Ghouls Read Free

ones.”
    “Now that’s what I call important police business, yes, sir.”
    “Well, it is. I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten all day.”
    “But you’re eating now. I can hear you.”
    “Just shut up and get the doughnuts. And grab this month’s Hustler while you’re at it.”
    “I’m not going to buy a skin magazine in uniform.”
    “You will unless you’d like to wear the uniform of some other department. Baltimore City’s hiring, if you don’t mind the lowest starting pay in the state and the highest murder statistics. Or, hell, I’m sure a guy with your experience could walk right into a nice cushy foot beat in Southeast D.C.”
    “I hear you, Chief.”
    “Good. If they don’t have Hustler, get High Society.”
    Kurt wished he had the—testicular fortitude?—to tell Bard exactly where he could put the doughnuts and magazine. Three months in the police academy for this? Dad would be proud. “That’s all I am, Chief? An armed errand boy?”
    “Yeah, but before you do any of that, I’ll let you go play police officer for a change. I’ve got a resident complaint for you, possible signal 7P. That’s trespassers on private property, in case you’ve forgotten your code sheet.”
    “I know what a 7P is, Chief. I’m the only one around here who bothers to answer them. So what’s the 20 for these trespassers?”
    “Belleau Wood. The prop-owner’s wife made the complaint. Glen doesn’t come in for a couple of hours, so she phoned us.”
    “That’s the rich guy’s land, right? Dr. Willard? I didn’t know he was married.”
    “Well now you do. She said somebody popped the chain on one of their entrance gates. Probably a bunch of kids back there cornholing or something.”
    “You want me to bust them?”
    “I don’t give a fuck, use your police officer’s discretion. You can kick their dicks off for all I care. Just get a move on.”
    “Okay, Chief. I’m on my way.”
    “And don’t forget. The chocolate-covered kind, the big ones.”
    PFC Kurt Morris hung up the Liquor Mart pay phone and went back to the town car, a dulling, white Dodge Diplomat with a banged-in rear bumper and one of the high lights missing from the visibar . The car looked like it hadn’t been washed since the day it rolled off the assembly line, which may well have been true; it wore a sheen of dirt. Recently, Glen Rodz had asked him, “Don’t you think it’s about time you washed the cruiser?” and Kurt had replied, quite logically, “Why? I don’t ride on the outside.”
    Kurt squealed out of the lot, not because he was in a hurry, but because the cruiser’s bald tires made more noise than purchase. The call to Belleau Wood was no great event; he’d answered many such calls over the years, when the property’s security guard, Glen Rodz , was not on duty. Belleau Wood seemed to attract Tylersville’s youth “like flies to a shit-bucket,” Chief Bard was fond of saying. Lots of teenage beer drinking, but mostly kids making out. Kurt had witnessed many flesh shows thanks to signal 7P’s. What he’d seen in the backseats of some of those cars would make John C. Holmes himself keel over.
    April was bowing out now. For the first time this season, Kurt noticed that everything around him pulsated in life and vibrancy. The unsightly black-flecked snow had melted away, leaving the winding asphalt of Route 154 a cleansed, black shimmer. Trees, barren a month ago, stood straight and heavy in prominent greens. To the left, the vast square of Merkel’s cornfield glowed coppery, fecund brown, showing newly turned soil, and would soon glow green as a scape of hardy man-tall corn rows. Colors seemed sharper, more intense, the air rich with the scents of life. It was more than just the shift of nature; it was an overhaul of his soul—spring fever, and the nearing of long days, endless skies, and the warmth he feared might never come. The end of another gray Maryland winter.
    Backward and hard-minded, Tylersville wasn’t a