• • •
Patrick returned to the group at the base of the stairs alone. He explained that Carrie had a nightmare and that Amy was consoling her. He did not have to ask everyone to leave. They took the cue.
• • •
Hugging his final guest before shutting the door behind them, Patrick returned upstairs to Carrie’s room where she had managed to fall back to sleep in Amy’s arms.
“Are you going to stay in here with her tonight?” he whispered.
She shook her head, then slowly slid her way out from beneath her daughter, gently lowering her head back down to the pillow.
They checked Caleb’s room next. He was fast asleep; Carrie’s screams hadn’t woken him.
“He could sleep through an earthquake,” Patrick whispered as he shut his son’s door.
The two walked into their bedroom where Amy sat on the bed and put her face in both hands.
“You okay?” Patrick asked.
She looked up, sighed. “Yeah. I just want it all to be over. I want the bad dream to end.”
He sat beside her. “I do too, baby.” She leaned in and rested her head on his chest. He kissed the top of her head and started running his fingers over her back. “Tell you what, why don’t you go get ready for bed. I’ll go downstairs and clean up.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll come down and help.”
He pulled her in, squeezed, and kissed the top of her head again. “I insist.”
She took her head off his chest and kissed him. “I love you.”
• • •
Patrick had cleared the dining room table, and was now elbow deep in suds at the kitchen sink. He thought about Jamie’s question:
“How did you do it? How did you manage to…do what it was that you did…to come out alive?”
He set the plate he’d been holding back into the sink and shut the water off. How had they done it? How had he done it? That man who did those things. That man who shot, stabbed, and mauled like a savage beast. Was that him? Standing here now, safe in his suburban kitchen, knowing Jim was dead and that Arty was locked away, he felt as though he hadn’t done those things—that someone else had. He felt a vague connection to it as though it were a scene in a film he had seen more than once. Now, in retrospect, he felt removed from the blood lust that had surged through his veins during that horrific moment.
A tingle began at the base of his spine, and then tickled ice cold all the way to the top of his head…because he had done those things. My God. He had.
And to answer your question, Jamie, I have no fucking idea how we managed to do it. No fucking idea at all. I guess when it comes to family…
Patrick thought of the nose he’d bitten off Jim Fannelli’s face and immediately filled a glass of water. He gargled with it then spat. He repeated the process, and then set the empty glass to one side. He placed both hands on the sink’s ledge to steady himself, his head down.
“This is going to take awhile, isn’t it?” he said quietly to the sink full of dishes and water and soap. “A hell of a lot longer than Amy and I think it—”
A second scream that night cut him off. It was not Carrie’s this time, it was Amy’s: a short, painful cry.
Again Patrick found himself sprinting up the stairs. In his bedroom he found Amy sitting on the floor, clutching her right foot with both hands. Her left foot was covered in a bedroom slipper; her right was bloodied and dotted with silver thumbtacks.
“What the hell?” Patrick said.
Amy continued clutching her foot with both hands, rocking back and forth in pain.
Patrick dropped to his knees and began examining her foot. “What the hell happened?”
Amy kept a tight grip on her ankle with her left, and began slowly plucking the tacks free with her right, wincing after each withdrawal. “My slipper,” she said.
Patrick spun on both knees and spotted the solitary slipper. He picked it up and turned it over. A dozen silver thumbtacks spilled out. “What the fuck? Who did this?”
Amy continued working on her foot. “How the hell should I know?”
Patrick hopped to his feet and immediately went to Carrie’s room. She was in the same position they had left her earlier, fast asleep. He closed the door and went to Caleb’s room. His son was turned on his side away from him, lying still. Patrick called his name. Caleb didn’t answer. His tiny torso beneath the blankets rose and fell with each breath. He was asleep.
A wave of panic swept through Patrick’s head. Had one of their friends done it? No. No way. Even the hardest of practical jokers would have found such a gag awful even under normal circumstances.
Jim was dead. He was sure of it. He was dead. Dead. He saw it. Dead.
Arty was locked away. Locked far away from them. Had he gotten out? Tracked them down? No. Impossible. It was absolutely impossible. But Patrick did know one thing: he would call right now. He would call and check. Call right fucking now and check to make sure that bastard was still locked up tight.
Patrick thought of serial killer Ted Bundy; he remembered reading how Bundy had managed to escape the police twice after capture.
My God, what if he escaped, Patrick? That means he was here. God Almighty he was HERE.
“No,” he said. Insisted. Pleaded. “No, no, no.”
Patrick locked Caleb’s door and pulled it tight, then did the same for Carrie’s. He sprinted back to his bedroom, his eyes wide and wild. He began going through their closets, pushing and shoving clothes out of the way, ripping them off their hangers and tossing them over his shoulder, checking every conceivable hiding spot.
Amy was still on the floor attending to her foot. Her own eyes grew wild from her husband’s frenzy. “What? What?”
Patrick ignored her; he just continued with his frantic search. The bathroom next.
“Patrick!”
He emerged from the bathroom a minute later. Satisfied their entire bedroom was empty save for him and his wife, Patrick turned to Amy, his eyes still lidless. “Stay here and keep this door locked.”
He flipped the lock, pulled the door tight, and checked the handle to ensure it didn’t budge. He heard Amy call after him one last time as he bolted downstairs to make the call.
• • •
Curled over on one side, his back to the bedroom door, four-year-old Caleb was desperately holding in a giggle, wishing he could have seen the look on his Mommy’s face after playing his funny joke on her.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 • 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 35 • 36 • 37 • 38 • 39 • 40 • 41 • 42 • 43 • 44 • 45 • 46 • 47 • 48 • 49 • 50 • 51 • 52 • 53 • 54 • 55 • 56 • 57 • 58 • 59 • 60 • 61 • 62 • 63 • 64 • 65 • 66 • 67 • 68 • 69 • 70 • 71 • 72 • 73 • 74 • 75 • 76 • 77
1
Chicago, Illinois
Autumn, 2008
Although the interior of the house was black with night, Monica could have slinked her way upstairs and into their bedrooms eyes closed. She had been in their home—alone—several times already. Her job demanded this kind of tactile homework. She had to be perfect. Always. But it was never a burden. She loved her job. It was why she was so good.
Monica never cared to know the reasons behind her assignments unless they were critical to the job. Reasons meant little to her. It could be a terrorist hiding in suburbia, or a school teacher having an affair. She didn’t care. It was the work itself she prized. Her first solo assignment at nineteen was carried out with the exactness of a veteran—her hand never shook, her movements never second-guessed.
At the top of the landing, Monica made an immediate right into the boy’s bedroom. He was a freshman in high school. Five-foot nine. Scruffy brown hair. Skinny. She’d studied him on his way home from soccer practice. Every day after school unti
l five. He walked home.
Monica now stood over his sleeping body and withdrew a pistol from her leather bag. Teenagers were always so easy. They slept like the dead. The boy snored deeply, his mouth ajar. She smirked at the opportunity and placed the suppressor of her Glock into his mouth. The boy never opened his eyes, even when the two quiet thumps bounced his head and turned the back of his pillow red.
Mom and dad were down the hall. She didn’t have to hurry with this one, and that was just fine by her. Quite often a job would require a quick in and out with little time to savor and enjoy. But with this one, she could (and would) secure the situation, and then take her time.
She glided into the master bedroom, hung at the foot of the bed, watched their sleeping silhouettes. She felt the familiar tingle flutter its way down her spine until it made a pit-stop in her belly, swirling hot and bad, waiting for the chance to continue its exquisite journey south.
Monica had once read that Adolph Hitler would often ejaculate while delivering passionate speeches to his minions. A crazy notion to most, but she understood the moment she’d read it. She desired sex as often (she assumed) as most women did, but achieving orgasm was near impossible no matter how earnest the man’s efforts may have been. But when an assignment like tonight’s allowed her to take her time? She was able to explode with ecstasy—multiple times.
One poor fellow unknowingly volunteered to be her first successful effort at sexual gratification when Monica was only twenty-two. The young man was not an assignment, just another random penis stepping up to the plate in hopes of hitting one out of the park. Unfortunately, the man, despite his efforts, could not even manage a bunt, and in a desperate attempt for fulfillment, Monica—she on top, he still inside her—reached for one of her instruments (always hidden close by) and slashed his throat.
Staring down at disbelieving eyes, a mouth gurgling red, and frantic clawing at a throat that no longer worked, she came instantly.
Future sexual encounters of the same nature occurred, but they were infrequent. More sport than anything else. The job satiated her appetite with far greater satisfaction.
And so now, just as the female subject (40, dirty-blonde hair, five-foot two, Pilates at twelve on Tuesdays and Thursdays) lifted her head off the pillow to likely obey the blind suspicion subjects sometimes had—the suspicion they were being watched—she did not receive two quick bullets like her son had. Instead she got a lightning-quick injection to the side of the neck that put her back into a deep sleep. The husband (42, brown hair, five-foot ten, work hours eight to six, happy hour with colleagues on Wednesdays and Fridays from six to eight) barely stirred, even when he received an injection of his own.
Monica left the sedated couple, entered their bathroom and hit the light. Her reflection in the stretch of mirror above the dual sinks was exceptionally kind: dark, seductive eyes, full lips, healthy dark hair that usually bounced at the shoulder (now pulled back tight for job efficiency), and a body that defied the majority by being slim and tight in the usual trouble spots, full and firm in the oft-desired.
These physical gifts were accentuated—and coveted by every female eye she passed—by a powerful and sophisticated aura, product of conditioning from years in the most elite of boarding schools. If she were wearing a power suit instead of the unassuming but apt attire needed for her current assignment, she could easily pass for a seven-figure knockout parading down Wall Street.
Monica placed her leather bag on the sink, glanced into the bedroom at the couple, and felt the familiar tingle begin its feathery dance down her body. Now she would take her time.
• • •
Monica sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette. Inhaling deep, she glanced over her shoulder, searching for the remote. It was on the nightstand next to the wife’s corpse.
She stood, strolled past the chair that held the husband’s bound and mangled body, flicked an ash on his scalp, picked up the remote from the nightstand, and returned to her spot at the foot of the bed.
Crossing her legs, she took a second drag, leaned back on her elbows, and blew a long stream into the air. She tweaked the toes of the dead woman next to her, then clicked on the television.
The news was replaying a top story from a few days ago. The incident had caught her attention the night it aired, and she had given it a brief glance. Multiple murders in the sticks of western Pennsylvania. A place called Crescent Lake. Torture. Sick games. Something out of a movie, they had said.
Now they apparently had the whole story.
She turned up the volume and looked on with the casual eye of an athlete watching their own sport. She hoped this local station had the balls to air recordings of the aftermath. The breaking report she had witnessed days ago on assignment in New York had given her nothing but a woman with a bad dye-job blabbering in front of a cabin in Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania.
For the moment, this one looked to be no different. Same bullshit drama in front of a cabin. A man reported this time, one with a bad toupee and capped teeth. He carried on as though auditioning for a Hollywood role.
Four murdered … two men responsible … brothers … one of the brothers eventually killed in an act of self-defense … the other brother critically wounded and in custody.
Her casual interest was waning.
The reporter disappeared, and Monica was finally rewarded with a brief shot of a large black body bag being carried out of a cabin and into an ambulance.
She rolled her eyes. Painfully unfulfilling. She took another drag of her cigarette and blew perfect smoke rings.
Toupee returned for a brief moment to provide new details about the naughty brothers. And then, for the first time, their pictures—side by side headshots that took up the whole screen.
Monica sprang upright, the remote falling from her hand, the battery casing breaking open as it hit the rug. She leaned forward and gawked at the screen. The brother on the left—the one they’d declared dead. He looked exactly like her.
The finished cigarette burned her fingers and she cursed and dropped it. She quickly stubbed it out with her toe, pocketed the butt, pushed off the bed and rushed close to the screen. A lock of her thick, dark hair came free from her ponytail and fell over one eye. She slapped it away from her face as though it were a bug.
The other brother, the one that was still alive and in custody, there was a resemblance there as well. And then she heard the word and her open mouth gaped wider.
Adopted.
Both brothers had been adopted. The pictures disappeared and she snatched at the screen as though she might be able to bring them back.
Toupee stood in front of a lake now. More cabins rimmed the corners of the screen. If he had been auditioning for a Hollywood role before, he was now trying to take home the Oscar with his dramatic recap:
“Once again, an idyllic autumn getaway becomes a nightmare for an innocent family, as two psychotic brothers subjected these unfortunate people to unspeakable horrors for their own sick amusement …”
A photo of the family’s cabin, and then of an isolated house where apparently further atrocities took place.
“… the family survived the brothers’ wrath, even fighting back and taking the life of one of the sadistic brothers in a heroic display of self-defense …”
A solitary picture of the deceased brother now—the one that looked like her. Monica touched the screen, caressed his face.
“The same cannot be said for the four victims here at Crescent Lake, whose lives were brutally snuffed out for unknowingly playing the role of obstacles in the sick games the brothers were orchestrating …”
A repeat shot of the same black body bag being taken out of a cabin and into an ambulance. Her fingers fell from the screen, dropped to her side.
“Ironically, it would later be known that one of the survivors of that night of horror was actually the adoptive mother of the two sadistic brothers. A widow, this elder woman, whose name is being withheld, was tragically unaware of t
he evil she was raising until it was too late. She too proved to be an obstacle, and is now in critical condition…”
Toupee on his own again, in front of the lake, pouring it on.
“What compels men to do such things? How does one develop the urge and ability to torture an innocent family for their own enjoyment? To slaughter four people without pity? Attempt to take the life of their own adoptive mother who, along with her now deceased husband, lovingly took these boys into their lives out of the pure goodness of their hearts … ?”
The side by side headshots leapt forward again as the commentary continued. She caressed the screen with both hands this time, one for each.
She knew. All those questions they were asking. The whys? The hows? She knew why. She knew how. God how she knew.
Monica rushed towards her leather bag, fished out her cell, dialed.
A male voice picked up on the first ring. “Code in.”
“Neco. 8122765,” she said.
“Waiting for voice authentication … clear. Everything okay?”
“Fine. You can send the cleaner in an hour. I want you to check something for me first.”
• • •
Monica “Neco” Kemp hung up after ten minutes then dialed a second number. It rang twice.
“What’s up, baby girl?” A male voice, deep and powerful.
“I found them.”
2
The Western Pennsylvania Hospital
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Two days later
“Hey, Fannelli, are your hands clean?”
Arty Fannelli ignored the officer. He’d learned over the past week that the officers assigned to him for the night shift could be chatty, and not in a how ’bout them Steelers? way. Day shift weren’t exactly benevolent watch dogs either, but at least they kept their noses in magazines most of the time.
Bad Games- The Complete Series Page 26
