by Hults, Matt
The eyes of one of the closest constructions still shined with false life, drawing Frank’s attention. Their positioning in the reshaped sockets of a worm-infested pig’s skull seemed to communicate the level of terror experienced by their former owner at their time of death, as if the very emotion had been fused into the corneas.
Frank looked at the floor to escape the thing’s gaze.
Further emphasizing the pure wickedness the hecatomb reeked of, he found a wide pool of blood the killer had gathered in a shallow pit at the center of the room. It gleamed in the candlelight, encircling a large column of stone. A host of cryptic symbols decorated the towering obelisk, strange characters chiseled in a three-dimensional pattern that caused Frank’s head to throb when he stared at them.
He swayed on his feet, then flinched when another officer reached out to steady him. He couldn’t fathom what sort of diabolic compulsion could’ve driven a person to commit such vile acts, what level of mental imbalance—
“He’s still alive,” a medic roared.
Frank turned to see Kane’s eyes snap open and almost fell down the steps leading into the cellar when he flinched back in shock. It wasn’t possible for the man to still be conscious, not after the amount of damage he’d received. Yet the killer struck out with the speed of a springing viper, teeth bared and hissing.
Kane reached up and grabbed the medic by the neck, ripping out his throat in a single vicious action. The man dropped to the floor, hitting the ground as Kane arose from a lake of his own blood.
His eyes shimmered.
Shiny filaments of spittle stitched together the space between his open jaws.
Blood rained from his wounds.
Frank and the surrounding policemen trained their weapons on the killer in a uniform motion, but Kane lunged at the closest officer before anyone fired a shot.
“Shit,” Frank growled, snapping up his weapon.
Several members of the tactical squad broke formation and rushed forward, reaching for their teammate. Kane met their charge with an animalistic battle cry, snapping the neck of his captive in one effortless action.
The man’s death set off a chain reaction of rage, and the other officers charged.
Kane struck the first man to reach him with an uppercut to the mouth, knocking a shard of jawbone through his cheek. He jabbed at another, gouging out an eye.
Blood sailed from Kane’s wounds with each move, yet he twisted and flexed without the slightest sign of impairment. He met the onslaught of officers with a smile, hammering his adversaries straight through their body armor and Kevlar helmets with bare fists. He punched, flipped, kicked, backhanded, and head-butted opponents before any of them got close enough to help or do damage, then heaved them aside as though they weighed less than the clothing they wore.
The crowd shifted with each new assault, blocking Frank’s attempts to move forward and help.
Gunfire cracked from various points around the room as other officers took aimed shots at the killer, carefully placing each round so not to hit one of their own. Fresh wounds peppered Kane’s flesh. Yet the madman continued to attack, advancing on the crowd as they tried to fall back.
Kane snatched a man’s arm and broke it in two. The bone sprung through the officer’s shirt sleeve like a spring-loaded blade, and Kane rammed it into the throat of another man he’d seized by the neckline of his tactical vest.
Sergeant Rice plunged into the battle and thrust his sidearm into Kane’s face, firing a round directly into the killer’s left eye. Kane’s head rocked back with the shot, then snapped forward again as if recovering from no more than a hard slap. He bellowed at Rice, spraying blood and saliva across the officer’s face. In a blur, Kane punched through the man’s teeth, burying his fist in Rice’s mouth up to the wrist.
Frank flinched.
Kane yanked his hand free, taking Rice’s tongue with it, then hurled him at the other officers, grabbing the strap of his sub-machinegun in the process.
“Oh, shit,” Frank hissed.
Kane opened fire the second Rice left his grasp, painting the cracked walls with lightning-quick pulses of light and filling the air with the repetitive thunder of gunfire. He panned Rice’s MP-5 left and right, emptying the weapon’s thirty-round magazine into the crowd.
Pivoting away, Frank ducked through the cellar doorway the same instant huge holes exploded out of its frame. Clouds of splinters and mortar dust sprayed through the air. From his new position, he had a clear view of the space across the landing and up the main staircase, where he spotted reinforcements frozen on the steps.
“Get down here, God dammit!”
The first floor door swung shut without warning, slamming into its frame with such force the candlelight at Frank’s back flickered with the sudden change in air pressure. With the door closed, only two cops remained on the steps, cut off from above like him and all the others.
Before he could dwell on the door’s abrupt closure, the hail of gunfire ceased, replaced by the faint, bell-like sounds of spent 9mm casings bouncing off the concrete floor. Then nothing.
Silence descended over the room like a smothering hand.
Frank tensed, listening, afraid the fracas had affected his hearing. From above came the incessant pounding and muffled shouts of the officers on the first floor as they fought to break down the door. Beyond that, he picked out the haggard gasping of the wounded men in the adjacent room, followed by the louder sound of the empty MP-5 clattering to the floor.
Frank brought up one hand, signaling for the officers on the staircase to hold their position. Given the number of men Kane had dropped in the other room, a veritable arsenal of loaded weapons awaited the killer’s hands.
He looked to his own weapon. Smoke rose from a bullet hole that had peeled open the breach, exposing the copper shell of a cartridge.
Shit!
He knelt down and set the weapon on the floor. His helmet slipped forward on his sweat-slicked forehead when he did, and he quickly pushed it back, eyeing the doorway.
He unholstered his sidearm, a 9mm Sig, and readied to move.
Staying low on the narrow cellar steps, he tipped his head around the corner of the bullet-shattered doorframe and got a quick glimpse of the other room.
Kane stood amongst the crumpled bodies of the fallen officers like the sole survivor of a war, splattered with blood, surrounded by smoke. The final moans of the dying faded to silence.
Frank concentrated on the fact Kane hadn’t replaced the MP-5 with one of the other firearms scattered about the floor. Instead, the killer stood amidst the wreckage of bodies, arms in front of him, palms up, studying his own injuries in soundless contemplation.
Frank’s grip on the handgun tightened. He flicked off the safeties and put two pounds of pull on the trigger.
Across the room, Kane pulled apart the two halves of his shirt and Frank tensed. The cloth had once been faded brown with a lighter tan check pattern, but now glistened almost solid crimson.
Multitudes of dark gunshot wounds peppered Kane’s torso, each a fatal ticket that should’ve secured his passage to Hell. Stranger still, among the scattering of bullet holes lay a series of deep lacerations that could’ve only come from a knife. Not random cuts, either. They looked like designs carved into his flesh, symbols similar those written across the stone pillar sitting in the pool of blood.
Frank quivered with disgust.
Without warning, Kane’s expression changed from triumph to fear. Frank didn’t think it was possible after all the mayhem he’d witnessed, but he could see it in the maniac’s freakish eyes; pure, unbridled fear.
Frank watched the man curl his bloody hands into claws, staring at them in shock.
Kane shrieked at the sight.
Frank recoiled from the sound and almost lost his footing on the steps. Steadying himself, he readied his weapon, watching Kane slap at his bare chest and stomach, flailing himself, almost like he was trying to brush away the bullet holes. He cried
louder with each breath, stomping his feet, ranting like a child in the thrall of a tantrum.
Frank motioned for the two officers on the stairs to get ready to move, certain they could take the man unaware while he wallowed in his deranged self-assault. He edged back out of Kane’s sight, stood up, and—
The orange light bulb over the landing suddenly popped and went out.
Frank’s half-drawn breath snared in his throat as darkness leapt in to take the light’s place, stopped at the cellar doorway by the glow of the few candles in Kane’s earth-walled lair.
He hesitated, poised on the verge of a tension-induced heart attack. Kane had fallen silent just a second before the light flashed out, and the thought of confronting him while nearly blind, armed or not, no longer seemed wise.
There came a noise: the subtle rattling of a chain.
It sounded at Frank’s back, from somewhere in the cellar of patchwork cadavers: an inconspicuous jingle under the clamor of men still trying to force their way through Hell’s gate at the top of the stairs.
“Fraaaaank,” a voice growled in his ear.
He swung around and fired three rounds into the wrinkled, slack-eyed face of a dead man chained at the far side of the room, at least twenty feet away. No one loomed behind him in the cellar. Everyone was dead. Dead and unmoving.
He twisted back to confront the doorway and met Kane’s grinning face. It flashed into the candlelight, his black eyes once again gleaming with a red reflection. Frank tried to aim his weapon, but Kane caught his hand, locking it in an unbreakable grip. He smashed it into the doorjamb, holding it there, with the handgun’s muzzle pointed uselessly away.
Then the knife flashed into view, clutched in the killer’s fist. It arced toward him with merciless speed, too fast to dodge, but skipped off the brim of his helmet when he tried to maneuver out of its way. The blade grazed his eyeball, splitting its surface, then stabbed into his face. It streaked down his cheekbone, cutting a hot trail from his ruptured eyeball to his jaw.
Frank shrieked.
Kane released him, letting him fall backward into the cellar. The killer smiled at him, his teeth gleaming in the murk.
Then Kane jolted and convulsed when gunfire exploded through him from behind, opening more holes in his chest.
The guys on the staircase, Frank thought.
He hit the floor, teetering on the dark edge of unconsciousness.
And blacked out when Kane collapsed beside him.
CHAPTER 22
Frank saw that his account of the raid on Kane’s farm had brought the young detective to the edge of her seat.
“The guys upstairs needed to use an explosive charge to get through the basement door,” he said. “The damned thing looked normal enough, but it had a solid steel core, with magnetic locking plates on the top and bottom.”
“What made it shut?” Melissa asked.
“Too many people trying to get around it at the same time,” he said, grimacing at the memory. “Once it closed, it locked. By the time the medics got to us again, Kane had slaughtered fifteen good men. It was a madhouse.”
Detective Humble shook her head in amazement. “And even after they shot him again, he still didn’t die.”
Frank nodded. “The headshot required the partial removal of his frontal lobe and reconstructive skull plates, but somehow he managed to survive in a coma. When I got word that he’d finally died last week … Well, I think you can imagine why I made those inquires to be sure he was dead.”
Melissa readjusted herself on the couch. “I never knew how intense the arrest had been for everyone involved. For you.”
Frank heard pity in her voice, and for a moment, he couldn’t respond. Recalling those details of the past had made him shaky, replete with emotions he couldn’t suppress. He looked at his clasped hands and said, “I put the whole story into my book, hoping I could rid myself of it for good—the arrest, the partner theory, everything. A lot of people said I was capitalizing on the misery of others, but I never did it for the money. I want you to understand that. I wrote the book because I was looking for closure. I suppose I was foolish to believe it would help.”
“What you did was a perfectly healthy way of dealing with it,” she told him.
He gave her an appreciative smile for her empathy, which she returned with a smile of her own. For an instant, he imagined himself leaning forward and kissing her. The thought blindsided him like an unseen assailant, hitting him hard, leaving him dazed.
Breaking eye contact, he redirected his gaze at the floor. How can you be thinking of such a thing right now? But he already knew the answer.
Not many visitors stopped by anymore, attractive women least of all. He’d grown accustomed to living alone in his small condo, the outside world closed behind the blinds, discarded. He only ventured into his old life long enough to collect his pension or disability checks from the mailbox. He didn’t even shop for himself anymore.
He glanced to the detective while she jotted down notes on a small pad. Being in the presence of such a smart and engaging woman, he found himself wishing he were insane, that Kale Kane’s accomplice existed only in his head. Then he could get help and maybe return to a normal way of life.
Melissa looked at him and said, “You told me you thought Kane preferred a certain type of victim.”
“That’s right,” he said, but paused at the frail sound of his voice. He cleared his throat. “Like I said, for all the trouble Kane went through to get at several of his targets, it seemed logical to say those individuals had something of a specific interest to him, something no one else could provide.”
Frank stopped himself again, deciding how much to reveal. Wracked by the understanding of what his life had become, he could’ve talked with Melissa all night. But he realized he needed to proceed with caution, reminding himself that he couldn’t let his rediscovered wanting for companionship cloud his judgment. Giving the detective too much information at this point would only cause her to regard him with skepticism, maybe even suspicion.
“Did you ever determine what the connection was?” Melissa asked, prodding him out of his thoughts.
“No,” he half-lied. “Once again, there wasn’t enough information. None of the victims shared any characteristics: physical, emotional, habitual, or otherwise.”
The detective said nothing, but her mouth pinched with disappointment.
“Did you ever determine what it was Kane was doing to them?” she asked. “I don’t recall hearing about the ritualistic stuff you described, other than the reconstructed corpses—the amalgamates.”
Frank didn’t respond right away, and when he did, he voiced the thought that had seized him the moment Melissa identified herself at the door. “This isn’t about an ordinary disappearance, is it, Detective? Judge Anderson is dead, isn’t he? He’s dead, and you’ve found something linking him to Kane. What was it? The double-K marking?”
She shook her head in protest. “Why would you think he’s dead?”
“Because I’ve feared this would happen,” he answered. “I’ve dreaded it for years. Recently, I thought I’d convinced myself I was just being paranoid, but when you came to the door I just knew.” Frank’s guilt seethed in him like a great furnace ready to explode. After all this time, his writing had finally served to educate the public of the danger still loose in the world. Now the Killer had taken the life of a man who’d wanted his help, and the weight of responsibility pressed even harder on his shoulders.
He wondered how the detective was interpreting what he’d told her. He’d seen her glance about the room during the breaks in their conversation, no doubt pondering the possibility that he might be the object of her pursuit. She hadn’t yet asked for his whereabouts during the time Judge Anderson had gone missing, but he suspected it was on her mind.
Melissa opened her mouth, maybe to ask that exact question, when five electronic beeps cut her off. She reached to her waist, for a pager clipped to her belt. “I’m afraid I
have to go,” she said after checking the message. “I’d like to talk more about this if it’s possible. May I stop by tomorrow sometime?”
Frank nodded and stood up. “All of my reports concerning Kane are on file downtown; the rest is simply an old man’s opinion. Still, I’d be happy to help you any way I can, Detective. Lord knows I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
He walked her to the door, unable to look her in the eyes after his last comment. She supplied him with one of her business cards, adding her home phone number to the back of it. He closed the door behind her.
After reengaging the locks, Frank slumped with his back to the entry and rubbed one hand over his face, feeling the scratch of thick stubble.
Although they’d only known one another for less than an hour, he couldn’t help but worry for Melissa. She’d already trod on dangerous ground without even knowing it, and her job would no doubt take her down the path of danger again before an end to the killings came within sight. He cursed himself for not having the courage to tell her the complete truth about Kane, even though he knew she wouldn’t believe him.
Like it or not, he was on his own.
He clenched his right hand into a fist and slammed it against the wall. Pushing away from the front door, he crossed the living room and went to the smaller of the condo’s two bedrooms. Full bookcases lined the walls, skirted by columns of other books stacked on the floor. Towers of boxes containing copies of past case files from around the country blocked the room’s only window. His computer desk sat in the far corner, flanked by a six-foot high filing cabinet and a cherry wood armoire.
Here the walls were lost under a collage of old documents: statement reports and crime scene photos from the original Kane disappearances; pictures from the Stillwater basement and cellar; lab analysis forms; blood work results; pictograph comparisons; maps of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas.