Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop Read Free Page B

one you can’t see. It was like watching hell itself. The man and his dog were being tortured by flames but were never consumed.
    A wave of panic swept over Kathryn. “Daddy! Wake up! We have to get out of here!” She twisted around and put her feet against the window glass. She pulled back and with all of her might kicked out against the glass.
    Nothing.
    She kicked again and again as the cloud outside grew thicker and darker and closer. She began to weep hysterically, but stopped with a gasp. She saw the man, now barely visible through the whirling cloud, begin to stagger directly toward her. His face looked swollen and blue with patches of black and gray, and his hands clutched at his throat. He bent forward, then straightened and threw his shoulders back and his chest out, as though he were straining to draw each breath through a long tube. He stumbled forward two steps, then suddenly stopped and dropped his arms limp at his sides. For a moment he stood perfectly still, as if somehow at peace with this unexpected fate, and then fell headlong on the pavement not more than ten feet from Kathryn’s window.Kathryn screamed and scrambled back from the glass. There were no flames, yet the man’s body grew steadily darker—and the black patches seemed to be moving.
    Kathryn’s eyes were fixed in horror on the blackened figure before her. She crawled back, back, until she was flattened against the opposite window glass, her arms frozen down and out to her sides. She felt a tiny tickle on her left wrist and frantically jerked it away. She turned.
    Near the ground, her father’s window was still open just a hairline crack. The crack was lined with the wriggling heads, legs, and wings of a thousand enraged bees struggling to squeeze through. Behind them, a thousand more pressed forward. Both windows were completely covered with a shifting, throbbing, crawling mass of black-and-yellow insects.
    Seven-year-old Kathryn took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and screamed.

Cary, North Carolina, April 21, 1999
    Nick Polchak rapped his knuckles on the frame of the open doorway. He glanced back at the Wake County Sheriff’s Department police cruiser blocking the driveway, orange and blue lights silently rotating.
    “Yo!” Nick called into the house. “Coming in!”
    A fresh-faced sheriff’s deputy in khaki short sleeves poked his head around the corner and beckoned him in. Nick wondered where they got these kids. He looked younger than some of his students.
    Nick stepped into the entryway. Dining room on the right, living room on the left. It was a typical suburban Raleigh home, a colonial five-four-and-a-door with white siding and black shutters. A mahogany bureau stood just inside the door. At its base lay three pair of shoes, one a pair of black patent leathers. Nick shook his head.
    He knew the layout by heart: stairway on the left, powder room on the right, down a short hallway was the kitchen, and the family room beyond that.
    Nick paused in the second doorway and took a moment to study the young officer. He stood nervously, awkwardly, constantly checking his watch. His right hand held a handkerchief cupped over his nose and mouth, and he winced as he sucked in each short gulp of air. Nick followed the officer’s frozen gaze to the right; the decomposing body of a middle-aged woman lay sprawled across the white Formica island in the center of the kitchen.
    Nick knocked again.
    “Officer … Donnelly, is it? I’m Dr. Nick Polchak. Are you the first one here?”
    “I was just a few blocks away, so I took the call.” He glanced again at his watch. “Our homicide people ought to be along within the hour.”
    Nick began to stretch on a pair of latex gloves and stepped around to the victim’s head. “The name on the mailbox said ‘Allen.’”
    “Stephanie Allen. That’s all I’ve been able to get so far.” The deputy nodded silently toward the family room, where a solitary figure sat slumped forward in a red leather