Lilith: a novel (26 page)

“Shut the frigging door!” Travis barked.

They were both now aware that a police presence had entered the building. That was impossible to miss. Although the police had done their best to be furtive and silent, the telltale signs had been there: The police had spent the better part of an hour huddling. Travis had peeked through the window and caught a glimpse of one man wearing body armor—the kind that SWAT teams and soldiers in Iraq wear.

“Shut the door
now
!” Travis shouted again. Jessica whirled around toward the open doorway. There was no barrier between them and the blank, dark space of the hall.

They had already been poised literally on the edge of life or death. And now, it seemed, their tormenters had jacked up the stakes a notch higher.

Jessica saw that this room did indeed have an intact door. She ran over to the wall and tugged the doorknob; the door swung toward her on rusty hinges. She slammed it shut.

“Lock it!” Travis ordered.

“How—” Her first thought was that given the age of the building, the door could only be locked with a key—and probably an old barrel key that had long since been melted down into scrap. But they were in luck (relatively speaking, of course): The door locked from the inside of the room with a simple button lock. Jessica pushed the button and heard it click.

They could now hear the sounds of the men exiting the stairwell into the main fourth floor hallway. It was a matter of minutes and seconds now.

Jessica looked at the ancient door with its simple lock and then looked at Travis. They seemed to share the same thought—though Jessica doubted that Travis had an inkling of what else she was thinking.

“Baby, that door ain’t never going to hold, is it?”

“No.”

There were footsteps at the far end of the hallway, approaching fast. They would have to turn a couple of corners. And they might make a wrong turn or two. But their arrival was inevitable. The end was inevitable.

“So I guess it ends here and now, baby,” Travis said. “But if these men want to take us prisoner, they’re going to have to pay for us in blood. You stand behind me, Jess, and shoot as many of ‘em as you can. I’ll go down before you do.”

Jessica couldn't believe what she was hearing. To Travis, this was apparently some sort of a game.

This was her last chance. It was now or never.

She raised her gun and leveled it at Travis.

“Travis, drop that gun. Drop it right now.”

Even though Jessica had already threatened Travis in a similar manner earlier this evening, he seemed unable to comprehend what was taking place.

Travis did not drop his gun, nor did he raise it to counter her threat. A look of supreme disappointment crossed his face.

“Jessie—what the hell are you doing?”

“Just drop your gun. Toss it away.”

For a brief instant, she thought that he was going to attempt to shoot her instead. But he sighed and tossed his gun off to the side, onto the floor.

Then, without asking her permission, he sat down. The floor in the front of the room was covered with sawdust and what looked like the splinters of old crates. But what difference did that make now? Staying clean was the least of their concerns.

“I didn't say you could sit down,” Jessica said. She felt her gun trembling in her hand. It had been one thing to make a vague, implied threat with the weapon back there in the alley. But to do it like this, for real, with the police just down the hall…well, this was something different.

“What’s the harm?” Travis countered. “If I’m your prisoner, then why can’t I have a seat? He swept his arm in the direction of the closed door. “After all, we’re both going to be prisoners of the cops in a few minutes’ time.”

Jessica nodded absently. There was nothing to be gained, really, by making an issue of his sitting. His gun was on the floor, but in order to reach it, he would have to lean over and lunge for it. And there would be plenty of time to shoot him if he tried that.

She had to keep her eyes on Travis. However, she thought she heard the men down the hall turn into the leg of the hallway that would ultimately lead them to this room.

“What are you thinking, Jessie? Huh? Will you tell me that?” 

He looked up at her, that smug smirk on his face. Suddenly she was so angry at him—for mucking everything up, for bringing them both to this.

So why shouldn't he know?

“What I’m thinking, Travis, is that you’re going to be in a lot more trouble than me. Because, you see, while I may have helped you, I had no idea what you were really doing. Then when I tried to stop, you threatened me; you told me that you’d kill me if I didn't keep going on dates with those men.”

He required a few seconds to process this. Then he said, “Oh, really, baby, is that the way you’re goin’ to play this?”

The remark was meaningless, more or less. And while she was trying to decipher it, her guard dropped for a second, and Travis’s hand darted forward. He didn't reach for his gun, as she might have expected. Instead, he swept up a handful of the sawdust and splinters on the floor, and flung them in her face.

In a second’s time, the already dark room went completely black, and she felt an unbearable stinging in her eyes. She dropped her pistol and started frantically rubbing her eyes. It took her a few seconds—at least five or ten.

When she opened her eyes, Travis was standing there before her, his pistol recovered. He had leveled the gun at her. His beautiful, familiar face was a mystery to her now, filled as it was with what appeared to be implacable anger. Could she blame him, really, for what he was about to do? She had not only defied him, she had revealed her plan to betray him.

“Travis, please don’t,” she said. The footsteps in the hallway were now just outside the door.

“Open up, police!”
a male voice shouted.
“Miss Knox—are you in there? I need you to open up that door for me.”

Travis glanced in the direction of the voice.

“Damn,” he said. “They’re calling you by name. Looks like they got you pegged as the weak link of this team.”

Jessica braced herself for the shot that she knew would come now. Why shouldn't Travis kill her? He had nothing to lose, after all. What was one more murder, from his perspective, after all they had done?

But instead Travis dropped his own pistol. He tossed it away, to roughly the place it had been barely a minute ago.

“I thought I could shoot you, baby,” he said. “And I’ll tell you the truth: For a second there, I actually wanted to.”

“Miss Knox! Open the door now!”

There was a loud thud, and the floorboards vibrated beneath their feet as one of the cops kicked the door.

Travis went on: “But then I realized that I couldn't. I guess the truth of the matter is that, even after what you did right now—what you did earlier, in the alley with that cop—I guess I do have a soft spot for you, Jessie. I just can’t do it—shoot you, I mean.”

He punctuated these words with a short laugh. “So I guess we’re going to jail, babe. I’ve been to jail before. It ain’t great, but it ain’t the worst place in the world, either.”

There was another loud crash as the cops kicked the door again. Also, the sound of wood splintering on the doorframe.

“Maybe we’ll be famous,” Travis mused. “Like Bonnie and Clyde, huh? But make no mistake about one thing—we are going down together. I got feelings for you, Jessie, enough to keep me from killing you, but not enough to make me take the fall for you.”

Jessica said nothing in response. She knew that she had only a few seconds to process what Travis was saying. Then her margin for making any sort of decision would be gone.

When the police questioned them, Travis might actually turn out to be the more cooperative of the two. He wouldn't escape blame himself, of course; but he would be more than capable of spreading out the blame between them.

She might protest; she might give them a contradictory story. But in the end it would be her word against Travis’s, wouldn't it? The police wouldn't be surprised by the inconsistencies in their two accounts. Didn't captured criminals try to blame each other all the time?

And to make matters worse, Travis would be telling the truth—or a closer version to the truth than what she would give.

She understood, instantly, what she had to do.

Without acknowledging what Travis had said, she bent down and plucked up the pistol at her feet. She did it so quickly that Travis had no chance to react, not even to say anything in protest.

He wore an expression of total surprise when she shot him—point-blank in the chest.

The impact drove Travis backward. She didn't want to look, though she forced herself. She had to be sure that the job was done. Otherwise, she might have to fire again in the seconds remaining to her.

Travis lay on his back on the floor. There was a ragged hole in the center of his chest. Blood was pumping through the hole.

Then there was another crash, and suddenly the room was filled with two other men.

“Hands up!”
one of them shouted.

Jessica dropped her gun. Then she turned to face the two policemen. Through the glare of their flashlights, she noticed that one of them was wearing SWAT gear. The other one she vaguely recognized as the tall, balding cop she has seen a few hours ago on the sidewalk near the Loft. He was undoubtedly the one who had visited her mother’s house that day, investigating her whereabouts.

Jessica raised both of her hands high in the air. She could afford no mistakes, no misjudgments from here forward.

“I surrender,” she said.

“It’s over,” Alan said. “It’s over before it’s even begun.”

Alan shook his head and stared across the lawn of the ODCI’s office building, and at the interstate beyond.

He, Dave, and Maribel were huddled beside the sole window in their office area. They had just learned that Jessica Knox was dead.

The three of them had been busy preparing for the start of Jessica Knox’s trial, which was scheduled to begin in less than two weeks.

Or rather,
had
been scheduled. There would be no trial for Jessica Knox now.

Travis Hall had died three months ago from a gunshot wound that ruptured his heart.

After placing Jessica Knox under arrest, Alan had immediately called for the paramedics. But Travis was dead before the ambulance even arrived. The coroner later said that Jessica’s accomplice had probably died within minutes of hitting the floor. Although Jessica Knox claimed that she had fired hastily and in self-defense, her single shot had been guided by a deadly aim.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Maribel said. “In the end, she died for love—only not her own love, and not because anyone was infatuated with her.”

To this observation, Alan could only nod silently. Dave let out a long sigh.

Jessica Knox had been stabbed only hours before by Alicia Griggs.

Although Alicia Griggs had gone free that night, she had been arrested two days later. Griggs was charged with aiding and abetting Travis Hall—who had likely intended to murder an Ohio state investigator in the alley of Covey Avenue. When Griggs was arrested in her apartment, she was found to be in possession of several different varieties of illegal narcotics. This only added to her legal problems.

Both Griggs and Knox had been sent to the Dayton Correctional Institution. This in itself was no great coincidence, as there are only three Ohio correctional facilities that house female offenders, and Dayton was the closest of the three to Cincinnati, where both women would be tried separately.

As far as anyone knew, Knox had not even been aware of Griggs’s presence at the Dayton facility, though Griggs was very much aware of Knox. One night shortly before lights out, Griggs cornered the other woman in a deserted corridor and stabbed her repeatedly with a shank.

Griggs—who was struggling with drug rehab, panic attacks, and severe depression—cried out, “You killed Travis, you bitch!” as she delivered the blows.

When the two male guards finally arrived, they had difficulty pulling Griggs off Knox. The killer, who was not an especially large woman, nevertheless fought so viciously that she had to be tased. By the time they subdued her, she was covered in her victim’s blood.

Jessica Knox was rushed to the infirmary; but as in the case of Travis Hall, it was already too late for medical care.

“There will still be a trial,” Alan said. “For Alicia Griggs. Only now Alicia Griggs will go up for Knox’s murder, plus her complicity in what Travis Hall had planned.”

“And Knox will never go to trial,” Maribel added bitterly.

“Yeah,” Alan said.

Since her first meeting with her court-appointed attorney, Jessica Knox had clung to a dubious story: She had indeed been half of the serial killer duo known as Lilith, but she had acted only under duress, and she had never had full knowledge of the extent of Travis Hall’s crimes.

Knox’s attorney had planned to tell the jury that Jessica had also been a victim of Travis Hall. According to this version of events, Knox’s participation in the crimes attributed to Lilith had been secured only through threats of death, physical abuse, and extreme intimidation.

“I still wonder sometimes if she truly knew everything,” Dave said now. Like Maribel and Alan, he was still in shock from the news. Though it was not necessarily a bad thing, from a law enforcement point of view, no one had expected it to end like this.

“Oh, come on, Dave,” Maribel said. “Don’t tell me you think she was innocent.”

“I’m not saying she was innocent,” Dave countered, more than a little defensively. Maribel had long insisted that Dave had developed a misplaced affection for Jessica Knox, all because she had effectively spared his life that night in the alley. “But there are degrees of guilt. Maybe Hall did use some kind of manipulation on her.”

“Right, just like the bank manager who made her clean out a deceased woman’s safety deposit box.”

Since Jessica Knox had been publicly revealed as the only living suspect in the Lilith murders, her probable crimes at the bank had also become a matter of public interest. Seth Greenwald, the bank manager who had been successfully blackmailed by Lilith, had been repeatedly grilled by police—as well as his employer.

No charges were ever filed against Greenwald. From a legal perspective, his behavior had fallen into a gray area. But the senior management of the bank required less exacting criteria. Seth Greenwald had been fired from the bank some weeks ago, Alan knew.

“She was almost certainly guilty of theft at the bank,” Dave acknowledged. “But as for shooting those men—we don’t know.”

“There’s no way Travis Hall could have gotten close enough to those men without Jessica Knox’s close cooperation,” Maribel said. “So she knew. She had to know.”

There was also the matter of the shooting of Travis Hall. Jessica Knox had repeatedly insisted that this was self-defense. Had she gone to trial, though, the prosecution would have argued that Jessica had killed her partner in cold blood, so that he would be unable to testify against her, thereby contradicting her claims of partial innocence.

“For all we know,” Alan said. “Jessica Knox might have fired the head shots that killed Lilith’s three victims. At the very least, she must have known what Travis Hall was doing. But let’s change the subject for a moment. Dave, I understand that you have an announcement to make—a change in your personal status.”

“What?” Dave said. His cheeks immediately flushed red.

“I believe that Dave has a girlfriend,” Alan said. “And she’s not a serial killer. In fact, she’s been vetted by the police.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dave said. “You’re referring to Lisa.”

“How long were you going to hold out on us?” Maribel asked, leadingly.

Alan knew for a fact that this was no news to Maribel, but she would miss no opportunity to needle Dave with such banter. There was no malice in it. Cops needed the occasional practical joke and personal teasing as comic relief. There was an adolescent aspect to such behavior, of course; but it lightened the gloom that so often came with their work.

Both Alan and Maribel were aware the Dave had been dating Lisa Cullen for more than two months. Once the divorced single mother had been cleared of any connection to Lilith’s crimes, there was nothing to stop Dave from asking her out.

This required Dave to come clean about his initial charade, and to reveal that his original presentation of himself had been a concoction. Lisa, Alan knew, had accepted the revelation with good humor. After all, she had not been completely honest in her own dating profile. And she was apparently attracted to the idea of dating a cop—even a mostly desk-bound cop like Dave Hennessey.

Most of us are liars at one time or another
, Alan thought, staring out the window again.
We all make masks for the purpose of hiding our secrets in certain times and situations. And many of those lies are wholly forgivable, in the big scheme of things.

And then there are the people who lie for completely evil ends—people like Jessica Knox and Travis Hall.

“All right, then,” Alan said, sighing and giving the view of the highway one last look. “Let’s get back to work. Last night the story of ‘Lilith’ came to an end, more or less. Today has been a quiet day so far; but the day’s not yet half over.”