Crow opened his mouth to say something, but Jonatha held up a hand. “Let me finish. After Newton contacted me about this…about his book, I started reading up. I read everything I could find, including everything about Ruger and Boyd. That makes for some interesting reading.” Her dark eyes glittered. “The news stories say that Crow and a Philly cop named Jerry Head both shot Ruger—and this is after Crow kicked the stuffing out of him—but the guy not only manages to flee the scene and elude a concentrated manhunt but then shows up a couple of days later and attacks again. Stronger than ever. How many bullets did it take to bring him down the second time?”
Instead of answering, Val just said, “Go on.”
“Then Boyd attacks and kills two police officers on your farm. The news report—Mr. Newton’s own news report—states that one of the officers emptied his gun, apparently during the struggle. All those shots without hitting the suspect? A week or so later he attacks your brother and sister-in-law, kills one of your employees, and almost kills you and you have to empty an entire clip into him to bring him down.”
None of them said a word.
“Then Newton here contacts me for backstory on the folklore of vampires and werewolves, wanting specifically to know how to identify a vampire after it has been killed.” She drained her coffee cup and set it down on the saucer. “Folks…how stupid do you really think I am?”
After almost half a minute of silence, Val said, “Well, well.”
To which Crow added, “Holy shit.”
“Okay,” Val said softly, “then what do you think is going on?”
Jonatha shrugged. “It seems pretty clear to me that you all think you have, or possibly had, a vampire here in Pine Deep.” She arched her eyebrows. “Am I right, Val? Crow?” They said nothing. “And very probably a werewolf, too.”
Crow opened his mouth to reply, but Val touched his arm. Her eyes bored into Jonatha’s. “What if we were to agree? What would you do if we said that we thought that we were dealing with something supernatural here in Pine Deep?”
“Then,” Jonatha said, “I’d say that you’d better tell me absolutely everything. Everything that’s happened, everything you suspect.”
“And if we do?”
“First,” she said, “I’d have to believe you. Meaning I’d have to believe that you are telling me all of it and telling me what you believe.”
“Okay,” Newton said.
“Then I’ll tell you if I think this is over or not.”
“From the way you’re talking,” Crow said, “it almost sounds like you believe in this stuff.”
Jonatha didn’t answer. She cut another piece of omelet, speared a piece of grilled potato, dipped it in ketchup, and ate it while staring him right in the eye.
“Tell me first,” she said.
2
“Well…that’s kind of weird.”
Nurse Emma Childs looked up from the chart on which she had been recording the doctor’s notes. Pen poised above the paper she said, “Excuse me, doctor?”
The young resident, Dr. Pankrit, was bending over Terry Wolfe, gently moving aside bandages in order to examine the man’s lacerations and surgical wounds. “Look at this. I’ve never seen a surgical scar heal that fast.”
Childs leaned past Pankrit’s shoulder. “Wow. I changed that dressing yesterday. This is wonderful!”
Pankrit turned and gave her an enigmatic stare for a moment, then bent lower to peer at the sides of Terry’s face. “I…guess.” He sounded dubious. “It’s just so fast…and look, see that? That was a deep incision and the scar should be livid. This scar looks like it’s six months old. That’s just…weird.” He put the bandages back in place. “Let’s run this by Dr. Weinstock. He said he wanted to be notified of any changes to the mayor’s condition.”
“Well, surely if the mayor is healing fast it must be a good sign. His system must be getting stronger.”
Pankrit gave her another of those odd looks. “Let’s run it by Dr. Weinstock.”
3
Bentley Kingsman, known to everyone as BK, walked the whole route of the Haunted Hayride, pausing every once in a while to make notes on a map of the attraction he carried on a clipboard. He and his friend, Billy Christmas, had driven into town the previous night, stayed at the Harvestman Inn on the town’s dime, and were out at the Hayride by seven in the morning. Crow had met them, introduced them to Coop and a few of the management staff, then left for another meeting.
BK was set to handle security for Mischief Night and Halloween at the Hayride, the Dead-End Drive-In, the College Campus, the movie theater in town, and the main Festival that covered three full blocks in the center of town. BK had a lot of muscle coming in that afternoon and by then he wanted to view every site himself and make decisions on who should go where.
They stopped at a slope that led down to a man-made swamp in which the silvery disk of a spaceship appeared to rise from the muddy water. BK read from the clipboard. “Alien Attack. Five staff as aliens, two as victims, plus mannequins as deceased victims.”
“Cute,” Billy said, sipping from a Venti Starbucks triple espresso. “What happens here?”
“The flatbed stops up there on the road and a lightshow kicks in. Blue and white lights plus a strobe over behind the saucer. The aliens chase the two actors up the slope and shoot them down with ray guns right about where we’re standing, then they start coming after the kids on the flatbed. The driver guns the engine and the flatbed slips away just in the nick of time.”
Billy grunted. “Kids buy that shit?”
“By the busload, apparently. Crow said this is the biggest one of these in the country. Place makes a ton of cash.”
“We’re in the wrong business, Kemo Sabe.” Billy was tall and wiry, with lean hips and long ropey arms. He looked more like a dancer than a bouncer, and two nights a week he did climb onto the stage for ladies’ night male stripper revues. He was tanned and handsome, with white-blond hair, cat-green eyes, and a smile that BK had seem him use to melt just about any woman who crossed his path.
BK was taller, broader, heavier, and darker. Brown hair and eyes, a short beard, and forty more pounds than he would have liked to carry. He was built on a huge frame, though, and carried the extra weight lightly. He did look like a bouncer.
The two of them worked at Strip-Search, the biggest of Philly’s go-go bars. BK was the cooler and Billy was his main backup. Like Crow they were old hands in the Middle Atlantic States martial arts scene. BK studied the same art as Crow, traditional Japanese jujutsu; Billy had years invested in a number of systems, including Muay Thai kickboxing and Wing Chun kung-fu.
“How many guys you figure for this spot?” Billy asked.
“This is the most remote spot, but I think we can get away with three guys for this scene and the next two. One here, one a quarter mile along the path, and one walking the line between the two.”
“That’ll work.”
There was a lot of activity around the saucer. Attractions consultant John West and his team were involved in a thorough wiring safety check, so BK didn’t bother them. He and Billy moved on, strolling past the Graveyard of the Ghouls, through the Corn Maze, and into the final trap, the Grotto of the Living Dead. “This is where one of the kids gets pulled out of the flatbed. He pretends to be a tourist and an actress plays his girlfriend. Some zombies sneak up and drag him off into the bushes and tear him up. The girl screams her lungs out and the zombies attack the flatbed, almost catching it as the tractor pulls away. Then it swings around the big bend in the road and back to the starting point where they offload the kids.
BK consulted the clipboard. “I figure it’ll take fifteen guys to secure this entire attraction.”
Billy whistled. “I hope somebody around here’s got some deep-ass pockets.”
“From what Crow says, they do.”
“It’d piss me off if the check bounces.”
“Amen, brother.”
4
They took turns telling her the story. Crow started and told her everything about the Massacre, everything about Griswold and the Bone Man. Val picked it up with what happened at her farm, first when Ruger invaded her house and took her family hostage—and mercilessly gunned down her father—to Boyd’s murderous attack. Newton filled in the backstory of the Cape May Killer, the police handling of the case, and what he had found out through Internet searches. It took well over an hour and they were so wired from caffeine that they’d switched to decaf. The owner, Gus, came by several times to see if they needed anything, but the seriousness of their faces and the fact that they immediately stopped talking as soon as he came into the back room finally convinced him that they were involved in something private and important. He stopped seating customers in that part of the diner.
Throughout the discourse Jonatha said very little except to clarify a point, a name, or a date. She made no notes, offered no opinions. When Newton finished his part of it, she leaned her elbows on the table and steepled her long fingers. “Wow,” she said. “And the only other person who knows about this is this Dr. Weinstock?”
“Yes,” Val said, “and we’d like to keep it that way.”
“Have you seen Dr. Weinstock’s evidence? The tapes, the lab reports?”
Crow nodded. “He said that each single element could probably be disproved, or at least discredited if someone wanted to work hard enough at it, but taken en masse it’s pretty damned compelling.”
To Val, Jonatha said, “So, as far I can tell, you three brought me here because of what happened to your brother and his wife, is that correct?”
“Not entirely,” Val said. “Mark is the most important reason to me, of course. I need to know that he’s going to be at rest. That he isn’t infected…but we also need to know if the town itself is safe. We think this is over, but how can we ever tell? I don’t want to have to live in fear every day and night for the rest of my life. Crow and I are expecting a baby…we need to know that this town is going to be a safe place for our baby to grow up.” Crow reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.
