A Perfect Life by Mike Stewart Page A

photos of naked women roped to chairs and handcuffed to bedposts, pictures of women chained wrists-to-ankles with long black nightsticks shoved into them. At the far end of the room, a horrible life-size nude poster of a bruised and lacerated female homicide victim stretched from ceiling to floor.
    And on each of these pictures, over every female head, someone had glued a photograph of Patricia Hunter's smiling face. And worse. Over the faces of every hairy, slack-butted, dog-collared man, someone had pasted a blow-up of Scott's own picture from the Harvard yearbook.
    It was too much. The room spun and slipped. Scott looked at Canon, the old man swung from side-to-side as if in a sideways rocking chair, and Scott Thomas's body hit the hardwood floor in a slack and unconscious heap.
     
    Canon Walker didn't move. The fainting had looked real, but he was too old to tangle with some young stud playing possum. So he sat and watched. Minutes passed. If the boy was dead, well, he was dead. But if he had just passed out, he'd come around. Folks always rush around grabbing smelling salts and slapping faces whenever somebody faints, but he'd never heard of anyone he knew dying from it.
    Canon leaned forward to get a better look. “Wake up or don't.” But he felt bad as soon as he'd said it. He did wish for the first time in his life, though, that he had a cell phone. He let his eyes move over the images taped to the white Sheetrock walls. “Sick bastard.”
    The old man stood to stretch his legs, and Scott moaned. Canon waited. The younger man reached up to rub at his face, then pushed up on one hand and got his butt under him. “What happened?”
    “Passed out.”
    “Fainted?”
    “Women faint. Men pass out.” The old man shook his head. “From the look of this, though”—he waved an open hand at the walls—“callin' you a man is an insult to every other human being with a set of balls.”
    “I didn't do this.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Scott got slowly to his feet. “Why would I do something like this?” He walked toward Canon.
    Canon brought the gun up. “Stop your ass right there.” He glanced at the wall. “I don't know why anybody'd do somethin' like this. Sick sonofabitch, I guess. Ain't no explaining it. Some people are just . . .”
    “Evil?”
    Canon nodded.
    “What can I do to convince you?”
    “Nothin'.”
    “What about that gun? That's evil, isn't it? I didn't come out here packing a gun.”
    “Shit.” The old man chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. “A gun is a tool. It can do evil, and it can stop evil. An old bluesman like me, hell, I wouldn't be alive after some of the juke joints I played if it wasn't for this little thirty-eight.”
    Scott tried to think. “What now?”
    “Back to town.” He motioned with the gun. “You gonna get a ride in the trunk. Sorry. Don't see no other way.”
    “Can I at least get some water before we go? My head's swimming.”
    Canon shrugged. “Where's the kitchen?”
    “I don't fucking know!” Scott felt his face flush and realized he'd been screaming. “I've never been here before.”
    “You want water. Calm the hell down.” Canon pointed at a door at the back of the inside wall. “Try through there. Slow. I don't want to, but I will shoot your ass if I have to.”
    Scott started to walk past the old man, but then hesitated. Canon reacted by impatiently jerking the muzzle of his revolver at the door. That was all the opening Scott needed. He grabbed the older man's wrist, shoved it hard away from him, and at the same time clamped down on the small bones in Canon's wrist.
    A sound like a cherry bomb exploded from the older man's hand. Before Canon could pull the trigger a second time, Scott had grabbed the cylinder with his left hand and twisted the gun loose. The young ex-wrestler swept the gun away from Canon's reach while quickly stepping back and ducking under a surprisingly swift elbow the older man had aimed at his ear.
    When Scott had retreated