Creekers (5 page)

Were,
Phil slowly thought.
Not am. Not anymore.
“Chief, are you trying to make me feel guilty? All right, so I haven’t kept in touch. Sorry. But you still haven’t told me why you busted into my gig.”

Mullins laughed. “Well, I wanted to see if you were keeping on your toes, now that you’re not a cop anymore.” The chubby man grinned at the open service door. “Pretty slick lock-picking, huh?”

“Chief!”

Mullins was getting a real kick out of this. “Okay, Phil, I’ll level with you. The real reason I came all the way out to this bumfuck yarn factory is because, well… I want to talk to you.”

Mullins’ cat-and-mouse games got old fast; this was the first Phil had seen of him in nearly a decade, and he was already sick of him.
Some guys never change,
he dully realized. “Fine, you want to talk to me. About what? Please, Chief, tell me before I have a stroke.”

Mullins finished his coffee and pitched the cup in the trash. Then he got a Milky Way out of the next machine.

Then he said, “I want to offer you a job on my department.”

And that was about all Mullins had elaborated upon, which was pretty typical; Mullins’ hedging sense of humor was part of his overall psychology—he’d always make his point by taking subtle shots. Phil had been born and raised in Crick City. His father had run off a week after he’d been born, and his mother died about a year later when the laundromat she’d been working in caught fire. So Phil was reared by an aunt, who received a subsidy from the state, and about the only thing he ever had that came close to a father-figure was Mullins, the chief of Crick City’s police department for as long as anyone could remember. Mullins, now, had to be close to sixty, but to Phil he’d always looked the same, even back when Phil was in junior high and hanging out at the station after school.

Mullins was a decent man, or at least as decent as any shuck-and-jive backwoods police chief. Crick City, with a population of less than two thousand, wasn’t exactly Los Angeles in its law-enforcement needs, and since nothing in the way of serious crime ever seemed to occur there, the town council never had any reason to appoint a new chief.

Phil had a confused regard for the man. As a kid, it was Mullins who always had an encouraging, if not gruff, word when Phil was down, and it was Mullins who kept him out of trouble. Mullins looked after Phil when no one else could, and it was Mullins, too, who had inspired Phil’s interest in police work.

But on the other hand…

It was the town itself that always rubbed Phil the wrong way, and Chief Mullins was a constant reminder of that. Crick City was a backward, run-down pit of a town—a trap. No one ever seemed to get anywhere, and no one ever seemed to leave. It was the sticks: low-paying jobs, lots of unemployment, and the highest dropout rate in the state. Dilapidated pickup trucks ruled the pothole-ridden roads, at least those trucks that weren’t propped up forever on blocks in the front yards of one seedy saltbox house after another. The only crimes that did seem to occur with regularity were drunk and disorderlies, and the hallmark: spouse abuse. In all, Crick City unfolded as an unchanging nexus. A nowhere land inhabited by nowhere people.

Phil didn’t want to be one of those people.

But there was one thing he did want to be—

A cop.

And now here was Mullins, appearing like a decade-old ghost, and offering Phil the job that had been taken away from him by Dignazio and his blackball battalion.

Of course, police work in Crick City wouldn’t be anything at all like his job on the narc squad. At Metro he had rank, he had respect and credibility, he had goals to pursue, and an important job that utilized every aspect of his education and fortitude. Going from Metro to the Crick City force was the same as going from a Lamborghini to a Yugo.

Quit complaining,
he reminded himself.
It’s better than punching a clock at a yarn factory.
At least he’d be engaged in a job he’d been trained at.

At least he’d be a cop again.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,
he thought,
even when the horse is dressed in a chief’s uniform.

Mullins had left the factory shortly after he’d arrived, planting only enough seeds to keep Phil’s brain working for the rest of his shift. “Stop by the station tomorrow afternoon,” the rotund man had bid, “and we’ll talk some more.”

“I will, Chief. Thanks.”

“Oh, and watch out for them burglars. You never know when the buggers might want to bust in here for some coffee.”

“You’re a laugh a minute, Chief. See you tomorrow.”

And now, hours later, after he’d signed out of his guard post at the textile plant, Phil dogged through morning rush-hour in his clay-red ’76 Malibu. He’d picked it up for $300 at Melvin Motors; now that he was no longer drawing lieutenant’s pay, it was all his purse strings could handle. The early summer sun glared between tall buildings; the air reeked of exhaust. And as he made his way home, he couldn’t stop thinking about Mullins’ off-the-wall appearance at the plant, and the surprise job offer. What would it be like to go back there now?
Crick City,
he mused.
Christ, even the name sounds redneck.
Had the town changed? Was Chuck’s Diner still owned by Chuck? Did the rubes still race their pickups on the Route every Saturday night after tying one on at Krazy Sallee’s, the roadside strip joint? Was the coffee still terrible at the Qwik-Stop?
Who’s still there that I remember?
he wondered. Then, more morosely:

Who’s died since I’ve been gone?

Yes, the prospect of going back to his hometown goaded many questions.
And…Vicki? What about Vicki?
High school sweetheart, his very first girlfriend. She could’ve gotten out, too, but had chosen to work for Mullins instead, the department’s only female cop.

I wonder if she’s still around…

But then Phil’s stomach turned queasy as he parked the Malibu in his littered apartment lot. Because there was one more question, wasn’t there? Remembering the town and the people tricked him into remembering something else…

The voices, and—

The House,
he thought.

There’d never been a name for it. Just…

The House.

Was the House still there?

Moreover, had it
ever
been there?

Just hours afterward, he’d gotten so sick. The doctor had said that a fever so severe often caused delirium and hallucinations. His aunt must’ve thought he was crazy, just a crazy little ten-year-old boy…

Maybe I was crazy
, he reflected now, trudging up his apartment steps.
Christ Almighty. I hope I was crazy…

Because, whether it had been hallucination or reality, it was one thing Phil Straker would never forget—

The House,
he thought yet again.

And the hideous things he’d seen there.

— | — | —

Two

Cody Natter’s
shadow looked like a crane lowering as he leaned over the open trunk.
So young,
he thought. The girl, bound and gagged, shivered as the shadow crossed. Her lovely red eyes looked lidless in her sheer terror.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Upped and split right out the house last night,” said Druck, whose right eye—which sunk lower than the left—had a way of ticking when he was excited about something. Druck was the only creeker Natter trusted to remain competent; and he could talk right. “Took us awhiles ta find her. Caught her runnin’ ‘long Taylor Road just ‘fore the sun come up.”

Pity. Natter couldn’t take his own red eyes off of her. She was shivering, and she’d wet herself.
Of course she’s afraid,
he considered.
These are frightening days.
Their stock grew worse and worse. Could they even last another generation before…

No mind,
he thought.
Faith…

“You must be good,” he whispered to her in a voice that sounded like old wood creaking. “You must trust your providence. Do you understand?”

Certainly the meanings of such words would ellude her, but nevertheless she nodded, gasping through her gag.

There was more to understand than mere words.

Druck would expect to handle the usual punishment—hence, his obvious ticking enthusiasm. Sometimes the boy drooled.

“Untie her,” Natter said.

“But ain’t we gonna—”

“Untie her, and remove the gag.”

Druck, dumbfounded, did as he was told. The girl heaved in her tattered clothes,

Cody Natter’s long, bony hand touched her cheek. “Go now,” he allowed. “And be good. Remember your providence.”

Tears of gratitude ran down her warped face. She squealed something, some inner words of thanks, then climbed out of the trunk and scampered off into the woods.