Neighbor Boy (BoyxBoy)

Part 6

The next five days were pretty easy going. There were no new killings, though one officer found a woman strapped down to a bed in an old abandoned house. She had several wounds but made it to the hospital alive, and was expected to be released in a few days. It was almost another mystery altogether of why the killings had paused. I kept my eye on Frank and Joe the whole time. Even though they told a touching story, it didn't mean that they couldn't tell a lie.

So I did odd jobs around the house that I had met Joe in. I tidied up the house on the inside and the outside, wiping down the walls and even painted a little to make the place look more friendly. While I was cleaning I found some old photos in a gray and black box, labeled 'Tayler's'. After I had a long argument with myself of whether to open it or not, curiosity finally got the better of me and I did.

I learned two things from what I found in there. One was that this house had belonged to him before Joe moved in. I suspected that Joe couldn't bear to live in his own home after what had happened, and it only helped that it was abandoned by a serial killer. It also helped Joe in his covering Tayler's tracks so that he could find him and kill him himself.

The second thing that I learned was that Tayler had a child of his own. A male, age 23 by now. He was sentenced to life in prison for killing a family of four about two years ago. The news didn't exactly shock me. It just made me sad for the man. It must have been hard growing up with a father like that. I shuddered at the thought.

I told Joe what I had found and he said that he had already made plans to go see him. Since the file that I found didn't give me a name, Joe told me. Andrew Parkinson. I was even more shocked to find the name familiar to me. He had been a school bully at my high school. He always had some sort of stick up his ass whenever he saw me. Tried to start fights, spread rumors that somehow had viable evidence. I was glad he was in prison, but I still felt sorry for him.

"Do you think he will want to talk to us about his father?" I had asked Joe, who at the time was sitting across from me, arms crossed, toothpick in his mouth. He was leaning against the back of one of the black leather sofas, the fireplace to his left. I was in one of the leather chairs, the fireplace to my right. His shotgun was across the room, so I felt safe enough to talk to him.

He shrugged. "Probably. A few years before he was sentenced to life, on his 18th birthday, his father humiliated him. He told his son that to be worthy of the family, he would have to do a job for him." He paused to sigh and shake his head.

"Tayler had the boy run naked for ten miles through downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Drove all the way up there just for the occasion. At first Andrew thought it would be fun, but when he got done, he was arrested and had to do quite a few hours of community service. None of it was pinned on Tayler since Andrew was an adult." Joe chuckled with dry humor.

"Since then the boy has been a hard ass son-of-a-bitch. Won't talk to anyone except the female jail warden, and even then what he says is pretty sketchy. Some sources believe he has a few mental issues, which, to be quite honest with you, wouldn't surprise me a whole lot. Don't worry about it, though. We'll see him soon. Just be ready when we do."

And that was the end of the conversation. I went back to working around the house while Joe sharpened knives, counted bullets and slugs, polished his guns, or even read. Frank worked with me sometimes, mostly carrying the heavy stuff and getting to the high places that I couldn't reach. I couldn't help but find him attractive when he worked.

At one point he had caught my eye while I sat in front of him, watching him work on painting the upper levels of the walls. As he reached up, his shirt came just above his belly button to reveal a solid happy trail and a six pack to match. I bit my lip to hold down some of the excitement, but I couldn't tear my gaze away.