Hobbled (20 page)

When he had the door sufficiently open, Danny stood at the edge of it so he could see both sides of the door at the same time. And both ends of Granger.

The poor dog looked up at Danny with the saddest eyes Danny had ever seen. He also appeared to be considerably embarrassed.

Danny took a minute to consider the problem. Should he push Granger’s back end on out, or poke his front end back in? Hmm. Since there were teeth on the front end, and Granger was looking none too happy to say the least, Danny thought he might try pushing the back end through first.

So he did. He had to fold up Granger’s back legs like a card table to do it, but once he had the legs out of the way, the rest was a cinch. He put both hands to Granger’s fluffy ass and shoved. Granger,
all
of Granger, popped out onto the back mat. It was like the miracle of birth, sort of, but without the mess and the gore and the histrionics.

The minute Granger was free, he gave himself a shake and took off across the yard, heading for the pool. No “thanks”. No “appreciate the help”. Nothing.

Since Danny was still naked, he couldn’t very well follow the ungrateful mutt. There was a mountain of dirty laundry piled atop the clothes dryer, so Danny scrounged through it until he unearthed the cargo shorts he had worn a couple of days ago. They smelled like mildew, but what the hell. Once he tugged them on, he set out across the back lawn to retrieve Granger. Pets were sure a pain in the ass.

The grass was cold and wet on his one bare foot that wasn’t encased in cement, and the backyard was dark. Even the pool lights were off, so Danny carefully edged his way around the water. The last thing he wanted to do was fall in. His cast would drag him to the bottom, gasping for air, before he knew what hit him.

Then he pulled up short. He suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. Weird. He looked up toward his bedroom window, thinking maybe Luke was staring down at him. But the window was dark and empty. No Luke.

There was some ambient light from the streetlight at the front of the house, so Danny wasn’t totally blind. He watched Granger head straight for the back fence. It was dark as hell back there, what with the six-foot-tall fence and all the hibiscus plants and the looming shadow of the house blocking the streetlight out front. As luck would have it, the moon also chose that moment to duck behind a fat black cloud, making it even darker. Great.

And Danny
still
had the feeling he was being watched.

“Granger,” Danny hissed. “What is it, boy? Where you going?”

Granger didn’t answer. But someone else did.

A human voice in a high-pitched whisper hissed back, “Shut the hell up, dipshit! You’re gonna get us caught!”

Danny squinted into the shadows, but he couldn’t see a thing. He could hear Granger licking and snorting and sounding all happy though. That eased Danny’s trepidation somewhat, but he still wasn’t exactly ecstatic.

What the heck was going on in his backyard, anyway?

“DeVon? Bradley? If that’s you guys in the bushes there I’m going to throw your asses in the pool.”

“Shut up, man! It’s just me!”

That whisper belonged to Bradley. Danny recognized it now. The little shit.

“Bradley, what the hell are you doing?”

“Investigating!”

Danny was furious. “It’s after midnight! I don’t imagine your folks are up for Parents of the Year, huh? Why aren’t you home in bed? And where is the darker half of your daring duo?”

Danny could see Bradley now. He was crawling out from under a hibiscus bush. He was pointing at the fence. “DeVon’s in
there.
So be quiet. You’ll get him caught. And get this dog out of my face!”

Granger was being playful, licking Bradley’s nose. Licking his ears. Licking his neck. Or maybe he was just trying to get the twigs out of the kid’s hair since Bradley looked like he had just crawled through a blackberry patch, snagging briers and branches and leaves along the way like he was swathed in Velcro.

And still, even with all the greenery stuck to his clothes and poking off the top of his head, there was a rope of red licorice dangling from his mouth. It was as dirty as he was. No surprise there.

“DeVon’s in
where?”
Danny spat in a homicidal whisper. He didn’t really need to ask that question. He had a horrible feeling he already knew the answer.

Once again, Bradley pointed at the fence behind him. “He’s checking out the blood. We saw it from the tree over there.” The kid pointed to an oak tree half a block away. “We wanted to get on your roof to check it out closer, but we couldn’t figure out how to get up there. You don’t have a ladder, do you?”

“No!” Danny snapped. “And if I did I wouldn’t give it to you. What blood are you talking about?”

“The blood on Childers’s driveway.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Oh, yeah, fruit loop? What do you think of this, then?”

And reaching into his trouser pocket he pulled out something wrapped in a tissue. He waved it under Danny’s nose. Bradley had a smirk on his face Danny would have given twenty bucks to slap off.

Danny wasn’t about to touch whatever it was the kid was holding out to him. “What’s that?” A moment later, Danny asked, “What’s that smell?”

“Finger,” Bradley said. “I think it’s going bad.”

“What do you mean, a finger? You mean, like, a
finger?”

Since Danny looked like he had no intention whatsoever of taking the little tissue-wrapped bundle out of Bradley’s hand, Bradley heaved a big put-upon sigh and unwrapped the bundle himself. When he was finished, he held something out to Danny, dangling it from his thumb and index finger.

Holding his nose, Danny leaned forward to better see it in the moonlight.

It
was
a finger. A human index finger. It still had the fingernail on it.

Danny hopped three feet back. “Holy crap! I’m gonna barf! Where the fuck did you get
that?”

“Frederick,” Bradley said.

Danny was feeling really stupid all of a sudden. “Huh? You mean my cat?”

“Yeah. He was playing with it on my back porch. Him and Childers’s orange tabby. Your cat’s girlfriend. I think they were going to eat it.”

“But—but—where would they get something like that?”

And again, Bradley jerked his thumb at the back fence. “Over
there
. Like I told you, there’s blood on Childers’s driveway. Right in front of his garage. Probably from when he cut the guy’s finger off.”

“What guy?”

“The latest victim.”

“
Who
cut the finger off?”

“Childers.”

A hand came down on Danny’s shoulder, and he almost had a stroke. He spun around so fast he damn near passed out. Words cannot describe how relieved he was to see Mr. Dinkens standing behind him. The man looked just as gangly and out of place as he always did. He was dressed in coveralls, like maybe he had been working on his car or something. Danny wondered if Mr. Dinkens
ever
slept.

Dinkens was about six and a half feet tall, weighed less than a jar of peanut butter, and was as ugly as a mud fence. Still, he looked friendly enough, and Danny was relieved to see it was only him and not some homicidal maniac.

“What’s happening?” Mr. Dinkens asked, situating his glasses a little more firmly on his beak of a nose. “Family reunion? Neighborhood block party?” Danny guessed he was trying to be funny.

Bradley hastily stuffed the severed finger in his front pocket. “Yeah,” he chirped. “That’s it. Neighborhood block party. Very funny, Mr. D. You’re a regular comedian. By the way, the family reunion is
next
week.”

Mr. Dinkens looked down at Bradley as if he had never seen a kid before in his life. Or maybe it was all the weeds and shit that Bradley had stuck all over him that threw Mr. Dinkens for a loop. Anyway, he didn’t seem too impressed.

He finally tore his gaze away from Bradley with a grunt and centered it on Danny. He stared at Danny for the longest time, taking in his bare legs and bare chest and the baggy cargo shorts barely hanging from Danny’s hips. Danny was just beginning to get uncomfortable about all the staring the guy was doing when Dinkens finally focused his eyes on Danny’s face. “Well, let’s try to keep the racket down to a minimum, boys. Some of the neighbors might be trying to sleep.”

With his civic duty apparently satisfied, Mr. Dinkens did an aboutface and sauntered off toward the front of Danny’s house on his long, gangly legs, where presumably he would work his way around to the other side and go the fuck home.

Two seconds later, as Danny was just about to start interrogating Bradley again about the finger, another hand came down on his shoulder. This time Danny came really, really close to pooping his pants. Jesus. He needed to start taking tranquilizers or Kaopectate or something.

When he spun around this time, Danny found Luke there. A vast improvement over Mr. Dinkens. Luke was wearing Danny’s black bathrobe. He was rubbing his eyes and fighting back a yawn like he had just woken up, which he undoubtedly had.

“What’s happening?” Luke asked, looking down at Bradley. He was squinting because he hadn’t put his glasses on. “We having a dipshit party?”

“Yeah,” Bradley chirped. “And now that you’re here, we can start. Want some finger food?”

The kid fished around in his pocket, then held up the bloody stump of the finger for Luke’s benefit. Seeing as how he got a pretty good reaction earlier from his boyfriend, Danny, maybe Bradley would get a pretty good reaction from the other gay boy too. He hoped so anyway. Gay guys looked pretty funny when they were scared shitless.

“Fuck is that?” Luke asked with a shudder. He took a good long look at the finger; then he turned to Danny, then back to Bradley. The little troll.

“What the fuck’s it look like?” Bradley simpered.

And then they
all
jumped three feet into the air when somebody roared on the other side of the fence. It wasn’t good roaring either. It was angry roaring. Somebody was
pissed!

“Go home!”
a voice boomed in the darkness, making all three of them cringe.

Two seconds later, there was a god-awful clatter by the fence, and a moment after that, DeVon came flying over the top of the fence like he had been shot out of a catapult. Jesus, the kid was
moving.

He landed on his feet running and didn’t bother looking surprised to see Bradley and Danny and Luke all standing there watching him. He merely shagged ass right on through. In his dark face, his eyes were as big and white as Ping-Pong balls in the moonlight. He disappeared around the front of Danny’s house, leaving everybody a little stunned.

“See ya,” Bradley said and took off after his friend.

Left alone, Danny and Luke turned toward the fence at the back of Danny’s yard, not knowing what to expect next.

What they didn’t expect to hear was laughter.

It was coming from Mr. Childers’s backyard.

Luke snagged Danny’s hand and quietly dragged him back to the house. A moment later, Granger followed.

Remembering that creepy laugh, Luke shuddered as he locked the door behind them.

Chapter11

W
HEN
they were safely inside the house, Luke turned to Danny. He looked almost as creeped out as DeVon had, just before the kid took off like a bat out of hell for parts unknown.

“What just happened?” Luke asked. “Was that really a finger?”

“Looked like it,” Danny said. “Kid said he took it away from Frederick and Childers’s cat on his back porch. It’s possible. Fred is always dragging something around. The other day it was a crow on the dining room table. Bird guts everywhere. Childers’s cat is probably just as bad. The two are seeing each other, you know.”

“How romantic,” Luke said.

“I know.”

Luke thought things over for a minute. “But the kids think the finger came from the killer cutting off somebody’s finger? Like—
torture?
The killer they were talking about on
TV?
The killer on the
news?
”

“Those kids are weird. No telling what they think. That finger could have come from anywhere. Somebody could just as easily have lost it in an accident. Then Frederick came along, thought it was a cocktail wienie, and took off with it.”

“That’s a little far-fetched,” Luke said. And they both knew it was true. People don’t just go around accidentally chopping off fingers left and right. And when they do, they usually pick them up and take them to the emergency room with them to be sewn back on. Gads.

Danny took a big fluttery breath. This night was a little too exciting for his taste. If he was going to have an exciting night, he’d rather have sex involved. Sex with Luke. Not disconnected body parts. Danny preferred his body parts (and Luke’s) still very much connected, thank you very much. Possibly even joined together in some way or other.

“They said they saw blood on Childers’s driveway. DeVon went over the fence to check it out. I wonder what he found.”

Luke shrugged. “Who knows. Sounded like he got caught, though. Whatever Childers is doing, he now knows he’s a suspect. At least in the eyes of the miniature detective squad. Those goofy kids are going to get themselves killed.”