The Taste Of Night

hillside as his own, but that didn’t faze me. I’d always considered the whole of the Mojave my home.

The brick wall separating his house from the untamed desert was my first hurdle. I vaulted it in a quick, single motion, watched only by the half cast eye of a slivered moon. Landing in a worn patch of grass, I darted beneath an overgrown pepper tree, where I remained for another minute to temper my thumping heart. I’d dreamed of this day too long to let my emotions overtake me now.

I approached the house cautiously, struck by the complete stillness. It was summer, and though the birds had retired for the night, chirping crickets should have softened the silence. Yet not even a blade of grass rustled in the breeze ferried from the hillside behind me. It was like the air too had abandoned this lot, run off by Joaquin’s predatory scent in the same way pesticide kept insects at bay.

Or killed those who didn’t obey their instincts, I thought, swallowing hard as I slid up the back porch. Reaching into my utility belt, I opened a compact mirror and peered into it to gauge the angle needed to reflect the home’s interior. Even in baggy black fatigues, my face half covered by my mask, I had to admit I looked fabulous. Whoever it was who said, “Die young and leave a pretty corpse” was probably a fan.

Flicking my wrist toward the window, I did a swift sweep to detect any movement inside. There was none. So I tilted the compact slowly, making out a couch and coffee table in the dim room, a television perched on a small rectangular stand, and shadows-the normal kind-layering one another in varying degrees of density, banished near the left corner where a dim utility light, probably the bulb over a stove in the kitchen, had been left on.

I moved back from the window and followed the wall until I reached the sliding glass door. Putting the compact away, I gripped my conduit in one hand and a heavy-duty flashlight in the other. Something told me Joaquin was so confident nobody would dare enter his private domain that he didn’t bother with an alarm system. What I didn’t expect was for him to neglect locking the door as well. Surprise, then wariness, held me back when the door slid smoothly open, not even a squeak to break the oppressive silence.

Arrogant bastard, I thought, widening the gap. In one quick movement I’d breached the threshold and whipped my flashlight over the room like a spotlight arching over the night sky. There was nothing here but the objects I’d seen through the window, so I clicked the light off and let my eyes adjust to the interior, sliding the door shut behind me.

On closer inspection I saw the flotsam and jetsam that occupied Everyman’s household-newspapers stacked neatly to one side of the sofa, four different remotes to operate one TV. Typical man. Next to an oval glass-top table I spotted a large water bottle, like the ones delivered door to door in big green trucks, brimming with coins.

How about that? Joaquin saves his pennies.

Another smaller jar rested on a wooden chair that looked to be sized for a child. At first I thought it contained the overflow coins from the first, but these weren’t the right shape or size, and coin didn’t gleam in the moonlight like broken seashells. I reached into the jar.

I knew even before touching them that they weren’t seashells. Running my tongue along my top row of teeth, I paused over the smooth surface mirrored in my hand, minus the root. At least he’d washed the viscera from each tiny trophy before depositing it inside. Fastidious, I thought, clenching my jaw. Then I wondered which of the hundreds was mine.

“Stop it,” I ordered myself, depositing the tooth back with the others. I wasn’t going to start playing victim just because I was finally facing the man who’d tried to make me into one. But I wondered what he planned to do when the jar was brimming. Something significant, probably. Something to mark the occasion. Or maybe he’d just start another jar. Maybe he’d simply go on killing.

“Not after tonight,” I swore, and turned with more determination, if less care, to search the rest of the house. “Not ever again.”

Thirty tense seconds later I had the kitchen canvassed, as well as the laundry room leading to the empty garage. That half of the home searched, I turned my attention to the hallway, and the bedrooms I knew lay beyond. My feet were silent on the living room carpet, and I paused only long enough to affix a bugging device beneath the cheap metal coffee table, placing the bug to track it in my inner ear. I wanted to know if he entered the living room while I was in another part of the house.

Away from the kitchen light, in the pitch of the darkened hall, the scents of charred candy and rancid flesh grew stronger. I caught myself breathing shallowly through my mouth, trying not to let too much of the stench in. The front rooms had been for show, with all the charm of a third-rate sitcom set. This, though, was where Joaquin lived. His stench was imbedded in the walls.

Inching along until I came to a trio of closed doors, I studied them all, then raised my conduit to the door on the right.

Let’s see what’s behind door number one, I thought, swinging it open. I crouched, prepared to blow the shit out of a secondary bedroom that had bare floors, naked concrete lying in spotty patches of light from the streetlights leaching through the vertical blinds. It was a workshop of some sort, I saw, straightening. All the tools were normal enough; jigsaws and cordless drills, pegboards anchored across an entire wall filled with hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers, aligned according to purpose and size. Drill bits lined the workbench in neatly arrayed plastic boxes, and I was willing to bet the locked drawers were equally well kept.

So, I thought, the anal freak liked to do his work away from the prying eyes of neighbors and passers-by. Interesting, as it didn’t appear he was much for home improvement.

I returned to the hallway, leaving the room open. Door number two was positioned on an interior wall, too small to be anything but a utility closet. I told myself I was being thorough as I moved toward it, and that I wasn’t avoiding what could only be Joaquin’s bedroom directly across from that.

I whipped the closet open to find nothing but a bare light-bulb, the string used to turn it on swaying from the ceiling. I pushed that door open as far as it would go, just as I had with the first, then turned to door number three. Joaquin’s bedroom. God, I did not want to go in there. But if I could catch him unaware, blow off his head in his sleep while he dreamed of murdering little girls in the desert and taking their eyeteeth home as a prize…well, isn’t that what I’d come for?

The memory of the jar in the living room mobilized me, and I took a deep breath of Joaquin-soaked air, filled my lungs with it, and held it as I reached for the handle.

A noise on the other side stopped me.

It wasn’t a snore, or the rustle of bedclothes as someone shifted positions, but a pleading sound, a soft whimper followed by ragged breathing, and in the brief silence I was sure I could hear someone struggling to crawl across the bedroom floor.

Like I’d once struggled to crawl across the dusty desert floor.

Thinking of tiny bodies, crushed spirits, and airless desert nights-and all those goddamned teeth in the living room-I expelled the tainted air from my chest and yanked the door open. But there wasn’t another young girl looking up at me with bloodied limbs and pleading eyes. That was just me, my mind. A memory. Instead there was something else.

And boy, did it look happy to see me.

“Uh…good doggie?” I said, taking in the sight of an animal with the muscle of a bear and the angular ferocity of a wolf. He let a warning rumble loose in his throat, and the deep reverberation jarred through my immobile bones like a jackhammer through concrete. His ears were pricked forward, eyes bright, and I had no idea what kind of dog he was beyond “not friendly.” Those eyes narrowed as I took a small step back, flashing scarlet, though that could’ve been my imagination. One thing was sure. If dogs could speak, this one would be saying, Yum.

No wonder the back door had been unlocked. Who needed a security system when Cujo lurked inside? Those hadn’t been whimpers of pain I’d heard from the other side of the bedroom door, but cries of longing as the beast sensed an intruder. I swallowed hard, shifting my weight to take another step back, and pulled from my mind the only word I could remember from a long-ago documentary on the Discovery Channel.

“Stay,” I said in German. Or so I thought. I’d probably said Puppy Chow because he launched from his back haunches so fast my vision blurred.

I raised my weapon arm too late. I couldn’t clear the beast’s bulky weight, and his front paws-flashing wickedly sharp claws-sank into my shoulders, mouth open and snapping. It was all I could do to wedge my forearms between us as I bowled over backward, footing lost, the stench of matted fur and stale dog breath washing over me as I hit the hallway floor.