Blood by Stephen Fox

Captain.”

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 3
     
                  Ten p.m. on another cool, damp night.  Harris Park was usually well lit, but two streetlights were out.  A rock concert was ending at the Civic Center just three blocks away, and overflow parking spread five or six blocks in each direction.
                  Don Carter walked his girlfriend to her car.  He had met Barbara last week at a little shop on the riverfront where she worked, and they had hit it off right away.  They drove separate cars because this was First Saturday and she had to work late.  Each month on the first Saturday of the month, Savannah holds a festival at River Street, and in recent years the event has grown tremendously.  The shop had been so busy that she’d had to plead to get off early enough to make the concert.
                  Hand-in-hand the couple walked toward the park.  Only a few cars were left on the street.   The well-dressed twosome appeared to be the only ones from the concert parked on this street.  But unbeknownst to the starry-eyed couple, hidden eyes deep in the shadows followed their progress.  Could he handle them both without creating a disaster like last night?  Better to bide his time than to make another mistake.  But the need was growing so strong.
                  The lovers neared her car.  “Gee, if I had known that it would be this dark, I never would have parked here.”
                  “Well, fortunately for you, beautiful Barbara, you have a rough, tough, incredibly handsome, not to mention sexy guy to protect you.”
                  “You forgot humble, Don.”
                  “Did I?  Well that one is taken for granted.  As my idol Jethro Bodine says, when you’re a third grade graduate, the world is your clam.  Or was it mussel?”
                  She giggled.  “The only muscles around here are in your head.”
                  The laughing and good-natured banter brought back memories of another age, another place for the dark figure, but the need quickly overwhelmed any other feelings.
                  The couple stopped at a red Ford Mustang, still fifty feet from where he crouched in the greenery.  Barbara produced a key and opened the car door.  Patrick wanted to leap out and take them both, but the distance was too great, the risk too high.  Watching the couple embracing in the road, so close and yet so far away, made the craving even harder to bear.
     
                  Terry Beard sipped his coffee as he sat next to his partner.  He moved to try to stay comfortable.  “I wish the department had stayed with the bigger cars.  These mid-sized jobs are murder on surveillance.”  They had the eight to midnight watch tonight, staking out an empty house.  After sitting for two hours, their attention span grew smaller with each passing minute.
                  “Quit complaining,” his partner replied.  Richard Coleman was a seventeen-year veteran and had seen it all.  “I hear that the Macon City Council was complaining about cost so one of the councilmen suggested that the police switch to subcompacts.  Of course that wouldn’t apply to the Council’s cars and portable phones and other perks.  Just the police who are expected to solve problems immediately and who need the more powerful engines.”  He chuckled.  “The only reason they didn’t switch was that they couldn’t find a good American subcompact.  Can you imagine doing surveillance in a Geo Metro?  We’d have to get out of the car to change our minds.”
                  “Still, some of those foreign jobs are pretty nice.  My brother loves his Toyota.”
                  “Well, with our luck, we’d get stuck in some Yugo.  We’d have to get out and push if we came to an overpass.”
     
                  One last kiss