by Barry Lyga
Hughes headed to the stairs. Checking up the first flight, gun extended, he realized before he mounted the first step that he was sweating. It was January-freezing outside and the stairwell wasn’t heated, and he was his own personal sauna. Pathetic for a man used to a fourth-floor walk-up. Settle down, Lou. Just another bad guy. Just another bad guy.
That mantra took him up the stories, easing around the bends, religiously scanning up the stairwell in case Dent decided to bail via the stairs. He strained to hear gunshots, knowing that Tanner would arrive on six before he would.
When he finally got to the top, he’d exerted himself not at all, but sweat still beaded his forehead and trickled between his shoulder blades. He wiped his hands dry before emerging into the hallway.
Tanner waited by an apartment door. Hughes stifled a giggle at the sight of the big man’s belly jutting out into the hall as he flattened his back against the wall. Hughes flanked the door, his gun pointed at the floor. Tanner raised three fingers.
Jesus, I hate this part.
Taking the door never got easier. No matter how many times you did it.
Hughes nodded, and together they counted off three head bobs before Tanner flung open the door.
Hughes kicked off the wall and spun around, gun raised and pointed into the apartment. His heart hammered. Nothing.
He flicked off the safety and gestured Tanner into the apartment.
Following the sheriff, he was immediately assaulted by the stench of human excrement, heavy in the air, undercut with the familiar reek of vomit. There was a sofa in the middle of the room, pushed awry and knocked on its back. The smell was thick, and Hughes started breathing through his mouth.
A pool of vomit had half soaked into the carpet in front of where the sofa had been.
And then a shadow moved in the corner of Hughes’s eye, and he spun in time to see a figure crawling from behind the sofa.
No, not crawling. Not like a baby, on hands and knees. Pulling itself along on its elbows. And clenched in its teeth—
“Knife!” Hughes shouted, and raised his gun, taking aim at the man’s forehead.
He sensed Tanner’s bulk beside him.
“Hello, Billy,” Tanner said softly, moving into position, his gun raised, too.
Billy. Hughes looked again, squinting. Holy… It was Dent. Billy Dent himself. Pulling himself along the floor like a grunt in a bad army flick, a bloody knife held in his mouth.
With the two cops standing over him and aiming at his head, Dent spat out the knife. Blood painted his lips. Even though he and Tanner had the high ground and the advantage, Hughes still found every nerve on screaming high alert. And he was only partly aware of what Billy Dent could do. He couldn’t imagine what was going through Tanner’s head right now.
If the sheriff was freaking out, he didn’t show it, calmly drawing a bead on Billy. “Good to see you again, Billy. You know the drill.”
“Outta my way, Tanner.” Dent’s voice was careworn, his expression haggard. But his growl still sent shivers running from Hughes’s head right to his balls. With what seemed to be a preternatural effort, he pushed himself up on his hands, arms ramrod straight. “None of this is about you.”
“Only gonna ask you once, Billy. Hands on your head and flat on the ground.”
Dent’s eyes narrowed in cunning thought. He started inching forward again.
“You deaf, asshole?” Hughes asked.
But Dent merely snorted, glancing Hughes up and down and then pulling himself forward another inch, as though he’d taken Hughes’s measure and decided he just didn’t count.
“Hey!” Tanner barked. “I said flat on your face and hands behind your head.”
“Heard you the first time, you bastard cop.”
“The man said freeze, asshole.” Hughes tracked Billy’s minuscule progress, keeping his head in range.
With an offended and reluctant whoof, Billy paused. Ignoring Hughes, he glowered up at Tanner and smirked.
“You thinkin’ of puttin’ a bullet in ol’ Billy? You thinkin’ of offin’ me?” Billy’s voice gathered strength as he spoke, as though he thrived on his own words, took sustenance from his bad attitude. “You better do it now, Tanner. You better put that bullet right in there and do it right, you fat piece of shit. I’ll dig up your momma and do things to her, Tanner.…”
Hughes and Tanner exchanged a look. If Hughes decided to put a bullet into the writhing mass of poisonous snakes Billy Dent called his brain, he was confident Tanner would cover for him. And he knew for damn sure that if Tanner decided to off the bastard, his own lips would be sealed.
“Your town,” Hughes said with a shrug. “Your call.”
Tanner contented himself with kicking Billy in the head. Dent didn’t even cry out, just rolled his head with the blow, stiffening his arms.
“We cremated my momma,” Tanner said, his tone tight and laden with restraint. “So good luck with that.”
For good measure, he kicked Billy in the head again. This time, Dent’s skin ripped along his temple and blood gushed. Billy groaned and collapsed on both elbows, but otherwise he didn’t move, didn’t try to roll away or run.
What in the name of holy Jesus fuck happened here? Why is he so—
And then he thought of Hat and Dog’s victims, starting with poor Harry Glidden, the Luxury Tax spot on the Monopoly board.
“He’s paralyzed.” Hughes’s voice resonated too loud and too deep in the confines of the apartment. “From the waist down.”
“That so?” Tanner adjusted his stance and nudged Dent in the leg with the tip of his shoe. Then kicked him there. Dent growled and reached out for Tanner’s other leg, managing to get his hands on it and—before Hughes could react—heaved himself along the floor and sank his teeth into Tanner’s leg, just above the ankle.
Tanner yelped in pain and tugged his leg back, but Dent had a tight clutch with both hands. Hughes couldn’t shoot him without risking hitting Tanner, so instead he holstered his gun, grabbed Billy’s legs, and yanked at him with all his might. Screaming obscenities and pounding his fists on the floor, Billy came away from Tanner, who hopped back a couple of paces and nearly fell backward onto his ass.
The guy can’t move his legs, and he’s still making us look like idiots. Hughes straddled Dent and wrestled his arms back one at a time, slapping the cuffs on him. “Try moving now, shit bird,” he whispered to Dent, who snapped his teeth at him, making him jump back. Dent laughed.
He kept laughing even though he was completely helpless. He rocked his torso back and forth and cursed at them, trying to shove himself forward with his core muscles. It was the saddest, scariest thing Hughes had ever seen in his life.
“You all right, Sheriff?” He knelt by Tanner, who had balanced on a nearby desk and was rolling up his pant leg.
“You tell me.”
Hughes checked the leg. Tanner was red there, but the skin wasn’t broken. His pants and sock had blunted the worst of it. “I think this particular vampire didn’t get a snack from you.”
“Good news. Because we still got a long night ahead of us.”
CHAPTER 52
Jazz wondered how many times he had driven or walked past the Dawes house. He wondered how many other people had done so, and how many times, in total.
Lobo’s Nod was a small town, true, but even for a small town, multiplied by the years, the number of pass-bys had to be in the hundreds of thousands.
Broken houses, dead homes. They were invisible, Jazz realized. Other than local kids daring one another to skulk the perimeters and throw rocks at the windows, the places sulked and stewed in their own special miasmas of neglect, dust, and mildew, sad mile markers on the road to entropy. He thought of the endless, blank-windowed façades of Brooklyn, only the minutest fraction of them glimpsed during his time there. How many of them were empty but harbored? How many Jack Daweses lived within? In every town, every city across the country—across the world—there were the abandoned and forsa
ken, the shuttered and barred. Passed into local legend, then myth, then fairy tale, then utter oblivion, as much a part of the landscape as the trees or the hills.
Someone had once said that in plain sight was the best place to hide.
He parked in front of the house. The car he had driven was Doug Weathers’s, according to the registration in the glove box.
Waiting in the car as it cooled, pinged, and rattled, he stared up at the Dawes house. It didn’t look scary. It wasn’t supposed to look scary. A house that seemed haunted would have attracted local lore tellers. It would have summoned children to dare one another to spend the night inside.
No, this was just a broken-down, derelict, run-of-the-mill three-story Victorian. It would garner no attention, and that’s just how Billy wanted it.
Like a serial killer, the house blended in. It suited its place, and its place suited it.
As best he could tell, there were no lights burning within, but the windows were boarded over, some of them papered from within. He cracked the car door, half expecting the echoing thunder of a gunshot. He knew what it was like to be shot, but he suspected Ugly J wouldn’t aim for the leg.
She wouldn’t kill me. Not like Billy tried to. She’s my mother, for God’s sake.
He went dizzy and gripped the steering wheel to steady himself.
You’re next.
No. It’s not what I think. Focus, Jazz.
She’s my mother, he told himself again, waiting for the dizziness to go away.
Think about it. Think it through. Think of what you know about female serial killers. They don’t do this for pleasure. They partner up with a man, and they get off on the man’s enjoyment. Like…
Like that couple in Canada. Homolka. Videotaped her boyfriend raping and killing her own sister. Because it made him happy. That’s why women do it—to make their men happy. Or they kill out of fear or necessity. With Billy gone, there was no reason for her to kill Jazz. And no reason for him to kill her.
That was it. That was it for sure.
The mere fact of her—of her existence—bewildered him and made it almost impossible to think. She had been dead and gone, and then she was alive, and then she was Billy’s partner, which he still couldn’t believe. Not entirely. Billy’s protestations to the contrary, what made the most sense was that she was in Billy’s thrall. Hybristophilia. Technical term. It happened so often that there was even a snappy, pop-psychish term for it, the kind of thing Doug Weathers would have thrown around on TV and in his articles: Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome. Powerful, overbearing man; submissive, eager-to-please woman. The combination was deadlier than the sum of its parts because, left to her own devices, the woman would never kill. Only when under the influence of the male did she become lethal.
Connie had seen her in handcuffs, under Billy’s control. Her devotion to Billy was automatically suspect. His domination of her couldn’t possibly be complete. Not if she’d been manacled. Not if she’d helped Connie escape.
I clung to her. My whole life, I’ve clung to the idea of her, the memory of her. I thought she could have rescued me. But it’s the other way around. I have to rescue her.
You’re next. No. She’s not. It’s over. She just doesn’t know it yet. I’m going to tell her. This is all going to make sense. I’m going to go in there, and it’s all going to make sense.
He swung his legs out of the car. Took a deep, cold breath. Closed the car door behind him and walked to the porch.
The steps creaked and whined in the winter air.
The front door was unlocked. Jazz opened it and went inside.
Inside, the house smelled of parched soil and dust and mold and something else that Jazz recognized but chose not to think about. From the moment he heard Weathers’s voice on Howie’s phone, he’d known he would smell this particular potpourri of blood, gases, excrement, and urine. He was used to it, inured to it, after helping Billy clean his tools and, on occasion, actual crime scenes.
You gotta get used to the smell, Billy had said. You get all distracted or all sick or whatnot, and you can’t finish the job, see? You try to get out of there too soon and you leave—
Shut up, Jazz thought fiercely, and was pleased to find that Billy did, for a change.
He imagined his father chasing a pretty young coed in his wheelchair, demanding she come back, and he giggled uncontrollably for a full thirty seconds.
I’m losing it.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. A flight of stairs tempted him, but the murk and solid black that ascended from halfway up the stairs stalled him. A narrow hallway before him led into the depths of the house, a flickering light coming from a doorway off to the side.
He realized, with a shock so hard he actually put a hand to his chest as though he could steady his wild heart, that he was unarmed. He’d left the knife with Billy.
Idiot. Idiot!
Still, there was not the slightest chance that he would back down now. Not when he was so close. Not when he could end it now. If he left to get a weapon, he’d come back to find the house empty, he knew.
And you don’t need a weapon, Jazz. You’re not going to kill her. You’re not even going to fight her. She’s not Billy.
The floorboards whispered underfoot. Nothing he could do about that. An old house would make noises, and he couldn’t anticipate them. He could only acknowledge the sounds, acknowledge that his mother—
Ugly J. Belle. The Crow King.
—would hear him coming and be forewarned.
I was abused. I was molested. I was abused. I was molested.
The thought was too big. He pushed it aside. He would deal with it later. If there was a later.
A lifetime of therapy. And even that probably wouldn’t be enough. It would be a start, though.
She doesn’t want to hurt me. She just thinks she has to. And if she gets to me before I can tell her Billy’s neutralized…
His muscles tightened. His neck tensed. He inched along the wall, his shadow dancing in the flickering light. Creeping along, his breath shallow sips, he flattened himself against the wall and listened, willing himself to hear whatever, whoever, lurked in the other room, the room with the light.
Straining, he heard…
A hiss.
Low and sustained.
There was no other option but to turn into the room. He did it quickly, before he could change his mind.
There was a chair, on which stood a Coleman lantern, hissing in that way lanterns do. In the leaping shadow relief of the lantern’s shifting light, he beheld the only other thing in the room of note.
It was Doug Weathers. What was left of him, at least.
Jazz didn’t need to approach and search for a pulse to know the man was dead. Weathers was deader than any body or anybody Jazz had ever seen before. His mind raced to catalog the grotesqueries Billy had heaped upon Weathers—
Because it was Billy. It had to be Billy. Billy did this. Billy and only Billy.
—and gave up.
There was an ear nailed to the wall.
Jazz tightened his jaw. He was determined to search this room. For clues. That was the way, right? That was the thing to do.
Avoiding it. You’re avoiding it. You’re avoiding going upstairs.
He was. She was up there, he knew, and he wasn’t ready yet. Not yet. Terrified? Gagging on anticipation? He couldn’t tell.
But he wasn’t ready.
He sidestepped a slick of blood and something else. The house wasn’t heated, so Weathers hadn’t begun to rot in earnest. Wintertime. It would take longer for the flies and other bugs to get to him. Lucky Jazz, he had Doug Weathers all to himself.
He tugged Mark Culpepper’s shirt over his nose and mouth and looked down at the ruin of Doug Weathers’s body. Another involuntary giggle escaped from him.
So, Doug, it turns out you do have a heart after all! And there it is.
Stop it, Jazz. Stop it.
There were no fingers on Weather
s’s left hand, but the palm faced up, cradling a small digital recorder. Jazz stooped down and plucked it away without touching any part of Doug Weathers.
Backing away, closer to the door, he suddenly felt eyes on him and spun around. The hallway was empty.
But had it been?
He backed himself into a corner. Now he would see anyone or anything approaching him.
It took him two tries to thumb the recorder to Play.
“Hello, Jasper.”
The voice. Her voice. He gazed up at the ceiling, relaxing for the briefest possible moment and he was a child again and he hadn’t seen his first body yet and everything was okay and everything would always be okay and then he heard something and he startled and there was nothing there, nothing, nothing.
“If you’re hearing this,” she went on, “then that means you’ve killed your father.” She paused. “Good for you. The only question, then, is this: Have you learned anything from the experience?”
Had he? He’d had Billy at his mercy. Completely in his control. Helpless. Legless. What had he learned in those soft moments of his father’s utter vulnerability?
“I want you to take a little time to think, Jasper.” His mother’s voice was soothing. It was the lullaby voice, the Band-Aid-on-scrapes voice. He felt tears again. “Think about your past and think about your future. You know the expression ‘As the crow flies,’ don’t you? People use it to mean a straight line. And that’s very important. Because the way a capital-C Crow flies is in a straight line. It may appear jagged to some, but the Crow flies in a straight line to his goal.” Another pause. “Or her goal, as the case may be. It’s usually men, though.” She laughed. “Mommy broke the glass ceiling, darling. First female Crow King in history. Aren’t you proud?
“Anyway, I want you to know two things, Jasper. I want you to know that even though I went away, I never stopped loving you. You are the flesh of my flesh, the blood of my blood. I’m your mother, and it would just be impossible for me not to love you. And the second thing is this: I’m proud of you. I imagine you’re harboring some sort of notion that I might be angry with you for taking your father away from me. But he and I both knew that someday it might come to this. That there would come a day when you might rise up against him.