Jerm walked to the front of the Pleasant Prairie Trailer Haven. Saw that asshole Raleigh standing on his deck, yelling something. Jerm drifted closer, raised the Smith & Wesson. Watched the man’s expression change from hatred to fear. Squeezed the trigger before the asshole could run back inside.
Raleigh spun, a sudden red flower blooming on his chest, and went crashing through his lawn chair before toppling off the deck into the pond. The wide-open blue sky came down and wrapped Jerm in a soft blanket and he sighed, perfectly content.
He wanted more.
He kept walking, straight down the street.
The blast of someone’s horn shook him out of his reverie. He blinked and tried to look around. The world still wasn’t falling into place like he hoped, but he could manage to make sense of the images his eyes fed his brain, however nonsensical they might look.
That was a dream for you.
There was a car behind him. The driver hit the horn again. Jerm eased around the front of the car, guiding himself along the hood and up the windshield with his left hand. The cranky fat broad inside was squawking something at him, but he shut her down with the handgun. This time, he distinctly saw blood, bone, and brains, explode across the front seat.
It made him feel even better.
He kept walking. And when the first cop car came screeching to a stop, siren wailing, lights spinning, Jerm just smiled and raised his gun. The first time he squeezed the trigger, the driver’s door window exploded and the cop inside fell back against the seat. Jerm walked right up through the broken glass and pointed the barrel at the cop’s head and squeezed the trigger a second time.
Another burst of bone and blood. All over the steering wheel.
More sirens. Coming from all directions. Fucking pigs. His hands popped open the cylinder, moving all on their own, and plucked out the empty shells. He dug into his pockets and pulled out a handful of loose cartridges, all from the boxes his daddy had left. Most of the shells were either too loose or didn’t fit at all. He found five that fit well enough to slide into the chambers, snug and secure, as if they were destined to be fired from the gun. Jerm waited until he could see at least three county troopers roaring up the street right at him before he stepped forward and blasted away.
The cop cars scattered, breaking away from the street and plowing into front lawns. Jerm kept right on tracking the cruisers, squeezing off empties, lost in a series of dry clicks. The effort of standing out in the full sunlight eventually took its toll, and he let his head and the gun drop. He bent over, breathing deeply, as if he’d just sprinted down a football field. He noticed the shadows inside the dead trooper’s vehicle and crawled over the corpse, shutting the door behind him.
He slid headfirst into the shadow of the floor of the passenger seat, curling up into a ball, knees up around his ears, arms wrapped tight around his shins, locked around each elbow. Once in tight under the dashboard, head wedged between the seat and the door, feet jammed against the upright .12 gauge, he did not move again.
Jerm exhaled one last time, and his already dim consciousness faded and blinked out.
His flesh did not relinquish the hold on itself.
Sheriff Hoyt signaled to his men to run forward and surround Bryan’s cruiser. Poor bastard. Twenty-one years on the force. Three, four years until a solid pension. Then shot in the head by some underage punk. It was a goddamn waste.
He waited until they got closer before he took off in a crouch from his own vehicle and slid behind the passenger rear panel on his knees. He took a second to gather himself and said, “Go. Unload on that fucker.”
Three other county troopers rose and squeezed off a dozen shots apiece, blasting out the windows and unleashing a firestorm of lead tornados inside the car.
Two bullets caught Jerm in the chest. One went through his head.
A soft summer breeze gently dissipated the blue smoke.
Somebody shouted, “Clear!” and everybody crowded around and got their first good look at Jerm. They saw the blood and bullet holes and Sheriff Hoyt called the time of death. He pulled the nearest trooper over and told the man to get Mike Castle on the phone. Castle was the only doctor in Parker’s Mill, and served as the town coroner and pathologist if Chirchirillo was busy.
“Tell him I want him here immediately.” Dr. Castle was a little too friendly with Chief Chisel for Sheriff’s Hoyt’s liking, but he didn’t have a choice. “We got ourselves a boatload of national press in town for the goddamn funeral or whatever it is, and they’re gonna be on this like flies on shit. You make sure Mike understands we need this fucker in the freezer. They figure out a kid did the shooting, and they’re gonna start asking questions.” Sheriff Hoyt pitched his voice higher, pretending to be a reporter. “‘Why’s he so young? What went wrong? Oh, it’s such a tragedy.’ That bullshit never helps anybody. Let’s get his ass out of the equation. Let ’em speculate.”
The trooper nodded and went off to call Castle.
Sheriff Hoyt pulled two more troopers over. The street was starting to get crowded with more cruisers, an ambulance, and even that dipshit Deputy Hendricks. At least the goddamn bitch chief wasn’t here yet. “You,” he pointed at a young trooper. “Get in touch with Chirchirillo. He’s in court today, but you get him on the horn. We need somebody on our side to take care of the victims, and the Church is a good man. He’ll listen to reason, make sure things get painted the way we want ’em.”
Sheriff Hoyt told the second trooper to round up anybody that was left, including that dumbass Hendricks, and seal off the area. “This is a goddamn crime scene. The last thing we need is the press running wild through here, waving their cameras and microphones at anything that moves.”
Sheriff Hoyt stuck his head through one of the shattered windows into the sweltering heat of the county police car and shook his head. He spotted the shooter’s handgun, a nickel-plated Model 686 Smith & Wesson, down along Trooper Bryan’s feet. Something about it seemed awfully familiar, like he should know the gun for some reason. The connection held promise, but he couldn’t grasp it, and the image was gone. He filed it away to think about later and focused on the immediate problem. His men were busy with their own assignments, on the phone, or waving off reporters and a few curious townspeople.
And that left Sheriff Hoyt to follow the trail of bodies.
He had a gut feeling where the kid had come from, and started heading south. A block away, he found what was left of Mrs. Perkins. She had been a cranky old bitch, and probably would have been dead in a year or so of a heart attack because of her weight, but it was still a damn shame to go out with your blood dripping from the dashboard. From her car, Sheriff Hoyt could see the body of the trailer park landlord floating facedown in the retention pond, and it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where the kid lived.
He headed down the narrow center street, passing empty trailer after empty trailer. When he saw the body of the large woman sprawled out next to the warped wooden stairs, he wasn’t surprised. He should have known that this particular trailer had someone living there, because it looked so much worse than the rest of the trailers. He stopped, tilted his head like an old dog, and recognized the woman from her bleached blond hair.
Miss Ellie May Higgins. Again, it wasn’t a surprise.
Back in the nineties Ellie May was the hottest thing in the county and had the time of her life raising hell. Now she was in her mid thirties, mother of two, maybe three, creeping up on two hundred pounds, and living on frozen cheeseburgers, pot, and TV. She was just one of these people that, for whatever reason, you knew damn well they wouldn’t be collecting Social Security and watching the grandkids run around. The bullet had punched through the dead center of her skull, wiping out her nose and popping her brain stem, leaving nothing but a ragged hole in the middle of her face, an astonished lower jaw, and instant death.