And here’s a good one: her father’s a cop! She has pictures in her bedroom of him in his uniform. There’s one where she’s real little and sitting on his knee and wearing his cop hat which is about a hundred sizes too big for her.
A cop!
Life is sometimes just one big jolly surprise after another.
Of all the cute little sixteen-year-old babes in the world, I just happen to be after the daughter of a cop.
He looks like an ugly, mean son of a bitch, too.
How did Jody turn out so beautiful with a gorilla like him supplying half her chromosomes? Amazing.
No doubt, though—she’s his kid.
She probably inherited the part of him that bounced a fuckin’ baseball bat off my head the other night.
Anyway, I did more than just look at her pictures. I went through her drawers and closet. The closet had a few empty hangers, and the drawer where she kept her panties and bras had a lot of vacant space. In fact, there were only two pairs of panties and one bra. The hamper next to the dresser had nothing in it.
So, did she keep extra hangers just for the fun of it? Did she have a big shortage of underwear?
Not real likely.
I went out to the garage and looked inside the washing machine and dryer. Only thing I found was a pair of jeans in the washer.
I added things up.
One, Jody and her old man are gone. Two, the car is gone. Three, it looks like Jody has clothes missing.
You add that stuff up, and they give you an answer. Which is that Jody and her old man must’ve packed a few things and lit out.
Probably planning to lay low for a while.
Not a bad idea when you know you’ve got killers after you.
Which I’ll probably have, myself, if I don’t turn Jody up in time for the big ten o’clock deadline.
Deadline’s a good word for it.
It’s three o’clock in the morning right now. I had the cassette recorder in my purse, and fortunately it didn’t get broken when I fell. It was starting to sound funny, though, so I put in some fresh batteries. Found them in a kitchen drawer where there was a lot of stuff like strapping tape, glue, and about five different sizes of new batteries.
Anyway, I’ve been talking into it for a while now, since right after I checked the washing machine and dryer. I’m on a sofa in the living room.
And dead tired.
I’ve gotta flake out for a while. Might not be a brilliant idea to do it in the living room, though. No telling when somebody might show up. There’s a guest room way at the end of the hall. That wouldn’t be much fun, would it?
I think I’ll try Jody’s bed.
Yeah.
I’m sure I’ll enjoy lying in her very own bed. I’m sure I’ll like that a lot.
Maybe it’ll help me have sweet dreams.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I’m back.
Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea, trying to grab some Zs on Jody’s bed. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I kept remembering everything about how she’d looked and felt the other night. And I kept thinking about how this was her bed, how she gets into it every night, maybe naked sometimes, and how my skin was pressing against the same sheets that had been rubbed by Jody’s body. It made me hard and achy and a little nuts.
I also spent a lot of time imagining what I would do with her. I thought about ways I might like to tie her up, and how I would hurt her, and the different ways I would fuck her.
And those were the good things that ran through my head.
There were also times when I worried about never being able to find her, what the guys would do to Lisa if I screwed up, what they might do to my sisters down the line and what they might do to me.
I spent part of the time horny, part of the time scared. And my face hurt from the dog bite and I had a headache.
It made for a very long night.
I slept just long enough to have one really horrible nightmare.
I was chasing a dog that reminded me a lot of Henry—a little white furball with an attitude. I was after the bone in its mouth. The bone belonged to me. It was my big, stiff cock. My crotch was bleeding all over the place while I chased the damn dog.
Whenever Henry had a good lead on me, he’d hunker down and gnaw on the bone and I’d yell, “Don’t wreck it! You’re gonna wreck it!”
But then he got away from me and I lost sight of him for a while. When I found him again, his mouth was empty but he had dirt all over his muzzle and paws. “You buried it!” I yelled. He wagged his tail. So then I begged him to tell me where, and he grinned and swung around and pranced on ahead of me.
He led me straight to a graveyard. Then he vanished and I was all alone in the bone orchard without a clue as to where he’d planted my dick. I started looking. It was creepy. Tombstones everywhere. Weeds and tombstones and stunted, dead trees. And the worst part was that I noticed spooks sneaking around the graves, scurrying this way and that, ducking behind monuments. I don’t know what they were supposed to be—zombies, maybe. I was afraid they might start coming after me.
Finally, I found a place where the soil looked loose and dark. I started digging there, clawing away the dirt with my fingers. It was a fresh hole, all right. And pretty soon, I found what I was looking for.
So I thought, anyway.
I grabbed it and pulled.
It was attached to someone.
All of a sudden the ground crumbled and up sat a body all covered by dirt. The dirt started sliding off, and I knew this had to be Tit Ring showing up to haunt me. But it wasn’t.
It turned out to be Jody. She was naked and grinning, and I still had hold of her cock. She said, “Suck me, honey.”
I was awfully shocked that she had a dick. I mean, she’s beautiful and has wonderful tits and she’s almost too good to be true, but here I find her in a grave and she comes up out of the dirt and has herself some male equipment. Very damn weird.
And even weirder still is that I’m turned on by the whole thing. I’ve never done any of that perverted stuff, you know? That stuff was for Mitch and Chuck, not me. But I tell myself this isn’t a guy, it’s Jody. So I go ahead and open up and slide my lips down her rod, but all of a sudden it turns cold and hard. The way it feels in my mouth, I know it’s a gun barrel.
I say, “This isn’t your cock.”
She says, “No, but it’s cocked.”
I’m thinking it’s very clever of me to have wisecracks in my dreams.
But then the gun goes off and I wake up damn fast—before the bullet has a chance to reach my brain and kill me.
It’s supposed to be very bad news if you get killed in a dream.
But I woke up in time. I’m pretty sure.
Woke up with a splitting headache and a sore face. The room was gray and chilly. I took my gun with me to the john. I helped myself to some aspirin, then went to the kitchen and got a pot of coffee started. I didn’t have any clothes on, so I was shivering. Have you ever noticed how a headache hurts a lot worse when you’re shivering?
Once I was under the shower, the headache tapered off. There’s nothing like a hot shower to take away the morning chill and relax you. The water made my face sting where the dog had bitten me, but it felt great otherwise.
When you’re in the shower, you can’t hear anything that’s going on in the rest of the house. But you think you hear things. Like the telephone ringing, like footsteps and voices. It can get to you if you let it.
It can also add a little spice to your showering.
You’ve just gotta be logical about it and tell yourself you aren’t hearing anything. I mean, the odds were very much against anyone turning up at the house at six in the morning.
After the shower, I put on a terry cloth robe that I found in Jack’s closet. Jack is the father’s name, by the way. Jack Fargo. His name is on magazine subscription labels, bills I saw in the kitchen, all sorts of things.
I took the wig with me, but didn’t put it o
n. I just wanted to have it nearby as a precaution. I was in no mood to wear it, not with my headache. I didn’t feel like getting dressed, either. For starters, it was too early in the morning to cope with Hillary’s bra. Even though I get a bang out of the way I look in it, the thing makes me feel like I’m wearing a harness. Maybe it’s too small. I’ll have to try on the one I saw in Jody’s drawer. Later.
For now, I’m happy just sitting here in the living room. The sofa is comfortable and I like the feel of Jack’s robe. My first mug of coffee was great.
Time for a second. Back in a second.
Okay, I’m back. Ahh, this is the life.
Maybe I should make myself some breakfast.
That can wait. I don’t feel like moving for a while.
Sooner or later, I’ll have to move. Gotta figure out a way to find Jody and Andy. Or maybe they’ll just show up on their own and save me the trouble of hunting them down.
What the hell, I’ve got till ten o’clock tonight. Plenty of time.
Right now, I want to talk some more about my adventures in murder with Tom and the gang.
I already told about Hester Luddgate, and about how we killed those two bike riders on our way up to Oregon. I guess I didn’t get into how we killed the gal, or what else we did to her. Time’s a-wastin’, though. There’s still a lot of ground to cover, so I’ll just go on. Suffice it to say we had a merry few hours with the wench, and left her in no condition to tell the tale.
After that, Private and Clement were hooked. The four of us were on the road for a total of two weeks, and killed three more people for a grand total of five. One was a guy who was hitching his way to Portland. Then there were two gals whose car ran out of gas ten miles from the nearest town. Talk about stupid! Hell, they were too dumb to live. They weren’t much to look at, but we had fun with them.
When Ranch and Minnow—God, Minnow’s dead? That’s what Tom said, but it’s hard to believe. And it was Jody that killed him. I can see it, as a matter of fact. Her killing him. All she did was give me a tap with that bat of hers, and I’ve had a lump and a headache ever since. The headache comes and goes, to tell the truth. But it’s probably from when she pounded me. If she really put some oomph into her swing, it’s no wonder she dropped Minnow.
Anyway. Let me think. Oh, yeah. We got back from the trip and told those two, Ranch and Minnow, what we’d done and they went crazy. They acted like they’d been cheated out of all the excitement. They kept saying, “Damn!” and “Shit!” and “No fair!” and “How could you do it without us?”
So that’s when Tom said, “It’s no big deal. Let’s go out and kill somebody right now. All of us.”
We were sort of having a party at Tom’s place when he said that. It was the week after we got back from our Oregon trip, and we all had permission to spend the night. We were sitting around in his wreck room drinking beer and eating all sorts of munchies.
When Tom said that about going out and killing someone, I got so excited I almost couldn’t breathe. Ranch went red in the face and began panting. Little Minnow started rubbing his mouth. Private mumbled, “Oh boy oh boy oh boy,” and Clement bobbed his head, grinning like a dope.
All of us were hot to do it.
“What a bunch of sickos,” Tom said.
“And proud of it,” Private said.
“Have they taken the pledge?” Minnow asked.
For a while there, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But Tom knew, all right. And he was ready. We all joined hands and did the oath, just the same as on the day when we buried Hester. The only difference was, this time there were six of us.
When we were done, Tom took us out to his garage.
The garage is off to the side and slightly behind Tom’s house. It’s huge, with six bay doors and room inside to hold at least that many cars. There are also a couple of normal doors and some windows. You can’t see through the windows anymore, but you could on the night I’m talking about. It was later that we painted them black.
The garage wasn’t air conditioned like Tom’s house. It had been closed up all day, so it felt hot and stuffy. There weren’t any cars inside except for the Mercedes. There was a lot of junk—tools and gardening equipment, things like that. But the garage was so huge that it was mostly empty space. It was almost like being in an aircraft hangar.
After we were inside, Tom told us to strip. Seems like we’re always stripping, doesn’t it? The thing is, bloodshed is a messy business, and you don’t want to be stuck wearing gory clothes.
After we finished, Tom handed out black jumpsuits to all of us. He also gave us black socks and black sneakers. Everything fit, too. Which is strange. He’d found out our sizes on his own, without ever asking any of us. He only smiled when I asked him about it.
The jumpsuits looked great on us. They made us look like a skydiving club, or something. But they were awfully damn hot, especially while we were in the garage.
After we had our outfits on, Tom led us over to a comer where there were a lot of tools. He said, “Pick your weapons, guys.” We helped ourselves to all sorts of nasty instruments: hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, hedge clippers, a sickle, a chainsaw, an ax. We also grabbed shovels and a pickax, though nobody discussed whether these were supposed to be weapons or tools for disposing of the body.
We piled all the stuff in the trunk of the Mercedes, then climbed into the front and back seats. It was pretty crowded in there. Tom opened the garage door by remote control. (Only the door for the Mercedes’ section was equipped with an automatic opener.) Then we were off!
A team of six hunters prowling the night for prey.
I figured the plan was to drive around and search for a good target of opportunity. What we needed was a gal by herself in a fairly secluded place. You’d be amazed how easy it is. But that isn’t what Tom had in mind.
He drove us to a house only about a mile from where I lived at the time.
Denise Dennison’s house.
Minnow recognized the place, too. He sucked in a breath. “You’re kidding,” he whispered.
“You want her, don’t you?”
“Sure. Yeah. But ... You said we’re gonna kill somebody.”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Denise?”
Ranch laughed. “It’s the only way you’re ever gonna lay your hands on her.”
“We’ll do a lot more than lay our hands on her,” Tom said.
What an understatement that turned out to be.
It probably took us fifteen minutes to bust into the house. We were pretty quiet about it. We didn’t remember to bring flashlights, so we just went ahead and turned on the lights each time we walked into a room.
We had no problem with the parents. We killed them before they could get out of bed. We did it fast without any fooling around. We don’t do it that way anymore—we stretch things out so we can enjoy every dimension of their surprise and terror and pain and so on. We like to play with them for as long as we can. But we were new at it, that night in Denise’s house.
We all got in on killing her mom and dad. With six of us working at once, it took about two seconds to wreck them both. It was really something to see. Wham! All of a sudden, they’re nothing but spurting piles of demolished yuck.
We knew that Denise had a couple of younger brothers, but the next room down the hallway was hers. Its door stood open. We went in and turned on the light.
The switch made a lamp come on beside her bed. Even though it was bright, it didn’t wake her up because she was sleeping on her side with her back to the lamp. The house had its air conditioning on. She was covered to the shoulders by a sheet.
Minnow sneaked to the foot of the bed and pinched the sheet and slid it down all the way.
Oh, man.
She wore a white nightgown, but it didn’t cover much. What it did cover, you could see anyway because the fabric was basically transparent.
We just stood there and watched her sleep for a while.
You should’ve been there. I’ll never forget the way Denise looked, or how I felt. I’d had the hots for her since junior high. So had some of the others. And now we had her at our mercy.
It was, to put it mildly, a magic moment.
A magic five minutes, more like it.
Then Tom snuck over alongside the bed. He had grass trimmers which looked like a big pair of scissors. He grabbed Denise’s hair with one hand. At the same time, he caught her throat in the V of the open trimmers.
All of which woke her up.
Her eyes bulged.
“Don’t make a sound,” Tom warned.
She shrieked, “Dad!”
Tom partly shut the trimmers. Their blades broke her skin. She made a gasping noise at the pain and started to bleed, but didn’t yell again.
We heard some voices and thumping sounds. Her brothers. They were on their way to the rescue. Which delayed things for Denise. Tom and Minnow stayed behind to keep her on the bed. The rest of us went into the hall and intercepted her brothers.
They were twins, blond and tan, about nine years old. They looked like boy versions of Denise, only younger, of course. Very cute, if you’re into that sort of thing. They were both wearing pajama pants that hung pretty low on them, and no shirts. Mitch and Chuck would’ve gone wild for these fellows, but they didn’t come along and join up until a long time after this.
One of the twins charged at us waving a pocket knife. The other came at us with a baseball bat.
A couple of very spunky kids.
Spunky till Ranch cranked up the chainsaw.
Then they yelled and spun around and ran the other way. We chased them down. They didn’t even make it out of the hall. Ranch got one with his chainsaw. I happened to be running beside the kid, going after his brother, and blood slapped me in the face like a wet rag. I couldn’t even see where I was going. But I bumped into the back of the kid I was after, and shoved my screwdriver in. We both fell. I jabbed him a few more times while he screamed and thrashed around under me. Then Clement came along and caved in his head with a hammer.