The Closer

by Donn Cortez

  HOWEVER, YOUR FEET DO SMELL.

  Oh, shut up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The first thing Djinn-X saw when the bag was removed from his head was a bright light shining directly into his eyes. He squinted past the glare and said, “Kind of a cliché, don’t you think?”

  “I prefer to think of it as traditional,” the Closer answered.

  “Yeah, like dumping me in your van and hauling me out here,” Djinn-X sneered. “Where are we, your basement?” He glanced from side to side, but all he could see beyond the glare was darkness. “You should have kept me at the warehouse, you know—empty, deserted, no connection to you unless you’re even dumber than you seem. Now you have to worry about traces: fibers, blood, my whole fucking body. Maybe even witnesses. You’re a bigger idiot than Jeffrey fucking Dahmer was.”

  “I caught you, didn’t I?”

  “Only because I trusted you, you traitorous mother-fucker. Killing sluts wasn’t enough, huh? You had to come after one of your own.”

  He heard steps as his captor moved through the darkness. A rectangle of softer, colored light blinked into existence beyond the harsh brightness. He recognized it immediately: a computer screen.

  “The first reason you’re here is because I needed a phone line,” the Closer said. “To access your website. You’re going to give me the passwords that will let me into your system files.”

  “Not a chance in hell, asshole.”

  “The second reason you’re here is because I knew it would take some time to get those passwords from you. I needed a place I could work without being disturbed.”

  Djinn-X felt his stomach twist the way it did when he was flying and the plane hit an air pocket.

  The light was suddenly moved. He blinked spots out of his eyes, trying to readjust his vision. When he could see clearly again, he wished he couldn’t.

  The instruments gleamed, laid out in neat rows on a plastic sheet draped over a table. The walls of the room were hung with sheets of black plastic, eerily like the plastic-lined corridors of Djinn-X’s self-created video game. They reflected the light like dark, wet flesh.

  “Okay,” Djinn-X said. “You’re a cop. You caught Deathkiss, and he gave me up. You think this voodoo inquisition bullshit is gonna make me roll over, too? You’re bluffing. Fuck you.”

  “I’m not a cop,” the Closer said. He picked up a small butane torch, not much larger than a cigarette lighter, and lit it with a wooden match. It hissed to life with a flickering tongue of blue flame. “The papers keep saying I must be, but I’m not. I’m just someone who closes cases.”

  “The Closer, huh?” Djinn-X knew the name, of course—he’d just never believed the Closer actually existed. It was a boogeyman, created by the police to scare the ones they were hunting. He figured the corpses were either suicides mutilated by the cops or actual suspects they just executed because they didn’t have the evidence to prosecute them. But the idea of a lone man, able to actually track and catch real predators like himself? It was ludicrous….

  “I can see you don’t believe me,” the Closer said. “Maybe I can change your mind.” He set the torch down on the table. Its hissing glow was hypnotic; Djinn-X’s eyes kept returning to it.

  “The real reason they call me the Closer hasn’t been reported in the papers. I do more than kill killers; I get them to confess. The bodies I leave behind haven’t been mutilated, as the press claims—they’ve been coerced. Persuaded, over the course of many hours, to give up the secrets of their owners.”

  “That how you get your kicks? A little psychotic revenge?” Djinn-X asked. “Let me guess: one of us killed your innocent little sister, who wasn’t really a whore like everybody said.”

  “This isn’t about revenge,” the Closer said calmly. “Not as much as you might think, anyway. It’s about holes. That’s what serial killers leave: great big holes in people’s lives. I can’t fix the big ones, the ones left by a daughter or a sister or a wife. But I can fix the smaller ones. The holes left by unanswered questions: Is my child alive or dead? Where is her body buried? What lie did that man say to make my son trust him?”

  The Closer picked up a pair of needle-nose pliers. He held them over the tip of the torch, watching the ends turn a glowing orange.

  “What I provide …is closure. The only kind the families of your victims are likely to get. You see, nothing in life is free; everybody pays, sometime, somehow. The answers you’re going to give me are simply payment for what you owe.”

  Djinn-X couldn’t take his eyes off the pliers. The tips were white-hot now. “You—you don’t have to do that. I’ll give you answers.”

  “That’s only half of what you owe. How I get the right answers—that’s the other half.”

  The Closer removed the pliers from the flame. He grabbed Djinn-X by the hair with his other hand. “It works best if you have to watch what’s being done to you….”

  The pliers were suddenly right there, so close he could hardly focus on them. He could feel the heat coming off them. He could smell the scorched metal.

  “Please,” Djinn-X whispered.

  “I don’t want you closing your eyes. So I’ll just make sure you can’t.”

  Jack snapped off the surgical gloves. It used to feel like shedding armor, getting rid of a bloodstained layer of protection; but lately if felt more like stripping away a second skin, throwing away some essential part of himself. His hands felt naked and exposed, trembling slightly as he placed them on the keyboard. For an instant he thought he’d gotten blood on the keys, but it was just the crimson light from the screen.

  “Spell it,” Jack said.

  “Ragnarok. R—A—G—N—A—R—O—K,” Djinn-X gasped. “I swear.”

  Jack studied the laptop in front of him, angled so that Djinn-X couldn’t see it. There was a rectangular gray window imposed in the center of the screen over a constantly shifting background, blinking a single request over and over.

  Password.

  Password.

  Password.

  Jack found the shifting images in the background hypnotic. Grotesque in content, they were arranged in a graceful ballet of colors and shapes. Photos of victims’ faces were layered row upon row so that only their wide staring eyes were visible, a mosaic of pleading and terror that morphed into a collection of body parts dancing a jig with gleaming scalpels and chromed handguns.

  It was well done, Jack decided, but would be more effective if the audio was integrated as well. Screams set to something bouncy, perhaps…

  He tapped a few keys. “Hmm. I guess I should have expected that,” he said. “The screen just went blank.”

  Djinn-X made a huge, bubbling sigh.

  “Some kind of universal delete, right?” Jack said. “I wonder how many you programmed in.”

  “One is all it takes, motherfucker. You lose.”

  Jack turned the laptop so that Djinn-X could see it. The gray rectangle was still onscreen. “I guess I would have—if I’d actually entered that code.”

  He stretched on a fresh pair of gloves, then picked up the can of lighter fluid and a syringe. “I guess we’ll just have to start all over again….”

  “You’re stronger than I thought.”

  “Huh. Huh. Huh.”

  “Give me the password.”

  “F-fuck you.”

  “Why do you care what happens to them? They don’t care about you.”

  “You’re wrong. Wrong.”

  “They’re sociopaths. Murderers. The only thing that matters to them is the taking of life.”

  “Us.”

  “What?”

  Djinn-X grinned up at him with bloody teeth. “Us. The only thing that matters to us is the taking of life.”

  “Give me the password.”

  “Why? You already have access. You want names, dates, places? It’s all there, right on the website—you don’t have to torture anybody. That’s what the Stalking Ground is about, the exchange of information. The other hun
ters are more than happy to brag about their kills.”

  “My method is more reliable.”

  “No. Your method is more fun—AAAAAAAAAHH! Fuck, don’t do that!”

  “Give me the password.”

  “It won’t do you any good. I don’t know the real identity of any of them.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s not what you’re after at all, is it? You just want to get into the system so you can pose as me—so you can hide behind my name and betray them, one by one. No. No way. I’ll never let you do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Fuck you—NNNO! NO! OH CHRIST!”

  “Tell me why.”

  “THEY’RE MY FAMILY!” Djinn-X screamed.

  The Closer stopped what he was doing.

  “They’re my family,” Djinn-X sobbed. “Don’t you get it? None of us ever belonged, not anywhere. But in The Pack, all of us belong. We’re not alone anymore….”

  The Closer stared at Djinn-X for a long moment.

  Then he turned and left the room.

  After two years with Jack, Nikki had evolved a routine. She slept until noon, then got up and went to a local gym. She spent at least three hours there, working out and taking a sauna if they had one. Then she’d grab some takeout food and bring it back to Jack. For the first part of the evening, they’d work on strategy: studying Dangerous John lists, newspaper and police reports. Most serial killers targeted a specific type of victim—Ted Bundy had preferred girls with long, straight brown hair. They’d try to figure out where and when a given killer might strike, and what type he preferred. Nikki had gotten proficient enough with wigs, contact lenses, and makeup to portray anyone from a blond amazon to a black transsexual.

  Around nine, they’d go to work. She’d walk the streets, and Jack would shadow her. She had a spycam and a transmitter in her purse—the same device Stanley Dupreiss had used to block her cell phone had also messed with the bug, letting Jack know something was wrong.

  Usually all he got to eavesdrop on was her trading blow jobs and quickies for cash—but five times now, they’d caught something else.

  When that happened, she left Jack alone. If Jack did the interrogation on-site, she’d stay in another room— if they’d lured the killer to where they were staying, she’d go out. They’d moved from the airport motel to a small house in a low-rent part of town so Jack would have the privacy to question Djinn-X; he’d set up an interrogation chamber in the basement.

  Today she’d decided to go shopping, but her heart just wasn’t in it. She wandered from mall to mall aimlessly, unable to find anything she wanted. She didn’t see clothes anymore; she saw disguises.

  And somehow, she found herself outside a church.

  Before she knew it, she was inside. Nikki had been raised Catholic, but she’d shaken off all the rites and thou-shalt-nots when puberty hit. She hadn’t been back since—but it was impossible to do what she was doing without thinking about life and death, good and evil. Justice and retribution.

  The church was beautiful, in the way only a Catholic church could be: a high, vaulted ceiling, long rows of solemn pews, a central aisle that led, inevitably, to the burnished wooden pulpit with its ornate golden cross. The whole thing lit by elaborate stained-glass windows, sunlight filtering through saints in frozen tableaus of pain.

  She walked down the aisle. There were two old women lighting votive candles up at the front; she walked around them and to the side. To where the confessionals were.

  She opened the door hesitantly, then swallowed and stepped inside.

  She believed in what they were doing, believed in the rightness and necessity of it, but there was a big difference between her role and Jack’s. When they first started their partnership, she thought she was taking all the risks and Jack was getting all the satisfaction—but that stopped the very first time she spied on him while he was working.

  She was just risking her body. Jack was risking much more.

  She sat down. The panel separating her from the priest slid aside, leaving a wooden screen between them. How did the ritual go again? “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been …a long time since my last confession.”

  She stopped, unsure what to say next. When she’d seen what Jack was capable of, she’d felt an overpowering mix of emotion: shock, disgust, fear—and yes, satisfaction. She was glad his victim was dead, glad that he’d suffered; but she’d never have been able to do the things Jack had done to him.

  But this last time, with Stanley Dupreiss—she hadn’t been nearly as sickened when Jack had killed him in front of her. A part of her had felt more than satisfaction; it had felt hungry.

  What did Jack feel, after all he had done?

  The shadowy figure on the other side of the confessional screen prompted her. “Yes?” His voice was low, soothing. Gentle.

  “There’s someone I work with. A man. I’m worried about him.”

  “Why are you worried?”

  “It’s his job. He’s forced to do… unpleasant things. I’m afraid of what it’s turning him into.”

  “What kinds of things is he forced to do?”

  “He has to… hurt people.”

  “Is he a criminal?”

  “Not like you think. He doesn’t hurt people for money.”

  “Are other people making him do it?”

  “No. It’s his own choice.”

  “If he can choose to start, he can choose to stop. God will always be waiting to forgive him—”

  “It’s not that simple. He has very good reasons for what he does. But—” She stopped, trying to put her thoughts into words. “What he does, I think it needs to be done. But every time he hurts someone, it hurts him, too. I know there’s a good man in there somewhere—he’s just buried under all this pain. And he keeps adding more and more.”

  “He sounds like he considers himself a martyr. One who suffers for the sins of others.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Martyrs usually believe they deserve to be punished. Could your friend be taking on all this pain because of something in his past?”

  Nikki thought about Jack’s family. About the story he had told her, and the deadness in his voice when he did so.

  “You hit the nail on the head, Father. I used to think if he could just… resolve that one thing, it might be enough to make him stop. Problem is, he’s been trying for the last couple of years, and it’s starting to look like that might not be possible. He needs to find a particular person—and they seem to be real good at not being found.”

  “Sometimes it’s not possible to face the one you blame, or the one you’ve wronged—except in your heart. The important thing is for him to forgive him self, first. Until he does so, he will continue to punish himself for this incident in his past.”

  She thought about that. Tried to imagine Jack accepting the loss of his family, moving on. Leading a normal life. Abandoning all those victims in unmarked graves, and those headed for them…

  She couldn’t.

  “I think the problem might run a little deeper than that, Father,” she said slowly. “What he does, it’s sort of taken on a life of its own. It’s not just about the past anymore. It’s about the future—making sure some people are in it, and others aren’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind.” She stood abruptly. “Thanks for the talk, Father. I don’t know what I thought it could solve, but I do feel better. Things are a little clearer in my head. I guess confession is good for the soul.”

  “Just a minute, my child—”

  She left without looking back.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking,” the Closer said.

  “Good for you,” spat Djinn-X. He seemed to have gotten his second wind; he glared at his tormentor with eyes that could no longer blink. “Figure out what a poor, deluded shithead you are yet?”

  “I want to know how you did it.”

  “Is that all? Shit, it
was easy. Stupid goddamn yup-pies will open the door in a second if you say you’re collecting for Jerry’s Kids—”

  “Not that. I want to know how you found the other members of The Pack.”

  “Put an ad in the Yellow Pages. Call 1-800-PSYCHOKILLER.”

  The Closer picked up the electric knife. “I’ll make you a deal. I know about the initiation—what I don’t know is how you screened out all the posers and wannabes before that. Tell me, and I’ll let you die with your reputation intact. I won’t pose as you in the Stalking Ground.”

  “Why? What do you care how I did it?”

  “Prevention. If I can duplicate what you did, I can catch killers earlier.”

  “So you want me to betray potential members as opposed to current ones. Right.”

  “Don’t think of it as betrayal,” the Closer said. He turned the electric knife on, brought it closer to Djinn-X’s chest. Let it hover, humming, over his right nipple.

  “Think of it as a trade. First in a series, collect ’em all….”

  Jack knew Djinn-X would talk, and he knew why. He’d found his fracture point.

  Everybody had one. It wasn’t the same as a breaking point, where you simply overloaded the body with so much pain and the mind with so much horror that the personality disintegrated. That could take days, even weeks, and you risked sending your victim into a catatonic state where no amount of punishment could reach him.

  A fracture point was a flaw in someone’s personality that reached into the very core of who they were, what was most important to them. If you could find that point and apply pressure to it, you could punch right through a person’s defenses, lay bare their soul. When he’d first taken up his quest, Jack had thought fracture points would be based on fear—he had found, to his surprise, that just as often they could be rooted in pride, sorrow, or longing.

  Djinn-X’s fracture point was loneliness. He’d felt alone all his life, and he blamed an entire generation for that isolation. That blame had turned to murder, which isolated him even further.

  Creating the Stalking Ground had finally given him the emotional validation he craved. He had built his own tribe, his own country. It was the single thing he was most proud of in his life.