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  CUT

  & DRY

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  www.scottblade.com

  Also by Scott Blade

  Coming Soon a Vampire series

  The Follower of Night

  CUT

  &

  DRY

  S. Lasher & Associates:

  CUT & DRY

  A Lawyer making a killing

  Scott Blade

  A Killer Novel

  Black Snake LLC, March 2014.

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Scott Blade

  www.scottblade.com

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Black Snake LLC, New York, New Orleans, and Las Vegas

  Black Snake LLC is trademarked.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  This novel is the intellectual property of the author and publishers. Reproduction of the novel without the author’s direct permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.

  The most important relationship that I have ever known is with my sister, Christi.

  This one is for her.

  “The predatory gaze of the psychopath lacks emotions and is as cold as a reptile’s blank stare. Reptiles are missing the limbic parts of their brains, where memories, emotions, and socializing and parental instincts reside. In other words, serial killers are aptly described as ‘cold-blooded,’ just like their scaly reptilian brethren.”

  ––Crime Library

  “After I’m dead, they’re going to open up my head and find that just like we’ve been saying, a part of my brain is black and dry and dead.”

  ––Bobby Joe Long, serial killer

  Fact:

  The brain of a serial killer is different than ours. Brain activity is different. Brain patterns are different. Thinking and behavior is different. Movement in the brain is different.

  Many serial killers claim that monsters live inside of them, that voices in their heads make them kill.

  Fiction:

  Meet Shane Lasher.

  Go to www.scottblade.com for The StoneCutter and other Shane Lasher novels.

  Prologue

  Who am I?

  “Demons do not exist anymore than gods do, being only the psychic activities of man.”

  —Sigmund Freud, Psychiatrist

  |||||

  I am the monster that lives inside of Shane Lasher. With my sharp claws, fangs, and cold, wet tendrils, I conjoined to his inner workings.

  Perhaps Shane Lasher was crazy. Perhaps I was only a figment of his mind. Perhaps I was the collection of evil activities in his brain.

  On the other hand, maybe I was a real, living, breathing reptile, a natural part of evolution. Was Shane Lasher the monster or was I?

  By day, Shane Lasher defended criminals. He worked as a lawyer at his dead father’s firm, Lasher & Associates. He was good-looking, smart, and famous. Defendants sought after his services because he had an impeccable track record. He won most of his cases.

  By night, Shane Lasher killed serial killers.

  Behind Shane’s eyes, cheeks, nose, and mouth, I smiled. I liked to watch killers think that they had gotten away with murder. Then I would hunt them down and kill them.

  I was not a good monster. But Shane was a good guy. For now, we coexisted.

  The two of us lived in this body.

  Human beings only used 10% of their brains. Imagine what they could accomplish if they executed control over the other 90%.

  That was where I came in. I lived in Shane’s brain. I lived in the 90% region of Shane’s mind.

  Most of the time, I sat back and watched Shane live his life. He made his own choices. As long as he never crossed me, as long as he followed my guidelines, then we wouldn’t have a problem.

  I guess that you could say that I was his copilot.

  As Shane’s daily life went on, I watched him live it. When the moment came that he needed to kill, I stepped in and took control.

  I did the killing.

  Shane observed, researched, and investigated the bad guys. I hunted, stalked, and murdered them. Together, we were the perfect killing machine.

  We were like Jekyll and Hyde.

  Shane investigated our clients’ cases. He used his lawyer skills and his investigative mind to discover their innocence or guilt.

  I used my powers to track them and kill them.

  I could see the murderers whenever I closed Shane’s eyes. Like a dream, I envisioned them doing things. I never saw their faces, only what they did.

  I shared a connection with them like a cellular network. They transmitted images to a signal. And I received it. They were like nodes. And as far as I knew, I was the only receiver. This power allowed me a backstage pass into their murderous lives.

  Sometimes, his clients were innocent. Whenever this happened, Shane fought tooth and nail to prove their innocence. He got some kind of satisfaction from it. Defending an innocent client fed his good side.

  Last year I killed the StoneCutter. He was the most dangerous opponent that I had ever faced. He would be the most dangerous one that I’d ever face.

  At least that was what I thought.

  1

  Out of the Woods

  “I made my fantasy life more powerful than my real one.”

  ––Jeffrey Dahmer, Cannibal

  |||||

  More than ten years ago, a man came home in the rain. He wore an FBI gold shield clipped to his belt, which was unusual for an FBI agent. They tended to keep their badges in billfolds. He had both versions.

  A Glock 22 rested in a gun holster clipped to his belt. It was on the opposite side of his badge.

  He stumbled about in his front yard. The man was in a drunken state. He and his fellow agents had been out celebrating.

  They celebrated the conviction of Carl Reagan.

  Carl was a serial killer who had been wanted for years. He was called the ID Killer. He killed and then stole the identity of his victims. He moved around from one region of the country to the next. He lived using the stolen identities.

  He acquired new credit cards, bank accounts, and even driver’s licenses made with his new name.

  I slithered in Shane’s head as he slept. I watched the events unfold before me.

  Shane had been asleep for an hour. The vision I saw took place back when Shane was a second-year law student. Study and sleep seemed to be all he did. So I watched with great interest any and every case of murder that came to our attention.

  The FBI agent stumbled up the walkway to a Jeffersonian townhouse. He left his car parked near a tow-away zone across the street.

  His breath reeked of alcohol.

  Back then my visions were not as potent as they are now. So I wasn’t able to distinguish the kind of alcohol from the smell on his breath. From the look of things it was something strong.

  The FBI agent stumbled up his front steps and fumbled around in his pockets looking for his keys. While he searched for them, he found his mobile phone instead.

  He loved his phone. It was a brand new Blackberry. He was one of the only agents to have one. Most still had Nokia flip phones.

  He pulled out the Blackberry and looked at the screen. He had four missed calls and three text messages.

  He must have forgotten that he had turned off his phone because it was switched to vibrate. He looked at it and switched it back to ring.

  The screen lit up and he typed in the code to unlock it.

  The calls and text messages were all from his wife, Millie. The screen didn’t give a last name, but I know it was his wife be
cause the first text read:

  Hi honey.

  I saw on TV that Carl Reagan was convicted. Congratulations :)

  The FBI agent smiled. Then his smile turned to terror as he read the next text message. It said:

  Answer the phone!

  The next text message read:

  There is a noise outside.

  Is that you?

  I tried calling you!

  And the final message read:

  SOMEONE IS HERE!

  That was when the real horror crossed his face. He noticed something else on his screen. It was not the text messages themselves but something far worse.

  Suddenly, he was shaken out of his drunken state. Sobriety engulfed him like a burst of flames. Adrenaline shot through him and his posture straightened.

  That was when I realized what the horror was that had taken control over his body. I saw what he saw on his phone.

  It was the time stamp on the last text message. It was more than two hours ago.

  Millie hadn’t texted one time after that. Not once. She hadn’t even called.

  She had thought that someone had broken into their house and pleaded for him to answer his phone. Then she had ceased her communications.

  Something was very wrong.

  The FBI agent put the Blackberry phone back in his pocket. He reached deep into the next pocket and found his keys. He opened the front door and brandished his Glock.

  Sweeping the dark hallway as best he could, he saw nothing. There was no movement.

  He tried flicking the light switch on, but nothing happened. The lights didn’t respond.

  He ignored most of his FBI training and cleared the entire downstairs in a matter of moments.

  This was risky. An intruder could have hidden in one of the corners and this FBI agent didn’t sweep thoroughly enough to be sure. His ineptness could have allowed the assailant to escape, or worse, attack him from behind.

  Someone might have hidden in one of the two downstairs closets. He never checked.

  There could have been someone hiding behind the couch. He never checked.

  The only thing that he cared about was locating his wife.

  Where was she? I thought.

  He made his way to the staircase. He peered up it while looking through the sights of his pistol. He kept his finger away from the trigger. It rested safely on the outer perimeter of the guard.

  That was one step in his training that he did adhere to. Mostly it was because he didn’t want to shoot his wife by mistake.

  On the second floor, he saw a flicker of light coming from the master bedroom.

  He whispered as loud as he could, “Millie! Millie!”

  No reply.

  This time he said it in his normal speaking voice. He said, “Millie! Are you there?”

  No answer.

  The FBI agent waited another second and then shouted, “FBI! I am coming up the stairs. If there is anyone in this house, then make yourself known or get shot.”

  Now his training took control over him. He spoke in a commanding voice, identifying himself as a federal agent and making it clear that any surprises from an intruder would result in their getting shot.

  There was one thing that he didn’t do. He didn’t call for backup.

  Foolish, I thought.

  Like moviegoers watching the suspense from the safety of their seats, I watched the scene before me.

  The FBI agent made his way to the top of the stairs. The final two steps creaked beneath his weight.

  He cursed under his breath. Then he stopped at the top of the landing and swept the two open doorways in the hall. The first was to an empty bedroom. It was decorated for a baby. It was meant for a future kid, whenever he and his wife were ready for one. At the moment, they had no children.

  The agent jumped out on one knee and swept the bedroom with his gun. There was no movement.

  The room was completely finished. There was a crib, a rocking chair in one corner, and a mural on every wall.

  The mural theme was the aquatic sea life. It was meant to be non-gender specific since they hadn’t had a child yet.

  There were drawings of fish, sea horses, and turtles swimming across the walls.

  One of Millie’s friends from her law office had come over and spent the last three weeks painting it.

  Why? The FBI agent did not know.

  He didn’t seem to know what the hurry was.

  But the detail in the mural amazed him, really quality work.

  As the FBI agent turned away from the room, he noticed that Millie had bought something new for the kid that doesn’t exist.

  Resting on a dresser near the crib was a pair of blue baby monitors. They were packed in clear, plastic packaging.

  The FBI agent shrugged. Then a slight noise returned him to the horror of his situation.

  The noise came from the master bedroom.

  The FBI agent entered the room and saw nothing. No one was there.

  Everything looked the way that he had left it that morning before he had left for work. All except for the bed. Millie must have made that before she left for her law firm.

  The FBI agent turned his attention to the sliver of light that he had seen from the staircase. It came from beneath a closed door.

  It flickered. He figured that it must have been candlelight.

  The door led to the master bath.

  He approached it. Then he heard the noise again. It sounded like dripping water. It was a quiet noise. It must have been a slowly dripping faucet.

  “Millie?” he asked.

  No response.

  He raised his gun to the door.

  “Millie, I have my gun drawn. I’m coming in. Please say something now,” he said.

  No reply.

  The FBI agent reared back and kicked open the door to the master bath.

  Inside the room, he saw that the light from under the door had indeed come from a lit candle. The wick had burned down to the lower half of the candle as if it had burned for hours.

  Suddenly, the FBI agent witnessed two sights that terrified him.

  The first wasn’t as bad as the second.

  His eyes flew to the bathroom mirror.

  Sixteen letters and four words were written across the mirror in red lipstick.

  The message read:

  ID KILLER

  TRY AGAIN

  The second thing that he saw was his dead wife.

  In the bathtub, her corpse lay under the surface of the murky bath water.

  Her cold eyes stared up at the ceiling. Two bullet holes had torn through her torso.

  One was in her chest, center mass. The second was in her gut.

  A blank expression covered the FBI agent’s face.

  The FBI agent looked back at the mirror. Then he moved his lips and mouthed the writing, as if reading it carefully.

  He mouthed, “ID Killer.”

  Then my screen in Shane’s head went dark.

  |||||

  The night was beautiful, the perfect night. It was art, like a painting or sculpture. This night was sculpted to perfection by a master sculptor. He had hammered out a perfect night for killing.

  Washington D.C. was quiet. In Georgetown University, a footpath in front of the campus led past the Georgetown Park and down to north Volta Place.

  Jessica Long was excited about her date. She had fantasized about it for days. She barely spoke to any of her sisters in the sorority house. She just floated around, daydreaming about her secret date.

  Jessica liked poetry. She majored in it. What she was going to do with a degree in English? That was a question that her mother would ask her.

  Her mother was more of a traditional woman: strong family values, do your chores, marry a working man, and stay-at-home type. This kind of future didn’t attract Jessica. She had no intentions of following in her mother’s footsteps, although her mother challenged her to do so every semester.

  Most of her family never questioned Je
ssica’s decisions. They minded their own business as she wished that her mother would do.

  Jessica had no idea what she was going to do with her degree. She’d probably go on to get a Ph.D. like so many others. She could teach college. These days the market wasn’t very good for any major, at least none that interested her.