“Anyway,” Smith began, carefully pulling into the parking stall closest to the police station. He turned to look at us, “One of the lead forensics just pulsed on my secure thread.” Excitement lit his face, and I was momentarily blinded by what he said next, “They have sampled enough tissue and determined what links the childrensʼ deaths.”
We leaned forward, what could it be?
“They were all Nulls.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We were in a dim little room with a rectangular, Formica-surfaced table, stale crackers and CFC-free Styrofoam cups littered its surface.
The lead forensic, Sam Buckley, tried to explain his findings. “Of course, it wasn't the first thing we looked for. But, as we became more proficient in excluding the obvious, we started looking for the zebras.”
How do zoo animals come into all this?
Buckley sighed as he took in my puzzled expression.
Tiff was deep into biting her nails, her eyes flitting around the dingy corners of the room, so bored that weeping was the next step.
“In med school they told us, ʻWhen you hear hoof beats, it's probably a horse, not a zebraʼ. This is what we did in this case. We had all these children, viciously dispatched. But for what reason? That's when we started running the DNA analysis. Our forensic geneticist,” I rolled my eyes at this and he gave me arched brows, “found the anomaly right away.”
Smith held his chin in his hand, thinking. “One thing that doesn't make sense.” He looked at Buckley. “That one victim, Mason's brother, he was killed a decade ago. How could he be classified as a Null, now?”
Buckley looked at me for a heartbeat. “When Dr. Hart and his team mapped the genome, well... that was the determining factor. Those kids are gone, but they were predestined to be Nulls. We have the technology to identify that marker. Their deaths don't negate the inevitability of their ability. We have someone targeting Nulls.”
That made no sense.
Smith was nodding, pacing around in a large circle in the room, Buckley tracking his nervous tension as he walked it off. “Someone would have to know these kids were Nulls. How?” Smith said, turning to Buckley.
Buckley shrugged, responding. “That's not my area, I just report the findings and offer my speculative opinion based on the science of it all.”
Smith stopped pacing. “What do you think, though? As an opinion.”
Buckley stood there, his lab coat rumpled, his bald head gleaming under the old, now-illegal (think grandfathered) florescent lighting.
“I'd have to say that it's an insider.”
“Wait a sec. If the first victim, Brett's brother, would've been what, four?” I asked.
Smith nodded.
I was on the edge of a revelation. “It would be someone at the school.”
Buckley shook his head. “No. I was thinking law enforcement or maybe government.”
Certainly the government sucked eggs but it didn't feel right for this. It didn't fit.
Smith scrubbed his face. “Okay, I think it's obvious that it's an insider. Someone that either one—had access to confidential records or two—had someone identifying the paranormals.”
The men stood there in contemplative silence, and I was circling around the answer when Tiff threw in, “Aura Reader, brainiacs.”
Aura Reader.
Smith's smile broke across his face, snapping his fingers and turning to Tiff like he'd hug her.
“No touchy,” she said, warding him off with a hand.
“Right,” he said.
“Okay, I'm going to pulse Gale and Garcia and report this,” he said as his hover-pulse floated to his hand.
I didn't think I'd ever get used to the hover feature. Judging by Tiff's face, she felt the same.
Buckley was oblivious, thumbing our conversation onto his pulse-pad. “Okay, you kids,” he glanced our way. “You should be looking at Nulls as targets, all Nulls. This criminal has most likely been doing this since the first of the paranormal markers were labeled. Why are they after Nulls?” he shook his head.
John.
Panic gripped me and as I looked at Tiff, knowledge bloomed like a horrible flower on her face. “John,” she breathed out.
John would be a target, John was in danger.
“Smith!” I yelled.
Tiff came to stand beside me.
Startled, he looked up from his pulsing.
“My friend. My friend, John Terran—he's a Null.”
Smith stopped pulsing.
“We need to get over there. Now,” I said.
He shook his head. “These began with older deaths, Caleb. There isn't sufficient evidence to indicate that it's the same killer. Except, of course, they were all Nulls.”
Yeah.
Buckley looked at him. “I think Caleb may be right. Just because this is what we've found, thus far,” he shook his head, “it might mean that the killer has found another site.”
“What site?” Tiff asked.
“Another burial site,” Buckley said.
Oh my God. There were possibly more?
“You're right; we can't assume this guy is done. He may be actively taking out Nulls.” Smith gave me his attention. “We'll go by Terran's house, okay? First, I need to tell Gale to go back five years on missing kids reports, see if there are others and try to make a connection on Null manifestation discovery and subsequent disappearance.”
“Well, get hot. I mean, John is busy at his house doing some tech-love with Alex, and doesn't know some creeper is smelling blood in the water.”
“Shark,” Tiff said.
Yeah, that.
“Aren't his folks home?” Smith asked.
“Yeah, but they're like one hundred and five,” Tiff said.
“Really?” Smith's eyebrows raised to his hairline.
Tiff gave a hard eye roll. “Aren't you the cop here? No. They're not really that old, but they're ancient.”
John's folks were older than Gramps. “I guess they could do a fair job of bludgeoning with their canes,” I said.
Buckley laughed. “Well, maybe your sense of humor will stay intact as you visit the next burial site.”
“You're saying that like it's an absolute, Sam,” Smith said.
He nodded his head. “I've seen this type of death rampage before, and this brand of killer continues until he's shut down. They don't want to stop. There is some kind of compulsion. They feel they're doing some kind of service for the ʻgreater goodʼ,” he finished, his hands falling from the airquotes.
“Could it be a girl?” Tiff asked suddenly.
Buckley shrugged, but it was Smith who answered, “Typically, serial killers are almost always men.”
“From the evidence I have, it would have taken a formidable woman to execute these murders.”
Smith gave him the look. I knew what that stood for: watch it, these guys are just kids.
Buckley hesitated, nodding to Smith. “Listen, you guys brought these teens in on this, they're old enough to know the details.”
Smith sighed.
Buckley gave his full attention to us. “The perpetrator separated, in all but two of the deaths, the cervical vertebrae,” he reached to show Tiff on her neck and she backed away.
He shrugged and put a finger on me instead, it gave me the flesh crawl. “Here, at C-7 and here, at C-6. That separation caused immediate paralysis and then the blunt force trauma was administered,” he paused, “causing death.” His hand slowly lowered and he made eye contact with us.
Tiff and I were quiet, thinking about an adult that felt they were somehow doing something right by killing those children.
“Okay, enough. I'm taking the kids by their friend's house. And,” Smith's slight frown was aimed at Buckley, “Gale will be slogging through the missing personsʼ reports. We should have some commonality soon, if there's any to be found.”
The men shook hands. Smith jerked his head at the door, and we moved out.
Tiff gave a last look
at Buckley. He was worth a stare. After all, he spent more time with the dead than the living.
My kind of dude.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We stood awkwardly at John's front door, waiting for a parent (or way-better, John himself) to answer.
No luck. John's mom peeked out from behind the doorway, saw it was me and opened the door. “Why, Caleb, it's a pleasure to see you again,” she said, sweeping her hand in front of me.
Smith and Tiff trailed in after us.
I was always super-nervous at John's house. One great reason was the plastic on the furniture. Mom would have done back flips with the petrochemical off-gassing on that.
The thought brought a smile to my face. John's parents were über-tight-ass adults. I think she dusted fifteen times a day. John's room looked like Teen Museum to me. I sighed, this would take some thinkinʼ on my part.
Just then Alex and John came out of John's bedroom. Alex's glasses still hung by a broken thread on his face and the arm wrapped in the gauze with a sling. John gave me The Look: what's up?
Oh nothing, pal. Just some psycho with a hard-on for Nulls. Nothing special. Out loud I said, “We've had a break in the case.”
Smith stepped up beside me. “Maybe we could sit down somewhere,” he said, eying the yards of plastic with trepidation.
Tiffany let about twenty bubbles snap and burst in a row, causing all of us to jump.
Mrs. Terran was on it, she held out a small trash separator casually, beefing it up about a foot under Tiff's mouth. Pointing a finger toward the top she said, “A new home for the nastiness we call gum.”
Tiff looked at her and she stared back, her gray eyes bright and unruffled in her wrinkled face. Wow... Tiff was so not prepared for the intellectual force that was John's mom. She should cave now and not bother.
Tiff appeared to deliberate. Finally, she spit the gum out in an unladylike glob that hit the rim, and slid down to the bottom, leaving a disgusting snail-trail of green ooze on the way down. Geez.
Smith watched this all with fascination.
Mrs. Terran spun on her heel. “Of course, how rude of me.” The tone of voice did not sound like she felt rude. “Join me at the table.” She strode over to a table that gleamed under a hanging LED chandelier with polished arms. We all stood uncomfortably around it and she said, “Sit, please.”
John and Alex slid into place and Smith stuck out his hand. “I'm Officer John Smith from the City of Kent Police Department.”
She shook his hand and the rest of us sat.
“What I say must be held with the strictest confidentiality for now,” he began, “but, due to the nature of what we've discovered and your son's proximity to Caleb, we feel you're on a need-to-know basis.”
I looked at Smith and he nodded. “Garcia knows. It's okay.”
Huh, maybe he was off his period now, I thought uncharitably.
“What does this have to do with John? He is not one to participate in anything untoward,” Mrs. Terran said, her eyes unwavering.
He was just too smart to get caught.
John gave me big eyeballs across the table. I gave an imperceptible nod back. Don't worry about it, the nod said.
Smith sighed. “It's not anything he's done, Mrs. Terran.”
“Please, call me Joan.”
Huh, I guess adults got status rights, she was still Mrs. Terran to me.
He nodded, continuing, “You may have heard on the news about recent developments on the murders of the children at that old cemetery by Hwy 167?”
“Clemen's Cemetery. Yes, I was aware. We remain updated about current events, especially those which impact us locally.”
John was busy dying in his chair across from me. I guess there were more embarrassing parents than having one that was famous.
Almost.
Smith leaned back against the chair, folding his arms across his chest. He appeared to decide something. “Mrs. Terran,” ignoring the Joan-thing entirely, “the killer is targeting Nulls.”
Comprehension flooded Mrs. Terran's face. She gave John a piercing stare, as if somehow he had caused the eagle-eye of the killer to fall on him.
His face suffused with a dull brick color.
Tiff squirmed.
Totally awkward.
“He is in danger. All Nulls are in danger. We suspect that the killer may be in a position in which he's in close proximity to kids, access to confidential records and such. John's association with Caleb makes him even more vulnerable because Caleb and Tiff, as AFTDs, are helping track the killer through his death trail.”
“And you, Mr. Smith; you are a part of this investigation in what capacity?” Joan Terran carefully folded her bird-like hands decorated with blue veins captured in milky skin.
“I'm a Null.”
“How many points are you?” she asked.
“Five.”
“I see. Are you not afraid yourself, Mr. Smith?”
Smith shook his head. “I am their protector, their advocate. He has no pattern of killing adults that we're aware of.”
“I think that might change, Mr. Smith. As you circle his lair, pressing in upon his complacency. He may lash out, capturing all the Nulls together, making us essentially vulnerable here.” She gestured with a palm, taking in the immediate space around us.
John jerked straight up in his seat, as though he'd thought of something.
Alex nodded alongside; they both got hit by the intellectual whammy at the same moment.
“It's anarchy,” John said.
Smith looked at him sharply. “Explain.”
John was excited, his elbows glancing the table top, so thrilled to tell his idea that he totally missed his mom's frown. “If all the Nulls were not here, this would be an oasis of chaos.”
Huh, kinda poetic, Terran.
Alex expounded, “We'd have no protection. No way of policing the paranormals. They'd have to be stopped with...”
“Force,” Smith said.
We looked at one other.
Mrs. Terran that summed it up, “If the Nulls were extinguished, then that would leave us undefended and stronger action could be taken. By whom?” she paused rhetorically. “By the same people or another entity like them, waiting for this moment to squeeze their fist of control, taking out the paranormals as a group. By death, containment or worse.”
“What's the ʻor worseʼ?” I asked.
She looked at me in the only way she knew how, with condescension. “That, Caleb, would be experimentation with the blessing of our government.”
Back to that again, I thought, remembering the Graysheets.
Tiff was obviously remembering too, giving me wide, frightened eyes.
“What concession of protection are the police willing to provide?” she asked, her arms carefully steepled on the table, sweatered elbows causing no mar upon its perfection.
“We're still looking into that. But, with the number of Nulls that fall in the under-eighteen, high risk category, a random patrol would be all we'd be able to shake out until we validated more man power.”
“Or another child dies,” she said with surety.
Ouch, she was right.
Smith cringed.
I was with him. It was the hard new reality.
There was a creeper gunning for the Nulls and John was in the crosshairs.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I couldn't get Jade out of my mind.
I knew that she was safe at Sophie's. But after what we'd discovered, the brawl in her yard, the unresolved issue with Brett sniffing around—I had to admit I felt unsettled.
For an extra dose of worry, her dad was out of the slammer.
I lay in my bed, absently stroking Onyx, thinking about the complications of my life, different than last year but somehow the same. Maybe this was what life was? A series of crap that popped up like weeds, some became a jungle and some stayed in line. But pulling them constantly was becoming a chore.
The Boy seems troubled, the Dog th
ought. He would stay close to him until the somber mood was gone. The Dog thought all of this would go away more quickly if the Boy threw the toy that smelled of him, that was soft and made an interesting noise that the Dog liked.
I watched Onyx jump off the bed and grab that sick-smelling doggie toy. I couldn't understand why he liked it. The squeaker was shot to hell, and it had been a peach color when Mom had bought it. It was some kind of pale sherbet now, with stiff spots where he had slobbered on it.
He approached me, giving me eyes that blended with his black face, his tail wagging, the gaze steady and faithful.
Ah-hell. He needed some time.
I got off the bed and we tore down the steps and out the door.
Mom called after me, “Caleb!”
“Yeah?” I said, my hand on the knob for the front door, the metal warming under my touch. Onyx waited impatiently for me to manage The Parent.
“Where are you going?”
“Takinʼ Onyx out to play with his ball thing.”
“Okay, supper's soon!”
“Yeah!”
“Yes, what?”
I rolled my eyes, this Nazi-response stuff was getting on my last nerve. “Yes, Mom.”
“Thank you. Acknowledgment is a good thing.”
Right.
Onyx raced out ahead of me and I launched the sucker as far as I could. He watched the pastel-colored toy arc, judging its trajectory then sprinted after it, nose down, all business.
The Dog saw the wonderful soft thing twirl above his head and the smell of it wafted on the wind to him, spearing his nose, giving the Dog the direction he needed to race after it. He lighted upon it, grabbing the fragrant mass into his mouth, giving it ʻsoft mouthʼ. Which made the Dog pause, a sensory memory of his other life sliding just out of the reach of him. He remembered a similar game with the Other Boy, a game in which he needed to not use the sharp things in his mouth for the toy...
“Onyx!” I yelled, seeing that he stood there with the ball-thing in his mouth, staring. What? Was he having a dog moment or something?
The sound of the Boy's voice shattered the memory, and the Dog came to the new Boy, his tail wagging, all memories displaced by the anticipation of another toss.
The Death Series, Books 1-3 (Dark Dystopian Paranormal Romance): Death Whispers, Death Speaks, and Death Inception Page 43