Read All Hallow's Eve: The One Day It's BAD to Be Good for Free Online Page A

siren. He looked in the rearview mirror. The car behind him had mini red and blue lights flashing. Which would make it Ruth’s car.
    “Yeah, sorry. I had to get Jeremy to school again.”
    “Well, I’m the last person to bust your chops for kid problems.” Paxton watched Ruth tilt her head to the right. “Take this corner, go three blocks, hang a left, and then pull up to the third store.”
    “Oh, a secret rendezvous?” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Other guys could get away with playful banter. But Paxton? Today? Not very likely.
    In the rearview mirror he could see Ruth frown. “Just drive.”
    Feeling about as old as the nephew he just dropped off, Paxton slipped his phone back into his pocket. He turned his blinker on, but didn’t bother to check his blind spot until a honk sounded. Slamming on the brakes, he barely missed hitting a car in the right-turn lane. Ruth had saved him again.
    Seriously, though, if he didn’t get some caffeine and sugar soon, he was going to do a lot worse than a fender bender. Much more carefully this time, Paxton checked his mirrors and his blind spot before turning right. He followed Ruth’s directions to the letter and pulled up at the curb.
    Not exactly how he expected Ruth and their first secret liaison to go… Paxton caught himself. What was with him today? The damned ME must have infected him with sheer stupidity. Ruth was so far out of his league that… Well, let’s just say that Ruth probably didn’t get her breakfast from under her car seat.
    His partner was all business as she got out of the car. He tried to keep the junk dispersal to a bare minimum as he joined her. Of course, he caught that cupcake wrapper under his shoe. Paxton tried to casually scrape it off on the curb, but only accomplished tripping instead.
    Ruth’s eyebrow went up as she started to brief him. “So, your canvas ,” Ruth said, making air quotes, “turned up a guy who had been hanging around Father Gonzales all week.”
    With a few taps she brought a rap sheet up onto her phone’s screen. Damn, she was good. Paxton was just glad he had figured out how to answer his. It had been slightly awkward for the first two weeks that he had his phone. He had to let everything roll into voice mail since he couldn’t figure out the “answer” function. Ruth, however, practically had a multimedia experience going on.
    “He is a recently released mental patient, Darby Fenkelhoffer.”
    “Besides the name,” Paxton said as Ruth showed him a picture of their possible perp. The guy had a shaved head, scar over his left cheek, and that I-belong-in-an-asylum look in his eye, “and his looks, what makes him our guy?”
    Ruth switched back to the rap sheet and enlarged it. “He’s got some pretty significant violent tendencies, with multiple arrests.”
    “Still, in this part of town, I doubt that we could throw a stick around here without hitting half a dozen perps matching that description.”
    “Ah, but ones with such a fascination for crosses?” Ruth said as she pulled up a picture of Darby’s cell. Every inch of the walls, ceiling, and even the floor, were covered in drawings of the cross. Many were in the upside down orientation.
    “The pope would be jealous,” Paxton commented, as he looked over to find that they stood in front of a “Christ’s Gift,” religious bookstore. “So we think he might be here?”
    Ruth shrugged. “A patrol car went by Darby’s halfway house and found several receipts from a variety of bookstores. This one just happened to be the closest.”
    Paxton headed toward the entrance. “Good enough for me.”
    But Ruth did not join him. Instead, a playful grin tugged at the edge of her lips. “Don’t you want to know what else they found in Darby’s bathroom sink?”
    “Not just a used toothbrush, I take it.”
    “No. There were copious amounts of blood in the sink’s drain. Human blood.”
    As she joined him, she popped the safety