and looks at the uniformed officer, his eyes impossibly large. The man’s vacant stare seems transfixed on me; I don’t think he’s blinked once. “They want the little shiiiit in the bowels of hell, you seeeeee. I’ve been sent by the legion to bring—”
“Show your other hand,” Mitchell says, stepping toward the man, his gun angled to the side. “Show me your muther fuckin’ hand. Do it now!”
“Mommy,” the boy utters softly. Then screams, “Mommy!”
“This one?” the man says, bringing his arm out from behind the boy’s back, a large kitchen knife white-knuckled in his grip. He places the cutting side against the child’s thin neck, casually, as if he were going to cut a melon for lunch.
“Jimmeeee!” the blind mother screams desperately from outside.
“Mommeee!” the piercing return.
“Drop the blade!” I command, my voice vibrating. His unblinking, lifeless eyes look at me as if I’m the only one in the room. Almost imperceptibly, his mouth begins to smile—knowingly? What… What does he know? What the hell does he know?
Then, like a gut punch, it hits me. There is no way out of this. He’s in charge and there is no way in hell he’s giving up. It amuses him that we’re all locked into this moment… a moment that will be forever in our minds. He wants us to shoot him. His eyes smile into mine, communicating. To me. Not to us. Me. He wants me to shoot him.
Oh please, please, this can’t be happening again. This can’t be happening again. Thiscannotbehappeningagain.
“Drop the blade, asshole!” my voice is high-pitched, like a girl’s. “Drop the blade!” Then I hear myself begging. “Don’t make me do this again. Please, please drop the blade.” I don’t want to be here. Idon’twanttobehere.
“I’m going to cut the little shit on onnnnnne,” the voice oozes as slowly as tree sap, his fish eyes locked on mine. “Tennnnnn, ninnnnnne, eeeeeeight…”
Mitchell’s gun and mine point at the man’s face. There is just enough clearance above the boy’s head for a shot. A dangerous one but it’s all we—
Tommy brushes past me toward the bed, holding up his empty palms as he did with the street boxer yesterday.
“Tommy, no!” I urge hoarsely. “He can’t be talked out of—”
“Let me help you, sir,” my partner says, as if talking to a confused elderly person who has walked away from his care facility. “First give me the knife.”
The man’s eyes are empty, like a dumb animal’s. “… sevvvvvven, siiiiiiix…”
Tommy stops three feet in front of the man’s knees. “Just give me the knife.”
I sidestep to see around him. “Tommy, back away. Damn-it, Tommy…”
The naked man turns his head slowly, mechanically like a robot. His eyes widen and he grins ugly. “Heeeere’s my knife, Tommy boyeeeeee.” His knife hand quick-flicks out and back, a soundless streak of silver.
Tommy yelps, jerking his hand upward past his head, a fan of red droplets in its wake.
What the hell?
He spins toward me, his hand in front of his face, his eyes staring in disbelief at three cleanly severed fingers dangling by thin flaps of skin. Blood arcs from the raw meat.
The smiling man returns the knife to the boy’s small neck and then rotates his head toward me, staccato like, until his eyes meet mine. Jimmy has moved to the side just enough that I can see the man’s—shit!—erect penis.
I aim at the freak’s nose, just as I did at the tweaker two months earlier. Got to stop his brain so he doesn’t cut as he dies.
The man’s mouth turns up into a malevolent smile. He resumes counting, but faster. “Fivefourthreetwo—” The blade begins to slice.
Mitchell’s gun explodes.
I’m squeezing my trigger—
Movement off to my side. Tommy’s hand. Waving in the air. Something splatters across my nose and mouth. Wet.
I fire.
I’m seeing everything in ultra detail, in living color, in high definition, in 3-D. The man remains upright, his smiling face now blood-spotted. Red oozes from a hole in his shoulder. The butcher knife has stopped cutting but remains against the boy’s neck. I fire at the man’s left eyeball but I can’t hear my shots. I hear Mitchell’s but not mine. He fires three rounds in succession. Or am I firing?
Holes appear in the man’s face: one over his left eyebrow, one in the center of his forehead, one at the corner of his mouth.
The knife drops to the rug and, clutching the boy tightly against his chest, the man falls back onto the bed, his dick still hard. I want to shoot it. Shoot it off. Empty all my remaining rounds into his crotch.
“Cease fire, Mitch! Cease fire!” My voice, I think.
From cacophony, to a vacuum of silence. The silence is worse.
Acrid smell of gun smoke. Eyes watering.
Mitchell and I shuffle-step toward the edge of the bed, our guns thrust forward. My face is on fire and it’s hard to breathe.
Blood rivers from the man’s neck, down onto the boy’s face still nestled under the unshaven chin, and down onto the lad’s small chest. More blood pours from holes in the man’s forehead and left eye.
Those must be my rounds.
From behind me, Tommy’s pained voice: “Damndamndamndamn!” From in front, the boy whimpers.
“Come on, son,” I say softly, prying the dead arms away from him. “It’s over. You’re safe now.” I quick-glance at Tommy; he’s leaning against the door frame looking at his hand. “Tell radio to get us an ambulance for the boy. Neck cut. And one for yourself. Ask for a shooting team. Tell them the suspect’s fatal.”
I glance at Tommy’s severed fingers; I can taste his blood and feel it on my face.
“The boy okay?” Mitchell asks, his voice suspicious, desperate. I lift the boy into my arms. “That blood on him… it’s the perp’s, right?”
“Yes,” I snap. “Of course it’s the perp’s.” I pull my head back so I can see the boy clearly. “He’s just in shock. The cut looks superficial…”
A cold chill shivers my body.
“What?” Mitchell asks, stepping toward me. “Oh… my… God!”
Blood trickles from a hole a couple inches below the hollow of the boy’s neck. It mingles with the other blood that was streaming down onto him seconds ago.
“Ohshitohshitohshit!” My voice sounding like there’s a pillow over my face. My legs begin to buckle, but I fight it and move toward the door, still cradling the boy
