James Andrus: The Perfect Prey

Larry Kinard didn’t bother to look behind him. This cop had proved how sharp he was, and he appeared to be in pretty good shape. He ran as hard as he could, leaping over the low wall and hedge that led to the back of the strip mall on Cleveland Street. He glanced both ways down the parking lot and didn’t see anyone. He turned left and broke into an all-out sprint, but as he approached the next block he could hear a distant siren and wondered if Stallings had been able to call in other cops so quickly. He skidded to a stop, scanned the area, and decided a tall industrial Dumpster might be his best bet.

He opened the plastic lid, then hesitated. The smell of filth and thought of bacteria kept him in place for a moment. He wasn’t sure he could do it until he heard the siren clearly coming closer. He scaled the Dumpster easily, tumbling onto plastic bags of garbage and soggy cardboard boxes. He worked his way into the bags and boxes, covering himself as he settled lower in the Dumpster. A shiver ran through him at the thought of this much contact with other people’s discarded waste. The odors that attacked him were monstrous. Old coffee grounds, ashtrays, half-eaten sandwiches, and really disgusting stuff tumbled down on top of him. Something alive squirmed past his foot as a cockroach ran up the sleeve of his T-shirt. But now the lid was closed and he slammed his eyes shut in the dark, smelly Dumpster.

Patty Levine had glanced in the kitchen and knew there was a bloody body on the floor. She also knew she was a lot less intimidating to the scared little boy trembling in the family room than Stallings had been. She had quietly set him up on the couch and sat next to him, trying to coax a name from him.

She had already raised dispatch on her phone, saying she needed immediate help at this address and they had a suspect with a weapon. That would get every cop in the district rolling to her in a few minutes.

The fact that Stallings had raced off after Kinard had not thrown her at all. She knew they couldn’t leave the young boy in the house with the body and she was better suited to keeping him calm. But there was still part of her that wished she could be looking for the killer as well. That’s where duty and responsibility took over from adrenaline and desire. She’d break free as soon as she could and help her partner search for Larry Kinard.

Stallings had left the yard and run behind the other houses to the end of the street, but he saw no sign of Larry Kinard. The adrenaline dump and discharging of his weapon had sapped him of energy, so he took a second to breathe and slow his heart rate. The pistol felt like it weighed twenty pounds in his hand. He started to jog behind the houses in the other direction, passing the house Kinard had run from and then clumsily sliding over a low wall and hedge into the rear nasty parking lot of the strip mall.

Again he checked each direction. He saw no sign of the fleeing killer, but he did hear the approaching sirens of help. He made sure his badge was clearly visible on his belt and pulled out his wallet ID as well. He didn’t want some excitable rookie shooting him by mistake.

There was no one in the lot, and the only movement he could see was a garbage truck on the next block, the same one that had nearly drowned out the screams that led him to the house in the first place.

The cruiser raced past the lot and screeched to a stop, and roared in reverse until he was level with the lot again. A round-faced young man shouted out an open window at Stallings. “Where do you need me?”

“Set up a perimeter of a few blocks in each direction and maybe we’ll bottle this guy up. He’s a white male, about thirty, with dark hair and a blue T-shirt. He left a homicide scene two houses away. Be careful.”

The young man nodded, jumping on his radio as he sped away in the new cruiser.

Stallings still wanted to be the one who caught this guy.

Larry Kinard heard a car’s engine and some shouting, but no one checked the Dumpster. He settled even lower and could see a beam of light from the rusted-out lower corner of the square garbage container. He even adapted to some of the smells, but the thought of bacteria kept him near panic. Now he needed a weapon. He wished he hadn’t dropped the knife, but he could tell by the look in the cop’s eyes he would’ve been shot if he didn’t.

He felt around with his free right hand, gripping the rubber handle of a broken golf club. It rose about two feet to a sharp metal end. All it was good for was jabbing, but that might be all he needed if someone checked the Dumpster. Just enough of a diversion so he could run away. That was his only goal now. It still hadn’t sunk in he’d killed his sister and left his nephew with no one in the whole world but his unstable grandmother. There was no way he could take the boy with him, not at the speed he had to travel. He saw himself in Seattle, where the street population was welcomed and no one asked many questions. After a few months under the radar he could find another identity and set up shop somewhere else. There were always spring break vacationers. And predators like him always found a place to hunt.

Stallings held his position as more cruisers sped past, following the instructions of the first officer on the scene. As soon as someone pulled into the parking lot, Stallings would team up with a uniform and monitor a radio. He checked in with Patty to make sure she was all right. She said the boy was not responsive and she expected the paramedics at any moment.

Stallings saw the garbage truck cross the street into the lot and walked toward it, his badge in his hand, ready to direct the man out of the area. But the driver was intent on his job and lined up the battered steel arms of his giant truck with the sides of the Dumpster. He moved in quickly without hesitation, sliding the arms into the sturdy metal sleeves quickly and pulling the Dumpster into the air smoothly and steadily. The swinging Dumpster and moving arms made an outrageous racket, and the driver couldn’t hear Stallings shouting to him.

He watched as the arms twisted and the Dumpster flipped upside down. The load of garbage tumbled out into the rear of the truck and Stallings clearly saw Larry Kinard’s arms flail as he fell in the back of the full dump truck.

Stallings picked up his pace toward the truck, his gun in his hand. He thought about calling in the patrol cars for backup. He froze as he heard the truck’s compactor engage. His first instinct was to race to the driver and have him shut off the compactor. But then he thought about the collage of victims. Of Allie Marsh’s bright face and her mother’s anguish. He even thought of the silent little boy and the dead woman in the house a few hundred feet away. He considered the endless legal proceedings and media coverage. He made a conscious decision to wait while the compactor finished its job.

The crushing and snapping sounds made him flinch as he wondered if any of the noises could be Larry Kinard’s bones. He thought, for just a moment, he heard a muffled scream from inside the solid metal truck.

The giant arms slapped the empty Dumpster back into the same spot on the scarred asphalt while the compactor retracted. Now the driver looked over and saw Stallings. He raised his hand with his badge, and the driver waved, pushing the truck into neutral and then swinging down out of the high cab.

The middle-aged black man smiled as he wiped his brow with a dirty bandana. “What’s up?” he shouted from the perpetual noise of his truck in his ears.

“We might have a problem,” was all Stallings said.

Patty Levine stood in the skanky parking lot behind the strip mall where Stallings had seen their suspect, Larry Kinard, get dumped into the back of a garbage truck. That had been over an hour before. Fire Rescue and Crime Scene had been searching the compactor trash for more than forty minutes now.