Prologue

That he was gay had everything and nothing to do with the fact that he was dead -- brutally beaten, savagely kicked, mercilessly assaulted, and virtually obliterated. No one, not even his own mother, could have recognized the oddly bent and misshapen form lying in a red lake of its own making; it hardly seemed to be the remains of a human, much less those of the talented, handsome, brilliant and exceedingly gentle young man it once had been.

Those three who had stalked him, cornered him and eventually slaughtered him, stood in a ragged circle around the carnage, breathing hard and fast through their open mouths. An operation of this magnitude takes a lot of physical effort, of course, even when the perpetrators of said killing are well equipped both physically and otherwise and their prey a slight, almost fragile target.

One of the men leaned heavily on the Louisville Slugger which had first quite efficiently pulverized the tibia and fibula of each leg, a foolproof method of keeping quarry from escaping but still conscious, one of the first items on the man's list for the night's work. To make doubly sure, he smashed a kneecap, and then moved back a couple of paces to allow his compatriots a turn, something they fell to with varying degrees of relish. He was the sole professional tonight, content to set it up for his employers and then allow them to be part of the action personally.

Cool, detached, he watched their frenzied, near manic attack on the wretch who tried desperately for a time to shield his head against the incessant rain of blows from what appeared to be a regulation nightstick in the hands of the second man, the youngest of the group, and a three-foot length of lead pipe which rose and fell, rose and fell, with a single-minded almost metronomic regularity that seemed to belie the passion of the oldest.

In just a short time the victim's forearms and hands were so smashed and bloody they simply fell away from their protective position, the last of the young man's defenses now forgotten and abandoned.

And the assault on the body continued with renewed vigor, continuing even long after he himself ceased to be.

It was finally over, and the watcher who was also the clean-up crew, according to his contract, almost -- but not quite, such emotion having been diligently excised from what passed for a soul in this killer many years ago -- felt compassion for the stricken creature as its resemblance to any human thing disappeared.

At last, probably more due to physical exhaustion than anything else, the rhythm of the blows became ragged, the kicks from steel-shod toes lost some of their strength, the grunts and hisses faded away, and quiet returned to the blind alley in Denver's lower downtown.

In the near total dark of the alleyway, the silence for a time was broken only by the wheezes and gasps of two of the men as they regained their breath after their labors.

After a time, the big man with the heavy oak bat stirred, moving forward again to stand above the body, flicking the beam of a pencil flash down at the smashed body, washing its pitiless eye over everything.

"Well?" he said.

"Finish it" said the older man.

The big man handed the flashlight to the older man, and then the heavy bat began to rise and fall again, starting with the already smashed head, and working its way down the body. The thin beam never wavered from the scene, the older man avidly watching the result of every blow. He did once move a single step back from his former position, not from any pretense at being fastidious, but to be sure the wielder of the bat was not in any manner obstructed in his work.

The younger man all at once whirled and retched, gagging back bile.

"Be a man for once!" the older man grated at him, and the younger man handed his piece of pipe to the other before moving farther away towards the entrance to the alley, away from the immediate vicinity. The older man watched him with a hard eye, then shook his head in disgust and returned his attention to the proceedings in front of him.

Eventually, the big man with the bat, powerful as he was and inured to such wet work, had enough, sighed deeply, put down the end of his bat for the last time, and stepped away, wiping his face on the sleeve of his dark jacket.

"You done?" asked the older man.

"He's done," corrected the big man. After a moment, another expressionless long look at the body, the older man nodded once, twice, and handed both pipe and nightstick to the big man.

Then, without a backward glance, he walked toward his son who was sitting on a pile of trash, his face in his hands. He stood over him a moment, looking past and over him into the faint trace of sunrise just leaching into the night sky, then headed for the mouth of the alley without a word. After a moment, the younger man got shakily to his feet and followed.

The big man stayed for a moment where he was, his practiced eye going over the ground everywhere to be sure nothing was left which would possibly prove unfortunate if found. From a rear pocket he pulled a thick packet which unfolded into a pair of large plastic trash bags, inserted the bat in one, the nightstick and lead pipe into the other, knotted the necks of both, tucked the bulky packages under his arm, and calmly left the scene.

It was nearly twenty minutes before the faintest of rustles would have been heard, had there been any living ear to hear, that hinted at the presence of a fifth person in that alley that horrible night.