House Infernal by Edward Lee (4 page)

The voice, somehow, raised vibrations in her guts; she
began to gag as she willed herself to crawl toward the door.

"I'm speaking to you from a city called the Mephistopolis!"
A bristling pause.

She didn't make it to the door; the black oscillations in
her belly shot upward and brought a headache like a
spike in her brain. The harder she pressed her hands to
her ears, the deeper the spike sunk.

"Get out of my head!" she gasped.

"I'm about to be captured by Scyther Detachment in Pogrom
Park! I don't have much more time, so-PLEASE-just
listen...."

Venetia was hyperventilating one cheek pressed against
the dirt-specked floor. She was drooling.

The flayed voice blared one more time... .

"This is not a dream! In the name of God on High, be careful
at the-"

An inhuman shout cut the macabre sentence short; then
the ghastly oscillation in her gut ceased. Venetia passed
out on the bathroom floor.

Captain Ray Berns felt as dilapidated as the tiny police
station looked when he pulled in after the all-day drive.
His sports jacket was covered with creases, and when he
got out of the cruiser his knees wobbled from fatigue.
He'd scarcely heard of the town he'd just entered. The
white sign read LUBEC POLICE DEPARTMENT in faded black
letters. The building itself looked like it might have been a
gas station in the fifties-Esso, maybe-and the roof
looked like it might fall in with next winter's first snow.

I hope this isn't a bunch of crap, he thought.

This far north, he was surprised how hot it was-over
eighty. He was even sweating when he crossed the lot and
pushed into the small brick building.

The local cop behind the booking desk had a goatee just
like Berns'. Hope that's not a bad omen. He flashed his
badge and ID. "I'm looking for a sergeant named-"

"Lee. That's me. And you must be the captain from
New Hampshire." The sergeant was slim, in a dark blue
police uniform. The Maine accent instantly rubbed
Berns the wrong way, and so did the goatee, even
though Berns had one himself. Just doesn't look right on a
uniformed cop.

"You want some coffee? It's really lousy."

"Sure," Berns said. Anything. "And I gotta tell you
something. The roads in Maine suck. I feel like I've been
driving on square wheels since six this morning."

Sergeant Lee looked at his watch. "You drove? You guys
got a helicopter; why didn't you take that?"

"Loaned it to Manchester PD for the Fire Quackers Parade."

Lee arched a brow. "Well, you made good time. And
you're right, the roads here suck, but I think they're worse
in New Hampshire. You guys ever going to get with the
program and start a state income tax?"

"Probably about the same time Maine gets the death
penalty."

Did Lee have a limp? How tough can duty be in this
postage stamp tourist town? Berns wondered. He took the
cup of coffee and winced at the first sip.

"Funny you should mention the death penalty, Captain." Lee grabbed a ring of keys like you'd see in the
sheriff's office in an old Western movie. "That's what part
of this guy's spiel is about."

Berns tossed his crumpled sports jacket over a chair below a poster: WELCOME TO THE LOWEST CRIME TOWN IN THE
PINE TREE STATE. "I don't follow you. Your teletype said
you've got him cold on molestation and attempted murder of a child. I don't have shit on him. What's his name?
Freddie Jackson?"

,Johnson.,,

"My people ran a check and say he's never been a resident of New Hampshire."

Lee shrugged. He seemed to relish every sip of the awful coffee. "He's itinerant-a Waterman. Let me put it this
way, Captain. The guy's white trash, just goes from town
to town working for any boat that'll hire him. But here's
the rub. He wants to cop a plea-in reverse."

"Look, I'm brain-dead after driving all friggin' day on
your shitty roads. I saw more lynx and porcupines than
people, and three hundred miles of spruce trees have got
me half hypnotized. Spell it out for me."

"He's confessing to a couple of sixty-four's in your ju-
ris, Captain. Wammsport."

"The two women-"

"Right, one was a nun and one was some kind of
church custodian. That happened a couple months ago,
didn't it?"

Berns nodded.

"Johnson wants to confess to that. Says he'd rather die
by lethal injection in New Hampshire than do life with no
parole in Maine at Warren. How's that sound to you?"

"It sounds more fucked-up than a tube of crickets.
Lemme see this guy."

Lee jingled the keys on purpose, unlocked one service
door, then took Berns down a long hall with a bare cement floor. Berns frowned at another poster that read
LUBEC POLICE-TO PROTECT AND SERVE. "Let me ask you
something, Sarge. How many murders do you get up here
in this rough and tumble town of yours?"

"None. Ever. Barely any severecrime. We're a pretty
vigilant police force, Captain. The thing two nights ago
with Johnson was the closest we've ever come to a hardcore murder."

"Burying a little girl? Yeah, I'd call that hard-core."

Lee was shaking his head. "We were all over him, just
minutes after the nine-one-one. Took the scumbag down
before he even got three shovelfuls of dirt in the hole."

"He say why he wanted to bury the girl?"

"Oh, yeah. Said he did it for the same reason squirrels
bury nuts."

Berns felt an inner twinge.

Lee stopped to unlock another door. "State PD's crime
shrink says he seems for real, wants to MMPI him. But the
psychologist from Washington County detent thinks he's
Gansering."

"Doesn't make sense to Ganser-"

"In reverse? Damn right it doesn't."

A row of three jail cells extended past the next door.
Two cells were dark but in the third sat a lean, cockily
grinning man in orange prison utilities. Thirties or forties, it was hard to tell with watermen; the elements weathered
their faces prematurely. Long, greasy blond hair, cleanshaven, and Jesus, Berns thought-a gold tooth up front.

"Freddie, this is Captain Berns, from the Rockingham
County Sheriff's Department in New Hampshire," Lee
said.

"Hey, Captain. You think you could get me a TV in
here?" Johnson's tone was cool, easygoing. "I been
watchin' paint peel in here for a couple of days."

"It's called domestic behavioral indoctrination, Freddie," Berns said. "They're just breaking you in, see? You'll
be watching paint peel for the next fifty years, so you
might as well have a taste now."

Johnson slumped on his cot. "Aw, now, man-that ain't
cool. I'm tryin' to give you something and you're already
steppin' on me. And you dudes wonder why folks call
cops pigs."

"Oink, oink." Berns glared through the bars. "Listen. I
just drove all the way up the coast of Maine to listen to
you. Please don't tell me I've wasted my time. Why am I
here, Freddie? Make it good."

Johnson stood up from the cot and held out his hands,
gold tooth flashing from the amped-up grin. "I wanna do
you a big favor and confess to-"

"And don't slide me any bullshit about confessing to
the Wammsport murders. You could've heard about that
anywhere. Shit, I've got no reason to even believe you ever
even lived in Wammsport."

Johnson looked offended. "The boarding house on
Fifth, man. Room three, a bill and a quarter a week. I paid
three months in advance, by the way-ask my landlord,
Mr. Cotton. Told him I'd be traveling. Oh, and I used to
drink at Abny's all the time, too."

"All right, so you know the name of a bar. Who'd you
work for?"

"I was a day-hire for any boat that needed help. Ask anybody on the town dock if they heard of me. Old redneck
named Desmond hired me most 'cos he had the biggest
boat. Peekytoes and Jonahs run best in the spring."

"What the hell's that?"

"Crabs, man. Sweeter than blue. Shit, the guys who
owned the crabbing boats all wanted me 'cos whoever I
went out with got the most crabs." The white teeth shimmered. "See, I know the secret."

"What's that?"

"The bait, man, the bait. I never tell no one this but, shit,
since my goose is cooked now, I'll tell you. You use cat
food for Jonahs and salmon scraps for Peekytoes. You do
that" Johnson pointed-"and you'll fill every trap you
drop."

"I drove all the way up here for you to tell me about
crabs?" Berns tried to sound disgusted. So far, though,
the story was level. "Five seconds before I walk out."

"I'm trying to confess to the nun thing, Captain. It's no
jive."

"Right, those two nuns-"

"Only one was a nun, I think."

Still. He could've heard that somewhere. Berns spoke like
an irate father scolding his child. "Don't insult me by trying to confess to the nun thing. We already caught the
three guys, and they all confessed."

Johnson sat back down and winked. The big smile
never left his face, to the extent that Berns was amazed.
How can this loser be so happy when he knows he'll be getting
life with no parole?

"Shame on you, Captain. You are a card, you know
that?" Then Johnson laughed. "It wasn't three guys, it
was just two: me and another dude, a boat hand. And one
chick."

Another wink.

"The state shrink says you're Gansering, Freddie. That
means you're lying through your face to snatch a lower
sentence."

Johnson shook his head in disbelief. "You need to eat
more fish, Captain, 'cos fish, they say, is brain food. I don't
want no lower sentence-I want a higher one. I want capital murder in a state that'll execute me."

"I'm leaving, Freddie. You're full of shit."

"What? Are you crazy?"

"No, Freddie, but that's what you want the jury to
think-because only a crazy guy would want to be executed for a crime he didn't commit."

Berns started for the door.

"I don't believe this shit, man. I killed those two galsstripped 'em naked and cut their throats! I'm handing
myself to you on a silver platter, man!"

Berns turned back around. "Then tell me why you
buried that little girl two nights ago." He tried to surprise him.

Johnson calmed down, cocked his head. "I didn't bury
her. I tried to bury her." He edged a shoulder toward Lee.
"Until John Law here and his town clown supercops
rained on my parade."

Berns lit a cigarette right beneath the NO SMOKING sign.
"Who would do something like that? What kind of man
would rape a ten-year-old girl and then try to bury her
alive?"

Johnson's smile switched to a sneer. He jumped up and
banged the bars so hard both Berns and Lee flinched,
hands instinctively hovering over their holsters.

Just now, the happy-go-lucky crabber looked scary. "I
ain't no kiddie-diddler, pig. I ain't a sicko, and I didn't do
nothing sexual to that girl."

"I'm supposed to believe you took her clothes off but
didn't molest her?"

"She had to be naked, man-it was part of the thing,
see?" Johnson banged his fist against the bars. It had to
have hurt yet he betrayed no sign of pain. "Fuck you, man.
I'll just hang myself in Warren. Why should I give you
credit for a double-murder when you treat me like this?
Bet you ain't been doing nothing your whole career except
writing traffic tickets for tourists and scarfing free coffee."

"Won't argue with you there, Freddie."

And I resent you, man, for sayin' I'd do something sexual to a kid. You got doctors who can tell that I didn't, and you damn well know we didn't do anything sexual to the
nun either, and that other woman last spring."

Berns gave him a long look.

"They can't be sexually tainted, but I don't expect you
to get that. And I bent over backwards to be careful with
the little girl. She was unconscious the whole time, 'cos I
didn't want her all terrified and shit. I made it so she'd
have smothered to death underground, never would've
regained consciousness."

Berns glanced to Lee, who stood with his arms crossed.
"He's not pulling your leg on that one, Captain. He
knocked the girl out with ether he stole from a veterinarian. He must've been casing the trailer park she lived in
because he knew when her parents would be gone.
Knocked out the fifteen-year-old brother baby-sitting,
then knocked the girl out, both with the ether. He already
had the hole dug in the woods."

"How'd he get fingered?"

Lee smiled. "Next-door neighbor saw him hauling the
girl out the window, so he called nine-one-one." He
looked to Johnson. "Pretty bonehead move, Freddie.
Maybe you're the one who should eat more fish."

"Damn straight," Johnson said and got his smile back.

"And the good news is the girl didn't remember anything that happened. Didn't even remember getting
snatched or being in the hole. Shrink says she won't be all
screwed up in the head later. I guess we at least have to
give Freddie some credit. For a flaked-out demented sociopath and would-be child-killer, he's pretty considerate.
Oh, and here's something. When we searched Freddie's
pad, we found forty grand in cash."

Berns raised a brow. "That's righteous bucks, Freddie.
How's an itinerant crabber get forty grand?"

The big shuck-and-jive smile returned in full. "Let's just
say that my boss appreciates loyal employees."

"Tell the Captain your boss' name, Freddie," Lee urged.

"Eosphorus," " Freddie said. "But trust me. You wouldn't
understand."

Eosphorus? What the hell is that? "Back to the girl you tried to bury," Berns said. "What do you mean, she had to
be naked?"

Johnson lay back on the cot, crossed his feet. "The revelation of her innocence, Captain. It's an epiphany, see? It's
transpositional. We'd call it a precursory oblation."

Epiphany? Oblation? Berns wondered.

Johnson held up an elucidating finger. "And you already know-the nun and the church woman? Their bodies were naked, too. And I killed 'em on March twentieth,
the night before the vernal equinox. But I'm just trying to
make it easy for you, Captain. You wouldn't understand
what I'm all about, so just leave it ... and charge me with
capital murder." He shrugged in the bunk. "I'll take a
polygraph any time you say. Type me up a confession. I'll
sign it right now."