Edward Lee: Header

And still more sounds haunted him when he drifted off into fitful sleep. The sound of nightmares...

Jesus...

The sound of a power drill fitted with a three-inch hole-saw. The sound of muted screams, and of bone smoking under 2500-rpm steel teeth. The sound—

—yes!

The sound of faceless hayseeds, of anonymous backwoods rednecks, chuckling as—

—as—

Jesus Christ, get me out of this dream!

—as heads...

Were humped...

The sound was evil. The sound was darkness, the uttermost darkness of the human mind. What could be conceived of more dark than this?

Humping... heads?

And the sound descended, a funnel to hell, fricatives and sybilants and murmurings as black as anthracite, as black as the gaps in the molars of the devil, and as black as his thoughts—

Cummings roused from his dredge-like sleep, as though touched by a cattle prod.

The phone was ringing.

........

Cummings met Beck the next morning, answering her late-night summons. She was an odd-looking woman, with ashy hair and a voice like someone with sinusitis, about forty. Jan Beck was the deputy field chief for the state police criminal evidence section. "Wild, huh?" she asked.

"I could think of more appropriate terms." Cummings replied.

For the last month, he'd been processing technical requests, and now, finally, they were being answered. "It's strange, all right," she said in her lab. She leaned against a Vision Series V blood analyzer and lit a cigarette, openly ignoring the DO NOT SMOKE IN THIS LAB sign. Shelves of glass-ware flanked one side of the brightly lit room, while various machines—gas and liquid chromatographs, mass-photospectrometers, Kodak fingerprint processors—flanked the other. "But you have to admit, the hills are a strange place. It's like another world."

"Tell me about it," Cummings nearly laughed. "I've been busting stills out in the sticks for years. But last night on the phone—you said you had something."

Jan Beck nodded, exhaled a plume a smoke. "Couple of things, actually. First off, I've got an ID on your perp."

Cummings simply stared at her words, his face becoming deranged.

"But don't get a hard-on in your pants just yet." Beck stubbed her butt out in a petri dish. "It was funny. You've been processing tech requests for quite a while. Yesterday I get an inter-office memo from Records saying that ATF had asked for a rap sweep on any cons recently paroled from the slam or popped from the state mental hospital."

"I processed that request a month ago." Cummings pointed out.

"Hey, things take time, and that's not my point. Records give me one name: Travis Clyde Tuckton. Did 11 years in Russell County Detent on a GTA and involuntary- manslaughter."

Cummings didn't quite follow her yet, but he wrote down the name in his pad. TRAVIS CLYDE TUCKTON.

"Then," Beck continued, sitting up on the top of a Sirchie iodine fuming cabinet. "Hair & Fibers calls me up. They put a full UV and IR scan on any grievous 64 we get piped through the Body Shop. What they found was a dried semen smear on the girl's right breast"

"Yeah?" Cummings bid.

Jan Beck's face remained deadpan. "The smear had a fingerprint in it. Dry. Perfect"

Cummings' heart suddenly thumped beneath his ATF tunic. He didn't have to ask, he didn't even have to goad her further.

"So we UV'd the print and photographed it, ran it through the Cyrix digitalizer, and then sent it through Triple-I at the State Bureau of Investigation. Took all of 20 seconds to spit out a latent match."

Cummings' eyes went wide as slot-machine slugs.

“Travis Clyde Tuckton." Beck said. "Some coincidence, huh? And Tuckton is A Pos Mn with 4F non-bar-bodies, same as the semen we've typed in every head"

"It's him," Cummings croaked. "I've got to—

"Save it. Tuckton got popped from county detent several months ago, skipped his parole officer the first minute. So we sent a goon squad to his last place of residence, and, guess what? It was burned to the ground, from years ago. Nothing there."

Cummings’ shoulders slumped. "So now it's needle-in-the-haystack time, huh?"

"Yeah. But at least you know your perp's name, and you know what he looks like."

Jan Beck handed Cummings a thin manila folder. Cummings blew off cigarette ashes, opened it. and gawped.

An in-pross photo. Hayseed just by looking at him: the kid had short black hair, slicked back, rubeburns, a big friendly farmboy-redneck grin and innocent brown eyes.

"If you hadn't pushed this." Beck pointed out, "we never would've bothered doing the forensic workups. We got a homicide guy on it now, but don't expect much action."

I hear that. Cummings thought. State wasn't going to put much manpower into a bunch of hillfolk murders, however bizarre. "Looks like its up to me."

"Good luck." Jan Beck offered. "Hey, and keep me posted, will ya? Can't wait to read the details when you catch this... head-humper."

"You got it. Thanks." Cummings made a quick exit from State HQ. He felt exhilarated. Look at what he'd done. He'd shagged the crime scenes, processed tech requests, and now he had his own investigation going on a real crime, not rednecks running panther piss but a sexually motivated, multiple homicide case. For the first time in a long time. Cummings felt like a cop.

But when he got back into his unmarked, his pager went off. It was Spaz.

"Yeah?" Cummings asked when he dialed up from a QWIK-STOP pay- phone.

Spaz sounded tittery in tense excitement. "We gotta run to make tonight. Big order, man. Meet me at Dutch's. We gotta enough blow to sink a ship."

........

Jory Slade, according tο Grundpap, had once whuppcd his Daddy's butt in a bar fight down the Crossroads, back when Travis were just a tike. Busted a few of Daddy's teeth. Jory Slade did, an' took his wallet too. An' worst'a all, Grandpap recited, when Slade were done with his ass-kickin', he laughed high an' might, and peed right in his Daddy's face. An' seein' that this injustice had gone unallayed fer so long. Travis felt it only proper now ta snatch one'a the Slade girls—a sassy li'l split tail named Sarah Dawn who turned tricks up the Bonfire Truckstop. Travis had parked way in back and eyed her fer a spell, and when she were hoppin' out a' a Peterbilt cab, he just up an' grabbed her, hauled her inta the truck. "Don't'cha make no noise," Travis promised, his big hand 'round her neck, "an' I won't hurt'cha." Well, you know what she did? Hocked a spitter right in Travis’ face, and it weren't just noise she made, it was a infernal racket, it was; her little yap opened right up like a hay-drop, an' she let outa scream so high Travis thought his blammed windshield might crack, so's he put the squeeze on her throat an' that's was the end of her ruckus. Put up a hail of a fight, though, fer about another minute, flailin' an' kickin' fierce as a muskrat inna trap, and one'a her feel caught Travis in the crotch, an' he almost shouted out hisself, it hurt so bad. But he kept the squeeze on, an' 'ventually her face turnt kinda dark pink, like possum belly after ya skin it, an' her little lights winked right out.

"Good thinkin', boy." Grandpap approved, settin' down his awl an' leather-puncher from the next set'a boots he was makin'. He cleared off the work table fer the business at hand. "That be one'a the Slade girls, ain't it? Kin tell by the big space 'tween her eyes, on account her maw drunk a coupla jars'a shine ever day while's she were preggered. Popped out eight kids like that."

"Shore are right, Grandpap. She's a Slade all right," Travis respondered, not in the best'a moods since she done took that spit in his face, an' put that kick ta his 'nads. He tied her down ta the table but good with some good sisal rope. Yoo-sherally he didn't bother 'cos he kilt 'em quick, but he tied this feisty whore down on account he was so mad. "Kicked me in the balls, Grandpap, and they'se'a achin', an' she spit in my face ta boot!"