CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Officer Burt Macklin cruised the streets in his black-and-white, the radio squawking like a scalded parrot with the usual Friday night chatter. Domestic disputes, drunken brawls, the odd fender bender from some lead foot with more horsepower than brain cells.

Just another night in paradise.

Macklin sighed and scrubbed a hand over his five o”clock shadow. He”d been riding this beat since he was a rookie, fresh outta the academy with a shiny badge and a head full of heroic notions. Now, five years and a few dozen shades of cynicism later, the only thing shiny was his cue ball dome, and his notions had gone from heroic to hemlock.

Still, it coulda been worse. At least he wasn”t walking the Tenderloin like those poor schmucks in Vice. He”d take babysitting a bunch of booze hounds over wading through used needles and human misery any day of the week.

Especially since the Chief had put the word out - keep your eyes peeled for anything hinky, anything that might point to Dover”s newest whackadoo playing pin-the-tail-on-the-corpse. The things he did for a measly government paycheck and a shitty pension.

But hey, it gave him something to do besides run speed traps and scrape drunks off the sidewalk. So he”d play along, do his due diligence, keep his peepers peeled for any sign of psycho-boy out there.

Macklin cruised past O”Malley”s, taking in the usual gaggle of stumble-bums and working girls loitering near the entrance. Half of them looked like they”d just stumbled off a boxcar, while the others could”ve passed for halfway respectable if not for the dead eyes and track marks.

Nothing promising there. Macklin made a mental note to have a word with O”Malley about his clientele, maybe see about getting some of those lost souls into a program or something. Assuming they didn”t pickle themselves to death first.

Next in line was The Chuckle Hut, a so-called gentlemen”s club that hadn”t seen anything gentle since the Reagan administration. Last he checked, they had a two-for-one special on lap dances and penicillin shots. Macklin gave the parking lot a once-over, taking in the rust-bucket beaters and mid-life crisis mobiles. Nada on the serial killer front, but he spotted a familiar face stumbling out the door - one Ronnie Dobbs, a semi-regular guest of the county lockup.

Looked like Ronnie was riding the white horse again. Macklin sighed, weighed the merits of hauling the scrawny bastard in to sleep it off versus letting him wander off to go piss in some poor sap”s azaleas. Without much more thought, he figured the flora could take one for the team. Ronnie was a pain in the ass, but he wasn”t a killer. At least, not the kind Macklin was on the lookout for.

He peeled away from the curb, leaving Ronnie to his own devices and the tender mercies of whatever shrubbery he chose to defile.

And so it went, up and down the strip. Bar after bar, dive after dive. Macklin”s eyes started to glaze over, his brain going soft as a two-day-old donut from the sheer monotony of it all. He was half-tempted to tug his piece and start playing quick-draw with his reflection in the windshield, if only to keep from nodding off at the wheel.

But just as he was about to call it quits and head back to the barn to go cuddle his faithful hound and his faithful bottle of Beam, something caught his eye.

Two people, silhouetted against the sallow glow of the street lamps. Nothing too outta the ordinary there, except for the fact that that one of them was parked in a wheelchair and the guy was pushing them along like he had someplace to be.

Now, Macklin was no expert on the social habits of the invalid set, but something about the whole setup just didn”t compute. Who the hell went for a stroll down Skid Row in the middle of the night with Grandma or Granddad in tow? It was like seeing a vegan at a steakhouse - technically possible, but highly friggin” unlikely.

He slowed to a crawl, trying to get a better look without spooking ”em. But they must”ve had a sixth sense for prying eyes, ”cause they hooked a sharp left and disappeared into an alley quick as grease through a goose.

The hell?

Macklin”s cop brain started firing on all cylinders. Could be nothing, just some Good Samaritan helping out a little old lady in need. But in this neighborhood, good deeds were about as rare as hen’s teeth.

He eased past, eyes straining to penetrate the murk of the alleyway. Caught a flash of movement, there and gone again, swallowed up by the dark. The wink of light on metal.

Macklin knew this alley, knew where it led. Straight to Snickersville Square, home of the famous Chuckles Memorial Fountain. Damn thing was not only an eyesore but a reminder that Dover”s biggest celebrity was some old-timey comedian who”d died on stage. These days, it was more likely to be full of used needles and human waste than anything resembling humor.

Nobody went there unless they had a reason.

It was an isolated landmark.

Aw, hell.

Something told him to get in there.

Macklin was moving before his brain could catch up, throwing the cruiser into park and bailing out like his ass was on fire. He slipped into the alleyway, one hand on the butt of his gun, the other fishing the flashlight off his belt. The beam cut through the dark, bouncing off dumpsters and fire escapes, empty bottles and condom wrappers.

Macklin forced himself to breathe, to take it slow and steady. Last thing he wanted was to go barreling in all Rambo-like and wind up giving the crazy a hostage. Or worse, a shield.

So he crept, one foot in front of the other, every sense cranked up to eleven. The stink of piss and decay hung thick in the air, undercut by something else.

He rounded the corner onto Snickersville Square, and that”s when he saw it.

His heart plunged into his stomach like a lead weight into quicksand.

The fountain, dry as a bone and choked with dead leaves.

And there, in the center, handcuffed to the crumbling stone spires of the fountain like a slab of meat on a hook, was a body.

A man”s body, dressed in threads that mighta been respectable if they weren”t stained with piss, puke, and other fluids Macklin didn”t wanna think too hard about. The stiff”s wrists were shackled to the ornate curves of the fountain”s upper basin, arms wrenched behind him at an angle that made Macklin”s shoulders ache just looking at it.

Macklin”s gorge rose, his dinner of coffee and stale donuts making a break for freedom. He clamped his jaw shut, breathing hard through his nose.

A soft scuff behind him, the crunch of dead leaves under a careless foot. Macklin whirled, hand flying to his holster. And found himself staring into the face of a nightmare.

White mask, smooth as a cue ball, black holes for eyes. And the mouth - Christ, the mouth. Curved in a grotesque frown, like some kinda twisted parody of a sad clown.

It was him. The one they were all looking for, the freak with a hard-on for stocks and strangulation. And he was just standing there, bold as brass, not twenty feet away.

Time dilated, seconds stretching like taffy. Macklin”s gun cleared leather, his voice ripping out of him in a hoarse bellow. ‘Police! Freeze!’

The figure bolted like a deer on opening day, vaulting over the fountain”s edge and hauling ass across the square. Macklin gave chase, blood roaring in his ears, the acrid stench of the vices voided bowels fading behind him as he ran.

‘Stop! Police!’ he hollered, the words ripped away by the wind of his passage. But the figure didn”t stop, didn”t even slow. Just ducked and wove through the shadows like a ghost in a funhouse, always just out of reach.

Macklin pounded after him, lungs burning, thighs screaming. He was a donut-eatin” desk jockey, not some track star, but he”d be damned if he”d let this freak get away. Not when he was so close he could smell the crazy on him.

They careened down narrow alleys, vaulted trash cans and dumpsters, the killer always just a hairsbreadth ahead. Macklin”s vision tunneled, the world narrowing to that bone-white mask bobbing and weaving in the dark.

The freak was fast, but Macklin was fueled by righteous fury and too much caffeine. He closed the gap, fingers stretched to snag the bastard”s flapping coattails. Almost, almost.

Then the alley opened up and the mask was gone, swallowed by the shadows between the buildings like it”d never been.

Macklin stumbled to a halt, chest heaving, frantic gaze raking the gloom.

Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

He was alone, nothing but the sound of his own labored breathing and the far-off blare of traffic for company.

A four-letter word erupted out of him in a raw bellow, all his impotent rage and sickened frustration poured into one sour syllable

With a shaking hand, Macklin fumbled for his radio. Keyed it with a thumb that felt like a sledgehammer.

‘Dispatch, this is Unit 42. I need backup at Snickersville Square, now. And get me a bus while you”re at it. We got another one.’

Backup usually took five minutes. Might as well be five years, for all the good it would do. The damage was done. Macklin had blown it. If the cosmos had any mercy left, maybe he could crawl into a bottle and pray the whole thing was just some cheap-whiskey nightmare.