Free Bite Me (Devlin Haskell 3) by Mike Faricy Page B

screamed.
    “Look, maybe I could help clean…”
    “Get out of my god damned house you ass hole, get out, get out, get out!”
    I deci ded not to wait until the knife came out. I dashed through the kitchen and out the back door.
    “C all you later,” I yelled as I jumped off the porch, ran to my car and drove off.
    I had no idea where to start looking for Gary so I went to The Spot. I stuck my head in the door and asked Jimmy.
    “Hey, has G ary Hobson been in here today?”
    “He quit drinking, Dev. Went to some high price treatment facility.”
    “Call me if you see him, okay.”
    “Yeah, but he won’t be in here, like I said, he quit.”
    I crossed the street to my office, phoned a couple of hospitals, the Detox unit, the police. Nothing. About forty-five minutes later I began getting phone calls from Serenity Center. The calls continued every fifteen minutes. I really didn’t want to talk with them so I let the calls drop into my message center.

Chapter Nineteen
    Kiki phoned sometime after seven that night. I was in the process of stuffing the last of a BBQ cheeseburger from McDonald’s into my mouth and washing it down with a Summit beer. I really didn’t want to talk to her, either, but I answered anyway.
    “ Kiki?”
    “He’s here,” she whispered.
    “Who? Gary, he came back?”
    “Apparently he never left. I was doing all my laundry, again,” she paused for empha sis. “I found him passed out in the guest bedroom down in the basement. You better get over here, right away, before he wakes up or I’m calling the cops.”
    I didn’t have to be told twice.
    Gary was on the floor and out cold. He must have rolled off the bed. He lay wedged between the bed and the basement wall. His face looked like it had gone about three rounds with the concrete floor when he fell. He had dried blood below his nose, a split bottom lip and a gash on his cheekbone.
    “Did you do that to him?” I asked Kiki.
    “If I’d done it he’d look a lot worse, believe me,” she sneered.
    I believed her.
    “ Gary, hey Gary,” I was shaking his foot, attempting to wake him up.
    “Just get him t he hell out of my house, now,” she demanded.
    “Look. I’m trying to, but he’s out cold.”
    “I want him out of here before he throws up all over the place. God, you and your friends,” she said, like this was an everyday occurrence instead of just the fourth time I’d ever been in her house.
    “Can you help me carry him?”
    “Me?”
    “If you can just help me get him up the basement steps, then I can drag him out the door.” I explained.
    “I just don’t want him to throw up,” she shuddered.
    “He won’t, look, he’s dead to the world,” I shook Gary’s foot again and got no reaction.
    “Oh, that’s great,” she said, then crossed her arms, cocked a hip and thrust her bottom lip out.
    “Just grab his feet, okay?”
    “Ugh,” but she did it.
    I held Gary beneath his arms and wrestled him up Kiki’s ancient basement stairs. Talk about dead weight, but eventually we got him up into the kitchen.
    “Can you get the back door for me?”
    She let go of his ankles and they dropped with a thunk as she hurried to the back door and opened it. I dragged Gary out the door and across the porch.
    “You better get your ass back here tomorrow and fix the fucking mess he left here.”
    “Me?”
    “God,” she screamed, then slammed the kitchen door and turned off the porch light. I dragged Gary down the steps and out to my car in the dark. I stuffed him in the back seat, checked for a pulse once I got him in, then headed off in the direction of Serenity Center.

Chapter Twenty
    I answered my phone on the drive to Serenity.
    “Haskell Investigations,” I was pretty sure I knew who it would be.
    “Mister Devlin Haskell, please. This is Gordon Sweitzer, provost at the Serenity Center.
    “Yes, Mister Sweitzer, I’m enroute to your facility now. Should be there within the next fifteen minutes,” I put a little