I never thought that Bones would go through with it. He’d been threatening for years. And now Stinky was dead, just like he’d promised.
We got the anonymous call about 2:30 that we needed to send a bus over to Stinky’s house. I got three officers and headed that direction.
The front door was ajar when we got there. When I nudged the door, Stinky’s black cat Bootsy came screaming out from behind it. That damn cat was lucky it didn’t get shot. My boys were edgy already. Instead, the cat scrambled from the porch and tore down the front stairs. Once it reached the hedge line, I never saw it again.
I waved with my left hand as my right shoulder pressed the door the rest of the open. The smell was overpowering. The combined stench of death, marijuana, and filth was enough to knock over a cow.
The doorway lead to a living room and to Stinky. He was on the couch with his back to us and a game controller in his hand. Crash Bandicoot’s opening screen was on the TV in a perpetual loop. There was a single gunshot to the back of the head. Stinky never new what hit him.
As I circled my way around the couch, I could see that the large caliber bullet had removed half of Stinky’s face. It was gonna be a closed casket for sure. Other random objects littered the living room. A milk crate of vinyl records. A singular crutch. An empty fish tank. Empty baggies and mildewed papers covered half the floor.
Then something caught my eye. Blood. Old blood. Stained into the tan carpet.
I followed the trail down the hallway as if the stains were breadcrumbs. When I reached the open door of the back bedroom, I nearly lost it. Looks like old Bones was right.
In the middle of the floor was a pile of animals. Dogs. Cats. Squirrels. And there was an astounding amount of blood. You could taste the iron in the air. If the blood spatter was glitter, it would have been enough to make a stripper choke. All the missing pets. All the local wildlife. Heaved into one giant haystack of carcasses. There had to be at least 40 furry bodies bled and discarded into the pile. It was one of the most horrible things I had seen in my 12 year career on the force.
I backed out of the room and headed toward the front porch. Even though I hadn’t smoked for years, I pulled my lighter from my pocket, closed my eyes, and lit up the imaginary cigarette. I took in a sharp breath and mentally pictured the smoke filling my lungs. I hollered for Butch to find Bones and take him in for questioning.
It was gonna be a long afternoon.
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