Cherry Bomb

by J. A. Konrath

  Another 360 check for witnesses. No one is paying attention to her.

  Then Alex marches back into Neiman Marcus and buys the Marc Jacobs satchel. The cashier, a young blonde who probably went to a local community college and majored in giggles, asks Alex for an ID to match the dead woman’s credit card.

  Alex leans in close.

  “It burned in the crash, along with half my face. I haven’t gotten a new one yet, because I’m afraid to drive again. Would you like me to speak to your manager?”

  Blondie declines. The fifteen-hundred-dollar charge goes through, and Alex heads back to the Prius. Once in the driver’s seat she transfers the contents of the fake purse to the real purse, and tosses the fake one onto the corpse.

  “You died too young. Should have treated yourself and bought the real thing.”

  Happily, there’s more than two hundred bucks in the woman’s wallet, along with half a pack of gum and a canister of pepper spray, which the woman should have been holding instead of her iPhone. Alex pops a stick of spearmint into her mouth and pulls out of the parking space. She heads back to the Hyundai, loads her previous purchases into the Prius, and drives until she finds a gas station.

  She fills the five-gallon plastic canister she bought at the department store and retraces her steps.

  Her previous stolen car blew up, and it’s unlikely they’ll link it to her. Plastic explosives do wonders for removing fingerprints.

  Multiple witnesses saw her shoot the gangbanger, including the gangbanger, but it could take a few days before her name gets pulled into it. If ever. She left no evidence; the brass belonged to the cop and Alex wiped off the cart handle. There were security cameras, but Alex always keeps her head down in public places, a habit from before the disfigurement.

  The Feds are no doubt looking for her. As is Jack, and all of Jack’s department. But they have no reason yet to think she’s in Iowa.

  Unless they get lucky. Alex can’t discount that. Luck is how she got caught. Luck is how Jack got away last time. Which means it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.

  If the authorities haven’t gotten lucky yet, there’s no reason to make it any easier for them.

  Alex drives back to the Hyundai and double-parks behind it. All five gallons of gas get splashed around the interior. She considers tossing the body in there as well, but a homicide will get more attention than a vandalized car, so she lets her be for the moment.

  The license plates are attached with nuts and bolts, and Alex removes them with the socket set she bought. She tosses the plates onto the body—something else to dispose of later—and lights up the car with a road flare. Then she climbs into the Prius and heads back to the Holiday Inn.

  No squad cars in front. No men suspiciously lingering outside. Alex parks. The police band radio is attached to the cop’s utility belt, in one of the bags. Alex switches it on, finds the local dispatch frequency, listens to chatter. It’s all in code, which Alex doesn’t know, but she does hear some talk about the car bombing at the mall.

  She turns it off and lugs everything back into the hotel. It’s with much amusement, and some disappointment, that she sees Alan is still tied to the bed. Unlike Lance, who butchered his wrists trying to get free, the duct tape securing Jack’s husband still looks freshly applied. The poor dear must have actually believed that BS about the motion sensor. Maybe that’s Jack’s secret to finding men: She picks the really gullible ones.

  “Did you miss me?” Alex asks.

  He mumbles something around the gag that sounds like bathroom. Alex shakes her head.

  “You don’t want to go in there. Trust me. Single women can be sloppy.” She holds up her new satchel, posing with it. “Do you like my new bag? Marc Jacobs. It was a steal.”

  His eyes are pained, tired. Alex sits next to him, gives him a gentle pat on the cheek. Then she examines the defibrillator. It has a battery pack and an AC cord. The back opens up, and Alex pulls out the battery. Since it isn’t plugged in, the unit goes dead. She flips one of the switches to manual override, then presses the big green button with a hotel pen and squeezes on enough superglue for it to stay in the on position. Theoretically, once she plugs it into the wall, it will shock Alan. And will probably keep shocking him, over and over.

  The outlet timer has settings that are pretty self-explanatory. It’s made to turn on lights, or a coffee machine, or anything plugged into it, at a preset hour. Alex programs in the current time.

  “How long should we give Jack to save you? Let’s make this one exciting. She’s probably in Wisconsin, but she’ll assume you’re still in Iowa, which gives her an advantage. It took me three hours to get here, but I was stopped by the police. Let’s give her two.”

  Alex sets the gadget, allowing for extra time to run some necessary errands. When she calls Jack, the lieutenant will have 120 minutes before Alan gets a jump start.

  She tapes an extra cell phone to the wall, switches on the camera, and checks her laptop to make sure the live feed is working. Then she uses her main cell phone to snap a picture of Alan. He looks suitably pathetic.

  She gathers up her things, then plugs in the outlet timer and defibrillator.

  “Thanks for the sex,” she tells Alan. “For what it’s worth, I won’t mind too much if Jack saves your life. And if you do live, I wouldn’t worry about the scars. I think they’ll heal up nicely.”

  Before she leaves, Alex takes thirty seconds to jerry-rig the door latch. It’s a standard privacy lock; on the door, at eye level, is a brass knob on a plate. It fits into a U-shaped bar, which is attached to the jamb. When the bar is swung over the knob, the knob slides into the groove, preventing the door from being opened more than an inch or two.

  Alex twists a screw eye into the door just behind the brass plate. She feeds the floss through the eyelet and ties it to the U-bar. She plays out a few feet of floss—enough to open the door—and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her. The floss is still in her hand, caught between the door and the jamb. Alex pulls the floss, taking up the slack until she hears a soft clink: the sound of the U-bar swinging over the knob.

  She uses the key card, tries to open the door. The latch prevents it. Alex tugs on the floss, snapping it off at the knot, and then closes the door.

  The lock isn’t really an effective deterrent, and won’t stop a determined criminal, or in this case a determined cop. But it will stop a maid.

  Alex takes the Do Not Disturb sign off the knob, places it on a room across the hall, and heads down to her new Prius to do some hotel hopping.

  CHAPTER 37

  “SQUEEZE IT,” I told Phin. “But be soft and gentle.”

  He looked up and grinned at me. “You’re turning me on talking like that.”

  “Focus on the target, not me. And squeeze the trigger until you feel it break.”

  “It’s going to break?”

  “That’s what it’s called when the trigger gives. The .377 is going to kick, hard, and sound like you stuck your head in a thundercloud. But don’t hesitate with the second shot. Relax and fire another round as fast as you can.”

  Phin was in a sniping position, on his belly, legs splayed out behind him, the big H-S Precision rifle resting on a tree stump. We were in a fallow field, a few miles west of I-94. Phin had taken a dirt road to get here, and there wasn’t another soul as far as the eye could see.

  We’d spent twenty minutes attaching our scopes, configuring the crosshairs. Now we needed to zero them out, a task that had to be individually configured for each shooter. I’d already zeroed out my scope to about two hundred yards, and put four rounds into a target the size of a grape.

  Phin had no experience with long arms. I set up his target—a Realtor’s For Sale sign we’d liberated from the front of an old farmhouse—thirty yards away, its iron legs stuck in the dirt.

  “Aim for the letter O.” I’d shot through the E. “Line it up and squeeze. And do it after you exhale.”

  “Who taught you how
to shoot?”

  “My mother.”

  “My mom taught me how to make fried chicken.”

  “Focus. Soft and gentle.”

  “Soft and gentle.” Phin blew out a breath, pulled the trigger.

  The rifle crack was loud enough to scare crows two counties over. The target twitched back, then righted itself.

  “Again!” I yelled over the ringing in my ears.

  He pulled back the bolt, ejected the brass, and pushed another round into the chamber. Then he fired again, but Phin did what every newbie did when anticipating the sound and recoil: He flinched and jerked the trigger, missing the target completely.

  Without prompting he loaded the final round from the internal magazine, aimed, and fired more carefully, getting another hit. I waited for him to eject the round, told him to leave the breach open, and went to check his target.

  The two bullets that struck were an inch lower than the E, and slightly to the right. I’d given Phin a penny and instructed him to turn the scope’s vertical and horizontal screws in the proper directions to adjust the crosshairs. He loaded three more rounds, rested the gun on the stump, and fired again.

  This time the bullets all hit the E. I marched the sign back another fifty yards, wet dirt clinging to my new shoes, then got clear and yelled at him to try again. Phin put another three into the sign, faster this time. Only one hit the sign. He’d probably turned one of the screws too far.

  My phone rang before I had a chance to tell him. I fished it out of my pocket, my mind blanking when I saw who the call was from.

  555-5555.

  Alex.

  The text message came first.

  THIS IS ALAN. HE’S YOUR HUSBAND.

  Oh God. Oh no. She was lying. She had to be.

  Please, be lying.

  Then the picture. Alan, tied to a bed. His bare stomach sliced up, the blood dry, but the cuts on it forming unmistakable words:

  TILL DEATH DO US PART

  My legs stopped supporting me and I fell onto my ass. I kept staring at Alan—poor Alan—and thinking about that last awful argument I’d had with him. It was my fault he’d been grabbed by the monster. My fault he was in this mess. The very thing he’d been preaching at me all these years had come true.

  Another text came. I opened it, trembling hands barely able to hold on to the phone.

  HE DIES IN TWO HOURS.

  Two? That wasn’t right. That had to be a mistake. Alan lived in Iowa. A three-hour drive from here. Alex wasn’t playing fair.

  “That’s not fair,” I said, but it didn’t sound like me. “Two hours isn’t enough time. It’s not fair.”

  “Jack?” Phin was standing over me, breathing hard, his hand on my head.

  “Not fair.”

  “What’s not fair?” He took the phone from me.

  “I can’t save him in two hours. It’s not enough time.”

  Phin looked at the text, pressed a few buttons. I stared beyond him, past the For Sale sign, past the field, to the horizon—that faint line where the brown earth met the gray sky, the great divider between heaven and earth. Except that there was no heaven. No hell either. But there didn’t need to be.

  We were already in hell.

  I had no spirituality. The little I was born with vacated the first time I saw a dead child, my second week on the Job. But I always had my morality. Always had my altruism. I was destined to be a Girl Scout, forever helping people cross the street, gaining what ever satisfaction I could from the meager act.

  But my efforts weren’t meager. They were worthless. Completely fucking worthless.

  Life had no meaning. It had no point. I’d chosen a career to do good. To prevent cruelty, and death, and suffering. To right wrongs. To fight for something important.

  But nothing I did mattered. I didn’t change anything. And I’d brought upon myself the very things I’d tried to prevent.

  There are no heroes. There are only losers.

  “We have to go.” Phin grabbed me under my armpit, pulled me to my feet. “Where does he live?”

  “We can’t make it.”

  “We can try.”

  What was Phin’s problem? Didn’t he know it was useless? Alex will just keep on doing this, over and over. And if not Alex, someone else will. You can’t fight darkness. Darkness comes. You can turn on some lights, lie to yourself that it will all be okay. But it never is.

  “Goddamn it, Jack. You can have your breakdown when we’re in the car. Move your ass.”

  “I’ve been lying to myself,” I whispered.

  “No shit. You’ve been lying to yourself for your entire career. But this is a piss-poor moment to stop lying.”

  His words settled in, gave me something to latch on to. Because he was right. Being hopeless had never stopped me before.

  Maybe I couldn’t prevent tragedy. Maybe I couldn’t make a difference. Horrible things would keep happening, that was a guarantee, and maybe I’d never be able to stop them.

  But I still had to try.

  “Okay,” I said, forcing my voice to be strong. “Let’s save him.”

  I sprinted for the truck, the moist earth sucking at my shoes. Tripped. Slid on my knees, banging into a rock. Scrambled on all fours until I was up and running again.

  I beat Phin to the Bronco, wondering where he was, and then he was in the driver’s seat and starting the engine.

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “Iowa. I’ve got a GPS thing on my phone.”

  All four tires kicked up mud, and we headed west.

  CHAPTER 38

  ALEX HEADS EAST, wondering if she’ll pass Jack on the road somewhere. It’s an amusing thought. Two mortal enemies, their cars zipping by at high speed, perhaps even going too fast to recognize each other. Alex considers pulling over, waiting on the side of the road, shooting out her adversary’s tires so they can have their final showdown.

  No, it’s best to wait. Now isn’t the right time. Let Jack lose a few more people she cares about first.

  Alex doesn’t believe in destiny. Fate is a future you didn’t try hard enough to change. If you want things to go your way, being smart and being strong are helpful, but you still have to work your ass off. Ways and means plus determination.

  Jack is smart and strong and determined. She’s also lucky. But she keeps making a key mistake. The same mistake that loses ball games, and fights, and wars. Jack is reacting rather than acting. And as long as she keeps doing that, she’s not going to change fate.

  Alex pulls off the highway to grab something to eat, and after a greasy fast-food meal that will probably go straight to her hips if she doesn’t schedule a workout later, she wanders into a chain store and picks up a few supplies. Focusing on the next victim. Staying one step ahead of Jack. Calling the shots.

  Back in the car, the Midwestern great plains blurring by on both sides mundanely, hypnotically, Alex lapses into a very old habit.

  She daydreams.

  “Daydreams aren’t practical,” Charles used to tell her. “Escaping reality is bullshit. Confront reality. Kick its ass. Make it what you want it to be.”

  Easier said than done, growing up with Father. A fantasy world offered a brief vacation from the horrors.

  Alex never imagined she was a princess, or owned a unicorn, or any magical shit like that. Her imagination was closely tied to reality. The only difference was that in her daydreams, Alex had absolute control.

  Daydreaming now, the endless miles of brown fields morphed into the farm where she grew up. She and Charles are children, and have placed a bushel basket on the hood of Father’s truck, playing a makeshift game of basketball. Father comes out of the house. Normally he’d scream at them, preaching some biblical nonsense mixed with his own par tic u lar brand of paranoia, self-hatred, and psychosis. That might lead to Alex being punished, or almost as bad, Alex being forced to punish Father, wielding some of the awful implements he employed for the task.

  But in the daydream, Alex
is all-powerful. She prevents him from acting crazy. He stands there and watches, hands on his hips, his face neutral. Then, incredibly, he smiles, and asks to join the game.

  A painfully obvious, incredibly pathetic scene. Alex knows this, but it pleases her anyway. In this insipid little fantasy, Alex has everything that was taken from her. Charles. Her face. Her childhood. In having total control, she can give up total control, and the feeling brings a real-life smile to her face.

  Well, half a smile.

  Which forces reality to return.

  Alex then lapses into another childhood habit. When in pain, the best way to take your mind off it is to cause pain. She locates her cell phone on the passenger seat of the Prius and calls Jack.

  “I hope you’re close,” she says. “By my watch, you’ve got less than a half an hour.”

  “Fuck you, Alex.”

  “That’s probably what your husband is thinking about you right now. About how you fucked him by marrying him. I guess it doesn’t pay to get close to you. If we were friends, I’d fear for my life.”

  Jack doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t hang up either. Maybe she’s hoping Alex will give her something. Alex plans on it, but there’s no rush.

  “He still loves you, Jack. Did you know that? He even called out your name while we were making love. He likes it on the rough side. Ever try cutting him before? He screamed, but I think he enjoyed it.”

  “Is that Alex?” Phin, in the background. “Tell her to drop dead for me.”

  “I always liked Phin. What is it about bad boys, Jack? Not that you’d know. You like falling for wimps. Does it make you feel stronger, being with men that you can manipulate? Or does their neediness fill some maternal urge?”

  “Are you going to get to the point, Alex?”