by Unknown
“It has also been learned that the New York Post is running a story tomorrow linking the Central Park murder to the work of the Woodsman killer.
“We already know that the Woodsman uses wood in his murders.
“Action 5 News has an unnamed source at the Post claiming that the killer used wood in his placement of the bodies in Central Park as well. If this is true, it links him to two murder scenes.
“But as I mentioned, most of this is speculative at this point,” the anchorman continued.
A feeling emerged inside me that I hadn’t felt in months. Murderous interest piqued in my blood. A cold, familiar feeling surged over my scales like goose bumps over Shane’s skin. I was ready to hunt again.
The day drew near that I would bathe in the blood of the dark demon that dwelled inside of the Woodsman.
For now, Shane had to play detective. He had to begin searching for clues; they were not just going to fall into our lap. We had to bait the hook. Then we would use the hook and jam it into the Woodsman’s head.
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Special Agent Kirk Cutter, the FBI’s top serial killer hunter, stood on a Coast Guard patrol boat along with his special task force. His hawk-like eyes perused the horizon. Five other patrol boats scoured the waters closer to the port of Miami. They searched for an escaped suspect. The man that he hunted was a notorious henchman for the drug cartels.
Miguel Crown was a vicious killer. Originally he had worked for the cartels, killing anyone they asked. Over a decade’s worth of murder warranted him the nickname, the Blood King. However, his lust for blood was even too great for the cartel. They had tried to terminate him two weeks ago.
Only they failed and he slaughtered the men that they had sent to kill him. Since ambushing him didn’t work, the drug cartel notified the Feds of his whereabouts. They figured that they could assassinate him in prison.
Before long, Special Agent Kirk Cutter was hunting down the Blood King.
Cutter furrowed his eyebrows and studied a bump on the horizon. The setting sun provided little light for him to focus, but something inside of him helped him to see with more clarity than the other agents standing on the deck of the patrol boat.
“Captain, steer the boat portside,” Cutter shouted back toward the bridge.
The captain nodded and the boat twisted its course toward the bump on the horizon.
Cutter and the other agents stared through their binoculars. They made out a yacht floating on open water.
Within minutes the patrol boat descended upon the yacht. As they neared it, Cutter noticed that the name on the side of the boat matched that of the stolen vessel that they’d been searching for.
“It’s him,” Agent Cutter announced to the other agents.
They’d found the Blood King.
“We should prepare to board,” one of the other agents said.
Then the agent stepped closer to Cutter. Inches from Cutter’s right ear, the ear without the earpiece, she whispered, “You know what to do.”
Agent Cutter nodded. Then he looked again at the yacht. He noticed movement on the upper deck.
“Prepare to board. I will take the upper deck. One of you, take the middle and the other, the hull,” Cutter said. He drew his service pistol, a Glock 22 handgun.
The agents locked and loaded. Each wore a bulletproof vest.
Cutter loosened the knot on his tie.
The patrol boat slowed its engines to a hum before cutting them off completely. Then it drifted to the rear of the floating yacht.
The stolen yacht simply floated, gently rocking up and down in the water. No signs of the Blood King jumped out at them.
A young sailor tied the patrol boat to the deck of the yacht.
Cutter led the agents onboard. No one spoke. Instead the agents watched for his hand signals as he commanded each of them to investigate the lower decks.
Cutter ascended the stairs to the upper deck and the other agents descended into the lower area.
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Rarely did Shane stir under my control over his sleep. Tonight he had. Tonight he woke up on his own.
He looked around the bedroom. Through the darkness he saw nothing but lights coming in through the window.
Shane walked to the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and buried his face underneath it. Like a man in the desert, he drank the water that gushed out.
Then he looked at himself in the mirror. He thought of Sandy Parks and smiled.
Another cop. Why not? he thought.
He had dated Sun Good on and off for years. Mostly that was off. He even loved her.
Shane rubbed his eyes and returned to the warmth of his bed.
I returned to my visions of Agent Cutter.
A cold wind blew off the Atlantic. Its icy fingers brushed through Cutter’s gray hair. At the top of the stairs, he stood with his knees slightly bent. He surveyed the objects on the upper deck. His lean silhouette was seen by the predatory eyes of the Blood King of Miami.
“Miguel Crown! This is Special Agent Cutter. I am with the FBI. Come out!” he said.
No response.
“I know that you are up here. Surrender yourself and you won’t get shot,” Cutter shouted. He kept his gun out and ready to fire.
Miguel’s demon clambered onto his brain. Something was wrong; it appeared weakened.
Miguel listened to the FBI agent’s demands. He didn’t respond. Instead, he remained standing at the other end of the deck. He stood over the edge of the boat, peering down into the dark water below.
Cutter began moving toward the bow of the ship. With the sunset diminishing the available light, it grew harder and harder for him to see.
He searched for two minutes before he noticed the shadow standing in the darkness near the edge of the bow.
Cutter looked around and saw no one else. He rushed for the shadow. As he neared the bow, he slowed and pointed his gun directly at the figure.
“Freeze!” he shouted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Miguel Crown said.
Cutter could not make out Miguel’s features, but he recognized that his voice was not one of his agents.
He saw the outline of a weapon in Miguel’s hand.
So he said, “Toss your gun over the side!”
“Please don’t kill me,” Miguel said. His thick Cuban accent almost made his words impossible to understand.
Cutter’s ears adjusted. Miguel Crown’s voice sounded hoarse. Then he sniffled.
He sobbed.
“Are you crying?” Cutter asked, confused.
Miguel’s voice sounded tearful. He said, “I have longed for this moment, FBI man.”
“What are you talking about?” Cutter asked. He kept his eyes on the gun in Miguel’s hand. His eyes focused better and now he could see that Miguel faced away from him. He peered out over the water.
“The creature in my head has made me do terrible things, man. Terrible things,” Miguel said. Slowly, he turned back to face Cutter.
“Creature?” Cutter asked.
Miguel stepped closer. The setting sunlight fell across his face. His eyes were black with tears streaming from them. His monstrous features stared back at Cutter.
The reddish hue from the sunset blinded Miguel as he stepped closer and closer to Agent Cutter.
“I have a creature living inside of me, a demon. I have fought these urges for years. It torments me. It drives me to kill. I don’t want it to win. I don’t want it to consume me. But I can’t stop it.
“I came out here to stop it, to end it,” Miguel Crown confessed.
I watched with pity. Pity for the creature inside of him. He’d let his vessel get the best of him.
“Special Agent of the FBI, I have killed and murdered dozens of people. And most of them are buried right here. Beneath this yacht is my dumpsite, a graveyard of the bodies that I’ve dumped here.
“I killed. I cut them up into little pieces and then I stuffed them in garbage bags with rocks and WHOO
SH! Tossed them overboard.
“They sank here, man. Right here.” Miguel said.
The sunlight vanished and Miguel’s features evaporated into shadow.
“Drop your weapon!” Cutter demanded.
Miguel looked down at his gun.
The urge to kill tried to consume him. He fought it.
In his head he heard a voice. It said, “Shoot him!”
He overcame his monster and tossed the gun to the deck of the ship. He raised his hands to surrender.
Kirk Cutter grabbed a flashlight from his vest and clicked it on. The beam fell across Miguel’s face. The creature was gone.
“No one will believe you about the creature, Special Agent. They will only think that I am crazy, man.
“Like the serial killers before me,” Miguel said. His tears dried up on his face. He seemed sincerely remorseful for his crimes, just as Dr. Jekyll felt for Mr. Hyde’s crimes.
Suddenly, from behind the beam of light that blinded him, Miguel heard a dark chuckle.
Then a voice said, “Blood King, you are not the only monster standing on this deck. I’ve killed someone close to me before. And then I just kept on killing.
“I’ve killed before that and I will continue long after you are dead. The reason why I am so good at hunting your kind is that I am one of your kind.
“I love to kill.”
Kirk Cutter moved the beam of light from Miguel’s confused expression to shine on his own face.
Miguel winced in horror as his eyes fell upon Kirk Cutter’s creature-like face. He stared at a secret that Kirk Cutter kept from everyone; he too was a serial killer. Ever since he’s first kill, ten years ago, he has hunted and killed men in his line of work. He has hid behind his badge.
His job afforded him the perfect cover to track down murderers and then kill them.
Miguel looked down at the gun that he’d tossed. He thought of making a move for it. Before he could budge, Kirk flashed the light back into his eyes, blinding him.
Cutter yelled with his finger holding the speak button down on the headset to his radio.
“Drop the gun! Drop the gun!” he shouted. He fired his gun twice into Miguel’s chest. The impacts of the bullets sent him back off his feet. Then he stumbled over the side of the bow. He fell to the cold water below.
Kirk Cutter picked up Miguel’s gun and fired it in the opposite direction as if Miguel had fired at him first. Then he tossed it overboard. The ocean erased his fingerprints, which didn’t matter since most likely the gun would sink to the ocean floor.
Cutter peered over the side of the yacht and watched as the Blood King’s body turned lifeless and cold. Miguel’s corpse floated. His blood leaked from the bullet holes and dyed the water around him into a thick, black color.
2
Statues That Move
“The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.”
––Alfred Hitchcock, Director
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The morning light cast shadows throughout the apartment. I watched through the portals of Shane’s eyes as they drearily opened. I saw a long shadow outstretch its darkness. It reached across the room and over the sheets and across Shane’s body.
Shane sat up in bed. He rubbed his eyes, obstructing my view. He rose from bed and walked to the balcony. He looked down at the park; it was not the ordinary Central Park scene.
The crowd from yesterday was gone, but the media remained. Actually it appeared as if they had doubled in size since yesterday.
Yellow crime tape blocked an entire canvas of the lawn near the center of the park.
That must have been where our new friend had skinned his victim. We needed to hunt down more information, much more. It was time to dust off Shane’s resources and find out more about the Woodsman.
Shane stretched back across the bed and picked his up iPhone from the nightstand. It was eight in the morning.
Back in D.C. he’d tried multiple cases. He was always busy working.
Here in New York, he did almost nothing but think and exercise. He had plenty of free time, so he slept in some days. Today was not going to be one of them. Today he hunted.
Shane picked up his iPhone and looked at the clock once again as if he had forgotten to check it just a second ago. Then he pulled up the phone screen and called Ally Embers.
“Hi Shane,” Ally said. She sounded chipper.
“Good morning. Why do you sound so excited?”
“I’m glad to hear from you. I’ve been so bored here,” she said.
“Bored? Aren’t they keeping you busy?”
“Yes. I am assisting with Jack Crush’s caseload, but working for him is not as exciting as working for you. I’m so glad that you called. Do you have something for me to do?”
“I do have something for you. It has to remain on the down low. Our secret. Understand me?”
“Of course. I always keep things hush-hush for you,” she replied.
“Good.”
“So what do you need?”
“I need you to make some calls and do some research on a murder that happened here. A body was found in Central Park. The cops aren’t saying much, but the media here claims it was a serial killer called the Woodsman.
“Apparently, he skins his victims alive. I need to know more. Can you find more information?” Shane asked.
He rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom.
“Oh. I’ve heard of him. CNN has been talking about it for the last twenty-four hours.
“No problem, Shane. Sounds exciting. It’s a lot better than the shit that Jack Crush has me doing. I can’t wait to look into it,” Ally said.
“Good. Prepare a report on what you find for me and email it to me. I need it today.”
“Got it,” she said. Then she paused a beat.
Then she said, “I really am glad to hear from you. Please come back.”
“I’m working on it,” Shane said. He hung up the phone.
We began our morning exercises.
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Shane spent most of the day waiting to hear from Ally. He glanced at the home screen on his iPhone. It read 3:00 p.m.
Then he touched the mail icon. This brought up his personal email address. He had no new messages. She had still not emailed her report to him.
We had to leave the office early. Dylan Range asked that we attend a special opening of Townsend Dry’s newest artistic creation, a sophisticated office building near the river.
Instead of letting the firm drive Shane in their car, he decided to take a taxi.
He left the office and headed down to the street.
He hailed a cab and told the driver the address. The driver started the meter and drove away from the curb.
It took about thirty-five minutes to arrive there. This was good time in New York City traffic.
The building was an enormous heap of twisted modernism. It possessed a hint of evil, like a demented tower of metal. I liked it.
Shane exited the car and paid the driver $47. He handed the man three $20 bills. He waited for his change and tipped.
Shane stepped away from the cab and turned before the car drove off.
We walked into the building. The security guard pointed us in the direction of the first-level gallery room. We walked up a flight of steel stairs and past a large fountain. In the center of the fountain was some sort of obscene, metal sculpture. Shane made out a naked woman in a strange position, but it was more than that. The naked woman was symbolic of a twisted reality. Her body had contorted like a broken ballerina.
Shane picked up on a symbolic meaning in her disfigurement. She represented a twisted life, her life. What was her turmoil? Only the artist knew.
Most people would not have noticed the true form in the statue. To the regular person, the statue was a bit of a Rorschach test. Like the ink blot, beholders saw only what they wanted to see. Their minds saw what they projected onto the image.
Shane turned from the sta
tue and continued.
He reached the gallery room. People flooded it.
Good turnout for a man that I’ve never heard of, he thought.
Art pieces stood on elaborate platforms that filled the room. Numerous paintings hung on the walls. Most were painted by famous local artists.
Waitresses and waiters in skimpy outfits paraded around the room like it was a nightclub. They carried flutes of champagne. The whole atmosphere was very chic. Shane fit right in.