No Remorse No Regret

by Ian Worrall

  Colton stands up and pulls her to her feet. Ever valiant, she tries hopping away from him. He grabs her around the waist and spins her around. “No escape, my dear.”

  Throwing her over his shoulder, he closes his eyes, tilts his head back, and breathes out heavily. “Oh yeah this is so great,” he says, before he starts massaging the bulge in his pants. “Just how I like my girls, helpless and under my control. I will be inside you soon, little darling.”

  Chapter 32

  I nside the Traveller’s Motel, the front desk clerk watches as a cab pulls up and a woman gets out. Her red hair is tied back in a ponytail underneath a Montreal Canadiens ball cap.

  Nothing remarkable, but she does look cute. A little eye candy to make about five minutes of the night go quicker. Maybe fake some computer problems and stretch it out to ten minutes. Thinking of what it would be like to do her in the motel room. There have been a few travelers who were willing. Maybe this one will be too.

  The cabbie opens the trunk of the car and lifts Melissa’s two suitcases out for her. She wheels them in to the motel and greets the front desk agent.

  “A friend of mine booked me a room for Mary Celeste.”

  The desk agent starts up the room booking program on the computer. “It’s going to be a few minutes, miss, the computer is old. They haven’t been upgraded in about five years.”

  “Really?” she asks.

  “Oh yeah. Backwards little motel. But the job pays the bills.”

  “That’s good.”

  “So, what brings you into town?”

  “I really am too tired to chat. Just get me to my room.”

  “Would you like a coffee while the system boots up?”

  “No. I want to be asleep before I hit the pillow,” she says.

  “OK. Well here you are, Miss Celeste. Would you like a hand with your bags?”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  The clerk grabs a luggage cart and lifts Melissa’s bags onto the cart, grunting as he does.

  “Do those things weigh as much as you?”

  “Probably more.”

  “If you’re tired you can always sit on the cart while I take you to your room. Or I can give you a piggy back ride.”

  “You looking to pick me up literally and figuratively?”

  “The nights get long,” he says.

  “I’m sure they do. But no.”

  At her room, the clerk opens the door and carries her bags in for her. Turning around she hands him a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Wish I had more but–”

  “Yeah, if you could afford more, you’d be staying at the Lacroix.”

  She winks at him. “Of course,” she replies, remembering her stay there under Mike Cairn’s bill.

  Closing the door behind her, she looks through the peephole and sees the clerk is lingering outside the door. She turns away and pulls the comforter off the bed, then turns off the light. Waiting forty seconds she walks back to the door and looks through the peephole, the clerk is turning away looking down at the floor mouthing the word “damn.”

  “You’re lucky all the ones you did consented.”

  From her suitcase, she pulls out the Quebec license plate and a screw driver. Opening the door to the parking lot, she looks each way to ensure no one is watching. No other cars in the parking lot, no lights on in rooms and no one out on the road. She removes the Nova Scotia plate and replaces it with the Quebec plate. She removes her bags from the room and puts them in the back seat of the car.

  Her last task is to remove the fifty thousand dollars from the room safe in the motel before driving off into the night.

  Chapter 33

  M itchell and Jackie are each nursing a glass of draught beer. Law enforcement paraphernalia adorns the bar walls. Men and women, all of them cops, are sitting and standing at tables, playing pool and darts.

  “So, what are the chances of us getting this bastard now, when ten years ago he wasn’t caught?” Jackie asks.

  “A lot better now. We’ve got better DNA technology, the profiling gives not only the type of person, but the geographic profile helps us to narrow where we’re looking.”

  “And what of this vigilante and the war between the Russians and The Black Roses?” she asks.

  “The war is the problem of the OC task force for now, until we get The Drowner. As for the vigilante, well, we’ll keep looking as much as possible.”

  She takes a drink.

  “Something wrong, kid?” he asks.

  She shrugs her shoulders. “Just wondering about the girl, Celine, was it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would someone block that out?”

  “Probably to guarantee her safety.”

  “From cops? Did whoever did it think our killer was a cop?”

  “Hopefully not. But killers have been known to inject themselves into an investigation,” Mitchell says.

  “And if she was a survivor of a serial killer, could she be our vigilante?”

  “Possibly. But in my notebook, she was a petite woman, like Melissa Vance at the survivor’s center. She’s no more than one hundred pounds soaking wet. She’d have to be able to physically control a large male.”

  “Without a weapon, or someone to assist, she couldn’t have subdued much.” Jackie puts her drink down on the bar.

  “Anything else?” Mitchell asks her.

  “Yeah. We haven’t heard back from Torres about any information on the names yet, have we?”

  “Come to think of it no. We’ll call him tomorrow.”

  Jackie looks around the bar. “Zach not here?”

  Mitchell shakes his head. “He’s at his hotel.”

  They both finish their drinks. Jackie takes out her mobile phone and calls a cab.

  “Cab after one beer?” Mitchell asks her.

  “We’re cops. If we uphold the law, we have to live by it ourselves.”

  Mitchell turns to the bar tender. “Hey, Chipper, can you take my keys? I’ll be by tomorrow to pick them up.”

  Chapter 34

  T hree minutes after pulling out of the motel parking lot and stopped at a red light, Melissa winks at herself in the mirror. “Looking sweet.” Opening a notebook to a page with a list of twenty potential stops on the way to Chicago, five are listed under Plan A. The others are listed under Plans B, C, and D. She enters the first destination from Plan A into her GPS.

  At the next red light, six young men pull up beside her and start whistling. She looks over at them and smiles.

  “Hey, babe,” one of them calls out. “Follow us. We’ll give you a good party.” She shakes her head at them and turns away.

  “Not good enough for you?” another one yells.

  She ignores them as the light turns green and drives off. They follow her and start honking the horn.

  “Back off, boys, you don’t know what you’re messing with,” she says to the mirror.

  In the rear-view mirror, she sees them make a right turn.

  “Smart move, kids.”

  Melissa breathes out a sigh as she continues driving. Don’t need the distraction right now. Two weeks or less to take out this next target, but she knows where he’s going to be, at his office or the company onsite weight room.

  She continues going over in her mind how she’ll do this hit. The cyanide or the gun. Hit and run with her car. No need to rush though.

  On the way home or upon return, she needs to do some banking. Danil did get her fifty of the three-hundred large he owes her. Set up accounts in different names. All will be under ten-thousand dollars. Get an escape plan in place for when she needs it. The storm that’s coming might not only be a psycho serial killer.

  At another red light, the same car as before pulls up next to her. They start again with calling to her to follow them. She rolls her eyes as they get out of their car, six guys at once? Maybe I’ll only have to take out two of them as one of them approaches her door.

  She slams the door open hitting him
in the forehead and following up with a palm heel strike to the chin, knocking him unconscious. The one behind him tries to grab for her. Sidestepping him she grabs his groin, squeezes, twists, and pulls hard. The kid goes down holding himself rolling around on the ground.

  “You bitch! You ripped my nuts off!”

  A third one makes the mistake of trying to grab for her and she kicks him in the ankle then gives him an elbow strike to the jaw breaking it and knocking him unconscious. The other three stop in their tracks.

  “Are you a psycho? We just wanted to see if you if you’d join us for some fun, lady,” one of them says.

  “Don’t have time for it tonight, boys. Back off or you can join your friends.”

  They don’t give an answer. Just stand there. “Well, boys, what’s it going to be? Let me go on my way or you’ll spend a night or eight in the hospital.”

  “Fine, lady. Go.”

  Driving off, she breaks three nails clenching the steering wheel as she breathes out through her teeth making the hissing sound. You boys should have backed off when you had the chance. Hope you learned to respect a girl, otherwise you’ll get another visit sometime in the future.

  Once on the interstate highway, she sets the cruise control for sixty-five miles per hour. She stays at the speed limit, marveling at the stupid things some criminals have done to get caught. One guy had a fake siren and light and pulled over an on-duty cop in an unmarked police car. Idiot.

  Even for some who were more organized, it is sometimes one of the most innocent things that the police can lock onto. A loose thread that, once pulled, causes everything to unravel. She can think of no loose threads she’s left hanging. She’s been very careful not to leave clues. Nothing’s been tied to her.

  After a rapist got killed, she could make most of them look like accidents. And for those that didn’t, the woman or women the man raped always had an air tight alibi. After all, she wasn’t the one who killed him. And the rape victim was the only one who had a clear motive, as did any of her family members.

  Part of what made it hard to catch a serial killer has also made her successful in her career. No connection between the victim and the murderer. There was no known connection between her and her victims.

  And there’s no known connection between her and her next target. Celine Charlebois was a woman who died in Quebec one-hundred years ago. It was a name she had planned to use for a character when she was in drama school. She got it walking by a graveyard while on a class trip in high school. Cops would never think to check that, would they? Not for something from a school project. Or with the fact that she had left drama school after breaking up with her then-boyfriend to repay her debt.

  Chapter 35

  W hile Melissa is on her way to Chicago, Colton is driving in his SUV, whistling along to the Country and Western music, when a news bulletin comes over the radio.

  “Police are asking for the public’s help with any information on the whereabouts of Haley Vater. Yesterday her mother made an emotional appeal begging for her release.”

  “To the man who has my precious little girl, she’s my baby. She has a family and friends that love her. We beg you to let her free and turn yourself in so you can get the help you desperately need.”

  Colton laughs out loud as Haley’s father announces a fifty-thousand-dollar award for her return and information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man who took her.

  “Oh, Mommy and Daddy, you won’t see your little girl alive again. I’ve got her and don’t want the fifty large. Got my parent’s house in the will, mortgage-free.”

  The songs continue after the news bulletin signs off. Colton sings his own words, “Oh, the fear I bring to the world. I am like a bird of prey, hunting and taking whatever I want.”

  With his cruise control locked in just below the maximum, he continues driving down the highway. He sees a Volkswagen Beetle driving in the same direction as him. As he gets closer, he sees a Quebec license plate. He slows down as his exit is only three miles away. When the car pulls into the left lane Colton speeds up and tries to get a look in the car. He is barely able to make out a woman in the car.

  “Could have had a little fun with you, but got someone else right now. The honor of being killed by me shall be bestowed to the next little bitch I come across.”

  He turns off his exit and slows down the car until he comes to a stop. Turning left, he drives to a four-way stop sign where he turns right down a road full of potholes. Colton bounces in his car seat, his head bobbing like a human bobble head. Tax dollars at work. They’ll have to pay for any damages to my truck.

  Ten minutes later, he arrives at his destination. He steps out of the vehicle and lights a cigarette while he walks to the middle of a wooden pedestrian bridge. He looks around to make sure he’s alone. At midnight, it is earlier than he normally dumps his victims, so when he finishes the cigarette and flicks it away, he lights up another.

  As he smokes, he walks to the other end of the bridge and looks both ways. Seeing no one, he makes his way back to the vehicle. When he opens the back, the bag reaches out and kicks him in the face.

  “You little bitch,” he screams as he punches at the bag where Haley’s stomach would be. A muffled groan sounds out as Colton grabs his flashlight and then throws the writhing girl over his shoulder. In his left hand, he carries a twenty-pound cinder block with rope tied around it.

  At the middle of the bridge, he sits her down on the ground and unzips the bag. He ties the rope around the tape that’s binding her wrists. Sticking his knife slowly into her below her collarbone, he kisses her on the forehead. Her struggling against the restraints and against Colton is futile as he puts the cinder block on her lap, lifts her up onto the railing, then turns the flashlight on and shines it in her face.

  “Goodbye, little darling.”

  He pushes Haley into the water below shining the light on her as she goes under. He lights another cigarette and stands on the bridge as he smokes. When he’s half-finished the cigarette, he throws it on the deck of the bridge, struts to his truck, and drives away.

  On the bridge, the still lit cigarettes have landed on dry brush, which has started to smolder while Haley breaks the surface of the water, the tape binding her wrists broken. She struggles to escape from the bag with her ankles still bound as the bridge bursts into flames. Not only did Colton flick the cigarettes into dried debris stuck in the cracks of the wood, but onto oil and gas that had leaked from off-road vehicles and seeped into the planks, causing the bridge to ignite.

  Chapter 36

  M elissa steps out of her car and spreads her arms to stretch all the muscles in her body from the waist up. She shakes her legs to get rid of the stiffness as she makes her way into the restaurant of this truck stop. Two customers are eating at tables while truckers at the counter are talking about the girls at their next stop. One winks at her as she hands the woman behind the counter her thermos.

  “Fill this with coffee and some milk, please.”

  “Hey there, little lady. Heading anywhere in a hurry?” the burly trucker says to her.

  She looks at him and smirks. “Yes, actually.”

  “Come on. Surely you can spare–”

  “Mick,” the woman at the counter says, “leave the girl alone.”

  “That’s all right,” Melissa says to her. She taps the trucker’s shoulder. “I really don’t like minute men.”

  As she turns back to the woman, the other truckers are laughing at their friend. “Shot down by a chick,” one quips.

  The checkout woman hands her the thermos of coffee, “On the house for that one, sweetie.”

  Melissa gives her a wink to say thanks.

  * * *

  With the bridge engulfed in flames, two firetrucks pull onto the scene. As soon as the crews disembark and hook up the hoses, they begin spraying it with water. By the time the volunteer fire crew arrived, there was no hope to save the bridge. Their intention now is to prevent the fir
e from spreading, creating a forest fire.

  In fifteen minutes, it becomes clear that the water stored on the truck will not be sufficient to put out the blaze. One of the firefighters starts to connect a line from one of the trucks to run it to the lake. When he gets to the side of the water and does what he needs to pump water from the lake, he finds an unconscious female in a sports gear bag.

  “Captain,” he calls out, “got a girl down here!” He grabs her underneath her shoulders and pulls her out of the water as two other firefighters grab EMS gear off their truck and run down to him. The fire captain yells up to the road where two cops are standing by to direct any traffic that comes by and an ambulance crew is waiting as a precaution in case there are any human victims.

  With the girl on a stretcher and the connection between the lake and the firetruck secure, the three firefighters begin checking her vitals. Finding that her pulse and breathing are both weak, they connect her to an oxygen tank after they remove the tape from her mouth, the tape on her wrists was torn so her wrists are no longer joined. They leave it on for evidence. She starts to regain consciousness. When she sees three men looking down at her, she screams out, “Please, I don’t want to die!” She thrashes around on the stretcher trying to pull away.

  “You’re safe now, kiddo. No one’s going to hurt you here. We’re firefighters.”

  She wipes tears from her eyes, her breathing coming in short gasps.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “I’m, I’m, I’m Haley Vater.”

  The firefighters look at each other as their mouths drop open.

  “Oh, my God. You’re the missing girl on the news?”

  Haley buries her head in her hands and says, “Yes.”

  “Officer,” one of them shouts. “Get the city cops here. She’s the missing girl on the news.”

  The state trooper makes the call to his dispatcher as the ambulance and fire crews carry Haley up to the ambulance.

  Chapter 37