I make my way upstairs, where all the commotion is. I place my hand on the balustrade and take each step with a heavy hesitation. I don’t want to see a dead kid. I don’t want to see one today. I just had a fantastic time and already I’m tossed into the darkness of this world, holding a torch and cleaning up. That’s what’s wrong with this case. That’s what the fundamental problem with this case is, I’m not actually preventing crime, I’m not pursuing anyone, and I’m just left, holding the bodies of the young, dead victims. This isn’t something I’m used to. I’m used to being the hunter. I’m used to being the one that calls the shots.
But honestly, I’m scared. This is the first time I’ve ever faced a serial killer of this magnitude. I understand the helplessness and the frustration of all of it now. I get it. I truly, deeply understand the kind of fear that has lurked in the eyes of other detectives hunting their killers. It’s the fear that I’m not going to be able to stop him. I’m not going to be able to stop this madman from taking another life. This child is the declaration to the media, to the police, to this entire city, that we’re not going to be able to stop him. He’s only going to be stopped if he slips up. He’s not going to be stopped until he wants to. I shake my head as I reach the top step. This man in a monster.
I make my way down the emptied hallway to where two uniforms are standing at the doorway of a room. The uniforms don’t even look at me as I approach the room. Inside. There’s a whole host of forensics crew members taking photos and making sure that everything in the room is photographed properly. I see the body in the middle of the floor, but it takes a moment to sink in. I have only seen a few children dead during my career. I could probably count the number of dead children that I’ve seen on both of my hands. It’s never something you shake off, seeing their tiny still faces, their motionless hands, the silence that should never accompany a child.
This boy is dead in the middle of his play room, a smattering of toys all around him. He lies on the floor, his limbs are stretched out, and fingers clenching the floor like claws. His eyes are wide, bugged almost. He looks up at the ceiling with tiny feet sticking out from between his lips. I stare with confusion at what I’m seeing. His throat is bulging and unnatural looking as I take a step into the room and the forensics team looks up at me, about to protest me entering the room, but all of them seem to know that I’m here to solve the case. There’s a gravity that shifts around me as I approach the body.
“It appears that he was force fed his toys,” one of the nerds says to me from behind his camera. He flashes another picture and moves around me as I look at the boy. He’s small, maybe four or five. That, or he’s small for his age. I’m not sure which to suspect at this time. I look at the feet sticking out of his mouth and feel my stomach churn. “It appears that the killer knows you’re on to him,” the nerd says again, motioning to the corner of the room with his head before taking another picture.
Looking over to the corner of the room, I’m staring at something that I haven’t seen for a long time. It looks like one of those old plastic stands that are supposed to be kids’ easels. One side is for chalk and the side facing me is covered in long sheets of butcher paper for the boy to draw and write on. Next to the stand is a picture of the boy and his mom, they look like they’re fighting pirates, or at least the boy is protecting his mother from the pirates. On the stand, there’s something else written, something sinister and dark, something that stands out different among the other four I’ve seen this week. This time, there’s a message, not for the family, but for me, for us, for everyone who is inside this house, looking for a killer.
Detective Steven King, I’m sorry you can’t mind your own business, it reads. I feel a cold chill run down my spine. There’s a lot that the killer has revealed in that one sentence. First of all, he knows exactly who is hunting him. He has to be watching me. He has to have been at the crime scene with any of the victims. There’s no way he would know that I’m after him unless he was there. The media doesn’t know that I’m the one who has been assigned the case yet. This is still fresh and new to them. The second piece of information that I garner from this first sentence is that this killer is rationalizing his actions. This is a business to him. This speaks volumes to me, but there’s still one last part to the message. Like always, there’s just two sentences. Continue tracking me at your own peril—Caleb. I read the last sentence over and over in my mind as I stare, dumbfounded, at the message.
Of course I’m not going to stop hunting him. Of course this is going to just give me more of a reason to continue hunting him. I look at the message and feel like I’m going to throw up. Was this kill just to leave a message to me or was there a reason for it? Was Caleb on the list of victims that he was always intending to murder, or was he just the excuse to leave me a message that would punch me in the balls? I can’t help but feel slightly responsible for Caleb’s death. What kind of a monster forces a kid to choke on his own toys? I look back at the young boy and feel my hands shaking. He was probably in his room, minding his own business when the killer crept in. Why Caleb? Why did he choose this house? What was the logic behind all of it? I don’t understand. I feel so lost.
I leave the room and go into Caleb’s room, and wonder where the killer was. How did he sneak into the house? How did he manage to do all of this without anyone ever having a clue that he was in the house? At what point did he kill Chad Roberts and then select Caleb for his trail of blood and carnage? I feel like throwing up again and I close my eyes, taking deep breaths, trying to find my center. I need to get under control. I need to get it together. I can’t fall apart on this one. I can’t just throw in the towel. After all, that’s what he wants. I’m nowhere closer to stopping him, which means that I have a long road ahead, so giving up is definitely not an option.
Downstairs, I can still hear the mother sobbing, wailing even.
How am I going to catch this bastard?
19
I can’t bring myself to leave Caleb’s room. I sit on his bed, staring at the posters on the far side of the wall. There’s a baseball player on one of the posters, but most of them have to do with superheroes that I don’t recognize and Star Wars. I only know that they’re Star Wars because it has the name splashed across the bottom of every poster. His room is remarkably well organized and I have to hand it to the boy’s mom. She certainly seems to have everything under control. I wish I had been this well in charge of life when I had my daughter. I had royally fucked that one up. Seriously, I can’t think of doing a worse job on raising a child than I did with my own. Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I shake my head and look out the window. It’s somewhere early in the morning and soon the sun is probably going to be coming up. I check my watch and realize that it’s earlier than I thought. It’s only after two.
They had taken the boy’s body out to the ambulance to deliver him to the morgue where Dr. Whitman will personally be inspecting him a few hours ago. Caleb’s mother had begun shrieking in sorrow and grief when they took the boy through the front door. She wanted to hug him, to throw herself on top of him and somehow forfeit her own life so that he might wake up, jump off the gurney and rush back upstairs to keep on playing. Tomorrow was supposed to be his birthday and they had set up a whole party for him. I can’t imagine the sorrow, the despair, the anger. She had snapped when they held her in the house, not letting the press get their money shot of her shrieking and torn by loss. Thankfully, she collapsed in despair and the uniforms relocated her to the living room.
Her sister showed up a few minutes after they took Caleb away and once Caleb was gone, the forensic teams began packing up and heading on to the next scene of carnage that was waiting for them. If there’s one thing that this city will definitely keep providing, it’s death. This whole fucking town feels like a death factory right now. When the sister arrived, she was already red eyed with tears and sorrow. She hugged her sister in the living room as they both wept over the loss of the beloved boy. I spoke wit
h both of them, promising that I was going to find whoever did this to Caleb. They didn’t care. Some people want revenge, but others are a little more clear headed about these situations. Finding a killer only prevents other killings. Caleb is dead and Caleb will always be dead. The sad fact is that the world now lacks another young boy. That’s my own defeat. My own failure.
When the sister pulled Caleb’s mom off of the couch and escorted her to her car, the last of the extra officers started packing up as well. The only people remaining were the evidence collectors and the uniforms keeping the media at bay. They hounded the pair of grief-stricken ladies as they tried to pull away, thankfully the uniforms and boots rushed to their aid, keeping them back as they drove off. But they lingered past midnight, capturing their stories until one by one, they all started trickling away. Soon, the last of the officers packed up and were gone, driving off to find others dead, hurt, robbed, or molested. All that remained was me, upstairs, in Caleb’s room, trying to understand what the hell I’m supposed to do about all of this.
I can’t think of a goddamn thing. I have no idea where I’m supposed to look. All I know is that the killer is on to me, just like I’m on to him. What is connecting all of these victims? How can they all be connected through a common thread? I thought that The Office might be the connection, but there’s no way that Chad or Caleb were going to be caught there. Chad was a father of two and Caleb was just a child, not the normal clientele.
From all I can see about this, is that the victims came in contact with each other while the killer was tracking them. He must have been watching them as they were going along their merry ways, picked one of the people they interacted with and then chose to kill them. I stop thinking and stare at the wall. Maybe that is it. Maybe that’s as simple as it is. Maybe the killer is tracking people who come in contact with his victims.
I look around the room and feel a cold feeling of nausea. That’s got to be it. Lola must have crossed paths with Jenny somewhere. They lived in the same general area. They could have met at a gas station or at a grocery store, but it doesn’t matter. They came in contact with one another. Later, Jenny had sex with Ted Martin before she killed herself. When Ted went home, on his shift the next day, Chad Roberts robs him at gunpoint, coming in contact with Ted. Later that night, Ted makes himself into a human pin cushion. On his way home from robbing half of the city, Chad nearly kills Caleb. Thanks to Dispatch and the mother calling them to report that she saw Chad, we now know that Chad and Caleb knew each other for a whopping ten seconds before Chad went home and dismembered himself. Finally, that leaves Caleb who kills himself the following day. All of these alleged suicides and now that I think about it, I feel a sinking, sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach. Contact. That’s the common thread. These people simply came in contact with each other. That’s not the strange, confusing connection. That is the exact connection. Somehow the killer is monitoring and killing people, based solely on the fact that they come in contact with one another.
I stand up and fish the keys to the Shelby out of my pocket. I need to call Owens and Mendez. I need to get ahold of them so that they can send someone to my house so they can pick up the files that Owens gave me earlier in the week. The connections are there. The connections have to be there. Some of those people had to know each other or just, simply run into one another. Looking into the room as I pass, I try to think of who Caleb might have run into. When we asked the mother what she had been doing for the past day, we tried to figure out when they weren’t home. When they weren’t home would have been the opportune moment for the killer to sneak into the house, but Caleb’s mother couldn’t put her finger on when the killer might have snuck into the house, because they were home all day. I close my eyes and shake my head. Of course, this is it. This is the break!
This is the one opportunity that we’re ever going to have to try and trap the killer. I find myself running down the street to where the Shelby is. I fish my cellphone out of my pocket and dial Mendez, listening to the phone ring as I start to feel my breath escaping me.
“King, what’s up?” Mendez asks me.
“I need someone sent to be with Caleb’s mom, Cynthia,” I shout as I reach the car, fumbling to unlock the door. Why the hell did I lock my doors in this neighborhood? “I need as many units as you can spare to watch Cynthia.”
“You got it,” Mendez answers as I drop down into the seat and slam the door. “You find something, King?”
“I think Cynthia is the killer’s next victim,” I answer, firing up the engine. I feel sick to my stomach. They’ve been gone for hours. The killer could be there by now. Cynthia may very well be dead. “The killer can only select victims that came in contact with his previous victim after the moment they’ve been marked. Caleb only had contact with Cynthia today. The killer has to be targeting Cynthia now.”
“Shit,” Mendez breathes. “She’s been alone for hours.”
“Shit indeed,” I shout, peeling off down the street, praying that I can make it in time.
“I’m sending everyone we have available to the sister’s house,” Mendez tells me as I turn on my sirens and start charging down the street as fast as I can push the Shelby. I have no doubt that I’m going to get there fast, but if Lori took her sister anywhere other than her apartment, then she’s likely to end up dead just like the other victims. “Are you en route?” Mendez asks me.
“As quickly as I can get there,” I answer.
“I’ll meet you there,” Mendez says. “We’ll get her into protective custody.”
I listen as the phone hangs up and I feel like I’m going to throw up. How could I have not seen this? How could I be so ignorant? I wanted something more meaningful than a game, but that’s exactly what the killer thinks of this as. He might not directly view it as a game, but there are definitely rules to what he’s doing. There’s a system that he has to abide by to choose his targets and that means that Cynthia is target number one for him. I overtake a car and know that I’m going to be too late. I look at the notepad in the passenger seat and look at Lori’s address. She lives on the far side of town. What if the killer intercepted them on the way to the house? If Cynthia is killed, then there are a thousand different possibilities as to who the killer could target next. Everyone who entered the crime scene is suspect. I immediately dial Owens’s number.
“King, I just heard,” Owens answers.
“Owens, I need a list of everyone who entered the crime scene,” I tell him. “If the killer gets to Cynthia, then I want Lori and everyone who was at that house under surveillance. The killer is operating by a set of rules. The victim has to come in contact with whoever he targets next. Since Caleb only contacted one person, this could be the only opportunity we have to set a trap for the killer. But if we fuck this up, then anyone who Cynthia had contact with since Caleb died is a possible victim.”
“Shit,” Owens says.
“So get that list,” I order him.
“Steven, half of that list is scattered across the city by now.” Owens senses the same doubts that I’m having. I feel the familiar sinking feeling inside of my stomach. “If he’s killed Cynthia already, then he could be moving in on any one of them.”
“He hasn’t killed her yet,” I say unnaturally optimistically. I have to have hope. I have to believe that he hasn’t gotten to her yet. I weave between traffic, watching the few loyal and honest drivers on the road parting and making way for me. I’m not going to make it. I know it, but I can’t let Owens hear it. He has to have faith, just like me. We have to hold on to whatever hope we have right now. This killer isn’t going to win. He isn’t going to get the best of us again. “We’re going to catch this bastard,” I promise.
-End
Begin Book Two, The Demon Inside, Coming Soon
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