Blood Red

Chapter 16

Brian Freemont paced around his house like a caged animal. He could leave, he could go anywhere he wanted to inside the town limits, but he wasn’t exactly sure that he was willing to risk it.

There were too many things in the woods. He didn’t want to run across any of them.

He looked around his house and shivered. Those pricks, Boyd and Holdstedter, had laughed when they found him. They’d looked down and laughed while he was crying. That was after they got done looking disgusted.

He didn’t get it. He’d made a very small mistake, okay, he could see them being pissed off about the whole drawing his gun thing. He would have been, too, but they were still all cops and he was still one of them.

They wouldn’t have treated anyone else that way, like a common criminal.

Then again, not everyone was under suspicion for murder.

No, that can’t be right. If they had any real evidence they’d have already booked him, and the chance of him getting out on bail for murder was none around these parts. There might be some places where it happened, but Black Stone Bay was not one of them.

So it was all just them being pricks.

He hated Boyd and Holdstedter with all the passion of an infant getting hurt for the first time. The pain came more from the sense of betrayal than from the actual deed.

All that, and the nightmares he’d been having every time he tried to sleep, was making him positively cranky.

The nightmares; he shivered just thinking about them. They were a repeat of what had happened in the woods, but worse, because he saw what was after him.

In the darkness, when he was all alone, they came from everywhere. They were young, mostly, the women he’d taken advantage of, the ones he’d forced to have sex with him. And they were always beautiful or at least cute. He had his standards, after all.

But when they came back for him in the darkness, they were less than lovely. Moving like nothing human could move, crawling along the trees and slithering through long grass in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. They looked human enough, but their eyes were rolled back in their heads and the whites glowed with a silvery light. Their faces were pale and dead and almost completely incapable of expression, but he could still sense their hunger.

The dream always ended with them crawling toward him and touching his body while he was frozen and unable to help himself. Oh, he’d beg, he’d cry and whine and ask for mercy a hundred times. They didn’t care, didn’t react, save to flash lascivious grins and lick their lips with cold, dead tongues.

They would open their mouths to feed, and he would wake up, his heart ready to explode inside his chest and his breaths coming in ragged gasps.

It wasn’t once or twice. It was every fucking time he closed his eyes. The thought wouldn’t leave him alone.

He’d never seen what was coming for him in the woods. Boyd and Holdstedter had come back before they ever came into view clearly enough for him to see them.

He was grateful for that at least; he still would have loved to watch the two men suffer. He’d seen pictures of Danny’s sister. She looked like a supermodel. He smiled at the thought of ever getting his hands on her. Bet Danny would be pissed. Bet he’d go crazy. Man, I might have to see about finding her address.

Boyd was different though. If Rich Boyd had any family, he hid them away well. Still, he knew how he could hurt the man. Nancy Whalen would do in place of a family member.

I don’t get it. Why hasn’t he bagged her yet? I know he wants to. I know she wants him to, so why not? I mean, it can’t just be because she’s married, can it?

He didn’t have time to answer the question. The noises started up before he could give Boyd and Whalen another thought.

They started near the roof. The sounds were soft and chaotic, slow scratching noises that could almost have been a squirrel stuck in the eaves, but he knew better. They were too even and paced for that. The chaos came from the fact that it was more than one set of claws scratching at the shingles above his head.

Like they’re digging for something.

Like they’re digging for me.

The scraping noises moved, shifting, sliding down the sides of the house. He ran to the front door, to the light switches there, and flipped them all on. Light splashed across the lawn and woods. White, fearsomely bright Halogen lights sprayed the world in vibrant colors and drove away the darkness.

Brian heard a feminine giggle above his head.

“You shut up! Shut the fuck up and go away!” His throat felt strained from the shriek, hot and scratchy in an instant.

The giggling continued and spread out. There were at least four of the damned things on his roof now, and the noises became more frantic.

He paced, trying to decide what he should do. He couldn’t call the police, because he was the police. How would it look to the guys if he couldn’t even handle a few scary noises?

But he couldn’t. Not really. The fucking sounds were driving him crazy.

“I’ve got a gun! I’ve got three of them! I’ll shoot if I have to!” Epiphany. He did have guns, and he had ammo. He went to the closet in the master bedroom and quickly unlocked his gun safe. Inside he had one .44 Magnum revolver, one .357 Magnum pistol, and one 12-gauge shotgun.

He was just starting to put the bullets in the revolver when the power went out. From outside he could hear a loud, crackling buzz for a moment and then he saw a brilliant flash of sparks cascade down past the bedroom window an instant before the power died.

“Oh fuck me…”

“Briiiiannnnnn…” He recognized the voice, of course. He’d been married to her for a few years and had dated her for almost four years before they were married.

Brian turned to the window and saw a blur of a pale white face and long, dark blond hair outside. A second later a hand slapped the glass hard enough to make it vibrate and slowly dragged across it, leaving behind a heavy trail of wetness that smeared through the dirt on the exterior of the window panes. A moment later, it too was gone.

“Briiiaannnn… come out and play with me, baby… I’m lonely…”

“Angie? Is that really you?”

“Brian… baby… where were you? I was waiting for you outside. I was waiting and you didn’t show up…”

“Angie, you’re scaring me…” His voice broke. God, to hear her talking to him caused a war of emotions. He missed her, deeply and dearly, but she sounded so cold, so mocking, and the hand he saw was too pale to ever be hers.

While he was looking at the window, he saw thick streamers of hair slide down from above. There was no light to see clearly; he couldn’t make out the face that slid into view, save for the eyes and their odd, silvery reflection. Whoever was out there had to be hanging above the window to look in from that angle. Dead white hands touched the glass again, pressing against it until the fingerprints flattened slightly and the face came lower, revealing little more than a shadow.

Angie’s voice came from the shape, calm and sweet and teasing. “Remember when we met, baby? The dirty things you used to whisper to me when we were fucking?”

Brian expelled the air from his lungs and sucked in a breath, his entire body sweating.

“Angie, baby, you have to go away. I can’t deal with you right now.”

“Ssshhhhhhh. Don’t go being mean now, baby. I miss you.” That little pout she’d put in her voice when she wanted him was there, teasing and taunting as she slid still lower, her full breasts hanging down. She wore no clothes, and he remembered finding them on the porch. Whoever had taken her had torn the clothing from her body. He remembered that, too.

“Angie, please… go away. I don’t want to hurt you. Come back tomorrow, okay? I can be brave by then, I know I can. I can be brave for you.” He was crying silent tears that ran down his face and spilled across his chin.

“Can’t you love me like you used to, baby?” She sounded so sexy, she always sounded sexy when she was in the mood.

“Angie, I’ll shoot if I have to.” He snorted back the drips from his nose and shook his head to get the tears out of his way. His fingers fumbled the last of the bullets into the .44.

Brian looked through burning eyes and studied his wife where she hung suspended above the bedroom window.

He didn’t know if he could pull the trigger. After all the arguments and the disappointments, all the times she’d said she had a fucking headache and all the times he’d cheated on her, he still wasn’t sure. He loved her. He did. He just couldn’t always show it the way she wanted him to.

He took aim at her shadowy form. “Go away, Angie, I mean it. I’m sorry if I hurt you, baby, but you have to go away now.”

“I know you’re sorry, baby…” That sultry, pouting tone was still there.

“Please go away.” He was crying again and his hands were trying to shake.

“But Brian… this time it’s not enough. This time ‘sorry’ won’t cut it.”

Her hands pushed and the glass from the window exploded into the bedroom, raining down in jagged blades. Brian pulled the trigger six times, his wrists bucking from the recoil. Thunder ripped apart the night and blasts of fire lit the room in lightning flashes.

He saw the first bullet hit, saw the way her head slammed backward as the lead punched through her skull.

The second shot ripped through her collarbone and blew out a chunk of her back.

The third hit her right breast.

The fourth shattered two ribs on its way through her body.

Then she was falling, and the fifth struck the swell of her stomach where their unborn child rested.

The sixth bullet missed her completely.

She fell out of his sight and he heard her hit the boards of the wraparound porch.

“Oh fuck, Angie, baby, why did you make me do it?”

He got up and moved toward the ruined window, trying to swallow his heart and to get back his hearing. The gun trembled wildly in his hands and he moved as quickly as he could, weapon held at the ready. It was empty, but that didn’t register.

He had to climb onto the bed and move to the headboard to look out the window.

Angie stood up and looked at him from inches away. Shadows blurred her face, but he recognized her just the same. He would know her face anywhere, even with the hole that was dripping blackness all over her white features.

Angie smiled, her faintly blue lips peeled away from her teeth, baring them in a leering, savage expression. “Sorry’s not enough, Brian. Never again.”

Her hand lunged through the window and slapped him across the cheek. The impact made him see stars and knocked him completely off the bed.

He felt numb and dazed, and it took him almost a minute to recover.

When he was able to move again, Angie was gone. He would have believed it was a nightmare, but the window was still broken and his cheek was bleeding from where she’d struck him.

Brian Freemont sat on the floor of his bedroom and looked at the darkness beyond his window. There was nothing to see but darkness. He rocked back and forth, moaning deep in his chest.

Ben had no idea where he was going, only that it was imperative that he get there. He ran a good portion of the way, homing in on the need that filled his body.

Maggie needed him. Nothing else mattered. When he could no longer reach his destination walking, he backtracked to the apartments and got into his car, the agitation blooming in his stomach, filling him with nervous energy.

“Maggie… Maggie… where the hell are you?” The radio was too loud so he shut it off, making himself listen for the sound of her voice. Instead he heard the crows, wild and raucous as they flew into the night air, hundreds of them cawing and cackling into the night.

They flew around his car, soaring in graceful arcs, gliding on currents and peering through his window, yet not one of them blocked his path. It took a while for him to understand, but they were guiding him, their mass of bodies shifting and focusing his direction with subtle shifts in the tunnel they formed around him.

He’d be afraid later. Right now, if the birds wanted to help him get where he needed to be, he would let them. He saw several people staring at the black cloud of birds around him. Many simply looked on, slack-jawed. Others backed away, shaking their heads.

Ben ignored them and so did the crows. For whatever reason, they were all on the same mission.

“I’m coming, Maggie. Just don’t get yourself killed in the meantime.”

Tom was getting bored now. Lenny broke too easily and cried like a fucking baby in need of a diaper change. Seeing as he’d shit himself almost fifteen minutes ago, that was fair.

“Lenny, where’s my money?”

“Honest to God, Tom. I don’t know.” He was still capable of using his voice, so Tom knew he hadn’t gone too far.

His little girl, Renee, was in the next room. She was watching TV, because Tom didn’t want her screaming all the way through the torture session with her father.

“Shame if I have to do something to Renee, Lenny. She’s a pretty girl.” He shook his head and frowned for the bloodied man in front of him. “I’d hate to have to change that.”

What was that? A little glimmer of anger in Lenny’s eyes. Was there still a spark somewhere in there that wanted to fight? He hoped so. “Don’t you touch her, Tom. I told you everything I know.”

“How can I be sure of that, Lenny? I mean, where were you all day that I couldn’t get a hold of you?”

“I told you, Maureen needed tests. There’s something wrong with her heart.”

“She’s too young to have heart troubles, Lenny. Come up with a better excuse.”

“She’s got congenital heart disease! Let me go home and I’ll bring you the motherfucking papers!”

“You’re not going anywhere until I get back my money!”

“I don’t have the money, Tom! How many times do you want me to say it!”

“Lenny, the walls are soundproofed, but let’s not test that, okay?”

“You can’t hurt my little girl, Tom. I’ll find the money for you. I’ll fucking steal it myself, but you can’t hurt my little girl.” He was starting to cry again. Pathetic.

“Lenny, I’m a good sport. I’ll give you until midnight to find my money. You have it for me by then, Renee gets to have a nice, safe sleepover. You don’t… do the math.”

Lenny looked almost ready to kill him. The restraints might have slowed him down.

“It’s your choice, man. I want my money back. There are only a few people who know the right information to steal it. I already checked with the other one.” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t have a daughter, but his girlfriend was nice and tight.”

Tom moved over closer, until he could look into Lenny’s swollen eyes. “I’m gonna let you go now, Lenny. Don’t be stupid. Just get it done and we can go back to being friends.”

The man groaned when his wrists were unbound. His fingers looked like purple sausages. He’d have to be careful about that the next time. He could have ruined Lenny’s typing skills; live and learn.

Someone started pounding on the front door. Tom scowled and looked at his newly freed victim. “You stay here, Lenny. Don’t want you getting jumpy while I’m busy.”

The stairs up to the ground-level floor were nicely padded, and he moved up them quickly. He didn’t carry a weapon on him, but he had easy access, so he wasn’t overly worried.

He should have been. By the time he reached the short hallway to the door, it was obvious that somebody was extremely unhappy with the current situation.

“Hold on to your ass! I’m coming!”

The front door came apart before his eyes and large pieces of the wood and beveled glass ripped through the air on a path for him.

Tom dropped to the ground and covered his head; only one piece of wood actually hit him, but it drew a red line of fire across his upper back. “Fuck!”

He scrambled, reaching for his stashed weapon. All he had to do was get into the vent next to the living room entrance and that was easy enough to do. He’d had the vent designed to lift up with ease.

His hand caught the lower edge of the vent cover. Maggie’s bloodied hand caught his wrist.

He looked up and saw the shape she was in: Maggie was covered from head to toe in drying blood that flaked away from her skin. She looked like she’d been dipped in the stuff and then hit with a hair dryer until her clothes were merely damp. Her hair was still pulled back in a ponytail, still had its usual thick curls, but it was rusty brown from the bath she’d taken. Her face, always enchanting, always so hot in that girl-next-door way, was twisted into a look of undiluted hatred. Her dark eyes glared down into his. Her nostrils flared and her full, welcoming mouth showed him nothing but bared teeth.

“Maggie? What the hell?”

Maggie yanked on his arm and lifted him into a standing position. Several tendons in his shoulder let out screams of protest that matched flawlessly with his yelp of pain. When the hell did Maggie start working out?

“Look what you did to my fucking door!” He was a little nervous, but only a little. He could handle a bitch hopped up on too much coke. He had several times in the past. “That’s coming out of your take, Maggie.”

“Shut your face, Monkey Boy.” She had a smile starting. It was dark and dangerous and mischievous and sexy as all hell. He was going to enjoy breaking her, but he’d make her take a shower first. He preferred his blood fresh.

“What did you say?” Now she was calling him names? Definitely time to put her in her place. He figured a good railroad by twenty men would have taken care of that, but she was still ready for more.

Tom was always glad to oblige. He brought his knee up and nailed her on the crotch. He’d learned a long time ago that hitting a girl there hurt her almost as much as it hurt a guy.

She winced in pain and let go of his wrist. He used his other hand to grab a thick wedge of her ponytail, fully intending to bust her pretty face all over his wall. He pushed hard and succeeded in shoving himself back when she didn’t budge. She’d no more moved than if he’d been pushing against his own house.

“Asshole.” She hit him. Not a little girly slap, either. She hauled her arm around and clocked him across the face hard enough to leave him seeing constellations.

“Bitch, that’s the last mistake you’re ever going to make.” Tom stood back up and pumped his arm at her face. Screw her looks, she was about to become damaged goods.

She took the blow to the chin and didn’t even blink. “I told you we were finished, Monkey Boy. I meant it.” Her hand blurred and she caught his nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Did I ever tell you how ugly you are?” She yanked back hard, and Tom let loose a shriek as the cartilage in his nose separated.

He backed into the wall, his eyes tearing furiously, and felt the blood flow from his broken proboscis.

Maggie looked at her handiwork and frowned. “I was kind of hoping it would come completely off. Let me try again.”

Tom ran. He forgot all about the gun in its hiding spot and all about the man he’d been torturing and the little girl he’d planned to rape half to death. He ran.

Maggie let him. She stood perfectly still and followed him with her eyes, a little half smile on her face. He knew the look: it was the one she got when she’d heard a joke that was only a little funny. He didn’t like to think that he was the joke, but right now he had bigger matters to deal with, like staying alive.

Tom’s Camaro was right where it should be and he fished into his jeans for the car keys, trying not to freak out about how much of his blood was coating his fingers.

Maggie followed, pausing long enough to pick up her pepper spray, which remained where she had dropped it earlier. He cursed himself for not picking the damned thing up himself; he could have used it about now.

He almost dropped the car keys while he was fumbling for the right one, but managed to keep them. He opened the door and climbed in at a record-breaking pace.

He closed the door just as Maggie was reaching for him and felt an unsettling jolt of relief.

Then she punched through the tempered glass. Her little hand—and she was practically delicate along those lines— shot through the glass and grabbed at the back of his long hair.

“Maggie! Jesus, girl, stop!”

“Not done quitting yet, Tom.”

She slammed his head into the windshield and shattered the safety glass. Maggie let go of his hair and reached around with her other hand. He was still groaning and stunned when she yanked him across the steering wheel and pulled him across the hood of the car. The glass shattered into tiny diamond shapes, and he got a few scrapes, but nothing compared to what she had already done.

Maggie let him hit the ground in front of his car and looked down at him. “Come on, Tom. I was expecting you to put up a fight.”

He started crawling, and she let him. She just walked a few paces behind him and let him do his thing. Crawling was the best he could manage for a while. After about fifty feet of slipping around on the damp asphalt and then the wet front lawn of his place, Tom stood up. It hurt like hell, but he did it.

“That’s my Monkey Boy. I knew you could do it.”

“Maggie, please… uh… unhhunnhhh… stop. Please…” Christ, he was crying! He couldn’t stop himself. He was begging and it was humiliating.

“I bet that’s what Liz was trying to say to the boys gang-raping her.” She still looked plenty pissed off, but her voice was calmer. He had hoped that he could talk his way out of this, or maybe get a weapon of some kind; it was a small hope, true, but it was still there.

“Hey, that wasn’t supposed to happen. I told them they had to play nice.”

Maggie nodded and then slammed her right heel into the side of his knee. Muscles pulped under the impact; bones splintered and his leg bent in ways no human limb was ever designed to.

He hit the ground again, gasping for air and wishing that the pain would end.

Maggie crouched next to him, looking at his sweating, agonized face. “Funny thing about that, Monkey; I told myself to play nicely. I guess I can’t take orders, either.”

She reached out and caught one of his hands in hers. He tried to pull away, but her strength was too great.

“I thought about taking a stick and fucking you with it, Tom. All the way over here I thought about it. I was thinking maybe it would be nice to give you a taste of your own medicine. A little payback for every time you forced me to take that little prick of yours.”

She held his hand tightly with her left hand and with the right, she caught his little finger.

Her eyes looked at his again, reflective in a way that didn’t seem possible. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she had lights burning deep in the back of her skull. Her expression was calmer now, but he was finally beginning to understand that even if he lived through this night, he would never be whole again.

“Thing is, if I did that, I’d have to see parts of your body that disgust me even more than your face.”

Her fingers pinched down and ripped at Tom’s little finger. His nail came free in a sudden, brilliant lance of pain.

Tom writhed, pulling with all of his strength in an effort to free himself from her grip. She reached out again and tore off the nail on his ring finger, even as he was thrashing around and howling out broken obscenities.

“You’re a sick bastard, Tom. You could have let me go and I would have left it all alone.” He wanted to puke his guts out and the bitch was still talking. “You were going to let them pull a train on me? What was I supposed to do, be grateful?”

He swore he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream again. By the time she pulled the thumbnail away from his hand, he was begging for mercy and praying to God that she would let him just die.

When she was done with his right hand, she let it go and he rolled away from her, weeping silently. In all his life he’d never expected it was possible to feel that much pain.

“Okay. That was for Liz.” Maggie looked him over and smiled. “Everything else is for me.”

Then she got inventive.

Tom learned more about pain. Oh, so very much more.

Maggie came out of her fury like a deep sea diver rising to the surface: it was a slow process and, while she could see the air high above her, it was distorted by waves of anger. The pain she’d been feeling was gone, but the memory of it lingered.

What was left of Tom wasn’t very appealing. What made it worse was that he was still alive. His fingers looked like they’d been attacked by rabid pliers. His face was a mess. She could remember pulling at his nose as if she’d been dreaming; but she hadn’t fully realized how hard she’d caught him. One nostril hung by a tiny shred of meat; the rest of it flapped loosely. His mouth was the worst. Somewhere along the way, she’d started breaking off his teeth.

Tom was alive, and he was conscious. His eyes reflected nothing of sanity, but he was there, awake and in agony.

The anger was gone. All that was left was a vague sense of pity. In the end, she punched him hard in his throat and watched him choke to death on his own blood.

His death was a loss to no one. He would not be mourned.

A car pulled into Tom’s driveway. It was a Crown Victoria, and the crappy shade of brown made her think cop car as surely as wailing sirens and flashing lights would have.

She backed away as the two men got out of the car.

Maggie shook her head, trying to figure out exactly what had just happened to her. She knew what she had done, knew why she had done it, and now, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember how she had done it.

The two men had cop written all over them. They looked around for only a moment before heading toward Tom’s Camaro.

It wouldn’t take them long to find the trail of blood he’d left behind and from there they could easily spot Tom’s body.

She didn’t have a mirror, but she didn’t need one to see the blood all over her clothes.

The two men were looking over the car and talking, but she couldn’t make out the words. She just knew she had to move, and fast, if she wanted to get the hell away from the scene of her crime.

Just as the cops would have been looking her way, she heard the racket. There are few birds that can make as much noise as crows, and the ones coming her way seemed intent on deafening the entire planet. They cawed and heckled and screamed as they flew, a seething mass of feathers that spread out over the entire area, flying low and circling around the two policemen. Her car was still in Tom’s driveway, and if she was careful she might be able to get to it.

Even as that thought occurred to her, she heard the familiar sound of her Ford Focus starting up. The two men were surrounded by the crows and dodging desperately, but they weren’t so stupid that they stood still when the car started forward and trenched Tom’s yard in an effort to get around them. They got out of the way and damned fast. Neither of them drew a weapon, and she was very glad for that.

Her car stopped two feet away from her and the passenger’s side door opened. One look inside and Maggie could have sobbed with relief.

Ben had never looked more handsome. Or more desperate. “Come on! Let’s go!” Even with him yelling, she could barely hear him over the crows. She climbed in as quickly as she could, and he gunned the engine as soon as her door was closed. He steered off of the lawn and back out onto the driveway, narrowly missing the cop car.

Maggie shivered, the chill of the night suddenly overwhelming, as Ben drove toward the apartments.

He didn’t look at her, didn’t say a word. He just steered and kept his eyes focused on the road in front of him.

“Ben?”

“Please tell me you’re not hurt.”

She had to think about it. “No, I think I’m okay.”

“Good. Great. Now let’s get home.”

“Ben, how did you know to find me?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ll care later, maybe, but right now I just need to get you home and safe.”

She nodded her head, drained.

“Thank you, Ben.”

She closed her eyes until he parked her car.

The next thing she knew, she was in his bathroom and he was testing the water coming out of the shower. “Okay. It’s about ready. There’s shampoo and conditioner, and there’re some towels. Soap’s already in there.”

“What?”

“You need to bathe, Maggie. Get clean. You’re… covered.” His face was pale, too pasty by far, and his eyes looked like the marbles placed in a mounted deer’s head.

Maggie nodded and began taking off her clothes. Ben beat a hasty retreat as she peeled away the stiff, bloodied fabrics. She ran on autopilot, dropping the ruined outfit on the floor and stepping into the warm stream of water. She stayed there for a long while, until her fingertips resembled wrinkled prunes and she had scrubbed herself raw.

“Okay. What the fuck was that?”

Danny looked over at him and shook his head. “That was a lot of fuckin’ birds. You should have listened to that call of yours earlier.”

“Oh don’t even fucken start.”

“Okay. So what’s that?” Danny pointed to a motionless ruin on the front lawn of Tom Pardue’s house.

Boyd looked at the trail of blood that ran from the trashed Camaro to the mess in the grass. It wasn’t a clean trail. The crows had shat over almost the whole area. His jacket was covered in droppings.

He ignored the slicks of crow crap on his clothes and walked over to the human body that was currently cooling down.

“You know what?”

“Tell me, Richie.” Danny’s voice wasn’t its calmest. He could dig that. He was feeling a little jumpy himself. He’d always hated birds. They were messy and they were loud. He liked clean and quiet.

“I think that’s Tom Pardue.”

“Yeah? How can you tell?” There wasn’t much of Tom that hadn’t been beaten, broken, or crapped on.

“The shirt, the shorts, and the greasy blond hair. That’s Pardue or there’s someone else out there with shitty taste in clothes.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Danny. I know you really wanted him to resist.”

Danny shrugged. “You know what? Somebody did it better than I could have.”

Anyone listening would have thought they’d both lost their minds. Joking was how they dealt with it. Joking kept them from screaming on days like this.

“You know, technically, this is a homicide. It ain’t our department.” Boyd lit a cigar.

“You thinking of giving this to Whalen and Longwood?”

“Damn right.”

“So what did you see?”

“I saw a car driving away. And I saw a lot of birds.”

“That all you saw?” Danny sounded doubtful.

Boyd shrugged. “I might have seen a really hot girl with a huge rack standing over Pardue’s body. She might have been covered in blood and looking a little like she wouldn’t mind finding some more. But I am not about to say that to the homicide kids.”

Danny nodded. “I might have seen that, too. But I’m gonna pretend I didn’t.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because I don’t know about you, Richie, but I don’t wanna hear a bunch of fuckin’ jokes about how I saw a ghost.”

“Ghost?”

“What? You think some girl painted herself in blood and beat Pardue to death?”

Boyd gnawed on the end of his cigar and rolled it around his mouth a few times. Fuck Freud. He didn’t care about the possible symbolism of his actions. Besides, Freud was a pervert.

“You know what I think, Danny?”

“What?”

“I think it’s time to go check out his house. I think we saw birds and we saw a car.”

“What kind of car?”

“I was a little busy ducking the fucken birds, Danny Boy. I didn’t see and I don’t care.”

“Think those two will catch whoever did this?”

Boyd spat away from the corpse, despite the temptation to aim for an eye. “I sure as shit hope not.”