64
For Mason, it was something that didn’t even require thought. If the people he loved were in any kind of danger, he would do anything to help them. And as the voice in the walls guided him to a door of metal wire, he had to ask himself… what would he have to do?
‘You’ll see a door in front of you,’ Shaun Chambers said, still hiding behind the nickname of Anarchy. ‘Only I can buzz you through, so you need to follow my instructions to the letter. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ And I hope you’re at the end of all this so I can wring your goddamn neck.
A buzzer rang, followed by what sounded like an automatic lock. Mason tried pushing it, and was relieved to see that it swung open easily. He followed the narrow corridor to the next room, where a video camera was set up on the centre table. There was rich décor here, but it had mostly been replaced by the prison-like theme that was set up for him.
‘Four minutes left,’ Anarchy told him, inflicting yet more pressure and an unnecessary reminder that there was a bomb in the building. ‘Are you ready for your first test?’
Mason’s mind was still on the bomb. Even if he could make it there – and on time, too – what would he do? He had no experience with explosives – wouldn’t even know where to start, and would probably be too scared if he did. ‘I’m ready,’ he lied.
‘In front of you is a video camera. All you have to do to access the next room is sit in front of it, hit record, and then confess… to murdering Marion and Bianca Healy.’
‘You’re insane!’ Mason wondered what he would use the footage for. Would Cox understand that he had been forced to confess in order to save his family? Would the FBI have a say in what happened to him if he got out of there alive?
‘Fuck you! Just get on with it. You have a little over three minutes left.’
Mason hurried over to the camera, reached around to turn it on and lowered his face into the shot. ‘My name is Mason Black,’ he began, tripping over his own rapid flow of words. ‘I’m a PI and I used to be a cop. It’s…’ He looked around for something that might help him. There was nothing. ‘I hereby confess to murdering both Marion Healy and Bianca Healy. I did it. I killed them both.’
The door beside him buzzed, and Mason ran through it. Whatever he had just done would be used against him, and he knew it, but he’d had no choice. And if that was only the start of his tests… what else was to come?
65
Since Mason had disappeared into the building, Captain Leanne Cox of the SFPD was left feeling helpless with her team. There was obviously a camera on them, but where it was and how much it could see was hard to tell.
Cox shuffled back to the police team. ‘You guys stay put. I’m going to take a look around, see if I can’t find another way in.’ She looked up at the manor, her attention drawn to the balcony that ran along the outside. It was difficult to see anything through the lights, but maybe that was a good place to start.
‘You want me to come with you, Cap?’ said one of the policemen, clutching his pistol.
‘No. We’re being watched. There’s less chance of being spotted if only one of us leaves.’
Cox moved through the crowd of men and ducked into the trees. From there, she ran around with the gun in her hand, keeping an eye on the manor. She was relieved to see that the floodlights didn’t extend to the sides or back of the building, and that the balcony covered the entirety of the house. If she was lucky, it could have been a way in.
Checking around her, she dashed out from the cover of the trees and sprinted toward the building, ready to fire at anyone if she absolutely had to. Once there, she used the drainpipe and window ledges to gain access to the balcony.
Cox nearly slipped, more than once, but steadily regained her balance. Looking down, the fall from this height wouldn’t kill her – it would hurt her significantly, maybe turn her into a vegetable (which was worse, in her opinion).
When her feet were firmly on the stone balcony, she peered into the window, where a large bed covered most of the room. She tried the door, and thankfully, it clicked open quietly. Whoever had lived here before Anarchy had set it up like a twisted training mission had been careless… Cox would thank them if she ever got the chance.
As soon as she was inside, the cables on the floor were the first things she noticed. They were thick, came bundled with five more of similar kinds, and led out of the room. It was as if they powered a large machine, by the looks of things.
Then, Captain Cox noticed the low, relaxed voice from another room.
‘You have a little over three minutes left.’ It was a man’s voice.
Three minutes until what? Cox wondered, creeping across the creaking floorboards. Her hands were shaking. It had been years since she’d been in a real combat situation, and she wasn’t sure that she was ready. Not that it would stop her.
Slipping the safety off the gun, she tiptoed out of the room and followed the voice.
Careful now, she told herself, and prayed that she wouldn’t get caught.
66
The next room was as bare as the last, but offered a certain sickening suggestion.
There was nothing between the four walls (well, three walls and another security door) other than a knee-high wooden table. Atop the table was a large carving knife, glimmering threateningly under the chandelier.
I dread to think what he wants me to do with this.
Mason swallowed a large, dry gulp and moved cautiously toward the table. Ever paranoid, he kept checking behind him for some sort of attack. In reality, an assault would have been a pleasant relief compared to what was about to happen.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘In front of you is the only tool you’ll need to honour the elusive Lullaby Killer. All you have to do is remove your pinkie finger, and you’ll be granted immediate access to the next room.’
Mason spun around, looking for the camera through which he must have been watched. ‘This is a joke, right? You can’t honestly expect me to…’ It occurred to him then, something that Anarchy had said. What was it? The elusive Lullaby Killer. Whatever Shaun Chambers thought he knew, he was totally clueless to what had really happened to Marvin Wendell, and that ruled out the possibility of this being about vengeance.
‘I’m completely serious, Mr Black, and I would expect you to be as well. The clock is ticking. Two minutes.’
Mason could see Diane’s face in his mind’s eye, smiling at him lovingly before she kissed him. Then there was Amy, who had already been through far too much. And now to die before she ever really got a chance to live? Bill was in there too, he knew, and he had always been a loyal friend. Mason made his decision; he would not allow these people to die.
Hand shaking, he picked up the carving knife, placed his empty hand upon the table and spread his fingers. Closing his eyes now, Mason convinced himself that they were worth the loss of one small finger.
67
The cables led to another room, and Captain Cox sneaked toward it. Floorboards creaking below her small feet, she peered around the doorframe and saw exactly what she had hoped she would.
A man – who she suspected to be none other than Anarchy himself – sat at a range of monitors. His back was to the door and he obviously hadn’t heard her. Distracted by his disturbing little project, he sipped from a mug and spoke into a microphone.
‘All you have to do is remove your pinkie finger…’ he said.
What? Cox stood stunned, realising that he had been talking to Mason via a range of speakers. Whatever was going on here, it looked like he was putting Mason through a test, and she wouldn’t accept that.
Cox closed her eyes, counted to three, and burst into the room with her gun trained on Anarchy. ‘SFPD! Don’t you move!’ she screamed, nervousness creeping into her voice.
The man turned his head ever so slightly, revealing his identity. It was Shaun Chambers, the man who looked so much like his picture but seemed somewhat chubbier in real life. ‘
I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’
‘Yeah? Why’s that?’ Cox fiddled with her belt, looking for her cuffs.
‘Because the bomb goes off in two minutes, which should be just enough time to get out of here.’
Cox froze. ‘Bullshit.’
Anarchy smiled. ‘Look at screen three.’
As Cox carelessly turned her head, distracted by her fearful search for evidence of a bomb, Anarchy spun around, bringing something long and metallic down on her arm. She cried out in pain, dropping the gun and clutching her wrist. She had never known pain like it.
Seizing his opportunity, Anarchy sprung from the chair and bolted out of the door. He was lightning-fast – surprisingly so, considering his build.
Captain Cox, her arm in absolute agony, had no time to run for her gun. Knowing that she would be pursuing an unarmed man, it felt wiser to simply take off after him, following him into the corridor until he ran into a room and out of sight.
By the time she reached the doorway, he was tipping something over, blocking her entrance. It was wooden and bulky – a large chest perhaps. But this was the master bedroom, the one she had used to come into the building. If there really was a bomb – and she had every reason to believe there was – her chances of escaping had slimmed considerably.
‘Target is on the east-side balcony,’ she said into her radio, running back to the room she’d found Anarchy in. ‘I repeat: east-side balcony.’
When she entered the room and leaned over the desk, her eyes went blurry with so many screens to look at. She quickly scanned each one until she once again found the one with Mason. He was holding a knife now, and his other hand was on the table in front of him.
What the hell is he doing?
Arm still throbbing, Cox reached for the microphone. She hurriedly fumbled for the switch to turn it on, and prayed that she wasn’t too late.
68
Mason, high on adrenaline, brought the knife down in one swift swipe.
‘Wait!’ the speaker chimed. But the voice had changed from what it had been before – now it was lighter, more familiar, but shockingly urgent.
The blade was a mere inch from Mason’s finger when he stopped it. Something must have been happening behind the scenes, he figured, but wasn’t that too good to be true? Mason, suddenly understanding whose voice was on the speaker, tossed the knife to the corner of the room and went to the nearby security door. ‘What happened, Captain?’
‘There’s no time for that. Listen, there’s a bomb in the–’
‘I know. My family is inside.’ Saying it aloud made it feel all the more real.
‘A team is sweeping the building as we speak. But… Mason, there’s less than a minute on the timer. We have to get out of here.’
Mason shook his head, unsure if she could see him or not. ‘No. I have to get them out.’
‘You have to–’
‘Cap, listen to me. I’m not leaving without my family. The best thing you can do is help me. There’s a security door in here and I need you to open it. Is there some kind of panel where you are?’
There was silence for a moment. Mason could almost hear the ticking of the bomb. Is that what happens with bombs in real life? he wondered. Do they tick? He still had no idea how to disarm the thing, but if he could get everybody to safety in time then he wouldn’t have to tamper with it.
‘Yes,’ Cox said through the speakers. ‘Which one?’
‘Open ‘em all up. Every one of them.’
There was a chain of buzzing sounds as all the doors swung back. Mason ran through as fast as he could, his leg still tender from the explosion at the office. It wouldn’t slow him down, however, for he had his priorities correctly arranged – for once, he was seeing things clearly, even though it was probably too late.
He ran between each room, passing by whatever tests had been laid out for him. There was what looked like an electric chair, some kind of choke chamber, and in the last room, something that turned his blood cold.
All around him, the room had been stripped and put back together, making it look identical to Alison Wendell’s woodland basement. This was where Joshua had died – or it felt that way, anyway. Mason decided then that if Anarchy didn’t hold a personal vendetta, he must have poured a phenomenal amount of effort into researching him.
‘Thirty seconds,’ Cox said, desperate.
Mason shook off the awful nostalgic feeling and reached the final room. Inside was the bomb, which was counting down close to twenty-five seconds. If he was lucky, he would be able to grab his family and take them to the front door, but…
‘They’re not here.’ It felt like he had been struck in the stomach, winded. Beside the bomb, three photographs were laid out: Bill’s ID photo, a picture from Amy’s yearbook, and Diane (whose face must have been trimmed around to cut Mason out of the picture). On the wall behind this display, a message was spray-painted in bright green: Psych!
‘What’s going on, Mason?’
But Mason could barely speak. His mouth had gone totally dry and his legs were trembling now. ‘They’re… It was a bluff. He was bluffing. My family isn’t here.’ He had been completely played, made a fool of. And for what? To kill him? To humiliate him first?
With less than twenty seconds on the clock, Mason turned and ran for the front door. There was no way in hell he would make it, but he had to try. At least if he was going to die, he could do so knowing that he had done everything he could to save his loved ones.
69
There had been no explosion. Mason had made it to the front door, surprisingly to both himself and the team he met in the hallway, escorting him outside in a huge hurry. They’d then made it twenty yards outside – thirty, forty yards, and still no deafening blast of fire.
Mason waited by the van with Captain Cox, who had also found an opportunity to escape the manor. They sat in silence while the bomb disposal team were inside, still awaiting a belated boom.
Even Anarchy, who had been tackled during his run from the building, was now cuffed and standing still outside the only police car. Four officers were guarding him, and although it didn’t quite seem like enough, he had little or no chance of breaking out of there.
A half-hour later, the disposal team came out and gave the thumbs-up. ‘It was a dud,’ the leader said, shaking his head. ‘Nothing but a timer strapped to an empty box.’
‘Wait,’ Mason stepped forward, addressing him directly. ‘Couldn’t it be that the timer was in one place, but the explosive was elsewhere?’ He knew how absurd the suggestion sounded, but couldn’t quite understand why he’d been made to jump through hoops.
‘Afraid not, sir. We swept the whole building, checked every electronic device, and–’
Electronic device. Mason’s attention went to the video recorder, where his confession of the murders had been made. He planned to speak to Captain Cox about this as soon as he could get her alone, but soon realised that he wouldn’t have to. ‘The video recorder could have…’
‘Nope.’ The team leader shook his head. ‘We had a look inside. There was nothing suspicious about it. There wasn’t even a tape inside.’
Mason suddenly felt like he was being attacked by a swarm of bees. Everything was stinging, pricking him, a thousand questions poking around in his mind at once, causing severe pain. No tape? He had only assumed at the time that it was a more modern camera, and was recording digitally. But if there was no tape – and no bomb, for that matter – then he was looking at cold, hard evidence that Anarchy had only wanted to humiliate him… and he had succeeded.
‘You’re weak, Mr Black,’ Anarchy shouted over. Though now, restricted in his cuffs by and guarded by the team who had tackled him, he was little more than Shaun Chambers. ‘You’d confess to something you didn’t do, take your own finger, and God knows what else. For what? A few people who are going to die anyway? This is what he–’
Mason had no more care for this nutjob’s words. He stormed over, passed the office
rs who seemed not to move so much as an inch, and delivered his strongest punch.
Shaun Chambers hit the ground immediately, cupping his own nasal blood in his hands. He looked up from the ground, pitiful and small. There was nothing to him now that he had no power, but he was no less infuriating.
‘You’re garbage, you hear me?’ Mason spat. ‘Absolute fucking garbage. You’re a nobody, and you’re going to jail for a very, very long time.’ He turned back to Captain Cox, who closed her eyes as she nodded approval at his actions.
‘You don’t understand–’
‘No, you don’t understand. This is it for you. Anything you wanted to prove, whatever this little plan of yours was, it’s done. Got it? You’re going to rot behind bars and nobody will even remember your name.’
The FBI were flying in now, and Mason returned to Cox. You don’t understand, Chambers had said, and it was playing on his mind. Anarchy had been stopped and nobody else could get hurt. The ordeal was over…
But then… why didn’t it feel like they had won?
Mason pushed the thought aside, took the cell phone from his pocket and called Diane. He had to hear her voice again, and Amy’s too. If this evening had proven anything, it was that he would give anything for them.
Hell, he almost had.
70
Somewhere in the struggle to understand her own identity, Evie Black was putting together her portfolio. It was in her best interest to find work in her own field – investigative journalism – and she finally realised that now.
While Lynyrd Skynyrd played from her slightly aging iPhone, she hit “recent crime” into Google and watched the results come up. It wasn’t like she needed anything new to write about. This was, after all, only a demonstration of her writing abilities. If she wanted to, she could have even copied out somebody else’s article, but Evie was fortunate enough to enjoy the entire journalistic process.
Mason Black (The Complete Collection): 6 Gripping Crime Stories: The Complete Collection + BONUS Story Page 44