Jack & Jill

it
Losers!
The world was full of them.
    He was on the verge of one of his worst rages,
a real bad one.
The hair on the back of his neck was standing at attention. TEN-SHUN. It felt like it, anyway.
    He could
see red
everywhere in the bedroom. Like this misting red. It was almost as if he were viewing the room through a nightscope.
    He… was
…
just… about… to… go… off… wasn’t …he?
    He could feel himself… exploding … into … a … billion… pieces.
    Suddenly, he screamed at the top of his voice.
“Wake up and smell the fucking Folger’s coffee!”
    He was sobbing now, too. For what reason, he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember crying like this since he was a real little kid,
real
little.
    His chest hurt as if he’d been punched hard. Or hit with an eighteen-inch ballbat. He realized that he was starting to wimp out. Mister Softee was coming back. He felt like Holden Caulfield. Repentant Always triple-thinking every goddamn move both before and after he made it.
    “POW,” he screamed at the top of his voice.
    “POW,” he screamed the word again.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.
    “POW.”
    And with every bloodcurdling yell, he pulled the trigger of the Smith & Wesson. He put another 9mm bullet into the two sleeping figures.
Twelve shots,
if he was counting correctly, and he was counting everything very correctly.
Twelve shots,
just like Jose and Kitty Menendez got.
    The Roosevelt military education finally came in handy,
he couldn’t help thinking. His teachers had been right, after all. Colonel Wilson at the school would have been proud of the marksmanship—but most of all, the firm resolve, the very simple and clear plan, the extraordinary courage he had shown tonight.
    His foster parents were annihilated, completely vanquished, almost disintegrated by all the firepower he’d brought to the task. He felt nothing—except maybe pride in what he had done, in his fine workmanship.
    Nobody was here. Nobody did this, man.
    He wrote it in their blood.
    Then he ran outside to play in the snow. He got blood all over the yard, all over everything.
He could, you know.
He could do anything he wanted to now. There was no one to stop Nobody.

CHAPTER
76

    ANOTHER MURDERED CHILD has been discovered.
    A male. Less than an hour ago.
    John Sampson got the news about seven o’clock in the evening. He couldn’t believe it.
Could not, would not,
accept what he had just been told. Friday the thirteenth. Was the date deliberate?
    Another child murdered in Garfield Park. At least, the body was left there. He wanted Sumner Moore bad, and he wanted him now.
    Sampson parked on Sixth Street and began the short walk into the desolate and dreary park.
This is getting worse,
he thought as he walked toward the red and yellow emergency lights flashing brightly up ahead.
    “Detective Sampson. Let me through,” he said as he pushed his way inside a circle of police uniforms.
    One of the uniforms was holding a gray-and-white yapping mutt on a leash. It was a weird touch at a weird scene. Sampson addressed the patrolman. “What’s with the dog? Whose dog?”
    “Dog uncovered the victim’s body. Owner let it loose for a run after she got home from work. Somebody covered up the dead kid with tree branches. Not much else. Like he wanted somebody to find it.”
    Sampson nodded at what he’d heard so far. Then he moved on, stepped closer to the body. The victim was clearly older than either Vernon Wheatley or Shanelle Green. Sumner Moore had graduated from murdering very small children. The creepy little ghoul was on a full rampage now.
    A police photographer was taking pictures of the body, the camera’s harsh flashes dramatic against the blanket of snow covering the park.
    The boy’s mouth and nose were wrapped with silver duct tape. Sampson took a deep breath before he stooped down low next to the medical examiner, a woman he knew named Esther Lee.
    “How long you think he’s been dead?” Sampson asked the M.E.
    “Hard to say. Maybe thirty-six hours. Decomposition is slowed a lot in this cold weather. I’ll know more after the autopsy. The boy took a brutal beating. Lead pipe, wrench, something nasty and heavy like that. He tried to fight the killer off. You can see defensive bruises on both hands, on his arms. I feel so bad for this boy.”
    “I know, Esther. Me, too.”
    What John Sampson could see of the boy’s neck was discolored and badly bloated.