101 People to Kill Before I Die

by Anthony O'Connor

  After some time had passed Assistant Commissioner Michael Branton called for their attention. A woman had entered the room and was standing beside him. She was middle aged, well dressed, she had a kind of academic look about her. Branton introduced her,

  "This is Doctor Theresa Hill, she's a criminal psychologist. She lectures at the University of Melbourne. We've consulted her on many other cases, some of you might remember her. Anyway, I'll hand it over to her."

  He stepped aside and Theresa Hill moved to the center of the front part of the room. She said plainly,

  "Hello everyone. Not glad to be here. Obviously."

  There were a few greetings in return. The room quickly settled down. She continued speaking.

  "I've been going over everything we have on Brian Samuals. He's an interesting case and a dangerous one. From his service record and recent events, I'd say he's become extremely manic depressive. No idea what kicked it off, but we'll keep looking into that. But it’s been coming on for a long time. He called his ex-wife on Friday November 29th, the day before the first killing. She told him, in her own words, to fuck off, and hung up on him. You'll see in the files that we've included a copy of a message he sent to his former supervisor at his old job. That was sent on the Saturday morning." She smiled. "We’ll take that as a resignation from his job and well, let’s just say, Samuals didn’t like his boss much. Check it out for yourself. The point is there is a definite starting point. Something triggered this. When he drove out of Sydney he knew what he was doing and where he was going. He had a plan."

  She stopped briefly for a few sips of water out of the glass in front of her. They were all listening intently. She spoke plainly but with some intensity.

  "During his manic phase he's unbeatable, megalomaniacal. He will go after bigger and bigger targets, escalating indefinitely. He will expect to keep getting away with it because he thinks he's just so much better than everyone else."

  One of the officers in the front row raised his hand and when acknowledged asked a question,

  "Doctor Hill, do you think he's suicidal? Does he want ultimately to go out in a blaze of glory? That's dangerous for us."

  Dr. Hill replied quickly,

  "No. Not in the slightest. He wants to live. He wants to win. This is all a big ego boost for him. He's extremely narcissistic. But having said that, he won’t stop. When you do catch up with him he'll fight like a cornered rat. He’ll be expecting to win right up until the end."

  Another officer asked,

  "What about the revenge killings?"

  Dr. Hill smiled back confidently,

  "Yes, there's an element of opportunistic revenge in all of this. Payback. But it's not terribly important. A few cases on the side. You will note that he didn’t kill or try to kill his ex-wife or his old supervisor. They surely would have been prime targets if this was all about revenge."

  Commissioner Sally Brown spoke up for the first time.

  "So Doctor Hill, what do you think his next targets will be?"

  Dr. Hill had thought about this carefully. She didn’t think it was too difficult to predict.

  "Federal MPs, probably the Prime Minister, any visiting heads of state. He's out to make a point. I don’t think he'll start blowing up buildings, but he could. He probably won’t attack large public gatherings. But he might if his other targets dry up. He's going to keep doing this until he's stopped."

  Assistant Commissioner Allen Smith, in charge of the Eastern District Command spoke up.

  "Doctor Hill, you said he is manic depressive. What about the depressive phase? What's he doing then?"

  Dr. Hill sighed.

  "Sinking into the depths of despair. Probably holed up in some apartment somewhere. Drinking himself to death. Possibly drugs. The place would be a stinking mess. He just wouldn’t care. Just lying around drinking, feeling wretched and miserable."

  Assistant Commissioner Smith asked a follow up question.

  "What about the girl, Natasha Brown, there's been some speculation that she's with him. We haven’t been able to find her either. Do you think she is?"

  Dr. Hill replied very confidently,

  "No. Not a chance. There's no way Brian Samuals could maintain any kind of relationship in his current state. What does he have to offer? What could she possibly see in him? No. She's just run off somewhere. Probably interstate. I wouldn’t worry about her too much, she's of no relevance to this case."

  Branton wasn't really listening too closely. He'd worked with Theresa Hill before. She was only right about half the time so that consulting her was about as useful as flipping a coin. Still she'd made a few good points. He saw that she'd finished and stepped back in beside her.

  "All right. Thank you very much Doctor Hill. We'll keep the information coming and if you can get back to us on anything you’re able to work out, that'd be great. I believe you're going out to the crime scenes in Toorak and Prahran this afternoon."

  Theresa Hill nodded. Branton said,

  "Excellent. Let us know what you think." He turned back towards the room. "We'll take a forty-five-minute break for lunch now. The cafeteria downstairs is closed. But there are a few shops in Spencer Street and Bourke Street nearby. If you're not sure just ask someone. See you when you get back."

  They all started moving out of the conference room. Chuck Miller made sure he caught up with Jack Williams on the way out. He grabbed his arm.

  "Detective Chief Inspector Williams."

  Jack Williams turned on him with some aggression. But Chuck Miller would not be put off. He asked Williams quietly,

  "Let's have lunch together."

  Williams looked at him, calmly now. He said without much emotion,

  "No. Piss off."

  Chuck Miller lowered his voice.

  "I must insist. I need to talk to you about your connection with the Russians."

  Williams didn’t react. But he nodded. They walked off together.

  ------------------------------------------------

  The Mahanirvana Tantra recommended variations in position and technique - while avoiding any position that was overly stimulating. So doggy style was out. Seven hours was a long time. I'd done seven hours before but never with just one hit at the end. Usually two or three for a session that long with breaks in between. You could still do a lot of things though. Now Natasha and I were going at it, very slowly, in the so called sixty-nine position. I was on the bottom, she was on top. My face was buried in her crotch, my tongue slowly and gently licking her vagina and clitoris. Her face was in my crotch, her mouth wrapped around my penis. She was sucking on it ever so gently. She seemed to intuitively understand how to take it right up to the edge but not beyond. I was beyond pleasure or pain, just somewhere else. Stark. Brilliant. Beautiful. But it couldn’t last. Not for much longer. But Oh Man! While it did. Natasha was not under the same restrictions that I was. Her juices were flowing copiously. She'd had several more orgasms. She was a happy girl. Today was her day. I was just an instrument. I could live with that. And my moment was coming. If it didn’t just kill me outright it was going to be unbelievably fucking awesome.

  ------------------------------------------------

  Jack Williams and Chuck Miller were seated at a table outside a cafe. No-one else was around. They had some sandwiches and coffee. Jack waited for Chuck to talk. But Chuck said nothing. Finally, Jack burst out with,

  "So what the fuck do you want?"

  Chuck smiled back at him.

  "You know who I am, right?"

  Jack nodded. Chuck continued,

  "Good. We've had Dmitri Alexandrovistch under surveillance for some time. We're interested in his connections down here. Your name comes up a lot. You really need to get better encryption. Not that it would make any difference for us."

  Jack listened with some dismay. He'd always known there was a chance of getting caught. But Miller hadn’t turned him in yet. So maybe it wasn’t all over just yet. He repeated himself,

&nbs
p; "What do you want?"

  Chuck knew he had him. There was no other way it could go. He looked at Jack severely.

  "We'll start with everything you know about Brian Samuals."

  Jack outlined what he knew of Brian's history and his own role in it. He skipped over anything already covered in the morning briefing. Chuck interrupted when Jack described Brian going to prison for fraud.

  "You didn’t have anything to do with that did you?"

  Jack shrugged.

  "Maybe."

  Chuck smiled knowingly. Jack thought to himself,

  “Jesus Christ, this fucking prick was very fucking perceptive.”

  He briefly considered what would happen if he just had him killed. Chuck picked up on that too. The quick look-over. That certain expression he knew so well. His face went grim.

  "I wouldn’t even think about going there. Much too late for that. My gang is a lot bigger than your gang."

  Jack didn’t respond. He knew it was true. He continued speaking again, outlining his view that Brian was just on a revenge spree. There was nothing political or megalomaniacal about it. Dr. Theresa Hill was just another fucking moron shrink who didn’t know fucking shit from clay. Chuck listened carefully then he asked,

  "Does Brian Samuals know you set him up on the fraud charge?"

  Jack replied,

  "I'm sure he's figured it out by now."

  Chuck was amused.

  "So that means you're a target."

  Jack snarled back,

  "Yeah, no shit, Sherlock."

  They stopped talking and finished off their sandwiches. Chuck Miller was clearly thinking it through. Jack Williams was waiting, not too patiently, to find out what his fate was. Would Miller turn him in or not? Chuck finished eating and then he asked,

  "So the Russians are after him because he killed Constantine. Nothing else? And he killed Constantine just to save the girl?"

  Jack replied,

  "Yep. I’m sure of that. Brian has no other connections to the Russians at all. They just want to kill him."

  Chuck laughed.

  "Don’t we all."

  Then he asked,

  "Who do the Russians have down here looking for him? I know about Boris Ivanov and Vadim Smirnov. Who else have they got?"

  Jack grimaced.

  "Svetlana Araknilova. Alexandrovistch’s top assassin. She's with Alexander Mendeleev and thirty other guys. I don’t know their names."

  Chuck was surprised.

  "We’re tracking Mendeleev and his group. Don’t worry about them. Didn’t know about Svetlana. I've heard of her, a real bitch by all accounts. Total fucking psycho."

  Jack agreed.

  "Oh yeah. They don’t come any worse than her."

  It was getting close to the time they needed to head back. They finished their coffee. Chuck looked at Jack closely.

  "You work for me now. You know that. My personal line into Alexandrovistch’s activities down here."

  Jack nodded. He asked carefully,

  "What about the authorities here? Police, intelligence?"

  Chuck smiled.

  "The locals don’t need to know. Let’s keep it between us."

  Jack smiled cynically and then replied,

  "OK then."

  They got up and started walking back towards Police Headquarters.

  Everyone started arriving back in the conference room just after 2:00 PM including Chuck Miller and Jack Williams. Williams looked worried. He wasn’t caught yet but the hook was in. Now he was serving a different master. If Alexandrovistch got a whiff of it Svetlana would be coming for him, if she wasn’t already. He shivered. That would not be good. It wasn’t going to end well for him the way things were going. At some point, very soon, he had to just cut and run. He moved to his seat. Standing at the front, Branton waited for everyone to be seated again. He said,

  "Hope you all had a good lunch. Let's press on."

  He activated the projector and selected a picture from his laptop.

  "I've made a small list of questions for us to go through. We can add more as we go."

  He paused, giving them all a chance to read through the list.

  "All right, first up, where did he get the weapons and can he get more?"

  Commander David Morton, the commander of the Special Operations Group, spoke up.

  "We've been looking into that. Brian Samuals has an uncle, Charlie Samuals. He did some time for weapons possession a while back. Thought to be a dealer. But that’s never been proved. We've got surveillance video of him and Brian Samuals meeting at the Strip Club the night Brian shot the Russian. We raided Charlie Samuals' house, didn’t find anything. We brought him in for questioning. He's one tough son of a bitch. He would be wouldn’t he - former SAS, a captain! We didn’t get anything out of him. He met his nephew for a drink, no idea why Brian was in Melbourne. Didn’t know Brian had quit his job. Never discussed it. Probably all bullshit. But you could put a blowtorch to this guy’s nuts and he'd never say a word. We had to let him go. We've got him under surveillance. But he'd know that. We won’t be getting anything from him."

  Michael Branton nodded.

  "Thank you, Commander Morton. Any other suspects, leads, anyone?"

  Assistant Commissioner Barry Jones, in charge of the South-Eastern Regional Command spoke up.

  "We've already started rounding up and questioning all known former weapons dealers - and any suspected ones. So far nothing. We'll step it up next week."

  Branton replied,

  "Thank you, Assistant Commissioner Jones."

  He waited. When no one else was forthcoming he looked back up at the screen.

  "All right. Until we come up with something we can assume he has an unlimited supply of weaponry and ammunition. We also must assume he has access to bombs or bomb making equipment. He hasn’t exhibited any of this yet but in view of Doctor Hill's warning we can’t discount it. What if he blows up a building next? With God knows who in it. This is getting very serious."

  No-one around the room was going to disagree with that. They all looked suitably somber. Branton waited for a while then continued speaking.

  "All right pushing on to the next question. Where is he staying?"

  Assistant Commissioner Jones spoke up again.

  "We've been checking all the hotels and motels, all of them in the greater Melbourne area. Around four hundred of them. Checking registries, any surveillance videos they have. We haven't got through it all yet. But we'll get more people on it as of tomorrow. He'll be checked in using a fake ID of course. Otherwise we'd have him already. We're checking through all the IDs and credit cards. It’s going to take time. We're getting some help from a few of the federal agencies."

  He didn’t elaborate on which ones or what was being done. Assistant Commissioner Smith from the Eastern Regional Command broke in abruptly.

  "He wouldn’t be stupid enough to stay in a hotel. He'll be holed up in a house somewhere, or an apartment. He'd break in. Kill the occupant or occupants and just stay there. No way we can find him that way."

  Branton nodded. Then he asked,

  "What about missing persons then?"

  Smith replied,

  "Yep. We're checking that. Twelve people reported missing in the last two weeks. We've checked their houses. Nothing so far."

  Branton shrugged. Needle in a fucking haystack. Directing his next question to the room he asked,

  "What about the girl, the stripper he apparently saved, Natasha Brown, has she been found anywhere? Do we think she's with him? Doctor Hill doesn’t think so."

  There was a variety of answers to that. Branton listened. Then he pointed to Jack Williams. He asked him,

  "Jack, what do you think?"

  Jack Williams hated being the center of attention. He hated the fact that he used to be Brian's partner. Fortunately, there hadn’t been the faintest hint yet that Brian was gunning for him personally, and therefore no hint of him setting up Brian in the fraud case
. He couldn’t bear too much scrutiny on that. He was still reeling from his encounter with the CIA fuckhead. His reply was brief and surly,

  "Sure she is. They're shacked up together. I know Brian."

  Branton asked,

  "So what do you think we should do next?"

  Jack Williams replied,

  "I don’t know. Just find the cunt and kill him."

  Everyone agreed with that but it wasn’t exactly helpful.

  Branton waited patiently for the commotion to die down. Then he pointed to his list again.

  "Next question. What is he planning next?"

  Bobby Fuller from the Federal Police Counter Terrorist Unit raised his voice and spoke up.

  "Do we think he is planning to stay in Melbourne? Couldn’t he just get in a car and drive to Sydney or Canberra or one of the other cities? That might be the next step if he's planning to escalate."