Micah (2 page)

Micah talked to the police for an
hour. Someone had stitched up his arm and wrapped it all up. His
dad had shielded him from the cameras, which was good. Micah was
still a little sobby and didn’t want it all over the world that he
was a baby. As soon as he was told he could go home, his grandda
lifted him up in his arms and carried him to the car. He was in the
back seat, all strapped in, when he made the decision he was going
to be just like his father and grandda were…good cops. He decided
to tell him right then.

“
You do that, boy. With
that extra bit of something you have, you’d be a good one.” His dad
winked at him in the mirror and smiled. “I’m very proud of you,
boy. You kept your cool and never forgot to keep the innocent safe.
That’s what being a good cop is going to be like.”

“
Yeah, and being a panther
don’t hurt either.” His mom turned to him from the front and cocked
her brow at him. It took him a couple of seconds to think what he’d
done. “Doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt to be a panther
either.”

Micah smiled. It was kinda nice being
corrected like that. His mom was the best, and he’d made sure that
she and his brothers were safe. Even that new one. Not that Micah
thought they needed any more brothers, but he was glad they were
all around.

Chapter 1

He cut the woman out of the picture
with the skill of a surgeon. Not any part of her was left on the
photo paper, not a single strand of hair. As he picked up the
second picture and started to cut her out, he looked into her eyes.
They were what had captured him in the first place, her lovely dark
blue eyes.

She’d been looking right at him,
smiling and looking like she’d known him forever. But someone had
come between them…a person that he’d taken care of immediately. The
man would never bother her again.

The scissors slipped in his anger and
he cut off a strand or two of her hair. This would not do. She was
perfect and it would only be fitting that every picture he took of
her would be as well. Going to the printer, he pushed the small
button again to have it print. As the small picture of her began to
feed forward, he looked around their room.

Two entire walls were covered in her
image alone. He’d been taking pictures of her for so long now that
he’d had to do something with them as boxes and boxes of them
spilled from his closet when he opened it. This was
better.

There were also things that she’d
given him. Not directly…no, that wasn’t her style. She would leave
them for him on tables, in her car, and on her desk. Once she’d
even left him a pair of her panties, hanging out of the top of her
trash just for him to see and take. His woman was a sly one, she
was.

Their love was clandestine. It was
their own private secret that had been so much fun for them. He
wanted the secrets to end now, to have their love in the open, but
knew that people would ridicule them, even try to tear them apart.
So he waited. Not to mention, he still had things to prepare for
her. The cage was just beginning to take on a good shape for
her.

Running his finger over the large
picture he’d worked so hard on, he smiled at her. “Not long now, my
love. Not long at all.”

As the picture finished, he picked it
up by the corner. The ink never dried as he’d wanted it to and
smearing it would not look the way he wanted, the way she deserved.
As he started cutting again, careful of every strand this time, of
every part of her and her clothing, he smiled at what her thoughts
would be of what he’d done for them. Not just the room but the
entire house. It had taken him weeks to find the perfect rocking
chair, more weeks to find the pillow that she used in hers. The
afghan had been handmade to match the one she had on the back of
her couch. The picture frames with all sorts of people in them had
been painstakingly matched to be like the ones she had. If she
changed the photo or moved the frame, he did the same
here.

But this room was not like the one she
slept in. It was their room. He frowned when he thought about her
room. The one with the bed. He’d never been able to enter it.
Something…someone had kept him out. Only once had he been able to
see her sleeping, and he thought it was not nearly
enough.

As he finished the picture, he set it
down on his desk. Spreading the glue from edge to edge, he blew
over it to make sure that it was sticky and not too wet to hang.
Picking it up when he was satisfied that it was ready, he pressed
it next to the one of him. They matched perfectly, like a couple on
a wedding cake.

There were other pictures he needed to
crop…many more, as a matter of fact. He’d gotten distracted last
night and had watched her for hours instead of preparing things for
her arrival. But she’d been so beautiful watching television that
he’d nearly went in to join her.

Her popcorn had been forgotten as she
was mesmerized by the things playing out on the small screen. She’d
gotten up twice, pausing it at a good part, only to return to close
her eyes when something was too scary for her. She enjoyed scary
movies, but seldom watched them without closing her eyes at some
parts. Had he been there, he would have held her through
them.

The knock at his door startled him and
he moved out of his room and into the next, locking the door behind
him. As the knock sounded again, he frowned. This was his time, and
whoever was on the other side was not welcome.

The big man standing there had on a
uniform. It wasn’t the police this time; he thought him to be a
delivery person. But there were no packages scheduled for this
week, and he stood back while the man knocked again. Then he saw
exactly who it was.

“
I know you’re in there. I
can see your car out here.” He looked at the car and wondered how
anyone had attached it to him. That needed to be taken care of as
soon as the man was out of here. “Open the fucking door. You owe
four months of back rent.”

Rent. How mundane. As he moved forward
to let the landlord in, he wondered again why people insisted on
having so much involved in money. He supposed it was needed. Food
had a cost and so did paper and new printers. He was glad now that
he’d purchased reams of it rather than just the small amount the
stationary store carried. The door opened and a blast of cold air
filled his small room.

“
I had not realized it had
gotten cold.” The landlord huffed at him as he moved into the room.
“I shall take care of the rent posthaste. Just give me a
moment.”

He turned then and moved to the little
table by the chair. It was one of the only things that was
different than his true love’s house. As he turned, smiling at his
landlord, he wondered if his love was paying her rent as
well.

The gun was pointed at the man’s head
when he fired. The landlord jerked back twice as he received his
rent in the form of a bullet. He’d only fired once, but the fall
over the table by the chair made him jerk a second time. There was
no help for it when it shattered beneath his weight.

Rushing to the closet that was near
the kitchen, he pulled out the large trash bags as well as the old
towels he had there. This was old hat for him, and the bundle that
lay in waiting was snatched up as well. Almost before the blood
saturated the carpet, he had the wound wrapped in one of the bags
while the towels were soaking up the spill.

It took him only an hour to get the
issue prepared for disposal. He supposed that he’d had enough
practice at this that he’d gotten better. But he took his time,
making sure that all the blood was cleaned up as well as any other
matter that the issue might have splattered around the
room.

The car had a huge trunk. And it had
been used for this purpose—getting rid of issues like this—for
months now. The body fit in the trunk, and as he closed the lid of
it, he tossed in the bag with all the towels and other things he’d
used to clean up with, including his clothing.

He’d taken the time to remove anything
from the landlord that might be useful…keys he might need to use, a
wad of cash, and his watch and cell phone. The credit cards he’d
already shredded, and the phone was now soaking in a bath of acid.
No rice would be making it usable again, he thought with a
grin.

Driving out to the country, toward the
farm, he thought of his love. Would she be pleased with him or
upset? He wondered, too, if she would help him if this was
something they had to do when they were together. More than likely
not. Women would not condone taking care of issues as he did. No,
she would more than likely want to simply turn him away with a
smile and be done with it.

“
She needs me to keep her
safe.” He frowned then. He’d not always been able to keep her safe.
Just a few years ago, she’d been in all the papers when her
family—mother, father, and a brother—had been taken by bad men and
tortured. These men had come into the home, killed the adults, and
had beaten the children…his true love had been one of them. But her
name, and that of her brother, had been omitted each time they ran
the stories.

The parents had died, and the brother
was…he had never heard, now that he thought of it, what had become
of the brother. When he did see her with a younger man, it was to
notice that he was in a wheelchair and that he was on oxygen to
help him breathe. He supposed it was her brother, but he had no way
of knowing for sure. He had been injured. That was all it had said.
He’d been there, of course, during the aftermath. Their love,
unknown at the time, was what had drawn him to the place. It was
where he’d first heard her.

He made his way out to the farmhouse
backyard. The place, like so many around there, had been abandoned
many years ago by someone that he’d been acquainted with while in
prison. Taxes, he’d come to find out, had ruined this family and
all their generations after. As he dug the hole that the landlord
would rest in, he thought about the car he’d have to bring out as
well. There was the big barn that he’d been using for this purpose,
but it was becoming full now. He’d have to come up with a better
plan. Things were moving much too fast for him to care
for.

After laying the landlord to rest, he
moved to the car again and pulled all the bags from within. Heading
to the outbuilding at the back of the house, he wondered if there
was a way for him to cut up the bodies and care for them the way he
did the necessary things he brought out here.

It was big enough, he realized. The
bygone kiln was just big enough to put an issue in if he worked at
cutting them up. That would require more work than he wanted to
mess with, but it was something to think about. Throwing the things
into the gas kiln, he moved to the dials to turn it up. The small
pyrometric cone that bent when the kiln got up to temperature was
still in place from when he’d been there before. Carefully reading
the instructions, as he did when using this tool, he turned the
burners on slowly.

It took it almost four hours to get to
the temperature he needed. Leaving the place as it cooled down, he
knew that when he returned, it would be ready to use again and
empty of all but a few ashes. Smiling, he nearly whistled as he
made his way back to the car. He was trying his best to stop that
habit, as it seemed to hurt his true love’s ears when she had heard
it before.

The van the landlord had driven to his
house was a little trickier than the issue had been. It was a stick
shift, something he had no real great ability to operate, and it
was loud. He had to dress in his baggy clothing as well so no one
would know him, and that proved to be incredibly hot.

Driving it to the darkest part of town
he knew of, he left it running with the keys in it. No one saw him,
of course, when he got out, and even if they did, they’d never know
who he was. Covered from the top of his head to the bottom of his
feet, he looked more alien than human. The large costume was big
enough to cover his head when pulled up.

Wrapping the suit up when he returned
home, he stuffed it in the smallish kiln he had there and fired it
away as he’d done the other things. He’d ordered it for his home
some months ago and was very pleased at the ease with which it took
care of things for him; quickly and quietly, too…including the
shredded credit cards. Everything that had been brought into his
and his true love’s home was now gone, ash. It was well after
midnight when he finally crawled into their bed.

“
Good night, my dearest.”
He smiled in the dark, knowing that she could hear him as well as
if she were lying next to him. And this was something he was
looking forward to more than anything…having her there.

He would never soil her with sex. That
was something that he would do to women who did that sort of thing
for a living. Not that he ever paid them, but when he needed sex,
which wasn’t often, he would find one that would never be missed,
take her to the farm, and use her there. Getting rid of the issue
was much easier, as it was close at hand.

Rolling over in their bed, he looked
at the stack of pictures he’d yet to cut out. Yesterday had been a
good day in that he’d been able to get nearly two dozen shots of
her while she’d been working, and then more when she’d gone to the
park with her brother, pushing him around with all her strength. He
hated that she had to work so hard at that place, but it was good
for her for now to get out with her friends. Plus, her job made it
so he could keep tabs on her.