Killing Kirshner (A Psychological Suspense Thriller) (16 page)

Jack pulled himself up, leaning heavily on a couch, and picked up a lamp and ripped it out of the wall. He flung the lamp, hitting Kirshner in the face. Kirshner felt his eye swell as he did his best to focus; Will quickly crawled out of the way wiping the blood from his nose. Kirshner moved toward Will again, as Jack pulled a small, silver gun from his back pocket.

“Don’t move, Kirshner! Don’t you fucking move a muscle,” Jack shouted, pointing the gun at Kirshner, who stopped moving, but did not look up at Jack.

“Where’s Abrams?” Jack asked.

The lights suddenly came on in the house. “I’m right here. I was looking for the circuit breaker box,” Abrams said, coming from the kitchen. Abrams grabbed Kirshner’s arm and twisted it behind his back, slamming him into the wall.

“Get on your knees now,” Abrams yelled.

Kirshner immediately complied, dropping to his knees. Jack stumbled over to Abrams and handed him the gun; he knew he was still out of it from the Taser, and was in no shape to watch Kirshner.

Will panted heavily, trying to catch his breath. Then he realized Amanda was still nowhere in sight. “Amanda!” he mumbled. “Where’s Amanda?”

“What did you do with her?” Abrams yelled, now holding the gun to Kirshner’s head.

“Ms. Martin? Oh I wouldn’t worry too much about her. She’s in a nice, safe place.”

“Where the fuck is she?” Abrams screamed.

Kirshner did not respond. Will stood up and walked over to Kirshner with his fists clenched.

“You have no idea who you are dealing with, boy,” Kirshner screamed.

Will pounded his fist into the side of Kirshner’s face. Kirshner’s head turned away, but he slowly turned to face Will again with a big grin on his face – almost unaffected by Will’s punch.

Abrams noticed something wedged in the back pocket of Kirshner’s pants. “Wait,” Abrams yelled as Will went to strike him again. Abrams pulled out a small plastic box with a red button on it – similar to a garage door remote. “What’s this do?” Will shouted.

Kirshner was silent. Abrams pressed the red button, but nothing seemed to happen. “You have five seconds to tell us where Amanda is or I am going to pull the trigger,” Abrams shouted.

“Say goodbye Kirshner …”

C
hapter 81

“Abrams, don’t,” Amanda yelled, appearing from the hallway.

Will ran over to her, making sure she was alright. He could tell she was shaken up, but she did not appear to be injured. Jack also walked over to Amanda to make sure she was not hurt.

Kirshner looked up at Abrams holding the gun to the back of his head, and saw he was looking across the room at Amanda. He launched himself from his knees and threw Abrams back off his feet. The gun fell out of Abrams’ hands and slid across the tile floor; Jack ran as fast as he could toward Kirshner, realizing he was attempting to get the gun. Jack landed into Kirshner’s side throwing both of them into a glass coffee table that sat in front of the couch. They both crashed through the table breaking the glass into hundreds of tiny pieces. Kirshner pushed Jack off him into the pile of glass. Amanda ran into the kitchen, as Kirshner fumbled to get the gun that was now just out of his reach.

Kirshner grabbed the gun and swung it around to face Will and Abrams; they both stopped moving toward him. Kirshner stood up and brushed the pieces of glass from his body. “Back up into the hallway,” Kirshner mumbled as he moved to them. The door to the secret room was wide open; Kirshner motioned for them to get into the room.

Will and Abrams entered the strange hospital room. “What the hell?” Abrams mumbled, looking at the room.

“Holy shit! He’s the Mangler,” Will said.

“I told you; you have no idea who you are dealing with or what I am capable of. Now put these on,” Kirshner said, throwing them handcuffs he got out of a drawer. “Lock yourself to that table.”

“It was you this whole time – torturing, killing all those people.” Will clamped the handcuff onto one of the table bars.

“You know what I read, Will. They said the Mangler was an insecure, little wimp who was probably impotent and had mommy issues. You know the type; we used to pick on them in high school. Hey, Kirshner, how many times did you get your head flushed in a toilet in high school?”

“I was going to wait to do this, but your mouth has convinced me otherwise.” Kirshner aimed the gun at Abrams.

C
hapter 82

As Kirshner pulled back on the hammer, Amanda came blasting into the room with a large serrated knife swinging in her hand. Kirshner spotted her out of the corner of his eye; he tried to get out of the way but the knife plunged deep into his arm.

The gun fell to the floor with Kirshner soon following, grasping his arm in pain. Amanda jumped on top of him and pounded on his chest and head with her fists. Although Amanda was a thin woman, she was very strong. She pulled the knife out of his arm and raised it high in the air to plunge into his chest.

Jack grabbed Amanda’s hands, preventing her from stabbing Kirshner. “Amanda, stop,” Jack screamed.

“It’s him, Jack, he’s the Mangler,” Amanda shouted back.

“I know, Amanda. Let’s just calm down and figure things out.”

Jack grabbed more handcuffs from the open drawer and cuffed Kirshner to a pole that Kirshner must have used for his victims. Amanda sat on the floor trying to calm down, but the adrenalin was still flowing through her veins. Jack uncuffed Will and Abrams.

They all slumped down to the floor in a circle around Amanda. “Obviously, our plan is not going to work now. We need to figure this out.” Will spoke first.

“Are you freakin’ crazy, Will? He’s the Mangler. Kirshner is the Mangler. We need to call the police. We can even do it anonymously,” Jack argued.

“No, it won’t work, Kirshner will tell them everything. What we tried to do tonight. How in the world are we going to explain that to the police?” Abrams responded.

“But he’s the Mangler. The police won’t care about us,” Amanda said.

“Abrams’ right, the only way the story of catching the most wanted serial killer in America could get more sensational would be if he was caught because four of his own students tried to kill him – unknowingly finding out that he’s the Mangler. That’s attempted murder no matter who he was,” Will interrupted.

They could not just call the police – it was much more complicated. They decided they would lock Kirshner in his own prison and figure out what to do later. For now, they all agreed that they had to clean up the place so no one knew they were there.

Amanda showed them what was in the next room – a library of personal DVDs lined the wall, each labeled with a different victim’s name. There were more than 60 DVDs stacked neatly on several wood shelves and three large LCD televisions hanging on the wall. In the corner of the room, there were two prison cells with chains and cuffs lying on the floor.

“He must have kept them in those cages and made them watch the DVDs of his other victims before he killed them,” Abrams guessed.

“How horrible.” Amanda clenched Will’s hand as hard as she could; Will squeezed her hand back. They all stepped out of the room in horror; Kirshner sat on the ground staring at the four of them as they reentered the room. He smiled, almost as if to say, “Pretty impressive work.”

“Go get the Taser gun and we’ll get him into one of the cells,” Abrams said to Jack. Amanda and Will left the room and started cleaning up the living room.

C
hapter 83

Five days later …

Will sat back in his uncomfortable chair as Shazhad leaned forward, hanging on every word Will was speaking.

“You’re telling me that you have Kirshner – the Miami Mangler – locked in a cage in his very own house,” Shazhad whispered.

“Yes, I am telling you that Isaiah Kirshner is the Miami Mangler, and we locked him in his house of horrors. We cleaned the house from top to bottom.”

Shazhad brushed his hair back with his hands – his mind was racing. “The glass table, we found a piece of glass under the couch,” Shazhad remembered.

“Yeah, Jack fell into that when he was fighting with Kirshner. I guess we didn’t get it all.”

“And Detective Pitman found a bloody piece of clothing in the yard.”

“Abrams tore his shirt; it must have fallen after we ran out of the house.”

Will’s story was making sense to Shazhad. The few clues he had all seemed to line up with Will’s story.

“So, here’s the deal, detective. You go to the house, catch the most notorious serial killer of our time and be the big hero. You say nothing about me, Amanda, Jack or Abrams. You don’t tell a soul what we planned to do that night,” Will explained.

“Why would I do that? Besides, Kirshner knows, he’s not going to just sit back and forget that the four of you tried to kill him – let alone help finally expose him for who he really is,” Shazhad argued.

“That’s why you can’t let him walk out of that house alive. It’s the only way this all works. You have to be the one that figures him out – seek justice for all his victims and the poor families that were left behind. You’ll be a national hero,” Will said, playing on Shazhad’s vanity.

It went against the entire legal system that he was an integral part of. He was a police officer, sworn to protect – but, he was protecting. He was protecting every law-biding citizen in Miami from a monster. He would be world famous – the man who finally caught the Miami Mangler. His wife would be so proud.

“Well, will you do it, detective? Do the world a favor and rid it of this horrible man.”

Without even responding to Will’s desperate plea, Shazhad asked, “How do I get into the secret room?”

Chapter 84

Shazhad raced down I-95 to Will’s dorm room where Will hid the remote for Kirshner’s secret room. Shazhad knew that a CSI team might be searching through Will’s room, and he needed to get to the remote before the team bagged it and it went into the chain of custody of the Miami-Dade Police Department.

“Dammit,” Shazhad said when he saw the police van outside of the dormitory. There were a few news crews still hanging around covering the arrest of the four law students, one of whom may be the Miami Mangler.

He marched up the stairs searching for room # 213 – Will’s room. The room was at the end of the hallway, and the door was wide open. He thought he might be too late when he saw a woman wearing a CSI vest already in the room collecting possible evidence. Shazhad told the woman he was the detective on this case and was trying to verify his suspect’s story.

Shazhad immediately went to a storage tub that Will kept under his bed, which was mostly filled with clothes, and wrapped up in an old T-shirt was the remote. Shazhad shoved the remote into his pocket and threw the shirt back into the storage tub. He thanked the woman for her time and glided out the front door. As he was about to walk down the stairs, he heard a woman calling his name. “Detective Ahmed, Detective Ahmed,” the woman shouted as she chased after him.

“Detective, I’m Jill Carlin, Harry Pitman’s girlfriend,” she said smiling. “I just wanted to introduce myself since we hadn’t met yet.”

Shazhad was relieved. “Great to finally meet you, Harry’s a great guy. We’ll all have to have dinner some time,” he suggested.

“Sounds great. So, how’s the case coming along? Do you really think you have the Mangler?”

“It looks like it. The FBI is very confident, but we are still being very cautious because we don’t want to arrest the wrong man again.”

“I hope it is him, and this is all over. I hope they give the death penalty. That bastard deserves to die.”

As Shazhad was walking away, he remembered that Jill’s sister was one of the Mangler’s victims. Shazhad thought how Kirshner had affected so many people’s lives. “She was right, he does deserve to die,” he thought.

C
hapter 85

Shazhad breathed heavily as he sat in his car parked in Kirshner’s driveway. It was a quiet day in Kirshner’s neighborhood; Shazhad did not notice a soul, except for some lawn workers mowing the grass a few houses down. He gripped his gun tightly in his hands as a newspaper article displaying pictures of the Miami Mangler’s seventeen known victims laid on his lap.

“My God,” he mumbled to himself in disbelief at all the lives Kirshner ended – their horrible, painful deaths. He would never get the images of the crime scene photos out of his head – they would stay with him for the rest of his life.

He suddenly was overwhelmed by a feeling of rage. His heart began to pound and the adrenalin started to pump in his body as he leaped out of the car and ran to the front door. He was ready to end this.

He ripped the door open and quickly stepped inside, slamming the door behind him. The house was fairly dark even though it was sunny outside; Kirshner had very dark blinds and drapes over every window – for obvious reasons.

Shazhad pulled the remote out of his pocket and pressed the button.

C
hapter 86

Abrams sat uncomfortably with his hand shackled to a hook in the table. Agent Petty sat across from him, as the rest of the FBI team and many of the Miami/Dade Police Department watched through the double-sided mirror.

“How in the world did you get those poor kids to go along with killing Kirshner?

I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been impressed with you from the start, but you really outdid yourself on this one – getting three other people to do the killing with you. It’s brilliant. Did they ever suspect that you were the Mangler?”

“I told you, I am not saying anything until my lawyer gets here. So, just leave me alone,” Abrams yelled.

“You’re a pretty angry guy, Abrams. A lot of rage in you, isn’t there? Is that where this all comes from – a rage inside of you?”

“For God’s sake, I’m not the Mangler, you moron,” Abrams shouted.

“Well, then, there must be one hell of an explanation for that little hidden room you have in your garage,” Petty smirked.

Petty finally got Abrams’ attention. “Oh yeah, we found that about an hour ago. There are blood stains, gloves, medical supplies …”