Growth (16 page)

There was a car behind him. The driver hit the horn again. Jerm eased around the front of the car, guiding himself along the hood and up the windshield with his left hand. The cranky fat broad inside was squawking something at him, but he shut her down with the handgun. This time, he distinctly saw blood, bone, and brains, explode across the front seat.

It made him feel even better.

He kept walking. And when the first cop car came screeching to a stop, siren wailing, lights spinning, Jerm just smiled and raised his gun. The first time he squeezed the trigger, the driver's door window exploded and the cop inside fell back against the seat. Jerm walked right up through the broken glass and pointed the barrel at the cop's head and squeezed the trigger a second time.

Another burst of bone and blood. All over the steering wheel.

More sirens. Coming from all directions. Fucking pigs. His hands popped open the cylinder, moving all on their own, and plucked out the empty shells. He dug into his pockets and pulled out a handful of loose cartridges, all from the boxes his daddy had left. Most of the shells were either too loose or didn't fit at all. He found five that fit well enough to slide into the chambers, snug and secure, as if they were destined to be fired from the gun. Jerm waited until he could see at least three county troopers roaring up the street right at him before he stepped forward and blasted away.

The cop cars scattered, breaking away from the street and plowing into front lawns. Jerm kept right on tracking the cruisers, squeezing off empties, lost in a series of dry clicks. The effort of standing out in the full sunlight eventually took its toll, and he let his head and the gun drop. He bent over, breathing deeply, as if he'd just sprinted down a football field. He noticed the shadows inside the dead trooper's vehicle and crawled over the corpse, shutting the door behind him.

He slid headfirst into the shadow of the floor of the passenger seat, curling up into a ball, knees up around his ears, arms wrapped tight around his shins, locked around each elbow. Once in tight under the dashboard, head wedged between the seat and the door, feet jammed against the upright .12 gauge, he did not move again.

Jerm exhaled one last time, and his already dim consciousness faded and blinked out.

His flesh did not relinquish the hold on itself.

Sheriff Hoyt signaled to his men to run forward and surround Bryan's cruiser. Poor bastard. Twenty-one years on the force. Three, four years until a solid pension. Then shot in the head by some underage punk. It was a goddamn waste.

He waited until they got closer before he took off in a crouch from his own vehicle and slid behind the passenger rear panel on his knees. He took a second to gather himself and said, “Go. Unload on that fucker.”

Three other county troopers rose and squeezed off a dozen shots apiece, blasting out the windows and unleashing a firestorm of lead tornados inside the car.

Two bullets caught Jerm in the chest. One went through his head.

A soft summer breeze gently dissipated the blue smoke.

Somebody shouted, “Clear!” and everybody crowded around and got their first good look at Jerm. They saw the blood and bullet holes and Sheriff Hoyt called the time of death. He pulled the nearest trooper over and told the man to get Mike Castle on the phone. Castle was the only doctor in Parker's Mill, and served as the town coroner and pathologist if Chirchirillo was busy.

“Tell him I want him here immediately.” Dr. Castle was a little too friendly with Chief Chisel for Sheriff's Hoyt's liking, but he didn't have a choice. “We got ourselves a boatload of national press in town for the goddamn funeral or whatever it is, and they're gonna be on this like flies on shit. You make sure Mike understands we need this fucker in the freezer. They figure out a kid did the shooting, and they're gonna start asking questions.” Sheriff Hoyt pitched his voice higher, pretending to be a reporter. “‘Why's he so young? What went wrong? Oh, it's such a tragedy.' That bullshit never helps anybody. Let's get his ass out of the equation. Let 'em speculate.”

The trooper nodded and went off to call Castle.

Sheriff Hoyt pulled two more troopers over. The street was starting to get crowded with more cruisers, an ambulance, and even that dipshit Deputy Hendricks. At least the goddamn bitch chief wasn't here yet. “You,” he pointed at a young trooper. “Get in touch with Chirchirillo. He's in court today, but you get him on the horn. We need somebody on our side to take care of the victims, and the Church is a good man. He'll listen to reason, make sure things get painted the way we want 'em.”

Sheriff Hoyt told the second trooper to round up anybody that was left, including that dumbass Hendricks, and seal off the area. “This is a goddamn crime scene. The last thing we need is the press running wild through here, waving their cameras and microphones at anything that moves.”

Sheriff Hoyt stuck his head through one of the shattered windows into the sweltering heat of the county police car and shook his head. He spotted the shooter's handgun, a nickel-plated Model 686 Smith & Wesson, down along Trooper Bryan's feet. Something about it seemed awfully familiar, like he should know the gun for some reason. The connection held promise, but he couldn't grasp it, and the image was gone. He filed it away to think about later and focused on the immediate problem. His men were busy with their own assignments, on the phone, or waving off reporters and a few curious townspeople.

And that left Sheriff Hoyt to follow the trail of bodies.

He had a gut feeling where the kid had come from, and started heading south. A block away, he found what was left of Mrs. Perkins. She had been a cranky old bitch, and probably would have been dead in a year or so of a heart attack because of her weight, but it was still a damn shame to go out with your blood dripping from the dashboard. From her car, Sheriff Hoyt could see the body of the trailer park landlord floating facedown in the retention pond, and it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where the kid lived.

He headed down the narrow center street, passing empty trailer after empty trailer. When he saw the body of the large woman sprawled out next to the warped wooden stairs, he wasn't surprised. He should have known that this particular trailer had someone living there, because it looked so much worse than the rest of the trailers. He stopped, tilted his head like an old dog, and recognized the woman from her bleached blond hair.

Miss Ellie May Higgins. Again, it wasn't a surprise.

Back in the nineties Ellie May was the hottest thing in the county and had the time of her life raising hell. Now she was in her mid thirties, mother of two, maybe three, creeping up on two hundred pounds, and living on frozen cheeseburgers, pot, and TV. She was just one of these people that, for whatever reason, you knew damn well they wouldn't be collecting Social Security and watching the grandkids run around. The bullet had punched through the dead center of her skull, wiping out her nose and popping her brain stem, leaving nothing but a ragged hole in the middle of her face, an astonished lower jaw, and instant death.

Sheriff Hoyt got closer and saw a kid wriggling out from underneath her body.

Now that,
that
was a surprise.

His right hand flew to the special rubber grips of his Ruger Blackhawk. Ever since those two assholes shot up the high school in Colorado and those two sniper spooks crept around Washington, D.C., he drilled his men that whenever they encountered a crime, they always had to be aware of the possibility of two or more suspects.

The kid struggled; Ellie May had let herself go, that much you couldn't argue with. She had always been curvaceous, no bullshit there, but in the years since her glory days had faded, she had become a hell of a heavy woman. It took the kid a while to slide out from underneath a corpse that wasn't in the mood to cooperate.

From a distance, he was maybe nine, ten. Sheriff Hoyt got a look at the kid's eyes. Up close, the kid seemed older than he looked. Maybe twelve or thirteen.

The kid rolled away and stood up, wavering a little when he straightened. Blood ran from a trail of burned scalp that traveled up the back of his neck, skimming off the skull, leaving a straight, shallow gash. Sheriff Hoyt was impressed; the kid had come within an eyelash of a bullet in the brainpan.

The kid fixed Sheriff Hoyt with a stare, for only a blink of a moment, but it was enough. Enough to take in the hat, the badge, Hoyt's face. The kid looked away and didn't say anything. Disrespectful punk.

Just like his mom.

Sheriff Hoyt snapped his fingers. It all came together, like water spilling down a suddenly unplugged drain. He now knew where he'd seen the gun. At that bitch's trial, before she stole the election.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he said to the kid. “What do you think your mother's gonna say about all this?”

Bob Morton glanced at the mirror and got a good look at his face. Now that the memorial service was finished, he could catch his breath, take a moment to try and make sense of everything. It had all gotten so confusing lately.

Under the fluorescent light, he looked tired. Drawn. It was to be expected, he supposed. Mourning his son, hadn't been sleeping right. Color was off. He just hoped his bad complexion hadn't been too obvious this morning. He dabbed at the black spots at the corners of his mouth. He scrubbed harder; they persisted.

Bob double-checked the bathroom door to make sure it was locked, then leaned into the mirror and gave the biggest blemish on the right ride of his mouth, right where his lips came together, a wicked squeeze. It bulged, but wouldn't pop. He tried again. No explosion, no wet splat. He tried on the other side. No matter the angle, he could not express the black circles.

And they were getting bigger, no question. Squeezing them just made things worse; his fingernails tore the skin and increased the swelling in the immediate area. He was starting to look like a squirrel in the fall, cheeks full of acorns. He splashed some more water on his face to calm things down. As the clusters got bigger, he noticed that the darkness inside the spheres faded more and more into a dull gray, like some kind of volcanic ash was slowly erupting out of his pores.

He used the hand towel to dry his face. When he touched his nose, it felt like it was clogged with hard nuggets of snot. Using his index finger, he pushed up on the tip, as if he were trying to make himself look like a pig, tilted his head back, and leaned in closer to the mirror.

Black stalks with conical buds at the tips clustered together in the nostrils like disturbingly thick hair. Bob gave them an experimental poke. They were flexible, and yielded to his touch. He placed both hands flat on the vanity and exhaled, long and slow. He understood that he was balancing on the razor edge of total, abject fear, and the slightest shift would send him screaming from the bathroom. His breath came out in a slight, wavering whistle, like a worried teapot.

He had to stay in control; his family and his reputation demanded nothing less.

He wrapped a wad of toilet paper around his fingers and pressed it to his nose. He took a deep breath and blew air out of his nose as hard as he could. Some air got through, but not much. His ears popped, and even that didn't feel right. He checked the toilet paper and bit down on a bubble of hysterical laughter.

Some of the things had broken loose and were smeared into the tissue paper, along with sticky smudges of black snot. He didn't want to admit it, but they did look like some kind of miniature mushrooms. The soiled paper went into the toilet. He found the tiny scissors he used to trim his nose and ear hairs, and went to work methodically snipping away at the things still in his nostrils.

Another blast into fresh toilet paper. When he pulled it back this time, it was covered with dozens of the mushroom things and more black snot. That went into the toilet as well, and he flushed it quickly. He took another look at his nostrils. He'd cleared most everything out of his nose, at least up front as far as he could reach. He needed a flashlight to check and see if there were more of the things growing deeper in his nasal passages, but he wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

He got a Q-tip from his wife's jar and screwed it into his right ear, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. The cotton swab made murky, liquid sounds as he went deeper. He pulled it out and wasn't surprised to find more black muck coating the tip. He reversed the Q-tip and stuck the fresh end back into his ear.

Bob went through more than fifteen Q-tips before he was satisfied he was cleared out. They all went into the toilet as well. He crossed his arms, jamming his fingers under each armpit, and bit down on the insides of his lips. He would not scream. He would not.

Then he felt something else, some kind of weird bulge in his armpits. He avoided meeting his eyes in the mirror as he lifted his shirt and found that more of the mushrooms were poking through the gray hair under his arms. He ripped off his shirt, lifted his arm high, and stared at the dark growths popping up. Turning, he twisted his head to look at his bare back. Just skin and patches of gray hair.

Still, he wasn't going to assume anything. Not anymore. He yanked his suit pants down, stepped out of his shoes and socks. Nothing between his toes. Nothing on his legs. Nothing behind his knees. He pulled his briefs out and glanced nervously down at his groin. Nothing there, thank God.

Almost an afterthought, he stuck his right hand around to feel his ass, just in case, because he hadn't been able to move his bowels in at least two days. That need was simply
gone
.

He felt more of the tiny buds pushing up through the tight folds of the skin of his anus. There was a single moment of pure, toe-curling revulsion, and before he could stop himself, he curled his fingers into claws and raked at his flesh.

He brought his hand back up. Black gunk was smeared under his nails. His hand shook. Then he gripped the mirror with his right hand and ripped at the mushrooms sprouting through the skin of his armpits with his left. He leaned closer to the mirror and saw that he was breaking the stalks off at the roots, leaving dark, ominous little craters behind.

There was no blood.

No pain.

Somehow, that was the worst.

 

 

Sandy didn't trust herself to speak just yet and they drove home in silence. Kevin wouldn't look at her, and watched the houses slide past his window. He'd barely said anything since Sandy had arrived on the scene and found her son in the back of an ambulance, getting the back of his head patched up.

At least that prick Sheriff Hoyt hadn't locked him in the backseat of his cruiser.

She'd heard enough on the radio driving into town to piece together most of what had happened. But she still couldn't figure out how her son had been involved. There would be time enough for that later, time enough to sort through everything, but not right in the middle of a major crime scene. As soon as she arrived, she hustled Kevin into her own cruiser and a simple glare at the nearest trooper told the man that she was taking her child and no one was stopping her.

She'd switched off her radio, and when her cell phone rang, she turned it off and threw it at the floor. Kevin flinched, and she felt bad. She couldn't take it anymore and whipped into the alley behind the Stop 'n Save. She shut off the engine and turned to her son, reaching out to stroke his hair.

He didn't react to her touch, still wouldn't look at her.

The line of bandages that stretched up his neck across his scalp chilled her. Tears welled up and she closed her eyes, trying to think of something, anything, to say. A simple, “What happened?” wouldn't be enough, wouldn't even begin to crack the surface. She blinked furiously, willing the tears to disappear.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, feeling the summer sun beat down into the cruiser. Finally, Sandy said, “We better go home and make sure Puffing Bill hasn't destroyed the place.”

Kevin gave a slight shrug.

At least it was a response. She put the car in gear and neither of them spoke the rest of the way home.

Sheriff Hoyt was waiting for them. He'd parked in the driveway, forcing Sandy to park on the street. He stood, leaning against his rear bumper, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses.

Sandy told Kevin to go inside and let the dog out into the backyard. Sheriff Hoyt's eyes never left her face. They stared at each other for a moment, and Sandy didn't want to dance around the subject. She knew Kevin was a witness to a mass murder, but that didn't explain the scrutiny, the way Sheriff Hoyt had treated him like a suspect. “What do you want?” she asked. “My son has been through enough hell today.”

“I don't doubt it. Gonna leave a hell of scar, back of his head, there.”

Sandy put her hands on her hips and waited.

Sheriff Hoyt went to the driver's seat and reached in through the open window. He grabbed a plastic evidence bag. Inside was the Model 686. “Know anything about this?”

Sandy recognized the handgun instantly. Ice flooded her veins. Her mouth went dry. “You know damn well I do. It's mine.”

“Thought so. Any idea how it got into that little fucker's hands? I'd like to hear all about that.”

“I don't know.”

Sheriff Hoyt watched her for a moment, face impassive behind those mirrored sunglasses. He used his tongue to dislodge some piece of stringy meat stuck between his upper molars. Eventually, he said, “Maybe you don't, maybe you do. Not sure it matters much, 'cause I'll bet your boy knows. We gonna have to talk to him, down at the station, you understand that, don't you?”

“He's not going anywhere right now.”

Sheriff Hoyt considered this. “You do realize that four people are dead, 'cause of this.” He hefted the plastic evidence bag. “Slow news day, this'll be front page on the national news. It's bigger than both of us, bigger than this town, this county. So it shouldn't be a surprise that you are hereby suspended without pay. The county police will take over your duties for the time being.” He turned the plastic bag over and over in his hands. “You and your son are in a heap-load of trouble. I hope you know this. Hell, I wanted to, I could take him in immediately, put him in a room, and sweat the truth out of him.”

“You could try.”

Sheriff Hoyt chuckled. He knew damn well Sandy wasn't talking about his legal right to remove a suspect from his home and take him to the station for an interrogation.

She was talking about him making it out of the driveway alive.

He turned his gaze skyward and contemplated the branches of the elm trees that swayed gently above their heads. “Tell you what. You sleep on it. Get yourself lawyered up. And bring Kevin down to the courthouse tomorrow. We do need to speak with the young man, as I'm sure you are aware.” He nodded. “Okay. Tomorrow. Bring him down and we'll get all this sorted out.”

He waited for Sandy to agree, or say something defiant, but she stood motionless, drilling him with her stare. He kept waiting, but when it became apparent Sandy had made herself perfectly clear and felt no reason to explain herself any further, he tipped his hat, curled his fingers around the bag, and got back into his cruiser.

She stepped out of the way as he backed down the driveway. When he drew level with her, he rolled down the passenger window and said, “Tomorrow morning. Nine sharp. Don't be late.”

She didn't respond. He rolled the window back up and left.

Sandy moved her own cruiser into the driveway and went inside. Kevin was out in the back, playing with the dog. She gave him a few more minutes and spent them pacing back and forth in the kitchen.

Her gun. Good Christ. Four people dead. Her gun.

She unplugged the house phone and made sure her cell was turned off, then went to the sliding glass back door and saw Kevin on his knees, petting the scarred pit bull. Puffing Bill seemed to know something was wrong, because he was leaning into the boy's touch. Sandy watched for a while, and while she didn't want to disturb them, she couldn't put it off any longer.

She slid the door open and went out to the backyard. Part of her couldn't help but notice the mounds of earth along the fence, covered with leaves. She'd been meaning to get out there and plant flowers in the spring, but had never found the chance. She tried to push that out of her mind, because the last thing she needed was something else to feel guilty about.

Kevin and Puffing Bill were aware of her presence, but neither moved. Puffing Bill seemed to know that the boy needed him, and stood stock still. His eyes found Sandy. She patted his head.

In the end, she didn't have to say anything. She simply sat quietly, both of them petting the dog, and Kevin finally said, “Mom, I took it.” His voice quavered, but he didn't cry. He didn't cry as the whole story came pouring out, how he had taken the Smith & Wesson, and how Jerm had been tormenting him for months, how it had all gotten so twisted and awful, what Jerm had done with his lunch bag, all of it. When he got to how he had finally tried to crawl out of the trailer, and then woke up with Jerm's mom laying on top of him, his voice finally cracked irrevocably, and there was no going back. Sobs erupted out of him and he gasped for breath.

Sandy could not process all of it right away. Part of her brain was still trying to put all the pieces together, but the mother instinct inside her, the part of her soul that recognized that her child was suffering, overrode everything else for that moment, and she took him into her arms and squeezed him tight. Tremors racked his thin body.

She held him for a long time.

 

 

“You feeling okay?” Cochran asked. He swiveled from Bob's desk, steepled his fingers in concern on his chest.

Bob shut the door to the bathroom behind him and fixed his attack dog with a grim stare. “I lost my son. How do you think I feel?” He settled himself on the edge of the couch, eyes on the TV news.

“I can only imagine,” Cochran said.

Footage of the burning island appeared on the TV and Bob yelled, “Quiet,” and turned the sound up. But there was nothing new. Just that distant, grainy footage of the island on fire and a bunch of smug assholes arguing about what could have been done to prevent such a tragedy.

Bob gripped his knees, then sank back into the couch. Seeing the footage yet again pushed the horror and rage and confusion out of his chest. He realized he was exhausted. “I'm sorry. Exploding like that. I mean . . .” He looked up. “Do you have any sons, or children?”

“No. I have never married. I have no children.”

Bob turned back to the TV. “You'll see. Someday. You'll have kids and someday you'll change your mind.”

Cochran nodded politely. “Other friends have said the same thing.”