Blind: Killer Instincts

by Sidney Bristol

  The worst of it was her face. He almost couldn’t look at her.

  “Do you know why I took her eyes?” the man whispered.

  Derrick groaned. He was going to be sick.

  “Some people say they’re the window to the soul. You know what I think?” He paused, as if Derrick would answer that. “I think they contain lifetimes of knowledge. We’re all reborn, Derrick. And now, I’m going to free you to live again, and I will take your eyes, so hopefully, next time you become a better person.”

  The man circled him until he stood in front of Derrick, a broken and bloody table leg in his hand.

  The gas station near Simon’s garage. That was it.

  “Your future self will thank me.” He smiled, and it was terrifying.

  Max stared at the two sets of eyes studying him from inside their new glass homes.

  What had he done with the eyes in his previous life?

  He couldn’t remember, and those little details were starting to annoy him. Did he eat the eyes to ingest and absorb the history of those other lives? Did he keep them as trophies? What?

  The souls weren’t going to speak to him now, not since he was so close to their former husks. He sighed and put the two jars into his bag. It was the last thing at every scene he did before leaving. Those souls needed to know they were at rest. They’d found a friend. In him.

  Behind the house, he stripped out of tonight’s clothing and changed into another nondescript set of track pants and a hoodie. He’d burn everything eventually.

  Max took the woman’s keys—Amanda—and left the house the way he came, except this time he wouldn’t be on foot.

  His phone vibrated against his hip, but he didn’t pause to look at it now. No doubt it was Mercy or Black Widow emailing him again. Joker had reached out to him, cautioning him against deviating too far from his path, which was ridiculous coming from him. They hadn’t heard from Red in months after Black Widow moved them to a new server and demanded three weeks of net-silence.

  He drove a mile to the twenty-four hour market in Amanda’s car and picked up his second vehicle. It was a stolen hatchback he picked up a few hours before his date with Amanda and Derrick. He watched that house for months, keeping tabs on everyone who came and went. Installing the hidden cameras made it easier once he was able to hack the neighbor’s Wi-Fi. When he realized how often Amanda and Derrick had their dirty little trysts, he’d known he had to stop them. Emma deserved better. She was so much better than those two.

  Yes, it was deviating from his plan to take them at this point, but it was necessary.

  Max drove the streets, staying a few miles under the speed limit, taking an indirect path across town to where he’d stashed his truck behind a rundown, boarded-up house that had been raided a week before for drugs.

  It was a long trek, but he made it all the way to his truck without being noticed or raising an alarm. Only when he was in his own vehicle did he finally check his phone.

  From: Black Widow

  To: Iron

  Subject: Concerned about you.

  Iron,

  You’re doing great work. I’ve watched all your material with joy. You make TBK proud. I understand your reasoning from deviating from the plan, but I caution you from getting caught up in the moment too much.

  Our mission is to pay homage to those who have come before us.

  Once your job is done, go forth and do your own work. But remember, membership in the club is dependent on carrying out your killer’s murders.

  Think it over. I’m here for you.

  BW

  7.

  J

  acob stared at the two bodies, and his stomach rolled. It had been a long time since he’d lost it at a crime scene, but this was beyond anything he’d ever seen. It stretched from wall to wall on every surface of the kitchen, even the ceiling.

  “This isn’t TBK’s style,” Jade said. It was the first thing any of them had spoken since the forensics team had cleared them to enter the kitchen.

  “No fuck?” Mullins shook his head. “What’s she supposed to be doing? Giving him head?”

  “He’s defacing the bodies. This is more personal than the others. There’s rage here. Coroner said the penis was removed postmortem.” Jade tip-toed closer to peer at the woman posed with her face resting on one of the man’s thighs.

  Whoever she was, it would be a closed casket funeral now. The eyes were gone and much of the skull appeared to be crushed. She was completely unrecognizable.

  “Any ID?” Brooks asked.

  “Nothing,” Jacob replied. “House is registered to a Pearl Jones, who died a couple years ago. They’re still searching the house for something that will tell us who these two are, but it’s kind of a dump.” And that was before someone had splattered the kitchen with pints of blood.

  “He prefers areas with hard surfaces,” Mullins said. When the man concentrated, a slight brogue slipped into his voice. “They were attacked in the living room. I’m guessing they were getting it on, killer knocked them out then dragged them in here.”

  “Clean up?” Jade suggested.

  Brooks shook his head. “He doesn’t bother.”

  “Flat surfaces.” Jacob gestured to the same blood void they’d found at the two previous scenes. “We think he’s filming these, right? Well, he needs a flat surface to put the camera on.”

  Jade, Mullins, and Brooks stared at him, similar blank expressions on their faces.

  “Fuck, that’s good, Detective.” Mullins wagged his finger at him. “The living room is trashed. The lighting is bad. He drags them in here to get a better shot on the camera, and no one lets their kitchen lights burn out because how are you going to make toast without light?”

  “Toast?” Jade blinked at him.

  “Throwing out ideas, love.” Mullins patted Jade on the shoulder.

  “Lali hasn’t been able to track down the footage since we told her Payton’s theory,” Brooks said as though he were simply thinking out loud.

  “Maybe it’s a trophy?” Jacob suggested. He really should keep his mouth shut. These were the profilers, he was just a detective.

  “Perhaps.” Jade shrugged. “The eyes follow the TBK MO, but he’s evolving. He’s finding his own identity.”

  “We’re treating TBK and TBKiller as two separate people now?” Jacob asked.

  “Yes, I think it’s safe to say that though TBKiller is inspired by TBK, he’s found himself. The question is, what is he?”

  “You know, I haven’t seen any letters around here.” Mullins paced into the living room and back. “Have you?”

  “Once TBK hit the media he eased off sending letters to the victims ahead of time. There were notes and hints of who he would go after in the letters he sent to the police and newspaper, but that was it.” Jade shrugged.

  “Neither of these fit the clues in the last letters, though. It doesn’t make any sense.” Jacob stroked his chin.

  “You’re right. What if these two weren’t on his radar until something else happened?” Brooks scooted past Jacob to stand with his back to the blood void on the kitchen counter, facing the victims. “What if he was supposed to kill someone else? The first scene was neat, almost as if each blood splatter was intentional. The second kill—something happened there. He got violent. Or maybe it was the sound? I need to see the second kill photographs again. Something changed with that scene to lead to this.”

  But what?

  And how could they figure it out before it was too late?

  Emma lifted her welder’s mask and glanced around. Sunday at Simon’s garage was a ghost town. Usually the guys tinkered on their own bikes or a friend’s truck, but everyone had somewhere else to be. It was just her, the latest sculpture, and a blowtorch. Normally welding was soothing. She could get out of her head and let the metal and flame speak to her, but today she couldn’t shake the sensation that someone was watching.

  Since Jacob had left to go to the station that morning, she’d dec
ided to try to get some more work done. The break-up with Derrick had interrupted her production schedule and she needed to make up some ground on custom pieces she’d promised clients.

  If Jacob knew she was out here, he’d be pissed beyond belief. He only suspected the copycat might be interested in her. He didn’t know she was firmly in the cross hairs.

  Maybe she should tell him?

  She took a swig of water before lowering her welder’s mask and starting the torch up again.

  If she told him, her ass would land in protective custody. She’d suffocate with that many cops crawling up her ass.

  The skin between her shoulder blades crawled. He was there. Somewhere. Watching her.

  She glanced in the reflective surface of a tinted car window, but nothing was behind her. Nothing was out of place.

  Her phone vibrated in her back pocket. She was too distracted to get much more work finished, and besides, the sun was reaching its zenith. From there it would be too hot to work with the torch.

  She shoved the mask up once more and hurried to get her glove off to press the flickering answer button.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Ms. Ration?”

  “Yeah?” Who the fuck called her Ms. Ration?

  “My name is Ryan Brooks. I’m with the FBI. We’d like to see your collection of TBK documents and ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “This about the copycat?” Shit. Did Jacob know this was happening? Hadn’t he mentioned an Agent Brooks at some point last night?

  “I’d rather not say. Do you think you could come in?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be a little bit, though. I’ve been out working, and I need to clean up a bit.”

  “That’s fine. Could you be here around, say five o’ clock?”

  “I can do that.” She didn’t want to, but she would. The truth was, as much as she wanted to understand this copycat and the senseless violence of it all, she wasn’t going to be the one who took him down. That was a job for the cops. But fuck if she didn’t want to give the asshole a black eye.

  It took her most of an hour to clean up and put her latest sculpture back in the shed Simon had said she could use until she found a new studio space. By then, her nerves were clamoring so hard between being watched and her impending date with the feds that she couldn’t even pretend to be hungry. She headed out to the station early to at least get it over with.

  The quicker she wrapped the meeting up, the sooner she could be hungry. Hell, maybe Jacob would like to go have dinner with her and take a break. He was getting in too deep with this case and she knew how much it could stir up the darkness inside.

  She focused on Jacob during her drive to the downtown station in Oklahoma City. His smile. The blueness of his eyes. The scars that told the story of a man so intent on getting his guy, sometimes he used his own body as a tool.

  He was also a target. Or maybe it was because he was a cop that made the copycat reach out to him. TBK had liked an audience and he’d flirted with the authorities for years before they caught him.

  She parked her truck and took the file box with all the precious history inside the station. An attendant signed her in, put her through a metal detector, and showed her back into the bowels of the building. There was no way she’d figure out how to get out of here on her own.

  “Ms. Ration?” A clean-cut blond man approached her. He couldn’t be a local, not in a long-sleeved shirt and a flashy pink tie.

  “Emma, please. Ms. Ration sounds like my mother.”

  “Emma, then.” He had a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “This way, please? I’m sorry we aren’t having this chat in the conference room, they’re all taken.”

  He led her into one of those interrogation type rooms she saw on TV. She hesitated near the doorway, her gut churning. She’d sat in one of these once before, while she’d recounted the story of what had happened the night Daddy chased her away. Lovely memories all around.

  She took a deep breath. They wanted to see the collection.

  Where was Jacob?

  She glanced over her shoulder, but didn’t catch sight of him. Were they a secret? It hadn’t occurred to her that maybe Jacob hadn’t mentioned their involvement. It stung a bit to think he might be keeping her in the closet, but it wasn’t like she was cop-wife material anyway.

  “What did you want to see?” Emma pasted on her brightest smile and went to the table.

  “Have a seat?” Ryan gestured to the seat facing the door.

  She set the box on the table to her right, the one-way glass on her left and tried to keep her focus on the man across from her.

  “I wanted to ask you if you knew any of these individuals.” He pulled four eight-by-tens out of a folder and laid them in front of her.

  Emma gasped and her stomach clenched. If she’d have eaten, she’d have lost it all in that moment.

  They were pictures from crime scenes. Close-ups of the victim’s eyeless faces, their features destroyed to the point they didn’t even look human. She gripped the edge of the table and sucked in deep breaths of air. She’d never seen pictures of the bodies that weren’t heavily blurred. They were the one thing that had been kept from the public, and she could appreciate that now. It would take a lifetime to burn those images from her mind.

  “Emma? Emma, do you know who this person is?” Ryan tapped the picture on her left.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I mean, that has to be Harold Espinoza, but I don’t recognize him. Not like that. Oh, God.” She slapped her hand over her mouth.

  “How do you know that? Do you know him?”

  “Christ.” She flipped the pictures over. “Once, okay. He came to a race. He wanted to do a motocross thing for Pride Week. He liked my pink jersey. Fuck.” She rubbed the heel of her hand over her eye, willing the image out of her mind.

  “What about her?” He flipped the second picture back over.

  That one was worse. Not only were the eyes gone, but there were tear tracks in the blood and a gag in her mouth. Just looking at her made it hard to breathe.

  “No. Fuck. What’s this about?” She shoved the picture across the desk as the desire to deck the smug bastard grew.

  “Her name is Laura Winthrop.”

  “What?” she shrieked. She couldn’t be more socked if he’d smacked her in the face with a steel pipe.

  “Laura Winthrop is the ex-wife of your boss, Simon, correct?”

  “Y-yes. She’s dead?” Emma hadn’t known the woman well. When she met Simon their relationship had been fizzling, but she’d liked Laura well enough. She was a ballsy, hardworking woman who wouldn’t take Simon’s crap. They hadn’t been able to make the love last.

  “Yes.” He laid another picture out in front of her. In this one, her face was in sharp focus as she pumped gas into Amanda’s car. “Why were you at the scene?”

  She opened and closed her mouth. How did she answer that and not implicate Jacob?

  “Harold’s neighbors also said you stopped by. Can you tell me why?”

  Well shit. This was really bad.

  She dug her nails into her palms. The truth was a flimsy foundation in this case. No matter what she said or did, it was going to look bad.

  “I wanted to understand, okay?” She flipped the picture of her over as well, stacked the images together and shoved them at the agent. “I didn’t do this, if that’s what you’re trying to say. I’ve lived with this nightmare my whole life, and some sick fuck wants to get his rocks off recreating the murders? I don’t get it. I don’t understand. I thought going there, seeing the crime scenes, might make me understand, but I don’t. I can’t get what makes someone kill another human being.” She was yelling now.

  “Do you know who these two are?” He pulled the last two images out of the stack and pushed them back toward her.

  Had there been more deaths? Had someone else died? It hadn’t hit the news yet.

  “Chris
t. No. Shit.” She shoved them away and stared at the wall.

  “This is Amanda. I believe you’re staying at her house and were driving her car yesterday. And this is Derrick. Am I to understand you broke up with him a few weeks ago?”

  “What?” She gaped at the horrid pictures of her best friend and ex. “No, that’s not true. You’re lying.” Her chest hurt. The muscles constricted so tight she couldn’t breathe.

  They were dead.

  Amanda was gone. It was too much to take in. It couldn’t be true. There was no way Amanda could be gone.

  “Emma, where were you the last few nights?”

  His words began to register and she stared at him. Was he serious? Did he think she would do something like this?

  Fuck.

  Jacob turned to the chief and agents lined up, watching Emma getting grilled. He’d been left out of the loop on this plan. Did they know he was involved with her? Were they keeping this suspicion from anyone local?

  “Sir?”

  “Not now, Payton.” The chief waved him away.

  “Sir—”

  “Not now. She might be our killer.” His mouth was set into a hard line. And why not? He’d been the arresting officer when Emma was taken into custody for her DUI.

  “I didn’t do it.” Emma’s voice was thin and high over the intercom. Everyone was watching, hardly breathing.

  He wasn’t going to leave her in there to fend for herself when he knew good and fucking well he’d been with her at the time of at least two of the murders. Three, since the last one was a double.

  Jacob stalked around to the door and yanked it open.

  Brooks turned, scowling at him. “What’s—”

  “She couldn’t have done it,” he said, his gaze locking with Emma’s tortured eyes.

  “And that would be why, officer?” Brooks asked.

  He could hear Stevenson swearing around the corner. Jacob could kiss this case goodbye.

  “She was with me Friday and Saturday night.” He grit his teeth. “I’m asking to be taken off the case. My involvement with Emma compromises my objectivity. Especially if you’re considering her as a suspect, and I am her alibi.”

  “Jacob...” Emma stared at him, her beautiful smile nowhere to be seen.