There Will Be a Reckoning

---

*** Note: In this story, there are references to child sexual abuse, as well as one scene that hints at it.

1238 U.S. Highway 80 (Home of Jason Blake and Pam Chastain)

Providence Flats, Alabama

July 28, 2026

2:46 p.m.

Phil Rendell, a large, fit man, kept to the shadows of the tree line about a hundred yards due east of Pam Chastain’s back yard, as she was tending to her small, scraggly garden.

As he peered through his binoculars at Pam, draped in a tight-fitting T-shirt and jean shorts that left little to the imagination, he noticed the gardenias wilting in the oppressive heat.

Phil opened the cooler, drained a bottle of water, and bit into an apple he'd bought at the Sip 'n Save downtown. He grimaced, tossed the mushy apple aside, and resigned himself to the gnawing ache in his stomach.

Maybe some squirrel or possum will get some use out of it.

Phil had been raised not to let such bad omens hang around. His granny Pearl told him that moldy fruit ushered bad luck into the house. Said she lost her husband because of an overripe banana.

And we thought it was only because old Jefferson had run off with that little slip of a dancer who let it all hang out at the Silver Saddle on the outskirts of town. We didn’t know about those damn bananas. Shit.

Phil let out a smile.

Poor Pearl.

The smile vanished as he thought about the job ahead, tracking down this asshole. Pam took her hoe and chopped at the plot of dirt. What she hoped to accomplish, Phil couldn’t gather. The dirt was hard as concrete; it hadn’t rained enough in the last month to wet a flea.

Cecilia Blake, a woman he used to carry on with over in Townsley, hired him to find Pam and, more importantly, Jason, Cecilia’s ex. Not for child support—that was a long-forsaken pipe dream—but to make sure he didn’t do to his prospective daughter what he did to his real one.

Blessed with a spark as well as a body that had spoken loud and clear to the glandular teenage boys of Townsley, Ceil, as Phil called her, had long since abandoned the wildness she’d clung to in order to escape the mind-numbing sameness of Providence Flats.

Respectable now, though saddled with a daughter as wild as a buck, she was content to blend into the woodwork. She also figured her daughter was the answer to her mother's favorite curse: "I hope you have one just like you."

Ceil worked as a dental assistant in Providence Flats, where she spent her days mooning over the dreamy young dentist and her nights wondering about her ex, what he was doing, who he was doing. Not because she was jealous, because she was vigilant.

And she had a stomach full of a mother’s rage.

When Cecilia told Phil about Jason and the liberties he took—God, I wanna beat the shit out of this bastard. For this girl. For my kid…—he felt a growing sickness eating away at him. When she showed him the videos she’d found after the worthless piece of shit had left her and the girl, he took the job, expenses only. For reasons more personal than she would ever know.

Phil, drenched in a cold sweat, did not at first feel the swarm of gnats that threatened to lift his body off the ground. It took one of the pests becoming lodged in his eye for him to become aware of what his body had become—a landing place for an endless blitz of the damned insects.

As he stood observing Pam, noting her curvy figure, Phil noticed a young girl come outside and join her mother in an unenviable task—removing a stubborn tangle of weeds.

Phil noticed the curve of Pam’s body. God knew he’d had thoughts that would’ve made a nun blush. But lust wasn’t the sickness he was hunting.

He was simply after a pervert.

And, as such, he felt an urge to rush up to this mother and show her what he had on the fleabag she called a fiancé. Let her look evil straight in the face. Give her all the facts before she put her daughter in any more danger than she was already in, but it wasn’t time yet.

Not every “t” was crossed—not every “i” was crossed.

Yet.

Soon.

4:15. About time.

Thirty years a cop. I’ll be ready.

Phil, fifty-five years old and retired two years, thought he’d been looking forward to the peace of retirement, but his years as a Montgomery, Alabama, detective had given him a craving for the adrenaline that came with a big case. And there was always a big case.

People never ran out of brutal, depraved things to do to each other; they were creative that way.

Tate, five. Brutalized, dead. Leon Mitchell, father, brutalizer. Dirtbag.

Last case.

Determined to go out a winner—if you could call it that—Phil, for the first time in his career, didn’t let a little thing like concrete evidence keep him from Mitchell’s conviction, the only thing that might finally give him a bit of peace.

If you hide the right thing in plain sight, he thought, you could fool anybody. He massaged his conscience by telling himself he’d never have planted evidence if he had been uncertain of Mitchell’s guilt.

But he knew what the man had done. He could see it in his eyes.

That’s what he told himself. It was enough to help him make it through the night.

Mostly.

_____

About six months into retirement, Phil opened his own private detective agency: Rendell Investigative Services. After a slack period at the beginning, business grew to be robust, and—people being who they are—it showed no signs of slowing.

Phil craned his head upward, eying the dark clouds overhead. He receded a bit further back into the woods, sheltering himself from the oncoming deluge under a canopy of trees.

Pam and her daughter went inside the house. In about five minutes, Pam returned alone with a wine cooler, sitting on her back porch, legs crossed, shading herself from the blazing sun.

Suddenly, Phil became aware of another presence on the back porch. A dark cloud passed overhead; Phil’s face also darkened at the realization that it was him: Jason Blake. Of that, there was no doubt.

Although he didn’t appear to be quite as reptilian as he had looked in the video, the bastard still had an air of general scumminess about him. Could Ceil not have seen that? Pam?

With beer in hand, Jason sat next to Pam, neither of them talking very much. Jason took out a pack of cigarettes, took one for himself, and offered one to Pam. Just like any other couple.

Yeah. Except—one of them was a pedophile, a stumbling block in any romantic relationship.

Just then, the daughter appeared and asked her mother something. The girl glanced at Jason. The girl, apparently satisfied with what her mother had said, went back into the house. A look, hard to categorize, passed between Jason and the young girl. Was he laying the groundwork or had he already started in?

Phil judged that the girl was no older than seven or eight—Ceil had said Jillian was eight when it started.

Jason stood, stretched, and leaned over to kiss Pam; what began as a chaste peck on the lips between lovers quickly turned passionate. Pam stood and let Jason’s grimy hands roam freely. Phil fought the urge to vomit.

Click. Click. Click. Phil aimed his phone at Jason. Click.

More clouds overhead, blunting the sun’s tyranny slightly.

They went inside, her arm in his, his hand on her ass. A cloud of lust lingered.

Shiver.

Phil had once been married to a woman named Veronica; he’d known how it had felt to be wanted by a woman, how liberating it was. He had loved her more than he thought any human being was capable of loving another. And she’d loved him, too. He was sure of that.

Until she didn’t.

She’d divorced him after twenty years of being a cop’s wife, twenty years of wondering every day if he was going to come home that night or if that day would be the day he’d wind up on a cold slab.

Before retirement, he’d had the job to keep him company, and, of course, all the other parts of the job, too. Swapping old war stories with his friends, all policemen; drinking until he was blotto in cop bars; scoring companionship with others who’d been scarred by the nonstop battles—others who would understand.

The ominous Providence Flats skies had finally opened up, and the rain pelted him with the ferocity of an angry god. And, after all, why wouldn’t he be?

Returning hastily to his car a few hundred yards away, Phil sent the pictures he’d taken to Cecilia for her inspection.

And then he waited—for her reaction, for her orders.

For her permission.

He didn’t have to wait long. Fifteen minutes later, he received a text back from her, fear and urgency jumping off the screen:

Do whatever you have to do to stop this

If you need more money let me know I will get it however I get it just don’t let this happen to another girl

His response:

Don’t need no more money, other than bare expenses. I’ll let you know when it’s done. Don’t worry. He’s history.

_____

5:24 p.m.

Phil pulled open a can of Vienna sausages. The taste, mystery meat personified, repulsed almost everyone he knew, but he loved it. They tasted like home. Veronica and he ate can after can while they were drifting on their fishing boat, drinking their beer—always Pabst Blue Ribbon.

When they decided they’d had enough fishing and drinking, at least to excess, they had a boy, Kyle. Phil and Veronica loved the boy more than life itself. More than once, Phil, while hunting down the dregs of the earth, held up his son and his wife as examples that proved life wasn’t just one torrential barrage of shit.

Before they knew what hit them, Kyle turned seven.

And Phil, in the darkest corners of his mind, turned to mush that this might be too good, that it might end.

And, sure enough, one day it did. Kyle disappeared. No trace. As gone as the rain in a suddenly cloudless sky.

Veronica called him at the station, panicked.

“Kyle’s gone. He just—left. He’s been gone for an hour.”

“An hour? What the hell? Why didn’t you call me before now? Damn it, Veronica!”

He’d seen it enough. Six, seven, dozens of kids picked up off the street, never seen again, until their little bodies washed up days, weeks, months later, a vacant shell of the vibrant beings they once were.

Phil made the report. The station, all of a sudden, was swarming.

His buddies, his pals, found nothing.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true.

Vera, from across the street, did remember seeing Kyle admiring a man’s dog—who the man was she’d have no way of knowing, with her one good eye. She thought nothing of it, though. When she went back outside later, Kyle and the man had left. Vera assumed that the boy had gone inside for lunch.

But he hadn’t, and when Veronica went outside to tell him lunch was ready and didn’t see him in the yard, fear gripped her so hard she couldn’t move. Kyle was gone, vanished into the ether.

Awaiting a ransom demand that never came and following leads that never turned into anything, the police filed the case away so they could pursue those with a chance of being solved.

The boy’s body was never recovered. It was as if Kyle had never existed and now inhabited only the realm of Phil’s dreams—a distorted, prismatic version of himself.

A spinning, flailing child, Kyle was compelled toward a dark figure with flaming appendages. The shadow’s greasy, stringy hair was crawling with vermin, and the cartilage of its victims lined its crooked, black teeth.

This was Phil’s constant companion, his never-ending story.

He wasn’t even sure if it would end upon his death, or if it would follow him beyond the grave to heaven, or, more likely, to hell.

A squawking bird jolted Phil into the here and now. Days earlier, in laying the groundwork to snare Jason, Phil had struck up an online conversation with him. It was on one of those websites that seemed to proliferate at least a hundred fold weekly.

Literally a chat room for child predators, the site featured the diseased thoughts of raving madmen and women—yes, these people were outnumbered, but they were quite fervent.

Phil had waded through site after site, until he felt like a lifetime of scalding hot showers couldn’t wash the grime off him.

Finally, when Phil felt that he could lower himself into the abyss no longer, he happened upon the online home of “childlove”—Jason, as it turned out. There he was bragging about his “conquest” of Jillian for all to see. Like it was nothing at all, not in any way perverse.

There was one thing, though. The mastermind had left a video link to his sickness. Yep, that was Jason—face blurred—and the child, Jillian. No need to look at that soul-sucking filth again. He was armed with everything he needed to get this asshole. And he would get him.

Phil decided to use the one-on-one feature that the Web site had so helpfully installed to contact Jason. Phil, after telling Jason he thought they lived fairly close to each other, arranged to meet him tomorrow so they could swap videos. Like a fly to honey, Jason transmitted his eagerness to play.

Or I could just kill his ass. Wouldn’t matter to me at all, damn the bastard to hell.

_____

Day’s Inn

1347 U.S. Highway 80

Providence Flats, Alabama

11:38 p.m.

That night in his motel, Phil watched a ball game—Braves in L.A.—and kept tabs on the video feed Jason had set up in the girl’s room.

Nothing.

For that, Phil was thankful. He had all he needed and more than he wanted to nail this guy.

Drifting in and out of sleep, Phil again suffered gruesome visions of Kyle calling out for him, still stuck in that damn bloody quagmire in which he found himself nightly. The ghastly visions always shook Phil from his erratic slumber after a period of time. The psyche could only take so much.

Awake, pale, and sweating profusely, he took a look at his phone to check on the girl. 3:14.

As he gazed at the screen, not really expecting anything, Phil suddenly drew back. Jason was in the room, staring intently at the young girl that he would soon make his stepdaughter. Pulling down her My Little Pony bedcovers, filming the parts of her body that had been exposed by the tossing and turning she had done in her sleep. A lacerating rage built up inside Phil.

This had to stop. Now.

Phil, hoping that Jason’s pervy feed from the Web site went to his phone when he was contacted, sent a message to him:

“childlove. Im here in Providence Flats. Can you make it out tonight? I wanna see what you got.”

Come on, come on, asshole.

After a couple of minutes, Jason noticed the message. Furiously, he started to type:

“Hey, man. U really r in a bad fix, aren’t u? Well, I’ll help u out. I got a place where we can really look at this shit.”

“Okay. Where is it?”

“147 Mason St, close to the Shell station. You know where it is?”

“I’ll find it. I got money for new stuff.”

Phil, his forehead glistening with perspiration, felt the same excitement he’d always known when he was about to get a perp.

This was going to be finished—one way or the other. He knew he had to remove this blight; failure was not an option.

In his fevered imaginings, which were becoming more frequent, he saw Kyle smiling at him, his hand stroking the nape of the dog that had unwittingly lured him away from home and family and safety and into the claws of a monster.

This time, however, there was a difference. About twenty yards behind Kyle lay a blurry, formless shape. Bypassing his son for just a moment, he went to the creature. Struggling for breath, the thing stared at Phil with its fiery orbs.

The figure, suddenly revitalized, sat up and began to lurch after him. With lightning speed, Phil shot the specter with his Smith & Wesson M&P 9, sending it flying backward, until it disintegrated into nothing. Kyle and he then walked hand-in-hand down the street as the sublime Alabama sunset made way for nightfall.

_____

Phil knocked, three sharp raps. Jason opened the door, and there stood his quarry, his prey. In person, close up, Jason was a regular-looking guy. He didn’t fit the central casting image of a weaselly little asshole pedophile. Dressed in a ratty T-shirt and ragged jeans, Jason smiled at Phil as if they totally understood each other.

“Hey, manchild?” Jason said, in a raspy whisper, a stub of a cigarette glowing from his fingertips. Phil got a warm feeling picturing the cancer rotting his lungs away. Seemed fitting, anyway. One cancer snuffing out another. If Phil didn’t snuff him out first.

“Yeah. Childlove?”

“Yeah.”

Jason, looking past Phil nervously, motioned for him to come in. Trying to keep the disgust off his face, Phil stepped inside, making sure to stay between Jason and the door. The sense of degradation in this place was overpowering.

“Hey, what’s your real name?” Phil asked.

Jason hesitated. But they were all pals here, right?

“Jason. Yours?”

“George.”

“Wanna beer?”

“Yeah, I’ll take one.”

They both glanced at each other warily, ready to have some fun, but still feeling each other out. Little did Jason know that Phil’s idea of fun was a lot different than Jason’s.

“Well, Jason. You show me what you got, and I’ll show you what I got, and we can both have some fun. Alright?”

“Alright, man. Here you are.”

Jason downed the last of his beer and handed Phil a plain black flash drive. Phil despaired at the untold horrors that were on the small object he held in his palm. He wondered how many grown men had toyed with drives just like this—one, perhaps, with videos of his son on it. A redness colored his face. But it was dark, and this was about over.

To seem legit, Phil stuck the drive in his iPad.

“Whoa, cowboy. What you got for me—George, was it?”

It was time.

“Well, I got to tell you, Jason. Yeah, I know you. Don’t look so shocked. It’s not becoming. You best believe, though, I ain’t no damn pervert, and I’m not here to share this smut with you, but I’ll tell you one thing. I got your ass right where I want you, you son of a bitch. Kids! Your daughter! You think it’s fixin’ to be Pam Chastain’s little girl next, but it sure as hell ain’t.”

A panic flitted across Jason’s face and settled inside him, causing him to reach inside his windbreaker and grab for his gun.

“Hey, man,” Phil said, opening his jacket so Jason would get a good view of his snubnose .44. “Reaching for that gun you’ve poorly concealed would be a huge mistake. I’d lay you out dead before you could pull it out of that holster. Now, why don’t you just let me take that gun of yours, before somebody winds up getting hurt?”

Jason opened up his jacket, letting Phil reach in and grab the gun. Phil put it on the counter behind him.

While he was this close and Jason was vulnerable, Phil drew back and punched him in the ribs. Hard. Jason lurched backward, crashing into the table opposite the bed. Doubled over in pain, Jason groaned like an old hound dog about to be put out of its misery.

“Who the hell are you? What do you want from me? Did Vinny send you? I promise, I’ll pay him back when I get paid. Three hundred, right? Vinny’ll have his money on Friday, okay?”

“Well, now you’re just pissing me off,” Phil said. “I assume that Vinny is a supplier of the fine cinematic entertainment that you and your pals watch. Well, I ain’t him, and if I met him, I’d do to him what I’m seriously thinking of doing to you.”

“And what is that?”

“Damn, you don’t have much imagination, do you? Or are you just stupid? I want to put a bullet right through your little pea brain. As far as who I am, Jason, all you need to worry about is what you need to do next. See, I’ll do what it takes, anything it takes, to make sure you don’t lay your grimy paws on Pam’s girl. Asked her to marry you, didn’t you? What was that, a cover? My understanding is that filth like you can’t get it up for a real woman. Is that right?” No answer was forthcoming from Jason, as he groaned in agony. “Is that right? You better answer me, boy!”

Jason broke down in convulsive sobs, heaving up and down on the floor like an accordion. The sobs and moans racked his body with even more pain.

“No answer, huh? Well, I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ ” Phil said, gloating and mocking the pitiful existence of this dirty heap of clothes in front of him. For good measure, Phil gave him a short, forceful kick to the ribs.

“Now, obviously, you’re not going back to Pam’s house, and you will never see that girl—what’s her name?” Phil asked.

“Ashley …” Jason replied.

“Ashley,” Phil repeated. “That’s a pretty name for a pretty girl. Of course, that has a different meaning for some of us.” Phil paused to let Jason’s situation sink into him. “You will never see her again, and you will move far away from here. And if you don’t, I’ll know about it, and I’ll come find you, and I will kill you. Do you believe what I’m saying to you?”

Jason looked at Phil, assessing his situation. He didn’t like what he saw. His options for living a relatively pain-free life were few.

“Get the hell out of here. I don’t ever want to see your ass again,” Phil said, snarling at Jason. “And, if I do see you again, it’s gonna piss me off something fierce.”

“Okay. Can I go get my stuff? Pam’s working tomorrow, and Ashley’s staying with her grandmother. I can pack tomorrow and be gone in thirty minutes, swear to God,” Jason said, looking at Phil expectantly.

“You know, I think you ought to just leave. Now. Anyway, if what you got on is indicative of your wardrobe, just buy new stuff, Jason. Maybe you won’t smell like a pig just rolled in shit,” Phil said. “Now, git.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jason said, with a hint of defiance.

Jason looked at him long and hard and finally turned to leave, winking at Phil as he walked out.

That damn bastard, winking at me. Screw that shit!

As Jason started to walk out the door, Phil spotted Kyle, bound in heavy rope and thrashing wildly, about to enter the scaly, fearsome creature for what seemed like the thousandth time.

You know what? If I let him out this door, I’m just sending the problem to somebody else. ‘Nuff’s enough!

Grabbing his gun, already equipped with a silencer, Phil fired at Jason, hitting him in the head. He fell to the floor, dead instantly.

Phil looked up at Kyle, the ropes binding him dissolving to nothing. Sheer bliss lit up Kyle’s face. The boy smiled and waved goodbye to his father. He floated up into the sky, lighter than air.

My boy got the peace he deserves.

Phil reached back onto the counter and grabbed Jason’s gun, firing it twice more into Jason’s head. Phil wiped it clean of his prints and placed the still-smoking firearm in Jason’s hands. Phil left Jason's body right where it lay.

He changed into clean clothes, wadding up his old clothes into a trash bag he’d had in his car. When he crossed the state line, he’d burn them.

Whatever happened to him, Phil thought, was worth it.

Kyle. Love. Joy.

Three words Phil never thought he’d be able to string together again.

_____

Next short story—hopefully, one that brings the Tomás Esteban Núñez cycle to a close—out on Wednesday, July 29.