Chant

by George C. Chesbro

“What does Curry look like?”

  “He’s young. Boyish face, blond hair, and a mustache.”

  “Of all the animals, which one was the worst?”

  “Dertack,” Kim Chi answered bitterly, without hesitation. “Reginald Dertack. He’s a sergeant.”

  “What did Dertack Jo?”

  Kim Chi shuddered. “He liked anal sex with children … girls or boys, it didn’t matter. He was too big; sometimes he’d tear them, and this would cause an infection. Three children died.”

  “What does Dertack look like?”

  “He’s a big man—tall and fat. He really does look like a pig. He wears a black toupee that looks absolutely ridiculous. You can’t miss Dertack.”

  “Oh, I won’t,” Chant replied very softly as he glanced at his watch. “Let’s get back to the car. We don’t want to be late for our appointment to blow me up.”

  Sergeant Reginald Dertack awoke from his daily, late-afternoon nap with a vague sense of unease. He reached across the seat and took the last can of beer from the six-pack he had bought earlier. He snapped open the can, threw the tab on the floor, sipped at the beer. Five minutes passed and he still felt uneasy; if anything, his anxiety had increased. He quickly turned in his seat, looked around, but there was nothing visible through the windows but the snow-laden fir trees on either side of the dirt road where he was parked. He turned off the heater and engine, and listened.

  Silence.

  “That fucking creep we’re hunting has the whole county spooked,” Dertack said to himself, somewhat reassured by the sound of his own voice. He belched, then touched the handgrip of the service revolver in his holster. He hesitated, somewhat embarrassed by his unreasoning fear, then took out the revolver and checked to make certain that each cylinder in the firing chamber had a bullet in it. Then he placed the revolver next to him on the seat.

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. If he were the one to catch this guy, Sergeant Dertack thought, he was going to castrate him before he killed him. He was horny, and since this guy Sinclair had arrived he’d been given a stern warning by Old Man Baldauf not to satisfy his appetites in the Hmong compound.

  It was when he began taking deep breaths in an effort to relax himself that Dertack detected the strange odor, pungent and foul, as if he’d farted—which he hadn’t.

  Dertack’s eyes snapped open and his head jerked up. What he saw was a thick sheet of blood, guts, and feces slowly oozing down over the front windshield.

  He wheeled around, saw that the rear window was already covered. Then the flow began over the side windows. Suddenly it was dark in the car as the last rays of sunlight were blocked out by the offal.

  Someone was on top of his car!

  Dertack grabbed his revolver, fell across the front seat and emptied the gun into the roof of the patrol car. Although he did not realize it, the thunderous roar of the gun being repeatedly fired in the small, enclosed space shattered both his eardrums. Blood trickled from both ears onto the stained seat cover as, terrified, he stared up at the neat holes he had put in the car’s ceiling.

  There was nothing visible through the holes but sky. Tiny pillars of light streamed down through the holes, making it appear as if Sergeant Reginald Dertack were trapped inside a cage of light.

  He couldn’t drive if he couldn’t see, Dertack thought as he sobbed in terror, and he couldn’t stay in the car forever.

  He had no more bullets.

  Dertack sat up, reached out with a trembling hand for the door handle. He sucked in a deep breath, bellowed in fear and rage, hurled open the door and leaped out.

  “Fox!”

  Chant turned away from the bed, where he was packing his suitcase. “Good evening, Mr. Baldauf,” he said, slurring his words slightly. “What a big shotgun you have.”

  “Where the hell have you been?!” The twin barrels of the shotgun Baldauf held did not waver from Chant’s chest.

  “Consulting with my superiors in Seattle.” Chant grinned inanely, swayed, sat down hard on the bed.

  “I called that number you gave me, Fox.”

  “Bully for you. How’s the general?”

  “What if I told you that I called a few other numbers in Washington?”

  “I’d say you’re going to get a big phone bill. What the hell’s the matter with you, Baldauf?”

  “None of my contacts in Washington have ever heard of you.”

  “I should fucking hope not, Baldauf. And if they had, I sure as hell hope they wouldn’t tell you. How about John Sinclair? I trust you asked about him. Have they ever heard of him?”

  Baldauf remained silent, sighting down the barrels of the Remington.

  “Right,” Chant said “They’re not going to talk about him with you either, Baldauf—that’s if you ever made the calls I don’t know what the hell’s eating you. I told you—”

  “Shut up! What did these superiors of yours in Seattle have to say?”

  “Is John Sinclair real enough, or was he real enough, for you?”

  “Answer my question.”

  “What did they say? We were having a victory celebration, Baldauf. It feels like I’ve been hunting that son of a bitch Sinclair half my life, and I finally got him.” Chant rose and, leaning heavily on his cane, lurched across the room and stopped with his chest pressed against the barrels of the shotgun, close enough so that the other man could smell the liquor on his breath. “What is the matter with you, man? You look, as the saying goes, like you’ve seen a ghost. I figured you’d be falling all over me with gratitude Instead, you make out like you want to shoot me. If this is some kind of joke, I’ve got to tell you that I’m too fucking drunk to get it. Is this thing loaded?”

  Baldauf abruptly released the hammers on the shotgun, pushed Chant away from him, and set the shotgun against the wall. Ashen and trembling, he seemed to be searching for words as he reached up and smoothed a few strands of dyed black hair over his otherwise smooth pate. “You’re an asshole, Fox,” he said at last.

  “Watch your mouth, Baldauf,” Chant slurred, taking an uncertain step backward.

  “Did you hear what I said?!” Baldauf shouted, leaning forward threateningly. “I called you an asshole!”

  “I heard you, Baldauf. Now I want to hear why you called me that.”

  “Sinclair’s alive, asshole!”

  “That’s impossible,” Chant replied curtly, the slur gone from his speech. “You said you were going up to the logging camp; you must have seen and heard the explosion. I did. I landed in a clearing on the other side of a knoll and waited. It must have been about ten minutes—”

  “I don’t give a shit what either of us saw or heard! I’m telling you he’s alive!”

  “And I’m telling you he can’t be.”

  “Four hours after Sinclair supposedly died in that explosion, he killed a county deputy sheriff.”

  Chant narrowed his eyes. “How do you know it was Sinclair who killed him?”

  “Because that bastard is never content to just kill a man! He has to be cute about it!”

  “That’s sometimes true, but you haven’t answered my question.”

  “The windows of the car were smeared with pig guts.” Baldauf paused, swallowed. “The man himself had been stripped naked and tied across the hood of the patrol car. One of those cylinders of compressed gas they use to power air pistols had been shoved up the man’s ass and detonated. That man blew up like a balloon until he burst.” Baldauf paused again, looked away. “The box the cylinder came in had been placed neatly in the center of the man’s toupee and set off to the side.”

  Chant grimaced “That does sound like something Sinclair would do.”

  “I repeat. You’re an asshole, Fox.”

  Chant turned and limped back to the bed He picked up the receiver of a telephone on the nightstand, dialed a number.

  “What number are you calling?” the operator asked.

  “Sinclair may still be alive.” Chant said quickly. “I’m staying to ch
eck it out I’ll be in touch.” He hung up, turned to find Baldauf close to him.

  “That Sinclair’s not only killed another man, he’s got my million dollars!” Baldauf shouted, his face livid “It’s your fault, Fox! What the fuck did they teach you in the army?!”

  “Now you wait just a minute!” Chant snapped, pushing the startled Baldauf away from him “Actually putting the money in the satchel was your idea, not mine! I was trying to figure out something else we could do!”

  “The money was supposed to blow up, along with Sinclair!”

  “If it’s any consolation to you, the money probably did blow up, Sinclair doesn’t have it. It was impossible to disarm that bomb. He may have suspected something, stood back behind a tree and fired a bullet into the lock. That would have triggered the explosion.”

  “Some fucking consolation’”

  “Sinclair usually picks his targets very carefully. Is there any reason he should have chosen this particular deputy sheriff?”

  Baldauf shook his head impatiently. “Don’t try to weasel out of this, Fox It was Sinclair who killed the man—and he knew what he was doing.”

  “Any note left with the body?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not good. You’re in a great deal of danger, Baldauf. So’s the rest of your family. If they haven’t left—”

  “They all left after my brother found the corpse in his car. There’s just me.”

  “You need lots of protection. And you shouldn’t leave the house until I figure out a way to get this guy.”

  “You’re never going to get Sinclair, Fox,” Baldauf said in a distant tone. “And I don’t think your big ‘team of specialists’ is either, even if I did let you bring them in. You’ve been after him for years. I’ve heard of somebody who might be able to get him. Once, when I was in Chicago, this guy told me about—”

  “A guy in Chicago told you what?”

  “Not what; who.” Baldauf glanced in Chant’s direction, but seemed to be staring through him. “Never mind, Fox. It’s none of your business. You had your shot at getting Sinclair, and you blew it. It’s my life on the line, and I’m going to hire me someone who can get the job done. If the rumors are true, and there is such a man, it’s going to cost me a bundle. It’ll be worth it to finally see Sinclair dead.”

  “You think some Chicago gunman is going to kill John Sinclair for you?”

  “I didn’t say the man was a gunman, and I didn’t say he came from Chicago. I said I heard about him in Chicago. The same guy who told me about him will have a phone number.”

  “Baldauf, it really might help if you tell me what you plan to do,” Chant said carefully, studying the other man’s face. “Right now, you’re up to your ass in alligators. You don’t want to go off half-cocked. Sinclair won’t be too pleased that you double-crossed and tried to kill him. His killing of the deputy sheriff is a message to you—and let’s hope it’s not the final one. It could be that he still hopes you’ll meet his demands, so you can get out of this with your life. If that’s true, we may still have a little time. We should coordinate our plans.”

  “What I plan to do is none of your business, Fox,” Baldauf said, his tone still distant, thoughtful. “You do what you want.”

  Not good, Chant thought. It was obvious that Baldauf still had hope—and hope clouded the mirrors he was using. “The next forty-eight hours could be crucial, Baldauf. Unless you meet Sinclair’s demands, you and I had better start some emergency planning right now.”

  “To do what?”

  “To trap and kill Sinclair, of course.”

  “You tried that; it cost me a million bucks.”

  “Just listen. We have to assume that one of two things will happen. Either Sinclair will decide now to kill you outright and be finished with it, or he’ll try to increase the pressure on you to meet his demands. You should have at least three armed men with you around the clock.”

  “I have my gooks.”

  “Not them.”

  “Why the hell not? They’re the best all-around fighters in the county—probably in the state.”

  “Precisely the point. They’re too valuable to waste in a job where men with shotguns will do just as well. We can use your Hmong for something else.”

  Baldauf had begun to pay attention “What do you have in mind, Fox?”

  “Let’s assume that he’s not ready to kill you—or can’t, since you have your personal bodyguards and the house surrounded to prevent him from planting explosives He decides to sabotage, to hit you where you’re most vulnerable. I think you mentioned the paper mill.”

  Baldauf nodded. “I have a lot of contracts to fulfill. There’s also some very expensive equipment up in the logging camp, but I worry more about the paper mill.”

  “Okay, let’s assume he knows that. Put two or three good riflemen up in the logging camp with the machinery, just to cover that base, and spread your local police forces around to cover other possible targets. But we’ll concentrate on the paper mill, and hope that he comes there. We’ll pull in all the county deputies, hide them around the perimeter. Their job will be to lie low unless, and until, they hear something going on inside the mill.”

  “Uh-uh. If he gets inside, I’m already in trouble.”

  “Wrong, Baldauf. We want him to get inside—because that’s where your Hmong and I will be waiting for him.”

  “You?”

  “I’m an expert with a shotgun. Since you blame me for losing your million dollars, I’d take great pride—personal and professional—in blowing Sinclair away myself.”

  Baldauf thought about it, finally nodded. “All right. We’ll do it. But I’m still going ahead with my own plans, just in case. Excuse me; I have to make a phone call.”

  NINE

  At midnight, Chant slipped out of his disguise and went to work. This time he killed silently, efficiently, without ceremony.

  All except one.

  Deputy Sheriff Mark Curry had lain motionless for hours in his position on the crest of a steep hill overlooking a section of the narrow dirt road leading up the mountain to the Baldauf Paper Mill. Every few minutes he would scan the road through the infrared binoculars Baldauf’s mysterious red-headed man with a limp had given him.

  Deputy Curry was cold, outside and inside. Although he was dressed warmly, the cold of the mountain night had penetrated his many layers of clothing, and the cold of his assignment had penetrated his heart. Information about the man they were hunting had been given to all the deputy sheriffs without warning, and it had come as a shock. He had previously been told that the grisly murders of Sheriff Baldauf and Sergeant Dertack were being investigated by the state police and the FBI Now he knew that was a lie. He and the half dozen other deputy sheriffs were on their own, and they were up against a brutal, homicidal maniac who was on the loose in Mordan County.

  He was a man who obviously had something on—and against—Wilbur Baldauf, and perhaps the entire Baldauf family.

  It occurred to Curry that any man who had something against the Baldaufs, any man who killed Lester Baldauf and Reginald Dertack, couldn’t be all bad. Brutal and homicidal, certainly, but not necessarily crazy On more than one occasion, Curry had felt the urge to kill those two men himself. Baldauf, Dertack, and the Hmong torturer had been the killer’s only victims—so far.

  Deputy Sheriff Mark Curry did not want to die for the Baldauf family, and he was very much afraid that on this night he was going to.

  Curry glanced through the binoculars and barely managed to bite off a startled cry.

  Below, bathed in bright moonlight as he loped easily down the middle of the dirt road, was a tall, black-clad figure.

  Curry dropped the binoculars and snatched up his high-powered rifle. Then, without warning or reason, he suddenly found himself thinking of his wife and infant twin daughters. He should be home with them, Curry thought, not on top of a freezing mountain risking his life to protect the pervasive, murderous corruption of the Bald
aufs in Mordan County.

  The fear that he was never again going to see his family persisted.

  Curry shouldered the rifle, switched on the sniperscope, and peered through the eerie cherry-glow of the scope at the road below. There was no one there; the man had vanished.

  Had there really been someone there in the first place? Curry thought. Were his nerves playing tricks on him?

  Curry laid aside the rifle, picked up the binoculars—which displayed a wider angle—and scanned the entire section of road within his field of vision. There was nothing visible but red road, red trees.…

  Then the figure appeared again, as before, coming from the same direction, trotting down the middle of the road.

  Suddenly Curry broke into a sweat. He wiped stinging perspiration from his eyes, grabbed his rifle, and squinted through the sniperscope. The running figure was there. Curry sighted on the man’s torso, led him slightly, began to squeeze the trigger.…

  He had been told to shoot anyone who came up the road. But what if this wasn’t the man?

  The figure abruptly stopped running, slowly turned—and looked directly up at Curry.

  Curry jerked his finger on the trigger. At almost precisely the same moment, the figure darted to one side. The bullet kicked up a cloud of red dust two feet to the man’s left Curry sighted, fired once more. Again the man darted away; again the shot missed. The man slowly raised his right arm and pointed directly at Curry, who quickly squeezed off two shots. Both shots missed.

  Then the man was gone.

  His body drenched with sweat, Curry staggered back a step and came up hard against a tree. He frantically swept the rifle with its sniperscope up and down the length of the road, searching …

  Then the figure appeared again, as before, coming from the same direction, trotting down the middle of the road.

  This time Curry did not fire. He sighed with relief, took the rifle from his shoulder. He understood now what had happened; he had fallen asleep and was dreaming. The terrifying, black-clad figure on the road below existed only in his mind. He was asleep; he had only to wake himself up, and the figure would be gone.

  Smiling slightly at the silliness of his fear, Mark Curry screwed his eyes shut. He shook his head slightly, opened his eyes. Everything seemed the same. He peered down through the binoculars.