Killerbyte (byte Series Book 1) Page 5

  “Hey, Mac,” I called out. “They got a footprint.”

  “Yay,” he replied.

  “Size ten, running shoe, male.” I continued, reading the report and trying not to think about the human remains in the trunk. I was doing okay, until the report stated DNA gave a positive identification of Carter McClaren. Why should I care? I closed the file before reading the medical examiner’s report.

  “You online, Ellie?” Mac asked.

  “Yep, satellite.”

  He grinned at me. “Jump into Cobwebs for a bit. I have to take a pit stop.”

  “Sure,” I replied and signed into the chat room. “Wow, full house tonight.” I watched the room and read a few poems recited by some regulars. I saw Dhs was there again. The sight of his nickname filled me with apprehension. He was in the room two days ago when we were at Interscape Café. Sure enough, he messaged me again.

  Good to see you, Otherwisecat.

  I replied: Just wanted to say hello to everyone before I go to bed.

  He sent another instant message: Let me recite a bedtime poem for you.

  A shiver ran down my spine as I thanked him.

  I called out to Mac, “Hurry up. Dhs is going to recite a bedtime poem for me.”

  I watched my screen as Dhs began to type:

  Dripping from the knife blade

  As you surf, the edges of sleep

  Longing to rest in the arms of Morpheus

  Wrapped in shredded fantasy

  Always watching as you dream

  Bound by tattered gossamer wings

  I await your dying screams

  Such a sorrowful frown

  Quickly erased by a delicate slice

  Across a slender neck

  Come sleep with Morpheus, my pet.

  As the poem ended, I felt rising alarm. Mac slid behind his desk. “Am reading it.”

  “Oh, man,” I hissed. “Could it be him?”

  Mac shrugged. “He’s always been freaky, sweets.” He paused, “But that doesn’t mean it is him.”

  I typed into the chat room window: Thanks Dhs, great poem.

  Images of the carnage stowed in the trunk of my car passed in front of my eyes. It took real effort to dislodge the unwelcome intrusion of the horrific scene.

  I noticed Mac had left his nick on “away” mode. I said goodnight to the room and followed suit by clicking on the cup icon next to my nickname. I leaned back and rested my eyes.

  Less than two minutes later I received an email alert. Mac’s computer pinged a second or so after mine. I opened my inbox and read the subject line aloud. As I did, Mac’s voice chimed in, saying the same thing.

  “‘Always watching as you dream.’”

  I opened the email and read aloud, “‘I await your dying scream. Such joyous imagery.’”

  I forwarded the email to Caine and a copy of the room transcript. I snapped the screen shut and took a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table in front of me. I consoled myself with the thought that nobody knew where we were.

  I’m okay. Mac’s okay. We’re okay.

  Mac frowned at his screen. “He’s got to be in here somewhere.”

  I leaned back and thought about the chat room.

  “The only name that stood out was Dhs,” I said.

  “Ohhh,” Mac said. “I have an idea.”

  I dragged myself from the comfortable sofa and joined him at his desk. Yellow Post-it notes covered ninety percent of his desk surface, all containing small beautifully-written poems.

  “What idea?”

  “What if he’s invisible, Ellie? Not someone we can see ...” He clicked an icon that read, ignore all. Xs appeared next to everyone’s names on the room list. Mac scrolled down and then grinned. “Lookie, babe.” He pointed to an ‘X’ without a name next to it. “That could be him.”

  “Okay. If he’s invisible, how do we know when he’s in the room or not?”

  Mac reached for my cigarette and took a long drag before passing it back. “I’ve another idea,” he replied, smiling some more. “We need a sentry bot in the room. A bot that will beep us every time someone enters or leaves, visible or not.”

  I perched on the edge of his desk. “This could be the beginnings of the break we need to find this loser.”

  Mac replied, “I’ll get on it tomorrow.”

  “Cool.” I passed the cigarette back as his hand reached out for it again.

  Mac’s eyes cut to the screen.

  “We should get some sleep, it’s gone two.”

  I stifled a yawn. “Yeah, we should.”

  Mac said goodnight to the chat room and turned off his computer. He stood up, and then froze.

  “Did you see David’s nick in the room?”

  I mentally scanned the room list: nope, no Metallurgic. “No, I didn’t.” My heart sank. “You don’t think something happened to him, do you?”

  He frowned and shrugged. “I hope not.”

  We had no idea if Carter’s death held a connection to the chat room. All we knew was that when we appeared in the room emails came, and those emails appeared to be from the same person and possibly from a disposable email account.

  Mac reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a notebook. “I have his phone number.”

  “You can’t call him at this time of night,” I told him, as his hand hovered over the phone on his desk. “What’s the number? I’ll call the Manassas field office and have someone check it out.”

  I made the call and asked that they do a backward check on the number and send two agents out first thing in the morning to verify that David Edwards was alive and well. I quoted a case number for them to document the information and asked that they fax the report immediately to Special Agent in Charge Caine Grafton at the Hoover building.

  “Okay, done.” I replaced the receiver in its cradle.

  “Good ... bed!” Mac said. “Don’t give me that look either. We both need rest so we are clear-headed tomorrow.”

  He turned out the office lights as we left the room. Together we checked all the door and window locks.

  Mac opened the guest room door for me. The large dreamcatcher suspended above the bed caught my eye as it swayed gently. He kissed me on the cheek. “Sleep well, sweets.”

  I smiled back at him. “You, too.”

  Mac closed the door on his way out leaving me alone. I felt tears prickle in my eyes and a lump rising in my throat. A silent waterfall of tears cascaded unchecked as I kicked off my boots and jeans.

  I could barely see through my tear-filled eyes. I attempted to place my gun on the bedside cabinet. I missed, and it fell onto the thick carpeting. I left it there. Tugging off my sweater and dropping it on top of my jeans and boots, I left my short tee shirt and climbed between the cool sheets.

  It was a relief to turn off the lamp and plunge the room into a blanket of darkness. I rolled over and pressed my face into the pillow, hoping the sobs that racked my tired body would go undetected. Pent-up emotion from the previous twenty-four hours flooded from me into the soft pillow.

  I gave up admonishing myself for behaving like a simpleton and let the cleansing process run its course. Eventually, I drifted into an exhausted and emotionally-drained deep sleep.

  Sometime during the night, an image lodged in my mind, a knife with the blade flashing in pale light. Words appeared as if cut from newspaper headlines: dripping, watching, slicing, dreaming, always. I rolled over to escape the images and encourage my mind to drift back into a deep, dreamless sleep. Lost in the dark, the nightmare worsened. Willing myself to wake up did nothing. There was no light. Just hands grabbing and pulling. I recognized a noise: the sound of duct tape ripping off a roll. I could no longer open my mouth. I think a knee pressed on my chest. Someone pinned me down. My voice was silent, as if the dream had captured my words before they became audible. I breathed in hard through my nose and in the intake of air, I smelled a faint spicy cologne. My dreams don’t have smell.

  My right hand sudd
enly freed. I reached up and connected with warm flesh. I didn’t recall dream people being touchable and warm. I wasn’t asleep. A small voice in my head said, “Epithelia!” Raking my nails against the warm skin under my hand, as hard as I could, I heard a slight yelp. Something sharp and cold pressed under my jaw.

  Time this ended.

  I struggled to get away, kicking out at the heat coming off the body close to me and hoping to propel myself out from his grasp. He grabbed my wrists. From the way he held my wrists in one hand, I knew he was a lot bigger than me. Another ripping sound – more duct tape! I felt it around my wrists. I kicked out some more. He sat on my legs. Again duct tape ripped. My feet no longer moved independently. I felt movement. He dragged me to the edge of the bed then picked me up then put me down a short distance later. I knew I was on carpet. A door closed very close to me. It was even darker than before. I pushed out my legs and connected with a wall.

  I lay still and listened and heard a faint sound I thought was a light switch and muffled footsteps. Fabric rustled. Someone moved a curtain. Footsteps again. This time accompanied by a door opening. The footsteps moved onto a tiled surface. The bathroom.

  The footsteps returned coming ever closer.

  “Ellie?”

  Mac. I couldn’t reply so kicked at the wall.

  A door opened. Light flooded in, chasing away the darkness and the nightmare.

  “Jesus!” Mac said as he knelt down beside me.

  I tried to say “I’m okay,” but I wasn’t so sure and no words came out of my mouth.

  He ripped something off my face.

  “Ouch.” I pulled my head away and saw duct tape in his hand.

  “Sorry.”

  Mac helped me to sit up. I could see a .357 magnum in his hand.

  “Mac?” I was beyond caring if I sounded shaky or scared or anything else. “He might still be here.”

  “No one is in this room but us,” he replied. “One sec.”

  Mac strode across the room and locked the door. He picked up the phone from the dresser and pressed 911. While he waited for someone to answer, he took scissors from a drawer and cut the tape from my wrists and ankles. He requested police and EMS. He gave a brief description of what he’d found and told them the person could still be in the house.

  Mac laid the phone on the floor. “They’re on the way,” he said.

  He frowned at me, not a real frown, more of a worried-concerned thing. I fought my tears and inner terror, and I desperately wanted to tell him how scared I was, but I couldn’t.

  “You okay?” His hand rested on the back of my head, his fingers entwined in my hair.

  “I’m okay,” I whispered. I wasn’t okay. Somehow his gun came back into my view.

  “Hey ... get rid of that, put it in a drawer or something.”

  Cops don’t like to walk into a situation and find someone with a gun, it caused confusion. I wasn’t prepared to take a chance that Mac could be hurt. He dropped the gun into a shoebox in the closet.

  “Do you get the feeling we have become playthings for a psycho?” I asked, inspecting my right hand. If it weren’t a dream, then I did mark him, and I had a decent amount of his skin under my nails.

  “What?” Mac asked, giving me a very strange look.

  “Epithelia,” I replied, showing him my hand. “I don’t know where I scratched him, but I did, and it was deep. I made him yelp.”

  Mac took my hand in his and scrutinized it. “You broke a few nails in the process, babe.” His smile didn’t quite disguise the worry on his face or in his eyes. “I need a cigarette.”

  “In my bag. In the zipper pocket on the side, you’ll find two packs of smokes and a lighter,” I told him.

  “Yay.” He kissed me on the top of my head. Affectionate and sweet, and I felt cared for. I had no idea why kissing the top of my head had such an impact on me.

  “Help me up, Mac. I want one as well.”

  I felt a little wobbly and leaned against him for a few seconds to catch my balance. It was a relief to be out of the closet. I still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced any of it was real. I tried to make sense of a dream that wasn’t, or was it? I sat down on the bed with unintentional haste.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. I think sitting is safer than standing.” I tested my smile, it seemed to work, and I received a smile in return. He turned his attention to my backpack.

  A small drop of blood landed on my thigh. Mac sat next to me, lit two cigarettes and passed me one. My hand wasn’t the steadiest. I looked down at my thigh as another drop of blood fell.

  “What the hell?” I exclaimed. “Where’s it coming from?”

  Mac watched another drop land on my leg. “Your throat, Ellie.”

  My throat? No way. I touched my neck with my left hand, running my fingers up under my jaw and across my throat. I could feel something, a line that ran almost from ear to ear. I looked at my hand and found blood smeared all over my fingers.

  Another drop landed on my leg.

  I looked at Mac.

  “It’s not coming from my throat. That wouldn’t drip onto my thigh. It would run onto my tee shirt.” I didn’t want to dwell on why my throat was bleeding.

  Mac stared at me for a beat, then grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. We stood as far away from the bed as we could and with much trepidation looked up. Something ghastly hung from the ceiling in what looked like a piece of cheesecloth. Dark-red drops formed, plummeting onto the exact place where we’d sat.

  “Oh, euwww.” I backed away until I was leaning on the door.

  “That’s not the dreamcatcher,” Mac said, before turning several shades of green and running for the bathroom.

  I heard him barfing, and clamped a hand over my own mouth trying to curb the urge to vomit. Being a sympathetic vomiter is no fun, especially when someone else already occupied the bathroom. I found myself looking at the ceiling trying to figure out what was wrapped in the cheesecloth. It didn’t look very big. I knew all of Carter was accounted for, knowledge which didn’t thrill me. It meant this was part of someone else. I hoped it wasn’t Mac’s cat.

  A loud bang from outside the door made me jump. I settled myself with a deep breath, half expecting the police to announce their presence any second.

  Mac emerged from the bathroom. I could see he was going to great effort not to look up.

  “Did you hear the bang?” I asked. We made eye contact and maintained it to stop our eyes drifting to the ceiling.

  “Yes.”

  “Hopefully it’s the police?”

  A flashlight beam shone into the room from outside. Several minutes later we heard a loud male voice call into the house, “Fairfax Police Officers, we’re coming in.”

  “That bang wasn’t the police,” Mac said. “Different direction.”

  “They’d have more than one team coming in.”

  We waited until the booted footsteps were level with the bedroom door before Mac called out, “We’re in here.”

  My mind ran a pre-recorded message “Please be the cops, please be the cops!”

  I heard every drop that fell from the ceiling, from the second of its release until its splashdown on the bed. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of the room.

  I listened to the noise out in the hallway: sounded like two entry teams converging.

  “How did our Unsub get into the house?” I wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know,” Mac replied. “It wasn’t from the front of the house. I checked doors and windows on my way to you.”

  Someone knocked on the door. “Police!” A burly uniformed police officer stepped into the room. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” I replied. “I’m cold. I’m pissed off. I’m in need of coffee. There’s something disgusting dripping from the ceiling, but I’m not actually hurt.”

  The officer tilted my chin up with one finger. “That qualifies as hurt, ma’am. There is an ambulance out front.” He turned his attention to M
ac. “Sir, are you hurt?”

  Mac shook his head. The cop inspected his face. “You have blood on you.”

  I looked at Mac. He did have blood on him, small streaks of blood on his face.

  “It’s not mine,” Mac replied. He took a breath, but his voice still trembled. “It’s from up there.” He pointed to the ceiling above the bed without glancing up.

  “Oh,” the officer said and focused on the ceiling. “Ohhh.”

  Another cop appeared in the doorway. The first cop spoke to him, “Andy, escort these people out to the ambulance.”

  Officer Andy stepped up beside us and prepared to escort us. I addressed him, “Can I use your cell phone?”

  “Why, ma’am?”

  “I’m a Federal Agent. I need to call my SAC. This may be related to a case he’s working on.”

  He pulled his phone from his belt and handed it to me with a grin on his face. “You’re her, huh?”

  I tried to raise an eyebrow, but the cut on my head still pulled a little. “Her?”

  “The fed, whose ex ended up in the trunk of her car in Lexington?”

  I gave a mental groan. Yay, now the whole state is talking about me. Guess that’ll only get worse once every cop in Fairfax gets a full description of my underwear. They should get their facts straight, though. He could hardly be termed my ex when we only went on one ill-fated date.

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  He nodded and replied, “People are scary. They’re calling it the ‘Chat Room Killer Case,’ on account of your chat room.”

  Oh man, how much information was released? Chat room killer indeed! A typical lack of imagination shown by all.

  “Great.” I called Caine. The police escorted us out to the waiting ambulance as I told Caine what had happened. He was less than impressed to find out forensics were needed again.

  I chose not to tell him I had a fresh cut as it was little more than a scratch and not worth mentioning; it didn’t even sting yet. Caine demanded to speak to the officer in charge.

  I held the phone out to him. “Sorry, he wants to speak with you.” I sensed Caine was about to unleash his mean temper. The cop took the phone.