Lucky's Girl, page 17
Mary, Jesus God, poor little Mary.
He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, looking into the deep black sky of the Upper Peninsula. Under those glaring stars he’d seen more death in one day than in almost his entire tenure in Elton Township. And there was no doubt in his mind that it had been the same assailant. This was a frenzy, a mad, thoughtless attack. This was an insane person, and despite every reason to the contrary, the only person in this sick puzzle left was Kenny McCord.
He took one more drag and threw the mostly unsmoked cigarette away.
Strike that thought.
The only person left was Lucky, but the evil little thing was sitting in a cell. He couldn’t have done it. Somehow he’d made Kenny do it. It couldn’t be Mary, it’s impossible to command a person to pull out their own intestines. It couldn’t be Christie, because the back window of the living room was broken and a bloodstained trail led out into the woods. The Paint River lay beyond that. She’d probably turn up several miles downstream, drowned and bloodless, sometime in the next few days. Either way she wasn’t strong enough to wield a golf club or a meat cleaver like that. As easy as it looked in the slasher films, killing someone quickly and on purpose was actually really hard. It took a lot of strength and no teenage girl is that strong.
So it had to be Kenny.
Acting for Lucky.
Acting because of Lucky.
Lucky did something to people, he controlled or brainwashed them. He was somehow the small town equivalent of Charles Manson, making other people kill for him. He’d killed Mary because she was pregnant. He’d killed Christie’s parents because they’d found that video tape. He had them killed because he could, because he liked it, just like he liked pulling the guts out of animals while they thrashed and screamed in agony.
Jerry doubled over and vomited.
Then he lit another cigarette.
It was time to arrest Kenny.
***
“No, Kenny, don’t!” Frank grabbed Kenny by the wrist as he reached for the chain lock on the door. Kenny turned to him, stunned and surprised. How could they leave Christie out there bleeding in pain?
It was just instinct. Kenny pushed back against his uncle, then they were struggling. Kenny had never fought his uncle, in fact his uncle had never laid a hand on him. Discipline wasn’t an issue because Kenny loved and respected him, but here they were fighting stupidly in front of the door.
Christie wailed, “Kenny, please, help me!”
Kenny grunted and pushed against Frank. “Are you blind? She’s bleeding!”
Frank mustered the last of his strength and shoved Kenny, sending him flopping against the little couch. Kenny caught himself and looked up in surprise. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He’d put hands on the man who’d raised him. He’d defied him. He remained on the couch, ashamed.
“Christie. Where are you hurt? What happened?”
She didn’t answer his question. “Kenny, let me in, I need you!”
She paused. Her voice changed again, agitated. “Kenny, where’s Lucky?”
Kenny began to answer, but Frank put a finger to his lips and shook his head; This doesn’t add up.
Kenny and Frank exchanged glances. Already the shame of their tussle was replaced with a deep suspicion. This really didn’t add up.
Frank peeked out of the corner of the front window at her. He shook his head and turned to Kenny. “That ain’t her blood, son.”
Kenny walked up and peered through the peek hole. Christie was close to the front door, looking back and forth furtively, a thousand expressions crossing her face at once, but not one equal to the physical pain required for all that blood.
Kenny asked quietly. “Lucky’s not here, what do you want, Christie?”
Her panoply of expressions coalesced into a snarl. She launched herself against the door with berserker strength. “LET ME IN! LET ME IN! LET ME IN!”
The door heaved and cracked with each lunge, giving way as Christie kicked and slammed against it. The door stayed in one piece but the hinges were coming away from the frame.
With a squeak and crunch they gave way, with Christie launching through like a bullet, snarling animal grunts and growls as she landed square on top of Kenny, sending the couch flipping over with her on top and him on the bottom. Her legs intertwined and she pushed her crotch against his, and began a piston-like rutting. She reared her head back and lunged with her mouth open like a wolf. He recoiled at the last second and she took only a mouthful of hair with a bit of bloody scalp. She was fucking and feeding, no longer human. She was jerking her head back and opening her mouth, displaying the gory bit of his head, shrieking in ecstasy and furious hunger.
Frank grabbed her by the neck and yanked but was pulled forward by the power of her fucking thrusts. She balled a fist and pinwheeled her torso, sending his head crashing into the wall, stunning him.
This isn’t possible, this is just a teenage girl were his thoughts as he slid down the wall to the floor.
But as he touched down on the floor he saw it all; a town entranced by nothing more than a charismatic charlatan. That same boy yanking loops of intestines from the abdomen of a screaming cat, holding them in some kind of religious triumph, and now one of his followers was something in between animal and human. For that split second he saw the mosaic come together in bloody symmetry. Then the world went black.
He lost consciousness just as Jerry’s bullet took Christie in the back of the head.
CHAPTER 11
Three figures sat in the squad car in the shadows behind the bus station. Two men in the front seat and another in the back, hands and ankles chained, a sock stuffed in his mouth held in place by duct tape. The two men in front were Jerry and Mailman Errol. Jerry had decided against involving his deputies in a situation involving public figures doing illegal things.
They drove seven hours across the deep dark woods of the Upper Peninsula and across the Mackinac bridge without a word. Neither had anything to say, neither knew what to say or even comprehend what or who they had in the back seat, or for that matter whether it was him or them who were really prisoners.
The only thing they could charge him with was Cruelty to an Animal. And Lucky would talk his way out of that in front of any judge or jury. Even if convicted he’d do no time. He would go right back to being the guy they called Lucky, the guy everyone loved, the guy who could do no wrong.
And Jerry would be on the wrong side of all of that.
He’d seen four deaths in one day, all somehow related to this kid. He had no rational way to explain how he’d caused them. Nothing Jerry said or did would put Lucky in a prison cell for as long as he wanted, which was forever. Over and over again he looked over his shoulder at the man hog-tied in the back seat of the squad car.
He’d thought of all the scenarios.
He could plant some pot on him.
There was plenty of confiscated weed in a safe box at the little stationhouse. Probably a couple pounds all told. That could send Lucky away for a few years, but what would Lucky be after a few years in prison? Charles Manson had spent the majority of his childhood in the slammer and it had made him what he was. Jerry didn’t want Lucky to become any more cunning. He looked into his eyes and saw a pit viper. He didn’t need that kind of enemy.
I could just take him into the woods and shoot him.
He was somewhat convinced that Errol might even go along with that.
But Jerry had already shot two kids in his life and he didn’t have it in him. Shooting Christie took every bit of serenity he’d accumulated in sobriety and being a decent man. Seeing her dead parents, seeing Mary, had robbed him of hope. Shooting Christie had stolen his faith. Now, when he prayed, he really didn’t know if there was a God out there. If there was, he might just be the eternal sadist who created mankind to watch them kill each other.
He didn’t know if shooting Lucky would make things better or worse, but he’d seen the limits of better and knew that worse had no such limitations.
What is Lucky?
How can he control people like that?
He still didn’t intellectually believe it even though he’d seen it with his own two eyes. He’d seen Lucky try it on Frank. They’d surprised him on Grove Island, knocking him in the dirt and cuffing him. He’d lain still for a few moments, wrapping his head around the fact that he’d been caught, then immediately tried to talk them out of it.
He told them they hadn’t seen what they’d seen… and for a moment he believed it.
He wanted to believe it.
He wanted to agree with Lucky for no good reason at all.
Don’t believe your lying eyes.
Then he told them to uncuff him and go home, that they would forget about everything in the morning. Jerry had got chills, he’d felt adrenaline pumping unbidden through his veins, he’d felt the air being squeezed out of his throat while his heart had hammered too hard to endure for long.
Frank was one step ahead of both of them. He’d brought the sock and the duct tape. He’d pushed Lucky face down in the dirt and had tried to stuff the sock in his mouth. Lucky had started in with the speaking in tongues. He shouted those rhythmic strings of monosyllables, Frank fell off his back, vomiting, choking and hyperventilating.
Jerry had put a boot in Lucky’s neck, cutting off his ability to use his voice. Then he’d given him the sock with plenty of duct tape. The two men had both sat under the Big Tree and cried like people who’d seen their best friends cut down in front of them, and neither of them had any idea what they were crying for. From that point forward they wore a Walkman turned up full blast when they were alone with Lucky.
You want to agree with him, you want to do what he wants you to do, and if you don’t, if you resist, you experience loss and fear that almost no one can endure.
Jerry looked at Errol and shook his head.
This was the only way.
Errol nodded and both men got out of the car. The doors slammed and they opened the rear passenger door. Jerry pulled Lucky out by the ankle chains and he flopped on the cold concrete of the alley. Errol pulled him up by the shoulders and leaned him against the door. They squatted down so he could see their eyes and know their determination.
Jerry began. “Lucky, you piece of shit…”
He shook his head and said to Errol. “I should have just pulled over, shot him and left him to the vultures.”
Errol nodded. “Somebody would have found him. Sooner or later someone would have found him.”
Jerry blew out his breath and pulled it together. “Okay, Lucky, here’s how it’s gonna be. I’m gonna take this one hundred dollar bill and put it in your pocket. You are going to go into that bus station and buy a ticket to somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t care where. Just be on the first bus out of here. We’re going to wait in the parking lot. If you aren’t on the first bus, or if you walk outside for any reason we will run you over and call it an accident.”
He cleared his throat and lit a cigarette. He blew smoke in Lucky’s face.
“You’re going to get on the first bus out of here and you’re going to sit in the seat right behind the driver. If you don’t do that, we’ll find you and we will fucking kill you.
Do you understand? Nod once if you do.”
Lucky just looked at them with big uncomprehending eyes. No one had spoken to him like that, no one had ever told him something he didn’t want to hear.
He honestly didn’t get it.
Jerry nodded. Jerry understood. He grabbed Lucky by the throat and squeezed until Lucky’s eyes bulged and his skin had gone purple. Then he let go and punched Lucky in the gut with everything he had. Errol seconded the motion and they took turns until they were sure Lucky understood. They took the chains off and told him to walk a hundred feet before taking off the duct tape. They saw him double over and vomit. They saw him go into the bus station and buy the ticket. They followed the bus halfway to Detroit.
Lucky got it, and Lucky wasn’t coming back.
***
Kenny had walked all day, from his Uncle’s cabin into town, then around the town itself. He’d trekked around the Lake, wading across it from the far shore to Grove Island. He returned home, took the rowboat, sculled across the lake and up the tributary to the Paint River. He recognized everything and nothing. What should have been green and full of life was grey and still, what had been color and comfort was cold and dead.
His best friend had gone. That roadtrip they’d been talking about since they’d seen Easy Rider and Lucky had read On The Road was happening without him. He didn’t mind, because he hated Mason James now. But still, he’d been robbed of the dream even if it had been just that – a dream.
Mary was dead. As ugly as everything was, that was the hardest cut.
He’d always thought Lucky would sow his wild oats but in the end would settle down with the girl who had loved him longest. Even after Lucky had made her fuck him he’d still held out this hope. Standing under the leaves of the Big Tree he thought about his first time with Mary on this same spot. He fell to his knees and vomited. He’d never held another person in such contempt as he now held himself. Even though it was Christie who’d physically killed Mary, he’d taken part in her slow murder ever since the day Lucky had made her his plaything.
And that’s exactly what she’d been to Mason, and ultimately to him as well; a plaything. Not a human being with hopes and feelings, someone who dreamed that the boy she loved would love her back if only she did everything he wanted.
Everything.
She had given him everything, and in the end had died hoping.
And Christie? She’d had hopes and dreams too. Different, totally different, but still a person with a path in life. Lucky hadn’t cared. He’d worked his manipulations and had steered her straight into the rocks. She’d been strong. Part of her had fought back. Part of her had fought what he’d made her, and it had driven her mad, and she’d snapped. She’d killed her parents. She’d killed Mary. And then she had tried to kill him, neither knowing nor differentiating between fucking and killing him. That look in her eyes. Bestial, like an animal gone berserk, a dog or a wolf cornered in fight or flight fury.
He ambled back and sat in the little rowboat, letting the subtle currents carry him. He drifted out to the center of the lake and beyond, towards the church. Abby and the Rev. The people who’d filled in the blanks when his uncle couldn’t. They’d defined the words Good, and Right and Kind. What had happened to them? It’s one thing to have a broken heart, it’s another thing to lose a son, but what Lucky had done was worse than both. And Kenny had participated in all of it. He’d betrayed them and had broken their hearts as surely as Lucky had done.
The rowboat drifted ‘til it had touched the shore behind the big wooden church. There was a crowd in the parking lot but he couldn’t see either Abby or the Rev. They were probably still at home, crushed by shock and loss.
The crowd stared silently as he got out of the boat and walked into their midst. He said nothing and neither did they, because nothing needed to be said. The spell had been broken. Lucky was gone. There were no clouds in the sky but Elton was still a shadow. Cold, alone and dead. Lucky was gone and it was over. There were no pieces to pick up but neither was there any starting over.
Kenny left the rowboat, wandering home to tell his uncle he was leaving. He didn’t have a plan, he didn’t have anywhere to go to, but the writing was on the wall and the message was clear. Kenny got it, and Kenny wasn’t coming back.
PART 3
NOW IS THE ONLY THING THAT’S REAL
CHAPTER 1
Beclowned. For some goddamned reason, that word of all words was the first to pop into Jerry’s head as his eyes strained against the horrifically bright lights of the hospital.
I’ve come so far from those terrible days at the end of the 80’s only to crack apart when I set eyes on him. I should have killed him. I had every opportunity to do so. He’s here, I’m here and I’m who I am because of him. I wonder if he’s who he is now because of me? And all I can think of is this stupid word over and over; beclowned, beclowned, beclowned!
Over and over, playing like a sick tape-loop in his head. And why? Why would this word pop into his head? Was it a lack of oxygen to the gray matter because he’d had a real heart attack this time? Oh yes, he’d had minor tremors before but not the big earthquake that would put him in a box. They would burble, flupper or hammer in his chest, then he’d go lightheaded and a drag on his cigarette would crash in his chest like a hit from a ball-peen hammer. Yeah, all of those things had happened, but there’s a cure for those.
Drink.
Just drink on time and don’t pretend you’ll get away without it. And when it happens, even after all of the requisite drinking, well, just drink more and lay low.
…beclowned, beclowned, beclowned…
Maybe it was time to eat the gun. Just stick it in your mouth, pull back the hammer, and let fly. There’d be a moment where it would be really loud but that would be over as soon as the brains registered they were no longer in the skull, and no longer connected to the earholes.
It’s not going to get any better. You can’t be a cop if you can’t ride a cruiser, and Elton isn’t going to pass muster at the capital anymore. The town’s charter would be revoked and they’d be incorporated into another one, another town with a cop shop not run by a drunk who shot kids.
You shot kids.
You shot three kids in your time you worthless piece of shit and now I’m here to watch you put that gun in your face and shoot the one you should have shot all those years ago; yourself.
