Be My Killer: A completely UNPUTDOWNABLE crime thriller with nail-biting mystery and suspense

by Richard Parker

  Keeler tried to pull off the mask but his hands wouldn’t respond. He couldn’t turn his head either. His eyes swivelled left and right and found his arms hanging uselessly beside him. Their muscles were dead. He attempted to bend his inverted body but it was paralysed.

  Someone passed by the slits of the mask.

  Keeler couldn’t call out to them. Whatever had incapacitated him had numbed him from the soles of his feet to the top of his gullet.

  ‘Ssshhh.’

  He glanced back in the mirror and saw their legs to the right of the Meredith mask. Then they bent down and met his eyes in his reflection.

  Keeler’s surprise at the face emerged only as a grunt, his exclamation restrained by the constriction of his vocal cords.

  They unwound some duct tape and wrapped it around the neck of the mask so it was sealed tightly to his. They’d positioned the small mirror in front of him so he could see exactly what was about to happen.

  A length of tape was ripped off and fixed over his nostril slits so he could only breathe through his mouth. Then a strip was stuck over that opening as well. The last air holes were his eyes. Keeler’s panic tightened the mask to his face.

  His captor looked into the terror of his reflected gaze before they applied the last strip, blocking his vision. He was about to suffocate inside his own handiwork.

  Keeler knew he had to slow his panting but the alarm stampeding through him was quickly draining the last of the oxygen from the mask.

  How long would he have? A minute? His bulk swung gently and at odds with how it needed to react.

  A sharp jab just below his jawbone briefly halted his wheezing, and Keeler felt warmth trickling down his chin inside the mask. It percolated through his beard, ran into his eyes, down his forehead and spread across his scalp. The skullcap of the mask was filling up. He wasn’t going to die from the knife wound or asphyxiation. Keeler would drown in his own blood.

  He clenched his lips but, as the warm level rose steadily up his face, he couldn’t close his nostrils. Keeler gagged as he felt it run inside them and tasted its salty tang coating the top of his throat.

  Come get some, fuckface!

  As he choked motionlessly, Keeler didn’t even consider why his specific words had hung him there.

  42

  Hazel grabbed the roll-on from her cot, lifted the edges of her two sweatshirts and quickly slid its cold ball around her armpit.

  Hazel was to interview Kristian O’Connell’s sister tomorrow morning but Sheenagh hadn’t called to say she’d landed. She shared some of the same vices as her brother, however, so Hazel was going to be surprised if she made it onto her flight from Cheyenne at all. There was a contingency plan if Sheenagh didn’t show but her testimony was crucial to underpinning the lone tourist theory.

  Kristian O’Connell was the one victim who looked like an unconnected killing. If she could eliminate him, it made her theory about the perpetrator travelling from Belle Meade to Clearwater then Broomfield entirely plausible.

  The door swung inwards and Lucas walked in holding his phone.

  ‘Hey.’ She didn’t know how to speak to him alone now. As they’d been so intimate in the past, were they now doomed to be awkwardly polite?

  He brushed past her and bent down to plug into the charger. ‘Keeler gone?’

  ‘Yeah, Rena’s at a loose end.’

  Lucas stood. ‘About Rena… ’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She’s pissing the guys off. We all have jobs to do but there are ways and means. It’s just her manner. And as for that trolley of hers… ’

  ‘I’ll speak to her.’ Hazel rolled the wet deodorant head with her thumb.

  Lucas dodged around her then halted. He sealed the door and turned. ‘Listen, I know things are tight but the others are far from happy about the way this shoot’s panning out.’

  The bathroom door opened and slammed in the corridor.

  Lucas took another step towards Hazel and lowered his voice. ‘It’s not the money. You know they’re all solid but they’re uncomfortable with showing that fake footage and so am I. Are you really happy to be churning out sensationalist bullshit for Criteria?’

  So, Rena’s tongue had been wagging. ‘You know I’m fully committed to this project.’ She considered taking Lucas into her confidence and telling him exactly why it meant so much to her.

  ‘But you can’t make the whole thing on your own and soon that might be your only option.’

  She dumped the deodorant on her cot. ‘So, is this a mutiny?’ Her gaze dropped to his mouth.

  Whatever Lucas was about to say evaporated. Before Hazel could meet his eye, he’d angled his head and dipped his lips to hers. He inhaled but didn’t withdraw.

  Hazel could see his eyelids were closed and briefly shut hers before detaching herself. ‘No.’ She put her fingers against his chest.

  He slid his warm palm over her hand and trapped it there so she couldn’t break contact. He leaned in again.

  Hazel craned her neck away but made it tense enough for him to press firmly back to her. She kept her lips tight shut and felt his fingertips brush her cheek. Hazel said his name as a warning but it only emerged as a muffled gag. She yanked her hand out from under his and shook her head free.

  His expression anticipated her reaction.

  Slapping Lucas seemed like such a cliché. Perhaps she should just knee him in the balls.

  ‘Haze—’

  She seized him by the belt and considered how easily she could pull his crotch against her kneecap but jerked Lucas forward and returned the kiss.

  Lucas gripped her waist before coasting a hand up to hold her face again. The aroma of his breath evoked all the intimate moments they’d already shared, like a trigger that wiped out the intervening months.

  The leather of the belt creaked as Hazel clenched it harder and held him in place. She needed his weight against her, wanted Lucas to make her forget to breathe like he had when they’d been together before.

  Lucas glided to her neck, and Hazel knew it would be academic if he touched her there. His bristles scratched and then the gentle suction moved downwards. She stiffened against it, knowing if she could resist now she’d always be able to.

  The crew and tomorrow’s schedule momentarily deserted her thoughts, and her hands grazed the shaved sides of his head. As he locked himself closer Hazel knew the barrier was as easily removable as it had been the first time they’d slept together. That had been after months of tension living in each other’s pockets during Isil Brides.

  But they hadn’t known each other then as they did now. Hazel was acquainted with every inch of his body. There was no clumsiness as there’d been the first time. Now there was only yearning for what had been good. But her instincts told her it was a mistake to start the cycle again.

  ‘No.’ She released Lucas and turned her back to him.

  43

  Keeler was silent but the Meredith mask, inflated by blood, creaked under the liquid’s weight. Droplets beaded at the tiny gaps in the duct tape around his neck.

  Meredith’s features were unrecognisable, contorted like a black Halloween pumpkin. As her face had warped and darkened, the piece of tape that had been fixed over the mouth had gradually come unstuck.

  It finally lost adhesion; the dead fluid exiting the bladder in a harsh spray, hosing the tiny mirror in the baby changing room and spattering the cartoon animal characters on the walls.

  The tension was slowly released, Keeler’s ten pints steadily draining down his body and into the mask to maintain the flow.

  44

  Fearing the grown-up could have still been watching her, April had been too scared to rummage in the black sports bag. She’d closed the microwave door and raced home just in time for lunch. But returning to an empty Apriltown the following morning, she decided it must be safe to look.

  Dumping the bag on the ground, she seized the zip. But something still restrained her from immediately opening it. This w
as a grown-up’s bag and probably held grown-up things. And even though them concealing it in the microwave had her imagining it might contain treasure, a voice reminded her there was a lot she didn’t understand and maybe shouldn’t see. After all, her mother and teachers at school had repeatedly warned her never to have anything to do with strangers.

  April told herself she would unzip the bag, quickly peek at its contents and put it right back where she found it. Except if it was full of money. That would please her mother. Her parents were always talking about not having enough of it. They’d be so pleased and grateful if she took that home. It seemed heavy enough.

  She put her hand to her face to brush away a strand of yellow hair, and her cheek was burning hot.

  ‘Don’t touch what isn’t yours,’ her mother often cautioned.

  ‘Finders keepers,’ her father had said about a wallet he’d found in a sports jacket that somebody had left on the park wall.

  April tugged the zipper back and peered inside.

  A long length of thick rope filled most of the bag, and she lifted it out so she could see what was underneath. A folded sack covered a huge knife. Not the kitchen sort. It was like the one her father used to hack bushes in their garden. She picked the blade up and it weighed heavily on her tiny wrist.

  There was a polythene bag of silver handles. She put her fingers in, trying not to make it crinkle too loudly. There were also some thin pieces of foil. She peeled one open to reveal a tiny sharp blade. She guessed you attached the blade to the handle. Wasn’t that like the knives the surgeons used on TV? Next she took out a big roll of black tape, some police handcuffs and a tube of glue.

  Then she extracted the last object she didn’t recognise. Initially it looked like a red ball but, as she withdrew it, realised there was a strap attached to it that had a buckle.

  April examined it. Perhaps it was a toy. Or did it fit around a dog’s neck? April knew; it was a grown-up’s watch. She tried to fix it to her arm but there weren’t enough holes along the length of the strap to secure it there. April tried twisting the ball. Maybe the watch was hidden inside. But it was solid. It had little dents in it as well, like bite marks, so that got her thinking about it being a dog’s toy.

  She sniffed it and it had an odd smell. Like her mother’s mouth did when she kissed her first thing in the morning. April decided to keep it. She’d put everything else back so the grown-up probably wouldn’t even notice it was gone.

  April zipped the bag up and was just about to return it to the microwave when she noticed the pocket at the front. She set it down again and searched that as well. She discovered some pieces of paper and unfolded one. It was a printout from a computer, a photo of a man’s face.

  45

  ‘OK?’ Hazel watched Sheenagh’s yellowed fingers shakily rolling a cigarette paper around a sprinkle of tobacco.

  She didn’t look up. ‘It’s the camera.’ There was a strong Irish lilt to her voice.

  Hazel had seen Sheenagh on TV plenty of times. ‘Want us to cut while you finish that?’

  Sheenagh raised her burned-out brown eyes. ‘Finished.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along the edge of the paper and deftly sealed the cigarette, twisted the end and lit it with the Zippo Lucas let her borrow.

  Hazel could still smell Lucas and his cologne. She had to focus. ‘Just relax.’

  ‘I’m not used to all this opulence.’ Sheenagh gestured around the mini go-kart track.

  Weiss had insisted they return to the semi-soundproofed zone, and a wall of low tyres now surrounded them.

  ‘You’ve been on the circuit before… ’ Hazel smiled.

  Sheenagh hissed smoke and wiped a fragment of glowing ash from the knee of her black jeans. She had angular and handsome good looks but seemed a decade older than her twenty-seven years.

  Hazel knew that behind her battered exterior was an intelligence that had been squandered. She took in her undernourished frame. Her knitted canary-yellow halter-top exposed her tight, grey midriff but it didn’t look like the cold bothered her at all. She’d taken off her denim jacket as soon as they were seated.

  Sheenagh quickly flicked the curtain of dyed lilac split ends from her face and arranged it on both shoulders with her free hand before leaning back. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘You know why I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Same reason as the others: everyone loves to see the rich kids fucked up.’

  But Hazel sensed Sheenagh was being defensive to conceal her feelings. ‘You have the same addiction issues as your brother?’

  Sheenagh made the end of her roll-up glow a long time as she shook her head. ‘Kristian was wrestling with bigger issues. But our privileged upbringing allowed us both access to things we shouldn’t have had in such plentiful supply. At least, that’s what they say.’

  ‘And who are “they”?’

  ‘Anyone who doesn’t take a shot at me to my face.’

  ‘You’re in a programme at the moment?’

  ‘Sixth one. Three step, twelve step, two steps back.’ The blue smoke clouded her expression but she let it hang there.

  ‘You miss Kristian?’

  Momentarily, it looked like she was going to chastise Hazel for the banality of the question but her eyes softened. ‘I still wait for him to call me.’

  ‘Who do you blame?’

  ‘Somebody like him. I don’t know who he was hanging with at the time. He moved in his own circles. Brothers and sisters do that. Do you have a sibling?’

  ‘No. You don’t think Kristian putting himself up as bait by tweeting with the #BeMyKiller hashtag was the cause of his death?’

  Sheenagh rolled her eyes. ‘But that’s what he’s going to be remembered for.’

  ‘I’ve explained to you, that is the focus of this interview.’

  ‘And I want to put the record straight. My brother probably knew his murderer long before he dropped his name into that Twitter stream.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ But Hazel had already seen Sheenagh’s response to this question.

  ‘He owed money. Much more than I ever thought he did. When he came to me, I couldn’t help him any more.’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘They’d already disowned him. Told me I’d get the same treatment if I stayed in contact with him. I don’t resent them for that. Kristian didn’t exist by then. His addiction had eaten him up. He’d stolen from all of us; assaulted my father so badly he had to have seven stitches in his face. Plus he’d been interviewed by the cops about a mugging in the park where he hung out. They didn’t have enough evidence but we all knew it was a matter of time.’

  ‘So why didn’t you give this version of events when the police first interviewed you?’

  Sheenagh’s features sagged. ‘I was protecting him. It was naïve but I thought I could hide what he’d become. Everyone wanted to make his death more sensational than it was. That’s why I kept quiet when people connected his death to him using the #BeMyKiller hashtag; even though I knew it was bullshit. Better that distracted people than his habit. But the media wanted to keep squeezing out every detail.’

  ‘So you really don’t believe Henrik Fossen was responsible for Kristian’s death?’

  ‘We all tried so hard to save Kristian but he was the only one responsible for his own death. Last year he was becoming capable of the same desperate acts as the person who killed him. But people don’t want to hear that.’

  ‘I promise, I’ll feature what you say in this interview in its entirety.’

  Sheenagh lifted a cynical eyebrow. ‘But only because it reinforces the idea that the others were murdered by one person.’

  ‘D’you think it’s possible?’

  ‘If that’s what you’re using to sell this to your viewers, I think it’s a cheap shot.’

  ‘So you don’t believe the lone tourist theory?’

  ‘I’ve no interest in it.’ She flicked her roll-up but the ash had already fallen to the floor. ‘Probably none
of the people spending their time discussing it online had to identify their brother’s body after he’d been stabbed so many times his ribcage was caved in. That’s the reality of it. It’s not fodder for entertainment; it’s a chunk of me gone. It’s just pain and emptiness, and there’s nothing remotely sensational about it.’

  ‘And what about the person who did that to Kristian?’

  ‘Like I say, the thought that frightens me more is that it could have been Kristian who did that to somebody else. Whoever stabbed him was probably as far gone as my brother and could have suffered the same fate by now.’

  ‘Does that comfort you?’

  ‘Nothing comforts me. Fact is, Kristian was dead the moment he got hooked on junk.’

  ‘And how’s your recovery?’

  ‘I take it a day at a time, blah, blah, blah.’ Sheenagh angled her roll-up in her fingers and watched the straight column of smoke. ‘What d’you want me to tell you? Kristian was my wake-up call but I may not be here in a couple of months’ time.’

  ‘You have the will to recover, the support of your family. You haven’t done the things Kristian did.’

  ‘You don’t know me or what I’m capable of.’ Sheenagh’s gaze seemed to align with a moment of whatever poisoned history had dulled it.

  Hazel nodded at her remote expression and waited.

  After a few seconds Sheenagh took a last toke on the roll-up, dropped it between her legs and crushed it with the rubber sole of her pink All Star. ‘Am I the only one to notice that?’ She pointed beyond the crew.

  Hazel turned in their direction. They were looking as puzzled as she was but behind them she could see the smoke pouring from the door to the main concourse.

  46

  Hazel was the first to run. ‘It’s the shrine.’ Beyond the rolling clouds she could just make out the pillar of flame.