by mike Evans
Gray was trying to think of anything that they’d learned about the man since finding out his identity. He wanted to try and appeal to something about him but he knew that in six months he’d not contacted his wife once, his mother had passed of cancer and his father had disappeared. He wasn’t sure what that meant for his dad if the man had killed him, or if the embarrassment of his son being a killer had been too much for him to handle and he didn’t want to deal with all of the questioning that he knew he was going to have to deal with.
Gray looked at the computer and realized he didn’t know all of the codes for the department he’d been working out of. He said, “Sandlin, where are we and how much longer until additional units are going to be here? We still have a chance to catch him.”
Sandlin tapped on the computer for a moment and said, “Backup is going to be here in eight minutes, we should be there in two. There’s no quick way to get anywhere here, it doesn’t matter if you have sirens or not, those pedestrians just sit there in our way. They hate the shield out here.”
Gray was thinking of his own advice about not going in without backup. He arrived at the parking lot a minute ahead of when Sandlin said that they would. Gray pulled his pistol and got out of the Tahoe. Sandlin did the same along with signing the cross on his chest praying that they made it there without being killed in traffic. Sandlin adjusted the bullet proof vest and the two of them made their way up to the door. Gray looked around back not seeing it and didn’t see when he stopped. He hit his radio and said, “Hagardt, Hagardt, where the fuck is your car?”
Sandlin heard this and realized there should have been a squad car out in front of the restaurant with lights and sirens blaring. Gray said it more to himself than to Sandlin, “We missed him, damn it to hell, we were close.”
“You still want to clear the building, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but we aren’t going to find anyone alive, I can assure you of that. He’s in their car and listening to every fucking thing that everyone is saying. We aren’t going to get a chance at him unless he is only getting his mouth wet with this one.”
They walked through the door, checking bathrooms, coat closets and everything in between until they finally made their way into the kitchen. Gray saw the head, the cook that had made the smoke alarms go off. The smell was intense and beyond burnt, it was something like he never wanted to smell again and that he wished wouldn’t be one that he could not forget. Sandlin began to reach and turn off the fryer but Gray grasped his wrist. “Don’t do that, please. This is too easy, I don’t trust anything that I’m seeing. This could be something else. We need to call in the bomb squad to make sure this scene is safe to work.”
Sandlin who had seen the man was nothing but a maniac since he’d heard the call said, “Are you kidding me? We finally might have a lead and you want to sit on it?”
“What lead do we have? There’s two dead police, a grill cook, and a waitress…dead. What lead do we have again?”
Sandlin started to say something and realized that they didn’t have a single clue. No idea where he’d go from here and the frustration he was feeling was what he realized Gray had to deal with on every scene that he was just a minute too late to. “This guy has no rhyme or reason, does he? How the hell do you predict anything?”
Gray was walking back to the lobby. “I don’t. There isn’t a rhyme or reason. It could be campers, farmers, a sorority or frat house, or a diner. It doesn’t make any difference to him because he is unbiased in his killing. There is no safety net. As of now, children seem to be the only thing he has not killed. I don’t know if it’s because he is a father himself or he actually has the thinnest moral fiber running through his body.”
“Or none have run through his path. I guess you’ll see if that’s the case if a school gets—”
Gray spun around stopping dead in his tracks. Sandlin who was still talking got lifted off of his feet for a moment and Gray pushed him backwards slamming him into a wall. “You think it is funny, you think that getting to follow this twisted fuck around the United States is why I signed on? Look at that waitress. Did you see the guy in that deep fat fryer? Maybe if you want to continue being on my side it might do you good to go back in there and look around. I don’t think you are giving this man the respect that he deserves. There is no reason that you shouldn’t be terrified about everything this guy is. He is not done, he is in his thirties, and if he isn’t stopped this fucker could kill for decades, before he is too old to do it, and maybe at the point when he is old he just starts using pistols so that he can still kill people, or he’ll disable them and then be able to take his time. Don’t follow me! I’m pretty sure I’d like to fucking deck you right now.”
Sandlin backed up throwing his hands up in a show of peace. “I’m sorry, and you’re right. I have no idea how it feels or what you are going through. Maybe you should let the backup know that we are inside and that it is secure.”
Gray was ready to walk out for some fresh air but saw two purses sitting on the counter and one had a wallet sitting on top of it. He turned around looking at it as his mind ran through the bodies they had found in the restaurant. Alarms started to ring in his head. He walked to the purse to look through it and did not find a driver’s license. He saw the cell phone and looked at the messages and saw that not more than twenty minutes ago a text had been sent. He picked up the phone and saw the blood on the numbers. He flipped open the phone to get the phone number. Gray ripped through the purse trying to figure out who this person was but only found a few loose dollars, emergency tampons, and nothing else important that would lead him to the owner. Gray saw the time clock board and ran to it looking through the cards seeing three people that had worked that night and only one who had clocked out. He ran to the truck to call it in and find out who owned it and see who was on shift. He knew that this was the lead that he had been waiting for. He hit his radio yelling to Sandlin. “Get your ass over here, we are going to move soon.”
“I’ll be there in a second, I just want to check something.”
Gray turned to run back in.
**
Sandlin was perfectly content giving Gray a chance to cool off; he’d read reports on him as well and when he googled his name was not happy with the history of violence that the man had. They had gotten him off for emotional stress when he had killed the man with a knife instead of a gun, insisting that he’d temporarily lost his mind and that he was using self-defense. He walked around the oven and saw something just barely sticking out of it. He hit his radio and said, “Hey, I might have found a clue in here.”
Sandlin was already opening the oven door when Gray was screaming to not open or touch anything. He looked down and the last thing that he’d ever remember seeing would be fire erupting. A spark went off and ignited the gas that The Stranger had left running. A fireball erupted into Sandlin’s face burning it to an instant crisp; he’d been gasping at the same time and it flowed into his mouth and down his throat.
Sandlin turned, running back out, not realizing that his front was ablaze and the fire was burning his clothes. Gray saw him as he made his way out the doors with fire consuming him. Gray jumped uncaring about himself onto the burning man sending him to the ground and ripped his suit coat off and covered Sandlin. He patted him down until the clothes were only smoldering. Sandlin tried to blink but his eyes were burnt shut. Tears started to fall from the corners and it sizzled as it touched his charred skin. When Sandlin tried to speak but only a puff of smoke rolled out of his mouth and as he moved his lips Gray could see the insides of his throat swelling. Sandlin took one last breath and then passed into the great beyond.
Chapter 16
Holly walked through the store picking up a bottle of wine and a frozen pizza. She smiled while looking at her supplies thinking how she knew how to treat her man right. She got to the checkout line and when it came her turn to pay realized that she didn't have her ID, Cell, or her wallet to pay for anything. She slumped when s
he looked at the cashier who was used to her coming in and knew her by name. Holly said, “I swear to God I will bring you the money tomorrow. I have the day off. You tell me what time I can bring it and I’ll drop it off with a little extra something for you in it.”
The cashier smiled a bit greedily before asking, “So, how much little something are we talking about, that is in it for me?”
Holly rolled her wrists in a look at me manner. “I’m a waitress and make three bucks an hour plus tips. How about an extra crisp five dollar bill with your name on it?”
“Big spender!”
“Yeah, be careful, Harry, that five might become four real quick.”
“You know I could just make you put back the wine right.”
“I’d put the pizza back before I put the wine back. I deal with people for a living, it kind of puts things into perspective for me that…I don’t really care for people. The thought that I’m literally getting food orders from people then taking the food to them and that is all I have to do is somewhat depressing, hence the pizza preference being put back over the wine.”
Harry tried to keep a straight face not knowing his manager was only a few feet away. “I fucking hate people too, so damn needy, you think that they’d like us a little more. I mean, we check them out and they get to take food home. What do they do instead, they complain and bitch about the prices of the shit that they don’t need.”
The manager said, “Holly, bring him the money tomorrow please. Harry, go take a smoke break before you snap on someone. I think you are due for one.”
Harry had no shame and grabbed his pack from under the counter and practically leapt down the aisles to the smoker’s dock. Holly mouthed a quick thank you to the manager and snuck out happily bagging her own groceries. She looked in the car making sure she’d not left her purse in there and hoping to save herself a trip the following day but little to no luck did she find her purse. “Shit, I must have left it at Earl’s. Looks like I get to sneak in there on my day off and come here. Nothing better than wasting a few hours on my one day off this week, damn it to hell.”
She drove home quickly when she saw the hour was getting late and she still needed to cook the feast for her man…and drink a good portion of the wine. When she pulled up in front of the house, it was dark. She didn’t think that he’d be sleeping knowing that the two of them could sleep in for a change. She hated their schedules and the fact that he was sleeping when she was working, or he’d have to pick up an overnight shift while she’d be sleeping. She thought of her parents and how dad worked, mom stayed home, and they were together every night for supper. She looked around the neighborhood looking at the palm tree’s tops that were just barely visible in the darkness of midnight and laughed realizing she sure as hell wasn’t in Missouri. The fact that she wasn’t didn’t break her heart either.
She locked her door thankful she’d had her keys in her pocket and not had to go back into the kitchen to catch Mark and Megan doing God knows what in the backroom. It reminded her that she needed to talk to Joan about possibly changing the hours that she worked. Holly figured if she got day shifts for a while that Mark and Megan wouldn’t be trying to fuck every minute of the day. But it was something that she worried could still be possible if they weren’t too busy at the diner.
She jingled her keys hoping that someone was there. She was trying to remember if there were any games on east coast time that would have her husband chugging beer and screaming right alongside friends. She, for the life of her, could not remember. Holly stumbled in, balancing the bag in one hand and a few odds and ends in the other. She walked in and didn’t even see so much as a glow coming from a television screen indicating maybe he’d fallen asleep in the lazy boy. When she rounded the corner two hands clutched to her sides. Holly screamed at the top of her lungs dropping everything, spinning and bringing a knee up out of nowhere and directly into the groin of her husband, Rob. He moaned and she instantly knew it was him and he leaned against her as she clasped at her heart, backing away from him. Her puppy, Poncho, came running up scratching her leg dying for her attention.
Holly tried her best not to laugh and then snorted. She tried to keep it in but it came out slowly at first until it was a full roar of laughter. Rob gritted his teeth saying, “Well, I'm so fucking happy you think that is so funny. I thought at some point that you wanted me to be able to use these things for helping you make babies one day?”
“Well, what the fuck were you doing standing in the dark like a fucking creeper? How is that my fault? Would you rather me swing this wine bottle at your head? That would have been better, right? We can’t afford any hospital bills right now. I'm sure stitches would only cost a thousand dollars and that doesn’t include the ambulance ride.”
“Honey, please, unless I'm not able to stand, just figure that we can’t ever afford it. Unless you see organs hanging from me, or I'm pissing blood out of Jose then you should just drive me.”
“Jose, Christ is that what you are calling him now? You can’t think of anything better?”
“Considering the laughter I got when I called him yardstick, no I don’t think there is anything better. You don’t have the sense of humor to keep up with my wonderful imagination. Now, I think you should come and kiss it and make it feel all better.”
She flicked on a light picking up her mess and left him lying on the floor expecting much more than he was going to get from her. Holly said, “You and Jose can get off the floor because I'm not kissing anything. I thought I was going to have a fucking heart attack. That was a close one. You are lucky I don’t carry a gun. I might have shot you.”
“Did you say that you had wine?”
Holly shook her head at his one track mind and laughed. Sex, booze, and food seemed to be all he thought about. “Yes, yes I did. I'm not sure that I'm going to share it now though. That wasn’t cool. You can’t do that to a woman, you might leave to do something some night and then I'm going to walk through the entire house waiting for you to scare me. You need to watch the news, there’s some creepy shit going on in California right now.”
“Are you scared of the big bad boogie man roaming the streets, lurking to do his worst with his big bad knife?”
“Are you slow, Rob? Thank god I have Poncho to protect me. I don’t think you or Jose are good for much but making messes.”
Rob got up off the ground slowly testing his man parts out and making sure there wasn’t any pain from the jiggling. He took the pizza from her, examining it to see if it was up to his standards. The words meat and pizza were all that he needed to see and he disappeared with it to preheat the oven. She set the bottle down burying the corkscrew and felt an instant relief wash over her as the cork popped free. She moaned a little as the smell of the ten dollar bottle hit her sense of smell.
“I wish that I could get you to sound like that in bed. Why do you make a more genuine noise in the kitchen than you do in bed?”
“Because I’m not a man and therefore don’t have a dick to pull me around in a million different directions only truly worried about one thing in life.”
“That hurts a little, Holly. I mean…I’m sensitive.”
She snorted, patting his privates, and said, “You mean post getting kicked in the balls? Play your cards right and maybe you and Jose will have a genuine chance at making me sound like that again.”
“Really?”
“Probably depends on how much of the wine that I get.”
“You want me to go get you more? Maybe some tequila, or some Everclear?”
“Are you trying to kill me?”
“Well no, sorry, never mind. Here, you can have the whole bottle, it’s all you.”
She patted his ass as she went for two wine glasses and whispered, “It’s a sure thing so have a drink, stud.”
Within fifteen minutes they were sitting in front of the television each attempting to eat a slice of pizza that was smoking hot. Rob was trying to use his willpower to sustain from eat
ing it but couldn’t help himself. Holly said, “You’d best be smarter than the pizza pie or you are going to have one burnt mouth.”
He patted a healthy midsection and said, “But I’m starving, baby, look at me. It’s a miracle that I lasted until you made it home with sustenance.”
“You poor, poor baby, you have it rough don’t you? You should rub my feet when you are done. It’ll make you feel better about everything.”
A rusted swing outside started to creak and Poncho sprinted to the glass door barking his head off. Holly jumped when he did trying not to spill her wine. She pulled Rob close and said, “You need to go check on that. Poncho is only a weirdo once in a while, he doesn’t flip his shit over everything.”
“But the pizza is going to get cold.”
“You don’t want to have the bed cold tonight, do you?”
“This is why I should have been gay; everything would have been so much easier. Can you imagine a guy telling another guy no?”
“Uh honey, I don’t see you as being up for the receiving end, unless there’s something that I don’t know about you that I need to know.”
“No, no, no, I am really just relating everything back to the fact that men are idiots and our cocks are kind of in control...take that back, they are in control. I’d say I hate it, but I could never talk that way to Jose.”
She sighed and he handed the pizza to her getting up off the couch and chugging what was left of his glass of wine. “We might need to go on a booze run. I don’t know if we have enough between the two of us, especially if we have tomorrow off together.”