The Sinner (Black Dagger Brotherhood 18)

She met his eyes. “You don’t think this has anything to do with…”

“Not officially, I don’t, and neither do you. We start talking about our little side project trying to find vampires and Dick’s going to think we’re crazy.”

As a sharpshooter went through Jo’s frontal lobe, she had the sense that she needed to ask Bill about something… something about the last night…

When nothing came to her, and the pain just got worse, she shook her head and looked back down at the photograph of the full body. The tangled, glistening mess was nothing but muscle and sinew over glimpses of shockingly white bone. Veins, like purple wires, added fine-line accents to the crumpled anatomy. And the bed upon which the corpse lay? Skin.

Well, to be fair, there seemed to be some clothes—

The familiar headache rippled through her skull, playing the piano keys of her pain receptors. As she winced, the newsroom’s back door was thrown wide. Dick Peters, as editor-in-chief of the CCJ, walked in like he owned the place, his lumbering footfalls the advance of all that was arrogant and arbitrary, as only the truly below-average could be. Fifty years old, fifty pounds over Dad-bod weight, and retrenched in the sexism of the fifties, the fat folds padding his once-handsome fratboy face were a harbinger of the atherosclerosis that would claim him early.

But not soon enough. Not in the next fifteen feet.

“You wanted to see me,” Dick announced to Bill. “Well, let’s do this.”

The boss man didn’t slow down, and as he passed by like a semi on the highway, Bill got up and motioned for Jo to follow with the pictures.

Stuffing them back into their folder, she strode after the men. As subscriptions and advertisers fell off, everything had been downsized so it was only another twenty feet to the paper-thin door of Dick’s fragile, declining temple of power.

But his authority was undiminished as he dumped his Columbo coat in a threadbare chair—and realized she was Bill’s plus-one.

“What,” he snapped at her as he took a suck on his Starbucks venti latte.

Bill shut the door. “We’re here together.”

Dick looked back and forth. Then focused on Bill. “Your wife is pregnant.”

As if the infidelity was excusable when Lydia wasn’t knocked up, but tacky for those nine particular months.

“We’re reporting this together,” Jo said, dropping the photographs on Dick’s desk.

They landed cockeyed on the clutter of paperwork, the glossies peeking out of the folder, presenting themselves for precisely the close-up Dick gave them.

“Holy… shit.”

“This is nothing that anyone’s ever seen in Caldwell before. Or anywhere else.” Bill checked his Apple Watch again. “Jo and I are going to investigate this together—”

Dick turned his head without straightening his upper half, his jowls on the down side hanging loose off his jawline. “Says who.”

“Tony’s still out from the gastric bypass.” Bill motioned to the closed door. “Pete’s only part-time and he’s covering the Metro Council fraud thing. And I’ve got a doctor’s appointment with Lydia in twenty minutes.”

“So you wait till your wife’s done with the lady doctor.” Dick moved the photographs around with the tip of his finger, sipping on his coffee with all of the delicacy of a wet vac. “This is incredible—you gotta get on this—”

“Jo is going down there to the scene right now. My contact with the CPD is waiting for her.”

Now Dick stood to his full height of five feet, nine inches. “No, you’re going down to the scene after that appointment is over, and didn’t you tell me it was going to be a quick one? When you asked for only the morning off?” The man motioned around at scuffed walls. “In case you haven’t noticed, this paper needs stories, and as a soon-to-be father, you need this job. Unless you think you can get good healthcare coverage as a freelancer?”

“Jo and I are doing this together.”

Dick pointed at her. “She was hired to be the online editor. That’s as far as she is going—”

“I can handle it,” Jo said. “I can—”

“The story is going to wait for him.” Dick picked up the photographs and stared at them with the eyes of the converted. “This is amazing stuff. I want you to go deep on this, Bill. Deep.”

Jo opened her mouth, but Dick shoved the folder at Bill. “Did I stutter,” he demanded.

* * *

Mr. F stood in front of the house and double-checked the number that was on its mailbox, not that he knew where he was or why he was here. Looking behind himself, he didn’t know how he’d gotten to this cul-de-sac with its seventies-era split-levels and colonials. No car. No bike. And there was no bus service in this part of town.

But more to the point, he had only hazy memory of… fuck.

Something that didn’t bear thinking of.

He had to go inside this particular house, however. Something in his brain was telling him that he was supposed to walk up the driveway and go into the garage and enter the fake Tudor.

Mr. F glanced around in case there was another explanation for any part of this. The last thing he remembered with any clarity was being under the bridge downtown with the rest of the junkies. Someone had approached him. A man he didn’t know. There had been a promise of drugs and the suggestion that sex was involved. Mr. F wasn’t that into the grind, but at the time, he had been too dope sick to panhandle, and he’d needed a fix.

So… something awful had happened. And afterward, he’d blacked out.

And now he was here, wearing combat pants he’d never seen before, a flak jacket that seemed very heavy, and a set of boots that belonged on a soldier.

The morning was gray and dull, as if the world didn’t want to wake up—or maybe that was just Caldwell. Everyone in this neighborhood, however, seemed to have gainful employment and school-aged children. No one was moving around in any of the windows of any of the homes. Nobody in any of the yards. No dogs barking, no kids on bikes.

Regardless of the mood the dour weather put them in, they were all out in the world, gainfully employed, properly enrolled in school, participating in society.

He had grown up in a zip code like this. And for a while, when he’d been married, he had lived in one. He hadn’t been back for a lifetime, though.

As he started up the driveway, he was limping, and he knew he’d bottomed for someone. There was also a funny buzz in his veins, a sizzle that didn’t exactly burn, but wasn’t pleasant. He was not in withdrawal, however, which considering it had been—

What day was it now anyway?

Focusing on the front door, he noted the scruffy bushes and the lawn that was littered with sticks and a stray branch the size of a dead body. The mailbox nailed into the stucco was stuffed with flyers, its flimsy maw open and drooling envelopes, and there were three phone books on the welcome mat, all ruined by the elements. The neighbors must love the neglect. He imagined all manner of frustrated knocking and no answers. Notes tucked into the storm door. Whispers at community cookouts about the bad seeds who inhabited 452 Brook Court.

He didn’t go in through the front. A voice in his head told him that the side garage entry was unlocked, and sure enough, he had no trouble getting into the one car. Inside, the crinkled carcasses of dead leaves lay across the oil-stained concrete floor, their entrance granted by a window that had been knocked out by yet another fallen tree limb. et his eyes. “You don’t think this has anything to do with…”

“Not officially, I don’t, and neither do you. We start talking about our little side project trying to find vampires and Dick’s going to think we’re crazy.”

As a sharpshooter went through Jo’s frontal lobe, she had the sense that she needed to ask Bill about something… something about the last night…

When nothing came to her, and the pain just got worse, she shook her head and looked back down at the photograph of the full body. The tangled, glistening mess was nothing but muscle and sinew over glimpses of shockingly white bone. Veins, like purple wires, added fine-line accents to the crumpled anatomy. And the bed upon which the corpse lay? Skin.

Well, to be fair, there seemed to be some clothes—

The familiar headache rippled through her skull, playing the piano keys of her pain receptors. As she winced, the newsroom’s back door was thrown wide. Dick Peters, as editor-in-chief of the CCJ, walked in like he owned the place, his lumbering footfalls the advance of all that was arrogant and arbitrary, as only the truly below-average could be. Fifty years old, fifty pounds over Dad-bod weight, and retrenched in the sexism of the fifties, the fat folds padding his once-handsome fratboy face were a harbinger of the atherosclerosis that would claim him early.

But not soon enough. Not in the next fifteen feet.

“You wanted to see me,” Dick announced to Bill. “Well, let’s do this.”

The boss man didn’t slow down, and as he passed by like a semi on the highway, Bill got up and motioned for Jo to follow with the pictures.

Stuffing them back into their folder, she strode after the men. As subscriptions and advertisers fell off, everything had been downsized so it was only another twenty feet to the paper-thin door of Dick’s fragile, declining temple of power.

But his authority was undiminished as he dumped his Columbo coat in a threadbare chair—and realized she was Bill’s plus-one.

“What,” he snapped at her as he took a suck on his Starbucks venti latte.

Bill shut the door. “We’re here together.”

Dick looked back and forth. Then focused on Bill. “Your wife is pregnant.”

As if the infidelity was excusable when Lydia wasn’t knocked up, but tacky for those nine particular months.

“We’re reporting this together,” Jo said, dropping the photographs on Dick’s desk.

They landed cockeyed on the clutter of paperwork, the glossies peeking out of the folder, presenting themselves for precisely the close-up Dick gave them.

“Holy… shit.”

“This is nothing that anyone’s ever seen in Caldwell before. Or anywhere else.” Bill checked his Apple Watch again. “Jo and I are going to investigate this together—”

Dick turned his head without straightening his upper half, his jowls on the down side hanging loose off his jawline. “Says who.”

“Tony’s still out from the gastric bypass.” Bill motioned to the closed door. “Pete’s only part-time and he’s covering the Metro Council fraud thing. And I’ve got a doctor’s appointment with Lydia in twenty minutes.”

“So you wait till your wife’s done with the lady doctor.” Dick moved the photographs around with the tip of his finger, sipping on his coffee with all of the delicacy of a wet vac. “This is incredible—you gotta get on this—”

“Jo is going down there to the scene right now. My contact with the CPD is waiting for her.”

Now Dick stood to his full height of five feet, nine inches. “No, you’re going down to the scene after that appointment is over, and didn’t you tell me it was going to be a quick one? When you asked for only the morning off?” The man motioned around at scuffed walls. “In case you haven’t noticed, this paper needs stories, and as a soon-to-be father, you need this job. Unless you think you can get good healthcare coverage as a freelancer?”

“Jo and I are doing this together.”

Dick pointed at her. “She was hired to be the online editor. That’s as far as she is going—”

“I can handle it,” Jo said. “I can—”

“The story is going to wait for him.” Dick picked up the photographs and stared at them with the eyes of the converted. “This is amazing stuff. I want you to go deep on this, Bill. Deep.”

Jo opened her mouth, but Dick shoved the folder at Bill. “Did I stutter,” he demanded.

* * *

Mr. F stood in front of the house and double-checked the number that was on its mailbox, not that he knew where he was or why he was here. Looking behind himself, he didn’t know how he’d gotten to this cul-de-sac with its seventies-era split-levels and colonials. No car. No bike. And there was no bus service in this part of town.

But more to the point, he had only hazy memory of… fuck.

Something that didn’t bear thinking of.

He had to go inside this particular house, however. Something in his brain was telling him that he was supposed to walk up the driveway and go into the garage and enter the fake Tudor.

Mr. F glanced around in case there was another explanation for any part of this. The last thing he remembered with any clarity was being under the bridge downtown with the rest of the junkies. Someone had approached him. A man he didn’t know. There had been a promise of drugs and the suggestion that sex was involved. Mr. F wasn’t that into the grind, but at the time, he had been too dope sick to panhandle, and he’d needed a fix.

So… something awful had happened. And afterward, he’d blacked out.

And now he was here, wearing combat pants he’d never seen before, a flak jacket that seemed very heavy, and a set of boots that belonged on a soldier.

The morning was gray and dull, as if the world didn’t want to wake up—or maybe that was just Caldwell. Everyone in this neighborhood, however, seemed to have gainful employment and school-aged children. No one was moving around in any of the windows of any of the homes. Nobody in any of the yards. No dogs barking, no kids on bikes.

Regardless of the mood the dour weather put them in, they were all out in the world, gainfully employed, properly enrolled in school, participating in society.

He had grown up in a zip code like this. And for a while, when he’d been married, he had lived in one. He hadn’t been back for a lifetime, though.

As he started up the driveway, he was limping, and he knew he’d bottomed for someone. There was also a funny buzz in his veins, a sizzle that didn’t exactly burn, but wasn’t pleasant. He was not in withdrawal, however, which considering it had been—

What day was it now anyway?

Focusing on the front door, he noted the scruffy bushes and the lawn that was littered with sticks and a stray branch the size of a dead body. The mailbox nailed into the stucco was stuffed with flyers, its flimsy maw open and drooling envelopes, and there were three phone books on the welcome mat, all ruined by the elements. The neighbors must love the neglect. He imagined all manner of frustrated knocking and no answers. Notes tucked into the storm door. Whispers at community cookouts about the bad seeds who inhabited 452 Brook Court.

He didn’t go in through the front. A voice in his head told him that the side garage entry was unlocked, and sure enough, he had no trouble getting into the one car. Inside, the crinkled carcasses of dead leaves lay across the oil-stained concrete floor, their entrance granted by a window that had been knocked out by yet another fallen tree limb.