Hellboy: Odd Jobs (22 page)

"Well then," Lorraine said, taking a deep breath and slumping back in her seat. For a while, she'd forgotten all about her glass of beer but now her throat was parched, and she picked it up and took a quick sip. "If you're waiting for The Finn, like you said, then it must've been Red Shirt who died, right?"

"Kind of a no-brainer," Hellboy said. "Yeah. It was Red Shirt who died."

"Was he an Indian? His name sounds like it's Indian."

Hellboy sniffed with laughter as he raised the pitcher above his head, signaling for Kyle that he was ready for a refill.

"You know, you're a regular Sherlock Holmes," Hellboy said. "Yeah, Red Shirt was a Native American and, as it turned out, I needed him to help me figure out what had happened to Moses."

"Wait a second," Lorraine said. "I thought you said Moses was shot and killed by the police."

"He was," Hellboy said, barely acknowledging Kyle when he came over to the table and replaced the empty pitcher with a full one. "It took us a while to piece it all together, but you see, the cops found Moses in a corn field when they tracked him down. When they shot and killed him, he was right beside an old scarecrow the farmer had left in the field."

Hellboy paused, and in that brief moment of silence, he eyed the full pitcher of beer. His head was spinning from what he had already had to drink, but he refilled his glass again from the pitcher and took a few gulps.

He was just replacing his half-empty glass on the table when Tommy spoke up.

"Christ, you see that, Jed? He drinks like a fuckin' animal!"

Hellboy shifted forward in his seat, as if to get up, but before he did, Kyle stepped over to the two Farrow brothers.

"I'm gonna have to ask you fellas to leave," he said in a low, controlled voice. "I don't want no trouble here tonight."

"I ain't causin' any trouble," Tommy said, his voice winding up higher. "He's the one who's causin' trouble.

Why do you even serve a goddamned freak like that?"

"All right. That's it," Kyle said, scooping away Tommy's and Jed's glasses and pointing at the door. "You fellas will be welcome here tomorrow night provided you learn yourselves some manners 'tween now and then."

"What the fuck?" Jed said. "I didn't do nothin'. I was just sittin' here drinkin' and mindin' my own business."

"Go on! Get out!" Kyle said, his voice stern and cold. "The both of yah get home before you get into more trouble that you can handle."

"I can handle anything that freak's got to dish out," Tommy said, his body stiffening as he cast a challenging glance at Hellboy. But Jed prodded his brother to silence with a sharp jab to the ribs.

Lorraine couldn't help but smile as she watched the two rednecks make their way to the door, looking like a couple of schoolboys who had been scolded.

"Have a nice night," she called out as Jed swung the door open, and both of them stepped out into the storm.

"Pardon me a minute," Hellboy said as he shifted out of the booth and stood up. "I have some business to attend to. I'll be right back."

Lorraine was amazed by the size of him when he stood up, but she tried not to let it show. Smiling, she said,

"Well, considering how much beer you've put away, it's no wonder."

She didn't bother to turn and watch him walk away. Instead, her eyes shifted to the cooler he'd left behind on the table. She was dying to know what was inside it. This Hellboy, whoever he was, sure was a strange one, so whatever was in that cooler was probably something just as strange as him.

Lorraine chuckled to herself when she thought how surprised and disappointed she'd be if she opened up the cooler and found a picnic lunch with sandwich, soda, and chips.

But

no. Hellboy had said he hadn't eaten all day, so it probably wasn't food in there.

So what could it be?

Leaning across the table, Lorraine sniffed the air. The thick, rotting aroma still lingered and almost made her gag.

Was there a fish in there? she wondered. Maybe Hellboy had been up north fishing, and this was his prized catch.

After a quick glance behind her to make sure Hellboy wasn't on his way back from the rest room yet, she reached out for the cooler with one hand. She noticed that her hand was trembling as she touched the cool, still-damp plastic. The barroom seemed suddenly dense with quiet anticipation as she ran her fingers down to the latch and slowly began to apply pressure to release it.

"I wouldn't do that if I was you."

The voice, speaking so suddenly behind her, made her jump. She jerked back and dropped both hands below the table as she spun around and saw Kyle, watching her from behind the bar.

"Trust me. Hellboy's not the kind of guy you want to mess around with," Kyle added.

As if on cue, the front door of the bar opened, and Hellboy strode back inside. His trench coat was drenched through, and his muddy hooves made loud, wet sounds as he walked back over to the table.

"Why'd you go outside? I thought you had to go to the bathroom?" Lorraine asked, her heart fluttering in her chest.

"Just had to check on something," Hellboy said simply as he wiped the water from his face. He sat down and took a healthy swallow of beer. He indicated Lorraine's all-but-forgotten glass of beer and added, "Come on.

Drink up."

Lorraine's throat was so constricted she could barely swallow as she took a tiny sip of her beer. It had just about gone flat, but she didn't care. After taking a moment to collect herself, she said, "So you were saying ...

"

"Where was I?" Hellboy said.

"You were telling me how, when they killed Moses McCrory, he was in a corn field, next to a scarecrow."

"Yeah

right," Hellboy said. "Well, you see, in some primitive beliefs, it's birds usually crows, but

sometimes other birds

that usher the spirit of the recently deceased into the afterlife. If that's true, then

"

Lorraine interrupted him with a snap of her fingers.

"

Then Moses' spirit wouldn't have been taken because the scarecrow would have scared away the crows."

Hellboy nodded slowly. "You got it. It took me a bit longer to piece it all together, but you have to remember, we were in the middle of it."

"So where did Moses' spirit go?" Lorraine asked, feeling a terrible chill creep up her back.

"Into the scarecrow, of course," Hellboy said simply.

Before he could say more, and before Lorraine could ask him to explain that, the bar door suddenly flung open so hard it slammed against the wall with a resounding bang. Lorraine's first thought was that the Farrow brothers had returned, maybe with guns or knives to settle their score with Hellboy. She turned around quickly, surprised to see a tall, thin man framed by the doorway.

He was hatless, and the rain had plastered his thinning, blond hair in dark squiggles against his skull. His face was pale, almost bone white. The dim light in the barroom glanced off his high forehead and the angular planes of his cheekbones, but the rest of his face

especially his eyes and mouth

seemed to be in

shadow, no matter how the lighting shifted as he looked around. Then he started over to the table where Lorraine and Hellboy sat. Without saying a word, he hooked a chair with his foot, swung it around, and sat down with his elbows resting against the back of the chair.

"I wasn't sure I had the right place," the man said in a low, gruff voice, "until I saw those two guys stretched out unconscious in the parking lot."

"What

?" Lorraine said, and then cut herself off when she realized what Hellboy had done.

Hellboy's face remained expressionless as he leaned forward and said, "Lorraine, I'd like you to meet The Finn. Finn ... This is Lorraine."

"Pleased to meet you," The Finn said, but Lorraine couldn't be sure if he was sincere or not because the light from the bar was behind him, and she still couldn't see his face clearly as they briefly shook hands.

"I was just telling Lorraine, here, about what happened last year," Hellboy said.

The Finn made a soft chuffing sound that might have passed for a laugh before saying, "Christ, Hellboy, look at you. You're drunk on your ass."

Hellboy slouched back in his seat and seemed for a moment unable to focus his eyes as he shook his head in adamant denial and said, "No. No. I just had a little something to drink with Lorraine while I was waiting for you to show."

The Finn leaned forward and ran his hands down the sides of his face.

"What kind of lies has he been telling you?" he asked Lorraine, and she caught the trace of a smile on his thin lips.

"Oh, he'd just gotten to the part where Moses McCrory was shot and killed ... when he was close to the scarecrow," Lorraine said, "and that the murders kept happening after he was dead, only they were worse."

"I see," The Finn said, "and did he tell you about the straw?"

"The straw?" Lorraine asked, looking quizzically at Hellboy.

"Right," The Finn said. "Once the killings started again, there was always straw around the victims ... straw and rope fiber. It was that, and the fact that the killings only happened on rainy nights, that I was able to piece it all together."

"
You!"
Hellboy said with a dry sniff of laughter. "You didn't put
anything
together. It was me and Red Shirt who figured out about the pond."

"Wait a minute, you two," Lorraine said. "You're confusing me. What's this about a pond?"

"Okay, I'll give credit where credit's due," Hellboy said, his voice slurring noticeably now. "It was Red Shirt who figured it out. I told you that this new round of killings only happened on rainy nights, right?"

Lorraine nodded. She was still more than a little tipsy herself, and she was having a bit of trouble following the conversation now.

"Rainy nights," Hellboy repeated, nodding to himself. "Only on rainy nights. There had been a killing two nights before, but the weather had cleared, so that afternoon, the three of us went out to the corn field where Moses had been killed. We hadn't put it all together yet, and one reason was because the scarecrow we'd seen in the police crime scene photos was still standing there. But when we got there, I noticed that the scarecrow wasn't the same one from the photos they'd showed us at the police station. So I thought we'd better investigate."

"Investigate!"
The Finn said, barking with laughter. "What the hell are you talking about, investigate? You took that cannon of yours, and you blasted the thing to pieces!"

Hellboy looked at Lorraine with a sheepish shrug. "Maybe sometimes I act before I think things all the way through," he said. "But that doesn't really matter because of what we found. See, the scarecrow wasn't stuffed with straw, the way scarecrows are supposed to be. It was packed full of body parts."

"Body parts?" Lorraine said, wincing as her stomach did a sour little flip.

"Yeah," said Hellboy. "Moses was collecting body parts from his victims and storing them inside the scarecrow."

"But I thought you said
he
was the scarecrow, that his soul had entered it the night he was killed."

"It did. He was," Hellboy replied, shaking his head as though desperate to clear it so she'd understand him.

"But he had started making a new one. See, it hadn't snowed yet that year, but there had been a frost the night before. It was getting late when we got out to the cornfield. The corn was dead, but the farmer hadn't cut it back yet, so the stalks were more than head-high. They blocked our view, but I

"

Hellboy glanced quickly over at The Finn.

"I mean,
Red Shirt
noticed footprints leading down to the pond."

"Actually," The Finn said, "the footprints led up from the pond and then back down to it. Hellboy and I thought someone

Moses in the shape of the scarecrow, maybe, had walked down to the pond, for some reason, before leaving."

"But it was Red Shirt

" Hellboy said emphatically as he nailed The Finn with a hard look. "See?" he muttered. "I can give credit where credit's due. It was Red Shirt who read the tracks correctly and determined that the prints coming out of the pond were the oldest, and that the ones going back into it were the freshest."

"I

I still don't get it," Lorraine said, shaking her head.

"Okay, think of it this way," Hellboy said, slurring his words. "If you were a scarecrow, what would be your biggest fear?"

Lorraine considered the question for a moment, then said, "Probably falling apart ... unless it was that I didn't have a brain."

"Very funny, Dorothy, but

no. That's not the problem," Hellboy said impatiently. "You can always stuff more straw into yourself if you're railing apart. Think about what would be your most dangerous enemy.

What can destroy you if you're made of straw?"

"Well ... fire, of course."

"Bingo," Hellboy said, clapping his hands together. Leaning back in his seat, he folded his arms across his chest and nodded with satisfaction. "And, if you were made of straw, you wouldn't need to breathe, either.

Would you?"

Lorraine shrugged, still more than a little perplexed. The more Hellboy talked, the less sense he seemed to be making.

"No," she said softly. "I guess you wouldn't need to breathe."

"So if you didn't need to breathe, and you didn't want to burn, where's the safest place in the world to be when you weren't out killing people?"

"In the pond, I guess," Lorraine said.

"Absolutely," Hellboy said.

"And the safest time to be out and about would be on rainy nights," The Finn added in a measured, controlled voice as Hellboy nodded solemnly.

Lorraine thought Hellboy looked totally plastered and was about to pass out. His voice dragged terribly when he spoke.

"So we were down there by the pond," he said, "The Finn, Red Shirt, and me. It was getting dark, and it looked like there might be a rainstorm brewing in the west."

Lorraine shivered as she cast a wary glance at rainwater streaming down the window beside her.