The Devil Next Door Read online

  Shaw had his hands on his hips. “Let me get this straight, Mr. Shears. These guys beat this kid near to death and then when you went to help him…he tried to strangle you?”

  “Yes,” Louis said. “Yes. I know how crazy it sounds, but, Christ, I didn’t get all this blood on myself at work. He jumped at me, wrapped his hands around my throat. He was strong…all broken up like this, he was still strong.”

  Shaw and Kojozian looked at each other.

  “Then what happened? He just died?” Kojozian said.

  “No, he wouldn’t let go of me, he was insane or something. He kept trying to strangle me, so I…I mean I…”

  “Yes?”

  “I…I guess I hit him.”

  Kojozian let out a low whistle of disbelief. “Now we’re getting to it.”

  Louis gave him a hard look. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  Kojozian shrugged. “You got blood all over yourself. Your fists are bloody. You just admitted you punched out a dying kid…”

  Louis laughed. He had to laugh. This whole exchange was ludicrous. “Oh, I get it. You think I assaulted this kid. Well, yeah, that makes perfect fucking sense, doesn’t it? I was bored after work so I beat this kid to death and then I called you guys and made up a story about a gray sedan and two guys with baseball bats. Okay, you got me. Your mind is sharp as a tack, Kojak.”

  “That’s Kojozian,” he corrected, totally missing the jibe. “And maybe you ought to quit with the mouth…how’s that sound, hotshot?”

  “Both of you calm down,” Shaw said. “We don’t think you killed the kid or beat him up, Mr. Shears. It’s just that the whole thing is a little wild.”

  Louis was starting to feel like he’d done something wrong. Like maybe he was in the hot seat here. Was this why people in big cities looked the other way when a crime was committed in plain view? They didn’t involve themselves for fear a couple Keystone Cops like these two might try to implicate them in something they were completely innocent of?

  “Sure, it’s wild,” Louis said. “I’m just telling you what happened. I wish I could tell you something that makes more sense. Trust me, if I was going to make up a story, I think I could do better than this.”

  Shaw nodded. “Sure, sure. Maybe the kid panicked or something. Maybe he thought you were the guy that did it.”

  “I wonder why he’d think something like that,” Kojozian said.

  Louis was burning inside.

  He had half a mind to punch Kojozian right in the nose. And maybe he would have if he wouldn’t have gotten thrown in jail…right after he got out of the hospital, that was. Because if he took a swing at this ape, he would have gotten his ass not only kicked, but pressed and folded. The funny thing was, he had a pretty good idea that Kojozian wanted him to try something like that. The man was baiting him, intimidating him, pushing him. But Louis would not be baited or pushed, not by an animal like Kojozian.

  Not that Louis hadn’t known any good cops, because he had. But these two were not in that category.

  He made himself breathe very slowly to calm himself. “I’m just telling you what happened, that’s all.”

  “Sure,” Shaw said. “Sure.”

  Kojozian looked at him and Louis felt a chill run up his spine. Those eyes were just as black and intense as the kid’s when he’d attacked.

  Like the eyes of a mad dog.

  “So you’re telling us this kid attacked you?” he said. “He don’t look like he’s in much shape to attack anyone.”

  “He was.”

  Kojozian shook his head. He walked over to the corpse. “Let’s see…compound fractures, split-open head, massive internal injuries…I’m not seeing it, Mr. Shears. I think you’re full of shit. This guy couldn’t have done nothing but die.” And to prove that, apparently, he kicked the corpse. It made a wet thudding sound. “Nope, he’s all busted up inside.” He kicked him again. “Hear that, Mr. Shears? Hear that slopping sound like Jello in a Ziplock bag? That’s his insides and they’re splashing around. People with injuries like that don’t do much attacking. What they do is they puke up blood and shit out their intestines, but that’s about it.”

  Louis felt something drop inside of him.

  Not only was this offensive and sickening, it was absolutely insane. The kid was dead and this cop was kicking him, saying those awful things. Louis backed away, his head beginning to spin and he wondered if maybe he was in a padded cell somewhere dreaming all this. Because it could not be real. It could not possibly be real.

  “What’s a matter?” Kojozian said. “You got a weak stomach?”

  Louis shook his head. “You can’t…you can’t treat a dead body like that. You can’t kick it.”

  Kojozian kicked it again. “Why not?”

  “Tell him to stop that!” Louis cried.

  But Shaw just shrugged. “He’s just making a point, Mr. Shears. That’s all. Just a point. The kid don’t mind.”

  Kojozian decided he needed to make another point.

  He put his foot on top of the kid’s chest and pumped his leg up and down. The body shook and rolled with a slow, fluidic motion like it was filled with jelly. The sound of everything sloshing around inside was almost more than Louis could take. More blood pissed out of orifices, a blood that looked almost black.

  “Yeah, I’m just making a point, Mr. Shears. I’m teaching you something, that’s all,” Kojozian explained. He kept his foot up on the corpse’s chest, his shiny black shoe and the bottom of his creased pantleg wet with blood. He began pumping his leg up and down again but with much more force, so much that his shoe sank into the kid’s chest and came back out again with an appalling sucking sound like somebody working a plunger in a clogged toilet.

  Louis took another step back, then went down on his knees, vomiting into the grass. It came and went quickly enough. But when he again looked at the two cops, the fever was still on him. Because Kojozian still had his foot up on the corpse’s chest and Shaw still looked unconcerned.

  “Please,” Louis breathed. “Please stop that.”

  Kojozian shrugged and pulled his foot free. “Weak stomach,” he said.

  Shaw was looking at his shoe and pants. “Lookit the mess you made. You’re not getting in my cruiser like that. Wipe your shoe off on the grass.”

  Louis could feel a scream building in his throat…

  3

  If viewed from above, Greenlawn would have looked roughly like a postage stamp with the Green River intersecting it. The north side of town was the oldest and the houses there could bear witness to this to any with an architectural eye. The closer you got to Main, the better they were kept up. But the farther you went, the shabbier they became until ultimately they blended into a strip dotted with neighborhoods of ramshackle company houses and old railroad hotels, industrial concerns and saloons and sooty apartment buildings. All of which ended at the very doorstep of the trainyards. South of Main things were much more prosperous and here flanking nice antique blocks of tall, narrow Victorians and frame houses thrown up before the Second World War were neighborhoods of post-war ranch-style houses of brick and stucco. And at the southern edge, modulars and pre-builts that had blossomed in the last twenty years, taking over fields and ball diamonds and any available open space. The west side of town was marked by a looming assortment of warehouses, mills, and machine shops, most of which were closed and rotting. The Green River passed through town, running through old neighborhoods and new, coursing beneath Main Street and continuing north up through the trainyards before leaving town entirely and making for the wheat fields, farmlands, and scrub forest beyond.

  All in all, Greenlawn was an ordinary town in the Midwest, no different from any number of towns to the east or west or south. The same families had lived there for generations and what new blood came in, generally settled in and toughed it out or moved away. The schools were good, the streets clean, the crime rate low. There were fireworks in the park on the Fourth of July and parades for Christ
mas and Veteran’s Day. There was a county fair in August and a circus passed through in May. There was a winter carnival and another come September. The summers were hot and humid, the winters long and white and frigid. It was a great place to raise a family, a great place for fishing and hunting and outdoor recreation. There had been a bad fire in 1915 that started in the shanty village at the western edge and swept through the northern half before it was contained. Old timers still spoke of it. There had been a few murders, though no more than you could count on one hand and nothing in recent memory.

  Greenlawn was just an ordinary small town that could be found anywhere.

  This, then, was the scene on Black Friday…

  4

  Maddie Sinclair slid the knife out of her husband’s throat.

  Cocking her head like a dog listening for its master’s approach, she studied the blood-streaked blade of the carving knife. She sniffed it. Then she tasted it. She made a bestial groaning noise in her throat.

  She stiffened.

  A sound.

  She waited, gripping the knife, ready to fight, to pounce, to kill. Whatever it took to protect what was hers and hers alone. Footsteps. Slow, stealthy. Maddie’s lips pulled back in a snarl. She tensed. Sniffed the air. Waited. She could smell the musk of the others that were coming. It was an odor she recognized. The odor of female.

  She brought the knife up.

  Squatted in a killing stance, ready to leap.

  Two girls came into the living room. Something in her chest jumped at the sight of them. There was recognition. A warmth that was quickly replaced by something cold, plotting, and atavistic. Maddie recognized them as her brood, her young, her daughters, but there was no emotion at this: the two bitches were not to be trusted. Not yet.

  Hissing at them, Maddie sniffed the air they brought with them.

  She smelled urine. Blood.

  It was a satisfying odor, one that calmed her somewhat. They smelled of the hunt. Not like others out there, not soapy and repugnant. She waited to see if the bitches would challenge her kill, try to take it. But they did nothing but stare. They did not run. There was no fear on them. Just hesitation. They were both naked. They had taken needles and poked their breasts, stomachs, chests, and arms with them, creating a bleeding series of welts that ran in decorative, concentric patterns. The elaborate scarification was symbolic, tribal, and resembled the intricate cicatrisation of certain African bush clans.

  Maddie liked it.

  If these two bitches were to hunt as part of her band, she would decorate her flesh likewise.

  The bitches moved in closer, intrigued.

  Maddie let them, watching them. Like her, they were pale, streaked with grime and gore, leaves and sticks braided into their matted hair.

  She hissed at them.

  They did not make any threatening moves.

  Maddie motioned them in with the knife. They squatted by the carcass with her. They laid fingertips upon the kill, touching, feeling, instinctively probing muscle mass and fat deposit, knowing which would be spitted first.

  Maddie swallowed. “Down…” she said, her voice dry and scraping, the words difficult to pronounce. “Take the kill down…below…”

  The bitches did not argue.

  Each gripping an ankle, grunting and gasping, their young scarred bodies rippling with muscle, they dragged their father’s corpse away across the carpeting. Maddie watched them. She was pleased. Her kill was made and her clan established. It was good. Moaning some long-forgotten tribal melody deep in her throat, she retreated into the corner and defecated there on the plush sea-green nap. When she was done, she sniffed what she had produced.

  She heard the bitches dragging the carcass below to the cellar.

  Its head thumped on each step.

  Sniffing the air for intruders and poachers, ever aware of danger, Maddie followed the scent trail of the carcass to the cellar door and below. When she got down in the cool, damp darkness, she schooled the bitches.

  Together, they dressed out the carcass…

  5

  The scream started out small in his guts and now it was rolling upward, gaining mass and volume along the way. And Louis was going to set it free and mainly because he didn’t really think he had a choice. Maybe he would have, too, but another Greenlawn police car rolled up behind the other one. The guy that got out was thin and tall, white hair poking around the edges of his cap. His mouth was hooked in a crooked scowl.

  “What gives here?” he said.

  Louis finally felt some sanity coming back. He knew this guy. His name was Warren and he was a sergeant or something, an old hand on the force. Louis knew that he handled the safety programs at the schools and was always in the newspaper involved in some civic or charitable organization. Warren also sang in the church choir over at St. Stephen’s and had a hell of a set of pipes on him. He was okay. Old school all the way, he’d sort this clusterfuck right out.

  “Well, it’s a real mess, Sarge,” Shaw said.

  “Let’s have it,” Warren said, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear and showing it some flame.

  So Shaw told him all about it and the whole time Warren’s eyes shifted from the stiff to Louis and it didn’t look like he cared for the looks of either. When Shaw finished, Warren just nodded.

  “They treating you okay, Mr. Shears?” he said.

  And Louis launched right into it. The re-telling of this tale sounded no better than the other one, but the evidence was all over Kojozian’s shoe and pantleg.

  “He’s got a weak stomach,” Kojozian said. “He got sick in the grass over it all.”

  Warren grinned. “No shit? Well, take it easy, Mr. Shears. Dead is dead. You can tap dance on this kid or drop your knickers and take a dump in his mouth. It’s all the same to him.”

  Louis stared up at him, pale and wide-eyed. “You’re all crazy,” he said.

  “Boy, he does have a weak stomach, all right,” Warren said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. “No offense, Mr. Shears, but you wouldn’t make much of a cop. Lots of bodies, always lots of bodies.”

  “We had a guy last week,” Shaw said, “over on West Rider Street. Mail piling up and all that. Neighbors call us and we go over there. We had to go in through a side window and that stink when we opened it up…holy Jesus! We found the stiff on the shitter. Old guy had a heart attack while he was delivering the mail. Must have been about a thousand flies on him. Another thousand on the windows and flying around. They were buzzing so loud, you couldn’t hear yourself think.”

  “That’s nothing,” Warren said. “When I was first on the Department, we got a call to go out to the airport. Middle of summer, some guy’s sleeping in his car with the windows all rolled up. A real hot bastard it was, too. Some kids were riding their bikes around, saw the guy laying in there, said he had rice all over him. Rice. Ha, what a mess! The smell would have put you right down to your knees, swear to God. He’d been in there almost a week, came apart like boiled chicken when we tried to pull him out. Most of him stuck to the seat…”

  Louis got to his feet and then he was running, running dead out for the Dodge. His brain was filled with a screaming black noise and he was certain that he had lost his mind. Nothing else could possibly explain it.

  “Hey, where you going?” Kojozian called out.

  “Let him go,” Shaw said. “We don’t need him. What we need here are a couple shovels to scrape this kid off the sidewalk with…”

  And then Louis was in his Dodge. He could feel the seat beneath him and his hands gripping the steering wheel. He held on tight before the entire world went flying away beneath him. Because it was coming, he knew it was coming.

  He squealed around in a U-turn and saw Warren wave to him in the rearview. As he screeched away down Tessler Avenue, barely missing a parked car, his face was slicked with sweat and his entire body was shaking. He needed badly to pull over and be sick, but he didn’t dare. He just did not dare. He had to make Rush Street and home.
And the most insane, impossible thing of all was that the cops did not come after him.

  They did not come after him…

  6

  At Greenlawn High, things began to happen.

  Macy Merchant, a junior and honor roll student, sat down in her fifth hour Mass Media class and tried to shut out the teenage soap opera that played around her as it did on a daily basis. Macy was not a popular girl. She was smart and ambitious and serious, qualities which certainly did not endear her to the more socially elite of Greenlawn High.

  Not that any of this really bothered Macy.

  At least, not that she was willing to admit openly. Some kids were funny and some kids were jocks, some were drop-dead gorgeous and some were burgeoning criminals, and some, like her, were just smart. A thin, flaxen-haired, girl, she knew her one true attribute was her brain. And she was adult enough to know that in the real world, this is ultimately what counted. Sometimes she wished she had looks like Shannon Kittery or Chelsea Paris or some of the other senior vixens, had guys worshipping at her feet. But not too often. For she knew that looks faded, as they said, and that both Shannon and Chelsea would probably end up living in trailers with three screaming brats each and the obligatory alcoholic, abusive husband who once upon a time had rushed for a hundred yards in the big game, but now only rushed to the refrigerator or to the TV set to watch the WCW or Girls Gone Wild on DVD.

  Unlike so many of the others that ran the maze of high school looking for their slice of cheese, Macy had ambitions. School and study came easy to her, so early in her freshman year she decided to go to law school upon graduation and commenced to arrange her classes accordingly. Yes, a good law school. Then maybe criminal law followed by district attorney and even judge. After that, a leap into politics and who could say where it would all end?

  Yes, Macy had high ambitions, lofty aspirations, but no one save the school counselor knew this. None of her classmates would have suspected that brainy, quiet little Macy was aiming at positions of great power.