Parker grabbed the gun with both hands and let loose four more shots. A few struck the pipe, a few ricocheted off in sparks.
Then his legs stepped up. Right leg first. Left leg second. Like a clumsy robot.
It was the seventh shot that did it. The pipe burst and water exploded everywhere and the cocoon of red and orange light shattered.
But not before Chalk Man made him take the final step off the roof and Parker began to fall.
Chapter 33
The air around Parker went electric as hundreds of white specks erupted. It was like being on the tip of a lit sparkler on the Fourth of July. An energy of some kind first held him, then pulled him over the ledge, before it clumsily spilled him back onto the rooftop. Falling on his hands and knees, he looked up to see the last of the energy dissipating from Napoleon’s left hand.
“Good catch,” Parker said aloud.
Napoleon, glowing in a blue light that ebbed and flowed, nodded gently at him, his face a mix of relief and exhaustion. “Yeah.”
They both turned to face Chalk Man and Parker instinctively raised his gun at him, not confident at all that it would do any good against a demon, spirit or whatever he was. Doused with a spray of water, Chalk Man’s left arm and shoulder seemed smeared and melting. In the time that it had taken Napoleon to save Parker, Chalk Man had moved to the other end of the rooftop, out of range of the water still coming from the ruptured pipe. Parker noticed in awe that his body and face were like two channels on a broken TV; one second he was Alex Roland, in living color, the next moment he was Chalk Man, sketched in black and white. But whereas Chalk Man’s face was filled with rage, Roland’s face was filled with abject terror. “No!” he screamed. “Yes!” Chalk Man screamed right back.
Be careful, Parker thought to himself. Be it battle in this life or the next, the rules are the same: expect nothing but the unexpected from a wounded adversary.
As if on cue, Alex Roland charged him.
Chalk Man, now wounded, evidently needed Roland’s skills. Since Roland had much of the same military training as Parker, it should’ve been a good fight. They were both about the same height, and though Parker was taller, Roland was thicker in the upper body and legs. Evening the odds even more, they were both injured.
But Alex Roland was no longer fully in charge of his body. In fact, he probably hadn’t been for quite a while. And Parker? Well. Parker was pissed.
He sidestepped Roland’s charge and caught him flush in the back of the head with his right elbow as he passed, sending Roland sprawling headfirst into the gravelly rooftop. He skittered to a stop at the ledge, got to one knee, then stood up and turned around.
Parker already had him at the end of the sight of his 9 mm. It was over.
Instead, Chalk Man and Roland began to wrestle for control of the same body.
“No, no, no, no!” Roland screamed as his face went from colored flesh to black and white chalk. Then, unable to fully believe what his eyes were seeing, Parker watched as Chalk Man seemed to win the battle.
Roland turned and took a header right off the rooftop.
With the memory of Ruiz’s body still fresh in Parker’s mind, he rushed to the edge and looked down expecting to see the carnage mess of a shattered man.
Instead, he arrived and looked down just in time to see the body of Alex Roland simply get up slowly from the pavement . . . and begin running.
Back into the chalk festival . . . back to where all the people were . . .
Napoleon arrived at his side as Parker gasped at what his eyes beheld next. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. It was happening again, just like before at the hospital. But this time on a much more massive scale.
The entire festival below was frozen in place. All the hiding people, all the cops and security guards that had been running in one direction or the other, all the cars along the boulevard and people that were on the sidewalk—even the birds in the air and a police helicopter that had been monitoring the area from a safe distance—all were now on pause.
Parker swallowed. “N-N-Nap.”
It’s a thing, Parker. When this plane of existence crosses over into the other? Time freezes. It has to, or the reality of each would merge.
“B-but.”
I’ll explain it all more later, but for now just look at it this way: what would happen if all these people saw a man plummet to the ground like that, then hop up and take off running?
“I don’t know.”
It would be too much for their minds to handle, that’s what. And we must get after him. Now.
Parker nodded. Meanwhile, Roland had managed to leave the grassy front lawn of City Hall and was making his way across the street. “Look. He’s heading back towards—”
The drawing. We can’t let that happen.
“Why?”
If he gets there, he’ll use the portal to escape and get away.
Parker had just opened his mouth to ask what they were going to do next when once again the fabric of space gave way and his body . . . blinked, shook and teleported.
When he came to a stop, he felt motion sick again, but it didn’t matter. Napoleon had teleported him to the street, right behind Roland.
Napoleon was right there with him, but this final effort had evidently been the last straw. Practically as see-through as a ghost now, he slowed and then stopped completely and shook his head in frustration. You’ve got to find a way to stop him on your own, Parker.
Parker, feeling pretty drained himself, took a quick inventory of his partner, and realizing the truth of his words, he took off after Roland alone, having absolutely no idea how he was going to achieve his mission.
Though he had a head start, it was obvious to Parker that Roland had been severely injured by the fall. Perhaps Chalk Man had been too weak himself to cushion Roland’s fall completely.
Up ahead by about forty feet, he was running poorly on a gimpy right leg. Parker knew he could close the gap between them easily if he just got going, so he did, breaking into a full stride as he dodged back and forth between a few festival-goers who’d evidently been trying to flee the shooting zone by moving from car to car before they were frozen in place.
Up ahead, Roland was doing the same, limping and trying desperately to get back into the festival area.
Parker leaped over a homeless woman who had fallen to the ground and pumped his legs. No matter what, he couldn’t let Roland get to that Mayan drawing. Before long, the gap between them closed to thirty feet, then twenty.
“Roland! Stop!” Parker screamed, his voice hollow in the eerie, frozen reality now around him.
And to Parker’s amazement, Roland did.
Right at the edge of the festival, where all the sectioned-off pieces of artwork blended from one area to the next, he turned, knelt and pulled a handgun from a holster strapped to the inside of his left ankle.
Parker skidded to a halt, brought his 9 mm up in a classic firing stance and took aim at the center of Roland’s chest. At this range? He could kill him with one shot.
But it became immediately apparent that Roland was going to take care of that himself. With eyes filled with tears and despair, Roland put the muzzle of his gun to the roof of his mouth.
“Don’t do it, Ro—”
And blew his own head off.
Blood and brain matter flew across the umbrella of a nearby registration booth as he crumpled to the ground in a heap.
For a second, things were silent. Then? Roland’s body convulsed violently.
A cloud of chalk dust erupted from his corpse. Parker watched Chalk Man leave Roland’s body and roll into the artwork on the sidewalk, exposed in his true form. Standing slowly, he looked back at Parker and smiled as he filled with the colors from the piece he was standing on—black, blue, gray and green from an over-sized locomotive with billowing smoke—and then took off running.
Parker wasn’t sure how much his mind was supposed to take before it snapped completely. If the world froze for e
veryone else then why wasn’t it freezing for him, too? Maybe Napoleon was why. If so, Parker was going to tell Nap to spare him any more favors.
Because this? What he was now seeing? It was madness.
The Chalk Man began running, from one piece of sidewalk art to the next, a 2D image one second, a 3D image another, from the whites and reds of a Little Lulu image, to the blue and whites of an ocean filled with dolphins. He went all puffy in the bloated images of an anime piece, then his features grew grossly exaggerated by the sharp angles and sweeping curves of another. Color after color erupted across his body, some as light as pastel, others as dark as rouge. At one point, his body became a fleeing jumble of letters as he crossed over a drawn crossword puzzle, before it filled with the image of a Dodger’s uniform as he crossed a large drawing done in homage to the baseball team’s many legends.
From right to left, sometimes straight, sometimes diagonally, Chalk Man kept leaping from one image to another, as if he were playing some twisted, warped version of hopscotch.
And all while he grew ever closer to the one drawing that he wanted. The one he had commissioned and killed for.
Parker didn’t dare fire at him. For one, he wasn’t sure it would do any good, and two, even though they were in suspended animation, he was fearful that he could still hurt one of the festival-goers.
Holstering his weapon, he took off after him.
As he ran after the man of cascading colors ahead of him who was leaving behind chalky footprints between each image he fled through, Parker struggled to think of a way to stop him.
Chapter 34
Chalk Man was close. Crossing over an art piece of the Mojave Desert, he lit up in the soft yellows and browns of ancient sands. He didn’t have far to go. Maybe fifty feet and he’d be at the Mayan piece. Sure enough, seconds later, in the distance, Parker could see the dead body of Sandi Espinoza lying on the ground, stabbed and squeezed to death by evil.
Parker did the only thing he could think to do: he ran as fast as he could. Chalk Man was only twenty feet from the Mayan drawing when Parker caught him and tackled him from behind, driving him sideways and away from the drawing.
They both struggled on the ground . . . rolling, rolling . . . onto what was probably the second worst drawing they could’ve rolled onto.
A large gothic image of demons and skulls instantly came alive. One of the skulls snapped its jaws shut and caught Parker on the shoulder. He screamed and fell forwards. The demons, meanwhile, numbering three in all, began to pulsate in heartbeat rhythms as they rose from the sidewalk as if awakening from the dead.
Grabbing Chalk Man in this form was like grabbing a mildly electric pole—like the carnival game where you grab the handle and hold it as long as you can while the light bulbs rank your toughness.
Still, he was lighter than Parker expected, so he picked him up and shoved him off the demon drawing, negating all their power and forcing them back into the ground. Chalk Man tried to spin away but Parker pushed him again, this time away from the Mayan drawing and back towards the center of the plaza.
Chalk Man spun on him and screamed in rage. “I’ll kill you for this!”
Parker ignored him. Think! he told himself. Think! Nap said it’s up to me to stop all of this. But how?
He had to find a way to keep this simple. So he did.
Chalk Man had to be his target.
And water was his weakness.
Parker looked to his right. There was a firetruck up the street, but it was too far away and he had no idea how to use fire truck equipment anyway. Sticking with that theme, though, he shifted his attention to a nearby fire hydrant.
Parker! Napoleon screamed. Hurry!
His mind was racing to keep pace with his heart as he felt his body flush with the cold sweat of fear, and he realized that he had no idea how to uncap the fire hydrant either. He’d seen the fireman downtown use a wrench before, when they were running drills, and the damned wrench was probably on that fire truck, but where he had no idea and . . .
Parker!
And no time.
He glanced over to see that Chalk Man was running across the plaza, using the police horses for cover, as he tried to make his way back to Sandi Espinoza’s drawing.
Instinct. Training. Always. A well-trained cop. A well-trained soldier. He was one and both. So, Parker took his cue from the world around him and made his mind freeze in place as his eyes parsed the area for anything that would work. Keep it simple, keep it simple, keep it . . .
When he saw it, he smiled. It was navy blue with a white lid, sitting right next to a churro stand not fifteen feet away: a large igloo cooler. A sign taped to the front of it said “Water & Coke, $2.”
Parker took off like a bolt of lightning, skidding to a stop and slamming into the churro stand and nearly knocking it over as he grabbed the cooler by the handles and ran on a dead sprint for the Mayan drawing with little more than a hope and a prayer. The cooler was heavy. That was good.
Because Chalk Man was almost there. Almost. Parker looked up. He was only a few feet away, reaching out one hand, clutching . . .
Parker opened the cooler lid and threw it. It landed on its side at the near-corner of the Mayan drawing, spilling its contents all over the chalk work.
Water bottles went skittering across the pavement and did no good.
Plastic coke bottles did the same.
But that’s not what Parker was hoping would help. No.
What saved the day was all the melted ice in the cooler. It spilled like liquid hope . . . all across the Mayan piece.
“Nooooooooooo,” Chalk Man screamed. And it was a blissful sound to Parker’s ears. At last, the bastard was feeling fear. Like the fear he’d unleashed on so many people over the centuries, starting with Sacniete and her boy and spreading all the way to Abigail Henson and her son, Charlie.
Suddenly, Chalk Man began to writhe in agony, his body exploding in puffs of chalky smoke as the icy water of the cooler spread, warping and diluting nearly half the image. It was enough, evidently, for the gateway to be closed and rendered useless.
Napoleon pulled up next to Parker, a relieved look on his face.
“What’s happening?” Parker asked as Chalk Man began to let loose with feral screams of panic and implode, more and more, in puffs of colored chalk.
Napoleon sighed. “Being an agent of hell is one thing, Parker. But being an agent that fails? That’s even worse.”
Chalk Man exploded in a red flash and was gone.
Parker blinked as all the artwork that had been disturbed everywhere fell back into place and all the people around them snapped back into motion. A seagull cried overhead, and the rotors of the helicopter resumed in the distance. The blissful noises of reality, his reality, came back in the sounds of murmured chatter, the clopping feet of the police horses and a ringing bell on the knocked-over churro stand.
“Nap?” Parker said. But looking to where his partner had been, he saw that he’d disappeared, too.
Instead, he heard Klink’s voice, calling to him cautiously. “Parker?”
He looked over and saw Klink’s look of complete dismay. He glanced from Parker to the spilled igloo cooler and back again, then said, “What the hell, Parker?”
Parker put his hands on his hips, dropped his chin to his chest, gave a little scoff and thought, You have no idea, Klink. No idea at all.
Whatever. None of it mattered.
Because next to Klink was all that had mattered since day one of this case anyway.
His name was Charlie Henson and he was looking up at Parker with such awe in his eyes that it was as if he were looking at Captain America himself.
Deciding to go with it, Parker gave him a little nod and said, “What’s up, Bucky?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said, almost reflexively, the innocence in the answer so pure that it made both Klink and Parker chuckle.
Nothing? If only.
After a few seconds, Charlie looked at them and
said, “Can I see my mom now?”
Parker sighed with happiness and nodded. “Sure you can,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 35
Charlie Henson and his mom were reunited in a squad room filled with celebration. Uniformed officers, detectives, captains and even Lieutenant Sparks, who Parker could’ve sworn had tears in her eyes when Abigail Henson ran to her son, gathered him in her arms and began to sob.
Who was he kidding? Parker had tears in his eyes, too.
The press wanted interviews, and everyone wanted answers. The brass, like always, gravitated to the cameras while Parker washed up in the bathroom, put liquid stitches across his cheek, quietly wrote up his report and left with the cap’s permission. He thought he was getting off easy. But nope. Not so fast.
Campos, Klink and Murillo were waiting for him by the elevator.
“Sun-na-nitch, Parker,” Campos said with a shake of his head. “Is there anything you get involved in that isn’t a trip to Knox?”
Parker furrowed his brow. “Knox?”
“He means, Knott’s Scary Farm,” Murillo clarified.
“Yeah,” Klink said with a half-smile, but the look in his eye was harder now. More suspicious. Things were adding up even less for him, it was obvious.
Murillo had that look, too. He’d still never said a word since the two of them had rushed to Evergreen Park long ago, when Murillo had glanced worriedly at the swinging crucifix on his rearview mirror, crossed himself and fearfully told Parker that he didn’t want to hear any explanations. Since then, it had been like an unspoken secret between the two of them.
Now, Klink made it three. And Parker knew that secrets were like hand grenades; you didn’t have to pull the pin to feel the danger.
For now, though, he deflected it all with humor. “Bet you can’t wait to get off admin leave and become my partner again, right, Campos?”
“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, Parker,” he said in an exaggerated voice. Then, proving he was the only one in the squad room crazy enough for the job? His chest and cheeks bounced with his trademark Muttley-the-Dog laugh.
Chalk Man Page 22
