Blood Red

Chapter 17

Sometime during the wee hours of the morning, the Phi Chi fraternity house caught fire. The fire investigation team ascertained that the blaze started in the main living room area near a substantial collection of single malt scotch whiskeys. From there, the blaze spread at a frightening pace, devouring the ancient wooden walls and igniting more fire hazards than should have been possible in any one dwelling. Of course the average dwelling wasn’t inhabited by a small army of college kids who failed to clean more than absolutely necessary for appearances.

The fire was helped out by faulty wiring and several cases of overloaded electrical fixtures.

The blaze required all three fire stations in Black Stone Bay to put it out. By the time they managed to get it under control, the building was little more than a burned-out foundation.

No one came out of the fraternity house while it was burning, and the fire was actually reported by a police car that was doing regular rounds to make sure the party hadn’t gotten out of control.

No bodies were found inside the structure, either.

The campus was abuzz with news the following day and there were plenty of students who were stunned into staying away from school; the students who lived in the Phi Chi fraternity were very popular and mostly they were well liked.

But a few held out hope. After all, if no bodies were found, it was possible that they’d escaped the blaze.

The truth was simpler than that. The bodies had been removed. Jason Soulis was not ready for anyone to know what was happening in the town, and that many corpses would have set off far too many warning bells.

Kelli didn’t regret not going to the party. She kept telling herself that until she finally fell asleep. She didn’t quite believe it, but she tried to.

She was in bed by ten o’clock and unconscious fifteen minutes later. She would have deeply loved to stay asleep, too. But the dreams came again. This time it was different. This time it was Bill, not Teddy, who came to the window.

The room was dark, but he was out there, calling to her softly. He looked at her with those warm, loving eyes of his and called to her softly. “Kelli, let me in. It’s cold out here and I want to see you.” His words were innocent enough, but the tone he used to speak them made promises of what she had dreamt of on a few occasions.

“Bill, you’re married.”

“Kelli, I want to see you, I want to hold you.”

She sat up in the bed and stared at him. He was so handsome. But there was something wrong with the way he looked, something minor that was enough to make her wait. His hair was as perfect as ever, his mouth sweet and kind, his nose unchanged: it was his eyes. They seemed… bleached. The deep rich blue they had always been was missing, and there was a strange light in them that was unsettling. Dream or no, his eyes were completely wrong.

Kelli knew one thing for certain at that moment: dreams can become nightmares. She stayed away from the window. When the voice from outside became insistent, she left her bedroom and walked down the stairs to the living room. In her dream, she turned on the TV and watched reruns of old sitcoms she remembered from her childhood. Bill kept calling to her, asking her to let him in, so she cranked up the volume. Now and then she looked out the back window and saw him standing on the patio.

It was when Who’s the Boss came on that she realized she wasn’t dreaming at all. There was just no way she could willingly dream about that show.

Kelli stared at Bill standing outside and he stared back.

“Let me in, Kelli.”

“No.”

He grimaced. “Why not?”

“You’re scaring me, Bill.”

“What do you have to be afraid of?”

She looked at him, looked at his shirt with the torn buttons, his pants with several spots that looked almost like mold staining the fabric and finally, she looked at his feet. He had one shoe on. The other was missing.

“I think you’re dead, Bill. I think you’re a ghost.” Her voice was a tiny thing, frail and broken.

“I’m not a ghost, Kelli. I’m right here. All you have to do is let me in and I can prove it to you.”

“Why can’t you just come inside?”

He looked at her for several heartbeats, his face working as he tried to come up with a proper explanation. “Just let me in. Please, Kelli, I’m cold and I need to get warm.”

“Go away, Bill.”

“Kelli…”

“I mean it. I’ll call the police. They’ll be here damned fast, too, with all of the people who’ve been vanishing from this house.”

“Kelli, come on now, we’re friends.”

She shook her head and looked away from him. When she looked too closely, she wanted to believe he was real and that he was there to be with her in a way she knew was wrong. The worst part was she knew he would be with her that way if she wanted. The desire to be with her was in his gaze.

“I can’t let you in, Bill. I don’t want to die.”

“I would never hurt you, Kelli. I just want to be with you.”

She shook her head again and tried not to cry. Bill slapped the sliding glass door hard enough to make her jump. “Let me in the fucking house, you bitch!”

She looked at him and blinked. He wasn’t handsome anymore. His face was dead white and slack, almost expressionless. His hair was plastered wetly to his skull, and she thought she saw something crawling through it, like a small crab. His eyelids were sagging, partially hiding that sickening glow from his pupils, and his teeth… his teeth were all wrong, grown obscenely long and sharp within the confines of his mouth. A dark, black tongue licked across those teeth as he suddenly snarled at her.

“You let me into the house before I have to get nasty with you!”

“Get away from me, Bill! I mean it!”

“You can’t stay in there forever, Kelli! And when you finally come out, I’ll be waiting for you!” His threat held more than merely the promise of violence. She shuddered and stepped away from the window.

Kelli looked around for something, anything that she could use to defend herself. Finally she settled on a letter opener and grabbed it.

When she looked up again, Bill was gone.

When she woke up, she was in her bedroom and the alarm was blaring at her.

“I can’t take these dreams anymore. Fuck, I just can’t.”

She slipped out of bed and stood, chilled by the early morning air and by the memory of Bill’s fury.

She didn’t even notice the letter opener near her feet. It had bounced when she dropped it earlier and was now mostly obscured by the covers.

Ben finally made it to his car just after sunrise. He had plenty of company along the way; a gathering of crows kept an eye on him as he walked the three miles toward Tom’s house.

He’d parked a block away from the place. Not by choice, mind you, but because the crows decided to land on his car and obscure his view until he did.

There was something very unsettling about having big black birds with wickedly sharp beaks telling you what to do. Still, he did it. He knew that Maggie needed him then and there, and he wasn’t going to let having to walk stop him.

Thinking back on the night that had just passed made his mind want to run and hide. He was fine with the whole thing, except for Maggie covered in blood. He could live with the demented intuition telling him he had to find her. He was dealing pretty damned well with the whole birds-hijacked-my-car-and-made-me-drive-here thing; it was really, really creepy, but he could manage to swallow it.

What was bugging him most was the sight of Maggie when he finally saw her. Damn near anyone else would have had trouble recognizing her right then. Most people didn’t know every feature of her face well enough to identify them through a caul of drying blood. The curve of her jawline and the teeth he knew so well were what gave her away. The way her hair fell, even when thick with crud, told him her identity. And her eyes as she came out of whatever spell had seized her; that was what really told him everything he needed to know.

She’d looked so confused, so dismayed…

Maggie didn’t really let a lot show on her face all the time. She was not an open book by any stretch of the imagination. When she was at school, she was studying; when she was in public, she kept a careful guard on her emotions. It was when she was alone that she showed the most emotion. Sometimes, she let herself relax around him, too, and he had learned to understand her expressions.

She’d been horrified by what she had done. He knew that. There were other emotions that warred with her fear in that moment before the crows swept through and blocked everything else, but he’d seen her repulsion at what lay before her on the ground.

He’d been horrified, too. There was a moment, very brief and fleeting, when he’d been afraid of her. She hadn’t looked human when he saw her; she’d looked more like a demon or a goddess or something that went beyond Ben’s definition of human. He’d been scared, and maybe he still was a little. But it was Maggie. Whatever else she might have become, no matter how frightening, he was in love with her.

And yes, he had recognized the remains of Tom Pardue, as well. Despite the vast mutilations, he had known the face of his enemy in an instant.

One look at the corpse and he knew he had to get her out of there. He also knew her car well enough by sight and knew a few other things that most people wouldn’t have known, like where her spare key was. She had a little magnetic box that was hidden in the well of her front bumper. Watching her dig for it one time had kept him focused on the shape of her derriere for almost a week. She was definitely as lovely from the back as she was from the front.

Ben shook that thought away. He was here to get his car.

She’d been quiet on the way back home, exhausted by whatever had overcome her. He’d been quiet, too, while his mind tried to take in the sight of her covered in blood and the fact that he’d come only inches away from running down two men who were too close to where she stood when he arrived.

Boyd and Holdstedter were decent enough guys, and he knew they had no love for Tom Pardue. But he still didn’t think they’d have let her walk away from the murder scene, and Ben knew he couldn’t allow them to arrest her. If they came after anyone, he preferred they come after him.

He was at least as guilty as Maggie: he’d killed Pardue a hundred times in his mind.

So far there had been no knock at his door. They seemed to have gotten away without incident.

Now he just had to get his car back where it belonged and avoid getting himself caught this late in the game.

Even from a block away, he could see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles that surrounded the man’s house. That could be a problem, too. There might be an investigation into Pardue’s past. That investigation might bring up Maggie’s name.

He’d have to do something about that.

Ben was still thinking about how to handle the situation when he arrived back at his apartment. He entered quietly and crept back to his bedroom to find that she was still under the covers, only her thick curly hair in sight. He was closing the door when she spoke to him.

“Ben?”

“Hi, Maggie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Ben, I’m cold. Come sleep with me.”

He climbed into the bed fully clothed. At first he lay on his back next to her and tried not to move. Eventually, she reached behind her own body and caught his arm. She pulled him closer until he was spooned against her back.

The feel of her body against his was an agony he willingly endured. Eventually, he managed to join her in her slumber.

O’Neill was in a mood. Boyd wasn’t in the right mood to put up with it. He stood with his arms crossed and scowled throughout the entire peppy conversation about how he and Danny needed to get their acts in gear.

“The thing is, Boyd, that you two are good cops. I know that. But if this situation doesn’t get any better, I might have to look into outside help. I have to say I’m disappointed.” O’Neill was one of those bastards that was aging gracefully. Boyd wanted to slap him on general principles but he was normally okay as captains went.

“All due respect, Captain. Fuck off.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said fuck off.” He uncrossed his arms and moved toward O’Neill’s desk. “We normally deal with maybe ten cases. Right now we got over thirty. You want to go ahead and bring on a few extra people, you go right ahead. But don’t you dare accuse me of sloppy work. I’ll turn in my notice and take the time in jail for kicking your ass.”

“That is uncalled for, Rich.”

“The hell it is. You just said you’re ‘disappointed.’” He snorted. “What? You think I’m having orgasms over the way my week has been? Get a fucken clue. I got thirty fucken cases to handle here and not all of them are easily solved. You want my badge? Go for it. Wanna write me up? Do your shit. But you can shove your disappointment straight up your ass, you stupid bitch.”

He left the captain’s office and headed for the door, his expression murderous enough that everyone but Danny decided to look elsewhere in case his gaze might turn them into stone.

Danny took it in stride. He’d been there for the reaming. “So, what’re we doing first, Richie?”

“First I’m keying the fucker’s car.”

“He’ll know you did it.”

“Not if I write ‘Freemont was here.’”

“Maybe later. Right now I think you hurt him enough when you called him a bitch.” He paused. “I thought only women could be bitches.”

“Did you see balls anywhere on that piece of shit? ’Cause I sure as shit didn’t.”

“You’re being a baby.”

“Yeah? And?”

“Nothing. Just an observation.”

“Any news on the ballbuster?”

“Alan Tripp? No. He vanished.”

“I don’t think so. He’s just really good at not looking like a maniac in a hospital nightie.”

“Think he’s still hanging around?”

“According to him, his dead son kidnapped his dead wife. My guess is he’s looking for dead people.”

“Maybe we should let him know about the Red Lady.”

“We aren’t letting anyone know about her.”

“Oh, come on. They might give us vacation time.”

“No. But be on the lookout for red ladies with nice racks.”

“I’m always on the lookout for nice racks.”

“Do we have anything at all on the girls working for Tom?”

“No. Besides, you dropped this case.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did. Just last night you handed it over to Whalen and Longwood.”

“Only on paper.”

“What? We’re gonna bust her now?”

“Shit no. I wanna thank her for the public service.”

“Seriously, Richie.”

“Seriously? Anyone could do that, maybe they know something about the Falcone car accident. Maybe they know a lot and they got caught before they could get rid of another body.”

“Shit.”

“Covering our bases is all. Far as I’m concerned, Tommy being dead is just a plus.”

“You heard about the fire?”

“Yeah. Fucken tragedy.”

“They didn’t find any bodies.”

“Yeah, that’s the tragedy. O’Neill is gonna shit a house when he hears.”

“Fuck the bitch, Richie. I ain’t wiping his ass.”

“That’s what I like about you, Danny Boy. You learn fast.”

“So, we’re going to the frat house?”

“’Course we are.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“I just love to hear your voice, Richie.”

“You need help.”

“I need that vacation. Sure we can’t mention the Red Lady?”

“Very sure.”

“Bitch.”

Alan Tripp crawled out of his cubbyhole and shivered. The woods were not a good place for sleeping, especially without any shelter aside from a few trees. His body felt feverish. The bandages on his hand were soaked again. He didn’t have any more pads or even cloth, and he decided he’d have to risk a trip to his house.

Besides, he was tired of freezing his balls off. He had perfectly good clothes waiting for him at the house, and he had other things, like money.

And he wanted to go home. Screw everything else; he wanted to go home for a while. Even if home was empty of everything good but a few stale memories.

Alan winced and realized that he’d been clenching his fists. A steady stream of crimson ran from the web between his thumb and forefinger. The physical wound hurt, but the memory of how he’d been injured was a thousand times worse.

“That wasn’t my boy. They don’t understand that. But I know my son, and Avery would never…” He couldn’t finish the words. They stuck in his throat like barbed hooks and he gagged on them.

Alan Tripp started for his house, ignoring the worst of the scrapes and cuts that adorned his bare feet. The ground was rough, covered with a thick layer of autumn leaves that hid a hundred different traps. His feet were suffering for every move he made.

He let himself go numb for the majority of his trek. It was easier on him when he wasn’t lingering on memories of Avery’s laugh or Meghan’s sweet smile. The pain wasn’t as great when he pushed away the scent of his son’s hair as he came inside from playing, or the taste of Meghan’s lips pressed against his own.

A blink of the eyes was all it took to have him recalling a thousand things he didn’t want to remember anymore. Christmas morning, the first year after he and Meghan were married; their first celebration of the holiday on their own. Meghan holding on to his hand with crushing force, her eyes open and her mouth a beautiful scrawl of pain as she gave birth to their baby boy. Her not-completely-joking promise to kill him if he ever let her opt for natural childbirth again. The first time he had to change one of Avery’s diapers by himself. The look on Meghan’s face when she saw the end result and her laughter, sweet as honey, that took the sting from the exasperated look she cast his way. Avery’s first step, his first word, his first time falling down and bruising himself: they were all beautiful, painful mementos of the life he’d had until just a few days ago. They were his life, his reason for living, his sole purpose for drawing in another breath.

Alan drew in a ragged breath and pushed those wonderful agonies aside. He sucked in another gasp of air and held it like a treasure as he thought of the look on Avery’s sweet, blood-stained face as he looked up from feasting on Meghan’s neck.

He could survive a little longer if he just let everything go but the anger. That was the most important element. Without his rage, he would have stayed in that room and eaten the pills they kept giving him for as long as they wanted him to.

But if he held it close, fueled it with tiny scraps of the pain that overwhelmed him, he could make his anger grow big enough to do what he had to do.

No creatures on this planet were going to steal his wife and son without suffering for it.

A branch punched into the sole of his left foot and drove a hot lance of pain into him. He stopped exactly long enough to yank out the irritation and continue on. He fingered the stick, felt the blood slick across his hand, and let that add more fuel to his anger.

Anger was his weapon. It was his shield.

There was something else that he would use, too: knowledge.

He wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but he thought he knew what he was facing. There were only a few things he’d ever heard of that came out at night and drank blood. Maybe the thing wearing Avery’s face had actually been eating the flesh of his mother, but if so, he took small bites.

No, it was the blood. Her neck was torn, not chewed away. At least I think it was. So damned hard to focus on anything.

Were vampires real? Was it even a possibility? He didn’t know, but he was going to find out.

He looked at the bloody stick in his hand and smiled tightly. Either way, a bit of stick through the heart will stop the thing that stole my boy.

Alan had a wood shop in the garage and plenty of wood he hadn’t quite gotten around to doing anything with.

That was about to change.

He had nothing left that mattered, but it was possible to find a substitute, at least for a while. He could fake a reason to live; he could make one up and use it for as long as possible.

His reason to live was that he had something to kill; something that looked like his son.

Brian Freemont slipped out of his house a little after noon, and kept a cautious eye on the houses around him. He carried two bags of clothing and a third that held all of his weapons and enough ammunition to let him hold off a small army. He checked under his car, and inside it, too, before he finally threw his luggage into the backseat and slid behind the driver’s seat and started the engine.

His face was bruised and stinging from the blow he’d taken in the wee hours of the previous night. The lacerations were not deep, but they burned. He needed to get something he could use to clean the wounds, because there was nothing in the house.

He also needed supplies. He wouldn’t try to leave town yet, but it was on his agenda. He wanted to be gone before night-fall. He wanted to be far away from Black Stone Bay before Angie could come haunt him again. She’d be back, too. He knew it.

Maybe a hotel would be best, a place where he could hide and not risk being screwed over by his ex-associates in the police force. Because he knew, sure as the sun rose every day, that if he left town, he would be hunted down like a dog.

One week ago, his life had been good. He’d had a life. Now he was reduced to this. Running from his home and from the ghost of his wife.

She has to be a ghost. No one living could take a bullet in her head and get back up like that. No one! Not ever! If she is a ghost, who killed her?

Who else? The voice on the phone. The voice that called and taunted and then stole his life away in the first place. Oh, it was fixed now, but he knew the voice could do it again, just reach out and take everything he’d worked for, everything he’d made with Angie and everything he’d wanted to have for his child.

Oh God, I shot her. I shot Angie in the head and I killed our baby.

It took him almost ten minutes to recover from his crying jag. He sobbed and shivered in the slight warmth of the afternoon and let all of the fear creep slowly from his body in the form of bitter tears.

I wish I still had my uniform. If I still had my uniform, I could find a girl and get my life back. Make her put out for me and get control of everything again. I need that! I need the control and I need the sex. It’s all I have. All I’ve ever had.

No. No that’s a lie. I had Angie. I just wish that she’d been enough.

“Angie, baby, I’m sorry. I wish you’d been enough.”

He was just getting ready to pull out of the driveway when the detectives showed up.

“You gotta be kidding me.” He groaned and rested his head on the steering wheel.

Boyd walked up to the side of his car and stared in the window at him. Holdstedter came up and stood at the back of the car, his arms crossed. Neither man looked like talking to him was something they really wanted to do.

Boyd looked him over for a second and then looked into the back of his car and saw the bags. “You weren’t thinking of going somewhere, were you, Freemont? Because the conditions of your bail say you have to stay where we can keep an eye on you.”

“I was going to a hotel.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” Boyd lit one of his cigars and looked him over, one eye squinted against the sunlight. Holdstedter was still in the same place, his face expressionless and his eyes unreadable behind reflective sunglasses.

“Someone tried to break in last night. Broke the window in my bedroom.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, so he managed to say it with a clear conscience.

“You recognize the perp?” Boyd had a cloud of smoke around his face. He looked like a demon to Brian.

“Looked like Angie.”

“Yeah? Did she say anything to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does. What did she say?”

“I said it doesn’t matter.”

“You really want me to drag your ass down to the boys’ club so we can talk in depth about this, Freemont? Or do you just want to go over it here? Because, I gotta tell you, your neighbors weren’t happy with all the gunfire last night. Had two of them call us a little while ago to piss and moan about it.”

Shit. He hadn’t thought about that. If he had, he would have left hours ago.

“What I’m trying to figure out here is why a fucken cop, of all people, would want to go and break a bunch of ordinances about firing weapons inside the town limits, and then load up his car and get ready to head out with still more guns in the backseat.” Boyd leaned in closer, the thick smoke from the cigar wafting into Brian’s car in a nauseating wave. “How do you think I should react here, Freemont? Oh, and don’t think of reaching for your backseat. Danny’ll take the top of your head off. He’s been itching for a reason ever since you pointed your piece at us.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You murdered a young girl, you sick motherfucker!” Boyd’s face was close enough that the cigar tip waved an inch from his nose. “I’m looking at your face and I’m seeing new cuts that look like somebody scratched your face and there were gunshots here! So you tell me why I shouldn’t just bust your fucken ass right now or I swear to God I’ll back Danny up and say you were going for the guns in your fucken backseat!”

Brian was ready to go insane right then and there. That was the first time Boyd had accused him of committing a murder. He didn’t need this, he needed to get out of town before Angie came back for him again and brought her friends.

“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!”

“I got a fucken DNA test that says otherwise. When it comes back, I’m gonna drop you like a sack of shit.” Boyd was calmer now, or at least he wasn’t screaming.

“And when it comes back negative, I’ll have your badge.” It was the best bluff he could manage.

“It ain’t coming back negative, Freemont. You know it and I know it.” Boyd stepped back a bit and glared. “How many girls did you make suck that limp dick of yours to get out of tickets, Freemont?”

That one made him jump. That one made him want to shit himself. No one was ever supposed to know!

Boyd nodded. “Yeah. I thought so. Guilty as shit.”

“You just leave me alone, or book me.”

“Try to leave town, Freemont. Please. We’ve been looking for a reason.” Boyd opened his back door and pulled out the bundle of weapons. “Gonna hold this for you, so you can’t get too stupid.”

“No! I need those!” He started to reach and flinched back fast and hard when he saw the pistol appear in Holdstedter’s hand.

“You can’t be that stupid, asswipe.” Boyd shook his head.

“I need those!”

“Yeah?” Boyd was staring hard at him. “Why do you need these if you’re all innocent and sweet like you say you are?”

“Because Angie’s trying to kill me!”

“Really? Your missing wife is trying to kill you now?”

Brian shut his mouth. He’d already said too much.

“You don’t wanna talk to me anymore, Freemont?”

Brian shook his head.

“That’s okay. I got what I need for now.” He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and slipped it into his left hand. Boyd was right-handed. Brian figured he wanted a clear path to his piece. “Don’t even think about crossing the city limits. You do, I’ll have you busted so fast you’ll think your mommy was watching out for you.”

“Look, why are you doing this to me?”

“Why do you think, asshole? Because you’ve been raping young girls and you murdered one, too. That makes you shit in my book.”

Boyd walked back to his car. Holdstedter waited until his partner was seated and comfortable before he looked away from Brian. When he was sure, he went to the passenger’s side of the Crown Victoria and joined his partner.

Brian waited until they had backed out of the long driveway and the dust had cleared before he let himself start crying again.

“Are we there yet?… Are we there yet?… Are we there yet?” Danny sat in the seat next to him and kept going like that pink bunny with the drum in the battery commercial.

Boyd was in too good a mood to be goaded. “I got a lit cigar, Danny. Don’t make me put it out on your forehead.”

“You know, I think he was crying when we left.”

“I love when little boys like him cry. Makes me feel all manly.”

“Probably why he did all the girls the way he did.”

“Yeah, he’d need that sort of shit to feel like a man.” Boyd thought about the crew cut and the hawk nose and the thin lips on Freemont and shook his head in disgust. “That’s what all the shrinks say, anyway.”

“What? That rape is about power?”

“Yeah, or anger.”

“I don’t think that’s always true, Richie.”

“No?”

“No. Maybe violent rape, but I think with Freemont it was just about getting laid and feeling like a man.”

“You don’t think what he did to Veronica Miller was violent?”

“She’s the exception.” Danny shrugged. “Mostly I think he’s just a horny prick on a power trip.”

“Fair enough.” He pulled the car up to open the gate of the sprawling black house, and then moved slowly past it and up the driveway.

“Ever wish you were this rich?”

“Isn’t your family this rich?”

“Yeah, but your family isn’t.”

“Thanks for the reminder, dickhead.”

“Hey, it’s what friends do.”

“Just put on your polite face. We don’t need any rich pricks giving O’Neill a reason.”

“Well, hell, Richie. You already gave him one, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, smart-ass, so he doesn’t need another.”

“Oh, yeah. Good point.”

“What’s his name again?”

“Jason Soulis.”

“You gotta wonder if that name is real, don’t you?”

“It’s real. The FBI checks that sort of shit, too.”

“Lah-dee-dah.”

“Hey. Don’t you go picking on the feds, now. They’re very important to the pursuit of justice.”

“Bite me.”

“Nah, you probably taste like you smell.”

“You saying I smell bad, Danny Boy?”

“I’m saying you should maybe buy better cigars.”

“You’re the one with money, dickhead.”

“Okay, am I dickhead or am I smart-ass? Because I’m starting to get confused here.”

“Drink more coffee. You definitely need to drink more coffee.”

“Maybe Soulis will have some.”

Boyd climbed out of his car and walked toward the front of the place. “Maybe he’ll even let you have some.”

“I can hope.”

Naturally, there was a big damned brass knocker on the door. Boyd used it. When no one answered, he used it again. After the third time, Jason Soulis appeared at the doorway, squinting against the bright sunlight.

“Yes?” The man’s voice was cold but polite.

Boyd flashed his badge and Danny did the same. “Really sorry to bother you. Are you Jason Soulis?”

“Yes I am, Detective Boyd. How can I help you?” He stepped back and gestured for the men to enter the house.

Boyd nodded his thanks and stepped inside, followed by his oversized blond shadow. “We just need to ask you a few questions.”

“By all means. I was just making coffee. Would either of you like a cup?”

“You’re a god.” Danny nodded as he said the words.

Soulis’s lips curved slightly into a smile and he led them into a large, tastefully decorated room. He left and came back a few minutes later with a large silver tray loaded down with fresh coffee and a few cookies.

When everyone had been served—by the man of the house, no less—Soulis leaned back in an antique chair and nodded. “Ask your questions, please.”

“We just needed to know if you’ve seen or heard anything unusual in the last week or so.”

“This is in regards to the missing people around town?”

“You know about that, huh?”

“I read the paper every morning.”

“There’ve been fifteen disappearances from this neighborhood.” Boyd shrugged and sipped at his coffee. It was disgustingly good. He could get used to coffee like that.

“Well, I know about the Listers, of course. And about the Tripp family.”

“Did you know any of them personally?”

“I met both of the boys from the families and I tried to offer help when the Lister boy took ill.”

The man was calm and cool. He was exactly the sort of person that Boyd distrusted on sight.

“Have you seen anyone strange hanging around these parts?”

“My good man, I’m sure you’re aware that I have only recently moved here. Everyone is still strange to me.”

“Okay. Have you seen anyone stranger than you?”

Soulis gave that little smile of his and nodded his head. “Nicely put, Detective. I had a man visit me the other day, asking if I was interested in purchasing sexual favors. His name was Tom Pardue, I believe. He struck me as rather unsavory.”

“That was the only reason Pardue came to see you?”

“Indeed. I declined his offer.”

“He was here for a long while.”

“Was he? I wasn’t aware. I was out looking at the ocean.” Soulis shifted slightly in his seat and rested one hand under his chin.

“Like the ocean, do you?”

“It’s why I moved here. The view is spectacular.”

“Where did you move here from, Mr. Soulis?”

“Ohio.”

“Why did you move?”

“My house was broken into and I no longer felt safe.”

“Did they take anything?”

“There wasn’t much worth taking. Most of my valuables were in holding.”

“Did you know that Tom Pardue was dead?”

“Yes. I am also aware of the tragedy at the university. Something about a fraternity house fire.”

“It’s been a busy week.”

“I suspect so, yes.”

Boyd couldn’t get a thing from the man in front of him. He might as well have been speaking about the weather.

“If I leave you my card, will you call me if you see anything suspicious?”

“Naturally. Has the police force considered a curfew?”

“There’s already a curfew in place for kids around here, high school and under. They have to be off the streets by ten P.M.”

“How’s that been working out?”

“Not so good. We have around fourteen or fifteen missing right now.”

He read a list of names to the man, and asked if he’d met or knew anyone on the list. The only ones he claimed to know were the kids he’d already mentioned.

“We’ll be in touch if that’s all right, Mr. Soulis?”

“Please, call me Jason and of course, if I can help in any way, you have but to ask.”

Boyd shook his hand as they were leaving and winced. The man had a grip that was intimidating.

On the way out to the car, Danny was grinning like a run-way model.

“What are you smiling about?”

“You don’t like him.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You think he did something, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I just haven’t figured out what.”

“You’re getting jumpy, Richie.”

Boyd shrugged. “It’s a hobby.”

“You think he took those kids?”

“I think he knows something is all.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he looks like he knows something.”

Before Danny could come up with an appropriate answer they were called back to the station. O’Neill wanted to bitch them out again. He’d recovered from being called a bitch.

He hadn’t driven twenty feet before Danny started in again. “Are we there yet?… Are we there yet?…”

“I’ve still got the cigar, Danny. I can light it right up.”

“You’re no fun when you’re pissy, Richie.”

“That ain’t what your mother said.”

“Gave up on Whalen, did ya?”

“Again with the damned Whalen comments!”

“Somebody’s getting oversensitive.”

Boyd lit his cigar. Danny shut his mouth.