Fatal Deception Read online

  Fatal Deception

  Russell Blake

  Copyright © 2016 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:

  [email protected]

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  Contents

  Books by Russell Blake

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Excerpt from Ramsey’s Gold

  Books by Russell Blake

  Co-authored with Clive Cussler

  THE EYE OF HEAVEN

  THE SOLOMON CURSE

  Thrillers

  FATAL EXCHANGE

  FATAL DECEPTION

  THE GERONIMO BREACH

  ZERO SUM

  THE DELPHI CHRONICLE TRILOGY

  THE VOYNICH CYPHER

  SILVER JUSTICE

  UPON A PALE HORSE

  DEADLY CALM

  RAMSEY’S GOLD

  EMERALD BUDDHA

  The Assassin Series

  KING OF SWORDS

  NIGHT OF THE ASSASSIN

  RETURN OF THE ASSASSIN

  REVENGE OF THE ASSASSIN

  BLOOD OF THE ASSASSIN

  REQUIEM FOR THE ASSASSIN

  RAGE OF THE ASSASSIN

  The JET Series

  JET

  JET II – BETRAYAL

  JET III – VENGEANCE

  JET IV – RECKONING

  JET V – LEGACY

  JET VI – JUSTICE

  JET VII – SANCTUARY

  JET VIII – SURVIVAL

  JET IX – ESCAPE

  JET X – INCARCERATION

  JET – OPS FILES (prequel)

  JET – OPS FILES; TERROR ALERT

  The BLACK Series

  BLACK

  BLACK IS BACK

  BLACK IS THE NEW BLACK

  BLACK TO REALITY

  BLACK IN THE BOX

  Non Fiction

  AN ANGEL WITH FUR

  HOW TO SELL A GAZILLION EBOOKS

  (while drunk, high or incarcerated)

  About the Author

  Featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Chicago Tribune, Russell Blake is The NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of over forty novels, including Fatal Exchange, Fatal Deception, The Geronimo Breach, Zero Sum, King of Swords, Night of the Assassin, Revenge of the Assassin, Return of the Assassin, Blood of the Assassin, Requiem for the Assassin, Rage of the Assassin The Delphi Chronicle trilogy, The Voynich Cypher, Silver Justice, JET, JET – Ops Files, JET – Ops Files: Terror Alert, JET II – Betrayal, JET III – Vengeance, JET IV – Reckoning, JET V – Legacy, JET VI – Justice, JET VII – Sanctuary, JET VIII – Survival, JET IX – Escape, JET X – Incarceration, Upon a Pale Horse, BLACK, BLACK is Back, BLACK is The New Black, BLACK to Reality, BLACK in the Box, Deadly Calm, Ramsey’s Gold, and Emerald Buddha.

  Non-fiction includes the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal biography) and How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks In No Time (even if drunk, high or incarcerated), a parody of all things writing-related.

  Blake is co-author of The Eye of Heaven and The Solomon Curse, with legendary author Clive Cussler. Blake’s novel King of Swords has been translated into German, The Voynich Cypher into Bulgarian, and his JET novels into Spanish, German, and Czech.

  Blake writes under the moniker R.E. Blake in the NA/YA/Contemporary Romance genres. Novels include Less Than Nothing, More Than Anything, and Best Of Everything.

  Having resided in Mexico for a dozen years, Blake enjoys his dogs, fishing, boating, tequila and writing, while battling world domination by clowns. His thoughts, such as they are, can be found at his blog:

  RussellBlake.com

  To get your free copy,

  just join my readers’ group here:

  http://bit.ly/rb-jet

  Chapter 1

  Two days ago, Manhattan, New York

  The high-resolution image jiggled slightly as a young woman, hands and feet bound, a strip of duct tape over her mouth, stared wide-eyed at something off-camera. Inky veins of mascara streaked down her hollow cheeks, standing out in high relief against her alabaster skin. The relentless glare of the harsh lighting lent her face a washed-out quality, as though her features were molded from wax.

  Beneath the metal chair to which she was tied, the floor was lined with green plastic garbage bags taped together, and her pale naked form glowed against the backdrop. She squirmed, trembling, her head shaking as a pair of bright yellow dishwashing gloves appeared in the frame, one of them holding a lit cigarette. Serpentine coils of smoke drifted lazily toward an unseen ceiling as a casual finger flicked away ash, and the woman shook her head again in silent horror.

  The scene zoomed until the frame was filled with her upper body and face. Her eyes welled with tears, glistening as they pled in silent desperation.

  The gloved hand pressed the cigarette’s glowing tip against the skin of her breast and she bucked against the chair, eyelids clamped shut, nostrils flared in agony, her muted scream echoing off the walls as it forced its way through her nose. Several seconds later the cigarette pulled away, leaving an ugly red welt.

  The camera twisted to the side, where a television was broadcasting a news report. Ruins of buildings smoldered as the ticker across the bottom of the screen announced further action against insurgents by a coalition of international forces. The woman’s tortured emanation faded into a long whimper as blossoms of orange lit the television image: detonating bombs, dropped from invisible planes filming the destruction.

  The focus returned to the victim’s quivering torso, her face now covered with a sheen of perspiration. A gloved hand came back into the frame, this time holding the long wooden handle of an artist’s paint brush, the bristles slathered with neon green. The woman winced as the brush touched her breast and then traced a circle, slowly, as though caressing her skin with the paint.

  The hand drew away, and for several long beats it was just the woman’s chest rising and falling rapidly, her pulse visible in her carotid artery as she drew shallow, terrified breaths.

  The paintbrush reappeared. A singl
e drop of green hung from the tip, as though fighting the pull of gravity before yielding and falling downward, out of the image. The brush neared the crude circle and settled on her sternum, and slid from the top to the base in a single swipe, neatly bisecting the ring.

  Another pause and the brush returned, slathered with more paint, and sketched an inverted V, creating a peace symbol on the woman’s brutalized form.

  The silence of the room was shattered by the strains of the “Star-Spangled Banner” from off to the side as the camera zoomed out. The image swung to the right again and fixed on the television, which was now displaying a slideshow of photographs of infants mutilated or killed during coalition attacks in the Middle East. After a half-minute montage, it reverted to the naked woman, who was struggling against her bindings as the screen filled with her seated form.

  A figure stepped into view, clad in a black plastic raincoat, its slick surface shining in the glare. In its right hand the figure clutched a meat cleaver, its blade gleaming. The woman’s eyes bugged out of her head at the sight. The figure stood, back to the camera, watching as she fought to free herself, and then slowly turned toward the camera. A Halloween mask, the beaming features of a popular cartoon ghost twisted in a permanent smile, its cherubic cheeks painted with small peace symbols in the same green paint as the woman’s, smiled ghoulishly at the camera. A gloved hand entered the frame and waved, like a child on a school outing, and threw a peace sign in the best tradition of Japanese teens in selfies before giving the camera the finger.

  The figure turned back to the woman and ripped the duct tape from her mouth in a single motion as the national anthem ended, and flipped the silver strip at the television. The room fell silent but for the woman’s ragged, harsh breathing. When she spoke, her voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “Please. Don’t do this.”

  The figure backhanded her, and the woman’s head jerked to the side from the force of the blow, her hair askew. She blinked rapidly, obviously dazed, and then the background filled with the sound of keening – the ululating of mourning women drifting from off-camera speakers.

  A gloved hand reached for something out of the frame and returned with an electrolarynx vocal synthesizer. The figure held it against its throat, and a monotone robotic voice filled the screen.

  “You are a child of privilege. You live in a nation of spoiled children. You destroy other societies without a second thought, claiming to bring them freedom or to protect yourself. Now you know the fear of real danger. Today is your day of reckoning.”

  The woman shook her head. “No. Please. I beg you. I haven’t done anything.”

  The figure held up the cleaver and studied the blade. “That is correct. You have done nothing. Just as the innocents everywhere who are butchered have done nothing. That is the world you have created. That is the world you live in – fragmented, each individual an island, apathetic and uninterested in the destruction your lifestyle inflicts upon others.”

  The woman closed her eyes and her lips moved in silent prayer. The figure moved out of the frame. A moment later the background ambiance changed to a wailing clarinet over a bouncing Dixieland jazz melody, and the figure stepped into the scene again, a single red rose in one hand and the cleaver in the other. The woman’s eyes opened and stared down at the flower, which the figure had tossed into her nude lap. She appeared confused, and then her face froze in fear as the figure raised the cleaver above her left arm, pausing dramatically before swiping down in a brutal blow.

  A spray of bloody mist dusted the camera lens as the woman’s hand and half her forearm dropped with a thump onto the garbage bags. The bouncing music played on, drowned out by the woman’s agonized shrieks, an otherworldly sound as she howled like a wounded animal.

  Five minutes later the screen went black. Three men seated at a battered wooden conference table stared in horrified disbelief at the monitor upon which they’d watched the abomination of the woman’s torture and dismemberment.

  The oldest of the trio, his creased face red and puffy from years of hard drinking, sat back and exchanged a glance with the others.

  “Jesus God…” he began, and choked on the last syllable.

  “Yeah,” the man next to him whispered.

  “Well, we know how the body at the school got that way,” the third man, NYPD homicide detective Ron Stanford, said in a hushed voice. A headless, appendage-less torso had been discovered in the schoolyard of an uptown Catholic school the prior day, scarring at least a dozen children for life. The video answered any questions about where it might have come from.

  Ben Rollins, the young homicide inspector who’d caught the case, shook his head. “I’ve seen some disturbing crap in my life, but this takes the cake.” He looked to his silver-haired superior. “What do you think, Captain?”

  “I think I’m not going to be able to eat dinner,” Captain Elton Larraby muttered. “What kind of sick bastard would kill someone on video? To what end?”

  Ron considered the overhead ventilation grill before returning his attention to the blank screen. “Someone who wants his deeds commemorated. Who wants the world to see what he’s done – to call attention to himself. Obviously, there’s some kind of symbolism at work, both with disposing of the body at a school and with the video. He’s trying to send a message.”

  “A political message, judging by the footage,” Ben agreed. “We need to get Homeland involved.”

  “Why?” Larraby demanded.

  Ben looked less sure. “This could be terrorism. All the anti-war rhetoric…”

  Ron shook his head. “No, this is the equivalent of a selfie taken by a monster, using the pretense of being anti-war to butcher a young woman. Since when did being anti-war equate to terrorism, anyway?”

  “I just thought…”

  “This is murder, plain and simple,” Ron said. He sighed. “What do we know?”

  “The news broadcast was day before yesterday’s local late news, at eleven p.m. The rest of it, we’re working on,” Ben said. “The video was received by all the major stations this afternoon, sent via the Internet in compressed format.” He paused. “They’re already calling the bastard ‘the Rose Killer.’ Leave it to our press to glorify a monster at every turn.”

  “Any progress on the school?” Larraby asked.

  “Not yet,” Ben admitted. “No traffic cams around it, and nobody living in the area saw anything. We’re running all the usual tests, but forensics isn’t optimistic.” He shrugged. “There was evidence of recent sexual activity, but no semen.”

  “How recent?” Ron demanded.

  “Within four to six hours of the victim’s death, at the latest. There are abrasions consistent with rough play.”

  Ron swiveled to face Larraby. “At least we have some promising threads we can follow from the footage. First, we can trace the IP of the sending computer. And there’s the electrolarynx – those aren’t exactly common. And then the paint. The brush. The raincoat. The music. The flower. All of it – it’s a goldmine if we can catch a break on even one element.”

  The captain frowned. “The networks are going out with this tonight. I argued against it, tried to convince them, but they refused to put a lid on it. Best I could get was an agreement to only show a brief snippet of the beginning, so we can see if someone can identify the woman.”

  “Can’t you quash it?” Ron asked.

  “Negative. Believe me, I tried. But apparently this is a ratings week, and nobody wants to suck hind tit by censoring themselves. Just be glad they aren’t going to show the whole thing.”

  “Which means we’re going to have every nutcase in the city calling in phony confessions by midnight,” Ben spat in disgust. “We’ve already had a dozen from the news on the torso discovery. This will up it to hundreds.”

  “Goes with the job,” Larraby said. He rubbed a calloused hand across his face. “Ron, tell me this isn’t the beginning of a serial spree.”

  Ron shook his head. “I can’t. My
bet is that he’s been thinking about filming this little masterpiece for a long time. The odds that it’s a one-off are slim to none. Sorry.” He eyed Ben. “Obviously, we need to run a search for similar MOs. I’d go nationwide.”

  “You think he’s done this before?”

  “He came prepared. My hunch is yes.”

  Ron Stanford looked suddenly older than his mid-thirties. A career as the NYPD’s floating serial killer and sensational homicide specialist weighed heavily on evenings like this. Even as hardened as the men in the conference room were, the video had clearly unsettled them. They were accustomed to discovering the aftereffects of murder, not viewing a particularly brutal one real-time, and none would sleep that night even though they habitually swam in the noxious waters of death.

  “And Homeland? FBI?” Ben asked.

  “I’ll run it past them,” Larraby said. “But my guess is Homeland won’t want any part of it. The feds? Right now there’s no reason for them to care.”

  “There will be when the next one appears,” Ron stated flatly. “And there will be a next one.”

  “The mayor is already freaking out,” Larraby said. “He’s going to call a press conference to get in front of it.”

  Ron rolled his eyes. “Oh, good. A press conference. Because those have proven so useful in solving crime.”

  Larraby shrugged apologetically. “I know, I know. I’ll do the talking-head routine and keep you out of the spotlight as long as possible. But you know the drill. That won’t last long – he’s already demanded a briefing within the hour.”

  “What are you supposed to tell him?” Ben asked.

  Larraby frowned. “That we’re pursuing all leads and can’t discuss the case at this early juncture.”

  Ron nodded. “I don’t envy you.”

  The captain grimaced. “Yeah, well, you’ll be up to bat soon enough.”

  The meeting broke up, and Larraby left Ben and Ron to coordinate their response. They agreed on a distribution of tasks, with Ben taking the lead – Ron was still embroiled in the trial of a group of thrill-kill teens who’d been murdering homeless men for kicks, so his time was limited until the verdict came in. The attorney general had demanded he be present for the closing arguments so the jury could see his face, which he believed was a colossal waste of time, but he’d been forced to play along. Ron was a minor celebrity in the city after solving several high-profile murders, including the recent Red Cap serial killings that had panicked Manhattan over the summer.