Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“What boy? There’s no boy, you goddamned nut.”
Jett gasped, squeezing tighter, realizing he was hugging only air. His arms dropped, an avalanche of ice joining the raging fire inside and yet somehow not extinguishing it. He froze and he burned. He was a frigid inferno. He needed rescuing, but there was no one to rescue him from himself. The world dimmed, sound rushing into the void around him.
“Call the police,” someone said. “He’s high. He’s on something.”
Jett gasped, stumbling back, looking around. So many eyes. There was no boy. He’d made him up, just like the doctor told him. But he wasn’t on something. That was the problem. Take your meds, take your meds, take your meds. Or the voices come back. The boy comes back.
But it was Sunday, so the free clinic was closed anyway. And even if it wasn’t, he didn’t want medication that made his face, hands, and feet jerk and move constantly, so that he felt like jumping off a bridge to make it stop. At least the dope he acquired on the street made him drift away. It stopped his pain, didn’t make it worse.
But he’d go to the clinic when the smack was gone. He would. He would. Because despite the side effects of the medication, he didn’t want to see the boy. It bent his brain. It hurt so fucking bad.
The people were all staring at him. He took another step back. He wouldn’t let them put him in jail. He knew what happened there, and he’d die before he’d be locked up. At least on the street he could curl up and hide. He could sleep behind the rusted, junked car next to the abandoned strip mall, or under the ivy growing along the chain-link fence near the old motel used mostly by prostitutes and their tricks. The one where he sometimes heard screams from the girls that no one answered, including him.
“Get your fucking hands off of me,” he growled to the man whose hand gripped his upper arm. Whatever was in his voice made the man step back. Behind him, another man was helping a woman out of her car. She looked dazed as she scooted past her deflating airbag.
Jett glanced back once to ensure the little boy wasn’t actually there, lying in a puddle of blood on the street as people stepped over him. But the asphalt was clear except for some broken pieces of headlight, not a drop of blood in sight.
Help, he heard, the voice young and weak. He shook his head, moving it rapidly from side to side, searching. There was no boy, but yet he’d heard him. He was somewhere. Somewhere.
He’s inside your head, Jett. You have to take your medicine. You have to remember.
Dawn was standing on the sidewalk, swaying slightly in her spiked heels, her thumb in her mouth.
A siren grew louder in the distance, and the sound propelled Jett forward, out of the street and back onto the curb.
“Hey, you can’t just leave,” the man who’d held his arm said. “You caused this. This is your fault. Get back here!”
But Jett didn’t listen. Jett ran, clutching the cash in his pocket, the money that would buy him at least a few minutes of peace.
CHAPTER NINE
Ambrose added a packet of sugar to the paper cup of coffee and took a sip, relaxing his shoulders as the hot liquid slid down his throat. The case files for the crime they’d been at two days before, including the two similar cases involving the dead men and woman who’d once lived on the streets, were sitting in the center of his desk. He didn’t want to appear too eager to read them. He set them aside as he put his cup down in front of him and took a seat.
He and Lennon had driven over to Geary Boulevard after leaving the youth drop-in center. But there had only been a couple of bedraggled prostitutes, and they’d both snatched up the money Lennon had offered, looked at the photo of the woman named Cherish, shook their heads, and turned away. Maybe he’d go back later on his own, once the nightlife started and the line of cars with men looking for a quick-and-dirty hookup started forming.
If nothing panned out there, he’d head over to the Cellar, where women let others use them to play their perverted games. The TL was a fantasyland for sickos looking to take advantage of those dissociated from their bodies. What easy victims they were. The same could be said of many other neighborhoods throughout the country. And the world too. He’d been all over at this point, and perverts came in all colors and creeds.
He pulled the case files toward him, flipped open the top one, and began reading through the evidence. Twenty minutes later, he had a more detailed picture of the first two crime scenes.