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.
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.