Starling (Southern Watch Book 6)

by Robert J. Crane

  *

  When the ritual was done, Pike felt a rushing sense of relief that he hadn’t felt when he got his rocks off. Darla had even smiled, something he’d wondered about her doing, since she seemed mad enough when she missed her orgasm that he’d been real hesitant to go looking for trouble by opening his mouth around her.

  “That’s blood and sex magic,” Darla said, belly damp where she’d ripped down the curtains from his office and soaked ’em in the sink, wiping them over her body to clean up the blood. She’d just about got it all now, a little here and there staining the white skin, a little seeped into her stretch marks, working their way into those little ditches like runoff after a storm. She smiled darkly. “That’s the good stuff.”

  “You know, after we burn this place down—” and he pointed straight up at the ceiling “—where am I supposed to work during the days?”

  Darla got a nasty smile. “Don’t you want to work at home, with our little monsters running around all day?”

  Pike felt like he’d been struck by a runaway train, even though he knew she was joking. “Not particularly, no.”

  Darla let out an ugly laugh. “I think you’re going to have bigger things to worry about soon enough, don’t you?”

  Pike eyed her. “Like what?”

  “I think you should kill the whole damned fire department next,” she said, buttoning her blouse. “Every last one of them, if you can, or at least enough so they can’t operate their engine.” She was focused on her blouse, talking casually. “You take them out, and suddenly there’s a lot more chaos, especially if other counties follow the Fed and State lead of ignoring the fuck out of Calhoun County’s demon problem.” She looked up at him. “When this thing comes down, it’s gonna mostly fall on Midian anyway. The sooner we isolate them, the sooner we can kickstart the finale here and just get Midian burned to the ground—maybe literally.”

  “This might not stop at the outskirts of Midian,” Pike said. “I mean, what we’re talking about here—this hotspot—it could go bigger. A lot bigger. Maybe the whole county.”

  “Who gives a fuck?” She stopped midway through pulling up her pants and favored him with a look that probably reflected how stupid she thought he was being at present. “I don’t even like it here. I don’t like these fucking backward people. They’re all, ‘Bless your heart—’” she made an ugly face, stretching her lips downward and wide, sticking her tongue out “—and pretending to worry about you. And they said to me, this one cunt down at the coffee shop in Culver, ‘Oh, the people are so much nicer down here.’ Bullshit. Fakeass nice. It’s not really nice to point out how nice you are, fucking assholes.” She looked right at him. “This place is just a way station for us. Let’s get what we came for, the blessings of—well, you know—all we can, okay? Every bit of lower-realm favor we can walk out of here with. Let’s stockpile it. Then we go home.” She fastened and zipped her pants, then took a couple steps back to sit in the chair while she put on her socks.

  “Yeah, all right,” Pike said. He was just about done dressing in clean clothes too. Good thing Darla had brought fresh ones. Always thinking ahead, that woman. “We’re going to have to call 911 eventually once we light this place up. The fire truck was just a few miles down the road earlier, so … we probably ought to wait a little bit for it to get all the way going.”

  “We’ll fake having passed out just outside the entrance in the lobby. Lie down on the ground there and just wait a little while before we make the call, in case anyone passes by.” Her eyes were darting as she slipped on her shoes. “We’ll need to really make sure we get things going hard, though.”

  “The county records room should be where we start it then,” he said, nodding. “Lots of paper. I think they used to use carbon paper, and that goes up quick. We hit the old records, light a few filing cabinets. Douse the place good … let it spread a little.” He considered for a second. “We can kill the sprinkler system too. Turn off the water main. They’ll never find that, especially if, uh … Marty Ferrell happens to go missing at some point in the next week or so.”

  She grinned at him, standing. “Now you’re thinking. I’ll get the gas cans.”

  “You didn’t buy ’em just this afternoon, did you?” he asked, that nervous thought occurring.

  “No, I loaded up a couple weeks ago, before this all started,” she said. “Back when we knew it was coming. Figured we might need to do a fire ritual, but I didn’t want to worry about having a gas can purchase and fill-up fresh in anyone’s mind.” She made another sour face. “And I damned sure didn’t want to have to drive anywhere else to do it. I mean, fuck’s sake, this place is so goddamned far from anything.”

  “Well, we ain’t going to be here much longer,” he said, and a shadow crossed her face. “What?”

  “Ain’t ‘ain’t’ a word,” she said. “Start speaking properly again, for fuck’s sake. You sound like one of these goddamned backwoods hicks.”

  “Yeah, I’ll work on that,” he said, “right after we burn up these bodies of people we killed and call the authorities, knowing that they hopefully ain’t going to even realize there was a crime, let alone prove it was us.” He gave it some thought. “How do you want to handle Ferrell?”

  “I don’t really know him very well. Do you?” Darla asked.

  “Well enough,” Pike said. “He’s the kind of guy that’d help anybody he could.”

  “Find out when he gets off shift,” Darla said, eyes moving like she was thinking rapidly. “I’ve got a babysitter for as long as I need tonight. Provided he gets off before midnight, I’ll park my car on the path this guy would take home, pretend I’m stuck. If he’s an actual nice guy—” she made a nasty inference there “—he’ll stop and help me.” She smiled slowly. “I’ll make sure to put the body somewhere it won’t be found before the demons get to it.”

  “And you don’t want my help on that?” he asked.

  “I might, depending on what you’re doing,” she said. “But I can handle it myself, if I have to.” She picked her way around Reeve’s corpse, still splayed on the floor. “If you’re still here, dealing with the fallout, I’ll take care of it myself. If you’re not … we’ll get him together.”

  “Whew, that’s an exciting date night,” Pike said.

  “Yeah, I wish there was time to use him as a sacrifice too,” Darla said, with actual regret. “But I don’t want to chance it with something this potentially dicey. I’ll shoot him in the head like I did Reeve, and quickly, while his back’s turned.” She nodded once, like it was decided. “If there’s anything I can work into before or after … well, I’ll see. But the important thing is to cover our tracks and make it look like a demon did it.”

  “Okay,” he said, and leaned in to give her a peck on the lips. She accepted it coolly, and then they parted, her looking around the room significantly. Enough time had elapsed; it was about time for them to get to work. “All right, let’s light it up and make the call.”

  *

  Erin was sitting at the desk in the cell bank, head resting on her hand. She’d taken over for Bernie Stout, and was now just outside the door of the unspeaking man, Mr. Voiceless, browsing her phone while she waited. Who was supposed to take over here? Bernie had told her, but she’d already forgotten. Reeve would be back before too long, and if the pattern held, he’d come do a quick inspection of the station, and she’d ask him when he passed through. He wouldn’t really give a fuck about the prisoner, but he’d make a show of it.

  She’d seen the look in his eyes whenever he passed this way; it was mere formality. Every time he looked in the cage-like window at the man housed behind her, she knew what he saw.

  The death of everything he’d ever loved.

  That bothered her on a few levels, the nearest one being that she’d had some of the demons in her head for a while too, just like the fella in the confinement behind her had. The only difference was time, and that she hadn’t done a hack and slash on Donna Reeve. If sh
e’d been in on that …

  Well, odds were good the sheriff would be looking at her—or avoiding looking at her—just the same as he was this guy.

  She sniffed the musty air in this part of the jail. They were caught somewhere between turning the heat on, with its dry, hot stink, and the air conditioner. This was the part of autumn where things hit an unpredictable in-between. Sometimes you’d start the morning with the heat on and move to the AC in the afternoon. This being November, they were more or less past that, but every once in a while, like today, a warm afternoon would sneak in on them. She might have enjoyed it if she hadn’t been sitting outside the jail cells, watching a man who didn’t really move to make sure he didn’t escape.

  Not that she was actually watching him. She was half-reading a gossip site on her phone and wondering why she should give a fuck now about the latest celebrity split. It was the sort of thing she would have loved to read just a few months earlier. Now, though …

  Well, there were more important things to do, weren’t there?

  Someone unlocked the door in front of her and came in; she saw dark hair in the little window, caught a flash of a face.

  Brian.

  He held the door, like he was waiting for her to get up and come toward her. His face was clouded over; wasn’t he supposed to be heading for the hospital soon? That was his pattern, wasn’t it? “What—” she started to ask.

  “We got a fire call,” Brian said, “out at the County offices. 911.”

  She flushed and stood. “The sheriff’s out there. Was it him—”

  Brian shook his head. “It was County Administrator Pike. He said something started the building on fire, said it was burning down—”

  “Shit,” she said, and went past him in a rush. The sheriff was there, and he hadn’t called. That meant—

  Fuck.

  Her mind sped, trying to get to the logical version of the conclusion her gut had already reached. If the sheriff was still there, and the building was burning, and Pike had been the one to make the call—

  Reeve could have been trying to save people. That’s the kind of guy he was. He would have delegated Pike to 911 duty, for sure, while he—

  But that other possibility tore at her as she burst out into the bullpen and found everybody except Casey already heading for the door. Her phone buzzed, but she didn’t look; they’d already called the watch and this was the message.

  Because the other explanation … was that Reeve was still there.

  And he was either fighting what caused the fire …

  Or he was dead.

  *

  Hendricks woke to a buzzing and the realization that he didn’t have morning wood, or afternoon wood, as the case might have been. Starling might just have sucked him dry for a while, he realized as he came out of a deep REM sleep, might have left him flaccid for a day or two until his libido recovered. It never tended to last long, but it was interesting to him that it was just sitting there, not fully retracted but not wild and hard, like it would have been if he’d been ready to go again immediately.

  Sometimes when he woke up like that, she was already here, in bed. Presumably her alter ego had nothing going on at those times, the early-morning crowd not a thing in the brothel business.

  Suited him fine; not that he’d ever caught a hint of Starling being in anything other than mint condition when she’d come to him. Something about the changeover, he reckoned. He wanted to believe it included a total body sterilization. Like someone hosed her off and put a mint air freshener up there before he went to work on her.

  Leaving that thought aside, because it wasn’t exactly stiffening him, Hendricks rolled over and fetched the phone. He clicked the screen on and got the message: FIRE AT COUNTY OFFICES. SHERIFF REEVE LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS AT THAT LOCATION.

  “Shit,” Hendricks said under his breath. He’d had about enough of fire for this day, but tossing in that last bit got him moving. He stumbled out of bed and started to dress, determined to get the hell out the door in less than five.

  After all, Reeve was basically the CO here. And no matter what a butterbars your LT was, you didn’t leave his ass to twist, especially when he was one of the competent ones, and especially when it might be a literal fire of someone else’s making rather than a figurative, shitstorm-type one of his own.

  *

  “Check that, would you, Braeden?” Barney Jones asked as they crowded around the kitchen table. Olivia Jones had put on another feast, and Arch had just bitten into a biscuit after they’d finished saying grace when the buzzing had sounded. They left their cell phones on the counter during meals, which on the whole Arch approved of. But with three of them on the watch, it wasn’t as complete a break into isolation as it might have been in a normal family, under normal circumstances.

  But they weren’t normal, were they? Arch thought, chewing that doughy biscuit. He hadn’t even buttered it, it was so rich. And they weren’t really a family either, other than in the family of Christ.

  Tarley nodded and put his napkin down on the table as he got up, taking care not to set it in his gravy. Arch watched the man go, thinking on all they’d been through. No, they weren’t a family. Two out of the four of them had lost their families. Had lost them hard. And—

  “Motherfucker,” Tarley said, face lit by the screen.

  “Braeden,” Olivia said in the voice of a mother terribly disappointed in her son.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” Tarley was appropriately chastened for the second it took him to turn around, and then Arch saw it on his face. “Fire at the county offices, and Reeve was heading that way last anyone talked to him—”

  “Dadgum,” Arch said, mind already moving ahead, making those assumptions. They’d already turned up one of those fire sloths today. Was it really that much of a stretch that a few minutes farther out, another would rear its ugly head?

  “Let’s adjourn to the car, gentlemen.” Jones was already on his feet, kissing Olivia. “Sorry, my dear.”

  “I’ll put your plates away,” Olivia promised, “and make sure y’all can heat ’em back up later tonight, when you get home.”

  “That’s mighty kind of you,” Braeden said. He was still torn up about swearing in front of Olivia, Arch could tell.

  Arch grabbed another biscuit for the road, heading out the door a few steps behind Braeden after pocketing his own phone and seeing that, sure enough, he’d gotten the same message. Barney was the last one out, and the screen door slammed behind him as Arch slid into the back seat of the Buick.

  “Shit,” Braeden said under his breath as he bent himself into the passenger seat. Arch rolled his eyes; he was upset about swearing in front of the lady of the house, and here he was swearing again. Apparently he didn’t possess the hindsight to see that if he stopped the habit of swearing entirely, he wouldn’t have had the problem to begin with.

  Barney slid in, a little slower than either of his charges, sinking into the seat and then reaching out, leaning hard to shut the door. He started the car without a word, and then backed up out of the driveway at about a hundred miles an hour.

  Arch let out a creative word of his own at the speed of the movement, but, as per habit, that word was “Dadgum!”

  Jones threw the car into gear and stomped on the accelerator. “When one of your people gets into the soup, you come a-running, even if there’s nothing you can do,” the old pastor said, not taking his eyes off the road as he explained, very matter-of-factly, why he was driving like he’d never driven before in Arch’s experience.

  Arch just took that one in; Tarley didn’t say nothing either. If it was true, though, and there really was nothing to be done, and they were racing there just to be racing there …

  Well, better that they were there and not able to do a thing to help than to be elsewhere, too slow, and unable to help when it was needed.

  *

  Erin let the sirens scream, let the pedal kiss the metal, kept the squad car floored and ripping along the bac
k roads. She was hitting a hundred, hundred and twenty on straightaways and going eighty into blind corners. Sure, she’d gone off a cliff like this not that long ago, she thought as she swept into a hard turn, feeling the gravity tearing at her, and sure, she’d kill somebody and probably herself in a head-on if she didn’t slow the fuck down soon, but …

  Dammit, this was Reeve.

  The man could be in danger. And help, though coming, was slow. She didn’t even know where the fire truck was, though she’d heard somebody say something about it on the squad radio. It had just buzzed right past her, not even registering.

  Her hands were on the wheel, white-knuckled, tight against that fakeass leather, and she was two turns away from the County offices in Culver. She was squealing her way around one now, sure that any second now she’d meet some hay truck or something on the curve and that’d be it, she’d be worse off than the time she tumbled down Mt. Horeb’s winding roads, but unable to ease her foot off that goddamned accelerator because—

  It was Reeve, for fuck’s sake.

  She iced the last corner at almost ninety, running off the road and fucking up the grass next to the shoulder. She slowed it down in the curve itself, but she’d come into it hard and came out of it hard, in the left lane, relying a little too much on the grip of the cruiser’s tires. Back on the pavement once more, she hit the goddamned pedal again, setting the tires squealing.