Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 129571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
“Yes, sir.” He hurried away and stood in the doorway.
Her voice sounded from the hallway. “I got this, Soldier Boy. Keep it moving down the hallway. Chase, keep your men away from me.”
He turned to me. I waved him away. The guard left her alone and went to the office.
Scanning the drums and not even able to walk to close to them, I headed to Benny’s office myself, but not before checking the room that Sophia explored, while I traveled by. She held a large garbage bag in her hand and piled stacks of twenty dollar bills into the close to full bag.
Money. Of course.
I stopped right there. “Really?”
“He’ll be dead by the time he returns.”
“Will he?”
“I believe in you.”
“Or you needed me to get access into his apartment.”
“How I wish it was just that simple.” Laughter fled from her lips as she piled in some more.
“Mr. Stone,” one of the guards called out to me.
I gave up on her and dragged myself to the sick bastard’s office. “What?”
A large wooden desk sat in the center of what would’ve been used as a bedroom. Here there was no freshly-done gray walls, just cracking blueish-green paint. Carvings had been made into the wood. They resembled biology test exams—figures of body parts with the names labeled, faces marked out, slashed out diagrams of bugs eating on cut off legs.
This is how a psycho doodles. He carves dumb shit into wood.
“These journals have your name on them, sir.” The guard handed me five heavy notebooks. Each one held a picture of me, one cut out from a magazine. “He’s a fan.”
The other guard laughed. “Funny, sir.”
I glared at him. “This isn’t a Law and Order episode. When people die, they die, not open their eyes, get up off the floor, and then go for a coffee break. This is real life. This man will kill you. He’s already cut off ten of my best hired men’s heads. Do your job and you’ll be safe. See this situation as a joke, and you’ll just be another head that I have removed from my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
I snatched the books from them and flipped through the pages. Every sheet held clear handwriting in blue ink. Benny took his time with his words. Each sentence had a rhythm to it. The sick bastard could actually write.
Too bad it’s all about killing me. Five notebooks and all you can do is describe how you would do it.
I gave them back to the guard. “Keep these. Have them all read tonight. Maybe, we’ll learn something.”
A bookshelf stood in the far end. I headed over to it as they rummaged through his desk some more.
What does a pyscho like to read in his garden of decomposed bodies?
The first shelf was typical, almost a big stereotype. I rolled my eyes.
The Catcher in the Rye. Really? Don’t be the stereotype, Benny. Aim higher.
Some of the most famous shootings had been connected to Salinger’s novel. After Mark Chapman killed John Lennon, the cops arrested him and found a copy of the Catcher in the Rye on him. He’d bought it that day.
I scanned the rest of the shelf. Benny had biographies on all the master sickos—Gacy to Dahmer, Bundy to the Son of Sam. On the second shelf, religious books sat there—from the Bible to the Quran, Torah to the Buddhist Sutras, and more and more.
Never saw you as a spiritual man.
More notebooks stood at the top of the shelf. I extended my hand and grabbed the first one. The cover read, Volume One.
I opened the page and read,
1986—How it all began.
“Perverts.” I gulped my glass of scotch, swallowed it whole, and crunched on the ice until they were tiny bits of shards against my tongue. “Perverts. The whole lot.”
Scar grunted. He never had much to say, and when he did usually a person was getting their flesh opened by his fingers. People respected Scar’s silence, most scattering away from him instantly when he entered the area. When he hung with me, many calmed. As if I could ever control a monster, like I had some sort of chain to a seething dragon bursting with violence and fighting to get out. Things like that were funny to me ...
I stopped and stared at Benny’s writing. “Are you writing your life story?”
“Huh?” one of the guards asked.
“Nothing.”
I read some more.
... If they only knew, the only thing that stopped Scar from killing was money. He took life for funds and would kill anybody. I watched him choke his older sister until there was no breath left to escape those pretty nostrils. She’d slept with one of the bosses and then broke his heart. There’s never been a man in history that didn’t kill over pure embarrassment. She had to go, and what better way to truly get the bitch back, but to order her own brother to murder her. That was the type of people I worked for.