by L T Vargus
Chapter 13
It started to get dark around five. The winter shrank the days down to almost nothing, plucked the sun from the sky and let the night have its way. Downtown, with all the skyscrapers blocking out the horizon like manmade mountains, sunset started at four.
He sat in the parking lot outside the movie theater, hunched in the driver’s seat, hands resting on the wheel. Some animal smell persisted in the car, some musk sucked up by the upholstery, almost a pet store smell.
He hadn’t slept since the shooting at the mall. Probably wouldn’t for another day or two. The blend of uppers and hallucinogens made it impossible to slow down. Impossible to shut his eyes.
He pawed at his eyelids at that thought. Pressed his fingertips into them. Felt the protruding orbs shifting under the thin membrane of skin. His eyes felt dry and scratchy already.
Likewise his face went too hot and then too cold, like his body couldn’t figure out endothermy, some internal thermostat too fucked to keep steady. His body temperature kept swinging wildly back and forth, overcompensating in each direction.
His mind did the same thing, tumbling around all strange and uneven, speeding up and slowing down, wobbling along like a crooked tire. Drugs had a way of doing that. Warped the normal thinking patterns. Threw off bodily functions. They don’t call it getting fucked up for nothing.
Removing his hand from his eyes, he watched the theater across the street, watched the sheep filter in for the evening showing. The flock bustling for their chance to stare up at the almighty screen together, to drink up the reassuring messages projected through the holy vessel of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s fifteen-foot-tall head or maybe Jason Statham or Keanu Reeves. A cartoonish symbol of masculinity, a surrogate dad who could convince them to follow their dreams. Never give up. The answer was inside you all along. Just use the force, dipshit.
Men of action. The sheep sure listened to them, didn’t they? Some guy with muscles visible from space or enough guns to start a revolution? That guy was their leader by default. They’d huddle together in the dark to watch him, congregating in a ritual just like going to church, to eat popcorn and worship him.
The strongest.
The predator.
He smiled at that bit of irony. Flicked his tongue over chapped lips.
Then he pulled down his ski mask and climbed out of the car. Crunched over the dusting of snow. Headed for the front entrance. Weapon tucked just shy of his chest.
The glass front of the theater reached up toward a high ceiling — rectangular segments of tinted glass laying the entire lobby open, almost like a giant TV screen, something like 30 feet high he thought. The tint was weak, more like looking through sunglasses than any kind of real obstruction of his view. Another mob of people milled about inside, not really distinguishable from those at the food court mall.
They waited for tickets and stood in line at the concession stand. Impatience shifted their weight from foot to foot, and noses pressed into glowing phone screens. A few kids meandered through the cluster of arcade games in the corner.
Something sleepy about the mob tonight, he thought. Grazing. Chewing their cud.
Boring. Boring. Boring.
Ready for the big bang then, yeah? Ready as they’d ever be.
A couple passed through the entryway two seconds before he reached the door, completely oblivious of the guy toting the Uzi just behind them. That gave him a little thrill for some reason. Made his blood run a little colder with the excitement. Walking into the masses undetected. Practically invisible. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Something about it felt incredible.
Time slowed to a crawl, and he watched the couple through the glass doors as he drew up on them. The woman shivered as they headed for the ticket counter, pulled her coat tighter around her neck.
This, too, sent a fresh surge of cold through his veins. Because maybe she could sense him, could feel him creeping up on her, some animal instinct she’d taught herself to ignore.
Or maybe she was just cold. Weak. He didn’t feel the chill anymore. Predators didn’t feel the cold when they were on the hunt, their consciousness entering some higher level of focus.
He pointed the Uzi at the line of people in front of the ticket counter. Adjusted his grip on the weapon, fingers undulating over the black metal.
Then he fired through the wall of windows. Flames snorting from the muzzle. Bullets spraying everywhere with the sweeping motion of his arm.
The glass spiderwebbed. Burst. Great runnels of shards fell, floating rivulets adrift, plummeting. They crashed to the earth like Niagara fucking Falls, all of the bits exploding again when they hit the ground.
Movie posters tattered at the bullets’ touch. Little scraps of glossy paper tearing away like confetti and fluttering to the ground.
And the mob of people scrambled. Frightened. All the bodies colliding in that cinematic slow-mo again. The crowd compressed into something tighter, something smaller. Puffy winter coats all crammed together. A roiling mosh pit jamming itself past the velvet ropes, past the concession stand, pushing for the hallway that veered off in both directions, heading off toward the various theaters.
Even through the tumbling in his brain, he could hear the screams. It made his eyes open wider.
Time sped up. Jerked out of slow motion. Real time resuming with a whiplash effect. The bodies flopped onto the floor in what seemed like fast-motion. Human beings collapsing like dominoes.
Blood spread around the fallen form closest to him. A teenage kid in a letter jacket. The red flooding out and spilling into the grout lines that ran between the gray tiles.
He pressed forward. Crossed the threshold. Glass crunched under his shoes as he stepped through the now gaping hole where the windows had been.
The cowering herd continued to scurry and shove and scramble for cover, most of them pushing further into the hallway at the back of the lobby. The mob shrank before his eyes like the sand funneling out of the top chamber of an hourglass.
A few panicked stragglers tried to run, letting out little panicked noises that sounded like the baa-ing of real sheep.
He sighted his weapon. Picked off the easiest targets.
An older man fixed against one wall, breathing heavily. His eyes blinked so rapidly it made one think of a slot machine whirring along.
He grunted as he went down, bending at the waist, arms crossing his gut. The way he folded over, it almost looked like the line of bullets had cut him in half right across the middle.
A muscular guy crawling across the floor just shy of the retreating mob. He moved like a hermit crab, one hand clutching his leg and whimpering.
One shot and his forehead thunked the tile, and then he held still. Limp hand falling away from his wounded thigh.
A woman who’d frozen coming out of the bathrooms, eyes wide and wet. Hands up. Like she could submit her way out of this. Like any of this could make any kind of sense.
She said, “Oh,” as the hot flecks of metal slammed into her. A deadpan. Sounded a little surprised, a little sad. Maybe she finally understood how the world really worked.
Things went oddly quiet then, apart from a bit of sniffling and the crunching and tinkling of glass. No running now. The mob had cleared the hallway. Moved deeper into the building. Probably flowing out of the fire exits even now.
He wasn’t alone though. He couldn’t see anyone, but he sensed them, felt them. A true predator. He knew they were there. Hiding, just out of sight. Hoping the lion would keep on going, find some other zebra to devour.
He crept across the garish carpet. Stepped onto the tile, his footsteps muted claps.
Then he moved to the concession counter. Peered over the edge.
Six or seven of them huddled there. Behind the candy display. Bodies hugging the ground. Half a dozen sick-looking theater workers, their little black vests identifying them as such.
And her. Cowering amongst them. The woman who had shivered as she entere
d the building a few paces in front of him.
He opened up on them. One of the popcorn jockeys screamed.
The metal punched through them. Shook them against the floor. Tattered the meat of them like all those movie posters. But their pieces didn’t flutter. They were wet and red. Leaking. Seeping.
Sounds. Sounds were so strange. Outdoors the Uzi had been loud, powerful. In here, it sounded tinny. More like a series of solid clicks than the standard movie blasts, and each one followed by these quivering little echoes.
When no one behind the counter was moving anymore, he pressed on to the hallway. Came to the first theater. Kicked the door open to peek inside.
Emma Stone’s face filled the big screen, too beautiful and enormous to be real. For a second, he felt like she was going to step out of the screen and crush him. Enfold him in her giant lips. There was something vaguely sexual about it, but in the next second, he couldn’t remember why it had felt like that.
No one in here seemed to realize what had happened out front. And no wonder. The surround sound was pumping out melodrama loud enough to drown out the end of the world. Bass rumbling like Armageddon with each slam of a car door.
His mind went oddly blank as he stood there at the back of the theater, staring up at the images flitting across the giant screen. Only the heat of the gun in his hand seemed to tether him to the real world.
He could’ve done anything. Wrought good or evil. Given life or death. He held sway over all of it.
The pictures up on that screen couldn’t touch what he’d done, couldn’t touch him. Movies were spectacles? Not like the spectacle he’d just rendered in shades of red out in the lobby. That was a real spectacle.
He turned. Let the door into the theater swing closed. Left the audience to their false gods.
His eyes tracked further down the hall. Fell on the last one out in the open besides him.
A little girl, maybe eight or ten years old. She was shaking, frozen with fear.
He crept toward her slowly, their gazes locked. Like a staring contest. She was too scared to move. He sensed she would stay that way for as long as he held her gaze.
When he got within point-blank range, he stopped. Stood. Looked down on the crumpled figure.
She stared back at him. Something intelligent in her expression. A single slow blink unfastened their gazes before their eyeballs re-adhered to each other.
Her nostrils flared with every breath, and along the bottom edge of his peripheral vision, he saw her flat little chest rising and falling like a terrified rabbit’s. He didn’t hear it, though. Didn’t hear her breathing. It was like the sound in the whole theater had been shut off. Like somebody hit the mute button.
Everything still. Everything quiet.
He lifted the gun. Lined the barrel up with her forehead about eighteen inches out.
In the silence, the sudden shrill sound of his phone’s alarm felt like it was stabbing him in the ears. He didn’t flinch, but he did grimace at the noise.
The little girl pissed herself, a wet sound and then a puddle spreading away from her. Her eyes squeezed closed, and tears ran down and dripped off her nostrils.
She didn’t know that she’d been saved by the bell. Something funny about that.
He let the gun fall to his side. Turned and left the soft creature, her chest still pulsing too fast.
The alarm went off again. It was time to go. Six minutes, in and out. He strode for the emergency exit, stepping over bodies as he went.
Chapter 14
“You know, it’s kind of funny,” Spinks said, twirling pasta onto his fork.
“That a grown man would order spaghetti at a diner?” Loshak asked.
While Spinks had gone straight for the All-You-Can-Eat Spaghetti and Garlic Toast advertised by the sign out front, Loshak had opted for the less messy Cowboy burger with fried onion strips and an egg on top. Of course, the reporter’s baby blue polo was still spotless, and Loshak’s tie had a dark burgundy spot where he’d dripped barbecue sauce on it. It was as if Spinks’ clothes were all Scotchgarded.
The reporter chuckled, covering his mouthful with a brown paper napkin.
“Garbage can of spaghetti notwithstanding,” he said after he swallowed. He wiped his mouth, then added the used napkin to his neatly folded pile of discards before pulling a clean one from the dispenser. “I’m talking about the little parallels between George Whitley and our shooter.”
Loshak dipped his napkin in his water glass, then dabbed at the spot on his tie.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, you said the shooter is capable and accomplished, right? Yet he’s somehow so wounded psychologically that he’s out doing terrible things to society at large.”
Spinks took a drink of coffee, then set his mug down and twisted it until the handle was parallel to the edge of the table.
“Sounded like Whitley was the same way, but opposite,” Spinks continued. “At least as a kid. Something was nagging at him inside, some wound or inadequacy that made him stick up for those bullied kids. If he really does turn out to be tied up with the Griffin stuff, then maybe at some point, he stopped sticking up for them and started turning his focus inward. Toward the hurt, you know? Maybe one day, he started needing someone else he could take it out on.”
Loshak pressed his lips together, remaining unconvinced on whether or not this George Whitley was the one tied up with the mess in Kansas City.
“Maybe. We don’t really have enough to go on to speculate about that side of things yet.”
Spinks made a slashing motion with both hands.
“OK, but even if he wasn’t,” he said. “Even if he had nothing to do with Kansas City, Whitley was still this talented guy using his abilities to help no one but himself. Just up there on the ninety-sixth floor building this cell for himself. A very large cell, but still a cell.”
“There’s a pretty big difference between not helping anyone but yourself and shooting a crowd of people with the intent to murder as many as possible,” Loshak said.
This time it was Spinks’ turn to look like he wasn’t convinced. He blinked a few times, a series of lines forming across his forehead.
“Maybe,” the reporter said.
Loshak’s phone screeched from his pocket. As soon as he saw that the Chicago number on the screen wasn’t Millhouse’s, he knew. He answered it.
“Special agent Loshak? This is Dispatch 7 with the Bureau of Detectives. There’s been another shooting.”
Chapter 15
Little pebbles of tempered glass were everywhere, like a carpet of green diamonds. They crunched under Loshak’s loafers as he walked into the movie theater.
It looked as if a bomb had gone off. Cracks in the marble-tiled walls. Chunks of plaster in the floor from the fake columns. His gaze landed on a large pool of blood. It looked black against the tile and reflected his face back at him like a mirror.
Again, the smell of food butted up against all the violence and carnage seemed wrong. EMTs were still carrying out body bags. That was not the time you wanted to smell popcorn butter and nacho cheese. The Cowboy burger gurgled in Loshak’s stomach, threatening heartburn and worse.
He kept walking.
Where the mall scene had been swarming with techs from the Bureau of Detectives’ Forensic Services, the movie theater was overrun with law enforcement. Amid the constant grit of glass under a hundred different feet was the chatter of police radios and the low rumble of conversations coming from the officers working the scene.
Spinks sidled up to Loshak.
“Three shootings in. What’s it been, eighteen or twenty hours?” he asked. “When the hell does this guy sleep? That’s an awful lot of sprees for one guy. Think he’s trying to set some kind of record?”
Loshak glanced over at the reporter and realized Spinks had that glint in his eye. The tinfoil hat look. Spinks wouldn’t say anything around all these strangers, but that didn’t mean he was going to stop dropp
ing hints about it.
Ignoring Spinks, Loshak headed back outside. He needed to reset his brain. Dump the extraneous concerns like conspiracies and walk the scene chronologically.
He backed up to the parking lot. Looked for security cameras. There were signs warning Smile, you’re on camera! on every other light post but no obvious electronics in sight. Maybe the cameras were hidden, tucked up between the letters on the theater sign or something. He would find out later, when they had all the information together.
Had the shooter parked here or down the block so that his car couldn’t be connected to this scene? Loshak stared across the lot toward the destruction of the theater. He could imagine it earlier, glass intact, moviegoers hustling to the entrance to get out of the cold. Maybe excited about an opening night.
The killer would’ve watched them for a while. He’d done it for seventeen minutes at the mall. Just watching.
Why? To build up the courage? To remind himself of his contempt for them? Or had there been something else he was waiting for? Some signal from a partner?
Loshak’s feet started to move, crossing the parking lot, eyes focused on the shattered windows. The shooter had opened up on the outside of the building, shooting through the glass. Tearing through a barrier with hot lead.
But that wasn’t enough. He wasn’t done. He wanted to get closer.
That was a bit of a departure compared to the incidents at the food court and the interstate. At the food court, the shooter was stationary, holding one position until he was done shooting, then he fled. With the interstate, he’d been content to shoot from his car, not bothering to stop and finish off the injured.
As Loshak went, the background noise from the LEOs, idling cars, and ambulances faded. Just like at the food court, he suddenly felt alone. Like he was walking through the wreckage of a battle only he had survived.
He stepped into the building through the shattered doors. The killer had watched them run and scream and try to hide. Confirming his suspicion that he was the powerful one here.
Loshak moved to the concession stand. Glass ground into the carpet, still crunching against the soles of his loafers. He was hearing what the killer had heard. Except there would have been additional sounds. People crying, maybe. Someone bumping something. Giving away their position. So he’d gone to the concession stand. Looked behind it.
