Orson walked over to the door and pulled it open. A waft of cool, dry air swept into the shed, coupled with the spicy scent of sagebrush and something else. He grabbed the handles and headed back inside, pushing a man who’d been strapped to a wheelchair with fifty feet of barbed-wire.
“I thought I smelled blood,” Luther said.
Orson grinned. “Oh, we’re going to do the brave thing? All right. I’ll play along.” He pushed the young man into the middle of the shed.
He was naked, eyes bugging out, still stunk of alcohol.
Orson said, “This is Juanito. Six hours ago, he was drinking beers down in Rock Springs. He passed out on the bar, woke up in the parking lot. Unfortunately for our friend, I picked him up.”
Juanito’s chest started rising and falling, his stomach bulging and retracting, the barbs digging into his gut with every expansion.
Luther said, “You might want to—”
Orson quickly removed the man’s ball-gag and he spewed what must have been a gallon of sour beer onto the floor.
“Too much cerveza?” Orson asked, laughing.
The man launched into a stream of Spanish that sounded to Orson like quite a bit of begging so he jammed the ball-gag back into his mouth.
“You remember that time we went for coffee back in Vermont?”
Luther nodded.
“I thought I saw something in you then. Something in your papers, too. They were god-awful, don’t get me wrong, but I think you’ve got…potential.”
“For what?” Luther asked.
Orson smiled and pulled his Morrell knife out of a leather holster attached to his jeans.
It was a beautiful weapon. He took a moment to appreciate the view, how it felt in his hand.
He set it on the concrete floor of the shed within range of his student, and then took a step back.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Orson said. “This is a test.”
“Your tests were always too hard,” Luther said.
“Well this one is a little outside the curriculum. Go on. Pick up the knife. You should be able to reach it.”
Luther leaned forward, the chain allowing him to move four feet out from the pole.
“Pretty blade,” Luther said as he lifted it.
“Now I’m wheeling Juanito over,” Orson said, pushing the wheelchair within range. “Here’s what I’d like you to do. Get a good grip on that beautiful ivory handle and—”
Before Orson had finished his sentence, Luther sprang to his feet and thrust the blade into Juantio’s throat, twisting it so violently it cocked the man’s head at a funny angle.
The arterial spray was spectacular, and Orson was still laughing uncontrollably by the time it had diminished to an irregular spurt.
The wheelchair had rolled back after the initial blow, just out of Luther’s reach.
He was straining desperately, the knife still in his hand, to deliver another thrust.
Orson clapped as he walked back over to Luther.
“I swear I had a feeling about you,” Orson said.
“Yeah, well, it was mutual. Ever since that day in class when you lectured on the Inquisition, I thought you might have the Darkness, too.”
“The Darkness?”
“It’s what my father calls it.”
“Calls what?”
“Whatever you and I are.”
Somewhere out on the desert, a coyote yapped.
Orson was still smiling.
“Luther, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
A Murder of Crows
Indiana, 1995
Charles Kork had seen movies where a character got a flat tire and was so mad he kicked it. That had always seemed pointless and stupid until now. Staring at the shredded tire and ruined rim on his Honda Accord, Kork didn’t just want to kick the damn thing. He wanted to take out his hunting knife, stab the fucker about a hundred times, and then toss it into a bonfire while imagining its screams of agony.
And of course he didn’t have a spare, because that was currently serving as one of the front tires, which had chosen to pop a week prior. Some asshole mechanic had warned him, last oil change, that his tires were bare and constituted a hazard. It had turned out to be prophetic. While the first flat was just a slow leak, this one had been a full-force blowout at sixty miles an hour, causing him to spin the car in a complete circle before fishtailing onto the shoulder alongside the road. Lucky he didn’t flip the car.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was that Kork had the mutilated body of a stripper in his trunk.
He kicked the tire a few times, swearing into the empty, mid-afternoon sky, and then stepped away and tried to think.
Middle of goddamn nowhere.
But he’d seen a state patrol car an hour ago. Even on lonely country roads like this, cops patrolled. Eventually, one would pull over, offer to call a tow truck.
What were the odds that he could buy a new tire without anyone knowing about the body?
Worst of all, he’d bought the car using his real name, and his goddamn fingerprints were all over it.
Kork took a deep breath, let it whistle out through his clenched teeth, watching his breath steam. He knew what he had to do. And it had to be fast, before a cop—or just as bad—some nosy motorist, stopped by with a big cornfield smile and a “got you a flat tire there, friend?”
Kork looked up and down the road. Indiana had to be the flattest fucking state in the country. He could see for miles in either direction. In all directions. He might as well have been on stage at Woodstock. Anyone coming would see him immediately.
And the fucking crows!
They were everywhere.
Circling and dive-bombing the fields. Scavenging for missed ears of corn.
So he’d better hurry.
It was a fall day. The morning had been colder than shit, a hard freeze overnight, but the sun had burned through the cloud cover and now it blazed down onto his face. He could feel the early pressure of a headache building.
Fumbling for his keys, Kork walked around the rear of the car to the trunk. He popped it, staring at the blue plastic tarpaulin, recalling all of the fun things he’d done to the whore only a few hours ago. His new favorite toy, a propane torch, lay next to the body. He’d gone through a whole fourteen ounce cylinder on the girl. It not only prompted screams so loud they made her throat bleed, but it smelled positively delicious.
Charles didn’t go there, of course. Cannibalism was for psychos. But he could admit to salivating a bit. Barbeques would be a lot more fun if the pigs and chickens were alive when you cooked them.
The same smell wafted up at him now, making him wish he’d stopped for lunch earlier. All he’d had was a few handfuls of popcorn from a jumbo bag he’d bought at a gas station last night.
Kork reached for the body, ready to lift it out, and got a pleasant shock when the bag jerked.
“Holy shit. The bitch is still alive.”
Charles had been pretty sure the whore was dead when he wrapped her up. He’d slit her throat pretty deep.
“You’re a fighter, I’ll give you that,” he said, hefting her out of the trunk and onto his shoulder. Moving quickly, he carried her ten yards into the cornfield and dropped her squirming body onto the cold, plowed earth.
He kicked at a clod of dirt, his work boot bouncing off without it budging an inch.
Frozen. Fucking frost.
Charles had a little hand shovel in his tool kit, but it wouldn’t be enough to bury a body. Especially with the ground so cold.
But leaving her exposed was just asking for trouble. He’d been planning on dumping the body in a river. Water washed away a lot of trace evidence. Creepy-crawlies nibbled at the feet and fingers. And with new DNA technology, where the cops could get a genetic fingerprint from a strand of hair or a drop of saliva, he had to be extra cautious.