Cat and Mouse

house?
    “Jannie? Damon?—” I finally mumbled, tried to call to them. “
Nana? Nana?
”
    I began scratching at his chest, his arms, felt something sticky, probably drawing blood. I was fighting with only one arm, and barely able to do that.
    “Who are you? What are you doing?
Damon! Damon!
” I called out again. Much louder this time.
    He broke loose and I fell out of the bed, face first. The floor came at me hard,
struck,
and my face went numb.
    My whole body was on fire. I began to throw up on the carpet.
    The bat, the sledgehammer, the crowbar, whatever in hell it was — came down again and seemed to split me in two. I was burning up with pain.
Ax! Has to be ax!
    I could feel and smell blood everywhere around me on the floor. My blood?
    “I told you there was no way to stop me!” he screamed. “I told you.”
    I looked up and thought I recognized the face looming above me.
Gary Soneji? Could it possibly be Soneji? How could that possibly be? It couldn’t!
    I understood that I was dying, and I didn’t want to die. I wanted to run, to see my kids one more time. Just one more look at them.
    I knew I couldn’t stop the attack. Knew there was nothing I could do to stop this horror from happening.
    I thought of Nana and Jannie, Damon, Christine. My heart ached for them.
    Then I let God do His will
.

Part Four

Thomas Pierce

Chapter 68

    M ATTHEW LEWIS happily drove the graveyard shift on the city bus line that traveled along East Capitol Street in D.C. He was absently whistling a Marvin Gaye song, “What’s Going On,” as he piloted his bus through the night.
    He had driven this same route for nineteen years and was mostly glad to have the work. He also enjoyed the solitude. Lewis had always been a fairly deep thinker, according to his friends and Alva, his wife of twenty years. He was a history buff, and interested in government, sometimes a little sociology, too. He had developed the interests in his native Jamaica and had kept up with them.
    For the past few months, he had been listening to self-improvement tapes from an outfit called the Teaching Company, in Virginia. As he rode along East Capitol at five in the morning, he was really getting into an excellent lecture called “The Good King — the American Presidency Since the Depression.” Sometimes he’d knock off two or three lectures in a single night, or maybe he’d listen to a particularly good tape a couple of times in a night.
    He saw the sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. He swerved the steering wheel. The brakes screeched. His bus skidded hard right and would up diagonally across East Capitol.
    The bus emitted a loud hiss. There wasn’t any traffic coming, thank goodness, just a string of green lights as far as he could see.
    Matthew Lewis threw open the bus doors and climbed out. He hoped he’d missed whoever, or whatever, had run into the street.
    He wasn’t sure, though, and he was afraid of what he might find. Except for the drone of his tape inside the bus, it was quiet. This was so weird, and as bad as can be, he thought to himself.
    Then he saw an elderly black woman lying in the street. She was wearing a long, blue-striped bathrobe. Her robe was open and he could see her red nightgown. Her feet were bare. His heart bucked dangerously.
    He ran across the street to help her, and thought he was going to be sick. In his headlights he saw that her nightgown wasn’t red. It was bright red blood, all over her. The sight was gruesome and awful. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d encountered in his years on the night route, but it was right up there.
    The woman’s eyes were open and she was still conscious. She reached out a frail, thin arm toward him.
Must be domestic violence
, he thought.
Or maybe a robbery at her home.
    “Please help us,” Nana Mama whispered. “Please help us.”

Chapter 69

    F IFTH STREET was blocked off and completely barricaded to traffic! John Sampson abandoned his black Nissan and ran the rest of the way to Alex’s house. Police cruiser and ambulance sirens were wailing everywhere on the familiar street that he almost thought of as his own.
    Sampson ran as he never had before, in the grip of the coldest fear of his life. His feet pounded heavily on the sidewalk stone. His heart felt heavy, ready to break. He couldn’t catch a breath, and he was certain he would throw up if he didn’t stop running this second. The hangover from the night before had dulled his senses, but not nearly