Blood Crimes Book One

Chapter 9

Hayes sat in his rented Dodge Neon and tried to think things through. What he now had went past purely hypothetical and circumstantial. This was hard evidence for a murder investigation, or more accurately, a double-murder. He could no longer kid himself about Jim’s involvement.

He looked up and counted six police cars and two ambulances parked outside the Cineplex’s front entrance. Two older model sedans had also been left out front, and he guessed that those were being driven by the detectives on the case. A middle-aged man had been taken by stretcher onto one of the ambulances, and Hayes found out from talking to a nineteen year-old girl who worked selling tickets at the Cineplex that the man had passed out after seeing the dead body, at least that’s what she heard. The rumor going around the other Cineplex workers was that a man had been hacked to pieces and his body left in the back row, and that there was blood everywhere. Hayes showed her the drawing he had of Jim, but she popped her gum and stared blankly at it, saying she didn’t think she saw him. When he showed her the drawing of Jim’s girlfriend, she nodded.

“Yeah, she bought tickets from me. I think it was for The Notebook, Part 3. She wasn’t a blonde, though. She had dark brown hair.”

“How many tickets did you sell her?”

The girl thought about it, popped her gum some more. “I’m pretty sure she bought two tickets. Maybe the guy in that other drawing you showed me was with her, but I didn’t see him.”

That was twenty minutes ago. Since then a corpse had been removed from the Cineplex via a body bag. Hayes was still trying to decide what to do when a pair of hard knuckles rapped on the outside of his window. Detective Joe Colvin was leaning against the car peering in at him. Hayes had the engine running for the air conditioner. He turned it off and manually rolled down the window.

“What are you doing here?” Colvin asked. “And don’t tell me you’re researching a book for some asshole novelist. I know bullshit when I smell it and I sure as fuck know verbal diarrhea when I hear it.”

Hayes nodded. “Why don’t I get out of the car and we’ll talk.”

Colvin backed away so Hayes could join him. The homicide detective’s cheap suit that earlier had looked wrinkled now gave the appearance of having been slept in. Colvin looked equally rumpled and worn out.

“What’s your interest in this?” Colvin said, his eyes hooded and tired as he stared at the PI. Hayes rubbed the back of neck. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it.

“I know you used to be a cop,” Colvin added. “New York’s PI licensing office put me in touch with your old precinct in Brooklyn. I talked to your old boss, Captain Hartlaub. He told me you used to be a damn good cop, and that you were a good guy and you’d do the right thing if asked. So I’m asking. Help me out if you know anything about these killings.”

Hayes nodded to himself as he came to a decision. His chest sunk a bit accepting what he was going to do. He knew Serena wasn’t going to be happy.

“I think these were done by the same guy,” he said. “The drug dealer killed in the alley last night and whoever it was in the movie theatre.”

“Yeah? What can you tell me I don’t know?”

“So you think so also?”

Colvin didn’t bother saying anything. His eyes held steady on Hayes. Hayes took out a handkerchief and wiped his neck. He could see the thought in Colvin’s eyes as the homicide detective suppressed a crack about how Hayes seemed to sweat a lot for a guy with a clear conscience.

“I’ve been trying to find this missing person for the past year,” Hayes said. “I don’t know anything about him other than a sketch my client gave me and that his first name is Jim, but I’ve been tracking him across the country. I have no real evidence, just a lot of bizarre circumstantial stuff, but I think he did both these killings, maybe some others.”

“Yeah? What do you have?”

Hayes made a pained face. “Jim’s girlfriend was at a bar near the murder scene last night. I think she was here also.”

Colvin looked more interested. “What bar?”

Hayes consulted a notepad and gave the detective the name and address. He told him how the bartender claimed he hadn’t seen her, but his reaction was a dead giveaway.

“Okay. Let’s say this mystery girlfriend was near the murder scene last night. How do you know she was here?”

“I talked with one of the cashiers working the tickets. She recognized a drawing I have of the girlfriend.”

“That’s funny,” Colvin muttered, rubbing his jaw. “Witnesses inside the movie theatre saw the victim with two other guys. No one said anything about seeing a girl with him.” His eyes shifted to meet Hayes’. “Why don’t you show me this drawing of yours.”

Hayes shook his head. “I have to talk to my client first.”

“Uh uh. Unless you want me to arrest you as a material witness, let’s see it.”

Hayes was still holding his handkerchief. It had gotten damp, but he wiped it again over his forehead and along his neck.

“It would help if I knew what happened in there,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“It just would.” Hayes ran a hand through his hair, felt the dampness of it. “I heard the guy was hacked to death. And that it was bloody.”

Colvin looked around to see if anyone else was standing nearby, or at least close enough to hear them. No one was. He licked his lips.

“It was bloody, but the victim wasn’t hacked to death. According to the medical examiner his arm was ripped out of its socket, then while he was bleeding out, his throat was crushed.”

“What do you mean his arm was ripped out of the socket?”

“Just what I said.”

Hayes felt dizzy at the thought of that. He put a hand out on his rented Neon to steady himself.

“That mean something to you?” Colvin asked, an eyebrow arched.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m just trying to get a handle on this. Was the guy small? Someone frail with a degenerative bone disease you could do something like that to?”

“Nope, a big beefy guy. Bigger than me.”

“You know anything about him?”

“Yeah. We knew about him. He was a pretty bad character. Worked as an enforcer for a drug gang we have here in Cleveland called the Blood Dragons. Not a nice group.”

“His arm was pulled out of the socket…how would someone do something like that?”

“You tell me. About those drawings…?”

Hayes nodded. He went back into his car, got a folder and took two drawings out of it that he handed to Colvin.

“I’ve got other copies,” Hayes said. “You can keep those.”

“Thanks.”

While Colvin studied the drawings, he took out a half-smoked stogie from an inside suit jacket pocket, chomped down on it, then fished out an ancient-looking Zippo lighter from his pants pocket. He turned an eye suspiciously towards Hayes. “You’re not one of them smoking Nazis, are you?” he asked.

Hayes shook his head. “Feel free to light up.”

Colvin flicked the lighter, got a flame burning, then puffed on the cigar until he had the end glowing red. His large ruddy face relaxed as he breathed in a lungful of smoke. “You’d be surprised all the smoking Nazis out there who’d call my precinct to complain about my cigar smoke invading their personal space. Christ.” He held out the drawing of Jim’s girlfriend at arms length, studied it. “A good-looking girl,” he observed. “The guy looks like a freak, though. I need the name of your client.”

“I can’t give you that right now. I have to talk to her first.”

“Uh uh, you know better than that. I need her name.”

“I know, but I’m going to have to talk to her first. I’m sorry.”

Colvin looked like he was going to argue the point, but instead his face deflated as he exhaled out a small cloud of acrid smoke.

“Why’s she looking for this guy?”

“Beats me. She never told me.”

Colvin let out another small cloud of cigar smoke, nodded to himself. “You can talk to her first, but afterwards I’m going to need her name and phone number. Show me who recognized this mystery girlfriend.”

Hayes pointed out the cashier who was standing huddled with other Cineplex employees. Colvin took his cigar from his lips and gave it one last longing look before tapping out the lit end and placing it back in his inside jacket pocket. He had Hayes join him while he questioned the girl, then the other employees. When he was done, he told Hayes to stand off to the side while he showed Jim’s picture to the other witnesses. Afterwards he walked back to Hayes looking dejected.

“No one recognized your guy,” he said. “And none of them remembered seeing the girl.”

“It was probably too dark in there.”

Colvin nodded slowly, thinking about it. He told Hayes he wanted him to come with him to the bar where Jim’s girlfriend was seen the other night.

“I’m going to need you to point out the joker who saw her,” Colvin said. “You can follow in your own car. It will give you a chance to call your client in private.”

Hayes agreed and took several steps towards his car. He stopped when Colvin received a call on his cell. The homicide detective stood quietly listening. Hayes gave him a questioning look after Colvin put his cell phone away.

“We’ve got another one,” Colvin said incredulously, his large face falling slack. “Another dead Blood Dragon enforcer.” He closed his mouth as if he were trying to decide how much to trust this one-time cop and now private investigator. He made up his mind, and with his voice a low rumble, went on, “This one had his head torn off from his body. According to the medical examiner who’s with the body now, it was torn off, not cut off. The body was left inside a motel room near the Brook Park area. The head was found a couple of hundred feet outside the room. From the way it was scraped up and dented, the medical examiner thinks it was thrown.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

Colvin shook his head. His face had paled, giving it a washed out look. He lowered his voice into a conspiratorial-type whisper, said, “A lot of bullets were fired inside the motel room, and while a lot of casings were found, not enough bullet holes were. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I want you to follow me there. Maybe something will make sense to you. And when we get there you’re giving me the name of your client.”

Hayes agreed, and Colvin gave him the address. That same dizziness from before hit him as he walked back to his car. Somehow he stayed on his feet and the dizziness faded. Neither of these killings made any sense for Jim. They were too public and they offered to much risk for exposure. But as much as they didn’t make sense, Hayes knew it was Jim. He also knew something had gone seriously wrong, and a lot more of these killings were going to happen. There was something else about them, something buried deep in the recesses of his subconscious that tied it all together, and made sense of it. He just couldn’t pull out what it was.

When he returned back to his car he checked the name of the motel against the leads Annie had given him, and found that it was the next motel on his list. The one desk clerk Annie had spoken to who wasn’t full of shit. That had to be where Jim and his girlfriend were staying. If he hadn’t let himself get sidetracked by checking out this last murder, he would’ve been at the motel an hour ago, maybe even been there while Jim was ripping that gang members head off. Fuck. What lousy timing turning on the radio and hearing about the ‘most vicious and depraved murders in recent Cleveland history’. He had a feeling the one at the motel might end up topping it-or if not that one, one of the others that were coming. He tried to piece together what he knew and come up with some idea of what had happened. The Cineplex murder was first. Jim and his girlfriend were out minding their own business and enjoying a movie when that gang member showed up. Later another gang member ended up in Jim’s motel room and was killed. Jim must’ve been one of the men that the witnesses saw with that dead gang member. Maybe they were confused and thought Jim’s girlfriend was also a guy. But how was that possible? From the drawing and every description he had of her, she was a tiny thing and as feminine looking as any woman has ever been. How could anyone confuse her as a guy? It just wasn’t possible. It must’ve been two guys inside that theatre with Jim, maybe the other gang member who was killed later in Jim’s motel room. So where was his girlfriend? Something had happened…fuck that, something was happening. He could almost see it, could almost put the jigsaw puzzle pieces together…

Hayes had been following a single car length behind Colvin’s older model Buick Regal, maintaining the same forty mile-per-hour clip the homicide detective was staying at. Things changed quickly. Colvin’s window was rolled down and a blue light placed on the roof, and then the car took a hard U-turn leaving Hayes stuck. He pulled over, thought about trying to follow Colvin. His cell phone rang. It was Serena. He considered letting it ring to his answering service, instead decided to just get it over with and rip that band aid off with one clean pull.

“Serena-”

“Donald,” she said, cutting him off, her voice harder and more shrill than he had heard from her before, “I’m in Cleveland right now. Please tell me that you’re still in Cleveland also?”

“Yeah, I am, but what are you doing here-”

“Seriously?” She laughed a glass-crackling type laugh. “Donald, you should know why I came here. To talk with you, of course. It is so very important. But right now we’re having engine trouble. I was so hoping you could help us out.”

His head was swimming as he tried to get a handle on her being in Cleveland at that moment.

“I don’t understand-”

“It’s very simple. Please drive by and pick up me and my companions. We so much need to talk.”

She gave him an intersection for him to go to and hung up. He cursed himself for answering the phone. It would’ve been hard enough telling her long distance how he had to go to the police with what he had, but with all the bizarre shit he was already stuck in the middle of the thought of having to tell Serena in person made him sick to his stomach. For a long moment he considered driving back to New York and saying the hell with it all, but instead let out a disgusted sigh and picked up his map of downtown Cleveland. He located the intersection Serena had given him. It was only five or six miles away and he memorized the turns he was going to have to make. For whatever reason he wanted to see this through, and more than that, find Jim and figure out what the fuck was going on with him. As he drove the streets became more desolate and more of the storefronts were boarded up, and then it was as if were entering a ghost town-what used to be an old warehouse district, but now looked deserted. It seemed like an odd place for Serena to end up at. He found the intersection. She stepped out of a doorway and waved to him. Her lips looked unnaturally large and red as if she had smeared too many layers of makeup over them. Something about the way they looked gave him the willies. He drove over to her, and tried not to look again at her lips.

“Donald, darling,” she said, “please open your trunk. But I’d rather that you not see what I need to put in it. It is private.”

He didn’t like what she was asking but he also didn’t want to argue with her. A voice whispered loudly in his skull that it would not be smart to argue. He unlocked the trunk and walked back to the front of his car. A police cruiser sat several blocks away. He squinted hard and saw that it was empty. It didn’t seem to make any sense for it to be there. He heard other voices talking with Serena, and remembered her mentioning having companions with her. When they were done putting whatever it was in the trunk, he turned and caught a quick glance of the three men with her. They were like shadows the way they moved, and he had this sense that he didn’t want to look at any of them too closely, but was left with the impression that they all had the same similar odd-shaped cat-like features as Serena and Jim. He figured that they were all related, maybe some inbreeding going on. He noted that one of them was limping.

“Donald, Darling, are you going to leave us standing here?” Serena asked, laughing.

He got in the driver’s seat. Serena took the seat next to him and her three companions piled into the back. Normally it would be tight fitting three adults back there, but like Serena, they all had slender body types, and they fit without any trouble. Outside of one quick glance in the rear view mirror, he kept his stare focused straight ahead. He didn’t want to look at any of them. At least not directly.

“There have been more killings, Serena. I think Jim is behind them.”

“That is interesting, Donald.” From her tone it was clear that she wasn’t at all interested. “May I suggest we go back to your hotel room so we can talk in a more comfortable setting?”

Hayes nodded. His instincts told him now was not a good time to fill her in on anything, especially along this isolated stretch of the city. As much as he wanted to peek over and see why her lips had looked so large and red before, he kept his stare frozen straight ahead. The silence inside the car unnerved him, but he knew it would be better to just keep his mouth shut for the time being. Now was especially not the time to tell her that he had talked with the police about Jim.

He drove further up the street so he could pull into a driveway and turn around more easily, and saw what looked like red smudges on the door of the abandoned police car. He almost kept driving straight ahead so he could see one way or the other what was smeared over that door, but again, his instincts told him now was not the time for that, and he turned the car around as planned. Nervously, he tried making small talk with Serena, asking how her trip was. She casually dismissed him by telling him that she’d rather not talk right now-she was tired and would like to rest until they got to his hotel room. That got a chuckle from one of her companions as they sat in the back seat whispering back and forth. Hayes strained to make out what they were saying but couldn’t quite get it. He realized his hands and wrists were aching, and noticed how tightly he was clenching the wheel and how the veins were bulging from his arms. He sensed that Serena was noticing those veins also, and that sent a chill up his spine.

“You’re sweating, Donald,” she said with a laugh.

“I’ve had a tough day so far,” he muttered, more than anything not wanting to look at her, especially not wanting to see why her lips were the way they were.

When he arrived at the hotel he started to pull into a parking space in front so they’d have to walk through the lobby, but Serena pointed out the hotel’s parking garage.

“I think it would be better if you parked in there,” she said.

Reluctantly, Hayes pulled away from the curb and drove into the attached garage. After parking, he got out of the car and heard Serena and her companions get out also. More than ever he didn’t want to look at them. Something told him not to. Even louder, the same gut instinct was screaming at him to run.

“Do you need to get your things out of the trunk?” he asked.

“They’ll be fine where they are,” Serena said.

Hayes led the way to the elevator, then stood staring at his hands folded in front of him. He could tell Serena and her companions found it amusing that he couldn’t get himself to look directly at any of them. He led them to his room, and once inside, went straight to the minibar and poured himself a scotch and water.

“Would any of you like one?” he offered the rest of them.

“No thank you,” Serena said, again laughing that shrill, glass-crackling laugh. “Your hand is shaking, Donald.”

“It’s been a tough day.”

“Yes, I’ve heard already. You’re repeating yourself.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize for that-after all, you’ve had a tough day.” That brought sniggers from her companions. Serena continued, adding, “I certainly hope you haven’t been expensing those. Motel minibar drinks are ridiculously marked up.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t expense my food or drinks.”

“You’d be much better off buying a bottle at a liquor store.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

Hayes drained his drink and poured himself another one. He could sense that all of them had moved closer to him.

“You mentioned something about more killings earlier…” Serena started.

It all clicked in place then. With a clarity of thought, Hayes knew what had happened with Jim. He knew why those killings happened, why none of the witnesses remembered seeing Jim’s girlfriend in that theatre.

“Yeah, I did mention something like that,” he said.

“You think my Jim was involved?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Donald, I am paying you quite a lot of money for your services.”

He nodded. His throat had tightened, and he knew he’d have trouble talking. He tilted his glass and finished off what was left of his second scotch. It helped.

“It looks like he killed two more people today,” he said. “Both members of a local Cleveland drug gang. The Blood Dragons.”

“What an adorable name,” Serena said. “Yes, I do like that name. Any guess why my Jim would do something like that.”

“I have a guess. I think he got in some trouble with them. Maybe he took something of theirs, and maybe they took something of his to get their stuff back.”

More curious than anything else, she asked, “What would they take of his?”

“His girlfriend.”

One of her companions snorted out a loud laugh.

“That reminds me, Donald, you never did fax me that girl’s drawing.”

Hayes nodded, fished a copy of the drawing out from a folder and handed it to Serena. It was purely reflex, he couldn’t help it, but he turned to look at her and found himself staring at Serena’s mouth. He understood why it had looked so big and red before. It had been smeared with blood, so much so that it looked caked on. He then looked from her to the others. Their clothing was bullet-riddled, splotches of blood covered both it and their skin. One of them had a four-leaf clover-like pattern of gunpowder burns in the middle of his forehead. Hayes thought he had smelled gunpowder earlier when he was in the car with them.

“I think I could use another drink,” Hayes said.

“I think you’ve had enough, Donald. I’m afraid I might get a bit tipsy if I allow you to have another.”

All of it made sense then. Those bodies missing all that blood, Serena and her companions splattered with it. Their freakish looks…being able to rip a man’s arm off…tearing another man’s head from its body…It was insane but it all made sense.

Hayes made a move for the door. Serena showed an amazing quickness and stepped in front of him, grabbing both his arms. It was like being held by steel bands. He couldn’t move.

“Donald, I have been very impressed with your work, otherwise I wouldn’t be having you join our little family. I know you may not think so right now, but you should feel quite honored.”

“You must be satiated from before,” one of the others was telling her. “If you’d like I could take care of him. That wouldn’t be too gay, would it?”

She laughed at that. “I don’t think so, but Donald and I have developed a very special bond. He’s been aching for my touch for so long now that it would only be right if I did the honors.”

She looked hard into Hayes’ eye. All he could see were two empty dark holes.

“Please…” he said.

“You’re quite welcome,” she told him.

She picked him up and swung him to the floor, then bent over him. Her lips touched his throat. They were like ice. With some shame he realized he was both terrified and excited. He was unable to move, unable to breath, his heart pounding as he waited. It seemed a long time before she bit his throat, her teeth sinking deep into his flesh. He knew she had severed his jugular. It hurt, but not as much as he would’ve thought. He closed his eyes and waited to die. Death didn’t come, though. Instead it started hurting. Bad. And it only got worse. Like he was on fire. Like he would go out of his mind. The world disappeared on him, leaving him nothing but pain. Before too long he wished he were dead already.

Zach bound Hayes’s wrist and ankles using strips that he had ripped from a spare bed sheet taken from the hotel room’s closet. The PI moaned softly, but mostly lay still on the floor. Zach pulled on the strips and tightened his knot. He stood up, faced Serena and wrinkled his nose as if he smelled bad cheese.

“That sheet is some sort of polyester-cotton blend. We’d be lucky if it were even a hundred thread count.”

“I know, darling.”

Zach’s head pivoted slowly in a half circle as he took in the room, his disgust showing plainly on his face. “Unbelievably tacky,” he said.

“Think of it as roughing it for a night, darling. Like we were camping.”

Zach nodded sullenly. Wilfred had joined him so he could prod Hayes in the back with the toe of his boot. The PI stirred slightly, but not much more than that.

“Do you think that’s going to hold him?” Wilfred asked.

“For a few hours maybe,” Zach said. “But after that I don’t think so. We could use some chains.” He shifted his gaze to Serena. “Is he worth this annoyance? If we got rid of him we could find someplace nice to spend the night. Why stay cooped up in this dump?”

Serena used her index finger to wave Zach closer to her, then placed both hands on his chest. She leaned forward and licked some of the dried blood off his face. The blood was from one of the cops they had massacred earlier and not from any of them so she had no problem digesting it.

“Darling,” she whispered in his ear, “we’ll be fine for the night. And yes, he’s worth it. He is a very clever snoop and could come in handy when we try to find Jim again.”

“We already found him once without his help.”

“I know. But that was luck. Jim knows we’re here now. It’s not going to be so easy the next time.”

“How do we know he hasn’t already taken off? That’s what I would do if I were him.”

“But you’re not him, Zach, darling. Jim wouldn’t do that, at least not without his precious girlfriend. As long as he doesn’t find her over the next twenty-four hours, Mr. Hayes could be very useful to us.” She leaned in closer to Zach and lowered her whisper so that only he could hear her. “And don’t be jealous, my sweetheart. No matter how many I add to our family, you’ll always be my favorite.”

He grunted, tried to maintain his sullen frown, but was obviously pleased with himself. The door to the room opened and the third surviving member of Serena’s group walked in, a duffel bag swung over his shoulder, and his arms loaded with luggage and a cooler. His forehead was still blackened with gunpowder from when Jim had shot him. He set everything down, found a corkscrew by the mini bar, then sat on the couch and tried to pry out a bullet that had lodged between his gum and tooth.

“I thought you were supposed to be some sort of hotshot martial arts sword guy,” Wilfred said to him. “Jim kicked the shit out of you.”

The vampire shrugged, removed the corkscrew from his mouth so he could talk.

“It wasn’t that asshole,” he said. “It was the sun. That’s what kicked the shit out of me. If I get another chance with him after the sun’s down, I’ll cut him to pieces.”

“I only want you cutting off his legs and arms,” Serena warned him. “Jim is not to be killed.”

The vampire nodded dully and went back to digging out the bullet. His body was swaying slightly from side to side-giving the impression that he was on a boat listing in a storm. He still looked woozy from the shots he took to the head.

“So that’s it,” Wilfred said, waving a hand casually at Hayes. “We’re just going to wait here until he wakes up?”

Serena shook her head.

“There’s no need for that,” she said. “The sun’s mostly down. Stefan here has no further excuses. I’d like you two to clean up and see what you can find out about this gang, the Blood Dragons. If we can find them, then we can find Jim’s precious girlfriend, and I would have to think things would get easy after that.”

“How about you and Zach?” Wilfred asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, we have other chores,” Serena said, smiling thinly. “I remember us passing a sex shop. They should have the chains we need for Mr. Hayes. After he’s been properly secured, Zach and I will do what we can to make this room tolerable since we could very well be spending from sunrise to sunset here tomorrow.” She turned her smile to Zach. “How about some satin sheets, goose down pillows, a comforter that hasn’t had hundreds of other people drooling and pissing and having sex on, among other niceties? We’ll see if we can make this sty a little bit more like home.”

Wilfred nodded, left to the bathroom to strip off his torn and blood-stained clothes and clean up. While Stefan waited, he opened the duffel bag and went over each sword with a damp cloth. Minutes later Hayes started to moan louder. Serena smiled at him the way a mother might a newborn child. She took a pint bag of blood from the cooler and kneeled by him so she could feed him. The PI suckled on it blindly.

“Metcalf is going to find out about what happened here,” Zach said. “I’m sure it’s already all over the news.”

Serena pretended not to hear him. After a while she asked him to be a dear and turn on CNN to see what they were reporting. Zach turned it on and it wasn’t just the top story-it was the only story. They were dubbing it the ‘Cleveland Massacre’, and whether they were showing a video recording that had been made by a bystander with a cell phone, interviewing witnesses, talking to a police spokesman, or showing the bloody aftermath, it was all Cleveland twenty-four by seven.

“At least we put this godforsaken city on the map,” Serena said.

Rolfe kept trying to get Noah off his Lazyboy recliner, but the man who would dwarf most NFL linemen was content in just taking long tokes from a joint the size of a Macanudo.

“Come on, man, this is big,” Rolfe implored.

Noah made a face as if Rolfe were full of shit. “Just chill, okay? I’m getting sick of hearing that. Whatever it is it can wait. Here, take a hit. This will calm you down, bro.”

Rolfe shook his head. “Fuck that, man, this is too important. I need your help now. Besides, you probably laced that sucker with crack.”

Noah smiled. “Guilty as charged.”

“Fuck, man, you need to let me show you this. It can’t wait, okay?”

Noah took a long drag on his cigar-sized joint and held the smoke in for a good twenty seconds before slowly releasing it.

“If this is so important, just tell me what it is, okay, bro?”

“Can’t do that, man, you need to see this to believe it. So get your ass out of that seat ’cause we’re talking real cash here. Fucking thing just fell right out of the sky and into my lap. And it gives us a sweet way to screw those Dragon bitches.”

Noah gave him a hard eye as he struggled to get out of his chair. Puffing somewhat, he told Rolfe to show him what he had. “This better be good or I’m kicking your bony ass for messin’ with my evening,” he said.

“I’m not worried, man, my bony ass is safe. This is that good.”

Rolfe led Noah through the one-level ranch style house to an attached garage where his van was parked. He opened up the back of the van so Noah could get a good look at the man inside moaning and writhing on the floor. Even though the man’s tattoos were obscured with blood and dirt, enough of them were visible to show that he was a member of the Blood Dragons.

“Fuck me,” Noah said. He shifted his gaze to Rolfe. “You do this?”

“Not me. I’d like to take credit for it, but no, that boy was in some kind of accident, and some real freaky shit went down afterwards. Acid trippin’-type shit, shit you wouldn’t believe if you saw it.”

Noah squeezed the area around his mouth, his fingers working into his flesh as if they were kneading dough.

“What’s the point?” he said. “He’s not much more than road kill.”

“He’s still breathing.”

“Not for much longer.”

Rolfe scratched his head, then behind his ears. “I don’t know. If we can keep him alive, we can make him talk when he wakes up. Anyway, he keeps mumbling shit. Maybe he’ll spill something about where the rest of those Blood Dragon bitches keep their stash. Maybe with a little coaxing he’ll say something like that out loud. Even if he don’t, we could take some pictures of him and get us a ransom.”

Noah kneaded his fingers deeper into his flesh considering this. “It would really piss that asshole Raze off, wouldn’t it?” he said, chuckling lightly, his hard flesh shaking. “But fuck, if he dies on us…”

“Not if, when. And don’t worry, I’ll get rid of the body like I always do.”

Noah was nodding, a brightness cutting through his stoner’s eyes.

“You know who this asshole is?”

“Hard to tell with half his face gone.”

“That fucker Pearce.”

“No shit.”

“No shit. Get a sheet from the basement-I don’t want him bleeding on my carpeting. We’ll lay him down there. That Russian we used last time…”

“Yuri.”

“Whatever the fuck is name is. Get him over here. Let’s see if we can keep this asshole alive for a while.”

Rolfe went into the house. Noah climbed into the back of the van. The physical exertion left him out of breath, and he stood bent over with his hands on his knees. After his breathing had slowed he gave Pearce a hard look. The skin was gone from half the biker’s face, his clothes torn and what showed underneath looked like hamburger meat. Noah got a closer look. One of the eyes had been torn out and nothing but bone showed in the empty socket. He was amazed the guy was still alive and doubted whether they’d keep him breathing much longer, or for that matter, get anything useful out of him. But maybe with some photos, a finger cut off, and a few teeth pulled, they could squeeze a ransom payment out of Raze. It would be worth it to piss off that crazy bastard. And he knew Raze would pay what he had to to get Pearce back.

Rolfe came back carrying an old sheet bunched under an arm. They spread it out next to Pearce and rolled him onto it.

“Sonofabitch,” Noah yelped. He pulled back a hand and pressed it against his mouth.

“Are you okay?”

“Fuck, no, this asshole bit me.” Noah sucked on his hand for a long moment, then kicked Pearce hard enough in the side to crack ribs. The biker seemed oblivious to it. “This fucker doesn’t even know what’s up or down, and he still has to bite me. He better not have rabies or nothing. Fuck, I’m bleeding. Goddamn do I hate these fucking Blood Dragons.”

“We’ll get him conscious. You’ll get your chance with him.”

Noah shook his head angrily and gave Pearce another hard kick to the ribs. Together he and Rolfe lifted Pearce off the van and into the house. After they laid him out on a large piece of plastic, Noah went back to the garage to get a pair of pliers and a hatchet. In theory trying to get Pearce to reveal where the Blood Dragons kept their drugs stashed was a good idea, but he wasn’t going to wait for the biker to regain consciousness, not when there were more satisfying ways to squeeze money from that gang.