Still, though, he had to ask.
“Vicki said—” he began.
Mullins laughed immediately. “Let me guess, supercop. She told you I fired her on bullshit, right? What’d you expect her to say? ‘Phil, honey, big bad Chief Mullins fired me ’cos I was fucking a bunch of stoners for twenty a bang in the back of the cruiser.’ Get real, Phil. Bet she also told you I tried to rape her.”
“Well—”
“Check the file, lover boy. It’s all documented. Sure, I’ll bet she also told you I fabricated the charges and the witnesses, and if you’re stupid enough to believe that, then you need to turn your brain in for a new one.”
“I didn’t say I believed it,” Phil stumbled. “I just—”
“How am I gonna jink affidavits and sworn testimony? It’s all filed through the county. The county investigated the whole schmear. What, they’re making it up, too? I’m buddies with the fuckin’ county? Those fuckers hate municipal departments. Go down to the county hall of records with a FOIA request, see for yourself. Christ, I showed you the pictures. She was turning tricks in the parking lot for God’s sake. She was giving blowjobs, behind the fucking dumpster. And that was just one stack, Phil. You want to see the rest?”
Phil felt he was shrinking from embarrassment. Yes, he’d made an idiot of himself even bringing it up. “No,” he said. “It’s just, like—”
Mullins spat tobacco juice into one paper cup and swigged rancid coffee from another. “Look, I know it ain’t an easy thing to admit, but no matter how you look at it, there’s no way you can tell me otherwise. Vicki Steele’s a hooker now. A roadside fuckin’ whore turning tricks for her old man, who’s the biggest angel dust supplier in the county and probably a murderer to boot. Back in the old days, sure, she was different then, she was a decent person, but that was a long while ago. People let their lives go to shit every day, and sometimes they’re people we know, even people we used to be in love with. But as cops, we have to forget it. We can’t let that shit get to us ’cos if we do, we ain’t worth shit ourselves. You hearing me?”
“Yeah, I’m hearing you, Chief.” Phil walked out, dejected, asinine. Mullins was right. Vicki Steele was a whore now.
A whore, he told himself and let the word sink in. And nothing more.
««—»»
“Go ahead, Druck,” Cody Natter granted permission. No one, naturally, could touch his wife without permission, no one dared. “Just take care not to leave any marks. She must always look good on stage. Few would want to purchase her services with her lovely face all bruised, yes?”
“Please, Cody,” his wife pleaded. One of the Creeker boys held her elbows behind her back, inclining her up on her tiptoes. “What is wrong?” she sobbed. “What have I done?”
Natter sat down to watch. “Hmm. Wrong. I suppose that’s for you to tell me, yes?”
Druck cracked the knuckles of his two left thumbs, then very delicately untied her tanktop. Vicki whined as the Creeker boy behind her exerted a bit more pressure against her elbows, which jutted her bosom. “You shore are pretty, Ms. Vicki,” Druck made the compliment. His crooked eyes fixed on her breasts. “Now what’cha wanna go jerkin’ Cody ‘round fer. He’s a right fine husband to ya, seems ta me.”
“I didn’t do anything!” she shrieked.
In the corner, a third Creeker boy drooled, rubbing the crotch of his overalls, while the boy behind her drooled even more profusely onto her bare shoulder. “Don’t’cha bite now,” Druck suggested. “Otherwise Ise’ll have to have the boys do ya twice, and you wouldn’t want that, would ya? ‘Specially Scooter there. I’se sure you’se heard how big he is. Last time he assed a gal, she plumb up an’ bled ta death.”
Druck then inserted his two long thumbs into Vicki’s mouth. He wriggled them gently, smiling his warped, broken-toothed smile as the Creeker boy holding her began to jibber in enthusiasm, spittle bubbling at his lips. Vicki’s own lips squirmed in revulsion. Tears smeared the fine-lined mascara down her cheeks like trails of black blood.
Cody Natter made a single, resolute nod.
“Time ta listen up, Ms. Vicki, and ya’s best listen good—” Druck slid his double thumbs all the way to the back of her throat and pressed down. He pressed down hard.
Instantly, Vicki was gagging, her green eyes widening, her body in tremors. “Don’t’cha bite,” Druck kindly repeated, “an’ don’t’cha dare puke. Just listen.” Beads of sweat welled on Druck’s protuberant forehead; his scarlet eyes focused intently. “You tell Cody here what’cha were doin’ today. You tell Cody where ya been.”
He pressed down hard one more time until she nearly retched. Then he removed his thumbs.
“Go on.”
After a violent coughing fit, she managed to catch her breath. Tears and sweat pasted shocks of her red hair to her paling face. “I just—went—for a drive,” she croaked, then whined when the boy behind her resumed the clenching pressure on her elbows.
Cody Natter blinked. His own eyes, though keen and clear, were uneven, one lower than the other and noticeably larger. His ears, too—each the size of a pastry—pressed the sides of his head so unevenly they scarcely appeared real. And in spite of the monstrously malformed face—long, bony, runneled—a sane and even considerate sense of deliberation seemed suffused through his twisted features.
“A drive,” he said. “That’s all? And where did this drive take you?”
“Nowhere, Cody, I swear!” she exclaimed, her teeth gritting against the pain of being chicken-winged. “I just went for a drive ’cos I was bored!”
“Hmm. Well.” Natter steepled his triple-jointed fingers in his lap. “What do you think, Druck? Is my fair wife telling the truth, or is she lying?”
“Well, jeez, Cody, I don’t rightly know, ya know?”
“How about you, Scooter? Is there a liar in our midst?”
The third Creeker boy babbled excitedly, tossing his squashed head and rubbing briskly at the obvious erection in his trousers. A foot-long line of drool depended off his bulbed chin.
Natter sighed. “Perhaps a trifle more convincing is in order. Yes, I think so.”
“No, please!” Vicki shrieked. “I didn’t do anything, I swear to God!”
“You needn’t swear to God, my dear. Not here.”
Natter nodded then to the third boy, who quickly appeared and returned a moment later, dragging along a gagged and blindfolded Creeker girl. Immediately, he clutched her by strings of jet-black hair and threw her to the floor.
“Lovely wife, please. Come sit with me.”
Vicki was released and shoved forward. Natter’s queerly long arms and hands shot out, grabbed her about the waist, and pulled her in, forcing her to sit in his lap.
His grip tightened, and his big grouper lips whispered in her ear: “So many choose to stray from our fold. Shanny tried to run away again last night. Such a pity. The poor thing doesn’t realize.”
Scooter, the third boy, stepped clumsily out of his overalls, clucking like a psychotic chicken. The second boy pinned the girl’s shoulders with his knees while Druck, drooling himself now, opened a buck knife and cut off her gag and blindfold. Then Scooter—sporting an erection so large and genetically malformed it more resembled a loaf of French bread—climbed atop the girl and began to rape her.
The girl’s screams were dizzying.
Each time Vicki tried to turn her face away, Natter’s claw-hand vised the back of her head and forced her to return her attention to the madness on the floor. “You must watch, my love,” came his shredded whisper. “You must see. Everything that we see makes us more real in the face of our faith. Do you understand? Some sights aren’t so pretty, but they’re real just the same…”
Vicki looked on from her husband’s lap, paralyzed, nauseous. Druck and his two dutiful attendants took turns raping the screaming girl. Her shrieks rattled the windows and pierced Vicki’s ears. All manner of molestation and sodomy ensued until the sheer gravity of shock robbed what was left of her senses, leaving her silent, bug-eyed, and convulsant on the wood floor. Blood poured freely as if dumped from a bucket.
“All things serve a higher purpose, wife. Even terrible things. One day you’ll see that as clearly as I do.”
Again, Natter nodded.
Druck slit the girl’s throat to the bone. She twitched feebly once or twice, then died. The two boys jabbered
