He looked over at the crows again and tugged his sunglasses down, squinting in the afternoon light. The field seemed to stretch on forever. Silos loomed several miles away and the sweet, rotting scent of a dairy farm was on the breeze.
“A coyote?” he said finally. “No, that looks too big to be a coyote.” Then he turned and walked around to the front of the Accord, shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazed with a heightened intensity into the field.
Charles felt the moment slipping out of his control, a mad rage building inside his head, a sound like white noise getting louder and louder, demanding an explosion of violence.
The trooper said, “Could it be a dog?”
“Looked like a coyote to us,” Orson said.
“If it’s a dog, maybe I should check the tags. Could be someone’s pet.”
The trooper had begun to walk off the shoulder into the field.
Charles looked at Orson, who gave him a little nod. Charles reached back, put his hand on the .45.
The trooper walked ten steps into the field and stopped.
He stood just a short distance back from the crows, so many of them now that Charles could only see fleeting glimpses of the purple and red underneath.
The trooper unholstered his firearm
What the fuck?
Raised it toward the sun and fired a shot.
The crows dispersed in a riot of squawking and flapping, like a black cloud rising into the sky.
Orson walked around to the front of the car, motioning for Charles to follow.
The trooper stood with his back to them, staring down at what the crows had left.
He was shaking his head, saying, “That is positively the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”
Kork stared, too.
The whore was unrecognizable as anything human. Especially with her insides pulled out and strewn over the cornfield like a massacred pinata.
But she must’ve been delicious.
Because almost as quickly as they’d fled, the crows descended upon their meal again, blanketing the body in an instant.
“If you want to go hunting through that mess for a dog collar, you’re a braver man than I am,” Orson said.
The trooper looked indecisive, chewing his bottom lip.
Radio chatter squeaked through the mike on the trooper’s lapel.
He tucked his chin into his collarbone, said, “Roger that.”
The cop turned and headed back toward his car. “You need me to call a tow truck for you, Mr. Kork?”
“I think we got it under control, Officer.”
“Then you gentlemen have a good day.”
Kork watched the trooper climb into his cruiser and crank the engine.
It whipped around in a one-eighty, slinging dust and gravel, and then the tires bit into the pavement and it screamed off down the road, the deepest tones of the turbo-charged V8 audible long after the car had disappeared from view.
Orson smiled at Kork.
“Well played. So, Charles, why don’t you tell us about the coyote out there in the field. The one with the human arms and legs.”
Kork pulled the .45, pointing it at Orson’s face.
Simultaneously, Luther pulled a gun of his own.
“I’ll bet,” Orson said, “that when you were a kid, you were the type of little shit who played in his own corner of the sandbox and didn’t share his toys with anyone. Am I getting warm?”
Kork didn’t like having a gun pointed at him, but it did have the effect of capping his boiling temper. “Who the fuck are you?”
“We’re just a couple of guys heading to a mystery book convention in Indianapolis. Looking for a little fun on the way. To be honest, we were kind of hoping your name was Ben. Because we have Ben’s partner in the trunk.”
Kork couldn’t tell if Orson was kidding or not. The man was seriously hard to read. “You’ve got a man in your trunk?”
“Well, I’m not sitting him in the back seat where he’ll bloody up the leather.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
Orson raised an index finger and drew an X across his chest. “Cross my heart. Winston and Ben were a couple of predators. Like Luther and I. And like you, judging from the corpse in the field. Only they made the mistake of hurting Luther and his family when he was a kid. So now Luther’s exacting a bit of well-deserved revenge.”
A faint smile curled across Charles’s mouth. “Prove it.”
Orson nodded to Luther, who walked to the rear of the Lexus.
“Keys,” Luther said.
Orson slowly took a key ring out of his pants and tossed it to the pale man. Luther caught the keys and tucked the gun away. Kork walked over, covering Orson, who had his hands at his sides.
Luther popped open the trunk.
“Fuck me,” Kork said.
Inside the compartment lay a man, completely naked, his body wrapped tightly in cellophane, all except for his head. His lips bulged wide around a ball-gag. He was older, in his fifties, white and hairy. His green eyes were wide with fear.
“Think those crows are still hungry?” Luther said, his mouth twitching.
Kork lowered his gun. He wondered what the chances were of running into these two kindred spirits in the middle of Indiana. Then again, he’d heard that the FBI estimated there could be as many as five hundred active serial killers in the U.S., so maybe the odds weren’t as high as he might have guessed.
Luther walked around to the rear passenger door on the shoulder-side of the Lexus and pulled it open. He fumbled around for a moment inside, and then returned to the trunk.
“You want in on this, Kork?” Luther asked.
Kork was staring at the wide-eyed man, thinking that aside from wrapping him in cellophane, it didn’t appear that they’d so much as laid a finger on him yet.
Fresh, untouched meat.
“Kork?”
“Yeah. For sure. You guys planning on doing him right now? Right here?”
“That’s up to Luther. I know he’s been itching to get to it ever since we picked Winston up in Gary.” Orson looked at Luther. “Luther, you sure you’re all right with bringing him in on this?”
Luther stared at Charles. He had eyes like black pits.
“As long as he shuts the fuck up, and doesn’t do anything until he’s offered the chance.”
“Charles?” Orson asked. “You cool with that?”
Kork had killed many people on his own, but the ones that were most memorable, and the most fun, were the ones he did with his sister, Alex. Orson had nailed it when he said Charles didn’t like to share. But with murder, it was different. Sharing made it more exciting.
“So when you pulled over to help me,” Kork said, “were you thinking I’d wind up in your trunk as well?”
“It crossed our minds,” Orson said. “We hate to pass up low-hanging fruit. How about that body in the field?”
“Blow torch versus whore.”
“I thought I caught a whiff of BBQ in the air. So do you want to join in the fun?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Luther seemed distracted. He was kneeling against the back bumper, leaning over the terrified man wrapped in plastic, staring down into his eyes with a brutal, predatory intensity.
“What you did to my family,” Luther whispered. “To my sister…” He pulled something out of his pocket. “…is
