Low Sided by A.J. Downey (best detective novels of all time txt) 📕

I flicked on the light, and Bianchi sat up, groggy and confused. He looked less confused when I put a fist in the middle of his mouth. Then he looked at the ceiling and fell out of the bed. I shook my hand for a second, that hurt. Teeth are hard.

I went over the bed and landed on top of him, throwing a few more punches so he knew what was going on. There was a bit of shouting, some blood, and something crunched. I hoped like shit it was his nose, and not something attached to me, like any of my fingers.

“Get him!” Fen shouted.

I pounded his face a few more times. I was panting, and Max wasn’t doing anything but laying on the ground, bleeding.

“Atta boy!” Fen said, coming around the bed himself. He jerked the top sheet of the bed, wrapped it around Max’s arm and head, and used it to drag him out of the bedroom. Max screamed and kicked, knocking a lamp over and then he grabbed at the doorframe. Fen gave him an encouraging kick in the ribs to get him to let go.

Fenris dragged him into his own living room and then hauled him up into one of his own dining room chairs.

“Who, who the fuck are you guys?” Bianchi spat out a mouthful of blood. “What do you want?”

“Do you remember a woman named Raven?” I asked.

“Who? No!” he said, leaning forward. He drooled a ribbon of blood on the floor.

“Her name is Tanis McGowen, that familiar?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen her in a long time,” he said. I rocked his head back with a knuckle duster right in the cheek.

“Do you recall the finer details of your date?” I asked.

“Think really hard,” Fenris said. “I don’t like wrong answers.”

“I took her on a date, that was it,” he said. I caught him on the side of the jaw with my off hand.

“Easy with the fists, you’re going to break your fingers on his skull,” Fen said. “That’s why we have the seax.” That caught Max’s fragmented attention. He looked up at us, and then the blade that Fen had drawn.

“Who are you guys? I never did anything to you.”

“You didn’t do anything to me, but you might recall putting your dick in a woman who wasn’t real keen on that, and when she turned your ass in, you and your boys arrested her, and beat the ever-loving fuck out of her? Is that ringing any bells?”

“None of that is true. She was just a trashy piece, and she gave me a fucking STD,” he spat. Fen caught my wrist before I punched Bianchi in the face again. “If you’re up in those guts, you better get checked.”

“Cut him,” Fen said, and handed me the knife.

“What, where?”

“Get creative, just don’t stab him,” Fen said.

“What the fuck, are you a fucking amateur?” Bianchi asked.

“Cut him like a billy goat.” Fen laughed. “Give his balls a tug.”

“Look, I’ll give you whatever you want. I have cash. Other stuff,” he said.

“No, I think my friend has a good idea,” I said, taking the blade from Fen and gesturing for him to hold Bianchi. The man immediately started struggling, but Fen jerked him up into a submission hold. Bianchi started to scream but Fen’s forearm cut off his air supply.

He kicked, but it didn’t stop me from doing something that I never thought I would ever do – I grabbed another man by his tackle. I steeled myself and remembered that this piece of shit was a cop, one of the people who was supposed to be a good guy, someone who was supposed to protect people.

And that he was a rapist, and that when she had tried to stand up to him, he made sure she went down in a heap of blood and broken bones. I slashed with the seax and Bianchi shuddered. I was holding a wad of flesh and my hand was drenched in blood.

He pissed all over himself.

“Brutal.” Fenris laughed.

Bianchi let out a sob.

“This is for Raven,” I said, and put the ruined handful of his own flesh in his hand.

“I bet she wasn’t the only one, was she?” Fen asked. Bianchi was silent, except for his shoulders shaking.

Fen smiled as he watched what I did to that man. The blade was incredibly sharp, and it parted skin and muscle easily.

While I was figuring out the dance, Fenris kept telling Bianchi what he would have done if he was the one with the knife and I was the one holding him. He did offer some praise for the full business castration, and that the only downside of that cut was after the initial cut, there wasn’t pain, just a terrible feeling of loss, and numbness where once his manhood had dangled.

“I’m sorry.” He let out a wet sob, and then threw up.

“You’ll have to speak up,” Fen said.

“I’m sorry for what I did to Tanis, or whatever you said her name was,” Max said. “It wasn’t anything personal, she was just pretty, that’s all.”

“That was all I needed to hear,” I said. I gestured for Fen to move, and then I stepped behind Max. Given the amount of blood on the floor, there wasn’t much fight left in him. He wasn’t going to come up out of that chair fighting. I grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back. Fenris threw his head back and howled.

I drew the blade across his throat and released a pulsing river of blood.

He convulsed, kicked, and gurgled.

Then he shit himself and went limp.

I felt my hand shaking, and I thought I was going to vomit.

“There is more blood than I expected,” I said.

“Oh yeah, people are fucking full of blood,” he said, pushing Bianchi’s corpse off of the chair. It hit the floor and jerked. “They’ll jerk and fart for a good while after you kill ‘em too.”

“We should probably go,” I said, feeling a tremor in my hands.

“Let’s