“I’m betting there’s a supply of Tuffskin somewhere in the house, give you some heft and cover my coloring,” she said. “It’s not ideal. But what with the subdued lighting at the dance, and given that we’ll try to avoid others until the moment of revelation, it just might work. Come on, Brayton, let’s look for it.”
“Call me Bray,” he said.
She huffed and grabbed his hand and yanked him stairward. He followed, admiring her thigh-swish and ankle-turn as they climbed the steps.
In the kitchen, the air cleared of death stench. But there were whiffs of gore that didn’t vanish even when he closed the cellar door, and a quick search of the house brought them face to face with the teacher’s wives.
“I think,” said Bray, staring down at the fresh corpses, “we ought to consider revising our opinion of our savior.”
“Poor things,” said Winnie. “But sometimes pawns must be sacrificed for the greater good. He had to kill the teacher. Maybe these two put up a struggle.”
“Does it look like they struggled? Phew, it’s amazing how quickly dead folks start to stink. Besides which, why didn’t he just truss them up? Why didn’t he lock that guy down there in a closet or something, roped many times over as tight as a mummy so he had no way to escape?”
“Beats me.” She picked up a packet from the end table. Its contents started to spill out the open end, but Winnie caught them in time. “Instructions for the designated slasher.”
“I think the wacko family member theory is starting to make a lot of sense. Either it’s totally coincidental our couch guy was murdered tonight, or his being chosen as slasher finally drove, I don’t know, maybe his son over the edge.”
Ignoring him, Winnie leafed through the documents.
“I bet the killer’s hundreds of miles away by now.”
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
“He won’t be anywhere near the prom.”
Winnie glared at him. “Either way,” she said, “no couple will be sacrificed tonight. So either we’ll back what our savior has to say; or, if he doesn’t show, we’ll step forward to put our best spin on the student slaughter that wasn’t.”
End of discussion.
“While you’ve been standing there flapping your lips,” she went on, “I discovered some things: The dead guy’s name is Fronemeyer. An art teacher. Ah. Here’s a map of the town. They’ve even circled the school for us, thoughtful of them. Corundum High.”
No surprise. The deputies’s shoulder patches had had “Corundum, Kansas” sewn into them.
“Here are the intended victims’ names. Tweed Megrim and… Dexter Poindexter. Jeepers, what a name. And where they’ll be sitting during the stalking phase. Now, while I find the Tuffskin, you use the phone book-there can’t be too many Fronemeyers-and the map to figure out where we are in relation to the high school. Also, call the parents of these two kids and tell them their targeted darlings are safe.”
That seemed pointless. “I don’t think we—”
“Just do it,” Winnie said. “The more committed anti-slasher folks we can count on coming out of this, the better. If I have to plant terror in the hearts of hundreds of complacent mommies and daddies, so be it.”
She headed off.
It was a relief to regain the kitchen, away from the sight of neck slashes and the spills of blood that idled down the slain wives’ bodies.
In a cabinet above the wall phone, Bray found the white pages. Thin. One Fronemeyer. Moonglow Street, so short its name ran its length, no more than four miles from school.
Finding the numbers for the Megrims and the Poindexters was just as easy. But mustering the will to dial them was another matter.
Winnie returned with a tub of Tuffskin in her hand, a prize from her rummage through bathroom cabinets. She carried as well a thick wad of bills and a set of keys on a chain, both of which she stuffed into Bray’s pants pockets. “Well?”
Bray pointed to the map. “We’re here. Over here’s Corundum High. It’s seven ten now. Apply the Tuffskin, let the stuff seal, hit the road at seven thirty, and we should be right on time.”
“Did you call them?”
“Not exactly, I—”
“Wimp!” She grabbed the pad and punched in a number. Six rings. “That’s right,” muttered Winnie, “catch some fast food and go bowling while your son dies.”
She hung up and punched in the other number, her index finger moving with strength and purpose. Ring one, ring two, ring three, followed by a click, and a singing voice, to which she began to say something, stopping when she realized it was a recording.
She drummed on the counter, then, “Yeah, hi, listen up. You don’t know me, but your daughter Tweed and her date were chosen as tonight’s prom victims. I have reason to believe they’ll be spared. Trust me, this is not a hoax. You’ll learn about it later this evening, but really now… don’t you think you should have done more to stop this outrage before it went this far?”
Winnie hung up. “That oughta jolt someone’s complacency.”
“You were unnecessarily cruel.”
“Tell it to the judge, Mister Promjumper.” She pried the lid off the tub and dipped a hand into the soft goo. “Turn your head left.” It burned going on, but Bray felt it harden and penetrate his skin as she kneaded and shaped it.
Thinned, Tuffskin concealed blemishes.
Applied more thickly, it gave heft to breast or cock.
A famous pianist had been said to extend his fingers this way, but anyone who understood music knew that had to be a wild lie.
“Now you do me,” she said, “and by God you’d better get it right.”
Her harshness had begun to amuse more than shame him, which was just as well. His hand held steady. He did his best to thin the Tuffskin and coat her lobe, concealing the pale green beneath flesh tones. Curiously, the more it reminded him of the lobes of girls he had lusted after when he was whole, the greater the urge grew to kiss it.
He planted a light one.
Winnie drew back. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Kissing my date’s friendship lobe.”
“Don’t you friendship me!” she retorted. “Let’s see what’s to eat. Ten minutes tops.”
Bray visited the john first.
When he returned, Winnie had a variety of meats and cheeses laid out on the table, along with three types of juice. He lifted a Jonathan from the fruit bowl, alternating bites of mozzarella and apple and feeling how weird it was to have a fake lobe moving to match his concealed stuffed lobebag on the left.
He’d give anything, he thought, to have it be real, to have this prom be his abandoned prom nine years before.
Between bites, he tried to filter his breath through his hand. The stench of death made eating an iffy proposition. Winnie, a thin shapely woman of fierce determination, chowed down oblivious of the smell. Her eyes darted between the wall clock and the sheaf of papers.
Bray grabbed another apple. One bite in, his date announced that it was garage time and headed back through the house. He tossed the apple in the trash.
Winnie’s instincts were unerring. At the end of the hall was the door to the garage, a standard three-car structure with a couple of cars and some boxes stacked against a side wall.
“Which one is least likely to have belonged to Fronemeyer?” she asked. “We don’t want to rouse suspicions in the parking lot.”
“This one’s got to be his.” Bray pointed to a newer foreign jobbie whose license plate frame read PAINTERS DO IT WITH ACRYLICRITY. A parking pass hung from its inside mirror.
“Good guess. We’ll take the other.” She started to open the passenger door. “What are you doing?”
“Holding the door for you.” Winnie looked creamy and scrumptious.
“Get the heck over to the other side of the car. And get serious, will you? There are three dead people inside that house. And we’re on a mission to turn things around in this cockeyed world.”