Payback (7 page)

She was suddenly remembering something that she had seen on Animal Planet where prey sometimes fought back and attacked the predator, catching them completely off guard and saving their lives through intimidation. The predator could easily win the fight but when they were after prey they were after animals who did not and could not fight back. Otherwise it was not going to be a good hunt, especially if they got injured.

Darla had to find a way to inflict pain on this man. She had to scare him and hurt him. He obviously had an insane ego and thought of himself as some sort of a God. Then she was going to have to bring him down a few pegs. That was all there was to it.

Now how could she work this... Darla could not explain this to herself but her mind was suddenly possessed by a feeling of eerie calm and tranquility. There was no fear. There was no self-doubt. There was really only the desire to save herself, as the maniac had said. He did not know this, but he had just reawakened in her the desire to live at all costs.

The man continued to ramble as he checked out each and every knife in his kit. The kit must have contained ten different knives of different sharpness, shape, and length. She was actually curious what each knife’s job was, but as he spoke she began to formulate a plot.

The duct tape was tight around her bare skin, but the maniac had not realized that the air conditioning was not on. He was wearing a full body suit so he was probably sweating profusely under there anyway. Darla was starting to sweat like a pig the more she writhed and moved against the duct tape that was tied tightly around her ankles and her wrists.

The assailant was paying her no attention as he spoke. He had his back to her and as he went on with his retarded speech he was holding each one of his knives up to the light and inspecting it, as if making sure it was ready to do the function that might be asked of it.

The tape was giving away a bit, even as it dug into her skin. She found the chafing and the pain to be lessening as her wrists began to get very moist. She concentrated on keeping her breathing as shallow as she could to drive her body temperature up and to keep the sweat pouring on.

“I am going to remove each and every single section of your skin with these knives. There is something about the human animal that is so beautiful, but the skin is the real marvelous creation. It covers everything, wrapping around it in perfect formation. It stretches and it retracts. It is the biggest organ in the body and people mistreat it so. They cause it to age prematurely. They subject it to harsh weather without the proper protection and they don’t take care of flaws and cuts when they happen, allowing bacteria to form and to infect the body. The skin is supposed to keep all of that out, but people fail it. It is not the other way around.”

Her right hand had now popped free. She could hardly believe it! She quickly went to work on the other hand while he was still blabbing. She knew exactly what she was going to do. She just had to have the guts to achieve it. That was all. She had to do the right thing here and take this psycho out. Who could tell how many other people he was going to hurt with this? The man had to be stopped!

Her other hand popped free and in one swift motion she sat up in the bed, grabbed the knife from his hand and caught him totally by surprise. He did not have time to react even a little bit when he realized what was happening. Jerking the knife from his hand she spun it around and planted all six inches of the blade deep into his chest, just missing the heart due to the fact that he still had his back to her and he turned on her as she swung at him. His shoulder blocked a little bit of the blow as the blade glanced off and plowed through his flesh to stick deeply in his chest.

The man tried to scream but the sound had been choked off by the fact that the knife had landed in his chest. She wondered if maybe she had punctured a lung or something else important, but she did not have time to think about it now.

He rolled off the bed to the floor clutching the knife in his chest and trying to scream, but she could tell he was holding it back also because he did not want any of the neighbors to possibly hear him. Darla unhooked the duct tape from her ankles and rolled off the bed.

The masked man pulled the knife from his chest in one swift movement, leaving a gaping hole in his chest that was now gushing blood. Darla jumped off the bed running past him as he lunged forward to her, but she was out the door and running down the hall. She did not care how naked she was right then.

She heard him stumbling into the hallway behind her but she was already unlocking the front door and making a bolt for it. The second she was outside she began to scream at the top of her lungs for help, running from apartment to apartment banging on the doors hoping that someone would hear her. Someone would have to be awake.

Finally after the fifth house she pounded on Mrs. Mccorkle, the crazy old lady in the neighborhood answered the door to see a somewhat bloody and fully naked Darla screaming for her life. As soon as she opened the door and saw that Darla needed some drastic help she let her inside and locked the door behind her.

Darla called the cops and told them everything. When they finally arrived thirty minutes later there was no sign of the man who had attacked her or any of his tools or accessories that he had brought with him.

And the strangest thing—there was no blood anywhere. Not a damn drop.

“So, you can’t remember anything else about him?” Brian asked for what must have been the twentieth time. He knew that Darla was getting annoyed with him for asking her to repeat herself, but that was an old interrogation trick. People could always remember just a little bit more if they were forced to recall and recall and it was also to keep things straight and to rule out any inconsistencies. Darla had been brutally attacked tonight and now after two hours of going over the same story repeatedly she was really starting to break. Brian figured that he could push her just a little bit more before she clammed up and refused to talk. Brian often wondered if these techniques did more harm than good. They seemed to be designed to make people not want to come forward and make reports. If they were going to have to repeat themselves a million times in a row then it was often better just to stay a victim. Brian knew that while it did help the victims remember what they saw; it also did wonders to break any chance of a bond between them and the victims. So it was anybody’s guess which method was more valid and which one was more harmful. Brian would have loved to conduct a sociological experiment on this sort of thing one day. Maybe he would do that if he ever wanted to retire to the world of academics. That was all a possibility.

“I’ve told you for the twentieth fucking time that there is nothing else to say about it. The guy was covered head to toe in some sort of lab quality radiation suit or some damn thing. I don’t know what you call it. I guess you will have to look it up. It was black and it was thick, heavy rubber. He also had this duct tape and ball gag wrapped around my face that tasted worse than the worse night of vomiting I can ever remember with the worst hangover I have ever had.”

Darla drank her third cup of coffee since they had offered it to her. The caffeine had also been shown to have a strong effect on memory and it really seemed to help people recall better the more they drank of the stuff. It was pretty much the opposite effect of alcohol that way. The caffeine also had the nice side effect of calming people down despite being a strong stimulant.

“Ok, Darla. We really appreciate this. I’ll just read it back to you so that you can verify that I got everything down correctly, ok? The man was about six feet to maybe six feet two, with a slender build, but still athletic and strong. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Darla replied.

“Now he had a set of knives with him that you said looked like some really expensive set of hunting knives. They were polished and carefully sharpened and he spent several minutes inspecting them to make sure that they were going to be good enough. Is that right?”

“You got it, detective.”

Brian loved it when people called him detective. He was not sure why it made him feel proud and embarrassed all at the same damn time. He was going to miss that when he started up his own security business. But there were sacrifices to be made no matter what you did in your life, he supposed.

“Now the man said that he wanted to kill you because of a sick desire or need that he had that he could not control. He said he had been this way since he was young?”

“Yea, he actually sounded like he wished he could be normal like everybody else, but then he got back into character. He seemed like it was important for me to not hate him and that I know that he did not hate me. He said he would not have blamed me for trying to fight back due to my self-preservation. The guy is so twisted. I just hope he dies from that wound I gave him.”

“You stabbed him that deeply?” Brian asked.

“Hell, yea. The blade was like six inches long and all of it was stuck deep in his chest about here,” Darla said pointing to the spot right above her breast.

“Well, if that aim had been just a little bit lower he would have been dead almost instantly as the blade tore through his heart. He definitely would not have got up and just walked away like that.”

“I know, if he hadn’t moved. Dammit. I wanted that bastard dead,” Darla said.

Brian had to admire the girl’s moxy and the way she was dealing with almost being murdered just a few hours ago. She was a girl that one would not want to try to mess with if they encountered her in a dark alley that was for sure. Brian could tell that Darla had been through a lot in her short life. The girl was barely in her twenties and she looked like she had lived and survived five harsh lifetimes. He hoped that things would get better for her and that she would be able to put this behind her.

Of course there could be none of that until they caught the Copycat. But at least now they knew more about him and what he was all about. They knew what he was thinking when he was getting ready to kill someone and they had verification of the methods that he used to break into someone’s house and then the routine that he followed once he was inside and ready to do his work.

“Have you guys checked the hospitals to see if he might have gone there? He has to get medical attention for that stab wound or he would bleed to death, right?” Darla asked. She seemed hopefully optimistic. That was a trait that Brian recognized but simply did not have anymore.

“Right. We have checked around and so far we haven’t received any word of anyone reporting with any chest wounds like that. The suit he was wearing may have offered him enough protection that the blade did not penetrate his skin as much as you thought it did.”

“No way! He was bleeding all over the place. I could clearly see the gash with blood like pumping out of it all over the place,” Darla said.

“Well, that is also the strangest thing. He cleaned it all up and packed up all of his gear by the time the first responding officers got there, which according to 911 records was about twenty-eight minutes. That is pretty fast to clean up a crime scene that had as much blood flying around as you say,” Brian said. He did not want to sound like he was purposely trying to piss off Darla by questioning the validity of her story, but there were certain things that did not add up. There was a reason why eye witnesses were so notoriously unreliable and usually dismissed in court proceedings as unusable. People did not usually get the full picture, especially during times of high stress and fear. The body was in survival mode and the mind was focusing all of its energy on that, not on minute details about the surroundings.

“I don’t know what to tell you. He must be like the Houdini of psychos,” Darla said.

“Well, Darla we really appreciate all of the information and we are all glad that you came out of this ok. You are a brave woman,” Brian said. “Of course we will help you get set up in a different apartment and we are going to have a police escort watching your home at all times and someone else to follow you pretty much everywhere you go. I understand how annoying that can be, but this man might come after you again. A guy with an ego like that is going to be outraged that his target outsmarted him and that you hurt him in the process. And of course you got away and you have been able to give us some really valuable pieces of information.”

Darla groaned. “Well, can you at least put some cute cop patrols on me? I would love to have some sexy cop action.”

Brian was not sure if Darla was joking or not. It was definitely one of the weirdest request he had ever had a witness of a survivor to a heinous crime ask for.

“We will see what we can do for you,” Brian said as he left the room. He almost burst out laughing but held it in. it would have been in poor taste he felt.

He joined the chief in the other room where he was watching the interview sipping from his famous Simpson’s coffee mug that he had drank from daily for about ten years. Brian was sure that he washed it occasionally. Or at least he hoped.

“You think the Copycat will come after her again?” Arnold asked.

“I’m not sure. It fits his M.O. that he should, but he might decide that this one is not worth the trouble. It is just too tough to tell with guys like that,” Brian said.

“I wish she had nailed him better too. Damn, it was so close. This could have been the thing that blew this case wide open.”

“Well, it might still be.”

“Well, we now have three separate crime scenes. Any connection to any of these victims as of yet?”

“None that I can figure out. They all come from different backgrounds and socioeconomics classes. Even race is not a calling card here. The first victim was part Hispanic. It makes no sense how he is just randomly choosing the victims. If we could establish how he is finding them or what his criteria is then we would know a lot more about him and where he might strike next.”

“Damn, we just don’t have enough yet, do we?”