by Simon King
Just as she flexed her leg to step through, something began to vibrate in her pocket, over and over again, in short sharp bursts. It took Grace a moment to realize the it was her cell. But why would anybody be messaging her? She pulled it out and was surprised to see that it wasn’t an sms coming through, but rather notifications for messages coming through to her message box online.
She quickly opened it, unsure of how so many people could be messaging her at the same time. But it wasn’t many people, instead just one, sending the same message over and over again.
Run. They’re on to you.
Grace took a moment for the words to sink in, but when they finally did, took off like the cat had moments before. She pushed away from the wall and made a jump for the gate, pulling the latch up and the gate open in one single motion. Just as she did, something moved inside the home and she kicked off for the bottom of the drive, running as fast as she could as something began chasing her.
“GET UP,” Sam screamed at Carla as she lay on the couch. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
The woman opened her eyes, pretending to wake up, unaware of what the issue was. Sam grabbed her arm and pulled her up.
“Ow, bitch,” she cried, pulling herself free.
“Why, Carla? Why would you betray me like that?”
“Because I can’t be the reason so many will have to continue living in fear and pain. THAT’S WHY.” She screamed the last two words into her accuser’s face, then sat back down. Sam turned slightly away and began speaking, as if into thin air. It took Carla a moment before realizing Sam had the earpiece in.
“I’m so sorry. I thought she was asleep. She took her cell and sent a message.” As Sam listened to Tim’s response, she turned and eyed Carla, her fury rising behind her eyes. “OK, give me a bit. I’ll come and get you.”
Without speaking a word, Sam walked into her room, grabbed something from the bag and returned. She didn’t pause, walking straight up to Carla and grabbing her by the arm. She pulled her unwilling captive into the bathroom, place one cuff onto her wrist and the other around the shower head. It was solid piece of pipe with no open ends, making a perfect anchor.
“I strongly suggest you sit tight until we get back.”
Tim was already waiting at the bottom of the driveway by the time Sam pulled up and he jumped in before she even stopped. He dropped into the seat beside her, slammed the door shut and sat quietly as Sam turned the car around.
Only once they were back under way did Sam try to make up for her mistake, hoping she didn’t jeopardize the entire mission.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t believe she would do that.”
“I had an idea she would. Her loyalty will always be to her sister.”
“I should never have left you there. Did you get close? Did you see her?”
“Close enough to smell her perfume,” he whispered and Sam could tell he was still angry. “But I got a decent look at her as we ran under the streetlight.” He turned to her then and Sam could see something in his eyes that told her he had more.
“What?” He didn’t answer at first. “What? You’ve got something.”
“We know her.”
“Wait, what?”
“OK, well not quite know her, but we’ve seen her before.”
“Who is it?” Sam asked, now firing up herself.
“It’s the woman that came to pick up Neville Potter. The one from the coroner’s office.”
“Jill?” Sam said, thinking back to the day they had visited the hotel room where Potter was murdered.
“That’s the one.”
“How sure are you?”
“No doubt in my mind. I remember the pronounced kink in her earlobes. At the time I thought weighted earrings might fix them. I’m telling you, Sam. It was her.”
“Weighted earrings?”
“Shut up. I tend to think about things, you know?”
By the time they returned to the hotel, the first wisps of impending daylight began to brighten the distant sky. Seeing night slowly begin to fade out made Tim yawn and it quickly spread to Sam, following as if on cue.
“Don’t start,” he murmured as she killed the engine.
They hurried to the elevator and rode up in silence, both eager to make sure their captive was still in the room. She had questions to answer and neither of them were in the mood for any more bullshit.
Sam cracked the door and followed Tim inside as he headed straight for the bathroom. He paused in the doorway and for a brief second, Sam imagined an empty cuff dangling from the shower pipe. But when she heard the familiar jingle of metal on metal, knew Carla was still there.
“Thanks for making sure a killer is free to continue her work,” he began, walking towards the shower. “I got half a mind to drop you at the nearest police station and let you explain the next murder away.”
“I’m sorry,” Carla began. “I really am. But I did what I had to.”
“No, you didn’t have to. You chose to.” He stepped forward a little closer, grabbed the key from Sam and unlocked the cuff.
Carla began rubbing her wrist the way they always seemed to do it in the movies and followed them out into the room again. Tim pointed at the couch and she sat without speaking. Sam left the room, already on the phone to Mumma to share with her the rest of the night’s details she may have missed.
Tim sat and eyed Clara off for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do with her. His stomach suddenly grumbled, loud enough to annunciate itself in the silence of the room.
“Maybe breakfast would be an idea,” Clara offered and for the first time, Tim agreed. He reached across to the hotel phone, dialed 0 and waited for an answer.
After sharing the sequence of events with Mumma and again apologizing for her screw up, Sam shared what Tim had discovered about the woman he chased earlier that morning. It took her a while, but after quite a bit of searching and scrolling, finally found the employee records of Jill Tannin, one of the transport officers for the Chicago Coroner’s Office.
As she listened to Mumma read through some of the details, Tim knocked on the door and called in that he’d ordered breakfast. She replied by knocking on the door a couple of times, then returned to the bed. She had the laptop open, listening through the earpiece as Mumma gave her a rundown of the woman Tim had identified as being the prolific killer they had been chasing.
Working her magic and following the trail so many try and hide as best they can, it didn’t take long for Mumma to start uncovering more and more information, including the false account she had set up in the name of a girl that had died in child birth.
Thirty minutes later and the list of details written on the pad beside her was extensive, including a sad history of how the woman once known as Grace Shaw, had discovered her mother, brutally murdered by a boyfriend, and her twin sister who died at the hands of an abuser.
As she read through the items, Sam suddenly realized just how close they had made their own story, including the part about the twin girls, something Carla had suggested. She understood why the killer had come running so quickly, probably due to a lot of old wounds returning.
She thanked Mumma, pulled out her earpiece and grabbed the notepad. The information she now had would make tracking their target a whole lot easier. Plus, they had the most important thing of all, her photo.
“You’ll never guess what I found,” Sam began as she walked back into the room and froze instantly. Both Tim and Clara were lying unconscious on the floor, with Grace kneeling above Tim, a knife pushed against his throat. From the look of her expression, Sam instantly understood the severity of the situation, with her partner millimeters from death.
“What the fuck is Pogrom?” Grace snarled at her. She motioned to cut and Sam dropped the notepad, held her hands up and tried to calm the woman.
“Please, we just want to help you.” Grace never blinked.
“Help me? I’m not gonna ask again. What is Pogrom?” She saw Sam’s surprise at hearing th
e name and knew she was onto something. “Yeah…you’re not the only one cluey with computers. Didn’t take me long to find you two once I heard you talking.” She gestured again with the blade, but this time lowering it enough to nick the supple skin of his throat.
“STOP. Stop, Grace. You don’t have to do this.”
“No, I don’t. But if not me, then who?”
“We can talk about this.”
“Talk? You think I’m here to talk, bitch?”
“You’re here because you’re angry, confused. I would be too. But killing him isn’t going to help you.”
“For the last time,” Grace began, lifted the blade and prepared to plunge it into Tim’s chest. Sam raised her hands a little higher, gesturing for her to stop.
“It’s an organization that hunts serial killers.”
“Killers like me?”
“Yes, killers like you. We’re what you might call the ones that make sure killers can’t hide behind the law.”
“Wait. So you want to preach to me about right and wrong and all the while, you guys are out there making your own decisions about who dies and who lives?” Sam felt her own anger rise, feeling the threat awaken her carnivorous senses. She took deep breath and tried to calm herself.
“No, not exactly. We never kill anyone unless we’re a hundred percent sure they’re guilty and then only if they display the classic signs of someone unable to stop themselves.”
“So, someone like me then?” Grace repeated.
“You’ve killed many people, some of which didn’t deserve to die.”
“WHO DIDN’T DESERVE IT?” She brought the knife down and froze, inches away from finding its mark and Sam called for her to stop.
“Please, Grace. Just like you had a traumatic upbringing, so did Trent Houghton. He had small children, children who are now left fatherless because of you.”
“Trent Houghton kicked his little girl down a flight of stairs. You think he deserved to remain in that house?”
“That happened long before he himself sought out the help he needed. His wife was helping him overcome his demons.”
“HE KICKED HER DOWN-“
“AND YOU MADE SURE HE COULD NEVER DO THAT AGAIN,” Sam screamed back at her. “You made sure he could never hurt them again. But you also made sure he could never be the proper father he fought so hard to become. To overcome the rapes and abuses he suffered as a child.”
Grace listened, her own thoughts beginning to cross in her mind. Some of the words weren’t making sense, while others only fueled her rage further.
“And now you want to kill me?”
“We have to stop you from hurting others.”
“So you can go on and hurt others?” Grace asked and Sam felt her own confusion begin to kick in.
“It’s not the same thing,” Sam whispered, trying to reign in the hunger rising inside her.
“ITS EXACTLY THE SAME THING. WHO ARE YOU TO SAY WHAT’S RIGHT AND WRONG? WE ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.” Grace pointed the blade at Sam, as if to annunciate the words further and that’s when Sam jumped.
While Grace was busy trying to make her point, she rose a little, pulling the knife away from Tim to point at her. Before she could react, Sam launched herself at the woman, grabbed the knife with one hand and with the other, the woman’s throat.
“What the-“ is all Grace could manage before she began to fight back. She pulled the blade back as hard as she could, the razor-sharp edge slicing into the soft flesh of Sam’s palm. Sam let go of her throat, instead grabbing Grace’s wrist and punched her inner arm in unison. Grace lost her grip on the knife, the blade skittering across the carpet.
Both women briefly froze, caught up in a tangle of arms and legs. As if to boost the cannibalistic hunger she knew to be lying just beneath the surface, Sam licked her palm, waited briefly as the taste sent her into a feeding frenzy, then unleashed what she knew to be waiting in the shadows of her mind.
“About fucking time you let me play,” she snarled, feeling her sense of control lost as a new monster stepped forward. Sam’s consciousness stepped back as Loui took control of her, Grace’s strength no match for the beast.
She tried to fight back, punching and kicking as hard as she could. But Grace Shaw was never a fighter, only driven by an anger that let her fight from the shadows. She made a final lunge for the knife, but Loui grabbed her ankle, snapped her leg back and sank his teeth into the soft piece of muscle.
Grace screamed as the fire rose through her body, feeling the blood flow from the wound as the teeth continued to gnaw. And then something happened she couldn’t explain. The woman biting her let go, stood and began to scream like a crazy person, her arms flexed on either side of her like a bodybuilder displaying for a panel of judges.
“GET BACK INSIDE,” she screamed. “I’M IN CHARGE.” And then, as if possessed, a new voice, the one that had spoken earlier, came out.
“You were never in charge.” She turned, facing Grace who was huddled into the corner of the room, as if about to lunge a second time. She screamed again and this time, closed her eyes tight, as if to deny her demon vision of the living world.
Sam appeared to be convulsing in the center of the room as Tim regained consciousness. He saw Grace crumpled in the corner and went to her, as if shielding the woman from whatever evil had taken control of his partner.
Just as suddenly as it began, Sam’s body seemed to relax. She stood silently for a few moments, then opened her eyes. There was blood on her cheek and neck and she slowly wiped it away as she eyed Grace. Tim, unsure of what had happened, looked at his partner, then at the woman he had intended to kill only hours before.
“You’re right,” Sam suddenly whispered. “We are the same.”
13
There had never been a meeting in the Pogrom board room like there was the morning Tim and Sam returned from their Chicago trip. John listened with interest as his two agents discussed the details of their hunt, including the victims, as well as the eventual outcome.
The one quality that defined his leadership was that he genuinely listened to his troops whenever they shared their thoughts. He sat quietly as Tim and Sam took turns to share their own experiences, as well as their own feelings about how to proceed. It was no easy matter and given the complexity of the case, took some time to deal with.
But one thing Sam knew about John Milton was that he was also fair. Whilst also a cannibalistic killer, he understood the fine lines they sometimes dealt with and in this case, knew how the boundaries would never be swayed one way or the other.
After more than four hours of deliberation, they had all come to a common consensus, finally giving the go-ahead to something that had only occurred on three previous occasions. John motioned to Sam and she immediately headed to the door.
“You can come in now,” the others heard and moments later, watched her return, followed closely behind by Grace Shaw.
The new arrival took a seat next to Sam, as if sensing some sort of protection from the woman previously sent to hunt her. John stood, walked towards her and held out his hand.
“Welcome to the team.” She shook his hand nervously, tried to force a smile and thanked John. “But you have to understand. This is a huge risk for us and there will be a long road of training ahead of you.”
“I understand, Sir,” she whispered.
“And before we go any further, there are no Sirs around here. We each have a first name and we all have a job to do. I’m John.”
“Thank you, John.”
Once the formalities were over, John pressed the button on the remote and Grace watched in amazement as the wall rose, revealing the incredible room lying behind it. They shared a drink together, watching the sun setting on the end of a beautiful Kansas City day. And once they finished, they all knew that the toughest day of all still lay ahead.
The church service for Jim Lawson was nothing short of spectacular. Almost five hundred people were crammed into St Patrick’s Cathedral in
Melbourne. Some of the highest dignitaries in the country attended, including current and former police commissioners, prison wardens, premiers and the heads of government agencies.
There were also quite a number of Pogrom members, including John, Sam, Tim, Mumma and Grace. John had hired an entire 737 to ferry the group across, as well as book out several floors at the Hilton.
The service itself was beautiful, with several people taking to the podium and sharing their own experiences of a man who had fought one of the longest battles against crime. His journey had begun in the 1930s, as a young constable tracking one of the most prolific serial killers in history.
For almost ninety years, Jim Lawson did what he could to fight crime, to end the killings of innocent people. Sadly, it was the help he had offered Pogrom that left a deep hole in the speeches made that day. His exemplary career with the underground agency couldn’t be mentioned, known only to the few sitting in a small corner of the room.
Jim Lawson was cremated on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, the flames ending his mortal existence lit at the very same moment the siren sounded at the MCG to start the match between his beloved Carlton Blues and their arch rival, the Collingwood Magpies. It was almost poetic in nature, two arch enemies coming together on that day.
Inside his coffin lay a single item, one that had been in his possession for more than half a century. It was placed into his shirt pocket, Sam spending her final moments with him as she held the photo of her grandmother in her hands for the last time. It belonged with him and needed to leave this world in his possession.
The small group that had been invited to the burning stood in silence as the flames took hold, reducing the legend of the man to nothing but ashes. There were lots of tears, the kind that could never be held inside. And once it was finished, they solemnly waited out by the memorial fountain for the final package to be delivered to them.
