Racing the Devil

by Jaden Terrell

  “I know,” I said. “But there’s no doubt he fired the gun that killed him. I just need to find out why.”

  Her moist, black currant eyes met mine. “Of course, dear. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Do you know who inherits if Calvin and the girls die?” I steeled myself for the answer. “Is Valerie the next of kin?”

  She cocked her head, birdlike, to one side. “Well, I suppose so, dear, but she doesn’t inherit anything. She isn’t even beneficiary of their insurance. Cal’s will stipulates that if he and Amy both die, everything goes to the church.”

  “Everything to the church? What about the girls?”

  “That minister of theirs gets custody. Amy wasn’t really happy about that, but there was no one else.”

  My stomach rolled at the idea of Avery taking the girls. If he was really Walter . . . “What about Valerie?”

  She waved her hands. “Oh, heavens no. She didn’t even like the girls that much.”

  “Grandparents? Aunts and uncles?”

  “I don’t think so. Calvin’s parents were dead, and Amy’s were estranged. Then her mother died just a few months ago. It’s like a black cloud’s been hanging over that family.”

  If Avery had killed the Hartwells in order to inherit, the string of deaths should end here. But if someone was systematically destroying Amy’s family, then Valerie was next.

  I PARKED THE VAN in her driveway just as a red Corvette with flames painted across the hood pulled out. I recognized the guy behind the wheel—limp blond hair, chiseled jaw. He looked like a British rock star. The last time I’d seen him, he was orchestrating the sound and lights for Amy’s memorial program. The first time I’d seen him, he was climbing into Valerie’s red Chevy.

  Valerie came out of the house, holding a glass of ice water.

  “I thought you weren’t seeing that guy anymore,” I said, trying to sound casual and not quite pulling it off.

  She brushed my cheek with her lips. “Jealous?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “I never said I was only seeing you.”

  Fair enough. “Can we go in and talk for a minute?”

  “I have a lot to do. Can’t we talk while I work?”

  “It would be better if we went inside.”

  She grinned. “My God, you’re insatiable.” Then she looked into my eyes and the smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  I led her into the living room, sat on the sofa, and patted the cushion beside me. She plopped down and tucked one leg beneath her, one arm resting across the back of the couch behind my shoulders. Her face was pale and perfectly still.

  I took her hand and told her, as gently as I could, about Calvin and the girls. Then I told her my suspicions about Avery and the Church of the Reclamation, and about my belief that all the deaths were somehow related and that she might be in danger.

  She listened wordlessly until I’d finished. Then, “You’re insane,” she said. She scraped a fingernail across a stray thread from the southwestern throw that protected her sofa. “My mother’s death was an accident. And Cal . . .” She stopped and gave a deep, animal moan. “Oh, God, Cal.”

  I pulled her into my arms. She resisted at first, then buried her face against my chest and wept.

  “I don’t think he did it,” I said. “Not on his own. I wish you’d stay somewhere else for a few days. Until I get this sorted out.”

  She snuffled into my armpit. “He must have done it. Don’t you see? He must have been crazy.”

  “He may have been crazy, but not the way you mean.”

  “Because the bed wasn’t made?” She gave a little shriek of laughter and sat up. “Calvin never made a bed in his life. He thought that was woman’s work.”

  My jaw set. “I’d still feel better if you’d find someplace else to stay. You could crash at my place for awhile.”

  “No, no, there’s too much to do. Katrina, and the estate, and . . . Tell you what.” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “If you haven’t caught the bad guys in a week, I’ll come to your place for a while.”

  “Anything could happen in a week.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Let me stay here, then. Just in case.”

  “Look.” Her cheeks were still wet, but she seemed to have cried herself out. “I don’t blame you for being freaked out. I’m pretty freaked myself. But I got along just fine before you came along, and I’ll get along just fine after you’re gone. I don’t need some guy to take care of me.”

  “This is a little different.”

  “Jared.” She snuggled in and gave me a peck on the jaw. “I’ll be spending my nights at the hospital with Katrina. Security guards all around. How much safer could it be?”

  I DIDN’T LIKE IT, but there wasn’t much I could do. There had been months between her mother’s death and Amy’s, weeks between Amy’s and Cal’s. Whoever was behind all this was taking his time. How long could I play Valerie’s guard dog? Awhile, but not forever. All the killer had to do was wait. Which meant I had to find him first.

  Thinking bleak thoughts, I swung by the office. Opened the door to the communal stairwell I shared with four other tenants. The air in the hallway was hot and dank, like a pile of old blankets in a steam room. A sharp exhalation of breath burst from the cubby hole beneath the stairs, and I had a moment to register another smell, a layer of sweat and cheap aftershave, before a human pile driver surged out of the darkness wearing LeQuintus’s face.

  He hadn’t been bluffing when he said I’d see him again.

  I was too slow turning, and he hit me shoulder first, square in the chest. All the air punched out of my lungs, and the force drove me backward into the door so hard I heard the wood crack. A jolt of pain shot through my back, up through my neck and down through my tailbone. A millisecond later, the back of my head smacked the door frame. Another burst of pain, and something warm and wet trickled down the back of my neck.

  Head reeling, I ducked under his arm and came up behind him. He turned to face me, pulling a ten-inch hunting knife from his belt. His eyes were cold, but he was grinning. The grin said he could think of nothing more fun than slicing me into pieces and eating my heart.

  “Told you you’d be sorry, asshole,” he said. “Fuck with me. Anybody fucks with me be sorry.”

  Shit.

  I knew I should try to reason with him. Maybe it would even work. But I felt like coiled muscle and nerves scraped bare, and I couldn’t seem to find the words. With the smell of Katrina’s blood still in my nostrils, I reached behind my back and came up with the Colt.

  “I’ve had a bad day, LeQuintus.” I pointed the gun at his head. “Blowing your brains out might actually make me feel better.”

  He froze, the grin dissolving into a hard, thin line. His eyelids fluttered. In the quiet, I couldn’t even hear him breathe. “You crazy, man,” he said.

  “No. You crazy, man. But I tell you what. If you get out of here right now, I won’t kill you today. And if I never see you around here again, maybe I won’t kill you at all.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You bust my ass in front of the whole fuckin’ jail.”

  I didn’t try to explain the concept of self-defense. “That’s what this is about? Your reputation?” “Ain’t nothin’ else worth nothin’.”

  Couldn’t argue with that. “Then tell your buddies you came here and kicked my ass. I don’t care enough to tell them otherwise. But if you try anything like this again, I swear I’ll shoot you just for being stupid.”

  He looked at me, thinking it over. Looked down the barrel of the .45. I could almost see the tumblers in his mind turning as he tried to decide if I’d really pull the trigger.

  He wasn’t sure I’d shoot him.

  I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t.

  Then his big shoulders sagged and he turned away. “Crazy man like you,” he said. “Shouldn’t even be on the streets.”

>   I watched his retreating back and thought back to our first encounter. I hadn’t wanted to kill him then. I hadn’t wanted to kill anyone.

  It seemed like a long time ago.

  IT TOOK SEVERAL MINUTES for my heart rate to return to normal. Then I went up to the office and bolted the door behind me. I’d planned to stay just long enough to check my messages and clear up some paperwork, but before I left, I made a quick call to the sanitation department and learned that Avery’s garbage pickup was on Tuesday morning.

  I couldn’t search his house, but garbage is fair game.

  The phone rang a heartbeat after I’d flipped it shut. Elisha Casale.

  “I think I have something,” she said when I answered. “Can you pick me up in a half hour? Wear black.”

  She gave me her address, and I pulled up in front of her split-level brick house thirty minutes later wearing black jeans and a black silk shirt I’d borrowed from Jay. She was waiting on the sidewalk, a small fringed purse slung over one shoulder.

  No tangle of auburn hair. No blue eyes. Instead, she had caramel skin, wide green eyes, and molasses-colored hair that tumbled to the middle of her back. She wore tight black pants and a black peasant-style shirt edged with black lace.

  Her smile was dazzling.

  I got out of the Silverado and came around to the passenger side.

  She held out a slender hand with short, perfectly manicured nails. “Hello, Mr. McKean,” she said. The top of her head came to the bridge of my nose.

  “Miss Casale.”

  “Elisha.”

  I opened the passenger door for her and she swung onto the seat.

  “Where are we going, Elisha?” I said.

  “His journals had a lot of references to a place called the Razor’s Edge. I talked to some of the kids, and they say it’s their code name for a little club just off Elliston Place.”

  “I was down there the other day. I didn’t see anything called the Razor’s Edge.”

  “It’s off the main drag. And it’s called The Masquerade. I think they call it the Razor’s Edge because a guy named Razor hangs out there. The kids call him the Vampire Prince of Nashville.”

  “We have a Vampire Prince?”

  “Watch and learn, Grasshopper,” she said. “Watch and learn.”

  ELISHA DIRECTED ME ONTO I-40, down Broadway past the West End split. We cut down Louise to Elliston Place, where the Elliston Place Soda Shop served the best milkshakes in town and where, just down the street, Rotier’s famous burgers had been immortalized by Jimmy Buffet’s song, “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”

  “Turn there.” She gestured toward a side street, and after a couple more turns, pointed to a stonework building with a flashing neon sign that said “The Masquerade.”

  A small group of Goths, both male and female, clustered by the door, smoking and talking in low tones. We parked across the street and walked over, the thump of the bass already vibrating beneath our feet. We eased past the Goth kids, and I paid the five-dollar apiece cover charge.

  Inside, the walls were draped in crimson velvet and lit by electric candles. Black tablecloths covered the tables, and in the center of each was a black rose in a crystal vase. Kids dressed in a blend of modern and medieval styles danced to death metal music. Some had painted fake wounds on their throats or foreheads.

  Posters on the wall announced bands with names like Switchblade Symphony, Christian Death, Red Temple Spirits, and The Shroud. Elisha pointed to one called Creaming Jesus and said, “Classy.”

  At one table, a young man sucked loudly at his girlfriend’s neck. At another, a girl held a razor blade between her thumb and forefinger, and sliced a thin line of red horizontally across her boyfriend’s wrist. As I watched, she lowered her lips to the wound.

  “I was going to suggest we get a drink,” Elisha said, “but if that’s what’s on tap, I think I’ll pass.”

  “We can probably do better than that.” I showed my photo I.D. at the bar, ordered a couple of $7.50 rum and Cokes, and handed one to her.

  “I see one of Josh’s friends,” she said. She took my hand and tugged me toward a table where a heavyset girl in garish makeup was sharing a clove cigarette with a wild-eyed young woman in red.

  Elisha said, “Absinthe,” and the heavyset girl stared up at us with undisguised hostility. The other girl plucked the cigarette from Absinthe’s hand and stalked away.

  “Just because you’re wearing black doesn’t make you one of us,” Absinthe said. She was squeezed into a black gown with a froth of lace at the hem. In spite of her weight, she might have been pretty if not for the death’s head makeup. She nodded toward me. “Who’s this?”

  “I’m looking for Josh,” I said. “Joshua McKean.”

  “Or Joshua Nightbreed,” Elisha added. “He might be calling himself that.”

  Absinthe shot a furtive look toward the back of the room. “Can’t help you. If he wanted to be found, he’d get himself found. Why don’t you just go home? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  “Justice never sleeps,” I said, scanning the crowd for a glimpse of my nephew. “And neither do I. Not until Josh comes home.”

  That’s when I saw him. He came out of the men’s room wearing a purple, lace-front shirt, tight black pants with D-rings down one side, and a short black cape with a deep blue lining. He looked like a bruise.

  Halfway across the room, his head came up like a young deer scenting a mountain lion. His gaze met mine, and his muscles tensed. I could see him thinking it through. Make a run for it? Brazen it out?

  My own muscles tightened, ready to sprint after him if he bolted. After a moment, maybe sensing that running would just delay the inevitable, he sighed and trudged over to us.

  “Why don’t you just leave him alone?” Absinthe said.

  I didn’t answer. Elisha pulled a couple of chairs up to the table and sat down in one of them. Gestured for Josh to take the other.

  “I’m not going back,” Josh said to me, sliding into the proffered chair. “You can’t make me.”

  I arched an eyebrow, and he sighed and crossed his legs at the knee.

  “All right,” he said. “I guess you can. But you can’t make me stay.” He gestured to his crossed legs. “Does this bother you?”

  “Should it?”

  “I just wondered. You and my father. So irredeemably masculine. It bothers him.”

  “Josh, I live with a gay man. This isn’t about you being gay.” “Then what is it about?”

  “If you’re gay, Randall will learn to accept it. But this other . . . You’re really into this scene? Sharing blood?” His cheeks flushed. “What if I am?” “Ever heard of AIDS?”

  He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “I’m not going to get AIDS. But what if I do? Look around, man. The world sucks. Life sucks. Things are getting worse and worse, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Death’s not something to moan and cry about. It’s . . . it’s something to be embraced.”

  “Yeah? Jay might disagree with you.”

  He looked down at his lap, eyes glistening. “I didn’t expect you to understand.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I understand that you’re sitting here like a spoiled kid while your parents and Caitlin grieve their guts out for you.”

  He couldn’t meet my gaze.

  “Leave him alone,” Absinthe said.

  I softened my voice and said to Josh, “I know you think your dad is mad at you right now. I know you think he’s a hard-ass who doesn’t understand or care about you. But the morning you left home, he cried.”

  He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “Yeah, sure. Like he cares.”

  “He cares so much it hurts. Look, he isn’t like you. We grew up in a different time. We didn’t cry. We didn’t talk about our feelings. We just sucked it up. This is hard for him.”

  Josh stared down at his lap, arms folded across his body like the sleeves of a straitjacket. “If you make me go back, I’ll just run away again.”


  “Josh,” I said. “You run away a hundred times, that’s how many times I’ll find you.”

  “Why? Why can’t you just let me be?”

  “Because,” I said. “I promised you.”

  “Me? When did you promise me?”

  “You were about seven, remember? You’d seen something on TV about some kid that got kidnapped. And you asked me—you remember what you asked me?”

  “I asked you if I ever got lost, if you would find me.”

  “There you go.”

  “But I’m not lost.”

  “That’s not how it looks to me.”

  He looked across the dance floor to where the wild-eyed girl in red was undulating in front of a man in a purple pirate shirt.

  Vampire Prince, mouthed Elisha.

  “All right,” Josh said. “All right, I’ll come home.”

  Except for the call to Randall and Wendy, no one talked much on the ride home. Elisha squeezed into the front seat between me and Josh, smelling of soap and some sweet, musky perfume. I pulled into my brother’s driveway and turned off the ignition, and we sat in silence for a moment. Then the porch light flicked on and Wendy and Caitlin hurtled out the door in their bathrobes. Wendy stopped in the driveway, hugging herself, gnawing at a thumbnail. Caitlin stood behind her, hair tousled, eyes uncertain.

  “Give them a chance, Josh,” I said. “No one could love you more.”

  He nodded slowly and pushed the car door open.

  “Josh?” Wendy’s voice cracked. Then she opened her arms and he stepped into them, tucking his head into the arc of her neck.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed over his shoulder.

  As Elisha and I pulled out of the driveway, Randall stepped out of the house and strode across the lawn like a conquering king. He looked at me for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he turned his face away and gathered his family into his arms.

  I WAS GLAD JOSH was home, but still, sleep didn’t come easy Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Tara’s broken body behind my eyelids, the splashes of red on Katrina’s white lace.