Savant (20 page)
There were three large landscape timbers, and three creosoted poles. He had purchased the poles and had stolen the timbers, back when he first hit on this idea, and once he'd selected an appropriate setting, he hid the timbers and poles in deep bush, selected for its preponderance of thorny wild rose and poison ivy. He was impervious to both.
They waited for him now, along with his digger, which took him all of ten minutes to use. He could dig and tamp in a large wooden cross in two to three minutes, tops, the hole digger biting earth with a vengeance, the soft dirt flying as a quarter-ton rhino pounded the sharp blades in and bit another monstrous chaw from the ground.
The crosses took only seconds to spike together with ten-penny nails. Messrs. Cholia, Belleplaine, and Vale also took no more than seconds to spike together, that is to the crosses, using—again—your ordinary hardware-store crucifixion nail.
Pow. Pow
. This is for doggie.
Pow. Pow
. Nice Mr. Hoggie.
Pow. Pow
. This is for kitty—right through your titty. Oh, this was going to
smart
when they came around. Well, that's life—eh? Life can be hard. The biker life. Doggone.
Then he was gone, back to the trailer, to get his legal wheels and move on down the road. Happy as a big fat clam. Knowing when those punks came to they'd be in a fucking world of serious pain.
But it was not to be. Shooter couldn't see shit in the headlight glare and he was a man to whom eyesight was everything. Maybe he was getting too old for this work? Bullshit. It was that fucking hooker that had messed up his night, damn the cunt to hell and back, which is where she probably was right now. He wrenched his mind back to his target, the blip on the screen of the OMNI, and flipped the unit back to the auto-track position, keeping a very loose tail on them. Where—oh,
there's
that fucker. Always down the damned turnrows and gravel shit. Why didn't he just whack these assholes out and go on to the next gig? Always a big fucking production. Always he had to slice and dice and shit. What a fucked-up guy Big Petey was. Oh, well, you couldn't help but love the sum'bitch. I mean-shit, he thought, nobody who had killed that many folks could be
all
bad.
He parked and a rustbucket of a VW blew by him doing ninety-and-change. "Get some, Bugs," he whispered. Probably got a Porsche in the bitch. His mind was full of four-barrel carbs and ratios as he carried SAVANT to a place where he could take care of bidness. He needed to get hisself a cool set of wheels and then settle down and find him a good woman. And he needed to fuckin' wax a few more assholes, is what he needed. Screw it down on the fuckers.
He couldn't see shit and the bugs were biting and bang, pop, wham, what's the big guy doing down there—building a house for crissakes? He carries his lady and eases around where he can see something and—
holy fucking shit-
Chaingang has got the fuckers up on sticks.
Three of the bastards on poles. He took his piece out and put her together and eyeballed the scene.
Jesus
. They were up on crosses. He'd gone and crucified them!
"
The SHERFSAVANT's mil dot duplex reticle in the Laco unit provides extended range-finding capability
." Where was the big boy? "Extended ranges are determined by a simple
mathematical method called 'the 666
formula.'
This formula compares the perceived size of the target visually, through the 40X sniperscope, as measured in mils, to the actual approximate height of the target, as expressed in yards
." He wanted to see Big Petey waddle his huge, vast yards of fat ass into the scope's crosshairs.
"
The computation is made by first sighting the target through the Laco. 1 mil on the scope reticle is equal to one actual yard at one thousand yards distance
." He computed the shot. The shot to Chaingang's head. He'd blow that ugly gangbang up real good. But where was he? In the fucking shadows, jerking off, he supposed.
"The formula for the computation of extended range is:
Actual height of target in yards multiplied by 1,000 over perceived height of target in mills. The
666 formula
computes as follows: If a human target is believed to be approximately sixfeet (two yards), tall, and is perceived as having a height of three mil through the scope, express numerically as 2 X 1000 divided by 3 equals 666.666 yards. (100 meters, a hectometer, equals 109.36 yards. 1000 meters, a kilometer, equals 0.62 miles.)
" Just as he recited the numbers
666.666
, he saw the men clearly. A cloud moved past the moon, and in the added light SAVANT picked up the detail of their chests. It was a heartless crucifixion. He heard the truck rumble off and whirled in the hopes of seeing it and taking a shot but Chaingang was gone again, the fat cocksucker. Damn!
Way to go, stud. He chewed himself out, using the word what's-her-name from the bookstore had used that first time in bed. She kept calling him a stud and he couldn't get hard for the fucking bitch and then she kept on using it, so stupid she thought she could coax him into a woody. Jeezus Q. Jimminies. It kicked his ass just to think about what bitches had put him through from his perverted cunt of a nanny on.
"
Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christ custodiat animan tuam (Thumpl) in vitum aeternam
." (Click. Load. Squeeze.
Twomp!)
A-fucking-men, asswipes. (Click.) Goombye, farewell, adios from your friendly neighborhood city morgue. You stab 'em…we slab 'em. And we guarantee
our
work.
T
he famous reporter held the microphone directly under John J. Llewelyn's proboscis. The light was bright in the lieutenant's eyes, and the presence of both mike and camera made him nervous. He could imagine how his bald forehead would catch the light and glare like a cueball on TV. He tried in vain to recall the famed investigative journalist's name.
"So you feel the persecution of the L.A. police chief is unfair, is that what you're saying?"
"Look. I don't know the details of what's going on out there but you take any industry where the guy at the top is responsible for the actions of thousands of men…" He was finding it so difficult to concentrate with that microphone shoved in his face. "Some guy runs a big plant, and there's fifteen thousand employees, and fifteen hundred cases of pilfering, I mean—do you fire the top guy because he allowed pilfering? Do you go on a witch hunt and—"
"So you're calling the brouhaha in California a
witch hunt?
"
"I didn't say that." They could always twist your words. "I know we do our best here. I can't speak for other people in other departments outside the Kansas City area. We do a good job, I think."
"You never worry about your detectives beating someone up?"
"Our detectives spend their day beating on doors, not beating on citizens."
"Get up."
"Pardon me?"
"I said get up."
"Hey!"
"You're dreaming." His wife was touching his shoulders, gently trying to get him awake. The light was blindingly bright in his eyes.
"Jesus, turn the damn light out. What the hell—" He was still brain dead.
"John, honey,
wake up
. It's the phone."
He came out of the dream and took the phone from her hand, having to wipe his eyes to see if he was holding it upside down and if the switch was moved over. He pulled the antenna out and coughed into the mouthpiece, then realized she'd put it in the ON position already.
"Hello?" he said, in a sleep-fogged voice.
"John, I'm sorry, bud. Hated to wake you." Brown, from the night tour.
"S'okay."
"I was gonna wait but
(whirr)
…said…wanted you to…
(whirr)
to call." Llewelyn got up with the cellular phone and moved.
"Shit!" He'd slid the button to OFF as he held it, still half asleep. He pushed it back to ON and somehow Brown was still there. "Sorry. I couldn't hear you."
"Can you hear me okay?"
"Yeah, now. What time is it, anyway?"
"Five fifty-five. You wanna grab a quick cup and call me back in five? It ain't that urgent. Let you wake up a bit?"
"No. S'okay. Go ahead."
"Okay. Guy in a light plane, coming from K.C. International, dude we know, used to be PIO for Civil Air Patrol and so on, he's coming low over the river out by Mount Ely, just as the sun's coming up, 'kay? He says he sees bodies on crosses. Just like in the Bible—all right? Three dudes on crosses. He thinks it's some kind of prank." The words slice down past the sleep, cutting deeply, making something stand up on his skin, electrifying the hairs, prickling his skin. "He goes around and checks it out closer. Crucified, John. Three bodies look like men—headless men. He's pretty shook up. Said he damn near crashed into a power line going low for a closer look."
"You talked to him?" Llewelyn's mind was not receiving information.
"I talked to him myself. I said, 'Are you sure it isn't dummies?' 'No,' he says, 'it could be a hoax, but it looked like decapitated men.' Three of them on these crosses. They had to be fairly large crosses he'd see them from a plane, I tell him. He says he flies low like that whenever he comes to Mount Ely, he likes the view over the river. The sun is coming up in the background over the horizon, big red sunrise, and there are these bodies in the middle of an empty field. Captain says for you to come in when you can—er, forthwith. Meet him at the crime scene?"
"Tell him I'll be right there."
The sky was full of July sunshine, titanium silver clouds against great slabs of Cezanne blue and Matisse gray, the blue beginning to deepen as the sun rose higher.
The one in the middle had been put in place upside down. It was bad. Three of them. Nailed to poles and yardarms fashioned into crosses. They found a common Western Auto tool, an orange wrench with its grease crayoned
29.95
still in place. Dotted with the same dried blood as had coagulated in pools under the crucified, mutilated victims. Blood on a bright length of extension cord and pieces of wire, which would end up in evidence bags marked LIGATURES. I.D.s on two of the three. Heads completely gone. Two of them with the chest cavities opened up. Doer had taken the hearts. There were wounds that appeared to be bullet holes in the one whose heart had not been ripped out. No shell casings. Bits of exploded humanity all around. Insects having a field day. In the field.
Lieutenant Llewelyn needed a strong drink. He needed Special Agent Glenfiddich to get over there and pour him a tall one. The captain had fiddle-farted around and "supervised" the evidence techs and securing of the scene, grooming Llewelyn for serious barrel time. He did everything but stencil SCAPEGOAT on his forehead. John had, in turn, Marlin Morris soon at his side, and was trying to get the stencil transferred. Morris in his turn, would pass it on. On a case like this, it came down heavy, hard, and each time rank passed it down it smelled a bit worse. This one was only halfway to grunt level and it already stunk to high heaven.
There were all kinds of people rolling on this one from Clay to Jackson County sheriffs homicide units, the entire metro squad, and the lot of them were commissioned as field examiners. Every dick in the Crimes Against Persons Unit was, for that matter, There was a wealth of talent crawling all over this nasty puppy, and pretty much just grabbing ass.
Julie Hilliard got the nod from her crew sergeant and came over to where Morris was taking notes and snapping Polaroids.
"Do we know anything? I mean—besides the biker gang tie-in?"
"Well." He sighed heavily, looking at the mess. "These three are not going to tell us much."
Yeah, she thought. Right. They're pretty much confirmed kills, too, huh? She watched a tech make a cast of tire-tread marks.
This was one of the scenes she called hurters. After you'd been on a bunch of these it hurt you. It hurt your chances to recapture a strong belief in the hereafter. This was another of those crime scenes that makes a tiny voice inside whisper, "Hell is here. You've
seen
hell, baby."
Something more terrible than Steel Vengeance had done this to three violent, deadly streetfighters, binding them in baling wire and electrical cord, nailing them to wooden crosses…ripping hearts out…blowing heads off.
This was one of the moments when horror becomes a relative quality, and cops are nudged by the assertion that there are no fundamental truths. At such times, reality and fantasy blur, become indistinguishable, as that which exists and that which is illusion merge. Reality and imagined reality swirl disconnected around the black magnetic hole at the hub of a centerless void. One senses that one exists, at least for that horrific moment, in a universe without a heart.
Chaingang knew something was wrong when he saw the darkened home as he pulled into the driveway. An unobtrusively located, perfectly ordinary-looking small rental property in Overland Park, which he'd been using as a safe house. No broken windows. No lights on. But something elbowed him sharply. Danger. The presence of others. He was instantly wary, moving away from the car and into deep shadow, the killing chain in his powerful right hand, ready to lash out at whatever moved. He waited for a long time, letting the protective darkness circumfuse and protect him.
Slowly, he moved back to the wheels and slid the suppressed SMG from his duffel bag, easing the bolt back and putting a ready round up the spout. He eased toward the back, listening, hearing nothing, carefully unlocking the back door and pushing it open without entering.
The first thing he saw was blood. Just a few drops. He flashed on his old dream. The hunter's dream. The stalk of a wounded enemy. The blood trail. The dream in which the target and the hunter exchange perspectives. Was this what the dream had meant to warn him of? He was not a man who thought in metaphors or symbols. Blood trails were blood trails.
There was an explosion of insight the moment he saw the animal affixed to the wall. A common Didelphis Virginiana, a lowly opossum, dead and mounted under a red banner. Pogo the possum, nailed to the living-room wall with his hardware nails, and across the wall, carefully printed in the animal's blood,
D A N I E L
. An envelope nailed to the wall beside it.