Blood Trail

Celluci put down the electric razor and glared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

    He'd made up his mind. He was going to London. And Vicki Nelson could just fold that into corners and sit on it.

    He had no idea what this Henry Fitzroy had gotten her involved with nor did he really care.
    London, Ontario probably couldn't come up with something Vicki couldn't handle - as far as he knew, the city didn't have nuclear capabilities. Fitzroy himself, however, that was a different matter.

    Yanking a clean golf shirt down over his head, Celluci reviewed all he had learned about this historical romance writer. Historical romances, for God's sake. What kind of job is that for a man? He paid his parking tickets on time, he hadn't fought the speeding ticket he'd received a year ago, and he had no criminal record of any kind. His books sold well, he banked at Canada Trust, he paid his taxes, and his charity of choice appeared to be the Red Cross. Not many people knew him and the night guard at his condo both respected and feared him.

    All this was fine as far as it went, but a lot of the paper records that modern man carried around with him from birth, were missing from Mr. Fitzroy's life. Not the important things, Celluci admitted, shoving his shirttails down behind the waistband of his pants, but enough of the little things that it set off warning bells. He couldn't dig any deeper, not without having his initial less than ethical investigations come to light, but he could lay his findings before Vicki.
    She used to be a cop. She'd know what the holes in Fitzroy's background meant.

    Organized crime. The police didn't run into it often in Canada, but the pattern fit.

    Celluci grinned. Vicki would demand an immediate explanation. He hoped he'd be there to hear Fitzroy try and talk his way out of it.

    2:15. Family obligations would keep him in Scarborough until five at the earliest and even at that his sisters would squawk. He shuddered. Two hours of eating burned hamburgers, surrounded by a horde of shrieking nieces and nephews, listening to his brothers-in-law discussing the rising crime statistics and criticizing the police; what a way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

    "Okay, so if the gun part of Rod and Gun Club refers to the rifle range and stuff," Peter, having convinced Rose that he should have a chance to drive, pulled carefully out of the parking lot, "what's the rod mean?"

    "I haven't the faintest idea," Vicki admitted, smoothing the directions out on her knee. The napkin had a few grease stains on it, but the map was actually quite legible. "Maybe they teach fly-tying or something."

    "Fly-tying?" Rose repeated.

    "That'd take one real small lasso, there, pardner," Peter added, turning north.

    Vicki spent the next few blocks explaining what she knew about tying bits of feathers to hooks. As explanations went, it was sketchy. Neither, when asked, did she have any idea why theoretically mature adults would want to stand thigh deep in an ice cold stream being eaten alive by insects so that they could, if lucky, eat something that didn't even look like food when cooked but rather stared up at them off the plate in its full fishy entirety. She was, however, willing to allow that it took all types.

    Although Peter drove as meticulously as Rose, he was more easily distracted - any number of bright or moving things pulled his attention from the road.

    So once again the wer are inside statistical norms, Vicki thought, squinting through the glare on the windshield, and we see why teenage girls have fewer accidents than teenage boys.
    "Red light, Peter."

    "I see it."

    It took Vicki a moment to realize they weren't slowing. "Peter. ..."

    His eyes were wide and his canines showed. His right leg pumped desperately at the floor.
    "The brakes, they aren't catching."

    "Shit!"

    And then they were in the intersection.

    Vicki heard the squeal of tires. The world slowed. She turned, could see the truck, too close already to read the license plate, and knew they didn't have a hope in hell of not being hit. She screamed at Peter to hit the gas and the car lurched forward. The grille of the truck filled the window and then, with an almost delicate precision, it began to push through the rear passenger door. Bits of broken glass danced in the air, refracting the sunlight into a million sharp-edged rainbows.

    The world returned to normal speed as the two vehicles spun together across the intersection, tortured metal and