Painful Truths

  PAINFUL TRUTHS

  Affair with Murder Series

  Book Two

  Brian Spangler

  TITLES IN THE SERIES

  Killing Katie

  Painful Truths

  Grave Mistakes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 Brian Spangler

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  First published as an eBook by B.A. Spangler on Kindle Press

  ISBN: 9781981079551

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  Thank You

  Subscribe to my Newsletter

  Also By

  About The Author

  DEDICATION

  To my friends and family for their love, support, and patience.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  While working on this series, I was aided by many individuals to whom I wish to offer my immense gratitude and appreciation: Chris Cornely Razzi, Fiona Quinn, Monica Spangler, Don Shope, and so many others. Thank you for reading early drafts, helping with research, and for offering critiques and encouragement. As always, your feedback has helped to shape the story.

  PAINFUL TRUTHS

  ONE

  FROM AROUND THE corner, I saw my latest mark approach. My stomach fluttered. My muscles grew taut and my hands became clammy. I was going to kill again. He wore his black hair long, slicked back, and its oily sheen glinted gray in the light from the overcast sky. Some of it hung loose around his ears and covered the front of his face. My mark was a stout man, square and bulky—like a fire hydrant. I had learned from his file that he was in his late thirties and that he’d never married. He also had no family to speak of.

  I stepped closer to him, then stopped abruptly. He had paused, as though he knew I was there. That I was watching him. He shuffled his feet and pushed the thick frame of his glasses up the bridge of his nose before turning around to face the street corner. It was the fifth time he had made that turn. But nobody else had noticed. Nobody else was counting his moves. Just me. He peered over his shoulder as a soft breeze caught the stray hairs above his eyes, revealing a furrowed brow, a near frown. He was clearly concentrating intently. He licked his lips. He was hunting. A hunter is most vulnerable when hunting, and I was going to take advantage of that.

  With each turn, his eagerness brought him closer to me. He paced back and forth like a caged lion waiting to be fed. Only there were no bars holding him back. The man was free to seek out his prey, to seek out his next victim. And though he had an evilness inside him that I could never understand, it still disgusted me that I had something in common with him—I knew how he felt. I knew what the hunt was doing to him. I knew his sour-smelling sweat and the way it stung the back of his neck. And I knew how his hands tingled and his heart raced, and that he could never seem to catch his breath. After all, I was hunting too. I was hunting him.

  I cleared my lungs as he closed the distance between us. He was near enough that I could hear him scraping his fingertips along the building’s brick facade. For a moment, I could smell the thick odor of stale cigarette smoke that clung to him. He nervously needled the brick’s pale mortar, picking at it briefly before pacing back in the other direction. As if he’d heard my thoughts, he pulled out a cigarette and struck a match. He puffed until the end was cherry red and his head and face disappeared in a cloud of white smoke. When he reappeared, I could see that his eyes had wandered over to the playground across the street. I was certain he’d already selected his next victim.

  A flurry of chaos erupted from the jungle gym, stopping him in his tracks. He closed his hand over his mouth, nervously wiped at nothing. Children squealed in delight, running and jumping, playing chase with one another in ignorant bliss, completely unaware of the dangerous man looking to feed on their innocence. A tiny child—no more than five by my guess—raced up to the edge of the street, her golden pigtails swinging and bouncing. She threw a twig onto the road. A car honked, blaring a threat before pummeling the stick beneath its heavy tires. The man’s eyes flicked wide and his body tensed. He leaned forward, waiting to see what Pigtails would do next. But a woman’s scolding voice interrupted the activity, and the man settled back onto his heels. The woman called out again, yelling for Pigtails to come back immediately. The man stayed fixed like a statue, ingesting every second of the interaction, every detail, every nuance. He seemed to be recording it in his memory. I thought at first he was mesmerized by the little girl, but I quickly realized that wasn’t it at all. He was memorizing the little girl. My stomach lurched, turned over with a sick twist. I knew what he wanted to do to her. If I had the opportunity, I’d kill him where he stood.

  “Patience,” I told myself. I continued to wait. He’d never broken his pattern before. Not yet, anyway. It had been more than a week since Nerd and I started working this case, and the man had only deviated from his daily patterns one time, when the early spring showers had kept the children safe and indoors and out of his sight.

  I’d read the police report and nearly retched when I learned what he’d done to a six-year-old girl. The man turned and paced back toward me. The smell of his burning cigarette grew stronger as the smoke caught in a short gust of wind, rose in a thin twirl above his head, and wafted near me. I could see more of his face now. No taller than I was, his chin stubbled in flecks of black, and his cheeks sunken deep beneath bulging eyes. The sight of him made me think of a sad little ghoul, but to the girl he had raped and murdered, he must have seemed a giant. A monster. And to her parents—the ones I’m nearly certain arranged for his murder—this ghoul, this man, this thing, was pure evil.

  “The world’s not going to miss you,” I said. “Technicalities are meaningless in my world.”

  This was our fifth case since Nerd and I had gotten back together. I know it’s murder, but I like to call them “cases” as if I am some kind of doctor. Only I’m not fixing a broken bone or helping to rid the world of a crippling disease. Instead, I’m righting wrongs and bringing a sense of retribution to the minds and hearts of those in need. I know it’s still murder. I’m not trying to fool myself into thinking it is anything different. I am a murderer, and I’m the first to admit that I get off on it. But isn’t it the same for a scientist in the throes of a great discovery or a surgeon cutting into a body? Don’t they get off on what they are doing, too? And let’s not forget, I’m a
lso getting paid a shit-ton of money for my work. And who doesn’t like that?

  Since starting to work with Nerd, I have to say his technical abilities have gone beyond anything I thought was even possible. Sometimes I wonder if he was holding back before. Now he is really beginning to trust me—and us—and what we’ve become. The favorite change he’s implemented? He optimized the yellow and green and red links we used to navigate the Deep Web. And of course, I always favored the red, knowing the dangers hidden in those links. The yellow and green were okay too, but more for shopping. To the endless depths of the Deep Web, he’s applied what he proudly calls our personalized taxonomy, helping us connect to those seeking revenge. Since then, we’ve had more customers than we can take on. Who knew there were so many willing to pay five or even six figures for a taste of vengeance? In our first months, I made more money than Steve does in a year working as a police detective.

  The money is great in theory, that is, but we have a problem. We can’t get paid. Our money is stuck somewhere in the vast and dark electron world of the World Wide Web. It’s circulating as Bitcoin, Nerd had explained to me. Internet currency just waiting to be converted and cashed in. But he had an idea about how to solve that, and promised a solution in the coming days. If he was right, I’d finally be able to show Steve something for all of my hours. Of course, he didn’t know about the murder part of the job—except for the homeless man, that is. I’d explained to him that I’d taken a start-up idea to a nerdy computer fellow and that we’d made some progress and had a few sales. He’d given me a cautious look meant as a warning, but had chosen not to say anything. He seemed to be satisfied enough.

  Ghoul’s pace changed then, shifting and pulling my attention back to why I was here. His step quickened and his hands snapped together as his fixation on the playground intensified. He seemed agitated. I saw the little girl with the pigtails walking away from the playground, and I knew my window of opportunity was closing.

  The old stone pavers lining the street were slick, smoothed by years of footsteps, and I carefully walked across them, approaching Ghoul without his suspecting me. Another squeal came from the playing children, and his face lit up in response. A row of yellowing teeth peered through his lips while he scratched his stubbly chin, darting his glances from child to child. He’d surely picked another victim, having given up on Pigtails. I reached down to playfully twist Needle, but then remembered I’d left my assassin’s ring in the car. Nerd had given it to me, and Ghoul was supposed to have been the first to receive the short but painful death it could deliver.

  I thought back to when Nerd first showed me the new toy he’d gotten me to accompany this case. He’d outdone himself. Nerd had found every one of Ghoul’s records. All of them were on the state’s old computers, just lying out in the open, waiting to be picked up by any curious eyes with a penchant for simple hacks. And while some had officially been “sealed,” we simply chose to ignore that legal designation. Ghoul’s life had started in foster homes, where he set fires and even mutilated a family dog. He moved on to a detention center, where the records stated he’d sodomized another boy. Soon after his eighteenth birthday, he’d been charged with his first sexual assault and was briefly sent away to big-boy prison. What we found out about his medical condition opened the door for our opportunity. Ghoul had a bad heart. He suffered from potentially deadly arrhythmia. Nerd had brought up images for me of a surgery showing an implantable cardioverter defibrillator being placed in a patient’s chest.

  “It’s like a pacemaker,” Nerd had explained. “Regulates the electrical field of the heart.”

  And how did that help us? Ghoul’s last ICD implant was overdue for a replacement, meaning his heart was vulnerable. All I had to do was disrupt its electrical field to send him into sudden cardiac arrest.

  When Nerd had finished showing me the images of the ICD implant, he had produced a taser. It was shaped like a gun, but was the type with the shiny metal nipples. I’d need to get up close, actually touch the target to deliver an electrical shock.

  “I boosted it too,” Nerd told me then, a smile brimming across his face.

  “What do you mean, boosted it?” I asked, intrigued.

  “Stun guns are normally set to deliver a fixed charge—eighteen pulses per second, lasting five seconds. So I dialed it up. A lot.”

  “How much?”

  “I reworked it so that it delivers all the juice in under two seconds. That’s almost three times the power with a delivery that is three times shorter.” His smile was easy and satisfied, but I heard hesitation in his voice.

  “But?”

  “It also means that you’ve only got one shot,” he answered, turning the stun gun around to hand it to me. “One shot. But it’ll be a hell of a shot. And hit him in the chest too. Just to make sure.”

  Pain wasn’t our usual thing, but ensuring delivery in entirety was paramount. Nerd could immediately tell I was uncomfortable with the plan. I preferred poison, which had worked well for us in the past.

  “And you boosted this to make sure he dies?”

  “Of course. Quicker delivery too. Could even be considered more humane.”

  “Won’t I get a shock?” I asked, not wanting to sound stupid but also not wanting to die trying to kill the mark.

  “Doesn’t work that way. His muscles will absorb all the electricity. None of it should pass to you.”

  “None of it should?”

  “None of it will pass to you.”

  “I’ll make the shot count. What should I expect to see?”

  Nerd sat back, closed his eyes. He was thinking. “If I had to guess, it should look like a heart attack, but I really don’t know. It could be bad, though, as in Green Mile bad where the French dude caught on fire and burned up in the electric chair.”

  “What?” I had asked, lifting my brow. “Seriously?”

  Nerd had waved off what he had said with a quiet laugh. “Kidding. But he’ll feel some punishment before his heart gives out.”

  “A punishment would be fitting, indeed,” I whispered now, emptying my mind and concentrating on Ghoul, concentrating on the hit. I felt the outline of the stun gun, recalling all the instructions Nerd had given me. Full delivery meant both steel nipples had to touch him—not just one. Both.

  Press firmly and pull the trigger, I heard in my head. Lean him against a wall if you can.

  A distant rumble sounded, taking Ghoul’s attention away from the playground. Cold air rushed over my skin as a shiver of pollen blew from the trees. A storm front was coming, and the first drop of rain hit my arm, blooming into a small wet flower before dripping away. Bruised clouds spiraled, folding into one another, turning the sky green, and filling it with a humid electrical charge. A mix of hail and thick, wet drops tinkled on the tops of cars and the pavement. The pour was slow at first but then sped up like a game-show countdown, adding to the urgency of my situation. I only had a few minutes before the heaviness of the rainstorm would wash away my chances by driving Ghoul inside.

  Parents rallied from the benches, surrounding the playground, clapping their hands, and calling out to gather their babies. The sizzle of electricity became audible as white tendrils arced rhythmically from one side of the sky to the other like a ballet dancer crossing a stage. A bright-blue charge flashed overhead and staggered downward, ripping through the air before crashing into a stand of trees just beyond the playground. Ghoul jumped, startled by the electric burst, but I kept my head down and my eyes level with his body. Parents yelled above the frightened shrieks of their children and Ghoul slumped his shoulders, realizing his opportunity was lost. His paced slowed, the enthusiasm gone from his step.

  Another lightning bolt came with a sharp clap of thunder, landing close enough to raise the small hairs on my arms. The sudden severity of the storm distracted me now. I almost let Ghoul walk by. I quickly ducked into a store’s doorway and called out to him, extending my arm into the pouring rain, pleading for his help, trying to play h
im like my first mark, the homeless man, had played me.

  Maybe he liked women too? Maybe he liked taking advantage of a damsel in distress? One could hope.

  I’d put the hook out for him to see, waving my hand, my white skin glowing in the storm’s green light. Then I baited the hook. Ghoul slowed when he reached me, staring long and hard at my dangling fingers. He ran his tongue over his lips and glanced around, uncertain. His curiosity got the better of him, and he stepped close enough for me to grab his loose collar. The doorway I had ducked into was a generously ideal fit, an alcove with all the privacy of a hidden closet. It was perfect, and it would become the scene of Ghoul’s murder.

  “What? What’re you doing?” he asked, his shoes skittering along, heel to toe, as I yanked on his shirt, manhandling him in a way that took him by surprise. “Please. Please, I don’t have very much. You can have it. You can have it all.”

  “Shut it,” I snapped. I had already drawn the stun gun from inside my jacket. I held the power of lightning in my hand—his dying grunts would supply the thunder. I wasted no time. I shoved Ghoul against the wall, as Nerd had instructed. His lungs deflated from the hard crash. I coughed and gagged at his stale-tobacco smell, but managed to drive the stun gun into his chest. The world slowed as I began the act of murder. I’d rehearsed how to do this a hundred times: lift the stun gun to the level of his chest, flip the safety, drive the metal posts into his heart.

  “What are you doing? Please—”

  Ghoul’s chest exploded in bright light and his body rocketed up and back, flattening against the alcove wall. I jumped at the sharp snap of electricity, the flash lighting up the space between us and burning the air. The smell of ozone filled the alcove as the gun’s last pulses fired. When the stun gun was spent, I dropped it to my side and pocketed it. I’d rehearsed that part too, knowing I’d take it to Neshaminy Creek later that day.