Page 59 of Ricochet

How quickly a man could be reduced to an animal. A psychopath, disconnecting all sense of morals.

With some wrangling, his ear came loose, and I held it up like a trophy, while his guttural cries reverberated throughout the building. “Perhaps you’re not hearing me, Jalen. I don’t give a fuck how sorry you are.”

Coughing and choking broke his screams, and I tossed his bloody ear in his face. Three years ago, I’d have been appalled by such a crime. Sickened.

Right then, I felt nothing. Except raw.

I couldn’t look at the guy without seeing my wife—the tears streaming down her face. Begging them to stop. The helplessness knotted my stomach, and my hands balled into fists at my sides.

I took deep breaths. Tamp it down. His death was supposed to be slow and merciless, like the many hours he’d tortured her.

Can’t. I’d clamped my teeth so hard it felt as if they’d crumble in my mouth.

I unchained then lifted his hands, keeping the cuffs attached to his wrists, and strung his arms across the flat surface, as I rounded the hydraulic press to the side opposite of where he sat. “Ever watch how bullets are made?”

My question was met by the increasing intensity of his whimpers.

“I always thought they melted the lead to mold a bullet.” A good tug on the chain killed his pathetic mewling. “They don’t! A heavy billet of lead is loaded into a press, and using a shit ton of pressure, they form it by compressing the metal together.” I slapped my hands together, and as the chains rattled, he flinched, before his lips quivered then soured with his sobbing. “Interesting shit.”

Returning to his side, I knelt to the floor. “So, you’re an arms dealer, huh? Ever wonder what they’d call you if you didn’t have arms?” At the reverberating pitch of his scream, I smiled, reveling in his obvious fear—the same horrific sound that had torn from my chest just moments before the bullet hit my wife and son. “The fucking irony, right? You might want to go by arms broker after this.” My laughter bounced off the walls.

“Please don’t … do this, man. Whatever you want … I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“The night you broke into my house, you had a choice. Of right and wrong.” I gripped the lever of the press. “You chose wrong.”

Closing my eyes summoned the blackness from the dark shadows of my mind. His screams jarred my muscles to flip the switch.

CHAPTER 27

Chief Cox

“So, who called on this one?” Cox circled the man strapped to a chair with his forehead pressed against the hydraulic machine. Like the first two crime scenes, Eye for an Eye had been painted near the victim, in this case, across the machine above him.

“First shift. One of the factory workers found him.” Burke knelt beside him, as the coroner tipped the man’s head back. “Looks like he was beaten pretty bad. His face is swelled up like a balloon. Ear’s been cut clean off.”

“He has swelling all throughout,” the coroner said as he continued his exam. “Compartment syndrome. Often the case in crushing injuries.”

Burke peered up at the bullet wound just above where the guy’s ear used to be. “Gunshot to the head. What’d you say, that’s a twenty-two, Chief?”

“Probably.” Cox turned to the manager and owner of the building, both keeping their distance outside of the investigation circle. “Can we flip this on? We want to lift this press. See what we got under here.”

“Yeah, there’s a switch. On the side of it.”

“You ready?” Cox directed the question to the coroner, still manipulating the man’s face with gloved hands.

“Yes.”

With that, Cox signaled for the manager to fire up the machine, and a burst of air preceded the lift of the press.

“Ah, fuck! Fuck!” Burke spun around, hand covering his mouth, as the gore beneath was revealed. “Who the fuck?”

“You throw up on my crime scene, and I’ll have you filling out parking tickets until you fucking retire,” Cox barked.

“Crushing injury to both arms and hands.” The coroner continued with his assessment, dictating as he examined the victim. “Bones appear to be completely broken, comminuted fracture, I’d say no more than one inch fragments. Skin is split, exposing the fascia beneath. Joint capsules and ligaments appear to have ruptured, dislocating the joint altogether.”

Blood coated the surface of the press, over the edges and onto the floor, but trapped in the crushed hand, beneath a sickly twisted, thick finger, Cox eyed a white scrap. “Gimme the tweezers, Burke.” After donning a pair of gloves, he lifted the scrap like a game of Operation.

Unfolding it revealed the number three.