by Unknown
The first thing that caught his eye was a gun lying on the floor, between the bed and the shattered window.
Next, he noticed a shirt, crumpled on the bed, covered with blood.
Third, on the floor—money. Wadded up bills, quite a few of them.
“So let’s see,” he muttered aloud. “We got another dead guy, and another weapon left at the scene.” He glanced at Roberta. “You suppose this gun is clean too?”
She just shrugged.
His eyes narrowed as he spotted the glitter of glass in the bed and on the floor. He went to the window, put his head gingerly through the gap and looked out.
“Hm,” he said. He turned to Roberta. “So, what do you think?”
“Think? Uh, sir?”
“Yeah. What do you think went down here?” Walter only had the vaguest of theories, but he figured asking her would keep her from asking him. That could only make him look smart.
She cleared her throat.
“Well. The manager, Mr. Hamilton, said that he heard loud noises from the parking lot around 3:30, then tires squealing. He thought it was firecrackers.” Walter nodded, and Roberta, encouraged, continued. “He went out to take a look and saw a man in a bloody shirt sprinting across the parking lot. The man jumped through the window into Number Ten, this room here.” That earned her another nod. “He—Hamilton—ran back to his desk and called the police. Then he heard three more gunshots. He stayed in the room behind the front desk until I arrived. The two of us came to the room, I entered it, and I found it as you see it.”
“Uh huh. He the one who sicked up in the hall?”
Roberta swallowed. “No sir, that was me.”
Walter shrugged. “Yeah, well. So those are the facts. What do you think?”
“Without the identities of the assailant or the victim, there’s no real way to calculate motive. Right now it’s forensics, I guess.” She looked around aimlessly, then slowly walked to the discarded gun. She squatted, careful of the broken glass, lowered her nose, and sniffed.
“It’s been fired,” she said.
She looked at the glass, and the corners of her mouth tucked slightly.
“There’s something odd,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“The glass is both inside and outside the window.”
“I noticed that. You think it got broken inward, or outward?”
“The biggest chunks are broken outward… the ones inside are smaller and farther and… hey, look at this!”
She strode across the room and stood next to the bathroom door. “Did you see this?”
Walter turned and saw her pointing at a large hole in the doorframe.
“Missed that,” he said, smiling. “Must have been distracted by something.” He looked through the hole like a spyglass, and saw that the edge of the medicine cabinet had stopped the bullet before it entered the hall.
“How many loud noises did the desk clerk report?”
“He said there were two at first and then three later.”
“We’ll assume those were gunshots… so here’s one. One, presumably, went in the victim’s face. Where are the other three?”
“Great Jesus fuck!”
Walter turned and saw big Phil King staring into the room with horrified fascination.
“Hey Phil. Bring the camera?”
* * *
At first, Jolene just drove, foot to the pedal in desperation to escape. But she was a pro. She regained self-control after just a couple blocks and started driving more responsibly. It wouldn’t do her much good to get pulled over with two incriminating cartridges on the floor of the van and a fresh-fired rifle riding shotgun. Not to mention Carl’s blood on her swelling left hand, transferred there by his killer. Not to additionally mention that fucked up dead baby gadget.
She took a deep breath, started using her turn signals and headed out towards the highway. She didn’t have any kind of plan until she saw a phone booth.
When she pulled over and killed the engine she realized her left hand hurt like hell. She looked down and saw the wrist bruising badly and starting to swell.
The phone booth was at a gas station, next to the outdoor ice cooler. She put her wallet on the top of the cooler and got out the phone card, only to find that the phone was the old kind that didn’t take cards.
“Shit!” she hissed, almost ready to cry in frustration. But she was a pro. She opened the truck door, went into the ashtray where they kept the change for tolls, got a roll of quarters and started feeding them into the machine. When she’d dialed the Chicago number, she held the receiver with her right hand and put the left into the cooler, laying it gingerly on the sacks of ice.
The voice that answered was cool, female and only marginally polite.
“Hello?”
“Betsy. It’s Jolene. I gotta talk to the boss.”
“He’s kind of busy right now…”
“It’s a no-shit emergency, Betsy.”
“I’m not sure where…”
“Betsy. Find him. Now. Or I will kill you dead.”
There was a moment of silence from the other side of the line, then “I’ll put you right through.”
In Chicago, the middle manager raised his perfectly shaved chin as Betsy poked her head in. “Sir? Jolene on one. She says it’s urgent.”
He found his lips were suddenly dry, and he licked them before he could stop himself. He’d been waiting for this call, and dreading it. “Put her through.”
He took a deep breath and picked up. “Yes? How’s the project going?”
“Carl’s dead.”
The manager felt a little lurch in his chest—part the dark feeling of a fear coming true, part habitual dislike for people saying things obviously on a telephone line.
“Really? What happened?”
“He went in to talk to Joe Kimble, and Kimble tore his goddamn head open!”
The manager blinked. This was unexpected.
“When you say…”
“I mean just that! I mean Kimble stuck his hand in Carl’s face, like you’d, you’d, reach into a jar of peanuts! Not only that, I tried to shoot him and the bullets just went right through him!”
Something clicked in the middle manager’s brain.
“Good grief,” he said automatically. “What happened next?”
“Well, Kimble jumped through the window and grabbed on the side of the van. When I punched him in the face, it just, just… just sank in. Like punching a pillow or something!” Jolene took a deep breath, and realized something. “Not only that, when I, uh, pulled my hand out… it was a different face. Like he had just turned into someone else.”
“But you got away?”
“Yeah, I scraped him off on a light pole, but not before he broke my fucking wrist.” Jolene bit her lip and then said “You gotta pull me out of here. Without Carl I don’t stand a chance in hell against him. Shit, the two of us together probably couldn’t do anything. You need to send down some serious heat to take care of this!”
The middle manager was still, but his brain was ticking along violently. He couldn’t send more people. Even if Jolene hadn’t figured out she had seen the Freak, someone would eventually piece it together. Then the questions would start. Everyone would want to know, how did the Freak find out?
His sister was doing much better. He couldn’t get discovered now.
The only person with the clues was Jolene. If the Freak killed Jolene and then Kimble, the links between him and it would all be severed. By the time he sent investigators to see what had happened, the Freak would be long gone and the trail cold. Tidy.
But Jolene would have to die.
“Okay, I’m on it Jolene. I’m going to see if I can get the Weather Channelers down there from Arizona, you know them? I haven’t seen any… manifestation yet that Uriel Sterne couldn’t handle. That may take a while, so I’m sending Cage and Officer Bob down now, understand?”
At the gas station, Jolene breathed a sigh of re
lief.
“But Jolene, I need you to do something.”
Her relief was short lived. “What?”
“You have to stay in town and keep track of Kimble.”
“Oh boss, no… you don’t understand…”
“Jolene, I do understand, but listen to me. If you bail out now, don’t you think Kimble will bolt? If he’s onto you, he’ll be back later, but when he decides. Have you still got the Hotchkiss compass?”
“You mean the jar thing? Yeah…”
“Then you’re able to track him, right?”
“Uh huh…”
“Good. Keep tabs on him. Don’t engage. Wait for reinforcements. They’ll be down there today.”
“Boss… I don’t think…”
“You’re not going soft on me, are you Jolene?”
“No! But you didn’t see…”
“Jolene, lots of our operatives see lots of terrible things. I need to know I can rely on you to stick with this. Can I rely on you?”
“Yeah…”
“Because if I can’t I’m sure I can make other arrangements. Odds are good that the… that Kimble wouldn’t be able to get at you in a federal prison, right?”
Jolene was quiet for a moment, her eyes widening.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Jolene, you must have a pretty good idea that I would. If I have to.”
“Dammit…”
“Language,” he said automatically, then sighed. “Jolene. Everything will be fine. Honestly. Cage and Bob are top notch—they’re the ones who uncovered the, the thing with the sugar packets at the millennium, remember? They’ve faced stuff as bad as this and come through it. They’ll be there today. You just have to stay safe for the five hours it’ll take them to get there. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah, I fucking understand you.”
“Jolene, I…” But she’d hung up.
In his office, the middle manager looked down at his hands and tried to concentrate on his sister’s “miraculous remission.”
Squatting in the dust in Missouri, Jolene wept.
* * *
Elsewhere, at the Sleepy Teepee motor lodge, the front desk man nodded genially at the portly lady checking in.
“You hear about the doings at the Motel Eight?” he asked, his grin showing a missing canine tooth.
She shook her head. “I just got off the highway. I was hoping to get farther south, but I got a migraine coming on.”
He nodded sympathetically. She seemed pale and tired, and it looked like she’d spilled something on the front of her navy blue sweatshirt.
Plus that raspy, hissing voice didn’t sound very happy.
* * *
Chief Walter Stelke was torn between his desire to stay at the crime scene (or go to the first one) and his need to go back to the station. He wound up leaving Nicole Cortez on the scene scratching her head, while Phil King kept shaking his.
At the station, he sat in his office with the door closed for about fifteen minutes, then called in Andy Brault.
“You wanted to see me, Walt?” After a few years on the force, Walter made it a habit to take his officers to Kandyland, a raunchy strip dive two counties over. He’d take a couple other officers along, they’d all get loaded, stay out all night and sober up at Dade’s Rib Shack the next morning. Then he’d drop the officer off at home and say, “Oh—you can call me Walt.”
(When he didn’t have anything else on his mind, he sometimes worried how he’d handle it with Roberta. But today, he had other concerns.)
“Shut the door please.” Walter gestured at the chair across from him.
“What can I do for you?”
“We have to call in Trevor.”
Andy nodded. They’d both known it, and Walt knew he’d have to tell everyone eventually. But Roberta would be optimistic about bringing in the county Sheriff’s Department. Luther wouldn’t understand the problem. Phil would curse up a storm talking about how Trevor Lee was just a shitheel politician in cop’s clothes. But Andy took the news with a sad little nod, as Walter had known he would.
“Yep.”
“I want you to handle him an’ his guys. You know he’s going to want to take over the whole damn thing. You make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’ma need people watching the jail, doing traffic, handling the standard daily calls. That’s gonna be you and the deputies and maybe Luther.”
“You don’t think he’ll be mad at missing out on the murder?”
“Luther’s a big boy, he can handle disappointment. Beides, I’ll bring him in on the actual bust, once Roberta does the detecting.”
“‘Kay. You want I should make the call?”
“Naw, Trevor will wanna hear it from my mouth, an’ it’ll go down easier if I’m the one who asks for help. You fill in the others, all right?”
“You got it, Chief.”
“An’ Andy?”
“Uh huh?”
“Make sure they understand the situation. The deputies are here to free us up for this murder case, not to fuck with it. The deputies don’t know this town, they don’t know the area and they don’t know the people. We do, so we’re in the hot seat.” He bit the inside of his lip thoughtfully. “Get it across to Nicole and Phyllis too, if you don’ mind. Not real obvious, of course. But make sure they know that everything moves through us.”
Andy nodded. “Sure. ‘Cause otherwise, the left hand won’t know what the right is doing.”
“‘Zactly.”
Andy turned to go, but halted when Walter said “Oh, one more thing. Can you bring me the Mundy woman’s gun? I wanna take another look at it.”
“You know, we can still hold her on the guns charge.”
“Yeah… but that’s like impeaching Clinton for banging his intern. If I’m gonna charge her, I want it to be something worthwhile.”
When the door was closed again, Walter reached into a paper bag under his desk. Before coming to the office, he’d stopped by his home to pick up a medium grade rat-tail file.
* * *
“C’mon out,” Luther said, and when the old man in the cell looked up at him, the cop almost shuddered. Fred Mundy had stopped hyperventilating after the doctor had talked to him, and had just sat, staring at the wall opposite his cot. Luther had figured this guy would be pleased as pie to be let loose, but his face was so blank it was scary.
Slowly, Fred Mundy stood.
“C’mon buddy, we’re burnin’ daylight here. You do want to get out of here, don’t you?”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Sure,” Luther said impatiently, with a tiny roll of his eyes. He stopped when he saw the abject fear in Fred’s eyes. It just flashed for a moment and then the older man hid it away again, hid it in the blankness. But it was the same terror that had shaken Luther when he opened the door.
If anyone had asked Luther about the last time someone was scared of him, he could have told stories about women giving him wary glances as a teenager, or white guys studiously not looking when he was going down the street with his cousins in St. Louis. But when he caught those brief hints from Fred, Luther realized that those women and men had only been nervous or cautious or a little skittish. Before Fred, no one had ever been truly, deeply afraid of him, and he found he didn’t like it one bit.
“Look,” he said, then stopped as Fred froze. Luther just shook his head, stepped back and gestured for Fred to leave his cell. Hesitantly, the prisoner complied.
Fred didn’t really believe they were letting him go until he was outside in the sun, with the Chief of Police giving him a last look and telling him “Don’t you leave town, now.” He squinted up at the sky, his teeth showing in something between a grimace and a grin.
“Well, that was close.” Fred turned towards the voice and Kate was standing beside him. He hadn’t even noticed her stepping down behind him. Her skin had an unshowered sheen and her hair was thick and clumpy, but he wound his
arms around her and held her as tight as he could. A moment later, he felt the arms of his son around the two of them. In the sun, in front of the police station, the Mundy family embraced for maybe half a minute. Not one of them thought anything. They just held.
The moment passed, and Fred said, “We ain’t done yet.”
“Well, what should we do?” Kate asked.
“I’m for a shower, first thing,” Leslie replied.
“Yeah,” Kate said. “And then some decent food.”
Fred nodded. “Yeah. Uh, can I get a ride from you two?
“Of course. You’re at the Super 8 too, right?”
“Like everyone else.”
No one had told them about the second murder. Their first intimation came when they saw the police tape around the shattered window. They parked and went in through the front lobby, where Phil King gave them a look like they were shit and he’d just stepped in it.
“Guess it’s true what they say,” the policeman said, crossing his arms so that his worked-out pectorals bulged.
Kate said nothing. She knew a gambit when she heard one. Leslie, too, had heard his share of provocative statements from aggressive men. He didn’t even make eye contact. As for Fred, years of jail had taught him. When a man in a uniform made a comment to him, he instinctively dropped his gaze and tried to look as blandly ass-eyed dumb as he could.
Phil waited for a response, but as the Mundys shuffled past, he was forced to respond to himself. “About returning to the scene of the crime, you know.” It felt weak to him, and he was irrationally annoyed that they hadn’t followed his script.
Down the hall towards their room, they spotted another cop, the woman. “What happened here?” Kate asked. Roberta stepped into the middle of the hallway and put her hands on her hips. She replied to Kate with a question. “What are you doing here?”
“This is where we’re staying,” Leslie said.
Roberta narrowed her eyes. “What an interesting coincidence,” she said, significantly.
Fred gritted his teeth. “You mean something by that?”
Roberta met his gaze and said nothing.