Jack & Jill

head even worse.
    We moved away from the building, and I finally spotted Chucky outlined against the skyline. My heart sank.
    Chucky did have an escape route in mind. He had thought about this before.
Somebody coming to get him. He sure was acting guilty. He had to be our killer.
    “Fuck you, peachfuzz!” he screeched, taunting us again.
    Then he took off on a long, running start. He had a powerful stride—a long stride.
    “No,” I moaned. “No, no, no.”
    I knew what he was going to do.
    Perez was going to jump from building to building.
    “Stop, you son of a bitch,” Sampson shouted, “or I
will
shoot!”
    But he didn’t stop. We watched him take a flying leap.
    We ran to the edge of the roof, both of us screaming at the top of our lungs. There was a second office building catty-corner to our roof. The top of that building was a floor below where Sampson and I now stood.
    Chop-It-Off-Chucky was airborne between the buildings, the glass-and-steel caverns.
    “Jesus!” I gasped as I peered straight down over the side. The gap between the buildings was at least twenty feet wide, maybe more.
    “Fall, you bastard. Hit a wall,” Sampson yelled at the flying figure. “Go down, Chucky!”
    He’s done this before. He’s practiced his escape,
I thought as I watched.
No wonder he’s never been caught. How many years on the loose? How many lads molested or murdered? -
    We had our guns out, but neither of us fired. We had no proof that he was the killer. He had only run from us, had never pointed a weapon. Now, this insane leap from one office building to another.
    Chucky looked suspended in motion sixteen floors up. A long, long way down.
    Something was wrong.
    Chucky was pumping his legs furiously. It was as if he were trying to pedal a bike straight across the sky.
    His long arms reached out, muscles hard and taut. His lead leg stretched until it was almost straight out from his body. Nike sneaker-poster stuff.
    His frame was stiff, like a runner caught in a prizewinning photograph.
    “Jesus Christ,” Sampson whispered at my side. I felt his warm breath on my cheek.
    Chucky’s arm was outstretched, but his hand barely touched the restraining wall on the roof of the nearby office building, his legs still pumping in midair.
    Then Chop-It-Off-Chucky screamed—bloodcurdling sounds, muffled only by the windows and walls of the two buildings.
    He continued to shriek as he fell twenty stories. His arms and legs were flailing, stroking the air at a futile, furious pace.
    As I watched, I saw his body suddenly twist in midair.
    He looked up at me—still screaming in a hopeless, plaintive way, screaming with his mouth
and his eyes,
and that bushy red beard,
screaming.
Chucky was dying as I watched. The fall seemed to take forever. Four or five seconds that seemed like an eternity.
    My stomach was falling with him. I experienced vertigo. The narrow alley below was a spinning gray band. The buildings, the
canyon,
seemed so steep and dark and faraway.
    Then I heard Chucky hit the pavement.
Splat!
It was otherworldly to hear.
    I stared at the crumpled body spread-eagled down below. I could feel no joy in it, though. There was nothing even remotely human about it. It was crashed like the side of Shanelle Green’s face. Chucky’s unearthly screams still echoed inside my brain.
    “Flameout,” Sampson said at my side. “Case closed. Score one for the peachfuzz.”
    I holstered my semiautomatic. Emmanuel Perez had practiced his escape, but he hadn’t practiced enough.

CHAPTER
13

    MAJOR FAKEOUT. Faked you out something fierce, didn’t I? I faked you all out.
    The real Sojourner Truth School killer was alive and well. The killer couldn’t have been any better, thank you very much. He had just committed the perfect crime, hadn’t he? He had just gotten away with murder.
    Yes, he sure as hell had.
Scot-free. The crackerjack Washington police had caught and toasted the wrong twisted ass-hole. Somebody named Emmanuel Perez had paid for his sins, paid with his life, paid in full.
    All he had to do now was cool it, he knew. That was what he had to concentrate on. He had already decided to hide out for a white—
inside his mind.
    He was cruising the Pentagon City mall in Arlington. He was getting absolutely rabid as he strolled through The Gap, and then Victoria’s Secret. He was obsessing about how to get back at—
anybody and everybody. At
tout le monde—
pardon his French,
s’il vous plaît.
    A song, an oldie