Jeffery Deaver - Twisted - The Collected Stories of Jeffery Deaver

What the hell’s so hard about being polite? he wondered. If people behaved the way they ought to, the decent way he’d told Jessie that they behaved, the world would be different — no hate, no anger, no scared little girls. No boys afraid of their fathers, no boys growing up into anxious men.

“What time you got?” Alex asked.

The man looked at the combination compass/watch hanging on his belt. “Half past noon. Thereabouts.”

Alex nodded at a nearby picnic bench. “Mind if I have my lunch here?”

“Suit yourself.”

He sat down, opened the bag and pulled out his sandwich and apple. His hand touched something else — a piece of drawing paper, folded in quarters. Opening it, Alex felt a rush of emotion. Jessica had drawn him a picture with the colored pencils he’d bought for her birthday last month. It was of him — a square-jawed, clean-shaven man with thick black hair — reeling in a shark about ten times his size. The fish had a terrified expression on its face. Beneath it she’d written:

Fish beware... my daddy’s out there!!!

He thought fondly of his family once more and his anger dissipated. He ate the meat loaf sandwich slowly. Then opened the thermos. He was aware that the other fisherman was glancing his way. “Hey, mister, you like some coffee? My wife made it special. It’s French roast.”

“Can’t drink it. My gut.” Not smiling, glancing away. Not even thanking him. The man gathered up his tackle and walked to a tree stump, sawn off smooth about three feet above the ground, like a table, and stained with old blood. He set down the bucket he carried and pulled a fish out. He beheaded it fast, with a long, sharp knife, and slit open the slick belly, scooping out the entrails with his fingers. He pitched the head and the guts ten feet away into a cluster of waiting crows and they began to fight noisily over the wet, sticky flesh. The man tossed the cleaned carcass back into the bloody bucket.

Alex looked around and saw they were completely alone. The only sound was the faint lapping of lake water, the caws of the mad crows. He started to take a bite of sandwich but the sight of the birds ripping apart the slick entrails sickened him and he shoved the food away.

It was then that he noticed a piece of paper on the ground. It had apparently been blown off a message board at the picnic area or been pulled down by the rain. He was curious and walked over, picked it up. Though the sheet was water stained he could still make out the words. The notice wasn’t from Fishery and Game, as he’d thought. It was from the county sheriff.

He felt a fast, uneasy twist within him as he read the stark words. The notice offered a reward of $50,000 for information about the killer of four individuals in and around Wolf Lake State Park over the past six months. They’d all been knifed to death, but robbery wasn’t the apparent motive — only a few valuables were missing. The deaths were thought to have been caused by the same man who’d killed two hikers in a Connecticut state park last month. No one had gotten a good look at him, though one witness described him as in his mid-forties and slim.

Alex’s skin felt hot and he looked up toward the fisherman.

He was gone.

But his tackle wasn’t. The man had simply left everything there and vanished into the woods. Almost everything, that is. Alex noted that he’d taken his knife with him.

The notice from the sheriff’s department fell from his hand. Alex studied the forest again, a full circle. No sign. No sound.

Alex gulped down the coffee he now had no taste for and took a deep breath. Calm down, he instructed himself harshly. Calm, calm, calm...

“Don’t go, Daddy... Please.”

He screwed the thermos back together, watching his hands shake fiercely. Was that a snap in the woods behind him? But he couldn’t tell; the sound of anxiety roared in his head. Alex started along the path through rocks that led deeper into the forest.

He got only a few yards.

His $300 L.L. Bean boots slid off a smooth piece of granite and he tumbled into a shallow ravine. His tackle box fell open and the contents scattered onto the damp ground. Alex landed on his feet but pitched forward into a rock and rolled onto his back, cradling his leg. He cried out.

Moaning loudly, he rocked back and forth. “Oh, it hurts... Oh, God...”

Then, a shuffle of feet. The scrawny fisherman was looking over the rock at him. His face was flecked with blood from the energetic fish cleaning. Behind him the crows cawed madly.

“My ankle,” Alex gasped.

“I’ll come help ya,” he said slowly. “Don’t you move.”

But rather than climbing down the short distance Alex had fallen, the man disappeared behind a tall outcropping of rock.

Alex moaned again. He started to call out to the man but he stopped. He listened carefully and heard nothing. But a moment later the man’s footsteps began to approach, from behind — he’d circled around and was walking toward Alex through a narrow alley between two huge rocks.

Still clutching his leg with his hands, he felt his heart pounding with the dreaded anxiety. Alex slid around so that he’d be facing the man when he arrived.

The footsteps grew closer.

“Hello?” Alex called in a gasp.

No response.

The sound of boots on sand became boots on rocks as the disheveled man approached. He carried a small metal box in his left hand.

He paused, standing directly above Alex, looking him over. Then he said, “Too bad I went to get my lunch outa my truck just now.” He nodded at the metal box. “I coulda told you these rocks’re slipperier than eels. There’s a safer way round. Now, don’t you worry. I was a medic for a time. Lemme take a look at that ankle of yours.” He crouched down and added, “Do apologize lookin’ at you like you was from outer space, mister. Since them killings started I check out everybody comes here pretty close.”

Have you ever been in a fight, Daddy ?

“Don’t you worry, now,” the man muttered, focusing on Alex’s leg, “you’ll be right as rain in no time.”

No, sweetheart, I hate fighting... I’d much rather catch ’em by surprise...

Alex leapt to his feet, sweeping up his own knife. He stepped behind the astonished fisherman, caught him in a neck lock. He smelled unclean hair, dirty clothes and the piquant scent of fish entrails. He jammed the staghorn knife into the man’s gut. The man’s voice wailed in a piercing scream.

As he worked the blade leisurely up to the shuddering man’s breastbone, Alex was pleased to find, as with his other victims, here and in Connecticut, that the anxiety that’d been boiling within him vanished immediately — just about the moment they died. He also noted that playing the injured fisherman was still an effective way to put his victims at ease. True, he was still a bit concerned about the sheriff’s department notice — somebody must’ve gotten a glimpse of him around the time of the last murder. Oh, well, he joked to himself, he’d just have to find himself a new fishin’ hole. Maybe it was time to try Jersey.

He slowly eased the man to the ground, where he lay on his back, quivering. Alex glanced toward the road but the park was still deserted. He bent low and examined the man carefully, a pleasant smile on Alex’s face. No, he wasn’t quite dead yet though he soon would be, perhaps before the crows started to work on him.

Perhaps not.

Alex climbed back up to the path and had a second cup of coffee — this one he enjoyed immensely; Sue was truly a master with the espresso maker. Then he cleaned the blood off the knife meticulously. Not only because he didn’t want any evidence to connect him to the crime but simply because Alex had learned his lesson well; he always oiled, dried and sharpened.