The Slayer's Apprentice

Excerpt:
Have you ever desired with passion? I don’t mean superficial passion yearned for by most men. No, the passion I’m talking about comes from far deeper within one’s soul. Not an aspect of one’s spirit, but its very core. It is not something you can switch off and on like the light of so-called love. Passion so all-consuming it feeds off every breath you draw, growing more powerful, seizing the soul in its embrace, never willing, or able, to let it go.

It’s that final look in their eyes. A final pleading look of confusion, which in that moment erases their fear. A flash of questioning: ‘Why me?’ ‘Why you?’ ‘Why now?’ ‘Why?’ It’s the final time their chest rises... falls... shudders... stops. It’s the final moment when, at my will, everything for them ceases to be. It’s that final moment which makes the build up, the hunt, the capture, and the deed, culminate into the exhilarating end.

So here you are reading this, surrounded by my work and impressed by it. Stimulated, perhaps. It gets the adrenaline pumping, doesn’t it? Your mind is already ticking over; I don’t have to be there personally to know this. You want me. At this one moment in time, you want me more than anything else you’ve ever desired. It’s a rage building inside you. I won’t stop and now you, due to my initiation, will not stop either. You can’t.

I know how God feels.

NOW you desire with the passion I feel, all because I, without even meeting you, have planted the seed. I have the upper hand. I’ll do this again, and again, and again, and again. Ad infinitum. You, and dare I say many others, are just along for the ride. In my hands, I hold the reins; in my heart, I hold the lust; in my mind, I hold the key; in my thoughts, I hold my plans; and in my deeds, I hold a captive audience.

You won’t trace me from this letter. You won’t find the blue-eyed, redheaded boy. You won’t find peace. You won’t find me.

Until we meet again.

T.C.S

***

Detective Paul Somerset placed the paper into a plastic bag and handed it over to forensics. “T.C.S.” He scoffed. “Kitsch.”

“That mean something?” inquired a uniformed police officer.

Peering sideways, Paul lifted an eyebrow. “The Crucifix Strangler, The Crucifix Slayer, The Crucifix Stalker, take your pick, Constable Lang. I highly doubt he’s been kind enough to give us his real initials.” He sidestepped the officer and re-entered the master bedroom. “Approximate time of death?”

“Coroner estimates between five and seven last night. You think it’s a ritual killing?”

“Because of the crucifix?” Paul shook his head. “I doubt it. This guy wants notoriety; he wants the media attention, a name for himself. My guess is the crucifix image is nothing more than a calling card.” Folding his arms over his chest, he craned his neck upward. “Drawn upside down on her forehead to signify the Antichrist. But he didn’t compare himself to the Devil, did he? In the letter, he made a comparison with God.”

Eight years working with Sydney’s Criminal Investigation Branch and Paul had never personally encountered a slaying quite so horrifically bizarre. In the back, a German Shepherd dog lay dead on the doorstep. Baited earlier and arranged on its back, its paws were bound with the same thick nylon cord used to strangle the three victims, its muzzle taped shut, its throat cut. In the lounge room, Colin Hilliard sat dead in an armchair, bound and gagged in a perfect replica of the deceased canine. He’d been struck in the back of the head with a blunt object, strangled, and then arranged in the armchair as though he’d died peacefully with a cup of coffee at his side. In the bedroom, his wife, Vanessa Hilliard, hung, stripped down to her underwear with no obvious sign of sexual assault. Her wrists had been slashed with only minimal blood spatter near where the body had been found. She’d then been taken into the bedroom and suspended from an exposed beam above. Unlike her husband, her body showed definite signs of a struggle, with defensive wounds on her hands and bruising across her face.

Most disturbing to Paul was a possible frightening connection between the Hilliard murders and the abduction of thirteen-year-old schoolboy, Dylan Firth, earlier in the day. ‘You won’t find the blue-eyed, redheaded boy.’ It could have been written as a taunt, taking responsibility for another heinous crime in order to boost the killer’s own ego. Paul knew T.C.S. wanted to be noticed. He wanted to play the law and flaunt his ability to elude it. A precursor, Paul feared, for more to come. He’d slain an innocent young couple in their mid-twenties, possibly abducted and murdered a child, boasted of it, and had plans to become Australia’s next most wanted serial killer. The killer had already given himself a name Paul knew he’d fully exploit at a later date. T.C.S. had arrogantly placed himself on a pedestal and likened his first crime to those that had gone down in history as the world’s most notorious. He was intelligent; the eloquent letter showed an educated man, a man who desired the police to immediately recognize this intellect. The murders would not stop until he was caught. Of that Paul could be certain.