Blood Red

On the other hand, there was always the campus.

What the hell are you, crazy? You can’t just go to the campus and grab some piece off the sidewalk. He stopped and thought about that for a minute. Maybe he could. He’d never really considered using the files he had—or that the students there thought he had on them—for a second tumble before, but the more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea.

He just had to be smart about it and look for the ones who were looking properly scared when they saw him again. And he had to mark any of them that looked smug when they saw him, because, really, he wanted to find the bastard that had screwed up his good thing. He wanted to find him in a bad way.

Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe he could find one of the smug little bitches and make her forget about being cocky, and in the process maybe he could get a name to go with the voice he’d had in his nightmares for the last week.

Brian showered and got dressed. He took his gloves with him. You never knew what the day would bring.

He didn’t know the half of it.

III

Michelle was on a rampage. She was quiet about it, but she was pretty close to the homicidal stage. Kelli had the good sense to stay out of her way.

Bill hadn’t come home last night.

Michelle was thinking the worst, and so was Kelli, though they had drawn different conclusions. His wife was muttering now and then, mentioning half a dozen different names belonging to different women. She could figure out the context from the previous night.

Kelli was worried for different reasons. It wasn’t like Bill not to come home. She knew that. She knew he wouldn’t really sleep around on his wife, either. It wasn’t the way he was designed.

So now two of the guys she cared for were missing. She didn’t have time to think about it. She had to get to school. Mercenary? Yes, but if she stayed here and thought about it, she was going to get herself doubled over and turn into an ulcerating knot.

Kelli grabbed her things and started out the front door. She only made it a third of the way to her car before she saw Bill’s shoe. It was sticking up like a finger aiming at the sky and she walked over toward it, frowning in concentration.

It was the same loafer that had adorned his left foot last night. There looked to be a spill of drying stain across the top and she looked again, carefully, and saw that it was blood.

Kelli walked as calmly as she could back to the house and dialed for the police.

The detectives showed up twenty minutes later, looking exhausted and fed up. Not fed up with her, but with the way their day was going.

By the time they arrived, she’d calmed Michelle down to a dull simmer. Now that there was a chance her husband wasn’t fooling around, she was back to her normal self, only stressed out.

“I’m Detective Boyd. This is Detective Holdstedter.” The short one spoke, his face placed as carefully to neutral as he could manage. The tall one, the Ken doll in the expensive suit, looked at each of the women with a fast eye. She looked back. He was cute.

“Hi, thanks for coming.” She was trying to sound professional, because Michelle wasn’t in any frame of mind for that. “Do you want me to show you where I found the shoe?”

“Yeah, if you could, ma’am.” Boyd followed her, his eyes looking at the ground. He pointed to something and shot a look at his partner. Ken stopped moving and looked where he’d gestured. She resisted the temptation to look over where Ken went and walked on to where she saw the shoe.

Boyd stood next to her and stared for a moment, then he cast his eyes all over the place, like a man watching a tennis match played by octopi. His facial expression was nearly blank of emotion, unchanging, but she stared at him anyway as he looked over the trees, the grass, and the bushes, focused intently on seeing everything there was to be seen.

“Get the kit, Danny. We have a few things to pick up.”

“I’m on it,” and as he said the words, Holdstedter stood from where he had been crouching, a glove now on his hand and something small pressed between two fingers.

“What did he find?” She hadn’t meant to speak, but the words fired out anyway.

“Looked like a button,” the detective shrugged and took enough time to look into her face. She had no doubt at all that he was reading every little sin she’d ever thought of committing. He had eyes like that. “Might be nothing, might be a clue.” He smiled and she felt more at ease.

“Do you think he was abducted?”

“Honestly? Yes, I do. I think Mr. Lister was taken by force. But I don’t know that yet, so don’t go panicking.”

“Do you want me to stay here for a while?”

“Do you have somewhere else to be?”

“I have school.”

He looked at her again and nodded. “So why don’t you head off to school then, miss. I’ll give you my card and you can call me when you have a little free time.”

“Are you sure that’s okay?”