Boomerangs
                           By Craig W. Steele


Stevens’ Law:  Karma makes it possible for lessons
to be learned and development to take place. — José Stevens, Ph.D.

Steele’s Corollary to Steven’s Law:  Karma makes it possible for lessons to be learned and development to take place — if it doesn’t kill you first.

Chris Inman slithered toward the alley, hugging the front of the hospital to avoid as much of the feeble light from the streetlamps as possible.  Intern Alley soon yawned before him.  The light in the alley faded from evening’s gloam near the street to velvet-black along its length, brightening again just before it opened into the ambulance bay of Mercy Hospital.

During the day, Intern Alley vibrated with life as throngs of hospital workers and visitors used it for convenient access to and from the hospital.  Fear kept it deserted now.  No one knew when or where the Angel of the Alleys would strike next.  No one wanted to be next to feel the deep and deadly cut of his knife, or to have his calling card — a pair of white paper wings — pinned to their back.

It was impossible to light every alley in Erie, Pennsylvania, so city authorities warned everyone to avoid using the alleys at night.  No longer were they safe convenient throughways after dark; now they were all potential tunnels of death.
 
Of course, not everyone listened.  Most who insisted on using them after dark made it through safely, while others ... picked the wrong alley, at the wrong time.  Seven people had died so far and, so far, the police could not determine any pattern to the killings.

“If only they’d listen to me,” Inman whispered. 

He was certain he had the pattern figured out.  He knew the Angel would be lurking in Intern Alley tonight.  As a volunteer Auxiliary Policeman, he had assumed the police would listen to him and would take his words seriously. He’d been wrong.

Inman paused in the entrance to the alley.  He squinted his eyes and jammed his glasses tightly against his forehead, as if that would help him see into the inkwell-like blackness ahead.

“If only Frank was here,” Inman whispered.  Frank Matlock was his best friend and a fellow AP.  But Frank was home watching Monday Night Football.  Frank hadn’t believed him any more than the Chief had.

A sound ahead of him in the alley made Inman hold his breath.  His spine tingled and he shivered.  He zipped his jacket a little higher, stepped a few feet into the alley, hunkered down beside a Dumpster — and froze.  He knew he’d seen a shadow flit among the shadows. 

Inman gripped his claw hammer, his only weapon, more tightly in his right hand.  With his other, he removed his AP radio from its case, ready to scream for back-up if he needed it.

He waited, silent and unmoving, for what seemed like forever, trying to spot any movement from the phantom he was sure was lurking among the shadows.

Without warning, stars exploded into supernovas behind his eyelids.  The back of his neck warmed with his own blood.  He cut his forehead on the Dumpster as he pitched forward.  His cheek bled from a gash delivered by a broken brick in the alley’s pavement. 
Then a shadow engulfed him, striking again and again ... and again.  Pain danced through his body, until he felt something give way inside his skull.

As consciousness faded, a light shone in Inman’s eyes.

“Oh, God, no!  For Chris’sakes, Chris, I thought you were the Angel,” Frank’s panicked voice echoed dully in Inman’s ears.  “Hang on, just hang on, buddy.  I’ll get help at the hospital.”

A soft grunt was the only warning Inman could give his friend.  He dimly heard Frank running down the alley, toward the ambulance bay.  The sound of running stopped, replaced by a brief scream and a gurgled cough.  As the final darkness claimed him, Inman thought he heard one last cry.

#   #   #

“Uh-oh, Johnny, look who’s here.”  Detective Bill Blair nudged Sergeant John Roberts’ elbow and nodded toward the tall, thin, dark-haired man exiting an unmarked car. The man wrapped his camel-colored trench coat around himself more tightly as a gust of October air whistled by.

“Captain Weber!  Great, just what we needed,” Roberts responded.  Distracted from his notebook, he ran a hand absently through his light-brown hair and consciously smoothed the scowl off his face before Weber got too close.

Captain Weber avoided the herd of reporters and onlookers and ducked under the yellow police tape at the entrance to Intern Alley.  He stopped in front of the two detectives.  As always, he glanced disapprovingly at Blair’s portly, pudgy, gray-haired figure.

“So, what do you have for me, Roberts?  Do we have the Angel, or not?”

“We think so, Captain.”

“You think so?  And what makes you think so, Sergeant?”

“One of the victims, Frank Matlock, an AP, has angel wings pinned to his back.”  Roberts pointed to Matlock’s body lying about halfway down the alley.

“Who’s that guy over there?” asked Weber, flicking his head in the direction of the Dumpster.

“That’s Chris Inman, another AP.  His body was the first one discovered, early this morning, by the crew of a garbage truck when they came to empty the Dumpster. Apparently, Matlock killed him.  There was a nightstick near Matlock’s body that looks to be the murder weapon.”

“Let me get this straight, Roberts — one AP killed another AP by beating him to death with a police nightstick?”

“Looks that way, Captain.  I’m guessing Matlock mistook Inman for the Angel and clubbed him from behind.  He must have panicked, freaked out, thinking he was facing the Angel, so to speak, and just pounded away until Inman was unconscious.”

“What the hell were they doing here anyway?”

“Well, Inman was trying to sell a theory of his last Friday at the station that he’d worked out the Angel’s pattern, but no one was buying.  I’ve already sent officers to interview both widows.  They reported back awhile ago. Inman had asked Matlock to come with him to Intern Alley last night, but Matlock’s wife said that Matlock thought Inman was nuts, so he stayed home to watch football.  After the first quarter ended, though, he told her he couldn’t let his friend go out alone, and left to find Inman.” Roberts glanced from one body to the other.  “Guess he did.”

“So, we don’t have the Angel, then.”

“We think he’s the third vic, Captain,” said Detective Blair.

“Third vic?”  Weber glared at Roberts.

“Right over here, Captain, inside the manhole,” said Sergeant Roberts. 

Roberts and Blair led Weber to an open manhole, set off with orange cones and yellow tape, three-fourths of the way down the alley.  The cover lay a few feet to one side.

As the three peered into the shaft, Roberts said, “This guy had a knife, still clutched in his hand, that we think is the weapon that killed Matlock.  He also had more paper wings and pins in his pockets.  We haven’t identified him, yet.”

“So, Matlock kills Inman, then recognizes him and runs down the alley to the hospital for help, obviously, where the Angel, we think, meets him and slits his throat, and then the Angel falls down an open manhole getting away and...”

“And breaks his neck, Captain,” Roberts finished.

“There’s also some electrical burns on his right side, Captain.  He must have hit some of the hot wires that the maintenance crew left unsecured when they quit for the day,” Blair added.

“So, we have to decide whether to reward the city workers for killing the Angel, or prosecute them for manslaughter for not closing up the manhole when they left work, is that it?”

“Not exactly, Captain.”  Roberts shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, consulting his notebook.  “We’ve identified who was working this job and I’ve already sent officers to their homes, and…”

“And what, Roberts?”

“And the electrician, Omar Watts, died late last night.  He’d been building an addition onto his house and was, naturally, doing the wiring himself.  He fried himself.  No one can understand how — he was a master electrician.

“The other guy on the maintenance team was Fred Jobber.  Today was his day off.  He fell off a ladder this morning, cleaning leaves out of a second story rain gutter. Broke his neck, and a bunch of other bones, and died in his front yard an hour ago.”


Craig W. Steele is a writer and university biologist who lives in the urban countryside of northwestern Pennsylvania.  His stories have appeared in The Storyteller, The Hiss Quarterly, Long Story Short, Concisely, The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine and elsewhere.