Crasher: Mind Of A Killer

Chapter Two

   “I don’t care” she fired at him, “If you want to be a journalist, be a journalist and stop whining while you still have a job because that could change at any second” she finished as she stared straight at him,

  Zach knew that wasn’t just an empty threat, Emily had fired people for lesser crimes, how much more, him, who failed to get an important piece. The last thing he needed was being jobless, this job was the only thing that kept him sane and level-headed, he found no solace in returning to his empty house and encountering things that reminded him of her….no, losing his job wasn’t an option, but getting that article though…. “Listen, Emily, if you’d just let me do more than a hundred-word write-ups on clubs, I could show you how valuable I am” he implored on his behalf. 

   “And how am I supposed to trust you with a major piece if you can’t do something as basic as getting into a club?” 

   Zach was quiet for some time, seeing sense in her question. Still, having worked in this place for over two years, he did deserve the benefit of the doubt if nothing else. He had worked his ass off and had delivered one every single piece he was assigned to, save for this one time. There was no need to act like he was suddenly an incompetent worker. Feeling a strong need to defend himself, he started, “I…”

   “No excuses Wylan, I want that piece on my desk tomorrow, or you can assume you no longer have a job and don’t bother yourself coming in,” she said with finality as she gave him a death stare.

  Zach stared at her for some time, hoping she would change her mind or renege on those words. There was no way he would be able to get that piece tonight, especially without a high-level clearance, she was sending him into the fire to roast, and he didn’t even have the least bit of protection. He wanted to say something to her, to plead his case, ask for more time if need be, but he found himself lost for words.

     “I suggest you go find a way to get me that piece, rather than stand here and be useless” she fired.

  He turned around and walked out of the office. As he did, he tried to come up with ways through which he could get that piece; perhaps he would have to bribe the bouncer? Even at that, once he was i, how would he get to the boss? And with their no press rule, what was the likelihood he would even get an exclusive if he found the boss? 

   He hoped he would get some reprieve before the end of the day

  The Miami Police Department has successfully captured the man who has terrorized the city for the last few weeks, yes people; you heard that right. The Crasher is currently in police custody. The arrest of the suspect, whose real name is Navroj Artsec, was made around 7: 19 PM this evening. Interrogations are far from complete. Therefore, the police are yet to establish any link between Artsec’s alleged killings and his brother’s business, leading them to believe he may have run a solo mission. As we all know, Mr. Devan Artsec runs the popular Ovyed Nightclub, and it is unclear, for now, whether the police, will begin investigations on him and his business

  Speaking of Ovyed Nightclub, journalist, and writer for the popular blog, ThisIndulge, Zach Wylan, was spotted, being thrown out of the club yesterday evening…..

   The television went blank at that. He had heard enough.

  Daven couldn’t help the smile upon his face as he thought of the sacrifice his younger brother had inevitably made to keep the company running. He wouldn’t lie, he did question Navroj’s judgment a lot, and they had had quite a lot of altercations due to this terrible judgment of his, but on this one, his brother had done well. To think he was so good at hiding this second personality of his, even he hadn’t figured it out until he had dropped by his apartment one day and seen his toys. Navroj enjoyed playing with knives and sharp objects, but the things he saw led him to believe it wasn’t just some leisure activity, he had kept his words to himself though, assuming that when Navroj was ready, he’d come to him. 

  Of course, Daven wasn’t one to interfere in a man’s source of joy. However, he had warned that if Navroj did get caught, it wouldn’t affect their business poorly. The one thing he could confirm at this moment was that bad publicity was good, and Navroj’s arrest was sure to bring in more patrons to the club if for nothing else, to satisfy their curiosities. The human mind was drawn to danger and feasted off of it and the idea that Club Ovyed would be some sort of danger would surely appeal to many.

    “I see my brother is making us proud” he mused to himself, “Cleaning up the mess on the streets to ease business, brilliant.”

  “What do we do boss?” his second-in-command, Melvin, who was sitting across from him, asked.

   “Well, sure, I have no plans of leaving my brother to rot in there. Get me, Reginald; I’m sure he can think up a defense that has him pleading insanity or some s**t like that.“

   Reginald was his lawyer and a damn good one at that. He couldn’t work with anyone who wasn’t at the top of his game and was definitely one of the best lawyers on the entire East coast, that much he could vouch for. He had handled some of his cases for him over the last four years, and he had a hundred percent record. Whatever bind Navroj was in, Reginald would surely spin him out of it.

    Melvin nodded, “On it, sir.” 

   He took his phone and dialed a number. Devan zoned out their conversation and returned to his thoughts. One thing he was sure of was that he would get his brother out in record time, whether he was guilty or not. The boy had done amazing, ridding the streets of their competition, he at least owed him a top-of-the-range defense team, and he was going to get just that.

    *****

   His head was buried in the article he was trying to draft, around him, torn and crumpled pieces of paper littered the room. He was working on extra time, and it showed. 

   Zach was aware he needed to submit an article to Emily, and he had tried his darned best to get her the one she needed. Last night, he had even resorted to shamelessly sneaking into the club, to see if he could find someone with an exclusive story for him, but he had gotten busted before he could get far with his investigation and was unceremoniously kicked out. It was the most embarrassing day of his life, and then to see it on the news earlier today, had just worsened everything. He walked around the office, thinking someone was giggling at his foolishness or mocking him. It was a terrible feeling, and he wanted it to be over.

  What was sure to be over though, was his career, if he didn’t get Emily an article, and he was currently working his hardest to scrunch up something, he hoped she would be lenient enough to accept what he could provide. He didn’t want to be out of a job; he loved this job, he loved going out to find the latest scoop, he loved piecing together captivating words to sell a story. He couldn't explain how much joy this job gave him and the possibility that he could lose it made his stomach turn in the most uncomfortable way. 

   He was alerted by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching his office, and he felt his heart catch in his throat, judgment day couldn’t have come this early, he still needed some time to complete this article and state his case.

   The door flew open, and he was confronted with the sight of a livid Emily, glowering at him, “You’re fired!” she stated simply.

   He felt the blood drain from his face at those words, “No, Emily. Wait, I have another story.”

   “There is no other story, Wylan.” She fired at him, “Do you have a story bigger than the one going around now? We were on the verge of uncovering a possible crime syndicate, of uncovering the biggest criminal this city has seen in decades, and you blew it. Now, you want to sell me some s**t story nobody cares about? I stuck my neck out for you, I gave you a job, and I put my faith in you that you could do it, and you failed me. I should never have given you that job” she stated firmly.

   He shot up out of his chair and rushed over to her, “No, please, Emily, give me another chance” he pleaded desperately.

  She sighed and shook his head, “I’ve run out of chances to give you. This was a big story, and we lost it because of you. Listen, Zach, I know you’re going through a lot right now, what with the death of your wife and all, plus, it’s the holiday season, and you probably want to keep yourself busy, but….we’ll have to terminate your employment. I’m sorry.” 

   “Wait” he called to her.

   She stopped. 

  He went over to his desk and retrieved the article he had been writing, “Here’s my story if you’re still interested.”

   She regarded the write-up he was handed to her for some time and Zach prayed she wouldn’t reject it. Even if he had to lose his job, he would feel a little better knowing that he had at least dropped one last piece.

   She sighed and collected the paper from him. Before he could say his thanks, she turned around and walked away.

   Zach slumped against his desk and buried his face in his hands. He wanted to scream and release all of the sadness within him, but he couldn’t afford to do that. So many people had already seen him being dragged out from a club the night before, if they were to hear him scream this place down, and even more, call security on him, it would only serve to damage his already dented reputation. They would think he was crazy.

   He could feel the tears rising in his eyes, and forced them back, as he turned to his desk and began arranging his stuff. He would miss this office, miss his friends and miss his job. This would serve as a major blow to him.

*****

    Two weeks and three days.

  That was how long it had been since he lost his job. He knew because he had been counting, he had been counting every single, sad day of his life since he became unemployed and was thrown into this sorrowful hell he called a life….it could barely even be referred to as an existence these days.

  Journalism was all he had known, all he had ever known how to do and now, it had been taken away from him. The worst thing was that the contract he had signed with ThisIndulge when he first started working with them, had stipulated that if he were to lose the job or resign from the company, he wouldn’t be allowed to work with any other blog or news outlet in the city. 

  His journalism career was more or less done in the city; he would probably have to travel to some other place before he would be able to get a job without the risk of getting sued. Being jobless left him in a position he couldn’t recall being in all through his adult life.

  Zach had started working from the age of fifteen. He had been a delivery boy for three years, after which, he went on to college, but even while at college, he did small jobs at times. Being idle was an alien thing to him; he always had to keep himself busy. He had decided to intern at a media house in his third year in college, and that was when he began his journey into the world of journalism. A little over a decade later, he had become extremely attached to the pen and the paper; journalism was what he was born to do. He had thought of starting up a blog, but even that had a clause attached to his contract. They had stripped him of his identity more or less.

  These days, he spent his time feeling sorry for himself in the privacy of his home, he found solace in the glasses of whiskey and vodka he had stocked his house with the day he was fired. Drinking and surfing the page of his former employees were the only things that took up his time. 

  It was pathetic, but that was what his life had become.

   He stood up to get a refill of his glass of whiskey when he heard a ding from his laptop. They had uploaded something new to their page. He went over to his kitchen and filled his glass with the last drops of whiskey left in what was possibly the third bottle this week….not that he was counting. 

   He nursed the drink for a while as he got lost in his thoughts. The house felt so empty; he had never felt more alone than at this moment. Suddenly, it became even more obvious that he had surrounded himself with his colleagues at work so much that they were the only friends he had. The thing with having work friends was that they were only friends for the 8 hours they got to work in the same office, at most, they could stretch to 12 hours if someone suggested after-work hangouts and drinks. Once you were out of the job though, the friends pretty much went with it. He had played around with the thought of calling Mindy, but certain angst in him wouldn’t let him call her. He was the one who lost his job; she should be the one to be thoughtful and call him, he would just seem like a desperate loser if he caved in and called her first. 

  Two weeks. Mindy hadn’t thought to call him in over two weeks, some friend she was…when their former colleague and reporter, Neil, had left the company, and he had reached out to him two days later. Somewhere in his head, he wondered if Neil was still around if he would have called him at this time.

  He shrugged. f**k those motherfuckers. He didn’t need them.

  He grunted and dragged himself back to this favorite seat- the couch, as he lowered himself onto it, the shrill sound of his phone ringing permeated the room. It jarred him slightly, that device had not rung since he got fired. Who the hell was calling him up? One side of him suggested it could be Emily, wouldn’t that be something? He picked up the device, maybe she was remorseful and wanted to give him back his job, he knew he had done damned good work with the article he had dropped before leaving. Maybe she gave it a read and realized he was more precious a gem than whatever s**t story she was pining for from the Ovyed Club.

   It took his eyes a second to adjust to the phone lighting, especially as the room was a bit dark. Once he had adjusted his eyes, he noticed the caller was Mindy. He snickered, thinking of the devil. He had the mind to ignore the call, but on second thought, he decided to pick it. He swiped to answer and placed the phone to his ear as he navigated the cursor of his laptop toward the notification bar alerting him of the new post on the ThisIndulge site. 

  “Yes,” he said drily as he clicked on it.

  “Hey, Zach. Have you seen Emily’s new post on the site?”

  Well, he hadn’t expected her to jump into the discussion like that. He had expected an apology, a question on how he was doing, or something to signify that she was calling because she felt really bad about ghosting him and wanted to make amends. This was about the freaking company? “Not yet, I’m checking it out now,” he said as he clicked the post titled “The Mind of a Crasher”….the title seemed quite suspicious and familiar, he had thought he was the only one interested in the Crasher, who else could have written on a topic he could have very well come up with?

   “I don’t think you should,” Mindy said, her voice filled with guilt and fear. 

   It was too late.

   Zach read with a mixture of confusion and rising anger as he read the content of the article word for word, each word reminding him of the ones he had penned down on that day he had been fired. What the f**k? These were his words, his concept; this was his article! His gaze quickly left the body of the article to return to the credited writer, a line he had skipped to read the body. His eyes widened exponentially when he saw that the article was credited to none other than Emily Nuneck. He spat out his drink and dropped the glass, “That b***h!” he sneered. She had some guts; she fired him so that she could turn around and take credit for his s**t? Talk about the scum of the earth.

   “I wanted to tell you before you had to see it Zach, listen…..”

   “Goodbye Mindy” he ended the call and turned off the phone for effect. He didn’t need anyone trying to call him and reach out to him about this. This was bullshit! How dare they treat him like trash? They had made him toxic goods for any other media house and the one thing he did have that could have pushed him to reckon or completed his good legacy in the company, had been used to elevate that scheming b***h and her comatose career. 

   Emily hadn’t written a decent article in months; he had heard rumors that her job was on the line, it was probably why she worked everyone else in the company as a horse and gave them deadlines that were almost impossible to meet. She had been going hard on them these past months, and now, she was using his intellectual property to save herself.

 He should have figured this out. He should never have given her that article, he should have taken it with him and walked away with his pride and his work….and to think she had pulled that act, like she gave a s**t about him, apologizing and being sympathetic, he should have known she had plans to pull the rug from under him like this. What was the possibility that she had only gotten him fired to help herself? 

   He began replaying the last month of his stay at the office, the way Emily would get easily irritated by him, even when he made his best efforts to please her. She was always so short-tempered, she always had a complaint about him or his work; he was too tardy, there was no structure, the sequence was all wrong, the story lacked imagination and creativity, it was too basic, a third-grader could come up with it, it lacked pizzazz, she had seen it multiple times. He had thought there was nothing to it; he thought she was only being thorough. It had all come down to this, this was her endgame, to get him out of the way and claim the throne all to herself.

  Boiling anger returned to simmering. He let his pumping heart calm as he returned to reading the article- to reading his article. The further he went, the more bitterness he felt. This was him, every single thing of it was him, Emily didn’t have this mind, Emily could never analyze a killer with such precision, she was an expert with the fashion industry and the nightlife, but the mind of a psychotic killer wasn’t something she could read and interpret in this manner. He picked up his glass of whiskey and sipped it as he read through the article.

  By the time he was done reading, he was livid. She thought she knew so much, didn’t she? She thought she could get in the mind of a killer; he would show her one couldn’t give what they never had. It took an innate killer to get in the mind of another killer. If Emily wanted to rip stories off of journalists, he would give her stuff to write about. He was only alerted of the grip he had on the glass when it suddenly broke into pieces. 

   He grunted as he looked at his hand; a piece of glass had pierced his palm. He hissed and got to his feet; he would have to treat the injury and then, he would begin making plans. Navroj Artsec may have been caught and taken into police custody, but The Crasher was certainly not out of business.

    ****

   Fred Norton.

   He owned Blaze Nightclub, the second biggest nightclub in the city, after Ovyed of course. Before Daven Artsec opened Ovyed a year ago, Blaze was the biggest nightclub in the city and had carried that title proudly for five years. 

  These days, business wasn’t as tight for Fred as it used to be, as expected. The blaze was losing most of its clientele, to the much more lavish Ovyed club and Fred was understandably desperate for money. The thing though, was that he was losing not just his clientele, but most of his investors too. Everyone could see the ship was sinking, but the captain was damn well not about to watch all of his efforts go down without a fight.

  Fred’s idea of fighting was sourcing for funds via other means, his other means though, was messy. He had spent the last five months supporting a s*x trafficking ring in the state that brought in girls from various parts of the world, specifically, Europe and Asia, and turned them into s*x slaves in the US…some of these girls happened to work in his club, pleasing whatever sick pervert that had a few extra dollars to spend. 

   Many would call him a big fish. He was a prominent man in the city, his death was sure to cause a frenzy, and lots of media would carry it. He was perfect as his first victim.

  He wanted to make a statement; he wanted to show a more daring Crasher, one that was sure to send shockwaves through the entire city and have rich folks updating their security, if not considering relocation. Killing some random bum off the streets wouldn’t do that for him….besides, Zach had always loved a good challenge, and this was sure to be the greatest he had had to face all his life. Not only was he about to kill a man, but he was also about to kill a man of high social standing.

   He watched Fred walk into his home. He would be home alone for the night, he had a wife and daughter, but they traveled the day before to see her parents, and they wouldn’t be back till the weekend. It was perfect. 

   He knew he wouldn’t be going in immediately; he had to wait at least an hour, just so he would be sure he was asleep before he could sneak into the house. As he waited, he casually played with the nail in his hand. He only needed one, because he only planned to send one nail into Fred’s throat, and it would be fatal. 

   About half an hour later, the lights in the house went off. Twenty minutes later, Zach got out of his car and slowly approached the house. He looked at the time; it was about twenty minutes to one in the morning, virtually everyone was asleep this time of the night…at least in a neighborhood such as this. He reached the building; he had studied it for the last three days, noting the position of every camera around the building. He was able to reach the backdoor, without any of the cameras catching him. The security box was in the kitchen, if he got to it and successfully disabled it; it would not only ensure the house was not secure anymore, it would also turn off all the cameras inside. 

  Picking the lock of the kitchen wasn’t so difficult. However, he knew that if he opened it hastily, it

Would set off the security alarms. The trick was to open the door so slowly; it would be unnoticeable. It was a grueling three minutes, but Zach finally opened the door just wide enough for him to enter. Right next to the door, was the security box. With his screwdriver and pliers ready to work, he proceeded to disable the security box, just like he had learned from the numerous YouTube videos he had watched.

  About fifteen minutes later, the red light switched to green. It was done.

  This was going so much easier than he had planned. The next objects to be used would be the nail and the hammer. He had thought long and hard on the best tools to use for this job, he had stood in the hardware store for almost half an hour, debating between a hammer and a nail gun, but he finally settled on a hammer. A nail gun would be too clean, too easy, and it would take away from the fun as it would kill the victim instantly. He wasn’t looking for something that quick. He wanted to revel in his act; he wanted to watch the victim beg for mercy and gurgle until he choked on his blood. That would be so much more gratifying than killing with a nail gun. The hammer didn’t need further arguments in its favor. 

   He walked through the home slowly, the shoes on his feet were bought specially to ensure that his footsteps wouldn’t be heard through the entire house. He finally found the Master’s bedroom and slowly opened the door. 

  There, lying in his queen-sized bed and between what Zach was sure were sheets made of Egyptian cotton, was Fred Norton, snoring away. He seemed truly exhausted as he lay haphazardly on the bed….whatever, at least his neck was nicely positioned for the nail it was going to receive in a matter of minutes.

   Zach stepped into the room and walked further inside until he was hovering over Fred Norton. He took out the first nail and held it between gloved fingers; he wondered if the nail was aware of the history it was set to make, and a dark smile came upon his face. 

  He looked out for an artery in his neck, and when he spotted one, he gently placed the nail over it. Fred mumbled something, but before he could open his eyes, Zach had raised the hammer high in the air, and he only opened his eyes as it landed square on the nail, sending it through the skin and straight into the artery.

  A strangulating sound came out of Fred’s throat as his hand shot to the area the nail had been driven to. His eyes were wide with fear and shock.

  Zach stood there, just watching the man as he began to gurgle, blood spurting out of his mouth as life dimmed from his eyes.

  Lifeless. Gone.

  It all happened in seconds; one second he was fighting for his life and the next, the battle was over. It was so quick, but in Zach’s eyes, every stage was lengthy, brilliant, enthralling. A sick smile lit his face. He didn’t have to struggle, he didn’t have to leave a mess, and The Crasher had been having fun all this time. He was late to the party, but there was still a party, and he would be the new host.

    He turned around and walked out of the room, feeling twice as good as when he had come in. As he did, he wondered when Fred’s body would be found, what the news would say when it was found. He couldn’t wait for the circus to begin.