{ACROSS THE ROOFTOPS.}
Jeremy pointed, Him acknowledged, and Johnathan made a running jump to the next building. He cleared the eight foot expanse in a landing roll. Springing to his feet, he continued the course agreed upon.
Him was in good shape, but only because Dr. Hilliard forced his workouts in the health care gymnasium. Lifting the weights and jumping the jacks was fun sometimes, but not every day. Him said no at first, but Hilliard insisted as part of his therapy, so he said yes. When it came to both Hilliard and Jeremy, Him was getting tired of having no choices. But seeing as he had no choice, Him did as he was told.
Johnathan managed the next gap between buildings and repeated his rolling technique. The abandoned warehouse was three rooftops away.
Reg stumbled off the fire escaped and onto the roof. He heaved a lungful of air. Bent at the waist, he saw his suspect hopping rooftops.
Figures.
Every second he watched Fare, put more distance between them. He stood upright, heaved his lungs full, and took off. As he jumped to the next rooftop, it occurred to him that if he hadn’t looked in on Reuben, his suspect might be in handcuffs right now.
Reg stuck the landing, and kept running.
“Yeah, yeah, and if the sky grew grass, it would be the ground,” he said to his thoughts, then jumped to the next building.
"He’s still following us,” Him said.
{Plenty of hiding places in the warehouse. Remember where you ran and hid with the first one, because you were scared of getting caught?}
"Uh-huh.”
{That stupid cop will never find us. None of the stupid cops will find us there.}
Johnathan Fare picked up speed and jumped the widest expanse, onto the warehouse roof. He erupted from his signature roll and sprinted for the landing door. In his haste, he failed to notice his nose had begun to bleed again.
Reg paused to catch a breath. The last gap was two feet wider than the others. He leaned over the side of the building, peering down to the street. The front of the warehouse was boarded up. Good. He assumed the back was the same. Experience told him the building most likely had a breach somewhere. A vagrant doggie door, his colleagues called it. He hoped Fare didn’t know where it was.
{Stop.}
"We have to hurry. The cop—”
{I’ll hit you harder this time.}
Johnathan Fare halted abruptly between the first and second landings.
{Listen.}
"To what?"
{I don't hear any sirens.}
"They will come. We have to hurry.”
{Shut up, Meathead.}
Him did not like being called Meathead, either.
{We’re going to hide and wait for this cop to come down. If we get rid of him, maybe no one will know where we are. He was the only one I saw chasing us.}
"No, they will put us in the cage."
{Stupid, we can get away.}
Him's brain moved on what his friend said. They would definitely go in the cage for the women they hurt. If Jeremy knew a way out, and it meant killing only one more person, that wasn't so bad, was it?
Him’s brain moved on it a moment longer, and he decided it wasn’t such a bad thing. Especially, since great excitement sped his heartbeat, at the thought of cutting and slashing on the cop. Johnathan Fare heard Reg enter the building from above.
{Cage or freedom, Einstein?}
"Freedom.”
Reg cringed when the corroded roof door creaked on opening. The sound echoed down into the building. If he didn’t know I was coming, he does now. A floor by floor search was his first thought, before he noticed the drops of fresh blood.
Fading sunlight peeked through small stairway windows on each landing. The stench of urine, decaying building sediment, and decades old machinery oil, crept with him and his glock down into the gloomy heart of the warehouse. The blood trail led through the entrance to the ground floor. Either Fare was hiding on that floor, or he was long gone through the vagrant doggie door.
Reg took position beside the entrance, with his back against the wall. He held the glock gripped in both hands, chest high.
"Johnathan Fare, police. I’m not here to hurt you,” he lied, “or accuse you of anything, I just want to talk.”
In the musty silence that followed, Reg remembered Whitfield’s casefile. Fare hated being called by his birth name.
"Him, are you there? I know you’re not a bad person. You just had a run of rotten luck. Could happen to anyone. Come out and talk to me about it. I can clear some things up for you. What do you say?”
Him felt surprise when the cop mentioned his name. He hated both names, but Him was better than John, because his mother named him John. The only person who gave enough respect, to call Him by the name he liked least, was Dr. Whitfield.
The cop said he wanted to clear things up. Him didn’t want clear things. Control over people always telling Him what to do, is what was wanted. Whitfield started to give it, but she was taken away. Could this cop give what was wanted, like Whitfield tried to?
Reg took the continued silence as a sign that his hidden exit did exist. He peeked quickly through the doorway to survey the room. Scary, deep shadows littered the landing. The only light seeped through small holes in the plywood boarded to the windows.
“A flashlight would be nice, but there’s no Ben & Jerry’s in hell, either. Nothing to it but to do it, Reg,” he said, and cautiously entered the first floor of the warehouse.
Four steps in, he was startled by a dazzle of movement to his left. Iron knuckles crunched his cheek—fwapp! Reg stumbled sideways and fell, spraying up a heavy cloud of sawdust. His glock clanked through the cloud and came to a sliding stop, ten feet away. Fare was on top of him in an instant, delivering jackhammer blows to his face.
Reg deflected as much as he could with his forearms. He bucked his hips, and his attacker’s balance was skewed momentarily, but Fare reset quickly and continued his vicious assault.
In a last ditch effort to stave off the approaching blackout, Reg mustered his strength and bucked his hips a final time. He might as well have been in hell, hoping for that pint of Ben and Jerry’s. His attacker’s surprise attack proved too much.
His last sight before losing consciousness was the Levi’s wearing, male model, who strolled out of Hilliard's office. He had hit the lottery in every state on the same day, but would never see a dime of the money.