The Outkast (10 page)

Allan was riled by Crawford’s
pansy
show. He intervened. “That’s what we found when we arrived, ma’am, and we’re here to—”

“
Oh, yeah. That’s what you found, damn right,” Holly burst. She was beginning to feel exhausted and sick of this whole thing. She had had enough—more than enough—of the officers’ crap. “It’s barely twelve in the morning, and you wouldn’t even let me sleep. Has my punishment climbed to that height? How did you get in and what’re you doing here at this ungodly hour? Have you got more evidence against him now? More evidence to pile up on top of the shitty ones you’ve already got?”

Allan opened his mouth to respond to the avalanche of furious words rolling out of Holly’s mouth, and thereby save the day, but he closed it back. Holly wasn’t done yet. He would have to wait his turn.

“
Oh, save your breath, okay? You don’t even need to say a word. It’s all crystal-clear. Your boss has sent you to take him away from me at last. Isn’t that so?”

With his thumbs hooked in his belt-holes, Allan said, “Unfortunately, yes, ma’am. That’s exactly why we’re here.”

Everything happened so fast from that point on—until it all culminated in an unmitigated disaster.

Holly burst into tears, shaking her head and screaming something at the deputies—screaming some really caustic obscenities.

Allan was trying to speak above her screams, to explain to her that taking the boy away was inevitable, as much as he hated to do it. One more body had been found at the river bank—a body that had been identified as one of Robert’s teachers. More clues had emerged along to pull the boy into the center of the mess once again.

And Deputy Crawford McGinnis had decided to stop shifting from foot to foot, and instead had chosen to pull his gun out of its holster as his wide eyes beheld the behemoth of a monster who came flying towards him, sparkling knife in one hand and chimpanzee’s face in place.

Holly saw it shortly before Crawford did—and even longer before Allan. Her scream of invective changed to a scared shriek as she turned and ran back down the hall, her lace-edged nightgown billowing and gunshots booming after her.

Crawford was screaming, too. He’d brought his weapon out of the holster, working things pretty fast lest those things go rotten even much faster. The gun was coming up now, coming up to take aim, his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze, his eyeballs expanding in their sockets with ever increasing fear of the creature whose flight seemed to be on the verge of outpacing Crawford’s own celerity.

The gun blasted again and again, bullets gouging walls and whining away like some banshee spirits in a terribly foul mood.

Even as his heart pounded wildly against his rib cage, and even as he gritted his teeth and squeezed the shit out of the trigger, Crawford McGinnis felt himself lifted off into the air, and with that came an indescribable pain.

He had been stabbed in the shoulder.

******

Deputy Allan Moore watched Holly’s eyes change from being filled with pugnacity to fright, and he wondered what had come upon her again. He hated the woman, anyway. Earlier, he’d thought she was very strange and remarkably annoying, considering how she sometimes came unglued when least expected, especially in the middle of a conversation. He was still wondering what had come upon her until the noise delivered to him a complete package of understanding.

Wheeling his head to the left, Allan saw Crawford’s frightened countenance, saw him make a move to draw his gun, and then saw a huge figure lope from the shadow behind the kitchen wall, airborne towards Crawford. The figure, flashing a chimp’s head atop a huge human body, crashed right into the screaming young deputy just a split second before Crawford started to shoot. The assaulter rammed its knife into Crawford’s right shoulder while it applied its momentum to knock him off his feet, and simultaneously parried Crawford’s gun-hand towards the wall. Bullets chipped away woodwork, filling the living room with smoke and dust. While in midair, Crawford lost his grip on the gun, which flew right underneath a couch at the opposite end of the room.

On the floor with his attacker, Crawford wailed in pain as the giant repeatedly stabbed him along the entire length of his torso.

Meanwhile, Allan had ducked behind a couch to shield himself from being hit by stray bullets. It took him just about five seconds to screw up his courage and come out of his hiding place, but the time seemed to stretch into eternity. He was training his own gun now, wishing more than anything to blow the monster’s head away, but also aware of the possibility of accidentally killing Crawford in the process.

The first chance came when the ape-man yanked its knife out of Crawford’s flesh so forcefully that it slid away from Crawford a little bit.

Allan opened fire. Didn’t hit his target. Only chipped off the wooden flooring beside the big monster.

The chimp-faced man growled and launched its knife at Allan.

Allan stumbled back a step, ducking away from the path of the sailing missile, and although he lost his footing in the process, he didn’t stop shooting as he went down.

At first, he thought the monster would come for him, but the huge creature only bounced to its feet and ran out the door, into the quiet, moonlit night.

******

“
Oh, my baby,” Holly cried, and ran back into the living room as Allan attempted to place a call to the Sheriff’s Office. “He’s stolen my baby, Deputy Moore.”

With a show of his teeth, not hiding his anger, Allan said, “Someone’s got to take the kid, Mrs. Smallwood. If the police don’t, then some prowling ape will come along to help. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“
How dare you talk to me that way?”

“
Oh, what way is that, ma’am? I actually thought you locked all the doors,” Allan said sarcastically. “The
thing
from the God-forsaken place stole the boy away through the back door.”

After the intruder had fled, Allan discovered the back door was also open.

“
Yeah, I already know that,” she said, mopping her face. “So, should that be the justification for your callousness? You have no human feelings whatsoever, and—”

“
Mrs. Smallwood, could you please keep your voice down so I can make a call for help?”

Allan’s breath was still rough around the edges when he spoke on the phone.

Emily Bateman who answered the call at the Sheriff’s Office said, “Hey, Allan. Have you been running uphill, or what? You breathe like you’re gonna have a heart-attack pretty soon.”

“
Tell you what, kid, I’ve just had something about worse than heart-attack.”

“
Oh, really?”

“
Yeah, really. I’ve had a terrible brush with death. Crawford’s down. We need ambulance. And we need back-up. Sixteen Bran Street.”

“
Oh, no,” Emily gasped.

“
Oh, yes. We need both, and we need them right away. I ain’t kidding.”

“
I didn’t mean ‘Oh, no. There ain’t no back-up for you, ‘cause you’re a lying son-of-bitch.’ I meant ‘Oh, no Crawford’s down. That’s no good.’”

“
No, it’s not. And thanks for the clarification,” Allan said, turning towards Crawford. “Hang on, buddy. Help’s on the way. You’ll be fine.”

“
How bad is it?” Emily asked.

“
Very.”

“
Oh, my God. Could you—”

“
Back-up and ambulance, Emily. Now, please.”

“
Working on it,” she said, and was gone.

Allan moved to Crawford’s side, giving whatever little therapeutic support he could offer without upsetting his wounded comrade. Blood flowed along the wooden floor without any restriction.

Holly lay face-down on the floor towards the hallway, mourning the kidnapping of her son.

Not long after, the phone rang.

It was Sheriff Brian Stack. “Make sure Crawford’s hanging on there, no matter how bad the situation is,” he told Allan, as if Allan was a first-class trained medical emergency technician, or as if the outcome of Crawford’s survival was exclusively in Allan’s possession.

“
I’m doing the best I can, Sheriff.”

“
Good,” Brian said. “I don’t expect any less from you. Help’s on the way. I’ll be on the way, too. Did you have an idea of where he ran to by any chance?”

“
All I know is that it ran out the front door,” Allan said. “And I locked all the doors right away.”

“
It?”

“
What, Sheriff?”

“
You said
it
ran out the front door ...”

“
Well, I don’t really know whether to call the
thing
“it” or “him,” if you ask me. He’s got a chimpanzee’s face sitting atop a man’s body.”

“
Ah,” Brian said. “Might be some monstrous creature from the Himalaya Mountains.” He hung up.

Allan didn’t know if that was a joke or serious talk.

Chapter 13

“You think he’s gonna make it?” Allan stood to the left of Brian, across the street from Holly’s place. His oblong face was a tablet of deep worry. Two other deputies stood by their cruisers at the other side of the ambulance.

“
I hope he does,” Brian said. “He’s got so many deep wounds all over him, enough to kill an elephant—which conveniently explains why he’s unconscious. But the emergency workers said he’ll come around pretty good.”

“
What’s the news from the Coroner’s Office?” Allan asked as they began to walk back to Holly’s place.

“
Another interesting story,” Brian said. “One of the boys at the lab screwed things up. The hair at the scene came from two sources—Robert and someone else. But they never saw that important fact until recently. Damn lab techies.”

“
Who’s the other source?”

“
Still unidentified.”

“
So, they don’t have the DNA results from the blood samples for us yet?”

“
Not Trevor Carter’s.”

“
What?” Allan stopped in his track.

“
Yeah, I know. It’s shocking. The blood on the knife as well as the one in which the strands were
marinated
came from the same person.”

“
But not from Trevor?”

“
No.” Brian went up the porch steps, and added, “Not from Robert, either.”

“
This is getting more and more exciting,” Allan remarked.

“
I want you to add to that excitement the fact that Ed Gibson’s running a different version of his story now.”

“
Which is?”

“
He was out to get a pack of cigarette when it all happened last week, and he held that important piece of info back at the start of this investigation. Hell, even past the middle of it.”

******

“
I don’t really think it’s a good idea to go back in there unless we can get reinforcement,” Allan had observed when Brian had decided to head back to Holly’s.

Now, once in there, Brian suggested they comb through the house for any giveaway signs in relation to the
thing
, as Allan had chosen to refer to the night intruder.

Holly was howling away in her room, which was good. Brian thought the last thing they needed was a contentious woman breathing down their necks while they tried to make headway. Better to have her stay in there and cry her eyes out.

Besides a congealment of blood on Robert’s bed, the search through the house yielded nothing.

Then, they decided to go through Robert’s room one more time before giving up and leaving the house to devise another solution.

“
What exactly are we looking for?” Allan asked after a while. He hadn’t been too enthusiastic about sticking around here—the location of his near-death—but evading responsibility seemed to be an uphill task now that Brian was here to supervise.

Brian favored him with a scalding look. “Well, I’m damn sure we’re not searching for your missing butt, Deputy.”

That didn’t sit well with Allan. Nonetheless, he shrugged and went on with his business.

Brian said, “Clues, Allan. Anything at all—that’s what we’re searching for. Anything that can lead us to the ...” He paused, watching Allan, who had already dropped down on all fours, poking his head underneath the bed frame, his butt jutting out behind him. He was probing the space down there, doing a darn good cop’s job. “ ... anything that can lead us to
it
,”
Brian finished.

Allan’s butt reversed, dragging the rest of him out from beneath the bed. He rose. With his back still turned to Brian, he dusted the object he’d ferreted out. Flipping it over and over, he said, “Check this out, Sheriff. I just found something, which is worth
anything
.”

“
What?” Brian inched closer.

Allan turned around. There was a mischievous grin spread all over his face.