Stiles sat in the van for nearly ten minutes, waiting impatiently, wondering if he should go on to the Tunnel and risk the deputy finding him there later. But then the squad car finally started. “About time,” he muttered as it edged into the empty street and U-turned, headed back past him. Stiles pulled out as well, following at a discreet distance, confident that they would finally make it to Sykes Road this time. But that was underestimating Rusty Sanders. Before they got as far as the Tri-Lakes, the deputy pulled off the road and into the Nevermore Trailer Park. “What now!” Stiles sighed with disgust as he eased onto the shoulder, where he had an unhindered view of the park’s main drive. Sanders drove all the way to the rear of the park, past the rows of Hollyparks and Westbrooks with their redwood decks and seamless skirting, and it looked as if he might turn the corner there and disappear onto the next drive. But he pulled in next to the last trailer in the row and stopped. Stiles fished through the van console for his field binoculars, and they brought the scene much closer. It was an older Windsor mobile home and it wasn’t in the best condition; the siding was separating at the seams and showed signs of rust, and the window nearest the door was broken and patched with cardboard from the inside. Rusty Sanders climbed from the patrol car trying to look professional, cap on and clipboard under one arm, as he approached the door and knocked. He had to do so three times before it finally opened.
The woman who greeted him there may have been in her early thirties but looked older, at least in the face. Her hair hung straight and bodiless and her eyes, even at that distance, had a glazed tired look, which could have been sleep or something stronger. A cigarette dangled from her large lips. She was wearing an open bathrobe and underneath it a satin teddy, the kind from Frederick’s of Hollywood, cut low in the front and high up on the hips so a little pubic hair is always in view. The kind that invariably looks better in the catalogs. Not that Georgetta Stovall had a bad figure; her bustline was an impressive sight to be sure and had been all but a landmark in Isherwood for some time. But the skimpy lingerie, while emphasizing those breasts, also showed a bit too much of a growing belly and the creep of cellulite that was beginning to threaten her thighs and hips. Neither of which seemed to affect Rusty Sanders. He looked around secretively to see if they were being watched, then said something to the woman. She flipped her cigarette into the yard and answered him with a curt, bored nod of her own, then reached out for his jacket collar and pulled him through the door.
Stiles shook his head with wonder. Not that he was against someone getting his pipes cleaned now and then, but while on duty? Well, at least it worked to the soldier’s advantage. “Take your time, punk,” he muttered as he wheeled back onto the road and headed for Sykes and the Tunnel.
It took him longer to find the yellow T-Bird than he’d expected. While not exactly hidden, it was parked at the far end, just around the edge of the tree line where a passing glance would miss it. It was only when backtracking that Stiles noticed it at all. He left the van running as he checked it out. Empty, and strewn with beer cans and burger wrappers. The registration sheet from above the sun visor read Lawrence Whitten, Seymour, Indiana. It didn’t match the three first names Bart and Del had given him, but the city was right.
There was no doubt in his mind where the boys had gone. He looked up the road. The Danner land started not much further along.
He drove down the road a short distance, till the van was out of sight of the Tunnel, and then he parked on the weed-covered shoulder and continued on foot. He moved in earnest, crouched, close to the ground like a bloodhound, searching for marks or prints, any sign at all that the three boys were there. It didn’t take him long to locate the cleared section of the boundary wall, where creepers and tanglevine had been slashed aside. Thorns near the top still clung to ravels of colored cloth. He swallowed hard. They definitely went over. But when? This morning? Last night?
He instinctively reached for a pistol before remembering them to be back in the van. You won’t need them, he assured himself as he climbed the wall. But once atop it, upon looking into the perpetual gloom of the other side, his hand strayed to his belt and drew the bali-song from its nylon cocoon. A flick of the wrist opened the nine-inch butterfly knife. He reversed the grip, holding the blade back, flush with his forearm, then jumped down into the forest and began his search.
He careened through the woods urgently, much faster than before but missing very little. His eyes scoured the ground like mine sweepers, picking through the weeds and leaves, searching out the smallest details. Trampled grass. Footprints. Obscure impressions in the dirt. The greenish-yellow smear of fluorescent paint on the roots of a tree . . .
His toe struck something in the weeds.
He thrust a hand into the underbrush and brought out a dense clod of dirt. With vigorous brushing it became a revolver, a Harrington & Richardson .32, to be precise. He dropped the cylinder and poured the empty casings into his hand. Every shot fired.
Oh shit.
He established a perimeter around the spot where he found the gun and began to comb every inch of it, upturning rocks, sifting through leaves. On the northern edge he found a footprint. Another perimeter was marked off, another search conducted. Another find, this time a tennis shoe to match the footprint, and beside that a handprint. Complete with inch-long nails. Another footprint further on, this one a boot, set deeper in the soil and accompanied by scuff marks alongside it as if its creator had rested its weight on one leg and had . . . dragged the other. Stiles swallowed and picked up his pace, heading in the general direction the clues pointed in. Toward the house.
There was something lying in the trail up ahead. The Red Chopper had broken just below the ax head and the handle was nowhere to be seen. He picked up the head and ran a finger along its blade. It came away smeared not with blood but a milky white film, like thin gauze, dry and tough.
Skin.
He started to run. The clues were that numerous and that obvious. A hockey mask here, a pair of plastic fangs there, a half empty pack of Winstons. The trail was veering away from the house and cutting a wildly erratic course through the woods. Stiles cut back on himself several times and tried to imagine the terror that had spurred such flight. He finally slowed at the foot of a tall birch. The tree was bleeding. A huge gout of blood had splattered the trunk, running in crimson rivulets, absorbing into the veins of the bark. Stiles pursed his lips and stared. It didn’t look real. He’d seen enough blood in his life and this just wasn’t right. He touched it, sniffed his fingers. A syrupy, almost plastic smell. What is this, a joke? He stopped to look around the base of the tree and quickly located the empty tube of Vampire Blood. It had been flung against the bough. But on purpose? Who was setting him up?
As he moved, the soil underfoot belched wetly and the mud sucked at his boot before letting go. The sole came away stained red. “What the . . .” He stepped down again in the same spot. Shallow crimson rose around his boot, bubbling as if it were still in a human body. My God. He dipped a finger and sniffed. This time it was real. And it was all around him.
The trail was just that now, a congealing trail of blood that soaked into the soil, and it led him onward and stoked his anger. Much of his fury was directed inward; he blamed himself for allowing this to happen, for not stopping the vampire when he could. But he reserved a special hatred for Sebastian Danner. He had lost hope of saving the three boys, not with that much blood gone. But their trail might lead him to the vampire. He might find it, whiling away the daylight in hiding, still draped in the gore of its feast and bloated like a fat tick. And then the boys would be avenged . . .
He slid to a halt as the trail suddenly veered to the left through a briar patch and led straight to the boundary wall itself. The blood, now little more than a trickle, went to the wall and up it, smearing the stone and discoloring the autumn brown of the ivy there. Stiles wiped a finger along the top of the wall. It came away red. They made
it, he sighed. At least one of them. And Danner couldn’t have followed him over.
Now, if only he could find whoever got away.
Stiles picked his way through the stickers and vines and climbed to the top of the wall. He was almost a mile down Sykes Road from where he’d left the van, nearly halfway to the main gate of the Danner estate. The roadway on the other side was deserted. A shallow stream, nearly dried up, ran along the shoulder and beneath the road through a concrete culvert. There was no sign of the boys.
He dropped to his feet, shielding his eyes from the sudden rush of sunlight, and started looking for the blood trail. There was no sign of it . . . no, wait. There was a droplet, on a rock along the stream. Another, further along. A smear on the concrete. He looked at the culvert tube. There was no water coming through it.
If only he’d brought his flashlight. He patted himself down and thanked God he hadn’t thrown out his lighter with his cigarettes. He tested the flint, then, brandishing it in one hand and the bali-song in the other, he bent and peered into the culvert.
There was an obstruction in the cramped darkness of the concrete tube, an amorphous shape blacker than the rest of the blackness. Except for one spot. That stood out, even to his unadjusted eyes. Almost glowing.
It was a face—he didn’t need light to see that—but one strangely disproportionate. Larger than normal. The eyes and nose were too close together, and the mouth too low and too wide and grinning madly from ear to ear. And it didn’t move. Hesitantly, he reached in as close as he dared and thumbed the lighter in front of it. The flame danced and reflected red in a dead man’s eyes. Doug Baugh’s paint-stained face stared back at him, but it was not larger than normal as he’d thought at first glance. The boy’s mouth was not even open; his lips were still tightly pursed in an agonized grimace. It was his throat that grinned. The flesh there gaped raggedly, like the teeth of a smiling jack-o’-lantern. It had been torn from one jaw hinge to the other. There was no more blood; the flesh looked like bread dough. There was a bouquet of arms framing that face, his and others, twisted and warped at horrid angles, ever reaching, but not far enough.
There was barely enough room in the culvert for a child to crawl through. It must have taken some ingenuity, and not a little strength, to stuff three bodies into it at once.
Rusty Sanders finally made it to the Tunnel an hour after he started. But the deputy didn’t take the T-Bird’s presence as seriously as had Stiles; it was just one more abandoned car to him, and he’d checked out too many there in the past. He wrote down the license number and the name from the registration, and then he left.
Back at the office, Dutch pushed him to check further, and he finally phoned Lawrence Whitten in Seymour. But the man didn’t seem particularly concerned; in fact, he sounded rather disinterested. His son was driving the car, and Tommy was a rambunctious youth. It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone for days at a time, especially on the weekends. The boy would turn up soon, his father predicted, and the deputy tended to agree. The “investigation” was over before it began.
Late in the afternoon, Marshal Larson came out of his office and noticed that the handyman was still nowhere to be seen. He asked Sanders about it, but the deputy just shrugged. He didn’t even look up from his magazine.
Billie hung up the phone slowly, giving away its message. Bart looked up from The Brady Brunch with concern. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, forcing a smile. “Chris won’t be able to make it tonight after all. He said he has something else to do.” She brushed self-consciously at the new slacks and her favorite print blouse she wore, and touched the hair she’d spent most of the day setting so it would look just right. “I guess I’d better change my clothes. Wouldn’t want to get this stuff dirty.” She went toward her bedroom.
“I told you,” Bart grumbled, throwing the TV Guide across the room. “I knew him and her wouldn’t work, I knew it! I hope you’re satisfied, Cap.” He looked around. “I said I hope you’re satisfied, Delbert.”
But Del wasn’t listening to him. He didn’t hear Mike and Carol and the kids either, though he was staring straight at the TV show. His face had gone chalk white. “Don’t you get it?” he whispered.
Chris Stiles wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. And Del could guess why.
Chapter Eight
It was getting late. The movie’s last showing would be letting out just about now. The doors would open and the crowds would filter from the theater to find shops closed for the night and the square virtually empty save for the occasional carload of teenagers roaming the night like the Flying Dutchman for something to do. The crowds, still laughing or grumbling depending on how the movie was, would dissipate as they reached the string of cars parked along the street.
Two of them would pause there arm in arm beneath the dimming marquee and wait until the rest of the people were gone and they more or less had the square to themselves. Then they would turn their collars up to the evening chill and, huddling close, they would stroll along the empty sidewalks, laughing and talking and window-shopping in darkened displays. If they were lucky they would find a diner open late, and she would relish being served for a change instead of doing the serving. They would sit there alone and stare at each other through the swirls of coffee steam and talk; about the movie at first and the weather and other inconsequential things, but slowly, as he opened up, the conversation would turn soft and serious. She would listen patiently to things he wanted to say, things he had to, even things she could not possibly understand or approve of. And when he was finished she would simply smile and reach across the table to take his hand, and nothing more would need to be said. And then . . .
And then?
Then they’d live happily ever after, Stiles grimaced, embarrassed at the sophomorism of his own mental fantasies. Jeez, grow up! You’re starting to sound like those damn Harlequins! He picked an open paperback from the dash, bent down the page, and tossed it to the back of the van. Too dark to read anyway. Tomorrow, old son, you change your reading tastes for awhile. Maybe something a bit more fitting—a little Bram Stoker perhaps. That should put you in the mood.
He looked into the night around him and shivered. Yeah, tell me about it.
He fished a handful of pretzel sticks from the bag on the console and grumbled under his breath. The fantasy may have been strained, he granted, but there was always a remote possibility that it might have happened. If he’d really gone to the movies, that is. But what was he doing instead? Sitting in his van, in the cold, in the dark, watching and waiting and cursing his brother for getting him into this in the first place. “I hope you’re happy, Alex,” he said aloud, not really expecting a response. He didn’t get one.
Billie’s voice still lingered along the edges of his mind. Even through the muffled phone line he’d had no trouble picking up on the disappointment in her voice. But hell, what else could he do—tell her where he was really going? Oh well. There was always tomorrow night . . . that is, if something would just happen tonight.
C’mon, dammit! Let’s get this over with!
He reached for more pretzels and grumbled again and wished for a cigarette to soothe his jangled nerves. There was no need for impatience; it wouldn’t get him anywhere. It never did. But he just couldn’t seem to beat it this time out. Too much time between stakeouts, he supposed, but that focused, waiting state of mind he’d developed in ’Nam and honed over the years seemed for some reason just beyond his grasp tonight. You’re concentrating too hard. Just relax. Let it happen.
He exhaled slowly three times. Cleared his mind. Then he raised the pistol-gripped Starlight scope and peered through the trees that concealed him. His view of the culvert was unfettered.
The night vision system captured the moonlight and magnified it to a field of green, robbing the shadows of their substance, nullifying them. He sought his visual marker and foun
d it. The hand still hung from the mouth of the culvert, blooming from the darkness like a pale and rigored lily, its petals curled and frozen. He watched it for several minutes, waiting for it to move and dreading it, but praying for it as well. It did not.
The eyes of any other would have seen the hand and merely from its shape expected motion, but not Stiles. At dusk he’d returned with his van and, after reconnoitering the area, had pried the bodies from the concrete tube. He didn’t actually expect to find their killer hiding in there among them, but it had been worth a try and it did give him a chance to examine the bodies. Seeing Larry Hovi’s deflated beach ball of a corpse up close, with sagging, sallow flesh the texture of butcher paper and a broadly laughing throat, was enough to strike from Stiles’s mind any residue of lingering humanity. This was no longer a body, an arm, a hand. It was a cold thing, inanimate and unfeeling, and a sane man would no more expect movement from it than he would a T-bone in the Kroger meat display. That’s what made the wait all the more unnerving—waiting for something to happen that shouldn’t be happening at all.
He sat back with a sigh of exasperation and caught himself trying to light a pretzel stick with the dashboard lighter. The tremors were slight but there nonetheless. So that’s it. Damn smokes’ve got a better grip on you than you thought. He kept his hands up and concentrated until the withdrawals subsided and the trembling eased. That’s it, once and for all. You stop this time and you don’t start again.
He smiled to himself and took a long deep drag on a pretzel stick. Yeah, that’s what you always say.
He sat there for what seemed an hour instead of the fifteen minutes it actually was and tried to make some sense of what had happened. In less than twenty-four hours a fairly routine search-and-destroy had become a total fucking nightmare. The result? Dead civilians. What went wrong? What the fuck went wrong?
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