• 4:27 A.M. APRIL 3 – COLLINS’ HOME
    Peter Collins woke to the annoying, repetitive ring of his telephone. Naturally, he looked to his clock, blinking until the red box-digits came into focus against the black. “Why do they have to call me in this early?” he wondered aloud. Waiting for another ring, he then reached for the phone, pushed talk, and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” he mumbled groggily.
    “Lieutenant Collins,” it was his boss, Chief Simon Jacobson. He sighed, “We got another one.”
    “Our artist again?” Collins asked. Jacobson said nothing, but he didn’t have to. After getting an address, he said, “I’m on my way.”
    He dressed, slipped his badge in his pocket, and put his gun in its hostler. Then he walked out to his car to the sixth victim of a serial killer.


    4:38 A.M. APRIL 3 – TEN-TEN HIGHWAY
    Tired, not thinking clearly, Collins thought it might be okay if he went 80 on an empty highway with a 65 mph speed limit. His thoughts sharpened when a siren wailed shortly behind him. “Damn,” he breathed.
    Sighing, he pulled over, and moments later found a flashlight in his face. “License and registration, please, sir,” the Traffic officer said.
    Instead, Collins pulled out his badge. “I’m with Robbery/Homicide on my way to a scene of a—.”
    “License and registration, sir.” Collins noticed the rougher tone and the absence of the word “please.” The Robbery/Homicide and Traffic departments never got along well. And Traffic happened to be the stronger bearers of the grudge.
    The Lieutenant scoffed, but pulled out his wallet and handed the other officer the cards. Seconds later he was slipping them back in his wallet—with a ticket. “Have a nice day.”


    4:54 A.M. APRIL 3 – CRIME SCENE: SIXTH VICTIM
    Collins finally pulled up to the crime scene. He was greeted by Jacobson. “Oh, that was fast; I only called you almost an hour ago,” the chief complained.
    “I…was held up.” There was no reason for details.
    “Hmm, nice car,” he complimented the newly polished, black 1971 Pontiac GTO Collins had just bought and had emplaced with the hidden lights and siren.
    “Thanks,” he glanced at a folder in the chief’s hand. “Is that the artwork?”
    “Yes, it is,” his superior replied slowly. He acted as if to give it to Collins, then jerked it back from the other’s reaching hands, saying, “Oh, you need gloves.”
    Collins bent into his car to retrieve a par of gloves from the storage compartment. “So far the guy hasn’t missed a step and you think he’s gonna slack now? The only thing forensics have found on anything is fabric fibers or latex.”
    “We might get lucky, but you don’t want your paw prints on it when forensics takes it.”
    “True,” Collins agreed, stuffing his hands in the gloves, then took the folder. Just like the other folders holding the drawings, the word “FRIENDS” was written in a blue marker on the front.
    “Before we move on to the body, I want you to see the copies of the other pictures together,” Jacobson said. Conveniently, his SUV was just a few yards away, with the back open to reveal five other drawings copied onto white paper. Collins glanced at each one and then back to the new painting he held.
    “Uh…well, they all have blue eyes, Caucasian; um…what are their ages again?”
    “All under twenty-one,” the chief replied.
    “Okay, let’s go to the body.”
    Collins followed Jacobson to the young girl’s body. “Nicole Roberts, twenty years old. She had her driver’s license and a Duke University ID card.”
    Collins kneeled beside her body. Her expression in the painting was the same as what he was looking at. “Chief, look at this,” he said, holding the painting by her head. “It’s almost exactly the same.”
    “Or maybe…well, yeah. I’ve heard of people like that. They think that to capture the ‘true life’, the true essence of what we are, we must die. Maybe he thought that he must kill his subject before he painted her.”
    The image disturbed Collins slightly. “Or he placed the girl in the expression he painted her in.”
    “No, no, no, no. Look at this. The eyes are just as they are in the picture. Her hair is as if it was in the wind, and her hand is holding just a bit of it. Look at the picture: her eyes are wide and blank, just as they are here. Her arm is bruised, and, though it is slightly exaggerated, it is bruised in the picture. Besides, in the picture, as she is here, her neck is at a slightly uncomfortable angle to hold for the amount of time it takes to draw or paint a picture of such extraordinary detail.” To Collins, it seemed as if he was almost complimenting the murderer artist. “I’ve always had a thing for art,” Jacobson mumble under his breath, barely loud enough for Collins to here.
    “Doesn’t seem like ‘true life’ to me,” Collins grimaced.
    “Let’s move on.”
    “Let’s see, three stab wounds in the torso, but no blood splatter, so she didn’t die here. If he did paint her here, she was already dead when she was painted.” He sighed, and then groaned.
    “Are you feeling alright, Lieutenant?”
    “Yeah, I just had a really disturbing image. So, anyway, do you think he kills all of them in the same place and brings them to random places?”
    “Yes, now look under her nails.”
    “Red paint. Car?”
    “That’s what we think,” Jacobson answered.
    “Now, I wonder how many people have a red car in the Raleigh/Durham area? Wait—what’s this?” He turned her arm over to find an imprint. “Mustang. A red Mustang. Well, that really narrows it down. It could be hers for all we know.”
    “Maybe it’s his, and he slacked this time.”
    “Yeah, maybe, but not nearly enough.”


    6:11 P.M. APRIL 5 – CRIME SCENE: SEVENTH VICTIM
    Collin yet again parked at a crime scene. Ducking under the police tape, he put on his gloves, which he had remembered this time. He did not look at the picture for any longer than it took to see if her features matched the others. It did: white, young, and with blue eyes.
    There was something else familiar about it. When he reached the body, he knew what it was.
    The many different highlights and hair colorings, along with her thin eyebrows and perfectly formed face could only belong to his younger brother’s fiancée. He had met her only once, but it was certain.
    Collins knew he had a job to do, and he would have to ignore his brother’s relation with her for this part of the job. His brother would be added to the lengthy suspect list afterwards.
    Trying to stay on task, he examined her body to find again three stab wounds and, as usual, no blood splatter, but…
    “Do you have anything, Lieutenant?” Jacobson asked from behind.
    Before he spoke, Collins made certain his voice was under control. “She resisted. I’m not sure how bad it is, but she fought back and scratched him. There’s blood under her fingernails.”
    “It could be from someone else, but if it is the killer, we may yet have a chance of catching him. Send it to the guys at the lab.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “If you’ll excuse me, I have…an appointment,” Jacobson said. It had been hardly noticeable, but Collins caught the small pause. As his boss turned away, he noticed other things: a scratch on his wrist partially covered with a bandage, dry paint on his fingers, and the top of a blue marker peeking from his pocket.
    Collins took the folder he had placed on the ground, opened it up, and studied her eyes. He thought he saw it on her otherwise blank face, and the picture confirmed it: there was pain. She might not have been dead when she was painted. Anger and sorrow swelled in his throat, but he tried to swallow it.
    He watched as the chief closed his car door, started the engine, and began to drive away. “Sergeant Stephens,” he said to one of the officers.
    “Yes, sir?”
    “Take over for now, I’ve need to check something, and I’m not exactly sure how long I’ll be. If I’m not back by the time you head back to the station, put the information on my desk and I’ll file the report. And tell one of the lab nerds to get a sample of the blood under her fingernails; I want the DNA results no later than tomorrow morning.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Then Collins climbed into his car and followed his superior at a distance.


    6:17 P.M. APRIL 5 – BANKS RD.
    Chief Jacobson in fact did have an appointment, though it was later that afternoon. In the rearview mirror, he saw the familiar car matching his speed, careful not to come too close: Lieutenant Collins. The murderer had slacked this time. First by letting the girl scratch him, second by getting paint on his hands, but what he didn’t know was the third—but far from final—mistake: he pissed off his best-shooting lieutenant, also a lieutenant that excelled at getting needed answers from anyone submitted to him…quickly. The best in the department at both.
    Collins might have seen the paint, Jacobson wouldn’t know until he faced the other, but he had no intention of taking the chance.
    He stepped on the gas a little harder, and when he looked into the rearview mirror again, he saw Collins had turned on his hidden flashing lights, and he was catching up.
    Jacobson now knew his cover was blown, he’d been discovered, and Collins was determined to send him away into darkness. Now he stomped the pedal to the floor, and turned his own lights on. His radio crackled to life, “Chief,” it was Collins’ voice, and it was far from anything happy. “I suggest you just give up now. I’ve got you caught, but what you don’t know…what y-you don’t know is…” Jacobson heard the other trying to contain emotion within himself. “What you don’t know is that the girl back there, she was engaged to my brother.”
    Jacobson hissed. What twisted chance was it that she would come to him for a portrait? That was why he was so ticked. “Lieutenant, back the hell off,” he spat.
    “Sorry Chief, no can do.”
    “Lieutenant—!” he began, but knew he would be shouting into an empty radio.
    At he turned onto Fanny Brown Rd. the sheer speed causing his car to fishtail, but he was able to quickly set the car straight and speed towards Ten-Ten.
    Soon after turning onto the road, he found a line of traffic, packed a half-mile from the traffic light at 401. He slammed the brake; the car skidded, and crashed into another car, bounced off, and hit an oil tanker. Steam rose from the hood along with a small fire.
    Jacobson kicked open the door, but before getting out, he made sure he had both side arms, then scrambled into the back seat, opening a long, rectangular black case. He removed a Remington Model 870 12 gage shotgun and an M-4, along with four extra clips and two dozen shells which he stuffed into various pockets. Both were meant for military use in combat, but not everything was used for exactly what it was meant for.


    6:24 P.M. APRIL 5 – TEN-TEN RD, NEAR INTERSECTION WITH HIGHWAY 401
    Collins watched, somewhat in horror as the Chief slammed into the other car and then the oil truck, but at the moment he was too angered for it to affect him. He swerved so the passenger’s side of the car was facing the crash, rolled down the window, and stepped outside. From where he crouched, he saw the Chief’s door open, and moments later he appeared—ready for an all-out personal war between them.
    Light and bullets burst from the M-4’s barrel, and Collins slammed his back onto the car as the projectiles littered the other side of his car. “Damn, I just bought this thing!” he breathed. The barrage of bullets ended, and he took the chance to look above the hood. His superior stood, looking through a scope, and he ducked just in time before five or six rounds went off, slamming into the inches from where his head was seconds before. Another bombardment went off, slamming into his car, which shook from the impacts.
    Collins nodded in frustration that added to his anger. “Twenty-five grand, twenty-five damned grand, and three days later it gets in a gunfight.”
    The shooting stopped, but this time he didn’t risk looking over his car. Seconds later, it began again. “How much ammo does he have?” he wondered aloud after yet again it stopped and restarted.
    Soon, that clip was out, or he at least stopped, and Collins heard, “Damn it!” and then metal hitting the pavement. After waiting five seconds in silence, Collins held his gun ready and leaped out of cover. Jacobson was running along the side of the road towards the intersection, about half a mile away.
    Collins leaned into his car, and shouted into the radio, “Suspect on foot, umm, it’s, uh, he’s Chief Simon Jacobson, on foot alongside Ten-Ten Rd. going towards Highway 401. Requesting immediate assistance. Repeat; suspect Simon Jacobson on foot on Ten-Ten Rd. heading for Highway 401, requesting immediate assistance, over.
    The radio’s reply was silence. “Damn!” he had forgotten that he’d turned the radio off. Rather than turning it on and repeating it all again, he left the radio and ran to where Jacobson had been. He found the M-4 on the ground with half a clip left and another clip laying next to it. “That’s odd,” he said then looked into the car. “Holy s**t!” he exclaimed. In the open case were the weapons remaining in the arsenal, including a rocket launcher, two sniper rifles, another M-4 equipped with a grenade launcher….
    Then he saw the fire and the slowly growing pool of oil spilling from a crack in the tanker. A pool becoming dangerously near the fire.
    Collins raced the oil, and then a small sound captured his attention—a little girl left in the car. Her mother and father were dead in the front seat from the collision, but she was perfectly fine. Collins glanced at the oil; he was far from heroic, and if Jacobson hadn’t gone so deep to him personally, he would have just called him in instead of chasing him.
    Finally conscience won over better judgment, and he race to the car. It was locked. “Unlock the door!” he shouted, but she shied away from him. “Damn,” he breathed, and broke the window with the butt of his gun, unlocked the door, opened it, and offered the girl his hand. “Come here, it’s okay,” he tried to get her to come, but dealing with children wasn’t his strongpoint; she tried to flatten herself against the opposite door.
    He glanced at the oil approaching the fire, and new it was now or never, but he couldn’t leave her; it wasn’t only her age or that she was about to explode if she stayed, but there was something familiar about her, something close, but he didn’t recognize what that thing was and he’d never seen her before. Grabbing her arm, he dragged the struggling girl out of the car and carried her while running as quickly as he possibly could. There was a drainage ditch at the side of the road, if he could only…
    The oil lit and exploded, forcing him to jump, and fortunately he landed in the ditch. He was further fortunate that he was able to spin in his desperate leap so that he didn’t land on and crush the girl.
    “Ow!” she exclaimed, somehow totally oblivious to the explosion and fiery hunks of metal. All her attention was focused on her elbow, which was scraped. “My elbow hurts!”
    “Yeah, yeah, kid, let’s go,” he picked her up and carried her away from the wreckage. In the back of Jacobson’s car, free rounds heated and flew off, and then there was another explosion as the rockets and everything else caught fire, and the car flipped over backwards, skidding towards Collins’. At the moment, he was too busy to care.


    6:41 P.M. APRIL 5 – HARRIS TEETERS PARKING LOT, 401/TEN-TEN INTERSECTION
    Collins was certainly faster that Jacobson, even while carrying the girl. As he neared the intersection, he found his superior running across the parking lot, heading towards the Harris Teeters entrance with a shotgun. Collins went after him, once reaching the parking lot he searched for a place to hide the girl. He found a propane tank at the side of the building, and sped towards it. Letting her down, he said, “Stay right here. I’m chasing a very bad person, and once I’ve caught him, I’ll come back and get you, but until then, you’ll be safest here.” He searched her eyes to see if she understood, “Okay?”
    “Okay,” she answered.
    Good, Collins thought to himself, and then continued his pursuit of his criminal and crooked hypocrite. As soon as he neared the door, the glass shattered, the sound of crashing glass blending with screams from inside.
    “Collins, just go away, let it be, Collins!”
    “Sorry, sir,” he called, checking his gun to see if there was a fresh, ready round, though he did it needlessly, knowing there was, but nervousness prompted him to be extra careful. “You know I can’t do that.”
    “I know. You’ve never exactly been righteous, but I’ve always known you as a goodie do-right boy, an awful stickler to the rules. You can be an annoying son of a b**** sometimes, with your do-good attitude, though. Y’know, I’ve always wondered, is the reason you’re so good at interrogating suspects—is it because you feel sorry, or even guilty, about your sister’s death? Is it because you’ve always put the blame on yourself, as if it were your fault?” he taunted.
    Collins remembered the masked men seven years ago; he was nineteen, taking his sixteen-year-old brother and seventeen-year-old sister to get some ice cream. To avoid traffic lights, he had taken some back roads. They were at a stop sign, only one car’s approaching headlights in sight. Andrea and Michael were laughing, the latter rather hysterically, at a joke that Collins had always told them yet always worked; a joke he hadn’t told since. Her red hair unique in the family, green eyes and warm smile, so full of innocence and happiness. That was another thing unique to her: she always found joy in everything, letting anyone feel…welcome. Her eyes were always filled with joy and there was sometimes a particular twinkle residing in them, letting you know she was about to do something. He remembered watching those eyes and smile. First bright and filled with her joy, then turning into pained surprise, and then only pain. He remembered her crying in that pain, choking on her own sobs, choking on her own blood. Screaming. A red stain growing on her shirt just inches below her left shoulder from where the bullet had embedded itself deep inside her. Screaming, crying out in pain.
    He remembered jumping out of his car, running around and gently taking her from the car while telling Michael to grab his cell phone and call 9-1-1, telling him to read the police the names on the road sign. He held her neck with his hand, supporting her back with his leg while putting pressure on her wound with his free hand. Somewhere she had found the strength to stop screaming, somewhere she found the ability to concentrate past the pain and lay a gentle, smooth hand on his. “Tell mom and dad I love them, and tell Michael, too.”
    “I will,” he had tried suppressing the emotions; he was supposed to comfort her, and he couldn’t break down. Yet somehow it happened the other way around. “I will, I will.”
    “And Peter…” she huffed, her breathing labored.
    “Yes, I’m here,” he sniffed, losing ground to his emotion, “I’m here Andrea." His throat burned, and his eyes stung.
    “I…I love you, too…Peter.” She was somehow able to smile, and then closed her eyes with a heavy sigh.
    “Andrea? Andrea! No, Andrea, come back, don’t leave, don’t leave Andrea! An-dre-a!” he sobbed, then unable to find his voice, he breathed, “Come back, please.” He lifted her lifeless forehead to his. Her face was already turning pale from lack of blood from her no longer pumping heart. He refused to believe she was dead; she couldn’t be dead! Yet her still chest and breathlessness tried proving him wrong, telling him he was only refusing the obvious—refusing the callous, hardhearted truth.
    He remembered watching two men dressed in dark clothing, though not necessarily black, disappearing into the night’s secretive arms of darkness.
    Then Jacobson brought him back to reality by saying, “That’s why I hired you, Collins: pity. I saw your name in the paper the next day, and remembered it even those years later when you came to the station looking for a job. Pity had gotten the best of me. Well, I guess it’s only descent if I tell you the murderer of you sister, since you’re already going to kill me. That was the most remote area around there, and the murderer and his partner were jumping someone who owed them money. Well, the two were surprised when the car headlights hit them, but you didn’t see them. The man got away, and the shooter took his anger out on your sister. You’ll be happy to know they caught his partner, at least.” Then, in a lower voice that was obviously meant to be heard by Collins yet spoken as if under his breath, Jacobson said, “Damn, he still owes me seventeen grand.” Implying what Collins feared.
    Emotion again swelled in his throat, but Collins held it back. Jacobson had always excelled in inspiring emotion in suspects from scraps of information, causing them to become reckless. Once it became evident Collins wasn’t falling for it, he snarled, “Collins!” and shot at where he hid behind the wall.
    Amidst the screams, Collins heard a gun c**k, quick footsteps, and a shell hitting the tile floor. He scrambled up and chased the Chief. Before going into the aisle Jacobson had vanished into, he called to the bystanders, “Is everyone alright? Is anyone hurt?”
    The frightened people were too nervous to answer, and he never expected them to, so he just continued on, yelling “Call the police!.” Jacobson was waiting for him at the opposite end, and once Collins appeared he fired, fortunately Collins had seen him and ran into cover. The shrapnel blasted into the customer service desk. Another c**k, and another shell hit the floor. Collins stood and began running around through the adjacent aisle, just in time to avoid another shot that had been aimed for his hidden legs of which the fragments bore holes into the tile floor. If he had waited another second, he would’ve been hit, and rendered unable to run. Easy prey, the type Jacobson liked.
    Collins and Jacobson weaved around the store, the first conserving bullets and the latter wasting his shells recklessly. There was a point at which Collins thought he heard the other laughing. Soon, Jacobson ran out of ammo for his shotgun, so he threw it aside and took out his side arms; the one from his waist and under his pants leg by his foot.
    He’s wasting ammunition like crazy, Collins thought, and then realized, maybe he doesn’t care if he dies. Maybe…maybe he wants to die.
    In some perverse fate, the little girl found Collins. He was waiting for Jacobson at the back of the store when she pulled on his shirt. “Mister” she said, “Mister, I have to go to the bathroom. Can I stop hiding now?”
    He was about to tell her to run to the front and ask someone there, but he was stopped as he saw Jacobson appear. As he moved to shoot, he thought he could see Jacobson’s finger squeeze the trigger, but he certainly saw the flash and felt the bullet’s piercing sting. It went through his left arm, and, not stopped by bone, continued into his lower torso where it was slowed to its stop.
    Collins shortly blacked out, just shortly, but when his eyes opened, he found Jacobson standing behind the little girl. Then Collins saw what was so familiar about the girl: her flaming red hair and the joyous face that young ones had even when they were sad, if she was older years older, she could easily be Andrea’s look-alike. He looked defiantly into the dark barrel, then up at his superior, his captor, just as defiantly.
    “Sorry, Collins, but I offered you every chance in the world to go away, and in return you’d know I’d disappear, since after this my face will be in every police station and federal building in the nation. You decided to be a jackass, just because you wanted to, and now, the same thing’s gonna happen as before, with the minor exception than you won’t be walking away alive.” Lowering the gun for a moment, he smirked, “Any last words?”
    “Yeah,” Collins snarled, “‘f’ you.”
    Jacobson’s smirk disappeared, a disgusted frown replacing it. “Goodbye, Collins.”
    He trained the gun on Collins’ head, and just before he fired, the little girl cried out, “No!” and jumped on his arm.
    The shot went off, hitting Jacobson in the kneecap. He fell, dropping the gun, and Collins quickly kicked it away. Standing painfully, Collins aimed his own gun at the former Chief. “This is for my brother’s fiancée,” he said, shooting a bullet into the man’s other knee. “This is for the other six you killed!” he shouted, putting six more bullets into the man, two in each arm, and one more in each leg. “This is for my SISTER!” he snarled, adding another bullet into him, this one in his right palm, and yet another in the left for good measure. It was less than he deserved.
    Panting, his eyes quickly shifted to the little girl and back. “See this girl right here, Jacobson? Because of you, she is orphaned,” he accused as he removed the empty clip and replaced it with a spare. “Her parents died when you slammed into their car. Luckily she survived, but if I hadn't pulled her out of the car, however, she would have died in the explosion you saw coming and ran. She would have been burnt to death, Jacobson, burnt! Burnt alive…burnt…to…death—and it’s all because of you. She’s couldn’t be any older than six—”
    “I’m seven!” she girl sounded offended, as if his misjudgment had been insulting.
    “Okay, a seven-year-old girl would have been added to the casualties on your list.” He crouched until he was eye-level with the man leaning on the wall. “And you wouldn’t have cared, would you?” The wounded Jacobson was too weak to respond. “Would you, you selfish son of a b****!” he pressed the barrel against the other’s crotch, receiving a pain-filled moan. “Well,” he raised the gun to his superior’s head, and his hand was followed by eyes stressed with dizziness. “This one’s for me.”
    “No!” the little girl exclaimed. “Don’t do it!” Collins held the gun steady. “Please, don’t do it, Mister, don’t do it!” After an agonizingly sluggish moment, Collins slowly removed the gun and turned to face her. His hands were shaking violently.
    “Don’t do it, please,” her eyes were watering as she said it.
    Somehow the new expression on her face seemed to resemble Andrea even more, and the swelling emotion returned yet again. He breathed in with a hiss, biting his lip while turning his head to look at Jacobson. That face, the memories…his one chance of avenging his sister, taking revenge on the one who stole her from him. Yet, as he looked back at her, he thought, Andrea wouldn’t want me to do it, would she? She wouldn’t care about being avenged…would she?
    He remembered that she always seemed to ignore the bad things people do to her as if it never happened, and never cast any hurtful or angered glance, not even saying anything hinting of trying to insult. No, she wouldn’t want to be avenged; she would want him to stop, to…
    He didn’t try to keep back the emotion that accompanied her memories. As the tears ran down his face, he replaced the gun in its hostler, picked her up, and headed towards the front of the store. Ironically the other police arrived just then, and Collins recognized Sergeant Stephens. “Sergeant,” he called to the other.
    “Lieutenant! Is everything alright? Oh, stupid question; if it was we wouldn’t have been called.” A second glance at Collins’ arm prompted him to ask, “Are you alright?”
    “Well, everything’s alright now, and I…I think I am now, too. The serial killer—he covered his tracks so well because he was Jacobson, our own Chief. You’ll find him in the back.”
    “His condition?”
    “Alive.”
    Stephens smiled; “You’ve always had your own way of doing things.” Then he departed.
    Of course, the paramedics from the emergency ambulance insisted on doctoring his arm and torso, so as they removed the bullet, applied medicine, and bandaged him up, he asked the girl, “So, what’s your name?”
    “Andrea,” she answered.
    He smiled, and then nodded, looking around the parking lot. Coincidence?
    Maybe. “Well, you seem to be in need of someone to take care of you.”