Extreme Justice

Chapter 34

HE PICKED UP another plate and tossed it across the room, watching it shatter into a thousand pieces as it crashed against the opposite wall.

Goddamn it all to hell!

What was happening to him, anyway? Why couldn’t he finish a simple matter like this without creating so many complications?

He hurled another plate across the room. The sound of the impact, the sight of the destruction, had a soothing effect on his soul—but not nearly soothing enough. Why was this so hard? When he had done it before, it had gone without a hitch. And now it seemed everything he did led to one more screw-up, one more loose end needing to be tied, one more person who had to be killed.

And Earl Bonner still wasn’t behind bars!

He grabbed the entire stack of plates and flung them across the room. They didn’t make it all the way. They went down in the middle of the living room, crashing down on a glass tabletop, shattering everything, sending porcelain and glass shards flying in all directions. It made a terrible, soul-satisfying noise, one he was sure all the neighbors could hear as well.

Screw the neighbors. He needed this. He needed it.

He ran through the entire chain of errors in his mind. He’d managed to kill Lily and plant her in such a way as to make Earl Suspect Number One, but not without being spotted by that pipsqueak Tyrone Jackson, and not without losing something that could lead them all to his doorstep. He’d had to take care of the kid, but that had led to being spotted—again—by that piano player out on the highway. He wasn’t sure, but it was just possible the asshole could identify him.

The piano man had to be dealt with.

His hands clenched down on the kitchen cabinets. He wanted Jackson, wanted him so bad he could barely stop thinking about it. It was what he lived for now. It was the only music that soothed his savage breast.

And the final triumphant coda would come when he found that punk—the one he should’ve strangled to death last night in his own van. When he found that punk again, he would play the fucker’s farewell fugue.