Amber raised her hand to rub the gauze bandage taped over
the side of her neck. Even the intense stinging of her wounds could not help
her shake the feeling that she was trapped in some kind of bizarre nightmare.
Her gaze moved to the detective as
he hung up his phone and leaned away from his desk. He had questioned her twice
already, and he still wore a skeptical expression. He asked, “Are you sure you
don’t remember something that might have caused your friend to snap?”
“No, it was just so sudden,” Amber
said, “She seemed like a completely different person, and then...then she just
stopped.” She tried to think of a plausible explanation and gave up, shaking
her head. “Rochelle doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. It doesn’t make any
sense. Nothing she said made sense either.”
The detective gestured to the
phone. “I just talked to her mother, and she said that their family doesn’t
have any history of mental illness. Miss Turner is being put in the hospital
for observations, just to be sure.”
Amber nodded, frowning at a
troubling stray thought. “Hey, let me ask you something. There’s been a lot of
people going crazy lately, right?”
“Yes, but it’s unlikely that your
friend’s condition is related.”
“Well, how would anyone know the
difference?” Amber asked. “I mean, have there been any witnesses for these
killing sprees?”
“A few, yes. But the MO is always
different in each case.” The detective smiled at her. “You aren’t the first
conspiracy theorist to try connecting all these crimes together.”
Annoyed by his finding humor in
the situation, Amber said, “Yes, well I guess almost getting murdered today has
put me in the right frame of mind to look for connections.”
The detective’s smile fell as he
dropped his head to look at his desk. “We’ve been getting calls every day from
people claiming to know why this is happening. Some are suggesting that it’s a
virus, while others say it’s a new drug on the market.”
“That’s been my dad’s latest
theory too, but I shot it down,” Amber said. “If you had found drugs in any of
the cases, it would have become public knowledge right away.”
The detective nodded. “If you’ve
got a theory, I’m willing to hear it.”
Amber stared at him, wondering if
she should mention the strange sensation she’d felt just before Rochelle
changed. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t have any theories. I’m only
trying to figure out why my best friend just tried to kill me.”
***
Amber shut off the engine and laid her head back on the
headrest while she tried to make sense of the morning’s events. She replayed
the memories over and over, and each time, she came back to the thought that
Rochelle had somehow become another person.
Her mind began nagging at her that
something was wrong, but she continued to stare at her steering wheel for
several more seconds without understanding why she felt anxious.
Amber raised her head, finally
realizing that she had parked behind her father’s car. Looking out the
passenger window, she found both the cars of her brothers were still parked in
the same places as well.
She’d tried to call her mother
after the police questioned her, but no one had been home. It was well past
mid-afternoon, and yet the driveway was full. The only vehicle that should have
been left was her mother’s mini van in the garage.
Amber got out of the car without
bothering to grab her bag or to take her keys out of the ignition. She left the
driver’s side door open, and as she crossed the front yard, she felt a need to
look back and confirm that she had a way to escape if something was wrong
The door was unlocked, and though
her instincts were screaming at her to go back to the car and call the police
on her cell phone, Amber stepped into the front hallway. A strong, unpleasant
odor hung on the air, and the scent combined with the oppressive silence had
her whole body shaking.
“Mom? Dad?” There was no answer.
She took a few timid steps into the hall to glance into the empty living room.
The dining room was empty as well, and she was about to turn around to check
the bedrooms in the back of the house when she heard a faint sound coming from
the kitchen.
At first, it sounded like someone
was drumming their fingernails on the counter, but after listening for a few
seconds, she decided the rhythm was too erratic. Amber moved toward the
kitchen, and the sound became stronger. It occurred to her that the unpleasant
smell was also getting stronger, and her heart began to hammer in her chest as
panic set in.
She slipped her head around the
frame of the door, and the first thing she saw was her father laying on the far
counter beside the stove. His slacks looked black and wet, and most of his
dress shirt was stained a deep crimson. It was his blood dripping from the edge
of the counter onto the floor that caused the tapping sound.
Amber leaned heavily on the
doorframe as her legs threatened to give out and fold under her. Her body
rolled against the frame, and she was still trying to steady herself when she
saw her brothers on the other counter. She sank to her knees and closed her
eyes, but by then the image had been burned into her memory.
Taking several long breaths to
steady herself, Amber got to her feet. Though she wanted to look away, she
couldn’t stop herself from staring at her brother, Taylor. His body lay over
the sinks with his face frozen in an expression of agony.
From where she stood, she could
see that his hand had been shoved into the garbage disposer in the right sink.
His other arm ended in a mangled stump, while the rest of his body was covered
in deep hacking wounds.
The size of the wounds confused
her, and she wasn’t sure if he had been stabbed or sliced until she looked
toward Calvin, who still had the meat cleaver buried in his side.
Amber pushed away from the
doorframe to walk into the kitchen, and though she had already met her limit
for shock, she couldn’t look away from the top of Calvin’s head. It looked like
someone had used the cleaver to cut a number of thin sections all the way down
to the middle of his nose. The only part of his face still recognizable was his
mouth, and it was locked open as if he had died screaming.
Amber thought of her mother
slicing cabbage with the same cleaver, and for no reason, the green cabbage
started to bleed.
The odd mental image pulled her
out of her daze long enough to think about calling the police. She crept to the
phone on the counter near Calvin’s feet to pick it up, and she had just dialed
nine when she heard the front door close.
Amber’s gaze flicked up, scanning
over the counter before she stopped at the block of knives in the corner.
The block was just behind the
neatly arranged slices of her brother’s head. The skin was ragged and stained
with blood, and the skin and muscle had begun to sag away from the bone,
creating gaps of pink in the pulpy red strips.
Amber raised one hand to cover her
mouth, but even though her stomach was churning, she still walked to the other
end of the counter to take a knife. She didn’t have time to forget herself.
She kept her right hand over her
mouth and nose, using her left to pull out the largest of the knives. Amber
heard a shuffling footstep in the hallway, and she spun on her heel, which was
much too easy with a slick blood puddle under her feet.
Amber never saw it, and she had to
plant her hand on the counter in another puddle of blood to stop her
uncontrolled sliding spin.
A whimper rose from her dry throat
at the sight of her mother covered in bloodstains. Rachel made a mocking pout
as she leaned her head over to one side, and her neck made a loud crack that
sent a spasm through Amber’s body. “Oh, what’s wrong, baby? Did you have a
rough day at school?”
Her voice was almost exactly the
same monotone rasp which Rochelle had spoken with, and her eyes were black,
leaving almost nothing of her brown irises. There were several wide splits in
Rachel’s upper and lower lips, and Amber wondered how it was humanly possible
to smile so wide that it could cause an injury.
Amber started to edge around the
counter, trying to make her way to the door which led out into the garage.
Rachel made a strange cackling
hiss and stepped into the kitchen. “Poor dear, come and give momma a hug.”
Amber stiffened and held out the
knife in front of herself. Closing her other hand over the handle and her
fingers, Amber shook her head and whined, “Don’t come near me.”
“Hush now,” Rachel said. She
stepped closer, allowing the blade to slide into her sternum. Raising her arms,
she pulled Amber closer and again made a rasping cackle. “Momma’s here now.”
Rachel closed her arms around her
daughter’s chest and squeezed.
Amber gasped as the handle began
to press into her stomach, and she had no choice but to lever it down against
her mother’s body. The relief was only momentary, as Rachel drew Amber into an
embrace so tight that she struggled to take even the tiniest breath.
“This is my gift to you, little
freak. I’ll see you soon.” Rachel went limp and fell back onto the floor,
pulling her daughter down with her.
Amber thrashed hysterically to get
free, slipping in a pool of blood as she tried to stand up. She thumped onto
the floor on her rump, and her mind yammered at her that she was sitting in
blood. She looked down and saw that she had somehow landed on one of the
remaining bare spots on the floor.
The math major in her began
working out an equation for how long it would take all of the puddles to
converge in the middle of the floor. It was the only thing she could do to
avoid going insane after being forced to kill her mother.
Rachel made a soft gasp, drawing
Amber’s attention back up. Confusion filled her mother’s expression. Rachel
tried to say something, but she made a final gasp, and then her mouth fell
open.
Amber stood up, her eyes drifting
from her mother back up to Calvin’s sliced head.
It was the abstract thought that a
cleaver should have crushed the bones and made the face unrecognizable which
finally pushed her past her limits. The room began to blur behind a wall of
tears before Amber closed her eyes and started to scream.
***
The homicide department was loud, and under the incredible
din of the room, thinking wasn’t possible. Amber didn’t mind, because right
then, she didn’t want to think about anything.
She stared blankly, her gaze
wandering from one desk to the next in the open office area. Many of the desks
were empty, but at others, detectives spoke loudly to be heard over each other.
From where Amber sat, most of the
shouting was gibberish. But when something did break through and reach her, all
she could notice was the frustration in the voices of the men and women working
the phones.
The detectives were shouting,
because they felt desperate to stop the flood of crime taking over the city.
But there were no leads, and no matter how much they shouted and acted like bad
cops, the witnesses didn’t have any information to offer. The dead ends made
the police cranky, and it showed in their voices, and in their tense, restless
expressions.
In spite of these shocking sprees,
the other criminals had not paused in their activities. The police still had to
deal with “normal” murders, where they rarely found suspects either.
Amber stared blankly at the styrofoam cup held out in front of her, finally looking up
at the detective before shaking her head. “No, thank you.”
The detective set the cup aside
and sat down on the edge of his desk. His dark, clean-shaven face was filled
with a look of concern, but the sentiment was belied by the look of skepticism
in his brown eyes.
“Miss McKenzie, my name is Peter
Benton. I was assigned this case, but it’s been brought to my attention that
your friend also attacked you and made an attempt to kill you earlier today.”
Amber watched him quietly, her
eyes flicking from side to side in agitation. “My mother didn’t attack me. She
just walked onto the knife. She didn’t even flinch.”
“I know, but I want to talk about
your friend Rochelle first.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” Amber
said. “We were talking about me looking plain. I’d just made a joke about
needing breast implants, and then she called me a freak and started to attack
me.”
She closed her eyes, but quickly
opened them as her mind began flashing from one gruesome image to the next in a
rapid-fire slideshow. “The detective I talked to earlier said that she’d been
put into a hospital for observations.”
“She was, but an hour ago, she
pried open the doors of an elevator and threw herself into the shaft.” Peter
took a breath, and he had to look away from Amber when she started to shake.
“She killed two doctors before that, and in both cases, she strangled them to
death. It looks like you were supposed to be her first victim.”
Amber shook her head. “No, I won’t
believe that. Whatever happened to her, it wasn’t by her choice.”
“Well, you know, sometime the mind
just snaps, and—”
“No, you really don’t know what
you’re talking about. Whatever it was inside Rochelle that caused her to kill
those doctors, it was inside my mother too.” Amber saw the detective’s
expression fill with concern and she groaned. “Great, and now you think I’m
catching crazy too.”
Peter showed her no sympathy. He
was a hardened veteran who had seen way too many similar cases in the last few
weeks, and he suspected that something wasn’t right with Amber’s story. He bluntly
asked, “Is there a history of mental illness in your family?”
Amber opened her mouth to say no,
and then she snapped it shut. “My brother—my half-brother, Jobe—he had some
kind of mental illness. But we never found out what he had. He ran away when he
was fourteen.”
“How do you know he had a mental
illness?”
“I tracked him down, and he told
me that he had started hearing voices. They told him that we were all bad
people, and he had to kill us.” Amber looked up at the detective, and he waved
for her to go on. But she had nothing else to say, because she couldn’t
remember what happened next.
She decided to lie, saying, “I
tried to grab him by the arm to take him home, and he hit me in the side of my
jaw first. After that, I lost track of where all the other hits went. I woke up
in the hospital three days later.”
Peter nodded. “How did you manage
to track him down?”
Amber shook her head. “I just went
looking for him.”
“So you found him right away?”
“No, it took me...” Amber frowned.
She knew that she was making herself look guilty, but for once, someone had
asked her the right question for her to realize that there was another hole in
her memory. She had no idea how long it took her to find Jobe, because once
she’d really thought about finding him, her memories became hazy.
Amber said, “Um, I guess it took
me about an hour to find him, but I already had a good idea about where he’d
gone. He’d made a fort out of plywood in a big patch of woods about a mile from
our house. Back then, we were living in Idaho.”
It was a lie, and it sounded like
one to Peter, who folded his arms over his chest and asked, “So how did the
police find you?”
“I’m pretty sure he called them,”
Amber said. “Otherwise they never would have found me. I don’t think this is
really the same kind of crazy though, because even when he was talking to me, I
had the feeling that he was still the same person I always knew.”
Peter nodded, still skeptical. But
he could admit there was no plausible way that Amber could make people go
crazy, and if he tried to make himself believe the idea, then he was falling
into the same crazed mindset of the conspiracy theorists who called the
homicide department every day.
But if Amber was not the link
between the two cases, what was? Peter decided to humor her by asking, “Was
there something similar in the behavior of your mother and your friend?”
Amber paused to think before she
gave a nod. “Yes. They both said things that seemed completely unlike them.
Rochelle called me a freak, and my mom kept saying momma this, or momma that.”
“How do you mean?”
“She said, ‘hush, momma’s here.’
But she’s never said anything like that, not even when I was a little girl.
Come to think of it, she called me a freak too.”
Amber leaned over and rubbed her
forehead in agitation while she went over the memory again. “There was also
something in the way their voices were similar. There was this low rasp, like
if they had laryngitis. They both sounded monotone. There was very little
emotion in their voices.”
She looked up at the detective’s
troubled frown and shook her head. “That shouldn’t be possible, should it? How
could two people both go crazy in the same way on the same day?”
“I’m not sure what to tell you,”
Peter said. “I’ll be honest. If not for the findings of the medical examiner,
I’d have you in an interrogation room as a suspect. But it’s clearly your
mother’s prints all over the bodies and the appliances she used.”
“Appliances?” Amber repeated
softly.
“Yeah, she used an electric knife
on your brother to slice—” Peter’s expression fell into dismay when he realized
that Amber was swooning. He set a hand on her shoulder to steady her and said,
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Amber whimpered. “None of
it makes any sense. People don’t just go crazy for no reason. Even with Jobe,
there were warning signs that something was wrong. This...it’s just coming out
of nowhere.”
“I know. Trust me, I see a lot of
crazy things, and most of them don’t make sense.”
“Have you...have you worked on any
of these recent serial killing cases?”
“Yeah,” Peter’s brown face filled
with a sympathetic look. “I know it’s tempting to try to link these cases
together, but every act is random. There’s no connection from one crime to the
next.”
“What if the pattern you’re
missing is in the randomness of the acts?” Amber asked.
“I’m not getting you.”
“Tell me something about Rochelle.
Did she really just strangle the doctors?”
Peter looked flustered as he sat
up, pulling his hand away from her shoulder. He got himself under control and
shook his head. “I shouldn’t say.”
“Then let me take a wild guess,”
Amber said. “Both doctors may have been choked to death, but after that, she
tore up the bodies in different ways.” She looked up at Peter’s expression
darkening, and her frown deepened. “Don’t you see how unusual this is? Rochelle
wouldn’t hurt anyone, but she snapped suddenly, and she took pleasure in
killing and mutilation. My mother was just as brutal, but why did she snap on
the same day as my best friend, in the same way?” Amber shook her head. “That
should be impossible.”
Peter nodded his agreement, but he
couldn’t say anything to her comments. He knew he should, but his mind was a
complete blank.
Amber pressed on when she saw that
he wouldn’t try to argue with her. “So, I’m betting that almost every single
person that you’ve arrested so far has no violent history prior to this
supposed snap.” Her eyebrows drew together at a sudden thought. “I’ll go one
step farther and guess that most of the people killed themselves after they were
captured.”
Peter sighed. “Some of them have
succeeded, but all of them tried. The people who haven’t succeeded were
strapped into their beds, but they keep suffering from random convulsions and
bouts of gibbering nonsense.”
“And you can’t find a common cause,
right?” Amber asked, not waiting for a reply before she pressed on. “You
couldn’t find any cases of drug use or mental illness in most of the killers,
so your current theory is that this is some kind of freak hysteria that happens
for no reason whatsoever.”
“That sounds about right,” Peter
agreed. “If you don’t think it’s a hysteria, what would you think is causing
this?”
Amber shook her head. “I really
don’t know, but it seems like I’m the only person to have survived two
encounters. I can say for certain that there is something in common between the
two attacks. I just can’t figure out what it is yet.” |