CHAPTER 4
A
second before John squeezed the trigger, the BMW's cold aluminum chassis rocked so hard to the left that it caused John to rock with it. This wasn't just a gust of wind. This sudden movement was so abrupt that the gun’s muzzle slipped to the right, clearing John's jaw line, just before the bullet emerged in a flash of flame and gunpowder. . The discharge sent the .38 caliber bullet up John's right cheek, where it gauged a furrow four inches long, before nicking the edge of his right cheekbone, chipping off a small jagged piece. The bullet blew out the car's rooftop, where the thick, black storm clouds above swallowed it.
The explosive discharge inside the confined space was so loud it
made the tiny hair follicles in John's right ear to collapse, instantly creating acute deafness and ringing to his ears. Simultaneously the sound waves of the gunshot bounced off the car interior, like miniature kidney punches to every square inch of John's body. Hot gunpowder and flash burn mixed with the warm blood oozing from the open wound on his face.
"Ah
, fuck." John gasped. He dropped the gun and grabbed at his right ear. The pain had yet to register in the synapses of his brain, but he knew it was no more than two seconds away. When you're dead, you don't hear the ringing, feel the burn of the open wound, smell the gunpowder, or feel the warm, wet, sticky blood.
When you're dead, you don't
feel
at all.
But John was far from dead and the pain hit hard
. Blood trickled through his fingers and down his right forearm, where it mixed with drops of rain, which dripped in through the bullet hole in the car roof. The blood and water moved to his elbow and dropped onto the three envelopes resting in the middle console pocket.
John
stared ahead and saw only darkness through his front windshield. Then the darkness moved
.
John shoved his feet against the floorboard in an attempt to pull away from the unknown black mass. His mouth opened, but it was so dry and dusty that no words came. His mind fought to comprehend what he was seeing when two quick flashes of lightning appeared. There, staring at him through the wet windshield was the face of a man scrambled in a twisted kaleidoscope of reflected light. A clap of thunder followed. John jumped.
What the hell is going on
?
Then the black mass
moved again, and like a large boa constrictor slithering through a jungle, the man slid his body over the hood and dropped onto the street. John groped for the ignition key, turned it, and flipped on his windshield wipers and headlights. The man got to his feet, glanced at John, then back at the house, before turning and hobbling away. John noted the limp in his stride.
"
Did you hit my car?" he said. "You stupid bastard."
John felt the rain
dripping on his head and looked up to see the bullet hole in the car roof. The hole he put there. The one he never expected to see.
***
Karen didn't witness the killer get into his car and drive away. While she worked to save an unresponsive Rachel, Karen thought of Rachel's older sister, Katie. No, not her too. Karen grabbed her baseball bat, ran to Katie's bedroom, and flipped on the lights, shouting Katie's name. Instead of her older daughter, Karen found an empty bed.
Where's Katie?
"Katieeee!"
Karen screamed her daughter's name repeatedly as she ran into the living room. The front door was wide open. She dashed through the door and into the pouring rain. She stopped. A strange car was parked in front of her home. She caught sight of the headlights just as the driver turned them off.
It’s him.
Karen's heart raced. Without hesitation, she gripped the bat tightly and ran down the walk, jumping the three small concrete steps, landing on the sidewalk, and rounding the front of the car. Her baby's killer would now face her wrath.
She swung the bat, and the
driver's-side window imploded. Glass shards flew into the killer's face, followed by the business end of Karen's bat, which snapped his head sharply to the right. He threw his hands up and screamed, covering his face with both hands.
Karen repeatedly
jabbed the bat into the car window, like poking logs in a fireplace. The man inside covered his head and swatted at the bat, trying to grab it, but his hands couldn't get a good grip.
"Where's Katie? Where's my daughter?"
The man reached out of the car window and punched Karen in the face. She was stunned long enough to loosen her grip, and that was what the killer needed to rip the bat from her hands. He threw it to the car floor on his right and grabbed at his keys. Karen came at him again. She dove through the window grabbing at his face, her left ring finger suddenly slick with something warm. The killer screamed, he quickly punched her and shoved her face hard, causing her to lose her footing, and she fell back out the window onto the wet ground.
The killer
started the car and accelerated, the tires hydroplaning as it slid out of the parking spot and quickly drove out of the neighborhood.
CHAPTER 5
John drove out of the residential neighborhood and turned onto Hawthorne Boulevard, unsure where he was going. He struggled to control his car as he fumbled, one-handed, with the steering wheel, attempting to navigate the Greenwood City streets. He pressed his right hand firmly to his gunshot wound. His bloodied and swollen face and rain-soaked shirt made him appear as if he'd just walked off the set of a John Carpenter film playing Zombie Number 4. His lungs heaved in asthma-like gasps as he brought his shaking left hand to the blinker arm, clicking the wipers up to high. The shard of glass stuck in his left eye hampered his view, which caused him to blink and squint even more, thus losing his depth perception as he drove through the rainstorm, straining to make out approaching headlights.
Damn woman.
What did I do to her
?
John
swiped his face, smearing more blood, and then rubbed it on his shirt in an attempt to dry it off, but everywhere he touched he felt the wet stickiness of half-dried blood. His right pinky finger hurt and he realized his shirt had caught a shard of window glass. He glanced down. Glass was all over his lap, the seat next to him, the floor…
This wasn't supposed to happen.
He kept driving without a thought of where he was going, but instinctively, he knew where he would end up. He needed medical attention. He needed Danny. He'd know what to do. A quick inspection of his eye, removal of the offending splinter of glass, some stitches, five to ten maybe. John couldn't be sure without a clear look at it.
It.
The self-inflicted gunshot wound. The kill shot that wasn't.
How could you fuck that up? One shot. That was all
you needed.
It was that man's fault. The one who landed on his car. The guy's face was dark and sinister. John tried desperately to put the pieces together. This man, this stranger out of nowhere, slammed into the car hard enough to cause John's trigger hand to slip and miss his shot.
Who was that gu
y? Where did he come from?
He looked to his right
. The baseball bat rested against the seat cushion, as if he placed it there on his way to the batting cages. Dark streaks covered the business end. A bloody handprint and finger smears were on the handle, which was surrounded by more glass shards, like sprinkles dropped on top of an ice cream cone.
And who was that crazy bitch
?
As he whipped his head from the road to the
interior of his vehicle, his gaze caught something else—the gun laying useless on the floor. He shifted in his seat and leaned over, reaching for the gun and straining to keep his good eye on the road. His fingers finally closed around the grip, but as he lifted the four-pound gun, it felt like an anchor in his hand. John's gaze shifted from the window to the gun and back to the window. Blue and red flashing lights came his way. The gun slipped from his hand as he straightened and grabbed the wheel, swerving to stay in his lane, and holding his breath.
The first cop car passed
. A second followed close behind. Then a third and, finally, an ambulance. John scanned the rearview mirror.
Are they going to my house
? Did I run that crazy woman over?
He tried to repl
ay the scene over in his mind and, each time he did, he couldn't recall if there was a thump from his tires rolling over a human body. But he couldn't definitely say it didn't happen, and the thought of hurting someone else, when all he wanted to do that night was kill himself, weighed on him until he finally exploded in grief.
"Shit
! Shit! Shit!" He pounded the dashboard, leaving bloody palm prints and sending tiny blood splatters in all directions. He turned right on Sepulveda Boulevard and headed north. The rain had eased up, so he slowed the windshield wipers. His ears were still ringing, and his cheek and eye hurt like hell. The blood still flowed. The front of his shirt was covered in the red mess.
He reached the parking lot for Greenwood Memorial Hospital and turned
onto the drive that led to the emergency room entrance. An ambulance was parked and the back doors were open, but there was no gurney inside. John’s heart lurched, and his breath caught in his throat. He jerked the wheel to the right and plowed the car over a small planter, where the vehicle came to a stop in a clump of bushes.
It was a full twenty minutes later, 3:08 a.m., before the ambulance crew came back out to close their doors and leave. One of them happened to turn and find John's car, with John inside, staring ahead
at nothing in particular, with the blood-smeared bat and the empty .38 revolver laying on the floor—in plain view
.
CHAPTER
6
The killer
sat inside his Chevy Nova, parked inside his garage, and slowly breathed in and out. It was at least thirty minutes since he drove away from the crime scene, and he still shook from his encounter with the bat-swinging mom. He reached back and rubbed the growing lump on the crown of his head, where her first swing had landed—a glancing blow but enough to stun him for a brief second before he was able to deflect the next swing and bolt for the door. As big as he was, the killer had never been physical with a woman, unless strangling four teenage girls counted. All the way home, he checked his rearview mirror, watching for police cars, doing his best to keep his speed as normal as possible. If stopped, his alibi was that he was coming home from Smoot's Bar. The timing was right since most bars closed at 2:00 a.m. He knew that he could count on the guys down there to cover for him, say he was there with them, as he was most nights, shooting pool and watching ESPN. His head pounded. He reached back again and felt the lump one more time.
He closed his eyes and replayed what had happened
, but he kept coming back to the guy inside the car. He remembered leaping from the end of the concrete walk, passing the three steps at the end, then hitting the small patch of wet grass next to the curb. His forward momentum slammed him into the car, where he immediately face-planted onto the hood.
What was that sound
? A gunshot? And who the hell was that guy? What was he doing inside that car, at the same place and at the same time? Was he a cop? Jesus, he was a cop!
He snatched the keys from the ignition, opened the car door, and
stepped out into his garage. He moved to the door, walked outside, and looked down the long driveway. The street was quiet and a light rain was falling. He was scared and exhilarated at the same time. He loved killing. He didn't know why. It just suited him.
He smiled
. That guy wasn't a cop. They would have chased him. No one followed him. He was safe.
For now.
He
entered the garage again, reached up to the two-by-four strut in the bare wall, and grabbed a key. He moved deeper into the garage, to the back wall, and lifted an old, heavy quilt, revealing a gray military footlocker. He unlocked it and raised the lid slowly, savoring every moment as the fruits of his labor appeared before his eyes. His heart skipped a beat, and his mouth watered. In a neat row inside the locker were three, five-by-seven color photographs, and beside each photo was a piece of jewelry. He unzipped his waist pack and pulled out Rachel's charm bracelet, eying it like the prized trophy it was. He placed it next to Jamie Kirks's gold necklace.
He picked up the photo of Jamie and studied her face, her eyes half
-opened, unseeing. He set it back down in spot number three, and he reached into his pack and removed his digital camera. He pulled the memory card out and slid it into his pocket. He'd print out the photo of Rachel Sharp at his office. Then he'd bring it home and put it next to the charm bracelet. His private collection was growing, filling him with a sense of accomplishment.