The Devil Next Door

5

The scream started out small in his guts and now it was rolling upward, gaining mass and volume along the way. And Louis was going to set it free and mainly because he didn’t really think he had a choice. Maybe he would have, too, but another Greenlawn police car rolled up behind the other one. The guy that got out was thin and tall, white hair poking around the edges of his cap. His mouth was hooked in a crooked scowl.

“What gives here?” he said.

Louis finally felt some sanity coming back. He knew this guy. His name was Warren and he was a sergeant or something, an old hand on the force. Louis knew that he handled the safety programs at the schools and was always in the newspaper involved in some civic or charitable organization. Warren also sang in the church choir over at St. Stephen’s and had a hell of a set of pipes on him. He was okay. Old school all the way, he’d sort this clusterfuck right out.

“Well, it’s a real mess, Sarge,” Shaw said.

“Let’s have it,” Warren said, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear and showing it some flame.

So Shaw told him all about it and the whole time Warren’s eyes shifted from the stiff to Louis and it didn’t look like he cared for the looks of either. When Shaw finished, Warren just nodded.

“They treating you okay, Mr. Shears?” he said.

And Louis launched right into it. The re-telling of this tale sounded no better than the other one, but the evidence was all over Kojozian’s shoe and pantleg.

“He’s got a weak stomach,” Kojozian said. “He got sick in the grass over it all.”

Warren grinned. “No shit? Well, take it easy, Mr. Shears. Dead is dead. You can tap dance on this kid or drop your knickers and take a dump in his mouth. It’s all the same to him.”

Louis stared up at him, pale and wide-eyed. “You’re all crazy,” he said.

“Boy, he does have a weak stomach, all right,” Warren said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. “No offense, Mr. Shears, but you wouldn’t make much of a cop. Lots of bodies, always lots of bodies.”

“We had a guy last week,” Shaw said, “over on West Rider Street. Mail piling up and all that. Neighbors call us and we go over there. We had to go in through a side window and that stink when we opened it up… holy Jesus! We found the stiff on the shitter. Old guy had a heart attack while he was delivering the mail. Must have been about a thousand flies on him. Another thousand on the windows and flying around. They were buzzing so loud, you couldn’t hear yourself think.”

“That’s nothing,” Warren said. “When I was first on the Department, we got a call to go out to the airport. Middle of summer, some guy’s sleeping in his car with the windows all rolled up. A real hot bastard it was, too. Some kids were riding their bikes around, saw the guy laying in there, said he had rice all over him. Rice. Ha, what a mess! The smell would have put you right down to your knees, swear to God. He’d been in there almost a week, came apart like boiled chicken when we tried to pull him out. Most of him stuck to the seat…”

Louis got to his feet and then he was running, running dead out for the Dodge. His brain was filled with a screaming black noise and he was certain that he had lost his mind. Nothing else could possibly explain it.

“Hey, where you going?” Kojozian called out.

“Let him go,” Shaw said. “We don’t need him. What we need here are a couple shovels to scrape this kid off the sidewalk with…”

And then Louis was in his Dodge. He could feel the seat beneath him and his hands gripping the steering wheel. He held on tight before the entire world went flying away beneath him. Because it was coming, he knew it was coming.

He squealed around in a U-turn and saw Warren wave to him in the rearview. As he screeched away down Tessler Avenue, barely missing a parked car, his face was slicked with sweat and his entire body was shaking. He needed badly to pull over and be sick, but he didn’t dare. He just did not dare. He had to make Rush Street and home. And the most insane, impossible thing of all was that the cops did not come after him.

They did not come after him…