Mr. Midnight

by Allan Leverone

  Milo turned back toward Kevin, raising the knife and slashing at him again in a quick, panicked motion, before relaxing as he took in the sight of the badly injured man. Kevin stopped and clamped his hand over the knife wound in a vain attempt to stanch the bleeding but succeeded only in soaking his palms with his own blood. He swayed on his feet and began moving again, shuffling grimly toward Milo.

  Milo laughed, the sound grating and unexpected after the events of the last few seconds. He stepped forward and shoved Kevin backward and Kevin pinwheeled his arms weakly, the blood once again welling up and out of his chest the moment he removed his hand from the wound. Kevin stumbled once, tripping over the smashed chair seat, then crashed heavily to the floor, the back of his head bouncing off the polished hardwood with a loud Crack!

  Kevin blinked once, twice, three times. He shook his head. He rolled onto his stomach, gravity increasing the effect of the stab wound, causing the blood to flow even more heavily. He pushed himself onto his knees, eyes glazed from pain and shock. Then they rolled up into his head and he tumbled face-first onto the floor and lay still.

  And Cait screamed again.

  CHAPTER 38

  Boredom was the part of police work that Hollywood never seemed able to capture in their silver screen portrayals of law-enforcement officers. Or, more likely, they could capture it, they just didn’t want to. Rico Petralli figured that was probably it. After all, who wanted to pay twelve bucks a ticket, not including highway robbery charges for snacks and drinks, just to watch bored cops drive around all day in their cruisers busting teenage punk gangbangers and rousting smelly homeless guys from park benches? Moviegoers wanted to see car chases and flinty-eyed detectives and gun battles, Rico figured. He certainly did when he went to the movies.

  But the fact of the matter was real police work involved mind-numbing boredom, hours of it, day after day, much more often than it involved car chases or flinty-eyed detectives doing anything besides sipping bitter coffee on stakeouts. Certainly more than it involved gun battles. Rico had been an Everett cop going on four years now and had never once fired his weapon in anger.

  So when the Granite Circle call came in—an old lady worried about her neighbor—he shook his head wearily. He was only a quarter-mile away, closer than anyone else, which meant that he had no choice but to respond. He hated these types of calls—“Is everything all right, ma’am? Are you sure, ma’am?”—even more than most. They represented not just boredom, but awkwardness as well.

  Rico knew he would have to explain that the next-door neighbor—who had undoubtedly been peeping out her bedroom window—was concerned and had been sticking her nose into business that wasn’t hers. The “intruder” would end up being a visiting relative who had shown up unexpectedly or something. Rico sighed and shook his head wearily.

  Boredom.

  Rico’s day hadn’t been all that great to begin with, and was undoubtedly about to get just a little worse. He pulled into Granite Circle, struck by the absolute stillness of the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be a single person around, which was silly. There had to be at least one—the citizen who had gotten a glimpse of something that had made her nervous and called it in.

  He scanned the numbers on the fronts of the houses and eased to a stop behind a Buick parked in the driveway at Seven Granite Circle. He reached down and picked his hat off the seat next to him and placed it on his head, turning off the cruiser’s engine and climbing out of the vehicle reluctantly. Something was not right. Something was…off. It took a moment for him to figure out what that might be, and then it struck him like a sledgehammer.

  The place was quiet. Too quiet, as the cliché went.

  The house was graveyard-still. The silence was unnerving. It was deathly.

  Rico climbed the stairs and pressed the doorbell and waited, his right hand resting on the butt of his service revolver. For a long time nothing happened, and he began to wonder if he had gotten the address wrong. He looked around. The neighborhood remained quiet and still.

  Then the door swung open and a man filled the doorway. He was young—around Rico’s age—and appeared preoccupied. And he was sweating, as if he had just been involved in some form of heavy physical activity. Like beating his wife, maybe? “Yeah? What is it?” he said, an edge to his voice.

  Rico tried to look past the man and into the house and found he couldn’t. The dude’s body was blocking his view and besides, the hallway behind him was filled with shadows, too dark to make out much of anything. “Everything all right, sir?”

  “Sure it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Rico ignored the question. “What’s your name, sir?”

  The man hesitated and then answered. “Milo Cain.”

  “Anyone else home with you, Mr. Cain?”

  “Nope. I’m here all by myself.”

  “Really. Because we received a call from a neighbor concerned about the resident at this address. A resident who happens to be a lady. Can you shed any light on that for me, Mr. Cain?”

  “I sure can’t. Sorry. Like I said, no one else is even here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m kinda busy…” He began closing the door in Rico’s face and Rico reached out with his left hand to block it. His right hand stayed where it was, on the butt of his weapon.

  “May I come in for just a moment, sir?”

  A shadow of something—annoyance, impatience, fear?—flickered across the man’s face and Rico thought for a moment the guy might actually try to force the door closed in his face despite his efforts at holding it open. It had happened before. And then the man shrugged and said, “Whatever. Can you make it quick? I’m trying to prepare for a little party I’ll be hosting later.” He smiled and the sight chilled Rico. The man’s eyes were cold and calculating and distant.

  Rico stepped through the door and as he did a moan floated on the air, coming from somewhere inside the house. He hesitated for a half second, confused. It sounded like a man’s voice, not a woman’s, and the dispatcher had specifically stated the complainant was concerned about a woman being in danger.

  The screen door slammed behind Rico. The face of the man standing in front of him gave away nothing. Then Rico heard the sound again—definitely a moan, definitely a man’s voice—and in one smooth motion unholstered his Glock. He reached out to grab the man, whom he expected to retreat.

  But the man didn’t retreat. He stepped forward, rattlesnake-quick, reaching behind his back and producing a knife he had hidden in the waistband of his trousers. His hand was a blur as he slashed at Rico and Rico squeezed off a shot and the gun bucked in his hand and a loud roar filled his ears and fire flew from the end of the barrel and a massive hole appeared like magic in the hallway wall behind the man and Rico realized he had missed—

  —and he felt a stinging pain in his throat, like someone had taken their fingernail and dragged it across the skin. Suddenly his uniform shirt was wet. It felt as though he had stepped into the path of a fire hose. He could feel the wetness flowing down his chest and his belly like a wave.

  He reached up reflexively with his left hand and covered the damage to his throat as he pulled the trigger again with his right. By now the man had sidestepped to his right and even though Rico’s aim was better this time, the man was no longer there. The same roar filled the little house and the same fire flew from the barrel of Rico’s gun, but this time the bullet disappeared somewhere past the end of the hallway. Rico registered screaming now, loud screaming, coming from a room off the end of the hall.

  He stumbled forward, aware of the man approaching him from the left. He pulled his hand away from his throat and saw that it was drenched in blood, his blood, lots of blood. It flowed like a tiny river, splattering his shoes as it struck the hallway floor. Rico knew he was in big trouble and he slapped his left hand back on the gash in his throat and incredibly he splashed blood into his eyes and he heard a desperate keening moan and dimly realized it was coming from him.

  Rico lurched backward towar
d the front door. He had to get out and regroup, had to call for backup. And an ambulance. Then he felt a sting in his side, just under his ribs, and he turned his head and saw the man pulling the knife out of his side and that was when he heard the sirens in the distance and he knew everything would be okay. Backup was coming.

  Rico fumbled with his gun, trying to turn to his left and bring it to bear on his attacker, but his fingers were starting to feel numb and the gun seemed like it was getting heavier by the second. It no longer felt like a 9mm Glock sidearm, instead it felt to Rico like he was trying to maneuver a five-gallon bucket of water.

  He fell to his knees and slipped in the blood on the floor, rolling onto his side as he worked on getting off another shot. But the man had moved again, he was like a fucking magician. He had somehow gotten behind Rico and the gun was now pointing in the wrong direction. Rico twisted his weapon and realized he couldn’t shoot now or he would likely put a bullet into his own head.

  And where were those fucking cruisers and ambulances? He could hear them, why hadn’t they arrived yet? The sound of the sirens had grown much louder, except now it didn’t resemble sirens as much as it did the buzzing noise his mother’s clothes dryer used to make when a load of laundry had finished drying. It sounded like his mother’s dryer, only the noise didn’t stop; it just kept buzzing and buzzing, getting louder and louder like the dryer was moving down the hall.

  Rico realized through his mounting fuzzy confusion that he wasn’t hearing sirens at all. Nor was he hearing a clothes dryer. The noise was coming from inside his own head.

  And that made sense. He had never had a chance to call for backup. Had never had a chance, period. The guy had suckered him and Rico had made it easy for him. Out of nowhere, the old cliché, “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight” popped into his head and it occurred to him in retrospect that the saying wasn’t entirely accurate. Sometimes bringing a gun to a knife fight can be just a bad an idea.

  The blood continued to gush from his neck, casting the scene in a bright-red pulsing glow, and Rico realized the knife-wielding motherfucker had severed his carotid artery. He was fucked. The buzzing noise had continued to increase in volume and now it was more of a roar, like a helicopter was hovering out of sight just overhead. Dark clouds roiled at the edges of his vision, which was beginning to flicker, and he struggled to breathe, gasping vainly, and he knew he would lose consciousness soon.

  He looked around for the man with the knife to blow him to hell—if Rico was going to die, he would make goddamned sure he took the fucker with him—but the man had disappeared.

  Then someone turned out the lights and Rico Petralli felt an instant of heartache and regret. Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 39

  Cait barely registered the sound of the ringing doorbell. She barely registered anything besides the sight of Kevin lying motionless on the floor. Then the man who called himself Milo cursed and hurried out of the room. He paused in the doorway and turned. He reached one long arm toward her and pointed the bloodstained knife blade. “Stay perfectly quiet or everyone dies,” he said, his voice low and soft and menacing. Then he disappeared.

  Cait didn’t know who was at the door. Didn’t care, either. It wasn’t like the cavalry was going to come riding in on their white horses and save everyone; no one even knew they were here. And her top priority, her only priority, was Kevin.

  She rushed across the floor, sidestepping pieces of broken chair, and knelt next to him. His face was white, his lips a frightening shade of pale blue. His eyes were closed and he lay unmoving and for a horrible moment Cait feared he might already be dead. If that were the case, she would rush the maniac, knife or no knife, and inflict as much damage on his murdering soul as she could before she went down.

  But then Kevin coughed and moaned. His eyes remained closed and his face was still sheet-white but he was alive! Cait steeled herself and turned him over onto his back. She had to examine his wound. She had no idea how long their captor would be gone and doubted she would be allowed to care for Kevin once he returned, so speed was critical.

  She lifted his shirt, now soaked and matted with his own blood, and when she did, a sickening gush of it bubbled up and out of his chest. The shirt was acting as a kind of rudimentary bandage, partially restricting blood flow, and it occurred to Cait that Kevin’s loss of consciousness might be the only thing keeping him alive. His heart rate had dropped and was no longer forcing the blood out of his body at such an alarming rate.

  But something had to be done. Quickly. She needed to improvise a more effective compress than a piece of cotton resting against the gash. Cait ripped his shirt down the front, scattering buttons across the floor. They bounced around like little rubber balls. She worked his arms out of the sleeves and lifted his upper body as gently as she could off the floor, sliding the shirt out from under his back. His blood dripped down her hands.

  She eased Kevin back to the floor and then twisted the shirt into a long, thin bundle of material, wringing the blood out of it like a sponge. She looped it across his chest, pressing it over the wound, and then began to tie the sleeves into a knot.

  As she worked, she began to feel a gentle pressure in her brain, like a Flicker trying to gain a foothold, and she slowed down and forced herself to ignore it, to push it away. She had far too much to worry about right now to indulge a fucking mind-movie.

  The Flicker was insistent but so was she. She closed her eyes, angry at the waste of precious time, but felt certain that losing a few seconds to fight off a Flicker was far preferable to losing who knew how many minutes if she were to let it in.

  Finally the pressure eased and Cait was able to continue. She breathed a sigh of relief, having been uncertain she could actually fight it off. She strained to tie the sleeves together as tightly as possible, hoping sufficient pressure would be applied to the wound to prevent Kevin from bleeding out right here on the floor. But it was a temporary fix at best. He needed medical care and he needed it quickly.

  Again the gentle pressure of a Flicker pressed into her brain and again she shut it out, her annoyance growing along with her terror. Dammit! This was the worst time to have to deal with this. Out of her peripheral vision she could see Virginia straining against her bonds, her muffled voice soft, clearly trying to pass along some kind of message. It was quiet and low and completely unintelligible thanks to the duct-tape gag. Cait felt badly for her but her priority at the moment had to be Kevin.

  Besides, Milo would undoubtedly be back soon—Cait was surprised he hadn’t already gotten rid of whoever was at the front door. He seemed awfully anxious to get started with whatever torture he had planned for her.

  Cait’s head was turned to look at Virginia, willing her to stop twisting and grunting in her chair, fearing Milo’s threat to come back and kill them all. And then Kevin groaned. He remained unconscious, but let loose a long groan, certainly loud enough to be heard around the corner in the hallway.

  Kevin groaned again and Cait slapped a hand over his mouth and prayed he would stop. His skin felt clammy and his eyes remained closed. She whispered into his ear, “I’m here, baby, it’s okay, everything’s going to be okay,” knowing she was doing it for herself more than for Kevin, knowing also it was most likely a lie, but she had to do something; it was either this or break down and cry. So she whispered to him.

  She whispered again and her voice was drowned out by the impossibly loud roar of a gunshot. Cait had never heard one before—she hated guns and wished every day that there was a way Kevin could do his job without having to carry one—but she recognized the sound immediately, nevertheless. The gunshot was followed by the sound of an intense struggle taking place around the corner and down the hall.

  Another shot.

  More struggling.

  Cait realized she was screaming again but she couldn’t stop herself. Oh, God, she couldn’t stop. This day had turned into a living nightmare and she knew that whatever was taking place out by the front door ha
d only resulted in more horror, more pain and more fear.

  She removed her hand from Kevin’s mouth and clamped it over her own, finally stopping the scream, sobbing uncontrollably instead. It seemed suddenly unlikely that silence mattered, but she still worked to get herself under control. She felt like she might puke and swallowed hard, forcing the contents of her stomach back down.

  A sliding/scraping/slithering noise came from the hallway.

  Cait told herself not to look. She refused to look.

  Then she looked. She couldn’t help herself. She glanced up as Milo turned the corner, hunched over, dragging…he was dragging…oh, God, it was a body. He was dragging a body, and the body was dressed in a policeman’s uniform very similar to the one Kevin wore every day when he went to work. And the body was bloody and unmoving.

  Then Milo dropped the policeman’s body with a thud. He turned and straightened. He looked at her and smiled.

  CHAPTER 40

  Boston Police Officer Gina Knowlin eyed the tenement building suspiciously from the front seat of her cruiser. She hated these sorts of calls. Some nutcase had reported a dead body on the third floor—anonymously, no surprise there—and, equally unsurprisingly, had not bothered to offer his name or any other information to the dispatcher who fielded the call.

  The discovery of dead bodies was not particularly unusual, especially in this neighborhood, where vagrants, drug dealers, users, gang members, hookers and their johns combined to form a rich stew of potentially deadly violence. But what made this call different, according to dispatch, was the condition of the victim—a young female who had been, if the frantic report was to be believed, “skinned alive by Mr. Midnight,” whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

  The call was bogus, that much was obvious. The police had been getting flooded with Mr. Midnight sightings for months, and they were almost always bogus.