by Mike Omer
“George, get out of here!” she yelled.
She was now on the floor, with the counter between her and the killer. She glanced around for something, anything, to use as a weapon. She grabbed a flowerpot from the low shelf just as the killer rounded the counter, his face a mix of rage and confusion. She threw the pot at him.
She was lying on the floor, and the angle was difficult for a good throw. The pot barely grazed the killer’s arm, smashing behind him. He took three steps forward and thrust the sword at her. She rolled aside, hearing the blade clanging on the floor, was relieved it had missed her—then she felt the sharp pain in the side of her neck. The sword hadn’t missed completely.
The killer appeared to have a problem. There wasn’t a lot of room behind the counter to maneuver the sword; the space between the counter and the back shelves was too narrow. He tried to thrust the sword into her stomach, and she rolled aside again, this time his clumsy move missing her completely. He was now roaring angrily as he lifted the blade up, seemingly intending to chop her like firewood. Reflexes took over, and her leg kicked hard, hitting him in his left knee.
He howled in surprise, falling backward. Tanessa took the opportunity to pull herself up, using the shelf. She felt dizzy and lightheaded. Her shirt was soggy, clinging to her body—blood. It was wet with her blood. Had George managed to run? How long since the killer had entered the store? It felt like hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
The killer got up as well. He was blocking her way out; the counter was on her left, the shelves on her right. Behind her there was a bare wall. She was trapped. The only way out was to jump over the counter, so that was what she did. Or, at least, that was what she tried to do. She was weak from blood loss, and her body hurt like hell. She managed to half-jump, half-fall over the counter and onto the floor.
The world was getting dark as she tried to get up, her limbs refusing to obey her commands. She could see the figure of the killer advancing—now much slower, calmer, knowing he had won, savoring the moment. She would kick him again, buy some more time… except her foot wouldn’t budge.
And then, an explosion. The killer swerved to the side, the sword dropping from his hand. There was another explosion, and the sound of something smashing. The killer moved fast, bolting through the front door just as a third explosion filled the air.
George stood above her, holding a pistol. Her pistol.
“Did you get him?” she muttered.
“Yes, but I don’t think he’s hurt badly,” George said, and then pressed his fist into her neck. Tanessa screamed in pain.
“Sorry, I just have to keep pressure on it,” George said, his voice urgent. “I called the police. Help is on its way. Hang on, Tanessa, everything is going to be okay. Can you hear me? Hang on, it’s going to be just fine.”
She had said the same words not long ago, she thought hazily. To a girl named Tamay. What had happened to that girl?
She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t even remember why her neck hurt so much.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He shook as he drove, fear intermingling with rage. Was this it? Would today be the day they would catch him?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Not knowing was frightening… but exciting as well. He grinned—a manic grin, half snarl, half laughter. Beaten by a florist. Shot in the belly by a goddamn shopkeeper. How had this happened? He had been prepared! He’d followed the girl for days, practiced his sword swing for hours, making sure he had the range right, that he could move fast enough to surprise her. There was no way she could have dodged his slash.
Except…
She’d known who he was.
It wasn’t just suspicion triggered by the message he sent her. No. There had been recognition there. Not a sliver of hesitation. Somehow, despite the fact that he had been in disguise, despite the fact that he had taken every precaution, never coming near her, she had instantly known he was there to kill her.
How?
HOW?
He smashed the steering wheel in frustration, smearing it with blood. His blood. The memory of the girl—the delicate, tiny girl, kicking him with the force of a mule—came back. Who was this Tanessa Lonnie? Had he really done his research well? She’d seemed to be just another empty-headed girl, working in a flower shop, dreaming of being a model. How had she been so fast? Where had she found that strength?
He took a deep breath. He would think about it later. For now, he had to make sure he didn’t get caught, and he didn’t die of blood loss. He probed his wound gently; the pain nearly blinded him, and the car swerved left, then right.
Careful, dammit! He should avoid attracting any attention. He’d been hit in his waist, but it was difficult to gauge how severely. He had a few more blocks to the motel; he could check the damage there.
If the police were raising roadblocks, at least they hadn’t blocked his route. This wasn’t a huge surprise. He had planned his route well, choosing small streets with little traffic, in the time just a bit before rush hour really started.
Maybe he should have broken through the girl’s window, caught her alone in her apartment. But he hadn’t wanted to rely on her opening that window. Besides, he’d gone through a window last time. Repetition was a great way to get caught. That was why he’d entered the store only five minutes after sending the message. He needed to stay unpredictable.
It had seemed so perfect when he’d heard on the news about a suspect being arrested. Originally, he had planned on killing Tanessa a couple of days from now. But once he’d realized that the police thought they had the killer in custody, he’d known it was the time to act. Catch them unaware, as they were giving their victory speech.
Hadn’t turned out so well after all. He was getting dizzy.
He had to get to the motel.
Tanessa smiled as Mitchell appeared in the doorway of the hospital room. His face reminded her of a day, long ago, when they had been riding their bicycles side by side and she’d crashed into a tree. He had blamed himself, thinking he’d been riding too close to her. As she had cried, he’d knelt by her and tried to make sure she was fine, apologize, and berate himself all at once, resulting in a hysterical, nonsensical monologue.
“Are you okay?” he asked, half-running to her small hospital bed.
“Sure,” she said, her voice slurred. They had given her some pain killers, which she suspected were intended for suffering horses. “It’s just a scratch. It hurts more when I nick myself shaving my legs.” Listen to the witty patient, joking with her brother. She had planned this joke for twenty minutes, just to sound casual, as if nothing was wrong. She had one more up her sleeve.
“They just told me,” Mitchell said. “He attacked you in the flower shop?”
“With a sword,” she said. “A samurai sword. What a geek.”
“Damn it, Tanessa, I’m so sorry—”
“It’s not your fault.”
He didn’t argue, but she could see in his face that he was blaming himself. God only knew why. He’d done all he could to stop her.
“Where were you hit?”
She turned her head a bit to show him the stitches on her neck. The movement hurt like hell, and for a moment her casual smile twisted in pain. She let out a small hiss, biting down on the scream that threatened to emerge. If the blade had cut a few millimeters deeper, she would have died, the doctor said. Another tidbit she’d prefer her brother didn’t hear. She put her smile back on.
“The guy who operated on me?” she said. “Doctor Frankenstein. I swear to God. I saw villagers amassing outside the operating room with pitchforks and torches. I could seriously picture him screaming, It’s alive!” That was joke number two. She hoped Mitchell wouldn’t stay much longer, because it began to be difficult to maintain this façade.
“We’ll get him, Tanessa, I promise you.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Mitchell, I know you will,” she said. “Say, where’s Pauline?”
&nbs
p; “She, uh… She said she’d get here as soon as she could.”
“Okay, no rush.”
Mitchell glanced back at the doorway. “You know there’s a cop outside,” he said.
Tanessa nodded. “Yeah, Noel. He got Tanessa detail for today.”
“Tanessa detail?” Mitchell looked confused.
“Chief’s orders. Apparently your forensic psychologist said that the killer might try killing me again.” Her voice cracked for the first time. She cleared her throat as if it was nothing, and said, “He isn’t a guy who takes no for an answer.” She felt frustrated. When her jokes weren’t prepared in advance, they were always lame. Mitchell was the witty one in the family.
The doctor walked in. Tanessa hadn’t been exaggerating; he did look like a mad scientist. He was bald except for two tufts of gray hair on the sides of his head, and he wore thick, black, round spectacles on an absurdly long nose. His eyes, magnified by the thick lenses, were constantly open wide, as if he was in shock, and his outfit was rumpled and disheveled as if he had rolled it into a ball just before wearing it.
“It’s alive,” Tanessa whispered to Mitchell, wiggling her eyebrows.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked. There was no trace of a German accent in his speech. Disappointing.
“Just fine,” she said. “How much longer will I be here?”
He shrugged, as if determining the length of her hospitalization was beyond his job description.
“You’ll have to come back during visiting hours,” he told Mitchell.
Obediently, Mitchell said goodbye, promised to come the following day, and left. The doctor checked her vitals and left as well. She was alone.
She didn’t want to be alone.
Because when she was alone, the fear kept her company. She saw in her mind the killer standing above her, looking down at her from behind his gray sunglasses, his blade flying fast toward her. Once again, she realized how close she had come to dying, despite all the precautions they had taken. Once again, she was filled with the terror of facing a killer, knowing she was on her own.
She fought the urge to call Noel in, like a small child telling daddy she couldn’t sleep because of the monsters under her bed. She tried to force the dark images away, thinking of books she loved, of movies she wanted to see again. She listed her top favorite songs. But a face wearing dark shades barged over and over into her mind, the happy thoughts dissipating like thin clouds.
With no one to see her, Tanessa curled under the hospital’s blanket, her body shaking.
Mitchell’s brother, Richard, was yelling at him on the phone. Richard had inherited their mom’s short temper, and talking to him was sometimes like talking to a pile of dynamite sticks while juggling three torches.
“… I told you, you should have stopped this!” he screamed. “Now look what happened! She almost died, Mitchell!”
“Well, what did you want me to do, Richard?” Mitchell asked, his voice getting louder as well. “Tie her to a chair? She wouldn’t listen to me!”
“Then you should have talked to your captain! Using Tanessa as bait was an amateurish hack job! Where is she?”
“She’s recovering from surgery in the hospital, but visiting hours are over and—”
“Visiting hours! Jesus. I’m going there right now,” Richard said. He would, Mitchell knew. He’d storm in, and threaten to sue anyone who’d stop him. Richard was a rising defense attorney, and threatening everything and everyone with lawsuits was his favorite hobby.
“Listen, Richard, could you call Mom and Dad and let them know? I’m trying to catch the—”
Richard let out a hysterical forced laugh. “Call Mom? Mitchell, this is your screwup. You call Mom. I’ll call Dad.” He hung up.
Mitchell stared at the phone, his emotions in turmoil. He should have stopped this. He should have tried harder, at least. The sight of Tanessa lying in that hospital bed, trying to act brave, was heart-wrenching. And his heart was wrenched enough as it was. He was ready for some good news.
“Mitchell.” Captain Bailey walked in. “How’s your sister?”
“Officer Lonnie is fine,” Mitchell said. Tanessa had forbidden him to use the word “sister” within the police department.
“Okay. The chief just ordered Danny Stevenson and Janice Hewitt set free,” Bailey said. “I thought you’d want to know.”
“What?” Mitchell felt as if he was about to kill someone. “Why did she do that?”
“Well, for one, neither of them is our serial killer,” Bailey said. “They’re just a couple of pranksters.”
“They obstructed justice! They purposefully filed a false—”
“In addition to that,” Bailey said, his voice rising to quash Mitchell’s complaints, “the police department is swamped with calls from reporters, bloggers, and pranksters. Dispatch can’t do their job with that going on. This is why we didn’t respond as quickly as we should have when the killer sent your sister the message.”
Mitchell closed his mouth, dumbfounded. His fault. Always his fault.
“The department is receiving some very bad press,” Bailey continued. “The chief says it makes us look as if we have no sense of humor.”
“Sense of humor?” Mitchell said, his voice high pitched. “Seriously?”
“Look,” Bailey said sharply, “if this could help us catch the guy, I’d have your back. But holding that dumb couple in jail is just pure spite, plain and simple. We’re letting them out.”
“Fine!”
Bailey put a hand on Mitchell’s shoulder. “What’s going on, Mitchell?”
“Tanessa—”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. You were acting like a zombie with a chip on his shoulder before your sister was attacked. You’ve lost your focus. My dad would say that you’re walking like a drunk man in a field of strawberry pies. What is going on with you?”
Mitchell’s face went blank. “I’ll be fine,” he said, his voice straight. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“You can take a vacation day or two. Bernard can fill in for you until—”
“I’ll be fine, Captain. Thanks.”
Bailey looked as if he was about to say something else when Jacob burst into the squad room.
“Come on,” Jacob told Mitchell. “We have to go.”
“What’s going on?” Bailey asked.
“Did you see the message that Tanessa received from the killer?” Jacob asked. “It’s a samurai sword leaning against a wall. There’s a window above it.”
“I saw,” Bailey said.
“Through the window you can see a cellular antenna tower, and Peterson’s Mojo,” Jacob said. Peterson’s Mojo was the tallest building in town. It was a slick office building that had been built by Mayor Peterson fifteen years earlier, just after his wife left him and married a senator. He’d named it Glenmore’s Hub, but since everyone assumed the building was designed so tall to compensate for something, Peterson’s Mojo was the informal name that had stuck.
“I just came from Matt’s lab,” Jacob said. “For the last hour we’ve been trying to triangulate the location of the room in which the picture was taken. It was tricky, because there are a lot of cellular antennas, but we’re pretty sure we found the right one.”
Mitchell stood up, putting on his jacket, his heart beating fast, as a smile appeared on Jacob’s face.
“We have the killer’s address,” Jacob said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was a bit after ten in the evening when Mitchell parked the car on the curb by the small shabby apartment building in Hillside Drive. He and Jacob stepped out of the car and looked around. The street lights were all either flickering or broken, but even in their meager light it was possible to see the chaos on the building’s walls. Crude signatures in black spray paint marred nicer graffiti signatures in pink, green, and blue, and those were clearly sprayed over a badly-drawn graffiti imitation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall album cover. The original color o
f the building couldn’t be seen.
Looking up, Mitchell could see the neglected, peeling, soot-covered wall. The graffiti on the bottom of the wall was the building’s most elegant feature.
Two squad cars were parked on the sidewalk just by the main entrance. One officer—a guy named Ron or Rob, Mitchell wasn’t entirely sure—stood by the door, gun in hand.
“What’s going on, Officer?” Jacob asked, walking briskly toward the man. “Did you get him?”
“They are just about to break down the apartment door, Detective,” Ron/Rob said. “I was stationed here in case he tried to make a break for it.”
“Any back door to the building?”
“No, sir, but there is an emergency stairway.” The cop pointed toward the right side of the building. “If he goes down those stairs, they’ll radio me.”
Jacob didn’t seem happy with this arrangement, but said nothing. Instead he strode into the building, with Mitchell close behind.
They heard shouting from upstairs, and then the loud, sharp sound of a door breaking. They rushed up the stairs, leaping over two and three stairs at a time, guns drawn. Mitchell reached the third floor seconds before Jacob. He saw the open door, its lock broken. Someone shouted “Clear!” from inside the apartment.
Mitchell nearly rushed inside, but Jacob grabbed his arm.
“Those cops in there are tense, trigger-happy, and looking for a killer,” he said. “If you pop up behind them in plainclothes, holding a gun, one of them might shoot.”
Mitchell could see the sense in that. He waited with Jacob by the door. After a few seconds they heard someone shout, “All clear! There’s no one here!”
“Damn it,” Jacob muttered. “They should have scouted ahead first.”
Mitchell felt a wave of disappointment and lethargy wash over him. “He’ll probably see the patrol cars outside and vanish,” he said. “We blew our chance.”
“We’ll see,” Jacob said and called out, “Detectives Cooper and Lonnie here! We’re coming inside!”