Luckily for her, politics tends to draw young, idealistic people who confuse their political passions with their raging hormones all the time.
Crystal knew that some of the boys she took to bed were only there for what they thought she could do for their careers. She’d overheard others talk about her as a “MILF,” which didn’t hurt her feelings, or a “cougar,” which did. She knew that at thirty-six she represented age and experience to horny college students barely out of their teens.
But she didn’t really care as long as they could perform. And thank God, most of them could. Over and over and over again.
Dustin was really too sweet for her. And moreover, it was possible he’d get dangerously attached. She’d been working the Midwest and spending more and more time away from home. Curtis was going to need every dollar he could get to pull out a win in November, especially with those killings. So Crystal was consulting with a half-dozen different state offices, spending a week or two at each one in rotation, helping them massage their finances.
She hadn’t been home for almost a full month. Worse, she hadn’t ridden some young guy like a pony in almost twice that long. She was due to return to Washington, D.C., the next day. If she was going to take Dustin, it had to be tonight.
He gave her a look that loosened her bra straps and she made her decision. Even though they were in the office, she jammed her tongue in his mouth. Just so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
“Oh wow” was all he said when she let him up for air.
Crystal maneuvered him around so that his back was to the desk. Dustin lost all his timidity. He grabbed her, pawing at the buttons on her blouse like a poorly trained circus bear. She let him try for a while, then pushed him back hard. His thighs hit the desktop and he had to fall on his back onto her carefully arranged papers.
“Oh man, oh wow,” he said again as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse, then stripped off her skirt. He fumbled with his own khakis, his cock bobbing up and down like it was spring-loaded.
She smiled. This was the kind of enthusiasm she was looking for.
Crystal swung a leg over his hips and guided him in. It felt perfect. Exactly what she needed. She tried to start slowly, because she knew kids his age had a hard time containing themselves. But she knew he’d rise for her again. And again and again and again.
Crystal didn’t hear the door at the back of the campaign offices open. Dustin probably didn’t hear anything, either: his voice was a constant stream of “Oh God, oh man.” Her eyes were closed while she worked herself back and forth on him, so she didn’t see the figure that crept up behind them, or the blade he carried.
It might have been almost merciful if he had brought the blade down at that moment.
But he wanted them to see it coming.
Crystal felt a tap on her shoulder and nearly fell off Dustin. He was too close to coming, couldn’t stop pumping even if he’d wanted to. Entangled and struggling, she tried to pull on her top. She was trying to figure out how to deal with this, whether or not to shriek in outrage or laugh it off with embarrassment. Then she saw him.
A man stood there with something like a machete but with a curved blade, held high and ready to strike. His entire head was covered with a rubber mask. It was a dirty-yellow latex version of a smiley face, some kind of bargain-bin Halloween remainder item, stuck on the man’s neck like the top of an obscene, fleshy lollipop.
She saw him lift the blade and her breath was vacuumed from her lungs. She couldn’t scream.
Crystal heard Dustin, who had finally opened his eyes, say, “What?”
She had a second to think about what this would do to her husband. Then there was blinding pain and that was all she could think about. It lasted much longer than she thought possible before everything went utterly, finally black.
Reporting from Lafayette, Illinois—
The Campaign Carver has done it again.
Almost as soon as President Curtis’s million-dollar campaign buses left this tiny town where he gave his usual promises about jobs and a better tomorrow, the bodies of two innocent victims were found.
They will never see a better tomorrow, thanks to the mysterious serial killer who just so happens to follow the President of the United States like the discarded confetti and signs from one of his rallies.
Crystal Waddell, 36, and Dustin Nichols, 22, were discovered by a campaign staffer upon opening the Curtis for President offices in the morning.
She called police, who found most of their bodies in various places around the room. According to one police source, “it looked like a goddamned slaughterhouse.”
Waddell was a regional committeewoman for the Curtis re-election effort. Nichols was a volunteer taking a semester off from his senior year in college to follow the campaign.
Waddell’s husband, Stephen Waddell, had no comment on why his wife would have been found naked with the much younger man.
The Curtis campaign has refused to answer any questions from THE ROARK REPORT, but when questioned by other media, spokesmen have said that the rapidly increasing body count following the president is nothing more than “coincidence.”
Coincidence? Six bodies in three months is a coincidence?
How many more people have to die before the lamestream media will stop buying the spin from Curtis’s hired mouthpieces and start asking the tough questions? Maybe they’re afraid of losing their place on the White House Christmas Card list, but THE ROARK REPORT is willing to be a little impolite if it means stopping a serial killer.
—Megan Roark, The Roark Report, October 17, 2012
9:23 P.M., OCTOBER 17, 2012, PRESIDENT’S SUITE, HOTEL PERE MARQUETTE, PEORIA, ILLINOIS
We’re getting killed,” Lanning said. “No pun intended.”
No one laughed. Butler, Cade, Zach and Candace sat with the president in the conference room attached to his suite in the hotel, listening to Lanning tally up the political damage.
The murders were the lead item on every network newscast. CNN was doing round-the-clock coverage. Fox had created its own graphic: a ballot marked with a check written in blood. The Net already showed what tomorrow’s headlines were going to be: MURDER ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: DOES A KILLER STALK THE PRESIDENT? Even NPR went with the blood and guts. “Et tu, Robert Siegel?” was Lanning’s reaction.
The media had burrowed into the story like a tapeworm. And in a way, Zach could not blame them.
The “Campaign Carver” angle was too good for them to pass up. It guaranteed them headlines and lead position in the broadcast or at the top of the hour. Careers could be made from something like this. And it slid so neatly into the narrative they’d already created, the one-term wonder. What better symbol of Curtis’s impotence than the fact that someone was killing his staff? How could he keep the country safe when he couldn’t even keep his own people alive?
Even Zach had to admit—it was a hell of a story.
And in all honesty, print reporters did not have the time to go out and find a new narrative; they were pressed to write a story a day, plus blog updates plus graphics plus a Sunday piece plus whatever else it took to convince the bosses that they were worth the added expense on the bottom line. The TV people had it just as bad, if not worse. Five or six updates a day, trying to milk news out of the same canned speeches, the same generic crowd scenes, knowing that they were only there to catch the candidate saying something unforgivably stupid or if someone took a shot at him.
They were all bored out of their skulls, wired from too little sleep, constantly uncomfortable and in direct competition with a bunch of other people who were crammed in the same buses and planes and hotel rooms. No wonder they were psychotic. Fortunately, they were easily distracted. Throw something shiny and easy to get in front of them, and they were off like hyperactive puppies.
The trick would be to find something even better for them. At least until Cade could stop the killings.
“Have we got any reliable numbers yet?” the president ask
ed.
“Still crunching the latest phone poll. Very preliminary numbers. We should have something more solid by morning.”
“What’s the damage?”
“As I said, it’s very preliminary—”
“Dan. Come on.”
“You’re down seven already.”
Seven points in less than a week.
Curtis actually smiled. He turned to Candace. “Is my nose bleeding?”
She looked puzzled. “No.”
“Thought it might be, considering the shot I just took.”
There was a little laughter at that.
“You’re taking this pretty well.” Lanning looked suspicious.
“No, I don’t think so,” the president said. “I think I’m taking it the only way I can. I cannot be responsible for the acts of a psychotic. If that’s what controls the outcome of this election, then so be it. All I can do is my job. And that’s all I can ask of any of you. I apologize for my earlier displays of temper. That was inappropriate. By now I should know that evil does exist in this world. We do our jobs. We go forward. There are some things more important than winning elections.”
The president stood.
“I’m going to see my wife.”
On his way out, he gave Candace a kiss on her head.
There was silence in the room after he left.
Lanning spoke first. “Anyone here want to see that guy lose in November?”
Silence.
“Then it’s time we got to work, kiddies. Zach, you and Candace will go out to the press bus. They’re tired and pissed off. I don’t care if you both have to blow them all in their seats, but you work the refs. All night if you have to.”
Candace and Zach got up to leave the room.
Cade followed them.
In the hallway, Zach said, “Shouldn’t you be with the president?”
“He’s surrounded by the Secret Service.”
“Yeah, but still—”
Cade allowed a small scowl to cross his face. “I need to get back out there. If I can find it, I can stop this.”
Zach turned and blocked Cade’s path.
“I think you should stay here, Cade. You haven’t found him so far. And for all you know, that’s exactly what he—sorry, it—wants: to get you away. To distract you. Maybe you shouldn’t take the bait.”
Cade turned dead eyes onto Zach. “Are you giving me a direct order?”
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
“So you’re the strategist now?”
“Well, maybe it’s time for a new plan. The old one isn’t working.”
“Thank you for that,” Cade said. He turned away quickly, coat snapping in the air with the sudden movement.
Zach had honestly never seen him so out of sorts, so easily irritated.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m only trying to help.”
Cade turned back. His mouth was clamped shut. Zach realized Cade was trying to keep his fangs from popping out of his gums.
“You want to help?” he hissed. “Explain to me why it’s changing a century’s worth of habits. Explain to me why it’s nibbling at the periphery instead of launching itself at its target. Better yet, tell me where I can find it. Tell me where it lives, so I can kill it.”
Cade’s fangs jutted forth, right there in the hallway of the hotel.
“You want to help?” Cade repeated. “Give me something I can bite.”
Zach stepped back. Candace simply looked scared.
Cade saw their faces. He took a moment and visibly brought himself under control again.
“Cade,” Zach said. “You’ll find him. You’ll stop him. I know you will.”
“It,” Cade said. But he seemed to relax somewhat. “You’re right. Thank you.”
Candace and Zach turned again to go out to the press bus. Cade began to follow.
“The president is the other way,” Zach said.
“I thought I would walk you out. I can’t have anything happen to my strategist now, can I?”
Zach smiled at that, even though Cade remained stone-faced.
“Pretty sure we’re going to be safe with the press, Cade. They only assassinate character.”
Cade got the hint and walked away.
Zach never ceased to be surprised by Cade. Sometimes he could be almost human.
MEGAN ROARK WOULD never admit it, but she loved meeting with her source inside the Curtis campaign. He was actually very good in bed. She let him believe it was a chore.
She didn’t wonder why he was here with her. Betrayal, jealousy, revenge, yadda yadda yadda, all that psychological stuff? So much bullshit. One look at herself in the mirror naked was all the answer Megan really needed to that question.
But lying sideways on the bed, one leg thrown over him, both of them sweating and spent, she felt pretty great.
Every news outlet in the world was following her lead. Everyone who’d ever looked down their nose at her after she left the lamestream media now wanted an interview, a tip or a link back to their own struggling and pathetic sites.
A decent orgasm was just the cherry on top.
Besides, even the pillow talk was fun.
“All right. Pay up,” she said.
“What more do you want? Doesn’t the story of the year get me at least a little credit?”
“Coal into a furnace. You know that. I want to know who’s doing this.”
He frowned. “You and me both.”
“Still no leads?”
“Nothing.”
“I suppose that’s enough for a follow-up. But it’s not much of one.” Megan stretched, rolled over and saw the hotel’s clock radio. “Shoot. I’ve got to get back.”
She bounced out of bed. His eyes followed every move hungrily as she collected her clothes from the various places they’d been thrown across the room.
She smiled at him. “Nope. No time for another round. Plus, you still haven’t given me anything really good.”
“Open my bag,” he said.
She slid into her thong before crossing to his laptop bag on the desk. Unzipping it, she found a file.
“Everything I could get on Zach Barrows. As you requested.”
“Oooh,” she squealed. “Interesting.”
“You’re not stalking him, are you?”
“I find it awfully convenient that he’s rejoined the campaign just as the killings have started.”
His laughter turned into a hacking cough. She really wished he’d quit smoking. The old joke about licking an ashtray was, unfortunately, true in this case.
“Barrows? You think Barrows is the killer? Come on. He couldn’t give anyone a paper cut.”
“How would you know? You haven’t seen him since he was fired. And you were the one who told me he’d been bouncing around all these places where people turned up dead. And on top of that, you just happened to have all this information gathered and ready for me.”
“I got curious,” he admitted. “I don’t know why the kid is inside Curtis’s inner circle again. Frankly, he shouldn’t be there.”
“Right. Your motivations are pure. I get it.”
“Hey, I’d be happy to see the kid go back to obscurity again. I’ve got enough competition. You should head back to Lanford, actually. His old man lives there. He’s probably got lots of dirt on the little snot.”
Megan’s eyebrows shot up. Still half-dressed, she found her phone. Thumbs flying, she made a note on the device.
“Thanks for the tip. Tips. Gotta run.”
“Megan. You know there’s no evidence that actually links the killer to the campaign,” he said.
Roark buttoned her blouse and tucked it into her pants. She wondered why he said stuff like that. He also swore up and down that he hadn’t sent her the initial e-mail about the killings with the police reports. Just making the best of a bad situation, he insisted, and getting a little nookie out of it. At times, it made her wonder if he was just playing her.
But no, that would be absu
rd.
“You know that, right?” he repeated.
Roark checked her makeup at the mirror. “So?”
He laughed. “Wow. You really are a horrible person.”
She smiled at him from the door and blew him a kiss. “You’re the one who’s fucking me.”
“You’ve got a point,” Lanning said.
Music World is built on the site of an old slaughterhouse (complete with a well underneath the building that received the drained blood of the slaughtered animals) dating back to the nineteenth century, and indeed, it was a site for satanic activity and a cult murder in 1896 when the headless body of five-month pregnant Pearl Bryan was found. Two men—Alonzo Walling and Scott Jackson—were arrested for murder after confessing to the crime. Self-proclaimed devil worshippers and occultists. They refused to tell investigating authorities the location of Pearl Bryan’s missing head, saying it would bring the wrath of Satan upon them. They feared Satan more than death, because they were offered life in prison instead of execution if they gave up the head.… If… some sites in America are sacred, then perhaps Music World is evidence that others may be just the opposite: unholy and profane.
—Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces
OCTOBER 17, 2012, LANFORD, ILLINOIS
Frank Barrows had spent the last week working his way to the bottom of the vodka section in the liquor store.
He always started near the top when on a real bender. It was important to prep the system with some high-quality stuff, preferably taken as close to freezing as possible and served straight up. So he began with Absolut on day one. On the second and third days, it didn’t matter as much. Everything was going numb, including his taste buds. He moved down a shelf or two. By Friday, he was drinking the generic stuff in the big bottles marked vodka stored on the floor.
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