Opening Moves

by Steven James

  …Tightened his grip on the handle…

  “No, I’ll—”

  And drove the blade forward, bringing a spray of hot blood and a bright, fresh scream from Adele.

  The cut was just shy of half an inch deep. Joshua paused, took a moment to drink in the sound of this woman’s cries. As he did, he felt—along with the excitement—a piercing stab of shame doing this, enjoying her suffering so much.

  The reality that her pain brought him so much pleasure was unsettling. He’d done enough research on serial killers to know that the majority of them were sadists, relishing the act of making other people suffer.

  You’re a sadist, Joshua. You’re a—

  Never before throughout his life had he thought of himself in that way, not before this autumn when all this began. But now he was forced to admit that he really did enjoy causing pain, and the discovery of that dark part of his nature emerging so clearly, so distinctly, troubled him.

  Adele was crying in between her shrieks of pain.

  “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

  The evil which I would not.

  That I do.

  Joshua realized that he would never be the same again, not after giving free rein to this part of his nature. Acts like this undoubtedly changed a person in fundamental ways. Once you start down this road, with the type of crimes he was committing, there’s no turning back. Yes, he might be able to find eventual forgiveness for his actions, but he would never be able to erase the impact they would have on his conscience, on his soul.

  “Light is come into the world”—his father made him recite the verse from John, chapter three, so, so many times—“and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

  Their deeds were evil.

  Are evil.

  You are—

  He shook the thought loose.

  Adele’s leg was quivering and it wasn’t as easy as before to hold her foot in position against the floor.

  He really should keep going.

  As he angled the saw into the wound, Adele screeched again and tried to jerk her leg away from the blade. But then, when she gasped to get another breath, even with the mattresses inside the boxcar, even with the door closed, Joshua thought he heard a clang outside.

  “Quiet,” he told her firmly.

  She directed her head toward him as if to look at him, even though she was still blindfolded. Her leg quivered with pain.

  Yes.

  There it was.

  He heard it again. Faint, but definitely the sound of something banging against the track near the boxcar.

  Someone was outside, nearby, in the train yard.

  Adele must have heard it too, because she yelled, her voice even louder than when the saw blade had bitten into her ankle. “I’m in here!”

  Leaping to his feet, Joshua clamped his hand firmly over her mouth. “You don’t want to upset me and I don’t want to gag you. Be quiet now.”

  But almost immediately he decided the gag would be necessary.

  He thought of the necrotome tucked in its sheath on his belt. Then his eyes flicked from the Gemrig saw, to the hypodermic needle containing the drugs he’d been planning on giving her later, to the Glock.

  And Joshua decided what he needed to do.

  35

  Muffled sounds.

  But it was impossible to tell which boxcar they were coming from.

  I ran alongside the line of cars, trying to discern the origin of the sounds, but I couldn’t. And then, just as suddenly as they began, they stopped.

  Slowing so I could listen more carefully, I noticed a small area of snow was kicked up in front of the door of a car not too far down the track. I ran to it. The door was chained shut, but the chain allowed the door to remain open a crack, just a few centimeters wide. The chain ran through the metal handle to another handle bolted onto the side of the train car.

  It had an old chain but a brand-new padlock, and even though it was a different brand than the one on the front gate, just the fact that it was new was enough for me.

  The crack was just wide enough for a person to slip his hand through and lock the padlock from inside the car. A perfect hiding place—you’re locked inside with the only access locked from the outside.

  But then a realization: the wind that cut through the crack made a high-pitched shrieking sound.

  Maybe that’s what I’d heard.

  Maybe that’s all it was.

  But I wasn’t about to take any chances. I unholstered my weapon and called inside, “This is the police. Whoever’s in the boxcar, lie down. Hands to the side!”

  No sound, except for the impertinent wind.

  I pounded on the wall of the boxcar with my fist. “Reply if you are in the boxcar!”

  Silence.

  The crack was certainly wide enough for someone to shoot through and I wasn’t excited about putting my face in front of it. Finally, however, I clicked on the Maglite and, standing to the side, I tugged the door open as much as the chain would allow.

  I aimed the beam of light into the car, waited to the count of three, then leaned over and peered through the crack.

  The narrow width made it hard to see, and even with the flashlight I couldn’t make out very much at all, but I could see what at first looked like a large sack or a slumped pile of clothes just on the edge of my vision. However, in an instant I realized it wasn’t just a pile of clothes—it was a body with its back to me. I shouted again, but the person didn’t move.

  From this angle I couldn’t tell whether I was looking at a man or a woman, although the frame looked small. A woman. Possibly a slightly built man or an adolescent boy. When I looked closer, I made out dark stains on the clothing near the person’s rib cage.

  Blood.

  I shouted again to see if the victim would respond, but there was no reply. I tugged hard at the door again, but I could only move it two or three centimeters before the chain caught. Without bolt cutters, there was no way I was getting into this boxcar.

  The other side.

  The sliding door on the other side.

  I punched at my radio as I swept around the car to see if there was another way in. “Ralph, I’ve got someone down. Injured, maybe a fatality. I’m at the seventeenth boxcar from the east end, by the woods.”

  “On my way.” By his tone I could tell he was already running.

  The door on the other side of the car was welded shut, so I quickly returned to the side facing the forest. I studied the ground again, trying to see if there was any way to tell which direction the person who’d left this boxcar might have gone. But there simply wasn’t enough snow.

  I turned, searched for any movement, crouched and swept the Maglite’s beam beneath the train car as I’d done earlier, but I still saw no evidence of anyone else nearby.

  While I waited for Ralph to arrive, I called for backup, telling the dispatcher that there appeared to be at least one victim and that we needed an ambulance. “Make sure they have bolt cutters and the Jaws of Life. The front gate and the boxcar are both chained shut and I want to get into this car as fast as possible.”

  Ralph appeared, leaping over the coupler between two cars.

  I pointed toward the boxcar’s door. “Over here!”

  He closed the distance between us. “So you can’t tell, injury or fatality?”

  “Not until we get inside.”

  He grabbed the metal handle and yanked at it, trying to get the door open, but the chain caught, held fast. “I tried that,” I told him.

  “Yeah,” he said vaguely. “Let me see that flashlight.”

  I handed it to him and he attempted to slide it into the door handle, but the Maglite’s casing was too wide. He slipped out his Mini Mag and wedged it in.

  “That chain isn’t going to break, Ralph.”

  “I’m not trying to break the chain.”

  I could’ve kicked myself for not thinking of it earl
ier—of course, the handle. Torque it loose from the boxcar and the chain is useless.

  He took a deep breath and pulled down fiercely on the flashlight. I thought it might break but it didn’t. However, it didn’t do the trick either. The door handle didn’t pull free.

  “I need more leverage,” he mumbled, then turned and inspected the area surrounding the car.

  Wondering if there might be a loose fence post he could use, I studied the fence line but didn’t see anything promising. When I turned around to look for him, I saw that he’d gone to a flat car on a neighboring track and now hoisted a three-foot-long pipe into the air. He jogged back to me, augured the pipe into position, clenched his teeth with the effort, and cranked down. Hard.

  With a tight, high-pitched squeal, the handle on the door bent, but only slightly.

  He repositioned the pipe.

  Yeah, he was going to be able to pry that loose.

  The ladder on the car was rusted but looked climbable. “I’m going to have a look around.”

  Holstering my gun and jamming my flashlight beneath my belt, I scrambled up and stood on top of the boxcar.

  The day was languishing around us, night crawling quickly over the city, the visibility fading fast.

  I turned in a circle, studying first the area north of us, then the parking lot, then the fence line.

  And that’s when I saw him.

  He was about forty meters away, moving stealthily through the drainage ditch on his way to the loose section of fence that Ralph and I had used earlier to access the train yard. Details were hard to make out in this light, but I could tell he was a dark-haired male Caucasian, large frame, wearing blue jeans and a maroon or brown-colored down coat.

  Knowing that he’d very likely been the one to attack the person in the boxcar beneath me, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I unholstered my SIG. “Milwaukee Police! You by the fence, do not move!”

  He paused, still facing the other direction. Before I could give him any more instructions, there was a mighty cry as Ralph hefted on the pipe. A harsh metallic snap ripped through the air. I heard the door slide open and then the sound of Ralph jumping into the train car.

  I kept the gun aimed at the suspect. “Hands up!” But the wind caught hold of the words, throwing them back at me, and he didn’t move. I shouted louder, “Hands up! Now!”

  Slowly, the man raised his hands.

  “Turn around!”

  He didn’t move.

  “Dead!” Ralph yelled to me. “Male! Late thirties!”

  The suspect didn’t move.

  “Turn around!” I repeated. “Face me—and keep your hands in the air!” A beat of silence from Ralph, and he must have been checking the victim for an ID because a second later he called, “It’s Hendrich.”

  What?

  Then who’s the guy by the culvert?

  “Turn toward my voice! Slowly!”

  The suspect began to turn slowly, just as I’d commanded, but then all at once he slung his right arm out in front of him and leveled it at me.

  Time seemed to pause in midbreath.

  In the wide swath of shadows, his hand was shielded enough that I couldn’t tell whether or not he held a weapon. In that instant I had to decide what to do—assume he had a gun and drop him, or assume he didn’t and let him live.

  Instinct took over and I made my choice.

  36

  I didn’t fire.

  I couldn’t, not if I wasn’t able to tell for certain that he had a weapon. Instead of firing, I dropped to one knee so that if he did have a gun he wouldn’t have a clear shot, then hollered, “Hands up!” I sighted down the barrel of my SIG. “Now!”

  But he did have a weapon and before I’d even finished shouting, he’d squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet clanged off the side of the boxcar and I returned fire, but in the fraction of a second it’d taken me to respond, he’d dropped down into the gully.

  Go, Pat!

  Now!

  I rolled to the edge of the boxcar, half slid, half leapt down the ladder, and found Ralph with his back to the car, gun out, aimed in the direction of the shooter. “Where?”

  “The fence. Eleven o’clock. Forty meters.”

  He signaled to me that he was going first, and before I could out-alpha-male him for the honor, he bolted toward the fence yelling, “Cover me.”

  I rounded the corner of the train car and leveled my weapon at the place where I’d last seen the shooter, but only seconds after Ralph left for the opening in the fence, I realized that the suspect had already made it through the hole. He appeared only as a dark blur of movement in the forest.

  “Ralph! The woods!”

  I had no shot. Not from here. Not with these trees, not at this distance.

  Sirens told me that backup was on its way, but they weren’t close enough to do any good right now.

  The forest stretched about the length of a football field and ended at an empty parking lot in a low-income neighborhood full of crack houses, dark alleys, and abandoned buildings. If the shooter made it that far, there’d be a hundred places to hide. The guy was really moving and I could tell that if I took the time to run to the opening in the fence, he’d make it to the neighborhood and be gone for good.

  Only one other option.

  “West Reagan Street,” I yelled to Ralph as I sprinted toward the fence. “Call it in!”

  I holstered my gun and tugged off my jacket.

  Don’t do this, Pat. You’re going to regret it.

  Yeah, maybe, but I was gonna do it anyway.

  As soon as I reached the fence, I flipped the coat up across the razor wire above me and, without giving myself time for second guesses, I climbed. At the top, using the jacket to pad my hands from the curling, bladed wire, I pulled myself up, but even through the fabric, the metal barbs slivered into my hands. My palms screamed at me and, hastily, trying to keep from toppling backward, I scrunched up the leather beneath my hands and managed—barely—to hold on.

  I scrambled my legs up, collected myself for what was to come, then brought them to the top, doing my best to keep my balance and not let the razor wire catch on my pants legs. But as I was bridging the fence, the fabric by my heel caught on the wire, and when I tugged to get it free, I lost my balance and the momentum pitched me forward, over to the other side. I hit the frozen ground hard and off balance, rolled, came up with my gun in my hand. The Maglite had dropped out of my belt, though, on the far side of the fence.

  You really do need a smaller flash—

  Go!

  Leaving the jacket behind, I raced after the suspect through the shadow-riddled forest.

  37

  Branches flicked past my face. There was hardly enough light to see where the suspect was going, but I was just able to make out his outline moving swiftly through the woods on the fringe of the night.

  I leapt over a fallen log, rushed past a pile of garbage and a rusted shopping cart that’d somehow found its way in here.

  Just past the tree line, streetlights had blinked on. The shooter emerged from the trees, dashed through the circle of light cast down by one of them, and disappeared somewhere beyond it.

  A sprawling, boarded-up building squatted on the other side of the street and blocked a direct path through the neighborhood. I couldn’t tell which direction the runner had gone to avoid it—right or left.

  I bolted forward, ducked to miss another branch, and, a handful of seconds later, burst through the edge of the trees and stood by the curb.

  No sign of the man I was chasing.

  Right or left?

  No idea.

  He held his gun in his right hand.

  Hurry!

  I made a choice.

  Right.

  All things being equal, if he fired with his right hand, he’d be right-handed. I recalled Dr. Werjonic’s research, his writings on cognitive maps and fleeing suspects: “Right-handed people typically turn right upon entering a novel environ
ment.”

  I dashed toward a row of cramped low-income apartments.

  When I came to the intersection, I saw no sign of the shooter.

  I ran forward, checked an alley, then gazed down the block.

  Nothing.

  No cars were moving. No pedestrians. Admittedly, this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people typically take casual strolls in the twilight, but tonight the streets seemed uncharacteristically deserted.

  Another hurried search through another alley and I came up empty again. In frustration I let my foot find a nearby trash can. If it hadn’t been chained to a telephone pole, it would have cleared the street. As it was, I left a sizable dent in the side that I might have been proud of any other time.

  Immediately, curtains in the nearest apartment building fluttered open and in the porch light I saw a young African-American boy, maybe four or five years old, peering out at me. I was already hurrying back toward the streetlight where the suspect had disappeared, but I didn’t want to frighten the boy, so I hid my gun, continued on casually, and then the curtain closed, and he slipped from view and was gone once again.

  When I got to the spot where the suspect had exited the woods, I heard Ralph hurtling through the darkness toward me, the light from his flashlight marking his path. “Anything?” he called as he burst through the edge of the forest.

  “No.”

  He cursed loudly.

  Just as we started scouring the street in the other direction, a patrol car came peeling around the corner.

  “Let ’em sweep the area,” I told Ralph. “I want to get back to the train yard and make sure there aren’t any more victims.”

  He pulled out his radio. “Or suspects.”

  “Yeah.” I was already heading into the forest. “Or suspects.”

  38

  Joshua made it to his car, which he’d parked four blocks from the train yard. The Ford Taurus he’d left behind wasn’t his, of course. He’d stolen it a few days ago so there wouldn’t be any chance that his own vehicle would be identified at the scene of any of the crimes. It seemed like a slim possibility anyway, but it wasn’t a chance he was willing to take.