by Anthony Izzo
The clerk stood up, wiped his hand on his jeans, then offered it to Matt. “Harry Pierce.”
Matt introduced himself and shook Harry Pierce’s hand. The man’s grip felt like he could squeeze iron and make it bend with no problem. It was deceiving, because Harry looked like a mound of flab.
“I had to check you out. You come in here and ask for heavy weapons, I get nervous. There are some strange folks in this town, folks I wouldn’t sell anything larger than a peashooter to. Got me?”
“I think so.” Matt took a swig off the beer and Harry did the same, and it finally occurred to Matt that he was drinking a beer at eleven o’clock in the morning. Probably too early, but it tasted good—and after the scare he just had, it calmed his frayed nerves.
“Did you say you’re from around here?”
“Born in Lincoln and lived here until I was eighteen,” Matt replied. “Then I headed out west.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“It’s a long story.”
Harry turned one of the chairs around backward and sat in it, his elbows resting on the back of the chair. “You ever notice anything strange about this town?”
There was no point in beating around the bush, because it was obvious to Matt they both knew about the town’s secrets and just how dangerous it was here for anyone who was an outsider. “You mean the creatures, the monsters, whatever it is you want to call them? Yeah, I’d guess I’d call that strange,” Matt said.
“So you know about Them.”
“More than I would like.”
“And you know why I was sniffing, checking.”
“Checking for the scent.”
Harry slurped his beer. “Yeah. If you were one of Them I would have had to done some shootin’.”
Matt didn’t doubt that.
“That’s my reason for needing the guns,” he said aloud, and took a sip of beer. “And I want to make sure that what happened to me doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
“What exactly happened to you?” Harry said.
“It’s a long story.”
“My wife whips up a mean pot roast. Why don’t you stop by for dinner sometime. Of course I’ll need to clear it with her. May take some convincing.”
“We can compare notes. Would you mind if I brought a guest?” Matt asked.
“Is he okay? You know.”
“Yes, she is. She knows about them too, but I don’t think she’s convinced herself yet.”
“Now about those weapons. Let’s see what we can do. Follow me.”
Harry got up, took another sip of beer and walked over to the door with the padlock on it. He fished a key out of his pocket and undid the lock, then opened the door and flicked a switch on the wall.
“C’mon!”
A stack of mannequins stood in the corner, one of them naked save for a camouflage baseball cap. A large box marked COLUMBIA SPORTSWEAR sat against the wall, the sleeve of a blue winter jacket poking out of the box. Across the room, a red-and-yellow banner with the Marine Corps anchor, eagle and globe hung on the wall.
“Over here.”
Matt followed Harry across the room, where a row of shiny black gun safes lined the wall beneath the banner. Harry turned the combination on one of them, then pulled it open, revealing half a dozen M-16 rifles standing on end. They had cylindrical grenade launchers mounted under the barrels.
“Pretty impressive, huh?”
“Where in the hell do you get this stuff?”
“Friends in low places,” Harry said, and gave him a conspiratorial wink. “That’s all you need to know.”
“I won’t ask.”
“Good. Now let’s get you set up with some weaponry. It’ll be better if you buy from my private stash here. That way you don’t have to fuck around with pistol permits and waiting periods. And the serial numbers have been filed off of these babies. Difficult to trace.”
After browsing the rest of the safes, Matt selected a Browning M951R handgun, capable of firing in auto or semi automatic modes, and a pistol-grip Mossberg twelve-gauge for some extra punch. These would be good for a start.
“Rafferty know about this place?”
“I think so. He’s just too busy going around busting people’s ribs and throwing them in his jail to care. I paid his predecessor a pretty nice sum—bought him a summer home, in fact—to keep quiet about this place. Although I got an extra-special present for Rafferty and his boys if they ever come for me.”
Matt wondered about Harry’s clientele—how much white powder they sold, how many of their enemies were now encased in concrete.
As if reading his mind, Harry said, “Case you’re wondering, I sell to guys who target shoot, maybe want to go off to a mountain cabin and drink Budweiser and blast targets with a little bit more than your garden variety thirty ought six. No drug dealers, any of that shit.”
Matt didn’t know if he entirely believed that statement. “No other reason you got this stash?”
Harry gave a laugh, his belly jiggling. “You see where I live, don’t you?”
Good point. If you were foolish or crazy enough to stay in Lincoln, then having some firepower at your disposal wasn’t a bad idea.
After paying for his weapons, Matt shook hands with Harry and left.
Vomit stood between Jill and punching out at three o’clock.
At two-thirty, Dorothy Gaines approached her, smiling a thin-lipped smile, announcing that the Lopez boy had thrown up all over himself and Jill was to clean it up.
Jill accepted the assignment with feigned enthusiasm, not wanting her supervisor to get the satisfaction of humiliating her. She tended to the boy with patience, asking him what his favorite sports teams and television shows were, trying to keep his wounded dignity in tact. The boy’s mother had gone outside for a cigarette—the poor kid had been in the emergency room all day waiting for a bed.
At eleven, the last thing most boys wanted was for a strange woman to see them in their jockey shorts. Jill felt for the kid, and felt even sorrier for him when he apologized for making such a mess. She assured him it was no big deal, ruffled his hair and was on her way.
After gathering her purse from her locker and punching out, she left the main hospital building and stepped into the sunshine. It was the middle of August and summer was baring its teeth, the sun blinding her for a moment until she could dig out a pair of sunglasses from her purse and get them on her face. The air felt thick and sticky; it was ninety-five, easy.
She entered the parking garage, her footsteps clacking on the pavement and echoing through the cavernous structure. It always amazed her how silent these ramps were, and she found it a little unsettling. She hurriedly took the stairway to the second level and found her Toyota.
After paying the attendant in the booth, she turned right onto Elmwood Avenue and headed toward home. The encounter with Dorothy Gaines had gotten her pipes warm, but she had kept from overheating. No reason to give Gaines justification for writing her up.
Her street was a little more than two miles away from the hospital. The houses on Wharton were mainly duplexes, built after the Second World War. Gnarled maple trees, some a hundred years old or more, provided shade for the entire street and created an effect not unlike entering a cave. Jill supposed it was good to have them because they provided at least some relief from the heat.
She saw the cop car in her driveway and immediately thought, a cop car in the driveway could not be a good sign. It was like getting a phone call at two in the morning. It was always bad news, like someone had a heart attack, or there was a horrible car crash and a family member was lying mangled on a highway.
Jill pulled the Corolla up behind the silver-and-blue patrol car, threw it in park and climbed out. The police car’s left rear tire sagged, low on air. The driver’s side window was open and voices buzzed on the radio. There was no sign of an officer.
She approached the house, which was painted yellow with black trim and always made her think of a bumblebee. The fr
ont porch ran the entire width of the house and on it was a glider that creaked with the slightest breeze. Jill kept promising herself she was going to park herself in that glider and read a good novel, but she’d been too busy.
She opened the screen door, took her keys out of her purse and inserted the house key into the lock.
The door creaked open. She would swear on her mother’s name that she’d locked it that morning. Jill looked up to see a cop taking up the doorway and gasped.
“I’m sorry, Miss Adams. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Is there something wrong, Officer?”
“Nothing wrong. And you can call me Ed. Everyone else does.”
“He gave her a big smile, but it lacked any sign of warmth. The fact that the cop had been shorted in the looks department didn’t add anything to the smile. His head was shaved bald, the forehead lined and cracked like a dried riverbed. His face looked as if it had been carved by an angry sculptor: sharp cheekbones, a pointed chin. And the eyes, seemingly locked in a permanent squint.
“How do you know my name? Are you sure I’m not in trouble?”
The cop threw his head back and laughed, revealing big, yellowed teeth. “No trouble. I make a point of having the townspeople let me know when someone new moves in. I like to come out and personally greet folks like yourself.”
Something about him made her uneasy, but if asked she could not put her finger on the exact reason. Maybe it was the fact that she knew she’d locked the door before leaving. Had “Ed” somehow jimmied the lock? Surely she was being crazy, maybe reacting to what Matt Crowe said about the cops being crooked.
“Mind if I come upstairs for a minute?”
She wanted to come up with an excuse why he couldn’t, but none came to her and after all, he was an officer of the law. What harm could come to her in the company of a police officer? “I suppose not.”
He moved out of her way and she entered the vestibule. Jill fumbled with her keys for a moment and dropped them on the mosaic tile floor. She bent over to pick them up and suddenly wished she had stooped instead. She could feel his gaze affixed to her backside, probably checking out her panty line through her white uniform pants.
Unlocking the door, she climbed the stairs and opened the big wooden door that accessed her apartment.
“I’m Ed Rafferty, by the way. I’m the police chief in Lincoln.”
Oh, great. She was dealing with the head honcho.
Jill passed through the dining room; the chief followed her.
“You’re a nurse, huh?” Rafferty hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and scanned the ceiling, as if checking the structural integrity of the house.
“Yeah.”
“I always loved nurses. Something about the uniforms.”
Maybe because you can see through the pants if you look long and hard.
“How long at the hospital?”
“A month. I lived in Buffalo before I moved to Lincoln.”
He flashed the yellowed grin again. “Well, it’s nice to have such a lovely lady gracing our community. Pretty girl like you must have a boyfriend.”
Jesus, he was getting personal. She wished he would leave. “Not at the moment,” she replied.
“Recently separated?”
“You could say that.”
Her fiancé, Jerry, had called off their year-and-a-half engagement this past January, saying he wasn’t ready for marriage. She found that odd because buying the ring and getting engaged was his idea in the first place. It was even stranger that a month after the breakup she saw him at the movies with an overweight blonde in stretch pants and a tropical shirt. The woman looked ten years older than him.
She hadn’t said anything to them, but had watched while they held hands and kissed throughout the movie like horny teenagers.
After that incident, she decided to get a job in another town. She had enough of Buffalo; it held too many bad memories. A fresh start was what she needed and she hoped to find it living and working in Lincoln.
But to her dismay, she already had to deal with a leering creep, who turned out to be the Chief of Police, of all people.
“That’s a shame,” he said. “Somebody break your heart?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Tsk, tsk. With that beautiful black hair and those killer eyes, I don’t see how anyone could resist you.”
“I really have a lot of unpacking to do. If you’ll excuse me,” she said pointedly.
He smacked his lips together. “Yes sir, irresistible.”
“I have to unpack.”
“No problem, hon.”
“Don’t call me hon.” She felt a hot flush of anger rise in her but quickly suppressed it. She was dealing with the Chief of Police, not some pickup artist on the prowl at happy hour. She didn’t want to wind up in jail.
“As long as I don’t call you late for dinner, right?” He smiled again and she thought it might be the same way a hyena smiles before tearing into its prey. His friendly small-town-cop act was wearing thin.
“Thank you for stopping by, Chief,” she said. “That door off the kitchen leads to the steps and the side entrance. You can use that.”
He winked at her. “I’ll be seeing you around.” Hands in his pockets, he ambled through the kitchen and went through the door.
Jill padded through the kitchen. She shut the door that lead to the steps. When she heard his lumbering steps hit the bottom landing, she slid the security chain in place.
CHAPTER 7
Rafferty looked up at Jill Adams’ house from the driveway. What was she doing up there right now?
Picking her lock had been a brilliant idea. He had watched her car pull in behind his, enjoyed the look on her face when she saw the squad car in the driveway. She was the same girl Dietrich had pulled into the warehouse, no doubt. Half of him wanted to rip off those white pants and have his way with her. The other half wanted to sink his teeth into her flesh, maybe tear off a piece from her buttocks while she screamed. That would come later, at Harvest time. Then she would be his. Human lust versus the need to hunt. That was pretty much what he felt toward human females.
He pulled out of Jill’s driveway and turned right, pushing the cruiser up to forty-five and cutting off a guy in a red Saab. The guy had the balls to honk his horn at him. Rafferty checked the rearview. The Saab’s front end swerved over the double yellow. I’d stop his ass if I had time, he thought.
When he pulled into the lot behind the station house, Clarence was standing at the gas pump. With one hand, he held the nozzle in his cruiser’s tank, and with the other, he idly scratched the back of his neck. That pump was another source of joy for Rafferty. Maybe once a year he caught someone trying to steal gas from it. They didn’t try to steal a second time.
Rafferty parked the car and climbed out. It was close to four P.M. and the sun was beating down on the blacktop. As he walked across the lot, the chemical smell of tar rose up and his feet smooched against the softened asphalt. He approached Clarence at the pump.
“Afternoon, Ed,” Clarence said.
“How’s Hamil doing?”
“He’s been pretty quiet. Haven’t had to beat him.”
“Too bad for you,” Rafferty said. “Release him. And tell him if he pulls that shit again he’ll get it worse.”
“Right, Chief.” Clarence shut the pump off and returned the nozzle to the holder.
Rafferty went inside. He had phone calls to make.
Inside, Linda stood at a file cabinet, its top drawer open. She jammed a report in the top drawer and slid it shut as he passed her on his way to his desk.
He dialed the number for Jimbo’s garage. The phone rang three times and Carl Downey, the other mechanic, answered.
“Get me Jimbo,” Rafferty said.
“Is this the Chief?”
“You got it. Where’s Jimbo?”
“Hang on.”
Carl hollered for Jimbo, his yell squawking in the receiver. Damned moron, Rafferty
thought. He held the receiver at arm’s length.
When he returned the receiver to his ear, Rafferty heard the clink of metal on metal, the whiz of an impact wrench and then Jimbo telling Carl to go check the rotors on the Ford in bay two.
“Jimbo here.” Old Jimbo’s voice always sounded like he had gargled with razor blades. Jimbo was the best source in town for information on Outsiders. He owned the town’s only gas station, and he saw all kinds go past his rusted pumps.
“Rafferty. Seen any action in town lately?”
“Had a young piece of tail come through here for gas a few times. Fine, she was. Said something about just moving into town. Other than that, not much.”
“I knew about her already.”
“Oh?” Jimbo hawked and spat, presumably on the floor of the garage.
“Keep your eyes open for any more newcomers. And remember, anything good you call me, got it?”
“I suppose. If I gotta share, then I gotta.”
Rafferty lowered his voice to a whisper. “No kills before Harvest. Unless I say so.”
Jimbo coughed, harsh and raspy. Then Rafferty heard the wet twhock of him spitting.
Maybe the old bastard will just keel over and die someday, choke on all that crap in his lungs. Serves him right for sucking down Pall Malls all day.
“Sure wouldn’t of minded stickin’ it to that little girlie who came through here. What’s her name, anyway?”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Rafferty warned. “I’m saving her.”
Jimbo cackled. “Well, if you want to share, Ed, you just give me a holler. My old pecker ain’t seen a beaver in years.”
“Keep it in your pants, you old pervert.”
Jimbo started coughing again and Rafferty hung up.
This town sucks, thought Bill Jergens as he sat in the waiting area at Jimbo’s garage. He had come all the way out to this pissant little town to sell a new pager account at Drover Industrial Supply. When he got there, the guy told him that Drover had already gone with Mobile Comm, Bill’s main competitor. And the asshole had told him over the phone that if Bill came out personally, they would sign with Rapid Communications, Bill’s company. He felt like threatening the guy with a lawsuit.