Cooked Goose

well,” he said, “too bad you’re not still on the force, Reid. You’re quite the little Sherlock Holmes.”
    “And you, Bloss, may shove it... sideways... with barbed wire wrapped around it,” she said, as coolly as though she were delivering a stock market report. Turning to Dirk, she said just as casually, “You know where I am if you need me.”
    “Thanks, Van,” he said. “I never would have noticed that bruise and it could be important. I owe ya.”
    She knew he was saying all that because Bloss was standing there. Dirk never missed a chance to make her look good in front of the stupid brass who had fired her. And he had never forgiven Bloss for breaking up their partnership. God bless him.
    “You bet you owe me, big boy,” she said in her best Mae West impression. “An extra large pizza, and this time I get toppings and a six-pack to wash it down with. Bloss here’s buyin’.”
    As she sauntered away, she could feel Bloss’s eyes boring into her backside. Gran would have been proud. She’d put him in his place and hadn’t even spit between his eyes. Gran had done her job well; Savannah was a true Southern belle, a lady through and through.
    Well... except for that part about telling him to shove barbed wire up his rear end. Sideways.

    * * *

    7:12 P.M.

    As he crouched in the oleander bushes beside her garage, he decided that the rear floorboards of cars hadn’t been all that uncomfortable by comparison. At least, there hadn’t been ants in those cars, and they hadn’t smelled like tomcat piss.
    He’d been here for more than half an hour, and his patience was wearing thin.
    She should have been home ten minutes ago... at the latest. Where the hell was she, anyway? He’d make her pay for holding him up like this.
    And it wasn’t just the discomfort or the inconvenience. He had studied the household and knew the comings and goings. If she didn’t get here soon, there would be a greater risk of intervention by a third or fourth party.
    On the other hand, the added risk made it all the juicier. Danger, and its accompanying adrenaline rush, had been his favorite narcotic for quite some time. A lot of people fantasized about rape, he surmised. But few had the courage to actually act out those fantasies.
    That was what set him apart from the others. They were just dreamers; he was a doer.
    He figured he wasn’t any worse than anyone else. Others fantasized, he performed. That didn’t make him bad, just ballsy… and a lot smarter than the average Joe, because he got away with it.
    Only time would tell if he could get away with murder, too.

    * * *

    7:17 P.M.

    As Margie Bloss drove her new BMW Roadster down Harrington Boulevard , heading for home, she briefly entertained the fantasy of turning the car north and just driving, driving, driving, until she hit San Francisco .
    She had never been to San Francisco , but she had seen the postcards. And, from what she’d heard, she was pretty sure she’d like it.
    Anywhere was better than her dad’s house. Mostly because he was in it. Sometimes.
    If there was one thing Margie Bloss hated—and she hated a lot of things about her parents—it was coming home to an empty house. And in her sixteen years, she had come home to find her house empty far more often than she had been greeted by a parent at the front door.
    For a few years, she and her mom had lived next door to her best friend, Meg. Megan’s mom was one of those stay-at-home types who baked cookies from scratch and sewed all the kids’ Halloween costumes... stuff like that. She had been in the kitchen, dishing up hot chocolate chippers from the oven when Meg and Margie had come home from school every afternoon. And she had let Margie hang out at their house until her mom got home from work... even if it was pretty late... and it often was.
    But then, Meg’s mom could afford to stay at home; she was still married to Meg’s father. He hadn’t fooled around with other women and got his butt kicked out of the house, like Margie’s crummy dad.
    A few weeks ago, Margie’s mom had married Crummy Husband Number Three. Numero Tres and Margie had hated each other on sight, when Mom dragged him home from the bar that first night, and their relationship only deteriorated from there. Days before the wedding, he said, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to support some punk with pink hair and a ring through her nose. The kid cleans up her act, or she’s out!”
    So, Margie did the only thing