Stirred

“Yo, she’s psycho, Chris, come on, quit messin.”

“I’m coming around to your way of thinking,” Donaldson said. “Lots of cornfields around here. Maybe we could take a little siesta.” He turned to the boy. “Do you youngsters like beer?”

“You got beer?”

“We also have candy,” Lucy said. “We’re going to a party. All your friends will be there. Your parents said it was okay. I just talked to them.”

“Chris, this is whack, let’s bounce.”

“Oh shit,” Donaldson said. “Jack’s coming out, look.”

Lucy glanced through the windshield, spotted Jack and some man walking out of a townhouse on the far side of the complex.

The two teenage wiggers had made what was probably the only intelligent decision in their young, white trash lives, and had taken off.

“Too bad,” Donaldson lamented, watching them go. “My tube was getting hard.”

He started the car.

“What are you doing?” Lucy said.

“Following Jack.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Don’t you want to know who Jack was visiting?”

“Yeah, but we’ll lose Jack.”

“We know where she lives. We can always pick her up again. But who’s so important that Jack drove all the way out to Peoria to see them? This might be someone we need to talk to. Or someone to use as leverage.”

Donaldson grunted. “Yeah, all right.” He killed the engine and jammed the Beretta down the chest pocket of his overalls.

Jack Daniels’s Juke hauled ass out of the parking lot, tires squealing.

“She’s going somewhere in a hurry,” Lucy said.

Donaldson opened his door and struggled up out of the Monte Carlo.

It took Lucy three tries to muster enough inertia to hoist herself out of the seat.

Finally standing on her pushpin legs, she felt lightheaded. A wave of crippling pain swept through her. She braced herself against the car, took a deep breath.

“You all right?” Donaldson asked.

“Yeah. I’m go

“How many we got?”

“Fifteen.” And it had been a hard-fought fifteen. Lots of pain-loaded nights in order to save them up.

“We’ll apply fresh ones when we get back to the car. Or maybe we’ll get lucky, and our little home invasion will result in some meds.”

They limped across the parking lot together like a pair of crippled demons, and by the time they reached the stoop to number 813, they were both panting so hard they had to stand there for two full minutes, recovering from the exertion.

“You ready?” Donaldson gasped, pulling the Beretta out of his overalls.

“I don’t have a weapon.”

“If I recall, your weapon was dragging people behind your car for miles, then spraying them with lemon juice.”

“Organic lemon juice,” Lucy corrected.

“You’re such a tree-hugging hippie. Do you want to go out and score some lemonade before we bust in? Or maybe some granola?”

Lucy shook her head. “Just don’t mess it up, fat ass.”

Donaldson made a sad, three-fingered fist, and pounded on the door.

After a while, slow, heavy footsteps approached from the other side.

As soon as the door cracked open, Donaldson shoved the Beretta into the homeowner’s face.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Um…Violet.”

“Are you alone?”

A hesitation, then, “Yes.”

“We’d like to talk to you, Violet. You can open the door, or I can blow your brains out the back of your head. Your call.”

The door opened.

Lucy’s heart rate accelerated. It was an even bigger rush than morphine. God, she missed this shit.

They forced their way inside, Lucy deadbolting the door behind her.

The place stunk of stale cigarettes and beer and desperation. She turned to look at Violet, amused to find a morbidly obese woman in a housedress so big it could’ve been a circus tent. Except there wouldn’t be any customers who’d pay to sit under that big top.

Lucy remembered back to a guy who’d given her a ride. Before she’d met Donaldson. A long time ago. A lifetime ago.

The driver had been fat.

He’d also been a lot of fun.

Every extra pound of fat a person carried required an extra three and a half miles of veins and arteries to supply it with blood.

Which meant that fatties bled.

A lot.

And Lucy loved blood.

March 31, 8:30 P.M.

Luther stands glaring at the desk clerk.

“No, that won’t work. I need a room on the twelfth floor.”

“Sir, here at the Renaissance Blackstone, we strive to make—”

“Yeah, I don’t give a shit about that. I just want a room on the twelfth floor.”

The desk clerk sighs but maintains her pleasant exterior. She turns her attention back to the computer screen, fingers tapping furiously at the keys. “Sir, all we have is a suite, but—”

“I’ll take it.”

“—it’s four seventy-five a night.”

Luther reaches into his wallet and throws down the stolen plastic.

• • •

It takes him five minutes to get the screws out of the windowpane in his suite on the twelfth floor, and even then, the window will only crack open six inches—suicide prevention measures.

But it’s all he needs.

He reaches down into his duffle bag and lifts out the bubble-wrapped package. Sitting on the windowsill, he has to press his face into the glass to get a decent look down the twelve floors to Michigan Avenue.

Lots of cars out, but pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk is fairly light.

He shoves the package through the opening in the window and watches it fall.

• • •

Three minutes later, Luther pushes through the revolving doors and walks outside.

A fine drizzle is falling.

He moves twenty feet up the sidewalk and stops where the package has finally come to rest after a hard bounce that had nearly taken it into Michigan Avenue.

Reaches down, lifts it, cuts through the packing tape with his Harpy.

It takes him a moment to unwrap the numerous layers, but he finally gets down to the device, which looks intact.

Moment of truth.

He slides the release button to power it up.

He smiles.

Damn sturdy piece of engineering.

March 31, 9:00 P.M.

I stared at my computer screen, looking at the crime scene photos Herb had e-mailed me, trying to make sense of it.

Two people killed for no apparent reason, beyond sending me some kind of message.

But what was the message? For me to be afraid?

Got that. Loud and clear.

“Hungry?” Phin asked, poking his head through the door. He was still mad at me, and had refused to accept my apologies or even discuss what happened earlier.

I could have gone for some ice cream, or nachos, or sardines—better yet, all of the above mashed into a single bowl—but I told him, “I’m okay.”

He left without replying.

I’d walked Duffy when I got home from Violet’s, but he hadn’t given up the goods. I wondered if feeding a dog a box of laxatives was dangerous. I also wondered, after the ring appeared, if I’d even want to wear it knowing where it had been.

Assuming I said yes to Phin’s proposal.

Assuming that proposal was even still on the table.

I turned back to the monitor, staring at the photograph of the large cardboard box labeled FISH FOOD.

There had been another book, this one the Andrew Z. Thomas thriller The Killer and His Weapon, found in a baggie in Marquette’s stomach. The baggie read: