Soultaker Page 19

  Kristen surprised him by picking the tune up: “…pick one up, throw it in the trash, ninety-eight bottles of cheap-ass beer on the ground.”

  Jake surprised himself with a laugh that felt real.

  Kristen put a hand on his shoulder as they stepped up onto the porch. “You shouldn’t feel so bad about this, Jake. You got out of here. You made something out of yourself.”

  Jake didn’t reply.

  He jabbed the doorbell and stepped back.

  He heard voices inside the house. Jolene and Trey. Then he heard the lock turn. Jolene pulled the door open and stood behind the still-closed screen door. She wore her usual uniform—low-slung, tight denim cutoffs and a skimpy pink tank top. The grin on her face was new, though. Jake couldn’t remember ever seeing his mother look so smug.

  She chuckled. “Well, look at this. It’s my backstabbing son come to say howdy.” She turned to Kristen. “And he’s brought his new whore with him.” She looked Kristen up and down, licking her lips in a lewd way that made Jake’s stomach churn. She caught Jake’s sickened expression and her grin broadened. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me for beating that bum rap, baby?”

  “I’m not your fucking baby,” Jake said. “And you ought to be in goddamn jail. Where’s my brother?”

  Before Jolene could say anything else, a shadowy figure came up behind her. When Trey came into view, Jake was astonished at the difference in him. No trace remained of his former sheepishness. He glared at Jake, his eyes wide and his nostrils flaring. The teenager threw the screen door open and strode outside. He bore down on Jake like a heavyweight champion springing out of his corner at the sound of a bell, making Jake flinch and take a step back.

  Trey stopped a few inches shy of Jake, standing chin-to-chin with his older brother. “You’re not welcome here, motherfucker. You set my mother up. You tortured my dad and blamed it on her. The police know all about it. They’re gonna drag your worthless ass into jail soon.” He sneered. “That’s if I don’t kill you first.”

  Jake was flabbergasted. He tried to say something, anything, for several moments before giving up. He needed to marshal his thoughts, to regroup. Of all the things he might have expected to hear from Trey—well, this wasn’t even on the list.

  The best he could manage, finally, was a weak, “What?”

  “You heard me.” Trey jabbed his chest with a strong forefinger. “Get the hell off our property.” He pitched his voice higher and leaned closer to Jake. “NOW!”

  Jake blinked. He looked to Kristen for help, but she looked just as flabbergasted. She even looked a little afraid. “Have you lost your fucking mind, Trey? This is bullshit and you know it.” He pointed a finger at Jolene. “She’s crazy. You know that, too. I don’t know what the hell’s gone wrong here, or what’s happened to sway you to her side, but some part of you must know this isn’t right.”

  Trey’s answer came in the form of a fist to the throat that sent Jake tumbling backward. Kristen screamed. The lawn’s tall grass cushioned his landing somewhat, but he landed hard nonetheless, the back of his head thumping against the ground. He winced and turned his head to the left, saw a shard of broken green glass inches from his face. He didn’t seem to be cut, so he’d lucked out in that regard, but he hurt like hell all over. He gagged and his vision misted. Then he looked up and saw his brother standing over him. Trey’s fists were clenched.

  “Get up.” His voice was flat and hard, betraying only one emotion—pure hatred. “Let’s finish this right now.”

  Kristen knelt over Jake, putting her body between the brothers. She glared up at Trey. “Don’t touch him! We’re leaving.” She put a hand on Jake’s face and gazed down at him. “Are you okay?”

  Jake drew in a deep breath. His throat still hurt, but at least he was able to breathe again. He gripped Kristen’s hand and drew himself to his feet. He looked Trey in the eye. “I don’t know what’s wrong here, brother, but I’m gonna find out.”

  Trey scowled. “There’s nothing to find out.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Jake spun away from his broken family and strode rapidly back across the lawn to his Camry. The world spun and he wobbled some, but he managed to stay upright. Kristen caught up with him, taking him by the hand again as they reached the car. By then he was shaking all over. She pulled him into an embrace and he allowed her to hold him as he fought to get control of himself.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered into his ear. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

  Jake nodded.

  He looked over her shoulder and saw Jolene standing on the sidewalk with her arm draped around Trey’s waist. With her other hand, she waved to Jake. “Bye, baby. Tell that whore of yours to come see my other baby if she ever wants a taste of a real man.”

  Jake felt another surge of nausea.

  Kristen whispered in his ear: “Don’t say anything else. This is not the time. You’ll only make it worse. Let’s get out of here and figure out what to do next.”

  Unable to bear the sight of his mother’s leering face another moment, Jake decided to follow Kristen’s advice. He eased out of her embrace and got back inside the Camry. Moments later they were out of the Zone and speeding back toward Washington Heights.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The name of the place was GUN CITY USA. It was a sort of firearm superstore. A Walmart for hunters and aspiring mass killers. The store offered rifles, shotguns, and sidearms of every make and caliber imaginable. Some of the rifles looked like the kind of thing a motivated sociopath might easily convert into a fully automated killing machine.

  Raymond Slater was appalled.

  These were the things that had haunted his pre-Lamia nightmares. Every time a story broke about some new school shooting a chill went up his spine. He lived with an ever-present dread that something similar might occur at Rockville High one day. On his worst days, a Columbine-style massacre at his school seemed inevitable, which he realized wasn’t entirely rational, and so he’d sought the help of a therapist, who’d dispensed antidepressants and antianxiety meds by the fistful. The pills helped some, but the affair with Penelope had been the real cure for his stress. But now even that was lost to him, though she didn’t know that yet.

  Because the time had come for Raymond Slater to make a stand.

  Following a long night of degradation and humiliation, Penelope had left him to his own devices this morning. That bitch. So smug. So certain he was again a thoroughly cowed man. He knew his place in Lamia’s scheme and would perform as required. It was a given. They thought he was a spineless, weak-willed man incapable of rebellion. The threat of torture and death would certainly be enough to keep a cretin like him in line. And if by some remote chance he should develop the testicular fortitude to oppose them, well…

  Josefina.

  Sweet little Jo…

  Something tugged at his heart at the thought of his daughter’s name. His only child. She was all he had left. And they had threatened her. She would die in the slowest and most agonizing manner possible if he attempted to stop today’s planned mass murder at Rockville High. This was according to Penelope, who said she was relaying the message on behalf of Lamia. And though Jo was at a college hundreds of miles to the north, Raymond knew this was no empty threat. So he had been forced to weigh the possible loss of his beautiful daughter against the potential loss of hundreds of young lives.

  The decision to rebel was the hardest he’d ever been forced to make.

  He felt hollow inside.

  Desolate.

  But he knew this—a man forced to sacrifice so much must do his damnedest to get the job done.

  He sucked in a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and turned away from a display of various trinkets emblazoned with NRA-approved slogans. The morbidly obese man in red suspenders behind the register at the checkout counter eyed him with obvious suspicion. Raymond forced his mouth to form something that may have resembled a smile. And he stood there. Still not moving. The big
man still watching him, slowly moving a green toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. The store was nearly empty this time of day. Raymond had actually been counting on that. But now he was wishing he had come at a busier time. Now he wanted nothing more than to blend in with a crowd. To be anonymous. What if this man was in cahoots with Lamia?

  Was he paranoid?

  Maybe.

  But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  Raymond approached the counter and coughed. “I would like to purchase a firearm.”

  The man behind the register smirked around his toothpick. “Didn’t figure you were here for milk and cookies,” the man said in a slow redneck drawl. He removed the toothpick and noisily sucked moisture from the corners of his mouth. “Whatcha lookin’ for?”

  “Excuse me?”

  The man made a sound that might have been a laugh or a grunt of contempt. “What I mean is, do you need something for protection or…” He hesitated, smirked. “Or something to hunt with?”

  Raymond cleared his throat and stepped closer to the counter. “Hunting.”

  “No shit.”

  Raymond leaned over the counter, dropped his voice an octave. “I would like to buy a handgun and some type of shotgun, something with serious stopping power. The best you’ve got. Price is not an issue.”

  “Mister, have you ever fired a gun in your life? Because, no offense, but—”

  Raymond’s face reddened as he bristled at the man’s questions. “Is this not a place of business? Do you regularly interrogate potential customers? Because if you don’t want my money, I’m sure—”

  “Now hold on, don’t get yourself all riled up.” The big man grinned. “I don’t mind takin’ your money. Was just curious, is all. Let me show you some stuff.”

  The big man showed him an array of handguns and shotguns. He spent a lot of time extolling the relative virtues of each piece. Most of the finer points went over Raymond’s head. There was something else he’d been thinking about and while he listened to the man talk he tried to work up the nerve to broach the subject.

  To his relief, the man went there for him. “’Course, you know there’s a waiting period. Federal law.”

  Raymond struggled to keep his face blank as he said, “I’ve, uh, heard…”

  The man grinned, showing him a lot of yellow, uneven teeth. “This here’s the South, son. Federal laws are made to be broken, you know that. We can negotiate. I get the feeling you’re wanting these here hunting weapons sooner rather than later. Am I right?”

  Raymond swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  “Thought so.” The clerk grinned again. “I’ll have to sell you something that ain’t from official stock. And you’ll have to pay cash. A lot of it. That a problem?”

  This was a point Raymond had anticipated. He’d fattened his wallet with a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills prior to coming here. “Not at all.”

  “Good.” The man put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. “Roscoe! Cover the register while I talk to this man in back.”

  A big, bearded behemoth of a man emerged from an aisle and approached the register. He looked like a younger version of the the clerk. Father and son, Raymond had no doubt. “Got it, Pa.”

  The older man fished a fresh toothpick from his shirt pocket and wedged it in his mouth. “Good boy.” He looked at Raymond. “Now let’s do some business.”

  Raymond followed him to the rear of the store, where they stepped through a door, through a room stacked with boxes, and then through another door.

  Raymond’s jaw dropped. Then he closed his mouth and let out a low whistle. “My God…”

  The clerk chuckled.

  Raymond squinted as he moved deeper into the room. “Jesus…is that a…a bazooka?”

  The man clapped a hand on his shoulder. “That, son, is a shoulder-mounted AT-7 antitank weapon.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Some of the gun seller’s good humor evaporated. “Ain’t for sale. I may skirt the law a lot of ways, but selling heavy artillery’s a good way to wind up in the slam for a long stretch of years. Besides, you could be with Al Qaeda or some other batch of assholes. Nah, that sucker’s just for show. But looky here, I got some good stuff…”

  Thirty minutes later Raymond Slater exited GUN CITY USA thousands of dollars poorer and in possession of the first firearms he’d ever owned, a Glock 9mm and a Mossberg pump-action shotgun. He’d also purchased several boxes of ammunition for both weapons. After stowing his booty in the trunk of the Lexus, he sat behind the wheel of the car for several minutes as he considered what to do next.

  He was exhausted. It was possible he wasn’t thinking straight. The night before he’d watched his mistress decapitate his wife while his dick was still inside her. It was the sort of thing that would unhinge any man. By all rights, he should be a gibbering, useless mess, but here he was, a man on a mission. A man with murder on his mind.

  So now he asked himself: Can I really do this?

  But he’d been around the block with that one countless times and knew the answer.

  I have to.

  I have no choice.

  If not me, then who?

  Never in his life had Raymond Slater felt so alone. It wasn’t fair. This burden was more than any one human being should have to shoulder.

  And yet…

  I have no choice.

  “Fuck!” He pounded the steering wheel with his fist several times, each blow punctuated with another curse: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Then his fist missed the wheel and glanced off the horn pad, producing a single loud squawk. He winced and looked at the storefront. The big man—the older one—was behind the register again. At the sound of the horn he turned away from another customer and stared straight at Raymond. Raymond’s heart skipped a beat. If the man had any doubts about the wisdom of doing business with him, those doubts had likely edged closer to certainty. Raymond didn’t think the man would call the cops. That would mean at least as much trouble for him as it would for Raymond. Still, putting some distance between himself and the man’s suspicious eyes was probably a supremely excellent idea.

  He started the Lexus and reached for the gearshift.

  A knock at the driver’s-side window startled him.

  Raymond let out a little squeak and reached for his chest. “Jesus!”

  His heart slamming, he turned and saw Cindy Wells staring down at him through the closed window. She smiled and waved. The smile looked grotesque beneath her bandaged nose. Dark sunglasses obscured her eyes. The shades hid a dark shiner inflicted by the thing pretending to be a teenage girl named Myra Lewis. The thought sent a chill through Raymond. He believed in coincidence, but he did not believe in capital-C Coincidence. This was just too much. The idea that Cindy was now allied with Lamia struck him with sudden force and unassailable certainty. Rockville High’s expelled golden girl wouldn’t just happen to be outside a gun shop at the exact moment he was leaving the place.

  She was following him.

  Keeping tabs on him.

  Raymond’s throat tightened. For a few tense moments, he saw all his grand plans going down in flames. He desperately wanted to bolt. His hand hovered near the gearshift as he debated a quick, rubber-burning departure.

  Cindy was still smiling, but the expression was beginning to falter at the edges. She made a rolling motion with her hand and said something that was unintelligible through the window.

  A thought struck him. His hand came away from the gearshift. He was suddenly sure he should talk with her, if only long enough to allay any suspicions he might be planning something that could piss off Lamia. He pressed a button and the window lowered a few inches.

  Cindy’s smile brightened again. “Hello, Mr. Slater.”

  Raymond cleared his throat. “Hello, Cindy. What—” He stopped, realizing he’d been about to ask why she wasn’t in school. Stupid. He knew the answer to that. Instead, he settled for the next obvious question. “What are y
ou doing here?”

  Still smiling, she said, “Following you.”

  Raymond gulped. His gaze flicked to the gearshift. “I, uh…”

  Cindy’s expression turned solemn. “Don’t.” A note of pleading entered her voice. “Listen to me, okay? I need to talk to you about Myra Lewis. I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but I think she’s planning to hurt a lot of people. We need to do something to stop her.”

  For a moment, Raymond felt something that might have been hope. More than anything, he didn’t want to do this alone. He touched the button again and the window lowered another few inches. He leaned toward Cindy and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I have a plan. It’s not much, but it’s better than—”

  He let out a startled shriek as Cindy stuck her head through the newly widened opening and wriggled in to her waist. Her right hand went for the key ring dangling from the ignition, but he batted it away. She laughed and reached for the keys again. Raymond knew he had to do something drastic or risk losing his chance at salvation. He backhanded her with a tight, hard blow, knocking the sunglasses off her face. Cindy howled in agony and started screaming about her nose. Raymond unclipped his seat belt, twisted in his seat, and braced his palms against the top of her head. The fleeting thought that her soft, conditioned hair felt nice against his fingers whistled through his mind like a bottle rocket; then he gave her a mighty shove and she fell back through the opening. She staggered backward, wobbling on high heels for a moment, then fell hard on her ass. He saw that she was dressed in a tiny halter and a tight black miniskirt. They made her look like a cheap hooker. Nothing at all like the effervescent, brainy head cheerleader he’d known for four years. Seeing her lying there on parched asphalt with her long, shapely legs splayed open triggered a spark of crazy lust.

  He gave his head a hard shake and put the Lexus in gear.

  Cindy began the laborious process of getting to her feet.

  Slater backed up the Lexus and executed a quick three-point turn. Then he stomped the gas pedal down and the car shot to the edge of the parking lot.