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 crushed 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 asshole. 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 while—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 he’d 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 to 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.