Jack & Jill

exit. The mall parking lot bordered on Columbia Park, which had been part of his escape package from the start.
    He took a couple of fast steps, then stopped dead in his tracks at the front of the store.
    Shit! A couple in their late twenties were walking toward him! The woman looked just like Little Boy Blue.
    They had him… dead to rights. They had him nailed! They had him!
    He knew what he had to do, so he never panicked for a nanosecond. Except for the two or three major heart attacks he had on the
inside. Well, here goes everything. Time to bet the ranchero.
    “Hey; hi there.” He smiled broadly and went into his best stand-up routine ever. “This little guy belong to you? He was lost in the action-figure section. Nobody came for him. I figured I better bring him up to the store manager. Little guy was crying his eyes out. You his mom?”
    The mother reached out for her precious bundle of joy, while at the same time throwing her husband a dirty look.
    Aha,
there
was our villain! Pop was obviously the one who had lost the boy in the first place. Pops couldn’t get anything right these days, could they! His own pop sure hadn’t been able to.
    “Thank you,
so much,”
the mom said. She tossed another incredibly nasty look to pop. “That was very sweet of you,” she told the killer.
    He continued to hold his best smile. Man, he was acting his heart out. “Anybody would do the same thing. He’s a nice little boy. Well, so long.
Bye-bye.
He wants a Mighty Max. That’s probably what he was searching for.”
    “Yes, he does want Mighty Max. Bye. Thanks again,” said the mom.
    “Bye-bye,” the little boy mimicked, waving his hand. “Bye-bye.”
    “Hope I see ya some other time,” said the Sojourner Truth School killer. “Bye-bye.”
You morons! You incredible idiots. You pathetic simps.
    He walked away from the family. Never looked back once. He was wetting his pants, but he was also beginning to laugh. He couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Here was another thing in his favor—even if he was caught someday—
they wouldn ‘t believe that he was the Truth School killer. No way in hell.

CHAPTER
15

    AH, THIS WAS MUCH BETTER. Life was good again.
I opened my eyes and Jannie was there, staring at me from about three feet away. Jannie had Rosie the cat in her arms. Jannie likes to watch me sleep sometimes. I like to watch her sleep, too. Fair is fair.
    “Hey there, sweetness and light,” I said to her. “You know the song ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’? You remember that one?” I hummed a couple of bars for her.
    Jannie nodded her head yes. She knew the song. She’d heard me play it on the piano downstairs, on our porch. “You have
guests,”
she announced.
    I sat up in bed. “How long have they been here?”
    “They just came. Nana sent me and Rosie up to get you. She’s making them’ coffee. You, too. You have to get up.”
    “Is it Sampson and Rakeem Powell?” I asked.
    Jannie shook her head. She seemed unusually shy this morning, which isn’t really like her. “They’re white men.”
    I was starting to wake up in a hurry. “I see. You happen to catch the names?” Suddenly, I thought I knew the names. I solved the mystery myself—at least, I thought I had.
    Jannie said, “Mr. Pittman and Mr. Clouser.”
    “Very good,” I complimented her.
    Not good, not good at all,
I was thinking about my “guests.” I didn’t want to see the chief of detectives, or the police commissioner—especially not in my house.
    Especially not for the reason I imagined that they were here to see me.
    Jannie bent and gave me my morning kiss. Then a second kiss.
    “Oh, what lies there are in kisses,” I winked and said to her.
    “Nope,” she said. “Not my kisses.”
    It took me less than five minutes to get as ready as I was going to get for this. Nana was entertaining our visitors in the parlor. Commissioner Clouser had come to my house twice before. This was a first for the chief of detectives. The Jefe. I assumed that Clouser had forced him to come.
    Chief Pittman and Commissioner Clouser were sipping Nana’s steaming coffee, smiling at a story she was spinning for them. I wondered what it was she had decided to get off her chest. This was a dangerous time—for Pittman and Clouser.
    “I was just rebuking these gentlemen for allowing Emmanuel Perez to roam our streets for so long,” she told me as I entered the parlor. “They promised not to let that sort of thing happen again’.