by J. R. Rain
He sat back down slowly. As he did so, he adjusted his grip on the phone, wrapping his surprisingly long fingers tightly around the receiver. His movements were all slow and deliberate, as if he had practiced them beforehand. He now placed the phone carefully against his ear and looked at me for a long, long time. I think I was supposed to be afraid. I think I was supposed to shrink away in fear. Perhaps he thought I would swallow nervously and look away. I didn’t swallow, and I didn’t look away. I also had the distinct feeling he was memorizing every square inch of my face.
“You want me to leave my wife alone?” he said evenly into the phone. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Your ex-wife, and yes.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I said so.”
He stared at me blankly, and then laughed. A single burst of sound into the phone. He laughed again, longer this time.
“You’re funny.”
“When I want to be.”
“You’ve got balls coming in here,” he said. “I’ll give you that much.”
“The world’s worst compliment to a woman.”
“What?”
“Never mind. So will you leave her alone?”
He stared at me some more. I heard guards talking to each other out in the hallway. Ira and I were alone in the visiting room, since it was after hours and I had been given special access. A clock ticked behind me. Somewhere I thought I heard someone scream, but that could have just been my imagination. Or my hypersensitive hearing.
Ira cocked his head a little, and then said, “It’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Never mind that. The bitch shouldn’t have left me. I told her to never leave me.”
“Gee, you’re such a sweetheart, Ira. How could anyone ever leave you?”
He barely heard me. Or heard what he wanted to hear. “Exactly. I gave her everything. The ungrateful bitch never had to work a day in her life.”
“People leave each other every day, Ira. It happens.”
“Not to me it don’t.”
Ira had gotten himself worked up. I knew this because the skin along his slightly misshapen forehead had flushed a little, and he was holding the phone so tight that his knuckles looked like some weird prehistoric spine running along the back of the receiver.
Breathing harder, he said, “I will do everything within my power to make sure the bitch dies. No one leaves me. Ever.”
I realized this was going nowhere fast. I honestly hadn’t expected anything different, but it had been worth a shot.
“I beg to differ,” I said, gathering my stuff together.
“You beg to differ what?”
“Monica very much left you, just as I’m doing now.”
“I’m going to remember you, cunt.”
“Lucky me.”
I was about to hang up when he added, perhaps fatally, “And not just you, Samantha Moon, private investigator and bodyguard. Everyone you know and love. You have kids?”
I heard the sound of boots moving along the hallway outside. Apparently, someone listening to us had heard enough. I took in some air and closed my eyes and did all I could to control myself.
But dumbass wasn’t done. He went on, saying, “I see I hit a nerve. So Samantha Moon is a mom.”
“Did you just threaten my kids?”
“You catch on quick.”
I opened my eyes and saw red. In fact, I couldn’t really see at all. All I could see was a blurred image of the man behind the bulletproof glass. And I heard pounding. Loud pounding. In my skull.
The sun, I knew, had set thirty or forty minutes ago. I was at full strength. I sat forward in my chair and leaned close to the thick Plexiglass that separated us. I motioned with my index finger for Ira Lane to come closer, too. He grinned, cocky and confident, and as he leaned forward, something very dark and very twisted danced disturbingly just behind his dead eyes.
His face was inches from mine when he said, “Is there something you want to tell me, you stupid bitch? I bet you’re wishing right about now you never fucked with—”
I punched the bulletproof glass as hard as I could. My hand burst through in a shower of glass and polycarbonate and whatever the hell else these things are made out of.
Bulletproof but not vampire-proof.
Ira screamed and would have fallen backward if I hadn’t grabbed him by the collar through the fist-sized hole in the thick glass. In one motion, I yanked the motherfucker out of his chair and over the counter and slammed into the clear glass barrier. His nose broke instantly, spraying blood over the glass, and two or three of his front upper teeth had broken back into his mouth. His lips were split clean through.
He flailed at my hand, struggling to free himself, but I wasn’t done with him.
Not by a long shot.
Still holding him by the collar, as his warm blood spilled over the back of my hand, I proceeded to slam his face again and again into the glass, breaking more teeth, breaking his face, his skull, his cheekbones, anything and everything, and I kept smashing him into the now blood-smeared glass until I was finally tackled from behind.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I nearly killed a man tonight.
Tell me about it.
And so I wrote it up for Fang, telling him everything from my first impressions of Ira Lang, to the bastard being hauled off on a stretcher. It took three huge blocks of text to get the whole story written, and when I had posted the final segment, Fang answered nearly instantly. How he could read so fast, I had no clue.
Were there any cameras in the visiting room? he asked.
No.
So there is no visual record of what you did?
Not that I’m aware of.
Don’t most prisons have surveillance cameras in the visiting rooms?
Not all of them. It’s up to the discretion of the warden.
So no one saw your little, ah, outburst?
No.
When you broke the bullet-resistant glass, did you leave behind any of your own blood?
That was a good question. I had cut my arm while reaching through the shattered glass. However, I hadn’t bled at all, as far as I was aware. I explained that to Fang.
So you don’t bleed?
Maybe, I wrote. But apparently not from cuts along my forearm.
Did the medical staff look at you?
They tried to, but I had wrapped my sweater around my arm, and since there wasn’t any blood, they assumed, perhaps, I wasn’t in need of any medical attention.
Was he in need of dire medical attention?
According to the warden, with whom I had had a long meeting after the incident, the prison doctors had determined that I had broken Ira’s jaw, nose, right orbital ridge, his sinus cavity, and broken out seven teeth. He was going to need countless stitches in his mouth and hours of surgery. I related all this to Fang.
There was a long pause. I looked over at my hotel bed where Monica lay sleeping contentedly on her side. It had, of course, been a long and emotional night for her. She had visited her abusive and murderous ex-husband’s prison. She had waited for me anxiously while the warden pieced together what had happened. She had been given snippets of news from the prison staff, and, she told me later, could hardly believe what she was hearing—that I had put the son-of-bitch in the hospital...even more than that, I had nearly killed him. Later that night, she sat staring at me during the entire ride home from the prison. At one point she reached out and held my hand tightly. She didn’t ask me how I punched through the glass. Or how I had the strength to grab a grown man and bash his face repeatedly against the glass. She simply held my hand and stared at me, and I held hers for as long as I could before I became self-conscious of my cold flesh and gently released my grip. I saw that she was crying, but she didn’t make a federal case of it. What those tears were for, I didn’t know, but I suspected this had been a hell of an emotional night for her. I didn’t tell her the bastard had th
reatened my kids. She had enough to deal with.
So what did the warden say? asked Fang.
He asked me why I didn’t kill the bastard?
Was he joking?
I don’t think so.
And what did you say?
I told him he should have given me another few seconds.
Jesus. What else did he ask?
He asked me how did I punch through bulletproof glass?
And what did you say?
That I was a vampire, and that if he asked me any more questions, I was going to suck his blooood. (Insert cheesy Bela Lugosi impression.)
Not funny, Moon Dance. You have put yourself at grave risk. There’s going to be legal implications to this. He can press charges. There’s going to be an investigation.
Maybe, I wrote.
What do you mean, maybe?
The warden heard Ira Lang threaten me.
Still, it’s only a threat.
A threat from a known murderer. A threat from a man who has also been known to do anything he could to carry out such threats.
So his threat is much more than a threat.
Yes, I wrote.
So if Ira Lang did press charges, a DA may likely decide not to prosecute.
Right.
So what did you really say when he asked how you punched through the glass?
I reminded him of all those stories of mother’s lifting cars off their injured children and such.
He bought that?
Probably not. He was in a state of shock himself. Everyone was.
So is that the end of the case? asked Fang.
No. Ira Lang made it perfectly clear that he wouldn’t rest until his ex-wife was dead.
I could almost see Fang nodding, as he wrote: Not to mention he could still try to carry out that threat on you and your kids.
Exactly, I wrote.
So what’s the plan? asked Fang.
If he won’t rest until he’s carried out violent crimes against his wife, or even me and my kids, then I think there’s only one answer.
Don’t tell me.
I went on anyway: Perhaps I should hasten his rest.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The backyard to my old house abuts a Pep Boys.
When I say old house, I mean my house of just over a month ago, where I had lived with my kids and husband. A house, by some weird turn of events, I had been kicked out of, even though my husband had been the one caught cheating.
Since our house sits in a cul-de-sac, we have an exceptionally large and weirdly-shaped backyard. In fact, our backyard is bigger than most little league baseball fields, which was always fun for the kids and great for parties.
On the other side of our backyard fence was the parking lot to Pep Boys, with its massive, glowing sign of Manny, Moe, and Jack in all of their homoerotic glory. I hated that sign, and thank God they shut the damn thing off at closing time.
It was well after closing time and the lights were off. Thank God. Manny, Moe, and Jack were sleeping. Probably spooning. My ex-partner Chad was happily watching over a sleeping Monica—at least, I hoped he let her sleep. No doubt he was watching her in more ways than one. Let’s just hope he didn’t creep her out too much. Chad was a great guy, even if a little love-starved.
We’re all a little love-starved, I thought.
I was sitting on our backyard fence, my feet dangling down, looking out across the vast sweep of our backyard, toward where I knew my children were sleeping.
Or where they should have been sleeping. A flickering glow in Tammy’s room meant that she was up well past her bedtime since this was a school night. Her laughter occasionally pierced the air. At least, pierced it to my ears. Actually, I could tell she was trying to laugh quietly, perhaps laughing into a pillow, but occasional bursts of laughter erupted from her.
Most remarkable, and surreal, was that my daughter was laughing at Jay Leno. I could hear his nasally laugh and wildly ranging voice—which went from high to low in the span of a few words—even from here.
Jay Leno? Seriously?
And since when did my ten-year-old daughter watch Jay Leno? And since when was Jay Leno ever laugh-out-loud funny? Perhaps a mild chuckle here and there, sure. But ha-ha funny?
At the far end of the house I could hear Danny’s light snoring. His snoring never bothered me, since I was a rather deep sleeper. Supernaturally deep, some might say. Anyway, mixed with his snoring was something else. Another sound. Not quite snoring. No, a sort of wheezing sound, as if someone was having trouble breathing through one nostril. Along with the wheezing was an occasional murmur. A female murmur.
My heart sank. Jesus, his new girlfriend was sleeping with him, in our bed. The fucker. Probably sleeping naked together, their limbs intertwined, touching each other intimately, lovingly. All night long.
Just a month earlier I had been sleeping in that same bed, although Danny had long ago stopped sleeping naked and had made it a point not to touch me.
The fucker.
I stared at my old bedroom window at the end of the house for a long, long time, and then I forced myself to find another sound, and soon I found it. The sound of light snoring. A boy’s snore. Little Anthony was sleeping contentedly, and I found myself smiling through the tears on my face.
A small wind made its way through the Pep Boys parking lot, bringing with it the smell of old car oil, new car oil, and every other kind of oil. Living here, you get used to the smell of car oil.
I folded my hands in my lap and lowered my head and listened to the wind and my son’s snoring and my daughter’s innocent laughter, and I sat like that until her laughter turned into the heavy breathing of deep sleep.
I pulled out my cell phone and sent a text message: I’m sad.
The reply from Kingsley Fulcrum came a minute later: Then come over.
Okay, I wrote, and did exactly that.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I drove east on Bastanchury, winding my way through streets lined with big homes and big front yards, the best north Orange County has to offer.
It was past midnight, and the sky was clear. The six stars that somehow made their way through southern California’s smog shined weakly and pathetically. The brightest one might have been Mars, or at least that’s what a date once told me in college.
Probably just trying to impress me to get into my pants.
Speaking of impressing me, Kingsley Fulcrum was an honest-to-God werewolf. Or, at least, that’s what he tells me.
Maybe he just wants to get into my pants, as well.
Granted, I’ve seen the evidence of his lycanthropy in the form of excessive hair the night after one of his transformations, and so I tend to believe the big oaf. But Kingsley is a good wolfie. Apparently, with each full moon, he preferred to transform in what he calls a panic room in the basement of his house.
Probably a good thing for the residents of posh Orange County. After all, can’t have a big, bad werewolf picking off the surgically-enhanced Desperate Housewives of Orange County one at a time like so many slow-moving, top-heavy gazelle. Would probably hurt the ratings.
Or drastically help them; at least, until the show ran out of stars.
Stars? I thought.
Now don’t be catty.
Bastanchury was always a pleasant drive, made more pleasant these days because it led to a big, beefy werewolf. I hung a left onto a long, curving, crushed seashell drive, past shrubbery that really needed to be trimmed back; that is, unless Kingsley was purposely going for the creepy feeling they invoked. Or maybe he just didn’t want to make his home too inviting. I voted for both.
Soon I pulled up to a rambling estate home that sat on the far edge of north Orange County. The house was a massive Colonial revival, with flanker structures on either end, and more rooms than Kingsley knew what to do with.
I stopped in the driveway near the portico, in a pool of yellow porchlight. My minivan seemed inadequate and out-of-place parked before such an edifice.
Hell, I seemed inadequate and out-of-place.
The doorbell gonged loud enough to vibrate the cement porch beneath my feet, and was answered a moment later by a very unusual-looking man. His name was Franklin and he was Kingsley’s butler. Yes, butler. Yeah, I know, I thought those went the way of Gone with the Wind, too, but apparently the super affluent still had them.
Must be nice.
But in the case of Franklin, maybe not so much. There was something very off about the man. For one thing, his left ear was vastly bigger than the right. And it wasn’t that it was bigger, it seemed to not, well, belong on his body at all. As if, and this is clearly a crazy thought, it had actually belonged on another person’s body altogether. Perhaps strangest of all was the nasty scar that ran from under his neck all the way to the back of his head. The scar, I was sure, wrapped completely around his neck.
My instincts were telling me something very, very strange was going on here, so strange that I didn’t want to believe them.
He was tall and broad shouldered, and there seemed to be great strength contained within his very formal butler attire. He looked down at me from a hawkish nose, nodded once, and asked me to follow him to the conservatory. I spared him another “Clue” game joke. This time. Next time, he may not be so lucky. Also, he spoke in what I assumed was an English accent, although it could have been Australian. I could never get the two straight. But my money was on English.
I followed his oddly loping gate to the conservatory. No, I wasn’t greeted by Mrs. Plum wielding a candlestick (whatever the hell that is). Instead, I was greeted by a great beast of a man who sprung from his oversized chair with a glass of white wine in hand. How he didn’t spill his wine, I didn’t know. As he bounded over, exuberant as a puppy, I was half expecting him to jump up on me and lick my face clean. Good thing he didn’t, since he would have crushed me. Instead, he set the wine down on an elegant couch table and gave me a crushing bear hug. I think a bone or two popped along my spine. He then led me over to the sofa where a glass of wine was already waiting for me. Along the way, he snatched his own glass.