Blood Red

Teddy didn’t answer. Instead his boy ran into the woods, laughing, moving with the sort of wild abandon that Bill had almost forgotten existed. Almost forgotten because, right then, seeing his sweet boy’s face after three days without him in the world, Bill was like a child again. He was angry, to be sure, but he was so very happy too, and he felt like he could run a thousand miles and easily, if he could just catch up with his son.

“Teddy!” In that one word he cried his joy to the universe and released himself from the bonds that kept him anchored to the world. With each step he took, he felt younger and stronger, and he gave chase, pushing himself hard to catch up to the most important person in his entire existence.

He ran, and Teddy ran before him, almost dancing with each movement as he looked over his shoulder and smiled back at Bill. The leaves on the ground exploded away from them, leaving wakes in the mulch as surely as a clipper cuts through waves on a mild sea.

Bill felt like he’d grown wings; his feet knew just where to touch and exactly how to push off from every obstacle that should have tripped him. His hands stretched out in front of him, closing in on his sweet boy and coming closer to catching him, holding him, loving him fiercely.

He caught his son in his hands and Teddy giggled. And then he had Teddy in his arms, and was holding him tightly enough to practically crush his wonderful, crazy, beautiful boy. He pulled his son closer still and smelled the charnel scent on his ten-year-old hair and thought it surely the sweetest perfume.

And then Teddy was hugging him back and his son was so unbelievably strong. His precious, lovely boy was smiling in his face; Teddy’s skin and eyes seemed the wrong color and his hair was rippling in a wind that Bill had not expected.

And then his son was killing him.

Despite the pain, Bill Lister died happy, reunited with his boy in the end.

VII

Tom Pardue waited patiently. He was good at being patient. It was one of the things that set him aside from the others of his ilk. He didn’t need to beat information from his girls, he just had to watch and wait.

He was watching Maggie when she went into the Methodist Church. It took some doing, but he was watching when she went into the minister’s office, too. He spent a little over an hour watching her fuck the middle-aged pastor four ways to Sunday, leaving him gasping and red-faced when she was done with him. His only real regret was that he didn’t have a camera to film the entire fuckfest, because she could have been teaching the rest of his whores a trick or two and he could have sold the resulting video for fifty bucks a pop to every college boy in town that wanted a piece of her sweet, little ass.

Which reminded him; this time when he taught her a lesson he was going to have to make her squeal like a pig and nail her there, too. Hadn’t done that one on her yet, but he’d thought about it a few hundred times.

He thought about confronting her when she left the church, and changed his mind when the phone call from Nichole came in: her john was being stupid and refusing to pay. That was not acceptable.

So he let Maggie go about her business. He could be patient. He’d be teaching her a lesson soon enough and this way he could let the anger burn for a while. He liked to let things simmer and boil; it made the final payoff ever so much sweeter.

“You fucking your buddy Ben, too, Maggie?” He spoke only to himself and didn’t expect an answer. But yes, he suspected she was. And even if she wasn’t, she liked the boy. That was good enough reason to put a hurt on the skinny little prick.

Maybe he’d make her watch. Maybe they’d play a game or two, where she got to beg him long and hard to see how many fingers he left on little Benny’s hands.

Hell, maybe he’d make Ben squeal like a pig first. He wasn’t into guys, but it might be worth changing his ways just to see if raping her boyfriend hurt Maggie as much as when he did it to her.

He wasn’t sure yet, but either way, he had time to decide.

For now, he had to go ahead and work over one of the assholes who owed him money. No one got to owe him and walk away without a few broken bones at the very least.

Tom loved his job. It paid well, and the fringe benefits were positively the sweetest things he could think of: sex and violence in equally large doses.

Chapter 11

I

Boyd looked down at the body and then he looked back at his partner and the two homicide detectives, Nancy Whalen and Bob Longwood.

“I want this between us for now, okay? I don’t want anyone talking about this case to anyone on the force.”

“You know we could take this case from you, right?” Bob looked over his way, the cigar Boyd had given him sticking from the side of his mouth. Bob Longwood was not a good-looking man, but he was definitely an intimidating one. He was too heavy and too damned tall not to be intimidating.