Kill Game: An Unforgettable Serial Killer Thriller

by Adam Nicholls

  This time she had a plan.

  A few nights ago, after Mr. Ross had left her, she’d found a crumpled white slip of paper lost in the still-warm sheets of her mattress. It’d appeared out of the cotton, right in her eyeline, where she was lying in a sweaty ball. Her arms still shaking, she’d picked it up and peeled it open carefully. It was a receipt. She turned it over in her hand like it was a precious artifact, her traumatized brain now clear for the first time in weeks.

  Keeping her legs closed against the pain, she’d leaned over the side of the mattress to pull a small piece of wood out from underneath it. The sound of the plastic protector whining under the movement had made her stomach turn. She’d heard enough of that noise. When she finally escaped, which she knew she would, she’d make sure she’d never hear that noise again.

  The piece of wood was taken from the remnants of a forgotten fire she’d found in the corner. Before the pain began, she’d done some exploring of the cellar and found an ash-filled can where someone had hastily burned papers. When she’d pulled the carbon-coated piece from the mess, she’d quickly determined that it might have a use and squirreled it away.

  She’d been right. Holding the small receipt steady was a challenge with the amount that she was shaking, but she’d managed to write small enough to get the whole message down.

  Help. In Cellar. Sick. Hurt.

  Now, she held the carefully folded piece of paper in her hand where she balanced on the crate. She could smell the winter air where it came in from the crack in the window. It smelled mean and urgent.

  She watched the neighbor as he made his way up the stairs, stopping to pull his already high pants up higher. He’d been coming over with his dog long enough that he didn’t care if it sniffed the window. The puppy had even dug at the wire-enforced glass a few times, but the bloom had fallen off the rose, and his owner wasn’t as interested in every little thing the animal did anymore.

  For a moment, Bella thought of screaming. The old man hadn’t rung the doorbell yet, and he was still close enough that she might be able to get his attention without Mr. Ross knowing.

  Stupid kid. Of course he knows. He knew the moment he heard the gravel crunching under his neighbour’s tires. He’s probably at the door right now, waiting for you to try something. Waiting for you to dare. One peep and he’ll be down in all his bony fury, ready to eat you up one limb at a time.

  She waited. Holding the tiny roll of paper in her hand, she watched as the puppy moved in a serpentine toward her window. His nose low to the ground, she could hear his snuffling grow louder as he approached.

  Her heart beating painfully in all her wounds, Bella waited for the doorbell to ring before she reached through the window. She’d only managed to wiggle it up a small amount, and it’d taken her all of last night. The splintered wood ripped against her skin as she pushed her hand out the opening.

  The puppy was right there. Its tongue lapped against her dirty skin, so warm and soft that she had to suppress a sob. Too afraid to speak, to even mumble, Bella managed to slip her hand under the dog’s collar. It wiggled ecstatically, hopping away from her and then back again.

  She felt hot tears on her cheek as the vibrating animal finally allowed her to push the piece of paper securely under the toggle of his collar.

  It was done.

  By the time he was finished his drinking, the neighbor would whistle for his now-neglected prize and then head home for more beer and his television set. He’d find her note then. Or his wife would. Someone would. Someone had to.

  Bella crouched, wincing as her posture forced more pressure into her wounds. All she had to do now was make her way back to her bed and wait. She knew, in a calm, black way that no child should ever know, that one way or another this was almost over. Whether through rescue or death, she would be out, and at this point, she didn’t much care either way.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kyle was the first to arrive. She had the vague impression that she’d called him immediately after her intruder escaped, though this evening had been nothing but a blur. If she concentrated hard enough, she could even remember buzzing him in and unlocking her front door. She felt as if her entire brain had gone into lockdown the moment she knew someone was in the loft. She felt drunk, standing in the center of the room, her gun in her hand and every light blazing.

  He found her that way and was at her side in a second, ordering the other officers to check every corner and cupboard even though he knew damn well she would’ve already done that. Bella, meanwhile, stared toward the open window that led to the fire escape, unresponsive even when he raised his voice.

  “Bella, come on.” There was a panic in his voice that finally caught her attention. She blinked and turned to him.

  “He was here, Kyle. It was him.”

  “Did you get a look at him? Did he say anything to you?” Kyle was leading her over to her couch, holding her elbow gently like she was an old lady recovering from a fall.

  She shook her head, letting herself be settled. She made eye contact with her partner again, and she realized she had to be careful. Bella had a reputation for having chased and tackled men twice her size. She’d never hesitated to be the first at a crime scene, and she had a special way of kicking open doors to crack houses. Who, then, was the vulnerable young girl she was acting like?

  A younger version of herself—that was who.

  “He was in my bedroom,” she said, her voice small and frail. “He went into my drawers and went through my clothes.”

  Kyle looked up as one of the officers approached. He nodded upstairs as he holstered his gun.

  “It’s all clear, Detective.”

  “I’m going to need you and Burns to brush this whole place for prints. The refrigerator handles. Start with the bedroom drawers,” Kyle commanded. He looked back to Bella. “Look, Cruz, we can’t be sure that it was Salem, right? Not until we get the prints back from the lab along with anything else he might have left behind. It could’ve been anyone.”

  “What? You said yourself he was back. This was him, Kyle,” she said. “I don’t need to wait around for those douchebags at the lab to get back to me with a confirmation. I know his shape. I’d know it anywhere.”

  “Right.” Kyle looked down at his hands, showing the weight of the red tape and paperwork that comprised his job lately. “I get that. I absolutely get that.”

  “He was in my house. What if he comes back to finish whatever it is he’s planning? I can’t waste time on that Williams case Brooks has me on.” The anger that welled up in her was refreshing. This was the version of herself she knew. “I’m going to find him, Kyle. I don’t care what Brooks says.”

  Kyle grunted, almost smiling. “You don’t, do you? Hey, speak of the devil.”

  Captain Brooks stormed into the apartment. He slipped past one of the officers dusting the handle of her front door, with a pack of at least three other policemen behind him.

  Kyle was on his feet in a second, looking nervously down at where Bella still sat.

  Brooks barely spared the young detective a glance. He brushed past Kyle to where he could loom over Bella. “You don’t care what I have to say about you disobeying my specific orders, co-opting another detective’s case, and putting both yourself and my other officers at risk? That doesn’t bother you in the slightest?”

  Bella recoiled in shock. She shot up, her legs steady thanks to the anger that was pushing up from her core. “Of course it bothers me. Jesus. I’m not here to get myself in trouble, but I’m a detective first. I know Salem Ross. Better than you, better than Kyle, better than any speed-freak FBI profiler you might be thinking about flying in. I can wrap this case up. Now that we know he’s responsible, put me on the case. Please. Let me bring him in.”

  Brooks stared at his adopted daughter’s face. His mouth was a vicious, angry slash, and she could feel the rage radiating off him. He should let her do this. He knew her well enough to understand that if he gave her permission, as so
on as he’d spoken the words she’d have Ross locked up, or she’d be on her way to die trying. Maybe that was what was really stopping him.

  “No,” he stated, like there was no room for argument. “You’re on lockdown.”

  Her heartbeat doubled, what little humility she had draining in an instant. “I’m on what?”

  “Lockdown. I don’t want you leaving this apartment. I’ve instructed officers to station themselves at the front and back of this building until we determine if it really was Salem you saw in here. If it was him, like you say, you’re in a dangerous position, and I will not put you in harm’s way.”

  Bella felt those two burning pink embers appear on her pale cheeks. The little girl she felt like moments ago was completely gone, and it must have shown, as Kyle took a step back, out of harm’s way. “Bullshit. I won’t be kept here. I won’t be locked up.”

  Captain Brooks scrubbed his tired face with his hands, sighing like he was still negotiating with a moody teenager. “You know it’s for the best, Detective. I can’t lose you. I won’t put you at any risk. That’s exactly what he wants.”

  When Bella spoke, her voice was low. She looked past her father at the open window that still bled the night air in like a wound. “I don’t give a shit what he wants. I just want him.”

  There was a beat where Captain Brooks looked down wearily at his best detective. She could read the contemplation in his eyes. He reached out and without a word took Bella into his arms. The room of officers all looked away at once, awkward at the strange display of affection between two such stubborn powerhouses.

  The embrace was brief. As soon as he’d touched her, Bella felt tears replace her rage, and she was grateful when he finally let her go. Her eyes were still dry, but not without a monumental effort on her part.

  “Let me get him for you,” Brooks said. “You’ve had enough of this bastard for a lifetime. Give me and Gray a chance. Just… allow us to take care of this.” He searched her eyes for approval, softness in his eyes as he waited for her to listen to reason.

  She met that gaze, refusing to give. All she could do was contain her fury. “You’re wasting your time.”

  Brooks sighed, shrugged, and turned to the officers that had accompanied him.

  “Peters and Turner? I want you parked at the front of this place for the first twelve hours.”

  Bella stomped forward, her pulse like lightning. “Hey, wait a—”

  “I’ll get someone in to take over after that,” Brooks went on, ignoring her. “Douglas and Winters? You have the back. You see anything at all, you catch it and call it in. Understand? No getting out, no slacking off. I want you watching this place like your jobs depend on it. And they do.”

  They nodded, mute. His intimidation tactics worked amazingly on his employees, but it was too bad they didn’t have the same effect on his daughter. All Bella could think about—all she could feel—was the rising rage coursing through her body like fire lighting up a gas station.

  It was only a matter of time until she exploded.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The coffee was a perfect syrupy storm of hazelnut, cream, and caffeine. She cradled it in her hands, blowing softly into the open flap on the top of the to-go cup. She smiled a little, both at the whistling noise she was making and the knowledge she had those beat cops outside her apartment under her thumb.

  The coffee she was holding was from a shop across town. Thanks to what essentially amounted to her house arrest, there was no way she could’ve gotten one herself.

  Her eyes drifted to the pile of takeout containers on the coffee table in front of her. The Thai had been great, the Indian not so much, but the sushi? That had been astounding. Since the captain had put her in lockdown a week ago, Bella had managed to transform the officers stationed outside her apartment into her own underground task force. She was eating better than she had in days thanks to their regular check-ins, and as a result, sleeping better than she had in months. Bella took a sip of her designer coffee, closing her eyes for a moment as the sweet warmth filled her stomach. Her mind was clear. Of course, it was still continually racing, but there was a calm beneath it that she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Maybe this eating and sleeping really was useful. Who knew?

  Bella crossed her arms and stepped back from the corkboard that hung on the wall. The morning sunlight filled her apartment. It blasted in from the windows and shone like a spotlight on the masterpiece her well-rested mind had created. She might be trapped, but she had been busy.

  A map of Portland and the surrounding area was the centerpiece of her creation. Perfectly positioned in the middle of the board, it was webbed with pushpins and thread that she’d used to indicate the crime scenes and Ross’s suspected movements. She’d chosen a green pin as the farmhouse where she’d been kept as a child, a couple of red pins as stand-ins for his two latest victims, and a myriad of yellow ones to indicate where he’d been spotted.

  Now they had confirmation of his identity, Ross’s face had been all over the local and national television stations. It was in steady rotation, his unsmiling, desiccated face seeming to pop up whenever she opened her laptop or switched on the television. She shuddered every time. Although the tips and sightings that this exposure was bringing only brought her closer to him, she still couldn’t get used to seeing Salem’s long face and shuttered eyes as often as she was. It’s bringing me closer, she’d remind herself. Every little yellow pin that I push into that corkboard is a step nearer to ending this.

  Bella took another sip of her coffee and moved closer to the wall. She ran her finger along the yellow thread strung between all the various confirmed sightings she’d marked. He wasn’t anywhere near the farmhouse. Kyle had checked that already. He’d suffered through an hour-long conversation with the late neighbor’s son, who’d assured them that nobody had been in that house for years. When Bella had opened the file of pictures that Kyle had sent, it’d taken her a few moments to even realize it was the same house. It’d fallen into such disrepair that it looked more like ruins than the massive, creaking monster she’d lived in the belly of for three months. Kyle had assured her that nobody had seen anyone in or out of the property for at least a decade. He’d even gone in himself and taken the pictures to prove to her that it was abandoned. Ross had moved on.

  He had moved closer.

  Initially, Kyle had only called her with what he believed to be legitimate sightings. He’d practically whispered into the phone, passing along the info as he huddled in some bathroom or empty conference room to avoid being caught. He placed new developments in her Dropbox as they arrived like some morbid Santa, sending Bella’s heart into excited flutters every time her phone notified her there was something new. First it was a surveillance video of him at a grocery store; then it was footage of someone who looked like him at a bank in Arizona. Bella had pored over these videos for hours. That night when he was in her apartment, she’d recognized his shape right away, but the face that peered up at the camera in these images was only barely recognizable. Walking swiftly through the aisle of the grocery store and under the camera, Bella had been reminded more of the infamous bigfoot footage than anything else. How someone so frightening, so evil, could be captured by something as banal as a low-budget security camera didn’t sit well. He wasn’t human. Not to her.

  The yellow strings that represented his movements were all gathered in a twelve-mile radius that included downtown Portland and a rough suburb on the outskirts, run through by the highways that soared through the city to the coast. This was where the grocery store and gas stations he’d been seen in were all located. This was where he was staying. She knew it with a frightening certainty. Even as she sat drinking her coffee in the morning sunlight, Salem Ross was sitting only a few miles away in one of the seedy apartments or rain-faded fifties bungalows that shuddered under the highways. She only needed to pinpoint which one.

  Bella slumped onto the couch. She picked up her laptop and opened it, click
ing onto Google Maps. She pulled up the area, flicking her fingers along the trackpad until she’d zoomed into the satellite view. What was she thinking, that she’d luck out and get a Google Streetview of Salem walking into his house? At least ten times a day she found herself scrutinizing the map, zooming in to the cars and addresses until the image finally pixelated and broke down.

  She’d called Kyle and begged him to check out all the available apartments or homes for rent a few days ago. At first, he’d given her an earful for contacting him, like he always did, but he eventually listened to her and promised to get on it. He always did that, too. They’d formed a strange alliance, the two of them. Bella knew he was risking his job by helping her stay involved, as much as Kyle knew that keeping his partner on lockdown and withholding information was risking her sanity. If they went down, they were going down together.

  A knock at the door interrupted Bella’s compulsive searching. She slammed her laptop shut and was at the door in a second. The confidence with which she opened the door had changed with her increased sleep as well. What had usually been a laborious and careful unlocking process was now the quick flick of a single dead bolt.

  One of the officers, a woman in her twenties with a tribal tattoo on her wrist and small, hard eyes was standing in her hall. She smiled at Bella, exposing silver fillings in the back of her mouth.

  “Hey.” Officer Turner handed her a paper bag so greasy that the bottom was more or less transparent. “It’s from that new cronut place you were talking about yesterday. You know—” Turner made direct, meaningful eye contact with the detective. “—the one off Highway 26. In Goose Hollow?”

  Bella’s heart thumped. Had she actually done it? Had she actually convinced her to do her legwork for her?

  She took the bag that dangled between the two women. While Officer Turner was still smiling, she nodded over Bella’s shoulder to where the morning light continued to light up the detective’s “Wall of Obsession” behind her. “It’s not the best neighborhood, but those cronuts are something.”