Lucky's Girl (23 page)

His uncle looked at him with a skeptical eye.
This girl’s nuts.

He nodded.
You don’t know the half of it.

He spoke into the closed door again. “Christie, this has gotten really serious. You really need to go. Your dad can’t find you here or people are gonna get hurt.”

Her first, desperate voice came back through that door. “A little late for that too, Kenny.”

Kenny remembered the black eye, the big bruise on her forehead. Had her dad given her those? Ted Tellefsen was clearly an asshole, but Kenny thought he was more the over-protective type, the kind who didn’t want the peasants talking to his precious daughter.

Kenny didn’t like this. This was exactly what they didn’t need right now.

He shook his head, exasperated. “Are you all right, Christie?”

Then the spooky sultry Christie voice came back through. “What do you think?”

He looked at his Uncle. He didn’t know either. So Kenny flipped on the porch light and looked through the peephole. Frank peered through the window at the same time.

Christie was covered in blood.

***

Jerry couldn’t help the irreverent thought that came even in this place of human tragedy:
People can be really hard to kill.
Sometimes they died with no struggle at all, like poor little Mary. They got knocked out and killed while unconscious. The two in front of him right now were a different case. Ted Tellefsen and his wife Jean had fought their killer, taking their grandiose living room with them on the way out.

The murder weapons were a Titleist golf club and a meat cleaver. Jerry suspected they’d been sitting on the big leather couch with their backs to the assailant when he’d come in from the kitchen and had tried to knock them out with the golf club. Their heads had been hit over and over, but the first strikes hadn’t killed them. The two had got up, attempting to defend each other. One would go down while the other tried to fight back only to get pulverized in turn.

It looked like it had gone on and on, seconds becoming minutes of frenzied pummeling and hacking. There was blood everywhere, even as the giant TV had continued to crank out movie after movie on HBO.

The back window was broken, glass shards spraying out onto the patio with a stream of blood leading to the woods beyond. Christie’s purse lay on the couch, broken with something, probably the golf club, sending its contents flying. She’d probably done what most women do when the knife or club is coming down at them; hold their purse up in a vain attempt to block the blow. She’d probably jumped out the back window and had run off, but the amount of blood said she wouldn’t have gotten far.

Jean Tellefsen was on her back in front of the TV. The death blow had taken her in the face, collapsing it back into her head. Teeth, bone and eyes were splayed out in a ruined inversion. Ted lay on top of her, his final motion to protect his wife from the blows with his body. He bled out from the huge deep gash at the base of his neck.

Jerry had never liked Ted Tellefsen. He was a callous, cruel man, a man who drove around town like he owned it, because he basically did. He didn’t flaunt his wealth, but didn’t care that what he had made others understand how little they possessed. Every time his daughter had achieved something at school, he was there to videotape it with a camera costing more than a millworker would make in a month. And he’d never liked Jean, just because she was married to him. But no one deserved this, and in the end they died fighting for each other. And for the second time that day, he was struck not just by the mortality and the humanity, but by the smell – the terrible smell of opened veins and human meat. He walked out of the house, leaving it to the same men who had been on the scene at the Rev’s.

Mary, Jesus God, poor little Mary.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, looking into the deep black sky of the Upper Peninsula. Under those glaring stars he’d seen more death in one day than in almost his entire tenure in Elton Township. And there was no doubt in his mind that it had been the same assailant. This was a frenzy, a mad, thoughtless attack. This was an insane person, and despite every reason to the contrary, the only person in this sick puzzle left was Kenny McCord.

He took one more drag and threw the mostly unsmoked cigarette away.

Strike that thought.

The only person left was Lucky, but the evil little thing was sitting in a cell. He couldn’t have done it. Somehow he’d made Kenny do it. It couldn’t be Mary, it’s impossible to command a person to pull out their own intestines. It couldn’t be Christie, because the back window of the living room was broken and a bloodstained trail led out into the woods. The Paint River lay beyond that. She’d probably turn up several miles downstream, drowned and bloodless, sometime in the next few days. Either way she wasn’t strong enough to wield a golf club or a meat cleaver like that. As easy as it looked in the slasher films, killing someone quickly and on purpose was actually really hard. It took a lot of strength and no teenage girl is that strong.

So it had to be Kenny.

Acting for Lucky.

Acting
because
of Lucky.

Lucky did something to people, he controlled or brainwashed them. He was somehow the small town equivalent of Charles Manson, making other people kill for him. He’d killed Mary because she was pregnant. He’d killed Christie’s parents because they’d found that video tape. He had them killed because he could, because he liked it, just like he liked pulling the guts out of animals while they thrashed and screamed in agony.

Jerry doubled over and vomited.

Then he lit another cigarette.

It was time to arrest Kenny.

***

“No, Kenny, don’t!” Frank grabbed Kenny by the wrist as he reached for the chain lock on the door. Kenny turned to him, stunned and surprised. How could they leave Christie out there bleeding in pain?

It was just instinct. Kenny pushed back against his uncle, then they were struggling. Kenny had never fought his uncle, in fact his uncle had never laid a hand on him. Discipline wasn’t an issue because Kenny loved and respected him, but here they were fighting stupidly in front of the door.

Christie wailed, “Kenny, please, help me!”

Kenny grunted and pushed against Frank. “Are you blind? She’s bleeding!”

Frank mustered the last of his strength and shoved Kenny, sending him flopping against the little couch. Kenny caught himself and looked up in surprise. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done. He’d put hands on the man who’d raised him. He’d defied him. He remained on the couch, ashamed.

“Christie. Where are you hurt? What happened?”

She didn’t answer his question. “Kenny, let me in, I need you!”

She paused. Her voice changed again, agitated. “Kenny, where’s Lucky?”

Kenny began to answer, but Frank put a finger to his lips and shook his head;
This doesn’t add up.

Kenny and Frank exchanged glances. Already the shame of their tussle was replaced with a deep suspicion.
This really didn’t add up
.

Frank peeked out of the corner of the front window at her. He shook his head and turned to Kenny. “That ain’t her blood, son.”

Kenny walked up and peered through the peek hole. Christie was close to the front door, looking back and forth furtively, a thousand expressions crossing her face at once, but not one equal to the physical pain required for all that blood.

Kenny asked quietly. “Lucky’s not here, what do you want, Christie?”

Her panoply of expressions coalesced into a snarl. She launched herself against the door with berserker strength. “LET ME IN! LET ME IN! LET ME IN!”

The door heaved and cracked with each lunge, giving way as Christie kicked and slammed against it. The door stayed in one piece but the hinges were coming away from the frame.

With a squeak and crunch they gave way, with Christie launching through like a bullet, snarling animal grunts and growls as she landed square on top of Kenny, sending the couch flipping over with her on top and him on the bottom. Her legs intertwined and she pushed her crotch against his, and began a piston-like rutting. She reared her head back and lunged with her mouth open like a wolf. He recoiled at the last second and she took only a mouthful of hair with a bit of bloody scalp. She was fucking and feeding, no longer human. She was jerking her head back and opening her mouth, displaying the gory bit of his head, shrieking in ecstasy and furious hunger.

Frank grabbed her by the neck and yanked but was pulled forward by the power of her fucking thrusts. She balled a fist and pinwheeled her torso, sending his head crashing into the wall, stunning him.

This isn’t possible, this is just a teenage girl
were his thoughts as he slid down the wall to the floor.

But as he touched down on the floor he saw it all; a town entranced by nothing more than a charismatic charlatan. That same boy yanking loops of intestines from the abdomen of a screaming cat, holding them in some kind of religious triumph, and now one of his followers was something in between animal and human. For that split second he saw the mosaic come together in bloody symmetry. Then the world went black.

He lost consciousness just as Jerry’s bullet took Christie in the back of the head.

CHAPTER 11

Three figures sat in the squad car in the shadows behind the bus station. Two men in the front seat and another in the back, hands and ankles chained, a sock stuffed in his mouth held in place by duct tape. The two men in front were Jerry and Mailman Errol. Jerry had decided against involving his deputies in a situation involving public figures doing illegal things.

They drove seven hours across the deep dark woods of the Upper Peninsula and across the Mackinac bridge without a word. Neither had anything to say, neither knew what to say or even comprehend
what or who
they had in the back seat, or for that matter whether it was him or them who were really prisoners.

The only thing they could charge him with was Cruelty to an Animal. And Lucky would talk his way out of that in front of any judge or jury. Even if convicted he’d do no time. He would go right back to being the guy they called Lucky, the guy everyone loved, the guy who could do no wrong.

And Jerry would be on the wrong side of all of that.

He’d seen four deaths in one day, all somehow related to this kid. He had no rational way to explain how he’d caused them. Nothing Jerry said or did would put Lucky in a prison cell for as long as he wanted, which was forever. Over and over again he looked over his shoulder at the man hog-tied in the back seat of the squad car.

He’d thought of all the scenarios.

He could plant some pot on him.

There was plenty of confiscated weed in a safe box at the little stationhouse. Probably a couple pounds all told. That could send Lucky away for a few years, but what would Lucky be after a few years in prison? Charles Manson had spent the majority of his childhood in the slammer and it had made him what he was. Jerry didn’t want Lucky to become any more cunning. He looked into his eyes and saw a pit viper. He didn’t need that kind of enemy.

I could just take him into the woods and shoot him.

He was somewhat convinced that Errol might even go along with that.

But Jerry had already shot two kids in his life and he didn’t have it in him. Shooting Christie took every bit of serenity he’d accumulated in sobriety and being a decent man. Seeing her dead parents, seeing
Mary
, had robbed him of hope. Shooting Christie had stolen his faith. Now, when he prayed, he really didn’t know if there was a God out there. If there was, he might just be the eternal sadist who created mankind to watch them kill each other.

He didn’t know if shooting Lucky would make things better or worse, but he’d seen the limits of better and knew that worse had no such limitations.

What is Lucky?

How can he control people like that?

He still didn’t intellectually believe it even though he’d seen it with his own two eyes. He’d seen Lucky try it on Frank. They’d surprised him on Grove Island, knocking him in the dirt and cuffing him. He’d lain still for a few moments, wrapping his head around the fact that he’d been caught, then immediately tried to talk them out of it.

He told them they hadn’t seen what they’d seen… and for a moment he believed it.

He
wanted
to believe it.

He
wanted
to agree with Lucky for no good reason at all.

Don’t believe your lying eyes.

Then he told them to uncuff him and go home, that they would forget about everything in the morning. Jerry had got chills, he’d felt adrenaline pumping unbidden through his veins, he’d felt the air being squeezed out of his throat while his heart had hammered too hard to endure for long.

Frank was one step ahead of both of them. He’d brought the sock and the duct tape. He’d pushed Lucky face down in the dirt and had tried to stuff the sock in his mouth. Lucky had started in with the speaking in tongues. He shouted those rhythmic strings of monosyllables, Frank fell off his back, vomiting, choking and hyperventilating.