by Anthony Izzo
“Noticed you have a few buttons undone. Can’t say I blame you.”
Jill pulled the cotton material closed and held it to her chest.
“No need to be embarrassed. You’re a beautiful woman. Gotta show off what you have. Am I right?”
Jill turned and slid the key into the lock. “I have to go,” she repeated firmly.
Rafferty grabbed her wrist and pulled it away; the key remained in the lock.
He probably expected her to cower before him, but instead she looked him right in the face (the whole time wanting to work up a gob of spit and let it fly in his kisser) and asked him, “How did you know what time I got off, Chief? And why are you harassing me?”
He narrowed his eyes, bent down within kissing distance. “I know a lot of things in this town, Jill. I know where everybody lives and where they work. I know what time they go to bed and what time they get up. I know when they fuck their wives and even when some of them take a shit. This is my town, and I don’t miss a goddamn trick. You remember that.”
His placid gaze had become a look of fury; the grip on her wrist tightened and her hand turned china-white from the pressure exerted on it. He whispered, “You just remember: I see everything. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll see that body of yours naked through your window some night. You won’t even know I’m there.”
She pulled away from him. He stank. Like the guy in the warehouse. Oh, Lord.
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, he reached over with his free hand, seized her hair and pulled her face close to his. Twisting the hair, he turned her head to the side and slid his warm tongue into her ear.
She felt hot and dizzy, her head swollen. Tears of rage pooled in her eyes and her face felt like it was on fire. The last thing she wanted was for Rafferty to see her cry.
He let her go and backed away, grinning. “I’ll be seeing you, Jill.”
She immediately unlocked the car door and climbed inside, clicking the lock shut. Then she dug in her purse for a tissue. Rafferty’s disgusting act had left her ear wet and slimy.
She tossed the used tissue on the passenger seat, started the car, slammed it into reverse, then screeched out of the parking ramp, half afraid that if she saw Rafferty walking she would splatter him all over the concrete with her Toyota.
But Rafferty was gone as fast as he came. After driving three blocks she settled down a little bit and eased off the gas. The first thing she would do upon arriving home was take a hot shower. The second would be to call Matt Crowe and tell him what happened. She remembered the comment he made about police corruption in Lincoln, and it turned out he was correct. But what troubled her even more was the smell that came off of Ed Rafferty’s hide.
CHAPTER 8
From his prowl car, Ed Rafferty watched the nurse speed away in her Toyota and laughed out loud. That was perfect, the look of pure fear on her face and the way she had begun spurting tears. Typical woman, he thought.
The tongue in the ear had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, and a great one if he had to say so himself. If you beat a person down, broke them until they reached the point of tears, they usually belonged to you after that. Jill was on her way.
The air in the car felt hot in his nostrils and mouth. He rolled down the window. He picked at the peeling vinyl on the seat, thinking of his first kill, the beauty of the hunt.
When Rafferty was fifteen, his father took him to the Allegheny Mountains so he could learn to hunt. The year had been 1845, long before he came to Lincoln. They had spent two days sleeping among the pines, the air redolent with the smell of sap and needles. On the second night, they came upon a pair of hunters camped out for the night.
They had tracked the hunters for two days, his father telling him that the anticipation of watching them would make the kill even more satisfying. They had watched them eat, sleep and even piss in the bushes. On the third night, just after sunset, Rafferty and his father changed over, careful not to shriek (even though the pain of transformation was excruciating) and warn the prey that they were coming.
After their transformation, they had moved quickly down the trail, powerful legs propelling them, the October air slicing over their bodies. The men sat by a bonfire, their knees drawn up, huddling for protection from the chilly autumn air.
His father leapt first, crashing on top of the nearest hunter and pinning him. With a slash of a talon, the man’s gut was laid open and his eyes bulged in disbelief at what had just happened to him. The other one sprang to his feet and started off down the trail, but he was far too slow. In two bounds, Rafferty pounced on his back and snapped his neck.
The two of them feasted and buried the corpses, which were reduced to bones and gristle, in a small cave down the trail. Then Rafferty and his father transformed back, washed the blood off of themselves in a nearby stream and put their clothes back on. The next morning they headed home.
He had other fond memories: him and his teenage buddies burning Mrs. Hathaway’s house down with her in it and then picking her off when she ran from the flames. Then there was the time he stalked a teenage girl through Dade Park, playing with her for nearly an hour before closing in for the kill. That had been back in 1956.
Jill Adams would make a nice addition to his list of memories.
Jill sat at her kitchen table and sipped Bailey’s Irish Cream on the rocks, hoping to calm her nerves and warm the iciness that had seeped into her bones. Some situations called for something stronger than Coca-Cola.
That Rafferty had balls. And the son of a bitch knew there was no place for her to turn. There had to be a way to get him off her back without fearing retribution from him or one of his deputies. She needed to find an answer fast, before harassment turned into something much worse.
As she sipped her Bailey’s, enjoying its cool sweetness, the phone rang. Picking it up, she almost wanted to groan. It was her mother.
“How’s everything, Jill?”
“Fine, Mom.”
“And the hospital?”
“Okay.”
“No one’s thrown up on you, or gotten blood on you? You know, with AIDS and all.”
“Mom, please.”
“The doctors don’t have people throwing up on them.”
“No one threw up on me.”
God, the woman could drive Mother Teresa to murder.
“Hmm. That’s okay. You probably wouldn’t tell me if they did.”
Jill didn’t say anything, and the sound of her mother’s breathing was the only noise on the line.
“Is everything okay? You sound like something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Mom.”
“You know you can tell me if there is.”
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t like the sound of your voice. You sound upset. Maybe you should come home.”
Jill gritted her teeth. “I’m not coming home. Mom, I really have to go. I’ll call you.”
She pushed the Off button on the cordless and it beeped, terminating her connection. In one way she felt like a rat for hanging up on her mother, but the woman treated her like she was four years old. “Tough titty said the kitty,” she said, and laughed at the silly saying.
She polished off the Bailey’s and poured herself another glass, adding more ice this time. Feeling a little brave from the Bailey’s, she decided she would take the plunge and call Matt Crowe.
She picked up the scrap of paper with his number on it, went to the phone and dialed his number.
A woman answered and told her to hold on. A moment later, Matt came on the line.
“Hi, Matt, it’s Jill.”
“Hey, Jill. How are you?”
“Just called to see how the ankle was.”
“I’ll walk again someday.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re on the road to recovery but I’d be lying if I said that was the only reason I called.”
Silence on the other end. Anticipation, maybe?
“I’ve been having a problem wit
h the police.”
“Rafferty or one of his deputies?”
“The head man himself. I’d like to get together with you and talk about it.”
“Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No, just shook me up a bit.”
“Would you mind if we met at your place?” Matt said.
“That’d be fine. Why don’t you come over about six? I can whip something up.”
“Sounds great. See you at six.”
They said good-bye and hung up.
She went to the kitchen to make sure she had spaghetti and ajar of sauce. She was surprised that her heart rate had sped up. Feeling like a fifteen-year-old with a crush on a boy, she giggled to herself. She couldn’t wait for him to get here.
Matt hung up the phone thinking he would bring her a bouquet of carnations and a nice bottle of Merlot. He hadn’t been on a date in six or seven years. Hopefully it was like riding a bike.
The sun beating in the window turned the loft into a sweatbox. He felt guilty running the air conditioner all day because it meant jacking up Aunt Bernie’s electric bill, but it was too hot to go without it. So he turned it to low as a compromise.
The digital clock next to the bed said four thirty and he still had a few things to take care of before he left. He had left his new weaponry on the bed; sitting down next to his arsenal, he set the shotgun across his lap, picked up a box of shells and clicked five of them home. He slid the Mossberg under the bed and a cluster of dust bunnies flew up in his face. He sneezed twice and then took the knife and slipped it under as well.
Then he loaded the Beretta and did the same with it.
Jill’s revelation of the Chief’s harassment made him angry, gave him even more motivation to take Rafferty down. Rafferty was a monster, a cruel beast and an all-around prick, someone he wanted dead. But Matt guessed that ten percent of Lincoln’s population was Rafferty’s kind, and he assumed they would turn on whoever tried to harm their beloved Chief of Police. He might be signing his own death warrant by going after Rafferty.
The best way was to hit Rafferty fast and then get the hell out of Dodge. That posed more problems, for he could never return to Lincoln again. And what if he and Jill hit it off? Started a relationship? Killing Rafferty would put an end to anything he started with her. The thought of leaving Aunt Bernie killed him, as well.
Eager to meet with Jill he decided to get a move on so he went in the house and took a shower. After he’d dressed, Aunt Bernie offered him two twenties for the two bags of groceries he’d purchased, but he refused the money. She was bound and determined not to let him pay for any food while he was here, but he needed to make some sort of contribution to the household. She scolded him, and he hurried out of the house before she tried shoving the bills in his shirt pocket.
Then he was off, more excited than he had been in years.
Rhonda Barbieri dragged her tired body out of her Audi, climbed the steps from the garage to the kitchen door, flipped on the lights and slumped into a kitchen chair. Her feet ached, her temples felt like they were caught in a vise and she could smell the sourness of her own sweat.
Rhonda, a lawyer at Goldstein and Day Attorneys, was on the verge of being made a partner, the first woman partner in the firm’s eighty-year history. She had started work at seven this morning and called it quits at quarter to six. Kicking off her right shoe, she lifted an aching foot and massaged it, thinking how nice it would be to slip into a hot bath and then collapse into bed.
She kicked off her other shoe and went upstairs to the bedroom, where she slid out of her clothes and into a pink bathrobe. She looked at the king-size bed, deciding that it was nice to have the whole thing to herself this evening. Her husband, Bob, had gone to a seminar for purchasing agents in Syracuse, and would not be home until tomorrow evening.
To Rhonda’s dismay, he had taken his assistant, Sheila, with him, explaining that he wanted to expose her to business settings. Rhonda knew that he wanted to expose more than just business to the little slut. Sheila Donahue. Twenty-two, red-haired, with a set of paid-for breasts. When Bob had introduced her to Sheila, the girl had been all giggles, picking lint off of Bob’s suit and laughing at stale jokes even Bob didn’t find funny anymore.
She’d first become suspicious last summer, when Bob told her one Saturday he was going to golf nine holes with his buddy, Ron Geiss. He had been gone six hours, and when he came home there was a faint trace of Liz Claiborne perfume on him, and that was not Rhonda’s scent. She had also found a strange phone number on a piece of paper in his pocket, but she didn’t want to confront him.
Yet.
Part of it was that she didn’t want to admit to herself that her husband was doing the nasty with a girl half his age—that Rhonda was being dumped for a younger, firmer woman. A quick phone call to Ron Geiss would let her know if the two of them had in fact played golf, but again, that would be finding out the truth, and the truth could cut like a razor blade.
She got an image of the two of them screwing, Sheila’s skirt flipped up, Bob bending her over a desk, the sweat shining on their skins. She was almost glad the son of a bitch wasn’t home—now she didn’t have to look at him or listen to him fart in his sleep.
She wondered if Little Miss Sheila knew about that charming habit.
If I wait long enough, I’ll catch him, she thought. And then I’ll cut his balls off. Maybe not literally, but she knew plenty of divorce lawyers who would love to sink their teeth into a case like this. And then he would pay dearly.
Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t had anything to eat since twelve thirty, and even then she had only scarfed down half a bagel and a cup of tea. Right about now a Stouffer’s Pizza sounded good, and she decided to get one out of the freezer in the basement. First she pulled out a Diet Coke from the fridge and set it on the kitchen table.
The first thing she noticed when she opened the basement door was the smell, sour and pungent. What in the world could cause such an awful reek? she wondered. Maybe a squirrel or a mouse had gotten trapped and died somewhere.
She flipped the light switch and got nothing.
Hmm. Fuse must’ve blown.
After retrieving a flashlight from the junk drawer in the kitchen, she padded down the stairs in her bare feet, hoping Bob hadn’t left any nails lying around. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the odor hit her again. She couldn’t place it, but it was vaguely chemical, with an undertone of raw sewage mixed in.
At the bottom of the stairs, she turned left to where the refrigerator stood against the wall. It was an old avocado-colored Amana, their first fridge. They retired it to the basement for storing frozen pizzas, pot pies, and other frozen junk food years ago.
The fuse box was to the right of the fridge, and Rhonda shone her light on the box and opened the door. The fuse in the socket for the basement and the corresponding section of the upstairs had been removed. Damnit, she’d been after Bob to get the electric updated for years. Now she had to find the fuse.
She flicked her beam to the floor and saw the fuse on the floor near the basement wall. At first she thought maybe it had simply dropped from the box, but she realized it couldn’t have fallen to the floor because the door was shut and latched.
What if someone was in the house and had pulled that fuse out on purpose? And she was alone. Rhonda shivered and her hair stood on end.
Then a growl came from the shadows behind her. Spinning around, she saw to her left, opposite the stairs, only Bob’s workbench and rows of screwdrivers and pliers hung on Peg Board hooks. Absurdly, she thought how he hadn’t fixed anything in two months and wondered why he even bothered keeping the tools. He had even left a screwdriver on the floor. And that damned gas can he insisted on leaving down here!
There was a storage room whose wall ran perpendicular to the workbench. The door was closed. She switched the beam from the door to the window between the bench and the storage room. The glass had been sma
shed out.
Get to the stairs and call the cops. But don’t panic, she thought.
More grunting came from behind the door. And that smell, churning her stomach.
She almost made it to the top stairs when the storage room door flew open, slamming against the wall like a gunshot. Powerful hands grasped her legs a second later, it seemed, and dragged her back down and into the darkness. Rhonda fought; a nail snapped off.
She turned her head and looked at her attacker, the face inches from hers, and smelled its fetid breath. Urine dribbled down her leg as her bladder let go.
My God, I can’t die like this.
Harry Pierce flicked the light switch off, pulled the keys from his pocket and stepped outside Lincoln Firearms. He then locked the door and gave it a nudge to make sure it locked. Satisfied the door was secure, he rounded the corner of the store, passing the bow and arrow display in the front window.
He walked down Barker Avenue. Crickets chirped around him, and in a driveway across the street, a girl in a pink bathing suit jumped rope and recited a rhyme he had never heard before. He smiled. Cute little thing, she was.
He reached the parking lot at the rear. As he turned to enter the lot, a flash of hot pink caught his eye. It was stapled to the telephone pole. Usually such signs advertised garage sales or church picnics, but when he read the lettering on the sign, it chilled his blood.
He looked left, then right. The only person on the street was the jump roper. He reached up and plucked the flyer from the pole, careful not to tear it in half.
As he walked toward his truck, he folded the paper and tucked it in his pocket. This was bad. Very bad.
Matt and Jill had polished off the spaghetti. After dinner, he helped her clear the table and put the dishes in the sink. He volunteered to wash the dishes but she declined, preferring to let them soak while the two of them talked.
They retired to the living room, him in a recliner and Jill sitting across from him on the plush couch, a glass of Merlot in hand. They had talked over dinner, mostly about their pasts and her adventures in nursing. She had also been engaged, but she wasn’t seeing anyone right now. That was the best news Matt heard in a long time.