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

by Richard Parker

  The driver moved along the passage to the next room.

  Sweeting’s coat was open at the front. Focussing on the back of his spattered baldness, Hazel slid her fingers into the lukewarm blood on the floor and grappled under him for the other edge. It wouldn’t budge. She needed more purchase, and her right boot slithered as she painfully repositioned herself in the slick.

  Grunting, she tugged it clear with both hands. His bulk rolled further forward as she squeezed the soaked pocket. There was something solid in there. His head jerked as she waggled her fist inside and wrestled the phone out. Hazel stood but her boots skated. Yelping, she windmilled her arms to stay vertical.

  Steadying herself, she listened for sounds of the driver returning. No feet on the stairs.

  Hazel punched the button and the screen lit up red. Wiping her bloody fingerprints from it, she could see he was down to six per cent power. Hazel didn’t need his passcode; there was an emergency call option which bypassed it. She made for the main entrance.

  A firm hand seized Hazel before she could take her second step.

  114

  Sweeting was still alive. Hazel looked down at him silently mouthing something at her, one half of his face deathly white, the other crimson from lying in his own blood. His grip tightened on the pocket of her jeans and an incoherent word hissed out of him.

  ‘Sweeting,’ she whispered.

  He emitted a guttural sob.

  Hazel bent to him. ‘You have to keep quiet.’

  Sweeting struggled to get upright and blood gushed out of the slit in his neck.

  ‘Keep still.’

  But he writhed around in the pool as he tried to escape it, and his weight was suddenly pulling Hazel forward.

  Her left foot skidded sideways. ‘Sweeting… ’

  Now the driver’s boots were pounding down the stairs.

  ‘He’s coming. I have to hide.’ His expression was only inches from hers, and she could see the terror in his eyes. ‘You have to let go.’ But he wouldn’t release her.

  The driver hit the bottom.

  ‘Please.’ She prised his fingers away, and he blinked once before they slipped from her.

  Staggering straight she checked the door. It hadn’t opened yet but, as the handle was depressed, she didn’t have time to return to the ball pit. Hazel dashed to the wall on the other side and pressed her back against it as the panel swung out.

  The driver emerged and halted a few paces from Sweeting.

  Hazel saw the bloody footprints leading from the puddle to her.

  Sweeting did as well then held the driver’s gaze. He gurgled a ‘fuck you’ at him and started crawling towards the main entrance.

  Hazel realised he was attempting to draw him away from her but the driver remained where he was, observing his progress. He had the prod in his left hand, and the hunting knife in his right.

  The door gradually closed. Hazel slid across it.

  Sweeting shouted another incomprehensible obscenity and heaved his body further, a red trail smeared in his wake.

  Keeping her attention on the motionless figure between her and Sweeting, Hazel clasped the handle.

  The driver’s cap dipped to her boot prints, and he slowly followed them to where she was standing; large blue eyes censuring her from under the curved brim of his leather peak.

  She turned, opened the door and hurtled to the stairs. As she scaled them, Hazel could hear the driver’s shoulders scraping the walls behind her. On the eleventh step, she felt a sudden jolt to her left calf. Her muscles contracted and she was briefly suspended before she slid backwards. Sweeting’s sticky phone slid from her palm.

  Her right ankle was tugged the rest of the way, chin bashing the edges of each stair. Hazel was unconscious before she reached the floor.

  115

  She awoke shivering.

  April remembered the grown-up forcing her back inside the sack and carrying her across the yard. Then she’d heard a metal door opening and closing behind them.

  He’d put April on a hard floor and told her not to move. He hadn’t asked her to describe him again though. He’d paced around and sworn a lot when he tried to get someone on the phone. That was when she’d wet herself. She’d lain there like that for a while and then April recalled something hitting her head. How long ago had that been?

  Now she was in pitch-darkness, and the sack was gone. April was lying on her tummy and tried to sit up. Her scalp struck something hard above her.

  Feeling around she found freezing metal surfaces on all sides. She was inside a small box. ‘Help.’ April’s mouth was dry but her voice sounded so big. What if he was still outside, listening? She waited but there was no reply or any sounds to tell her where she was. Where had he put her? ‘Help!’

  April beat her fists on the walls. No good.

  Resting on her back she kicked up at the barrier above until her ankles hurt.

  Was this a punishment or had he left her there forever? She could describe him now. Why didn’t he want her to do that any more? She was so cold and thought about being at home. Maybe he’d gone there to hurt her parents. April started to cry.

  116

  Lucas and Weiss had tried to find Eve Huber at Rifkin Lodge, but she wasn’t in her room. Driving the Toyota down the illuminated main street of Broomfield there was no sign of her there either.

  Weiss glanced at him from the passenger seat for the third time. ‘You OK?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’ve just said I am.’

  ‘Look, I feel as bad as you do about Hazel.’

  ‘What more could we do? I’m the last person she wants to be around right now.’

  Weiss squinted at the dingy entrance to the tiny cinema. ‘Hazel’s got a lot on her plate, and our presence is probably the last thing she needs.’

  ‘That was shitty timing though.’

  ‘She confronted you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It had to happen – sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Now though? What the fuck—’ Lucas had spotted a large crowd of people assembled outside the park. A patrol car was pulled over on the sidewalk with its lights flashing. The throng was being coordinated by two police officers. ‘That’s Soles and Drake.’

  Weiss squinted through his specs. ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Hazel said it was Soles that was on his way to Fun Central.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We didn’t pass his car when we came into Broomfield. If he’s been waylaid with this, Hazel’s still there on her own.’

  117

  Even though she was in virtual darkness, Hazel knew immediately where she’d been taken. Woozily lifting her head, she recognised the glow of the white reflective lines bisecting the go-kart circuit.

  She attempted to touch her throbbing chin, but couldn’t move her hands from their position behind her. It was the second time she’d been bound that day. Hazel peered down at her thighs. She was sitting on her swivel chair, wrists secured around its trunk.

  Hazel could feel the same cold metal sensation about her ankles and the cool, rough track against the soles of her bare feet. Her boots had been removed to snap the second set of cuffs there.

  Was the driver standing nearby, watching? As Hazel scanned the gloomy arena, her blood pumped harder against the restraints. She listened for his presence. If he were in here with her, he would soon make himself known.

  Hazel shunted her buttocks. The chair rolled a couple of inches on its plastic wheels but slewed left. Using her toes and stomach muscles to guide it to the middle of the speedway, she wondered which direction to go. There was no opening in the tyre barrier until the finish. She had to follow the luminous lines. Was that what the driver wanted? Hazel considered reversing but figured moving forwards was the quickest route to the exit. She boosted her body ahead again and was just approaching a bend when she heard the sound of different wheels.

  One of them squeaked under a steady trun
dling, and Hazel halted and waited for the source of the noise to appear. It was coming from the concourse.

  The rumble got louder, dampening and crunching when the wheels hit dead leaves. Hazel pushed faster but veered right and bumped against the tyres. She thrust vigorously in the chair as she tried to free herself.

  The squealing became distinct as it reached the entrance to Speed Zone.

  Hazel strained to look back.

  The wheels stopped and strip lights flickered on. Squinting, she struggled to arc around before she registered the now illuminated finishing line and the person seated in a chair behind it.

  118

  Hazel couldn’t recognise the charred corpse but guessed who it was.

  Burn me in hell. #BeMyKiller

  They were the words Henrik Fossen had tweeted to @BeMyKiller, and she recalled the incinerated tree they’d found in the forest and the scraps of his tee shirt nearby.

  Henrik’s features were consumed. No hair remained on his shiny obsidian skull, and his burnt-out eye sockets were empty. Some form of plastic had melted and fused to the bottom half of his shrunken charcoal face, partly coating the exposed teeth there.

  The fire had eaten away his shoulders and exposed bone jutted from black flesh. The flames had scorched him to his midriff, and the skin around his navel was tightened and raw. But everything below his waist looked untouched. Only sooty streaks on his jeans intimated the trauma to his torso, and his new Reeboks still looked spotless.

  Before Hazel’s senses could recoil from what was sitting twenty feet in front of her, the wheels started turning again. She harshly jerked herself free of the tyres and rotated the chair.

  Beyond the barrier, she could see the top of the driver’s baseball cap as he leaned forward to push Rena’s trolley in her direction. Sweeting was sitting on it, bloodied and naked, his back propped up against the handle.

  He was bloated and deformed, his belly distended. One of the bright red plastic balls from the pit was stuffed between his lips like an apple in a hog’s mouth, and the incision from his throat to his groin barely held in the ones that had been crammed into his stomach.

  Hazel’s repulsion twisted her wrists in the cuffs.

  It looked like he’d been gutted; his innards removed to jam as many of the balls inside him.

  She attempted to reverse, but shot across the track and struck the tyres on the other side.

  You don’t have any balls.

  had been Sweeting’s input to the WhatsApp discussion. The driver must have got hold of a crew phone.

  He passed by, negotiating the trolley towards the rear of the arena before hitting a small rubber ramp covering some cables. It rattled the wheels, and several balls spilled and bounced away from the cavity of Sweeting’s chest.

  Hazel swivelled reluctantly to follow the driver’s progress and saw where he was going. A naked cadaver was seated on a chair in front of the shuttered coffee stand.

  Come get some, fuckface!

  Hazel’s struggling ceased as she saw what Keeler’s message had wrought. His slashed face hung in ribbons, and large chunks of his cranium and brain tissue were missing; the top half of his head almost hacked clean away.

  The driver positioned Sweeting a few feet from Keeler at an angle he seemed satisfied with.

  As Hazel’s hands and feet were so firmly secured there was no way she could resist whatever he had planned for her. She juddered away from the barrier and made for the finishing line, keeping her attention locked on him as he stood back to appraise his display.

  Hazel was only about ten feet from the chequered floor, where there was a gap in the tyres. But what would she do, even if she reached it? Roll all the way out and back to Broomfield? The driver knew he could take his time. But the sight of Fossen’s cremated carcass kept her feet shuffling in tiny steps.

  As she edged closer, the driver ambled back to the entrance but changed course and vaulted the tyre barrier. His desert boots thudded onto the track and he advanced down the circuit towards her, holding the cattle prod in his hand.

  119

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  The driver didn’t break his leisurely stride.

  Hazel’s chair came to rest on the dirty white finishing line. She raised her head and shouted into the high ceiling. ‘Help!’

  He slowed a few feet in front of her and circled his free palm, encouraging her to do it again. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’ The comment was softly spoken and amiable.

  Hazel furiously waggled her wrists and ankles and felt the metal cut deep.

  The driver blinked at her through his thick lenses then bent to one knee.

  Spineless bitch.

  They were the words she’d dropped into the WhatsApp discussion, and Hazel was sure they were about to tailor her death.

  The driver used his left hand to hitch the leg of his chinos and unclipped the hunting knife from the sheath. He stood, showed it to her then forcibly stabbed the blade into the top tyre of the barrier behind him so the handle jutted upwards.

  It appeared he wanted to take his time with the prod first and thrust it in her direction. She glided from him and hit hard rubber again. He paced towards her and Hazel leaned away, as she had in the kitchen, but now her scalp was pressed against the opposite barrier.

  The driver held the prod under her nose and made it spark. Hazel could smell the charge. Then he touched her cheek with the prongs and moved them downwards, grazing her neck and tracing the edge of her shoulder. He drove them hard between her breasts then skimmed gently to her right nipple. He pricked her there and pressed them firmly through her bra.

  Hazel waited for him to glance up. ‘Fuck you.’

  He shifted the prongs further down, circling her stomach and scratching the denim at her crotch.

  Hazel squirmed and bucked in the seat, rotating herself away from the prod before he caught hold of the chair and swung her back to face him. His expression was irked, and he stuck the prongs hard into the top of her leg.

  She stiffened against the jolt of electricity, her tendons rigid and shoulders shrinking in on her body. As the muscles of her throat stifled a yell of agony, Hazel knew she was unable to delay the fate she’d chosen for herself.

  He went to retrieve the knife.

  Groaning as she tried to galvanise her body, Hazel couldn’t even scream against what was about to happen.

  The driver reached the barrier and set the prod next to the knife. Then he paused, as if remembering something, and turned back to her. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a tube of glue. He frowned as he unscrewed the tiny lid.

  Hazel recalled the footage of Meredith’s death and how her eyelids had been stuck open so she had no choice but to watch.

  The driver turned to put the cap on the barrier.

  Hazel closed her eyes tight and waited; her stiff limbs anticipating his touch.

  She heard a female scream. Was it hers?

  A male choke of pain opened her eyes.

  The driver slowly spun from the barrier. The knife was planted in his chest. As he slid down the rubber wall, Hazel recognised his attacker. She was the other side of the tyres.

  Rena took a few faltering steps back, expression repelled and hands balled against her.

  The blade was deep in his sternum, and he made no attempt to remove it. He blinked at Hazel from his seated position.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Rena’s voice trembled.

  Hazel couldn’t reply. She watched the blood patch rapidly expanding under the driver’s avocado shirt, and him puff some air out of his cheeks.

  He stopped blinking soon after.

  120

  It was minutes before Rena would take one step back to the driver’s body.

  As the effects of the prod wore off and Hazel’s muscles began to relax, she assured Rena he was dead and told her to search his pockets for the keys to the cuffs.

  Rena limped cautiously onto the circuit through the gap in the tyres by the finishing line.
She sobbed when she saw Henrik’s corpse.

  ‘Don’t look at him. And don’t look back there. Focus on finding these keys.’

  Rena nodded her tangled pink hair, warily approached the driver and gazed in horror at his darkened bloody chest.

  ‘He must have them. Look in his top pocket. For car keys as well.’ Hazel registered the black grit embedded in the side of Rena’s raw cheek.

  Rena extended her fingers but hesitated a few inches from him.

  ‘He’s dead.’ But Hazel still anticipated his magnified blue eyes blinking.

  Rena’s hand remained where it was.

  ‘Quickly.’

  She tentatively grazed his top pocket. A button secured it, and Rena shakily fumbled it open.

  Hazel heard the jingle of keys.

  Rena wheeled the chair away from the barrier by the arms so she could get behind Hazel.

  Hazel didn’t shift her attention from the driver while the metal scraped about in the lock of the cuffs around her feet.

  ‘It’s awkward,’ Rena said from her kneeling position.

  One of the loops loosened from Hazel’s left ankle, and the other quickly followed. She stretched her legs out to get the blood back into them. The cuffs clattered to the track, and Rena unlocked her wrists from behind the chair.

  Hazel stood unsteadily and silently hugged Rena. They trembled against each other but Hazel knew they’d have to deal with the trauma of their ordeal later. She released her. ‘OK, you get in the chair now and I’ll push you out of here.’

  121

  Hazel rolled Rena away from the Chrysler. Even though they hadn’t found it on the driver’s body, the key wasn’t in the ignition. ‘I’ll wheel you right back to town if I have to. We’re not waiting for Soles. Keep your feet on the legs.’