"Holy Shit!" John said to himself, as he entered the rail yard and the narrow road opened up to a large parking lot. He followed Kennedy's car, which followed Bell's car. John turned out of the group and headed left down a side road that peeled off between a couple low warehouse buildings. He didn't want to be anywhere near Bell when everyone stopped. He watched the group following the Mustang as it kept going down to the far end of the yard. John exited at the other end of the warehouse buildings and came upon the railroad lines, a thick congruence of multiple lines crisscrossing and running parallel to one another. He stopped the car and cut the engine, and although he could still hear the sirens in the distance, he suddenly felt very calm. Everything he saw through the window was very still. The rail lines were lit in a ghostly glow of yellow lamplight, and here and there stood links of railroad cars, two, three, and sometimes four linked together, like stray dogs left in a pound. His cell phone rang.
"Hello," John said.
"Where the hell are you?" shouted Marcus from the other end.
"We're all inside the railroad yard."
"I can see the cop cars in there, but where are you?"
John replied, "I went in between a couple warehouse buildings and I'm on the other side, the north side. There's a large stretch of multiple tracks right out in front of me. How'd you get here?"
"I hitched a ride with Channel 9. Thanks for waiting."
"Hey, I couldn't see you and the red Mustang popped out in the road behind me, what choice did I have?"
"I don't blame you. I would've done the same thing. Look, we're driving around to the north side. I know another way in. I'll call you…"
John's attention suddenly shifted when he witnessed the dark-haired man running across the tracks—no more than a hundred feet away.
"That's him!"
"…when we—What?" said Marcus.
"I see him. The guy. The killer!"
But John's heart sank when, at that same moment, he saw Megan running right behind the killer. They were both running, jumping the tracks, like miniature hurdles, in a timed stutter step as to not trip and yet still going fast. And right behind Megan was Bell, his fat frame running much slower, but still in the chase.
"I gotta go."
John clicked off the phone—at least he thought he did. He got out of the car and stuffed the phone into his pocket—still on—and took off after the Bedroom Killer, the woman he loved…and the man who wanted to see him dead.
CHAPTER 73
The three of them headed for a warehouse building that was as long as a football field and ran parallel to the tracks. Bell was having a hard time keeping up, and John knew what he had to do. For a brief moment, he allowed himself to smile as he imagined blowing past Bell and calling him slowpoke. But he quickly realized what would probably happen if the killer made it to the warehouse building not far away. Megan would go in, and the killer would be waiting for her. John knew he didn't come this far to lose everything, so he took off running at the exact moment he heard the other police cars closing in somewhere off to his right. Racing across the grounds, dirt and gravel crunching under his shoes, John started jumping tracks just as he had seen the killer, Megan, and Bell do only moments before. It wasn't long before his chest was heaving. There was no time to catch his breath or balance before he had to jump the next track, and to do it correctly, John had to keep his eyes down. He was quickly gaining ground on Bell, forty feet behind him…then thirty…twenty…ten.
Just as he caught up and passed him on his left side, John said out loud, "Don't trip."
***
Bell's head snapped to the left, a moment of recognition in the voice he'd heard, and the last thing Bell saw as his foot caught the top of a rail and he went down, was the profile of Dr. John Randall, appearing like a menacing ghost that just won't pass on to the other side. Smack! His head met a rail as he hit the ground. He grabbed at his forehead and struggled to stand, his balance wobbly. He opened his eyes and focused ahead in time to see Megan disappear through a side door of the warehouse…and Randall was not far behind.
"You're dead, Randall!"
***
John heard the thud and grunt as Bell's overweight body hit the tracks, but his attention was drawn to the end of the tracks. He hit the asphalt and looked up to see the killer as he opened a door and disappeared inside a warehouse. Ten seconds later, Megan was at the same door. She stepped to one side, drew her gun, slowly pushed open the door with the foot closest to it, and entered. As she entered, all John could see was a rectangle of blackness. He reached out his hand.
"Megan. Wait!"
But the blackness swallowed her up…and the door closed behind her. John lowered his head and ran as fast as he could.
***
Megan stood just inside the door, off to one side, crouched low, her hands firmly gripping the butt of her gun, her finger on the trigger. She swung her arms from side to side and waited for her eyes to adjust. The warehouse was large. A few staggered lights were on, hanging from the wooden rafters on long, thin metal rods like dwarf yellow moons. Enough to see, barely, but not enough to track anyone. She would need her ears now.
Listen!
She heard cooing in the rafters. Pigeons. Then, something pinged—off to her right, along the wall. She kept her head down and moved in that direction, stopping every few steps to listen again. She heard it again, but farther away now.
He's moving. Megan moved faster as she tried to keep up yet move in a way to keep her footsteps as quiet as possible—it wasn't easy. The warehouse had not been cleaned in a long time and there was dirt and debris on the floor, loose metal washers, pieces of plastic and metal from an earlier time when money was abundant and men spent their days inside working on diesel train engines. However, although the dirty floor worked against her, it also worked for her, for she could hear his footsteps too.
She kept moving.
***
John reached the warehouse door and opened it. He stepped inside and listened. He moved forward as his eyes adjusted, and he wondered if Marcus had ever played inside this building. He needed Marcus with him now to describe where he was going, but he knew he was on his own. The old building creaked and moaned. Lined up in rows like a long abandoned Home Depot were shelving racks. Most of them were empty, but some still held boxes and dissimilar assemblages of industrial knick-knacks probably thrown up there when the company that leased the building was closing down and moving away. It would have made for a great science fiction movie set, John thought.
Where are they?
John turned right and walked slowly down a long aisle.
***
Bell reached the warehouse door and stepped inside, gun drawn, mirroring what Megan had done—a standard police maneuver for entering an unfamiliar structure. He kept his gun forward, moving his arms from side to side while he stood in one spot waiting for his eyes to adjust.
Where are they?
Should he call for her?
He was still pissed at her and that fucking doctor, and he thought again about her talk of transfer. If given a choice between keeping Megan on his team—and thus in his control—or catching the killer, well Bell would have to think about that. He'd come to rely on his Monday afternoon "under the tree" business meetings. He had long ago converted the VHS tape over to DVD, and with his fifty-inch flat screen, it was now better than ever. He loved the close ups. Megan is forever young. Forever his.
Yes, he would give up the killer.
Keep Megan.
Kill Randall.
He'd make that sacrifice. Let someone else catch this asshole. Megan is what mattered. They were a team and always would be. She wasn't going anywhere. He heard a sound, a scrape to his right, down the aisle. Bell moved, his gun leading the way.
CHAPTER 74
Isaac Graham stood very still, hidden behind a steel support girder on the north side of the building, his heart pounding so hard he could hardly hear anything else. But he could still hea
r the lady cop not far behind him. He knew her name was Detective Ash. He'd watched her on television and read about her breakdown just yesterday in the newspaper. So what the hell was she doing chasing him? Don't cops usually get pulled out of service when they crack?
Isaac slithered out from behind the girder and moved along a stack of boxes, looking up to see if there was a way onto the roof. He'd get up there and maybe find a ladder leading down one side. If he could get out of this building before it was surrounded, he might be able to slip away into the open stand of trees that lined the east side.
"Graham!"
Isaac dropped to the ground and turned to face the direction of the voice. But it was hard to tell. There was an echo in the large building. It was a female voice. Detective Ash.
"You have nowhere to go, Isaac. It's all over."
"Megan," John whispered to himself when he'd heard her call out. She was much farther into the warehouse than he'd thought. He was moving slowly, as he figured she was doing, but since the killer got inside first John realized he probably moved through the building much faster. Megan knew that too. Probably police training. John moved, more quickly through the warehouse in the direction of her voice, passing empty barrels, stacks of boxes, and large, long-dead machines still bolted to the floor, like quiet sentinels silently watching the newcomers but still awaiting their long-absent master.
Bell heard Megan's voice and he knew that besides Megan, the killer, and him…Dr. John Randall was inside too. If he could just get to him—somewhere away from the others—he'd figure out a way to take him out permanently and blame it on Isaac Graham. But for now he needed to move. He felt good about his chances of making this all work out that way he wanted. He took a step toward the direction of Megan's voice, knowing it would all be over very soon. Then he heard the crash and Megan's voice scream, "STOP! POLICE! Stop right there," followed quickly by more crashing sounds.
"Megan!" yelled another voice, closer than Megan's.
Bell ran toward the sound, which echoed off the walls of the dead warehouse, its wooden supports and brick outer shell wrapped tightly around the four lost souls wandering inside.
***
More than forty police officers, SWAT team members, news vans, and looky-loos, who stopped on the frontage road to watch, surrounded the brick fortress. Two police helicopters circling overhead, flashing high-intensity light beams on the windows, doorways, and roof of the building. Andy called the shots outside, and now that he had the SWAT guys in place, he grabbed Kennedy by the shoulder and said, "I'm going in."
At the very same moment, on the north side of the railway yard, Marcus was squeezing under a section of fence that ran through a long stand of eucalyptus trees that loomed like a black fortress wall behind the warehouse. It was partly because of this appearance that it was dubbed the official entryway of the Legion of the Greenwood Knights, his childhood gang of 6 eighth-graders, who had called the rail yard their playground throughout the eighth grade. Once in high school, the Legion of the Greenwood Knights turned it into the party place of choice. Because of this history, Marcus knew the yard inside out. From John's earlier description of where he'd parked and how he'd seen Megan chasing the killer across the tracks toward a huge warehouse, Marcus knew exactly where he needed to go to find them.
He cleared the bottom of the fence, dragging his backpack with him, and watching out for the one tangle of chain-link twist that always seemed to catch and cut the chest of at least one of the Knights in their haste to get inside and start the party. The skin cutting usually took place in the chest area since it was the highest spot when they scooted in on their backs. To this day, some of the Knights could lift their shirts to show off their entry scars, with stories of drunken glee sure to follow. Marcus stood, brushed off his clothes, swung the backpack over his left shoulder, and moved with determination along the back side of the warehouse, harboring no illusions of drunken glee anywhere in the near future.
CHAPTER 75
John rounded the outside corner of a built-in cluster of offices, entered the first room, and found the dark silhouette of Megan standing over the killer, her gun drawn down on him, hands trembling, and lips quivering.
There he was.
The guy from my car.
The one I saw.
That's him.
The Bedroom Killer.
He didn't know how long she'd been standing there, but it might have been at least a minute. John knew that one minute wasn't very long, but when you're standing over a ruthless killer that you've spent months tracking, and in those long months you've stared into the dead eyes of five young girls killed by this very man, he knew that every one of those sixty seconds would seem like an eternity. But now Megan didn't seem to know what to do…or she was weighing the consequences of pulling the trigger and ending his child-killing career—forever. John stared at the man lying on the floor. The same man who kept him from dying. The man who stared through John's front windshield during a raging rainstorm, and who crawled off his car and limped away that night two months ago, leaving him to deal with Karen Sharp. This was the very man he and Megan had spoken of so many times in the last month. John imagined Karen walking in with her baseball bat, easing Megan aside with an, I'll take it from here. There would be nothing left of the man on the floor. John was sure of it. In fact, he pictured Karen and Megan taking turns handing the bat off to one another. He pictured Megan taking the time to show Karen how to shoot a gun, then standing back and nodding toward the dead body saying to Karen, Empty it. They could probably put a call out to the community and charge admission at the door, or give each person three whacks for ten bucks. They'd make a fortune; so much was the hatred for this man.
It all felt so surreal to John that he had to ask himself the silly question…How did I get here? He found it almost unbelievable to think that he'd studied medicine for so many years and spent so much time helping people— diagnosing illnesses, fixing broken bones, even treating gunshot wounds—and now he was deep inside a dilapidated old, abandoned warehouse staring at a child killer, who cowered like a beaten mutt below a gun held by the woman he was now so much in love with. He almost laughed out loud.
John eased into the room, gliding to the left side, never taking his eyes off Megan.
Isaac kept his eyes on the gun pointing at him. His left hand raised, palm up—as if he could stop the bullet in case Megan's finger twitched. It was Isaac who first saw John when his eyes darted to his right, causing Megan to flinch, swerve her body to the right, and point the gun at John.
"No!" cried John, raising his own hand toward Megan.
Isaac shifted his body once the gun shied away from him, and Megan, sensing the movement, whipped the gun back on him, causing Isaac to flinch and hide his face behind his hand once again. Megan did not move. She did not speak. But she continued to shake. She needed her pills. Her mouth was dry.
The only way John could tell she was even breathing was the fact that her mouth was open and still gasping from her run through the rail yard. John waited, wondering what she was waiting for.
"Megan," John said softly, without getting an answer. "Megan…read him his rights." She shifted on her feet, still staring down at Isaac.
"Detective Ash," John said now, this time with a touch of authority.
"Please don't," said Isaac.
She took a deep breath, as if trying to slow down her pounding heart. She licked her lips, took another deep breath, exhaled, and spoke for the first time in what was no more than a whisper.
"I looked into their eyes. Each one," she said.
John listened—was she saying something? Then her voice grew stronger.
"You…have the right…to remain…silent."
John took a step closer, being careful to step over a long piece of rebar on the floor.
"Louder, Detective, I couldn't hear—"
"Shut Up!" Megan screamed at John. This time Megan belted out the same line in a more definite voice.
"You have the right to remain silent, you…fucking…scumbag motherfucker…you don't deserve to take another breath." She took a small step closer and Isaac sunk lower to the floor. John leaned forward sucking in air, almost certain he was about to hear a gunshot and see Isaac's head explode.
But there was no gunshot. No exploding head. Only Megan's voice coming back.
"Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law." She took another breath to continue when the sound of loud footsteps came from around the corner, and suddenly Bell appeared, ten feet way, his gun drawn on Megan and Isaac Graham.
CHAPTER 76
Some years back, as the leader of the Knights of Greenwood, Marcus gave the first order of business, calling for the creation of a throne befitting a knight of his stature. The other pimply-faced knights, obeying his holiness, scurried about the massive warehouse collecting bits of wood, piping, wire, foam, crates, and a toilet seat and together created a most ugly monstrosity, which they dubbed The Throne de la Cash. Once he had his own throne, Marcus called for a Royal Party Room in which to place the throne and preside over the festivities, which basically meant—Now let's find a cool place in here where we can all sit around and get high. They chose the suite of offices in the northeast corner of the warehouse. The bathrooms were next door, and even though they had no running water, they still pissed into the stained, decaying bowls. The suite of offices, nine in all, were mostly empty, but one of them had a window facing out into the warehouse, which is where the afternoon sunlight passed through the row of paneled windows that dotted the north wall of the warehouse.
Once they moved the throne inside the office, they called it the Official Party Room of the Knights of Greenwood. There was the front entrance, from which one could walk through the entire warehouse from the west side, just as Isaac, Megan, John, and Bell had done; and there was the back way, which is where Marcus was now. He'd run along the back of the warehouse and came to the north side door—a single door that opened to the outside, but really didn't lead anywhere. There was nothing back there, and they'd all wondered years ago why there was even a back door. The door handle had been busted off long ago and as he ran, Marcus crossed his fingers that it hadn't been fixed.
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