The Soul Hunter by Melanie Wells

Jackson. This time he accepted it. “They breaking your heart yet?” I asked, pointing at the photos on his desk.
    He shook his head and smiled for the first time. “Any minute now.”
    I drove home in a daze, a cruiser following closely behind me. My head was filled with images of Gordon Pryne and of Drew Sturdivant and of axes and blood and alleyways. The thin veneer had once again been stripped off the ugliness of the world for me. I knew it would return (the veneer, I mean), filmy and comforting and deceptively opaque, offering up the attractive illusion that life on this earth is safe and reasonably tidy and involves mainly nice people and generally good behavior. But then you walk into a filthy public restroom, or watch local television news, or cross paths with someone who dwells on the underside—some bottom-feeder—and the seamy sin seeps out of the cracks. The stench, the sticky oozing mess, is noxious.
    I wonder how God stands it.
    I felt like crying. Or sleeping for a week. But mainly I felt like taking a hot shower and having supper at an Italian restaurant with white tablecloths and sharing a bottle of wine with my handsome, well-behaved boyfriend, whose worst offense was probably a traffic violation in the sleepy town of Hillsboro.
    I called him on my way home. We agreed he’d pick me up at eight thirty. Give this date one more shot.
    My house was dark when I got there. And cold, as usual. The cop followed me in, and I flipped on lights as he checked the house. When I shut the door behind him, I felt the safety of home wrap around me. Okay, so I had mice. Or maybe rats. And Peter Terry was back, dressed as a lumberjack. And I could be the nextvictim of an ax murderer. But I was home. And my water heater was fixed.
    Sometimes, you have to take the small victories.
    I dumped my stuff, kicked my space heater on, and checked the water to make sure it was hot, which it was. I started myself a pot of water for tea and went to the front door to get the mail, leafing through it, tossing out a couple of credit card offers and a reminder from my dentist that it was time to have my teeth cleaned.
    Mixed into the stack was a sealed, unmarked envelope. I opened it and stopped mid-stride.
    The note was written in child-scrawl, in red felt-tip pen.
    “Did you like the gift I left on your porch?”

11

    J ackson and McKnight were there within minutes. They gloved their hands and picked up the note with a pair of tweezers, sealing it into a baggie and labeling the bag with a felt-tip pen.
    “If we’re lucky, Pryne’s sloppy. We can get prints off the paper,” McKnight said to me. “And DNA from the saliva.”
    “Saliva?”
    McKnight pointed at the envelope.
    “Oh. Right.”
    “You have any place to stay tonight?” Jackson asked me.
    “Do you think it’s necessary?”
    “Second visit from this nut in a week,” McKnight said.
    “No time and no reason to be a hero,” Jackson said. “Be smart. You might live.”
    “He’s enjoying this,” I said, the thought sickening me as I said it.
    “You want to sit around and enjoy it with him, it’s up to you,” McKnight said. “But if I were you, I’d find myself somewhere to stay. Do you have a gun?”
    “No. Should I?”
    “Wouldn’t hurt. Pryne’s a blade man. Gun beats a blade every time.”
    “I wouldn’t know how to shoot it,” I said.
    “You get yourself a gun,” McKnight said, “and I’ll teach you how to shoot it myself. Get a revolver. Ruger makes a good one,and Winchester. Five-shot. With a small grip for a woman’s hand.”
    “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Thanks again for coming so quickly.”
    I was touched by their concern for my safety. They were rough men, all starched shirts and neckties and sturdy shoes, bound up with the bailing wire of regulation and procedure. They were suspicious by trade, guarded by nature, and probably more socialized to deal with criminals and victims than with any sort of regular type of human