Night Terrors by Dennis Palumbo

Neal Alcott, who sat tapping his fingers on the armrest between us.
    â€œFirst, two weeks ago, the guard who killed John Jessup is shot,” I said at last. “Then, this morning, the judge who sentenced Jessup to prison. So the Bureau figures it’s the work of the same man, carrying out the promise he made in that last letter.”
    â€œThat’s the way we see it.”
    â€œA serial killer avenging the death of another serial killer?”
    His fingers stopped tapping. “The guy who shot Cranshaw and Judge Loftus is no serial. Just some garden variety murderer, with a hit list. It’s personal.”
    â€œFine distinction. The point is, I assume you’re worried that he hasn’t finished his mission.”
    â€œProbably not. That’s why we’ve contacted the ADA who prosecuted Jessup, the jury foreman, the Cleveland cops who bagged him…”
    â€œWhat about Jessup’s defense attorney? The killer might blame him for providing an inadequate defense.”
    â€œMaybe.” A sardonic smile. “We could end up with a helluva long list…”
    We came to a stop at a deserted intersection, then turned down a side street. Like nearby Allentown—whose economic collapse was memorialized in a pop song by Billy Joel—Braddock reminded me of nothing so much as a frontier ghost town. Foreclosed homes, shuttered family businesses. Streets needing repaired. Only the bars, neon lights buzzing against the hollow night, showed signs of life.
    Then, just past the city limits, I caught sight of a low, brooding building off to my right. Easily twice the length of a football field, its knobby, uneven black shape stretched like a fallen giant against the foothills.
    It was a steel mill. Or once had been. Abandoned now. Unworked, from the look of it, for many years. Smokestacks rose from its angled roof, no longer pumping clouds of soot into the sky. The blast furnaces that once burned like suns long since gone cold, dead.
    Unlike Pittsburgh, whose seventeen miles of steel works had been torn down, victims of the economic cataclysm that ultimately revitalized the city, towns like Braddock had no reason to dismantle their dying mills and factories. Nothing was going to take their place.
    By now I could see the blurred contours of a Motel 6 loom up out of the patchwork night. It was a squat, two-storied building half-buried under the past three days’ snowfall. As we pulled into the lot, I noticed there were only a few other vehicles parked there, noses angled toward the lights of the motel, as though for warmth.
    Alcott and I got out of the car, stepping into a bitter cold that seemed to cling, unyielding, like a carapace. Billy shut off the engine and joined us.
    Moments later, the lights of the trailing black sedan swept the lot. The two field agents parked, then crunched across the snow to meet up with their boss.
    â€œYou three wait in the lobby a while, okay?” Alcott’s gloved hand indicated Billy and the two agents. “Probably got a vending machine in there. Maybe get some coffee.”
    â€œFine with me,” Billy said. “Long as it’s warm, I don’t care where we go.”
    One of the other agents nodded gravely. Then, without another word, the three men went into the lobby, a small, well-lit room under a snow-draped canopy.
    Agent Alcott turned to me. “Let’s go, Doc.” Breath coming in frosted puffs.
    I followed him up an exterior staircase to the second floor, through a heavy access door, and down the corridor. The air in here was warm, close, prickling on the skin after the brutal chill outside.
    Walking briskly down the corridor, our footsteps muffled by the stiff green carpet, we passed closed doors on either side of us. Old, worn, paint-flecked. Somehow I sensed— knew —that the rooms within were all empty.
    Then, approaching the end of the hall, I heard—
    â€œWhat the hell?” I froze, turned to