Devil Dead (23 page)

After a time, Claire said, “Okay, we've been on the road for an hour. Where do these friends of yours live? Timbuktu?”

“Down in the deepest, darkest swamp. Hope you aren't squeamish about alligators and deserted bayous and stagnant water and voodoo altars.”

“Been there, done that.”

Novak glanced over at her. “Oh, yeah, I read all about that in the papers. That was a close call. I know where that place is, the one where that nutjob kept you captive.”

Claire's mind returned to the crazy psychopath and his little Murder Maze in the swamp where he played some very deadly games, and then wished Novak hadn't brought it up. But that real monster was rotting in prison now, and that was the only good thing about him. She didn't pursue the subject.

“So how deep and dark is this place of yours?”

“About half of it lies in Lafourche Parish, the other half in Terrebonne. About as deep and dark as it gets, I guess. Middle of nowhere doesn't even touch it.”

And Novak was right on. Not so long ago, she had worked briefly as a homicide detective in Lafourche Parish and had stayed on a big bayou near the city of Thibodaux, but even that area had not been as isolated as the bayou gravel road down which they were now jouncing along in Novak's old truck. Talk about primordial soup. Jeez, she half expected to see a pair of prehistoric raptors dart out on the road in front of them and jump on the hood. She felt slightly creeped out, too, probably because of the aforementioned horrific case with its voodoo altars and mutilated victims, a case from which she had just barely made it out alive. So her thoughts dwelled on the unwanted memories until they rounded a curve and saw a little store/restaurant called Crab House Bar, with lots of neon signs advertising Dixie beer and Budweiser and shrimp and crayfish and po'boys and lots of folks sitting out on picnic tables and enjoying the delicious fare. Okay. If there was a popular restaurant down this far in the boondocks, she probably didn't have to worry about dinosaurs.

“Hungry?”

“Nope.” Claire looked around. “You live around here, Novak?” She was digging, of course, since he was so guarded and closed mouth about the Mysterious Life and Times of Will Novak. His reticence continued to bug her.

“Yep.”

Well, that was more than she usually got. “No kidding? Where exactly?”

“What'd you want? Directions?”

“Anybody ever tell you that you are conversationally challenged?”

“I don't have conversations like that.”

“No joke. What's your thing, anyway? Your address some kind of national security secret? You in witness protection, that it?”

Just a quirk of the mouth and nothing else. Maybe she should just chatter on until she drove him so crazy that he told her all his personal data just to shut her up. But that would be cruel, not that she wasn't up to it.

“Want to see my place? That why you're constantly harping on it?”

“Harping? You call that harping? You haven't even heard harping outta me yet. When I'm harping, you'll know it. Just ask Black.”

“We're comin' up on my next-door neighbor's road. So we can drop by there and check it out. Then I'll show you my place so you'll get your wild curiosity under control, then maybe we can concentrate on work instead of where I hang my hat.”

Wow, now he was really proving he knew how to talk, and she was going to get what she wanted, so all was well in her book. “Well, if you insist. I wouldn't want to intrude.”

They drove on, down dusty gravel roads thick with even dustier vegetation and even a five-foot-long alligator in the road, which actually took some time. Novak had to stop and wait for said prehistoric-ish beast to lumber across, apparently very patient where alligators were concerned. So they just sat there and watched each tiny little alligator claw come up and go down in equally tiny footsteps for a good five minutes plus. Claire wanted to get out and shoot a gun right behind its tail, anything to get it out of their way, but that would be animal cruelty and she didn't want to appear antsy.

“You have a pet alligator, Novak? Is that what this delay is all about?”

“There are some that I feed. They were here first. They deserve some respect.”

She stared at him. “You have got to be kidding me. You feed alligators?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what do you feed them?”

“Dog food.”

Okay, Claire gave up. The guy wasn't cut from the same cloth as a talk show host. He wasn't cut from the same cloth as anybody she'd ever laid eyes on, either. But that didn't mean it was a bad cloth. Chattering on David Letterman–style sure wasn't his thing. Hers, either, so time to let it be. So she just said, “Just go around the damn thing, would you, please?”

Novak did so, but another good twenty minutes on the same road later, she was exasperated enough to say, “Are we almost to Mexico City now? Or have we crossed into Panama? I shoulda brought my passport.”

“It's right up here. Calm yourself. Relax. You on speed today?”

Claire had to laugh at him. “We've been on the road for two hours, Novak. Am I being punked or something?”

“You're the one who wanted to come with me.”

“I give up. Silence is golden.”

And silence it was, all right. Until he turned down an even smaller, darker, thicker part of his jungle bayou environs.

“Hope he's home,” Claire said.

“Yeah, me, too, but it's a she.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Friend. Like I said.”

Soon they came upon a little scrubby clearing that looked sort of like the remote Amazon hinterland except there were no naked natives walking around with bones through their noses and carrying baskets of fish on their heads. Novak stopped the truck. He said, “Her name is Adonis. She can be a bit eccentric.”

Claire stared at about half a dozen severed duck heads thrust down over each post on a chicken wire fence. Then she looked at the skunk hides nailed to the front porch wall and the other animal carcasses hanging in the trees by their tails, not to mention the rusty cannon sitting in the front yard and pointed directly at the front gate, sort of a homemade and deadly welcome wagon. She hoped it was an antique with a firing pin that was rusty as hell and no longer in use. There was a small barn out back with a Louisiana flag hanging from the roof's eave, along with about half a dozen nutria rats, also hanging by their tails. Snacks, maybe? The only normal thing in the whole tableau was the big dog lying curled up beside the front door.

“Well, quite a homestead, I must say. Glad she's got a dog to protect her, living way out here all alone, and all.”

“That dog's stuffed. She had him for years. Adonis did it herself.”

“She stuffed her own pet? Like that guy in
Psycho
? How'd she get him to lay curled up like that?”

Novak shrugged. “She's been into taxidermy since she was a child. She's got all her cats and dogs and parakeets stuffed and displayed around the house.”

Nothing way weird about that. Uh-uh. Everybody kept their stuffed Fido and Fluffy in their living rooms.

Novak was still waxing chatty. “I'm gonna have to honk a few times before she'll venture outside. She doesn't care for strangers coming onto her property. So don't speak too loudly, or too much, or make any sudden moves toward her.”

“I thought you said that she was your neighbor.”

“Yes, but she still considers me a stranger.”

“Everything about this is just straight out and damn bizarre, Novak. Sorry, but that's just the way I see it.”

“Addie's okay. Maybe just a little touched upstairs. Schizophrenic, maybe. At least I think so. She's had a rough time of it.”

“Maybe Black should take a look at her. What kind of rough time?”

“Got lost once in the swamp. Never was the same after that. Said the demons took turns jabbing her with red pitchforks and that the alligators finally saved her by letting her ride on their backs while they swam her to safety.”

Claire could only stare at him. “Yikes, I say. Well, that's just great, Novak. Love your friends already.”

“That was probably just a nightmare that she confused with reality. You're gonna like her. Just don't overreact to some of her harmless idiosyncrasies.”

“Actually, I've seen that kinda dream before. In nearly all my serial homicide cases. Except it wasn't a dream.”

“I don't doubt it. Okay, there she is now. Get out of the car but do it slowly and stand behind your door. Don't step out toward her, because she's skittish.”

“Novak, if this gal blasts me with a shotgun, eccentric or not, I'm going to shoot her, and then I'm gonna shoot you.”

Novak ignored all that, but he took his own advice, got out slowly, and stood behind his car door. Claire did the same, albeit a lot more reluctantly. She waited, not about to say a word. This little one-act play belonged to Novak. About ten long minutes later, a young woman who looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, maybe, stuck her head around the doorjamb but then immediately pulled it back, sorta like a startled turtle. Yeah, pretty eccentric, all right.

“She's nervous. I don't usually bring people out here when I visit.”

“Yeah, you'd probably have to pay somebody to tag along out here.”

“Hush, you're gonna scare her,” Novak said, very low.

Hush? Did the guy really just tell her to hush? Jeez, but she did, and mainly because of the cannon and the dead raccoon carcasses dripping blood into the two pound coffee cans underneath them. Not to mention the big black crow perched on the front porch railing. Somehow she thought of Edgar Allan Poe and his dark literature and stuff like, “quoth the raven, nevermore,” and all that morbid crap. She looked around, feeling a bit on edge. It was all pretty quiet, so quiet in fact that she could hear the patter of lots of little blood drops plopping into the Folgers cans, like rain sprinkling on a pool of water. Damnation. One thing for sure, she never again was going to insist on meeting any of Novak's friends. She had a bad case of the willies.

“It's Will, Adonis,” he was calling softly to aforementioned bizarro girl. “Claire's my friend. She's not gonna hurt you.”

Well, that was up for debate
, Claire thought. Then came more waiting. She spent the time thinking about Andrea Quinn's whereabouts.

Then Adonis stepped out, only she was no female Adonis. She was pretty damn dirty and unkempt and probably smelled like it, considering the looks of her old and raggedy white sundress. She was holding the cutest little white puppy. It looked cleaner and fluffier than she did. Okay, she was out on the porch now, maybe next Tuesday or so she would actually say something to them.

“Mind if we sit a spell on your porch, Addie?”

The girl nodded, which made her long fuzzy dreadlocks shake, or maybe her hair was just matted with dirt and duck down. She had tiny jingle bells woven into the filthy tresses, causing lots of pretty tinkling to ensue. But she was poised to run back inside, sort of in a crouch with one leg in back of the other. Ready to zoom to safety.

“Walk slowly to the porch, Morgan.”

“Yeah, right. Be my guest, really. I'll stay right here and watch the shenanigans.”

“Just do it.”

So Novak walked ahead, stopping after each step, and was even slower than that damn pokey alligator. But Claire did the same, too, and felt like she was walking down the aisle at a wedding ceremony, but hey, that might be good practice for her own upcoming nuptials. She certainly hadn't ever walked that slowly in her entire life, being rather spry and always in a hurry, so it took some getting used to, but whatever. No more visits to Adonis after this, though. Novak was on his own with psycho girl from this day and forevermore. Two days later, when they finally reached the porch, Ms. Timid had still not run off so all was hunky-dory.

“Mind if we step up on the porch, Adonis?”

The girl nodded, playing more music with her filthy hair, and so they stepped up, slowly of course. It felt to Claire like that old schoolyard game of “Mother May I?” Or, maybe that was “Red Light, Green Light,” except nobody was allowed to move faster than a snail.

Novak leaned back against the railing and looked more relaxed than Claire would ever feel until she left the premises. “How's Toby doin'? Still chasing those rabbits around?”

Skittish One nodded. Once.

Novak looked around at all the bloody carcasses. “Looks like huntin's been good.”

Another nod, this time without much jingling of hair ornaments.

Yep, Claire's two new friends were like two peas in a pod, but with Novak doing all the talking, which was indeed startling in itself.

“Mind if we sit down?”

Their hostess gave her favorite single nod. She was really good at nodding, and apparently, at hunting and keeping her dog groomed. She was not so good at meeting people or socializing.

They sat down, but the girl stood, poised to flee at any quick movement.

“This is my friend, Claire Morgan,” Novak told her again in that soft and non-menacing, only-for-Adonis voice of his. Quite incongruent for a man his size and stature. Oh, yes indeedy, and not heard before in their short acquaintance, either.

The girl nodded. She was really good at moving her head up and down, and the duck heads were a nice decorating touch to the place. Wonder where their feathered bodies and webbed feet were. Claire shuddered to think.

“Claire's interested in hearing about the satanic rituals and black magic that folks say go on around in these parts.”