by Jason Parent
Masterson squealed and staggered backward, tearing his arm free of her grasp. The knife grazed Sam’s biceps, drawing blood but causing no serious damage. Masterson frantically rubbed his eyes.
I’ll give you something that will make you cry. Sam yanked her pepper spray from her belt and blasted him in the face with a generous dose.
Masterson had held onto the knife, and it made small concentric circles in the air as he tried to regain his vision. He was down, but not out. “You fucking bitch,” Masterson growled, blinking furiously.
Sam took the opportunity to draw her gun. “It’s not so easy when you pick on someone who can defend herself, is it, Masterson?”
“I am going to kill you for that.”
She held her gun in front of her. “Drop the knife, and put your hands on your head.” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Michael. He stood a few feet away, looking frightened and confused. “Stay behind me, Michael.”
“I should have told you,” Michael said. “Oh God, you’re bleeding. How could I not have told you? How could I have assumed everything would be okay?”
Sam didn’t know what he was talking about, but somehow, Michael had known to be there. He had just saved her life, and it was up to her to keep them both safe.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “Just stay behind me.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Masterson said. “That little shit’s time will come soon enough.”
Sam extended her arms a little. “I said drop the knife. Don’t make me ask you again.”
Masterson straightened and flipped the knife in his hand so that its grip was toward Sam. He raised his other hand, empty, as he squatted. “You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you, Ms. Reilly?” The knife, still in his hand, scraped along the cement.
“Not usually, but for you, I could make an exception. Now, for the last time, drop the weapon.”
“I think I’ll take my chances.” Masterson pivoted and extended his legs, springing into a run.
“Freeze!” She fired a warning shot, but Masterson didn’t even slow down.
The distance between them was rapidly increasing. Sam lowered her gun to eye level. She had Masterson in her sight, and she was a damn good shot. All she had to do was squeeze the trigger.
But she hesitated, and Masterson was gone. He disappeared into the woods behind the station. The thought of Michael standing beside her like a wounded puppy made her think twice about shooting the man in the back. She’d spent Michael’s whole life trying to teach him right from wrong. Shooting a fleeing suspect in the back was wrong, no matter how much he might have deserved it. She couldn’t shatter all she had accomplished with Michael for good old-fashioned revenge. The law was supposed to be better than that. In reality, it might not have been, but Sam never stopped trying to make it so.
She leaned into her car and grabbed the radio. “Dispatch, this is Detective Reilly. Masterson was just spotted at my location. He is on foot and running in an east-to-northeast direction. All available units are to set up a perimeter with a three-mile radius from the Gas and Go. No one gets out of it without first having to answer to one of ours. All shifts should be extended, all roads covered. Call in the whole damn department if you have to, but do not let Masterson escape.”
Service pistol still in hand, she turned to go after Masterson. “Michael, will you be okay here?”
“Yes,” he said sheepishly. “Go get him.”
Sam looked at the boy, and her heart sank. Michael wasn’t okay. He was terrified. She felt awful for even considering leaving him there alone, defenseless. What if Masterson doubled back? In her festering desire to bring her suspect down, she had nearly lost sight of the “protect and serve” part of her job. Her first priority was to guard two teenagers who had lost their parents, to get them someplace safe and keep them that way.
She holstered her weapon. “Let’s go,” she said, gesturing at the car. “We’ll pick up Tessa and get you guys something to eat. You two must be starving.”
Smiling, Michael hopped into the passenger seat. Sam smiled back at him, feeling as though the weight of the world had dropped from her shoulders. Maybe there was more to life than just being a cop.
Chapter 30
I can’t stay here. The cops are everywhere, and they want my head. They’ll be here any second.
Christopher’s heart was racing. It wasn’t the first time he had to disappear, but it was the first time he was cutting it so close. He wondered if he should stick around until his good work was done right. Plenty of people in Fall River needed to be taught lessons, but he couldn’t fix the city from the inside of a prison cell. The last time, long before he met Tessa’s whore of a mother, he had fled before the bodies could turn cold.
He laid the knife on the kitchen counter and hurried down the hallway to his bedroom. The police had ransacked the place, and he had to hurdle furniture to get there. Each room was in disorder. Not one cabinet, closet, or drawer had been spared. His left eye twitched as he assessed the unruliness of his room, the chaos throwing his mind into disorder. Nothing is in its place.
His mattress had been slashed open. The contents of his dresser were strewn all over the floor. He picked up a white tube sock, then another, smoothed them out, and folded them together. The top drawer of his dresser, where he stored his socks and underwear, was pulled out and tilted off its track. Christopher released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he placed the neatly folded pair of socks against the drawer’s back wall.
He crouched to pick up another sock then searched for its mate. His breaths came shorter. Ican’tIcan’tIcan’t, he chanted in his mind, then he howled, whipping the sock at the wall. He slammed a palm into his forehead, trying to silence the sound of his own thoughts. Resisting the urge to tidy up the room made him sweat. It put him on edge. He couldn’t think straight.
He punched the open drawer hard enough to split the skin over his knuckles. His eye started to twitch faster, until he wanted to pluck out the eyeball. His skin itched as though ants were biting him everywhere. Christopher clawed at his cheeks, his nails digging deep, leaving gashes. He started throwing things at random, adding to the disarray.
Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to take it anymore, not without screaming and breaking, a sense of peace came over him. The warring factions inside his brain called a truce. The next place will be perfect. A home with rules, enforced without exception. If one wants perfection, he must demand it.
Christopher looked around his bedroom and chuckled. His laughter grew as he walked back out into the hallway. In the living room, chairs were overturned, a few broken. Stuffing had been ripped out of the pillows and sofa cushions. Pink insulation hung from the opening to the attic, and the hatch door had been removed. The walls, however, remained intact.
They didn’t see it. He gnashed his teeth in a feral grin, no longer seeing any reason to tame the predator in him. Why should they have? He had plastered the hole as soon as he and Tessa had moved into that house, and he had done the job well. He stared at the wall, admiring his handiwork.
Behind the refrigerator, which was leaning against the counter, the kitchen wallpaper was pressed flat. No bumps or discoloration could be seen through its gray hue. His emergency stash was right where it should have been, right where he needed it to be when he needed it most.
Wasting no more time, Christopher kicked a gaping hole in the wall. He reached into darkness, reaching blindly inside the hole until he felt the package. He withdrew the ziplock bag, which held a hefty wad of cash, approximately a hundred thousand dollars, his rainy-day money. The police presence in his neighborhood, all searching for him, told him it was pouring.
Christopher would need a big chunk of the money to obtain a new identity. The rest, he would need to start over. He knew the drill. After all, he hadn’t been born Christopher Masterson. I never
really liked the name anyway.
Sirens blared nearby. They were getting closer. Leave it to the police to announce their approach. Christopher shrugged. Who cares? They’ll be too late, as always.
He jammed the cash into his jacket pockets, distributing it evenly. With his hands on his hips, Christopher took one final look at his home. This castle has fallen into ruin. What is a man without his castle? It’s time to leave this one behind. A new domicile awaits, and I will rule it with a just and steady hand.
He headed to the kitchen to retrieve his knife, planning to escape out the back door and into the darkness. The cloak of night, his silent ally, would keep him hidden. It always had. He walked over to the counter, but his knife wasn’t there.
“Hello, Father.”
Christopher was startled, but only for that split second before he recognized the voice. Tessa. He didn’t turn to face her right away. He had to hide his excitement first. His daughter, a horse that would not be broken and would thus have to be put down, had gift-wrapped and hand-delivered herself right to him. Her presence was nothing short of miraculous, as if God himself demanded Christopher’s brand of justice. He couldn’t have hoped for more perfect timing, the opportunity to give her a proper send-off—or himself one, anyway. His only regret was that he would have to do her quickly.
When he spun around to greet her, he was far more surprised than he’d been at hearing her voice. Tessa stood in the kitchen doorway as naked as the day she was born. Her skin glowed white under the moonlight shining in through the living room window. Goose bumps covered her skin. Her expression was cool, but something sparkled behind her eyes, something wild.
But the most shocking thing was that Tessa was holding his knife.
“Tessa?” Christopher asked in that wholesome-family-sitcom-dad’s voice he had learned from imitating Andy Griffith and Mike Brady.
Tessa didn’t scare him. She was nothing but a little whore with a big knife. Little whores needed to be cleansed, but Christopher wanted only to throttle her, to show her how to use the weapon she flaunted before him. Still, he recognized the foolhardiness inherent in a headlong charge. Instead, he kept up appearances, waiting for an opening.
“What are you doing here? Where are your clothes?”
“I took them off so I wouldn’t get blood on them.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper, but her words came out with a sureness Christopher hadn’t heard in them before. “Don’t worry, though. I folded them neatly and stacked them on the chair.”
She dares to threaten me! The notion sent Christopher into a violent rage. The blaring of the sirens faded into the background, drowned out by the angry heartbeat thumping in his ears. “Give me back my knife, you little cunt.” He decided he would stick it in her, in the same place all those boys from school were sticking their tiny little cocks, the same place he might have stuck his own one day if she earned her place beside him. “You need to learn respect.”
“I hate you,” Tessa said flatly.
He took a step toward her. “Someone needs to remember her place. Your mother was the same way once, until I broke her. I’m going to break you, too, Tessa. I’m going to break you, or I’m going to put you down.”
She can’t talk to me like that and get away with it. She’ll bleed first, then the real fun will begin. He swung a backhand at Tessa’s cheek, meaning to slap the teeth from her mouth. Christopher would make sure she never spoke another errant word toward him, even if it meant ripping out her tongue.
But his hand only swooshed through the air. His momentum sent him staggering sideways. He maintained his balance briefly, just long enough to see Tessa’s hand retreating from his body, pulling a bloodied blade back with it.
“You little bitch!” Christopher couldn’t believe the sniveling brat had actually stabbed him. Him! Her father. He hadn’t even felt the knife go in, but he did feel pain and rage and hate so strong, it needed release. His mind screamed at him to kill her. He had to kill her. She was everything that was wrong with the world. No respect. No gratitude. Not worthy of existence. How dare she stab her own father?
How fucking dare she! He lurched forward to grab her with his right hand, keeping his left on his wound. His movements were too slow and clumsy. Tessa ducked under his arm. She stabbed him again, a little higher on his abdomen.
He wheezed with pain. The fresh wound gurgled. When he coughed, blood sputtered from his lips. Still, he stepped forward, feeling drunk. Feeling afraid.
His life fluid gushed from his stomach. He stopped moving. Tessa stepped back, staring at him. Crimson speckled her white skin. In the dark, it looked as though she had been behind a tire that kicked up mud.
Christopher felt woozy. He wanted to sit down. A chair stood a few feet away. He reached for it, almost fell forward, then did fall onto his butt when he overcompensated. He rested his upper body on one elbow.
Tessa stood over him. She appeared to be smiling. Christopher couldn’t believe it. She had always been as he had molded her to be: submissive. He made the rules. She had no right to break them. It was never supposed to be his blood dripping from the blade he’d used to kill so many others.
“What have you done?” Christopher no longer felt powerful or in control. Death had always danced around him, never asking him to be its partner. Yet there it was, the reaper’s skeletal face sharing time with Tessa’s fleshy one. In her eyes, he saw vengeance and despair. He saw death, and he knew it was his own.
His bowels let go. What is this suffocating feeling? Is this what it means to be afraid?
The sparkle behind Tessa’s eyes moved to their forefront. Christopher had seen that sparkle many times before, every time he looked into a mirror during a kill and for a long time afterward.
Tessa gripped the knife as if she meant to strike again.
“Tessa, honey, haven’t I always taken care of you? Haven’t I always been there to provide for you?”
Her face was haunting, demonic. Christopher didn’t know what to say to make her fear him again or at least to make her stop.
Tessa shrieked and jumped on top of him, straddling his waist. She raised the knife above her head and plunged it into his chest. She raised the knife again and again and again. He felt a sharp pain each time it entered him, followed by a searing wet heat.
With the fifth stab, he heard a crack, no doubt his rib fracturing. By the eighth, the sirens were blaring outside. He reached out a hand to the police as they entered the kitchen, pleading silently for help. Light from the car headlights shone through the windows, cascading around him as if Heaven had opened its Pearly Gates.
But instead of seeing God’s benevolent face, he saw the scornful faces of men and women in blue, brothers and sisters of the officers he had killed. Damning him.
The pain made him delirious. “Please,” he muttered, beginning to lose consciousness.
The eleventh strike, Christopher barely felt. His body was numbing to the world. His vision began to fade. The light withdrew. Darkness, lonely and scary, began to creep in around his peripheral vision. The twelfth strike was little more than a thump followed by a gentle tugging.
A familiar woman wrapped Tessa in a gray overcoat and pulled her away. The knife fell from her hand and bounced on the floor next to his body.
Christopher’s lungs no longer wanted to breathe. His mind dulled, remembering only panic as it faded into the darkness. As consciousness left him, he thought about the knife and hoped someone would return it to the block.
Chapter 31
One month later.
Michael chewed his nails. He was worried about Tessa. Life had been tough for her, and he wondered when—if—that would ever change. She didn’t deserve any of it. Her father had made her do it. He’d made her do all of it.
The Fall River Judicial Complex was a resolute, uncompromising structure with lots of sharp corners and hard marble. Michael fou
nd no comfort on the wooden bench where he sat outside Courtroom 4, Judge Jeremiah Killoran’s session. Sam had told him that Judge Killoran was tough but smart and that she trusted him to do what was fair for Tessa.
When Sam came out of the courtroom, she looked as though her shoulders were weighing down her small frame. But she managed a smile as she approached.
For the first time, he allowed himself to hope for good news. “What’s going to happen to her?” It was the only question he wanted answered, and he gave Sam no chance to waste time with less important details.
“The DA has offered a sweet deal, given Tessa’s extraordinary circumstances and all the help she’s given us in closing some unsolved cases. Remember that home invasion a few months back?”
Michael scratched his head. He nodded because he felt he was supposed to.
“That was him. Tessa says he made her wear a Girl Scout uniform, and… well, never mind that. Tessa’s given us half a dozen fact patterns that follow unsolved murders or suspicious accidents tracing all the way back to Denver. And that’s just the ones we’ve been able to pair. Tessa says there are more, including her own mother.”
Michael looked away. The idea of one parent killing another made him want to curl up in a corner, though he wasn’t sure why.
“Anyway,” Sam said, letting out her breath, “the DA says that if Tessa agrees to be remanded to the correctional institution in Framingham for psychological evaluation and treatment, she can be released as soon as they determine that she’s no longer a danger to society. No charges will be brought against her.”
“How long will that be? Forever? Who’ll make sure they’re not just keeping her in there for no reason?”
“Michael, it’s the best chance she’s got. It won’t be easy. If all goes well, she’ll be out in six months. She just has to show that she won’t hurt anyone.”
“What then? Where will she go when she gets out?”
“Let’s not worry about that just yet. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I promise you, I’ll be looking out for her best interests every step of the way.”