by Unknown
Shane drove on.
The guy swiped something from the backs of Townsend’s security cameras. They were small, metal objects. Probably back-up hard drives.
He tossed them to the ground and smashed them with several hard stomps from his boot heel.
I strained to see his face, but there was nothing. I could only see his cold, dead eyes. They were black, blacker than my own.
After the man was done sifting through the Woodsman’s lair, he stopped and stared at the weapons hanging from a rack above a bloodstained table.
The guy reached up and used his gloved hand to pull down a large, sharp machete. He twisted it in his hand and stared at the blade. It was perfect.
He returned to the stairwell. Instead of locking the door, he pulled a shiny new padlock from his coat and locked it around the knob.
He brought his own lock? This guy was not new to this. He planned this.
Again I shifted in Shane’s head. I hated to admit it, but I was slightly nervous. The skill set of this new character was extraordinary.
The guy returned to Townsend’s door and simply knocked on it. A moment went by. Then another. The door opened. Townsend stood behind it.
Townsend held a stun gun. He had expected a visitor. Perhaps, he had expected me.
The stun gun was a standard police issue with the yellow square around the tip. It waited to be fired. Once fired the metal barbs would shoot out toward the target at a high velocity. Following the barbs was a set of long metal cables not much thicker than fishing line.
Once the barbs penetrated the target, a powerful electric current ran from the length of the gun, down the long, metal cables, and into the victim. The charge from the current caused immediate pain and paralysis.
Before Townsend could fire the stun gun at the intruding stranger, he stopped and stared in shock at his visitor.
“You?” Townsend asked. Then with a reflex that had been delayed by only seconds, Townsend fired the stun gun. The electrified barbs shot through the air, cutting through the room with a sharp sound.
The electric sound surged.
The barbs dug deeply into the intruder’s center mass. Microseconds later the electricity sparked and dazzled out from the point of impact, but the intruder did not budge. He merely stood motionless and unwavering.
Townsend’s heart pumped fast and hard. He felt a fear overcome him unlike any that he had ever felt before. His terror grew as he watched the intruder grab onto the electrified barbs and pull them from his chest. That was when Townsend could see that the intruder wore a thick bulletproof vest.
The barbs had penetrated only the very top layer of the vest. And they barely managed that. It was because the Kevlar was constructed with a steel plate in the center of the two sides of thick fibers. The steel plate was meant to deflect knife attacks, but it worked nicely on stun guns too.
The stranger whipped the electric barbs to the floor and pulled a Glock 22 on Townsend.
“Drop the Taser,” the guy commanded.
“Who are you?” Townsend asked.
“Woodsman, you are going to die,” the stranger said, raising the machete high above his head. With one downward swipe, the blade chopped the fingers clean off the Woodsman’s left hand.
Each bloody digit tumbled to the ground. The Woodsman clutched his fingerless hand and stumbled backward. He began to scream, but then the stranger punched him square in the throat with the hilt of the machete.
The Woodsman gasped for air.
“Look at me! You are going to die!” The guy said. His voice was filled with darkness.
Tears filled Townsend’s eyes. The Woodsman had abandoned him. He was merely the human shell now. Then he whispered, “Are you working with him?”
As the words desperately floated from his mouth, the stranger stopped, motionless. He asked, “With whom?”
“You know. The one who wants to kill me. The lawyer.”
“Shane Lasher?” the stranger asked. “He has tried to kill you?”
Townsend Dry reached into his pocket on the left side. It was awkward for him to do so since he had to use his right hand, which still had fingers.
He pulled out a memory stick and handed it to the stranger. Droplets of blood smeared across it from his hand. The stranger looked at it and then back at Townsend.
The intruder raised the weapon high again. He swung it down. The blade cut clear across Townsend’s throat. Blood began gushing out. Townsend Dry choked and gagged.
The stranger paid no attention. Instead he walked to the sofa and inserted the memory stick into the laptop that rested on the coffee table in standby mode.
The computer came to life and the video drive started up. A small screen appeared and an image popped out onto the screen. It was a security feed from one of the cameras that the stranger had already destroyed.
His interest piqued when he saw a man wearing a disguise break into Townsend’s apartment. The man was of a muscular build. He had brown, short hair. A flowing red scarf covered the bottom portion of his face. His eyes were the only thing that gave him away. Big, black eyes. The dark creature that lived inside the stranger recognized them. It was the lawyer. It was Shane Lasher.
Now the stranger had the memory stick and he knew who I was. I had to retrieve the drive.
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I tossed the last bits of the Woodsman into the monstrous furnace in my lair. Shane had carried up his dismembered body parts in suitcases. It appeared that he was carrying up his luggage after returning from a trip, which was a plausible scenario.
He had wrapped each part in trash bags. He doubled the bags so no blood would seep out and stain the inside of the trunk of the Mercedes. Then he placed each bag inside the empty coolers and iced them down to keep them from smelling. Finally he used Townsend’s empty luggage to transport the body parts up to Shane’s penthouse.
At this time of night there was no doorman. The building security consisted of a keypad lock with everyone’s individual four-digit combination.
Over the roof of my secret lair was a small industrial smokestack. To the city of D.C., the smoke that crept out was typical pollution. They had no clue that it was all that remained of a violent serial killer, a man who’d liquefied his victims in wood. His methods of macabre murder solidified his victims forever in statue-like positions. They remained frozen in the final expressions of their lives.
Now the Woodsman was cremated, his ashes forever scattered and returned to the earth. I wondered if serial killers ever really died or if our murderous souls simply returned to the earth to be recycled and reconstructed into new serial killers.
After a moment of watching the last remaining chips of bone evaporate through the small window in the furnace, Shane peered at the last shred of evidence that he had to deal with. He stared at the anklet. It was a high-tech device, smaller than the common criminal court-issued anklet.
In his life, Shane had trained himself in numerous skills. These skills trained him for a lifetime of hunting killers and evading the law.
He could speak English and get by in Spanish, French, and well enough in Russian. He was proficient in guns, knives, and other weaponry. He became skilled in unarmed combat. And he had mastered instant and unarmed kills. He could snap a man’s neck with the right leverage and positioning.
All of this merged with Shane’s considerable knowledge of the sciences and arts from our years in school, not to mention Shane’s natural ability to converse with others; all of this made him a deadly predator. With all of these attributes, however, the one thing that we had never foreseen to study or prepare for was a federal-issued, high-tech tracking anklet.
Two things dawned on him at this realization. First he again realized that whoever had disconnected the Woodsman’s anklet must have been skilled. The second thing that he realized was that he had no idea how to dispose of this piece of equipment.
The only thing that he was certain of was that he had to get rid of it tonight before it jumped
back to life. As long as it was with him, he was in danger of it reactivating. The last thing that he wanted was for the cops to suspect that Townsend was missing and had fled to his lawyer’s home hundreds of miles away.
Shane couldn’t throw the anklet into the fire. It might fire it up. That could send out one final signal. So he threw it into the freezing cold water of the Potomac River.
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The darkness wrapped around Shane as he finally lay down from an exhausting day. He had spent the last few hours cleaning up a dastardly crime scene, driving, and finally disposing of someone else’s kill. He’d arrived back at his penthouse just in time to catch the first slivers of sunlight peaking over the rooftops of the buildings to the east. The sun was barely starting its climb over the Atlantic Ocean.
I remained quiet in Shane’s head. My tail was coiled up, my mouth was closed, my tendrils wrapped snuggly around Shane’s brain, and my eyes were shut tight.
As I lay in a standby position, I envisioned the stranger again.
Somewhere in a dark room, the lights were off and the shades were drawn. Located near the freeway, he slept soundly. He rested in a plain motel room, nothing special, just four walls and a bed.
The stranger’s dreams were too far from my view to make them out, but I imagined that he pictured the Woodsman’s final breath over and over. The climax of his dream was, however, when he discovered a new monster, one that had successfully remained hidden for decades. This new creature would be much more challenging for the stranger to kill.
The stranger had already tasted the thrill of killing a killer. I didn’t know how many killers he had dispatched. It couldn’t have been that many if he didn’t even bother disposing of the body. Leaving a hacked-up corpse like that raised unnecessary suspicion. So either the stranger didn’t care about getting caught or he was simply reckless.
Suddenly, the stranger’s phone rang.
“Hello,” the stranger answered, his voice groggy.
“The Woodsman vanished last night. We just had a blip from his tracker. He’s in D.C.,” the voice on the line said.
The stranger’s eyes shot open like a garage door.
“What?” he shouted into the phone.
“Sorry, sir. But Mr. Dry has vanished. Last night sometime. His tracker blipped a couple of times about a half hour ago in D.C.
“The local cops are searching near the river right now,” the voice said, sounding somewhere between professional and frantic.
The stranger didn’t even respond. He hung up the phone.
Then he got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. He turned on the light. He spun around, grabbed some clothes, and put them on. It was the same suit that he’d worn the day before.
The man grabbed his Glock 22 that was inside a paddle holster. He ejected the clip and checked the gun. Then he holstered the weapon. He slipped the paddle holster into the back of his pants behind his waistband.
The paddle holster was a favorite among undercover law enforcement officers because it possessed a flexibility of use, good concealment, and a relative ease for quick draw.
Its only real drawback was that it shuffled around during fast movement, such as running or driving. It also was hard to quick draw it from a seated position.
That was when I saw what I had already suspected. The thing that was obvious. This stranger was law enforcement. He held a badge in his hand for a brief moment and then placed it into the inside of his jacket pocket.
I couldn’t make out the details of the badge. But I knew what it was. It was FBI. And the killer that I wanted next was none other than the one who had stood before me many times already: Special FBI Agent Kirk Cutter.
Cutter ran out his front door, not even bothering to lock it behind him.
He took the stairs down to the lobby and ran from the hotel.
He hopped into an unmarked FBI car and blared the sirens. Blue and red lights seemed to fire from the front grill of the car like laser beams. The streets were relatively dead for New York City, but the hour was still very early. The daylight had only begun emerging from the east like a great beast waking from a slumber.
The FBI car sped through the streets for about twenty-five minutes and then Agent Cutter was on the scene of Townsend Dry’s apartment.
He jumped from the car, leaving it parked on the street. The blue and red lights pulsated from behind the car’s grill. The lights bounced high on the buildings surrounding the crime scene.
Agent Cutter grinned as he entered the building. A uniformed cop was speaking to the doorman, taking his statement. Of course, Cutter already knew that the doorman had seen nothing.
Cutter’s creature hid behind the FBI agent’s steel eyes. No one suspected him. He entered the elevator, passing a policeman standing in front of them on his way in.
The elevator doors opened to Townsend’s floor. Inside, an artificial light that his team had set up lit the hallway. A portable lantern illuminated a strong blue hue through a halogen bulb.
Before Cutter entered the apartment, he brandished his Glock. He checked it again. He made sure that it was ready for use. Then he holstered it again.
He was confused about why they had called him to tell him that Townsend’s tracker was in D.C. He knew that Townsend was not with it. He knew that Townsend had been ripped to dozens of pieces and scattered all over his apartment.
Cutter walked into the apartment expecting to be greeted by other FBI agents asking questions about the massacre that lay ahead. He wasn’t sure how much they knew, but he liked to be prepared for the worst.
What if they’d somehow figured out that he had butchered the Woodsman? What if they’d tricked him into showing up at Townsend’s apartment? What if they’d set a trap for him?
He imagined it already. He was walking into a room full of agents waiting to confront him about all the forensic evidence that he’d left behind. He shouldn’t have left the Woodsman in such a messy way. He should have known better. He was in such a rage that he hadn’t thought clearly.
The other kills had been much neater. He’d killed other serial killers in a way that seemed like it was in the line of duty. They were legal kills. But not this time. This time his rage had gotten the best of him. It had grown stronger than ever. It was becoming harder and harder to hide it. Now he liked it. Now he embraced it.
Agent Kirk Cutter had embraced his demon.
Cutter entered the apartment with his hand resting near his gun. The holster was unbuckled.
As he entered the living room, two things happened. The first was that he saw a dozen forensic agents studying the floors, furniture, and walls. They wore protective gear and used black lights and spray bottles to search for blood spatter and other signs of evidence.
The second thing was that Agent Cutter nearly jumped out of his own skin when he saw the crime scene. His eyes scanned the apartment in desperation. The body was gone. It was nowhere.
Where were the body parts? There were no legs, no arms, no torso, and no head. There was no blood in sight. The entire apartment was spotless.
“Sir,” one of Agent Cutter’s team members said as he approached the stunned monster, “it appears that Townsend has not only escaped, but he has also killed again.”
Agent Cutter swallowed hard. He tried to regain his composure.
“Over here.” The agent pointed at the blood splatter on the wall. “This is the only blood that we have found so far, so we are hopeful that the victim may still be alive.”
The dark creature inside Cutter grinned underneath Cutter’s skin. It knew that no one would find a living victim. The Woodsman was definitely dead.
Someone had found the body and cleaned up after him. Someone that Agent Cutter would soon find.
“Townsend is on the run. And he has a hostage. That’s why his tracker went off in D.C. The last time it showed up on GPS was near the Potomac River,” the other agent said.
“Alert the metro police. Call the Bureau. Tell them to drag the
river. Tell them that we’re searching for that tracker and the leg that was attached to it,” Cutter said.
“You think that the Woodsman is dead?”
“I don’t think anything. He probably threw it in the river after taking a hostage, but let’s be thorough. So have the river dragged,” Cutter said. He finally relaxed his gun hand.
“Yes, sir.”
Cutter did what he had done best for ten years; he controlled his team. He hunted.
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It was rare for me to feel exhausted. After the long night that Shane and I had endured, I was tired. He slept. I didn’t really sleep, but I did shut my eyes and dream.
