“Wait for backup. This guy's flipped out, and he's extremely dangerous. Hold on until we get there.”
“We were just about to call for backup, Jim.”
“You've got it. I'll radio the nearest cruiser to join you, and we're on our way. And remember, you don't need a warrant if you at all suspect his children to be in danger from him… if you know what I mean.”
“His angels, he called them,” Jessica replied, realizing only now what a target this made of the two children, and possibly of their mother, Locke's wife, if the three had returned to the house from wherever it was that they had gone.
“We've got to get in there, Jess. If the children have been poisoned, and if we're not too late, perhaps we can do for them what Sturtevante was unable to do for Tamburino- get them to a poison center for treatment.”
“Agreed.”
“We can't sit idly waiting for backup knowing what we know.”
Jessica agreed, lifting her. 38 automatic from her ankle holster below her slacks. Kim, too, found her weapon. They advanced on the house quickly but cautiously, and as they did so, the dim lighting became dimmer and dimmer until only a great darkness awaited them inside.
When they got to the front porch, Jessica put a hand on Kim's shoulder. “I'm going to need you to direct traffic when backup arrives. We have to get medics in here, immediately, so hold this position.”
“Oh no you don't. If you go in, it isn't alone.”
Jessica tried reasoning with her friend, but Kim remained adamant. As they argued, the lights inside flickered and died again, leaving the place as black and still as a mausoleum.
“It's so quiet here my ears are ringing,” Jessica commented. “Far too quiet.”
“Where's the requisite music, the obligatory candlelight? His vat of selenium? All of the rest?”
“I think he's spotted us out here.”
“What's he going to do? Kill us with a pen?”
Jessica's joke notwithstanding, they approached with extreme caution, guns held at the ready. The door was not locked, and within they now heard the faint sound of music coming from somewhere upstairs. Faint sounds other than music could also be heard-rustling, the pitter-patter of someone in slippers moving casually about, ghostlike sounds that mixed with the shadows and played pranks on the ear, making Jessica wheel and bring up her gun only to realize that what she heard was only the faint meowing of a cat.
In the living room, she saw the piano and the pictures of Locke and his adopted children, cute urchins at play, she could see, even in the darkened room, one as adorable as the other. Jessica and Kim could also see a pair of large adult eyes, the penetrating eyes of Evey, Locke's wife, but this image staring back at them, Jessica suddenly realized, was propped up in a chair, and it was no photograph.
The corpse of Evey Locke sat upright in the chair across the room. From her pose, she seemed to have been tied there, but closer inspection revealed that this was not so. She was dead, but she was sitting up. From the impressions on the deep-piled rug, picked up by a flashlight Kim had grabbed from the glove compartment of the car, it appeared that she had crawled to this, her last resting place in this life. No blood trail, only a dead body, naked and stiff. Jessica stood over Mrs. Locke now, and placing a hand on her cold form, pronounced her dead.
Kim, standing next to Jessica, flashed the light on the woman's back and said, “Look at this. More proof that we're right about Locke.”
Jessica looked, and seeing the familiar cuts, nodded. “He did her, all right.”
“The children've got to be upstairs.”
Jessica turned and headed for the stairwell, Kim directly behind her. Fearing the worst, they made their way up the stairs, cautious and not very hopeful about the children.
The master bedroom was empty, so they made their way down the hall toward the children's rooms. Passing a large guest room, again they saw nothing. The first child's room was empty of all but stuffed animals. In the second child's room, they located the children, huddled together, their backs covered with the words of the Poet Killer.
Apparently, after both children died, killed by the powerful poison selenium, their mother had somehow found the strength to get downstairs. The impression on the bed where she had been lying clearly indicated this to be the case.
But where was Papa Locke? The mastermind of this mayhem?
As if in answer to their thoughts, a creaking, groaning sound, followed by a thwacking sound rose up from downstairs. Jessica and Kim rushed out of the chamber of death that the children's room had become, hearing police sirens and the squeal of tires outside. They moved toward the apparent source of the strange noises that welled up from somewhere in the bowels of the large house.
The sound of spurting, gurgling water led them to the kitchen. There they located a door that led to the basement, and the moment they opened this door, they knew they'd found the source of the gurgling. It was a busted pipe Going cautiously down the steps, their guns extended along with the flashlight, they were stopped when the light hit the prone figure of a man with a noose around his neck. It was Locke, small and misshapen, lying below the busted pipe, which spewed water over him. His pitiful suicide attempt had apparendy failed not once but twice. His back was etched with a poem, and his throat was raw and swollen from his attempted hanging, but he was still alive. Somehow the selenium had not killed him and the pipe he hanged himself from had torn loose, sending him falling to the concrete floor and saving his miserable life.
“Kill me… kill me,” he pleaded, lying over a gutter and holding his hands over his eyes.
“We'll let the state decide whether or not you live, Locke. Not our job,” replied Jessica.
“Put me out of my misery. Send me over.”
Sturtevante and Parry rushed into the now cramped basement, bringing with them a floodlight. The light made the little man on the floor look all the more disgusting and ugly and pitiable.
“The children?” asked Parry.
“Dead, along with their mother.”
“Angels one and all,” muttered Locke.
At that moment. Parry lost control, kicking out at the lump of tortured flesh on the cold floor, sending him reeling over. “You lousy sonovabitchingmotherfucking child killer!” Again Parry kicked him, this time in the teeth. Jessica and Sturtevante pulled and shoved Parry into a corner, shouting for him to cool down, when suddenly an explosion filled the small room, and they all saw Kim Desinor standing over Lucian Locke, a bullet hole through his head and a shocked look in his eyes. “He… he grabbed out at my gun!” Kim shouted. “He took hold of the barrel. I didn't mean for it to go off, but it did. It all happened in the blink of an eye. It was an accident.”
“Good riddance,” Parry said in a raspy whisper, patting Kim on the back, as if to congratulate her. “Imagine what the literati of this country would turn him into if he lived to a ripe old age in prison, writing poems from his cell, given his own Web site like Charlie Manson. He'd probably become the most celebrated poet of his generation.” Parry then turned and rushed up the noisy, wooden stairwell to the kitchen, where backup cops had turned on lights.
Kim kept repeating, “It was an accident. The gun went off when he grabbed the barrel. He yanked at it with my linger on the trigger. I was distracted by you guys and Parry, all the fighting, and then the explosion.”
“We believe you,” said Sturtevante. “No one will dispute your need to kill that piece of shit.”
Jessica put her arm around Kim, telling her that it would be all right. “It will be investigated and there will be no charges of wrongful death. You did what you had to do.”
“It wasn't like that, Jess. Truly, he grabbed the gun and pulled it straight at himself, but I had a strong grip on it, and it went off, all quite unintentionally.”
“Perhaps not on your part, but what about his? He asked us to put him down, and when we didn't respond in the manner he wanted, he created the circumstance in which you had to end his life. Simple as that.”
“It's such a horror for me, taking a life. I feel less of a human being for it.”
“He left you with no choice; he wanted you to act instinctively, intuitively, and you did. You did for him what the rope over the pipe couldn't do… and I'm getting wetter'n than the proverbial drenched rat in here, so let's vacate this place for now. Come on upstairs with me into the light-
Kim nodded weakly and allowed Jessica to lead her away from the body and this place. “And for the sake of protocol,” Jessica added as they turned to go, “since I was on hand when the perpetrator of this bloodless slaughter was shot to death, I'd best call Shockley and his ETs in to collect evidence and to deal with the bodies.” Jessica led her friend and colleague out of the death grid, neatly defined here in the basement to await Shockley. “It's always
