Husk (6 page)

He reached the top when the first tent stake hit him.

They came out of nowhere. A dozen of them.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

One after the other they plunged into his back like arrows fired from the shadows. Three more caught him in the head, casting him off the shelves and over the other side.

Bird cursed, thumbing fresh rounds into the revolver.

Penelope stood paralyzed by the sight. The shape at the end of the aisle advance toward her, moving with purpose. Bird grabbed her arm and hauled her after him.

“
Come on!” He pulled her through the main doors, into the humid summer night. “My truck’s on the side of the building,” he said, locking the handgun’s cylinder in place. “It’s the blue one. The doors are—”

He fell to his knees with a shout, taking Penelope down with him. Three medium size knives jutted from his hip and side.

“
Oh, shit, no,” she shrieked, trying to help him up.

She wrapped her arms around his midsection, struggling to lift his bulk. He gained one leg. Then the other. And five more knives jabbed into his shoulder and back, causing him to howl in pain. He collapsed.

Penelope pulled at his shirt, tears streaming down her face. “Get up.”

She looked to the store. The figure emerged from the doorway.

“
Get up, Bird. Get up. He’s coming!”

The man had fallen silent, but his grip tightened on her arm. Pulling himself to a half-kneeling position, he pressed the handgun and truck keys into her hands. “Go. Hurry … Go.”

The words were still fresh from his lips when two more blades sunk into his flesh, entering his neck and the side of his head. His heavy body went slack and slipped out of her grasp.

Penelope staggered backwards, her gaze locked on the dead Indian. Five minutes ago he’d been an average guy doing his job. Now he was gone. She’d only known him by part of his name, but he’d helped her. Hell, he’d saved her life a moment ago.
He didn’t deserve it,
she thought.
None of them deserved it.

Screaming, tears spilling down her face, Penelope pivoted away from Bird’s lifeless body.

She raised the revolver and opened fire on his killer.

Each shot jarred her arms to the bone. The recoil threatened to send the gun flying from her grasp, but she tensed her muscles and forced herself to hold the weapon level. At such close range—less than twenty feet away—the bullets pierced the killer’s body and punched into the walls of the building behind him.

Then, in a horrifying moment of heightened perception, she saw several sparks leap off a metallic cage of propane tanks near—

The building exploded.

CHAPTER 6

Melissa could smell the bodies all the way from the roadside, thirty yards from the house. Even here in the country, surrounded by sprawling green fields of soybeans and corn, the vast open space and gentle morning breeze did nothing to dilute the stench in the air.

She turned off the county road and onto the property’s dirt driveway, pulling to a stop behind the two Corcoran squad cars already on the scene.

She got out of the car and found herself in the shadow of a tank-like man who identified himself as Officer Davis. Melissa put the man at six-foot-four from the soles of his shoes to the top of his crew cut blonde hair. Despite his formidable size, a sickly pallor dominated his facial complexion. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead.

“
I’m Detective Humble,” she said. “Hennepin County Homicide.”

After floundering for a response, Davis merely nodded.

“
First body?” Melissa asked, giving the man time to recover.

“
Yes, Ma’am. I’m sorry.”

“
What can you tell me so far?”

“
There’re, ah, two victims,” Davis said, leading her toward the farmhouse. “Mel and Florence Patterson, ages sixty-five and sixty-two. We found their IDs inside. One of’em’s in the house, the other’s in the garage.”

“
Who found them?”

“
Xcel Energy employee,” Davis answered. He pointed past the squad cars, to a white pickup truck with the power company’s logo on the door. “Guy’s name is Kevin Porter. He was doing scheduled maintenance both here in Corcoran and down the road in Loretto. He said he’d finished checking the transformer back near the road when he noticed the service pole feeding the house was down. He didn’t have a report on it, so he figured the people who owned the place were out of town and didn’t know their power was out. When he came up the driveway to have a better look at the damage, that’s when he saw the garage.”

The officer gestured to the large detached garage. The white aluminum door buckled outward at the center, as if someone had tried to drive out without raising it.

“
That’s nothing compared to what’s inside,” Davis added in a whisper.

They approached the two-story home and ascended the front steps into the cooler shadows under the covered porch. Davis led her around the building’s front half, passing a cedar log bench swing and decorative bouquets made of dried cornstalks and sunflowers. He stopped at a side entrance to point out the first signs of destruction amidst the pristine yellow paintjob on the walls and the white trim of the doorway. Melissa crouched down to examine the splinters of wood that jutted from the doorjamb and strike plate like a vertical row of needle-sharp teeth.

She looked at the officer. “This door was kicked out.”

“
From the inside,” Davis agreed.

He opened the door for Melissa and the smell of decay intensified to an almost unbearable level. Davis took a step back.

“
It’s bad,” he warned her.

She glanced at him, knowing her small frame and youthful appearance often made other officers—male officers—feel inclined to treat her like a rookie on the first day of the job. But when she noted the unfeigned look of repulsion on his face, she strode inside without comment.

The door opened onto a true farmhouse kitchen, one that boasted two big ovens and a gas range that looked large enough to serve in any major restaurant. Copper pots and iron pans hung in neat order on ceiling racks over a central cooking island, and the dinner table looked like a marvelous solid oak work of art from a previous century.

Beyond those items the pleasantries stopped.

At the far end of the kitchen, between the counter and the ovens, Mrs. Patterson’s corpse hung on the wall like one of the knickknacks on the porch.

Melissa stopped in her tracks, gazing in disbelief.

The woman’s corpse had been nailed in place with every cooking utensil imaginable, pinning her back to the wall, arms outstretched. Knives, forks, tongs, skewers, corkscrews—even wooden cooking spoons pierced the body; their straight handles had been thrust into the eye sockets. The air hummed with flies.

“
You ever seen anything so horrible?” the officer asked, now staring out the window rather than look at the deceased.

“
Not like this, no.”

“
We got us a real problem here, don’t we?”

Melissa didn’t answer. Instead, she moved closer to the body.

“
Decomp has to be three or four days old,” she said, swatting at flies that darted for her face. She knew the coroner’s examination would determine if anything had happened to Mrs. Patterson prior to being stapled to the wall, but it seemed likely the bizarre crucifixion would prove to be a posthumous act, done as a deranged display by the killer. Then again, she knew anyone capable of taking a life was also capable of unthinkable cruelty.

Suddenly, something caught her eye, a mark half-hidden behind the hair drooping over the dead woman’s face. Melissa pulled a pen from her pocket and pushed the strands aside.

“
Oh, shit,” she thought aloud.

Her comment jolted Officer Davis from his thoughts, and he turned his back on the blooming countryside out the window. “What is it, Ma’am?”

She stepped back to allow him a view of several incisions on the woman’s forehead. Maggots squirmed under the skin, but she knew it was the marking itself that caused the cop’s expression to pale in awe.

Melissa now knew that this would be an even stranger case than it already seemed. She’d found two overlapping twin Ks, the horrifying signature of serial kidnapper and mass-murderer Kale Kane. She knew the mark well. The maniac’s freakish signature that had become synonymous throughout the state—maybe even the country by now—with fear, malevolence, lunacy, and death. 

“
Oh, Jesus,” Davis whispered. “We got a copycat.”

Melissa looked out the kitchen door at the sound of approaching vehicles. The coroner van and the crime scene investigators had arrived.

“
We don’t know it’s a copycat,” she warned.

“
How many will this one kill?” he whispered, still staring at the corpse.

Melissa ignored the officer’s comment and edged past him, exiting the kitchen to go meet the forensics team leader. Outside, the rising sun’s heat did little to dissuade the shiver that ran through her.

CHAPTER 7

Dad, do we have to do this?” Mallory asked.

She looked at the gathering of strangers in the parking lot of Loretto’s Church of Saints Peter and Paul. “We don’t know anyone here, and people keep looking at us. I feel like an oddball or something. Besides, this is a Catholic church, and we’re not even Catholics.”

BJ hopped out of the Expedition and began plucking at his rear.

“
It doesn’t matter,” Paul said, helping BJ adjust his clothes. “We’re here as guests. And don’t worry about not knowing anyone. That’s one of the reasons we came, remember? To meet people.”

“
These pants go up my butt,” BJ complained.

Mallory rolled her eyes. Fresh out of the shower and in his junior suit and tie, the kid looked like a six-year-old mobster.

Paul checked his watch. “It’s almost eight, we better get inside.”

They climbed the double staircase that led to the entrance. The red brick church stood in a cul-de-sac on the incline of a modest hill, and its tall steeple towered over the surrounding houses. Inside, Mr. Fish greeted them near the door, initiating a round of handshakes and hellos. He led them inside, weaving through a mix of people gathered within the main chamber. They stopped at one of the right-hand pews, where a young redhead woman sat alone.

“
Rebecca, mind if we join you?” Harry asked.

The woman turned, curious, and her face bloomed into an expression of surprise. Her green eyes sparkled even in the diffused light coming through the stained glass windows on the wall.

“
Harry, how are you?” she asked. “And, Paul, this is a surprise. It’s good to see you again.”

Mallory’s eyes zeroed in on her father and noted how his smile widened when the two shook hands.

“
Nice to see you again, too, Rebecca,” her dad replied. “You look … You look spectacular.”

Mallory cleared her throat, exaggerating the volume to regain his attention.

Her dad looked. “Oh, kids, this is Rebecca Fleming, the realtor Harry set me up with when I bought the house. She lives here in Loretto.”

“
Mallory and Benjamin, right?” Rebecca asked. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Paul mentioned you’d be moving here. How is everything so far? Do you like your new home?”

“
The pool is my favorite,” BJ chimed in. Not yet versed in the complex morays of social behavior, he had unzipped his fly and stuffed one hand down his pant leg to scratch his thigh.

Her dad flinched. “BJ!”

Harry gave a hearty chuckle. “Rebecca has a son about your age, Mallory,” he interjected while her dad adjusted BJ’s clothes. “Where is Tim, anyway?”

Though answering Mr. Fish, Rebecca kept her eyes on Mallory’s dad. “He’s visiting his father this weekend.”

“
Oh, that’s right,” Harry said, leaning toward Paul. “Rebecca is also divorced. A.K.A. available. You two have something in common on that front.”

Rebecca reddened. “He already knows that, Harry, but thank you.” Turning to Paul, she added, “In case you haven’t noticed, Harry’s taken it upon himself to be my personal matchmaker.”

Her dad nodded while the woman talked, clearly trying to keep his expression serious despite Mr. Fish’s elbow nudges.

“
Tim should be back later this afternoon,” Rebecca said, once again speaking to Mallory. “I’m sure he’d love to show you around town and introduce you to some of the other kids. Should I tell him to stop by?”

“
Sure,” Mallory answered, knowing her dad would argue the matter if she said no.

Mr. Fish clapped a hand on Paul’s back and ushered him into the pew beside Rebecca. “You two go ahead and have a seat together. I want to sit next to Mallory so I can fill her in on the high school she’ll be attending this fall.” He leaned in close and winked. “The Dean is a good friend of mine, and I can give you all the dirt there is to know about any teacher in the school.”

CHAPTER 8

Tim Fleming stared wide-eyed, his breath held at mid-draw. On screen the two girls embraced, coming together at the mouth for an open, tongue-touching kiss.