Page 45 of Kill For Me Kill For You
Amanda saw the dumpster at the corner of the alley, just like Naomi said. She opened the lid. It was full of glass. If she moved it, it would make a lot of noise, like dragging a box of bells across rough concrete. She left it and found the gate to the alley unlocked, just as Naomi had said. Counting the houses from the rear, she moved north and stopped when she got to the rear of Quinn’s house. Amanda put her shoulder blades against the wall opposite, and ran at Quinn’s backyard wall. She leapt, got her hands on top of it, dragged herself up, but banged her right knee hard against the brick. Scrambling, she crawled up on top and swung her legs over. Her boots hit the grass. She stayed low, watched the house.
No lights on in any of the windows at the rear. Amanda pushed upwards into a crouch, but couldn’t help a low moan as her knee clicked, sending a shockwave of pain through the joint. The right knee – same one that she’d banged against the wall. She looked at it now, saw her jeans had been ripped over the kneecap.
It wouldn’t take her weight at first. She thought it could collapse at any moment.
Fuck.
Tentatively, she took a step, testing the joint. The throbbing blazed when she tried to use it. There were two options now. Keep going or haul herself back over the wall and call Naomi, tell her that something had gone wrong.
The tool shed was just ahead of her.
She thought for a moment.
It could still work.
Hobbling now, she reached the shed. It had an old padlock securing the slide bar in the locked position. Just as Naomi had said.
The lock on the tool shed is a single bolt, padlocked. The frame is rusted, the screws too. The wood is old. That tool shed has probably been there since the seventies. There’s only a couple hundred coats of varnish holding the thing together. A screwdriver should deal with the bolt.
The bar was set into the wood with eight screws. All rusted. Amanda took the screwdriver from her pocket. She had brought the wrong type. A flathead would’ve been easier. She managed to work it between the bar and the wood and then pulled. The screws came out of the wood with a dry crack. The bar fell to the lawn, the sound dulled on the grass.
The door opened outwards. The little side window for the shed was covered in cobwebs, but the worktable was clean. Tools hung on nails, planks of wood were stacked on the floor. Even monsters have hobbies.
Like I said, if you don’t have a gun, you’re gonna need something else – something heavy duty to take this guy out. He’s big and very strong. A knife won’t do it. Not like Crone. Inside the tool shed you’ll see an axe. I saw it from the shed window. It’ll still be there. Take it. That’s what you use. One good swing is all you’ll need . . .
Amanda found the axe on the top shelf, lifted it down.
You’ll only get one chance at this. You have to make it count. If he’s not down after that then you get out of there because he’ll kill you. If you do what I tell you, then you’ll have all the time in the world to make that swing. Take these burner phones . . .
Amanda took the first burner phone from her pocket, switched it on and placed it on the worktop. Then left the tool shed with the door ajar.
Now was the time.
Up until this point she could call it off. Just walk away.
In a few seconds, it would be too late.
She hesitated, the axe heavy in her hands. But it wasn’t just the axe that weighed her down. She was about to attack a man. A real person. She would be ending their life in a bloody, horrific murder.
She stood there, motionless, frozen in place by her innate humanity. It takes a lot to kill someone. Human beings in crisis cannot think straight; their instinct to preserve life gets sidelined in the sea of their desperation. In the absence of a psychological disorder or crisis or the impairment to rational thinking brought about by drugs or alcohol, it is very hard to kill another living, breathing member of the human race. She knew all these things. She’d thought about them a lot.
Amanda’s dream came back to her. The same one she had almost every night since she’d got out of the hospital.
Adrift in a stormy sea, in a small boat.
Luis and Jess beside the fire burning on the beach, guiding her home, yet impossible to reach. With Crone dead, Amanda felt those seas calming. There was one final storm to get through, and then she could step onto sand and enjoy that welcoming fire.
She looked down at the axe.
She had rationalized Crone’s death many times. She’d come to believe that killing him was not an act of murder: it was an act of mercy – she was saving the lives of his future victims. Another parent wouldn’t have to feel her pain, her loss. She told herself now that it was the same with Quinn.
Amanda closed her eyes. She remembered that day on the subway. Right before Crone had glanced up at her. She could smell the other people surrounding her in the carriage – their perfume, aftershave and sweat, and the faint odor of hot motor oil and grease that pervaded the subway. She could feel the vibration from the brakes beneath her feet. The sweat on her hands in those gloves. Her fist wrapped round the butt of the gun. She saw herself, no longer in memory, but the fantasy of what could have happened, as she pulled the gun from her coat, and pointed it at Crone’s head, and pulled the trigger, hearing the blast . . .
Her eyes snapped open. The sound of her imaginary gunfire still in her ears. In Amanda’s mind, she was not going to kill a man named Quinn who had raped and murdered a girl she had never met. No, Amanda was killing Crone tonight.
She swung the axe at the kitchen window of the house, and it broke through with more noise than she’d been expecting. Glass exploded around her, but most of it fell into the house. Amanda took the axe and limped behind the tool shed, hunkered down and waited.
She glanced up at the house when she saw a beam of light hit the lawn.
