Roadrunner

by Michael Lilly

  I look across the parking lot and spot the squad car parked with Lund’s silhouette sitting in the driver’s seat. The gunfire must have been my imagination, after all.

  “See that car there?” I say. He nods. I say, “That man is Officer Lund. Go and knock on the window and he’ll keep you safe, okay?” He nods again.

  “You’re not coming?” he says.

  “I gotta make sure this guy doesn’t escape. I’ll stay and watch you until you get into the car, though. Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

  The boy nods, takes a deep breath, and sprints toward the car at max speed. A second before he reaches the car, its passenger door swings open and the boy climbs inside.

  Now I can turn my attention back toward the unconscious pile of waste in the basement. I pull the door closed behind me and head back toward the inner basement room. The path is easy, like I’ve been doing it for years. It helps that I’m not shy about using my flashlight this time. My footsteps, also in contrast to my fist trip, sound and feel like those of a clumsy giant—maybe one who’s had a few too many.

  I run to the southwest corner of the far basement room, where I left Perkins, but he’s gone.

  The thundering stampede that composes my heartbeat rears its head again, and though the beasts that comprise it must be nearing death by exhaustion, they nonetheless gallop with full force and speed.

  I listen hard, but can’t discern any one noise from the next; the formerly silent structure is now rife with creaks, snaps, and the odd whoosh. The heavy hiss of the air conditioning turning on once more (have these people no regard for the environment?) falls behind me as I turn to leave the room; I don’t bother searching it as, if Perkins were to have stayed in this room, it would have been with the intent to ambush me on my way in, and unless I dreamed the last minute, that certainly did not happen.

  That being the case, where did he go? Had he gone through the back door, he couldn’t have done so and escaped my notice. I have my doubts about him having slipped out the front entrance, either, as he would have to have a way to bypass or override the hours of its functionality. Still, though, I suppose I can’t rule that out just yet.

  Maybe this is his way of inviting me to play a high-stakes game of hide and seek. While I’d rather not play, I suppose I don’t get much of a say in the matter this time. So I set off to explore the dark nooks of the building for the second time tonight. Though tense and antsy again, it’s different this time, like a chef tried to recreate a dish but had none of the main ingredients. This time, it’s a bit more primal, feral even. As I think it, I realize: this isn’t a new sensation. This is the same hungry rush I have always gotten before a kill.

  Is that what this is becoming, then? What I’m becoming? Have I truly transitioned to a place where that’s no longer a hobby of mine, or was I simply waiting for the right target? I like to think that that part of me fell dormant with the events of last fall, that the Don Thorn had been removed from the lion’s paw, allowing him to calm and rest, but could that transition have been so rapid? Instinct and experience tell me that no, that type of change cannot have occurred so quickly.

  Whatever the case may be, I need to find Perkins, and fast. Whether or not I plan to kill him is irrelevant for the time being, but that it’s a confrontation I’ll have to make with myself frightens me. But alas, it must join the rest of my simmering issues on the back burner for now.

  Recommitted to the stealth I employed on my first tour, my pace is slowed quite a lot, but even so, my new knowledge of the facility’s layout keeps my movements direct and true. However, my certainty that Perkins is lying in wait makes them less fluid and, in general, I’m more prone to being startled by abrupt noises, organic or otherwise. A car door shuts in the distance and I nearly shit myself.

  Fortunately for me, my hands don’t sweat nearly as much this time—maybe I’ve exhausted those particular sweat glands over the last forty-eight hours. Whatever the reason, I’m permitted a great deal more confidence in my grip on my weapon this time around, a confidence which I will never take for granted again.

  The way my footsteps echo in certain hallways reminds me of a large, empty public restroom. I’ve decided to take the same route as I did the first time through, as the path is still fresh in my mind, down to the number of steps into, around, and through each room.

  The first computer-filled room looks the same as it had before, although my memory is no Todd’s memory, and I fear I may miss something subtle. But all I can do is keep going.

  The break room and restrooms are empty, as before, and I double back toward the T, and then to the east wing. Though I can’t pinpoint why, the eastern counterpart to the computer room is charged with a tension that I have difficulty naming or describing. Because of this phenomenon, I take my time in inspecting every last detail of the room. Although nothing new jumps out at me, I still get the sensation of seeing it all for the first time.

  Alas, the room is empty, but the feeling of being surveilled rises in my mind and bares its teeth. I make my way to the other side of the room where the door to administration lies in wait.

  It’s unlocked. I don’t have Todd’s memory, but I’m distinctly aware that I left this door locked after I looked through here. Perkins has been through here. There’s a definite possibility that he’s in there now, waiting for me. When I saw him before, he was unarmed, but that may have changed within the past few minutes. Indeed, he may be standing inside the office, with a firearm trained on the door, waiting for it to swing open and be replaced by me, at which point he would simply pull the trigger and put a bullet into me.

  However, he would have to have had a gun hidden away somewhere, somewhere accessible but not so accessible as to be noticeable. I must consider, as well, that when I saw him the first time, my vision and perception were still blurry and broken from my sudden, ill-timed illness, and that he could have been armed this whole time.

  I breathe deeply and steel myself, facing the office door. I turn the handle and pull with a speed and force that nearly sends the door into my face, but it misses my nose narrowly. I step back with the motion of the door’s opening, expecting to hear and see gunfire, but none comes. I approach the doorway again, with no less caution than before.

  Perkins sits inside, on the floor and propped up against a ground level cabinet. His hands are behind his back, which makes me all the more wary.

  “Welcome to our base of operations,” he says. His voice is steady, like the sentence was practiced, rehearsed with an import on par with the delivery of a Broadway monologue.

  “Oddly, I don’t feel all that welcome,” I say.

  “That may be because much of our hospitality doesn’t extend to those who knock us out and let our sacrifices run free.”

  “Sacrifices?”

  “Ah, yeah. Romero’s thing, really. Mostly it stemmed from my need to get a local involved in this.”

  “How do you mean?” I ask. My eyes are still strained for any movement of his arms, which have yet to move from behind his back.

  “Didn’t you wonder how? Yeah, I could have blackmailed him, but that only ever goes so far. I needed him to want to do it.”

  “And what made him want to do it?”

  “Revenge.”

  “Revenge. Against a handful of adolescents?”

  “Not them, per se, but their families. You see, years ago, their grandfathers owned a farm together. But it failed spectacularly, which I’m sure you found out in all your digging the other night.”

  I nod.

  Perkins continues. “All I had to do was convince him that there was a way he could bring life back into the farm. He’s a smart guy, of course, but lots of people have their superstitions. Hell, maybe you even have some. Anyway, I got him convinced that there was a ritual he could do to bring life back into his dead property he calls a farm. But come time to throw his son into the mix, he got antsy. That’s why I had to come after you directly. Sorry about the window and all. Business. I’
m sure you understand.”

  “Not really.”

  “No? You really don’t know why I’m after you?”

  “I have a hunch.”

  “Well let’s hear it!”

  “You’re one of Keroth’s guys and now you’re out for revenge,” I say. It sounds over-simplified when I say it out loud, lacking in the drama that it carries and implies.

  He laughs. “Well, you’re half right. I’m definitely in this for revenge. Sinking a blade into you is a sensation I’ve dreamed of for months now. But I’m not one of Keroth’s guys.” He pauses for dramatic effect, baiting me to ask him to elaborate, but all I can manage is to lift an eyebrow, probably barely visible in this light.

  “All right, I’ll tell you,” he says, as though I had indeed begged for further details. “Nah, I wasn’t one of Keroth’s guys. Keroth was one of my guys. And so was your dear old pappy, too. They were my two most prolific producers, right up until you went and made a mess of your daddy’s neck. Quite the shitload of trouble you’ve stirred up for me and my business, you know.”

  “You have my deepest sympathies. As it is, that’s not a well that runs deep.”

  “Well, you will be sorry.”

  “You sure about that? I’m standing here with a gun, with you cornered, and your hostage freed. I’m liking my position right now.”

  “My hostage freed? Really? Did you simply free him into the night, hoping he might fly his way home like a damned homing pigeon? Hmm?”

  “I took him outside and watched him until he got into the squad car.”

  “Ah yes, a squad car,” he says. He’s using the patronizing tone of one acting impressed at a child’s Christmas haul, and it unnerves me.

  “A squad car driven by whom?” he asks.

  “Officer Lund, Albuquerque PD,” I say.

  “Ah, dear, sweet Lund. That child is as good as dead.” He laughs in a disconnected, cliché way. It makes me ever more nervous.

  I move to pull out my phone, and that’s Perkins’ moment to strike. He pulls his hands from behind his back, revealing a small revolver, ready to go in his right hand. He points the barrel at me—a movement that appears, to me, to be in slow motion.

  I move, but not quickly enough to dodge the bullet. I feel a sharp, shocked pain arrest my upper right chest, near my shoulder. The force of the shot knocks me back, and the recoil dismantles Perkins’ aim. I crash against the back wall, but retain my hold on my weapon.

  I raise my arm in a draw to rival the old western films and take aim, doing my best to channel my inner Beth—she’s the single best and fastest shot I’ve ever met—and squeeze the trigger, praying that my shot takes him out completely before he is able to fire off another round. It’s fortunate for me that he’s clearly inexperienced with guns and thus didn’t know to anticipate the kickback, even if it was relatively small. It allowed me time to ready and take my shot, possibly saving my life.

  Now, a searing fire starts up near my right shoulder. I’m pretty sure it’s only a flesh wound, but that doesn’t change that a piece of hot metal has entered my body at a location that is definitely not an entrance.

  Bearing an immense amount of pain to do so, I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and discover that it’s been on silent this entire time. All the better for stealth, sure, but I also have double-digit missed calls and text messages from Todd.

  The first text reads, “Something’s not right. I’m following you two.” There are several more, with varying levels of panic, leading into “Remy, get out of there. Lund looks like he’s heading in with a gun.” “Remy!” “Oh, god. I shot him, Remy. I called an ambulance, though. They should be here soon.” “Remy?”

  As I’m reading the messages, my phone’s battery dies. Great. Well, at least the fucker didn’t shoot me in the legs. It’ll be something of a bitch, but I can make it out of here on my own. Based on the texts I did get to see, Todd must have been the one whose silhouette I saw in the squad car. Knowing that Todd is safe brings me almost as much peace as knowing that the child is safe with him. I’d imagine that many of Brooks’s men are still assisting with the situation in Wometzia, but hopefully dispatch can find someone nearby to assist us. I wonder whether they know about Lund yet. Surely they must, if Todd called an ambulance for him. I must convene with Todd. If he’s spinning tales, I need to familiarize myself with them before Albuquerque PD and New Mexico Police have a chance to separate us and interrogate us individually.

  As I move through the darkness, the shadows have lost their menace, as though they had been a limb of Perkins’ control, shot dead along with him. Thus, the trip back out through the building is devoid of the drama it carried beforehand; the shadows do not need to be bathed in light to be stripped of their darkness.

  Whether due to the adrenaline or otherwise, the spicy, peppery smell from earlier has intensified, and now carries with it a hint of sweetness. I have an abrupt craving for mango salsa.

  That pleasant sensation is replaced by a rather unpleasant one: that of my shoulder roaring up in pain again. I inhale hard and do my best to suppress it, but I don’t know how long I can fight it. I’ve always handled pain well, but this is, in my memory at least, the most intense physical pain I’ve ever endured.

  In the light of the neighboring parking lot’s pole-mounted bulbs, I see an abundance of blood in the corner of my eye. It’s about as bad as I expected: a bloody mess of a thing, mangled, but only in the flesh, as far as I can tell. It hurts like a son of a bitch, but the pain is fairly consistent when I move my arm.

  After I get my look, I move back into the shadows; I’m within Todd’s line of sight, now, and I don’t want him panicking before I can explain that it’s not as bad as it looks.

  I approach the squad car and find it to be empty. I panic for just a second before a pair of headlights flashes at me from the east. A moment of looking reveals the car to which they belong: Todd’s forest-green Honda Civic.

  I approach the car and hear the electronic locks disengage when I’m within ten feet. I open the door, fling myself into the rear passenger side seat, and pull it closed behind me, a process that ends up being a great deal louder and more painful than I would like.

  “What happened?” asks Todd.

  I explain, but I give him the abridged version, without the panic attack, though I’m sure he’s figured out that I left something out; his cop brain tracks these stories through the timeline. I’ll tell him about that part later, but not now. I’ll just let him assume that I took a rather laborious and thorough detour, or saw something shiny.

  Now, back at the hospital, we head to the emergency room rather than the pediatric ward. The doctor dictates a few notes about the wound, confirming my suspicions (and hopes) about its relative ease to heal. In addition, he insists that I take a powerful sedative to ease the removal of the bullet and cleaning of the wound, but I’m not comfortable with that just yet. It worries me that I haven’t heard from Husk by now, and I plan to go down to Wometzia as soon as my wound is clean and dressed, whether or not against medical advice. Such is an endeavor most likely best done sober, so I refuse the painkillers with a gradually depleting level of patience. I know it will hurt. But I can’t risk that my sedated mind will not be sufficient to lend aid to my neighbors in Wometzia.

  So, the doctors do what they can. Instead of floating along on a cloud of barely-conscious bliss for the duration, I bite down hard on a tongue depressor and pray that it withstands my clenching through five stitches. It does, but barely. The bullet was actually close to leaving an exit wound. So close, in fact, that rather than dig through the mangled muscle tissue in the open wound, they simply make an incision in the back and pull the little metal devil out that way. Afterward, the doctor hands me a plastic baggie containing the bullet as a souvenir. I almost refuse, but decide that its retention may prove to be prudent in the area of evidence.

  When I’m finished, my shoulder stinging and throbbing itself slowly into a pulsing ache, a cop I
don’t know finds us in the lobby to let us know that the boy’s parents have been contacted. As it turns out, he recently had a Missing Person report filed on him, and his mother was in hysterics. I wait only long enough to see her walk in and hug him, but I don’t have the time to join in the moment. I shoot Todd a look: Let’s go while we can.

  Todd and I get into the car and we take off.

  “Next time, no more Super Detective, maybe?” says Todd.

  “Agreed. Maybe just no more regular detective, too.”

  I called dispatch on my way in to the hospital and let them know where they could find a dead Perkins. I’m sure I’ll get shit at some point about going in there alone, but with the exception of Todd, I prefer to be alone. Whether that means an evening of reading and Netflix or a night of fighting baddies, my own company is my second-favorite.

  As soon as we cross the Albuquerque border, I feel my eyes getting heavy, but I fail to fall asleep. Damning as it may be, my mind is once again with Andre Romero. I have a new level of understanding about his delusional motives, yes. But the question in my head, the one surfacing again and again only to be shoved back down, morph into a different shape, and float back to the surface with an ostensible innocence, like a Magic Eight Ball with a manufacturing error giving it only one possible outcome, is whether or not Romero actually has something on me that could put me in jail.

  Now that my mind is a bit freer to think about it, I find myself developing something of an obsession about it, mentally screening my own memories of my crime scenes. Devin was clean, swift. I’m sure there’s nothing left of that scene that might suggest my hand. Though my power of recollection isn’t on the same level as Todd’s, it’s still reliable, and none of the cases bring to mind anything incriminating. A handful of them leave a couple of open ends, yes, but in any cases where I allowed that to happen, it was more in effort to give the detectives the impression that it wasn’t as simple as it initially seemed to be, similar to how a zookeeper will hang a tiger’s dinner from above for the cat to tear down so that it feels that it’s hunting something rather than being fed.