Slaves to Evil - 11 (5 page)

This smile seemed genuine, not a forced, cheerful front. Matt returned it. He liked the real Kathy. The saleswoman reappeared as they reached a cute little house. She walked him through it, pointing out amenities like new kitchen appliances and a large backyard. Matt nodded and
hmm’ed
thoughtfully, feeling bad about wasting her time. He solemnly promised to think about it.

He directed Kathy back to the hotel where he claimed to be staying. “I’d be glad to look up more listings for you,” she told him, “but I assume you’re heading back to Washington tonight.”

“No. Why?” As soon as he asked, he remembered the date.

She seemed genuinely concerned. “You’re not going home for Thanksgiving?”

Matt shrugged. “It’s a scheduling thing.”

“So where are you going for dinner?”

“I think the hotel has a buffet… ,” he said vaguely.

“That sounds awful,” she declared. “Come to my house.”

He pictured sitting at a table with Lennox, watching him eat with half of his face missing. “That’s really nice of you, but I don’t want to intrude on your holiday.”

“You won’t be,” Kathy insisted. “We always have an orphan or two.”

Pushing his disgust aside, Matt realized that dinner at the Lennoxes’ would be an opportunity to go behind enemy lines and snoop. It wasn’t as if he had much else to go on.

“In that case, I’d love to,” he said. “Thanks.”

She wrote her address on the back of another business card and gave it to him. “Dinner’s at one o’clock. See you then.”

“See you,” he replied, struck anew by how truly strange his life had become.

As Kathy drove off, Matt went back to the empty building to check on Elena. He’d left her alone for nearly four hours. For all he knew, one of Kathy’s fellow Realtors was showing the vacant building right now.

When he got there, the place was empty except for his captive. Elena treated his return with conspicuous indifference, refusing his offers of food, water, and a trip to the bathroom. He took a pointless look around the building. Nothing amiss. Now he felt antsy about the evil cops again. He had two big problems to solve and felt like he was doing a half-assed job on both. He went back out the window and returned to town.

Elena breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been able to hide the frayed section of rope. Now that Matt was gone, she opened her fist to reveal a tiny carpet tack. With some effort, she’d been able to dislodge the thing from the floor with her bare toes. She’d wriggled her cold feet back into her shoes and gotten to work. She’d spent the morning using the tack to pick at the nylon rope, pulling apart one tiny thread at a time. She maneuvered it back into her fingers and got back to it.

Matt returned to the police station, hoping to catch up with Lennox again. Instead he saw two cops emerge into the parking lot. One was the badly decomposed No Nose. The other man had rot spreading from the neck of his uniform across the bottom third of his face. It hadn’t yet reached the thick blond mustache on his upper lip. So this was O’Neill, which made the other man Woronicz. Sheridan seemed to be the only cop in Breckenridge still holding on to his humanity.

The two corpses got into an unmarked sedan. Matt wanted to follow but knew he’d never be able to keep up with them on foot. Fortunately he’d seen another option. There were two bicycles chained to a rack outside the library nearby. As the cops drove off, Matt used his ax to break a chain, then pulled the bike free and rode after them.
Add it to my list of crimes,
he thought,
grand theft ten-speed.

They stopped at a pet store. Matt stayed outside, peeking in through the window on occasion. He saw Woronicz pick out a dog collar, a big leather one with metal studs. The cop could probably wear it around his own neck if he wanted. He probably had some huge attack dog at home, which Matt hoped never to meet.

They moved on to a liquor store, where they picked out an impressive selection of alcohol. O’Neill went to the register. He took a bag of powder from his pocket and gave it to the cashier as payment. The cops returned to the patrol car with their booze.

Matt was almost relieved to see the police engaging in criminal activity, confirming that the rot he saw really did indicate a problem. Of course, drugs were a milder sin than he usually saw with people who’d been touched by Mr. Dark.

He remembered the story about the murdered dealer. The theory was that he’d been killed by a rival.
Yeah,
thought Matt,
rival dealers in the Breckenridge PD.
Maybe this was how they dealt with any competing criminals who invaded their turf, by eliminating them. That was certainly one way to reduce the town’s crime rate.

Matt followed the patrol car to the parking lot of the local high school, which was closed for the holiday weekend. The two cops got out, climbed a grassy hill by the football field, and sat in the sun. O’Neill pulled out another bag of powder and offered it to Woronicz. The decaying officer took a pinch and snorted it into the hole in his face. O’Neill helped himself to some and they sat in the grass getting high.

After a while Woronicz took another hit. He picked up a few small rocks and began throwing them at the squirrels in the nearby trees. His aim was pretty good. He hit a squirrel and it fell off its branch. O’Neill applauded. Woronicz moved quickly to grab the little animal. He pulled a knife from his belt. He cut the squirrel open, ignoring its shrieks of pain. Bright red intestines tumbled out. He poked around curiously in its gut, pulling out a few organs. Matt looked away. When he dared look back, the cop had tossed the dead squirrel aside and was cleaning the gore off his fingers with a tissue. Matt felt chilled by the casual cruelty. This was more like what he’d expect from the seriously decomposed. There had to be more going on in Breckenridge than drugs. He was missing something.

He needed to talk to Sheridan again, to find out if he really was one of the good guys. The absence of visible decomposition was no guarantee of virtue. Some people didn’t need Mr. Dark’s evil touch to become corrupt all on their own. Was Sheridan just hiding his moral rot better than his colleagues were?

He asked for Sheridan at the front desk, only to be told that he was out. Matt figured he was responding to a call somewhere. He decided to look around town for a police car. He could always check back at the station later.

Matt spotted the black-and-white parked in front of an Italian restaurant. He went inside. Sheridan was sitting alone in a booth near the back, apparently in the middle of an early dinner. There was a half-finished bowl of pasta in front of him and a nearly empty glass of red wine.

Matt walked by the table and feigned surprise at seeing him. “Hi there.”

“Hi,” said Sheridan, then recognized him. “We haven’t had any luck on your case, I’m afraid…”

Matt waved this off. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to give you a hard time about it.” He slid into the seat opposite him, with a perfunctory “May I?” The other man didn’t protest.

Sheridan was polite enough about the intrusion and asked what brought Matt to town. Matt repeated his story about relocating for work. He asked Sheridan’s opinion about living in Breckenridge and got the same rosy picture that Kathy had painted for him. As they talked, the cop finished his wine. Matt hailed the waitress and ordered Sheridan another. He had less than twenty dollars in his pocket. He hoped that would get Sheridan drunk enough to talk about his fellow officers.

After another glass disappeared, Matt asked what it was like to be a cop in suburbia. It was OK, said Sheridan. Mostly pretty quiet. The biggest downside? All the paperwork needed for every little parking violation or noise complaint.

“When I came in the other day, you seemed to have a lot of it,” said Matt sympathetically. When Sheridan nodded, he went on. “And the other officers weren’t doing any.”

“They never do,” he answered, with an edge of bitterness. “I get all of it.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Matt observed.

“Lennox doesn’t like me.”

“Why not?”

Sheridan took another drink. “’Cause I don’t kiss up to him like the other cops. They can get away with anything.”

“What do they get away with?” Matt was hopeful that he’d get some real information. He was disappointed.

“Falsifying their hours, skipping entire shifts,” Sheridan griped. “If I tried that shit, I’d get reamed out. Even fired.”

“But not Woronicz. Or Ross,” Matt prompted, stoking his annoyance.

“Hell no. They’re all buddies, always hanging out together.”

“Drinking, partying… ,” suggested Matt.

Sheridan nodded, his movements getting unsteady. “For all I know, they’re having orgies up there.”

“Up where?” He tried to sound casual.

“You want more garlic bread?” asked Sheridan. “I want more garlic bread.”

“Sure,” said Matt. He gestured to the waitress.

He tried to get more detail about where the other police went and what they did but got nowhere. Sheridan was more interested in bitching about Lennox. “He doesn’t know what the job’s really about. With him, it’s all photo ops and schmoozing. I mean, sure, he gets more money for the department, but if you ask me…” He lowered his voice. “He’s got something on those city council guys.”

“Like what?”

Sheridan shrugged. “Hell if I know. But they’re afraid of him all right.”

“Maybe you should find out why,” Matt said. “Investigate.”

The cop let out a short chuckle. “Why bother? That’s how things get done. You think it’s different anywhere else?”

Matt wanted to think so but didn’t argue the point. Sheridan continued, “Nobody wants to hear about all the backroom shit. They just want to live their nice little lives in their safe little town, and who cares how it happens.”

Matt listened to Sheridan complain for a while longer, then asked for the check. Fortunately his drunken pal slapped down a few bills to cover it.

It had gotten dark by the time they left the restaurant. Sheridan tried to get in the driver’s seat of the patrol car, but Matt stopped him and confiscated the keys. There was no point in taking Sheridan back to the police station. He was obviously done for the day. Matt got directions to take the man home.

Sheridan and his family lived in a neat little bungalow with a play set in the front yard and a nicely restored seventies-era Mustang in the driveway. Matt pulled him out of the patrol car and to the front door. The woman who answered his knock was already irritated. She became even more so when she saw them.

“Jesus Christ, Alan.” She glanced at the neighboring houses to see if anyone was watching and hustled him inside.

Haley Sheridan was tiny, barely scraping five feet. But she supported most of her husband’s weight as Matt helped her maneuver him to the couch.

“I’m OK,” Sheridan protested as they set him down.

“Sorry about this,” said Matt, not sure why he felt the need to apologize.

“So who are you again?” she asked, efficiently pulling off Sheridan’s shoes and laying him back. She’d obviously had practice.

“Matt,” he said. “I’m a friend.”

She looked doubtful about this. “Right.”

He handed her the car keys. They stood there for a moment, looking down at Sheridan, who was already snoozing.

“Things were supposed to get better,” said Haley. “That’s why we moved here.”

Matt nodded. “This place isn’t really so great, is it?”

“No,” she agreed. “It kinda sucks.”

Maple Grove, North Carolina

After the beating, Matt was embraced by the Patriots as one of their own. One afternoon he sat with Brady and Peter at a backyard cookout, sipping lemonade. It was a scorchingly hot day and nobody strayed too far from the pool. Matt could feel the back of his neck getting crispy, despite three layers of sunscreen. He wondered how soon he could politely excuse himself and leave. At the moment, he could barely get in a word as Brady went on yet another rant about how so-called multiculturalism was undermining American morals.

“We need to strike a blow,” he declared.

“Sure thing,” agreed Matt. He’d been hearing that sentiment for weeks.

“The problem is that fucking mosque. It makes them feel like they’re welcome here,” said Brady.

Peter smiled, excited. “Tell him.”

The older man considered this, then leaned closer to Matt, lowering his voice. “We’re going to bring it down.”

Matt nodded, trying to keep his expression even. “Great. How can I help?”

Brady laughed. “You’re a man of action. I like that.”

“We’re going to slip them an IED, just like they use on us,” said Peter.

Matt kept nodding. “You need any more parts for it?”

“No. We’re all ready to go,” Brady assured him.

“Great,” Matt said again. “When?”

“Wednesday,” said Brady. He raised his empty lemonade glass to his lips, trying to coax out a few more drops. No luck.

Peter added, “It’s some Arab holiday. The place should be full.”

Matt looked thoughtful, as if considering the logistics. “It’ll be tough to get it into the mosque. A white man can’t exactly waltz in there with a big package under his arm.”