Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 32

Crow peered into the oversized duffel bags the detectives laid out on a table in the lab Weinstock had ordered set aside for their use. “Gee, you think you brought enough guns?”

“If it has fangs we want it dead,” Ferro said, “not just pissed off.”

“Works for me.”

There were two short-barreled Remington 870s with pistol grips and folding stocks of the kind favored by some of the more hard-core narcotics units; a Mossberg Bullpup with a twenty-inch barrel and an eight-shot clip; a venerable old Winchester Defender with a standard stock and a Parkerized finish; an Ithaca Deerslayer; and one monster of a ten-gauge shotgun that LaMastra fondled with familiarity. This was an Ithaca Mag-10 Roadblocker with an augmented clip that allowed him to carry seven shells instead of the usual three. It was a bull of a gun useful only in the hands of a bullish man.

Ferro had somehow procured a thousand rounds of 12-gauge and two hundred for the Roadblocker, and over the last few hours they had worked in teams to doctor them up by injecting pure garlic oil into the casings, sealing the needle holes by melting the plastic with a lab burner. Ferro, LaMastra, and Val handled that job, marking each shell with a felt-tip pen to indicate the ones that were enhanced. Crow worked on the five hundred 9mm pistol bullets Ferro had brought. The concave mouths of the dum-dums needed only a small drop to fill, and Crow sealed in the oil with a drop of hot wax, blew on the wax, and smoothed the tips to make them round and even. When they had doctored six hundred shells and three hundred bullets, Ferro called a halt to it. They all gathered around the autopsy table, staring in fascination at the weapons and the ammunition that they hoped would help them survive the coming war.

“Okay,” Ferro said as if instructing a class, “the plain red shells are standard twelve-gauge double-ought buckshot. The ones marked with the black arrows are filled with deer slugs. If we have do concentrate on head shots, that’ll do’er.”

“What about those?” Crow asked, touching a shell marked with thick black bands.

“Shok-Lock rounds,” Ferro said. “Inside is a kind of ceramic minishell that explodes on impact and discharges bits of metal.”

LaMastra nodded. During the hours of work he’d shaken off some of his funk and had started talking again, though his eyes were still spooked. “Fire one at a lock and poof!— no lock. Fire one at a head, and all you have is a lingering cloud of pink mist.”

Crow winced. “Thanks, that image is going to stay with me.”

“The rest are for Vince’s Roadblocker.”

“Standard double-ought,” said LaMastra with a grin, “but at ten-gauge it’s a real crowd-pleaser.”

They loaded all six of the shotguns. Crow selected the Bullpup, liking its weight; Ferro took a Remington. They stowed their shotguns in one of the duffel bags, along with Crow’s Japanese sword and a collection of knives. LaMastra opened one of the bags of garlic bulbs and poured several dozen into a plastic bag and stowed this in the duffel.

Ferro finished the last of his cold coffee, “Does anyone know when sunset is today?”

“6:47,” said Val. “I checked the paper.”

“Then let’s go,” said Ferro.

Val told them to wait and quickly searched the cabinets until she found some small plastic specimen vials with pop-off lids. She filled a half dozen of them with garlic oil and gave two to each of them. “You never know,” she said, and they nodded their thanks.

Ferro and LaMastra stepped out into the hallway, leaving Crow and Val alone in the morgue. Crow wrapped her in his arms and kissed her.

“I know this will tarnish my Captain Avenger image,” he said, “but I’ve never been this scared before.”

“Me, too.”

“We could leave, you know. Pack up my car…just go. You, me, and the baby.”

“Sounds great. I hear Jamaica’s great this time of year.”

They smiled at each other, letting the lie make the moment bearable. They kissed very tenderly. Val leaned back and searched his face for a long time. “Crow, I’m not going to make any more speeches, okay? Just promise me that you’ll come back. Give me your word and I’ll be able to let you go. Otherwise—I think I’ll just go crazy.”

Very seriously he said, “Val, you know that poem I like, “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes? The one Loreena McKennitt did a song about? Remember what the hero says to his love? ‘I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.’ That’s me, baby. Mr. Hero Guy. Nothing’s going to stop me.”

She pulled his face close to hers. “Swear to me, swear you’ll come back.”

“I swear,” he whispered.

“Swear on our baby.”

“I swear.”

“Swear,” she said again and again, and each time he swore, and each time he kissed her face, tasting tears. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.” Then she pushed him back and turned away and walked across the room where she leaned with both hands on the edge of a counter. He understood and didn’t say anything else. As he pulled the door closed behind him he heard the first of her deep, terrible sobs.

The cops saw his face and didn’t comment.

Crow nodded and he and the cops headed out to assault Dark Hollow.