Everybody Dies - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 3)

by J. A. Konrath

  So Hugo didn’t kill the baby, or his mother, or every single person on the bus. Instead he ground his molars so tightly they could chew through steel, and three hours later he was in Chicago.

  The priest lived in an apartment, which seemed weird. Hugo always assumed they lived in church. His original plan was to watch the priest for a few days, follow him around, learn his schedule, and then find the best time and place to murder him in a messy, memorable way.

  But still high on anger from the bus ride, Hugo decided to knock on the man’s door and wing it.

  Apparently the Catholic church didn’t treat its members any better than the Caucasian Nation did, because the priest’s neighborhood was lower middle class, and his apartment building was more rundown than Hugo’s shitty trailer. Hugo bypassed the lobby security door with a firm tug on the handle, and went to the second floor, the industrial carpet on the stairs smelling like rat piss. He knocked shave-and-a-haircut on the priest’s door and put his face close to the peephole so his victim couldn’t see how big Hugo was.

  After a few seconds, a voice came from inside. Male, kind of squeaky, but confident.

  “Can I help you?”

  Hugo liked confident people. Their faith in their own abilities made them easy to trick.

  “Sorry to disturb you at home, Father Michael. I have to talk to you.”

  Hugo expected the door to open. But it didn’t.

  “I’m kind of busy right now,” he said.

  What kind of asshole priest would turn away a member of the flock?

  “It’ll only take a minute,” Hugo told him. “You can say no if you have to.”

  That last bit was a little psychological trick. People were more likely to say yes to something if you tell them they can say no. Strange, but true.

  “Okay. Come in.”

  Humans. So predictable.

  The door opened, and Hugo quickly stepped in, filling the doorway, blocking the doorway. As Father Michael’s eyes went wide, Hugo shut the door behind him and turned the deadbolt. Then he eyed the priest, a slight man in jeans and a polo shirt, hair thinning, an Adam’s apple large enough to hang a coat on. He didn’t have on his robes or Roman collar, but was wearing a cross around his neck.

  “I never understood, why do Christians wear crosses?” Hugo asked.

  “To remind us of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and how he died.”

  “You don’t find that stupid? If I wanted to remember Kennedy, would I wear a bullet around my neck?”

  His initial shock apparently over, the priest still didn’t understand the danger he was in. “The Passion of Christ is the central tenant of Christianity. He suffered and died for our sins.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that Jesus took the blame for all of the evil we’ve committed, so God forgives us.”

  “So I’m forgiven for all of the evil I’ve done, because Jesus died?”

  “Exactly.”

  Hugo smiled. “That’s good. Because I’ve done a lot of evil.”

  He set down his bag and unzipped the top.

  “What is it you seek, my son?” Father Michael asked, his voice losing some of its confidence.

  “I’m not your son. I’m the son of an alcoholic son of a bitch who beat the shit out of me every day until I was thirteen years old. Which, according to you, was okay because God forgave him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure it was rough, but you survived. The Lord only gives us what He knows we can handle.”

  “That’s good to know. Because I’m about to do some things to you that most people wouldn’t be able to handle.”

  Hugo let the hate flow in, filling him up.

  Then he took the hammer and nails out of the bag.

  “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be crucified, Father?”

  Turns out, crucifying someone isn’t easy without a cross. Drywall won’t hold a man’s weight.

  Hugo had to make due with nailing the priest to the floor.

  When he ran out of nails, he used a cheap steak knife set he found in the kitchen. So cheap, the blades broke off when he was hammering them in.

  After the priest finally kicked off, Hugo took a well-deserved shower and considered the meaning of life. Father Michael had believed his faith was strong, and that the Lord would save him. He was wrong on both counts. It had been child’s play to make the priest denounce God and pledge his allegiance to Hugo. An entire life, wasted, just because of a few nails in some sensitive spots.

  Hugo wondered if his existence was every bit as meaningless. What was the point of anything? He was serving a stupid, meaningless cause, and in return had certain basic needs provided for him. Just like every other person with a job. He ate. He slept. He worked out. He killed. Before the steroids shrank his balls to the size of marbles, he had sex. But none of it meant anything.

  Killing the priest meant a fourth tear. And he didn’t care at all.

  In a way, he envied the priest. His belief in God was foolish, but at least he believed in something.

  When he got back to Decatur, Hugo had a package waiting for him in the trailer. It was a box containing fifteen hundred dollars in cash, and a paperback copy of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

  Hugo burned the box and its contents.

  Tear #5

  ZOM is for Zionist Occupational Media

  A year after killing the priest, Hugo was permanently moved from Decatur to St. Louis. No reason was given.

  His new trailer home was slightly bigger than his previous one, but it had rats. They ate his food and pissed and shit on the floors and counters and ran through the walls at night, scratching and thumping.

  For some reason Hugo didn’t mind.

  He was never the type to seek out companionship, with either people or animals, but the ingenuity and destructive abilities of his rat roommates amused Hugo. After several weeks, the rats seemed to sense that Hugo wasn’t the enemy, and they came out during the day. Some even approached him as he ate, begging for scraps like dogs. It wasn’t unusual for Hugo to wake up and find one sleeping on his chest.

  A year passed. Eighteen months. More handcuffs. To ease the boredom of waiting for his next assignment, Hugo began a game. He would pick someone out of the St. Louis phonebook, and give himself a week to find them and kill them.

  First, he’d try to locate the person, which often wasn’t easy. People moved. Went on vacation. Got married. Lived with others. Sometimes Hugo followed the wrong person for days before realizing the mistake.

  After finding the one he was after, Hugo would switch to surveillance mode. Watching. Waiting. Planning.

  Then, on day seven, he’d strike when the person was alone. If the person never was alone, they got away, and Hugo picked a new person for the next round.

  The game helped to focus Hugo, give him purpose. During the discovery phase, he was usually forced to interact with people, to ask questions, to make simple conversation. Which meant he couldn’t be scary or intimidating. So he worked on looking, and acting, non-threatening. Learned small talk. How to fake a smile.

  Once he identified the potential victim, he followed them for a few days. It wasn’t easy for a man his size to blend in, but Hugo became pretty good at it. The secret wasn’t concealment. In fact, the opposite was what worked best. Hugo took to wearing a pair of headphones, pretending to bop his head to an imaginary beat. People automatically dismissed him, thinking he was into his music and not paying them any mind. Hugo got so good at it that he sometimes left his tattoos uncovered. He could ride the bus, jailhouse tatts exposed, and no one would give him a second glance.

  Except children. Children always stared. Like they knew what he really was.

  During that year, Hugo stalked twenty-eight people, and killed seven. Strangely, the game remained satisfying whether or not it ended in a death. Hugo didn’t get upset if someone got away. He just moved along to the next name.

  He was going through the phone b
ook, looking for twenty-nine, when Packer called.

  “You missed the last few rallies.”

  “Been busy.”

  “I told you to go to the last one.”

  “Look in the mirror, General. How many tears do you have? Last I checked, four is more than three.”

  “This isn’t about rank, Hugo. You’re the sleeper. I’m the handler. You have to listen.”

  “Unless you wanted me to kill everyone at the rally, I’m sure I didn’t miss anything.”

  “Open line, Hugo. Don’t talk like that.”

  “We both know the only one tapping this phone is the CN. Who listens to these recordings, Packer? The Supreme Caucasian?”

  “He listens to the relevant ones.”

  Hugo snorted. “I don’t think that guy even exists. He’s like the Easter Bunny. Or Jesus. Some stupid fairy tale to keep the kids in line.”

  “He knows about you, and wants to meet you. But the time isn’t right.”

  Hugo didn’t want to have that conversation again. He’d believe in the SC when they were in the same room, face-to-face. Which was probably never going to happen.

  “Why are you calling, Packer? Some other dumb rally? Need me to teach the drunk skins how to burn a cross?”

  “Go to your PO Box.”

  An assignment. Hugo hadn’t had one since moving to Missouri.

  “How many people in the CN have five tears?” he asked Packer.

  “I’ve never met any. Heard there’s a guy in California.”

  Hugo wanted to call bullshit. He wondered if the entire Caucasian Nation was just a bunch of loosely affiliated cracker assholes run by some rich teenager in his mom’s basement. The CN supposedly had members in the military, in big business, in local, state, and national government, in the unions, in the churches. But the only examples of White Nationalism that Hugo ever saw were the infrequent drunken rallies where skinheads moshed on each other to Nazi songs played by some shitty death metal band.

  Still, he kept quiet. Why rock the boat? The CN paid Hugo, stayed out of his way, and every so often gave him something interesting to do.

  Like the latest mission.

  A St. Louis journalist. Wrote a political opinion column, some commie liberal nonsense. Politics bored Hugo as much as religion did; it was just a bunch of self-important assholes telling others how they should live. While many seemed to find comfort in rules, and sought the company of those who shared those same values, Hugo found it all to be ridiculous. Insecure people bonding over silly shared beliefs.

  Which, in essence, was the same snake oil the CN offered.

  Hugo wasn’t educated, having dropped out of school his fifth year, but that didn’t make him stupid.

  He was told to make the death messy, and to make it look like it was done by Jews.

  How the hell was he supposed to do that? Leave a Star of David on the body? And wasn’t this guy supposedly a member of the Zionist Occupational Media, which meant he worked for Jews?

  It was stupid.

  He called Packer for advice, and General Gym Teacher told Hugo to spray-paint Holocaust Denier on the man’s door.

  “They get uppity when you deny the Holocaust,” Packer told him.

  Hugo bought spray paint, work gloves, a rain poncho, and a sledgehammer, stole a car from some idiot who was loading groceries into his car and not paying attention to his surroundings, and then tailed the journalist leaving work. When the writer stopped at an empty intersection—seriously, what kind of fool obeys stop signs when there isn’t anyone else around—Hugo gunned it and rear-ended him.

  Then the man got out of his car to check the damage. Hugo got out, wielding a sledgehammer. A chased ensued. Hugo chased after him with the sledgehammer. It only took twenty meters for the guy who worked out for two hours every day to catch the guy who sat behind a desk. Hugo hit him so many times that the corpse was only recognizable as human by its shoes. He ditched the blood-soaked rain poncho and gloves, fetched the spray paint, and spent about a minute trying to figure out how to spell the word Holocaust.

  It didn’t matter, because the paint can top could only be removed with a screwdriver, which Hugo didn’t have. He tried squeezing it, and did smash the plastic, but that also ruined the nozzle so it wouldn’t spray right. Hugo gave up, threw the can as far as he could, and jogged back to the trailer.

  Packer said the higher-ups weren’t impressed by the Jewish evidence Hugo hadn’t left behind. Hugo didn’t give a shit, and explained that if he wasn’t approved for his fifth tear, he was quitting the organization.

  He didn’t mention that if he quit, he’d hunt down every CN member and kill them all. But Packer apparently noticed that he wasn’t fooling around.

  Hugo had a tear the next day.

  He also got a package in the mail. Rather than useless money and books, this one contained something interesting.

  A straight razor.

  It was old, a patina on the black handle. Etched onto the blade were the SS lightning bolts, and A. Göth.

  Hugo was curious enough to look the name up at the library. Amon Leopold Göth was the commander of the Kraków-Plaszów concentration camp. Though he ran the place, with the ability to order around subordinates, he still would personally beat, torture, and kill many of the prisoners.

  Hugo liked that personal touch. He also liked the razor, and Göth became his constant companion.

  Tear #6

  ZOG is for Zionist Occupational Government

  Three years passed before his next mission.

  Hugo continued to play his phone book game, adding scars to his shin. The rat problem in his trailer escalated until one of them bit Hugo on the toe, and then he burned down his trailer and waited outside with a shovel. He managed to smash twelve of them as they fled the flames.

  He moved into another trailer, this one rat-free, and the acne on his back—a side-effect of steroid abuse—became so bad that Hugo began using a bike chain to scrape it off.

  Packer called after months of zero contact, saying there was a rally, and attendance was mandatory.

  Hugo drove to Illinois in a rental car, and when he arrived Packer took him under the stadium to meet an unassuming white guy who wore what looked like a postal worker uniform. He held a beat-up metal case, the kind that had combination locks on the latches. They went into the tunnels, to a room sealed off with plastic fumigation tarps hanging from the ceiling via duct tape.

  “In there is your sixth assignment, Hugo.”

  Hugo took a step toward the tarp, but Packer grabbed his arm. “We need it done a specific way.”

  “What way?”

  The mailman guy set the metal case on an old chair, dialed in the combinations, and opened the lid. He took out three gas masks, handing one to Hugo and one to Packer. Then he put on some nytril gloves.

  “Hugo, meet the Chemist. We’ve hired him to cook something up for us.”

  The Chemist gave Hugo some gloves, then reached into the foam-lined case and took out—

  —a bottle of eye drops.

  “What do you know about sarin?” the Chemist asked.

  “That’s what those Jap terrorists used, in the subway,” Packer said. “It’s a chemical weapon.”

  “On March 20, 1995, the cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin nerve agent on two separate occasions, killing twenty-one people and injuring thousands more. One drop can kill twenty people. It can kill by being absorbed by the skin, the eyes, or being inhaled.”

  “One drop?” Hugo snorted. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Make a fist,” the Chemist said.

  Hugo raised up his hand, his fist the size of a ham.

  “When your brain told your muscles to flex, it used a chemical neurotransmitter, which was released via a signal through your nerves. After a neurotransmitter completes its task, your body releases an enzyme to destroy the chemical. If it didn’t, you’d keep flexing your fist, over and over, unable to stop. Nerve agents block the enzymes that destroy the neuro
transmitter. In the case of sarin, it blocks acetylcholinesterase, which breaks down acetylcholine. Acetylcholine controls the parasympathetic nervous system; bodily functions like crying, sweating, drooling, pissing, shitting, digesting. When acetylcholine goes unchecked in your body, your parasympathetic nervous system kills you because it can’t shut off.”

  “How long does it take?” Packer asked.

  “There are several factors involved, but point zero one milliliters should kill a healthy adult within a few minutes.”

  “How much is that?” Packer asked.

  “A drop the size of a pinhead.”

  “I want to try it,” Hugo said.

  “Put on your mask and gloves.”

  Hugo did. The gloves were too tight, and he couldn’t get his fingers all the way in. The Chemist put on his own mask first, then helped Hugo adjust the straps on his for a snug fit.

  “One drop,” the Chemist said, holding up the eyedrop bottle. “Anywhere on the skin. Then put the cap on immediately. If you get any on you, I have some reactive skin decontamination lotion wipes. The drop should be absorbed into his skin, but sarin is incredibly volatile. It evaporates fast, going from liquid to vapor. The vapor can still get on you.”

  “It’s only a drop,” Hugo said.

  The Chemist stared at him, reminding Hugo of all the know-it-all teachers he hated during his grammar school years. Hugo felt like punching him right in his mask, but there was something disturbing about the gaze.

  It took a moment for Hugo to figure out what it was.

  Fearlessness. Hugo intimidated everyone around him, and was used to seeing awe and fright in men’s eyes. But the Chemist seemed completely at ease.

  Which was kind of creepy.

  They walked under the tarp and approached a man duct-taped to a chair. Chubby, forties, his cheap suit damp with armpit sweat that had soaked through.