Read Online The Butcher's Granddaughter by Michael Lion - Free Book Online

taste of spit that had gone electric with fear.
    “Walk over to the door,” Waterston grunted. I moved very slowly toward the hall, the shotgun a quarter-inch from my face. He was just a shadowy lump at the other end of the steel tube that glowed dully in the scant blueness of the room. “Slowly. Next to your shoulder. The light switch.”
    I started to lift my right hand, and he hit me on the side of the head with the barrel. “The other shoulder,” he said impatiently. I winced and pushed the switch.
    Waterston was wearing a silk paisley-patterned robe over a black silk nightshirt. His hair was almost totally white and set off a tan that was just pre-cancerous. A fairly serious crop of zits as a youngster had given his face a handsome aged ruddiness. The third finger of his left hand, wrapped firmly around the barrel about a foot-and-a-half from my face, had no ring. No wife in the house.
    My nose had stopped bleeding, but the smack I’d given it made it numb. Waterston raised the gun slightly and rested the twin barrels on the bridge of my nose. He had one eye shut tight and was squinting down at the bead-sight with the other, as if he might miss from the distance that separated us. That thought brought with it an image of my head turned into a fleshy crimson smear on Denise’s wall, and my groin went numb. I distantly hoped I wasn’t pissing my pants. I forced the image out of my head and concentrated on the single, ice-blue eye peering down the barrel at my forehead.
    “You the peeping tom?” he asked.
    I said nothing.
    “Not talking? I figured. Saw your ass the other night going over my fence, you little pussy. Think my daughter’s pretty do you? Huh?”
    He put a little weight against the butt of the gun and pushed my nose cartilage into my skull. I shut my eyes and fought back a whimper. He released the pressure as soon as I had a headache. I opened my eyes. When the red and yellow spots cleared, he was still there, still one-eyed.
    My mind raced. What the fuck was the old man doing here? Thirty minutes ago I was stealing his car—there was no way he could have gotten home in that time. He should be just realizing it was gone right now. Had he gotten a ride home with some of his cronies? And just left the car? Did the valets deliver?
    I flicked my eyes around the room. Bed. Dresser. Vanity. Waterston. Shotgun. Nothing. Nothing in the whole room to help me. I toyed with the idea of switching the light off again, just sort of leaning against it with my shoulder. A trickle of sweat built up on my brow and dropped into my eye, salty and stinging, but I didn’t close it. I just felt it turn red.
    Bob was giving me a lecture on Who I Thought I Was and Did I Think I Could Just Come Into Someone’s Home And Take What I Wanted. I realized I was hyperventilating and held my breath to calm down. If he was going to shoot me, he was a while from doing it. Robert Waterston is the kind of guy who has to get his two cents in.
    “...and then I say to the officer, ‘I bet it was some punk kid, trying to sneak a peek at my Denise.’ And look what I got. A punk. Just like I said to the police.” He noticed my eyes darting around and raised the barrels until I was staring directly into them. “Looking for something, son? Trying to get a look at her panties there on the floor? I know, I know,” he went on, mocking me, “it’s tough for you perverts to control yourselves. Even with a gun in your face, you have to get an eyeful. Probably want to smell them, too, huh, sicko? That what you want to do? Is that what you were doing on the floor there when I walked in?”
    The gun went back to the bridge of my nose and he paused for an answer. When none came he said, “Come in and get a hard-on over my Denise, will you?” And the click of the trigger-safety releasing echoed through the barrels into my eyes.
    I shut them tight, feeling them trying to crawl back into my skull, away from the snuffing heat I would feel for