Эд Горман - Blood Moon

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Do you blame me?”

“I guess not.”

She put her hand on the door handle. Opened up a few inches. Rain hissed. The air was cold. “I had some real hope for us. I really did.”

I was going to say something soothing but she was gone, slamming the door, before I could form the right words.

If there were any right words.

The plain pure smell of it, of human flesh as it rotted... Sometimes he would dip his head down into the darkness below and let his entire consciousness be suffused with the odors. And in the frenzy of it he would touch himself — that was all it took at moments such as these — touch himself and know an orgasmic ecstasy none of the women, not even the dead ones, had been able to give him. Nor was there any pity or scorn or smirk in the air because he had failed them and failed himself — the charge of orgasm was perfect, blinding, all-encompassing emotionally as well as sexually.

He watched as they scrambled and scurried below. Sometimes they even climbed high up on the ladder, their claws digging into the wood...

He felt oneness with the universe, calmness, tranquility, wholeness — feelings he had never known before until the past few years.

But now somebody was threatening this. Nobody had known anything until the man who called himself Hokanson had showed up here a few days ago. And didn’t the ladies all love him, the sonofabitch. And you could bet that he didn’t have any problems in bed, putting it right to them and riding them for hours if he wanted to.

This was all he had — the corpses and their smells — and now it was in serious jeopardy.

Hokanson had everything he wanted...

Just now he caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a window.

And smiled.

Weren’t appearances deceiving?

Somebody looked like one thing but they were actually quite another.

“Boys will be girls, and girls will be boys.”

God, he hadn’t heard “Lola” in years...

He had to do what was necessary with Hokanson. Had to. And right away. Before Hokanson figured everything out and destroyed this little paradise...

He walked out into the rain, liking the cold clean bite of it, liking the way it cleared his senses, liking the contrast of its chills with the warm wetness in his underwear...

Damn Hokanson, anyway.

Things had been going so well...

He got his car started and went in search of the only man standing between himself and his continued happiness.

“Joanna?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Jim Hokanson.”

Pause. “I really don’t want to talk to you anymore. I shouldn’t have flirted with you yesterday. Now Sam’s dead, and what kind of memories do I have? That I wanted to go to bed with somebody else on the very day my husband is murdered?”

“I think I know who murdered him.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Jane Avery was here. She seems to think that I know something about the murder, but I don’t.”

“I’d like to come over there in a little while and look through your husband’s office.”

“For what?”

“At this point, I’m not really sure. But I’ll know it if I see it.”

“I haven’t been a very good wife,” she said.

And of course, I thought of Eve McNally, and her notion that she hadn’t been a very good mother.

But all I said was “I’ll see you in a little while.”

No white Lincolns in the drive. No lights on in the windows of the house on the hill behind.

I pulled up in front of the church, left my car running, and ran up to the double front doors. Locked. I stood for a moment under the porch roof watching the rain in all its drab fury. I didn’t especially want to run back out into it. I hadn’t been a good boy. I’d brought neither my rubbers nor my raincoat. But finally I had no choice.

I ran back to my car, feeling the rain pound and soak my back. There were a few puddles already formed, and these soaked my shoes. I’m one of those people who can stay calm about having an arm broken, but let me sense a head cold coming on and I get very uptight, even surly. I hate being sick in any way.

I got inside the car and aimed it up the hill to the house. The gravel was chunky. I kept fishtailing.

This time I shut off my engine. Before getting out, I opened the glove compartment and took my Ruger out, dropped it into my jacket pocket.

Even in the hard cold rain, the two-story Spanish-style house was imposing and attractive, the smooth texture of the white stucco exterior contrasting nicely with the roughness of the red tile on the various planes of the roof. It was a newly rich place, and one with no apologies to the more modest standards of the community.

Nobody answered my knock.

I walked down the side steps to the double garage and peered inside. Both white Lincolns were gone.

I went back to the front door, tried knocking again. Nothing happened this time, either, except that I got a little wetter.

I walked back to my car and was just opening the door when the first bullet shattered the glass of the driver’s window.

I haven’t been shot at many times in my life. Despite a few feats of derring-do, most of my Agency work was conducted at a desk in the wilds of Virginia, where the most murderous people you’ll find are reporters in search of another Agency scandal.

My first reaction was that I must somehow be wrong. A shot? No. Something else.

Then the second shot came and I knew I wasn’t wrong at all.

I dove into the car, slamming my knee hard against the steering wheel as I did so. I lay flat on the front seat.

Two, three more bullets came in quick succession. Windows imploded into dense spiderwebs.

Whoever he was, he was a good shot. He had to be hiding down behind a corner of the church. He also had to have a pretty high-powered rifle.

I was huddled inside a cocoon of myself — all bad nerves and fear and anger and sudden heavy sweat.

Oh, yes; and panting. I sounded like a big old sheepdog on a very hot day.

Then, nothing. I lay there rubbing my sore knee, listening to the tinny sound of the rain on my car roof and hood.

I don’t know how long it was before I heard an aged truck grinding up the gravel hill to the house.

I very cautiously sat up, peered down the hill.

The killer was long gone, of course. No sign of him at all.

The truck had G&H MARKET written on the side of its doors. It was a white Chevy that had to be a quarter-century old. The gearbox sounded awful.

A white-haired man pulled it up to the garage and the door to the side, braked noisily and shut off the engine.

He walked slowly over to me in the rain, his watery blue eyes fixed on the bullet webs in the windows. He wore blue-and-white-striped Oshkosh overalls and had a pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth. He walked with a slight limp.

“I was right. Them was gunshots I heard,” he said, examining the bullet holes more carefully.

“Yes,” I said. “You were right.”

“You called the law?”

“Not yet.”

He grinned. “If I was you, I’d be in taking a good long leak. I was in the South Pacific in World War Two, and every time the Jap fire would get close to me, I’d pee my pants. Wasn’t ashamed to admit it, either. No, sir, I sure wasn’t.” He paused, examined the spider webs again. “You got any idea who it was?”

“Nope.”

He shook his head, then looked at the house. “They home?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hell, she just called me two hours ago and told me to get her order out here as fast as I could.”