Deadly Messengers (37 page)

Even before he reached him, the realization hit him. He fell to the concrete drive beside his partner. Trip’s remaining eye was open, staring unseeing toward the house. Half his face was gone. All that was left was a jagged crater-like hole instead of an eye. Thick blood splatters ran like spilled paint down the side of Trip’s car. He’d been shot at close range.

Trip was a good cop with good reflexes. O’Grady’s instinct:
he knew his killer.

He bent over Trip, his core aching. He wanted to touch him, but he didn’t. Trip was now part of a crime scene. He leaned in and whispered into his friend’s ear, “Trip, what happened, man?
What happened?”

The time to mourn would come later. A killer roamed out there, and he needed to find them. O’Grady scanned the area again. He figured, by the still-pooling blood, he’d missed the killer by mere minutes. Minutes, the difference between life and death.

Guilt rushed over him. If he’d only joined the two of them this morning, maybe he could have done something. Maybe Trip would still be alive. If he hadn’t been so annoyed with the Jennings woman, he
would
have been here. She’d infuriated him, and it was more than her being a journalist. She’d gotten under his skin. Not because she was a journalist. No, because she’d awakened something in him. He hadn’t wanted to care about
anyone
again.

Sudden panic filled him. He looked around the garden, to the house, and then to the street. Now, he had just one question. Where
was
Kendall Jennings?

EVERYTHING WAS COMING TO FRUITION as planned. In fact, even better than planned. Kendall was wildly receptive to the drug.

Now the police couldn’t ignore him or his research. Certainly, they couldn’t put the detective’s death down to a random crime. Eventually, they would put it together, discover Kendall Jennings was taking anti-depressants and that all four mass killers were using some form of them. These drugs created violent killers out of peaceful good people, that’s what they’d discover.

He’d allowed himself a moment of regret as the detective fell and Kendall walked back toward him. Then he pushed the emotion aside, replacing it with thoughts of his son’s death and of his duty to make his sacrifice count. This plan was proof of his love. Doug reminded himself that in years to come, without his intervention many more would die.

In the passenger seat, Kendall sat quietly. In less than ten minutes, they’d reach their destination, his plan’s final act. He felt a sense of pride swell in his chest. He’d stayed straight and true over the long, difficult years.

His stomach fluttered at what lay ahead. He was certain, yet afraid to fail. There would be no confession. Nobody would know what he’d accomplished, his sacrificial act. Someone else would receive the credit: a forensic doctor, the police, maybe a news reporter. Someone, just not him.

He glanced over at Kendall, the sweet girl. If there were any other way, he would have tried. She was too perfect, though. The girl’s identity, linked intrinsically with the massacres, would become part of the story, her name tomorrow’s news headline.

Kendall quietly stared ahead through the windshield, small earphone pods in her ears. Zombie’s Breath was amazing. She experienced everything, but felt nothing emotionally, as if she watched a film of her life with no concern for the storyline. Doug felt comforted. He didn’t want her to suffer.

The recorded instructions were on a repeating loop, so by the time they arrived she would have heard them at least four times, hopefully more. His preference would be more, but his biggest adversary was time. This, the final mission, was also the toughest with the least preparation. In doing this, he’d given up some of his control.

The detective Kendall had killed had been on his phone. It couldn’t be helped, but potentially that could mean they had only a short head start. He only hoped by the time they found his body it would take them a little longer to go inside. He needed the police there at the final act, so he’d left them a message on one of the computers. Calling them from the destination to alert them, might give him away. Better if it was organic, everything leading from one step to the next. They would believe it was Andy, poor, innocent, damaged SSRI-taking Andy and Kendall Jennings.

With the previous candidates, he’d had more time to complete the programming. Andy was instructed to give them fifteen minutes minimum to listen to the recording. Seven or eight repetitions of the instructions was what he knew worked.

Andy was his first subject. Doug hated wasting the drug, but he needed to be sure. He’d had Andy walk to various destinations and buy food he knew he hated to eat: salads and sushi. McKinley followed behind, a stopwatch in his pocket, measuring not only the effects, but also how long before they diminished.

He needed his subjects strong, held close in his control, until the police arrived in time to end it. The killers couldn’t survive. This was a one-way trip.

After experimentation, he’d discovered six reiterations over twenty minutes delivered a strong control, as though his hand were resting on shoulders, his voice inside their heads, guiding them to success. He hoped Kendall’s programming took, so she’d play the game to the finale.

Doug’s hands shook as he pulled the wheel and maneuvered the car into a spot in the parking lot. Reaching for the ignition, his hand could barely grasp the keys; his fingers had a mind of their own. He glanced at Kendall, who displayed opposite emotions; she, calm, peaceful even, her lips silently reciting the words feeding into her mind.

Eleven forty-five read the dashboard clock. He’d figured the lunchtime rush would create the greatest casualties, send the loudest message:
Nobody
was safe. Cafés, private facilities, citizens’ own homes, and now family restaurants like this, dotted across the country. The furor of the aftermath would surely force the government to do something. The people would demand it. When you can’t trust your neighbor, your friend, your co-worker, or your parent to stay sane, then society is lost.

His hand snaked across to pat Kendall’s arm. “Thank you.”

She ignored him and continued to listen to the track. He’d felt compelled to say it, anyway.

“You may not understand this now, but in a few minutes,
your
life will have meaning. This will be your gift.”

Through McKinley’s plan, Charlie’s life had become a grand contribution to the world, his passing the spark to begin all this. Today, he would bestow the same gift to those souls who would die. It didn’t make him happy. But righting great wrongs took courage, and Doug McKinley understood his only course was straight and true.

THE DOOR TO DOUG MCKINLEY’S house was unlocked. The shrill scream of sirens from a few streets hurried O’Grady. He was inside the living room when he heard the slamming of car doors outside. He only had a minute or so in here on his own.

Another siren sounded distantly—the ambulance for Trip. Wretched sorrow gripped him as he imagined what lay ahead: speaking to Trip’s parents, the funeral, the enquiry, staring at his partner’s empty chair until he was replaced. Even though he was irreplaceable.

O’Grady couldn’t think about that now. He needed to find Kendall Jennings. That’s what mattered. He shrugged an imaginary coat over his emotions. His feelings about Trip would be dealt with later.

He scanned the living room, his gun held before him, his senses on high alert. The room was empty. Gun still at the ready, he circled the space, then exited to move back into the entrance hall. Opposite him was a closed door.

O’Grady stood to the side of the door, his back flat against the wall, as he reached out to grip the handle. He pushed it down slowly. If Trip was here, they’d nod to each other, both knowing what the other would do next: he to move in first, Trip to follow back up.

The door opened with a haunted-house groan. For some reason, he’d imagined it would be locked, protecting a secret room. This house felt full of secrets, hidden behind its normal façade, just as the killers were hidden beneath their normality.

He edged his head around the door, but couldn’t see anything. The room was oddly dark for late morning. Four small, red lights on the opposite side of the room blinked
hello
to him. Reaching his hand inside, he fumbled for the light switch and flicked it down. Fluorescent light flooded the room.

A custom-made, over-long office desk ran along one whole side of the room, upon which four computers sat in an even-spaced row. Their standby lights were what he’d seen. It looked like rocket-launch central. Two high-backed office chairs sat empty and abandoned. Heavy blackout curtains completely covering the windows were the reason for darkness. They’d been taped to the walls so to block any stray ray of sunlight.

The room was a mess: empty chip packets, candy wrappers, and dirty paper plates lay in untidy piles on the floor, a strange juxtaposition to the computer desk, meticulously tidy as though it were a holy alter.

A convertible sofa bed was pushed against the corner of two walls. It was a mess, too, covered with a pile of blankets and pillows, as though someone had dumped a bag of washing there.

O’Grady walked over to one of the computers and patted the space bar. The screen sprung to life. A Twitter feed instantly began feeding, line after line of tweets scrolling and changing every few seconds. He’d never understood this social media site. Staring at it now, it looked like perpetual, fast-moving ads.

Stepping to the next screen, he tapped its keyboard. This one had some kind of code scrolling against the black of the screen like the Twitter feed. This wasn’t Twitter, though, but jumbled letters and numbers. Programming code, maybe? He was no expert.

The next in line had the largest monitor, double the size of the others. When he tapped this one to life, he was expecting more scrolling of some kind of program. Surprisingly, a paused shoot ‘em up game appeared on the screen.

The fourth computer displayed a Google map.

He didn’t understand the use for the computers considering McKinley wasn’t exactly the demographic for this much investment. He turned from them and scanned the room again. Something about the sofa bed caught his eye. The dumped clothes and clump of bedcovers concealed something.

“What the—?”

Once he recognized what he was looking at, his heart stopped.

A hand poked through the clump of bedcovers.

Kendall.
God, Kendall.

O’Grady rushed across the room to the sofa bed, then tore at the clothes, barely breathing, throwing the apparel and bedcovers to the floor. Only when the body was revealed, did he breathe again. Relief rushed through him even as a shot of adrenaline coursed through his blood.

It wasn’t Kendall.

A young man, maybe even a teenager, with matted dark hair, pale and sick looking, his skin almost translucent, lay curled on his side. His head rested on clasped hands, as though he were peacefully sleeping.

He wasn’t sleeping. Drying white foam bubbled around his mouth, and his eyes stared back at O’Grady as though to say,
you arrived too late.

O’Grady reached down, placing his fingers on the boy’s neck. A lock of curly, matted hair fell back off his face. There would be no pulse.

Was this Hoody?
The height and build looked right.

From the hallway, came the sound of police entering. He called to them: “In here.”

He walked back to the bank of computers, to the screen with the Google map. He stared at the entry for the map. It had to mean something. The neon sign flashed in his mind again.
What?

It took him a minute, but suddenly he understood. It made sense: this kid, the massacres, and Doug McKinley’s report. If he was right, then more were about to die.

And Kendall Jennings was in terrible danger.