by Nick Petrie
He slipped through the kitchen and went to the front hall. It was dark and he tried not to bump into things. It smelled like his grandmother’s house when he was a boy. He could see a light on at the reporter’s house through the big front window. He turned to look up the stairs and saw a small, pale shape at the top.
“Who’s there?” Her voice thin but not soft.
“It’s just me, Grandma.” Edgar started up the steps. “I wanted to see you.”
“Buddy, you’re too fat to be my grandson.”
She turned on the light but he was already reaching for her. She tried to back away but he had her thin upper arm tight in his fist. In the other fist, he raised the axe.
“I don’t have anything you want,” she said. “I’m just an old lady.” Then she got a closer look at him. “Hey, you don’t look so good.”
He felt the sweat beading on his face and under the sweatshirt. The Tylenol hadn’t done much. Plus getting through the fence and hitting her door had opened things up again. It was harder to pretend he wasn’t damaged.
“I need your hands,” he said. “I need you to bandage me up.”
Her face was all sags and wrinkles. Her hair was steel gray and cut short. Her white cotton nightgown hung below her knees. “You’re the man with the van,” she said. “From earlier today.”
He nodded.
“All right.” She tugged her arm and he released his grip. “I’m Fran. Come into the bathroom.” She turned away, then stopped and pointed at the axe. “Put that thing down before you hurt somebody.”
* * *
—
He put Mike Dillman’s kitchen knife in his sock where he could reach it, then sat on the green carpeted toilet seat cover while she sorted through the supplies he’d brought. Her bathroom smelled like his grandmother’s bathroom, too. Talcum powder and Listerine.
She told him to take the sweatshirt off, then peeled away his makeshift dressings. She ran water in the sink until it steamed, then soaped a washcloth and began to scrub his wounds. Every muscle clenched and he wanted to close his watering eyes but he didn’t. It took longer than he liked.
When she finally sprayed disinfectant into the raw meat, the pain eased and he knew he had begun to heal. He angled his head to watch her. “You’re not afraid of me,” he said.
“Of course I am. Have you looked in the mirror?” She opened a box of gauze. “But when you’re almost ninety-eight, you know the grim reaper will show up sooner or later. Maybe you’re him.”
She packed the gauze into the entry wound, taking her time, then laid more on top. She ran strips of tape across the bandage to hold it in place, glanced at her watch, then tapped his shoulder. “Turn.”
He spun on the seat and she began to pack the exit wound, pressing the wads in with her thumbs. He made a sound. “Sorry,” she said. “The back is worse than the front.”
He cleared his throat. “You were a nurse?”
“I grew up on a farm,” she said. “And my husband, God rest his soul, he and his friends were kind of accident-prone. Anyway, I’ve done my share of fixing people up.” She got the tape on, then tapped his shoulder again. “Time for that ear.”
He bent his neck to the side and saw her glance at her watch again. “Are you waiting for someone?”
“It’s almost six,” she said. “Usually I’ve had breakfast by now. And New Day starts in a few minutes.”
She held up the shears he had bought, still in their wrapper. “Do you want me to trim that torn skin or just tape it up?” The reporter’s bullet had blown a ragged hole into the upper cartilage, and flaps of ear hung free and bleeding. They were already dead and they didn’t know it.
“Cut away,” he said.
When she was done, he stood and inspected her work in the mirror while she put the wrappers in the trash and packed the remaining medical supplies into the bag.
“I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.” She walked into the hall. “Come downstairs and I’ll make an ice pack for your ribs.”
“You got any beer?”
“Just scotch,” she said. “And Girl Scout cookies. I guess I could make eggs if you want some. I might have bread for toast.”
She went to the steps. He was still in the bathroom. She looked at him. He could feel the knife tucked into his sock, pressing against the skin of his calf. He didn’t say anything.
She put a hand on the railing. “If you’re going to kill me, buddy, make it quick. I don’t want to lay dying on the floor for two days.”
He walked to her. He had the knife in his hand now. “Go into your bedroom, Grandma.”
She glared at him. “None of that pervert sex stuff, either. I’m almost ninety-eight years old. I’m all closed up down there.”
He took her arm. “Come on, now.”
She glanced at her watch again. Six-thirty. “Just one scotch,” she said. “Let me have one last scotch. It’s the good stuff.”
Out the bedroom window, the sky was red in the east and tree branches thrashed in the wind.
* * *
—
When Edgar was done taking care of the old lady, he put on his fresh shirt, then took a jug of milk and a box of cookies from the kitchen and stood in the living room away from the window where he could see without being seen.
It was a good place to watch. The light was still on at the reporter’s house across the street. She’d come home eventually. Edgar would wait.
A few houses down from the reporter’s, a front door opened and a man stepped outside. He wore a blue sweatshirt and held a coffee cup. Edgar thought he might be one of the reporter’s protectors. If he was in that house, maybe she was, too.
The man drank from his cup and looked up and down the block while the wind blew his hair around. He finally took something from his pocket and raised it to his ear.
In the kitchen, the old lady’s phone rang. Edgar didn’t move. It rang and rang and rang.
Across the street, the dog was barking again.
44
PETER
Peter paced through the quiet house, watching the light come up outside.
He had woken at five when Lewis had come up the creaking stairs. June had snored beside him, burrowed deep under the covers. He would let them both sleep as long as they could.
He made a pot of coffee and thought again about what they’d learned. It wasn’t much.
June had made a connection between the Virginia killings, the machete murders outside Metzger Machine, and Mr. Cheerful with his double-bladed axe. It sounded right to Peter, too. They’d go check out the Metzger location today.
On the Journal Sentinel’s website, June’s friend Dean Zedler had a story about the newsroom attack. The security guard, Jerry, was dead. An unnamed reporter had fired a gun at the man with the axe, but the attacker was still at large. The police were searching every corner of the city. The detectives had left a half-dozen messages on June’s phone before Peter had gone to sleep. She’d have to deal with the fallout today.
Peter still had no decent line on Spark. He wasn’t willing to split the team to have one of them sit on her apartment in the hopes that she’d come back, not with Mr. Cheerful still on the loose. Even if the fat man did have a few new holes in him.
Maybe June had made progress with that name she’d gotten from the florist. Graham Brown was a good alias for someone pretending to be ordinary. Graham Brown sounded like a lawyer from Phoenix.
Mingus came down the stairs and drank noisily from his bowl, stuck his nose in Peter’s crotch to get his ears rubbed, then went to the back door and whined. Peter let him out into the backyard, poured another cup of coffee, and stood at the glass and watched the dog go to work on the fence pickets again. The soft cedar was no match for those relentless teeth. Maybe Lewis should think about a metal fence instead of wood. Or concrete blo
ck with razor wire. Or just give up and admit that the dog was some kind of throwback to the ancient age before domestication.
The wind came up again. Mingus stuck his head into the gap he’d made and began to bark. Peter’s phone chimed softly and he knew it was seven o’clock. The daily alarm he’d set to check Fran’s porch light as she’d asked, to make sure nothing had happened to her in the night. Why she’d picked Peter instead of June, he had no idea.
He took his coffee out to the front porch and peered at her front window. Sometimes she forgot to turn off the light. Peter figured sometimes she just wanted a little company in the morning. He’d go over there and make her scrambled eggs and toast. But she wasn’t in her chair and the light was off in the living room. And she didn’t answer her phone.
Peter set his mug on the railing and crossed the street into the wind.
Her door was unlocked. “Fran? Fran, are you okay?”
The entryway was dark and small. The static hummed in his blood. “Franny, where are you?” Mingus had stopped barking.
Ahead of him was the stairway to the second floor and a narrow hall to the rear of the house. At the end of the hall was a slice of the kitchen with a chair tipped against the back door. He’d been in the house dozens of times and he’d never seen Fran do that. Something wasn’t right.
As he reached for the gun behind his hip, a flicker of movement flashed from the living room. He jumped back instinctively and jerked his hands up to his sides as the axe blade flew past his chest and buried itself in the wide oak trim of the entryway. Mr. Cheerful smiled at the other end of the handle, the happiest man in the world.
He wore a clean white dress shirt and a lump of gauze and tape over one ear. The shirt was snug enough that Peter could see the bandage over his ribs on his left side. He had a slight protective hunch over the injury, but if it affected his swing, Peter hadn’t seen it.
Edgar pulled the axe handle sideways to free the blade and Peter went for his pistol.
He had the safety off and was bringing it up with his finger moving to the trigger when the axe flashed out again. The blade smashed the Colt to the side and into the heavy oak newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
Peter felt the blow all the way to his shoulder and the gun was almost knocked loose, but he managed to retain a hold on the bottom of the grip, grateful he hadn’t lost the pistol or part of his hand. He brought the muzzle to bear again on Mr. Cheerful’s thick chest but his finger couldn’t find the trigger. He looked down at the Colt. The frame was scored and the trigger and guard were torn away by the power of the sharp steel blade against the solid old oak. He didn’t even know that was possible.
Mr. Cheerful raised the axe again, his eyes dancing. Peter was crowded into the stair landing and his options were few. He could retreat upstairs or attack inside. The axe was a bad weapon for close quarters and an attack would be unexpected. The gun would be his hammer. Plus, Peter was a Marine so it wasn’t really a choice.
But Edgar had made the same close-quarters calculation. His smile stretched and he tossed the axe behind him and pulled a big kitchen knife from somewhere at the small of his back.
Peter changed his mind about retreat. He’d find something useful upstairs, a lamp or a bedside table, anything to get him out of arm’s reach. A hand grenade was probably too much to hope for. He was half-turned with a foot on the first step when he heard a low growl and the fast clatter of claws on the front porch.
Mr. Cheerful’s eyes got wide and he slapped the entryway door shut. It hit Mingus on the nose and Peter heard a yelp. But the door hadn’t latched.
As it swung open again, the big mutt stepped into the gap with his legs bunched for a leap and his gleaming fangs bared and his growl rising as if from the darkest depths of a bottomless cave.
Edgar turned and ran down the hall.
Mingus went after him.
The back door was still blocked by the kitchen chair wedged under the knob. Edgar upended the table and threw it behind him, tried and failed to move the chair, then crashed through the closed window to the backyard.
Mingus dodged the table and scrabbled around it to put his front paws on the sill, gauging the leap. Razor shards of thick old glass made blades in the bottom of the window frame.
“No, Mingus, goddamn it, no.” Peter didn’t want the dog’s belly torn to shreds.
He pushed past the table and put his restraining right arm tight around the dog’s neck and aimed the Colt at Edgar’s retreating back, but the goddamn gun still didn’t have a trigger. Edgar vanished behind the garage and Peter heard a big engine start and tires squeal. Edgar was gone. Again.
Mingus turned his head to Peter, tongue hanging out, and gave Peter a big wet slurp across the face.
Then Peter thought of Fran.
* * *
—
Franny? Fran, where are you?”
She wasn’t in the kitchen or dining room or half bath or laundry. She wasn’t in the front hall closet. The basement was empty but for a giant humming chest freezer full of freezer-burned meat and boxes of Girl Scout cookies.
With every empty place, he felt the panic rising.
He imagined her fear and pain. He imagined her chopped into pieces like the family in Virginia.
It was his fault. He should never have gone into the market. He should never have moved into the house across the street. He was responsible for the death of an old lady.
He left Mingus whining on the landing and ran the stairs three at a time.
She wasn’t in the back bedroom or hall closet or bathroom. In the front bedroom, he saw a wooden chair jammed under the knob of a closet door. “Fran? Are you in there?”
He kicked away the chair and found her kneeling in the middle of the deep closet. She faced the door with an ancient black revolver held out in both small hands. With the light shining from the bedroom window, Peter could see the blunt noses of the rounds in the cylinder. The hammer was cocked. Her finger was inside the guard.
“Hi, Fran. It’s Peter, your neighbor. Put the gun down, okay? Are you all right?”
She wore a long white nightgown. Shoes littered the floor of the closet behind her. By her side was a large pair of old-fashioned leather work boots. Inside one, Peter could see what looked like an open box of ammunition, covered with dust.
“Oh, Peter.” Despite the beaming smile, her eyes looked sunken and wet. “I knew you’d come. Because I left the porch light on.”
“Very smart, Fran. Now put down the gun, please.”
She lowered the pistol to her lap and eased down the hammer without having to look at it. Her hands were blue-veined and translucent, but they were steady.
“I forgot I even had this thing until that horrible man locked me in here. I had to find it by feel in the dark. The bullets are quite old. Do they ever go bad?”
“Let’s not find out, okay?” Peter helped her off the floor. The revolver was not a modern weapon. The small walnut grips were worn smooth and the four-inch barrel had an odd half-moon front sight. “Where’d you get that gun?”
“Oh, it was my Bob’s pistol, so it has sentimental value. Do you like it? It’s a Police Positive.”
“Your husband was a policeman?”
She chuckled. “Oh, no. My Bob didn’t get along with the police. Do you know, he once robbed fifty-nine banks in twenty-six months? On a bet, if you can believe it. He got pretty good at it. Those were fun years.”
“Seriously? Your husband was a bank robber?”
“Well, not all the time. He did other things, too.” Her stomach rumbled. “I’m hungry. That horrible man wouldn’t let me have anything to eat or drink.”
“I’ll make you some breakfast.” Peter put a hand on her shoulder. “How did you end up in the closet?”
“He was hurt and I patched him. I used to do that for Bob and his friends, ba
ck in the old days. When I was done, he locked me up. I think he planned to be here until June came back, and he needed me to change his bandages. He told me if I didn’t give him any trouble, he’d let me go.”
“Did you believe him?”
She raised up the revolver. “Buddy, what do you think?”
45
SPARK
The morning bike commuters were gone from the valley and Spark had the Hank Aaron Trail to herself. All her gear was freshly charged, and her electric skateboard carved long, smooth arcs on the blacktop.
She stopped at the Valley Passage tunnel and took out her phone. It rang and paused and clicked and rang again before a voice answered.
“Hello. How may I help you?”
Spark remembered the voice from three years ago. It had gotten even better since then, with more realistic intonation. Indistinguishable from a real person. “Hi, is this Operator Ten?”
“This is Operator Twelve. You may call me Gary. How may I help you?”
“Congratulations on your upgrade, Gary. I need to talk to Vincent Holloway. This is Maria Velasquez. Vincent is waiting for my call.”
Gary was a chatbot, a kind of active filter that Holloway used instead of an answering service, an offshoot of a voice recognition and speech generation project. Operator Twelve seemed a little pared-down compared to Operator Ten, which had engaged her in conversation about the weather and sports. Spark had been completely fooled. Holloway had explained the trick when he was trying to steal her battery technology. It was like showing a child a puppy to get her into your van.
A short pause. “Hello, Ms. Velasquez. Mr. Holloway is in a meeting. Please hold.” Then silence.
She looked at the Valley Passage murals and checked the time.
Was he tracing her cell right now? She didn’t doubt he was trying. His security people would be top dollar. Not that they’d find her. She’d routed the call through the Philippines and Costa Rica. Even if they did, she was on the bike trail. They only had a few points of entry, and she had a million ways to leave.