Blvd. of Blood
Book 3, chapters 16–19
(Upcoming appearances: June 1, 12–5, Skullastic Book Fair, American Legion Post 16, Shelton CT | July 15, 6–7:30, author talk, Hagaman Library, East Haven CT)
This is a serialized “thriller” novel. Continued from here. Table of contents for ease of navigation here.
(The story so far: It is April 10. Everyone knows something is going down, but no one knows what it will be yet. Not Officer Oberman, anticipating the emergency he has long prophesied; not the hacker known as Sp!der, who almost has a handle on the accomplice; not Carl Lang, who thinks, erroneously, her boyfriend is no killer but merely cheating on her. No one except for Colin Lang.)
16.
It was a quiet day. Oberman kept jumping at every little radio squawk and Campbell sighed like a bellows each time. By three o’clock, everyone had their little smirks.
“Still plenty of day left, Johnny,” Lepage said. “You might still get lucky.”
17.
Sp!der called Ronnie and got her husband and then he called her again and left a message on the machine and again until his mother stopped agreeing to type in the code for him. “She’ll call you back, Mickey.”
“She’s not really out, ma! Her husband’s lying.”
“She’ll call you back when she’s ready. She’s probably just working late.”
“Do you know her cell phone number, ma? She’d get that at work.”
“Oh, I never can keep straight all these fool cell phone numbers…”
“Okay, fine. Well, do you know where she works?”
But she didn’t. Fat lot she knew.
18.
Carol knew that Colin would not be getting back home from mother’s until after six. She drove to his house right after work and circled the block, looking for a place to spy from. Finally she decided her best bet was to park a few blocks away and then hide herself across the street from Colin’s house in a little copse of trees. In the dark she should be invisible both to Colin, in his house or his car, and—just as importantly—to whoever owned this copse.
Of course, dusk wouldn’t be for another couple of hours. She drove home and ate dinner. She packed a few energy bars and a thermos of coffee. She got her warmest coat, just in case the night got cold. She was going to figure this out once and for all.
And she did all this without thinking too hard about it. Because if she’d thought about it she would have stopped. It was ridiculous. If his secret was that he went to a bar now and then alone, this was a small secret.
But of course, all this time Carol had been banking on the notion that Colin only had deep secrets.
Around dusk she came back to his house. The lights were on, although the car must have been, as usual, in the garage. She parked around the corner and snuck in the gloaming around to the trees. She settled down, preparing for a long boring wait.
She was prepared for everything but what she saw.
19.
Colin went outside, unlocked the side door of his garage, and went back into his house. With the electric razor he made a final pass over his knuckles, the backs of his hands, his wrists. Then he took a long shower, with exfoliant. Once out, he brushed his hair, then his eyebrows and eyelashes. If he could avoid leaving any DNA anywhere, this would be best.
Colin stood in his kitchen in a robe drinking a last cup of coffee. It smelled crisper and brighter than any cup he remembered having in a long time. It tasted so good he didn’t wait for it to cool sufficiently, and of course he burned his tongue.
Finally he took out a post-it pad and wrote a note in big block letters with a Sharpie. He peeled off the top sheet and put it in his pocket. Then as always, he removed a half-dozen more sheets. He took these and his junior disguise kit to the bathroom where he tore the extra post-it sheets into tiny pieces. He flushed the tiny pieces down the toilet, adding a couple extra flushes. They went down fine. He’d been meaning to do a test like that for a while now; he knew if the paper didn’t flush well he could always, when the time came, eat it.
Now, looking in the bathroom mirror, he built up his nose with putty and stuck on a thin mustache. He took his time. It should look natural. Then he brushed his teeth; it was early for it—quarter after eight—but there’d be no opportunity to brush later.
He removed his car key from the ring. The top of the key was large and plastic, and threading it off the ring took a while, but when he was done, he washed the car key off and wiped it down—probably unnecessary, but you never could tell—and, holding it with a tissue, set the key on his kitchen counter. The rest of the ring he hung up by the door, where it usually went. His watch was on the counter nearby.
After fetching his pair of pliers from the garage, he unlocked the basement door and went downstairs to the clothes drier. With the pliers he pushed aside the larger items until he found a left leather glove. It looked a little duller than usual. Probably shouldn’t put leather through the wash, Colin thought.
He eased the glove on with the pliers and flexed his hand. It still fit fine, which was important. He wouldn’t be taking it off for twelve hours or so.
With both gloves on he removed a pair of coveralls from the drier and put them in the duffel bag. Then he took out the other pair and put them on, zipping them up carefully. He had transferred the post-it from pants pocket to coveralls. The rest of the drier’s load—a windbreaker and a scarf—went in the duffel bag as well. He carried both the duffel bag and the gym bag with the rifle in it upstairs and laid them on the kitchen floor, where no identifying carpet fibers could get on them. He realized he was still holding the pliers, so he set them on the floor, too, where they’d be out of the way. Out of the duffel came the broken-in hiking boots, and he put them next to the bags. The windbreaker and scarf on top of the boots.
Colin walked back to the bathroom in his stocking feet and fitted the blond wig on. He looked ridiculous. Then he inserted the cotton to puff out his cheeks. Sure, he looked even more ridiculous, but he didn’t look like himself. He picked up a plunger and started plunging the toilet. No telltale scraps of colored paper came floating up. Everything was going fine.
There was plenty of time for a final check. The gym bag had a tricked-out rifle and nothing else. The duffel bag held (roughly top to bottom):
One roll of packing tape.
A cylinder of sterile wipes.
A couple extra black plastic garbage bags.
A Ziploc baggie with the burner phone and the battery.
Two cheese sandwiches and a banana wrapped up in a grocery flier he’d grabbed off the street.
A pair of black coveralls.
Two Alfred E. Neuman masks, slightly mutilated.
One piece of cardboard, cut down, creased on one edge, and, although formerly white, shaded in black with a Sharpie; a length of black thread was coiled up and taped on the back.
Four VHS holders.
Four times seven equals twenty-eight magazines, plus two spares for a total of thirty.
A concomitant number of bullets.
Colin realized that he’d meant to pick up a small scissors somewhere secure, and had forgotten. He thought about wiping off one he owned, and decided against it. He could do without.
He put on the windbreaker. The scarf went in the jacket pocket. The car key went in the pocket of the coveralls, along with the wallet. He made a last walk through to make sure that the house was staged properly: some but not all lights illuminated; the TV loud.
With the help of the shoehorn, he wriggled the boots on and laced them tight. Now came another problem. He considered bringing the shoehorn along, just in case he had to take a boot off and put it back on. But he had not thought it out before; he had not carefully considered whether there was anything about the shoehorn that might identify him, nor had he thought up a cover story about why he needed to be carrying a shoehorn. Finally he put it in his coveralls pocket, planning to move it to the glove compartment when he got to the car.
Suddenly Colin had a memory: of when he was a child, and in late August his friends and he would be dreading the coming school year. They knew that time passed quickest when one was doing stuff, and slowest when one was bored; so they lay on the lawn and did nothing, just to make the summer last a little longer.
He stood for a moment in the kitchen and then exited through the patio door in back, leaving it unlocked. He had no house key on him, after all. Just as he left he heard his phone ring; it sounded, though the walls, so distant, and he decided to let it go. There was no dealing with Carol at this moment. He walked around the house to his garage. Entering through the unlocked side door, he hit the switch to winch the garage door, slowly, upwards. It felt like a curtain raising. He did not say, “showtime!” but the thought was there.
End of Book 3. Continued here.