by David Haynes
The truck reeked. It smelled so bad he thought Brad might have taken a dump in there.
“Use your shirt,” he replied. “And what the hell is that smell, anyway?”
“Can’t smell shit,” Brad replied. “My nose is all busted up.”
Paul looked in the back seat. “Is it you, Newsome?”
Newsome shook his head but he looked worried, like he was about to cry.
Paul closed his door and opened the rear door. “Hey, we never did find out what was in that bag of yours, did we?”
He reached for the bag, dragging it off the seat. The stench hit him immediately. He looked away, taking a lungful of fresh air before pulling it all the way out. Newsome whimpered but said nothing.
Paul unzipped the bag and gagged. It was as if someone had filled the bag with shit, literally filled it. He could see things squirming about in there, little pink things wriggling in and out of…A maggot crawled over the zipper, twisting its revolting body across his fingernail. He winced and flicked it at Newsome.
“What the hell?” He opened it a little wider and then he saw the reason for the stench. There were three cats in there, all dead, glassy eyed. In among the carnage was the head of a small dog. Its eyes popped out of its head, long gray tongue lolling. There must have been a dozen collars in there too.
Paul used the end of the Taser to lift them out.
“Hey, what was your dog called?” he asked Brad.
“Buster. Why, what you got back there?” He twisted his bulk in the seat and looked at the bag.
“I think we’ve got ourselves a homicide suspect,” Paul announced.
“Homicide?” Newsome said. “It’s just some mangy old dogs and cats. They’re not worth…”
Brad lifted his rifle and put it the muzzle in Newsome’s mouth as he was speaking.
“That was my boy’s dog,” he said. “You had no right to kill it.”
Paul looked at Brad and then up and down the street. Brad looked about ready to shoot but it would be stupid to do it here and now. A gunshot was still a gunshot whatever state the town was in, and people would look out and see. He didn’t want that happening.
“Put it down,” he said.
Brad kept it where it was.
“Put the rifle down, Deputy! That’s an order!” Paul hissed.
Brad’s jaw worked up and down. Why the hell was he getting so worked up about the dog anyway? He didn’t particularly like it. Maybe it was something to do with his kid, Ryan. That was the only explanation. Perhaps he did have some fatherly instincts toward the boy after all.
Brad slowly pulled the rifle out of Newsome’s mouth. “You going to let him get away it?” he asked.
Paul hooked another collar. It read ‘Scout Cheadle’ on one side and the address on the other.
“I’m going to let the public decide what to do with this man,” he said. “You know Ben Cheadle, right?”
Brad nodded. “Loved that dog of his.”
“That’s right,” Paul said, slamming the truck’s door. “Let’s pay him a little visit.”
*
Ben Cheadle hadn’t slept well since Scout had gone. He’d never been able to work out if he loved or hated the dog while he was still alive but now, he knew. The damn dog was probably the love of his life. How stupid was that? He lay back on the couch and sucked at his beer. The dog had actually been his best friend, his most reliable one anyway. And now he was gone, there seemed to be a big gaping hole in his heart.
He finished the beer and stood up to get another one. He made it two steps before the doorbell rang. He checked his watch. Nearly ten. Goddamn kids thinking it was funny to knock and then run off. They wouldn’t have done that with Scout in the front yard. He ignored it and walked to the kitchen. The doorbell rang again and then someone banged on the door with a hammer fist.
His temper rose, much faster than it did when Scout was around. Dogs had calming properties, that’s what he’d learned out of all this. He ran across the lounge and threw open the door. A pair of tail-lights were disappearing around the corner. He watched them go and then turned to the man on his porch.
He was bound up, a length of rope in his mouth, taped in place. His hands were taped up too and his legs bent at the knee, also tied up with gray tape. Cheadle frowned and then looked down at the man.
“Newsome? Is that you?” He looked up and down the street. “What’s going on? Is this some kind of joke?”
Newsome couldn’t answer. He had a sign around his neck. It was crude, made of cardboard with writing that looked like a child’s. Attached to the cardboard was a collar. He lifted both from around Newsome’s neck.
He read it aloud: “I killed Scout and took his collar as a souvenir.”
Cheadle held the collar in his hand. He hadn’t noticed the collar was missing right away, there was so much else to see on that morning. And after he’d taken Scout down, he’d been too upset to think about it. Now, as he held it again, he felt something akin to a bomb detonate in his head. It flashed white hot and bright at both temples. He clamped his jaws together until his teeth hurt.
“You…you…” he started, but he couldn’t think of what else to say. His anger was all-encompassing. Instead he grabbed Newsome’s hair with one hand, his neck with the other and hauled him inside his house. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do with him yet, but it was going to take a while and it was going to be painful. For Newsome.
As he yanked him across the threshold, a book fell from Newsome’s coat pocket. Newsome screamed, not because some of his hair had come out but because he couldn’t get to his book. His story.
39
Pete Carr was awake early. He was always up and about before the rest of the family, but today he’d woken up when it was still dark. He had a headache, a real bad bitch of a headache. It felt like his skull was bruised. It probably was. He’d been outside the police station yesterday morning. He hadn’t meant to stop but the road was partially blocked and getting out of town had been near-impossible.
At first, the sight of Dave Pope hanging from a home-made gibbet had turned his stomach. The vision of his gray, bulging tongue and lifeless eyes had made him want to vomit. It wasn’t the dead man that kept him there for longer than he’d anticipated. It was the fight.
He’d never witnessed anything like it. His initial reaction had been to help the Popes fetch Dave down and let them take him away. He wasn’t friends with Dave or his family, hardly knew them in fact, but his moral compass told him it was the right thing to do.
But when he started thinking about it, he changed his mind. For a long time, he’d harbored the thought that the country was going soft. Prison sentences too lenient, courts hamstrung by an overly conservative government and the police caught up and used in political arguments, not left to get on with what they were paid to do.
Dave Pope would have been caught, eventually. But then he would be incarcerated for a few months before going to court, then he’d be tried, found guilty and sentenced. No doubt his legal team would appeal, the courts would have to fight that appeal, and all the time good old Dave Pope was getting three square meals a day and eating them in front of a forty-two inch flatscreen paid for by yours truly. This way, he hadn’t cost the taxpayer a dime. His punishment fit the crime and he was dealt with. Simple, effective and final. It was how things worked a long time ago. Biblical. How they should still work now.
Not everyone saw it that way, of course. There were people who thought Dave Pope should be cut down and delivered to his family. Those who thought it too swift, too final. Pete didn’t. He thought Pope’s corpse should be left in place for everyone to see. A warning.
When he found out about Gary Palmer, he’d been confused. He liked the Palmers, they were good people, and Gary had done him a few favors in the past. But now, he didn’t feel conflicted at all. The bastard was a pedophile and he deserved to die. Anyone who behaved liked that deserved to die. There was no confusion about it.
&
nbsp; That’s why he’d started to fight too. It had been frightening, terrifying actually; the blood, the sound of bones breaking, the cries of pain and anger. It had been like a medieval battle scene. At least that’s how Pete felt initially. Then someone punched him in the face, tried to kick him too. Then it all changed. His anger boiled up and then over. He grabbed the man, someone he vaguely recognized, and punched him as hard as he could in the gut. The man grunted, fell down and then someone else kicked his head and trampled on him. He heard him scream but didn’t have time to think before someone’s elbow caught him above the eye, filling it with blood and tears.
It was bedlam. It was hell, but the exhilaration, the adrenaline, the frustrated anger all churned together inside his guts, combining, forming a powerful knot of violence and desire. It was a beautiful, intoxicating feeling and once the knot started unraveling, it untangled itself pretty quickly. He didn’t remember anything after a while, just the feeling of his fists striking bone and flesh.
It left him with bruises and cuts but it left others dead, dying or unconscious. Sandra gave him hell about it but once he explained the situation, the cause, she relented a little. He was left wondering if there would ever be another opportunity to vent himself like that. Wasn’t there some kind of white-collar boxing he could get involved in?
Pete padded into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Boxing was all very well, but it was too controlled, too regimented and organized. If he’d learned anything at all about himself yesterday, it was that the violence was all the more satisfying because it was uncontrolled, chaotic. Brutal.
He sat down at the table and read some of yesterday’s newspaper. It would be another hour before Sandra or Emily woke up. What was with Emily these days? She was growing up, making her own decisions and starting to live her own life, but she seemed driven, more focused. He shouldn’t moan about it. There were plenty of kids her age who just sloped around, playing video games and hanging about the park. At least she seemed to be going for something. Quite what it was he hadn’t got to the bottom of yet, but with that loser Sam Portland out of the picture, she might actually meet someone worthwhile.
Not that he disliked Sam. The kid seemed to be sweet on Emily and hadn’t messed her around, not that he knew of. And he didn’t wish him ill, certainly not what happened at the school.
Pete leaned back. He should look at moving. As soon as Emily was finished at high school, they should move. The town was going to shit. When they started putting up all those cookie-cutters on the other side of town, it attracted all the wrong people. They were the ones responsible for the state of the town. He’d talk to Sandra about getting a realtor round to value the place. He just hoped things hadn’t gotten so bad that he’d lost money on it.
He tossed the newspaper aside and poured a cup of coffee. Outside, the sun was just coming up, peeking through a haze of gray cloud. Another bleak and miserable day. He walked outside, down to the mailbox and opened it. The newspaper was there but it was too early for the mailman to have been. Yet there was a letter in there, carefully pushed to the side. He pulled it out. It had his name on the front, no address and no stamp. Strange. He stuffed the paper under his arm and walked back to the house.
The letter didn’t have the feel of junk mail. The envelope was handwritten and of good quality, the kind they sent out to clients from the office when they wanted to impress them.
Pete slid his finger along the seal, easing it open. The paper was decent quality too, thick. He unfolded it and started to read.
When he finished, he let the paper slide from his fingers.
“Emily?” he shouted, barging into her room.
She was curled up in bed, the duvet pulled over her face. She groaned and then straightened her legs.
“Oww, oww,” she hissed.
Pete pulled the duvet off her.
“What the hell, Dad?” she said.
“I…I…what…” He didn’t know how to say this; he didn’t know how to ask her if what he’d read was true.
“What the hell’s going on in here?” Sandra appeared at the door. “What’re you doing, Pete?”
“I…” he started. “Go get that letter on the floor. You’ll see.” He turned back to Emily. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
She dropped her hand to her crotch, wriggled uncomfortably. He could see she was desperate to scratch herself. She tried to pull the cover back but he held on.
“Please! Dad, please!”
Sandra filed into the room behind him. She was still reading. When she was finished, she lifted her head. “Emily? What is this?” She passed the letter to her.
Emily took the letter and started reading. Pete expected a reaction, a vehement rejection of everything written in the note, a tirade against some ex-friend, maybe even some serious sobbing. What he got was unexpected.
Emily sat in bed, read the note, smiled and then shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”
“What?” he asked. “Haven’t you got anything to say about it? Why would someone write this…this…”
“It’s true,” she said. She looked confused. “Is there a problem?”
He looked at his wife. Sandra was staring open-mouthed at their daughter.
“A problem? Of course, there’s a problem!” He snatched the letter from her. Maybe he’d read it wrong, misinterpreted it somehow. He scanned it again. No, there was no mistaking the content. “It says here you’ve been sleeping with half the school, there’s a goddamn list of the boys here.” He tapped the letter. “And you’ve given them all an…an STD. What the hell, Emily? It isn’t true. It can’t be!”
“Why?” she asked. She still looked puzzled.
It was bizarre. He didn’t understand it. Was he dreaming? “Because…because…it just can’t be…you’re not old…”
“Old enough? Of course I am, Daddy! You and mom were…”
“Enough!” he shouted. “I’m going to take this to the police. It’s…it’s…”
“True!” she smiled. “I’m going to meet a rock star, you know. I’m going to meet someone who really knows how to treat a girl like me. And then I’ll know how to satisfy…”
He slapped her across the face, hard. His blood was boiling. “You shut your mouth!” he roared.
Emily held a hand to her red cheek. “Why are you behaving like this?” she asked. “It’s all in here, it’s says what’s going to happen in my story. It’s all here.”
She reached under her pillows and pulled out a little brown book. It looked old, like something from a movie about the early settlers. He snatched it from her hand and flicked through the pages, then tossed it back to her. “It’s blank, Emily. It’s empty!”
She was having a breakdown. That’s what it was, a full mental breakdown. He’d heard about it happening to kids in high school, but surely not Emily. Not Emily.
She caught the book and frowned. “That’s what Mr. Fletcher said too.” She laughed. “He’s in love with me, but I don’t want a teacher.”
“Bob Fletcher?” Sandra asked.
Emily looked up, all sweetness and light. “Yes, do you know him? He teaches math.”
Pete swallowed. No. This wasn’t happening. No.
“I meet him over the bridge most afternoons,” she said. “He’s sweet, but not very…not very…”
“Stop!” Pete shouted.
“You slept with him?” Sandra asked.
“Of course,” Emily replied.
Pete felt his vision crowd in, funneling in until Emily was just a speck in the far distance. The room slanted first one way and then the other. His blood pressure had just gone off the scale. He could feel it. He could hear it crashing and booming in his ears like massive ocean waves.
40
Dan closed the door quietly and walked to his car. It had been a late night and he didn’t want to wake Lori. After driving back from Paul’s house, they stopped at the grocery store and bought some beer. Both of them were too wired to sleep and they tal
ked until the early hours, sipping beers and trying to forget about Silver Lake.
Lori spoke about some of the things Paul had done or said to her in the last year. The pattern of escalation was clear, yet Lori hadn’t seen it. He wanted to drive her over to Rainworth to file a complaint, but she was reluctant. She didn’t want to go through the process, she just wanted to move on. He understood that.
When they were too tired to talk anymore, Dan made up the spare room, showing Lori where the bathroom was and telling her to help herself to anything in the house. She smiled and hugged him for about the tenth time that night before closing the door. Dan locked up and then double-checked before he finally went to bed.
He woke this morning at his usual time. Despite the closure of the school, he needed to get up to date with his marking. The hideous nature of recent events made him determined to at least try and keep some normality to his own life. It would all end soon and the town would get back to normal. He just had to keep working through it, helping where he could, trying to behave as if Silver Lake wasn’t doing everlasting circuits of Dante’s nine levels of hell.
He parked in his usual spot. Only a handful of staff had chosen to come in. This half of the school, well away from the sports faculty, looked as if nothing had changed. There were no signs of any of the carnage that took place yesterday. But only a short distance away, the lush grass of the football field was stained red with blood.
He made his way directly to the teachers’ lounge to make coffee before continuing down the hallway to his classroom. As he sat at his desk, he looked around the room. Three of his desks would be vacant when the school opened up again. Tom Holiday, Sam Portland and Jacob Straw were all gone. A sudden and unexpected surge of grief hit him. They were kids, just kids fooling around, trading insults like they did at that age. Maybe if he’d stopped them sooner…maybe if he’d come down on them harder, then all this wouldn’t have happened and they’d be sitting down to the usual lesson right now. He banged his fists on the desk. Why was this happening?
