James Grippando - The Pardon

“You jerk!” the man cried from the floor.

“Sorry,” said Jack, though he was sorry only that the elevator had just left without him. He left the man on the floor and his manners behind as he sprinted toward the stairwell and barged through the emergency door. He leaped down two and three steps at a time, covering five flights in little longer than it would have taken his hundred-and-ninety-pound body to fall down the shaft. He burst through the metal door at the bottom, catching his breath as he scanned the main lobby. The place was bustling, as it always was, but the crowd was scattered enough for him to see that he’d been too slow. The elevator had already emptied, and the man with the clean-shaven head was nowhere to be found. Jack charged out of the courthouse and stood atop the granite steps, searching desperately. The sidewalks were full of rush-hour traffic, but the man had disappeared. Dejected, Jack lumbered down the steps, hailed a cab, and jumped into the backseat.

“Where to?” asked the driver.

Jack started to give his home address, hesitated, then replied, “Four-oh-nine East Adams Street.”

Adams Street was twenty long blocks from the court-house, each block representing a geographic uptick in the crime rate. The sun was setting as the taxi entered Eddy Goss’s old neighborhood, steering past mountains of trash and vandalized buildings. The driver left Jack off at the curb right in front of Goss’s apartment building. Jack passed a twenty through the open car window for a ten dollar fare, and before he could ask for change the driver was gone.

Once inside, Jack retraced his journey of eleven weeks earlier up to the second floor, to a very long, graffiti-splattered hallway with apartments on either side. It was just as dark as the last time; not even the murder of tenant Wilfredo Garcia had prompted the landlord to replace a single burned-out or missing bulb.

Jack walked briskly down the dimly lit hall and came to a halt before number 217, Eddy Goss’s old apartment. Yellow police tape barricaded the doorway, but Jack had no intention of going inside. He stood in front of the door just long enough to book down the hall and determine the apartment from which the neighbor had emerged that night. It was only a second before he was certain: four doors down-apartment 213, the one with a swastika spray-painted on it. He walked the thirty feet, knocked firmly on the door, and waited. There was no reply. He knocked a little harder, and the force of his knock pushed the door halfway open.

“Hello?” he called out. But no one answered. With a gentle push, the door swung all the way open, revealing a dark efficiency that had been completely ravaged. Huge holes dotted the plasterboard walls like mortar fire. Newspapers, bags, empty boxes, and other trash covered a floor of cracked tile and exposed plywood. Broken furniture was piled up in the corner. The room’s only window had been boarded up from the outside. He checked the number on the door to verify he was in the right place. He was, so he stepped inside, sending a squealing rat scurrying to the kitchen. He looked around in confusion and disbelief.

“What the hell you doing here?” demanded a man in the doorway. Jack wheeled around, expecting to see Goss’s neighbor. But it was an old man with yellow-gray hair and a scowl on his pasty white face. He was wearing a T-shirt stained with underarm perspiration, and a toothpick dangled from his mouth.

“The door was open, so I came in. I’m looking, for someone. Tall guy. Shaved head. He was living here on the second of August.”

“The hell he was,” the old man said, the toothpick wagging as he spoke. “I’m the manager of this dump, and there wasn’t nobody livin’ here on no second of August. Ain’t nobody lived in this rat hole goin’ back more than a year.”

“But-he said he had a two-year-old kid.”

“Kids?” the manager scoffed. “Here?” Then his look soured. “I’m puttin’ the padlock back on the door one more time. And if it’s broken off again, I’m gonna remember you, mister. We’ve had two murders in three months in this building-both of them on this floor. So get your butt outta here, or I’m callin’ the cops.”

Jack didn’t argue. He lowered his head and left the way he had come, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door.

It was nearly dark outside when he stepped out of the building, but the streetlights hadn’t yet come on. From the top of the steps he saw someone on the sidewalk across the street, standing in the shadows of what little daylight remained. Jack looked at him carefully, and the man glared back. He felt a chill of recognition: It’s him.

Suddenly the man bolted, running at an easy pace back toward the courthouse. Jack instinctively gave chase, sprinting across the street and down the sidewalk as fast as he could in his business suit and black-soled shoes. The man didn’t seem to be trying to pull away. He was taunting Jack, as if he wanted him to catch up. Jack came within fifteen feet, and then the man pulled away, effortlessly disappearing into the Greyhound parking lot two blocks down the street. Jack tried to follow, stopping and starting again and again, catching a glimpse of him every second or two as he weaved between coaches bound for New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. Revving engines filled the air with window-rattling noise and thick exhaust. Thoroughly winded, Jack stopped between two coaches and looked frantically for his target. He scanned in one direction, then the other. Nothing. The door to the empty bus beside him was open. Cautiously, he stepped inside and peered down the aisle.

“I know you’re in here,” Jack called out, though he was far from certain. There was only silence. He took one step down the dark aisle, then thought better of it. If his man were crouched down between the seats, he had to come out sometime. Jack decided he’d wait for him outside.

He turned to leave, but suddenly the door slammed shut. He wheeled around to see that someone was standing behind him, but a quick blow to his head and then another to the gut doubled him over in pain. Another blow to the back of the head and he was facedown on the floor. His attacker threw himself on top of him from behind and pressed a knife to his throat.

“Don’t even think of moving.”

Jack froze as the blade pinched at his neck.

“I’d really hate to have to slit your throat, Swyteck-after all the trouble I’ve gone to.”

Jack clenched his fist tightly. “Who are you?”

“Think back. Two years ago. The night before Raul Fernandez was executed.”

Jack felt a chill as the voice came back to him. “What do you want from me?”

“I want justice. I want you to die like Raul died-in the chair for a murder you didn’t commit.”

“That’s not justice,” he struggled to say. “This is sick. And it won’t work.”

“It’ll work,” the man said, laughing as he drew a little blood with a slight twist of the knife. “Remember: You’re alive only because I let you live. You might think you’re safe. The locks on your doors. The alarm on your car. All that’s just bullshit. It’s like that warm, safe feeling people get by closing the drapes in their house at night, when for all they know there’s a guy with an axe outside their window with his face up against the glass. There’s no protection from that, Swyteck. All you can do is play by the rules. My rules.”

“Such as?”

“There’s only one. This trial is me against you, one-on-one. You try to turn it into anything else, and I promise you, innocent people are gonna get hurt.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re smart. Figure it out, asshole.”

“Why-”

“Why must you die?” The man leaned forward until Jack felt his breath on the back of his neck. “Because there’s a killer on the loose,” he said in a cold whisper. “And the killer is you. ”