Part 2

George Foster, head of the Piper Ridge Police Department for over fifteen years, was a tough guy. He’d served in Vietnam. He’d seen things that still woke him up in the dead of night, overseas and at home. He was a cool customer. One tough hombre. The townspeople idolized him, as well they should. He’d spent years cultivating his reputation. It was a point of pride, being jaded and unflappable. In a small town like Piper Ridge, you needed a thick skin if you wanted to survive.

So it was more than a little galling to walk into the local bar and nearly lose his dinner. And his lunch. And possibly whatever was left of his breakfast. Truth be told, he wanted nothing more than to run back into the cool night air along with the rest of the force. But that wasn’t his style. When all around him people lost their heads, he had to keep his. Even if it was spinning with disgust.

Calling it a mess would have been a cruel, sick understatement. The bar would never be clean again. Mrs. Trotts would have to sell the place, or better yet burn the building to the ground. Gallons of disinfectant and soap wouldn’t even begin to rinse of the stink of death. Professional cleaning crews would run screaming straight to their therapists, never to be seen again.

Everything that belonged inside a normal human being had been ripped out and put on display. There were seven bodies in dozens of pieces spread across the room like a demented buffet. All the organs and innards and limbs you can eat for 9.99! George Foster swallowed, breathing through his mouth in a failed attempt to filter out the odor of fresh blood.

A few hours ago, it had been a nice bar. It had been cozy and intimate, with a pool table and a decent selection of beers, and a minimum of tourists. The tourists preferred the few fancy places, or drove to neighboring towns for dinner. The walls were rich oak, and the seats were deep enough to sink into with a beer and forget the world. The only place in town to get a quiet drink, and now it was a crime scene.

Sergeant Daniel Bounds walked up beside Foster, his face an unpleasant green that resembled pea soup. Bounds was reasonably confident he wouldn’t throw up anymore, if only because the contents of his stomach were out by the front door.

Bounds made up most of the police force in Piper Ridge. The town was too small to warrant a full-time paid law enforcement team. There was Bounds, of course, and Sergeant Grant Turner, Officer James Morgan, and the new rookie. Then there were the part-timers and volunteers. None of them was qualified for this sort of thing.

“Bad scene,” said Bounds, doing a terrible job of masking his discomfort. Foster grunted, still fighting his own gag reflex. He crouched down beside the nearest body, his soft stomach straining against his crisp blue shirt.

The victim before him was a man in his early thirties. His throat was a gaping wound, and his guts were exposed to the elements, spread out around him like confetti. His name was Michael Green. Bounds had sat beside him in chemistry class. His empty stomach lurched away from the scene.

“Are all the victims’ throats ripped?” asked Foster, tilting the victim’s head and studying the torn remains of his neck. Bounds nodded before realizing Foster wasn’t looking at him.

“Yes, sir. Including those that were… mutilated.” Bounds jumped and almost bolted as Officer Morgan brushed by him. Morgan’s face was a uniform green. Bounds wondered if his face was the same pasty shade as his colleague. With difficulty, Foster rose to his feet.

“No witnesses,” he said, more to himself than Bounds. Bounds wasn’t much use at the moment. He was out of his element. They all were. They were ace at dealing with underage drinking or speeding drivers, or even the occasional unusual disappearance. Grisly multiple murders was out of their range of experience.

“Mrs. Trotts heard most of it, but she won’t be much use even after she starts making sense,” said Bounds. “All she heard was screaming.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Nick Trotts had sold Bounds his first drink, all those years ago. Now his arm was resting on the bar, his body nowhere to be seen, the palm open and waiting for a final tip. Bounds had to clench his fists to control the almost overwhelming urge to slip Trotts one last dollar for old time’s sake.

“Is it a gang?” he asked. Bounds knew little of gangs, aside from what he’d learned from television and movies, and the obligatory training courses Foster forced upon him from time to time. He didn’t think dismemberment was a common hobby for gang members, but it was the only explanation besides a bear attack that could account for such violence. Foster waved in the lackeys from the coroner’s office. Bounds stood back, feeling superfluous.

“Could be,” said Foster. The story might work, with a little tweaking. At this point in the evening he wasn’t going to be caught making any definitive statements. “Take pictures of everything, but don’t touch anything yet.” he yelled to Sergeant Turner, who was fumbling with the station’s ancient camera. Several people froze like this was all an elaborate game of Simon Says. The Chief could do that to people.

Bounds, meanwhile, was searching for something safe to look at. There weren’t many options in the surrounding gore. The number of organs scattered around the bar was not conducive to a healthy mind frame.

There was a woman’s torso lying on s table like a piece of a cast-aside Barbie, her tight shirt splattered with blood. At the table Bounds had once considered his domain, a curly brown toupee slowly soaked up a puddle of spilled beer. It had to be a toupee. It just had to. Bounds knew he couldn’t handle the alternative.

“Don’t be sick on my crime scene,” warned Foster, studying bits of shattered glass like this was all their fault, and he was going to have them arrested. “Go outside with the rookie if you can’t handle it.”

“No sir,” said Bounds, wounded. “Sorry, sir. I’m fine.” He focused on Foster’s stern, worried expression. While not exactly comforting, at least it wouldn’t make him sick.

“Does anything here strike you as odd?” asked Foster, examining the torn neck of another victim, this one blessedly unfamiliar. Working in a small town, you learned that at some point you would recognize the person being loaded into a body bag. You just didn’t expect so many at once, or in so many pieces. “Anything unusual?”

Despite his innate instinct to always respect his superiors, not to mention his unabashed admiration for his boss, Bounds wanted to tell Foster that he found the question patently idiotic. This was Piper Ridge, New Jersey. Things like this did not happen, period. True, they had a higher missing persons rate than the state average, and the mortality rate was rather troubling, but this was an entirely different matter. This wasn’t a traffic collision, or a freak accident in the park. This was his neighbor, dotty old Dennis Sheen who liked to talk with his mailbox, his guts on the pool table staining the green-

Bounds made it outside before he was sick, but barely. The rookie speaking with the coroner’s office was not impressed. He had to jump to avoid being hit by Bounds’ vomit. Once Bounds had finished, he looked at himself in the window of the bar. Reddish-brown hair was plastered to his forehead, and there was a fine sheen of sweat on his long face. He was as pale as the corpses.

By the time he got himself together and returned to the bar, everyone had been assigned a task and was hard at work. People were speaking in loud voices, their tones forced and cheerful. Police tape was being put up around the doors and windows. They were all shattered.

Turner slunk by with the camera. The look on his face told Bounds that Turner had once again been chewed out by Foster for jumping rank. Turner lived his life like they were in a crime show, and he was the headliner. He sneered at Bounds, and took a picture of the cash register.

Foster was standing to the side, waiting for Bounds with a deep frown. His round, pleasant face had aged considerably in the time it had taken Bounds to throw up.

“For such a mess, there isn’t all that much blood, is there?” asked Foster, his voice heavy with meaning. Bounds wanted to disagree on principle, knowing what the Chief was getting at. But he couldn’t. The Chief was right. Aside from odd puddles and splashes here and there, the room was remarkably dry. There were no stains around the bodies, and even the victims’ clothing was relatively clean, although torn and in disarray.

Years of bad experiences had taught Bounds to notice such things. Blood, for some unexplained reason, played an important part in the police work of Piper Ridge. He’d already noted, albeit privately, how waxy and pale the corpses looked, almost like they were mannequins instead of real people.

In his world, the ‘b’ word spelled trouble. Epic, Old Testament-style trouble. No conversation involving the ‘b’ word ever led to anything good. Bounds quickly calculated how much vacation time he had stored up, and what possible reason he’d have for leaving town for a while. As if the Chief would let him off that easily.

Well, that was fine. But he wasn’t going to ask it. No way, no how. He would not ask the question. Nobody could make him. He would not be party to the madness. Asking the question would mean invoking the name, and that only led to misery.

“Does this mean we need Charlie Black?” Bounds heard himself ask. He winced, despising himself for falling so easily into his traditional role. Foster gave him a tight smile with no humor behind it.

“Looks like it,” he said. Foster debated his limited options. After a moment, he gave up. Why fight it?

“Charlie Black,” he said, swirling the name around in his mouth like bitter wine. “Shit.”