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  “Your lead, baby!” he screamed into the wind giving Marilyn her head. It was like channeling the spirits or playing Ouija—Larry’s hands rested on the bars but they turned themselves. The road twisted like a garter snake. Larry kept his eyes on the dappled sunlight coming through the spread of branches overhead wary of deer.

  The sunlight momentarily disappeared as a cloud passed overhead. Funny. It had been clear all day. Larry instinctively glanced in his Maltese cross-shaped rearview but there was nothing behind him save the road and the trees. A yellow info sign swished by and it took a second to register. A V-type intersection, Brogden went left, Norton Road to the right. Marilyn veered right. The narrow asphalt shimmied through the trees passing a couple overgrown pasture entries. A half mile on Larry came to another unmarked intersection and instinctively turned right again.

  He had unwittingly veered into Milton’s Hollow.

  Clouds scudding in. Larry’s heart pounding from the chase and the bump but he was pretty sure he’d lost that copsickle. That cop was probably at the state highway wondering where the fuck Larry went. Stupid cop had about as much chance catching Larry as Wile E. Coyote the Roadrunner.

  “I’m a roadrunner baby,” Larry sang in a surprising falsetto.

  Ho shit but that put a boot up his ass! He hadn’t outrun John Law like that in years! Damn if his heart wasn’t wangin’ like a bent piston. He had to get off the bike, smoke a cigarette.

  Now.

  He looked for a place to pull over. Larry cruised slow, confident he’d lost the law. The road descended gently into another overgrown valley. Yet another pasture entrance, two ruts overgrown with weeds winding through second growth forest toward a crop of sorghum. It was so overgrown he almost missed it. Only saw it because he was cruising slowly, and just as he was passing a random breeze parted the branches and a ray of light fell on a gleaming red shard, catching his eye.

  Larry stopped, turned into the ruts, and walked the big bike back until it was invisible from the road. The red shard looked like it came off a broken taillight. Little pieces of plastic crunched beneath his tires as he worked his way back, thirty feet off the road. He was in a clearing, twelve feet in diameter built around an odd, biscuit shaped mound. An Indian mound. Oak, alder, and locust trees formed a natural ceiling with a hole in the middle in imitation of an Indian hogan.

  The local Indians were known as the Illinois, duh, adapted by the French from the tribal name the Inini, meaning “the people.” They were a deeply spiritual people blah blah blah. A drunk Indian explained it all to Larry one night at a roadhouse outside Atlanta. Atlanta, Illinois. Bikers felt affinity for Indians. The bike was the modern equivalent of the horse and they were warriors at one with nature. Especially when they took the baffles out. What were MCs if not tribes?

  Larry tossed down the lid, kicked out the stand and got off. Grabbing a bottle of water from the bags, he walked up the gentle incline and sat in the very center of the mound. He pulled a pack of American Spirits from his vest and lit it with a Bic.

  Larry looked around. The mound had five stubby appendages. It took a moment for Larry to realize it was a tortoise. He inhaled deeply of the cigarette, heard his blood rushing through his head like an underground river. The area was supposed to be riddled like Swiss cheese with caves. Larry had never seen one. Of course he never went looking.

  Glancing further into the forest he spotted what looked like a gravestone. He saw a glimpse of candy apple red. The Midwest was dotted with rural cemeteries, many informal, some lost. He briefly wondered if there were anything worthwhile. Larry wasn’t above robbing graves. He’d made some serious jack stealing bronze burial urns from a mausoleum in Evanston. And those little metal veteran memorials—scrap dealers paid good money for those.

  Larry ignored the rushing in his ears and listened to the forest as best he could with his tinnitus. The breeze sighed through the trees. A mourning dove cooed. There was a sharp metallic snick, as of some blade flashing through straw.

  A jagged shard of paranoia thrust into the tweaker’s brain.

  Larry’s trapezoids clenched, the body dredging up a rumor from the subterranean depths of his soul. A black and twisted rumor like an unidentifiable body part.

  The air whistled. Closer.

  Larry turned.

  His heart imploded as if crushed by a mailed fist. The air rushed out of him like a child’s balloon. Part of him hovered nearby calmly observing that he was having a stroke and a panic attack. His eyes riveted on the figure before him.

  The blade flashed, the beautiful horizontal light from beneath Heaven’s door appeared and Larry’s head toppled from his body, rolled off the mound and came to rest next to the turtle’s front leg.

  Larry saw the sky and then nothing.

  ***

  CHAPTER 4

  Homicide

  Fagan cut over to Brogden on Turkey Trail, was at the cornfield inside five but the biker was gone. He could only have gone south or Fagan would have seen him. The cop figured the biker for a Road Dog headed for the Kongo Klub. The Road Dogs lived up to their name in being extremely territorial. There’d been a number of biker fatalities over the years attributed to the Dogs who guarded their meth franchise zealously.

  He’d studied the file. He knew what to expect. The president was Wild Bill Hedgecock. His Veep was Derek “Chainsaw” Gunderson, an Army veteran. The rest were a blur—Larry, Doc and Curtis, the latter two looking too old to cause trouble.

  Fullerton said the Dogs were not cooking, only distributing. In Fagan’s opinion this was nonsense.

  Fagan came to the fork in the road and cut left, figuring the Dog would head for the pound via the quickest route. He’d gone a mile when out of nowhere a wind whooshed through the forest strong enough to nearly blow him over. Fagan leaned hard to the left and stopped as limbs cracked and part of a rotten locust tree smacked down in the middle of the road twenty yards away. Had Fagan not pulled over it might have hit him.

  Fagan reached out for Irma but all he got was white noise. Fortunately the tree limb was small enough for him to rotate out of the way and lay it in the ditch. The wind abated but dark clouds with massive wrinkled foreheads scudded in. The conviction he’d been snookered abruptly filled him. The biker would assume that he, Fagan would assume that the biker would seek the most direct route to the KK.

  The biker must have taken the right turn. Fagan was certain.

  As certain he’d been that day a year ago when Chief Ashburton called him in and fired him.

  Fagan, who stood five nine and weighed 170, wrestled the big Harley around in a Y-turn and headed back the way he’d come. A fat raindrop splattered against his chin. He looked up. The clouds were in motion, rearranging themselves. Midwest thunderstorms were unpredictable. They could dump an inch in fifteen minutes then peel off leaving the sun shining. No other drops struck as he rode back to the fork and took the acute turn to the left.

  Now he was in the biker’s head, seeing the road as only a biker can see it. Fagan watched for deer. Deer killed more bikers than booze and pills combined. Six minutes later he came to the second fork in the road and veered right. Milton’s Hollow. Didn’t even think about it. It just looked like the more interesting road. Bikers always took the more interesting road.

  The rumble of electrical discharge filled the air, a freight train a mile away. Clouds cut out the afternoon sun. Fagan might have missed the turn-off if his headlights hadn’t picked out the gleam of red plastic lying in the weeds. He pulled over, got off the bike, tried the radio.

  He went over to the ditch. It was a taillight shard. He picked it up. It said Kuryakyn on the back. Made in China. Next to it was a crushed beer can with the stars and bars. Confederate Beer. Fagan had been surprised to learn that Southern Illinois was more gray than blue. They still flew the stars and bars down here and Saturday night the bars were filled with rebel yells.

  He peered past the waving grass and saw the ruts leading into the forest the faint o
utline of a road. A glimpse of metal thirty or forty feet into the brush.

  Fagan took off his helmet and set it on the seat. He took off his gloves, stuck them under the helmet and scratched his head furiously. He unsnapped his S&W .40 and held it in both hands as he followed the ruts into the forest, trying to step on rocks and bare earth so as to proceed silently.

  Leaves crackled. I’m no Indian, Fagan thought. It occurred to him to shout, “Sheriff’s Deputy!” but there was something in the forest that demanded silence. Nor did he want to give himself away if his prey were in the area.

  He didn’t even know if the biker had broken the law, but like all good cops Fagan was familiar with body language and the way that dude reacted said otherwise.

  Whoa. There was the dude’s bike, black, rat and loud with ratty black leather saddlebags and ape hangers. The tank was the exception. Whoever had painted La Monroe knew his business. Fagan brought the pistol up to eye level and followed it into the clearing automatically running the clock before his eyes registered an anomaly and swiveled back to the odd mound in the center. At first Fagan thought the guy was just lying there, resting, maybe OD’ing. Playing possum.

  “Sheriff’s Deputy! Turn over and put your hands behind your head.”

  The black clad form did not respond. Fagan circled around to the side and saw that the body had no head. A soak of dark, moist brown sank into the earth which Fagan registered as an Indian mound.

  The body had no head.

  Fagan’s heart redlined. Like he had a little tach on his chest like a Firebird. Easy now, he told himself forcing his shoulders to react. The biker couldn’t have been dead more than a few minutes. Fagan spun in a circle. The forest stared silently.

  Where was the fucking head?

  Fagan circled the mound and saw the head nestled in the crook of the turtle’s leg at the base amid a large moist spot. It must have rolled there. It lay staring wide-eyed at the sky. Blood lay on the ground. The vic had been killed in the past five minutes. Fagan approached and looked down. He’d seen that face a thousand times at biker rallies and in jails but it didn’t ring a bell. He used his cell phone to take a picture.

  Fagan fingered the hand unit pinned to his chest. Useless. He had to get to where the radio worked.

  If the killer were using an edged weapon on top of the mound was the safest place to be. Fagan was up there in a heartbeat. He crouched by the body, pulled on the chain attached to the corpse’s belt and tugged out an oversized Harley wallet. A Minnesota driver’s license identified the rider as Lawrence Rodell, age thirty-nine, height six three, weight 195, eyes brown. The license had expired six months ago.

  The wallet contained two hundred and sixty eight dollars in cash including a curled Franklin with white residue. It contained a business card from an escort service in New Orleans and a half-dozen credit cards, none belonging to Lawrence Rodell. The rumbling got closer. Fagan didn’t want to ride during a thunderstorm but he was reluctant to leave the crime scene until he’d scoped everything that might be of value.

  It was his investigation now. It was his fourth day on the job.

  His eyes scanned the ground and saw where the grass had been mashed down by another set of boots. Fagan came off the mound and stooped to examine a boot print in a bare section of the moist, fungible earth. Holy shit. The print was thirteen inches in length. Had to be a size 16 XXW. Dude was a monster.

  Fagan got up and walked slowly around the mound. Facing west, blood spray reached toward the forest at two o’clock. Whatever struck the biker had done so with enough force and focus to cleanly slice through bone and sinew in one stroke.

  There were no samurai patrolling Southern Illinois as far as he knew. A stiff wind brought a sheet of rain that washed over him and was gone, leaving the breeze and the promise of more to come. Fagan used his cell phone to photograph the crime scene, several close-ups of the machine-like cut. A quick patrol of the perimeter revealed nothing. The wind picked up abruptly to announce a fresh downpour.

  Fagan felt an urgent need to book.

  He jogged back to his bike, strapped on the helmet and powered up. He did not want to be riding during a downpour. He’d done it and it was no fun. He eased out the clutch and motored down Milton’s Hollow. It had to run into State Highway 123 or County Road 38. None of these little valley trails dead-ended. This was a farm state. They all led to market.

  Driving with extreme care he went a mile down the road and eased off the throttle at 35, wary of rain-slick leaves. He glanced in his rearview.

  A red headlight appeared a quarter mile back like a baleful demon eye.

  ***

  CHAPTER 5

  Demon Eye

  Fagan pulled to the side of the road and kicked out the stand. His tires rested in weeds. Only the kickstand touched asphalt. He got off his bike and turned to face the oncoming biker, arms folded, Sam Browne belt, official in his white, blue and gold helmet and mirrored sunglasses. The red headlight dipped beneath the horizon as the biker descended the roller coaster road.

  Sound reverberated through the tunnel of trees like thunder, only louder. Straight pipes. Dude was in violation of the noise ordinance. Fagan flicked on the light bar on the rear box. Red and blue strobed the sides and ceiling of a tunnel of rain-slick leaves. At least the rain had let up for the moment. The sound of the unmuffled engine grew, shaking tree limbs, causing leaves to fall and sending pebbles skittering. What the hell was he riding? A freight train?

  Fagan stood with his hand out like a traffic cop fully expecting the biker to comply. The biker had to know what was waiting over the next rise from the red and blue flashing off the trees. With a thunderous crescendo a monstrous mechanical centaur erupted out of the depression. Fagan registered danger. The rider wore a shiny black carapace surmounted by a black, beetle-like helmet; his right arm extended up, back, and in that instant Fagan threw himself backward over the seat of his ride, bending so far his body formed a horseshoe. The blade snicked overhead with a whistling sound.

  The shriek of engine peaked and passed with a Doppler effect carrying the demon around a curve and out of sight. Fagan stood gasping and leaning on the bike. What just happened?

  Some creep with a samurai sword nearly took off his head. Now Fagan knew what had happened to the Road Dog. There’d been no mention of this freak. How did the killer control his ride with his left hand? All motorcycle throttles were on the right. He could have used a throttle stop but that was insanely risky on twisty little roads like this. Unless he’d modified the bike so the throttle was controlled with the left hand. Who does that? Why? Fagan knew why. But still, the effort and for what? Effect? The vics were dead—they didn’t have much time to admire the effect.

  Fagan knew he was dealing with a real sicko.

  Lightning flashed through the trees. Fagan tried the radio. White noise. He listened. Wind and thunder—and something else. Those shrieking cylinders. Fagan caught a glimpse of red light recrudescent through the trees.

  The black biker was coming back.

  Fagan withdrew his S&W, jacked one into the chamber and thumbed off the safety. He didn’t think about his record or how this would look to the Firearms Discharge Review Board. The black biker had already tried to kill him. Well now he was going to get perforated.

  Fagan crossed the road and braced his forearms on a branch, all but invisible in leaf and shadow.

  Bring it on freak.

  Red light splayed across wet branches followed by the demon eye, bike bent like a storm cellar door, right arm held high. He came right at Fagan. Fagan began pulling the trigger when it was twenty feet away and didn’t stop until it was almost upon him. At the last instant he ducked and rolled and swish!

  The blade cut through the four-inch elm like string cheese.

  The giant motored over the crest and disappeared. The sound barreled away in a diminishing howl until it was almost gone.

  Fagan got up, his uniform soaked. He listened. The engine—how many cylind
ers? It almost faded away. Almost. There. It was gone.

  Thank God.

  Fagan held his breath, heart pumping like a tweaker. Raw terror beat coffee every time. Fagan bent over with his hands on his knees searching for breath. No one would believe him. If he got an All Points out within the next couple hours they might stand a chance. Unless the demon biker went to ground.

  Fagan headed diagonally across the road to his bike. On the other side of the road he paused.

  He listened.

  A tiny buzz.

  It waxed louder.

  Fagan saw four slugs penetrate the giant’s black leather jacket. Why wasn’t he dead? If he were wearing body armor why hadn’t the 160-grain slugs at least knocked him off the bike? Was he jacked up on PCP?

  What was keeping him up?

  Lightning flashed. Rolling thunder joined the ascending howl of the killer’s bike. Fagan sprinted to the Harley, thumbed the starter and took off, kicking up the stand in motion.

  The motherfucker was returning for another pass, like it was a bullfight. No use trying to divine the motive of a homicidal maniac. Fagan had been a biker long before he’d been a cop. Riding a bike wasn’t like driving a car—your sensory awareness was heightened ten-fold. You couldn’t be bothered with chitchat, text messages or music. You needed total concentration to stay on the road. In the rain, chased by a killer.

  Fagan held it just this side of panic as he goosed the big Harley up to fifty on roads that weren’t designed for anything over thirty-five. He felt the rear tire slip in the corner and catch as his heart stopped and restarted, floorboard banging against the pavement sending a shockwave to his knee. Somehow he kept the 800 lb. bike upright. He headed southwest, certain the road would connect with either 123 or 38.