Chucky was pumping his legs furiously. It was as if he were trying to pedal a bike straight across the sky.
His long arms reached out, muscles hard and taut. His lead leg stretched until it was almost straight out from his body. Nike sneaker–poster stuff.
His frame was stiff, like a runner caught in a prizewinning photograph.
“Jesus Christ,” Sampson whispered at my side. I felt his warm breath on my cheek.
Chucky’s arm was outstretched, but his hand barely touched the restraining wall on the roof of the nearby office building, his legs still pumping in midair.
Then Chop-It-Off-Chucky screamed—bloodcurdling sounds, muffled only by the windows and walls of the two buildings.
He continued to shriek as he fell twenty stories. His arms and legs were flailing, stroking the air at a futile, furious pace.
As I watched, I saw his body suddenly twist in midair.
He looked up at me—still screaming in a hopeless, plaintive way, screaming with his mouth and his eyes, and that bushy red beard, screaming. Chucky was dying as I watched. The fall seemed to take forever. Four or five seconds that seemed like an eternity.
My stomach was falling with him. I experienced vertigo. The narrow alley below was a spinning gray band. The buildings, the canyon, seemed so steep and dark and faraway.
Then I heard Chucky hit the pavement. Splat! It was otherworldly to hear.
I stared at the crumpled body spread-eagled down below. I could feel no joy in it, though. There was nothing even remotely human about it. It was crushed like the side of Shanelle Green’s face. Chucky’s unearthly screams still echoed inside my brain.
“Flameout,” Sampson said at my side. “Case closed. Score one for the peachfuzz.”
I holstered my semiautomatic. Emmanuel Perez had practiced his escape, but he hadn’t practiced enough.
CHAPTER
13
MAJOR FAKEOUT. Faked you out something fierce, didn’t I? I faked you all out.
The real Sojourner Truth School killer was alive and well. The killer couldn’t have been any better, thank you very much. He had just committed the perfect crime, hadn’t he? He had just gotten away with murder.
Yes, he sure as hell had. Scot-free. The crackerjack Washington police had caught and toasted the wrong twisted asshole. Somebody named Emmanuel Perez had paid for his sins, paid with his life, paid in full.
All he had to do now was cool it, he knew. That was what he had to concentrate on. He had already decided to hide out for a while—inside his mind.
He was cruising the Pentagon City mall in Arlington. He was getting absolutely rabid as he strolled through The Gap, and then Victoria’s Secret. He was obsessing about how to get back at—anybody and everybody. At tout le monde—pardon his French, s’il vous plaît.
A song, an oldie he’d heard that morning on MTV, was stuck in his head. The lyrics had been bouncing around in his skull like Ping-Pong balls for the last couple of hours. He could hear the singer, Beck, a hopeless geek from Los Angeles: I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me?
I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me? he repeated the lyric in his head.
I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me?
He loved the way the dumb-ass lyrics worked two ways for him. They were about him, and they were about his potential victims. Everything was an irritating circle, right? Life was beautiful in its screwy simplicity, right?
WRONG! Life was not beautiful. Not at all.
He was watching a little sucker now, a potential victim who looked way to good to pass up. The Truth School killer loitered inside the Toys “R” Us at the mall. Since it was the holiday season, the store was jam-packed with idiots.
The overhead speakers were playing the chain’s irritating and moronic theme song: “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid.” Over and over and over, the kind of mindless repetition that kids loved. The sheer number of insane toys, the spoiled-rotten little kids, the smug-looking mothers and fathers, the whole raw deal made him feel hot, thickheaded, and almost physically sick.
I don’t want to grow up, either, he said to himself. I’m a Toys “R” Us kid killer.
He watched his chosen little boy as the kid wandered alone down a wide aisle chock-full of action games. The boy was five or so, a very manageable age.
The anger button inside his head was going off like a powerful alarm. WOM! WOM! WOM! The terrible feeling quickly spread to his chest. WOM! WOM! It was tense and uncomfortable. Both his hands were clenched tight. So was his stomach. The back of his neck. His brain was clutching, too.
Be careful now, he cautioned himself. Don’t make any mistakes. Remember—you do perfect crimes.
CHAPTER
14
THIS WAS GOING TO BE a mite tricky going, though, working in the crowded Toys “R” Us store. What if the boy’s parents were close by? WHICH THEY DEFINITELY WERE! What if he were caught? WHICH HE WOULDN’T BE! COULDN’T BE!
That was incredibly important to him. Just watching the attractive, round-faced, sandy-haired boy, he could feel how badly this particular kid would be missed and, even better, mourned. He needed to imagine the stories that would bombard the television screens and the thrill of watching them, knowing he was responsible for so much pain and suffering and emergency activity.
The little boy was getting itchy in his woolens and starting to panic a little. He had big crocodile tears brimming in his eyes. There didn’t seem to be anybody, any adult, anywhere around him. Poor Little Boy Lost. Poor Little Boy Blue.
The killer began to move in on his prey, slowly and carefully. He couldn’t stop now. His heart was beating like a big tin drum, and he loved the powerful sensation. His legs and arms were a little wobbly. Jell-O city. His vision tunneled; he was dizzy with anticipation, fear, dread, exhilaration.
Do it.
Now!
He bent, picked up the boy, and immediately starting smiling and talking the happiest, friendliest barf-babble he could come up with.
“Hi there, I’m Roger the Artful Dodger. I work here at Toys ‘R’ Us. What kind of fantastical toys do you like best, huh? We’ve got every kind of toy in the whole wide world, ’cause we’re the world’s biggest, coolest toy store. Yahoo! How ’bout that? Let’s go find your superpathetic mom and dad!”
The boy actually smiled up at him. Kids could do weird mood changes like that. His beautiful blue eyes sparkled, glistened; something wet and wonderful happened. “I want Mighty Max,” he proclaimed as if he were Richie Rich instead of Little Boy Lost.
“Okay, then come with me. One Mighty Max coming up! Why? ’Cause you’re a Toys ‘R’ Us kid.”
He cradled the boy in his arms and began to hurry up the wide shopping aisle toward the front of the store. Suddenly, he knew he could get away with it, even something this audacious and shocking, with almost a hundred eyewitnesses in the store. Hey, he was the new Pied Piper. Kids loved him.
“We’ll get a Vac-man. Then how about X-Men? Or how about a Stretch Armstrong?”
“Mighty Max,” the little boy repeated, stuck on his one track. “I only want Mighty Max.”
The killer peeked out of aisle three. He was less than thirty feet from the store’s front exit. The mall parking lot bordered on Columbia Park, which had been part of his escape package from the start.
He took a couple of fast steps, then stopped dead in his tracks at the front of the store.
Shit! A couple in their late twenties were walking toward him! The woman looked just like Little Boy Blue.
They had him… dead to rights. They had him nailed! They had him!
He knew what he had to do, so he never panicked for a nanosecond. Except for the two or three major heart attacks he had on the inside. Well, here goes everything. Time to bet the ranchero.
“Hey, hi there.” He smiled broadly and went into his best stand-up routine ever. “This little guy belong to you? He was lost in the action-figure section. Nobody c
ame for him. I figured I better bring him up to the store manager. Little guy was crying his eyes out. You his mom?”
The mother reached out for her precious bundle of joy, while at the same time throwing her husband a dirty look.
Aha, there was our villain! Pop was obviously the one who had lost the boy in the first place. Pops couldn’t get anything right these days, could they! His own pop sure hadn’t been able to.
“Thank you, so much,” the mom said. She tossed another incredibly nasty look to pop. “That was very sweet of you,” she told the killer.
He continued to hold his best smile. Man, he was acting his heart out. “Anybody would do the same thing. He’s a nice little boy. Well, so long. Bye-bye. He wants a Mighty Max. That’s probably what he was searching for.”
“Yes, he does want Mighty Max. Bye. Thanks again,” said the mom.
“Bye-bye,” the little boy mimicked, waving his hand. “Bye-bye.”
“Hope I see ya some other time,” said the Sojourner Truth School killer. “Bye-bye.” You morons! You incredible idiots. You pathetic simps.
He walked away from the family. Never looked back once. He was wetting his pants, but he was also beginning to laugh. He couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Here was another thing in his favor—even if he was caught someday—they wouldn’t believe that he was the Truth School killer. No way in hell.
CHAPTER
15
AH, THIS WAS MUCH BETTER. Life was good again. I opened my eyes and Jannie was there, staring at me from about three feet away. Jannie had Rosie the cat in her arms. Jannie likes to watch me sleep sometimes. I like to watch her sleep, too. Fair is fair.
“Hey there, sweetness and light,” I said to her. “You know the song ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’? You remember that one?” I hummed a couple of bars for her.
Jannie nodded her head yes. She knew the song. She’d heard me play it on the piano downstairs, on our porch. “You have guests,” she announced.
I sat up in bed. “How long have they been here?”
“They just came. Nana sent me and Rosie up to get you. She’s making them coffee. You, too. You have to get up.”
“Is it Sampson and Rakeem Powell?” I asked.
Jannie shook her head. She seemed unusually shy this morning, which isn’t really like her. “They’re white men.”
I was starting to wake up in a hurry. “I see. You happen to catch the names?” Suddenly, I thought I knew the names. I solved the mystery myself—at least, I thought I had.
Jannie said, “Mr. Pittman and Mr. Clouser.”
“Very good,” I complimented her.
Not good, not good at all, I was thinking about my “guests.” I didn’t want to see the chief of detectives, or the police commissioner—especially not in my house.
Especially not for the reason I imagined that they were here to see me.
Jannie bent and gave me my morning kiss. Then a second kiss.
“Oh, what lies there are in kisses,” I winked and said to her.
“Nope,” she said. “Not my kisses.”
It took me less than five minutes to get as ready as I was going to get for this. Nana was entertaining our visitors in the parlor. Commissioner Clouser had come to my house twice before. This was a first for the chief of detectives. The Jefe. I assumed that Clouser had forced him to come.
Chief Pittman and Commissioner Clouser were sipping Nana’s steaming coffee, smiling at a story she was spinning for them. I wondered what it was she had decided to get off her chest. This was a dangerous time—for Pittman and Clouser.
“I was just rebuking these gentlemen for allowing Emmanuel Perez to roam our streets for so long,” she told me as I entered the parlor. “They promised not to let that sort of thing happen again. Should I believe them, Alex?”
Both Pittman and Clouser chuckled as they looked at me. Neither of them realized this was no chuckling matter, and that my grandmother was no one to mess with or, even worse, condescend to in her house.
“No, you shouldn’t believe one word they say. Are you finished now?” I asked her, returning her sweet, phony smile with one of my own.
“I didn’t think I could trust either of them. I wanted to get their promise in writing,” Nana said.
I nodded and smiled, as if she’d just made a joke, which I knew she hadn’t. She was dead serious. The Jefe and Commissioner Clouser both laughed heartily. They thought Nana Mama was a stitch. She isn’t. She’s the whole nine yards.
“Can the three of us talk in here?” I asked her. “Or should we go outside for our discussion?”
“I’ll go in my kitchen,” Nana evil-eyed me and said. “So nice to meet you, Chief Pittman, Commissioner Clouser. Don’t forget your promise. I won’t.”
Once she had left the room, the commissioner spoke right up. “Well, congratulations are in order, Alex. I understand that you found all kinds of kiddie porn in Emmanuel Perez’s apartment.”
“Detective Sampson and I found the pornography,” I said. Then I was silent. I had decided not to make this easy for them. Actually, I agreed one hundred percent with the point Nana had been trying to make.
“I’m sure you’re wondering what we’re doing here, so let me explain,” Chief of Detectives Pittman spoke up. He and I were not close, to put it mildly. Never had been, never would be. Pittman is a bully and also a closet racist, and those are his better points. He could never seem to see a belt without wanting to hit below it.
“I’d appreciate it,” I said to The Jefe. “I was thinking that maybe you had just been in the neighborhood and you dropped by for my grandmother’s coffee. It’s worth a trip.”
Pittman didn’t come close to breaking a smile. “We received a formal request from the FBI late last night. They’ve asked that you work on the investigation of Senator Fitzpatrick’s murder. Special Agent Kyle Craig strongly suggested that your background and recent experience might serve the investigation well. Obviously, it’s an important case, Alex.”
I let Chief Pittman finish, then I slowly shook my head no. “I’ve got a half-dozen open homicides here in Southeast,” I said. “The case I just worked on should have been solved months ago. Then another little girl wouldn’t have died for no goddamn reason. A homicide detective got reassigned off the killer’s trail back then. Now a little girl is dead. Six years old.”
“This is a major case, Alex,” the commissioner said. He had snow-white hair. His face was bright red, which happened when he was angry or disturbed. The two of us went back some. Usually we went along, got along. Maybe not this time.
“Tell the FBI that I can’t be spared for this Jack and Jill mess. I’ll call Kyle and make my peace with him. Kyle will understand. I’m on several homicide cases in Southeast. People die here, too. We have our own messes, and even major cases.”
“Let me ask you something, Alex,” the police commissioner said. He smiled gently as he spoke. Lots of beautifully capped white teeth. I could have played some sweet Gershwin on them, though maybe some key-slamming Little Richard would have been more satisfying.
“Do you still want to be a cop?” he asked.
That one landed, and it stung. It was a sucker punch, but a pretty good one.
“I want to be a good cop,” I said to him. “I want to do some good if I possibly can. Same as always. Nothing’s changed.”
“That’s the right answer,” the commissioner said as if I were a child who needed his instruction. “You’re on the Jack and Jill investigation. It’s been decided in very high places. You have experience with these kinds of murders, with lunatic psychotics. You are officially off all your other cases. Now, be a very good cop, Alex. The FBI is almost certain Jack and Jill are going to kill again.”
So was I, so was I.
And I felt the very same thing about the Sojourner Truth School killer.
CHAPTER
16
I RESISTED the unique charms of the Jack and Jill case for one more day. Half a day, anyway. I tried
to clear a few things on my watch in Southeast. I was furious about what had happened with Clouser and Pittman.
Shanelle Green had died because more detectives hadn’t been assigned to find Chop-It-Off-Chucky, hadn’t given Alvin Jackson the time of day. The whole sorry affair was race-related, no way around it, and it made me both angry and sad.
I came home early and spent the evening with Nana and the kids. I wanted to make sure they were okay after the murder at the Sojourner Truth School. At least that horror tale had been solved. But I still wasn’t over the child killing. I couldn’t get past it for a lot of reasons.
For half an hour or so, I gave Damon and Jannie their weekly boxing lesson in the basement. To Damon’s credit, he’s never complained that the sessions include his sister. He just puts on the gloves.
They’re becoming tough little pugs, but more important, they’re learning when not to fight. Not many kids mess with them at school, but that’s mainly because they’re nice kids and know how to get along.
“Watch that footwork, Damon,” I told him. “You’re not supposed to be putting out a fire with your feet.”
“You’re supposed to be dancing,” Jannie threw a little verbal jab at her brother. “Step, right. Back. Step, step, left.”
“I’ll do a dance on you in a minute,” Damon warned her off, and then they both laughed like hell.
A little later, we were upstairs in front of the tube. Jannie was crossing her small arms, squinting her brown eyes, and making a tough-as-nails face at me. It was her official, non-negotiable bedtime, but she had decided to lodge a protest.
“No, Daddy. Nope, nope, nopeee,” she said. “Your watch is too fast.”
“Yes, Jannie. Yep, yep, yepeee.” I held my ground, held my own against my chief nemesis. “My watch is too slow.”
“No, siree. No way,” she said.
“Yes, indeedee. No escaping it. You’re busted.”
The long arm of the law finally reached out and corralled another repeat offender. I grabbed Jannie off the couch and carried my little girl up to bed at eight-thirty on the dot. Law and order reigns at the Cross house.
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