“Good, so far. Prints match
Sparke’s
.”
“Bingo.”
“We’re checking all the gathered evidence now. Based on the nurse’s story, we’re still looking into the possibility of another party being involved. We’ll let you know what we come up with.”
“Thanks Len. We’re at
Sparke’s
residence now. Nothing out of the ordinary-”
“Wait...you’re at
Sparke’s
? What luck!”
“What is it, Len?”
“Captain...I need you to do something for me. Earlier today...” He hesitated, realizing that he didn’t want to discuss this matter until later. Too late. “Earlier today Kevin and I paid
Sparke
a call on what seemed at the time to be an unrelated incident.”
There was a harsh silence on the other end of the phone. This was Reese’s anticipatory anger setting in. “Go ‘head.”
Good, cutting him some slack for now. “There was a report of an injured woman fleeing his place. When we arrived,
Sparke
was cleaning up some blood on his floor.”
“What?”
“Wait, please don’t get ahead of me. He had a solid story. There was nothing we could do at the time. He’d had an argument with his girl. She slipped, cut her hand on some knives that...” He hesitated. His heart skipped a beat. Kevin saw the look of surprise in his eyes as he grabbed the baggie with the murder weapon in it.
“Len...you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here...Captain, where are you now in the condo?”
“In the living room.”
“Go to the kitchen.”
“Why? What are you getting at?”
“Just go there.”
“I’m going.”
“You see any knives there?”
“There’s some in the
drainboard
by the sink.”
“You see a butcher block anywhere?”
“Yeah, right next to it. Also in the
drainboard
. It’s tipped over and the knives are spilled out.”
“Okay…put all the knives back into their corresponding slots.”
“All right,” he said. He replaced them one by one, speaking as he did so, “I think...I...see...what...you’re...getting...at. Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch! The steak knife slot is empty.”
“That’s because I have it right here, boss.”
“Damn it, Len! Why didn’t you arrest him right there and then?”
“There were no grounds for it, Captain.”
“No grounds? Are you kidding me?”
There was a pause of silence. Reese was trying to gain his composure, and Leonard allowed him the courtesy. “An injured girl? Blood on the floor? I hope you filed a report.”
“Not yet...listen Captain, can we discuss this later, I--”
“Frankly Leonard, I...Jesus, there’s a killer on the loose and you--
we
--might have let him run free. God-damned-son-of-a-bitch! There’s absolutely nothing we can do about that now.” There was an uncomfortable silence on the other end of the phone, Reese evidently cooling the engines. Finally he said, “No sense wasting any more valuable time. You continue doing what you’re doing; I’ll keep things busy on my end.”
Dare I ask him?
“Captain, can I ask if you’ve found anything there I should know about?”
Another stretch of contemptuous silence. Reese then said, “We did a once over, found nothing. But now that you say there was blood on the floor, I guess we should be looking for traces, no?”
Leonard coughed a dry spot out from his throat. “If our theory of a second person at the murder scene exists, then it’s conceivable, albeit a long shot, that the blood from
Sparke’s
floor could belong to him, or her.”
“Her?”
“I haven’t ruled out the possibility of his girlfriend, Pamela Bergin, being involved.”
“We’re going to check out her place now, and then hit his ex-wife’s. I’ll call George and have him come here to look for blood. Anything else, Len?”
“No.”
Leonard hung up the phone. “Reese wasn’t too thrilled to hear about our visit this morning.”
“I could hear his voice from here,” Kevin said, leaning back in his chair.
Leonard reached into the box, pulled out the tape recorder and the two tapes. He placed them on the desk before them. “Let’s go to the tape, shall we?”
Kevin leaned forward, ear cocked.
Leonard pressed ‘play’.
The first thought that entered his mind was,
Which Pamela is this?
With a handgun pointed at his face, he painfully assumed this to be the newly aggressive Pam that showed up at his condo this morning.
He closed his eyes, thought about swinging the screwdriver around in an arc aimed for her calf. He dropped it instead and pleaded for his life. “Please...please Pam. D-don’t kill me.”
“Jesus, Richard. Get up. I’m not going to kill you. It’s dark out and I had to make sure it was
you
.” She stepped back and as she did her feet slipped from under her, pulling her to the rain-drenched ground. She landed with a moan, the gun pointed skyward. “Shit!” she cried.
Richard scrambled to his knees, not too sure of what to make of the situation. He decided to help Pam, and assisted her as she sat up. She stood quickly, trying to brush the mud and pine needles from her jeans. “Look at what you did, Richard!”
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Richard, what are
you
doing? Running from the cops? They’ll find you in no time.”
“No...it’s not the cops I’m running from, exactly.” He’d never told Pam much about his recurring dreams, nor their multiple players--not once had he thought she’d believe him. And now? Would she believe him if he told her the man who played the sinister character in his nightly affairs had escaped his mind and was trying to kill him?
She stepped closer, studying him, the pain in his eyes, the pale wetness of his skin glowing in the car’s headlights. “Richard, what is it? There’s something else you’re not telling me, isn’t there? I can see it in your face.”
Richard stammered. “I-I can’t tell you.” Foolish, he thought. Now, if any, was the time to spill it all. Then, he thought,
How the hell did she find me here? And why did she come?
She remained silent, staring, then asked, “How much do you know?”
Nervously reacting, he wiped the rain from his face. “Know about what?”
She turned and jogged back to the car. She leaned in, pulled out a double-gauged shotgun, and a few boxes of ammunition. “That screwdriver isn’t going to protect you from him. Hand to hand, he’ll destroy you.”
Him? What the hell? Can it be that she knows about the man in black
? “Pam, who are you talking about?”
She loaded the gun. “The one who’s following you, Richard. You know, the guy you call ‘the man in black’?”
Richard nearly fell down, his head dizzied at the sound of those words, ‘man in black’, coming from her mouth. How did she know about him, whoever he was? Jesus, was this really happening? It seemed too illusory--the rain, the environment, the turn of events--to be real. This
had
to be a dream. But no, it
was
real, everything around him. Pam. The dead doctor. His life. Everything--taking another reckless turn, becoming more complicated than he ever imagined possible.
“How do you know about him, Pam?” He felt sick.
She walked over and handed him the rifle. “There’ll be plenty of time for questions later. All we have to do is make it out alive, and then I’ll be able to explain everything to you.”
“What are you talking about? Make it out alive? Jesus, I am so damn confused!” He tucked the rifle under his arm and ran his hands through his soaking wet hair. “I need to know what the hell is going on!” A cool plume of mist purled from his mouth.
Pam came close to him, her face full of raindrops. “I’m here to help you, Richard. But…I need you to cooperate. First things first: I need you to do is get a grip. Can you do that for me?”
Richard stood frozen, trembling silently in the cold rain.
“Richard!” she yelled, yanking the rifle out from under his arm and handing it to him. “Okay? Can you get it together?”
He nodded, knowing that he had no choice but to comply with Pam’s demand. Not only did it give him a chance for survival, but she also claimed to have the answers to the questions he’d been asking himself his entire retentive life.
The answers…
“We need to get out of here,” Pam said, “while there’s still a chance.”
“A chance for what?”
“Come with me,” she urged, ignoring his last question. “If he sees us together, he’ll suspect a trap and back off. Then we’ll be at a grave disadvantage. We need to get to him before he gets to us.”
“What? He can’t be here. I didn’t see him following me.”
“It’s not that simple, Richard. You didn’t see me until the last minute, did you?” She reached back into the front seat and pulled out a large knapsack and a jacket. She put on both, then retrieved another pistol from the car, which she tucked into her jeans. “You also didn’t think he’d beat you to Samantha’s house. But he did, didn’t he? And with enough time to do a number on her before you got there.”
Richard squeezed the hard steel shaft of the rifle, feeling very uncomfortable holding it, much less having to fire it. “How do you know about all that? And Jesus, Pam, where’d you get all the guns?”
“No questions now,” she said, stepping away from the car. “Come with me.”
“We’re leaving your car behind?” Richard could only stand and listen, feet rooted as he swiveled his head around to follow her. She moved at an even pace, towards the woods. Richard stayed watching her for a moment, then started after her, now afraid to be left alone for fear of the unknown: the man in black might be close by, watching the two of them, awaiting the perfect moment to…
Pam reached the perimeter of the woods and Richard picked up his pace, only to stop as she froze in her tracks. At that moment, a gunshot reverberated across the woodland area. Pam jerked around, revealing a blanched face. Her jacket, near the right bicep, turned red: blood, rupturing from her arm, soaking the material of her jacket. Richard ran forward and met her as she whimpered and sagged. He dropped the rifle and caught her beneath the arms, then gently lowered her to the ground. Another bullet ricocheted off a tree to their right, shattering the barky surface. In a sudden panic, Richard dragged Pam into the cover of the woods, ten yards from the edge of the dirt road. His foot slipped behind him. When he turned he saw the depression. It had twisted and turned in this direction, with the fifteen-foot decline now at his heels. Keeping his grip on Pam, he dug frantically with his feet to escape the drop, but the rain-slicked surface made it impossible to take a firm hold, and he slipped down, taking Pam with him.
The descent was quick, but painful, especially for Pam, who cried out as mud and pine needles invaded her wound. For Richard, the surge was cold and irritating on his lungs, yet the will to survive had sent adrenaline to his muscles, enabling him to quickly stand, pick Pam up and carry her across the stream all the way to his car. Dizzied, he opened the back door and lay her down on the seat.
“Are you hit badly?” he asked, gasping.
“Not sure,” she stammered, lips blue. “I’m cold. I can’t feel my legs.”
“Damn--I knew you’d be next on his list!” he said, mostly to himself. Then, “We need to stop the bleeding.”
“My knapsack, Richard.”
In another wave of action coerced through the onset of a previously lost memory, Richard gently removed the knapsack from her back. There were a half-dozen flaps and zippers. Desperate, and barely able to see in the gloom, he began to tear at the large zipper circling the upper half.
“Don’t!” she yelled, rather defensively, then reached over with her good arm and popped the two snaps on the back, removing a bandana. She handed it to Richard. Miraculously, he knew what to do. He removed the side-shoulder strap from the knapsack, cinched it tightly below the wound around Pam’s injured bicep, making her groan in pain. He then used the bandana to bandage the wound, also tying it tightly around her arm. She bit her lip, stifling a scream.
“How the hell are we going to get out of here?” Richard was out of control, shaking terribly. His lungs heaved, clouds of frozen breath rising up.
“Run now, leave me here...”
Richard looked around, saw nothing but the landscape and the rain. He tried to pull back away from the car, but was paralyzed with fear, unable to move. He thought about the rifle he dropped at the top of the trough, now gone forever. At that moment, Pam dug into her jeans, pulled the second pistol she had tucked away and gave it to Richard. “Take this. There’s only six shots.”
“Jesus, Pam, what about you?”
“I have another gun,” she uttered, displaying it with a trembling hand. Her face was a sheen of cold wetness glowing in the dark: rain and sweat.
Richard took a deep breath then forced himself to step back from the car. He peered over the roof to the upper edges of the trough above. The rain had intensified, limiting his vision. He could use that to his advantage: the man in black’s sights would be impaired as well.