Page 52 of Race With The Devil

I snorted. “With grief over me.”

Wolf looked at me, confused. “You? What are you talking about? No, I mean grief over the idea that Lavinia is almost certainly at the bottom of Grandview Point, maybe with her neck broken.”

I felt compelled to remind him. “In case you forgot. She was running away, in your words, angrily sobbing after finding out I did time for rape.”

“Oh. Yeah. That, too. Well, both things combined could’ve sent her crazy as a soup sandwich. She’s been dealing with a lot lately, Tanner. Gary Gregario, Lyric, then Lavinia vanishing. She’s barely had time to do her promotional work.”

It hadn’t occurred to me she’d turned down work. I knew I’d only heard her mention going in to her dog grooming spa once or twice. Other than that, her assistant was dealing with it. It was completely self-centered of me to think the only reason she ran to Tutti like a chicken with its head cut off was me. Things definitely had been building up. She had to testify in person in court against Gary in a few weeks. The stress would be caving in anyone with a healthy outlook. But a damaged doe like Unity? My stomach tightened at the idea she might be throwing herself at Tutti’s mercy, begging for answers. Not the brightest way to get intel from a warped monkey like Tutti.

“I see motion in those windows,” Wolf whispered, pointing.

I did too, the two-story windows of most likely a living room. Tall curtains covered half the height of the glass, and opened louvers the other half, but silhouettes of people moving were plain, as though projected there by a shadowbox. We crept even slower, and I winced when Wolf’s big engineer boot crackled a dried pine branch. But the man and the woman in the living room kept right on arguing.

If I bent my knees in an awkward manner and leaned against the window, I could make out the forms of Tutti and Unity as they stridently walked circles around each other on the carpet. Wolf bent the same way on the other side of the curtains.

“We know you killed her!” Unity shouted.

Oh, no. Wolf rolled his eyes. Everyone knew you never showed your hand to the enemy. You played dumb, like the Bare Bones were doing in not firing Tutti.

The back of Tutti’s white-lavender hair glowed eerily under fluorescent lights, as though it were a Halloween fright wig. He barked a laugh. “Oh, Unity! You make me laugh. Why would I off the love of my life, my Lovey? Remember the enormous twenty-four carat ring I gave her? Why would I do that if I was planning to off her?”

Off her. Like offhauling some trash.

My fingers scratched the glass helplessly, hoping to get Unity’s attention. But as they walked circles around each other, they switched places, and now I had the back of Unity’s head as she said,

“We have proof! We have a video of you crossing into Grand Canyon National Park with her!”

Oh, no. No, no, no, Unity.

Wolf whispered, “I’ll go in the front to stop her from saying anything else. You break this window.”

Tutti was recklessly eyeballing her as though he had a plan in mind. Indeed, he clicked his tongue with pity as he circled her, getting her into position. “Oh, Unity. How little you know! We were taking a romantic drive down the south rim.”

“On Tuesday? I thought you said she drove off with José on Sunday.”

Tsk-tsking some more, Tutti made a lunge for her. As he struggled with the stronger woman, a bodyguard popped out of the shadows to help him. I was forced to helplessly watch behind the plate glass as they wrestled her into a facedown position and snapped zipties around her wrists. These fucking windows! They were not the kind that opened, just picture windows for the view.

But as Tutti straddled Unity’s ass to tighten the flex-cuffs and the bodyguard pinned her shoulders to the floor, Tutti seemed to get some ideas. He slapped my woman on the ass and began to ride her like a horse. He even trilled, “Giddyup!” while making bucking motions with his hips.

“You fucking cray-cray dickhead!” Unity shrieked, her voice muffled by the Persian rug. “Lavinia told me how you’d ride her, force her to wear a bit in her mouth, put reins on her, like you enjoyed fucking a horse! You’re a twisted assmuncher! You make poisoned fake weed you know kids will buy and you stand back and laugh when they die!”

Tutti did seem to be overwhelmed with a crazed fit of the giggles. Like those insane marijuana addicts in thirties movies who ran around with bugged-out eyes, scratching their faces and laughing maniacally when they saw a werewolf in the mirror, Tutti acted like he was on some drug I’d never heard of before. Maybe he was. Maybe he was trying his shit out on himself.

Now he slapped her ass again and lunged even more energetically against her bottom. “You know it, sister! I do enjoy fucking horses! Too bad you’ll never live to tell anyone about it!”

That was fucking it. There was still no sign of Wolf Glaser. I could’ve gone around the front, too, but when Tutti whipped a knife out from somewhere on his person, I was done with waiting.

Hefting the hammer on high, I smashed the plate glass.

To my surprise, it only spread out into a network of spiderwebs as tall as myself. And, of course, the three people in the room went stiff and silent, staring in wide-mouthed awe at the window. Breakproof glass. But I was a tall, muscular guy, so I smashed again and again. The spiderweb grew larger and divots appeared where I was certain I could break through. In the meantime, Wolf Glaser finally appeared in the doorway, distracting Tutti from his cutting or humping of my woman. I couldn’t hear their dialogue what with my smashing, but I did hear a gunshot. The bodyguard. He had shot Wolf Glaser.

At last, I smashed a weakened spot in the glass. Kicking with all my might, glad I’d worn the steel-toed boots too, I busted on through, skidding on a sea of broken glass.

The bodyguard had his semiauto leveled at Wolf again, though Wolf was on the floor in the shape of a pedestrian on a sign. So I shot the bodyguard—a poor sap who looked to be former military—through the temple, painless and quick. The hollow-point round made a fairly big rosette of a blowout against the wall behind him. He slumped to the rug like an empty suit of clothes.

Tutti had the knife held to Unity’s throat but had done nothing more than press it to draw a little blood. Before he could say “boo,” I whipped him by his spindly arm so stridently the knife went flying, and in one fell swoop I slammed him against the wall.

I pinned him with nothing more than the pressure of my gun barrel against his forehead and a knee to the groin. “You’re an inhuman bastard. You loaded Corey up with that poisoned fentanyl and you didn’t care. You shoved your own wife off a cliff and probably took back that twenty-four-carat ring first. You poisoned all those sideshow kids and didn’t give two fucks who you killed.”