Killerbyte (byte Series Book 1)

by Cat Connor

My turn to drive. I pushed the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened.

  I flipped my hair out of my eyes and turned it again. Nothing.

  “Now what?” I wondered aloud.

  “Loose lead? Pop the hood, love. I’ll take a look.” He leapt from the car.

  Mac raised the hood. I heard him gasp. I scrambled from the car to Mac. The horror on his face spoke volumes.

  A disembodied head sat on top of the battery with its dead eyes wide open and frozen in terror. A bloodied scrap of paper protruded from the cold blue lips. Who’d have thought a head would fit?

  “Who?” Mac said.

  I blinked several times as I tried to make sense of the horrid sight. “I don’t know.” I shook my head and handed Mac the keys. “But I guess someone else is missing from the chat room.”

  “What does it say?” Mac asked.

  I held my hair back to prevent it falling onto the head and peered at the note. “‘Can you fix what’s broken, when you’re unable to see? Look into my eyes, hear my plea.’”

  Yuck. I shivered and stepped back. Mac slammed the hood down. My stomach flipped as a thought lurched around my brain, what if it had been squashed? I dismissed the thought; there was plenty of room under the hood.

  “It didn’t smell too putrid, must be a recent kill.” My words echoed against the house. “Did it look male to you?” I asked, grabbing my bag from the car.

  I heard Mac gulp and swallow as he unlocked the front door. Once back inside, Mac locked the door behind us. “I don’t know. It just looked ghoulish,” he said.

  “I thought it looked ghoulishly male.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s someone from the chat room. I haven’t seen photographs of everyone, just those that had them in their profiles. He doesn’t look familiar.”

  I traded feeling grossed out to morbidly curious and amused. “It’s freaky looking.” And smaller than I thought a head would be. Not that I gave much thought to the size of disembodied heads, but that’s twice now I’ve come across a head.

  I called Caine. “He’s killed again. We’re at my place.”

  “Can you leave?” His voice bore the same flat tone I’d heard earlier.

  “Not sure. My Explorer is in the garage,” I replied and crossed my fingers that my truck was free of any body parts.

  “I’ll notify Kevin and the State police. I’ll send someone out from Lexington. If you two can leave, then go.”

  “You want us to leave a crime scene?” I struggled to understand what he had said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Get out of there, and do it now. He may be watching, so for God’s sake take care.”

  My skin crawled as I slipped the cell phone back into my pocket. “Did you hear him?” I asked Mac. Time to get serious. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, we’ll go through the back door and head for the garage. There’s a side door, we’ll use that.” I explained my intentions as we walked through the kitchen. I stopped at the back door, with my hand resting on the door handle. My eyes flicked to the window in the door as I turned the handle. “Oh, Christ!”

  Blood covered the outside of the frosted glass in the top of the door. A face pressed against the window.

  My gun was in my hand, index finger on the side of the barrel.

  “I think I saw eyes,” Mac said. “This is insane.”

  I glanced at him. He had a firm grip on his .357. I heard running footsteps outside. The crunch of gravel determined direction. “Front door.”

  Mac was already on his way.

  I slid the heavy bolt across the backdoor just in case and hurried after Mac. “He’s still running,” he whispered.

  The footsteps faded.

  Mac stood to one side of the front door and could just see out of the side window.

  I fished into my pocket for the phone and made a 911 call. I asked for a patch straight through to Kevin in his car. “The Unsub is here. Sounds like he’s running around the fucking house.”

  “State police are on the way. I have four deputies with me. Twenty-five minutes, Ellie.”

  “I think he pressed his face against the glass in my backdoor. There could be prints.”

  “I’ll make sure any evidence is protected.”

  “Hurry the hell up.” I disconnected and shoved the phone back into my pocket.

  “Can he get in through any other doors?” Mac asked.

  I shook my head. “Unless he breaks a window.” My mind ran over the layout of my home, checking all scenarios.

  But there is another way.

  “There’s another door at the back of the house through a storage room. It’s a solid door with an internal bolt.” An unfaltering air of calm swept over me. “I’ll go check.”

  Seconds later, I stood in the storage room. Something scratched and banged on the door leading to my back yard. I released the interior bolt. The noise outside turned my blood to ice. A loud squawk pierced the air and the scratching ceased and screeching started. Wings beat against the door. Anger rose in waves. I slid back the last bolt and pulled the door towards me. The noise from the door was deafening. The screeching reached scream pitch. Feathers flew in all directions from the extended wings. I winced as I pulled the trigger. A single round ended the struggling bird’s torture.

  “I’m sorry, Abigail.”

  The bloodied carcass nailed to my door jerked.

  “You sadistic fuck!” I screamed into the yard before slamming the door and shoving the bolt across. Abigail’s body thudded against the wood.

  “Ellie!” Mac called. “You okay?”

  I hurried back to him.

  “He nailed Abigail to the door!” I said. “She was still alive!”

  Absolute disgust registered on his face. He leaned back on the wall and ran a hand through his hair.

  He glanced sideways at me and asked, “Who is Abigail?”

  “My chicken,” I said. It was unbelievable anyone would be so cruel to an animal. Wasn’t it bad enough that Carter and his insanity had caused me to trample all over Abigail’s eggs? Now my chicken hung like some horrid voodoo warning, her lifeless body flapping in the wind.

  Mac exhaled. “Oh man! I thought it was a person.” He checked himself. “Sorry, Ellie.”

  It had become eerily quiet. At that instant, it felt as though we were in the eye of the storm. The silence created some sort of bizarre void. Minutes dragged by.

  Mac jolted to full alert. “Did you hear that?”

  “Sounds metallic,” I replied. I searched the recesses of my mind to give shape and form to the noise.

  “It’s coming from over there.” Mac pointed towards the far side of the kitchen.

  “Oh, fuck!” I yelped. “Gas. The tanks for the underfloor heating are in that part of the basement.”

  Why is he messing with the gas?

  “Where’s the bag?” Mac looked around the room.

  I reached over the back of the sofa grabbed the bag, and then slung it over my shoulder.

  “If he’s in the basement, he may not be able to get out before we get to the garage.”

  Mac grabbed my shoulders. His dead-serious eyes stared into mine. “You want to take that chance?”

  The chance to live versus a fiery death? Now that’s a tricky one. I am so glad he can’t hear my thoughts.

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  Mac unlocked the door. We ran around the front of the house and kept to the far side of the driveway, close to the old barn. The grass verge deadened our footsteps somewhat.

  The double garage doors loomed in front of us. I could still hear a metallic ringing sound coming from the basement.

  I pulled Mac around the side of the building and through the small door. I peered into the back of the Explorer, ever conscious that there was a body somewhere.

  I grabbed the spare keys from the shelf and threw them to Mac. “The remote for the garage door is on
the dash,” I said.

  He climbed into the driver’s side. I jumped in next to him and threw the bag onto the backseat.

  He pressed the remote for the garage door. “How fast does this door open?” Mac asked. He turned the key. The engine sprang to life with a throaty roar then purred.

  “Not fast enough,” I replied. “He will have already heard us.”

  The door seemed to move in slow motion.

  Mac planted his foot on the accelerator. We tore forward and wiped out the door. It must’ve made a hell of a noise, but all I could hear was the scream of revs and the tires tearing up the gravel. Stones pelted the underside of the car. Somehow, Mac controlled the turn onto the road. In the distance, we could make out rolling lights and hear faint sirens.

  Mac grinned at me. “Cavalry is coming.”

  “They can’t go in there. The whole damn house might explode any second!”

  Mac angled the car across the road, turning it into a makeshift roadblock. We waited.

  My cell phone rang. I frowned as I checked the display. “Jesus, Mac ... 703?”

  “Mom,” he said.

  Mac answered the call, “Help desk.”

  I heard a woman’s voice say, “It’s not funny this time either!”

  A fireball shot into the sky. A second later, the sound of the blast hit us.

  Mac said, “Not now, Mom.” He flung the phone into the glove compartment.

  Kevin pulled up beside us and rolled down his window. “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “You see any vehicles parked along the road or pass anyone on this road?”

  He shook his head. “You think he got out before the explosion?”

  “He’s not ready to die, Kevin. He’s having too much fun.”

  Kevin nodded. “Then he must’ve had a vehicle somewhere.”

  “We’ll check driveways on our way out. There’s a head, possibly cooking, under the hood of the car by the house.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Kevin looked ill. “Anything else?”

  “He nailed Abigail to the storage room door. The casing you’ll find by her is mine. I had to shoot her. He nailed her up alive.”

  Another explosion ripped through the air.

  “Both tanks have gone. Guess it’s safe to drive on up now.”

  Kevin grimaced. He reached forward and lifted the radio handset. “ETA on the fire truck?” He paused. Something crackled back at him. His ears were more in tune with the crackle than mine were and he replied, “Copy that.” He waved his arm out the window. Two police cars rolled past us and turned into my driveway.

  “We’ll be in Lexington looking through files,” I told him. “Coordinate this with the FBI. They should be here soon.”

  “Will do.”

  “Catch you later, if he doesn’t get us first.” I waved as Mac straightened up the car.

  We paid close attention to driveways and wooded areas that we passed. I looked for concealed vehicles and found none.

  Mac said nothing as he concentrated on the road ahead.

  “It’s going to be okay, right?” I asked. It felt very strange to know my home no longer existed. I was homeless.

  He turned his head and smiled. “We’re together, and we’re alive.”

  I knew then that everything would be okay.

  Ten

  Deuces Are Wild

  “We have to do this file search tonight, don’t we?” Mac asked. He surreptitiously attempted to hide a yawn behind his hand.

  “We should.” I attempted to disguise my own fatigue. “But honestly, after today and the state we’re in, we’d probably miss the very thing we need to find.”

  Mac stood up and stretched. My mind replayed the day’s events and I knew the minute I lay down it would increase the speed with which the images of horror manifested.

  “Damn, my body is tired,” Mac said.

  “Why does horrible shit make us laugh?”

  Mac’s astonished expression suggested my question came from left field. “I guess it’s just our way of dealing with it. We’ve seen some weird shit. How often do you find a human head on top of a battery?”

  “Well, it was a first for me. Wonder if it cooked?”

  “Euwww.”

  “Do you suppose the brains would boil or something inside the skull?” I asked. My finger traced intersecting lines on the Formica tabletop. I looked up to see if Mac had heard me.

  “That’s one of the sickest questions I have ever been asked.”

  “But would it?”

  Mac couldn’t answer. He laughed so hard, tears trickled from his eyes. They tumbled over his long dark lashes and cheekbones. I found I wasn’t far behind him. Images of legs on wire and heads cooking sent me over the edge.

  Mac regained composure enough to answer. “If it were exposed to high heat for a sustained period, the liquid in the tissues would evaporate very quickly, thus dramatically shrinking the brain.”

  I had visions of a shrunken head and some bizarre tribal ceremony as he spoke.

  “All that would be left would be the tissue minus the liquid, which comprises about seventy percent of the brain mass.”

  “Ah, now I see.”

  “If the heat were sustained much longer, after the liquids had evaporated, then the tissue would contract even further and burn to a crisp. It would look something like a crumpled piece of leather, but crispy,” Mac explained with frightening authority.

  “No boiling then?”

  “No, no boiling.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what bothers me more … that you asked the question in the first place, or that I could answer it.”

  With shrunken-head thoughts lurching through my brain, sleepiness hit like a sledgehammer. My eyes would not stay open any longer. We curled up together on the comfortable bed and succumbed to the exhaustion our bodies and minds felt.

  Friday morning arrived with a loud banging on the door.

  “Mac, do you suppose psychotic killers knock first?” I checked through the peephole in the door.

  “Why? Is there one at the door?” he asked, and sounded almost awake. He trained his gun on the door.

  “Nah, just Caine,” I replied, undoing the security chain then unlocking the door to let him in. I glanced down at myself before he stepped in. I wore a long tee shirt; my moment of panic subsided. I was decent.

  “Morning,” he announced, “I come bearing caffeine.”

  I took two of the styrene cups from the tray he carried and passed one to Mac.

  “Thanks,” we replied in unison, and set the cups on the small bedside table.

  “You’re welcome.” Caine sat himself at the table.

  Mac and I dressed at speed.

  “Did you get anything in those files?” Caine asked. He lit a cigarette then sipped his coffee.

  “We don’t know yet,” I told him.

  I crossed the room and opened the curtains, letting in what little sun the morning offered. When Caine didn’t admonish me for my tardiness concerning the files, I knew there was something up.

  “What?” I gave him a questioning look and sat at the table.

  “The Marriott body had traces of ketamine.” He rolled his cigarette end around the ashtray then raised his eyes. “We think it may be some Cobwebs’ regular who went by the name of Pebblerock.”

  Ack! I remembered his making a comment about that poem I had posted while we were at the Marriott. I couldn’t raise any joy at being right about the identity of the body.

  Caine carried on without waiting for a response. “Have you checked your credit card account recently?”

  “Work account?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Haven’t checked it at all since Delta finished the Blue River case. That was what, three weeks ago?”

  Caine nodded. “You are absolutely positive?”

  “Yes. I wrote you a report on my expenditure after the last assignment and have had no reason to check it since.”

  Caine continued,
“Because we couldn’t work out how he found you at the Marriott. I checked your account. It was a long shot but now I know we have something.”

  “What?”

  “Someone logged into the card member service as you, twice, in the last forty-eight hours.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” I replied.

  “We ran a trace on the log-in.” Caine paused and stubbed his smoke butt out. “The first time this person logged in as you, it was done at the Richmond public library.” He looked over at us. “We checked the computer logs and matched the user to a library card. Ellie Connelly was the name.”

  “You’re kidding!” I was stunned.

  No way!

  “The second trace led us to the Fairfax library and to another library card holder by the name of Ellie Conway-Connelly.”

  “Now that’s a mouthful.” I grimaced.

  No way would I hyphenate.

  “Any addresses? Did he have an attack of stupid and give us a break?” Mac asked.

  “Richmond, the address on file for the card was 1970 East Parham Road.”

  I knew that address. My mind stumbled over Richmond and came up with an answer. “FBI field office.”

  “Yeah,” Caine replied. “The Fairfax library card gave us Vienna Woods. He was less inventive that time.”

  “How the hell did this sicko bastard get my account info and password?”

  “We need to have your home computer analyzed to be sure, but more than likely the result of a key logger.”

  The thought of some hacker sneaking a key logger into my computer turned my gut. I felt violated as much as I would if that same person rifled through my underwear drawer.

  Who’s to say he hadn’t?

  “My computer was in the house. The house exploded,” I told him. Someone watched every key stroke I made. I gulped down some coffee and hoped it would subdue my churning tummy. It didn’t. I shoved my chair back, jumped up and hurried for the bathroom.

  A few minutes later I heard a quiet knock on the door and Mac’s voice, “You okay in there?”

  No, I’m not okay. I just wasted perfectly good coffee. And found out some freak watched everything I did on my computer.

  I wiped my mouth, brushed my teeth, and then flushed the toilet. Another knock this time louder, followed by a determined voice, “Ellie?”