Taylor glanced at Johnny and sat up. “Go ahead,” he replied, the words unsteady.
“Thank you, five eight six. We’ve got a report coming in about a distressed elderly female on Clydesdale Close. No further details, but the informant says they can hear screaming, and that the female has stripped off all of her clothes. Do you think you can start heading over?”
Taylor groaned. “Why’ve they always gotta be naked? I’ve seen enough wrinkly boobs and ballsacks for a lifetime.”
Johnny laughed, a quiet sense of delirium washing over him; the kind that you only feel when you know you should have died, but somehow didn’t.
“It gets us out of the pharmacy line,” he replied, voice cracking a little.
Taylor nodded, pulling on his seat belt and readjusting his radio. He eyed Johnny. “Are we good?”
Johnny shrugged, trying to appear unbothered. “You tell me. I did just confess my undying love; surely you’ve got to feel some type of way about it?”
Taylor cracked his neck and fished a pair of blue gloves from his pocket. “Well, your confession went from Hallmark to pure filth in less than a second. So, yeah. My brain is a mess, but I willlet you know in five to ten business days.” He grinned, and it was the best thing Johnny had ever seen.
“You’re such a dick,” Johnny replied, before pressing his radio and saying, “We’re on our way.”
CHAPTER 16
CUCKOO
Taylor
As they navigatedbetween the perfectly manicured lawns and overly complicated hanging baskets of East Dingly, Taylor found that he couldn’t stop looking at Johnny. His stomach was doing flips every time their eyes met, and he was very,veryconscious of how Johnny’s combat trousers pulled across his crotch every time he pressed down on the clutch.
“Thank God,” Taylor muttered when they finally found their way to Clydesdale Close. Like all of the town’s residential clusters, this one was named after something specific. In this case, horses. Taylor thought it would have been infinitely more funny if they’d have named the roads something likeBrittneigh Spurs Street, but sadly they went forFriesian Fields, Mustang MountandLipizzan Lane.
Spoilsports.
“She’s inside,” said a concerned looking lady, her wrinkled fingers turning white as she gripped her picket fence. “Jill, her name is. Well, actually her real name is Mathilda, but she doesn’t like that.” The old woman leant forwards, her silver perm swaying in the breeze. “Says it reminds her of the war.”
Taylor had no idea what that meant, but he nodded and glanced at Johnny. “Oookay. Got it.”
Wandering up the disturbingly symmetrical flag stones, Taylor paused when a bright flash of white under one of the front windows caught his eye.
“Huh…” he murmured, cutting off from the path and following a flowerbed around the front of the house. He accidentally flattened several of Jill’s pansies under his boots, coming to a stop when he found what he was looking for. A spilled tub of talcum powder. Nothing particularly odd about it, but he was pretty certain it shouldn’t have been in the flower bed.
He stared at it for a few seconds before the front door creaked and Johnny said, “It’s open.” Taylor watched as he pushed it with a finger and stuck his head through the gap. “Jill?”
Taylor re-trampled Jill’s pansies and fell back in line with Johnny. “Jill?” Taylor called.
Silence.
“Hellooo, Jill. Can we come in, love?” Taylor called again before pushing open the door the rest of the way.
The house was in darkness and all the curtains were drawn, despite it being midmorning. It was the very definition of an old white lady’s house, with the randomly placed doilies and obnoxious china cats.
The cats were staring at him from a shelf in the hall, with their slitty green eyes, pointy golden whiskers and demented smiles.
Johnny was the religious one, but Taylor was pretty certain that if anything had been spawned from the pits of hell it wasdefinitelythose fucking cats.
Taylor shuddered as he peered up the stairs. “Jill, we’re in your hallway!” he called in a sing-song voice that was meant to sound friendly, but came out like a crazy serial killer. “Jill?”
“Hello!”
Taylor screamed.
Ruggedly.
