The Skull Ring by Scott Nicholson Read Free Book Online Page B

missing in the last two weeks. The leathery old man who'd walked her through the shelter and let her take pictures with her digital camera leaned against the fence, flicking his ash to the gravel. Five dogs pressed their noses against the chain links, only one wagging its tail. The rest looked like lifers, fur dull, ears drooping from the boredom of chronic confinement.
    "We usually get about three reports a week," the manager said, his voice rough from half a century of smoke. "Most of them are killed by cars, of course. Some just plumb run off, but a dog or a cat is a lot smarter than you think. But, just lately, a hell of a lot of them been lost, if you'll pardon my French."
    "I don't speak French," Julia said. "That's a hell of a language."
    The man laughed, coughed.
    Julia wrote some notes on her pad. "Has this ever happened before?"
    "Not since I been here, ten years," he said. "I'd just as soon you leave that part out of the story. The people who did our stories before focused on what important work we do, how much we rely on donations, that sort of thing."
    "A warm and fuzzy piece?"
    "Yeah." He knocked the fire from his cigarette butt, stomped it out, and put the butt in the pocket of his coveralls. The strong smell of animal waste rose with the shifting of the wind. The man didn't seem to notice. "We got enough problems here, as you can probably imagine."
    "Let me guess. The county funds only a tiny portion of your operation, but they impose all kinds of regulations. Not to mention all the state laws you have to follow. Then there are the outbreaks of parvo and feline leukemia and mange and fleas and heartworms. And the only thing you get out of it is, every once in a while, somebody comes by and adopts one of these guys."
    She reached her fingers through the fence and rubbed the nose of the nearest dog. It licked her fingers and gazed at her with morose, questioning eyes. She looked away before the guilt could finish its journey from her heart to her brain.
    "That's about the size of it," the man said. "A lot of people don't give a second thought to the way animals are treated. I just wish I could take them all home with me."
    The manager's eyes misted a little. Julia averted her eyes and scanned the wedge of sparse woods, the river, and the Elkwood wastewater treatment plant on the neighboring property. The mountains rose in the distance, red and gold and orange with the changing of the leaves. The clouds were high and thin in the sky.
    "Okay, warm and fuzzy it is," Julia said. "Just a question. Off the record, of course. Why do you think so many animals are missing?"
    The man reached into his pocket as if for another cigarette, but brought his hand away empty. "I used to live down in Austin, Texas," he said. "One morning a few farmers on the outskirts woke up to find some of their animals dead. Dogs, cats, a few lambs, even a cow. Had their throats cut. The cops found a little mashed-out place in a mesquite thicket. Whoever done it had themselves a little party."
    "Party?"
    "They made a ring of blood on the ground and poured out a star shape in the middle of it. Devil worshippers, the cops called it. Never did catch nobody."
    "Did it ever happen again?"
    "Not on that big a scale. They got reports now and then, dogs mutilated and such as that. Cops said some of them devil worshippers was known to actually drink the blood." The man's face wrinkled in revulsion. "Kindly hard to believe, ain't it?"
    "Not in this crazy world," Julia said. "Did you ever hear of any mutilations of people?"
    "Hell, that was Texas," he said. "People would throw down on each other with knives over which model of pickup was best. Sometimes they'd whittle a fellow right down to the bone."
    "Do you think somebody in Elkwood is killing animals?"
    He shook his head. "It can't happen here. Not in a town like this. They’re good, God-fearing folks who live by the Bible."
    "That's what they say everywhere," said Julia.
    "Excepting Los Angeles. And