The Devil's Pets

by Alex Siegel

  "Yes, sir," Stony said humbly.

  "The PEA has strict policies for a reason. We are surgical and covert. We don't leave evidence behind."

  "Orcus isn't trying to hide his crimes."

  "I can't control Orcus," Robertson said, "but I can control you. A scrub team can be there in two hours, but I would rather you clean up your own mess immediately. Those arms dealers must never talk to the police. Make this problem go away."

  "What are you saying, sir? You want us to kill them?"

  "I don't have the authority to give that order. Do as you see fit. After you're done, return to Agent Gritz. Follow her instructions to the letter. She is in charge of that territory, not you." The call ended.

  Stony's face became warm. He returned the phone to Lewis.

  "We fucked up," Stony said to Mia.

  "I heard," she replied. "Let's go back."

  They somberly walked back towards the metal barn behind the gun shop. Lewis stayed with the car.

  "What does Robertson expect us to do?" Mia said. "Does he really want us to murder two civilians?"

  "Or let them go," Stony said. "I'm pretty sure they won't go to the police and file a complaint."

  "But they're scumbags. They sell weapons to terrorists and cop killers."

  "You don't know that."

  "If they had legitimate customers," Mia said, "they wouldn't hide the merchandise in a secret storage room with a boobytrap bomb on the door. What kind of person buys top-of-the-line machine guns on the black-market? We were told before we came here that Elijah sells to gangsters. I say we deal out some justice."

  He sighed. Technically, the PEA wasn't in the business of punishing sinners. Their job was to suppress unlawful supernatural activity. Orcus was a target because he had made a deal with a demon. Officially, the PEA considered the murders and kidnappings to be incidental.

  "OK," Stony said, "but I don't like it. Feels like a big step backwards for us. We're supposed to be holy warriors, not murderous vigilantes. This reminds me of the bad old days, when making problems go away was something I did regularly. We need to do better."

  They entered the barn and walked down the stairs to the secret room. Elijah and his brother were still tied up on the floor. The brother had woken up though.

  "I'll kill you!" he yelled. "Both of you are dead meat!"

  Stony looked at Mia. "You want to take care of this?"

  "Could you, darling?" she said. "You can make it quick and painless. I've caused enough pain today."

  Stony walked over to Elijah's brother, grabbed his head, and twisted very hard. His neck broke with a loud pop, and his face ended up pointing backwards. The body twitched once and then became still. Stony watched for a moment to make sure the brother had stopped breathing. Spinal injuries could be tricky. Severed nerves didn't always lead to a quick death.

  "Hey," Elijah said in a fearful voice, "let's talk about this. There is no reason to kill me."

  "Oh?" Stony said.

  "Maybe I did meet the kidnapper."

  "Really? What did he look like?"

  Elijah had a panicked expression. "Uh, was he black?"

  "Wrong answer." Stony walked over to Elijah.

  "I have money! Lots of money! How much do you want? You can walk out of here with a million dollars in cash. Just let me live."

  Stony wanted to give a sermon about the price of evil and the value of money in the afterlife. He could've spent an hour explaining the mistakes Elijah had made. Stony knew those poor choices all too well. He wanted Elijah to feel remorse and guilt in the end. Perhaps he would die a slightly better man.

  Instead, Stony reached down and twisted Elijah's head until the neck snapped and became loose.

  "Thank you," Mia said.

  "We're not done," Stony said. "We need to do something about the evidence. There can't be any sign of foul play." He looked at the room full of guns and frowned.

  "Let's just leave the bodies down here and seal the room. If we hide the entrance, nobody will ever know this chamber exists."

  "Dead bodies stink. Police dogs will smell the rotting meat even from outside."

  "True." She pursed her lips. "And I'm sure other people know about this room. Somebody will come down here eventually. I suppose we'll have to work a little harder at cleaning up our mess. Why don't we bury the bodies in the woods?"

  Stony looked at the corpses thoughtfully. The hardest part of getting away with murder was eliminating the body. Making two hundred pounds of raw meat disappear without a trace was a difficult trick, but without that evidence, the police had a much weaker case. Usually it was impossible to prove a murder had even happened. As a criminal, Stony had taken full advantage of that fact, and now he would do so again.

  "That's a little too close to the scene of the crime," he said. "The police might look for an unmarked grave in those woods. I would. We have to put the bodies in the trunk of the car, drive them far away, and bury them someplace safe. But before we take them anywhere, I need to prep them. I'll use the creek."

  Mia grimaced in disgust. "Yuck. While you're busy with that, I'll clean up all the blood splatters and any other evidence I can find."

  "OK. Send Lewis around with the car, and I'll need four garbage bags."

  She glanced at the two bodies. "Four?"

  "That's what I said."

  Stony loaded a corpse onto his shoulder. He carried it up the stairs, out of the barn, and to the nearby creek. He found a spot where trees provided privacy and dropped the corpse onto the soft, moist dirt.

  The creek was about four feet wide. Water flowed smoothly over rocks covered with moss. Perfect, he thought.

  Stony retrieved the second body and laid it near the first. Then he went back to the barn a third time to get some tools. He found a basic handsaw, wire cutters, and a small sledgehammer, which was just what he needed.

  He went back to the bodies. He stripped off all his own clothes and set them on dry grass. Then he stripped Elijah and his brother. Clothes were important identifying evidence and needed separate handling. Stony dragged Elijah's corpse into the creek. The cool water felt refreshing and invigorating on a hot day.

  Stony began his prep work by snipping off the body's fingerprints. Little chunks of pink flesh floated down the creek and out of sight. Then Stony smashed Elijah's face with the sledgehammer until every bone was shattered and the face was unrecognizable pulp. Stony made sure to knock out every tooth so that even dental records would be useless.

  The final step was sawing the body in half by cutting across the abdomen. Doing so made the corpse easier to transport and allowed bulky, messy fluids to drain out. Stony went to work with the saw, and the creek soon ran red with blood. Some pieces of internal organs also washed out, but he wasn't worried. A bird or fish would eat them. He waited until the water was completely clear, and then he shoved the two halves onto the dirt beside the creek.

  Stony was starting on the second corpse when he heard a voice.

  "Stony?" Agent Lewis called. "Where are you?"

  "In the trees," Stony said.

  A moment later, Lewis found Stony in the creek. When Lewis saw the mess, he immediately threw up onto the grass. He gagged several times before finally settling down.

  He wiped his mouth with his hand. "What in God's name are you doing?" he croaked.

  "We're going to bury these bodies in a place where they won't be found," Stony said, "but just in case, I'm making them hard to identify."

  He began to snip off the fingerprints from the body he was holding.

  "You're naked!" Lewis said.

  "I don't want to mess up my clothes. Did you bring the garbage bags?"

  Lewis held up a handful of green, plastic bags.

  "Good," Stony said.

  He used the sledgehammer next. The sound of crunching bones was like an old, familiar song to his ears.

  Lewis made a choking noise and walked away. Stony heard the agent try to throw up again, but there was nothing left.
After a moment, Lewis returned, his face white.

  "That's horrible," he said. "How can you be so calm?"

  "I've done this kind of thing before," Stony said. "I used to be a professional killer."

  "You still are as far as I can tell."

  Stony considered that statement as he pounded the corpse's face until it looked like chopped hamburger. Then he started with the saw.

  "Who taught you this?" Lewis said in a tone of disbelief.

  "I'm self-taught."

  Stony cut into the bowel, and the stink hit him square in the nose. There was nothing like the smell of warm, fresh human feces.

  "What everybody says about you is true."

  "What's that?" Stony said.

  "That you're a cold-blooded monster who should be kept under lock and key. A piece of Hell is still inside you."

  Stony watched colored fluids wash down the stream. The human body was mostly water, although that wasn't obvious until one took a body apart.

  "Are you almost done?" Lewis said.

  "Just about. You can start bagging the other body, but be careful. Don't get any mud on your clothes. Neatness counts."

  After Stony finished prepping the second corpse, he washed himself and his tools in the stream. He made sure every speck of blood and meat was gone. Then he got out and helped Lewis with the cleanup. Four hunks of meat and bone went into four plastic bags.

  Finally, Stony got dressed. He was still wet but didn't care.

  Lewis had parked the car on the grass near the barn. They loaded the garbage bags and the victim's clothes into the trunk. The fit was tight, but the corpses were still fresh and flexible. In a few hours, that wouldn't be the case, but by then, they would be in the ground.

  Stony heard the sound of machinery inside the barn. He looked through the door.

  Mia was using the hoist to lower the truck bed. She had already closed the secret entrance to the weapons cache and had smoothed the dirt covering.

  "Are you finished cleaning up?" Stony said.

  She nodded. "I wiped up every drop of blood I could find." She pointed to a bucket, a sponge, and a bottle of bleach.

  "Even down below?"

  "Of course. I'm not an amateur. Even if the police find the guns, they won't have any evidence of murder."

  "The bodies are in the car," he said. "We're ready to go as soon as you are. Did you happen to see a shovel while you were wandering around?"

  "No. We'll have to buy one. Give me five more minutes, and then we can go."

  * * *

  By the time Stony, Mia, and Agent Lewis returned to the Jackson Police Department, it was the middle of the afternoon. Finding a spot to bury the bodies and then burying them had taken three long hours. Stony was feeling time pressure. Every minute that passed allowed Orcus to get further away or deeper into hiding. Stony wouldn't let himself think about the horrors that the kidnapped children might be experiencing.

  The crowd in front of the police station was even thicker than before. Stony recognized a couple of national reporters in the mix. The media had erected tents on the lawn to serve as temporary broadcast studios, and thick cables snaked everywhere. Some people carried signs as if they were attending a political protest. The signs displayed slogans like "SAVE OUR KIDS" and "KILL THE KIDNAPPER!"

  A solid line of police officers blocked the front door, and they were holding riot shields. Security was even tighter than before. Getting inside the station was going to be challenging.

  "I'll call Agent Gritz," Lewis said. "She can get us in."

  He used his phone, and the response made him widen his eyes in surprise. He hung up.

  "What happened?" Stony said.

  "She doesn't want us in there," Lewis said. "She's coming out instead."

  A minute later, the African-American woman came out of the building. She pushed past the police line and forced her way through the crowd. She spotted Stony, Mia, and Lewis standing together and came over.

  "I talked to Director Robertson," Gritz said. "He seemed upset. According to him, your interview with the arms dealer was unproductive and ended badly."

  "That's correct," Stony said.

  "He was vague about what actually transpired though. Apparently it's none of my business."

  "That's also correct."

  She stared at him. "The police and the FBI know I sent people out there, and they'll wonder what happened. You were gone for a suspiciously long time. I'm very... concerned about questions being asked."

  "Don't worry," Stony said. "We cleaned up our mess."

  Gritz turned to Lewis with a questioning expression.

  "Yes, ma'am," he said. "It was handled with remarkable attention to detail."

  She narrowed her eyes and then nodded. "I'll take your word for it. The timing of your arrival is fortuitous. We just got another lead, a good one this time."

  Stony leaned forward. "What?"

  "A bank in town filed a CTR this afternoon."

  "A CTR?"

  "A currency transaction report," Gritz said. "Financial institutions are required to file one when there is a large cash transaction. It's part of anti-money laundering law. In this case, a man made a deposit of thirty thousand dollars in cash. According to the bank teller, it was all crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, already in bundles."

  "That's suspicious."

  "His name is Marvin Parker. He breeds and sells horses on a farm south of Jackson, and according to his tax returns, business is bad. He has no criminal record. No obvious reason to have that much cash on hand. Another agent is already observing the subject. I want you to join him and move in as a group. Follow standard procedures this time. Lewis, you're in charge. Don't let these other two push you around."

  Lewis looked at Stony and Mia nervously. "Yes, ma'am."

  Chapter Twelve

  Lewis drove past a sign that read, "Rebel Yell Quarter Horses." He parked on the side of a dirt road.

  Stony looked out the window at green fields bordered by wooden fences. A few horses stood at troughs containing feed or water. Other horses were wandering around in the sunlight, accompanied by flies. A big, red barn needed repairs and fresh paint. Tall trees crowded together on the outskirts of the farm.

  Stony, Mia, and Lewis got out of the car. A man with red hair was crouched behind a bush, and he was clearly the PEA agent they were supposed to meet. He was looking through binoculars at the horse farm.

  Stony walked over to him. "What's the situation?"

  The agent with red hair turned and said in a quavering voice, "You're Stony and Miasma?"

  "Get over it. Report."

  "Yes, sir. Mr. Parker is out performing chores. He is working in the barn at the moment. I didn't see any weapons or any other signs of a threat."

  "OK," Lewis said. "I'll do the talking. Everybody else watch my back and cover the exits."

  The four of them walked down a private driveway made of dirt. Stony kept an eye on a yellow farmhouse, but he didn't see any movement. Hopefully Parker lived alone. The group of agents entered the barn.

  An old man was scraping a horse's hoof. He was wearing a blue shirt and a leather apron over blue jeans. His face was tanned, but a pale bald scalp indicated he usually wore a hat. Brown muck encrusted his boots.

  He looked up. "Can I help you?"

  "Mr. Marvin Parker?" Lewis said.

  "That's right. Who is asking?" Parker spat a little tobacco juice onto the ground.

  Lewis walked up to Parker. Stony, Mia, and the other agent spread out and surrounded the subject to prevent him from escaping.

  "We're federal agents." Lewis flashed his badge. "You're under arrest."

  Parker's eyes widened. "What?" he said in a fearful voice. "Why?"

  "Violations of the 2003 Excessive Cash Transaction Act and the 1994 Commerce Transparency Law. These are serious felonies."

  Stony fought an urge to smirk. He didn't think either law was real.

  "Never heard of those laws," Parker said. "What did I
do?"

  "You deposited a suspiciously large amount of cash earlier today," Lewis said. "Now, you seem like a good, honest, hard-working man. I'd hate to see you waste away in federal prison because of one terrible error in judgment. If you cooperate, we might consider leniency. Where did you get those stacks of crisp, hundred-dollar bills?"

  "I did nothing wrong! A man bought an old horse trailer from me last night. He paid in cash, which I thought was suspicious, but I had to sell. I needed the money! Not a lot of customers for my horses these days."

  Lewis furrowed his brow. "Describe this man."

  "Big guy with a big beard. Mix of blond and brown hair. He had a hat and sunglasses even though it was after sundown. A woman was in the truck, but I didn't get a good look at her."

  Stony perked up. That's Orcus!

  "Truck?" Lewis said.

  "A white Ford pickup truck," Parker said. "I hitched the trailer to it."

  "What kind of trailer exactly?"

  "A 1990 Phoenix Coach Works big enough for nine horses. Stainless-steel on the outside, roomy on the inside. I hated to see it go."

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. "Big trailer."

  Stony was thinking the same thing. That trailer was perfect for carrying a large number of children and dogs across the country.

  "What's really going on?" Parker said. "Hard to believe it takes four federal agents to arrest one old man."

  "It's possible the man you met last night was the one who kidnapped those kindergarteners this morning," Lewis said.

  Parker gasped.

  "The kids are probably being held in your trailer right now."

  "My God." Parker's face became ashen. He put his hand to his forehead.

  "Tell me everything again in as much detail as you can remember."

  "Of course."

  Lewis used his phone to record the interview, which went on for some time. He was relentless in his questioning. Parker even provided the license plate number of the horse trailer. Lewis sent the audio file to Agent Gritz and Director Robertson.

  Afterwards, the four members of the PEA left the barn and walked back to the road. When they had some privacy, Lewis put his phone in speaker mode and called Gritz.