The Killing Tide (An Alexa Chase Suspense Thriller—Book 2)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

East Jersey State Prison, Woodbridge Township, New Jersey

July 4, 10 a.m.

Deputy Marshal Alexa Chase waited as a prison guard buzzed her through a door of heavy steel bars. Her uniform clung to her as sweat oozed out of every pore in her body. The concrete hallway was cool, but Alexa could not stop sweating.

As the door clicked open, she and a second security guard entered a short hallway ending in an identical door.

The first door clicked shut behind them. The prison guard accompanying her adjusted his belt, heavy with a pistol, baton, and pepper spray, and nodded to his colleague through the security camera. The second door clicked open. Alexa surreptitiously wiped her sweating palms on the side of her uniform slacks.

Beyond lay a hall with six cells on each side. All were full. A red plastic chair stood in front of one at the end, positioned precisely in the middle of the hall so as to be out of reach of both cells. The prison guard and Alexa walked down the center of the hall as well. Alexa glanced to the right and left, keeping a wary eye on the inmates.

They kept a wary eye on her, burly, tattooed men sitting on their bunks or pacing back and forth in their tiny cells. Silent, Watchful.

East Jersey State Prison was a maximum security prison, holding some of the most violent criminals in the state. And she had flown all the way from Phoenix to see this ward’s most violent offender.

Bruce Thornton, otherwise known as the Jersey Devil.

Several years ago, back when she had been Special Agent Alexa Chase of the FBI, she had arrested Thornton after he had made a string of killings in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. It had been her toughest case yet—no pattern to the killings except the same general location. The victim were men, women, and children of all ages and races. Most had been kidn*pped elsewhere and taken to the large forest area, except for one unlucky hiker and another unlucky hunter who had already been there. Some had been stabbed. Others had been shot or strangled. One ten-year-old girl had been buried alive.

She could see no pattern, no modus operandi, other than the obvious psychological importance of the location itself. Because beyond being a dense pine forest where it was easy to hide a body, it was the location of the famed Jersey Devil, a legendary creature with leathery wings, a goat-like head, taloned hands, cloven hooves, and a forked tail.

The media, of course, had already picked up on this and dubbed the killer the Jersey Devil. At first, local police had dismissed the connection, thinking the killer was merely using the barrens because it was so vast and easy to hide in. Plenty of other criminals had done so before, after all. Alexa thought differently.

She delved into the lore of the Jersey Devil—where it had been spotted, how it swooped down on its victims, competing theories as to its origin. The fact that it didn’t exist didn’t matter. It was the legend that was important.

Because she got the sense that the killer was trying to create his own legend.

Her research took her down a dozen rabbit holes, from folklore to Satanism, ecology to psychedelics, history to cryptzoology. It had been a disturbing, absorbing ride.

But it gave her the pattern of how he distributed the bodies, and it made her anticipate where his next kidnap victim would be taken to be finished off.

Two days of camping in the cold, rainy pine forest was rewarded with the appearance of Bruce Thornton, a terrified eleven-year-old boy in tow. When she leapt out of her hiding place, Thornton surrendered, a smile on his face and a triumphant gleam in his eyes. His legend had already been made.

Alexa had seen that gleam and almost killed him. She had raised her g*n, aimed right for his head, and started to squeeze the trigger.

Bruce Thornton’s smile had only widened.

And she had stopped, arresting him instead.

It was the biggest regret of her life.

She had wanted to kill him. No, she had needed to kill him. Some terrible, animalistic urge inside her wanted to hunt down this predator and show him that he was merely prey.

Just a couple of weeks ago she had nearly given in to temptation a second time, with a serial killer named Drake Logan. She regretted not killing him too.

So she had come here, to face the devil of her past.

The hallway seemed to extend in length, the red plastic chair pulling away from her as she walked and walked seemingly forever down a hallway that couldn’t have measured more than fifty yards.

A low whistle came from the furthest cell, an off-key tuneless succession of notes. It took a moment for Alexa to recognize it.

Bruce Springsteen’s “Night with the Jersey Devil.” Bruce Thornton’s favorite song.

“Whistles that damn tune all the goddam time,” the prison guard muttered beside her. “You’d think with all this practice he’d get in tune.”

Alexa squared her shoulders and walked the final few steps to bring her in front of the cell.

Bruce Thornton was nothing much to look at. Serial killers rarely were. Sitting on his bed at the back of his cell in prison orange and slippers, he looked very much like the out-of-work plumber he had been when Alexa caught him.

Only standing five-eight, with thinning blonde hair over a large forehead, beady blue eyes that never rested, a cheesy moustache that he never trimmed properly, and a squat body that ten years of prison food had added several pounds to, he was not an inspiring image for someone who wanted to launch a legend.

And yet he had. Countless books had been written about him. Several websites dedicated to his crimes. At least five documentaries.

No one had ever written a book about her. She was only a footnote in those books and websites, and she had turned down any interviews for the documentaries. She didn’t trust the motivations of the producers.

No, the real heroes in those people’s minds were the predators locked up in here. Disgusting.

“Hello, Special Agent Chase,” he said, giving her a grin and showing off uneven teeth stained yellow from smoking. “I’d get up and shake your hand but Roy here would mace me.”

“Damn right I would,” Roy the prison guard said. He turned to Alexa. “I’ll be right down the hall.”

He moved off. Alexa sat in the red plastic chair, which was so flimsy it gave a little under her weight. No using this for a weapon.

“She’s a cutie,” a voice said behind her.

Thornton frowned. “Quiet, Rick.”

Alexa turned around and saw a large Anglo man lazing on his bunk, his hand resting on his crotch. Deep acne scars pockmarked his face. He gave her a gap-toothed grin, but his eyes didn’t smile. Not at all.

“My bad, Bruce. I’ll just sit here and fantasize.”

Alexa turned back to Thornton. She would have preferred a private conference with the serial killer, but to do that would have required the cover of an official visit, something she didn’t want in the U.S. Marshals records. Thornton wasn’t allowed in the visitors’ room for security’s sake, so she had to come to him. The warden stretched the rules for her, hoping she’d give him some insight on his most dangerous prisoner.

That was what Alexa was here for. Insight.

Thornton gave Alexa an apologetic shrug. “Rick’s a bit of a ladies’ man.”

“Not in here he isn’t,” Alexa said, not bothering to turn around and look at Rick again.

The serial killer grinned. “Oh, but you should read his sheet. Before he got locked up, he had himself a time.”

Rick chuckled.

Alexa glowered at Thornton. “Let’s talk about you.”

Another smile. “You mean us.”

He gave a significant look around his cell. Alexa had been so focused on the man she had arrested all those years ago that she hadn’t noticed the interior of the cell was entirely covered in drawings.

Most were crude, drawn on prison-issue paper with charcoal and crayon. They showed various depictions of the Jersey Devil, or dark woodlands with demonic eyes floating in the clouds above. Others showed Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, or strange spirits flitting through haunted houses or dark woods.

“You do these?”

“Most of them.”

“Some are in a different style,” Alexa noted, pointing to a few on the righthand wall which were mediocre portraits of Thornton himself.

“Fans. I get a lot of fan mail.”

A bitter taste came to Alexa’s mouth. There was a whole subculture of people who corresponded with serial killers in prison. They sent them letters, books, money for the commissary, even marriage proposals.

It was sick. Simply sick.

In fact, after arresting the Jersey Devil, the FBI had been flooded with hate mail. Most of it was whacko stuff about how she had stopped a great ritual that Thornton was doing to bring mankind to a higher level of consciousness. Others were direct threats on Alexa herself.

Those were followed up and the authors arrested.

She looked back at Thornton, the old regret coming back tenfold.

“You missed the masterpiece,” he said, pointing.

On the opposite wall was a drawing in Thornton’s crude style. Alexa blinked. It showed her, seen from below, standing tall and proud in a forest glen, stars framing her head, pointing an oversized g*n down on the viewer.

While Thornton was very far from being an artist, he had obviously put some extra time into this particular drawing. The resemblance was pretty good, and there was a power to the image. She looked domineering, confident, almost taller than the surrounding pines.

“That’s how I always remember you,” Thornton said with a smile. “You looked so strong, like an avenging spirit. A banshee or a Valkyrie.”

“More like an FBI agent who busted your ass.”

With prisoners, it was best to nip any s****l harassment in the bud.

But Thornton didn’t seem intent on that. He went on in an admiring tone, “You see how I drew you almost as tall as those pines? That’s how you looked. Fifty feet tall. You busted me when I had the rest of the FBI, Forest Service, state troopers, and a dozen different local police departments running around in circles.”

“They weren’t paying attention to the folklore.”

Thornton shook his head. “No they were not. They just dismissed the whole Jersey Devil connection as an invention of the press.”

This was why Thornton had been so hard to catch, and why he was not found criminally insane. He had set out to create a name for himself by deliberately tying his crimes to a local legend about a monster living in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. The locations and methods of killing varied, but Alexa had noticed a pattern in how they related to the old legends. She was only able to figure out that connection after immersing herself in all sorts of dark knowledge thought up by superstitious and warped minds. It had seriously affected her metal state.

Aiming down the barrel of her pistol at this guy, about to stab to death an abducted child, had affected it even more.

She had almost shot him. Not because he resisted arrest, or because he was an clear and present threat to the child—on the contrary, as soon as she made herself known he had dropped his knife and put his hands in the air—but because she had simply wanted to.

No, needed to. All that fame, all that attention, even approval. While she remained a faceless officer of the law, an object of suspicion for a large portion of the population. She wanted to wipe him out. Prove she was the stronger.

Of course, all law enforcement officials have fantasized about harming criminals they have arrested. That’s just the dark side of human nature. But she had come far closer than anyone should, and only pulled back at the last instant because the child was watching.

She felt sure if the kid hadn’t been there, she would have gone through with it.

And she had regretted not killing Thornton every day in all the years since. Regretted that she didn’t prove herself stronger than him.

And that regret had made her doubt her morality, doubt her worthiness to wear a badge.

Thornton was staring at the picture.

“So proud,” Rick whispered from the other cell. “I look at that picture all the time and think, ‘I could take that pride away.’”

“You’ll never touch a woman again,” Alexa told him without bothering to look at him. “Think about that.”

“You got no style, Rick,” Thornton said, flushing. “You’re nothing but a common convict.”

“And you’re not?” Alexa asked, raising an eyebrow.

Thornton c****d his head. “Why are you here? You never visited me before. Living over the old days? I see you’re a deputy marshal now. Read about you in the papers too. Caught Drake Logan. Twice.”

“I wanted to see how you were doing.”

As soon as Alexa said it, she realized how lame that sounded, and how untrue. She was here not for him, but for herself. She needed to face down this man who had brought up the darkness in her, a darkness that had only grown stronger during the Drake Logan manhunt.

Thornton didn’t look convinced either. He studied her a moment as Alexa shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“Yeah, you looked like an avenging angel when you burst in on me and that kid. Man, I thought you’d kill me for sure. Never thought I’d ever see someone look that fierce again. I sure haven’t in here. Oh sure, there are plenty of tough guys in here, plenty of fights and guys getting bent over, but that real anger, that real strength, I’ve only seen it so strong in you.”

Alexa looked away. Coming here had been a mistake.

Bruce Thornton, who had achieved his dream of going down in history as the living manifestation of the Jersey Devil, chuckled.

“No, never thought I’d see someone like that again. But I did. On TV in the rec room one day not too long ago.”

Crap. I know what’s coming.

“You looked like a champ beating down that guy Drake sent at you. And that look in your eye! Wow. The same look you gave me in the Pine Barrens all those years ago. What a sight. You had the whole rec room staring with their jaws open. Some of the boys hate you, plenty of them took a police beating themselves, but even they had to admire you.”

“I used acceptable force.”

Thornton laughed. “Acceptable force for an avenging angel. Oh, you can’t trick me, Alexa. The public may be on your side, and the media might be on your side. You’re the heroine who caught the big, bad Drake Logan, but I know, and you know, that you were getting off on that beating.”

“Bet her panties got wet,” Rick said from the cell behind her.

Thornton glowered at him. “Rick, shut the hell up or something’s gonna happen to you that you won’t like one bit.”

“You make it sound like she’s your girlfriend,” the r****t/murderer snorted.

“No, she’s my idol. Right up there with Drake Logan as people to aspire to be like.”

“Drake’s the man,” Rick admitted.

“He’s nothing but a common killer,” Alexa told him. “And now he’s probably going to get lethal injection.”

Thornton c****d his head and looked at her. “The news said you made the arrest. Is that true or was that just to make you look better after that video?”

“I made the arrest,” Alexa said with pride.

“You and a bunch of other people,” Thornton snorted. “Because if you were alone with him, after he killed your partner and all, I bet you’d have capped him just like you wanted to cap me.”

Alexa looked him in the eye. “I was alone with him, and I didn’t kill him. I subdued him, cuffed him, read him his rights, and took him into custody.”

Thornton tut-tutted. “Aw, Alexa. Now you’re in a spot. Now you got two regrets, me and him.”

“My only regret is I didn’t catch the two of you sooner. I’m glad to see you rotting in here, though.”

Thornton laughed. “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Drake Logan said that. And it’s true. Catching us only helped our reputations. That little chase you had with him all over the Southwest is going to make his writings even more popular.”

“His writings are banned in every prison in the country,” Alexa said.

Thornton shrugged. “So are drugs. So what? We all love Drake’s works.”

“No way you’re hiding his essays in your cells, but just in case I’ll have them searched.”

“You won’t find anything. We got a man in here who’s got a photographic memory. Was an accountant. Brilliant guy. Embezzled millions. Never got caught for it but he thought his boss and his boss’s wife suspected him, so he killed them both. Got caught for that. Turns out he was a better embezzler than murderer. Anyway, he had all of Drake’s writings memorized even before he got locked up. He recites them to us. In exchange, he gets to take his showers in peace.”

“I’ll be sure to tell the warden about that.”

“I changed the details. The warden won’t find him.”

Alexa stood. This had been a mistake.

“I’ll leave you to your cell and your showers. I’m going to go out, breathe some fresh air, watch a sunset, and maybe have a nice, tall, cold beer.” Alexa stretched. “Ah, freedom!”

Thornton only laughed and clapped his hands. “Well done! Stick the knife in. That’s what you like to do, Alexa. That’s who you are. Now go on out and find yourself another killer. Go on out and get yourself another regret. Hey, if you’re lucky, you might even help make another legend!”

She still didn’t have an answer to Thornton’s question of what she thought she’d get out of this. She had just wanted to face her past. And then what? Somehow the darkness would magically disappear? Somehow she could put her past mistakes to rest? Find some peace?

Now she felt even worse than before.

Thornton’s applause followed her, echoing down the cellblock as she left.

But she wasn’t leaving, and the Jersey Devil wasn’t staying. A bit of her would remain here, and a bit of him would always be with her.

Maybe she could bury that bitter truth in work. Marshal Hernandez said he had a big case for her when she got back tomorrow. Maybe cracking that would help. Maybe doing some good in the world would outweigh the bad she felt in herself.

Maybe.