Savage Drift

^{CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN} DEAN

Now I was following a trail of blood. It was easy and it was horrible.

I tracked the red-brown swath over the gravel of the neighbor’s driveway to the front stoop. There was blood on the handle and around the doorframe.

I pushed it open. Somehow I didn’t think to announce myself.

I went in gun first, like some TV cop. My heart was hammering hard and I saw my gun hand was shaking again.

Kind of modern-styled, the house. The blood trail went straight down the hall into the kitchen.

There were no bodies there, either, but the kitchen was spattered with blood everywhere, sprayed over the counters and floors.

Bile flooded up. My stomach heaved. I went out the back door and puked off the stoop, down onto the trash cans.

It was the smell. Meaty, metallic, thickening into a rotting sweetness.

The godforsaken trail continued outside, only wider. What had happened here?

I kept my head down and walked. Started running, actually. Get it over with.

The trail led to two cellar doors, set at an angle at the base of the house to the left of Rinée’s family. I had gone to the house on the right, gone clear through and was now entering the house on the other side.

I grabbed the handles and flung the doors open.

“Hello?” a voice called. “Hello?”

“Who are you?” I shouted. “What did you do?”

“Here,” I heard a voice say. “Please help me.”

Here is the vision that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

There’s a single utility lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and a wash of sunlight coming from behind me.

Stained wooden plank steps lead down into a basement with cement-block walls. Tools on a pegboard on one side. Shelves with Tupperware marked “Christmas” and “Crafting” are on the other. In the center of the floor are the bodies of two women, both stabbed and mutilated as only a madman could do, and behind them is the bald-headed man, kneeling and weeping.

“I’m so glad you’re here. You see, I think I killed these women,” he said. “I had… I had some kind of an episode and I murdered them.”

I tried to talk but no words came out. Mouth too dry.

“I think I killed these women!” he repeated.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I told him. “It was chemicals. Chemicals in the air.”

“I volunteered. Every Saturday. Reading to kids. Teaching them. Serving soup, cleaning up. I volunteered.”

I needed to leave. I needed to get away from this man, this dark hole of a basement. Away from the bodies. Every sinew, every cell of my body strained toward the doors behind me, begging me to leave.

“I drove a hybrid. I put solar panels on the roof.”

“I have to go,” I said.

“Please.” He got up on his knees. “Please help me.”

His voice was low and serious and sane.

“I need your help. Please. I can’t do it myself. I’ve tried.”

“Do what?” I asked him.

“I need you to kill me.”

I cursed and stepped back.

He rose on his knees and edged toward me, his hands clasped, begging.

The gun was so heavy in my hand.

“I can’t live with this. It would be a mercy. A mercy. Please.”

He cried and begged and I backed away.

I walked back to the car. I felt like I was moving through cement—or like I’d been filled with it. I felt like my heart was so leaden that I’d never feel light again.

“What did you find?” Astrid asked me. Her blue eyes were clear and full of concern.

And then, from next door, there came a muffled shot.

“I found the O man,” I told her.