Practical Demonkeeping Chapter 33-34

33RIVERADuring the drive to Pine Cove, Rivera was nagged by the idea that he had forgotten something. It wasnt that he hadnt account where he was going he had planned that. Until he had somatogenic evidence that there was a serial killer in the area, he wasnt saying a word. But when he knocked on the Elliotts front admission and it swung open, he suddenly remembered that his bullet-proof vest was hanging in his locker hindquarters at the station.He called into the house and waited for an answer. N unitary came.Only cops and vampires ask to have an invitation to enter, he thought. But there is probable cause. The part of his mind that functioned the like a district attorney kicked in.So, Sergeant Rivera, the lawyer said, you entered a underc everyplace residence instald on a computer data base that could have been no more than a mailing list?I believed that Effrom Elliotts name on the list re familiarizeed a clear and present danger to a private citizen, so I entered the resid ence.Rivera drew his six-shooter and held it in his right hand plot of ground he held his badge come on in his left.Mr. and Mrs. Elliott, this is Sergeant Rivera from the Sheriffs Department. Im coming in the house.He moved from style to room announcing his presence before he entered. The bedroom door was closed. He saw the splintered bullet hole in the door and felt his epinephrin surge.Should he call for backup?The D.A. said And so you entered the house on what basis?Rivera came through the door low and trilled. He lay for a moment on the floor of the empty room, feeling stupid.What now? He couldnt call in and report a bullet hole in a residence that he had probably entered illegally, especially when he hadnt reported that he was in Pine Cove in the first place.One grade at a time, he told himself.Rivera give birthed to his unmarked car and reported that he was in Pine Cove.Sergeant Rivera, the dis assembleer said, there is a pass along for you from Technical Sergeant Nai lsworth. He said to tell you that Robert Masterson is married to the granddaughter of Effrom Elliott. He said he doesnt know what it means, but he thought you should know.It meant that he had to find Robert Masterson. He acknowledged the message and signed off.Fifteen legal proceeding ulterior he was at The air travels trailer. The old pickup was gone and no one answered the door. He radioed the station and requested a direct patch to the Spider.Nailgun, can you get me Mastersons wifes home address? He gave the trailer as residence when we brought him in. And give me the place where she works.Hold on, itll be just a second for her address. Rivera lit a cigarette while he waited. before he took the second drag, Nailsworth came back with the address and the shortest route from Riveras location.It will wee-wee a little longer for the employer. I have to access the complaisant Security files.How long?Five, maybe ten minutes.Im on my way to the house. maybe I wont need it.Rivera, there was a fire call at that address this morning. That mean anything to you?Nothing means anything to me anymore, Nailsworth.Five minutes later Rivera pulled up in front of Jennys house. Everything was cover with a gummy f cable-haired(a) goo, a mix of ashes, flour, and water from the fire hoses. As Rivera climbed out of the car, Nailsworth called back.Jennifer Masterson is concisely employed at H.P.s Cafe, off Cypress in Pine Cove. You compliments the phone number?No, Rivera said. If shes not here, Ill go over there. Its just a fewer doors down from my next stop.You need anything else? Nailsworth sounded as if he was property something back. No, Rivera said. Ill call if I do.Rivera, dont forget about that other matter.What matter?Roxanne. slow up on her for me.As soon as I can, Nailsworth.Rivera threw the radio microphone onto the passenger oceant. As he walked up to the house, he heard soul come on the radio singing a chorus to the telephone call Roxanne in a horrible fa lsetto. Nailsworth had shown his weakness over an open frequency, and now, Rivera knew, the altogether department would ride the fat mans humiliation into the ground.When this was over, Rivera promised himself, he would concoct a story to vindicate the Spiders pride. He owed him that. Of course, that depended on Rivera vindicating himself.The walk to the door covered his place with gray goo. He waited for an answer and returned to the car, cursing in Spanish, his shoes converted to dough balls.He didnt get out of the car at H.P.s Cafe. It was obvious from the darkened windows that no one was inside. His last chance was the query of the Slug Saloon. If Masterson wasnt there, he was out of leads, and he would have to report what he knew, or, what was more embarrassing, what he didnt know, to the captain.Rivera found a parking place in front of the Slug behind Roberts truck, and after taking a few minutes to get his right shoe unstuck from the gas pedal, he went in.34U-PICK-EMThe Pa gan Vegetarians for Peace called them the Sacred Caves because they believed that the caves had once been used by Ohlone Indians for religious ceremonies. This, in fact, was not true, for the Ohlone had avoided the caves as much as attainable due to the huge population of kookie that lived there, balmy that were inextricably locked into the pile of the caves.The first human occupation of the caves came in the 1960s, when a down-and-out husbandman named mark Styles decided to use the damp interior of the caves to cultivate plucks. mark started his business with five hundred wooden crates of the sort used for draw soda bottles, and a half-gallon carton of mail-order mushroom spores total investment cardinal dollars. homer had stolen the crates from behind the Thrifty-Mart, a few at a time, over the period of weeks that it took him to take away the pamphlet Fungus for Fun and Profit, put out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.After filling the crates with moist peat and laying them out on the cave floor, kor spread his spores and waited for the money to roll in. What Homer didnt figure on was the rapid arriveth rate of the mushrooms (hed skipped that part of the pamphlet), and within age he found himself sitting in a cave wide of mushrooms with no market and no money to pay for help in harvesting.The solution to Homers problem came from another government pamphlet entitled The Consumer-Harvested Farm, which had come, by mistake, in the same envelope with Fungus for Fun. Homer took his last ten dollars and displace an ad in the local paper Mushrooms, $.50 lb. U-PICK-EM, your container. Old Creek Road. 9?C5 daily.Mushroom-hungry Pine Covers came in droves. As fast as the mushrooms were harvested, they grew back, and the money rolled in.Homer spent his first profits on a reservoir and a string of lights for the caves, figuring that by extending his business hours into the evening, his profits would grow in proportion. It would have been a sound business move had the chapped not decided to rear their furry heads in protest.During the daylight the bats had been content to hang out on the roof of the cave while Homer ran his business below. But on the first night of Homers blanket(a) hours when the bats woke to find their home invaded by harshly lit mushroom pickers, their tolerance ended.There were twenty customers in the caves when the lights went on. In an instant the air above them was a maelstrom of screeching, furry, flying rodents. In the rush to exit, one woman fell and broke a hip and another was bitten on the hand while extracting a bat from her hair. The cloud of bats soon disappeared into the night, only to be replaced the next day by an equally mute cloud of landbound vermin personal-injury lawyers.The varmints prevailed in court. Homers business was destroyed, and once again the bats slept in peace.A depressed Homer Styles went on a pig out in the Head of the Slug. He spent four days in an Irish whiskey ha ze before his money ran out and song thrush Sand sent him to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. (Mavis could tell when a man had strive bottom, and she felt no need to pump a dry well.)Homer found himself in the meeting room of the First National Bank, impressive his story. It happened that at that same meeting a young surfer who called himself The Breeze was working off a court- logical sentence he had earned by drunkenly crashing a 62 Volkswagen into a police cruiser and promptly sick on the arresting officers shoes.The farmers story touched off an entrepreneurial visible radiation in the surfer, and after the meeting The Breeze cornered Homer with a proposition.Homer, how would you like to make some heavy bread growing legerdemain mushrooms?The next day the farmer and the surfer were hauling bags of manure into the caves, ventilation it over the peat, and scattering a completely different type of spore. agree to The Breeze their crop would sell for ten to twenty dollars an o unce instead of the fifty cents a pound that Homer received for his last crop. Homer was enraptured with the possibility of becoming rich. And he would have, if not for the bats.As the day of their first harvest neared, The Breeze had to take his leave of their plantation to shell out the weekend in the county jail (the first of fifty the judge had not been amused at having barf-covered police shoes presented as evidence in his courtroom). Before he left, The Breeze assured Homer that he would return Monday to help with the drying and marketing of the mushrooms.In the meantime, the woman who had been bitten during the debacle of the bats, came down with rabies. County animal-control agents were ordered to the caves to destroy the bat colony. When the agents arrived, they found Homer Styles crouched over a tray of psychoactive mushrooms.The agents offered Homer the option of walking away and leaving the mushrooms, but Homer refused, so they radioed the sheriff. Homer was led aw ay in handcuffs, the animal-control agents left with their pockets fill with mushrooms, and the bats were left alone.When The Breeze was released on Monday, he found himself in search of a new scam.A few months later, while incarcerated at the state prison in Lompoc, Homer Styles received a earn from The Breeze. The letter was covered with a fine yellow powder and read Sorry about your bust. Hope we can bury the hatchet.Homer conceal the letter in a shoe box he kept under his bunk and spent the next ten years aliment in relative luxury on the profits he do from selling psychedelic mushrooms to the other inmates. Homer sampled his crop only once, indeed swore off mushrooms for life when he hallucinated that he was drowning in a sea of bats.