by Sonya Jesus
“Like, criminal probability?”
I knew she was smart. “Yes. I also have access to a ballistic fingerprinting database. I’m not at liberty to share more about that.” IQ3 is in its rudimentary stages, but it can assess for wear, use, and batch similarities of weapons and combine the information with psychological profiles of people within the vicinity and pinpoint likely assailants. Lucky for us, half the population seeks counseling at one point or another.
She looks at her score again. “All the questions you asked me… it was for your government study?”
“Of course not! This is independent of that funding.”
“This is personal?” she asks calmly. “All of this … what is this place?”
“My mother’s writing shed.”
“Where is your mother?”
“Dead. Like your son.”
“So this Bullet Theory, is it because of her?”
“Do you mean, was I the first test subject?” I smirk at her interrogation skills. It’s not just about reading people; she has a way of redirecting the conversation and maintaining a calm, nonjudgmental voice, which encourages confessions. “Let’s call me the first trial run. I took the information to the police.”
“They didn’t believe you?”
“Maybe they don’t like people doing their job for them. Every case I solve shows something they missed.”
“You have a point, but the law doesn’t always mean justice.”
“Is that why you took it into your own hands today?”
She scoffs. “I’m not sorry for what I did.” She hands me the paper back. “Frank deserved it.”
“I’m not sorry, either. All of you deserve closure.”
“Which you graciously provide?”
I grab my mother’s inspiration jar off the shelf and pop it open. “I do solve the unsolvable cases, but I don’t put bullets through anyone.”
She shrugs and quips, “You just give them bullets with names on them.”
“Most attorneys would argue that’s an artistic choice of medium. I could’ve written it on paper, or wood, or painted it on cotton canvas, or used chalk to write it on the floor.”
“How do you solve the cases?” she asks. “I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
I tap on my head. “I’m a smart person. Maybe a bit smarter than the average criminal.”
“Are you like a genius or something?”
I put my finger on the nose and grin. “I’ve been called gifted a time or two. It didn’t make me very likable in school. But that doesn’t matter right now.”
She flashes me a lopsided grin. “You don’t think you’re going to get caught?”
“No, I know one day I’m going to get caught, but it’s not going to be today.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because you’re going to help me.”
“You’ve got me locked in some shed, in the middle of God knows where, and you think the police aren’t going to come looking for you?” She chuckles. “Or rather, looking for me? I just finished shooting a pregnant woman.”
I smile and lean back. “Retribution?” I ask, assessing the aftermath. “You’ve supported my hypothesis. You’re the twelfth one.”
She takes a seat on the couch and rests her elbows on her thighs. “Do I get a prize for completing the dozen?”
“No prize, but I’m offering an escape.”
“An escape?” she scoffs and throws her head back. “Kace is going to hunt me down and put me behind bars. He’s not going to rest until he finds me.”
“I can help you hide.” A friend would do such a think, I mull the thought over.
“What?” Her eyes dart over my whole body.
“I can give you a new identity. New name, new look. Plastic surgery does wonders for people in hiding.”
“You want me to run away with you?”
I click my tongue and place my hand over my heart, touched at the compliment. “Your symmetrical features are pleasant on the eye, but I prefer solitude.” Perhaps a friend is pushing my own comfort zone.
She bobs her head and looks around the room. “Yep. In a dusty shed.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I have things to do here and an experiment to finish. What I’m offering is a mutual exchange. You get away with murder and get a new life, and I keep my identity secret. But you don’t have much time to figure it out.”
“So you can continue to kill people without anyone interfering?”
“I’ve never killed anyone.”
“No,” she says sarcastically. “You just orchestrate and manipulate.”
“Maybe I should clarify some things.”
She waves her hand in the air before slapping her thigh. “Go right ahead. You’re in control here. If I try to run out that door, you’ll shoot me. Not that it would matter.”
“I don’t own a gun,” I confirm to put her at ease. “So if you want to run, I’ll open the door for you. But where are you going to run to? Your home is a crime scene, and they’ll find you anywhere you go.”
“And you want me to let you go on killing people?”
“I’ve never whispered in someone’s ear or pushed them to kill. All I’ve done is give them information; a private detective could’ve done the same thing.”
“You prey on people who are broken. You use them.”
“Investors, lawyers, CEO’s, teachers. Name one profession that doesn’t use flaws for profit?” I give her time to try and come up with one and then happily shake my head. “It’s hard to find one, because part of success is knowing how to utilize people’s strengths and weaknesses. Therapy is about working on those flaws—or what you perceive to be flaws.”
Her eyelids twitch as she says, “No, it’s not.”
“Have I not helped you?” I ask. “Minus your husband’s infidelities and your spat, I helped you laugh again, work again, and live again. You communicated, ate together, wore makeup. Have I harmed you in any way? Did I tell you to kill anyone?"
“No, but you manipulate people.”
“No, never. I’m not here to debate what you deem good practices.” I hold a finger in the air, which signals for her to look at her own ringless finger. “Kace used your weakness—your drive for power—to get you into that Pregnancy Center. Frank used you too.”
“You use people.” The tone of her voice lacks the oomph it possessed earlier.
“Is that illegal? All my subjects are of sound mind, and everyone consents to my study. There’s an option to check if you don’t want to be included. It’s in the document you signed before entering my office, and I only choose people who are conscious of right and wrong.”
“Murderer’s loopholes,” she mumbles.
I jot down the idea on a sticky note and drop it in the inspiration jar. “That’s a great title.”
Her eyebrows knit together as she flattens her palms on her thighs. “Why do you need more time?”
Replacing the lid on the jar provides me a moment to think. Too much information and she can run with it straight to the police. Too little might provide the same outcome.
“Okay.” I pull out the data from my experiment, from the shelf with all my mother’s books, and hand it to her. “The higher the ‘n,’ the more reputable the outcome.”
The science log flips open, and she asks for clarification with a furrowed brow.
“Sample size of experiment, that’s what ‘n’ stands for. On the first pages, you’ll find a running log of each subject.”
“This is a kill log?”
“It’s a scientific journal!” I correct and amble toward her. She had not yet noticed it resembled the journal I gave her to write in—the same journals which are on the shelf, all lined up in order and numbered. “None of those people are dead, at least not by unnatural causes.”
She flips the book horizontally to view the chart spread across the pages. “There are one hundred numbers. You want to find one hundred people?”
“Ideally,
I’d find more. The higher the number, the better to estimate the statistical probability.” I point out her name on the sheet of paper, followed by age, sex, score, profession, start date, and date of completion, with a column for time, in hours, from bullet to revenge, if applicable.
“Data,” I say, as I grab a pen from the desk and hand it to her. “Three hours. Write that down for me on your sheet?”
“You only had twelve victims.” She shakes her head and looks up at me for answers. “You have over fifty bullets given out, and some have numbers indicating revenge. How many bodies are we looking for?”
“Since when does revenge have to end in death? You can hurt someone without causing any physical harm. You said so yourself, didn’t you?” My gaze cuts to the book to locate n=29. “Sample twenty-nine. She’s currently sleeping with the man who killed her husband and son, isolating him from his family. His eldest son is on drugs, which she happily supplies for him. Preliminary conclusion: women tend to be much more imaginative in their ways of revenge. More symbolical even.”
“Except me.”
“For a second, when you tied her to the chair, I thought you were going to burn her alive like Bitten.”
Her jaw locks as she condenses her line of sight. “Plastic melts. The zip ties wouldn’t withstand fire. She’d get away, or she’d scream a lot.” She taps the cap of the pen against the side of the bound notebook.
“She wasn’t dead when we left, but she wasn’t moving.” I gauge her reaction: a slight chin drop creates a gap between her lips. “There was plenty of blood, and I did pass some cops on the way over here.”
Her mouth relaxes, pleased with the situation. After a long pause, she says, “I’m an outlier on your data.”
Truth, but intriguing nonetheless. “How so?”
“You didn’t give me a bullet with a name on it. Just a location. I did the rest.” She rolls her neck back and forth to release the tension.
“Correct, but what about the photos?”
“They were inconclusive.”
“Inconclusive to someone else, but not to you … It led you right toward the person you suspected.”
“If I had suspected Stefanie Frank, I would’ve confronted her a long time ago.”
“Deep down, your brain rationalized you out of your instinct. Maternal instinct begins during pregnancy. It changes your neurological functions to amplify your empathic processes.”
“Talk English.”
“Your lie detector mode is at its best during pregnancy. After becoming a mother, you’re more in tune with external factors.” My hand swirls around my face. “Especially with facial features. It’s all biological.”
She flips to the pages with detailed notes on each subject and sketches of the bullets.
“After pregnancy, the seat of emotion, or the amygdala enlarges. Which interestingly enough is also one of the regions associated with psychopath characteristics.”
“Yeah, real fucking interesting.” She shuts the book with a loud thump and tosses it on the couch. “You chose me because of being pregnant?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you let me go? Why help me during your sessions and then help me ruin my own life?”
“You were too intriguing not to study.”
16
N-this
Eleanor Devero
I touch the charm on my necklace for strength and clutch it in my hands, squeezing it tight. I’m trapped in his shed, with no way out. Going along with his story is the only chance I have of getting out alive, or I can piss him off, and Kace can put his ass in jail for murdering me.
The worst thing about all of this? Nolan’s right.
We got nothing to lock him up. Not even the people like Coralee Mitchell and Bitten Senior are willing to say something negative about the Bullet Man.
“So, you brought me here—to wherever the fuck this place is—because I’m intriguing?”
The scowl on his face … I hit a nerve. “This is my mother’s favorite place.”
“You’re a mamma’s boy?” I chide, as I run my fingers through the notebooks. “A serial killing mamma’s boy.” The book in my hand belongs to Veronica Mills, a woman, I assume, is his mother. I hold it up between us as I stare at the romance cover. “Does she know you’re using her dusty shithole to sequester women and store evidence?”
He rubs at his jaw and massages the skin between it before rushing for me and snatching the book from my hands. “Do not talk about my mother,” he growls in a calmly unnerving way, while replacing the book back in the exact same position I took it from and aligning the spine with the others.
The lack of dust on the shelf, as opposed to the couch and the window sills, even the small ledge of the doorframe, alerts me. This was her shrine.
“When did she die?” I take a chance and soften my tone, nurturing his past out of him.
“A long time ago.”
I glance around, looking for evidence and spot a glass jar on the far end of the corner. I reach for it and hold it in my hand. “She was shot?” Two casings rattle around inside the bottom of the container, jarring his attention. His fascination with bullets is starting to make sense now.
He softly takes it from me and replaces it on the shelf. “Don’t touch things.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Please.”
“Did you find the person who shot her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No,” he answers truthfully and takes a seat on the edge of the desk. “My father did.”
“Your first victim?”
“My father didn’t know the man he shot was my mother’s killer.” He opens a drawer, grabs a picture frame of a newspaper article, and hands it to me. The headline reads: Man Dies Saving Genius Son. After my mom was murdered, I went into foster care until they could find my father.”
Sadness encircles the air as he stares at the picture of his father. A quick glance at the article gives me the important facts. By sixteen, he not only had watched his mother die but also his father.
“My father owned a supermarket, some franchise that’s gone out of business since, just a few towns over. I graduated high school a couple of years early and took college courses at night, so Dad gave me my first job to occupy my days and keep me out of trouble.”
“IQ of 162,” I read aloud.
He gives me a lopsided grin and cocks his head. “I could’ve graduated earlier, but the school psychologists didn’t want me to miss out on a ‘normal’ high school experience. Turns out, not everyone likes smart people.”
“They feel intimidated,” I offer, connecting with him. “You were bullied?”
“Emotionally mostly. Like you. It would have been worse had I not gotten contacts, grown into some good genes, and clear skin.”
Not the first good-looking killer in the world. We share a sympathetic moment, where we eye each other, not as doctor and patient but two people with more similarities than I’d like to admit.
“You think we’re alike,” I point out with a little more understanding. As much as I want to find something to hate about Nolan Mills, I can’t evade the truth. Maybe that’s why I trusted him so easily… because we both have similar stories. All his subjects do.
“Does that bother you, Eleanor?”
“Stop shrinking me. I think we bypassed that point in our relationship when you broke into my house.”
“Relationship?” He rubs at the back of his neck. “And I did not break into your house. The backdoor was open.”
“Did you get revenge on your bullies?” I ask, mimicking his questions during our sessions.
He shakes his head before I even finish my sentence. “No. I already told you, I have never killed anyone.”
“But people have died for you?” I hold the frame up. “Your mother and your father?”
“There are good people in the world, Eleanor. Then there are bad ones.” He swallows and nods his head toward the picture frame. “The summer I ha
d been working at the register. Dad was in his office, working on inventory and ordering stock while I handled the front. Two hooded figures came in. One ordered me to empty the registers while the other checked the aisles.
“As I was emptying the cash register, the one from the aisles stopped in front of me. I recognized him right away. He had been the one who shot my mother five years earlier in the gas station. Same tattoos on his hand, and same two letters ‘F’ and ‘U’ tattooed in black ink on the fingers flanking his middle finger.
“I must’ve stared too long because he began looking at me. Before I knew it, the gun was at my head, and he was saying, ‘I recognize you.’ My father came out of the back then, saying he had called the police and telling them to leave.”
“But you could identify him.”
He uses his finger and places it against my chest, his forefinger mimicking a gun to my chest. “If I close my eyes, I can still see the blood everywhere. The sirens came, and the guys left. With my mother, I had blocked out the facts of the robbery because it was my fault she died, but when I saw her killer in front of me, every detail flowed back in, like I had just unlocked a box inside my own mind. Compartmentalization is a defense mechanism often used by children of traumatic experiences,” he diagnoses himself and shrugs. “Guess, even geniuses suffer psychological trauma.”
I remember studying this in criminology. “It also makes people more resilient to trauma.” They regulate emotional reactions differently.
“Post-traumatic adaptation,” he adds and runs his finger over the metal shavings. “Fascinating how different brains do different things, isn’t it?” He takes the frame back from me and places it on the desk.
A picture of his handsome father stares at me. “Myelin. The brain’s white matter and speed booster.”
“I knew I liked your brain…” Nolan grabs one of the bullets and holds it between us. “Maybe, had I done something like this as a teen, my parents would still be alive.”
“Or maybe it would be exactly the same. All you’re doing is turning innocent victims into killers.”
