The club’s sign was visible from a few blocks off, an elaborate network of neon that moved as different tubes lit and darkened. A nude woman clung to what looked like a vine. Even on a Monday night, the parking lot of the Beanstalk brimmed. Inside, beyond a goateed bouncer, it opened into one massive room. The periphery was dark, surrounding a stage that buzzed with stark, electric light, LEDs fading from one color to the next: magenta, teal, Gatorade yellow.
Around the tables, groups looked up in reverence or glee. They were men, almost all of them, and mostly young, though one table was all gray-haired men in expensive suits. David didn’t recognize any locals.
He’d left his cowboy hat in the truck, thinking he’d be less conspicuous without it. He’d brought Spady with him, explaining it as a long-overdue guys’ night out, but really Spady was his cover. He couldn’t go to a strip club alone and hope to keep a low profile.
Spady eyed the room warily, as if on alert. David wondered if his friend was nervous about the killer, as so many other locals were. Priest had kept her word and made sure that Erickson’s death didn’t leak out. But everyone still knew that a murderer was loose, that authorities had failed to catch him, and it felt as if anyone could be next.
How would they react if they knew what was really happening? Somehow, the killer had the spire—some part of it—inside of him, and it was making him kill. It was too much. Too insane. Even with all that had happened—a giant, dead alien, his senile grandfather coming to life for two minutes every night—this felt impossible. Because when he considered the possibility of it, he couldn’t help but think of the dose that the Tonys gave him. It was the giant, not the spire. But could it affect him just the same?
“What do you think? Table or the stage?” Spady asked.
“Let’s take that one,” David said, leading the way to a table in a corner of the room.
They sat, and a waitress took their drink order. On the stage, two women danced around metal poles with fake vines attached to them. One woman was a tall, lithe blond, the other a brunette dwarf.
“Is the little one supposed to be Jack?” Spady mused.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to think too critically about it,” David offered.
The waitress returned with beers and an offer of a private room. Spady waved her off.
“Where did you tell Brooke we were going?” David asked.
“Here, of course. Shit, she was just jealous that she had to be on shift and couldn’t come with us. Besides, I lie to her, and suppose’n she drives by and sees my truck in the lot. Well, she’s got a gun right there on her hip.”
“That she does.”
Hip-hop blared from the deejay’s booth. They watched the dancers, and then David let his attention drift beyond the stage. It was hard making anything out in the shadowy corners of the booths, but as the spinning lights of the stage arced around the room, they illuminated faces. Following the sweep of the lights, he worked his way table by table. He didn’t see anyone that he recognized. He didn’t know what he hoped to see here. Drugs changing hands openly? Someone parading around with a small baggie of crystalline substance? Whatever went on in this place, it happened out of sight.
Then he saw them. Soldiers, he could tell. They wore casual clothing, but they had the unmistakable tight haircuts and rigid posture of the army. To one side sat Private Chambers, the young man who’d been called in by Conover and Geiger. The man whose wife Jason had fucked. David looked away, hoping he wasn’t recognized.
“So, the girl you brought to the bar. What’s that about?” Spady asked.
He’d taken out a cigarette and smoothly toggled between that and his beer with his one hand.
“Sunny? I don’t know what it is yet. Suppose we enjoy each other’s company a bit.”
“Anyone at the bar could see that,” Spady replied. “I just meant that she isn’t one of us. Isn’t from the town.”
There was an undercurrent of judgment in his tone. Just enough to be unmistakable but little enough that he couldn’t be accused of it.
“No,” David answered. “She isn’t. I mean, the town being what it is, there aren’t too many gals to choose from.”
“Suppose there aren’t. I guess I was surprised, seeing you with an Oriental.”
“She’s Asian,” David corrected.
“It isn’t the same thing?”
“It isn’t.”
They drank. The song ended. The dancers left the stage. New ones came out, dancing and steadily shedding what little clothing they wore.
“Brooke knows,” Spady said.
David’s stomach dropped. She knows. Knows what? About the investigation? About the infection? About the cult and their mystery drug? He’d lost track of the number of truths he was forced to hide.
“We were watching the news and it hit me. That reporter. It’s Ben Junior,” Spady said. “Or Charlotte. Whatever his name is. Her name.”
“Oh.”
“You knew already.”
Not a question, but David nodded all the same.
“I wanted to tell everyone. But it’s her secret to share. And I think it’s hard for her.”
Spady gesticulated with his beer.
“Hard for her? Shit. Ben was our friend. He was one of us! And then he just disappeared. Just ran away and left us all behind.”
“Charlotte. Not Ben. I keep screwing it up, too, but I’m trying.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
They fell back to staring at the stage, though neither really watched the dancers. After a few minutes, looking straight ahead, Spady started to speak again.
“It’s wrong. This whole goddamned town is broken. When we were kids, the way things were . . . It was the way things had been since our parents were kids. Since our grandparents were kids. And it made sense. You knew who people were, what they were. And now . . . None of it makes a goddamned lick of sense.”
Spady took a long drink, then continued as the cigarette traced wisps of smoke in the air above the table.
“All these assholes coming in, thinking they can tell us how to live. We’ve been getting by just fine without them. We don’t need any goddamned help, thank you very much. And then there’s all the criminals, that goddamned cult.”
Spady finally looked at David, and his eyes were angry.
“You’re the one who’s supposed to be holding this all together. Protecting us. But goddammit, things are just getting worse and worse. And Brooke is out there nearly every damned night, working herself into the ground, because you’re off doing whatever the hell you’re doing. You’re hiding things. From her. From me. From your people. Why? That’s what I want to know. Why are you choosing them over us?”
David looked at his friend. Spady seemed rougher than usual, as if he’d aged years in the past weeks. His five o’clock shadow had grown out into long stubble, which showed flecks of gray at the corners of his mouth. It was so hard to imagine the way things had been—the way people had been. Not just that. It was hard to imagine that they had once been those kids. That the town had been that town.
“You’re right,” David said. “I have had to hold things back. Even now, there are things I know that I can’t tell anybody. It’s not because I don’t want to. It’s because I can’t. Jason’s killer is still out there, and I’ll do whatever it takes to track him down. And if that means pissing you off, or anyone else, that’s just the price I’m going to have to pay.”
The answer didn’t seem to satisfy Spady, but the argument had run its course. Spady turned back toward the stage and muttered something that was lost in the boom of the music.
David stood.
“Need to talk to a man about a horse,” he said.
The bathroom had the same harsh lighting of the rest of the club, though the thumping base of the music was thankfully muted. It felt like pissing inside a horror movie.
“You like the short chick?”
David recognized Chambers’s voice. He didn’t bother to turn around even as he readied himself. He would talk the kid down, if he could. If not, well, a bridge to cross when he came to it.
“Me, I’m not into it,” Chambers continued. “It doesn’t weird me out or anything. Just not my thing. I like them tall, tight ass, big fake titties. What about you, sheriff?”
Then he heard it. More boots scraping against the tile floor. Too many.
David zipped up, flushed the urinal. Behind Chambers, five other soldiers crowded in, one blocking the door. Hell.
David held up his hands.
“Hey, listen, I’m just here to . . .”
The fist cut off whatever else he planned to say. His cheek went numb, then burst with pain.
He was off balance, then a shove and he was on the ground. Cold tile. Boots, coming in a flurry.
He covered his face and curled, protecting as much as he could.
It seemed like it would never end.
Then, mercifully, it did. The boots marched away.
David sat a minute, trying to survey the damage. Bruises. A few bad scrapes. Nothing that wouldn’t heal. He pulled himself up onto the sink and washed his hands. In the mirror, he saw an already swollen cheek, a ripped shirt.
When he came back to the table, the soldiers were gone. Spady squinted at him, spotting his cheek.
“What the fuck?” Spady asked.
David waved him off.
“I’m fine. We should leave.”
Spady’s face curled into a snarl.
“Fuck that. Who was it? I’ll fucking kill him.”
He was up at once, his face reddening.
“I’ll fucking kill him.”
“He’s gone.”
“Who was it?”
David dropped cash on the table and grabbed Spady by the shoulders.
“Some drunk kid, okay? Remember, I’m the sheriff. If I want something done about it, I’ll be the one to do it.”
They went out into the parking lot, where Spady still seethed. He’d always had a temper, and age hadn’t knocked any of the edge from it. The night was dark, clouds blotting out any light from the stars or moon.
The fight gnawed at David. His adrenaline still pumped, and there was a part of him that imagined fighting back. A part of him that was furious and embarrassed. How long had it been since he’d had his ass kicked? High school, he figured.
There was something else. Something that didn’t quite fit in this sudden outburst of violence. Chambers was pissed off about his wife; David had no doubt in that. But why come after a man you knew was the sheriff, a man who had nothing to do with that act of adultery?
David opened the passenger-side door of Spady’s truck, grabbed his cowboy hat from the seat, and replaced it atop his head. He touched the taut skin of his swollen cheek, which flared anew with pain.
“Hell. Not quite the fun night out we envisioned, was it?” he said.
“Night isn’t over yet,” Spady answered in a somber voice.
“I don’t think I have another club in me,” David said, examining his face in the truck’s side mirror.
“No. I mean that.”
David looked. Spady was pointing north. David’s eyes followed, to the horizon beyond the parking lot, where an orange-red glow shone.
All at once, David’s phone buzzed.
“Fire.”