The Inn(5)

Mrs. Minnow had called me once before about her son Winley, after the boy stole her car and drove it into a ditch off the Yankee Division Highway. She shifted uncomfortably now, perhaps remembering.

“Winnie’s much worse this time. He’s gone crazy.” Ellie was staring out the window, rubbing her wrist. “He’s just out of control. I’ve never seen him this angry. He snaps at me whenever I try to get him out of bed. He just slugs around the house. I got a call from the school saying he hasn’t been there in three days. I tried to talk to him about it this morning …”

I turned and looked at her wrist, glimpsed red finger marks. She hid them from me.

“Did the kid hurt you?” I asked.

“No, no.” She tucked a curl behind her ear. “He would never—”

“If he’s hurt you, I’ll kick his ass,” I said. “He’s not too young to learn what you get if you raise your hand to a woman. Once I’ve finished kicking his ass, Nick will kick his ass, and then the two of us will hold him down while you kick his ass.”

I’ve got a real issue with men who beat up on women. It’s part of a large collection of emotional baggage that would make a team of bellhops throw in their hats.

The Minnow residence was covered in bougainvillea; the mailbox was balanced on the top of a gray concrete post. I turned off the engine and was about to open my door when a coffee table smashed through the front window of the house and landed upside down in a flower bed.





CHAPTER SIX





TIME LOOPS AROUND. One minute you’re a washed-up ex-cop with love handles who hasn’t shaved in days, and the next minute you’re back in time, a rookie with washboard abs who couldn’t grow a beard for love or money, adrenaline thrumming in your veins as you wait for the go-ahead to bust into a crack house with your team.

The Minnow residence wasn’t a crack house, but it sure seemed as dangerous as one. As I jogged over, I heard Winley Minnow growling and the sounds of glass breaking and something dry, maybe cereal, scattering across the floor. Through the window by the back door, I saw Winley and his father, Derek, a small, round man who was sweating in his polo shirt. Winley held a wooden block of knives under one arm like a football and had one knife in his big fist. Just above Derek’s head, beneath a cheerful cuckoo clock with lumberjacks poised to saw tiny logs, a knife handle jutted out of the drywall. I watched as Winley brandished the blade at his father.

“Win, please.” Derek put his hands up. “Please, please, son, put the knife down.”

“They’re not taking me. They’re not taking me! I’m not going! They’re not taking me!”

I could tell Winley was high as a kite even before I saw his face. He was pacing in a small area, two steps forward and two back. Between the shouts, he muttered something to himself in a singsongy voice.

“No one’s coming to take you,” Derek said. “You’re out of your mind!”

I kicked in the back door just as Nick came in the front. Nick grabbed Derek and yanked him out of the kitchen. Winley turned and hurled the knife at me; it went sailing past my ear and through the open door to the yard. Nick grabbed the boy’s hand as he went for another, and I went for the knife block. We wrestled, and the knives scattered on the floor. Nick swept the kid into a headlock that didn’t seem to slow him down at all.

Winley had experienced a growth spurt since I’d handled him last, and he’d put on a few pounds. Maybe a hundred of them. The bug-eyed kid picked me up and threw me clean across the room into the kitchen counter, which sent a rack of dishes and glasses to the floor. Nick hung off him like a backpack, but he tightened the headlock until Winley’s eyes started rolling up in his head. Winley went to his knees and the two tangled on the floor. I rejoined the fray, and Nick and I shoved the kid into the tiles.

“Winley!” I put my knee in his fleshy back to get his attention. “You’re caught, buddy. Give it up!”

The kid growled and howled a bit and then burst into tears. “Don’t let them take me!”

“Who’s going to take you?”

“The doctors. The scientists.”

“This kid is whacked,” I told Nick. Typical newbie drug taker shuffling through emotions, grasping at anything. He was crying like a toddler, huffing and sniffing. I sat him up in the glass and cereal and mess on the floor and Nick and I watched as he sobbed into his hands, the ferocious rampaging killer suddenly reduced to a blubbering child.

“Don’t tell my mom,” he cried. He’d obviously completely forgotten that he’d manhandled her only minutes earlier. “Oh God. I’ve gotta clean this place up before she gets back!” He tried to get up. I shoved him down.

“Winley, what did you take?”

“Nothing. I didn’t—” The sobs racked his big body. “They’re coming for me!”

“He’s on something,” I told Nick. “This doesn’t look like the joy and exuberance of glorious youth.”

“The what?”

“Never mind.”

“Don’t call the police!” Winley said.

“He is the police, son.” Nick grabbed Winley’s big shoulder and shook him.

Winley wasn’t giving up. He cried and begged us to keep his mother out of it, his dazed state blocking out the reality of what he had done. I stood and walked into the living room, where I saw through the smashed window that neighbors were gathering to console Ellie Minnow on the immaculate lawn. Derek Minnow was in the room, sitting in an armchair by the big kicked-in television set. Winley had knocked pictures off their hooks, punched holes in the drywall.