Scalpers

Staubb fell over the top of Hamel, holding onto the killer's throat as if it meant holding onto life. The breath stolen from Hamel was the breath that kept him going. But the bastard dwarf plunged his knife in and out again, twisting it until Staubb had nothing left to give. All his major arteries to and from the heart had been severed. Staubb died bloody atop Hamel, who was now gasping for air, the dwarf working to push the large body from his brother until he was free of the dead man.

Hamel choked and gasped and rubbed his neck as if to revive the bruised tissue on the outside with a laying- on of hands. The dwarf looked over the contusions with much attention and anguish, repeatedly asking Ian if he were all right.

Hamel staggered to his feet, saying, “We've got to take the other one, Corman—alive.'

'Yes, I know ... and there he is.'

Corman stood on the porch, having come out to see what the shot was all about. He stood there like a statue, his features in deep shadow. “Do you think he's armed?” asked the dwarf.

'Only one way to find out.” Ian stepped toward Sid Corman, who suddenly raced into the house and tried desperately to bolt the door and seal the house from entry.

'Remember the plan,” Ian said as they closed in on the house they knew so well, going for the root cellar stairs, which would lead up into the kitchen cupboard.

'I remember ... but if he doesn't cooperate, it's sssssssss!” He made a throat- cutting gesture. “Then we'll take his hair.'

'We've got to make the plan work! If we fail, they will destroy your power, strip you of the hair, dissolve the dark energies.'

He looked into Ian's eyes, deeply and long, shaking his head. “No, no, we cannot allow it. Do what you must, Ian, to stop them.'

'Follow my plan to the letter. We must take Corman alive. He must stand trial as the Scalper.'

He laughed raucously as they approached the cellar and lifted it, Ian begging for silence. “We must take him by surprise.'

'Then we get Grant?'

'Then we get Grant.'

Together the brothers went into the black hole in the earth. Quietly they made their way to the rickety old stairs and ascended cautiously, Ian in the lead.

Ian was getting more and more pushy ... more and more uppity, Van thought. When this was over, after they had found a new home place, he would teach Ian a good lesson, remind him who was who and what was what.

But for now, Ian was right. For the moment these two cursed doctors had to be shown what was what....

SIXTEEN

Grant thrashed about on the stretcher as he was being wheeled through the E.R. at Mercy Hospital, his mind fighting for consciousness, a deep-seated knowledge disallowing him to return to complete unconsciousness. He sensed that Sid Corman and the others at the house where Hamel lived were in terrible danger. Coming around, his eyes opened on the doctors and nurses caring for him, and on Peggy.

'Now, now, lie back there,” said a reproachful nurse applying pressure to Dean's chest as he tried to get up. “You'll only do more harm—'

'I'm all right ... have to get out—'

'Orderly, please,” said the nurse.

But by this time Dean was on his feet and making for the door. The two policemen who had helped them earlier were just outside, and they caught him, forcing him back inside. “I've got to get a call through to that house, to warn—'

But no one was listening, or Dean was sounding so full of gibberish he could not make himself understood. He felt woozy. Had they given him a sedative?

'Just lie right back down here! You big hunks think you can overcome a shock like that easily, but let me tell you, it's easier said than done,” the nurse's voice droned on.

Dean needed to call the number he'd jotted down, Hemel's place. He needed a car to get back out there. He needed to escape these self-important, would-be Florence Nightingales. He saw his opportunity when the nurse whipped white curtains all around him and said, “The doctor'll only be a few minutes, and then we'll find you a nice room.'

The moment she left, Dean got up and slipped into a second curtained room which was unoccupied. Somewhere behind him, he heard a voice telling someone that the girl's condition was much worse. He then stepped into a doorway that led him down a corridor and out of the building on the other side. Still dazed, not thinking clearly, Dean only knew that for some time Hamel had been secretly planting the idea that Sid Corman was the killer. Hamel had somehow influenced men as disparate as Hodges and Warner to work for him in this regard. Hamel had to be on his way back to that house for a final frame of Sid Corman. With Sid the only one walking out of that house alive tonight, it could stick.

And somehow Hamel knew that Dean would come for him. Something in Dean's dazed mind told him it was so. Hamel had remained one step ahead of them the entire way, first with Park and now with Dean.

Dean circled the building, wondering if he could not get back to Dyer's squad car. But it was no good ... the car was being towed off, and there were cops everywhere.

Then Dean saw an idling ambulance.

It was his only chance, and he ran for it. In a matter of minutes, he quietly pulled out of the E.R. lot and was on his way. A block off, and he found the controls for the siren and began to speed back for Wekiva and Hardscrabble Road, praying his memory of how to get there would not fail him.

Sid feared desperately for his life as he went about the old house, locking every door and window against the pair of killers outside who had mutilated Williams and Staubb, and who now were coming for him. Sid felt like the man in the cult classic, Night of the Living Dead, as he searched for ways to board up the place against the intruders. His only other hope was the phone, but the moment he dialed 911 and began to shout out his situation, the line, along with the electricity, went dead.

Now he searched about the kitchen for a weapon. He never carried a gun, had never had any use for one until now. He thought of all the weapons outside in Staubb's car, in Williams', thought of all the firepower they'd had, and of their training, and none of it had saved them from this fiendish duo.

Still, Sid yanked out drawers and tore open cabinets until he found an arsenal of knives hanging inside one cabinet. Two hooks were missing carving knives. These, no doubt, were the weapons used on young Williams and Staubb, and soon to be used on him, Sid gruesomely surmised.

'Bastards!” shouted Sid, taking down the largest knife he could find. Suddenly a door opened inside the kitchen and the two killers rushed Sid high and low. Sid saw into the basement, saw the flash of the banging door against the fridge, saw the blur of the dwarf and Hamel coming all in an instant, and he reacted with vicious intent, bringing his knife at Hamel's eyes. The blade plunging deep into the forehead and brain just before Sid was knocked unconscious by a powerful blow from Hamel with the hilt of a pistol.

Van stared in wide-eyed horror at what Corman had done to his brother, Ian, who lay on the floor, stunned, the knife protruding from his head, dead center on the top of the frontal lobe. An X ray would surely show that the two halves of the brain had been severed, yet Ian breathed and was talking calmly as if he felt no pain.

'This ... got to get it out ... fix it,” said Van, wrapping his mangled hands about the handle, readying to remove it like an arrow from a wounded soldier on the frontier, like in the comic books.

'No, no! Not yet,” said Ian from deep within himself. “Don't remove it.'

'But—'

'I'll be dead in minutes.'

'There's no blood...'

'Take it out, and I'm dead ... before that happens, I want you to take a graft from me ... try my scalp, Van. We're brothers ... twins, even ... and maybe...'