Darker Still (12 page)

“Well, you know my name. It seems fitting that I should know yours so we can keep everything nice and friendly.”

Frank laughed. His laughter was mechanical and a bit creepy. It had no warmth or compassion in it. It didn’t even sound human. It was like something mechanical and artificial. John wondered if Frank was even using a voice disguiser.

“Let’s cut through the shenanigans here. I want you to meet me at a certain address and you are to come alone. If I even smell another cop within twenty miles of us I will kill the girl without a seconds notice and you will never find me. You will not see me until I kill you. You got that?”

“Sure. Where and when?”

“That’s more like it. I’ll text you the address. I want you there in one hour. And again if you tell anybody about this I will know and I will be very angry. And trust me John; you don’t want to see me get angry. It isn’t a pretty sight.”

Frank hung up then.

“I’ve got to go,” John said.

“Wait a second. We have to come up with a plan.”

“I’m not risking her life! I have to do what he says.”

“I’d like to think we can outsmart one man. We are an entire police force, after all.”

“No, sir. This guy has beaten us for over thirty years. I am not giving you the address and if I see anyone following me I will lose them. Do you understand? I have to do this.”

The Chief relented. He knew that there was no stopping him.

John pulled up to the address that he was given. The house was similar to Frank’s regular house, actually. It was a bit bigger, but much nicer than the house that he had used previously. John found the contrast to be totally different and unsettling. Even this guy’s disordered personality had no rhyme or reason to it. It was almost as if he was just being weird for sport. It was that strange to him.

He entered the house and walked down the long hallway as he had been instructed to do by the text message. He knew that this was stupid as could be and he was basically walking into his own suicide here, but if there was a chance that he could save Cheryl then he had to do it.

He wondered about Cheryl’s friend she was staying with and about the officers who had been guarding them. Were they all dead? Was this guy that good that he could simply take out two police officers and a woman without being seen or heard by Cheryl. Or was he just that sneaky that he had been able to abduct Cheryl from out under their noses. He hoped it was the latter.

The air in the house felt chilly and moist somehow, which was a stark contrast to the muggy atmosphere that resided outside. John felt a pain in the pit of his stomach that was clenching tight and making it hard for him to breathe. He had never felt more fear than he was feeling at that moment.

As he turned the corner into the kitchen he saw another door that led to the basement. That was where he had been instructed to go. He saw an empty pizza box sitting on the counter. The man had ordered pizza in the middle of a kidnap and torture fest when he was getting ready to kill one, possibly two people. What kind of a sick mind got hungry during any of that?

This guy was living on a parallel plain of existence that the normal human mind could not even conceive of. It was insane how turned off from anything resembling normal human emotions Frank Diel was. It made the whole experience that much more terrifying.

He arrived at the bottom of the stairs and walked down another hallway into another room. There was a light in this room and he could hear breathing. John knew that was where they were and he was about to come face to face with the man who had killed his sister and filled his nightmares since he was eight years old. This man was the pinnacle of evil itself and he had to be destroyed by any means possible.

There he was. Frank Diel—the Valley Ripper. He looked like an English teacher or a retired accountant, which he was. He was tall and well built, but somewhat nerdy looking. He was clean cut and nicely dressed in well-fitting jeans and a flannel shirt. He looked just like anyone else walking down the street. For some reason John was expecting him to look like some sort of new age Charles Manson. The man was very normal looking. John had seen a lot of sick people in his time and a lot of them looked fairly normal, but Frank Diel took the cake on that. He could have been your son’s little league coach or your neighbor who invited you over for barbecue on Saturdays to watch the game.

“Well, hello there John.”

His voice was deep but non-threatening. He seemed to be very friendly and genuine. Except he was standing beside Cheryl who was naked and tied to a large beam above her head by the wrists and he was holding a loaded gun on her.

“Let her go. She isn’t a part of this.”

“Wow, you are jumping to negotiations already, John. I expected a bit better of you. I invite you to my home and try to be hospitable and polite and you just want to get down to brass tacks don’t you?”

“Let her go. Then we can talk. She has no reason to be here.”

“Well, that is where you are wrong John. You see, she has to be here because she is my leverage. She is my guarantee that you will behave and you won’t do anything stupid. Now so far you have followed my orders and I know that no one is following you and no one else knows that you are here. So I appreciate your cooperation thus far.”

“You are welcome,” John said.

He could not believe that he was actually responding to this. The man was so polite that his creepiness was polite and charming. What the hell had he gotten himself into here? John felt like he was losing control and like all of his years of training had not prepared him for this. It was not supposed to go down this way. He was supposed to be able to talk the scumbag out of keeping the weapon. He was supposed to be good at rapport building. So far he was not showing any of this. It was pathetic and Cheryl’s life was hanging in the balance.

“Well, I’m glad we are getting along so well. Now I am going to tell you why I’ve brought you here, but you can probably guess the outcome.”

“You want me dead?”

“Yes! Very good, John. I do want you dead, but I am not sure you appreciate the why behind the reason I want you dead.”

“Well, it has something to do with interrupting you and almost getting you caught. I’m sorry, I was eight years old. I went to retrieve a football and watched my twin sister get her throat slit by some sick, degenerate, psycho.”

“Watch your mouth John!”

The anger flashed in Frank’s face and he held the gun to Cheryl’s temple, pressing hard. She began to sob loudly through her gag.

“Please don’t!” John yelled.

Frank smiled at John wickedly and then back handed Cheryl across the face with the butt of the gun. The impact echoed off the walls of the small room.

“No! Dammit! Why did you do that?” John yelled.

“Lower your voice in my house John. I can’t stand people not being civil with each other. It angers me like nothing else. Everyone should learn how to act and how to treat each other with the proper amount of respect. If people would do that then there would not be any senseless violence in this world, would there?”

John remained silent. He could see the crazy look in Frank’s eyes. The man was completely out of touch with reality. It was bizarre and frightening to watch happen in front of you. A person like that was totally unpredictable and you could not tell what in the world they were going to do from one moment to the next and Frank was capable of anything. The man was a maniac.

“To answer your question, you are only part right. I want you dead because you interfered in something that you had no business participating in. I killed your sister because it was convenient and I figured killing you would be convenient as well. You were both in the wrong place at the wrong time, as is the law of the jungle. If you come across a pride of hungry lions then you are about to die whether you intended to be there or not. It is just the law of nature, John. I did not intend for you to live a minute longer than your sister did. I would not have wanted you to live with that pain your whole life. I mean it has completely consumed you entirely. You are a bitter, angry, lost soul because of it. By running away from me you pissed in the face of Mother Nature and she let you have it with a vengeance, didn’t she?”

“I never thought of it that way,” John said. He had to start to do some rapport building. He had to make believe that Frank believed that he was helping John in some way. He got the sense that Frank needed desperately to belong in a world that just didn’t accept him. He had probably felt that way his whole life, but now he had the power to make someone listen to him and he was not going to blow that. He was not going to allow that to get away from him.

“I’m sorry that it has had to come to this John. Do you know that I have been thinking about and dreaming about this moment right here since that night thirty years ago? This has been a long time coming and I almost can’t believe that it has finally arrived.”

“I know. It’s been an experience. I am curious about something though,” John said.

“What’s that John?”

“Why did you wait so long? I’m sure you could have tracked me down. My parents did their best to keep my name out of the papers, but I’m sure that you found a way to find out who I was and where I went. I was in protective custody for almost two years until they agreed that I was no longer in danger. It made for an interesting childhood.”

“I’m sorry about that John, but I was so angry with you for destroying what took a lot of vision and work to build up. I had to essentially start all over and that took me a lot of work to redo, so I was distracted with that, but honestly John I didn’t want to face you until you were ready. I decided to let you grow up and to let you live in fear until you had all but forgotten about me. That way you would be able to arrive here at this time nice and fresh for me.”

“You knew I would come back eventually?”

“I had a sneaking suspicion that you would come back. If you didn’t do it by the time you were forty I was going to have to come after you and speed up the process,” Frank said as he let out a gleeful little giggle. Everything the man did was evil sounding. There was no other way to describe it.

“Well, I guess I was lucky that I decided to move back here. I had to get away from that big city life style for a bit.”

“I know how that is. I never wanted to live in a city. They are just too congested. I like my privacy. It is essential for my work of course, but it is also required for me to feel like I am still a living thing thriving and communing with nature. I am all about that sort of thing. So you can call me a hippy tree hugger if you want to, but that is just the kind of chap I am.”

Frank began to laugh heartier now. He was completely ignoring the fact that Cheryl was in excruciating pain and was on the verge of passing out. To him she might as well have been upstairs watching sitcoms. It was all the same to him.

“Well, anyway. I am starting to ramble a bit,” Frank said. “It has been nice knowing you and it almost makes me sad to do this because it will be over. And it has been such a big part of my life.”

“Wait, what about Cheryl? You have to let her go.”

“Well, I was going to let her go, but she is just so damn exquisite that she is going to be my newest project. After I kill you I will give her the royal treatment, so to speak. But don’t worry she won’t be out in public on display like the past three. I did that solely for your benefit John. I hope you appreciate that. Cheryl will just be for my eyes only.”

“No. You can’t do that!”

“I can do whatever I want, John. This is my show.”

John felt the rage well up within him. He was going to bring this smug bastard down off of his high horse now. It was going to be beautiful.

“I don’t think so, Frank.”

Frank looked like someone had just spit in his face. It was the most amazing thing John had ever seen. It set off a song in his heart and he wanted to laugh in the man’s face.

“That’s right, Frank Diel. We know who the hell you are. In fact there is half of a police force going through every inch of your other home as we speak.”

The rage that flashed in Frank’s eyes was so sweet because it was backed by a fountain of fear. John saw genuine fear and worry in that smug bastard’s face. He wanted to savor it and make it last, but he knew that he couldn’t. There just wasn’t enough time. He was tipping Frank off balance, which was his intention, but now he had to get the bastard going farther to fall off the rails completely. It was easier to overpower an enraged opponent than a calm one. People who were angry were off balance already.

“How?” Frank screamed at the top of his lungs.

“It doesn’t matter, Frank. You are not as good as you think you are. You should have stayed hidden. You should have left people believing that you were dead or imprisoned like they have all of these years.”

“AAAGGH!” Frank bellowed as he prepared to fire a bullet into John’s chest.

John timed the move perfectly as Frank fired the weapon several times. John felt the breeze from the blast moving close enough over him that he got a rug burn from it as it passed just millimeters from his skin. He continued his dive backwards as he bounced flat on his back in perfect position for the next move.

He moved his legs to kick Frank’s feet out from under him. The tall man went down landing on top of John. Before he could get a grip on what was happening and seize the top guard position that he was in John punched him square in the nose. The soft tissues of Frank’s nose broke instantly shattering the bone beneath and spraying blood all over his face.

His eyes were instantly glossy and dazed as the blow rocked his whole world. John was not going to let him go that easily. He quickly flipped the big man over and assumed the top guard position so he was on top of Frank, twisting the gun from his grasp as he did so.

He planted the barrel of the gun against Frank’s chest. Frank lay back on the floor half unconscious with his broken nose. He looked like a beaten up old man, which is exactly what he was now.