The Breaker

by Nick Petrie

  He stopped behind a brick house across the street from the reporter’s place. He thought of how he would do it. He wished he had a real sword. A real sword would be fun. He couldn’t believe he didn’t own one already. Then he heard the two men jogging up the street again, back toward the reporter. If he faced them directly, they might use their guns. Edgar liked to attack from a hidden place. He liked a good surprise. He could wait.

  He remembered the old lady in the window, watching as he drove past. He was sure she had called the reporter and told her about him. It was her fault he hadn’t done his job. It was her fault he had lost the van.

  The brick house was hers.

  He went to the back porch. The door was wide open. He could see clear through the house to the front porch. The old lady stood there now. She was a little bitty thing, barely big enough for breakfast.

  His arms were torn up by the thorns. His head was still bleeding, and his shirt was dirty. His van was gone. And now he heard sirens and a barking dog. He wanted to go into the house and punish her for what she had done. One smash of the axe. But the men would see him. The police would come. He would wait. He would hide.

  The bottom part of the porch was wrapped by wooden boards. On the side away from the driveway, there was a gap. It was small and low, but Edgar could squeeze through. Underneath it was bare dirt with a shallow hole scraped away. There was a musty, animal smell. It comforted him. Edgar curled up into a ball and slept.

  When he woke and crawled out from beneath the porch, the old lady’s back door was locked. A police car was on the street by his wrecked van. He didn’t want to make noise. He was hungry and his head hurt. He wanted a beer. He missed that van. It was his nest. Edgar could hide a lot of things in a van.

  But he wasn’t picky right now. He’d take anything with an engine. Too bad the old lady’s driveway was empty. Her garage was empty, too.

  Behind her garage was a fence, old and sagging. It was easy to push the boards out of the way and climb through. He didn’t even need his axe. He didn’t want to use it on wood, anyway. Past the fence was another garage and another house. Then he saw the van in the driveway.

  Edgar was lucky like that. Good things just came to him.

  “Hey. What the hell are you doing in my yard?”

  A man sat on a chair on the patio in the dark. He had a big white mustache. On the table beside him was a can of beer and a phone and a pack of cigarettes and a ring of keys.

  Edgar looked at the van. It had a sign on the side that read mike dillman paint and drywall. He walked toward the man. “My name is Edgar. Are you Mike Dillman?”

  “Yeah, I’m Mike. Get the hell out of here before I call the cops.” He stood up quickly, bumping the table with his leg. His beer fell over, which was too bad. Edgar looked at him. Was he a triple XL? Edgar needed a triple XL. Mike Dillman picked up his phone. “I’m calling the cops.”

  Edgar threw the axe. It turned twice in the air and buried itself in the other man’s chest. It made a good sound. It gave him the good feeling. Not as good as when he got to swing the axe directly into a person and get that beautiful wet shiver up his arms, but it was still satisfying.

  He used the keys to open the van and cleared out the paint cans and stepladders. He put the body in the back of the van for safekeeping, took his cool sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on the dashboard, then went inside the house, where he found a can of Schlitz in the fridge and a nice clean white pressed dress shirt in the closet. Triple XL. Thank you, Mike Dillman.

  The ironing board was still set up in the bedroom. Edgar had left his own iron in the wrecked van. He looked at his fingertips. Still nice and smooth from last time. He was glad. The iron was no fun.

  He took a shower and washed the blood from his face and hands and forearms. He found a gallon of bleach under the sink and poured some down the shower drain, then wiped himself down with a bleach-soaked towel. He thought it would kill any DNA he might later shed in the house. He didn’t know if this totally worked, but he liked the burn on his skin anyway.

  He carried a cooler from the basement and filled it with ice and beer and a couple of Usinger’s summer sausages. He took the largest knife from the kitchen and honed it against the stone countertop. He was keeping the axe, but it never hurt to have an extra tool.

  He was certain the reporter wouldn’t stay at her house.

  Where would she go?

  Edgar knew the answer to that one. He didn’t even have to think about it. He just knew it, the way he knew that blood was hot and beer was cold.

  Sooner or later, she would go back downtown, to the newspaper where she worked.

  Edgar missed his old van. But the new one was pretty good, too.

  It wasn’t hard to find a place to watch and wait.

  Now the elevator slowed as it neared the fourth floor. His face throbbed where she had hit him with the bicycle tire. Waiting for the door to open, he touched the bruise with his fingertips, exploring the pressure of the red and swollen skin.

  35

  JUNE

  Dean, get behind me,” June said.

  “What?” Dean turned his head to follow her gaze and stumbled back a half-step, his feet not working properly. Mr. Cheerful’s naked smile had that effect on people, even at a distance. The axe only made the effect more shocking.

  “Get behind me,” June said again, louder this time. “Then call 911. Do it now.”

  She knew running wouldn’t work. She’d seen how fast Mr. Cheerful could move.

  Without taking her eyes off him, she backpedaled into her cubical and dug her hand into her work bag on the desk. Feeling her way past the water bottle and her various notebooks and her wallet and phone and Oliver’s phone, all the way down to the very bottom of the backpack, where she’d put the pistol Peter had given her.

  While Mr. Cheerful ambled closer, she pulled the gun from her bag and took the grip in her right hand. She grabbed the slide and pulled it back against the pressure of the spring, racking a round into the chamber, then found the safety and flicked it off. The whole thing was almost second nature. She was glad Peter had kept inviting her to the range with Lewis.

  She left her cube for the open aisle, raising the gun into firing position. The chrome .22 was designed for bigger hands than June’s, but the kick was minimal and she was more than strong enough to use it. She’d been a rock climber since she was a girl and had the arms to prove it.

  Mr. Cheerful’s smile broadened when he saw the pistol. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and his forearms were slashed with angry red lines, like he’d swum up a river of needles. The head wound from the car wreck had stopped bleeding, and he’d obviously found somewhere to clean himself up. He had a wide red stripe across the side of his face, the developing bruise from her bike tire. As he walked toward her, she wondered if she could see the actual tread marks imprinted on his flesh. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  Then she blinked. Jesus, he was like one of those animals that hypnotized their prey.

  It sure worked on Dean. He still hadn’t moved. She whacked him on the shoulder with the side of the pistol. “Dean! Get the fuck behind me and call 911.”

  Dean looked at her like she had three heads. “What the hell . . . ?”

  But at least he was moving, stepping around her and clearing the aisle. June turned to Mr. Cheerful and stood square with a two-handed grip, her knees slightly bent and her finger taut on the trigger. “Stop right there, asshole.”

  He was twenty feet away and still coming, although he’d slowed. He held the axe casually, one hand in the middle of the long handle, double blade out and away from his body.

  He beamed like a drunken child. “Hey, you ever shot somebody? I’m just curious.”

  She lined up the sights on his chest. “No, fuckface, usually I just hit them with my bike. Now stop right there or I’ll ki
ll you.”

  His smile only got wider. He held out the axe blade for her to see. The sharp steel was bright with blood. She thought of Jerry at the lobby desk. His homemade calzone and thermos full of coffee. She pushed it down, the horror and fear and sadness. There would be time for that later.

  “When you shoot a person,” Mr. Cheerful said, “it’s real ugly. Like an explosion of skin and blood and bone. It goes everywhere. The stink is horrible. You’ll remember it the rest of your life.”

  “You don’t scare me, freak show.” But it was a lie. She was terrified. And he knew it. “Stop right now or I will shoot you.”

  “But you don’t want to, right? I mean, how many other people do you want to die? I ask because my only job here is you.” He waved the axe at the newsroom, where a few heads had popped above cubicle walls. “These other people aren’t important. I’m not getting paid to hurt them. But if you make it difficult? You know, get my blood up? Who knows what I might do?” The smile got impossibly wide. She half-expected to see fangs.

  “You want me to just offer myself up, is that it? Like a sacrifice?” She couldn’t believe this shit.

  “Yeah.” He was closing on her. In the swirl of air from the heat vent overhead, she smelled the sharp tang of bleach. The axe spun in his hands. His eyes were locked on hers. “You don’t want all that blood on your head, do ya? I’ll make it painless. I promise.”

  He’s fucking hypnotizing you, she thought. Don’t let him get closer.

  He raised the axe.

  She pressed the trigger.

  36

  BANG! The pistol bucked in her hands.

  But Mr. Cheerful had already moved, a strange little knee-dip side shimmy. When he straightened back up, he said, “You missed me.”

  Her head rang and his voice was faint in the aftermath of the shot. His left ear had turned red and pulpy and the collar of his white dress shirt was flecked with blood. But he didn’t seem to notice. He stared her right in the eyes and lifted the axe as if to rest it on his shoulder, but she saw his arm flex in his sleeve. He was going to throw it. At her.

  The pistol’s recoil had pushed the barrel up. She steadied her grip and brought the sights down to his chest. Then pressed the trigger again.

  Again he slipped and twisted, anticipating her, but the bullet still caught him, this time low on the far left side of his chest, below the nipple. At first just the fabric was torn, but quickly his shirt began to turn pink. His eyebrows rose in surprise, and he gave a short chopping laugh. The axe swung around, but he kept his grip on the handle. The weight of the blade turned him and she saw the reddening rip on his back where the bullet had left his body.

  His eyes were wide as he patted his side, then probed his ribs with stiff fingers. “Ha!” he said again, his face shining with glee. “Ha ha!”

  How could he still stand? June lined up the sights again. She was sweating. The pistol’s grip was slippery. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  Then his focus changed and he looked at her. His smile was truly unhinged. “I guess I’m living right, hey? Let’s do this again soon.” Then he winked at her, turned carefully, and walked away, bent slightly sideways, his left hand pressed to his ribs, his right hand still holding the axe.

  Pistol still raised and ready, June followed at a careful distance. She saw that he’d left something blocking the elevator door, to keep it open. He stepped inside and kicked out with one foot. A rolling desk chair flew into the newsroom with a crash. Probably Jerry’s chair.

  The elevator doors closed and he was gone.

  She was shaking.

  She should have shot him again, she thought. She should have emptied the whole damn gun at him.

  She told herself he’d collapse in the lobby. Or on the street.

  Was it wrong to hope she’d killed him?

  But somehow she knew she hadn’t.

  * * *

  —

  At the far end of the aisle, there were two starred holes in the glass wall of the enterprise editor’s office. Thankfully, he’d gone home hours ago. She hoped her rounds had spent their velocity in his file cabinets, and not punched through the window, too.

  She looked across the tops of the cubicles. “He’s gone. Everybody okay? Nobody hurt?”

  Heads rose cautiously above the cube walls. Nobody spoke.

  The smell of gunpowder was strong.

  Beneath it, the tang of bleach scorched her nose.

  She turned and walked back to the file cabinet where Dean had laid out the security-cam photos. He stood there stunned, holding his phone. She hoped he’d called 911 and hadn’t been taking pictures. This thing had already gone from bad to worse.

  She flipped the safety, then dropped the magazine into her palm. She was still shaking, but the ritual movement calmed her. She pulled back the slide to eject the round from the chamber, thumbed it back into the magazine, then popped the magazine back into the pistol with the heel of her hand. At that moment, that solid click was the best sound she’d ever heard.

  Dean stared at her. “Who the hell are you, June? Who are these people?”

  She pulled the coffee shop security-cam photos off the file cabinet, then crossed to her desk. She packed the photos, her laptop and charger, and the rest of her work things into her backpack. The movements were familiar and sure. Everything had a place. Everything but the gun.

  “June,” he said. “What are you doing? Have you gone crazy?”

  She looked at him. “Remember when I told you to step away from the story, Dean? To leave it alone?” She waved a hand toward the elevator, the hand holding the gun. “This is why. All of this.”

  She already wore her jacket. Now she slung her backpack over her shoulders and cinched the straps, then walked toward him.

  He backed away, hands half-raised. “Where are you going? The cops will be here any minute.”

  She plucked the phone from his grip and flipped it into the maze of cubicles. “I’m leaving,” she said. “I have work to do.”

  He looked in the direction of his phone, then back to her. “But the cops,” he said. “You shot somebody.”

  “That fucker was going to chop me into little pieces. Didn’t you hear him? Someone paid him to kill me. And you were next.”

  His cheerful face flashed into her mind. His homicidal grin. The loving way he held the axe. She pushed it away, then stopped. Something made her think of Oliver’s employee and his family in Virginia, held hostage to gain access to the Vault. Then brutally butchered with a meat cleaver, severed heads and limbs arranged neatly on the bloody carpet. Three kids named Andy, Erica, and Tim. Oliver had showed her the photos. It was plenty motivating.

  She remembered Mr. Cheerful’s hands flexing on the long yellow handle and knew now that he was the one who’d killed them. Because he enjoyed it. But also because someone had paid him.

  Something flickered in the back of her mind, a new connection. To what? It wouldn’t come into focus. She knew chasing it wouldn’t help, so she ignored it.

  “Tell the cops whatever you want about what just happened here. But if you keep your mouth shut about the Samaritans, I’ll give you the story when it’s over.” She brushed past him and walked toward the rear stairwell on the far side of the newsroom. “Tell the police I’ll call them tomorrow. I’ll have some questions.”

  “You’ll have some questions? For them? June, what’s all this about?”

  But she already had her phone out, calling Peter.

  37

  Hey, June. I was just thinking about you. You’ll never guess what we found.”

  Just hearing Peter’s voice released something inside her. Her whole body began to shake. She clamped down hard. She wasn’t out of here yet.

  “Mr. Cheerful came to the paper,” she said. “With his axe.”

  “Jesus. June, are you all right
?”

  “I shot him,” she said carefully. “I shot him twice.”

  “June. Are you all right?”

  “Definitely not,” she said. “But I’m not hurt. I hit him in the side but he just, like, walked off. He got back in the elevator. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Okay. We’re on our way. Everything’s going to be just fine. Where are you now?”

  “I’m in the newsroom. Heading toward the back stairs.”

  “You should stay put. Find a safe place and wait for the cops.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to the police. They’ll find you.”

  “Junebug.” His voice was gentle. “It’s okay. Really, it is. The cops are good at this. They’ll find him. Tell them everything.”

  “No,” she said. “We’ll fucking find these people and Oliver will clear you and then everything will be good again. We can be fucking normal.” She leaned her forehead against the cool steel of the stairwell door. She was trying not to cry.

  “Oh, honey.” His voice was warm and quiet in her ear. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. Will you please please please find someplace safe?”

  She cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was a growl she barely recognized. “Meet me at the southwest corner of the main building. On Vel Phillips, in the middle of the block, there’s a gate across an alley. I’ve got seven more rounds. How long until you get here?”

  The Yukon’s engine roared in the background. “Five minutes. Please be careful.”

  As she hung up, she heard a noise behind her. She spun with the pistol raised in her shaking hand.

  It was Dean. With his goddamn mouth open to speak, still trying to talk her into doing what he wanted.

  She took a step forward and stuck the pistol in his face. It was still on safe with no round in the chamber, but he didn’t know that. His mouth snapped closed. No wonder people loved guns. “What do you want now?”