Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) (50 page)

Fuck you
White Man
, he thought.

Over the sound of soaring violins, Watch Commander Nielsen hollered a few reminders into his microphone. Into their ears:

Investigate the suspected home location of a serial killer presently terrorizing the West Coast.

No bloodshed.

Reconnaissance mission only.

In and out.

Round up any residents for questioning.

Secure the premises and await back-up.

Clean and sweet.

Textbook.

Sure.

Weren’t they always?

Here we go …

The chopper made a stiff bank to the right.

Cornsilk clung to a hand loop. Clung to his puke.

One or two of his colleagues howled with glee.

Then they were landing with a thud in a snowy field. The hatch was pulled back. Icy air blasted their faces. Must have been minus double figures. They bailed out into ankle-deep snow. A frozen top layer. Like walking on broken glass. The helicopter sprang back into the night. The team waded through stiff grass toward a black copse of trees. Leaving ragged furrows behind them.

Nielsen quickly fingered out instructions.

Adrenaline flashed through Cornsilk’s chest when he saw he was to take the front entrance along with the Watch Commander.

This was it. The real deal. Here was his chance to make his mark. Leave all these cretins speechless once and for all.

They separated into three groups of two. Fanned out. Worked their way through the frozen leafy undergrowth towards what looked like a farmhouse. No lights. No sounds of human inhabitancy. No cooking smells. A dark, ominous structure. Could be anything. A big black lump of nothing in a bitch of a backwater.

They crept closer across frozen packed earth.

Cornsilk had his ArmaLite butted up against his shoulder. Night-vision powered up. He could see his breath form a freezing fog. Billowing like glitter dust in his goggles.

It was a big building all right. A few ramshackle outer structures. A tall silo out back. It all looked long abandoned. Overgrown. Covered in a thin sheet of frozen snow. The broken skeleton of a tractor lying off to one side, half buried by brambles. Smashed windows. Discarded farm machinery. Scrub invading everything. No Christmas card.

Cornsilk began to feel a little disappointed.

Nielsen shook his fist.

Cornsilk was to go in first.

What an honor!

Deep breath.

No stalling now.

He flipped off the safety. Inched his way forward across the icy ground.

A kettle drum boomed in his chest.

The front door was the only thing about the whole place that didn’t look decrepit. In fact, it didn’t look that old at all.

Cornsilk reached with a gloved hand. Tentatively tried the handle.

Unlocked.

The door clicked ajar.

He glanced over his shoulder at the Watch Commander lingering a yard or so behind.

Nielsen was an impatient man. Didn’t take delays kindly. He gave Cornsilk a curt nod.

Get inside! Move it!

Cornsilk threw open the door.

Pitch blackness.

It took a moment for his infrareds to adapt. Green-washed patterns of a hallway and stairs shimmied into view.

Then something caught his eye.

Something white-bright in the edge of his enhanced night-vision.

What was that?

He took a cautious step forward. Caught a whiff of benzene.

It was a small flower of radiance. Mushrooming towards him from underneath the staircase.

His eyes widened in disbelief.

‘Fall back!’ He screamed into the pin microphone. ‘It’s a – ’

Gary Cornsilk didn’t get to finish his words.

142

^{___________________________}

The call came through at around five in the morning, Pacific Standard Time. I’d retired to my suite. Tried catnapping, but slipped in and out of a fugue state instead.

Disaster had struck in Jackson, Tennessee.

Two FBI SWAT agents dead. Three more seriously injured. One in a critical condition. That made six innocent families torn to pieces overnight. And all the responsibility of
The Undertaker
.

I felt sick to the pit of my stomach.

‘We think he may have used some kind of a liquid explosive.’ Assistant Director Marty Gunner was telling me. He sounded shaken. His words were like thorns against an elephant’s hide. ‘Maybe hydrazine nitrate. Too early to say for sure. Preliminary reports say the place is a mess. We’re in the process of sending in a recovery and evaluation team as we speak. It’s going to be daylight and then some before we crack the lid on this one.’

‘Marty, I’m sorry.’

The Undertaker
had booby-trapped the farmhouse. Rigged a bomb in advance to stop us digging deeper. Knew we might trace him back to the homestead. Waited for somebody to come snooping. Then blown the place to smithereens.

‘What about our prime suspect?’

I heard the Assistant Director let out a tremulous sigh.

‘So far, we have his IRS records, social security details, driver license. We’re still pulling information in from Clarksburg. Once we have his financial records we can track his credit trail. We’re expecting a full breakdown within the next couple of hours.’

I sat on the rim of the mattress. Rubbed tired eyes. Computers processed data at the speed of light. But people didn’t.

‘So what do we know about him?’

Copes was thirty-two. Born and raised in Jackson. The FBI had a copy of his birth certificate. But no marriage license. It looked like he’d worked on the family farm up until the recession had hit. No record of gainful employment since then.

And he hadn’t appeared on any of the hotel guest lists the FBI had collated so far.

The driver’s license had come with a photograph. But it was an old photo. Taken when Copes was a spotty teenager.

‘People are lazy.’ Marty said. ‘They re-use their original photograph for renewals until someone says otherwise. In any case, I’ll get the picture blown up and sent out to all our check points. Maybe get one of our boys to artificially age it.’

I thanked Marty. Flopped back onto the sheets and stared up at the ceiling. It was dark in the room, but I could still see stars. I licked at the dried antiseptic salve on my lips and thought about the mess we were in. Thought about the premeditated nature of everything this killer did. Thought about the Feds blown to bits in Jackson. Thought about Mark and Sarah lying in a display of controlled rage. Thought about Patricia Hoagland with Jenny’s blood on her hands. Thought about Helena Margolis with her lethal stab wound. Thought about Marlene and Samuels lying in their rings of rose petals. Thought about little Jenny McNamara who would never grow up to become a fantastic doctor.

Then I thought about Harry and of never hearing his self-induced laughter again. Thought about Father Dan slain by the devil himself. Came to the conclusion I was sick of thinking.

I went into the bathroom and threw up painkillers. Stared at the horror show face loitering in the bathroom mirror.

143

___________________________

The faint wail of police sirens came to him over the motel roof. It sounded like the cry of a prehistoric beast as it roved through the pre-dawn night. Studiously, he listened to the sound. Swaying in tempo to its long undulations.

He was standing on a narrow balcony-cum-walkway. Outside a grimy motel room somewhere in downtown Vegas. He was leaning against a rusty railing. Buck naked and lacquered in sweat. Pulling long drags on a cigarette.

As far as cheap backstreet accommodations went, this had to be one of the worst he’d ever seen. Everything threadbare. Not seen a lick of paint in twenty years. Not even any water in the communal pool.

Through the grubby ground-floor window of the room opposite, he could see a couple making out. The man was a greasy punk. Likely a drug user. He had his larger-than-life girlfriend pinned up against the wall. Hammering her from behind.

The killer known as
The Undertaker
breathed through his cigarette.

His work here in Sin City was done. His grand finale complete. He had a flight booked. He had business elsewhere. Later today Elvis would be leaving the building.

He flicked the cigarette butt into the filthy pool basin.

The hooker was still out of it. Curled in a fetal position on the tatty mattress. He’d injected her with enough of his creative chemistry to keep her compliant for hours. She’d have no memory of him or what had transpired here.

He looked at her while he threw on his clothes. At the patterns of sweat-streaked make-up. The whorls of tangled hair. The leopard print of her skin where her fake tan had worn away. He tore a crisp one-hundred dollar bill from his wallet and tossed it onto the bed. Then went to the bathroom. Took a leak in the cracked toilet bowl.

A previous tenant had scrawled the words
time to check out
across the paint-peeling wall where a mirror once hung. It was either written in old blood or old feces. Hard to tell against all the years of accumulated grime.

144

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