Chapter Two
Drip. Drip. Drip, drip, drip, drip.
The blood was starting to flow easier now. It was flowing from all of the shallow cuts I’d already made, but it wasn’t fast enough. I had shit to do, and I needed this subject to die already so I could move on with my day.
The bastard had already told me what I’d been paid to find out. He was the one who had molested all of those children at his Baptist Church in Georgia. As the music minister, he’d worked with the kids in the community on plays and musicals the church had done. He’d invited the less privileged kids from struggling communities to participate, paying for their costumes and giving special time to some forrehearsals. But he had really just been grooming all of them for his sick and twisted purposes.
The Preacher and the parents thought he was a saint, and the kids thought he was their last chance at acceptance and inclusion. He was a wolf among the sheep. When one of the kids told someone, the shit hit the fan, but he was never charged with a crime. None of those kids would testify against him, so there was nothing to be done. Except that wasn’t altogether true.
The Mayor of Mayvale, who was a member of the church, had held a closed meeting of the deacons. They decided to take justice into their own hands, so they quietly passed the plate and raised enough to hire me.
And now I was watching Brother Dwight slowly bleed out onto my concrete floor after confessing to every heinous thing he had done to the girls and boys of Mayvale Baptist. It hadn’t taken much more than the kidnapping, the road trip in my trunk, and the hour of cutting his naked flesh with a serrated hunting knife. One long slice on his thigh by his balls had been the thing to make him spill all the details. He even gave me the video information he’d sold online.
They hadn’t paid for it, but I was going to go onto the Dark Web and trace the videos he uploaded, and destroy the ones I could find. And when I had extra time between clients, I’d have a list of pedophiles to hunt. I liked to stay busy. Idle hands were the devil’s playground, after all.
The subject was slumping in the wooden chair I had in the middle of the otherwise empty room. The shallow wounds were slowly seeping now. Deciding to hurry the process along, I took the knife and walked slowly toward him. Hearing me approach, he opened his eyes and tried to raise his head, but it just flopped back onto the top of the ladder back of the chair.
“Just let me go, please. I won’t do it again, I promise. I’ve learned my lesson. I swear.”
This piece of shit actually thought he had a chance of leaving here alive. I had to laugh at his delusion, but it didn’t register as more than a slight smile. He must have thought that was a positive sign because he kept going,
“I know I’ll never do it again. I’m disgusted by what I’ve done. Honest.”
I grabbed a handful of his thinning hair and yanked his head up from the chair back. Sliding the tip of my knife under his chin, I pushed the sharp blade angled down against his jugular until he raised his eyes and meet mine. When I held him in my silver gaze, I showed him what a liar he was.
“You’re disgusted by what you did, huh? Nope, don’t try to talk because if you move, you’ll slice your own throat, you sick fuck.”
He stilled for a few seconds but then tried to swallow, flinching when he felt the blade cut into his paling flesh.
“You fucking idiot,” I breathed out. Then continued louder, “So, you didn’t love touching those little girls and boys? You don’t want to feel those little hands and little mouths on your skin again? You never want to look at those videos you made and remember what it felt like to wield that power over your victims?”
The whole time I was talking, the subject’s eyes held mine, but they began to glaze over, and the pupils blew wide open. The nail in his coffin was his cock trying to rise in his lap at the thoughts I was putting into his head. He didn’t have enough blood left in his body to get hard, but even a twitch was enough to convict him in my mind. And in this room, I was judge and jury.
“That’s what I thought, you sick fucking pedophile. You’re never going to hurt another child. I’m happy to make that a reality. Say hi to the devil for me and tell him I’ll be there eventually.”
The blade slid smooth and clean through his throat. The gurgles that came from him drowning in his own blood was what made me finally crack a smile. Once the bastard was finally fucking dead, I cleaned my blade, returning it to its drawer, then got busy getting rid of the body. After wrapping him in plastic, I hoisted the body up on my shoulder, climbed the back stairs out of the basement, and carried him out into the woods behind the cabin.
I believed in chemical and biodegradable body removal. Placing them in a tub hidden by a small blind and covering them with chemicals to liquefy the body was the best way I’d found to get rid of them quickly and as cleanly as possible. The bubbling was always so cool to watch at first.
Living in southern Oregon allowed me the freedom and isolation I needed for this job and gave me the acreage for my greenhouses for my other business, my cover business. Genetically modified marijuana was in high demand for cancer patients, and I had patented my own strain a few years ago. They were the best for patients who had no toleration for other medicines or drugs. Both jobs were turning out to be very lucrative.
As I was placing the latest subject into the tub behind the blind, my phone began to ring. I was so startled, I dropped the body and half of him landed on the ground, cracking his back over the edge of the tub.
Fuck, bet that hurt.
I chuckled into the empty woods, then answered the phone.
“What.”
Yeah, that was the way I always answered the phone. Sue me.
“Hey, my man, It’s Jeremiah. What ya doing?”
“Jeremiah, hey, what’s wrong?”
“Dude, always the same, even in high school. You always think something’s wrong if I’m calling you. Can’t I just call to shoot the shit with my best friend?”
“Well, yeah, I guess you can, but you never do. You always call when you have news, and you know I always think it’s bad news, sooo.”
