Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(42)

DUNN GOT TO THE PLAINS at seven o’clock, with the sun right on the horizon. He first cruised the Stokeses’ house without slowing down. There were no signs of a police presence—no crime scene tape, no cop cars, nothing. He continued over to Warrenton, in the growing darkness, stopped at a Safeway, bought groceries for the next few days and a box of throwaway latex gloves.

At his house, he stowed the groceries, thought hard about it, and at nine o’clock, in full darkness, he cruised the Stokes place again. Again: no sign of life. He continued on for five miles, pulled off the road for a moment, got the lug wrench out of the back of his truck and put it on the floor behind the passenger seat.

The next trip back, he turned into the drive, continued past Randy’s parked car and around to the back of the house, out of sight, but still on gravel; his heart thumping like a drum.

He put on the gloves and got out and listened—nothing but crickets. He went to the back door, listened again, tried the doorknob: locked. He pressed against the door’s glass window with the wedge-end of the lug wrench. When it broke, almost silently, he reached through and unlocked the door, taking care not to cut himself.

Inside, he was hit by the stench. He hadn’t thought about it, but the nights had grown cool, almost cold, and the heat would be on in the house, and the bodies had been there for four days, and were decomposing. He had a penlight, and he turned it on, careful not to shine it at a window.

He was in the kitchen. He couldn’t see Rachel’s body but Randy was lying halfway through the arched doorway between the kitchen and the front room. There was a closed door to his left, and he opened it and looked through.

Rachel’s bedroom. A single bed, with a quilted coverlet, more quilts on the wall. Randy, he thought, would keep his guns in his bedroom, as there wasn’t a lot of space in the small house.

He swallowed, tried not to breathe through his nose, backed out of the bedroom and followed the pencil-beam of light out of the kitchen and into the front room, high-stepping over Randy’s body, trying not to look at Rachel’s, a dark oval lump on the floor.

On the other side of her body, there was another door. He stepped over her, pulled open the door, and found a narrow staircase. A second door was off to his right, and he pushed it open. A bathroom.

Must be up the stairs. He climbed them, slowly, trying not to touch anything. At the top, he found a tiny bedroom with another narrow single bed, unmade. Clothes were strewn on the floor with copies of porn magazines; Randy had displayed a lack of knowledge about the internet, and this proved it: where did you even get porn magazines anymore? A wastebasket, overflowing with empty beer cans, sat next to the bed, and a radio sat on the floor beside it.

No guns, no gun cases, no gun safe. Was there a basement?

He turned away, then his eye caught a shadow under the corner of the bed. He knelt, and found two gun cases lying flat, and a range bag. He pulled out the range bag and found it half full of ammunition.

As he was pulling out the first of the guns, he heard a high-pitched creak and then another.

Someone on the stairs. He clicked off the flashlight and held his breath: he thought about calling out, but choked it back. The room wasn’t quite dark, with a bit of moonlight filtering through the single window. Creak.

A dark, human-sized shape moved into the doorway, and Dunn, who’d been on his hands and knees, rolled into a crouch, lifted the penlight, and shined it at the shape.

Rachel Stokes was there, missing much of her head, her eyes gone, her mouth a gaping hole. She didn’t speak, she reached toward him and hissed. Dunn fell backwards, tried to scoot away from her as she rushed toward him.

“No! No! No!”

And he saw the light from his flash was penetrating her, and when she stepped in front of the window, and looked back at him, the moonlight came through her eye sockets and mouth, and then . . .

She faded away, hissing.

Dunn never cursed, or swore. Now, “Jesus. Jesus Christ. Jesus God . . .”

He got to his knees and to his feet, stepped into the doorway, shined his light down the stairs, to the open door at the bottom. She’d be waiting there, he thought. He looked back at the window, thought about climbing out . . .

And finally caught himself. Not a ghost. A freak-out. That was it: he’d freaked out. He had to leave, the death stench of the bodies now suffocating, the stink buried in his nostrils. He managed to gather up the two guns and the ammo bag, and slowly, his hair again prickling all over his body, got down the stairs.

He looked at the body this time; she was looking up at him, as she had when he shot her that last time. He stepped over her, then ran toward the door to the kitchen, vaulted Randy’s body, dropped the ammo bag and a box of shells broke loose and scattered on the floor. He picked up a couple of them and then heard a hiss behind him, and his hair stood up. He grabbed the bag and the guns and ran out the back door to his truck. He threw the guns into the backseat, looked at the house—the door was standing open—and he hurried back to it, pulled it mostly shut, got in the truck, roared out of the driveway and away.

Halfway back to Warrenton, he almost lost control on a curve, and saw that he’d gone into it at more than ninety miles an hour. If a cop stopped him, guns in the back . . .

He forced himself to brake, bring his speed down to forty-five, and into town.

He didn’t try to sleep that night. He sat watching a series of mindless old movies, because when he didn’t have a screen in front of him, he would see the moldering face of Rachel, rot and hanging flesh, coming for him in the dark.