“So, where’s the brew?” Glen demanded, eyeing me suspiciously, as if I’d stiffed him for the beer.
“I got it.” Phoenix picked up the six-pack that I’d set on the floor in the back of the car. “Here you go,” he said, handing it to Glen.
Grinning, Glen ogled the six-pack of Guinness. “Mmm, you got the good stuff. Remind me to call you back for a second date.” He guffawed.
Tickled by the date comment, Phoenix joined in with giggly, teenage laughter.
Glen twisted off the bottle cap and downed half the dark brew in one gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not supposed to drink. That’s part of my commitment to the recovery program I’m in. But after the shit that I’ve been through, I’d say that I deserve to get good and drunk.”
“What exactly have you been through?”
“You get right to the point, don’t you? There’s no fucking foreplay with this guy,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Phoenix.
Once again, Phoenix burst into titters of laughter. Apparently, sex jokes went over big with him.
“Are you recording us, Phoenix?” I asked, attempting to get him in a more serious frame of mind.
“Oh. Right. One second.” He tapped on the record app and then held the phone up, near Glen’s head.
“Hey, that’s annoying. Get that thing away from me.”
“Sorry. You can set it in front of you on the dashboard, if you like,” Phoenix suggested, handing over his phone.
Glen placed it on the dash and slugged down more beer. Another swipe across his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What have you been through?” I repeated.
“For one thing, I lost my job over this mess they tried to pin on me, which is the reason I’m fucking broke right now.”
“Do you think that working around children was the right thing to do, considering your past?”
He shrugged. “It felt all right to me. I put myself in the situation to test my mental strength.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had all the eye candy I wanted, but I forced myself to look but not touch.”
“Look at what? Those sick kids’ naked bodies?” It was hard not to hit him over the head myself. He was a sick individual and the world was better off without him.
“No, I never saw any of them naked. And I didn’t work on the cancer ward, and most of the kids I came into contact with weren’t all that sick. Like that little girl, Taylor. She had a minor operation, and a couple of days of recovery. I slipped in her room when they took her downstairs to run tests. I stole a few of her possessions, so what? I didn’t hurt her.”
“What did you steal?”
“A pair of panties, an undershirt, and a cute little pair of pajamas, decorated with stripes and butterflies,” he smiled dreamily, and it was a terrible sight.
“Did you masturbate on her clothes?”
“So what if I did,” he said defiantly. “It’s a coping mechanism. I still didn’t hurt her.”
From the back, I heard Phoenix gasp. The conversation was getting real, and he stopped giggling.
Glen drained the rest of the beer and then cracked open another bottle. This time he guzzled down the contents of the bottle and crudely belched afterward.
“When did it begin—this obsession with children?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think,” I prodded. “When was the first time you actually found yourself being attracted to a child?”
“I was always attracted to them, even when I was a child. But I became aroused by them somewhere in my teen years. Yeah, my late teens. My best friend at the time had an older sister and he used to help babysit her kids. I would go over her house with him and help him look after the children. He had a niece, Jenny, a real pretty little girl. She used to always crawl up in my lap with a book, asking me to read her a story. I would get a boner out of this world when she’d scoot her little bottom around my groin, searching for a comfortable position. The first time it happened, I made her get off of me and sit down on the couch. But the second time, I just let things take their natural course.”
“Their natural course—what exactly is that?”
“I let go of my wad. She asked me if I peed myself.” He laughed heartily. “It was the cutest thing.” He was well into his third bottle, but showed no signs of drunkenness as he recalled memories of that innocent little child.
The two empties that he’d placed on the floor mat next to his feet were quickly joined by a third bottle.
“Where are my manners? Have some,” he asked, offering me a bottle of beer.
“No thanks, I don’t drink when I’m working,” I said, sounding primmer than I intended.
He turned slightly in his seat. “What about you, son? This’ll put some hair on your chest.”
Phoenix accepted the beer enthusiastically, and I initially thought he was seizing the opportunity to drink illegally. When I turned to look at him, he smiled and did a double eyebrow raise, letting me know that he planned to use the bottle as a weapon.
CHAPTER 35
I feared that five beers wouldn’t be enough to intoxicate the man; his threshold for alcohol seemed unlimited. In hindsight, I realized I should have bought two or three six-packs.
Phoenix would have to swing really hard to sufficiently daze Glen.
I asked more questions about the little girl, Jenny. The way Glen talked about her, it was easy to think that he was referring to a teenaged girlfriend instead of a four-year-old child. Every word that came out of his mouth repulsed me. I struggled not to vomit, yet I had to keep a straight face and act like I was having a normal conversation.
“When the carnival came to town, I walked around with her, holding her soft little hand, and it was heavenly. I bought her every treat she pointed at. I was so in love with her, I couldn’t tell her, no.”
“Did her uncle know that you were obsessed with her?”
“He knew that I was crazy about her. There wasn’t a dad in the house, and he thought I was trying to be a father figure.”
“But you were trying to hurt her,” I goaded, sick of him trying to turn his twisted fantasies into a sweet story of star-crossed lovers.
“No! I never hurt her…I adored her. I brushed her hair, I bathed her. I gave her piggyback rides, and I bought her lots of toys and nice presents. Everyone wants to vilify me, but I didn’t choose to be this way. I can’t help being attracted to children; it’s just the way I am.”
The sick bastard was asking me to empathize with him, but that was impossible. I looked at him, stone-faced, and asked, “Did you molest her? Was she your first victim?”
He didn’t respond. He closed his eyes and swilled down the fourth bottle of Guinness, and then the fifth.
He turned and looked at Phoenix. “Are you gonna drink that beer I gave you or are you gonna nurse it all day?”
“Uh, it’s kind of bitter. I don’t really like it…” Phoenix paused and made an apologetic grimace.
I was about to signal him, but he shocked me when he suddenly pulled his arm back and smacked the side of Glen’s head with the beer bottle. The brown liquid sprayed everywhere—the roof of my car, the doors, the dashboard, my neck, the steering wheel, and all over Glen’s hair and shirt. I gawked at the mixture of blood and brew that trickled down his face.
Phoenix looked stunned.
“Do it!” I shouted.
Looking punch-drunk, Glen leaned at an awkward angle toward the door. He was muttering incoherently as he lethargically jiggled the handle. Despite his muddled state of mind, he realized that he was in grave danger, and he was trying to get out of the car.
I couldn’t let that happen, so I picked up the bottle that had fallen in his lap, and bashed him in the head again. This time he slumped over, unconscious.
I glared at Phoenix. “You picked a hell of a time to choke…no pun intended. Do I have to put this piece of shit out of his misery, or are you going to man-up an
d handle it?”
“I…I…I can handle it,” he stammered and reached inside his backpack.
I noticed Glen stirring a little and I shot a frantic glance at Phoenix. “Hurry up and kill this motherfucker, damn!”
With trembling hands, he held the metal handles of the garrote, but didn’t move.
“What the fuck are you waiting for? You don’t hesitate to act when your victim is a little girl, you fucking pussy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Well, stop acting like one.” I had never called my son such a vile name before, but I was infuriated with the world after hearing how Glen had courted a little four-year-old, doing God knows what to her while he had her in his clutches.
I sat Glen up straight so that Phoenix could place the wire around his neck. When he put it in place, I smacked Glen, waking him up, so that he was aware of what was happening to him.
His eyes fluttered open and I yelled, “Go!”
Phoenix tightened the wire and I watched with delight as it cut into Glen’s flesh. Glen’s eyes widened in shock and he thrashed about, struggling to pull away the wire that would soon cause his demise. He stomped on the floor mat, like he was marching…or trying to run away.
Sweat beads dotted Phoenix’s forehead. Straining, he growled like an animal as he yanked as hard as he could on the wire. Finally, Glen stopped moving his feet, and his hand fell away from his neck.
Blood spurted out, running down the front of his shirt.
Amazed, I watched the light go out of his eyes right before he slumped to the side.
“That’s it. He’s gone, Phoenix. You can stop,” I said in a weary voice. I felt drained of energy as if I’d been the one asphyxiating Glen. “Are you okay, son?”
“I’m fine,” he said breathlessly and then fell against the back of the seat. “Wow! That was incredible. Really incredible,” he said as he smiled blissfully.
I checked his pockets for a cell phone, but didn’t find one. He either had left it at home or it was cut off while he was in jail.
We dumped the body on the railroad tracks. I would have preferred dumping him in the cornfield, an eye-for-an-eye sort of symbolism. But the tracks were more convenient.
“We have to get rid of your phone,” I told Phoenix.
“Why?”
“The cell towers it pinged off could be a problem. And there’s that recording of Glen…” I shook my head. “We can’t risk anyone ever hearing that.”
“What about your phone? Are you getting rid of yours, too?”
“I turned it off hours ago to avoid any conversations with Sasha. I didn’t want her to hear the tone of my voice and worry that something was wrong.”
He handed his phone over and I turned it off, then stomped on it with the heel of my shoe. On the way home, I tossed the broken phone into a Dumpster and Phoenix looked forlorn.
“I’ll get you the latest iPhone tomorrow,” I said, trying to cheer him up.
After we got rid of the phone, I drove toward home. Something caught my eye and I noticed that there were thin streams and tiny dots of blood spatter staining the leather and wood-grain interior of the car. There was even a long streak of blood on the inside roof. I looked around and speckles of blood were everywhere. I hadn’t expected to have to deal with cleaning blood from the seats, floor mats, and dashboard. There wasn’t a lot of it, but I didn’t trust myself to adequately clean away all of the damning evidence.
Two blocks from our house, I turned on my phone and called Ahiga, asking if he could point me in the direction of a chop shop.
“Why are you asking about chop shops? Are you in some kind of trouble, Malik?”
“No, not at all. I swear. Everything is fine, but I have to get rid of my car.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Some other time. I can’t get into it right now.”
He backed off and gave me an address.
I turned my phone off again and drove to chop shop and dropped off the car. Phoenix and I walked the six miles back home, mostly in silence.
“You’re awfully quiet; are you doing all right?” I asked when we entered our neighborhood.
“I feel…I don’t know how to put it.”
“Try.”
“I feel exhilarated. Like I drank five energy drinks. My gym teacher always gets on my case when I have to quit running laps due to my chest burning, and basically, a lack of oxygen. But right now, I could run ten laps and still keep going.” He flashed me a grin and I gave him a one-arm embrace as we walked along.
We had finally bonded. It wasn’t the sort of male bonding that I had expected. I had dreamed of fishing and camping trips, and father-and-son ping-pong tournaments, but it didn’t work out that way.
For the good of our community, I made sure that Phoenix got his fix in a morally acceptable way. Together, we eradicated a scourge, making the world a better place.
• • •
Sasha came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her body and stood in the middle of the floor, looking up at the mounted TV. On the ten o’clock news, there was a report about an unidentified body being found on the railroad tracks.
She shook her head and glanced at me. “What on Earth is happening to our town? There’s so much crime lately. Violent crime. It seems like people are being killed right and left. If we wanted to raise our children around this kind of brutality, we would have set up housekeeping in a big city like Phoenix. Should we think about selling the house and moving somewhere safer?” Sasha asked with her brows furrowed.
“It’s worth looking into. I think we’re going to start seeing ‘For Sale’ signs popping up all over the neighborhood, and we don’t want to be left behind in an undesirable community.”
“But we just put in a pool—”
“Right, and we increased the value of our home.”
“I hope we can sell it. The Westfields’ home is still on the market after all this time.”
“They didn’t have a pool,” I said with laughter.
“By the way, Malik, I didn’t see your car in the driveway. Did you park in the garage?”
“No, I meant to tell you that I had transmission problems. I thought that the transmission needed to be flushed or maybe the fluid needed to be changed, but when I took it to the dealership, I found out that the problem was a lot worse than I realized. I had to leave it, and it’s going to be a major bill. I might just get a new car. When parts start breaking down, it’s one thing after another.”
“Yeah, it’s five years old, and this is only the beginning of its decline. That’s why I lease my car and get a new one every three years.”
“Maybe I’ll look into leasing my next vehicle,” I said, lying with ease and not feeling guilty at all.
I secretly looked Sasha up and down and noticed how sexy she looked wearing a clingy towel.
She walked over to the bed and sat down next to me, her eyes glued to the TV screen. The water beads that had gathered on her shoulders caught my attention and I eased her close.
“I’m thirsty, babe,” I said and then licked the droplets of water from her shoulder.
“Malik,” she whispered, turning toward me. “I missed you. I missed us together.”
“I was going through some shit, but I’m back.”
“To stay?”
“Forever, baby.”
I lay her down, unfastened the towel that was knotted at her chest. One look at her plump breasts and my lips parted and found their way to her dark cherry nipples. My tongue went from one beaded nipple to the other, drawing slow circles around the hardened flesh.
I patted blindly on top of the comforter, and after locating the remote, I clicked off the TV.
I wanted to give Sasha my undivided attention, and I wanted hers.
CHAPTER 36
A couple of months passed and Sasha let go of the idea of selling the house. Our community was pretty much back to normal after the murder of Glen Mathis.
&n
bsp; The residents of Springfield Hills accepted that he had murdered Taylor Flanagan and almost got away with it had it not been for the heroism of an anonymous Good Samaritan.
Weirdly, the police didn’t work too hard trying to find Glen Mathis’s killer, and I took their lack of interest as a green light for us to continue our vigilantism. But it was only when Phoenix really needed to appease his cravings, and at the moment, he was in good spirits and seemed fine.
The feeling of love in our household was palpable. Sasha and I spent quality time with each other by going out for date night once a week. We took turns choosing places to rendezvous, and although I wasn’t always crazy about Sasha’s selections, making her happy was worth enduring a few hours at Butterfly Wonderland, the indoor home of thousands of butterflies.
With Sasha and I on good terms, the kids seemed to thrive emotionally. Zoe wasn’t such a smart-mouth lately, and Phoenix wasn’t nearly as withdrawn and anxious as he’d been before our get-together with Glen Mathis. Phoenix’s friends came over often and hung out by the pool, and he had a new, extremely expensive therapist that I hoped was helping him learn how to cope with his problem.
I no longer believed that he needed to be locked inside a rubber room for life. He knew that I was here for him whenever his cravings returned. In fact, I was so on top of Phoenix’s needs that I began my own research, using the National Sex Offender list to locate child molesters in our area.
There was one that I was tracking on social media, and was able to monitor his movements online. In an attempt to make himself seem like a regular guy, he posted regularly, capturing photos of himself posing next to his SUV, hiking with friends, swimming and mountain climbing. He wanted to be perceived as an earthy outdoorsman, and I had him in my crosshairs for being so deceitful.
The moment I felt that Phoenix needed a fix, Mr. Outdoorsy would be our man.
One Friday evening while Sasha was working late, I decided to try my hand at preparing something a little more wholesome, something that the kids and I both would like. Usually, I ordered Chinese or pizza on Fridays, but I was tired of commercial fast-food. The pizza in Arizona never quite stood up to the slices I used to buy at Philadelphia pizza parlors.
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