Killing Kirshner (A Psychological Suspense Thriller) (17 page)

“Boy, are you guys way off. That’s my blood stains; I’m in a fight club. It was hidden because I did not want my wife to know. It was my thing, and, yes, I do have a lot of rage in me, but I don’t deal with it by murdering innocent people. I do it in the ring.”

Agent Petty stood up from his chair and walked around the room. Something did not seem right to him. Did he have the wrong man, again?

C
hapter 87

Shazhad moved slowly down the hallway as the door to the secret room opened. He was about to be face to face with the most notorious serial killer in the country. His eyes lit up as he saw the hospital room that Will had spoken about.

His heart sank thinking about the torture and pain that Kirshner’s victims experienced in this room. The room was just as Will described – stark white with silver cabinets and instruments displayed throughout. Shazhad then saw the door in the corner of the room.

He crept around the frame of the door and saw several large LCD televisions attached to the wall; right next to the televisions were the shelves of DVDs. Each case had large writing on the spine – names. Shazhad pulled himself back to the hospital room, and took a very deep breath.

He flew back into the room with his gun pointed directly in front of him, and that’s when he saw the body in the cage. “Don’t you move,” Shazhad shouted.

There was no movement. He inched closer to the cage to see if it really was Kirshner in there. Kirshner was curled in a ball in the center of the cage. “Hey,” Shazhad yelled, stepping back a few paces – still nothing. Shazhad crouched down and looked at the man’s face; it was Kirshner.

Shazhad pushed Kirshner’s arm, but he still did not move. He saw a pool of blood in the bottom of the cage. “Maybe he bled out from the knife wound,” Shazhad thought to himself.

If Kirshner was already dead, then the plan would not work. Shazhad stood back up and walked over to the shelves with the DVDs. He quickly counted them – sixty DVD cases, each with a different name. “That’s forty-three more than we knew about,” he mumbled to himself. He pulled one of the DVDs out and stuck it into the player; he had to make sure there was absolute proof that Kirshner was the Mangler.

As the DVD began to play, Shazhad collapsed into the chair. He saw a young girl chained to the hospital table in the other room, screaming for help and struggling to get free. Then Kirshner entered the room, dressed in a surgeon’s outfit. Without saying a word, he pulled the instrument table close to his side. He looked up at the camera and began his “work.” Shazhad stopped the DVD. “You piece of shit,” he yelled.

He unlocked the cage and pulled Kirshner’s body out. He kicked Kirshner as hard as he could, over and over. He held the gun to Kirshner’s throat as he checked for a pulse. He felt a very faint pulse – Kirshner was alive. This was perfect. He could position Kirshner any way he wanted to make it look like a battle between them ensued.

Shazhad decided he would go to the other room to get a weapon to place on Kirshner. As Shazhad turned away, Kirshner lifted himself up from the ground and charged toward Shazhad.

Chapter 88

Amanda and Will sat in a private waiting room. The FBI was still talking with Jack and Sean. Will assured Amanda that everything was going to be okay. “I took care of it,” he whispered.

“What are you talking about? How did you take care of it?” she angrily asked.

Will told her how Detective Ahmed agreed to his plan, and Kirshner would be revealed as the real Miami Mangler in the next few hours. Amanda was panicked. “What if something goes wrong? He doesn’t even have any back up.” Will tried to calm her down but he was taken by Agent Petty for further questioning.

Detective Pitman walked in with a cup of coffee. “Been trying to quit, my doc keeps telling me I have too much caffeine in my diet, but what can I say? I’m addicted,” Pitman told her, pointing to his coffee.

“Detective, can we go somewhere to talk in private? I have something I need to tell you,” Amanda whispered to him.

C
hapter 89

Shazhad tried to focus his eyes, but he was in a daze; he felt something cold and hard underneath him. A bright light blasted down on him as his vision returned. His hands and feet were tied down to the hospital table, and his clothes were stripped off him and tossed in the corner of the room. “Oh my God,” he mumbled.

Kirshner appeared out of the small room, fully dressed in his surgeon outfit. “I’m a cop. You think you can get away with this?”

“I saw your ID in your wallet. My question is, how come you came alone? Where is the SWAT team? The FBI? It just doesn’t make sense. So, I’m thinking you are here on your own and no one else is coming. Isn’t that right, Detective Ahmed?”

Kirshner moved his instrument table closer to his side. “You’ll be my first Middle Easterner.” Kirshner smiled.

“Why do you do this? Please, tell me. Why?” Shazhad begged.

“The newspapers love to paint me as some maniac man running around the city. I‘m not a maniac; I’m not crazy, and I’m not insane. I know what I am doing. I understand the consequences of my actions. If you loved to dance, and someone asked you, why? What would you tell them? There’s no real reason for it. We all like what we like. This is what I do. This is my dancing,” Kirshner answered.

Kirshner lifted up an electric saw and tested it in the air. Shazhad closed his eyes tightly as three loud bangs echoed in the room. Kirshner fell to the ground with the saw running in his hand. Shazhad opened his eyes to see Pitman standing in the doorway with his gun drawn.

Pitman stood over Kirshner and fired two more shots into his chest. He placed his gun back into his holster and took a deep breath. “Let’s get you off that table,” Pitman said.

Pitman released all the straps and handed Shazhad his clothes. “How did you know?” Shazhad asked.

“The girl – Amanda – told me everything. Now, put your clothes on and then we’ll figure out what to do with all this.”

C
hapter 90

Several hours later, Agent Petty stood behind a small podium on the steps of the Miami/Dade Police Department. A large crowd of local and national reporters crouched along the steps in anticipation of Petty’s press conference. Captain Alvarez, Detective Ahmed and Detective Pitman stood next to Petty.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice. On behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Miami Police Department, I am relieved to announce that the Miami Mangler has been apprehended. Earlier today, two detectives from the Miami/Dade Police Department captured the Mangler in his home. During the apprehension, the Mangler was shot and killed in defense. The Mangler has been identified as Professor Isaiah Kirshner. This is the very same Isaiah Kirshner who was missing and believed to be a possible victim of the Mangler. Apparently, Kirshner went into hiding when he thought we were close to catching him. Luckily, these two fine detectives stumbled onto some evidence which led to his capture.”

No longer able to wait, the reporters blurted out their questions. There must have been at least five or six at a time, but the only question Petty responded to was, “Are you sure you got the right guy this time?”

“There is no question – Isaiah Kirshner was the Miami Mangler. We have unquestionable evidence that will be discussed at a later time. Now, I would like to introduce Captain Alvarez.”

“Thank you Agent Petty, this has been a long time coming, and it’s finally over. People of Miami can breathe a little easier tonight knowing that this monster is no longer on the streets. And, we can all thank two men, Detective Shazhad Ahmed and Detective Harry Pitman.”

The crowd rose to their feet, applauding; Shazhad and Pitman stood close together at the podium. This was the moment Shazhad had been waiting his whole life for, but it was not exactly what he thought it would be. He and Pitman agreed to keep the law students’ secret.

Pitman did not regret what they did for a moment; he felt justice was served. Maybe the four law students should be punished in some way; maybe they already had just being exposed to Kirshner. Pitman did not worry about this. After all, this was not the first time Pitman had concealed evidence in the name of justice.

C
hapter 91

Will and Amanda sat on the couch in her dorm room watching the news coverage about Kirshner. They watched for a few minutes and both decided they did not want to hear another word about him. “I think I’m going to take a shower,” Amanda said as she stood up. “Meet you back here on the couch,” she said with a big smile.

Will changed the channels quickly on the television, but could not find anything except stories about Kirshner, the Miami Mangler. He finally found a rerun of
Seinfeld
, one of his favorites. He needed to take his mind off what had happened over the last few days and sat back and laughed a few times at the show. Amanda’s phone rang and as she was already in the shower, he decided to answer it for her; it was her mother.

“Hi, Mrs. Martin, I’m Will, a friend of Amanda’s,” he said.

“Nice to finally talk to you, Will, I’ve heard a lot about you. I was just checking on my Amanda, making sure she was okay. I was worried with all the news about Kirshner.” Her southern accent was even stronger than Amanda’s.

“She’s doing as well as can be expected. It’s been a crazy day for all of us,” Will said.

“I was so against her going to that school because of him, but she wanted to be a litigator like her mom and no one has a better program than Miami University. I still tried to discourage her, but you know how stubborn she can be.”

“I’m sure she would’ve never stepped foot in our school if she knew Kirshner defended her dad’s killer,” Will said.

“Of course she knew that. I was always open with her about what happened with her dad’s trial and everyone involved. It was a horrible time for us; the things Kirshner made the jury think about her daddy. It was just awful.”

“Wait, Amanda
always
knew that Kirshner got her father’s killer off?”

“Oh yeah, I never hide the truth from her – us Martins don’t believe in hiding things.”

“Apparently, they do. I’ll tell her you called, Mrs. Martin.” Will quickly dismissed her and hung up the phone.

His head was spinning.
Why would she lie?
he thought. “Amanda acted like her mom just told her about Kirshner the night we finally decided to kill Kirshner.”

He rummaged through her desk drawers looking for something to explain what was happening. He came across a letter from Miami University approving Amanda’s request to transfer from Section 3 to Section 5. “Why the hell would she want to be in his class if she knew?” Will mumbled to himself.

He continued to look around her room while she was still in the shower. He looked through her dresser drawers for anything that made sense – just clothes neatly folded in each drawer.

Amanda stood in the doorway in only a towel. “What the hell are you doing?”

“What the fuck is this?” Will yelled, holding up the transfer approval.

“Why are you going through my stuff? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You weren’t even supposed to be in our section with Kirshner – you requested it. You knew about Kirshner the whole time, you pretended like you just found out that night.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“I just got off the phone with your mother; she called because she was worried about you. She told me that you always knew that Kirshner got your dad’s killer off. You lied to me; you wanted me to think that you didn’t want to kill him, that you didn’t want any part of it. That was bullshit,” he yelled.

“Shit, Mom always did have a big mouth,” Amanda said.

This was the first time he heard her curse.

“Just calm the fuck down, Will. He turned out to be a serial killer, for God’s sake.”

“But you didn’t know that. At the time, he was just our horrible law professor. He was not the Miami Mangler. But that didn’t matter to you. You …”

“Apparently, it didn’t matter to you either. You were ready to kill him and chop him up into pieces because he threatened your fucking law career; at least I had a good reason.”

“I don’t understand what the hell is going on,” Will shouted, with his hands raised in the air.

“Just like you said, I made sure I was in his class. I saw how he picked on you the first day, and I knew you were the one. You were the one that could help me. I studied him for years, Will; I knew everything about that monster. I knew he would continue to target you because he had done this with all the students he called on first; it was a ritual for him. I saw how deeply it was hurting you – the dreams, the Xanax to try and deal with the stress. So, I formed the study group with you and the others. You were all the perfect guys to help me get rid of him – Jack was an avid hunter, Abrams was ex-military, and Sean had a major chip on his shoulder. For God’s sake, you started talking about how you would kill him within the first few weeks of knowing the scumbag. It couldn’t have been easier, but that wasn’t enough for you guys. The fact that he made a fool of us every chance he got, wasn’t enough. I needed something to put you over the top, so I gave Kirshner an anonymous tip that we cheated on the exam.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? How could you do that to us?” Will asked.

“We needed something real at stake – what better thing than our legal careers? So, I sent him the note and the asshole followed through like I knew he would. But, then we needed the perfect plan; it couldn’t be me that suggested it. I knew it was going to come from you; you’re the smartest. So, every day after I was done with my paper, I would give it to you – remember the highlighted sections I did for you about the Mangler. It took you a few days, but you finally came up with the perfect plan. We make it look like the Mangler killed Kirshner – he would just be another victim of the Mangler.”

“Jesus, Amanda! Who the hell are you?”