by A. J. Downey
We left the farm on our bikes and went to a place that I didn’t expect Fen to even know existed, a public library. The place was small and rough looking, and inside the terminals were scuffed and dated, but that wasn’t what we had come for. The woman working the desk had the same look as he did, blond hair, shaved on the sides, and she had a massive double-headed eagle tattoo piece across her chest. They spoke, and in a few minutes, she had more information on Parole Officer Massimiliano "Max" Bianchi than I could have found in a month. She also said strings of words I couldn’t follow, like tor, and dark web, doxing, and blockchain data.
It didn’t matter how, but I had the fucker’s home address, thanks to Kim, and the rest came later via Cipher. We had his phone number, home and cell, and even shit like his blood type and uniform measurements.
“We case the joint, but we do it quiet like. Looks like it is a nicer neighborhood, so we can’t wear colors or ride the bikes. We’ll stick out,” Fen said as we walked back to the bikes.
“So, what, we use the truck?” I asked.
“Nah, even that sticks out,” he said.
“We call an Uber to drive us through the neighborhood?”
“I was thinking about walking, but that might work too.” He laughed.
“Split the diff, take an Uber to the neighborhood, then walk the alley, check the place out like that?”
“Good plan, and we do it at dark,” he said.
“Because we won’t be noticed?”
“Because people aren’t as on guard, in their homes, when the sun goes down,” Fen said. “They think they are safe.” The way he smiled when he said it made my blood cold.
A very nervous man showed up and drove us from a popular night spot back to a house a few blocks from Bianchi’s house. The kid was really glad to have us out of his Maxima, but Fen gave him a good tip and a smile as he all but did a burnout leaving. Even without our jackets, the two of us were a pair of scary looking motherfuckers.
We walked a short distance from the house we had been dropped off at. The alley afforded darkness and a lack of attention, plus this place was absolutely the sort of place that hated us, and everything about it. Cookie cutter houses sat on postage stamp lawns, but each jagoff had an oversized riding mower, SUVs in driveways, and everything reeked of fake wealth.
These assholes were over their heads in bank loans and mortgages.
Fen followed a few turns and then stopped at a backyard. “This is the one.”
“Follow your nose?” I asked.
“GPS, man, get in the twenty-first century.” He tapped his phone.
“Well fuck me, then,” I said, and pulled myself up to look over the fence. Bianchi had a clean-cut backyard, but it was mostly empty. No toys, no bikes, no shit like that. That was good, no sign of kids. “Does this asshole have a wife or anything?”
“You don’t know?” Fen asked.
“No, man, I don’t.”
“You saw it all as good as I did. He isn’t married. Divorced, no kids, ex lives down in Fresno,” he growled. “So no, we don’t have to worry about women or children being here.”
“Or we do.” I gestured toward the sliding glass doors on the back of the house. I finally got my first look at Bianchi himself. He was what I expected, an average looking white guy, on the thin side, but in a decade or so he would hit the middle age spread and turn into one of those potbellied cops who nursed a coffee cup and a donut everywhere they went, shotgunning whiskey and blood pressure pills. Right now, he was probably still running miles in the morning, and spending time at the shooting range.
He wasn’t alone.
There was a woman with him, a bottle blond, fake tits, a little on the heavy side.
“Looks like he has company,” I said. “We aren’t ready, anyway.”
“Who said we aren’t ready?” Fen asked. He pulled a long-bladed knife from the top of his boot. The light caught on the blade, and there were Celtic knots etched in the steel.
“That’s all you brought?” I asked.
“Gun crime does real time,” Fen said. “Besides, when it comes to something like this, I would want to use just my hands.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Guns are for war, knives are for lovers, and bare hands are for your worst enemies.” I could almost feel the gleam in his eye. I could certainly hear it in his voice. “As long as no one comes down the alley, we wait.”
“For what?” I asked.
“When the time is right, you’ll know.”
“And if I don’t?”
“If you keep asking fucking questions, I’ll send you to go get some frozen yogurt and some hair ties, since you’re being a little girl about this,” he said. It would have been less intimidating if he had raised his voice or spoken harshly, but this was just matter of fact. Fenris was hunting, and I had to stop asking so many questions if I was going to go through with this.
It would be a lot easier to just let him handle it, just let the berserker loose, and then head back to the farm, and Raven.
Jesus, being back at the farm and railing Raven again would be better than this. But I couldn’t. How could I make the promise to her to get rid of this shitstain on her soul, and then chicken out at the last minute, just let Fen go in? If things went sideways, there would be no mercy for Fenris from the police. They would put him away for a long time, and that’s only if he survived to be arrested.
The boys in blue were good about making sure attempted cop killers committed suicide, overdosed, or were just suddenly armed and they were justified in filling a man with lead. If there were two of us, then it would work. Fen knew how to do this, he had killed. I had to do this for Raven, for myself, and it would go better if he was watching my back.
“I only have one question,” I asked.
“Sure,” Fen said.
“What if he has a gun?”
“Of course, he has a gun, but he’s a fucking coward, ain’t he?”
“I would say yes just because of the badge,” I replied.
“He rapes a woman, then has her beaten. He’s a coward because nine times out of ten, a single man can take on a woman in a fight. Most women can’t fight for shit. Most men can’t either, but they are at least the same size as the coward with a gun. A cocksucker who needs a bunch of his brothers to boot stomp a woman, he’s a fucking coward. He will be scared. If he goes for the gun, his aim will be shit. He probably won’t go for the gun. I’m betting bullets to goat shit that this cop is more likely to offer to suck your dick than to pull iron on you.”
I grunted a response. I had said one question, so it would be smart to keep it to just one question.
The cop and the blonde drank some wine. They talked.
They made out.
He sat on the couch, and she vanished. I realized that their conversation had turned to her sucking him off. Then they fucked.
Then she was near the back door, fake tits out. He bent her over the couch and went back to pounding her.
“Oh, this is putting me in a mood,” Fen says. “Aspen might have a right nice evening when this is over.” I didn’t respond other than giving him a short laugh. This felt weird. If we had a rifle or something, it would be done and over.
Instead, we kept a vigil over the fence, asses planted on a dumpster, watching this asshole give it to this blonde. They went at it for a while, and at one point, I barked a laugh.
“What?” Fen asked.
“She checked her watch,” I said.
“Either she’s bored, or she’s billing hours.” Fen laughed. “Plastic tits and cheap hair, I’m betting the second.” There were a few words between them, and then she was on her knees and he was giving it his best 90s porn guy pose. Thirty seconds after he was done, she was up and out of the room, leaving him leaning against the back window, obviously winded and sweating.
“Definitely the second,” I said.
“We won’t do anything until she leaves,” Fen said. I nodded in agreement. No reason for
whoever she was to get drawn up in Max’s fate.
The next couple of hours seemed to never fucking end. She cleaned herself up. They talked. There was coffee. They talked more.
They might have had an argument.
They made up and talked some more.
She eventually left.
Max fucked around in his house for a bit longer, took a shower.
Dicked around, watched some television.
Then, thank fuck, finally turned out his lights and went to bed.
“How do you have the patience for this?” I asked.
“I slept.” Fen shrugged. “After he finished his business, I closed my eyes. I knew nothing interesting was going to happen.”
“You could have told me,” I said.
“Figure it out, Mace,” he said. “We’ll move when the moon is directly above that tree.” He pointed at the tallest tree in the neighborhood.
I leaned back against the dumpster and thought about getting some sleep myself. I wasn’t sure how to sleep, my nerves were all jangled up, and I didn’t know how this was going to go down. We had one knife, no guns. This guy was a cop, and I would so rather be with Raven right now. Next thing I realized, Fenris was shaking me awake.
“C’mon, Cinderella, it’s go time.” When he stood, he seemed like some sort of ancient Norse god, or a wolf that had come to levy judgment. “You still remember how to pop a sliding glass door?”
“Of course, I do.” I looked toward the house. The work I had done, construction and shit, of course I knew about doors and windows. I never imagined that remodeling would be a useful skill in dealing with a bad cop.
We hopped the fence and stole across the backyard in a low run. Max didn’t have any sort of personal security, no cameras, no flood lights. Fenris looked at the door when we eased up next to it. I could see the look in his eyes, smash the glass and go right through. There were two things though, some of these doors weren’t glass, they were energy saving sandwiches of composite materials, and more often than not…
I slid the door open.
They were left unlocked.
I gestured for quiet, and he nodded. I saw a flash of teeth, and then the flash of the crazy Norse knife he was carrying.
“What’s the plan, Jesus,” I hissed.
“You’re going to jump him, and beat the shit out him,” Fen said. “Then, we’re going to kill him, slow like.”
“Just beat his ass?”
“Yes, beat his ass, then we are going to kill him, because this is what you wanted to do.”
I nodded and clenched my fists. Fen had my back; he had that knife. Fuck, Fen didn’t need my help to do this, he was fucking babysitting me.
It took three doors to find the bedroom.
I flicked on the light, and Bianchi sat up, groggy and confused. He looked less confused when I put a fist in the middle of his mouth. Then he looked at the ceiling and fell out of the bed. I shook my hand for a second, that hurt. Teeth are hard.
I went over the bed and landed on top of him, throwing a few more punches so he knew what was going on. There was a bit of shouting, some blood, and something crunched. I hoped like shit it was his nose, and not something attached to me, like any of my fingers.
“Get him!” Fen shouted.
I pounded his face a few more times. I was panting, and Max wasn’t doing anything but laying on the ground, bleeding.
“Atta boy!” Fen said, coming around the bed himself. He jerked the top sheet of the bed, wrapped it around Max’s arm and head, and used it to drag him out of the bedroom. Max screamed and kicked, knocking a lamp over and then he grabbed at the doorframe. Fen gave him an encouraging kick in the ribs to get him to let go.
Fenris dragged him into his own living room and then hauled him up into one of his own dining room chairs.
“Who, who the fuck are you guys?” Bianchi spat out a mouthful of blood. “What do you want?”
“Do you remember a woman named Raven?” I asked.
“Who? No!” he said, leaning forward. He drooled a ribbon of blood on the floor.
“Her name is Tanis McGowen, that familiar?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen her in a long time,” he said. I rocked his head back with a knuckle duster right in the cheek.
“Do you recall the finer details of your date?” I asked.
“Think really hard,” Fenris said. “I don’t like wrong answers.”
“I took her on a date, that was it,” he said. I caught him on the side of the jaw with my off hand.
“Easy with the fists, you’re going to break your fingers on his skull,” Fen said. “That’s why we have the seax.” That caught Max’s fragmented attention. He looked up at us, and then the blade that Fen had drawn.
“Who are you guys? I never did anything to you.”
“You didn’t do anything to me, but you might recall putting your dick in a woman who wasn’t real keen on that, and when she turned your ass in, you and your boys arrested her, and beat the ever-loving fuck out of her? Is that ringing any bells?”
“None of that is true. She was just a trashy piece, and she gave me a fucking STD,” he spat. Fen caught my wrist before I punched Bianchi in the face again. “If you’re up in those guts, you better get checked.”
“Cut him,” Fen said, and handed me the knife.
“What, where?”
“Get creative, just don’t stab him,” Fen said.
“What the fuck, are you a fucking amateur?” Bianchi asked.
“Cut him like a billy goat.” Fen laughed. “Give his balls a tug.”
“Look, I’ll give you whatever you want. I have cash. Other stuff,” he said.
“No, I think my friend has a good idea,” I said, taking the blade from Fen and gesturing for him to hold Bianchi. The man immediately started struggling, but Fen jerked him up into a submission hold. Bianchi started to scream but Fen’s forearm cut off his air supply.
He kicked, but it didn’t stop me from doing something that I never thought I would ever do – I grabbed another man by his tackle. I steeled myself and remembered that this piece of shit was a cop, one of the people who was supposed to be a good guy, someone who was supposed to protect people.
And that he was a rapist, and that when she had tried to stand up to him, he made sure she went down in a heap of blood and broken bones. I slashed with the seax and Bianchi shuddered. I was holding a wad of flesh and my hand was drenched in blood.
He pissed all over himself.
“Brutal.” Fenris laughed.
Bianchi let out a sob.
“This is for Raven,” I said, and put the ruined handful of his own flesh in his hand.
“I bet she wasn’t the only one, was she?” Fen asked. Bianchi was silent, except for his shoulders shaking.
Fen smiled as he watched what I did to that man. The blade was incredibly sharp, and it parted skin and muscle easily.
While I was figuring out the dance, Fenris kept telling Bianchi what he would have done if he was the one with the knife and I was the one holding him. He did offer some praise for the full business castration, and that the only downside of that cut was after the initial cut, there wasn’t pain, just a terrible feeling of loss, and numbness where once his manhood had dangled.
“I’m sorry.” He let out a wet sob, and then threw up.
“You’ll have to speak up,” Fen said.
“I’m sorry for what I did to Tanis, or whatever you said her name was,” Max said. “It wasn’t anything personal, she was just pretty, that’s all.”
“That was all I needed to hear,” I said. I gestured for Fen to move, and then I stepped behind Max. Given the amount of blood on the floor, there wasn’t much fight left in him. He wasn’t going to come up out of that chair fighting. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back. Fenris threw his head back and howled.
I drew the blade across his throat and released a pulsing river of blood.
He convulsed, kicked, and gurgled.
Then he shit himself and went limp.
I felt my hand shaking, and I thought I was going to vomit.
“There is more blood than I expected,” I said.
“Oh yeah, people are fucking full of blood,” he said, pushing Bianchi’s corpse off of the chair. It hit the floor and jerked. “They’ll jerk and fart for a good while after you kill ‘em too.”
“We should probably go,” I said, feeling a tremor in my hands.
“Let’s make sure there isn’t anything we need first,” he said. “Like does this sack of shit have any good booze? Then, we torch the place, no evidence.”
“I should take something more than his booze,” I said, looking down at the gold cross necklace laying on his chest. “I’ll keep this, for Raven.”
We each found a bottle of high-end booze and used the rest to start a fire. Bianchi and his sheet were the center, and we stood in the backyard long enough to make sure that the fire really took off. We walked a few blocks and downed the bottles.
“What did you think?” Fen asked.
“Well, it’s not my favorite thing in the world. Probably the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“I’ll ask you again in a week, and we’ll see how you’re doing. Maybe wait a few days before you give that trophy to your girl and wash the blood off of it. Most girls don’t like being handed a bloody present.”
Fuck.
I did vomit. Fen pushed me off balance and laughed at me, shaking his head.
“This is why it’s DT and me for this shit, bro,” he said, shaking his head and his expression sobered.
“Maybe just stick to beating the fuckin’ brakes off a motherfucker and leave the killing to me from now on. It’s not for everybody, man.”
I nodded and spit, doubled over, my hands on my knees.
“I had to see it through,” I said, and he took a pull from his bottle.
“You did good for bein’ fuckin’ amateur hour.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. “I think.”
“You’re welcome.” He lifted his head as sirens split the night air. “Come on, keep walking. They’re singing our song.”