The Cat Hunter

by Krishna Ahir

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  Byron crashed into Veronica with all of the force of the storm that beat down on the scene. Thunder rolled over the landscape, as if reacting to his action. Hooking one arm around her waist, he grabbed hold of her hand holding the knife. The girl's feet left the floor as she was tackled, and she came down hard in the mud, Byron's full weight on top of her.

  Restraining her, he shook loose the blade from her grip and breathed heavily, his heartbeat roaring in his head.

  Byron had heard about the strength of the insane before, but had never truly understood the concept until that moment. Madness gripped the girl, unlike anything he had ever seen before. So powerful and flooded with adrenaline was she, he had difficulty securing her wrists into the handcuffs. Even after snapping them into place, he kept a firm grip with one hand; for fear that she would break free.

  Finally pulling his phone from the depths of his mud-caked uniform, Byron shouted down the receiver. "This is Constable Byron from Rosefield Police. I need an ambulance down on Burleigh Way. I've got a stabbing victim and a kid that's been hit by a car." Veronica started to scream and buck beneath him, but he kept his hold on her. His voice grew even louder, to dwarf the cacophony of her shrieking. "I'm also going to need a van! I've got the perp in custody!" As he said it, it dawned on him. "I've got her! I've got the Cat Killer!"

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  Chapter 29

  Veronica Hunt was carted away, just as Christopher Douglas's stretcher was being loaded into the ambulance. Not once did her voice die down, through the entire ordeal. She shrieked out her love for him, like a wailing banshee, continuing long after her vocal chords were torn.

  Another ambulance peeled away from the house, carrying in it Detective Sergeant Devon Osborne. His left lung flooded with blood, he was lucky to be alive. Had help arrived even ten minutes later, he might not have made it.

  Inside the house, the police had found the bodies of Georgina Bell, Maddie DeWhitt, and Patricia & Victor Hunt. Georgina's throat had been slashed, as had Victor's. The only solace to be held was that their deaths were quick. Maddie and Patricia, however, were another story. Veronica had cut out Maddie's tongue and stretched a strip of duct tape over her mouth, leaving her to the slow and torturous agony of drowning on her own blood. Patricia was downright mutilated. She had been stabbed so many times, she was almost beyond recognition.

  Upon searching her bedroom, Drake Gregory uncovered a diary of sorts. In it, Veronica detailed the horrific abuse she suffered, at the hands of her parents. As he thumbed through the pages, Drake was so unsettled he had to fight back the urge to cry.

  Finding him reading in the bedroom, his hands trembling, Harold had placed one hand on Drake's shoulder and ushered him out of the house.

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  The office, in the middle of Grand Stone Bay Police Station, was silent save for the dull hum of the computers. Drake peered down at one of the monitors, watching Veronica from the security cameras as she rocked back and forth, chained to the table in the interrogation room. Beside him, Wilson twisted his mouth into a shocked and sour expression.

  "What the hell happened to her face?"

  "She stabbed Osborne in the throat, so he punched her in the face," Drake explained. "She swallowed six of her teeth."

  "How on earth are they still alive?"

  "Which one?"

  "Both." Wilson turned away and grimaced. "It feels like I'm looking at some kind of creature, down there."

  Drake leaned back and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Please don't."

  "What, you're telling me you don't feel the same?" He jabbed a finger down at the screen and bared his teeth. "After what she's done... She's not human."

  "I said don't."

  Wilson persisted, his gaze hardening behind the lenses of his glasses. "She stabbed your partner. You're saying you don't feel anything when you see her?"

  Drake felt something boil up inside him. He stared down the Detective and lowered his voice. "You want to know what I feel when I look at her? I feel pity. Pity because someone took a poor abused kid and manufactured a monster." Not once breaking eye-contact, he maintained a lead tone. "I read her diary. And when I did, I felt... Sad. Because if that little girl had been born to anyone else, she would have stood a chance. If things had been different... Nobody would have had to die."

  "That doesn't change the fact that she killed five people," Wilson argued.

  "I'm not saying that it changes anything. Those people are still dead; three people are still in hospital... She's done horrible things, and should be punished for that. That's not my argument. My argument is that this could have been prevented. This," he tapped the screen, "could be anyone. And that's terrifying."

  As if there was nothing more to be said, Drake made for the door. Wilson might have called after him, but he was barely aware of the words. Slipping out of the half-open door, he paced down the corridor in an effort to calm himself. Heat seemed to radiate from the top of his head, and he leaned his forehead against the wall. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply.

  "It's not easy, is it?" came a voice from behind him. Drake turned and stared through blurry eyes at DCI James Harold. "She's not what you expected, I take it?"

  Drake took a second to compose himself. "I... I expected someone more-"

  "Evil?" He watched Harold study his expression, as he nodded. "Trust me, it seems difficult now — Christ, I know it does — but give it time and you'll be thankful. This one, we can help. She's done some terrible things, but she's still young. She has time to get better. It's going to take a lot of therapy, but there's still a chance. Real evil, though... Real evil, you don't want to find."

  "It's just..." He averted his eyes quickly, before returning his gaze to Harold's own mahogany orbs. "Everything that happened to her; everything in her diary... I feel so sorry for her."

  "You do," Harold said, matter-of-factly. "You feel sorry for almost all of them. But that doesn't change what they've done. So the best you can do is put them away, and get them the help they'll need. With any luck, she'll end up in a hospital. Somewhere that can help her."

  "You know, most people don't think like that."

  "I know," Harold replied, shrugging. "And I'm not saying that what I think is right. I just thought that, if you're anything like me, you'll take solace in that."

  Harold patted Drake on the arm and, for the first time, offered him a smile. The experience was so surreal that Drake was unsure whether or not it had actually happened, or if he was just imagining it. Either way, it had helped.

  "And anyway..." the DCI said.”You should be proud of yourself. You solved this one. If you hadn't noticed the handwriting, we never would have made it in time. I'll be telling McIrvin much, too. No one can take that away from you."

  Harold turned and nodded his head down the hallway. Fishing his hand out of his Jacket pocket, he pulled out a debit card and wagged it in the air.

  "Come on," he said. "Byron and I are going for a drink, so come and join us. I'm buying."

  Drake hesitated. "What about the paperwork?"

  "That'll keep. Something tells me you need this."

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  "How you holding up?"

  The hospital room was sparsely populated with few furnishings. A low chair was left abandoned in the corner, and a squat table sat beside the bed, upon which a cup of water and a framed picture of a cat had been placed. The curtains had been drawn over the window, leaving only artificial light to illuminate the room.

  Osborne sucked water through a straw and turned his mismatched eyes onto Drake, who stood lingering in the doorway. "I feel like shit, but I'm alive. Which is something..." He flinched in pain as he spoke, straining the stitches ringing his neck.

  "I've gotta say... You're one tough son of a bitch," Drake said, folding his arms over his chest. "I talked to the boy. He says you grabb
ed her, when she tried to chase him out. And from what I gather, you'd already been stabbed at that point." He broke into a genuine smile. "Without you, she might have caught and killed him."

  Osborne scratched at the side of his head, again wincing as his IV line moved beneath the skin of his left arm. "Yeah, well... No good deed. She stabbed me three times."

  "You got your own back, though," Drake retorted. "I saw what you did to her face."

  "Thought she deserved something."

  Pulling the chair out of the corner, Drake sat beside the bed and took a long moment to himself. "You know... I think I'm actually going to miss you."

  "Shit, don't say it so loud. People might hear you."

  Drake chuckled to himself and leaned backwards. "I'm actually trying to be nice to you. Don't make me regret it."

  Osborne smirked through his beard and pushed one hand back through his long, matted hair. "Actually... You grew on me as the week went on. Then again so did my verruca."

  Drake burst into a genuine laugh, for the first time in a while. His eyes creased and crow s feet spread across his face. Reaching up, he wiped a tear out of his eye. "Like I said... I'm going to miss you."

  Osborne shrugged. "I guess I can say the same. I liked you better than the other Rosefield guys. Though that's not saying an awful lot."

  Drake again sat in silence for a while, listening to the ticking of the wall-mounted clock. Again, Osborne took a drink from his cup of water.

  "You were right about the cats on the track, by the way," Drake said, breaking the silence. "She did dump them there, to get someone on their own. Maddie DeWhitt, nineteen years old."

  Osborne took a breath and stared off into the distance. "You'd think that would make me happy..."

  "Not at all... I just wanted to say, you're good at your job."

  Osborne turned his odd eyes back to Drake, meeting his pupils in an unwavering stare. "Yeah. You too."

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  McIrvin and Harold stood staring over at the house, as if they could see the evil seeping out of it. The horrors that had occurred in the home had forever stained it, infecting it with the disease of pain. Lesions of the sickness spread out into the air around it and lingered, like the stench of death. Too long would it be until the horror was forgotten. The house would carry the stain until long after their bones turned to dust.

  "Your lads did a good job," McIrvin admitted.

  "So did yours," Harold replied. "The media's going to be all over this," he added.

  "Well, you can't expect anything else," the Superintendent stated. "A case like this... A serial killer in Grand Stone Bay. The press is going to have a field day. It's a big talking point."

  "If you want to go in front of those vultures, leave me out of it." Harold stuffed his hands into his pockets, his gaze still fixed on Veronica Hunt's house. Strands of police tape still hung between the beams of the garden gate. "I've had my fill. Twenty years on the Murder Squad is too long."

  "What about all of those crime shows you were on," the older man said, with a smirk. "You were quite the celebrity back in your day."

  "Not all they're cracked up to be," he replied. "I went on the shows to educate people, not because I had illusions of grandeur." He flicked his eyes over McIrvin. "But if that is what you want, don't let me stop you."

  Harold turned to leave when he spotted movement, coming down the slope of the field behind the house. Red-faced and ruddy, the young man wore a navy blue windbreaker and light blue jeans. Looped around his neck, a DSLR camera jumped and bounced with every step that he took.

  He raised his voice and called out to the young reporter. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

  Expecting the young man to run, he was surprised when the reporter continued past the house and jogged up to him. In his sweaty fist, he clasped a handheld recording device. "Hey, sorry about that!" he laughed. "Jessie Goodwin, Mayfair Star. You wouldn't happen to want to give me a bit of an interview? About what exactly is going on here?"

  Stunned by the brash nature of the man, Harold stepped back in disbelief. "Are you being serious?"

  "Deathly," he joked. Crudely.

  "Sorry, sir, but you're going to have to leave."

  "Hang on a second," McIrvin interjected, patting Harold on the shoulder as he strode past him. "You're from a local paper, right? Not one of those national ones?"

  Jessie nodded, a shrewd smile curling his mouth.

  McIrvin smiled. "How about an exclusive?"

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  EPILOGUE

  "I'm glad they've finally let you out," Barbara said, beaming a smile over at Christopher.

  Both of his eyes were still black and swollen, and his limbs encased in cast, but he was otherwise on the mend. He sat in a wheelchair, his broken leg stretched out in front of him. As he smiled, he chewed the inside of his cheek.

  "I guess they figured I was well enough to send home."

  "How are you feeling?" she tilted her head in genuine sympathy, looking for anything in his expression.

  "Honestly?" Sadness passed over his face. "Still guilty. If... If it hadn't been for me, Georgina and Maddie wouldn't have died."

  "She was crazy," Barbara said her voice stern and forceful. "There was nothing you could do. As far as we know, she could have killed anyone. Listen to me." She moved as he looked away, so as to keep eye contact. "Listen to me. None of it was your fault."

  Christopher said nothing.

  "Listen to me. None of this is your fault." Leaning towards him, she reached out and took his hand in her own. "Don't think like that, okay. Promise me."

  Breaking into a sad smile, Christopher nodded as the tears began to brim in his eyes. "Thank you."

  "That's okay." Barbara returned the smile and cocked her head to the side. "Just promise not to cry next time I come and visit, okay?"

  Christopher laughed, crying all the while. "Well I can't exactly help it, can I? Jesus, you're heartless."

  Her usual attitude coaxing a laugh out of him, Barbara joined Christopher in chuckling.

  The pair sat for a long time talking about nothing, but it meant everything to Christopher. She could see it on his face. He had been through so much that he needed a sense of normality; something from his life before the horror to return to.

  After two hours of conversation, and very little else, she promised to visit him every day. Christopher replied with a laugh that she had better, or he would get the impression that she didn't care. She called him a bumhole and left with a smile on her face, thanking whatever God would listen for returning him safe.

  Leaving Christopher s house, she prepared to climb into her car when she noticed something out of the ordinary.

  Barbara saw the man, stood in the shade of a sycamore. He was leaning against the newly built wall that bordered the garden in which the tree had been planted. Tall and strong, his body was corded with tightly wound coils of dense muscle.

  He seemed out of place in the suburban neighborhood; an unfamiliar face that she had never seen before.

  Clearly waiting for something the man moved listlessly, turning his attention up and down the street. The way that his eyes flitted about left her slightly uncomfortable and self-conscious. Almost like his vision was able to penetrate the very nature of whatever he looked at. When his gaze landed on her, he lingered for a second, like he was staring into her mind.

  Lifting one hand, he waved pleasantly and broke into a grin.

  Turing away, he walked several feet down the road and got into his car. As he drove away, Barbara watched him leave. Through the white glare on his windows, she caught the man looking out; his eyes fixed on Christopher s house.

  Disappearing around the corner, down the road, the car's tail end reflected in Barbara's eye.

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  Thinking to himself, as he drove away from the house, The Grinner curled his mouth into a smile.
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  The End

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  About the Author

  A stay at home mom by profession, Krishna mesmerizes us with her heart touching, deep poems and stories. She weaves magic through her words and her characters are inspired from real-life incidents. Krishna has been a lifelong writer and first began creating other worlds and characters in her school days. When not absorbed in latest gripping page turner, she loves listening to music and playing with her daughter. She is a Gujju by heart who lives in Hyderabad, with her husband and daughter.

  Published Works: Short stories and poems in anthologies like The Narrow Road Vol 8

  Blooming Tales Vol 1

  Namaste Ink Magazine Vol 1

  Advent – HydRAW Anthology

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