Hi Mom.
More shots of Dead Mike came up, all broadcast-quality: Dead Mike obscured by weeds; Dead Mike from a tastefully airable angle; Dead Mike’s hand, sticking up like a sad little tree. Gary turned up the fader on the audio track.
No tears. No sobs. No heartfelt outpourings of panic.
Just the ghoulishly methodical attention to detail.
The screen blipped, and the Dead Mike shots mercifully abated.
“Oh my God,” Laura repeated. She felt suddenly very ill. This was a man she’d allowed inside her, and the fact of it left her feeling horribly unclean, like there weren’t enough baths in the world to scrub the Kirk-scum off her skin.
Gary’s reaction was far more basic.
“I’ll kill him,” he muttered, punching the controls, rewinding the tape. “I’ll break that little weasel-assed bastard in half.”
“Let’s just hold on a second,” Laura said. She was fighting to remain levelheaded here, amidst a Gordian tangle of conflicting emotion. “We don’t have all the facts in…”
“Yeah, right,” Gary cut in, cleaving right through it. He hit the “play” button, and Dead Mike came back up on the screen, the slow vulture loop closing in.
“I think we’ve got all the facts we need.”
“No,” Laura said. “We don’t.” Gary glared at her; Laura stood her ground. She took a deep, quavering breath. I will not throw up, she thought desperately. I will not throw up. “Look,” she insisted, “this is getting to me, too, okay? But there’s a larger issue here.”
“Name one,” Gary snorted and stared.
Laura grabbed the ledge of the console, fighting for internal control. “Someone or something is out there.” No. Lines of thought, racing toward each other like colliding freight trains in her skull. “It’s already killed one man…” I will not. “…and God only knows what’s on the back of that truck.” I will not… “We could have a serious hazard to the community here.”
“Not to mention a hell of a great exclusive story,” Gary added bitterly. He hit the “pause” button for emphasis; Dead Mike’s hand halted in midwave.
“Not to mention,” Laura said, her eyes flaring.
…I WILL NOT THROW UP…
Downstairs, the scanner was humming, and the radio beckoned. Kirk was out there somewhere. It frightened her to admit it, but if anyone stood to know what was happening, it was him.
“I’m going to find out what the hell’s going on here,” she said, abruptly getting to her feet. “You do what you have to do.”
Laura turned and left the studio, heading back to the newsroom, counting the steps. She rounded the corner without looking back, ducked quietly into the ladies’ room. Then she turned on all the faucets, filled the room with roaring sound.
And heaved till she thought she’d die.
Back in Studio B, Gary ran the tape back, forcing himself to watch. He hit the “pause” button; Mike’s dead, mangled hand loomed on the monitors.
“You jerk…” Gary whispered, tears welling up in his eyes.
Mike’s frozen image beckoned. They went thataway. Gary groaned.
And against his better judgment, he followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Following Harold’s epiphany, atonement seemed only natural.
By two o’clock, he had assembled the necessary documentation. Correction: evidence, he amended mentally. The little TV on the top of the file cabinet was turned on, to distract his stray anxieties and keep him company. The Eagles had just scored against the Giants in Philly; there were a couple of minutes left in the first quarter of their big interconference rivalry. And they were tied, for first place.
Two cardboard file boxes stuffed to capacity with invoices and ledgers sat on the desk before him. Sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Harold sifted and packed; names, dates, dispensation, payments, and even a special log on kickbacks. Werner’s right, he thought, we’ve been playing way too fast and loose. It’s high time we cleaned up our act.…
Starting right here.
Harry whistled as he worked; for the first time in ages, he knew he was doing the right thing. He was still nervous, still sweating, but now it was the clean sweat of penance, cool on his skin. He was scared, true, almost giddy with the exhilaration of his newfound sense of being part of a greater Whole. He could really feel the Spirit moving through him. He was certain there was a special place for him in God’s great design. A gaping hole had opened like a sore on the hide of business-as-usual in Paradise and the nation, a virulent ethical infection, and Harold Leonard was by God going to heal it.
The first step was to clean the wound.
Harry smiled; his was truly the Lord’s work. If he closed his eyes, he could practically picture it: the fissures cracking in a hundred hypocritical veneers, the poison of lies and deceit leaking from them like a hundred lanced boils. Messy at first, certainly, but essentially…
“S’cuse me,” a voice said from across the room.
“YAH!” Harry screeched.
He snapped out of his vision and whirled in an ungainly pirouette to face the man standing in the doorway. He was late thirties/early forties, with a peppered black mustache and tan, pocked skin. Dressed in jeans and flannel, muddy work boots, and a dusty plaid hunting jacket, he clutched a sweat-stained, web-backed CAT cap in his hands and stood with the antsy shuffle of a working stiff uncomfortable in offices.
“R’you Leonard?” he said, thumbing at the sign on the door and smiling uncomfortably.
“No, I, uh…” Harold stammered, flustered. “I mean, yes, I am.”
“Name’s Bill Teague,” the man said. “An’ I was hopin’ you could help me out some.”
Harry composed himself, became Harold, officious and innately suspicious. “I’m sorry, but we’re closed today,” he said.
“Please, mister.…” Bill blurted with the nervous clench of a man in a bind. “I got a problem. I, uh…” He paused then, swallowing as if forcing down a lump of undigested food. “See, I got a little ‘lectroplate shop, down Hellam way. I do okay, you know, I mean, business has been pretty good and all lately.” He shrugged. “Just got me a contract to do some circuit boards for ICC and a couple other things.”
“That’s good,” Harold said, nodding uneasily.
“Yeah, well, that’s the good news,” Bill Teague sighed. “The bad news is that I’m a little too busy.”
Harold nodded.
“I mean, who has the damn space for all that seg-ree-gation and shit that the gov’ment wants.” Teague shuffled antsily. “It’s a crock, you ask me.
“Anyway.” He halted, resumed. “I, uh…I been storing my runoff in common drums. Used to take it down to the landfill near Felton, but they won’t take any more of my loads. Say it’s too dangerous.” He spat the last word contemptuously.
“Gee, I’m sorry to hear that,” Harold said. “Life’s a bitch.”
“You got that right.” Bill Teague sighed exasperatedly and moseyed past Harold and his desk, toward the window. Harold turned, tracking with him. Harold’s newfound ethics were delicate things, not up to the pounding. He wanted very badly for the man to go.
Bill Teague looked out the window. Harold looked at Bill Teague. “Listen, I…” Harold began.
“Goddam DeeEeeArr,” Bill Teague interrupted. He turned, regarded Harold with a kind of wounded pride. “What the hell am I suppose to do? Hell, I know it’s dangerous. But I got babies to feed.”
Harold sympathized. Bill Teague looked at him, then away again. Uncomfortable. The Eagles-Giants game gave way to commercials and a test by the Emergency Broadcast System.
“Anyway,” he said, “I hear you can take a load off people’s hands. I’m desperate to get rid of it.”
There was an urgency in the man’s tone that got under Harold’s skin. A truncated version of a deep baritone boomed from the television’s tinny speaker. This is a test.…it said.
“I’m sorry,” Harold said, shaking his head.
> “I’ll pay,” Bill Teague offered, still staring out the window. “Top dollar.”
For the next sixty seconds this station will be conducting a test…
“I don’t think I can help you,” Harold reiterated, stepping forward, feigning calm as his heart pummeled his rib cage like a prizefighter.
“Please, mister,” Bill Teague pleaded. “I got nowhere else to go.”
This is only a test…
“I really can’t help you right now,” Harold said, punctuating it with a deep breath of finality. “I’m very sorry.”
Bill Teague sighed and turned around to face Harold. “I understand, and I respect that,” he said. He smiled resignedly and held out his left hand. “Thanks for your time.”
Harold extended his left hand in return. They clasped firmly if awkwardly and shook, mano a mano.
On the television, bars and tone, going boooooooooooooooooo…
“By the way,” Harold asked, “just out of curiosity, who was it that told you I would ‘take a load’ off your hands?”
boooooooooooooooooooo…
Bill Teague looked around the office, then back to Harold. “Oh, a friend of yours,” he said.
“Name of Blake.”
Harold felt his scrotum shrivel as if dipped in liquid oxygen. The good ol’ boy veneer dropped away like dross. And two things became instantly clear.
Bill Teague’s hand was smooth, uncalloused, thoroughly professional.
And Bill Teague’s hand would not let go.
Harold’s back was to the door; he caught a shadow of movement out of the corner of his eye. He tried to turn. Bill Teague would not let go. Harold screeched like a weasel as a much larger hand came down behind him, thick fingers clamping around his neck as if to pinch his head off.
The fingers found the pressure points in the clefts of Harold’s collarbone as if they’d lived there all their lives. They made themselves at home.
And squeezed.
Pain exploded in his head, his spine, his entire central nervous system. Harold’s threshold was low to begin with, and this was expert pain, as debilitating as it was economical. It washed over his defenses like a tsunami over a sand castle. Harold screeched and sank to his knees, assuming a position of purely functional prayer.
“AHHHHH! P-please…!” he whimpered, wholly involuntary. His head tried to sink into his shoulders like a turtle’s, was held in place by the big cruel hand. He could not turn, could not move, could breathe only with great effort. He struggled like a two-hundred-forty-pound Roger Rabbit in a leg-iron trap.
“Pul-l-leeeeease!”
The pressure eased off, ever so slightly. The contact remained, hovering on the brink of agony. Harold blinked, tears brilliant in his eyes, and sucked air as if it were on sale. He looked down, could barely make out the tips of shoes behind him. Loafers. With tassels.
Bill Teague was still holding his left hand, attached now to his fully outstretched arm. Harold looked up, terrified.
“W-whatdoyouwantwhyareyouhere?” he gasped, an inchoate verbal spew. The pain returned, saying shut up. Harold squeaked and obeyed.
“Mr. Blake asked us to come see how you’re doing,” Bill said pleasantly. “And what you’re doing.”
He perused the opened file cabinets, the boxes on Harold’s desk. Harold followed his gaze as best he could, mewling all the while. “I was consolidating documents…” he blurted.
The big hand squeezed and Harold went oof. His sphincter pooted a waft of purest eau de fear. Bill Teague shook his head.
“Tsk tsk tsk tsk.”
He reached his right hand into the inside pocket of his hunting vest and withdrew a glassine packet. He held the packet to his lips, delicately tearing the edge with his teeth.
“What’s that?” Harold creeched, terrified. Bill Teague smiled and shook out the contents one-handed. The glassine packet fluttered to the floor.
Harold glimpsed the contents.
“NO!” he shouted, a statement of pure emphatic will-to-live. He pushed upward with every ounce of strength he had and several that he didn’t.
The spirit was willing.
But the flesh…
It was ridiculous. Harold Leonard was an overweight, aging amateur against professionals, and he was utterly at their mercy. The sum total of his life-energy bought him a half an inch of freedom and another blindingly brutal clampdown.
For his part, Bill Teague just smiled a little harder and flipped off the safety cap. He held the syringe up to the light. The needle gleamed, short and sharp and businesslike. Gracefully he pulled the plunger back, then twisted Harold’s arm outward, pitting radius against ulna until the soft pocket in his elbow coughed up a faint bulge of vein.
Harold yowled like a cat trapped in a moving car. Bill Teague twisted harder. “Shhh, shhhhh,” he said. “Hold still.” He placed hard needle against tender skin, resting it on the soft antecubital hump.
Harold blubbered, his breathing quickly giving way to sobs. “Wha-what are you putting in me?”
Bill looked at him, as if genuinely surprised. “Why, nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
He smiled.
And plunged the needle in.
Harold went rigid as ten cee-cees of nothing at all was injected and went hurtling through his circulatory system, a runaway boxcar of oxygen on a collision course with his heart. His assassins let go, no longer concerned. He thrashed his way straight to the floor.
And there was maybe a second of useless, unbankable time left in Harold’s cosmology. Just long enough for panic to collide with regret. Actualize futility. Vaporize God’s grand design.
Then the embolism hammered his heart, squashing it like an overripe tomato inside his chest. His final moments harbored no thought at all. Just meaningless pictures and pain.
And then, like yesterday’s garbage, Harold Leonard went away.
They lingered a bit, till the twitching subsided. They could afford to. All on his own, Harold had done a good deal of their work for them.
By God, Bill thought, he even boxed it for us.
On the floor, Harold was turning just right. Cool and livid.
Just right.
Bill Teague was pleased. Normally, they didn’t work Sundays, but what the hell. They’d been hipped to the weakness, and offered a bonus if they made it seem natural.
Piece o’ cake.
Careful not to leave any prints, he picked up the phone, punching in the number with the hypo’s plunger. The party picked up on the first ring.
“Yes?”
“Uh, hi, just wanted to let you know that everything is fine.”
“Everything?”
Bill checked Harold’s postmortem progress. Natural causes all the way. Old ticker just gave out. From the stress.
“Couldn’t be better,” he said.
There was a pause of audible relief on the other end of the line.
“That’s nice.”
They hung up without saying good-bye. The delivery was complete. Now the pickup.
And then…
On the tube, the Giants and the Eagles were back for action. Bill Teague looked at his watch. One thirty. He smiled and grabbed a box off the desk, motioned his partner to do the same.
“C’mon,” he said. “It’s Miller time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Boonie awoke to the sound of the front gate’s annihilation.
Out of blackness, he rose: a blackness so deep and thorough that it rose up with him, refusing to succumb to the light. He felt it in the heaviness of his flesh, the whispering hollowness of his bones. He felt it buzzing inside his head, a million hornets in angry flight.
Or maybe it was the roar of the truck, echoing inside his head as it blew apart the gate, drew closer. Echoing louder closer there, directly outside the shuttered window. He struggled to pull himself upright, vision straining through the hair-thin venetian slats of light. But the muted sun needled in through his one good mucus-tacked eye. It floode
d his head, sagged him back to the sheets.
It was dim in the room, and the air was rich with sickly ammoniacal stench. It cloyed in the tubes between nostril and bowel, esophagus and ischio-rectal ravine. Woozy and weak to the brink of paralysis, he helplessly laid there and listened.
His face, against the pillow, felt all wrong.
Outside, the door of the truck flew open. The door at the front of the trailer slammed shut. Boonie could hear the whickering of the chains as Coonie and DamDog yowled and snapped; could hear his father’s voice, bellowing anger as it poured down the steps.
Could hear the rage wilt and blacken to terror.
Could hear the terrible laughter begin.
“Urn,” his own voice croaked. “Ah-harn.” His face, like the rest of him, refused to cooperate. Like there was an inch of foam rubber and zero sensation between his cheek and the pillowcase, his body and the world. It put even his panic at a distance as he squirmed against the surface of the sheets.
He heard the familiar crack of his old man’s .45. It did not stop the laughter. Over the howling-dog hysteria, something went snap.
And Otis’s horror ballooned into scream.
Boonie began to move then, something sparking to life in his nervous system as he listened to his daddy die. There was no second shot, but the screaming went on and on, ratcheting upward as thick bone snapped and wetly folded, doubled and snapped again…
…and Boonie rolled off the bed, plummeting to the floor as chewing sounds met screaming sounds and cranked them to a new plateau, high-pitched titter rising up to punctuate the mayhem…
…as a three-hundred-plus-pound Otis-shaped wishbone ruptured, fractured, tore apart while Boonie, inside, crawled across the floor, trying to escape the sounds it made…
…and then the scream died, swallowed and chawed and disappeared forever.
For a long crazy moment, there were only the dogs, tearing into each other, rabid with fear.
The moment stretched…
Then he heard the footsteps coming, into the trailer and right down the hall. He understood who the laughter was aimed at. Understood that there was no hope. The certain knowledge froze him in the middle of the floor, staring up at the flimsy door. The only way out. Or in…
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