The Rampant Reaper Read Online Free PDF Page B

fingers. The drive circled around a center island where ornate, stilled fountains had filled with leaves instead of water and stone lawn ornaments posed as if for sale—deer, racoon, bear, squirrel, duck. No plastic and no flamingoes.
    The building curled a semicircle around the end of the drive opposite the island with lawn ornaments. A one-story brick, it had bright white pillars holding up the porch roof, and matching shutters at the paned windows, sort of a colonial ranch house-motel hybrid. There were French windows and doors, and the porch was lined with empty wicker lawn furniture, white with bright floral cushions and a scattering of brown leaves. The oaks, soaring over the place like a Disney nightmare, didn’t look gentle to Charlie. Perhaps it was her mood, this being a somber place on a somber trip.
    The help and service trucks must park behind the building—but there were no NO PARKING signs on the drive, so
Charlie pulled up right out front behind the marshal’s Jeep. Maybe his grin would lighten up her day.
    The small lobby, decorated in pleasant pastels, had chairs and a couple of sofas, silk-flower arrangements, and the closed door to the administrator’s office. There was no reception desk, so they opened the double doors at the back of the lobby and were met with two women rushing out—one in a wheelchair—and the overriding stench of human feces and the startling blare of an alarm. When they turned back into the lobby to get a breath of air, the wheelchair lady grinned a mouth missing half its teeth and took a magazine from one of the end tables.
    Cousin Helen was next through the door. “Oh, it’s only you, Gladys.” She turned back inside and held the door open to reach behind it and the alarm blessedly silenced. “Sorry about this,” she told Edwina. “It’s just nuts today. And tonight’s the full moon.”
    â€œShould we not have opened the door?” Charlie asked.
    â€œIt’s not you gals. It’s Gladys and her ankle bracelet that set off the alarm.”
    Gladys had a lovely head of gray-streaked hair and a leg in a knee cast, extended out in front of her on a sort of plank. Her other leg was bent at the knee, that foot on a foot rest, and around its ankle she wore a black band with an oblong box on it. She grinned even wider and as Cousin Helen turned away from her, slipped her magazine up her skirt and reached for another. “I have three boyfriends, honey, how about you?”
    â€œThere was another woman slipped through with Gladys,” Charlie said.
    â€œOh, shit.”
    â€œWe got plenty of that.” Gladys clapped her hands and drool slid down over her chin. Her glasses were so dusty it was a wonder she could see. “We’re gonna have fun today. It was Marlys.”
    â€œWhere’s that no-good Delwood when you need him?”
    â€œHis Jeep’s outside,” Charlie offered.

    â€œThat, I know.” Helen wore white polyester pants with a blue-flowered smock almost to the knees.
    â€œNot Marlys Dittberner?” Edwina said. “That was—”
    â€œThe very one. Welcome home, cuz.” She opened the doors to let the smell out into the lobby and yelled, “Darlene, tell old Delwood to get his sweet ass out here fast.”
    â€œHow can you stand it?” Charlie asked, breathing through her fingers.
    â€œI can’t believe it, Marlys Dittberner. Still alive,” Edwina said.
    â€œOh, the smell? You get used to it. And it’s worse in the morning. You got what, eighty filled adult night diapers to change? And we’re fully staffed. Think what it’s like out in the real world where women and junkies can get paying jobs.” Cousin Helen looked like herself but didn’t sound like the woman Charlie met in the church basement and ate dinner with last night. “We’re usually spiffied up by nine, ten in the morning. After-lunch bowel movements