The Steel Kiss

Police are smart nowadays. All that scientific equipment. DNA and fingerprints and everything. Maybe they’d found some evidence I left somewhere, evidence from when I’d been here before, preparing for the attack today. Or maybe I got spotted. Distinctive appearance, one could say. Slim Jim. Sack of bones…

Hell.

Moving west now, head down, slouching away some of my height.

Keep on the disguise? I wonder. I stole a hard hat and Carhartt jacket in the jobsite before I climbed to the third floor to get to business. Don’t know if anybody saw Vernon the ironworker. But I decide: better to dump the outfit soon. Maybe a restroom in the subway. No—there’d be security cameras in the stations. The police would be watching them diligently. Go to Macy’s, a restroom there, and shove them into a wastebasket.

A new jacket. Hat of course. A fedora again maybe, hipster. My tight crew cut, blond, is pretty distinctive.

I’ll get back to the Toy Room as soon as I can. The womb. The zipping, colorful fish. I need comfort. Have Alicia come over. If I tell her to come over, she’ll come over.

It’s me, Vernon?

Looking behind. Nobody following. I—

Uh.

A pain in my side. I’ve collided with someone. Panic, at first, thinking it’s a cop, cuffs out, about to arrest me. But no. A well-built, handsome man—outfit crying Weekend Businessman—was stepping out of a Starbucks and talking into his Bluetooth earpiece.

He rages at me: “Jesus, you skinny fuck. Watch where you’re going.”

I can only stare at his face. Red with anger. “Apoplectic” is the word that blossoms in my head.

Handsome, he’s handsome. Small nose, nice brows, solid physique. He holds his precious Starbucks toward, not like a toast but like a gun about to fire. “You’d spilled this on me, it would’ve cost you big time, you Walking Dead asshole. This shirt cost more’n you make in a month. I’m a lawyer.” Then talking into his phone as he walked away. “Sorry, honey. Some skinny freak, AIDS patient, thinking he owns the sidewalk. I’m on my way home now. There in twenty.”

My heart is racing as it always does after an encounter with a Shopper. He’s ruined my day, ruined my week.

I want to scream, want to cry.

I don’t bother with the Macy’s restroom plan. Strip off the Carhartt, the hard hat. Toss into a bin. The flesh-colored cotton gloves too. Put the St. Louis cap back on. No, pick another, I tell myself. And fish in my backpack for a basic Nike black. On it goes.

Want to scream, want to cry…

But, eventually, those feelings go away, as they usually do, leaving in their place another desire.

To hurt. To hurt oh so badly.

* * *

The sparks had not been that impressive.

A quarter-inch flash of orange, accompanied by a modest puff of smoke. Had it been a scene in a movie the director surely would have called cut or redo or whatever they say and summoned the special effects pyrotechnician to multiply the cascade times ten.

What did happen, though, was the circuit breaker popped and the workshop, if not the entire theater, went dark. She herself didn’t get shocked or receive a single burn from a spark.

Sachs had then held up her shield and motioned the carpenter, who’d turned and was staring at her in dismay, out of the open doorway. The unsub was still unaccounted for. He pulled off the muffs and started asking questions. She held up a wait-a-minute finger and looked around the workshop carefully. Sachs reminded herself that she’d deduced the theater was probably, but not necessarily, the attack site so she directed the other officers in the search teams to continue the sweep along the street here, particularly in the construction site, where at least they knew he’d been.

A few minutes later her phone hummed. It was Killow, her rotund, good-natured patrolman friend. “Amelia. I’m in the jobsite. The foreman’s assistant found some workers who spotted our boy. He was here—third floor. South side. Somebody saw him leaving. K.”

Third floor, south side. A perfect view of the carpenter and the saw.

“Got it. Going where?”

“Hold on.” A moment later he came back on. “Four-Seven Street. Wearing brown Carhartt jacket and hard hat. Still canvassing. K.”

“Roger that. Keep me—”

Ron Pulaski’s voice sliced through the airwaves. “Sighting. Somebody spotted him on the corner, Four-Eight and Nine, headed north. We’re in pursuit. Nothing further. K.”

“Keep on him, Ron. He’ll’ve dumped the Carhartt and hard hat. I’m sure. Look for tall, look for skinny. He’ll have the backpack—it’s got his hammer or other weapons and whatever he controls the DataWise with. A phone or tablet.”

“Got it, Amelia. Sure. K.”

Hell. They’d been so goddamn close. So close. She felt her teeth grinding like millstones and found her left index finger probing her left thumb’s cuticle. She felt pain, told herself to stop. She didn’t stop. Damn nervous habits.