Blood Red

Chapter 10

There were two abiding pains in Ben Kirby’s world when he woke up. The first was the throbbing, shrieking thing that had been his brain trying to crawl out of his head and find a place to die in peace. The second was the raw humiliation of having the girl he loved find him outside his apartment and help him inside.

The head he could do something about with a few hundred aspirin and a gallon or two of water; the heart was just something he had to endure. The only good news for him was that it was Sunday and he could sleep in for a while. Being a proper masochist, he made himself climb out of bed as soon as the sun’s rays tried to fry his eyeballs.

He made it out to the living room and sat down on the couch just in time to see Maggie leaving her apartment dressed in her Sunday best. One look at her and his headache faded to a whisper. Her hair was free to run around for a change of pace, instead of pulled back into her traditional ponytail; the thick, dark cascade of curls held his attention as surely as her smile always did.

She cast her eyes in the direction of his door for a second, warring with whether or not to check on him. Her teeth worried at her lower lip and he decided to make it easy for her.

Ben opened his door and looked out at her, smiling against the glare of the sun. “Good morning.”

“I was just thinking about you. You all right?”

“I think my head exploded, but otherwise, yeah, I’m good.”

She had a wonderful laugh. “It looks like it’s still attached to me.”

“I meant what I said last night, Maggie. Thanks for being a friend.”

“You saved my ass the other day, Ben.” She shrugged and looked away. Then she got a playful grin on her face. “Besides, I couldn’t leave you to puke in the courtyard. Somebody would have to clean it up.” She smiled, fired a wink over her shoulder, and headed toward the parking lot. “See you around.”

He watched her walk away, savoring the chance to look at her without being noticed. When she was gone, it was back inside to medicate his aching brain.

Maggie sat in the center of the third row of pews and found herself staring at Father Wilson as he stood behind the altar and started speaking of sin and the wages it most certainly brought about. He looked a little twitchy up there, which was rare for him. He certainly wasn’t quite as calm as he had been in the past, and while he looked at her several times, he didn’t wear the same expression of fatherly kindness she’d gotten so used to seeing.

His desire was torn between giving his all to the parishioners and simply bending her over the altar a second time: she could see it in his face and his troubled eyes. She couldn’t keep a small smile from playing around her lips, and the more she thought about what they had done right where he was standing in front of his congregation, the more aroused she became. It wasn’t just the act of sex; it was everything else as well. The man was trying his best to behave, but she knew what he was thinking. He wanted her; he wanted to run away from her. He wanted to speak with her and tell her what a mistake it had been, and he wanted to make sure she would keep her word about never telling another soul.

Wilson’s voice faltered for a second and she looked into his eyes. Maggie smiled for him, a fast sultry expression, and her eyes traveled the length of his body. She placed one finger against her lips, just for a moment, and licked her fingernail for his benefit. Nothing overt about the gesture; it would mean nothing at all to anyone but him, but for Father Wilson that gesture had powerful meaning.

He cleared his throat and looked away as if burned. Part of her was appalled by her own actions; part of her was amused by his reactions. Part of her wanted to bare her breast to him and see how long it took him to hurtle the rows of faithful churchgoers between them in order to take her again.

He turned his back to the parish and gathered his thoughts. Maggie looked off to the right and saw Patrick Flannery staring at her, his eyes slightly wider than usual and his lips parted as he watched her. She looked back in his direction and smiled again, a secretive, appreciative expression that told him exactly how much she had enjoyed her last confession. His hands were placed strategically in front of his crotch. She could still see his arousal.

When the sermon was done and everyone rose to pray, she felt the eyes of several men in the church seek her out. She stood before them all, hidden behind her proper clothing, and gave lip service to the words that were supposed to be spoken. They watched her as she left the church, and she in turn watched them as surreptitiously as she could.

Maggie knew good and damned well that she would be on the minds of the priests who attended to Sacred Hearts, and she reveled in that knowledge.

It was good to be wanted; sometimes it was better to be desired. Anyone that didn’t know the difference between the two hadn’t been paying attention.

Brian sat in the congregation, the space next to him left empty, held for Angie. There had even been a prayer said at the very beginning for her safe return to him. He watched the girl with the dark lustrous curls and just possibly the finest ass he’d ever seen, and thought about how much he would love to give her a ticket. It was a brief thought, a respite from the fear that was growing inside of him and mingling with the rage that was already dominating his thoughts. I bet she’d be a screamer. I bet she’d fight and scream and bite and beg. I’d love to hear her begging me to stop. I’d love to make her crawl and—

He cut the thoughts off; he was in a church after all, it wasn’t appropriate.

Angie should have been next to him. He’d never even bothered with the church before they’d met. She’d changed him in a lot of ways and even he had to admit that most of the changes were for the better. Only now that she wasn’t here, he actually came to the church seeking solace. It wasn’t working very well though. All he could think about was how much he missed his wife and how badly he wanted to nail the piece of ass a few seats over and in front of him. She’s a college girl, I bet. Probably goes speeding around corners more than she should. Maybe I’d be doing her a favor if I tailed her for a few days. Gotta remember to check what kind of car she drives. He shook his head, trying to get his mind off the girl a few seats away. He had to focus on Angie and their baby. That was what was important. But remembering the little bitch he’d raped in the woods was becoming a little bit of an obsession, and he wanted to get relief from the hard-on that was making his balls ache.

Still, not here and not with a member of the congregation. Too close to home. Even if she didn’t protest enough to warrant getting her pretty little head bashed in, she might decide to confess it to one of the priests, and then if Angie did come home—no, not if, when—he’d have one hell of a lot of explaining to do.

After what seemed like hours of genuflecting, the Mass was finally said and done. He rose and headed for the doors, accepting best wishes from several people he knew and a lot he didn’t. There was one girl back in the corner that he’d been with a few months back. She barely looked at him. She was still afraid of him and what he could do to her. That was a lovely thing.

The brunette with the pin-up body got outside before he did. That was all right. He wanted to see where she went, not follow her right now. All he had to do was get a tag number and the odds were beyond good that he could follow her anywhere: it was one of the advantages of being a cop.

There was a traffic jam at the threshold. Several people were standing in the doorway and looking out at the lawn of the church, not scared by whatever they saw, but certainly taken aback. Brian moved through them as carefully as he could until he saw what had them all so overwhelmed.

The girl was out there, and a few others were as well. And so were the crows. The birds were on every car, every open space around the entire church, on the telephone poles and trees, and even, he guessed, on the cross that adorned the top of the building.

They were just there, barely moving, not at all perturbed by the world around them. It had to be close to a thousand of the black carrion eaters. No, maybe closer to two thousand. But that wasn’t possible, was it? Could there be that many crows in the entire state?

The sexpot walked toward her car and Brian’s eyes were drawn to the movement; so, too, the eyes of the birds. Without any warning, they were airborne, black wings were flapping and generating an unsettling amount of wind. Autumn leaves blasted through the air in their wake and for a moment the air was as thick and fierce as a hurricane.

Brian backed up hastily as several of the crows suddenly veered and banked and came for the front entrance to the church. One of them came within inches of plucking his eye from his face, screaming indignantly as it came closer. His hand tried to settle on the holster he carried at work and clutched only air. It was probably for the best that he was off-duty, because he wanted the damned thing dead. That screeching noise reminded him too much of Angie when she was having a bitch fit about damned near anything.

The birds rose in a spiral, a storm of feathers and beaks and cackling cries of derision, circling the church and its parking lot several times before they dispersed.

By the time the crows had finished their aerial dance, the girl he’d been looking at was gone. If she walked or took a car, he had no way of knowing.

Sullen and bitter, Brian Freemont headed for his empty home. It was his day off, and he had nothing planned. He thought he might go for a drive, however, and see if he could find a few places with pleasant memories attached.

Danny was being a big baby. He wanted to be in church but there was too much work to do. He didn’t want to go to church because of his devout faith, mind you. No, he wanted to go because there were about five women there that he said dressed up so nicely he could go without seeing a girly magazine for a whole day after ogling them. “They’re good for my soul, I tell ya,” was his favorite line on any Sunday when he had to work.

Boyd didn’t care about church one way or the other, and as for ogling women, he could do that when they were dressed like angels, hookers, or even if they were naked. He was, in his own words, an equal opportunity leerer.

So it was IHOP instead of Sacred Hearts. That was okay. The food was better at the pancake place.

“Any leads on the Falcones’ car?” Danny was also nursing a mild hangover, so his normal cheer was down to a dull roar and that was good, because Boyd was nursing a slight hangover too. He blamed his partner; it was just too embarrassing to watch the bastard get drunk on his own.

“Yeah. According to Maria Falcone, it was her husband driving. She has no idea who would have been in the car with him. Says he was always picking up street trash to play hide-the-pepperoni with.”

The lady at the next booth over was listening to their conversation and her eyes went wide when he talked about hiding sausages. She got an indignant expression on her face—she was either on her way to church or on her way back, he could tell by the fancy clothes—and he skewered her with a glare that had her suddenly looking elsewhere.

“What is it about Italian men having to find it elsewhere, Boyd? I swear, fidelity and Italian do not mix.”

“It’s the culture. And don’t be an asshole. Not every Italian man is that way.”

“Name one who isn’t.”

“I’ll get back to you on that. It could take a while.”

“Yeah, call me next decade, Boyd.”

“Anyway, the lady says she wasn’t in the car and she doesn’t have any family with blond hair. So maybe we need to start checking with the hookers.”

“We have hookers in Black Stone Bay?” Danny was waking up, his smart-ass was showing.

“What about the college girls?”

“We got Veronica Miller, and we got Danielle Hopkins…”

“Yeah, those two. Any news?”

“Witnesses say one of them was talking to a kid in the park, named Ben, but no last name.”

“Physical description?”

“He’s allegedly ‘really cute.’”

“Can we just once not interview only the cute college students?” Boyd rolled his eyes.

“Umm. That was a guy, smart-ass.”

“Of course.” The woman at the next booth was making fish faces. She could go screw herself; which, he decided, was about as close as she ever got to lucky.

“Are we seeing a pattern yet?”

“Aside from what I said yesterday, no.”

“And then we have Freemont’s wife.”

“I’m telling you, he’s up to something.” Boyd scratched at his chin and continued to glare at the fish woman. “You know what? I want you to go over the car in the Veronica Miller case.”

“We already did that.”

“You said her purse was in there?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I want you to personally supervise taking fingerprints off her wallet and her photo ID. What the hell, let’s go for broke here. I want you to go over her insurance card and her registration, too.”

“Why, you think a cop did something?”

“I got twenty dollars that says Freemont was the cop on duty when her car was pulled over.”

“You seriously think he did something to her?”

“You said it yourself yesterday.” He started ticking off points on his fingers. “He had an hour of radio silence. He had a chance to do it and he was in the area. And I don’t trust that slimy little prick.”

“Will you please watch your language?” The church lady was making even more fishy faces as she stood up.

“You know what? Why don’t you sit your ass down and mind your own business, lady, before I book you for interfering with official police business.”

He took great satisfaction in watching her do exactly that.

It was almost sundown, and the day had dragged on for what seemed like a dozen or so eternities. Kelli sat back in her favorite seat on the porch, nestled in a coat and staring at the leaves on the trees.

The Listers were not having a good day and, as a result, neither was she. Despite her best efforts to remain strong and to be supportive for Teddy’s parents, she was ready to scream.

How is it that two people can live their lives together, have a child together, and not love each other at all? That makes as much sense as peanut butter and tuna fish salad egg rolls.

They were breaking, or they had already broken. Kelli wasn’t sure which, only that she was just now noticing the situation. Every time she’d seen them they seemed like the perfect couple. It was only now, with Teddy out of the picture, that she saw how little they had to say to each other. The only common denominator in their lives was their son. With Teddy gone, they were barely civil to each other, and most of what they had to say revolved around their mutual desire to make the hospital suffer as much as they were suffering.

They were inside the house, which was why she was outside. What had started as a nice, simple discussion about whether or not they were going to hire a private investigator to check on the possible incompetence of the hospital staff had exploded around the same time that Bill suggested using an agency he had hired previously from Boston. It seemed that Michelle’s firm had used the detectives before and found them wanting.

Right after that, the screaming match began. She hadn’t heard any of the conversation beforehand; it wasn’t in her nature to eavesdrop under most circumstances. But when the argument started growing, she really didn’t have a choice. The neighbors were probably hearing the damned fight a half a block away.

Bill started the actual yelling: “What the hell does it matter, Michelle? So your fucking boss had a bad experience with the Harkers! I don’t care! They’ve done damned good work for me for over ten years!”

“Yeah, I’ve seen the little bitch you keep hiring, too! Who do you think you’re kidding, Bill? How long have you been fucking her on the side?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! I’ve never done anything with Denise and you know it, Michelle. She’s a fucking detective who does work for me. I can’t believe you’d even make an accusation like that.”

“Really?” she asked. “Are you really having trouble with this after what happened at the goddamned New Year’s Eve party back in 2000?”

“Oh, give it a rest already!” He was really cooking after that comment. That was about the time Kelli left the house. “That was five years ago, Michelle! Five damned years, and nothing happened!”

“I don’t call a pregnancy scare nothing, you bastard. You’re lucky you didn’t get AIDS from that skank!”

She did her best to ignore the words that the Listers threw at each other. It might have been easier to do if they weren’t throwing more than just words. When she heard the fighting escalate to Michelle Factor Four—the point where breakables were normally hurled through the air—Kelli decided it was time to take a walk.

The woods were beautiful, of course. The colors of the leaves were brilliant and almost explosive. But that didn’t do a damned thing to cheer her up. The more she thought about Bill and Michelle fighting, the less she wanted to return to their home.

By the time she finally did return, the silence from inside the house was almost worse than the earlier screaming match. The tensions were high enough that she wanted a chainsaw to cut through the oppressive atmosphere.

So she sat here, on the porch, and watched as the sun fell lower. The trees finally obscured her view after a few minutes. Bill Lister stepped out of the front door and lit a cigarette. He sat down on the far end of the couch, ignoring the wicker’s creaking protests. Kelli smiled in his direction and he smiled back, a little shamefaced by what he suspected she’d heard.

“It’s safe now, if you want to go inside. We’ve reached the I’m-Not-Talking-To-You stage.” He tried to keep his voice light, but she could hear the strain.

“Oh, it’s all good. I’m just enjoying the dusk.”

“It’s a beautiful night. Or it will be.”

She looked away and was surprised to feel her eyes threatening tears. “Teddy should be here. He liked to sit in my lap and have me read to him when he was younger, and lately he’d just sit right where you are and read his own stuff.”

Bill looked away, and she could tell by the way he was swallowing in rapid gulps that he was trying not to lose it.

After almost a full minute he nodded his head. “Yeah, he should be here.” He looked at Kelli and she could see the ghost of Teddy’s future looking back. In that light, with that expression, Bill looked exactly like she thought Teddy would look when he was done growing up. “Do you think he’s alive, Kelli?”

She drank in the sight of him, not only because he was a handsome man and a crush she knew she would never act on, but because he was Teddy’s father and the closest link she had to a kid she cared for more than she expected to. Handsome. Teddy would have been a very handsome man someday. He would have gone on dates and the girls would have swarmed around him. He would have probably kept playing sports, maybe even football, and he would have been good at it. But he’s dead. I know he is. I can feel it. Death feels like autumn; cold and sad and so very lonely, even in a crowd.

“All we can do now is hope, Bill.”

She got up and went inside, because if she didn’t she could feel that things were going to go where they shouldn’t between her and Teddy’s father. She didn’t want to be the straw that broke the Listers’ marital back, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be the one Michelle referred to as a skank.

And what the hell was he thinking? He watched Kelli stand up and had to make himself stand still. He wanted to reach out and pull her to him, look into her dark blue eyes and run his fingers through her long chestnut hair. He wanted to hold her and comfort her the way he was supposed to take care of his wife and he was ashamed of himself for these feelings.

Kelli was half his age: it would have been close, but he was old enough to be her father. But she had exactly the sort of body he’d always loved—lean with small, shapely breasts and wide hips—and she was always so sweet. In the back of his mind, he played over another fantasy where she had her long legs wrapped around his body and her fingers locked in his hair and her mouth was bruising his lips.

He crushed out his cigarette and stood up, heading away from the house. The sun was down now and the air was getting colder, but he didn’t go back in for his jacket; he was pretty damned sure that if he saw Kelli in the next few minutes he would do something incredibly stupid.

Like kiss her and ask her to run away from all of this with me, and just for one time in my fucking life it would be so nice to forget everything but the freedom to do whatever I wanted. When the hell did I grow old and bitter? He chuckled to himself as he lit another cigarette. Around the same time I married Michelle, I guess. The same time I couldn’t just be free to go where I wanted and do all the things I kept meaning to do.

There had been college and then law school and then interning for a group of self-righteous bastards who knew their business and knew a good thing when they saw it. And damn, they’d paid him handsomely as soon as he graduated. But he sometimes wondered how different everything would have been if he’d decided to learn something other than corporate law when he was studying for the rest of his miserable life. Because there were days, and they were coming around more and more often, when he hated his job and he could barely stand to look at his wife.

Teddy had made it all worthwhile. The days when he and Michelle could barely stand each other, all his son had to do was walk into the room and they both remembered why they loved each other and why they’d been struggling to stay together for so long. All of the old clichés seemed to be true: he loved his wife, but was not sure if he was in love with her; she was his wife and his mate, but she wasn’t really his friend. She didn’t understand him, and he loathed himself for having those oversimplified, miserable excuses filling his head constantly. They were all easier to ignore when Teddy was there and filling not just the room but the whole fucking house with his sweet, silly smile and his endless childhood energy.

And now he was missing from the equation and it was painful to be in the same room with his wife, because they were both hurting, both desperate to lash out and not really much in the mood to be forgiving.

Teddy peered around a tree and looked at Bill, his eyes flashing with merriment and an impish smile on his face. He wore clothes that were unfamiliar to Bill, and his hair was a little wild, but oh, dear God, how sweet he looked; an angel made flesh, alive despite everything Bill had allowed himself to think.

“Teddy?” It felt like his heart had stopped when he saw his son.

Teddy didn’t answer. Instead his boy ran into the woods, laughing, moving with the sort of wild abandon that Bill had almost forgotten existed. Almost forgotten because, right then, seeing his sweet boy’s face after three days without him in the world, Bill was like a child again. He was angry, to be sure, but he was so very happy too, and he felt like he could run a thousand miles and easily, if he could just catch up with his son.

“Teddy!” In that one word he cried his joy to the universe and released himself from the bonds that kept him anchored to the world. With each step he took, he felt younger and stronger, and he gave chase, pushing himself hard to catch up to the most important person in his entire existence.

He ran, and Teddy ran before him, almost dancing with each movement as he looked over his shoulder and smiled back at Bill. The leaves on the ground exploded away from them, leaving wakes in the mulch as surely as a clipper cuts through waves on a mild sea.

Bill felt like he’d grown wings; his feet knew just where to touch and exactly how to push off from every obstacle that should have tripped him. His hands stretched out in front of him, closing in on his sweet boy and coming closer to catching him, holding him, loving him fiercely.

He caught his son in his hands and Teddy giggled. And then he had Teddy in his arms, and was holding him tightly enough to practically crush his wonderful, crazy, beautiful boy. He pulled his son closer still and smelled the charnel scent on his ten-year-old hair and thought it surely the sweetest perfume.

And then Teddy was hugging him back and his son was so unbelievably strong. His precious, lovely boy was smiling in his face; Teddy’s skin and eyes seemed the wrong color and his hair was rippling in a wind that Bill had not expected.

And then his son was killing him.

Despite the pain, Bill Lister died happy, reunited with his boy in the end.

Tom Pardue waited patiently. He was good at being patient. It was one of the things that set him aside from the others of his ilk. He didn’t need to beat information from his girls, he just had to watch and wait.

He was watching Maggie when she went into the Methodist Church. It took some doing, but he was watching when she went into the minister’s office, too. He spent a little over an hour watching her fuck the middle-aged pastor four ways to Sunday, leaving him gasping and red-faced when she was done with him. His only real regret was that he didn’t have a camera to film the entire fuckfest, because she could have been teaching the rest of his whores a trick or two and he could have sold the resulting video for fifty bucks a pop to every college boy in town that wanted a piece of her sweet, little ass.

Which reminded him; this time when he taught her a lesson he was going to have to make her squeal like a pig and nail her there, too. Hadn’t done that one on her yet, but he’d thought about it a few hundred times.

He thought about confronting her when she left the church, and changed his mind when the phone call from Nichole came in: her john was being stupid and refusing to pay. That was not acceptable.

So he let Maggie go about her business. He could be patient. He’d be teaching her a lesson soon enough and this way he could let the anger burn for a while. He liked to let things simmer and boil; it made the final payoff ever so much sweeter.

“You fucking your buddy Ben, too, Maggie?” He spoke only to himself and didn’t expect an answer. But yes, he suspected she was. And even if she wasn’t, she liked the boy. That was good enough reason to put a hurt on the skinny little prick.

Maybe he’d make her watch. Maybe they’d play a game or two, where she got to beg him long and hard to see how many fingers he left on little Benny’s hands.

Hell, maybe he’d make Ben squeal like a pig first. He wasn’t into guys, but it might be worth changing his ways just to see if raping her boyfriend hurt Maggie as much as when he did it to her.

He wasn’t sure yet, but either way, he had time to decide.

For now, he had to go ahead and work over one of the assholes who owed him money. No one got to owe him and walk away without a few broken bones at the very least.

Tom loved his job. It paid well, and the fringe benefits were positively the sweetest things he could think of: sex and violence in equally large doses.