The StoneCutter

by Scott Blade

  Katelyn Fox's articles gained enough support with the public that the FBI formed a task force to hunt the StoneCutter. A year and a half ago, the FBI arrested their suspect: a mentally unbalanced man named.....

  "Gillard Shutter?" Anna Black said, interrupting our thoughts like she heard them.

  "What? Did you ask a question?" Shane asked. We were both thrown off guard. Shane's jaw dropped. The hatch to my part of the brain swung wide open on its hinges in blatant surprise. How did she know that we were thinking about Gillard Shutter?

  "I killed Gillard Shutter," I screamed in Shane's head. "He is dead! He has to be! I don’t make mistakes!"

  "Shane, your client, Gillard Shutter, where is he? How did you feel about defending him?"

  "You are not interested in Paul Verize?" Shane asked. He began to put his shirt back on.

  "No. What?" she said seemingly confused. "Our readers want to know about the StoneCutter. Paulverizer is not as interesting. His case is over."

  "Ah. What did you want to know?" he answered.

  "Where is he now? How do you feel about letting him get away with murder?" She asked.

  "He was proven innocent in a court of law."

  "Actually, he was guilty by reason of insanity. That's not innocent."

  "He served his time. Wherever he is, I'm sure that he just wants to be left alone." Shane said.

  Anna's questions persisted. She wanted only to know about the StoneCutter. She wanted to reopen old wounds, Shane's wounds. Shane was scarred. I was not, but he carried the burden of conscience, of regret, of guilt. Sometimes, I could sense beneath Shane's arrogant exterior, a sickening sense of right and wrong. I'm not sure why. Morality was useless to us. We killed the StoneCutter, and now we must continue to kill. Shane had to feed me. I needed to grow. I was, after all, a growing monster.

  In our youth, we grew together, but now he aged, while I continued to grow.

  But right now I only grew hungry.

  |||||

  Shane's law office was a dark complex of glass, modern art, and expensive furniture. It was located in downtown D.C., not far from the Vietnam Memorial. His office rested on the corner of the third floor. Along with a modern-style conference room that sat down the hall; there were other offices, a lounge area, and a lobby.

  Many of our firm's top ranking lawyers had offices next to ours. Most of Graves and Associates were comprised of young to middle-aged lawyers with little to no moral code other than how to make money. The business of law was dog eat dog, or in our world, cannibal eat cannibal.

  Ally Embers' picturesque body sat perfectly posed just outside of Shane's office door. He left the door closed, but could still stare at her through the glass. Glass covered seventy percent of Shane's office with the exception of one wall, which divided Shane's office from the lawyer's office next door.

  Luckily for Shane, the windows were made of one-way glass, like an interrogation room, a place that we hoped never to be in.

  With the one-way glass, Shane watched his clients as they approached Ally's desk, asking to meet with us. It was a way of avoiding unwanted visitors. The glass was like Shane's skin, the walls surrounding my home. Inside of Shane, I could see out. I could see our prey, but they could not see me.

  Sometimes, Shane had entire conversations with people that I wanted to kill. They never realized that I stared at them through the one-way glass of Shane's soul.

  In a profession where we dealt with killers, I wondered why I was the only serial killer who could see other killers. Why was I the only monster that could sense other monsters? Why did I alone have a one-way glass? Guess I was a more evolved monster. That was why I preyed on them. They were the weaker of my species.

  I had the killer instinct. I was the killer instinct. Shane was my looking glass.

  "Shane?" Ally said over the phone's intercom.

  Shane looked up to see the back of a woman standing at Ally's desk. The woman's frame was well built and toned. She faced the opposite direction, away from Ally and away from our one-way glass. Her backside looked familiar. Her long, dark hair, straightened by her own hand each day, waved perfectly behind her.

  She wore a short, trendy leather jacket and a pair of tight designer jeans. She looked like she planned to go clubbing later. Shane noticed that she didn't have a purse. He liked that. We both liked it. A woman without a purse was someone who didn't need to carry a lot of stuff with her everywhere. She possessed little baggage. She was ready to go.

  "Yes, Ally?" Shane replied, leaning into the intercom.

  "Det. Good is here to see you," Ally said.

  Det. Sun Good turned around to face the window so that Shane could gaze at her. She bent down toward the intercom, exposing the perfect amount of cleavage and said, "Let me in, Shane!"

  Det. Sun Good was a good cop. I never held that against her. She worked hard in a world filled with sexism. She was tough. Shane enjoyed being with her, back when they were together.

  Sun Good was the only real woman that threatened me. I thought that Shane would stay with her forever. I thought they would marry someday. I feared having to spend all of my energy tiptoeing around her. I feared that eventually she would be our downfall. She was a good cop. She would discover us, but so far we were safe.

  Shane reached down to hold the intercom button on the phone and said, "She can come in, Ally."

  Det. Sun Good walked into our office. Her hips swung with each swagger like a runway model craving attention. Shane saw the outline of her gun holstered under her leather jacket. He wondered how accurate she was with it.

  Det. Sun Good was Japanese-American. She was gorgeous. Her dark skin glistened. She used a glitter body cream like a stripper, but I didn't judge, and Shane liked it. The scent grasped at my sensitive nostrils. I couldn't help but smell it. Even I found her alluring. I know Shane did.

  Even as she approached, and I choked, Shane's deep blue eyes filled up with lust as they outlined her frame.

  While she repulsed me, Shane wanted to touch her.

  "Sun, how are you?" Shane said. He gripped tightly to the arms of his chair.

  Sun walked in with her partner in-tow. He was completely silent. I chuckled. He stood tall and lean. He looked serious.

  Sun stopped at the edge of Shane's desk. She gazed past him for a moment at the lustrous, white marble city beyond Shane's floor-to-ceiling windows.

  "Shane, we need to know where your client is."

  "Well you know where he lives. Right? You should have the address," Shane replied.

  "Shane, stop dicking us around. We need you to tell us where he is. We've been to his house, checked his utility records. He hasn't lived in that house in a year," Sun said. She turned and gaze at Shane.

  Shane felt suddenly uneasy. A year? That can't be right. We killed Paul just last night in his home. What was she talking about?

  "Why do you look so puzzled?" Sun asked. Her powers of deduction were commendable.

  "I'm just confused. I thought he was still living in the same place."

  "Cut the shit, Shane. I know that you know where he is. Aiding and abetting, Shane. Aide and abetting. It is illegal to hide a wanted suspect. You know that. I don't want you to get into trouble."

  "Sun, I have no idea what you are talking about."

  "You don't know what I am talking about?" she asked, looking stunned that he really didn't seem to understand.

  "Shane, don't you watch the news? Read the papers? There has been a new murder. How many people are you going to let die before you realize that you shouldn't represent the scum of the Earth?"

  "A new murder?" Shane said, puzzled. Now, I was shocked. That was twice in one day.

  We bashed Paul's brains in. We chopped him up into little bits. He was nothing more than ashes in our furnace. How could he have killed someone new?

  "Shane? Are you serious? Have you been living under a rock? Yes, there have been five murders already. The Johnson family in Maryland and the Frosts in New York," Sun s
aid. She shifted her weight onto her left leg. Her hip leaned out.

  "Families?" Shane asked. Now we were both confused.

  "Yes. Families. Shane, are you not listening to me? We need to know where Shutter is!"

  "Shutter?" he asked.

  "Gillard Shutter. Shane, he was your most famous client. You do remember him? If it wasn't for him; nobody would even know your name," Sun Good said, mockingly. "Tell me! Where is the StoneCutter?"

  Gillard Shutter made us famous. Shane defended him in the StoneCutter case. It took months. Shane got Shutter off on an insanity plea. He was placed in a mental hospital one day, then six months later he was out. We waited for him to get out. We took him and killed him in the usual, undetectable fashion.

  Det. Sun Good just told us that he was back. Back from the dead. It must be a copycat.

  "Sun, I'm really not sure where he is," Shane said. He was in such a good mood earlier. His spirit skyrocketed after the photo shoot, but now the engines failed and his mood plummeted toward the ground, spiraling like a crashing plane. Gravity had caught a strong, unflinching hold.

  "Shane, you can't hide him from us, and why would you want to? This man killed two more families. You know how demented he is."

  The StoneCutter was the most sinister serial killer that I had ever encountered. He was truly devious. I wanted to kill him so badly that it took all of Shane's dexterity to stop me from slashing his throat right in the middle of open court.

  "Sun, I'm not sure what else I can say. I haven't seen or heard from Gillard Shutter since the day of the verdict."

  Or rather when I watched the terror in his eyes the last night that he was alive.

  "Fine, but I'm warning you. I don't like how your most famous client has vanished into thin air. We will be looking into that. You want to play it this way? Then you play it this way," Sun said. She glanced over at her partner and the two of them departed from his office.

  The last thing that we needed was for the police digging around into our past. They might notice that many of our firm's clients have vanished, but that's another issue. Right now, I needed to focus my instincts on the StoneCutter's copycat.

  The StoneCutter was dead. At least I had thought he was. Gillard Shutter was the StoneCutter. He confessed it to me. He was a little off. He was a little crazy, but my natural predatory instinct told me that he was the killer that we had searched for.

  I had to be right about him. No way did I make a mistake. I never made mistakes. Never.

  |||||

  Shane stood near the edge of the roof of his penthouse. He looked out toward the Potomac River. I could sense Shane's frustration seeping past his part of the brain and into my own like a leak in a nuclear reactor. The radiation seeped into my living area and it stunk. The smell was debilitating. I had never felt this before. I had never felt Shane's regret. Normally, I was emotionless, void of feeling.

  Suddenly, I felt concerned about Shane's side of the brain affecting mine. His fear of killing the wrong man was powerful, more so than I ever suspected. I had to keep him in check.

  We looked out over the river and thought back to the night that I killed the StoneCutter.

  |||||

  Six months ago, we waited in the shadows in Shane's black Mercedes E Class and watched the entrance to Devil Arc, D.C.'s maximum security mental hospital.

  A gloomy morning sky hovered in the air. The thick overcast slung such a dreary shadow over the city that D.C.'s white marble complexion seemed more of a decrepit grey like a mausoleum. The overcast stole away the city's famous luster. Today, it was a tomb.

  We waited in the driver seat of Shane's car, behind the silent hum of the engine. Gillard Shutter stepped out of the hospital. He stretched out his arms toward the sky as if he had just awaked from a yearlong sleep. He wore the same tattered suit that he had worn the final day of his trial.

  Gillard walked away from the hospital, waving goodbye to the guards as if to say goodbye to old friends. He seemed different than we remembered. His demeanor was different. He was calmer. He appeared to be a completely new man, rehabilitated. We wondered if they had lobotomized him. We weren't sure if they even did that anymore.

  I remembered asking myself a question: If they ever caught us, what would a lobotomy do to us? Shane was sure that they didn't perform that procedure anymore. Society deemed it barbaric and medieval, even primitive. However, the truth was that lobotomies worked.

  If the state ever caught us and sentenced us to shock treatment, that would surely be the death of me. A lobotomy would kill me. Like the serial killers of the past, who were thought to be criminally insane and then lobotomized; Shane would be cured. The others who were lobotomized actually were cured only they were rendered brain dead.

  Shock therapy was the equivalent of chemotherapy. The radiation killed the cancer cells, but it also destroyed the healthy ones. A lobotomy would kill me, but leave Shane alive, but brain dead. He would be a shell of a man. His heart would beat. His eyes would blink. His lungs would breathe, but he would be no more.

  Gillard Shutter was a fragile looking man. He did not look nearly the same way that he had a year before, when Shane first approached him in his cell.

  "Gillard?" Shane called out through the driver's side window.

  Shane wore his kill-suit. It was perfectly pressed along with his red tie and blood-colored scarf. When we first met with Gillard Shutter in his cell, I wasn't completely sure that he was the StoneCutter. That very first day, I wanted to kill him, and Shane wanted me to have him. Yet, we had to verify that we had the right suspect.

  We had waited our entire life to kill the StoneCutter. Inside that prison cell, that very first day, we had brought in our kill-case. We were prepared to kill. Shane's briefcase housed a secret compartment. Inside it was a razor sharp, retractable knife with a three inch, stainless steel blade. The small knife was not our preferred method of slashing, but it would do the trick nicely––surgically.

  "Yes?" Gillard said, with a monstrous look in his eyes.

  He was hard to read, but I felt that he had the killer instinct. Still neither of us was convinced that he was the right man.

  After a short conversation, Shane decided to represent him. As usual we would get him off and then kill him. That was the plan.

  That criminal case brought Shane national attention, something that we were unprepared for. Getting away with murder was a lot more complicated when you have a famous face.

  Gillard walked toward the street. He looked around for a taxi to take him home.

  It was no surprise that the media was not there to film his release. The hospital had announced that he would be leaving two months from the day he was actually released. This lie protected him from harassment.

  Shane pulled the car up to the curb and honked.

  Gillard looked over in surprise.

  "Mr. Lasher?" he asked.

  "Gillard," Shane acknowledged. "Want a ride home?"

  "Sure," Gillard said, looking pleased to see his savior. He opened the door and got into the car. "How did you know I was getting out today?"

  "Gillard, it is my job to keep tabs on my clients," Shane said.

  "The trial is over, Mr. Lasher. Are you in the habit of going the extra mile for your clients?"

  Suddenly, I realized that there was definitely something different about him. The monster that was inside seemed to be hiding from me. I could no longer sense him. It didn't change anything. Gillard was going to die today.

  "You are a very special client, Mr. Shutter. A very special client," Shane said, his voice turned darker. I rose to the surface and took control.

  We drove along the highway for thirty minutes in silence until we started to speak.

  "Gillard, of all of those families that you ruined, I wonder if you remember a particular family from about twenty-five years ago?"

  Gillard looked over at Shane in uncomfortable dismay.

  "Mr. Lasher, I am innocent," he proclaimed.

&
nbsp; "Gillard, you don't have to lie to me. I'm your lawyer, your defender, your priest. You were convicted and claimed insanity. Remember? We both know that you were not really mentally insane at the time."

  "Mr. Lasher, I was mentally unbalanced during the trial. I am rehabilitated now, and I'm telling you that I did not commit any murders. The unbalance in my brain caused me to admit to those horrible acts."

  "Imbalanced,” Shane said.

  “What?” Gillard asked, confused.

  “It’s imbalanced not unbalanced,” Shane said.

  “Gillard! Now, just answer the damn question!" I shouted. We peered over at the StoneCutter. My black eyes seeped through Shane's eye sockets.

  Gillard Shutter saw me clear as day. He gazed into the large, black orbs that replaced Shane's blue eyes.

  "Oh my God!" he shouted.

  "StoneCutter, I know who you are," I said. The darkness in my voice shook him to his core.

  Gillard froze in terror. Suddenly, he glanced out the window at the highway and noticed that we had passed the exit to his house.

  "Shane? That was my exit. Stop the car. I told you. I am not the StoneCutter. We made a mistake at trial. Stop the car!"

  "StoneCutter, we are going to visit a special place. We are going to the place of my birth," I said.

  Gillard peered back into my dark eyes.

  "Dear God!" he said. "What are you?"

  "I'm a monster, like you. Except, I am a monster who feeds on other monsters.....like you," I said, turning my head and gazing into his face.

  Gillard went for the door handle. He pulled it. He yanked it, but the door didn't open.

  "I detached the spring to that door handle," I said. "It won't open for you. You can’t escape."

  Gillard reached into his jacket pocket. Before he could pull out whatever he had reached for, I stuck a syringe hard into his inner thigh.