The Kill Club

by Wendy Heard

  I check my reflection in the driver’s side window. I really do look like a different person. I hunch my shoulders forward to look older, frailer. The muumuu billows out around me like a tent. Sexy.

  The church’s front door is covered in white construction paper doves, cut with a die cutter and taped to the door like in elementary school. The barred front windows release strains of singing onto the deserted, desert-bright street.

  My neck feels tight with anxiety as I trot up the front steps and grip the door handle. I remind myself to move slower, like an older woman.

  I take a breath and turn the handle. It’s unlocked, and the door swings smoothly open.

  I enter a tiny, stuffy lobby. The walls are covered in floral wallpaper, the floor soft with musty, rose-colored carpet. The singing is coming from an open door in front of me, and I press forward through it.

  It’s a normal, wood-benched sanctuary, and the smell of the room brings back a wave of memories from years ago, of Joaquin on my lap, of Joaquin and me giggling and elbowing each other in the pews. The darkened room is packed full. Most of the congregation is gathered up in front of the stage, in what I would call the pit at a rock show. Their hands are raised, their heads thrown back, lips busy in prayer. Colored spotlights play over the crowd, turning it into a rainbow of grasping hands. A woman at the piano hits the keys with squint-eyed intensity, and the singer and guitarist raise their arms in the air like they want to be called on in class. Behind them, a drummer bangs earnestly on a cheap electronic kit, which freezes me in place as I contemplate the douchebaggery involved in bringing an electronic kit into a church service. “Lord,” cries the singer, a good-looking guy in his early twenties, “we come to You in worship, in supplication. We give You all of ourselves!” The congregation cries out in response.

  This is different, more modern, than I remember it. The singer is kind of hipster-looking, with shaggy hair and skinny jeans. The congregation is different as well. Some of them are younger than me, and some are Carol’s age, but all are moving their lips in quick succession as they reach into the air with searching hands.

  Another man, older than the singer but equally handsome and shaggy-haired, trots up to the stage, mic in hand. He lifts his free hand and releases a slew of babbling nonsense words that sound vaguely like Hebrew. Oh, God, this is the speaking-in-tongues thing they do here. I can’t with these people. Once Carol told me, “It’s my private prayer language that only God can understand, so the devil doesn’t know what I’m praying for.” I didn’t even know where to begin with that one.

  “Thank You, God,” the dude onstage moans into the mic. “Thank You for Your sacrifice. Thank You, Jesus, for the blood You spilled on the cross!” He screams out the last word, and an answering chorus echoes from the crowd. He returns to babbling in fake Hebrew, and babbling rises from the crowd like the chatter of birds.

  “Alrighty then,” I whisper to myself, and I approach the stage warily, looking for Carol and Joaquin. I press through the crowd, weaving through people, looking for Carol’s limp blond hair or Joaquin’s emo-style mop while also trying to keep my face down so no one notices I’m not as old as I’m pretending to be.

  I’m halfway through, slipping past rapt worshippers chanting to themselves, when the pastor starts talking about “a call to prayer,” something about “raising your hands” and “surrendering to the spirit.”

  He says, “Jesus said that His disciples have authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.” The crowd roars in agreement. The pastor’s hair is sweaty, flopping around his forehead, and he pushes it aside, his expression rapt. “Jesus calls us to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” The music drops dramatically in volume, entering a mellow, hypnotically down-tempo song. “Now he that needs healing, let him ask. He that needs healing...let him ask,” he chants, sometimes louder, sometimes softer.

  I move around the back of the crowd, searching, the lights floating through the throng, confusing my ability to see faces. The hundreds of raised arms float around like the fluorescent tentacles of sea anemones.

  A middle-aged woman comes to the stage, her hands lifted, eyes streaming tears. He lays a hand on her forehead and starts chanting. She begins trembling, shaking, and the chanting gets louder. Around her, worshippers reach out to lay their hands on her back, her head, her arms, her waist, and they begin chanting in a hysterical babble of nonsense words. Just as I feel I’m going to scream, the woman cries out and crumples to the floor, her forehead against the carpet, hands pressed to her cheeks.

  “Amen,” cries the pastor. “She’s slain in the spirit. The Holy Spirit is cleansing her body, doing His healing work. Let he who is thirsty come drink! Remember, church, you are the blood of Christ—you are the resurrection!”

  “Amen,” cry out worshippers. The music swells. A kid is shoved onto the stage.

  It’s Joaquin. He looks bored and embarrassed, and when the pastor places his hand on top of his head, he ducks away. Oh, God, they’re going to do their pray-away-the-disease thing on him. I feel hot with protective rage. I am absolutely mad enough to kill.

  The pastor settles for gripping his shoulder. “Aaaaruuushnaka,” he screams, rolling the Rs.

  The lights flash, flickering over the crowd, and I see Carol. She’s toward the back of the pit.

  Bitch.

  Pressed between people with eyes closed and faces raised to the promise of God, I dig around in my fanny pack and get out the sharps container. I pull the syringe out and return the empty container to my fanny pack, which I leave open. I drop my hand to my side with the needle pointed down and slip between people until I’m standing right behind Carol.

  I take a deep breath, try to push the pastor’s voice out of my head, the incessant chanting, the bad electronic drumbeat. I’m going to do something I can never take back, never undo—

  She turns and moves left, slipping away between people. Is she heading for a bathroom?

  I follow her to the outskirts of the crowd. She’s heading for the left bank of pews. Maybe she left something on her seat.

  It’s dark over here and separated from the yammering crowd. I clutch the syringe. This is good, better to kill her here. I close the distance between us. I could reach out and touch her.

  She spins to face me. She lifts a hand and presses it to my nose and mouth. It’s wet. Wait—her hand’s not wet. She’s holding a wet towel.

  Her face swims into focus, shadowed, pink flashing in her eyes. Her brown eyes—she’s not Carol. She’s way younger, her skin darker. The hair is a wig. I gasp. The wet cloth smells strong, sweet, a saturated chemical scent that goes straight to my head. I try to back up, holding my breath. She pushes me forward, catches me off guard, presses the wet cloth deep into my nostrils, my mouth. Her face is savage. My head spins. I realize I’ve toppled back onto the carpet. No one notices. They’re all screaming, praying, dropping to the floor themselves.

  I grip my syringe. My head is a blur. I can’t let myself breathe. I spin sideways, but she’s somehow on top of me, the cloth pressed into my face still—I’m breathing it, I’m losing this fight—what is happening? My clutching hand is empty. Where is the syringe?

  Get it together, Jazz. Pink and blue lights flash in her eyes. Her other hand comes into view. It holds a yellow syringe.

  Adrenaline slams through me. I’ve lost my arms, my hands. I lunge forward and headbutt her, hard. The wet cloth is gone; the air is warm and clean with no chemical sweetness. She rolls aside, one hand clutching her nose, the other raising the syringe.

  I roll out, search the floor frantically for my own needle. My hand closes on it. I scuttle backward, desperate, panicked. I lurch to a standing position and try to run. She grabs me, drags me back. She lifts a hand, gets the syringe up to my neck.

&
nbsp; I impale her stomach. She squeals, tries to get her own needle in me. I hear myself sobbing out the words, “Stop it! I don’t want to!” She won’t. She’s hell-bent on poking me with that fucking needle. I depress the plunger. She cries out and falters. I pull the syringe out of her and it falls to the floor.

  She crumples to the carpet. Her hand grips her stomach. She looks down at it, her face confused.

  My hands are shaking, sweating under the latex gloves. I almost fall, my head like a carnival ride. I push through the crowd. Just a little farther. Got to get outside. Got to get out of here before Joaquin or the real Carol sees me. Can’t get caught here. Hurry. Hurry.

  26

  KELLY

  KELLY CRIES OUT when the needle pokes her stomach. Her target’s face is desperate. “Stop it! I don’t want to!” the woman screams. She’s young beneath the gray wig, at least ten years younger than Kelly.

  It’s kill or be killed. Kelly fights to get her needle in the woman’s neck, squirms, writhes, and then the woman depresses the plunger.

  Something slides into Kelly’s gut, ice-cold. She claps a hand to her stomach. Her knees hit the carpet.

  The woman who’d just injected her stares down at her with huge, horrified brown eyes. In the sanctuary’s rainbow light, the eyes are beautiful, liquid and long-lashed, the eyes of an angel.

  The young woman turns and runs.

  No, you don’t. Kelly grabs her syringe and lurches to her feet. She doesn’t know what the woman injected her with, but it can’t be the same poison Kelly has in her syringe. If it were poison, Kelly would already be dead, right? Maybe it’s sleeping medication, something to knock her out. The voice on the phone told Kelly this poison kills instantaneously.

  The singer onstage calls out, “Thank You, Lord, for the blood that washes all of us clean! We give You all of ourselves. We thank You for trading Your life for ours!” The crowd screams, voices, eyes, hands lifted in prayer.

  Kelly pushes through the singing parishioners. A vise grips her stomach and twists. She groans and the vise grinds harder, wrapping around her midsection and squeezing, slow, agonizing.

  There! She sees the woman who’d injected her! The flowered dress, the gray hair. She’s in the crowd, pretending to pray, trying to blend in.

  Kelly pushes herself forward, limping, guts grinding themselves into a pulp. This feels like contractions, like when she thought she could do childbirth without an epidural—before she realized she was totally wrong.

  She grips the syringe. She approaches the loose flowered dress, hand clasped to her abdomen. The gray head remains lifted, oblivious to the approach of death. Bitch, it’s your turn now.

  Kelly puts her arm around the woman, and, no hesitation, she slips the syringe into the woman’s stomach and pushes the depressor.

  I did it!

  The woman cries out and grabs at her stomach. Kelly trips back into someone—people—and her vision is suddenly bent, the sanctuary a carnival nightmare. Her lungs pinch shut.

  She’s on the floor? When did she fall?

  She rolls onto her side, grips her knees to her chest, all of her sucked into the band of pain clenching through her ribs.

  The kids. Their faces are so close, she could reach out and touch them. Vanessa’s pretty pink cheeks; Eli’s curly brown hair, so soft to the touch.

  The woman she’d injected is on the carpet next to her, writhing in agony just like her own. The woman’s face turns toward her, blue eyes wide with fear and horror—

  Blue eyes?

  “Jesus!” hollers someone near at hand. Finally someone sees me, Kelly thinks, desperate, but it’s an exultation. Someone places a hand on Kelly’s back and cries, “These two are slain in the spirit!” A flurry of incoherence follows as parishioners around her lift their voices in a chorus of tongues.

  The gray-haired woman’s terrified eyes are wide and full of fireflies. Kelly reaches across the carpet and grips the other woman’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, but the woman is past hearing her.

  27

  NIELSEN

  NIELSEN AND PATEL park on the street in front of the tiny church in East LA. They get out of the car and stand in the hot sun, surveying the scene.

  Patel says, “They did a good job of blockading the lot. Fat lot of good it does us. They didn’t arrive on scene for ten bloody minutes.”

  “It’s going to be a shit ton more admin, all these witnesses,” Nielsen complains. “Like we aren’t up to our asses already.”

  “We need to ask for more help with the paperwork.”

  He gives her shoulder a pat. “Come on, little woman, let’s get this over with.”

  She slaps his hand away and grins. “Don’t touch me, twat.”

  “I love it when you say ‘twat.’”

  “I know you do.”

  All the congregants have been brought out into the front yard of the church, where they’re contained in a taped-off square, a makeshift fence since the church doesn’t have one. It’s a diverse crowd, young and old, different ethnicities, some dressed up, some in jeans.

  A pair of uniformed cops led by Gonzalez spots Nielsen and Patel from across the clearing, and Gonzalez waves to them enthusiastically. Nielsen groans.

  “Don’t be a tosser,” Patel says, waving back to Gonzalez.

  “She’s a terrible cop. You know that.”

  “She’s not terrible. She’s learning.”

  “She’s a pain in my ass.”

  Patel grabs his arm and pulls him to a stop. “You know she lost a child. Why don’t you try not to be such an inconceivable prat?”

  “She should take more leave. She’s not ready to be back.”

  “She needs this.”

  “This isn’t group therapy. You think I haven’t lost people? But you don’t see me crying about it at work. I leave it at home, and when I’m here, I’m here.”

  He expects Patel to argue with him, but she nods like she’s considering his words. “You know I served, too. Afghanistan.”

  “Yeah.”

  She squeezes his bicep. “I’m sorry about those you lost.”

  The words catch him by surprise. His eyes sting. He wasn’t ready for compassion.

  She sees his face and does the best thing possible. She makes a joke. “At least no one will ever call you a cheerleader. You’d look bloody horrendous in the uniform.”

  “I look hot in a miniskirt,” he protests, back to normal.

  Gonzalez introduces the uniforms as Wilson and Ramos, and they explain that they’ve kept the band and the preacher in a separate space around back if they want to talk to them first.

  “I’m going to need all these folks down at the station,” Nielsen says, indicating the churchgoers huddled in the makeshift front yard. “Can you work on transportation? I don’t want to lose a single one along the way.”

  “I’m on it,” Gonzalez says.

  Nielsen and Patel follow her past the little church, around the side through the parking lot, and up a set of rickety back steps to a back door. This looks more like a house than a church; it can’t be more than two thousand square feet, and the neighborhood it’s in is all warehouses, recycling centers and scrap yards. Past the parking lot and the railroad tracks, on the embankment to the LA River, a long row of tents stretches off to the horizon.

  Patel says, “Why not hit one of the megachurches? This can’t hold more than a couple hundred people, and I bet they all know each other. Not an easy place to be anonymous, I wouldn’t think.”

  Nielsen says, “These killings aren’t random. Blackbird is studying his victims, planning his kills carefully.”

  “I’m not convinced of that.” She still believes Blackbird picks his victims opportunistically.

  “You coming?” Gonzalez asks from the back door.

  “Keep your panties
on,” Nielsen snaps.

  They follow her up the creaky wooden stairs and into a claustrophobic hallway that needs a good carpet cleaning. Inside the sanctuary, Forensics has already gotten to work on the bodies.

  “How’s the crime scene?” Nielsen asks Gonzalez.

  “Secure,” she replies proudly.

  “We’ll see.” None of the Blackbird crime scenes have been secure.

  The sanctuary is as small as Nielsen had imagined, with just ten rows of pews and a tiny stage at the front. In front of the stage is a clearing, which is full of activity. A man in a Dickies jacket with LAPD printed on the back squats by a supine shape on the floor. The flash—flash—flash of his camera competes with the dim overhead lighting.

  Nielsen and Patel approach the bodies, respecting the boundary marked off by Forensics.

  “Two victims,” Patel whispers, her tone restrained but excited. There have never been two victims at a single scene.

  The victims, two women, are stretched out on the carpet face-to-face, both in a loose fetal position, both with the wide-open, terrified eyes they’ve come to expect from these killings.

  “You think Blackbird positioned them like that?” Patel asks.

  “Has to be.”

  “Or he injected two people side by side and they fell that way.”

  Gonzalez, suddenly behind them, says, “Take a look at the younger one. Look at her hair.”

  Nielsen squats down. “It’s a wig.”

  “But why?” Patel kneels down so she can get a better look. “She’s a brunette. I can see her hairline around the side here under the bangs.”

  “Do we have IDs?” Nielsen asks Gonzalez.

  “On the older woman, yes. Guadalupe Ramirez, seventy-six, from Baldwin Park. Homemaker, six children, seventeen grandchildren. The younger woman with the wig, no.”

  Nielsen lets his eyes roam over the limp, gaping figure. The woman is probably forty years old with pretty olive skin and deep brown eyes. One of her hands is stretched out to the other woman, like they’d been holding hands before they died.