Dead Man Running

by Steve Hamilton

  It gave one more time, and I heard the sound of wood cracking around the sink and I thought I had it but then it was stuck solid again. I bent over one more time, laced my fingers together, and gave out one more scream as I used every ounce of my strength, concentrating on Jeannie’s face.

  Come on, you piece of shit drainpipe!

  Now!

  I pulled one more time, felt the whole thing coming down on me, too late to stop it, too late to protect myself. The edge of the sink caught me in the head and drove me backward. I slipped under it just enough to avoid most of the weight crushing my head into the floor, but then the bowl of the sink hit me in the jaw like the biggest sucker punch that was ever thrown by any heavyweight, and I had to stay down on the floor for God knows how long, waiting for everything to come back into focus. When it finally did, I realized that my hands were free. Free from the drainpipe, at least, if not from the cuffs.

  I grabbed the side of what was left of the counter, the one half that had remained attached to the wall when the sink had fallen over. I felt for my cell phone. It was gone. Then I saw the collection of knives in the butcher-block holder, took out the heavy meat cleaver and tried to line it up with the chain between the cuffs. It was almost impossible to get any force on it, holding it with one hand and trying to swing it backward, to the space between my wrists, but I raised both hands and brought everything down on the counter at once, slamming the cleaver into the chain. Raised my hands and did it again.

  The chain wouldn’t break.

  I can’t waste any more time.

  I went through the other knives, pulling out the longest, sharpest knife in the block. Then I grabbed one of the flashlights that had been inside the top drawer I’d spilled on the floor, tested it, wiped my eyes with a kitchen towel, took one more breath. And went out the door.

  The two cars were still parked in their spots in the driveway. I didn’t know why Livermore hadn’t taken one of them. Looking out at the dark road, I still didn’t see any other way for him to get away from here, and as I shined the flashlight on the driveway itself, I saw no footprints in the snow.

  I reversed direction, struggling to keep my balance on the slippery ground with my hands still cuffed together in front of me, and went into the backyard, finally picking up the footprints leading down to the lake.

  She was barefoot, I said to myself. Wearing a tank top. She could die out here from the exposure alone.

  When I went down closer to the lake, I saw the footprints leading along the shoreline. I followed them, keeping my flashlight trained on the ground, watching great drops of blood falling into the snow—from my face, or my wrists, or God even knows where else I was bleeding from. I flashed back to that woman in the hotel room above mine, the blood dripping through the ceiling and onto the white bedspread.

  I’ve seen enough blood for a lifetime. I don’t want to see any more, unless it’s Livermore’s.

  The footprints eventually led right to the lake, and as I shined the flashlight I saw the dark patches out on the ice showing from where the snow had been wiped away. My heart jumped into my throat as I imagined her going down through this ice, into the water below. She wouldn’t last more than a minute. But as I scanned the ice I didn’t see any holes, and I finally picked up the footprints as they continued along the shoreline.

  Where did he take her?

  I turned off the flashlight long enough to let my eyes adjust to the dark, and to see the dim light coming from a house on the other side. The only other house on this lake that showed any signs of life.

  There.

  I hurried along the shoreline, seeing where the road came close and hoping that someone would come by so I could send for help. But there was nobody to help me. I would need to do this alone.

  I continued to the house, saw the one light coming from the kitchen door. This was where he first saw her, I realized, a long time ago, when they were both teenagers. Not that it even mattered now. But it was an answer to my question.

  I kept the flashlight off, moving in the dim light that reached across the yard. I went to the first window, looked inside and saw the empty kitchen lit by a single bulb in the ceiling, moved around to the next window, saw another empty room, this one dark. I went to the back porch, closed up for the winter. Around to the far side, another window looking in on a bedroom. Completing the circle, seeing nobody at all. There were no lights coming from the upstairs rooms, as far as I could see.

  Where are they?

  I got down on my hands and knees, looked through the narrow basement window that sat just a few inches off the ground. Through the cobwebs, I could make out one faint light that seemed to come from a little desk lamp. I wiped the blood from my eyes again, closed them for a long moment to give myself the best shot of night vision I could manage, and then looked through the window again.

  I saw the top of Livermore’s head. I didn’t see Jeannie.

  Standing back up, I weighed the long kitchen knife in my right hand. Still cuffed to my left, so I knew it would be hard to use the knife against him. But it was all I had.

  Then I finally noticed the generator sitting next to the house. It was humming away, supplying this house with its only power. I looked it over carefully, and as I moved to the other side I saw a pair of boots first, then two legs, then the body of a man slumped against the far side. In the dim light, he seemed to be looking up at me, but as I touched his face I felt no warmth in his body. There was nothing left of his throat, just a dark frozen mass of blood and tissue that spread down onto his coat.

  I don’t know how long you’ve been out here, I thought. You’re one more victim I was too late to help.

  I just pray to God I’m not too late for Jeannie.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I DIDN’T WANT IT TO END THIS WAY.”

  Jeannie was huddled on the concrete floor of the basement, the blanket still wrapped tight around her. Livermore stood at the workbench, with a single light casting a pale glow that barely reached to the dark corners of the room. He had a box of shells on the bench, and as he talked to her he refilled the magazine of his semiautomatic.

  “I gave you a chance,” Livermore said. “You didn’t take it. That was a big mistake.”

  Jeannie stared at the concrete floor. She had given up trying to play along.

  She had given up on everything.

  “This may surprise you,” he said, “but I’ve made mistakes, too. I’ve let other women get close to me. Women I never should have trusted. If you think about it, it all goes back to you.”

  She didn’t respond. The words were just a buzzing in her ears now.

  “You were the prototype for me, Jeannie. You were the alpha. I should have known there could never be a beta.”

  The floor was cold against her skin. No matter how hard she clutched at the blanket, she could not stop shivering. Livermore slid the magazine back into his gun and slipped it into his belt. She heard him moving behind her, rummaging through the plastic storage boxes that were stacked against the wall. Then sliding one of the boxes across the floor.

  “The first was Arlene,” he said, looking back toward the other boxes against the wall. “Then Theresa.”

  The words started to break through. What is he saying?

  “Then Claire, from Utah. Then Sandra, who I met in Las Vegas.”

  He took off the lid from the plastic box next to her. A box that anyone else in the world would use to keep Christmas decorations in.

  “And this is Liana.”

  She still couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing, because even after everything that had happened to her, there was only so much madness she could take in at once. But as he lifted the lid from the box and the smell came washing out over her like the hot breath from an animal, breaking right through her terror and her shock, it all came together in that single moment and turned this thing
in front of her into a reality.

  This is real.

  It’s a dead body.

  She couldn’t even scream at that point, not that anyone would have heard her, anyway. She slid away from the box, from the man who had killed this woman and had put her here. Had kept her in this box.

  “She’s the most recent,” he said. As he tilted the box toward her, she saw an arm. Flesh still on the bone. A purplish liquid oozing from it. A black swarm, moving.

  Insects.

  It was all pure animal reaction now, as she tried to scream, her voice so hoarse she could barely make a sound.

  “This is the price they paid,” he said. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I didn’t want you to have to do the same.”

  Before she could stop herself, she looked down one more time and saw the whole woman’s body, the liquefied organs at the bottom of the box, with clumps of hair and the flesh that still clung to the bones. What was left of the woman’s face, her mouth wide open as if still screaming.

  He stood up and pushed the box back toward the wall. Jeannie stopped trying to make any noise. Stopped trying to think. There was no strength left in her body. If he had pushed her over, she would have stayed there and never moved again.

  “Stand up,” he told her.

  She stayed still.

  “I said, stand up.”

  The words didn’t register. She felt the cold concrete against her hands and knees, the blanket on her back. The rest of her mind was white noise.

  “You’re making me angry again, Jeannie.”

  More words that meant nothing to her. Until she felt the smooth fibers of a rope against her neck. She reached for it, pure instinct as it tightened against her windpipe. She clawed at the rope with her fingers, but it was pulled tighter and tighter until she finally felt herself being lifted from the floor. She struggled to her knees, then to her feet, feeling the rope go slack for just an instant. But before she could slip it from her throat, her right wrist was caught in another loop of rope. Then her left. Both hands were pulled away from her body, like the wings of a bird, or of an angel, and as she looked around her she saw both ropes leading to one of the exposed ceiling joists above her head, along with the third rope still wrapped tight around her neck. All three coming together in the hands of the man standing in front of her.

  He moved behind her with the ropes, and she felt the tension increase on all three at once, drawing her up onto the balls of her feet, which she could still barely feel against the cold concrete floor.

  He came around to face her again, the ropes all apparently tied to something behind her now. Keeping her suspended in this position she would not be able to hold on for long. The tears started to run down her cheeks again, but she didn’t say a word.

  He kept watching her, his face unreadable in the dim light coming from the desk lamp behind him. She felt herself weakening, felt herself leaning back against the ropes holding her upright, felt the center rope tightening against her throat with every slightest movement.

  She wanted to say something now. One more utterance while she still could. Her last words on earth. But before she could make a sound, the lights went out, and they were both left in utter darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I SLIPPED INTO the dark house, ready to die if I had to. There was a knife in my right hand, a flashlight in my left, but both hands were still cuffed together.

  Livermore had a gun.

  And he had Jeannie.

  I paused in his kitchen for a moment, waiting to hear something. The house was quiet. I took a step forward and heard the floor squeak beneath my foot. Old wooden boards, no way to avoid it. He would hear me coming, no matter how carefully I moved.

  You need some kind of edge, I told myself. Something to surprise him, to distract him, to get him away from Jeannie.

  I took another step and felt my feet slipping from under me. When I caught myself against a table, I had to take a few seconds to stand still and let my head clear.

  You’ve lost too much blood. You don’t have much time left before you pass out for good.

  I covered most of the flashlight with my hand, turning it on just long enough to see the general outline of the room. I saw blood on the floor. My own, maybe Jeannie’s. Maybe from the man outside. There was a door about twenty feet ahead of me. It had to lead down to the basement. When I opened it, it was too dark to see the stairs, but I could smell the basement’s dampness. And something else . . .

  It was a smell I knew, taking me right back to the first time I ever responded to a senior wellness check, in that old house in Detroit. My partner and I had found the woman on her bathroom floor, where she’d been lying for the past four days.

  It was the smell of death.

  I wanted to call out to Jeannie, to tell her that I was here, that I would make sure she was safe. But that would have been suicide for both of us. Instead, I crouched down at the top of the stairs and I listened. I waited. I gave my own gut instincts a chance to show me my next step.

  There was nothing but silence. And darkness. And that sickening smell.

  Then I heard a sharp intake of breath from somewhere below me. A muffled cry.

  I took one step down the staircase, hearing the wood creaking, actually feeling the whole thing shifting under my foot.

  Fuck your instincts. Fuck your training, fuck everything you ever learned about how to approach a possibly armed suspect.

  Fuck Martin T. Livermore because I am not going to wait one more second.

  I flipped the flashlight on for a fraction of second. Just long enough to see the stairs, to see where they started, to count how many steps I would need to take. I kept myself low and moved as fast as I could. Down the second step, to the third.

  Then a flash of light and sound both exploded at once, freezing everything in that one brilliant instant, every last detail, my shoes on the stairs, Livermore with the gun raised and Jeannie standing off to the side, her eyes closed, her body stiffly upright, her arms reaching out into a letter Y.

  Another two steps down the stairs, then another flash and another image burned into eternity. I was closer to him, but still too far away.

  Two more steps and I felt the concrete beneath my feet. I turned on the flashlight to blind him, but the meager light was consumed by the third flash, and then I felt the sudden jolt in my right shoulder, my own body remembering that night so many years ago, another jolt just like this one, then the same burning sensation that came right after it as I watched my partner dying on the floor next to me. My whole right arm went numb in an instant, and the knife I was holding went sliding across the rough concrete.

  A fourth flash lit up the room again, but by that time my momentum had already taken me into his chest and the gun went off right next to my ear. My shoulder was on fire but I had my hands on him, even though they were still cuffed together. After all this time, all those miles chasing him . . .

  I will not let go until you’re dead.

  He knocked the flashlight from my other hand, but at the same time I was able to grab at the gun, using both hands together, the cold metal twisting away from his fingers and clattering to the floor as we both fell hard against the workbench behind him, tools rattling and the breath coming out of him as I drove his back into the hard wooden edge.

  The flashlight was on the floor somewhere, giving the room just enough light to make out the dark outline of his body. He tried to push me away, but I redoubled my grip on his shirt. Then he sucker-punched me right in the gut and folded me in half. I felt him slipping away from me, and then he stepped aside and tried to drive my head into the workbench. I ducked down just in time to avoid the blow, came up looking for him, but he was gone.

  “Jeannie,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  I couldn’t see her now. But I remembered the image that had burned int
o my mind. The unnatural way she had been standing, her arms spread out wide.

  “Jeannie!”

  She didn’t answer me. Her body was nothing but a dark shadow against the wall.

  No, she’s not dead. She can’t be.

  “JEANNIE!”

  “It’s too late,” Livermore said, his voice strangely detached in the darkness. “For both of you.”

  My right arm was dead. I knew I was running out of time. As I took a step toward his voice, he picked up something from the top of a pile of plastic storage boxes that were stacked against the wall. I saw the glint of metal, but otherwise had no idea what he had just armed himself with. Something hard and heavy, something that would put me down for good if he caught me with it.

  I took another step and he was gone again. He had moved deeper into the darkness of the room, choosing another corner to wait for me. I tried to quiet down my own breathing, my own mind, but as I took a step sideways he came out at me and swung the metal object right at my head. I ducked just in time, trying to move inside to tie him up, but he slipped away.

  “Give up,” he said. “Give up and die.”

  I shook the blood from my eyes, got myself low, ready to try again, ready to take my one last chance if it came.

  “Come on,” I said to him, wherever he was, trying to draw him out. “Don’t be a fucking coward. Fight me like a man.”

  I heard a sound to my left, took a step, and ducked again as he swung at me.

  You have to time this just right. He swings, you drive before he can slip away. You bury your head right in his chest.

  I waited and listened. I heard him breathing, heard him moving from one corner of the room to another, like an animal hunting its prey. I took another step as he somehow came up from behind me, and I felt the hard metal glancing off my temple. I had no chance to go after him. He was too fast, and everything was starting to fade.

  Come on, put me away. Step out and take a big swing at me.

  “The minutes are working against you,” he said. “You don’t have many left.”