Robert Browne: Kill Her Again

“ What the fuck is the matter with you?”

Anna was at the rear of the house now, seated at an old patio table with a tattered umbrella. Beyond the low wooden fence, across a barren field, was the back side of a junkyard, mountainous piles of debris laid out in neat rows and bathed in moonlight.

Old tires. Car parts. Rusty washing machines. Scrap metal. All caged in by a chain-link fence.

Anna had been staring at it for a long time, thinking that if there were a junkyard for demoted and disgraced FBI agents, she’d surely be at the top of the pile.

She looked up at Royer, saw the fury on his face. They’d been working together for a total of four hours now and she already knew the partnership was doomed. He’d be filing a complaint against her as soon as they were back in Victorville.

“Well?” he said.

“I got nauseous.” She wasn’t about to tell him the truth. “You’ve never gotten sick at a crime scene?”

“Never,” he said. “And if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t show it.”

Anna glared at him. “Is that what this is about? Macho pride? Did I embarrass you in front of the deputy?”

“All I asked you to do was keep your mouth shut and focus, and you can’t even do that.” His cheeks were red with anger. “You’re a disgrace to the bureau, you know that? Must be nice to have a daddy with connections.”

Anna felt the heat rise in her own cheeks. But it wasn’t anger that caused it. It was humiliation.

After the fiasco in San Francisco, if she’d been the one making the decisions about who could stay and who needed to go, she would’ve ignored the political pressure and booted her ass right out the door. Permanently.

But Daddy was an influential man and had been for as long as she could remember. And in her desperation to keep her career from completely caving in on her, she had called him and asked for help.

But the truth was, she hadn’t deserved his help.

A man was paralyzed, had almost died, because of her inability to lead. She had let down her own partner. Had let everyone down. Including herself. And maybe that was the reason for these strange visions. The vertigo.

Maybe it was the guilt that was driving her mad. Maybe it all came from some inner darkness she harbored, a subconscious need to be punished for what she’d done.

But why the little girl?

Why that particular scenario?

Was she someone Anna knew?

From somewhere far off, Royer said, “You’re not even listening to me, are you?” But the words barely registered, and when she looked up again he was gone. Headed back to the house.

She watched him slide the glass rear door open, angrily flick the curtains aside, and disappear behind them.

Anna turned, looking out across the field at those giant piles of junk, thinking she might as well get it over with and crawl on top of one right now. Her career was done. Kaput. Pump her full of morphine, Doc, then pull the plug.

But then she paused, drawn out of her rendezvous with self-pity by movement across the field:

A shadow near one of the junk piles.

A silhouette, low to the ground.

Was it an animal?

A junkyard dog?

She rose from her chair, moving closer to the wooden fence. And as she moved, the silhouette moved also, retreating.

But it wasn’t a dog at all. As it hurriedly crawled backwards, it crossed into a pool of moonlight, exposing feral eyes in a small round face — the face of a young boy.

And even from this distance, Anna was sure she recognized him.

The boy in the amusement park photograph. Evan.

Rita Fairweather’s son.

Quickly climbing over the fence, Anna started toward him, calling his name. “Evan?”

But the boy picked up speed, standing now, turning toward the darkness between two piles of junk. As he disappeared between them, Anna ran, calling out for backup, hoping one of the deputies would hear her.

The field was made of rutted, sun-baked dirt, and navigating it in the pale moonlight without falling on her face was tricky, but she managed to get across, then leaped onto the chain-link fence, using the momentum to pull her up and over it.

As she jumped down to the other side, she landed wrong, tweaking her left ankle. Biting back the twinge of pain, she reached for her flashlight, only to realize she wasn’t wearing her coat, had left it hanging over her chair in the backyard.

She could run back for it, but the boy might be gone by then. Hesitating only a moment, she looked up at the rusty mountains of junk that loomed above, then moved into the darkness between them.

“Evan?”

Nothing in return.

“Evan, don’t be scared. I’m a friend. A friend of your mommy’s.”

Still nothing. The darkness was nearly impenetrable here, the junk piles blocking out the moon. It suddenly occurred to Anna that Evan might not be alone, that the predator or whoever had killed those people back at the house might have been watching all this time.

Watching and waiting.

But for what?

She reached to her holster and released her Glock, bringing it up in a two-handed grip, resting her finger against the trigger guard. Moving forward cautiously, she decided not to call out again. If the boy wasn’t alone, she saw no point in telegraphing her position.

A sound spun her to the right. It was little more than a creak of metal that could simply have been caused by a shifting of the earth.

But Anna didn’t think so.

Turning, she wound her way around the large silhouette of what looked like the remnants of an old school bus. There was a moonlit clearing up ahead. Hearing the creak again, she gauged its direction and picked up speed, deciding to skirt the edge of the clearing to keep her exposure to a minimum.

Then, just as she was edging closer to the moonlight, there was a burst of movement from inside a nearby pile of rubble as the boy, Evan, flew across the clearing and disappeared into the darkness on the other side.

“Evan, wait!” she shouted, but he didn’t slow down.

Quickly holstering her Glock, she ran for all she was worth, pain shooting through her ankle as she moved out into the open, knowing she was taking a risk exposing herself like this. But her instincts told her she was safe, that the boy was alone out here. Alone and afraid.

She didn’t know what he’d seen back at that house, but suspected the worst, and all she wanted to do was catch up to him, to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that there were people who wanted to help him.

“Evan!” she shouted, as she moved again into darkness, wishing she had her flashlight.

Hearing a whimper, she froze, knowing she was close. And despite the lack of illumination, she sensed that the boy had miscalculated and had hit a dead end of some kind, a wall of junk that held no escape.

She heard him struggling for breath. Raw and ragged. Frightened out of his wits.

“Evan? Are you there? It’s okay; I won’t hurt you.”

Then, as her eyes began to adjust, she could see the small, pale oval of his face, low to the ground, eyes wide and terrified. He was lying inside a warped wooden cabinet with one of its doors missing, the other hanging by a single hinge.

Moving closer, Anna crouched down, peering in at him.

“It’s okay, hon. It’s gonna be-”

The vicious bark of a dog cut her off and spun her around. Anna reached for her Glock, but a shotgun blast to the sky stopped her cold as a flashlight beam shone directly in her face.

“Keep your fuckin’ hands right where they are, missy. You wouldn’t be the first trespasser I’ve shot.”

Daniel Pope was watching himself on TV when he got the call.

He did that a lot. Watched himself.