by T. R. Ragan
“No, Dad. She hasn’t even come out of her house. Her neighbors made an appearance, though, and they were arguing. It looked like the man was getting a little rough, grabbing the woman and trying to pull her back inside. I didn’t like it.”
“Where are they now?”
“Right before you called they disappeared through a side door into the garage. What should I do?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I think it’s best to keep doing what you were hired to do.”
“What if he’s hurting her?”
“You didn’t see him raise a hand to her, did you?”
“No, but—”
“I think the best thing you can do is leave it alone. Whatever you do, don’t approach anyone, okay?”
She saw the front door to Lindsay Norton’s house open. “I’ve got to go, Dad. I’ll see you tonight.” Without giving him a chance to say goodbye, she disconnected the call and then grabbed the camera, setting it to video. Lindsay Norton stood on the front step of her porch, looking around for a second or two before she made her way to the mailbox at the end of a short driveway.
Zee sank down low in her seat, hoping she’d parked far enough away to not be noticed. She videotaped Lindsay Norton as the woman walked, tall and erect, down the stone path. Lindsay Norton stopped and tilted her face toward the sun. By the time she got to the end of the driveway to collect her mail, she made a big show of wincing as she reached a hand to her lower back. She then struggled at a snail’s pace to carry a few envelopes back into the house.
Feeling impatient, Zee glanced over at the neighbor’s house. What she really wanted to do was walk up to the front door and knock. She could tell whoever answered that she was doing a survey and just had a few questions, maybe get a peek inside.
I wouldn’t bother, a voice inside her head said. She’s probably dead.
Oh, brother. You’re such a drama queen. Don’t listen to her, Zee. You’re lucky to have this job. Don’t do something stupid and mess it up on your first day.
“Shut up,” Zee said. “Both of you.” She needed to think, but the voices sometimes made that difficult. Although proud to have gotten the job, she didn’t like knowing she’d lied to Jessie about no longer hearing voices. The truth was, even when she took her medication regularly, she heard them. Lucy, Marion, and Francis. They never stopped. They were her constant companions whether she liked it or not. She had lied to her doctor, too. How else was she supposed to get her license and a job?
Even at this moment the voices were bickering, although they had turned the volume down a notch. “If you don’t stop it,” Zee warned, “I’ll quit this job and start taking Clozapine, which will make me sleep all day, and I’ll never have to listen to any of you again.”
Silence. Finally.
Jessie Cole was giving her a chance to gain on-the-job experience. Zee refused to let her down. This was her opportunity to prove she could help people in a meaningful way. But she also knew firsthand, after seeing Jessie go head-to-head with a notorious serial killer, that being a PI could be dangerous. She wondered if there would come a time where she would need some professional firearms training.
You’re a crazy girl. They won’t let you carry a—
She growled.
The voices stopped.
Of course she would need a weapon. What if she ever happened upon another madman? She’d never been a people person, but she’d really thought the young man who had befriended her months ago had been different. Sadly, after he’d proven to be a psycho killer, she no longer trusted her instincts, which was why she was going to take her father’s advice and sit here and do her job.
Looking away from the neighbor’s house, she picked up the binoculars and focused on Lindsay Norton’s front window, just in time to see her shut the curtains tight.
SEVEN
Ben sat quietly as his therapist, Lori Mitchell, scribbled in her notebook. Lori was in her late forties. Tall and thin. Dark hair, wispy bangs. He had no idea what she might be writing down, since he hadn’t said much in the twenty minutes he’d been sitting across from her.
The first time he’d met Lori was ten years ago, after the car accident. For the next three years, he’d met with her every month. Back then, the process had seemed like a waste of time since he’d had absolutely no memory of his life prior to the accident. What was he supposed to talk about?
His wife, whom he’d met at the hospital where he spent months recovering from first-degree burns and broken bones, had insisted it was important to his well-being that he talk about his experiences and “get it all out.” She worried he might be frustrated that he couldn’t remember his childhood—let alone friends or family.
It had been distressing at first to realize he’d lost his whole identity along with his memory, but in the end, he’d decided there was no point in looking back.
But that was then, and this was now.
He’d recently been experiencing what he sometimes thought of as out-of-body experiences. The first time it had happened, he’d seen himself raise a knife and plunge the blade into one of his coworkers. He’d seen the blood. Hell, he’d smelled it. And then, in the blink of an eye, it was over. No knife. No blood. Just his coworker with a smile on his face as he’d said goodbye and walked away.
Ben also saw flashes of people and places in his mind’s eye. Eighty percent of the time the people he saw were dead. Gory images of a woman lying in a crumpled heap in the middle of a vast field; a man sitting behind the wheel of a black Mercedes, a cord wrapped around his neck; an elderly man in a bathtub, facedown in his own blood. A few months ago, when the images had first started, he’d figured it came with the job. He was a crime reporter. He had a police scanner. Sometimes he arrived at the location of a crime before the police did. He’d seen a lot of blood and gore throughout his career, so it all sort of made sense. Not too long ago he’d taken the time to examine some cases he’d once worked on. He read articles and sifted through files, hoping to find something that might be related to the images he was seeing.
Unfortunately he’d turned up nothing so far.
And then he’d ended up face-to-face with a crazed killer, and something had changed inside of him. Like a light switch flicked on. He needed to look into his past and find out who he once was. His sister might be the key to unlocking his past, but she’d made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him.
“Ben,” Lori said, interrupting his thoughts. “Is everything okay?”
He zeroed in on the therapist, surprised to see her staring at him.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Everything you’ve told me today about the images you’ve been seeing . . . I get the feeling you’re merely saying what you think I want to hear.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, when you talk about the dead bodies and the blood, at times it seems as if you’re describing someone else’s emotions. Not your own.”
“Maybe I am describing someone else’s emotions,” he said thoughtfully. “But maybe that someone is actually my old self, you know, the person I used to be.” He lifted his hands in question.
“Interesting,” she said. “Have you had any episodes recently?”
“Not the sort I think of as film reels, whole scenes played out in my mind with me being a main character.”
“What about the bloody images? When was the last time you saw an image you would describe as macabre?”
“This morning.”
“Are they always the same?”
“Not always. But there are three dead people I see on a regular basis.”
“The dead woman in the middle of the field?” she asked.
“Yes. And also the man in the black Mercedes and the old guy facedown in the bathtub.”
Lori scribbled down notes. “And the others?”
“Too many to name. Glimpses here and there of random dead people. Strangled, stabbed, drowned. Nobody looks famil
iar.”
“Hmm.”
“There is something that happened at work yesterday,” he went on.
Lori straightened in her chair.
“My coworker showed me pictures of a case we worked two years before my accident. One of the pictures he shared was of a man who authorities believe killed his wife and two kids. My coworker said it was one of the most horrific crime scenes he’d ever seen.”
“And did you recognize the man?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t, but his name sounded familiar. When I saw a picture of the site where his remains were found, though, I experienced the same sensation as when I first recognized the image of Sophie Cole on TV.”
“Can you describe that sensation for me?”
“Uncanny, unnerving.”
“When it happens, does it frighten you?”
“No. It’s more of a surprise. Almost as if my brain is short-circuiting.”
More scribbling on her notepad.
“There’s something else,” he said.
She looked up at him.
“I’ve been at war with myself over what happened with the Heartless Killer.”
She nodded as if she understood, which nobody could unless they’d killed a man with their bare hands.
“You saved three lives that day,” she said. “You’re a hero.”
“I killed a man.”
“He was a cold-blooded killer.”
“I should feel remorse.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing by warring with yourself over what happened?”
He shook his head. “Every time I’m brought back to that moment when I was nose to nose with him, it’s amazingly clear to me that I knew exactly what I was doing.”
“You were angry.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “And yet I was also fully aware of my surroundings. When my hands were wrapped around his throat, I could feel his pulse. I could have stopped choking him, knocked him out, and waited for the police.”
“Did that thought go through your mind at the time?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t stop,” she stated.
“No. All I could see was the girl he’d locked in the box and left to die. So I kept squeezing.”
“And how did you feel in that moment?”
“Good,” he said. He inhaled. “I felt really good.”
All he had to do was close his eyes and imagine his hands wrapped around the man’s throat to bring himself back to that moment. His pulse would race as he recalled an evil darkness settling over him like a good friend. His muscles would tense, his jaw would harden, and then, like the blossoming of a flower, he would slowly come alive.
EIGHT
At 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday he awoke in a sweat, his dream of holding Hannah in his arms as she struggled for each breath still vivid.
The shades were drawn, and the room was dark. It took him a few seconds to calm down before he remembered that this was do-or-die day.
He threw off the covers, put on his slippers and robe, and headed for the kitchen. After getting the coffee started, he walked to the end of the driveway to grab the paper. Five minutes later, with coffee in one hand and paper in the other, he took a seat on the sofa. As he read every headline on the front page, his insides knotted. He inhaled, then turned the page and read every article, column after column, before moving on to the next page.
He stopped halfway through one particular article about a woman in Elk Grove who’d hidden in a closet after hearing an intruder enter her house. She was quoted as saying, “The silence was deafening.”
The silence was deafening.
He could relate. The silence was not only deafening but thickened the air and made it difficult to breathe. Everything had changed once he’d sent the letter to Ben Morrison.
He took another breath.
He was procrastinating.
He wasn’t quite ready to see what was or was not inside today’s paper. Although he’d said he wanted to see the letter on the front page, anywhere in the newspaper would do.
This was the boy’s last chance for survival. He didn’t want to kill him, but he had no choice. His mind was made up. He’d exhausted all other options—sent countless letters to DHI as his daughter battled for her life. In response, he’d received their standard form letter. Around that same time, he’d contacted the local media, but they had made it clear that his story was a dime a dozen. A drug not being covered by an insurance company wasn’t news. It was life.
And then it had hit him.
If he wanted to draw attention to his cause, he would need to take drastic measures. Death and destruction were the only way to capture DHI’s and the public’s attention.
If he took an innocent life, the news media would be all over it. People killing people made headlines. It was too late to save his daughter, but her death would not be in vain. He wanted the world to know what was going on. And that it could happen to them.
Who better to spread the word than a man with nothing to live for and therefore absolutely nothing to lose?
The truth was he was angry it had come to this. This was DHI’s fault. Not his. He was not a monster. If anything, he was numb. Nothing seemed real any longer. As far as he was concerned, the people who would lose their lives were not human beings. They were merely pawns in a game, and he was going to make the first move.
His gaze drifted around the living room and settled on an old-world map. He’d been renting the place for two weeks now, and yet this was the first time he’d noticed it. The map made him think of his wife and all the plans they’d made to travel abroad. Her life’s dream had been to spend a month in New Zealand. He’d always thought that someday he would take her there.
He stretched his neck, feeling the pull on his muscles and tendons. And then he turned another page. Feeling a sense of urgency come over him, he read faster, still careful not to miss even one word. When he finished, he gulped down the rest of his coffee, which was now cold, and then made his way to his bedroom to get dressed.
It was time.
Jessie had just gotten to the office and taken a seat when Zee came barreling through the door to her office. Higgins jumped to his feet, ears perked, eyes bright.
“It’s okay, Dog,” Zee said as she approached Higgins and patted his head. “I’m not going to bite you.”
Jessie laughed.
Zee walked to the chair in front of Jessie’s desk and plopped down into it. “Since it’s the end of the week, I thought I’d come here on my way to Lindsay Norton’s house and give you an update.”
Jessie glanced at the clock. It was 7:45 a.m. “It’s early.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep so I figured I might as well get the day started.”
“How’s it going so far?” Jessie asked.
“I’m afraid Lindsay Norton might be a dud.”
“How so?”
“She’s only exited her house twice. Both times she made a big show of cringing and putting a hand to her lower back as if getting the mail was too much effort. The first day I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. But the second day, I noticed a bit of a kick in her step, right up until she got to the driveway.” Zee scratched her nose. “I think it’s possible she knows she’s being watched. I took pictures and videos. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
“Not much else you can do,” Jessie agreed. “So the equipment is working well for you?”
“Yeah, it’s all good.”
Usually Zee was in a hurry to leave, but she didn’t move. “Anything else?” Jessie asked.
“Well, since you insist on twisting my arm,” she said. “I saw something the other day that troubled me.”
Jessie waited.
“While I was watching Lindsay Norton’s house, I witnessed something disturbing going on next door. I saw a man and a woman arguing. They were standing by a side door leading into the garage. The woman looked much younger than him, and she seemed scared. He had a tight gri
p on her arm and wouldn’t let go.
“The only reason I saw everything so clearly was because of your binoculars. His fingers were digging into her arm. He was being aggressive, and we didn’t—I mean, I didn’t like it.”
“Was she able to leave?”
Zee shook her head. “I turned away to put the binoculars on the passenger seat, and when I turned back they were gone. The door was closed.”
“Listen, I’ve done a lot of surveillance over the years, and I can tell you you’re going to see lots of people doing strange things out there. But if they’re not breaking the law, and they are not violent, you need to look the other way. I don’t mean to sound callous, but you have a job to do. Now, if you do see something violent, then that means it’s a job for authorities. And you need to dial 9-1-1.”
Jessie opened a drawer, grabbed a business card, and handed it to Zee. “Colin Grayson is with the police force. Call him if you ever feel as if someone’s life might be in danger.”
Zee stared at the card.
“Would you rather not watch Lindsay Norton? I understand if surveillance isn’t something you’re comfortable doing.” Jessie glanced at the pile of papers in her in-box. “I’m sure I could find something else for you to do around here.”
Zee’s head snapped up. “Oh no. I know I’ve only been doing this for a couple of days, but I love it! I’m pumped about this job, and I appreciate you giving me this chance. I want to learn all I can. I even ordered some books online. They should arrive at my house in a few days.”
“What sort of books?”
“Mostly how-to books—how to search public records, how to develop PI skills, everything I need to know about new and improved investigative techniques like GPS tracking systems.” Her face became animated. “Did you know you could use drones to spy on people? They’re only about two hundred bucks at a high-end toy store. All you have to do is keep them fifty to seventy-five feet high so nobody can hear anything.”
“Drones are probably difficult to pilot.”
Zee snorted. “All we’d have to do is visit a college campus and find some geek to help us out. Gamers love that stuff.”