by Scott Blade
StoneCutter
Scott Blade
Scott Blade is the author of the new killer series, S.Lasher & Associates. He lives on the Gulf Coast.
www.scottblade.com
Also by Scott Blade
Coming Soon another
S. Lasher & Associates Novel
ManEater
Also Coming is the New
Vampire Series
The Follower of Night
The StoneCutter
S.Lasher & Associates:
The StoneCutter
A Lawyer making a killing.
Scott Blade
A Killer Novel
A Black Snake, LLC, November 2011.
www.blacksnakebooks.com
First Edition
Copyright © 2011 by Scott Blade
www.scottblade.com
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Black Snake LLC, New York, New Orleans, and Las Vegas.
Black Snake is trademarked.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This novel is the intellectual property of the author and publishers. Reproduction of the novel without the author’s direct permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.
F or Joe & Gizmo.
Thank you for believing in me.
1
The Associate
"When this monster entered my brain, I will never know, but it is here to stay. How does one cure himself? I can't stop it, the monster goes on, and hurts me as well as society."
––Denis Radar, the BTK Killer.
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"My client did not bash in those boys' heads with a sledge hammer,” we said.
“Paul Verize is a local university professor. He is an upstanding citizen. He teaches history, for God’s sake. He may be a private man, but that does not mean that he killed those college kids,” Shane said. He spoke using a fake Virginia drawl. Of course, it would vanish as soon as he left the courtroom. The jury was mostly conservative, rural Virginians who did not read The New York Times. They didn't fit into the Washington crowd that Shane belonged to.
Det. Blake Gabbs, the prosecution’s final breath, sat on the stand, quivering. He gave a weak testimony. It was their death rattle. Our defense worked. Shane's talents saved our case again.
The detective cowered in the witness box like a blind chick resting in the nest when a hungry snake slithered along, a snake not unlike me. The snake devoured it.
“Mr. Gabbs,” Shane said. Calling him 'mister' instead of 'detective', made him sound lesser. It demoted him. “My client is being erroneously accused of bludgeoning three college students with a sledge hammer.”
Although, we already knew the truth; he actually bludgeoned eleven.
“Your honor, Mr. Lasher needs to refer to the witness as detective. That is his title,” the local prosecutor blurted out.
We are going to use the sledge hammer on him, metaphorically of course. If I went around bashing everyone's head in with a hammer, like I imagined, then we would've gotten caught by now, and the last thing that Shane or I wanted was to get caught. I would never wear an orange jumpsuit. I would kill us first.
Before the judge responded, Shane corrected. “Detective,” he said. “Where is this murder weapon now?”
“Well…uh…that’s the thing, Mr. Lasher. Uh. We have misplaced it.”
A sudden wave of mixed voices washed, like a tidal wave of blood, over the jury box and the entire courtroom.
“I’m sorry, DETECTIVE Gabbs," Shane retorted. "Did you just tell the members of this courtroom that the hardest, most tangible piece of evidence that the D.A. has against my client, Dr. Verize, an upstanding college professor, is missing?”
“Yes, it is missing,” Det. Gabbs said, sounding like the snake to my mongoose. He squirmed on the bench. My sharp, killer instincts sensed the gasping expressions on the twelve faces of the jury.
Shane turned around to face the prosecutor; he couldn’t bear to miss the expression on his face.
The prosecutor furrowed his eyebrows and rubbed his face with his thumb. He did it so harshly; I thought he might rub off his entire face, revealing the shiny, wet muscle tissue beneath as it contorted into the expression of utter defeat.
That would have been sublime.
Shane walked causally toward the defense’s table, where his client sat calmly. He knew that Shane was the right guy to defend him from the moment we stepped into his jail cell several months earlier. And honestly, he should have known. In fact, I bet that when we stepped into his jail cell that cold night, he felt the proverbial butterflies in his stomach. Of course, in his case they were not butterflies. They were a more wretched insect, like moths.
Shane's eyes met with his client's. Paul looked at Shane in utter awe. The look in Shane's eyes might as well have been a blatant wink. If this had been a baseball game, he would have patted Shane's ass and said "Good game". Of course, I would have hit him with a bat, bludgeoning his brains all over home plate––not unlike what Paul did a few months ago to those university freshmen.
Sounded fun.
The trial could have ended. Shane had already freed his client. We might as well have stood up now and walked out of the courtroom, glancing back over Shane's shoulder, and said to the judge, "Text me the not-guilty verdict."
Shane put his hands on the table in front of his defendant. He leaned in close. The jury followed his movements as if he were about to share something pertinent with Paul Verize, some vital information that they needed to know. It appeared as though Shane had a secret. And he did, but it wasn’t a secret that they would have ever suspected. It was a dark, twisted secret. I was that secret.
Shane and I thought obsessively about the sledge hammer.
It was a beautiful instrument that Mr. Verize used in those devious killings. The sledge hammer possessed a long, metal handle. In the direct center of the handle was a dark, metal ring. The ring connected the two long ends of the handle. It could be unscrewed, turning the sledge hammer into two separate pieces of a single instrument. That made it a dangerous weapon. Paul concealed it before each use. The two separate pieces remained hidden in a special case that he carried in the rear of his Ford Escape.
We closed our eyes for a moment, imagining the murderous weapon. Its two pieces were separated and hidden, awaiting reassembly, awaiting the use of its master.
As the prosecution discovered only days before, the weapon had gone missing. The police had filed away records of it and pictures of it, but none of that mattered now. The prosecution knew it. Losing the murder weapon blew their offense. The missing evidence was just one more way for Shane to prove how incompetent the local police force was. Without it there wasn't much evidence left. The rest of the evidence was circumstantial at best. We were one step closer to setting our client free.
Where did the bloody, malicious, sledge hammer go? Where was it?
Simple: it was disassembled and lying in wait to be used once again, by a new master. Shane's master. Me.
Shane opened his eyes and stared, only for a moment, at his briefcase, his kill-case.
The briefcase's black, leather surface glimmered under the bright lights of the courtroom. It held many truths about Shane—about us. Often, he used it to conceal items that we didn't want people to see.
In this case, it held two heavy, metal pieces that fit together to assemble a sledge hammer––Paul's sledge hammer.
The cops didn't lose it; Shane had removed it from the ev
idence room. It cost him several thousand dollars to simply have the room left unguarded for a short window of time. This happened late one night—the graveyard shift.
Normally, he would never take a chance bribing someone, but our client faced life in prison. The evidence was stacked against him. After all, they had the murder weapon. Shane couldn't let the state win.
He worked on Paul Verize's case too long and hard to let the justice system have him.
No. He belonged to me. Me and Shane.
Who was Shane Lasher? Shane was the vessel that I resided in. He was my home. He was the lawyer that the jury attentively gazed their eyes upon. He was the muscle tissue, organs, skin and lungs. He was the bones and the brain. He was the muscular, murderous vessel that I had occupied since we were born together. He had no heart to speak of and that's why I survived in him.
I was Shane Lasher, but I was more than that. I was the dark, wet creature that clutched to Shane's innards.
Sometimes, I watched Shane live his life. Sometimes, I lived it for him. That was when he took a backseat to my murderous deeds.
Shane's peers called us "Lasher the Slasher" behind his back. We got this nickname because we had defended so many murderers. If only they knew how much I slashed, how I loved to slash. I was the Slasher part. I needed to slash––to kill.
People said that if a man used 100% of his brain then he could accomplish the impossible. Some believed that if we used that extra, untapped part, we would turn into complete energy.
Serial killer's brain patterns were different than those of regular people. Different parts of our brains were more active, the darker parts. I lived there. I operated in the darkest parts of Shane's brain. I operated in the darkest parts of Shane's soul.
If using 100% of our brains actually turned us into complete energy, then I was the usage at 90%.
A psychologist once named me, my kind. He called us the id. I was the savage, animal instinct, the killer instinct. I was the killer inside of Shane.
Shane Lasher may not have used more than 10% of his brain, but I did. I used much more. I could see things and know things that he could never have known. Sometimes I shared things with him. Sometimes I kept things to myself––secrets.
He knew me. He knew what I was, but he seldom fought me. He never tried to resist me.
In the real estate that we shared, if he were to fight me, we would leave his mind a war-torn wasteland. There would be nothing left of him except sharp, ridged brain shrapnel.
"Thank you for your closing arguments, Mr. Lasher," the judge said. "The jury will adjourn for a verdict."
The judge banged the gavel. It reminded me of the hammer in Shane's briefcase. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I imagined the cracking of bones beneath it. I imagined what it would feel like in my grasp.
The jury rose from their pew and left the courtroom.
Shane glanced over at the prosecutor, a nervous looking man. Shane had already won. The prosecutor felt the sting before the defeat.
"Mr. Verize, let's go into the lobby for a bit," Shane said to his client.
Paul Verize looked giddy. He was so grateful to Shane for getting him this far.
Months ago the press covered his murder spree like it was the only thing happening in the entire world. They covered it like a wildfire spreading across the nation. The story doused the front pages of most every magazine and newspaper in New England. They carried on about it for weeks and weeks.
Shane remembered first reading about it. At the time, he defended regular lowlifes, while we waited for the next worthy client to come along. A long time passed since the last time I had my fun. I wasn't satisfied killing regular degenerates. I preferred serial killers. I longed for the hunt. My mouth salivated at the thought of a new challenge. Paul Verize was that challenge.
Shane's ex-lover, Det. Sun Good, captured our client. Of course, she was not officially put on his case. The D.C. police department was male-centric. They put Det. Gabbs on point for the "Paulverizer" investigation. That was why he sat on the stand, embarrassing an already humiliated police department.
The Paulverizer, I loved that nickname. It fit so well.
It was too bad about Det. Sun Good’s absence. I knew that Shane would have liked to see his ex-lover. She was very sexy. And on the stand he could have interrogated her.
Why are you such a bitch?
You are under oath.
Your honor can I treat her as hostile?
When the media first got wind of our client's arrest, they began calling him the "Paulverizer" instead of "Pulverizer".
USA Today's headline read, "Paul Verize is the Paulverizer!"
The New York Times read, "Paul Verize/Pulverized!"
Time Magazine read, "Paulverizer Caught! He is Pulp!"
The Wall Street Journal read, "Professor Hammers Students."
The last one was not very clever, but they printed it.
As it turned out, Paul Verize acted unintelligently when picking his victims. All of the male students that he pulverized were in a fraternity that rejected him many years ago.
Guess he took the rejection hard.
Det. Sun Good discovered that the campus had a string of male students who had disappeared over the years, but no bodies were ever found. At least not until Paul Verize grew lazy and careless––something that I will never let happen to Shane.
He actually began pulverizing students in their dorm rooms while they slept. Det. Sun Good alerted the University P.D. So they began patrolling nightly.
The University Police captured him. Both Shane and I got a chuckle out of the thought of a vicious serial killer being thwarted by University Campus P.D.
Paul Verize sat on a bench outside of the courtroom. That giddy look lingered on his face. Numerous members of the press stood down the lobby, chattering. They waited outside the courthouse for a statement from his client.
The sledgehammer waited in Shane's briefcase, quietly like a deadly viper buried in the desert sand. It waited, coiled and prone to strike like two pieces of a deadly snake.
The briefcase weighed heavy under his powerful grip, but Shane's muscular arm held it with ease. This made it appear that he held a simple briefcase filled with legal papers and nothing else.
No one suspected its true contents, not the cops that scrambled around the station searching for the missing hammer, and certainly not the prosecutor. Most of all, our client didn't suspect that we held his missing instrument.
Shane smiled as he peered down the corridor at the hungry reporters. They lay in wait like a pack of wild dogs, salivating at the chance to get their teeth into Shane's client.
"Shane, they are ready for us to go back in," Ally Embers said, her long, bronze legs shimmered.
Ally Embers was our Brazilian assistant. Shane picked her because she was smart, ambitious, and the most gorgeous woman in the D.C. area.
Shane was not interested in some kind of normal, male fantasy of having raw sex with his sexy female subordinate. He liked that she was good looking. It complimented his vanity. My Shane was a vain one. Having Ally employed under him was about public image. Everywhere we took her there was a chance of being photographed by the press. Shane had an image to maintain, namely his own, and a sexy assistant helped portray that image.
"Shane, the jury is back from deliberation," Ally repeated.
Shane looked over at Paul.
"Paul, let's get you free to walk the streets once again," he said.
Long enough for me to cut your body up into seven pieces, and place them into seven trash bags. Shane's job was to free him from going to jail. Mine was to do the actual cutting and free the world of him.
Inside the courtroom, Shane stood tall and lean next to our client. Everyone stood at attention, while the judge entered and sat on the bench.
"Mr. Lasher and the plaintiff please rise," the judge commanded, ignoring the fact that Shane already was.
"Has the jury reached a verdict?" he asked.
"We have your honor," the foreman jurist said.
"How do you plea?"
"We the jury, find the plaintiff not guilty."
Shane did not expect any other verdict from the jury. Ally seemed excited. She clapped one single time from behind the defense's table.
Shane glanced over at Paul Verize. He smirked. He gets to live and kill again; at least that was what he thought.
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"Shane, don't forget your photo shoot with Vanity Fair is in the morning," Ally reminded him. Her toned body blended her in with the lingerie models that lined the ads in Vanity Fair's pages.
"Thank you, Ally," Shane said. He glanced over at his client, who waited in the shadow, casted by a large pillar. He waited for his savior to come and guide him through the media jungle.
"Paul, are you ready to face the press?" Shane asked.
"Yes," Paul answered, nervously.
Shane and Paul approached the journalist. The reporters were huddled at the bottom of the courthouse's steps.
"People of the media, I have a statement. My client was always innocent of these heinous crimes. Instead of fabricating these insidious allegations against him, the local police should have been out there searching for the real "Paulverizer". Not just picking on my client for his unfortunate name. Thank you," Shane said.
He moved over, allowing Paul Verize to address the media. They bombarded him with questions.
"Mr. Verize, how did you manage to get an innocent verdict?"
"Mr. Verize."
"What do you have to say to the police department for accusing you?"
"Mr. Verize."
"Mr. Verize. Over here."
"Is it true that they lost the murder weapon?"
"Mr. Verize."
Shane backed away from the podium and faded into the crowd, like a lion fading into the brush. He allowed the media, the vultures, to have their way with Paul. It didn't matter anymore what they asked him. He was already ours. He was already free. He had been proven innocent in the eyes of the law, but not in our eyes.
