Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  The keys.

  Jasper had wanted the keys. David saw no keys on the man’s belt, and he checked both pockets, avoiding the blood as much as he could. No keys. And the guard had probably carried keys to all the stores, in case of break-in or fire or something. So it was safe to assume that Jasper had keys to every store in the place.

  Not good. He could be hiding anywhere.

  But what was his plan? And killing the guard quickly like that went against Julie’s theory of torture and mayhem, didn’t it? So that meant that Jasper would kill quickly and coldly if he needed to, and only took his time when he wanted to. Would he hurt Bethany, hoping it would push him over the edge? Or what if he’d already killed her...

  No, couldn’t think about that. Had to get moving. The guy would use her as bait in the way that would give him the best advantage, and that meant keeping her alive, for now.

  He rolled the guard back over onto his front and saw that the guard had a pair of handcuffs attached to the back of his belt. They were covered with blood, but David worked them loose from the leather belt and cleaned them off on the guard’s pant leg before slipping them into his pocket. He had no keys for them, but maybe they might come in handy. The keys were probably on the key ring.

  All of the lights in the main area of the mall were on, and it was lit up very brightly. There was a small area of water and fountains on this end of the mall just outside the entrance to Hecht’s, and the fountains were running now, spurting water up into the air and crashing down with a dull roar. David was no expert, but he was pretty sure that the fountains should be turned off at night - it just made sense to not leave those things running. Jasper must have turned them on. But why? A distraction, or something more?

  David continued through the mall, stopping once to look at a directory. He had no idea where the lights and fountains would be controlled from, but he figured there had to be security office and maintenance areas where these controls were probably located. And there had to be cameras for watching the mall, and a loudspeaker system for paging.

  Thinking about the maintenance area made him think about the basement of the High School. Had that been tonight? It seemed like it had been weeks ago. He and Bethany had arrived at the school with Julie and Norma, talking and nervously planning what he would say in the town meeting. David had been carrying his father’s box of files, now lost in the destruction at the school. And Norma was gone now, too. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was only 11:00. Amazing, how time could fly at one moment and just crawl the next.

  Slowly, warily, he made his way through the mall. He’d seen on the mall directory that the security office was on the J.C. Penney’s end, of course - just another example of how things were working in Jasper’s favor. The security office was next to the bathrooms, across from the entrance to J.C. Penny’s.

  He walked slowly around a large, potted tree and in front of him on the tiled floor he saw a long streak of fresh blood, scarlet against the white floor.

  His stomach tightened as he followed it. It stretched from one side of the mall to the other, impossible to miss, and it led to the entrance of a store, a woman’s clothing store called “3 5 7,” whatever that was supposed to mean. The lights in the store were on but the gate was rolled down, one of those metal gates made of thick bars that can be rolled up into the ceiling when the store is open but pulled down to effectively keep out vandals or thieves. The bars of the gate were easily wide enough to see through, and as David followed the trail of blood, he saw someone lying on the carpet just inside the gate.

  It was Bethany.

  She was alive, and sitting up, but she was bleeding from what looked like a serious puncture wound in her stomach. One arm curled around her stomach, holding a shirt or something against her stomach to slow the bleeding. It looked bad. Her other hand was handcuffed to the leg of a large rack of clothes, but with the free hand she’d pulled one of the shirts off the rack and used it to slow the bleeding. A mannequin laid at a crazy angle next to her, pushed over from where it had been standing, blocking a clear view into the store. It had been shoved out of the way so that David could see into the store better, so that he could see her better.

  This whole thing was being planned down to the smallest detail.

  “Bethany?”

  She looked up and saw him and burst into tears. For a moment he was confused, and then he realized that she was so happy to see him that she couldn’t help crying. What, had she questioned whether or not he would come - did she think he was that weak? He was so glad to hear it that he began crying too - at first glance, she had looked dead to him.

  He grabbed the bars and reached in for her, but his arms weren’t nearly long enough. “Honey, what did he do to you?”

  She moved the hand on her stomach gingerly while keeping the shirt’s pressure on and laughed. David wondered if the pain was getting to her. “Oh David, he cut me, right by my belly button. He apologized while he was doing it, too. He said that it would bleed a lot and hurt a lot, but he said he was sorry.”

  Her voice sounded different, higher than normal. It wouldn’t have surprised him at all, remembering the screaming and the fading in and out as he’d driven out here from town. Pain was powerful, mind-numbing. Confusing.

  “He said you would come,” she continued, smiling. David wondered what she could have to smile about. “He nodded and smiled a lot and said you would come for me, and then you and he would have a talk about the future. What does that mean? What could you guys have to talk about - you don’t even know him, do you, David?” She shivered and let go of the bloody shirt to pull her jacket a little tighter around her. "He knows you, though. He kept calling you by your name. And '202.' What does that mean?"

  David just shook his head. This was very bad. She was losing a lot of blood. And the shivering was shock - if she passed out the bleeding might not stop. She would die attached to that metal rack of cheap clothes, chained like an animal.

  He looked up and grabbed the metal bars of the cage and shook them, pulling savagely up on them, but the gate would not budge. Jasper had cut her and locked her inside, and now it couldn’t be more obvious: Jasper was challenging him. David would have to get the keys from him somehow, and that would mean he would mean facing him. Confronting him.

  No better way to guarantee a confrontation than by giving David no choice.

  He looked back in at his girlfriend. “Honey, just keep the pressure on. Push that shirt as hard as you can – it’ll slow the bleeding. What else did he say? Did he say where he was going?”

  Bethany’s head came up and she looked at him as if noticing him for the first time. “David. You came...he said you would come...” she said, and a tiny bit of blood dribbled out of her lips, lips he had kissed a hundred times. The blood ran down her chin and dripped onto her sweater, one she had gotten from her parents for Christmas last year.

  It was almost more than he could bear.

  Seeing the woman he loved so much in so much pain, all because of him. He had to do something, he had to...

  “Yes, honey, I came. And I love you very much, and you’re going to be okay, all right? It’s not as bad as it looks. Now, what else did Jasper say?”

  She smiled again, and her teeth were stained red with blood. “Oh, his name’s not Jasper, it’s Jack. Jack Terrington. He told me that right after he stabbed me. Isn’t that a funny name, David? He wanted me to tell you his real name, his true name. Said it was important. And he said you two had to have a talk...what are you going to talk about?”

  He grimaced. “We’re going to talk about getting you to a doctor, honey. Now, which way did he go?”

  She glanced in the direction of the theaters and the food court, further down the mall away from where he had come in. “He said you guys were going to see a movie. An exciting action movie, with a gunfight at the end?”

  David simply nodded his head and tried to reach through the bars to touch her foot, just to let her know that he was trying h
is best, but he couldn’t reach. She was just too far away. He told her he loved her and turned away to go, but she called him back.

  “David,” she said, her voice suddenly clear and strong, the voice he recognized instead of the soft, baby voice she had been speaking in since he’d found her. He looked at her and saw that her eyes were momentarily clear, too. “David,” she continued, “the pain, it’s...just hurry.” Her eyes were sharp and dark and angry, and he felt a chill run though him.

  She was doing her best, but it wasn’t going to be enough. She was going to die.

  He nodded. “I will,” he said, and stood painfully and hobbled away. Leaving her like that, in such pain, bleeding and dying back there on the carpet of some stupid clothes store, was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.

  Jack was waiting, but not patiently, rubbing his chest where the girl had kicked him. She had been quick and had gotten a good hard kick in, right to his chest, and it felt like a rib or two might’ve been bruised or even busted. Must be that soccer all the young girls are doing nowadays. It made his breathing heavy and painful, and he had angrily cut her to teach her a lesson.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like that - Jack was going to use her to bring the boy to him, but after he had cut her she had bled a lot and he couldn’t drag her along – it was way too much mess. The boy was coming

  he's almost here

  and bringing the girl along had been genius. Locking her in that store had been smart too. Sometimes Jack surprised even himself. There was no way that the boy could resist coming after Jack had kidnapped the girl. Now there was no way he could save her without confronting Jack.

  And Jack reveled in the ironies of the situation. Before, Sheriff Beaumont had set up the situation, setting the trap to catch Jack and end his short-lived career. But that trap had failed and Jack had escaped. And now here, on some of the same ground from that night 18 years ago, Jack was setting a trap and baiting it to catch the only Beaumont there was left. It was delicious, the irony of the situation.

  Jack had regretted at first that the boy hadn’t been killed in the explosion at the school, but the more he thought about it, it was better to take the kid out like this, one on one, slowly, savoring it. It would come down to an epic showdown, a matching of wits between a professional killer, one who had spent his entire adulthood learning and perfecting the art of taking lives, up against a kid with little or no world experience. At first it didn’t sound like a very fair fight

  a gunfight, like before

  but Jack knew better. The kid was a Beaumont, and crafty. The girl had told Jack that David had figured out a lot about what had happened, even that the boiler was going to blow and had tried to rescue some of the people. The Beaumont boy was smart

  or lucky lucky like you

  and Jack knew it. If Jack was going to win this last fight, he was going to have to be on his toes. The kid was young and inexperienced, but he was clever, too, just like his father had been. Maybe it was in the blood.

  David hobbled his way down the mall, trying to put the bleeding, painful vision of Bethany out of his mind. He knew she was back there, hurting, maybe dying, and once he even turned back to go to her, but he’d changed his mind, reminding himself that the only way to save her was to confront Jack and get the keys. He had to get her out and get her to a doctor. If that meant killing the man, so be it. David didn’t think of himself as an especially violent person, but he would do whatever was necessary to save her.

  Suddenly he remembered some of the things he had been thinking about up on that mountain turnout, back when he was trying to decide what to do, where to go. He remembered thinking about his theory that anyone, no matter how tame they might seem, could kill another person if they were put in the wrong situation.

  There was a Rush song to that effect, a song he had sung along with a hundred times, singing the words without really thinking about them until that day in the mountains. The song was “Lock and Key”, and it was about how we all have a demon, a monster trapped just beneath our skins, and the right or wrong situation can unleash that Killer Instinct, letting it out to rampage and destroy.

  The song was about how we all keep that Killer Instinct locked up under ‘lock and key.’ For some people that instinct might be much nearer the surface than in others, but we all have it. And when pushed to a certain point, anyone, whether they be an Army General or Mother Teresa, would push back, calling upon those suppressed instincts that they usually kept locked up to defend themselves. Or those they loved.

  And David felt like he had reached that line, and maybe even crossed it. Or been pushed over it, more accurately. He didn’t feel any strong emotional compulsion for sympathy, felt no liberal need to try and see things from Jack Terrington’s “point of view”, no need to seek “rehabilitation” or salvation for the man. He saw no need for anything except helping Bethany, doing whatever it took to save her. And if he died to save her, that was fine. He would find the guy and get the keys, then call the cops and get an ambulance sent out here. She would need it, judging from the amount of blood...

  Phone. He could call and get someone out here. The cops were all busy at the school, probably, but that had happened over an hour ago and things had probably improved at the scene, at least enough for them to send a cop or two. Especially if he told them there had been a homicide.

  David reached the end of the first leg of the mall and hobbled up to the railing that overlooked the food court below, leaning against it and breathing heavily for a few moments. The whole leg was throbbing now, and he imagined that if he looked down at it he would be able to see it growing and pulsating with fire and pain. He shook his head, trying to put these thoughts out of his mind and concentrate on the situation at hand.

  There were a dozen or so small food shops in the sunken area below him. The middle of the food court was taken up by scores of plastic chairs and tables arranged around a large reproduction of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The towering copy of the Continental Congress building in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence had been signed, stood directly in the center of the food court, and in the top of the clock tower was a large copy of the Liberty Bell. Just below that on all four sides of the tower were the large round faces of a clock. Chimes usually rang on the hour and half-hour, filling the food court with sound.

  Off to his left, on the same floor as David, there was the entrance to the Cine-Six Theaters. Above the entrance was a large marquee listing the names of the movies currently playing, their show times, and their ratings. Opposite this on his right were a large arcade and a music store, both closed, and in front of them were escalators that led down into the food court. He started towards the theaters, hobbling around the balcony overlooking the chairs and tables below, and as he approached the theater he saw that one of the doors was propped open. Well, Bethany had said this is where he was headed.

  The inside of the theater’s lobby had been trashed. Posters had been torn off of the walls, the ticket-takers stand had been shoved over, spilling torn tickets all over the dark carpet, and the concession stand had been ransacked. Popcorn had been flung everywhere, blanketing the counter and carpet of the lobby like huge yellow flakes of snow, and cash registers and soda dispensers had been shoved over, their broken pieces lying scattered. Even the backlit pricing signs over the concession stand counter had been smashed, and little letters and numbers stood at strange angles or pattered slowly to the counter below. David could hear music and voices coming from somewhere behind these walls, like the theater was open and showing movies.

  Why? Why would he smash the concession stand? Candy and popcorn and hot dogs and nachos were scattered on top and all over behind the counter, and some of the thick nacho cheese sauce had even been spattered on the ceiling. If the guy had been that hungry, couldn’t he have just taken the stuff? Why make such a mess? It was almost like he wanted David to come in here and see his handiwork, almost like a diversion...

  Davi
d caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look in that direction, but it was in that moment that his leg betrayed him. It was probably the sudden twisting movement, but his leg buckled and collapsed, sending him crashing to the ground.

  He heard what sounded like the muffled bark of a big dog from the darkened area in front of him and, at almost the same moment, the tinkle of shattering glass from behind him. David had seen movement in that dark area past the ticket-takers stand, and as he rolled over to try and stand up, he looked behind him. There had been a framed poster of a new movie on the wall behind him, and in the middle of the poster was a small smoking hole. Broken glass lay in a fine sprinkling on the dark carpet below the movie poster.

  Jack was shooting at him.

  David had never been shot at before, and it was a completely new experience. His first reaction was to leave. Quickly.

  He used the wooden stick to pinion himself up off the carpet and limp out of the theater’s lobby as quickly as he could, sure that there would be another shot at any moment. His back felt gigantic, like a huge target as he limped from the theater. He made it outside and around one corner and stopped.

  It was all good and fine to go up against the guy and try to take him out if they were equals, but Jack with a gun and the element of surprise, and David had only his stick and a broken leg - it would be a quick, unexciting match up. No long, drawn out excitement there. David would walk in there and demand the keys and Jack would shoot him and David would die - roll credits, the movie’s over. No, they had to be on more even terms if he was going to get the keys, whether it be by talking him out of them or by taking them by force.

  Oh come on, who are you kidding? a part of his mind spoke up. You want to kill him, want to end this all right here, right now. Nobody expects you to come out on top of this, just like you’ve never come out on top of anything else in your life. But you want to kill the bastard, and that’s what you’re going to do.