Slashback Read online

  Whichever was chosen, you rarely came back.

  “Kithser.” I studied the face on the cheap photocopy. “David.” I hadn’t known his first name was David. I’d only known him as the seventeen-year-old drug dealer and probably thief three streets over who’d once tried to sell crack to Cal. It was the week we’d first moved in. Kithser was big for someone who did crack. Big boned, muscle-bound enough that if he wasn’t doing crack, he was certainly juicing. Definitely well fed, I guessed, by the family who was now looking for him.

  Did his family know how he was on the streets? That he was mean and nasty with the steroid psychosis lurking in the twitching beside his glassy eyes. Who knew? Either they were softhearted and hoped he’d change or they’d made him the way he was and missed that drug money.

  When had I become this cynical? I reached out to fold a corner under and keep the paper from flapping in the wind. “It’s an old picture,” Cal noted, giving up on his sneaker. A finger plopped directly in the middle of David Kithser’s face. “See? It doesn’t show where you broke his nose.”

  Whether someone loved him or not, you didn’t try to sell my little brother crack. Cal wouldn’t have taken it, but the next step would’ve been Kithser trying to steal any money he had on him. That would’ve led to Cal bashing him in the balls . . . testicles. Damn it, whacking him in the testicles with his battered skateboard. From that point on, it was hard to say what would’ve happened. Cal had been armed. I didn’t let him take a knife to school, but after school and on weekends, I wanted him able to protect himself. Against Grendels. Against Kithsers, against those even worse than the Kithsers. The only good neighborhoods we knew were the ones we rode through on buses.

  Luckily I was two blocks down, saw it, and that was the end of Kithser bothering my brother. I could’ve taken him down without hurting him much. Steroid muscle is useless muscle for the most part. But with drug dealers, bullies, perverts, and what else oozed about, you needed to make an impression. A thoroughly broken nose did that and was essentially harmless in the long run. Kithser had never seen a drop of his own blood in his life until then, I could tell. Most bullies haven’t.

  And Cal helpfully kicking him in the b— testicles when he was down and rolling around screaming about his nose hadn’t done much for his pride either. Kithser had paid attention to the lesson and he hadn’t come back to our street. So I’d thought.

  Or maybe someone had gone over to his street instead.

  Expectant eyes slanted up at me in a rainwater gaze. Now I’d see the truth. No way to avoid it. Not even I could ignore this. “You know the killer got him. Right, Nik?” You’re not an oblivious idiot anymore, are you? Because worrying about keeping you alive is getting to be a chore. I could see all those thoughts spinning under the dark hair.

  I rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly. His bones were thin and light under my fingers. Fragile. Breakable. A spun glass version of a brother. I hoped for that growth spurt soon. A knife and some hand-me-down martial art moves from the dojo wouldn’t always be enough.

  “Maybe,” I answered, noncommittal. “He leads a bad life. Lots of trouble.” Missing a week now, the poster said. Not crashing at a friend’s place then. “But . . . maybe.”

  Cal blew a random strand of hair out of his eyes and rolled up the too-long sleeves of his cast-off sweatshirt one more time. “Can we get pizza after?”

  I’d already ripped the stapled poster free. I’d done it completely without thought and stared at it with a combination of dread and curiosity. What was I doing? “After what?” I asked, distracted.

  Picking up his skateboard, Cal tucked it under his arm and nodded at the paper. “After you go around the neighborhood asking stupid questions about Kithser.”

  “How do you know that’s what I’m going to do?” Bemused at his sudden psychic ability to know what even I hadn’t known, I folded the missing poster in half.

  “Because that’s you. Good.” He had an expression of patient resignation on his face that I knew was identical to the one I wore when I was cleaning up his SpaghettiOs and soda handprints in the kitchen. “Just . . . good. You can’t help yourself. You don’t want to get someone in trouble if they don’t deserve it. You know, in case the weirdo next door is a butcher.” There was a heavy load of sarcasm on the word butcher.

  “Wouldn’t you want the same benefit of the doubt?” I knocked lightly on top of his head. “Although all the trouble you get in you almost always deserve,” I added with exasperated affection.

  Cal was stubborn and getting him off topic wasn’t easy at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times. “You’re right, Nik. He is a butcher. But he butchers people, not cows.” That’s when the glow that hung in the air faded and the sun was only the sun again. The wizard behind the curtain was just a man, possibly one with an inhuman grin and huge, serrated knife dripping blood.

  By then Cal was already walking toward our rental, done trying to convince me. There was work ahead and he wanted it over with as soon as possible. “Bible or crutches?”

  We’d learned a few techniques from watching Sophia. She could work an entire block in twenty-five minutes lifting valuables to be fenced later and she had a routine that didn’t fail often. It was difficult to get into a house to talk to and scam suspicious neighbors in our crumbling section of town. It helped to have one of two things.

  “The Bible or the crutches?” Cal asked again. “And what about the pizza?”

  “The crutches,” I decided. The Bible worked less and less for Sophia. It seemed people were as upset by pushy Christians knocking on their door as much as they were the possibility of a home invasion. “Yes, pizza, but vegetarian. You need some vegetables. Otherwise you’ll turn into a can of SpaghettiOs.”

  “Okay, but extra cheese.” Which was remarkably agreeable for a kid who loved pepperoni and any other kind of questionable meat more than life itself. It made me wonder uneasily exactly how bad the smell was to him coming from next door. Was there meat in that basement and was it questionable in a very different way?

  I planned to find out.

  After retrieving the hard-used crutches, we started canvassing the neighborhood. I went from a fifteen-year-old who looked seventeen to a teenager with a hugely swollen foot and ankle, two pair of socks stuffed with more socks, a pathetic limp, and a solemn-eyed little brother holding a box of cookies he could only be selling for school. Granted it was an empty box, another prop and victim of Cal’s appetite, but it would get the job done.

  Crutch and drag. Crutch and drag. I looked down at Cal. “This is wrong, all right? We don’t do things like this unless we’re trying to find out if a killer lives next to us and I don’t think that will ever come up again. We don’t do it to steal. We’re not Sophia.”

  “I know, Nik. You’ve said it like a thousand times. We’re not. But sometimes I think things would be easier if we were.” That was true. I wasn’t so naïve I didn’t know that, but that didn’t mean it was the way it was going to be. Not for me and not for Cal. I’d remind him as often as I had to. If it had to be a thousand, then a thousand it would be. He was holding up the box, taking a whiff, and giving a small smile at the lingering aroma of cookies.

  He caught me watching him from the corner of his eye and gave me a look of his own as he kicked a small chunk of concrete down the sidewalk. “You should slump more,” he suggested. “You still look too tall and too . . . um . . . ninja-ish. Badass.”

  Right then I gave up on the language. His school was the educational version of Pulp Fiction. Mine was a teen version of a supermax prison, metal detectors, police, and all. If we made our way through with only foul mouths, we would be doing well. There also might be a serial killer and there were monsters. All that was enough to worry about. So I let it go and took his advice. I slouched more, aimed for a pained expression, and slowed my pace.

  We talked to Mrs. Spoonmaker first, Cal remembering to cough once or twice for that flu I’d told her he had the
day before. We didn’t pull the cookie scam on her. I thanked her for calling our schools and casually asked if she knew David Kithser? If she’d seen him around lately. We went to school together and he owed me money for doing his homework. That she would believe. If I said I was his friend and she knew him, she wouldn’t talk to me at all. He was a bad guy. In our world minding your own business about bad guys was good business for yourself.

  Cal perched on her couch covered in faded orange and red roses. Covering him were her seven cats. Cats liked him, loved him really. The moment they smelled him they would swarm. Now wasn’t any different. They draped over his shoulders, lap, and feet. If they happened to have a dead mouse tucked away, they’d present it at his feet like an offering. Cal didn’t mind. Affection from anyone but me was rare. He knew when to appreciate it—even in the form of a dead rodent. He stroked the cats, surrounded by a cloud of purring and flying fur. Each one took a turn bracing on his chest to stare into his eyes. I didn’t know what they were hoping to see, but they always seemed satisfied when their turn was over.

  Mrs. Spoonmaker knew Kithser. “No better than he had to be,” she’d said with pursed pink lips that matched the pink tint in her short curly white hair. She also said that she hadn’t seen him in months and good riddance. We moved from house to house after that. Five houses down Cal stopped on the sidewalk, several feet away from the porch. “Dog,” he warned. “Big dog.”

  I couldn’t smell him like Cal could, but a second later I heard the barking. Loud, ferocious, and absolutely crazed. Big dog was right. Big and wild to attack. Unlike cats, dogs did not like Cal. Not some dogs, not most dogs. All dogs. They had two reactions: fight or flight. And when the reaction was fight, it was instinct that ran back to their prehistoric ancestors—to the death.

  Dogs were good for howling their lungs out when the Grendels were around too. We didn’t talk about that, Cal and I, but he knew. Dogs hated him because dogs hated Grendels. Man’s best friend hated monsters and man’s best friend hated Cal. There was nothing to be said about that because it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t.

  “We’ll take the next house,” I said.

  Cal stood silently behind me as the dog next door continued to bay the invisible moon down from the sky. This door, boiled cabbage green, opened to a hugely tousled mane of platinum blond hair with glossy black roots, long red fingernails with a rhinestone at each tip, and an impatient expression. “I’m running late. What the hell do you kids want? And what the hell is that damn dog barking at?” Beyond the yellow, crimson, fake diamond glint and irritability, there was a woman. She was dressed in a skintight miniskirt, thigh-high boots, and a glittering bikini top that, while extremely skimpy, NASA must’ve helped engineer to hold up an enormous cargo load. She was holding a shirt in her hand as well, but that didn’t seem quite as important.

  How did they stay up? Physics had never been so interesting or useful until now.

  “Mrs. Breckinridge,” Cal said, surprised, moving up beside me. “Nik, she’s a substitute teacher at school.” I cleared my throat. He was never going to be the male equivalent of Miss Manners, but there were some requirements I expected of him, behavior that helped us blend into average society. “Um . . . sorry. Mrs. Breckinridge, this is my brother, Niko. He broke his ankle. He’s helpless and pathetic and won’t rob you.” He was curious at her presence, but he was also a Leandros when he had to be, there with the story. “Hey, I didn’t know you lived on my street.”

  “I’m never home long enough to really live anywhere. Too many bills to pay.” Thick, fake eyelashes blinked. “You’re the kid with the weird name who always sits in the last row? Haliban. Caliban. Something from Shakespeare, right?”

  His teacher but obviously not a very good teacher.

  Cal said flatly, “Cal. My name is Cal.” Sophia had told him long before school ever would about Caliban, Shakespeare, and The Tempest. She wanted him to know why she’d named him after the shambling monster-child of a bitch sorceress. The only part she’d gotten right was that about the bitch.

  “Well, Cal”—she fished a five out of her pocket and passed it to him—“my new favorite student. How about you forget you ever saw me and what I do for a second job. The principal is the stick-up-her-ass kind. All sorts of morals—her morals, the judgmental old witch. She’d fire me like that”—she snapped her fingers—“if she knew I was stripping. Dancing, I mean. Dancing. You think you can do that? Keep your mouth shut?”

  Cal gave her a “no skin off my nose” shrug, the five-dollar bill already a mere afterimage in the air, before grinning cheerfully. “You know me and rules, Mrs. B.”

  She grinned back under a thick layer of scarlet lipstick. She looked as if she’d broken more than a few rules in her life too. “You walk to the beat of a different drummer, there’s that for sure. You spend more time talking to the principal than her own damn husband does, which he’s probably happy as hell about. And, sugar, I’m forty. You might want to look me in the face, appreciate me for my brain because when this top comes off my brain is still in the same place but my tits will be four inches lower.”

  It took me a second to realize that last part was directed at me and I could feel my skin flush hot and mortified. I read about Buddha, Nietzsche, Sun-Tzu, Jung, poetry, physics, chemistry, advanced mathematics, and I trained to kill Grendels, to be ready if they came looking for a fight, but I couldn’t do anything about the fact I still had normal teenage hormones.

  “Hold it in,” Cal whispered. “Virgins live. Horn-dogs die.”

  “Horn-dogs? You’re eleven. Do you know how much trouble you are . . .” I swallowed the rest and asked Mrs. Breckinridge, while looking directly at her face this time, politely, “We were wondering if you knew about David Kithser.” She worked at Cal’s school. The cookie excuse wouldn’t work on her. I might as well come out with what we actually wanted. If our neighbor was a murderer, I doubt I had to worry about her spending any time with him—droopy and pitiful as he appeared, and definitely not enough time for them to discuss our interest in Kithser.

  “Cecily? Cee-cee? Who are you screwing around with now? Every time I turn my back, there you go.” The man, once big and athletic, now just big and fat, appeared out of the gloom of the tiny house. Graying hair stuck up on end, small ferret eyes shied away from the light. He was shirtless and needed Mrs. Breckinridge’s structurally improbable bikini top more than she did. He was in boxers, splitting at the seams, but still fighting the good fight. “Look at him. What is he? Sixteen? Seventeen? You’re into jailbait now because a real man’s too much for you? I oughta—”

  “You oughta get out of my face, Virgil, or the next time you’re sleeping off a drunk, I’m taking the shotgun out of the closet, loading for bear, and sticking the barrel up your fat—” The door slamming in our face cut off the last word, but I didn’t think either of us had to guess at what it was.

  Cal, again, checked the cookie box, hoping against hope a sympathetic universe had magically refilled it. “Mrs. Breckinridge is my favorite teacher,” he announced with a more than slightly evil smirk. “She never gives homework. She knows everything about everything. And she tells us.”

  “I’ll bet she does and she really shouldn’t do that.”

  “And she said you shouldn’t look at her tits but you did.” His expression was pure and guileless as a baby on Santa’s lap at Christmas.

  “That is it. No TV next week. None. Maybe some silence and a good book will bleach your brain of that filthy language.” As I started for the next house, the complaining started and didn’t stop as we trudged through the front door of our own house fifteen minutes later. I thought I saw the twitch of a curtain in one of Junior’s windows, but he had no reason to be suspicious. We had the box of cookies. We actually took two orders for the nonexistent sale, and I didn’t ask about Kithser at every house. I also had never seen Junior outside talking to anyone on the street. He didn’t socialize with the neighbors. I’d say that was a bad sign, but
except for Cal and me and the old ladies, none of the neighbors wanted to have anything to do with anyone else. It wasn’t that kind of neighborhood. That was good. It meant that word shouldn’t get back to him.

  Not that we’d found word of anything suspicious. Either no one had seen Kithser in weeks or didn’t know him at all. To me that meant there was no evidence of a connection between Kithser and Junior. To Cal it meant that Junior was still not killing where he lived but close enough for convenience. But his belief that Kithser’s body was now in Junior’s basement was nothing compared to the lack of television.

  “Yes, I know it’s not fair. You’ve said that twenty-two times now. But I’m trying to keep you from saying words that will incite any dates you have in the future to stab you in the eye with a nail file.” I leaned the crutches on the wall and sat on the couch to peel off all the extra socks that had faked an impressive swollen ankle. I then picked up the notebook and looked at the list I’d started before we’d left the house that morning. There were two columns—the For and Against regarding serial killer evidence.

  “Maybe I won’t want to date. Girls might not like me. When do we go get the pizza? You promised pizza.” He sprawled in the ugly plaid chair that had come with the house, his legs flopped over one arm and his head and arms over the other. His upside-down gaze was accusing when he mentioned the pizza.

  “Why wouldn’t they like you? Once I go to college and we get away from Sophia, we’ll have a normal life,” I said. “And if you stop cursing like a forty-year-old bouncer there’s no reason girls wouldn’t like you.”