The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1)

by Chris O'Neill

  She stopped, angry with herself that she had let this slip.

  “The ribbons? Do you…see things when you hunt people, Lara?”

  “Yes…” she admitted. She hadn’t been able to tell the therapists at the trauma center, afraid they would diagnose her as delusional, possibly psychotic and then gently lock her in a padded room forever where the cursed gift she had been given could help no one ever again. Somehow, she had let it slip to this man. Perhaps because he might understand. She had often wondered if the people the ribbons led her to could see them from their side.

  “Fascinating,” he pondered. “And what do you see now you’re hunting me?”

  “Nothing. You’re faceless. Why do you kill the young men? The backpackers. Did they get in your way?”

  “Ah, so you’ve been reading about me. I am impressed. There are worse things that can happen to young men than death…”

  Again, he had revealed an old and secret pain. He had suffered some kind of abuse in his past. As in many cases, the abuser had been abused. Sometimes it meant there was still a part of them that could be reached, a part that was sympathetic to the suffering they inflicted on others if they were reminded of their own. But it could also enrage them further and be a stress trigger. It was dangerous to play in this part of their mind and Lara usually avoided it.

  “Why did you want the girls so badly, Luc?”

  “To answer a simple question.”

  “What question?”

  “Can Angels survive Hell? I… need to know that.”

  “You don’t have to punish these girls because of what happened to you, Luc. There are people who can help you.”

  The line was silent. She wondered if he’d hung up or if he was genuinely considering the fact somebody could help him.

  “The Angels will save me,” he said. There was something buried so deeply in those words, a secret she could not begin to fathom but understood the depth of its meaning, the importance of which implied he would never ever deviate from the path upon which he was set. She knew then the only way to stop this man would be to kill him.

  “Keep walking,” he ordered.

  Lara approached the archway of the bridge, her eyes scanning the shadows. It was hard to see down here with the light changing and readjusting constantly. She walked closer, trying to see through the rain and looked up to see if Brouchard or the two Tactical Team members were watching. A pleasure boat was drifting under the bridge, churning up white foam in its wake, the constant thump of the engine growing louder, the noise reaching near deafening levels as it reverberated off the walls. She could see the Eiffel Tower in the near distance, its lights glowing in the rain lashed sky, a halo around the pyramid. She kept going, deciding the faster she got there, the faster this could all be over.

  “They say the rain is angels weeping,” Guillotine said as he stepped out of the shadows ahead of her. She stopped in shock. His face. The scars. She was so distracted trying to make sense of it all in that brief moment that she had already given him the edge he needed.

  “You look like an angel, Lara,” he smiled. Then he rammed the knife in to her chest.

  “Weep for me…”

  He pulled the knife back, saw the blade was broken from where the body armor had deflected it. She grabbed his wrist between both hands, slamming the broken knife from his grasp to clatter across the cement. He kicked her in the knee, knocking her off balance and she went down on one side, a hand out to the ground to stop her falling over completely. He slammed his fist down in to the back of her neck, pushing her down further. Lara threw a well aimed fist in to his chest, driving the air out of him and making him double over in reflex, allowing her to launch herself up off her knees and slam her head in to his face. He stumbled back. She moved on him, throwing a right hook. He recovered quickly. She was surprised how nimble he was, how fast. She didn’t see the first punch coming. It connected with her ear, deafening and disorienting her. The second blow came to her jaw and she could feel her legs give out from under her. She wanted to keep fighting, was still under the impression she was in the fight at all. The third blow shut her down completely and she fell heavily on the walkway, her head connecting with the concrete just as her brain stopped all her motor functions and forced her in to unconsciousness. Guillotine rolled her in to the river, kicked the broken knife blade in after her and walked away.

  She felt herself floating. She saw Janelle’s face, forming out of the dark water. The world was deafeningly silent here, inky black and very cold. She felt powerless. Janelle was smiling. Reassuring. Another body floated out of the dark towards her. It was the daughter from San Gabriel. Her face was torn apart, her throat exposed and one eye gone from where the hard nosed round had exploded inside her face. She had failed Janelle and failed herself, breaking the promise she had made to her so long ago at their parents funeral. She had told Janelle she would always protect her. That she would always be there for her. All they had was each other. Now, Janelle would be on her own and would die knowing her sister never came for her.

  Lara McBride saw a black ribbon wrap itself around Janelle’s face, go tight and violently pull her back in to the dark, her hands reaching out for help that would never come, leaving Lara to float in the endless black ink with nothing to do but die.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When he came out of the café a half hour later, Guillotine was intent on returning to his work garage where he kept the van when he was in the city, but the sight of emergency vehicle lights flashing off the stone walls on the far banks of the river made him cross the street instead to investigate. A small crowd had gathered on this side to watch, curiously looking out across the water to the ambulance and Police cars. The rain had stopped but the streets and pavement were slick, the air crisp with a frosty bite beneath, providing perfect visibility, as though the night itself had taken some kind of clarity enhancing drug. He felt a chill of anger in his stomach as he saw the Paramedics on the Quayside. He knew then somehow Lara had survived and suddenly he was afraid again, thrown back through time and space to those days in the barn, quivering in the dark, helpless and trembling with fear, left to deal with it all alone. He dared not turn his head from the scene as he could feel his Aunts’ eyes on him, knew they were stood behind him, wearing the funeral veils and hats, watching, judging, destroying him one piece at a time. He felt their rotting breath burn over his ears like flames, filling him with shame for his failure.

  Paramedics and Police officers busily fluttered at the scene like moths. He focused on them, hoping the hot breath on his ears and the feeling of eyes boring through his skull would dissipate quicker if he concentrated hard enough on something else. A stretcher was being loaded in to the back of an ambulance. Police cars blocked access at both ends of the Quayside. Lara was on the stretcher, an oxygen mask on her face. The water in the river was so cold it may have given her a slight chance to survive, but that would depend how long she was under and if she had stopped breathing. If she had drowned and been revived, along with the seriousness of the blows he had inflicted, she might suffer brain damage and would never be able to communicate what had happened. Or, more importantly, identify him.

  But these were all theories and he needed facts- now, immediately- something to decide on his next course of action. He could run for the barn, hope she had not been able to disclose any details about him or give enough to a Police sketch artist to provide a picture that would blanket the news. His face, of course, was easily identifiable to the few people who knew him. Claude, in particular, would see it and call him immediately, then probably call the Police and use the whole thing for publicity for his gallery. All the dominoes would fall and his Masterpiece would remain unfinished and that would just not do. It would not do at all. No. He was not a failure, but he could sense himself doubting what he had done- he had tempted fate and been caught out, leaving him with the consequences of having to deal with his Aunts’ retribution. He would prove them wrong, though. He would finis
h the job. No matter what it took.

  The Paramedics secured Lara inside the ambulance, quickly closed the doors and took off, the lights spilling off the river’s calm and glassy surface. It raced up the access ramp to the main boulevard and disappeared in to the city. The Police remained, taking statements from passersby. He saw two men in Ponchos and a third man in an overcoat who looked to be in charge.

  He would have to go to the hospital then. He hated unfinished work. He usually burnt the things he didn’t finish, purifying the failure through fire, the way he purified his own flesh with pain. Fire. Yes. He would bring lighter fluid and matches to the hospital ward and set her alight, let her incandescent brilliance burn up in the night like a human candle. Perfect. From what he had read, Detective Lara McBride deserved a spectacular death at the hands of somebody who appreciated her work and perhaps he had been too dismissive of her by the river and that was why Fate had stepped in and saved her life- to give him a second chance to take it properly. He cursed himself for indulging his silly desire to get up close with her, toy with her and have some fun. He should have had more respect and reverence. She was, after all, a very gifted and driven woman and he had ambushed her like a coward. The price for indulgence was steep.

  “I know what to do,” he snapped at his Aunts as he walked away, not waiting for them to respond. A couple of onlookers watching the scene across the river looked at him curiously. He hurried down the boulevard, trying to think to which hospital they would take her. He ran across the street, through the traffic, moved quickly down a backstreet then broke in to a full sprint. He darted over the cobbled streets, hooking left, driving right, over a low wall and on again until he reached the storage garage.

  As he caught his breath, he unlocked the enormous padlock on the chain securing the outer door and stepped inside. He turned on the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling and clicked on the floor heaters. It was always cold in here because there was only one small window in the back, which he had painted black many years ago when he had first found the place. The little window was not enough to let in the sunlight, which suited Guillotine’s purposes just fine. He did not want anyone to see his private hideaway in the city. The building was old, stone, been there for hundreds of years. It had been a workhouse of some kind with high ceilings, abandoned for some time, then converted in to two storage garages. Guillotine had rented them both- he didn’t want neighbors- and then opened the sliding door that separated the two units, opening up a space so large it doubled as a workshop as well as a place to stay when he was too tired to make the drive out to the farm. If he had found an Angel and laid her down to sleep in the van too close to daybreak, he would use the garage to wait until dark instead of risking a run to the farmhouse in the sunlight.

  He had a cheap wooden closet against the wall where he kept clothes in suit bags, fresh and clean and ready for him any time he needed to change. A cot bed was set against the wall next to one of the floor heaters, a small refrigerator on the floor where he kept chilled water and some supplies and a bedside table with a lamp sat on top of it, giving the place a semblance of humanity. Cozy, really. An easel, paints, brushes, a large work table and a stereo provided all the tools in here that he could ever need to disappear in to his work. The white van sat parked off to the right. His trusty chariot, invisible in urban traffic.

  He opened a large wooden toolbox on the work table. It was his treasure chest. Knives, a cheese wire, and a surgical scalpel kit he had paid cash for at a medical supply store. That was where he also acquired the syringes and sedatives with a fake physician’s ID he had stolen from a hospital emergency ward one winter’s night. There was also a pistol wrapped in oilcloth, an automatic Beretta nine millimeter. He rarely had any use for it and he kept it more for the sentimental value of how he had acquired it.

  He had inherited the gun from a young man in his early twenties, whom he had met in the Pigalle district one night. They had been drinking wine, which the boy had stolen from a nearby shop. The boy had bright blue eyes, long dirty blonde hair and a smile that could have broken heaven itself. He was living rough on the streets, trying to survive any way he could and Guillotine had met him purely by chance as he had turned a corner and the boy had asked if he wanted some company. Guillotine had been struck by the boy, visually he was a work of art, and so he had accepted the boy’s offer and handed him fifty Euros.

  They sat in the cemetery behind an old church whose stones had turned black from the dirt and filth of the years it had weathered, much like Guillotine’s soul. The boy had become confused when Guillotine stopped him from making sexual advances, assuring him that all he really wanted was simply company. He told him that he didn’t often get to enjoy conversation with people due to his disfigurement. The boy relaxed, seemed much more at ease now he did not have to perform physically and they had talked until the early hours, sharing stories of their childhoods over that delicious bottle of stolen wine.

  Guillotine had told him things he had never told anyone, finding himself helplessly gushing out a tearful confession about his Aunts, Madeleine and Marie, how they drove him to do such terrible things. How, when they brought him home to the farmhouse from his mother’s funeral, they had told him he was their ward now. That they had to see to his upbringing now “that whore of a mother” was gone and left this dark chaos in her wake, he was their problem. Bastard child of an unwed woman and a German man. A German. Such a betrayal, after what they did to Paris in the war. He was a reminder of what a disgrace she was to the family. He was the result of a disgusting union between a French whore and a German monster, nothing more than an abomination. An animal. Deciding so, they sent him out of the farmhouse and walked him to the barn, where he was to live with the other animals. He could eat what they threw in the trough for the pigs, living off what they left behind.

  He had cried hot tears as he told the boy about the priest at the church in the village near the farmhouse. Father Varrick. How his Aunts had taken him there and left him to have “the devil cast out of his body”. Father Varrick had spoken in low, soothing tones as he “purified” him on the altar in the empty church with the doors locked and nobody to hear him cry, just like in the barn. He had focused on the huge painting on the wall behind the altar as the Priest went about his holy instruction, clearing the Devil from him through pain. That painting had him transfixed. It was so beautiful, so beguiling, so real. It came alive, rippling before his eyes and welcomed him inside to play. It depicted heaven, clouds and soft bright lights, smiles and happiness. Angels and light and love and beauty in the top half, then a mirror image of hell, demons torturing the suffering lost souls and the damned, who, looking up, desperately wanted to be in the light. He could sympathize with them, knew exactly how they felt. He wanted to be with the angels, up there where it was safe and bright and he wondered how the Angels would fare in the darkness of the pits. Could that light survive down there? Could it bring order to chaos, peace to suffering. He wanted to believe so. They brought him to the Priest for “purification” every week. The Devil, according Father Varrick, had a strong hold on the boy.

  He had used the cheese wire on the boy as he slipped in to a wine fuelled sleep, gently easing it around his neck from behind and squeezing tight as tears bled out of his eyes and fell on the boy’s forehead. He remembered living in the dirt in the barn and squeezed harder, feeling the boy’s windpipe pop like biting in to an apple. He felt his muscles tighten to their very limit and felt all the pain of the first time he stood before the cracked mirror on the wall by the stables and took his dead father’s straight razor and began to cut his face, reveling in the pain of true failure, destroying himself his way before they could do it their way. Guillotine dropped the boy in front of a gravestone that nobody could read anymore. He searched his pockets and found the gun, wrapped in the oil cloth. The boy couldn’t have been more than twenty one and was already selling himself for sexual favors and debasing himself. It was time he was sweetly eased from t
he world before more pain and humiliation could find him. He cried for the boy, wishing there was something more he could have done, but knew this was the best thing for him and he cursed the world for the way it greedily ate up the innocent with an insatiable hunger. He had given the boy peace. The gun made for a souvenir of the destruction of the innocent, proof that there were, sadly, others like him in the world but that there was a blissful end to all the pain. He just had to find his.

  He wondered what souvenir he would take from Lara McBride.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lara sat on the front row of the main room in the funeral home. Her parents lay still and frozen in the open caskets on display before her. Family and friends were cycling through the room, paying their respects, offering condolences, everyone saying how sorry they were. Lara was sorry, too, but after the fifteenth time of hearing the same epithets, sincere as they might be, she had become numb to it. She wondered why people said these things. She wondered where all this sincerity had been before her parents had been murdered and why it took such a harrowing obscenity to the world to bring these people together. Half the family had never bothered with her or little Janelle, sat beside her now, swinging her legs, holding a little crocodile plush toy with a yellow t-sirt that said “smile”. She called the crocodile “Fred” and never slept without him these days. Funny kid, so sweet and with such a big heart, she seemed to have amazing sympathy for the things in the world that others dismissed. She seemed to think about how their feelings would be hurt, how lonely they must be and that they needed somebody to love them and she would be that person. She really was an angel.