Blood Red

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!”