Kill the Messenger

by Tami Hoag

  Glancing over his shoulder, Jace could see the cycle racing up the opposite side of the street. He would make it to the intersection before Jace did.

  The light at Olive and Fourth turned red. Nothing blocked the intersection. The motorcycle bounced off the curb, hit Fourth, screamed into a hard left turn.

  Pumping, pumping, pumping, Jace’s thighs felt as though they would burst. He willed more speed, but it didn’t seem to come. The motorcycle ran the intersection and horns blasted as he split the oncoming cars on the one-way street.

  Jace made the corner, went left, stuck close to the meters so he couldn’t get pinned against the buildings if the cycle made it to the sidewalk. He could see his pursuer pushing between cars up ahead of him, trying to come across.

  Turning left again, Jace cut through a small plaza with a fountain, and came to a halt. Before him was the precipitous drop of the Bunker Hill Steps, a stone double staircase with a waterfall running between the two sides. It dropped like a cliff down to Fifth Street, where traffic was now gridlocked. Sirens were screaming.

  Jace looked down to the bottom. It would be his death or his salvation. He swallowed hard. Horns were still blasting behind him. He could hear the motorcycle getting closer.

  Jace glanced back, saw the headlights coming, turned to the drop in front of him, took a deep breath, and went over the edge.

  Several people rushed to the aid of the guy with green hair. Kyle ran past him, chasing the motorcycle, chasing Damon. Parker went to Abby Lowell. She lay over the back of the park bench, as if she had just turned to watch the action leave the park.

  “Ms. Lowell? Are you all right?” he called above the noise. People were shouting, sirens were wailing.

  Blood stained the back of her aqua vest. She’d caught a bullet. He rested a knee on the bench, bent over her, carefully swept her long hair back so he could see her face.

  The brown eyes that rolled to look at him were wild with fear. Her breath was wheezing in the way of an asthmatic. “I can’t move! I can’t move! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  Parker didn’t try to move her to see if the bullet had exited. She could bleed to death right in front of him, but if he turned her and a bone or bullet fragment shifted the wrong way, she would be a quadriplegic. Hell of a choice.

  “We’ll have an ambulance here in two minutes,” Parker said, pressing two fingers to the side of her throat. Her pulse was galloping like a racehorse. “What did you feel? Did you feel something hit you from behind?”

  “In my shoulder. Yes. In my back. Twice. Am I shot? Oh, my God. Am I shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  She was sobbing now, hysterical. No sign of the stoic, controlled woman trying to bravely deal with the fact that her murdered father lay on the floor at her feet.

  “Why did you come here?” Parker asked. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket, carefully reached under her, and felt for exit wounds. “Who set it up?”

  She was crying so hard, she was gagging and choking herself.

  “Who told you to be here?” Parker asked again. He pulled the handkerchief back, dyed red with blood.

  “He did!” she said on a wail. “Oh, my God, I’m going to die!”

  “You’re not going to die,” Parker said calmly. “The paramedics are here. They’ll be with you in a minute.”

  The EMTs had run to the fallen Green Hair and were trying to revive him. He lay on the ground like a broken doll, staring at the afterlife.

  “Hey!” Parker called. “I’ve got a GSW here! She’s bleeding!”

  One of the EMT crew looked up and acknowledged him. “Coming!”

  Parker turned back to Abby. “Who called you? Who called Davis?”

  She couldn’t have cared less about what Parker wanted to know.

  It didn’t matter anyway. He had simply been shocked to see Damon show, and he wondered if the kid really had tried to reach out to him. And what it meant if he had.

  He hoped he would get a chance to find out.

  The Beast bounced and slipped on the stone steps. Going too fast. Jace touched the brakes, twisted a little sideways, angling the bike, trying to control his descent.

  Déjà vu. He’d had this dream a hundred times. Out of control, hurtling down, his equilibrium rolling and tumbling in his head. He couldn’t tell if he was right side up or ass over teakettle. Nausea rose in his throat.

  The bike banged down the steps, back end threatening to overtake the front. Jace tried to make a correction, shifting his weight, and The Beast kicked out from under him and tumbled the last fifteen steps to the sidewalk. Jace rolled and bounced after it, trying to grab hold of something, anything to slow his fall.

  He landed at the bottom, and immediately looked back up toward the fountain, toward Fourth Street. The motorcycle sat at the top. Even as he watched, the lunatic with the throttle in his hand made a decision, and the angle of the headlights tipped dramatically downward.

  Crazy bastard.

  Jace grabbed his bike up off the ground, climbed on, pointed it down Fifth. He raced around the corner at Figueroa, turning toward the Bonaventure Hotel. He checked back over his shoulder again and again. No motorcycle.

  He lost himself then, in the same spot he had started his day, under the tangle of bridges that connected downtown to the Harbor Freeway. The place where, three days ago, he had hung out with the other messengers waiting for calls from their dispatchers, all of them complaining that it was going to rain.

  His pursuer—if he survived his descent to Fifth Street—would assume Jace had turned down one street or another. He wouldn’t think to look here. Jace hoped.

  Jace hid the bike and himself behind a huge concrete footing, out of sight from the street. He stripped off his backpack and dropped it, stripped off his coat and threw it on the ground, so hot he thought he was going to vomit. His shirt was soaked with sweat, the kind that reeked of fear. He was shaking like a malaria victim. His legs gave way beneath him and he went down on his knees.

  Shit like this only happens in the movies, he thought, bending forward, curling himself into a ball on the ground.

  What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck just happened?

  The images flashed through his head. He was going to have nightmares for the rest of his life. The panhandler with the green hair. The cops, the guns. The guy on the motorcycle.

  Who the hell was he? Predator? He’d ditched the big gas hog for a rice burner? He had been scary enough in a car. With the motorcycle helmet, the extreme shape of the sport bike, he was a demon from hell for the Matrix age.

  How had he known to be there? How had the cops known? It didn’t make sense to Jace that Abby Lowell would have tipped off either of them. Why would she? She was in on it, whatever “it” was.

  Jace had tried to call the detective she had told him was in charge of the case, Parker. But he hadn’t gotten him, and even if the woman he’d spoken to had acted immediately, there’d been no time for them to get people set up in the park. The green-haired guy had been there an hour before Jace had made the call.

  Abby Lowell had double-crossed him. She had thought she could get him arrested and walk away scot-free. So she had called Parker earlier in the day, probably right after Jace had spoken with her. But if she had set it up, she would have walked away without the negatives, and the negatives were what everybody wanted. The negatives were still in their envelope, still taped to Jace’s belly.

  And even if she had called in the cops, that still didn’t explain Predator, if that was even who had been chasing him.

  What the hell could he do now?

  His pulse had slowed. His breathing had evened out. He was cold, the sweat dried on his skin by the chill of the night air. He wanted not to think, not to have to. He was alone. The light was weird under the bridge, dark, but dappled in spots with the diffused white glow from the streetlights above, like moonlight filtering down through a concrete forest. The hum of tires on the road ab
ove him was like white noise seeping into his exhausted brain.

  He pushed himself up onto his knees, shrugged into his coat, reached for his backpack, and dug out his space blanket. The walkie-talkie fell out of it as he unfolded the blanket.

  Jace picked it up, turned it on, and held it next to his face, but he didn’t press the call button.

  His voice would telegraph his fear, his fear would leap across the airwaves, go into Tyler’s ear, and frighten him to the core. Bad enough not to know what his big brother was up to, worse to know what he was up to, worse still to know that he was afraid.

  What could he say to the kid anyway? He didn’t know what to do. People were trying to kill him. Every way he turned, he only became more entangled in the mess, like he’d walked into a bramble bush.

  I’m fresh out of plans, he thought. He felt hollow inside, like he was just a shell, and if someone was to give him a good kick, the shell would shatter into a million pieces and he would cease to exist.

  “Scout to Ranger. Scout to Ranger. Come in, Ranger. Do you read me?”

  The walkie-talkie crackled, speaking into the side of Jace’s head. He didn’t even jump. It was as if his mind had conjured his brother’s voice.

  “Ranger, do you copy? Come on, Jace. Be there.”

  He could hear the worry, the uncertainty in Tyler’s voice. But he didn’t answer. He couldn’t. What could he say to Tyler after screwing up their lives this way?

  He just squeezed his eyes shut tight, and whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  43

  Tyler put the radio in his backpack and tried really hard not to start crying. He thought maybe he would pull out a granola bar and eat it to distract himself. It was suppertime anyway. But the idea of eating made him feel sick, so he didn’t.

  He went back inside the Central Library, his base of operations for most of the day. It somehow made him feel calmer to be in this big, solid, beautiful building full of things he loved, books. All that knowledge and wisdom and excitement and mystery around him, his for the small price of reading words.

  But he was really tired now, and he still didn’t have a plan that didn’t involve superpowers, like Spider-Man had. And he doubted there was a single book in this building that could tell him what to do next. He kept thinking if only he could talk to Jace, but Jace hadn’t answered a single radio call all day, and that made him worry.

  Why would Jace have bothered to take the radio with him if he wasn’t going to use it? Did the fact that he wasn’t answering mean he was out of range, or that his batteries were dead? Or did the fact that he wasn’t answering mean he couldn’t answer? And if he couldn’t answer, was it because he was in jail, or in a hospital because he’d been shot, or that he was dead?

  Or maybe he was just plain gone—out of LA to Mexico or someplace—and Tyler would never see him again. Just like when their mother had died. She’d gone out the door with Jace to go to the hospital, and never came back. No good-bye, no I love you, no I’ll miss you. Just gone.

  That horrible empty feeling came over him from the inside out, like giant jaws opening to swallow him whole. Tyler pulled his feet up on the bench and hugged his arms around his knees, holding tight as his eyes welled up again.

  Jace always told him he borrowed trouble. That wasn’t true, Tyler thought, or else he would have for sure given it back to whoever he was supposed to have borrowed it from.

  He had thought maybe if he went to the places he knew the bike messengers hung out, he would find Jace.

  Jace never told him anything, but Tyler had long ago gotten on the Internet to find out everything he could about the bike messengers who worked downtown. He knew there were about a hundred messengers working for about fifteen different companies. He knew the “tag price” was the base price the client paid for the delivery. He knew the difference between being W-4 (having taxes withheld from salary) and 1099 (being an independent contractor).

  Tyler knew that there were certain places that the messengers hung out together when they were between runs. So he had walked to the Spring Street station in Chinatown, taken the Gold Line train to Union Station, transferred to the Red Line, got off at the Pershing Square station, walked down Fifth to the corner at Fifth and Flower.

  On one side of the street, messengers were hanging around in front of the library, but none of them was Jace. He went into the Carl’s Jr. on the other side of the street and found plenty of weird-looking people—a bald guy with his head tattooed all over, Goth kids with piercings everywhere, green hair, pink hair, dreadlocks—but Jace was not among them.

  At Fourth and Flower, Tyler walked up and down in front of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, looking across the street at the messengers hanging out under the bridge, but he was afraid to go ask them if they’d seen his brother—afraid for himself, on account of they looked kinda scary, and afraid that if he said the wrong thing to the wrong person, he might get Jace in even bigger trouble. Maybe that person would rat him out to the cops or something.

  But if Jace had been over there, looking back at the hotel, he for sure would have seen Tyler walking up and down. No one called to him, except a doorman from the hotel, who got suspicious. Tyler had beat it out of there in a hurry.

  Over and over during the afternoon, he had gone back and forth between the hangout spots and the library, each time thinking this time he would see Jace, but he never did. He had tried and tried to get him on the radio, but he never had. Now it was dark, and he was afraid to go back down to Fourth Street.

  Downtown was a busy place during the day, but once all the people in the office buildings went home, the only ones left on the streets were way scary—crazy, on drugs, looking for trouble. Not a place for a little kid to be walking around alone.

  Madame Chen would be worried about him, he knew. Worried sick. The idea made him feel really guilty and bad. He had almost called her a couple of times during the day, but he didn’t know what exactly he could tell her. He still didn’t know. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

  He worried that maybe the detectives had bugged the Chens’ phones, and if he called, the cops would be able to find him. He was already worried the Chens would be arrested for harboring a fugitive or something. And maybe the fish market was under surveillance, and the cops would see him if he tried to go back.

  Tyler sat down on a bench near the restrooms. The library closed at eight. He supposed he could spend the night here if he could find a good hiding spot. But if he was stuck inside the building, he couldn’t get radio reception, and what if Jace tried to reach him? Besides, Tyler could only imagine how creepy it was in here when the lights were out and everyone was (supposed to be) gone.

  He was right back where he started: alone and scared.

  Tyler stuck his hands inside the pockets of his sweatshirt and fingered the business card Detective Parker had given him. He didn’t seem like a bad guy. He was kind of funny in a cool sort of way. And when he’d told Tyler he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to Jace, Tyler had wanted to believe him. The other detective could have told him the sun comes up in the east, and Tyler would have been suspicious.

  Always trust your instincts, Jace told him.

  It was now 6:19. His instincts were telling him he wanted to go home. Maybe if he went up the fire escape onto the roof, he could sneak back into the building and let Madame Chen know he was okay. They would have to communicate with notes or sign language or something, in case the place was bugged, but then she would know he was okay, and he could sleep in his own bed, then sneak out really early and come back downtown to try again to find his brother. It wasn’t a master plan, but it was a plan.

  Tyler wiggled into the straps of his backpack and headed outside. There was some kind of commotion going on across Fifth Street, at the foot of the Bunker Hill Steps. People were standing around talking excitedly, gesturing wildly. Two police cars sat at angles to the curb, lights flashing. Traffic had come to a horn-honking standstill.


  Whatever it was about, Tyler wanted no part of it. He hurried up the sidewalk toward Olive Street, his backpack bouncing against his butt as he went. The thing was heavy with his life essentials—granola bars, walkie-talkie, Game Boy, bottle of water, schoolbooks, comic books, and pocket dictionary.

  Tyler imagined if he went up a really steep hill, the thing would overpower him and flip him over backward, and he would have to lie there like a turtle until somebody turned him over. Tomorrow he would leave the schoolbooks at home.

  He crossed Grand Avenue and kept going, but the traffic didn’t get any better, and the closer he came to Olive Street and Pershing Square, the more people and cop cars and disorder there seemed to be.

  The square was bright with floodlights and full of activity and yellow crime-scene tape and people shouting at one another. Tyler felt like he was walking onto a movie set, the scene seemed so unreal. He wound his way between people until he stood on the fringe of it all, eyes wide, ears open.

  “. . . and they were just standing there, and the next thing I knew . . .”

  “. . . Freeze! Police! And man, it was like . . .”

  “. . . insane! I thought it was part of the movie, even when . . .”

  “. . . the guy on the motorcycle. You mean that wasn’t a stunt?”

  “. . . shooting . . .”

  “. . . screaming . . .”

  “. . . awesome cycle!”

  Tyler had worked his way up to the yellow tape that was preserving the crime scene. He didn’t see anyone in handcuffs. He didn’t see anyone lying dead on the ground. But about twenty feet in front of him he saw two men having an argument, and he knew them both. Detective Parker and Detective Kyle. Good cop, bad cop.

  Detective Kyle was so red in the face, he looked like his whole head was about to pop like a pimple. Detective Parker was so angry, a cop in a uniform got in front of him to hold him back from hitting Detective Kyle.