Death Notes Omnibus

by James Hunt

  Hart remained silent for a moment. Then, silently, he stepped aside. He walked to the desk and started picking up the case files that had fallen. Cooper paused in the doorway. She opened her mouth, but hesitated. Without a word she left, heading straight toward Farnes’s office.

  The captain was behind his desk, looking over some papers, when she burst through the door. Farnes paid little attention to the disruption, only glancing up for a moment before returning to his business. “If you’ve come to talk about your impromptu press conference from this morning, you’re wasting your breath. The chief thinks you were out of line. If you’re not able to bring this guy in, then you won’t have a choice but to resign.”

  “Where’s Hemsworth?”

  “I’m not his handler. Now, get out of my office.”

  “You think that if I get fired that I still won’t be able to come after you?” Cooper asked, stepping closer to Farnes’s desk. “You think that will deter me from trying to bring you down?” She flattened her palms over the top of the papers he was reading, invading the bubble he enjoyed keeping around himself. “If you think I’m a pain in the ass with a badge, just wait until I don’t have any rules holding me back.”

  The dismissive demeanor vanished from Farnes’s face and was replaced by the red tint of anger in his cheeks. “You’re on your last leg, bitch. Just a little while longer and I can put you down for good.” Farnes whispered the threat, his loose neck wiggling in rage before he collapsed back into his chair. “Get the fuck out of my office.”

  Reluctantly, Cooper left, and on her stampede through the halls she felt the urge to pick a fight with anyone who looked at her the wrong way. She knew what all of them thought of her. She knew how much they loathed her. A bitch, traitor, turncoat, rat. That’s all they see me as. That’s all their little minds can comprehend.

  “Hey!” Hart stepped in her path, grabbing her shoulder. “I just got a call from the hospital. Our girl’s finally awake.”

  It was the first piece of good news she’d received since this whole thing started. The ride over to Baltimore General was a quiet one. Neither said a word or even exchanged a glance. Cooper kept her wall up. She needed it up. It was the last piece of defense she had, and once it crumbled she was exposed.

  It was Cooper who stepped into the room first, but the doctor inside quickly cut her off. “I’m sorry, but Dalia needs rest. You’ll have to come back another time.”

  Cooper sidestepped the doctor, and Hart kept him from pursuing. She approached the woman’s bedside calmly, trying to hide the eagerness in her voice. “Dalia, I’m Detective Cooper with the Baltimore Police Department. I wanted to ask you a few questions.” She placed a gentle hand on Dalia’s wrist, but the woman quickly removed her hand.

  “I don’t… remember anything.” Dalia’s voice was weak and just above the volume of a whisper.

  Cooper shuddered, the disappointment and frustration growing harder to hide. “You were attacked. Do you remember what you were doing before you were here in the hospital?”

  Dalia scrunched up her face, her voice shaky. “Not really.” She shifted uncomfortably in the bed and winced. “I just remember walking to my car.”

  Cooper bowed her head, and her knuckles popped from the tight grip on the railing. When she lifted her head, a few strands of hair broke loose from her bangs, which she brushed away hastily. “Did you hear a voice, see anything? Even the smallest detail could help.” Cooper stretched out her hand and clutched the woman’s arm, blind to the pressure she gave. “You have to remember.” She felt the panic and despair from the sleepless nights and empty whiskey bottles take control. Cooper shook the woman’s arm hard enough to rock the bed. “You have to remember!”

  Hart quickly stepped in and removed Cooper’s hands, using his size and strength to subdue her and slammed her against the wall. “Cooper, that’s enough!” She struggled at first, but with her arms pinned she was left immobile. Cooper relaxed, and Hart loosened his hold. The tile felt cool when she slid to the floor, and a numbness washed over her. The killer could do whatever he wanted, and right now she was nothing more than one of his puppets. One of his stories.

  “God, it hurts.” Dalia reached for her side and moaned. The machine monitoring her heart rate beeped wildly, each sound quicker than the one before. “It feels so sharp.”

  The doctor grabbed the woman’s wrist as sweat formed on her cheek. “Where are you feeling the pain?”

  Dalia took in a sharp breath and clutched her left side. “It feels like one of my ribs is broken.” The moment the doctor glided his hand up and down the point of the pain’s origin she screamed. “Jesus Christ!”

  Still in a daze, Cooper looked to the woman on the cot, watching her writhe in pain. That’s what he does to everyone he touches. That’s what he’s doing to Beth. That’s what he’s doing to me. The woman screamed again, this time a shrieking cry that snapped Cooper from the apathetic haze she wandered through. She pushed herself from the floor, a thought coming to mind. “You need to get her x-rayed, run tests for poison. Look for anything that could be wrong with her. If she’s in pain it’s because the killer did something to her. You need to find out what it is.”

  The doctor pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Detective, it can take weeks to run a battery of tests and get the results back. And I’ll need more information to go off of than ‘something’s wrong.’” He examined the left side of Dalia’s ribs at a closer angle. “I’m going to lift up your gown and get a better look.” Dalia’s breath grew sharp as the doctor exposed a cluster of cuts and scrapes along her ribs.

  Cooper stepped closer to get a better look. “Were those there before?”

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, she had some light bruising. Most likely from when your suspect moved her into the box.” The woman let out another cry as the doctor continued to prod a gloved hand over the wounds. “I don’t see anyth— Wait.” He leaned closer, examining a cluster of scrapes, then pulled a small flashlight from his pocket, illuminating one of the cuts.

  Cooper tried to see what the doctor had found, but he clicked the light off before she could see. “What is it?”

  “Ma’am, have you had any recent surgeries, been to the hospital at all?” the doctor asked.

  “No.” Dalia’s tone was panicked, but still in pain.

  The doctor pulled both Cooper and Hart out of earshot from Dalia. He leaned in close, the three huddling together. “Someone made an incision between her rib cage and then stitched it up.”

  “He put something inside of her.” Cooper smacked Hart on the shoulder, pulling his attention away from Dalia’s painful moans. “Get Hemsworth on the line and tell him to have a team ready. Whatever he put in there won’t be good.”

  While Hart phoned the FBI and the doctor wheeled the woman into surgery, Cooper found herself wrestling with the one task that drove her mad: waiting. She bounced her knee nervously as staff members and visitors passed. The adrenaline withdrawals triggered her hands to shake, which she constantly flexed to hide the tremors.

  “I found Hemsworth,” Hart said, taking a seat next to Cooper and putting his phone down. “He’s back at the station. He said he’ll have a team ready in less than an hour.”

  “Good.” Despite the communication Cooper kept her wall up, though she felt herself lowering the height, one brick at a time. In silence the pair wallowed in awkward spasms and nervous habits. Cooper watched Hart twirl the wedding band around his finger again, spinning it faster and faster while she bounced her leg. Finally, taking a chance, Cooper ended the standoff. “He called me.”

  With the olive branch extended Hart stopped twirling his wedding ring and ended his staring contest with the floor. “Who?”

  Cooper sighed, leaning back into her chair and folding her arms across her chest as she slouched. “The killer. When I got back to my apartment. He called me.”

  Hart swiveled quickly, his eyes wide. “Christ, Cooper, why didn’t you say anything? Did you t
ell Farnes? Or Hemsworth? Did you—”

  “The number was blocked.” Cooper waved away the thoughts racing through Hart’s mind, the ones she’d already dispelled in the seconds after the call had ended. “He’s gone to too much trouble to get caught by us tracking a cell number.”

  “Maybe Hemsworth has some way he can track it. He might have some resources that we don’t.”

  “No,” Cooper answered. “He wanted to fuck with my head. He wants me to find him, and he wants me to have to work for it.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know why he wants me to find him.”

  “You said it yourself, he’s a psychopath. They all want to get caught in the act sooner or later.”

  Cold laughter echoed through Cooper’s mind at the remembrance of their conversation, along with her sister’s screams. She flinched involuntarily but tried to hide it by shifting in her seat. “This is different. He went out of his way to find me. Everything has been elaborate, over the top.” She buried her face in her hands then brushed her hair back, running her fingernails harshly over her scalp.

  “We’ll find him, Cooper.” Hart rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to get your sister back.”

  “Yeah.” And while Cooper agreed, she felt the hollowness of her own words. She thought of all of the case files on her desk, all of the murders yet to be solved. How many kinds of people like him were out there in the world? How many times had someone like him done this and walked away a free man? “He wants to watch me burn, Hart.” The revelation developed slowly in her mind. “He knows that my last connection I have is with my sister.”

  “Hey.” Hart turned her head toward his, and for the first time since she was a little girl she felt the weightlessness of helplessness. “We’ll find her.”

  “Detective?” The doctor pulled the surgical mask from over his mouth, his white coat flowing behind him. “You’ll want to see this.”

  Cooper and Hart followed the doctor back to the x-ray room, where Dalia was still inside the MRI scanner. The doctor pointed to a few of the images of her body. “If you look here, you can see the bones of the ribcage.” He took a pen and pointed between the upper two ribs. “And this is right around where the incision was made on the patient.”

  Hart squinted to get a better look. “What is that?”

  Cooper leaned forward, noticing the small sliver of an object. “The note.” She turned to the doctor. “Is it close to any organs? Can you get it out without hurting her?”

  The doctor nodded. “It’s wedged inside tightly, but it’s best to retrieve it quickly before it results in any infections. We’ll get her prepped for operation immediately.”

  Once the doctor left, Cooper and Hart returned to the waiting room, and if Cooper felt anxious before, then now it felt as if her head were going to explode. She paced the hall outside the operating room. Time stood still, and the more she paced, the more it slowed.

  When the door finally opened, Cooper sprinted to it before the doctor could even step into the hall. She looked down to his hands, which were empty. And bloody. “Where is it?”

  The doctor looked back inside to the nurses, and Cooper tried to lean in to get a better look, but he blocked her view. “We were able to retrieve the object, but something happened.” The color drained from his face, and that’s when Cooper noticed the amount of blood on his shirt. “There was something else hidden behind the object’s mass that we missed. A wire inside the patient’s body that ran through her small intestines was connected to the object we retrieved. When it was pulled out it triggered tears inside the body that caused her to bleed internally. With her previous injuries still healing the overall blood loss was just too much. We lost her.”

  Cooper remained quiet for a moment, peering into the surgical room, and watched as one of the nurses pulled the sheet over the young woman’s face. The world slowed, and she nodded and stepped back. Hart mouthed a few words, but all Cooper heard was the thump of her own heart. Even when she saved someone, even when she played by his rules, followed the law, he could still kill who he wanted. “The note.” Her words felt slurred and dull on her tongue. “Give it to me.”

  The doctor nodded, and Cooper and Hart followed him into the surgical room, where the doctor washed the blood from the small plastic case the note was placed. Cooper unfolded the paper and exposed the familiar scribbles in red crayon.

  When she read the first few lines she couldn’t stop her hands from trembling. It was Hart who stepped in to make sure she was all right. But when he asked what was wrong Cooper merely handed him the paper and walked over to Dalia’s body. She placed her hand on the woman’s arm, the body still warm though the blood that kept it alive had stopped flowing. She thought of the boyfriend she had, the one that had spoken to her that very morning. Whatever happiness the two of them had found ended with her last breath.

  “Christ.” The note dangled from Hart’s fingertips. “Cooper… I had no idea.”

  The grief she’d buried over twenty years ago resurfaced, and it was just as paralyzing, just as powerful as she remembered. That same feeling of hopelessness, of doubt and evil crept back into her mind. “It still feels like it happened yesterday.” Hart extended the note back to Cooper, and she read it one more time.

  Dear Addy,

  I know how hard this is for you, trying to find me. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to not know where I am, how I’m doing. I know you’re hoping that you’ll save me, but you have to be careful of that hope. You have to make sure that it doesn’t consume you, because I know you’ve had that hope taken away from you before. Like in college.

  I know we haven’t talked about it in a long time, but grief never truly leaves us, no matter how deep you try and bury it. So why don’t you let yourself finally feel it? It’s easier to just face it head on and let it happen.

  I still remember the dream you told me you had about him. How you chased him along the beach, his little legs carrying him as fast as they could and his red curls bouncing in the sunlight? The laughs and smiles. You were happy then. It was the only time I’d ever seen you really happy in your entire life, even after his father left you weren’t scared.

  But after the miscarriage, that piece of you died with your unborn child. But it wasn’t your fault. You were nineteen. And we both know there was a part of your soul that was glad to be relieved of the burden, it’s okay to admit that. Because you knew what it would have been like to grow up without a father, and now there wouldn’t be another child in this world that would have to go through that pain.

  You were desperate then, just like you are now. Don’t lose me like you lost your child, and all of the lives that have slipped through your hands by the murderers you couldn’t catch. Stop him, Addy. For me.

  Love,

  Beth

  A tear landed over Beth’s name, and Cooper quickly wiped its successor away. She took in a sharp breath and tightened her hand, crumpling a portion of the paper. When she did she noticed writing on the back. There was an address scribbled hastily. Cooper pulled out her phone and entered the address into her GPS.

  “Where is it?” Hart asked.

  The map application narrowed the search to South Baltimore, and when the software matched the address with the name of the business, the phone slipped from her hand. “Oh my god.”

  Hart scooped the phone off the floor, and he quickly dialed Hemsworth. “We know the killer’s next location.” He paused, taking a moment for the panicked thoughts to form coherent words. “He’s targeting Southside Day Care.”

  Chapter 10

  A heightened sense of fear gripped the Baltimore police officers and federal agents that were called to the day care. It lingered in the air like a haze, and though the boots on the ground numbered close to one hundred, Cooper wasn’t sure if that was enough. She navigated the chaotic clusters of crowds, Hart close behind, that had gathered around the day care, along with the chaos of the news crews that had stationed themselves on the street.
There wasn’t a reporter in the city that wasn’t on scene.

  The moment one of them caught wind of Cooper’s scent questions were hurled in her direction, but when she stepped under the police line she managed to put some distance between herself and the press. She found Hemsworth near the day care’s entrance, speaking to a few of his agents.

  “Detectives.” Hemsworth gave a weary nod, and Cooper noticed the beads of sweat that dotted his face, accompanied by a slight twitch in the corner of his left eye. He was nervous. Everyone was. “I have a team ready to sweep the place. Is there anything in particular we should be looking for?”

  “Where are the children?” Cooper asked.

  “We have them stationed in a room inside with some agents guarding them. I didn’t want to bring them out in case it would trigger something.” Hemsworth shook his head. “I don’t know what this psycho has planned.”

  “Then his plan is working.” The buzz of helicopter blades sounded overhead as two birds circled the day care. “I need to speak with the children inside.”

  “I’ll take you in.”

  Cooper’s stomach summersaulted. She had an idea of what she was looking for, and for the first time in her career she was afraid of being right. The room where the children were held was small, and all of the kids were huddled together, sitting with their legs crossed on the carpet, their eyes wide at the team of SWAT officers dressed in all black that guarded their perimeter.

  “What are we looking for, Cooper?” Hart asked.

  But she remained silent as she scanned the small bodies sitting on the carpet, the walls beyond the day care buzzing with sirens, people shouting, and the drum of the helicopter blades.

  “Cooper—”

  “There.” She pointed and circled to the rear of the pack, her eyes glued to the curly top of a redheaded boy. He kept his head down and picked at the sticker on the side of his shoe. Cooper knelt, a few of the kids scooting closer at her presence.

  “What’s going on?” The girl wore pigtails and rocked back and forth on the floor with her legs crossed. “Are we going home?”