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"Hardcore," Ajax said in awe.

"I'm not proud of it. I admit it, I was an asshole back in DeSmet. I was a redneck rancher, getting drunk in bars every night, slapping my girlfriends around for no reason, cheating on them whenever I felt like it. I was a prick, I was a bastard."

Ajax stared, amazed. "Young, dumb, and full'a cum."

"That was me."

"But... you look like a frat boy," Ajax couldn't get over it.

Short hair, conservative clothes, good manners. Dean had to agree that that was the appearance he gave people, and that's the appearance he wanted. "This is what I used to look like, before I moved to Seattle." He slipped an old photo out of his wallet. It was a snapshot of himself with his arm around one of his droves of girlfriends.

Ajax spat out a mouthful of Diet Coke when he looked at the picture. "You gotta be shitting me! This is you?"

"I was about twenty-five when that was taken. Couple months later, I blew town, moved here, started my life over."

Ajax was aghast; the picture showed a sun-bronzed stud in a muscle shirt, hair down to his shoulders and a goatee. His arms bulged like a power-lifter's. Ajax repeatedly switched glances between Dean and the photograph. "Unbelievable. Talk about Jekyll and Hyde. This is incredible. And—" Ajax reglanced at the photo and gulped. "And who's the brick shit-house piece of box standing next to you?"

"Arianne," Dean revealed with remorse in his throat. "She was my last girlfriend in DeSmet. I dated her for three years... and cheated on her for three years. I treated that poor girl like total dog shit."

"Why?"

Dean shrugged. "‘Cos, like I was telling you, I was an asshole." The memory sunk in his gut. "Arianne loved me bigtime, and all I did was shit on her. She had a scholarship to Harvard but I wouldn't let her go. Told her we'd get married, have kids, all that, but I never meant a word of it. I just strung her along till I got sick of the whole town, my whole life. One day I told her I was going out to pick up a can of Skoal, but I went to the airport instead. I split, left her cold. Never spoke to her again." Dean's guts just sank and sank. "She was so depressed when I dumped her, she just went off the deep-end. Now she's a street whore, turning twenty-dollar tricks to support a drug habit."

Ajax just sat there with his mouth hanging open. "Man, you were a Grade-A Number One low-down motherfucker! What a scumbag!"

"I know, and I don't feel too good about it."

Dean didn't feel like talking anymore, and Ajax could tell. Dark clouds slipped in over Elliot Bay, and the wind gusted up. "Shit, man, it's Saturday. You've got the car, your wife's out of town—it's settled."

"What's settled?"

Ajax put his cigarette out in his tartar sauce cup. "We're going to your place."

"Why not?" Dean said. "You can help me vacuum the carpet."

Ajax laughed as they walked away. He eye-balled several girls getting off the Waterfront Street Car, uttering typical sexist comments. But as he and Dean waited for the WALK sign, Ajax said, "Hey, what did you say you did with that can of Skoal?"

"I threw it out," Dean said.

"You sure?"

Dean cocked a brow. "Yeah."

"Then I guess that's a can of lark's tongues in aspic sticking out in your back pocket."

Huh? Dean's hand padded back to the rear pocket of his jeans. His hand froze.

Then he withdrew another can of Skoal.

"You're putting me on, right?" Ajax asked. "You're making all this shit up just to jerk me."

"I wish I was." Dean's eyes fixed wide on the inexplicable can. "This is really creeping me out."

He looked at the can some more. His mouth began to water. And then:

"Fuck it."

Dean opened the can, and took a big dip.

««—»»

"What the damn bloody fuck?" exclaimed the first cop.

The second cop squinted. "What's that... hangin' out of his... "

"Dick?" the third cop finished.

The third cop would be one Sergeant Alphonse Taylor Lass, the DeSmet Police Department's ranking officer. He was essentially the chief, having only to answer to the town counsel and the mayor. His asshole and cock still felt radiant from the whore's first-class butt-suck and blow job back at the station. Fine indeed. But the recollection turned to rot at what he was looking at now in the hard streams of three police Mag-Lites.

It was the security guard who lay at their feet.

Pants down.

Eyes gone.

And—

Jesus! Sergeant Lass thought.

The kid's nuts were hanging out of his dead dick, from tender threads tracing back through his peehole.

"Jesus!" Sergeant Lass said aloud.

Eventually the county coroner—who was also the county recorder of deeds, the county magistrate, and the county's official notary—would transfer the perplexing corpus delectus to the Office of the South Dakota Medical Examiner where it would be properly autopsied and found to have had the entirety of its brain aspirated through the right ocular cavity.

This unfortunate security guard would not only prove to be the most bizarre murder to ever take place in DeSmet, South Dakota.

It would be the only murder to take place in DeSmet, South Dakota.

Sergeant Lass glared at his two accompanying constables. "For fuck's sake! Isn't anybody gonna say anything? This guy's lying here with no eyes and his fuckin' balls hanging out of his dick!"

The first officer only stared, jaw jacked open. The second officer had already fainted.

Lass scratched his head, idly glanced up at the massive wooden sign erected above the cattle coves behind them. The sign read:

WELCOME TO THE LOHAN RANCH

««—»»

"Let me ask you something?" Ajax was examining the gold-plated trophy. "How much did you get paid to crank the horns out of bulls?"

"Steers, not bulls. And I didn't get paid anything. I worked on my father's ranch. It was just one of the chores, like taking out the garbage."

Ajax wheezed laughter, slapping his thighs. "Cranking horns off of magnificent spectacles of nature is the same thing as taking out the garbage?"

"You pansy city boys take out the garbage, farm boys crank horns," Dean elaborated.

Ajax continued to wheeze as they set down the case of Tsing Tao beer, which they'd picked up at the Ballard Market on their way over. Ajax was on an oriental-beer kick. Dean didn't care. He spat tobacco juice in the sink.

"That's the spirit," Ajax observed, then looked around the quaint split-level. "Guess you cleaned the place up since your wife had her conniption fit."

"Well, no," Dean said.

"But the place is immaculate!"

"Not really. It could use a vacuuming, and a dusting."

"Man, you are whipped. Daphne's turned you into a slave." Ajax cracked open two Tsing Tao's, passed one to Dean. "She should be doing that shit. I'll bet you even do the cooking."