by P. Craig
Anxious, the man pulled his finger away from the curtain. He made his way quietly across the bedroom, casting his eyes briefly at his two victims, and then slipped out into the hallway, heading for the staircase.
The man knew the cop was in the house—the officer’s footsteps were quiet, barely noticeable above the faint hum coming from the light bulb in the hallway, but nonetheless he was definitely inside. The man figured the front door must have been unlocked, just as he had found with the last house he had entered uninvited. Doesn’t anyone lock their doors around here?!
The man waited near the top of the staircase, standing stock-still, barely even daring to breathe for fear of giving himself away, and listened carefully, trying to figure out what the cop was doing downstairs. The officer would have to come upstairs at some point to take a closer look at the broken window, but when he did, the man knew it was going to cause him a big problem—quite simply, beyond taking the stairs, there was no other way out of the house. Climbing out through a window in one of the other rooms nearby wasn’t an option; the other cop was almost certainly checking the outside of the house and could be anywhere. Escaping via the loft space wasn’t a good option, either; the man couldn’t see any easy way of getting up there, let alone even begin to think how he could subsequently get out undetected. The man shook his head. Going down the staircase and leaving through the front door was the only way out, although he briefly supposed there had to be a back door somewhere, not that he knew exactly where he might find it. Either way, I’m trapped.
A grunt of effort and an unwelcome creak of wood signalled that the cop was finally starting up the stairs. The man quietly cursed his own hesitancy and moved further down the hallway away from the approaching officer. Running out of options, not that there had been many in the first place, he slipped back into the bedroom, hoping that the cop would check one of the other rooms first, maybe give him an opportunity to sneak past unnoticed.
The floorboards creaked out in the hallway, the cop’s bulkier frame eliciting a more unforgiving response than the man’s wiry body had seconds earlier. The man’s heart hammered against his breastbone as he waited anxiously inside the bedroom. He prayed that the cop wouldn’t have the nerve to investigate the broken window straight away.
The unmistakable sound of the officer cocking his gun answered the man’s prayers in the negative; the cop, it seemed, wasn’t prepared to waste any more time.
Thinking quickly, the man crept across the bedroom floor, wet and sticky in places where blood had pooled and was beginning to dry, and hid inside the en-suite bathroom.
“Mrs Carter?”
The voice sounded faint, as though the cop was hesitant to walk into the room too soon and was still standing out in the hallway a few yards short of the door.
“Miss Carter, are you there?”
The man knew that the silence would lure the cop into the room to try to confirm with his eyes what his ears were suggesting—it was only a matter of time, seconds, until the man and the dead bodies were discovered.
Still, hearing his victims’ family name did at least answer one of his own questions; now he knew who he had killed. The Carters. Strangely, the name was familiar to him, and he didn’t have to dredge too far back through his memory, such as it was, to recall why that was so. David Carter was the name of the patient who had died in the crash from which the man had escaped. Carter’s file hadn’t contained any note of his home address, and no family had been mentioned either. But wouldn’t it be a small world, wouldn’t it be deliciously ironic, if this house had been his home too?
The man smiled in amusement and marvelled at the mysterious, almost fortuitous, way in which the world appeared to work at times.
Another creak, closer this time, snapped the man out of his thoughts. It sounded like the officer had finally plucked up enough courage to step into the room.
“Fucking hell!”
The bodies strewn across the floor and drenched in blood had revealed the secret of the house’s silence.
“Holy mother of...”
The man, with his ear pressed hard up against the bathroom door, listened carefully as the cop stepped further into the room. He could hear the creak of the officer’s knees as he bent down to examine the bodies for signs of life.
“Aw, shit.”
A faint click and the crackle of static reached the man’s ear.
“You... you there, Jerry?”
The cop, though his voice sounded weak and frail, was calling for assistance. The man sensed that he was only seconds away from losing any chance he had of making his escape. Panicking, he snatched a pair of scissors from the shelf above the sink; like a frenzied tornado, he swirled back into the bedroom, the scissor blades poised and ready to strike.
The cop, with his revolver drawn, was crouching over the girl’s body, checking her wrist for a pulse with his free hand, but as the man thundered across the room, the officer turned his head, looking round just in time to meet the sharp point of the scissors square in the eye. There was a sickening squelch, a second of stunned silence, and then the cop let rip with a horrific scream.
The man yanked the scissors free and shoved the officer backwards. As the injured cop fell, still holding his revolver, he instinctively squeezed off a round; the bullet ripped a hole in the curtain and blew out the window in a shower of glass. The sound of gunfire ricocheted around the room, the hallway, the staircase, the whole house.
The man pounced on the wounded cop and repeatedly stabbed at his hands and arms until the officer finally released his grip on the revolver. As the gun tumbled away, the man gritted his teeth and bore down on his defenceless victim, putting both hands round the cop’s thick neck.
Gasping for breath, the officer jerked a knee into the small of the man’s back, buying himself a second to fill his lungs. Hands on the man’s chest, he pushed up with everything he had and then, as the man’s hands slipped away from his neck, he screamed for help. As the man reeled back, the cop sat up and shoved him off to one side; the man’s head banged hard against a wall, though not hard enough to knock him unconscious.
“What’s going on, Sam? I heard gunfire. Come on—talk to me, buddy!”
Groaning, the officer struggled to his feet and then staggered towards the doorway with a hand covering his ruined eye.
The man sat up groggily and shook his head to clear the confusion fogging his brain. Quickly recovering his senses, he scrambled across the floor on all fours, desperate to get to the unattended handgun before the cop realised what he’d left behind. Just as he wrapped his hand around the grip, the officer stumbled out into the hallway and lurched in the direction of the staircase.
The man sprang to his feet. As he charged out of the bedroom, he took aim and pulled the trigger. The officer had almost been out of sight as he staggered down the stairs, but he hadn’t been quick enough; the bullet ripped through the back of his shoulder, twisting his whole body round. The cop tumbled down the staircase, arms and legs cartwheeling like the rotors of a helicopter spiralling out of control, and then disappeared into the darkness.
The man hurried along the corridor to finish him off, but as he reached the top of the staircase, he heard the second officer barge past the front door, spurred into action by the sound of gunfire.
The cop spotted his partner lying slumped at the foot of the staircase; eyes wide, he looked up, saw the man lining up for another shot and then, reacting quickly, fired off a couple of rounds.
The man ducked out of sight; he cast an alarmed look at the two impact marks on the wall and then hurried back towards the relative safety of the bedroom. His options now were severely limited. For a second time, he cursed the hesitancy that had cost him the chance to make a clean escape. Have I always been this sloppy when making a kill? Have I always had a tendency to linger and think about my victims, their homes, their lives, before fleeing the scene?
The man locked the door behind him and then moved quickly over to the wind
ow to see what was happening. The injured cop was sitting on the ground with his back against the car, partially obscured by the open passenger door; his partner was crouching a little closer, his head almost fully in view, while he radioed for backup.
Sensing an opportunity, the man whipped the curtain to one side and, squinting as the beam from the flashlight poured into the room, quickly fired a shot at the nearest cop’s head. It missed but not by much—a jagged hole was now visible in the car windscreen only a foot or two from the intended target. The cop’s head, unsurprisingly, promptly disappeared from view. A few seconds later, a shaky hand rose up from behind the dashboard and grabbed the shotgun mounted next to the steering wheel.
The man wondered whether he should fire another shot, try to stop the officer from making use of the more powerful weapon, but he suspected that would only leave him with three shots in the revolver. It was a good gun—an antique Smith and Wesson—but this particular model only packed six bullets. The man shook his head in dismay. Trust a country cop to fancy himself as something of a cowboy.
There was a resounding crunch as the officer pumped a shell into the barrel of his shotgun. Swearing under his breath, the man pulled the curtain back into place and crouched down below the window. The debate over whether or not he should take another shot at the cop was finished; the man knew he’d come under heavy fire the second he showed himself anywhere near the window again.
Somewhere in the far distance, a wail of sirens heralded the impending arrival of the cavalry. The man picked out two different pitch variations—a sign that the backup was more than just the local law enforcement. Probably the kind of backup who shoot to kill, too.
He nibbled his nail, silently berating his misfortune. Clearly, news of his earlier attempt had gotten out and attracted more interest than he had bargained for. Breaking into this house was beginning to look like a mistake—a mistake that was growing bigger and more severe with every passing moment, any of which could be his last.
Several cars came to a crunching halt out in the yard, their locking wheels skidding across the gravel. Doors opened and a dozen men stepped out and pumped a dozen shotguns ready for action.
Knowing what he would find, the man pushed open the cylinder of his revolver and confirmed that there were only three bullets left. Outnumbered and outgunned. He clicked the cylinder back into the frame and wondered, with increasing morbidity, if he should try to keep the last bullet for himself.
Feet crunching over the gravel, growing fainter with every moment, told the man that the cops were spreading out, making sure they had all the angles covered, making sure that he couldn’t make a bid for freedom out the front or rear of the house.
Except escape wasn’t what he had in mind; that option had passed out of sight the instant he had hesitated upon seeing the first pair of cops arrive. Thinking back on it, he wondered if maybe he could have used the officer he’d attacked as a hostage; that would have given him some kind of leverage with which to negotiate his freedom—a little more time, if nothing else.
“This is the police. We have the building surrounded. Throw your weapon out the window and make your way outside through the front door with your hands in the air where we can clearly see them.”
The man shook his head clear of the thought about what he should have done; there was little point dwelling on the past now, the irony that such an act had been in any case.
He glanced in the direction of the dead mother. Her head was lying on the carpet at such an angle that her lifeless eyes were staring right at him. With her mouth open, it almost looked like she was laughing at him for the way events had unfolded.
Damn you, bitch!
Anger flaring, the man pointed the gun at her face, squeezed the trigger and showered the room with skull fragments, blood and grey matter. He smiled; her head had almost literally exploded, and her eyes, those beastly sad eyes he had so hated, lay scattered across the carpet in opposing directions, severed from her brain. A great gash in the woman’s skull, a great gouge shaped like a mouth, seemed to smile at the man for his unthinking foolishness, though it took him a moment to think why. The answer came eventually—just two bullets left now.
Or are there more elsewhere in the house?
He thought it was a definite possibility. After all, people who live in the countryside often keep a gun in their home—protection against people like him who might try to take advantage of the cops’ inability to respond quickly in such areas. For some unknown reason, the man felt sure there was another gun in this house; maybe even more than one.
There was an eerie silence outside. The cops seemed hesitant to make a move, perhaps hoping the man had made the job easier for them by taking his own life. Finally, some officers exchanged some muted words and then the man heard multiple pairs of feet thundering into the house. They had clearly taken the firing of another shot as a sign that he had no intention of coming out of his own accord.
Hearing the stairs creaking once again, the man quickly made up his mind about what he was going to do. He stuffed the revolver into the waistband of his trousers and then crawled quickly across the bedroom to the door, where he got to his feet and ever so quietly turned the key in the lock. Taking great care to avoid making a sound, he opened the door just enough to enable him to look out into the hallway. He could see the top of a head as a cop crept up the staircase.
The man cleared his throat. “Out... okay... c-c-coming!”
The lead cop halted and quickly raised his shotgun. Two more officers appeared alongside, both similarly poised and ready to shoot.
The first cop poked his head up so that his face became visible to the man. “Throw your weapon out into the hallway, buddy. I won’t ask twice.”
The man pretended he hadn’t heard the order. “Don’t... I’m... shoot... out... coming!”
He stepped very slowly and very deliberately out into the hallway, with his hands high in the air above his head.
“Stop right there! Where’s your weapon?”
The man nodded in the direction of the bedroom. “There... left.”
The cops hesitated for a moment, the impassive look on the man’s face not betraying any sign of a lie, his garbled words taking a second or two to sink in, before finally one of the officers gestured for the man to start walking. “Real nice and slow, mister.”
Nodding obediently, the man inched slowly towards the staircase; the cops moved back down in time with his steps, their sights trained on his head. As he reached the doorway to the room closest to the stairs, the man stumbled forwards, seemingly tripping over his own feet; appearing to fall, he quickly dropped his hands, one stretching out to catch the door handle, the other snaking round and pulling the revolver free from behind his back. Surprised, the cops backed away and dropped their guard, their sights, giving the man the chance he needed to push down on the door handle and, at the same time, fire off one last parting shot; a shot that blew a hole in the head of the cop closest to him. Amid the chaos and uproar caused by the lifeless body tumbling down the stairs, the man ducked into the room under a hail of gunfire and then slammed the door shut behind him.
Breathing hard and grimacing, his back against the wall, blood pouring out of a fresh wound in his leg, the man reached up above his head and switched on the overhead light.
The room, a study, looked exactly as he had expected to find it. And mounted on the wall to his right was exactly what he had hoped to find—hunting rifles. The three weapons were surrounded by various photos of some guy with a beard—Mr Carter?—who was smiling and holding aloft various wild birds he'd shot.
Wincing as he stood up, the man grabbed the most powerful rifle and instinctively reached up to a shelf above and behind his head where there was a box of bullets. Smiling, he loaded several bullets into the magazine clip and then locked it back into the rifle.
He knew that this was only ever going to end one way—the cops wouldn’t take kindly to one of their own being shot dead—but he
also knew that he could hold out a little longer now. He had a rifle, three of them; he had ammunition, boxes of it; and he knew—somehow, he just knew—that Mr Carter would be the type of resourceful man to have some food and water stored nearby.
The man surveyed the room and smiled again. He could hold out for days if he had to. And to be honest, he knew he would have to. Surviving for as long as possible and maybe killing a few more cops—that was the only future he saw ahead of him.
Perhaps, he wondered, turning and pointing the rifle at the door, that was all there could ever be, all there had ever been, for a man—a killer—like me.
Two
April 5, 8.15 p.m.
The wood was finally beginning to give way, splintering along a fracture spreading out from the spot where he was applying heavy pressure with the crowbar.
The glass in the window frame cracked first, a series of white lines rippling out across the pane. The man stepped back and, scratching his head, reconsidered how he was going about the task of prying it open. The wood was old, weak in places, and all it would take was one quick, hard push on the crowbar to break the catch on the window and force it open. The problem was, he reckoned, one quick, hard push would result in too much noise—noise that would almost certainly attract the unwanted attention of the occupants of the house, who were currently lounging about in the living room downstairs. No doubt stuffing their faces with chips and cookies.
Placing the crowbar against the wall, the man bent down and took a closer look at the cracks in the glass; he ran his fingers over the thin grooves, trying to assess how much more pressure they could take before shattering completely. The glass was thin, presumably worn down over the years by the raw elements, its ability to absorb pressure apparently similarly eroded.
The man rubbed his jaw for a moment, partly to help the mental process as he considered whether to continue with the crowbar, and partly because it still didn’t feel quite right after the beating he had taken.