Free Good to the Last Kiss by Ronald Tierney

him well enough to stick around or to contact him once he left. And that pissed his mother off, because, if the truth be known, she sure as hell wished the old man would have taken Earl with him.
    His stepfather wanted Earl out of the house the moment the toad moved in.
    People didn’t like him when he was a little, pimply mouse of a kid. Now that he was strong, they didn’t like him any better. Now they were scared of him. He could see it in their eyes.
    Outside, in the world, he could fool people sometimes. When he first met them, he could act all nice and shit, like he cared about what was going on in their lives. Give them something.
    That’s how he did it. That’s how he got the girls to go with him. Meet them at the mall, maybe the beach at San Gregorio or somewhere on the streets in San Francisco. Down around Turk Street they were kinda scuzzy, but they weren’t all that bad when they were young. They’d talk to him. He was always shy with women. Came in handy. Made them feel comfortable. Then he’d find out what they’re into. Rock bands mostly. Then he’d say he had these tickets to this or another concert. Whatever was in town or coming to town, some group they’d die to see.
    Only he didn’t have the tickets with him, he’d tell them. He’d have to go get them. That would always work. And they’d go with him. He’d get them out somewhere. Always somewhere different. Hell, he didn’t even remember where a couple of them happened. He remembered it would be someplace in the middle of nowhere. And that’d be it.
    What he really wanted was a woman, not some girl who barely had her pubes; but the young ones were easier. He didn’t feel so awkward around them. And they trusted him. Most of the time, they didn’t even see it coming.
    McClelland and Gratelli met with Judge Wharton the next morning to get the warrant to search Julia Bateman’s San Francisco residence. However they decided to go to the cabin in the woods first.
    McClellan drove. Gratelli, this time, rode shotgun, the unmarked Taurus making them look like a couple of hardware conventioneers in a rental.
    They drove without conversation, up Highway 101, choosing speed over the beautiful but tortuously slow Highway One. They bypassed Mill Valley, Novato and Petaluma before having to exit at Cotati, where still another bypass would get them around thriving and trendy Sebastopol.
    Gratelli would have preferred the scenic route. McClellan seemed immune to anything aesthetic. Once out of San Francisco, it didn’t matter that much to Gratelli. The sky was a cloudless, hazeless blue and the sun through the glass warmed him, enticed him to relax. He allowed Puccini’s ‘Un bel di’ to creep in and sweep out the debris that littered his mind. It was as good a way as any to spend a Friday afternoon, a fine way indeed to reduce the tension before gliding into a weekend.
    Gurneville, the closest town to the crime scene, was one dot on the map beyond Forestville. It wasn’t until then that McClellan spoke.
    ‘You know where I can find a cheap apartment?’
    ‘The Tenderloin,’ Gratelli offered as a joke.
    ‘Too expensive. I checked.’
    ‘Who’s interested?’
    ‘Me,’ McClellan said, eyes still on the road.
    ‘Yeah, why is that?’
    McClellan didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Gratelli regretted asking. He had pieced together the signs. It was the breakup of a twenty-five-year marriage. That many years was a near record in the police department, where male officers, and now female officers, accumulated multiple spouses. But when a marriage lasted beyond the second decade, there was another dangerous time. When the kids left. When they were on their own. Nothing to hold the shaky partnership together. The years of late hours, mediocre pay, lack of communication, pent-up anger, disillusionment took its toll on the most well-intentioned, devoted families.
    Even now, McClellan couldn’t talk about it.
    ‘Why in the hell would that dink