Hot Southern Nights

by Gen Griffin

  “You're a really shitty cop,” the man said. He pointed back towards his wrecked car. “I kept thinking you'd get back out of your truck and come help me, but you don't even give enough of a shit to do that. You're happy as a clam sitting in your nice warm truck while I freeze my ass off out here.”

  “Dude, its 88 degrees.” Addison poked the temperature gauge on his own dashboard. “You're not going to freeze. Besides, the tow truck is on its way.”

  “You really are just a fucking douchebag, aren't you?” The man crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Addison from underneath the hood of his jacket. “I'd almost decided to walk away. I stayed up all night last night waiting for Trish to come home. I thought I could talk some sense into her if I could just get her to listen to me. I waited for her in her bedroom. I slept in her bed. She never came home. She stayed out all fucking night and I almost gave up. I got back in my car and was going to drive home to figure out a new plan when my car hydroplaned and I ran off the road.”

  “Trish?” Addison narrowed his eyes at the motorist. He suddenly had a very, very bad feeling that he'd missed something important about this guy. “You're Curtis?”

  “Ha ha. It really took you this long to recognize me, Officer Fuck Buddy?” Curtis shook off the hood to reveal his fat, jowly face and piggish blue eyes.

  “I thought I told you to get the hell out of my town,” Addison said as warily eyed Trish's clearly enraged ex-husband.

  “Not without my wife,” Curtis replied. He reached one hand into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a very large handgun. “This nightmare has gone on long enough. Trish is coming home, whether she wants to or not. I'll kill blow her brains out before I'll let her marry another man.”

  Addison stared at the gun blankly. He was still trying to wrap his mind around what the hell was going on when the fat man pulled the trigger and shot Addison in the chest. Blood blossomed to the front of his shirt as he crumpled to the wet, muddy ground.

  Chapter 57

  Someone was standing next to Grover's hospital bed when Trish walked into the darkened room. All of the lights had been turned off and the only illumination in the room was coming through the dingy second floor window.

  “David?” Trish asked as she shut the door behind her. Her eyes were struggling to adjust to the lack of light but she couldn't seem to find the bank of light switches that she knew were on the wall somewhere to her left.

  “Who the fuck is David?” Curtis asked as he turned to face her.

  “Curtis?” Trish involuntarily took a step backwards. She grabbed for the handle of the door she'd just closed. Curtis snatched her arm and yanked her back towards the center of the room before she could flee back into the safety of the well lit hospital corridor.

  His grip bit into her skin as she instinctively struggled to pull away from him. “Stop fighting me, Trish. You're only making this worse for yourself.”

  “What are you doing in my grandfather's hospital room?” Trish cast a glance towards the bed Grover was laying in. The old man was lying completely still in between his sheets. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open but his building-rattling snore was strangely absent. Trish narrowed her eyes at him, a twinge of fear shooting down her spine. Something wasn't right.

  “Technically he's my grandfather too,” Curtis informed her. “You are my wife.”

  “I'm your ex-wife,” Trish reminded him. “I'm divorcing you. I don't want you here. You should go now. My grandpa is sick. He doesn't need your company. He needs to be left to rest.”

  “Your grandpa is already getting all the rest he'll ever need,” Curtis said. His grip was still firm on her arm. “I'm sorry, Trish, but he ruined our marriage. You never would have left me if it weren't for your poor, dying grandfather. He had to pay for what he had done.”

  Trish looked back at Grover's too still, too silent form. “Grandpa?”

  Curtis shook his head at her.

  “Grandpa?” She called to him in a louder tone of voice.

  Grover never so much as twitched.

  “Grover!” Trish yelled his name and Curtis slapped her.

  Trish whimpered and fell to her knees on the cold tile floor. Her face was stinging where Curtis's open palm had impacted with her cheekbone.

  “Your grandpa is gone,” Curtis told her. “I didn't come here to kill him, but he gave me no choice. He tried to have the nursing staff throw me out of the hospital room when he realized who I was. Thank god they all thought he was crazy and believed my story about being his least favorite grandson here to make amends.”

  “You killed my grandpa?” Trish felt tears burning in her eyes. The floor was painfully cold under her bare knees.

  “I did. He said something interesting before he died though. He thought I was after your jewelry. I told him you didn't have anything worth taking, but now I see I might have been hasty when I made that judgment. That's a big ring you have on, Trisha. Let me see it.” Curtis reached down towards her but she scooted away from him.

  “Go to hell.” Trish hid her left hand and its huge diamond behind her thighs. “You murdered my grandfather.”

  “I killed him for you. I know you didn't like living down here and taking care of him. Now you won't have to worry about him anymore,” Curtis said. “You can come home.”

  “I don't want to come home,” Trish whispered. “I hate being your wife. I don't want to be married to you anymore.”

  “You don't get a choice,” Curtis replied coldly. His clothes were still visibly wet from the rain outside. “Now get up. We're going to leave before the hospital staff comes in here and finds your grandpa's body.”

  “You can't just kill a man, Curtis. Have you lost your mind?” Trish tried to stand up but found her knees wouldn't support her. She couldn't stop crying but she needed to think. If Curtis had killed her grandfather then he had clearly gone way off the deep end.

  She looked over at her motionless grandfather again and noticed the wires to all the machines that were supposed to be monitoring his heart and vital signs had been disconnected. They were dangling lifelessly from the machines.

  “You weren't supposed to leave me, Trish. You ruined everything when you left me.” Curtis closed the distance between them and snatched her to her her feet.

  “You didn't even love me enough to keep your dick in your pants,” Trish spat the words at him without really thinking. “Why wouldn't I leave you?”

  “Because I need you. Or more specifically, I need your law license.” Curtis began pulling Trish towards the door of the hospital room.

  “What?” She was genuinely confused now.

  “I might have let you go if you would have agreed never to practice law,” Curtis told her. “But all your talk about opening your own practice was my breaking point. You can't open your own practice. I'd be exposed for the fraud I am.”

  “What the hell are you even talking about?” Trish looked up into Curtis's narrow eyes and saw a panic there that she'd never expected to see.

  “I failed the bar,” Curtis said.

  “You what?”

  “I failed the state bar exam,” Curtis repeated. “The law firm was going to fire me. I had to do something.”

  “You're using my law license?” Trish gaped at him.

  “We have the same initials.” Curtis's grip was like iron around her arm as they approached the door that would lead them out of Grover's hospital room and into the main corridor. “Peter Curtis Heinstein and Patricia Candice Heinstien. Remember how perfectly our names monogrammed after we got married?”

  “You're using my law license.” This time it wasn't a question. It was acceptance of a seemingly impossible truth.

  “Why do you think I wouldn't let you work as a lawyer?” Curtis replied.

  “Curtis-.” Trish stopped because she really didn't know what to say to him.

  “We had it all, Trish. A great apartment. A great car. I was in line for a hundred thousand dollar promotion and then you dec
ided you were going to walk away, open your own law practice and leave me to wither and die.”

  “Why didn't you tell me you failed the bar?” Trish demanded. “We had a party to celebrate when you passed the bar.”

  “I lied when I said I'd passed it,” he replied. “I was afraid you wouldn't marry me if you knew I was only qualified to spend the rest of my life as an over-educated paralegal.”

  “Curtis, this is insane. You killed my grandfather over a law license?”

  “I killed your grandfather because he would have tried to stop me from killing you,” Curtis informed her. “Believe me when I say this wasn't my first choice in locations. I wanted you die an accidental death. It would have been best for everyone if you'd drowned back in April, Trish. I don't understand why you didn't just drown.”

  He pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket and pointed the barrel of it at Trish.

  “You can't shoot me in a hospital,” Trish whispered. “You'd never get away with committing such a stupid crime.”

  “I'm not going to shoot you in the hospital. I'm going to shoot you outside the hospital and throw your body into the depths of this godforsaken swamp you've been living in.” Curtis actually grinned at Trish. “You're going to disappear and no one is ever going to question the validity of P. C. Heinstein's license to practice law.”

  “I am not walking out of this hospital with you,” Trish said. The memories of David's mother's corpse were far too fresh in her own mind for her to doubt that Curtis would kill her the minute he had the chance.

  Curtis reared back to slap her with the butt of the gun and she reacted by flinging herself backwards. She felt the bone in her arm snap as she hit the door but all she could think about was grabbing hold of the door handle. Trish yanked the door open and stumbled into the hallway, running screaming towards the nurses desk even as the pain from her arm made the entire world go white with agony.

  Chapter 58

  “Have they found him yet?” Trish buried her face in David's chest as the doctor who had x-rayed her broken right arm prepared to put her in a cast.

  “No,” David admitted reluctantly. He tightened his grip on her waist and pressed his chin against the top of her head. “I'm so sorry, baby.”

  Trish hadn't stopped shaking since she'd collapsed next to the nurses' station, screaming at them to call 911 because her ex-husband had just murdered her grandfather. Unfortunately, Curtis had been gone by the time the nurses made it to Grover's hospital room. Security footage showed that he had fled down the back stairs of the hospital and disappeared into the pouring rain outside.

  “It's not your fault I married a monster.” She hadn't been able to stop crying, but her tears had slowed as the minutes continued to tick by on the big clock that was hanging on the wall of the hospital room.

  “No one could have seen this coming.” Nanette stroked her hand through Trish's hair. “I never liked Curtis but I never thought he was dangerous.”

  “The cops will find him,” David promised as a very pale Cal walked back into the hospital room. “They're already looking for his Lexus. It's a flashy car. It will turn up. Probably sooner rather than later.”

  “Actually, it's already turned up.” Cal met David's eyes across the room. David was startled to see real fear in his best friend's expression. “One of the guys who works for Baker County Wrecker called it in. He was responding to a call Addison had put in for a car that had run off the road and needed to be towed.”

  “He won't get far on foot.”

  “He's not on foot,” Cal said. He took a deep, shuddering breath. He looked like he was struggling to get his words out of his mouth. “He shot Addy in the chest.”

  “What?” Shock vibrated through David's entire body. Surely he hadn't heard Cal right. “He shot Addy?”

  “Marty's guy found him bleeding out on the ground next to the Lexus. Curtis is gone, David. He's gone and he took Addison's truck and gun with him.”

  WANT MORE?

  Pretty Is As Pretty Does

  Possum Creek Book 4

  “You can't just take off after a homicidal maniac.” Cal's exasperation was clear in his tone.

  “Worked out alright last time.” David pulled open the glove box of Cal's truck. “Where's your gun?”

  “I don't carry it.” Cal leaned against the passenger's side door-frame of his own truck.

  “What do you mean, you don't carry it?” David continued to toss all the paperwork out of the storage console. The owners manual fell open on the floorboards, spilling out the neatly folded registration. Cal watched as his insurance card landed in a heap of crumpled brown napkins. Next came Gracie's spare tampons, a handful of broken pens, a grubby red disposable lighter and a fistful of loose sockets.

  “I mean that having a loaded weapon on a college campus is against the law, David.” Cal sighed and shook his head at his best friend. “I quit carrying it when I enrolled in classes at Callahan Community.”

  David slammed the glove box shut abruptly. “Well, that's fucking useless.”

  “Sorry.” Cal rolled his eyes. “Didn't know it was my job to keep weapons available at all times just in case you got a wild hair up your ass to go kill someone.”

  “A wild hair up my ass?” David's dark green eyes narrowed as his head snapped up. “The only woman I've ever loved is hurt. Grover is dead. Addison may damn well be dead. I don't know because I don't have the balls to go back inside and sit in that fucking waiting room until we find out. I can't do it. I just can't.”

  “David-.”

  “No. Shut up. I don't want to hear you tell me how going back in there is the right thing to do.” David jerked his thumb back towards the emergency room doors. “I don't want to be in the room when that doctor walks back in and tells us that Addy didn't make it. I can't fucking cope with that today.”

  “You don't know he's going to die,” Cal nearly choked on the words.

  “Addison carries a .45 and the paramedics think he got shot in the chest with his own gun. If that's true then the odds aren't going to be real high in his favor.” David closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. His chest was so tight that he felt like he was the one who had taken the bullet.

  “So what? You're leaving?” Cal jammed his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans. “Addy could be dying and you're running off?”

  “No.” David slammed his fist as hard as he could into the dashboard of Cal's truck. The plastic crumpled under the impact. “I'm going to go hunt down and kill the motherfucking bastard who did this.”

  “We don't know where Curtis is,” Cal pointed out.

  “He's got Addison's truck. It stands out.”

  “Frank's already put an APB out on the truck,” Cal said. “Come on. Let's just go back inside. Trish and Gracie are still in the waiting room. The girls are going to expect me to try and talk some sense into you.”

  “Tell Trish-.” David reached for the ignition of the truck and turned the key. The big engine roared to life.“Tell Trish I'm sorry.”

  “Goddammit David, you can't just-.”

  “I have to,” David said. “I didn't take Curtis seriously. Now Trish's grandfather is dead and Addison has a bullet in his chest. I knew Curtis kept calling her. I knew he'd made threats. I told her not to worry about him. I promised her that I would protect her and take care of her. I've failed. I'm a complete fucking failure and there is only one way to make this right.”

  “Nothing that has happened today has been your fault.” Cal slammed his hands against the door-frame. “You can't make this right. Grover is dead. Riding off into a stormy night with a gun and a death wish won't bring anyone back from the dead. Come back inside.”

  “I can't.” David tightened his grip on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “I'm sorry, Cal. I can't do it. I can't sit in that sterile, cold, miserable waiting room for one more minute. I can't sit on my ass doing nothing for hours while the girls bawl their eyes out. I can't wait around in this hospital and m
ake small talk about how bad the weather is with every single person who is going to turn up when they find out that Addy's been shot. I can't do it. Its not in me. Tell Momma and the girls and everyone else that I'm fucking sorry.”

  “You can't just go kill Trish's ex-husband.”

  “Yes, I can.” David moved his hand onto the gearshift and popped the truck into reverse. “Its the only goddamn thing I can do. Let go of the door, Cal.”

  “Fuck.” Cal started to sit down in the passenger's seat. “If you're going after this nutcase, I'm going with you.”

  “No,” David said. “Get out.”

  “You can't order me out of my own truck. Technically, you're stealing my truck.” Cal grabbed the door handle in his hand but he hesitated before he shut the door.

  “Get out of the truck,” David said.

  “Why?”

  David sighed. “Because one of us needs to be inside with the girls.”

  “We both need to be inside with the girls. Your homicidal maniac might not be gone. What if he comes back?”

  “He's not coming back.”

  “What if he does?”

  “Kill him, Calvin.” David rolled his shoulders and closed his eyes. “Kill the bastard.”

  “Come back inside. Let the cops do their job and find Curtis. He probably hauled ass out of Callahan County the minute after he shot Addy. He ran, David. You won't find him.” Cal still hadn't shut the door on the truck.

  “What cops?” David asked. “Ian's an idiot. Kerry's incompetent and Frank Chasson is old, fat and sitting in the same damned waiting room that you and I just walked out of. Addy's the only decent cop we've got.”

  “The State police.”

  “State police aren't going to come all the way down to Possum Creek.”

  “Curtis probably left Possum Creek.”

  “But what if he didn't?” David countered.