Bad Men

Dupree was about to leave the room when a piece of paper, seemingly caught by a draft, rose from a corner by the drapes and then settled again. The policeman leaned down to examine it more closely, and found himself looking at a moth. It was ugly and gray, with yellow markings along its body. Its wings fluttered feebly.

“Doug, can you get me an empty mayo jar, or something with a lid on it?”

The older man found a jelly jar. Dupree scooped the moth from the floor, then refitted the lid carefully. He used his pocketknife to bore a hole in the top, in order to allow the insect some air, although he guessed that it didn’t have long to live.

Holding the jar up to the light from the window, he examined the moth, turning the bottle slowly to look at its wings and its markings. Doug Newton squinted at it, then shook his head.

“I’ve never seen a moth like that before,” he said.

Beside him, Dupree felt an uncomfortable ache spreading across his belly. Suddenly, Doug Newton’s tale of a levitating girl didn’t seem so far-fetched. He swallowed hard.

“I have,” he said.

They were four miles from the prison, following the banks of the river, when they saw the body. The Dismal Creek State Penitentiary lay at the end of an isolated road, with little traffic apart from prison vehicles. Anyone who found himself in trouble on that road was likely to be waiting a long time for help.

“Hell is that?” asked Misters.

“Looks like a woman,” said Torres. “Pull over.”

The woman lay by the side of the road, her legs splayed, her shoulders and head hidden in the long grass that grew by the hard shoulder. Her legs and buttocks were exposed where her skirt had ridden up over them. They pulled up a few feet from her and Torres got out, Misters about to follow until Torres told him to stay back.

“Keep an eye on him,” said Torres.

“He’s going nowhere,” said Misters, but he still remained close to the car and aware of Moloch, who was watching the proceedings with interest.

The woman was not moving, and Torres could see blood on her back. He leaned down and spread the grass that obscured her head.

“Oh sweet-”

He saw the red exposed flesh where her head should have been, then turned his face away in time to catch the slug on the bridge of his nose. He crumpled to the ground as Misters went for his own weapon, but a shadow fell across him and he looked up to see one of his own, a brother, holding a shotgun on him. From the grass at the other side of the road another man emerged, this one younger, with blond hair and a pretty, almost feminine, face. Behind him was a muscular man with short red hair, wearing tight faded jeans and a T-shirt decorated with the Stars and Stripes. The red-headed man took Misters’s gun, then used plastic restraints to tie the investigator’s hands behind his back. Meanwhile, the blond kid knelt by Torres and removed the keys from his belt and the gun from his holster. Then he walked over to the Land Cruiser, opened the door, and released Moloch from his chains.

Moloch stretched as he emerged from the car, then took Torres’s gun from the kid and walked over to where Misters squatted. He raised the gun and pointed at the investigator’s head.

“Now, Mr. Misters, do you have anything to say to me?’

Misters didn’t open his mouth. He looked up at Moloch with mingled fear and disgust.

“I could shoot you,” said Moloch, “shoot you like the boorish dog that you are.”

He aimed the gun.

“Bang,” he said. He tipped the muzzle to his mouth and blew a stream of imaginary smoke from the barrel.

“But I’m not going to shoot you,” he said.

“We taking him with us?” asked Dexter.

“No.”

“If we leave him, he’ll identify us.”

“Really?” asked Moloch.

He stared hard at Misters.

“Oh that my eyes might see and my tongue might speak,” he said. “Of what wonders might I tell.”

He turned to the young white boy.

“Blind him, then cut his tongue out. He never had much use for it anyway.”

They worked quickly, pushing the SUV into the river, the body of Torres and the woman inside it. Misters they left, bleeding and in shock, by the riverbank. The whole operation had taken less than three minutes.

Braun made a call on his cell phone, and seconds later, they were joined by Powell and Leonie, who had been driving the lookout vans positioned two hundred yards at either side of the ambush area, their sides decorated with the removable logo of a nonexistent forestry company so that, if any other car had taken that road before their work was done, they could be held back with a story about a fallen tree. In the event, no other vehicle had troubled them. Then the little convoy, five men and one woman in two vans, headed at speed toward the highway, and the north.

Dexter, Leonie, and Moloch drove in silence for a time, Dexter glancing occasionally in his side mirror. Three cars behind were Braun, Powell, and the boy, and that suited Dexter just fine. The boy Willard gave him the creeps, the beauty and seeming i

Dexter was a clever guy, maybe not as clever as he thought he was, but still pretty smart, all things considered. He’d done some reading, and liked books on psychology. Dexter figured that if you were going to be dealing with people, then you should try to find out as much as possible about the general principles behind them. He particularly liked the abnormal stuff because, in his line of work, abnormal was what he dealt with on a day-to-day basis. He knew all about sociopaths and psychopaths and assorted other deviants, and had begun to categorize the freaks he had met according to his diagnosis of their particular abnormality.

But Willard…

Dexter hadn’t found a book that dealt with anything quite like Willard before. Willard was off the scale. In fact, Dexter wasn’t even sure that Willard was entirely human, although that wasn’t the kind of thing that he was about to say out loud in the company of Moloch or anybody else. But sometimes he found Willard staring at him, and when he looked into the kid’s eyes it was like falling into a void. Dexter figured that dying in space might feel something like seeing oneself reflected in Willard’s eyes: there was only nothingness masquerading as blackness. It wasn’t even hostile. It was just blank.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Moloch.

“Stuff.”

“Don’t you go giving too much away now.”

“Like I said, just stuff.”

Beside him, Leonie just stared silently at the passing cars.

“Willard stuff?” said Moloch.

“How’d you know that?”

“I was watching you. I saw you look in the mirror. Your face changed. I can read you like a book, Dex.”

“I don’t like him. I’ve never been anything but straight with you, and I’m telling you the truth of it now. He’s out there.”

“He’s been useful.”

“Yeah.”

“And loyal.”

“To you.”

“That’s all that matters.”

“With respect, man, you been in jail these past three years. Difficult to work with someone who don’t answer to anyone but a man in a prison suit.”

“But you managed it.”

“I got a lot of patience, and the Verso thing was a piece of luck.”

“Yes,” said Moloch. “I take it something is being done about him.”

“As we speak.”

“You should have gotten Willard to do it. He never liked Verso.”

“I never liked him either, but I didn’t dislike the man enough to sic Willard on him. You see what he did to the woman? He cut on her pretty bad.”