Creekers (16 page)

He grabbed her head, turned her face up, and jammed his fingers into her toothless mouth. “Open up, retard. Open yer yap unless you want me to punch your lights out.”

The girl’s panic had nowhere to go. Tears smeared her cheeks along with the bewilderment and terror in her scarlet eyes. Then she let her mouth yawn open.

Jake squinted.
The fuck?
he thought. He grabbed her slender throat and squeezed.

“Stick out yer tongue, ya cumbucket.”

The girl resisted, whining, gagging. Her eyes seemed lidless as she stared up in total incomprehension.

Jake squeezed her throat a lot harder, till her face began to tint pink. “Stick it out, ya Creeker freak. Right now.”

The pink tint began to darken. Then, tremoring, she stuck out her tongue.

Jake stared back.

It was not
a
tongue that stuck out of her mouth, but a
pair
of them, both roving like fat worms on a hotplate.

She’s got…two…tongues,
he marveled in the most grotesque fascination.

And that’s about all Jake Rhodes had time to marvel over because at the same instant the fidgety shadow slid up behind him and—

Ka-CRACK!

—brought a yard-long two-by-four straight down on top of his head.

««—»»

“Where’s the chief?” Phil asked brusquely when he returned to the station at the end of his shift.

“You didn’t call in 10-6 for shift change,” Susan smirked in reply.

Phil fumed. “Straker, Philip, ID 8, reporting 10-6 from eight-to-eight shift. Out of service,” he said. “Now, where’s Mullins?”

“If you mean
Chief
Mullins, I believe he’s back in the supply building—”

Probably checking coffee filters,
Phil
thought,

But Susan Ryder continued from her console, “And one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you. What kind of service ammunition are you loading…
Sergeant
Straker?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It seemed like a pretty cut-and-dry question to me. But just let me remind you that sabot, teflon, liquid-filled, and especially quad ammunition is illegal for all law-enforcement use in this state.”

So that’s it,
Phil realized.
That’s why the Ice Bitch hates me.
“I get the gist of what you’re saying, Ms. Ryder, and not that I’m in the habit of reporting the nomenclature of my service ammunition to radio girls, I’m loading Plus P Plus .38 wadcutters, which is what I’ve always loaded.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” she said, and redirected her gaze into her textbook.

“Yeah, well, you’ve probably also
heard
that I’m a kid killer, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if you’ve heard that Jesus Christ is really an astronaut from another solar system and that Elvis is alive and well and has lunch regularly at Chuck’s Diner, nor would I be surprised if you actually believed those things.” Phil leaned over her console desk. “But let me make a suggestion, Ms. Ryder. I really think it would be prudent for you to not only get your snooty nose out of other’s people’s business, but you also might find life a lot more agreeable if you put a lid on that outrageous ego of yours, and—” Suddenly Phil pounded his fist—
BAM!
—down on her desk, whereupon Susan Ryder’s derriére lifted at least an inch from her seat in complete surprise.
“—and
let me tell you one more thing. I’ve never loaded quads, and I never killed a kid. That whole Metro mess was a sham, Ms. Ryder; I was set up. And if you don’t believe that, I don’t give a flying fuck. But I do have one more suggestion, you rude egomanical
bitch.
Don’t make judgments about people until you know all of the facts.”

Then, in utter calm, Phil turned around, walked into Chief Mullins’ office, and closed the door very quietly behind him.

God, I hate women so much sometimes,
he told himself. Through the window, he saw Mullins coming out of the lock-up-turned-supply building and the man did not look happy.

When the back door swung open, Phil beat the chief to the punch. “Look, Chief, I’m sorry, but I forgot to pick up the coffee filters. Bust me.”

“Christ, you kids,” Mullins griped and sat his girth down behind his desk. “Can’t trust ya to take care of your own bowel movements, huh? Looks like I’ll have to waste valuable tax-dollar-time getting the friggin’ filters myself.”

“Guess so,” Phil said. “But I suspect the world will still continue to revolve while you’re gone.”

“That’s what I like about you, Phil. You’re a smartass after my own heart.” Mullins raised a paper cup and spat tobacco juice into it. “You stake out Krazy Sallee’s in plainclothes last night?”

“Yeah,” Phil replied. “Got some tag numbers, descriptions, stuff like that. It’s a good start.”

“You see that ugly fuck—Natter?”

“Yeah, Chief, I saw him.”

“You see anyone else?”

Phil rubbed at minute stubble on his chin. “Yeah, Chief, I did. And right now I got a burning question for you.”

“Lemme guess, hot stuff,” the chief said, “You saw Vicki Steele coming out of there, and now you’re pissed at me ’cos I didn’t tell you she was stripping up there.”

“Bingo,” Phil said.

Mullins spat again. “Well, I figure there’s things a man has to learn on his own, especially when it’s about a woman he’s still got the hots for.”

“I don’t have the hots for her. But I think it would’ve been pretty civil for you to warn me in advance. And you expect me to believe that
Vicki Steele
quit the department to do a strip show at Sallee’s?”

“No, I don’t expect you to believe that,” Mullins said very quickly. “So let’s make a little bit of an amendment to what I told you beforehand. Vicki Steele didn’t quit like North and Adams. I fired her.”

“For what?”

Mullins let out a stout chuckle. “Shit, Phil, you’re the one who dated her for five years. I gotta tell you?”

“You’re losing me, Chief. And you’re pissing me off more.”

“I fired her for dereliction of duty on the grounds of overt sexual misconduct.”

“Bullshit,” Phil said at once.

“Believe what ya want, son. But it’s true. You think I wanted to tell you about the shit she pulled?”

“Tell me,” Phil asked.

“She was fucking her boyfriends on duty, Phil. And since you asked for it, she had a lot of boyfriends. Or maybe I’m using the term ‘boyfriends’ out of respect—”

Phil glowered. “Be disrespectful, Chief.”

“She was fucking just about anything that moved,” Mullins pulled no punches. “Hey, you’re the one who asked. She was picking up guys at the Qwik-Stop and doing them right in the patrol car. She’d pull rednecks over at night for speeding, and she’d wind up fucking the guys. You want more?”

“Sure,” Phil said.

Mullins shrugged. “One night I came in and caught her blowing a
prisoner
in the lock-up. I got half a dozen complaints that she was rousting patrons at Sallee’s, pulling them over and threatening to DWI them, and then fucking the guys and letting them off. You want more, son?”

“Sure,” Phil said, a bit less enthusiastically this time.

“I have good reason
—documented reason—
to
believe she was actually turning tricks while on duty. Threatening to write guys up for drinking behind the wheel, then fucking them for money in exchange for not writing them up. Christ, one night she even put the make on me, and I haven’t had a hard-on in about fifteen years.”

Phil sat back in his chair, reflecting.
Vicki? A sex maniac? A…whore?
Then he reflected further. She’d always been pretty feisty—and sometimes downright kinky—in bed.
But that doesn’t mean she’s a nympho,
he thought. Mullins seemed straight up about this—at least as straight up as he could be—but Phil had a hard time seeing Vicki Steele changing so drastically that she would actually blackmail traffic offenders into a scenario of prostitution.

“I just can’t believe it,” Phil said. “I just can’t see her doing things like that.”

Mullins’ brow raised as he took another spit. “Neither could I, until she told me the reason. And please don’t ask me to tell you what she said.”

“Tell me what she said,” Phil directed.

“You can’t handle it, Phil.”

“I can handle it. So quit fucking with me, will ya?”

Mullins set his jaw. He appeared genuinely distressed, which was something Phil had never recalled seeing. He cleared his throat, did a fidget in his seat, and said, “When I fired her, she said it was all because of you. You taking off without her. You dumping her.”