“Yes, Sam. Nudity is nothing to be ashamed of. But don’t do it until you’re over 50.”

  Harry continued. “MamaLuvr4Evah wrote, ‘Perky for an old gal.’“

  “I agree,” Phin said.

  I shot daggers out of my eyes at him. “You agree I’m an old gal?”

  “I agree they’re perky.”

  McGlade kept the train rolling. “TowMeDaShitties wrote, ‘Not bad, but lefty is bigger than righty.’“

  I glanced down at my chest. “Not true. That’s the camera angle. My girls are symmetrical. Phin?”

  “They’re absolutely perfect, babe. And if one is a little bigger, it means there’s more to love.”

  Asshole.

  “Is this how you got suspects to talk when we were cops?” Harry asked me, enjoying this moment far too much. “No wonder your arrest record was so good.”

  “We’re moving on,” I said. “The old pervert who posted that revenge porn said he was sure Blood was a woman. I don’t think fake Kertis could be mistaken for female. So there might still be a chance that we’re dealing with two people, rather than one person with dissociative identity disorder. Let’s build a suspect list. Harry, since you have your phone out can you write this down?”

  “Hold on. I’m setting this pic as my wallpaper.”

  “I’ll write it on a notepad, Mom.”

  “Thanks, Sam. Phin, what have you found out?”

  “I talked to four nurses. One of them, a woman named Shelby, doesn’t trust two of the others, Doug and Doris. Shelby also pointed me to a patient in long-term care, Mr. Manx, who had a stroke while I was talking to him.”

  “I can understand that,” Harry told Phin. “You’re a very attractive man. I’ve had a stroke or two while talking to you as well.”

  “Harry,” I warned him. “We got a kid present.”

  “Says the woman whose titties are all over the Internet,” he countered.

  Phin forged ahead. “Mr. Manx is all kinds of screwed up, but he might know something. His nurse, Rhonda, thinks the rumors about the Destiny Drac are shared hysteria. Some of the other nurses seem to agree.”

  “Any of those nurses suspicious?” I asked him.

  “I got weird vibes from Nurse Rhonda and Nurse Shelby,” Phin said.

  “Want me to tell you about the weird vibes I’ve got?” Harry asked. “I got one shaped like a submarine sandwich. Twelve inches long, takes four D batteries.”

  “Why would a sandwich take batteries?” Sam asked.

  “Second warning, McGlade,” I warned him. “Did you find anything out?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “I called an old buddy, Andrew Maalox, because we worked on a blood drinking case before. Every perp involved with that case is deceased, so that was a dead end. Literally. Heh heh.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m not a fan of Dr. Luff or Nurse Bantam,” Harry said.

  “And Dr. Michaels,” Sam chimed in. “He laughs too much.”

  Harry kept going. “And that candy striper guy is weird. With his bloodshot eyes.”

  That rings a bell. “Both witnesses I interviewed said that the Destiny Drac had red eyes. What was the candy striper’s name?”

  McGlade appeared pained. “I got a pic of him, but I didn’t tag it. He had a weird name.”

  “Can you run him, Luff, and Bantam through Fleming’s face recognition software?”

  “I’m on it. I can also check criminal records.”

  “Shelby mentioned St. Erasmus began doing background checks, but they didn’t a few years ago.” Phin shrugged his shoulders. “Might as well do Elroy, too.”

  “Elroy helped me,” Sam insisted. “He’s one of the good guys.”

  “We still need to eliminate him from the suspect list,” I told her.

  Sam folded her small arms across her chest. “I think there’s only one suspect. That fake Kertis guy.”

  “And maybe you’re right, pumpkin,” Phin told her. “But you know the Parker Brothers game Clue? It’s not about guessing. It’s about eliminating suspects.”

  “Mom guesses all the time. And she wins.”

  “True,” my husband agreed. “But your mother is also a tart who flashes her ta-tas on the World Wide Web.”

  Everyone thought that was hysterical, except for me.

  When the laughter died down, Harry asked, “So how did fake Kertis get legitimate police reports?”

  A good point. “Blood also seems to be getting into victim’s locked houses. Even bypassing deadbolts,” I said. “And he’s injecting them with a sedative.”

  “That points back to the hospital,” Harry said. “A nurse or doctor. Someone who can draw blood, and also has access to meds.”

  I felt vulnerable all of a sudden. “Harry, when is your… um… package supposed to come?”

  “Really, Jack? When is my package supposed to come? And I’m supposed to just let that entendre slip past without comment because there is a kid present?”

  “The pistolas, Harry,” Phin clarified.

  “That’s Spanish for guns,” Sam said.

  “Tomorrow morning delivery. We all have surgeries scheduled, but one of us will always be awake. Standing guard.”

  “Do I get a chance to stand guard?” Sam asked.

  “Absolutely not,” I told her.

  “Dad?”

  “No way. It’s a parent’s job to protect their kids, not the other way around.”

  “Uncle Harry?” Sam asked.

  “I’m rich and famous and have everything to live for, so I should say yes, you can stand guard. But if I do your mean mom will give me another warning. So I say no. No way in hell. If the shit goes down, you run away and save yourself. Someone has to survive to tell the world how amazing and awesome I was.”

  I checked the time. “It’s getting late, gang. We figured out a lot of stuff today. Sam, you were very brave.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Don’t ever do that again. Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Big day tomorrow. I’ll take first watch. Harry, I’ll wake you up in four hours.”

  “How about eight hours?”

  “Four hours.”

  “You can’t argue with a MILF.”

  “I don’t even try to,” Phin agreed.

  After a round of goodnights we killed the lights. I accessed my Kindle app on my phone and looked for a good thriller novel to calm my nerves. Prowling Amazon, I wondered why Jack Kilborn hadn’t put out anything new in years.

  Dead, probably.

  Instead I picked something by Ann Voss Peterson. It had a cowboy on the cover.

  What girl doesn’t like cowboys?

  I settled in to read, keeping one eye on the door to watch for unwanted visitors.

  PHIN

  I dreamt in noir. A black and white nightmare. And it wasn’t fuzzy like most of my dreams.

  This one was high-definition and so real I could smell it.

  So real I could feel it.

  BEGIN FLASHBACK

  I see myself.

  In the dark. In the dirt.

  Bound. Unable to escape.

  As the ghoul kept biting and biting and BITING.

  One arm, a mangled mess.

  The other, better but bleeding.

  Bites on the legs, thighs, abdomen, chest.

  Face and head.

  It’s a blur of pain and panic, compounded by a concussion and by being drugged.

  I’m looking at the scene as if it is happening to someone else.

  I know this is a dream about a reality that I endured.

  I know I’m helpless to change the outcome.

  As the ghoul bites me in the dream, I feel it where she bites.

  A painful, wet kiss on my neck. The wetness is my blood.

  Then my ear. Chewing, like a dog with a rawhide.

  I’m going to be eaten. One tiny, painful, horrible bite at a time.

  Then I hear the sweetest sound of my entire life.

  “Phin!”

  My wife. Coming to save me. Once again.

  Man oh man did I love her.

  “Jack!” I cry, unable to keep the joy out of my voice.

  The ghoul’s disfigured face twists in confusion. She has no clue of the wrath that’s going to descend upon her.

  We play nibble and push-away for another minute or two, and a shotgun booms.

  What’s taking Jack so long?

  “Jack! I’m over here!”

  I expect her to reply.

  But what I hear next I didn’t expect at all.

  “Dad!”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. No. How the hell did my daughter wind up here?

  END FLASHBACK

  I opened my eyes and sat up, the quick movement making my head ache, my many wounds ache, my psyche ache.

  I was dizzy from the sleep, from the drugs, from the concussion. I quickly looked around, saw Sam safely asleep in her hospital bed.

  Harry, snoring.

  Jack, reading an e-book.

  “Bad dream?” she asked, meeting my gaze.

  “Rita was gnawing on me. You came to my rescue.”

  “I rescue cute guys. It’s my thing.”

  “I thought your thing was flashing old men.”

  My wife gave me the finger.

  I wanted to tell her that my dream/flashback didn’t end with my rescue. It ended with our daughter in danger.

  And we may have put our daughter in danger yet again.

  Rather than go down that dark path, I took a different approach.

  “Do you believe in free will?” I asked Jack.

  “Sure. We control our actions, don’t we? If actions are predetermined, and no one has a real choice, then no one can be held accountable for crimes. Would have been morally wrong for me to become a cop if every criminal had no free will.”

  “The Destiny Drac is likely mentally ill.”

  “The law provides an insanity defense,” Jack said. “Those with healthy minds can choose whether or not to break the law.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “Blood’s victims are still victims. They didn’t choose that. It just happened. Just like Blood just happened. Just like you and me just happened.”

  “Are you talking about fatalism? Whatever will be, will be? No matter what we do?”

  “No one gets to redo things. The things that happen could be destined to happen. Because they already happened. No other outcome was possible.”

  “You’re calling the horse race after it’s already been run.”

  “Maybe every horse race has already been run. And nothing we do can affect the outcome. We’re just slow to learn the results. We’re here, right now. It’s too late to choose some other path, like one where we never moved to Destiny, Colorado.”

  “Maybe that’s why the town is called Destiny,” Jack said.

  “And once again, we’re being threatened. Which, honestly, I can live with. But it isn’t just you and me.”

  “You think we’re dragging our daughter into our unavoidable streak of encountering psychopaths?”

  “What if we are? Maybe if we stayed in Illinois, there’d be some other asshole trying to kill us. The Scalper. The Skinner. The Diddler.”

  Jack chuckled. “The Diddler?”

  “Maybe it’s the concussion talking, but I’m having a hard time seeing how anything I do makes a difference. I can’t even protect my family.”

  Jack put her Kindle down. “You’re wrong. Here we are. Together. Alive. Maybe all of time is already written in permanent ink, and we have no free will. If so, there’s nothing we can do about it. But if we can do something to change the future, and I think we can, then I also think we’re doing something right. You’re a good man, Phin. A good husband. A good father. You don’t need to beat yourself up.”

  “Because there are psychos to do that for me?”

  “Exactly. It’s almost time for Harry’s guard duty. You want to take his place, since you’re up?”

  “I don’t think I ever had a choice.”

  “I love you, Phin. I don’t think I ever had a choice.”

  “You guys are so syrupy sweet it’s giving me gas,” Harry said.

  I swiveled my head his way. “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “I was. And fate has decided that I get to keep sleeping, because you’re taking my place on guard duty.”

  Pretty smooth, actually. You had to admire McGlade’s assholism.

  “Sleep tight, Harry.”

  “Thanks. Just one more thing.” McGlade farted, loud enough to rattle the window blinds.

  “Holy hell,” Jack said. “Did you shit the bed?”

  “I’m not sure,” he answered. “Let me do the finger check.”

  Jack groaned in obvious disapproval. “Ugh. I just threw up in my mouth.”

  “And the dipstick goes into the oil tank…”

  Heh heh. He said dipstick.

  “We don’t need a play-by-play,” Jack told him.

  “We check the level…”

  “This keeps getting worse. Phin, make him stop.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “I’m pretty invested in the outcome.”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand…” Harry dragged the word out. “We’re clean! It was just gas. Crisis averted.”

  “Thank God,” Jack said.

  Harry farted again.

  I’m a guy. Farts are hysterical. Plus, his timing was really good. I laughed, which hurt my head.

  “I need ear plugs,” Jack said.

  “I need a nose plug.” I waved at the air around my head.

  “Must have been my dinner,” Harry told us. “Refried beans, cabbage soup, hardboiled eggs, and salami. Who could have guessed it would lead to this?”

  “I’m never sharing a room with you again,” Jack said.

  “Then my butt will never blow you another kiss,” Harry countered.

  “Good. Promise me that.”

  Harry farted again.

  Which, no matter how you look at it, was inevitable.

  SAM

  I had bad dreams. Fake Kertis coming after me.

  His mouth was huge. Big as a dinosaur’s. He was trying to eat me.

  I tried to be brave in the dream. I tried to stand up to him.

  But whenever he got too close, I turned and ran away.

  Because I wasn’t brave.

  Even dreaming, which wasn’t real, I couldn’t be brave.

  JACK

  They came in to prep Harry at 5 A.M.

  “No tears,” he told me and Phin as Sam slept. “If I don’t make it, don’t mourn me. Because I plan on coming back as a ghost and haunting your bathroom. Every time you pinch a loaf, have the Hershey squirts, birth a floater, plant some cedar logs, grunt out the fudge, cut a cigar, make butt burgers, liquidate some assets, lay some stink eggs, make room for dinner, strangle the brown snake, or feed the sewer alligators, I’ll be there. As an ethereal spirit. Watching you. Taking pictures of your turd snipper.”

  They pushed his bed out of our room, and I told Phin he could sleep because I wanted to check my case notes.

  I still felt like I was missing something. It kept coming back to three main points.

  First, Blood likely worked at St. Erasmus.

  Second, Blood was either fake Kertis and had dissociative identity disorder to explain the wild divergence in modus operandi. Or Blood had an accomplice.

  Third, somehow Blood was getting into people’s houses.

  Picking locks? Entering some other way?

  How did Blood choose their victims?

  I felt the answer was right there, within reach, but I kept overlooking it. I spent the next hour reading through more sparse police reports. When 8 A.M. finally rolled around, I decided to call another victim, see if they could offer anything new.

  So I didn’t disturb my sleeping family, I walked outside of our room and stood in the hall to make the call.

  Ms. Conchita Cortez picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello, Ms. Cortez. My name is Jacqueline Daniels. I’m doing a follow-up to the police report you filed two years ago. The home invader.”

  “Si, the Destiny Drac. Did you people catch him?” Her accent was Central American. I checked the police report, saw she was my age. I also saw no reason to disabuse her of the notion that I was a police officer.

  “Not yet. But we’re hoping that you might provide some more information that might lead to an arrest.”

  “I told everything I know to that detective. The plump one.”

  “Detective Kertis is deceased, and his notes are incomplete. Would you mind going through it again for me? On a video chat?”

  “I have never video chatted. I know that sounds silly. Everyone is doing it during the pandemic. But I don’t want to put on makeup just for a call, you know?”

  “I understand. Could you describe the incident right now?”

  “Ay dios mio, of course. It was after three in the morning. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain in my foot. I had three toes amputated. I was obese, and my diabetes was severe before I got my weight under control, you know? I’m much better now.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I lost over two hundred and seventeen pounds. Intermittent fasting. Just eating one meal per day did the trick. I didn’t even have to cut out pan dulce. Those are my favorite little cakes, you know? I still eat a few per week, and I’m still losing weight.”

  “So what happened at three in the morning?”

  “He came into my house. Let himself in through the front door like he lived there.”

  “The door was locked?” I asked. A nurse, Nurse Bantam, walked past, smiling benignly at me.

  “It’s always locked. It locks automatically when it closes. I hate that door. I’ve locked myself out half a dozen times, by accident, you know?”

  “So did you see the intruder at first?”

  “First I heard him. And I did something stupid. I didn’t trust my own ears. I heard it, but convinced myself I didn’t hear it. You know?”

  That happened a lot. Crime victims refusing to believe something was happening to them, right until the situation escalated. Often people would rather doubt themselves than act. Sometimes because they were sure it must be a mistake, and they didn’t want to be foolish. Sometimes because they simply hoped they were mistaken and the threat was imaginary.