or knifings because people here don’t pay them any more mind than the brothels or gamblers. These murders I’m talking about…goddamn, folks have been slaughtered, Tyler. Mutilated in the worse ways. Heads torn off, bellies opened up, limbs ripped free. I’ve heard rumors that these bodies, they were eaten.”
A long gray ash fell from Cabe’s cigarette. “Eaten? Well, shit, sounds more like wolves or a wild dog pack. I’ve heard stories about Mormons, but never that they ate folks.”
“ I agree. But, again, get people here to believe that. They’ve formed vigilance committees and are shooting at shadows. Things are getting crazy.”
But Cabe could understand it. The Mormons. They were different, they made good targets. Good ones to vent your frustrations on. Because when people got scared, they formed into gangs and these gangs needed a common enemy. If they couldn’t find one, they created one.
“ I guess all I’m saying to you,” Carny began, “is that this Sin City Strangler of yours, he couldn’t have found a better place to squat. He’ll fit into this madhouse like a needle into a button hole.”
Cabe didn’t doubt that at all.
8
Later, in his room, Cabe did some thinking.
A mining town. Dance houses, gambling halls, saloons, brothels. There was nothing money could not buy in such a place. The riches coming out of the ground would attract killers and thieves and scoundrels of every conceivable stripe. Immigrants would flood in, bringing trash from every corner of the country with them. The mining companies would pay men three-dollars a day for ten and twelve-hours workdays, six days a week if not seven. Drillers and muckers and jackers. Powermen would gouge out drifts and slopes, gut the mountains to extract ore. And the mines would hum around the clock and timber would be stripped from hillsides for bunkhouses and shacks and offices. Run-off from the smelters would kill the vegetation and foul the creeks and rivers and the lake with waste. The fish would all die and those that remained would be fouled with toxins. The town itself would be just as filthy and stinking as a boring cob. The company—or three of them, in this case—would own just about everything and everyone. It would have stores that sold everything from beef to Bibles to bed sheets and the miners would pay in company script, keeping the workers nicely in debt. There would be company doctors and company housing and company stables. And, if all else failed, a company coffin in six-feet of rank company earth.
Men would come by the hundreds to sell their souls to the malefic company god. Lots of men would die in the shafts—from cave-ins, from gas, from explosions, from dangerous equipment—but that wouldn’t bother the company none because they had ten men lined-up and ready to take the company oath…soon as they pushed your corpse out of the way.
Yeah, that was Whisper Lake.
Like some huge human hive where flesh and blood were as cheap as desert dirt and the rich owners and their lily-white board of directors sat up in the high offices, pressed and starched and spotless. Never caring how much blood was on their hands because it always washed off and if there was enough green, it canceled out oceans of red.
Whisper Lake. A human cesspool where humanity was a commodity like hides or whores.
Then you add to that heady mix these murders and the Mormons and the vigilantes and too many hot-hands and not enough cool heads and you had real trouble.
And that, Cabe knew, was Whisper Lake laid bare. The town stripped of skin—raw quilts of muscle, yellow fat, and greasy rank blood that stank of mordant corruption.
The perfect stalking ground for the Sin City Strangler.
Looking out his window at the muddy streets below, Cabe waited. Maybe for the Strangler. Maybe for something else. Because whatever it was, it was coming. And it was going to be bad.
9
The prostitute’s name was Katherine Modine, but folks in
A long gray ash fell from Cabe’s cigarette. “Eaten? Well, shit, sounds more like wolves or a wild dog pack. I’ve heard stories about Mormons, but never that they ate folks.”
“ I agree. But, again, get people here to believe that. They’ve formed vigilance committees and are shooting at shadows. Things are getting crazy.”
But Cabe could understand it. The Mormons. They were different, they made good targets. Good ones to vent your frustrations on. Because when people got scared, they formed into gangs and these gangs needed a common enemy. If they couldn’t find one, they created one.
“ I guess all I’m saying to you,” Carny began, “is that this Sin City Strangler of yours, he couldn’t have found a better place to squat. He’ll fit into this madhouse like a needle into a button hole.”
Cabe didn’t doubt that at all.
8
Later, in his room, Cabe did some thinking.
A mining town. Dance houses, gambling halls, saloons, brothels. There was nothing money could not buy in such a place. The riches coming out of the ground would attract killers and thieves and scoundrels of every conceivable stripe. Immigrants would flood in, bringing trash from every corner of the country with them. The mining companies would pay men three-dollars a day for ten and twelve-hours workdays, six days a week if not seven. Drillers and muckers and jackers. Powermen would gouge out drifts and slopes, gut the mountains to extract ore. And the mines would hum around the clock and timber would be stripped from hillsides for bunkhouses and shacks and offices. Run-off from the smelters would kill the vegetation and foul the creeks and rivers and the lake with waste. The fish would all die and those that remained would be fouled with toxins. The town itself would be just as filthy and stinking as a boring cob. The company—or three of them, in this case—would own just about everything and everyone. It would have stores that sold everything from beef to Bibles to bed sheets and the miners would pay in company script, keeping the workers nicely in debt. There would be company doctors and company housing and company stables. And, if all else failed, a company coffin in six-feet of rank company earth.
Men would come by the hundreds to sell their souls to the malefic company god. Lots of men would die in the shafts—from cave-ins, from gas, from explosions, from dangerous equipment—but that wouldn’t bother the company none because they had ten men lined-up and ready to take the company oath…soon as they pushed your corpse out of the way.
Yeah, that was Whisper Lake.
Like some huge human hive where flesh and blood were as cheap as desert dirt and the rich owners and their lily-white board of directors sat up in the high offices, pressed and starched and spotless. Never caring how much blood was on their hands because it always washed off and if there was enough green, it canceled out oceans of red.
Whisper Lake. A human cesspool where humanity was a commodity like hides or whores.
Then you add to that heady mix these murders and the Mormons and the vigilantes and too many hot-hands and not enough cool heads and you had real trouble.
And that, Cabe knew, was Whisper Lake laid bare. The town stripped of skin—raw quilts of muscle, yellow fat, and greasy rank blood that stank of mordant corruption.
The perfect stalking ground for the Sin City Strangler.
Looking out his window at the muddy streets below, Cabe waited. Maybe for the Strangler. Maybe for something else. Because whatever it was, it was coming. And it was going to be bad.
9
The prostitute’s name was Katherine Modine, but folks in
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