Authors: Edward Lazellari
Cal raised his fist again to strike. Much as he disliked the cop, he deserved a smack for putting MacDonnell in a bind with his superiors, but he didn’t deserve to be a punching bag. Seth closed his eyes and wished the cop wouldn’t hit him. A second went by, then another, without a strike, Seth cracked one eye open to see the fist still hovering in front of him, shaking.
“Are you going to hit me, or not?” Seth asked.
“I’d really like to hit you,” Cal said. “But I can’t move my fist.”
“You can’t…” Seth looked around in a panic. “Are we under attack?” Seth didn’t want to die frozen like a pair of Popsicles in an alley. He scanned the alley and the street for the goons that had been on their tail but saw only the normal bustle of a city street. Callum let go of his scruff and looked around as well. Neither of them was frozen, only Cal’s arm hanging in the air in striking position.
Seth had a thought. “Try opening your hand,” he said. Cal did this easily, and his arm released the tension.
“What the heck … Did you do that?” Cal asked, shaking his hand.
“I don’t know,” Seth said, sounding pleased. “I really didn’t want to be hit.”
“Can you do it again?” Cal asked.
“I don’t know.”
Cal sucker punched him in the jaw with a right hook. The photographer lost his legs and crashed on his butt. White spots circled his head.
“Apparently not,” Cal said, as though it were a harmless experiment. “My car is around the corner.”
“Where are the girls?” asked Seth, rubbing his jaw.
“Bree’s staying with Cat. I left Lelani behind to protect them. It’s just us heading south.”
“Wait, I have one more thing I need to do up here,” Seth said.
Callum MacDonnell’s glare made it abundantly clear Seth’s excursion was over. Any protest from him would lead to more beatings.
Great,
Seth thought. Without Cat to calm her husband on this trip, Seth was likely to be the short, tubby half of an Abbot and Costello routine all the way to Maryland. He moved his jaw back and forth trying to regain its normal feeling.
“Did Lelani track me?” he asked, as they walked toward the Ford Explorer.
The cop shook his head. “Any active cell phone, even disposables, can be triangulated,” he said. Seth noticed his staff and the bag of shavings was in the backseat. Also a lacrosse bag that Seth suspected held Callum’s recovered sword. “Worry less about that and work on that defensive magic,” Cal continued. “It’ll be handy if we run into Dorn’s goons.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Seth murmured, stroking his jaw.
CHAPTER 13
THE KINDHEARTED KILLER
1
Callum and Seth pulled up to the Glen Burnie, Maryland, home of Clyde and Rita Knoffler in time to greet the sun as it emerged from the horizon. They had driven through the night at Cal’s insistence, stopping only for a vital nap in a rest stop parking lot as exhaustion finally overpowered the cop. Cal nudged Seth, who sat in the passenger seat, and thankfully had slept for most of the ride down.
A liberal helping of police tape cordoned the house declaring it a crime scene. Cal’s hopes dissolved into his gut with a discomforting slosh.
“I’m tired of seeing that tape everywhere we go,” Seth declared.
Cal thought that for once, he and the idiot were in total agreement. Seth opened the door and got out, but Cal remained in his seat staring at the sealed dwelling. Dread had rooted him in that spot. The boy was dead—this was the end.
“Are you coming?” Seth asked.
Cal couldn’t move. For all his courage and ability to face an army wielding swords and axes, he just couldn’t bear to discover what had happened in this place. He was stuck to his seat like a raw recruit, as if a spell had pinned him there. Everything he loved back home in Aandor, everything he suffered for, could be over in an instant … as dead as the young boy he failed to protect. Seth walked over to the driver’s side and tapped the window. Cal did not acknowledge him.
“It could be anything,” Seth said, through the glass, displaying some nascent intuition for the first time. Cal looked at the photographer—he had guessed what was going through the cop’s mind. The idiot was not as oblivious as when they’d found him a few days earlier.
“Maybe they got robbed,” Seth added. “Maybe someone else got killed.” Seth spotted a paperboy making rounds and ran over. They talked for several minutes with Seth pointing to the house. The paperboy was animated about what had happened, making wide gestures with his hands as though this was the most important thing to have happened in his neighborhood in his lifetime. He handed Seth a newspaper from his bag. Seth trotted back to the car. This time, Cal cracked his window.
“Clyde’s dead,” Seth explained. “The boy’s still alive.”
Cal let out a long breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding in. He inhaled, and the air was crisp and sweet.
“But…,” continued Seth.
No buts … the kid’s alive, that’s all that matters
.
“… it was the kid that killed Clyde. He ran away and is hiding from the cops.” Seth handed Cal the local paper.
TEEN KILLER
STILL AT LARGE!
FATHER SLAYER DANIEL HAUER
ELUDES POLICE
Cal stared at the headline in disbelief.
The kid’s alive, that’s what matters,
he repeated to himself over and over.
A Glen Burnie police cruiser sidled up to them driver side to driver side. “Can I help you folks?” he asked. “There’s no trespassing on these premises.”
Cal flashed his NYPD badge. “I’m working a case,” he said as professionally and detached as he could. “It led me to this house. Looking for a kid named Daniel, about thirteen. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Killed his old man is what happened,” the deputy said, thumbing toward the property. “Sheriff had him in the station a few days ago on an A&B. Beat up his classmates with a two-by-four and sent them to the hospital.”
“Did he fight a lot?” Cal asked, trying to get some sense of who his prince had become.
“Don’t know if he got into a lot of fights growing up,” the deputy said. “But I heard he tore up all his desks at school—costing the city hundreds to replace them.”
Cal wondered how it came to this. Daniel was his ward to raise into manhood. He and the guardians were to bring the kid up in a safe environment and imbue him with an understanding of his role and responsibilities to his kingdom, to be a good, civilized person. How could he have ended up a juvenile delinquent … patricidal? If he and Seth had arrived just a few days earlier …
The kid’s alive, that’s what matters.
“Can you clear me to go in there?” Cal asked the officer.
“Let me call it in, make sure forensics has everything they need. It’s a pristine scene. The wife OD’d on some pills shortly after and had to be taken to the hospital. No one’s been in there since the incident. We didn’t get a jump on the case early enough, though. Neighbors only realized there was a problem when the little girl wandered bawling into the street. We think the boy’s left the county.”
Always a step behind. But the delinquent is still alive, and that’s all that matters.
2
It was a typical middle-class American home. The furniture had been of good quality once; nicks in the wood, worn threads, and frayed edges told a story of neglect. The dining room hutch was scuffed, the plates within it did not match, and the varnish had lost its luster a while ago. In the center lay a broken dining room table and bloodstains on the carpet beneath it. Cal walked gingerly through the home, careful not to disturb the scene. He studied the broken table and the stains.
My prince did this.
Cal had mixed feelings about the incident. In Aandor, new recruits were kept at arm’s length by experienced troops until after their first battle. It was claimed to be a hazing tradition, but in truth, no grunt knew whether an untested soldier would be able to take another’s life in battle when the time came. It was one thing for a young recruit to do well in training, or to boast of his bravery over drinks at a tavern surrounded by friends and buxom wenches, another to find oneself opposite a man you are expected to hack to death with iron and steel. Noncombatants assume when you put on a uniform and act the soldier that you are capable of dealing death. It’s not that easy.
Sometimes the most obvious warriors falter and bring shame on themselves, or if they’re lucky, a quick death. No veteran soldier wanted to bond prematurely with a coward—to develop feelings of brotherhood and camaraderie with a man unable to do his job and defend his regiment and country. Sometimes the least obvious soldier—a tailor’s son or a musician; the weasely, good humored, or immature—surprised you, and turned out to be the man you most wanted at your side in a trench.
Often, the troops discussed whether their king or prince, seldom in battle themselves, was made of the same stern stuff as their most fervent soldiers.
Daniel’s answered that question at least,
Callum thought. The boy had taken a life. He had true grit. At least that could be said for him. But was he someone you wanted leading your kingdom?
Something was missing, though, and Cal searched his mind hard looking around the living area of this home. There were no family photos displayed in this house. The few pictures there were, were of a little girl. But where was Daniel? Where was his presence in this family?
From the empty beer cans and other bottles in the pantry—enough to shame even the worst college fraternity—Cal took a measure of the man Daniel had killed: a sad waste of a human being. The mom was no better. Prescriptions for Valium, Xanax, Percocet lined the kitchen counter and her nightstand—it was not that needing these types of prescription made one a bad person … but she was clearly incapable of defending her adopted son from this man.
Cal walked into Daniel’s room. He had expected posters of sultry women, heavy metal gods, an Xbox with Grand Theft Auto and other violent games stacked beside it … perhaps the smell of cigarettes or a hidden bong. What he found instead was a small collapsible drafting table and an extensive collection of books, mostly fiction. He didn’t know who Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, or Roger Zelazny were, but recognized J. K. Rowling and Stephen King. On the floor was a long white cardboard box brimming with comic books in plastic sleeves. On the dresser rested a photo of two boys at some type of convention, one very fat, the other thin, posing with SpongeBob SquarePants. Cal knew the thin boy was Daniel right away. He had his mother’s coloring and her eyes. They were not the eyes of a delinquent … a killer. He looked intelligent—a normal kid who liked to read comics and draw.
Cal removed the photo from its frame and sat on the bed, studying the boy. He tried to see the room from Daniel’s perspective. What did the boy think of his life? Did he wish for a better home, a better father? What were his hopes and aspirations? Seth walked in and took stock of the scene from the doorway.
“Not exactly what I thought a prince’s room would look like,” he said. “Or a murderer’s,” he added. He picked up a copy of Joseph Campbell’s
The Power of Myth
that lay at the top of a stack on the nightstand. “My ex-girlfriend tried to get me to read this once. Only made it through ten pages. Kid’s smart, huh?”
He was smart, Cal silently agreed. Not just book smart, either … he’d eluded the police for two days already, and they didn’t have a clue as to how to find him. They were doing the usual, canvassing the places he’s been known to associate and checking at friends’ houses. But this boy was creative—he thought outside the box. He was gone—out of state, and probably out of country soon enough. In one regard, Cal was grateful—Daniel had eluded Dorn’s agents as well. This was the break he had prayed for. Being lost was the best protection for the prince until Cal could catch up with Dretch.
As they exited the home, signs of life began to emerge on the block. Kids with backpacks full of books shuffled their way to school. A sheriff’s car pulled up to the curb. He wore mirrored aviator sunglasses under a cowboy hat with a star on the front. Cal didn’t know if they were far enough south to justify a sheriff looking like he stepped out of
Smokey and the Bandit
.
“I’m Sheriff Ed Maher,” he said. “You the folks looking for the Hauer boy?” he asked, knowing full well that they were.
“That would be us,” Seth said.
Cal put a hand on Seth’s shoulder and squeezed to indicate
Let me do the talking
.
The sheriff filled them in on the details of the past few days: the fight with the Grundy boys, the conversation he had with Daniel’s mother about her abusive husband and his feelings that he was being lied to by the both of them about Clyde Knoffler’s abusive behavior.
Cal asked the sheriff about the school desks Daniel supposedly destroyed. The sheriff laughed.
“I don’t know if ‘destroyed’ is the right word,” the sheriff said. “Boy liked to draw on his desks. The principal’s a bit of an asshole; I can say that because he’s my cousin. But I don’t think he would have put the boy in that position with his pa if he knew the whole situation at home though.
“I think the kid was acting out,” Maher continued. “Can’t grow up in a home where a drunk ex-Marine is pounding on you and not pick up a few bad habits. I mean them Grundy kids he beat up were no angels; they been terrorizing the school district for better part of the decade. It’s possible things went down like Hauer said. Got a doctor that’ll swear on a stack of Bibles Danny’s bruises came from a grown man’s fist, not them other boys.”
“Have you talked to his friends about where he might have gone?” Cal asked.
“Didn’t do any good. His best friend ratted him out and his girlfriend stepped out on him with the captain of the baseball team. She ain’t said much of anything. Doesn’t stop them coming by this house every day to see if anyone’s home. I guess if they knew anything, they wouldn’t be bugging me every six seconds, like they are now, standing over there waiting for me to finish talking to you.”