Chapter 5 #2
Officially, I’ve been jobless for the last two years.
Every record of me shows I’m just a normal guy who joined the Marines and did his ten years then retired.
Sure, I was Force RECON, which explains some of my missions during that time, but mostly, I rid the world of the worst filth imaginable and I’m not even sorry about it.
Being a part of the DOGs isn't all that different from my time in the military, except now there’s no official mission. We are in no way tied to the government. We are an illegal machine that kills off the perps that law enforcement can’t arrest without breaking a few laws themselves.
Yeah, yeah. We need to trust the justice system, sure, but sometimes, scum just needs a good dose of bleach. Call us Mr. ReallyFuckingClean.
Scrub, scrub, motherfucker.
A thump on the side of the house gets my immediate attention, and when I get up to check out the surroundings, I find the perpetrator. With a mask around his eyes and weapons at the tips of his fingers, he’s trying really fucking hard to open up my trashcan.
I grin, big and wide, at his frustrated grunts when he realizes that he can’t get access.
I notice he’s cleaned up my bins, leaving hardly any trace of Berkleigh’s vomit fest. There’s no denying that raccoons are equal opportunity scavengers and will eat any-fucking-thing. It’s practically all they’re good for.
I walk away from the shitshow, confident that he’ll get bored and move on to another bin—probably Berkleigh’s—and that thought makes me grin yet again.
Snapping my computer shut, I decide it’s safe to go to bed, but keep the alarms on my cameras active and ready to cause havoc if anyone gets too close.
Tomorrow there will be one less evil piece of shit in the world and that thought helps me sleep on the nights I’m not plagued by nightmares.
Does that mean I have a conscience? That I do have empathy on some level? Sure. But it doesn’t change the fact that killing brings me the same amount of pleasure as fucking and coming inside a hot, tight pussy.
Which makes me a monster, too.
I’ve been here since mid morning, having only gotten about three hours of sleep last night. Pretty much par for the course, so it’s not fucking with my normal focus.
Marty Hicks hasn’t shown any signs of life as of yet, but I know he’s awake because I’ve been stalking him for a while now.
Last month, after the police discovered a body in the woods about ten miles away from here, the DOGs contacted me to see if I could locate and eliminate the perp.
Without making a promise I can’t follow up on, I told them I’d do my best.
Because it was the first one the authorities found, there was no reason to classify it as a potential beginning to serial murders.
The cops can’t just assume that because the victim was set up in a particular way, that more are to follow, but we can.
Not only that, we stop them before they can kill others.
After the peak in 1986, soldiers with my special skills were sought out and used to eliminate the threat to civilians. By the nineties, the number of serial killers had dropped like dead flies on an electric flyswatter.
Here’s the thing about these guys…they live and kill for the ritual. They’re proud of the obsessive and compulsive way they find their victims and every other act that follows. Some are even disappointed if they’re not caught. Who am I to deprive them of that happiness?
So I did the logical thing and set up a fuck load of cameras all around the perimeter where the young girl was found, in strategic areas, ready to uncover his identity.
A week later, we caught him about two hundred yards away from where his first victim was left out like yesterday’s trash.
Laying out his second kill in the exact same position—facing north—he sliced her arteries, at her neck and inner thigh, and used tape to keep her eyes open and staring up at the sky.
Had the victim been killed then and there, her blood would be a steady stream from her lacerations. Instead, it was slow and seeping.
Using all the high tech the world—legal or not—has to offer, I did facial recognition and found that Marty Hicks had three homes: one he inherited from his dead mother, one he bought with his late wife, and a cabin that was more about hunting than living. It was almost too easy.
Considering the lapse between the first kill and the second, I’ve been watching his cabin for almost a month, waiting for him to show up. It’s easier to kill and dispose of a body in a secluded area…case in point.
So here I am. Waiting for this bastard to come outside so I can get on with my day.
No fucking way I’m risking putting any of my DNA inside that cabin.
I’m not looking for heroics. In fact, I know for damn sure he’s getting addicted to the kill because he’s back here earlier than before, jonesing for a rush, for the dopamine kick to make his miserable life better for just a moment.
Sucks for him because he won’t be getting shit today except for a bullet in his brain, and even that he won’t be able to keep. We don’t leave evidence behind. Not even his body.
For the next twelve hours, I sit and wait like a predator ready to hunt down a lesser opponent.
Checking my cameras at home and making a mental list of the shit I need to buy for food proves a great distraction.
Most importantly, I imagine and plan the different ways I’ll go about killing this guy and getting rid of any trace that he ever existed.
Deep down, I long for the thrill of the chase.
Hunting him on foot, feeling the loss of life with my bare hands, the coppery smell of his blood drenching my skin as I snuff the breath right out of him.
I’m itching to get on with it, but this motherfucker is holed up doing fuck knows what and robbing me of my will to live another minute.
Which is why the spike in adrenaline gets me hyperfocused when I hear the latch of his wooden door click and the man himself steps outside under the cover of dusk.
The place is secluded, no doubt, but there’s always the risk of random people passing by on a summer hike. It is, after all, how the first body was found.
I know for a fact that he doesn’t have another victim with him because he arrived alone last night. I scoured the recordings to make damn sure. On top of that, my thermal camera only shows one body, no one else alive or dead was picked up.
When I see him walking toward his car, I do a quick check of what he’s wearing and carrying.
He looks presentable, wearing a suit and a tie, nice shoes, and it occurs to me that it’s his modus operandi.
Driving around looking for hitchhikers? The bag on his shoulder must have the supplies he needs to subdue his victims.
He lives in a small city, though much bigger than our tiny town of fifteen thousand souls. Making himself look like a presentable, upstanding member of the community gains the trust of these young girls. Their na?veté is their greatest weakness.
Fuck this shit. Change of plans.
Stealthy as a feline, I go in for the kill at close proximity. A bullet will have splatter patterns that can tell an entire story, but if I keep it all contained to one spot, I can control the narrative.
I’m behind him before he reaches the driver’s door, one arm hooked around his throat while I drive my hunting knife straight into his kidney, then his liver.
Both organs are kept alive by the renal and celiac arteries, and piercing them causes internal bleeding with minimal outer spilling.
All the while, I’m cutting off his air supply, and I just can’t help myself, my mouth right next to his ear.
“The best part about killing you is knowing you won’t get your last high. But I will. Enjoy Hell, motherfucker.”
Dragging his body to the back of his car, I open the trunk and can’t help the grin that spreads across my face.
“Aw, how sweet. You even put plastic in here for me. Thoughtful.” I don’t know if he heard me because his body is heavy in my grip, and when I roll him into the trunk, I can tell he’s either dead or close to it.
My disposal spot is all ready for me, so I drive his car there and make quick work of getting him out. It’s not ideal, but that’s what I get for improvising.
He’s dead, no doubt about that. I pull him out with the plastic and place him inside the industrial-sized wood chipper, letting the machine do the rest of the work for me.
Pieces of him are scattered inside a block of wet concrete sitting at the mouth of the evacuation chute.
Once it dries and solidifies, it will be used for the foundation of a house or shed or whatever the fuck.
This place is owned by the DOGs under the guise of a construction company so no one will be asking questions.
After cleaning up the mess and driving his car back to the cabin—the trunk and driver’s seat scrubbed and inspected with black light—it’s fucking late and a thunderstorm has started to rumble.
It’s like Mother Nature wants to wash away my sins with an “attaboy” for taking out the human trash. Good fucking riddance.
And yes, I’m fully aware that one day, someone will think the same about me.
Once I reach my truck, I rummage through my rucksack and grab my burner phone, calling one of the DOGs whose day job is in a garage the next town over.
“It’s B,” is all I say when he picks up.
“‘Sup, man?” I can hear the soft sounds of the television in the background.
“Car broke down, needs a lift and a fix.” He’s aware that it’s not my car, and a fix is exactly the opposite of what he’ll be doing. I need it to disappear.
“Coordinates?”
“Comin’ up.” We hang up and I quickly send the numbers that will give him the precise location of Marty’s car.
By tomorrow morning, it’ll either be unrecognizable or parts used for other cars.
Hell, it may end up at the bottom of the fucking lake for all I know, but that seems careless and these boys are nothing if not thorough.
As I roll up onto my driveway, the rain pelting down on my windshield making my wipers slash back and forth at top speeds, I almost miss the lump that’s sitting on my porch, pressed against my front door.
What the fuck?
Is that a dog? Better not be some huge fucking raccoon.
Jumping out of my truck, keys in my hand, I leave my gear inside and jog up to my door just as the flood lights flick on.
It’s not an animal, it’s a person.
A woman. Correction, a naked woman.
With short blonde hair and skin like smooth silk, she’s shivering and crying and looking nothing like the woman I know.
“Berkleigh? What the fuck? Who did this to you?”
Turning, her eyes wild with fear and some other emotion I can’t quite decipher, she tries to open her mouth to speak. The only sounds I hear are the pelting rain on the concrete and wood, and the hiccupping sobs that rattle her entire body.
Shaking, her tears running like rivulets down her cheeks, she finally speaks.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”