Helltown (29 page)

But that’s what you want, my friend. That’s the point. Goodbye, goodnight sweet world. You’re a coward, that’s all. You don’t have the balls to do what you know needs to be done—

“Hey!” a woman’s voice called.
Wrap wrap, wrapwrapwrap
. “It’s me! Beetle? Are you sleeping?”

Beetle frowned. Me? Who was “me?”

The girl from next door. The tall German with the lidded eyes and the long face who was backpacking through the country to LA.

What the hell did she want?

Beetle stuffed the pistol beneath a pillow and stood, grimacing as the dull pulse in his head became a wicked pounding. For a moment his stomach turned and he thought he might be sick. The queasy sensation passed.

Breathing deeply, he unlocked and opened the door and squinted into the bright light of the hallway. The German—Gertrude? Greta?—stood two feet away from him. Her face appeared flushed, her eyes as wide and round as they’d been, now exaggerated, either in fear or excitement, and for a split second Beetle wondered if maybe the motel was on fire.

“You were sleeping,” Greta said, more statement than question. “I woke you.”

“No, yeah—sort of.” His voice sounded thick and slow in his ears. He cleared his throat.

“I thought so,” she said. “You were pretty drunk on the balcony. I would have let you sleep, but I know you would want to see this.”

Beetle waited expectantly. He was trying to remember what they’d spoken of out on the balcony and was drawing a blank.

“There are people at the church!” Greta told him in an unnecessary whisper, given they were likely the only two guests in the entire motel.

“Huh?” Beetle said.

“The church! With the upside down crosses.”

“Ah…”

“Three cars just arrived. Right now.”

Beetle frowned, struggling to make sense of the meaning and significance of this. Who would attend church at this hour, and why the hell did it matter?

Greta read the confusion on his face and said, “The legends! Remember?”

The legends. Right. What had she told him? Something about mutants…and a graveyard? Or a school bus? He shook his head.

“Satanists!” she blurted. “They’re there right now!”

Beetle almost smiled—almost.

“You don’t believe me,” Greta said. “I can see that in your eyes.”

“What time is it?”

“Two in the morning. Who visits a church at two in the morning?”

“You really think there’re a bunch of Satanists over there?” His eyes shifted to the door.

“What?” she said.

“Huh?”

“You want me to go?”

“I’m a bit tired, and I have a headache…”

“You want to go to
bed
?” She seemed incredulous.

“I’m sure you’ll be safe,” he assured her. “Just lock your door—”

“I don’t want to hide. I want to
see
them—and you have to come with me.”

“To the church?” Beetle was already shaking his head “I’m not going to the church.”

“You’d let me go by myself?” She became indignant. “What if they kidnap me? What if they
sacrifice
me?”

“No, I don’t think you should go either. It’s late. Go to bed. In the morning you can check it out, see if they left anything behind.”

“And miss a real Satanic mass? No way! This is why I
came
to Helltown. Now come with me, Beetle. Please? We’re wasting time standing here. They might finish soon and leave.”

“I’m sorry, Greta. Not tonight. Maybe in the morning.”

“I have a car. We can drive there. It won’t take long.”

Her persistence was trying Beetle’s patience. He’d made up his mind; he wasn’t changing it. “I’m not going,” he told her firmly. “That’s that. Okay?”

Anger flared in Greta’s eyes, and for a moment she wasn’t uniquely attractive; she was beautiful. Then she clenched her jaw and returned to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Beetle eased his own door closed, relieved to be alone again.

He stepped into the bathroom and urinated into the toilet bowl without bothering to lift the seat, fearing the simple act of bending over might ratchet up his headache. Afterward he filled the paper cup on the counter with tap water and drank from it greedily, spilling water down his shirt. He refilled the cup and drank again, albeit more slowly. His parched throat thanked him.

Back in the room proper he sat on the end of the bed, facing the TV. A news anchor was reporting on a tsunami that had struck Japan’s eastern shoreline. Beetle’s eyes shifted to the bottle of vodka next to the TV. Roughly a third remained. He was about to fetch it when he realized the idea of drinking more booze right then made him feel more nauseous than he already was.

Then, quite abruptly, a weight settled over Beetle. Not the suicidal depression—that was still there, pressing down on his shoulders like an invisible lead cloak—but something else that made him stare stupidly at the television and fidget with his hands repeatedly.

Boredom. He was bored out of his fucking mind.

He wasn’t going to kill himself tonight. He’d already decided that. He wasn’t going to continue drinking either. Ideally he would have liked to go to sleep, but right then he felt not only wide awake but wired. If he attempted sleep he would lie there, thinking thoughts he didn’t want to think.

“Fuck it,” he grunted, getting up and snagging the motel room key.

Beetle knocked a second time on Greta’s door. When she didn’t answer he realized she wasn’t ignoring him; she had likely already left for the church. Beetle started along the hallway, noting the zigzagging line of blood that stained the carpet. He passed the clicking ice machine and took the stairs to the first floor. The reception was deserted. The old cheat was likely in bed sleeping, or at the hospital with his sons. Beetle stepped through the front doors, into the rain and wind.

While he was halfway down the steep staircase that led to the parking lot he heard the rev of a car engine. He took the steps two at a time, ignoring the knot of pain bouncing around inside his head.

At the bottom he stepped into blinding headlights. Brakes screeched. Shading his eyes, he went to the car.

Greta rolled down the driver’s window and stuck her head out, beaming. “You changed your mind!” she said.

“Yeah, but I think we should walk,” he told her. “Because if there really are Satanists at the church like you think, we’re going to need be discrete about this.”

CHAPTER 25

“Oh yes, there will be blood.”

Saw II
(2005)

As Spencer drove through the gate in the split-rail fence and down the gravel driveway toward to the House in the Woods, he frowned as he passed Cleavon’s pickup truck, which was tipped over on its side like a toy that had been tossed to the broken pile. He parked the Volvo and hurried through the rain to the sagging front porch where everyone was waiting for him: Cleavon, Jesse, Earl, Floyd, and Weasel. There were also two women at Cleavon’s feet. They were hogtied and gagged and staring up at him with red, terrified eyes.

“So,” Spencer said heartily, “having some car trouble, are we, Cleave?”

“Don’t get me started,” Cleavon growled.

“I told you, it was an accident,” Earl said, holding a bloodied dish towel against his neck. “I didn’t mean to, I told you that, she was just too quick.”

“What happened to you neck, Earl?” Spencer asked.

“He almost let the tiny bitch get away, that’s what,” Cleavon said. “She sliced him with my razor, jumped in my truck, and almost got away.”

“But she didn’t,” Spencer said.

“No, she didn’t. But look at my fucking truck, Spence! I’m gonna need all new side panels, a new headlight, and a new window. And you think Earl got the money to pay for that? You think his rabbits gonna pay for that?”

“Aw, Cleave,” Earl complained. “I told ya, I told ya a hundred times, I didn’t mean it.”

Spencer held up his hand to command silence. “The truck’s not important right now. What I want to know is what exactly went on here tonight. Who would like to explain this to me from the beginning? Weasel? Cleavon tells me this is all your doing?”

Weasel Higgins had his scrawny arms folded across his chest, the beak of his cap pulled low over his forehead, as if he were trying to hide. “No it wasn’t, Mr. Pratt, I wasn’t even here when the truck crashed—”

Cleavon whacked him across the back of the head. “He’s talking about Stanford Road and all the shit that’s happened ’cause of your stupidity, stupid.”

Weasel swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a quickly moving elevator. “I don’t know it’s fair to say that, Mr. Pratt, to say it’s all my doing. Cleave, he’s the one who let that redhead get away.”

“She wouldn’t have gotten away,” Cleavon told him, scowling, “if you hadn’t gone messing with two cars in the first place.” He took an angry drag of the cigarette he was smoking and flicked what remained into the night.

“I’m not blaming anyone,” Spencer said calmly. “I merely want an explanation. The account you told me on the phone, Cleave, was brief, to say the least.”

“Yeah, well, okay then,” Weasel said, lifting his cap and clawing his hand through his oily hair. “Well, I was patrolling Standford Road, like we talked about last meeting. It being Halloween and all, there was gonna be some does, right? So eventually I come to these two cars parked next to Crybaby. Problem was, I drove by so fast I didn’t get a good look inside them, didn’t know there were so many people. That was the problem.” He studied the others warily, as if to see if anyone would challenge this claim.

Cleavon jumped on the opportunity. “That’s not what you told me on the phone, you lying shit. You told me—and Jess, mind you—you told us there were seven people inside ’em.”

“I did not.”

“Jess?” Cleavon said.

Jesse Gordon stood off on his own, chewing bubblegum. “Ayuh, Weasel,” he said, looking at his feet. “You said seven.”

“What the fuck?” Weasel said. “You two ganging up on me?”

“Now, now, Weasel, what’s done is done,” Spencer said, holding up his hand again. He felt like a school teacher mediating aggressive children. “There’s no point arguing about this. Now please continue.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Weasel said, shooting Cleavon a triumphant look. “What’s done is done.” He pulled at his goatee, a nervous habit of his. “Anyway, what happened? Well, what happened was, I turned the meat wagon round and high beamed the first car, the Bimmer. It high beamed me back. So it’s on, right? So I come straight at it. The driver in the Bimmer was ballsy, but I was ballsier. I kept my cool. Didn’t blink. At the last second the Bimmer swerves and shoots off the road faster than a cat can lick its ass.”

“Were they screaming?” Earl asked earnestly. “Did you hear them screaming?”

“Naw, Earl, like I said, it happened too fast.” He swept his hands together while making a whistling noise. “Now you see ’em, now you don’t, just like that. Anyway, I knew they wasn’t going nowhere. So I burned rubber all the way home and got on the horn to call Cleave, but he was already talking to Jess, so I told ’em, I told ’em both, what happened. That’s when Cleave, that’s when he took over. So you see, Mr. Pratt, I didn’t have nothing to do with the girl getting away, that was Cleave—”

“There were four of them and only three of us,” Cleavon snapped. “Me and the boys took care of them the best we could—”

“Three,” Weasel corrected. “One was a cripple. And he was out cold. So there was only three, and two of ’em were girls—”

“I’ve had about enough of your smarting off, boy,” Cleavon said, and shoved Weasel, knocking him into Earl. He shoved him again, this time to his knees.

“Cleavon!” Spencer said. “Leave Weasel be.”

“Ehhh,” Cleavon spat next to where Weasel cowered. “The little drink of water ain’t worth it.” He took out his cigarettes and lit up a fresh one while Weasel regained his feet and moved a safe distance away from him.

“So what happened at Lonnie’s, Cleave?” Spencer asked, doing his best to appear empathetic. Lonnie Olsen had been one of Cleavon’s better friends. “How did he die?”

Cleavon shrugged, showing no emotion—if you didn’t know him better. Spencer could tell he was holding back a whole lot of hurt and anger inside. “Happened before me and Jess got there,” he said. “But looked like one of the bucks got hold of his rifle and shot him point blank in the chest.”

“And his boy?”

“Got it bad, real bad, brains all over the floor. You ask me what happened, I reckon the bucks got into it with the boy before Lonnie arrived for not letting them use the phone. They killed him accidentally, ’cause that’s what it looked like with the radiator and all, an accident, and Lonnie came home and went ape shit, killed one of the bucks, then got served himself. But don’t take my word for it. Ask the flying princess here. She was there.” He kicked the blonde in the side of the ribs.

She moaned and squeezed her eyes shut.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Spencer said. “Your account sounds logical to me. Where had Lonnie returned from?”