The Fort (Aric Davis)

didn’t recognize. The outfit didn’t look like it would have garnered a positive response either, but most troubling about it was the tear in the low collar of her shirt. Dad looked pissed, madder than Tim could remember ever seeing him, even more than that time Tim spilled all that paint in the driveway. Mom looked really sad—scary sad, just like Becca did.
    “Stanley, you get Tim back to bed,” Tammy said. “This will still be waiting when you come back. And calm down. No more yelling, not from anybody, OK?” Dad didn’t say anything to her, just walked to Tim, pointed to the hallway, and walked behind him back to his room. Tim hopped back into bed, and his dad sat on the floor next to it. He didn’t look mad anymore. He looked worse, like maybe he wanted to hurt somebody, maybe even kill them. Tim was used to his dad with his nose in a book, grading papers, or lately, looking sadly at the hole in the backyard. This was very different.
    “How much did you hear?” Stan asked, finally. His voice was flat, like the life had been sucked out of him.
    “I don’t know. Mostly just a bunch of noise, and then you said the F word, and that you were going to kill someone. What happened to Becca?”
    “I’m not sure yet,” said Stan. “Not exactly, in any case. If I had to guess, a boy, probably that Tyler kid, got a little fresh with your sister, and she told him to dial it back a notch. When he didn’t…well, I’m not sure what exactly happened. I suppose I’ll know soon enough.”
    “So are you going to kill him?”
    “No. No, I don’t think so. This is probably one of those things that can be handled a little differently than that.” He smiled. “I’m not sure I’d be much good at killing, after all. I’d likely bungle it all up, end up not killing anybody, and going to jail to boot. I don’t think it’s in my genes. I suppose that’s a good thing.”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I don’t know, buddy. I really don’t. But you don’t need to worry about any of this silly stuff, at least not for a few more years at least.”
    “I’m not sure I want to get any older.”
    “I don’t either,” said Stan, almost chuckling. “You get some winks, Tim, and don’t worry about Becca. She’ll be fine, all right?”
    “If you say so.”

7
    Detective Dick Van Endel woke to the twin sounds of his pager and the phone ringing. He checked the clock: 2:37 a.m. Christ. Ignoring the pager, he yawned, gave the mostly empty glass of whiskey on the nightstand an ugly look, and answered the phone. There was a pause, and then a click.
    “Van Endel.”
    “Jesus, Dick. Where are you?” It was his partner, Phil Nelson. His nickname had been Full Nelson until he’d lost thirty pounds and threatened to beat the shit out of the next man who used that term to describe anything besides a headlock.
    “I’m at home,” Van Endel said. “I take it I need to answer that page on the double?”
    “Yes, please do. They’re driving me nuts. Plus, I think Sarah is going to kill me if I leave her alone with all the fucking machines again. For fuck’s sake, they know I’m on leave. Why are they even calling me?”
    Phil’s wife, Sarah, was pregnant, about six months along, and things weren’t going well. They had her on bed rest, and evidently had her hooked up to twenty-seven different machines to monitor her condition. Phil was on emergency leave until they successfully got the kid out of her. Phil and Van Endel had joked just two days earlier that something terrible was going to happen while Phil was gone, perhaps another dead whore at Riverside, maybe something worse. As Van Endel listened to his pager wail, the joking was an ugly memory.
    “Well, sorry they had to bug you, Phil. Give Sarah my love, all right? And don’t let this stress you out. We talked about that. I got shit under control, no matter how thick it may get.”
    “Thanks, buddy. Make me proud.” Phil hung up, and Van Endel depressed the button to make his end click off, then released it again. He grabbed the pager, then punched in the number.
    “This is Dispatch,” said the female operator on the other end.
    “Van Endel, returning a page. Whaddya got?”
    “Possible 207, sixteen-year-old girl. A couple of uniforms on the scene already. They requested you.”
    Van Endel gritted his teeth. That wasn’t good. Usually, a possible 207 on a kid that old took a few days to process. There had to be a part of the story he