"With what? A paper clip and rubber band?" the "intruder" replied and casually turned away from the vending machine. Then he smiled. "How"s it goin", Phil? It"s been a long time since I"ve seen Crick City"s favorite son. I guess you"re not too keen on keeping in touch."

Phil couldn"t believe it. The man who faced him stood short and fat. The bald pate glimmered in the automat"s buzzing fluorescent light, and his mustache was like a stout caterpillar on his lip. Those features, plus the tidy, starched munic.i.p.al police uniform, were all Phil needed to recognize.

"Lawrence Mullins," Phil identified, "Chief of the Crick City Police Department. Would you mind telling me what in the h.e.l.l you"re doing here?"

"What"s it look like? I"m getting a cup of coffee," Mullins said and raised the steaming Macke cup.

Phil closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Calm down, he commanded himself. Don"t blow up.

Then, as was usually the case, he...blew up.

"You broke into my factory just to buy a G.o.dd.a.m.n cup of coffee!"

Mullins chuckled approvingly. "Still got that temper, I see. Good, good. And, you know, you sure got some cheapie locks on this place. s.h.i.t, I had that door open in less time than it takes to use the key. Oh, and how about reholstering that 44-magnum can of Mace, huh? What, you get a lot of mean dogs around here?"

Phil sighed. "Please, Chief. Don"t screw with me. I"ve had a bad day-or I should say, a bad year."

"So I"ve heard. Back in town, we all heard about that shooting when you were with Metro. But we can talk about that later. That was a smart move, resigning voluntarily instead of fighting them. You fight with any big city IAD, you lose your a.s.s. Then you really would have been washed up. s.h.i.t, a former cop with convictions... You wouldn"t have been able to get a job cleaning the greasehole at Chuck"s Diner."

One thing Phil didn"t need to be reminded of was the Metro frame. And another thing he didn"t need was a load of wisecracks. "Chief, look, it"s good to see you and all that, but are you going to tell me why you"re here, or are you just trying to p.i.s.s me off while you stand there sipping coffee?"

Mullins sipped more coffee, just barely smiling over the steam. "Oh, is that what you want to know? You want to know why I"m here?"

"Yeah, Chief, I do."

"Well, we"re friends, right? From way on back? s.h.i.t, I practically raised you myself. And when I heard about the Metro thing, and you taking this p.i.s.sant security job, well... I was a little concerned, that"s all. I mean, it"s not like you"ve seen fit to stop by your old hometown once in a while, you know, just to say h.e.l.lo to some of the folks you grew up with. But of course I guess you been too busy for the last ten years, what with the highfalutin" big city job with Metro. A narc lieutenant, ain"t that what you were?"

Were, Phil slowly thought. Not am. Not anymore. "Chief, are you trying to make me feel guilty? All right, so I haven"t kept in touch. Sorry. But you still haven"t told me why you busted into my gig."

Mullins laughed. "Well, I wanted to see if you were keeping on your toes, now that you"re not a cop anymore." The chubby man grinned at the open service door. "Pretty slick lock-picking, huh?"

"Chief!"

Mullins was getting a real kick out of this. "Okay, Phil, I"ll level with you. The real reason I came all the way out to this b.u.mf.u.c.k yarn factory is because, well... I want to talk to you."

Mullins" cat-and-mouse games got old fast; this was the first Phil had seen of him in nearly a decade, and he was already sick of him. Some guys never change, he dully realized. "Fine, you want to talk to me. About what? Please, Chief, tell me before I have a stroke."

Mullins finished his coffee and pitched the cup in the trash. Then he got a Milky Way out of the next machine.

Then he said, "I want to offer you a job on my department."

And that was about all Mullins had elaborated upon, which was pretty typical; Mullins" hedging sense of humor was part of his overall psychology-he"d always make his point by taking subtle shots. Phil had been born and raised in Crick City. His father had run off a week after he"d been born, and his mother died about a year later when the laundromat she"d been working in caught fire. So Phil was reared by an aunt, who received a subsidy from the state, and about the only thing he ever had that came close to a father-figure was Mullins, the chief of Crick City"s police department for as long as anyone could remember. Mullins, now, had to be close to sixty, but to Phil he"d always looked the same, even back when Phil was in junior high and hanging out at the station after school.

Mullins was a decent man, or at least as decent as any shuck-and-jive backwoods police chief. Crick City, with a population of less than two thousand, wasn"t exactly Los Angeles in its law-enforcement needs, and since nothing in the way of serious crime ever seemed to occur there, the town council never had any reason to appoint a new chief.

Phil had a confused regard for the man. As a kid, it was Mullins who always had an encouraging, if not gruff, word when Phil was down, and it was Mullins who kept him out of trouble. Mullins looked after Phil when no one else could, and it was Mullins, too, who had inspired Phil"s interest in police work.

But on the other hand...

It was the town itself that always rubbed Phil the wrong way, and Chief Mullins was a constant reminder of that. Crick City was a backward, run-down pit of a town-a trap. No one ever seemed to get anywhere, and no one ever seemed to leave. It was the sticks: low-paying jobs, lots of unemployment, and the highest dropout rate in the state. Dilapidated pickup trucks ruled the pothole-ridden roads, at least those trucks that weren"t propped up forever on blocks in the front yards of one seedy saltbox house after another. The only crimes that did seem to occur with regularity were drunk and disorderlies, and the hallmark: spouse abuse. In all, Crick City unfolded as an unchanging nexus. A nowhere land inhabited by nowhere people.

Phil didn"t want to be one of those people.

But there was one thing he did want to be- A cop.

And now here was Mullins, appearing like a decade-old ghost, and offering Phil the job that had been taken away from him by Dign.a.z.io and his blackball battalion.

Of course, police work in Crick City wouldn"t be anything at all like his job on the narc squad. At Metro he had rank, he had respect and credibility, he had goals to pursue, and an important job that utilized every aspect of his education and fort.i.tude. Going from Metro to the Crick City force was the same as going from a Lamborghini to a Yugo.

Quit complaining, he reminded himself. It"s better than punching a clock at a yarn factory. At least he"d be engaged in a job he"d been trained at.

At least he"d be a cop again.

Don"t look a gift horse in the mouth, he thought, even when the horse is dressed in a chief"s uniform.

Mullins had left the factory shortly after he"d arrived, planting only enough seeds to keep Phil"s brain working for the rest of his shift. "Stop by the station tomorrow afternoon," the rotund man had bid, "and we"ll talk some more."

"I will, Chief. Thanks."

"Oh, and watch out for them burglars. You never know when the b.u.g.g.e.rs might want to bust in here for some coffee."

"You"re a laugh a minute, Chief. See you tomorrow."

And now, hours later, after he"d signed out of his guard post at the textile plant, Phil dogged through morning rush-hour in his clay-red "76 Malibu. He"d picked it up for $300 at Melvin Motors; now that he was no longer drawing lieutenant"s pay, it was all his purse strings could handle. The early summer sun glared between tall buildings; the air reeked of exhaust. And as he made his way home, he couldn"t stop thinking about Mullins" off-the-wall appearance at the plant, and the surprise job offer. What would it be like to go back there now? Crick City, he mused. Christ, even the name sounds redneck. Had the town changed? Was Chuck"s Diner still owned by Chuck? Did the rubes still race their pickups on the Route every Sat.u.r.day night after tying one on at Krazy Sallee"s, the roadside strip joint? Was the coffee still terrible at the Qwik-Stop? Who"s still there that I remember? he wondered. Then, more morosely: Who"s died since I"ve been gone?

Yes, the prospect of going back to his hometown goaded many questions. And...Vicki? What about Vicki? High school sweetheart, his very first girlfriend. She could"ve gotten out, too, but had chosen to work for Mullins instead, the department"s only female cop.

I wonder if she"s still around...

But then Phil"s stomach turned queasy as he parked the Malibu in his littered apartment lot. Because there was one more question, wasn"t there? Remembering the town and the people tricked him into remembering something else...

The voices, and- The House, he thought.

There"d never been a name for it. Just...

The House.

Was the House still there?

Moreover, had it ever been there?

Just hours afterward, he"d gotten so sick. The doctor had said that a fever so severe often caused delirium and hallucinations. His aunt must"ve thought he was crazy, just a crazy little ten-year-old boy...

Maybe I was crazy, he reflected now, trudging up his apartment steps. Christ Almighty. I hope I was crazy...

Because, whether it had been hallucination or reality, it was one thing Phil Straker would never forget- The House, he thought yet again.

And the hideous things he"d seen there.

Two.

Cody Natter"s shadow looked like a crane lowering as he leaned over the open trunk. So young, he thought. The girl, bound and gagged, shivered as the shadow crossed. Her lovely red eyes looked lidless in her sheer terror.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Upped and split right out the house last night," said Druck, whose right eye-which sunk lower than the left-had a way of ticking when he was excited about something. Druck was the only creeker Natter trusted to remain competent; and he could talk right. "Took us awhiles ta find her. Caught her runnin" "long Taylor Road just "fore the sun come up."

Pity. Natter couldn"t take his own red eyes off of her. She was shivering, and she"d wet herself. Of course she"s afraid, he considered. These are frightening days. Their stock grew worse and worse. Could they even last another generation before...

No mind, he thought. Faith...

"You must be good," he whispered to her in a voice that sounded like old wood creaking. "You must trust your providence. Do you understand?"

Certainly the meanings of such words would ellude her, but nevertheless she nodded, gasping through her gag.

There was more to understand than mere words.

Druck would expect to handle the usual punishment-hence, his obvious ticking enthusiasm. Sometimes the boy drooled.

"Untie her," Natter said.

"But ain"t we gonna-"

"Untie her, and remove the gag."

Druck, dumbfounded, did as he was told. The girl heaved in her tattered clothes, Cody Natter"s long, bony hand touched her cheek. "Go now," he allowed. "And be good. Remember your providence."

Tears of grat.i.tude ran down her warped face. She squealed something, some inner words of thanks, then climbed out of the trunk and scampered off into the woods.

Natter turned back to Druck, whose own warped face reflected his disappointment.

"Kill her later," the gaunt man whispered. "Kill her tonight. And be kind."

Druck smiled as a line of drool depended off his chin.

"I needs ta kill me somethin"," Scott said, and he said this with no particular emphasis or intensity-just an everyday, no-big-deal kind of comment. Scott "Scott-Boy" Tuckton rode shotgun today, slouched back on the big bench seat, Lotta a.s.s been on this here bench seat, he mused for no reason. Lotta fine razzin". Gut drove, Gut being the nickname for one Lowell Clydes, who was called Gut on account of a considerable girth about the waist. Both had cans of beer wedged at their crotches, while Bonnie Raitt sang away on the radio in that hot, c.o.c.k-stiffening voice of hers.

"Yeah, Bonnie"s tonsils sh.o.r.e make my dog hard," Scott-Boy commented, giving his groin a nonchalant rub. "Ain"t that right, Gut, my man?"

"Uh, yeah," Gut replied.

Scott stroked his burns in the mid-afternoon sun. "And I say, it"s a great day, ain"t it? Yes, sir, a great day ta kill us somethin"."

"Uh, yeah."

""Course, we"se"ll probably have ta wait till tonight. Night time"s always the best time fer killin"."

Scott liked to kill things. He liked to run down animals in the road. On several occasions he"d run down people. Once they"d plastered a little girl on one of them fancy 10-speeds, then dumped her in the woods up near Waynesville. Another night one of the r.e.t.a.r.d kids from up on Prospect Hill was loping along the Old Dunwich Road just as pretty as you please. Scott had been driving that night, too, and he"d run the kid right smack dab down-Ka-b.u.mP! "Scott-Boy, why"d you wanna go and do a thang like that?" Gut had inquired.

"Fer the hail of it, I s"pose," Scott had replied.

Scott-Boy and Gut were what clinical psychiatrists would label as "affect stage sociopaths." They harbored no organic brain defects, nor were they subject to any mode of reactive or cerebro-chemical maladaptations. They were capable human beings who knew right from wrong, who had never been s.e.xually abused, and who had never been locked in closets as children. Both were born of decent, hard-working parents and had been raised in an acceptable fashion. Their conduct could not be liberally excused by environment, abuses incurred during the formative years, or abnormal brain chemistry. Instead-and to put it more simply-they were two bad, evil, s.h.i.t-kicking, redneck motherf.u.c.kers.

For instance, they didn"t work. They were perfectly capable of working, they just didn"t. "Money"s walkin" all over!" Scott-Boy had once postulated. "Uh, yeah," Gut had agreed. Best thing about the south counties-most were unchartered, which meant they didn"t have police departments. So they came down regular from Crick City (razzin" too close to home Scott likened to p.o.o.pin" where they et); a thirty-minute drive up or down the Route easily carried them to any number of remote townships where they enjoyed complete anonymity. Everyone drove big pickups this part of the state, and everyone wore the same duds: boots, straightleg jeans, and jean jackets over T-shirts. Redneck fashion was also great camouflage.

Their lives were happily without direction; Scott-Boy Tuckton and Gut lived week to week in pursuit of their joys. But such pursuits, regardless of their nature, generally required some mode of finance. Beer cost money, after all. So did truck payments, trailer rent, and insurance. Bar wh.o.r.es were the easiest pickings. The south counties had more roadside watering holes than you could shake a busted camshaft at, and each and every one of the joints had at least one parking lot head queen to take care of a fella"s business. Wait till about one a.m. any Friday night, entice one of these fine young ladies into the truck with the typical promise of cash for services rendered, let her do her thing first, of course, then crack her upside the head with the bra.s.s knucks. What you were generally left with for your troubles was a purse chock full of tens and twenties. An even better gig was the fellas. Any Friday night (Friday nights were best "cos the first thing these peabrains did before heading to the bars was cash their paychecks) just hide yourself in the woods behind the bar or poolhall, wait for some homeboy to stumble s.h.i.tfaced into the parking lot, then crack him a good one upside the head with the bra.s.s knucks. Drag him back into the woods, tie him, gag him, then pluck the wallet, which was almost sure to contain half of the dupe"s cashed paycheck. A few minutes later the next sucker drags a.s.s out, then you repeat the process. Scott and Gut could commonly take out six or eight guys like this at the same parking lot, in like, about the s.p.a.ce of an hour.

Lately, on the side, they made even better money running angel dust for a couple of local dope dealers. Not exactly a job, but it was something. They didn"t use the stuff; they just helped sell it a few nights a month. A thousand dollars a drop, not what you"d call chicken feed. So between that and ripping folks off, Scott-Boy and Gut did all right, yesiree.

Once the money was had, their joys remained. "Razzin"," Scott-Boy liked to call it. "What say let"s razz up some splittails tonight, ya reckon," he"d suggest. Hitchhikers provided prime razzin". Lordy Jeez, in this day and age you"d think gals"d be a tad smarter than to get into a vehicle with a perfect stranger. Just the same, if you cruised around long enough, there she"d be, skippin" along some road darker than the devil"s b.u.t.tcrack. She"d be pretty more times than not, and she"d always be alone. And Gut would just pull the pickup right on over. Scott-Boy always did the talkin", in his laid back, farm boy sort of way. "Hey there, purdy lady, where you headed this fine night? Well ain"t that just plumb dandy, see, "cos it just so happens me and my buddy here, we"se headed fer the "zact same place. Just slide right on in, and we"ll git ya where you"re goin" safe an" sound."

Safe an" sound, indeed.

Scott-Boy and Gut knew every dell, grove, hillock, and backwood hideyhole anywhere they might happen to be at any given time.

All"s it took was one turnoff, and the unsuspecting gal realized that something wasn"t right, but of course by the time this realization had been made, it was already too late. Way too late. Way on back deep in the woods, no one could hear them scream, and scream they did-like holy everlivin" heck. Diversity proved requisite to any venture of uniqueness, and Scott "Scott-Boy" Tuckton was a very diverse young man. He liked to hear them scream, and his powers of imagination spared no possibility through which they might do so. Ol" Scott-Boy, yeah, he had himself a headful of visions that would make Ivan the Terrible look like f.u.c.kin" Bambi.

Gut supposed they"d killed at least a dozen people. They"d never really set out to, it just happened once by accident. One night they"d been jacking drunks as usual, and Scott-Boy had cracked one poor f.u.c.ker a tad too hard upside the head with the bra.s.s knucks. Exit muggers, enter killers. The poor f.u.c.ker"s head had split, showing pink brains. "Well, hail, would ya look what I just up and done?" Scott-Boy remarked with dull fascination. Like they say, accidents will happen. But for Scott, murder was like potato chips; ya couldn"t eat just one. That same night, Scott had sliced open a bar wh.o.r.e"s throat after she"d f.e.l.l.a.t.ed him in the truck. "Jesus ta Pete, Scott-Boy!" Gut exclaimed. "What you go and do that fer?" "Dunno," Scott chuckled his remorse. "Dag good thang we got the vinyl pole-stree." He scratched his head. "Gals sh.o.r.e do got theirselfs a lotta blood in "em, huh?"

Gut pretty much just helped out or watched. It was Scott who was the virtuoso. He had a thing for slowly stranglin" gals during coitus, fashioning a tourniquet around their necks with sisal twine and a dowel rod. He had also b.u.g.g.e.red, then beaten to death, a hippie boy he"d first thought was a hippie girl; he"d carved up a yuppie couple he"d found camping in the woods; and then there was that redheaded hitchhiker who must have been at least eight months and twenty-nine days pregnant...

But, never mind what they did to her.

Three.

Home, sweet home, Phil thought as mordantly as he could. Was it shame? How would it look? Christ, a Master"s degree and over ten years on a major metropolitan department, and now I"m coming right back to where I started, back to good old Crick City, the moron mecca of the world.

A few minutes after exiting the interstate, the road funneled down, plummeting with his spirits. This was State Route 154, known to locals simply as "The Route," a winding 30-mile patchjob of asphalt that cut a swath through south county"s rolling hills and forest belts. It also cut a swatch through some of the poorest and least developed townships in the state: Luntville, Tylersville, Waynesville, and Crick City. Soon the ma.s.sive scape of the metropolis faded behind him, only to be replaced by bridged ravines, famished tracks of farmland, trailer parks, and one rundown shack after another. The pits, Phil reflected. Waynesville, Luntville, Crick City-it didn"t matter what these towns were called; to him, they were all the same. Bustedville. Even the woods looked dest.i.tute-sickly vegetation and ancient garbage clotted between dense ma.s.ses of trees, some scrawny and skeletally thin, others stout as sewer pipes and hundreds of feet high. Rampant fungus shined like green-white snot over diseased and grossly knotted tree trunks. Most of the road signs could no longer be read thanks to the pockmarks of midnight shotguns; shattered gla.s.s littered the shoulders like halite, along with the innumerable carca.s.ses of small animals-"Road Pizza" in police parlance. "Possum Pie"-which were forever being run down by motorists to be scavenged of course by still more small animals, which were then promptly run down by still more motorists. Cyclic carnage.

The easterly ridge loomed to Phil"s right, a great wall that seemed to keep the entire Route in perpetual darkness. He pa.s.sed one town called Lockwood where, several years ago, most of the tiny population had disappeared seemingly overnight, and another, Prospect Hill, where dozens of residents had died or gone blind all on the same weekend from bad hootch. Yes, hootch, moonshine, panther p.i.s.s-some of these communities made the stuff like it was the Prohibition era, from stills back in the woods. Phil had tried it once, and one sip had about knocked him on his a.s.s.

Abrupt turnoffs periodically marked the Route, roads with absurdly redneck names. Turkey Neck Road, Furnace Branch Road, Old Mill Road-there was even a Tick Neck Road, and as far as Phil knew, ticks didn"t even have necks. Ah, sophistication, he thought. A used car dealer"s called Lucky Lee"s, Fast Eddie"s Pool Hall, and a roadside diner that seriously sported a sign: GOOD EATS.

In between the towns, Phil knew, were even more remote communities-actually sub-communities-that existed in complete obscurity, loosely knit hamlets known as "hill towns," where the populace remained unknown to public record. "Hill folk," they were called, and "hill squatters." There were more conventional names, too.