Coven (33 page)

Wade was shit scared. He
expected—something. So it almost shocked him when he turned on the
lights and found himself standing in a perfectly normal
bedroom.

Then he opened the door to the
not-so normal closet.

One glimpse was all it took: the dean’s
crumpled corpse acrawl with flies, the enormous wash of blood on
the clean white walls. All that blood was too much to view at once.
Wade didn’t even notice what exactly had been done to the dean. He
didn’t need to. This was a butcher’s jubal, party-time for a
maniac. Blood was a sacred substance, the Eucharist of life. Here,
though, in the dim closet, it had been spilled for the sheer sport
of it. For fun.

Wade ran. He pounded down the steps and tore
out of the house, and he didn’t stop running until his legs could
bear no more of it, his energy ejaculated as a spurt of the basest
fears. The night swept him into its velvet black caress, and
Wade, brain numb now and exhausted, was left to stumble with
feet of lead back to the beginning…

—

CHAPTER 28

M
urder,
he thought.
Blood.

Wade couldn’t stop thinking about it,
couldn’t stop seeing it in his mind. There’d been so much
blood.

Through the dead, empty night, he drifted
more than walked. The campus lay silent behind him, strangely still
and very black. Insentient, he made his way along trails once
familiar but now forgotten, past buildings and halls dark and blank
as gravestones.

The sky seemed depthless, a slate void.
Phantom reefs of clouds roved past a darkled moon. Far and away,
the chapel bell tolled, signaling 4 A.M. The monotonous, dull peals
incited him, chipped cracks into his shock. Then he saw the lighted
sign: “Campus Police.”

Wade stepped in unnoticed. Leaving the hot
night and its murder behind him was like stepping into
paradise…

Porker was eating
microwaved cheese dogs at the booking desk. He was eating them with
his fingers, without rolls. Sergeant Peerce sat at his own desk,
intent on a magazine called
Babes with Big
Boobs.

“
The dean is dead,” Wade
announced.

Porker’s immense face
floated up.
Babes with Big Boobs
lowered to the desk, unveiling Peerce’s typical
hillbilly smirk.

“
You heard me,” Wade said.
“The dean’s dead. Murdered.”

“
Probably dumped his fancy
car in a ditch,” Porker surmised, “and wants us to tow it out for
him.”

“
Just another
daddy rich smart ass,” Peerce added.

Wade could not believe this
response to his announcement. “Are you guys deaf? I just got done
telling you the dean
is dead!”

“
You mean Dean
Saltenstall?” Porker inquired.

Wade slumped. “No,
Dean
Dick.
Is
there any other dean on this campus, you fat jughead? He’s been
murdered.”

Peerce and Porker stood up at the same time.
They looked at each other. Then they looked at Wade.

“
Just like that, huh?”
Peerce asked. “The dean’s been murdered?”

“
Yes! You understand
English! Praise God!”

“
And just how did he come
to be murdered, boy?”

“
Well, I don’t actually
know,” Wade admitted. “But—”

“
Ya hear that, Porker? He
don’t really know.”

“
What difference does it
make, you brickhead? I saw him in the closet! and I saw the…I saw
the…blood.”

Peerce and Porker chuckled. “St. John,”
Peerce said. “This is just another one of your practical
jokes.”

“
You must think we’re
pretty dumb,” Porker added.

Dumb?
Wade thought.
Naw.

“
We been bustin’ our tails
all night. We got one missing security guard and two dormitory
break ins. We ain’t got time for your practical
jokes.”

“
Look,” Wade said. “All
that stuff you just said—missing persons, break ins—it’s all
part of this. A lot of crazy shit has gone on tonight, and it all
starts in the dean’s closet.”

Chewing cheese dogs, Porker inquired, “What
would the dean be doing in a closet at four in the morning?”

“
Getting murdered,” Wade
answered. “Don’t believe me? Go check.”

Peerce made a contemplating face. He got the
dean’s number out of White’s directory. He paused. Then he dialed
the number.

“
You’re wasting your time,”
Wade declared. “He won’t answer.”

Peerce listened and waited, tapping his
foot. He waited some more and hung up. “He didn’t answer.”

“
Of course he didn’t
answer, you crawfish for brains Cajun moron! How can a
dead man answer a fucking telephone?”

Then Porker said, “It can’t hurt to take a
look, Sarge.”

“
Shee-it,” Peerce agreed.
“All right, punk. Lead the way.”

Wade felt a shimmy of panic. “Not me,
fellas. You guys go, I’ll wait here. But before you go, you have to
lock me up,” He pointed to the station’s jail cell. “In there.”

“
Why?”

“
For my
protection.”

“
Protection from
what?”

Wade gulped. “From
them.”

Peerce squinted.
“Who’s
them?”

“
Look, Sarge, just pacify
me, okay? Lock me up and go check.”

“
We can’t lock you up,”
Porker informed him. “There’s no probable cause to believe you’re
in danger.”

“
But I’m telling you I
am!”

“
We cain’t lock you up
unless you commit a crime,” Peerce said. “And unfortunately, bein’
an asshole is not a crime.”

Wade was getting desperate. “In other words,
you won’t lock me up in that cell unless I commit a crime?”

“
That’s right,
boy.”

Crime,
Wade contemplated.
Okay.
With impressive reflexes, he kicked Porker square
in the belly as hard as he could. Porker bent over, howling like a
gelded walrus.

“
There,” Wade said. “Is
that crime enough?”

Peerce, snarling, jammed the butt of a
nineteen ounce blackjack into Wade’s solar plexus. Wade folded
up, bug eyed. He was then thrown into the cell. For good
measure, Peerce rapped Wade another one—between the legs, this
time—and locked the cell door.

“
Thank you, Sarge. And my
future children thank you too.”

Peerce’s eyes blazed through the bars. “This
is the end for you, St. John. We’re gonna check out this
harebrained story of yours, and then we’re gonna come back here and
kick your ass so bad you’ll shit shoe polish for a week. Assaultin’
a police officer will get you kicked off this here campus
forever.”

“
I hear you, Sarge. Just go
to the dean’s. Check it out.”

Peerce called White and told him to meet
them at the dean’s mansion. Then he left, followed by Porker, who
limped along cradling his elephantine belly.

In spite of his pain, Wade smiled.

Go ahead, super cops. Check it out.

««—»»

A half hour later keys rattled in the
station door. Peerce, Porker, and Chief White tottered in, their
faces drained.

Wade leapt up. “Well?”

“
The dean is dead,” Peerce
iterated.

“
I told you so.”

Sweat glazed Porker’s pasty white face. “The
closet,” he mumbled. “The dean—” Then he staggered to the john, to
vomit. “Poor bastard never could stand the sight of blood,” Peerce
said.

The memory blared
back.
Blood,
Wade
thought.
So much blood.

Chief White’s beshocked eyes looked like big
flat coins. “It was pulled off,” he said.

“
What?” Wade
asked.

“
The dean’s head. It was
pulled off.” White steadied himself, flinching. “Not cut off or
chopped off. Not sawed or blowed off. I mean somebody grabbed onto
that man’s head and
pulled
on it till it
came
off
.”

“
They’re a rough bunch,
Chief.” But that was only the tip of the iceberg; there was much
more to tell, but Wade dared not. These hayseeds would only swallow
so much at a time.

Peerce stared cross eyed straight
ahead. “Took his wagger off too.”

“
His
what?”

“
His wagger. You know, his
meat, his homeboy.”

Wade frowned. “You mean
his
dick?”

“
Pulled it clean off, just
like his head. Who the hell would wanna run off with a man’s head
an’ homeboy?”

“
Psychopaths, that’s who,”
Wade said, to put it mildly. “Now that you’ve seen the goods, let’s
get out of here.”

“
Think again,” Chief White
said. He sat down and looked at him. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere till
we have some answers.”

Panic rose in Wade’s guts
like bubbles. “We’ve got to get off this campus right now, Chief!
They’re coming for me! They’ll come here and pull
our
homeboys
off!”

Peerce popped a chaw of Red Man. “He knows
plenty more than he’s tellin’, Chief. That’s for damn sure.”

I’m a
had daddy,
Wade realized. The safety
of the cell now condemned him. Porker was still vomiting in the
john, cutting loose deep, tubalike
eeerps.
Peerce edgily spat brown
juice into a paper cup. Chief White just stared, arms
crossed.

“
What were you doin’ at the
dean’s at this hour, boy?”

“
I—”
Shit,
Wade thought. “I saw the
murderer leaving the scene.”

“
Oh, you
saw
the murderer? You
mind enlightenin’ us?”

Wade swallowed, thinking of the blood. “It
was Jervis Phillips.”

White and Peerce joined in
low laughter. “Jervis Phillips ain’t nothin’ but an egg suck
drunk. You spect us to believe he pulled the dean’s head off and
painted the fuckin’ closet with his blood?
Jervis Phillips?”

“
I don’t care what you
believe. I saw him driving out of that area,” Wade unconvincingly
explained.

White was rubbing his hands together. He was
losing control of his town, and he was desperate. He needed a
candidate for scapegoat, and Wade could guess the nominee.

“
I can’t tell you
everything, Chief,” Wade admitted. “If I told you everything, you’d
think I was crazy.”

“
We already think you’re
crazy.” Peerce said.

“
A crazy
murderer,
”
White added.

But if they saw the grove, the mutated
woods, and the women… Wade could think of no other way to convince
them. “Take me to the grove,” he said, “and I’ll show you the
rest.”

“
What grove?” Porker asked,
finally emerging from the john. “What the hell are you talking
about?”

“
Trust me. I’ll take you
there right now.”

White was still glaring at him. “Bring him
out.”

Now we’re getting
somewhere,
Wade thought, but only until
Peerce released him from the cell and hand-cuffed him to White’s
chair.

“
This is what we call
interrogation,” Chief White said.

“
I’ve got a better name for
it,” Wade told them. “Deprivation of constitutional
rights.”

From a locker, White retrieved an
eighteen inch Nova shock baton. It could deliver several
one second 50,000 volt bursts, which disrupted the
victim’s muscle impulses and caused temporary paralysis. It also
caused great temporary pain. Shock batons were illegal now, but
Wade could see that this judicial fact would do him little good.
They were going to torture him.

“
Would it be too much
trouble to ask for a lawyer?”

White, Peerce, and Porker all laughed out
loud.

The baton hummed when White turned it on.
“Now, this thing will shock you right through your clothes. A
couple of hits and you’ll think you stepped on the third rail of
the subway. Are you gonna talk, or do I go to work on ya?”

“
This is America!” Wade
shouted. “You can’t torture people!”

White, Peerce, and Porker laughed out loud
again, harder.

“
I don’t want to hear no
shit about Jervis Phillips, and I don’t want to hear about no
groves. Tell me the truth, St. John. Why did you murder Dean
Saltenstall?”

“
I didn’t murder the
fucking dean!” Wade bellowed. “It was Jervis Phillips and those
women in black!”

White pushed the baton into the soft of
Wade’s crotch. The discharge head fit nice and snug. White’s finger
wavered over the button, then began to lower.

“
Excuse me,” a frail voice
rose behind them.

White, Peerce, and Porker jerked upright and
turned. White hid the baton behind his back.

A sheepish, long haired girl in a
nightgown stood wanly in the doorway. “My name is Nina McCulloch,”
she said in a voice almost too soft to be heard.

“
So what!” White
snapped.

“
I just saw my roommate and
her friends get murdered.”