Deadly Messengers (26 page)

A small child’s voice called out from somewhere out in the restaurant. He wished he were out there, instead of here, facing a gunman who looked like a zombie, who looked like a guy who didn’t care anymore.

The mother of the child tried to shush the little girl, but the child kept repeating the same questions: “What’s he doing, Mommie? Why has the man got a gun? When can we eat?”

Her mother’s voice replied, tense, strained to breaking: “We’ll eat in a minute. Shhhhh.”

Freaksville moved the gun toward the voice, then circled the weapon around the room as if to say
I am serious. Shuddup
.

Two female teenagers sitting at a booth, all black hair and blunt-cut bobs, screamed and cowered, hands over their heads as the barrel of the gun momentarily pointed at them. Nearest the counter, a man in his forties, in an open-necked business shirt and dark gray pants, moved a few steps back. He angled sideways to face the gunman, stretching his arms wide, so his body was now between the imminent danger and a woman and young sandy-haired boy. Nodding to them, he indicated they needed to move behind, that he would be their human shield. The boy snuggled into his back, pressing his face into the folds of his shirt. A sob escaped the child, overly loud in the eerie quiet. A few patrons had climbed under the tables. On any other day a disgusting idea, to scrabble on the floor of a fast food joint. Today, it was instinctive.

Freaksville returned his attention to the counter, his eyes distant as though his mind had traveled somewhere else, like he was listening to a song only he could hear.

Taking Cody’s lead, thinking the sooner this crazy got his money, the sooner this would be over, Charlie moved to the last register, his shaking hand hitting the
open
button. The sound of the drawer sliding out like a dozen drawers sliding open at once.

The gunman’s gaze followed Charlie’s every move. Sweat rolled down the guy’s face as though his pores were discharging his crazy in little, wet drops.

Then Freaksville spoke.

Charlie jumped. Cody, too. Charlie’s heart burst in his chest. He’d been so focused on the registers, on getting the money out and handing it to their captor, he’d been on autopilot.

Freaksville pointed the gun directly at Charlie.

“You. You’re the one who served me. Aren’t you? I say
serve
loosely, because I
still haven’t got my food
!”

Charlie didn’t move, didn’t dare speak. He wasn’t sure what to say, or if he even had the ability to answer. His jaw felt locked. His breath, trapped in his lungs. His hands shook, vibrating like an earth tremor had hit.

“I asked you a simple question. I was hungry, you know. In fact, I bet there’s a
lot
of hungry people here. Now … Was. It. You?”

He again tracked the gun around the restaurant. Every pair of eyes inside the room followed the gun’s movement. When its aim passed by them, they nodded in agreement, as though the gunman was their leader.

“Hey, man.” Cody, his hands back in the air, the cash register he stood behind, abandoned, his voice now an octave higher than normal, sounded less confident. “We’re really sorry if your experience here has disappointed. We can work this out. Take the money, and we’ll be good, okay?”

Freaksville swung the gun back toward Cody, narrowing his eyes, beginning to take aim.

“You’re the manager, right?”

Cody slowly nodded.

“No, sorry, we won’t be good.”

He fired the gun. Charlie’s eardrums rang with the sound, loud and shocking. His heart exploded into a gallop. Screaming erupted in the room. It was strangely muted and low, as though he heard it through a glass wall. Then more shots followed in rapid succession.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Charlie threw himself below the counter. He was going to die. He
was
going to die.
How could this happen to him? How?

Cody was there on the floor face down beside him. Charlie took in the blood, pooling around the manager. Three big dark patches had appeared on the back of his shirt. He wasn’t moving.

Holy shit, is he dead?

Charlie
had
to get out. He
had
to get home. To his dad. It was just him and his dad since his mom’s passing. He couldn’t leave his dad alone. They were a team. He had to get back to him. This was just a shitty part-time job.
Who dies doing something like this? Really, who?

“Cody?” He whispered into his boss’s ear. His heart thumped louder than his words. “Cody, you got to get up.”

Then more gunfire. Sounding closer, nearer him.

Shit! Was he coming toward the counter? Holy shit.

He looked at his manager; for all he knew he was dead. He couldn’t help Cody. He had to save himself. Charlie had blood on his hands and blood on his shirt. It was sticky and warm and he was going to be sick. He wasn’t a hero. He was sixteen and terrified. He started to cry.

The sound of thunder from the back of the kitchen startled him.

Shit, what the hell?

It was crashing kitchen trays. He’d swung his head to the noise in time to see the fry cook, Ben, running for the door.

That was it. Charlie didn’t stop to carefully make a life and death calculation. He just moved, pulling his body up, ready to run, ready to get out, get away, get home to his dad. He couldn’t take it anymore. His mind felt filled with thick, cloying fluff. He couldn’t think anymore, could barely control his limbs.

Ben got away. Why couldn’t he?

He’d only reached a crouch, when the warm metal of the gun barrel touched the back of his neck. A jolt of electricity entered his skin. Instantly his bladder let go; the rush of urine warm down his leg. It dripped onto the floor, drip, drip, but he didn’t care.
He just wanted to get home
.

“You know, all I wanted was a meal. I tried to be calm. Dr. Willis won’t be happy. If it wasn’t for you …”

Charlie hunched his shoulders. In his mind, he saw a ten-ton weight flying through the sky, aimed at him, bearing down, him trapped waiting for it to descend. He felt his life slipping away, the weight of his choices wrenched from him, the regret of never seeing his dad again. Still half-crouched, he raised his hands to either side of his face, and then clasped them behind his head.

“Plee-aase. Please … don’t.”

The words stuck in his throat like tough meat. A hundred miles away, he heard gasps from the dining room. No sound from Freaksville. All he saw looking down—he didn’t dare look up—were the white floor tiles, splattered with blood and a growing pool of red. Cody’s blood.

Shit, Cody’s blood. Don’t let that be the last thing I see. Please, God, please.

The gunman’s voice remained calm, as though he were simply ordering a meal, not standing over a person with life—and fear—coursing through their veins.

“Consider this an official customer complaint.”

Charlie didn’t hear the gun explode. He thought he would. He thought there’d be some warning. No, the last thing Charlie heard was the voice of that child, the words so clear as though whispered in his ear.

“Mommie, I want to go home.”

“Me, too,” Charlie mouthed. “Me, too.”

“YOU NEED TO COME BACK to the precinct.”

That was the total of the message Trip left. O’Grady had planned to go straight home from his interview with Wendy Thompson. He’d barely slept since this had all started.
Was it only three weeks ago?
The last time he’d eaten a decent meal was probably even longer.

He’d been so certain Kate Wilker’s friend would confirm his “stranger theory,” he felt somewhat disheartened to discover he’d been wrong. It was a random idea, he knew. That’s why he hadn’t floated it with Trip.

Nothing but remote circumstantial evidence linked these killings. He needed to face facts. The killings weren’t terrorism, nor were they the product of a gang or any kind of collaboration. Danbridge City was just having a very, very bad run of crazy. Still, as he wearily headed back to the precinct, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something important.

Trip hadn’t answered his call back, and O’Grady wondered if this had something to do with that journalist. Had Trip revealed too much to her and now needed his backup? It wouldn’t be the first time. His mind wandered to the Jennings woman. He surprised himself to find he smiled as he thought about their last interaction.

My morals are in the exact right place.

She’d said it with such conviction, he wondered if she was one of the few journalists who did follow a decent code of conduct. Why did he care, anyway? After the sensation of these killings had died she would move on to something else and he’d never see her again. He corrected himself:
Never have to deal with her again!

His mind was all over the place. Lack of sleep and too much caffeine and sugar. Once Trip explained what was
so
important, his next meeting was with his pillow. Tomorrow he’d arrive early and start working on the paperwork so they could finalize the reports on the mass killings. O’Grady just wanted to get back to normal, where killers looked like killers and some kind of reason for the violence emerged. Even if it were a crazy reason, he’d take it.

By the time he entered the squad room, his mind was back under control. Trip was alone, hunched over, and reading something on his desk.

O’Grady headed across the room to stand beside his partner. “I tried to call you. What’s the big urgency?”

Trip looked up and swung his chair around to face O’Grady. He pushed the large manila folder he’d just been reading toward his partner.

“This.”

He tapped the top of the folder. It was thick with a clutter of papers.

O’Grady tapped the dossier. “This is what, exactly?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s very interesting. And weird.”

“Weird? Weird comes with the job. What makes this
standout
weird?”

Trip leaned back in his chair. O’Grady sat in another chair, positioned at the side of the desk.

“Take a look,” Trip said, pushing at the folder.

O’Grady opened the folder and flicked through the papers inside. It contained word-dense pages and sheets of what looked like research notes interspersed with complex-looking graphs. It certainly didn’t look like anything he’d understand in a hurry, or something he felt like reading when his eyes felt like they’d been rolled in sand.

“What am I looking at? Help me here. I flunked science.”

“It’s a study on SSRIs and research dating back to 1987.”

O’Grady twitched the side of his mouth, as though to say,
I should care, why?
“And that would be some new Russian country, right?”

“Nope, they’d be anti-depressants. S.S.R.I. stands for Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor. A class of drugs which includes Prozac, for instance. Basically, the thing hypothesizes that with the growing uptake of these drugs, there’s been an increase in mass killings.”

O’Grady held up a page containing a brightly colored graph. He couldn’t, at a glance, completely understand what all the bars and numbers meant, but a few things
did
stand out to him.

“Hmm,” O’Grady said, “I didn’t realize these drugs have only been around since early nineties. Seems
everyone’s
been on anti-depressants forever.”

Trip pulled out a post-it-note-marked page and placed it between them.

“See here. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to create a map of every mass killing since 1989. They’ve been meticulous, too. Even cataloging mass killings incorrectly categorized by the FBI. In most cases, so the report claims, the killer was prescribed one of these SSRIs.”

“I don’t get it, though. Aren’t these drugs supposed to
stop you
from being violent? From
being
suicidal?”

Trip shrugged his shoulder. “You’d think.”

His partner pulled back the file and rifled through it. “What’s even more interesting is violence is a
known
side effect. According to this—.” He pulled out another piece of paper and passed it to O’Grady. “since the drugs went on sale in 1987, the increase has been amazing. Look at this chart, here.”

O’Grady studied the graph on the paper. If the figures and graph were correct, there did seem to be a case to be made these drugs did play a role in some of these documented killings. On the other hand, figures could be made to say anything you wanted. The report’s author probably had a political agenda. Maybe he was with the gun lobby.
Guns don’t kill. People do
. Yeah, that’s always been a good one.

“Check this.” Trip handed him another sheet. “Here’s the conclusion of a study done by internationally renowned scientists.”

A paragraph was highlighted in green highlighter.

“These data provide new evidence that acts of violence toward others are an unpromoted, but real and serious, adverse drug effect of a small group of SSRI.”

O’Grady shuffled through a few more pages, glancing over them as he went. Jesus, the documents were thorough. The killings were even segmented into the number of victims, the area, and the type of murder—knife, gun, asphyxiation, or other—and whether or not the victims were family or strangers.