approaching the van. “Stand back and get me security out here now!”
The man’s eyes go wide, and he backs up. I squat at the rear of the vehicle, adrenaline coursing through my veins, driving away fear and leaving nothing but duty. Duty, however, rides a happier horse when it’s holding a weapon. I don’t have my service weapon or any weapon at all, for that matter, but that isn’t going to change, and with a campus full of targets for a shooter, I can’t wait for backup. I inch left to the door of the vehicle and find the driver’s side sealed shut as expected. I do the same to the right and go cold inside. It’s open. It wasn’t open. And this isn’t a suicide. Damn it, I need that weapon.
I unlink the mace I keep on my keychain attached to my pants, and inch to the side of the vehicle, still low, beneath the window, careful not to touch anything and screw up evidence, without gloves on. Oh, screw it. I rush to the door, the sweet, iron scent of blood blistering my nostrils even before I have a visual of the interior of the vehicle. That comes next with the gruesome view of Newman alone inside the van, sitting in the driver’s seat, face down on the steering wheel, with the side and part of the back of his head missing. I don’t bother to check for a pulse. No one has the Grand Canyon carved in their head and survives.
Blood and gore didn’t bother my former captain, and father, but then, I’m just not the man he was, in all kinds of ways, and that’s okay with me. A wave of nausea threatens to take hold, but I welcome the reminder that I’m alive, that I’m human, that I’m not immune to human suffering. That’s what it takes for me to push past the gore, that’s my light switch, my trigger. Or he is. Even from the grave, my father defines all I do not want to become. I begin to map the location of blood and tissue, but I home in on his right arm, hand palm up, and draped over the console toward the passenger seat. His fingers are relaxed, and the weapon is lying on the seat.
The weapon is a Smith and Wesson snub-nosed, single-action revolver, a common self-defense choice that packs a massive bullet, meant to get the job done. It also has a rough recoil that supports why his hand would be on the seat right now. The problem is that A) The Poet wouldn’t kill himself. That’s not his way. He’s precise. Clean. He killed his victims with poison and then shoved a poem into their mouths. Even the U he carved in the chests of his earlier victims was delicate and precise. And B) Newman doesn’t own a gun. Or he didn’t. Not according to our files.
This was murder.
Someone killed this monster before I could claim that honor. That’s my other secret, the one I’ll never admit to anyone. The one I also faced quite vividly in that San Antonio hotel. I wanted him dead, gone forever so he could hurt no one else. Beneath my calculated, thoughtful investigations, with facts and knowledge as my preferred choice of weapons, my desire for this man’s expiration was as complete as any desire any woman might possess. Perhaps the secret is the real root of my rapidly fading nausea. This one got to me. This killer was under my skin, and his death was what I wanted. Perhaps I’m more like my complicated father than I like to believe. I don’t feel regret that The Poet is dead. I feel joy.
Perhaps that’s how The Poet made me his victim. He turned me into my father.
Chapter 83
Voices sound all around me and I step back out of the vehicle where I lean around the door to find uniformed campus security, in a set of four, rushing toward me. “Lock down the campus,” I call out to them.
“Who the hell are you?” a tall man wearing glasses demands.
“I know who she is,” the chubby guy next to him snaps, his ruddy face set in a scowl directed at me. “She’s that cop who’s been harassing Newman.”
“Focus,” I order, sirens sounding nearby. “Newman is dead, and we need to rule out a shooter. Secure yourselves and the campus. Now!” This earns me shocked expressions and dropped jaws. It does not earn me action. “Now!”