Blood Orchard Part 14

Jay gaped as he stuck his head through the opening. A citric pungency hit him like a tidal wave. He stepped back and blinked. It stank as if someone had doused the room with apple cider.

He grimaced as Coren barged past him. "A panic room? What have you been doing in here?"

"Me? Look at them!" Coren pointed at the wall to Jay's immediate left, spun, and then gestured toward the window. "Look at them!"

Jay stepped into the room and shook his head. He dropped his crossed arms, flexed his palms. The farther the eccentric guy led him into his world, the more he wished he had his camcorder. He had more stories than the Bible brewing in his head for WNDY. He still could not believe that he stood in a panic room.

"What do you mean them?" Jay scanned his steel surroundings. There were rotten remnants of apples splattered on the floor, most covered in fruit flies. Piles of cardboard boxes littered the corners. "The walls? The mess you haven't cleaned up in days? I don't see a phone anywhere."

"Forget the phone!" Coren kicked the wall beneath the window. The twin girls were unresponsive. The one with twisted legs and barbed wire scars twitched on her back to the left of the doorway; the stumpy one inched across the room on Coren's right, her tongue las.h.i.+ng out as if she intended on s.n.a.t.c.hing up some fruit flies. "See this? It's a panic room! See them? They're dead! And I've been hiding them in here so Pritchard doesn't find them!"

"Listen, I don't have time for this. I need a phone. A phone. And you need to sober up, buddy."

Jay turned to leave. Coren lunged and seized him by his sleeve. He yanked him around, and then shoved him down. Jay landed in a pile of boxes.

"Hey!" Jay glanced right and left. He considered heaving a box. "What is your problem?"

Coren gestured with both hands, resembling a frustrated traffic cop. "Look at them! Are you blind? Or am I the only one that can see them? There's no way I'm that crazy!"

"You're that crazy! There's no one else in here! So what are you pointing at?"

Coren froze as a cold dread drenched his bones. The redhead's quavering words burrowed in his head like a tumor. He shook his head. That was impossible. The dead girls were right there before his eyes. He had even dragged them out of their wells. The guy was putting him on. He had to be. Or had he drank one too many tumblers of gin, which in turn gave him disturbing hallucinations?

It's not the gin! And I'm not hallucinating! I picked them up with my hands! I fed them apples and they swallowed them whole!

"I'm pointing at the dead twin blonds." Coren gulped. He knew he sounded like a madman. Was this what happened to people that spent day in and day out on the Internet? He was beginning to wonder if it was all those flash banners he clicked on. Maybe they had triggered a subtle brain seizure. He was going crazy. "I pulled them out of my backyard. Now there's another one on the deck. It's probably another sister. Ah, Jesus, they're triplets!"

"What did you say?" Jay kicked the boxes at his feet and stood. "What did you just say?"

"The fat blond bimbo that chased you! She's their sister!" Coren pointed again while Jay tugged hard at his beard. "I knew it! The whole family's coming for dinner!"

"Christ, would you calm down?"

Coren balled his fists. He wanted to knock out Opie's teeth and make him choke on the molars. Calm down? There were kid zombies sprouting out of his yard like dandelions. Triplets at that.

Realization struck him cold and he paled. The Tribune headline glowed like a neon sign in his mind's eye.

Six-month-old triplets kidnapped, bloodied Triplets had been kidnapped, now triplets sought him out. But the abducted children had been six-months-old, not teenagers. How did that make sense?

"Triplets. Blond triplets."

Jay began to piece the puzzle. "Wait a minute. What do you know about the triplets?"

Coren shook his head, dumbfounded. "They were twins, now they're triplets. But they're teenagers." He looked to Jay for an answer, gla.s.sy-eyed. "The dead girls in my house are triplets."

It was Jay's turn to lose skin color. He felt as if it drained straight to the floor. He swallowed hard. "Where are they?"

Coren snapped out of his trance. "They're dead. And you can't see them."

"Show me where they are. Show me, dammit!"

"They're dead! I can see them and you can't! How many people are in this room?"

"Counting your hallucinations?"

"You can't see them!"

"Four."

"You counted yourself three times!"

Coren stormed to the sliding door, flung it open, and then slammed it behind him. Jay stood rooted to the box pile and collected his thoughts. Despite the cider haze and burning orifices, he soon grasped wisps of clarity. For choosing a random residence with a headcase, the oddities seemed to parallel. He was convinced the disappearance of the Blondies fifteen years ago had something to do with the recent kidnappings. Now here he was in a stranger's presence that admitted to having dead triplets in his house. And to think that he had asked him where they were, as if the madman would tell him.

But they're teenagers.

The guy's comment rang in Jay's ears. Did that mean he wasn't hiding the babies in his house? Was it possible he had gone on a kidnapping spree and s.n.a.t.c.hed up another set of triplets?

He needed to involve the cops. But who could he trust? Pritchard? Barter? Neither gave him the warm fuzzy feeling. He wished more than ever that he was covering yet another news story. But it was more than that. He felt as if the events were unfolding around him.

"Get out of here!" The shouts broke Jay's concentration. He crossed the panic room and opened the door.

As Francine stepped off the school grounds, the previous day's goings-on blinded her like winter sunrise. She saw herself sitting naked on the ditch embankment, vulnerable, trembling, asking herself why the Blondies would do such a thing to her. It was beyond humiliation. They had dumped her in a ditch and left her for dead. She knew that next time they would bury her. Their hatred for her had multiplied tenfold like a plague.

A halo of ache surrounded her head. Her mother had given her three Tylenol that morning and warned her that if she visited the nurse's office she would be grounded for a month. Her father had slapped her for being weak after she explained what had happened. He then threatened her with a las.h.i.+ng if she told anyone that the sheriff's daughters had harmed her.

She hated her father. She hated her mother even more for not standing up for her. They were both terrified of Sheriff Pritchard. Ever since the time her father rear-ended his cop car while driving drunk, they were deaf to her pleas of bullying. She tried her hardest to swallow the sobs and bury the Blondies in her subconscious, reminding herself over and over that she needed to be strong. Strong like her father, not weak like her mother.

She gazed at Railroad Street. It would be a long two and a half blocks. She hoped the Blondies would follow her. She had glimpsed them lurking near the entrance, probably having skipped their last cla.s.s. She pretended not to see them as she pa.s.sed the two school buses and left the grounds.

She glanced down East Walnut Street when she reached the corner. She spotted her house in the distance. She had the overwhelming urge to sprint there and lock the door behind her. She didn't fancy getting the s.h.i.+t beat out of her twice in two days.

She looked over her shoulder. The Blondies walked side by side a block back. Henna pulled a wrench out of her pocket. As if on cue, Loren and Sylvia withdrew screwdrivers.

Francine broke into a sweat. For a moment, dizziness clouded her. She bit her lip, blinked her eyes hard, and focused on the sidewalk. She bottled her fear like a firefly. It was pointless to worry. She had been through this before, the difference being that she was the cat and they were the mice. On that thought, she found strength and walked faster.

Henna slapped the wrench in her hand. "You might wanna start runnin', Smeller! I'm gonna kill ya this time!"

Francine was nearing Main Street. Her plan was to lead the Blondies through town and down the alley by Kate's Bakery. She had a good distance left to travel.

Loren sneered as her sisters chuckled. "Hope you're ready to get stabbed!"

Francine turned the corner onto Main Street and paused as she was. .h.i.t with a brainstorm. She slipped off her backpack, unzipped it, and then whipped it at the Blondies.

"You can have my backpack, you pigs!"

Francine dashed toward downtown as her schoolbooks pummeled the triplets. Her Trapper Keeper knocked Henna's wrench into the street. Her lunchbox slammed into the side of Sylvia's head while her algebra homework landed at Loren's feet.

Unharmed, Loren pursued her as her sisters staggered and regained themselves.

"You're dead, Smeller!"

Hank unlocked and opened the barn doors. He then hopped into the cab and backed up the truck. Once the flatbed was inside, he killed the engine, and then dropped the tailgate.

"'I'd hate to have to charge ya with manslaughter.' You best find the evidence first, piggy."

He tossed aside a few bags of apples at the end of the flatbed and uncovered Barter's bloodstained loafer. He reached into the pile, seized his ankle. He grimaced at the cold and slimy feel of it.

He proceeded to tug the body forward until it was exposed and slid off the tailgate like a sack of flour. It landed on the dirt floor with a crunching thud, as if more than the skin had been melted away. Blood and brownish-yellow bodily fluids seeped around Hank's boots.

"Ah, Christ's Disciples!"

He turned his back on the mess and dragged his boots across the barn, intending to wipe them clean on a dirt floor. The cloud of dust trailed him to the last stall on the left. He stared at the splintered rack as reminiscence curled his lip. The residents a mile away on Sangralea had mentioned the next day that they had never heard his hogs squeal so much. His reply was that he had scared them with his new John Deere. In truth, unbeknownst to the townspeople, he did not own any farm animals.

He grinned at the ironic situation. Here he was about to bury the detective on the Trammell case beneath bloodstained evidence that was more d.a.m.ning than Ed Gein's homemade furniture. He was glad the FBI was far from Onward. He would be jailed for sure.

Yet he was reluctant to part with his collection. They were chock full of memories dating back centuries. How many people had shed blood on the leather straps? How many screams had been forced from the cranks? How many dying breaths had fogged the steel frameworks? Vengeance was carved into the wood grain like lovers' initials.

"What's going on here, Hank?"

Hank whirled to see Burl Nelson squinting between the right barn door and left headlight of the pickup.

The old man twisted his beard, and then straightened his gla.s.ses. "The last time I saw your truck in the barn you had blood on your hands."

Hank glanced down at Barter's body, and then met his friend's gaze. He turned his head and spit. The cop's corpse was a yard out of Burl's periphery. He hoped the geezer smelled apples, as death hung in the air like London fog.

Pritchard emerged from the pine trees and stamped out his Marlboro. He was glad the rain clouds had dissipated. It was a long walk from boxcar alley to the Texaco. He was exhausted, huffing and puffing, out of gas and in need of a refill. He seldom walked anywhere. Though Onward was smaller than most towns, if he couldn't drive there, it wasn't worth his time. In fact, he failed to recall an instance in which he abandoned his cop car and traveled on foot. What was the world coming to?

He approached the rear of the gas station. The back door was shut tight. He rounded the concrete building, removed his Stetson, and wiped the sweat from his brow.

"Sheriff? What in Judas happened here?"

Pritchard paused at the corner of the storefront. He slapped on his hat and regarded Deputy Marten. He was a wisp of a man; he was tall as a basketball center, skinny as a Hollywood actress. His uniform was in disarray. His s.h.i.+rt was bunched and unb.u.t.toned while his khakis were stained with coffee dribbles. He was his right-hand man - besides his only other officer Ernie Edsel - and nagged worse than a housewife. Now here the nosy pest was with his hands on his hips gazing at the disaster area.

"How the h.e.l.l should I know?" Pritchard thumbed his belt buckle as he approached Marten's squad car, which was parked beside his own. "Ya think I've been sittin' here buyin' Slurpees all day?"

Marten s.h.i.+fted and backed into the fly-splattered grill of his Ford. "No, sir. I just thought that maybe you'd...What happened to your hand? Jesus, sir! We need to get you to the doc!"

"It's a paper cut, Marten. Must've hit an artery." He motioned with his bloodstained stump. "Now I'm gonna be goin' on inside, if ya care to have my back. Christ Almighty. Where is Edsel? How is it we have only one officer posted?"

"Well, the crowd's pretty much split. Most of 'em ran off to that bomb scare on the el. Heard there were two more threats at Soldier Field and the Sears Tower. Ernie and I laid some spikes and strung up the yellow tape."

"Ya kiddin' me? What if we get ourselves another redhead who thinks he's Evel Kenevel? If anymore of that chaos goes down, both y'all will be pullin' spikes outta yer face."

Pritchard turned his back, drew his Magnum, and kicked in the front doors. They snapped off the hinges and crashed. Marten drew his service revolver and followed his boss into the store.

"What do you think happened here, Sheriff?"

"Sounds like a h.e.l.luva question for Adler, seein' how he should be workin' the register." Pritchard waved his pistol. "Scope out the back room. Make sure our suspect ain't hidin' in the john."

"Should I radio Ernie?"

"Why? Ya need him to hold yer woody? Get yer a.s.s back there!"

Pritchard was grateful Marten was dumber than Barney Fife. The guy had walked across smeared bloodstains and pa.s.sed a scorched counter without so much as a turn of his head. Then again, maybe he had noticed, but wasn't about to p.i.s.s off his boss with stupid questions. After all, small town cop qualifications amounted to gun licenses and Good Enough Diplomas. That was how Pritchard preferred his officers, obedient and submissive. If one of them ever became smarter, they would think that they could do a better job as sheriff. Over his burning dead body.

"Hey, Sheriff! I think we got something here!"

Pritchard raised his Magnum. What the h.e.l.l did that pig farmer leave behind? He sure didn't mop worth a d.a.m.n.

Marten had his back turned, crouched near the pantry door. He lifted Barter's blue C.P.D. cap with the barrel of his pistol. The right side of the brim was shot off. The underside was crimson.

"Sheriff, this belongs to that Barter fellow. It's bloodier than a d.a.m.n tam -"

Pritchard's Magnum cut off Marten. The point-blank blast knocked his brains into Barter's cap. His body dropped and drained red.

Pritchard holstered his gun, withdrew a Marlboro, and then sparked it. He savored the nicotine rush as it slowed his adrenaline. "Looks like Edsel earned a promotion."

He stared at the skeletal, bleeding body as the implications of his crime set in. He had reacted defensively, as Marten - regardless of his stupidity - would have figured out that something bad had happened to Barter, which in turn could have led to an FBI tip. He realized now that he had another mess to clean, and another squad car to conceal.

He smoked the cigarette down to the b.u.t.t while reflecting on his misdeeds. He then flicked the smoldering remains into the pool of blood.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the walkie-talkie off his belt. "Edsel!"

"Sheriff?"

"Any sign of Adler? The store's vacant and I need a word with him."

"No sign, but he never goes farther than his farm. You want me to make a house call?"

"No. Stay posted. I'll pay him a visit."

Pritchard reattached his walkie-talkie, and then removed his badge. He swapped it out with a s.h.i.+ny replacement.

"Onward and upward."