Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

Falling to his knees, then on his face, the cats scattering.

The killer calling his crew and using their little code, two rings, hang up, three rings, hang up. Whatever. Telling the boss, the schemer behind it all, I’m in.

Watching the house across the street, seeing Chase come and go. Now a van pulling up with an old man and a hot chippie with him, sliding into the garage. Watching the blinds part a little bit in the living room over there now, somebody staring back out at him.

Chase went for the cold spot and let it ice him down, the burning fury that threatened to consume his thoughts slowly being quelled until he could think again.

He stood watch, staring at the house for four hours. He heard Jonah and Angie in the guest room going at it. Maybe not so tired from the trip, after all.

Chase remembered being thirteen, and Jonah holding the mostly empty pint of Dewar’s and introducing him to the cute and less-cute girls named Lou. His grandfather had stolen the one Chase wanted to be with simply because he could. It had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power, which reminded him of Marisa Iverson and why Chase had called Jonah in the first place.

They were two of a kind. He’d been right. He needed Jonah.

Chase stood at his front window staring into the evening as it became night, wanting to kill someone.

B y the time Jonah was ready, Chase had a bag packed with a few changes of clothes and some personal items. There was nothing else he wanted from the house. The bag was out in the trunk of the Chevelle in the garage. He’d brought in many of Lila’s guns and laid them on the kitchen table.

“In case you want something to carry.”

“Yours?” Jonah asked.

There were things he would talk about and things he wouldn’t. Chase didn’t want to say anything about Lila to Jonah. The very act of discussing her with his grandfather seemed disrespectful to her memory.

So he said, “Yes.”

“Don’t need them right now. Got a.38 I like. But pack them up and bring them along. We might have use for them later.”

Chase still had Marisa Iverson’s 9mm and two.22s, all three of which he’d cleaned. He felt more comfortable with them than he did with any of Lila’s weapons. It was a complicated emotion that he couldn’t quite untangle.

But he knew that thinking about Lila would make him soft, even if only while holding her pistol. His concentration would fail, even as it was failing now, his mind wanting to take him back to her, to hear her laughter, think about her smile. He had to hold on.

Angie walked out of the guest room and picked up Lila’s twelve-gauge shotgun. She checked the load and racked it. “I’ll be able to hold the fort with this.”

“We won’t be far,” Jonah said. “We’ll cut through the backyard, circle around the block, come up behind the house.”

Mrs. Nicholson’s place was dark except for one dim light in the living room.

The sun had only been down a few minutes, but Jonah didn’t want to wait for fear the crew might come by and make a hit before he and Chase could get over there. They went out the back door, hopped the fence, and worked their way through neighboring yards, circling in a wide arc.

There was a sense of time moving very quickly now. The understanding that it was running out, or had already run out, and they could do nothing but wait for whatever was so nearby to strike. There was no averting it, no deflecting it.

Chase was very quiet but still louder than Jonah, who moved silently and kept to the shadows like he owned them. They spotted and avoided motion-detector lamps, property with dogs, a couple of loud households where rowdy cadres watched a late baseball game. Everybody was losing money on the Mets.

They got to Mrs. Nicholson’s backyard and eased through an overgrown hedge. Chase put a foot on the lawn and felt something brush his ankle. The cats were loose. Seven or eight of them, slinking about, pooling in the gray patches of light bleeding through the clouds. Their eyes glowed a fiery amber, and the curves of their fangs were outlined in blue detail. They mewled and me-owed. Whoever was inside had tossed them out and they were aggravated about it, maybe starved.

Jonah whispered, “Make sure none of them follow us inside.”

Chase and Jonah moved to the back door, which opened into the kitchen. Jonah let him take point, of course. He’d expected that too. He had a very clear image of getting gut-shot and lying there while Jonah ran away and ransacked Chase’s house, stealing Lila’s candlestick holders.

The thought of it made his shoulders tighten. Jonah noticed and put a hand on his back, pushing forward because he thought Chase had frozen with fear. The old man really never had known him at all.

Drawing his tools out of his jacket, Chase got to work. It took fifteen seconds to pop the door. He inched it open and squirted oil onto the hinges so there wouldn’t be any squeaking.

A sharp crew but maybe not sharp enough. The guy should’ve blocked the door with something-a chair, a beer bottle, a stack of glasses. Anything to warn him that somebody was coming in, but he hadn’t taken the precaution.

So, either an oversight or a trap.

Chase crept in, his grandfather at his heel.

Mrs. Nicholson and Freddy were seated at the kitchen table. Side by side. Their heads almost touching.

At least Chase figured it was them. Two body-sized shapes wrapped in garbage bags and cocooned with duct tape. The roll was still on the counter. The bodies didn’t stink all that much, considering. The cat piss smell overpowered it.

Chase thought, Because of me, because of my mistakes.

He tasted Marisa Iverson and didn’t know what it meant until he realized he’d bitten through his tongue and his mouth was full of blood.

The fire began to burn again but he fought off a wave of guilt and forced himself to stay focused. He pulled the 9mm, hating the feel of it in his hand but adoring its intention.

The guy was napping at the front window, sitting in a worn love seat with an MP3 player in his hand and the tinny sound of music coming from his earplugs. He’d been here a day or two and the boredom had made him sloppy.

He was slim, a little younger than Chase, with a pretty-boy roguishness and his hair moussed all to hell. Probably took him forty-five minutes every morning to affect that nonchalant hipster messiness. Dressed down in a wife-beater T-shirt and stained jeans. Young girls would’ve found him beautiful.

Chase didn’t get a pro vibe off this guy. Something was wrong.

He smelled setup but couldn’t see any kind of trap. He quickly walked up and cracked the fucker across the head with the butt of the 9mm. The guy’s eyes shot open and then quickly closed again as he tumbled to the floor. The solid thunk of metal on bone was so satisfying that Chase had to restrain himself to keep from doing it again and smashing the guy’s skull in.

Jonah had drawn his favored.38 and was searching through the small house. He returned and gave a headshake. Nobody else in the place.

First thing Jonah did was rifle the guy’s wallet and pull all the cash. Looked like three or four hundred bucks. Jonah pocketed it and checked the driver’s license. “It’s a fake. Shitty work too. Looks like it was glued together in a half hour. First time stopped at a traffic light he’d be busted. Name on it is Timmy Rosso. He can’t be a pro, sleeping on the job. They killed the old lady and her son and then suckered him into taking this fall.”

“Is he carrying a phone?”

Jonah found the guy’s cell and handed it to Chase. Only one number programmed in. Terrific, he thought. Now we have to go through this shit again.