Coven

Wade fumbled. “Why?”

“Why else? To teach you a lesson. You’re a rich, pompous hooligan who’s been breaking my ass for six years. But now, finally, I get to return the favor. Justice is so sweet.”

“So that’s the game,” Wade concluded.

“Indeed it is, so I’d walk softly from here on. Your father is at his final limit—your future is in my hands now. One more mistake, Wade, just one more, and your father will disown you.”

This Wade knew to be fact. He was in a minefield now.

The dean’s grin turned evil, his true colors. “I’m your lord and master from here on, Wade, and don’t you forget it. The rules are simple. You will work this job to the full satisfaction of the department, and you will carry out your duties as prescribed by your immediate supervisor without hesitation and without argument. Otherwise, you will be fired, and it will be my personal pleasure to see that your father is promptly notified.”

The dean had him now, and Wade knew it. If he got fired, he’d be cut off for good. But at least it couldn’t get any worse.

Or could it?

“Did you say something about a supervisor?”

“Indeed I did,” the dean replied. “And here he is now.”

A door clicked shut. A shadow crossed the room—huge, wide as a beer barrel. “Good to see you, Wade. Good to have you back.”

“No,” Wade muttered. “Not you. Anyone but—”

Professor Besser came forward. He seemed to be limping a bit. The plump, slyly smiling face and trimmed goatee made him look like the devil on his way to the fat farm. “I can’t tell you how enthused I am to be supervising you in your new…position.”

The dean handed Wade rubber gloves, a smock, and a toilet brush. “Tools of the trade, my boy.”

“It’s fun work, Wade.” Besser smiled. “As you’ll soon see.”

Wade took the “tools.” Then the dean turned to Besser and said, “I’m afraid there’s been a mishap on the second floor. It seems an entire bank of toilets became…clogged simultaneously, and they overflowed. Ghastly mess, and quite malodorous.”

“I’m sure Wade will be pleased to take care of it.”

“And remember,” the dean added, “honest work, Wade.” Then he threw his head back and laughed, disappearing down the hall.

“No time like the present, eh?” Besser said. “You will clean every toilet in this building, every day, and you will also mop every bathroom floor and scour every sink. And you know what they say, don’t you? A job not done right isn’t worth doing at all.”

“Oh, is that what they say?” Wade remarked. One day I’ll clean these toilets with your fat face. Now, that’s worth doing.

“I’ll be in my office should you need me. Have fun, Wade.”

Wade simmered. But as Besser turned to leave, Wade noticed something. Did Besser have a pendant around his neck? It looked like a black amulet on a black string. It looked like a cross.

But Besser was an atheist, like all college professors. Why wear a cross?

“Professor? Is that a cross you’re wearing?”

Besser didn’t answer. Instead he looked back with an unfocused gleam in his eye. Even more peculiar was what he said next. “Great things may await you, Wade. The most wondrous things.”

“Huh?”

Almost dreamily, Besser walked away. And that was odd too. He strode off in a quickened limp, like a man, perhaps, who’d been recently shot in the buttocks.

««—»»

The compound gate hung open, uncordoned. Some crime scene, Lydia Prentiss thought. Two more cruisers sat out front, both with keys in the ignitions. She grabbed her field kits and went in.

Field forensic experience was part of what she’d been hired for. Equal opportunity was the other part, which irked her because she knew she was the best cop in the department. The others seemed pressed from the same mold—redneck, bigoted, and barely anthropoid when it came to intelligence. Everyone spoke in thick southern drawls, and everyone was lazy—though she supposed this judgment, like all of them, was of her own prejudice. She took things too seriously, she’d been told for her whole life. Her college career counselor had told her she was a hypercritical Type-A personality. Her watch commander at D.C. had told her she was an insubordinate smart ass. These vain faults had always haunted her, had made college very lonely, had kept her from making friends, and had pushed her out of D.C. Not fired, really, just urged to “move on.” She’d even been in love once—just once—and had ruined that too. She’d ruined everything for herself.

Stop. Why think of these things now?

Chief White didn’t like her, but at least he respected her. The other officers were morons who only wanted to get into her pants. They all regarded her as a blond curio, not a cop.

She found Chief White and Sergeant Peerce in the compound office. “What the hell’s going on?” she asked. “The dispatcher calls me and says to get down here with my field gear but doesn’t say why.”

“That so?” White kicked back in the chair. “Guess that means my dispatch is incompetent, right? Like everyone else in this department, right? Except you…right?”

Off to a great start, Lydia thought. “Chief, I only meant—”

“You meant that we’re just a bunch of hick cops who don’t know nothin’ compared to slick city sharpies like you.”

Peerce laughed. Lydia frowned.

Chief White must’ve been about fifty, with short American Legion gray hair and a potbelly. Peerce was a big South Georgia stupe: redneck sneer, Elvis sideburns, and slicked back hair.

“We gotta missing security guard,” White told her, rubbing his temples. “Old rummy named Sladder. We also got evidence a female student was out here with him last night. And that’s just starters.”

“There was a power failure,” Peerce added. “Last anyone heard from Sladder was when he called it in to Physical Plant and the power company. Only sign of the old fucker is his wallet.”

“His wallet?”

“That’s right. Old fucker musta dropped it. We also found a purse,” White said, pointing to a slim purse on the desk. “Belongs to a student, Penelope somethin’, lives over in Lillian Hall. I got Porker out lookin’ for her. Peerce already been over the stables, but I want you to have a look too, judgin’ the seriousness of the situation.”

“Seriousness? A wallet and purse? What’s the big deal?”

White’s snide grin vanished. “Show her the big deal, Peerce.

Peerce took her out, not offering to help carry the field kits. Most of the stables were open faced. She noticed some animals in the field, dead. Their heads all seemed to point toward the woods. From the first stable she heard the buzzing. Then she saw.

Peerce led her from building to building, from bad to worse. Though the animals were token in number, they were all dead. Lydia had seen her share of 81s in D.C.; she was used to viewing dead men. But this was queerly different. Cows and pigs had always struck her as harmless, even comical. Here they were grotesque, swollen masses of meat. The buzzing, of course, came from blankets of flies, oblivious in their feast.

Poisoned, she concluded. But why? And what did they want her to do? Take latent hoof prints? She was an evidence tech, not a toxicologist.

“In here,” Peerce said. Was he amused by her uneasiness? He took her into the horse stable, where each stall housed a dead, gas bloated horse. Channels of white foam lay in their opened mouths, and their faces moved —masks of flies shifting grainily like an optical illusion. Lydia switched on her Streamlight. Clots of flies filled the horses’ eye sockets. Maggots shimmered.

“Serious enough for ya?” Peerce commented.

Asshole. She gulped. “How well did you look over these stables?”