Grace Street (A Chapter 8 Novel, #1) (21 page)

The cover page read:
A Case Study in Behavior Modification and
Character Development by Laurenzo Black.

Elsa’s nerves prickled.
This was it. His journal typed out. A loud ringing in her ears
drowned everything out as she reached for the pages. This was the
key to all Victor’s secrets. Did she really want to know the man
she was falling for? Could she handle everything she was about to
come face-to-face with? Probably not, but she couldn’t leave
without knowing everything even though she knew the rules of the
game would change forever once she did.

Whether they would change
for better or worse, she wouldn’t know until everything had played
out.

Victor threw himself onto
the hotel bed, mentally worn out. He had helped follow up on
several dead-end leads that day and his nerves were raw. There were
still several to dig into and he hated that he wouldn’t be able to
spend time with Eight over the weekend. If he was lucky, he might
be able to steal away for a visit on Sunday… maybe. He closed his
eyes and drifted in and out of sleep with the sound of traffic
drifting in through the open balcony door.

He could really use a
cigarette. He sat upright and reached for his briefcase and
retrieved a piece of nicotine gum. It was a lame replacement, but
his smoking was strictly a weekend/stalking kind of
thing.

He kicked his shoes off and
decided to call Virginia State Penitentiary. He needed to speak
with Anthony and he was tired of waiting. After several minutes of
being put on hold, Ant’s raspy voice rang out on the other end of
the line.

“Get your guy, yet?” he
asked.

“We’re getting close,”
Victor lied but got right to the point. “Do you have anything to
add or any insight?”

“Sure do, but first I want
to talk about Chapter Eight. How’s that piece ass panning out for
you?”

Victor sighed
irritably.
Fucking Anthony
Bruce.
“It’s going fine. Answer my
question.”

“You first. And I want the
truth this time.”

He gritted his teeth. It
took a liar to know one. “She’s a handful.”

“Nice. Does she like it
rough?”

“Don’t they all?” Victor
blurted, already tired of Ant’s games.

Anthony chuckled and Victor
could hear the condescension in his tone. “Seven didn’t. Neither
did Three and Four. Or have you forgotten, already? Hell, come to
think of it, I think only two of them Chapters of yours liked to
play hard.”

‘
Come to think of it,’ his ass
.
Victor knew damned well that Ant had committed to memory every
single fucking detail of each and every one of his
Chapters.

“I want details, Agent
Laurenzo and since I know you’re out of town and can’t drop off
your notes, tell ‘em to me. Since I already know how Eight smells,
tell me how she tastes,” he laughed a little too
heartily.

Why the hell had he
contacted Anthony? His disgusting laugh turned Victor’s stomach.
Pissed at himself for having called the manipulative fuck, he
blared into the phone. “Listen here, you self-righteous, asshole,
people are dying over here. I’m sick of your bullshit games so get
this through that sociopathic head of yours: I’m not telling you
anything more about any of my Chapters until you give me what I
want. End. Of. Story.”

Victor was seething and the
silence on the other end only made matters worse.
Fuck this shit
.
He reached for the hotel’s phone receiver to end the call when he
heard Ant grumble.

“Fine. You win.
This round
,” he
spat out contemptuously.

It was always something
with this guy, but Victor didn’t care. He was happy to have won a
round period. “Talk,” he ordered.

“I’ve been watching news
and this guy is playing with you. It wouldn’t surprise me if some
of those leads were planted by the killer himself. In hindsight, I
should’ve done the same damned thing. Maybe I could’ve stayed out
there a longer if I had. Anyway… his mistake was that he knew those
girls. At least I had the common fuckin’ sense to pick my victims
randomly. Go with your gut and not with what everyone is leading
you to believe.”

Victor’s interest was
piqued. As usual, Anthony knew more than he was letting on and the
sick fucker had an uncanny way of reading him. He shook his head.
God, he hated Anthony Bruce and everything about him, but he was
right. Victor had sensed all along that the murders were somehow
connected. The detectives involved had nixed the idea from the
beginning, but Victor’s gut instinct was telling him
otherwise.

“How do you know all that?”
he asked Ant.

“Killer’s intuition,” he
laughed perversely. “As for Eight… now it’s your turn to
talk.”

Victor shuffled the phone
between his hands before finally responding. “She doesn’t know when
to shut her mouth and…” he paused, but he could hear Ant’s
breathing quicken. “She’s too curious for my taste.”

“You gotta watch out for
those interferin’ bitches, they’ll get you into trouble every
fuckin’ time. You gotta put her in her place before things get out
of hand.”

Victor rolled his eyes. He
seriously wasn’t going to take relationship advice from a known
serial killer. “Well I can’t kill her, Ant, if that’s what you’re
suggesting. My game has rules, unlike yours,” he sniped.

“Nobody said anything about
murderin’. Christ in heaven, didn’t anyone teach you anything? You
don’t gotta slay a cunt to shut her up. You just gotta kill her
spirit; break her down, mentally and physically. If that doesn’t
work, then beat the shit out of her. And if
that
doesn’t work…”

Victor had heard enough. “I
get it. I’ll stick with my own methods. Anyway, I like her
spirit.”

As soon as he let the
statement slip from his mouth, he regretted it. What the hell was
he thinking? He was tired and…
God damn
it.

“Jesus, Agent Cock Sucker,
you’re losing your touch. Is the merciless Mr. Black getting soft
in his old age?”

Victor cringed. He truly
hated that Ant knew his secrets. “No one is getting soft and this
conversation is over.”

***

Elsa held the manuscript in
her hands and touched the binding. She suddenly felt as if she was
being watched and panic inundated her. She just wanted to get the
hell out of there and fast. She looked around the room for printer
paper and then carefully untied the twine. Removing the cover page
from the document, she placed it on top of the stack of blank
sheets of paper and retied the string. No one would ever know it
was a fake at first glance. She put the faux case study back in its
place and tucked the real pages under her arm. She closed all the
drawers and put everything else back in its place, and gave the
room a once over to make sure that she had left no evidence of her
visit.

The drive back to her
apartment was excruciating. She found her eyes on the manuscript
more often than they were on the road and her foot kept
unintentionally pressing too hard on the gas. Twice she caught
herself doing well over the speed limit. If she were to get pulled
over and given a ticket, Victor would undoubtedly find out and it
wouldn’t take him long to figure out why she was on this side of
town.

She turned on her satellite
radio for the distraction, tuning into an alternative rock station.
An unfamiliar song came on and the strong bass and instrumental
intro slowly began to erase from her mind the thoughts of the law
she had just broken, and the shitty intrusion of privacy she was
perpetrating on Victor.

When the words of the song
finally broke through her trance-like state, it was as if Mr. Black
had cued the song himself. She tapped the button to see the artist
and title and
I Will Possess Your
Heart
by Death Cab for Cutie flashed
on the small screen. What the hell kind of creepy kismet was going
on? She promptly turned the channel, not wanting to hear any
version of a stalkers anthem.

Back in her apartment, she
was too eager to get down to business to even take her jacket off.
She sank into her couch and flipped over the first page.

Chapter 7 – Emily, Age
26. Profession: Graphic Designer.

Elsa had already read a
small portion of his journal about this particular Chapter and
found it odd the document read in reverse and started with the most
recent subject as opposed to starting from the beginning. She was
also frustrated that none of the notes written on her were
present.

Prologue:

And so C7 begins. You
found me at a local gathering and made your presence known. You
have a reputation that I’m well aware of and though I’m not usually
one to jump on the pussy bandwagon, something about you piqued my
interest. If any Chapter has needed my assistance, it’s you. Your
immature behavior to get my attention was only slightly amusing if
not pathetic. Nonetheless, you’re my next project. We shall see if
your ways can be changed.

The first lesson I shall
attempt to teach you is self-restraint, though I suspect this may
be a subject that will be a work in progress. First and foremost,
your promiscuity
must
end. I will not tolerate
being one in a long line of lovers. It is to be me and only me
during our time together. Your sexual cleanliness must be proven
before we can continue.

Pre-activity:

I was disappointed and
more than a little annoyed to find out that you have an STD, though
it doesn’t completely surprise me. Now it’s necessary that you be
started on a regimen of antibiotics before we can begin our
liaisons, only delaying our sexual activity. I will use this time
to my advantage to watch you in your surroundings and learn your
habits. Also it will help me to figure out exactly what I can do to
make this endeavor successful. I hope you like to play rough, C7,
because that’s precisely what I think you need.

Surveillance
Notes:

Never have I seen such
immaturity in a 26-year-old woman. In the span of a week, I’ve
witnessed you drinking and driving twice, seen you get into a
verbal altercation that nearly led to a fist fight with a cashier
over the wrong change given, and observed you leaving from a coffee
shop with a stranger to engage in oral sex in his car.

I’m shocked that you’ve
gotten this far without having caused yourself or others physical
harm or gotten your ass kicked for acting absurd.

What Elsa would’ve given to
see a picture of Emily. Was she beautiful? What color were her
eyes? Were they sad and expressive? Was she truly a reckless
individual who needed help or was she just a normal, uninhibited
woman? Elsa would never know. All she had to go on was Mr. Black’s
notes and they were, to say the least, biased and
twisted.

I must delve into your
past to see what is causing you to act so recklessly. Have you been
abused? For your and my sake, I hope not. I don’t need the hassle
of trying to heal your mental wounds as that’s next to impossible.
I know. If it comes to light that you have been abused in some way
be it sexual or physical, I must conclude our brief interlude. Even
though I can identify with your pain, I cannot condone your
carelessness, regardless of your past. No matter what has happened,
there is no excuse for unreasonable behavior. We all have to move
on at some point and make the best of it.

Elsa stood and removed her
coat, letting the words sink in as she glanced out the window
nervously. She was only two pages in and already she knew Victor
had been abused, but by whom? She remembered the detail of his
mother having died of liver disease and the implications sent a
shockwave through her. His mother was most likely an alcoholic. Her
stomach churned. If she was going to continue reading, she needed
wine, and lots of it.

***

Victor didn’t fall asleep
until well after two. It was one of those restless, nearly
sleepless nights where his brain wouldn’t fucking shut off. When he
did sleep, his dreams were filled with disorganized, grisly images
from the Cambridge case files – a 22-year-old stunning blonde in a
state of rigor, duct-tape with skin cells gruesomely clinging to
the adhesive, a discarded knife with dried blood, scalp and dark
hair encrusted onto the metal, clouded hazel eyes, blue
lips…

He woke early that Sunday
from a nightmare, breathless and with his heart nearly pounding out
of his chest. He rubbed his eyes and tried to recall the
particulars, but they were already fading. In his dream, he was a
serial-killer and his victims were his Chapters. One by one he had
broken their hearts and then murdered each of them in a different
way so as not to get caught. He couldn’t remember all the details,
but he had bludgeoned the sad and irredeemable Seven, poisoned the
gorgeous but temperamental Three, and sexually asphyxiated the
strong husband and father of two, Four. His heart was still beating
rapidly when a wave of nausea washed over him.