The Poet (Samantha Jazz)

I frown at the fresh knife wound on Dave’s chest, the perfect U dripping with blood, but some part of my mind knows that’s not what happened. The Poet didn’t damage Dave’s body as he did his earlier victims. He simply, so very simply, poisoned him. Clean and cautious in every way, he limited his risk of leaving DNA evidence.

Reaching my gloved hand into Dave’s mouth, I pull out yet another poem and message left for us by The Poet. I unroll the piece of paper and read the words of a poem credited to bestselling poet, Mary Oliver:

And this scar I then remember

is a medallion of no emotion

Obviously, I now know why he cut him. He wanted him to have a scar to match the poem. No, my mind wanted him to have a scar to match the poem. This isn’t real. This didn’t happen.

Grimacing, I’m right back in the nightmare, and I start reading again, finding Oliver’s words replaced now by The Poet’s:

I know how those scars got there.

You know how those scars got there.

You cut her

You killed her, Detective Samantha Jazz

Bugs start crawling out of Dave’s mouth and then they are all over me.

I gasp and sit up, hitting at myself, shoving away the bugs that don’t exist, nor did they exist at that crime scene. My mind just seems to want to punish me in new ways. The hot Texas sunlight beams through the curtain, piercing my irises, while I might actually have icicles clinging to my eyelashes. Shivering, I all but sprint to the thermostat, turn it back up to a reasonable level, and then head to my closet.

Glancing at my Apple watch, and the seven a.m. hour, a perfect hour for a much-needed run, I decide I will not let The Poet strip me of my life or outlets. I throw on workout tights and a tank top before I settle on the bed and lace up my sneakers. A flashback to that nightmare and the bugs crawling all over me has me standing and running my hands over my arms.

Grabbing my phone and Bluetooth headphones, I hurry down the stairs, crossing through my living room to grab my keys from the table by the door. With a sigh, I pull up the security footage and do a quick scan for activity alerts and find none.

Eager for my outlet, I all but explode into a small foyer, lock up, and head down the two flights of stairs, only to have Old Lady Crawford shout down at me, “When are you going to work again, Sam?”

At least it’s Sam and not Detective Jazz, I think, wiping the grimace off my face that she doesn’t deserve. I rotate to find her at the top of the stairs, standing in her perpetual hunched over position, her polyester pants a bright orange today. “I’m working, Mrs. Crawford.” At a desk, without my service weapon, but close enough.

“Oh, pishposh,” she says, her gravelly dismissal instant. “You get fired over that thing that happened?”

Now “the incident” is “that thing?” Someone dying is not “that thing.”

“Gotta run, Mrs. Crawford, quite literally. Taking my morning jog before the heat suffocates me.” And then, to soften my harsh dismissal of a seventy-something sweet old woman, and as for her question, I add, “I’ll check on you later,” and then hurry the rest of the way down the stairs.

Exiting to the sidewalk, the certainty that I have to sell my place slams into me right along with the Texas humidity. I don’t let either thing hold me back. I start walking, tuning my music on my phone to my run playlist. That’s the extent of my warm-up. I need to be moving. I start running, but the nightmare plays in my head. I’m back in the alleyway and this time, I approach the body. This time, I let myself live the moment that I roll the man over to discover he isn’t a man at all.

I run harder, and I don’t even notice the green light or the intersection I’ve entered. Horns blast and a car screeches to a halt. Someone shouts. “You idiot!”

Yes, I think, clearing the road to jog on the sidewalk, I am an idiot. I not only ran into a busy intersection, but I didn’t do what it took to take down The Poet before that boy ended up dead. And how did I think that kid was The Poet? He was four inches shorter. I just don’t know how he did the switch and how he convinced the boy to go along with him.

I round a corner and bring the university into view, halting on top of what is now my lookout hill, overseeing a parking lot to the liberal arts building. I didn’t mean to come here. It just happened. I’m sure the captain would call me a stalker again. I don’t know how a law enforcement officer trying to prevent another murder stalks a serial killer, but apparently, my captain believes I’ve mastered the craft.