"Please," Clifford said, and, "Oh, G.o.d-"
"Don"t start that again. Unless you want to look like our friend here, you"d better shut up until I tell you different."
I gave the iron box a little shake as punctuation, and Whistler"s head seemed to nod in agreement. Rakes retreated to the far corner of the gutted bed, gasping like a hyena on nitrous oxide.
I didn"t care. I wasn"t going to cut him a bit of slack. He"d compared me to Charles Manson. He"d accused me of bedwetting and animal mutilation. And he"d done it on national television.
"Please," he said, one more time, and I came around the bed and hit him hard with the pommel of the knife.
"I told you to shut up." I dropped Whistler"s head on the night table. "It won"t do you any good to talk to me, anyway. You said so yourself-there"s no reasoning with a sociopathic religious avenger. That was the profile, right? You can"t talk sense to a human juggernaut. You can"t cut a deal with Charlie Manson."
Clifford"s lips quivered. He opened his mouth. He couldn"t help himself. He wanted to try.
"No, Clifford," I warned. "I make the deals. You go along with them, or else I"ll use the other end of my knife. I"ll add your head to my trophy case. I"ve always got room for another Philistine journalist, you know."
That did it. A sour stench rose from the waterbed as fear emptied Clifford"s bladder and bowels. He pursed his lips tightly, his face flushed with embarra.s.sment, and didn"t say a word.
"You"ve got to calm down now," I said. "I mean, really. What would Barbara Cartland say if she saw you like this?"
He gasped. "How do you know about that?"
"I did a little profiling of my own, Clifford."
I tossed his wallet at him, and recognition flared in his eyes. "You"re the guy from the pay phone-"
"Now you know me."
Clifford stared at me for a long moment. He"d screamed and carried on. He"d even s.h.i.t himself, but now he was getting a little bit of a handle on the situation. The wheels were turning upstairs. After all, he was starting to think of money. If he looked at it right, a situation like this could mean a cash bonanza. Crime writer faces down serial killer...like that. He"d be set for several weeks on Geraldo, if nothing else.
"But why come here," he asked. "Why-"
"No, Clifford. It"s my turn to ask the questions. I only have one for you, really. For your sake, I hope you can answer it. Do you want to try?"
He nodded.
"Good." I lifted Whistler"s head off the night table and stared at it. "I got to thinking about what you said on television. About trophies...and completion."
Clifford nodded some more. h.e.l.l, he hadn"t stopped nodding.
"I"ve decided that you"re right," I went on. "About completion, I mean."
"You did?"
"Yes. Whistler"s head isn"t enough. I won"t be happy until I have the full set. That"s why I want you to tell me where they"re keeping the old man"s body."
Clifford sighed in relief. This was obviously a question he could answer. "None of the local mortuaries would handle it," he blurted. "Their reputations, you know. They thought that they"d lose business and-"
"Don"t give me the MacNeil-Lehrer version. Keep it short, like Headline News."
Now I was speaking his language. "Okay," Clifford said. "There"s a guy south of here in a little town called Owl"s Roost. Whistler"s people really twisted his arm, and he took the job. He told a stringer for the Enquirer that he was going to hit them for a good chunk of change and-"
"How far is Owl"s Roost?"
"About thirty miles south. Maybe thirty-five."
"Good boy." I smiled. "Now, there"s just one other thing we need to talk about."
"What"s that?"
"I don"t like the things you"ve been saying about me, Clifford. It"s as simple as that. You hurt my feelings. I think you need to develop a lower profile."
"W-what do you mean?"
"Just this-if I ever see your face on television again, I"ll find you, and I"ll kill you."
"You can"t be serious-"
"I"m dead serious. Remember that, Clifford."
I hit him again, and this time he went out like a light.
He splashed down in the gutted bed. Water poured from the frame. The carpet was already a soggy mess. Soon the bed would be empty, and the floor would be a swamp.
I stood over Clifford. Killing him would be easy.
If I hurried, I could drown him in the gashed mattress...or I could simply cut his throat.
But if I did that, Clifford Rakes might come back to haunt me.
Literally.
It wasn"t much of a decision. I tied him up instead.
2.
Through midnight drizzle, I pushed Janice"s Explorer for all it was worth. The coastal roads were narrow and wet, and when I came to the inevitable landslide I punched the gas pedal and tore past a knot of traffic and a shivering highway patrolman who was flagging for a late-night road crew.
If the cop tried to follow me I never knew about it. As it was, I didn"t care about anything in the rearview mirror. What I wanted lay ahead of me, and anyone who tried to keep me from it was going to end up dead.
I was buckled in tight. Diabolos Whistler wasn"t-the Explorer"s seatbelts weren"t designed for severed heads. Whistler"s mortal remains bounced around in the padlocked iron box as I tore over potholes and hugged hairpin curves, but the old man didn"t seem to care.
"Still dead and quiet as an empty grave," I said. "That"s the way I like you best."
And that was the way he was going to stay, if I"d read the situation correctly.
Owl"s Roost Road came up without warning, and I nearly spun out trying to make the turn. But make it I did, with a quick footwork duet on the brake and the gas that sent Whistler"s iron prison tumbling to the floor, and when I was on the road and racing into the dark redwoods beyond I stuck to the gas.
Whistler"s teeth clacked against the iron bars as I took curves too wide and too fast, but caution wasn"t in my vocabulary. Speed was. Because speed was what I needed. I had no idea when Circe had scheduled her father"s funeral, or where she might take his remains for burial. h.e.l.l, maybe the b.i.t.c.h was planning on cremating the old man"s body, just to be on the safe side. Whatever her plan, I was sure she"d carry it out as soon as possible. No matter what she believed or didn"t believe, Circe wasn"t the kind to leave loose ends untied. The way I saw it, Whistler"s body would be on the road and traveling fast as soon as the undertaker did whatever undertakers do to headless corpses.
A sign flashed by on my right: ENTERING OWL"S ROOST PLEASE DRIVE SAFELY.
I did the former but ignored the latter, pa.s.sing a post office and a mini-mall, a couple of sad bed-and-breakfasts, and a burger joint nearly hidden by a trio of logging trucks.
Another quarter mile and I hit the outskirts of town. Another sign on the right informed me that I was leaving Owl"s Roost and should continue to drive safely.
Next came a sign for the Owl"s Roost Mortuary. I turned down the gravel drive, my headlights washing a Cadillac hea.r.s.e that waited near the front entrance.
An elderly man stood near the rear door of the hea.r.s.e. It was open, as was the door to the mortuary. Bright light spilled from the interior of the building, back-lighting four pallbearers as they carried a coffin through the stained gla.s.s doors.
I couldn"t see the pallbearer"s faces, of course. But I saw their silhouettes.
One in particular.
A silhouette that was at least seven feet tall.
Spider Ripley, carrying Diabolos Whistler"s coffin. As far as I was concerned, that coffin was mine. No one was going to take it, and pray over it, and bury it in the ground.
It was mine, and I meant to have it.
I stomped the gas pedal to the floor.
Rocketing forward, the Explorer kicked up a gravel hailstorm.
The seven-footer was the first to rabbit. He dropped his corner of the coffin, and his three companions were stupid enough to try to compensate. They tottered under the load as I crossed the parking lot, and the guy in back lost it and jumped clear just in time, and the two in front looked up just as my b.u.mper fractured their kneecaps.
One went under the tires and the other went over the hood, splintering the windshield with his head as the Ford rammed Whistler"s coffin. Whistler"s severed head slammed against the bars of its iron cage on impact, and then the big metal box that held the rest of him shot forward like a silver bullet through the open mortuary doors, scything carpet as red as sacramental wine as it went.
Ten feet ahead of the coffin and running hard, Spider Ripley glanced over his shoulder. He didn"t know what to do. The corridor was only twenty feet long and the stained gla.s.s doors at the other end were closed, and the coffin was coming and I was coming behind it, and both were coming fast.
But the coffin was in the lead. It clipped Ripley"s right ankle and he went down hard against the lid, twisting as he fell, his eyes trained on my headlights as he landed on his belly. He held onto the big metal box for dear life, grabbing the handles, riding the coffin as it skidded across burgundy carpet and smashed through the stained gla.s.s doors.
The doors exploded in a hail of flying gla.s.s-a rainbow smashed with a hammer-but the coffin didn"t stop.
Neither did I. The Explorer ripped through the entranceway, splintering wood molding and kicking the oak doors to the side. The doors slapped against the walls with a sound like thunder and stained gla.s.s blood spit from a dozen little vertical windows that looked like bleeding gashes.
Gashes like those on the face of Spider Ripley. He stared at me as the coffin continued its wild ride into a chapel beyond the hallway. Roses and lilies eclipsed Spider Ripley as Whistler"s coffin crashed through a floral display and into a platform that held another casket.
Which tumbled into the bed of flowers, spilling a corpse on top of Spider Ripley.
A fat woman that pinned him to the chapel floor.
My left foot mashed the brakes as Spider wrestled with the corpse. Roses and lilies spilled off him as he sat up. He stared at me as I stepped out of the Explorer, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fear.
I pulled one of the .45s as a shot rang out behind me.
The bullet skinned my left forearm.
Sharp pain jolted me and I dropped the gun.
Before it hit the ground I"d pulled my other pistol. I whirled with it, firing, and the bullets caught the last pallbearer in the belly. He went down screaming and rolled around on the ground, his blood the same shade of burgundy as the carpet.
His screams were horrible. Only death would stop them, but I hoped the pallbearer wouldn"t die. The others, too, the ones I"d hit with the Explorer. I wanted them to live. Not out of mercy. It was just that I didn"t want to hear their ghostly screams.
Those kinds of screams never stopped.
I advanced on Spider Ripley. He tried to rise from his flowery nest but his ankle was broken, so he writhed there like a wounded bug among the flowers.
I could finish him now, but something kept me from doing it. Spider scrambled away from me, crawling backwards until his elbow sank into the fat corpse"s belly. A little deathgasp parted the woman"s prim lips, and the scarred bodyguard grunted in surprise, and I laughed.
Just a dead husk, but she had scared a big scuttling Spider.
Scared him so badly that he couldn"t move another inch.
I said, "If you"ve got a gun, get rid of it."
Ripley looked at me like he didn"t quite understand. He didn"t say a word. He just sat there and bled. If his buddy hadn"t been screaming so loud, I might have heard Spider"s blood pattering against the dead woman"s corpse.
I pointed my pistol at his face. I was about to let it speak for me when Spider"s hand slipped under his latex coat and came out with a .45, gripped gingerly by the b.u.t.t like it was something that might bite him.
I took the gun away from him and tossed it behind me. It clattered among the pews and was lost in the shadows.
"What now?" Spider asked.
I stared at Circe"s bodyguard. His shirt was torn open, and it was plain to see that he was still covering all the bases. As before, a crucifix eclipsed the scarred ankh on his chest.
The silver gleamed in the Explorer"s headlights. I noticed that the upper part of the vertical bar was worn, notched like a key.
I reached for Spider"s throat.
He closed his eyes.
My fingers closed on the rawhide chain, and I tore the crucifix from around his neck.
The pallbearer died. The one I"d shot. His corpse coughed up an oily shade that slipped between his lips and pooled on the carpet with his blood.
Just for a second. And then it slipped through a tear in the carpet and was gone.
I walked down the hall, my boots crunching over stained gla.s.s shards as I returned to the Explorer.
In the doorway-now somewhat bigger than it had been a few minutes before-stood the man who had opened the hea.r.s.e for the pallbearers. Black suit, white hair and neatly trimmed whiskers, and a professionally stern expression that rivaled Diabolos Whistler"s. He was obviously the undertaker.