Read I Don't Want To Kill You Online
Authors: Dan Wells
I Don't Want To Kill You (13 page)
‘Hey, Dad,’ said Marci, swallowing another bite of bread.
‘Hey, babe,’ said Officer Jensen, stepping out and closing the car door behind him. ‘And the venerable John Cleaver - it’s an honour.’
‘Hi,’ I said. I gave a small wave, uncertain what else to do.
‘What brings you here?’ he asked, stopping a few feet away with his hands on his hips. He seemed cheerful enough.
Would he stay cheerful if he knew we were talking about the Handyman?
Would he stay cheerful if he knew we were talking about the Handyman?
‘We’re talking about the Handyman,’ said Marci.
‘Cool,’ he said.
Well, I guess that answers that question.
‘We’re doing our own investigation,’ said Marci. She sighed, long and fake. ‘Just a little criminal profiling; you know, nothing big.’
Her dad laughed. ‘Well, John’s the one to do it with. A little too much personal experience with psychos – huh, kid?’
I’m sure he didn’t mean anything rude by it – he didn’t know I was a psycho too.
He folded his arms. ‘So, what do you have so far?’
Marci glanced at me quickly, then turned back to her dad. ‘How much do you work with the profilers assigned to the case?’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’m only marginally involved with the Handyman case.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ve got some stuff you might want to pass along.’ She glanced at me again.
Why did she keep doing that?
‘For example, we know that killing makes her angry.’
Why did she keep doing that?
‘For example, we know that killing makes her angry.’
So that’s why she keeps looking at me: she told him the thing I wanted to keep secret.
I kept my face impassive. Did she tell because she didn’t trust me, or just because she didn’t understand my reasons for secrecy? It’s not like I could tell her my plan: that we could find the killer on our own, and then I could go after her myself. Having the police and the FBI running around following the same leads would make my plan a lot more difficult.
I kept my face impassive. Did she tell because she didn’t trust me, or just because she didn’t understand my reasons for secrecy? It’s not like I could tell her my plan: that we could find the killer on our own, and then I could go after her myself. Having the police and the FBI running around following the same leads would make my plan a lot more difficult.
‘ “Her”?’ asked Officer Jensen. ‘You think the killer is female?’
Oh come on, she was giving away everything.
‘That’s another thing,’ said Marci, nodding. ‘We’re pretty sure she is.’
‘A woman who gets angry when she kills, but does it anyway,’ he said. ‘Interesting.’ He smiled, just barely in the corners of his mouth, and spoke again. ‘So what have you deduced about the hands?’
That smile meant something – it meant he knew something. They had evidence about the hands they hadn’t shared yet, or more likely new evidence that had just come in; if it was a secret, he wouldn’t have mentioned it. But would he share the whole thing? I had to frame my answer carefully.
But what could I possibly say, when the only real answer was, ‘The killer’s a demon who uses the stolen hands and tongue for an as-yet unknown supernatural purpose’?
I spoke slowly, cautiously. ‘The killer removes the hands and tongue very carefully, almost surgically. This is probably after the bout of rage that comes from the initial kill, because she’s obviously very calm when she does it. She takes off the hands with a hatchet, a single blow for each one, and the tongue with some kind of scalpel, I think.’
‘And what does he – or she, if you prefer – do with them?’
‘Most serial killers keep souvenirs of their kills,’ I said, trying to spin a plausible lie, ‘because they like to remember them. They can pull out a piece of jewelry or a driver’s licence even months later and relive the crime. Body parts don’t last that long, especially soft tissue like the tongue, so it’s more likely, statistically speaking, that the Handyman is eating them.’
‘Gross,’ said Marci.
I was positive that wasn’t the case here: if the demon was just looking for food, she wouldn’t need to be nearly this careful about it. There had to be some other purpose. But if I gave Officer Jensen a false answer, I gave him an opportunity to prove me wrong, and the natural human response to that opportunity would be to take it: to show what he knew. I had to hope it worked.
‘It’s the only explanation that has any real precedent,’ I said. ‘Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, Albert Fish; the ones who take body parts are usually cannibals. Usually. There are some we don’t know much about, like Charles Albright. No one ever found out what he did with the body parts he stole.’
‘What did he steal?’ asked Marci.
‘Eyeballs.’
‘I knew I shouldn’t have asked.’
Officer Jensen wasn’t smiling any more, but he wasn’t frowning either. His face was flat, his mouth turned down; he wasn’t mad, he was . . . professional. I’d slipped him into lecture mode. He was going to take the bait.
‘So you think he eats the hands and tongue?’ he asked.
‘It seems likely,’ I said. I watched him carefully.
‘And what if I told you that he didn’t?’
Perfect!
It was exactly like I’d hoped – they’d found some new evidence. Having a friend with ties to the police was awesome.
It was exactly like I’d hoped – they’d found some new evidence. Having a friend with ties to the police was awesome.
‘What have you found?’ I asked.
He lowered his voice. ‘We got a call this morning: two hikers out by the lake came across a firepit, with the fire still burning; they got there just in time to hear someone running through the trees towards the road. A few seconds after that, a car started and drove away. They didn’t think anything of it until they smelled meat in the firepit, and poked it with a stick.’ He looked down at the sidewalk. ‘It was the Mayor’s hand.’
No,
I thought,
that doesn’t make any sense. She had to be saving the hands for some kind of special purpose. What purpose did it serve to save them, and then turn around and destroy them?
I thought,
that doesn’t make any sense. She had to be saving the hands for some kind of special purpose. What purpose did it serve to save them, and then turn around and destroy them?
‘So she was cooking them, to eat,’ said Marci. ‘Just like John said.’
‘Only if she likes her meat really, really well done,’ said her father. ‘These weren’t on a grill or a spit – they were down inside, under the logs.’
Years of pyromania leaped into my mind, and I knew that the area in the centre, under the logs, was the hottest part of a campfire. That’s where the fire pulled in new oxygen, and it burned like a furnace. Anything in there would be incinerated.
But why? What could the demon possibly gain from burning them? Was she destroying evidence? Was someone too close? But if she could absorb them or disintegrate them the way Crowley had, she wouldn’t need to burn them. I couldn’t believe it. It had to be something else – they must be unrelated hands from an unrelated attack.
‘You can’t possibly have ID’d the hands already,’ I said. ‘The fingerprints would be unreadable, and you haven’t had time for a DNA test.’
Officer Jensen smiled grimly and held up his wrist, tapping the knob of bone. ‘This is called the pisiform bone. The blow that took the Mayor’s left wrist – probably done with a hatchet, like you said – bounced off of this bone the first time, and then cut slightly through it on the second stroke. It left a very distinctive cut, and the bones we recovered from the fire match perfectly.’
‘Did the hikers see the killer?’ asked Marci.
‘Not a thing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not even a silhouette, or a flash of colour through the trees. Certainly not a confirmation of gender. I’m afraid your female theory is still just a theory.’
‘What about the car?’ she asked.
‘Our hikers didn’t see anything,’ he said, ‘but we’re still questioning everyone we can find who was out by the lake today. Someone may have seen the killer, so we might be able to get a description.’
No. This was wrong. It didn’t jive with anything I thought I knew about the killer: why would a demon need to burn evidence? Why would the killer save the hands so carefully just to destroy them later? Did the destruction imply more rage, or more control? More planning, or less? It didn’t make sense.
‘What about the tongue?’ I asked. ‘Did they find the tongue?’
He nodded. ‘There was some kind of charred lump in addition to the hands, which was probably meat and might be the tongue, but there’s no way to confirm that yet. The Feds have it; we’ll see what they come up with.’
The tongue too.
So it was the same killer
. I wracked my brain, searching for an explanation, but nothing came. What was I missing? We needed another victim, and we needed it soon, so we could find the next piece of the puzzle.
So it was the same killer
. I wracked my brain, searching for an explanation, but nothing came. What was I missing? We needed another victim, and we needed it soon, so we could find the next piece of the puzzle.
‘Are you okay, John?’
I looked up and saw Marci looking at me, her face marred by a frown. She was concerned. How bad did I look?
‘He’s probably just squeamish,’ said her dad, but Marci snorted.
‘John’s the most unsqueamish person in the world,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who gets grossed out; he’s only bothered by . . . by letting the bad guys get away, I guess.’ She looked into my eyes. ‘We’re not going to make it, are we?’
‘Make what?’ asked her father.
‘We wanted to predict the next victim,’ she said, ‘so you could try to warn him, but there’s only a few days left, and your new evidence changes everything. It sets us back.’
Here I was, upset about being wrong, and she thought I was worrying about the victim we wouldn’t be able to save. I was desperate for another killing, and she only thought the best of me.
Just like Brooke had, before she’d learned the truth.
I was a killer. I had known when I first called Nobody that she would kill people here, and I’d been willing to accept it as the only way of tracking her. I followed corpses like bloody footprints, and when I reached the end I made another corpse of my own. I’d killed two men – two demons - but how many more bodies had I left in my wake? How many people had died so that I could pretend to be a saviour?
Was I really a saviour at all? Or just another killer?
‘You gonna be all right?’ asked Officer Jensen.
I looked up, shrugged, and nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ll be fine.’
‘It’s probably just Mom’s bread,’ said Marci, laughing halfheartedly. ‘Six whole grains today.’
‘Six,’ her dad said, and whistled. ‘No wonder you look like that. I can barely handle four – but don’t you dare tell her I said that.’
He stepped up to the porch, passing between us and reaching for the door. He was already pulling it open when Marci stopped him.
‘Hey, Dad.’
‘Yeah, babe?’
Marci shot me another quick glance, but different than before. That had been a guilty look, when she had known she was about to tell our secret. This was more searching, more . . . nervous. She looked back to her father.
‘Did you have a chance to follow up on that teacher I told you about?’
‘Mr Coleman?’
‘Yeah, the one who leers at me all the time.’
So, she’d told someone after all. Good for her.
‘Of course I did, honey. I thought you’d heard.’
‘Heard what?’
He looked at her, then at me, as if surprised we didn’t know something. Officer Jensen’s eyes went grim as he spoke.
‘The Vice Principal checked his classroom after I mentioned your concern,’ he said, ‘and it turns out Mr Coleman’s computer was filled with pornography, most of it depicting underage teens. Girls and boys. He was fired this morning.’
Chapter 10
Mr Coleman was found dead four days later, on Wednesday morning, his hands severed and his tongue removed. It was unexpected. Nothing in the previous crimes, or in any of our profiling, had led me to think that the next victim would be someone like Mr Coleman. The first two victims were older men, late fifties to early sixties, with families and jobs and good reputations in the community. Coleman was in his thirties, single, and the community pariah. Everyone hated him.
I expect widely-hated people to be murdered now and then, but serial killers choose their victims through entirely different methods. What was it about this guy that put him into the Handyman’s sights?
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