James Moore - Blood Red

Brian Freemont put the phone back in its cradle, scowling the entire time. He was not a happy man.

He was about to be a lot less happy.

The sun was coming soon. It wouldn’t be long before the light of the new day covered the town and the people of Black Stone Bay rose from their sleepy little beds to start a new day among the conscious.

Out on the bay itself, the waters were almost calm. The waves that ran to the jagged shoreline merely tapped the stones instead of shattering against them.

Jason Soulis looked out at the waters and listened to the sighs of the wind and the water.

He was going to like this town. He did already. It was perfect for him.

The waters below him stretched as far as he could see, and the sky at their horizon was changing quickly, growing brighter. He smiled to himself and turned back to the great black mansion behind him. Albert Miles had promised he would like the place, and his old friend had been absolutely right. He had also promised that Maggie would be everything Jason was looking for, and so far she was showing a great deal of promise. Two of them in one day; he let himself chuckle at the thought. The lady in question certainly had initiative.

Yes, he supposed he would keep her.

Assuming she would be willing to be kept, which he doubted.

Jason Soulis walked to his new home, casting his eyes briefly through the window of the boy he had visited during the night. He could sense the woman that slept next to him, fitfully turning in her sleep: he suspected she was a lovely young lady, friendly and shy, and innocent. He would watch her over the next few weeks. She would probably surprise him if he let her.

The wind was still a soft murmur at his back, playing idly with his hair as he closed his eyes for a moment and listened. To the west, not too far distant, he heard a scream that brought a thin smile to his lips.

Someone had found his first victim. He’d been wondering how long it would take.

The car was a complete wreck. The front end had wrapped itself very neatly around a telephone pole, and the engine was halfway out of the hood. What was left of the windshield lay across the entire mess, covered with strands of hair and lightly drizzled in blood. The steering wheel looked more like a pretzel than a proper circle, and the seatbelt had been completely torn free of its moorings.

Brian Freemont looked at Alan Coswell and shook his head. “You mean to tell me someone got out of this and walked away?”

“Screw that.” Coswell lit a cigarette, careful to step away from the wreckage, just in case there might be some gasoline left in the area. It wasn’t very likely. The car had been there for at least a day and the spillage from the ruined tank had long since evaporated. “What I want to know is how anyone driving down this road could miss the fucking car sitting here.”

Brian kept his voice as calm as he could; he was doing a damned fine impersonation of a sane man as far as he was concerned. “No street lights. Not a lot of traffic out here, except on the weekends. Hell, the only thing down this way is a make-out spot.” He knew it well. He’d used it a few times back in high school and a lot more often since he’d joined the force. This was one of his favorite roads for finding a little action on the side.

He thought about a few of his recent conquests. The girls he’d had along the side of the road were pleasant distractions. It was easier than focusing on the shit his life had become in less than twenty-four hours.

Coswell snorted and coughed, a chest cold doing its best to work itself deep into his lungs. That was what he got for being a smoker as far as Brian was concerned. The fact that Coswell felt like shit also helped Brian stay outwardly calm in the face of personal disaster.

His life had become absolute hell since the phone call the day before. Piece by little piece his entire life had slipped down into a cesspool, and it didn’t look like he could do a damned thing about it until the next time the badly disguised voice on the phone called him.

“Jesus Christ, Freemont! Are you even listening to me?” He turned to see Coswell glaring at him. The man’s fat face and walrus mustache always annoyed him, but he was a sergeant, so Brian faked giving a damn.

“Sorry. I was trying to figure out what happened to the body.” It was a lie, of course. He couldn’t have cared less. Nothing much mattered right now except getting his world back in order, before everything else could crumble away.

“Come look at this shit.” He moved his flashlight over a section of the car’s front. Brian nodded as he walked around the rear of the vehicle. They hadn’t looked over there yet.

It was hard not to see the marks once they were in view; there was nothing subtle about them. There were two hand-prints imbedded deep into the metal on the front passenger’s side. The metal had crumpled around the indentations, and the paint had been lifted completely away, as if it had adhered to the hands that struck the side of the car.

“What the fuck?” He moved closer, crouching next to the door to study the deep dents. “I mean, damn. Should we get the fingerprint kit out?”

Coswell snorted his laughter. “Yeah, kid. Lemme just yank that outta my ass for ya.” He rolled his eyes and started back toward the cruiser. “I’m gonna see what’s taking the damned detectives so long.”

Freemont glared at the other officer’s back, and looked again at the car in front of him. The sheer force of the blow that would have left a mark like what he was staring at now would have been enough to shatter the bones in any person’s arms like they were cheap glass. It might explain why the car had been abandoned. No one would want to stay around to face the police if they’d smeared someone all over the side of the road. The police seldom understood about that sort of thing. They tended to suggest a few years in jail as a good method of getting over the guilt.

The longer he looked, the more puzzled he grew. He looked at the trajectory of the car and studied the ground leading to the crash site. The skid marks were obvious for only around four feet and then they left the road a good fifty feet or more from where the vehicle now rested. It was either going at an incredible speed on the back road or…

“No fucking way.” He scowled and walked up to the road and the deep black rubber trails that were obviously new enough to associate with the crash.

Brian Freemont was not stupid. He might not have been a rocket scientist, but he’d studied hard to get through the academy and he’d also studied on the side as well, learning all he could about accident scenes and forensic pathology along the way. One day he planned to get back to school and learn enough to get himself set up as a coroner. It was an elected position and technically you didn’t even need to have a medical degree, but he wanted to do it right. He had dreams, and they didn’t end with a little college-grade pussy on the side of the road now and again. His conquests with the girls were strictly a bonus, not a life-long ambition. The point being that, even though he was hardly the most honorable man, he knew what he was looking at with better than average knowledge.

The skid marks never even turned away from the course of the road. The vehicle had never swerved. It had been driving along nice and easy—probably at around 30 miles per hour too fast for the road conditions—and then it met something that hit it hard enough to push it off the asphalt and through the air, at least fifty feet.

And that something had hands.

Brian looked the evidence over again, ignoring Coswell as the man came back from the patrol car and stared hard at him.