15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  So he arose from the bed, clicking his joints into place. He didn’t need to get dressed. He was already in the gear he planned to wear that day. No suit for these murders. Just plain clothes. Blending in with the scum. He still wanted to look half decent, so he had slipped on a plain red shirt and some shorts. It was supposed to be a hot day that day. Judging from the temperature in the room, he wasn’t going to be disappointed. He planned on bringing a lot of heat to Boston today. So much so, in fact, that he was worried he’d melt society forever. No one would think of the city in the same light again. The incompetence of the police department and their lack of balls in investigating his spree had pissed him off. He’d imagined, before partaking in his fantasy, that he would be splashed across the newspapers and that his mug shot would be put on the evening news. He even imagined being put on America’s Most Wanted list. But the FBI didn’t know who he was. Boston didn’t know who he was. Nobody cared about the lives he’d taken.

  But that would all change. He was adamant about that fact. After today, they would never forget the heat he’d brought to Boston. The heat that scorched their skin and ripped it off its bones. The heat that melted their brains and scarred their eyeballs. The heat that took all those lives.

  Yes, today in Boston was going to be a very hot day, indeed.

  RANDOM RICK climbed down his bunk. He heard a few people stirring, but did nothing to cover up the noise he was making. He didn’t care who would wake up. He was out of there anyway. He didn’t have time to be courteous to other people. Sleep could wait. He was certain that, after that day, many people wouldn’t be sleeping well at all. Nightmares would engulf them and tear and rip at their inner beings. He would make them pay. But before leaving, he decided to make somebody pay for their sins. He quickly looked around and noticed that everybody was still asleep. The stirring that he heard was just some tossing and turning. He still had time to make his victim pay. So he reached into his rucksack and pulled out his knife.

  Suddenly, his victim’s eyes opened and were staring straight at him.

  “Wwwww-what the fuck are you doing?” the wheelchair punk said, about to get up and off the bed.

  But RANDOM RICK held him down hard. He had no qualms about what he was going to do. The kid was only three or four years younger than he was. He would have lived a long enough life.

  “Hush…don’t you dare scream,” RICK said before covering the guy’s mouth and driving the knife into his neck seven times within the space of three seconds. Each stabbing motion ripped through his skin, tearing bone and slicing arteries. A spray of blood exploded onto the pillow, which RICK used to smother the punk as he bled out. He struggled for a while, but after three or four seconds, the expanding blood-soaked pillow took its last struggling jerk, and the kid died. By now RICK was a professional and hardly made a sound. The dorm-room-like hostel was as quiet as a mouse. Getting his stuff together, he quickly made his way out of the hostel. He noticed that he had a little blood on his shirt.

  “Good job I chose to wear red,” he said, walking out into the scorching-hot streets, putting some red tinted shades on his face.

  Things were about to get a whole lot more red.

  Thirty-Nine

  I watched as the four-man squad got down to business in front of us. They maneuvered their way through the front lawn, keeping low and pressing themselves against the wall. A bay window stood beside them as they quickly dashed past it. San and I, on the other hand, were stationed at the back. We were in the last squad. The SWAT team’s job was to go in and detain whoever was in the house. Our job was to read the detainees their rights and book them in. We would also search the place for any leads on our suspect. I’d seen the suspect’s name in our briefing file, but it still didn’t feel real yet. As I looked on at the SWAT team about to breach the house, I said the suspect’s name out loud under my breath, just audible enough for me to hear it.

  “Richard Kendrick…Richard…Rich…Random Rick….” I said, remembering what the killer was calling himself on bostonspreekiller.com, his website.

  Santiago gave me a glare and then solemnly nodded his head.

  “It’s true what they say about the big game,” he said.

  I looked at him and shrugged. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Don’t you know?”

  I shook my head. “Know what?” I replied.

  He then showed me his phone. The Boston Bruins had won their first game in the playoffs. “Looks like your bet paid off, Frank!”

  I handed him back his phone and watched as the SWAT team breached the front door with an explosive charge. The door came off its hinges, and I swallowed hard at the sound of them searching the premises. I saw another three four-man squads enter the house. They were like ants swarming on a down-and-out bug, ready to carry it back to their base. That’s exactly how I saw things right about then. We were ready to carry back our bugs. In body bags, if need be. This whole thing needed to end as quickly as possible. I was fed up with being on the shitty end of things.

  “I’m just hoping this bet pays off,” I finally said, a little too delayed for San’s memory.

  “What are you talking about? Your boys are through to the next round!”

  “Not the hockey,” I said, pointing at the vacant-looking front door. I could see shadows moving around. Must have been the SWAT guys searching the house. I heard somebody shout the order we were waiting for. Then my radio crackled, and we heard the same order.

  “Suspects apprehended,” the voice said as I swallowed a few of my pills dry.

  “Well, I’m no betting man, but I’d say the odds are against our boy Richard Kendrick now,” San said as we moved into the house, ready to take Boston’s number-one killer’s parents into custody.

  We were putting all our chips on this move. We were all in.

  If we failed on the flop, we could make things worse. We could provoke the hornets’ nest. But that’s what gambling is all about. The house always wins.

  And I’m afraid that the killer’s luck was just about up.

  Forty

  I read the mom and dad their rights. They looked at us as if we were insane. I could see the lack of understanding in their eyes. The confusion they were feeling. The trembling hands. The shakes. The adrenaline. It all hit them like a ton of bricks. As I stood over the two of them, sitting on the big black sofa in their living room, I could see that they had no idea what was going on.

  Cops aren’t psychic. We don’t have some secret power or a third eye when it comes to guessing somebody’s innocence. That’s why courts of law were invented. That’s not to say that years of experience don’t help when it comes to getting a gut feeling on somebody. That gut feeling helps determine how you approach the suspect. If your gut is telling you that the suspect is lying and acting shady, then you know something untoward is happening. The same goes the other way round. If your gut is telling you that the suspect is being cooperative and is acting in an expected manner, then it’s most likely the case that they may be innocent.

  But as I said: we aren’t psychics, and we don’t know who is being truthful. All we do know is that when it comes to reeling the bad guys in, I’d rather take a suspect who looks guilty than one who sounds guilty. Looking like a criminal helps, in my opinion. Does that mean that we might have prosecuted people who looked as if they did the crime and not somebody who did? That’s not my concern. As I said, the courts are their makers, and if they see without reasonable doubt that the person did the deed, than who am I to stop them from making their decision? My job is to bring them the guilty party. So I have to find the people responsible. Sometimes it’s hard to find your man or woman. But on occasion, they present themselves to you on a platter.

  “My son didn’t do anything,” the father, Mr. Kendrick, said as he looked up at me. I gave a coy smile to my partner, who knew that the case was about to get a little more interesting. After all, we hadn’t told the parents why we were there. They just assum
ed we were there for their son.

  “How do you know we’re after your boy?” I asked, getting down on one knee and looking the father square in the eye.

  “Why else would you be here? All you do is harass him,” his mother said.

  I turned my head slightly to face her. She was an attractive woman but had a bitterness to her tone. I wasn’t sure if it was her way of dealing with things or if she was always like that. I was interested to find out more.

  “We haven’t ever come across your son before,” Santiago said. He was standing up behind me, jotting notes down on his notepad. “We just want to know where he is.”

  The look on the mother’s face went from anger to hatred within a few seconds of the conversation. For some reason, she didn’t want us having anything to do with her son. I was starting to get a little suspicious of their reasons.

  “Why is it exactly that you don’t want to cooperate with us?” I asked.

  “After everything that poor boy has been through. All the bullying in school. Then in college. And now he’s a young man trying to make something of himself, and all you do is harass him, as if it’s a crime to be a victim,” his mother said.

  I shook my head and got back up to my feet. “I guess you aren’t willing to tell us where he is,” I said, putting my sunglasses on for effect. Saw it on CSI once. Decided to incorporate it into my irresistible, sexy, smoldering, fear-inducing detective routine.

  “Fuck you!” the woman said. Guess my routine wasn’t working out too well for me.

  “Take them away,” I said, signaling the uniformed officers to drag them off to the meat wagon. I was done with the questioning for now. I’d ask more questions down at the station, let them cool off a little. Judging by the lack of remorse and sadness in their eyes, I’d suggest that they had no idea where their son was or why we wanted him. If they knew we were after him for the murders of eight people, I was sure they’d be more cooperative.

  “We’ll be searching the premises for the murder weapon,” I said as they were being escorted out of the living room. I saw the look of shock on the mother’s face. She didn’t know. She had no idea. I had just dropped a bombshell on her. And the dad, he was the same. He looked as if he wanted to talk all of a sudden.

  “Wait!” he screamed. “What’s this about a murder weapon?” he asked.

  “Never you mind. You wanted to be silent, so I’ll give you some time to reflect on the idea that your son is responsible for eight people’s deaths.”

  The look on both of their faces was one of sickness and shock. I could still see that they didn’t believe what I was saying. But now that I had told them what I wanted their son for, it would give them plenty of time to stew.

  “Let’s give them some time to think about what they’ve gotten themselves into,” Santiago said as they were taken away by the cops.

  We had plenty to do. Dust for prints, examine the boy’s room, and check the laundry. I didn’t think that Richard Kendrick had been back since he started his spree. But I knew that if we were to find anything in this house that linked him to the crimes, then it would have been worth it. Part of me wanted to show the parents the CCTV footage of him from the neighborhood watch security camera. If they told us it was their son in that frame, then it would make placing a case against Richard easier. But right now, at this very second, all we had were his fingerprints from the cyber café. The café that he regularly visited. It wouldn’t hold up. We’d need his DNA on the victim. But that was a while off yet.

  We could only hope that something else would go our way before he had another chance to kill.

  “You think we’ll manage to flush him out like this?” Santiago asked me as I took a cigarette out and popped it in my mouth.

  “If we charge the parents with conspiracy to commit, and aiding and abetting a fugitive, I’m sure Richard will come out into the open. All I need him to do is make one video of himself facing the camera and admitting what he did. The guy seems to be obsessed with social media and video blogging. So we may get something we can charge him with.”

  Santiago looked at me and scratched the rough stubble on his chin. He looked like he needed a shower and shave rapido.

  “You’re telling me that we don’t have enough on the kid to move in and make an arrest?” he asked, still scratching his chin.

  “Of course we do,” I replied, taking a drag from my smoke. I paused and then said, “It’s just we need to find him first. The more we get against him, the more we have to bury him with. Plus, let’s not forget, he definitely seems the type to revel in his deeds. We won’t get any problems trying to extract a guilty plea from him.”

  “So what’s the holdup?” San asked. “Why don’t we get the FBI involved and start a manhunt?”

  “Simple, really,” I said, stubbing out my cigarette. “You don’t catch a killer like this with brute force. You catch a killer like this with brains. Why waste time with a mass search when he could be anywhere? We need him to think we don’t have the resources to catch him. He’ll grow confident and start making mistakes. If we go at him with pitchforks and torches, he’ll see the angry mob from a mile away. Go in quietly, and it could be over before dinner time.”

  San shook his head and grabbed my shoulder. “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said, walking away from me.

  “You don’t think we’ll catch him like this?” I asked.

  San turned around and said, “Only if he is what you say he is. It all relies on him loving his parents. If we crucify them publicly for aiding him and he doesn’t go for it, it could bite us in the ass down the line. We can’t send somebody to jail who is innocent.”

  I watched him walk off into the next room. My fingers were feeling numb, and my chest was rattling from all the adrenaline.

  “Nobody is innocent,” I whispered under my breath.

  Forty-One

  Sandra Austin was feeling tense. The tips of her fingers tingled, and her abdomen was playing host to butterflies with iron-tipped wings. She felt nauseous but was steady enough on her feet. At one point, though, she was close enough to fainting that she was going to tell her cameraman, Jimmy Sway, to call the ambulance.

  But that was before. Now, though, she felt good. Good enough to take a grilling from her station boss, Bob Sinclair. He had called her to the control room at News72 headquarters. The building they worked out of was a piece of crap in her eyes, but it did the job, and for that she was grateful. It seemed as if the people who worked in the building, including herself, were all black sheep in the journalism world. None of the big companies wanted them. No one knew who they were, bar the select few who chose to tune into the News72 channel.

  Her little stunt had gotten her in trouble. She knew it. The way people were looking at her as she walked up the winding stairs toward her final destination gave it away. The destination being the camera control room to visit her pissed-off boss, Bob. She had spent so much time with News72 that she knew when her boss was happy and when he wasn’t. It didn’t take years of working there to know that Bob would usually stay hidden away in his comfort zone, surrounded by monitors and the editing team. He wouldn’t usually call anyone to the control room. But today was different.

  Sandra got to the top of the stairs, her feet vibrating in anticipation of what her boss wanted her for. The door to the control room was a mere two to three inches from the base of the stairs. There was no room to breathe. One false step, and she’d go tumbling back down them. She guessed that was the reasoning behind her strong sense of dread while visiting her boss in the control room. The thought of the fall from the top was always a gut-wrenching feeling — the fall being both hypothetical and literal.

  She knocked on the door. A faint voice ushered her in. As she gripped the handle, she could feel her heart pumping blood into her fingers. She ignored the sensation and pushed the door open. The wooden door creaked under the tight and dry hinges. She winced at the sound hitting her eardrums. A flash of light hit her face, and
she attempted to shield her eyes from it. It was a projector light attached to the wall. She could just make out her boss sitting on his chair, or “the throne,” as it was sometimes referred to. He was motioning her forward. She took a few steps toward him, the door swinging back shut behind her. The same creaking sound accompanied the closing door.

  “Take a seat,” he said to her, motioning to a chair pulled up next to him. Sandra swallowed hard, looking at her boss. She then sat down. She usually looked like a cold fox. Both beautiful and distant. But right at that moment, she looked like she was worlds apart from her usually composed self.

  “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” she asked out of the blue. The control room was empty except for her and Bob. It sparked off an alarm bell in her head.

  “What makes you think that you’re in trouble?” he asked her, grabbing his fat cigar out of the ashtray and lighting it up. The tip glowed a mixture of orange and gray. Little specks of ash fell to the table. She watched in a trancelike state at the falling specks. Bob’s voice brought her out of her daze.

  “Sandra? You with me?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, sorry. What was the question?”

  He paused for a moment as he took another long drag on his cigar. He then put the thick brown tube-like bad habit back in the dirty ashtray. It was littered with both cigar ends and cigarette butts, and even a few twisted-up lollipop wrappers.

  “Why do you think you’re in trouble?” he asked.

  “For nearly getting arrested,” Sandra replied.

  Bob broke out into one of his yellowed, smoke-stained smiles. He took a sip of coffee from his plastic cup.

  “You’re not in trouble. In fact, I have some great news. You’re being given the first question at the press conference tonight.”

  Sandra didn’t know what her boss was talking about. “What first question?” she asked.

  “The P.D. are holding a press conference tonight at six, regarding the killer. They’ll be appealing to the public for information, plus they’ll be splashing his image on every damn media-related item in the city. TVs, Internet, and billboards. The guy will be famous.”