Alan drew in a ragged breath and pushed those wonderful agonies aside. He sucked in another gasp of air and held it like a treasure as he thought of the look on Avery’s sweet, blood-stained face as he looked up from feasting on Meghan’s neck.
He could survive a little longer if he just let everything go but the anger. That was the most important element. Without his rage, he would have stayed in that room and eaten the pills they kept giving him for as long as they wanted him to.
But if he held it close, fueled it with tiny scraps of the pain that overwhelmed him, he could make his anger grow big enough to do what he had to do.
No creatures on this planet were going to steal his wife and son without suffering for it.
A branch punched into the sole of his left foot and drove a hot lance of pain into him. He stopped exactly long enough to yank out the irritation and continue on. He fingered the stick, felt the blood slick across his hand, and let that add more fuel to his anger.
Anger was his weapon. It was his shield.
There was something else that he would use, too: knowledge.
He wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but he thought he knew what he was facing. There were only a few things he’d ever heard of that came out at night and drank blood. Maybe the thing wearing Avery’s face had actually been eating the flesh of his mother, but if so, he took small bites.
No, it was the blood. Her neck was torn, not chewed away. At least I think it was. So damned hard to focus on anything.
Were vampires real? Was it even a possibility? He didn’t know, but he was going to find out.
He looked at the bloody stick in his hand and smiled tightly. Either way, a bit of stick through the heart will stop the thing that stole my boy.
Alan had a wood shop in the garage and plenty of wood he hadn’t quite gotten around to doing anything with.
That was about to change.
He had nothing left that mattered, but it was possible to find a substitute, at least for a while. He could fake a reason to live; he could make one up and use it for as long as possible.
His reason to live was that he had something to kill; something that looked like his son.
VI
Brian Freemont slipped out of his house a little after noon, and kept a cautious eye on the houses around him. He carried two bags of clothing and a third that held all of his weapons and enough ammunition to let him hold off a small army. He checked under his car, and inside it, too, before he finally threw his luggage into the backseat and slid behind the driver’s seat and started the engine.
His face was bruised and stinging from the blow he’d taken in the wee hours of the previous night. The lacerations were not deep, but they burned. He needed to get something he could use to clean the wounds, because there was nothing in the house.
He also needed supplies. He wouldn’t try to leave town yet, but it was on his agenda. He wanted to be gone before night-fall. He wanted to be far away from Black Stone Bay before Angie could come haunt him again. She’d be back, too. He knew it.
Maybe a hotel would be best, a place where he could hide and not risk being screwed over by his ex-associates in the police force. Because he knew, sure as the sun rose every day, that if he left town, he would be hunted down like a dog.
One week ago, his life had been good. He’d had a life. Now he was reduced to this. Running from his home and from the ghost of his wife.
She has to be a ghost. No one living could take a bullet in her head and get back up like that. No one! Not ever! If she is a ghost, who killed her?
Who else? The voice on the phone. The voice that called and taunted and then stole his life away in the first place. Oh, it was fixed now, but he knew the voice could do it again, just reach out and take everything he’d worked for, everything he’d made with Angie and everything he’d wanted to have for his child.
Oh God, I shot her. I shot Angie in the head and I killed our baby.
It took him almost ten minutes to recover from his crying jag. He sobbed and shivered in the slight warmth of the afternoon and let all of the fear creep slowly from his body in the form of bitter tears.
I wish I still had my uniform. If I still had my uniform, I could find a girl and get my life back. Make her put out for me and get control of everything again. I need that! I need the control and I need the sex. It’s all I have. All I’ve ever had.
No. No that’s a lie. I had Angie. I just wish that she’d been enough.
“Angie, baby, I’m sorry. I wish you’d been enough.”
He was just getting ready to pull out of the driveway when the detectives showed up.
“You gotta be kidding me.” He groaned and rested his head on the steering wheel.
Boyd walked up to the side of his car and stared in the window at him. Holdstedter came up and stood at the back of the car, his arms crossed. Neither man looked like talking to him was something they really wanted to do.
Boyd looked him over for a second and then looked into the back of his car and saw the bags. “You weren’t thinking of going somewhere, were you, Freemont? Because the conditions of your bail say you have to stay where we can keep an eye on you.”
“I was going to a hotel.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?” Boyd lit one of his cigars and looked him over, one eye squinted against the sunlight. Holdstedter was still in the same place, his face expressionless and his eyes unreadable behind reflective sunglasses.
“Someone tried to break in last night. Broke the window in my bedroom.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, so he managed to say it with a clear conscience.
“You recognize the perp?” Boyd had a cloud of smoke around his face. He looked like a demon to Brian.
“Looked like Angie.”
“Yeah? Did she say anything to you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Sure it does. What did she say?”
“I said it doesn’t matter.”
“You really want me to drag your ass down to the boys’ club so we can talk in depth about this, Freemont? Or do you just want to go over it here? Because, I gotta tell you, your neighbors weren’t happy with all the gunfire last night. Had two of them call us a little while ago to piss and moan about it.”
Shit. He hadn’t thought about that. If he had, he would have left hours ago.
“What I’m trying to figure out here is why a fucken cop, of all people, would want to go and break a bunch of ordinances about firing weapons inside the town limits, and then load up his car and get ready to head out with still more guns in the backseat.” Boyd leaned in closer, the thick smoke from the cigar wafting into Brian’s car in a nauseating wave. “How do you think I should react here, Freemont? Oh, and don’t think of reaching for your backseat. Danny’ll take the top of your head off. He’s been itching for a reason ever since you pointed your piece at us.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You murdered a young girl, you sick motherfucker!” Boyd’s face was close enough that the cigar tip waved an inch from his nose. “I’m looking at your face and I’m seeing new cuts that look like somebody scratched your face and there were gunshots here! So you tell me why I shouldn’t just bust your fucken ass right now or I swear to God I’ll back Danny up and say you were going for the guns in your fucken backseat!”
Brian was ready to go insane right then and there. That was the first time Boyd had accused him of committing a murder. He didn’t need this, he needed to get out of town before Angie came back for him again and brought her friends.
“I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!”
“I got a fucken DNA test that says otherwise. When it comes back, I’m gonna drop you like a sack of shit.” Boyd was calmer now, or at least he wasn’t screaming.
“And when it comes back negative, I’ll have your badge.” It was the best bluff he could manage.
“It ain’t coming back negative, Freemont. You know it and I know it.” Boyd stepped back a bit and glared. “How many girls did you make suck that limp dick of yours to get out of tickets, Freemont?”
That one made him jump. That one made him want to shit himself. No one was ever supposed to know!
Boyd nodded. “Yeah. I thought so. Guilty as shit.”
“You just leave me alone, or book me.”
“Try to leave town, Freemont. Please. We’ve been looking for a reason.” Boyd opened his back door and pulled out the bundle of weapons. “Gonna hold this for you, so you can’t get too stupid.”
“No! I need those!” He started to reach and flinched back fast and hard when he saw the pistol appear in Holdstedter’s hand.
“You can’t be that stupid, asswipe.” Boyd shook his head.
“I need those!”
“Yeah?” Boyd was staring hard at him. “Why do you need these if you’re all innocent and sweet like you say you are?”
“Because Angie’s trying to kill me!”
“Really? Your missing wife is trying to kill you now?”
Brian shut his mouth. He’d already said too much.
“You don’t wanna talk to me anymore, Freemont?”
Brian shook his head.
“That’s okay. I got what I need for now.” He pulled the cigar out of his mouth and slipped it into his left hand. Boyd was right-handed. Brian figured he wanted a clear path to his piece. “Don’t even think about crossing the city limits. You do, I’ll have you busted so fast you’ll think your mommy was watching out for you.”
“Look, why are you doing this to me?”
“Why do you think, asshole? Because you’ve been raping young girls and you murdered one, too. That makes you shit in my book.”
Boyd walked back to his car. Holdstedter waited until his partner was seated and comfortable before he looked away from Brian. When he was sure, he went to the passenger’s side of the Crown Victoria and joined his partner.
Brian waited until they had backed out of the long driveway and the dust had cleared before he let himself start crying again.
VII
“Are we there yet? . . . Are we there yet? . . . Are we there yet?” Danny sat in the seat next to him and kept going like that pink bunny with the drum in the battery commercial.
Boyd was in too good a mood to be goaded. “I got a lit cigar, Danny. Don’t make me put it out on your forehead.”
“You know, I think he was crying when we left.”
“I love when little boys like him cry. Makes me feel all manly.”
“Probably why he did all the girls the way he did.”
“Yeah, he’d need that sort of shit to feel like a man.” Boyd thought about the crew cut and the hawk nose and the thin lips on Freemont and shook his head in disgust. “That’s what all the shrinks say, anyway.”
“What? That rape is about power?”
“Yeah, or anger.”
“I don’t think that’s always true, Richie.”
“No?”
“No. Maybe violent rape, but I think with Freemont it was just about getting laid and feeling like a man.”
“You don’t think what he did to Veronica Miller was violent?”
“She’s the exception.” Danny shrugged. “Mostly I think he’s just a horny prick on a power trip.”
“Fair enough.” He pulled the car up to open the gate of the sprawling black house, and then moved slowly past it and up the driveway.
“Ever wish you were this rich?”
“Isn’t your family this rich?”
“Yeah, but your family isn’t.”
“Thanks for the reminder, dickhead.”
“Hey, it’s what friends do.”
“Just put on your polite face. We don’t need any rich pricks giving O’Neill a reason.”
“Well, hell, Richie. You already gave him one, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, smart-ass, so he doesn’t need another.”
“Oh, yeah. Good point.”
“What’s his name again?”
“Jason Soulis.”
“You gotta wonder if that name is real, don’t you?”
“It’s real. The FBI checks that sort of shit, too.”
“Lah-dee-dah.”
“Hey. Don’t you go picking on the feds, now. They’re very important to the pursuit of justice.”
“Bite me.”
“Nah, you probably taste like you smell.”
“You saying I smell bad, Danny Boy?”
“I’m saying you should maybe buy better cigars.”
“You’re the one with money, dickhead.”
“Okay, am I dickhead or am I smart-ass? Because I’m starting to get confused here.”
“Drink more coffee. You definitely need to drink more coffee.”
“Maybe Soulis will have some.”
Boyd climbed out of his car and walked toward the front of the place. “Maybe he’ll even let you have some.”
“I can hope.”
Naturally, there was a big damned brass knocker on the door. Boyd used it. When no one answered, he used it again. After the third time, Jason Soulis appeared at the doorway, squinting against the bright sunlight.
“Yes?” The man’s voice was cold but polite.
Boyd flashed his badge and Danny did the same. “Really sorry to bother you. Are you Jason Soulis?”
“Yes I am, Detective Boyd. How can I help you?” He stepped back and gestured for the men to enter the house.
Boyd nodded his thanks and stepped inside, followed by his oversized blond shadow. “We just need to ask you a few questions.”
“By all means. I was just making coffee. Would either of you like a cup?”
“You’re a god.” Danny nodded as he said the words.
Soulis’s lips curved slightly into a smile and he led them into a large, tastefully decorated room. He left and came back a few minutes later with a large silver tray loaded down with fresh coffee and a few cookies.
When everyone had been served—by the man of the house, no less—Soulis leaned back in an antique chair and nodded. “Ask your questions, please.”
“We just needed to know if you’ve seen or heard anything unusual in the last week or so.”
“This is in regards to the missing people around town?”