by Craig Hurren
The Killing Code
The Killing Code
By
Craig Hurren
Copyright © 2013, Craig Hurren
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Dedication:
This novel is dedicated to my family.
Thank you for your love and support.
acknowledgements
I sincerely thank my close friends, Dennis Jamison, U.S. Army helicopter pilot (CW4 retired) and CIA Operations Officer (retired), David R. (DMFF) Fouts (Former US Marine and private military contractor), and Karl Osborn (Computer guru) for their expert technical advice. Thank you to Colin Murray and Chris Holifield of Writers’ Services UK for their professional editorial services. I also thank Randy Tinsley, Tim Young, Tom Dragoo, Bob Finch, my parents Geoffrey and Rita Hurren, and my beloved wife Robyn for their helpful input and assistance.
Chapter 1
Dr. Helen Benson stood quietly but impatiently in the modern chic elevator, waiting to reach her floor in the luxurious Eleanor building. She had been at an international psychotropic pharmaceutical seminar in Washington for the past two days and was excited to reunite with her husband, Jim and her two daughters, Bethany and Crystal. Busy imagining the adoring faces of her darling little girls and the embrace of her loving husband as she opened the door and they came rushing to greet her, she hadn’t paid much attention to the strange looking little man with piercing eyes standing behind her. Now though, she could feel those eyes on her, and her mind wandered to thoughts of him. He was in the elevator before she entered so she assumed he must have come from one of the parking levels below the ground floor but couldn’t remember having seen him in the building before.
Helen and her family had been living in ‘The Eleanor’ since they bought their comfortable, modern, four bedroom condominium eighteen months earlier and despite the grand size of the building, and the fact that it contained ninety six apartments, she was familiar with many of the occupants. It wouldn’t be unusual for a guest to be riding unaccompanied in the elevator, since the modern security system enabled occupants to allow entry to visitors via a camera-phone and remote access system but she couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy at his presence. Despite her tickling intuition, Helen admonished herself for being mildly paranoid and tried to put it out of her mind.
As the floor numbers flowed steadily and quietly past on the LED display beside the elevator doors, the anticipation of seeing her family was renewed. She longed for details of the last two days. She wanted to ask Bethany about her new school, and talk to Crystal about her friends in kindergarten. Essentially, she just wanted her much needed dose of family time after the seemingly endless, dry hours of lectures, display booths, and scientific chatter that had been her time at the convention center in D.C.
Just as the display passed through floor ten and Helen was deep in thoughts of her family, she felt a slight prick in the skin of her neck, near the base of her skull. Before her mind could properly process what had happened, the small, sharp featured man’s hand darted out toward the twelfth floor button and the elevator came to a smooth stop as Helen rubbed her neck with a puzzled look on her face. The man exited the car and as the doors began to close, Helen wondered if the mild pinch in her neck had come from him. With his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat, he turned and glared straight into her eyes.
“Goodnight Dr. Benson - sleep well.” he said, in what felt to Helen like a menacing tone, then he turned and paced briskly down the hall as the elevator doors met and he was lost from her view.
“What on earth was that?” Helen wondered aloud.
The pain was not at all intense and had quickly subsided to nothing more than a tingle but she felt confused by her thoughts on the origin of the pain and her interpretation of the man’s intent. Could it really have been something he’d done to her or was it just an insect bite or perhaps a phantom pain from a pinched nerve? Her medical training and experience had taught her over many years that the human body and mind were capable of playing all sorts of tricks so perhaps this was one. There was no reason to suspect that a man in her safe, up-market residential building, particularly one who knew her by name, would do anything to hurt her so she wondered why suspicion had been her initial reaction? She also questioned how terse the man’s voice had actually been. Her better nature was telling her that she must have misheard his tone – he had an accent so maybe he wasn’t a native English speaker and his slightly inappropriate intonation was purely unintentional.
“There must be a logical explanation for the whole scenario.” she thought. “Too much time away from home has got you imagining things Helen!” Her brow formed a frown, “Then again, why did he wait to select his floor until the elevator had almost reached it instead of when he first entered?”
Helen’s logical mind once again gave way to anticipation and she decided to push such thoughts out and get on with the much more pleasant business of coming home to her family. As the elevator drew to a halt on the fourteenth floor she waited for the doors to open and walked purposefully toward the door of her family’s condominium.
The welcome and familiar brass numbers, 1404 entered her field of vision and she pulled excitedly at the keys in her bag. In one quick movement, she reached for the lock and inserted her key. The bolt slid open with a familiar clunk so she pushed the heavy security door and breezed through the opening. As if on cue, her girls looked up simultaneously from their coloring books and with squeals of delight, ran toward their mother in flurry of excitement and giggles.
Bethany, the eldest, was first to reach her destination; half running and half jumping into her mother’s arms. Helen hugged her tightly and began smothering her head with kisses as Crystal followed closely on her sister’s heels, colliding lovingly into her mother’s side and melting into the warm three-way embrace. Helen gripped Bethany with her left arm as her right hand dropped down to the middle of crystal’s back and she bent to kiss her youngest daughter’s sweet little face.
“How are my angels?” Helen gushed. “Have you been good girls for Daddy while I was away?”
“More like little monkeys!” Jim Benson interjected playfully. “I’m only kidding girls. They’ve been very helpful and well behaved; even made me breakfast one day… and once was more than enough!” he teased. “How was the conference honey?”
“Oh, I don’t think you really want to know about the conference.”
“Nope, you got that right!” shaking his head dramatically. “I’m just glad you’re home safe.”
Jim’s eyes were locked on those of his wife as he strode toward his tightly huddled family. He and Helen had been married for over ten years and their love for each other had only grown deeper and more respectful during that time. They had been in college together when they met and though they courted for a year and a half before Jim proposed and they waited a further two years before they married, they had always known their futures would be inextricably entwined.
Jim was a successful nanotech engineer at a private company with connections to M.I.T. when Helen became pregnant with Bethany, and with her career in psychiatric pharmaceuticals taking off, they mutually agreed that he would be a stay
at home dad. Jim was overjoyed with the decision as it would enable him to spend as much time as possible with the children while allowing him to focus more on his own design research than he could while he was in a formal job.
Jim reached his wife and two daughters, and the grand hug was complete. They held their embrace for a moment, only letting go to look into each other’s eyes. As the excitement subsided, Jim asked his wife, “Are you hungry honey or did you eat on the plane?”
“Eat on the plane – really? I wanted to make it home alive, thank you!”
“Oh come on honey, it can’t be all that bad, can it?”
“Well, it can and it was! One bite was all I could bear. I’m starving and I need a shower.”
“OK, I’ve got the makings of a nice chef’s salad waiting for you so go and get comfortable while I put it together.”
Helen started toward their bedroom but found that she had developed a limp from the excess weight that was daughter number two. She had attached herself to her mother’s left leg like a limpet and showed no signs of letting go.
“Come on now Crystal, let Mommy put her things away and have a shower then I’ll be back out to see you soon.” she said gently.
Crystal’s grip released and she pouted dramatically as Helen towed her wheeled case behind her down the hall. Once in the bedroom, she decided that unpacking could wait and headed straight into the en suite bathroom for a well deserved shower. As the warm water pulsed on her head and neck, she felt a wave of relief and relaxation from being safely at home with her family. She loved her cutting edge work in psychiatric pharmaceuticals and neuro-hormones at Blue Sky Biotech but she had always tried to maintain as much balance in her life as possible so any conferences that went for longer than a day were an annoyance.
Helen finished her shower, dried herself and sat on the edge of the bed in her bathrobe. She suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired and despite her hunger and knowing that Jim was busily preparing a delicious meal for her, she felt strongly compelled to lie down.
“I’ll just have a ten minute lie down…” she thought as she moved up the bed to lay her head on her pillow. “…and by the time Jim’s got the salad ready, I’ll be fine.”
Despite her best intentions, Helen fell into a deep sleep and within a few minutes, Jim came in to check on her. He knew she would be exhausted but obviously she was much more so than he had expected so he decided it would be best to leave her to sleep. He went back into the dining room, took Helen’s salad to the fridge then explained to the girls so they wouldn’t disturb their mother while she rested.
Helen woke with a start just over an hour after she’d drifted off, and anxiously peered at the bedside clock.
“Damn!” she admonished herself. “The girls will be asleep already and Jim’s salad will be wilted.”
She was disappointed that she’d fallen asleep before spending as much time with her family as they all needed. She secured the knot in her bathrobe, turned the doorknob and went to apologize to her husband but entering the hallway, she noticed that everything was quiet - too quiet for this time of night. White noise emanated from the television in the living room down the hall, coming from a station that must have finished broadcasting for the night but that didn’t make sense since it was still early in the evening.
Helen stepped slowly and deliberately so as not to disturb the girls in their rooms as she made her way in the darkness to the living room to talk to Jim. She could see the snow on the television screen and began to wonder if she had misread the clock on her bedside table. Standing at the back of the main sofa where Jim would often stretch out to watch TV, she thought he must have dozed off since there was nothing on this particular channel and he hadn’t bothered to change it. She leaned forward and gently put her left hand on Jim’s right shoulder; partly to wake him and partly to hold her weight as she reached with her free hand for the remote to turn off the TV. Strangely there was no response from Jim so before she turned off the TV, which would have extinguished the only light in the room, she gave him a little shake. He still didn’t respond so she reached higher to stroke his hair and felt a strange, warm wetness covering his head. Helen stood to look at her hand and a sudden wave of adrenalin swept through her body. Her hand began to shake uncontrollably as she realized it was coated in thick, dark blood. She felt a scream welling up inside her but her throat clamped shut and refused to allow it to come forth. She immediately leaned over to shake Jim hard as her logical mind tried to fight the fear, shock, and disbelief. Her constricted voice box squeezed out his name as she shook him but he still didn’t respond. Her mind was darting from thought to thought, unable to focus on any. Desperately searching for a pulse at Jim’s carotid artery, she realized that he was gone and reeled back in horror. Despite Helen’s intellect, she could not gather her thoughts to process the situation. Disbelief was giving way to shock and confusion as she turned to face the dining room, where a terrible new vision lay before her. Suddenly, viciously, and overwhelmingly, the scene now took over her thoughts and dictated her actions.
Her eyes took a brief moment to focus through her tears and her mind followed closely behind as stark realization hit her like a baseball bat. Her beautiful daughters were at the dining table sobbing quietly, their eyes brimming with fear. Bethany was alone on a chair beside her little sister, who was held tightly on the lap of a mad man. Helen immediately recognized the face of Bryan Adler and she knew with fatal realization, the tragedy that had befallen her family and the fate that awaited her.
Bryan Adler had been a patient of Helen’s while she was working at a government facility in West Virginia, which housed some of the country’s most dangerous criminally insane inmates. Bryan wasn’t the average psychopath; he was an utter monster, bred and created by the purest of evil and the worst case she had ever seen. Her sadness for his victims was enough to shake her faith in anything, yet she also pitied him for his own suffering and that pity had been unsettling.
Before her first session with him, Helen had pored over Bryan’s file for many hours examining his family history, home life, eventual foster care, and other relevant details, before finally moving on to his crimes. They were shocking, horrific events that had brought enormous notoriety to his case throughout the country. He had been dubbed, “The Orphan Maker” by the press; an appallingly dark moniker that Helen found repulsive in its diminution of his ghastly acts.
She knew Bryan Adler’s motives and desires, and she knew the outcome was inevitable but she could understand neither how he could have escaped from the maximum security mental facility where he had been held all these years nor how he had found her home and gained access. He had been on long term injected sedation and a cocktail of anti-psychotic drugs for his entire incarceration so she couldn’t understand how he was able to overcome not only the effects of the drugs but the security measures of possibly the most secure psychiatric institution in the country.
It didn’t matter now anyway. He ordered Helen to sit in the empty chair opposite and she complied. She was all too familiar with his modus operandi and as he held the girls close to him, his signature drone began. Bethany had been gagged and her hands were bound in front of her since she was older and possibly capable of running from him. Crystal had the look of shock with which Helen was so familiar, from observing child victims of psychological trauma.
“Had they been forced to watch their father die?” she wondered fearfully. “Will they ever recover from this trauma?”
Her thoughts were completely detached from her own personal peril and she was only concerned that Bryan would leave her babies unharmed as he had always done with the children in his previous crimes. She was certain that this was an essential component of his psychosis so she steeled herself to follow his instructions without hesitation even though it meant her own death and a life without real parents for her daughters.
Helen knew Bryan could see the resignation in her eyes, just as she had always felt he could see her inner thought
s in their therapy sessions. A few minutes later, he stood slowly but purposefully, holding Crystal in his left arm, stepped to Helen’s chair. He handed her a sharp knife and calmly returned to his seat.
“You know what must be done Dr. Benson.”
“Please don’t hurt my babies.” was all Helen could muster.
She gazed lovingly into her daughters’ eyes for a moment then looked down at the soft skin of her left forearm as tears clouded her vision.
“Mommy loves you my darlings. Take care of your little sister Bethany.”
With that, Helen drew the knife diagonally across her forearm with the precision of a trained medical doctor and the blood came forth. It flowed faster than expected and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she would go into shock. The coldness would come over her in a wave, then it would wane, then she would become sleepy and weak, eventually lapsing into unconsciousness and finally, death would come.
Helen looked up into the eyes of her children, who were now sobbing uncontrollably. She wanted so desperately to comfort them and shield them from this violence and pain but she was already feeling the waves of shock come over her body. Blood was quickly pooling on the carpet beneath her chair and as she became more and more drowsy, her daughters and Bryan Adler strangely began to fade from view. As she looked on in confusion, it became evident that there would soon be only vacant chairs and she couldn’t understand what her eyes were telling her. With one final burst of strength, Helen tried to lunge toward the rapidly disappearing image of her girls but she and her chair toppled to the floor. Frantically searching for the sight of her children, her field of vision began darkening into an ever shrinking circle and she vaguely sensed strong hands tugging at her body, and a powerful pressure on her injured arm. She imagined she could hear the panicked voice of her husband Jim but how could that be.