Blood Red

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.