New Title 1 (28 page)

He had killed them all, he told me, Mike Peary, Nora and Vic, Lodge and McNally, Mindy and Betty Roberts. They had all uncovered his secret—or he thought they had, at any rate—and so he was forced to kill them. Eve McNally he'd beaten up when she couldn't tell him where the tape was that her husband had.

As he would now be forced to kill me. He'd tried it once already, on that first day. God, it seemed so long ago. After Mike, he'd gotten nervous about how much Nora knew, and followed her for a while.

"How about Melissa? You took her so McNally and Lodge would give you back something they were blackmailing you with, right?"

He nodded.

"Very creative, those two. They hid out here and watched the taping in the barn over there. I always told Mindy and Betty that I'd drive the girls back to Cedar Rapids and drop them off. But I never did. I brought them over here and fed them to the rats." He smiled his improbably boyish smile. "You know the funny thing? Those're the only animals I've ever liked, those rats. Hated everything else." He shrugged and moved in closer to me. My flashlight was on the floor. He bent over, picked it up, shone the beam in my face. "So good old Lodge and good old McNally videotaped me killing one of the runaways and stuffing her down with the rats. They made me pay them $6,000 a month. I have some money I diverted from Eleanor before I left her—but I just didn't like the principle of paying somebody blackmail money."

He was silent for a time. Rain plopped from the roof to the ground in front of me. The old hay smelled sour-sweet in the darkness. I avoided looking at my vomit.

Suddenly, he turned off the flashlight. "Don't say anything or I'll kill you on the spot."

I said nothing, just eased myself quietly to my feet. He could see me with no problem. And could kill me with no difficulty.

At first, I didn't know what he was so agitated about. There was just the hissing rain and wind and the far-distant midnight trains.

And then I heard it, an almost inaudible squishing sound.

What was it?

I had to hear it for a time before I recognized it. Then—footsteps. Yes. Somebody was outside the barn, sneaking up.

In the doorway I saw nothing but the fainter darkness of the night. And then somebody was there, peering inward.

Rain hammered the roof; wind rattled the back door.

Inward came the person; one, two, three cautious steps.

Whoever it was carried a shotgun.

Four, five steps now.

"Watch out!" I called, pitching myself to the right and the hard earthen floor.

As I did so, I saw a yellow eruption of flame and smoke as Kenny's gun fired in the darkness.

He caught the person; there was a thrash of old hay as, wounded, groaning, he fell to the floor.

"You sonofabitch," Kenny said in the gloom. "You're going to regret coming in here, believe-you-me."

As I scrambled back to my feet, he turned the flashlight on again and found the person he'd wounded.

The blood from her shoulder wound ruined the nice starchy look of her blue uniform shirt. She lay on her back, holding a bloody hand to the wound. The injury looked serious.

"Stay right where you are!" Kenny shouted at me above the din of rain and wind.

But I didn't pay any attention to him.

I went over to Jane and knelt down beside her.

"Thanks for warning me," she said.

"Least I could do," I said, touching my fingers to her wound, trying to see how bad it was. Awful bad.

"You shouldn't have followed me," I said.

She grinned her girly grin. "Least I could do," she said.

Kenny came over. "Help her over to the trapdoor there."

My reaction was to spring to my feet and start to swing on him but all he did was raise his Magnum and push it into my face.

"Don't worry about being noble, Hokanson. You're both going to die. I'm too much of a gentleman to let her die alone."

Just before he hit me hard on the side of the head with his Magnum, I heard a kind of faint bleating sound from the storage box near the back. I wondered if an animal had been trapped in there. But then I didn't wonder about much at all because when the gun cracked against my skull, I felt my knees start to buckle.

He brought his knee up between my legs and caught me hard and straight in the groin.

Pain blinded me momentarily; he pushed me to the floor, next to Jane, and said "Help her up."

"Do what he says, Robert. C'mon."

But I must have moved too slowly—because he took two more steps toward me. This time he hit me so hard my knees buckled entirely and I dropped to the floor. I was dizzy, and everything was getting faint and fuzzy.

I pitched forward into the deeper darkness of my mind where pain and fear lay like shameful secrets.

Could I get up? Drag myself over to Jane in time to help her? Somehow get my hands on Kenny?

I wasn't out long, just long enough for him to carry Jane over to the trapdoor.

She fought him constantly, even using the arm of her wounded shoulder to drive the heel of her hand into his jaw.

But I had recognized the look in his eyes; he was as eager for death as his friends, the rats.

He dropped her hard on the floor, so that her shoulder lay directly over the hole.

The response was instant. A kind of chant, a keening cry unlike anything I'd ever heard before in my life, went up in the old barn, louder even than wind and rain combined, the cry and chant of rats as they are teased with just a few drops of blood falling from above, the same cry and chant of the rats that overran medieval European villages, and that ate infants in the dark impoverished streets of eighteenth-century London.

Kenny smiled at me. "She's really working them up. They love that blood of hers."

He watched, amused, as I drew myself to my feet again. But this time I was so wobbly, I thought I was going to pitch back down again.

Jane, who was obviously losing consciousness, tried to push herself away from the trapdoor, but she had almost no strength left.

Kenny dropped to one knee, jerked her around and shoved one of her legs down the hole.

The cries of the rats came up again as did the scent of their carrion.

They were eager for her, waiting.

And then Jane screamed. She looked at me frantically and shouted, "One of them is on my leg!"

I lunged at Kenny, but he sidestepped me and brought the gun down across my head again.

But this time I didn't drop and I didn't let go. I held onto him as if I'd tackled him. He kept pounding and pounding me with the handle of his weapon but I wouldn't let go, wouldn't let him be free to push Jane down the hole.

Jane screamed again. I turned my head briefly away from Kenny's midsection and glanced down the hole.

Three fat black rats were ripping her leg with almost-desperate joy. More rats were scurrying up the ladder, dozens of them.

The gunshot came out of the darkness with no warning. Jane, Kenny and I had been too preoccupied to hear him come in, too preoccupied to watch him stand on the edge of the flashlight beam, lower his Remington shotgun and take the top off Kenny's left shoulder.

All I knew to do was dive for Jane, pull her leg up from the hole and then grab the furry slimy rats in my hand and hurl them back down into the fetid darkness.

I carried Jane over to the wall, got her propped up and then had a look at her leg. They'd torn the flesh severely, and in a couple of places, you could see where their teeth had literally chewed off chunks of her flesh.

"No!" she was looking over my shoulder when she shouted.

I turned around to see what was going on.

Tolliver, looking curiously composed and wearing, as always, his blue blazer and white shirt and gray slacks and black penny loafers, was lifting his son up in his arms and carrying him over to the trapdoor.

Kenny was sobbing and pleading incoherently, seeming to know exactly what his father was going to do.

Jane cried out again to stop Tolliver, but it was too late. Many years too late.

Tolliver dropped his son to the floor, then knelt down next to him and started pushing him headfirst into the hole.

Despite the fact that Kenny's shoulder had been torn away, he was still conscious enough to know what was happening.

And then he vanished, tumbled into the hole.

Tolliver stood up and quickly closed the trapdoor.

Kenny's pleas and cries filled the barn.

Jane covered her ears as the keening of the rats overwhelmed Kenny's screams.

At least they made fast work of him, Kenny falling silent no more than a few minutes after his father had slammed the door on him.

And then the rats fell silent, too.

And then there was just the sound of the rain, the incessant rain, and the soft whispers of midnight on the cold wind.

Jane was crying, holding onto me as if she were drowning.

Tolliver came over, looked at us a moment, and stooped to pick up his shotgun. "It's over now. And I hold myself greatly responsible. I should have dealt with him long ago." You could hear the tears in his voice suddenly.

"Thanks for saving us," I said.

But there in the darkness, he didn't seem to hear. There was just the sound of the soughing wind and his whisper. "It's over."

He turned, without saying anything more, and walked out of the barn, the shotgun cradled in his arms.

It took me a moment to figure out what he was going to do, but when I did I ran out of the barn, too, out into the rain and the darkness and the wind.

He stood facing the barn, angling the barrel of the shotgun just under his chin.

"Don't do it, Mr. Tolliver!" I shouted, wind making my voice faint and ragged. "Don't do it!"

I ran as hard as I could but I slipped in the mud and just as I was getting to my feet, I saw, through the lashing rain, his fingers tense on the trigger.

The roar of the gun, the kick of it in his hands, the explosion of the back of his head—all happened in moments.

And then he fell forward into the mud, fell on the gun that had served its purpose.

I went over and knelt next to him. The only sound was the rain now. I touched his shoulder and said something like a silent prayer. Maybe he'd been right. Maybe he should have dealt with his son a long time ago, before the boy had killed all those people. But that was easy for somebody to say, and much more difficult to do.

I stayed there with him a little while longer and then I got up and walked back down the hill to the barn.

Jane had managed to pull herself to her feet and was leaning against the wall. She had the flashlight in her hand." God," she said, "I feel so sorry for him."

I nodded. "Poor bastard. But maybe it was the right thing for him to do."

"You want to help me out to the car?"

"In a minute," I said. "Right now I need you to shine that light at the storage box over there."

I'd remembered the mewling sound I'd heard earlier.

There was a padlock on the door to the storage box so I went back and took Jane's service revolver.

I put a clean bullet through the hasp of the lock and moments after I did so, I heard the muffled plaintive cry again.

I opened the door, knowing exactly who I'd find.

Eight-year-old Melissa McNally was in there, bound, gagged, and tied to a chair.

She was dirty and sweaty and bloody where the rough ropes had cut her, and once I took the gag off her she started crying and laughing at the same time, as if she couldn't decide which was the most appropriate.

And then, free of her bonds, I picked her up and held her tight and told her how much her mother loved her and how happy she would be to see her, and then I carried her back to Jane and the three of us set out into the night and the rain and the wind for Jane's police cruiser.

We went on to the hospital, where it was quickly decided that Jane's shoulder wound was bloody but not nearly as serious as we'd feared, though the leg needed a lot of work.

After they'd cleaned the wound and bandaged her up, I went where she lay on the gurney and said, "You look cute lying there like that."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

"You do."

"Well, if you're so sure of that then how about giving me a kiss?"

I smiled. "I suppose that could be arranged."

An hour later, I drove her home.