by Jeremy Bates
“She’s okay,” Humperdinck said tightly. “She called us.”
Spencer frowned. “She called you? Why? What’s happened?”
“Where were you just now, Mr. Pratt?”
“I was at the hospital.”
“At this hour?”
“I often stay late, to catch up on work. Now, Sheriff, I must demand to know what’s happened.”
Humperdinck reached a gnarled, liver-spotted hand into the back pocket of his trousers and withdrew a card. He began to read from it. It took Spencer a moment to realize he was citing a variation of the Miranda warning: “You are a suspect in several capital crimes. You will accompany us to the Boston Mills police barracks. You have the right to remain silent—”
“Now hold on a minute, Sheriff—”
“You have the right to legal counsel. If you cannot afford legal counsel, such will be provided for you—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Spencer interrupted more forcefully. “Not until you tell me what in God’s name is going on.”
“You’re coming with us one way or the other, Mr. Pratt,” Humperdinck said. “If you refuse to come willingly, Deputy Dawson will wake Judge Pardy and get a warrant for your arrest. Given what your wife has shown us, that would be very easy.”
“Lynette? Where is she?” Spencer stepped forward.
The two officers blocked his path.
“Get out of my damn way,” he snapped. “This is my bloody house, isn’t it?”
For a moment Spencer didn’t think Humperdinck was going to concede. His old body seemed to tremble with a barely constrained hostility. But then, reluctantly, he stepped aside. The deputy did so as well, his eyes downcast.
Spencer turned his bullish body sideways to slip between them in the narrow hallway. He stopped at the entrance to the living room, from where they had emerged. Lynette sat on the buffalo-hide chesterfield, staring up at him with wet eyes.
Dozens of Polaroid photographs were spread out on the coffee table before her. Spencer stiffened in surprise. This morphed into panic, then rage. The dumb whore had gone snooping when he was out! She had somehow gotten into his locked study. She had discovered the false top on the ottoman, what he kept within the ottoman, and she’d called the police on him.
Spencer’s mind raced, searching for excuses, but there were no excuses to be found, there was no way to explain the photographs, nor his collection of Satanic paraphernalia, which alone would link him to the massacre at Mary of Sorrows church.
“Lynnette?” he said, stepping into the living room, his eyes searching for a weapon. “What’s going on? What are these photographs? Why did you call these gentlemen?”
She didn’t answer.
“Mr. Pratt,” Humperdinck said. He and the deputy had stuck close behind him. “You need to come with us. Now.”
Spencer whirled on him. “Not until you tell me what the bloody hell is going on here, Sheriff! What are these purported capital crimes of which I have been accused?”
“Murder,” Humperdinck said coldly. He moved next to Spencer and pointed at the photographs on the coffee table. “These were discovered in your study.”
“My study?” he repeated, though he was thinking: A chair? No, too unwieldy. The bronze bookend on the bookshelf? But how did he reach it without drawing suspicion? “Impossible,” he added. “I’ve never seen these photos before in my life.”
Humperdinck gripped Spencer’s right biceps. “We’ll continue this discussion at the barracks.”
“Just a moment, Sheriff,” Spencer said, reaching into the inside pocket of his blazer. “I need my eyeglasses.”
“He doesn’t wear—” Lynette began.
Spencer’s fingers curled around the gold-plated ballpoint pen in the pocket. He plunged it into Humperdinck’s right eyeball, driving the shaft three inches deep, into the man’s brain. Humperdinck spasmed, almost as if he had been zapped by an electrical shock, then fell to the floor, where he continued to convulse.
Lynette screamed. The deputy cried out and faltered backward.
Already moving, Spencer tore open the buttoned clasp on Humperdinck’s leather holster and withdrew the .357 Magnum. He swung the service revolver toward the deputy, who was fumbling with his own holstered weapon. He squeezed the trigger. The kickback rocked Spencer onto his rear. The hollow-point slug blew straight through the deputy’s chest, punching him backward into the hallway. Spencer fired a second time. The bullet hit the already dying deputy in the gut. The kid slid to his ass, leaving two blood-splattered, plate-sized holes in the wall behind him.
Spencer leapt to his feet, shot Humperdinck in the chest to end his suffering, then aimed the gun at Lynette, who had turned white as a sheet.
“Spencer…” she whispered. “I’m your wife…”
“Not anymore,” he said.
He blew her brains out the back of her skull.
Spencer went to his bedroom on the second floor, tugged his suitcase off the top of his bureau, and tossed it onto the queen bed. He unzipped the main pocket and filled it with his clothes, not bothering to remove the wire hangers. He selected items mostly from his summer wardrobe, shorts and golf shirts, given that the Yucatán Peninsula enjoyed a year-round tropical climate. Next he went to the master bathroom, retrieved his leather travel case from the cupboard beneath the sink, and filled it with toiletries. Back in the bedroom he upended the contents of the studded oak box that sat on the dresser—cufflinks, watches, rings—onto the clothes he had hastily packed. Finally he zipped the bulging suitcase closed and lugged it downstairs. He left it by the front door while he went to the basement gym. He glanced about the room, at all the Life Fitness exercise equipment which he had used every day for much of the last decade. Today his workout would have been chest and triceps and quads.
No matter, he thought. He would choose a hotel when he reached Kentucky tomorrow, or even Tennessee, that featured an exercise room. Perhaps one with a swimming pool as well…and maybe a heated hot tub. Yes, why not? If you’re going to live life on the lam, you may as well do it as comfortably as you could.
Adjacent to the floor-to-ceiling mirror was a glass-and-steel fire ax case. Spencer depressed the two screw heads on the underside of it. The case with its false backing swung away from the wall on hidden hinges, revealing a safe. He swiveled the knob left and right, entering the correct number combination, then opened the thick door. He tugged a black duffel bag out. It dropped to the floor with the heavy thump of two hundred sixty-three thousand dollars.
Contingency plan two.
Spencer returned to the first floor. On the way to the front door he found he had a slight bounce in his step. He had wanted to leave the life he had become a slave to for a long time now: the hospital, Summit County, Lynette. But he always felt he had too much invested to simply pack up and leave. Nevertheless, necessity was not only the mother of invention, but also of motivation. Getting ratted to the cops by his duplicitous wife was, ironically, the best thing that could have happened to him.
He had become untethered, unconditionally free.
In the living room, stepping over the sheriff’s body to retrieve the Polaroids from the coffee table, Spencer’s gaze fell on Lynette. Although slumped backward on the chesterfield, she had remained in an upright position. She could have been knitting, or watching television, except for the fact she was missing her head from her mandible up.
Had he ever loved her? he wondered. Yes, he thought he had. He had been lonely in those early years after being kicked out of the Church of Satan, he had needed companionship, and she had offered it to him. She was never a great conversationalist, and she didn’t have many original ideas of her own, but she was a good listener. And he supposed that’s what he’d wanted. Someone to listen to him, to agree with him, to admire him.
Spencer slipped the photographs into his blazer pocket and went to the front door. He paused on the front porch to watch a magnificent display of lightning, then he carried the suitcas
e and duffel bag to the Volvo, loading both onto the backseat. He was about to return to the house, to collect the contents of the ottoman from his study—the police might eventually piece together his role in all that happened this evening, but he saw no need to make it easy for them—when a voice said, “Not so fast, Spence.”
Spencer whirled around. Squinting against the onslaught of rain, he made out a shape emerging from the nearby trees. Thunder boomed and lightning flared almost simultaneously, and in the brief heavenly illumination he recognized Cleavon. His brother held a long, thick branch in his hand.
“Cleave…?” Spencer said in disbelief.
How the hell had he gotten free of the church?
“Who blew the whistle on you, Spence?”
“My, er—my wife, Lynette, if you can believe that.”
“So you killed her, did ya?”
Spencer cleared his throat. “There was no other choice.”
“And the sheriff too?”
“Again, there was—”
“No choice.” Cleavon nodded. “Just like there wasn’t no choice but to burn everyone alive in the church, that right?”
“This was your mess, Cleave. Weasel, Jesse—they were your friends. They screwed up, not me. Someone had to take the fall.”
“And Floyd and Earl? They were your brothers.”
“It’s…unfortunate, yes… I certainly didn’t want to—”
“And me, Spence? What about me?”
“Christ, Cleave! Don’t—” Thunder drowned out the rest of the sentence. “Don’t get all maudlin on me,” he repeated. “You left me no choice. You would never have agreed to—”
“That woman wasn’t your first, was she? That Mary? How many people you killed, Spence?”
“What does it matter?”
“It don’t. But I’m curious.”
“Forty one,” he said. “Plus Mary and the eight you know about.”
“What’s that? Fifty?” Cleavon whistled. “You’re slicker than greased goose shit, Spence. That’s gotta be a record or something. And I didn’t never suspect nothing. Not ’till that Mary anyhow.”
“Yes, well, now you know,” Spencer said impatiently. “Your older brother is a serial killer. And so are you. Now, I have a long drive ahead of me…” As he spoke he reached into the blazer pocket for the sheriff’s revolver.
Cleavon was unexpectedly fast. He covered the distance between them almost instantaneously, swinging the branch in his hand as he came. The business end struck Spencer in the face with bone shattering force, spinning him about. He landed on the macadam, on his chest, dazed. He rolled onto his back, blinking stars from his vision, wondering what happened to the revolver.
Cleavon loomed over him, backlit by a burst of lighting that electrified the black sky, turning it a deep-sea blue. He raised the branch with both hands.
Spencer opened his mouth but choked on the blood pooling inside his mouth. Nothing came out but a garbled, incomprehensible plea.
Cleavon felt no pity as he brought the tree branch down with all his strength across the top of his brother’s skull. He repeated this action again and again, payback for Earl, for Floyd, for Jesse, even for that dumb shit Weasel.
Then, panting hard with exertion, his eyes tearing from sweat and rain, he tossed the blood-covered tree branch aside and stared for a long moment at what remained of his brother’s head. He spat on his lifeless body and turned to leave, to head back to the El Camino he’d parked up the road, when his eyes fell on the Volvo. The back door was ajar. A suitcase and duffel bag rested on the seat. The duffel was unzipped, and a brick of cash wrapped in an elastic band poked out the top.
Cleavon blinked twice, then went to the car. He tugged the mouth of the bag open wider. “Judas Priest!” he whispered. “Judas fuckin’ Priest!” Then he turned his face to the heavens and danced in the rain and laughed like he had rarely laughed in all his miserable life.
CHAPTER 30
“We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!”
Ghostbusters (1984)
Beetle discovered a set of car keys on Goliath’s body, which turned out to be for the rusted old banger parked in front of the church. He set Greta gently in shotgun and the small woman across the backseat. They were both unconscious but breathing. Then he got behind the wheel and sped to town. Given the late hour, and the full-throttled tempest, the rain-slicked streets of Boston Mills were deserted. However, he came across a twenty-four-hour gas station, where a clerk told him directions to the hospital. He arrived at the emergency entrance of the Boston Mills Health Center a few minutes later. Medical staff wheeled the two injured women away on stretchers while Beetle remained behind in the reception to explain what happened. He was then led to a private room where he changed into a dry paper frock and was checked over by a grandfatherly doctor who, upon finding no serious injuries, advised him to rest until the police arrived to take his statement.
Exhausted and emptied, Beetle fell immediately asleep, waking some eight or nine hours later at eleven o’clock that same morning. He was surprised to find a pretty redhead in the previously empty bed opposite his. She was watching him with haunted green eyes.
“Hi,” she said hesitantly.
“Hi,” he said.
“The police were here for you.”
“When?”
“Three hours ago? I was just admitted then. They questioned me. They wanted to question you too, but they weren’t allowed to wake you up.”
“They questioned you?” he said.
“My friends…” Her face dropped. She looked like someone who had just been told they had a week to live. “You saved one of them. Cherry. The doctor told me she’s going to be okay.”
“She was your friend?”
The woman nodded. “The police told me about you. What happened at the church. I told them I had never met you before.”
“Who were those men at the church?”
“Crazies.”
“Satanists?”
“I don’t know. They attacked my friends and me in the woods. I got away and hid in a school bus. Then when it became light I found the road. I followed it out of the national park. I came to the church—or what was left of it. There were police and firefighters. They brought me here. They said they didn’t know what happened to the rest of my friends. But I think…I think…” She rubbed tears from her eyes, shaking her head. “Where could they be?”
Suddenly Beetle remembered the small woman shouting off the names of three or four people who the man named Cleavon had apparently murdered, along with something about a snake…feeding her boyfriend to a snake?
He decided it was not his place to break this news to the already distressed woman. Instead he said simply, “I’m sorry.”
She nodded, still rubbing her eyes.
He said, “Did you hear anything about someone named Greta?”
“The doctor mentioned her. He thought she was my friend. He said she was also in stable condition.”
Beetle felt a bit of the tightness in his chest loosen. Then he wondered where the police were, when they would return to question him. And after they did, would they contact the army, tell them they had an AWOL soldier in their custody? Or would they release him, let him go…to where?
Beetle frowned. It was a valid question. Where was he going to go? Not back to Savannah. The recent events hadn’t changed his relationship with Sarah; there was nothing left for him in Georgia. However, something else had changed. He found he no longer had a desire, a need, to kill himself. Although the night before he had been so sure it had been his only recourse, his only way out from the nightmare his life had become, he no longer felt that way. He didn’t know why this was the case. He wasn’t going to philosophize over it either. Because perhaps this feeling was only a temporary reprieve, perhaps the darkness and despair would return in a week, or a month…perhaps…but he didn’t think so. A switch had been flicked inside him. He felt different, not ebullient—not like he had as a kid on his b
irthdays, or on the day he wed Sarah—but different. Alive. He had almost forgotten how pleasing, how natural, a feeling that was.
The door to the room opened. A portly man with salt-and-pepper hair and a too-tight tweed jacket appeared. His eyes fell on the redhead, and his face lit up with joy.
“Mandy!” he said.
“Daddy!” she blurted.
The man rushed to her bedside and wrapped her in an embrace.
“They told me they called you…” she mumbled into his shoulder.
“I came as fast as I could.”
The redhead said something more, though Beetle couldn’t hear what, not that he was listening anyway, for he was suddenly thinking of his own parents, how nice it would be to see them again, and he knew he had a place to go to after all.
EPILOGUE
“Boy, the next word that comes out of your mouth better be some brilliant fuckin’ Mark Twain shit. ’Cause it’s definitely getting chiseled on your tombstone.”
The Devil’s Rejects (2005)
School had only finished one week before, but eight-year-old Danny Kalantzis was already anticipating the best summer of his life. Most past summers he stayed in Cincinnati and didn’t do much of anything and then September came around and it was time to start school all over again. This year, however, his best friend Roy Egan had invited him to his family’s cottage for a full week. Danny’s family didn’t have a cottage, and he had never been to one before, so he wasn’t sure what to expect. But apparently it was on a small lake in northeastern Ohio, and they could go swimming every day and take rides in the motor boat. He could even try water skiing if he wanted to. He wasn’t sure he did. It sounded difficult. Roy told him there was also a rope hanging from one of the trees along the shore, and they could swing from it into the water. That was probably good enough for Danny.
Nevertheless, what made this week really great was the fact Roy’s sister, Peggy, had come along as well. She was a year older than Danny and Roy, and Danny thought she was the prettiest girl in school. Originally she was supposed to attend summer camp for ballerinas, but then her friend backed out, so she did too.
