Divine Evil

cold liter bottle of Pepsi at his side. He'd stripped down and showered since returning from the Dopper farm and now, wearing only jeans, watched the sun set, and wondered.
    Two young Angus had been brutally butchered. Decapitated. Castrated. According to the vet who had examined the corpses with him, several of the internal organs had been cut out. And were missing.
    Sick. Cam shrugged down Pepsi to wash the ugly taste from his mouth. Whoever had done it had wanted to shock and disgust-and had done a damn good job. Even Matt Dopper had been pale and pasty-faced beneath his fury. The calves had been only two months old and would have grown into hulking steers.
    To be butchered, Cam thought, but not mutilated. And Matt blamed him, at least partially. If the dogs hadn't been chained up, no one would have trespassed on the land, no one would have gotten to the stock, no one would have butchered his calves.
    Cam leaned back, watching the twilight, feeling the light chill of it on his bare skin. There was a stillness that fascinated him, a lovely kind of hush as the light faded from pearly to dim. Into the silence, like a benediction, came a whippoorwill's hopeful call.
    What was happening to his town, the town he thought he knew so well?
    A baby's grave disturbed, a man hideously murdered, calves mutilated. All of these things had occurred within weeks of each other in a town where the biggest controversy was whether to have a rock or a country band at the Legion on Saturday nights.
    Where was the connection? Did there have to be one?
    Cam wasn't naive enough to ignore the fact that city problems, and city violence, could creep down the interstate and sneak into town. Emmitsboro wasn't Brigadoon. But it had been the next best thing.
    Drugs. He took another swig from the bottle and watched the first star blink on. He would have said that whoever had taken a knife to the calves had to be wacked, or just crazy. And that person would have known Dopper's farm, and known too that the German shepherds were chained. So that someone belonged to Emmitsboro.
    The town was close enough to D.C. that it had the potential for a drug drop-off point. The fact was the state police had raided a farmhouse about ten miles south and had confiscated a couple hundred pounds of coke, some automatic rifles, and about twenty thousand in cash. With almost ridiculous regularity, mules were picked up traveling on Interstate 70, stupid enough to speed with bags of coke under the hubcaps.
    Could Biff have been picking up extra cash, screwed up a deal, or gotten greedy, then been taken out?
    He'd been beaten by someone crazed with fury-or by someone making a point.
    But neither of those incidents, nasty as they were, seemed to connect with the gruesome work in the cemetery.
    So why were his instincts telling him to look for a connection?
    Because he was tired, he thought. Because he'd come back here to escape from the ugliness and the guilt. And, he was forced to admit, the fears he had lived with since he'd held his dying partner in his arms.
    He sat back, let his eyes close. Because he wanted a drink, badly wanted a drink, he refused to move. He let himself imagine what it would be like to pick up a bottle, lift it, set those seductive glass lips against his and swallow: hot liquid searing down his throat to burn in his gut and numb his brain. One drink, then two. What the fuck, let's drink the whole bottle. Life's too short to be stingy. Let's drown in it. Drip with it.
    Then the misery of the morning after. Sick as a dog and wanting to die. Old Jack heaving back up while you sprawl in the bathroom and cling to the sweaty porcelain.
    Hell of a good time.
    It was just one of the mind games he played with himself since he'd broken off his friendship with good old Jack Daniels.
    He wanted to believe he could get up in the morning and the urge to reach for the bottle would be gone. Vanished. He wanted to think he could get up, cruise into town, hand out a few traffic violations, lecture a few kids, fill out a few forms.
    He didn't want a murder investigation or frantic farmers on his conscience. Most of all he didn't want to talkagain to frightened, grieving parents like the Jamisons, who called every week, like clockwork.
    But he knew he would get up the next day, check the urge to poison himself with Jack, then do his job. Because there was no place else for him to go and nothing else for him to do.
    You think you know this town, but you don't.
    Sarah