Trying to sit up, I managed, “Look around dammit! It’s not here. And I didn’t leave you any message! What the hell are you talking about?”
The light dropped down to my chest and I could see a perplexed expression. The expression rapidly changed to unbelieving.
“Don’t even try it, kid. You think you’re so smart. I watched you badge your way in here. Ever hear of a back door, moron? Smokers prop things in the latch and forget to lock them all the time. I walked right in and walked the floors until I found the crime scene.”
Huh. Score one for the opposition.
“You had to find the crime scene?” I asked.
He stood silent. Empty breaths filled the room.
I followed up with, “So, you didn’t kill V? And what message are you talking about?”
The light dropped a little further down my chest. He was really confused now. I was a little confused myself.
The voice replied, “If you didn’t put that letter under my office door threatening to . . . threatening me with what’s on some flash drive, then why would you be here?”
“It’s a long story. Let’s just say that we are looking for the same thing for different reasons. Maybe we can help each other.”
I started to stand and my chest was greeted by a size 11 in the sternum.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he menaced. “If you’re looking for the flash drive, then what did she have on you?”
“Nothing. I think this all ties into Steven Thacker and Lindsay Behram. I think . . .”
The light was back in my eyes and another kick was delivered to my side.
“You know what’s on that thing! You do want to blackmail me! You almost had me, you bastard! Now, where the hell is it?”
Through gritted teeth, I explained, “I honestly don’t know. We both know you aren’t going to kill me, so let’s just talk about this.”
There was a canyon of silence while he thought this over. I had presented him with a logical option that made sense. Surely, he would see the light.
“Here’s the way I see it. Regardless of whether or not you know where the information is, you must know what it is.”
Uh oh.
“And here you are, impersonating a police officer in order to gain access to a sealed-off crime scene.”
He wasn’t seeing the light.
“And even if you do have the information stashed somewhere, you can’t really use that information if you’re dead, now, can you?”
He continued the lecture with, “And after I shoot you, I’ll search your body for the flash drive, leave this unregistered handgun behind, slip out the back door, and disappear into the night before anybody is the wiser.”
He smiled as another thought came to him.
“Who knows? A gunshot wound to the head in this apartment . . . sounds like remorseful suicide to me. When I realized where you were going, I assumed you killed the girl. I bet the cops will think the exact same thing. Cops love open and shut cases, don’t they? Yes. I think this would—”
The voice came through the apartment door before the person.
“Awwww, what the hell? I told you that if the door was locked then you were out—”
The silhouette of Officer Nokes filled the doorway, but only for a moment. The man standing over me turned in a panic and fired in her direction.
It’s called muscle memory. If you practice something enough times, then your body reacts to certain situations or stimuli in a particular way. You don’t mean to do anything, your reflexes just take over and you move from point A to point Z without even remembering passing through any other points. It just happens; and even after years of not practicing, you would be amazed at how the synapses in the brain tell the tendons, ligaments, and muscles to act under extreme circumstances.
I don’t remember thinking about reaching for the holster. I don’t remember smoothly unsnapping the holster and drawing the pistol in one fluid motion. I don’t remember lining up the sight at the end of the gun’s slide in between the two rear sights. I don’t remember pulling the trigger. But I did.
It’s simple cause and effect. The finger pulls the trigger. The hammer gets pulled back and releases forward. A firing pin slams into the primer of the bullet, causing a minute explosion. The bullet is propelled forward at over 1,200 feet per second and twists as it hits the grooves in the barrel. The slide of the weapon moves back and forth causing a sensation called recoil. The casing of the bullet ejects from the chamber and free-falls to the ground, having served its only purpose. The bullet spirals away from the gun and leaves all judgments, opinions, and traces of a conscience back in the shooter’s hand.
In this particular case, the hollow-point bullet struck Dr. Randy Walker in the side of his head. The entry point was small. The exit point was not. His corpse folded to the floor a beat after Officer Nokes fell victim to Randy’s shot. My training had taught me to shoot for the middle of the chest, but he had been turned toward Nokes and the light from the hallway had illuminated his head. I had automatically aimed at the best available target on his body.
I stood up and surveyed the dimly lit room.
Blood.
The smell of burned gun oil.
I checked the officer for signs of life.
Gone.
No need to check Randy.
His plagiarizing mind was on a wall.
Even with the music blaring from a neighboring apartment, the noise was surely going to attract attention. I had to make a decision. Stay and explain why I was in a crime scene with a Baltimore badge, a gun, and two dead bodies, or leave and continue my search for V’s killer. I used my flashlight and checked where I had been lying to see if there was any blood from my head on the floor. None. It was time to go. I searched for, and found, the shell casing that had ejected from my gun. I pocketed the warm brass and took one more look at those who had been living just seconds before. If I played this right, nobody would ever know that I was here. As I fled the apartment, I remembered some words often attributed to Ben Franklin: Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead. Seemed about right.
Mile 18
Most cities hide their defeats. They don’t hold parades through crime-soaked gutters or hold community picnics in postage stamp patches of grass that have seen too much. And most places certainly don’t send thousands of athletes through beaten streets—lined with beaten buildings—that are filled with the echoes of beaten people. This city isn’t most cities. This part of Homewood isn’t where dreams go to die—they were never dreamt. This town isn’t hiding its slow motion Hiroshima. It says: Here it is. This is us too. We know . . . we’re trying.
Like many parts of America, this neighborhood has transformed into a gangland where the vibrations of the honest are drowned out by an earthquake of violence. Bars on windows are useless to the innocents whose affliction comes from their own broken circle of trust. Illegitimate businesses operate on broken glass, in alleys behind abandoned storefronts. It’s real. It’s here. It’s no lie.
Exhaustion is blinding for most of us at this juncture, but we all see this. The race fires right into the heart of this disparity—a column of positive light being projected through the damaged streets. Police block the intersections, but there is little else to do here on a Sunday morning. Any wounds inflicted were done in the darker hours and only scar tissue remains. No water station here. No volunteers placed on the streets here. Not this place. The silence on these blocks isn’t peaceful, it’s a tiresome exhale.
This is how it should be. Not that this disrepair and neglect should be accepted, but it shouldn’t be hidden. To show off statues, stadiums, and successes and hide those who have missed out, is nothing more than a hypocritical shell game. Allowing the runners to see this area is a way of saying that we still have farther to go. We haven’t finished moving forward. This is truth. No recovery here. Not yet.
I burst out the back door that Randy had used and came to a halt to compose myself. A square pi
ece of cardboard was lying near my feet. At some point, the square was some smoker’s ticket back through the door. A cold rain was falling as the metal door slammed behind me. I realized I was still holding my gun, so I quickly de-cocked the killing machine and put it back in my holster. I started moving away from the building, not a run, but not a walk. Pulling the collar of the jacket up, I kept my face shielded from both the rain and anybody whom I might pass, as I made a wide circle around the block. Approaching my Jeep from behind, I slid into the driver’s seat and pulled away. In all my years in law enforcement I had never killed a man. Now I was setting a new standard of two a semester. I thanked God TRU wasn’t on the quarter system.
Ballistics: The science of the flight of and effects caused by flying projectiles. In this case, I was in possession of a handgun registered in my name that also happened to be a murder weapon. The chances were good that the hollow-point round that ended Randy’s life had fractured into tiny pieces, but the forensic techs would possibly be able to determine the caliber of the round. If the bullet stayed relatively intact, the striations from the grooves in the barrel could be matched to my gun. Taking the shell casing may have only served to make sure my fingerprints weren’t left in that room. Nobody wears gloves when loading a gun.
Checking the spot above my ear where Randy’s gun had struck me, I found no blood. That was good. Trace evidence can be enough to convict and certainly enough to arrest. I wasn’t too worried about fibers. People watch too much television and they think that crime scene technicians can find every little fiber and solve a murder in an hour. That’s not the case. Besides, there were countermeasures for that.
I pulled the Jeep into my garage, got out, and stripped off my clothes. When I entered the house, Sigmund took a run at me, observed my state of nakedness, hit the breaks, cocked his head, and decided not to lunge at me. Thank God for small favors.
From a cabinet, I grabbed a large garbage bag and put everything in it except my gun and wallet. After throwing on a pair of sweat pants, sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, I vacuumed the Jeep. I would have to shampoo the carpets and clean the upholstery the next day on my way to take care of my gun problem. In the meantime, I emptied a can of aerosol disinfectant into the car in order to add as many contaminants as possible.
Pulling the car back out into the driveway, I rolled down all of the windows, and let the rain in to soak the seats and carpeting. Temporary, but effective. Back in the house, Sigmund looked at me disapprovingly and walked out the doggie door into the backyard, rain be damned. I looked at the clock and realized I had only a few hours until I had to meet Brent Lancaster and give him my statement.
By the time the police found the bodies, processed the scene, identified Randy, and started looking for a suspect, it would be well into the afternoon. The people at TRU wouldn’t even hear about it until then, since any family members would have to be notified first. By the time anybody thought to connect the dots, take a close look at me—and check to see if I had a gun registered in my name—I would have taken care of everything.
Throwing the gun away wasn’t a good option. Having some lame story about it being stolen wasn’t going to help my cause. I had a better idea. For the time being I decided to hide the weapon, just in case. I put the gun into a waterproof bag and took a shovel from the garage. Sigmund watched me through the small openings between the fence boards as his idiot owner dug a hole in the mud out in the dark woods. In case I had any inquisitive visitors, having a bad story about a gun being stolen would still be better than being caught with conclusive evidence. I just had to make it until the afternoon. Then I would be able to regain some control over the situation.
Taking off my muddy shoes, I walked back through the house and grabbed my third pair of shoes for the day. I walked back through the garage, picked up the garbage bag, and took the hangman’s evidence out to the Jeep. A short drive later, I tossed the bag and my muddy shoes into a dumpster behind a strip mall. My clothes and the seats of the car were soaking wet and chilled my bones. Coming up on a traffic signal, I pressed down on the brake pedal, looked in the rearview mirror, and saw nothing but red-tinted rain behind me.
The shower at home was steaming and the hour of dampness had pruned my fingers. The steam filled the bathroom and clouded the mirrors. Water washing over water. No real cleansing, just immersion. Facts floating around in the steam, unable to find each other. Unable to connect. The rush of escape was fading and my entire body raged with pain.
Randy had searched the building for the exact apartment in order to find me.
He didn’t know where it was, because he hadn’t been there.
He didn’t kill V.
My message? He received a message with my name on it threatening to blackmail him? Somebody knew that I knew. V had told her killer everything. The flash drive was history. The killer had it. But I knew what was on it.
I was the threat, and the killer had unleashed an angry desperate man on me. What did Randy think that I knew? Merely about the plagiarism, or did he think I had more? It didn’t matter. I couldn’t ask him. Somebody had pulled his strings and counted on one or both of us dying.
This was hand-to-hand combat. Somebody was using my strength against me. They knew the source of my power—I would keep pushing. I would always keep coming. Pursuing. And he just kept pulling. Using my force as a weapon. Letting my momentum pull me right past him, into one obstacle after another.
No more mistakes. Cut the strings. Randy didn’t do it. One more kill, but one less suspect.
It’s always good to look at the bright side.
Mile 19
Descending through Homewood West the houses stand a little taller. Torn sofas in the front yard are gradually replaced by shrubs. A local business appears on one block, two on the next. A gulp of water from a volunteer’s hand washes down a tasteless piece of my pastry. Continuing hurts, but stopping would hurt worse. This is when the body just keeps moving because it doesn’t know any better. The autopilot is turned on, but can’t be fully trusted. The sun has pushed my shadow in front of me and the dim silhouette is pulling my chest toward the ground. I have to run tall. Maintain form. Don’t even let your shadow see your pain.
Frankstown Avenue is the start of the runway to the finish. The sun on my back means the city is to my front. A few more hills will taunt me, but most of the course will slouch into submission if I can just keep moving.
Ignore the shoulder.
Ignore the legs.
Remember the mission.
Liberty Avenue is up ahead. The beginning of the civilization we choose to accept. Not rich, not poor, the last of the middle-class warriors. Finding the right pace is becoming more difficult than I thought. I have to move slowly enough to stay behind him and fast enough to outrun my doubts. For the first time, I feel them gaining on me—honing in on my location and trying to lock on. I thought I could outrun them, but now I’m not so sure. Can I pull this off? Have I left out any details? Did I miss something crucial? Something damning? It has to be perfect. The worst questions of all creep into my thoughts.
Am I right?
Should I be doing this?
Am I any better than him?
This can’t be the ideal. This is something much more savage. If Dostoyevsky were writing my story, he would have my conscience compel me to fall to my knees and answer for my sins. Confess all and the human spirit will overcome. He would have me lower my head in defeat to the detectives and unload all of my burdens. The ideal is right in front of me. I can still touch it. Questions hit every time my soles compress against the warming road. Stop this madness before it gets any worse. How many hearts have to stop beating to make this right?
I think about Lindsay. The fear that must have been in her eyes when she realized she was overpowered. Her panicked lungs begging for air. Her desperate clawing, knowing it was all coming to an end.
I think about V. Pigtails dipped in blood after what must have been a torturous few minutes with a
sadist wielding a fireplace poker. The fear. The pleading. Any remaining innocence extinguished. She gave up everything and it still wasn’t enough for him. Only death was payment enough.
I think about Steven. The blackness in his eyes. The premeditated attack from nowhere. His arrogance. I think about that day in my office when he held up that paper with the misspelled Latin phrase. He pointed to those words with condescending disbelief. He couldn’t believe anybody would misspell that phrase. I mentally focus on those words. I can still read his correction, written in big red letters.
Lex Talionis.
The law of retribution.
An eye for an eye.
Exact reciprocity.
Doubt will have to wait. I have only a few more hills to go, and the wind is at my back.
I found Brent lecturing in the auditorium of Voorhees Building. The screens behind his head held images of explosions, damaged buildings, bloody sidewalks, and weeping faces. Block letters, spelling out names of locations, identified each tragedy. Lebanon, Cairo, Madrid, Paris, London, Mumbai, New York, Tel Aviv, Munich, Washington, D.C. The screens transitioned and images changed along with the names. New nightmares in new settings.
I stood in the back and looked down the filled rows of the academic arena. Not one student was texting, emailing, or chatting with a neighbor. All eyes were focused on the man in the suit guiding them through this class on terrorism. The day’s topic of assassination was right up the former Secret Service man’s alley.
Walking back and forth on the stage, the lecturer effortlessly discussed the subject without the assistance of notes. He tried to keep the listeners involved by eliciting their opinions.
“Now, let’s look at these scenes. Some of these targets were assassinated and some survived the attempt. Ford even survived two attempts.” Lancaster directed a thumb toward the screens. Names like Caesar, Ford, Reagan, Sadat, Rabin, Truman and others situated themselves into precise positions on top of the images. “What do all these attempts have in common?”
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