The Poet (Samantha Jazz)

Newman pulls his light blue minivan into his assigned faculty space, as I knew from reports he would right about now. A grassy mound and about ten parking spots divide me from him. I should step behind the ancient oak tree to my left before Newman reports me and his attorney threatens to sue the department again, but damn it, people are dead. I want him to see me. I want him to know I’m watching him, that I’ll know if he tries to kill again.

Maybe I’m losing my mind. Maybe I am going off the deep end, but I’m not hiding. I wait for him. Maybe I’ll have a little talk with him. Yes. I’m going to have a talk with him. Decision made, I start walking, and that’s when the muted sounds of a discharging weapon inside a sealed vehicle is followed by blood splattering all over the inside of Newman Smith’s minivan.

Chapter 82

The gunshot was muffled, lost to city sounds, but I know what I heard, and the blood on the windows tells the story.

A stunned moment overtakes me, but it’s a breeze in the storm where I thrive. My training kicks in, my action automatic. I start running, clearing the grassy mound with a leap that has me landing in the parking lot, hyperaware of everything around me: Of the two middle-aged women chatting as they walk to their cars. Another man in a suit is rushing toward the building, a briefcase on his shoulder. Another woman, this one thirty-something, doing the same. At this point, my phone is in my hand, my finger automatically punching the autodial button that’s been a part of my life for a decade now.

Dispatch answers in one ring.

“This is Detective Samantha Jazz, badge number 25K11, off duty and unarmed.” I sound my normal cool and calm self, but the rock concert pounding against my ribcage argues otherwise. “Shooter alert,” I add, still deceptively calm. “I’m requesting backup and an ambulance at an active scene. UT campus Calhoun building, faculty parking lot, now. Shooting, one known victim, possible suicide but undetermined.”

A man runs toward me and I disconnect at the sight of him carrying a book bag. Bags of any type make great weapon cases.

“Austin PD!” I shout, approaching the van. “Stand back and get me security out here now!”

The man’s eyes go wide, and he backs up. I squat at the rear of the vehicle, adrenaline coursing through my veins, driving away fear and leaving nothing but duty. Duty, however, rides a happier horse when it’s holding a weapon. I don’t have my service weapon or any weapon at all, for that matter, but that isn’t going to change, and with a campus full of targets for a shooter, I can’t wait for backup. I inch left to the door of the vehicle and find the driver’s side sealed shut as expected. I do the same to the right and go cold inside. It’s open. It wasn’t open. And this isn’t a suicide. Damn it, I need that weapon.

I unlink the mace I keep on my keychain attached to my pants, and inch to the side of the vehicle, still low, beneath the window, careful not to touch anything and screw up evidence, without gloves on. Oh, screw it. I rush to the door, the sweet, iron scent of blood blistering my nostrils even before I have a visual of the interior of the vehicle. That comes next with the gruesome view of Newman alone inside the van, sitting in the driver’s seat, face down on the steering wheel, with the side and part of the back of his head missing. I don’t bother to check for a pulse. No one has the Grand Canyon carved in their head and survives.

Blood and gore didn’t bother my former captain, and father, but then, I’m just not the man he was, in all kinds of ways, and that’s okay with me. A wave of nausea threatens to take hold, but I welcome the reminder that I’m alive, that I’m human, that I’m not immune to human suffering. That’s what it takes for me to push past the gore, that’s my light switch, my trigger. Or he is. Even from the grave, my father defines all I do not want to become. I begin to map the location of blood and tissue, but I home in on his right arm, hand palm up, and draped over the console toward the passenger seat. His fingers are relaxed, and the weapon is lying on the seat.

The weapon is a Smith and Wesson snub-nosed, single-action revolver, a common self-defense choice that packs a massive bullet, meant to get the job done. It also has a rough recoil that supports why his hand would be on the seat right now. The problem is that A) The Poet wouldn’t kill himself. That’s not his way. He’s precise. Clean. He killed his victims with poison and then shoved a poem into their mouths. Even the U he carved in the chests of his earlier victims was delicate and precise. And B) Newman doesn’t own a gun. Or he didn’t. Not according to our files.