Part 15

Charlie’s truck reeked of stale cigarettes, garlic, and old coffee. The stench slammed Bounds in the face as he got into the passenger’s seat, a more effective wake-up than any alarm clock.

Part 14

Danny Bounds was exhausted when Charlie pulled up in front of his house in her dirty truck and leaned on the horn. He had to sprint down the front walk before she woke up the whole street, feeling like a man whose mistress has shown up at his doorstep on Christmas morning.

Part 13

Nothing of interest was going on behind the Chief’s door. Not unless you found lectures on common decency, respect, and acting your age to be fun-filled thrill rides. Charlie didn’t, but she sat across from the Chief trying to look contrite and nod at the right times. Her attitude was more like that of a troublesome child instead of a full-grown woman.

Part 12

Here’s how a nameless creature handles the issue of breakfast. It hunts. Curfew notwithstanding, there were always a few souls willing to brave the night: a businessman returning from a meeting that had run late, a dinner guest that had overstayed their welcome, and teenagers.

Always teenagers, a never-ending supply, young enough to think they’ll live forever and old enough to think that they don’t care if they do. Teenagers sneaking into the park at night for a romantic rendezvous, or stumbling home drunk from a house party. Easier prey than even children, because teenagers had a modicum of freedom. It would be hours before they were missed.

The creature sniffed the cool night air. There was blood on the wind. The tide was changing. A new moon rose. The hunt began.

Part 11

George Foster went home, had breakfast, made love to his wife, plotted how to deal with Charlie Black and Danny Bounds, paid some bills, called his son, took a power nap, made some work-related phone-calls, filled out some paperwork, and prepared for another long night. George Foster knew how to manage his time.

Part 10

 Tobias Masters returned home to an empty house. His younger brother Chris was gone, despite the early hour. A note on the fridge said, rather curtly, that he had gone to the park and would be there all day. Tobias felt an unkind sense of relief.

Part 9

Daniel Dominic Bounds, potential future Chief of the Piper Ridge Police Department, had burnt the eggs. And the toast. And the oatmeal. And he was pretty sure he had messed up the cereal as well, although he had no idea how that had come to pass.

Part 8

“You’re what?!” Chief Foster would never be able to put into words how supremely glad he was that he’d decided to hold this conversation in private. Charlie’s public outbursts were something of a legend in town. When she wanted to, she could be a one-woman riot. Last year’s charity bake sale had almost ended in a felony charge.

Part 7

Charlie was not allowed to smoke at crime scenes, a rule that had taken Foster years to impress upon her. Charlie could be sulky and stubborn as a recalcitrant child about certain things. If told not to do something, Charlie would usually do said thing with a sort of gleeful mania that left chaos in its wake. 

In the end, however, Foster had won that fight. And once she lost a fight, Charlie never mentioned it again. She settled for an unlit cigarette clenched between her teeth, which privately annoyed Foster as much as her filthy clouds of smoke ever had. But one contaminated his crime scenes, and one simply irritated him. He’d chosen the lesser of two evils.

Part 6

She was ready in six minutes, one full minute devoted entirely to locking up her trailer. Tobias doubted the local bank had as much security covering its vaults.

Dressed in jeans, black boots and a man’s leather jacket that was about as old as her, nobody would have looked twice at her in any major city. Hell, compared to some of the people Tobias had seen in the East Village her fashion sense was charmingly conservative. In Piper Ridge, her wardrobe choices smacked of the obscene.

Part 5

While the center of town and the neighborhoods surrounding it were indeed lovely (picturesque was the word the tourism board preferred) the outskirts of town quickly fell into disrepair. It was a squalid warning to good citizens of what might happen if you didn’t keep up with your home repairs. The borders of the town, which the finer residents liked to pretend weren’t connected to Piper Ridge at all, bore little resemblance to the immaculately maintained heart of the small municipality.

Part 4

Piper Ridge was a quaint town. It strove for quaintness. It worshipped at the altar of all that was old-fashioned and charming. Piper Ridge understood what needed to be done to achieve the coveted title of ‘quaint.’ You couldn’t just plant some expensive flowers around the center of town and hope for the best. If you wanted to be considered quaint, you had to work for it.

Part 3

Tobias Masters was deeply, deeply unhappy. His unhappiness radiated like nuclear fallout, incinerating every other emotion. Tomes could be written about his unhappiness that would drive men to madness. He was the common cold of misery, infecting anyone unlucky enough to happen by. He was aggressively miserable. His depression was motivated.

Part 2

George Foster, head of the Piper Ridge Police Department for over fifteen years, was a tough guy. He’d served in Vietnam. He’d seen things that still woke him up in the dead of night, overseas and at home. He was a cool customer. One tough hombre. The townspeople idolized him, as well they should. He’d spent years cultivating his reputation. It was a point of pride, being jaded and unflappable. In a small town like Piper Ridge, you needed a thick skin if you wanted to survive.

Part 1

They came a little after midnight. It was a cool, crisp evening at the end of August. The moon was a sickly orange, making strange shadows across the landscape. There was a brisk wind blowing, upsetting the leaves and pulling them from the trees. The weather would have been better suited for November.