The Devil's Laughter

by William W. Johnstone

  Waldren smiled at Link. The smile was quickly wiped away when Link took his hand out of his jacket pocket. He was holding the twin-barreled .410 derringer. “When those two apes move toward me, Waldren, you get your face blown off.”

  Waldren expelled a breath and nodded his head. “I understand.” He turned his head, looking at the butchers. “Back off, boys.”

  The butchers walked away, back to their work area.

  “It’s only a matter of time, Donovan,” Waldren said in a low voice. Spittle oozed from one side of his mouth, dropping onto his shirt. His eyes gleamed with the fires of hate. “We’ll get you. We’ve got the numbers and the time. You’ll get careless.”

  “One of us will,” Link told him, then walked away.

  Link had slipped the micro-cassette-corder into his shirt pocket when he left the house. He had turned it on just before entering the store. For all his tough talk of the night before, he didn’t want to start killing; he really didn’t know if he had the stomach for it. He would prefer to do this the legal way. But he knew in his guts it wasn’t going to go down any legal paths. Waldren was right on one count: They had the numbers. But did they have the time? Link didn’t think so.

  He drove out into the country, out toward Judge Jackson’s place. The gates to the estate were closed. He drove farther up the road and stopped at probably the same spot Tom Halbert had stopped.... How many days ago? Only a few. Seemed like weeks had gone by. He punched open the console and took out a binocular case, and removed the long lenses. He took off the lens caps and sighted in the estate of Judge Jackson and his wife Lynette. A dozen cars and pickup trucks were parked in front of the place. He recognized the vehicles of George Keenan, the editor of the paper, Jack Matisse, Nelson Marshall, the Jeep of Charlie Ford, the pickups of Dick Marley and Ed Westcott.

  “Meeting of minds,” he said aloud. “Strategy session. I’d like to know what’s going on in there.”

  Link cased his field glasses and drove on, cutting down a gravel road that he knew would, eventually and after taking a winding route, come out about a mile north of the old Romaire complex. He smiled. Up there with the trash of the parish – the Barlows and the Hardens and Waldo’s stupid clan. Then there were the Mastersons and the Medfords, and others that probably didn’t know who their daddies were; they changed names like most folks change underwear.

  “This might be interesting,” Link said.

  He parked off the road, in a small clearing, but with his vehicle visible to anyone coming north or heading south. He wanted to be seen.

  While he waited, he made sure his .45 was loaded up full and he had full clips in his belt pouch. Then he jacked a round into his MAC-10 and made sure he had plenty of full clips for it in the canvas clip bag. He had visited his basement before leaving the house and had picked up a heavy sack. It lay on the floorboards, passenger side. Link took out two round metal objects, dark green in color, and stuck one in each of his jacket pockets. He sat back in the seat and waited. He didn’t think it would take long.

  It didn’t. Not ten minutes had passed before the crud started gathering in their pickup trucks with fancy hubcaps, enough antennas to transmit to the moon and beyond, gun racks in the rear window of the cabs, coon dog cages in the beds, and plenty of spotlights – used to blind deer at night for easier killing. Of course that was illegal, but people of this particular ilk believe the laws of the land don’t apply to them.

  The pickups had parked both north and south of Link’s location. He picked out Jimmy Joe Harden’s fancy truck and stuck his arm out the window, extending his middle finger to Jimmy Joe. He watched Jimmy Joe have a hurried conversation with his passenger. Link wasn’t sure, but he thought it was one of Waldo’s cousins, a cretinous individual called Jelly. Hell, they were all related. They’d been inbreeding for generations.

  “Hey, Jimmy Joe!” Link yelled. “You boys didn’t finish the job you started the other night down at my place. You want to try it now, you ignorant asshole?”

  That got the attention of all of them. Link watched as the men talked to one another, sitting in the cab of their trucks.

  “Are you crazy, Donovan?” one of the men hollered. “Any one of us could shoot you dead right where you sit.”

  “Then do it, Barlow!” Link returned the shout over the no-more-than-fifty-yard distance separating them. “You open this dance,” Link muttered. “You boys have to start it. Then I’ll finish it.”

  “My woman saw you grab Artie the past night,” a man yelled. “And Duncan ain’t been seen, neither. Them’s my kin. What’d you do with them, Donovan?”

  Link had opened his door, ready to hit the ground running when the shooting started. He had slipped the strap of his clip pouch over one shoulder and the strap of the other smaller bag over his other shoulder. His Bronco was positioned so that it would give him cover until he reached the woods, just a few yards behind him. “I read to them from the Scriptures,” Link yelled. “They renounced their evil ways and begged to once more come back into the arms of the Lord.” That was no lie. “They told me everything, boys. I know everything you silly bastards plan on doing.” That was a lie. “I know the names of everybody in this parish who belongs to the coven, everybody who made a pact with the devil. So you’ve got to kill me.”

  “Get him!” Barlow screamed. “Kill him. He’s got to die.”

  Link jumped from his Bronco and headed for the woods. I was right, he thought. Grubb told the truth. They’re all in this up to their unwashed armpits.

  At the timberline, Link dropped to the ground, leveled the MAC-10, and burned a full clip in the direction of the running men, very close behind him and all bunched up. Four of them screamed, dropped to the earth, and grabbed at their suddenly perforated chests and bellies.

  The others stopped cold, realizing they were out in the open, facing a man with an automatic weapon, and very vulnerable. Link changed clips and put two more on the ground as the others had an abrupt change of heart and put their feet to work, running back to their trucks. Link held his fire and let them go. When they had roared out of sight, heading north, he left his position and walked up to the line of dead and dying men, clicking on the tiny cassette-corder in his shirt pocket.

  He knew their faces; he had seen them around town but did not know their names. One looked up at him, his eyes filled with pain. He was hard hit and dying, and he knew it.

  “It wasn’t ’pposed to be thisaway,” he gasped. “The judge said it would be easy.”

  “Judge who?” Link asked.

  “Judge Jackson and his wife,” the man said, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “They said y’all wouldn’t know what hit you.”

  “Hep me,” another man whispered. “Please hep me.”

  They were the only two left alive. Due to the rise of the submachine gun, two of those on the ground had taken hits in the face. The .45 caliber slugs had really screwed up their complexion.

  “I’ll do that,” Link told him. “But you help me first.”

  “Anything!” the man gasped.

  “I know everyone who belongs to the coven. Who runs it?”

  “Judge Jackson and his wife,” the second man confirmed what the other had said. “She’s the Exalted One and he sits by her side. The committee is made up of Jack Matisse, Nelson Marshall, Dick Marley, and Dave Bradley. The young people have their own coven, separate from our’n.” He jerked and twitched on the ground. Then choked and coughed and closed his eyes, and did the world a favor and died.

  Link turned to the other man. “You pick it up where he left off.”

  “I don’t know no more that he tole you,” the man cried. “Please, God, hep me!”

  “You’re calling on God?” Link asked. “I don’t believe this. You had a hand in torturing and murdering people, you pledged your heart to the devil, and now you’re calling on God? You got to be kidding, man.”

  “It didn’t work lak we was tole it would. Somebody lied to us. We ’pposed to have
eternal life.”

  “Oh, you will,” Link assured him.

  “We will?” the dying man asked, excitement in his voice.

  “Yeah,” Link told him. “In hell!”

  Chapter 2

  Link dragged the bodies back to the road and tossed them all in the bed of one pickup. He backed the other pickups close to the death truck, then opened all the hoods and jerked the gas lines loose, saturating the road bed with gas. He cranked his Bronco, tossed a grenade under one truck, then floorboarded the pedal, getting a few seconds head start. The explosion rocked his vehicle and the fireball shot up into the sky, followed by thick plumes of dark smoke. He was parked on the side of the road, on the edge of town, smoking a cigarette and smiling when the fire trucks screamed past him.

  With Gerard sitting on the passenger side, Ray whipped his unit in close to the Bronco and sat staring at Link. “I don’t suppose there is any point in us hurrying out to the scene, is there, Link?”

  “Not unless you’re a pyromaniac.” Link handed the cassette-corder to the sheriff.

  Ray and Gerard listened to the words of the dying men. Ray sighed and shook his head. “It’s like you said, Link. But this is virtually useless in a court of law. By the way, District Attorney Parton was found dead in his house about an hour ago. The coroner said it was a heart attack.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Of course not. Parton was the only one in his office who didn’t belong in that damn coven. Link, how many did you kill out there today?”

  “I didn’t kill anybody, Ray. My engine overheated and I pulled off the side of the road to let it cool down. I’ve been sitting here waiting for help to come along. And I’ll take my recorder back now.”

  Ray returned the recorder. “You want me to sing ’Onward Christian Soldiers,’ Link?”

  Link made sure the cassette was in the tiny recorder. It was. “Go write a ticket, Ray,” he said without rancor or sarcasm. “You go do your thing and let me do mine.” He cranked the engine.

  “Link!”

  He braked and backed up. “What do you want, Ray?”

  “When does all this stop, Link?”

  “That isn’t up to me,” Link told the truth, knowing that both Ray and Gerard knew it as well as he did. “The problem is, they can’t stop. They have to keep going. They made a pact with the devil. He won’t let them stop.”

  Ray shook his head. “The more I think about this . . .”

  “Don’t think,” Link told him. “Don’t try to apply logic to any of this. Just accept the fact that we’re dealing with the supernatural here. Ray, they’re going to kill us all. Why won’t you acknowledge that and act on it?”

  “Because I’m not a goddamn murderer!” the sheriff flared at his lifelong friend.

  “I see,” Link replied. “Well, if that’s the case, Ray, maybe you’d better drop the s off of Soldiers.” He pulled the transmission into gear and drove off.

  * * *

  “We’ve got to declare all-out war against Link Donovan, Judge,” Jack Matisse said. “The others don’t have the stomach to back him up in what he’s doing. With him out of the way, the road for us would be clear.”

  Marshall, Bradley, and Marley nodded their heads in agreement.

  Judge Jackson cut his eyes to look at his wife, sitting away from his desk, over by the wall. She shook her head so slightly that anyone but her husband would have missed it. Lynette was dressed in black, from her shoes to her scarf. Her lips were painted silver. She looked cruel. She was cruel. Deadly. Savage. Ruthless.

  She looked at Judge Britton. He nodded his head in agreement with her, looked at the four men seated in front of Jackson’s desk, and said, “Gentlemen, you were all advised that this project might fail. It was a daring, daring plan. And you are to be complimented for your work. But we must accept that we lost the element of surprise. We did not take this Link Donovan’s penchant for violence and barbarous acts into consideration. Now we have to slow down and reevaluate our position....”

  He paused while Jackson answered the phone. The man’s face grew mottled and ugly with rage. He cursed and slammed the phone down. “He’s a savage!” he said.

  “Who?” Britton asked.

  “Link Donovan. He ambushed some of our people just north of the complex. Killed six of them. The foul bastard!”

  “He’s not gonna quit, Judge Britton,” Jack Matisse said. “I can promise you that. I tried to warn people not to even suggest harming those damn animals of his. That’s what got him so stirred up. Bet on it.”

  The federal judge was thoughtful for a moment. “Those reporters still out at Donovan’s house?”

  “As far as I know,” Jack replied.

  “Have your people with the telephone company cripple the phone system out that way. And keep it crippled. I’ve got to think about this . . . situation.” He cut his eyes to Lynette. “Do we have a subject for tonight’s mass?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said with a smile. “She’s being prepared for you now.”

  Britton licked his lips. “Suitably young?”

  “Just right. Her screaming will be a wonderful thing to hear.”

  “Marvelous!”

  * * *

  “Phone’s dead,” Trooper Miller told Link as he walked into his house.

  “And right before it went dead, Keenan called out here and fired both of us,” Suzanne said, jerking a thumb toward Guy. “I never did like that creep.”

  “What else happened?” Link asked.

  “Dennis and I have been ordered to pull some time down south,” Miller said. “New Orleans.”

  “They’ve got people in the State Police, then,” Link said.

  “Looks that way. What do you want us to do, Link?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know that you can do anything. Probably the best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut.” He looked around. “Where is Jimmy?”

  “He was called early this morning. The supermarket chain offered him a manager’s job over in West Texas. Told him to leave immediately,” Anne said. “He didn’t want to go, but we told him to take it and don’t look back.”

  Link took off his jacket and sat down. “It’s a nationwide thing. I was right. Too many strings being pulled for it not to be. The priests?”

  “They went back to the church. They must have received six dozen phone calls this morning from parishioners wanting one thing or another,” Paul said.

  “Did your ex-boss call, wanting you to come back to work?” Link asked.

  “He sure did. And I told him I knew what was going on and for him to kiss my butt. He got hot about my refusal. Started to really fly off the handle. I heard somebody tell him to shut up.”

  Link picked up the ringing phone. “Hi, doll face. This is Wanda. You want some phone sex, baby?”

  Link started to tell her to go to Hell, then realized how ridiculous that remark would be. He hung up the phone as she was shouting obscenities into his ear.

  Link turned to the troopers. “When do you leave?”

  “Right now,” Dennis said. “We were waiting for you to come back.”

  Link shook hands with them and the troopers were gone. “Sure thinned our ranks,” he said, walking to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Anne walked along with him. The kids were on the back porch, playing with Link’s critters.

  “Ray and Gerard stopped by here,” Anne said. “Ray said he wanted to apologize to you for something he said. Said he’d be back.”

  Link shook his head. “He doesn’t have to apologize to me for anything. We just don’t think alike, that’s all.”

  “What did he say, Link?”

  “Oh ... some things he really didn’t mean. Ray’s tired and confused and just like me, scared a little. It’s easy to sit around and talk of killing, Anne. But when it comes right down to pulling the trigger, there are a lot of people who can’t do it. Not cold-bloodedly. Not even when they’re facing certain death if they don’t act. I’m not one of those p
eople, Anne.”

  “What happened today, Link? We all heard the sirens going past here.”

  Link sugared his coffee. “I killed six men. Or rather, six coven members. I don’t think of them as human beings. Ray does. He didn’t handle the news very well.”

  “Were they some of the same bunch who tried to kill you in the woods the other night?”

  “Some of them, yes. They’re all related from years of inbreeding. Now ask me if I enjoyed doing it.”

  Anne said nothing. She leaned against the counter and stared at him.

  Link met her eyes. “It didn’t offend me,” he said flatly.

  * * *

  Link slept the remainder of the afternoon, awakening just after seven. He bathed and shaved, being careful not to use after-shave or cologne. He was going to prowl this night, and Link knew that to a person with any skill in the woods, smell was a dead giveaway. Although he wasn’t going to be in the woods. He dressed in dark clothing and soft-soled lace-up boots. He stuck a black bandanna in his pocket, to be used later as headgear.

  He ate a light meal and was sitting alone at the kitchen table when Anne walked in. She looked at the way he was dressed but had no comment to make about it.

  “Too many loose ends,” Link broke the silence. “Too many things that make no sense or appear to be unrelated. But maybe they’re not supposed to make sense.”

  “Tom is waiting for you,” Anne said. “He said you asked him to meet you out here around eight.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going out?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a man of few words this evening, Link.”

  “Do you really want to know what I’m going to do, Anne?”

  “Let’s get out, Link. Just leave. Right now. We’ll put our property up for sale and pick up our lives far away from this goddamned place.”

  “I’m staying. You go.” He looked up at her. “I thought we settled this the other night. Was it last night? Jesus. I’m losing track of time.”

  Tom Halbert walked in and poured a cup of coffee. He was dressed in civilian clothing. He looked at the way Link was dressed. “You still going head-hunting tonight, Link?”