The Closer (6 page)
Authors: Donn Cortez
Nikki thought about Jack’s family. About the story he had told her, and the deadness in his voice when he did so.
“You hit the nail on the head, Father. I used to think if he could just…
resolve
that one thing, it might be enough to make him stop. Problem is, he’s been trying for the last couple of years, and it’s starting to look like that might not be possible. He needs to find a particular person—and they seem to be real good at not being found.”
“Sometimes it’s not possible to face the one you blame, or the one you’ve wronged—except in your heart. The important thing is for him to forgive
him
self,
first. Until he does so, he will continue to punish himself for this incident in his past.”
She thought about that. Tried to imagine Jack accepting the loss of his family, moving on. Leading a normal life. Abandoning all those victims in unmarked graves, and those headed for them…
She couldn’t.
“I think the problem might run a little deeper than that, Father,” she said slowly. “What he does, it’s sort of taken on a life of its own. It’s not just about the past anymore. It’s about the future—making sure some people are in it, and others aren’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind.” She stood abruptly. “Thanks for the talk, Father. I don’t know what I thought it could solve, but I do feel better. Things are a little clearer in my head. I guess confession
is
good for the soul.”
“Just a minute, my child—”
She left without looking back.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” the Closer said.
“Good for you,” spat Djinn-X. He seemed to have gotten his second wind; he glared at his tormentor with eyes that could no longer blink. “Figure out what a poor, deluded shithead you are yet?”
“I want to know how you did it.”
“Is that all? Shit, it was easy. Stupid goddamn yup-pies will open the door in a second if you say you’re collecting for Jerry’s Kids—”
“Not that. I want to know how you found the other members of The Pack.”
“Put an ad in the Yellow Pages. Call 1-800-PSYCHOKILLER.”
The Closer picked up the electric knife. “I’ll make you a deal. I know about the initiation—what I don’t know is how you screened out all the posers and wannabes before that. Tell me, and I’ll let you die with your reputation intact. I won’t pose as you in the Stalking Ground.”
“Why? What do you care
how
I did it?”
“Prevention. If I can duplicate what you did, I can catch killers earlier.”
“So you want me to betray
potential
members as opposed to
current
ones. Right.”
“Don’t think of it as betrayal,” the Closer said. He turned the electric knife on, brought it closer to Djinn-X’s chest. Let it hover, humming, over his right nipple.
“Think of it as a
trade.
First in a series, collect ’em all….”
Jack knew Djinn-X would talk, and he knew why. He’d found his fracture point.
Everybody had one. It wasn’t the same as a breaking point, where you simply overloaded the body with so much pain and the mind with so much horror that the personality disintegrated. That could take days, even weeks, and you risked sending your victim into a catatonic state where no amount of punishment could reach him.
A fracture point was a flaw in someone’s personality that reached into the very core of who they were, what was most important to them. If you could find that point and apply pressure to it, you could punch right through a person’s defenses, lay bare their soul. When he’d first taken up his quest, Jack had thought fracture points would be based on fear—he had found, to his surprise, that just as often they could be rooted in pride, sorrow, or longing.
Djinn-X’s fracture point was loneliness. He’d felt alone all his life, and he blamed an entire generation for that isolation. That blame had turned to murder, which isolated him even further.
Creating the Stalking Ground had finally given him the emotional validation he craved. He had built his own tribe, his own country. It was the single thing he was most proud of in his life.
And he couldn’t tell anyone.
Like all serial killers, he was an anonymous celebrity. He got the respect and approval of the rest of The Pack, of course, but they were just words on a screen. No one ever looked him in the eye with anything except vague disdain or blind terror, and he knew they never would.
What he really wanted to do was howl his rage at the world, let everybody know who he was and what he’d done. It was a flaw many serial killers shared— and the reason most of them got caught.
So Jack gave him a way to get what he wanted.
“I’m going to distribute your methods on the web,” Jack said. “How you did it. What programs you used. Profiles you targeted. And I’ll tell everyone who was responsible.”
“You’re—you’re lying,” Djinn-X gasped. “Doesn’t make any sense…”
“Sure it does. No matter how clever you were, there’ll be ten thousand people on the web who’ll tear your ideas apart and design ways to beat them. Within a month of its release, your method will be useless. But look at the bright side,” Jack said. “Everyone will remember your name….”
And after a long, silent pause, Djinn-X had whispered, “All right.”
“Good. Let’s go back to the beginning….”
The first step had been research. A website called the Serial Killer Tracking Bureau listed states where serial killers were known to be operating; those areas of the country got flagged on Djinn-X’s computer. Next, he compiled a list of webpages of possible interest to killers: anarchists detailing ways to make bombs, purveyors of hardcore S&M, freelance mercenary ezines with descriptions of assassinations and torture, archives devoted to mass murderers and killers throughout history. He used a search engine and fed it words that ranged from “Auschwitz” to “zealot.”
Next, he used a program called Remora, which attached itself to those websites and kept track of email signatures that visited at least two of the sites and originated in one of the areas that might hold a serial killer. Since there were thirty-five to fifty killers operating at any given time in the United States and they often moved around, this didn’t narrow the possibilities down much.
Next came his own webpage. He called it “Serial Killer Update,” and used a program called ChainLink to automatically link all the other sites on his list to his own; anyone scanning those webpages could jump to his with the click of a button.
Serial Killer Update was only a stepping-stone, though. He designed it to be as grotesque as possible, knowing it would weed out the casual cybersurfer. Graphic depictions of dismembered corpses and text that mocked the victims would drive away the merely curious.
The webpage had several sections, and only after you had visited every one would a link button pop up, inviting you to check out another webpage: The Gauntlet.
The Gauntlet was exactly that—a test. It had one hundred questions, culled from several studies of serial killers plus Djinn-X’s own perspective, and you had to generate a score of eighty percent or higher to graduate to the next level. Some of the questions required research—what was the name of Son of Sam’s third victim?—and some were designed to be infuriating, asking for intimate and embarrassing details of the subject’s life; the angrier the response, the higher the score generated. Djinn-X offered no incentive to complete the test, just a promise of complete anonymity through an elaborate email rerouting system.
Even so, he still got hundreds of replies. He compared these replies to the results of his Remora program, seeing which respondents fit the profile he’d worked up. He pored over the results, and struck up an email relationship with those that showed promise. He freely admitted to his own murders, and asked his correspondents if they’d ever done the same.
Most of them said yes.
He knew some were telling the truth—but how could he bridge that final, fatal gap?
He already knew how to verify the real killers’ bonafides; the initiation was the first thing he’d designed. But none of them would go through with it until he had proved himself to them, first. They had no more reason to trust him than he had to trust them; they were wolves, slowly circling each other and growling. There had to be a test, something that couldn’t be faked, something that all of them could verify. A public sacrifice, performed by Djinn-X to christen the birth of his creation.
They discussed it among themselves. They decided on a school bus.
Djinn-X agreed. Pipe bombs were easy to make.
The morning after the horrific crash—twelve dead, twenty-two injured—half the discussion group vanished. Djinn-X immediately took down his webpage; he knew he was entering the most delicate and dangerous part of the process. He contacted the remaining members and told them about the private website he was setting up, one they could connect to but no one else could—and if they wanted to join, they would have to go through an initiation of their own. Most said yes, but only a few followed through. One sent an obviously embalmed hand whose fingerprints didn’t match.
The ones who passed became members of The Pack. There were only four of them at first, but that was enough.
Enough to make a family.
DEATHKISS: I’ve been having trouble accessing your page.
PATRON: I apologize for that. I prefer to give a guided tour to new members—after that, you’re free to look at it anytime you wish. This allows us to get to know each other on a more personal level.
DEATHKISS: The other members spoke highly of you. They refused to give details.
PATRON: I do have something of a reputation, though I’m afraid it’s limited to the Pack. The world at large is still unaware of my existence—I vary both my methods and my quarry to such an extent that no one has connected my various endeavors.
DEATHKISS: I see you also claim the entire country as your territory.
PATRON: Not in any proprietary way, I assure you; I simply travel a great deal.
DEATHKISS: I’d be interested in seeing some of your work.
PATRON: Certainly. I’m sending you a file I call
“Swaying Madonna.” Let me know if you have any trouble decompressing it.
A dead woman appeared on Jack’s screen, dangling from a hangman’s noose. It was a video clip, not a still photo, and the body was moving slowly to one side. The camera’s focus widened and Jack saw that the body was hung from a crude mobile, like the kind hung over cribs to amuse infants. Instead of Fisher-Price plastic, this one was made of rope and two-by-fours.
It was counterbalanced by two children.
DEATHKISS: Memorable.
PATRON: Thank you. A young family in St. Paul. Very little blood, actually—note the pristine whiteness of the ropes.
DEATHKISS: Were they dead when you hung them up?
PATRON: Oh, no—that was half the fun.
Strangulation takes a few minutes, you know; each of them was very aware of the others.
DEATHKISS: I can see you appreciate the psychological element. So do I.
PATRON: But of course. The actual act of killing is no more complex than turning off a switch. But the emotional landscape to be explored, before and after the fact—that’s what’s fascinating.
Study the look on the mother’s face. What is she feeling? Terror at the imminent loss of her life?
Horror at watching her children die? Guilt over the knowledge that it is
her own weightkeeping her
offspring’s feet kicking in the air—or rage because it is
their
weight doing the same to her?
DEATHKISS: An interesting question. I prefer to ask such questions more directly.
PATRON: How so?
DEATHKISS: By punishing the wrong answers.
PATRON: Ah, torture. It’s always seemed a bit crude to me.
DEATHKISS: Maybe if done for its own sake. But pain is the key to unlocking many doors. You can learn just as much by which lies your subject chooses to tell as you can by his honesty.
PATRON: “His”? I didn’t think your tastes ran that way.
Jack’s fingers froze on the keyboard. All Deathkiss’s previous kills had been women. The Patron had sharp eyes….
DEATHKISS: Seeing the work of the rest of The Pack has changed my perspective. As a matter of fact, my first male target is also my current work in progress.
PATRON: You mean he’s still alive?
DEATHKISS: For the moment.
PATRON: Well, this is a first for The Pack—an online kill. Would you mind sharing?
DEATHKISS: I was planning on it.
He tapped a key. Djinn-X had a digital camera with him when they’d captured him, and Jack had taken some pictures of its owner with it. It had been easy to transfer those pictures to the laptop.
It took several minutes before the Patron’s reply came back.
PATRON: I apologize for my earlier disparaging comment. You have quite an artistic touch.
DEATHKISS: That’s not my intention. I’m simply interested in communication.
PATRON: All art is about communication. Art should either raise a question or attempt to answer one, don’t you think?
“Yes,” Jack found himself whispering.
DEATHKISS: Which one do you prefer?
PATRON: The question, of course. Answers are endings. Questions can lead anywhere.
DEATHKISS: Isn’t what we do about endings?
PATRON: What you do, perhaps. What I do is about beginnings.
DEATHKISS: I don’t understand.
PATRON: And you want an answer, hmmm? Well, I have those, too—not answers of my own, but the answers of others to questions I have posed.
An icon flashed, telling Jack that the Patron was sending him a file. He waited until it had finished downloading, then opened it.
The image that filled his screen was an oil painting. A man, barely recognizable as such, was huddled in a heap on the ground. Above him, angels with twisted, demonic faces hovered, holding lances tipped with bloody hearts. An immense, white-bearded face dominated the top half of the painting, leering cruelly. His teeth were sharpened fangs—God as a cannibal.