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  Her breath was shaking slightly as she slowly crept out of the bedroom, down the corridor, to the front door. Her eyes kept glancing around, searching for any sign of movement. Her entire body was tense, ready to bolt. She reached the main door and peeped through the peephole. She could see the hallway of the apartment building. It was empty. She hesitated for a minute, then unlocked the door, and pulled it.

  It wouldn’t budge. She pulled it harder. Nothing. The door was stuck.

  She forced herself to breathe deeply. She had to act quickly, time was moving fast. Her mind whirred, processing the last few minutes. The man who had sent her this message thought she was trapped in the house with her phone disabled. She had to outmaneuver him somehow, and fast. Before he showed up with a chainsaw in hand.

  Her laptop! She dashed to the living room. The laptop was there, on the coffee table. It was already on. Wasn’t there a way to contact the police via chat? She was sure there was. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, typing furiously. She entered the Glenmore Park Police Department site and scanned it. There was no chat, only a “Contact Us” link. Damn.

  She searched wider, looking for “Police chat USA.” Okay, there were quite a few there. Apparently she could chat with the police in Arlington, Texas. Good enough. She clicked it. The chat window opened.

  This is the Arlington police online assistance, how can I help?

  She thought for two seconds. She had to get this right.

  I live in Glenmore Park, Massachusetts. I just received a message from a murderer, and he’s about to kill me. I am trapped in my home, my phone doesn’t work and the door won’t open. Please help.

  She waited for a moment, praying that whoever it was in Arlington would take her seriously.

  This is the Arlington, Texas Police chat. We don’t respond to calls from Massachusetts.

  Of course. Nothing was ever easy. Please, she typed. Just call the Glenmore Park PD. Let them know. I can’t reach them. I have no time. He will kill me.

  After a second, the response appeared: What’s your address?

  She breathed in relief. She typed in her address. Then she waited. Something in the house creaked. He was there with her, she was sure of it. She was running out of time.

  They’re on their way.

  Good. Now it was time to—

  A figure dressed in black stepped into the living room, a chainsaw in its hand. Janice screamed and stood up. The towel wrapped around her unfastened and dropped to the floor.

  The man with the chainsaw stepped forward.

  Officer Neal Fuller was thrilled to realize their patrol car was the first on the scene. All units had been called to a possible attack by the serial killer the press had dubbed The Deadly Messenger. Details were scant, since dispatch hadn’t gotten a lot of information from the caller.

  It was an apartment building. Five floors, no elevator, and the slight whiff of pee around the bottom stairs. It all vaguely registered as he dashed up, jumping two stairs at a time, knowing there was no way Markus, his partner, could ever keep up. After all, Neal was twenty-two, fresh from the academy, and in great shape. Markus was forty-three, with a beer gut and a knee that acted up occasionally.

  Neal zoomed up the stairs, adrenaline kicking in to help him run faster than he had ever done before. He was breathing heavily as he reached the top floor, and he knew he should wait for backup, but he also knew it was an emergency and there was no time. He rushed to the door and thumped on it.

  “Police!” he shouted.

  There was a high-pitched scream from inside. Neal tried the door. It was unlocked, but for some reason it wouldn’t budge more than an inch. Something was blocking it.

  He took a step back and threw himself at the door. There was the sound of wood splintering, and he felt something give. From inside, a woman shouted for help. He could hear a man shouting something as well. He hit the door again, and the thing burst open. Neal nearly lost his balance as his body kept moving forward into the apartment.

  There was a large room on his left. A man, dressed entirely in black and wearing a ski mask, was facing him. Behind the man, Neal could see the screaming woman, naked, cowering on the couch.

  Neal’s gun was already aimed directly at the man’s chest.

  “Don’t shoot!” the man screamed, his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot!”

  Neal’s finger was on the trigger, pressing ever so lightly. He almost fired, already tensing for the gun’s recoil.

  “I’m unarmed!” the man shouted. “Don’t shoot!”

  “On your knees!” Neal screamed. “Hands above your head! Do it! Now!”

  For a moment the man hesitated.

  “Now!” Neal shouted again.

  The man fell to his knees, raising his hands high above his head and Neal was on him, pushing him to the floor, cuffing his hands behind his back. As he cuffed the man, Neal saw what was lying on the floor: a chainsaw. The sick fuck had been about to kill the woman with a chainsaw. Neal kicked the man, who fell to the floor with a scream. The woman whimpered in fear.

  “It’s okay!” Neal told her, trying his best to look only at her face and failing miserably. “We got him!”

  The woman fumbled at the floor, where a white towel lay discarded. She clumsily wrapped herself, shaking.

  “Please!” she said. “Just get him out of here!” She hid her face in her hands.

  Neal realized Markus was standing behind him, ogling the woman.

  “Help me out here,” he said, pulling the man to his feet.

  “You don’t understand—” the man began.

  “Shut up!” Neal shouted, shaking him roughly. “Shut the fuck up!”

  They manhandled the man downstairs, ripping the mask from his face in the process. He was young, no more than twenty-five, his forehead sweaty, his face fearful. He tried to talk once again, and Markus shook him roughly. He stayed quiet after that.

  Neal grinned at Markus as they dragged the suspect out. He thought of his mother. Perhaps this weekend his family would be talking about Neal, and not about damn Peter and his successful business. This time, Neal would give his mother a reason to be proud.

  There was a reporter outside. How the hell had they heard about this already?

  “Officer?” The reporter rushed at him. “What happened?”

  “We got him,” Neal said, drunk with victory, already imagining the newspaper in his mother’s hands. “We got The Deadly Messenger.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “There’s something wrong with all this,” Zoe told Mitchell.

  He looked at her blankly. His eyes itched from lack of sleep, and he felt disconnected from the whole thing. They’d caught the killer. Yay. All he wanted was to go back home and lie on his bed, staring at the ceiling, like he’d done pretty much the entire previous night. Recalling his past conversations with Pauline, trying to find hints he’d missed, anything that indicated she was about to leave.

  “Mitchell, are you listening to me? I don’t think it’s the guy.”

  “He sent a message with a murder weapon to his victim. He was literally caught attacking her with a chainsaw. He’s the guy, Zoe.”

  “He was not caught attacking her. I just talked to the cops who arrested him, and—”

  “Zoe, he’s the damn guy! Let this go!” He didn’t realize he was shouting until he noticed everyone in the squad room staring at him.

  Zoe bit her lip, then went back to sit at the makeshift desk they had provided for her. She grabbed some papers and stared at them, her face red.

  “Look,” Mitchell said, taking a deep breath. “Jacob is on his way over here, and then we’ll interrogate this guy, and get a confession from him. Do you want to join us in the interrogation?”

  Zoe remained silent, facing away from him. Mitchell sighed, and sat at his desk. He stared at his dark monitor, drained, and thought about the engagement ring. He should return it. He briefly wondered what would have happened if he had proposed in the past weeks, instead
of constantly postponing it, waiting for the right moment. Would Pauline have said yes? Would she still be with him? It was not the first time these thoughts had occurred to him. Nor the second. They’d been spiraling in his brain over and over, a merry-go-round of self-loathing and sadness.

  Jacob entered the squad room, smiling.

  “I understand that we have a good reason to celebrate!” he said. He’d been in Boston when the arrest transpired, examining the places where the serial killer had previously hit.

  Both Mitchell and Zoe turned to face him. His smile drained from his face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t think it’s the guy,” Zoe said.

  “Why not?” Jacob asked. “I understand that the M.O. is identical.”

  “It isn’t,” Zoe said. “When the police walked in they found the guy in the living room, the victim still alive, the chainsaw on the floor.”

  “Maybe he had some technical problems,” Jacob suggested. “A chainsaw can be a tricky thing to use.”

  “This killer always plans ahead,” Zoe said impatiently. “Do you really think he wouldn’t have made sure that he could turn on a chainsaw? Besides, the way he was dressed—completely in black, and a white hockey mask?”

  Jacob furrowed his brow. “That’s what he was wearing?” he asked.

  “Yeah! Does this sound right to you?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Mitchell asked sharply. He knew damn well what was wrong with it. It was completely off. But he clung to his conviction as if he believed it. Just like he had believed everything was all right between Pauline and him until the moment of truth.

  “Seriously?” Zoe glanced at him contemptuously. “A white hockey mask? It’s a prop! It’s something that someone would wear after watching Friday the 13th! Do you really think that this guy would do that?”

  “Who knows what he would do?” Mitchell said. “He’s a psycho! Maybe he always wanted to be just like Jason when he grew up!”

  Zoe shook her head. “Whatever. Do you know what the message he sent said? It said see you soon. This is not a serial killer. This is a serial killer wannabe.”

  “So what do you think?” Jacob asked Zoe, his eyebrow raised. “A copycat?”

  “Maybe,” Zoe said. “But he’s not the guy, I’m almost certain.”

  “Well,” Jacob said. “Let’s talk to him and find out.”

  Danny Stevenson was scared, aching, and nauseous. He’d thrown up in the patrol car, to the cops’ immense displeasure, but had done nothing to alleviate the queasy feeling in his stomach. That was partly due to the punch in the gut he had received earlier. The bastard cop had fists of steel. Danny felt as if something had been dislocated.

  He looked around him. The room was stark, the furniture almost nonexistent. One simple metal table and three chairs, the one on which Danny sat, and the two on the opposite side of the table. His hands were still in handcuffs. Until they’d reached the police station, his hands had been cuffed behind his back. Once they’d entered this room, they had removed the handcuffs, pulled his arms roughly forward, and locked them again. They had tightened the cuffs too much, and his hands were slowly turning red. He moved his fingers, trying to get the blood flowing. It hurt. Everything hurt. His eyes filled with tears of pain and fear.

  How had such a simple, elegant plan become such a mess? The whole point was that Janice wouldn’t be able to call the cops! That was why he’d blocked outgoing calls on her phone in the first place. And he still couldn’t understand why—

  The door opened, and two men and a woman walked in. The woman carried a small folding chair. She unfolded it and sat in the corner, looking at him as if he was a garden slug on her doorstep. The two men sat in front of him.

  The bald man began talking, reciting the sentences Danny knew so well from movies and TV shows. He had the right to remain silent. He had a right to an attorney. Danny tried to speak once, but the bald man simply raised a finger, as if to hush him, and kept reciting Danny’s rights. When he was done, he pushed forward a piece of paper and a pen. Danny stared at them. The same words were written on the paper, and the bottom had a line for a signature.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Sign it,” the bald man answered.

  “But what is it?”

  “It just clarifies that you’ve been read your rights and that you understand them.”

  Danny clumsily picked up the pen and signed the paper with his left hand, his right hand hanging uselessly in the air.

  “You’re left-handed?” the bald man said.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So nothing,” the bald man said. “I’m Detective Jacob Cooper. This is Detective Mitchell Lonnie, my partner, and that’s Zoe Bentley, from the FBI. What’s your name?”

  “D… Danny. Danny Stevenson.” Danny said and looked at Detective Lonnie. The man stared at him with blank, empty eyes, as if Danny was nothing. This was almost more disconcerting than the hostile looks he was receiving from Detective Cooper and Bentley.

  “Danny,” Detective Cooper said. “Would you care to tell us why you tried to kill Janice Hewitt?”

  “I didn’t! I swear! You got it all wrong! Janice is my girlfriend! It was just a prank!” Danny said, a hysterical note crawling into his voice.

  The surprise on the detectives’ faces was palpable. Clearly this wasn’t what they were expecting. Well, he had tried to tell it to the cops who had arrested him, but they had threatened to tase him if he said another word, so he’d shut up.

  “Janice is your girlfriend?” Detective Cooper repeated.

  “Yes! You can call and ask her!”

  “This was a… prank?”

  “Yes! Janice and I… that’s what we do! We prank each other! We’re famous for it!”

  “Attacking your girlfriend with a chainsaw is not exactly my idea of a prank,” Detective Cooper said.

  Well, that was hardly surprising. The old detective probably thought a whoopee cushion was the best prank ever. Danny shook his head. “I never attacked her. Look, here’s what I did. It was supposed to be really simple. Janice does these really long showers after a workout. While she was showering, I installed a small application that blocked her phone from making outgoing calls, and placed a small wedge under the front door. Then I hid in the apartment, in this disguise with my chainsaw, and sent her the message—”

  “You admit you sent her the message,” Detective Lonnie interrupted him.

  “Yeah, sure. I mean, that was the entire point. I wanted her to think that this serial killer was coming for her.” Danny almost smiled. Things were looking up. Surely they’d understand their mistake. How he and Janice would laugh about this later…

  “This is your idea of funny?” Detective Cooper stared at him, his eyes wide, his nose crinkling in disgust.

  “Sure,” Danny shrugged. “Not just me. I mean, Janice thought it was hilarious, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Detective Lonnie asked.

  “Well, I showed up, and she screamed so loud, I nearly went deaf. And then I took off my mask, and she saw it was me. We both laughed so hard!”

  “You were wearing the mask when the cops showed up,” Detective Cooper pointed out.

  “Well… yeah. I mean… Janice thought it would be funny to have sex like that. So she asked me to put on the mask. And then you guys showed up.”

  “She was screaming for help,” Detective Lonnie said.

  “It was just part of the fantasy! Look, just call her. She’ll tell you! You’ve got it all wrong!”

  The detectives glanced at each other.

  “I’ll be right back,” Detective Cooper said. He stood up and walked out of the room.

  They sat in silence. Danny was feeling better, though he still hurt all over.

  “Can you loosen the handcuffs, please?” he asked. “I can hardly feel my hands.”

  Detective Lonnie stared at him as if he hadn’t said anything. As if he wasn’t even
there. Something was wrong with this guy. Danny glanced at Bentley. She was looking at him thoughtfully, but did not appear as if she were about to help with the handcuffs. Something in her eyes scared the shit out of him. He felt as if she could stare into his brain and read his memories. Danny shuddered and waited.

  Finally, Detective Cooper walked in, and sat down.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he said. “Janice’s sister answered the phone. She said that Janice was currently in shock, and she couldn’t come to the phone. The trauma of being attacked by a serial killer was too much for her, that’s what she said.”

  Danny smiled. He’d underestimated the old detective. This was a guy who could see the opportunity for a good prank when it showed up. “Nice,” he said. “I mean… really funny. So, she told you, right?”

  The detective lifted an eyebrow. Danny waited.

  “As I said, I only talked to the sister,” the detective said.

  Danny blinked. He didn’t understand. Did the guy really think… and then the pieces fell into place. He suddenly recalled how Janice had asked him to put on the mask. How she’d shrieked even when the cops were in the apartment. How she hadn’t stopped them when they had taken him away. Danny had thought it was because she didn’t want to run outside wrapped in a towel.

  The police hadn’t shown up by mistake. She had somehow managed to contact them. She had known all along that it was him; he hadn’t fooled her for even one second.

  That bitch. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to kiss her. It was the most brilliant double prank she had ever played.

  “She’s messing with me,” Danny told the detectives. “She knew all along. That’s why she’s acting as if I’m the real killer. She’s the one pranking me!”

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Detective Lonnie snarled, and slammed his hand on the table. “You sent the message! You attacked Janice with a chainsaw! You are the one who killed Skyler Gaines, Tamay Mosely, Kendele Byers—”

  “No! It was just a stupid prank!”

  “We’ll find the evidence, Danny! We have eyewitnesses who can identify you! You’ll be lucky if you don’t get the death penalty, Danny!” Detective Lonnie leaned over the table, his eyes wide and red, spittle flying from his mouth. The man was clearly deranged.