Creekers

That’s just great, Phil thought, pulling on a Highpoint College T-shirt. He tried to think of a funny comeback.

“The heating ducts, huh? So that explains the loud vibrating sound I hear everyday from upstairs,” which he immediately regretted. He didn’t know her well at all, and certainly not well enough to be making jokes like that.

“If you must know,” she came back just as fast, “I use imported ben-wa balls, not vibrators.”

Jesus. He guessed she was joking, or hoped she was. He came back out then, was about to speak as she turned in the den, but hesitated. Though his pause lasted only a second, it seemed like full minutes to him. God, she really is beautiful. No makeup, just a simple, pretty farm-girlish face, a slender yet curvy body, and high B-cup breasts that looked firm as apples. For a moment her face seemed brightly alight in the frame of pure-blond hair. Her eyes, a beautiful sea-blue, sparkled like chips of gems.

“You can take me out to dinner now, or breakfast, or whatever it is that us night-shifters call the first meal of the day,” he said. “I’ll put on my best sports jacket if you’re taking me someplace expensive.”

“Is Chuck’s Diner expensive enough for you?”

Phil held the door open for her, then followed her out. “Chuck’s Diner? I guess I should put on my tux.”

««—»»

They went in her car, a nice Mazda two-door, for which Phil was very grateful. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed by his dented, rusted, clay-red ‘76 Malibu, it was…well, something probably worse than embarrassment. Immaturity notwithstanding, no real man wanted to drive an attractive woman anywhere in such a vehicle. Susan’s car was clean and unadorned, like her, attractive in its lack of frills. He watched her bright-blond hair spin in the breeze from the open window. “No valet parking?” he joked when she pulled into Chuck’s.

“Only on weekends,” she said. Inside they took a booth in the back. Another blast from the past, Phil considered. It had been over a decade since he’d last set foot in here. Chuck’s Diner was your typical greasy spoon, though cleaner than most. A middle-aged waitress in an apron and bonnet took their orders.

“So what are you packing?” Susan asked.

“Packing?” Phil queried.

Susan, frowning, rephrased, “What kind of weapon do you carry off-duty?”

“Oh, that kind of packing.” But what a strange question. “A Beretta .25.”

“That’s a peashooter!” she exclaimed. The waitress set their orders down, then Susan continued, “What are you gonna shoot with a .25? Gnats?”

Phil appraised his hash and eggs. “Well, actually I’m not planning to shoot anything, except maybe the waitress if she doesn’t bring me some salt and pepper.”

“Cops are supposed to be prepared for trouble round the clock. What if some coked-up scumbags try to take you down?”

“In Chuck’s Diner? Look, if they want my hash and eggs, they can have it.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead with anything less than a hot-loaded 9mm,” she told him, then nonchalantly bit into her cheeseburger sub. “Right now I carry a SIG .45.”

“You carry a gun?” Phil asked.

“Of course. Mullins got me a carry permit, told him it was the only way I’d dispatch for him. It’s a crazy world, there’s a nut around every corner.”

Phil nodded. “Two on every corner is more like it.” And he’d seen them all on Metro. He felt inclined to tell some stories, but before he could, Susan said, “Take a look,” then abruptly opened her purse and withdrew a large, clunky automatic.

“Put that away!” Phil said. “This is a diner, not an armory.”

She shrugged and put the gun back. “I’m thinking about buying one of those H&K squeeze-cockers, or maybe a used Bren-10.”

How do you like that? Phil mused. Dirty Harry’s got a sister. “If you want my opinion, stick to simple pieces.”

She glanced across the table as if slighted. “Oh, because I’m a woman? Women can’t handle sophisticated handguns?”

Phil sighed in frustration. “Simmer down, Annie Oakley. Wait till you’re neck-deep in a shootout one night and your fancy auto stovepipes a round. You’ll sell your soul for a Colt revolver.”

Again she shrugged, almost as if she couldn’t decide whether or not to agree. “How’s it feel to be back?”

“Okay, I guess. A job’s a job.”

She fidgeted with a French fry, glancing down. “And, again, I really apologize for the way I treated you this morning. I had no right to say things like that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Phil passed it off. Actually, it was kind of funny now. A few hours ago she was practically accusing me of murder, and now she’s buying me hash. “I guess we all have a bad day every now and then.” But he thought it best to change the subject quick, “So what are all the books I see you reading at the station? You in college?”

“Yeah, slow but sure. I’m majoring in criminology, minor’s in history. This is my last semester, thank God. Evening classes a couple nights a week.”

“That’s great,” Phil acknowledged. “What are you going to do when you get your degree? Work for Mullins?”

“Not on your life. I’ll shoot for DEA or maybe Customs. And there’re always the county departments up north. Last thing I want to be is a Crick City cop—” Then she caught herself, brought a hand to her mouth. “Sorry. No offense.”

“None taken,” Phil laughed. “It’s the last thing I want to be, too, but I don’t have much of a choice at the moment.”

Her gaze moved absently to the window. “It’s the town, you know? It’s so slow and desperate and backwards. It’s depressing. The minute I get a decent job, I’m out of here.”

“I know just what you’re talking about, believe me,” Phil related, but at once he felt dried up. He’d said the same thing to Vicki, hadn’t he? No way he was going to work in a nowhere town like this. He was too good for Crick City. And now Vicki was a prostitute and Phil was—

The thought didn’t even need finishing.

“How long have you been working for Mullins?”

“A little under a year,” she said. “He’s a decent man, if a bit ornery, and he offered me the dispatch job when he heard I was looking for something to help me through school. He knew my parents when they were alive.”

Better not ask about that, Phil told himself, though he did note their commonality. “So you grew up here, too?”

“Yeah,” she said despondently. “My father was on disability; he got shot up in Viet Nam. My mother worked lots of odd jobs to get us by, but it just seems the harder she worked, the harder things got.”

There seemed to be a similar variation of the same story for just about everyone around here: poor people struggling just to make it, and never quite succeeding. Phil had been too young to really even remember his own parents—but the tale was the same. He could tell the coversation was draining Susan; her luster was gone, her bright-blue eyes not quite so bright now. He struggled for something more upbeat to talk about, but nothing came to him until he remembered that she seemed enthused about guns and cop talk in general.

“What do you know about Cody Natter?” he asked.

She pushed her plate aside, leaving the fries. “Not a lot. About the only place he’s ever seen with any regularity is Sallee’s. He owns the place now, you know.”

“Yeah, Mullins mentioned that. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Sure it’s weird. A guy like Natter? No visible income, no bank account. I don’t guess that Sallee’s sold for much, but still, you have to wonder where he got the cash to buy the place.”

“I’m even more curious as to why?”

“I have to agree with Mullins,” Susan said. “An out-of-the-way strip joint like that is the perfect contact point if you’re networking dope. Last year Mullins had the Comptroller’s Office audit him, but the guy’s books were picture perfect. No way we can nail him on taxes. I don’t know how he did it.”

Phil didn’t care. “I don’t want to get him on tax fraud or ill-gotten gains; I want to bust him for manufacturing and distribution.”

“Then you’re going to have to have solid evidence linking him to his lab, which’ll be tough,” Susan reminded him, “and finding the lab itself will be plain impossible.”

“Why?”

“Natter’s a Creeker; his lab’s got to be up in the hills. You ever been back there? It’s a mess. You’re talking about three or four thousand acres of uncharted woodlands. There are roads back there that aren’t even on the county map grid. Finding Natter’s lab will be like looking for the needle in the haystack, or try ten haystacks.”

She had a point, and Phil was no trailblazer. “Yeah, but maybe one of his people will spin.”

“Don’t hold your breath. Natter’s people are all Creekers, too; they’re never gonna talk, first, because they’re all terrified of Natter—he’s like their god—and another reason they’ll never talk is simply because most of them can’t. Let’s just say you catch one of them dealing dust; no judge in the world will accept their testimony. Why? Because technically they’re all retardates—they’re legally mentally impaired.”

Phil frowned. She was right again. “But what about Natter himself?” he raised the issue. “You ever talked to the guy? He’s sharp as a tack. He’s smart, he’s well-read, he’s articulate. I wouldn’t call him mentally impaired at all.”

“Phil, be real. The guy’s a Creeker, he makes Frankenstein’s monster look like Tom Cruise. You get him into court on shaky testimony, all the guy’s gotta do is play dumb and the judge throws the whole thing out. The only way you’re gonna get Natter is to bust a bunch of his point people or bag men—people who aren’t Creekers—and get them to testify. You’re gonna have to make a positive link between Natter and known PCP dealers. At least Mullins has you on the right track. Staking out Sallee’s over a period of time, getting a line on Natter’s out-of-town contacts—that’s the only way you’ll be able to get Cody Natter on a distro bust that’ll stick.”

Phil saw no point in telling her that the whole idea was his, not Mullins’. But she was right on all counts. This would probably wind up being as complicated as any of his PCP cases in the city, if not more so since the circumstances were so atypical. “I still want to find that lab, though,” he muttered, more to himself. “No judge will argue with hard photographic evidence.”

Susan’s expression turned bemused. “What, you think you’re gonna get a picture of Natter at the lab?”

“Why not? It’d be an open-and-shut case.”

“Never happen, Phil. Natter’s way too smart for anything even close to that. He’s probably never set foot in the lab, you can bank on that.”

Phil grumbled. Again, he knew she was right. Yeah, this sure ain’t the city, he thought. On Metro, he’d been one of the best narc cops on the force, but his expertise felt like a white elephant now. Everything was different here; things worked different ways. This was another world

“Phil!” Susan was suddenly whispering. “Look!”

He glanced up from the remnants of his hash and eggs. Susan was gazing fixedly out the window. Along the shoulder of the Route, a teenage boy and girl were walking, both dressed in little more than rags. Both had shaggy heads of dirty black hair, and they ambled along unsteadily, even crookedly. The boy wore rotted workboots, while the girl was barefoot, oblivious to the shoulder’s sharp gravel. In the bright, hot afternoon sun, they looked like bizarre ghosts.

“Creekers,” Phil uttered under his breath.

“God, I feel sorry for them,” Susan remarked, still staring out. “Talk about getting a bum deal from life.”

Phil gulped. Her observation made him at once feel selfish; in all his reflection upon his own problems, here were two kids with real problems. They walked at such a distance that he could discern little of their physical features, but even that was more than enough. The boy’s neck appeared twice as long as it should, which caused his enlarged head to droop to one side, while the girl didn’t seem to have any jaw at all, and though her left arm looked normal, her right was grievously shortened, the hand sprouting from the elbow.

“I wonder how many of them there are?” Phil said.

Susan’s gaze never strayed off their backs as they grew tiny beyond the bend.

“Who knows?” she answered.

— | — | —

Ten

Back in Black, Paul Sullivan thought along with the pounding juke music. Right now this hotter-than-hell redhead was dancing up a cock-stoking storm on stage. Big tits, like a Penthouse Pet, and legs that looked a mile long. Vicki Steele, her name was. He and his buddy Kevin Orndorf just got off a bag run out near Waynesville; Krazy Sallee’s was the perfect place to drop a few beers after a sale. It was also a good place to meet their partners and point men, talk some quick business and make arrangements. Of course, they’d never actually sell the product here—that’d be crazy. Paul and his people, after all, were big time runners, not dime-baggers. Kevin himself was a little cranked up; he’d lit up a dust roach in the parking lot and he was hopping. Paul had lit up himself, but just a toke; he didn’t want the shit turning his brain to mush. Just a quick hit once in a while.

The joint was packed. This redhead on stage was pure fucking dynamite, the best bod he’d seen in the house all night. Wonder how much a gal like that’d cost, Paul’s thoughts strayed. Couple hundred at least. Maybe five.

But it would be worth it.

“Too bad they gotta wear them fucked-up g-strings here,” Kevin postulated, stroking his goatee. “Bet she’s got a snatch redder than a pit fire.”

“And them tits?” Paul added. “Christ. You could hang your hat and coat on ’em.”

“Be right back, partner. Got’s to drain the love-snake.” Kevin drunkenly rose, then wended through the jammed aisles. The music was so loud it seemed to swell Sallee’s old plank-wood walls. Strobe lights throbbed to the beat, along with the redhead’s sultry dance moves. Her firm, big breasts jiggled as those long legs traipsed across the stage. Dollar bills fell like confetti…

Man, she could tease the cock out of the Pope’s pants just with her smile, Paul theorized. What I wouldn’t give for just a half hour with that piece of pie.

Not that he could complain. Darleen, his current squeeze, was tough stuff, and almost had a set of tits to match. And she could get down on the rod like Sandra Scream in them porn films he watched sometimes on card night. But, Christ, there was so much out there… For a guy to confine himself to one girl, well, that was like going to McDonald’s every fucking day and having a Big Mac. Every now and then a fella might want some McNuggets or a fish sandwich.

Right?

The music compressed in his ears; he could barely hear himself think, not that Paul Sullivan ever needed to think all that much. He lit a Lucky and looked up. Kevin, clearly half shit-faced, was talking to some creepy looking kid by the john door. That dumbass better not be trying to move any dust here, Paul fretted, but then Kevin disappeared into another door off to the side, while the creepy kid hung out another minute, then went up the stairs.

“Hey, what’s in that back room?” he asked the waitress when she came along. Typical beat redneck mama, probably dropped eight kids by the time she was thirty, and now she looked fifty.

She emptied a clogged ashtray and asked, “You want another Carling?”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “And what’s in that back room? I just seen my buddy go in there.”

“Pinball machines,” she quickly replied. “You said you wanted another Carling, right?”

“Right.”

A half hour later, Paul was getting drunk, and Kevin still hadn’t come back. Pinball machines? He ain’t into that shit. Never been. The redhead had long since finished her set; some skinny tattooed brunette—who looked pretty drunk herself—had replaced her and was now feebly dancing to some bass-ripper by Motorhead. Sheets of cigarette smoke wafted before the lit stage; at one point, the brunette lost her footing and fell down, which brought a burst of laughter. This was getting dull; Paul wasn’t even looking at her. He didn’t like tattoos on women, and this gal in particular wasn’t dancing for shit anyway. And—

Where the hell is Kevin?

It was almost last call, plus they had a run in the morning. Havin’ to drive the first runs themselves was a pain in the ass, but it seemed like every time they hired some new drivers, the fuckers disappeared. Scared off, he figured. Kids, most of ’em. Come to think of it, a lot of point people had run off lately, too. Can’t find good people fer shit…

Just as Paul was about to get up and go find his partner, Kevin appeared at the door by the john and headed for the table. He seemed antsy with excitement when he sat down, or maybe it was just the dust he’d toked. His goateed grin leaned forward. “Man, you won’t believe what they got back there, partner! They got—”

“Pinball machines,” Paul didn’t let him finish. “Big deal.”

Kevin’s Orndorf’s broad, goateed face ticked in a moment of perplexion. “Pinball machines? What’choo talkin’ about? What they got, they got another stage, and more dancers. Thing is, though, the girls back there are Creekers.”

“Creekers?” Paul expressed his own perplexion. “Stripping?”

“Yeah, man. You wouldn’t believe, it’s great!”

Great? He couldn’t figure what could be great about a bunch of Creeker women dancing in a strip joint. He’d seen Creekers plenty of times; they were inbred, deformed. Had heads that looked like balloons and lopsided eyes. “Man, are you nuts? Them Creeker girls are ugly as all hell. They got faces on ’em like pigs.”

“Not these, man. These girls are hot, let me tell ya. They’re a little fucked-up, sure, but they’re still lookers.” Then Kevin, his face still lit up in some arcane thrill, put his half of the tab down on the table. “Here’s dough to cover my beers. I gotta go.”

Paul’s face pinched. “Go where?”

“I’m buyin’ me one.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me!” Paul thought he might puke up his eight Carlings right there at the tabletop. “You’re payin’ for a Creeker whore?”

“Yeah, man,” Kevin tittered. Suddenly, the wicked, pumped-up smile within the sharp goatee made him look like a redneck version of Lucifer. “They got one gal—you ain’t gonna believe it! She’s got four tits…”

“Aw, man,” Paul complained, “you can’t be doin’ shit like that. We got a big drop to make in the morning,”

“I’ll be there, man, don’t worry.” Kevin rubbed his broad hands together in some perverse glee. “I can’t wait to get me a piece of this bitch. See ya in the mornin’.”

Paul frowned after him. Kevin went out with that kid he’d seen talking to him earlier, who Paul guessed must be a Creeker too, on account of the funny-looking head. And… Did the kid have two thumbs? It looked like it. Ain’t that the dumbest shit I ever heard, Paul thought, and drained the foam out of his last Carling. The juke cut off then, the last dancer stepping drunk off-stage to not much applause, and the house lights went on. “Last call!” shouted the barkeep, a thin balding guy in a T-shirt which read Shut Up And Do Me. “Order up or get out!”

I’ll get out, Paul decided. He was, after all, a drug dealer possessed of a professional sense of responsibility. Got a big drop tomorrow, got to get up early. Ain’t got no time to be fuckin’ around with whores. Sometimes he just couldn’t figure Kevin out. The guy was a wild man. And who the hell would want to fuck some deformed Creeker girl with four tits? Now that redhead, Paul surmised. That’s different, that’s natural. But…a Creeker? That kind of kinky shit just wasn’t Paul’s speed…

Paul shuffled out through the thinning crowd. Headlights swarmed the parking lot as one pickup after another started up and pulled out. The hot night seemed static; the big blinking KRAZY SALLEE’S sign winked off. The moon peeked over the tree tops just past the ridge, an ugly, cheesy yellow like the color of his daddy’s skin when the old fuck had checked out from pancreatic cancer. Paul got into his own truck and idled out of the lot. He looked around for Kevin’s truck but didn’t see it anywhere. Guess he’s already gone, him and his Creeker whore with four tits.

And Paul Sullivan was right about that. Kevin was gone, all right.

Kevin Orndorf was gone forever.

««—»»

For the next week, Phil did pretty much the same thing: he’d maintain a visual surveillance of Krazy Sallee’s—in plain clothes, and in his own car—until after closing, snap a few pictures, and log every tag number in the lot each night, for a future cross-reference. Then he’d change into his police uniform, and finish his night shift in the department’s patrol car. Routine police work in Crick City was unsurprisingly dull, but at least this stake-out operation each night helped breakup an otherwise gruelling 12-hour shift. On a few occasions he’d caught glimpses of Vicki Steele, leaving Sallee’s with Natter in the mint Chrysler Imperial. But at no time did he witness Vicki or any other woman engaging in any parking-lot prostitution. Still, though, the snapshots Mullins had reluctantly shown him continued to stick in his mind…

Between rounds, he’d hang out at the station and shoot some bull with Susan, whom he was beginning to like. She seemed made from a different mold, not a typical Crick City woman at all, but enlivened to pursue an education and career that would one day take her away from this place. (And he hoped she had better luck than he had.) The variety of her intellectual facets intrigued him; she was very smart, she knew a lot about lots of things, yet she clearly possessed a persona which transcended her bookishness. She was sassy, opinionated, even hot-tempered at times; when they disagreed on a particular topic, she wouldn’t hesitate to be in his face about it. Phil admired that.

He also admired her looks. She’s beautiful, it occurred to him every time he’d come in for a coffee break. She struck him as idyllic in a way; her beauty—a very real, unassuming, and unaugmented kind of beauty—made her shine in his eye. How do you crack a woman like this? he wondered almost constantly. He’d asked her out three times, and three times she’d politely declined, citing her evening classes would not permit it. Perhaps Phil was paranoid, but it felt to him as though she liked working with him, but had no desire to date a municipal cop. He could only hope he was wrong.

Chief Mullins remained typically oblivious, chewing his tobacco, chugging atrocious coffee, and bellyaching about anything that suited his redneck fancy. He never seemed to ask much about what was going on, but this was typical Mullins: as chief he didn’t expect to have to ask, he expected to be told, and in all honesty, aside from a few SRO’s and traffic citations, Phil had nothing to put on the so-called “blotter.”

But after his second week on the job, Mullins did indeed ask one morning: “So how’re things going with your stakeout?”

“All right, I guess,” Phil answered, transferring his surveillance notes to an official log. “Too early to get a decent read on things just yet.”

“Yeah?” Mullins seemed to grumble, pouring the black ichor he thought of as coffee. “I thought you were supposed to be moving on this.”

Phil frowned up from the desk. “I am. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”

“Bugger Rome. This is Crick City. You making any headway out there or just gandering your ex-girlfriend through the binocs?”

Sometimes I could kill him, Phil thought. “Chief, I’m doing this the way we talked about. I’m logging the plates of the regulars so we can eventually get a decent cross-reference. Things like this go slow.”

“Yeah?” Mullins packed a wad of Red Man, then chased it with coffee. “Too slow if you ask me.”

Phil all but threw his hands up. “All right, boss. You’re the one who wanted me to check out this PCP net in town. You think I’m doing this wrong, then tell me how to do it right.”

“Don’t bust out into tears yet, Phil. I didn’t say you were doing it wrong. I just said you’re taking too much time.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Phil repeated and got back to his writing.

“You’re right, it took a thousand years, which is fine for Rome. But I ain’t got that kind of time myself. You sure you’re not stalling a little?”

This time Phil’s frown creased his face. “Stalling on what, for God’s sake?”

“Well, you’re sitting out in Sallee’s parking lot every night, writing down tag numbers like a good little boy, sure. But don’t you think it’s time for you to get a move on? I mean, how many tag numbers can you write down before your hand starts to hurt?”

Phil leaned back in the chief’s office chair, arms smugly crossed. “Chief, save us both some time, will ya? What are you implying?”

“Implying? Me?” Mullins chuckled, scratching his formidable belly.

“Yeah, you.”

“Well, maybe I’m merely suggesting that it’s time for you to move on to the next step. After all, this whole procedure was your idea.”

“Fine. The next step. What have you got in mind?”

“See? You are stalling. You’ve got enough tag numbers, Phil. You’re staking the lot in your POV, you’re in plain clothes, and nobody knows you’re back in town, and even if they did, nobody would remember you anyway. It’s high time, ain’t it?”

Phil still didn’t know what the chief was talking about. “High time for what, Chief? For the Yankees to win the pennant?”

“No, high time for you to get your ass into Sallee’s and check things out from the inside.”

“Sure,” Phil agreed, “but don’t you think it’s still a bit early for that?”

“Hell no. Why don’t you just admit it, you’re stalling. You don’t want to go in there ’cos—”

“Because why, Chief? Because I know I’ll run into Vicki? Is that what you’re driving at?”

“Well, yeah,” Mullins said, and spat into his ubiquitous paper cup. “I think you’re a little bit chicken to run into her again. Christ, you dumped the poor girl like a load of heavy diapers.”

Phil simmered in his seat. “I did not dump her, Chief. And keep in mind I’ve been a cop for over ten years. I do know how to keep my personal past separate from my job.” Phil felt convinced of this, but he also felt…a sudden distant queasiness. “You want me to go in there, Chief. Fine, I will.”

Mullins packed a pinch more Red Man into his jowl—if it was tobacco, he chewed it: snuff, leaf, plugs. “Glad to hear it, Phil.” Then he spat a big one. “Get your ass in there tonight.”

— | — | —

Eleven

“What are you nervous about?” Susan asked behind her Motorola station base.

“I’m not nervous,” Phil asserted. He’d just changed into his street clothes in Mullins’ office, then came out to the commo room. It was just past midnight.

“Not nervous, huh?” Did she smile? “Looks to me like you’re about to tinkle in your jockey shorts.”

“How do you know I don’t wear boxers?” Phil quickly changed the topic. He changed it, he knew now, because he was nervous, and he also knew why.

Evidently so did Susan. “It must be the girl, huh? Vicki what’s-her-name, your ex-fiancée?”

Phil seethed. “No, it is not. Christ, can’t Mullins keep his mouth closed about anything?” He shuddered to think what else the dubious chief had told her.

“Did you really dump her ’cos she wouldn’t move?”

“No, I did not! Jesus!”

“Don’t get whipped up. I was just asking,” she said, adjusting the frequency modulator on the radio. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, you make a great-looking redneck.”

“I’ve never been more flattered.” But he supposed she was right. Tight, tapered Levis over pointed shit-kicker boots, a big buck knife on his belt, and a black-and-red flannel shirt. It astounded him how the societal contingent colloquially thought of as “rednecks” insisted on wearing flannel shirts even in the middle of summer. He’d also slicked his hair back with Score.

“Look at the bright side,” Susan added, cueing her mike once. “How many guys actually get paid to sit in strip joints?”

“Hmm, you’re right. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. Might as well be me. Anyway, I’m out of here. I’ll be back around two.”

“Wait, wait,” she was suddenly complaining. She got up from behind her console. “Don’t you know anything about redneck fashion? You’ve got to show some hair.”

“Pardon me?”

She walked right up to him, so close he could smell her herbal shampoo. Phil was six-feet even, while Susan stood about five-seven. He looked down at her, instinctively noting the lean compactness of her body, the sudden proportion of her waist and hips, and the stunning white-blond hair. In the small “v” of her blouse, he spied a breast satcheled in a plain beige bra. The simple, beautiful image nearly shook him.

Then she began unbuttoning his shirt.

“What, uuuuuuh,” he asked, “what are you doing?”

“I told you. You have to show some hair. It’s the redneck’s version of a tie.”

“Oh,” Phil replied.

She unbuttoned his shirt all the way to his solar plexus, then fluffed it out some. “There, that’s much better,” she said. “Now you look like a true Crick City redneck.” Her eyes thinned momentarily, and her mouth turned up in the slightest grin. “Nice pecs, too. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

Jesus, he thought as she went back to her commo cubby. “That’s all? Just nice?”

“Get out of here,” she said, laughing.

««—»»

Nice pecs. Well, he thought. He hadn’t touched a barbell in five years, but at least Susan’s remark, even if she hadn’t been serious, offered him a welcome diversion during the drive. He realized, most fully now, that what Mullins had accused him of this morning was absolutely on the mark. I’m a fucking nervous wreck, he admitted after parking in Sallee’s dusty gravel lot. And he realized two things more, just as fully:

Vicki’s going to be in there, and she’s going to see me.

He left his off-duty Beretta locked in the glove box; the last thing he needed was some, drunk redneck spotting his piece printing in his pants. And there was another consideration: Vicki knew that Phil had worked for Metro; he had a phony line all planned about a new job—a non-police job. Another thing he didn’t need was everybody in the joint knowing a cop lurked amid the clientele. That would blow the whole stakeout right then and there.

KRAZY SALLEE’S, the high roadsign blinked as he disembarked. His boots scuffed gravel as he traversed the lot. Lurid light bathed him in the entry; a bull-faced bouncer gave him the eye at the door, then let him pass through. Phil expected thunderous—and awful—heavy metal or C&W. Instead he walked into a half-full bar full of similarly flannel-shirted ’necks talking over tables flanked by beer bottles and ashtrays. I thought this was a rowdy stripjoint, he reminded himself when he took note of the empty stage. Loud music and near-naked women were what he had prepared himself to be in the midst of. What he found instead was a lethargic gathering of good old boys shooting the shit over bottles of Black Label and Schmidt’s.

No one seemed to notice him when he scouted the floor; he tried to make it appear that he was looking for someone. The only thing he was looking for in reality was a seat. Sallee’s layout hadn’t changed an iota from what he remembered. Cheap tables packed around makeshift aisles, a carpet of crushed peanut shells and beer slime, warped wood walls with tacky upholstered booths in back. Every possible beer-ad-plaque hung in evidence: Budweiser mirrors, Schlitz wall lamps, Michelob neon squiggles, a Killian’s mural, and an illuminated Miller clock. What else hung in evidence was a shifting—and nearly living—wall of cigarette smoke. Phil had never taken up the habit, but he suspected he’d be getting more tar and nicotine just breathing the air here than chaining a pack of Camels. Next time wear a gas mask with your flannel shirt, bud.

He wanted an inconspicuous seat from which to observe, but then the barkeep, a thin blond guy wearing a Jeff Dahmer T-shirt, waved him over. “Plenty of seats up at the bar, brother.”

Good enough, Phil thought. At the bar corner he wouldn’t be obvious. Another thing he knew he had to do was order a beer, despite his being on duty. When working undercover in a strip joint, ordering Pepsi didn’t emphasize one’s credibility.

Only problem was, Phil hated American beer.

“Heineken,” he said.

“Ain’t got it, brother,” enlightened the keep. “We’re all Americans here. You want your money to go to Holland? What they ever do for you besides balk out of World War Two while your daddy was probably getting his ass shot at by the Waffen SS.”

“Bottle of Bud,” Phil fairly groaned.

“Comin’ right up.”

Phil glanced up at the TV mounted high at the back corner of the bar. He wondered what the Yankees were doing but saw only dismal pro wrestling on the color screen: a black guy and a big blond schmuck suplexing each other to a slavering crowd. When the keep brought his Bud, Phil asked, “How about switching on some baseball? The Yanks are on tonight, hopefully whipping the shit out of Baltimore.”

“What, grapplin’s not good enough for ya? It’s the all-American sport.” The keep seemed offended by Phil’s suggestion. He gestured toward the screen. “We got Ric Flair tusslin’ with Bruce Reed here, brother. You’d rather watch the Yankees?”

Don’t make waves, Phil warned himself. “Oh, shit, man, I didn’t realize it was Bruce Flair. Keep it on, man.”

The keep frowned. “That’s Ric Flair, brother. He’s only been heavyweight champ ten friggin’ times.”

“Yeah, yeah, Ric Flair. Best black wrestler in the sport.”

The thin keep frowned again. “Reed’s the black guy.”

“Right,” Phil faltered. “It’s been a while since I’ve caught any…grapplin’.”

The keep slid away, leaving Phil feeling like a horse’s ass. Can I help it I don’t know who Ric fucking Flair is? Right now, on the TV, Mr. Flair seemed to be getting his clock seriously cleaned by the black guy. But then Phil noticed the obvious incongruity: both wrestlers looked like they had three-pound rockfish stuffed in their trunks. Either those guys both have ten-inch dicks or they’re big fans of Idaho potatoes.

So this was what rednecks did? Hang out in strip joints with no girls on the stage and watch wrestling and drink Budweiser? There must be more to life than that. “Hey, man?” Phil flagged the keep again.

“Yeah, brother?”

“This a strip joint or a social club?” Phil indicated the empty stage. “Ric Flair’s fine, but I was kinda hoping to catch some chicks.”

“You’re not from around here, are ya?” the keep sideswiped the question. “Haven’t seen you around.”

“Actually I am from around here, but I just moved back to town. Name’s Phil.” He extended his hand.

The keep didn’t shake it. “Wayne. We’re in between sets right now. You want women, just keep your shirt on a few. We got women comin’ out that’ll mow you down like a county-prison weed-whacker crew.”

“Sounds good,” Phil feigned. But—A county-prison weed-whacker crew?

“And we got a two-for-one special on hot dogs tonight,” the keep added. “Best dogs you’ve ever had.”

Phil got the gist quick. A lighted rotisserie hosted a lone hot dog that looked like it had been cooking in there for about a month. Rule Number One, he thought. Never cut down wrestling in a redneck strip joint.

The Bud tasted awful. They should pay me to drink this swill. He was so bored so fast, that he contemplated paying up and leaving right now, but that would blow his cover too, wouldn’t it? Try to fit in, he insisted to himself. He glanced up at the wrestling and saw Mr. Flair hitting the black wrestler over the head with a metal chair, then pinning him. The crowd roared in a glee that could only be described as sociopathic. But then Phil started; at the same time the patrons of Krazy Sallee’s began to applaud with equal enthusiasm, and it wasn’t because of the wrestling.

Phil craned his neck back, eyed the stage.

Amid applause as loud as cannon fire, a woman in sheer crimson veils stepped up onto the lit stage in five-inch high heels. Tousled red hair shimmered around her head like a halo of fire. Long coltish legs rose to join a zero-fat body of perfect curves and awesome contours. With feet apart and hands on hips, her eyes scanned the crowd in a predatory glare. Her breasts jutted beneath the sheer material, tight chiffon orbs the size of grapefruits.

The juke kicked on a loud, obnoxious heavy metal cut, and the girl on stage began to dance.

“Happy now, brother?” the keep asked, wiping a glass off with the edge of his Dahmer T-shirt.

Phil felt like something shrinking, like a robust plant being drained of all its water by a parasitic taproot. The woman on stage was Vicki Steele, and what was worse, after her first stage-spin under the pulsing strobe lights, she skimmed off her top veil, stopped on a dime and looked right into Phil’s eyes.

««—»»

The night—a beautiful night—unfolded to Cody Natter’s inbred crimson eyes. “Beautiful things are made for nights like these. Glorious things. Powerful things…”

“Huh?”

It was no matter. So many of his clan were weakheaded; how could he ever expect them to understand the things he saw? God had cursed them all, hadn’t He?

Ona, he thought idly. Mannona, come to us…

One day, he knew, he would sit in equal glory, and piss in God’s pious face.

“Fireflies!” Druck exclaimed. “Look-it!”

“Yes. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Like the night, like the moon above us. Like the world.”

“Like Ona?”

Yes.

Druck scratched his stubbled cheek with the two thumbs on his left hand. In his right hand, he held the knife.

Natter looked down at the corpse. So beautiful, too, he realized. Even in death, she lay beautiful, despite the flaws of their Godly curse. The sallow moon shone faintly on the still-warm breasts, the sleek legs, and abyssal black hair. Her open eyes reflected the night back like the pristine face of the cosmos.

Druck, on one knee now, appraised the hollow gourd of her abdomen. His blade glittered pastily with blood, and he passed his other hand through the detached pile of her entrails…

The boy got carried away sometimes.

“You’d best bury her now, Druck.”

Druck looked confused. “But… What’s ’bout skeetinner?

“No, Druck. Just bury her.”

The seemingly eternal night-racket—peepers, crickets, grackles—throbbed around them. Druck’s simple idiot face gazed upward, a question struggling in the warped, uneven red eyes. The sweetmeat of the girl’s spleen drooped slack in his hand. “Kin I eat some of her first, then? ‘Fore I put her in the ground?”

“Yes, Druck,” Cody Natter granted. “You may eat some of her first.”

««—»»

The Budweiser was killing him. And so were the flashing lights and the infernal music. Last call approached; Vicki had seductively danced a four-song set, then disappeared, only to be replaced by other women who likewise twirled and spun and gyrated until they’d stripped themselves down to their g-strings. Phil paid them no mind; seeing Vicki had been impact enough. He was sure she’d noticed him, but at the end of her set, she’d merely walked off the stage and retreated to the dressing room. Seeing her again, after all this time, was like seeing a ghost.

The last dancer bumped and grinded to Twisted Sister, baring her breasts as a wolf bares its teeth. She was attractive enough, but Phil preferred to stare into his beer. What am I doing here? he asked himself disgustedly. He certainly wasn’t making any observations relevant to the case. And where was Vicki? What was she doing? What was she doing right now?

Probably blowing some redneck scumbag out in the parking lot, came his worst considerations.

“Last chance, brother.” It was the keep, meandering behind the bar now as Sallee’s crowd quickly thinned.

For some reason, the keep’s head reminded Phil of a big sweet potato. “No thanks, no more beer for me.”

“No, I mean the hot dog.” The keep pointed to the wizened grease-sheened thing revolving lazily in the lit rotisserie. “If you don’t want it, I’m gonna have it.”

Phil thought of a lone car on a dilapidated ferris wheel. “It’s all yours, brother,” he said.

“Suit yourself. Don’t know what you’re missing.”

Time to get out of this hole in the wall, Phil concluded. I got better things to do than talk to this guy about hot dogs. He was about to reach for his wallet, to pay for the wreckage of this dismal night, when suddenly—

“Hey! Hey, man!”

A hand was shoving him from behind. Did I get made already? he feared as the hand continued to jostle him.

“Aren’t you Phil Straker?”

Christ. Phil turned on his barstool to face a tall guy, dressed in similar redneck garb, with blond hair down past his shoulders. “Yeah, I’m Phil Straker,” Phil admitted.

The half-drunk grin heightened. “I guess you don’t remember me—gotta admit, it’s been awhile. We went to school together. I’m—”

“Holy shit,” Phil said when the recognition finally sparked. “Eagle? Eagle Peters?”

“That’s right, man.”

What a mind-blow this was. They shook hands vigorously. “Christ,” Phil said. “I haven’t seen you since high school. So what’ve you been up to?”

“Nothin’ much, same old dickin’ around,” Eagle answered. “Got into some trouble up north a few years back, but I’m squared away now. Hangin’ sheetrock in north county when there’s work. I heard you were a city cop.”

Phil figured Eagle had probably “heard” a bit more than that, so he tailored his spiel. “Not anymore. I got fired, but the job sucked anyway. That cop shit wasn’t for me. I’m working for a landscaper now.”

“Planting bushes and pulling weeds doesn’t seem your style.”

“It ain’t, but a buck’s a buck.”

Eagle laughed. Phil paid his tab—a wopping six dollars—and walked out to the lot with his childhood friend. Gravel dust flurried as countless pickup trucks idled toward the exits.

“Must’ve been a bummer, huh?” Eagle said.

“What’s that?”

“You know. Walking into the joint and seein’ your ex up on the stage doing a strip routine.”

“It was no big deal,” Phil lied. “I’d heard she was working here. She still looks good, I’ll tell you that.”

“She’s the hottest ticket in the joint these days,” Eagle informed him. “But she really took a nosedive since you left town.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forget it, man. Let’s just say that she’s into a whole lot of shit that you don’t want to hear about.”

Yes I do! Phil wanted to yell. But he held back. Eagle was just the kind of information source Phil needed to get a line on the underside of the town. It was best not to press the guy, better to slowly cultivate his trust. Besides, all Eagle probably meant was Vicki’s plummet into prostitution, which, thanks to Mullins’ photographic enlightenment, Phil already knew about. I hope that’s what he means, Phil thought. What could be worse than that?

“Gotta get rolling,” Eagle said. “Got an early job tomorrow, hanging rock in Millersville.”

“It was great seeing you again, Eagle. You hang out here much?”

“Most nights. Let’s get together soon and shoot the shit.”

“Will do. Take care of yourself.”

They forked off. Eagle got into a beat-up Chevy four-runner—Phil memorized the plates, an occupational instinct—and filed out of the lot. How weird. Phil hadn’t given Eagle Peters a thought since the dreams had recurred, and now here the guy was in the flesh. And what had he meant about getting into trouble up north? And that stuff about Vicki—could Eagle have been implying that she was into more than just roadside trick-turning, or was Phil just being paranoid?

I’m being paranoid, he insisted to himself. He got into the Malibu, started it up, and sat a moment. So much gravel dust rose in the lot he could barely see, just as too many thoughts cropped up in his head, too much marauding him at once, from too many tangents: Mullins’ PCP case, Eagle, Susan, the Metro sham, and, of course, Vicki.

Vicki…

…she’s into a whole lot of shit that you don’t want to hear about…

“God,” he muttered. This was no good at all. He’d only had two beers, but he felt drunk in drenched images. Her dance routine ground in replay in his mind, like a lewd, overbright film loop—garish strobe lights pawing at her flawless body, her red hair a shimmering dark fire about her sleek shoulders, and the large breasts—which he’d once caressed in total love—displayed on her chest like prime raw meat in a butcher’s case…

Bait, no doubt, for her new trade.

“Yeah, the hottest ticket in the joint, and I used to be in love with her.”

He felt pathetic, a putz, a wimp. Pining over a relationship that didn’t work. But—

Why didn’t it work?

Because of me, he thought. She’s a stripper and a whore now…because I abandoned her in this shit-pit of a town.

He flicked on his headlights, prepared to pull out and head back to the station. But through the mist of dust, he spotted Cody Natter’s big maroon Chrysler rumbling up to Sallee’s entrance, and out of that same entrance Vicki Steele emerged, high heels at the ends of her long legs, a skin-tight blue sequin dress tight as frost about her body. She leaned over, was about to get into Natter’s car, then she paused. Erected herself. And turned around… Through the gray dust, she stared. She was staring right at Phil’s headlights. Phil’s heart sank. More dust rose in the wake over another pickup truck, and when it eventually cleared, Vicki, along with Natter’s long dark-scarlet car, was gone.

— | — | —

Twelve

Phil came in off his shift at about seven a.m., to take care of the night’s paperwork and, much more importantly, to get the coffee brewing before Chief Mullins came in at eight. Susan hadn’t asked him how things had gone at Sallee’s when he’d come back to the station last night to change back into his uniform; perhaps she sensed his mental disarray.

What a night…

The entirety of his shift was haunted by thoughts and images of Vicki Steele.

He tried to clear his head, and sat at Mullins’ big desk to finish off his DOR, but then he noticed the sheet of paper on the blotter. MISSING PERSON’S REPORT, it read; somebody named Orndorf had been reported missing by somebody named Sullivan. “Hey, Susan,” he called out. “What’s this missing person’s report here on the chief’s desk?”

Susan, from her commo cubby, answered rather snidely, “It’s…a missing person’s report.”

“Funny. I mean, what’s the scoop? You know either of these guys?”

“Nope.”

“How’d this guy Sullivan look?”

“Like a typical creep. He came in about an hour ago, filed the report because he said he hadn’t seen his buddy Orndorf in several weeks.”

Phil’s eyes scanned down the sheet of paper. “Why’d he file it here? These guys don’t even live in Crick City.”

“Yeah, but the last place Orndorf was seen was in our juris. At Krazy Sallee’s as a matter of fact.”

Sallee’s? Hmmm. But why should Phil even care? Nine times out of ten, a missing persons was nothing. The guy probably owed a bundle in alimony or child support, so he blew town and didn’t tell anyone. Happened all the time.

He went back to his DOR, but still, something was bothering him. Eagle’s words: She’s into a whole lot of shit that you don’t want to hear about.

“Hey, Susan,” he called out again. “Do me a favor and run a rap check on Vicki Steele, will ya?”

Did she actually chuckle? “Checking out the ex, huh?”

“Don’t break my chops. Just do it, okay?”

“All right. Give me a minute.”

Phil waited, tapping Mullins’ blotter with a pencil-end. From Susan’s cubby, he heard computer keys clicking. Then:

“Nothing,” she said when her terminal responded.

He tapped the blotter some more, thinking. “Run a check on Eagle Peters,” he said next.

“Who?”

“Eagle Peters. Long time resident, he might be into something. His real first name is James.”

Another flurry of clicking keys. Probably nothing on him, either, he supposed.

“He might be into something, huh?” Susan came back a minute later. “This guy’s got three outstanding traffic warrants, three suspended sentences, and four narcotics busts.”

“You’re kidding me. Eagle?”

“Yeah, Eagle. And that’s not all. He served three years on a five-year sentence in Clay County Prison.”

Phil fell silent, tapping the desk more rapidly. This information left him partly excited, partly disappointed. But it wasn’t for another moment that the most pertinent question of all occurred to him.

“The jail stint—that was narcotics?”

“Yep,” Susan answered. “Possession, transport, and intent to distribute.”

“To distribute what?”

“Your pet peeve. Synthetic phencyclidine.”

PCP. Paydirt.

Phil sat a moment more; now he felt geared up. Eagle would be the perfect schmooze. He didn’t know Phil was a cop, plus they were childhood friends. If Eagle was in deep, he could lead them right to Natter…

“Hey, Susan?”

“Yeeees,” she groaned.

“Do me a favor and run raps on these guys too, Orndorf and Sullivan.”

“You know, whenever we run a rap check through the county mainframe, the department gets charged.”

“I don’t care,” Phil almost snapped. “Just run the raps…pretty please.”

“Well, in that case…” More clicking, more waiting. Then: “You got some sense of foresight. Both guys have several priors, same thing. Possession with intent to distribute.”

“PCP?”

“Ten-four.”

Well well well, Phil thought. This was getting downright interesting. Phil poured some coffee, oblivious to its acrid tang. Three rap checks in a row, three base hits on PCP busts. He couldn’t wait to tell Mullins.

Mullins…

Then Phil looked at the cracked VFW clock mounted above the chief’s shooting trophies.

“Hey, Susan?”

“What now! You want me to run a rap check on Snow White?”

“No, but how about the Easter Bunny? He hangs out at Sallee’s, too… Where’s Chief Mullins? It’s almost eight-thirty.”

A pause, then, “You’re right. He’s never late.”

“Maybe he’s hungover.”

“Naw, he quit drinking years ago.”

“Maybe you should call him. Maybe he forgot to set his alarm clock or something.”

“I doubt it,” she said, but then he could hear her dialing anyway…

“No answer.”

That’s weird. Then he shrugged. “He’ll be in. He’s probably waiting in the donut line at the Qwik-Stop.”

“Now that’s a possibility.”

Well, looks like I’m stuck here till he comes in. He killed some time calling the county hospital, the lockup, and the morgue, but no one by the name of Kevin Orndorf had checked in. Then he called the state and had them run the name on their blotter program.

Nothing.

“Hey, Phil?”

We really should get an intercom, he thought. “Yes?”

“You ever gonna ask me out again, or should I just give up?”

Phil almost spat his coffee out all over Mullins’ desk. He tried to recover as quickly as he could, but what could he say? The smart-ass approach, he decided, might be best. “Hey, I already asked, but you were too busy. Remember? My rule is to never ask more than three times. Women have to stand in line to go out with me, I’ll have you know. Sometimes they pay.”

Susan shrieked a laugh.

“And if my memory serves me correctly, Ms. Ryder, your three chances have already been expended.” Phil smiled at his own cockiness, even though, from her commo cubby, she couldn’t see him. “It’s like baseball,” he told her. “Three strikes, and you’re out.”

“Hey!” she shot back. “I can’t help it if you only ask me out on days I have class.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right, so just to show you I’m a man of character and fairness, I’ll give you an unprecedented fourth opportunity to be graced by my presence.” He paused for effect. “You want to go out tonight?”

“I can’t. I have class.”

Phil winced. “You evil, toying, malicious—”

“But tomorrow would be great,” she interrupted. “Call me when you manage to drag your behind out of bed.”

“Why bother calling? I’ll just yell up through the heating duct.”

“Don’t forget,” she warned him. “You ever heard the line ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”

Forget? Phil nearly laughed. Yeah, like I’m gonna forget I have a date with you. “You needn’t worry, Ms. Ryder. In fact I’ll have my itinerary director mark it down on my calendar, posthaste.”

“Posthaste, my ass,” she came back. “Don’t stand me up.”

Jesus, she’s serious, Phil realized.

“And speaking of getting stood up, I think we’ve both been,” Susan said.

“What?”

“The chief. He’s really late.”

“You’re right,” Phil agreed when he noted the clock again. Chief Mullins was a lot of things—arrogant, biased, stubborn, crotchety. But there was one thing he wasn’t: late.

“He’s got a radio in that big land yacht of his, right?” Phil asked. “Try giving him a call.”

“Good idea.” Susan keyed her base station mike. “Two-zero-one, relay Signal 3 immediately.”

The only reply was static.

“Two-zero-one, do you copy?”

Nothing.

“Chief Mullins? Do you copy?”

Still, no reply.

“To hell with this,” Phil said and got up, grabbing the cruiser keys. “I’m gonna go look for him. Something’s not right here.” But before he made it to the back door, Susan called out, “Wait! He just came on line.”

Phil stepped quickly into the commo cove. Mullins’ voice, even more gravelly through the airwaves, was grumbling, “…yeah, Susan, I’m 10-20’d north on 154, just past Hockley’s Swamp…”

“We were getting a little worried. Are you all right? Do you need assistance?”

“You might say that—Christ. Is Phil still at the station?”

“Yeah, Chief, he’s right here.”

“Good. I want you to lock the place up and get out here,” Mullins directed. “But first, Susan, I want you to get several pairs of plastic gloves, some forceps, and a handful of evidence bags.” Static crackled through his next pause. “And tell Phil to bring a Signal 64 report.”

Holy shit, Phil thought.

Susan turned off the base station. Her face looked grim. “You heard him,” she said as she opened the small drawer they kept their evidence collection materials in.

Yeah, I heard him, all right. Phil then, just as grimly, went to the file cabinet and retrieved a Signal 64 form, otherwise known as a Uniform Jurisdictional Standard Report for Homicide.

««—»»

“What in the name of…”

Phil didn’t go to the trouble of finishing. In the name of what, exactly? What, he wondered in fragments. Could possibly. Describe. This?

Susan, standing right beside him, gaped down into the ragged ravine, while Mullins lingered several yards off, facing away. He looked on the verge of displacing his last meal into the woods.

If he hadn’t already.

The corpse glistened, scarlet hands locked in rigor. A few flies peppered the gore-sheened head; it took Phil a few solid moments of staring before he could even discern it as human. The chief, his bulbous face going pallid, was pointing to the flat front-right tire on his Caddy and explaining “…so just when I come around the bend, I get a blowout. Brand-new friggin’ tire, too. And anyway, I’m lugging the jack out of the trunk, I turn to take a spit in the ravine, and the first thing I see is that.”

Hell of a way to start the day, Phil thought. His stomach felt as though it were shrinking to something the size of a prune as he looked more closely. It was still early; the sun hadn’t yet cleared the ridge, which left them in dappled shade. This lent a strange purplish hue to the corpse’s glittery scarlet. At first Phil surmised that the body was merely nude and covered in blood, but when he stooped over, hands on knees, he realized it was something far worse than that.

“My God,” Susan croaked. “It looks like it’s been—”

“Skinned,” Phil finished. “And a humdinger of a job, too. This is some serious, calculated work here, Chief.”

“Tell me about it.”

The corpse lay in the ravine as if haphazardly dropped there, its arms and legs canted at impossible angles. Probably pushed out of a moving car, Phil guessed, though he pitied the poor chump who had to clean the car out afterward. Sinew, tendons, and even veins remained flawlessly intact along the flensed musculature. “Yeah,” Phil mumbled. “Somebody really did the job on this guy…if it even is a guy.”

This observation was pertinent; though the corpse appeared to possess a male frame, its obvious loss of genitalia left its gender in question. And there was no hair either—it had been scalped. What remained of its head grinned back liplessly at them, a crimson meaty lump.

“It’s a guy,” Mullins said. He pointed ten yards to his right. “Those ain’t a woman’s duds.”

Further along the ravine, Phil spotted clothing—a pair of men’s straight-leg jeans, a large flannel shirt, and a pair of decent-looking cowboy boots—strewn about as recklessly as the corpse. Then Susan, squinting, noticed something else.

“Is that a wallet lying there, too?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “That’s why I wanted you to bring gloves and evidence gear. Check it out.”

Both Phil and Susan slipped on pairs of polyvinyl evidence gloves, and approached the strewn garments. A braided wallet sat next to one of the boots. Susan knelt and, very gingerly, opened the wallet with a pair of Ballenger forceps. “No cash,” she discerned. “But—”

Just as gingerly, then, she slipped out something else.

“Driver’s license,” Phil noted. “Not surprising.”

Mullins, in spite of his obvious nausea, grew excited. “Ain’t that some luck? We got an instant ID.”

“It’s not luck, Chief,” Phil said. “This is a hit, and I’ll bet my next paycheck it’s drug-related.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Mullins testily asked.

“It’s protocol for dealers,” Susan told him. “They left the wallet on purpose.”

“Exactly,” Phil added and shook open an evidence bag. “Whoever did this wants the word to get around that this guy got whacked. I saw stuff like this every other day on Metro.”

“Jake Dustin Rhodes,” Susan read the name off the license. “Waynesville address.” Then she dropped the license into the bag.

“And I’ll bet another paycheck,” Phil went on, “that this guy’s got dope busts on his record.”

“You seem to know an awful lot,” Mullins grumbled. “I still don’t know what you’re driving at.”

Phil frowned. He kept forgetting that this wasn’t the city anymore. “This guy Rhodes is a cowboy, ten to one, and some other cowboys did this to him for moving on their turf. This is how dealers put the word out: deal on our territory, and this will happen to you.”

“That’s a hell of a way to leave a message,” Mullins commented.

“Yeah, but it always works.” Phil bagged the wallet next, and then he and Susan began putting the clothes into larger evidence bags. “On Metro, they’d do this all the time, decapitations, dismemberments, blow-torch jobs, then leave the body with the ID so word will get around. This guy was dealing dope on somebody else’s territory. And since they left the body within Crick City town limits, we can safely assume that the territory in question is Crick City itself.”

“Natter,” Mullins said.

“It’s a good bet, unless your previous intelligence is wrong.”

“It ain’t wrong. It all fits.” Mullins pulled out his bag of Red Man, grimaced, then put it back. “I’ll bet that sick, ugly fucker had one of his Creekers do this.”

“Let’s not jump the gun just yet. We still gotta check everything out. I could be wrong. I just doubt that I am.”

Mullins ran a squab hand over his pasty face. Phil sympathized; Mullins was a down-home, laid-back town police chief—he didn’t know how to deal with situations like this, and since the office of police chief was an elected post in Crick City, that was a further worry. Mutilation, murder, drug assassinations came as alien to Chief Mullins as bottles of Seagrams at MADD meetings. Mullins was trying hard not to fall apart, and he wasn’t doing too keen a job of it. He didn’t want to look weak in front of his employees, which presented a side of the man—vulnerability—that Phil had never fathomed.

“I-I gotta wait for the M.E.,” Mullins wavered. Every time he glanced into the ravine, he looked like he might keel over. “You two get back to the station and start a rundown on this Rhodes character.”

“I’ll wait with you, Chief,” Phil offered. “Help you change that tire.”

“No, get on back, the both of you. I ain’t a baby, you know. I been at this business since you were wearing diapers.”

“Look, Chief, I’m not saying you’re a baby, for God’s sake. But you’re obviously a little shaken up.”

“I ain’t shaken up,” Mullins insisted. He steeled himself then, and stuffed a chaw of the Man into his cheek. “Take the evidence back to the station,” he ordered. “Run a rap check on Rhodes. And whatever either of you do, don’t tell anyone about this, not the county cops, not the state, not any-fucking-body. We’re not town clowns, you know. We’re a police department just as good as anyone else, and I don’t want some outside agency hogging our case. This is our problem, and we’re gonna be the ones who fix it.”

“Chief, look—”

“Get on back to the station with Susan,” Mullins commanded, more resolutely this time. “I’m your boss, so don’t give me no lip. You don’t like it, go work someplace else.”

“Got’cha, Chief,” Phil obeyed. “See you in awhile.”

He and Susan put the evidence bags in the trunk, and without further word, took the cruiser back down the Route. In the rearview, Mullins’ discomposed reflection shrank as they drove away: a fat, old, broken man.

“I’ve never seen him like that before,” Susan said from behind the wheel. “He was in pieces.”

“It’s hard for him to cope with—shit—getting out to change a flat and finding somebody skinned in his juris? He just doesn’t want to let on that he’s shook up. And he’s right about one thing. We can handle this ourselves. We don’t need the county cops wiping our noses.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what?” Phil asked.

Susan’s pretty face looked in complete disarray as she steered the cruiser through the Route’s weaving bends. “This is serious business, Phil.”

“We’ll handle it.”

“I mean, Christ, you saw what they did to that guy. Who could possibly do something like that?”

“Psychopaths, that’s who. The only thing worse than a psychopath is a psychopath who’s a businessman. Drugs are just like any other business: you succeed by cutting out the competition. I guarantee, the people who did the job on that guy, it was all in a day’s work to them. They don’t give a shit.”

And then, without any warning at all, as his hair sifted in the breeze from the window and the first streams of sunlight peeked gloriously over the ridge, the most macabre question occurred to him.

What the hell did they do with the guy’s skin?

— | — | —

Thirteen

Both Phil and Susan got out of the station by noon. Mullins had returned earlier, after fixing his flat and signing the corpus of one Jake Dustin Rhodes off to the morgue; it hadn’t taken the M.E. very much time to officially pronounce Rhodes dead. It was hard to be much deader…

Phil’s estimation had been right on the mark; Susan’s rap check on Rhodes had revealed a profusion of arrests, convictions, suspended sentences (famous in this state), and even some time in the county slam—all for possession, distribution, and sales of PCP. He’d even been held as a suspect in a couple of drug-related murder investigations but had been released due to insufficient evidence. The world would not miss Jake Dustin Rhodes. After being a cop for a decade now, Phil was not surprised by the sense of detachment that overcame him shortly after seeing the state of the corpse; the sensibility went along with the job: when you see dead people, you don’t take it personally, and when you see dead drug-dealers, you care even less. Nor was Phil surprised by the strange and accelerated manner in which this narcotics investigation had bloomed. For weeks he’d been on the case and uncovered nothing to suggest a PCP operation in Crick City. Yet now, and literally overnight, he had Eagle Peters with a PCP history, a missing person named Orndorf with a PCP history, and a corpse named Rhodes with a PCP history. Another aspect of police work—sheer spontaneity—that he was well used to by now. Dumb luck was frequently a cop’s most reliable friend.

“Don’t forget our date tomorrow,” Susan reminded him when they both got out at Old Lady Crane’s boardinghouse.

Are you kidding me? He’d sooner forget his name. “I know, hell hath no fury like a dispatcher scorned.”

“See you at work tonight,” she said, skipping up the old carpeted stairs.

Phil smiled in spite of his fatigue, and walked down the first-floor hall to his own room. He felt a numb elation; he hadn’t been on a real “date” in some time. And what pleased him much more was the growing attraction he felt for Susan. It seemed easy and honest, not just his physical attraction to her—each day, though, she did seem even more beautiful, her eyes more blue, her hair more silken, her physique more alluring—but his personal attraction as well; he liked her in too many ways he could name, and she clearly liked him. I must be doing something right, he gave himself credit. Why would she want to go out with me if she didn’t think I was a cool guy?

Right now, though, he was a tired guy. Night shifts skewed his metabolism to begin with, and worse was the fact that, thanks to today’s unavoidable overtime, he was getting to bed hours later than he was used to. The simple prospect of sleep never seemed more luxurious as he closed and locked his door and began to undress.

He only had one wish.

No dreams today, okay, Mr Sandman? No nightmares.

The dreams were subtly haunting him now. It seemed that the instant he dozed off, his mind took him back to that byway of his childhood. Like a grainy, ill-exposed movie: his ten-year-old self wandering through the humid, vine-tangled woods. The little Creeker girl, pretty in spite of her deformities, running away into the blistering sun. The high hill surrounded by dying grass that was as tall as he was, and atop the hill—

The House.

Christ…

And its marred, narrow windows set into whitewashed wood. Windows like eyes glaring straight into the throbbing heart of the nightmare itself…

He hung up his gunbelt in the closet, unfastened his badge and pulled off his shirt. A moment ago he’d been in a great mood—now it was ruined. The nightmare festered even when he was awake; it sabotaged him. Why should he remain so obsessed with the memory? That had all been over two decades ago, if it had even been real at all. I should see a shrink, he considered. It wasn’t fully a joke. The nightmare was stressing him out now, making raids on his sleep, and pecking at his waking thoughts like some demented, needle-beaked grackle gorging on a pile of delectable worms. It was now to the point that, exhausted as he was, he felt afraid to go to bed. For he knew the specter would be waiting to feast on more of his memory, the grim, blade-sharp images of the things he thought he’d seen in the House that day…

Jesus Christ, can’t you quit thinking about that shit! he hollered at himself. What the hell is wrong with you, you basketcase!

And at the end of this self-explosive thought, the tiniest rap of knuckles sounded at the door. His mind felt so disarranged at that moment, he didn’t even at first contemplate who it might be. Susan, maybe. Maybe she forgot to tell him something. Or maybe it was his landlady, or Mullins. But when he answered the door he saw, in smothered shock, that it was none of these people.

“Hello, Phil,” came the subdued and slightly sultry voice. Slightly sultry, yes, but more than slightly familiar,

Phil gulped as if swallowing dry oatmeal.

“Hello…Vicki,” he replied.

««—»»

Ona…

The thought came like a single sob of joy. Like a herald, like a breath of—

Of what? he wondered.

Of hope?

No. Deliverance.

Enraptured in the tainted dark, the Reverend stood poised in the opposite comet. The darkness dressed him as if in a holy man’s mantle. He was, after all, a holy man. He gave succor to holy things. He bid blessings and cast absolutions. In his own cloak now, weaved of the most austere sackcloth, he stood in pensive, undeniable worship.

Save us.

From the shuttered window, the tiniest leakage of sunlight hung in the dark chamber like brilliant web-strands. The light of day provided its oblivion—didn’t it?—as it did their own souls, their own spirits, a sanctuary from the misery of their cursed and most obscene blight.

Like their savior, their only real freedom was the glorious dark…

Save us, I beg of thee, the Reverend thought.

A tear welled in his eye.

And past the minute webwork of light—in the haven of its own darkness—

Something stirred.

««—»»

“I wasn’t going to come by, but—”

Vicki’s words seemed to die of their own starvation, as though each were a little shrew expiring in its tracks.

“But what?” Phil asked after he let her in. He’d asked the question more out of his own mental famine. Her presence assailed him. Why had she come? What did she expect him to say? How did she perceive him?

She has every right in the world, he reminded himself, to hate my friggin’ guts.

Had she come to tell him off? To unload on him in an outburst of anger and betrayal that had simmered in her for years? Most women would, he thought. He was the guy who had professed his love, and then abandoned her.

Yet she seemed composed, if not a little nervous. In her manner and the shades of her voice, Phil could not detect anything of the rage he imagined.

“Didn’t want to bother you—”

“It’s not a bother, for God’s sake,” he replied so quickly he may have seemed irritated. “Christ, we almost—”

He bit the rest off. We almost got married, he nearly finished. And what a catastrophic thing that would have been to say. A pause, hard as concrete, floundered between them.

“You look good, Vicki,” he said. “And it’s good to see you.”

He expected some equally benign reply, but then he thought, How good can I look in crumpled pants and an old T-shirt? Yeah, dickhead, how good can it be for her to see me? The guy who walked away from her life and never looked back?

“I saw you last night,” she said more quietly, “and I’m sure you saw me—at least I guess you did.” She made a morose chuckle. “It’s probably pretty hard not to notice your former fiancée up on stage in a strip joint. I was going to come over to the bar and say something to you, but, well… Complications, you know?”

Complications? That could, mean anything, but to ask her to elaborate now would only make things more difficult for her; just coming here had to be difficult enough. “You want something to drink?” he asked instead, and opened the refrigerator. “I’ve got-uh…” The fridge was empty. “I’ve got some great imported sparkling tap water.”

“No thanks,” she laughed. “You remember me—I never touch the hard stuff.”

Phil took a few seconds to really look at her then, though those few seconds ticked by like full minutes. She was dressed revealingly: a short, tight denim skirt and a glittery vermillion tanktop, very sheer and as tight. Where Susan was attractive in a plain and simple sense, Vicki’s looks could be likened to a caricature, every stereotypical trait of feminine desirability all flawlessly converged into one woman. Her light red hair hung straight just past her bare shoulders; whenever she turned her head, the hair shimmered like fine tinsel. Trace makeup accentuated the lines of her model’s face. Her deep sea-green eyes seemed huge, gemlike, and the faintest pastel lipstick highlighted a pert, full mouth. She was more beautiful than even Phil could remember. She seemed more fit, more trim, more toned of muscle than ever before, which made sense—dancing, even in a strip joint, proved a vigorous exercise. Long legs, sleek shoulders and arms, the keen neckline, all bare and a creamy white. Even the mistlike spray of freckles just above her breasts seemed a perfect embellishment, while the breasts themselves, obviously braless beneath the sparkling tank, were firm and full. In Phil’s long absence from Crick City, Vicki Steele had become a sexist’s dream, a living monument to the numbers 38-24-36, a paragon.

And in all her beauty, perhaps that was the saddest part of all. That’s all she was now, in a sense, a body. Crushed by backwoods subjugation, trapped by her own upbringing and the indoctrinated fear to leave, her real womanhood had all but evaporated. The lot of her life had left her nothing else.

A queer smile came to her lips. Had she noticed Phil’s momentary appraisal of her? He hoped not; the last thing she needed in her life was another chump gaping at her, especially when the chump was her ex-fiancé. She sat down in the ragtag chair by the dresser. Her skin seemed to whisper as she crossed her legs; she sat back lazily, looking at him.

“I heard you’re working for a landscaper now,” she said.

Evidently Eagle had run his mouth, which was just what Phil wanted. And it was a damn stroke of luck he’d hung up his shirt and gunbelt in the closet before she’d come in; his cover would’ve been blown before it started. “Yeah, part-time for now,” he said. “Until I find something better.”

“Around here? You’re lucky to have that.” Her big green eyes took in more of the cramped room. “I guess it was about six months ago or so, I kind of heard that things didn’t work out for you on Metro.”

“I got canned,” Phil admitted immediately. “It’s a long story, and a boring one.”

“Must have been a real bummer for you. Being a cop was what you wanted more than anything else in the world, wasn’t it? I mean, for the whole time we were together, that’s all you talked about.”

Phil swallowed a lump. It was almost innocuous, the way she’d said for the whole time we were together. “It’s no big deal, all for the better really,” he rebounded, lying. “Took me ten years to realize that being a cop wasn’t for me. I got tired real fast of seeing people get hurt, ripped off, and killed every day. You must know what I’m talking about, you were a cop, too.”

“I was a town cop,” she corrected, then recrossed her legs. “Not the same thing, really. But it was a good job.”

This seemed the oddest of remarks. According to Mullins, there’d been no choice but to fire her for all manner of sexual misconduct. She was obviously not cut out at all for police work; she’d made the transition from cop to prostitute all too easily. Mullins’ photographs proved that.

Didn’t they?

A grim smile surfaced on her lips. She relaxed back, closed her eyes, and sighed. “You always were such a gentleman, Phil. Aren’t you even going to ask?”

“Ask what?”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious even?”

Phil read what she was driving at, but to admit that would only increase the severity of this weird circumstance. Instead, and with not much conviction, he said, “I don’t know what you mean, Vicki.”

Her frown drained all the prettiness out of her face at once. “I used to be a cop, Phil, and now I’m a stripper. Most people would think that’s a little bit weird, wouldn’t they? Don’t you want to know what happened?”

With more conviction this time, he replied, “Hey, that’s your business, none of mine. As long as you’re happy doing what you’re doing, then that’s all that matters.”

In part-whisper, part-croak, and with her eyes still closed, she responded: “You think I’m happy doing this?”

Phil sat down on the edge of his bed, brows raised. He couldn’t summon a reply.

“I was like you, remember?” she continued. “I wanted to be a cop, and I was a good cop.” A hesitation, an uneasy gulp. “You want to know why I’m not a cop now?”

I already do, Phil thought, but of course he couldn’t say that, not without blowing his cover completely. “So tell me what happened.”

“Mullins blackballed me. From day one he was trying to get into my pants but, you know, I figured it was all a joke. Country bumpkin small-town chief, just acting the part like any good ol’ boy. But soon the joke stopped being funny. One night he tried to rape me, told me if I didn’t put out he’d fire me. I filed an harassment complaint with the state liaison office, but Mullins got it nixed, trumped up a bunch of crap and phony documentation, and then he fired me.”

Phil stared at what she was saying as much as he stared at her. He’d like nothing more than to believe her, but how could he? Mullins’ own claims of her on-duty sexual negligence provided an undeniable corroboration with the photos that had been taken after her separation from the department. There could be no denying what the pictures showed—sexual acts in public—and there could be no denying that Vicki Steele was the woman in the pictures.

“But I’ll bet that’s not what you heard, huh?” she whispered on. “I’ll bet you heard some snowjob about me turning tricks on duty, huh? Is that what you heard?”

“I never heard anything, Vicki,” Phil lied again, protecting his cover. “I’ve only been back in town a month.”

“Yeah, well, that was the word the bastard put out all over town and in my personnel file, that I ‘demonstrated social behavior unbecoming of an officer in general’ and ‘engaged in acts of sexual solicitation and prostitution while in uniform.’ He even had ‘witnesses’ turn in written statements and promises to testify if I took him to court. Next thing I knew I was on the street with no place to go. And no way any police department in the country would even consider hiring me. The son of a bitch ruined me, all because I wouldn’t fuck him.”

The word fuck clanged like a cracked bell. But, again, Phil couldn’t believe her story. I saw the pictures, he grimly reminded himself. Too often in life, he knew, people changed for the worse, and Vicki Steele had to be a prime example. That’s why she came here today. To save face, to make an excuse now that she knew I was back in town. All he could do now was feel sorry for her.

And it made him feel ultimately shitty, too, not just the tailspin her life had taken since he’d ended their relationship, but the acknowledgement of what he was doing to her right now. He was using her, wasn’t he? There could be no other word for it. Phil was pretending to be someone he wasn’t, and he was using her misfortune as a means to get deeper into his PCP leads.

She’s a perfect information dupe, he told himself. And I’m a perfect asshole…

Vicki finally straightened up and opened her eyes. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I believe you,” he lied yet again. He didn’t want to contemplate how many lies he’d told already. “I know all about getting blackballed, Vicki. One day I’ll tell you what happened to me on Metro. Same thing, different circumstances.”

She sighed silently. Relief? Resignation? “I’ll bet you think I blame you, though, right?”

Finally here was a question he didn’t have to answer with a lie, though the topic was not an enlightening one. “You’d have every right to, Vicki. The main reason things went to hell for us is because I wanted out of this town more than anything. I know that. And I don’t feel too good about the way things ended for us.”

“Yeah, but at least you knew what you wanted, and you went for it. I was too insecure—too afraid—to think I could do better than Crick City. And look at me now…”

“I’m not exactly doing great myself,” Phil tried to lighten things. “I gotta goddamn Master’s degree, and I’m making seven bucks an hour planting rosebushes and laying manure.”

“You always manage to get around the issues, don’t you?” she said. “I guess that’s your way of being polite.”

“What’s that?”

Her face hardened. For a moment she wasn’t pretty at all; she was ugly in a raving glare of self-disgust. “I’m a roadside stripper, Phil. I’m not gonna lie to you.” The big gemlike green eyes struggled against sudden tears. “I’m a whore.”

In an unbidden instant, part of Phil felt transported back to another time not really that long ago, a time when they were in love with each other and when the current state of their lives was so remote as to be unthinkable. He wanted to argue with her, to shake her around and bellow in her face that she should stop indicting herself and step out of the seamy ditch her life had fallen into. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your shit together! he wanted to rant. All right, you fell down, so get the fuck back up and make a real life for yourself before it’s too late!

But he could say nothing of the sort, and he knew it. He needed her, for the case. He was a cop, and he had a job to do. He had to play along, or else he’d lose his best lead yet.

Yeah, my best lead. A girl I used to love. A girl I almost married…

“Excuse me,” she said and abruptly stood. “I need to use your bathroom.”

“Right in there,” he pointed.

She went in and closed the door. He knew she was crying, which made him feel even more despicable. He was low enough to use her for the profit of the investigation. But beyond that, no matter how hard he rationalized it to Mullins or even to himself, he knew he would always be partly to blame for what had happened to her.

After several minutes, he began to pace his room. Several more and he began to worry.

He knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay, Vicki?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll be out in a sec.”

And when she did indeed re-emerge from the bathroom, she seemed back in control, but—

Oddly so.

Again, she looked neat as a pin, her posture perfect, every shining red hair in its place, but her eyes bore a glint now like ice. She seemed stolid, hard, when only a few minutes ago she’d been falling apart.

“Look, I’m sorry about that,” she said.

“We all have bad moments, Vicki.”

“I guess the real reason I came here was because I wanted you to know what happened, that’s all. I didn’t want you to think—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you stopped by.”

Their eyes locked. For a moment the green ice cracked. “Really?”

“Sure. Look, the past is the past, right? We both got bum raps, that’s life. Why don’t we try to put the past behind us, forget about all that and leave it lie? Let’s be friends, okay?”

Something like a repressed despair threatened to collapse her entire face, but she seemed to stave it off. “I’d really like that, Phil. I’d like that a lot, but—”

“So what’s the problem?”

“It’ll have to be a secret.”

“A secret? Why?”

She steeled herself. “I’m married now, Phil,” she said very coldly. She raised her left hand, flashed the wedding ring with a diamond on it the size of a pea. Then:

“I’m married to Cody Natter.”

He tried to manage his shock, tried to keep it from getting out and molesting the memory of how he used to feel about her.

“Still want to be friends?” she asked.

“Sure. I don’t care if you’re married to Elvis.”

She let a smile eek out, gave him a final glance, then kissed him very lightly on the lips.

“See you around,” she said and left.

His bewilderment held him in a momentary check. When he looked around the doorway and down the hall, she was already gone.

Cody. Natter’s. Wife. Each word smacked like a piton into stone. How could any man, however irredeemable, let his own wife dance in a strip joint and turn roadside tricks in pickup trucks. When Phil closed the door, he wanted to punch a hole in it. His anger raged like a huge beast trapped in a tiny cage. He thought he would explode.

And the emotion doubled when he went into the bathroom. Perhaps his cop’s sensitivities had tuned him in; anyone else wouldn’t have noticed it in a million years. But—

“Oh, my God, Vicki, no no no—”

At the corner of the old porcelain sink, the faintest sprinkling of diminutive white dust lingered. He knew what it was even before he rubbed a trace across his upper gum and felt the numb, cold tingle.

Cocaine. No wonder Natter got her stripping and turning tricks so fast. He got her hooked on coke…

— | — | —

Fourteen

Phil walked into the station at five of eight, keyed up by an array of emotions: despair, perplexion, and anger…

Mostly anger.

“Hi, Phil,” Susan said from the commo niche, her nose buried in a textbook.

“What?”

She vaguely smirked, looking up. “I said hi. It’s a colloquial Modem English interjection commonly used to denote a greeting.”

“Oh, yeah. Hi. Where’s Mullins?”

Susan obviously sensed his disheveled mood at once. “He’s eating sushi on the Ginza in Tokyo. You know, like he does every night at eight.”

“Huh?”

“He’s in his office! Where else would he be?” She closed her book somewhat testily. “What’s wrong with you? You get out on the wrong side of the bed today?”

“Sorry, Susan. I—” He didn’t know how to properly explain it, not that he would want to anyway, not to her. What? My ex-fiancée stopped by today and enlightened me to the fact that she’s married to Cody Natter. She claims Mullins tried to rape her. Oh, and she’s also a prostitute and a coke addict. No, that wouldn’t wash, and it would certainly put a damper on their date tomorrow.

“Just feeling a little out of it today. Talk to you later.”

Phil’s frown widened when he stepped into the chief’s office; Mullins wasn’t there, but an instinctive glance to the back window showed the chief lumbering out of the disused lockup behind the station, bearing a can of coffee.

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I see,” the big man said when he came in.

Phil didn’t waste time. “That was real cool of you to not tell me Vicki Steele was married to Cody Natter. I guess you just forgot that minor detail, huh?”

“I can tell you’re in a great mood.” Mullins started another pot of coffee, then sat down at the cluttered desk. “I figured it was best you found out on your own. Didn’t want to shake you up before I had to.”

“Oh, I appreciate that, Chief. I’m not a school kid, you know. I don’t let personal stuff get in the way of my job.”

“I can tell.” Mullins’ chair creaked like a keening hinge when he lounged back. “You haven’t even been in the office ten seconds, and you look about as happy as a mad dog. I didn’t think you could handle that information right off the bat.”

“Well, fine. But next time fill me in, all right? How can I do a good job on this case if you withhold pertinent facts?”

“Sorry, dear. It won’t happen again. I take it you ran into her.”

“Yeah, this afternoon before I turned in.”

“Were you in uniform?”

“No, no, my cover’s intact.”

“Good.” Mullins hand-pinched a few choice leaves of tobacco from his bag, then stuffed them into his cheek.

“Takes the cake, don’t it? That ugly scumbag is married to the best-looking woman in town, and he’s got her doing a strip show and turning tricks.”

Yeah, it takes the cake, all right. But now that he’d had time to think about it, it wasn’t terribly surprising. “Actually it’s pretty common in criminal networks. Drug kingpins frequently take a beautiful wife for status, then use them for business. The dust honchos in the city do it all the time. It’s like buying a $500 silk shirt and using it to check your oil. It’s street machismo.”

Mullins chuckled grimly at the simile. “Ugly Creeker slime. I can’t wait to bust his ass.”

“We got a lot of very positive leads real fast, and Vicki’s the best lead yet.”

“You figure you’ll run into her on a regular basis?”

“Sure. She works at Krazy Sallee’s; I’ll be hanging out there every night. And I’ll be seeing a lot of Eagle Peters, too. I should be able to infiltrate the entire scene at Sallee’s if I play my cards right.”

“Yeah, but if you play ’em wrong, you could wind up looking like that chump we found in the ravine this moring. So be careful.”

“But,” Phil went on, “a secure cover is the key, and there’s no way I can expect to maintain a secure cover by staking out Sallee’s for a few hours in plainclothes and then touring the town in uniform for the rest of my shift all night. There’s only one way to do this right, Chief.”

“You want to go undercover full time, in other words?”

“There’s no other option, Chief. Say I’m hamming it up at the bar with Peters one night, and a couple hours later the guy sees me cruising around in the patrol car. Or any of the regulars at Sallee’s. Not only would that destroy my cover for good, it would tip Natter that you’re eying him. He’ll move his distro point somewhere else, and then we’re worse off than before we started.”

“You’re right,” Mullins grumbled and spat. “But I’ll have a hard time selling it to the town council. This ain’t Miami Vice, you know. They won’t like the idea of paying an officer for fulltime undercover and not having a uniform on duty during the nightshift.”

Phil gave a smirk. “Piss on the town council, Chief. They want you to solve this PCP business, you gotta do it the right way. Those loudmouth assholes shouldn’t even know about it. And, shit, you don’t really even need a patrol cop out here at night. All I ever get are smoochers parking out on some of the old logging roads. Anything hairy goes down, Susan can call you, or dispatch the county. If you want me to get into Natter’s shit, I can’t be seen anywhere near this station or that cruiser. And no one, not even the town council or the mayor, can know about me being undercover. They could blab, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Natter’s greasing one of them for tip-offs. You trust those guys?”

“Wouldn’t trust ’em to walk my dog, and I don’t even have a fuckin’ dog.” Mullins festered a moment more, then conceded. “All right, you’re the big city expert, we’ll do it your way. Work your own hours, do your own thing, but keep me posted each day. And be fuckin’ careful. These people don’t fuck around; you saw that Rhodes guy this morning.”

I sure did, Phil remembered. Seeing a skinned human being wasn’t easy to forget. He got up to leave, but hesitantly.

“Ain’t you even gonna stay for a cup of coffee?”

Phil raised a brow at the bubbling pot. “No thanks. But look, Chief, there’s one thing I gotta ask.”

“What?”

How could he phrase the question without looking absurd? He’d wind up proving that he couldn’t keep personal feelings separate from the job.

Still, though, he had to ask.

“Vicki said—” he began.

Mullins laughed immediately. “Let me guess, supercop. She told you I fired her on bullshit, right? What’d you expect her to say? ‘Phil, honey, big bad Chief Mullins fired me ’cos I was fucking a bunch of stoners for twenty a bang in the back of the cruiser.’ Get real, Phil. Bet she also told you I tried to rape her.”

“Well—”

“Check the file, lover boy. It’s all documented. Sure, I’ll bet she also told you I fabricated the charges and the witnesses, and if you’re stupid enough to believe that, then you need to turn your brain in for a new one.”

“I didn’t say I believed it,” Phil stumbled. “I just—”

“How am I gonna jink affidavits and sworn testimony? It’s all filed through the county. The county investigated the whole schmear. What, they’re making it up, too? I’m buddies with the fuckin’ county? Those fuckers hate municipal departments. Go down to the county hall of records with a FOIA request, see for yourself. Christ, I showed you the pictures. She was turning tricks in the parking lot for God’s sake. She was giving blowjobs, behind the fucking dumpster. And that was just one stack, Phil. You want to see the rest?”

Phil felt he was shrinking from embarrassment. Yes, he’d made an idiot of himself even bringing it up. “No,” he said. “It’s just, like—”

Mullins spat tobacco juice into one paper cup and swigged rancid coffee from another. “Look, I know it ain’t an easy thing to admit, but no matter how you look at it, there’s no way you can tell me otherwise. Vicki Steele’s a hooker now. A roadside fuckin’ whore turning tricks for her old man, who’s the biggest angel dust supplier in the county and probably a murderer to boot. Back in the old days, sure, she was different then, she was a decent person, but that was a long while ago. People let their lives go to shit every day, and sometimes they’re people we know, even people we used to be in love with. But as cops, we have to forget it. We can’t let that shit get to us ’cos if we do, we ain’t worth shit ourselves. You hearing me?”

“Yeah, I’m hearing you, Chief.” Phil walked out, dejected, asinine. Mullins was right. Vicki Steele was a whore now.

A whore, he told himself and let the word sink in. And nothing more.

««—»»

“Go ahead, Druck,” Cody Natter granted permission. No one, naturally, could touch his wife without permission, no one dared. “Just take care not to leave any marks. She must always look good on stage. Few would want to purchase her services with her lovely face all bruised, yes?”

“Please, Cody,” his wife pleaded. One of the Creeker boys held her elbows behind her back, inclining her up on her tiptoes. “What is wrong?” she sobbed. “What have I done?”

Natter sat down to watch. “Hmm. Wrong. I suppose that’s for you to tell me, yes?”

Druck cracked the knuckles of his two left thumbs, then very delicately untied her tanktop. Vicki whined as the Creeker boy behind her exerted a bit more pressure against her elbows, which jutted her bosom. “You shore are pretty, Ms. Vicki,” Druck made the compliment. His crooked eyes fixed on her breasts. “Now what’cha wanna go jerkin’ Cody ‘round fer. He’s a right fine husband to ya, seems ta me.”

“I didn’t do anything!” she shrieked.

In the corner, a third Creeker boy drooled, rubbing the crotch of his overalls, while the boy behind her drooled even more profusely onto her bare shoulder. “Don’t’cha bite now,” Druck suggested. “Otherwise Ise’ll have to have the boys do ya twice, and you wouldn’t want that, would ya? ‘Specially Scooter there. I’se sure you’se heard how big he is. Last time he assed a gal, she plumb up an’ bled ta death.”

Druck then inserted his two long thumbs into Vicki’s mouth. He wriggled them gently, smiling his warped, broken-toothed smile as the Creeker boy holding her began to jibber in enthusiasm, spittle bubbling at his lips. Vicki’s own lips squirmed in revulsion. Tears smeared the fine-lined mascara down her cheeks like trails of black blood.

Cody Natter made a single, resolute nod.

“Time ta listen up, Ms. Vicki, and ya’s best listen good—” Druck slid his double thumbs all the way to the back of her throat and pressed down. He pressed down hard.

Instantly, Vicki was gagging, her green eyes widening, her body in tremors. “Don’t’cha bite,” Druck kindly repeated, “an’ don’t’cha dare puke. Just listen.” Beads of sweat welled on Druck’s protuberant forehead; his scarlet eyes focused intently. “You tell Cody here what’cha were doin’ today. You tell Cody where ya been.”

He pressed down hard one more time until she nearly retched. Then he removed his thumbs.

“Go on.”

After a violent coughing fit, she managed to catch her breath. Tears and sweat pasted shocks of her red hair to her paling face. “I just—went—for a drive,” she croaked, then whined when the boy behind her resumed the clenching pressure on her elbows.

Cody Natter blinked. His own eyes, though keen and clear, were uneven, one lower than the other and noticeably larger. His ears, too—each the size of a pastry—pressed the sides of his head so unevenly they scarcely appeared real. And in spite of the monstrously malformed face—long, bony, runneled—a sane and even considerate sense of deliberation seemed suffused through his twisted features.

“A drive,” he said. “That’s all? And where did this drive take you?”

“Nowhere, Cody, I swear!” she exclaimed, her teeth gritting against the pain of being chicken-winged. “I just went for a drive ’cos I was bored!”

“Hmm. Well.” Natter steepled his triple-jointed fingers in his lap. “What do you think, Druck? Is my fair wife telling the truth, or is she lying?”

“Well, jeez, Cody, I don’t rightly know, ya know?”

“How about you, Scooter? Is there a liar in our midst?”

The third Creeker boy babbled excitedly, tossing his squashed head and rubbing briskly at the obvious erection in his trousers. A foot-long line of drool depended off his bulbed chin.

Natter sighed. “Perhaps a trifle more convincing is in order. Yes, I think so.”

“No, please!” Vicki shrieked. “I didn’t do anything, I swear to God!”

“You needn’t swear to God, my dear. Not here.”

Natter nodded then to the third boy, who quickly appeared and returned a moment later, dragging along a gagged and blindfolded Creeker girl. Immediately, he clutched her by strings of jet-black hair and threw her to the floor.

“Lovely wife, please. Come sit with me.”

Vicki was released and shoved forward. Natter’s queerly long arms and hands shot out, grabbed her about the waist, and pulled her in, forcing her to sit in his lap.

His grip tightened, and his big grouper lips whispered in her ear: “So many choose to stray from our fold. Shanny tried to run away again last night. Such a pity. The poor thing doesn’t realize.”

Scooter, the third boy, stepped clumsily out of his overalls, clucking like a psychotic chicken. The second boy pinned the girl’s shoulders with his knees while Druck, drooling himself now, opened a buck knife and cut off her gag and blindfold. Then Scooter—sporting an erection so large and genetically malformed it more resembled a loaf of French bread—climbed atop the girl and began to rape her.

The girl’s screams were dizzying.

Each time Vicki tried to turn her face away, Natter’s claw-hand vised the back of her head and forced her to return her attention to the madness on the floor. “You must watch, my love,” came his shredded whisper. “You must see. Everything that we see makes us more real in the face of our faith. Do you understand? Some sights aren’t so pretty, but they’re real just the same…”

Vicki looked on from her husband’s lap, paralyzed, nauseous. Druck and his two dutiful attendants took turns raping the screaming girl. Her shrieks rattled the windows and pierced Vicki’s ears. All manner of molestation and sodomy ensued until the sheer gravity of shock robbed what was left of her senses, leaving her silent, bug-eyed, and convulsant on the wood floor. Blood poured freely as if dumped from a bucket.

“All things serve a higher purpose, wife. Even terrible things. One day you’ll see that as clearly as I do.”

Again, Natter nodded.

Druck slit the girl’s throat to the bone. She twitched feebly once or twice, then died. The two boys jabbered on, their bulbous heads bobbing in glee. Druck’s knife flashed, cutting an expert seam from the girl’s pubis to her chest.

“Soup’s on, boys!” he exclaimed.

The three of them, then, sloppily disemboweled the girl where she lay, reveling in a wet, noisy festival of gore. Hands dipped down and came away red. Jabbers of enthusiasm rose above the sounds of evisceration. Organs were promptly scooped up and consumed…

Natter’s hand released the back of Vicki’s head; her eyes fled away.

“Oh, my love,” creaked the monstrous man’s voice. “Never lie to me, or else they’ll do the same to you.”

— | — | —

Fifteen

“No Ric Flair tonight?” Phil asked when he pulled up a stool.

The bizarre barkeep gestured toward the TV. “Flair, the Nature Boy, the Champion of Champions? Naw, ya missed him. He’s already been on, whupped the tar out of Rocky Johnson. Like he says, to be the man, you have to beat the man. Right now we got Terrific Terry Taylor mixing it up with Rick Morton.”

“Ah,” Phil said. “Of course.”

“Bottle of Bud? Hot dog?”

“Just…a bottle of Bud.”

Sallee’s was buzzing, the crowd waiting for the next dancer. Phil glanced around. Well-bosomed waitresses in ludicrously tight tops wended orders between tables like tight-ropists. Same crowd as last night—Generic rednecks, Phil thought. Is that all these people do? Bum around in strip joints? Lights throbbed idly above the vacant dance stage, through lolling sheets of cigarette smoke. Hoarse laughter erupted every so often, and the bar, in its casual discourse, was not lacking in foul language and bad jokes. “Hey, what are two words you never wanna hear in the men’s locker room?” “What?” “‘Nice dick.’” “You got ten gals with PMS and ten gals with yeast infections, what’ve ya got?” “What?” “A whine and cheese party!” Brilliant, Phil thought. He didn’t see Eagle anywhere, nor Vicki; he felt immediately foolish sitting at the bar by himself He frowned up at the wrestling foolery on the TV. These guys probably spend more money per year on hair bleach than I spend on car insurance. The keep was peddling shriveled hot dogs at one end of the bar, while two bearded guys at the other end nearly got into a fight arguing over whether cast aluminum engine blocks were more durable than cast iron. Next, they’ll be arguing over who should win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Phil joked over his beer. But this night was no joke. His lame distractions coaxed him to forget he had a job to do, yet he continued to do exactly what Mullins—and professionalism in general—warned him never to do: Take things personally. His mind kept homing back—to Vicki, and the dusting of cocaine she’d left in his bathroom.

Addict, the word kept haunting him.

Eventually the next dancer came on, a blond who was surely half-inebriated as she plunged her routine into another nondescript heavy metal tune. A snake seemed to peer from her navel, but then Phil realized it was a tattoo. Small, weathered breasts jiggled with each high-heeled step, like slackened bags of gel, and wires of black pubic hair leaked from the seams of a flesh-colored g-string.

One thing Phil eventually came to notice, though, in spite of his despondency, was an influx of patrons crossing the bar toward the men’s room but never returning, and as he became more aware of this, he tried to pay more attention without being conspicuous.

What the hell’s going on back there?

A cramped hallway in the corner led to the men’s room, and right next to it stood a door. A funny-looking kid in overalls waited beside the door itself, arms crossed and stone-faced. A Creeker, Phil ascertained. The gaunt features and enlarged head left no doubt. One periodic redneck after another approached the kid, bypassed the men’s room, and after a moment of discussion, was granted permission to pass through the cryptic door. It seemed almost as if the Creeker kid was guarding it.

Maybe it’s a billiard room or arcade or something, Phil suggested to himself, but that wouldn’t make sense.

Why would the kid be guarding it? Then Phil thought back: When he’d first started staking the lot, hadn’t he heard several patrons mention something about a back room?

A hand slapped on his back. Phil jumped.

“Hey, man. How’s it going?”

Eagle, his long blond hair in his face, pulled up the next stool and ordered a beer.

“Can’t complain,” Phil answered. “Well, I guess I could, but why bother? What’s up with you?”

“Same old, same old.” Eagle craned to view the current dancer, then quickly frowned. “Looks like she’s dancing with cinderblocks tied to her feet.”

“Give her a break, Eagle. She probably just got out of Harvard Law School but hasn’t quite found the right firm.”

Eagle chuckled and swigged some beer. “I don’t know where they dig some of these girls up. Sure, some of them are all right, but most of ’em look like death warmed up. Vicki blows them all away.”

“Yeah,” Phil replied but thought: Yeah, I’ll bet she does, when she’s not blowing Natter’s coke up her nose.

Another thrashing song thumped on the juke, waves of grinding guitars like chainsaws in tempo. The crowd haphazardly applauded when the dancer stood on her head and parted her long, pale legs, no easy task for a drunk. Phil and Eagle small-talked a while, but in the corner of his eye, Phil detected still more scruffy patrons shuffling rearward, to the door beside the Creeker kid.

“Hey, Eagle? What’s in there?”

“Where?” Eagle asked.

“That door back there. I keep seeing guys walking over and talking to that kid. Then the kid lets them in.”

“You don’t want to know, man. It’s a gross-out.”

“A gross-out?” Phil pondered this, and came up with nothing. “Come on, what gives? They got pool tables back there or something? Let’s go shoot a few games.”

Eagle chuckled again, more darkly this time. “Ain’t gonna shoot no pool in there, man. It’s the back room. I been in there once, but I’ll tell ya, I wish I hadn’t.”

Phil couldn’t figure this one out. Gambling? Cock fights? He wanted to find out what was cooking. “What? I gotta guess? Fill me in.”

Eagle swept some of his shoulder-length hair out of his face, to reveal the sourest of smirks. “They got a second stage back there,” he replied.

“What, you mean more girls?”

“Yeah, man. More girls,” he said, dour.

Why’s he balking? Phil wondered. “Well, this gal here isn’t exactly setting the world on fire; looks like she might die before the next set. Let’s go check out this other room, see these other girls.”

“It ain’t like out here, Phil,” Eagle finally confessed. “They got Creeker girls working the back.”

Phil’s beer went flat in his mouth; he nearly gasped. “Creeker girls? Stripping?”

“That’s right, partner. The cream of the crop. They all look great—till you take a second glance. Believe me, man, it’s a gross-out. That’s the draw. The only people who go back there are kinks and sickos.”

Phil eyed the door. Creeker strippers. He’d already seen some, that first night of his stakeout, with his binoculars. He couldn’t imagine who would want to witness such a thing, but then he remembered what Eagle had just said. Kinks. Sickos. Yeah, Natter’s really got himself a prize here. Shit. It seemed ultimately perverse, and an even more ultimate exploitation, but Phil doubted that the girls were underage. Natter would never be that stupid.

So why was there a doorman?

Only one way to find out, Phil. Ask. “How come that kid’s watching the door?”

“It’s private. Cody Natter doesn’t let just anyone go back there, only friends or regulars. Things would get too rowdy otherwise. The kid’s name is Druck, one of Natter’s gofers.”

This sounded too fishy to resist; Phil finished his beer. “Come on, let’s go check it out.”

Eagle rolled his eyes. “I just got done telling you, man, regulars only.”

Phil leaned over. “Yeah, and you’re a regular. You could get us in.”

“Sure, I probably could, but I’m not going to.” Eagle seemed exasperated by the topic…and a little nervous. “Listen to me, Phil. You’ll blow chunks if you even take one look behind that door. They’ve got girls in there with three or four tits, triple belly buttons, triple nostrils. Hunchback girls, girls with no ears, girls with ten fingers per hand and two elbows per arm. The one time I went back there” —Eagle swallowed hard— “this one Creeker chick walks out on the stage, and she had a body on her that would make Vanna White look like Dr. Ruth—”

“Sounds great! Let’s go!”

“—but all she had for arms were these little twigs with fingers on them.” Eagle paused to gulp again. “And a head the size of a basketball. I’m tellin’ ya, man. It’s a fuckin’ freak show back there.”

These, of course, were not things that Phil wanted to see… But I have to get into that room, he determined to himself. See what else is cooking back there. He persisted, feigning more enthusiasm. “What’s the matter, Eagle? You scared of a few inbreds? Christ, this is Dullsville out here.” He shrugged at the stage, and at the next narcoleptic dancer. “These girls are tripping over themselves, for shit’s sake. They look like they’re ODing on ‘ludes. But I’ll bet there’s plenty of spark in that back room.”

“Spark, huh? That’s what you want?” Eagle shook his head. “All right, you pay the tab here, and I’ll try to get us in back.”

“Solid,” Phil said, and left a ten on the bar. “Let’s go.”

They got up and squeezed past the waitress station. Phil’s curiosity blended with abundant disgust; butterflies went mad in his belly. But he had to keep playing the part; he had to prove to Eagle that he’d changed, for the worst.

“Hey, Druck,” Eagle greeted the Creeker kid at the door. “This here’s my buddy, Phil.”

“Hey, Druck,” Phil said.

“We’d like to go in back,” Eagle added. “Phil’s a townie, he’s just been away a while. But he’s all right.”

The kid’s expression, if it could be called that, didn’t waver. His stout, muscled arms remained folded like a sentinel; the scarlet eyes never seemed to even blink. He looked Phil up and down, his enlarged jaw set, the swollen front of his head shining in mushy colors from the dance strobes.

Then he nodded.

“Thanks, Druck,” Eagle said.

“Yeah, man,” Phil added. “Have a good one.”

The music grated on. The strobe lights flashed behind them.

Then Eagle led Phil into the back room.

— | — | —

Sixteen

Kinks. Sickos. Kinks. Sickos…

The words siphoned round Phil’s head like a ring of scavenger birds. What he and Eagle walked into was not so much a different room but a different realm. A circumference of grainy darkness seemed draped around the single, elevated stage. Faces could not be discerned—just half-formed suggestions of faces signaled by the orange tips of lit cigarettes. Weird electronic music resounded in place of the typical fractious heavy metal, and there was none of the rowdy bar-talk, boisterous laughter, and perverted jokes.

Just human silence, and the steady electronic drone.

As a limping waitress took them around to a table, Phil nearly tripped. “Christ, this is like wearing a blindfold—I can’t see a thing!”

“Shhhh!” Eagle replied. “Quiet in here. Rules of the house. They don’t want no loud talk, clapping, shit like that.”

They were seated several rows back; the waitress or hostess or whatever she was seemed to evaporate. Eagle ordered two beers from another waitress who trolled through the unlit aisles; the darkness revealed only enough of her face to hint at deformities: overlarge eyes; flattened, uneven cheekbones; a bifurcated nose. She made a wan grunt in reply, and slid away. Then Eagle leaned over and whispered, “You’re the one who wanted in. Beers are ten bucks a pop back here.”

Ouch! Phil thought. Some scam. But was that really all that was going on here? The dusty darkness unnerved him; he wished he could see the faces of the other patrons, to compare them with the pictures he snapped while staking out the parking lot over the past few weeks. But what unnerved him more was the crowd’s utter silence. Anticipation thickened in the air; Phil could feel it, he could nearly breathe it…

The stage existed as a single colonnade of dark, roving light.

Then the light went out.

Jesus, Phil thought. They were now sitting in pitch dark; all that his eyes could make out were myriad cigarette ends rising and lowering. The music—or noise really—plunged into a barely audible suboctave note which Phil could feel rattling in his throat. Very slowly, it rose and grew louder.

And even more slowly, the stagelight—now a deep blood-red—revived itself, increasing in a lapse of time that seemed minutes long.

But now the lone stage had a host…

A woman, draped in diaphanous veils, stood immobile as a chess piece in the axis of scarlet light. The music began to throb in a diastole, like blood through a heart; the sound was somehow gelatinous.

And the woman on stage began to move.

It wasn’t dancing; it was more like some macabre kind of performance art. Dexterously, she drifted along in the midst of the arcane music and light, invisibly shedding the segments of her veil. In the meantime, and in imperceptible increments, the light adopted new colors—algae greens, yolk yellows, livid purples—so languorously the entire spectacle took on the texture of a dark dream.

Eventually, the girl was naked save for a pinkish, translucent g-string.

The sludge-like light played with Phil’s vision, while abyssal noise-works distracted him further. It was a trick. At first he could note nothing abnormal about the girl, but as he trained his gaze, details began to surface as uncannily as magic. Features seemed to appear rather than be noticed. The girl’s left eye was tiny as a marble, the right large as a scarlet billiard ball. Otherwise her face was flawless.

But the rest of her, Phil could soon tell, was not.

Aw, God…

Her bare splayed feet divided into but a pair of squab toes. Her hands were the same: two-fingered. As she swayed her head to the sonic dirge, shimmering black hair fell momentarily away to reveal that she had no ears at all, not even holes or indentations where the ears should be. Her navel, too, was fully missing—no suggestion of any such thing on her midriff. Pert breasts danced in the light, each topped by a perfect, dark nipple, yet more nipples—a half-dozen on each side—tracked down her sleek torso and abdomen like teats on the underbelly of a wolf.

Phil never tasted his ten-dollar beer. The grotesqueries onstage chained his gaze; repelled as he was, he couldn’t look away for the life of him. More dancers came and went, each harboring accelerated genetic deformities, which, if anything, exceeded even Eagle’s previous descriptions. One girl had three arms (two of them normal, but a third tiny arm sprouting from her armpit like a dead branch), another none, and a third possessed arms that appeared totally boneless—slack tubes of flesh swaying this way and that, with shriveled fingers at their ends. Another dancer displayed multiple breasts, four per side, stacked like pancakes, not to mention a head that seemed clovened.

Each girl finished her set with an obligatory—and masturbatory—floor show. The three-armed woman openly caressed her pubis with two hands, while the third hand—atrophied at the end of the shortened arm—plucked at her nipples.

Phil thought he might vomit any minute.

The evening’s progress seemed to drip. The dark grew more murky as cigarette smoke thickened, and eventually the room became sweltering. Phil felt narcotized, shocked to numbness, as though in the aftermath of being bludgeoned in the head. On a few occasions, his eyes had acclimated sufficiently to see that every seat in the back room was taken. What a show, he thought despondently. A packed house. Eagle was right; this was where the denizens came. People who found arousal in the tragic misfortune of others. The kinks. The sickos.

One thing he noticed right off was that each dancer wore a garter, and attached to the garter was a small white card with a number on it. What’s with the numbers? he managed to wonder. What purpose could they serve?

When the show was over, Phil felt winded. I thought I’d seen everything on Metro. Boy, was I wrong. Stepping outside, into the fresh night air, made him feel released from a long sentence in jail. But he couldn’t let on how revolted he was; he must maintain the pretense to Eagle, and to everyone here, that he was just another busted, bent-out-of-shape redneck looking for kicks. Obviously the back room was a magnet for Crick City’s most jaded, and would provide a very serviceable fuel for his investigation. To infiltrate a crowd such as this, he must pretend to be a part of it.

“Happy now?” Eagle asked.

“That was pretty wild, man.”

Eagle shook his head. “You’re into that kind of shit?”

“These days I’m into anything that’s not dull. And that show definitely wasn’t dull, you gotta admit.”

“Christ, man, I couldn’t believe that one chick with no bones in her arms.”

“The gal with the eight tits was a kick, too.”

Eagle gaped at him. “Man, I never would’ve guessed you’d be into that. Lookin’ at those girls makes me wanna blow chow.”

Phil feigned a nonchalant shrug. “Different strokes, like they say. One thing I didn’t get, though. Why did they all have numbers on their garters?”

Eagle’s smirk creased his face. “Why do you think? They ain’t just dancers, Phil. They’re hookers. A guy sees one he likes, he gets the number and talks to the pimp after the show.”

“Who’s the pimp?”

“That Creeker kid at the door, Druck. He makes the arrangements. All the money, of course, goes to Cody Natter. That fucker’s something; he’s got himself a gold mine here. The girls who work the front stage are hookers too, but I guess you figured that. Anything for a buck. Ain’t that the American way? Natter’s even got his wife turning tricks. You did know that Vicki’s married to him, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “I heard all about that.” His next question, however morbid, wouldn’t let go. “How much you think she costs?”

“Vicki? Shit, she’s the prime beef of the front room, probably a hundred at least. Natter’s pretty selective about who he lets buy her.”

Buy her. The two words hit him like a kick in the chin. Probably uses her to finish off deals with his point men and dope distributors. Typical. “What about those Creeker girls?”

“From what I’ve heard, they’re even more expensive, ’cos this is the only place you can get ’em. Hard to believe guys would want to pay to fuck a Creeker.”

“But where? Where do they turn their tricks?”

“Right in the parking lot, in your car mostly. For a little extra, they’ll go home with you.” Eagle looked at him. “You’re not thinking of—”

“Naw, I’m just curious. This town’s changed since I been gone.”

“Yeah, man.” Eagle laughed. “And so have you.”

You got that right. Phil fished in his pocket for his keys. He’d made a lot of headway tonight; Eagle was a veritable tap of information, and he seemed to know a lot about Natter. Phil wanted to hit him up for more info but— Don’t push your luck. You ask too much too soon, he’l1 get wise. Taking it real slow was the name of this game. One day at a time, he told himself. “You coming here tomorrow night?”

“I got a late job tomorrow, so probably not,” Eagle said. “But I’m sure I’ll be in the next night.”

“Okay, take care.”

They branched off to their separate vehicles. Phil was thinking. Late job? Eagle said he did construction work, but then Phil remembered his rap sheet; he’d done time for dealing PCP. Maybe he’s bullshitting. Maybe he really runs dust for Natter. These considerations were pertinent, but there was no point jumping the gun. Only time would tell. Phil knew he’d need to work on Eagle with great care, or else his cover was gone. He also knew it would take a lot more than a couple beers in a strip joint to gain complete trust.

Dust rose in billows as the parking lot began to empty. Following Eagle tonight would be a dumb move, but he thought it might be a good idea to tail one of the regulars for a while, just to see which direction he was headed. He set his sights on one of the pickups that frequented the lot, waited a moment, then pulled out. The pickup turned north on the Route, away from town. In fact, most of the vehicles pulling out headed north.

And another thing occurred to him. Natter wasn’t at the club tonight. His car wasn’t in the lot…

But before Phil could contemplate that any further, a shadow rose up behind him from the back seat.

««—»»

The dream was a proffering, a blessing…

It was a gift.

In the dream, he was vapor, an unholy ghost. Bodiless. Perfect. Spiralling down perfectly into perfect black.

But it wasn’t really a dream, he knew that. They were never really dreams…

They were summonings.

Ona. Oh, blessed flesh of Ona, he thought. I am so unworthy…

He ascended, somehow, downward.

He soared.

Bereft of the flaws of his curse, he was perfect now, the vessel of his being light as air, his wisdom heavier than all the earth.

He knew where his wisdom had come from.

The darkness smeared, soaring past. He felt terror at first—so quick was his flight. He breezed through massive stone channels pocked and blackened by the age of all of history. He wisped through crevices no more wide than a fraction of an inch.

On and on. Down and down.

Into the blessed black.

Soon the great ebon wall approached. He soared right into it—

—then through it.

Greater blackness bloomed beyond the wall. Blackness that was brighter than the sun. He could smell the sound of screams. He could taste the dense stench of burning human muscle and bone. He could smell pandemonium, a scent sweet as fresh-cut roses.

And with his ethereal eyes, he saw the field.

A field of flesh, of people. Acre upon acre, prone humans lay naked and alive, awaiting the field’s noxious attendants, its pious harvesters. And they squirmed in their wait. Screaming. Shrieking. Convulsing in spastic tremors.

Soon the harvesters arrived: squat, rough-skinned figures plodding forward into the screaming field. Above them, a blistering black moon shined, offering light to their sacred tasks. Dutifully, then, and steadfast, they began to farm the field.

With unholy tools, they plowed and tilled; great blades and hewers, twivels and trowels, rose and methodically fell to turn the hearty human soil. Skulls burst under the blows of mallets. Breasts, buttocks, and faces threshed raw. Bellies riven open by scythes which swept this way and that like clockworks, baring fresh, fertile entrails, ripe organs, and rich, fecund blood. Some of the harvesters worked barehanded, crawling along the squirming horde to punch out eyes with stub fingers, twist genitalia out of shivering groins, crack bones and unseat limbs. Hands and feet were bitten off by glassine teeth, then spat out. Talons raked throats. Palms and heels crushed bodies and heads like grapes in a wine vat.

Hard work. Eternal work.

Tending the fields of the father! he thought in utter, rushing joy.

Acres and acres, miles and miles, he continued to soar above the wondrous spectacle. Oh, how he prayed that on some great day he, too, would join the harvesters in their divine and hallowed labors.

But even eternal farmers needed reprieve. They needed sustenance. They needed recess. So at the granted time, they set aside the tools of their industry—

Such wonders!

—and began to feast.

Some took their meat raw, others preferred it cooked. Plump organs were plucked from opened abdomens as fruit might be plucked from vines. Eyeballs were swallowed whole like grapes, lungs eaten like bread loaves, intestines consumed like so much robust salad. The living dirt screamed forth. Whole heads were cooked to perfection over open flames, then prized apart and picked clean of their delectable meat. Testes were roasted on skewers, severed breasts fried crisp, uteri and placenta, fetuses and kidneys, human bowels and human hearts—all flamebroiled and lustily munched.

It was a hearty meal, and a well-earned one.

And once the reverent harvesters had sated themselves of the belly, they next proceeded to sate themselves of the groin. Demonic erections rose, to plunder every conceivable orifice, and some not so conceivable. Vaginas were routed with gusto, rectums were sodomized raw by perverse organs sunk to their hilts. Unwilling jaws were pried wide till their tendons tore—the only way the pitiful human mouths could accommodate the tumescent girth of such netherworldly members. Trowel punctures and scythe rents, too, provided fine pockets of release, and such release poured forth in copious volume, gouts of lumpen semen flooding bowels and wombs, stomachs and entrails, emptied eye sockets and cracked-open cranial vaults.

A romp indeed.

Slaked now, the field hands took up their tools and finished the dark work they’d started.

The field was tilled red. Rich, fresh blood drenched the chopped soil, the finest of fertilizers. More attendants followed behind, bearing sacks of strange seeds. The seeds were sewn liberally into the verdant, warm soil, and beneath the light of the caliginous moon, they began to spout at once. Soon stalks rose high, heavy with succulent fruit, and the fruit was then expeditiously threshed and taken away to market.

The harvest was over, only to begin again and again and again…

His vapor siphoned back, wisping fast as light through stone cracks and rabbets, back up the charnel earthworks, back from whence he came.

He didn’t want to go back; he could soar here forever, and revel in these holy sights and many more.

But I must go now, he realized.

He had his own fields to farm…

Back, back, he sailed. Back out of the hot meat of the earth, back to the lackluster terrain of his forebears, back to his wretched human vessel.

Back—

Like blood sucked up by a sponge, his flesh reclaimed his glorious vapor.

Ona. Ona. I give thanks to thee for such sights, such heralds, such righteous and holy gifts.

I live to serve thee…to the ends of the earth.

The Reverend opened his eyes.

And sighed.

««—»»

“Jesus Christ!” Phil shouted. “You scared the—”

“The shit out of you, I know. Sorry.”

Phil, in his shock, had weaved across the yellow line, then veered back over to the shoulder. When the shadow had risen from the back seat, he freaked…

But the shadow…was Vicki.

“I just—I just needed someone to talk to,” she explained. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”

Phil put the car in park on the road’s shoulder. “Yeah, fine,” he acknowledged. “But did you have to hide in the back of my friggin’ car?”

She hesitated. “Well, yeah. I guess so.”

“Why?”

She swept shining red hair off her brow. “Let’s just say I had a bad day.”

Phil gave his heart a moment to slow down—actually, several moments. “I didn’t see you in the club tonight. What, day off?”

In the rearview, he saw her glance down. “Something like that. It’s best if you don’t ask.”

All right, Phil instructed himself, Don’t ask. But he had to ask something. “I was hanging out with Eagle Peters. Do you know him?”

“I know who he is,” Vicki said. “When you’re in my line of work, you don’t really know anybody. You’re not allowed to. It also makes things a lot easier.” Then, as if premonitory, she asked, “You made it to the back room yet?”

“Uh, yeah,” he admitted. “That’s some show. Jesus. Kind of feel sorry for the girls.”

“Don’t bother. No one else does.” She got out of the back and then got into the front. The door chunked closed.

Christ, Phil thought.

She wore cut-off shorts, sandals, and a tight, bright-pink halter top. Coltish, perfect legs inclined. Her hair shined like some kind of rare metal.

“I didn’t see your husband at the club either,” Phil pointed out.

“He’s busy tonight.”

“Yeah?” he queried, though a hundred other questions occurred to him. Like, Busy? Busy doing what? Dealing with a dust distributor? Killing cowboys moving on his turf? Buying your next rail of cocaine? But none of these questions could he ask. Not without jeopardizing his cover. He’d have to deal with Vicki the same as he was dealing with Eagle. Slowly, discreetly, for snippets of information.

“I just wanted to talk,” she said. “Maybe that sounds pathetic, but you don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve actually had a normal conversation with someone. It’s not easy, you know. Under the circumstances.”

Phil could imagine what she meant. A good-sized chunk of her humanity was erased now, or turned into something fairly useless. She wasn’t a real person anymore as much as she was a pretty painting hanging in a rogue’s gallery. Only these paintings you could rent, if the price was right. As a prostitute, and a stripper, how could she ever really relate to anyone anymore? And being married to someone like Cody Natter? It must be hell…

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong?” he said.

She was looking out the window, into the woods and the night’s profusion, but he knew what she was really looking at was herself. “Sometimes I feel like I’m falling apart,” she said more under her breath than to him. “Sometimes I wake up, and I can’t believe what’s happened to me. I can’t understand how I could ever let this happen to me. It must’ve been a pretty big shock for you.”

“What do you mean?”

She laughed cynically. “Oh, come on, Phil. Stop trying to be such a gentleman all the time. The last time you saw me, I was a police officer. Ten years later, you come back to town to find out that I’m working in a strip joint and turning tricks. Probably not quite what you expected.”

“Well, if there’s one thing I’ve taught myself, it’s that I should never have expectations about people. Especially about myself.”

“Yeah? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Now it was Phil’s chance to laugh. “You’re not the only one who’s taken a fall since the old days. I didn’t exactly come back to Crick City better off than when I left. I came back because there was no where else to go.”

“What happened?” she asked him. “You never really told me. All I remember is hearing bits and pieces. Something about a shooting. Something about a kid.”

This was Phil’s chance. Here he knew he could mix lies with truth and have it work to his advantage. He could win her confidence, like he did tonight with Eagle, by pretending to have turned into a typical town scumbag. Working undercover, that was his job. Time to let some bullshit fly. “We were taking down a PCP lab one night. It was cut and dry; in fact, the whole thing went off without a hitch. Only problem was there was this prick named Dignazio who had it in for me. He shot a kid, a spotter, with illegal ammo and made it look like I did it. It was a sham, a frame-up. But I got shitcanned all the same.”

She looked at him sympathetically. “Why did this guy have it in for you?”

Here was his cue, the perfect place to start his cover story, his lie. “I was stringing out; Dignazio was the only guy who knew that, and he wanted me out of the picture. Only problem was he couldn’t prove it without turning on his own stools.”

Her stare fixed on him in the dark. Sure, she was a prostitute, but she was also an ex-cop, and she knew the language. “You were strung out? You?”

“That’s right,” Phil lied. “By then, I’d been free-basing crystal for a few years. Then I switched to dust ’cos it was the only way I could get off the ice.”

This fabrication, he knew, would build a new bond between them, however phony. By demonstrating a weakness that she could directly relate to. Vicki knew she was on a road to ruin; if she believed Phil was on the same road, he’d have her. And from there—with some luck—he could get a real line on Natter’s lab and operation.

“Now,” he continued, “I’m trying to get off the dust, but I can’t. It’s a real bitch.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get off coke for two years now. Can’t do it. I try real hard all the time but…”

“I know,” Phil said. “You don’t have to tell me. I guess it’s all the same in a way. Coke, dust, ice, booze—it’s all a kick in the ass, but what can you do? A habit’s a habit.”

A pause drifted between them, but Phil sensed it was a natural one. She was letting some serious things air out here, another good sign that his pitch was working. They lounged back in the darkness, watching the fireflies, listening to the crickets. Phil thought he’d delivered his lines well, and he knew that she believed him when, a moment later, she snapped open a small wrist purse.

Was she testing him? No, if she thought his recital was a fake, she’d never take so open a chance as this.

So, it could only mean one thing:

She trusts me.

If she didn’t trust me, if she even suspected for a minute that I was really still a cop, there’s no way in hell she’d be doing something like this.

In the moonlight, he couldn’t see much, but he could see enough. The purse contained the typical provisions of a prostitute: lipstick, eyeliner, a small pack of tissues, and, of course, condoms. He also noticed a small amount of cash. But from beneath it all, she extracted the tiny glass vial…

No, she’d never be snorting coke in front of me if she thought I was working undercover…

“You want some?” she distractedly offered.

“Naw. That stuff makes me break out in hives. Like I said, dust’s my bag.”

A tiny silver spoon and chain depended from the vial. With expert quickness, she sniffed two shots out of the spoon, and then the stuff was all back in her purse before either of them could so much as blink.

“Jesus,” she whispered.

I guess that says it all, Phil thought. She rested back against the bench seat, her eyes closed. Her chest, arousing in the tight halter, rose and fell. And the look on her face…

He’d seen it a million times. The source of the habit didn’t matter in the least (cocaine, PCP, crystal meth, heroin), the expression was always the same. There was no pleasure in it, but an articulate and very abstract intertwining of relief, disgust, and self-capitulation.

All addicts had it. It was the look of someone who had surrendered to their own slavery.

The night’s stillness enveloped them. The high, two o’clock moon cast shadows about the car. Lightning bugs shifted in legion, and the trill of crickets throbbed hypnotically.

Vicki fidgeted a moment, and sighed.

Hitting her up now with questions about her source—would be the worst thing he could do. As with Eagle, he knew he’d have to walk on eggshells a day at a time. He must prove to her that he was one of her ilk, that his life had turned to garbage just as quickly as hers had.

“Maybe it’s all for the best,” she said with a grim joke in her words. “You’re on dust, I’m on coke… Not what you would call model cops.”

Phil laughed. “You got that right.” Then he shrugged as though it didn’t mean much. “Guess we just weren’t cut out for it. Big deal, you know? I was a shitty cop anyway.”

“I don’t miss the job, either. It got too scary.”

“Scary? What could be scary about driving a beat in Crick City?”

“You don’t know the half of it, Phil.” Lethargically, she lit a menthol cigarette and watched the smoke drift out the open window. “Let’s just say you got out of town at the right time. Remember Adams and North?”

“Yeah. Town boys. I never knew ’em, but I’d seen them around. They worked for Mullins too, didn’t they?”

“Um-hmm. After I got fired, some pretty serious shit started to go down around here.”

“Like what?”

“Never mind what. Just take my word for it, it was hairy. Mullins had Adams and North working on it, though.”

Phil could guess what she was talking about: Natter’s PCP operation, but of course he couldn’t let on that he knew about that, at least not yet.

“All right,” he said. “But what about Adams and North?”

“They disappeared,” Vicki said.

Disappeared. It took a moment for the word to sink in. Mullins had told him that Adams and North had merely left the department for better-paying jobs elsewhere. Fairfax and Montgomery County, he thought. And as he recalled, they were decent guys and fairly tough customers.

“There were some murders,” Vicki finally admitted. “Drug dealers from out of town, PCP guys mostly. It was really gross; they were mutilated. It looked like…”

Phil’s patience ticked. He didn’t want to push her, but he did want to know what she was talking about. He let a few more seconds pass, then: “It looked like what, Vicki?”

She was clearly distressed, but was it the coke or something else?

“These cowboys they found dead?” Her voice lowered to a dusky croak. “It looked like they’d been…skinned.”

Skinned. His pause burgeoned. Just like that cowboy we found, Rhodes. He was a dust dealer from out of town. And he’d been skinned.

“I heard they found a dozen bodies at least,” she went on. “Same m.o. each time. Mullins had Adams and North investigating. Then one day—four or five months ago, I guess—both of them just disappeared.”

Phil chewed the inside of his cheek. Disappeared, huh? This was the second time she told him something that directly refuted Mullins. And when they’d found Rhodes’ body? Mullins had seemed genuinely shaken, but he’d also seemed…

Well, Phil wasn’t quite sure what. But he didn’t like it. Why would Vicki make something like this up? And if it were true, why wouldn’t Mullins have told him about it.

Whatever it is, he declared to himself, I’m going to find out.

He got back on track. “So what exactly happened? I mean, to Adams and North?”

That somber croak came back to her voice. “Nobody knows.”

Phil ran a hand across his cheek, scruffing stubble. “Okay. But what do you think happened to them?”

Her brow rose wide. “Me? I think they got killed by the same people who did the job on those dealers. They’re probably at the bottom of one of the swamps, chained to a couple of manhole covers. You ask me, they got too close, so they got offed.”

“Yeah, Vicki, but what did they get too close to?”

“I don’t know,” she wavered.

I know, Phil thought. They got too close to your Creeker hubbie’s angel dust bizz. That’s what they got too close to. So he murdered them. I gotta funny feeling you know that, Vicki. But you’re not gonna say it because you’re covering for your husband. The same guy who’s using you for a piece of meat to show off to his dope friends. The same slimy, ugly motherfucker who strung you out on cocaine and has you turning tricks at a low-rent strip joint.

She was reaching into her purse again, repeating the phantom ritual of her curse. Two minute scoops of the white powder disappeared from the spoon up her nose, and again Phil felt torn between two opposing poles. The part of himself that still cared about her, and then the other part, the cop part, the part that knew if he objected, he’d be letting personal feelings obstruct the integrity of the case.

Holy shit, he thought very slowly. What am I going to do?

The coke was wiring her up now. Her face flushed. She was breathing faster, she seemed antsy. She kept sniffing at nothing but the air, and was rubbing her hands unconsciously up and down her nearly bare white thighs. That must be some first-class blow he’s feeding you, Phil thought. Probably pure. The purer the better, right, Vicki? The easier to keep you in line, to keep you destroying yourself for his wallet and status. Then the saddest reflection of all hit him in the head…

Coke addicts never lasted long. They used themselves up. What would Natter do when there was nothing left of her?

The same thing he probably fucking did to Adams and North and Rhodes and all those other people…

That’s the way it worked. Eventually coke-queens outlived their usefulness. Then they became a liability.

A guy like Natter? He’d toss her out like next week’s garbage.

This was hard. This was a woman he used to be in love with, and here he was sitting in a car with her, watching her coke herself to oblivion. And knowing there was nothing he could do about it made him feel even worse.

But what could he do? Spill it all? Reveal the entire undercover operation to her? She’d squeal in a heartbeat. Or what else? Quit the department, drag her into the county rehab program knowing there was only a ten-percent success rate?

All I can do right now, he commiserated, is play the game.

“Phil?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

He supposed he should have known this was coming. Why hadn’t he foreseen it? She was wired now, coked to the gills, and even though she had undergone a catastrophic change since their relationship had ended, her feelings for him probably hadn’t changed. I’m the only reminder she has that her life hasn’t always been the hell it is now, he figured.

Her hand was on his leg. He could feel its subtle heat.

“How did things get so screwed up?” she asked in the most forlorn voice he ever heard.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Her hand slid up. Her body slid closer. “Why don’t we, like, pretend…that nothing bad ever happened to either of us?”

An impulse reached him, like an alarm. The urge to push her hand away, to berate her, to tell her there was no going back. But instead, he did nothing to dissuade her.

He made no reply at all.

Which, in this particular circumstance, was the same thing as a clear consent.

There was no rebreaking of any old ice. Instead, some weird, inexplicable current in the air drew them closer…

The night joined them.

She was kissing him immediately. Her slender bare arms at once slid about his neck. I cannot do this! he ordered himself. This is crazy! I’m a cop! I’m on a case!

Her tongue licked across his lips.

No more! This is where it ends! I’m going to stop this right now!

She untied her halter, slipped it off…

No! Phil thought.

She slipped off her shorts—

No.

—then her panties.

Nnnnnnn…

Phil’s resolve died flat, like a machine whose tank had just run dry. His eyes opened on her. His heart surged. She sat facing him, her back against the passenger door. The soft moonlight buffed her marble skin; her perfect body glowed.

“You used to say I was beautiful.”

“You still are,” he replied with no forethought at all. The words didn’t even sound like his own. “More than I ever remember.”

She came over to him again, sliding along in the moonlit darkness. Her mouth opened over his, and all he could do was lie back as if comatose. The moon seemed to peer at him, either as an accuser or the very face of his id.

Her warm hands roved all over him, gradually in their travels unbuckling his belt, unfastening his pants, lowering his zipper.

Their tongues slid together.

Her large breasts slid against his chest.

Into his ear she whispered, “I still love you.”

Aw, God, no, don’t say that. Say anything, but don’t say that…

“I-I never stopped,” she finished.

Her hands found his waistbelt, and began to work at getting his pants off.

I can’t be doing this, his thoughts made one last waning effort. Then the effort flitted away, like the fireflies outside.

No, he knew he shouldn’t be doing this, but by this point he knew he was going to do it anyway.

— | — | —

Seventeen

Phil parked behind the local Qwik-Stop, about a half-mile away, then cut through the woods up to the station. It was perhaps an extreme precaution but a worthwhile one. Now that Phil was insinuating himself among the locals, he couldn’t take the chance of letting his car be seen anywhere near the station. True, he could’ve called Mullins on the phone, but—

Not good enough, he thought, hoofing it past the old lockup and across the back lot.

This has got to be face-to-face.

Phil didn’t like loose ends.

It was just past 9 a.m. when he slipped in through the back door. Mullins, as usual, was pouring himself an acrid cup of coffee and chewing tobacco at the same time.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” Mullins chuckled. “Ya know somethin’, Phil? You’re startin’ to look like a pure-bred redneck. Maybe this plainclothes business is bringing out the real you.”

“I hope to Christ not,” Phil said, but he knew what Mullins meant. Boots, old jeans, flannel shirt, plus he hadn’t shaved in two days. To play the part, he had to look the part.

“How come I can always tell when you’re pissed off?” Mullins asked. “You don’t even have to say nothin’. I can tell just by lookin’ at ya.”

Phil sat down. “You know what I did this morning, Chief?”

“Hmm. Let me guess—”

“Don’t bother. I called up the personnel office of the Fairfax Police Department. I also called Montgomery County PD. And neither of them ever heard of North and Adams. Said those guys never even filed applications.”

“Oh, jeeze.” Mullins sat down himself then, behind his desk. His belly stretched his police shirt to its absolute physical limit.

“How come you lied to me, boss?”

Mullins chewed on the accusation. “I wouldn’t exactly call it lying. Let’s just call it—”

“What? A tactical circumvention of facts?”

“Well, yeah. That sounds good. I kinda like it. A tactical circumvention of facts. You got yourself a dandy vocabulary, Phil.”

“Fuck my vocabulary,” Phil said. “How come you told me North and Adams left for better-paying departments?”

Mullins gusted a big sigh. “‘Cos I needed ya, Phil. This PCP shit is turning the whole town to garbage, and it’s makin’ me look like the garbage man. You might not’ve taken the job if I told you up front why North and Adams left.”

“So tell me now. What happened to them? Are they dead?”

“Dead?” Mullins gaped. “No, they ain’t dead, but they sure as shit ain’t here. Things started to get too hot, so they both threw in the towel. Turned in their badges and boogied.”

Phil smirked plainly. “Come on, Chief. The whole story.”

“All right. North and Adams were working on the PCP thing for a couple months. Then they got a lead on Natter’s lab, so the three of us checked it out one night. We was told he had the works back up in the hills past Hockley’s.”

“Who told you that?”

“Let’s just say an anonymous tip.”

“Okay. What happened?”

Mullins suddenly flinched, as if at a bad memory. “What happened was we nearly got ourselves killed. The whole thing was a set-up. There must’ve been two dozen of those fuckers waitin’ for us, a fuckin’ army of ’em.”

Phil didn’t quite get it. “An army of who?”

“Of Creekers. And they were all packing rifles and shotguns. We walked right into Natter’s ambush. I got myself an assful of 16-gauge buck. Wanna see the scars?”

“I’ll pass,” Phil said.

“Adams took a .308 in the upper leg, shattered his thigh bone. The bullet fragged and tore the living shit out of his knee, poor bastard’ll never walk right again. And North got nicked in the ear. Another two inches, and he would’ve got his head blowed off. By the time we got out of there, the patrol car was so full of holes it wasn’t even fit for the demolition derby.”

Phil leaned back in his chair, assessing his boss. Mullins had broken out in a light sweat, and when he took another sip of coffee, his big, fat hand was noticeably shaking.

“So North and Adams freaked?”

“That’s right,” Mullins said. “Said they couldn’t hack it no more, and I can’t say I blame ’em. North quit right away. And Adams quit the day he got out of his cast. Had to pay the fucker ten weeks of workman’s comp.”

Phil folded his arms. “That’s funny, Chief. I heard that neither of these guys quit. I heard they disappeared and were never seen again.”

Mullins’ lips puckered as if he’d just sucked a lemon. “You seem to be hearing a lot these days, and I think I know who you’re hearing it from. Don’t let Vicki Steele make a horse’s ass out of ya, Phil.”

“Shit, Chief. You haven’t leveled with me. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t believe her.”

“I’ll give you a bunch,” Mullins replied. “She’s a sexfreak, a stripper, a dopehead, and a whore. Plus she’s Natter’s wife.” Mullins hocked his chaw into the wastebasket, then loaded up another. “North is walking a mail route in Bowie, Maryland—after he took fire, he said he never wanted to be a cop again. Adams and his brother got a small-business loan and bought a liquor store in Whitehall. If ya think I’m bullshitting ya, then go right ahead and look up their names in my Rolodex and give ’em a call.”

Skip it, Phil thought. Mullins was coming clean now. But there was one more thing…

“All right, so you pulled my leg about what happened—”

“Naw,” Mullins interrupted. “I made a tactical circumvention of facts.”

“Fine. But why?”

“I told ya. I was afraid you wouldn’t take the job if I gave the full scoop right away. I was fixin’ to tell ya; I was gonna tell ya this week as a matter of fact. Figured you’d be agreeable once you got on the case awhile.”

“That’s pretty shitty, isn’t it?”

“Well, sure,” Mullins admitted. “But face it, Phil. Once a cop, always a cop. This case was cut out for you; I just wanted to give you some time to ease into it. You’d have taken the job anyway, right?”

Phil didn’t answer, but he knew the chief was right. He knows me better than I thought. “One more thing,” he said.

“Let me guess. Your ex-sweetheart blabbed shit about North and Adams. Stands to reason she’d blab more shit to boot. The bodies?”

“Yeah, Chief. The bodies. Vicki said there were over a dozen, all with their skin cut off like Rhodes.”

A wave of Mullins’ hand dismissed these mere details. “It wasn’t no dozen, shit—maybe seven or eight, and yeah, they were all done up like Rhodes pretty much. All dust cowboys from out of Crick City. I figure Natter’s got his Creekers hitting anyone who tries to compete with his own operation.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me, but that’s also beside the point,” Phil posed. “It would’ve been helpful for me to know about these murders before you sent me out on an undercover investigation, don’t you think?”

Mullins shrugged. “Keep your shirt on. I was gonna tell ya all about that too, just like I was gonna tell ya about North and Adams. But I thought it best—”

“To give me some time to ease into things.”

“Right.”

By now Phil’s frown seemed like a permanent fixture on his face.

Mullins spat again, sipped more coffee, and scratched his belly. “That night we got shot up, that was because none of us knew what the hell we were doin’. North and Adams, sure, they were decent cops, but they were town cops, Phil. They didn’t have the know-how to get on with a serious dope and murder investigation, and neither do I. But you do know what you’re doin’. You’re an expert at this kind of job; Christ, that’s all you did out on Metro. If I’d thought for a minute that you weren’t experienced enough to hack the heat on a case this hot, then I never would’ve rescued you from that brain-dead goin’-nowhere yarn factory you were rotting in uptown. I gave you a chance because I figured you deserved it. Not many chiefs would” —Mullins paused to stretch— “considerin’ the shit on your record at Metro.”

This little reminder took some of the punch out of Phil’s petulance. The chief had a point; Phil knew dope networks like the back of his hand, and he knew what to expect. But Mullins? And hicks like Adams and North? No wonder they almost lost their asses. Those guys don’t know PCP from a PCV valve.

And another consideration began to smolder. Who am I to get pissed off at him for not exactly following protocol? Last night relit in his mind: Vicki.

They’d made love in his car for over an hour.

I haven’t exactly been following protocol either, he had no choice but to remind himself.

“So let’s get it all right out on the table,” Mullins began again. “Without you on this case, it won’t be long before the whole county knows about it, the papers, the news shows. Sure, I got a vested interest, I ain’t sayin’ I don’t. My fuckin’ job, you know. Natter and his Creekers are turning Crick City into a pile of shit, and I’ll be the one goin’ right down the crapper with it. But it ain’t just the job—this pissant, redneck burg is my home and it’s yours, too, whether ya like it or not. You don’t owe me nothin’, and I don’t expect you to stick your neck out to save my job as chief. But, shit, Phil, you must care a little about what Natter’s doing out there. He’s getting kids turned onto his shit, nippin’ ’em in the bud before they even get half a decent chance at life.”

“I was a narc lieutenant for several years, Chief,” Phil refreshed the big man’s memory. “I know what dope does to kids.”

Mullins spat another streamer. “And don’t forget about what Natter did to your ex.”

Another reminder.

Phil hitched uneasily in his seat.

“So like I was sayin’, if you feel I done you wrong, then I apolergize. And if you wanna turn in your badge right now and tell me to get stuffed, then I’ll understand. Shit, I guess I’d deserve it. Sure, it might get real hot out there on a case like this, but you knew that from the start. I wasn’t stonewallin’ ya, Phil. I just didn’t want to hit you up with too much at once, that’s all.”

“Relax, boss. I’m not going to turn in my badge. Just try to keep me a little more informed in the future.”

“‘Course I will.” Mullins rubbed his hands together. “So are we friends again?”

“Sure, Chief.

“Good. Now tell me what’cha dug up at Krazy Sallee’s last night.”

“I hung out with Eagle Peters—”

“Your buddy with the rap sheet full of angel dust?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t push him for anything. It’s too early for that just yet. I have to pin the guy’s confidence before I can expect him to trust me. And, yes, I ran into Vicki last night, too,” Boy, did I run into her, he thought “I figure if I get in good with both of them, they’ll spread the word that I’m cool. Then I’ll be able to get closer to Natter’s net. I’ve got Vicki thinking I’m a dust-head, and Peters probably reads me as a kink.”

“A kink?” Mullins asked. “Why’s that?”

Phil’s stomach gave a minor quake at the memory. “Natter’s got a back room open at the joint. They only let certain people in.”

Mullins made a face. “A backroom? What’s he got going back there? Blackjack, craps?”

“Nope, that’s what I thought it must be at first. But then Eagle got me in; he’s a trusted regular. It’s another dance stage back there. They got Creeker girls tricking.”

Mullins nearly expectorated coffee and tobacco simultaneously. “You’re pullin’ my leg, right?”

“Wish I was, Chief. It was pretty gross, but I played along like I was into it.”

“Smart move.” Mullins wiped brown juice from his lips with a napkin. “Only whackos would want to see that kind of shit, and I’ll bet half of them are Natter’s distributors.”

“That’s what I’m betting, too,” Phil said. “I’m gonna try to get into there whenever I can, and try to cross-reference the regulars with my parking lot photos. I should be able to link some of them to their vehicles, then I can run their tags with MVA, get their names, and run rap checks from there. That way we’ll know who to keep a special eye on. Plus I’ll be keeping my ears open for anything I might pick up along the way.”

Mullins nodded. “All right, sounds like you’re on the mark. Keep it up, and for Christ’s sake be careful.”

Phil stood up, got ready to leave, “Don’t worry about me, boss. I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid.”

“Yeah?” Mullins said, giving him the eye. “Hobnobbing with Vicki Steele sounds pretty stupid to me.”

The comment held Phil in a momentary check. He’s just guessing, there’s no way he could know about what went on with me and Vicki last night. Absolutely no way. “Fishing season’s over, Chief. What makes you think I’m hobnobbing with her?”

“Couple things,” Mullins came back. “One, there’s a saying—old love dies hard—”

“Gimme a break, Chief,” Phil complained. “That ended ten years ago.”

“Two,” Mullins ignored him, “since she got hitched to Natter, she’s turned into a right cunning little bitch, and a pushover like you? You’d be putty in her hands.”

Phil rolled his eyes and groaned.

“And, three. If that ain’t her lipstick on your blamed neck, then whose is it? Eagle Fuckin’ Peters’?”

Phil’s eyes widened. He’s bullshitting, he convinced himself until he ran a hand across his neck.

Aw, no. Aw shit, he thought next.

His fingers came away red—

“So let me tell ya somethin’, Phil,” Mullins got back into it like a surrogate father. “You ain’t the first guy in the world to get teased by a woman, and you sure as shit ain’t the first to get teased by her. That’s a rough crowd she runs with—they’re killers. And the last thing I need is for you to start dicking her and getting yourself all tangled up again. It’s human nature, sure—men think with their peckers instead of their brains. But I hope you’re too smart to fall for her tricks.”

There was nothing Phil could say to justify last night’s accident. I fucked up, he admitted. But how could Mullins be so self-assured? “All right, Chief, you got me. I made an error in judgment.”

“An error in judgment?” Mullins blurted a stuffed-mouth laugh. “You stepped on your ever-livin’ dick is what ya did. You must’ve whizzed your common sense out the last time you took a piss. Don’t do it again. That bitch’ll make mincemeat out of ya. She’ll have ya like a regular fool, and you’ll wind up blowing your cover and maybe getting your ass killed.” Mullins aimed his big finger like a pointing stick. “Use your head, Phil. Keep out of that whore’s panties, or she’ll wind up hangin’ you with ’em.”

“Chief,” Phil had to object. “You’ve got her sounding like Lucretia Borgia. What makes you so sure she’s so dangerous, huh? Tell me that.”

“I will, smart boy.” Mullins’ heavy face darkened; again he looked like he’d sucked something intensely sour. “That night I was tellin’ you about, when we got that tip on Natter’s lab and wound up nearly getting blown away by a whole helluva lot of Creekers?”

“The night you, North, and Adams got set up,” Phil remembered. “What about it?”

Mullins’ small, hooded eyes glared in the recollection.

“It was Vicki Steele who gave us that tip,” he said.

««—»»

“Nice car, huh?” Phil joked, and opened the Malibu’s passenger door for Susan. Untold junk cluttered the back seat, cracks webbed the upholstery, and the paint job looked flat as dried mud. I should’ve at least cleaned out the back, he complained to himself. She’ll think I’m a slob.

“You’re a slob, Phil,” she said. “But don’t take that as a criticism.”

Phil started it up and gunned the old engine. “Never judge a man by his car. The Ferrari’s in the shop for a tune-up; otherwise, we’d be going out in that.”

“The Ferrari, huh?” Susan smiled at him. “I guess your razor’s in the shop too, right?”

“Hey,” Phil remarked of the several days’ stubble on his face, “you think I like to look this ratty? Working a dangerous undercover operation, it’s my professional duty to look as scummy as possible. And let me tell ya, that ain’t easy when you’re as handsome as I am.”

“Your diligence is outweighed only by your amazing modesty,” Susan replied, cranking the window down. “I do have to admit, though, you are the best-looking redneck scumbag I’ve seen in a while.”

“I’m touched by the compliment.” Phil pulled out of Old Lady Crane’s front drive and headed down the Route. “So now that I’ve finally got you out on a date, I have one very important question.”

“What’s that?”

“Where are we going?”

“Hey, you’re the one who asked me out, remember? It’s your job to make the evening’s agenda.”

“Okay. I’ll surprise you.”

Phil actually didn’t have a clue as to where to take her, but he knew he couldn’t take her anyplace in town, now that he was effectively undercover.

“So are the folks at Sallee’s buying your cover story?” Susan asked.

“Yeah, I think so.” If they thought I was a cop, they never would’ve let me into the backroom. Then a darker voice, the voice of his own guilt, perhaps, added: That’s right, Phil. And if Vicki thought you were still a cop, she sure as hell wouldn’t have been snorting coke in front of you last night, would she? And she wouldn’t have fucked you, either. You’ve got your little stoolie trained real well, buddy boy. The best of both worlds, huh? You’re using her for information, and you’re using her as a sex object. Give yourself a pat on the back.

The thoughts soured him. He didn’t want to confront them, so he got back to answering her question. “I’d be able to tell if they were wise to me. And hanging out with Eagle Peters gives me more credibility since he’s a regular. As long as I keep up a good front, I’m in.”

“That might be harder than you think,” Susan said.

“Why?”

“What if you have to prove yourself? Say you get deeper into Sallee’s crowd. Someone starts smoking dust one night, and they offer you a hit?”

It was something any undercover cop had to consider. “That’s a good question, and I guess the answer is I don’t know. In the right situation, I could probably fake it. I’ll worry about that when I have to.”

“Aren’t you scared? What about Natter and his people? If they ever got wind that you were a cop…”