Alex Cross 03 - Jack & Jill Read online

  He had no sooner said the words when Perez spotted us. It was as weird as a bad dream. I saw that he had a longish red beard that stuck out stiffly from his chin. It was something distinctive about him physically. Something people would have remembered if he’d been seen in Garfield Park. He leveled Alvin Jackson with a dark, scary look. Then he took off in a dead run.

  Emmanuel Perez was a very fast runner. But so were we; at least, we were the last time I checked.

  CHAPTER

  10

  SAMPSON AND I raced behind Perez, closing a little ground on him. We shot down a littered, twisting concrete alley that ran between the tall, depressing buildings. We could both still move pretty well.

  “Stop! Police detectives!” I yelled loudly at the sorry excuse for a man running ahead of us. Bogeyman? Chimera? Innocent restaurant porter?

  Perez, the suspect child murder and child molester, was definitely trying to escape. We didn’t know for sure if he was Chop-It-Off-Chucky, but he had some reason to run from Sampson and me, from the police.

  Had we finally caught a break on the case? Something sure as hell was happening right now.

  I had a very bad thought lodged in the front of my brain. If we’re this close to catching him, after two days on the streets, why wasn’t he caught before?

  I thought I knew the answer, and I didn’t like it much. Because nobody cares what happens in these wretched neighborhoods around the projects. Nobody cares.

  “We’re back!” Sampson suddenly shouted as we sprinted between the cavernous buildings, stirring up street garbage in our wake, rousting pigeons.

  “Remains to be seen,” I yelled to him.

  Nobody cares!

  “Don’t doubt it for a minute, Sugar. Think only positive thoughts.”

  “Emmanuel is fast, too. That’s positively the truth.”

  Nobody cares!

  “We’re faster, stronger, tougher than Manny ever dreamed of being.”

  “Better trash talkers,” I huffed. Just one huff, but a huff all the same.

  “That, too, Sugar. Goes without saying.”

  We followed Perez/Chop-It-Off out onto Seventh Street, which is lined with four- and five-story row houses, bombed-out stores, a few tank bars.

  Perez suddenly turned into a beaten-down Federal-style building near the middle of the block. The windows were mostly boarded with sheet metal, looking like silver teeth in a rotting mouth.

  “He seems to know what the hell he’s doing,” Sampson yelled. “Knows where he’s going.”

  “At least that makes one of us.”

  Sampson and I entered the sagging, ramshackle building several strides behind Perez. The strong smell of urine and decay was everywhere. As we climbed the steep, reinforced concrete stairs, I could feel a fire spreading into my chest.

  “Had his escape route all figured out!” I huffed. A definite huff. “He’s smart.”

  “He’s trying to escape from us. That’s not too smart. Never happened… WE GOT YOU, MANNY!” Sampson yelled up the stairs. His voice echoed like thunder in the narrow quarters. “HEY, MANNY! MANNY, MANNY, MANNY!”

  “Stop! Police! Manny Perez, stop!” Sampson shouted at the fleeing suspect. He had his gun out, a nasty 9mm Glock.

  We could hear Perez still running above us, his sneakers slapping stairs. He didn’t yell back. Nobody else was on the stairs or in any of the stairwells. Nobody cared that there was a police chase going on inside the building.

  “You think Perez really did it?” I yelled to Sampson.

  “He did something. He’s running like his ass is on fire. Spreading right up his spinal cord.”

  “Yeah. We lit the fuse.”

  We burst out a gray metal door onto a broad, uneven expanse of tar roof. Overhead the sky was a cool, hard blue. There were shiny surfaces and maximum glare everywhere. There was nothing but bright blue sky above. I had the urge to take off—fly away from all of this. The urge, but not the means.

  Where the hell had he gone? He was nowhere in sight. Where was Emmanuel Perez? Where was the Sojourner Truth School killer?

  Chimera.

  CHAPTER

  11

  “FUCK YOU, peachfuzz,” Perez suddenly yelled. “You hear me, peachfuzz?”

  “Peachfuzz?” Sampson looked at me and made a face.

  I saw a quick flash of Chop-It-Off-Chucky. He was off to our extreme right. He was sprinting across a connecting rooftop and was already about thirty yards away. I saw him grab a quick, worried look back over his shoulder.

  His small eyes were hard black beads, evil-looking as they come. He had that weird red beard. Maybe he was a total psycho. Or maybe he really was just a pizza-store porter? Forget it, I told myself.

  Four teenage boys and a girl were up there on the roof doing their sneaky business. Crack, probably. I hoped they weren’t snorting heroin. They idly watched the wild, wild world go by. The real city game was in progress here. Cops and robbers. Child molester-killers. It made no difference to these kids.

  Sampson and I covered three more narrow rooftops in a powerful hurry. We were gaining on him a little, but only by a step or two. Sweat was running down my forehead and cheeks, burning my eyes.

  “Stop! We’ll shoot!” I yelled. “Stop, Emmanuel Perez!”

  Perez looked back again. He looked straight at me this time and grinned! Then he seemed to disappear over the far side of the brick-walled building.

  “Fire escape!” Sampson yelled.

  Seconds later, the two of us were rushing headlong down skinny, twisting, rusted metal stairs. Perez flew down the flimsy fire escape ahead of us. He was really moving. This was definitely his event, his home course.

  Sampson and I were both too big for the tight-radius maneuvering. He gained a full flight on us, maybe a flight and a half.

  Chucky definitely had an escape route figured out, I was thinking. He’d practiced this. I was almost sure of it. He’s a smart one. He’s guilty. Those vicious eyes! Mad-dog eyes. What had Alvin Jackson said—that Emmanuel Perez had always been around?

  We saw him down on E Street. The red beard jutted out as if it were petrified wood. He was already a full block away. Lots of rush-hour traffic everywhere. He was getting into a gypsy cab, a dull red-and-orange hack that read, CAPPY’S. WE GO ANYWHERE.

  “STOP, YOU FUCKING SQUIRREL!” Sampson screamed at the top of his voice. “GODDAMN YOU, MANNY!”

  Perez gave us the finger in the crud-crusted rear window of the cab.

  “PEACHFUZZ!” he leaned out and screamed back at us.

  CHAPTER

  12

  SAMPSON AND I scrambled out onto E Street. Sweat was still streaming down my forehead and cheeks, my neck, back, legs. Sampson ran in front of a Yellow Cab and the driver screeched to a stop. Intelligent of the cabdriver to avoid hitting Man Mountain and totaling his car.

  “Metro police! Detective Alex Cross!” my voice boomed as we simultaneously swung open the cab’s back doors. “Follow that hack. Go! Go! Go! Dammit.”

  “Don’t you lose him!” Sampson threatened the driver. “Don’t you even think about it.” The poor man was scared to death. He never even looked back. Never said a word. But he didn’t lose visual contact with CAPPY’S. WE GO ANYWHERE.

  We hit a bad snarl of traffic at Ninth Street where it approaches Pennsylvania Avenue. Cars and trucks were backed up for at least three blocks. Angry horns were honking everywhere. One tractor-trailer had a foghorn like an oceangoing vessel’s.

  “Maybe we better get out and run him down,” I said to Sampson.

  “I was thinking the same thing. Let’s go for it”

  It was one of those fifty-fifty calls. Either way, we could lose Chucky right here. My heart was pounding hard in my chest. I could see the crushed-in skull of little Shanelle Green. Emmanuel had always been around! Those mad-dog eyes! I wanted Chop-It-Off-Chucky real bad.

  Sampson already had the creaking door on his side of the cab open. I was half a step behind. Maybe less. />
  Chucky must have felt us breathing fire on the back of his neck. He jumped out of his cab and started to run.

  We followed him between the tight rows of barely moving traffic. Blaring car horns provided chaotic background noise for the foot chase along Ninth Street.

  Chop-It-Off-Chucky burst forward. He’d gotten his second wind.

  Suddenly, he veered right and into a gleaming, glass-and-steel office building. The building looked silver blue.

  Madness, pure and simple.

  I had my detective’s shield already out as we entered the office building several strides behind Chucky. “Spanish guy, red beard. Which way?” I yelled at the dazed and confused-looking security guard standing around in the plush, paneled lobby.

  He pointed to the middle car at a metal-on-metal elevator bank. The car had already left the ground floor. I watched the floor indicator: three—four—rising fast. Sampson and I jumped into the open door of the car nearest the front entrance.

  I hit ROOFTOP with the palm of my hand. That was my best guess.

  “Roadrunner said Perez was a porter at Famous Pizza,” I told Sampson. “There was a Famous on the ground floor here.”

  “Think Chucky’s a creature of habit? Likes roofs? Has his favorites all picked out?”

  “I think he had a couple of escape routes figured out, just in case. And, yeah, I think he’s a creature of habit.”

  “He’s most definitely a creature.”

  The elevator bell rang, and Sampson and I scrambled out, guns first. We could see the Capitol in the distance. Also the Statue of Freedom. Pretty sight under other circumstances. Weird, now. Kind of sad.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Shanelle Green. I kept seeing her brutalized face. What had he hit her with? How many times? Why? I wanted to catch this bastard so bad, it hurt. Hurt my body; hurt my head even worse.

  We moved away from the building, and I finally spotted Chucky outlined against the skyline. My heart sank.

  Chucky did have an escape route in mind. He had thought about this before. Somebody coming to get him. He sure was acting guilty. He had to be our killer.

  “Fuck you, peachfuzz!” he screeched, taunting us again.

  Then he took off on a long, running start. He had a powerful stride—a long stride.

  “No,” I moaned. “No, no, no.”

  I knew what he was going to do.

  Perez was going to jump from building to building.

  “Stop, you son of a bitch,” Sampson shouted, “or I will shoot!”

  But he didn’t stop. We watched him take a flying leap.

  We ran to the edge of the roof, both of us screaming at the top of our lungs. There was a second office building catty-corner to our roof. The top of that building was a floor below where Sampson and I now stood.

  Chop-It-Off-Chucky was airborne between the buildings, the glass-and-steel caverns.

  “Jesus!” I gasped as I peered straight down over the side. The gap between the buildings was at least twenty feet wide, maybe more.

  “Fall, you bastard. Hit a wall,” Sampson yelled at the flying figure. “Go down, Chucky!”

  He’s done this before. He’s practiced his escape, I thought as I watched. No wonder he’s never been caught. How many years on the loose? How many lads molested or murdered? -

  We had our guns out, but neither of us fired. We had no proof that he was the killer. He had only run from us, had never pointed a weapon. Now, this insane leap from one office building to another.

  Chucky looked suspended in motion sixteen floors up. A long, long way down.

  Something was wrong.

  Chucky was pumping his legs furiously. It was as if he were trying to pedal a bike straight across the sky.

  His long arms reached out, muscles hard and taut. His lead leg stretched until it was almost straight out from his body. Nike sneaker-poster stuff.

  His frame was stiff, like a runner caught in a prizewinning photograph.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sampson whispered at my side. I felt his warm breath on my cheek.

  Chucky’s arm was outstretched, but his hand barely touched the restraining wall on the roof of the nearby office building, his legs still pumping in midair.

  Then Chop-It-Off-Chucky screamed—bloodcurdling sounds, muffled only by the windows and walls of the two buildings.

  He continued to shriek as he fell twenty stories. His arms and legs were flailing, stroking the air at a futile, furious pace.

  As I watched, I saw his body suddenly twist in midair.

  He looked up at me—still screaming in a hopeless, plaintive way, screaming with his mouth and his eyes, and that bushy red beard, screaming. Chucky was dying as I watched. The fall seemed to take forever. Four or five seconds that seemed like an eternity.

  My stomach was falling with him. I experienced vertigo. The narrow alley below was a spinning gray band. The buildings, the canyon, seemed so steep and dark and faraway.

  Then I heard Chucky hit the pavement. Splat! It was otherworldly to hear.

  I stared at the crumpled body spread-eagled down below. I could feel no joy in it, though. There was nothing even remotely human about it. It was crashed like the side of Shanelle Green’s face. Chucky’s unearthly screams still echoed inside my brain.

  “Flameout,” Sampson said at my side. “Case closed. Score one for the peachfuzz.”

  I holstered my semiautomatic. Emmanuel Perez had practiced his escape, but he hadn’t practiced enough.

  CHAPTER

  13

  MAJOR FAKEOUT. Faked you out something fierce, didn’t I? I faked you all out.

  The real Sojourner Truth School killer was alive and well. The killer couldn’t have been any better, thank you very much. He had just committed the perfect crime, hadn’t he? He had just gotten away with murder.

  Yes, he sure as hell had. Scot-free. The crackerjack Washington police had caught and toasted the wrong twisted ass-hole. Somebody named Emmanuel Perez had paid for his sins, paid with his life, paid in full.

  All he had to do now was cool it, he knew. That was what he had to concentrate on. He had already decided to hide out for a white—inside his mind.

  He was cruising the Pentagon City mall in Arlington. He was getting absolutely rabid as he strolled through The Gap, and then Victoria’s Secret. He was obsessing about how to get back at—anybody and everybody. At tout le monde—pardon his French, s’il vous plaît.

  A song, an oldie held heard that morning on MTV, was stuck in his head. The lyrics had been bouncing around in his skull like Ping-Pong balls for the last couple of hours. He could hear the singer, Beck, a hopeless geek from Los Angeles: I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me?

  I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me? he repeated the lyric in his head.

  I’m a loser, baby. So why don’t you kill me?

  He loved the way the dumb-ass lyrics worked two ways for him. They were about him, and they were about his potential victims. Everything was an irritating circle, right? Life was beautiful in its screwy simplicity, right?

  WRONG! Life was not beautiful. Not at all

  He was watching a little sucker now, a potential victim who looked way too good to pass up. The Truth School killer loitered inside the Toys “R” Us at the mall. Since it was the holiday season, the store was jam-packed with idiots.

  The overhead speakers were playing the chain’s irritating and moronic theme song: “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid.” Over and over and over, the kind of mindless repetition that kids loved. The sheer number of insane toys, the spoiled-rotten little kids, the smug-looking mothers and fathers, the whole raw deal made him feel hot, thickheaded, and almost physically sick.

  I don’t want to grow up, either, he said to himself. I’m a Toys “R” Us kid killer.

  He watched his chosen little boy as the kid wandered alone down a wide aisle chock-full of action games. The boy was five or so, a very manageable age.

  The anger
button inside his head was going off like a powerful alarm. WOM! WOM! WOM! The terrible feeling quickly spread to his chest WOM! WOM! It was tense and uncomfortable. Both his hands were clenched tight. So was his stomach. The back of his neck. His brain was clutching, too.

  Be careful now, he cautioned himself. Don’t make any mistakes. Remember—you do perfect crimes.

  CHAPTER

  14

  THIS WAS GOING TO BE a mite tricky going, though, working in the crowded Toys “R” Us store. What if the boy’s parents were close by? WHICH THEY DEFINITELY WERE! What if he were caught? WHICH HE WOULDN’T BE! COULDN’T BE!

  That was incredibly important to him. Just watching the attractive, round-faced, sandy-haired boy, he could feel how badly this particular kid would be missed and, even better, mourned. He needed to imagine the stories that would bombard the television screens and the thrill of watching them, knowing he was responsible for so much pain and suffering and emergency activity.

  The little boy was getting itchy in his woolens and starting to panic a little. He had big crocodile tears brimming in his eyes. There didn’t seem to be anybody, any adult, anywhere around him. Poor Little Boy Lost. Poor Little Boy Blue.

  The killer began to move in on his prey, slowly and carefully. He couldn’t stop now. His heart was beating like a big tin drum, and he loved the powerful sensation. His legs and arms were a little wobbly. Jell-O city. His vision tunneled; he was dizzy with anticipation, fear, dread, exhilaration.

  Do it.

  Now!

  He bent, picked up the boy, and immediately started smiling and talking the happiest, friendliest barf-babble he could come up with.

  “Hi there, I’m Roger the Artful Dodger. I work here at Toys ‘R’ Us. What kind of fantastical toys do you like best, huh? We’ve got every kind of toy in the whole wide world, ‘cause we’re the world’s biggest, coolest toy store. Yahoo! How ‘bout that? Let’s go find your superpathetic mom and dad!”