CHAPTER TWELVE
She deserved it. All of them did. It wasn’t fair that they could pull that kind of bullshit and not suffer for it.
The killer repeated this to himself as he tapped his steering wheel and watched from the parking lot as volunteers for the Arlington Animal Sanctuary spoke to a few dozen parkgoers about their adoption drive.
Nine pups sat in front of them, wagging their tails and looking hopefully at the parkgoers.
Maybe one of them would give them their forever home.
He scoffed. These dogs would find forever homes. They’d be fine. They weren’t damaged. They were pretty too. Shiny fur, bright eyes, probably perfect teeth, good muscle tone, almost definitely no scars. And so well-behaved.
Yeah, they’d be okay. They were the supermodels of the dog world, posing for the camera with moist eyes leaving a caption on their Instagram photos that read, need someone to hold me. People would fall all over themselves for dogs like that.
Sure enough, as he watched, a young couple with a small child, maybe three or four, approached a Dalmatian that sat near the end of the line.
The young Dalmatian perked up, wagging its tail furiously and staring at the little girl eagerly.
The girl reached gingerly forward and stroked the dog’s fur.
The dog licked her wrist, and she jerked her hand back.
For a moment, the killer thought she was afraid, but then she began to jump up and down and turned to her parents. She was beaming.
Five minutes later, the volunteers handed the girl’s father a leash.
The little girl hugged the dog tightly around the neck and kissed him softly on the cheek.
The dog was literally shaking with excitement.
It ran in a circle around the family, leaping at both parents before stopping next to the girl and laying its head gently on her chest.
One big happy family.
The killer started the engine of his ten-year-old Mazda 3 and pulled out of the lot. Traffic in Arlington was always present but not as bad as Dallas or Fort Worth except on the interstates. He stayed off the freeways and allowed the slow but steady drive through the city to calm him.
It wasn’t fair. Just because someone had suffered didn’t mean they were less deserving of love.
Just because someone was scarred didn’t mean they were broken.
Hunter could have found a family. Even if he couldn’t take care of Hunter anymore, there were other families who could have given him a home.
He could have had a chance to live a normal life, at least for his twilight years.
His hands tightened around the wheel. Goddamned fake healers.
Liars. They smiled at people in their brightly colored t-shirts and soft faces.
They talked about how dogs needed homes, how so many shelter dogs were just “misunderstood”, and with the right home, they could be just as loyal and wonderful and perfect as any dog from a breeder.
“So, bring ‘em out,” he said. “Bring out the misunderstood dogs.
Let people see ‘em. Advocate for them. Not the pretty ones that look like they walked off the cover of a magazine.” The light turned green and he accelerated smoothly from the stop, barely noticing the BMW that rocketed past him and cut him off. “And that Dalmatian was purebred.”
The BMW, perhaps disappointed at not getting a reaction from the Mazda, sped forward and cut off a Camry next.
The Camry driver fell for the bait, speeding up to try to get around the sedan.
Both vehicles ran the red light and narrowly avoided getting t-boned by an F350.
The truck laid on its horn, and the driver rolled down his window and shouted, “Fucking idiots!” at the two sedans.
The killer turned right at the next street, keeping a respectful distance behind the riled-up Super Duty.
His fingers tightened around the wheel once more when he passed the Arlington Animal Sanctuary, but he kept his eyes stoically forward, not allowing himself so much as a glance at the place.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the police vehicles parked in the outer corners of the parking lot.
They had increased security. They knew that the killer was attacking animal shelter workers, and they had responded by bringing police officers to deter any more murders. Or the police had taken it on themselves to send officers to the location.
Either way, that complicated things. The killer liked leaving his victims near the animals they helped. It was a bit of revenge for the animals they refused to help, the ones they allowed to die instead. Their perfect, “proper” dogs got to see them die.
He couldn’t do that with cops sitting in the parking lot, though.
Maybe they’d be gone once business hours closed, but the target he wanted wasn’t an early arriver.
She stayed late often, but she was also the director of the facility now, so it wasn’t likely the police would leave until she was gone.
“The fucking director. God above.”
He laughed and pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building.
The building was a fourteen-story high-rise near downtown.
It wasn’t quite dilapidated, but it probably would be in a few years.
The developers built it about twenty years ago thinking that Arlington was going to boom with people eschewing the density of Fort Worth and Dallas but preferring the convenience of a large city.
By the time they figured out that made no sense at all, the building was already occupied just enough to make it more worthwhile to let it limp along than to shut it down and try elsewhere.
It was comfortable enough. The stairs creaked, and his apartment’s windows let in a draft until he convinced the landlord to let him put new ones in, but the neighbors were all older and not noisy.
The appliances were old, but they worked.
He lived alone, so it didn’t matter that the place paled in comparison to the sprawling luxury communities in the outer neighborhoods. He had no need to impress a girl.
And it allowed pets. From time to time, he entertained the idea of getting himself a pet.
It would be easier, definitely. He was under no illusions that his actions were safe.
The FBI was investigating him now, and they’d brought a K9 unit.
He hadn’t done anything to mask his scent, so if they happened to pass him somewhere, the dog would pick him up.
But it was too late. His occasional thoughts of getting a dog never panned out.
No dog was Hunter. And he’d already started.
He’d killed three people, and he was definitely killing at least one more.
That would take care of everyone who’d taken Hunter from him and let him die.
After that, he would probably keep killing.
There were other fake healers. Other assholes who helped “pretty” dogs and sent the ones that really needed help to die.
He parked his sedan in its spot and sighed.
He stared through the windshield at the beige concrete wall in front of his car.
A praying mantis stood on the top. It tilted its head to look at the killer, missing a chance at a particularly fat grasshopper that briefly alighted on the fence in front of it before wisely jumping to the ground out of danger.
The killer opened his door and stepped out of the car. The startled mantis began swaying from side to side. He had no idea why they did that when they were afraid. How was that supposed to help them?
He walked up the stairs to his apartment. Soft moans emanated from one of the rooms on the first floor, and he chuckled. Not all of his neighbors were old.
He walked into his unit and switched the living room light on. It bathed the place in sickly yellow. He’d get around to switching the old yellow bulb out for a cool white LED one of these days.
He kicked his shoes off and trudged across the carpet to the small desk on the opposite wall.
He settled into the chair with a sigh and pulled up the folder on his victims. He had created this folder prior to committing to the murders, thinking that maybe he could get the urge out by planning it out like a fantasy.
That wasn’t even close to enough, but it had given him a good amount of information in case he needed to plan a killing more carefully.
He opened the fourth file and read through his notes. They were more detailed than he remembered them being. That was good. He knew exactly when his next target would be most vulnerable.
He might play with her a little. Drag this one out. Make it hurt more.
A smile stretched across his face. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the business.”
He would make this one last. He would make her suffer the way Hunter had suffered. She would pay for her crimes in full. Maybe then the nightmares would stop.