It had been an easy decision for Amanda not to go to the police, but she remained glued to the TV during the days that followed. Mostly, she watched the news, wanting to know if the puppet man had been arrested, or the crime scene identified. Her story was on several times—apparently, it was a big deal for someone to escape from these traps. Two policemen went over the details about past victims who had not made it out in time. Both were male. The first one had been guilty of pretending to be sick, so the puppet man (or Jigsaw, as the police called him) had injected him with a poison and placed the antidote in a safe.
"Sounds easy enough, right?" asked one of the police. "Well, with Jigsaw there's always a catch. The man was smeared with a flammable substance in a dark room with only a candle to be able to read the numbers on the wall. To make matters even more tricky, shards of glass were spread out over the room. Clearly done with the intention of making the victim lose his balance and set himself on fire."
The TV cameras flashed to the crime scene, revealing a heavily burned corpse. Amanda felt ready to vomit.
"Clearly, the victim did not make it."
The camera flashed to another scene, showing a heavy corpse encased in barb wire. Much like the first trap, this took place in a small and enclosed room, filled completely with wire. Amanda gasped as the same policeman began to explain what happened.
"This man, apparently, had a problem with injuring himself with razors. As a result, Jigsaw decided to test him in a way that would force him to cut himself. There was a door on the other side of the room which, we are extrapolating, was open at the time of the test. If the victim did not reach the door in the allotted period of time, it would close." The screen showed the door bolted shut. "Medical evidence states that this man climbed through the wires so quickly that he had bled to death before he was halfway across the room."
Amanda almost snorted at that test. If only that had been hers, instead of the reverse bear trap. She was an expert in dealing with pain that came from cutting, and the wires could not be much worse than a razor blade. Granted, Amanda never cut herself on multiple parts at once, but if her life was at stake…His test had been pitifully easy, and still he failed.
"Recent evidence shows that Jigsaw has acted again." The camera panned to the room that Amanda had woken up in, and for a moment Amanda found herself unable to breathe. "Although there is a dead corpse present—" There was a short pause for the camera to focus in on the dead body, "—it appears that Jigsaw's intended victim was able to escape. Due to a missing tape, we are unable to ascertain for sure what the victim was intended to, but investigators believe that this object—" The camera pointed to the reverse bear trap "—was attached to the victim, probably about the face, and the victim was supposed to disassemble the trap within a given period of time. We can conclude that the corpse somehow had access to whatever tool that would neutralize the trap, and the victim managed to pass the test."
Neutralize the trap…disassemble the trap…they all sounded like such poor and technical terms for what Amanda had been required to do. She wanted to shout, "He had that thing on my fucking head and the key was in the fucking body!" but Liz was making dinner and she didn't want some nosy neighbor to overhear. The walls were paper thin, Amanda knew.
"So far, we have to wait until the DNA evidence is gathered before taking further steps, but we find this exciting because we may come face to face with one of Jigsaw's survivors. Once we catch their heinous murderer, the victim's testimony can only help to ensure that he is locked up for good."
"Detective, do you believe that locking the Jigsaw killer up will stop the slaughtering?" asked the announcer in a bemused tone of voice. "Such a mastermind must have people working under him."
Here, the detective shrugged. "We can only hope that by disarming the leader, whatever followers that may exist will realize it is in their best interest to stop." Here he paused and the TV camera zoomed in on his face. "Let it be known that the Jigsaw killer has made a grave mistake in allowing this person to go free, and it will ultimately result in his—or her—undoing."
"Do we know for sure that the victim is still living?"
"We wait for DNA tests to confirm our results," the detective repeated. "Certain details concerning the victim may be kept silent, if this victim is still alive, for fear of retribution. We will know within a few days whether the DNA belongs to someone who is still alive."
With that, there was a commercial break. Amanda's heart was pounding almost completely out of her chest. The victim the police were talking about…that was her. They'd find her immediately because her DNA was on file. She didn't think that they'd send her back to prison—not for life, anyway—because they needed her testimony against Jigsaw. She remembered watching TV shows where someone who killed completely out of spite was given a lesser sentence in exchange for his testimony against a larger killer. Amanda hadn't killed out of spite…why, she had barely registered that the man was alive before she had plunged the knife into him. The largest problem, Amanda realized, was not what the police would do to her but what Jigsaw would do to her after they were through with her. He'd probably kill her hands on next time…
As a result of this information, whenever the phone rang over the next several days, Amanda's face would turn white and she would momentarily stop breathing. Whenever she heard a knock on the apartment door, her heart would stop and then race so quickly that Amanda thought Liz must be able to hear it.
Amanda stayed in the apartment during this time. She knew that doing so would get her fired, but she didn't care. The idea of leaving the apartment and seeing other people was too much to handle. Maybe if she just stayed put, the police wouldn't know where she was living and give up on finding her and making her testify. Besides, she knew that he would be watching her and he would capture her again if she dared to leave her home.
Of course, Amanda realized that he probably had advanced technology and was spying at her inside from miles away. You couldn't create those kinds of traps without being rich. Amanda had never seen anything like the trap she had worn before, and she imagined that even if it did exist elsewhere, it must be rare. So not much was beyond his power.
Yet if he was watching and planning to kill her, he was taking his time. Perhaps he wanted to catch Amanda the next time she left her home, or the next time she fell into drugs. There must be others working for him. Maybe he was a terrorist, or working for a terrorist agency.
She closed her eyes, sighed, and tried to take a deep breath. It didn't work. As she inhaled, she tasted the metal and the blood. Had the blood been hers? Perhaps she was now infected with some disease. She should get tested. But this would mean leaving the apartment. If she was sick, she probably had longer to live if she remained where she was than if she took the chance at capture.
As Amanda pondered this, she paced back and forth in her room so she didn't hear the doorbell. It wasn't large. A few steps in any direction took her to a wall. But it was something.
"Mandy!" shouted her sister. "Police are here and they want to see you."
Damn.
It was over. She was either going back to jail right away–which might be preferable to being captured again—or going to have to answer some questions that would result in her being sent to jail. She tried to steady her breathing and realized that she was crying. This would not be surprising for anyone else but Amanda was used to being able to keep a level head.
For the most part.
"Coming." Her voice sounded harsh and scratchy, as though she had a sore throat.
She walked into what Liz called the "living room", but the only part of the room that made it livable was a TV. Even that was ten years old.
Two officers waited there, still standing. One was Chinese and looked to be in his thirties. The other was black, and more elderly. She recognized the Chinese one from the news, but the black officer was a mystery. At least they didn't have Detective Matthews with them…
"Amanda Young?" the Chinese man asked.
"Yeag…" Amanda cleared her throat. "Yeah. That's me."
"You are familiar with the Jigsaw case?"
Amanda paused. Should she lie? Did they know for a fact that it was really her they were looking for?
"We have evidence that links your DNA to a case our force has been working on for several months. We need you to come to the station and testify," explained the black one.
"C-can't we do it here?" she asked.
The black cop narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
Fortunately, Liz answered so that Amanda didn't have to. "She hasn't left the place in days. No idea why, but at least she's not out screwing guys."
Amanda didn't bother yelling at Liz to shut up, something she would have done without hesitation before her capture.
"How'd you know where to find me?" she asked, for lack of anything better to say.
"We received an anonymous tip, possibly from the Jigsaw killer himself, that you lived here," the Chinese man explained.
"I'm Detective Tapp and that's Detective Sing," the black man said. "We've been working on a case for awhile and given that you're alive, we think you could be important to getting the killer."
"What do you want to know?" Amanda asked, voice shaky and so quiet it must have been a strain for the detectives to hear her.
"Ever hear of the Jigsaw Killer?" Tapp asked.
"Not before I was kidnapped by him."
"Mandy never follows the news," Liz interjected. "I suppose most people her age don't, but she's been watching intensely the last few days."
Liz seemed to forget that she was only a few years older than her sister.
"Ms. Young, we found your DNA around the crime scene of an unidentified man who suffered from a drug overdose but appeared to have died by being stabbing to death. Your fingerprints were on the weapon." He paused. "We left some of this information hidden while filming the news segment, but it is easy to prove that you have killed an unsuspecting man."
Amanda barely flinched. "Meaning?"
"If you don't come with us to the police station and agree to testify, we can have you charged for manslaughter."