15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  “We have plenty more photos of your son’s deeds if you wish to waste more time in here,” I said, grabbing a cigarette from my pack and lighting one up. I blew the smoke into the air and watched as it began to settle.

  “Our son is innocent,” the father said, sounding defeated. I didn’t know if it was the heat or the exhaustion from watching the murder video. We had also shown them the CCTV footage we had of their son, both the murder in the cyber café and the second murder he did in the suburbs, the one where he got into his car and acknowledged the security camera by miming that he was stabbing himself.

  “How can you say he’s innocent after watching what we just watched?” the mother blurted out as she began to cry. The father gave her a sharp look. She was the first to crack. We had one of them; now it was time to put the pressure on. I quickly stood up and smashed both my fists onto the cold metal table. The laptop jolted an inch or so in the air on impact.

  “He isn’t fucking innocent!” I shouted, leaning in over the both of them, resting on my fists like a gorilla would do in the jungle.

  “YES, HE IS!” his father screamed back, a tear rolling down his cheek, soon turning into three tears, and then a stream of them.

  “Stop protecting him, Mike!” his wife interjected.

  It was time to turn up the heat some more. “Yeah, Mike, unless you want to go to prison for ten years, I’d stop protecting Damien!” I said.

  He looked at me in confusion. “His name is Richard…. Oh, very funny,” he said once he realized I was calling his son the spawn of Satan. “You obviously don’t know what it’s like to raise a child,” he added.

  “No, you’re right,” I interrupted. “I don’t know what it’s like to raise a demon child who goes on to take nine fucking lives!”

  The look on the father’s face was priceless. He looked as if he wanted to murder me. Apples don’t fall far from the tree, after all.

  “What are you going to do, Mike?” I asked. “Protect him and then go to prison yourself?”

  “I’ll do what I have to do!” Mike snapped.

  “NO, YOU FUCKING WON’T!” I snapped back. “You think this is some fucking game, Mike? You think we’re playing pass the parcel around here? This isn’t a game. There is no candy in the wrapping paper. This is it. This is your final chance to do some good. Or are more lives going to be lost in the process? Can you honestly justify another little girl being killed? Can you handle that sort of blood on your hands? The missed recitals. The graduations that won’t happen. The school kids who won’t ever see their friend again.”

  I took a deep breath. I could see the moisture in the father’s eyes. He was ready to submit. “He was once a good boy, Mike. He was once your son. But the person who did those things to those nine people isn’t the boy you knew. Monsters don’t blow out candles on a birthday cake. Little boys do. Monsters kill innocents. Little boys don’t,” I said, dragging on my cigarette hard.

  “You aren’t sending your little boy to jail. You’re getting him help before it’s too late,” Santiago added.

  That was it! That was the magic saying. We did it. We’d convinced them both! I could see it in their eyes. They were now reasoning with us.

  “I have a number he gave us a few days ago,” the father said. “He told us not to give it to anybody. He was going away for a few days and people would say things about him. He’d call us, but if he didn’t and we got worried, we were to use the number to ring him directly. He told us that we needed to memorize it, and we couldn’t put it into a cell phone.”

  I nodded my head and asked them to write it down. They did as they were told. The next thing I did was motion the guys behind the two-way mirror to bring us a phone and possibly start a trace on the number. Before they knew it, a phone was placed in front of them. The number was dialed, and the speaker was turned up.

  Whether they liked it or not, it was their duty to rein their son in. I was just hoping that the sound of their voice would reason with him and make him realize that what he was doing would affect them as well.

  “Just end this madness, okay?” I said to the parents. “It’s time to get your little boy back.”

  Forty-Nine

  The man who formally went by the moniker RANDOM RICK reached into his vibrating pocket. The cell phone he’d been carrying around for three days finally rang. He now knew that his parents were aware of what he was doing. He’d implanted the idea that they should only ever use it in a dire situation. Something must have been up, so he was of two minds whether or not to answer.

  Part of him was worried that they knew everything and were calling him to question his motives. Another part of him thought that maybe they just missed him. That maybe they were wondering what he was up to.

  On the sixth ring, he clicked the green button and put the phone to his ear.

  “Mom, Dad?” he said, almost immediately. There was a faint sob on the other end. Somebody was crying. He knew that something had gone wrong. He had two choices. He could act on his instinct and hang up, smash the phone, and get on with his spree, or he could risk it all and talk to his parents. But his fear of them being compromised was worsening by the second.

  “Anybody there?” he said under his breath.

  And then somebody answered. “Son? Is that you?” It was his father’s voice.

  A smile crept across Richard Kendrick’s face. He knew his father loved him ever so much. There was no way in hell that his father would sell him out. His anxiety about the situation subsided almost immediately. A wave of relief rippled through his core at the sound of his dad’s voice.

  “I’m so glad to hear your voice, Dad!” Richard said, his cold defenses momentarily crumbling. He didn’t feel like a killer at that moment. Just a boy. A scared boy who knew that the people he loved wouldn’t understand why he’d done what he’d done.

  “Hi, son,” his father said. His voice was audibly cracking under the intense emotion that seemed to be flooding through the both of them.

  “I’m sorry for what I did,” Richard said, a tear dropping down his cheek. “I just didn’t have a choice. They need to pay for what they did to me. They need to experience the pain that I went through.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “They have us in custody, son. They think we’re working with you.”

  Richard felt his old moniker make his blood boil. RANDOM RICK was about to explode out of his dormancy.

  “I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN ACTIONS!” he bellowed into the phone. “All my damn life, all I’ve heard is the constant digs that I couldn’t do this or couldn’t do that. Well, I showed them. I showed them what I could do. And now I’m about to show Tony what I’m capable of.”

  “Tony? Tony who?” his father cried through the phone.

  “It’s not of your concern, Father. I’ve made my bed, and I need to lie in it. Give Mom a kiss for me. I probably won’t ever see you again. It’s the price I’m willing to pay to set things right.”

  He cut the call off immediately and snapped the cell phone in half. He then chucked it onto the ground and stamped on it. He looked around and saw that the road he was on was quiet. The only sound he could hear was the roaring between his ears. The blood was rushing to his head. He was seeing red. It was time to make one last street pay. A stranger was about to knock on a door. But the person at the first door he knocked on would recognize this particular stranger. And once they did, that was when RANDOM RICK would shove a nine-inch blade into their neck.

  “It’s the only way,” he said to himself as he opened the front yard’s gate and quietly made his way up to the door.

  Fifty

  “We lost him!” I heard someone say from behind me. I was staring at the killer’s parents as they sat opposite me, burning a hole into the phone we used to talk to their son. I could see that they didn’t expect it to go down like that. Looking into their eyes, I could see that, deep down, they expected to be able to convince their son of his wrongdoing and talk him d
own from more harm. But something was bugging me more than the realization that their son was a cold-blooded killer.

  “Who’s Tony?” I asked.

  They both looked up at me with big puffy eyes. I could see that their strength had gone, as if it had been sucked out of them. The life that once ran through them had evaporated, and all that was left was a shell, cracked and scarred, but not quite dead yet.

  “I don’t know,” the father said matter-of-factly.

  “How about you?” I asked the mom. “Do you know who Tony is?”

  She shook her head at me. I could tell that they were telling the truth. They didn’t know, nor did they care. They were spent and of no use to me. So it was time to let them go. I didn’t know how this would all end, but I had a feeling that Richard Kendrick’s mom and dad would never be happy again. There are only a few times in life in which a person can never be happy again. One of them is feeling like the happiest person alive and then having it taken away from you, and the other is feeling like the unluckiest person and having it stay that way until death.

  Part of me felt sorry for them, but another part of me wondered whether they had some unknown influence on Richard’s spree. I know they say to never blame the parents, but I see things in black and white. Sometimes…on very few occasions…the parents are to blame. You can’t deny it. You can’t run away from it. What you do in your home to your kids affects what they do when they grow up.

  Did I think that his parents sexually abused him as a child? No. Did I believe they beat him silly? No. Do I believe that they wrapped him up in cotton wool and made him think that he was special in some sort of way? Absolutely. Killing them with kindness. It happens. And sometimes on occasions like this, it destroys lives.

  “You’re not bad parents,” I finally said, standing up and opening the door. They looked up at me, still sporting their big puffy eyes from crying.

  “We may not be bad parents, but we have a bad kid. I don’t know which is worst. Part of me believes that if it was our fault at least some of that burden could be spread between the three of us. But having a bad kid, a kid who kills and sees no wrongdoing in it? How are we supposed to take comfort in knowing that it’s not our fault?” the mother said, getting out of her chair.

  “If it isn’t our fault, then it’s his, and knowing that you brought a monster into this world, showered it with the best life possible, only for it to bite your hand off and murder a bunch of people…now, that’s the worst feeling of all,” his father interjected.

  They both walked out of the interrogation room, hand in hand, heads slumped, weeping audibly. I turned to look at Santiago, who seemed a little sad.

  “You can’t stop the people you love from hurting you,” I said as I sat on the edge of the table, and reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my pills. I popped a handful into my mouth, chewing on them and swallowing.

  “It doesn’t stop the pain, though,” San offered. “They’ll blame themselves, then blame the school, then the friends. But when the realization hits that nobody but their son is to blame, it’s like a dagger to the heart.”

  I nodded and put my pill container back in my pocket. I was just about to talk to Santiago about his medical condition when Shaw walked in.

  “Well, that was a waste of time. We have no location on the kid. We have parents who look like they’re about to commit suicide, and we have a killer on the loose who has a grudge against some guy called Tony, and nobody knows who the fuck he is, where he may live, and how we could warn this Tony fella that he has a very high likelihood of being murdered by the most barbaric killer I have ever come across,” Shaw huffed, sitting next to me on the table. We were both swinging our legs in unison, like a couple of layabout kids on the school wall during recess.

  “It isn’t all bad,” Santiago offered.

  Both Shaw and I looked at San with inquisitive faces. We’d never known it to be much worse than this case.

  “My ball cancer doctor called me earlier,” San said, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Ball cancer?” Shaw exclaimed.

  “Yeah, he has it,” I said, smiling like a goon.

  “Well, that’s where you’re wrong, McKenzie. Dr. Pepper said that it was just a cyst. I’ve been given a clean bill of health!”

  I started to cackle like a witch. Shaw joined in, which, to my surprise, wasn’t awkward at all. Both he and I looked at each other and couldn’t help smiling.

  “Dr. fucking Pepper! Now, that has to be a joke!” Shaw said.

  Santiago didn’t look amused. He was close to smacking both of us in the face.

  “You know what?” he huffed. “I didn’t choose my fucking doctor’s name, nor did I choose to have a cyst the size of Texas on my nut!”

  We burst into laughter again. San shook his head so hard I thought it was going to topple off.

  “Fuck you guys! Last time I’ll concern you with my health.”

  He walked out of the interrogation room to the sound of Shaw and me howling like two little schoolboys at the end of a penis-related joke.

  I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep or the high amount of adrenaline running through our systems, but that day was no laughing matter. We had a serious press conference to attend in twenty or so minutes.

  Plus, the killing hadn’t stopped, and that was no joke.

  Fifty-One

  Sandra Austin and her cameraman Jimmy Sway were seated in the front row at the Boston P.D.’s press conference, which was being held in a special assembly hall a block away from the precinct. Cameras were being put up, heat from the lighting above their heads making thin layers of sweat dampen their foreheads. Everybody in attendance seemed to be suffering from the sweltering heat. From what Sandra gathered from the chitchat going around the reporters, nobody but Jimmy and herself were aware of what the press conference was about. A man next to her was talking to his cameraman.

  “You think they’re finally suspending that maverick cop who keeps making the headlines?” he asked his colleague, who gave him a shrug as he bolted his tripod together.

  Sandra turned to her cameraman and smiled. “Looks like we’re the only news crew here that knows what this is about,” she said, still smiling.

  “Keep it down?” Jimmy teased, “Let’s keep it that way!” he said, fiddling around with his camera, which was already set up.

  In front of them, a woman in roadie gear was sorting out the microphone stands that were attached the podium. A screeching burst of feedback echoed through the hall. Everybody began to chuckle a little. The woman didn’t look too happy with the reporters laughing at her.

  “At least get somebody who knows what they’re doing!” somebody jeered.

  The overall mood in the room was jovial. Most reporters who are invited to big press conferences like this come with inflated egos attached to their fake smiles. They saw it as a big deal that somebody had invited the likes of them to an event like this. All the big names were there. In fact, the only small fish in the assembly hall was Sandra, and she knew that the people around her had come to that same conclusion. She figured it out when random reporters were coming up to her and asking which station she worked for. To catch them off guard and to also mess with their heads a little, she said she worked for the White House press team. The looks on their faces when she said that was priceless. Obviously, she was joshing with them, but it was fun nonetheless.

  A few minutes passed, and the lights dimmed a little. A man’s voice came over the P.A. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are starting the conference in two minutes.”

  There was a sudden electrical feel to the atmosphere. The wait was over, and the journalists in attendance began to get their cells out and phone their station bosses. After a minute or so, every camera in that room was transmitting live pictures to viewers all over the country. Thirty seconds passed, and a man walked onto the stage. Everybody went quiet. All you could hear was the hush of voices, along with a few still cameras popping their flashes as they too
k pictures. The event felt like a big one, which was uncharacteristically odd for the city and the context of what was about to be announced. Sandra herself knew that the subject of the press conference was going to shake the core of the city.

  Boston had been through a lot in recent times, and they didn’t need a new boogeyman to worry about. None of the reporters would be reporting. They would be quiet while the conference wound down, taking notes about whatever was said. And then finally they would ask questions. Lots and lots of hard questions. Sandra was trying to think of the question she’d ask. She felt privileged that they had decided to give her the exclusive first question. All she knew was somebody was covering up a murder. But nothing could prepare her for what she was about to hear.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, three days ago, two people were killed in a hotel on the outskirts of our beautiful city. Those two people were identified as Governor-elect Roger Bulscelli and his wife, Mandy Bulscelli.”

  A hush of quiet shock ran through the place. Sandra’s heart thumped hard in her bony chest.

  “Following their murder, after attending the scene of the crime, we learned that they were stabbed to death by an unknown assailant. A few hours after the attack, the next day, early in the morning, another woman was stabbed to death on her porch after going on a school run. From security camera footage in the surrounding area, we were able to get a profile on the killer and see what he drove.”

  Another slight pause. Enough time for people to keep up with the information.

  “After that particular murder, the killer went on to kill a family of four in Charleston. He filmed the incident and put it on his very own website. A few thousand people saw the video, but, luckily for the rest who didn’t, we managed to find the computer he used to maintain the website at a cyber café in town. That was thanks to a tipoff from a woman who was nearly killed by the same killer. She got away, but I’m afraid she was the only one.”