“Shit,” Mullins grumbled. “I wanted to keep all this out of the papers for as long as I could. But with you blowing six of them away like a one-man killing machine, I guess I gotta call county Technical Services and have them pick up the bodies. After the job you did up there, those county fuckers’ll ask all kinds of questions.”
“Save yourself the hassle, Chief,” Phil pointed out. “You can bet Natter had all the bodies removed within an hour. And when I was jogging out of there, I could see a fire start up on the hill.”
“They burned Blackjack’s place, you mean.”
“Yep, and I guarantee you they took all their dead out, too. No bodies, no shack, no evidence, no nothing. Probably just a whole lot of spent brass which the county won’t give a flying fuck about because none of the Creekers have their fingerprints on file.”
“You got that right. And Peters, you sure he was dead when you left?”
Phil gulped at the recollection. “Dead as dead can be. He took a shotgun blast full in the chest. Died in minutes.” Phil’s thoughts darkened further. “I guess I feel pretty shitty about it.”
“Shitty? Why? The guy was everything you hate. We oughta give those Creekers a trophy for putting that asshole six feet under. Saves the state big-time tax dollars. He was a scumbag PCP dealer.”
But was that really it? Was there no gray area? “Sure, Eagle was a criminal. But he was also a friend, a guy I grew up with, you know?”
“Oh, boo-hoo. You need a hanky for your tears?”
Fuck you, Phil wished he could say. Part of the reason he’s dead is because of me. It was a strange concoction of feelings; Phil really didn’t know how he should feel.
“Only thing that pisses me off about the Creekers killing his dope-dealing ass is it cost you your only good tie to Natter’s PCP net,” Mullins said. “It took you weeks to get where you were. What are you gonna do now?”
“I still got Sullivan to lean on. The county’s putting him in general pop. Give him a few weeks there, and he’ll start singing like a canary.”
“Yeah? Well, let me tell you something, Phil. We ain’t got a couple of weeks. I can only keep a lid on this shit for so long. It’s too bad you couldn’t get Natter’s lab location out of Peters before he kicked the bucket.”
“I tried,” Phil lamented. He didn’t feel very good about that, either. Pressing a guy for info as he lay dying in the dirt. “But he died before he could say anything. And that last Creeker too…” The imagery of the scene reemerged in his head. “It was really strange. He kept repeating this word: Mannona, or onnamann, or something like that.”
“Creekers talk garbage all the time. Half of ’em can’t talk at all. Their brains are all scrambled from all that family fucking they do out there in the boonies.”
“Yeah, sure, but it was also pretty weird—I had a gun to this kid’s head, and he still lunged.”
“They’re retards, Phil. They’re all a bunch of inbred crazies. And you can bet your ass before Natter sends them out on a job, he’s got them dusted to the gills. You’ve seen what PCP does to people’s heads. Turns ’em crazier than bedbugs in a whore’s mattress.”
It was another legitimate point that Mullins made, however ineloquently.
“I just don’t know what the fuck you’re gonna do now that Peters is dead. Who else have you got to sap info off of? No one.”
“Relax, will you?” Phil requested. “I’m doing the best I can, which—and pardon me if this is offensive—is a lot better than before I came on.”
Mullins nodded smugly. “Go ahead, rub it in. I ain’t arguin’ with ya. You’re right, with you we’re closer to Natter’s dust op than we’ve ever been. But what good is that gonna do me—or you, for that matter—if you get yourself killed?”
“I’m not going to get killed, Chief. Trust me.”
“Okay, killer. But tell me this. What’s Susan gonna think when she hears about your little chopping party in the woods last night? Tell me that.”
Phil looked crookedly back at Mullins. It, too, was a good question, but— “What do you mean, Susan?”
Mullins guffawed, slurping coffee and spitting tobacco juice at the same time. “Like they say, with age there’s wisdom, right? Don’t bullshit me. You and Susan got something going; I can tell just by looking at her. She’s got big-time hots for you, boy. And you got the same for her, and don’t even think about telling me otherwise.”
Was it that obvious? Phil almost wished it were so. But Mullins had made a sound inquiry. Susan would raise hell if she knew how deep Phil had gotten into this mess. And if she found out about the firefight last night…
“So how about doing me a favor, Chief? How about clamming it up to Susan about this?”
“I hear ya,” Mullins said, smiling. “And why don’t you do me a favor, huh?”
“What’s that?”
“You look like death warmed up on my grandma’s wood stove. Go home, all right? Get some fucking sleep.”
Good idea. Phil got up. “Thanks for the coffee; remind me to never drink it again. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Phil made for the door. But before he left, Mullins stopped him with a fat wave of hand.
“Oh, and Phil?”
“Yeah?”
“Tonight when you’re on the job?”
“Yeah?”
Mullins chuckled. “Try not to kill more than ten people, huh? Would ya do that?”
««—»»
Phil drove home numb. Morning sunlight glared like a great blade—an annoying scimitar—across the windshield. Only now were the realities sinking in. He’d killed men last night, a lot of men. Eagle had been killed.
And he’d nearly been killed himself.
All that adrenalin left him hungover now. He felt jittery, dry-mouthed. Two pinpoint headaches buzzed behind his eyes as he drove the Malibu down the Route, and he could swear his heart was still skipping beats in the aftermath of split-second terror.
When he parked at the boardinghouse and got out, he instinctively glanced up at Susan’s window. Her curtains were drawn. She’s asleep by now, he realized, and this depressed him. He wanted to sleep with her, not to make love, just to…sleep. After the frenzy of last night, he didn’t want to be by himself.
I want to be with her, he thought sappily.
Should he go up to her room right now and knock on her door? Should he wake her? Would she mind?
It didn’t matter; Phil never got the chance.
Just as he was about to go up the stairs to her room, the faintest sound wisped from down the darkened hall.
A moan.
Phil turned.
Something sat huddled right beside his door.
Susan? he stupidly thought. No, it wasn’t Susan.
The huddled figure moaned again. When Phil realized it was Vicki—and that something was very wrong—he ran down the hall to help her.
He knelt down; her hand reached out.
“Good God, Vicki. What happened?”
She was only partly conscious when he helped her up. Her hair was disarrayed, her clothes were torn, and when Phil looked at her face—
Oh, Christ, no…
—he could tell at once that she’d been beaten.
««—»»
“Calm down,” Phil said, gingerly daubing at the cut on her forehead. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Vicki flinched for probably the hundredth time. “That hurts, Phil!”
“Hey, I ain’t Dr. Kildare, the alcohol is going to sting a little—”
“A little? Jesus!”
“—but you don’t want it to get infected. So pipe down and let me do this,” Phil finished. There hadn’t been much blood, and the bruises weren’t too severe. It was easy, though, to see what had happened. Yeah, somebody gave her a pretty good knocking around, he observed. But why?