Edward Lee (6 page)

"Kohl's Point you say?"

"Yeah."

"Hang tight, Chad I'll be there in twenty."

"Thanks, man."

Kohl's Point.
Cummings thought, strapping on his gunbelt. He whipped up some quick sandwiches in the kitchen, brewed a thermos of coffee, and grabbed an extra pack of smokes.

We got another murder out here,
the words echoed in his head. Christ. And then more words fluttered, like slow, black birds.

Peerce's words.

Cain't believe it. A fuckin' header.

Cummings couldn't have known, of course. Nevertheless, he was sweating pretty bad when he got into the unmarked and headed, lights on, to Kohl's Point.

........

"Thanks fer comin' out, Stew," Chad Amburgy obliged, his stomach stressing his ATF field shirt. He plowed into the bag of sandwiches.

"So what've you got here?" Cummings asked. He slipped his Streamlight out of his belt.

"Some fat lady, hillfolk probably, as ya can see. Just saw her layin' here. Stew, when I was comin' up the Route. Blood all caked in her hair."

"But no blood under her head." Cummings noticed, adjusting his beam.
Just like last night.

"Must've been killed somewhere else and then dumped here."

"Yeah."
Just like last night.

Amburgy munched a BLT and chugged coffee right out of the thermos. "I didn't have too close a look, didn't want to risk messin' up the crime scene." Amburgy pronounced
crime
as
cram.
"Peerce told me to radio the state and wait for 'em. Pretty pissant job of body-dumpin' though. Just dumped her flat out in the middle of the field."

Yeah. Just like...

Cummings carefully hunkered down, aimed his flash beam right on top of the decedent's head, which was a mess of caked blood. With a pencil end, he pushed aside some of the clotted tresses, to reveal the insult.

"Yeah, someone cracked her good in the head." Amburgy postulated.

"Not cracked. Drilled."

"Huh?"

Cummings let it pass. A perfect circle had been cut out of the top of her skull, exposing the keenly slit brain. More macabre words came back to haunt Cummings...
a peculiar aspiration of human seminal fluid.

And, again. Peerce.
A fuckin' header...

"You check the perimeter for tire tracks?"

"Naw, not much. Dirt trail right there at the treeline. Must've been where he drove in. But the trail's dry."

Cummings cast his light. No. there'd be no impressions left there. He'd leave it for the state to look at. At least the semen in the head could be typed, for all the good that would do, and they could run a g/p scan too, and their toolmarks lab could try to make the brand of the hole-saw, but Cummings doubted that the state police criminal evidence section would bother. This was just a cracker murder to them, a fly-by-night.

"What the hell is that?" Cummings asked when he stood up and roved his Streamlight again. A yard off from the victim's feet something glistened.

"Looks like..." Amburgy leaned, his checks stuffed as he chewed his sandwich. His nose twitched. "Looks like a pile'a dogshit or maybe a horse-flop. Looks like it's been—"

Cummings nodded. There, satcheled amid weeds, clearly lay a deposit of some kind of animal excrement, and said deposit just as clearly had been—

"Damn right, Chad." Cummings observed. His Streamlight glared down. "And it's been stepped in."

........

Peerce glanced up, glanced at his watch, then glanced up again from behind his desk at the FO. As discreetly as possible, which wasn't very discreet at all, he slipped this month's issue of
Babes With Big Boobs
under his desk blotter.

"Ain't like you ta be three hours late ta work. Stew."

"Didn't you look on the op log?" Cummings sniped back. "I was 10-6 to Millersville."

"State Sub HQ? What'cha doin there all morning?'

Some Special Agent in Charge.
Cummings complained.
Doesn't even read his own operating report.
"It's right there in the log, J.L. I was 10-6 to Millersville, on an evidence check. That 64 Amburgy stumbled on last night? Identical m.
ο
. to the Reid girl the night before. Only this time the perp left a footprint."

"Oh yeah?" Peerce replied without much interest.

"Stepped in a pile of dogshit, left a perfect impression of the bottom of his right boot."

"Some hayseed steps in dogshit and you take it to state police CES?"

"I photographed it. Showed it to their tech and got a pattern layout. Was hoping they'd be able to match the pattern to a manufacturer's solescheme in their computer."

"What the hell fer?" Peerce asked, more absurdly now.

Cummings rolled his eyes. "Finding out the manufacturer of the boots would give us a list of local outlets. Might be able to narrow down the stores in the area, check invoices, get a clerk who remembers, that sort of thing. If we have a list of the stores that sell the boots, we have a list of areas the perp might live in."

"Wastin' yer time, Stew."

"Oh? They'd already run an electrophoresis test on the semen in both heads," Cummings challenged. "The perp's bloodtype is A pos, subtype Mn. But there's A pos
and
Β
pos in the second head, the one from last night. What's that tell you?"

"Nothin' of importance." Peerce was barely listening now. He even retrieved his copy of
Babes With Big Boobs.
"You tell me. city boy."

"It tells us that
two
guys ejaculated in the second head." Cummings caught himself there, realizing exactly what he'd just said.
Ejaculated in the second head. I've got two perps out there, somewhere who've cut holes in the skulls of two women, and then they...

He didn't finish the thought.

"It ain't squat. Stew," Peerce insisted. "What good's knowing the perp's bloodtype?"

"I can run a records sweep now, check out any A pos Mn ex-cons or psych-ward releases in the area. It's something."

"It's
squat,
Stew. Yer pissin' in the wind. And what about the footprint?"

"The state evidence tech ran a digitalization of the print pattern in their comparison computer. They've got every tread scheme of every shoe or boot ever made in the country. She knew it was a boot due to the sole-depth. But there was no match."

"See? Squat."

"Which tells me that the boot was handmade, which'll be even easier to check out. Get a line on any local shoemakers, and I got a line on the killer"

Peerce looked up again, trying now to play Boss Man. "Ain't you got more important things ta do? Like stake out McKully's land fer more stills? That's yer job, ya know, not playin' Dick Fuckin' Tracy on a coupl'a no- account cracker murders."

"I'm a fuckin' cop." Cummings profaned in reply.
"My job
is to investigate criminal activity."

"Yer job. Stew, is ta bust stills—"

"And that leads me to my next question." Cummings sat down, took a breath. Peerce, low IQ notwithstanding, was his superior. He couldn't get
too
shitty.

"You're not leveling with me. J.L" he said.

"How's that?" Peerce asked without looking up from the tit mag.

Cummings caught a glimpse of the mag. A blonde was spraying milk into a redhead's wide-open mouth. He blinked away the image, cleared his throat. "What's a 'header'?"

Peerce slapped the mag closed again. "Aw. shit, man! Just leave it, will ya!"

"No. I want to know. That's what you said under your breath after the state sent the fax on the Reid girl. A 'header,' you called it. What the hell's going on?"

Peerce spat tobacco juice into his obligatory cup. then pinched the bridge of his nose as if attempting to tamp a migraine. "Cain't you just leave shit be?"

"No. What's a header?"

Peerce opened his hands on the desk, leaned back, sighed. "It's just somethin' that goes on, is all. somethin' folks don't talk much about. It's nothin'."

Cummings looked aghast. "J.L., we've got at least two men in our juris who are
cutting women's heads open
with a hole-saw and
fucking their brains.
That's
nothing?"

Peerce faltered further, grimacing like stomach gas. "If you was from around these parts, you'd know what I meant. It's feuds, boy."

"Feuds?"

"Yeah. Feuds." Peerce spat out his lump and loaded up another chaw of Red Man. "You wants ta know, city boy. then I'll'se tell ya. Cultures're different, see? Everwhere ya go. The Serbs hate the Bosnerians, the Jews hate the Ay-rabs, the Japs hate us."

Cummings' frown blistered on his face. "What's that got—"

"And 'round here." Peerce drawled on. "everbody hates ever-one else, fer all kinds'a reasons, from way on back. Don't matter why, just is."

"All right." Cummings gave him. "Feuds. Fine. The Hatfields and the McCoys."

"Right, Stew, only in these parts it's the Crolls and the Walters, the Lees and the Ketchums, the Kleggs and the McCroncs, like that. It's unervensal, Stew, just different in different places. Someone shits on ya. ya shit back twice as hard, see? Gets ta the point when ya cain't one-up each other. Understand?"

"No," Cummings responded. "Answer the question. What's a header?"

Another spit, another sigh, then Peerce came clean. "A header's the worst thing these rubes out here could think of. It's like the law of the hills. Someone does ya wrong bad enough, then yer justified ta do the worse thing imaginable fer yer revenge. That's what a header is. Folks don't talk about it much, it's just somethin' that's understood. Yer gettin' all whipped up 'bout somethin' that's been going on fer generations."

Cummings closed his eyes, took a deep breath himself now. "J.L.. you're telling me that that's what this is all about? Hill people feuding? Cutting holes in women's heads and—"

"That's right, boy, so don't'cha gripe 'cos you was the one who asked. It's one-uppin', like I said. Someone slashes yer tires, you burn down his barn, then he rapes yer sister, and you kill his son. When there ain't nothin' left ta out-do the other... ya have a header, ya throw a head-humpin'. Ya snatch the other guy's wife 'er daughter, get the boys together, an' then ya hump 'er head. Like that. I growed up in these parts, so I oughta know. 'Round here, there ain't nothin' worse ya can do ta someone than pull a header on one of his kin."

Cummings stared. His mouth attempted to form words but failed "That, Stew," Peerce finally verified, "is what a header is. 'Round here, folks take care of their own, so that's why there ain't no need fer you ta be blowin' tax dollars at state CES tryin' ta run down bloodtypes an' fuckin" bootprints. Just a bit un-yoo-sheral that the perp'd leave the bodies where anyone could see 'em. Yoo-sherally they'll leave 'em on the properly of the fucker that done 'em wrong in the first place."

But Cummings was still staring. Was this madness or what?
Headers,
he thought baldly.
Head-humping. My... God...

........

And head-humping it would be.

Over the next seven weeks, no less than a dozen more 64s were reported, same m.o., same autopsy findings. Some of the victims were identified, some were not. It didn't matter. But what did matter was that on all occasions, the brains of the corpus delecti were found to contain liberal amounts of A Positive and
Β
Positive semen, and on two more such occasions. bootprints were found with an identical tread-pattern.

Ever the dutiful law-enforcement officer, Cummings pursued the crimes.

He also pursued the ill-gotten gains of driving point for Dutch the Drug Dealer.

This divide in Cummings' sense of human purpose didn't obscure him. The continuous head-humping murders amounted to something whose evil he could scarcely comprehend, and he fell it was his professional obligation to stay on the case. And as far as Dutch went. well... that was different. Once a week. Spaz beeped him on his Motorola pager, and Cummings was there. He had a sick wife to think of, after all, and the drugs—namely PCP, marijuana, and cocaine, mostly cocaine—would be sold and distributed anyway. BATF Special Agent Stewart Cummings could not possibly hope to stem the flow of illegal drugs.