Free Daddy's Little Girl by Ed Gorman, Daniel Ransom Page B

up so that Sanders couldn’t help but notice it. “Now, man, you want to call me a liar again!”
    “You think you can get away with anything, don’t you, Evans?”
    Dave inched forward, purposely breathing on the teacher’s face.
    The first inklings of fear began to show in Sanders’s face. He was not a brave man. He had spoken a few words in anger. But now that Dave was challenging those words, Sanders did not seem so brave.
    “I wanna hear you say it again,” Dave said. “C’mon, call me a liar again.”
    “That won’t be necessary. You heard me the first time.”
    “C’mon. Just one more time, Sanders. Call me a liar again.”
    Sanders had begun to sweat, to avert his eyes.
    Dave had begun to smirk. He could hear how Bobby would tell this story later to all the guys. More coin of the realm for Dave.
    “You think you coulda been wrong?” Dave asked, bringing up his other fist.
    Sanders looked at it, looked over to Bobby who stood absolutely still, watching.
    “Wrong?” Sanders said weakly.
    “About smelling marijuana in here?”
    Dave was so close now the teacher had to back up.
    Perfect.
    “No,” Sanders said, “I wasn’t wrong, Evans.”
    Then Sanders stopped moving backwards and returned Dave’s glare.
    “I’m not going to report you this time, but not because I’m afraid of you.”
    The smirk did not leave Dave’s face. “Oh, yeah, then why aren’t you going to report me?”
    “Because I don’t happen to agree with the marijuana laws.” The teacher smiled. “I’ve been known to take a toke or two on occasion myself.”
    Bobby burst out laughing.
    With that, the teacher left the boys’ room.
    Dave stood there furious, not at all amused.
    Sputtering, he said, “Bullshit, he uses it himself. I scared him is what happened. You see him start to sweat?”
    Bobby muttered something or other.
    Dave lashed out and grabbed his smaller friend by the shirtfront.
    “I asked you if you saw him start to sweat?”
    “Yeah, I saw him, Dave.”
    “He left because I scared him, right?”
    Bobby nodded. “Sure, Dave. That’s exactly why he left.”
    Dave, still enraged, let go of Bobby, then walked over to the sink.
    Combing his hair, studying himself in the mirror, had a soothing effect on him.
    Bobby came up in the mirror behind him. Obviously he wanted to make it up to Dave for laughing when he shouldn’t have. He didn’t want Dave pissed at him. No way.
    “Man, you really going up to the Foster house tonight?”
    At first, Dave wouldn’t talk to him. Just sneered.
    “You really going to, Dave?”
    Through his teeth, still combing his hair, Dave said, “Yeah, asshole, I am.”
    “Man, you really got balls, you really do. That place scares the shit out of me.”
    There. That was a little more like it, the kind of treatment a guy expected to get from somebody like Bobby.
    But he didn’t want to give in too easy.
    He just kept combing his hair, watching the punk Bobby watching him.
    “Angie going with you?”
    “That’s what she says.” Dave smiled his best shark smile. “Then afterward—”
    Bobby laughed. “Oh, that’s right, the bet. If you find out what’s in the basement of the place she—”
    Dave cut him off. He didn’t want some jerk like Bobby laying his tongue on a swell chick like Angie, even if only in conversation.
    “Then afterwards is none of your fucking business,” Dave said.
    Bobby shrugged, crushed, and walked out of the mirror.
    Then in seconds, he was back, “I want to go with you two tonight.”
    For the first time, Dave laughed his natural loud laugh.
    Bobby. Going with them. To the spook house.
    Punk Bobby.
    Yeah. Right.

5
    The man looked as if he wanted to choke her.
    That was Carnes’s first impression as he came awake in the overstuffed armchair in Beth Daye’s apartment. Having dozed off while Beth was fixing him breakfast, he regained his senses only in time to fling himself from the chair and start toward the man who seemed to be endangering