The Devil Next Door

12

“Excuse me, sir,” Warren said, taking his hat off. “We’re on police business here. What’s your name?”

The guy stood there in blue jeans and a tank top, clippers in hand. He was very neat and immaculate as was the lawn behind him, just as green as emeralds. He was staring at Kojozian. His shirt open, chest glistening with sweat.

“What are you looking at?” Kojozian asked him. “You never seen a cop before?”

“No… no… it’s just that… um…”

“I asked you your name,” Warren said.

“Um… Ray Donnel. What’s going on here… what’s this about?”

Kojozian chuckled. “He wants to know what this is about.”

“Sure, he does,” Shaw said. “He’s just being a concerned citizen, that’s all.”

But Warren shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Donnel. This is police business and we’re not at liberty to discuss the particulars. We need a shovel, maybe those clippers, too.”

Donnel looked from one to the other. The blood had drained from his face. “I have tools in the shed.”

“He says they’re in the shed,” Kojozian said.

“Sure, where else would they be?” Shaw said.

He led them back behind the house and they all commented on his yard, how nice it was, how green the grass was, the nice edging job he’d done on his walk. They were all really impressed and they told him so. Inside the shed there were racks of gardening tools, spotless and shining. Shovels arranged by size. Donnel was definitely a guy who believed everything in its place and a place for everything.

Warren grabbed a shovel, admired the clean blade on it. “Nice,” he said. “Real nice. We’ll try not to dirty it up too much.”

“That’s okay,” Donnell said, fumbling over his words. “I’m… I’m just a neat freak, I guess.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Shaw said, mopping more sweat from his face.

“As long as I get ‘em back, I’m not worried.”

Warren handed the shovel to Kojozian. “You’ll get it back. I’ll see to it. We’re cops and you can trust us. We’re not thieves, you know.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that.”

“You believe this guy, Kojozian?” Shaw said. “He thinks you’re a thief. Thinks you won’t bring his shovel back. How do you like that?”

The big man bristled. “I don’t like it at all.”

Donnel looked at them like maybe it was a joke, but they were deadpan to a man. They saw nothing funny about a guy like him who thought cops were thieves. In fact, in their book, there was nothing worse than a guy like him that didn’t trust cops. What was the world coming to?

Donnel just shook his head, smelling something on these three he did not care for. Something savage, something desperate.

“Listen, officers, I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t mean anything at all.”

The three of them were circled around him now like they didn’t want him getting away and Donnel was starting to sense that. Their faces were hard, their eyes shining like basalt. They licked their lips with the pink worms of their tongues. Shaw’s belly growled.

“Maybe he wants the shovel back right now,” Warren said. “You better give it to him.”

Kojozian shrugged and swung it with everything he had at Donnel’s head. There was a clanging and Donnel dropped to their feet, a gash opened from his left ear to his right eyebrow, blood pooling out. Kojozian kicked him with a gore-encrusted shoe, but Donnel did not move. He just bled some more.

“What a guy,” Shaw said. “You just can’t reason with some of ‘em, you know that, boys?”

They knew, all right.

They gathered up three shovels, a rake, and a wheelbarrow which would make carting the stiff around a lot easier. Shaw and Kojozian stepped out into the sunlight.

“Hey,” Warren said. “You’re not gonna just leave him there, are you?”

“Why not?” they said.

Warren shook his head. “This guy likes things neat. We should at least respect that. Give me a hand with him.”

Kojozian lifted the body up where a hook was sticking out of the wall. While he held Donnel, Shaw and Warren pushed the body onto the hook. It entered just beneath the back of his skull with a moist, grating sound. He hung there just fine.

“That’s better,” Warren said. “Donnel would have appreciated that.”

“I hope I look so neat when I’m dead,” Shaw said.

Kojozian studied the blood all over his hands. He was fascinated by it in a way that blood had never fascinated him before. He kept sniffing his hands. Finally, a loose and almost comical smile on his face, he rubbed blood all over his right index finger and painted his face with it. A huge red X that went from jawline to temple, the apex being dead center of his nose.

The other two did not seem to notice.

They all just stood there for a few minutes, approving of what they had done. Donnel was hanging from the wall, blood running down his face and out of his left eye. They listened to it drip to the floor for a time, then they went to take care of the kid…