by J. R. Rain
I nod. “Of course.”
We stand aside while the doctor attempts to pull Mrs. Sullivan out into the hall. Emma refuses to let go of her, wailing. After a minute or two, Alex takes hold of his sister and convinces her that their mother needs a minute to talk to the doctor. Emma watches the doctor leading Mrs. Sullivan out the door with an expression like it’s the last time they’ll ever see her. Though I try not to listen in, I catch a snippet of the doctor suggesting the children (especially Jacob) see a therapist to help them cope with the trauma, and a few questions about where Mr. Sullivan is.
Alex cinches his robe tight and walks up to us. “Are you going to shoot the space man?”
“You better,” says Emma from the bed, where she’s got her arms around Jacob, trying to protect him.
Jacob leans his head against her, staring at the door where the sound of his mother’s voice mixes with the doctor’s.
“He was going to hurt us.” Alex pulls down the neck of his robe to show off some finger-shaped bruises on his neck. “Emma yelled when he grabbed her. I woke up and heard her fighting, so I tried to stop him, but he grabbed me, too.”
I shake my head. Truly, a family of heroes.
Next, I sit on a stool. It helps kids open up if they’re talking to someone at or below their eye level. “Alex, your mother told us what you tried to do for your sister. That’s incredibly brave of you.”
Emma bursts into tears.
“I almost escaped, but Jake shot him before I got my hand free.” Alex looks back at Emma. “It’s okay. He’s gone. He won’t hurt you or Mom.”
“I know.” Emma sniffles.
Alex recounts his side of the story, how the ‘space man’ overpowered them in Emma’s room and dragged them down to the living room where their mother was already zip-tied to a chair. I cut him off by telling him how brave he was all over again before he starts talking about the man forcing them to beg. They don’t need to relive that.
“What did the space man look like?” my partner asks gently.
Alex and Emma describe a big guy in a puffy white suit with a clear face covering. Emma thinks he had a cloth mask on, too.
“Is he as big as Rick?” I ask, pointing.
Alex looks up at my partner. “A little bit shorter. He smelled like a swimming pool.”
Mrs. Sullivan walks back in and sits on the bed before pulling the two younger kids into her lap and holding them. Alex looks over his shoulder at them for a second, fidgets, and turns back to face me.
“You can go to your mom, too.” I smile. “You’ve been a big help.”
He grins and runs over to join his family.
“The city will cover a hotel for you, for as long as we need to cordon off your home as a crime scene.” Rick pulls his cell phone out. “I’ll get that set up for you.”
“How long?” asks Mrs. Sullivan.
“I don’t imagine more than a day or two for us to get everything we need.” Rick dials and holds the phone to his head, wandering to the back corner of the room by the window.
Jacob looks up at me. “I shot the bad space man. He wanted to hurt my family.”
Emma and Alex hug him.
“I wanted to shoot his face off, but I fell over. He ran away before I got up.” Jacob pivots his head to look at his mother. “Sorry for touching Dad’s gun. Am I in trouble?”
I ruffle his hair. “You’re a hero. You defended your home, and your family.”
Jacob stares blankly at me for a moment before breaking into a little smile.
“Is that guy gonna come back?” whispers Emma.
I narrow my eyes at the wall. “No. I won’t let him.”
Mrs. Sullivan gives me a grateful look. She couldn’t possibly know the role I probably played in how her fate turned out tonight, but I am going to be on eggshells for weeks thinking about what might’ve happened if Caius and I didn’t decide to throw that hex when we did. It all feels so spur of the moment now that I think back on it. So damn close to such an unspeakable tragedy. The killer’s fastidiousness with not leaving behind any evidence doesn’t bode well for the idea of leaving witnesses, even if the kids aren’t ‘managers’ and don’t fit his target profile.
Mrs. Sullivan brushes her fingers over Jacob’s bruise.
I picture the boy as I saw him in the mirror, running into view, aiming, firing, and flying over backward, legs in the air. Buckshot probably caught the suspect in the right arm, maybe chest, maybe right leg. The blast would’ve had to have been confined to the side, or Alex would’ve been hit by a pellet or five, too. I bet my ‘no harm’ request knocked the kid on his ass so he couldn’t fire a fatal shot. As much as I want this guy stopped, good. No eight-year-old needs to live with being a killer, even a justified one. Then again, we still don’t know the extent of the suspect’s injuries. Now, if my luck was good, the guy’s at a hospital and patrol division’s already on their way.
No… I think this is where my bad-luck jinx is coming back to sink its teeth into my ass. Our ‘space man’ killer isn’t simply going to walk into our hands. Oh, ugh. I can see it now. The papers are going to call him the spaceman killer or something lame like that.
Again, I focus on my deep thanks to Lady Morrigan and the Goddess. I need to do an offering ritual as soon as this case spares me the time for it. The first chance I get, I’ll set aside a nice three-hour window.
They deserve a big thanks. After all, four innocents remain alive because of them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
DNA
Tuesday Late Morning – July 25, 2017
Turns out, I found the time last night. The way I see it, the sooner the better.
Naturally, I fell asleep last night only about two hours before my alarm goes off. Caius participated in the ritual as well, offering our thanks to The Goddess and Morrigan for their intervention. My hair still smells like camellia.
When we crawled into bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Sullivans, especially Jacob, wondering what must be going through the mind of an eight-year-old who shot a man. With any luck, between the ‘space suit’ and the lack of gore on the scene, he’ll tuck it away as some bit of cartoon violence. The recoil knocked him over instantly, so there’s a good chance he didn’t even see the effect of his shot on the killer, beyond it making the man run out the front door.
Greer calls us into her office a few minutes before eleven to go over what we know. Rick and I have been analyzing photographs from inside the Sullivan house. Information is still trickling in bit by bit, but the forensics people have ascertained that the camera had most likely been around the ‘space man’s’ neck. When Jacob shot him, he ran with enough speed that the strap snagged on the screen door handle and broke, sending the camera into the bushes.
We can only guess (and thank Morrigan) why he didn’t shoot the boy after the shotgun knocked him over. The most likely reason I can think of is that the shotgun disabled his right hand or arm, or made him drop his gun―but we didn’t recover any firearm except the shotgun. Maybe the killer didn’t realize the boy had been knocked over, and panicked? That would also explain why he didn’t go back for the camera. I smile to myself, entertaining the idea of Morrigan adding a little supernatural fear to the boy’s presence. Maybe the killer believed he saw something entirely more threatening than a scrawny little child with a huge shotgun.
“What a night…” Captain Greer looks over her screen, reviewing what we’ve entered on the report so far. “That poor family.”
“The victim works as a human resources manager for Providence,” I say.
“Fits the pattern.” Rick scratches at his chest. “This guy hates managers.”
Greer nods and holds up a DVD. “This just came back from the lab. They transferred the contents of the camera’s memory card.”
I look at the door, taken by a sudden need to get away, but I fight it. It’s my job to look at stuff like this so the rest of society doesn’t have to. Rick’s expression is grim, but he doesn�
�t flinch. I’m sure he’s not looking forward to watching that family forced to plead for their lives. This guy has some issues with control and authority. He must be marginalized somehow and have a compelling need to feel like he’s in control. There’s also a punishment aspect of it, lashing out at managers for their role ‘above’ others.
Captain Greer puts the DVD into a player on a table at the side of her office. The three of us stand there, no one making a move to go for a chair. That would feel too much like enjoying it.
The first file, dated from two days ago, starts in a dark cinder block basement. A middle-aged black man sits tied to a metal chair, facing the camera, his expression part delirious part furious. The camera wobbles and moves around, clearly in the hands of the killer. For several minutes, a calm male voice tells the bound man to beg for his life.
“Sounds like he’s doing a shitty impression of Bale’s Batman,” mutters Rick.
Based on the tone and inflection, I assume he’s fairly educated, but not too much. Most likely, he has a high school education and reads some heady things, but he doesn’t sound like a college graduate. The whole time the voice orders the victim to beg, offering the promise of not killing him, the man in the chair glowers. As the minutes tick on, the killer’s voice grows agitated. The calm affect breaks, as does the fake gravelly voice, and profanities slip in. At nine minutes in, an arm covered in white enters the frame, a 1911 pistol clutched in a black rubber glove.
“Beg, goddammit!”
The man doesn’t even blink at having a .45 waving in his face. He tugs at handcuffs, but only stares at the man.
“You think you’re better than us, don’t you?” shouts the killer, before smacking the man over the head with the gun. “You beg for your worthless life or it’s gonna take hours for you to die.”
“Bet you got a one-inch dick, don’t ’cha?” asks the man, a trickle of blood rolling down his face. “Your momma didn’t love you enough?”
Rick cringes.
I bite my knuckle. What is this guy trying to do, pull a True Romance and incite the killer into such a murderous rage that he dies fast and easy?
The killer emits an incompressible scream that might’ve been a series of obscenities or perhaps only a yell. When his arm rises back into frame again, he’s got a knife, which he holds to the man’s throat.
“Now fucking beg for your life! You live or die at my whim. Tell me how much you want to live,” shouts the killer.
“Dude sounds like a spoiled kid not getting his way,” mumbles Rick. “Totally can’t handle pressure.”
“I was in Baghdad, motherfucker,” says the bound man. “I seen shit. Your punk ass got nothin’. You think you’re some kinda big man hidin’ behind a mask and a gun. You ain’t nothin’ but a punk-ass bitch with daddy issues and a dick so tiny a cockroach wouldn’t feel it.”
The killer rams the knife into the man’s shoulder.
All the veins in the victim’s face and neck swell up, but he doesn’t cry out. The two men stare at each other for almost thirty full seconds before the victim says, “Punk. Ass. Bitch,” in a rasp.
Everything blurs into a whirl of rattling and incoherent screaming; after a few seconds of that, the video cuts off.
“Jesus,” whispers Greer.
“He had nothing to do with this,” I say, soft. “We need to figure out who that man was.”
“Or is,” says Rick. “Dude had some enormous balls… he might’ve made it.”
Greer and I exchange a ‘that’d be nice, but I doubt it’ glance.
The second video file is dated from yesterday. My heart races as Greer reaches to play it.
A familiar living room appears on the screen, viewed from a camera about chest-level to a grown man. Mrs. Sullivan, Alex, and Emma are tied to chairs, the woman facing her kids. Alex is closer to the killer. While his mother begs and pleads for her own life, the boy struggles frantically but futilely at what appears to be clothesline-type rope. Emma writhes, tugging on her arms and twisting her body at the X of rope securing her chest to the seatback.
I want to reach into the TV screen and pluck those kids straight out of that moment. Seeing this rips at my heart, and only the knowledge that they are okay now keeps me from crying in front of my captain and partner. Unable to speak or breathe, I clutch my hands at my throat and stare.
The same calm-killer voice says, “All right. You beg so well. Now, I’m going to play a little game of chance. How’s that sound? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Your opinion doesn’t mean anything. Here’s how the game works. I know you love one of your children a little less than the other. You should be used to placing value on people, right? That’s what you do all day long. You decide who’s worth a little bit more and who’s not so valuable. So…”
“No…” whispers Mrs. Sullivan. “Please don’t…”
The camera zooms in on Emma, who’s crying the hardest. Her body jerks over and over as she tries to fight the ropes around her. The view shifts to focus on Alex’s face next. He’s pale as a ghost and trembling, but trying hard to put on a defiant face.
“Tell me which one dies, and I’ll spare you as well as the other one.”
“Please no,” whispers Mrs. Sullivan. “Let them go. Kill me instead.”
“Oh, no.” The killer emits a dry chuckle, like slate scraping on concrete. “That’s not how this works.” His voice gains emotion, rising in pitch. “I’m the one in charge right now. I’m the one in control. And I’m telling you, one of your spawn is going to die tonight. It’s time for you to be on the other end of things. You tell me which one we keep.”
Mrs. Sullivan babbles non-words, bawling.
He zooms the camera in on her face. I look away.
“I wanna hurt this guy,” says Rick. “Cap’n, tell me you’ll overlook a bruise or six.”
“As long as it makes sense on the arrest report.” Greer doesn’t take her gaze off the screen.
“Mom. Pick me,” Alex yells. “Don’t let him hurt Emma. Do it. Pick me.”
Rick whirls away from the screen, fist cocked like he wants to smash something, but he winds up just covering his mouth with both hands. Silent tears run down my cheek as I stare into Alex’s desperate eyes.
“Please don’t kill us!” wails Emma. “Please!”
Mrs. Sullivan goes off, screaming and pleading with him not to harm the children. She thrashes at her bindings, but can’t break free. I watch this woman abandon all trace of dignity in front of this monster, trying everything she can to save her children’s lives. The killer is quiet for a moment, and zooms back in on her face. She seems to sense his reaction to her pain, and begs even harder.
It’s almost impossible to watch. I want to throw up. Turn it off. Walk out of the room. Kick the screen. I’m half-ready to put a bullet in the DVD player just to make this stop.
A small voice yells in the background.
Boom!
The image blurs from the man spinning too fast for the lens to keep up. A man’s groan of pain, then a gasp and a gurgle. Emma’s clear high-pitched scream accompanies the camera rushing toward the doorjamb and striking it with a hard clunk. The killer grunts again, and the image whirls into a mess of rapidly shifting colors before coming to rest with an extreme close up of a bush.
Mrs. Sullivan yells, “Jacob!” while Emma keeps screaming and Alex shouts, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” Seconds later, a distant car door slams and tires screech.
He’d parked close enough to the house for the camera to hear that… but none of the neighbors saw a black Ford Ranger. We should check the property around the area for tire marks on lawns; maybe he hid it somewhere. Or security footage. Yes, definitely security footage.
Rick, Captain Greer, and I stare wordlessly at the screen of tiny green leaves and small branches. One minute and sixteen seconds later, the flashing red and blue lights of police cars light up the ground below the bush.
Greer stops the recording. “Tech guys got this…” She taps an icon on
the monitor, and a still image appears, depicting a man in a white Tyvek suit with a full head covering and visor. “This is a single frame image from when the camera fell off and went spinning. The original’s upside down and quite blurry, but they flipped it and corrected it as much as possible.”
“Can’t see a face. Too much glare from the street light,” says Rick, leaning close to the monitor. “Now we know why there’s been no evidence at the other crime scenes.”
My eyes narrow. “Oh, he left plenty of DNA this time.”
Rick chuckles. “Yeah. Twelve gauge will do that.”
“Come on. I wanna nail this guy.” I start for the door.
When my partner only nods at me, instead of making a sexual joke, I know for a fact that video of the Sullivans got to him, too.
“Wims, Santiago,” says Greer, easing herself back in her chair. “I know I don’t need to say this, but, a bruise or two not showing up on an arrest report is one thing. That video is some of the worst stuff I’ve ever seen on this job, and that’s saying something. Don’t let this piece of shit take your careers out. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I nod. “No way, ma’am. We’re not sinking to his level.”
“Might sink him to the level of my boot, but… yeah.” Rick grumbles.
“Good.” Greer smiles at us. “Now, go get him.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Maribel
Tuesday Afternoon – July 25, 2017
We order Chinese delivery for lunch and keep working while we eat. None of the hospitals within 150 miles have any records of treating shotgun injuries within the past twenty-four hours, so either this guy stitched himself up or he has magical powers of bullshitting.
Or maybe his cousin’s a nurse or something.
Speaking of hospitals, Rick printed out a still-image capture of the male victim in the first video and sent it around to area hospitals and morgues.
A mouthful of Singapore mei fun nearly goes spraying all over my monitor when an email pops in with the subject: got prints in all caps. Henry Lee, one of the lab guys, has emailed me a full one-handed set of prints he lifted off the camera.