Just a boy. There’d been no indication that Matty even remembered seeing him come out of his mother’s room.
He saw her fight with Lonny. Now Lonny’s dead.
And last night he was in some kind of contact with Chabwok, what ever Chabwok is. He couldn’t stop thinking about the books they’d been reading, especially the ones about psychotic killers.
What if Chabwok were just another part of the boy? Another personality? What if…?
He shook his head. I must be losing my mind. There had to be another explanation. All the talk of monsters and curses must be getting to me. All that crazy stuff could confuse anyone.
But what if Lonny came here the night of the storm? Came looking fo r Athena to continue their argument about his moving in? What if he came here and found the boy alone?
He moved away from the back door. Nobody’s going to blame the boy. He poured himself a glass of lemonade. It tasted warm and watery now, and feathery things like plastic shavings floated on the surface. They blame me. He grimaced as he downed the sweet liquid.
I go out on a routine assignment, and my partner winds up dead…and I’ve got some cock-and-bull story about going for a drive and coming back to find him torn apart. Not my fault. But I left him there. Knowing there was a killer in the woods, I took his gun and drove away.
I might as well have killed him. The phone was already in his hands. It’s just like with those pineys he was always going on about. I killed him and took his woman.
“So, Steve, when you coming back to work?” Phone cradled on his shoulder, Frank Buzby shuffled papers while pretending to look for the bulletin Steve wanted. As he scratched the graying tangle of hair at his open shirt, his face bore an expression of annoyed curiosity. “So now tell me again why it is you want to know about this.” Silently, he beckoned to the other cop in the office. “Uh-huh.”
Billy Mills—a shy man with no neck and an upper body like a log—approached the desk. Listening in and trying to read his boss’s signals, he passed paper and pencil when Frank motioned for them.
“Uh-huh.” Buzby scribbled. “Yeah, sure. Where’d you say he was hiding again? Sure, I gotcha. You’re gonna check it out yourself, and I’ll wait to hear from you. Right.” He grinned at Mills. “So when you coming back? Huh? Oh, Cathy’s fine, I guess. I ain’t seen her. You know how busy we are, shorthanded like this. Well, listen, Steve, thanks a lot for checking in, and you’ll call me soon as you know something, right?” He hung up and leaned back in his chair. “That moron.” He crowed with laughter.
“What?”
“We done finally caught a break, that’s what.” Frank sat up straight, reached for the phone again. “And he wants to handle it hisself.”
“You mean the cars? You hear something?”
“The police dick just told me how to get the heat off a us and the troopers outta the frigging woods.” Buzby rummaged through his desk. “So we can get back to business.”
“’Bout time.”
“Let me tell ya—ain’t never been so frigging paralyzed. Got eighteen cars just sitting. What’s the number for the state cops? Never mind.” He dialed. “Listen, go outside and use the other phone. See if you can get hold a some a your buddies, then get your partner in here. Hello, operator? Connect me with the state police. Yeah, it’s an emergency call from Chief of Police Frank Buzby.”
Distant cries drifted down the road, then a cracking noise. As he twisted the steering wheel, he saw a puff of white smoke ahead.
He cursed himself. As a wave of uniformed troopers zigzagged toward the central buildings, he spotted Frank’s cowboy hat and a couple of people he recognized as Buzby’s cronies.
The buildings were surrounded.
He should have guessed what Buzby would do, should have gotten here sooner. But Athena hadn’t wanted to be left alone, and he’d promised to file a missing-persons report about Pamela, and then…
A trooper waved him back. He left the Volks on the road.
The clearing blazed white as Frank’s vigilante buddies and the troopers converged on what had to be the gin mill. As Steve ran forward, someone yelled, “Hey you, get back! You up there, quit firing until I say so!”
He flashed his ID and was let through. An officer kept shouting at the paint-blistered building, ordering someone to come out, to throw down any weapons. “Nobody wants to hurt you now. Just do what I’m telling you.”
The troopers began to mutter. Again, Steve spotted Frank’s cowboy hat and moved toward it. Suddenly, the troopers grew silent.
The door to the gin mill slowly opened.
“That’s it. Come on out now.”
At first, nothing moved in the shadowed doorway, then a wild thing charged, a knife clutched about its head with both hands. With an animal cry, it streaked for the nearest cop.
Steve heard a nearby rookie whisper, “Oh Jesus.” Then guns began to go off. He saw Buzby rock backward with the recoil of his rifle.
The redheaded man with the knife jerked from side to side, clouds of dust rising from his shabby clothing with each blast. It seemed he would never hit the ground.
“Stop firing!” Steve heard himself shouting. “For God’s sake, stop firing!” Then others took up the cry. He was already running forward when a final burst rolled the body onto its back.
Steve reached it first. He knelt. He couldn’t guess how many shots had struck their target, but only reddening shreds of clothing maintained the figure’s shape. A bullet had cracked the skull open just above the left temple; yet the broken face smiled. Like seeds spilling from a sack, the contents of the split forehead seeped out and streaked the face, mingling with and becoming part of that horrid, secret smile.
He felt sand in his teeth. In all probability, this was the man who killed Barry. Yet he felt no hatred. Only pity and disgust. He could see the troopers cautiously entering the gin mill, and men gathered about him now as well, staring at the ruined corpse. And still he felt no sense that justice had been done, not even as he pried the knife from the man’s clenched fist. It was an ordinary Buck knife, the handle mother-of-pearl, its milky opalescence spotted with blood.
“I don’t know as you should be touching that.”
“Leave him be. That’s the guy whose partner got it.”
He dropped the knife beside what remained of the stomach. He turned his back on the gathering men and caught a glimpse of Buzby—grinning, deep in a furtive-looking conversation with a state police captain. We’ll never know now, not for sure. Sick and angry, Steve hurried away, not trusting himself to speak to anyone. Never know the why or the how.
“Hey! There’s a kid up here!” A trooper stuck his head through the narrow second-story window. “He’s all tied up!”
With a single movement, the crowd ran toward the building. From inside, somebody began screaming “Ernie!” over and over in a desperate panic. A cop bellowed at the trooper in the window.
“What? Yeah, he’s all right,” he shouted back. “Just looks a little spooky.”