Sins of the Flash

by David Niall Wilson

  He had the lights positioned in moments and set to work. There were other poses; other shots to capture, and the night would not last forever. He worked until he saw her blink sleepily and heard a soft gasp.

  He tied her arms quickly behind her and replaced the tape across her lips. With the fresh makeup in place and her breasts catching the chilly air and standing up pertly, Christian nearly lost control again and reached out for her as she groaned into awareness.

  At the last second he caught himself. Draping his blanket across her shoulders, he helped her to her feet before she was really aware of what was happening and led her out the back door and through the security gate. He sheltered her with the blanket and moved as solicitously as possible, as though helping a sick or drunken friend. He got her to his car, opened the back door, and tossed her inside. He leaned in and quickly wrapped more of the duct tape around her ankles and calves so she couldn’t rise and stumble from the car.

  Tied as she was, locked in the car and parked in his private cubbyhole, nobody would see her.

  He returned to the house, passed through the kitchen and into his bedroom again. Opening the room's one large closet, he pulled free a huge, rolling suitcase. It was the one thing he’d inherited from his father, the one thing the man had left behind when he ran away. An odd thing to leave behind, but oddly his mother had left it too. It didn't' fit her "style". It was leather, very tough, and very big. Momma dear had liked leather, but not in her suitcases.

  Christian rolled it into the kitchen and began the long, laborious task of lifting Tony's limp and stiffening body inside. The legs did not want to bend, and if Tony had not been in a sitting position, Christian might never have bent him in half, but somehow he managed it, stuffing in arms, and then legs, pulling the zipper tightly closed around the ponderous form and leaning heavily on the table when he was done to catch his breath.

  Once again, he was struck by how young the boy seemed, and how much smaller. On the streets it had been like facing a villain from a movie. Now, compressed into the suitcase, it occurred to Christian that Tony was only a child.

  It was already early morning, and there was no time to waste.

  Christian rolled the suitcase outside and around in back of the Dart, locking the house behind him. It was then that the flaw in his plan slapped him directly in his face. He opened the trunk and tried to tip the huge bag over the edge, into the cavernous depths of the luggage compartment, but he couldn't budge it. He could get one end, or the other, off the ground, but he couldn't get the thing to overbalance and fall inside.

  "Need some help?" said a cheerful voice from behind him. Christian started so violently that he banged his head on the trunk lid, cursing and spinning quickly.

  "Sorry, sir," the man facing said, smiling.

  The man wore orange coveralls and a concerned smile, and it took a few seconds for Christian's mind to register.

  It was the garbage man.

  "You looked like you could use some help there, didn't mean to scare you." The man said.

  "Uh, yes, I suppose, if you could help me lift this?"

  Christian prayed then, for the first time in years. He prayed the man wouldn't ask a bunch of questions. He prayed that the lumpy, ridiculously heavy cargo in the suitcase would not slip and fall, bursting somehow from its confinement, and he prayed that Lindy would not manage to struggle up and bang on the window, or the door, attracting the man's attention. Maybe he should have killed her already, too.

  None of the things he feared happened, and seconds later the bag was in the trunk and the door was slammed safely closed. Christian managed to smile feebly as the man headed back to his truck with a wave. Christian returned the gesture, and then hurried around the car and into the driver's seat. He closed the door and leaned back into his seat with a gasp of relief.

  He was certain that his heart would stop, that it was about to explode and leave him there, flopping and choking for breath. It took what seemed a very long time to regain his composure and to get the keys into the ignition.

  Christian backed out into the street, turned, drove to Broadway and turned again, hitting the on-ramp for the freeway. The first green sign said "Lavender, ten miles," but Christian had a closer goal in mind. There were two things between Lavender and San Valencez, a dump and the old cemetery, Shady Grove. He sped down the road until the first turn-off and nosed the Dart between the open gates of the City Dump.

  A greasy looking man in blue jeans and a grimy t-shirt that had no doubt once been white waved him through without a second glance. The man shielded his eyes from Christian's headlights as if they hurt him, and when he turned to walk away, his steps were uneven and clumsy. The man was probably drunk, and definitely unconcerned with Christian, or his business. They didn't charge for small, non-commercial dumping anyway. Christian had checked.

  He drove in through the rotting hulks of appliances, old cars, and refuse and continued until he was as far from the main gate as he could possibly be before pulling over to the side.

  There was an old freezer half-buried in cardboard cartons, and its top lay beside it on the ground.

  Christian opened the back door and dragged Lindy from the car. He tore the tape at her ankles, freeing her legs, but held her tightly by her hair. He yanked once to let her know she couldn’t escape, and then he motioned to the freezer. She tried to pull away, and then kicked at him feebly, but she was weak from the drugs. Christian was pumped full of adrenalin, and he was scared to death. These two factors gave him the added strength he needed.

  He forced her over the side of the freezer and slammed her down into it, hitting her head so hard on the side that she was dazed. As she sat there, trying to lift herself by pushing against the smooth sides of the freezer with her feet and her back, he returned to his car. He had the syringe and the bottle of developing fluid in the glove box, and he filled the hypodermic quickly. There was no time for being careful. He leaned in over the lid of the freezer, tilted her head to the side and plunged the needle into the side of her neck, depressing the plunger with a quick jab. He didn’t wait for her to react. He returned the syringe and fluid to his glove box, and moments later he dropped the old freezer’s lid carefully in place, weighting it with a bucket of old shingles and a box of rusted nails he’d found nearby.

  Next he dragged the suitcase out of the trunk, which proved much easier than lifting it in. He grimaced at the soft, wet sound it made as it hit the ground, but he didn’t hesitate. Soaked in sweat and panting from the effort, he dragged it to the far side of the freezer and laid it on its side. He covered it with loose debris until only the handle showed.

  When he felt as if he could do no more, he returned to his car and drove slowly away. Sweat poured down his face and arms, and he was afraid the custodian would notice, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

  His mind buzzed with lack of sleep and rampant emotion, but he managed to hold himself together for the drive home. He slipped into his apartment unnoticed and locked the door behind himself. Then he went to the sink, poured out the scotch, and tossed the bottle in the garbage. He knew he’d have to dispose of it more carefully, but this was not the time.

  He grabbed one of the warm beers from the bag on the table and headed for the darkroom. It was time to capture a dream.

  ~END PART ONE~

  PART II

  Psychos ‘R’ Us

  “Fortunately [psychoanalysis] is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

  –Karen Horney

  FIVE

  Detective Tommy Doyle stared down at the ripped leather of the suitcase in disgust, watching the flies as they buzzed and swarmed over the body inside. The boy's head hung out through a tear in one side of the bag, and what had once been his face was ravaged, rent and torn beyond recognition.

  There was debris and old junk piled on top of the suitcase, falling off to the sides and surrounding it in a heap. The bag had been dragged from
beneath the junk. The teeth marks were deep and savage.

  Off to one side, barely within the range of Tommy’s hearing, the junkyard attendant who'd discovered the body, one Matthew Jenkins, droned on and on to “Big Mac” Markum in a dazed monotone. The man had obviously been drinking heavily the previous night; his words were slurred and unfocused. Small snatches of the conversation floated to where Tommy stood, and he listened closely as he watched the flies.

  Tommy had backed off and left the man to Mac. The stench of day old rotgut whiskey and the question of how many days it had been since the guy's last shower had been too much, combined with the presence of the body in the suitcase. It had been one or the other, and Tommy had chosen the stiff.

  "I just heard 'em barking, louder'n shit, officer," the man was saying. "The dogs, I mean, Wolf and Charlie. Never heard anything like it since I been here. It sounded like they was killin' something, you know?"

  "And you came straight here?" Mac weighed in at two hundred and fifty-five pounds and six feet four, but for all his size and strength, he was a quiet, careful man. His voice had a calming quality, despite his imposing bulk, and he dragged the story from the man with easy efficiency.

  "No sir," Jenkins shook his head. "I went in that office over there," he pointed vaguely toward the gates, "and I grabbed me the shotgun from behind the desk; then I came over here. You never can tell what kind of wild shit will happen out here. Remember that graveyard thing a few years back? Place is just over the hill from here.

  "Now, if it'd just been a man, that would've been somethin' different. I've done me some fightin', let me tell you. Been trained for it. That shit that happened at Shady Grove, though – Jesus."

  Tommy remembered it well. His old friend Ken Straker was the police inspector over in Lavender, where the thing had taken place. Psycho ministers, ritual killings, all pretty gruesome. "But once you had the gun," Markum went on patiently, "you came straight here, is that right?"

  "Yes sir. I followed the noise of them damned dogs. Couldn't see at first what the hell they had. It looked like they were just fightin' over this old suitcase. The dust and shit was pretty stirred up. It took a while to sort it out."

  Tommy doubted if the man had sorted anything out in his life. He could barely string words in front of one another at that moment.

  "What made you look closer?" Mac asked him.

  "I saw the hair," the man answered promptly. "Saw ol' Charlie had somethin' by its hair, or someone, and I thought I'd lose my breakfast right then 'n' there. I was hopin' it would just be a hairpiece, you know, a wig? Damn."

  The questions went on, but the picture was pretty clear. Someone had killed the boy, packed him up like overnight luggage, and dumped him here without a thought. Fucking swell. Tommy felt his stomach roll and reached instinctively for the Rolaids he kept in his pocket. Why did he always have to be the one on duty when this shit happened?

  The sun was going to be getting a lot hotter soon, and things were going to get nasty. He made quick mental notes of the scene as cars rolled in and the crime scene guys scurried around him, placing barriers, dusting for prints, snapping photographs.

  It was obviously an amateur job, a fact that might have made him cheerful if there were more to go on. He was certain there would be prints, and he was right. They found them all over the handle of the suitcase.

  That helped a bit. If they were dealing with a stupid killer with a history of crime, they were in luck. If, however, they were dealing with a newly hatched psycho, or an irate stepfather who just couldn't take it anymore, they might be in for a real search. Fingerprints were only useful if you had something to match them to.

  “Swell,” he commented to no one in particular. “Just fucking swell.”

  He was about to turn away and head back to his cruiser when one of the lab techs, a kid named Cotter who'd just transferred from the Lavender Police Force let out a whoop.

  "Holy shit," the boy breathed. "Detective Doyle, you better get a look at this."

  Heaving a sigh, Tommy turned back and moved to the young man's side. Cotter was standing in front of the old freezer that the suitcase had been tucked behind, pointing. The side of the freezer was scratched to hell. The dogs had apparently fought over more than the suitcase. It looked like they had tried to claw their way inside. Tommy’s guts took a roll.

  Signaling to the officers behind him for assistance with a short whistle, Tommy stepped up and grabbed the lid carefully. He didn’t want to smudge any fingerprints that might be on the lid – if he did he’d never hear the end of it out of these guys. Cotter grabbed the lid as well and turned to look at him. The boy’s eyes sparkled with excitement.

  Tommy wasn't excited, he was disgusted. Damned psychos, anyway. And for that matter, damn anyone who thought they were exciting. They were warped, and they could ruin a man's day faster than anything on earth, not to mention his stomach.

  “On three,” Tommy grunted.

  He counted, and the two of them lifted the lid, sending old trash and debris sliding off the far side. The stench hit them like a hammer blow, and they dropped the lid, wrenching violently to either side.

  Cotter hadn't turned away fast enough, and Tommy heard the kid spew his breakfast all over the ground as he staggered in the other direction.

  There you go, son, he thought. Maybe that will help to put an end to some of that fucking excitement you thought you'd found.

  Wiping his arm angrily across his forehead to clear the sweat away before it dripped into his eyes, Tommy turned to Mac and nodded at the freezer.

  "Got another one, Mac. A girl."

  His partner nodded, but made no move to get a closer look. The lab boys would get it all, no sense letting his own breakfast join Cotter's. They'd have it diced and quartered and stuck away in little specimen bags, listed down to the DNA count in no time. They didn’t miss much.

  Mac escorted Jenkins out beyond the lines of crime-scene tape and told him to go back to his office. Then Tommy and Mac turned away, threading their way through the slowly gathering herd of black and whites and past the carrion gaggle of reporters who’d caught the story on their scanners with grim faces.

  Tommy slid in behind the wheel without a word, fired the cruiser up and backed out slowly and carefully. The "ladies and gentlemen of the press" followed the pair’s departure, filmed it, and launched their pursuit. They paced the cruiser, banged on the windows and waved their notebooks and tape recorders insistently. They were as bad as that kid, Cotter. They thought it was great, something to get a by-line off of. News.

  Tommy ignored them, focusing on the road and cutting them out. No way was he risking another scene with those bozos. He'd been warned enough times.

  Detective Tommy Doyle had a colorful career behind him. He was the last of a line of cops, following the footsteps of his father, his grandfather, his uncle and his cousin Patrick. All of them had died in action. All of them had been killed by, or in pursuit of, psychos.

  Patrick had been the last, and the worst. Tommy had been in the academy when it had happened, right there in San Valencez. Patrick had been an Inspector on the force, a specialist. Homicide had been his baby, and he'd been good at it. That is, right up until he'd apparently snapped and gone on a killing spree of his own.

  Tommy didn’t buy it, and any time it was brought up in his presence, he was quick and violent in his disapproval. The papers claimed that Patrick Doyle had raped and killed five women, including the wife of a local minister, then had gone to San Francisco and killed the minister himself.

  Tommy didn't know what had happened. He had the sketchy details of the news story, and he’d heard more from others on the force, but he knew his family, and he knew his uncle. Somehow, deep inside, he knew that some psycho had just gotten the better of his cousin. If you let down your guard, they got you every time. It was something Tommy wasn’t going to let happen to himself, something he'd had nightmares about.

  A fair number of killers were behind bars
because of Tommy’s efforts. Some of them had been normal citizens prone to sudden flashes of violent anger. Some of them had been cold, calculating, and efficient. Then there were the others, the ones you had to look out for. Psychos.

  There was a certain sensation when it was a psycho, an aura that hung in the air like a giant spider’s web, waiting for Tommy to get snarled up in it. The itch caught deep in his bones and sent him sniffing into places and things he'd be better off miles away from. He wondered if he was just next in line, the last of his family to be hunted and stalked. Somehow, he always got the psychos.

  For his efforts, the city had promoted him to Detective. Homicide, where his late cousin had lost his mind, was Tommy’s home, and he was comfortable there. Not comfortable in the sense of feeling safe, but in the sense that it was the point of offense against the insanity that surrounded him. It was the one place, even on the force, where they openly opposed the sickness that permeated the city.

  The ladies and gentlemen of the press were another matter. Tommy had his methods. Not all of them could be found in the regulations, and on more than one occasion, he'd been called forth to explain himself to his superiors, and to the city he served.

  They also remembered his cousin, and that ghost dogged his footsteps, waiting for the day when he, too, would snap, giving them the juicy headlines they craved. Fuckers were almost as bad as the psychos.

  "Psychos are everywhere," he'd told a reporter once, about one interview before he'd learned to keep his mouth shut. "I learned that a long time ago, when they started picking off my family one by one. You can't sit and read the rulebook to them, and you can't expect normal methods to put them away.

  "I do what is necessary in every given situation, no more, no less. You pay me to hunt psychos; that is what I do. What you don't do is to take the time to understand what you are asking. Go stare insanity in the face, then come back and ask me about my 'methods.'"