A voice close behind me said, “Alex, come over here, goddammit. I want to talk to you. Alex, come here.”
I turned around and faced the music. Sampson was scowling from ear to ear. “We don’t need another hostage in there,” he said in no uncertain terms. He was angry with me already. His eyes were dark beads, his brow deeply furrowed. “You didn’t hear him raving before, through most of last night. The bad boy is real crazy. The boy is crazy as shit, Alex. All he wants to do is kill somebody else.”
“I think I’ll be all right with him,” I said. “He’s my type of boy. Gary Soneji, Casanova, Danny Boudreaux. Besides, I don’t have a choice.”
“You have a choice, Sugar. You just don’t have any good sense.”
I looked back at the house. Christine Johnson was in there with the killer. If I didn’t go in, he’d kill her. He’d said so, and I believed him. What choice did that leave me? Besides, no good deed goes unpunished, right?
Chief Pittman signaled that I had the go-ahead from him. It was up to me. Doctor-Detective Cross.
I sucked in a deep breath and began to walk across the wet, springy front lawn to the house. The news photographers took a flurry of flashshots in the few seconds it took me to move to the front door. Suddenly, all the TV cameras were aimed at me.
I was definitely concerned about Danny Boudreaux. He was incredibly dangerous right now. He’d been on a killing spree. Five indiscriminate murders within the last few weeks. Now he was cornered. Even worse, he had cornered himself.
My hand reached out for the front doorknob. I was feeling numb and a little out of it. My vision was tunneled. I focused on the whitewashed door and nothing else.
“It’s open.” A voice came from behind the door.
A boy’s voice. A little raspy. Small and fragile without the megaphone to amplify it.
I pushed open the front door and finally saw the Truth School killer in all of his insane glory.
Danny Boudreaux wasn’t much more than five three or four. He had thin, squinty eyes like a rodent’s, large ears, a bad buzz haircut. He was an odd-looking boy, clearly an outcast, a freak. I sensed that other kids wouldn’t like him much, that he was a loner, and had been for all of his life.
He had a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic aimed chest-high at me.
“Military school,” he reminded me. “I’m an expert marksman, Detective Cross. I have no difficulty with human targets.”
CHAPTER
99
MY HEART was clanging around inside the tight metal cage that was supposed to be my chest. The loud buzzing sound in my head was still there, like irritating static on a radio. I didn’t feel much like a police hero. I felt scared. It was worse than usual. Maybe because the killer was thirteen years old.
Danny Boudreaux knew how to use the semiautomatic clenched in his hand, and sooner or later, he would. The only thing in the universe that mattered to me right then was to get that Smith & Wesson away from him.
The image before me commanded all my attention: a thin, pimply thirteen-year-old boy with a powerful, deadly handgun. A semiautomatic was pointed at my heart. Although Boudreaux’s hand was steady enough, he appeared to be more mentally and physically out of it than I had thought. He was probably decompensating. His behavior was likely to become increasingly more bizarre. His instability was obvious and scary to confront. It was in his eyes. His eyes darted about like birds caught in a glass bubble.
He was weaving slightly as he stood in the foyer of the Johnson house. He waved the gun in small circles at me. He was wearing a strange sweatshirt with the printed message HAPPY, HAPPY. JOY, JOY.
His short hair was dripping wet with perspiration. His glasses were slightly fogged around the edges. Behind the glasses, his eyes were glazed and shiny-wet. He looked the part of the Truth School killer. I doubted that anyone had ever liked Danny Boudreaux too much. I didn’t.
His wiry body suddenly snapped rigidly to attention. “Welcome on board, Detective Cross, sir!”
“Hello, Danny,” I spoke to him in as low-key and non-threatening a way as I could. “You called, and now I’m here.” I’m the one who’s going to take your ass down.
He kept his distance. He was a jangle of raw nerves and incredible, pent-up anger. He was a puppet without a puppeteer. There was no way to predict how this was going to go from here.
He was almost definitely suffering a withdrawal from his prescription drugs. Danny Boudreaux had the whole package of symptoms: aggression, depression, psychosis, hyperactivity, behavioral deterioration.
A thirteen-year-old, stone-cold killer. How do I get the gun away from him?
Christine Johnson was standing in the darkened living room behind him. She didn’t move. She looked very distant in the background and small, in spite of her height. She looked frightened, sad, tired.
To her right was an exquisitely carved fireplace that looked as if it had been scavenged from some big-city brownstone. I hadn’t seen much of the living room before. I studied it closely now. I was looking for some kind of weapon. Anything to help us.
George Johnson lay on the off-white marble floor in the foyer. Christine or the boy had placed a red plaid blanket over the body. The slain lawyer looked as if he’d lain down to take a nap.
“Christine, are you okay?” I called across the room. She started to speak, then stopped herself.
“She’s fine, man. She’s mighty fine pudding. She’s all right,” Boudreaux snapped at me. He slurred his words, so that they sounded like “cheese alriii.” “She’s a-okay, all right. I’m the one who’s losing it here. This is about me.”
“I can understand how tired you are, Danny,” I said to him. I suspected that he would be experiencing dizziness, impaired concentration, cottonmouth.
“Yeah. You got that right. What else do you have to say for yourself? Any more nuggets of wisdom about my delusional behavior?”
Wham! He suddenly kicked shut the front door behind us. More impulsive behavior. I had definitely joined the party. He was still very careful to keep his distance—he kept the semiautomatic always pointed at me.
“I can shoot this son of a bitch real well,” he said, just in case I’d missed the point before. It reinforced my notion of his extreme paranoia, his agitation and nervousness.
He was overly concerned about how I viewed him, how competent I judged him to be. He had me confused with his real father. The policeman father who had deserted him and his mother. I’d just learned about the connection on the ride over, but it made sense. It tracked perfectly, actually.
I reminded myself that this nervous, skinny, pathetic boy was a murderer. It wasn’t hard for me to hate such a fiend. Still, there was also something tragically sad about the boy. There was something so lonely and freakish about Daniel Boudreaux.
“I believe that you can shoot extremely well,” I told him quietly. I knew it was what he wanted to hear.
I believe you.
I believe you are a stone-cold killer. I believe you are a young monster, and probably unredeemable.
How do I get your gun?
I believe I may have to kill you before you kill me or Christine Johnson.
CHAPTER
100
I LOOKED at the words HAPPY, HAPPY. JOY, JOY. I knew exactly where the saying on his sweatshirt came from.
Nickelodeon. Children’s TV. Damon and Jannie loved it. In a way, so did I. Nickelodeon was about families, and it probably infuriated Danny Boudreaux.
He grinned at me! He had such a fiendish, madhouse look.
Then he spoke quietly, as I just had. He expertly mimicked my concern for him. His instincts were sharp and cruel. It scared me again. It also made me want to rush him and punch his lights out.
“You don’t have to whisper. Nobody’s sleeping in here. Well, nobody except George the Doorman.”
He laughed, reveling in his crazy, creepy inappropriateness. Here was the real psychopathic deal. Danny was a thrill killer in the flesh, even at thirteen.
“No. Not really,” she whispered.
“Shut the hell up!” Boudreaux yelled at both of us. He pointed his gun at Christine, then back at me. “When I say something, I mean it.”
I realized I wasn’t going to get the gun away from the boy. I had to try something else. He looked close to the breaking point, way too close.
I decided to make a move immediately.
I concentrated on the boy, trying to gauge his weaknesses. I watched him without seeming to watch.
I took a couple of slow, deliberate steps toward the living room window. An ancient African milking stool sat there. I glanced outside at the police lines staggered across the front lawn, keeping their distance. I could see riot shields and Plexiglas masks, battle dress uniforms, flak vests, guns everywhere. Jesus, what a scene. This mad boy had caused all this.
“Don’t get any funny ideas,” he told me from across the room.
I already had a funny idea, Dannyboy. I already made my move. It’s done! Can you figure it out? Are you as smart as you think you are, creep?
“Why not?” I asked him. He didn’t answer me. He was going to kill us. What more could he do?
There was a real good reason for me to be near the window. I was going to position myself and Christine Johnson on opposite sides of the living room.
I’d done it. I had already made the move.
Boudreaux didn’t seem to notice.
“What do you think of me now?” he snarled. “How do I stack up against those assholes Jack and Jill? How about against the great Gary Soneji? You can tell me the truth. Won’t hurt my feelings. Because I don’t have any feelings.”
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” I said to him, “since that’s what you want to hear. I haven’t been impressed by any killers and I’m not impressed by you, either. Not in that way.”
His mouth twisted and he snarled, “Yeah? Well, I’m not impressed by you, either, Dr. Hotshit Cross. Who’s got the gun, though?”
Danny Boudreaux stared at me for a long, intense moment. His eyes looked crossed behind the lenses of his glasses. The pupils were pinpointed. He looked as if he were going to shoot me right then. My heart was racing. I looked across the room at Christine Johnson.
“I have to kill you. You know that,” he said as if it made all the sense in the world. Suddenly, he was speaking in a bored voice. It was disconcerting as hell. “You and Christine have to go down.”
He glanced around at her. His eyes were dark holes. “Black bitch! Sneaky, manipulative bitch, too. You dissed me bad at that stupid school of yours. How dare you disrespect me!” he flared again.
“That’s not true,” Christine Johnson said. She spoke right up. “I was trying to protect those kids out in the yard. It had nothing to do with you. I had no idea who you were. How could I?”
He stamped one black-booted foot hard. He was petulant, impatient, unforgiving. He was a mean little prick in every way.
“Don’t tell me what the hell I know! You can’t tell what I’m thinking! You can’t get inside my head! Nobody can.”
“Why do you think you have to kill anybody else?” I asked Boudreaux.
He flared at me again. Pointed his gun. “Don’t fucking try to shrink-wrap me! Don’t you dare.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” I shook my head. “Nobody likes lies, or people trying to pull cheap tricks. I don’t.”
Suddenly, he swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine.
“I have to kill people because… that’s what I do.” He laughed again, cackled, and wheezed like a fiend.
Christine Johnson sensed what was coming. She knew something had to be done before Danny Boudreaux exploded.
The boy turned to me again. He swiveled his hips and almost seemed to be preening. He’s watching himself act like this, I realized. He’s loving this.
“You’ve been trying to trick me,” he said. “That’s why the calm Mr. Rogers voice. Backing off from me, so you’re not so almighty big and threatening. I see right through you.”
“You’re right,” I said, “but not completely right. I’ve been talking like this… real softly… to distract you from what I’m really doing. You blew your own game. You just lost! You little chump. You weasly little son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER
101
“YOU CAN’T SHOOT both of us,” I told Danny Boudreaux.
I spoke in a clear, firm voice. At the same time, I angled my body sideways. Gave him less of a target.
I took another step toward my side of the large living room. I widened the distance between Christine Johnson and me.
“What the hell do you mean? What are you talking about, Cross? TALK TO ME, CROSS! I DEMAND IT!”
I didn’t answer him. Let him figure it out. I knew that he would. He was a smart bad boy.
Daniel Boudreaux stared at me, then quickly back at Christine. He got the message. He finally saw the trap, subtle as it was.
His eyes bore deeply into my skull. He knew what I’d done. One of us would get to him if he shot at the other. He couldn’t have his final blaze of glory.
“You dumb piece of shit,” he growled at me. His voice was low and threatening. “You’re the one who gets it first, then!”
He raised the Smith & Wesson. I was staring down the barrel at him. “TALK TO ME, YOU BASTARD!”
“That’s enough!” Christine shouted from the other side of the room. She was unbelievable under the pressure, the circumstances. “You’ve killed enough,” she said to Boudreaux.
Danny Boudreaux was starting to panic. Wild eyes stared out from a head that seemed to be on a swivel. “No, I haven’t killed enough fucking useless robots. I’m just getting started!” His skin was stretched tight against the bones of his face.
He swung the Smith & Wesson toward Christine. His arms were stretched ramrod straight. His whole body was shaking and canted to the left.
“Danny!” I yelled his name and started to move on him.
He hesitated for an instant. Then he jerked the gun and fired. A deafening muzzle blast in close quarters.
He fired at Christine!
She tried to spin out of the way. I couldn’t tell if she had.
I kept coming, then I was in the air.
Danny Boudreaux swung the semiautomatic back at me. His eyes were filled with terror and intense hatred. His body shook with rage, fear, desperation. Maybe he could get us both.
I moved a lot faster than he thought I could. I was inside the radius of his arm and the outstretched gun.
I crashed into Danny Boudreaux as if he were a full-grown man, an armed and dangerous one. I crushed him with a full body-blow. I relished the contact.
Danny Boudreaux and I were down in a sprawling heap. We were tangled up, a mass of flying arms and twitching, kicking legs. The gun went off again. I didn’t feel any blinding pain yet, but I tasted blood.
The boy screamed in his high-pitched wail. He wailed! I wrenched the gun out of his hand. He tried to bite me, to rip into my flesh. Then the boy growled.
He began to have a seizure, possibly from the drug withdrawal. A major surge of brain activity was being discharged in his body. He was thrashing his arms and legs. His pelvis thrust forward as if he were dry-humping my leg.
His eyes rolled back, and his body suddenly went limp. Foam spewed from his mouth. His arms and legs continued to flail and twitch. He might have lost consciousness for a second or two. He continued to drool, to make choking and gurgling sounds.
I flipped him on his side. His lips were dusky blue. His eyes finally rolled back into place. They started to blink rapidly. The seizure had ended as quickly as it had come. He lay limp on the floor, a pool of wild bad boy.
The police had heard the shots. They were all over the living room. Riot shotguns, drawn pistols. Lots of shouting and squawking radio-receivers. Christine Johnson went to her husband. So did two of the EMS medics.
The next time I lo
oked, Christine was kneeling beside me. She didn’t seem to be hurt. “Are you all right, Alex?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
I was still holding down Danny Boudreaux. He seemed unaware of his surroundings. He was streaming with cold, oily sweat. The Sojourner Truth School killer now looked sad, lost, and unbearably confused. Thirteen years old. Five homicides. Maybe more.
“Grand mal?” Christine asked.
I nodded. “I think so. Maybe just too much excitement.”
Danny Boudreaux was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. He sputtered, still drooling the bubbling white foam.
“What did you say? What is it?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and my throat hurt. I was shaking and covered with sweat myself.
He spoke in a tiny whisper, almost as if there were no one inside him anymore. “I’m afraid,” he told me. “I don’t know where I am. I’m always so afraid.”
I nodded at the small, horrifying face looking up at me. “I know,” I said to the young killer. “I know what you’re feeling.”
That was the scariest thing of all.
CHAPTER
102
THE DRAGONSLAYER lives, but how many lives do I have left? Why was I taking chances with my life? Physician, heal thyself.
I stayed at the Johnson house for more than an hour, until the Boudreaux boy and the body of George Johnson were taken away. There were questions I had to ask Christine Johnson for my report. Then I called home and spoke to Nana. I told her to please go to bed. I was safe and basically sound. For tonight, anyway.
“I love you, Alex,” she whispered over the phone. Nana sounded almost as tired and beat-up as I was.
“I love you, too, old woman,” I told her.
That night, miracle of miracles, she actually let me get in the last word.
The crowd of ambulance-chasers on Summer Street finally broke up. Even the most persistent reporters and photographers left. One of Christine Johnson’s sisters had arrived to be with her in this terrible time. I hugged Christine hard before I left.
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