Blackburn’s squad car, even with a linger of the drugged woman’s perfume, hugged him like home. Firing it up, he headed for Corundum High and his duties there, the lockup, the speech.
If there was any justice in the world, he would never have to see Zane Fronemeyer or his wives again.
Shyler Bleak and his wife Bitsy sat on their bed, propped up against pillows. Their cardigans matched, their black patent leather loafers had been spit-polished to a bright sheen, and their fingers were lovingly entwined.
The TV on the dresser claimed pretty much the Bleaks’ entire attention.
Ceremonies at the Shite House.
Down the hall there sounded a steady blast of shower water.
Gerber Waddell was Corundum High’s feeb head janitor. Shyler and Bitsy Bleak housed, clothed, and fed him. Tonight, of course, he would be very much on duty.
The Bleaks got plenty of mileage out of the community for their sacrifices on Gerber’s behalf. Store discounts, pleasant ego strokes, sympathetic words of encouragement and looks that said better-you-than- me.
But right now, on the heels of applause for the puppet president’s introductory remarks about the nation’s need for divine guidance, the Right Reverend Sparky Reezor bounded up to the podium and seized the lectern with his huge hands as if to rip it clean off its base.
“Mister President, distinguished guests, and all o’ you sinners out there in this great nation of ours,” intoned the burly churchman in his deep bass voice. “Got-damm it! Let us pray!”
He bowed his great white head. His eyelids clamped down tight, as if doing so tuned his mind to the eternal frequency.
Behind him, a TV camera caught Cholly Bork, crack puppetmaster and the brains—such as they were— behind the President. His masterful hands worked an elaborate airplane control. He mince-walked President Windfucker to a plush chair and angled his head as though he were listening in respect. Then that head bowed. The President’s delicate oaken fingers steepled piously betwixt chest and belly.
“Dear God-in-heaven,” thundered Sparky, “once again, as the year rolleth around like that vast immovable boulder (ha! but we know better, don’t we, my friends?) that shut air and sunlight out of Thy Son’s tomb, into our hearts and minds and pleasingly proud bosoms hast Thou rolled the marvel that is prom night.
“We in these Demented States of America are blessed to live in the greatest got-damned country on the greatest got-damned planet in this triple-got-damned wonder we fondly call the universe, my fellow citizens, ain’t it a piece of work? And we have Thee, dear Lord, to thank for that.
“JEEsus—when He roamed the earth with those penetratin’ eyes o’ his—tugged with a harsh hand upon his friendship lobe and condemned us sinners, every one.
“JEEsus, the only man unfallen, swept His glarin’ gaze, those condemnatory orbs whose sting we know so well, across the race of the fallen and He shouted, ‘Let the little children suffer.’
“Got-dammit, let them suffer.”
Shyler Bleak and his wife whispered the words along with Sparky Reezor.
“And JEEsus the Lion, He ramped back upon His great hind legs, His thighs tawny and muscular and slick with sweat. Across the tenuous fabric—that warp and woeful weft, my friends—of our smug complacency, JEEsus the Lion clawed bloody rents, roaring out: ‘Cursed be the meek, for they shall eat camel dung.
“‘Cursed be the poor, for money, the measure of all worth, proclaimeth their unworthiness.
“‘Cursed be the peacemakers, for war alone has the power to set rods of steel in backbones that are otherwise fa-a-ar too bendable.
“‘Cursed be the cowards and the whiners, for rage and fear alone nourish the human heart.
“Lord, I’m not gonna recite every one o’ Your glorious be-RAY-titudes, much as I’d like to. No! For we are gathered here this evening to celebrate the annual sacrifice of our young.
“Here in Washington and aw-w-l up’n’down our eastern shore, from the great state o’ Maine to that blinkered backwater we call Florida, senior proms are just itching to begin. Our brave boys and girls’re champing at the bit like the prize studs and fillies we’ve raised them up to be. Their hooves are digging up divots from the dirt and flinging ’em skyward, as they wait for the starting gate to clang on back and for their death knell to sound.
“So I’ll simply say THANK YOU, LORD, for the wisdom of our forefathers. THANK YOU, LORD, for this marvelous rite of spring, established in antiquity upon our great got-damned land to honor the spirit of your Son. For His rage and hatred, we give abundant and abiding thanks. His ferocity we worship. We strive to emulate it. Every year on this aw-w-l important night, we seek to renew that living dogma, so as to kickstart our nation out of the dying days—out of the morally suspect doldrums—of winter and on into the rejuvenatory times of spring and summer.
“All of us, old, young, and in-between, bow our heads. Some small number of those heads shall roll, never again to rise upon the youthful necks that bear them.
“Their bodies shall, by their sorrowin’ school chums, be futtered, so that reminders, dried and preserved, disseminate across the land and on into the future of this great and pow’ful nation. Mementos of prom night. Mementos too of those brave young souls, unaware—until the abrupt unlooked—for fall of that short sharp shock o’ death—that they have been so chosen, that they have been so honored.
“Honored may they be.
“Honored, their parents.
“And may vast new hordes of talented seniors be unleashed upon this land, upon an economy in dire need of their skills, upon this close-knit community of sinners known as the Demented States of America.
“Got-damn, got-damn, in all manner of ways I say, got-damn!
“In JEEsus’ name. Amen.”
2. Slasher Slashed
Bastard sheriff. Damned gun-totin’ goof had tried to throw a kink into this special night.
Couldn’t. Not the essence of it anyway.
Zane ribbed the squealing mutt with a swift kick to stop its noise, but that only cranked up the volume.
Zane knelt before the couple, his knees cracking in protest. Through layers of fabric, he squeezed the woman’s breasts, the man’s organ.
The bag that clung stubbornly to the base of the man’s left ear convinced you there might be something beneath. But his lack of a right earlobe—the sole blat in an otherwise persuasive visual symphony—told the real story.
Promjumper.
Even so, his exposed lobe-stump was quite the turn-on. Ditto the woman’s undocked friendship lobe, whose faux-chartreuse dye-job reminded Zane of the crushed kernels of pistachios. And this doped-up duo was completely at his mercy.
The mutt’s whimpers began again to grate on him. Zane checked his watch. Time to shake it.
He kissed the two of them on the lips, the man pretty much out, but the woman responding as in a dream, her pretty pink tonguetip starting to show.
They couldn’t trace lipmarks.
Zane was sure of it.
Further play could wait until just before he axed them, once the dog was dead.
After he’d had his practice? The young pair at the prom, whose names and place of death waited inside the packet upstairs.
Zane untied the leash from the sink trap.
Stupid mutt tried to lick his face, had to be batted away. He slack-jerked it into the light, then retied its leash to the trough leg closest to the drain.
