Devil's Playground Read online

  DEVIL’S

  PLAYGROUND

  D.P. Lyle

  DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND

  Published by Reputation Books www.reputationbooksonline.com

  Copyright © 2001 by D. P. Lyle All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in manner whatever without written permission from Reputation Books, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact publisher at [email protected].

  Book design by Lisa Abellera

  eBook design by Mary C. Moore

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-In Publication Data (TK)

  ISBN-10: 0-9740222-0-9 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9740222-0-8

  ISBN-10: 0-9740222-3-3 (e-book)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9740222-3-9

  Reputation Books Edition: July 2014

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not have been possible without the help of many trusted friends. The members of my writing group: Roger, Ticky, Vicki, Anna, and Christina. My designated readers: Aunt Nancy, Janny, Jimmy, Bobbie, Hawk, Sparky, Tootie, Roxy, and Mikey, who had to pour over every draft because I know where they live. Nan, who gave me the time and freedom to pursue the madness of writing. Our late “kids” Squirt (1980-1997) and Mr. Punk (1984-2000), who helped with this story’s initial draft by kitty-walking on my keyboard, bathing in front of my monitor, playing with everything on my desk, driving me crazy, and making me laugh. I thank them all.

  Contents

  ∙ Chapter 01 ∙ Chapter 02 ∙ Chapter 03 ∙ Chapter 04 ∙ Chapter 05 ∙ Chapter 06 ∙ Chapter 07 ∙ Chapter 08 ∙ Chapter 09 ∙ Chapter 10 ∙ Chapter 11 ∙ Chapter 12 ∙ Chapter 13 ∙ Chapter 14 ∙ Chapter 15 ∙ Chapter 16 ∙ Chapter 17 ∙ Chapter 18 ∙ Chapter 19 ∙ Chapter 20 ∙ Chapter 21 ∙ Chapter 22 ∙ Chapter 23 ∙ Chapter 24 ∙ Chapter 25 ∙ Chapter 26 ∙ Chapter 27 ∙ Chapter 28 ∙ Chapter 29 ∙ Chapter 30 ∙ Chapter 31 ∙ Chapter 32 ∙ Chapter 33 ∙ Chapter 34 ∙ Chapter 35 ∙ Chapter 36 ∙ Chapter 37 ∙ Chapter 38 ∙ Chapter 39 ∙ Chapter 40 ∙ Chapter 41 ∙ Chapter 42 ∙ Chapter 43 ∙ Epilogue ∙

  ∙ About the Author ∙

  ...though now they lie groveling and prostrate on yon lake of fire...

  Beelzebub, from Paradise Lost John Milton

  Chapter 1

  James McElroy was into the sixteenth hour of the fifth day of his East Coast turn-around. The two Black Mollies he popped outside Gallup, New Mexico were on their downhill leg, no longer packing enough punch to keep him fully awake. Only two hours to LA. No sweat.

  His back and shoulders ached from wrestling the eighteen-wheeler since sun up in Amarillo and his butt felt as though it had grown to the seat. He had made good time, 950 miles so far, and were it not for a shredded front tire near Tucumcari, he would be home by now. Instead, he faced another 130 monotonous miles.

  He fired up a fresh Marlboro with the glowing remnant of the one he had lit seven minutes earlier and tossed the dead one out the window, creating a firefly wake, which quickly dissolved into the thick blackness of the desert night. He drained the last of the Wild Turkey in two gulps and dropped the bottle in the passenger side floorboard, where it clanked against its empty twin.

  He yawned, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and inspected himself in the rearview mirror. Two days growth, a thick layer of road dirt, and eyes, red to the point of bleeding, stared back. He curled his lip and ran his index finger across his front teeth, attempting to scrub the film from them. A dab of dried ketchup, left there by the greasy hamburgers he had picked up in Flagstaff, sat on his chin like a birthmark.

  Jesus, he looked like shit.

  He also needed to piss. He should have stopped at King’s Truck Stop in Mercer’s Corner a couple of miles back. Whenever he made this run, he usually did stop there for a quick piece of pie and a caffeine jolt to carry him through the last two hours. Tonight, he had intended to, remembered seeing it as he flew by, but his mind must have been elsewhere. Where? He couldn’t remember. Probably concentrating on the white line that constantly disappeared beneath his left front wheel and seemed fuzzier with each passing mile.

  He sucked down the last quarter of the cigarette, tossed the butt out the window, and grasped the gear lever. The engine whined in protest as he downshifted and the air breaks squealed and huffed, hauling the beast down from eighty-five miles per hour. He eased to the shoulder of Interstate 40.

  As he stepped from the cab, a 20-mile-per-hour wind gust pushed the cold night air through his shirt, releasing an involuntary shiver. He snagged his jacket from the truck, slipped it on, and yanked open his fly. As he urinated, he wavered, the wind buffeting him more than his alcohol-sabotaged legs could handle, forcing him to lean against the truck’s door for support.

  After unloading the Wild Turkey, he zipped his fly and inhaled the night air in a futile attempt to shred the cobwebs that clutched his brain. He yawned and climbed into the cab, where the smell of stale whiskey and grease wafted up from the passenger side floorboard. He gathered up the empty bottles and the hamburger wrappers and tossed them into the night. Slamming the truck in gear, he accelerated down the shoulder of the freeway, gravel flying.

  After regaining the roadway, he snatched the CB mic from its dashboard mount. “Breaker 19. This is Big Dog, westbound, I-40. Need a smoky check.”

  “Break 19. How you doin’, Big Dog. This is Gatorman outta Jacksonville, eastbound. All clear over my shoulder. Put the hammer down, Good Buddy.”

  “Thank you, Gatorman. This is Big Dog, westbound and down.”

  All clear. Maybe he could make LA in an hour and a half. The Peterbilt growled and the tires whined as he accelerated to ninety-five miles per hour. He wanted this trip to end, wanted to dump his load of gasoline in L.A. and get to Van Nuys where Lucy would be waiting with a warm shower and a warmer body. Christmas was still two weeks away, but maybe he'd give her the present he had bought for her tonight, rather than wait. She always looked good in black lace.

  He massaged his stiff neck and yawned, wishing he had a cup of strong coffee to knock down the fatigue.

  Soon, gravity tugged at his eyelids, tipped his head downward until his chin rested on his chest, and drew sleep into his brain. Warm, wonderful, welcome sleep.

  The truck lurched as it slipped off the roadway, bouncing his chin against his chest, jerking him to wakefulness. He yanked the steering wheel to the left; the tires squealed, clutching the pavement. The truck wobbled unsteadily, and for a brief moment he thought he had lost it, but somehow managed to regain control. He gulped air while his heart did the Meringue in his chest.

  Jesus, that was close.

  Fatigue and somnolence evaporated as if a double espresso had been injected directly into his heart. He quickly recaptured ninety-five miles per hour, settled in his seat, and returned his concentration to the white line that led him toward L.A.

  From nowhere, an unseen dagger of ice-cold pain penetrated his left temple, his brain, squeezing tears from his eyes. Through the windshield, the monochromatic night mutated into an explosion of color. The white line he followed remained white, stark white, but was now razor sharp, unwavering, as straight as a blueprint line.

  The parade of red taillights, stretching before him, and the line of twinkling headlights, which delineated the eastbound lanes to his left, transmuted into smears of brilliant pastels like schools of tropical fish racing through a black ocean, their colors blending into long multico
lored ribbons. Hot yellow, orange, and red fused with cool blue, green, and violet, creating a psychedelic cacophony of color in which each melted into the other while maintaining its own distinctiveness.

  He blinked and shook his head. Surely, this was a dream. What else could it be? Panic swelled in his chest, but before it could take hold, it waned, sinking in the depths of the colors that swirled in his brain.

  He scanned the pastel river before him, searching. For what? He didn’t know. He knew only that it was there and he must find it.

  Nothing.

  Panic returned with a surge of heat that expanded in his chest, whipping his heart into a gallop. His throat constricted as if snared by a hangman’s noose.

  His focus shifted to the oncoming lanes to his left. Where was it? What was it? His gaze skimmed along the river of molten colors. It was there somewhere. He didn’t know how he knew it was, but he knew.

  Panic and frustration smothered him. Sweat rolled down his forehead, into his eyes, as the heat within his chest swept outward, into his face, down his arms and legs. His blood felt like a boiling, bubbling cauldron. He wiped the sticky sweat from his face with his sleeve, then cranked down the window and sucked in the cold air in huge gulps.

  There. That’s it. In the oncoming lanes. One pair of headlights, in the distance, neither white nor pastel nor fused with the tropical flow of color, but rather bright, crimson, penetrating, captured his gaze.

  Alert, focused, he slid into the left lane and pressed the accelerator to the floor, hurling the churning Peterbilt forward.

  One hundred, one hundred and five.

  He moved to the right lane, passed a station wagon, to the left, nearly clipping a Cadillac.

  One hundred and ten.

  A Porsche swerved to the right to avoid being trampled, then waffled in the turbulence the truck dropped in its wake.

  One hundred fifteen.

  He aimed the truck off the road into the 100-yard-wide median that separated I-40 East and West. The truck bounced and gyrated over the rough terrain, eating the thick Creosote scrub brush and the low, round Burroweed in its path like a giant locust in a feeding frenzy. Cutting across a three-foot deep, fifteen-foot wide dry wash, its massive steel bumper ripped a twenty-foot Desert Catalpa Willow from its moorings and tossed it high into the night air. The driver saw none of this, his focus locked on the ruby headlights, now 800 yards away.

  That corner of his brain where reason and sanity resided, screamed at him, imploring him to turn back. He wanted to veer away from the oncoming traffic, to slam on the brakes, to stop this madness, but he could not. His hands would not turn the steering wheel; his foot would not release its pressure on the accelerator.

  As he neared the roadway, the oncoming cars, swerved, sped up, slowed down, locked brakes, anything to avoid the rampaging truck. McElroy ignored them, rocketing past, focused on only one, much as a cheetah gallops past easy prey to strike at the one Springbok that is most vulnerable. The one selected by some genetically imprinted template. The one that must be taken if the cheetah is to survive.

  A similar need pulled James McElroy forward. He wanted to turn away, but the tenacious urge tightened its grip, squeezing his resistance into submission.

  His target was now directly ahead, 400 yards. The truck climbed onto the pavement, brush hanging from its grill, like remnants from the jowls of some large carnivore after a successful hunt. A car swerved to the left, another to the right, catching the gravel shoulder, flipping over, sliding into the night in a swirl of dust.

  Three hundred yards.

  A station wagon jerked sharply, too sharply, spinning off the pavement, tipping onto two wheels before coming to rest against a twenty-foot boulder.

  Two hundred yards.

  The truck moved to the left and straddled the white line, staking its claim to the roadway.

  One hundred yards.

  The ruby lighted car moved left, right, then left again, seeking refuge, finding none. The car pitched forward, tires screaming and smoking as the driver assaulted the brake pedal. Too late.

  The truck consumed the car as easily as it had the scrub brush, flattening it like the bugs that decorated its windshield. Seven of its eighteen tires ruptured, fragmented, releasing their grip on the road. The polished aluminum petroleum-filled trailer swung forward, dragging the cab behind it as the rig jack-knifed, tipped on its side, sparks flying, and exploded, transforming the desert into an inferno.

  Chapter 2

  By 10 p.m., Deputy Samantha Cody had spent two hours catching up on paper work. She hated it. Sitting on her butt, reading mundane reports, completing repetitious forms, was not her idea of police work. The only thing she hated more than doing the work was looking at stacks of it on her desk. She was never this far behind, but the past two months had been neither easy nor routine.

  The arrest and trial of Richard Earl Garrett for the murder of three local children and his defense that “the devil made me do it” had turned the quiet desert community of Mercer’s Corner into a macabre carnival. Newspaper and TV reporters roamed the streets, sniffing for sensational stories. Visitors drove hundreds of miles just to say they had seen the town. A group of Satanic groupies had camped on the corner near the Sheriff’s Department everyday for a month. Locals were terrified. Thank God, the entire mess was about to end.

  Garrett had already been convicted and tomorrow would be the final arguments in the penalty phase. Sentencing should soon follow, and then, maybe everybody would go back where they came from and life could return to normal. None to soon for Sam.

  She had finished off a granola bar, two cups of coffee, and half of the paperwork when she heard the front door open. A voice echoed down the hall. “Hello? Anybody here?”

  “Down here,” she called back. Footsteps approached and Nathan Klimek entered.

  “How are you doing?” A broad smile erupted from his tanned, model-like face.

  “What can I do for you, Mister Klimek?”

  “I saw the lights on and your Jeep out front. I thought you might want to get some coffee or something.”

  “I told you. No interviews.”

  Nathan Klimek, star reporter for “Straight Story,” a supermarket checkout counter tabloid rag, had hounded her for three weeks for an interview. So had every other newspaper and TV reporter in town.

  “Now that the trial is over, I hoped you had changed your mind.” He forked his fingers through his thick, light brown hair, sweeping it back from his forehead.

  “The trial isn’t over. Or don’t you need sentencing to write your story? That’s right, I forgot. You make it up as you go along.”

  “We stand behind every story we print.”

  “Just not down wind.” Her brow wrinkled into a frown.

  “You don’t like me very much do you?”

  “Perceptive.”

  “What did I do?” He gave her a look somewhere between shock and hurt. Practiced most likely, she thought.

  “What did you do? Are you kidding? Look around. The chaos that has surrounded this trial.” She waved her hand toward the window. “You broke the story. You opened the door and let the flies in.”

  “It’s news.”

  “No, it’s not. Not your kind of news, anyway. It’s a tragedy. For the victims, the families, and this town. You made it an international event.”

  “People are interested in child murders. Especially if Satanism is involved.”

  “Satan, my ass. Garrett is a sicko that hacked up three innocent children. He isn’t possessed or the son of Satan or anything like that. He’s a child killer. Nothing more. But, your paper splashed his story from coast to coast and we have to bear the brunt of the morbid curiosity that followed.”

  “But...”

  The phone rang.

  Sam waved him away and picked up the receiver. “Hello.” She listened for a moment. ”Where?” She exhaled loudly. “I’ll be right there.” She dropped the phone in its cradle and looked at Nathan. “
You’ll have to excuse me. Duty calls.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing that would interest you. A traffic accident. But, if one of the drivers has three heads, I’ll call you.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. She couldn’t prevent a half smile from raising one corner of her mouth.

  He followed her out and she locked the door behind them.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  “I’m sure you will,” she said as she jumped into her Sheriff’s Department Jeep.

  She fired up the engine and headed north through town, toward the freeway. The call had been from Sheriff Charlie Walker. A major accident, involving a gasoline truck, had occurred on I-40 East four miles west of town. She flipped on the roof-mounted flashing lights and accelerated down the on-ramp, merging onto I-40 West.

  A mile from the accident site, she could see a red-orange ball of fire, which lit the night as if the sun had crashed into the desert. As she cut through the wide median, flames seemed to tower above her, licking at the low-hanging scattered clouds, painting their undersides orange. A thick plume of oily smoke churned skyward, obliterating the half moon, which peeked between the clouds, and cast the desert into an even deeper darkness, intensifying the glow of the blaze.

  She eased across the eastbound lanes and parked off the roadway. Stepping from the Jeep, she took in the spectacle before her.

  The smoldering gasoline truck had consumed most of its cargo and been reduced to a hissing metal carcass, which glowed a cherry red. The flames, though still leaping thirty feet in the air, diminished minute by minute. Two firemen wrestled with anaconda-like hoses and directed thick streams of water at the wreck, which sputtered in protest and released clouds of steam into the sky. The air was thick and rancid with the smell of burnt petroleum, like an old service station, its floor slicked with years of dripping oil pans. The entire scene looked like an Irwin Allen disaster movie.

  An overturned Camaro had cut a 150-foot-long trench in the desert floor with its roof before coming to rest against a condo-sized boulder. A rusted station wagon, its right front wheel folded beneath its frame, hugged a droopy Catalpa Willow as if seeking protection much as a child pulls bed covers over its head to escape the troll that lurks in the shadowed corner of his room. A frazzled family of four huddled nearby. Sixty cars lined the freeway shoulder, their wide-eyed occupants coalesced in several groups, some talking, some staring silently, all hoping to see something gruesome no doubt.