Dead Mann Walking

parted. His high-pitched voice, disembodied, floated across the dark into my increasingly pathetic hiding spot.

He was whispering, so softly I barely heard him above the beeping.

“Almost over now, Mr. Mann. Mr. Mann. You want to hear something else funny? Way back when I found you and your wife, I thought you’d be the hardest. But you were the easiest of all of them.”

What was he on about?

He went on. It was an intimate whisper, the voice of a sleepy child lying in bed, talking to a parent. “I watched for months, up in the trees, behind the bushes. I saw how she drove you crazy, how she’d push you right up to the edge. But you wouldn’t jump. You couldn’t. You were a chained dog, a poor chained dog. And she was a sadist with a stick. Do you remember that?”

Bad as my memory was, it wasn’t how I recalled things. Maybe that’s how a fucked-up kid would see it, good guy/bad guy, someone to root for, a villain to hate.

It was obvious he was trying to get to me, keep me distracted. He kept cooing, reciting details, telling me what was in our house, talking about the photos on the fridge, what we’d had for dinner, what dishes were left in the sink.

How long had that son of a bitch been stalking us?

“And the hole in the wall from the bottle you threw the night before.”

That I hadn’t remembered until he reminded me. It was the day Booth denied me that raise, the money Lenore and I’d been banking on. Not getting it meant our debt would keep piling up. It also meant we’d keep holding off on having kids. Forever, as it turned out.

In that sick singsong voice, Turgeon whispered every word of the argument I had with Lenore that night. “You said, ‘Just admit it, you blame me. Just fucking admit you blame me.’ She wouldn’t. She’d say, ‘No, I don’t blame you.’ Then a minute later she’d remind you of something else you’d put on the credit card. ‘I just don’t understand why you had to get that TV set. We can live without TV.’ ”

Every word brought up an ugly picture. Only now it wasn’t just me and Lenore. Turgeon was there, too, outside the window, lurking behind a bush.

As he went on, his tone changed. Something lizard-like grew behind the sweetness. He knew it was working. He knew he was getting to me. Smart. Smart sick fuck. He knew I’d only hear him if I was nearby. He wanted a reaction, any reaction, anything that’d let him gauge where I was.

“I waited and waited and waited. You were a police officer. Your friends were police officers. They wouldn’t believe you did it. They’d help you. But she was so much like my mommy. Mom did the exact same thing to my daddy, drove him away, then drove my stepdaddy away. Your wife had the same hair, the same eyes; sometimes she used the same words, so I had to keep watching. I wanted you to do it. I kept hoping you would. I was rooting for you. Even when I saw her fucking your boss, I didn’t act. I thought maybe it was just a onetime thing. But when it happened again and again, and I realized how much she liked it because she was hurting you . . . well, then I knew I was right. I knew you’d be left all alone . . . like me. I don’t believe in destiny, but it sure was lucky, don’t you think?”

Something skittered in the darkness behind me, breaking the spell. It could have been an echo from the heads, a leaking pipe; it could’ve been nothing, but Turgeon thought it was me. The shadow moved again. He was moving toward it, toward me.

“I took thirty pictures and sent you the best. After I e-mailed it, I had to move fast. I’d timed your commute. Twenty-two minutes, and of course you’d be speeding.”

He was six feet away.

“I came in through the living room window, took your baseball bat from the closet. She was in the kitchen. I was very good. When I hit her the first time, she only just started to be surprised.”

Four feet.

“I hit her on the side of the head, but she fought. Even when she went down, she was still conscious. I had to keep going. I had to make sure she wouldn’t scream.”

Three feet. Judging from the shadow, his head was angled not at me, but at the darkness where the sound came from.

“She scratched and kicked and clawed. She called out for help, but only once.”

Two. He should have seen me by now, but he didn’t see me. I was a thing.

“She didn’t call for you, though. That’s how I knew this was the most right thing I’d done since my own mommy.”

I was a thing, and he wasn’t a shadow anymore. As he came around the corner of the pillar, I saw his lips moving. “ ‘Tom,’ she called out, ‘Tom!’ ”

A wave washed over me; I thought it was nausea, or the electric syrup, but it was rage, stronger than any chak was supposed to feel. Before the sick feeling could kick in, I rushed around the far side of the pillar, thinking I’d be behind him.

He whirled too quickly. All at once there was some distance between us and I was facing the open blades. They snapped closed as I hobbled back, pinching a tiny piece from my neck.

My foot slipped sideways, off the broken ankle. The basement spun. Next thing I knew I was on my back. The capsule flew into the back of my throat and I nearly swallowed it.

Turgeon opened the blades and came forward.

I coughed, trying to hack the vial back into my mouth. The pain in my mouth got into a fight with the pain in my ankle over who’d get me killed first. I put my palms and my good foot to the floor and pulled myself away, moving backward like a big, sickly, hobbled spider.

My right hand hit something heavy, a two-by-four. It was full of nails. I knew because one pierced my palm when I grabbed it. It stung, but that didn’t stop me from swinging. I slammed Turgeon in the calf. He screamed, again looked like he would cry, then stepped back. I swung again, hitting the clippers hard enough to make them clamp shut.

Nail still through my palm, I wedged the wood under my armpit and forced myself to standing. This time I didn’t run; I lurched forward, toward the opening blades. I didn’t give a fuck about my head anymore.

Turgeon shivered with glee at the sight of me. He had the blades open and out, half expecting I’d run straight into them. Instead, I swung the board again, knocking the clippers away. Then I grabbed his shoulder, crushed the vial between my teeth, and sprayed green poison and glass shards right in his face.

His egghead doused in the oily liquid, he pulled away, sputtering, and rushed into the darkness. I could feel a small bit of the viscous stuff clinging to the insides of my cheeks. I shut my mouth, in case he needed another whiff, and, using my two-by-four crutch, hobbled after him.

I heard steps, then silence, then that skittering again. What was he up to? Crap. I glanced back at where the clippers had fallen. They were gone. Dead man or not, he had them again.

How much longer until two minutes were up? Could he still get me? I had to hide and wait him out. I stepped along, no longer sure whether my foot was attached or I was walking on leg bone.

When I passed by one of the plastic sheets, something moved right behind it. Thinking it had to be him, I whirled, pulled the sheet away, and exhaled the last of the poison.

Only it wasn’t Turgeon. It was Misty.

Somehow she’d found me, even down here, even in the dark. She gasped when I surprised her, took a deep breath, then smiled when she realized it was me, not knowing I’d just killed her.

Maybe it was the deep breath she took, but the VX seemed to work on her a lot faster than I thought it could. A few seconds later, her eyelids fluttered.

32

“Misty.”

Her lips parted, but without a word, she fell. Too shocked to catch her, I threw myself onto the cold floor beside her. A long, stringy trail of saliva dripped from the side of her open mouth.

“Misty?”