Killer Instinct, page 15
Chapter Thirty-Two
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS I barely see Victor, and my mom only speaks to me when absolutely necessary.
Her underlying hostility and extreme disappointment unnerve me.
Because of you and your sick curiosity, another person is probably going to die.
Is that what I have—sick curiosity? It doesn’t seem sick and unnatural. It’s such a part of me I can’t imagine it not being there. Between my abusive grandfather, my real father who killed him, and my uncle the possible Decapitator, darkness is my heritage. If I had expected to receive understanding from anybody, it would have been my mother.
Now I know that’s not the case. She thinks I’m unbalanced right along with everyone else, if they knew my innermost thoughts.
Aside from all that, I craved to get out, to hunt somebody. I itched for it. I longed for it. I wanted, no needed, to bring someone down and have adrenaline swelling my veins again.
On Thursday night I purposefully stay up until Victor comes home. He’s yet to say a word to me since Mom ransacked my bedroom.
Having one parent pissed at me is one thing, but two? Too much. I formed a life around not caring what others think. The truth is, my parents’ opinions of me matter, even if they both agree I’m sick.
Victor tosses his keys onto the hallway table and raises his red, tired eyes to mine. “Hey, what are you still doing up?”
“Waiting on you.”
“Oh?”
“Are we . . . Are we okay?”
He scrunches his brows. “What are you talking about?”
I let a significant amount of time pass as I wait for him to realize what I’m referring to.
Finally he shakes his head. “Lane, baby, I’m so tired. Can we do this in the morning?”
“Sure.”
With a nod and a stifled yawn, he shuffles upstairs. I watch him go, completely puzzled. For all intents and purposes, he seems as if he doesn’t even know what Mom found in my room. She said she would be handing everything over to the FBI. Maybe she changed her mind. Or perhaps she did hand everything over, and Victor just isn’t ready to deal with me personally on the issue. And if she did hand everything over, surely someone official will be questioning me. Unless the FBI is leaving that up to my Mom and stepdad to handle.
• • •
The next morning in first-period library I pull up my e-mail. In my inbox are several from Belinda. I consider deleting them unopened, then notice they have pictures attached.
Curiosity wins out and I click on the first one. It’s a picture of her and Zach, grinning with their cheeks smooshed together.
The second one shows them kissing, tongues and all.
The third one shows them having sex, her on top.
The fourth one shows her giving him a hand job.
I don’t bother opening the others. I can only imagine.
The last e-mail has no attachment and so I bring it up. It says simply: Glad to have him back and inside me.
What a disgusting girl.
I do something out of character and forward them all to Zach with my message: Thought you’d like to see what your ex is passing along.
As I mentioned before, I don’t do drama. It’s not my thing. But I like Zach and, bottom line, Belinda’s not treating him right.
After school it doesn’t surprise me when he finds me in the parking lot. “Can we talk?”
I toss Daisy my keys, and she rolls her eyes.
“Hurry, would you?” she whines.
I turn to Zach, ignoring my idiotic sister. “What’s up?” I know what’s up, of course.
He leads me a few steps away and keeps his voice low. “Those pictures were taken over a year ago. I had no clue she had a camera set up in her room. We were both drunk, as I’ve mentioned we always were.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You don’t have to explain.” Really, what does he want me to say?
He shakes his head. “I’m totally embarrassed that you saw those. I’m mortified. It’s just like her to do that too. I hope you know I didn’t have any cameras when we . . . ya know.”
“Had sex?” Why do people find that act a challenge to admit or say in everyday conversation? Especially between two people who have participated in said act.
“God, Lane, yeah, had sex.” Zach looks around.
“And yet you’re visiting her in rehab,” I point out.
“She’s not in rehab anymore. She gave up.”
Figures.
“Despite what you think—”
“I don’t think anything,” I interrupt.
“Despite what you think, I didn’t get back together with her. I was just trying to be a good friend. You have no idea how hard it is to go through rehab.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” I glance back at the Jeep to see Daisy impatiently waving me on.
“I’m sorry you got hurt in all this,” he quietly says.
“I didn’t get hurt.”
“Yes,” he knowingly acknowledges, “you did.”
No, I didn’t.
He rakes his fingers through his dark hair, which, I notice, is starting to curl a bit. “See ya around, Lane.” With that he turns and heads off across student parking.
I watch him go. Okay, he’s right. I did get hurt—a little. I lost a friend I’d barely gotten to know. I lost a guy I realized I was starting to genuinely like.
Daisy honks the horn, and I resist the urge to flip her off. I climb in and drive off, glad she’s got the music cranked. I don’t feel like listening to her bullshit.
• • •
That night after dinner I get an encrypted e-mail from an unknown sender. I click around, try to figure out how to open it, and come up with nothing. About thirty minutes later my cell buzzes from a number I don’t recognize. pw: jg41ost. I go back to the encrypted message, type in the password, and up pops a video.
It’s dark and I lean in to make it out. A light flicks on and I see a blond woman, gagged, naked, and strapped to a table. There is no sound, and I watch as she stares off to the right, shaking, yanking against her holds.
A person steps into view, but his image has been doctored and is blurred. He pulls out a long knife, more like a sword, and its edge glints in the light.
I ignore him for a second and zero in on the woman’s face. She’s the latest Decapitator’s victim. This is an old video. He’s sent me the kill room.
With the graininess of the film, I can’t place the room, but I’m sure it’s not 4 Buchold Place. However, something about it does seem familiar. . . .
I turn my attention back to him. He circles the table to the top and braces his hand on her forehead. While she violently thrashes, he puts the knife to her neck and with long—slow—thorough—slices—takes her head right off.
It plunks to the floor, and I inhale sharply.
He moves to her hands next, taking them both off with a single chop, and then does the same to her feet.
He lays the knife on her torso and disappears from view. While he’s out of view, I study the blood pumping from her body. There’s so much. And it’s creating a pool beneath the table.
Seconds later he comes back with a small white cooler and packs her hands and feet on ice. This is the same cooler he’ll be sending to the police, I’m sure. I watch his every movement. Something seems different about him. He seems heavier than before and a bit taller. I try to back the video up, but it won’t allow me to. Perhaps the camera has moved a bit and distorted his image even more. Perhaps he’s distorted his image even more in an attempt to throw me further off.
I put that thought aside and watch as he slices her right arm off, then her left, but both arms stay strapped to the table.
He takes her legs off at the hip with the same slow, thorough slices he used on her head. Like the arms, the legs stay strapped to the table.
While he methodically cleans and resharpens the knife, I focus on the cut lines and the blood continuing to drain from the woman’s body.
It’s all very organized and methodical. And despite the amount of blood, it comes across as clean.
He pulls out a hose and begins washing everything down. Where is it going—a drain of some sort? It has to be, because the previously pooled blood and accumulating water disappear as he rinses.
Eventually he’ll wrap the pieces in airtight plastic for preservation. I stare at the screen, waiting to see how he goes about this.
Then suddenly everything goes black. I lean in.
Yellow type appears on the screen:
IF YOU WATCHED THIS
AND FELT ONLY FASCINATION . . .
IF YOU WANTED MORE . . .
THEN YOU’RE READY.
P.S. I HAVE A PRESENT FOR YOU.
The video goes away and I feverishly click, trying to bring it back up, but it won’t relaunch.
The video is all I can think about the rest of the weekend. I had watched it with complete fascination, emotionally detached, almost from an impartial medical viewpoint.
I did experience distress for the woman—a person who has been dead now several weeks. Perhaps if I’d known the individual on that table I would’ve felt different.
Then you’re ready, the yellow type had said. Ready for what—to be a killer?
P.S. I have a present for you. Another video, pictures, more mail? And when will this present come—today, tomorrow, a week from now?
Because of you and your sick curiosity, another person is probably going to die.
My mom’s words echo through my brain. She’s right. I am sick. Because I am interested to see what my present is. Only a sick person would be interested in a present from a serial killer. I realize that. But I am full of nothing but disdain for this man, present or not. He’s twisted and malicious and deserves nothing less than death.
I’ll give Mom the video link tonight, even though it probably won’t launch again, and let her pass it along to the FBI team.
“What’s wrong with you?” Daisy scowls from the passenger side of my Jeep. “You’re even more quiet than usual.”
I shake my head—“Just thinking”—and round the corner onto our campus.
Police cars have swarmed the place, and we’re being directed to continue on.
Daisy sits forward. “What the—?”
Several blocks down we see students’ cars parked alongside the road, and we pull over.
Daisy jumps out. “Gunman? Bomb? What is it?”
Crying, one of her cheerleading friends hugs her. “There was a cooler with hands and feet in it.”
So the Decapitator decided to deliver the hands and feet to my school. Some present.
Daisy starts crying too.
My cell buzzes. There’s a picture attached, and I pull it up to see the cooler propped open, with a pair of hands on display and red-painted toenails on both feet.
LIKE YOUR PRESENT?
Chapter Thirty-Three
HUMAN NATURE HAS ALWAYS PERPLEXED me. People cry even when they don’t know the person they’re crying for.
This is what goes through my mind as I stand amid all the students at school the next day, sad, hugging, and visiting grief counselors over the hands and feet of a woman they didn’t even know.
The Decapitator has broken routine by delivering the cooler to a school. In all the reports I read, he delivers it to a police station. This was a present for me, although no one knows this information but myself. And so I decide to tell my mom. I would tell Victor, but he’s barely around the house anymore.
“A present for you,” my mom states.
“Yes.”
“Why would the Decapitator think that cooler is a present for you?”
“Why would the Decapitator do anything he’s doing? The FBI knows I own Four Buchold. That I witnessed a murder there. And the Decapitator is somehow connected to me. What is the problem with finding him? I’m assuming you all still think it’s my uncle?” Even I can hear the agitation in my tone.
My mom sighs. “It’s not that easy.”
“He’ll be moving on soon. It’ll be next September before he kills again.”
“We know that, Lane. Don’t you think we know that? And I want you to know that Seth and your uncle were in every state when the decapitations occurred.”
This I already know because of Reggie’s information. “So, what, are you saying they were working together?” I immediately recall the video. Maybe it had been two people and not just a different camera angle.
“I can’t say anything else.”
I growl. “Then why say anything at all? What about the video? Were you able to open that?”
“I won’t say anything else.”
I continue grilling her, even though she’s closed down on me. “Why would they let you investigate all this with my real father and uncle being so closely tied?”
“I was already working the case before we realized all the connections. It doesn’t matter; a true FBI professional can compartmentalize and focus.”
“Is that why you went off half-cocked and got pulled from the case?”
“That’s enough,” she snaps at me. “I am still your mother, and you will speak to me with respect.” With that she disappears into her office and slams the door.
I stand for several solid seconds, fuming at that closed door. I would love to go in there and fire back at her.
A movement in my peripheral vision has me whipping around.
Daisy holds her hands up. “Easy.”
I get right in her face instead. “I swear to God, if you mess with me, I will—”
Her eyes widen. “I won’t mess with you. I promise.”
I take a step back and turn away. As much as I can’t stand my sister, I don’t have the right to take this out on her. This is my shit. Not hers.
“I . . . I was hungry and thought I’d make spaghetti for everyone. That’s all.”
I nod but don’t look at her, and after several minutes of hearing her move around in the kitchen, I go to help.
I can’t remember the last time Daisy and I made dinner together. What kind of sisters are we? Basically, we’re strangers living in the same house. When all this is over, I should make more of an effort with her. Try to find some common ground. I mean, does she think I like not liking her?
“I wish this whole thing would go away,” she grumbles later into her spaghetti.
“Cramping your style?”
She looks up at me and laughs. “Something like that.”
I smile back. It’s been so long since she and I have been friends.
“I know we don’t know that lady, that teacher who died, but . . . will you go to the memorial service with me tomorrow?”
I hadn’t planned on it, but the fact Daisy just asked me has me answering, “Sure.”
“Do you think he’ll deliver something to my school?” Justin whispers.
Daisy and I shoot each other a glance, and in that second it strikes me how much my depravity has affected my younger brother. I don’t know why the Decapitator has chosen me. If he is my uncle, being his niece can’t be the sole reason. I would think there’s got to be something else.
What I do know is that if I had given everything over to the FBI from the start, he would be caught by now.
And my younger brother, who I love more than anybody, wouldn’t be sitting here sad, worried about horrible things like body parts.
Daisy reaches over and tenderly strokes his cheek. “Of course not. It’s all over now.”
It’s not, though.
That night Justin’s nightmare wakes the whole house. I lie in bed, listening to him scream, listening to my parents run into his room, listening to him cry.
He sleeps with them, as does Daisy, and I stay right in my bed, laden with guilt.
• • •
The next day at school goes the same way with grief counselors and all, and after dinner Daisy and I leave for the memorial service.
“I’ve never been to a funeral,” she whispers as we park outside the church.
I give her a bolstering look that I myself don’t even feel.
“I heard they waited for all her body parts to have the memorial service. Isn’t that sad?”
Yes, it’s very sad.
We enter the packed place, and I have to admit there are more people here than I expected.
As I take a seat next to Daisy and look around, it occurs to me how many people come to these things to support the family.
Sure the congregation is full of kids from our school, here, I’m sure, like Daisy. Not because they knew the preschool teacher, but because the tragedy brought them in, and because this happened to someone in our community. And then there are those here, I’m sure, out of some weird fascination.
But the majority is adults—friends of the family, people they probably work with, extended relatives.
Up front sits a large portrait of a smiling woman. Staring at the picture, I can see how the Decapitator had been drawn to her pretty sweetness. It’s curious how portraits come across so innocent.
On a wall in our house our parents have school pictures of each of us kids. They update them every year. Justin’s always grinning, Daisy’s got a pretty smile, and my expression remains blank. I wonder what people think of those when they see them. They probably think I’m the “difficult” child.
The service progresses, people speak, someone sings. When the whole thing is over, we head outside to see news crews camped out.
Of course I didn’t know this woman, but I experience a flash of aggravation at their presence.
“What was it like to finally have her hands and feet delivered?” An obnoxious reporter gets right in the victim’s family’s face.
A woman around my mom’s age crumbles, and a man angrily shoves the camera. “Have some respect.”
