I look toward the door in question and the hall that extends about twenty feet to the right. There are doors on each side, all closed except for one at the end of the hall, from which a rectangle of light falls across the carpet. Bathroom, probably.
“Don’t know what that yell was about,” the veteran officer says, breathing raggedly but more than ready to pounce. “It scared the shit out of me, though. Heard the boy’s voice after, whimpering. Haven’t heard anything for a few minutes.”
“How do you want to do it?” I ask, acknowledging that he was first on the scene and therefore calling the shots.
Mitchell looks down at Tommy under the archway. “Check with radio to see if SWAT and a hostage negotiator are on the way.” To me: “I think we should hold our positions and—”
A window-rattling bellow from the boy’s bedroom.
“Jesus!” Tommy gasps from below, as Mitchell and I crouch reflexively, thrusting our weapons toward the door. “What in holy hell was that?”
A nasally voice from the room. “I’m going to kill the little shiiiiit. Nowwww. Just you wait and seeeee.” Taunting voice, syrupy. Was he talking to us? He had to have heard us.
“We got to move now,” Mitchell says between clenched teeth.
My stomach churns a huge bubble of acid. Please don’t let this be a repeat of two months ago.
Tommy moves up behind us.
“Okay,” Mitchell says. “I’ll move to the other side of the door and you guys take up on this side. We’ll listen from there.”
We move up the last few steps and then quiet-walk over to the door. Mitchell places his ear against the wall and listens for a moment. He looks at me and pretends to rub an eye.
I nod that I understand. The child is crying and that means he’s still alive.
My heart thumps so hard that I wonder if the other guys can hear it. I don’t want to shoot again. I don’t want to shoot again. I don’t want… Damn. Kari said there was no greater chance of it happening again. She promised me. It can’t be my turn again.
Mitchell pantomimes that he’ll go right and that Tommy and I should go left. I nod and position my trembling hand just above the doorknob. Mitchell holds up three fingers, closes his fist, extends two fingers, closes his fist, extends one.
I twist the knob hard and push it forcefully. Mitchell slides around the door facing, moving to the right. I step in an instant later, moving to the left, my gun pointing into the room; Tommy’s on my heels.
“I’m going to killllll the little shit. Wanna watch?”
I hear and understand the words before my mind fully comprehends the image before me.
A man, skinny, mid twenties, head shaved, and naked, sits spread-legged on the corner of the bed. Between his legs, a blond-haired little boy, also naked, struggling weakly against the forearm that pins him within a tight embrace. The man looks in my direction, but his eyes—gray, opaque—seem to look trance-like into another world.
“Let us help you, my friend,” Tommy says. “I’m coming over to sit next to you so I can hear you better. I—”
“I’m going to killllll the little shiiiit,” the man repeats in that same slimy voice. The boy stops struggling and looks at the uniformed officer, his eyes impossibly large. The man’s vacant stare seems transfixed on me; I don’t think he’s blinked once. “They want the little shiiiit in the bowels of hell, you seeeeee. I’ve been sent by the legion to bring—”
“Show your other hand,” Mitchell says, stepping toward the man, his gun angled to the side. “Show me your muther fuckin’ hand. Do it now!”
“Mommy,” the boy utters softly. Then screams, “Mommy!”
“This one?” the man says, bringing his arm out from behind the boy’s back, a large kitchen knife white-knuckled in his grip. He places the cutting side against the child’s thin neck, casually, as if he were going to cut a melon for lunch.
“Jimmeeee!” the blind mother screams desperately from outside.
“Mommeee!” the piercing return.
“Drop the blade!” I command, my voice vibrating. His unblinking, lifeless eyes look at me as if I’m the only one in the room. Almost imperceptibly, his mouth begins to smile—knowingly? What… What does he know? What the hell does he know?
Then, like a gut punch, it hits me. There is no way out of this. He’s in charge and there is no way in hell he’s giving up. It amuses him that we’re all locked into this moment… a moment that will be forever in our minds. He wants us to shoot him. His eyes smile into mine, communicating. To me. Not to us. Me. He wants me to shoot him.
Oh please, please, this can’t be happening again. This can’t be happening again. Thiscannotbehappeningagain.
“Drop the blade, asshole!” my voice is high-pitched, like a girl’s. “Drop the blade!” Then I hear myself begging. “Don’t make me do this again. Please, please drop the blade.” I don’t want to be here. Idon’twanttobehere.
“I’m going to cut the little shit on onnnnnne,” the voice oozes as slowly as tree sap, his fish eyes locked on mine. “Tennnnnn, ninnnnnne, eeeeeeight…”
Mitchell’s gun and mine point at the man’s face. There is just enough clearance above the boy’s head for a shot. A dangerous one but it’s all we—
Tommy brushes past me toward the bed, holding up his empty palms as he did with the street boxer yesterday.
“Tommy, no!” I urge hoarsely. “He can’t be talked out of—”
“Let me help you, sir,” my partner says, as if talking to a confused elderly person who has walked away from his care facility. “First give me the knife.”
The man’s eyes are empty, like a dumb animal’s. “… sevvvvvven, siiiiiiix…”
Tommy stops three feet in front of the man’s knees. “Just give me the knife.”
I sidestep to see around him. “Tommy, back away. Damn-it, Tommy…”
The naked man turns his head slowly, mechanically like a robot. His eyes widen and he grins ugly. “Heeeere’s my knife, Tommy boyeeeeee.” His knife hand quick-flicks out and back, a soundless streak of silver.
Tommy yelps, jerking his hand upward past his head, a fan of red droplets in its wake.
What the hell?
He spins toward me, his hand in front of his face, his eyes staring in disbelief at three cleanly severed fingers dangling by thin flaps of skin. Blood arcs from the raw meat.
The smiling man returns the knife to the boy’s small neck and then rotates his head toward me, staccato like, until his eyes meet mine. Jimmy has moved to the side just enough that I can see the man’s—shit!—erect penis.
I aim at the freak’s nose, just as I did at the tweaker two months earlier. Got to stop his brain so he doesn’t cut as he dies.
The man’s mouth turns up into a malevolent smile. He resumes counting, but faster. “Fivefourthreetwo—” The blade begins to slice.
Mitchell’s gun explodes.
I’m squeezing my trigger—
Movement off to my side. Tommy’s hand. Waving in the air. Something splatters across my nose and mouth. Wet.
I fire.
I’m seeing everything in ultra detail, in living color, in high definition, in 3-D. The man remains upright, his smiling face now blood-spotted. Red oozes from a hole in his shoulder.