Be My Killer: A completely UNPUTDOWNABLE crime thriller with nail-biting mystery and suspense

by Richard Parker

  ‘Number seven,’ she lied.

  ‘Did you make that up?’

  April shook her head hard. The grown-up outside the sack didn’t say anything for a while and, momentarily, she thought he might have gone.

  ‘You took something that didn’t belong to you, April.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘You didn’t mean to steal?’

  ‘I can tell you where I hid the pictures.’

  He snorted. ‘Those belong to my friend. He likes to remember people. Would you like to be in one of those pictures too, April? Now, tell me the real number of your house. This is your last chance.’

  ‘Two forty-four.’

  ‘Two forty-four. And you live there with your parents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want me to hurt them?’

  April closed her eyes.

  ‘Answer.’

  ‘No.’ Her tummy hurt because she needed to pee.

  ‘Don’t lie to me again then.’

  April heard the man grunt, felt herself being lifted and then bumping against his hot back.

  He started walking faster.

  101

  Hazel was waiting apprehensively by Meredith’s blackened shrine when Lucas and Weiss got back from the forest. Griff wasn’t with them but, having eavesdropped their conversation in the forest, she was still trying to evaluate how she felt. She waited for them to speak first.

  ‘Still no sign of him. You OK?’ Lucas frowned.

  She unfolded her arms and nodded.

  ‘Need the bathroom.’ Weiss headed for it. ‘Then I think we should scram.’

  Hazel waited for the sound of the door squealing open and shut.

  Lucas breathed warmth into his cupped hands and uneasily glanced back to the main entrance. ‘He’s right. There’s some fucked-up games being played here. We’re probably better off getting the hell out.’

  ‘Look, if you and Weiss need to take off … ’

  ‘As soon as you’re ready.’

  ‘Together I mean; I’ll understand.’ Hazel looked fixedly at him.

  Lucas stiffened. He realised the conversation they were having.

  ‘I’ve just got off the phone to Soles. I couldn’t get anyone else. Least of all Bennett. Soles and Drake are on their way. With Henrik, Jacob, and now Griff missing I hope they’ll bring in that backup they were talking about. But this is my responsibility. Head into town and stay at Rifkin Lodge tonight. The police might want to talk to you.’

  Lucas shifted on the balls of his feet. ‘You don’t have to be a martyr, Haze.’

  ‘The two of you get your gear together. I’ve still got to wait for my car to be dropped off.’

  ‘We’ll wait with you.’

  ‘You and Weiss?’

  He swallowed and nodded.

  Hazel closed the laptop on the table.

  Lucas hovered. ‘I don’t want you stranded here on your own.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘We’ll wait.’

  ‘The cops will be here by the time you leave. Please, Lucas, I need someone to check on Eve Huber. She still hasn’t returned my calls so I’m getting worried about her now as well.’

  ‘Isn’t she out looking for Jacob?’

  ‘She can still pick up. I got hold of Sheenagh. She’s going to stay put. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘What about Criteria?’

  ‘Maybe I’ll stop returning their calls.’

  ‘Haze—’

  ‘Just… do this for me. I’ll join you there soon.’

  ‘Sorry this didn’t work out,’ he said eventually.

  ‘The project?’

  He massaged the shaved skin at the side of his head then made for the door to the stairs.

  ‘Lucas?’

  He paused with his fingers on the handle.

  ‘Have you told Carrie about Weiss?’ She attempted to meet his eyes as he lingered there.

  His were on the floor between them. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘She deserves to know.’

  102

  April could tell the grown-up was carrying her down a hill. She wasn’t bouncing against his back as much, just lying against it while he walked in small steps. She was so hot. ‘I can’t breathe.’

  ‘Don’t speak.’

  She juddered as he trotted down the bottom of the slope, and then she was being placed carefully on the ground again. No leaves crunching. Were they out of the forest? Wherever he’d taken her, April knew she was far from home.

  He panted and she felt his bulk drop down beside her.

  ‘I need you to be honest now, April. Can you do that for me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I want you to describe me.’

  April frowned.

  ‘Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s all I want you to do. Then I’ll let you go.’

  ‘I can’t.’ The figure in the forest had been too far away when she’d climbed the tree.

  ‘You’re lying again, April.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘All I want you to do is describe me. I promise you can go once you’ve done that.’

  ‘I can’t.’ She gritted her teeth against the pain in her tummy. She couldn’t pee now.

  ‘Then you’ll have to stay in the sack and I’ll have to hurt your parents. Do you really want that?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Are you telling me you didn’t see me?’

  April didn’t respond.

  ‘So you did. Describe me.’

  April was suddenly blinded. Light was getting in through the opening at the top of the sack.

  ‘I’ll drag you all the way home if you want. And do you know what I’m going to do to your parents when they open the door?’

  April sprang from the sack and looked frantically around her. She was at the bottom of a grass bank and beyond her was a yard. The grown-up was already getting to his feet. She headed up the incline.

  ‘Get back here!’

  Her feet slipped on the wet grass but she grabbed a few thick clumps and heaved herself higher. She heard the grown-up attempting to climb after her, and April’s scream shot her forward.

  ‘April! No!’

  She didn’t look back, just kept yelling and running. She could see the trees at the top. April knew she had to flee back into the forest. A hand locked around her ankle.

  ‘Come here!’

  April screeched as she landed hard on her front and was dragged back down the wet bank. She turned and tried to kick him.

  ‘April, enough!’

  She saw his face. Now she could describe every detail of it.

  103

  As she waited tensely for the police, Hazel’s reflection glowed over her bleak, late afternoon view of Holtwood Forest through the production office windowpane. After she’d brushed off their objections, Lucas and Weiss had very reluctantly left to look for Eve. But there was still no evidence of a patrol car. Hazel surveyed the trees under the slate clouds. No sign of Griff either.

  Her instincts had told her she shouldn’t rekindle things with Lucas. But she still had to process what had been going on between him and Weiss right under her nose. And the notion of that compounded her frustration about failing to disentangle the multiple events that orbited Meredith Hickman.

  She’d become too focussed on Wade and Tamara, but even after their explanation about the turkey farm, she still suspected they were concealing the reality of Meredith’s life there. And she had to get Soles to be transparent about his relationship with her.

  But Hazel’s interview with Griff Needham had opened up deep-seated resentments she hadn’t anticipated, and now he’d vanished as mysteriously as Henrik Fossen and Jacob Huber.

  Where did any of that leave the lone tourist theory?

  Hazel slid her hand into her back pocket and pulled out the piece of paper. She unfolded the photo of April that Mrs Weeks had given her and looked in
to the eyes of the seven-year-old. She wondered if she’d been found yet or if she was the fourth to vanish since they’d arrived at Fun Central. Hazel considered the little girl in Blue Grove Park she’d left behind two decades previously and adult Meredith’s sadistic murder: a wretched event amongst a glut of others she hadn’t even started to resolve.

  Her phone rang and she checked the display. She thought it might be Lucas with news about Eve, but it was Rick Bloom from Criteria. She let him leave a message. Hazel had no choice but to put the project on hold. Soon she would be leaving Broomfield again, with more questions than she’d arrived with.

  She attempted to contact Rena and Keeler, but neither of them were picking up. Hazel examined the texts from Keeler. When had she last actually spoken to him? She only had his word about Rena’s absence.

  Hazel had brought everyone to Fun Central. As her panic deepened, she tried Rena again and left instructions to call her back immediately.

  104

  Rena collapsed backwards from her sitting position on the forest floor. Blinking at the birches above her, she waited for circumstances to play catch-up and sat painfully erect when they did. She flinched as she tried to angle her head towards the spot she’d seen Lucas and Weiss, but they’d gone.

  It didn’t matter. She was only two hundred or so yards from Fun Central and was already scrambling to her feet. Her right ankle was double its normal size but Rena bit down on the agony as she put her weight on it with each stride she took towards the parking zone.

  She had to climb the dirt incline to reach it and clawed at the wet dirt and leaves as she drove herself forward.

  Emerging from the branches, she paused to take a couple of breaths and looked down at her bare toes on the concrete. Rena lifted her head to the complex. There were no vehicles parked outside. She limped across the spaces, dreading finding the place deserted. Were they out searching for her?

  A noise behind her made her turn to the trees. She waited and took three steps back. Was it just the bushes settling into place? Rena peered through the trunks for signs of movement.

  She couldn’t glimpse anyone there but ran as fast as her body would allow. Rena could feel the ball of her joint crunching in its socket as she put more pressure on her leg. She was only twenty feet from safety and hoped yelling against the dry grinding of her hip would attract the attention of someone inside.

  Crows cackled and fluttered on the branches but Rena kept going until the doors slid open.

  ‘Help.’ She barely sobbed the word. The concourse was deserted. Where was everybody?

  She teetered sideways to the Meredith shrine. The table was still positioned beside it, but there was no production laptop there. Had everybody split? ‘Help!’ Her throat was still swollen, and her lungs struggled to wring the jagged plea from her chest. She sagged against the sooty pillar and waited for a response.

  As soon as the word finished echoing around the concourse, she turned back to the main entrance. If somebody were in the forest, she’d just telegraphed exactly where she was. And if they wanted to attack her now, she couldn’t defend herself.

  Feet clumped above her. They hit the stairs and stopped halfway down.

  Rena launched herself from the shrine and grunted towards the door. Her bottom half had begun to feel warm. She thought it was because she was thawing out but, as the pain of her hip and ankle deepened, she wondered if it was the final warning her body was about to shut down.

  ‘Who is it?’ she demanded, as her palm gripped the cold metal handle.

  The footsteps descended the rest of the way.

  Rena yanked it, but her leg gave and she swung with the door; her skin squeaking down the panel before her face struck the tiles.

  105

  Rena tried to locate the door handle above her but found she was lying, still naked, on one of the yellow coral tables in Neptune’s Party Zone. The walls coruscated with green and blue fish silhouettes.

  Rapid footsteps echoed outside the doorway. Sorely, Rena sat up and prepared to drop from the table top. She figured she could crawl under it to hide before whoever it was entered.

  ‘Stay still.’ Hazel’s anxious expression emerged from behind a blanket and bundle of clothes she was carrying.

  Rena felt the blanket being wrapped tightly around her and suddenly tears were running off her nose.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Hazel dumped a first aid kit beside her.

  ‘The cab driver.’ They were the words Rena thought she’d never utter. Her bruised throat barely allowed her to.

  ‘Cab driver?’ Hazel brushed Rena’s matted pink locks from her face.

  Her sobs remained paralysed. ‘The guy who’s been dropping people up here in the red Chrysler; he attacked me.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Hazel used a wipe to catch the string dripping from Rena’s nostrils.

  It burnt her raw skin and she jerked her face away.

  ‘He picked you up from Keeler’s hotel?’

  The cucumber moisturiser smelt overpowering. ‘Keeler’s dead.’

  Hazel’s hand froze.

  ‘The driver killed him. And tried to kill me… last night. He hung us both from a tree.’ She recalled the machete blade in her palm and the solid jolts in her wrists as she struck Keeler’s corpse. ‘And he has our phones.’

  ‘Where have you been since?’

  ‘Lost in the forest.’ Her jaw trembled.

  ‘All this time?’ Hazel was horrified.

  ‘Where’s everybody else?’

  ‘Sweeting left. Lucas and Weiss have just taken off as well.’

  Panic suspended pain and her eyes darted around the room. ‘We’re alone? We have to go now. Where’s your car?’

  ‘Long story. The cops are on their way though. Put these on.’

  Rena grabbed the handful of garments, and her fingers shook as she attempted to unfold her blue cotton vest.

  ‘Here.’ Hazel pulled it over her head and shoulders.

  Rena couldn’t lift her right arm to push it through.

  Hazel tore the seam down the side and gently tugged her elbow clear. ‘I’m so sorry, Rena. I got texts from Keeler’s number. I thought you were with him.’

  Rena bent her left hand through the other armhole while Hazel knelt in front of her, carefully slipped her white panties around her muddy heels and tugged them up her shins.

  ‘This looks broken.’ Hazel was examining her swollen ankle.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Rena stood, tuned out the agony and pulled the panties up the rest of the way.

  Hazel headed to the doorway. ‘I’m calling an ambulance as well.’

  106

  Hazel returned breathless to Neptune’s, half expecting Rena to have passed out again. ‘Somebody’s just been in the office.’

  Rena stiffened, sweatpants halted at her hips.

  ‘My phone’s been taken. And the laptop.’

  ‘He’s here,’ Rena whispered.

  ‘Where’s Henrik’s phone?’

  ‘The cops took it. Along with Huber’s.’

  ‘Then we have to leave.’ Hazel cursed Weiss for walking out with Griff’s.

  Rena quickly hitched the sweatpants up the rest of the way.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  She nodded vigorously.

  Hazel crossed the room to the counter at the rear. There was a long-handled brush and scoop there. She brought the brush to Rena and inverted it. ‘Use this as a crutch.’

  Rena lodged the bristles under her armpit but the handle was too long.

  Hazel took it back from her and tried to break a section from the end across her knee but the plastic was solid. She leaned it at an angle against the coral table and stamped hard on it. It broke in half. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Screw it.’ Rena took a few exploratory steps forward. ‘Let’s just go.’

  ‘Slip these on.’ Hazel snatched up a pair of Rena’s blue leather loafers from the table top and dropped them in front of her. ‘Put your arm around me.’
<
br />   Rena delicately slipped her feet into them while they both watched the doorway.

  107

  Hazel paused them outside Neptune’s, both listening as they intently watched for movement behind the pillars. The wind briefly clattered the ceiling overhead. She waited until the sound subsided before shuffling them forward. Rena was clearly exhausted. Even supported, it didn’t look like she could get very far on her ankle.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Rena flinched with every slow step they took.

  ‘As far away from here as we can get,’ Hazel whispered back.

  ‘I’m not going back into the forest.’

  ‘We’ll stick to the road and hopefully meet the cops.’ Where the hell had Soles got to?

  They passed the grabbers and both fell silent as they came to the bathroom door. Rena clamped her jaw tight and they continued. As they drew in line with the entrance and the panels parted, Rena started to limp faster.

  Outside, the dismal evening seemed in stark contrast to the charged atmosphere they were about to walk out of, and the only activity was a few leaves skipping lazily across the spaces.

  Hazel glanced back at the deserted concourse and readjusted her grip under Rena’s shoulder. ‘Straight for the ramp?’

  Rena inhaled slowly through her nose. ‘You might have to roll me down it.’

  Hazel guided her over the threshold. They made swifter progress than they had inside. She set the pace as Rena leaned hard on her and mostly hopped across the forecourt. ‘We’re doing good.’ Hazel noticed Rena had her eyes firmly closed against the pain. ‘Tell me if you need to stop.’

  Rena shook her head. ‘No stopping.’

  Hazel focussed on the top of the ramp and calculated they were a quarter of the way there. ‘Put all your weight on me.’

  A car engine started behind them, and they were lit up.

  ‘Turn, we have to turn.’ But Hazel couldn’t because her arm was locked behind Rena. She craned her neck but not enough to see.

  Rena bounced and swung her body in time with Hazel’s until they’d arced ninety degrees.