The StoneCutter (S. Lasher & Associates)

by Scott Blade

"Yes, I can see you working it out in your head. Gillard Shutter was my last scapegoat. That was when I discovered your dark devil.

  "Oh Shane, how I felt when I learned that you had something inside of you like I have inside of me," Terrance admitted. He turned his head for a quick moment and glanced at the moon as if he was contemplating something profound. He looked at it as if it were his temptress, his beacon of light in the dark, night sky.

  "Sometimes, I feel like there really is a creature living inside of my head. It controls me. It gives me all of these sick and twisted thoughts. Do you have any idea what that is like?

  "Whenever a serial killer is caught, he blames the voice in his head......That is real. The voice is real. I feel the devil inside me as it turns and twists about. It seeks the perfect position to control me."

  The strength slowly returned to my body. My claws twitched until I could fully move them. I awakened.

  Shane felt my stirring inside him. He stared at Terrance and said nothing. He only hoped that I would jump back to life in time.

  "As soon as the Secret Service finds out that you are the killer, and that I killed you in self-defense, I will be free of you. Finally," Terrance said.

  My black eyes shot open. The tranquilizer had knocked me out of the cockpit and clear down to Shane's guts. I spun around and began to climb my way back to his brain, back to his thoughts, back to the controls.

  "And the cops will stop looking for your past clients when they search your penthouse. They will link you to those two murders along with the ones that I committed over the years, leaving my firm alone.

  "You were smart and promising. I knew that you would never stop looking for the StoneCutter until you had him. So I gave Gillard Shutter to you on a silver platter. I thought that your devil would be satisfied. I thought that he was merely a vengeful creature. But you had to keep killing after Shutter. You couldn't be satisfied with avenging your parents. You killed Paul Verize," Terrance said.

  He peeked down into the open grave. He planned on shooting Shane. He was only moments away from seeing his plan carried out, but he noticed that something wasn't right. Something was missing from the grave. Something was missing from the ritual.

  "I didn't kill Shutter for revenge," Shane confessed. He began to inch away. Slowly, he backed towards the woods, towards the darkness.

  "Yes, you did. You couldn't let it go and you hunted down and avenged your parents," Terrance said, peering down into the grave, trying to figure out what was missing.

  Rapidly, I climbed up Shane's ribcage, passing his beating heart. I clawed at the entrance into his skull. I was almost back in the driver's seat.

  "You are wrong. I never intended to kill you for revenge," Shane said, backing away.

  "What then, justice?"

  "Revenge is about killing the person who wronged you. If I was looking for revenge; then why the others, more than just Shutter and Verize?"

  "Others? What others?" Terrance asked.

  "Didn't you know, StoneCutter? I killed others before them," Shane said as his eyes turned a deep black color, my black. In the moonlight, it appeared that his facial features transformed into mine. I covered his surface, coming out with my teeth sharpened, claws extended.

  "What others? The missing clients?” Terrance asked. An unexpected look of worry stretched across his face.

  I nodded and grinned. My eyebrows furrowed, creating an animalistic glare across Shane's face.

  "You only killed Shutter and Verize," Terrance insisted.

  "And all the others," we replied, laughing.

  "What others?"

  "All of the missing clients. The killers anyway. You kill rich and powerful families. I kill killers," I said. I was in complete control of Shane now. My tentacles were firmly wrapped around his brain.

  "But we have dozens of clients unaccounted for."

  "Yes," I answered. I backed us far from Terrance. Now, we stood on the border of the tree line and the utter darkness beyond it.

  He realized that we had moved further from him. He stared at us. He gasped as he tried to focus on my features. His monster gazed upon me. For the first time, he saw the horrifying thing that he'd created.

  "I study them. I get them a not guilty verdict. I free them. And I murder them."

  "For justice?" Terrance asked.

  "Justice is for humans, StoneCutter. You and I are not human. We are something else. Something different," I said, as I stepped back once more. The sudden, thick darkness engulfed me into it like a sponge of blackness.

  "We are monsters," I whispered.

  Terrance heard my dark voice surrounding him. It echoed as if the trees housed numerous hidden speakers. He lost me. I left him with no idea where I was.

  Looking down into the open grave, Terrance realized what was missing, the coffin that he had crafted for us. I pulled it out of the grave earlier in the night, before I approached the house. I hid this from Shane. I didn't want to spoil it for him.

  The StoneCutter twisted and contorted his head to try and find me. He took a furious breath and began to chase after me. The creature inside him felt something that it had never felt before—fear.

  He ducked and darted around the trees and beneath low hanging branches. He sprinted through the woods, following the warm path that I left for him. Terrance grew frustrated as he realized that I was nowhere in sight. He could not lose us. He had to find us.

  Terrance began to sprint through the thick, dark night.

  Abruptly, he tripped over something and fell into a deep hole. The sound of cracking bones sounded all around him. An intense pain shot through his body. His legs twisted and broke. He looked like a feeble tree that had toppled over and now was trying to escape the hard, dry soil. He panicked when he realized that he was not lying on dirt. He was lying in a coffin. It was the coffin that he had built special for us. Even though it was snug, it was now his coffin.

  "No! No!" he screamed.

  As his eyes adjusted to the dim light that fell from the moon and filtered through the branches overhead, he saw my lean figure standing over the open grave holding his gun. He hadn't even realized that he dropped it.

  My eyes were completely black. Shane's blood-red scarf blew in the wind, naturally covering the bottom half of my face once again.

  "Terrance Graves," I said. "You are lying in a grave. Your grave."

  "You are not Shane! Who are you?!" Terrance demanded.

  Without a moment's hesitation, I shot him in the chest, a merciful act unlike what he did to Sebastian Lasher, our real father. I glared into his soulless eyes and watched as the monster inside him breathed its last breath. I relished in its utter death. It was that short moment that gave my entire life meaning. Now, I was satisfied.

  The gunshot had surely been heard across the ranch. A moment after it echoed throughout the landscape, the motion lights ignited, flooding most of the area with extreme white light.

  Within minutes, Secret Service agents crawled all over the property, but we were already running towards Shane's car, leaving behind: a shovel, Terrance's handcrafted coffin, a dead Godfather, and a headstone that was created decades ago for Sebastian Lasher. With faded letters, it read:

  Here lies the bastard lawyer

  Sebastian Lasher's name had been completely rubbed off. No trace of it remained.

  The Secret Service agents found Terrance dead in the coffin. Upon close examination, they also found that the coffin had a tag on it that read:

  Exhibit B

  The StoneCutter's Coffin

  Shane was exhibit A.

  10

  The Final Verdict

  "This is the happiest moment of my life."

  ––George Engel. Right before he hung to death.

  |||||

  We were in the last place that I ever wanted to be—jail.

  Shane sat behind bars, normally we contemplated mass murder, but now he contemplated suicide. We did something that I never thought I would ever allow; we tur
ned ourselves in. We allowed ourselves to be put in jail.

  The price of playing the hero, I thought.

  As soon as we returned from recess, the judge had us arrested. The only excuse regarding our absence from the trial that Shane had for him and the media was that we got caught up in a 48 hour lovemaking session with a couple of prostitutes. Of course, we paid those girls handsomely to agree to that very story. And both girls were so doped up the night before that they weren't sure who they were with, might as well have been a wealthy, young lawyer and celebrity.

  First day of the trial, which was postponed due to our imprisonment, and the courtroom had been packed wall to wall with spectators. The courthouse steps had been overcrowded with news cameras and media personalities. The traffic on Hoover Avenue was completely jammed. It was like the Presidential Motorcade was left abandoned in front of the building. None of the cars budged. Cops were posted on every street corner trying to restrict the crowds from becoming too overbearing for their already exhausted police force.

  On every major news channel, the stars of the media reported on this court case. Everyone out there was talking about the new StoneCutter murder.

  And we missed it. At least we missed the media coverage.

  Shane was being held in contempt for not showing up to court on Friday morning.

  The interest in this case soared because Federal Agents revealed that over the weekend the U.S. Secretary of State was attacked by the StoneCutter.

  Anderson Cooper told his CNN viewers that the StoneCutter murdered the senior partner of Graves and Associates. How he knew that much detail, I wasn't sure. Perhaps, he also had a creature inside him like me. Who know? One day Anderson might be in my crosshairs.

  For now, we were stuck in jail.

  "Lasher, you have a visitor," one of the guards announced, abruptly.

  We looked up and saw a Secret Service agent escorting the weak-looking Eline Kline.

  She had suffered from oxygen deprivation. She looked a bit shaken up. Otherwise she was perfectly fine for a woman who should have been dead and buried.

  It was Shane's idea to make that air pocket for her. If we hadn't then she would have surely been dead.

  She leaned into the bars and said, "Thank you, Mr. Lasher. You have freed my son."

  "Mrs. Kline, I had nothing to do with freeing your son. The real StoneCutter attacked you and Terrance. If he hadn't your son would still be the police's suspect," Shane said and swallowed hard at the lie that he was about to tell.

  "The real hero here is Terrance Graves. He saved your life. His sacrifice is the reason that you are still alive," Shane continued; feeling disgusted.

  "Mr. Lasher, you are right, but he is not here. So I thank you. And in your own way of mishandling this case, I feel that you may have saved my son's life. I'm not sure why, but I feel that I must thank you. So just accept it," she insisted.

  "Yes ma'am. I guess that it was just dumb luck," he said.

  "At any rate. I owe you considerably. So much of what happened is still so fuzzy. Some of my memory makes no sense. Like sometimes, I remember Terrance attacking me, but then he was attacked too, so that can't be right."

  "What happened doesn't matter. Your son is going to be free. And you are alive. Just be grateful for that," Shane said.

  In a strange way, I was proud of him. Even though we were turning into semi-heroes, I felt proud to be living inside of him.

  The Secretary turned to leave, but stopped halfway. She turned back and asked, "Is there anything that you need?"

  "Go. Get well, Mrs. Kline," Shane said.

  |||||

  I straddled Shane's brain with pride. We killed the StoneCutter and ended our nearly three decade quest to spill his blood.

  Shane stared out of the jail cell and down the winding hallway when the guard approached once more with two new guests.

  More visitors? Shane thought.

  I saw Det. Sun Good before he did. She walked, more like strutted, towards Shane's cell.

  "Det. Sun Good," Shane said when she reached the cell bars.

  "Shane, finally you are where I've always wanted to put you," she said, laughing.

  "It's nice to see you, Sun. Who is your friend?" Shane asked, acknowledging the unfamiliar man that followed close behind her. He wore a suit and tie. It made him look like a Fed. His build was athletic for an older man. He was probably in his late forties.

  "Shane, this is Special Agent Kirk Cutter. He is the FBI's best serial killer profiler."

  Great! I thought.

  "It is nice to meet you, Mr. Lasher," Agent Cutter said. He looked quite serious.

  At first, I was uninterested in both of them until she said 'best serial killer profiler'. Why was he here? Why did she bring him? Did she finally suspect us?

  "Shane, we have noticed that some of your clients are missing, and I originally blamed you for hiding their whereabouts from us. I owe you an apology. I'm sorry," Sun said.

  "Wow. Thank you, Sun," Shane said, slightly bewildered, but he smirked, jokingly. "So you finally realized that I had nothing to do with their disappearances?"

  "It turns out that there are a lot more than a couple of clients missing," she said.

  "There are twenty-seven confirmed missing clients, Mr. Lasher," Kirk Cutter interrupted. "And they are missing across the board. And your firm has a global reach with territory everywhere. Just here in the United States on the east coast, we have confirmed that number of missing clients. Each was a defendant that was acquitted on murder charges."

  Shit. They are getting close to discovering what I do.

  "That is a lot of missing clients," Shane admitted. We both knew that the number was far greater than twenty-seven. "So, what do you think?"

  They had us in jail. We couldn't escape. We could only pray that they weren't suspecting us. Were they here to arrest us?

  "We think that you can help us," Kirk Cutter said. Then I noticed that there was something off about him.

  "Help you? How?"

  "You can report to us. You can look around a little bit at your coworkers or through company files. Maybe you can uncover something for us," Sun Good suggested.

  "You guys want me to spy for the FBI? Like an informant?"

  "Mr. Lasher, something funny is going on at your firm. Now, it may turn out that Terrance Graves is behind the disappearances. It may turn out to be nothing. But it could turn out to be something else all together.

  "We just want you to keep your eyes peeled," Kirk Cutter said.

  I would like to peel your eyes back off of your face, serial killer hunter, I thought.

  "Just think about it, Shane. There is going to be an investigation. I'm just giving you the chance to help out," Sun Good said.

  The two of them turned and left us behind bars. If they found anything in their investigation, it could end up leading them to us and we might spend the rest of our life behind bars.

  We had just rid the world of a mass murderer. We saved Eline Kline's life. We freed her son from death row. Now we might get caught? We might end up on death row ourselves.

  No good deed goes unpunished, I thought.

  |||||

  Wednesday afternoon we were released from jail.

  Back at our penthouse, we got a voicemail from Ally. She said that the partners wanted to see us first thing in the morning. So she booked a flight for us, another redeye.

  Shane packed light and caught the plane.

  When the morning arrived, we stared at the hellish double doors that led into the boardroom, waiting for the meeting to begin.

  "Mr. Lasher," Tina said. Her face was still puffy from apparently crying over Terrance's death. "The partners will see you now."

  She opened the large, terrifying doors. We entered the dark chamber—the same place we stood not so long ago when Terrance was alive. We stood here while he pretended to defend us. In fact, he had sabotaged us. He toyed with us, and I didn't even notice the monster that lived inside him.
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  The Board sat around the long table. They stared at us from the darkness that surrounded them.

  Shane looked at the empty chair at the head of the table, the chair that used to belong to Terrance. He sat there, overseeing the Board, the Partners, overseeing our life.

  "Shane, your recent activities have been less than favorable for this firm's reputation. However, in consideration for Terrance and your record with this firm, and with how things turned out for Mr. Alex Kline, we have an important task for you. We want you to fill Terrance's seat while we consider replacements.

  "Would you be willing to take on this challenge?"

  It was in that moment, in the darkness of Shane's soul that I peeked through the portals that were his eyes, and saw for the first time the monsters that sat in front of us. The Partners were all demonic. Every one of them had a creature living in them—a killer, like myself. I could hear their collective rattles as they warned me that this was their snake pit.

  Terrance had not been alone. He was the leader of a firm filled with lawyers with killers living inside of them—killers like me. And why not? He built this firm. He filled it with the Associates.

  The Partners were all capable of murder. We had to investigate. We had to keep our evil eyes on them. So Shane said, "Yes.

  Shane Lasher Will Return!!!!

  www.scottblade.com

  About the Author

  SCOTT BLADE is the author of The Secret of Lions and S.Lasher & Associates. He teaches at Tulane University and lives near New Orleans.

  GO TO SCOTTBLADE.COM. LIKE ME, FOLLOW ME, AND WRITE TO ME. I WILL RESPOND PERSONALLY. I BELIEVE IN TALKING DIRECTLY TO MY READERS!

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  CUT & DRY

  Shane Lasher is in trouble. FBI Serial Killer Hunter, Kirk Cutter, has discovered something profound about Shane's law firm: Dozens of acquitted murder clients have vanished. Cutter suspects that Shane is a serial killer who only murders killers. Nothing could be closer to the truth.