“What the fuck, man?” Gabriel said to the smirking Flatfeet beside him, and pulled out a pistol. “Don’t you fucking move. I said don’t—”
Flatfeet strolled inside the kitchen while Gabriel’s gun was still trained on his head. He kicked Barnabas on his broken thigh, but Barnabas didn’t even feel it.
“Stop right now!” Gabriel shot the ceiling.
Plaster and paint rained down in uneven sizes.
“Aren’t you the one who killed my friend Mr. Bunny?” Flatfeet said.
“Stop right where you are. I swear, if you don’t, the next round will go through your brains, you crazy motherfucker.” Gabriel’s hands and voice trembled. “Put your hands in the air.”
Flatfeet complied. Gabriel holstered his gun, walked behind him, and folded one of his arms.
Didn’t cops order suspects to lie down?
As the detective reached up to the other arm, Flatfeet winked at Barnabas.
Within a second, before Barnabas could yell a warning, Flatfeet grabbed the detective’s hand, turned and faced him. Gabriel tried to reach for his gun, but couldn’t wiggle out of Flatfeet’s grasp. He pushed the detective back and smashed him against the wall, and in the moment of disorientation, he relieved the gun from his holster with ease. But he didn’t use it. Instead he dropped it on the floor and kicked it under the sink.
Gabriel hit Flatfeet on his shoulder, but that didn’t even pause the hulking man. But when Flatfeet punched Gabriel’s stomach, the detective’s eyes rolled into his skull. Just as Gabriel doubled over, Flatfeet’s knee connected with his forehead. The detective’s head arched back and hit the wall behind with a loud thud. He crumpled, revealing a blot of blood where his head had banged. It drew an unbroken red line on its way down until he slumped against the wall.
Flatfeet didn’t relent, though. He took a step back and kicked the detective in his face. With the sole of his foot, he pushed Gabriel’s head onto the unmoving wall and a new blot appeared behind him. Then Flatfeet took three steps back, sprinted forward, and repeated the deadly kick. The blot widened like a watermelon pelted at a wall. Gabriel’s face was torn, his lower jaw broken and hanging to the left. He collapsed sideways and sprawled on the floor.
Flatfeet opened a cupboard and retrieved something shiny from it. An icepick. If Gabriel had brought along backup, it would be an optimal time for their entry.
But no one burst through the doors.
Flatfeet turned Gabriel over with his leg and placed the icepick’s tip under the base of Gabriel’s skull.
“You know, Gabriel, I ain’t Mr. Bunny to go down that easy.” Then he put the top of the handle under the heel of his palm. “This time you bit off more than you could chew.”
He took a deep breath and leaned on the icepick with all his strength, his veins threatening to rip the seams of his sleeves. After a few moments of hesitation, the icepick finally slid between the cervical bones, with a gut-wrenching crunch. For good measure, he shook the handle of the icepick, twisted and rotated it. Gabriel’s dirty nails grabbed the carpet, and then let go.
Flatfeet looked at Barnabas, whose mouth gaped in fear. He smiled, but it had no warmth in it.
“Now we gotta do something about your holler,” Flatfeet said, in his hillbilly accent, and stood. “What dish you think your tongue’s best for?”
Part II
Chapter 1
April 5, 2019. 07:26 A.M.
He was sinking in the cold river. The muffled gurgling and the sound of bubbles sent a shiver down his spine. As he descended into the turbid water, he felt something creep up his arms. Slimy tentacles hugged his limbs, and one grappled his throat. A form slowly manifested from the murky depths—a red octopus, but with a man’s head.
Gabriel awoke with a start and almost fell off the mattress. He closed his eyes and calmed his spiked heartbeat. His grip on the bedspread loosened. A minute later, he opened his eyes again. The images and panic had dissipated, his skin chilly under a layer of sweat.
He was in his small second-floor apartment on Elmtree Avenue—a cul-de-sac beside his workplace, the 122nd precinct—not at the bottom of the Styx, being throttled by humanoid octopuses. Gabriel got used to the nightmares starring victims from unresolved cases, and waking up to hyperventilation.
Only a few knew about his battle with this condition. A sleeping disorder, really. But Gabriel didn’t let them talk him into becoming a regular at a shrink’s. He didn’t want to be stuffed with pills that would temporarily chase away the ghosts, but also ruin his brain, which could be used to solve the cases and put the ghosts to rest forever. But his problem was the old ghosts were always replaced with new ones.
He sighed, got up, and shambled to the bathroom.
Thirty minutes later, he was drying his naked body under the draft from a noisy ceiling fan. He put on a crisp white shirt and jeans before pulling a brown jacket on. Everything was fresh because it was an important day. Raymond Hughes, the NYPD commissioner, had finally gotten him an appointment with a special supervisory agent in the FBI.
Gabriel looked in the mirror, more as a ritual than to check for something awry. With five-inch hair that shot out like Einstein’s, and two inches of untrimmed beard, he resembled a homeless person more than the detective first grade he actually was. But he wasn’t going to change his looks anytime soon.
He had a Spartan breakfast, which comprised of bread daubed with jam and regular butter. Who gave a damn about their waistline when dead people invaded their brain every night? From the bedside table, he got his motorcycle key and iPhone XS, his father’s ill-advised Christmas gift the previous year.
As Gabriel headed out, he stopped at the doorway. He turned and walked over to the clothing rod and grabbed the jacket he’d worn yesterday. He inserted a hand into its pocket and took out a Vicks VapoInhaler. He had been used to sniffing menthol since he’d started high school. Except for making him feel energetic, which might well be a placebo, he never understood why he needed it.
He picked up the helmet from the floor near the door as he left.
At the curb stood his motorcycle—a green Kawasaki Z1000. He raked his damp hair back, held it in place with one hand, and pulled the helmet over it before it sprung straight again. He got on the motorcycle and started his journey to Manhattan.
Father Capodanno Boulevard, a hundred-foot wide road running on the eastern end of Staten Island, welcomed him with its non-existent traffic. He rode at medium speed, taking deep breaths, filling his lungs with fresh ocean air. It should be a relaxing Friday morning cruise along South Beach for a small number of people driving on it, with smiles on their faces, probably thinking about the weekend plans.
But not for Gabriel. His mind was rehearsing again, how he was going to convince the head Fed into helping him catch an unknown serial killer. An idea that looked more preposterous by the minute. Well, how else would it look with the small amount of intel he possessed? He didn’t have a body, didn’t have a complaint, and surely didn’t have any evidence of a crime having ever been committed on American soil, least of all in New York State.
All he had was a newspaper article from South Korea about a murder. Noah Smith, an infamous serial killer named Mr. Bunny, who Gabriel had caught the previous month, had directed him to it via email. According to Mr. Bunny, that particular murder had been perpetrated by a serial killer from the US who had already killed more than thirty people inland. Since then, this project had been the main preoccupation of Gabriel’s life.
Fort Wadsworth passed on his left as he climbed the Narrows Bridge, which connected The Rock to Brooklyn. The traffic here wasn’t so bad, and the Kawasaki smoothly added miles to its digital odometer.
Was Gabriel wasting these miles? Thinking about it, there was no guarantee that even if the Feds believed him, he would be included in the task force. That was a scary thought. But then again, with so little to support his case, the chances of persuading the FBI seemed thin. The desire to turn around and call the who
le thing off tempted him. Again.
As he approached a light traffic jam on 5th Avenue, he passed Green-Wood cemetery—the final resting place of many civil war heroes. The peripheral walls overflowed with vines sporting yellow, red, and purple flowers.
Three minutes later, Gabriel was stuck at the perpetual congestion on the Brooklyn Bridge, adding his bit to the exhaust fumes flowing over it. Stuck. Just like he was with the investigation.
Noah’s email had taken him to an article in a South Korean newspaper’s website, about an unsolved murder in Seoul. The victim’s name was Byung-Chul Woo, the octopus man who’d scared Gabriel out of his sleep. Woo’s limbs were sawn lengthwise with surgical precision, and arranged in a circle, the head sitting in its center. A human mutilated into an octopus. The victim had been the owner of a restaurant where Sannakji, a native term for live octopuses, was served. No one could miss the pattern. But what to make of it?
Gabriel had contacted Han, the inspector who’d investigated the case, but had learned nothing except they suspected a white guy. He sent Gabriel a list of Caucasian passengers who had flown in and out of Seoul on the date the victim had been killed. It wasn’t helpful. Gabriel checked out all two hundred-plus US passengers and their backgrounds, and found no suspects.
He didn’t have access to looking into Caucasians from other countries, but that wasn’t necessary because Noah had said the killer was an American. Noah had sent the email to Gabriel as a dare. He’d found the killer all by himself, and he challenged Gabriel to do the same. And Noah wasn’t the type to cheat and win. His conceited personality would consider it beneath him.
Not only did Noah find the killer, but he’d also coached him in police investigative methods. That’s why Gabriel couldn’t find him on the passenger manifest. It wouldn’t be easy to catch someone Noah had shared his knowledge with. But Gabriel had outsmarted Noah, so it was his moral duty to stop this new threat.
As Gabriel turned right onto Broadway, the skyscraper which housed the FBI’s field office came into view. He rehearsed again, from the start.
Whenever an ultra-violent crime was alleged to have been perpetrated by an American citizen outside the US, the country’s police would contact the FBI’s legal attaché there, and the information would be sent back to the US. Someone in the FBI should know about it.
He hoped to get them interested with elementary logic or a straightforward threat. If this guy had the balls and would travel to the other side of the world to torture someone for three hours—the medical records Han had sent said it was no easy task to cut through femurs—then this wouldn’t be the first time he’d killed outside the US. So if he ever got caught, like any good narcissistic serial killer, he would never be able to stop bragging about all the murders he had committed. It would become an international scandal, and the FBI would be held responsible. Especially if they had disregarded a warning from a famous veteran detective who had experience catching a serial killer.
Gabriel didn’t want to play it this way, but what else could he do? The FBI hadn’t acknowledged his calls or emails. When he became frustrated with their indifference, he decided to use Raymond’s clout. Raymond, the police commissioner, was practically Gabriel’s uncle, as he and Joshua Chase, Gabriel’s dad, were close.
Gabriel reached the building and rode along its western side. He parked the motorcycle in front of an Arby’s, got down, and locked the helmet onto the rear grab bar. Then he pulled out the inhaler from his jeans. He marched to the meeting, inhaling the cool vapor.
Chapter 2
April 5, 2019. 08:50 A.M.
Once inside the concrete behemoth, Gabriel rode the elevator to the twenty-third floor and approached a booth controlled by a petite woman. Her welcoming smile was as warm as it could be from within a bulletproof window. She asked for his ID as a morning greeting, and he put it in a small compartment under the window. Once she’d taken the ID out of a copier and returned it to him, she collected his Glock and stashed it in one of the lockers behind her.
Then she emerged out of her tiny fort, used an access card, opened the door to the left, and took him across the office. They passed several rows of cubicles, most of which smelled like Danishes and coffee. She led him to the last door in the corridor and into a meeting hall. Then she left without a word. Clueless as to what to do next, Gabriel scanned the room.
Occupying its center was a shiny white table. It could accommodate twenty people, but only one person used it now—a woman with bright pink hair, typing something on her laptop at the head of the table.
“Can I help you?” she said, without looking up, her voice like a perpetually bored teen.
“I’m here for Conor. We have a meeting at nine.”
“Balls.” She looked at Gabriel.
She had a heart-shaped face and a sharp nose that supported a pair of rimless spectacles.
“What?”
“No one addresses him by his first name. We call him sir.”
“If he likes to be called that, then Mr. and Mrs. Lyons should’ve named him sir, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” She pointed her chin to a chair beside her. “Might wanna take a seat. He isn’t known around here for punctuality.”
As Gabriel got close, he realized he had been wrong. She was not a woman, but a girl.
“How old are you?” He took the seat offered to him.
“Wow. With that kind of etiquette, you must be buried in girlfriends.”
He’d had only one girlfriend his whole life.
“You’re too young to be working with the FBI.”
She smiled to reveal two rows of perfect teeth, which made her look even younger.
“I’m Madeline, by the way.” She extended her hand.
“Detective Chase.” He shook it.
“Wait a minute. Gabriel Chase?”
“That’s my name, yes.”
“The Gabriel Chase?” Her lips parted to form a small oval. “Who caught Mr. Bunny?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“That’s super cool.”
“There is nothing super cool about arresting a psychopath who murdered people for no reason.”
“Says you,” Madeline said, either blissfully missing or ignoring the edgy tone with which Gabriel spoke. “You beat us to him, and without all the perks the FBI’s got. You know, we have our own department to catch serial killers? The NCAVC?”
“I’m aware. They’ve worked closely with our own Major Case Squad and helped a lot,” Gabriel said.
Though the investigation had been primarily their responsibility, it was Gabriel’s team that had unmasked Mr. Bunny. Literally.
“Bullshit. My friend from the academy? She was one of the agents on the team that worked with the NYPD, and she’s told me they had no idea what they were doing. Fun fact—our profiler suggested that we were looking for a person with a high IQ and a powerful job, probably in the government. We all know how wrong it turned out to be.”
The profiler had actually been accurate in his assumptions. Noah was the smartest criminal Gabriel had ever caught, and he worked as an Assistant District Attorney. But to the world, the person who they’d framed as Mr. Bunny was a white supremacist robber and rapist with no job.
“We went after false leads, too. It’s part of the job,” Gabriel said, feeling bad for the profiler.
Then he took out his inhaler and used it.
“But you eventually got it right and caught the guy. I guess my boss kinda hates you for it.”
“For catching a serial killer and making the world a little safer?”
“For catching his serial killer. He wanted to get him. He thought it’d do him a lot of good, because a position of Special Agent in Charge has opened up in Quantico.”
“I’m sorry for ruining your boss’s career plan.”
“And snide too? Man, how single are you?”
“Six years.”
“I believe you.” She giggled. “And you do look like a madman, up clo
se.”
She was referring to a piece published by Tree, a biggish newspaper with a questionable reputation. In the midst of Mr. Bunny’s investigation, they printed an article about Gabriel, titled Madman to Catch a Madman? To garner support for their title, they’d put Gabriel’s picture on the front page.
“And you look like a dozen flamingos decided to take a poop on your head,” Gabriel said.
He was never known for his witty retorts.
Thankfully, Madeline acknowledged his joke with a laugh. Then she fluttered her eyes behind him for a moment, and her smile shrunk. She closed her laptop and stood.
“Here the sir comes.”
Gabriel turned and stood. A man was standing just outside a glass door, chatting with another Fed. His red hair was combed up, his suit a thread looser, and he wore no tie. The first two buttons on his shirt were undone, and a pair of aviators hung from it.
“A tip,” Madeline said. “He is a little brat in a man’s body.” She smiled apologetically and sashayed to the door.
Conor held the door for Madeline and ogled her as she walked away. Then he came inside.
If Conor seemed unprofessional from a distance, he didn’t look like an FBI agent up close. He had a myriad of tattoos. A small star on one cheekbone and three stitches in the other. The back of his hands had a burning skull and a growling wolf. And there was a trident in the hollow of his throat, its spear disappearing beneath his shirt. The skin around it was reddish. Must be a new one.
“What you staring at?” Conor said.
“Sorry. It’s nothing.” Gabriel extended his arm. “I’m Detective Chase with the NYPD.”
“Oh, I know who you are.” Conor sat in Madeline’s chair. “What do you want?”
“I believe there is a prolific but unknown serial killer out there.” Gabriel retracted his untouched arm, embarrassed, then sat.
Conor fake-yawned. “We always have unknown serial killers at any given moment. You need to be a little more precise.”
Inhuman: Detective Chase hunts an animal who protects his own Page 2
