by Rick R. Reed
"C'mon," McGrew ^ whispered. "C'mon, goddamn you."
There was no room to get around the car.
Nick waited the time they had allotted: five minutes. He turned himself around on the seat so he was facing the passenger door. Opening it quickly, he slid out of the car and slammed the door, cursing the overhead light. He edged his way along three parked cars, thinking that if Joe was watching, Nick would look less suspicious if he appeared nowhere near the car Anne had gotten out of. Finally, he stood.
He looked up and down the empty sidewalk, taking a deep breath.
Then he stepped off the curb and started across the street.
"Hold it right there."
The voice, coming suddenly out of the darkness, made Nick jump. He turned to look and saw Pete McGrew behind him. The color drained out of his face and his stomach twisted into a lead knot. There was an overweight, balding guy with Pete.
"How the hell did you . . . You followed us, didn't you?"
"Bright boy," McGrew said. "Maybe you should be some kind of investigator."
"You bastard."
"C'mon, Nick. Let's cooperate. I'm sorry." McGrew stretched his palms out in a gesture of appeal.
"Fuck you."
"Look, Nick," McGrew's tone grew harsh, angry. "We can't play games. Where's your girlfriend?"
Nick looked wildly at the warehouse across the street, noticing the dark, empty windows. Oh, God, Anne was in there . . . alone. He bolted. He was halfway across the street when he stopped because of the blaring horn of a Ford Bronco. He felt McGrew's grasp on his collar.
"Don't be an asshole!" McGrew pulled him back to the other side. "Now, we're gonna take care of this the right way." The reasoning in his tone made Nick want to punch him, force his nose back into his face.
"You don't understand!" Nick's voice was excited, almost high with terror and pain at what the loss in time might mean for Anne. "Goddamn it! You don't understand! You're gonna fuck this up and she's gonna die in there!"
Anne stared at Joe's face, wondering where the man she loved had gone. Nothing was left. His eyes were reddened, wild. His skin was pasty and his lips stood out, too red, in the dim light. Dark stubble covered his face.
"Please, babe," she said to him for at least the fourth or fifth time, "I love you. You gotta understand that. Come with me now and we'll get everything back together."
Joe lowered his head and began to tremble. He was weeping. Anne thought she was beginning to break through, make contact. "Lies! Lies!" he shrieked, and his head came up suddenly, grinning and devoid of tears.
The X-Acto knife glinted in the moonlight. Anne was shocked that it didn't hurt as it sliced across her throat. It was the blood that made her knees go to rubber. The blood that spurted down and landed on the floor.
She collapsed. "Joey, Joey . . ." She reached up and felt her neck, warm and slippery with blood. Was she going to die right here? How stupid! She felt the cut and finally was thankful: She had pulled back when he slashed at her and the cut wasn't deep.
He knocked her backward. She bit her tongue as her head hit the floor. "Nick, where are you?" she wondered aloud, the room beginning to move, rocking like a boat. Joe knelt above her. In one quick motion his face was on her throat, sucking up the blood.
"No, please, God, no." Anne moaned into the darkness.
She looked up at Joe, looming above her, his grin ringed in blood. Suddenly his features contorted and he frantically clawed at the front of his pants. She watched as he pulled out his penis, watched, but could do nothing, as he shot his semen on her face. Listened as he groaned in the darkness. "Perfect, perfect," he mumbled.
Anne wondered for a moment why she felt nothing, not even her own breathing. Wondered why she couldn't scream, why every muscle in her body felt like liquid and there was no way to move.
Even as he groped in his pocket and brought out a hunting knife and raised it above her. "Now, you little bitch. Now." His breathing was ragged.
The flash of the gun jolted Anne back to reality, and its loud report brought her muscles back to life, released the screams in her throat. Screaming, she looked up at Joe, watched as his head, propelled by the bullet, whipped to one side. Wondered then where the other scream was rising from, rising up to join hers.
The knife clattered to the floor and Joe collapsed on her.
She screamed and screamed as she fought to get out from under him. Finally she managed to slide out from beneath his weight and get to her knees.
She vomited.
After she felt she could breathe again, she stared into the shadows, searching for something to connect with the gunshot. Was it Nick?
A young man walked into the light coming in through one of the high windows. Anne assumed the dark stain on his front was blood. He smiled at her and then fell to the floor. She heard the metal of his gun as it hit the concrete and skittered across the floor.
Then there were more gunshots. Two, in fact, went off, their reports shocking, the flashes bright, before Anne fell to the floor, groping her way to the shelving. She crawled underneath and lay cowering, like a small animal, as the gun continued to sound its report, filling the darkness with the acrid smell of its smoke.
Her mind went blank.
The gunshots and the screams caused all three men across the street to stiffen, their heads up and listening. *
"Damn you!" Nick screamed at McGrew. "If anything's happened to her, I swear to God, I'll kill you."
McGrew and Sam said nothing. They were already running across the street. Nick followed and eventually passed them.
Nick was first in the door. He hadn't let himself think anything, not wanting to realize that Anne might be dead. Once inside, he didn't see her, didn't see her at all, just the body of some young guy he had never seen before and MacAree. MacAree. Please God, don't let Anne have paid for this. Don't let her pay.
Oh, God, where is she?
Nick glanced down at the two bodies on the floor. "Who's the other guy?" he whispered to McGrew. Pete didn't answer.
Sam wasn't far behind. "What the hell?" Sam shouted.
Nick watched as McGrew and Sam each knelt beside a body.
"Where's the wife?" Sam asked.
It was then that Anne crawled from beneath the shelving. She stood on rubbery legs, her eyes, vacant and staring, searching the darkness. Nick wondered what she was looking for, wondered if she even knew.
"Anne?" he whispered. "Anne? You okay?"
Nick was grateful when her eyes met his in the darkness. Just as he was going to her, a final shot cut through the darkness.
Anne dropped to the floor.
"What the fuck?" Sam shouted.
McGrew ran toward the direction from which the shot had come.
Nick knelt beside her. She looked up at him. "Am I gonna die?"
Nick felt and searched for the wound, finally stopping at Anne's left shoulder, where he felt a small hole, viscous liquid. He pressed on the hole. "No, I think you'll be okay. It's your shoulder."
There was a scream then in the darkness. A scream of disappointment and sorrow. Nick and Anne looked up to see McGrew yank a wheelchair out of the darkness.
Anne's eyes met Pat Young's. And she remembered. "My God," Anne whispered, "you tried to kill me. Why? Why?"
Pat ignored her and looked at McGrew. "The bitch. She's the one you should be going after," Pat shrieked. "She's the one caused all this shit. She caused it all. Joe was a good man." Pat wept
freely now. "He was good. She made him do the things he did. Forced him to do all those killings. Arrest her, arrest that little bitch."
McGrew leaned down, close to Pat Young's face and said, "The only one around here who's getting arrested is you, lady." He stood up straight. "Read her her rights, Sam."
"Yeah, right away. But this one here, he's still got a pulse."
Anne and Nick looked down. "It's Joe," Anne said. "You mean he's still alive?"
Sam snorted, "Just barely. That's him, then
? The slasher?"
Anne didn't respond. She began to tremble.
The only thing stiff about Pat Young was her face as the two uniformed officers loaded her into the back of the police car. She concentrated on her hate as she let her body go limp; she would be damned if she made this easy for them. Let them grunt and groan as they lifted her into the car, worried about dropping the cripple.
Outside, the night grew more and more alive, lit up by squad cars' flashing blue and red lights. Voices. Media people. Like flies to shit, Pat thought, and smirked.
There . . . there . . . that final image. Her Joey, his head flying back, the shock on his face (that beautiful face) as the bullet entered him. Pat couldn't get it out of her mind. Finally she lowered her head and, for the first time in years, wept.
After a moment she straightened, wiped the tears angrily away from her face. Anne would be coming out soon and Pat wanted to see her. Wanted to see her because if Joe couldn't have her blood, Pat would at least make sure that one day, no matter how long it took, Pat would have that bitch's blood.
McGrew put a hand on Nick and Anne's shoulders. Gently, he said, "C'mon, get out of here. We'll take care of this. Why don't you take her to the hospital?" He led Nick and Anne outside.
McGrew watched as Nick led Anne back to the car. There was something stiff in her stride. A tautness McGrew didn't know how to describe. Like something about to go off.
He heard her begin screaming when Nick put her in the car, and McGrew shook his head, staring down at the ground. "She'll be okay," he whispered.
He stared at the ground until he heard the sirens. When he looked up, at least fifteen minutes had passed. An ambulance and forensics were pulling up, along with about a dozen squad cars who didn't want to miss this. The media couldn't be far behind.
Sam was leading forensics and the crime lab in. He was excited, more excited than Pete had ever seen him, and he decided to let the old guy have his time in the limelight. McGrew followed them in.
One of the forensics guys went to the body and groped in a pocket. He pulled out a wallet. Flipping it open, he looked up at the men gathered around him. "Says 'Randy Mazursky' on the license. Is he the slasher?"
"No, it's the other one." McGrew stared at a dark puddle on the floor. Blood.
Epilogue
At Cook County Hospital, word had spread fast. As they wheeled Joe MacAree, the Chicago Slasher, into the emergency room, nurses, orderlies, aides, residents, and interns had all forced their way into the corridor, crowding around the entrance to get a look at this monster, this monster who had made all of them buy new locks and jump at every sound in the darkness.
He was already hooked up to an IV. Most of those who saw him thought he looked like a bag person, someone you'd see sleeping on a bench at Daly Plaza. One resident, Liz Sperry, turned to the nurse standing beside her and said, "He looks too weak to have killed anyone, doesn't he?"
The nurse just gripped herself tighter and stared down at Joe.
"What's the prognosis?" Liz shouted to the paramedics.
"Guy's in a coma," one shouted back, a stocky Irish guy with dark curly hair and a mustache.
His partner said, "If he lives he's not gonna be doin' anymore killing." She snickered, "Or even talking or walking."
"Serves him right," Liz Sperry whispered to herself, "serves him right."
The Irish man said, "If he ever does come out of it, they oughta string that fucker up by his balls, but he's in his own little world now."
Liz shivered; she wanted to be away from all of this. She started walking rapidly up the corridor, toward the elevator and pediatrics, where her current rotation was. She didn't want to think, but the paramedic's "words continued to haunt her: "He's in his own little world now."
My God, what kind of world would that be?
Joe MacAree sat on the worn sofa, his hands shielding his face. The air was heavy with stale cigarette smoke, and the couch beneath him was worn almost to the frame. He rocked back and forth.
Margo came into the room, and he looked up at his sister. She smiled at him. "It'll heal, Joe. It'll heal. That's what's so wonderful about us. Things always heal." She sat down beside him and put her arms around him. She brushed his neck with her lips, ran a sharp nail down the inside of his arm. "I just wish it didn't take so long for you to realize where you belong."
Joe closed his eyes. The voice of his father made him tense and look up. "Welcome home, Joey." The old man grinned at him.
"Yes," Margo said. "You're finally home." Joe slumped on the sofa and drew his legs up to his face. He began to cry.
