John Sandford - Wicked Prey

"How's business?" Ranch asked, his eyes on the baggies in Whitcomb's hands.

"Shit. Republicans don't want nothing from me," George said. "They go for the high-end stuff, no fuckin' redneck drippin's."

"This shit's better than coke," Whitcomb said. "It's like somebody sticks a fuckin' knife in your brain."

George bobbed his head and said, "Party on, men," and he was gone. George was a teetotaler.

Crank-enough of it-affected Whitcomb the way a paddle affects a Ping-Pong ball. They loaded the GE crank pipe with a spoon of the stuff, melted it down with a Bic lighter, watched it bubble and then begin to smoke. Whitcomb took the first hit, closing his eyes, letting it scream into him ' He and Ranch blew smoke at each other for a while, long snakes of black lung-leavings that held together in the air like dirigibles, and then, after a while, like the Hin denburg, fell apart. Then Ranch ripped off his shirt, backed against a wall and sat down, his eyes going goofy and red, into zombie mode, shaking with the intensity of it; but Whitcomb began crashing around in the chair, pumping with one arm, then the other, and then both, crashing into walls, chairs, the table, singing, "Oh, Black Betty, Bam-a-Lam," the words all screwed up, "Black Betty got fat lips, Bam-a-Lam," the "Bam-a-Lam" punctuated by a variety of impacts as he ricocheted around the two rooms and the bathroom that he could get at.

They went back to the pipe again, and again, and again '

Then Letty called.

Ranch got the phone again, because, again, it was under his head, as he lay facedown on the beanbag chair; he had death in a corner, and was pushing on it, hard. Then the phone rang, and his life was saved.

"Lo?"

Whitcomb, the comet, hurtled out of the kitchen and shouted, "Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you…"

Ranch listened for a moment, then said, "… this ain't Randy…"

He gave Briar a peculiar look and struggled to his feet, got in front of Whitcomb and caught the chair and when Whitcomb screamed at him, he put his face an inch from Whitcomb's and howled back, until Whitcomb stopped, and then he said, "Bitch needs to talk to you, and you needs to talk to her."

"Yeah?" Whitcomb took the phone and said, "This is me? Who's this?"

He listened, then looked at the phone, and then at Briar, then tossed the phone in the corner and said to Briar, "Bitch says you been talking to Davenport."

"No," she said, but there was a lie in her eyes, somewhere, and Whitcomb saw it.

"Don't tell me "no," bitch, I can see you lyin'." Whitcomb's face was purple with rage and the crank. "Get down. Get down, bitch. Ranch, don't let this bitch out, she been talking to the cops…"

They shouted at her, made her confess, though the confession didn't make any sense, and Randy got his stick and made her get naked on her hands and knees like a dog and he beat her until she collapsed, her back red with blood, and then he said, "Ranch: fuck her in the ass, fuck her in the ass, fuck her in the ass…"

"Randy…" She was in a haze of pain and blood, and tried to crawl away and felt a foot on her back. Not Whitcomb; Whitcomb's feet didn't work.

"Fuck her fuck her fuck her…"

Letty rode up the hill, saw lights at the house, ditched the bike, walked across the yard past the van, and listened; and heard the screaming: "Fuck her fuck her fuck her!" She ran back to her bike, down the hill and to the pay phone and she called 911.

"I think somebody's being murdered," she said. "I can hear the woman screaming'"

Ranch pulled up his Jockey shorts and Briar crawled across the kitchen to her dress, and Whitcomb, exhausted, said, "We need to get George. Everybody in the van."

Ranch: "George," and he started toward the door, but missed the door and cracked his head on the doorjamb and fell down.

Whitcomb screamed, "Get up, you fuckin' turd," and Ranch got to his knees, and then his feet, and said, "You fuckin' scrote," and Whitcomb shouted at Briar, who was huddled in a corner, trying to cover herself with her dress, "Into the fuckin' van; we find George again, into the fuckin' van."

Ranch was all for it; $250 in crank all gone. He hovered over Briar, his insane face a half inch from hers, howling, no words, a dog howl, and she struggled into her dress, the blood on her back seeping through the thin cotton, and Randy marched them out the back door and down the ramp.

Letty was there, bouncing her bike across the yard. They didn't see her immediately, and she climbed off and dropped the bike: Whitcomb, Briar, and Ranch looked like some kind of surrealist parade, something from a masked ball, a man in a wheelchair pumping a stick like a drum major, screaming unintelligibly, followed by Briar, hurt, staggering, bloody, and then Ranch, in his Jockey shorts, holding on to the ramp railing, barely able to walk, still howling like a dog.

Then Whitcomb saw Letty.

He hit the brakes, and Briar stumbled, and one of the chair's wheels went off the concrete at the bottom of the ramp. And the chair tilted and Whitcomb screamed at her, and she wrenched it upright.

Whitcomb jabbed the stick at Letty and screamed, "There she is. There she is. Get her! Get her! Ranch, get her!"

Letty crossed the yard and hit the button on the switchblade and the blade flicked out. "I'm going to cut your head off," she said to Whitcomb.

Whitcomb saw the knife and recoiled, then lifted his stick overhead with both hands and screamed at Briar, "Push me, push me," and at Ranch, "Get her, get her," and Ranch stumbled off the ramp and Letty turned the knife at him, and Ranch ran at her and she ducked away and he kept going in a straight line and then stumbled over his own feet and fell facedown.

Letty turned back to Whitcomb, who was screaming at Briar, "Push me, get her," and unsatisfied with the progress, turned and slashed at Briar with the butt of his punishment stick. The butt caught her on the end of the nose and she went down, bleeding from the nose, and he screamed at her, "Get up, you bitch; you fuckin' ' gonna cut you a new goddamn nose…"

She got to her feet and Letty shouted, "Juliet, go back, go back in the house, the police are coming," but Briar pulled the wheelchair around in a circle and Whitcomb slashed at her again and screamed, "Not that way, you cunt, not that way…"

She'd aimed the chair at the back of the yard. The last renters had had a bad dog which they kept staked out at the back of the house, and the dog had worn the grass down to hard dirt; and behind that was the bluff that led down into Swede Hollow.

Briar said, "I loved you, Randy," and then she began pushing the chair toward the bluff, faster and faster, Letty calling, "Juliet, Juliet…" Ranch staggered to his feet and Letty turned toward him, pointing the knife at his chest, but he staggered around her, after Briar, as though he were trying to catch them-no chance of that; one of his legs was working harder than the other and he couldn't keep going in a straight line, but tended off in circles.

Whitcomb was still trying to thrash back at Briar with his stick, and tried to brake with one hand, but Briar was stronger than he was and at the end of the yard he grabbed both wheels and shouted, "Oh, shit," and she ran him right off the edge and Randy Whitcomb went screaming sixty miles an hour down a seventy-degree slope into a wall of trees.

He hit it with the impact of a small car driving into a brick wall.

Briar stood, looking down, stunned by what she'd done. Letty came up and looked over the edge; then Ranch got there, well away from Letty, and he peered down the bluff and then said to Briar, "You fuck."

Letty heard a siren: still a way out, but not too far. She said to Briar: "Juliet, don't tell them I was here. Lie. Okay? Don't tell them."