by Jaden Wilkes
Fuck.
She made me feel.
But this. This fucking drivel they published in today’s paper. Fucking smatterings of barely legible schlock they passed off as newsworthy.
Donovan fucking Blake, Mr. so called CK expert, had been spouting off his trashy mouth on the front page.
I stopped pacing, walked around the desk and picked the paper up. I smoothed it out, flattened on the surface of my desk and leaned over it, staring into his eyes.
His dull, hooded, arrogant eyes.
I read: “I believe the CK is impotent, unable to achieve an erection or finish his desperate act to completion. Therefore he murders these women to find some kind of physical release. He is most likely unschooled, uneducated and lower class.”
Fucking unschooled. Uneducated. Lower class. I was stiff with rage, imagining my mother reading these things written about me.
My father.
My disapproving, hard-nosed father.
The article continued: “It’s obvious he lacks the charm and social skills necessary to attract victims of higher social status. Or victims of greater beauty. So far his pattern has been to go for the low hanging fruit, so to speak. He’s a consummate underachiever with a little man complex. He likes to hide in the shadow and watch the world from there. The world he’s unable to join.”
What the fuck did he know? I didn’t kill in the shadows, I was the shadow. I could charm women onto the end of my knife and convince them it was an honor to die by my hand. I love them but I still had to destroy them.
Donovan Blake was miles away from the mark, he knew nothing about me, but the uncontrollable rage would not subside. That a man dared to tell the world such things about me, his obvious superior. It enraged me.
I clenched my fists and unclenched them. Hot waves of red washed over me and I closed my eyes, envisioning my knife plunging into Donovan Blake’s neck, his blood spraying over me, the arrogance fading from his eyes as he realized his fatal mistake.
Underestimating me.
***
I was wrong, I miscalculated and the waitress had died some time in the days I’d been gone.
I cursed under my breath and slapped her face.
No response.
She looked dehydrated, and I calculated how long it had been.
Seven days since I’d picked her up on the street. I thought the human body could handle much more than what she’d endured, but perhaps she’d had some underlying ailment that had contributed to her demise.
It didn’t matter now; it wasn’t like I could conduct a post mortem. I’m pretty skilled at the killing part, but the keeping them alive part seemed a little overwhelming at times.
Lucky for Pet, I didn’t need her bound. Her room was cage enough.
I released the straps from the waitress’s hands and feet and her limbs were still stiff with rigor mortis, so she’d died sometime in the last twenty four hours or so.
If only I hadn’t spent the night with Pet, she would still be alive. If only I hadn’t given into Pet’s persistent longing, I might have some way to slake my thirst today.
If only I hadn’t been so fucking weak. And then I could feel the hot gorge rising in my throat like hunger, ready to spill forth.
An image crossed my mind, my cock in my hand, jerking off on her corpse, slicing her nipple, slashing her throat. Like an appetizer, an amuse bouche, an unexpected treat to whet the appetite.
It did nothing for me though; the moment of death was my aphrodisiac, not the corpse, not the after effect.
I unfurled a tarp from a side table and counted my blessings. At least there was no clean up, no blood to worry about. I could get home to Pet tonight, much earlier than I’d intended.
But I’d have to be careful.
So fucking careful.
As I wrapped the tarp around the body, I had a thought. That fucking Donovan Blake, he wanted to play, so I decided I’d join his game.
I pulled a small, sharp knife from a tool chest to my left. I surveyed her body, she was dirty and bruised, I didn’t remember how she got so bruised.
I lifted the polyester blouse of her Waffle House uniform and held the knife to her white, flawless, flat abdomen.
I drew the blade across with surgical precision; I was an artist with a knife after all.
I sat back when finished and smiled at my work.
The letters, “CK” were carved into her flesh. The message was unmistakable; I hoped those arrogant, dark eyes would flood with futile impotent rage when he saw my signature.
I tossed the knife in the sink and finished packing her up. I loaded her in the trunk of the Audi I was driving and headed to Washington Park. I remember a couple of bodies had been found there a few years back. I didn’t feel like I needed to take this one out to the mountains, I had no urge to pose her or immortalize her, I’d lost her to death, she’d been taken from me.
Her body was a message, not a monument.
I pulled into the parking lot, it was deserted. It was raining and dark already, a gloomy day overall leading to an even gloomier evening.
Everybody sensible must have been home eating dinners with their families, basking in the warm glow of their television sets, watching a story about CK terrorizing their city.
I smiled at that thought and hiked up a small rise into a wooded area. It was rather private up here, but well used on sunny days.
She would not remain undiscovered for long.
Task completed, I threw the tarp into the back of the Audi and drove home. I felt an intense thrill thinking about Donovan’s discover of the message, and I was awash with smug self-satisfaction at fucking up his little profile by leaving him a vastly different body in close proximity to the city.
It was almost enough to keep the need to kill at bay. Pet would be safe for the moment, but not for long.
Chapter Nine
Donovan Blake
“I think you’re an asshole.”
Emily’s body moved like a prowling tiger as she entered my bedroom suite with two glasses and a bottle of wine in her hands.
“Yet, you are still riding my cock.” I smiled and placed my hands behind my head to lean back against the pillows on the bed. “It’s about time you learned to separate business and pleasure.”
A smirk lit her face and I saw the glint of humor in her eye. “You threatened to kick me off the team when I’m the best agent you have. If any person needs to learn to separate the two, it’s you. If I hadn’t submitted to your ridiculous authority in front of the other agents, I’d be relaxing back home and you’d be one damn good agent down.”
She smiled with the satisfaction of having pointed out my own misbehavior. It wasn’t unusual that she was accurate in what she said; I could admit that my reaction had been just as unfortunate as her behavior had been.
“I’m surprised you cut the conference short just to come chastise me in front of Ward and Cartwright. Had I pissed you off that much?” Tilting her head to the side, she stood at the foot of the bed studying me with her shrewd brown eyes. “Now who is showing their emotion, Agent Blake?”
“Touché, slut. Are we drinking or what?” The corner of my lip pulled into a mocking smile and Emily’s expression softened.
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
Crawling up onto the mattress, she handed the glasses and bottle to me before slinking her way up my body. She was dressed in a simple, light blue silk negligee that contrasted against her tanned skin beautifully. With my eyes angled down her body, I watched her crawl, basking in the power trip her movement gave me.
In truth, there wasn’t much different between the killers I hunted and myself. Every crime on their part was a play for the feeling of power. With most, it wasn’t about the sex or violence that came with their sick acts, it was the control and possession of the victim. Once in their grasp, a woman had no say over the way she was treated or how and when she died. The killer was God at that moment and the rush that feeling provided was a
drug of which they could never get enough. While some were able to control their needs and their desire to control and possess a living and breathing human being, others were like any other drug addict on the street. The subsequent kills were never the same high as the initial act and they escalated and made mistakes in a rush to achieve it once again.
I, too, enjoyed the feeling of ultimate control; however I didn’t need to kill a bitch to achieve it. I’d taken a different route, one that gave me license to hunt and to kill if it was needed. I commanded a team of intelligent and respectful men and women and I had found a special gem in the woman who was wetting my dick.
Most importantly, and what most people didn’t realize, was that I’m just as dark as CK, maybe even more so. To others, this profession is a lonesome job that sucks the life out of you day after day and crime scene after crime scene. A man couldn’t look into the bowels of hell for too long before losing the ignorant hope that life wasn’t all bad. However, I fed on the scenes, on the job and the realization that evil existed in every place and that it was my job to hunt it down.
Where one gruesome scene would cause a good man to puke, it would make my heart race with excitement, it would make my dick hard to know that there was some poor bastard out there that would be MY next victim, the next man I chased down to imprison or destroy. They committed the evil and I got off on it, but could disguise my interest and thrill behind the FBI identification I flashed at every scene.
“Penny for your thoughts, Blake.”
Pulled from my musings, I blinked my eyes in Emily’s direction. I was turned on just thinking about everything I’d seen in this career and Emily was the perfect outlet for me at that moment.
“Take off your clothes, Chase.”
Her eyebrows rose up on her forehead, but without questioning me, she reached down to remove the silk from her body. I took no time, pushing myself up into a sitting position, grabbing her by the back of the neck and bending her over. With her face crushed against the pillows, she wiggled her hips against me, the submissive inside her waking up at the feel of the painful grip I had on her body.
“You like that you little bitch, don’t you?” Bending over her, I pushed my mouth against her ear and said, “You act so superior and strong when your ass is bouncing in those tight skirts you like to wear at work, but in here, you’re powerless and you fucking know it.”
She purred, rubbing up against me, begging me to take her body.
“Don’t worry, beautiful, I’ll take control of that tight cunt of yours and show you what it’s like to be with a man as dangerous as the ones you hunt.”
It was a slip, a fragment of how I felt in this career, but I knew that deep down Emily was just as sick as me when it came to the type of life in which we’d been immersed. Where I knew the thrill of power that sociopaths and sadists killed in order to achieve, Emily was drawn to the true helplessness of the victims. I think in some ways she wished she could feel helpless, that there could be times in her life where the decisions were no longer hers to make. In business, she was a powerful woman and force to be met, but here in the bed, she was nothing more than a body to be used.
Slipping the pants from my hips, I forced a condom over my dick before shoving it inside her as I tightened my grip on her neck. She squeaked out in pain, but her hips were moving over me within seconds.
I slammed into her with all the frustration and rage that was pent up in my body and bent over her again, whispering in her ear my confession that I knew her little secret. “You sick bitch. You think I don’t know? Just like your anger is so obvious, so is your attraction to death. Let me show you what it’s like, little girl.”
She stopped moving as soon as I forced her face tighter against the pillow, but I didn’t stop slamming into her with increasing speed. Her moans were quieted instantly. She started to struggle when she couldn’t breathe and it made me fuck her even harder. Everything about the moment was turning me on: the feel of her head against my palm and her hair wrapped through my fingers. The way her body moved in her panic, her motions hurried yet weak because she’d been taken off guard.
Just like CK, in that moment I was God. I could snuff her out so easily, make her cease to exist. But it wasn’t death that turned me on, it was the power. Finding my release quickly, I shot my orgasm into the latex condom, finally loosening my grip enough that she could lift her head and take a deep breath. Her body shuddered over me, her own orgasm exploding when oxygen once again filled her bloodstream.
Pulling out, I didn’t stop for a cuddle before getting up and moving into the bathroom to wash up. By the time I returned to the bed, she was sipping from a glass of wine, the imprint of the pillowcase still red across her face.
She smiled at me and handed me a glass when I approached.
“Do you think that’s true, Donovan? Do I flirt with death?”
I chuckled in response to her question. “Are you asking me to profile you, Chase?”
“You’re the one who brought it up.” She shrugged. “But you’re the only man who can get me off like you do and I wonder if it’s not the threat of violence I see in you every day.”
Opening my mouth to respond, I was interrupted by the vibration of my phone on the surface of the bedside table. Snatching it up, I flicked the side button to see a text from Agent Cartwright.
“Fuck.”
“What? What is it?” Emily straightened her posture and reached over to place her glass on the table where my phone had been.
“I guess the conference worked like a charm. Another body showed up…and this one included a message.”
***
The cold wet air stung my face as I walked across the dimly lit parking lot on the south side of Washington Park. Dumped with no more concern than a pile of garbage, Noreen Hamilton’s body was found by a vagrant who was sneaking into the woods surrounding the park to sleep off the alcohol in his stomach.
Left naked and displayed in a way that made CK’s message abundantly clear, it appeared that she’d been dead for some time before being dumped in the very public location.
With a flashlight, I looked over the body, wishing like hell that the local PD would hurry the fuck up and get some floodlights set up around the perimeter of the scene before all the evidence was washed away by the impending rain.
In Noreen’s abdomen, the letters CK were carved, however the lack of blood told me that the cuts had either been performed post-mortem or she’d been cleaned like all the other victims we’d found. Unlike those victims, however, Noreen’s body wasn’t positioned to appear sleeping. It was just one more indication to me that the message I’d given CK had shaken him enough to break with his usual routine. I could only pray that he’d been pissed off enough to accidentally leave something behind that we could use to identify him.
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied, Blake. You pissed him off, alright.”
Emily bent down to take a closer look at the letters carved into the body. “These cuts are quite deep and there are no hesitation marks to speak of. He was obviously agitated while making them.”
“At least now, he’s communicating with us. It’s a step closer to finding this bastard.”
“I wonder what he’s done with Veronica Lapierre’s body,” Emily mused.
“What makes you so sure that she’s dead? From everything we know about her life, she’s an easily manipulated woman. She probably does as instructed without complaint. It might be the only reason she hasn’t turned up dead like all the others. Giving power to a sadist is always a way to keep them interested.”
Not having intended to make that a public thought, I spoke the words before thinking about what Emily would hear in them. In a way, I’d just described our sexual relationship and I was concerned she would pick up on the reference. She did and looked up at me with a question behind her eyes, but decided to keep her mouth shut.
Turning back to the body, she commented, “Noreen doesn’t fit his type. I mean, sure, she’s ob
viously not high on the food chain, but she’s not desperate. At any time, she could have gone home and had all the money in the world to better her life. Somehow I don’t think this girl was targeted because she wouldn’t be missed, I think she was just a victim of opportunity. He hasn’t shown the same remorse with this one as he did with the others. This was about rage, about something other than what his previous kills meant to him.”
“Is there an obvious cause of death, Agent Blake?”
A male voice sounded behind me and I spun to shine my flashlight in the face of the medical examiner assigned to the scene. He reached out to shake my hand.
“I’m Dr. Keith Montgomery. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
Taking his hand, I shook it quickly. “You as well. This is Special Agent Emily Chase.”
The two shook hands and Dr. Montgomery looked to me once again, “Have you determined how the young woman died?”
Beaming my flashlight at Noreen’s neck, I was surprised to find that it hadn’t been cut open like the rest. “As a matter of fact, no. The neck appears intact.”
“Well, can I ask you to move aside so that I can take a look?” Flashing me a friendly smile, he stepped around me to kneel down next to the body. After a few minutes examining her, he stood back up and breathed out heavily.
“I don’t see any obvious signs of trauma besides the initials carved into her abdomen. I’m going to have to perform a full autopsy to determine cause of death. I can tell you that the letters were carved after her death, so at least he did her that small favor.”
Floodlights clicked on at that moment and the entire scene was bathed in an eerie bright glow. Local PD and my team processed the scene, collecting everything we could find that might lead to the killer. Once I was positive we’d found all we were going to find, Emily and I returned to the car, climbing into the warm seats before simultaneously breathing out our exhaustion.
Minutes of silence passed before she finally said what I’d been wondering all night. “He’s changed his MO completely, Donovan. Are we sure we have CK on our hands? Or is this another asshole hoping to pin his kills on the person we’re already hunting?”
