Serial Killer Z: Volume One

by Philip Harris

  It was a waste of my experience. My degree made me as valuable as anyone else in the lab, but I’d been sidelined by Owen shortly after I arrived. I’d spent the next two years doing the research facility equivalent of serving burgers. Some people might have taken it as an insult, but I earned more than enough money to live on—and yet I was invisible to most of the people I worked with. In other words, it was the perfect job for someone with my predilections.

  After the test, the atmosphere in the lab was an odd mix of elation and confusion. The fact that we’d seen any sort of results from the serum felt like it should be a step forward, but the details of those results were disturbing. Hunter’s reaction only served to muddy the waters further. His excitement seemed misplaced.

  I try to avoid my coworkers as much as possible. I have no interest in the tiresome details of their lives. There have been days when I’ve spoken to no one but the cashier in our cafeteria. People learned very quickly that I was not the sort of person who’d take them up on after-work drinks or lunchtime excursions to local restaurants.

  So it should have come as no surprise to them that I stayed at my desk with my headphones on for most of the day.

  In reality, I was battling the shadow. It kept replaying the final moments of the man’s life—the blood pouring from his ears, nose and mouth, the twitching and flailing of his limbs. I could feel the need to kill again growing inside me with each replay.

  When I wasn’t thinking about the Asian man’s bloody corpse, I was thinking about the video. I’ve never kept mementos of my work. Once I’ve finished, my subjects no longer interest me. The existence of the video was an anomaly, a blip in my otherwise pristine routine. I’ve killed fifteen men and women, and beyond victim and location, each kill has been the same. Now someone else had interfered and disturbed that routine.

  By the end of the day I was watching the clock. When it finally ticked over to 6 p.m., I had my jacket on and was ready to leave. Only Doctor Hart noticed me walking out. She looked up from her desk long enough to say goodbye then returned to her work. No one else paid any attention to me hurrying out of the door. They knew as well as I did that my work was a waste of time. They’d leave on time, too, if they were in my place.

  The journalist, Spencer, wasn’t waiting for me outside. He was leaning on the hood of my car when I got to the parking garage.

  “Doctor Tay—”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  The journalist stood and held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot this morning.”

  I ignored him and walked around to the driver-side door. Outside, a thick bank of clouds had rolled in, and the garage shadows were beginning to thicken. My own shadow took note.

  Spencer put his hand on the hood of my car. “How about we just go for a drink? Nothing heavy, just two men hanging out, getting to know each other. We could talk about how your day went.”

  I unlocked the car then paused. Did he somehow know what had happened in the lab?

  He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  Without consciously thinking about what I was doing, I’d noticed that there was no one else in the garage, and the car next to mine was gone. That created a sheltered corner for me to work in.

  “What do you say?”

  Spencer was bigger than me with the body of a man who spent too much time sitting at a desk, typing on a keyboard. I didn’t have my midazolam, or my tool kit. That didn’t stop the shadow insisting I could solve both of my problems right here and now. I could get rid of Spencer and satisfy the shadow’s growing desire to kill.

  I pulled on the handle and opened the car door. “I don’t drink.”

  “Come on, I’ll buy you a Coke.”

  Without speaking, I closed the door and started the car. Spencer appeared at my window. He tapped on the glass and gave me a look that said he was my best friend and I was being totally unreasonable.

  He stepped back as I let the car roll forward. I accelerated, and his mood changed. He hammered his fists on the back of the car.

  “What does it feel like to be a murderer, Doctor Taylor?”

  I sped away, the tires on my Mazda squealing on the slick concrete as I turned onto the exit ramp.

  Rush-hour traffic was beginning to build up as I hit the bridge out of the city. I was grateful for the time to think.

  Spencer had called me a murderer. Part of me wanted to dismiss it as my overactive imagination mishearing his words, but the shadow knew the truth and made sure I did, too. But did that mean Spencer knew what I’d done? Was he the one who’d made the video recording?

  A horn blared, and I had to hit my brakes to avoid a cab that had cut across into my lane. I raised my hand in an apology, committing the car number—YC45—to memory without really thinking about it. The lights at the next intersection turned red. The cab made it through. I didn’t.

  Surely, if Spencer had evidence I was a killer, he’d have printed it? The newspaper hadn’t even mentioned the discovery of a body. As far as I knew, the city wasn’t aware it had a serial killer in its midst. The editors of the Sun wouldn’t be able to hold on to a scoop that big. Spencer was clearly focused on Hunter Neurologics.

  The lights changed again, and I turned right toward home.

  I’d deal with Spencer tomorrow. I could set Owen on him for a start. He’d call in HNR’s legal team and get him banned from the property. Forget Spencer; I needed to focus on the video.

  Not that I was any closer to understanding that either. Someone wanted me to know they were onto me, and I kept coming back to the same fundamental question—why not just turn the evidence in to the police?

  The answer had to be blackmail. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I wasn’t rich by any means, but my unique lifestyle meant I had little overhead, and even my questionably useful job paid exceptionally well.

  Whoever it was hadn’t made any demands yet, but they would. There would be other copies of the video, and they’d threaten to send them to the authorities unless I paid up. Once I’d made one payment, they’d request another, and another. They’d have me over a barrel, or in this case, over a blood-soaked table.

  I smiled. They’d made a mistake. They’d given me time. If they’d confronted me the night before or even this morning, when I was off balance, they might have been able to get the reaction they were looking for. Now, I had time to plan. I’d take the fight to them.

  My first stop would be the house where I’d taken my last subject. They had to have left evidence behind. The camera might even still be there.

  The building was a thirty-minute drive away. It stood at the edge of an almost derelict part of the city, the sort of place that the cops left well enough alone in the hopes that the undesirables would congregate there rather than stink up the more affluent areas.

  Which meant that my Mazda, modest though it was, would stick out like a sore thumb. So would my suit and tie.

  The clock on my dashboard read 6:47. I needed to go home, get changed and then wait a few hours until the streets had quieted down.

  The shadow reminded me that time was of the essence. I reminded it that I’d have no time at all if I got caught, then changed lanes and turned left onto the street that would take me back to my apartment.

  Four hours later, I took a bus across town to the east side. From there, it was a ten-minute walk to the house itself. I circled the block once, then had to wait for another ten minutes while a pair of junkies argued over which squat they should spend the night in.

  By the time they’d moved on, I was feeling exposed. I’d always made a point not to return to the scene of my crimes. There was no need—the city had hundreds of forgotten corners that someone such as myself could make good use of. Even the shadow was telling me I should move on, just leave the city and find somewhere else to do my work. The doubt was eating into me, but I silenced the shadow, made my way down the street, and slipped through the gate into th
e backyard of 409 Quebec Street.

  It was an old two-story wooden house that had been built in the late eighties by the look of it. Time had not been kind. The roof was sagging, and nature had claimed half a dozen shingles. The doors and windows were boarded up. The local graffiti artists had left their marks, but even those had faded under the assault of the wind and rain.

  The board over the rear door looked intact, but in reality the nails holding it in place had long since rusted away. The wood creaked slightly as I pulled it open enough for me to slip inside.

  The air was damp and musty. The odor triggered a memory of my last visit—carrying Hinkler’s unconscious form along the hallway.

  I paused at the entrance to the dining room. The table was where I’d left it, and the thick drapes were still closed. I turned on the flashlight I’d brought with me. The dining room floor was covered in dust. There were tracks, but I had no way of knowing whether they were mine, some random junkie’s, or if they belonged to the person I was looking for.

  It was obvious where the camera had been placed. A wooden bookcase stood in one corner of the room. The upper shelves would provide a perfect view of my work. I could see they were empty but checked anyway. The thick layer of dust that coated the top shelf had been recently disturbed.

  The shadow bubbled inside me, bringing a wave of anger and frustration with it. How could I have been so careless? I’d picked the location weeks before the kill. I’d watched it from a safe distance for days before breaking in.

  I’d prepared the dining room three hours before intercepting Hinkler on the way home from his weekly poker game at a bar. There’d been plenty of time for someone to break in, place a wireless video camera and retreat to a safe distance. If I’d taken the time to check the room before I’d begun my work, I’d have found it. But I hadn’t, and now I was exposed.

  I gave the rest of the dining room a cursory glance, but it was clear I was wasting my time. It would have taken no more than a couple of minutes to set up the camera—not enough time to leave behind any evidence that I’d be able to find without a CSI kit. I was back to square one.

  Despondent, I headed outside. I moved quickly through the backyard. The air was cool, and a light drizzle was falling. I stopped at the gate as a car drove past, its headlights sweeping across the fence. Then I ducked out into the alley and walked back to the bus stop.

  The feeling that I was being watched settled over me. Whoever was trying to blackmail me could be out there in the darkness, watching and waiting. I kept my movements slow and casual, but inside, the shadow raged.

  Chapter 6

  Intrusion

  The shadow had calmed itself by the time I got home. I might not have any evidence of who was blackmailing me, but I’d still had enough warning to make a considered response when they did finally contact me.

  I pulled the car into my parking space and headed upstairs. My neighbor was on his way out as I reached our floor.

  He stepped aside as I came out of the elevator. “You forget something?”

  I mumbled a noncommittal answer and smiled. He wished me goodnight, and the elevator door slid closed. His comment didn’t make sense. It distracted me, and it wasn’t until I went to put my key in the lock that I realized the door to my apartment was open.

  I clenched my keys in my fist, one jagged point sticking out from between my fingers. Cautiously, I pushed the door. It swung open to reveal the darkened interior of my living room. I listened for a count of thirty-two before going inside.

  I let the door close behind me and then called out, “I know you’re in here. Give yourself up, and I won’t involve the police.”

  Silence.

  My apartment isn’t big. There are two bedrooms, the living room with its tiny kitchen and a single bathroom. Not a lot of places for someone to hide, but a few.

  I debated exploring in the dark but decided that would give any intruder just as much of an edge as it would me. So I gripped my keys tighter and flicked on the lights.

  The room was bathed in crisp, clean LED light. It was immediately obvious someone had been in my apartment while I was gone. The cushions on the sofa had been tossed aside. Some of the books had been pulled from the shelves; others had just been moved. Clearly, they’d been looking for something.

  Fear punched me in the gut. My tool kit. I ran toward the room I used as my office. Not caring whether the intruder was still around, I shoulder-barged the door open and switched on the light.

  They’d been in there, too. My computer was on, and a stack of papers on my desk had been disturbed. I ignored both and went straight to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. The top drawer was open, and the contents were a jumbled mess where someone had searched through them.

  I pulled open the bottom drawer and tipped it up until it popped out of its runner. I removed it and threw it aside. Wood cracked. The files inside scattered across the floor, but I ignored them. They were nothing. I dug around in the cabinet and found the small hole drilled in the back. My hands were shaking as I hooked a finger into the hole and pulled. The backboard came loose.

  I already knew what I was going to find. The man who’d made the video had come here looking for the scalpels he’d seen me use. Somehow, he’d found them, and now they were gone.

  The backboard scraped against the cabinet’s base as I pulled it out. I reached behind it, and for a fraction of a second my fingers found nothing but air. Then they brushed against soft leather. I grabbed the case and pulled it out. The relief I felt when I saw it was so intense it made the world shift on its axis.

  I fell sideways and leaned against the wall. I clasped the case to my chest like a drowning man clutching a life belt. It was safe. My scalpels were safe.

  I don’t know how long I sat on the floor. It could have been five minutes or an hour. It was the shadow that finally got me moving. The scalpels might be safe, but there’d still been an intruder in my apartment.

  After a few seconds of consideration, I put the fake panel back into place, stuffed the files back into the drawer and replaced that, too.

  I went to put the scalpels on my desk and stopped. There was a white rectangular card on my keyboard—a business card. The words I’LL BE WAITING were written across its back. I flipped the card over to reveal the name Doug Spencer and the address of the Sun. His home address had been added in the same black ink as the message.

  I nudged the mouse to clear the screen saver and found myself looking at a full-screen image from the video—me leaning over Hinkler’s body with a bloody scalpel in my hand.

  My breath caught as ice-cold fingers gripped my heart. I was sure I’d turned off the PC the night before. Which meant Spencer had broken in to my apartment, and whether he’d been looking for it or not, he’d found the video. My legs went weak, and I was forced to sit down.

  I took a deep breath and counted to sixteen. The chill in my heart eased, but the improvement was more than matched by a solid knot of anger forming in my gut.

  Halfheartedly, I picked through the contents of the filing cabinet’s top drawer. I’d left the memory card containing the video in there. It was gone. Spencer had found it, copied it to the PC to play and then taken the stick once he knew what was on it. I closed down the video and turned the PC off.

  Anger gnawed at me. I silently reprimanded myself. Keeping the card had been stupid. I should have destroyed it, but part of me had wanted to keep the video—either me or the shadow, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was both of us.

  The address on the business card was in an ordinary, middle-class part of the city—maybe forty-five minutes away by car.

  I rested my fingers on the tool kit. The leather was worn and the edges were battered, but the familiar texture grounded me. The shadow stirred and sent dark tendrils writhing through my thoughts. This time, I let it.

  Chapter 7

  Spencer

  I parked my car on a side street a few minutes from Spencer’s house. It was dark, and th
e alley ran behind a drugstore and a row of small businesses—clothes stores and a hair salon that would be closed at this time of night. There was no one to see me park or open my car’s trunk and retrieve a thin silver object from a leather case.

  A thin shaft of light cut through a gap between the drapes at the front of Spencer’s house. His security light burst to life as I approached. He must have seen it because he opened the door before I rang the bell.

  He greeted me with a curt nod and led me through into the living room. It was dimly lit, and I was vaguely aware of an old leather sofa and a coffee table, but the screen mounted on the wall above the fireplace dominated my attention.

  The video was playing on it. I’d already strapped Hinkler to the table and removed his gag. There was no sound, but I could see his lips moving. His eyes were filled with panic. He was begging for his life.

  Spencer directed me toward a chair. “Please, take a seat.”

  I dragged my eyes away from the television and sat down. He seemed very calm. If he’d found the video disturbing, he wasn’t showing it. Nor did he seem particularly concerned that he’d invited a killer into his house.

  While Spencer sat down, I looked for signs that he’d hidden a video camera somewhere. Beyond the sofa, armchair, table and TV, there were three large bookcases crammed with books of all shapes and sizes. There was any number of places he could hide a camera among them.

  There was no sign that anyone else lived in the house. The only picture on the wall was a moody black-and-white photograph of a storm-swept beach, and there was only one coaster on the coffee table. That was a good thing.

  When I looked back at Spencer, he was watching me with a slight look of amusement on his face.

  “Why did you break into my apartment?”

  “I was looking for information on the atrocities Hunter Neurologics is committing.”