Hobbled (26 page)

Stupid humans.

T
HIS
was the first time Danny had ever been on Mr. Childers’s property. It was a big lot, nicely maintained, with a ranch style house in the front, a two-car garage set at an angle behind the house, and a lot of southwestern style landscaping: sandy ground, succulents everywhere, wagon wheels propped up here and there, a terra cotta Mexican peasant snoozing under a ceramic sombrero that doubled as a bird bath. Tacky. There was also a cactus around every corner. And they were big.

“Yeeouch! Luke hissed. “Watch out for the cactus!”

Mr. Childers’s backyard was almost as dark as Danny’s, but not quite. The sandy soil was a lighter color than Danny’s grass, and even without moonlight, they could pretty well see where they were going.

Luke and Danny found DeVon and Bradley waiting for them at the corner of the garage.

“Jesus,” DeVon growled. “You finally decided to show up, huh? What were you doing? Smooching and declaring your undying love for each other under the fucking bushes?”

Bradley giggled. Luke and Danny ignored them both. Mostly because smooching and declaring their undying love for each other was
exactly
what they had been doing.

Danny looked down to make sure his ankle monitor was still green. It was. He knew he couldn’t go much farther before it switched to red and every cop in San Diego would be chasing after his ass.

DeVon pointed a finger toward the concrete apron leading into the garage. There was a big stain right in the middle of it which stood out clearly against the pale color of the driveway.

“See that? That’s blood,” DeVon whispered. “Childers didn’t even try to clean it up, the dumb shit. DNA evidence for the cops.”

Danny wasn’t convinced. If Childers was a serial killer and he chopped off some guy’s finger in the middle of his driveway, Danny couldn’t imagine the guy not hosing away the evidence pronto, or more to the point, doing the dastardly deed in a more secluded location to begin with. “Probably antifreeze,” he said.

And DeVon grumped, “Think what you like. I know better.”

Luke had been studying the terrain. The house was small and neat. One story. Every light in the place was off. Even the yard lights. The garage doors were closed up tight.

“How do you know his car is gone?” Luke asked.

DeVon pulled a small flashlight from his pants pocket. He grabbed Luke by his shirttail and dragged him toward a window in the side of the garage. As he shined the light through the glass, all four of them stuck their heads together and looked inside. The garage was empty except for the usual crap stored around the edges. Tools, boxes, washer and dryer. An old chifforobe. On the far side of the garage, in the space designed for a second car, Childers had set up a gym, with a Nautilus machine, a treadmill, a Bosu ball, and an old TV perched on an orange crate that he presumably used to watch exercise videos while he worked out.

No wonder the guy was such a hunk, both Danny and Luke thought. But they had the good sense not to say it in front of the kids or they’d never hear the end of it.

“See?” DeVon said. “No car.”

“And no cute blond kidnappee chained to the wall either,” Danny huffed with exasperation.

“Maybe he’s in the house,” Bradley said. He was chewing on a licorice stick again. Danny could smell it, and he could hear the kid gnawing on it like a cow ripping at a bale of hay.

“Or maybe he really is dead and Childers carted him off to get rid of the body,” Danny muttered.

Luke couldn’t believe his ears. “You’re not buying into all this, are you?” He turned on DeVon and demanded point blank, “If you don’t show me some real evidence in the next five seconds, I’m leaving, and I’m taking my easily hornswoggled lover with me.”

“Wow,” Bradley breathed, turning to DeVon. “They really are gay. Lovers, no less. You were right. I owe you fifty cents.”

They all jumped straight up into the air when the garage door suddenly started clattering up into the ceiling: squeaking, rattling, groaning. It sounded like it hadn’t been oiled for, like, eighty or ninety years.

As soon as the four of them finished executing their tandem leap of fear, they hunkered down against the wall of the garage and prayed to God they wouldn’t be discovered by whoever it was who had just opened that damned door. Except for the garage, there was nothing nearby to hide behind. If whoever it was decided to walk around the corner, there was no way they wouldn’t be spotted.

They waited for the sound of footsteps. Nothing. Then suddenly headlights swept across the fence behind them as a car turned in off the street. It rumbled straight up the driveway and steered into the garage while the four of them hunkered even lower. The radio was blasting disco music. Must be an oldie station, Danny thought. Disco music to Danny was somewhat akin to a guy in a powdered wig playing minuets on a clavichord. Ancient.

The motor and the radio went dead at the same moment. Two car doors squeaked open and they heard two pair of feet hitting the garage floor. One set of footfalls had a solid thump to them. The other set was kind of clicky and clacky. All four of them knew what that clicky-clacky sound meant. Whoever, the second person was, she was female, and she was wearing high heel shoes.

Their suspicions were confirmed when they heard a woman’s high-pitched squeal of laughter.

“Ooh, Mike,” the woman tittered. “You have a Bosu ball!” Danny didn’t think she sounded like a card-carrying member of Mensa. “Oh, and a medicine ball too! You must work out a
lot
.” And she tittered again. Bimbo city, Danny thought. He could feel Luke silently giggling beside him and flapping his wrist around in the air making fun of the poor broad.

They heard the boom of Mike Childers’s masculine voice crooning right back at her. “Let’s go in the house and I’ll give you a tour of the rest of my balls.”

The woman tittered again, and Danny couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t mind taking that tour himself. Beside him, Luke was laughing so hard he was practically peeing in his pants. His face was so red from trying to do it silently that Danny wondered if he was about to have a stroke.

Bradley was holding his hands over his mouth trying not to laugh too. DeVon was just looking mad. This turn of events was not one he expected at all. If Childers was straight, then how the hell could he be a gay serial killer?

Danny gathered up his courage and peeked through the garage window. He saw Mr. Childers with his arm around a petite little thing in a miniskirt and stiletto heels, and from Danny’s viewpoint, it didn’t look like either one of them could keep their hands off the other.

Childers steered the woman through the garage door, hit a button on the wall as he passed, and the garage door started sliding back down behind them, still squeaking, rattling, and groaning, just like it had when it went up. As soon as the door banged shut, the garage light went out.

The four of them held their breath, still afraid Childers might for some ungodly reason peek around the corner of the garage and catch them lurking in the shadows. But their fears were for naught. The footsteps clattered up the walk to the back door of the house, mixed with the sounds of a few more feminine giggles and some sexy masculine cooing. It seemed Mr. Childers had some moves when it came to members of the opposite sex. They heard a tinkle of keys, the squeak of a door opening, and a second later the squeak and bang of a door closing.

The lovebirds were inside.

DeVon, Bradley, Danny, and Luke took that as a cue to breathe again.

But Luke was furious.

“I’m out of here. So is Danny. This guy isn’t a killer. And he never
was
one.”

Bradley scratched his head. “I’m not sure that sentence makes a whole lot of sense.”

Luke grabbed Danny’s arm and dragged him toward the back fence.

At that moment, they heard a cry that stopped them dead in their tracks. The cry did not come from inside Childers’s house. It didn’t come from his garage either. It came from somewhere else. All four of them seemed to be looking in different directions, trying to decide where the sound had actually originated.

A moment later, a sob could be heard. Just one short sob, then silence. Danny thought that truncated sob was absolutely the saddest sound he had ever heard in his life. Full of pain. Full of anguish. Full of terror. The way Luke’s arm came out to pull him close, he figured it must have had the same effect on Luke. Danny ignored the shivers skittering up his back like mice with little cold feet. The truth hit him like a 2-by-4 to the back of the head.

“We’re in the wrong place!” Danny hissed at Luke. “We’ve got the
wrong house!
”

“Holy shit!” DeVon said. “You’re right. But whose house was it? Where did the crying
come
from?”

“I think it was over there,” Bradley whispered, pointing north toward Luke’s place.

“No,” DeVon hissed. “It came from over there!” He pointed east.

“I thought it came from across the street,” Luke interjected, not sounding too sure of himself even while he said it.

Then another scream tore through the night. Not a muffled sob this time. This time it was a scream guaranteed to wake the dead. It sounded like the screeching wail of a banshee on the Irish moors, and it made every hair on Danny’s body stand up and do the Watusi. Holy heebie-jeebies! He could feel Luke flinch away from the sound as if he had been struck.

This time all four of them knew exactly where the scream came from. It came from Danny’s backyard. Not more than ten feet away. Just on the other side of the fence!

They took one hesitant step toward the echo of that horrible screaming shriek when they heard the splash. It sounded like someone had dropped an anvil in Danny’s swimming pool.

That woke them up. They ran straight for the hole in the fence. DeVon was the first to dive through. Then Bradley, then Luke. Danny struggled under the fence dead last, grunting, groaning, and cursing the damn cast on his leg with every move he made.

And then it started to rain.

A
FTER
crawling under the fence, Danny staggered to his feet, slapped his way through the bushes, and shook himself off. He froze when he heard a rumble in the sky. He looked up and blinked back the spattering of raindrops that hit his face. They were cold, but they actually felt pretty good. Bracing. It wasn’t raining hard yet, but it felt like it wanted to. Thunder rumbled over their heads again. It sounded like a bowling ball ambling its weary way toward the pins after being dropped by a grunting six-year-old. Immediately afterward, a couple of sharper claps of thunder tore across the sky like distant artillery fire.

“Holy shit,” DeVon said. “What now? We at war with Mexico?”

Luke answered while he gave Danny a hand dusting himself off. “That wasn’t gunfire, you moron, it was thunder.”

“Wow,” DeVon said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard thunder before.”

Danny shook his head and tsked. “Californians.”

“Fuck the weather updates,” Bradley said, “Where did that scream come from? DeVon, flash your light on the pool. Let’s see what splashed. I heard something splash.”

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Me too.”

Above the storm and the rain and the ever-increasing wind, they heard a hullabaloo taking place inside Danny’s house. It was Granger, and he was barking with such ferocious energy he sounded like
six
dogs. Six
pissed off
dogs. He wanted the hell out! Now!

“Listen to Granger!” Danny said. “He’s going batshit. I’m too slow with this cast. Here Bradley, take the house key and open the back door for Granger so he’ll shut up.”

For a change, Bradley did as he was told with a minimum of grousing. He was back in less than a minute with Granger hot on his heels. Granger pranced around the four of them, happy as a clam, bouncing and hopping, his tail going a mile a minute. The dog said hello to each of them in turn then returned to his master and hiked up his leg to pee on a rose bush while Luke patted his head. He peed for about a minute. He really had to go. When his business with the rose bush was finished, Granger went prancing around saying hello to everybody again. One happy dog.

The rain was coming down harder now. It felt like icy pinpricks against Danny’s skin, and it was starting to plaster his long hair to the back of his neck. It wasn’t bracing any more either. He was starting to shiver. Then Luke snuggled up beside him, stroking his arm, making his presence known, making Danny feel safe. And Danny forgot about the rain. Sometimes his love for Luke just filled him up so much nothing else could seem to get inside.

A flash of lightning illuminated the pool, and all four of them froze in horror. Even Granger stopped what he was doing and blinked. Danny leaned in closer to get a better look at the water, but by the time he did the lightning had blinked out and the pool was swallowed in shadow.

“Did you see that?” Bradley hissed. “Did you see the water? Did you see it?”

Luke sounded confused, his voice a stunned hush. “We saw it. At least I think we saw it.”

“Go on, DeVon,” Bradley urged. “Shine your flashlight at the pool. Shine it in the water. I wanna see it again.”

“What a snot,” DeVon muttered, but he did as he was asked. He shone the flashlight into the pool.

Into the pink, pink water of the pool.

Lightning flashed. Thunder grumbled across the sky once again. Granger cowered closer to the ground, trying to get away from the sound. No one was paying any attention to the sky
or
the dog. They were all staring at the water.

“Is that water—
pink
?” Bradley asked, whipping out another licorice whip and mindlessly stuffing it in his mouth. He couldn’t take his eyes off the water. He was waiting for the lightning to flash again. He was
willing
the lightning to flash again. Just so he could see.

Danny opted for a more hands-on approach. He awkwardly clomped across the soggy lawn to an electrical box located by the back door. He opened it, found the proper button by memory since the outside lights were still off, and flicked the switch. The underwater pool lights came to life. Everyone stared at the water. The surface was speckled with raindrops. But it was the water
under
the surface that drew everyone’s attention. For it was
under
the surface where the water was pinkest.