The house looked like it had before. The yard was slightly more overgrown and there were still newspapers on the front porch, but so far as appearances went, it looked like no one had lived in this house for a long time.
Steele didn’t move right into the yard. He wanted to wait, to see what he could find out before he did that. The police were itching to go in and take Ellen out, but he knew as sure as he was standing there that it would not end well for the police, no matter how many guns they had.
“She in there?” Steele looked over at Landon and the cop who had been following them around for the last hour. “He’d like to be able to send in the troops.”
Steele didn’t answer either man. Landon was pissed off. The cop was making them all nuts, and the cop had his hand on his gun like it was going to do him a bit of good on the rest of the monsters in the house. Instead of standing there and telling him again that they needed some answers first, he went to find their contact, Sergeant Perrier.
Madeline Perrier was the most laid back cop he’d ever worked with. Not only had she risen to the rank of sergeant in a relatively short amount of time, the townspeople in her little burg wanted her to run for mayor as well. Steele had no doubt that she’d do a fine job of that too.
“Steele? Everything all…?” She glanced over his shoulder, and he knew that the cop was hot on his heels. “He is going to shoot his fucking dick off if he doesn’t calm now. I’ll take care of him. Anything else I should know?”
“Billy and two more are looking inside. I’m waiting on them before we go in with our heads on a platter for her.” She nodded and Wonder-Cop came up beside him. “When I have it, you’ll have it.”
“I was thinking that we should send in one of them drone things. You know, with a camera on it.” Wonder-Cop smiled and started nodding as he continued. “My kid has one of them. Does a fine job of seeing all kinds of stuff in the room you normally wouldn’t be privy to.”
“What a fine idea.” Both Steele and Wonder-Cop looked at Perrier when she spoke. “You go on back to the station and get ours. Tell Mavis that I said it was in the locked room in the sublevels of the jail. The box is marked tromper.”
Steele watched the cop leave them, and he turned to Perrier. She was laughing pretty hard as she waved the moron away when he drove by them in a cruiser. He cleared his throat and looked at her.
“Tromper?” She nodded and told him what it meant. “Ah. So he doesn’t speak French, I guess, and has no idea that you’re telling Mavis that he’s a fool.”
“I’m pretty sure she knows that anyway, but it’s code for her to keep him there for me. We’ve used this ploy before.” Perrier shook her head. “I might take the mayoral job just to get away from fools like him.”
Billy prevented him from telling her she should take it anyway. He looked…well, nauseous, Steele thought, and wondered what sort of things were going on in the house. Steele excused himself and walked to where the rest of his group was.
“She’s been busy. I mean…Christ, you should see what she’s been up to.” Billy looked away, then back at them. “I never seen the likes of it, Steele. Never. But she’s been taking out her frustrations on the men that she’s lured there. Three of them I think. It’s bad.”
Steele had talked to the others, ghosts that were loyal to him, and had them working the yard. None of them had reported that anyone had gotten by them, but he knew that their way of doing things wasn’t perfect. Three men. Steele asked him if that included the pizza boy that had come up missing a few days ago.
“I can’t tell.” Billy looked at Carlton, who had come to stand with them. Nick was on his cell phone and he could tell that he was upset, but he had no idea why. As Billy continued, Steele sent his sister to Nick. “The blood is just everywhere. She’s been using the table in the kitchen as her lab, I think.”
“There are four bodies in the house. All dead and all have been tortured not just by her, but by Glass’s troops as well after they are dead. Steele, I have never seen such a bloodbath before. And the dead are needing to move on. They’ve suffered enough.” Steele nodded and looked at the house as Carlton continued. “I’ve sent young Donny home. There is no reason for him to be here. He’s…I know that he’s been gone from this earth for a while, but he’s much too young to see this.”
Steele told him it was a good idea. And when his sister came back to him, Steel knew that something else had happened. Before she could tell him, however, Nick came to him. He looked like a man that had been run over.