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I had the same hollow feeling I got whenever entering a blood-spattered crime scene. Dread. I braced, feeling faint at the thought of watching another murder through Blackout’s eyes.
CHAPTER 45
BLACKOUT’S UNTRACEABLE EMAIL came with the “Are you ready?” subject line and a video attachment. I pressed Play and without preamble, my partners and I were peering through a windshield into a dark and hazy night. The car’s parking lights lit up the broken yellow line in the center of what appeared to be a secondary road. Raindrops fell intermittently on the glass and the wipers came on. Blackout saw no streetlights or road signs or traffic so neither did we.
Blackout glanced at his dashboard. We saw mileage, speed, and the time: 63,072 miles, fifty mph, 9:32, and the gas tank was half full. Was he in California? None of us could tell.
Blackout’s eerie electronic voice came over the speaker. He said, “I don’t understand what happened.”
Our view changed as a flashlight switched on inside the car and Blackout rotated his head to look at the passenger sitting beside him. I started making screenshots of the video, capturing the image of the passenger. He was white, looked to be in his mid-twenties, with dark, medium-length hair. It washard to judge his height and build, but I guessed him to be an average six-footer, 180 or so. He wore a dark sweatshirt with a hood down on his shoulders.
“He looks pissed,” said Cappy.
Blackout’s eyes swung back to the road. His gloved hands were in the “9 and 3” position on the wheel.
We watched raindrops and a broken yellow line as the passenger spoke, his voice also digitized.
“I was walking home after work. I hitched a ride from a guy in a pickup truck but when I opened the door, I didn’t like his looks, so I changed my mind and got out.”
“Didn’t like his looks? Were you working?”
“You mean …? No, no … What do you take me for? But he thought so. Actually, I’m in college but I have a part-time job at the diner. I just wanted a ride home, so then, I didn’t. I said ‘Sorry, I need to take a piss.’ I was backing out of the truck …”
“And then?”
“And then that whackoshotme. I don’t think the bullet hit the bone, but it hurts like hell.”
Blackout swung his head and looked at his passenger.
“Did you call the police?”
“No. I just ran. I didn’t want him to shoot me again. Thanks for the lift, man.”
Blackout’s view dropped to where the young man was holding his right arm with his left.
Cappy said, “He’s putting pressure on the wound.”
“There,” Alvarez said. “You can see blood seeping between his fingers.”
Blackout said, “How far to the hospital?”
“Five miles. Something like that. Go straight and I’ll tell you where to turn.”
“I’ve got an ace bandage in the glove box,” Blackout said. “Use your good arm. Be careful.”
The young man said, “Sure.”
He bent to the glove box and by the sound of the latch, he opened it. Alvarez shouted, “Noooo,” as Blackout’s gloved hand lifted off the steering wheel and came back into the frame holding a suppressed Ruger Mark IV.
“Aw, shit,” Brady said from behind me. A soft, muffled pop sounded from the speaker of my boxy old Dell. The passenger turned disbelieving eyes to Blackout. His face stretched in shock before going slack. His eyes closed and he slumped against his window.
“Not your lucky night, buddy,” Blackout said. He fired a second shot into the victim’s head, then, put the gun down on the seat and wrenched the steering wheel hard to the right. He pulled the car onto the disabled vehicle lane and braked. I heard the click of his seat belt separating from the latch, then, Blackout’s arm snaked out across the passenger’s body. He reached over and lifted up on the door handle.
I strained to see anything of our killer. A patch of skin above the cuff of his sleeve, a flash of his face in the rearview mirror, but that didn’t happen.
The vehicle was parked so that the passenger side was lower than the driver’s side. When the door swung open, the dead man rolled against the seat belt’s shoulder strap. Blackout unlatched the strap and started to drive. Momentum caused the body to fall out under its own weight.
Blackout braked the car again. We saw the victim’s clothes,a darkened view of the glove box, Blackout’s gloved hand pulling the passenger door shut. As he accelerated into driving speed, orchestral music came up and raindrops quickened, falling heavily on the windshield.
