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He began to hump the head.
"Ooo-eee!" the footless old man exclaimed. "Hump that there evil head, boy. I say, hump it!"
As Cummings stared on, his sentience felt akin to a swamp rat racing round in his mind, madly seeking exit. The old man in the chair had his penis out too, was masturbating as he whooped. And Tuckton continued to hump the head in a fury...
"Yeah. Travis! Do'm up reals good!" the old man celebrated, his hand choking his own penis like a chicken neck. "Get'cher self off a dandy nut in that there head!"
"Gonna come in his head so hard. Grandpappy" the boy huffed, humping away, "my peckersnot's gonna squirt out his butt!"
"Yeah, boy! Yeeeeeah!"
So here it was, right before Cummings’ eyes. He'd stumbled upon this, he was watching it, for God's sake. He was bearing witness tο the same macabre crime which had obsessed him for months.
He was witnessing a header...
Cummings, an automaton now, unholstered his service revolver. Turned. Walked up the porch steps and entered the dilapidated house.
"Aw, shee-it, Grandpap," he heard, "I'se gonna gets me off my first nut likes real fast in this cracker head!"
"Go fer it, boy! Get it! We'se got all night ta fuck that head, plenty time fer more nuts. Why, I'se'll hump four 'er five times myself! So don’t’cha worry 'bout comin' fast. Pipe a load a juice that'd make yer daddy proud!"
Numb, and oddly fearless, Cummings stepped into the room.
"Who the hail!" the old man cracked.
The boy, evidently in the spasms of orgasm, slowed down his pelvic thrusts into the corpse-head and opened his eyes.
'"S'a cop!" he realized.
BAM.'
Cummings squeezed off the first shot. The boy's eye disappeared as a pulpy red blur, and he fell away from the table, from the... head. He landed on the wood floor hard as a side of fresh-butchered beef, his erection still pulsing down, offering semen to the air.
"Ya blammed fuckin' cop! Look what'cha done!"
BAM!
Cummings' second shot caught the old man in the belly, who doubled over in the wheelchair. And—
BAM!
The third shot divided the top of his head almost as cleanly as a machete through a melon.
Cummings stood. Stared. For the second time in a day his eyes went wide in spite of rising cordite. Silence like a graveyard at 3 a.m. insinuated about him, and so did the simple thought.
I just solved the head-humping murders.
That's all it had taken. Three shots from his service revolver, and it was all over...
What... now? There was no phone, no way to report the incident to the state. And on this side of the ridge, his radio probably wouldn't reach the dispatcher.
Leave the house. Take the evidence. Go back to the FO and report to State, he thought robotically.
And Cummings did just that. He redonned his gloves, grabbed a cardboard box from a random shelf. He took a boot off the body of Travis Clyde Tuckton, grabbed the power-drill still fitted with the 3-inch holesaw, grabbed the kitchen knife, and put it all in the box. Then he took it all out to the car and drove back to the Russell County BATF Field Office.
........
The drive back left him stunned—or, not so much the drive, but his musings. Talk about a busy day. I killed four men in a handful of hours, he reminded himself at the wheel. The Route opened up, passed endless cornfields and slat-gapped barns. But only two of the dead men mattered. Tuckton and Martin.
The head-humpers.
It was a revitalization he needed. Killing two drug dealers and copping their green was one thing. But... this? In a matter of minutes, and with three shots from his duty piece, he'd solved a murder case...
Cummings parked. A state unmarked was in the lot too, and he could only guess that they were following up Beck's evidence, talking to Peerce. Save your breath, boys, he thought proudly. I just solved the case. The grotesquerie of what he'd seen was far behind him. He could deal with that later.
He walked into the FO.
"I did it, boss." he announced.
Peerce looked up from his desk.
Cummings was nearly out of breath now. "I solved the head-humping murders."
"Ya did... what?"
"Caught them in the act, saw it with my own eyes. Shot them. They were... doing it right there in the window."
"Stew—"
"Ex-con named Tuckton, and his grandfather. Had some guy right there on the table and they were... humping... his head."
"Stew, shut up a minute."
Cummings peered. "What's wrong. J.L.? I just got done telling you I solved the header murders."
Peerce spat in his proverbial cup. Only then did Cummings notice the other man in the claustrophobic office.
Hard-looking guy, tall. State uniform but he had stripes down his pants and a crest on the bill of his hat. A state captain or above...
But Cummings noticed something else.
The state officer had his gun drawn.
"This here's major Phil Straker." Peerce told him. "He's liaison officer 'tween state IAD an' narcotics."
"Narc—" But that's all Cummings could get out.
"Yer unner arrest. Stew, fer two count's'a first degree murder."
Cummings fell bolted in place.
"Not to mention." this Straker added, "obstruction of justice, complicity with known felonious criminals, misprision of a felony, the willful theft of ill-gotten gains, and possession and illegal transport of controlled dangerous substances."
"Don't even say nothin', Stew. They got'cha cold," Peerce said. On his desk was a portable field VCR. Peerce turned it on, toned up the tiny screen.
My God. Cummings thought.
There, right there on the screen. Cummings saw himself, placing first the gym bag and then 10 bags of cocaine into the trunk of his federal car...
"That's two counts of murder. Agent Cummings." Strakcr spoke up again, "but one of the men you murdered was a state police officer."
"Dutch," Cummings murmured.
"That's right. He was a state narcotics plant working a sting. We had cameras inside and one outside, for tag numbers. The cameras inside, of course, burned up in the fire you set. But the one outside..."
Straker's free hand bid the VCR screen. On it, Cummings was driving away.
"You're fucked, Stew" Peerce said. "You're an asshole."
"The murder of a police officer," Straker was kind enough to embellish, "as you probably know, carries a mandatory sentence of death in this state."
I'm caught. Cummings thought simply. I'm dead.
But he wasn't dead yet, was he?
"Stew, unholster yer piece an' set it on my desk. Real slow like."
Straker had his own piece on him. I'm not going down, Cummings thought. I'd rather punch out now than spend a decade years getting butt-fucked in the can while my appeals run out.
Cummings, very slowly, set his service revolver on Peerce's desk.
"Good boy," Straker said.
Cummings shrugged, then, in an instant, lashed his hands out, remembering the pistol-disarm technique they'd taught him in the army. His hands wrapped around Straker's gun, pushed away—
BAM!
The bullet grazed his side but he didn't even feel it.
"Goddamn it. Stew, don't'cha even—"
The automaton again. Cummings had disarmed Straker in less than one full second, had the guy's piece in his hand.
Straker, though shit-scared, tried to maintain his authority. "Don't be stupid. Cummings. You can plea-bargain your way out maybe. You can say you killed them in self-defense and were bringing the money and the coke back here. But if you kill us. you're finished."
BAM!
BAM-BAM!
He took out Peerce first, a clean headshot, then punched Straker's ticket with a double-tap in the 5x. a heartshot. Blood jetted out of the holes a good three feet. Peerce lay limp in
his office chair, the back of his head emptied.
Brown tobacco juice drooled as a single rope from the comer of his mouth.
Cummings head was ticking: the swamp rat was back, whipping more circles, trying to find a way out.
Be cool, he ordered himself, though that was not particularly easy considering he'd killed six men today, three of them police officers. What's done is done. Don’t freak out.
Think.
Plea bargain? No way. He'd already dumped the cocaine. No judge would buy it. He'd done the only thing he could do to preserve his own life. The way he saw it, he had maybe an hour lead before anyone found the bodies, more if he was lucky. He'd have to pinch a car, blow over the state line, then steal more cars along the way till he got to Mexico. There was no other way.
After all, he still had over all that money in his trunk.
Out of here.
He didn't even take a final look around. He left the VCR; surely Straker wasn't the only state narc who'd seen the surveillance tape. So he got into his car and drove.
Take the Route to 23. Best to stay off the intestate. They'd have an AΡΒ out on his car soon, so he'd have to steal something quick, and abduct the owner so the car wouldn't be reported stolen. Who knew? But—
What am I doing? He decelerated, then pulled a U.
Kath...
He couldn't just disappear. He owed her an explanation, at least. And the money? He'd leave her half, to keep her on her feet and pay her pharmacy bills. Hell, even half of the cash. U.S. greenbacks, would last a long time in Mexico. But it wasn't just that—
I've got to— Suddenly Cummings, a cold-blooded murderer, a cop killer, was in tears.
I've got to see her one last time...
In one afternoon he'd destroyed his entire life. And the only good thing that remained in that life was Kath. My God What have I done?
There could be no point in deliberating regrets, no logic in reconsideration. It was a cruel world, and sometimes people had to do cruel things. Ripping off the money, killing Dutch and Spaz? It was either that or live in squalor, weighed down by Kath's medical bills. They both deserved better than that. All he wanted was enough to get by. It was the chance he had to take, and the whole thing went sour. From the beginning, he'd never had a choice.
Dust followed him up the gravel road to his house. He skidded to a halt. In a waking nightmare, he saw a house full of State SWAT and DEA tac men, waiting for him, waiting for the cop killer. But the house was pin-drop silent when he entered. No shadows in wait.
Gym bag in tow, he walked down the dim hall to the bedroom. She was probably resting, worn out by the fatigue of her illness. What would she say? How would she react? Cummings brushed aside tears, his hand on the doorknob. Disgusted with him? Appalled? All that and more, he realized.
He could just leave half of the money, then drive away, call her later. Anything not to have to face her with what he'd done. But that wouldn't work, either. By then the state would be tracing any incoming calls. He'd be caught.
Be a man, you asshole. Go in, wake her up, and tell her.
The gym bag felt as heavy as a bag full of body parts, or dead babies. The door stood slightly ajar. But just before he could open it, he heard - “Yeah, like that."
Kath's voice.
She must he on the phone, he discerned, Then paranoia kicked in. Had the state called her? Were they talking to her right now, rubbing the revelation in her face that her husband was a murderer? But no, that couldn't be. Her voice sounded normal, even enlivened.
"Want more?"
Cummings' brow furrowed. Then he heard another voice.
A man's.
"Yeah, cut me another line."
Cummings peeked in the gap, and that was when the rest of his world collapsed.
Kath lay naked on the bed, spread-legged and grinning. She was giggling as a naked man—Dr. Seymour, no less—inhaled lines of cocaine off her belly, simultaneously rubbing the furred plot of her sex.
"Where do you get this good blow, Jimmy?" she asked.
The pharmacist leaned up, wiped white power off his nose. "I got my sources." Then he chuckled, his finger still in the groove of Kath's vagina. "Bet your husband'd shit a brick if he knew."
Kath laughed. Her sweaty face looked aglow in untold delights. "Are you kidding? He'd kill us both!"
"It's amazing how stupid he is, though." Now the man was rubbing her breasts, so nonchalant. "Just keeps forking over the cash week after week, and never suspects a thing."
"I'm a good actress, Jimmy. The asshole still thinks I'm so sick I'm about to die. And he believes it all because I show him those phony doctor slips and drug prescriptions you give me. He thinks I'm using all that money for medicine!"
"Yeah, well this is some fine medicine," the man said, shaking the bag of white powder.
"And he just got a raise!"
They both laughed like jackals. Kath's breasts bobbing. Cummings could only stand there and watch, as if annodized, as if the truth had reverted him to a six-foot block of cement.
"Come on, let's do it again," Kath purred, cupping the man's genitals. "Stew doesn't get home till six."
"Christ, Kath! I done come in ya twice already. Give a guy a chance to get it up again!"
"You'll get it up." she assured, "and when you do, I want it up the ass."
"Aw, shit, aw, Christ, honey, you sure know how to suck a cock."
What the universe was now treating Cummings to, of course, was the witness of his wife performing expert fellatio on this Jimmy, the town general practitioner, who lay back in Cummings bed with his eyes closed.
And, next—
The swamp rat slopped.
When the doctor opened his eyes, though. Cummings' gun was in his face. The face drained. The mouth opened to speak.
BAM!
Kath's head rose, her naked body bucked. She screamed. Jimmy's head emptied glistening brains on the pillow.
"Stew!" Kath shrieked, turning in a blur of flesh. "I—"
BAM! BAM!
She lay back howling.
"Just to make sure you don't go anywhere," Cummings said, reholstering his Smith. No, he hadn't killed her. He'd blown out her kneecaps.
Then he walked out of the house and put the gym bag back in the trunk.
Yes, it was a cruel world indeed, and it was about to get a little bit crueller.
From the trunk he retrieved the box he'd taken out of the old man's cottage, the box containing the evidence: the power drill, the knife, and the hole-saw bit.