Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus (22 page)

But he also liked going hands-on with belligerent drunks who’d been pulled over for swerving on the highway, and getting into chases with vehicles driven by suspects in robberies or assaults.

John was a big man, with the build of an Austrian railroad worker. In his time on the force, none of the suspects he’d taken into custody had ever gotten the better of him. Oh, there were a few times when he’d gone to the pavement, and he had absorbed his fair share of punches. But he had always given as good as he got. If he got hauled to the emergency ward, he made sure the fellow who’d put the hurt on him was in the next gurney.

Of course, that wasn’t what he was going to do to Chad Brooks. He wanted to scare the boy straight, not damage him. Not permanently, at least. Just give him something to think about, and John had a method for doing that.

One of the perennial problems for highway patrol officers, especially around prom and homecoming times, were cars crammed full of kids who’d somehow gotten hold of a few six packs, and went out to have their first taste of playing grown up: racing along, hanging out the windows, swerving all over the road, and generally making dangerous nuisances of themselves.

You made a stop like that, there were a few ways things could play out. You might just let the kids off with a warning if they seemed contrite or embarrassed enough when you demanded their license and registration. If they tried to play it cool, you could haul them down to the county drunk tank on a reckless endangerment charge. A few hours behind bars, resting on a mattress that smelled of puke and urine, was an experience guaranteed to melt even the coolest of punk attitudes.

But now and again you came across a particular kind of kid, who didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by a run-in with the law. And that probably meant they’d grown up with parents who didn’t give a solitary crap what sort of trouble they got themselves into. Kids like were damned near immune to any sort of official punishment the police could dish out.

In those cases, John and his fellow officers had something off-the-radar. Something John liked to think of as, “the Krampus treatment.”

It went like this: You put the kids in the back of your patrol car, ignored their pleas and demands to know what was going on, drove them to one of the deserted stretches of feeder road that every PSP highway patrolman knew about, well out of view of the Interstate. That was when things got interesting.

You started by stripping them to their skivvies, cuffing their hands behind their backs, and blinding them with one of the heavy-duty squad car spotlights. Then a couple of officers dressed in their riot gear, with faces hidden by their balaclavas, came at the kids with their billy clubs out looking like nothing in the world would get them off faster than cracking a few skulls.

And for the otherwise unreachable hard-cases, John and his fellow officers had one last ace in the hole: a few pepper spray canisters that had reached their expiration date, and had been salvaged from the disposal bin while the supply officer was conveniently on a coffee break. Give those kids a little snort of that shit and let them spend the next half hour sneezing and hacking while those big, black-masked officers pounded the bumpers of the patrol cars with their batons just an inch or two from the kids’ heads, and screamed obscenities right in their puffy, snot-covered faces. No teenager in existence was so tough that
that
didn’t put the fear of God and Uncle Sam into them.

And the final act in this drama came just at that moment when the kids were convinced that they were going to get beaten to death and dumped in an unmarked grave somewhere. Then John would unsnap his holster and watch their eyes go wide. But instead of drawing his revolver, John pulled out a little piece of paper that showed a dancing, horned devil, wagging his long, curly tongue, and leading a couple of crying kids on a chain. It was a
Krampuskarten
—something his grandfather had told him about, a little seasonal memento for people who needed a reminder about the value of respect and good behavior.

Each card had Krampus and his victims drawn in a different pose, but they were all emblazoned with the same three words:
Gruss vom Krampus!
(Which translated, as Grandpa Nast explained, “Cheers, from das Krampus!”)

“You got off easy this time,” John would say in an almost congratulatory way as the other officers unlocked the cuffs and tossed the kids’ clothes down on the pavement. “If we catch you again, this is going to go a whole lot worse for you. You hear?”

As they were sucking up their last few sobs and hurriedly yanking their pants back on, the kids would inevitably thank the officers for their kindness and promise they’d be absolute frickkin’ angels for the rest of their lives.

By the time John and his fellow officers got the kids back to their vehicles, the pepper spray was all worn off, and only the humiliation and terror remained. But their Gruss vom Krampus cards were small, and completely untraceable souvenirs. If there were any claims about police misconduct, it would come down to the sworn oaths of half a dozen decorated patrol officers against the crazy-sounding allegations of teenagers who shouldn’t have been out drinking and joyriding anyway.

“The Krampus treatment” was how you took care of the worst kind of disrespectful kids.

Things like GPS trackers and dash-mounted video cameras had put an end to going “off the radar” for John and his brother officers. But now, in retirement, the memories of those terrified, pleading teenagers gave John some ideas about how to deal with Chad Brooks. He’d already tried confronting the boy directly about all of his destructive neighborhood shenanigans. But Chad was mighty good at leaving no scrap of evidence behind that John could use to legitimately pin the boy down with.

The few times John had gotten fed up enough to go tell Arnold to get his kid under control, the kid’s father proved to be as irresponsible as his son. “You leave Chad out of this, Nast,” he demanded. “He isn’t causing any of your problems and you can’t prove otherwise. Maybe you ought to think about who you pissed off, instead of trying to blame my boy.” Weaseling out of things with technicalities and counter-accusations. What else would you expect from a defense attorney?

Okay then, it was up to John himself to fix this problem, to give Chad Brooks a little lesson in respect that his parents were clearly incapable of teaching him.

In the cold evening air of his garage, John went through box after box, stacking them up on his workbench until he got to his old footlocker. The hinge creaked dryly as he opened it, and he saw that this was the box he was looking for.

Right on top was that old photo he used to keep stuck to the dash of his patrol car—Christ, Maggie practically looked like a teenager! She’d written on it, “Come home safe to me!” and had signed her name with a great big heart beside her face. John admired the faded photo for a minute, then gently put it aside as he lifted his old duty belt out of the chest.

He had to tug at the pouch snap several times before he got it unfastened. Finally it popped and he slid out a little device that looked like a cross between a flashlight and a Martian ray gun.

The LED indicator on top was yellow, a “low battery” warning. Not surprising, John thought, after sitting in storage for so many years. But when he punched the “test” button, the Taser’s forward prongs crackled with an electrical arc. Enough juice there to get the job done.

Grandpa Nast had said that the Krampus carried a birch switch, a narrow, thorny rod that would leave bright red welts across your ass when he hit you with it. This wouldn’t leave any welts, but John knew that when he pulled that trigger, Chad was going to stand up like he was watching a Fourth of friggin’ July parade go past. You didn’t slouch and drag your feet when you were getting motivated by 50,000 volts.

After that, he’d bet that Chad wouldn’t think it was much fun to screw with people’s holiday celebrations on River Street ever again.

* * *

John hadn’t bothered to straighten up the mess in his front yard. He wanted the neighbors to get a good look at that scene in the daylight, so there’d be no bellyaching if someone caught wind of what was about to happen to Chad. Now, as John left his garage just after sundown, the sight of it filled him, you might say, with the Krampus spirit.

He stood at the top of the driveway, concealed by the shadow of the eaves. Better to stay out of sight as things went down, even though he suspected he was only going to accomplish what everyone else on River Street wished they had the gumption to do.

As he looked over the wreckage of his Christmas décor, he noticed something he hadn’t caught before. On the edge of that upside-down sleigh there’d been two oversized Christmas stockings, one with his name written in gold on the top, and another that said “Maggie.” When she was alive, they’d hung those stockings on their mantle each Christmas. But when she passed away, he decided to put them on the edge of the sleigh, so everyone who walked by his house during the season would remember her name.

Now, after Chad’s little rampage, John saw only one of those stockings lying limply on the snow-covered yard; the one that read “John” on the cuff. Maggie’s was missing, and the thought of that infuriated John even more. He couldn’t abide the notion of Chad Brooks’ dirty little hand clutching his late wife’s Christmas stocking. If John had any reservations about giving Chad the Krampus treatment, they vanished in that instant. What he was about to do was mild compared to what that little punk deserved.

Stepping into the glow of the porch light for just a moment, John reached out and yanked the branch of holly out of Santa’s rear end. Then he retreated to the shadows by the driveway once more.

He slid the black police balaclava over his face, pulled up the furry hood of his army parka, and gave the length of holly a test swing. The sharp, thorny leaves cut the air with an intimidating, satisfying hiss.

And in his other hand, tucked into his coat pocket, rested the little Taser unit.

John hadn’t given much thought to how, exactly, he was going to get to Chad. He couldn’t exactly walk up and ring the doorbell. He simply had a notion that if he was patient and stealthy, an opportunity would present itself.

And now, just as he stood at the edge of the driveway in the shadow of his porch light, he heard soft footsteps coming down the sidewalk, footsteps made by someone who barely bothered to pick up his own feet. It was like a gift to him dropped out of Santa’s big red sack.

Here came Chad Brooks, right back to the scene of the Christmas crime.

John backed away and stood stock-still in the darkness by his garage. He kept an eagle eye on Chad as the boy approached down the sidewalk, stopped in front of the house and turned to look at the mess on the lawn. Admiring his work one last time, no doubt.

John was invisible there in the dark, and he knew he had to get Chad out of sight of the neighbors before he started things. As Chad stared at John’s yard, probably having himself a good chuckle, John let out a soft, “Hssst,” to get his attention.

Chad turned toward the sound and squinted. “Mr. Nast? Is that you?” he called. Dumb-ass kid was standing right in the glare of the streetlight. John knew he could practically do jumping jacks and the kid wouldn’t be able to see him in the shadows.

But as luck would have it, Chad’s curiosity got the better of him. Or maybe he just thought he’d get an extra kick out of laughing in the face of the doddering old man whose decorations he’d ruined. In either case, John grinned just a little under his black facemask as Chad started walking cautiously up the driveway, right toward the place where he was hiding.

The side gate creaked ever-so-slightly as John eased himself into the back yard. If that kid followed him here, they’d be completely hidden from the street. And, sure enough, Chad had the hook in his mouth and John was reeling him right in.

“Mr. Nast? You back here?” the boy wondered quietly as he pushed the gate open. “Mr. Nast, I gotta to talk to you.”

Chad came round the corner of the garage and found himself looking at a large, hairy, faceless figure with a long, leafy switch in its upraised hand. He hardly had time to register what he was seeing, to gasp and wonder, “What?” before the branch came down and left a stinging welt across the side of his neck.

Drawn up to his full height, John was a full foot taller than Chad. The sight of the boy’s wide, panic-filled eyes warmed John like a sip from a cup of eggnog. He was glad that the balaclava concealed his face. It wouldn’t be nearly as terrifying to be attacked by a Krampus with a big crap-eatin’ grin on his face.

Chad tried to sputter out a few words. John cut him off with an enraged, wordless howl as he raised his holly switch for another blow. The boy scrambled backwards, tripped over his own shoes (that would teach the damned kid to pick up his feet!) and hit the ground ass first. As the boy made a clumsy dash for the gate on all fours, John delivered another lash with the branch right across the back of both knees.

The blow put Chad right back down into the slushy gravel on the dark walkway.

As Chad scuttled along the ground like the rat that he was, John could see that the boy would be out the gate and back into the street in just a few seconds. Kid was so scared that he’d probably pissed himself already. This was just the moment John had been waiting for.

He plunged his hand into the pocket of his parka and pulled out the Taser.

It was nearly impossible to aim the thing in the dark, but the Taser wasn’t a sharpshooter’s weapon. John just extended his arm and pulled the trigger, sending the trio of barbs darting forward on the end of their hair-fine lead wires.

An instant later he heard the rattlesnake crack of the electrical charge as the tips came alive. Eerie halos of micro-lightning danced between the contact points, lighting up the darkened yard in a pulsing, bright blue flash.

Chad whirled like a marionette in a windstorm. He fumbled with the latch for a moment, shouted, “Sh-sh-shit!” then tore open the gate and sprinted away.