Be My Killer: A completely UNPUTDOWNABLE crime thriller with nail-biting mystery and suspense Read online

  Be My Killer

  A completely unputdownable crime thriller that will shock you to the core

  Richard Parker

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  A Letter from Richard

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Richard Parker

  To The Plump Duck

  1

  The only parts of her body Meredith Hickman could move were her eyelids. She could just blink them against the matted ends of her blood-soaked peroxide hair.

  The barbed wire that tightly coiled her naked form to the cold stone pillar lacerated the bridge of her nose and held her head rigidly in place. It restrained every muscle and painfully secured her arms, which were crossed and pinned firmly to her chest.

  Her teeth ground the taut metal that cut deeply across the corners of her mouth, and Meredith gagged as she tried to position her tongue against the sharp spikes. Dirty tears diluted and leaked dark mascara down her cheeks. She attempted to swallow but one of the barbs was already stabbing her throat.

  The area beyond Fun Central’s derelict concrete walkway was in darkness. Perhaps she was going to be left here until one of the crackheads found her and let her go. Or did what they wanted to her. She prayed that’s what would happen.

  She felt goosebumps prickle her pinioned shoulders but not from the freezing air. Meredith knew she was going to die. And in her twenty-six years she’d never left Broomfield.

  The person who had taken her had been a shape at the periphery of her vision outside the bathroom of the fried chicken place before a sack that stank of paraffin had been put over her face. Then something heavy had slammed into her scalp. Meredith could feel the bruise pound under the raw and broken skin, still taste the vinegary Buffalo wings she’d been eating. She breathed out and flinched as the spiked metal pierced her stomach.

  Movement behind her – whoever had stripped and bound Meredith was the other side of the pillar. She gasped as the wire cut deeper. They were pulling and tightening it. The tops of her arms throbbed as the blood was trapped and the steel points dragged and tore at her flesh.

  Meredith struggled to shape her guttural pleas but agony squeezed them flat. Was it going to get any worse than this? She closed her eyes and kept them shut even after the wire had stopped contracting. Her wounds trickled warmth down the inside of her thigh.

  ‘Meredith,’ a calm voice whispered in front of her.

  She cracked her eyes at the hooded person standing in the shadows. They took a step forward into the dim light, head bowed as they focussed on something in their gloved hands.

  Meredith looked down and saw it was a tiny tube of glue. They unscrewed the cap and then moved the nib across the area under each of her eyebrows. She could only grunt incoherently and stare at their throat.

  She could smell the cool solvent on her skin before the leather pads of their thumbs curled her false eyelashes against it and pressed them hard in place.

  She couldn’t shake her forehead as they pushed it harshly against the pillar. A few moments later she was released. Meredith could feel the air on her exposed eyeballs and them quickly drying out as her lids fought to blink. Now she had no choice but to look at whatever they were going to do to her.

  The hood spoke to Meredith through her tears and agonised begging, so she only heard some of what they said. But it was enough. They retreated back into the gloom when she understood. She couldn’t accept what they’d told her. How could she have brought this on herself?

  Meredith waited for them to return but their footfalls faded before she heard a car door slam.

  She was still going to die; nobody would find her and cut her down in time.

  An engine started. They were leaving.

  Her circulation coursed irregularly through her constricted limbs. Meredith sucked in air through her nose. Unconsciousness began to release her.

  But the black haze was quickly bleached out.

  Meredith Hickman was illuminated and couldn’t seal her eyes against a blinding set of headlig
hts turning square in her direction. The car accelerated, hurtled through the main entrance and rocketed straight at her.

  2

  Hazel Salter yanked on the frosted entrance door and breezed through the downstairs reception as quickly as she could. ‘Hey, Rena.’

  The pink-haired, twenty-three-year-old intern looked up from her granola and magazine with barely concealed hostility. ‘Hey.’ Rena had the kind of indolent arrogance that stemmed from the belief she had so many years ahead of her she was bound to be spectacular at some point.

  ‘You’ve beaten me in again.’

  Rena grinned inhospitably. ‘When don’t I?’

  Hazel couldn’t blame her for being spiky. She was a UCLA graduate who had been employed by her for seven months and had been tucked downstairs since she’d started. She hit the button for the elevator and willed the doors to open.

  ‘Hazel?’

  She turned and rapidly blinked at Rena as if startled from her thoughts.

  ‘Just wondered if you’ve interviewed for another receptionist yet.’ Rena knew Hazel hadn’t. She signed everyone in.

  ‘I’m still looking at applicants.’

  Rena nodded but knew she was being fobbed off. ‘I have a friend who’s interested. Maybe then you could put me to better use.’

  ‘Great. Get her to email me her résumé.’

  Rena knew it was another stalling tactic. ‘She’s in town today. I could get her to swing by, if you’re not too busy… ’ she said significantly.

  Hazel had one solitary meeting that day, and Rena knew it. She’d orchestrated this perfectly.

  ‘Sorry, I’m locking myself in the office to work on some new proposals. But if she can leave her details with you, I’ll get back to her as soon as I can.’

  Rena’s eyes instantly glazed. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Any messages?’

  Rena shook her head once as if it was becoming a tiresome ritual. ‘Mail’s on your desk.’

  The elevator doors parted, and Hazel stepped inside. She wouldn’t have to run the same gauntlet for much longer and had been half-expecting to find reception empty for the last couple of weeks.

  The other floors of the office block were unoccupied so she’d had to put Rena there as sentry. Seven months ago she’d genuinely believed in the chemistry she’d felt when the girl with the bowl cut of pink hair had walked into her office fresh from campus. When Hazel had interviewed her, she’d said she needed a general factotum but that there’d be plenty of opportunities to gain valuable production and post-production experience. Now Rena was her only employee – today, at least.

  The doors separated, and she echoed through the oversized second empty reception, past the six unoccupied desks on the production floor to her expansive office beyond. Hazel had no choice but to give up her Sunset Boulevard business address at the end of the month and go back to working from home. However long she owned that.

  Hazel regarded the pile of envelopes on her desk and knew exactly what they were. She flicked through them, holding her breath as she did. A final rent reminder and demands for business utility bills with red stamps all over them. After spending her teenage years with her British mother in the UK, Hazel had lived in LA for just over a decade, but, wherever she lived, she’d always had a tendency to ignore everyday responsibilities.

  She didn’t even look at the Emmy on the cherrywood wall unit any more. It had been her talisman when she’d moved Veracity Media to the next level, and now the golden angel with the atom within its grasp was a gilded joke.

  Even though it was only the September before last, picking up the award for Isil Brides seemed like it had happened in somebody else’s lifetime. It coincided with her thirtieth birthday, and her agent at the time had told Hazel everyone was talking about her forthright interview technique and that she had to step up to the plate and capitalise on the exposure. Now her office was about to shut down, and the bank was going to foreclose on her house. She’d used it as collateral to start up Veracity Media.

  She hadn’t got complacent. The number of meetings she’d had after Isil Brides picked up its award for best documentary had been dizzying – big studios, big talk. Seven months ago she had so many projects pending she wondered if her office space was going to be big enough to cope. Now even the secretaries of the execs had stopped returning her emails, and the only people still in touch with Hazel were her crew.

  Isil Brides had been made with caffeine and goodwill. Most had worked for nothing and had stuck with the project above and beyond the point most professionals should have. She loved her crew but now she couldn’t make good on the promises she’d used to entice them on board in the first place.

  Hazel knew she could do it again. Some of them would come back, if not all. But how could she replicate the optimism and belief that there was no limit to what they could achieve next that she’d engendered on the Syrian shoot?

  She’d been here plenty of times before, but on her earlier projects she hadn’t been an award winner with overheads. Ironically, the industry now thought she was too big a producer/director for indie money, but not big enough to helm upscale projects for the majors.

  Picking up the remote, she switched on the news channel, turned her back on it and took a jar of instant coffee out of her handbag. Moving into the galley kitchen she filled and switched on the kettle and waited while it strained and wheezed. Hazel wondered if she could get any money back on the cappuccino machine that had been installed. Jesus, had it really come down to this?

  For a while her mind searched for a gear. The kettle boiled, and she made her drink on automatic pilot. As she stirred her coffee, the words of the male newsreader gradually filtered into her thoughts. He was talking about the ‘Be My Killer’ story.

  Several people were dead after they’d responded to a dare to put their names into a Twitter stream supposedly for serial killers to select their victims. She sipped her coffee but it was piping hot, and she was just struggling to open a new milk carton when Hazel recognised a name he mentioned and walked quickly back into the office, her attention on the screen.

  A twenty-six-year-old woman, Meredith Hickman, had been brutally murdered in Broomfield, Vermont.

  Hazel examined the photograph on-screen and saw, behind the make-up and wear of twenty years, a girl whose shrieks and laughter and cherry lip-balm scent had mingled with her own as they’d chased and weaved through the broken benches of Blue Grove Park.

  3

  ‘Yes?’ Detective Jared Bennett’s flat tone said he’d run out of excuses not to speak to Hazel.

  She hadn’t been expecting him to pick up and tucked her short ash-blonde hair behind her ear as she sat down on her desk. ‘I’ve left a ton of messages for you.’

  ‘You always do. What can I help you with this time, Miss Salter?’

  ‘My crew are travelling to Broomfield tomorrow. Just wondered if you’d reconsidered.’ She already knew what his response would be.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to add since the January press release.’

  ‘It’s March now. No progress since then?’

  ‘I’ve got a bunch of other things on my plate.’

  ‘It’s been five months since Meredith’s death. Don’t you think participating in my documentary would be an opportunity to rekindle interest in the investigation?’

  ‘Why don’t you speak to the FBI? Since they assumed control I’ve probably had as much luck getting them to pick up the phone as you.’ Detective Bennett had been uncooperative since Meredith’s murder had been tied in with the ‘Be My Killer’ hysteria. That’s when it had become much bigger than just a small-town homicide and, after his department had been ridiculed for their handling of the case by the media, it had been swiftly wrestled from his hands.

  ‘I’m just asking you for an hour or so of your time.’

  ‘Yes, you and all the other TV people. Just let me get on with my job, Miss Salter. What I don’t need is you and your crew picking over a cold crime scene.’


  ‘We’ve got permission.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. But we’ve only just seen the back of all the cameras and TV crews. Everyone here went crazy with that. Wait, I’ve got another call.’

  Hazel’s eyes came to rest on the photo of Meredith Hickman stuck to her pinboard. ‘I promise I wouldn’t be pursuing this if I wasn’t wholly committed to this story.’

  ‘If you want to help the investigation, just keep your crew away from Broomfield.’ He hung up on her.

  Hazel set her iPhone on the desk, stood and walked to the pinboard. Over the past months she’d immersed herself in the chain of events that had followed the ’Be My Killer’ Twitter craze.

  The Twitter account @BeMyKiller was supposedly set up as a prank. Millions of people had responded to the dare and put their names forward using the hashtag #BeMyKiller and included a message goading their potential murderer.

  Four people had died after using the hashtag. She examined their faces. Denise Needham was a pretty twenty-three-year-old nanny working for a wealthy family in Belle Meade, Tennessee, who, on Halloween, had baited her killer with the words

  Take your best shot #BeMyKiller

  Two days later, three armour-piercing bullets fired by a sniper through a kitchen window fatally wounded her.

  One day later, in Clearwater, Florida, thirty-one-year-old Caleb Huber’s

  Want a piece of me? #BeMyKiller

  message was taken very literally. His younger sister, Eve, found his mutilated remains in their backyard. His pockmarked features sneered crookedly at Hazel from the wall.

  She took in the gaunt expression of twenty-five-year-old Kristian O’Connell. A couple of hours after Caleb had died, he’d been stabbed thirty-six times in an alleyway in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He’d tweeted the @BeMyKiller account but was the only victim who didn’t include a message for his killer. Kristian was a heroin addict.

  Three days later, Meredith Hickman had been murdered only two hours after her

  Hit me up #BeMyKiller

  invitation in Broomfield, Vermont.

  Hazel’s eyes returned to her toothy smile. It was the photo they’d used on the news, and there was a doleful vulnerability in her regard that hadn’t changed since she’d first met her.