A Guardian of Innocents by Jeff Orton Read Free Book Online Page A

two seconds, and confident the asshole who administered her beating would be receiving the worst ass-kicking of his life thereafter, I drove on. Watauga or bust, and all that good shit.
    As I turned the corner from that little side street onto Ridglea Avenue, though, I saw a man dressed all in black. Black trench coat, black pants and boots. His shoulder-length hair could have also been black maybe, or perhaps dark brown. He was leaning against a light pole, but as I approached he stood up straight, snapping to attention as if he recognized my car.
    I knew there was no way he could see me clearly inside my car but he locked eyes with me just the same. A ghostly smile formed on his face, gleaming white teeth beneath a hook nose. He appeared maybe ten years older than me, taller and certainly more broad-shouldered.
    When I turned the corner he turned his body with me, watching me intently. His lips were moving as if he was trying to tell me something. I listened with my mind, but heard nothing.
    Absolutely nothing.
    Now some people do have strong minds that are difficult to break into, but I’d never met someone, not in all my life, who could block me out so completely.
    And in the silence of my night drive to Watauga, I thought little of the murder. I thought little of my strategy for not getting caught. I thought mostly of that black figure, with that hideous grin.
     
     
    Chapter 4
     
    The night air was chilly with a light breeze as I stripped off the Salvation Army clothes in front of the open hole I’d dug only a few hours before. I used the flannel and the gray t-shirt both to wipe Jack’s blood off the gun, being careful that my naked hands didn’t touch the pistol; not an easy task since the congealed blood had adhered to it like wet taffy to a child’s fingers.
    Confident that none of my prints were left on it, I dropped the gun into the hole first before anything else. I then used the other articles of clothing to clean the blood from my hands and face. Again I thought of how it would have been easier if I’d just brought some damn water with me. I wiped vigorously, feeling my skin become raw.
    I stood there in the silence of the night, wearing nothing but my briefs, throwing the bloody clothes down the hole like a pile of dirty laundry, then stepping on them to push them further into the earth.
    I contemplated tossing Jack’s wallet in there, but then I thought if someone did discover this buried treasure, they would only be able to determine this was hidden evidence of a murder, one out of hundreds that have taken place in the Fort Worth area in recent years. But if I threw in the wallet with all the rest of the evidence… 
    So I filled in the hole with a nearby mound of dirt, kicking it in with my feet and spreading it around with my hands since I had stupidly forgotten to bring the shovel back with me. I cursed myself for that as I stomped on the dirt to compact it and then spread the rest around so there were no visible lumps anywhere.
    I walked around the area collecting fallen leaves and twigs, and scattered them over the mound to better hide the difference between the freshly sifted dirt and the settled earth. After brushing all the crap off my body, I changed into my regular clothes and headed home, all the while scanning the area for people that might be watching me. There was one old man in a nearby second-story apartment watching pro wrestling on cable when he heard my car start up. He took a glance out the window at me, but I could feel that he only saw the Nova, not the driver inside it. He thought it a bit unusual for one of the other tenants to be going out this late but thought little of it. He didn’t care.
    For the first two minutes or so of driving I was okay. I was feeling the jittery after-effects of the adrenaline rush from the night’s escapades, but other than that I was really okay.
    But then it all just hit me. All at once. What I’d done. It was the strangest mixture of