Blood Red (21 page)

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.

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.

Nancy shook her head. “Shut the fuck up, Bob.” Nancy was a short woman with big hair. He’d seen her wear it down once and it ran almost to her knees. When she was off duty, there was probably no one he’d ever met who was sweeter, but when she was working, she could out-swear a sailor and out-glare the sun. One hundred percent lean, mean law machine. There had been a few occasions when they’d almost gone at it like bunnies, and both of them still wanted to, but they had enough common sense not to mix work and pleasure that way. Besides, her husband liked to bench-press Mack trucks to stay in shape and Boyd wasn’t really sure he was willing to get himself torn into itsy bitsy pieces and buried alive just yet.

“What? I didn’t say we would take the case from them, I’m just saying we could.” Boyd didn’t take any offense and neither did Danny. Bob was teasing and they all knew it. It wasn’t like he didn’t have enough cases on his plate, and a couple of years back, Boyd had been partnered with him. That was back when the department had tried to actually have separate detectives for Vice. They gave up on that in a hurry. The department was well-off, but not filthy stinking rich. They were cops, after all, and it was much more important to have the extra money they could have used for detectives doing something important, like planting flowers on all the curbs in the springtime. Not that Boyd was bitter about it or anything. Much.

Boyd lit his own cigar, standing a long way off from the body when he did it. No one had touched the body since it had been found the night before by a couple of high school kids who wanted to get frisky. They were good kids; they were smart enough not to touch anything. He could see the spot where they’d had their blanket laid out a good thirty yards away from the actual crime scene.

Veronica Miller was not looking her prettiest. A couple of days in the woods will do that to a corpse. The crows had been picking at her face and chest; they’d removed her eyes and most of her nose. Not even Danny could look at what remained and think anything sexual. That was saying something, as Danny could probably look at his own grandmother and wonder if she was a good lay. No, that wasn’t really fair. Someone else’s grandmother, maybe, but he wasn’t a complete pig.

“Hey, Danny Boy!”

“Yeah, Richie?”

“You ever wonder if your grandmother was good in the sack?”

“Of course. I asked my grandfather about it.”

“Yeah? What did he say?”

“He said your grandmother was better.”

“Fuck you.”

“Are you two ever serious?” Nancy was being all professional again. Well, mostly, she had a little laugh when she asked.

He looked her way and smiled past the plume of smoke from his stogie. Damn, she was a good-looking woman.

“Of course, hon. I’m serious about this case. Veronica Miller needs to be our little secret.”

“Why, Rich?”

“’Cause we think maybe a cop did this.”

“No shit?” Bob looked over at the corpse again and got a little pastier. Boyd wondered exactly which bright boy at the top had chosen to make him a homicide detective. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the job, because he could. It was that he hated the sight of blood. Okay, so most of the blood here was dried up and flaking, but still.

“Want to tell us which one?”

“Well, neither of you.”

Nancy nodded her head. “So let’s get the equipment and get this done.”

“We owe you, guys. Dinner’s on us tonight.”

Nancy looked at him long and hard, and he knew she was thinking the same thing that he was: no drinking tonight or things could get dangerous and her husband could find reasons to twist Boyd into a pretzel.

“By the book, guys. I want to make sure we find everything, okay? If we have a crooked cop, I want him going down hard.”

“You looking for a good fuck, Rich?” That was Nancy, and hearing her talk like that made him swear off drinking a second time.

“Only every day of his life, Nancy.”

“Shut the fuck up, Danny.”

They got to work. They were very meticulous and found the condom Brian Freemont had dropped when he was murdering Veronica Miller.

Brian woke up in a decent mood. He had the day off again, and planned on using it to just relax. That was the problem here. He needed to relax in a big way.

If he didn’t calm his ass down and soon, he was going to screw up.

His mood darkened when he realized Angie wasn’t there. For a minute he’d let himself forget that she was gone.

He missed her, even missed her being a bloated, irritable, screaming bitch.

Mostly though, he missed seeing her face in the morning.

Damnedest thing about it was he was a little surprised by how much he missed her.

“Get over it. She’s gone. Move on with your life.”

The problem was that as much as he loved her, he knew that he couldn’t stop chasing the college girls. It was heady stuff when they were begging him and thinking of ways to get out of their troubles. Even thinking about it was getting him in the mood to go out and do it again.

But he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t working. That was a problem.

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.

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?”

“Oh, yeah. You go do what you have to do. I’ll be here for a couple of hours at least.”

She nodded and took the card he offered. She nodded to the Ken doll, too. He smiled for her and suddenly had a lot more personality than she had been giving him credit for. He graduated up from cute to handsome.

It was time for class and definitely not time to think about good-looking cops, so she went on her way. She went reluctantly; she’d wanted to stay and learn more about what might have happened to Bill.

Ben wasn’t really expecting any policemen at his door. The detectives introduced themselves and looked at him with expressionless faces; they asked if he could answer a few questions. He nodded and stepped out of his apartment.

“What can I do for you, Detective Boyd?”

“It’s just a few routine questions, sir. We have a missing person’s report filed on a fellow student at your school . . . Danielle Hopkins.”

“Danni’s missing?” He hadn’t really given much thought to her not being in class. Danni wasn’t exactly known for her perfect attendance. “I saw her just the other night. When was that . . . I think it was Thursday.”

“You look worried. Was she having troubles with someone?”

Looked worried? He was terrified. How was he supposed to help her without getting himself into deep trouble?

“She . . . was having troubles with a man. I helped her get them resolved, I thought.”
Shit. Damn, damn, damn
. This wasn’t at all what he wanted to talk about.

“Anyone you care to tell us about?” Detective Boyd was looking at him and looking hard. The big guy next to him was looking, too. Neither of them was making it easy to read what they might be thinking, and he decided that if he ever took up poker, it wouldn’t be a game he played with either of the policemen.