Slasherazzi (18 page)

There was no further information to garner from the last three orphanages, and by the time we returned to the motel, the sun was setting. Feeling tired from driving around all day, I went straight to bed, leaving Vince to locate the doctor who treated Russell in the hopes he would be able to give us the information we desperately needed.

The next morning around ten o'clock, we pulled up outside the house Vince unearthed as Doctor Hendrick’s. It was a small one-story house, with a light red vinyl siding and a freshly cut lawn. The mailbox stood a few feet away from us, the flag pointing upward, his family name printed on the side in block capitals.

“Hope he’s in,” I said, turning off the engine and unbuckling my seat belt.
Vince nodded, and we climbed out of the car to walk together to the house. About halfway up the path, I paused and grabbed at Vince’s wrist.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I lifted a hand to point at the front door. It was slightly ajar.
“Oh, fuck. You don’t think…?”
A lump formed in my throat, threatening to cut off my air supply. I swallowed hard, and my stomach seemed to turn to lead, dropping down into my gut. It would be just my luck to finally come across a clue that could help unravel the Slasherazzi’s past, only to have it ripped from my grasp.
I started back toward the car, urging Vince to follow me. He resisted and pulled his arm from my grasp.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “We should check to see if he’s okay.”
“And if he’s not?” I replied. I left Vince on the path, walked to the trunk of my car and popped it open. Inside was a box of latex gloves, and I took two pairs from it. I never knew when I’d need them in my line of work. I also took my gun and tucked it into my belt, just in case. If we were closing in on the killer, then it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared. I closed the trunk and headed back to Vince, handing him a pair of gloves. “The feds already think we’re involved somehow. Last thing we wanna do is leave fingerprints on a potential crime scene. We go in, check things out, and if anything seems wrong, we get out of there immediately. Understand?”
Vince nodded and fiddled with pulling the latex over his fingers. I pulled my own gloves on, then cautiously made my way to the door. With a gentle push, it creaked open.
“Mr. Hendrick,” I called out. “Are you in?”
There was no reply. I stepped inside and motioned for Vince to follow. We stopped to look around the living area. The walls were lined with bookshelves, stacked with books and DVDs. No sign of the doctor, dead or alive. Vince walked up to the nearest one and began to browse through a set of hardback notebooks.
“Looks like it’s his diaries,” he said. “Seems our doctor wrote about all sorts in these. Maybe we can find one from around the time the young boy was under his care.”
“Okay. Well, I’m gonna look around some more. Something doesn’t seem quite right here.”
Vince hummed a reply as I walked through to the adjoining kitchen. The place was immaculate; so clean it was almost twinkling in the sunlight seeping in through the venetian blinds. A phone hung from a nearby wall, and next to it sat a notepad on the worktop. I walked over and flicked through a couple of the pages. There were to-do lists, appointments with the dentist, and a single name written in big letters and circled. My heart stopped dead, and heat leeched from my body. Alex Beckman.
It was impossible. Hendrick couldn’t have known about me. Sweat trickled down my back, the early morning heat becoming unbearable. I shook my head, then placed my hand over my open mouth. There had to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe he really did know something and had meant to contact me about the murders. After all, I had been on the news a few times in relation to the case. My earlier fears resurfaced, ten times stronger than before. What if our killer had got to him first? It made sense he would want to tie up any loose ends. And my name was there on his notepad, dated just yesterday.
I tore off the top sheets, and several below them to make sure I got any that my name might have imprinted onto, and shoved them into my pocket. Letting out a long breath, I turned to the corridor. Maybe I was overreacting. The doctor could have left that morning and not locked his door properly, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
I stopped at the next room and inched the door open to peer inside. A small bed had been pushed against the far wall, and the tiny space had been filled with stacks of boxes—an unused bedroom being used for storage by the looks of things. The next doorway led to a small bathroom with nothing interesting to note. Floorboards creaked beneath my feet on the way to the last room. I stopped outside the door with my hand on the knob, and took a deep breath. My heart hammered in my chest, and blood rushed past my ears with a deafening roar. Either the doctor was in the last room, or we were shit out of luck.
I turned the handle and opened the door a fraction to peer through the gap. A dim light filled the room, the sunlight shining through the curtains and casting a red glow onto the white walls. Below the window sat a computer desk, the monitor still switched on. Maybe Hendrick hadn’t gone far. I pushed the door wide open, stepped inside, and froze.
The doctor was in after all. He lay on his back across the bed, wearing only a pair of blue pajama bottoms. Blood had soaked into the material at his waist, staining the cloth brown. His stomach had been slashed open, a deep gash that ran in a diagonal line across his rounded belly. Farther up, another stab wound that pierced the skin of his chest on the left side. And finally, a severed jugular that had bled out onto the bed covers, creating a large pool of dried blood around his upper body, and an arc of crimson decorating the far wall—the fatal blow, from the looks of things.
What were the chances of another killer just happening to find the doctor the night before we were due to visit? Not very likely at all by my estimates. No, I was certain this was the work of the Slasherazzi, though he hadn’t taken the time to torture his victim as he had with the others. It was a simple execution to tie up loose ends. He’d known we were coming and had taken Hendrick out to stop him from snitching.
In a panic, I moved to leave the room when my eye caught the monitor once more. Or rather, I caught myself on the screen. I took a few steps forward to the desk and leaned over to get a better view. There were multiple windows open, each showing a different room in the house. Vince was still at the bookcase, reading through one of the journals. I focused on the bedroom image again, and saw my back, hunched over the computer desk.
“Someone was paranoid,” I muttered.
It seemed almost too good to be true. There was no way our killer would have made a vital mistake and allowed himself to be caught on camera committing the murder. Knowing our luck, he had probably erased the video files. I took hold of the mouse and, after a bit of searching, managed to find the video archives. It seemed the files were saved at regular two-hour intervals and organized into folders by date. I clicked the video from last night starting at midnight. The doctor was still alive, fast asleep in his bed. Fast-forward an hour, and nothing had changed. By two a.m. the only movement had been the doctor shuffling from one side of the bed to the other in his sleep.
I opened the next file and skipped forward an hour. The bedroom was empty, and the light was on. Maybe our victim had gotten up to use the bathroom, or something had disturbed him. Skipping forward a few minutes, I got my answer. The doctor came into view, holding up his hands and backing up very quickly toward the bed. A second man entered the room soon after, holding a knife in one hand. He wore a hooded jacket that obscured his face from view…A dark red padded jacket, with black across the shoulders and sleeves.
The man with the knife stepped forward and lashed out, catching the doctor’s stomach. Hendrick fell backward, and the blade was swung downward, catching him in the chest. Finally, the killer straddled his body and drew the sharp edge across his throat. He got up quickly and left, keeping his head down. I paused the video and rewound it to the moment the killer had walked past the camera. His face remained a mystery, but there was a logo on the front of the jacket, the white stitching now splatted with blood.
In that moment, my heart stopped, and my throat closed up on me. The heat shrouding my body only moments earlier seemed to dissipate in an instant, leaving a cold shiver to run up my spine. I’d seen a jacket exactly like that, and recently. It was hard not to, considering I had packed it with a few of my other things before I’d left with Vince.
I stood up to run my hands through my hair, and clutched at the thick strands. This wasn’t happening. First, my name appearing on the doctor’s notepad, and now a video of a man—who looked to be about my size— wearing my jacket and killing someone. It was a setup. There was no other explanation. Either way, things were looking positively grim. I closed the video and went to click delete, but then paused. A memory stick sat in the USB drive. I tapped my finger on the mouse a few times, then chose to transfer the file to the external device, before deleting the rest of the files from that night and removing them from the recycle bin.
With the USB stick shoved into my pocket, along with the other evidence, I clicked onto the computer menu and navigated through various menus to find the program that would wipe the entire drive. Though I may not have been a technical wizard, I knew how to do that much. Tanya had shown me how when I needed to completely reformat my computer. It turns out certain porn sites carried the computer equivalent of STDs, and after much surfing had caused enough harm, the only solution had been to wipe the damn thing and start again.
Once the screen had cut to blue and the progress bar began its slow crawl to completion, I hurried back through the corridor and to the living area, where Vince sat on the arm of the couch flicking through the pages of a book.
“We have to leave. Now!”
“Something wrong?” Vince asked.
“Very. Like, we’re in the middle of a goddamn crime scene wrong.”
Vince jumped up to his feet. “Is he…?”
I nodded.
“Slasherazzi?”
“Looks that way. Come on, let’s get out of here. The longer we stay here, the more chance someone will link us to the murder.”
Vince tucked one of the books under his arm, then grabbed another from the shelf. “Okay, let’s go,” he said. I looked down at the books and raised an eyebrow. “Journals from when our guy was under the doctor’s care. I reckon we could learn a few things from them.”
I opened my mouth to protest but then stopped myself. A part of my mind insisted the right thing was to head back home and present our findings to the feds. Sure, it might end up with a disciplinary for defying direct orders to not get involved in the case, but at least then, there might be a chance of them catching our guy before he managed to successfully frame me for murder. But then there would be the impending questions about what I was doing at a motel not far from where the crime took place. I hadn’t exactly been ruled off the suspect list to begin with, and neither had Vince. Going to the authorities might only make us look guiltier.
I shut my mouth and went straight for the front door. A quick glance through the nearby window told me the area was deserted save for a young man walking his German shepherd away from us on the opposite side of the road. We walked briskly to the car and drove off before anyone had time to spot us. I could only hope that no one had seen my car in the time we were investigating.

We drove straight back to the motel, and I sat hunched on the edge of the bed. Vince sat by my side, rubbing his hand in small circles on my back.

I stood and pushed away his hand before storming over to the window. “How is everything okay? The one good lead we had just turned up dead. Not only that, but he had my name on his notepad.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bits of paper, which I threw toward Vince. They fluttered to the floor, and Vince leaned over to scoop them up.

“Shit, this is bad,” he said.
“You think? He’s trying to frame me or something, Vince. Maybe this was his plan all along. That’s why I got the note…to bait me into chasing him so he could set me up.” I slumped down into the nearby chair and tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling. “I should have taken it straight to the feds and let them deal with it.”
“Maybe,” Vince replied. “But it’s too late for that now. What’s done is done. Was there any other evidence that might implicate you?”
I hesitated, my fingers playing over the tiny plastic lump in the pocket of my jeans. With the hard drive wiped, I had the only copy of the video. “No. Just those pages.”
Vince crumpled the paper into a ball. He tossed it into the air, catching it as he rose to his feet. “I’m gonna take this out back and burn it. Gonna get a coffee while I’m out there. Do you want one?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He stopped on the way out to give me a pat on the shoulder and a forced smile before leaving the room. As the door clicked shut behind him, I heaved a heavy sigh and brought the USB stick out from my pocket to twiddle it between my fingers. It was so hard to believe that the tiny plastic housing held the video of a man—supposedly me—killing Doctor Hendrick. I don’t even know why I’d had the urge to bring it along with me anyway. If I’d had any sense, I would have let the evidence be wiped away forever. Maybe it was because the images were the only real glimpse I’d gotten of the killer, who I had devoted several weeks of my life to chasing. But then, what did the video really show? A faceless man leaving the murder scene wearing a jacket identical to one that I owned. One that had been covered in blood stains when the doctor’s throat was slit.
I jumped up out of the chair and nearly ran across the room to where my case sat in the corner. My hands trembled as I fumbled to undo the zipper, then lifted the jacket out to inspect the front. A long arc of brown stained the fabric, right across the white logo. There was a thud against the floor. I looked down to find a knife, the steel blade coated red and brown. I dropped the jacket and backed up on my hands and knees until I hit the bed. My chest heaved as I struggled to catch my breath, and my heart beat wildly, the sound echoing through my skull like a bass drum.
I was still on the floor when Vince came back. He placed two coffee cups on the table and rushed over to crouch by my side. He lifted up the jacket in one hand.
“Alex, is this what I think it is?”
I nodded and held out the memory stick. “The killer wore it when he killed Doctor Hendrick. The video is on there.”
“You said there was no more evidence.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I was going to keep it a secret until I remembered about the jacket. Don’t even know why I kept the damn video.”
Vince stood and walked over to the bed. He sat down with his back against the wall and placed his laptop on his knees. He inserted the USB drive and loaded up the video. His eyes were glued to the screen as the images played, probably in shock. Then he shook his head.
“Okay, we need to get rid of this and your jacket,” he said. “We can’t have anything that ties you to this murder.”
“Then what?” I asked. “After all this, we’ve still got fuck all. Even if we destroy the evidence, what’s to stop the killer from trying to frame me again? Next time, he might even succeed. And once I’m out of the picture…” I glanced over my shoulder at Vince, and a sharp pang struck my chest. “You gave him the notoriety he craved. What if he’s trying to get rid of me so he can get to you?”
“Then why doesn’t he just kill you?”
“Because then he’d still have the cops after him. If he can frame me, he gets me out of your life and the feds off his tail.”
“Good point,” Vince replied. “Then we’ll just have to find him first.”
“How? With the doctor gone, we’re out of options.”
“Not entirely,” Vince said. He leaned over the side of the bed to pick up a leather-bound journal. “Hendrick was quite meticulous in his note keeping. He had a whole book of observations for this Russell kid. I reckon everything we need to know is on these pages somewhere.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“Then we find another clue,” he replied. “We just gotta keep trying.”
With one hand on the edge of the bed, I pushed myself to my feet. I wasn't not sure how Vince managed to stay so optimistic when faced with the possibility that a deranged killer might be after him. Perhaps the alternative to catching our guy was too much to even think about. I know I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Vince to him.
I walked over to the table and sat down on one of the hard chairs, alternating between sipping at my coffee and running my thumb along the angel charm on my wrist. If she was ever going to offer me some guidance, this would have been a great time to chime in. Meanwhile, Vince read through the diary. He flicked through the pages one after the other, soaking in the information.
I was onto my second cup when he almost jumped from the bed and made a loud “A-ha!”
“You found something?” I asked.
He nodded enthusiastically. “Let’s just say our doctor resorted to some extreme measures in his attempts to help Russell heal from his trauma. Problem is he couldn’t get the boy to talk so he could never say for certain what that trauma was.”
“I’m betting he had a pretty good idea, though. Why else would the kid react violently to any older male? And the whole not speaking thing says to me that the abuse wasn’t a one-off thing. It had probably been going on for months. Maybe longer.”
“Kinda makes you feel sorry for the guy,” Vince said.
I lifted my head and arched an eyebrow. “Sorry?”
“Yeah, I mean he was just a kid who went through a lot of bad stuff. His mother dies, and his father starts beating him up. Then he goes into hospital and gets this…doctor, who starts conducting experimental therapies on him.” Vince paused to take a deep breath, then sighed. “He was probably just a normal kid before all this happened. Who’s to say we wouldn’t have turned out the same if we went through the things he experienced?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Doesn’t make what he’s doing right, though. This guy needs serious help. So, anyway, does the book say what kinda experiments Doctor Hendrick performed on him?”
Vince nodded. “Think Manchurian Candidate. They used hallucinogens and sedatives to try and hypnotize the kid, and followed it up with electroshock sessions.”
“You mean they brainwashed him?”
“Yeah, basically.”
My stomach turned. How could anyone do such a thing to a young child? It was no wonder he’d turned out the way he had when the male role models in his life had abused, even tortured him.
“But why did they do it? What could they have hoped to gain by all of it?”
“His recovery,” Vince replied. “They used a hypnotic state to make him believe the abuse was all a dream and get him to talk. But when that didn’t work as well as they’d expected, they attempted to completely suppress his memories and rewrite them with better ones. In short, they created a whole new personality. Made him believe he was someone else.”
“I’m guessing the effects weren’t quite as permanent as they’d hoped. Something must have triggered him and brought the original personality back to the forefront. Fuck!” I slammed my fist down on the table, and Vince flinched. “That kid should never have been allowed out of the hospital. They didn’t make him better; they just covered it up with lies. If they’d done their damned job like they were supposed to, then none of these deaths would have happened.”
Vince placed the journal on the bed and walked to my side, where he sat on my lap and wrapped his arms around me. “Nothing we can do about that now. We gotta figure out who this guy is before he gets to anyone else.”
I buried my face into Vince’s chest and breathed in his musky scent. “But how do we do that? He could be anyone.”
“True, and the person we’re looking for might not even know he’s the killer. He may not remember anything that happens while the original personality is in control.” He paused and chuckled. “Maybe it’s you.”
I pulled away and jabbed him in the arm. “Jerk. That’s not funny.”
He shrugged and took up the seat on the other side of the round table. “Just saying that we may think we know this guy, but it could be his other personality in control most of the time. He could be a lawyer, doctor, or even a pizza delivery guy.”
I groaned and turned to stare out of the window. Just as I’d thought we were closing in on our killer, we’d run into another dead end. Our only other option would be to return home and let the feds finish the investigation. With their resources, they might be able to track what happened to Russell after he left the care home—assuming he was the young boy in the pictures with me, though it seemed like too big of a coincidence for it not to be. And what of his second personality? Had he been living all those years without any knowledge of his real self? Then he could be an innocent. What then?
“Hey, Alex.”
I glanced back at Vince and raised an eyebrow in askance.
“You okay?”
“I’ll be better if we ever manage to get this guy behind bars,” I replied. “Why?”
“Just worried about you, that’s all. I mean, I woke up last night and you were just gone. Where’d you go?”
Ice flowed through my veins, and I froze. Last night? The same night the doctor had been killed by a man wearing my clothes. What if it really was me? The orphanage had held no details about my parents, or where I’d come from, so it was possible I’d been transferred from the psychiatric hospital. And it would certainly explain how our killer seemed to have enough knowledge of forensics to avoid leaving behind any evidence.
I drew in a shaky breath and looked down at my open hands. Had they been the hands that tortured and mutilated all those people? The same hands that were supposed to serve and protect. I wanted to say no, but the uncertainty plagued my mind. The killer being inside my head would account for why he was always one step ahead of us. He could have accessed my study at any point to find out everything we knew, and what we were planning.
“Alex?”
I lifted my head to look Vince in the eyes. Oh, he was waiting for an answer. I opened my mouth, ready to blurt out that I was a serial killer, but something in his gaze stopped me. Worry. “Sorry, I guess I zoned out for a bit. This whole case is really getting to me. Every now and then, I need some time to clear my head. That’s where I went last night. For a drive around town. I’m okay. Really.”
Vince cocked his head slightly to one side. “You sure?”
I nodded and forced a smile for him. “Yeah, I’m sure.”