The Killing Room Read Free Page B

snapped it back, thinking:
    In this city, any city, you are the hunter, or you are food.
    Byrne put the weapon on the seat next to him, six words stalking the corners of his mind:
    Terrell didn’t bang like they say.

THREE
    As an icy draft knifes across the basement, the young man sits rigidly on a wooden chair. He is naked: Adam banished to this bleak and frigid garden. There are myriad whispers here, the last pleadings of the faithless.
    He has been here one full day.
    She looks at him, sees the bones beneath his skin. This is a moment for which she has waited all her days. In her fingertips now lives an ancient magic, a power that gives her dominion over the thieves, the fornicators, the usurers.
    ‘It is time,’ she says.
    The young man begins to cry.
    ‘You must tell him what you said. Word for word. I want you to think carefully. It is very important.’
    ‘I … I don’t remember,’ he says.
    She steps forward, lifts his chin, looks into his eyes. ‘Do you want me to tell you what you said?’
    The young man nods. ‘Yes.’
    ‘You said: “I would do anything not to get AIDS. I would even sell my soul to the devil.”’
    The young man does not respond to this. No response was expected. He glances at the opening into the other room. ‘I can’t look at him. When it happens, I can’t look at him.’
    She removes her coat, folds it gently onto the altar cloth on the floor.
    ‘Your name has meaning in the Bible,’ she says. ‘Did you know that?’
    He shakes his head. ‘No.’
    ‘Your name means “God is my judge.”’ She reaches into her bag, removes the hypodermic, prepares it. ‘According to the Word, Daniel was brought to Babylon. It is said he could interpret dreams.’
    Seconds later, as the first drop of blood falls, as it did that terrible day on Calvary, she knows that the screams of the children of disobedience will soon fill the city.
    All contracts are due.
    The devil has returned to Philadelphia.

FOUR
    Get it together, Jess. If you don’t, you’re going to die right here, right now.
    Detective Jessica Balzano looked up. The mass of humanity that stood no more than ten feet away from her had the purest form of evil in its eyes she had ever seen. And she had seen a lot. In her time in the Philadelphia Police Department she had squared off with all types of miscreants, deviants, criminals and gangsters, had gone toe to toe with men almost double her weight. She had always come out on top.
    How? A combination of things. Flexibility, speed, excellent peripheral vision, an innate ability to sense the next move. These things had served her well on the streets, in uniform, and in the Homicide Unit.
    But not today. If she didn’t get her shit together, and get it together quickly, she was dead.
    The bell rang. ‘Let’s go,’ Joe said. ‘Give me two hard minutes.’
    Jessica was in the ring at the Joe Hand Boxing Gym on North Third, stepping into the third round of a three-round sparring session. She was in training for an upcoming exhibition bout for the Police Athletic League annual boxing tournament.
    Her opponent this day was a young woman named Valentine Rhames, a nineteen-year-old who boxed out of the Rock Ministry Boxing Club on Kensington Avenue.
    Jessica was no expert, but she figured girls named Valentine weren’t supposed to have fourteen-inch biceps and shoulders like Sasquatch. Not to mention fists the size of canned hams. The kid was built like Ving Rhames.
    The upcoming event was for charity, and nobody was supposed to get hurt, but as the sound of the bell ringing in round three began to fade, and Valentine stormed across the ring, it appeared that the young woman had not gotten the memo.
    Jessica sidestepped the onslaught with ease, and even though her headgear cut down on her peripheral vision, she was able to land a glancing right hand to the side of Valentine’s head. An illegal blow, technically speaking, but Jessica intended to worry about that at some point in the