Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 22

(1)

He picked up the phone on the second ring. “Ferro.”

“Frank? It’s…Saul.”

Ferro murmured distractedly. “Saul…who?” He held the phone in left hand and with his right he was ticking off items on an elaborate expense account that was due in an hour.

“Saul Weinstock.”

“Mm-hmm,” Ferro said absently, underlining an item he thought might be disallowed.

“From Pine Deep,” said the voice on the phone.

Ferro paused, smiling as he recognized the voice. “Hey! Saul, how are you?”

Instead of answering, Weinstock said, “Look, is there any way we can get together to talk?”

“About what?”

“About what’s happening in Pine Deep. About the thing with Boyd and Ruger.”

“Saul, that case is pretty much closed, at least as far as my involvement in it. Our homicide guys are working with the FBI on it. My partner Vince and I were only dragged into it by circumstance, following the drug angle out of Philly, so with Ruger and Boyd both dead…well, our involvement dried up—”

“It’s not over!” Weinstock barked. “It’s still happening.”

Ferro set down his pen. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You thought everything was over when Boyd died, huh? Well, let me tell you, Frank, that was just the start of it. Things have been happening here in town you should know about.”

“Like what?”

“Like…well, I really don’t want to go into this over the phone.”

Oh brother, Ferro thought. “Why not? Are you afraid someone might be monitoring your call?”

“No, it isn’t that.”

“What, then?”

“What I have to say involves a lot of very detailed material. Forensic evidence. X-rays, tests results, stuff you should come and take a look at.”

“It’s not my case anymore. The FBI is in charge now.”

“Oh, please…those two jokers who were here during the manhunt? Neither of them could find his butts with both hands and a map. You ran that investigation.”

“I helped to coordinate it, but—”

“You ran it. Look, Frank, I’m really not in the mood to mince words. I’m under one hell of a lot of pressure right now, and to tell you the truth, I’m pretty scared.”

“Scared?” Ferro echoed, half-smiling. He leaned back in his chair and put his crossed ankles up on his desk. “Scared of what?”

Again that long silence. “Of what I found out during my autopsies…and what I’ve discovered since then.”

“Have you discussed this with Sheriff Bernhardt?”

“Oh, of course not. He’s hopeless, and you know it. The mayor’s still in a coma, so there’s no one here to talk to except Malcolm Crow and Val Guthrie and both of them are sitting here in my office right now. We all want to talk with you.”

“They’re both there?”

“Yes,” Weinstock. “Look, I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you could just meet us, let us share our concerns with you.”

Ferro sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Saul…I just can’t see how I can manage that.”

“What if I told you I found some of the missing cocaine?”

“Say that again?”

“Would you be interested if I found some of the cocaine that Ruger misplaced somewhere here in Pine Deep?”

“Are you saying you have found some?”

“Would it make a difference if I have? Would it get you to come back to Pine Deep? Would you be reassigned to the case?”

“I could request it,” Ferro said cautiously. “If, and I say if, you actually had located some of the missing coke. I want to be really clear on that.”

There was some low conversation at the other end and then a new voice spoke. “Frank? Crow here. You’re on speakerphone. Look, I don’t want to try and bullshit you with some fairy tale about finding the coke. We didn’t find any, but we did find some other stuff and we need to talk to you. I know about the whole jurisdictional thing, but trust me when I tell you that this is important. Vitally important.”

“Crow…”

“People are dying here, Frank.”

“You have a police force.”

“No,” said a third voice—Val’s. “No, Detective Ferro I don’t think we do. I think we’re all alone here and we need your help.”

Ferro said nothing.

“Detective Ferro…Frank,” Val said, “you told me that at my father’s funeral that if there was ever anything you could do. I know people say that because they don’t know what else to say, but I’m going to take you at your word. I’m going to make you live up to your word. You said you’d help if I needed it, and I need it. What’s your word worth?”

“That’s pretty damned—”

“Answer the question,” she snapped. “What is your word worth? I’ve lost my father, my brother, and my sister-in-law, and one of my best friends is in a coma. Doesn’t that give me enough of a right to ask for help?”

Ferro felt heat bloom in his cheeks. “That’s a low blow, Ms. Guthrie.”

“I don’t care. At this point I’d do anything to get you to come out here. Believe me when I say that.”

“Okay,” he said. “I do believe you.”

“Will you come?”

He sighed in disgust. “Oh, all right, I’ll come out. But you get to play this card once and that’s it.”

“Thank you, Frank,” she said.

Crow said, “Can we do this tomorrow morning? Meet for lunch?”

“Why?”

“Because we may not have a lot of time with this. Look, Warrington’s about halfway…why don’t you meet us at Graeme Pizza? You know where that is?”

“Across from the movie theater? On County Line Road, just off 611?”

“Yeah. Noon okay?”

“Not really,” Ferro said, “but we’ll be there.”

He slammed down the phone.

“Shit!

(2)

“Is this all of it?” Vic said, pulling open the panel truck’s back door. It was filled with cartons floor to ceiling.

“Everything you asked for,” said the driver. He was a weasel-faced man name Trent who owned a minority share in a candy company in Crestville. The truck was backed into an empty bay at Shanahan’s garage. Trent looked around, but there was no one else in sight.

Vic pulled one box down and tore it open. Inside were forty one-pound bags of Pine Deep Authentic Candy Corn. He took the clipboard from Trent’s hand and scanned down the list. Fifteen boxes of candy corn; forty boxes of marshmallow Peeps—ten each of bats, pumpkins, ghosts, and black cats; twenty boxes of Gummi worms; and the rest were cartons of rolled sugar dots in Halloween colors.

“Looks good.” He handed the clipboard back. “Okay, leave the truck here and I’ll have some of my boys offload this shit. I’ll drive you to the Black Marsh train station. You packed?”

Trent gave a nervous bob. “By the time anyone starts tripping on these goodies I’ll be in Rio.”

“Sounds fun. Don’t send me a postcard.”

“No way, José. Now…just to put me at ease…you’re going to take care of everything, right? You won’t leave anything that’ll tie me to this?”

“Yeah, I’ll handle everything.” Vic fished a cigarillo from his shirt pocket. “Got a light?”

“Sorry, don’t smoke.”

“No problem,” Vic said, and kicked him in the groin. Trent’s eyes goggled with surprise and sudden agony; he made a strangled squeak and dropped to his knees. Vic kicked him in the face and then stood over him and stomped him nearly to death. He smiled all the time.

A figure stepped out from the far side of the truck. The embroidered patch on his shirt said Shanahan. “Jeez, Vic…he screw you over or something?”

Vic turned. He was breathing heavy. “Nah…just working out some frustrations.” He nodded at what was left of Trent. “You hungry?”

Shanahan smiled a toothy smile. “Sure,” he said, “I could eat.”

“Help yourself. I got to head home.”

(3)

Mike stopped home between school and his shift at the Crow’s Nest to get a sweater. The afternoon had gone suddenly cold and his light windbreaker was nowhere near warm enough. He leaned his bike against the steps, climbed onto the porch, and had just turned the handle when he heard Vic yelling. Mike froze in an attitude of listening, head cocked to one side.

“You’re such a pain in the ass, Lois, I swear to God! All you do anymore is bitch about how hungry you are, but you won’t frigging eat anything we bring you.”

We? Mike thought.

He heard his mother reply, but her words were too faint to make out.

“Well, I don’t care…and I’m not going to go get you something from Trinian’s. You think I’m the goddamn maid?”

Trinian’s was the butcher shop in town. Mike thought it was weird that mom was asking Vic to go shopping. Vic never did anything like that. He didn’t even buy his own beer. Besides…Mike had been rooting in the fridge earlier and there was plenty of food, including pork chops and ground turkey. Why was she making a fuss about something from Trinian’s?

“Well, you can starve for all I care.” There was a crashing sound and Mike had the feeling Vic had hurled something against the wall. He was a big one for throwing shit. “I’ll be downstairs. You know what you need to do, you silly bitch. When you come to your senses and want to feed, then send me a frigging postcard…otherwise you can kiss my white ass.”

There was the sound of fast, stomping footsteps and then the distinctive heavy slam of the cellar door. Mike gave it a few seconds and then pushed the door open and stepped quietly into the foyer.

Going into the living room was a major sin against Vic’s house rules, but this was driving him nuts. Every night all his mom did was sit in the living room. No lights, no TV. She seldom answered when he called to her, and sometimes she said nothing at all. It was weird and it scared Mike.

He lingered uncertainly in the doorway.

“Mom? Are you all right? Are you sick?”

No answer. He took a deep breath as he stepped into the living room, standing behind the couch, not ten feet from her. The fear of Vic’s wrath was a stink in the air. “How come you always sit in the dark like this?” When she didn’t answer he said, “Look, let me turn on the light…”

He heard her gasp. “No, Mike…please don’t…”

“Come on, Mom, you’re freaking me out here.”

She turned away from him just like she did the other day, clearly not wanting him to see her face, and Mike wondered just how badly had Vic beaten her that she hid her face for over a week?

“Mom…listen to me…if you’re sick or hurt we need to get you to a doctor.”

“Mike, if you love me, then please just leave me alone. Go to your room, go to Crow’s store…just leave me alone.”

Mike stood there, uncertain. “I heard you tell Vic that you were hungry. You should eat something.”

He saw her body cave over as if his words had hit her like a punch in the stomach.

“Why don’t I go get some Chinese? I’ll get the lemon chicken you like…”

“Go away!” she said, and this time there was an edge to her voice and and it scared Mike to hear it. It hardly sounded like her at all.

A month ago he would have turned and fled from the sound of that voice, but he wasn’t the same boy he had been a month ago. He wasn’t even the same boy he had been that morning. Now he took a half step forward, beginning the motion of raising his hand to touch her, to reassure her, to comfort her with his presence.

“Why, you disrespectful little shit!”

The voice slashed through the shadows and Mike turned to see Vic’s bulk filling the doorway behind him. He hadn’t heard Vic come upstairs, hadn’t heard the cellar door open, but there he was, all puffed up with righteous rage, standing wide-legged, fists on hips like a poster of Superman.

“Mom’s sick,” Mike said hastily.

“Sicker than you think, shithead. Get the hell out of there.”

But Mike held his ground. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that she’s a sloppy drunk and a lousy lay, and if she’d just take her medicine like she’s been told she wouldn’t be mooning around the house like she was at death’s door.” Vic chuckled and repeated, “Like she was at death’s door. Ha!”

Mike didn’t understand what was funny about that, and didn’t care. He stood his ground. “If she’s sick, then she ought to go to the doctor.”

Vic laughed again. “Well, I think it’s a little too late for the doctor, kiddo. Isn’t it, Lois honey? Too late for the ol’ doctor? Still, she knows where the medicine is, and she knows how to get it, but she won’t, ’cause she’s a stupid, stubborn old cow.”

“Don’t talk like that about my mother,” Mike warned.

Vic looked at Mike for a second, then burst out laughing. “I’ll say whatever I damn well want in my own house, and you, my little piece of shit, are just going to have to listen and like it.”

“I’m telling you—”

“No, shithead, I’m telling you! Since when did you grow a pair of balls? What, you think you’re standing up for your mother’s honor? That’s a frigging joke! I was screwing her long before your father rolled his car off Shandy’s Curve. I was sticking it to her day and night while your dumbass father was out working his balls off. Christ, what a shithead he was!”

“You’re a liar!” Mike felt his hands balling up into fists.

“Hell I am,” Vic snapped back. He was smiling, enjoying this. “And I’m here to tell you, boy, ol’ Lois there used to be a sweet piece, no matter what hole you’d take her from. And head? Damn, she could suck a golf ball through a twenty-foot garden hose. Jeeez-us! Man, those were some good times. Your dad’d call home to say he was working overtime and Lois here’d call me up not ten seconds later, talking all sweet about how she wants my cock in her and she can’t get enough of it and how she’s all wet and wants me over there. Back then, kid, I’d be over here in a hot minute. You’d be sucking your thumb upstairs and your mom’d be sucking my root down here.”

“Shut your lying mouth!”

“Hell, boy, I was taking her up the ass when the chief’s office called to say that John Sweeney was Spam in a can off Shandy’s Curve. You know what? We finished screwing before we went out to the accident. How’s that for good old mom?”

Mike took a definite step toward Vic, who didn’t budge.

Behind him, Mike could hear his mother quietly weeping.

Mike looked over his shoulder at her huddled form. He tried to muster anger at her, tried to conjure hate, but he couldn’t. Maybe there would be a time for that, but right now all he felt for her was sadness. Still, as he turned back to face Vic, a searing white-hot hatred sprang up in his heart, charring his soul.

“Yeah,” Vic said in an offhand way, “Lois’d ball anything with a dick back then.” Vic leaned forward and gave Mike a secretive leer. “How do you know John Sweeney was even your dad?”

“He was my father, asshole!” Mike snapped, though he knew it was a lie.

“John Sweeney was a useless piece of shit who did the whole world a favor by rolling his car down the hill. Kid, if I was you I’d be embarrassed to tell anyone that I was even related to that loser, let alone scream that he’s your father.” He gave Mike a knowing sneer. “You couldn’t begin to understand who your father is. Or what he is! You should be ashamed of yourself, you little faggot, for being such a weak, miserable piece of crap, when your father is—”

He never finished his sentence because against all logic and expectation Mike Sweeney hit him so fast and hard that Vic never saw it coming. It caught Vic in the mouth and ground his inner lips against the teeth of his laughing mouth and knocked him back three steps so that he slammed against the living room doorway. Vic touched his mouth and looked at the hot blood on his fingertips.

For a moment he stood there and stared through shocked eyes at Mike. The boy’s chest heaved, hands clenching and unclenching, and there was a look of mingled fury and surprise in his eyes.

“Oh, God, Mike…no!” his mother cried from the shadows.

Slowly Vic’s eyes rose from his bloodstained fingers to stare at Mike, and Mike swore he could see a crimson veil of fury fall over his stepfather’s gaze.

“You just killed yourself you stupid shit,” he said and hurled himself off the wall, looping a hard right hook that broke a big white bell in Mike’s head and sent him crashing into an overstuffed chair. Mike slid to his knees as blood ran into his left eye.

“Fucking hit me?” Vic said, still overwhelmed by it. He moved toward Mike, bringing his hands up into a boxer’s guard.

Mike scrambled to his feet and backed away as he brought his own hands up the way Crow had taught him, remembering the advice he’d learned: “The best block is to not be there.”

Vic started throwing jabs and short hooks, uppercuts and backhands, tagging Mike in the biceps and shoulders, trying to beat down his guard. Mike blocked and parried as best he could, but his head was ringing so badly that he couldn’t think. Vic’s hands were pistons, driving Mike back into the living room, into shadows, toward the edge of the couch.

Mike felt the back of the couch against his thighs as he was battered backward. He almost overbalanced and fell over, but Vic darted out a hand and caught his shirt, holding him upright as he delivered a short hook to the ribs that knocked all the air out of the room. Mike’s head swirled with pain and disorientation. This had been a mistake. Stupid, and probably fatal. Well, he thought as the beating continued, at least I hit him, at least I made him bleed.

Vic cuffed him again in the head, but this new blow had a weird effect. Instead of worsening the disorientation it seemed to hit some kind of internal circuit breaker and suddenly all of his interior lights came back on, all at once. Crow’s voice seemed to whisper in his ear: “Never hold someone with one hand and hit him with the other. It limits you. The hand that’s holding on can’t hit and the punching one can’t block. Use both hands because otherwise it leaves half of your body wide open.” How Mike was able to remember that at such a time was beyond understanding, but suddenly that germ of information was there. He had looked at what Vic was doing and somehow managed to analyze it for a flaw—and found that flaw. From his perspective, despite the constant blows, Mike could see what Crow was trying to tell him. He could see how vulnerable that whole side of Vic’s body was.

FUGUE.

Before he even knew he was going to do it, both of his hands moved at once. With his left he blocked the incoming high hook, meeting it at the source and jamming the swing of Vic’s shoulders so that the punch never generated any power; and at the same instant Mike’s right hand lashed out, palm foremost, and caught Vic on the side of the head, just at the curve of the eye socket where eyebrow meets temple. This time the blow was delivered the right way, and Mike even used one foot to push himself away from the couch and turn into the blow as he delivered it. This combination of movement was unexpected and immensely powerful; it spun Vic halfway around so that he had to let go of Mike and flail his arms to keep from falling as he took three staggering sideways steps.

Mike stepped in and kicked Vic in the back of the knee with the edge of his foot, jolting the knee into such an extreme bend that Vic’s legs buckled, and as he went down Mike hit him with two overhand rights, one after the other, that smashed Vic’s nose and nearly tore his ear from his head.

Vic crashed down onto hands and knees, shaking his head, trying to fight through explosions of light and shadows to understand what had just happened. Blood poured down his face and neck and splattered on the floor. Mike surged forward and landed a football place kick that caught Vic in the floating ribs, half-lifting him off the ground. Vic flipped over onto his back, wrapped his arms protectively over the point of impact, and struck the floor with a crash that knocked decorative plates off the shelves in the living room.

Vic was vulnerable and Mike stepped forward to kick him again, had actually raised his foot to do it…

…and hesitated.

Vic was bleeding, dazed, down.

Don’t stop! Don’t stop now! His own voice screamed in his head, but he didn’t listen. Instead he turned, searching the shadows for his mother, wanting to grab her, pull her out of here, run while Vic was dazed. He saw her; she was on her feet now, a dark shape against the greater darkness of the room.

“What have you done?” she demanded in a voice filled with dread.

“Mom…I had to…”

She didn’t move. “Oh, Mike,” she said softly, but her words were strangely muffled.

A metallic clicking sound saved Mike’s life. Vic had pulled out his clasp knife and with a flick of his wrist he snapped the four-inch blade into place. The gleaming metal seemed to fill the whole room. Mike saw his death on that gleaming blade as it slashed at him. He ran backward out of the way, but he was in the middle of the living room now and Vic was between him and the front door.

“Oh boy…” Vic crooned softly, “Oh boy. Here it comes, now. Here it comes. Oh boy. Here it comes.” Vic held the knife, guarded by his other hand, the way an expert would hold it. Mike had seen Crow hold a knife just that way. Crow probably knew how to take a knife from someone. Mike did not. Their lessons hadn’t gotten that far. He wished he had a sword, even the blunt-edged bokken.

He was going to die. After all that he had survived, he was going to die.

“Here it comes, now. Here it comes.” Vic’s eyes were insane. Blood dripped from his mouth and torn ear, it streaked his grinning teeth. “Oh boy. Here it comes, now.”

Vic advanced on Mike, the knife slicing at the air between them as if he was cutting a path toward Mike’s heart. Mike knew in that instant, without any reason for knowing it, that Vic had killed people, and he wondered how many people had seen Vic smile just that way before they died.

Mike didn’t know what to do or where to go. There was no other exit from the living room that the doorway, and Vic’s crouched body blocked it entirely.

“Here it comes, now. Here we go.”

Mike didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want to just give up and collapse and be killed with no way left to fight. He wanted to fight, even if it meant going down fighting, but he didn’t know how. Not against a knife, not against this.

Suddenly something smashed him out of the way even as Vic lunged in to bury the knife in his throat. As he fell, Mike saw something dark blur past him and crash into Vic, driving him backward, crashing him out into the hallway, propelling him down onto the bottom steps of the staircase.

He stared, dazed with unbelief, “Mom?”

She had leapt over the sofa and slammed Vic down, taking his knife wrist in one of her slim hands. Mike watched in horror, waiting for the moment in which Vic would tear his wrist free and slash her to death, but try as he might Vic couldn’t get free. With his other hand, though, he hit her, shoved her…but all to no effect.

“Mom?”

She shouted at him. “Run!”

“But, Mom!”

“Run, for God’s sake!”

It was impossible that she had held him even this long—Vic was twice her size, many times her strength—yet somehow, impossibly, she kept him pinned there with his knife arm hard against the floor.

“Run!” she screamed.

“Mom!” He took a step toward her, desperate to help.

Lois Wingate whipped her head around toward him, and for the first time in days he saw her face. Her skin was as white as new milk; her eyes were as red as fresh blood. Her mouth was a snarling mask of curled lips and bared teeth.

Mike felt every molecule in his body turn to ice. He wanted to scream, couldn’t remember how to do it.

In a voice that shook the walls of the house, a voice that was a bellow of sheer force and volume that it literally staggered him back a pace, his mother screamed, “RUN!”

He ran. Of course he ran.

He screamed as he backed away and then turned and ran out of the house. He was still screaming when he grabbed his bike and jumped on it and tore away into the night. He did not remember doing that, he did not remember the nightmare ride down the street past neighbors who stood on their porches and stared at him, or stared at Vic’s place. No one called the cops. No one on that block dared.

Mike tore down the street. His mind was black with shock except for the clear and vivid memory of his mother’s face.

Her white, white face.

Her eyes, her skin. Her teeth.

Oh, God, he thought as he fled into the darkness, her teeth.