The Blonde

12:55 a.m.

Behind the Edison Avenue House

Not good, not good. Kowalski could see the flashing cherries of the fire trucks filling the night sky. Wouldn’t be long before police started searching the immediate area, looking for survivors. Wouldn’t be long before the neighbors would pop their lights on, look out their front doors, wondering what the hell was going on at one o’clock in the morning.

And the tree house was empty.

His bag was gone.

Not a soul in the immediate vicinity. Bag wasn’t there long enough for someone to have “accidentally” discovered it. What, was he away three minutes? Four, tops? What the hell happened? Did Ed’s decapitated head sprout green hairy spider legs and go for a stroll?

Lights were flicking on in houses spread across the hills. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Kowalski noticed the opposite: a light flicking off.

It all came together within seconds.

He so didn’t have time for this.

Within thirty seconds, Kowalski was in the living room, staring at the guy who was staring at the stolen Adidas bag on his dining table. In the dim light, he looked like a young workaholic college professor, staying up late to do grades and putter away at a novel in spare moments. He had that bedhead look, even though he was still dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt a shade too tight for his age. The guy was so entranced by the bag—maybe he was thinking, Forget this novel stuff; I may have a bag full of stolen loot here. And that made sense. Who else would stash a bag in a tree house but a criminal? The prof, however, was in for a little surprise. Kowalski considered waiting until the guy opened it before speaking up. There you go, buddy. Put that in your novel. But the whole killing innocent bystanders thing was beginning to disturb him. He didn’t need another dead body on his conscience.

Not tonight.

“Ahem.”

The guy jolted, then froze. Only his eyes moved.

“Yeah, right over here, see?” Kowalski waved.

The prof nodded slowly.

“That bag does not belong to you. It does not contain cash or jewelry, or anything else you might consider valuable. Take a few steps back, let me take my bag, and I’ll be gone. No harm, no foul.”

“How do I know this is yours?”

“Because I say it is. And you should always believe a man with a semiautomatic pointed at your stomach.”

Kowalski had no such thing pointed anywhere.

The man’s voice cracked: “I want my cut.”

“Of what?”

“What’s in this bag. You can spare a little. Consider it a holding tax. I know how you armed robbers operate.”

“You don’t need anything in that bag.”

“And you don’t have a gun. No chance you’d be caught with the money and a piece. That’s another twenty mandatory. You ditched the gun the moment you left the job.”

The guy was a stubborn fucker. Definitely a college professor, thinking he could throw his intellect around like a sledgehammer. Always thinking he was too clever to get caught. He must have been sipping a cappuccino, up late, thinking amazing thoughts, and then watched Kowalski stash the bag in the tree house.

“You’re not worried about your children? Because once I kill you, they’re next.”

“What makes you think I have children?”

“Right before they die, I’ll tell them Daddy let this happen.”

“Oh, the tree house, right? That was here when I bought the house. I don’t have kids, asshole. Just like you don’t have a gun.”

Kowalski had been perfectly content to take the bag by force and leave this guy alive. That’s what he’d thought about as he broke the lock on this guy’s back door: Let him live. Because the body count was already high—hell, he’d just walked away from a dying woman in a shallow creek. No need to toss another body onto the pyre.

This, though, demanded a response.

“Go ahead. Take what you want out of the bag, and let me get out of here. I can hear the sirens.”

The professor smiled, then unfastened the bag. He looked down into it. His jaw dropped.

Kowalski closed the distance and slapped the man across his nose with an open palm. Better than a fist—less likely to break your own hand that way. The prof was stunned, but he threw a wild right roundhouse punch, which Kowalski deflected by snapping it to the side with the flat of his hand. Without losing momentum, he grabbed the professor’s wrist and yanked him forward, giving Kowalski a clear shot at the kidneys and base of the spine. He pounded his fist down repeatedly until the man was paralyzed on the carpet and sobbing.

“You’re probably a sociology professor, aren’t you? All that talk about mandatory sentencing.”

The guy squirmed, and moaned. Kowalski patted his pants pockets until he found what he was looking for.

“Tell me something. What’s mandatory sentence for dental floss?”