Preacher did not smoke, nor did he tolerate anyone in his presence to do so. Such a filthy, wasteful habit.
Standing with his back to the door of the apartment, the small kitchen was on his left. The appliances appeared to be about a decade old, the corners and crevices lined with rust. The refrigerator contained nothing but condiments, some prepackaged sliced American cheese, and a quarter gallon of milk that smelled just this side of funky.
A narrow hallway led to the living room in front of him, and two doors lined the wall on his right, most likely the bedrooms. He saw nothing of interest in the kitchen, not even a single note affixed to the refrigerator door—the room looked rarely used, so he went on to the living room. A dining table sat tucked into the corner on the left, littered with stacks of both opened and unopened mail. Preacher took up the nearest pile and studied the labels: bills and Publisher’s Clearing House. The bills were unopened, the Publisher’s Clearing House envelope was not only open but the application had been completed and stuffed into the return envelope, ready to be mailed. Although completed in the name of Josephine Gargery, the handwriting was that of a child, no doubt belonging to the boy.
Preacher returned the mail to the table, careful to place everything back exactly as he found it, and studied the living room. A recliner and couch both faced a small twelve-inch television. A coffee table stood at the center of this little triangle. He expected it to be thick with dust, but he found the table to be clean, same with the top of the television. The grime of the space seemed to start and end with the cigarette smoke. Someone took the time to clean the apartment on a regular basis, and he found this surprising. Most likely, this was the boy again. He knew the aunt worked long hours and was rarely here, probably just long enough to sleep, shower, and return to work. The boy fended for himself. How that woman managed to smoke enough to create this cleanliness problem was perplexing. Preacher imagined her chain-smoking just to keep up with it. He knew the boy didn’t smoke, not yet anyway. They had been watching him closely, and someone would have made note of such appalling activity. A sniff of both the couch and the recliner confirmed she sat in the recliner as she smoked. Oddly, he found no ashtrays. The window nearest the chair had no screen. He supposed she could dispose of her ashes through that opening, but that seemed unlikely.
The door to the first of two small bedrooms stood adjacent to the living room, clearly the boy’s room—posters of superheroes and pages torn from comic books covered the walls. On the dresser he found stacks of books, classics such asTreasure IslandandLord of the Fliesas well as nearly a dozen volumes of Hardy Boy mysteries. Comic books sat beside those, all stacked in neat piles. Within the drawers he found nothing but clothing, all folded and organized by type. The socks were paired off and rolled together in careful balls. He expected to find something hidden within the clothing, contraband of some sort, but there was none. Nothing under the bed, either, not even a dust bunny.
In the closet, he found clothing hung in perfect symmetry on hangers arranged from light to dark. On the floor of the closet sat a single cardboard box. Inside that box, he found twelve ashtrays hidden beneath a dozen paperbacks—most likely, the missing ashtrays from the apartment. Apparently, the boy thought he could convince his aunt to quit smoking by hiding them. Clever. Childish, but clever.
Preacher returned everything as he found it and closed the closet door.
His eyes drifted over the room, the neatness of it. Everything in its place.
He had been a boy once.
Boys hid things.
He turned back to the bed and lifted the mattress, his eyes lighting up at what he found.
Pressed between the mattress and boxspring was a notebook of some sort. He retrieved it and flipped through the pages. Not a notebook, asketchbook, containing dozens of drawings, drawings of Stella.
He lowered the mattress back in place.
The drawings were crude, but better than most. Far better than Preacher could ever draw. Exceptionally better than expected from most children. The last sketch in particular, Stella smiling with the glint of the sun in her eyes, that one was good. That one wasrealgood. The boy had drawn it with a black ballpoint pen, a medium that didn’t allow for mistakes.
This had to stop. Things were getting out of control.
Preacher sat on the edge of the bed, dropping the sketchbook beside him.
What did the girl see in this boy?
Why him?
He was a nobody, a future rat to run the maze. His life would come and go in a blip. Most likely he would not attend college, would not obtain even mediocre success. He was destined to a life of labor and an early grave, so why him?
Preacher took his Walther PPK/S .380 from the holster slung over his left shoulder and held the weapon in his hand, absentmindedly unscrewing the silencer, then tightening it back up. The weight of the gun, the heft of it in his hand, the smell of the oil, these things all helped him focus, helped him concentrate.
He could kill the boy. He might have to at some point, he was sure of that. Why not now?
He could wait right here and put a bullet into the kid’s brain when he returned from the cemetery, the aunt, too. Preacher had no qualms about killing kids. He had killed his share in the past. The only difference between a child and an adult was time. They would be done with this, then. The whole sordid mess would be behind them, and they could move on.
There would be repercussions.
Preacher scratched at his chin with the barrel of the gun.
3
We were late for our shift.
It was my fault.
After the woman left, I sat on the bench, completely dumbstruck. My mind buzzed and I couldn’t stop shaking. Each breath seemed to catch in my throat and hold to the sides, unwilling to be expelled.
Even now, as I kept pace behind Auntie Jo, my heart beat with such a ferocity I thought it might crack out from behind my ribs and land with a thud somewhere ahead of us on the broken sidewalk.
“Are you coming down with something? You don’t look too good.”
