CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
He guzzled half a bottle of Bud, leaned back on the kitchen chair, and sighed.“That was Hoffman we heard screaming. When Matt and I ran in the bathroom, all we saw was this butcher knife jerking around right above the floor. And the handcuffs shaking. Laveda must’ve made herself invisible when the shooting started. Must’ve had a bean left over from the time she’d gone through the process a year ago.”“She went for Matt. That gave me a chance to douse her with gas and touch her off. The whole gas can went up, though. I thought I was cooked, but I dived out the bathroom window. The fall…it knocked me out cold. Don’t think I was out for long, but by the time I reached the front of the house, I saw you and Nancy running off.”“Why didn’t you yell?”He shook his head and took another gulp of beer. “I figured I could catch up later. The main thing was to get Matt out of the house.”“You went back in?”“Had to. Couldn’t leave him in there. I got to him just before the fire did, dragged him out, patched up his stomach wound the best I could, and threw him into the car. When I drove up the road, you and Nancy were nowhere in sight. I figured you’d be all right, though, so I drove like hell back to Tucson and got him into an emergency room. I didn’t think he’d make it, but he’s a tough son of a bitch. They had him in stable condition by the time I left.”“He’s alive?” Lacey grinned. “Well. What do you know?”“When I got back to the house and couldn’t find you, I suspected you might come back here.”“I didn’t know where else to go.”“Not the greatest hideout in the world.”“I had a plan,” she admitted, and lowered her eyes. Until now, the plan had seemed like her only chance for survival. With Scott sitting across the breakfast table, it seemed ridiculous and perverse. She didn’t want to tell him about it.“In your place,” Scott said, “I might’ve tried the same thing.”“You know?”“I saw the empty brandy bottle out back. And the sack of beans. And where you dug the hole.”“The…the rest of the body’s still in the garage. I found her…near where they’d left their cars. After I sent Nancy away, I…a bean was in the dirt by her mouth. That’s what gave me the idea. If I were invisible, nobody could get me. I tried the bean, but it didn’t make me invisible. So then I put her body in the trunk of a car and…God, it was all burned and crumbly and…”“It was Laveda!”Lacey nodded. “I guess so.”Reaching out, Scott squeezed her hand. “Then it’s over.”That night, he dug up the head. They drove far out in the desert, and poured gasoline over the remains of Laveda. The fire burned for a long time. When it finally dwindled, they dug two holes in the sand and buried the smoldering head a great distance from the body.
RAVE REVIEWS FOR RICHARD LAYMON!
“I’ve always been a Laymon fan. He manages to raise serious gooseflesh.”
—Bentley Little
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—New York Review of Science Fiction
“Laymon always takes it to the max. No one writes like him and you’re going to have a good time with anything he writes.”
—Dean Koontz
“If you’ve missed Laymon, you’ve missed a treat!”
—Stephen King
“A brilliant writer.”
—Sunday Express
“I’ve read every book of Laymon’s I could get my hands on. I’m absolutely a longtime fan.”
—Jack Ketchum, Author of Old Flames
“One of horror’s rarest talents.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Laymon is, was, and always will be king of the hill.”
—Horror World
“Laymon is an American writer of the highest caliber.”
—Time Out
“Laymon is unique. A phenomenon. A genius of the grisly and the grotesque.”
—Joe Citro, The Blood Review