15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  He ran out of his small, cramped office and bolted down the hallway. Something in his mind was counting down, like an egg timer about to go off. The dark hallway he was careering down was sparsely lit and posed many an obstacle. He was ducking and diving through a sea of crates and clothes rails. The place looked like the back of a drama workshop. He knew what it was, though; he knew they weren’t drama props. No, they were his props. Props for his masterpiece. It was a shame he didn’t have time to use all of them.

  He finally reached the end of the hallway and stopped to catch his breath. That was when he heard a small explosion. They must have breached the front door. They were big metal bastards, he thought. They sure came equipped. He snapped himself out of his fear and unlatched the door in front of him. With no time for a respite, he charged into the room and grabbed the keys on the hook off the wall. In the middle of the room was Olivia Cormack. She let out a scream. He hit her on the head with a closed fist, like a hammer into a nail.

  She went bye-bye. He smiled.

  Seventy-Nine

  The big doors came down with a thud. I couldn’t see much because of the smoky residue left behind by the breeching explosives. When the smoke finally cleared, we went in. I was in the lead team, the front team. The guy who saved my life at the Boston Common was leading the pack, and behind him were two of his closest squad members. Behind them, were Santiago and me. Behind us were two more teams, consisting of around twelve men. To say we went in all guns blazing was an understatement. We went into that warehouse with every intention of war on our mind. What we didn’t expect was what we got.

  We went storming in. I could feel the weight under my feet crack into the door that lay splintered in the entrance way. As we all made our way inside, I could hear the ever-so-present sound of our marching boots. I could hear a chorus of controlled breathing, the sort of breathing marksmen have. None of that controlled breathing was coming from Santiago or me. Our breathing mimicked that of an overweight, unfit, hyperventilating mess of humanity. We weren’t too familiar with the adrenaline rush that was a police raid. It felt like something out of the movies. We felt like SWAT.

  Chief Shaw had stayed behind; he was manning the communications in the van. He wanted to come, but the commissioner was having none of it. It was against police regulations. In other words, the Chief was too damn important to die. We, on the other hand, we were just your run-of-the-mill expendables.

  We reached the middle of the warehouse. So far, there wasn’t any sign of anything out of the ordinary. And then we heard some screaming. A woman’s scream. It was loud and could have split my brain into two. We knew we were close. We could smell it. At the sound of the screams, the teams of armed police, including San and I, all drew our weapons high, aiming in all directions, looking for our mark. We resembled a circle of humanity as we all stood on guard, aiming at a 360-degree angle. I spotted a shadow in the distance. It was standing in an unlit hallway. I didn’t know if my mind was seeing things or if what I saw was real. It didn’t take long for me to make the distinction.

  “Twelve o’clock,” I shouted. At that moment, everyone pointed their guns in the shadow’s direction.

  “Boston PD, come out with your hands up!” the guy who saved my life shouted.

  For a moment or two, nothing but silence followed. It was the sort of silence that was deafening. The sort of silence that burrowed into one’s ears and made a nest of noise in your eardrums. And then it began.

  “So it ends like this,” a voice said, soon accompanied by a face escaping from the shadows. A man wearing a big red sombrero came out of the darkness. He was wearing a smirk on his face that nearly outshone his big red hat. He wasn’t alone, though. I immediately noticed the chain on his wrist. He stopped dead in his tracks and pulled on it for effect.

  “You see this chain? You see it connected to my wrist? Someone is attached to this chain. Someone has a noose around their neck. I walk any farther, and she dies. I’ll snap her damn neck! You don’t think I’ll do it? You don’t think I’ll snap her neck before you have the chance to shoot me?” the man said in an unsteady yet affirmative voice.

  I was steadily aiming my gun at his head. I could see his eyes. He had a cold look in them. He also looked serious. He looked devious.

  “But that’s not all. What’s to say I haven’t already snapped her neck? What’s to say I haven’t already slit her throat? You see, you don’t know. You could be wasting time here. You could be playing into my game. Into my masterpiece. So what’s stopping you from shooting me?” He laughed.

  I could feel my finger twitching on the trigger. I didn’t know what to do. Neither of us did. We wanted to see this guy do time in prison. We didn’t want to shoot him. The fucker had to pay. Good job the Chief wasn’t there. He’d be screaming for the prick’s blood by now.

  “But I have an ace up my sleeve. My masterpiece is nearly complete. You think I don’t know what will happen to me? You don’t think I know what awaits me? Deportation awaits me. I’m not a U.S. citizen. Cuban prisons aren’t a very nice place to spend the rest of your life. It’s too bad I’ll be a hero in those parts. My masterpiece is solely based on the fact that corporate America and its greed need to end. I have accomplished that. Not all greed is gone, but at least the people will know. They will know why I did what I did,” the killer said, sounding a little out of breath as he wheezed a little, tugging on the chain once again. “They will know…they will know what I did,” he repeated.

  I had had enough. I was beginning to lose my temper.

  “Know what exactly? That you are a coward? That you have nothing but hate in your heart? You murdered innocent men and women. That girl at the café, she wasn’t no damn corporate queen, was she? She was a student with loans to pay, and now she is dead, all because she served you coffee,” I screamed.

  I got a look from the men and women who had my back. They didn’t take too kindly to me breaking the rules of engagement. We were told to apprehend him, and if he took matters into his own hands, let the negotiator deal with it. The thing was, the negotiator hadn’t showed up. Looked like this hostage negotiation was going to go down without him either way.

  “Ah, Frank McKenzie, how’s the leg? You don’t seem to be in too much pain.” The killer exaggerated a sadistic cackle. It was over the top. I couldn’t help but notice how much of showman this guy was.

  “I guess shooting me in the leg was justice, just like you murdering those people. The piñata in the park, the man in the back of the van, the woman in the café, the bartender and your associate at the bar,” I said.

  The killer looked at me intently; it was as if he and I were the only two people in the building. It was as if the twenty or something armed police were gone and all that was left was the law and the criminal, the good and the bad. I wondered which way he saw things. Was I the good? Was he the bad? Did he really believe he was responsible for a so-called masterpiece?

  “Bullshit, Frank, not everyone died. Not everyone. There could have been so many. But I’m not a bad guy! I’m just an artist with a message,” he uttered under his breath. I could see him playfully tugging the metal chain on his wrist.

  “Just an artist with a message?” I repeated.

  “Yes, Frank,” he replied.

  “WHAT FUCKING MESSAGE?” I shouted.

  The killer nodded his head in triumph. He had won the first round. I could see it in his eyes. This whole situation was a damn game to him.

  “A message of common decency to the poor. The working man. The working woman. How is it right that American business gets to ship off their plants and factories, pollute the motherlands of my people, and pay our workers a dollar on the hour? How is that fair? Do you not see the disgusting practices of this wicked country? Do you not see that American capitalism is like a plague, and it’s attempting to destroy everything that the old world stands for? GREED. POWER. AUTHORITY. That’s the only damn thing you people care about. MONEY. COUNTRY. GOD. Those are your damn man
tras. How about you do us all a damn favor and stick your damn business practices up your ass! This isn’t some damn game. This is people’s lives you are dealing with. Not only the lives of my people, but your people. How many people in this country get made unemployed because the damn car factory is off to Eastern Europe for cheaper rates? How many factories hop the border for cheaper taxes? But still, you have the nerve to disallow my people across the border? Even though we helped make this country what it is? SCREW YOU, FRANK. SCREW YOUR DAMN AMERICAN CAPITALISTIC ARROGANCE.”

  There was a long pause of silence in the air. I could smell the atmosphere in the room. It smelt red. It looked red. I was seeing red.

  “So you kill to get your own way?” I asked. “To spread your message of hate?” I continued.

  I didn’t get an answer straightaway. There was too much electricity in the air. Everyone was on alert. The cops. The killer. Everyone was ready to end this. There was only one thing left to do. And I didn’t see it coming.

  “No, Frank. This isn’t about right or wrong. This is about just being free. Free from the pressures of right and wrong. Free from money and greed. Freedom to go where I like and work for the same rates as anybody else. It seems like in your world, Frank, asking questions is frowned upon. I guess that makes me a bad guy. I guess me asking these hard questions makes me the villain.”

  I shook my head in utter repulsion.

  “No, killing those people makes you the bad guy,” I said.

  The killer just looked squarely at me. I could see the cogs in his head rotating as he sized me up.

  “I guess that means I’ll always be the bad guy,” he said in defeat.

  At that very moment he pulled hard on the metal chain around his wrist. I heard something snap, and just above us from the rafters, a body came hurtling toward the ground. It stopped meters from the floor, and her neck snapped. He had hung Olivia Cormack. To this day I don’t know how he managed such a heinous hanging as that, but I do know one thing: He didn’t regret it. I could see it in his eyes. He loved every second of it. Even after what happened next.

  Suddenly, the three teams of PD gunmen opened fire on him. I watched as a barrage of bullets pierced his chest and legs, popping and cracking bones as they did so. He remained wobbly on his feet, but stayed standing in a defiant pose. He had a smile on his face. It was as if he didn’t feel any pain. But I noticed something strange. Something that moved me profoundly. The whole time he was being fired upon, he was staring at me, his eyes penetrating mine. He had a look on his face that I will never forget. Even when that fatal bullet popped into his skull, that look remained.

  The look of pain that finally washed over his face. That single last bit of true emotion that he couldn’t hide from me. That last slither of truth that showed a man who had regrets. I don’t know exactly what was running through his head before that bullet popped his skull apart, but I knew whatever he was regretting, he’d be taking it to his grave. An eternity is plenty of time to evaluate your mistakes. It’s plenty of time to think about your life and what you did that was right and wrong. It’s plenty of time to remember those you hurt.

  An eternity is plenty of pain.

  Luis Samways

  ALL F**KED UP

  A Frank McKenzie novella

  One

  I stood there, dumbfounded by the look of complete insanity on my face. It wasn’t often that I would take the time out of my day to look at myself in the mirror…but when I did, I usually disliked what I saw. I had deep black circles around my cold dark eyes. I knew I looked like shit, but that wasn’t going to stop me from performing my duties as a detective. Nothing ever did, you see. I was always game for doing my job. It’s funny, really – this job makes me crazy, but I still do it to remain sane.

  “Hand me that case file over there,” a guy said to me as I continued to stare into the mirror.

  I didn’t even look at him; I reached for the case file propped up on the shelf to my left. As I did so, I didn’t take my glare off the mirror in front of me. I could see his face in the reflection, waiting behind me. He looked a little disturbed at what he was seeing. I didn’t have time to entertain his curiosity in my fragile state of mind; I just grabbed the file on the shelf and flung it in his direction. He didn’t appreciate it, but kept his mouth shut. He walked away, leaving me with my reflection for company. I saw the rest of the precinct hard at work in the mirror. Some were answering phones, while others were questioning the usual scum at their desks. I didn’t exactly know whose idea it was to put a mirror up on the wall in the middle of our offices, but I didn’t really care. I assumed it was there to remind us that we were human, and the reflections the mirror swallowed into them each day grew ever weaker with each passing case.

  I suppose I knew why I was feeling this way. I knew exactly why I was looking at myself in the mirror. I was questioning my resolve. I wanted to know if I still had it. But what looked back at me that day was far from what I wanted to see. You see, people say the truth hurts; so does looking into your reflection and seeing nothing but empty promises, and lost causes. That was me all over. Detective Frank McKenzie. Ten years with the Boston PD. Ten years I’ll never get back.

  “Frank, in my office,” I heard the Chief say.

  I stopped looking into the mirror on the wall and took a deep breath. I knew why the Chief wanted to see me. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight, that was for sure. I turned around and saw what seemed like a sea of people giving me “the look.” I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real, but I wasn’t going to stand there for much longer to find out. My mind had been playing tricks on me for a while now, ever since I found that letter from my ex-wife — my now dead ex-wife. I told myself that everything would be fine. I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t to blame. But I guess my mind had finally given in, and it was now controlling me with its depressive grip.

  I cleared my throat and made my way to the Chief’s office. The door was ajar, so I just walked in unannounced. Shaw ushered me to the seat facing his desk. He shut the door behind me and walked around my chair. I could see him fiddling with something in his hand. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he looked a little nervous. From all my time working with the PD, I knew when my boss was about to lay down some heavy news. It was like clockwork, you see. Every time we lose a case or fold in court, it was time to get the rubber hoses out and bend over for our lashings. That was police work for you. Someone had to take the blame….even if it was us, someone had to take responsibility.

  “The Commissioner just called. He wants blood, Frank,” Shaw said under his breath. He was still pacing the width of the room like a caged animal with a lot on his mind. I just nodded my head; I knew what he meant. The last case we worked, a drug bust, went sour. One of our officers got killed. It was a stray bullet from one of our weapons. Ballistics matched it to my gun. The thing was, I hadn’t used that gun…I wasn’t even there. I loaned it to a fellow detective who had misplaced his. Fearing repercussions I decided to lend him my heater. Didn’t expect him to put one in an officer’s neck. Didn’t know I wasn’t the only crazy one on the force. It turns out this guy I loaned the gun to had some beef with the now very dead cow he shot. The guy swore it was an accident, and I believed him, but Shaw knew I was covering for someone because I was with him when it happened. We were working a sex-trafficking gig. We were putting the finishing touches on the case when the call came in that one of our men had suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the neck. We first assumed that it was the bad guys, but when none of their guns matched the caliber of bullet in the dead cop’s neck, alarm bells rang. The attending officers were all subpoenaed to have their guns checked, and a match came back on mine. But I wasn’t there, remember, so there I was in the Chief’s office, ready to get milked for information…but he’d be lucky to get a single squirt out of me. I’m no rat, and the one thing you learn at the academy is to always have your fellow man’s back, even if the guy you are covering for did something bad.
It wasn’t his fault; it happens a lot. It’s unavoidable; it isn’t a video game out there. The good guys don’t have green tags over their heads. People all look the same in the heat of the moment. It’s a shame, but cops have got to stick together. I’d rather do time in prison than put someone I know behind bars for something they didn’t mean to do. Even if a court of judges would most likely rule it a homicide, I for one know that COPS DON’T SHOOT COPS.

  “McKenzie, I’m getting pretty tired of this covering-up bullshit you are doing. I know you were here with me when that gun went off, so I know for a damn fact that it wasn’t you who fired that weapon. Now, I’m no detective, so forgive me, but it doesn’t take a damn rocket scientist to work out you loaned your weapon to one of the attending officers at the drug bust. The weapon was used and then returned to you. Somehow, everybody’s weapons are now accounted for, so I assumed either somebody misplaced theirs and asked you for a lend, or somebody is fucking with you and trying to frame you for a murder I know you didn’t commit. You were with me, remember, so don’t try to pull off a leap of faith on me. There is no damn grenade in the trench and you aren’t jumping on it. Get me?” Shaw said to me as he sat down behind his desk and wiped his brow.

  He was a large man, a big Irish ball-buster. He had a thick Irish-American accent that was now meshed into one Bostonian accent that could make chalk melt. He was tough-sounding, but I was never afraid of him. Let’s just say he and I were used to butting heads. If it wasn’t this, it was that, or whatever else he would conjure up in his mind. He was a good boss, but I was under the impression that he didn’t want me around so much anymore. Sure, before it was the same, but right then, at that very moment, I got the distinct impression that my days were numbered in his PD. I would have bet my house on it if I’d ever managed to buy one on my crappy pay.