Coven Read online

  Penelope peeped around. The massive figure had stopped halfway down the corridor. He held the ax from shoulder to hip.

  “Hey, you fat tub!” Mr. Sladder yelled. “Puttin’ in some overtime with the knife and fork, huh? Fellas don’t come no fatter, that’s for dag sure.”

  The figure faltered. “I’m not fat,” it said. “A trifle overweight perhaps, but I wouldn’t say—”

  Mr. Sladder laughed. “Trifle! Who you kiddin’ trifle? I seen sea cows in Disney World skinnier than you, ya big tub!”

  “This is absurd,” the figure said. “I won’t stand for this.”

  “I’m surprised you can stand at all, fat as you are.”

  The ax raised. The figure, offended, took a step—

  —and Mr. Sladder fired the pistol.

  Penelope flinched. It wasn’t like TV—the tiny gun made a loud, irritating pop! Then came a ping! A bullet ricocheted off the giant, flat ax blade. Mr. Sladder fired again. The figure howled, fell down, and crawled out the exit.

  “He shot me!” he bellowed outside. “He shot me in the ass!”

  “Dag straight!” Mr. Sladder affirmed, waving his stump. “Come on back for another if ya like, fatso!”

  Penelope squealed, this time in delight. The tiny gun had worked! But then Mr. Sladder said, very slowly:

  “What in creepin’ Moses is this?”

  Two more figures stepped in the doorway, sleek, slim. They were just standing there. They looked like…women.

  —Hello, they said.

  But what was that? What was going on?

  —We want to eat, please!

  They began to step forward.

  “You just turn right around!” Mr. Sladder ordered.

  The twin silhouettes continued.

  “I ain’t kiddin’, sweethearts! Dag dabbit, I ain’t one fer shootin’ a couple of gals, so don’t ya come no closer!”

  The figures weren’t stopping, and clearly weren’t going to.

  “Daggit! I warned ya, so here it comes!”

  Four even shots slapped in Penelope’s ears; she clenched her teeth. When she looked again, the two figures were still coming.

  Mr. Sladder scurried back, dragged Penelope out. “Come on, honey. Dag Saturday night specials, can’t hit fudge with ’em. I musta missed all four times.”

  “Shoot more!” Penelope screamed.

  “I ain’t got no more bullets! Now come on!”

  They scrambled down the main stable walk, pushing through swing doors, bam, bam, bam, one after another. Mr. Sladder burst through the last one before the exit and—

  chunk.

  But it wasn’t a chunk as much as a resonant, wet splap! Mr. Sladder was standing straight as a pole, head bent back. The ax blade was buried in the middle of his face, bisecting his eyes.

  “Dag fat psychopath,” he gurgled, staggering back. “Run, Nellapee…” Then he collapsed like a bag of sticks.

  Penelope’s blouse was torn open as she turned to run. Two big soft hands plopped on her breasts and pulled. Instantly she was aloft. She was being carried away.

  She kicked and screamed. Hot breaths brushed her ear. It was the ax-wielder, the horse-killer. He must’ve come around the other side of the stable. His big hands roughly kneaded her breasts and crotch as he carried her on.

  —Be careful with her! the odd slushy voice demanded.

  Slats of moonlight passed Penelope’s face. The horse killer seemed to be sniffing her hair, and then he was licking her neck. The harder Penelope squirmed, the more securely she worked herself into his grasp.

  Then she thought: Plums.

  It was an errant thought, yet very clear in her mind. Plums. The average person certainly would find it peculiar for a young woman to think of plums while being abducted by a madman in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, the image glowed: squashing plums, bursting them. She thrust her hand into the figure’s trousers, into his briefs. His erection felt like a hot bone. Thinking of plums, she grabbed his testicles and squeezed them so hard her hand cramped.

  The plums, disappointingly, did not burst. But the figure’s wavering deep yowl was reward enough. He dropped her at once and folded up in the impact of pain.

  Penelope ran.

  She trampled down the corridor, banging through swing doors. No footsteps could be heard pursuing her. Next she squealed in joy, for in a moment she bolted through the exit.

  The open night air felt good on her exposed breasts. She used the moon’s ghostly light to guide her out the gate and to the dark outline that was her car. I made it! she thought. I escaped! God only knew where the horse-killer was taking her, and what he planned to do. Penelope careered around her Datsun ZX, jumped in behind the wheel, and slammed the door. She reached for the ignition, had her fingers on the key, was about to turn the engine over, and only then did she realize in slow, sinking horror that someone was sitting beside her in the passenger seat.

  —

  CHAPTER 6

  “Good to see you, Wade! It’s good to have you back!”

  “Wha—” Wade said. A waxlike, idiot grin opposed him as he stepped through the vestibule. The lobby was dismal with cluttered dark and geometric edges of tile shine. Standing thinly before him was Dean Saltenstall.

  “It’s a pleasure to be back, sir,” Wade, said, you back stabbing two faced grinning fruitbar.

  The dean offered his hand, which Wade shook with some reluctance.

  “Affluence is no excuse for one to become separated from the real working world. Isn’t that what life’s all about? Honest work?”

  What do you know about honest work, you blue blood hypocritical fuck? “I couldn’t agree more, sir.”

  “Good, good! Then let’s go.” The dean’s grin never faltered. “We start at the bottom and we work our way up, right, Wade?”

  Wade didn’t know what the old crank was talking about, but he suspected that the reference to starting at the bottom might have something to do with cleaning toilets for minimum wage. They moved briskly down dim halls which smelled of floor wax. Their heels clapped on shiny tile. Wade followed the dean’s back, wishing for a slingshot.

  “I’m quite proud of our lab facilities.” The dean looked like a sapling in a pinstripe suit. Preposterously overstyled grayish hair made his tight tanned face appear fake, like bad cosmetic surgery. “And I’m equally proud of our maintenance staff.” He stopped at the door. The door read “Janitorial.”

  And the dean was beginning to snicker.

  “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

  “Of course,” the dean said.

  Wade fumbled. “Why?”

  “Why else? To teach you a lesson. You’re a rich, pompous hooligan who’s been breaking my ass for six years. But now, finally, I get to return the favor. Justice is so sweet.”

  “So that’s the game,” Wade concluded.

  “Indeed it is, so I’d walk softly from here on. Your father is at his final limit—your future is in my hands now. One more mistake, Wade, just one more, and your father will disown you.”

  This Wade knew to be fact. He was in a minefield now.

  The dean’s grin turned evil, his true colors. “I’m your lord and master from here on, Wade, and don’t you forget it. The rules are simple. You will work this job to the full satisfaction of the department, and you will carry out your duties as prescribed by your immediate supervisor without hesitation and without argument. Otherwise, you will be fired, and it will be my personal pleasure to see that your father is promptly notified.”

  The dean had him now, and Wade knew it. If he got fired, he’d be cut off for good. But at least it couldn’t get any worse.

  Or could it?

  “Did you say something about a supervisor?”

  “Indeed I did,” the dean replied. “And here he is now.”

  A door clicked shut. A shadow crossed the room—huge, wide as a beer barrel. “Good to see you, Wade. Good to have you back.”

  “No,” Wade mutt
ered. “Not you. Anyone but—”

  Professor Besser came forward. He seemed to be limping a bit. The plump, slyly smiling face and trimmed goatee made him look like the devil on his way to the fat farm. “I can’t tell you how enthused I am to be supervising you in your new…position.”

  The dean handed Wade rubber gloves, a smock, and a toilet brush. “Tools of the trade, my boy.”

  “It’s fun work, Wade.” Besser smiled. “As you’ll soon see.”

  Wade took the “tools.” Then the dean turned to Besser and said, “I’m afraid there’s been a mishap on the second floor. It seems an entire bank of toilets became…clogged simultaneously, and they overflowed. Ghastly mess, and quite malodorous.”

  “I’m sure Wade will be pleased to take care of it.”

  “And remember,” the dean added, “honest work, Wade.” Then he threw his head back and laughed, disappearing down the hall.

  “No time like the present, eh?” Besser said. “You will clean every toilet in this building, every day, and you will also mop every bathroom floor and scour every sink. And you know what they say, don’t you? A job not done right isn’t worth doing at all.”

  “Oh, is that what they say?” Wade remarked. One day I’ll clean these toilets with your fat face. Now, that’s worth doing.

  “I’ll be in my office should you need me. Have fun, Wade.”

  Wade simmered. But as Besser turned to leave, Wade noticed something. Did Besser have a pendant around his neck? It looked like a black amulet on a black string. It looked like a cross.

  But Besser was an atheist, like all college professors. Why wear a cross?

  “Professor? Is that a cross you’re wearing?”

  Besser didn’t answer. Instead he looked back with an unfocused gleam in his eye. Even more peculiar was what he said next. “Great things may await you, Wade. The most wondrous things.”

  “Huh?”

  Almost dreamily, Besser walked away. And that was odd too. He strode off in a quickened limp, like a man, perhaps, who’d been recently shot in the buttocks.

  ««—»»

  The compound gate hung open, uncordoned. Some crime scene, Lydia Prentiss thought. Two more cruisers sat out front, both with keys in the ignitions. She grabbed her field kits and went in.

  Field forensic experience was part of what she’d been hired for. Equal opportunity was the other part, which irked her because she knew she was the best cop in the department. The others seemed pressed from the same mold—redneck, bigoted, and barely anthropoid when it came to intelligence. Everyone spoke in thick southern drawls, and everyone was lazy—though she supposed this judgment, like all of them, was of her own prejudice. She took things too seriously, she’d been told for her whole life. Her college career counselor had told her she was a hypercritical Type-A personality. Her watch commander at D.C. had told her she was an insubordinate smart ass. These vain faults had always haunted her, had made college very lonely, had kept her from making friends, and had pushed her out of D.C. Not fired, really, just urged to “move on.” She’d even been in love once—just once—and had ruined that too. She’d ruined everything for herself.

  Stop. Why think of these things now?

  Chief White didn’t like her, but at least he respected her. The other officers were morons who only wanted to get into her pants. They all regarded her as a blond curio, not a cop.

  She found Chief White and Sergeant Peerce in the compound office. “What the hell’s going on?” she asked. “The dispatcher calls me and says to get down here with my field gear but doesn’t say why.”

  “That so?” White kicked back in the chair. “Guess that means my dispatch is incompetent, right? Like everyone else in this department, right? Except you…right?”

  Off to a great start, Lydia thought. “Chief, I only meant—”

  “You meant that we’re just a bunch of hick cops who don’t know nothin’ compared to slick city sharpies like you.”

  Peerce laughed. Lydia frowned.

  Chief White must’ve been about fifty, with short American Legion gray hair and a potbelly. Peerce was a big South Georgia stupe: redneck sneer, Elvis sideburns, and slicked back hair.

  “We gotta missing security guard,” White told her, rubbing his temples. “Old rummy named Sladder. We also got evidence a female student was out here with him last night. And that’s just starters.”

  “There was a power failure,” Peerce added. “Last anyone heard from Sladder was when he called it in to Physical Plant and the power company. Only sign of the old fucker is his wallet.”

  “His wallet?”

  “That’s right. Old fucker musta dropped it. We also found a purse,” White said, pointing to a slim purse on the desk. “Belongs to a student, Penelope somethin’, lives over in Lillian Hall. I got Porker out lookin’ for her. Peerce already been over the stables, but I want you to have a look too, judgin’ the seriousness of the situation.”

  “Seriousness? A wallet and purse? What’s the big deal?”

  White’s snide grin vanished. “Show her the big deal, Peerce.

  Peerce took her out, not offering to help carry the field kits. Most of the stables were open faced. She noticed some animals in the field, dead. Their heads all seemed to point toward the woods. From the first stable she heard the buzzing. Then she saw.

  Peerce led her from building to building, from bad to worse. Though the animals were token in number, they were all dead. Lydia had seen her share of 81s in D.C.; she was used to viewing dead men. But this was queerly different. Cows and pigs had always struck her as harmless, even comical. Here they were grotesque, swollen masses of meat. The buzzing, of course, came from blankets of flies, oblivious in their feast.

  Poisoned, she concluded. But why? And what did they want her to do? Take latent hoof prints? She was an evidence tech, not a toxicologist.

  “In here,” Peerce said. Was he amused by her uneasiness? He took her into the horse stable, where each stall housed a dead, gas bloated horse. Channels of white foam lay in their opened mouths, and their faces moved—masks of flies shifting grainily like an optical illusion. Lydia switched on her Streamlight. Clots of flies filled the horses’ eye sockets. Maggots shimmered.

  “Serious enough for ya?” Peerce commented.

  Asshole. She gulped. “How well did you look over these stables?”

  “Like a fine tooth comb. Found nothin’.”

  “Nothing? There’s blood on the floor, Peerce.”

  “What blood? I don’t see no blood.”

  “Bend over and look down, Sherlock.” She pointed to the darkened streaks along the run. “What do you call that? Cherry smash?”

  Peerce lost his southern snideness. “Thought it was horsepiss.”

  “Yeah, horsepiss. Look out, and watch where you walk!” She followed the blood line with her SL beam. It ended at some larger splashes by a utility stall. A spatter of “fall” dotted the wall in an arch; what she knew about bloodfall trajectory told her the victim must’ve been moving away, not forward. Drop-configuration like this was rare. The large bleed at her feet bothered her most of all. A bleed this big in conjunction with this fall pattern indicated an excruciating wound. At D.C. they’d once walked into a basement where two crack taxis had been murdered. They’d found the men in a pile of neatly stacked pieces. Axes had been used.

  Her eyes followed another line up. The halfboard on the stall had a gouge in it, what a tech would call strike impactation. More blood stained the gouge. Shit, she thought. Had the victim been reaching for the pitchforks in the stall? Yes. It’s too perfect. She peered over and looked down. More blood.

  The impactation looked good, a good strike. She’d need no toolmarks workup to tell her this was an ax, and a big one. A big blade with an unusually flat cutting edge. But there had to be more.

  Follow back, she thought. “Look at the fall.”

  “Huh?”

  “The bloodfall. The drop points change direction here, a 180 degree shift
. They don’t lead forward, they lead back.”

  Peerce didn’t know what she was talking about. Lydia followed the line. “Jesus,” Peerce observed. “Fucker lost a lot of blood.”

  “Don’t walk in it!” Lydia yelled. “Look, Peerce, this place is too small for both of us. Do me a favor and—”

  Peerce didn’t need to be told. He sputtered and went back to the office, bitterly chewing a wad of tobacco.

  Now we’re in business. She aimed the SL back on the blood. It went about fifteen feet to the stable charge’s office. The phone hung off the hook. A larger splash had coagulated on the floor. Lydia crouched down, thinking. She closed her eyes and tried to see the victim. Despite the wound, he’d made it back here.

  Why? To use the phone.

  What then? He hadn’t died here. Not enough blood.

  So he left. He’d dressed his wound and he’d left.

  Now where? Where would I go if I’d just been severely cut by an ax wielding maniac near the stable entrance?

  The stable exit, dumb ass.

  But what about the attacker, the axman? He’d still be in the aisle. Cut this bad, did the victim actually have the balls to go back out and fight?

  Weapons.

  Maybe he was strapped. If the victim was Sladder, maybe he had a gun. Some guards carried them, some didn’t. The security office would know; they had sign out sheets. The suspicion needled her.

  She went back out, imagining herself in great pain. She fixed her SL beam, and there they were, like gold ingots at the baseboard. Bingo! she thought. There were six of them. .25s, maybe .32s. He popped six caps at the axman. Okay, okay. What then?

  Escape.

  She followed away from the empty cartridges. Where did he go now? She pictured a frantic, bleeding man stumbling along. Come on, come on. Show me.

  The last swing door before the exit. Bingo! she thought again, but it was a pale thought. She’d been rooting for the bleeding man, for nothing. This was as far as he’d gotten.