Random Acts

by Franklin Horton

  He was coming for her.

  He was there. He was just outside the door. Keys jingled and one slid into the trunk lock. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut in terror, to not see what sights lay in wait for her, but she forced them open. She had to see what she was doing.

  The key turned and the trunk unlatched with a popping sound. The trunk lid squeaked open and there he was, a dark figure silhouetted against a darker night.

  She planned on concealing the fact she had escaped her bonds. She planned on waiting until he reached in to strike decisively and accurately. Her plan blew apart like an exploding tire. When she saw him there above her, the needle on her panic gauge maxed out. She screamed and swung blindly with the knife.

  She felt it connect, slash him somewhere. Warm wetness splattered her hand.

  "Oh shit!" he groaned. “Oh fuck!”

  She slashed again but this time he stepped back from the vehicle and slammed the trunk lid on her arm, pinning it. She screamed. The pain was excruciating and she was certain her arm was broken.

  He threw his body weight on the car, forcing the trunk lid down even harder. Amanda was unable to keep hold of the knife and it dropped from her numb fingers. She was done. She was dead. She’d had one chance and she blew it.

  Her attacker had ended the threat but he had not vented his rage. Not at all.

  He raised the trunk lid and slammed it again before she could draw her arm back into the trunk. When he raised it again, she managed to draw her wounded arm back inside and cradle it to her chest before he could close it a third time. Enraged, he flung the trunk lid wide open and shot a meaty arm inside. He grabbed wildly, one hand closing around her bicep and the other coming in to grab her by the shirt. He dragged her roughly over the lip of the trunk and slammed her to the ground.

  She scrambled for something to grab, something to break, or at least slow, her fall. Her fingers closed on nothing. She thumped down on her side, her breath knocked from her. She croaked and gasped, struggling for the air to scream but she couldn’t find enough to even breathe. She tried to get away, to roll up under the vehicle, but there was no time. He drew back and kicked her.

  Had he been wearing tennis shoes, she might have been spared more damage but the Death Merchant wore black combat boots every day. The hard leather boot impacted her side like a sledgehammer. She felt a crack deep inside her as ribs broke. She mercifully found air, sucking in a breath then crying out.

  The Death Merchant understood now he needed to choke down his rage and get her inside before someone heard her. He grabbed her by the forearms and dragged her toward the house. The strain on her injured arm was excruciating and she screamed again. She did not have long fingernails but she desperately tried to claw and scratch at his wrists.

  When one nail found purchase and drew blood, he let a boot fly and it caught her in the back of the head, stunning her. She wilted from the blow too disoriented to struggle. She succumbed to the dragging, unable to prevent herself from being pulled to whatever fate awaited her, unable to stop the monster from pulling her to his lair.

  The house was dark and silent. She vaguely felt herself being pulled up steps and then pulled over a threshold into the house. He yanked her through the room, bouncing her off furniture, her cries of pain buying her no mercy, sparing her nothing. He flung a door violently open and it bounced off the wall. Without warning, Amanda was shoved through it.

  In the blackness of the house’s interior, she could not see that stairs awaited her on the other side of that opening. She tumbled head over heels, rolling out of control before slamming to the concrete floor. She cried and arched her body, uncertain what injury might be the most significant. It was a blur. A mélange of pain and sensation. She sensed somehow it might only be the beginning of what was in store for her.

  She'd taken several blows to the head. It throbbed and there was a burning sensation that probably meant a cut or scrape. She alternately attempted to soothe her elbows, her knees, her hip, her back. Everything in her body screamed at her, demanding attention, demanding relief. Before she could make herself get up, before she could try to scurry into the darkness and hide, she heard the thud of heavy steps.

  They were coming toward her.

  55

  After Nasr was shot, Mohammed fled the hills of Boone, North Carolina, in a panic. He struggled to keep his speed in check. He’d been driving for much of his life but did not have an American driver’s license and it was against the law to be driving without one.

  His mind raced. He tried repeatedly to call Khebat but the phone rang and rang with no answer. He tried texting him but got no response to that either. It had been easy to convince himself earlier that Khebat’s failure to answer the phone was because he was busy making preparations for the flash mob attack. Now he was less able to convince himself of that. Something was wrong. Khebat had been captured or killed. Something bad had happened. He was sure of it.

  Part of him wanted to go check on his friend but he couldn’t. It could be a trap. Someone could be there waiting on him. He couldn’t risk it. His friend would have to understand, if he was even still alive.

  At a highway rest area, Mohammed logged into the email account he used for communicating with Miran. As much as he hated to do so, he needed to make the man aware of what had happened. When he logged into the account, he found a message from Miran already waiting on him.

  “This will be our last communication while you are in America. We won’t require you to run operational control. Everything has been arranged.”

  Mohammed slammed his laptop screen closed and cursed. He punched the dashboard of the vehicle several times, yelling in frustration, then raked his fingers through his hair, tempted to pull it out. There was nothing for him to do and only one place he knew to go.

  56

  In Charlotte, a hastily-assembled team huddled inside a van staring at a wall of monitors. Representatives of the city police department, the state police, and the FBI were on hand. No one quite understood the scope of this operation yet but the mood in the command van was tense. The kidnapping of a teenage girl was a situation that tore at the soul of each of them.

  “Drone up,” said a tech operating a remote control with joysticks and switches.

  The rest of the team watched the display, seeing the image from the drone’s camera as it flew over the neighborhood. Another task force member brought up local Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping and 9-1-1 mapping software to guide the drone to the correct house. In seconds it was there hovering in position.

  “Any vehicles?” the task force commander asked.

  “I don’t see any,” the drone tech said.

  “Doesn’t mean he’s not here,” the trooper said. “He could have switched cars or parked somewhere else. Hell, he could be in a garage somewhere.”

  “I agree,” the commander said.

  “Then let’s do this. Time is wasting,” the trooper said.

  The task force commander keyed his mike. “Subject is Victor Hesse, six foot two inches tall, three hundred and eighty-six pounds. He has a recent arrest for assault and various other crimes. We assume he has the victim with him so stay alert. Team One in place?”

  “Team One confirmed,” came a voice. They were on the perimeter, watching the road in case anyone tried to escape the scene.

  “Team Two ready?” the commander asked.

  “Team Two confirmed.”

  “Entry Team ready?”

  “Entry Team confirmed.”

  The commander took a deep breath. He always hated this part, sending men into the unknown. “Entry Team, you are clear for breach. Let’s roll.”

  At the rear corner of Clara’s property, a tactical team assembled from several branches of local law enforcement spilled through the chain link gate and onto the property. Members of Team Two took concealed positions around the property. In seconds, they had surveillance on all sides of the house.

  The Entry Team stacked up at the fro
nt door. The lead man cocked his battering ram and split the cheap door jamb with a single blow. He rolled to the side and the entry team spilled through, weapons at the ready, lights and lasers splashing off walls. The men did not know the layout of this particular house but they’d breached many like it before. They’d been able to establish an accurate entry plan and everyone knew where they were going.

  “POLICE! Put down your weapons.”

  Nervously, the men in the command van monitored the entry through helmet cams and communication traffic.

  “First floor clear.”

  “Attic clear.”

  A single monitor showed the helmet cam of a team member descending the stairs. It was Sargent Yost, a fifteen year veteran of the city’s police department and a senior tactical team officer. He reached the bottom, took a few steps, and came upon a puddle of blood. In the jumpy image of his camera, the command team could see a blanket tossed in the floor, the clear shape of a body beneath it.

  “We got a body,” Yost stated, his disappointment clear even as he tried to keep his emotions at bay. “Size doesn’t match the suspect. Must be the girl.”

  “Fuck!” blurted the team commander back inside the van. “Get me visual confirmation but don’t screw up the scene. I’m not breaking some father’s heart until I’ve laid eyes on her.”

  The view in the camera showed Yost carefully avoiding the pool of blood as he crept toward the body. The view jumped from wall to wall as Yost verified the room was empty. When his light caught the wall of knives, he paused and took them in.

  “Holy shit,” the tech in the command van whispered.

  Yost heard feet on the steps, other men coming down into the basement.

  He spoke into his comms.

  “Taylor.”

  “Go left at the bottom of the steps, Taylor,” Yost said. “I haven’t cleared that side yet.”

  “Roger that.” Yost continued toward the body.

  “Raise it carefully from the face,” the FBI agent said into the comms. “Don’t slide that blanket. You don’t want to displace trace evidence any more than we have to.”

  The monitor continued to display a slightly offset version of what the man on the scene was seeing through his own eyes. The men in the command van saw the profile of a face beneath the blanket, the blood-soaked blanket molding perfectly to the face under it. In the harsh glow of his headlamp, Yost’s hand appeared on the screen, reaching for the corner of the blanket. He delicately peeled it back and found himself staring into the face of a dead man.

  “Who the fuck is that?” the FBI man asked.

  “Not our suspect and sure as shit not our missing girl,” the commander said.

  “Mixed blessing. She’s not dead but she’s not here,” the FBI guy whispered.

  The commander keyed his mike. “Is it just the light or does this guy appear to be of Middle Eastern descent?”

  “I did two tours of the sandbox,” Yost growled. “Looks Middle Eastern to me.”

  The commander turned to the trooper in the command van. “Get your trooper in Boone on the phone.”

  He turned to the tech working the computers and monitors. “And you’ve confirmed there’s been no activity on the suspect’s mobile phone?”

  “Not for days,” the tech replied. “Completely offline.”

  “You with the dad?” the trooper asked into his phone. “Tell him she’s not here.”

  Trooper Thomas, sitting with Cole at the police station in Boone, grilled the trooper on-scene for details.

  “I don’t know what our next move is,” the trooper replied. “We tried tracking him with his phone but it appears to have been offline for several days now.”

  “What about that other number?” Trooper Thomas asked. “The one used to call the stepfather a few days ago.”

  “We assumed it was the home phone to this residence,” the trooper replied.

  “You have a number?” the tech asked. “Give it to me. I can run it from here in seconds.”

  Cole held up his phone and showed Trooper Thomas the number Fox had given him. Trooper Thomas read it into the phone. The trooper in the command van repeated it to the tech who entered it into the 9-1-1 database.

  “Not this house,” the tech said a few seconds later. “Belongs to a Stanley Price. Other side of the city.”

  The commander hit his mike. “Team Two, secure the scene for detectives and crime scene investigation. Do not enter the house. Team One and Entry, roll out immediately. We have another possible location on the suspect.”

  In sixty seconds they were mobile and en route to Stanley’s house.

  Before they even reached it, the commander was on the radio with his team. “We have air support flyover of the second location. Thermal imaging confirms a vehicle with a hot engine sitting in the driveway. Vehicle matches the description of a second vehicle registered to the suspect’s mother. There are no lights on at the house and thermal couldn’t confirm any heat signatures within the residence.”

  He paused a second.

  “We have a second chance here, folks. Let’s bring this girl home.”

  57

  Amanda rolled away from the base of the steps before the man was upon her. There was something about his momentum and his position above her that made her fear he was going to pounce on her like a cat. She dragged herself deeper into the dark basement, crawling into a steel support column and striking her head. She got to her feet and toppled a stack of boxes, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and the steps, but it was like navigating a maze.

  The footsteps stopped.

  With no light reaching the depths of the basement, she could see nothing. It was only sound feeding her information. It sounded like he sat down on the foot of the steps.

  “I’ve never liked real live people. I don’t understand them,” the Death Merchant said. His voice filled the darkness, rolling off the bare block walls of the basement. It was throaty but high-pitched, like he was unused to talking.

  “I had a lot of friends online. I played games with them every night. I chatted with them and it never felt awkward. But in person, I could never say the right things. I could never do the right things.”

  Amanda remained silent, she did not know what to say. As quietly as possible, she continued moving around the basement, exploring with her hands, trying to protect the arm he’d slammed the car trunk on. She was certain it was broken but if she could not fight back that would be the least of her problems. She felt for anything she might be able to use to defend herself.

  “In real life, everything is always a disappointment,” he continued. “It never measures up to the virtual world.”

  She ran into what felt like a table covered with a sheet. She banged her already bruised hip against it and had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. It was a jolt she felt deep in the core of her battered body.

  “When you reached out to me, CamaroChick19, I thought you were going to be a new kind of friend,” he said. “Our communication was not about gaming. It was about me. No one had ever been interested in me before. In what I was doing. It made the world a different place for me.”

  Had he been able to see her face in the darkness, there was no way he could have missed her look of confusion. She had no idea what he was talking about. She had no idea who CamaroChick19 was. No idea who he even was. Her fingers touched an exterior wall, feeling the rough texture of cinderblock. She felt like a mouse trapped in box.

  “You have nothing to say?” he asked.

  She did not want to answer him, hoping the darkness concealed her movement, concealed her search for a weapon. Her fingers moved desperately, exploring everything around her. She found a flat surface at waist-height. It was level but scarred with deep grooves gouged into the top. A workbench maybe. There had to be something there she could use. She extended both hands, doubling her search, groping blindly, looking for anything. She refused to give up.

  Her hand struck an old coffe
e can filled with nails and it turned over, making a distinctive sound as it spilled nails. He had to know what she was doing now. Had to know where she was.

  “It’s no use,” he said. “There’s no way out. Nowhere to go. Nowhere else to be. We have to work this out. We have to end it.”

  “End what?” she demanded. She’d finally had enough. She was angry now, no longer able to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t care if talking gave away her position or not. “I don’t know you and have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never talked to you. I never reached out to you. Until I saw you in the bike shop that day, I’d never seen you in my life.”

  He released a sigh of disappointment. “I don’t understand why you’re lying to me. There’s no reason for it. Don’t you understand this is why we’re here? Maybe you thought you were fooling me with the fake user name but I’m too smart for you. I tracked the picture back to you. I figured out who you were.”

  “Who am I?” she asked.

  “You are Amanda Castle. You are CamaroChick19.” He said it with an air of revelation, like a detective announcing he’d figured out who committed a murder.

  All the while, Amanda searched. Her toe struck a cardboard box and she heard the tell-tale rattle of empty canning jars clinking together. She changed direction and her shin struck a tall plastic bucket. It was heavy with something, rocking from her impact but not sliding away. She bent over and felt around for the mouth of the bucket. Found the smooth rim and shoved a hand inside.

  The first thing she felt was a wooden handle. She groped around inside the bucket and found more wooden handles. They were not hammers. Too light. She pulled one out.

  Trowels.

  Bricklayer’s trowels with diamond-shaped steel faces and a point on the end. She found the sharpest one. It was not nearly as sharp as a knife but with enough effort she could shove it through flesh. Flesh was fairly easy to penetrate.

  But what about the shirt he was wearing? Could she push the relatively dull trowel through it? Probably not. That reduced the number of places she could strike to just his face. Not good.