Kill Me Once Read online

  His voice was a disjointed mumble for several seconds before the connection cleared up again briefly. ‘I’ll tell you how we hooked up later. It’s the strangest thing. Remember the other day at the hospital? Turns out I’ve talked to one of those guys before. Online, of all places.’

  Just then, the beep of an incoming call sounded on Dana’s cellphone. ‘Goddamn it, hold on, Eric. I’ve got another call coming in. I’ll switch back over to you in a second.’

  She took the second call and said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Dana, it’s Bill Krugman again.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  Krugman cleared his throat. ‘Thought you should know – we finally found a link between all the copycat victims. With the exception of Mary Ellen Orton, they all belonged to a computer-dating website called the Lonely Hearts Club. I’ll let you know when we find out anything else, but it’s looking pretty promising so far.’

  Dana was confused for a moment after she hung up with Krugman, then suddenly alarmed by the terrible thought that came next.

  Eric belonged to the Lonely Hearts Club, had done for years. Their killer was fixating on her; could he be getting closer than she feared? Was he focusing now on someone she really cared about? It was a frightening thought but she made herself stay with it. This killer was capable of anything. And Crawford knew all about Eric and how much he meant to her.

  She tried to keep her voice calm as her connection to Eric was re-established. ‘Eric? Listen to me. You need to get out of the apartment right now, honey. No questions. Just get out of there right now.’

  But her best friend didn’t hear her. The phone had already gone completely dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Nathan closed the bathroom door behind him and pulled the shower curtain shut. He reached into the shower and turned the water up full blast to mask the sound of his voice, twisting only the cold-water handle to avoid fogging up the mirror. The mirror was very important to what he needed to do next.

  It was almost over now; redemption was almost his.

  Perfection was almost his.

  In his possession he had an old black-leather satchel, the kind used by doctors in the long-ago age of house calls. Placing it on the toilet, he unsnapped it and removed the art supplies he’d purchased earlier in the day.

  First there was a large jar of white foundation, the type favoured by stage actors. Then there were three containers, one each of pink, red and black make-up. A small circular sponge and a brush with a long tapered handle were positioned on either side of the sink basin.

  Nathan used the sponge to apply carefully the white foundation in the shape of a heart around his eyes and over the bridge of his nose, then repeated the motion in a wide arc around his mouth. Ten minutes later he reached back into the satchel and extracted a red clown’s nose before positioning it over his own. The final touch was the curly red wig.

  Looking into the mirror at the reflection of the man he’d just become, he appraised himself with a critical eye.

  Perfect.

  As always, he cleared his throat before he began the sacred recitation out loud.

  ‘I am well respected by my community. Everyone who knows me thinks of me as a generous, friendly and hardworking family man. I’m an extremely sharp businessman, and I play a major role in local Democratic politics. Hell, I even had my picture taken with former First Lady Rosalyn Carter once.

  ‘I am many good things, but beneath my carefully crafted veneer I am also a murderous homosexual who cannot for the life of me stop killing teenaged boys and burying their bodies in the crawl space beneath my beautiful suburban home. Painting those pictures in prison never satisfied my thirst for innocent blood. Murder is my true medium; my rightful canvas the body of a teenaged boy.

  ‘Society locked me up before putting me down like an animal on 10 May 1994, but now I’m back from the dead and ready to kill again. My last words still ring as true today as they did back then.

  ‘Kiss my ass.

  ‘My name is John Wayne Gacy, and I am an eagle.’

  Smiling at the reflection of his alter ego in the bathroom mirror, Nathan opened the door and stepped quietly back out into the hallway of the stylishly decorated apartment.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Dana roared into the parking lot of her apartment complex at sixty miles an hour and came to a screeching halt in front of the main doors.

  She jammed the car into park mode and threw the door open hard, not even bothering to remove the keys from the ignition before covering the few feet to the entrance in a flash.

  She fumbled with the magnetic card for the front doors, her hands shaking so violently that she almost dropped it twice before finally managing to coax it through the reader.

  Dana’s heart slammed in her throat. Never before had she known such an all-encompassing fear, not even on the night she’d witnessed the brutal murders of her own parents. She was a trained law-enforcement official now, not just a scared little girl wetting her pants at the sight of her parents’ killer. She’d fought damn hard to get to where she was today, and now she had a personal and professional obligation to protect the man she loved more than anything else in this world.

  She mashed the button on the elevator for the fourth floor, but grew impatient after the longest three seconds of her life had passed and took off for the stairwell at a dead run.

  She raced up the slippery concrete steps as fast as her frantically pumping legs would carry her. After throwing the fire-escape door open with a violent bang, Dana raced down the hallway and came to a skidding halt outside Eric’s door.

  D13. Please, God, don’t let that be an unlucky number today.

  She unholstered her Glock and listened for noises coming from inside, but she was breathing so hard that her ragged gasps were the only sounds she could hear, filling her mind like the howling winter wind outside.

  Dana placed her ear directly against the cold surface of the apartment door. Nothing. Only silence. No discernible noises other than her own frantic breathing. She tried the door. Locked.

  She flipped back the welcome mat in front of her own apartment and grabbed her copy of Eric’s house key. She slid it into the lock and turned the knob until the lock popped. Flinging the door open, she dropped down into a crouch with her Glock at the ready. The door slammed halfway back on her, but no other immediate movement came from inside the apartment.

  She rose to her feet and nudged the door with her left elbow. Stepping inside, she swung the Glock back and forth in front of her as she made her way through the dining room, living room and kitchen.

  Dana was on autopilot as she cleared the rest of the apartment quickly, her years of training taking over completely now as she stepped inside the bathroom and threw the shower curtain aside. No one there.

  The only room left to check was the master bedroom, and that door was closed.

  She moved to the outside of Eric’s bedroom and heard a low, mournful cry coming from inside – an inhuman wail of pain and grief. Dana stepped back and kicked the door in hard, thrusting the Glock in first to lead the way.

  The first thing she noticed was Oreo gently nuzzling the side of Eric’s face.

  The next thing she noticed was the blood.

  Eric was completely naked and was lying on his stomach on the bed. The claw hammer that had been used to cave in his head was covered in blood, bone and little bits of brain tissue and was now lying on the bloodstained pillow beside him, denting the fabric with its heavy weight.

  Oreo looked up at her and meowed pitifully.

  For one terrifying moment, Dana’s heart actually stopped. There were no sounds in this new world of hers, no smells, no discernible sensations of any kind. Only an emptiness so complete that it was impossible to comprehend.

  Her best friend was dead.

  The phone jangled on Eric’s bedside table, kick-starting her heart back into gear. She raced across the room and picked it up in the middle of the second ring. ‘Hello
?’

  The voice on the other end of the line was unnaturally deep and robotic, computer-altered by a speech-masking device. ‘Look out the window,’ the voice told her. ‘I’d like to say hello to you, my dear.’

  Dana stepped to the bedroom window with the cordless phone still at her ear. Her thumb went to the safety of the Glock to double-check that it was off. Looking down into the parking lot, she squinted toward the front doors.

  From behind the rented Chevrolet he popped up like a human jack-in-the-box. A man dressed as a clown.

  He raised a set of keys and playfully jangled them in Dana’s direction, then tossed them into the thicket of overgrown bushes lining the side of her apartment complex.

  ‘Hello, Dana,’ the clown said into the cellphone at his ear. ‘Long time, no see, sweetheart.’ It was the same robotic voice as before.

  Dana dropped the cordless phone to the floor and emptied the Glock’s full clip through the closed window. Shattered glass rained down on the parking lot below.

  But the clown only laughed gleefully at her while he danced across the street, effortlessly dodging the bullets kicking up thick chunks of concrete at his feet.

  Jumping into a brown Lincoln parked on the far side of the road, he jammed the car hard into drive and peeled out. The Lincoln’s bald tyres squealed as though in agony against the slick pavement as he sped away, the noise echoing in the night like the sound of insane laughter.

  And then he was simply gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  Eric’s funeral three days later was the hardest thing that Dana had ever had to live through – even harder than the night she’d watched her own mother brutally murdered right in front of her eyes. She couldn’t help thinking there must have been something she could have done to prevent it. But he had taken her parents away from her so why should she be surprised he’d take the nearest person to family that she’d had since? She didn’t even want to think about how Crawford had been like a father to her. It made her feel sick.

  She choked back sobs during the entire service, and not even Bill Krugman’s comforting arm around her shoulders was enough to take the pain away.

  Her head swam with the realisation that her best friend was dead and he was never coming back.

  She was all alone in the world.

  Again.

  The FBI had lifted Crawford’s fingerprints off the claw hammer in Eric’s bedroom, the final proof that they were looking for. It came as a surprise to absolutely no one. He knew he was better than them, and now he was just showing off to prove it.

  Dana returned home directly after the service, knowing that she wouldn’t have been able to handle the sight of watching them lower Eric’s body into the frozen ground. Outside her apartment complex two Cleveland PD cruisers were parked to provide a visual deterrent should Crawford make good on his threats to come after her. Slumping down on her living-room couch with Oreo curled up in her lap, Dana cracked the seal on a fresh bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum and cried uncontrollably for the next hour. Twenty minutes later the phone jangled on the wall in her kitchen.

  She picked it up drunkenly and found herself listening numbly to the words Bill Krugman was saying.

  ‘The bastard squeezed off a couple of shots at the graveyard, Dana. Winged me. I’m getting patched up at the Cleveland Clinic now. He also set off an explosion down the street. The security detail assigned to your place was called away to go deal with it. All hands on deck, the chief of police said.’

  Dana’s head almost imploded with the news. ‘Was anyone killed?’

  ‘No, thank God,’ Krugman said. ‘But there is something else.’

  He blew out a slow breath but didn’t continue right away.

  ‘What is it?’ Dana said. ‘Just tell me.’

  The Director cleared his throat. ‘You’re off the case, Dana. Things are way too personal for you, were from the start. I should have realised that earlier, but Crawford convinced me to give you a second chance. Now I know why.’

  Dana couldn’t have been any more stunned if he’d just slammed an aluminium baseball bat across her forehead. She started to protest but Krugman cut her off before she could continue.

  ‘Sorry, Dana. That’s final. I’m sending a new security detail to your apartment to watch over you now. Should be at your door in a couple minutes. Other than that, you’re done. It’s all over for you.’

  Dana’s mouth went dry. Over? Done? How could it be over?

  She was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even breathe. Everything was coming down on her all at once.

  Her stomach gurgled violently from the Captain Morgan’s swishing around in her guts. She dropped the phone to the floor and rushed into the bathroom for the toilet, but her left foot slipped on the tiled floor just as a knock sounded at her front door. The security detail.

  A split second later Dana’s head slammed into the sharp edge of the bathroom sink. Bright white stars danced in front of her eyes.

  After that, there was nothing. No grief, no nausea, no pain.

  Just a cold black flood of emptiness as the unconsciousness wrapped her brain tight in its freezing embrace.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  Numb confusion replaced the nothingness sometime later as Dana struggled to come awake. She had no way of knowing exactly how long she’d been out of it. Might have been an hour but just as easily could’ve been a month. It felt like someone had stuck a long needle in through her ear and anaesthetised her brain.

  Her eyes were still too heavy to open and when she tried to move her arms she found that she couldn’t. Her shoulders ached as though they were on fire.

  The fog cleared gradually and Dana realised her hands were tightly secured behind her back with some kind of restraining device.

  A deep voice came from no more than five feet away.

  ‘Special Agent Dana Whitestone, you are under arrest for the murders of the five little girls in Cleveland, of Mary Ellen Orton in Los Angeles, of the Aiken family in Kansas, of the college students at Loyola University, of the highschool students in the western suburbs of Cuyahoga County, of the young mother and child you interviewed on the east side, of the elderly couple in West Virginia and of your neighbour Eric Carlton. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights?’

  Dana groaned as her eyelids fluttered open. Everything was a blur, as though she was trying to focus through a veil of tears. Wherever she was, though, it was freezing. The lighting was dim, but she could just make out the puffs of frozen air issuing from her mouth with every ragged breath she exhaled. She couldn’t seem to hear straight, either.

  She could smell all right, though. The scent that filled her nostrils made her want to throw up.

  Liquorice.

  When Dana’s vision cleared finally, she saw that she was tied to a chair in the middle of a cold room. She gave a startled moan when she suddenly realised where she was. If this was a nightmare, it was the perfect setting.

  She was in the house of her childhood. Or at least in the bedroom.

  Dana looked up at the large man standing over her. He was dressed entirely in black and his face was covered with a black ski mask. Dark sunglasses shielded his eyes.

  The fear materialised as a lump in her throat. ‘Why are you doing this, Crawford?’ she stammered. It was Crawford, wasn’t it? Although it didn’t sound like him. She cleared her throat. ‘You had everything. You were the best.’

  He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Before we get to that, Dana, I have a little something to show you. Are you awake enough for it yet? Brace yourself. This will probably come as something of a shock.’

  He moved to a large wardrobe three feet away – it was a perfect replica of the one she’d had in her bedroom as a kid – and flipped the latch up. Dana gasped as he stepped to the side and the
doors creaked open slowly.

  His face blue and his lips black from strangulation, Crawford Bell was hanging by the neck from a length of tightly knotted cord.

  ‘Not exactly your daddy, but I figured he was close enough for my purposes.’

  Dana shook her head violently to clear it and stifled a scream. She stared up in horror at the man dressed in black.

  ‘But how?’ she said, her brain still foggy despite the horrifying vision before her. ‘ Crawford’s prints were on the hammer in Eric’s bedroom.’

  The man in black laughed. ‘Jesus Christ, Dana, fingerprints can lie. Don’t you fucking know that? You can transfer them with a simple piece of Scotch tape.’

  He waved a hand in the air. ‘Do you remember the man who gave Crawford a glass of water when you two were in the library at Quantico? The asshole didn’t even drink it. Just set it down on the table for my private investigator to retrieve and send to me. Pay the wrong people the right kind of money and they don’t ask too many questions. Anyway, some fucking expert he turned out to be.’

  Dana’s mind slammed back to Quantico. She did remember the man in the library, but her mind had been too clouded even to consider the possibility. Once she’d suspected Crawford of masterminding the copycat murders she’d held onto those suspicions as tenaciously as a dog with a bone between its teeth and she’d taken everyone with her. She hadn’t thought things all the way through – none of them had. And now Crawford had been murdered; it was no comfort to know he was dying anyway.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Dana rasped.

  The man in black smiled and dragged a magnetic easel in front of her. Again, a perfect replica of the one she’d had in her bedroom as a kid. On it, NATHAN STIEDOWE had been spelled out in colourful plastic letters.

  ‘Notice anything familiar about this name, Dana?’