by James Hunt
“I bet the bitch doesn’t show,” he said. “She’s an idealist, always has been. And they’re all talk.”
Cooper positioned herself on the second floor, and she saw the shadows of Quentin and his thugs shift on the floor of the foyer. She eyed the window of the room across the staircase, knowing from her scout prior to the meeting that a dumpster rested below, giving her a way out and something to help break the fall, should she need it.
With each foot Cooper planted softly on the old floorboards, she winced in anticipation of the one loud groan that would give away her position. But as she pivoted to the right side of the second floor, close to her emergency exit, she arrived without incident.
“I’m surprised you showed up!” The moment her voice echoed down the steps and into the room where Quentin and his goons were positioned, she saw the barrels of four pistols appear in the open doorway. Quentin stepped toward the open space, only revealing a sliver of himself, making a shot nearly impossible.
“I would say the same for you! So, I drove all the way out here. What did you want to talk about? For your sake, I hope it’s about the money you owe me.”
“I’m here to read you your rights.” Cooper drifted her gaze toward the front entrance, praying the agents wouldn’t take much longer to burst inside.
Laughter echoed up to the second floor, the old governor wheezing between chuckles, hacking and coughing as he caught his breath. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, Detective, but you’re wanted for murder, and for killing my brother no less, not to mention the cop you shot outside my bar.” The mirth faded with the mention of his brother. “You’re the last person I have to worry about right now.”
A groan sounded beneath Cooper’s feet, and her eyes shifted downward. Between the cracks of the floorboards, she saw movement, and when she realized the number of guns aimed at her in the hallway didn’t match the number of guns that had walked into the building, she rolled right.
Bullets sprouted from the second floor like weeds, each one looking to choke the life out of Cooper as she sprinted back up to the third floor, the guards at the bottom of the foyer emerging from their shell and joining the pursuit.
Cooper emptied the magazine of the pistol she’d stolen from the guard she’d killed on the roof and reached for the revolver, having to be careful with her shots now.
The gunfire ended, and again Quentin’s laughter drifted up with the smoke of the pistols and rifles. “Well, perhaps you’ve got more than just ideals in you after all. There isn’t a way out for you in this, Detective. One way or the other, I’m going to kill you.”
“I’m not the one that killed your brother!” Sweat poured from her body, the heat of the gunfire only intensifying the swelter of the old building. Her aim was glued to the corner of the staircase, where the security team would have to pass if they wanted to make another move.
“You think this is about Jonathan? My younger brother was an idiot. He couldn’t have made it to his position without me. I controlled him, and he had an easy ride. Do you have any idea how many people like him I have working for me? Hell, even our mother thought he was a worthless shit. No, Detective, this visit is about the money. That’s how you grabbed my attention, and that’s what I want.”
“You give yourself up right now and I promise I won’t burn the rest of your operations down.” Cooper’s hands ached from the tight grip on the revolver, her fingers curled along the handle like vines clutching a tree. “You’re going to jail, Quentin. And if that means us sharing a cell, then I’m game.” She waited for a response, but he never answered.
The thump of Cooper’s heart pulsed deep and slow. She kept the gun aimed at the door and when first two guards charged the sight along her revolver showed fists clutching grenades, the pins already pulled.
Cooper sprinted to the farthest room on the third floor and jumped through its door, curling herself into a ball as the grenades exploded, quaking the ground and cloaking the building in a fog of dust and debris. She stumbled to all fours, her hands and knees scraping across the room, which spun in every direction. By chance, her hands fell across the revolver she’d dropped just as a body charged through the fog of dust. She squeezed the trigger but didn’t hear the gunshot; she only felt the kickback.
The body dropped to the floor and red streams flooded the wooden boards, pushing their way through the settled dust. Slowly, Cooper’s hearing returned as she stumbled to her feet. The faint pop of gunfire broke through the high-pitched whine in her ears, and she clutched the window frame behind her. Once no one else entered, she stepped over the body, waving the remaining smoke from her face.
Cooper peered over the edge of the banister. The section of stairs between the second and third floors was completely gone, turning the old wood into toothpicks. Bodies moved quickly, and she saw the flash of FBI jackets flood the bottom floor as gunfire was replaced with shouts.
“FBI! FBI! Freeze! Put the gun down!”
Sound and coherent thought were slowly returning Cooper’s cognitive functions as she clutched what remained of the railing. One of the agents below looked up, and the two made eye contact. He raised his pistol, screaming at her, but Cooper sprinted back into the room where she’d shot the guard. She pressed her face against the dirty window, looking into the alley below, where she saw a cluster of agents. “Shit.”
Cooper sprinted back up the stairs, racing to the rooftop, as the shouts of the FBI agents on the first floor slowly faded behind her. She burst back out onto the roof, the sun fading on the horizon, and glanced left then right, looking at the adjacent rooftops.
FBI agents burst onto the roof to her left, all three armed with rifles they aimed in her direction, shouting their orders for her to freeze as she sprinted right. Gunfire thundered behind her, and bullets peppered the old tar roofs as she gained momentum near the edge.
The wound in her calf burned as she planted her right foot on the rooftop’s edge and pushed with every last bit of fading strength. She held her breath in midair, glancing down to the bottom of the alleyway, which rested at least one hundred feet below. The edge of the roof of the next building suddenly seemed farther away than it had before, and she felt her heart stop at the thought of falling.
But when her foot scraped the concrete ledge on the other side, she exhaled, tumbling forward as she rolled across the hot tar of the roof. She scrambled back to her feet, snatching the revolver that had fallen on her way, and sprinted to the next roof, the FBI agents stopping at the edge of their rooftop, unwilling to make the jump.
Twice Cooper dared the ledges along the row of houses, and twice she aced her landing. When she reached the fourth house, she headed to the rooftop door. A lock protected the roof access entry from any intruders, and with one squeeze of the revolver’s trigger, she broke the lock. Cooper descended into the darkness, the sun nearly vanished from the horizon, and stopped at the third floor when she heard the crack of wood and the entrance of the agents chasing her.
Cooper eyed one of the back rooms to the building and the window that overlooked the backyard. She wiped the grime from the glass and saw the top of a flat overhang that hovered above the building’s rear door. She smashed the glass with the butt of her gun and cleared the remaining jagged pieces.
Hurried footsteps thundered up the steps as she flung both legs out the open window, clutching the window frame with white knuckles. She lowered herself until she dangled, trying to lessen the distance between herself and the small patch of awning below.
“FBI! Don’t move!”
Though she couldn’t see them, their voices were close. Cooper released her grip and felt her stomach levitate in midair on the fall. Her feet smacked into the awning’s surface, and she buckled her knees to help absorb the shock of the landing, but when she landed on her ass, the struts keeping the awning in place were ripped from the wall, and she smacked into the earth below.
Pain rippled through her shoulder, and she sprinted toward the fence as the a
gents reached the window. Bullets peppered the closed gate as Cooper hobbled down another back alleyway and turned down another side street, sidewinding her escape from the agents scrambling to converge on her location. But they wouldn’t find her in this town, not with the ghost homes that lined the streets. There were too many places for her to hide and not enough manpower to search them all.
Night finally covered the sky, and in the darkness Cooper continued her run. With Quentin now in custody, she’d held up her end of the deal, and she knew the killer would hold up his. It was what he wanted. She thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out the soggy note he’d left for her at the motel. She flipped it over to where he’d written the address of her childhood home.
Chapter 11
The note was clutched between Cooper’s fingers, the ends flapping in the breeze, as she stared at the black and rusted upside-down numbers of 576 Westworth Way that clung to the side of the building with the aid of rusty nails. Old paint curled in long strips on the outside, the color faded.
The apartment complex was only four stories tall, but it dwarfed the surrounding structures in the neighborhood. Grey dirt, broken beer bottles, and trash occupied the front yard amid the graveyard of rusted playground toys, where she and her sister used to spend their time after school under the watchful eye of their mother. So much had changed since then, but a few things remained the same.
Poverty still plagued the neighborhood, and while it had been bad here when she was a child, the decades had done more harm than good. Most of the buildings that surrounded the old apartment complex were foreclosed, boarded up, and vandalized with gang markings and graffiti.
A siren wailed, and Cooper ducked behind the collapsing wooden fence that guarded the property. Her hips and knees popped from crouching low, and she peered through the cracks of the worn wood, where she saw two squad cars speed down the road. But judging from their trajectory, they were headed toward the drug shanties near the river.
Once the police were gone, Cooper returned her gaze to the steps of the complex. A quick flash of her mother watching her and Beth play struck like lightning in her memories. She would sit there and sew some of their old clothes, patching holes to make them last another year, or she’d be reading or studying for school after she decided to go back. You did so much, Mom.
Cooper crumpled the note in her hands and dropped it among the trash and litter of the yard. The ancient staircase to the front door groaned with each step. A foreclosure sign was plastered to the front door, but the planks meant to keep vagrants out had been pulled and cast aside in broken pieces.
Sunlight spilled into the main foyer as Cooper opened the door. Her shadow loomed over the floor and walls as she stepped inside, covering her mouth with her shirt against the rancid stench that greeted her entrance. She squinted into the darkness of the first floor hallway, where half the apartment doors were closed and the others open, inviting whatever animals had snuck inside to seek shelter.
But Cooper’s apartment was at the top. She drifted her eyes to the staircase, where they caught the faint shimmer of red letters. When she stepped closer, the words came into view, the fresh red crayon mocking her in the faded light of the foyer.
Does this place remind you of her, Detective?
An arrow pointed up the staircase, and Cooper removed her revolver from her waistband. She ascended the steps methodically, her senses heightened. She slipped on the last step before she reached the second floor, and when she looked down, she saw her footprint etched in a clump of dirt. Up ahead, a trail of soil wound up the staircase, where more crimson letters marked the wall.
Has the weight of your sister’s death crushed you?
The giggle of children echoed in Cooper’s mind, and on her ascent she watched the ghosts of both herself and Beth race up the steps toward their apartment on the top floor. Sweat beaded on her forehead, while one drop rolled down the bridge of her nose and dripped to the dirtied floor. The heat of the building and the lack of sleep were playing tricks on her mind. She’s not here. No one is here anymore.
Cooper kept the revolver aimed ahead of her, knowing it wouldn’t be ghosts she’d need to use it on. The ascension to the third floor was void of any more notes, but when she passed the third floor and started her way up to the fourth, the notes and scribbles became more frequent.
It should have been you that died.
The blood of family doesn’t wash off.
Do you remember when the two of you played in these halls?
Your mother pulled you out of here, and now I’ve brought you back.
The words were scribbled over and between graffiti that painted the inside of the building. Every step revealed new words and old memories. When she climbed the last few steps to the top floor, she saw the graffiti had been washed away, and a fresh coat of white paint had taken its place. And written over the freshly brushed paint were red letters that covered the walls from floor to ceiling.
Cooper lowered the revolver, her vision absorbing every word the killer had left behind. Some of the paint had dripped over the letters, hardening in thin streaks over the writing, giving the illusion that the wall itself bled, the white and red mixing together in a light pink. Cooper pressed her palm flush against one of the notes, her cheeks as white as the freshly painted walls that surrounded her.
Dear Detective,
My time with your sister was well spent. I learned so much about who you were as a child, your fears and insecurities. I filled pages and pages of notebooks from our conversations together. She was so willing to tell me about you just to stay alive. But while Beth may be gone, know that she still lives within both of us. She will always hold a special place in our hearts. And this is my gift to you, a retelling of your childhood and the path that led you to me.
Cooper felt her heart crack in half, and she dropped the revolver as she stumbled forward, her eyes reddening as she read the most intimate moments of her life. She touched the words written by a stranger, memories now tainted by his hand and written selfishly in the gutted remains of her childhood home.
Tears streamed down her face as she relived the time she ran away and her mother found her on the swing in the park and brought her home, where she fell asleep between Beth and their mother. The time when she was in middle school and got sick from the cigarettes she’d smoked with a friend. The long night she and Beth stayed up talking about her first date, reliving all of the nerves and anxiousness together. The virulent and wicked words she spat at her mother as a teenager when the anger about her father boiled over and she needed a punching bag on which to release her rage.
The killer had taken her stories, her memories, and twisted them into something evil and deformed. The invasion of privacy tainted her soul, and the killer’s sick fantasies had cast storm clouds over what moments in her life she’d treasured. Nothing was sacred anymore. He’d truly taken everything now.
The hall of memories ended at the door to their old apartment, and in thick bold letters the killer had written “enter” across the front. With her cheeks still shiny and wet with tears, Cooper pushed the door open, the soil on the floor that trailed inside thickening into deeper layers the farther she walked.
Inside, the apartment had decayed like the rest of the building, but the killer had left it how it had been. No paint. No messages. Cooper ran her hands over the fading wallpaper and the rotting drywall as she followed the trail of dirt into the living room, passing the kitchen, where she watched a rat scurry across the barren counters, dodging the fallen cabinet doors that exposed empty shelves and the droppings of whatever other creatures lived inside.
A few pieces of furniture remained, but the fabric of the couch and chair had been frayed and torn. The window in the living room was dirty, filtering the moonlight through layers of dust, casting the room in a grey tinge. Cooper looked down to the trail of dirt and followed it to the closed door of the bedroom she and Beth had shared.
Cooper trembled when she place
d her hand on the door knob, the piece of brass loose and one hard yank from crumbling into nothing but dust. She gritted her teeth and twisted the handle, her palm tightening over the hot brass.
The door clanked against the adjacent wall, and Cooper lingered in the doorway, her eyes following the trail of dirt to an old, worn mattress supported on tarnished brass posts. A pale hand hung from the side of the bed, and Cooper collapsed to her knees upon the sight of Beth’s corpse resting on a snow-white comforter, her eyes open but void of any life. The bastard had dug her sister from her grave, waking the dead to torment her one last time. And on the wall at the head of the bed, written in large red lettering, was another message.
Now you’re both home together, one last time.
Cooper crawled forward on her hands and knees. Snot and tears poured from her nose and eyes as she reached for Beth’s lifeless fingers. She clutched her sister’s hand like a buoy at sea, her skin cold and joints stiff. Even in death, the killer had defiled whatever was left sacred of her sister’s memory. He meant for her to rot with the building around her, to fester and act as fodder for the rats that roamed the innards of the complex.
All of the rage, all of the pain, every ounce of grief and terror and regret that plagued Cooper’s mind and poisoned her heart released with the blood-curdling scream that reddened her face and set her body afire. Tears burned up on her cheeks, and her bloodshot eyes stung from the sweat and stench until all that remained was hate.
Cooper clung to that feeling, letting the moment consume her, fuel her, giving her the needed push over the edge. The laws of men were no longer of consequence. There would be no trial, no judgment, only execution. With her sister’s death she had been given the black mask and scythe to end the lives too wicked and vile to continue. And now the killer had given her the strength to wield them.