Serial: Volume Two (8 page)

In truth, there wasn’t much different between the killers I hunted and myself. Every crime on their part was a play for the feeling of power. With most, it wasn’t about the sex or violence that came with their sick acts, it was the control and possession of the victim. Once in their grasp, a woman had no say over the way she was treated or how and when she died. The killer was God at that moment and the rush that feeling provided was a drug of which they could never get enough. While some were able to control their needs and their desire to control and possess a living and breathing human being, others were like any other drug addict on the street. The subsequent kills were never the same high as the initial act and they escalated and made mistakes in a rush to achieve it once again.

I, too, enjoyed the feeling of ultimate control; however I didn’t need to kill a bitch to achieve it. I’d taken a different route, one that gave me license to hunt and to kill if it was needed. I commanded a team of intelligent and respectful men and women and I had found a special gem in the woman who was wetting my dick.

Most importantly, and what most people didn’t realize, was that I’m just as dark as CK, maybe even more so. To others, this profession is a lonesome job that sucks the life out of you day after day and crime scene after crime scene. A man couldn’t look into the bowels of hell for too long before losing the ignorant hope that life wasn’t
all bad
. However, I fed on the scenes, on the job and the realization that evil existed in every place and that it was my job to hunt it down.

Where one gruesome scene would cause a good man to puke, it would make my heart race with excitement, it would make my dick hard to know that there was some poor bastard out there that would be MY next victim, the next man I chased down to imprison or destroy. They committed the evil and I got off on it, but could disguise my interest and thrill behind the FBI identification I flashed at every scene.

“Penny for your thoughts, Blake.”

Pulled from my musings, I blinked my eyes in Emily’s direction. I was turned on just thinking about everything I’d seen in this career and Emily was the perfect outlet for me at that moment.

“Take off your clothes, Chase.”

Her eyebrows rose up on her forehead, but without questioning me, she reached down to remove the silk from her body. I took no time, pushing myself up into a sitting position, grabbing her by the back of the neck and bending her over. With her face crushed against the pillows, she wiggled her hips against me, the submissive inside her waking up at the feel of the painful grip I had on her body.

“You like that you little bitch, don’t you?” Bending over her, I pushed my mouth against her ear and said, “You act so superior and strong when your ass is bouncing in those tight skirts you like to wear at work, but in here, you’re powerless and you fucking know it.”

She purred, rubbing up against me, begging me to take her body.

“Don’t worry, beautiful, I’ll take control of that tight cunt of yours and show you what it’s like to be with a man as dangerous as the ones you hunt.”

It was a slip, a fragment of how I felt in this career, but I knew that deep down Emily was just as sick as me when it came to the type of life in which we’d been immersed. Where I knew the thrill of power that sociopaths and sadists killed in order to achieve, Emily was drawn to the true helplessness of the victims. I think in some ways she wished she could feel helpless, that there could be times in her life where the decisions were no longer hers to make. In business, she was a powerful woman and force to be met, but here in the bed, she was nothing more than a body to be used.

Slipping the pants from my hips, I forced a condom over my dick before shoving it inside her as I tightened my grip on her neck. She squeaked out in pain, but her hips were moving over me within seconds.

I slammed into her with all the frustration and rage that was pent up in my body and bent over her again, whispering in her ear my confession that I knew her little secret. “You sick bitch. You think I don’t know? Just like your anger is so obvious, so is your attraction to death. Let me show you what it’s like, little girl.”

She stopped moving as soon as I forced her face tighter against the pillow, but I didn’t stop slamming into her with increasing speed. Her moans were quieted instantly. She started to struggle when she couldn’t breathe and it made me fuck her even harder. Everything about the moment was turning me on: the feel of her head against my palm and her hair wrapped through my fingers. The way her body moved in her panic, her motions hurried yet weak because she’d been taken off guard.

Just like CK, in that moment I was God. I could snuff her out so easily, make her cease to exist. But it wasn’t death that turned me on, it was the power. Finding my release quickly, I shot my orgasm into the latex condom, finally loosening my grip enough that she could lift her head and take a deep breath. Her body shuddered over me, her own orgasm exploding when oxygen once again filled her bloodstream.

Pulling out, I didn’t stop for a
cuddle
before getting up and moving into the bathroom to wash up. By the time I returned to the bed, she was sipping from a glass of wine, the imprint of the pillowcase still red across her face.

She smiled at me and handed me a glass when I approached.

“Do you think that’s true, Donovan? Do I flirt with death?”

I chuckled in response to her question. “Are you asking me to profile you, Chase?”

“You’re the one who brought it up.” She shrugged. “But you’re the only man who can get me off like you do and I wonder if it’s not the threat of violence I see in you every day.”

Opening my mouth to respond, I was interrupted by the vibration of my phone on the surface of the bedside table. Snatching it up, I flicked the side button to see a text from Agent Cartwright.

“Fuck.”

“What? What is it?” Emily straightened her posture and reached over to place her glass on the table where my phone had been.

“I guess the conference worked like a charm. Another body showed up…and this one included a message.”

***

The cold wet air stung my face as I walked across the dimly lit parking lot on the south side of Washington Park. Dumped with no more concern than a pile of garbage, Noreen Hamilton’s body was found by a vagrant who was sneaking into the woods surrounding the park to sleep off the alcohol in his stomach.

Left naked and displayed in a way that made CK’s message abundantly clear, it appeared that she’d been dead for some time before being dumped in the very public location.

With a flashlight, I looked over the body, wishing like hell that the local PD would hurry the fuck up and get some floodlights set up around the perimeter of the scene before all the evidence was washed away by the impending rain.

In Noreen’s abdomen, the letters CK were carved, however the lack of blood told me that the cuts had either been performed post-mortem or she’d been cleaned like all the other victims we’d found. Unlike those victims, however, Noreen’s body wasn’t positioned to appear sleeping. It was just one more indication to me that the message I’d given CK had shaken him enough to break with his usual routine. I could only pray that he’d been pissed off enough to accidentally leave something behind that we could use to identify him.

“Well, I hope you’re satisfied, Blake. You pissed him off, alright.”

Emily bent down to take a closer look at the letters carved into the body. “These cuts are quite deep and there are no hesitation marks to speak of. He was obviously agitated while making them.”

“At least now, he’s communicating with us. It’s a step closer to finding this bastard.”

“I wonder what he’s done with Veronica Lapierre’s body,” Emily mused.

“What makes you so sure that she’s dead? From everything we know about her life, she’s an easily manipulated woman. She probably does as instructed without complaint. It might be the only reason she hasn’t turned up dead like all the others. Giving power to a sadist is always a way to keep them interested.”

Not having intended to make that a public thought, I spoke the words before thinking about what Emily would hear in them. In a way, I’d just described our sexual relationship and I was concerned she would pick up on the reference. She did and looked up at me with a question behind her eyes, but decided to keep her mouth shut.

Turning back to the body, she commented, “Noreen doesn’t fit his type. I mean, sure, she’s obviously not high on the food chain, but she’s not desperate. At any time, she could have gone home and had all the money in the world to better her life. Somehow I don’t think this girl was targeted because she wouldn’t be missed, I think she was just a victim of opportunity. He hasn’t shown the same remorse with this one as he did with the others. This was about rage, about something other than what his previous kills meant to him.”

“Is there an obvious cause of death, Agent Blake?”

A male voice sounded behind me and I spun to shine my flashlight in the face of the medical examiner assigned to the scene. He reached out to shake my hand.

“I’m Dr. Keith Montgomery. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Taking his hand, I shook it quickly. “You as well. This is Special Agent Emily Chase.”

The two shook hands and Dr. Montgomery looked to me once again, “Have you determined how the young woman died?”

Beaming my flashlight at Noreen’s neck, I was surprised to find that it hadn’t been cut open like the rest. “As a matter of fact, no. The neck appears intact.”

“Well, can I ask you to move aside so that I can take a look?” Flashing me a friendly smile, he stepped around me to kneel down next to the body. After a few minutes examining her, he stood back up and breathed out heavily.

“I don’t see any obvious signs of trauma besides the initials carved into her abdomen. I’m going to have to perform a full autopsy to determine cause of death. I can tell you that the letters were carved after her death, so at least he did her that small favor.”

Floodlights clicked on at that moment and the entire scene was bathed in an eerie bright glow. Local PD and my team processed the scene, collecting everything we could find that might lead to the killer. Once I was positive we’d found all we were going to find, Emily and I returned to the car, climbing into the warm seats before simultaneously breathing out our exhaustion.

Minutes of silence passed before she finally said what I’d been wondering all night. “He’s changed his MO completely, Donovan. Are we sure we have CK on our hands? Or is this another asshole hoping to pin his kills on the person we’re already hunting?”

Giving the question some thought, I finally brushed off the concern that we had a second killer on our hands.

“No, I don’t think it’s someone else. The timing was too perfect. This was an escalation based on what I said at that conference. If anything, he’s just helped me correlate the prostitute murders with the disappearance of the waitresses. We need to stay in the public eye about this now that we know he’s watching.

Emily nodded her head. “Yeah, but if Veronica Lapierre is still alive, will our continued taunting come at her expense?”

I thought about the poor girl that CK still had in his hands. If she was alive, I knew we wouldn’t be able to save her in time.

“That remains to be seen, Agent Chase. But it’s not something we can allow to stop us in our tracks. We’re getting closer and hopefully, when all is said and done, we will be able to say that Ms. Lapierre was this bastard’s last victim.”

Chapter Ten

Jude

I finished pouring the wine and moved back to the living room. The evening had been an exercise in splendid domestic bliss, and nothing at this point could ruin it for me.

I walked towards the sofa where Pet was curled up, watching television. I hadn’t taken note of the program when I’d left, but now it was on the eleven o’clock news.

They were covering the waitress found in Washington Park.

They were interviewing Donovan Blake, the arrogant worm who thought he knew me. I paused and listened as he expounded his own expertise and assured the public that they were on the trail of the monster who’d done such a thing.

Pet’s tiny gasp caught my attention and I looked at her. Her eyes widened as she watched the interview, took in every word. I could see the gears grinding in her head as she put two and two together and turned to look at me.

“What does this mean?” she asked. She seemed to shrink on the sofa.

I walked swiftly to her side, set the wine glasses on the coffee table and sat next to her.

“It means nothing,” I said, “maybe Billy did it.”

She knew I was lying, I could see that in her eyes.

“That was Noreen,” she said, “I don’t think Billy even knew her. I barely knew her; she worked opposite shifts than I. They are saying this is part of the CK stuff.”

“I doubt that’s anything you need to worry about,” I said and smiled.

The fear didn’t leave her eyes when she said, “They said that I’m missing, and that I might have been taken by the CK. Do you know anything about this?”

I thought about what I was going to say very carefully. Finally I said, “You are not missing, you’re right here. And if the CK took you, then you would be dead, right?”

“Yes,” she whispered and looked me up and down. Some animal instinct told her different though, some gut feeling told her exactly who I was.

“Besides, if the CK took you, that would mean it was me, correct?” I said. I don’t know why I pushed her, why I poked her with this little fact.

I think part of me wanted her to know; I wanted her to know everything about me and still want me as much as I wanted her.

She whimpered and looked away. From that angle she looked so delicious, and so familiar.

That sense of déjà vu rose again and I almost felt like I knew where I’d known her, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

The news continued and they flashed quickly to her face, an old photograph of her. It looked like something she might have put on Facebook; she was standing in a bathroom, holding the camera up and staring into a filthy mirror, a look of determined resignation on her face. As if she’d accepted the life that fate had brought her.