15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  I heard a few laughs from behind me. The group of men started to jeer me and joke about my weak efforts at scaling the metal fence. It was the very first time I had ever tried to jump up a security fence while escaping the cops. To be honest, I was offended by the men’s jeering, but I persisted and pulled myself up onto the large fence. I could feel my shoulder muscles stretching in protest as I heaved myself over the fence and dropped onto the concrete below.

  “My nigga!” someone shouted from afar. I sometimes felt like I was the only white guy in Watts. Hell, L.A., at times.

  I turned around and saw the group of homeboys clapping me on.

  “RUN, FORREST, RUN!” someone shouted.

  I gave them a candid wave and a smile. It was always eventful being around here. People were used to seeing other people running from the cops. Apart from the gang-related crime around here, I always felt strangely safe. I believe most people felt that safety. It was the whole mentality that “if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.”

  Those were the sort of mantras we lived by.

  I made my way down the green, running as fast as I could. A small baseball field stood in my way. I dashed through it as if I was about to catch a homer and deny the competition. I jumped over another gate/fence and got onto 101st Street. I was one block away my street. Just a few more minutes to go, and I’d be home free. I couldn’t hear any choppers in the sky to make me think differently. I was sure I’d make it. Until I saw the hue of red and blue lights pulsating in the distance. As I got closer, I slowed down. I could see the red and blue flashing lights were coming from stationary police cars. About six of them were parked on my street. And yes, you guessed right. They were outside my apartment.

  Twenty-Three

  I had the Southeast Division LAPD on my doorstep and nowhere to run. I hid behind a tree and watched them from afar. There wasn’t much movement, just lights. Lots and lots of lights. I wanted to be sure whether or not they were after me. Seeing them at my apartment block made me think so, but I couldn’t be too sure. After all, this is Watts we’re talking about.

  It’s not exactly rare to see police show up on the scene. They practically lived here! But what struck me as odd were the other men and women standing next to the police officers. They looked like feds. FBI types, but the vans they were in were all black. They had no logos. Not FBI. Not DEA. They were blank of authority, yet oozed strength and power. The men who guarded the three or so vans looked prim and proper. They wore ear pieces and had automatic machine guns in their grips. No helmets, though. Just suits. Made me think that they were Secret Service. I didn’t have much time in regards to scouting out these men. I wanted to know what I was up against, but, as I said, maybe they weren’t after me.

  That thought soon escaped my brain when I saw them talking to my neighbor. The lady in question was Mrs. Hargrove. She was a nice old lady who did my washing for me once in a while. She even had a key to my apartment. I had struck up a friendship with her when I used to hang with her son, Evan, back before he was shot dead. I felt a certain attachment to that woman, even if she was a few marbles short of a cake.

  I started to feel a little flushed. The events of the day were messing with my mind. Even in my state, I still felt little to no body sensations. It was as if I was numb to the outside world. I was an outsider looking in, but with my visit to Chad’s house, I had learned two things.

  One, I was not a ghost. Chad and his mother could see me just fine.

  Two, I needed to be careful where I went. People got hurt when they were around me. Just look at the doctor at the hospital who took a shot to the chest. And Chad and his mother, let’s not forget. I felt responsible for all their deaths. They weren’t coming back like I did. That was for sure. So I needed to find a way to make things right. I know I wasn’t the one who killed either of them, but I needed to make things right. Being caught wasn’t going to make things right. Staying ahead of them would make things right.

  I needed to know why everybody wanted me dead. Why were SWAT guys shooting at me? Helicopters chasing me? None of it made any sense whatsoever. But I needed to find out. I wasn’t going to let them win.

  I looked on from behind the tree for a few more minutes. Nothing else happened. Just more silence. More lights. No movement. The men and women standing outside my house were waiting for something. They were waiting for me to return. But I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

  I ducked behind the tree and slowly made my way back down the street I’d run down earlier. It was empty. Oddly enough, the police hadn’t cordoned anything off down here. Either they were really stupid, or lazy. I figured it was the second one.

  So I took advantage and ran back down the street, jumped over a familiar fence, and found what I was looking for.

  My friend Tricky Ricky kept a motorcycle in his backyard. He didn’t live too far away from me. I knew where the key was. He kept it under a plant pot. He had a spare with him at all times, but he told me he kept one under the plant pot for safekeeping, just in case he lost his.

  I sneaked through his backyard. It was layered with nice plants and a tomato patch. His mother was into gardening and liked growing things. I accidentally stepped on a ripe tomato vine. I heard a squelch under my sneakers.

  “Damn it,” I said under my breath.

  I maneuvered around the various garden-variety obstacles that stood in my way. I missed a few wheelbarrows. A broken plant pot crumbled under my feet as I got to the deck and relaxed a little. The key was in the right place. I pocketed it and made my way around to the left side of the house. The street in front of me was still empty. Propped up against the wall was the motorcycle. It was a dirt bike. It had big black wheels and a chrome engine that stuck out from under the bodywork. It was medium-sized and jet black with white stripes running along the sides.

  A nice ride in general. You might be wondering why such a bike was left unattended and unchained in a neighborhood like this?

  Tricky Ricky was a guy you didn’t want to mess with. He was six foot eight, three hundred pounds, and would smack the crap out of anybody who crossed him. His dirt bike was just fine unchained at the side of his house.

  Well, it was just fine until I came along and borrowed it. I was sure Tricky wouldn’t mind. If he did, he’d have to come find me. I was banking on the fact that I’d be safe. Ricky was the least of my problems. It was the feds that I was worried about.

  I hopped onto the jet-black dirt bike and keyed the ignition. The engine stuttered into life.

  I accelerated out of the projects and made my way to freedom. Before I got there, though, I had to do some banking. If I was to survive on the run, I’d need to get some money. I didn’t have much, but every little helped, so I pulled on the throttle and made my way to South Central, Hyde Park. Bank of America was calling my name. I had a safe deposit box of money there and few essentials that would come in handy.

  I revved on the engine and took a hard right with nothing but open road and breaking dawn to accompany me on my journey.

  Twenty-Four

  Eight hours later:

  I had attempted to sleep for the duration of the evening in a parking lot. According to the time on my watch, it was 8:45 a.m. when I woke up again. I didn’t manage to sleep at all. Thoughts of capture had kept my mind occupied. The bank opened at nine o’clock, and I was just a few blocks away. I knew I couldn’t show up on a stolen motorcycle, so I decided to ditch the ride in an alleyway a few blocks from my local branch. I hid the bike behind some trash and covered it with a few wet and juicy garbage bags. I winced at the odor of the foul-smelling bags.

  “Damn,” I said, wiping my hands on my jeans.

  I checked my surroundings. It was a desolate-looking alleyway, a mere three to four feet in width. It stretched a good 100 feet, though, making it the perfect area to stash something in. There hadn’t been much room when I rode into the alleyway. I managed to scuff the sides of my hands on the walls. A few chunks of grip ha
d been etched off the bike’s throttle. I looked at my fresh scrapes and noticed that not one ounce of blood, not even a speck, showed through my wounds.

  I came to the conclusion that my non-beating heart was a reality, and I didn’t have any blood flowing through my body. Much like in Predator, the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie by the same name, the phrase “if it bleeds, we can kill it” was running through my mind. The thing was, I wasn’t bleeding and nothing was killing me. So did that mean I was invincible? I wanted to run an experiment, maybe get a knife and dig it into my arm. Slit my skin deep and poke around. It was all in the name of finding out what was wrong with me. I wasn’t going to do it, though. All thoughts of self-experimentation aside, I was in a whole lot of mud and needed to get my act together. I needed to get focused on saving my skin and getting to safety. I pondered where that safety would be, but decided that I needed to get some money together first.

  I gave the dirt bike one last glance and started walking out of the alleyway. I was a good forty feet from the exit, heading toward the bustling street when I heard a rustling behind me.

  “HEY, YO!” I heard someone say.

  I turned around and saw a tall guy in a leather coat holding a wrench. I stumbled back a few steps. He was standing next to my makeshift trash pile. His eyes darted from me to the pile, like an overexcited guy on crack in a strip club.

  “What you got under that trash?” he asked.

  The guy spoke with a thick Italian American accent. He looked like a grease ball, the sort of guy who would snap your legs and beat you to a pulp. He was breathing heavily and looked agitated. I took one step toward him and held out my hands.

  “HEY! Not so fast, squirt,” he said, holding up his wrench.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I managed to say under a stuttering breath.

  We looked at each other for a long while. He was sizing me up, trying to gain some perspective within every inch of my face. The cogs in his brain were turning, and he was trying to get a read on me. I knew that sort of look. Experienced it plenty of times. It was the sort of look you got from somebody who wanted to know why you were on their turf.

  “You know this is my alley, right?” he asked.

  Suddenly, I knew what I had done to antagonize this gentleman. I spotted the big metal door next to the trash bags. It was half open. The smell of fresh waffles penetrated through the alleyway, covering up the dicey smell of garbage.

  “You are standing on my property. What gives?” the guy said. He had a very thick accent. It scared me. I felt like I was on an episode of The Sopranos.

  “I just parked my bike here, that’s all,” I finally said, taking another step forward.

  “Listen here, you prick, you better not be stashing drugs outside of my restaurant. Do I look like the sort of schmuck who would allow such a thing?”

  I started to shake a little. I was more terrified of him hitting me over the head with that wrench than anything else. I didn’t know whether I’d wake up from such a thing. It was an untested theory. I knew my heart was shot to shizz, but I didn’t know whether a blow to the head would finish me off. I didn’t want to die. Not when I was so close to coming to some sort of understanding.

  “It’s just my bike. I swear it sir,” I said.

  “Do I fucking look like a ‘sir’ to you?” the guy said, almost immediately.

  “No,” I answered, also immediately.

  “Why not? You think I’m some sort of scumbag who couldn’t pull off wearing a suit and being respectful?”

  I didn’t know what to say. This time he took a few steps toward me. In the meantime, the light sound of early-morning traffic echoed in the background.

  “I don’t want no trouble,” I said.

  He came closer, his face baring menace and his shoulders tensing up. He was scrawny, yet imposing in stature. His jaw was square and his eyes pierced mine, making me feel as if he could see right through me all the way down into the pit of my soul.

  “You said already. You said you didn’t want no trouble twice now. Are you some sort of retard? Do I need to call your mom or something? You get lost in South Central?”

  “No, I just need to leave my bike here. If I don’t, I might get in trouble.”

  He broke into a smile. A row of yellow nicotine-stained teeth shone back at me.

  “Ah, I get it. You stole the damn thing, and now you think you can hawk it off on me? Like the police won’t come looking for a damn stolen bike at the back of some Guido’s restaurant?”

  I backed up a few paces, still holding my hands out. I could tell this wasn’t going to end well.

  “Look, sir,” I said. The guy’s face went red. I quickly retracted my statement. “Look, man, I don’t want no trouble. Just let me be. I’ll be back in ten minutes. I need to get some money from the bank. If they see me rolling up on some dirt bike, I might draw attention. Those things make a racket. I just want to get some money, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

  The guy with the wrench nodded his head. He dropped the iron tool on the ground. It echoed in the air, the sound clinging to my eardrums. He took a few steps back and turned his head to the left. He was looking at the trash bags. He managed to look at them, yet keep a keen eye on me. He parted one of the bags with his left hand and bent down for a closer look. He quickly straightened back up and relaxed, his shoulders hunching and his fists turning into placid resting hands at his sides.

  “Fuck off, then. But don’t you dare come back, you hear?” he said, sounding awfully intimidating.

  “But what about my bike?”

  The guy laughed, then rolled up his sleeves and cracked his knuckles.

  “You’re lucky I don’t crack your damn head in two with my wrench. Now fuck off. The bike is mine. Capisce?”

  I nodded and backed away, a few steps at a time.

  “Run, and don’t look back,” the guy said, moving near the big metal door. He stuck his left arm into the half-ajar door and I heard something snap, like a gun being cocked.

  I ran. I didn’t look back. I did as I was told.

  Twenty-Five

  I had made it out of the alleyway and was nearly at the bank. I knew that Tricky Ricky’s bike was done for, and I wouldn’t be seeing it again. The guy must have liked what he saw. It was probably worth a few grand, maybe even ten with all the modifications it had. It had been stupid of me to think I could persuade a guy like that to let me have the bike back. People like him, men with crowbars, that is, don’t think twice about taking something from you. I guess I thought people were more understanding. Maybe if he knew I was being chased by the cops, and was a wanted man, then maybe he would have cut me some slack.

  I was probably wrong about that, too. He would have turned me in for a reward. Men like him hate rats, but when it comes to fat reward money, most will turn a blind eye. I was still confused as to why I was being chased. Last time I checked, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Aside from knocking a few police officers around, I didn’t understand what warranted such a police presence. Come to think of it, why were men in black suits with jet-black vans and machine guns outside my apartment? Who the hell had I pissed off?

  I took a left and looked at my watch. It was 9:09 a.m. A whole nine minutes late, but I figured the bank wouldn’t be that busy yet. I could see the small cream building where my bank was housed. The metal bars on the window reminded me of where I was. South Central, Hyde Park was a bad neighborhood, just like Watts. I guess I was used to bad neighborhoods. But the thing is with any “hood,” there is always a large police presence. So I’d need to be quick about my visit to Hyde. I’d need to wrap it up pronto if I was to stand a chance.

  I walked up the sidewalk and noticed the newspaper vending machine. I decided to have a look at the front page, wondering if there would be anything useful on it about me. I hadn’t made the front-page news yet. I guess it was early. Maybe they hadn’t had time to print my story. Would the authorities even acknowledge the existence of somebody with no
discernable heartbeat walking the streets of L.A.? I guess it might cause a widespread panic. That, I know, they wouldn’t want to happen. All sorts of people would get involved. Religious groups would be calling it a miracle. Roswell enthusiasts would be calling it a conspiracy. I’d be safer if only the feds knew. They won’t want to risk me being killed by conspiracy nuts who thought I was part of an alien invasion.

  I stopped studying the newspapers and made my way to my bank. The cracked sidewalk seemed like an eerie reminder of my fragile life, how it had ended in a second and was reborn into my current nightmare. I was too far into my thoughts to notice the people staring at me. I guess it should have raised some alarm bells, but I was too busy wallowing in self-pity to give it a second thought. Funny thing, paranoia is. One second you think the whole world is after you, and when they are, you’re too immersed in your own theories to see the threat that is staring you straight in the face.

  I strolled into my bank and noticed the line to the teller’s desk. It was about four people long. Didn’t really justify the name “line,” but when it’s a small bank and only one teller is open for business, I guess four people might as well be a thousand waiting in line at Disneyland.

  I didn’t have business with the teller, though. I needed to get to my safety deposit box. I would need to go to the customer service desk for that. So I did. I zigzagged through the four men waiting in line. I noticed a few of them giving me a look. Nothing that warranted an alarm bell in my head. But if I was less inclined to be steeped in thought, then maybe I should have walked out at the first chance I got. But I didn’t. I walked up to the friendly-looking customer service clerk and gave her a smile. I saw a slight crack in the one she returned, but I carried on nonetheless.

  “Hi, I’d like to make a withdrawal, please,” I said, still smiling, still oblivious.

  “From the cashier?” she asked, sounding plain and uninterested. She had long brown curly hair. It went past her shoulders. She was wearing business attire that made her look a little heavier than she probably was. It wasn’t flattering, that was for sure.