, it would have to be silent.
It would have to be done with his knife.
Dirk slipped the blade from the hidden scabbard and then pushed himself to his feet, before slowly making his way down to the man smoking the cigarette below.
Chapter 19
“Coggins, with me. Reggie and Williams, you go to Maselo’s—see what you can get him to part with. Tell him we’ll open the coffers if we get through this, overlook any of his, ugh, transgressions. Get anything big, any boomsticks. Jared you go to the new church and hand the radio to Pike, then head home.”
Up until this point in the instructions, everyone had been silent. But when his name was mentioned, Jared’s eyes shot up.
“Home? I’m not going home. Why the hell would I go home?”
Sheriff White bit his lip and debated what to say next. He already had Coggins to deal with, a bubbling pot of anger threatening to spill over any second, he didn’t need another.
He, for one, had managed to push his emotions aside, so why couldn’t they?
Thankfully, Coggins spoke up in his stead.
“Jared, go back to the Lawrence place. There’s nothing for you here.”
Jared shook his head and screwed up his face.
“Nothing for me here? There’s nothing for me there. Remember when you came to my place? Remember what I was doing there? Nothing. Fucking drinking myself to death. Sitting, listening to the voices in my head, waiting for the icy fingers of death to squeeze my heart until it stopped breathing.”
Something passed across Coggins’s face, and the Sheriff debated intervening. But when Jared continued, he remained silent for a moment longer. There was something deeply personal being espoused here, hidden messages in his angered speech.
“I belong here,” Jared exclaimed. “I need to help—I need to get Corina back.”
This time Coggins didn’t protest. There was a silent exchange of sorts, and Sheriff White felt his heart skip a beat.
Why shouldn’t I bring him along? One more gun couldn’t hurt. And after the way he performed with the crackers and out at the Wharfburn Estate…
Sheriff White cleared his throat.
No. The thought shot through his mind like a fletcher’s arrow. No—no more civilians.
But it wasn’t just that—it wasn’t just the fact that he felt guilt at bringing regular people into the fold, risking their lives for something that he alone should be able to handle, to fight an evil that he should have snuffed out years ago. Nor was it just the fact that he had already recruited a not so magnificent four smorgasbord of deputies, with limited or even negative experience. Or the fact that one more deputy would increase the chances of their cover being blown even before they entered the sewers.
That was part of it, but not all.
There was something about Coggins and Jared, about having them together that didn’t feel right with the sheriff.
When they were together, there was this nagging sensation at the back of Paul’s head, a strong intonation to go somewhere, to do something.
And it wasn’t the dishes or the laundry. It was something else. Something more sinister. And Paul thought it had something to do with what they had experienced all those years ago in the storm.
Finally, Coggins spoke up.
“You don’t have to go home, then. Stay at the church, do us all a favor and keep an eye on the priest.”
Jared’s face screwed up again, and Reggie, who Paul was beginning to suspect was more devoted to the church than the cause, started to get his back up again.
Sheriff White nipped the retort before it was even uttered.
“Not negotiable,” he said strongly. “Go back, Jared. Go back to the church. We all have a job to do, and that’s yours.”
At first it looked as if he might protest, but then the thin, pale man lowered his eyes.
“What are you going to do when you find him?”
Him? Don’t you mean her? Corina?
As if reading his thoughts, Jared said, “Seth. What are you going to do when you find Seth?”
Coggins snarled, and even Paul had a hard time keeping his emotions in check. If Seth, whoever the hell he was, was in with Walter, if he was involved with Nancy’s murder, then he would get a face full of fucking lead just like the rest of them.
Before he could reply, Jared raised his eyes and Paul was taken aback by the realization that he was crying.
“There’s… there’s something wrong with him—he’s—he’s not a bad person. It’s this place, this thing,” he lowered his voice. “It’s Oot’-keban.”
Sheriff White stared at the man for nearly a full minute; they all did. Until yesterday, he had never heard the strange sounding name before. And yet, even if he hadn’t yet heard it uttered from Coggins’s lips, it would have sounded familiar to him, in an awful foreboding sort of way. He knew this, the way he knew that his skin was black, the way that Nancy was dead.
And it reminded him of his dream. Of being in the closet, the weight of a person pushing down on him, the fire in the hallway. It wasn’t until yesterday that he actually found out what it meant, that it was what Jared and Coggins had seen.
He still had no idea how it was in his head, but it was.
And so was Oot’-keban.
It was everywhere in Askergan.
“We have to go,” Sheriff White said simply, ignoring the question. Then to his deputies, he added, “We’ll meet you at Maselo’s in under an hour.”
“And then what?” Deputy Williams asked, a tremor in his voice. Outside of Coggins, Williams was the longest serving deputy, and if he was scared, what did that say about the others?
“Then we wait for the call from Dirk. And then, if it’s a go, we fucking go.”
***
“Where we headed, Whitey?” Coggins asked as they peeled out of the police station parking lot.
Sheriff White kept his eyes on the road.
“Have a quick stop to make first before meeting up with the others.”
“But where? Wouldn’t it be best for us to sort through the cache at Masela’s? I mean, the request would look better coming from you, anyway, seeing as Williams is new and Reggie is—well, he’s newer. I mean, the man can wield a mean motherfucking homemade blowtorch, but that’s different. Whose to say he even knows how to fire a gun? We should be there, with Williams, getting weapons.”
Sheriff White didn’t hesitate.
“We are getting weapons, Coggins—getting weapons of our own. Gonna give that fucker Walter a taste of his own medicine.”
He expected Coggins to launch into another series of questions, to probe and prod, but he remained silent.
The old Coggins wouldn’t have let him get off with such an obtuse reply. The old Coggins would have needled him, teased him.
But this wasn’t the old Coggins. And he wasn’t the old Paul White, either.
And yet, despite this knowledge, the lack of response was so unlike Coggins that
Paul took his eyes off the road, which had darkened considerably over the past twenty or so minutes, to stare at the deputy.
Coggins’s cheeks were sallow, and even his red beard, which had become unkempt again, did nothing to give his face any color.
“Coggins?”
Still nothing.
White had just turned his eyes back to the road, when Deputy Bradley Coggins finally spoke.
“When Jared said that word, that horrible fucking word, I felt it in my head again.”
Sheriff White bit his tongue, fighting the urge to say that he had also felt something.
“It was in there, in the back of my mind, you know? Like a feeling or a pressure, building and building.”
Paul felt himself nodding subconsciously.
“It was like it was back in the estate, only it’s stronger now. And it was telling me—telling me to…” his sentence trailed off.
“What? To do what, Coggins?”
When Bradley spoke again, his voice was low, almost guttural.
“To do something bad.”
Paul swallowed hard. He wanted to tell his friend that he had felt it too, that he had sent Jared away because it was worse when Coggins and he were in the same room.
But that wouldn’t help them, not now, anyway.
Now they needed to focus; now they needed to avoid finding anybody else’s head in a bag.
“We’re here,” he said instead, pulling the squad car into the hospital parking lot.
His eyes scanned the side of the building.
“What are we doing here, Paul?” Coggins asked, his voice returning to normal. “We should be—”
“There,” Paul said, pointing to the figure standing beside the door with the glowing EXIT sign hanging above. Darkness was quickly closing in on them, but he didn’t need to see her face to know who she was.
Her stooped posture was enough of a confirmation.
Sheriff White pulled the car right up to her and rolled down his window.
“Dr. Dex,” he said simply as the woman stepped forward. Her gait was awkward, and when she leaned into the car, he smelled alcohol on her breath. “Did you burn the rest?”
The woman nodded.
“All but one,” she replied as she hoisted a garbage bag and shoved it through the window.
Paul grabbed it and passed it over to Coggins who took it despite the strange expression on his face.
“What are you going to do now? Write your report?”
The woman stepped away from the car and shook her head.
“No. Now I’m going to have a drink.”
Coggins leaned over Paul and said, “Lady, I think you’ve had enough to drink already.”
Again, the doctor shook her head. She was ghostly pale, and in the gray dusk air she looked nearly transparent.
“No, no I haven’t—I haven’t had nearly enough.” Then she turned, and as she staggered away, she kept speaking, perhaps to herself, perhaps to nobody at all. “I’m going to have a drink then I’m getting the fuck out of this town. Bad things happen in this fucking place.”
The last thing Sheriff White heard before he rolled up the window was an airy voice carrying on the wind.
“The devil will awaken from his slumber and reach up and blot out the sun.”
Chapter 20
Williams pulled into the parking lot of Maselo Tackle and drove right up to the door. It was nearly eight o’clock by the time they arrived, and the store was completely dark.
In fact, all of the businesses that they had passed on their way from the station had been closed for the night.
It was as if the entire county had decided that it was safer just to stay inside.
Video games, groceries, t-shirts, books, and tackle could wait until tomorrow.
Or the next day.
“Looks closed,” Reggie said from the passenger seat. Williams nodded.
But being closed didn’t mean that Leon Maselo wasn’t inside. If it took even a modicum of intelligence to know that there was danger in the air, then there was a good possibility that Leon hadn’t picked up the scent.
Williams jammed the car into park and then quickly hopped out.
“Stay here until I signal for you to come, alright Reg?”
The big man in the passenger seat nodded in agreement, and Williams headed for the door.
Cupping his hands, he peered through the glass. The main lights were out, that much they had seen from the road, but like nearly every store these days, there was always some lights on inside to deter break-ins.
His heart sunk when he detected no movement, but then part of him, a small part, a part he cared little to acknowledge, felt relieved. Not only had Sheriff White’s plan sounded dangerous, but it bordered on the suicidal. This wasn’t like shooting strange, parasitic crabs.
These parasites had guns, and some of them even had brains.
Williams pushed these feelings away and wiped the sweat from his brow.
He knocked on the glass; three hard raps. The sound echoed throughout the store and Williams waited patiently.
The interior of the store remained still.
“Leon? Leon, you in there? It’s Williams… Andrew Williams.”
He knocked one more time.
“Leon?”
“He’s in there,” a voice beside him said, and Williams’s nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Jesus Christ, Reggie, I told you to wait in the car.”
Reggie ignored the comment and instead pointed toward a row of tennis rackets near the back of the store.
“He’s there. Crouched down. He started to come to the door, but then he saw the car and hid.”
Williams squinted hard.
He could see the tennis rackets, but not Leon.
“You saw all that from the car?” he asked, still searching.
“What can I say, got good eyes,” Reggie replied, and then started to bang on the glass. “Hey! Buddy! Open the damn door!”
“Easy, easy.”
“Naw, he’ll come—hey, buddy! Open the door or I’m going to bust it down!”
Williams glanced over at his partner, eying him up. He hadn’t known him very long at all, but Williams had pegged him as a gentle giant, much like Sheriff White.
He laid a hand on Reggie’s shoulder, and the man turned to look at him.
“You’re not really going to bust down the door, are you?” he asked in a small voice.
Reggie shrugged.
“Maybe. I mean, we could. Maybe we should.”
Williams raised an eyebrow and Reggie sighed.
“Look, he’s in there—he’s in there, sees the police and then hides again. This is Askergan, for Christ’s sake. What do you think he’s doing in there with the lights off?”
Williams’s answer was immediate.
“Heroin.”
“Yep. Heroin.”
This time, they banged on the door in unison.
“Leon, open the fucking door or we’re going to break it down!”
And then Williams saw a shadow blot out the tennis rackets and then begin to make its way toward the front entrance.
“See,” Reggie said, a smile on his face, “I told you he’d come.”
The man was a shade of the person that Andrew remembered from high school. Leon had been linebacker for the football team, large, muscular, strong jawed, a thatch of beard on his chin that looked like it belonged hanging from a Moroccan souk. But the person who opened the door for them now was thin, his eyes sunken, his cheeks peppered with pockmarks. He stared at the floor when he spoke.
“I wasn’t doing nuthin’. You didn’t see me doing nuthin’.”
Reggie reached out and opened the door all the way before shoving him aside roughly.
“Alright Leon, show us the stash of weapons you got in here. And not just the peashooters, either. The good shit. What’d the Sheriff call them? Boomsticks? Yeah, boomsticks. Show us the fucking boomsticks, Leon.”
Deputy Wil
liams made a face at his partner, and reluctantly followed him inside.
Chapter 21
Dirk silently sidled up next to Mickey. Before the man had even dropped his cigarette, he slid one arm around his waist, pulled him in tight, then pressed the blade against the side of his neck.
“What the—”
Dirk pulled him even closer.
“Shh, keep your voice down. If you want to live, be quiet.”
Mickey tensed, and for a brief second, Dirk thought that he might call out, or worse, force him use the knife.
“Dirk?”
Dirk hushed him and glanced around nervously.
They couldn’t talk here. Even though Dirk was certain that Mickey was the only security on the north-east corner of the property, anyone who drove by might take notice. And that wouldn’t be good for either of them.
“We’re going to go for a walk, Mickey. Just a nice walk to chat a little. No need to go crazy, understand?”
As he spoke, Dirk pulled him backward a little to encourage him to start moving.
The man didn’t resist.
“Jesus, it is you, Dirk. I thought—shit, I thought that the Crab got to you. Or worse—there are rumors that you are working for the local PD as a deputy or some shit. That you were undercover the whole time, trying to put a sting on Sabra. I was like, nuh-uh, no way, not Dirk. No fucking—”
“Just keep moving,” Dirk hissed, turning away from the fence, his body still locked against Mickey’s. He spotted a white-washed retaining wall on the neighboring property, and figured they might be able to get behind it and talk without the risk of being seen. It wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t have much time. If Mickey didn’t check in…
“C’mon, Mickey, head to the wall over there. I’m going to let you go, but no matter what, don’t turn around. Keep your hands at your sides. I have a gun pointed at your spine, and if you so much as blink funny, I won’t hesitate to put a hole in you.”
Without waiting for an answer, Dirk released his grip on the man’s waist and shoved him forward. As planned, Mickey stumbled just a little, affording Dirk the time to reach into the front of his jeans and pull out his police issue Glock 19.
Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5) Page 9
