Wade felt a shimmy of panic. "Not me, fellas. You guys go, I'll wait here. But before you go, you have to lock me up," He pointed to the station's jail cell. "In there."

"Why?"

"For my protection."

"Protection from what?"

Wade gulped. "From them."

Peerce squinted. "Who's them?"

"Look, Sarge, just pacify me, okay? Lock me up and go check."

"We can't lock you up," Porker informed him. "There's no probable cause to believe you're in danger."

"But I'm telling you I am!"

"We cain't lock you up unless you commit a crime," Peerce said. "And unfortunately, bein' an a.s.shole is not a crime."

Wade was getting desperate. "In other words, you won't lock me up in that cell unless I commit a crime?"

"That's right, boy."

Crime, Wade contemplated. Okay. With impressive reflexes, he kicked Porker square in the belly as hard as he could. Porker bent over, howling like a gelded walrus.

"There," Wade said. "Is that crime enough?"

Peerce, snarling, jammed the b.u.t.t of a nineteen ounce blackjack into Wade's solar plexus. Wade folded up, bug eyed. He was then thrown into the cell. For good measure, Peerce rapped Wade another one-between the legs, this time-and locked the cell door.

"Thank you, Sarge. And my future children thank you too."

Peerce's eyes blazed through the bars. "This is the end for you, St. John. We're gonna check out this harebrained story of yours, and then we're gonna come back here and kick your a.s.s so bad you'll s.h.i.t shoe polish for a week. a.s.saultin' a police officer will get you kicked off this here campus forever."

"I hear you, Sarge. Just go to the dean's. Check it out."

Peerce called White and told him to meet them at the dean's mansion. Then he left, followed by Porker, who limped along cradling his elephantine belly.

In spite of his pain, Wade smiled.

Go ahead, super cops. Check it out.

A half hour later keys rattled in the station door. Peerce, Porker, and Chief White tottered in, their faces drained.

Wade leapt up. "Well?"

"The dean is dead," Peerce iterated.

"I told you so."

Sweat glazed Porker's pasty white face. "The closet," he mumbled. "The dean-" Then he staggered to the john, to vomit. "Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d never could stand the sight of blood," Peerce said.

The memory blared back. Blood, Wade thought. So much blood.

Chief White's beshocked eyes looked like big flat coins. "It was pulled off," he said.

"What?" Wade asked.

"The dean's head. It was pulled off." White steadied himself, flinching. "Not cut off or chopped off. Not sawed or blowed off. I mean somebody grabbed onto that man's head and pulled on it till it came off."

"They're a rough bunch, Chief." But that was only the tip of the iceberg; there was much more to tell, but Wade dared not. These hayseeds would only swallow so much at a time.

Peerce stared cross eyed straight ahead. "Took his wagger off too."

"His what?"

"His wagger. You know, his meat, his homeboy."

Wade frowned. "You mean his d.i.c.k?"

"Pulled it clean off, just like his head. Who the h.e.l.l would wanna run off with a man's head an' homeboy?"

"Psychopaths, that's who," Wade said, to put it mildly. "Now that you've seen the goods, let's get out of here."

"Think again," Chief White said. He sat down and looked at him. "You ain't goin' nowhere till we have some answers."

Panic rose in Wade's guts like bubbles. "We've got to get off this campus right now, Chief! They're coming for me! They'll come here and pull our homeboys off!"

Peerce popped a chaw of Red Man. "He knows plenty more than he's tellin', Chief. That's for d.a.m.n sure."

I'm a had daddy, Wade realized. The safety of the cell now condemned him. Porker was still vomiting in the john, cutting loose deep, tubalike eeerps. Peerce edgily spat brown juice into a paper cup. Chief White just stared, arms crossed.

"What were you doin' at the dean's at this hour, boy?"

"I-" s.h.i.t, Wade thought. "I saw the murderer leaving the scene."

"Oh, you saw the murderer? You mind enlightenin' us?"

Wade swallowed, thinking of the blood. "It was Jervis Phillips."

White and Peerce joined in low laughter. "Jervis Phillips ain't nothin' but an egg suck drunk. You spect us to believe he pulled the dean's head off and painted the f.u.c.kin' closet with his blood? Jervis Phillips?"

"I don't care what you believe. I saw him driving out of that area," Wade unconvincingly explained.

White was rubbing his hands together. He was losing control of his town, and he was desperate. He needed a candidate for scapegoat, and Wade could guess the nominee.

"I can't tell you everything, Chief," Wade admitted. "If I told you everything, you'd think I was crazy."

"We already think you're crazy." Peerce said.

"A crazy murderer," White added.

But if they saw the grove, the mutated woods, and the women... Wade could think of no other way to convince them. "Take me to the grove," he said, "and I'll show you the rest."

"What grove?" Porker asked, finally emerging from the john. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"Trust me. I'll take you there right now."

White was still glaring at him. "Bring him out."

Now we're getting somewhere, Wade thought, but only until Peerce released him from the cell and hand-cuffed him to White's chair.

"This is what we call interrogation," Chief White said.

"I've got a better name for it," Wade told them. "Deprivation of const.i.tutional rights."

From a locker, White retrieved an eighteen inch Nova shock baton. It could deliver several one second 50,000 volt bursts, which disrupted the victim's muscle impulses and caused temporary paralysis. It also caused great temporary pain. Shock batons were illegal now, but Wade could see that this judicial fact would do him little good. They were going to torture him.

"Would it be too much trouble to ask for a lawyer?"

White, Peerce, and Porker all laughed out loud.

The baton hummed when White turned it on. "Now, this thing will shock you right through your clothes. A couple of hits and you'll think you stepped on the third rail of the subway. Are you gonna talk, or do I go to work on ya?"

"This is America!" Wade shouted. "You can't torture people!"

White, Peerce, and Porker laughed out loud again, harder.

"I don't want to hear no s.h.i.t about Jervis Phillips, and I don't want to hear about no groves. Tell me the truth, St. John. Why did you murder Dean Saltenstall?"

"I didn't murder the f.u.c.king dean!" Wade bellowed. "It was Jervis Phillips and those women in black!"

White pushed the baton into the soft of Wade's crotch. The discharge head fit nice and snug. White's finger wavered over the b.u.t.ton, then began to lower.

"Excuse me," a frail voice rose behind them.

White, Peerce, and Porker jerked upright and turned. White hid the baton behind his back.

A sheepish, long haired girl in a nightgown stood wanly in the doorway. "My name is Nina McCulloch," she said in a voice almost too soft to be heard.

"So what!" White snapped.

"I just saw my roommate and her friends get murdered."

Silence unfurled. The three cops stared. Wade sighed.

"Murdered?" White blabbed.

"Yes," Nina McCulloch whispered. "And I recognized the killer."

"Who was it?"

"It was Jervis Phillips, and he was with a woman in black."

CHAPTER 29.

"It's a cult of some kind, I think," Wade speculated from the backseat of White's cruiser. Porker sat heavily beside him. White drove, and Peerce rode shotgun. They sped down Route 13, toward the agro site.

"A cult?" White questioned.

"Yeah. It must be like one of those satanic gangs. Ritual murder, black ma.s.s, cannibalism, that sort of s.h.i.t. All the members wear upside down crosses. And whoever their leader is, they call him the Supremate. I figure there're seven of them, not including this Supremate guy. Four of them are girls, and I mean the freakiest looking girls you've ever seen. They wear black capes, and they all have" -Should I really say this?- "fangs."

Peerce swore. White smacked the wheel and glared at Wade. "I suppose you're gonna tell me they're vampires, right?"

"You said it, I didn't. But there's this thing out at the grove that looks like a coffin on end. And Besser told me that these girls-sisters, he called them-can't live in sunlight."

Peerce had a frown baked into his face. "He's pullin' our d.i.c.ks, Chief. There ain't no grove or no cults. He's lyin'."

"Besser?" White backtracked. "Besser told you this?"

"That's right. He's part of it, and so are Jervis and Winnifred Saltenstall. They're all members of the cult."

"I don't know what kind of drugs you been smokin', St. John, but you gotta be crazy to think I'll believe two respected faculty members belong to some satanic cult. I don't believe in vampires, and I don't believe in the f.u.c.kin' devil, so just shut yer yap."

"If you think I'm nuts, how come you're going to the grove?"

"'Cause I got two eyewitnesses that link Jervis Phillips to several murders, and you say he might be at this G.o.dd.a.m.n grove of yours, so that's where we're goin'!"

Fine, Wade thought. In a few more minutes, they were there. White groaned as his loaded cruiser rolled through the logging track, branches sc.r.a.ping the paint. He parked in the junk heaped clearing. "Check your heat," he ordered. White checked his fourteen shot Browning. Porker checked his AMT .45. Peerce checked his giant Ruger Blackhawk. Then they checked their backup pieces.

"Hey, fellas," Wade asked. "Don't I get a gun?"

"Don't make me laugh," White answered. "Peerce, bring the ga.s.ser too. If Phillips is hidin' in these here woods, we'll gas him out."

Peerce loaded a 37mm CM 55 tear gas gun. Then Porker doled out flashlights and they all got out. "Christ!" Peerce complained. "d.a.m.n place smells worse than a Georgia hoghouse!"

You ought to know, Wade thought. "Take a look over here."

"Graves," Porker muttered.