City of Night

Chapter 53

From across the street and half a block away, Cindi and Benny Lovewell watched O’Connor and Maddison escort two black women from the parsonage to the plainwrap sedan, which was parked under a streetlamp.

“We’d probably end up killing one or both of the women to nab the cops,” Cindi said.

Considering that they were not authorized to kill anyone but the detectives, Benny said, “We better wait.”

“What are the women carrying?” Cindi wondered.

“Pies, I think.”

“Why are they carrying pies?”

“Maybe they were caught stealing them,” Benny suggested.

“Do people steal pies?”

“Their kind of people do. They steal everything.”

She said, “Aren’t O’Connor and Maddison homicide detectives?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why would they rush out here to arrest pie thieves?”

Benny shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the women killed someone for the pies.”

Frowning, Cindi said, “That’s possible, I suppose. But I have the feeling we’re missing something. Neither one of them looks like a killer.”

“Neither do we,” Benny reminded her.

“If they did kill for the pies, why would they be allowed to keep them?”

“Their legal system doesn’t make much sense to me,” Benny said. “I don’t really care about the women or the pies. I just want to rip the guts out of O’Connor and Maddison.”

“Well, so do I,” Cindi said. “Just because I want a baby doesn’t mean I still don’t enjoy killing.”

Benny sighed. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were going soft or anything.”

When the women and the pies had been loaded in the backseat, O’Connor got behind the wheel, and Maddison sat shotgun.

“Follow them just short of visual,” Benny said. “We want to be able to move in quick if there’s an opportunity at the other end.”

The unmarked police car pulled away from the curb, and when it turned out of sight at the corner, Cindi followed in the Mountaineer.

Instead of conveying the black women to a police lockup, the detectives drove them only two blocks, to another house in Bywater.

Once again parking half a block away and across the street, in the shadows between two streetlamps, Cindi said, “This is no good. At half these houses, people are sitting on the front porch. Too many witnesses.”

“Yeah,” Benny agreed. “We might snatch O’Connor and Maddison, but we’ll end up in a police chase.”

They needed to be discreet. If the authorities identified them as professional killers, they would so longer be able to do their jobs. They would not be authorized to kill any more people, and indeed their maker would terminate them.

“Look at all these morons. What’re they doing setting on a porch in a rocking chair?” Cindi wondered.

“They sit and drink beer or lemonade, or something, and some of them smoke, and they talk to one another.”

“What do they talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’re so… unfocused,” Cindi said. “What’s the point of their lives?”

“I heard one of them say the purpose of life is living.”

“They just sit there. They aren’t trying to take over the world and gain total command of nature, or anything.”

“They already own the world,” Benny reminded her.

“Not for long.”