The Devil's Laughter

by William W. Johnstone

  Link played a hunch. “You love Satan so much, you little dickhead, I’m going to send you to him.” Actually, Chris was no little young man. He was just about Link’s size.

  “Satan is real!” Chris said, his voice emotion-charged.

  “And a far greater God than that pussy Jesus Christ you people grovel to.”

  “Do you even realize what you’re saying, boy? Those are dangerous words in the eyes of God.”

  “Fuck God!” Chris shouted. He charged at Link.

  Link managed to get out of the blade’s way just as Chris tried to gut him. Link kicked the young man on the kneecap and Chris screamed in pain. But he held on to the knife as he fell back against the hall wall.

  Link popped him in the mouth with a short hard right fist, then stepped back just as the knife came up and Chris’s lips exploded in a spray of blood under the impact of hard knuckles. The back of Chris’s head slammed against the wall.

  Link drove his left fist into the young man’s stomach, and the air exploded out of him and he dropped the knife. Link kicked it away and Billy grabbed it. Link then began to beat the hell out of at least this one lover of Satan.

  He dropped Chris to the carpet when he realized he was slugging an unconscious object. Link couldn’t bring himself to call him a human being. The whole matter had taken about two minutes.

  Link knelt down beside the still-addled Anne. “Get me a wet towel, Betsy,” he said. He looked at the back of Anne’s head. There was a slight bump there from her noggin impacting against the wall. He bathed her face, and she opened her eyes and stared dazedly at him.

  “Try to talk. Let’s see if your jaw is busted,” Link told her.

  She mumbled a few words, cleared her throat, and then proceeded to give her oldest a thorough cussing. Then she realized Billy and Betsy were listening, both of them grinning, and she blushed.

  “Well, your jaw still works pretty good,” Link said. “Let’s get you into the den.”

  On her feet, she looked at the still form of Chris, lying on the carpet. “Did you kill him?” she asked, exhibiting absolutely no emotion.

  “No. But it wasn’t because I didn’t feel like it. He’s just out for the count. Come on, let’s get you into some light and inspect the damage.”

  She had a cut on the inside of her mouth, and that was about it.

  “You should have seen Mr. Link go to fightin’ when Chris pulled that knife on him!” Billy said. The youngster showed his mother the knife and she promptly took it from him.

  “You could have been killed, Link.”

  “The odds were slim against that happening with the pigsticker in his hand,” Link said. He told her about his baiting Chris into admitting he worshiped the devil.

  “He’ll not stay another night in this house,” she said firmly.

  “The devil sucks,” Betsy said solemnly, and that started them all laughing.

  “We better report this,” Link said, walking to the phone. “Not to press any charges – unless you want to, Anne – but to alert Ray.”

  “I’m not going to press charges.”

  “I think,” Link said, “that since Chris is seventeen, he’s considered an adult in the eyes of the law. I think you can legally toss him out of this house.” He punched out the number of the sheriffs office.

  “Legally or not,” she said, “he’s gone.”

  * * *

  “Worshiping the devil?” Cliff Sweeney asked, looking at the beaten and battered face of the young man, sitting sullenly in a chair. “Young man, you need to seek comfort in the arms of the Lord.”

  “Oh, go blow it out your ass!” Chris told him.

  Ray turned his head to hide his small smile and Gerard looked shocked. Dispatch had radioed the men out at the Romaire complex and they arrived together, since it was on the way back to town.

  “I’ll fix coffee for everyone,” Billy said. “Come on and help, Betsy.”

  “I want to stay and listen,” she told him.

  “Move,” her mother said. She moved.

  “If you people will press charges,” Gerard said, “we can sure have the bond set high.”

  “I want him out of this house and on the road,” Anne said.

  “How old is he?” Ray asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  “Grab your rags and hit the trail, boy,” the sheriff told him. “And don’t screw up in this parish. I’ll have your butt in a cell so fast it will purely amaze you.”

  “You don’t scare me at all,” Chris sneered at him. “It won’t be long before – ” He caught himself and closed his swollen mouth.

  “Won’t be long before what?” Ray asked, stepping closer.

  “Stick it up your gazoo,” Chris told him. He looked at his mother. “I got places to go and people that’ll take me in, bitch. I don’t need your mouth in my business.”

  “Get your clothes and get out of this house,” Anne told her son.

  Link watched her. She was rock-hard, with no sign of any tears in her eyes.

  “I don’t need a damn thing from this piss-hole,” the boy said defiantly. “All I need is what I got on my back.”

  “Then go,” his mother said.

  The young man walked to the door and left the house. He slammed the door behind him.

  Gerard slipped out the back way. He would circle the house to watch the road, checking to see if Chris was really leaving.

  “You be careful, Mrs. Brooks,” Ray said. “That boy’s the kind that’ll come back and burn this house to the ground, with you and the kids in it.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” she told him.

  “It would be better if you’d press charges, Link,” Ray told his friend. “We could damn sure take him off the street then.”

  “And the judge would promptly cut him loose,” Link responded.

  “What judge? Jackson and his wife are gone on vacation.”

  “They never left the parish.” Link told the man what Tom Halbert had told him.

  “What the hell? ...” Ray said. “He called the office personally to let me know.”

  “You took the call yourself?” Cliff asked.

  “Well . . . no. Sally did. But why would she lie about it?”

  “Is she a religious person, Ray?” Link asked.

  “Yes. I ...” He paused for a few seconds “Well, she used to be. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her in church in a long time.”

  “But she was devout?” the Bureau man pressed.

  “Very much so. All her life. Until recently.”

  “Do you take care of – or did you take care of – your son’s room?” Ray asked.

  “No,” Anne said. “He expressly forbid me to set foot in there, and I went along with that. If a seventeen-year-old wants to wallow in filth, that’s fine with me.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” the sheriff replied. “Dee and I did the same with our teenagers. They soon learned to keep it picked up.”

  “I want to see Chris’s room,” Link said.

  “Good idea,” Cliff said.

  It was classic. Bed unmade, sheets filthy, litter on the floor. On the walls hung posters depicting the more violent of the rock groups, an upside-down cross, and a Nazi flag. The numbers 666 were prominently displayed.

  “What is n – a – t – a – s?” Ray asked, looking at the letters printed on a piece of poster paper.

  “Satan spelled backward,” Link said.

  “This is very offensive,” Cliff said, looking all around him. “And very irresponsible on the part of the parents.”

  Anne opened her mouth to tell the FBI man where he could stick that remark. Link stepped in between them and faced the man. “You have a very loose mouth, you know that, Sweeney?”

  The Bureau man stared at the ex-CIA man. “I don’t much care for you, either, Donovan.” He walked out of the room.

  “He can be a bit much at times,” Ray said. “But he’s a good man.”

  “Coffee’s ready,” Billy cal
led from the den.

  “I’ll help you clean out this room in the morning,” Link told Anne. “And fumigate it.”

  “He’s hoofing it toward town,” Gerard said, pouring a cup of coffee. “I radioed ahead and have a unit rolling this way to keep an eye on him.”

  Anne asked them all to sit and then quietly told the lawmen all she had done to try to help her son. Months of expensive sessions with first one psychiatrist and then another; no help. The savage fights he’d been in. The lying and stealing on his part. But the thing that brought it all to a head happened just recently.

  “He was looking at Betsy in a ... certain way. A woman knows that look all too well. There comes a point when a parent must have the right to say, ’Enough.’ I’ve reached that point.”

  “I’d have reached it a long time back,” Gerard said. “I commend you on your patience.”

  “I was out of line in the boy’s room,” Sweeney said in a form of apology. He glanced at Link and added,

  “To you, Mrs. Brooks.”

  Link smiled and said nothing.

  Gerard’s walkie-talkie crackled. “Subject was picked up by Dick Marley’s boy, Chief. The youngest one, Frankie.”

  “Follow them, Clement. I want to know where they are at all times tonight. That’s what you do and nothing else.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Dispatch, have Steve take any calls.”

  “Ten-four, Chief.”

  Cliff stood up. “I’m going home to get some sleep. I’ll be back in the morning. Nice to have met you, Mrs. Brooks.” He headed for the door.

  “Nice to have met you, too, Cliff,” Link called.

  Sweeney grunted something and left the house.

  “What is it with you two?” Gerard asked.

  Link shrugged. “Some Bureau people like CIA types, some don’t. He falls in the latter category, that’s all.”

  “Somebody had told him I’d commissioned you, Link,” Ray said.

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Probably Waldo or Westcott.”

  “Or Sally,” Ray said.

  “Or Sally,” Link agreed.

  Link had taken care of his critters, done his work at the computer, and was back at Anne’s place by ten o’clock the next morning.

  They went to work cleaning out Chris’s room.

  “This stuff is disgusting!” Anne said after reading a pamphlet from something called The Church of All Truth.

  “Save all that crap,” Link told her. “We’ll turn it over to Ray. There is no doubt in my mind we’ve got a very active coven in this parish. If the law can’t deal with it, there are other ways.”

  She looked at him but said nothing. She could guess fairly accurately what other ways he was talking about.

  “The star in the center of this circle is all cockeyed,” Anne said.

  Link glanced at it. “A straight-up star inside a circle denotes white magic,” he said. “The one you’re looking at is the sign of the occult.”

  She shook her head. “Let’s pull the mattresses off the bed and take them outside and burn them.”

  “His clothes?”

  “Burn them. We’ll box up all these records and literature and take them to the sheriff. Everything else goes into the fire.”

  They had stripped Chris’s room down to the walls and the floor and burned clothes and mattresses by noon. Link did some work in her hospital building while she fixed lunch. Just after lunch, Gerard stopped by.

  “New developments, folks,” he said after accepting the offer of coffee. The day was turning raw. “Judge Jackson and wife have reappeared. Said they canceled the trip to Vermont and decided to stay at home and relax. And guess who owns the old Romaire complex and all the acreage around it?”

  “Lynette Jackson,” Link said.

  “You got it. Judge Jackson told both Ray and the FBI to get their work done out there and then get off the property and stay off.”

  “That’s a strange remark coming from a judge,” Anne said.

  “There’s more. He said his wife has decided to tear the place down because it’s a danger to kids who might decide to play in there.”

  “Or a good way to hide a lot of bones,” Link said.

  “Yeah,” the chief deputy said. “That passed through all our minds down at the office.”

  “Can’t Sweeney get some sort of federal order halting the demolition?”

  “He’s trying. But he really doesn’t have much to go on. We’re trying to get a search warrant signed by another judge, but he’s dragging his feet. Obviously, Judge Jackson has been very busy on the phone. He’s saying it’s all political; that the sheriff is trying to smear him and ruin his career. Jackson is well-liked. He may be able to delay a search for some time.”

  “Giving coven members time to move in very quietly at night to carry off any evidence that might be lying about,” Link said.

  “If there is a coven in this parish,” Gerard said. “And if there is any evidence out there. And if Judge Jackson and wife are connected with any of this. Even if we prove there is a coven, it’s not against the law to worship the devil so long as there is no cruelty to animals or human sacrifice.”

  “How about contributing to the delinquency of a minor?” Anne asked.

  “We’re working on that part of it. But it’s iffy. None of us have any experience dealing with devil worship. We’re groping around in the dark. I was on my way out to the complex. You two want to come along?”

  “No thank you,” Anne said. “How about Chris?”

  “He’s staying out at Dick Marley’s farm. Dick’s boy, Frankie, just dropped out of high school a couple of weeks ago. He’s been running with a pretty rough bunch: dopers, thugs, punks. Surprisingly, most of them come from good homes. And they’re a violent, vicious group of young people. Seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. Male and female.”

  “When I was seventeen years old,” Link said, “I was scared to death of cops. I tried to make myself invisible when they came close.”

  “So were we all,” Gerard said. “And that’s a large part of the problem now. These kids have no fear of us. They know in many cases our hands are tied by court rulings. I had a kid toss me the finger the other day. You know what old Town Marshal George Reed would have done to us thirty years ago if we’d flipped him the bird?”

  “He’d have broken that finger off, chased us down and put knots on our heads, and then hauled us home so our father could take a belt to our well-deserving asses,” Ray said. “But now, if a cop hurts one of mommy and daddy’s precious little angels, we get slapped with a lawsuit and the kid gets patted on the back, with the parents saying, ’We’ll teach that cop a thing or two, won’t we, boy?’ Gives me the red-ass so bad I can’t hardly stand it.”

  “I joined a group of concerned parents out in southern California,” Anne said. “I left after the third meeting. Some of that garbage they were spewing made me nauseous. Not one there would put the blame for their kids’ behavior on themselves or their kids; it was always somebody else’s fault.”

  Ray drained his coffee cup, stood up, and sighed. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, kid or no kid, I want to live to enjoy my retirement. If one confronts me with a gun, I’m not going to cut him any slack. This generation has among them some of the most vicious, uncaring, cold-blooded young people I have ever seen. Drive-by shootings don’t even make much news now, it’s done so often. We used to settle our differences with fists – now it’s guns. The most horrible damn music I have ever heard, torture and devil worship. Come on, Gerard, take me home before I start crying.”

  Chapter 8

  Before Link did anything the next morning – except to tend to his animals – he drove down to Anne’s house to see if that snot-nosed punk had burned it down. It was Saturday, and it was a gorgeous late fall morning. One of the prettiest times in the rolling hill country of Louisiana. The house was still standing. Link opened the gate, closed it behind him, and drove up to the house. Anne stepped out on t
he back porch just as he pulled to a stop.

  She smiled and waved him inside. “The kids are sleeping late. How about some breakfast?”

  “I’d love it. Any trouble last night.”

  “No. Oddly enough, nothing happened at all. But I slept with a loaded pistol on the nightstand.” She poured him coffee in a thick mug. “I guess that makes me a pretty terrible mother to think thoughts about shooting her own son.”

  “You’re pretty, for sure,” Link said. “And survival is one of humankind’s oldest instincts.” He smiled. “You and I think a lot alike.”

  She fixed oatmeal and English muffins. “I’m assuming you’re a vegetarian?” she asked.

  “Right. But don’t worry, I’m not the preachy kind. I eat fish and occasionally some chicken. I was pretty much of a vegetarian as a kid, too. In fact, I almost killed my brother Robert once over just that.”

  “Over your dietary habits?” she asked, sitting down.

  “In a manner of speaking. Robert liked to needle me – in a very ugly way – about how I loved animals. I had a pet rabbit. While I was at work, Robert killed it and cooked it. Tossed it on my plate for supper.”

  She grimaced. “What type of person would do that?”

  “Someone like Robert. He told me, ’There’s your damn stupid rabbit, kid.’ I knocked him flat on the kitchen floor, tossed him out the back door, and stomped him. That was twenty-six years ago. We have not exchanged a word in all those years. No, that’s not true. When my parents retired and moved away, Robert was one of the more vocal of the clan complaining about their giving the homeplace to me. I told him to go to hell and knocked him flat on his pompous butt in the front yard. Calvin and Maria helped him to his car, and I haven’t seen any of them since.”

  “That’s sad, Link.”

  “Not to me.” He grinned. “They’re greedy, grasping, hypocritical, social-climbing people, Anne. They think they’re going to get the money when Mom and Dad pass away. But I’ve seen the will. They each get one hundred dollars and the rest of it goes to various animal protection organizations. And my parents are worth a couple of million bucks.”

  “No way your siblings can take your land?”

  “Nope. Believe me, they’ve already tried several times. I don’t even know where two of them live.”