Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series) by W.D. Gagliani Page B

Rose Billings
herself, sometimes her soused partner, a useless sack of pus as the young
Archer thought of him, would wield the punishing whip with equal gusto.
    And the
foster child had suffered for those sadistic Billings bastards, until the day
he snapped – or whatever it was that happened – and when he and
Randy were the only ones standing at the flattened top of the bluff overlooking
a narrow bend in the Fox River, way behind the sprawling Billings homestead, he
had shoved Randy over the edge and listened with glee as the kid’s ragged scream
was cut short.
    Then the
Archer had followed, scrambling down the gravelly zig-zag path until he’d
reached the devil boy, whose neck was at an acute angle where he lay cradled by
a thorny bush that had broken his fall somewhat. But not enough, definitely not
enough.
    Ah yes, the
Archer-to-be had chuckled at the wonder of it all. The reversal of fortune had
been immediate, if not exactly premeditated. He wiped bits of gravel embedded
in the seat of his pants, breathless with suppressed joy.
    And then the
devil boy opened his eyes and stared at him, unable to speak, his crazed gaze
pleading.
    And the
Archer remembered all the trouble, all the pain, all the humiliation he’d
suffered at Randy’s hands, all the punishment, all the missed suppers, all the
whippings with that damned belt…
    And he’d
stepped up to where Randy lay upside-down and put his hands on the injured boy’s
neck and twisted, hard, until he heard the badly damaged spine snap under his
calloused fingers.
    He’d stared
at those frozen, accusing, shocked eyes for a long time, as if waiting for a
blink that would never come, then he had made his way home to build the alibi
that would make Randy’s fate a complete and terrible accident.
    Turnabout
can be fair play, sure enough.
    And now Aunt
Rose herself was in the basement, stuffed into that old-fashioned steamer trunk
she’d dragged around with her for some unknown reason. The belt he’d been
punished with had come from that trunk. Maybe her dead husband’s clothes were
stored in it, along with the alcoholic’s who had also apparently succumbed to
something. The homestead had been sold, the house torn down. When he’d tracked
her down here in Milwaukee, to a tiny, long-unpainted and run-down bungalow on
the south side, she was living the life of an old lady. Watching ancient
television series, reading prim and proper romances, doing word puzzles, and
feeding a yappy rat-like dog. The yappy dog rested in peace right on her body,
now, the two forever entwined. Their loose broken necks identical. It felt right , like a cycle completed.
    The Archer was born.
    Like a
superhero.
    This was his origin story.
    Tonight he
had flipped on Rose’s television and waited for the news at 10:00, and sure
enough there was another live report from the casino.
    He felt the
thrill of knowing the news-chick, the hot-looking brunette, was talking about
what he had done. There was footage of the casino, an establishing shot, and
then they’d managed to get some video of the scene itself. The cops swarmed
around it, so the Archer couldn’t see Tanya’s body, and they wouldn’t have
shown it anyway. The hot reporter was melodramatic. The anchor in the studio, a
handsome Latino man with short hair gelled straight up, made the obligatory
terrified and shocked face: That this
could happen in our city! Imagine!
    He tried to
eyeball the cops who stood nearby, but it was hard because the video was
choppy. A couple guys in leather, including the big cop who'd talked to the
reporter and a guy in a three-quarter length dark wool coat, a bunch of
uniformed cops, and a small cluster of crime scene guys like on the CSI shows.
A few cars drove past slowly, waved around the scene by uniformed cops who
stared into their windshields.
    They kept
the report short to avoid sickening their audience, but they did mention that
an arrow was the cause of death.
    Then in a
sublime moment, the hot