The Poet's Blood (Heinous Crimes Unit Book 7), page 4
“There’s nothing in this world I want more than to see you again,” his mother said. “I want you out of that place. I need you to be honest with me, Christian. What’s going to happen if you help them? I’m talking about your mind. What’s going to happen if you try to go into your mansion?”
Christian closed his eyes. He hadn’t ventured into his mansion since Arizona, and he’d thought he would never go there again. At least, that had been the plan. He didn’t know what waited for him there, and he didn’t want to know. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s still dangerous, right?” his mother asked.
Christian shrugged with his eyes still closed. “I don’t know. I won’t know unless I go back inside.”
Long seconds of silence passed. Christian didn’t know what else to say. He needed her approval after everything that had happened and how much she’d been there for him. How she was still with him, no matter what.
“I wasn’t supposed to come see you until the end of the month.” His mother’s voice had a hard tone she never took with him. “I’m going to go ahead and get a ticket for tomorrow. I’m going to get our lawyer there by the next day. Can you get in touch with that FBI agent?”
“Yes,” Christian whispered.
“Fine,” his mother responded. “I want you to get him and whoever else he needs to make this happen there. If they’re going to let you out, then we’re going to need everything in writing.”
That was the motivation for his mother. She wanted him out. She wanted to see him again, and not through glass. “Okay,” he answered.
Patricia’s voice softened. “If this is what you want, Christian. If it’s not, then tell them to fuck off. Excuse my language, but that’s what I mean. If it’s going to set you back, then tell them to go away and we’ll stick with our plan. I think that’s the right thing to do, anyway.”
Christian leaned his forehead against the wall. “Go ahead and book your ticket.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded, the brick wall cold on his forehead. “Yeah.”
“Honey, I know why you want to do this,” his mother said. “You want to help. But sweetheart, if they don’t put your release in writing then we’re not signing off on anything. You know that, right? I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I’m not letting this damned organization take advantage of your willingness to help if they have a way to screw you over again.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll put you on the visitor list.”
“I love you, Christian.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
Christian listened to the dial tone for a moment after she hung up, then he straightened and placed the phone back in its cradle.
He walked over to the command station after making sure his mother was on the visitor list. He didn’t want to spend any time in the common area today. Two guards manned the circular platform at all times, facing opposite directions so that they could see both sides of the common area and pod and electronically lock down both areas if there was an incident.
One of the guards leaned out and looked down at Christian. “What’s up, Windsor?”
“I’d like to go back to my cell,” Christian told him.
The guard shrugged. “You know the rules. You go back now, you’re in it until lights out.”
Christian nodded. “That’s fine.”
“Go on, then,” the guard instructed.
Inmates could move around relatively freely inside the common area, so long as it was the appropriate time and they let the guards know what they were doing. The protocol existed to prevent inmates beating or stabbing each other. If he’d headed for his cell without permission, they would have stopped him.
Christian ascended the stairs to the second floor, where his cell was located. The door slid open when he arrived. He nodded his thanks to the guard at the command station, then stepped inside. The door clanged shut behind Christian with a finality that used to scare him, but now it made him feel secure.
He sat down on his cot and felt underneath the mattress. He pulled out the envelope he’d hidden there. The letter had come a week prior, but he hadn’t opened it yet. He knew the handwriting.
Christian didn’t know where Luke was institutionalized, and he didn’t care. This was the first letter he’d received from Luke in two years. The timing was too much of a coincidence to actually be one. This letter was connected to the case the FBI agent had brought to Christian.
Am I going to read it? he wondered. Madness awaited him inside the envelope.
It’s also inside of me, even if I don’t want to see it.
Christian had kept it at bay for the past two years, but he heard something knocking inside his mind. Something knocking on the front door to his mansion, banging on the boarded-up windows. Did it want out, or did it want him to come inside? Was there any difference?
Christian flipped the envelope over and pulled the letter out, carefully unfolding it and looking at perfectly scrawled lettering.
LETTERS FROM A KILLER
Dear Christian,
I hope this letter finds you well. It has been a long time since we conversed, and I find myself thinking about you often.
What fills your time and your thoughts? Do you think about me, Christian? Do you think about Tommy and Veronica? Have you been back to your mansion, or are you afraid to go inside? Do you keep it quarantined in a corner of your brilliant brain, hoping the darkness inside you will never break free from the barriers you have built?
I imagine the FBI will be coming to visit you soon, if they have not already. I doubt that you pay close attention to the world outside your prison cell, but I do.
Outside of your walls and my own, the world is continuing to spin, and people continue to be murdered. This has always been true, but something has changed. I am nearly positive it will bring the FBI to your prison to ask for your help. Perhaps beg for it.
You see, Christian, the elites are dying. Not the criminals and the destitute, but those who create the laws that put you and me inside these cells.
Yet, it is worse than that. It is not the congresspeople who are being hunted, but their family members. Their children and grandchildren are being murdered. Who knows where this killer will draw the line?
The FBI lacks the talent to capture this killer, that I feel quite confident about. You, however, have everything that is needed to catch him—if you want to. What will you do when the FBI come calling? Will you let them in and listen to their pleas for help?
Will you venture back into your mansion and face the horrors waiting there for you? I know you have not killed them. Will you risk letting them infect you again, or would you rather let innocents die?
You know me, Christian. I do not lie. I promise you, they will continue dying.
Yours,
Luke Titan.
CHAPTER FIVE
The only light came from the moon. Brian hadn’t wanted to take the van up the gravel driveway. The tires would make too much noise, so he and Bonnie had parked on the shoulder and walked the half-mile to the trailer.
They were dressed in black pants and black shirts with sleeves that covered them to their wrists. They wore nothing over their faces. The trailer was dark and quiet. An old model sedan that looked rarely used but in good condition sat on the driveway.
Brian and Bonnie knew the name of the person who lived inside. They wouldn’t be visiting her tonight. Tonight’s visit was for them to scope the lay of the land.
Neither needed to speak to the other. Since childhood, they’d known what the other was thinking. Right now, they were thinking, Dad was right. This is the one.
No neighbors for miles. No alarm system. No roommates. Just a trailer with space to work, and the little box that no one knew about hidden in the closet.
They wouldn’t go to work yet, even though it would probably be safer under the night sky. It wasn’t their choice when they worked. None of this was their choice. Their hands had been forced.
They had what they came for. Brian and Bonnie turned at the same time and walked back to the van, accompanied by people only they could see on their right and left. Burnt people whose skin was black and crispy who had died a long, long time ago. They stared at the twins but said nothing. They only nodded their approval.
This was what the dead wanted from them. This was what the dead demanded.
Neither sibling needed to look at the dead. They knew them well. They had known them since they were babies, and although they died a long, long time ago, Brian and Bonnie still knew them well. Outside of each other, these dead people were the only family they had.
Brian and Bonnie wanted to please them.
It was truly all they desired in life.
Wilma Pinkington had lived in the trailer for the past forty years. She’d moved in when she was twenty. She planned on leaving when she died, and not a day before it.
As far as Wilma was concerned, God had created no greater land in the entirety of the Earth. Alabama had a reputation as a redneck, backwoods place, but that was fine with Wilma. She’d grown up here and raised her kids here, and all of them were doing fine, thank you very much.
Her eldest was doing quite a bit better than fine, and Wilma took no small bit of pride in being the mother of Senator Donnie Pinkington from the state of Alabama. He was forty-two years old, and Wilma was sixty-three. Donnie and his two sisters never gave up trying to get Wilma to move, but she wouldn’t even discuss it.
Donnie had called her a couple of days ago and told her the news was about to report something scary. Someone was killing the family members of congresspeople. Even babies. Wilma could hardly believe this was the world she lived in. Donnie had told her he wanted to make sure she had protection. He’d wanted to send police over to the trailer and have them watch the place until they caught this killer.
Wilma had told him she wasn’t hearing any of that. She didn’t need police to look out for her. If it was God’s will that she be taken to heaven where her husband waited, then she was ready to go. Donnie had tried to argue, but he knew his mother wouldn’t bend. They’d gotten off the phone with him saying if there was another murder, he was going to have police come whether she agreed or not.
She’d said, “Sure, honey,” then told him to call soon, knowing that she wasn’t going to have anyone babysit her regardless of what her know-it-all son told her.
Three days later, Wilma was drinking her first cup of coffee at eight in the morning when she heard car tires crunching the gravel on her driveway. The mailman didn’t normally arrive until one in the afternoon. While Freddy usually brought the mail to her house, it couldn’t be him. Wilma wasn’t expecting any visitors, either.
She stood up from her chair in the kitchen, leaving her morning coffee steaming on the table. She opened the front door and looked through the screen.
A white painter’s van with no back windows had pulled up outside. The front windows were tinted and she couldn’t see who was inside with the sun’s glare. No one got out, which struck her as abnormal.
Wilma felt a chill run down her spine for the first time in a long, long time. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been scared. She didn’t have many visitors way out here in the country, and certainly none who didn’t call before they came.
Still, this was her home, and she wanted to know who was on her property. She pushed the screen door open and stepped out onto the small wooden stoop.
“Can I help ya?” she called loud enough that anyone inside the van would be able to hear.
The driver’s side door opened and Wilma still couldn’t see who it was. She stepped a bit farther onto the stoop and put her hand to her brow to block the sunlight.
A man walked around the van and Wilma got her first look at him. He was thin and hard, like someone who had grown up on a farm and was no stranger to manual labor. He was wearing black clothes, but Wilma had a tough time focusing on that.
His eyes shifted to his left and right, as if something on both sides of him was more important than the woman on her stoop.
“Can I help ya?” Wilma took a step back as she repeated the question. She was not quite inside her home, but close.
The passenger door opened next and a woman stepped out. Her hair was short and cut jaggedly, like those punk-rockers that had been popular a few years ago. She had the same hardness as the man, a look that came from work and effort that those punk-rockers with their pale and smooth skin had never experienced. Whoever these two were, they were definitely family. The resemblance was too clear for anyone to deny. Maybe even twins.
The woman closed her door.
Her eyes are just as shifty as his, Wilma thought, like they’re both lookin’ at the same thing.
She tried to sound confident as she spoke, although she felt anything but. “This is my property. What business do ya have here?”
The man blinked and fixed his stare on Wilma, as if he hadn’t known she was standing there. “I’m sorry.”
Those two words made the hair on Wilma’s arms stand up straight. “What you sorry for, son? I don’t know you or your friend there.”
She took another step back into the trailer and let the screen door close. The man and woman didn’t move, but they were now solely focused on her.
“This isn’t something we wanna do,” the man said. “But we don’t got any choice.”
Wilma knew the man’s accent. It was just as southern as hers. Usually, that drawl made her know she was near home. Now, it sent a chill down the back of her neck. “You always got a choice, son, and you know it. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, and we can discuss whatever it is that’s on your mind?”
The woman, who was yet to speak, walked to the right. The gravel crunched beneath her feet, her steps loud in the silent sunlight. Wilma had never been afraid of that noise in her life, but at that moment, she was terrified.
The woman finally spoke when she came to a stop. “Do ya see ‘em? Don’t you lie to us. We’ll know.”
“She can’t see ‘em,” the man drawled, almost as a rebuke.
The woman paid him no attention. She kept her eyes on Wilma. “Answer the question. Can ya see ‘em?”
Wilma didn’t know what to say, but she knew there wasn’t much time to figure it out. The murders her son had mentioned didn’t enter her mind. All the same, she knew death had come to visit her. It drove a white van and asked strange questions. She decided to tell the truth, same as always. “All I see is you two.”
The man took a step forward. “I told ya.”
The woman nodded. “He’s right. We’re sorry. We don’t have no choice in this. It was taken from us a long time ‘go.”
Wilma shook her head, her heart thumping faster in her chest. “What choice are you talkin’ ‘bout, honey?”
“What we’re gonna do to ya.”
The man rushed Wilma as the words left the woman’s mouth. He moved faster than anyone Wilma had ever seen before, including the football boys on the TV.
Wilma screamed and stepped back. She slammed the door shut before the man reached it and fumbled with the deadbolt, but the man crashed into the door with enough force to send her sprawling back into her living room.
The door rebounded off the wall and hit the man in the shoulder, but he didn’t notice.
“What d’ya want?” Wilma shrieked as she backed up, scrambling on her ass. She was unsure where she was trying to go, but her instincts screamed at her to get away from this man.
The woman stepped onto the stoop and then walked slowly into the trailer.
Wilma’s back hit the wall. “Look, whatever you’re thinkin’ of doin’, you ain’t gotta do it. I’m just an old woman. I ain’t gonna tell no one about you two. You can just leave, and I’ll forget. It’ll be like none of this ever happened, ya understand?”
The man stepped to the left and pulled a blade from his belt loop. Wilma didn’t know the length. It looked as long as her chef knives in the kitchen and had ridges like teeth along the edge.
The woman crossed the small living room and squatted in front of Wilma. The old woman wanted to move, but there wasn’t anywhere she could go at that moment.
“It don’t matter what ya say,” the stranger told Wilma. “You ain’t stoppin’ what’s comin’ for ya. Just like our choice is gone, so is yours. This ain’t our fault, and nothing you can say will change that, either. Part of the blame lays with you. Sure, there are other people with more fault on their shoulders, but their choices will be taken from them soon enough, too. Worryin’ about that don’t make much sense.”
Wilma didn’t have a clue what the woman was talking about. It was gibberish. All she knew was that she had to get away from these crazy people. “Is it money y’all want? My boy’s a senator. I can getcha whatever money ya want. I got money here, too. Buried out back behind the trailer. I’ll show ya where it’s at if ya’ll will just let me go.”
The man had moved to stand behind the woman. He laughed at her frantic pleas. “We ain’t whores.”
“I-I-I—” Wilma tried to speak and tell these people she didn’t mean to call them whores, but she saw the woman’s face and her words died on her lips.
They weren’t lying. There wasn’t any bargain that could be made. No way to talk them out of what they’d come here to do with that knife.
If Wilma was going to survive, she had to fight. She kicked out. Unable to extend her leg completely, her knee slammed into the woman’s stomach. Her attacker fell to the side with a whoosh of air, holding her stomach and gasping for wind.
Wilma dove to her left and scrambled to all fours before climbing to her feet. She rushed into the kitchen, which was the only place in the trailer with any weapons.
She reached the knife block and pulled out the meat cleaver. Her left hand trembled as she turned with the cleaver in her right hand.
