Home Improvement: Undead Edition

by Harris, Charlaine

  He found Austin Cramer there just as he had expected—studiously scrubbing blood off the wall of the tomb. DeFeo shook his head; he’d scrubbed the damned tomb already. Austin Cramer had apparently been busy that night with another initiation. And now he was trying to clean it all up. Interesting. Didn’t look like the work of a rabid murderer.

  Austin Cramer didn’t hear him at first. He was too busy inspecting the tomb and scrubbing.

  Standing just a few feet behind him, DeFeo said, “Well, this is a new twist.”

  Austin nearly leaped atop the tomb, he was so startled by the sound of DeFeo’s voice. He backed against it. He didn’t look like a great cult leader, but a young man of about twenty-two, terrified.

  Austin shook his head, unable to find speech at first.

  “I already did that tonight,” DeFeo said, his voice harsh. “Thanks to you, I spend half my life trying to take care of that tomb.”

  Austin worked his mouth for a few minutes. “I’m sorry, hey, it’s not like it’s your home or anything—it’s your old family tomb.”

  “It’s way more than just a home; it deserves more reverence than a home,” DeFeo said, his tone just as harsh. “And you spend your life making sure that it constantly needs domestic repair!”

  “I’m sorry; I swear to God I’m sorry.”

  “You need to be sorry to that poor girl you ripped to shreds,” DeFeo said. “I’m taking you to the station where you’ll be arrested—not for vandalism. For murder.”

  “No, no—that’s why I’m here, and you have to know it! I didn’t do it. I swear to God, I didn’t do it! Look—you can see. I was here tonight! I was here, with a girl. I couldn’t have done it. Please, I swear to you. You have to help me.”

  “Why would I want to help you?” DeFeo demanded.

  “Because you’re a decent guy—and you know I didn’t do it!”

  DeFeo looked at Austin Cramer and, for the first time, realized that the little prick was actually intelligent. He was staring at him with a strange certainty and pride, as if he knew the facts of the situation and believed that DeFeo saw them clearly as well. He was also terrified, cleaning off the blood because he knew that his vandalism was like a bone stuck in DeFeo’s throat. It had been a game of cat and mouse with the two of them, DeFeo always furious and longing to pounce, and Austin Cramer always happy he could get away with it. He was careful not to leave prints or evidence, and he almost always picked nights when DeFeo was working. They both knew the cops didn’t have the time to sit on the cemetery nightly, and they hadn’t a whit of proof or evidence against him.

  Austin had to be absolutely scared silly about what DeFeo just might do to him—after all, the two of them were alone in a dark cemetery. DeFeo could beat him to hell—and claim that he’d swung first. He could probably get away with shooting him, and the law and the people of the city would look at the situation with blind eyes—good riddance to the devil incarnate.

  But he was here, and he was facing DeFeo, shaking, but desperate and determined.

  “You didn’t do it?” DeFeo asked quietly.

  “I swear to you! As God is my witness—”

  “God?” DeFeo interrupted.

  “Oh, please, you know that my thing is an act! Hell, I finally got the bullies to quit picking on me! The Harley dealer gave me a big bike! Girls flock to sleep with me. I couldn’t get a girl to let me buy her a beer on Bourbon Street before all this. It’s an act, man, please—look at me! You’ve got to believe me—and help me! If the cops pick me up, I’ll be convicted before they seat a jury!”

  He is nothing but a scrawny, computer-geek nerd—who has found an act, DeFeo thought.

  “You keep wrecking my house!” DeFeo told him.

  “It’s a tomb, man, it’s a tomb. Okay, so it’s a tomb that’s nearly two hundred years old, but come on, it’s a tomb! But, I swear, I’ll never do it again. I swear, I’ll paint it once a year. I’ll keep flowers around it, I’ll rip out the weeds, I swear I’ll keep it in pristine condition. I’ll do anything—please; you’ve got to help me.”

  “Really? And how do you propose that I help you? You’re definitely at the top of the suspect list as far as the police are concerned. Maybe things will change; the autopsy is going to be done now, this is such a savage event; the killer has to be stopped before he strikes again.”

  “I didn’t do it, and that’s it—the killer is out there somewhere tonight. Maybe he doesn’t intend to strike again tonight, but, dear God, Jesus, Lord! We have to find him.”

  “Do you know how many crimes go unsolved—forever? Do you know how much desk work, forensic work, and legwork usually go into apprehending a killer? But you think that I can solve this tonight. With you, of course.”

  “Where would you start looking in a normal investigation? Say she’d just been strangled and left in the cemetery?” Austin asked him.

  “I’d look closest at her associates—oh, that would be you!” DeFeo told him.

  “Me—and the rest of my group.”

  “They’ve brought in most of your group already,” DeFeo said. “And guess what? I’ll bet your loyal followers will be pointing the finger at you!”

  The Father—who now looked so pathetically like a little kid—shook his head fervently. “I didn’t do it!” he repeated. He stared at the ground blankly, and then he looked at DeFeo. “Who didn’t they get? Who didn’t they bring in?”

  “I don’t know. And we don’t know exactly who might have been living in that mansion of yours.”

  “I do—I know exactly who I’ve been in contact with, and if you tell me who they have, I can tell you who they don’t have. And then we can do some of that computer stuff. You know, look up their backgrounds, find out if they smothered kittens and liked to set fire to dogs’ tails and stuff like that!”

  DeFeo had to admit it; the kid had a point.

  “Well, if I take you to the station, they’ll start interrogating you, and the way the cops are feeling tonight, you will finally confess to anything.”

  “I’ve got a computer!”

  “There are unmarked patrol cars and plainclothes detectives watching the mansion.”

  “No, no—my home. My real home. It’s a two-bit shotgun house, the other side of Esplanade. I’ve got a computer there. My folks left me the house.”

  “They died?”

  “They moved to St. Pete.”

  DeFeo stared at him as seconds ticked by. If Austin hadn’t killed the girl, it was likely that someone he knew, someone in his association—maybe some other idiot involved in one of the other area vampire/demon/Satan cults—had. Or someone in his realm, at the least. Unless a new whacko had suddenly come to New Orleans, drawn by the legends, voodoo, and the city’s reputation.

  But, used the right way—and not set down beneath a brilliantly burning bulb, deprived of water, dying to use the john—Austin Cramer just might have the key to the murder.

  “Let’s go,” DeFeo said.

  “Oh, my God. You’re not going to regret this. I swear, I will be your willing slave in the future. I will take such good care of that tomb—you’ll never need to do the least bit of maintenance again. I swear, oh, thank you—”

  “Stop slobbering on me!” DeFeo said. “Let’s do this!”

  Austin Cramer slunk down in the back seat of DeFeo’s car as they wove through the city to a small, ramshackle house in a poorer area of the city. The place still smelled of mold—almost as if someone had decided after the summer of storms to simply abandon it. Maybe that was what his parents had done.

  The house had a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, and two bedrooms.

  The computer was in what had once been Austin Cramer’s bedroom. There were rock band posters and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model pictures taped to the wall. There were books in rickety wooden shelves, and a plethora of old gaming boxes. It was the typical room any nerd might have—any poor, unpopular kid who spent his life in his room.

  But the computer, se
t on a simple desk, was brand-new, and when Austin touched the keyboard, the screen snapped to life, showing a zillion applications.

  He pulled up two chairs and DeFeo watched as Austin keyed in one of his word-processing programs, and then slid it over to open a Web page.

  “There—there’s the list of the people in my group. Should I pull up their Facebook pages, or something like that? I know how to find out if they have criminal records!” he said proudly.

  DeFeo grated his teeth, brought his finger to his lip, and called in to the station. He read off the names and asked the sergeant on desk duty how many of those he had listed had come in. “We’ve got them all, now. Except for Brian—Brian Langley,” the sergeant told him. “They’re all claiming that it was Austin Cramer—he took them to the cemeteries and made them drink human blood and then throw it on the wall.”

  Austin could hear the sergeant, despite the fact that DeFeo was pacing with his phone. “It was never human blood!” he said in horror.

  “Where the hell are you?” the sergeant’s voice cracked over the phone again. “Montville, the lieutenant brought you in on this, but when you’ve got something, you’re not a cop. You’ve got to keep us in the loop. You’re a PI, man. Not a cop!”

  “When I’ve got something, the lieutenant will know. Right now? I’m on a search in the city,” DeFeo said. It was more or less true. He glanced at his watch as he spoke, and he frowned. It was already one A.M. He looked at Austin, feeling his jaw tighten. “Trust me; you’ll be informed. I’m going to find Brian Langley,” he said, and hung up.

  “Wait!” the desk sergeant said. “What’s that one girl’s name—Sue. Sorry, I wasn’t looking right. We have Sara, but we don’t have Susan Naughton.”

  “So, Brian Langley and Susan Naughton are still missing?” DeFeo asked.

  “Of the names you gave me, yeah. Hey, where did you get that list?”

  “Just something I’m working on.” DeFeo was growing irritated. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got something and you can tell the lieutenant,” he said, and hung up quickly.

  “So—Susan, and Brian Langley. Where would Langley go?” he asked Austin.

  DeFeo stared back at him. “Brian? Oh, my God, Brian! Yes, he’s the biggest chump of them all. He used to be a bully, a big football hero—only he flunked out on his college scholarship. He’s always been an asshole who wanted to beat the hell out of everyone.”

  Austin was elated, thinking that Brian was the killer.

  “Doesn’t sound right,” DeFeo said.

  “What do you mean? I told you—he was a bully!”

  “Guys who get physical with their fists don’t usually turn into this kind of a murderer.”

  “You have to be strong to hack up a girl, right?”

  DeFeo shook his head. “You just need to know something about human anatomy—and own a good saw—like a bone saw. I know a few medical pathologists down at the coroner’s office who aren’t all that big or strong, and they can take a body apart pretty damned easily.” He hesitated, thinking about the way the body appeared to have been chewed. “Hell, let’s go find Brian. Where would he be?”

  Austin was reflective. “I—I don’t know. I made a big deal about our constitutional rights, and the fact that we didn’t need to hide from the pigs—sorry, cops.” Austin offered up a weak, ironic smile. “Sorry, hide from the cops—use pig’s blood.”

  DeFeo rolled his eyes. “Come on, think. He’s from this area. Where would he hide out? What about his folks?”

  “They’re gone, too.”

  “So did they move out and leave him their house?”

  “No—they actually died. And the state took over the house for back taxes,” Austin said.

  “Great,” DeFeo muttered.

  “Oh, oh! There’s an old abandoned church down near Magazine Street. He used to go there. He might be hiding out there. Derelicts and prostitutes use it sometimes, too. I don’t think the cops have ever caught on. It’s like a safe house for the street people of the city.”

  “Let’s go,” DeFeo said, rising.

  They returned to his car. Austin hid in the back.

  But they never reached the abandoned church on Magazine.

  DeFeo’s phone rang.

  It was the desk sergeant.

  “You’re not going to believe this—but it’s gotten worse. Found both of those kids you were talking about.”

  “What?”

  “Susan Naughton and Brian Langley. Can’t be that they’re guilty; they’re chopped up like doll parts. Lieutenant is on his way. They found them in an abandoned-church-turned-nightclub up in Metairie. I’d get there quick if I were you.”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Austin Cramer sat huddled in the worst misery and despair of his life.

  Hell, he’d never expected this. He was in the Montville tomb at the cemetery. He’d wanted DeFeo to leave him at his old house, but DeFeo had told him that the cops weren’t stupid, and they owned computers, too. It wouldn’t take long for them to discover that he owned the place, and they’d be looking for him there.

  His face was known; there was no safe place in the city for him to hide.

  Except for the Montville tomb.

  It was very dark and heavily shadowed. Pale light from the full moon made it through the high grate at the rear of the tomb, but it didn’t do much to alleviate the darkness inside.

  The thing that was weird about the place was that it wasn’t dusty; the marble that covered the shelves of caskets was entirely free from cobwebs, and the floor had been well swept, if not polished as well. DeFeo really had a thing for his old family tomb. It was spotless. It was really beautiful, in an odd sort of way. The heat in New Orleans was so intense that a body was naturally cremated in about a year; in fact, for a tomb to be “reused” or for a recently deceased family member to be interred with others, the rule was “a year and a day.” That way the fragments of the body that remained could be swept to a holding area just beyond the length of the individual tomb, and another dead family member could join those who had gone before in this final resting place.

  Austin sat in silent torment for a while and then nearly jumped sky high, feeling movement near him.

  Then he heard a soft buzzing sound. It was his phone. He answered it with a quavering voice.

  “Who else?” DeFeo’s voice barked to him. “Both Susan Naughton and Brian Langley are dead. Who else should we be looking for?”

  “Who else? No one! I gave you every name—you saw my file!” Austin said. He felt small, beaten, and almost numb. He’d given the man everything.

  No, he hadn’t. And it seemed that members of his cult were being killed right and left.

  “Oh! Wait. There’s Adriana Morgan. That’s why I couldn’t have killed anyone and you know it. I was in this cemetery tonight, initiating her. You saw me—you saw me washing the blood off!”

  “The first victim was murdered about an hour before you would have been there,” DeFeo told him dryly over the phone. “Plenty of time to play with human blood as well. Where is this Adriana Morgan now?”

  “She’s a nurse; she works at the hospital. She had to leave fast because she’s on duty tonight. You’ve got to get to her. DeFeo, you’ve got to get to her quick. This bastard is killing people around me—he’s killing my entire cult.”

  “Stay where you are—don’t even think about looking for your girl. I’ll get someone to pick her up,” DeFeo said.

  “I won’t move!” Austin swore.

  He hung up. He did move. He had to shift his weight. No matter how nicely the tomb had been kept, it was a tomb, dark and stifling, and the floor was hard.

  He sat there, shivering in the dark shadows, staring at the grating, and watching as the moon, glowing full, seemed to fill the night sky.

  Time crept by. Then he nearly jumped again. He heard something, something that seemed to be rustling in the tomb.

  “THE KILLINGS ARE being done by someone from the city, someone who knows t
he city like the back of his hand,” DeFeo told Lieutenant Anderson. They both stood on the sidewalk, just outside the building that had begun its existence as a church and then been turned into Bats! Bats! had apparently been an alternative bar before going down. The décor had made use of the arrangement of the old church, with dusty bats in various sizes adorning the walls and hanging from the pulpit. And, of course, there were bats in the belfry as well.

  “Yeah, that freak cult asshole—that Austin Cramer. We’ve got to find him, DeFeo. This isn’t the beginning of a serial killer’s vision—this is a spree murderer out in a vengeance.” Anderson looked back at the church-turned-nightclub. “Gotta love New Orleans,” he muttered.

  “The youth of America,” DeFeo said. “They have places like this in New York, L.A., San Francisco, you name it. Kids like the occult.”

  “The occult has gotten damned ugly—we have to find this nut,” Anderson said. “Quickly. Tonight. Who knows how many will die next?”

  The bodies of Susan Naughton and Brian Langley had been posed one after the other in what had been the church aisle. They’d been placed in the same pattern. Heads and limbs detached, arranged so that they were a foot or so away from the torso, where each limb and head should have been. And the edges of the torso and limbs were ragged.

  Chewed? DeFeo wondered again.

  They had been killed less than an hour before.

  That left Austin Cramer in the clear.

  “Did you get someone to go find the nurse at the hospital—that Adriana Morgan?” he asked Anderson.

  “Sent them as soon as you gave me the name,” Anderson told him. “Where the hell did you get those names, DeFeo?”

  “I’m a computer whiz,” DeFeo lied. “I’m going to start moving.”

  “I hope you have a plan. I was having all the cemeteries staked out—but now, now we’ve found these two new bodies. . . .”

  Another one of the detectives, Brad Raintree, walked out to the sidewalk. He headed straight to the edge, leaned over, and vomited. He glanced up. “Sorry, guys. I was doing all right, and then . . .” He looked at DeFeo, who looked back at him with sympathy.