The Wicked
Page 17
David couldn’t help but notice how Joel seemed obviously bothered by something as he introduced the man without making eye-contact with the deputy.
“Glad to meet you, Deputy,” David said.
The deputy nodded, shook David’s hand, but smiling seemed to be a habit this man had not been born with. At least as far as David could tell.
“And this is...” Joel trailed off. “I’m sorry...?”
George stuck out his hand. “George. George Heatherly.”
Keenan quickly shook George’s hand, and then he got down to business.
“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Little?” the deputy asked, stepping into the foyer of the house. He glanced around the interior of the Little home as he came in. His no-nonsense expression seemed chiseled from stone. “I got a call about an attempted kidnapping?”
David told Deputy Keenan about the night’s events. If it hadn’t been for George Heatherly, he explained, that sick sonofabitch might have Becca even now.
“You’re new in town, aren’t you, Mr. Little?” the deputy asked.
“Um, that’s right,” David said, not understanding what that had to do with anything. He led the other men through the house, down the hallway toward the bathroom. “We just moved to Morganville a couple months ago, from New York.”
Change jingled in the deputy’s pockets and his shiny gun-belt made low squeaking noises as he walked. When they passed Becca, who still slept soundly on the sofa, Keenan glanced down at the child but did not stop.
“Poor little angel, I can’t begin to imagine how terrified you were,” Joel said, taking a second to lean down and kiss his niece on the cheek, but then he followed the other men through the house without another word.
“Here’s the crazy bastard,” George said, gesturing for Deputy Keenan to enter the bathroom ahead of them.
Keenan said nothing. He entered the bathroom.
And closed the door behind him.
George stared at David, and both men frowned. Why did he close the door?
“I’m so sorry, David,” Joel whispered, biting at his fingernails. “I feel like if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to answer that call...”
“It’s not your fault, Joel,” David replied.
“But if I had waited in the house until you got here...”
“Stop, Joel. I told you, it’s not your fault.”
“I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to Becca.”
George Heatherly knocked twice on the bathroom door. “Uh, Deputy? Everything okay in there?”
“I guess you haven’t heard yet, with everything else going on,” Joel whispered, standing close to David in the hallway.
“What?”
“There was an accident. Michael’s...Michael’s dead.” Joel’s voice grew moist as he spoke, but he fought back the tears. He sniffled once, feeling as though he had cried all he could cry tonight.
“No,” David said. “I hadn’t heard.” He turned to Joel, and Joel was surprised to see genuine sincerity in his brother-in-law’s face as he said, “Damn, Joel, I’m sorry to hear that. When did it happen?”
“Several hours ago.”
“Jesus. Are you okay?”
“I think so. For now.”
“Does Kate know?” David asked.
“Not yet. I should call her.”
“I’m sure she’d want to know.”
“Do you mind—”
David gestured toward the kitchen, where he had left the cordless phone earlier. “Help yourself. She’s in Room 311.”
Joel nodded and moved through the hallway past George Heatherly, giving the older man a polite nod as he did so.
“Everything okay?” George asked David.
“I don’t know anymore,” David replied, his face pained.
“Who is Michael?” the old man whispered.
David cleared his throat. “Joel’s, er, boyfriend.”
“Ah.” George seemed unfazed. He glanced toward the kitchen, but then back to the bathroom door before them.
“Shit, man,” David said. “Do you ever feel as if the whole fucking world is coming apart around you?”
“Too bad we haven’t had the chance to chat under different circumstances,” George said, with a dry little laugh. “Remind me, this is all over, I’ll spring for a couple cases of Michelob. We’ll get shit-faced one night.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Neither man said anything for a few long minutes.
“Jesus Christ,” George said, after Deputy Keenan still had not exited the bathroom seven or eight minutes later. “What’s he doing in there, givin’ the guy a bath?”
He knocked on the door several times fast. “Deputy? Everything okay in there?”
In the bathroom, they heard a gentle sighing noise. Not unlike the sound of someone quietly reaching orgasm. Whether the sound came from the man in the bathtub or the deputy, neither George nor David could tell. They stared at one another, bewildered.
And then, at last, the bathroom door opened.
Deputy Keenan came out, his face a bright red mask of anger. His gun was drawn.
“Deputy—” George said with a start.
“Is something wrong?” David said.
“Damn right it is,” said the burly deputy. “Where do you two get off?”
“I don’t understand,” said George.
“You got some nerve picking on a man who just lost his son.”
“I don’t understand,” said David. “What do you mean?”
“Fred Dawson’s got problems,” the deputy said, lowering his voice a bit. “I’ll give you that.” He glared at David, and David had no choice but to look away beneath his furious glare. “But you would too, if your kid just died. Jesus. What’s your fucking problem?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” George asked.
“Shut your mouth,” Keenan snarled, pointing a fat finger in the old man’s face. “You listen to me. Fred Dawson lost his only son less than a month ago. He drinks too much, yes. And maybe sometimes the guy tends to run off at the mouth a little. But that doesn’t give you the right to lay your filthy hands on him.” He stared at David, his nostrils flaring with anger. “This may be the way they do things in New York City, buddy, but we don’t stand for vigilantes in Morganville.”
“Vigilantes? What are you—”
Deputy Keenan turned then, allowing the men to see what lay behind him in the bathtub. George and David both gasped, shaking their heads as their eyes fell upon the impossible scene in there.
“No fuckin’ way,” said George.
David’s jaw dropped. “That can’t be.”
Fred Dawson still lay in David’s bathtub, but he looked quite different from the last time they had seen him. Now Dawson looked as if someone had battered him within an inch of his life. He was unconscious, his face cracked and bloody, covered with ugly purple bruises and thick pink welts. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and a thick gash hung open in his forehead as if someone had sliced him there with a knife. He only vaguely resembled the man they had captured earlier. Thick spatters of dark blood speckled the porcelain all around him.
“That can’t be,” David said. George’s single punch to Dawson’s nose, he knew, had certainly not been responsible for that.
“Turn around,” Deputy Keenan told them. “Against the wall.”
“What the hell are you—”
In one swift movement, Keenan twisted George’s arm behind him, slammed the old man against the wall. George hissed through his teeth, but did not fight him.
“What the hell is going on?” David cried.
“You’re both under arrest. You too, against the wall. Now.”
“For what?” David said.
“Assault and battery,” said the deputy. “Now shut up.”
Keenan reached behind his back then, brought out two sets of handcuffs.
“This is bullshit!” David spat. “He wasn’t like that when we left him!”
“Okay, okay,” David said. “Easy...”
“You both have the right to remain silent. Moloch. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Mohh-loch. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?”
“Oh, my God,” David said. “OhmyGodohmyGod.”
Joel stood in the kitchen doorway, watching with wide eyes. The cordless phone was in his hands.
“What’s going on?” he shouted. “What did you do, David?”
David could faintly hear Kate’s voice on the phone, tinny and distant: “David? Who’s there? Joel? What’s going on?”
“Please, Joel, tell her what’s happening,” David shouted over his shoulder as Deputy Keenan led him and George down the hall, toward the front door. He glanced at Becca on the couch. She stirred as they passed, but did not wake. “And watch Becca for me. Please!”
“I will, David. Don’t worry. We’ll get you out of this.”
“This is horseshit!” George Heatherly shouted once they were out the front door.
Keenan shoved him, and the old man nearly fell.
“Get in the fucking car,” said the deputy. “Now.”
They stumbled across the yard beneath his prodding, and when they reached the patrol car Keenan pushed first George’s head down and then David’s, forcing them roughly into the backseat.
“Moloch,” said the deputy then, one last time, before slamming the door in David’s face.
“Fuck!” David shouted, struggling to no avail within the cuffs at his wrists. He kicked the seat in front of him. “Fuck!”
Deputy Keenan slammed his door. But he did not pull away from the curb just yet.
Before the patrol car took off, he turned toward the men in the backseat, behind the steel cage.
His eyes seemed to glisten. He smiled at them.
CHAPTER 42
The patrol car cruised into the town common like a sleek white beast stalking the night. No siren, no lights. Just the steady purr of tires upon asphalt.
David noticed after a few minutes that the fucker hadn’t even turned on his headlights. As if he could see in the dark and didn’t need them.
The clock on the dashboard read 4:44. Almost dawn. David shook his head, gnashed his teeth, wondered when he would ever get back to Kate and little Christopher.
“So I’m over at Martha Simms’ place earlier tonight, right?” George Heatherly said suddenly, but under his breath, so low only David could hear him. His tone was conspiratorial, but tinged with fear. “Before all this shit happened.”
David whispered, “Go on.”
“She’s always loved my broccoli casserole, so I fixed her up a batch. Figured it was the least I could do since I haven’t spoken with her since Randall’s funeral.”
David nodded, wondered where George was going with this.
“So I knock on the door. Several times. But no one answers. I know she’s home, ‘cause the Cadillac’s out front.”
David listened intently as his friend spoke, but he had a bad feeling about where this story was going. He didn’t know how he knew, it just seemed reasonable that George’s story would not have a happy ending after everything else that had happened tonight.
“I knock a few more times. She never comes to the door. I call out her name. Nothing.”
“What are you two talking about back there?” Deputy Keenan barked, staring at them in the rearview mirror.
“Nothing,” said David.
“He doesn’t like secrets,” Keenan insisted.
George never missed a beat: “Tell ‘him’ I said ‘bite me.’”
David couldn’t help it. He laughed at that, in spite of everything he had been through. It felt good. Just to laugh.
“Keep runnin’ that mouth, old-timer,” growled the deputy. “Moloch.”
“So what happened with Simms’ widow?” David asked softly, distracting Heatherly’s attention from pissing off Deputy Keenan any more than he already had. He winced, shifted in his seat. The cuffs on his wrists were starting to chafe him.
“I hear something through the door,” George continued. “Swear to God, it sounds like somebody dying. Moans and groans, shit like that. Either that, or somebody fucking their brains out.”
“That’s weird. Mrs. Simms?”
“Yeah. I try the door. It’s unlocked, so I go in. Not something I’d normally do, of course, but my spider sense was tinglin’.”
George leaned over closer to David as he went on, his voice going lower.
“Martha’s sitting in the living room, right? Her back’s to me. She doesn’t answer me when I say her name, just keeps moaning and groaning like somebody’s throwin’ some major dick her way. I walk around her, and you’ll never guess what she’s doing.”
David shook his head.
“She’s got her skirt pulled up, and she’s masturbating like crazy. To a picture of her husband.”
“How pitiful,” David said.
“To hell with ‘pitiful.’ It was fucking creepy, what it was.”
“She must really miss him.”
“I’m sure. But you haven’t heard the least of it. This photo of the fire chief, it’s their wedding picture. She’s taken a Magic Marker to it. Scribbled all over it—you know, like kids draw devil-horns and missing teeth on a picture of somebody they don’t like?”
“Right.”
“Except Martha’s drawn this long black beard all over Randall’s face, this stringy thing that goes all the way down to the bottom of the picture, then over the bottom of the frame, too. Where that stopped, she even kept drawing that beard all the way across the carpet, right up to her crotch.”
David’s stomach churned. “What’s that all about?”
“I don’t know,” George said. “There’s not a whole helluva lot that scares me, man, but that was the most bizarre fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I left without saying another word, and I don’t think she ever knew I was even there.”
Several minutes later, the patrol car stopped again.
George and David peered out the window and were surprised to find that Keenan had pulled the car alongside the curb in front of Morganville First Baptist.
The interchangeable black letters on the sign out front pronounced the place was CLOSED.
David stared at that, his mouth hanging open.
“What are we doing here?” George said, and even he was not quite sure if his question was directed toward David, Deputy Keenan or no one in particular.
Deputy Keenan said nothing. He just sat there in the front seat, staring at the church.
He let out a little sigh.
At least five minutes passed, and Deputy Keenan continued to sit there. Staring at the church.
“What’s going on?” David said.
“Moloch.”
David Little and George Heatherly stared at one another, bewildered.
“Moloch,” Keenan said again, and this time it was a strained sort of sound. As if he might start crying any moment. He continued to stare at the church, almost longingly, and now seemed completely unaware of the two men in his custody.
Finally, he started up the car. Headed once more toward the station, as if nothing had happened.
“Since when is a church closed?” George whispered. More than ever, David thought the retired Marine’s pale flesh appeared ghost-like beneath the blanket of night all around them. The tattoos on his forearms resembled dark scabs.
David shuddered as the church grew small behind them.
CHAPTER 43
Keenan made yet another stop on their way to the station, this time in front of a house at the corner of Cangr
o and Tenth Street.
David glanced over at George. The old man shrugged.
The house Keenan parked the car in front of was small—one-story, white brick. The soft blue glow of a television set burned in one window. Otherwise, the house was dark. A single car was parked in the blacktopped driveway, a Ford Taurus. PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR-ROLL STUDENT boasted one of its bumper stickers; the other: D.A.R.E. TO KEEP KIDS OFF DRUGS. Against one side of the house sat a fancy Charbroil grill; nearby, a child’s bicycle lay abandoned in the front yard like lazy metal dogs. Beneath the patrol car’s headlights, the bicycle’s red and white reflectors seemed to wink at the men in the backseat as they stared at the place, perplexed.
Deputy Keenan turned to George and David, said in a low monotone, “I’ll be back. This will only take a minute.”
His door opened.
“Take your time,” George Heatherly replied. “We’ll wait right here.”
Deputy Keenan reached beneath the dash then, and brought up the largest shotgun David had ever seen. He climbed from the patrol car, his face expressionless.
A thin rivulet of sweat tickled its way down David’s left temple as he watched Keenan walk stiffly around the front of the patrol car.
Across the lawn.
Toward the house.
He ratcheted the pump-action as he stepped onto the porch.
“I don’t like this, David,” said George. “I don’t like this at all.”
The two men watched the house, saying nothing for the next few seconds. George swallowed, and the sound was very loud in the quiet confines of the patrol car.
The front door was unlocked. Keenan stepped inside the house. He was nowhere to be seen now.
David and George both jumped when they heard a shotgun blast boom in the night. From where they sat, they could see the muzzle flash of the weapon, a split-second strobe-effect through the window as if someone had turned the lights on and then back off again just as quickly.
“Jesus Christ,” said George. “Jesus H. Christ.”
“He killed them. Oh, my God, George...”
Less than a minute later, two more gunshots rang out in the night. David was quite sure he could feel the vibrations of those reports in his ass, in the seat beneath him. He stared off into space, looking at nothing in particular. This had to be a nightmare. It couldn’t be happening.