The Room Where It Happened

by Jason Letts

  She watched the doorknob jiggle and twist before the door slowly swung open.

  CHAPTER 11

  Tera wasn’t sure what to expect when Robert Parkinson bumbled into his room and saw her standing there pointing a gun at him. His hands were empty and below his baseball cap was a deer-in-headlights look. He may not have even remembered that he’d left with the lights off, and his pause outside may have just been his idiosyncrasies or lack of hurry.

  She expected him to do something, but instead he did nothing to the point where he may have been trying to pass himself off as a statue, like she was a Tyrannosaurus Rex with eyesight dependent on movement that could overlook his bloodshot eyes and gaping mouth.

  “Robert Parkinson, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Kimberly Parkinson. Put your hands behind your head and drop to your knees,” she commanded, imagining herself waiting there with the suspect she apprehended while Brady and other officers arrived, but a combative look took to his face along with a hostile sneer.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, his eyes wandering around without him shifting his head at all. He was looking for something to fight back with, trying to find a way to overcome her. He had a few extra pounds and may have weighed half again as much as she did. His lifetime of mostly manual labor required a fair amount of muscle. She guessed he was barely forty.

  As long as he didn’t charge her, she knew this wasn’t a situation that required the use of force. He needed to accept that he was caught.

  “It’s over, Robert,” she said through gritted teeth. “You may have been able to walk away the night you killed her, but we have you now. If you cooperate, it’ll be better for you.”

  The sneer persisted. Robert gave her a nearly imperceptible shake of the head.

  “No. You look like you’re headed out to a club, not here to make an arrest. Hand over the gun and I won’t hurt you,” he said, though the piercing, hungry look in his eyes put the lie to his words.

  Her blood pressure was rising and her fingers started to tingle. He wasn’t giving in like he should have, and from the looks of it she didn’t think he would stop as long as he was alive.

  But rather than rush at her, he turned on the spot and raced out the way he’d come.

  “Stop right there!” She shouted as loud as she could, but it did nothing to dissuade him. By the time she got to the door, he was rounding onto the stairwell with a smug look on his face that made her sick. If he thought he was going to be able to get away from her by running, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

  But he flew down the steps quickly enough, and Tera didn’t hesitate to chase after him. They went around and around down the flights, forcing their way past a couple of other residents who were headed in the opposite direction. She kept her eyes on him as much as she could. The thought crossed her mind that he would dash off onto one of the floors below, but after another moment it looked more like he was heading all the way down to the bottom.

  “Don’t take another step!” Her hollering wasn’t doing her any good, and she decided to give up on it. Her feet shuffled down the last flight of stairs as Robert took off down the hall for the front door. There was a moment when she could’ve stopped and attempted a hasty shot, but the consequences for shooting an unarmed man in the back would’ve been severe.

  She had no choice but to follow him toward the door and out onto the streets. Breathing heavily, she slammed the closing door back open with her shoulder and barged out onto the building’s front deck. He was coming off the stoop and careening onto the sidewalk in a way that startled some people who were still around.

  Tera leapt off the deck and landed on the cement walk, her fingertips brushing against the surface as she bounced up and resumed her stride. There were too many people around, and even though they were just watching they were variables she didn’t want to deal with. Robert Parkinson didn’t seem to care though, and he sprinted farther along the street with more stamina than she would’ve guessed.

  When she thought he was just going to run until his legs gave out, he veered onto the street near the end of the block and set his hand on the back of a hatchback parked there. It wasn’t until he yanked open the driver’s side door that she recalled the vehicle was his, and he may have been attempting to use it to escape. Tera came up along the passenger side, pointing her gun at the interior.

  “Not another step or I’ll shoot, Robert. You’re under arrest!”

  Without her uniform on or badge showing, no one gawking in the vicinity was likely to know what was going on, although it wasn’t all that often that pistol-packing women were chasing men down the street. He still didn’t listen, but he didn’t seem to be positioning himself to get into the vehicle either.

  An instant later he’d backed away and started racing across the street, leaving the vehicle’s door open in the process. Tera wheeled around to continue pursuit, sparing a moment to glance at the hatchback and wonder what that was about. The consternation of the prolonged chase was getting to her, but she wasn’t gaining on him fast enough to take him down.

  What was worse was she realized he was heading into an even more crowded area, Duggan’s Park under the highway overpass. Already she could see people walking in and out. The lights were on over the basketball courts and the sounds of rolling wheels and scraping boards echoed from the skate park.

  Robert’s pace started to slow as he hit an incline leading into the park, and Tera braced herself for the necessity of knocking him over and subduing him, but just as she reached out to take hold of his shoulder he stopped suddenly and sent an elbow flying back at her that caught her in the jaw and sent her sprawling.

  “There’s nowhere you can run I won’t follow you,” she said, enraged. Something was in her mouth though and when she spat she saw blood on the walk. Her anger was rising, and she turned to see Robert loping onto the park, a jungle of cement and steel with chainlink fences, bridge-support columns, and sloping paths leading from the different recreational areas. There were at least fifty people around, according to Tera’s first guess.

  “Who said I have any intention to run?” Robert said, flashing another smarmy grim back at her, but that wasn’t the only thing he had. Tera spotted the small black object tucked into his waistband that hadn’t been there before. He’s acquired a gun from the vehicle, likely the same weapon that had killed Kim and Johnny Rittigen.

  Her eyes widened in alarm as she realized that the situation she was in had changed dramatically.

  The crushing need to get to him before anything worse could happen took over, but he slipped around another small group of walkers and retreated behind one of the giant gray pillars supporting the highway overhead. Before she could take another three steps, Robert stepped back out with his gun drawn.

  He fired two shots in her direction as she scampered to the right to try to get the end of the column between them. She hunched over and nearly fell, gasping for breath as she scrambled along the park’s hard surface. By the time she’d raised her own gun in response, he’d ducked back under cover.

  Although she’d come to a halt and Robert seemed to be staying still on the other side of the column, everyone else was moving. The sound of the gunshots had put everyone in a panic, and people were running for it in every direction. Cries and yelling echoed from all over as people cleared out of the park.

  It was one thing for Robert to go after her, but taking wild shots that could’ve hit anyone who happened to be around seemed low, even for a killer. From where she stood, the entryway was largely clear. Nobody had been downed by a stray bullet, luckily.

  When the noise of the fleeing crowds receded, Tera was left with the sounds of the cars and trucks screaming by as they whipped along overhead. About ten feet of solid cement in an elongated hexagonal shape separated her from Robert, and she crept around counterclockwise hoping that she’d be able to get to him before he got to her.

  Tera tried to keep her breathing steady and her footsteps sile
nt. The whooshing noises were getting in her head. Despite a few lights here and there in the park everything was so dark, like the night was fighting to get in and was winning.

  Alone and fighting with herself to keep her adrenaline above the impulse to freak out on this sweltering hot night, more than anything she wished she’d broken the rules and shot him when she had the chance to save herself from a confrontation she could very well lose. If Robert got the best of her, there was a good chance he could slip away and never be seen again. He’d be far from the only killer hiding out permanently in Chicago.

  When she was about to creep around the corner, she was sure she’d heard something behind her, but after looking and finding nothing she turned back to discover that Robert was right in front of her and raising his weapon.

  They were so close, and they each fired an errant shot before colliding with each other. Suddenly Robert reached out to grab her and got a hold of her tank top strap. He was trying to bring the gun around, but she struck his wrist and kneed him in the thigh. Grunting, he staggered back, tearing the strap in the process.

  Just as Tera was trying to use the space to aim her Luger, he got ahold of her wrist and squeezed it hard enough for her to think it was going to break. The gun fell out of her hand, a gurgling cry escaped her lips, and she felt like she needed to do something desperate.

  Tera caught his gun-wielding hand under her arm, and they grappled each other to a standstill. Not able to generate enough force for a punch to be effective, she brought her free hand to Robert’s face and raked her fingernails against his skin. He wailed but didn’t let go even as he hobbled back away from the column. Tera pushed him back and back, trying to get as much leverage as she could as she tore into his face.

  But just when she thought she was getting the upper hand and the pressure on her wrist abated, they collided with the chainlink fence alongside one of the basketball courts, and the sudden break in momentum threw her off even though it was his back that collided against it.

  She kept ahold of the arm with the gun and weakly attempted to defend herself against his blows with her free hand. With his face bleeding all over and teeth bared, he looked completely insane as he clubbed the side of her head with his fist and swung her around against the fence. Somehow this ended up hurting him more than her, and she heard a clattering on the blacktop as his gun fell. It took her a second to realize that it must’ve slipped through the fence, and his hand was worse off after grinding against the little metal spokes as well.

  “I’ve always been so sick of Kim’s stupid friends,” he seethed through his teeth. Tera was feeling disoriented and her body was a chorus of pain. He was so much larger than her, and despite everything she’d done he had little more than scratches to show for it. At least getting his gun back would require going all the way around into the basketball court.

  “She wouldn’t have needed us so much if she had a decent dad,” Tera said.

  Thinking about Kim, doing it for Kim, seemed to give her the energy and the strength to keep fighting. He would get tired and make a mistake, and she would take advantage of it. The next time he tried to punch her, she deftly ducked underneath and lunged closer, catching him on the chin with the butt of her fist, which came away slick with his blood.

  Robert reeled backward, but she kept on him. She pounded against him as hard as she could even though in her mind she was exhausted and couldn’t think about anything. He extended his arms to strike her and push back, but his movements were sluggish and easily avoided. Her heart was pounding. She had to win. He was on his back foot heading toward the skate park.

  Every moment she imagined he would give up or tell her to stop, but he never did. No matter how many times her fist connected with his face or her elbow with his stomach, he kept trying to get to her. Vaguely out of the corner of her eyes she could see the ramps and the rails the skaters used in the distance, but Robert took up so much of her field of vision. The sounds of the roaring trucks boomed in her ears.

  She cocked her fist back and set her sights on his left eye, sure she could knock him down. But before she could strike, he managed to grab her around the waist, and with a grunt he lifted her up and spun her around. When he dropped her and her cheek hit the hard edge of something, it almost didn’t register that the rest of her body continued to fall until she continued to drop into the empty skating pool.

  As she slid down to the bottom, it felt like she was falling apart. Her muscles didn’t have enough in them to lift her up. The world seemed to be slipping away.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Robert said from above. Tera couldn’t bring herself to speak. She was so angry and so scared and so angry about being scared.

  The next thing she knew she could see Robert’s boots and pant legs next to her after he’d hopped into the pool. Her head was spinning and she was having trouble focusing, but it was coming back in time to see him reach into his pocket and pull something out.

  He had a pocket knife with a brown and silver handle, and with the touch of a button the blade swung into place and locked. Tera gurgled when he used his foot to push her onto her back, forcing her to look up at him. She noticed that near his head someone had spray painted a gold star alongside some other graffiti high up on one of the columns.

  She needed to get up, to fight back, to resist. A garish smile was on his lips and he was muttering to himself incoherently. When he finally reached back to bring the knife down on her, she reached up to stop him. The blade cut across her forearm and she started bleeding the instant the metal edge passed through her skin.

  Tera screamed, and almost like a reflex she kicked out with the full strength of her leg, catching him on the ankle and sweeping the leg supporting him on the slope out from under him. Robert Parkinson toppled over hard against the cement, his hands and the knife somewhere underneath him.

  Dragging herself up and mostly watching the blood pour out of the arm putting her in agony, she scrambled to get to him before he could recover. She’d spent nights in this park all alone hiding in the dark when she was little because her block didn’t feel safe. This place gave her strength, and she couldn’t lose here.

  His cap had come off at some point during the chase, allowing her to extend her fingers into his matted black hair and around his skull. She lifted his head and bashed it into the cement slope once then twice, but she already got the sense that he wasn’t moving like he did. The fall had left him unable to react other than the faintest shivers and chattering teeth.

  Crawling around him, she discovered that he’d fallen on his knife after swinging at her and then collapsing with his hand and the knife coming around toward him. Almost as soon as she’d put it together, she noticed blood from his chest or stomach wound beginning to spill down the slope to the bottom of the pool. He froze, eyes half open in a dreamy daze that appeared to give him too pleasant a death for what he deserved.

  As for Tera, a nauseated feeling was coming over her. She felt a rush of blood to the head, as if her body could still manage that with so much leaking out of her arm. Driving a shoulder into Parkinson’s side, she pushed forward like she was shoving a sled to roll him over. The knife was there, and she needed it before she passed out.

  She saw that the pocket knife was buried to the hilt near his sternum, and she groped toward it and drew it out of his body. It was covered in blood, and she ineffectively wiped it off on a section of his pants. Using her left hand, she cut through the torn strap of her tank top, dropped the knife, and then wrapped the fabric around the gash in her arm before tying it in place.

  It instantly stained red, but some would be kept in. Enough, hopefully. The dizziness was returning and she slumped against the sloping cement. She kept her eyes trained on the gold star until she couldn’t keep them open anymore.

  The next thing she knew she was being roused forcefully by a hand to her shoulder. A groan escaped her lips and she had to fight to lift her eyelids. It was Brady, whose big eyes and light-brown hair w
ere catching some of the flashing red and blue police lights. It was like back in the alley when Johnny had been shot, only now she was still in the park and one of the squad cars had driven right up to the edge of the bowl.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” he said. She couldn’t answer, but it was fine. He slipped a hand behind her head and lifted her from behind the knees.

  Come to find out though that carrying her out of a sloping bowl with a depth of probably six feet was too much for him to do alone. She felt like a rag doll as Brady hoisted her up so that another officer could pull her out. By the time she’d been set down, she felt like she was going to pass out again, so she leaned her head gently onto the floor and took big, gulping breaths.

  An ambulance was approaching, and the sound of the sirens hurt her ears. When would the new sources of pain stop? Brady and the other officer, one she didn’t recognize, came over to prop her up.

  “Hey, can you hear me? Are you OK?” Brady asked her. She had to think about it. Was she OK? Had she ever been OK? What was it even like to be OK? She wasn’t sure she’d ever experienced it.

  “I’ll live,” she said, too tired to be excited about it.

  A paramedic checked her over and gave her a better bandage for her arm, which was still red, raw, and aching. But the bleeding had stopped. She gave her a candy bar and water, like a treat after giving blood. She wasn’t sure what she’d been donating blood to this time or if she deserved chocolate, but she began to feel better.

  As other officers swarmed the park and attended to Robert Parkinson’s body, Brady sat next to her in the back of the ambulance. It was now possible to attend to some of her less-severe injuries, and he handed her an ice pack wrapped in cloth for the bump on her head.

  “Here, this should set you straight, water girl,” he said.

  Tera slowly shifted her head to look at him.

  “This isn’t water. It’s ice.”