by Ed Gaffney
Vera went from sixty to zero in about five, tire-squealing seconds, jumped from the car, withdrew her weapon, and raced toward the front steps.
An anguished shriek sounded from inside the house.
Someone was being attacked.
Vera leapt to the top of the stoop, and without even trying the lock, she fired at it, kicked in the door, and raced inside.
“Police!” she shouted, aiming her weapon into the room. She was still out of breath from the half mile she ran, but she was ready for this.
The scene before her was bizarre. A broken china plate, a slice of pizza, and a spilled can of soda were on the floor directly in front of her. Beyond that, a chair lay on its side in the middle of the room, with an old woman duct-taped to it by her ankles. In her right hand, she held a bloody steak knife. She was moaning through the tape across her mouth. She was in obvious pain.
Beyond her, farther toward the back of the house, a younger woman was much more securely taped to another chair. Her head was slumped over. She looked dead.
To the right of the younger woman, a long, bloody smear ran on the hardwood. It trailed away out of sight, into a room at the back of the house.
Vera approached warily.
The young woman was breathing. From the look of her and the smell of burned flesh, Vera was betting that she’d been Tasered. The older woman was conscious, but she had been gagged with duct tape.
As Vera walked toward her, the woman shook her head, and moved her eyes toward the blood trail staining the floor. She didn’t want anyone to bother with her yet. She wanted Vera to get this guy. To finish the job she’d started with the steak knife, God bless her.
“Okay,” Vera said, in a strong voice which she hoped would inspire confidence. “Wait here. I’ll take care of him.”
She hurried past the debris on the floor, through the entry hall, turned left into the kitchen, and then, without a sound, walked into the dining room from that side.
The killer was sitting on the floor with his back to her, facing the entrance to the living room. His left hand was under his thigh. He was probably trying to stop the flow of blood which continued to pour from him. His right hand held a pistol. It was aimed at the entrance to the living room.
She was about nine or ten feet behind him, and a step or so to the left. It would be an easy shot. But you don’t shoot people in the back when you’re a police officer.
“Please turn around and try to shoot me,” Vera said calmly, “so I can kill you right here.”
Monster
DESPITE THE FEROCIOUS PAIN IN HIS LEG, HE smiled. Did this bitch cop really think he hadn’t been prepared for her little run-around-behind-him trick? How sad.
He became absolutely still, and then his shoulders and his head sank. He sighed, raised his hands above his head, and said, “Sorry to disappoint you, Detective Demopolous. I give up.”
He was concentrating hard, now. The woman’s voice was just another buzz to analyze. About eight to ten feet behind him, about five and a half feet off the ground, just slightly to the left.
In his last three practice sessions, he had been thirty-for-thirty.
And that was from fifteen feet away. This was going to be cake.
He began to speak. “I was hoping to get a chance to speak to you—”
And exactly as he had been practicing, between “chance” and “to,” he spun around, whipped his arm into shooting position, and fired.
THIRTY-EIGHT
AFTER SHE HAD CALLED OUT HER WARNING, Vera had taken a trembling, silent breath, one large, equally silent step to her left, and then crouched down, held her breath, and waited.
When he turned and fired, the killer missed. High, and to the right.
Vera didn’t miss at all.
Squeezing off round after round, she rose and then walked directly toward the killer. His body spasmed with each hit, until he finally flopped backward to the floor.
Only when the house stopped reverberating with the echoes of the gunshots, did Vera hear the comforting sound of approaching sirens.
The serial killer lay on his back, staring blindly up at the ceiling as bloodstains slowly grew on his clothes.
He was a reasonably good-looking man, probably in his early forties.
He wasn’t Alan Lombardo, or Ellis. But neither was he Russell Crane. Or Malcolm Ayers.
Vera reached into the man’s pocket, pulled out his wallet, and read the name on his driver’s license.
Neil Heinrich.
THIRTY-NINE
STEPHANIE WAS WORKING THE LATE SHIFT when Vera came to visit.
It had been three days since the attack. Thanks to Mrs. G. and Vera, Stephanie had escaped with only the Taser burns as injuries.
She hadn’t had enough time to fully free her elderly neighbor before Neil Heinrich had come downstairs, but Steph had managed to run into the dining room, grab one of those sharp knives, cut through the tape on Mrs. G.’s hands, and leave her with the weapon before she ran into the dining room to hide.
The only question had been whether the killer would walk close enough to Mrs. G. so the older woman could use it.
And thanks to his arrogant need for pre-murder speech-making, he had.
From the autopsy report, Mrs. G. had done herself proud, inflicting damage not only by severing a small artery and a tendon in Heinrich’s leg, but by slicing through his sciatic nerve, too.
The effort at stabbing the serial killer had thrown her balance off, however, and the old woman had tipped her chair over, and broken her left arm in the process.
Her good-for-nothing son had finally stepped up. David was arranging for his mother to live in an assisted care facility near him and several of Mrs. G.’s grandchildren. Mrs G. would be moving into it as soon as she was released from the rehab facility that she’d be transferred to next.
“Vera Demopolous, I need you to come here and kiss me immediately before I die of my grave injuries.”
Terry Tallach, Zack Wilson’s big, loud partner, was breaking the rules again, and walking around the hallways of the pediatric ward like he owned the entire hospital. He wore a maroon and black bathrobe, and his head was wrapped in a big, bright white gauze bandage. He looked like a gigantic, five-o’clock-shadowed swami. He had been hit in the head by one of the bullets fired in the courtroom melee. Thankfully, the bullet only grazed his skull, so there was no fracture, and no gunshot injury to his brain.
But he’d suffered a serious wound to his scalp and he’d also split his head open when he fell back onto a wooden bench after the bullet had hit him. The gunshot wound had taken eighteen stitches to close, and the gash on the back of his head from the fall had taken another six.
The concussion he’d suffered had been serious, and the doctors wanted him to rest for another few days before going home.
Good luck to them all with that plan.
By now Vera had reached the big lawyer, and they embraced. Terry saw Steph watching them, and called out to her, “I believe it’s time for your coffee break, Nurse Hartz. Please come with Vera and me. I think it’s about time for my lazy partner to stop faking his injuries and wake up.”
Steph looked over at Donna, who was working with her today. She smiled and gave Steph a thumbs-up, and Steph joined Vera and Terry in the elevator up to Zack’s private room.
Zack’s condition was much more frightening than Terry’s. He had suffered three gunshot wounds—one to the left leg, one to the left arm, and one to his abdomen.
The injuries to the limbs were bad enough—the leg had nerve damage, and the arm had a broken bone, but it was the third shot that was the real trouble.
Not only had the bullet perforated Zack’s small intestine and peritoneum, initiating a frightening infection, it had made contact with Zack’s spine, rather than exiting cleanly.
By the time Zack had gotten help, he had lost a lot of blood, and the emergency surgery, the infection, and the nature of the injuries had put a terrible burden on his immune
system, and on his entire body.
He had yet to regain consciousness from the operation. Until he did, no one knew for sure that he was going to make it, or if he did, whether there was any permanent nerve or spinal damage.
When they reached Zack’s floor, they turned down the hallway and entered his room.
He looked exactly the same as he had since they wheeled him up here after surgery.
An intravenous tube led into the back of his right hand, feeding him glucose, saline, and an antibiotic. An oxygen tube was looped over his head and attached to his nose. Vitals were being monitored, his left arm was in a cast, and his left leg had a large bandage covering the surgical incision where they’d gone in to remove the bullet.
“Zack, you lazy bastard, wake up,” Terry said quietly. “Vera and Stephanie are here. And Stephanie’s wearing her nurse’s uniform, by the way. I already told her that’s your big fantasy, so I don’t understand why you’re lying there with your eyes closed. She says she thinks guys on a saline drip are hot, so even you might have a chance.”
If he survived this, Zack had way more than a chance.
“And Vera said—What?”
Terry was leaning down close to Zack’s mouth.
“How’s Justin?” Zack asked.
Vera bolted to get the doctor.
“Never better, my friend,” Terry said with a grin, and eyes bright with unshed tears. “Completely unscathed. And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you owe me for taking him to Largeburger. Damn check was almost twenty bucks. Kid’s a freaking eating machine.”
Zack’s eyes flickered open for a moment, and his face moved in what had to be the smallest smile in the world, but it lit the room like a sunrise.
“Oh, listen, as long as we’re chatting, you mind telling me why you were running toward a guy who was shooting you? Seemed a little, I don’t know…stupid?”
“I…had to stop…him.”
“By bleeding on him?”
Zack was about to reply, but the resident interrupted the visit, and began to examine him. It was clear that the doctor was relieved that his patient had regained consciousness, but there was one more hurdle to jump.
“Zack, I need to know if you can move your foot,” he said.
“Do you need me to kick Terry’s ass for you?” His voice was really getting stronger now, and his smile was giving Steph’s heart quite a bit of exercise.
“Actually,” the doctor replied, “we just want to make sure there’s no damage to your spinal column.”
That got Zack’s attention. “Spinal column? He didn’t shoot me in the back, did he?”
“The one in your stomach went through to your spine, Zack,” Terry explained. “Doc just wants to make sure you can still walk into a hail of bullets if you need to.”
“Shut up,” Zack said. “I’m fine. Watch.”
For a moment, no one moved. Steph realized she was holding her breath. Then Zack inhaled, and wiggled his right foot just an inch.
Everyone exhaled at once.
Terry pumped his fist and said, “Yes!”
And Steph started to sob.
At that point, one of the nursing supervisors came and chased them all out of the room, so Zack could get some rest.
Predictably, Terry grumbled as Vera tugged on him to leave. “Rest? Dude’s been sleeping for three days. When do I get to rest like that?”
Then just as they were about to get through the door, Zack said, in the clearest voice they’d heard yet, “Hey! Elvis!”
From the look on Terry’s face, if he’d had any doubts that Zack was going to fully recover, they were gone now. The big man in the giant, garish robe, with the huge, bright white bandage wrapped around his head, rolled his eyes, smiled despite himself, took a deep breath, and turned back to his partner, lying there in the bed. “What?”
Zack lay there with a huge smile on his beautiful face, and simply said, “Nice hat.”
Epilogue
Two Months Later
TERRY LOOKED OVER THE CHURCH FULL OF people.
Damn straight the church was full.
Malcolm Ayers was celebrating his tenth consecutive year of sobriety at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And Malcolm’s sponsor, crazy Thomas Prieaux; Malcolm’s daughter, Stephanie; her dates, Zack and Justin; and Terry and Vera wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
The outfit Vera was wearing was a celebration all by itself.
If you had asked him four months ago if he’d be here, Terry would have said you were crazy.
But how would he have known that Alan Lombardo’s condition would deteriorate so completely that he would lose all control, use his last contact with George Heinrich before the old man died to get hold of a gun, and then shoot up a courtroom full of people in a last-ditch effort to commit suicide-by-cop instead of face life in prison without protection from Gentleman George?
And who could have imagined that Neil Heinrich was the original Springfield Shooter? After Vera finally killed him, the madman’s house was searched. His computer, full of rantings and ravings from a very sick mind, told the whole story.
Neil had started his murderous streak back in high school. His old man found out about it, but couldn’t bring himself to turn his kid over to the cops. So he shipped the psycho off to Europe with a contingent of bodyguards, and forced him into intensive therapy.
Thomas Prieaux finished his introduction, and now Stephanie was speaking. She had her full Sandra B. going tonight. Once Zack got back to full strength, the guy was going to be toast.
To make sure that suspicion never headed Neil’s way, old George planted the Springfield Shooter evidence in Alan’s house, knowing his bookkeeper would be the perfect patsy. One of George’s henchmen had called in the anonymous tip about Alan’s car being at one of the murder scenes. And when the housekeeper found the mutilated fingers in the freezer, that was it for Lombardo.
Except that George always felt secretly indebted to Alan for doing his son’s time, so the old mobster made sure that the obsessive-compulsive accountant didn’t suffer in prison because of his mental illness.
Meanwhile, the kid managed to control his homicidal impulses and really tried to turn his life around. Neil finished college in Europe, and was very serious about trying to lead a normal life when he returned to the U.S. to help his father with the family business.
And in what must be one of the great ironies of all time, once he got involved in the Heinrich family operations, he started cleaning it up. By the time Old Man Heinrich died, Neil had pretty much turned Heinrich Contracting legit.
Except for the serial killer part.
It seems that when his father’s physical health turned to shit, Neil’s mental health slid downhill, too. And soon the Springfield Shooter was back in town.
Of course, he was now twenty years older, and twenty years wiser. He’d seen what kinds of reactions people had to crimes like his, and he’d made special note of the hell that Malcolm Ayers had gone through, thanks to some sloppy speculation and unfortunate coincidences the first time around.
So Neil knew just how to play people for maximum effect. He intentionally threw suspicion on Malcolm, anonymously mailed him one of the murder weapons, and just like his father had with Alan, Neil planted evidence in Malcolm’s house.
He couldn’t help himself from further muddying the waters when Ellis joined the case, by starting to sign his letters Eternally Yours, waiting for someone to notice the EY clue.
What Neil hadn’t counted on was running into a cop like Ellis Yates.
Although no one could confirm it, the best guess was that when Ellis figured out the clue which identified the address of Heinrich’s next murder, he was reminded of the chess club that he belonged to briefly in high school. Members got together weekly to play a variety of board games. One of the younger kids in the club, a student who also loved making up puzzles and riddles, was Neil Heinrich.
That was the only connection anyone could ever find between the
two men, but once he started looking at Neil, Ellis probably connected the crime lord’s son’s abrupt relocation to Europe with the discovery of the evidence against Alan Lombardo. Ellis already knew about the connection between Lombardo and the Heinrich crime organization. Any number of other things could have sealed the deal for Ellis—maybe he illegally broke into Neil’s house and discovered his sick little annex, complete with shooting range, “trophy” room, and twisted setup for spying on Stephanie.
Whatever led him to his conclusion that Neil was the real serial killer, Ellis probably thought that he’d take his former schoolmate by surprise, but Neil killed him first.
Then, in a brilliantly perverse move, Neil decided to create the illusion that Ellis was the killer. He planted evidence in Ellis’s house. Figuring he was safe for a while, he took a day off to prepare for the Giordano murder.
Of course, that’s where Stephanie and Vera came in.
Now Steph had finished her introductions, and the whole room was on its feet, applauding.
“Hello. My name is Malcolm, and I’m an alcoholic.”
Incredibly, Neil’s plan was to kill Mrs. Giordano, and then, Stephanie.
The idea was that if you spelled out the first letters of the middle names of all of the victims, you’d get S-A-L-L-Y. As in Sally’s Gift. Neil’s original plan was to frame Malcolm, but when Ellis became an unplanned victim, Neil changed his mind. His gleefully redesigned scheme was to finish off Mrs. Giordano and Stephanie, drive off to some remote place in Ellis’s car, and then dismember and hide the cop’s body. He figured that the incriminating evidence and Ellis’s apparently guilty flight would ensure that Ellis was blamed for the murders, and Neil would escape prosecution yet again.
Until his next life crisis triggered a homicidal spree.
Malcolm was wrapping up his remarks.
“Before I began drinking, I was described as something of a recluse—a rather cautious individual, unwilling to open myself to the society of others.
“And as an active alcoholic, I found myself waking every morning in an increasingly profound quagmire of isolation and self-pity.