Traffic is a nightmare and already I start to panic, thinking that we’re not going to make it back in time before that thing starts possessing teacher after teacher and killing itself over and over before I once again have a nightmare on my hands. Honestly, that’s the demon’s only play right now. If it wants to throw me off my game, then it should start letting its victims terminate themselves so that when those doors open and I get to see a bloody mess, everyone points their fingers at me and I’m left holding the bag and a ton of questions that need to be answered. Really, that’s its only play. Unless it thinks it can still beat me at this game and is simply toying with me.
Grabbing my phone, I call Lola just to make sure that everything is in order. I want all of this to run as smoothly at the precinct as it did at the diner. I listen as the phone rings several times and when I finally get Lola, she sounds like she’s out of breath. “Steven, how did everything go?” she asks me. Before I can answer she cuts me off. “Hold on,” she says frantically as I listen to her washing her hands and running them under the blow dryer in the precinct’s bathrooms. I impatiently wait, held prisoner by her on the phone until she’s ready. “Okay, Steven, let me have it.”
“It went off fine,” I tell her honestly. “Whatever this thing’s plan is, it’s not willing to reveal itself yet. It must be holding out for someone to slip up and touch them. So I need to make sure that everyone is out of the way for transportation to lock-up. Did you get the cell manager to free up the entire first floor?”
“I did.” I hear something that sounds distinctly like spitting. “He wants to know how many prisoners you’re going to have.”
I can’t believe I didn’t get that to her already. I shake my head at myself, frustrated that I hadn’t been more conscious of what’s happening after I arrest the suspects. “Tell him that we need five cells and that I don’t want anyone around. I need privacy for what comes next,” I tell her. Lola already knows exactly what I’m intending on doing and even though she doesn’t like it, she understands why I need to do it. I glance into the rearview mirror, catching sight of the van, knowing that it’s right behind me.
“He can do that for us,” she says to me. “Steven, how are you going to get this thing to reveal itself to you? You can’t just torture five teachers. It might just let them suffer.”
“I’m working on that, Lola,” I tell her. I wish she would come up with something to do rather than shooting holes in the very flimsy plan that I do have. “Lola, I need a DNA testing kit in lock-up too when I finally get there. I want you to leave it there so I can trick the demon into thinking that I know something it doesn’t.”
“Okay, but why a DNA kit?” Lola presses.
It’s right then that I wonder why I didn’t make a move on Lola. Other than the fact that she’s related to Owens, I don’t know why I never actually tried to put the moves on her. I went to a topless bar where they served terrible, disgusting tacos and had worthless tits when I should have been trying to get Lola into bed. She’s the right age, she has a great, flirty personality, and she knows how to wear clothes to make her body scream for attention. I wonder why I never tried to get with her. I look ahead at the wall of traffic and think about her, imagining what it would be like to pull that white, button up shirt off of her, yank down that oh so inappropriate plaid skirt, slide off those knee-high socks that she wore like a schoolgirl. I think about how much fun it would have been to fuck her from behind, grabbing those ponytails while she moaned and screamed for more. I think about her nipples and how they wouldn’t have disappointed me. They were probably perky and stand at attention whenever they want to be noticed. Why didn’t I try for her? She was beautiful and there was no denying that she had a quirky personality that might accommodate for my age. She might find an interest in me. And there was always that hug that we shared when I came back for her. She had jumped up and embraced me without hesitating and that had been something that I hadn’t experienced in a very, very long time. God, I should have given it a go. If everything goes as I have planned for the evening, then I’m not going to get another chance to fuck her, to kiss her, to maybe fall for her. I shake my head. These are the regrets of a madman.
“Just make sure it’s there,” I tell her. “Lola, I want you out of the precinct after you leave that kit there. I want you to get in your car and drive away. I’ll have Owens call you when it’s finally safe for you to come back. If I’m wrong about all of this, then I don’t want you getting caught by this thing. You’re the only other person who knows about this.”
“Steven, you’re scaring me,” Lola says cautiously.
I think about how this all started with a Lola and now it was going to end with a Lola being the only sane, free person who knows the truth. Even if Kelly believes me and does think that there’s a demon out there hunting her, she won’t have the proof that Lola has. She didn’t see the thing with her very own eyes and she didn’t watch it move from person to person. Lola has that. Lola is the one who will be carrying the torch from now on. I hope she gets the footage to someone who will know what to do with it. I hope she has better luck with this information than I did.
“Don’t be scared, Lola,” I tell her. “Everything is going to be fine. This will probably be the last time we speak. At least until after I’m tried and convicted of murder. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
“I’ll visit you,” she assures me. “I’ll make sure that you aren’t alone.”
“Thank you,” I smile at the thought.
It takes an hour until we get back to the precinct, and when I finally arrive, there’s already a sizeable escort waiting for me. I count thirteen officers, half of them in civilian clothes, from the diner waiting for me. I park in my spot right up front and race to intercept the van as it pulls up. It parks and holds its position while I coordinate with the officers waiting for me. I can hear the SWAT truck pulling in with Owens and his men. I’m glad they’re here. I need them to help direct the prisoners down to their cells.
“Alright,” I shout to the officers that are present. “Every door between here and lock-up is propped open. You do not need to interact with the suspects, you only need to escort and usher them to their cells. Refrain from touching or speaking to them just like we did at the restaurant. Your job is to make sure that no one tries to talk to them and above all else, do not let anyone touch them. Get into position and we will take it from here.”
I watch as they disperse. Owens and his crew quickly set up on the exterior while the rest of the arriving unit members take up their positions as ushers for the prisoners, some of them going so far as to hold riot shields as a barrier between themselves and the teachers. When they’re all set and I walk the route to make sure that everyone gets from point A to point B without a single person needing to hold open a door or to touch a prisoner, I make my way back out to the van. Taking a deep breath. I look at the van and feel a swelling sense of triumph. I’ve beaten this thing. It’s going to be locked up here and there’s nothing that it’s going to be able to do about it.
Nodding to Owens, I watch as he reaches forward and opens the door to the van. Expecting an abattoir inside, I’m pleasantly surprised to see five intact prisoners staring at me with frightened, nervous eyes. I look at them without a drop of empathy or sadness for what I’ve put them through. I motion each and every one of them out of the van. When they’ve all lined up in front of the van, I look them over one last time before speaking to them.
“Each and every one of you will proceed forward,” I inform them loudly. “You will be ushered to lock-up by officers along the way. Do not reach out for them, do not move to touch them, and do not try speaking to them. You will hug the right wall all along the way. If you deviate from your course, the officers along the way have been instructed to use any force required to subdue you.” I look them over one last time, all of them looking at the ground, still keeping the demon hidden. “Proceed.” I give the order and watch them start walking
.
XIX
Owens closes the last of the cell doors and looks at me with a triumphant look on his face. For him, the fun is only just starting, phase one of a much larger scheme is underway that will never actually come to fruition. I feel bad for him. He’ll never get his back alley justice that he’d been vying for this entire time. He nods to me and I shake his hand as he departs. No words need to be spoken. The bank of eight cells in the holding area of lock-up are completely vacant, except for the five where my prisoners are quietly waiting. As I listen to the door closing behind me, I know that I’m alone with five walking corpses and a demon lurking in one of them. Kill them all, and this game is over.
I walk over to the watchman’s desk and grab the DNA testing kit that Lola left for me, and smile at her efficiency. She’s been so helpful all along the way. It’s a shame that it’s come to this. I look at the lights over my head, harsh fluorescent lights that plague the eyes. So this is where it all comes to an end. I open the kit and look at the ten vials, accompanying needles, a bottle of iodine, disinfectant, and cotton swabs.
“You can’t hold us here,” Sally shouts at me frantically. “I know my rights, Detective. I have a family and they’ll be wondering where I am. You can’t just hold us here like criminals. This isn’t Nazi Germany.”
“Yeah, I want my lawyer,” Jack shouts impatiently. “Give us a phone call and you’ll see that you’ve got the wrong guy here. I don’t know why you have me here. Just let me have one phone call and I’ll prove it to you.”
I turn and look at them, all of them are just bleating sheep to this thing. It doesn’t care about them. It doesn’t care about lawyers or rights or anything else. Hell, they are all just stupid, worthless humans to this creature and it would like nothing better than to end all of their lives. I reach into the interior pocket of my jacket and place the note I wrote out for Kelly and Lola on the desk. Just in case all of this goes tits up in the process of ending the demon, there’s a good possibility that if it even goes off without a hitch, those who come in through that door are going to open fire on me. Shooting a prisoner in the middle of the precinct is going to cause a lot of trouble.
Each of the prisoners can see me and they’re all watching me as I pull out my pistol and hold it up, taking a nice long look at it. I hit the clip release and watch as the magazine slips free of the grip. Instinctively, I snatch the mag out of the air and place it on the desk, over the letter that I’ve left for Kelly and Lola just in case. I holster the gun behind my back and grab the kit.
“What is that? What are you doing?” Mr. Tugg shouts as I approach the cell of Debra Connelly.
“I’ll be with you in a moment, Mr. Tugg,” I say politely, as I approach the nervous old woman who is staring at me with wide, horrified eyes. She hasn’t said a word since she attempted to protest my arrest of her. She clearly learned her lesson. I look at her as she quivers all over, shaking out of pure terror. Clearly, she has never been arrested before or even had a run in with the law that comes marginally close to this. “Debra Connelly, please approach the bars and hold out your hands for me. I’ll make sure that we get those handcuffs off of you.”
She stares at me, quivering. I’m afraid that she’s in some sort of shock or trance and I stare at her with a frustrated expression on my face. Suddenly, I notice that she’s chewing something. It’s the flash of her jaw and I see that her whole body seizes up, wincing from something like I’ve just struck at her. I look at her, wondering what the hell she’s doing when I see the first trickle of blood pouring out of the corner of her lips. The woman stares at me with horrified eyes as she slowly opens her mouth in a great, gaping yawn that’s full of blood. I watch as her tongue falls out of her mouth, toppling to the floor with a sickly splat and blood is running down the front of her pretty patterned dress that you’d picture any grandmother wearing. She bites down on her lips and I watch as she continues to chew and shred her face maliciously. Blood drips and runs freely down her chin and what’s left of her lips. I watch her apathetically, because I know that whatever I do, I’m helplessly late. There’s nothing I can do for her.
I turn away from her, just as she collapses, shivering like she’s in some sort of seizure. She’ll bleed out and die before I can call someone to help her and that’s the terrible end of her life. I think about all the others and wonder at how lucky Debra Connelly is that she actually got to experience her life before it was ripped away from her. The demon has chosen many victims that aren’t nearly as fortunate as she was. But next, I find myself looking at Jack Halloway who is shouting for me to answer his demands for a lawyer as the old woman’s movements cease, her heart probably having stopped under the pain and panic of her self-induced injuries.
“Jack Halloway,” I say to him. “Please, turn around and back slowly up to the bars.”
As Jack slowly approaches the bars I set the DNA kit down on the ground and gently open it, lifting the lid and looking at the contents inside. I grab the bottle of disinfectant and soak a piece of cotton before cleaning the area. I then do the same thing with the iodine, making sure that he’s clean before I stick him with the needle. I don’t wait to see anything that goes into the vial. It isn’t even a quarter of the way full before I pull the needle out and put it into the kit.
Before he can continue to demand answers to his incessant flow of questions, I move on to Sally and ignore her while she continues to scream at me for answers as well. I’m not interested in addressing her. I just want this over with. I have no idea who the old lady touched last. Any one of them could be next. I look at Sally who is already starting to scream louder and louder about her rights and that I’m infringing upon them. I repeat myself, telling her to stick out her hands. When she does so, I wipe a spot clean, scrub the iodine, and then stick her with the needle.
I do this for Nancy as well, but she’s silent, just biding her time until she can either killer herself or she can be set free. It’s only a matter of time for her and as I grab her hand and wipe it and inject her, I look her in the eyes and see no concern, no malice, no hatred. I don’t know if she is the demon or if she’s just someone who wants the nightmare of a day to end. I finish with her and I turn my attention now to Peter Tugg.
He looks at me and stretches out his hands, ready for me to do my business. As I take ahold of his hand, he starts to chuckle at me. I look him in the eyes and realize that this is what I’ve been hunting for. The others, they’re either explainably frightened, angry, or they’re just going to bide their time until it’s time for them to be released. This man, however, he’s what I’ve been searching for this entire time. I look into his eyes and see that there’s something there, hidden behind the circular glasses that make him look like a turtle. He stares at me with that big, mocking grin on his face.
“You think you can just kill me?” Peter Tugg asks me, tilting his head to the side. “Can you even comprehend the magnitude of the time I’ve spent dwelling on this festering rock? Humanity is such a frail thing, Detective. I’ve been so fortunate to play my small part in the extermination of your species. It’s not something that I’ve taken lightly. Before the end, I want you to know that you’ve been my favorite. You’ve been the most interesting of them all.”
“What are you?” I ask the thing inside of Peter King, the thing that I’ve been hunting since Owens first brought me to Lola’s apartment and I saw her corpse hanging on the cross. I want to know what it is. I want to know why it’s done all of this.
“I don’t owe you any answers, Detective,” Peter says to me with a cruel look of disgust on his face. “For all the cunning and the brilliance that you’ve displayed chasing after me, you never once went looking for answers. That’s what I respected most about you, Detective. Your tenacity outweighed your comprehension or your curiosity. That’s such a rare trait in a human. After all, can you imagine how long I’ve travelled the earth, soul to soul, watching as humanity languishes and draws out its inevitable extinction? So few have e
ver stopped to wonder, to ponder about my existence. But now that you’ve caught the serpent, you only too late have realized that you grabbed the tail, and not the head.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say to the man. “But I guess that I don’t really care.”
“Good for you, Detective,” Peter Tugg smiles encouragingly. “Answers are for those too terrified to experience the world. Let the scholars hide in their towers. You’re a man of action. Experience my presence for yourself. Behold my power. Your greatest sins and failures will be mine to feast upon and in your last moments, together we will dine on the crippling weaknesses and sorrows of your meager, pathetic existence in this world.”
“No,” I shake my head. “I’ve had a whole lifetime to come to terms with that. Good. Evil. It doesn’t really matter. The past is the past and I’m not the kind of man who just dwells on the things I’ve done. The feast is over for you. It’s time to starve.”
Mr. Tugg smashes his head against the bars of the cell, laughing. Down the line, I can hear Sally and Nancy screaming in horror at the sound of his skull cracking against the bars. I watch as he pulls back, the skin splitting and blood gushing down from the fresh wounds. His smile and grotesque laughter continues as I pull out my pistol and look at him. He again pulls back and stares at me while a mask of red flowing down his twisted, ruined face.
“Have you forgotten so soon?” Peter looks at the pistol in my hand. “You were foolish enough to touch me. All for your precious blood sample that will tell you and the technicians nothing. You’ve lost, Detective. I’ll take you to go see your daughter, but unlike the others, you’ll know all along that it’s me pulling the strings with you. You’ll know it’s me all the way up to the moment we hug your daughter.”
The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) Page 16
