8:25 a.m.
8 hours until the gloaming
An infected and barbarous heart.
The words seemed almost audible to Joshua, who tried to tune them out, tried to bury them beneath the memory of killing Petey Schwartz last Friday, the man whose funeral he was going to attend today at noon.
You have an infected and barbarous heart.
He chose a tie and slung it around his neck.
Attending the funeral of a man you’ve killed contains a sad and tragic irony. Perhaps even a touch of sadism. But killing Petey had not been something Joshua had been planning to do at all. They both just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Still, when the moment came, when the homeless man came at him, Joshua had, without hesitation, plunged the necrotome into his belly just the way his father had taught him to do in the barn when he was a boy.
And he had moved it back and forth.
Just like his father had taught him.
Petey had looked at him strangely as Joshua hugged him closer, held him until the man had no more strength to stand on his own. Then he helped him to the ground so he could finish bleeding to death on the sidewalk.
After he had, Joshua stared at the body.
No one will even miss him.
No one will ever know.
This is the perfect time to do it.
But eating Petey Schwartz’s diseased, unbathed flesh was not something Joshua was ready to do. He’d learned long ago, when his father was still alive, that you have to use discernment. You have to exhibit self-control.
He finished with the tie.
The city paid to bury vagrants, but the West Reagan Street Mission was the one to arrange memorial services for the homeless people in the neighborhood who died.
There was no way they could afford a service at an actual funeral home and there was no practical way for the homeless people who would be attending to get there anyway, so the service would be held right there at the mission, just three blocks from the train yards.
As Joshua headed out the door, he ran through his plan for the day one last time. He would head to work for a few hours, attend Petey Schwartz’s funeral at noon, then stop by Kohl’s department store to get the box he would be sending the police officer.
Then he could pick up the children, deliver the package, and wait for the cop to die.
Finally, this evening when it was all said and done, he would meet the man who’d called him earlier this morning. The man who was going to become his partner.