Excerpt (continued)

When Frankie walked close enough to the shed where Ren was concealed, Ren stepped right in front of him so that Frankie could see his attacker. Frankie was so drunk that he had lost all of his reflexes. He just stood there like the stoop he was. Ren raised the board over his head with his one good arm and, with all of his might, he crashed it, nail side down, straight into Frankie’s thick skull, killing him instantly. Ren did not wait for Frankie to topple and fall. He jerked the nail free from his skull and plunged the nail a second time into another spot on the top of his already-bloody head. Frankie fell dead away. But Ren wasn’t finished. He was still too angry to quit. A dozen times more, he drove the bloody spike into Frankie’s head and face. By then, his anger was spent. After trampling the spike with his shoe and embedding it in the eardrum of the late Frankie Wilson, he simply walked away.