Evil Harvest (20 page)

Read Evil Harvest Online

Authors: Anthony Izzo

Sally’s lip quivered and she put her hand over her mouth, as if to hide her shame from Matt and Harry. Fresh tears welled in her eyes. Matt admired the hell out of the kid. A woman was being assaulted, and the attackers were still in the vicinity, but instead of running, she’d tried to help. In a day where so many people had a “don’t get involved” mentality, the girl tried to help, and that took guts. Matt wanted to give her a hug and tell her she would be all right, even though she probably wouldn’t. The corpse would appear in her nightmares for years to come.
“I know this is hard, honey. But we need your help if we’re going to catch these people,” Harry said. He put a big hand on her shoulder, a decidedly fatherly gesture.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. “Her body was all bit up. And her throat was sliced. There was a lot of blood.”
“You’re sure there were bites?” Matt said.
“Yeah. It looked like chunks were missing. Poor Carla.”
“Carla? You know her?”
“Carla Reese. She went to Millard Fillmore.”
The balding cop approached. His red-haired counterpart was shooing the crowd away.
Matt wondered if any of them would have helped Carla Reese as she was being torn to pieces. Maybe or maybe not. But they were plenty glad to stop and try to get a peek at her mutilated corpse. God, people were morbid.
“Thanks, honey. You take care,” Harry said.
“The officers will take you home. Let’s go, Detective,” Matt said.
They hurried back to the Town Car, Matt wondering if there would be more attacks. And how would Lincoln’s finest handle this case?
He also worried about the girl. When Rafferty questioned him about what he saw the day his family was killed, he put the fear of the devil in Matt. Would he try and scare Sally Perski too?
“I wanna check on that girl tomorrow, Harry. I don’t trust that son of a bitch Rafferty.”
“You think she’ll be all right for tonight?”
“He won’t risk another murder. I have a feeling they’ll try and cover this one up. Like another murder I know about.”
“Get her address and stop by the house tomorrow.”
As they walked away, Matt saw the girl duck her head and get into the back of the cop car. He was pretty sure he heard the cop say, “What detectives?”
 
 
Matt and Harry parked next to the Lincoln Community Center, a one-story brick building that was formerly an elementary school. Grubby bushes surrounded the building, stopping just below the first-floor windows. To one side of the building was a wooden playground set with bridges and tunnels and slides. They had a good view of the crime scene. Matt guessed a hundred feet from the shelter. Hopefully not close enough to draw attention.
The car windows were down; a mosquito whined and landed on Matt’s arm, tickling him with spindly legs. He smacked it, leaving smeared blood on his arm. “Damn bugs.”
Harry looked at him and laughed. “You would’ve lasted about five minutes in Vietnam. Mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds over there.”
“You were in ’Nam?”
“Got a Purple Heart too. Took shrapnel in the ass for Uncle Sam. Show it to you some time.”
“No offense, but I have no desire to see your bare ass.”
“I meant the Purple Heart, wise guy.”
The red-haired cop remained at the shelter. The crowd of onlookers had departed, and now the cop paced back and forth, agitated.
“What do you suppose he’s waiting for?” Matt whispered.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
They got their answer when a white van pulled into the parking area, swung around, and backed up to the picnic shelter.
Two men got out, one from the driver’s side and one from the passenger side. The back doors flew open and another pair of men jumped out. They had on coveralls, either blue or black, with no markings. Matt found that strange, because if they were police or worked in some other official capacity, they would’ve had some kind of identification on their clothes.
The men who had been in the back of the van took out an old army-type stretcher, the kind used for taking wounded off the battlefield, and set it on the tabletop next to the body. Then one of them got the corpse’s feet, while the other grabbed the shoulders. They flopped her on the stretcher; one arm poked out from underneath the sheet. The man at the body’s feet stuck it back under the sheet.
The sheet glowed phosphorescent against the night and the darkened blood that soaked it. Luminescent.
Matt was not a religious man, but the sheet reminded him of an angel’s robe. He hoped an angel had escorted the girl’s soul to a better world, for she had met an awful fate in this one.
They lifted the stretcher with the body and slid it into the back of the van. The cop yelled at them to hurry up.
Once the body was in the van, one of the men took out a plastic bucket and ran to a waterspout near the picnic shelter. He filled the bucket and brought it back to the shelter. The other men brought two mops out from the van and they went to work mopping the concrete pad.
“They’re trying to erase any sign of the murder. But why?” Matt said.
“To keep their fellow creatures hidden,” Harry replied.
“We have to tell that girl’s family what happened. The cops’ll feed them a line of bullshit about what happened. I wish we could get this on videotape.”
Matt heard the rumble of a big engine coming. A diesel.
A turquoise dump truck pulled into the parking area. He could make out
LINCOLN D.P.W
. painted on the door. Its backup alarm beeped as it neared the picnic shelter.
For a cover-up, they were making an awful lot of noise. Matt was surprised that none of the lights in the houses near the park came on, or that no one peered out the windows. Perhaps the people in the houses were also demons, fully aware of the events in the park. They would have no need to look, for it was a familiar scene taking place in front of them.
But what about the people who weren’t creatures underneath? They probably knew better than to watch, aware that the men in the coveralls and the cops were not the good guys. They probably feared retaliation if they were caught spying.
The men set the bucket and mops back in the van and then all four of them picked up the picnic table, two to a side. They leaned it against the tailgate of the dump truck and tipped it into the bed with a hollow crash.
The cop took one last look at the concrete pad and then gave a thumbs up. The men in coveralls got into the van, and the cop jogged to his police cruiser.
The dump truck pulled out first, followed by the cop car and the van.
They had cleaned the site as if it were picnic trash instead of a human being they were dumping. Matt felt his stomach knot. “You believe this?”
“This town, anything’s possible,” Harry said.
Rafferty stepped out of the patrol car and slid his baton into his belt. Clarence stood at the picnic shelter, rubbing his hands together, as if trying to warm them. As Rafferty approached, he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
Clarence had radioed Rafferty on his way back from Jimbo’s and told him there was a murder in the park. Rafferty told Clarence to meet him there pronto.
Now, Clarence waited for him like a ten-year-old boy who’s broken a window and sees his father coming up the driveway. Rafferty stopped three feet from him.
“The boys took the body away?” Rafferty said.
“Yep.”
“Witnesses?”
“There was a group of kids. I got their names.”
“Others?”
“The ambulance crew.”
“Our guys.”
Clarence nodded. “Charles called them. He was the first one on the scene.”
“Why didn’t Linda call you?”
“Don’t know.”
Rafferty punched the wooden support post that held up the shelter’s roof. All calls came right to Linda at the station, for Lincoln had no central dispatcher. She was supposed to call Rafferty, and if he wasn’t around, Clarence. At least it didn’t get out over the scanner.
The ones who murdered the girl must’ve gotten spooked or been stupid. Besides taking a victim before the Harvest, they violated the essential rules: make the kill in a remote location and consume the body fully. The murderers had left behind evidence, and Rafferty didn’t want strangers poking their noses into his business. Evidence led to questions by Outsiders. Every murder like this meant having to go through a cover-up.
Each of them made on average one or two kills per year. Most went to neighboring towns and cities to make the kills, so as not to draw attention to Lincoln.
Rafferty knew what was happening; it was too close to the Harvest. The need to hunt and kill was welling up inside his fellow creatures like a geyser ready to gush. He was losing control of his followers.
“There was a little girl who found the body.”
“Where is she?”
“I dropped her at the station house.”
Rafferty hunkered down and examined the concrete pad that served as the shelter’s floor. He took out his flashlight and shined it on the floor. The clean team had done a good job mopping up blood, for there was no visible evidence of a kill.
“Any idea who did it?”
“No. There were three of them according to the girl.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Over that fence.” Clarence pointed to the fence that separated the houses from the park.
“Something else. The girl said some detectives questioned her.”
“Son of a bitch. What detectives?”
“I don’t know. And the press was here too.”
He felt like slamming Clarence up against one of the posts and knocking some sense into his skull. Where the hell would detectives come from? Lincoln didn’t have a detective bureau, it was too small. The nearest city that did was Buffalo, and the Buffalo cops wouldn’t have known about the murder.
Shit was getting worse by the moment.
“Things are going downhill. Jimbo killed someone at the station. And I got into it with him tonight. He challenged me, tried to kill me.”
“What happened?”
“I tore out the old bastard’s throat.”
Clarence’s mouth opened in an O of surprise. “Jesus, Ed.”
“Never mind that. Did they take the body?”
“They did. Got rid of the picnic table too.”
“The crowd that was here, were they Outsiders?”
“There were a few.”
“Give me the names. I want to talk to all of them.”
Clarence pulled a sheet off of his notepad with a list of names written on it in blue ink.
“Things are getting out of control,” he repeated. “It’ll be hard to keep this up.”
“There’s more,” the redhead warned.
“Now what?”
“Some woman cop got into it with one of ours in a house on Dorchester. The house burned down.”
It was that little bitch Donna Ricci who had tried to grill him on the Barbieri murder. He knew it. “What happened to it?”
“Burned to death. One of the other boys put a few holes in it too.”
“The body?”
“In the garage at the station house.”
“Let’s go see it. Where’s the woman cop?”
“Lincoln Mercy.”
“We’ll see her too.”
C
HAPTER
19
Rafferty entered the squad room with Clarence behind him. He went to his desk and set his nightstick on the desk. “Where is the girl?”
“In the room,” Clarence said.
Clarence leaned against his desk, arms folded across his chest, watching Rafferty, maybe expecting an explosion.
“What about the other item?”
“In the garage.”
“Anybody see it?”
“Don’t think so.”
Rafferty turned to him; the fluorescent lighting beating on Clarence’s face made him look pale and drawn, like a suspect under interrogator’s lights. He hoped that’s how Clarence felt, because he had fucked this one up but good.
Too many people got an eyeful of that girl’s body in the park. He didn’t know who he was angrier with—Clarence or the murderers. “You’re sure no one saw it?”
He scratched his chin and tucked his arm back into the crossed position. “No one saw it.”
“What about the other officer?”
“I sent him home from the park.”
Rafferty half laughed and half snorted. “At least you did something right tonight.”
Clarence looked down at his boots.
“I’m gonna talk to the girl, then I’m gonna look at that body.”
Thumbs in his belt loops, he hitched up his pants and went through the door to the cell block. He opened the door to the interrogation room.
A blond girl of about fifteen sat on the chair, her knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. She had bony knees and her collarbone jutted out underneath the skin. Someone should start feeding the kid.
He would start off playing the good guy.
“You cold, honey?”
“Yes.”
“Clarence!”
Clarence poked his head in the doorway.
“Get this young lady a jacket.”
“Right,” Clarence said, and disappeared.
He returned with one of the winter coats from the storeroom. It was three-quarter length, midnight blue, with a fuzzy blue collar and lapel.
Rafferty took it from him and draped it over the girl’s shoulders.
She wrapped it around herself and held it closed at the throat.
“So you saw something in the park? Something unpleasant.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you like some hot chocolate?”
“No.”
Rafferty pulled out a chair and sat down, hands folded in front of him on the table, trying to appear the epitome of concentration. “Where were you going?”
“I already told this to the detectives. Do I have to tell it again?”
“What detectives?”
“The ones at the park.”
“We don’t have detectives here. The town’s not big enough.”
“If you say so.”
“Do you remember their names?”
“Rand and Willis. No, Wilks! That’s it.”
She set her feet on the floor and sat up straight, nestling into the coat.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened anyway.”
She told him she was walking home from her friend Laura’s house, where they had spent the past few hours in-line skating.
When she got near the shelter, she saw three large men crouched over a woman, who was lying on top of a picnic table. She was struggling, and Sally said the woman screamed.
“It sounded like an animal getting killed,” she told Rafferty.
Lights had come on in the houses bordering the park, and the three men hopped the fence, ran through a yard and were gone, she told him.
“Then what happened?”
“I ran to see if I could help her, and ...”
“And what?”
Tears rolled from her red-rimmed eyes. She wiped them on the sleeve of the jacket.
He was getting impatient. “Tell me!”
She recoiled from the force of his voice.
“It was Carla Reese, all bit up.”
“Two questions. How did you know who she was, and how could you tell they were bite marks?
“She went to my school, Fillmore. And there were chunks taken out of her. Can I go now?”
“Not yet. Tell me more about these detectives.”
She slipped the jacket off her shoulders and sat forward on the edge of the chair. She nudged the jacket and it slipped off the chair, rumpling on the floor. It was as if she didn’t want it coming in contact with her skin any longer.
“One was a fat guy. He had on a flannel shirt.”
“How old?”
“About fifty.”
“And the other one?”
“Young. Dark brown hair. He was cute.”
“I don’t care about cute. How old?”
“About twenty-five.”
His blood began to hum like motor oil through a V-8. Thrusting the chair away from the table, he stood up. The girl winced.
He turned his back to her and put his hands on his hips, the vein over his right eye pulsing and twitching, close to blowing his cool. If he didn’t control himself, someone might be dead soon. The whole situation made his stomach churn and go sour.
First he had phony detectives poking around asking questions, and absolutely no idea who they were. Or worse, maybe they really
were
from Buffalo Homicide and had gotten word about the killing.
It was only a matter of time before people from the state or county came nosing around. He couldn’t keep covering things up much longer.
He took a deep breath.
Facing the girl, he said, “Don’t talk to anyone about what you saw. No reporters, no other police, no one except me. There’s things about the murder only the killer would know, and we need to keep that private. Understand me?”
“Yeah.”
“You’d fucking better.”
His explanation about only the killer knowing certain details was bullshit, but she didn’t know that. If it kept her quiet, then it was okay with him.
“Get up. I’ll drop you off at home.”
 
 
Rafferty returned to the station house afterward. Before Sally got out of the car, he told her again not to mention what she saw to anyone. Normally, he would’ve threatened violence, but there was enough trouble stirred up right now without some girl telling her parents the cops hassled her.
He walked into the station. The front of his shirt was moist with sweat, and he peeled fabric away from his chest.
Clarence sat at the deputy’s desk hunched over, entranced in a game of solitaire.
He didn’t look up as Rafferty approached the desk.
“Anyone else here?” Rafferty said.
“Nope.”
“Good.”
He grabbed Clarence by the hair, just above the crown of his scalp, yanked his head up and then smashed his face into the desktop. Cards flipped and scattered onto the floor.
Rafferty let go.
Covering his face with his hands, Clarence rolled away from the desk in the chair. He took his hands away from his face; rivulets of blood trickled from his nose and lower lip, which would be fatter than Dom De-Louise in no time.
“Jesus, Ed.”
It came out “Jeethus, Ed.”
“Don’t act fucking surprised. You knew you had that coming.”
“Could’ve at least given me a warning.”
“What fun would that be?” Rafferty said.
Clarence pulled a white hanky from his back pocket and dabbed at the blood running from his nose.
“We’re getting in deep, Clarence.”
“Deeper than deep,” Clarence agreed.
“I got dead people showing up all over my town. Killed by our own kind. Other things I can go after like a regular crime, but when one of us kills, it gets hard.”
Clarence leaned back, his head over his knees, pinching his nostrils together with the handkerchief.
Rafferty almost never had to discipline Clarence, but he knew better than what he did tonight, and he had to be reminded that mistakes were costly. “I can’t have you making mistakes like this. Got it?”
“You’re right.”
“I’ll need your help.”
“You got it. You know that.”
Rafferty rubbed his chin. “Let’s go look at the body.”
They walked out into the garage. Next to a patrol car on the oil-spotted floor was a blanket with a clawed foot sticking out from underneath.
Rafferty went to the blanket, squatted down and pulled it back.
Someone had killed one of his kind, something that had never happened while he was chief.
The skin was charred black and blistered. Shit. This made it tough to ID. Once one of Rafferty’s kind switched into their true form, it was impossible to identify the human it had once been. If they died while in that form, they stayed that way, unlike those werewolves in the movies, which turned back into humans after being killed by a silver bullet.
“Any idea who it was?”
“None.”
“Did anyone see it?”
“I covered it with a blanket I had in the squad car. I don’t think the medics saw it.”
“Who took it here?”
“The van.”
“And who took the woman to the hospital?”
“The paramedics.”
Rafferty draped the blanket back over the thing’s face.
“Have it taken to Krasner’s. You took the Reese girl’s body there, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
Elliot Krasner owned Krasner’s Funeral Home and Crematorium, and he was one of Rafferty’s kind. Sometimes when Rafferty needed to dispose of a body, he had it brought to Krasner’s and cremated. Looking at the corpse, he hoped it would fit in the oven, for he’d never had to burn one of his own kind before.
Rafferty stood back up and motioned for Clarence to follow him.
Once inside the squad room, he sat at his desk, opened the middle drawer, and took out a pad and Number 2 pencil. He flipped the first page over the top of the pad and touched the tip of the pencil to his tongue.
“Bring a chair over.”
Clarence wheeled his own chair to the front of Rafferty’s desk. His nosebleed had stopped, but he continued to blot blood from his lower lip.
“I’m moving the Harvest up.”
“Can you do that?”
“No choice. It won’t wait until October. Someone’s gonna come in with all the commotion here and find us out. It has to be sooner.”
He wrote at the top of the page:
TO BE ELIMINATED
“We got some planning to do.”
Jill fanned the neckline of her blouse, trying in vain to cool herself off. The temperature had spiked to eighty-three degrees and it was only quarter to seven in the morning. She felt sticky already.
She entered the break room to find Cora putting her Masterlock on her locker.
Jill knelt down and opened her own locker.
“You hear about the one they brought in last night?” Cora kept her ear to the ground, and she was always the first to have the hospital gossip.
“I just got here,” Jill said. “What happened?” She put away her purse, clicked her lock in place and stood up, holding her bag lunch.
Cora grabbed a Styrofoam cup and poured herself some java from the Mr. Coffee. “They brought in some woman. Sheriff’s deputy. No, wait, Chief of Police. Marshall, I think. Minor burns on her back, laceration on her arm.”
Cora pulled out a chair from the break room table. She sat down, Jill wondering with shame if the chair would hold under her weight.
“They pulled her out of a burning house.”

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