A Killer Like Me (40 page)

A hand grabbed Murphy’s hair and jerked his head a few inches off the floor. His senses were coming back. He tried to push himself up to his knees. Then he felt something rigid graze his forehead and scrape past his nose, lips, and chin. It tugged at his neck. There was a zipping sound. Then his throat cinched shut. He gasped for air but none reached his lungs. He knew he was being strangled with a cable tie.

Panic.

Murphy’s body responded with a surge of adrenaline. He lurched to his feet and turned toward his attacker. Standing five feet away was Richard Lee Jeffries, the Lamb of God Killer. Murphy recognized the scar above his right eye. The same scar the Lucky Dog man had described. There were fresh scratches on Jeffries’s face and a bandage covering his left cheek.

He held a stun gun in his right hand.

Murphy’s eyes darted around the room. The .38 lay on the floor several feet away.

Jeffries triggered the stun gun, sending sparks arching between the two prongs.

My Glock!

Murphy clawed at his raincoat with both hands.

Jeffries lunged at him. He jammed the stun gun into Murphy’s chest and pushed the trigger. The electric blast knocked Murphy onto his back. Jeffries dove on top of him and snatched Murphy’s Glock from its holster. He flung the pistol into the hallway. Then he rolled away and scrambled to his feet. From a safe distance, Jeffries stared down at Murphy as he choked to death.

The killer’s expression was like that of a porno actor having an orgasm.

Somewhere in the background, above the roaring wind, Murphy heard Kiesha Guidry’s voice. This time there were no words. Just shrieks of terror.

Murphy’s heels thrashed at the floor. His right hand pulled at his empty holster. Then his fingers brushed against the top of his folding knife, clipped to the inside of his pants pocket. His vision was fading.

Murphy yanked the knife from his pocket and flicked it open. He jammed the three-inch titanium blade under the cable tie. The tip sliced through his skin as it dug under the hard plastic strap. Blood spilled down the handle.

Jeffries ran at him, but Murphy drove the killer back with a hard stomp to his shin. Twisting the knife outward, Murphy tried to saw through the strap, but his grip slipped on the bloody handle. Jeffries triggered the stun gun and jabbed at one of Murphy’s flailing legs, but Murphy managed to kick the killer’s hand away. Then Murphy hooked his other foot around Jeffries’s ankle and swept his leg out from under him, spilling the killer to the floor.

For Murphy, the dim light from the overhead bulb was fading fast.

I’m going to die.

He gripped the blood-slick handle with both hands and twisted it out and down. The blade sliced the cable tie in two. Murphy sucked in a deep lungful of air.

Kiesha Guidry was still screaming.

On his knees, with one hand braced on the floor, Jeffries stabbed at Murphy with the stun gun. When Murphy kicked at the killer’s hand, the twin prongs brushed his right leg. The brief contact sent a convulsive shock wave through his body.

Jeffries dove for the .38, but Murphy, still on his back like an overturned turtle, managed to boot the gun toward the door.

As the killer crawled after the revolver, Murphy stood up. Only eight feet of space separated him from Jeffries. But Jeffries was only two feet from the gun. Like all revolvers, the .38 had no safety. It was a point-and-shoot weapon. Inside the small room, Jeffries didn’t have to be much of a shot to bury the five hollow-point bullets inside Murphy. He would be dead as soon as he hit the floor.

Murphy turned toward the French doors. He wrapped his arms around his head and dove through the painted glass.

He landed on the awning that overhung the sidewalk. The surface was covered with tar shingles, but the downward slope and the rain had made it too slick to stop his headlong sliding roll toward the street.

Behind him he heard two gunshots.

As Murphy’s momentum carried him headfirst over the edge, he clawed at the fascia board. For an instant, his fingers snagged a piece of molding and held it just long enough so that his legs passed him. He somersaulted in midair and landed on his feet, with a slightly rearward angle that dropped him on his back a half second later.

His right knee popped and his breath exploded from his lungs.

Yet even while fighting for his next breath, Murphy realized he had to get out of sight. Like a wounded animal, he dragged himself over the curb and under the cover of the overhang just as three more shots rang out. The bullets tore through the wooden awning and ricocheted off the asphalt a couple of feet beyond the curb.

Then Murphy heard the repeated click of the revolver’s hammer falling on empty chambers. The .38 was out of bullets, but his Glock was still upstairs in the hallway where Jeffries had thrown it. Kiesha Guidry was still up there too.

Murphy grabbed the nearest post and pulled himself to his feet. His knee held his weight but barely, and it hurt like hell.

Somewhere in the trunk of his car, Murphy knew he had a collapsible police baton. It was the only weapon he had left. A steel club wasn’t much use against a .40-caliber Glock with twelve rounds in the magazine, but one way or the other, this was going to end tonight.

Lord, grant me the strength to beat that son of a bitch to death.

Monday, August 6, 8:21
PM

The flatfoot has escaped.

In frustration, the killer stands amid the shattered French doors and fires the .38 revolver down through the wooden awning, at where he estimates the edge of the road lies. The gun bucks in his hand three times before the hammer falls on an empty chamber. He pulls the trigger several more times.

Then he remembers the other gun. The one he tossed into the hallway. He turns and runs across the room. The girl screams again. In a moment she won’t have a head to scream with. The thought makes him smile.

He finds the pistol in the hall. A big automatic. The sheer size of it scares him. He steps back into the room, the big gun clutched in his right hand. The mayor’s daughter stops screaming. He holds the pistol up to the light, looking for a safety, but he can’t find one. How does this thing shoot? He points it at the floor and squeezes the trigger.

Bam!

Evidently, there is no safety.

The killer tucks the gun into the front of his pants. He stoops and picks up his Khyber knife from the floor beneath the tripod. Then he walks toward the girl. She screams and yanks at her bonds. Halfway to her, the killer stops and turns around. He looks at the red LED light on top of the camera. He hopes his face is not within the camera’s viewfinder. He has forgotten his mask. He retreats across the room to retrieve it.

What will Murphy do now? the killer wonders as he pulls the black ski mask over his head. Will he give up? No, he will try again.

Murphy is like me. That means I have to find him first.

In a burst of anger, the killer stabs the Khyber knife into the wall behind the tripod, burying the blade halfway to the hilt in the soft Sheetrock.

Murphy pulled his keys from his pocket and opened the trunk of his Taurus. As soon as the trunk light flashed on, he smashed it with the bottom of his fist. He didn’t want to be silhouetted against his car.

It was raining so hard he could barely see. He ducked his head inside the trunk to try to get out of the worst of the weather, but the wind was pushing the rain almost horizontally and threatening to tear away the trunk lid. Murphy had to paw blindly for his baton. He knew it was there somewhere.

His hand fell on the chopped-down butt of a shotgun, the one he had taken from Jonathan Deshotels in what seemed like another lifetime.

Murphy didn’t hear the shot over the screaming wind, but he heard the bullet strike the underside of the trunk. It punched a hole through the metal six inches from his face. He turned and saw Jeffries striding toward him, a dark mask covering his face. The killer was forty feet away, with his arms thrust out in an awkward combat posture and Murphy’s Glock squeezed between his hands.

A flash exploded from the muzzle of the Glock. This time Murphy heard the shot at the same time the bullet thudded into the metal next to his head. He jerked Deshotels’s sawed-off shotgun from the trunk and ripped it from the paper bag. The shotgun was an over-and-under 20-gauge, with the barrels cut down to little more than a foot and the stock chopped into a pistol grip.

Murphy thumbed the release lever and broke open the barrels. They were empty. Where had he put the two shells of buckshot he emptied from the gun at Deshotels’s house?

Another gunshot. Murphy glanced up. Jeffries had stopped advancing. He stood thirty feet away, trying to aim at Murphy. The Glock wavered in his hands.

Murphy remembered where he had put the shotgun shells. They were inside the paper bag. He dropped to his good knee and picked up the bag from where it had fallen beneath the bumper. He shoved his hand inside and grabbed both shells.

Jeffries fired again. The bullet blew out the left taillight of the Taurus. Bits of shattered plastic struck Murphy’s face.

Ignore him. Focus on loading. He’s not going to hit me. Big sky, little bullet. Big sky, little bullet.

It was something he had read that Wyatt Earp used to say to himself when he was in the middle of a gunfight.

Murphy’s fingers felt like fat sausages. He shoved the two shells into the breech and snapped the barrels shut. He raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The blast knocked Jeffries off his feet.

Murphy waited and watched, covering Jeffries with the shotgun. He had one more barrelful of buckshot.

For several seconds Jeffries lay on his back, not moving.

Murphy pulled himself to his feet.

Jeffries rolled onto his side and fired, snapping off several shots. The .40-caliber rounds clanged against the car’s metal body.

Murphy ducked around the Taurus to get away from the hail of bullets. He scrambled along the driver’s side toward the front bumper but slipped on the wet pavement and fell. A bullet struck the back left tire and blew the air out with a giant hiss.

Murphy tumbled around the front end of the Taurus. The shooting stopped. He lay on his stomach and looked under the car. He saw the bottom of Jeffries’s legs limping toward the house, already too far away for Murphy to risk his last shot.

He realized he had probably only hit Jeffries with a few pellets. To kill him with this cut-down, underpowered 20-gauge, Murphy knew he needed to get within a dozen feet and hit Jeffries dead center.

The driving rain dug into Murphy’s face and cut visibility to almost nothing. He rose to one knee and peeked around the Taurus. The big house, no more than thirty yards away, was barely visible, just a hulking gray shadow against the black sky, a shadow that had already swallowed Jeffries.

The killer hobbles through the back door and slams it shut. The wood around the lock is splintered, and the lock itself is useless. He puts his back against the door and slides to the floor. He screams in pain.

There are three holes in his right pant leg, each more than a quarter-inch in diameter. Blood pours through them. He pulls off his ski mask and examines the holes. He can see that the flesh beneath the torn fabric is mangled. How could he have missed Murphy?

He had fired at least ten shots at the flatfoot. Maybe some of them found their mark while Murphy was crawling around his car like a whipped dog. The killer examines the big pistol in his hand. How many shots are left? He doesn’t know how to check.

He reaches for the doorknob and pulls himself to his feet. As he puts weight on his injured leg he screams again.

Oh, God, it hurts.

Struggling up the stairs, the killer realizes that Murphy called him by his name. Somehow the Philistine figured out the killer’s identity and knows he is the Lamb of God. Yet Murphy came alone.

He’s not here to arrest me. He’s here to kill me.

The killer limps into the room. The mayor’s daughter is where he left her, duct-taped to the chair. Her face is red and swollen from crying and stretched wide with terror. Her nose and lips are crusted over. She looks nothing like the beautiful ebony princess who was honored at the awards ceremony two nights ago.

Her fear strengthens him. He shoves the pistol into his pants.

Wind and rain whip through the busted glass of the French doors as the killer pulls the Khyber knife free from the wall. He hefts the heavy weapon in his hand. It feels good.

He pulls a folded yellow sheet of legal paper from the back pocket of his pants. As he unfolds the wet page, he is glad to see the words are still legible. He has hand-printed four lines of text. The girl will read the lines into the camera. Then he will strike off her head and hold it up for all the world to see. Including her father.

The killer touches his face. His mask is downstairs. No matter. He can edit himself out of the video later. What is important now is that he finish his work. Then he will find Murphy and kill him.

He checks the camera. It is already recording. He remembers pushing the red record button just before he heard the noise downstairs. His struggle with Murphy has been recorded.

God is on my side. I shall not fail.

Murphy pushed open the broken door and slipped into the foyer, the shotgun gripped in both hands. He did not waste time searching downstairs. Jeffries was upstairs. He was sure of it. At the bottom of the stairs, Murphy reached down to unlace and remove his shoes.

He didn’t charge up the stairs this time, not with a busted knee. But he moved steadily, turning as he climbed, keeping the shotgun aimed at the upper railing. He had lost his flashlight, but his eyes were adjusted to the darkness.

The top of the stairwell was empty, but the dark tunnel of the hallway loomed straight ahead. Murphy limped toward the opening. He peeked around the corner with the shotgun ready, his finger on the trigger. The hallway was empty. The first door on the right was still open. Inside, the light was on. He stepped into the center of the hallway.