by Erynn Mangum
I turned the first pages until I got to the table of contents and found the listing for Luke. Page 847.
The Bible was a lot bigger than I’d figured it was.
I flipped over carefully and ended up in a section called Psalms on my way over to Luke.
There were a lot of chapters in Psalms. I was looking at Psalm 112 and there were still a bunch after it.
One line caught my eye. “They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”
I wasn’t sure who “they” were, but I found myself wishing that I could be like them. You know, the whole not fearing bad news.
At this point, my life was all about fear.
I read a little further in the Psalm and some of it sounded like the songs we’d sung at church last Sunday.
I wondered what it would be like to be like Justin or Detective Masterson. Both of them seemed so set that everything that was happening was God’s plan. And for some reason, that made everything okay.
Everything was not okay, though. I’d already been shot at once, and now the guy who I put in prison was likely out there looking for me.
I shivered and looked at the closed blinds covering the bulletproof window. My life had been reduced to a tiny house in the middle of the woods of Missouri.
I spent the next three hours reading in the Psalms. By the time I reached over to turn off the bedside lamp to try and get a few more hours of sleep, I could hear the birds starting their morning chirping.
I slept until almost eight, which was really good for me. I walked out into the living room after I brushed my teeth and found Mom and Dad pulling on their sneakers.
“Morning, Katie-Kin. We’re going for a quick walk,” Mom said, doing a couple of stretches. “Want to come with us?”
I watched Mom do a few lunges and shook my head, yawning. I might be going stir-crazy, but I wasn’t about to go power walking with Mom. Mom took her walks far too seriously.
I was actually amazed that Dad was going to go with her. He mocked her mercilessly about how she walked.
He must be really bored.
“No, thanks,” I said. “Have fun.” I sat down on the couch.
“We’ll be back soon,” Mom said, kissing the top of my head.
“I’ll tell Kent we’re leaving,” Dad said.
I looked around. “Where is he?”
He shrugged. “Something about the motion sensor. I think he’s working on it in the shed out back.”
They left and I went to pour a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, one of the many contraband items in our house that was luckily in plenty of supply here. Detective Masterson walked in as I was pouring the milk over them, listening to the happy sounds of chocolate snapping.
“Good morning, Kate,” he said, backhanding his forehead and reaching for a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Hot outside?”
“Stuffy in the shed,” he said after gulping half the bottle. “Anyway, I’ve got to finish working on this thing.” He unclipped his cell phone and set it beside me on the table. “If you need anything or anything even seems off, push 4–6–3. That will buzz my pager.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“It shouldn’t take me too long. And I’m just behind the house.”
I nodded again. “Okay.”
“Have a good breakfast.”
He left and the house suddenly felt very quiet.
Quiet, dark, and small.
I ate my Cocoa Puffs in crunching silence, reading the back of the box as I ate. Apparently, Toucan Sam had a friend who was crazy for this cereal.
I put my bowl in the sink when I finished and found my sketchbook. My parents’ heads were coming along, but I wasn’t quite done yet.
I sat down on the couch.
Nothing like an orange and olive green–striped couch sitting on orange carpeting and surrounded by dark wood paneling to get the inspiration rolling.
I stared at my parents’ half-finished heads for about fifteen minutes before I finally just flipped the page over and started drawing something else.
Last night, one of the Psalm chapters, the first one I think, had mentioned something about someone sitting under a tree or being like a tree or something like that. That was one of the last ones I read, so it was a little fuzzy to me. But looking out the front window and seeing just a mesh of trees made me think of it.
I usually liked to stick to people but I started sketching the forest. I drew the window frame I was looking through, complete with the wood paneling on the sides of it. Then, through the window, I drew the trees.
The sound of Detective Masterson’s phone ringing startled me and I jumped, my pencil making the limbs on one tree look more abstract than real.
I walked over to the table and looked at the cell. He had one of those phones that rang and vibrated at the same time, so it was jangling and turning in a circle on the table.
He hadn’t told me what to do if his phone rang.
I picked it up and looked at the screen.
Slalom.
I should probably answer it if it was the deputy calling.
“Hello?” I said, my voice all mousy. I hated how I seemed to always talk an octave higher on the phone.
“Who is this?” Deputy Slalom demanded.
“Um. Kate, sir. Kate Carter.”
“Kate, why are you answering Kent’s phone?”
“Um. Because he’s out working in the shed.” Now, not only was I talking an octave higher, I was stuttering and a tattletale.
Today was going to be a great day.
“Get him. NOW!”
I nearly dropped the phone when he yelled. “Uh, yes, sir,” I managed, fumbling with the phone and running for the front door. My stomach was flip-flopping like I had a dozen or so wide-mouthed bass swimming around in there.
Maybe they’d caught John X!
I shoved my feet in some flip-flops and ran out the front door, leaving it slightly ajar, and onto the porch. The birds were singing, there was a slight breeze, and the sun was shining through the trees in small patches all over the pine-needle-blanketed clearing.
The shed was in the back. I hadn’t been to the back yet since I was pretty content to stay inside, all things considered.
“Did you find him?” Deputy Slalom barked at me.
“Uh, not yet, sir.”
“Good grief, Kate, the house is tinier than my aunt Gladys’ kitchen! Find him now!”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
I tripped over the natural landscape and found myself thankful for the manicured lawn Dad cared so much about. I didn’t even have to worry about stubbing my toe in his grass.
Not like I was ever allowed to walk on it.
I finally saw the shed a few feet back from the house and I hurried as quickly as I could toward it, phone smashed to my ear, trying to avoid all the fallen branches, rocks, and probably snake holes around.
I had one thing in common with Indiana Jones, and that was that we both hated snakes. Other than that, we were total opposites.
It was my goal to lead my life in relative obscurity.
Which obviously was not happening right now.
I looked up at the shed and saw someone coming out of it, closing both the doors behind him.
It was DJ.
“DJ!” I shouted, waving and smiling.
“DJ?” Deputy Slalom yelled in my ear.
“Hi!” I said.
He waved back and started walking in my direction.
“Kate! Listen to me — run! Get as far away from DJ as you can!” Deputy Slalom yelled.
I stopped about halfway between the house and the shed, frowning. “What?” I said. “It’s DJ. The guy from your police force?”
“Kate, get in the house! Get back in the house now!”
I didn’t try to argue with him, but I couldn’t help thinking how ridiculous it was for me to be running back to the house when I’d just waved at DJ.
DJ had lived
with us for the last month. What did Deputy Slalom think he’d do? Hug me in greeting?
“Kate!” DJ yelled behind me, and I could hear him crashing through the brush. “Kate, hold on!”
I tripped up the front steps and into the front door, closing it and locking it behind me right as DJ rammed into it, grabbing the knob. “Kate!” he shouted again.
What if DJ had news about John X? What if he knew something and had driven all the way out here to tell us?
“Are you in the house?” Deputy Slalom was still yelling at me.
My heart was pounding. I just stared at DJ through the window on the front door. “Yes, sir.”
“Do not open that door, Kate. Do you hear me? Do not open that door!”
DJ pounded on the door. “Open the door, Kate! Don’t listen to him!”
“Deputy, what —?”
“You left your sketchbook here,” Deputy Slalom shouted.
I went into the kitchen to get away from DJ’s pounding on the door. “Okay.”
“You left your sketchbook here and one of the guys we brought up from St. Louis started looking through it.”
A sketchbook isn’t the same thing as a journal, but for me, it can be. I felt myself getting a little offended. “He what?”
“He looked through it and saw the picture you did of DJ.”
My heart started beating a little faster. I watched as DJ paced the front porch, staring into the house, shouting at me.
“Open the door, Kate!”
“Kate. He recognized him. From a case about four years ago.”
Surely Deputy Slalom meant that DJ had worked on the case. He must have worked in St. Louis.
I couldn’t get a full breath into my lungs. They felt cramped, like there suddenly wasn’t enough room in my rib cage.
“Kate, a man matching DJ’s exact description was an accomplice in John X’s first murder.”
And just like that, my heart stopped pounding. I sank to the kitchen chair, shock making it impossible for my kneecaps to hold the standing position.
“But he … how …?”
“We hired him exactly three and a half years ago. He had no police record, we didn’t know anything about any of this. But the cop from St. Louis brought up the case records from the first murder.” Deputy Slalom sighed and I could picture him rubbing his forehead. “Kate, it’s him. I don’t know the whys and I really don’t understand the hows, but it’s him.”
“Kate! Open the door!” DJ yelled, pounding on the front window.
I looked at him, and the fear took over. I shook from head to toe. DJ? The same guy who slept outside my room on an air mattress for the last four weeks? The guy who panicked when Officer DeWeise was shot, the guy who tried to make me laugh when he could tell I was getting freaked out?
He, of all people, was working with the man who was trying to kill me?
DJ looked and sounded angry. His eyes were bloodshot, his face was bright red, and he was yelling constantly.
I started worrying about my mom and dad. And Detective Masterson. I’d seen DJ coming out of the shed. What if he’d killed Detective Masterson and my parents?
I started shaking harder. Tears were gathering in the corners of my eyes, and I felt like all of my muscles had turned to overcooked noodles.
“Stay on the phone with me, Kate,” Deputy Slalom said. “I’ve got the FBI headed your direction.”
“Kate! Kate!” DJ started banging both fists on the window, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Kate!”
I don’t think I even realized what happened at first.
One minute I was holding the phone, Deputy Slalom talking in my ear about how the FBI was on the way, the next minute the phone was gone and I was face-to-face with a man whose face I knew better than my own.
“Hello, Kate Carter from South Woodhaven Falls.”
It was John X.
Chapter Nineteen
I COULD ONLY ASSUME THAT MY CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM had shut down, because for some reason I was very calm right then. The man I’d been having nightmares about for weeks was standing right in front of me closing Detective Masterson’s phone and smiling smugly.
And I just sat there. I didn’t scream. I didn’t faint.
I didn’t even twitch.
DJ, meanwhile, was continuing to pound on the door, the window, the siding on the house, yelling at the top of his lungs. “Kate! Kate!”
John X ignored him. Instead, he pulled out the chair to my right and sat down at the table with me, pushing the detective’s cell phone to the other side of it.
“So, Kate Carter,” he said.
His voice was different than I’d imagined it. It wasn’t scarily deep. It was cultured, almost. Precise.
I just looked at him. He was, all things considered, a very nice-looking man. A strong jawline, high cheekbones. And unlike the thin-lipped, beady-eyed crooks like I’d always imagined, John X actually had a nice smile and really pretty brown eyes. He wasn’t too tall and he wasn’t too short. And he was dressed fairly stylishly — straight-cut jeans, a collared Polo shirt.
No wonder he’d targeted women. It was difficult to think of the man in front of me committing a moving traffic violation, much less murder.
I didn’t say anything.
He knit his fingers together on the table and looked over at me. “So, you’ve made things a little difficult for me lately,” he said.
I kept thinking about the panic buttons Detective Masterson had told me about. If only I could get up nonchalantly and push one of the buttons.
“KATE!” DJ yelled.
John X sighed and looked out the window. “Your friend is a slow learner.”
“Apparently, he’s your friend too,” I said quietly, surprising myself with the sound of my voice.
John X’s mouth curled in a small smile. “Is that what your friendly deputy just told you?”
I shrugged but inside I was worried. If he knew I was talking to Deputy Slalom, then he knew that it was only a matter of time before the FBI got here.
So why was he just sitting at the dining room table with me? Why hadn’t he killed me and moved on before he got caught again?
Four and a half minutes, that’s what Detective Masterson had told me. It would take the FBI four and a half minutes to get here.
It had been two since I’d talked to the deputy and he’d said they were on their way.
“You’re quite young,” John X said, looking at me, sounding almost surprised. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“I knew you were still in high school, but I wasn’t expecting … well, when does life really go by your expectations, though, right?” He sat up straighter. “Such a shame. I bet you were going to be the shining star of the South Woodhaven Falls police force, hmm?”
My nerves were back at his use of the past tense in referring to me. I clasped my hands together to keep from shaking. I kept thinking about the Psalm I read last night. The “they” who had no reason to fear.
I had reason to fear.
It had been three minutes. I only needed another minute and a half.
I sat quietly and he watched me, leaning back in his chair. The only sound was DJ’s occasional yell.
“How come you aren’t letting him in?” I asked finally.
“How come you aren’t?” he asked me.
“Because I heard he was with you.”
“Interesting,” John X said, rubbing his chin. “Because I’ve been hearing different reports about little Darren there.” He looked over at DJ, who was staring through the window, visibly seething. “Consciences can be deadly things.”
I frowned. “So DJ didn’t help you kill the first lady?”
John X snapped his gaze back to me. “Oh, no. He did. He just didn’t adapt as well to life after the murder. Some people just can’t face who they really are, you know?”
Dad had told me that exact phrase once during one of his infamous Kate-should-become-an-engineer talks. I’d
made a comment that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an engineer and Dad had only said, “Well. Some people can’t face who they really are until college. You’ll get there, Kate. You’ll get there.”
Detective Masterson believed in a whole “plan” type of life where everything was God’s plan.
Was this God’s plan? Me accidentally drawing a murderer and soon becoming his next victim? And who knew what had happened to the detective or my parents, for that matter.
I looked down at the orange linoleum and squeezed my eyes shut.
God. If You’re there, please help me.
It was probably the shortest prayer ever prayed, but I didn’t have a lot of time.
John X was looking at me again, head slightly tipped, eyes thoughtful. “So, Kate Carter, what should we do now?”
I shrugged. “You could let me go.” It was worth a shot.
“Ah. See, I could. And I probably should. But you know I can’t do that,” he said, smoothly.
I nodded, my heart pounding. It had been five and a half minutes.
Where was the FBI?
DJ had stopped pounding on the door. He just stared at us through the window.
John X sighed. “Well, now, Kate Carter, I probably should do what I came here to do,” he said.
Apparently, John X liked both my first and last name.
I looked at him and then back at the window. DJ was gone and I felt a mix of relief and panic. On the one hand, if he was working with John X, then I was glad he’d left.
On the other hand, now it was just the two of us.
And John X was pulling a small black gun from his pocket. He set it on the table between us and sighed again. “Such a waste of talent,” he muttered. He looked over at me. “I hope you realize that I hate to do this.”
I swallowed hard. I wasn’t ready to die. I didn’t know what came next. Heaven? A weird mix of memories? Eternal napping?
I heard tires crunch on the driveway right then. John X looked out the front window and frowned. “Hmm,” he said.
I don’t know what came over me. I grabbed the gun from the table and bolted for the front door. I had just gotten the top lock open when John X tackled me from behind. I fell forward, clutching the gun to my chest and hitting my head hard on the front door.