About 3pm I got a phone call from Detective Clapton. “You want to see the end of this?” he asked.

“I do,” I replied. “You have him?”

“We do – and we have the weapon too.”

So I waved down my tail and had them take me back to the 12th precinct. I walked into the kill shop to see a lot of very satisfied people. They had their man, and they had him good. It was obvious on the faces of everyone there.

“Gary!” called Gloria, waving me over.

“Captain,” I replied. “Everyone looks like a well-fed cat.”

She was even smiling, which was a bit frightening. “Do you know how rare it is to catch a serial killer this quickly?” She asked. “Of course you do. Well not only did this guy have the weapon, but he had trophies. He took pictures of his victims – including the missing girl.”

I let out a long, slow whistle. “Damn. I had been hoping I was wrong. Has he admitted to it?”

“He hasn’t said a thing since we brought him here. Eric’s got him in interrogation room two with the Feds.”

“And the weapon?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like a pistol with an overly-large grip. Apparently there’s an air compressor inside the grip that charges up to maximum in less than a second. Between that and his trophies this one’s done. We haven’t worked out yet the logistics of his kills or how he did them at the speed he did, but that’s for the lab guys to work out.”

I nodded and found myself a chair. “Any thing about why I got dragged into this?”

“Not a clue. Maybe you can find that one out yourself.”

I looked up at my former boss. “Oh please,” I started. “You don’t want to put a civilian into the interrogation mix. Imagine what the trial will be like.”

“Actually I think it’s a good idea,” came another voice. I turned my head to see Agent Faulkner. “We’ve been working him pretty hard and we haven’t gotten anywhere. Maybe if the object of his obsession were to talk with him he’d open up.”

I considered it for a moment. I finally relented. “Let’s make it quick,” I said. “I have somewhere to be at 5.”

Faulkner led me to the interrogation room, where Eric and Agent Borges were already seated across from Chalone, who looked like mentally he wasn’t even in the room. I walked in and Eric stood to give me his chair. He looked at me for a moment as if he were calculating what to say, but he ultimately stayed silent and left the room. He would be with the others watching through the two-way glass, looking for any subtle clues.

“James,” I said to the prisoner.

He looked at me and for a moment brightened up, and then it was if his ego was a balloon and it just popped. “I guess it really is over,” he said with a voice that sounded like it hadn’t been used in a while.

“Educate me,” I said.

“I always knew that if they managed to drag you into this that it would probably end in short order.”

“It was you that dragged me into this in the first place,” I shot back. “Certainly you had to expect it.”

He started to giggle. It was unsettling. “I never wanted you involved,” he said after a moment of this. “Running into you at the first crime scene was an accident. Pure coincidence, nothing more.”

“If that’s the case then why the painting at the second crime scene?”

“Not my idea.”

Everyone sat bolt upright at that. You could even tell that the people on the other side of the mirror had done the same, even without a sound.

“You have a partner,” Borges said.

Chalone giggled again. “No, not a partner,” he managed between breaths. “A boss.” He looked back at me. “He’s really interested in you. As soon as he learned about you he decided to tweak the plan.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He thinks you’re interesting. He knows a lot about you although I got the impression that it’s all recent research. He says he’s never met you but that he plans to at some point.”

“How about a name?” Borges asked.

“He calls himself Freddy, although I’m absolutely certain that’s a lie.” He started giggling again. “He likes your scars,” he continued. “He likes your tastes in hookers. He likes your absolute disregard for conventional morality. I know he has plans for you. I’m sorry I’m not going to see how it comes out.”

“You’re not exactly going anywhere,” I pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised I’m not already dead.”

“No one here wants you dead,” Borges said.

“Yeah they do,” Chalone shot back with surprising venom, “but they’re willing to use the courts and a truly ineffective death penalty system. No, I expect my boss will throw me to the winds any second now.”

In every story with odd elements to it there is always a moment where everything goes off the rails. That’s what the movies tell us. A moment where no matter how much you have planned to tried to understand the psyche of a psychopath something happens that you had no clue was coming. Hell, I describe two of the times I got shot that way. And right at this moment came just such an occurrence.

There was suddenly another person in the room. The door hadn’t opened. There hadn’t been any sound. Just one instant he wasn’t there and the next instant he was. There was a smell like gunpowder, but slightly off. All that had time to register was the smell and that he was neat, tall, and in a white suit holding Chalone’s gun when he said, “Hi. I’m Freddy.” He then shot Chalone in the forehead.

I don’t really understand what happened next. Chalone flew backwards in his chair, blood already spurting out the wound when he suddenly froze in place. Borges had stood up and was reaching for his own weapon when he suddenly slowed down – like he was moving through thick syrup. He was trying to look back at us while grabbing his gun.

Freddy strode over to Agent Borges and looked him up and down. “Hmm,” he said. “You’re an interesting one. You get to live for a while. It will be like a game of chess, you versus me.” He raised the weapon and shot Borges in the shoulder, spinning him away – where he froze in place. “Can’t leave you unscathed though,” Freddy said.

I was still watching it all just dumbstruck. I hadn’t even moved.

“Well you were an interesting diversion,” the man said. He pointed the gun at my forehead. “By now you’ve figured out that I can change how people move.” I hadn’t but let’s just move on. “I’m manipulating time,” he continued. “No one outside of this room even knows what is happening in here yet. They’re going to discover you and James over here dead, the FBI man injured and the weapon missing. It should look pretty funny on the videotape of this room – like everything exploded all at once. They won’t see me though.

“Like I said, you were an interesting diversion, but you helped them put the pieces together faster than I thought they would. James was right about that one. Most people would hide in shame with your predilection for the working girls but you even kept seeing them, even with your police coverage. That interested me, but James was wrong; I don’t actually need you for anything. Goodbye, Mr. Carter.”

He then fired, and everything went black.