by Tyler Porter
“What the hell are you even doing here?”
“Cooper told us about this place. Your perfect place where no one could hear them screaming. The others are on their way. It’s over Hunt. Done. Did you really think we wouldn’t figure it out? That we wouldn’t eventually see through all the bull shit?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“All those girls…Simmons…why? Because you were stuck in my shadow? All you had to do was fucking transfer if you didn’t like it, but you chose to start killing people instead. I groomed you James! I was the one who insisted on your promotion!”
“What? What are you talking a…wait…wait, you think I killed all those people? You…you think I’m The Optometrist? Are you fucking kidding? Jesus Christ, you really have lost it haven’t you? Retirement ruined you, you’re out of your fucking mind,” he said still, pointing the gun at me.
“Am I? Then explain it, Hunt. Explain why it all makes so much sense. Your mood lately. All the resentment and hostility. You were aware of all of the murders before the rest of us. Are you saying that was just coincidence? No one can account for where you were when those people were killed and all this time you’ve had a little getaway out in the middle of nowhere.”
“So fucking what? None of that makes me a killer Norris! None of that is evidence,” he shouted.
“You were on site when Cooper was shot, and you made sure Jim Cullen was too. You knew he had no business being in the field, but you promoted him just before the raid at Captain Connor’s. Just in time for him to be on site, the perfect suspect. A jury probably would have believed it too, but it was too perfect. Too easy.”
“He was ready Norris! You were holding him back! You held him back for years, just like the rest of us! I promoted him because he’s done his time. He’s earned it!”
“You’re really leaning on that coincidence card, but the thing is that isn’t going to save you in court. You can shoot me right here, unload the fucking clip, but everyone knows. They all know, and they are not going to rest until they bring your ass down.”
“You’re out of your mind! I had nothing to do with those murders! Do I resent you? You bet your arrogant ass I do. You’ve held me back for years and for no other reason that the fact that you bought into your own fucking hype. Casey Norris, Helena’s hero. The thing is, you aren’t a fucking hero. You’re just a beat cop who lucked into Lieutenant status and hit a ceiling. But do you really believe that is enough for me to start killing people? Don’t flatter yourself. Just face the truth, this guy is beating you and you can’t handle it! I am not The Optometrist!”
“He’s telling the truth, he’s not The Optometrist,” the voice said from the shadows behind him. “I am.”
The three shots exploded from the barrel of the gun lighting up the night and creating a booming echo through the trees. Hunt’s body shook as the bullets penetrated his back. He never took his eyes off of mine until the blood began to drip from the corner of his mouth and he fell forward onto the forest floor. I watched as his body twitched and spasmed until it eventually went dead still. I brought my eyes back up meeting the eyes of the true killer. The Optometrist.
“…Cooper?”
Chapter 33: Twisted Reality
“Don’t look so surprised boss, it’s not a good look for you,” I said aiming the gun at him as I stood over Hunt’s bloodied and bullet-riddled body.
“No…it can’t be…you can’t be…” Norris stuttered as he tried to find the words.
“Oh, I can’t be? Why not? You don’t think I’m capable of something like this? You don’t think it is a possibility that I am the one who’s dragged you around all this time?”
“Hailey…I can’t believe…”
“Well, believe it! It was me; I beat you! I killed all those fucking whores! I killed Shelby; I took her right out of your bed while you slept. I made Simmons watch me take his wife apart piece by piece. I even did it without a mask, it made it so much sweeter. I almost drowned him to death. Enough time submerged in water and amnesia is almost guaranteed. It wasn’t my intention to kill him, but it was a nice surprise anyways,” I said smirking.
“…Why?” It was the only word he could come up with.
“Why? Is that even a question? How long have I slaved under you? How many times have you told me that my record outshined every other detective in the department without ever recommending me for promotion? How many times was I the one that found a break in a case without any credit? How long have I worked my ass off day after day, night after fucking night, only to be denied any acknowledgment? All of that, and never once was I put up for promotion. Not once did you tell everyone that I did good. Never! You had plenty of time to pack Hunt on the back and Perez, but not me!” I shouted letting every bit of the anger I had built up over the years flood out of me.
“That’s the reason? The reason for all of this? Because I never blew smoke up your ass?” he asked letting his notorious defiance ring true.
“You knew I was the best one on the team, but you never lifted a finger to make sure anyone else fucking knew it did you? You were well aware that the only woman in the group was outworking and outshining the rest, but you and your ancient views would never let that come to light! You spent all your time praising Hunt, guiding Hunt, grooming Hunt to take over. Well look at Hunt now Norris! Look at him! Fucking look! Dead on the fucking ground! I was better than him all along. I was better than him tonight, I was better than the others and I have always been better than you!” I was shaking with rage as I spat the words I’d held in for so many years.
“The job wasn’t right for you. You weren’t meant to be a leader. You took good orders and you did good work if that’s what you want to hear, but you were always too hell bent on being better than anyone else. What? You think because you never said it out loud like you are now that I didn’t see it? That I didn’t see the anger? There’s more to the job than being the best. It’s about caring the most about closing the cases, saving people, helping people, but you didn’t care about any of that. That was the exact reason why I kept you exactly where you belonged. Turns out my gut didn’t lie,” he said shrugging.
I tightened my grasp around my gun and pressed my finger, lightly, against the trigger. He winced, expecting me to unload my clip into him and end all this, but that would be too easy. No matter how badly I wanted to watch his arrogant, pompous ass bleed out right then, I wasn’t about to let him off that quick. No.
“Where I belonged? I belonged carrying your bags and getting your fucking coffee? Well, that’s all fine and good. That’s exactly why I put those sluts where they belonged. That’s why I put Shelby where she belonged. That’s why Simmons and his wife are where they belong. Rotting in the fucking ground just like Hunt will. Just like you will,” I said grinding my teeth between my words.
It was taking everything in me not to pull the trigger. Not to pepper his torso with bullet holes. This was everything I’d worked for, everything I’d been patient for. This moment, just him and me. Having him in a position where he has no choice but to answer for the decisions he’d made, the decisions that led to all of those people having to die. It was his fault. He was going to accept it and then he was going to die right here.
“If that’s what you want, then what are you waiting for? This is what this has all been about. It’s what you have wanted all along. It’s been a game. It’s all been about beating me at this game, but here’s the thing, you’re sick. This game, the rules, it’s all in your sick, twisted mind. None of it is real,” he said.
“Shut up. Shut up! The rules are real, and I make them. I’m in control here! I’ve been in control the entire time! I’ve dragged you around the entire time! I even had to leave extra clues and evidence so you could keep up. You’re nothing! You have this entire city fooled. You have them all thinking that you truly are the great Casey Norris. The one who at the end of the day wo
uld always get the bad guy. That little bit of light that would always conquer the dark. How’s that going for you now?”
“Hailey…you haven’t thought this through,” he said.
“Do not fucking patronize me!” I was gripping the gun so tightly that the small ridges in the butt were digging into my palm. I was so tired of the rules and regulations.
“I’m not…I’m trying to help you. You haven’t considered how this ends. You can’t just kill five women and three police offers and walk away. They will never stop looking for you and they will find you. You will go to number one on the most wanted list they will have the entire country looking for you. You won’t last a week.”
“I’ve done pretty well so far. I think I’ll take my chances. I mean Jesus, I was shot. No one is going to believe that I had anything to do with this,” I said.
“You think they won’t be able to put it together that you shot yourself? Being sure that the bullet would hit in a place that would just be a flesh wound? I’ve figured that out in the last five minutes, they will too. You cannot escape this. Your only option here, is to make a deal.”
“You have got to be joking. Are you really that delusional? You think that I would do all of this, just to make a deal? And with you of all people?” I asked.
“Hear me out, Cooper, you’re in a really deep hole here. You’ve already killed innocent people as well as police officers. There is no avenue that doesn’t end with you in a cell, but that cell can be a little bit bigger and little bit more comfortable if you work with me. Confess to the murders and give yourself up right now, and I will talk to courts about having you placed in a wing with lighter security.”
“I fail to see how that benefits me at all. I give up everything that I work for, I miss the chance to see the life leave your body and I still end up in a cage…doesn’t seem like a great deal for me,” I said.
“Let’s consider the other option then. You pull the trigger and get what you’ve wanted this whole time. You beat me in the ultimate sense. You take my life, along with all the others that you’ve stolen. You go on the run. You last three, maybe four days before they find you. One of two things happens then. You either give yourself up in which case you lose and end up in a maximum-security wing where every single inmate around you knows that you were at one time a police officer, I think we both know how that turns out. Or you go down shooting in which case, again you lose.”
He was getting his confidence back with every word. I wouldn’t say it out loud, but I knew he was right. The thing was, I’d never planned on leaving this property. I’d let him feel like he had a chance, then he would die as planned. The calvary would show up too late and I would go down in a blaze of glory.
“Don’t make this worse than it already is,” he continued. “Give me the gun.” He reached out his open hand.
I smiled and raised the gun level with his skull. “Goodbye boss.”
Bang.
Chapter 34: Removed from Reality
I watched as Cooper turned to her left. Her face told the story that no words ever could. A mixture of anger, surprise, stress, and fear created an emotion concoction unlike anything I’d ever seen. She’d dropped the gun the instant that the bullet had entered her abdomen, but it wasn’t the wound that had her speechless. It was the man who’d pulled the trigger. Standing to one side, still holding a shaking gun out in front of him was Officer Jim Cullen.
I looked past him toward the house where I could see the police lights illuminating the darkness. Other officers were making their way through the woods following the crack of the gunshot, but Cullen had gotten to use first. It was over. Backup had finally arrived and just in time too. I studied her face, trying to pin point her exact expression. She looked back at Cullen, then past him at the approaching squad then back at me.
I could have sworn I could visibly see the definite moment when she’d decided. Decided that there was no way she was leaving this place in handcuffs. No way she was going to spend the rest of her life rotting way in a six by eight cell. Slowly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a long, thick piece of steel before pressing a small button on its side causing a shiny chrome blade to appear out of the top of it.
Holding the bleeding wound on her side with one hand and gripping the knife in the other, she began to stagger toward me, her dark brown eyes glazing as she moved closer. Cullen noticed and looked around him as if hoping that the other officers were close enough to stop her, but they weren’t. He was clearly struggling with what to do. I prepared for what was to come next, readied myself to avoid the blade.
But just as she pulled the knife back ready to jab it forward into me, Cullen found his courage once again. Boom. She staggered to the side, but stayed standing. She took a moment to compose herself, ignoring the new opening in her shoulder and began moving toward me once more. Boom. This time the lead imbedded itself in her neck almost taking her off of her feet. I watched as she struggled to breath around the blood that was surly collecting in her throat. For a moment, I thought that would be the end, but incredibly, she took one final stride in my direction. Boom.
She dropped to her knees first, keeping her eyes on mine. And in them, I saw something in that moment that I never would have expected. This woman was so removed from reality, I would have doubted she felt anything anymore. But in that moment, as the blood poured from her side, shoulder, neck and head, I saw fear in her eyes. The eyes never lie.
She slowly fell forwarded and crashed onto the ground convulsing and shaking making a terrible gurgling sound as she choked on her own blood. After everything she’d done, after all the lives she’d taken and the ones she’d ruined, I still couldn’t stand to watch it. I turned to my right, bent down, picked up my gun and magazine and began walking back toward the house. As I passed Cullen I stopped, gave him an approving nod of my head, patted him on the shoulder and kept walking leaving him alone with the two corpses.
Six or seven more police units had shown up in front of the house and were out in full force surveying the scene. Officers were already inside the house taping off as a crime scene as they collected evidence and left sticky-tape markers in areas where they felt the crime scene techs should swap for fingerprints, DNA, hair, or anything that could be of use to closing the case.
I sat down on the stairs that led up to the porch and buried my face in my hands. Crying wasn’t something that I generally did, but lately it’d become a norm. I was fighting it off well enough, but I knew at any moment the emotion was going to overwhelm me. All those girls, Shelby, the Simmons’, Hunt…how could I have been so wrong about Hunt? I was wrong and because of it he was dead.
In the midst of all the craziness, Cooper had been spot on about one thing. She’d been right about me buying into my own fucking hype. Buying in and believing the legend of Casey Norris, Helena’s hero. I believed with everything I had that I was the guardian and protector of this city. I believed that there was no case that was too much for me, no criminal I couldn’t overcome. I believed I couldn’t be beat.
I believed it so much that I’d allowed my ego to take over. I’d come here, alone, knowing it was not a good idea. I’d confronted him. Instead of putting him in handcuffs and taking him to the station for questioning, I turned it into a street fight. Why? Because I had to prove that I was better. I believed he was my killer and I had to prove to myself that he couldn’t beat me, retired or not. Now, because of that ego, he was dead.
All of sudden, it hit me like a brick. Hall. I’d left him with Cooper at the hospital. Just as the realization hit me, I saw an unmarked sedan pull onto the property and Perez got out of the driver seat. He spotted me instantly and made his way to where I was sitting on the porch steps.
He stood next to me, neither of us speaking at first, looking around at the house, the woods and all of the officers bustling around the area.
“You alright?” he asked.
“Hunt’s dead…it wasn’t him,” I exhaled.
“I know. I figured that much out.”
“What do you mean?”
“The hospital staff found Hall, knocked out cold in her hospital room and her missing. He’s gonna be sore and it sounds like he’s got a pretty good goose egg on his dome, but he’ll live. Bitch must not have had anything sharp available to take him out. Smashed a damn flower vase over his head. Anyways, they called the department, word go to me and I put two and two together. I just got out her a little too late,” he said.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“It’s not yours either Casey. I’ve worked with you long enough. I know you’re gonna blame yourself for this. You can’t. You never could have known it was Cooper, none of us did.”
“Yeah, instead I decided it was Hunt and he’s dead because of it.”
“Everything pointed to him. It all made sense; you had no reason to ignore the signs. It just that sometimes the signs are wrong, no matter how sense they make. You couldn’t have known.”
“Listen, I think Cullen is a little shaken up. He’s out with the bodies. Do me a favor, go check on him. Let him talk, he’s going to want to do a lot of that. Try to calm him down the best you can, poor bastard isn’t going to sleep for a week as it is,” I said rubbing my forehead.
“You got it,” he said turning and walking toward the woods.
I forced myself to my feet, acknowledging the wobbliness that was present throughout my legs. The adrenaline had been intense and now every ounce of it had left my body. I felt drained. I felt like I might fall over onto the ground and sleep for weeks. After all, I hadn’t truly slept much in weeks. I bent down and slapped each of my legs on both sides of my thighs trying to wake them up. As I stood back up, a younger officer was walking out of the house. He saw me and jogged over.
“Lieutenant,” he started before I held up a hand stopping him.