The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) (8 page)

The demon has struck again, taking the life of another teenager. This time, it’s a little guy, probably a freshman. I look at him as he’s lying on top of an art room table, the boy is on top of a pile of construction paper and shredded chunks of paper from a dozen different projects. I stare at the kid, wondering what had possessed him to think that this was the way he needed to die. What would make anyone think that this was how they should end their lives? I look at him, his blood pooling on the floor, on the confetti of a thousand different projects. I stare at his wide eyes, his head slowly tearing itself from its body. I stare at the enormous paper cutter, the kind that the school should have retired ten years ago, but there it is, an enormous sword-like blade slicing through nearly his entire, gangly little neck. I watch as the last of the boy’s muscle and skin tear from the weight of his nearly severed head, his eyes rolled back in their sockets.

I shudder as it falls and smacks on the floor with a wet splat among the pool of crimson confetti. I can hear footsteps coming up behind me. I can hear his ragged breath as I look at the decapitated kid, all of his blood rushing out of his enormous, fatal wound. His head rolls to the side and I stare at it, wondering what the hell I’ve done. What have I brought here by my attempt at cornering the demon? It could be anywhere now, running amok among the students of this school, hopping from host to host, looking for an avenue to get to my daughter.

“Oh my God,” the principal gasps.

“Get them all out,” I growl at him. “Get everyone out of here.”

VIII

No one’s allowed in. It’s been that way since the van showed up, since the guys dressed in yellow space suits stepped out of the back of their enormous delivery truck and started making their way toward the entrance of the school. By the time they arrived, everything had exploded into anarchy and chaos. The doors burst open and there was nothing to keep the students in. The shouting teachers, the carefully practiced and monitored drills, everything shot to hell, sending kids and adults alike out in a whirlwind of panic and fear. Honestly, I don’t blame them. I can’t possibly imagine a world where people could witness this and still be absolutely okay with following the rules, following their little marching orders. But since then, no one’s been allowed in.

They tried shutting the gates. They tried making it so students couldn’t get out, but without the permission of their parents, that was hardly a thing that anyone could do. Soon, kids were ramming the gates in the parking lot and the teachers’ threats fell on idle ears. Backup was too preoccupied with seeing if anyone else was in the school, if there was a gunman or a killer on the loose, lurking. No one listened to me. No one cared to listen to the man who had been there, who had seen it all. After seeing dead children, it’s hard to keep people in line. It’s hard to stop tempers and emotions from skyrocketing out of control. I look over at the doctor next to me and I know that everything has gone up in smoke.

“We’re going in to have a look at the bodies.” I can hear the team discussing what’s happening with the FBI agents that arrived after the perimeter had been set up and the students were all escorted off the property. That was after they stopped trying to corral the kids. It was time to let them go. The principal had let slip that I thought it might be a neurotoxin and because of that, it was upgraded to a possible terrorist attack and the FBI were called. “Everyone is out of there?” the man in the enormous puffy yellow suit asks the lead agent. It has to be a thousand degrees outside and he’s wrapped up in five layers of hell underneath that suit. God,
that
would be a terrible job.

When the FBI pulled up, they came to me almost immediately, demanding that I be willing to hand the scene over to them. They had no idea what they were asking, but I relinquished the scene before anyone could advise me otherwise. Honestly, there was no strategy to it all, no trickery or subtle manipulating of the system. There was no hanging onto the case. It was officially a jurisdictional nightmare and everything was coming out of my hands. When they arrived in their dark black suits, their dark sunglasses, and their identical haircuts, I knew that they were going to take everything I had thus far. The serial killer angle was officially going to be bumped up to the FBI and the manhunt was going to grow larger. You don’t just kill three people at a high school and get away with it.

Sitting on the hood of the Shelby, I look over at all the cops who are making sure that no one is getting near to the school. While they’re running around, chasing their own tails, expecting to find something that I know isn’t there, I’m left here wondering what my next move is. I know that once the CDC is officially inside of the school, running their tests, looking for signs of toxins and infection, the FBI will come have their chat with me. They’ll make their way over and they’ll lean on me, asking me all the questions that I would. I have no doubt that Mendez is already on the phone talking with the director of the local FBI offices. He’s going to flip out that I didn’t follow protocol. He’s going to scream at me for not going through the proper channels and at the very least, not calling for backup or letting him know what I was planning on doing.

I know that the shit storm is coming for me, rippling with all the fire and hellish anger that I would expect on the horizon, but right now, I can’t focus on that. I’m thinking about how colossally screwed I am right now with the investigation. How am I going to find the demon now? Without the teachers and the students here to be questioned or the ability to even see the security feed, I have thousands of suspects that the demon could be lurking in. Honestly, it’s leaving me with so few options that it’s making my stomach twist into knots.

The problem is Kelly. I know that at any moment, the demon is going to try to get to her and not only is it going to try to get to her, but it’s going to do so in an indirect, unsuspected approach. The two cops outside of her house aren’t going to have a clue what to look for. All they will see is a child or an old woman approaching to tell my daughter how sorry they are for her. That’s when it’ll strike. That’s when the demon will get to her, kill the last person that I truly care about on this planet, and I will be alone… with it. I lower my gaze and look at my hands. There’s already too much blood on them. I can’t imagine what it will do to me to have her blood on my hands.

I feel helpless. I feel like there’s nothing I can do to stop this killer entity. It’s like the thing is impossible to stop now. It’s on a rampage and it has a vendetta against me. It wants to make me suffer since I found out what it truly is, what it’s doing. It hates that we’ve caught on. It hates that we’re trying to catch the thing. So why does it keep mocking me? Why not run away? Why not flee off into the wilderness? It would leave a trail of bodies in its wake, but surely it can flee and hide from the chance of exposure? I wouldn’t follow it. I wouldn’t chase after it. I would let it run away into the darkness, vanishing into the night, so long as it left the city alone. So long as the victims started dropping elsewhere. That is all I need. I just need it gone. But not really. I have a moral obligation to see this through.

Honestly, I would like to think that I could reason with whatever it is. Maybe there’s a chance that I could speak with it, tell it that it’s nothing personal, that I don’t want it destroyed or whatever. If it’s an entity, then it must have some sort of ability to reason, to have a dialogue like something vaguely similar to humanity. Maybe it will be willing to speak with me, come to some sort of terms with what I want. I look up from my hands, feeling the burning sensation of despair. I have no idea what to do next.

Looking over at the agents, I keep waiting for them to come over and start interrogating me about the case. They’re not going to be happy with what I have to tell them. Honestly, I’ve got nothing. I’ve never had a single thing. I had hoped that I would find something to put me in front of this killing spirit, but I’m just here, holding my hands out, empty, waiting for some divine intervention. But there’s too much unseen in the world right now. Something is making its way through the city, killing people with divine guidance. I think I’m done with gods and spirits and all the other nonsense that’s surrounding this case. If God is real, then he doesn’t give a fuck about this city or humanity. Maybe he ran out of patience with all of us and our horrors a long time ago.

“Detective King.” A man with a practiced, stern voice approaches the car. I look up at him and see that he’s taken off his dark black blazer now, clearly adapting to the elements of field work. I had several chances to join the FBI when I was a local hero but I didn’t like the hours. I look at this suit and I can’t help but feel like I’ve dodged a bullet. It would have been a terrible fit. I’m not into the rules enough to live a life under their thumbs. “My name is Agent Halbert.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say, taking his extended hand and shaking it. He’s got a strong grip, probably practiced over and over by introducing himself to people. “How’s everything going over there?” I ask him, nodding to the mobile command center.

“Not well,” he grumbles. “I was hoping that you’d run through the events that transpired here. I’d like to hear things from your perspective.”

I look over his shoulder to where the principal is standing with his arms crossed, his head shaking while he talks to the other agent. Clearly he has decided to let slip that I came in, tried to tackle Alice and she ended up killing herself, sparking this entire abattoir that now sits before us. I look at the man and wonder how quickly I could kill him with my hands wrapped around his throat. That asshole is going to cause me nothing but endless grief. I was the one who told him what to do. I was the one who told him to evacuate the school. I was the one who told him that others would die. That piece of shit owes me everything and he is going to rat me out?

“You’re aware of the killer who is posing his victims as brutal suicides?” I ask the agent.

“Isn’t everyone now?” He nods.

“Yeah, well,” I shrug. “That’s how it goes. Anyway, we had another victim drop this morning. Thankfully, I had a lead on who the next victim might be. Knowing that time is of the essence when it comes to this particular killer, I wanted to try and take the next suspected target into custody. By the time I arrived, the victim ran, I gave chase, she ended up killing herself in her haste to flee. I made my presence and my intentions known to her, you’ll have witnesses for that.”

“This isn’t a grand inquiry,” Agent Halbert smiles and shakes his head. “I just wanted to hear what it is that happened from your perspective.”

“Well, when the girl killed herself,” I continue, “the principal of the school refused to acknowledge my credentials and had his taser-toting pets detain me, until we heard another scream. Upon investigation, I discovered that one of the teachers, Miss Beasly, I think that was her name, had attempted to end her life. She was successful in the attempt and I ordered the immediate evacuation. We were losing control of the students, who were becoming more and more terrified in the wake of the events. While we were attempting to detain the students of the classroom, we heard another scream, and all hell broke loose. Students were running as quickly as they could for the exits. We couldn’t quarantine or hold a perimeter, and backup had yet to arrive. We discovered the third victim had decapitated himself with one of those old paper cutters.”

“Do you have any idea how the kids escaped the campus grounds?” Agent Halbert asks me with a furrowed brow. I see my reflection in his sunglasses and I don’t like it. It’s like talking to an alien.

“No idea,” I shrug. “It’s probably just a terrible evacuation strategy that didn’t hold up during the pressures of a real threat.”

“Why didn’t you contact the school prior to entering the grounds?” He asks the obvious.

“Because it would have been a bureaucratic nightmare to get to the girl.” I had been rehearsing that line in my head for the whole of the conversation. I have been anticipating all of these questions for a while now. Ever since I knew that this wasn’t going to work out, I knew that I needed to get my story straight. “It would have been better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

“Not the smartest move,” he answers.

I shrug. “It was the only move.”

“Did Chief Mendez know what you were intending to do?” he asks me, no doubt trying to find out how far up the totem pole this shit storm should rain. I don’t want Mendez to get any flak from this, even if he is an asshole. I want it all to hit me.

“Not a clue,” I answer honestly. “He would have stopped me.”

“So you just went cowboy?” Halbert shakes his head. “Tell me about the neurotoxin.”

“It’s the only theory we have operating right now,” I lie to him. It’s the only theory that will help explain why a bunch of rational people are butchering themselves. It’s something that makes me feel nervous telling him, because I haven’t spent any time actually solidifying the theory. So far, I just had the basic shouting lie that it was all neurotoxins. I look at him, wondering what exactly he wants me to say to him. “We have no way of knowing how the killer tracks two victims at once, so far, we don’t think that he does. The best conclusion that we can come up with is a neurotoxin.”

“So you’re telling me that you think he’s administering a neurotoxin to a single victim,” Agent Halbert furrows his brow, not buying it for a second, “then following it as it passes from one victim to another, then just leaving suicide notes to hide his trail? I’m not buying it, Detective King. I read what Detectives White and Landsmen have on this case, most of it from your own rogue investigation. If this was a neurotoxin, then why is it transmitting to the last person and not the first person—or every person—that the victims come in contact with? Whatever it is you’re not telling me, now is the time to come clean about it.”

“Hey.” I stand defensive, not willing to give this asshole an inch that he doesn’t fight to the death for. For a second, I consider handing all of this over to Agent Halbert. I look at his left hand and see the wedding ring, see for a moment his faceless family, all in the crosshairs of this killing entity. Maybe if I wipe my hands clean of all of this and take a step back, let someone else stand in the limelight, maybe then the demon will decide to play this game with a new opponent. Maybe Agent Halbert deserves his moment of glory, his victorious pursuit of my nemesis. If stepping aside would get the demon’s focus on something else, then maybe I should step down, relinquish control over to him. “If you’ve got a better theory, then let us hear it, because so far, we’ve got nothing with this guy.” I tell him God’s truth here. “We have no clue how many killers there are, how he’s tracking them, or even why he’s doing all of this.”

“You’re certain it’s a he?” Agent Halbert drills me.

“No, I’m not certain of a fucking thing,” I fire back at him.

“You see, Detective King.” Agent Halbert takes a long, quiet stare at me, poisoning the silent pause in his statement. “The only common denominator in any of these suicides posed as murders is you.”