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“We’re fine,” Blackout shouted back. “We’re all fine.”
The jogger’s expression showed confusion, then, as the baby’s cries filled the air, the old man put it all together. And he held up his phone.
He shot pictures, then turned and ran surprisingly fast back down the hill, with his phone clapped to his ear.He was calling 911. Had to be. He had pictures on his phone. Of him. Of his car. Maybe he’d gotten an angle on his plates and the contents of the trunk.
The baby was shrieking.
There was no time for rage. Blackout covered the baby’s mouth and nose with his large gloved hand until moments later the baby had stopped breathing. Then he dragged blankets over the two dead bodies. Slamming the trunk lid closed,he surveyed the field with a chopper gunner’s eyes, tipping the street toward him and dividing it into a grid.
The jogger was sixty feet away and gaining downhill speed. Farther down the block, near the Victorian row houses, an impatient woman yanked on the leash of a small, prancy dog before disappearing through a doorway.
And now, the sun was burning off the cloud cover and pinking up the sky. Blackout slid into the driver’s seat and backed his old Ford into a K-turn. Straightening out, he touched his foot to the gas. He trailed behind the old man for a moment before darting around him, braking suddenly, blocking him in. The old man faltered, dodged, then made for the space between two parked cars.
Blackout reached for the weapon lying on the passenger seat. A stun cane. He grasped it, exited his vehicle, and using the stick as a bat, he swung and connected with the back of the old man’s head. The jogger fell against a parked van then slumped to the street. He cried out weakly, but the sound didn’t carry.
The phone had jumped from the jogger’s hand, skidded a few yards downhill. Blackout walked over and crushed it with his heel, then uncapped the stun cane.
The jogger was weeping, helpless. He couldn’t stand.
Blackout looked down at him and carefully placed the business end of the stun cane against the jogger’s throat.
He spoke in a soothing voice, “What’s your name?”
The old man pushed futilely at the stick. His face was red. Tears spilled down his cheeks.
“Don’t,” he said. “I didn’t see anything.”
“I said, ‘What is your name’?”
He wheezed, “Jay. Cob.”
“Jacob. Got it. You took pictures, buddy. Big mistake. Hang on for the thrill of your life.”
Blackout pulled the stun cane’s trigger, sending a million volts into the old man’s body, enough to light up the entire block. He knew that the human body could only absorb one percent of a charge that strong, but that plus the current knocked the old man out and with luck, stopped his heart.
But no. The old man blinked his eyes. His mouth moved.
The sky was brightening and Blackout had no more time for this. Back in his car, he pulled the classic Ruger Mark IV, complete with suppressor, from his glove box. He walked back to the old man and aimed the gun point-blank at his forehead and fired it. Then put two more in his chest.
With his back to the many-windowed houses on Taylor’s west side, Blackout picked the SIM card out of the litter of Jacob’s broken phone. He tossed the stun cane back into his car and took the driver’s seat, returning the gun to the glove box. The engine was still running and now Blackout allowed elation, that precious, elusive feeling, to fill him up. He heard in his deep and heaving breaths, the soundtrack of his life.
He made a mental note to freeze frame on the bullet hole in Jacob’s forehead. Fade to black.
And then he headed the car downhill.
Blackout still had a lot of work to do, of the most important kind.
THREE
AS HE DROVE at the residential speed limit of twenty miles an hour, Blackout’s immediate plan had been to get off Taylor as fast as he reasonably could. He had taken the first right at Green, then turned up onto Leavenworth, passing the house where Catherine and Josie Fleet had lived.
A man he recognized as Catherine’s husband, Brad Fleet, had been coming down the front steps. He’d looked both ways and, not seeing his wife and daughter, had no doubt assumed that Catherine and Josie were still in the park.Poor bastard.
As police cars, sirens screaming, could be heard on the street below, Blackout proceeded to the location for his most important scene.
Now, hours later, safe at home, he thought how long that drive had seemed with the woman and baby tucked away inside the trunk. And he’d had a few thoughts about the senior citizen who’d seen too much, lying dead on Taylor between two parked vehicles.
He’d charged up his video glasses in the car as he drove andlater, filmed the perfect ceremony for his victims—without interference. He’d felt peaceful. Reverent.
