By God, she gasped, floating up through the bubbles and exposing the tips of her nipples.
…rub his bagged lovelobe against hers.
Tweed panted and laughed.
Enough of that. She felt light-headed. It wouldn’t do to get herself all worked up so early in the evening.
She forced herself to concentrate on the pink-sequined dress that waited on a hanger in her bedroom. On the matching lobebag clipped to the hanger. And on her soft pastel pumps.
Her dad had spared no expense in decking her out.
Why should he? There was only one prom night in anyone’s life. Well, okay, if you didn’t count teachers, principals, janitors, school nurses, and such. They had one every year.
But they were grown-ups. Odd old folks whose generation didn’t matter worth a hoot.
Nope. Tonight belonged to the kids.
She and Dex would survive. They hadn’t been chosen to fall beneath the slasher’s knife. Some other couple had.
A full life lay ahead for Dex and her, and cruel fate would not step in to cut it short.
The day before, Dex bragged that he would punch the slasher’s lights out, he would defend her, if by freakishly bad luck they had in fact been chosen. But Tweed put a finger to his lips and told him, “Hush up now, we won’t be.”
And she was right.
There was no question.
Tonight would be the most wondrous night of their lives. And many more nights of wonder lay before them.
Downstairs, her dad was singing.
“Take ’er easy,” grumbled the sheriff, his shoulders stooped as he footed his cumbrous way down the stairs. The back end of the trough was wide and unwieldy.
Fronemeyer, struggling with the front end, nodded and slowed.
Doggy smell. A high soft whine like the plaintive scree of a clothesline pulley.
In the dim spill of light, the pup looked pitiful. Rib-winded, sick-eyed, underfed. It strained at its tether, eager for companionship.
But the sinkpipe held. Puppy claws scrabbled ineffectually on concrete. Light brown whips of turd swirled up from the floor by the dryer. A long-handled axe lay across the washing machine lid.
Blackburn’s eyebrows rose. “You’re practicing on a pooch?” he asked.
“There’s no law against it.” Defensive scum. “I used my own money. At the pound. They’d’ve snuffed him anyway. They’d’ve entered him in a dog-cracking contest, sure as we’re standing here.”
“Maybe so.” The sheriff’s tone betrayed him.
“I’m planning to work up. Most first-timers do, don’t they?”
Blackburn’s ears burned but he said nothing.
When they had set the trough near the drain in the floor, Fronemeyer arched his back and let out an exaggerated groan.
The sheriff glared at him and headed for the stairs. “Let’s bring ’em in.”
Upstairs, Fronemeyer’s mates were draped in wifewear ten years out of date. Red-pink checks. Frilly aprons.
Blackburn nodded at them. He passed an end table that held the school’s instruction packet, doing his best to ignore the fluxed elders in the vestibule.
It was a relief to hit the air outside. But the art teacher dogged his heels, putting in one small-talk goad after another.
When they reached the cruiser, Blackburn opened the back door. “I’ll hand you the guy. “Walk him to the basement. Me and his date’ll be right behind you.”
The woman was propped against the man, both of them doped to the gills. It was a deal and a half to set her straight and wangle the man out, his ungainly shoes struggling for balance as the sheriff propped him up.
Fronemeyer, his eyes agleam in the moonlight, staggered beneath the passed burden. Shouldering one of the man’s arms, he poured soused-relative, coaxy soothings into his ear and steered him toward the house.
The woman groaned. Blackburn shifted her out, her gown rustling like wads of packing. A prom pass was pinned to her dress. At her side hung a miniature cleaver and a small Futterware container, green-lidded.
Authenticity, they said.
As far as Blackburn was concerned, it was nothing but a waste of taxpayer money and a huge boondoggle to the Futter family empire.
The woman reeked of perfume. She had a nice shape to her, fleshed-out and curvy, twenty-five tops. Were it not for the freakish dye-job done on her exposed friendship lobe—pale green from some fringe group’s absurd protest against the sexification of the lobes, as if God had intended anything else, for the love of Christ—the lawman would have thought her attractive.
“Where am I?” she ventured, slow-tossing her head, unable to open her eyes.
“Just a little further,” he said, guiding her past Camille and Hedda. “There’s a nice couch for you downstairs.”
Yeah. Old. Dusty. Discolored foam poking out of threadbare fabric. But in her state, she wouldn’t notice. And in nine-ten minutes tops, to judge from the art teacher’s zeal, she’d be way past the point of noticing anything.
Again the dog.
Scree of a clothesline pulley.
Fronemeyer panted at the couch. Snailtracks of sweat eased down his cheeks. The seated man’s head lolled back, his mouth agape as if preparing to break into snores.
Blackburn placed the woman beside her date. Whipping the receipt from his pants pocket, he pushed the axe aside and smoothed the paper on the washing machine lid. On it he scrawled the time of delivery and his signature.
“Sign here,” he said, “and here.”
“No problem,” said Fronemeyer, taking up the pen. The ratswim of hair on the back of his hand Blackburn found repulsive.
When he was through, the sheriff tore off the pink copy, left it on the lid, and clipped the pen to his shirt pocket. The mutt’s soft high whine had gouged a killer headache into his skull.
“It’s done then?” asked Fronemeyer.
What was this citizen’s problem?
Did he burgle beyond the Maximum Swag Rate? Did he run red lights? Clearly he felt guilty about something.
One could never tell about folks. What went on inside them was a mystery.
“A deputy’ll be by in the morning to pick up the corpses. All three. Leave ’em here in the trough. We do autopsies, so nobody’d better try any shenanigans—”
“Oh, we’d never—”
“—not before, not after. No diddle, no fondle, no lobeplay. Am I clear?”
“We’re not the sort to—”
“ Am I clear? ”
“Yes, sheriff.” A nasty glare. “You are.”
“I’m going to check these two out myself.” He pointed a harsh finger at the teacher, feeling bombs land and detonate, bullseye, bullseye. “The dog’s part of it too. I’ll be scrutinizing Fido here real close, you hear what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir.” Deflation.
“I’ll see myself out.”
And that he did. Fronemeyer’s wives, in the midst of a fondle on the upstairs couch, bade him good night. The blonde one mumbled it around a nipple.
