the inside of the trailer and sprucing up the surrounding yard.
She threw away everything that belonged to her children, and that made the cleaning much easier.
Now it was night, and she knew that it was time to pre pare her sacrifice to the Lord.
She went back inside, took a knife from the drawer in the kitchen, brought along the twine she'd purchased earlier in the day, and walked out to the storage shed. Care fully, not speaking, she unlocked the storage shed door and opened it a crack. As she'd expected, Neal tried to make a run for it, tried to push the door open and flee, but she shoved the knife through the crack, catching him in the cheek. He fell down, screaming, holding his face.
She grabbed David's arm, pulled him out and shut the door, locking it again.
David tried to twist his arm, pull out of her grasp, but she sliced off a chunk of his thigh, the knife easily shaving off a thin piece of skin and muscle, and he went limp in her arms. The blood was flowing, fairly pouring from the wound, but she ignored it and dragged her son across the small backyard.
She tied him to the cross pole of the clothesline, leaving his naked, bleeding body in a reverent position of crucifixion. For good measure, she wrapped some twine around his testicles and tied it. She did the same to Neal on the other clothesline pole. She went back inside, took a shower, put on her pajamas, and crawled into bed to watch an old rerun of The Bob Newhart Show.
Outside, David was silent, but Neal continued to howl well into the night.
She turned off the TV and fell asleep to the music of his screams.
She dreamed of Jesus, and in the morning both of her boys were gone.
Emily looked from Robert to Woods and back again. 'Elvis killed my daughter.'
'The tape is rolling. Tell us again exactly what happened.' Robert smiled sympathetically and handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee. A long time ago he had dated Emily. In those days, before his marriage to Julie, he had even hall thought that he and Emily would marry, although he could not imagine himself married to the woman now seated before him. Many times, over the years, he had thought of her, of their short time together, and he wondered if she, too, remembered those old days, or if her time with him had just blurred into a hazy, indistinct past. He wondered what it would have been like had they married. Would he look older now? Would she look younger?
That was what he hated most about living in a small town--the past was always intruding. You could never get a clean start if your history was a part of your present.
Emily sipped the coffee, looked up. Her voice was surprisingly calm, eerily devoid of emotion. 'Elvis Presley killed Pam. We were walking home from her piano lesson, and we saw him waiting under a streetlight at the corner of Ocotillo and Indian Hill. Pam recognized him first.
Then he ran toward us, and I thought he was going to tackle us both, but I just felt a... a rush of air, and then both of them were gone.'
'Elvis and Pare? ....... 'Yes.' Emily leaned forward in her chair, and around her neck Robert saw a gold chain and a square of green. A jade pendant.
He stared at the chain around her neck. 'May I see that?' he asked.
She frowned, fingering the necklace nervously. 'This?
What for? Pam gave that to me last Christmas.' 'Humor me.'
She unhooked the necklace, handed it to him.
'What did Elvis look like?' Woods asked. 'Did he look like he was dead? Did he look like a ghost? Do you think it might have been an Elvis impersonator, someone dressed up to look like--'
'It was Elvis, and he was dead, and he looked like he did the day he died.'
Robert was examining the jade. It was a simple square with some sort of Chinese character carved on it, He handed it back to her. 'All right,' he said. 'We've searched that area of the town, and my men are combing the rest of Rio Verde with Pam's picture. We'll get a posse together and search the surrounding desert if we have to, but we need as much information as you can give us.'
'That's it. That's all there is.'
Let's go through it step-by-step, from the moment you left the house to take Pam to her lesson.' your
An hour later, they were all exhausted, Emily was crying and they still had no new information. Robert dismissed Emily, thanking her, promising they would keep her informed, and dispatched Ted to take her home.
Robert sighed, popping out the tape and carrying it out to Lee Anne
'Type up a transcript and fax it to Rossiter, okay?'
She nodded. 'Okay.'
Stu walked in, limping.
'What happened to you?'
'Nothing.' He moved behind the counter and sat down at his desk, painfully grimacing as he stretched his right leg out in front of him.
'Charley horse.'
'Great. People are dying and Elvis has come back to life and my officers are incapacitated by charley horses.' 'I'm not incapacitated.' He frowned. 'Elvis?'
Robert waved tiredly. 'Have Lee Anne explain it to you while she types. We have a missing person. You're going to be out there searching next shift.'
He walked back to his office. Woods was seated at his desk, contorting his face. 'My mouth tastes like I've been gargling with sewer water.'
'Really? That's nice. Get out of my chair.'
The coroner stood. 'Medusa Syndrome,' he said. 'I'd bet money on it.
She saw the vampire kill her daughter, or abduct her daughter, and the shock was too great. Now she thinks she saw Elvis.'
'You never heard of the Medusa Syndrome a month ago. Now you're an expert?' '
'Let's call in Jacobson, have him look at her.'
'He still hasn't gotten through to Vigil.'
Woods took a cigarette out of his pocket, looked at it. 'The only thing I can't figure out is how come the vampire didn't take her down, too. Why just the daughter?' 'The jade.'
'What was all that about? I was wondering why you wanted a peek at that necklace.'
'According to the Chinese, jade scares vampires away. Works like a cross is supposed to.'
'So we have ourselves a Chinese vampire here?' Robert shrugged. 'I don't know. Could be.'
Woods put the unlit cigarette in his mouth. 'Clifford and the horses were cremated Monday. They won't be coming back.'
'Good.'
The two of them were silent for a moment. 'I think people are missing,' Woods said finally.
Robert didn't respond right away. He kicked his shoe against the floor, trying to dislodge a small rock pressing against the sole of his foot. 'What people?'
'I don't know. It just seems to me that there are fewer people around town than there's supposed to be. I went into the pharmacy yesterday, and while it's never the most happening place in town, it seemed downright deserted. Even the Basha's parking lot looked kind of empty.'
It was true. Robert had not wanted to admit it, might not have even noticed it on a conscious level until Woods had brought it up, but now that he considered it, Rio Verde had seemed unusually quiet since the weekend. With the absence of the recreationers and the coming of the cold weather, it was as if the town had emptied out, leaving only a skeleton crew of citizens.
'Maybe people are scared. Maybe they're leaving.' 'Maybe,' Woods said doubtfully. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'It means most people around here have a tough time just making their car payments. You think they can slid demy decide to take a few weeks off work and stay at a hotel in Scottsdale because they're scared of a vampire? You think they're packing all their belongings, calling moving vans, and heading off for California?' The coroner shook his head. 'That looks great in movies, but real life economics ensures that that won't happen here.' 'What's your explanation, then?'
'People are staying home, not going out. They're frightened. Many of them might not even know why. But they're scared. It's in the air now, Robert. It's not working behind the scenes anymore. It's out in the open.' He took the cigarette out of his mouth. 'And I think some people have.. disappeared. Like Pam Frye.'
