Johnny Revenge

by Remington Kane

  Chapter Five

  DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA

  Having finished with Rudy Brenner in Cocoa Beach, he decided to pamper himself and checked into a hotel. A little down time from the road seemed like a good idea. And besides, he had earned a rest. Everything was working out just as he’d planned.

  He was wearier than he’d realized and slept most of the day away. After dressing in jeans, work boots, and a fresh polo shirt, he went down to the bar for dinner.

  The hotel was a good one, which was reflected in the food. The steak he ordered was one of the best he’d had in a while.

  The bar was busy. There was some sort of convention taking place that had to do with doctors. Some of the men were with their wives, but most had come alone and gathered in boisterous groups at tables. Since he was also alone, he had eaten at the bar. While he was considering dessert, the woman had settled three stools away from him.

  She was a blonde in a tight red dress with matching shoes. The shoes had stiletto heels, while the dress exposed a generous amount of her cleavage. The revealing dress told him what she was; he could always spot a hooker. He gauged her to be in her mid-twenties. Her eyes looked as if they had seen a lot in those years.

  Most people might think her just another of the hotel’s guests. But no, she was a working girl. No street walker though, not this woman. She was a classic beauty and had the goods to ask for and receive five-hundred dollars or more for the pleasure her body would bring. At a convention of doctors, he guessed she was earning two to three grand a night.

  He decided to have a piece of apple pie for dessert. It was while he was taking his first bite that she turned her head and caught him looking her way. Blue eyes roamed over him as she took in his old jeans, cheap watch, and scruffy beard. He had better clothes, a much better timepiece, and usually kept his beard trimmed, but he’d been on the road for days with no need to dress up. In any event, he was obviously not a doctor, and so not on her menu. That was fine, and he expected her to ignore him. And yet, she couldn’t resist being rude.

  There was amusement dancing in her old/young eyes as she spoke after looking him over.

  “You’re cute, but don’t even think about it, poor boy. I’m out of your league.”

  The rage he felt was immediate and intense, and yet his face remained impassive. The woman laughed, then turned her attention elsewhere.

  The hooker, like everyone else, had a right to choose whom she slept with. She did not have a right to talk to him with disrespect.

  He finished his pie along with a second cup of coffee. In the meantime, the high-class hooker had gone off with a bald man who was twice her age.

  Baldy must have been low on stamina. Only a few minutes had passed, but as he was leaving the bar, he spotted the blonde stepping off the elevator. He watched her from the lobby as she reentered the hotel bar to find another customer.

  Back in his room, he found himself pacing as he fumed over what had happened at the bar. The bitch had personally insulted him. She would have saved them both time if she had slit her own throat instead. He tried to forget her mocking tone. He couldn’t. He could never forget any slight against him.

  Reason reared its head for a moment, and he stopped his pacing. Killing the hooker was not a part of his plan. Even so, she had to be dealt with. If she were to go unpunished it would make his plan and its execution meaningless. His enemies be they new or old, must be paid back, just as his friends must be rewarded.

  When a devious idea occurred to him, he laughed aloud. There was a way to make the hooker’s death a part of his plan. Not only that, but it would accelerate its progress.

  He went out into the parking lot to wait for her, while first stopping at his own vehicle to retrieve his kill kit. It was what he called the disposable rain gear and clear face mask he donned while committing a murder. With the kit in hand, he stole a car from the lot. Some fool, doubtless one of the drunken pill pushers, had left it unlocked, and the spare key was still inside the owners’ manual.

  The blonde emerged from the hotel sometime after two a.m. and got into a little red Mercedes. He followed, while feeling the excitement build.

  The hooker drove to the town of Espanola, where she parked in front of a small white house with red brick steps. She wasn’t much for lawn maintenance. The grass was high, and the bushes needed a trim.

  He drove to the other side of the block and parked in line with her rear door. He could see the home through the slats of a picket fence.

  The house had been dark before the woman entered but glowed like the dawn after she went around turning on lights. The lamps went off an hour later. He gave it an hour more before making his move. The short wooden fence was straddled with ease, while the cheap lock on the home’s rear door was a joke. He was inside within seconds.

  He stood in a small kitchen. There was a single window over the sink and white marble countertops sat beneath black cabinets. The scent of garlic was in the air. He located the herb in a large ceramic bowl, which was in a corner atop the countertop. There were potatoes and onions as well. Cook books were stacked atop the refrigerator and appeared to have been referred to often. Their pages were well thumbed through and several had hand-written recipes sticking out of them.

  The whore likes to cook, he thought, as he went in search of her.

  As he assumed, she was in the bedroom. It was a smaller room than the kitchen and illuminated by a 15-watt bulb. A lamp had been left burning atop the dresser. The lampshade was a coral color and lent the room a pink aura. In fact, the bedroom was a pink paradise complete with a rose-colored canopy bed and a matching rug and vanity. It looked like something more fit for a girl of sixteen than a woman.

  He stood over the bed, and for a time, he watched her as she slept. She was nude, with a pink blanket covering her lower half. She had an incredible body. Her skin was flawless, and her large breasts were natural and firm.

  The knife was in his hand before he realized he’d taken it from the sheath in his boot. The blade was short, but it was sharp, and he would wield it like an expert.

  He trembled with anticipation as he thought of the vengeance to come. She stirred awake as he climbed onto the bed, but with his knees pinning her forearms down she was unable to sit up.

  The moistness of her breath coated his gloved hand as he pressed his palm against her mouth. He was enjoying the rising panic in her eyes. She had left a small light burning as a shield against the dark. It had been a useless precaution. The dark was everywhere; it didn’t rely on a lack of light for its existence.

  “Do you remember me?” he asked her.

  His face was visible behind the clear plastic shield, and she did recognize him, he could see it, and for some reason it seemed to curb her panic.

  “I was in the bar tonight. You said you were out of my league, but you say a lot of nasty things, don’t you? You know, you’re not a nice person.”

  The hooker, who went by the name of Tessa White, was trembling from the terror gripping her. She mumbled something, and taking a chance, he removed his hand from her mouth.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I’m so sorry that I ever did that, and I’ll do anything you want. Just please, don’t hurt me.”

  He smiled as he covered her mouth again.

  “But I want to hurt you, and I wouldn’t stick it in that nasty hole of yours if you were to pay me.”

  The knife sank into her stomach an inch above her naval, then moved in an upward thrust. He felt her shiver from the pain even as he trembled from the pleasure of vengeance. Despite the thin clear gloves he wore, he felt the warmth of her blood flow over his fingers.

  She tried to get away by bucking her hips. It was useless, he not only outweighed her but had twice her strength. More cuts followed, and although they were savage, they were also placed in a certain pattern. Later, when the body was examined, the sequence and placement of the cuts would be significant and telling.

  While acting as
a signature, the wounds caused damage to the organs beneath Tessa White’s flesh. Her attacker’s movements were accompanied by a slew of curses and vile insults. The flawless skin was in ruins.

  He stopped stabbing her when she was at the point where she’d be too weak to resist or cry out. After turning on the bedside lamp, which of course was pink, he stared into her eyes, then he spoke to her as the life fled her body.

  “What league are you in now, bitch?”

  * * *

  A thorough and scalding shower washed the blood off his rain gear. Once he was outside, he stripped out of the cheap plastic and crammed it into the trash bag he used to carry the kill kit in. A rattling sound was audible as he walked through the tall grass. The killer took the noise to be the plastic snaps of the rain coat. They sometimes made clicking sounds as they touched each other.

  As he placed his hand on the door of the stolen car to open it, a tingle ran up his spine. He was being watched; he was certain of it. While only turning his head, he scanned the street. It was as empty as it had been when he’d entered the house. A look at the neighbors’ windows revealed no faces peeking out at him either.

  If anyone did see him, all they could describe was a man with a beard wearing a ball cap. If they wrote down the car’s plate number, it wouldn’t come back as belonging to him anyway.

  Perhaps it was nerves. Killing the blonde had been unlike his other recent and carefully planned bouts of murder. It had been reckless as well, because he couldn’t be certain that she lived alone. He hadn’t been so careless or impulsive since his first murder, which had occurred years earlier.

  After taking another look around and seeing nothing disturbing, he climbed into the car and drove away. He still had the feeling that something was amiss, but he pushed it from his mind.

  After a good night’s sleep at his hotel, he awoke refreshed and was back on the road early. It was time to head home.

  Chapter Six

  After Rudy Brenner’s death, Erica and Owens visited his home and discovered thousands of books. As unlikely as it seemed, a love of reading could be the thread that connected the victims.

  Thanks to the cameras around the facility where Rudy Brenner was killed, they knew that his murderer had been driving a van. Analysis of the video determined that it was a white Dodge Ram Van manufactured sometime between 2009 and 2016. It was an extremely common vehicle. It was also the first concrete clue to help uncover the perpetrator’s identity.

  Following Rudy’s death, the killer seemed to have placed his murderous spree on hold. Although they were still involved with the search for the spree killer, Erica and Owens were busy pursuing leads in their other cases.

  There had been a break in the case involving the serial killer who was targeting women on a college campus in Virginia. When the man went after his sixth victim, he attacked a young woman who was an undercover police officer. The cop subdued the man with a shot to the knee but not before he struck her in the face.

  The undercover cop had been wearing a pair of large gold hoop earrings, as Erica had suggested be worn.

  When Erica and Owens learned that the subject’s name was James Roper, they thought of the initials J.R. left at the crime scenes on their other case. As unlikely as it was that a serial killer in Virginia could also be their far-roaming spree killer, they checked James Roper’s movements.

  It became clear that Roper was not the man they had come to think of by the appellation of Wildcard. It was Erica who named him Wildcard because of the wild and chaotic way he killed his victims. Those methods had the FBI’s profilers in disagreement about him.

  Some thought that Wildcard was a disorganized killer who improvised while others believed that his murders showed a massive degree of planning. Unfortunately, they were all certain that he would kill again. The experts agreed that he was a white male between the ages of thirty and forty-four with a high I.Q. He would also have gone through a disrupted childhood, due to trauma or abandonment issues.

  * * *

  On their return to FBI headquarters in Washington DC, Erica and Owens received good news about the case. The researchers assigned to find a connection between the four victims of Wildcard had methodically searched for a common link among them. They had compiled a list of the decedents’ friends, relatives, acquaintances, places of work, venues of play, residences, and any other details that were of pertinence during their lives.

  They uncovered the fact that all the victims had been part of an online book club that folded in 2013.

  Rudy Brenner, Dave Burke, Stuart Hawkins and Harriet Holbrook had been active in an internet community of book lovers called the Choice Book Club. Burke and Hawkins had been members for over a year, while Rudy Brenner had only joined a month before the website ended its existence.

  There was only one thread where all four of them commented on the same topic. It was a discussion about the use of the pronoun They, and its derivative forms of theirs and themselves in a singular sense. Two of the victims said it was acceptable to use it when the subject being referred to was gender-neutral. Harriet Holbrook and Rudy Brenner disagreed and thought it should never be used that way. Harriet said she found it annoying whenever she came across such usage in a book.

  Four other people had been involved in the online discussion. They were Choice Book Club members, Simon Liu, Grace Ranker, Phillip Baker, and Joyce Crawley. Baker had also been a moderator on the site.

  As soon as the connection was made, police officers in their respective communities were dispatched to the homes of the four surviving participants, as were local FBI agents. Simon Liu, Grace Ranker, Phillip Baker and Joyce Crawley were all alive and reported having no problems with stalkers. A check of their activities over the past few weeks ruled out each one as being the murderer.

  None of them remembered participating in the thread in question, while Grace Ranker and Simon Liu didn’t even remember the Choice Book Club. Playing it safe, the homes of Liu, Ranker, Baker and Crawley would be patrolled often by the police in their communities. They were also instructed to call if anything unusual occurred. The FBI had installed hidden security cameras on their properties that could be monitored 24/7.

  Special Agent Owens held out hope that they had uncovered the key to catching the killer, while Erica thought it was unlikely to be the missing piece they needed. Erica was concentrating on the victims themselves. She wondered if there was something about each person that made them a desirable target. While still working on the theory that their love of reading was a factor, she dug into that aspect of their lives.

  The victims had all read hundreds of the same books, many of which were best sellers. They had also been involved in reviewing the books they read. In truth, they were prolific review writers and had combined to pen over ten thousand book reviews across a number of websites. Since the vast majority of them were on one website, Erica looked over the reviews there.

  Erica had read or conducted interviews with those closest to the victims. Harriet Holbrook had been described as being opinionated and disagreeable at times by her sister. A neighbor had been less kind. The woman described Holbrook by calling her, “One mean bitch.”

  The other victims all had kind and gentle dispositions in real life. It was a different story on the internet, and Erica was surprised by how vicious some of their comments and reviews were.

  They had all posted anonymously under pseudonyms; it seemed to embolden them. Even Rudy Brenner, who had been described as a sweet old man, was prone to nastiness in his reviews. His moniker had been Coach B, and as Coach B he had written over twelve hundred book reviews.

  Playing a hunch, Erica had a data list compiled. The list was composed of books reviewed by all four of the victims. A further criterion was that all of the books were connected to authors, editors, agents, or publishers whose initials were J.R.

  The result was a list of seventeen names. All were authors. Some of them had penned only one or two books, but most had multiple titles f
or sale. The associated reviews numbered in the hundreds.

  * * *

  Erica’s and Owens’ desks were in the center of a large room shared by dozens of other agents. There was almost always the noise of numerous conversations going on around them, as well as the sounds created by cell phones. Erica barely heard it anymore; she could concentrate well in the midst of the chaos. Owens was the same way, and so they each sat at their desk reading the reviews. Whenever they found an interesting one, they shared it.

  “Listen to this review written by the third vic, David Burke. He wrote reviews under the name of Book Lover 242,” Owens said. “The Killer Who Killed is an inane thriller which is just as stupid as it’s title. The author, Harmon Reed, is either an imbecile or on heavy medication. The storyline is predictable, the characters boring, and the thrills nonexistent. Don’t quit your day job, loser.”

  “That’s harsh,” Erica said, “and Dave Burke was described as being such a nice guy. What is it about posting anonymously that brings out the nastiness in people?”

  Owens shrugged. “My guess is that anonymity breeds courage. Online, they feel free to say what they would normally only think. It reminds me of the way many drivers become rude and inconsiderate when they’re behind the wheel. It’s as if being encased in a two-ton auto makes them feel brave and inconspicuous.”

  “Could one of these authors be our killer? If so, they must be insane to want revenge for an online review.”

  Owens snapped his fingers as he recalled something. “Four, maybe five years ago there was an author who stalked a woman who gave his book a bad review. He went so far as to track the reviewer down and visit her house.”