Roadrunner

by Michael Lilly

  I slipped into Devin’s house for the last time and double-checked that my additions were still in place. They were.

  It had taken me some time to decide how, specifically, I was going to kill him. See, I didn’t necessarily want to make him suffer, although I wasn’t particularly averse to it, either. However, a longer death would mean prolonged potential for screaming or otherwise drawing attention to us. More blood, more potential for me to leave actual evidence rather than my fabricated kind. Only two things were really important to me regarding the kill itself: Firstly, that he died. Second, that he knew why. Not that that would change anything in the long run, but a sense of duty compelled me to ensure that he knew why his life is no longer his, that he forfeited control of its continuance when he used it to strip innocent women of their own. He needed to know that it wasn’t random.

  Keeping my nerves about me turned out to be easier than I had anticipated. Perhaps I had a knack for this. At the time, the thought killed me.

  I entered through the back door and he was in the living room watching TV. The flat screen was set against a window, for whatever reason. Must’ve been a bitch to watch during the day. I needed to make sure that he wouldn’t see me in the reflective surfaces of either the television screen or the window.

  I came with my .9mm in hand, but if I were just to shoot him right away, he would never know why he was being killed. Hell, he wouldn’t even know that he was being killed, unless I shot him somewhere not initially fatal and let him bleed out instead, but for reasons of avoiding detection, that wasn’t an option. In addition, I was no Beth, and I was thus incapable of landing that shot confidently anyway. So instead, I crouched low, approached the couch where he was sitting, and struck the back of his head, as far down as I could reach, close to the base of his skull. He leaned forward in an unconscious slump. I crossed to the front of the couch and tied his hands and legs to the chair, unable to suppress feelings of being a Bond villain. I removed his phone from his pocket and splashed water on his face to wake him up. He blinked a few times as his eyes focused. Then, he spoke.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he said.

  “Batman,” I said.

  “I’ll call the fucking cops,” he said. He began to struggle, but I know my knots and he wasn’t about to go anywhere.

  “Will you, now?” I said. I showed him his phone, and his hand tried to zip to his pocket, but my knots wouldn’t permit it.

  The panic began to set in. The struggling became more intense, violent. His adamant anger turned to fear. He screamed twice for help, but I was growing more confident that there was no one within earshot. Still, I wanted to shut that noise up as fast as possible.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He was trying to tap into his anger for a substitute for the newly rooted fear, but those roots are already strong and deep.

  He continued, “I’ll fucking kill you!”

  “Ah, but you won’t. I’m not pregnant.”

  At that, his face became an ugly gray color. If I had needed any more certainty to his guilt, that color did it. Good. He knew. Sweat started to build under my double-layered gloves. I pointed my piece at his forehead. The screams and struggling intensified, and for a moment, I doubted whether I’d be able to land my shot. But I held my arm steady, and eventually, he slipped into my aim for just long enough for me to pull the trigger. I stood for a couple of minutes in my crouched stance, having lowered myself slightly, to what I hoped was Angie’s approximate height.

  As soon as I could get myself to move, I lowered my arm and let the idea sink in: I took a life. The television played on in the background; my first ever kill was set to the enchanting allure of Steve Urkel.

  I gathered myself mentally and bobbed through the front door, leaving the main door open and allowing the slowed screen door to clack shut behind me, its echo following after me into the darkness. I picked up speed and ran to Angie’s house, but not to enter. Instead, I deposited the exterior pair of gloves and the gun into the trash bin she kept to the side of the house. Up to that point, I hadn’t been too careful-it could only help my endeavor if someone saw a dark figure bolting from Devin’s house to Angie’s, but then in the aftermath, I needed to be invisible on my return trip. I had a nosy neighbor downstairs, but she would be too engrossed in her drama-filled dreams to stir at my return. I made a mental note to learn how to navigate the staircase to my apartment as quietly as possible.

  And once again, I was off into the night. This time, I avoided taking roads, opting instead for the private (but intrusive) route of Riverdell’s backyards, some of them overgrown, having had no attention since the prior autumn.

  Perhaps it came as a result of my fantasizing about freedom in desperate perpetuity throughout my youth, but in my teens, I found and fostered an interest in parkour that bordered on obsession. As a teen, it was useful as a means of catharsis and travel. As an adult, it came in handy now and then in my police work. Now, it came in as a tool to help me escape the eyes of the police. In a town that emulated the most stereotypical of suburban lifestyle, there were hardly alleyways or close-built structures to make use of, but I could go between two given points in town in damn near a straight line from a bird’s eye view. Trees, fences, gates—they were my bitch.

  I arrived a block from my apartment building, and hid in the abundant shadows while I caught my breath; I was confident that no one was awake, but should someone see me, I would prefer that I not be huffing and puffing—nobody needed to know that I had been running. Plus, even with my break, if I got lucky and someone saw the house’s open door and they got an accurate time of death, nobody would suspect that I was able to make the run from Devin’s house to Angie’s, then my own, in so little time.

  But alas, the call didn’t come for another couple of hours anyway. Murder, no known suspects yet, gunshot wound to the head, piercing all the way through his cranium and coming to rest on the floor behind the victim. The victim was identified as Devin Bailey, twenty-eight years old, lived alone, was seen with a girl now and then, according to the witness accounts of neighbors. After some asking around, the woman was identified as Angie Miller. Down went the dominoes.

  Angie was found at home, asleep, and was taken in for questioning and, subsequently, detainment. During the search of her house, forensics techs uncovered a .9mm handgun and a pair of latex gloves bearing gunpowder, both matching the ammunition found at the crime scene.

  Angie was not a suspect in the murders of the pregnant women, but she had to have known: if she pleaded innocent to the murder of Devin, the investigation would deepen, drastically increasing her risk of being caught having had a hand in the pregnant women’s murders.

  She pleaded guilty.

  Later, an interesting piece of evidence surfaced in the form of a journal that I had missed. Apparently, it was a pocket-sized one like the other, but he kept it on his person. In it, he revealed that the single-digit texts referred to a series of drop spots and meeting places that the two had used before they began dating (at which point, I’m sure the ‘fuck it’ mentality took over in lieu of precautionary logic). Indeed, the date that the texts ended lined up nicely with the approximate time that Devin’s neighbors reported having begun to see her around.

  Also revealed in the journal, Devin’s mother had died when she was six months pregnant with his younger brother. The doctors were unable to do anything for either of them.

  There wasn’t a mysterious three-month-delayed task that Devin had been waiting to carry out. Those were his victims’ due dates, passed on to him by Angie Miller. His victims had all been six months pregnant, just like his mother was when she died.

  I didn’t plan on it, or even know it at the time, but that murder set the precedent for my killing career. Now, I wonder what Andre Romero might know about me.

  Fifteen

  My mind is abuzz with the potential outcomes of each scenario, following a branch, then a twig, then a leaf, then each vein therein, before moving on to the next
over and over again. As I mentally walk—or sprint, rather—through each of my kills, I become more and more confident that Romero is bluffing. I cover my tracks with the meticulous care of the OCD sufferer that I am. Again, I am human. But barely.

  “So what do you have that could land me in jail?” I say. I make a point of using finger quotes and making a mockery of the last part. I might have overdone it a little, but in this case, I suppose, I’d rather oversell than undersell.

  “Ah, but what would be the fun in telling you? You’ll have to guess!”

  “Good day,” I say. It’s a gamble—a big one—but the stakes are high enough that I can’t afford to sit and have my time wasted like this. Even if they do have some kind of evidence, and even if it alone is enough for a conviction, is it not better for me to be in jail than to risk the lives of more potential victims? I must leave this here and now. This time, he doesn’t call me back.

  Back in the lobby, Todd and Husk await. They perk up at my arrival.

  “Anything?” says Husk.

  “Nothing yet,” I say. While it is true that I got no useful information out of him, I also hope that my absolution is enough to deter Husk from asking anything himself.

  “Then why the hell did he ask you over here?” says Husk.

  “To waste our time. Distract us.” Both Todd and Husk look at me and I explain my reasoning.

  “Son of a bitch,” says Husk.

  “I say we look into the office where Romero works. Perkins is from out of town and he’s not about to stay in a hotel. As far as we know, Romero is his only contact out here, and obviously he’s not staying at the Romero household.”

  “All right. I like it. What about you?” Never one to speak out of turn, Husk asks Brooks if he’s on board with what pieces of a plan we have.

  Brooks nods. “Need backup?” At this, Lund perks up—he’s been bored, apparently—and puts his phone in his pocket.

  I’m about to say yes, but just then, Chief Husk’s phone rings. He picks up and his gaze flies elsewhere, taking his mind with it. The conversation thereof sounds distressed, intense. His eyebrows push inward with such intensity that they almost fuse into a hairy gray caterpillar. But rather than weaving a cocoon, it splits into two again when Husk’s eyes widen in surprise.

  “Someone is holding the Wometzia station at gunpoint,” he says. “The description didn’t match the Perkins fella, though.”

  “Oh shit,” say Todd and I.

  “Who called you?”

  “My wife. She went to drop dinner off for me, and saw it from the outside.”

  “What’s the plan?” I ask. Surely, someone is extending the effort to distract and divide us, but just like with finding Perkins, it can’t realistically be put on hold in favor of other things. But how exactly do we split up in such a way to carry everything out with as few casualties as possible?

  Husk says, “We’ll call in Kent and Simpson, assuming they’re not already at the station. I’ll meet up with them and see if we can’t take care of the problem ourselves.”

  “Take some of my men with you,” says Brooks. He looks at Lund, but Lund is staring absently at the floor. “I’ll make the call and send them your way. You’d better get going.”

  “You two,” he says. I’m not sure whether he means Lund and me or Todd and me. “Go see what you can find at the office, that lab or whatever.” Lund and me.

  I look at Todd.

  “I think I’ll just take a nap in the car,” he says.

  I would much prefer to have him by my side than Lund, but policy and procedure don’t really give a damn about my preferences.

  Todd and I walk out with Lund close behind us. Husk beat us out the door and is already pulling out of the station, en route to Wometzia’s. I hear several sirens engage in the distance, the small brigade going to assist him.

  Todd hugs me tightly before getting into his car, but he’s not a fan of PDA and Lund is right behind us, so he cuts it short.

  “Wanna drive? I’m exhausted,” says Lund.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

  We get into the car and shut the doors, and we’re off. I don’t plan to engage the sirens, but Lund attempts to make a case for them.

  “I just don’t want him to know we’re coming,” I say.

  “Makes sense,” he says. He spends the remainder of the car ride on his phone.

  “So, plan?” I say.

  “You go in ahead, and I’ll watch the entrance.”

  “Okay. Let’s do this.” A sense of unease washes over me.

  The building is smaller than it looked in the photographs on the website, but I somewhat expected that. The street is satisfyingly dark now, and the parking lot is intruded upon only by the reluctant spill of lights from the street and adjacent lots. I shut the door and put my hand on my handgun, which was returned to me when they found that I was not behind the kidnapping and mutilation of Stanley Romero. The car doors’ closing is muffled by an unseasonal humidity in the air. I miss the lightning and thunder.

  I make my way up the side of the lot, avoiding the pools of light, still and yellow. When I reach the end of the lot, I look at Lund and he nods in encouragement. I approach the building with caution, paying an enormous amount of attention to each step. The night is my ally—I know this. The main entrance—the south-facing one, looking out at the street, and the east-facing one are locked electronically and require a passcode to enter, if one does not have a badge.

  There was indeed a badge among Andre’s things, but even if we could have taken it, I would think that they would disable the locks after a certain time for security purposes. However, there’s another door on the north side of the building, with a traditional mechanical lock, and I hope that my lock picking skills (and tools) are sufficient for this heavier duty lock.

  It takes some practice, but on my third try, I manage to jimmy the sixth pin into place and the always satisfying turn of my tension lever followed by the click of the mechanism serve to applaud my efforts. The door swings outward and I step inside.

  Shutting the door behind me as quietly as possible, I step into a dark room with only a couple of LED lights blinking on and off. Otherwise, the blackness is pure. I crouch down, in case Perkins had been in wait, but I hear no other movement. Ears strained, all I can hear is a series of hums and whirs from the machinery around me. The purposes (and even the general shapes) of the machines elude me. I can scarcely discern enough of the silhouettes to navigate the room quietly, and even that is labored and slow, as if I’m hauling a sack of bricks on my back.

  I don a pair of gloves—always useful—and use my hands to feel my way around the room. The machines are mostly cool, seeing the majority of their action during the day and doing nothing more than sleeping idly through the night. A couple of the machines are warm, however.

  A calm, rational mind might try to determine what might have been going on based on the remaining warm machines, but even under closer inspection, I’m unable to tell what the functions of any of the machines are, the one piece of information necessary to arrive at any accurate speculations.

  As my eyes adjust further to the level of darkness here, I see two exits from the room, on either side of the far wall, leading east and west. I need to be looking for a storage area, or maybe a spacious utility closet. Although, as I think it, I suppose that if Perkins is indeed using this building, it’s a given that he studied the operations and maintenance schedules and has an intimate knowledge of when the building is entirely empty. That being the case, he could reasonably set up shop anywhere he likes, so long as it isn’t visible from the windows. And then, the windows are tinted, such that a curious passerby would have to do nothing short of pressing his face in on the glass to look inward.

  So, while a storage area would probably have the most ideal floor space available to Perkins (not to mention the easiest floor to clean up), I must be on the lookout at all times, not just on the brink of one of such areas.

  Quiet is some
thing I’m good at, but as I approach the west hallway, I gradually lose the cover of the machines’ ambience, and my footsteps grow comparatively louder. My shoes, it seems, will go no quieter for me. All I can hope for is that, when I approach Perkins, there’s some other kind of sound nearby to mask my own commotion.

  My heartbeat picks up and my breathing intensifies. My grip on my gun loosens as sweat begins to fill my gloves. In full awareness of my inherent vulnerability, I back up against the south wall, stow my flashlight under my arm, and alternate which hand holds my gun as I wipe each of them on my pant legs. I know that this will offer maybe a minute of dryness, at best, but I am a creature of habit and my anxiety is on the climb.

  I reflect briefly on the Devin Bailey kill, and all of those between that and my father. How the hell did I always keep my hands dry?

  I stash that soggy pair of gloves in my pocket, careful not to drip any sweat onto the floor, and withdraw another pair, but they won’t go on properly, catching on my excessively moist skin. The rigid, spindly fingers of panic threaten to take me.

  I hear muffled yells, coming from outside, it seems. Has Lund run into trouble? What’s the quickest way from here to there? My breathing and heart rate continue to accelerate, beats and breaths simultaneously bold and flimsy like a Pomeranian. My vision, already strained in the darkness, begins to blur, and the shapes of the room—machines, shadows, desks—come to life, each imbued with the spirit of a malicious demon, threatening, gnawing, gnashing, all coalescing in a silent, raging chaos tailored specifically for my ears.

  I slide down the wall into a crouch, distantly aware that I’m smearing DNA on it in the form of my back sweat, but logic is an operation that occurs on a different plane than the one presently holding the reins of my mind. Indeed, as panic sets in, I’m always aware of a lucid piece of my brain somewhere deep in my mind, but when enveloped by the deathly grip of a panic attack, finding and extracting that place takes a back seat to other priorities, like surviving the assault from the printers and desks.