Nightblood

by T. Chris Martindale

  “Teddy didn’t take the news too good,” the deputy told her. “He bolted as soon as I told him. Thinks I’m full of shit, more’n likely.”

  “So you’re going after him?”

  “Nope. Ted’s a big kid now, he’ll have to fend for himself. There are other things to be done.” He lowered his voice so it wouldn’t carry through the bathroom door. “You have a silver service, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but . . . Wait a minute. Didn’t I overhear Chris telling you to leave that silver business alone? I think we’d better listen to him, Charlie—”

  “Screw him,” the deputy huffed. “He’s just a man, Billie, one lone man, and he’s in a lot of pain. We can’t all depend on him. We’ve got to stand up for ourselves, in case something happens to him, and now’s as good a time as ever. Now, where’s your silver?”

  She thought it over. “I’ll have to show you.”

  “Oh, no,” Bean told her, but he could tell she’d already made up her mind. “Oh, all right then, but just as far as your house. The rest of the time you stay in the car.”

  Bart looked up from the reloader to see his mom slipping on her coat. “Where are you two going?”

  “To check on a few things,” Bean said casually. “Stay here with your brother, keep an eye on things.”

  Bart’s expression was knowing. “Then you’d better take this,” he said, chambering a round into the assault rifle like a seasoned fighter. “You might need it.”

  She pushed it back into his arms and hugged him and Del too. “Chris left that for you. Keep it. We’ll be all right.” She joined Bean at the door. “We’ll be back before nine,” she told them, smiling for Del’s sake and for her own. She wanted to warn them, the same way she did every time she drove out of town or took a plane (“This is where the insurance policy is and this is who you can call”), but she didn’t want to make Del worry. In the end she didn’t have to. Bart read her intention just the same. He nodded. He would bring Chris if there was no word.

  Outside the apartment Billie stifled a sob. Bean told her once again that she didn’t have to go. But she climbed into the wind-shieldless squad car just the same, and they drove to her house in relative silence.

  Billie’s misgivings had free rein even before they turned onto Greenbriar Avenue. She averted her eyes as they pulled up out front. “Is there anything on the lawn?”

  He looked around. “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a pair of legs, a spare torso, something like that. Anything?” Bean just shook his head, forcing her to look for herself. The lawn was empty save for the plastic ducks near the mailbox. The legs were gone. That . . . thing must have come back after them, she thought as a chill raced up her spine. She didn’t want to leave the car.

  “I can get it if you’ll tell me where it’s at.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Don’t fight my battles, Charlie. Please.” She took a deep breath, flung the car door wide, and was halfway up the walk before he could even get his open.

  “Hey, Rambo! At least wait up!” He grabbed the shotgun and hustled to catch her. She waited for him only after reaching the door, and she kept her darting eyes on the surrounding bushes. Her hand was on the knob and starting to open it when Bean motioned to her. “Let me go first,” he said, racking the pump on the Mossberg. “To check the place out.”

  “There’s nothing in here,” she assured him. “Chris says they’ve got to be invited first.” She pushed open the unlocked door. The drapes were still drawn throughout the house; a remnant of twilight still lingered within. Billie gulped audibly. Before entering she drew the Magnum revolver from Bean’s holster.

  It took her a few minutes to remember where she’d stored the silver, on the top shelf of the cabinet over the fridge. Bean pulled down the laquered chest, laid it on the countertop, opened it, and lifted a long, tapered cake knife from its satin recess. It felt good in his hand. It wasn’t a Buck or a Gerber, but it would suffice. “This ought to do the trick,” he said. They packed up the rest and headed for the car.

  Billie sank into the passenger seat and sighed, “So far, so good. Now comes the hard part. Finding a guinea pig.” She glanced at the neighborhood around her, at her friends’ houses, the Citozzis next door and the Ingrams and the Foxes across the street and the Schloessers down the block, all with drapes tightly drawn against the morning sun. And she remembered how no one had heard the commotion last night and how no one answered her cries for help. “On second thought,” she decided with a shiver, “the hard part won’t be finding one. Just deciding where to start.”

  “I’ve already got one in mind,” he told her, steering the squad car away from the curb.

  Dutch Larson’s house was only a few streets away.

  It was a tri-level ranch half-again the size of Billie’s house and situated to the rear of almost an acre of well-tended lawn. It was not an elaborate house, nothing that said “money” on the mailbox or merited a nod from Better Homes and Gardens. But in a small town like Isherwood it was the exception to small, cozy homes and its amenities were much envied. Bean sneered. So this was what made Dutch more qualified to be town marshal. Money. Land. Community standing. No matter that he was sixty pounds too heavy and couldn’t qualify with a handgun if he was two feet from the target.

  Bean tried to stop himself, tried to swallow those pretty jealousies and put them in the past. But they kept coming, and finally he just gave up. His subconscious was regurgitating those feelings for a reason; he was about to go in there and stick a cake cutter into a man’s chest. If he didn’t go in hating him, he’d be scared to death.

  Like last night.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, stepping from the car with a shotgun and ceremonial weapon in hand. “If you hear any gunshots, get back to Stiles, okay?”

  “Bullshit,” Billie answered, getting out herself. “I’m going in there too.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not.”

  “Try me. C’mon, Charlie. You think you’re the only one here with something to prove? I know we’re testing a theory—at least that’s the idea—but that’s not the only reason we came. It’s to face him. You cracked up last night, Charlie, I saw it. You were lucky he didn’t come back upstairs. And me—I couldn’t even pull the trigger. I stood there with a gun on that bastard and my eyes kept telling me he’s a monster, goddamn it, shoot him! But my mind said nope, that’s just Dutch, and you can’t shoot Dutch. I almost got us killed. Right now we’re both liabilities, Charlie. And we might freeze again. Unless we prove otherwise.” She laid the Magnum on the roof of the car, then reached inside the collar of her jacket and pulled out her crucifix. It dangled there in the open and reflected the precious sunlight. She took several breaths, then retrieved her gun. “Coming?”

  There was nothing else to say to her except, “Yes, ma’am.”

  They started up the winding walk to the front porch, exchanging ideas on how best to enter. Bean favored the direct approach. He went up to the massive oak door and tried the knob. Unlocked. The portal swung open freely. It was still dark within. Billie reached inside and flicked the wall switch. The entry hall to the living room lit up, showing a carved wooden mirror frame, conspicuously mirrorless, and an ornate mahogany coat tree. The latter’s burden was light; only two coats hung there. Bean reached in with his shotgun barrel and plucked what little remained of the dark brown uniform jacket from its peg. His hastily aimed blast had hit dead center and shredded the chest area, while the back was perforated up the middle with a dotted line of bullet holes. The material was greasy with blood, yet it had been taken off and hung up, nonplussed. The parody of normalcy chilled them. “At least we know he’s here,” Charlie whispered, his throat suddenly lined with sandpaper. He dropped the jacket quickly. “We’ll go from room to room and open the curtains as we go. Okay?” He took a moment to psych himself and focus that hate. It wasn’t working anymore
. He was just scared. “Let’s get this over with.”

  They crept around the corner and into the living room, Billie in the front with her revolver, Bean right behind with the shotgun covering either side of her. The room was cloaked in shadow, the furniture merely clumps of black against a field of twilight. It was impossible to tell if anyone was there. Bean wished he’d brought the Mag-Lite from the car. He felt along the wall for a switch but couldn’t find it and, feeling vulnerable there against the light of the entry hall, began nudging Billie across the room in the direction of the bay window. The distance seemed to grow and every table and hassock and chair they maneuvered around threatened to loom up over them at any minute. Billie reached out, found the curtain fabric against her palms and jerked them open. Sunlight invaded the realm without fanfare, without a sound. But they were still taken aback by its entrance, its intensity. They looked around them. Dust motes swam in the light. Nothing else. The room was empty.

  Bean shimmied out of his jacket and wiped the sheen of sweat from his face. “One room down, only seven or eight more to go.”

  “Wait a minute,” Billie whispered. “Do you hear that?” Bean listened and this time he heard it too. An incessant murmur, far off. “A television?” she wondered. “It’s coming from . . .” She turned to the stairway at the other end of the living room, well within the arc of sunlight they had invited. One arm of steps reached upward to the bedroom level above. The other led below, to the den or basement or whatever lay beyond the murkiness down there that lapped against the third step.

  “Downstairs,” Bean nodded, heading for the staircase. Billie caught his arm.

  “Wait a minute. Shouldn’t we check up here first? He could come down behind us.”

  Charlie pointed at the window. “The sunlight cuts this room in half. Nothing can come up, and nothing can follow us down.” He looked into the murk awaiting them and swallowed hard. “Ready?”

  They slipped down the staircase without a sound, immersing themselves in the inky dark. But once they reached the foot of the stairs, away from the bright sanctuary above, the cloaking gloom eased. They were in a shallow hallway, lined with several doors. The door at the very end was ajar, and bars of lamplight framed its edges. The television sounds came from there.

  The adrenaline was pumping hard now. It blinded them to the empty doorways they passed, deafened them to all but the sound of their own breathing. They glided to the door like well-armed wraiths and peered through the crack.

  They could see bookshelves and wood paneling, the corner of a pool table to one side, and a console television to the other. A coffee table sat in front of the couch, sporting magazines and a reproduction of a Remington bronc-buster. Willard Scott was saluting the elderly on the Today Show. But there was no one else in sight.

  Bean edged the door open with the shotgun . . . a little further . . . a little more . . .

  A limp figure was sprawled on the carpet in front of the couch, a female, lying facedown. She was naked except for her panties and her arms were bound behind her back, though the handcuffs were hardly necessary. The pale cast of her skin told them she was beyond struggling. Bean slipped into the room and scanned it once more before moving to the girl, and Billie stayed right behind him. “I don’t want to do this,” he whispered, but he reached out and touched the girl nonetheless. Her skin was stiff and turning cold. He pulled her onto her back, where they could see the young face with its glassy eyes open and its mouth frozen in a grimace, and they found the features only too familiar. Billie started to gag and all Bean could mutter was a low “No . . . oh, God, no . . .” as he felt for a pulse in Doreen Moody’s puckered, much-bitten throat. But there was none. He sighed with frustration and sat back on his butt. And then he realized his fingertips were still wet from touching her, almost oily. Not blood. Saliva. The bites were fresh.

  “Ah, company,” came from behind them. Both flinched and whirled about to find Dutch Larson standing in the rumpus room doorway, blocking their retreat. He wore only his jockeys and a clean T-shirt, or at least it had been clean when he put it on. Since then his ventilated chest had leaked a steady dribble of Doreen Moody’s blood across his bloated stomach. He had washed his face since they’d last met and combed the hair on his loose scalp, and he’d even pushed his jagged ribs back into place. But he looked no less nightmarish.

  Bean tried to rise and bring up his shotgun but there wasn’t time: Larson charged across the room hissing and bowled him over, knocking the Mossberg in one direction and the cake cutter in another. The creature’s momentum carried them onto the couch and over it and onto the floor, and Dutch came out on top. He hammered at Bean and clawed at him, knocked his hands aside so he could get at that thick, luscious, bull-like neck. Bean tried frantically to throw his attacker but he was pinned by Larson’s weight and couldn’t gain any leverage. He swung again at Larson’s leering, flat-nosed face, but the marshal caught his wrist, forced it to the ground, and held it there, and all the while squealing in anticipation and raining oily spittle onto the deputy’s face.

  “Dutch!”

  Larson looked up at Billie’s command, just as she fired the Magnum from a few feet away. Thunder shook the room as the hollow point round tore its way through the left side of the marshal’s forehead and out the back, spraying the far wall with flecks of blood and hair and dead gray matter. The impact almost knocked him off of Charlie. But he just shook his leaking head, looked up at Billie, and growled, “Wait your turn, bitch,” before attacking Bean again.

  “The knife!” Bean screamed. “GET THE KNIFE!”

  Larson laughed at that, and it grew into a mad cackle that made the deputy’s flesh crawl. “Sorry, Charlie,” he said, a rivulet of viscous fluid and brain cells running down his face. “Knife won’t do you no good. What’s a knife gonna d—” He stiffened as the tapered blade of the cake knife pierced his already shot-up back, and groaned even louder when Billie put her weight behind it and drove the point as deep as she could. Dutch fell away from Bean and writhed across the carpet, his limbs rigid and jerking. And then, just as suddenly, the spasms ceased. There was one last exhalation, and the corpse was still.

  Bean climbed to his feet unsteadily and found Billie standing over the body, her look a mixture of vengeful satisfaction and outright disgust. She was trembling. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I . . . I think I’m gonna puke. Excuse me.” She staggered into the corner and dropped to her hands and knees.

  Charlie knelt next to the marshal’s body. Dutch’s features were already softening, losing their savage mien. It worked, the deputy thought as he inspected the killing wound with clinical thoroughness, cautious not to remove the knife, no matter what. Now we can fight these fuckers. Eat your heart out, Stiles.

  When Billie recovered, she found Bean picking Doreen’s body off the floor. He laid her gently on the couch. “Why don’t you go out in the hall,” he said, throwing Billie his shotgun. “I’ll be through in a minute.”

  “I’m staying,” she said.

  He pulled the slipcover loose from the couch and draped it over the girl to form a flowered shroud. He made sure her face was covered; he didn’t want to see it again. Then he went to the pool table and picked a cue from the wall rack, laid it against the table, and stepped on it. The stick shattered. He took the sharper end back to the couch and plunged it into Doreen’s body. The first try glanced off the ribs and missed; pulling it out was the worst part, and that was when he started to cry. But his subsequent aim was better.

  Before leaving, Bean busted the glass on Dutch’s gun cabinet and they cleaned out his shotgun collection. Then they beat a hasty retreat upstairs to the purifying light of day. But even there it did not feel safe. Not until they were out of the house entirely.

  They sat in the car in silence, feeling the fear that only now was catching up to them. Bean wiped the blood from his watch face. Ten to nine. He starte
d the engine. “I’ll take you back to the boys,” he told her, “before I go to the church. There’s bound to be some people waiting.”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  “The truth,” he said flatly. “They have a right to know. Besides, we need more people on our side, to round up the silver, to melt it down and load the shells. There’s a lot to do before dark.”

  “They’ll never believe you.”

  He looked back at the house as they pulled away and nodded. “I think they will.”

  Billie fidgeted in her chair, checking her watch every few minutes or so. Almost ten. Charlie had been gone over an hour already. Maybe she should go past the church to check on him . . .

  She was immediately disappointed in herself. Any excuse, right Billie? Any reason to get out of this apartment, to get out of the same room with Ted Cooper. But she couldn’t help it. His presence made her antsy, almost sick to her stomach. According to Bart, Ted had come back shortly after she and Charlie had left, carrying not his baseball bat this time but a stout ax. He held it even now as he sat in the corner of Charlie’s living room, not saying a word. He didn’t have to. Anyone who looked at the burly young man could see that he had changed. The concern for his girl had turned into grim resignation and, since then, something darker. He sat hunched forward, ax across his lap, his muscles taut, like an animal on the prowl. The thoughts behind those hard, staring eyes were bitter and angry and anxious for release.

  She didn’t like keeping Doreen a secret; it was eating away at her insides. But she knew better than to tell him.

  “Are you gonna tell Chris?”

  She turned. Del was standing beside her. “Tell him what, honey?”

  “About the silver?”

  She breathed a sigh. “When he gets up,” she said, kissing his cheek. “He’s pretty tired. Let’s leave him alone for now. We’ll wait for Charlie to get back, okay?”