Butcher

69

Clearwater County Jail

Raymond Meara is alone, in the jungle. Inverse perspectives shimmer and restructure, fractionating in the intense heat that crashes into him, plugging his nostrils so that he cannot breathe. He struggles to his feet and plunges through the thick foliage, breaking through to a clearing that he recognizes as the landing zone in the shadow of Monster Mountain.

A phantom rises from the Perspex and pierced steel like a heat mirage off baking macadam. It whispers to him.

“Bounty Hunter One, this is God Six Actual, do you read me, over?"

“Um. Yeah. Right. Uh, loud and clear, God. Is it really you, God? Where are you? I can't see you. Over?"

“I'm right here in the trailer, Bounty Hunter One. Come in. Door's unlocked."

It is the mobile home, sunk into the base of the mountain, roofed, reinforced, packed in a cozy, sandbagged berm. Meara opens the door.

“Come in, my boy."

“Thanks,” Ray says, entering the dark mobile home. A figure sits in the shadows waiting.

“You're just in time for breakfast,” it says, as Meara fumbles for a light switch. The smiling, decomposed remains of Dai Uy McClanahan holds out a scorched, dented skillet, proffering food. Meara gets a glimpse of black and silver, some blackened mess in the pan. “Come and get it while it's hot, boy,” the thing says to him. He realizes now that the voice is not McClanahan's, but belongs to the wall-size monster who comes out of the shadows behind the corpse. Chaingang!

“Brains and eggs!” Meara's own scream is his alarm clock.

“Hey, Ray,” the turnkey sang out cheerfully through the bars. “You sleep good in our hotel?” He was unlocking the cell.

“Like a fuckin’ top,” Meara said, a sack of screaming nerve ends and lousy luck.

“Well, that's good,” he was holding the cell door open, “but looks like you're outta here."

“Huh?” Meara was on his feet.

“Come on, let's go. You're going home, man."

What the fuck? Meara was still sleep goofy, but he moved out. “Say what?” he asked, softly, but swallowed the question so as not to jinx the spell.

He had to go through the formalities of checking out of Heartbreak Hotel, but within minutes he was blinking in the bright sunlight, listening to his young lawyer run it down for him.

“—the book alleges that Doc Royal had been a Nazi, or so they're saying. We'll have to have our own translation made of it but that will come later. You'll still have to stand trial for the shooting but I doubt if there's going to be much of a climate for prosecuting or punishing you.” Ray heard the word justifiable for maybe the fifth time. “Royal was killed last night. Decapitated in his hospital room.” Meara tried to assimilate the information. “So I guess they figure—” Perhaps he read the absence of understanding in Meara's eyes. Stephen Ellis took Meara to his truck.

The young attorney told Meara what he'd heard about Royal's murder.

“There was a witness who saw the killer. He also killed and mutilated the chief of staff of Delta General. Big, fat guy, she said, supposedly a giant. They think it's the serial killer who may have been responsible for some of these random murders around here."

Meara shivered.

“Sorry. I shouldn't be talking so much. I can imagine how you must feel, between the pneumonia and what you went through back there,” Ellis said.

Ray was in bad shape, true enough, with losing Sharon by far the worst of it, but that wasn't why he shivered. It was what he knew that he could never talk about, his all-too-intimate knowledge of Dr. Bunkowski, the pioneer in organ surgery without anesthetics.