Preview: The Lesser of Two Evils

Part 1
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Tuesday August 13th, 1996 11:34 PM
Houston, Texas

Fred Tanner drummed his fingers on the steering wheel nervously, looking from the red light at the intersection to his partner Larry Sloan, who had been silent for most of the night. Both of them had been, but then the mood for most of the officers at the station had been tense for the last three weeks.
Fred glanced at the dispatch radio, and he forced himself to think of the tune he was drumming his fingers to. He wasn’t quite ready to give in to paranoia at how long the radio had been silent. It was slow on Tuesday nights sometimes, but never quite dead. Yet not one call had come through in the last hour. There were occasional bursts of static, and with each small burst, Fred found himself wishing a call would come through, even if it meant bad news.
“The light’s green,” Larry muttered, his deep voice seeming a few pitches higher than normal. “Stop looking at the radio like the station’s been blown up.”
“How do we know it hasn’t been already?” Fred asked, finally giving voice to his concern.
“Because somebody else would have called in a report on a big ass fire in the middle of downtown,” Larry replied before huffing an annoyed sigh. “Look man, just cool it, okay?”
“How can you be so calm?”
“I’m not calm. I’m fatigued. I haven’t slept in… God, I can’t even remember the last time I even had a nap. Five patrols hit in three weeks, and with a city full of cops we still can’t find one clue who’s doing it.”

“Yeah, like we don’t already know.”
“What? Oh hell, don’t tell me you’re still buying that urban legend bullshit?” Larry groaned at the sight of his partner’s jaw tightening. “For the last time, there is no Jobe McKenzie, all right? The man is a myth as far as I’m concerned.”
“A myth,” Fred repeated and shook his head. “Myths don’t have body counts.”
“Look, just because people get killed in explosions don’t mean they’re all related. You’re talking about six different MO’s in six states over the course of four years, and the only thing to tie them all together is a letter that one tabloid claims is from this Jobe McKenzie guy. It’s the Weekly Globe, and they’re always trying to come up with some dumb ass conspiracy theory. How many times did they pin the murder of that Mitchell girl to one of her family members? Like what? Eight, nine times? And how many times was it supposed to have been her kid brother?”
“Maybe they got it right this time,” Fred grumbled.
“It’s a gossip rag! They haven’t even got another letter since the first two bombings. They just keep picking attacks and saying that this guy did them. Until someone else backs up their claims, it’s all just crap from a tabloid,” Larry said. “For all you know, they picked a staff writer to make up a letter that connected the two crimes, then they make the claim that every explosion after that is really vigilante acts from an urban myth.”
“Well-”
“The first victims listed were a Sunday school teacher and her husband, and the claims that they were criminals might be easier to believe if there was some kind of actual charges made, you know? But they came up clean, and no one’s come forward to say otherwise.”
Fred scowled as he glanced at his partner. “Right, and now we just happen to have a serial bomber in our city-”
“Using a completely different MO and unrelated targets!” Larry shouted before he sighed and slumped back into his seat. “Just drop it, all right? Keep your tabloid killer ideas to yourself.”
“Hey,” Fred remarked and tapped Larry’s shoulder before gesturing across the street to a grocery store, its parking lot empty save for one car.
Larry shrugged, almost looking away before he spotted the same faint trail of light on the ground beside the car which had caught his partner’s attention. Looking closer, he guessed it was coming from a flashlight laid on the ground under the car, but he couldn’t see signs of anybody around.
His eyes quickly scanned the other buildings of the shopping center as Fred pulled the car across the street and back toward the parking lot entrance. “Where do you think the driver is?”
“No idea,” Fred replied with a pensive expression. “But if they left their flashlight on, they were either being chased or they were snatched.”

Larry nodded grimly, reaching for the door before the car had finished coming to a stop. Looking around again as he got out of the car, he unsnapped his holster and laid his palm lightly over the handle of his revolver. Nothing seemed right about the situation, and he felt his skin prickling as he got closer to the car. “Who’s looking under the car?”
Fred swallowed thickly. “Are you thinking what I am?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking bomb,” Larry said as he took a step back from the car.
“Let’s call for backup. If it turns out the to be a false alarm, only our pride will be wounded,” Fred suggested before uttering a short forced chuckle. He walked back to the car, dropping into the driver’s seat before reaching for the radio receiver handset. “Dispatch.”
Larry sat down in the passenger seat, immediately noting the silence of the radio with a sense of anxiety that grew as he waited for a reply. Tearing his troubled gaze away the radio, he saw that Fred was again drumming his fingers while he watched the abandoned car. “Did you make the call yet?”
“I tried, but there’s no answer,” Fred declared while he checked the radio’s frequency to try again. “Dispatch, are you there?” He glanced at Larry with an uneasy expression, drumming his fingers faster against the steering wheel. “Who’s on shift tonight?”
“Matt,” Larry replied, his brow furrowing at the continued silence from the radio.
“Matt?” Fred called uncertainly. He looked up in the rearview mirror, dropping the handset as he caught sight of someone ducking behind the back of the patrol car. “Shit!”
“What?” Larry asked just before his door was slammed with his leg still stuck outside.
Fred jerked violently away from the sounds of the slamming door and Larry’s agonized bellowing, his hands slick as he fumbled to pull his gun out of his holster and open the door at the same time. Stepping out on shaky legs, he pivoted on his heels to look over the side of the car, then towards the back.
He heard a soft metallic rattle on the ground and glanced down just as a small silver ball tumbled out from under the car. As it rolled far enough to catch the light coming from the car’s dome lamp, he took a step back to run around the car. He still looked down at the ball, his eyes barely registering that the bumpy surface was made up of B.B.’s a moment before the ball exploded.
Throwing his arm up in front of his face, he stumbled backward and collapsed on the ground. His vision was gone in one eye, and when he tried to wipe his face, his hand came away covered in a slick coat of blood. Somewhere faintly, he thought he heard the sound of someone screaming. Though his face and neck burned when he tried to move, he raised his arm to stare at the remains of the hand that had shielded his face.

Something struck his chest and knocked the wind from him. He closed his hand over it then jerked his arm up, trying to throw another of the little improvised grenades away. It burst over his head, killing him instantly.
Larry continued to scream even though a part his mind plead with him to move. The passenger door opened, and before he could think to act, a hand clad in a black leather glove reached in and tugged his pistol up and away from his holster. Seconds later, the hand returned to grip him by the arm and throw him out of the car in one pull.
He hit the ground and tumbled over twice with the force of the throw before coming to rest on his back. He rolled his head to one side, looking up at the man who leaned against the patrol car before he began to search his pockets. “Wh- who-”
“You know what’s fucked up?” the man asked as he tugged a pack of cigarettes from one pocket of his long black trench coat and a Zippo lighter from the other. Larry watched the man flick the flint wheel several times before the wick ignited. The faint light of the tiny flame pushed back the shadows to reveal a slender, sickly pale face with sunken cheeks and eyes.
The man’s gaze never left his. In that cold stare, Larry saw with certainty that he would not live to see his girlfriend again. He allowed himself a final thought of her laying beside him in bed before he faked a bitter laugh. “What’s fucked up is I’m gonna die at the hands of an urban legend, and the only people who’ll believe it read the Weekly Globe.”
“That’s close, yeah. But no, what’s really fucked up is out of six patrols, you had to be the cops who decided not to go for the flashlight. I had an almost perfect streak going there, but you…” The man paused, smiling as he took a drag from his cigarette. “You win the distinction of actually being smart cops. So I’m giving you the honor of my congratulations.”
“I’m thrilled,” Larry said and dropped his head back onto the pavement, panting as he tried to will away the spots floating in his vision. Whether the man in front of him was really Jobe Mckenzie or not, he wasn’t stupid despite seeming cocky. Even with a broken leg, Larry had a chance to take him if the man would only move a little bit closer, but he wisely kept his distance.
“You don’t want me to tell you what all of this is about?” the man asked in a coldly amused tone of voice.
“Sure. Come on over here and whisper it to me,” Larry muttered.
“Nice. I still have your gun, you know.”
Larry shook his head. “Nah, that’s not your style.”
“True, but I’m not opposed to switching tactics now that you’ve blown my streak,” the man said and knelt down, leaning against the door of the patrol car. “Larry, you’ve been a bad man, haven’t you?”
“What? You know what. Fuck you. Just kill me now.”
“Fine,” the man said and rose to pull Larry’s gun from the waistband of his jeans before shooting Larry twice in the chest. “See? It is too my style.”

He walked around to the back of the patrol car, reaching under the bumper to pry loose the device he’d tagged the car with to block their radio. He turned to look at his reflection in the back window of the car then shook his head and walked away. “Save it for later.”

***

Wednesday August 14th, 4:53 AM

Jobe settled into his seat, looking at his reflection in the window of the bus. He’d spent most of the night walking around to clear his head, and though he hadn’t slept in close to forty-eight hours, he still didn’t feel tired. He knew that no one was looking for him, but the bus wouldn’t leave for another few minutes, and he wouldn’t be able to relax until he was moving again.
His reflection shifted slightly, catching his attention and drawing him out of his thoughts. Jobe glanced around the bus to make sure there were plenty of seats between him and the other passengers before he turned back to his reflection and offered a tiny nod. “All right, the coast is clear.”
“Sloppy, man. Very sloppy,” his reflection said.
“Nobody lived,” Jobe insisted then nodded again. “Okay, guns really aren’t my style, but I used up both my plan B’s on Tanner, and I wasn’t about to go fetch the flashlight… oh yeah.”
“And that’s what was sloppy, dumb ass,” the reflection snapped before crossing its arms and sitting back in the reflection of Jobe’s seat. “In your haste to get away, you didn’t think to clean up after yourself. So now a bomb squad will get a good look at one of your live bombs, and they don’t know those guys were dirty. We can only hope they don’t look at it too closely before blowing it, but that makes two jobs you’ve botched, meaning the FBI will be able to link you to all those other seemingly random jobs.”
“That wasn’t a botched job. You didn’t tell me the bomb was defective,” Jobe hissed and looked around to make sure no one had heard him.
“It wasn’t defective before you dropped it, buddy, and you didn’t check back with me until after finding out you had a dud,” the reflection said. “What you need is a vacation.”
“All right, that sounds fine with me. You told me to pick this bus, so where are we going?”
His reflection smiled broadly. “To find redemption, we shall seek a divine place.”
“A riddle? Okay,” Jobe said and sat back.
“Look at your ticket,” the reflection suggested with an annoyed tone of voice.
Jobe did, scanning the list of names. He stopped on one and looked back up to his reflection. “Where the hell is Devine?”

***

Devine, Texas
Wednesday 11:45 AM

Wendy Stoffel chewed the gum center of her Blow Pop, not quite ready to pry it off the paper stick. She knew herself well enough to know that she’d swallow the gum a few seconds later, so she left the wad of gum on the stick and flipped through the latest issue of Spiderman. She wasn’t really reading it, and her attention was focused more on the sounds coming from behind her.
She glanced casually up at the window, seeming to check the traffic on Hondo avenue, one of the two main highways running through the town. The Pico station was on the corner where those highways intersected, and even then there weren’t more than two or three cars passing through.
She wasn’t really watching the traffic either. Instead, she was checking the reflection to see if Mabel Lang, the clerk running the convenience store, was still working on the fryers on the other side of the counters. The old woman’s back was turned, and the store was empty.
Wendy closed the comic book and slipped it under the waistband of her cut off denim shorts before she pulled her shirt up and over the top. She picked up the same issue from the rack and opened it before her eyes flicked back to the reflection.
She still had plenty of time before Mabel turned around to give her a scornful look. “You know, you been here something close to two hours, and the only thing you bought was that lollipop.”
“Yeah, and I’m flat broke just like everybody else in this town. Where else am I gonna go? There’s the grocery store or the library,” Wendy said and set the comic down before turning toward Mabel to fake a look of excitement. “Wow, there’s so many choices!”
“You could go home,” Mabel suggested.
Wendy’s expression darkened. “Yeah, what a great idea.” She turned and started for the door, holding her face in a scowl even as she saw Mabel starting to pout.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I know things are rough with your brother and all, but this isn’t a lending library, you know? We’re just about as broke as you too,” the woman rambled, her expression slowly becoming more guilty looking while Wendy continued to stare at her coolly.
“We’re home alone these days. You know that? My folks finally found a job, and it’s a day labor construction deal over in Odessa. So they’re gone until Friday, and I’m all alone except for Sam. Maybe it might seem crazy to you, but after four years of watching him die slowly, I might need to get out of the damned house every once in a while.”

The old woman’s mouth flapped open, but Wendy stormed out quickly. She knew that if she stayed any longer she’d overplay her grief card, and she liked rationing it out to last throughout the whole week.
She went around the side of the station before she jogged out to the street, picking up her pace and not slowing down until she had run a full two blocks to a set of railroad tracks. She smiled at them, stepping over the rails as she always did with a little sarcastic thought about being the girl from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’.
“Did you pull a guilt trip on Mabel again?”
Wendy spun, giving a nod to her brother Jamie as she broke into a smile. “Of course I did. Otherwise she’d do the smart thing and count the comics right after I left. This way, I have a few days to build back up the guilt supply before the cops come to visit me for a lecture.”
“You’re evil sometimes,” Jamie said.
“No, I’m just bored sometimes. Being poor is one thing, but being poor and stuck in a podunk town is driving me crazy,” Wendy complained.
“We could go beat somebody up.”
“Now who’s being evil?” Wendy asked and looked around before she tugged the comic out from under her shirt. She waved for her brother to follow her. “Come on, Sam is waiting for me.”
“I still don’t get any thanks?” Jamie asked while he faked a pout.
Wendy sighed. “All right, yes; thank you, Jamie. You told me the new Spiderman was in for Sam. I still had to go get it myself.”
“Boohoo. Cry me a river. When are you going to cut your hair?”
“Get bent.” Wendy said and quickened her pace.
“So you’ll ignore me now?”
“Yep,” Wendy agreed. “Even if you refuse to shut up.”
The air went still with an alarming suddenness, the warm wind fading as quickly as the sounds of the wasps and locusts. Wendy stopped walking as she felt the short hairs on her neck rise. She turned slowly, intending to ask her brother if he’d noticed the change in the air. Instead she froze, and her eyes moved back up the street at a flicker of movement.
Jamie’s back was turned to her, and his attention focused on the intersection by the station that she had just left. She didn’t need to ask what he was looking at, because she saw the car too, a black Lincoln with windows tinted so darkly that all she could make out from the interior was the silhouette of the driver.
What made the car more ominous was that it didn’t seem to reflect any light. The black paint was dull and flat, while the windows didn’t reflect the sunlight or the car’s surroundings. Wendy squinted as she realized that she could see a reflection. But the outlines flickering across the window appeared to be a row of houses, not the businesses around the intersection. The longer she stared at the car, the less it seemed real.

No one else but the driver was in the car, yet simply voicing the thought set off an internal warning: -No one else is in the car yet. Make sure it’s not you.-
Wendy tried to reason with herself that if the car wasn’t real, neither was the threat, but she still followed her instincts and took a few steps back before catching herself.
The car drove out of view, and Jamie shivered, looking over his shoulder at his sister. “Did you feel that?”
Wendy nodded, taking a few short steps and uttering a tiny gasp as the warm wind began to blow again over her skin. It was impossible not to notice the change, nor was the returning sounds of the insects. She glanced at her brother anxiously before turning and quickening her pace a little. “I’ve gotta check on Sam.”
“Good idea. Then what?”
“Then I’m digging out one of dad’s good knives.”

***

Wednesday 1:39 PM

“Wendy,” Jamie said in a tense voice.
Wendy nodded, looking around as the sounds around her again faded to a sudden silence while the wind died, leaving the air feeling oppressively hot. “I know. The car has to be around here somewhere.”
“Over there.” Jamie pointed up the street as the phantom car slipped through the intersection behind them. He took off at a run to chase after the car.
Wendy was much slower than him, barely able to run around the corner before she saw the car fade out of sight a few blocks away from her. The moment it had faded, she heard the returning sounds of the insects droning. She felt the wind blowing, confirming again that somehow, it had died only during the time that she saw the car.
She stopped running and began to walk up the street toward her brother, who stood on the side of the street where the car had faded.
“What is it?” she asked quietly as she noticed his pensive expression.
“This is the third time we’ve spotted this car around town, but I can’t see who’s driving it,” Jamie said. “Even the driver inside is just a dark outline.”
“Jamie, did it feel to you like… like everything stopped while we saw the car?”
“Yeah, I noticed it right away, like time just froze.” He gave his sister a strained smile. “You and I should be used to things like this by now.”
Wendy shook her head. “No, this is something new. I don’t remember ever feeling like this before.”
“No, I mean we ought to be used to having crazy things happen to us,” Jamie said and looked back toward the street as his expression clouded.

“Why does it keep fading just when I’m catching up to it?”
“Why is it happening at all? Do you think the car is a threat of some kind?”
“Not the car directly, but the driver is, I think.” Jamie turned his head back and forth as he began to frown. “Where would it go from here?”
“We’ve found it just by wandering around. Maybe we should just keep wandering to see where else it shows up.”
“Maybe we should split up to cover more ground.”
“No, if you found the car, there’d be no time for you to lead me to it before it faded again,” Wendy said.
“Are you sure you don’t just want me to protect you?” Jamie teased lightly, trying to break the tension.
Wendy was having none of his efforts at humor and nodded grimly instead. “That’s exactly why I don’t want us splitting up.”

***

Wednesday 2:15 PM

Davis Briggs pulled his patrol car off of Hondo and onto a dirt road that would lead him to the little league baseball field. It wasn’t on his patrol, but he’d heard from Mabel that a game was supposed to be scheduled that afternoon, and he hoped to watch a few minutes. It wasn’t likely that he’d get a call anyway, and he was almost able to relieve himself from the guilt of wandering off of his patrol route.
But his plans hit a slight hitch when Wendy Stoffel walked out from between a set of trailers just ahead of his car. She turned her head to look at him then smiled and offered a wave.
Davis slowed the car to a stop and rolled down his window. “Hey Wendy. You stolen any comics lately?”
Though he’d only lived in Devine for a year, and had spent less then six months working for the police department, the one person he knew the most about in town was Wendy. He didn’t consider the added knowledge a good thing.
Even before taking a job with the police, he’d heard all kinds of gossip about Wendy and her family. Both parents were construction workers, as the story went, and Wendy was something of a classic victim of neglect. He’d heard more than one person in town say that describing Wendy as moody was putting it nicely. Nobody ever used the word bitch to describe her, but it was clear they were thinking it.
Among most of the people in town, there was also a sense that something about Wendy was vaguely creepy. She didn’t play with other children, and any time that she was not in school or at home, she could be found walking alone around the town. He could confirm that just a few days after getting settled in, and it had seemed to him like Wendy was often talking to herself.

Once he’d started working as a cop again, he had been called to take her to the station regularly for lifting comic books from the gas stations. In spite of her repeatedly hitting the same stores, none of the owners would ever press charges.
He was sure they let her get away with returning to their stores because her story was not only always the same, but also sadly true. She was stealing the comics to give to her older brother Sam, who was dying from a tainted vaccination he’d received four years before while living in Arizona.
The owners wanted the police to lecture her and get her to stop stealing the books, but suggesting that they press charges or at the very least ban her from their stores caused them to back down every time. So she had kept up a pattern of drifting from store to store, always stealing the same two comic book titles.
During several of her arrests, he had asked the owners why they didn’t just cancel the two titles for a few months to discourage her, and even that suggestion was met with a number of mumbled excuses about not wanting to punish the other kids. Only once had he made the mistake of voicing his opinion that ‘other kids’ meant Sam, and the dirty look he’d gotten made it clear his opinion was not wanted.
Davis had no problems lecturing Wendy at their request, nor did he feel obligated to fall for her guilt trips over her sick brother. But he still found her to be likable, if a bit complex for a girl of thirteen. No one else had mentioned it to him, but it often occurred to Davis that she would say things he’d just been thinking. He occasionally mentioned it to her, but she would only smile and change the subject quickly.
He and most everyone else in town would have described her as a tomboy, except she didn’t look like one at all. She acted the part by getting into fights with some of the local boys, and often winning much to the chagrin of her victims. Davis had been called to break up a good number of those fights even in his short time on patrol, and the few times she was losing had been when someone else had jumped in to make it more of a fair fight.
She was in the habit of wearing skimpy denim shorts and t-shirts during the summer, exposing as much pale skin as she could. That she could spend as much time in the sun as she did and only end up with a soft beige color to her skin was the subject of many offhand jokes told around town. One joke went that Wendy bathed in guilt nightly to preserve her clear complexion.
She had a slender face that suffered a little from eating poorly, but it was hard to notice the tiny flaws of her lean cheeks once anyone looked at her eyes. Davis had noticed that she used her crystal blue eyes to her advantage, and while he couldn’t fall for a guilt trip from Wendy, he had allowed himself to be charmed by her eyes a few times.

She normally kept her black curly hair held out of her face with a rolled black bandana or a hair band unless she was looking for a fight. Then she would tie her hair back into a ponytail and change into a pair of jeans to keep from skinning her knees.
Watching her walk toward the patrol car, it occurred first to him that she was dressed in jeans, and her hair was bound back about as tightly as he’d ever seen it. He left it alone, deciding he’d save the lecture for after the fight, wherever it would end up happening. But the closer she got to the car, the more he realized how fake her smile was.
“Hey Davis. How’s life as the supercop going?”
“Well I don’t know. Right now my gut is telling me that you’ve got a real problem on your mind.” Davis shut off the engine. “You wanna tell me about it?”
Wendy’s smile melted as she looked around and walked closer to the patrol car. “You haven’t seen a big black Lincoln driving around today, have you? I mean like a flat black color, not shiny or reflective like that.” She pointed to the side of his car for emphasis.
“No, I’m pretty sure I’d remember seeing something like that,” Davis said. “When did you see this car?”
“Twice now,” Wendy lied. “I was walking back… well, back from the Super S, and-”
“You mean you were at Pico stealing a comic, right?” Davis sighed and waved his hand. “All right never mind. Just tell me about the car.”
“It was over on Hondo, just passing the intersection at Teel. When I saw it…” Wendy frowned. -No, forget it,- she thought. -He’ll never believe you if you tell him how everything stopped moving.- “It just felt creepy to me. The windows were tinted really darkly, so you couldn’t see the driver beyond an outline.”
“Nobody I know owns a car like that out here. How long was it until you saw the car again?”
“I’m not sure. You know I don’t wear watches or anything,” Wendy said. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but something about that car just set me on edge.”
“So that’s why you’re dressed in fighting gear?” Davis sighed when she nodded. “Look, you shouldn’t be out trying to play the big hero. If whoever’s in that car really is a threat, you could end up getting your skinny little butt kidnapped.” He knew she wasn’t really listening to him and gave up. “Where else did you see the car?”
“Over by the middle school.” Wendy turned to point behind her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were patrolling the area too. They keep taking random turns like they’re trying to get lost intentionally.”
“You’ve been following them?” Davis groaned. “Wendy-”
“Do you want to hear this or not?” she cut him off.
“Sure, go ahead.”

“There isn’t much left to tell anyway. The car pulled onto Washington and was headed towards me, so I had to hide between some bushes.”
Davis nodded his approval. “Good idea, but if you were so creeped out by this car, why are you trying to follow it?”
Wendy looked away from him toward the little league field as a group of fans started cheering. “I just don’t like the way it looks. It doesn’t belong here.”
“Wendy, you probably won’t listen, but I think you should head on home. I’m gonna look into this car for you, and I’d feel a lot better knowing you weren’t trying to chase it down in the mean time, okay?”
Wendy nodded. “I have to check on Sam anyway.”
“Your folks are still out of town?”
“Yep, till Friday. I’d throw a party, but nobody likes coming to our house.” Wendy offered him a weak smile. “I’ll head home, so you can get to the game.”
“I wasn’t-” Davis stopped himself and smirked at her. “One of these days, you gotta tell me how you do that.”
“Maybe someday, when you’re older,” Wendy said and gave a soft laugh as she walked away.

***

Wendy stopped walking and turned her head back over her shoulder to watch Davis’ car until it was a few blocks away. As soon as he was out of sight, she wandered back between the same set of trailers she’d been looking around when Davis showed up.
Cutting back through several open yards, she checked up and down the dirt road before finally giving up and leaving the trailer park. She went back to Moore avenue, checking to make sure Davis hadn’t followed her before she crossed the front lawn of a house and made her way into the back yard.
The yard next door was fenced in, and she saw a short legged scruffy brown haired dog lounging on the grass under the shade of a tree. The dog looked back at her, offering a greeting that was somewhere between a whine and a bark. She put her finger to her lips and shushed the dog, smiling when it rolled onto its legs and gave a short yip before laying its head on the ground.
Jamie was still standing in the same spot where she had left him, his arms crossed over his chest as he studied the back windows of the house. “You’re sure about this?”
“The car passed this place twice,” Jamie said.
“So? It’s driven by a couple of places repeatedly.”
“Where else has it slowed down?” Jamie asked and nodded at her silence. “This has got to be the target, but for what? There’s nothing of value inside that I can see.”

“I don’t think they’re planning a robbery, Jamie.”
“No, I don’t either, but I can’t see what they want.” Jamie turned to look at her while gesturing back towards the street. “You told Davis a whole bunch of lies just to give him a description of the car, and it isn’t really here yet. Why did you bother telling him? You’re going to have him running all over town for nothing.”
“No, it wasn’t for nothing,” Wendy insisted. “It might not pan out for him today, but he’s always on patrol during the week. Now he knows what to look for.”
“Even though I don’t.”
“Don’t work yourself up over it. So you know some things in advance sometimes. You don’t know everything, right?”
“Yeah,” Jamie agreed without much conviction.
“I wasn’t lying to Davis about everything, though. I really do need to go home and check on Sam. He’ll probably be wanting dinner soon anyway.”
“Yeah, I’ll see you later then.” Jamie’s eyes drifted back to the windows of the house.
“You’re not just going to stand here all day, are you?” Wendy asked.
“Nah, but I figure if this is the place, the car’s shadow will be back around in a little while, and maybe I can try to track it from here before it fades out again.”
“Maybe we’re wrong.”
Jamie nodded. “God I hope so.”

***

Wednesday 3:42 PM

Jobe stepped out of the Super S grocery store, slipping on a pair of sunglasses and squinting up at the sun with annoyance. He had woken up just a few minutes before arriving in Natalia and looked down to find that his ticket did not have Devine written on it at all.
His reflection was silent on the matter, but the bus driver had been able to direct him into town without getting him lost. The heat of the day had forced him to take several rest breaks along the way, and by the time he arrived to the outskirts of Devine, it was late in the afternoon. He had taken in quite a lot of sun dressed in black clothes that were better suited for night jobs than a forced hike in broad daylight, and his body was drenched with sweat. His face was rosy and already stung with a light burn.
He had only spent a half an hour in the town, and his first impression of the town was that he wasn’t impressed. Most of the town’s businesses were lined up along the highway, and everything beyond that seemed to be homes or churches.

He’d gone into the grocery store as soon as he found it and used the bathroom to clean up. Buying sunglasses to block out the overly bright sun, he also pulled a sport drink from the cooler by the checkout stand. He’d drained the bottle before he’d even paid for it, and the cashier graciously offered to throw it away for him as he paid, chatting with him as if he were just another neighbor.
Pondering on that thought, he wondered if everyone in town was friendly, so he decided to stage an impromptu experiment. Jobe looked to the doors of the grocery store, smiling warmly at an old woman as she hobbled outside, leaning heavily on her metal cane. “Hey, is it always this bright around here?”
“Lord, yes,” the old woman said before she gestured up at the sky. “At this time of year, you can’t find any clouds, and even the shadows look like they’re dying.”
“I know how they’re feeling,” Jobe agreed with a polite laugh.
The woman laughed with him then hobbled closer to offer her hand. “I’m Molly Crane. I don’t believe I’ve seen you around.”
“No, I’m actually on vacation here,” Jobe said while extending his own hand to shake hers gently. “The name’s Chuck.”
“A vacation? Out here?” Molly said and laughed before she shook her head in disbelief. “I think maybe you might want to get back on thirty-five and keep heading up towards San Antonio. That’s where I’d go, or maybe down to Nuevo Laredo, if you’re into collecting trinkets.”
“Nope, this is it.”
“Why?” Molly asked.
“You know, I’m not quite sure of that part just yet either.”

***

Wednesday 3:51 PM

Mabel looked up from the magazine she was reading and nodded as she smiled at Davis. “Hey Davis. What you need?”
“Two things- no, make it three,” Davis corrected himself as he walked up to the counter. “First, you might want to count your comics.”
Mabel’s mouth fell open, but she clamped it shut and shook her head before sighing heavily. “Dammit, I knew it.”
“Yeah, I keep hearing you folks say that, but no one’s pressing charges yet,” Davis said.
“What, like I’m going to volunteer to be the evil old lady who has the witch girl locked up. That’s what they’d call me in the gossip circles.” Mabel sighed. “Sometimes I think we ought to just deduct some of our paychecks and donate it to her brother. She always steals the same two comics, so it’s not like we’re talking about that much money.”

“No, instead you let her steal them, and then you call us to lecture her over it.” Davis shrugged. “Anyway, the second thing is, I was wondering if you’ve seen a black Lincoln out on the street today. I was told it was cruising up or down Hondo every once in while.”
Mabel looked up in thought. “Well, I’m not sure. I got my back turned to the street whenever I’m making chicken, or I sometimes have my nose buried in one of these tabloids.”
“Yeah, it was a long shot,” Davis said.
“But we got the camera,” Mabel said as she gestured to the security camera mounted in the far corner of the store by the drinks. “We got it pointed at the pumps to record the cars in case anybody tries to make a gas or beer run, but if your car was passing by when the pumps were empty, I think the camera would catch it.”
“Yeah. Could you let me use your phone to call the station and let them know that I’ll be here in case they need me?” Davis asked. He took up the handset as soon as Mabel set the phone on the counter. “Thanks.”
“You sound a little worried about this car.”
“It might be nothing at all, but…” Davis smiled, waving a hand at Mabel before dialing the station’s dispatch number. “Nah, I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.”
“Hello?”
“Barry?” Davis checked.
“Yep, I’m here. What you got going on, Davis?” Barry Roland, the day shift dispatcher asked.
“Maybe nothing, but I’ve had a report made on a strange black Lincoln driving around town. It was described to me as being flat black paint with really dark tinted windows. You don’t know anybody with a car like that, do you?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Uh, no, that doesn’t sound like anyone from here. Jake’s got a Caddie covered in primer that’s almost black, but the windows aren’t tinted.”
“Molly has one.” Mabel called from across the store.
“Hold on.” Davis cradled the receiver on his shoulder and craned his neck to find Mabel by the coffee machines filling a large cup from a carafe. “What?”
“A black Lincoln. You didn’t ask if anyone in town had one. You asked if I’d seen one today,” Mabel clarified.
“Is it a dull color of black or shiny?” Davis asked.
“I’m pretty sure it’s shiny. Molly has her grandson wax it for her every other day, it seems.”
“The windows aren’t tinted either, are they?”
“Good grief, yes they are. Damned windows are so dark you’d think Molly was driving blind. I heard some of the kids calling her midnight Molly,” Mabel said with a good natured laugh and crossed back to the counter before she handed him the cup of coffee.

“Is everyone in this town freaking psychic?”
“What? No, but I figured you might want it while you’re watching the tape from the camera.” Mabel gave him a perplexed smile. “Has someone been reading your thoughts today?”
“Seems like it,” Davis said and put the phone back up to his ear. “All right, it really may just be a little old lady’s car, but I’m going to check the security tape here at Pico.”
“Who reported the car?” Barry asked.
“Wendy.”
“As in Stoffel?”
“One and the same,” Davis confirmed.
“Weird,” Barry said before making a short laugh. “Are you sure she wasn’t just trying to distract you?”
Davis opened his mouth to reply when he realized that Barry had a pretty good point. Wendy might have just made up the story about the car to get rid of him. He shook his head more for himself than anything else. “I don’t think so. She seemed really pensive about this car, and she’d said that she’d been following it for some time. She said it was like the car was patrolling the area.”
“Huh,” Barry hummed. “Well I’ll put up a note for Gladys, and she can have the guys look in on it when they start their shift if you think it’s legit.”
“Let me look into it here first,” Davis said. “For all we know, one of the ladies is planning a move and looking for a new house.”

***

Wednesday 6:15 PM

Jobe sat down under the limited shade of a tree and looked around casually while he tugged the wrapped sandwich which Molly had insisted he take from out of his coat pocket. She’d also insisted that he come to her house for lunch, and he’d had a long, sometimes pleasant conversation with someone who was clearly a town busybody. Before she’d even set bowls of soup on the table, he’d learned the sexual habits of four of her neighbors, a series of mental images made more disturbing when he realized that all of her neighbors were nearing their seventies.
Molly was not a passive gossip either, and she spent much of her time driving around to visit her sources. Some people had a calling to God in their old age, but Molly had obviously found her calling with gab instead.
After wearing out a list of her favorite suspects, she had checked the time and told him that she was almost late for an appointment at her hair stylist, where she could pick up a few more useless yet thoroughly fascinating rumors.

Just by having lunch with one of the town’s busybodies, he’d heard most of the weird habits of the seemingly shadier citizens in the area, with each rumor followed by Molly proclaiming that she “didn’t judge no one”.
Which was good, because compared to any large city, the worst people in Devine were guilty of either getting drunk and fighting, or getting drunk and kinky. In some cases, really kinky. Thanks to her rather frank descriptions, he wasn’t sure he could ever look at another cow without gagging.
After leaving Molly’s house and wandering around for a few hours, he had concluded there wasn’t much else to do but get drunk. When the novelty of inebriation failed, people were going to be inclined to find something else to do. The town had no theaters or even any major department stores, though Molly assured him there was a fantastic flea market on the weekends. If that was the highlight of the week in Devine, he had a feeling the town needed to be renamed to Dull.
He reminded himself that the town was dry anyway, so just to get drunk, he’d have to walk a very long way to find a liquor store. To his mind, the only diversion left to him was masturbation, and Molly had killed the urge to try that, possibly for years.
Having already walked from one side of the town to the other, he suspected he’d worn out his entertainment options for most of the week, so while he ate, he worked out various ideas for finding a place to stay. The town had a cheap enough motel on Hondo, but Molly had already confirmed that both clerks working in it were terrible gossips, being major sources for her information. If he continued to just hang out, word was going to get around pretty quickly about a stranger in town. As it was, Molly might not last the day before calling a friend to gab.
“You should wait until tomorrow to worry about where to stay,” his reflection suggested, its voice sounding fainter as though the smaller size of his sunglasses reduced the reflection’s volume.
“I was wondering when you’d show up.” Jobe looked around and took a bite of his sandwich. “So what am I supposed to do tonight, if I’m not worrying about where to stay?”
“I’ve got a plan, but it’s complicated.”
Jobe swallowed slowly. “You know, the last time you said that I had to make my way out of a ventilation shaft maze without your help.”
“But you still got out,” The reflection said.
“I got out two minutes after the bomb exploded, and I almost ran right into the police,” Jobe complained.
“Yeah, well this is a little bit less complicated.”
Jobe frowned. “Can you give me a hint?”
“Yes,” the reflection confirmed. “We’re going to need a hostage.”

***

Wednesday 7:22 PM

“Hey Sam, wake up,” Wendy called out as she set down a tray with her brother’s dinner on the stand beside the bed.
Turning on the lamp, she smiled at his soft whimper of protest. She pulled back the covers and shook his arm gently, forcing herself not to think about how thin and pale Sam had become recently. He had always looked thin because of the vaccine, but over the last few months he had begun losing weight again, and the doctors had suggested that he wouldn’t last much longer.
The problem with their predictions was that Sam had shed weight and gained it back so many times that each new prediction was met with just a little less faith in the doctors’ skills.
Instead of getting up, he rolled away from her onto his stomach and tucked his arms under his chest while he grumbled something incoherently. “Don’ wanna.”
“Come on, Sam,” Wendy called in a louder voice. “I let you sleep right up until supper. You can’t sleep all day or we’ll have to call it a coma instead of a really long nap.”
“Ha ha,” Sam said and flopped his head over to one side to examine the tray. “So what am I getting this time?”
“Mac and cheese with tuna and peas,” Wendy chimed, smiling at her brother as he rolled onto his back and sat up against the headboard.
“Eh, it’s better than having chili and mac again. That chili kills my stomach.” He raised his arms to let his sister settle the tray across his lap.
“Yeah, I’m not too hot about it either,” Wendy agreed. “But it’s what mom left for me to make.”
“Hey, look on the bright side. After they get back, they’ll probably let you go to the mall when they drive to San Antonio on Sunday.”
“Maybe. It wasn’t supposed to be a very big job this time around,” Wendy said. “Dad said he hadn’t planned to travel with anything more than two pounds.”
“Well if you do get the chance to go, I’ll be sure to send a short cheap wish list for the candy store.”
“I got you another comic today,” Wendy announced.
Sam gave her an annoyed look. “Sis, you’ve gotta stop stealing those.”
“Ah, nobody really cares if I do,” Wendy said. “They all know you read them, so they let me take them and we go through the same routine every couple of weeks. I mean, if they really had a problem with it, they’d take the comics back from you, and I’d be headed for hard time.”
“Yeah, you’re going to Huntsville. With all your crimes, they’ll probably decide you’re too hardcore for the women’s prison,” Sam joked before spearing up a blob of macaroni on his fork. “But you know, even if you can

get away with it, you shouldn’t be stealing things for me. It makes me feel bad that you think you need to do that for me.”
“You still read the comics, don’t you?”
Sam swallowed the mouthful of macaroni and shook his head. “That’s not the point either. You stop stealing them, and then I’ll quit reading them.”
Wendy’s expression faltered as she looked away from her brother. “Sam, you need something to do, you know. Maybe it’s not much, but I’m trying to give you something to look forward to.”
“Sis, I’m not going to die if I don’t know what happens to Spiderman and the Flash once a month. Hell, I don’t even really care about them anymore. I am sixteen now. I might be getting tired of reading how heroes keep putting the bad guys in jail only to get away again. But every time they send them back and insist that some day, somehow, these psychopathic killers will just turn good and stop killing. I mean, no matter which hero we’re talking about, most of them have been on the job like twenty or thirty years, right?”
Wendy nodded and smiled faintly. “Yeah.”
“In all that time, they’re fighting the same ten or fifteen guys and every time, it’s because the bad guys are too strong to be kept in prisons, even in super prisons. Maybe I’m a cynic, but after the thirtieth fight with the exact same bad guy, would it really hurt Spiderman’s morals so much to just cover their face in webbing and walk away?” Sam asked in a skeptical sounding voice. “The stuff sticks for an hour, so it’s not like he even has to be there to watch them die.”
“That’s pretty sick, Sam.”
“No, Spiderman is sick. For every super villain he’s let live, there’s trails of bodies, and those trails makes something close to a river of blood on his hands for not being strong enough to admit that some people just need killing,” Sam declared. “For a super genius, he’s just about retarded.”
“Okay, so no more Spiderman, except for this next one. Which means I’m not stealing comics anymore. Will that make you happy?”
“Yes, very happy.”
“I’m not suggesting this might happen, but theoretically, if I was walking home and found a dirty magazine-”
“Oh God, sis! Shut up!” Sam groaned before weakly punching her in the arm. “Please don’t do that to me. It’s like you’re saying ‘here bro, why not look at something you’re never getting!’ That’s not even right.”
“Okay, yeah. It was a dumb thought,” Wendy agreed. “I just… I wanna do something for you, and there’s really nothing that I can do out here. Maybe if we lived in the city like we used to, I could…”
“Yeah, sis, that’s exactly it. There’s nothing you can do for me, not even in a city. The only thing a city could offer is more doctors,” Sam said before his brow furrowed in anger. “Besides, I think those doctors have done enough to

‘help’ me at this point.” He took another bite of macaroni, chewing it as he looked at his sister thoughtfully. “So who’s getting their ass kicked tonight?”
“What?”
“You’re wearing jeans in August, sis.”
Wendy smiled. “I got a little paranoid today over something, but I think maybe it’s just a false alarm.”
Sam regarded his sister with a more serious expression and shook his head. “You’re hiding something bad from me.”
Wendy considered lying, but realized anything she tried to use as an excuse would end up sounding like one. “I saw a car today, a black car. Only, I don’t think it was really there yet.”
Sam nodded before taking a drink of water from his cup. “Did Jamie see it too?”
“Yeah,” Wendy said. “He said he was trying to track it down, but if it’s not real, I don’t see how that’s possible. I might have screwed up, though. I told Davis about the car even though we hadn’t really found it yet.”
“You like him.”
“I do not,” Wendy objected.
“Yes you do. You like him because he talks to you and lets you ride in the front seat when he arrests you.”
“Please, they never really arrest me. No one reads me my rights. They just drive me down to the station and sit me in a chair for an hour long rant about how stealing is wrong.”
“Right, because it is wrong,” Sam said.
“So I won’t do it anymore.” Wendy smirked, though it faded quickly. “I was thinking of going out with Jamie tonight, if you’ll be okay by yourself.”
“I don’t know if it’s such a great idea. If you get hurt, there’s no way I’d know to call for help.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if I can just sit here and wait for this to happen. I think something bad is coming, but not even Jamie knows what it is.”
“Yet even knowing that, you’re going outside.” He sighed and frowned at her. “Now I see how the balance works in this family. You got the body, and I got the brains.”

***

Wednesday 9:15 PM

Molly tugged her cane off the arm of her recliner, rocking forward and pushing herself up slowly. She went to her grandson’s room, rapping gently on the door.
“Yeah?” Billy Crane called.
Molly opened the door to find her grandson sitting in front of his computer

with a game paused, his headphones looped around his neck and still playing music loud enough for her to hear it across the room. “Sweetie, before it gets too late, can you take the trash out?”
“Yeah,” Billy agreed, rolling his chair back from the desk and pulling his headphones off. “Hey, who was that weird guy you were talking to earlier today?”
“Well he said his name was Chuck.”
“The last name wasn’t Farley, was it?” Billy joked.
“He didn’t say, actually,” Molly said.
“Never mind.”
“But he did say he was here on vacation.” Molly uttered a small laugh. “Isn’t that just the strangest thing you ever heard?”
“It ranks pretty high,” Billy agreed while he tugged on his shoes, leaving them untied as he stood up. He stretched his arms out and popped his back. “So where is he staying?”
“He didn’t say that either. Come to think of it, I don’t think he really even had a car.” Molly looked up in thought. “I wonder how he got into town.”
“Well it’s no mystery there, grandma. He had to have arrived by bus.”
“Aren’t you a regular Sherlock Holmes?”
“Nah.” Billy grinned impishly at her. “Sherlock could tell you where the guy came from based on a fleck of dirt on his pants. I just figured it would be cheaper for a bum to take the bus and walk into town.”
“How do you know he was a bum?” Molly asked.
Billy’s smile widened. “Because he said he’s vacationing here,” he explained and shuffled past his grandmother to walk into the kitchen.
Tugging the bag up and out of the bin, he set it on the floor to tie off the corners. He lifted it and opened the door in the kitchen leading out onto the covered car port. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he glanced over at the neighbor’s dog when it started growling. The dog never growled at him, and he looked around more carefully.
Every direction seemed clear, but he still felt tense and uneasy. Taking much shorter steps, he moved cautiously to the corner of the house to peek around the front. Nothing. He looked back at the dog and went to the fence, kneeling down. “What? Tell me what you’re looking at.”
The dog stopped growling, licking its chops and whimpering lightly at him before looking back across the street intently. He turned, looking in the same direction and still finding nothing out of place. “Probably just a cat,” he reasoned to himself out loud.
The reassurance was enough to help shake the anxiety he felt, and he walked down the driveway to set the garbage by the curb. Behind him, the dog growled louder then began barking. He looked around again before shaking his head, deciding that it was definitely a cat even if he couldn’t see it.

He went back towards the house, giving a surprised yelp and pitching forward when he stepped on one of his laces. Hissing in frustration, he picked himself up off the ground, brushing bits of dry grass and dirt off of his knees gingerly.
He straightened up, just registering that someone was standing in front of him before they lashed out with a knife, plunging it into his throat and pulling it hard to the side. The blade tore its way free and Billy fell backwards, his hand reaching up to his gaping wound. He made a soft gurgling noise and went limp, bleeding out quickly.
The killer looked down at the boy as he died then knelt slowly beside the body.

***

Wednesday 10:42 PM

Wendy looked around at the sound of a car passing nearby, but it whizzed through an intersection a few blocks away without turning. She looked to Jamie skeptically. “We haven’t seen anything in three hours.”
“Yeah, I’m almost ready to give up, but I want to check that house one last time. Wendy, what are we supposed to do if we really find the car?”
Wendy thought it over for a few seconds. “Well, I guess we’ll take down the license plate, if we can, and then we can turn it over to the police. If it ends up being nothing, at least I’ll earn a few points with the cops now that I’m turning over a new leaf and not stealing comics anymore.”
“What are you going to do for fun now?”
“There’s always beating up boys.”
“Hey, check it out,” Jamie said and pointed to the house up ahead. “There’s a black car in the carport.”
“Yeah, but it’s shiny.”
“But think about what we saw. Not even the glass was shiny on the phantom car, so maybe it came through looking less real for us.”
“After everything else that’s happened today, you could probably convince me that a Martian was driving-” Wendy stopped, freezing in place when the tail lights on the car lit up. She hunched low and jogged quickly across the yard several houses away from the Lincoln to slip behind the car in the driveway.
The Lincoln backed into the street, swinging out and pausing for just a moment before it began to head up the street towards Wendy and Jamie. She held her breath, her gaze locked on the car as it passed by and turned onto Sayers drive before it sped up.
Wendy rose up and looked back at the house. “Do you think we’re too late?”

"Let’s check to be sure,” Jamie suggested.
“Shouldn’t you already know?” Wendy asked.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Jamie said. “Ever since we saw that car this afternoon, it’s like there’s a fog that has dropped over the city. I’ve lost track of everyone in town, and I can’t see any further out than you can at this point.”
“Then we’re definitely going to call the police if something’s gone wrong.” Wendy began walking down the driveway and back towards the house.
“You might have noticed I didn’t argue with you the first time.” Jamie fell into step beside his sister as he offered her a smirk. “Even if I could see what was coming, we’d still be better off leaving this to people who are allowed to use guns. Dad might have showed you how to shoot, but I doubt anyone is just going to hand you a pistol. Not with your reputation.”
“Yeah, you may have a point there,” Wendy conceded.
Jamie froze and Wendy turned to look at him. “We’re too late.” He pointed to Billy’s body lying in the grass close to the front of Molly’s house.
Following his finger, Wendy drew in a sharp breath and broke into a run towards the house. She stopped just over the body and shook her head. “Dear god.”
Billy’s stomach was slit up the center, and his intestines were pulled out and wrapped around his wrists and ankles. She noted how the killer had even put knots in the bindings, as though they expected that Billy might try to get away. She gave another look at the boy’s face frozen in an expression of fear before glancing to Jamie and closing her eyes to fight off the wave of nausea building in her stomach.
Jamie stepped closer to the body and knelt down. “Damn. Look at that.”
“I did, Jamie. I think I’ve seen enough,” Wendy said sickly and wandered onto the car port, looking towards the light coming from the open kitchen door. “Crap, there’s probably another body inside.”

***

Molly woke with a start, feeling vaguely confused as to what had woken her up. She blinked and looked to her left, checking the time on the wall clock. Slowly, she adjusted to being awake and took her cane, rising out of her chair to shuffle across the living room. She was headed for the bathroom, but when she cast a sideways glance into the kitchen, she noticed that the door was left wide open. Remembering that Billy had gone outside, she shook her head and sighed.
She went to the door to close it, intending to tell her grandson not to be so forgetful next time. Before she even reached the door, she could hear someone talking in a very low voice, and thinking Billy might still be outside, she stepped out into the covered car port.

***

Wendy heard the shuffles of Molly’s slippers on the pavement of the car port and she spun, feeling a wave of relief to see that the old woman was okay.
“Where’s my car?” Molly asked.
“Ma’am, go back inside and call the police. Someone… well, they just stole your car not two minutes ago. I was walking by with my friend, and we saw the whole thing,” Wendy said in what she hoped wasn’t an overly panicked sounding voice.
“Is Billy out here with you?”
Wendy shook her head. “No, I didn’t see anyone,” she lied and waved toward the door. “Look, just call the police now, and maybe they can still get your car back in one piece, all right?”
Molly wasn’t looking at Wendy, but she clearly wasn’t looking down either. Even if she did, Wendy was relatively sure that she couldn’t see the body sprawled out just around the corner of the house. Instead, she was looking past Wendy, and her expression grew more confused. “Chuck?”
Wendy turned her head to look across the street. She could barely see the outline of a man standing near the curb wearing a long trench coat with his hands stuffed into the pockets. She couldn’t make out any details of his face in the darkness, but even as she thought about it, the whole area grew brighter gradually.
She saw the man much more clearly then, and she found something oddly familiar about his sunken features. His dark hair was shaggy and unkempt, his bangs almost falling into his eyes. She found his eyes moving from the old woman to her, and then his thin lips parted into a small grin, revealing a row of uneven upper teeth.
His face was unfamiliar to her, and yet something about his appearance resonated within her memory, sending a shiver of fear up her spine. He looked like someone she knew, but she couldn’t figure out who.
Wendy looked up to see why the sky had brightened, and sure enough the clouds had parted, allowing the light of the full moon to illuminate the area. She looked towards the spot where the man had been, but she saw that he was already walking away quickly. “Stick to him.”
“Like glue,” Jamie agreed and took off at a run.
“What?” Molly asked before her senses finally alerted her to a scent on the wind. “What’s that smell?”
Wendy groaned, turning and walking over to the old woman. “Look lady, your car got stolen, and they’re getting away.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“No-”

“I can smell blood in the air!” Molly saw Wendy’s expression faltering for just a moment. “Something’s happened to Billy!” She tried to move around Wendy.
“Yes, something happened,” Wendy said as she took hold of Molly’s shoulders. “The person who took your car… they took Billy with them.”
“No…” Molly’s hands clenched once before her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped forward.
Wendy struggled to keep hold of the old woman as she eased Molly to the ground gently. “Hell, that was a no win situation. She’d have fainted either way.”
She went into the kitchen and found a phone mounted on the wall. Pulling down the phone, she dialed a nine before hanging up. She glanced up, chewing her lower lip as she looked around the counter. She found the phone book wedged behind a blender and dug it out, flipping though it slowly. After a few minutes of searching, she shook her head. Closing the book to check the cover, she groaned when she realized it was three years out of date. Tossing the book to the back of the counter, she picked up the phone and dialed zero.
“Operator assistance.”
“Yes, I need you to look up a number in Devine, and then dial it for me please,” Wendy said as she looked toward the open door. She knew that after making the call, she would have to drag the old woman inside to keep her from seeing Billy’s corpse. The memory of his body came to her again and she shuddered, trying to force the thought away.
Keys clicked on the phone line for what seemed like an eternity. “What name, please?”
“Davis Briggs,” Wendy replied.
More keys were struck rapidly. “I have the number. Please hold for the connection.”
The phone rang several times before someone picked up. In the background, Wendy could hear a movie playing on a TV, the volume still turned up loud. “Davis?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Who is this?” Davis asked.
“It’s Wendy. Listen, I’d call the guys at the station, but I think they’re going to end up calling you anyway. You need to get over to West Moore avenue, and I mean right now.”
“What’s the house number?”
Wendy cringed and berated herself for not thinking to look for the address. “I’m not sure, but believe me, you don’t need it. Just look for the house with the corpse in the front yard.”
“What?” Davis was almost shouting. In the background, the TV went silent. “Who’s dead?”
“I don’t know him, but the old lady living here called him Billy. He’s maybe

eleven or twelve, I think, but… well he’s cut up real bad,” Wendy said. “Davis, there’s something else. The old lady owns a black Lincoln. It’s shiny, but the windows are tinted really dark, just like I saw. That’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?” Davis asked.
“I’m pretty sure Billy’s killer just drove off in it.”

***

Thursday August 15th, 12:02 AM

Jobe quickened his pace as he worked his way north to get out of the town for a few hours. He knew that he’d need to return later in the night to pick up supplies, but for the time being, the area he needed to be in was going to be crawling with cops who were most likely already looking for him.
It had made sense in theory to see if Molly was willing to lend her couch for the night, but he’d arrived around the corner just in time to see Molly’s car pull away. He made plans to try his luck with a nearby abandoned trailer which wasn’t quite ready to collapse yet, but as he turned to head back the way he’d come, he saw a girl running towards Molly’s yard. He’d moved in closer and saw enough to know Molly’s grandson was dead, and the killer had stolen her car.
But by moving in to have a closer look, he’d exposed himself twice, potentially making him a suspect for Billy’s murder. To his mind, that made the vacation quite a bit less pleasant.
He walked in complete darkness and had moved so far from the city that there were no streetlights of any kind. The windows of the houses were black. Almost everyone had been asleep for a couple of hours. The quiet allowed him to replay the series of events over and over, and every time, he kept coming back to the girl’s reaction to the body. She didn’t scream, or even look particularly horrified. It was like she had already been exposed to something similar which partially desensitized her.
He took out his glasses and slid them low on the bridge of his nose. He needed information, hopefully a lot more than what he was working with.
“You have a tail,” his reflection said.
“What?” Jobe asked and spun into a low crouch. He scanned the street, his eyes flicking from one pool of shadows to the next to search for any signs of movement. “I got nothing. Tell me where to look.”
“What do you mean where?” the reflection asked. “There’s a kid that’s been following right behind you since you left Molly’s house.”
“Where? I don’t see anyone!” Jobe hissed.
“Never mind now, they saw you looking for them and took off. We can follow them, but I think he’s just going back to that girl,” the reflection said.
“Wait, there wasn’t anybody with the girl.”

“Yes there was. There was a boy about the same age as the girl. If I had to guess on looks, I’d say they were related,” the reflection insisted. “How could you miss him? Pale kid with curly short black hair and blue eyes? He’s just a little taller than the girl.”
“I’m still drawing a blank, possibly because nobody else was out there but the girl and Molly,” Jobe said.
“No, you’re wrong. How could you miss him? I mean, he didn’t run with her across the yard, but he was still only a few steps behind her.”
Jobe shook his head and sat down in the middle of the road to think. “Something weird is going on here. I see nothing, but you say a kid is following me. You saw the same kid back with the girl, and I didn’t see him at all.” He tapped his lower lip in thought and closed his eyes. “There’s something about the girl that’s been bothering me anyway. Why didn’t she freak out when she saw the body?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m trying to check on it in a few places. You shouldn’t be leaving town, though,” his reflection declared. “There’s still too much work to do for you to go wandering out of town just to avoid a few extra cops.”
Jobe nodded, getting up and heading back towards town. “So this girl and boy are a super twin team of some kind? Does the boy have powers of invisibility?”
“Silly as that may sound, I’m not discounting it yet,” his reflection said. “But at least now you have some idea of why this will be complicated.”
“Huh? Why what will be complicated?” Jobe asked.
“The girl is your hostage.”

***

Thursday 12:03 AM

Davis pulled his car to a stop and put it into park before he turned to look at Wendy in the passenger seat. “Are you okay?”
Wendy nodded as she gave him a weak smile. “Sadly, that’s not the first mutilated body I’ve ever seen.”
“You want to tell me about it?” Davis asked.
“No,” Wendy answered and turned to look back out the window.
“Will you tell me why you went out tonight?”
“Because sometimes I do stupid things like follow hunches. You know who the car belongs to now, so you have a license plate to look for instead of just stopping every black car you see.”
“About that,” Davis said. “Wendy, I went through the security tape at Pico, and there’s never a point after you leave that a black car passes in front of the store. Are you sure you saw it traveling through that intersection?”

Wendy turned to study him for several seconds before she shrugged. “It might have been Teel and I just got my directions mixed up. It doesn’t really matter either way. Some kid named Billy is dead, and I don’t think he’s going to be the last one.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Davis said.
“I think we do. Someone gutted that kid and bound his hands and legs with his own intestines…” She leaned away when he tried to reach out for her. “I said I’m all right, okay?”
“Okay,” He agreed quietly.
“Nobody kills like that and leaves it with just one victim. They were playing with him, and they’ll want to play with someone else soon.”
He wanted to say something, but his own gut instincts were telling him the exact same thing. He’d seen similar cases while working homicide in Austin, but after retiring to Devine and taking on a job with the local police, he’d grown used to the idea that he’d never need to look at a body that had been mutilated for the sheer pleasure of the act.
“I know this may sound stupid to you, but you should try to get some sleep,” Davis said.
“If you knew it was stupid, why would you suggest it?” Wendy’s mouth twisted in a half smirk. “There’s a killer in my town, his first victim isn’t much younger than me, and I’ve been privileged to see their handiwork first hand. No, I think it’s gonna be a long night for both of us. I imagine you’ve got some phone calls to make.”
“No, Gladys is handling that. They’ll wake Doug up, and he’ll take the boy’s body to…” Davis trailed off, looking to Wendy and offering a weak smile. “For a second, I almost forgot you’re thirteen.”
Wendy laughed tiredly. “For a second there, so did I.”

***

Thursday 12:09 AM

Gladys Humphreys, the night shift dispatcher of the Devine police department, looked up at the sound of the door opening. “Hey Davis, are you all right?”
Davis nodded to her. “Be with you in a minute. I’ve got to change out of these clothes.”
He went to the bathroom and dropped the duffle bag he’d carried in from the trunk of his personal car. Though he hadn’t needed a spare change of clothes since moving to Devine, the habit of keeping an overnight bag in the trunk had been a routine he hadn’t quite been able to break himself of. Every few weeks he had changed out the clothes with a fresh set, chiding himself the whole time that he ought to just take the bag out. Finally having a need

for the bag was really not a cause for celebration, and he reminded himself morbidly that using the overnight bag usually implied something bad.
He unbuckled his belt and set it on the floor. Leaning against the wall, he shucked his shoes off and dropped his pants before stepping out of them. He shrugged out of his uniform shirt then stripped off his t-shirt, allowing himself a moment to stand under the air conditioning vent to cool off.
Heaving a sigh of relief, he went to his bag and unzipped it to pull out a clean t-shirt. He put it on and looked in the bag, debating with himself if he really needed to carry his gun. He nodded to himself, taking his shoulder harness and slipping it on. He took his gun holster from his belt and attached it to the harness on his left side. He tugged on a light denim shirt next and buttoned only a few of the buttons. Grabbing a pair of black khaki slacks next, he slipped them on, tucking in his t-shirt before checking his reflection in the mirror.
The years, he decided, had not been quite as cruel as they could have been. Though his short dark brown hair was speckled with grey hairs, they hadn’t yet come out in a high enough population for him to call the color salt and pepper. He had high widow’s peaks, but he’d had them since his early thirties, and at forty-three they still hadn’t receded any further.
He ran his fingers loosely through his hair, which served as the closest attempt he made to having a style. Rubbing his cheek, he leaned over his bag again and dug out a small shave kit to clean himself up. He finished by splashing his face with a few handfuls of water. Tugging down a few paper towels, he dried his face and leaned in close to the mirror, trying not to be too critical of the black bags under his hazel eyes. Finally, he shrugged. Overall he decided that he looked more like Don Johnson, and less like Don Knotts.
“At least now I only look half dead,” he declared, figuring it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.
He packed up his uniform in the bag, slipping his badge off of his shirt pocket and stuffing it into the back pocket of his slacks. Finally, he settled his work belt on the top of the piled clothing and closed the bag before hefting it back onto his shoulder.
Gladys looked up at him with a nod of approval as he came back into the front office of the station. “You look better.”
“Thanks. Do you mind if I push you out of your chair to borrow your computer for a second or three?”
“No, go right ahead. It’ll give me an excuse to go make a fresh pot of coffee.” Gladys sighed as she pushed herself out of her seat. “It’s going to be a long night, I think.”
“For all of us,” Davis said as he sat down. Setting his bag beside him on the floor, he pulled the keyboard tray out and opened a browser to tap out an address for a search engine. He paused, considering what to search for before settling on: Wendy Stoffel +murder. He found a list of articles from various newspapers in Scottsdale Arizona.

“What are you looking up?” Gladys asked.
“I’m curious about Wendy,” Davis replied absently.
“The town witch?”
“Yep,” Davis agreed quietly. In truth, he didn’t like people referring to Wendy as a witch when everyone meant it more as a euphemism for bitch.
However, upon commenting on this turn of words once before to Gladys, he had learned a quaint new phrase: ‘Fuck ya if ya can’t take a joke’.
“Poor girl.” Gladys flicked on the coffee maker and walked back to her desk, leaning against the side of it. “Her folks are hardly ever around, so she’s left taking care of her brother most of the time.”
“Hmmm,” Davis mumbled.
“It can’t be easy growing up in a home like that. I think that’s why everyone gives her so much slack. If that girl really did get arrested, there’d be no one to care for her brother. Nobody wants that on their conscience.”
“No,” Davis said. “Gladys, can you find out if they sent Molly Crane to Bexar County? I think I might need to talk to her tonight after I finish up here.”
“Sure thing,” Gladys agreed as she moved to another desk to pick up the phone.
He opened another article with a later date, skimming through the parts he’d already read. He finished and closed the browser before he sat back and looked up at the ceiling.
On May ninth of nineteen ninety-one, Wendy had been kidnapped by a serial killer named Marcus Trent. She had been the third victim in five days, but something had happened that neither article was clear on. Marcus had called emergency services and died while talking to the dispatcher. The police and paramedics were sent, who found Marcus’ body laying face down by the phone with a Phillips screwdriver buried to the handle in his back, and Wendy locked in the basement with four broken ribs.
Later autopsy results also showed that Marcus had been struck on the back of the head by a paint can, and in the side of his head with a metal flashlight, but the actual order of events were a complete mystery because Wendy had remained silent on what really happened that day. Both articles went on to point out that it was not a figurative silence. Wendy had gone mute for four months after her kidnapping.
The first article had covered the story nine days after the police unlocked Marcus’ basement and found Wendy. She had led an officer by the hand to the deep freezer in Marcus’ basement, showing him the partially carved bodies of Marcus’ first two victims. But even with the police assuring her that she was safe, she did not speak to anyone following her rescue.
The second article had explained that she was placed in a state hospital for six months of observations, but while she had started speaking again after four months, she hadn’t ever told anyone what had happened in Marcus Trent’s basement.

Davis sat back, absently watching Gladys while he mentally sorted and resorted the details. Each time he tried, it seemed to him that he was attempting to put together a puzzle that had no reference to go by, and which many pieces were missing from.
The two articles he read concluded that Wendy had killed Marcus, but both suggested entirely different scenarios for how an eight year old girl managed to kill a grown man. In reading both, Davis couldn’t help but notice how implausible both ideas were. The police’s suggested order of events made even less sense, but even after going over the idea a few times, he couldn’t think of any plausible explanation that allowed for Wendy to have acted alone.
Putting it simply, in order for her to have survived, there had to have been someone else in the basement who helped her overpower Marcus. Davis nodded to himself, realizing that it possibly explained why she had remained silent. Perhaps she was protecting the person who helped her for whatever reason. Off the top of his head, he constructed a much more likely scenario where an adult had come to Wendy’s aid and then left. Anybody with a criminal history might have reason to run.
Even then, it seemed highly unlikely that Wendy would defend a complete stranger to the point of staying in a state mental health facility for six months. Ultimately, he came back to the possibility that she had killed someone before, and that knowledge put her hunt of the black Lincoln in a whole new light.
“Hey Davis, Molly is at Bexar County,” Gladys announced. “The nurse told me that she’s been medicated, and that she’s talked to a couple of highway patrol officers.”
“I’m going to head to San Antonio anyway, to see if she saw anything that might be helpful,” Davis said and rose from the chair before he retrieved his duffel bag.
“But shouldn’t you be off the clock by now?”
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” Davis asked sarcastically. “Overtime is mandatory when there’s a killer working your town.” He went to the coffee machine and grabbed a styrofoam cup, pausing as another stray thought occurred to him. He had a memory of Wendy sitting in his car, when he’d asked her why she went out. -Sometimes she acts on her hunches.-
He took his coffee back to his car, not hearing Gladys calling for him until she caught up to him in the parking lot. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“You forgot to take Molly’s room number,” Gladys said as she handed him a scrap of paper. “Maybe you ought to get some sleep first?”
“Later.” Davis walked to his car and pocketed the slip of paper before he opened the door.
He started the car and sipped his coffee as he considered what to do. Setting the cup between his legs, he put the car in reverse as he decided to drive to San Antonio first. He knew he would probably end up sleeping in

his car before driving to the station for another shift, but then he would need to talk to Wendy as soon as he got back on the clock.

***

Thursday 12:55 AM

Wendy’s shoulders were instantly rigid as she sat up in bed. Glancing around her darkened room, she couldn’t see what had woken her up so completely, but just confirming that it was empty hadn’t lowered her feeling of anxiety.
Rolling out of bed, she dropped onto the floor and opened the dresser by her bed to pull out a switchblade knife. She flicked the blade out as she stepped quietly to the door.
The house was lit faintly by the moonlight from the windows. The clouds had dissipated, and everything outside was bathed in an eerie soft light. Inside, the light was barely strong enough to create outlines of the furniture in the various rooms, but she felt certain it would be a mistake to turn any lights on.
She searched the rest of the house before moving up the stairs to check on Sam. She closed the switchblade and sat down on the bed beside her brother.
As the old springs settled enough to stop squeaking, she heard him breathing and felt panic rise in her chest for how shallow and faint it sounded.
She reached out to shake him, gasping when she found his arm was terribly hot. “Sam, no,” she whimpered, getting up and running down the stairs. She dashed into the dark kitchen and tugged the phone off the wall mount.

***

Thursday 1:16 AM

Jobe looked up at the full moon and smirked as he offered a soft howl to it. His mouth fell back into a tight frown when he returned his attention back to the highway.
He’d been sitting on the roof above the grocery store for an hour, and unless he was missing a few of their patrols, it seemed the murder had drawn down six highway patrol officers, a number he knew would probably double by morning. If someone else died, that number could swell to four times as many cops, probably even the FBI. The growing number of cops could easily ruin his vacation plans, though a nagging voice in his head had begun to complain that he wasn’t really on vacation any more.
He had a lot of voices talking in his head at any given time, but that little voice was beginning to sound more logical, even to the point of drowning out all the other voices.

The logical voice was calmly reminding him that for the time being, six extra officers on patrol was enough to ensure that he couldn’t break into the store and get supplies before a cop showed up. The town was just so small that any number of patrol cars could be to the store in minutes. Jobe knew that one of the highway patrol officers was cheating on his wife, but that was hardly a killing offense according to his internal moral compass. There was also the good chance that he would be confronted by one or more truly good cops. He could kill them if he had to, but he preferred to avoid the situation altogether by simply not picking up supplies just yet.
Turning and resting his back against the brick wall, Jobe tugged out his sunglasses and his pack of cigarettes. “All right, obviously, you know I can’t get supplies.”
“Of course not,” his reflection said. “You’re on vacation.”
“Yes, and?” Jobe asked, sighing when he realized he was about to smoke his last cigarette.
“And that means no bombs,” the reflection clarified.
“Should have seen that coming,” Jobe muttered and shifted his weight to lay down on his side. “I assume it will be safe to sleep here for an hour or so?”
“Yep,” the reflection said. “Good night butterball.”
“Yeah, g’night to you too.” Jobe tugged off the glasses and dropped them back into his pocket before he dug out his lighter.
Slowly he shifted around until he was lying flat on his back with his side pressed to the wall. He kept one arm raised and tucked under his head, while the other rested on his chest between drags from the cigarette.
He turned what little he knew over in his mind, giving a small nod after several minutes. “Yep,” he said as he crushed his cigarette out and pocketed the butt. “This is complicated all right.”