He hit the ground again, gasping for air and wishing that the pain would end.
Maggie crouched next to him, looking at his sweating, agonized face. “Funny thing about that, Monkey; I told myself to play nicely. I guess I can’t take orders, either.”
She reached out and caught one of his hands in hers. He tried to pull away, but her strength was too great.
“I thought about taking a stick and fucking you with it, Tom. All the way over here I thought about it. I was thinking maybe it would be nice to give you a taste of your own medicine. A little payback for every time you forced me to take that little prick of yours.”
She held his hand tightly with her left hand and with the right, she caught his little finger.
Her eyes looked at his again, reflective in a way that didn’t seem possible. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she had lights burning deep in the back of her skull. Her expression was calmer now, but he was finally beginning to understand that even if he lived through this night, he would never be whole again.
“Thing is, if I did that, I’d have to see parts of your body that disgust me even more than your face.”
Her fingers pinched down and ripped at Tom’s little finger. His nail came free in a sudden, brilliant lance of pain.
Tom writhed, pulling with all of his strength in an effort to free himself from her grip. She reached out again and tore off the nail on his ring finger, even as he was thrashing around and howling out broken obscenities.
“You’re a sick bastard, Tom. You could have let me go and I would have left it all alone.” He wanted to puke his guts out and the bitch was still talking. “You were going to let them pull a train on me? What was I supposed to do, be grateful?”
He swore he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream again. By the time she pulled the thumbnail away from his hand, he was begging for mercy and praying to God that she would let him just die.
When she was done with his right hand, she let it go and he rolled away from her, weeping silently. In all his life he’d never expected it was possible to feel that much pain.
“Okay. That was for Liz.” Maggie looked him over and smiled. “Everything else is for me.”
Then she got inventive.
Tom learned more about pain. Oh, so very much more.
IV
Maggie came out of her fury like a deep sea diver rising to the surface: it was a slow process and, while she could see the air high above her, it was distorted by waves of anger. The pain she’d been feeling was gone, but the memory of it lingered.
What was left of Tom wasn’t very appealing. What made it worse was that he was still alive. His fingers looked like they’d been attacked by rabid pliers. His face was a mess. She could remember pulling at his nose as if she’d been dreaming; but she hadn’t fully realized how hard she’d caught him. One nostril hung by a tiny shred of meat; the rest of it flapped loosely. His mouth was the worst. Somewhere along the way, she’d started breaking off his teeth.
Tom was alive, and he was conscious. His eyes reflected nothing of sanity, but he was there, awake and in agony.
The anger was gone. All that was left was a vague sense of pity. In the end, she punched him hard in his throat and watched him choke to death on his own blood.
His death was a loss to no one. He would not be mourned.
A car pulled into Tom’s driveway. It was a Crown Victoria, and the crappy shade of brown made her think cop car as surely as wailing sirens and flashing lights would have.
She backed away as the two men got out of the car.
Maggie shook her head, trying to figure out exactly what had just happened to her. She knew what she had done, knew why she had done it, and now, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember how she had done it.
The two men had cop written all over them. They looked around for only a moment before heading toward Tom’s Camaro.
It wouldn’t take them long to find the trail of blood he’d left behind and from there they could easily spot Tom’s body.
She didn’t have a mirror, but she didn’t need one to see the blood all over her clothes.
The two men were looking over the car and talking, but she couldn’t make out the words. She just knew she had to move, and fast, if she wanted to get the hell away from the scene of her crime.
Just as the cops would have been looking her way, she heard the racket. There are few birds that can make as much noise as crows, and the ones coming her way seemed intent on deafening the entire planet. They cawed and heckled and screamed as they flew, a seething mass of feathers that spread out over the entire area, flying low and circling around the two policemen. Her car was still in Tom’s driveway, and if she was careful she might be able to get to it.
Even as that thought occurred to her, she heard the familiar sound of her Ford Focus starting up. The two men were surrounded by the crows and dodging desperately, but they weren’t so stupid that they stood still when the car started forward and trenched Tom’s yard in an effort to get around them. They got out of the way and damned fast. Neither of them drew a weapon, and she was very glad for that.
Her car stopped two feet away from her and the passenger’s side door opened. One look inside and Maggie could have sobbed with relief.
Ben had never looked more handsome. Or more desperate. “Come on! Let’s go!” Even with him yelling, she could barely hear him over the crows. She climbed in as quickly as she could, and he gunned the engine as soon as her door was closed. He steered off of the lawn and back out onto the driveway, narrowly missing the cop car.
Maggie shivered, the chill of the night suddenly overwhelming, as Ben drove toward the apartments.
He didn’t look at her, didn’t say a word. He just steered and kept his eyes focused on the road in front of him.
“Ben?”
“Please tell me you’re not hurt.”
She had to think about it. “No, I think I’m okay.”
“Good. Great. Now let’s get home.”
“Ben, how did you know to find me?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ll care later, maybe, but right now I just need to get you home and safe.”
She nodded her head, drained.
“Thank you, Ben.”
She closed her eyes until he parked her car.
The next thing she knew, she was in his bathroom and he was testing the water coming out of the shower. “Okay. It’s about ready. There’s shampoo and conditioner, and there’re some towels. Soap’s already in there.”
“What?”
“You need to bathe, Maggie. Get clean. You’re . . . covered.” His face was pale, too pasty by far, and his eyes looked like the marbles placed in a mounted deer’s head.
Maggie nodded and began taking off her clothes. Ben beat a hasty retreat as she peeled away the stiff, bloodied fabrics. She ran on autopilot, dropping the ruined outfit on the floor and stepping into the warm stream of water. She stayed there for a long while, until her fingertips resembled wrinkled prunes and she had scrubbed herself raw.
V
“Okay. What the fuck was that?”
Danny looked over at him and shook his head. “That was a lot of fuckin’ birds. You should have listened to that call of yours earlier.”
“Oh don’t even fucken start.”
“Okay. So what’s that?” Danny pointed to a motionless ruin on the front lawn of Tom Pardue’s house.
Boyd looked at the trail of blood that ran from the trashed Camaro to the mess in the grass. It wasn’t a clean trail. The crows had shat over almost the whole area. His jacket was covered in droppings.
He ignored the slicks of crow crap on his clothes and walked over to the human body that was currently cooling down.
“You know what?”
“Tell me, Richie.” Danny’s voice wasn’t its calmest. He could dig that. He was feeling a little jumpy himself. He’d always hated birds. They were messy and they were loud. He liked clean and quiet.
“I think that’s Tom Pardue.”
“Yeah? How can you tell?” There wasn’t much of Tom that hadn’t been beaten, broken, or crapped on.
“The shirt, the shorts, and the greasy blond hair. That’s Pardue or there’s someone else out there with shitty taste in clothes.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Sorry, Danny. I know you really wanted him to resist.”
Danny shrugged. “You know what? Somebody did it better than I could have.”
Anyone listening would have thought they’d both lost their minds. Joking was how they dealt with it. Joking kept them from screaming on days like this.
“You know, technically, this is a homicide. It ain’t our department.” Boyd lit a cigar.
“You thinking of giving this to Whalen and Longwood?”
“Damn right.”
“So what did you see?”
“I saw a car driving away. And I saw a lot of birds.”
“That all you saw?” Danny sounded doubtful.
Boyd shrugged. “I might have seen a really hot girl with a huge rack standing over Pardue’s body. She might have been covered in blood and looking a little like she wouldn’t mind finding some more. But I am not about to say that to the homicide kids.”
Danny nodded. “I might have seen that, too. But I’m gonna pretend I didn’t.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Because I don’t know about you, Richie, but I don’t wanna hear a bunch of fuckin’ jokes about how I saw a ghost.”
“Ghost?”
“What? You think some girl painted herself in blood and beat Pardue to death?”
Boyd gnawed on the end of his cigar and rolled it around his mouth a few times. Fuck Freud. He didn’t care about the possible symbolism of his actions. Besides, Freud was a pervert.
“You know what I think, Danny?”
“What?”
“I think it’s time to go check out his house. I think we saw birds and we saw a car.”
“What kind of car?”
“I was a little busy ducking the fucken birds, Danny Boy. I didn’t see and I don’t care.”
“Think those two will catch whoever did this?”
Boyd spat away from the corpse, despite the temptation to aim for an eye. “I sure as shit hope not.”
Chapter 17
I
Sometime during the wee hours of the morning, the Phi Chi fraternity house caught fire. The fire investigation team ascertained that the blaze started in the main living room area near a substantial collection of single malt scotch whiskeys. From there, the blaze spread at a frightening pace, devouring the ancient wooden walls and igniting more fire hazards than should have been possible in any one dwelling. Of course the average dwelling wasn’t inhabited by a small army of college kids who failed to clean more than absolutely necessary for appearances.
The fire was helped out by faulty wiring and several cases of overloaded electrical fixtures.
The blaze required all three fire stations in Black Stone Bay to put it out. By the time they managed to get it under control, the building was little more than a burned-out foundation.
No one came out of the fraternity house while it was burning, and the fire was actually reported by a police car that was doing regular rounds to make sure the party hadn’t gotten out of control.
No bodies were found inside the structure, either.
The campus was abuzz with news the following day and there were plenty of students who were stunned into staying away from school; the students who lived in the Phi Chi fraternity were very popular and mostly they were well liked.
But a few held out hope. After all, if no bodies were found, it was possible that they’d escaped the blaze.
The truth was simpler than that. The bodies had been removed. Jason Soulis was not ready for anyone to know what was happening in the town, and that many corpses would have set off far too many warning bells.
II
Kelli didn’t regret not going to the party. She kept telling herself that until she finally fell asleep. She didn’t quite believe it, but she tried to.
She was in bed by ten o’clock and unconscious fifteen minutes later. She would have deeply loved to stay asleep, too. But the dreams came again. This time it was different. This time it was Bill, not Teddy, who came to the window.
The room was dark, but he was out there, calling to her softly. He looked at her with those warm, loving eyes of his and called to her softly. “Kelli, let me in. It’s cold out here and I want to see you.” His words were innocent enough, but the tone he used to speak them made promises of what she had dreamt of on a few occasions.
“Bill, you’re married.”
“Kelli, I want to see you, I want to hold you.”
She sat up in the bed and stared at him. He was so handsome. But there was something wrong with the way he looked, something minor that was enough to make her wait. His hair was as perfect as ever, his mouth sweet and kind, his nose unchanged: it was his eyes. They seemed . . . bleached. The deep rich blue they had always been was missing, and there was a strange light in them that was unsettling. Dream or no, his eyes were completely wrong.
Kelli knew one thing for certain at that moment: dreams can become nightmares. She stayed away from the window. When the voice from outside became insistent, she left her bedroom and walked down the stairs to the living room. In her dream, she turned on the TV and watched reruns of old sitcoms she remembered from her childhood. Bill kept calling to her, asking her to let him in, so she cranked up the volume. Now and then she looked out the back window and saw him standing on the patio.
It was when
Who’s the Boss
came on that she realized she wasn’t dreaming at all. There was just no way she could willingly dream about that show.
Kelli stared at Bill standing outside and he stared back.
“Let me in, Kelli.”
“No.”
He grimaced. “Why not?”
“You’re scaring me, Bill.”
“What do you have to be afraid of?”