Chapter 6: Murder Gone Viral by Stephen Simpson
Gareth and Richard sit in the panel van. The inside of the van is dark, and Richard has parked the vehicle in between two lampposts so only a faint amber glow is shining onto the car. The kid across the street might become suspicious when he sees two white young men sitting in a car staring and watching him absorbed.
Richard has followed the fourteen-year-old, black youth around for a few days. He has learned the kid stays on the corner until four o’clock each morning, catching the early morning stragglers as they leave the nightclubs and looking for a fix or to replenish their stock. Each morning at four o’clock the kid then goes home to a filthy Brownstone house. Black bags of rubbish are piled on the steps and some are spilling over onto the sidewalk. One morning when Richard did not have to rush off to get in a few hours of sleep before heading to class, he saw the fourteen-year-old boy leave the disgusting squalor with a ten-year-old girl. Although the girl did not have any physical injuries, she had the haunted look of an abused child. Interested he followed the children around the block and then he saw the young boy buy the little girl a burger and drink before he walked with her across the road and down four blocks. At the school, he went down on his one knee in front of the girl and Richard instinctively knew that the little girl is the young boy’s sister.
For a moment, he considered to rather kidnap the girl, but then he remembered they were looking for the perfect kid, not the sorriest looking kid.
Tonight, they have been watching the boy wordlessly for more than an hour, and it is almost four o’clock. The road is dark and deserted, all the street vermin have crawled into their respective holes.
Richard jumps with fright when he hears the passenger side door open. Silently, he watches Gareth get out of the car, and he follows him with his eyes as Gareth crosses the road in front of the van.
Gareth approaches the boy with a confident swagger. “Hey.”
The young boy looks up at Gareth nervously.
Gareth says friendly, “I hear you are the man to see if I need something.”
The boy looks up and down the road apprehensively. He cannot afford to be arrested. He cannot leave his sister alone with their sadistic father and pathetic mother.
Gareth takes out his wallet and then he pulls a hundred-dollar bill from the fold. “I hear you are cheap.”
The boy remains standing with his back against the wall, looking up at Gareth searchingly.
“You can keep the change.”
The boy looks at the hundred-dollar bill, flapping in the slight early morning breeze. He reaches his hand into his pocket to pull out the little packet of drugs. His mind works fast. Julio, his boss, will not know he got paid a hundred dollars for a twenty-dollar sachet. He would be able to take eighty dollars’ home and this afternoon he can spoil Anna. He loved seeing her happy smile when it appeared now and again, and sadly it did not happen often enough.
He holds the sachet to Gareth while his other hand reaches up to the money.
Gareth grabs hold of the boy’s skinny, emaciated wrist and then he pulls him roughly to him. Richard is next to him in seconds because he knows Gareth is not big and strong enough to do the physical labour.
Richard grabs the boy from behind, around the waist and then he carries him to the panel van. The boy screams, but there is nobody to hear him, the industrial area is desolate at this hour. He kicks violently and his foot hits Richard in the groin.
Richard yells out in pain. “Fuck, kid.” He punches the boy against the back of the head hard and the sound is dull but effective. The boy slumps down in his arms, and annoyed Richard hurls the boy into the back of the panel van. The child’s body bounces off the side, and then slumps down into a sorry heap.
Richard rubs his groin, trying to get the sharp excruciating pain to subside.
He walks to the front of the van and he slides into the driver seat, with a painful groan. Gareth is already waiting for him.
“Do you want me to drive out to the cabin with you?”
Richard suggests, “While we got this one, why don’t we just drive two blocks on and get that other kid. He sleeps under the bridge.”
With a frown, Gareth asks, “What about the other homeless people? Won’t they try to stop us?”
“No. I have discovered in the last few days following him around that homeless people are very territorial, and he sleeps there with only four or five other kids. This would be a good time because it is still dark, so when I grab him from under the bridge, the other kids there won’t be able to see my face too clearly.”
As Richard starts the van, he pulls the car into the road, driving toward the bridge, Gareth agrees. “Okay. We might as well get this over and done with. You’ll have to drop me off though before you drive to the cabin, I have an eleven o’clock class, I cannot miss. Are you free today?”
“I have a class this afternoon at four, so hopefully I’ll be able to get a few hours of sleep in before then. At least it is Saturday tomorrow.”
Gareth suggests, “We can upload the first video tomorrow, or do you have any other plans?”
“None.”
“Good. So, we upload the video tomorrow, and then by next week Thursday, we can have the final climatic episode. Perfect timing, in my opinion, cause my parents expect me home for Thanksgiving dinner.”
As they approach the bridge, they stop talking about their normal, daily activities. Richard switches off the engine of the car, and he lets the van roll down the slight incline, closer to the bridge. He does not want to carry a writhing and kicking kid up to the main road. His groin is still shooting sharp pains down his legs.
Richard stops the car and then without hesitation, he opens the door and gets out. With determination, he walks in under the bridge. With the amount of city and streetlights around him, the early morning darkness is not as black as would be expected, so he can see where he is going easily.
He steps across two tiny bodies and he walks directly to the black-haired boy in the corner. He pulls the sleeping boy up from the ground and then he is surprised when four pair of hands grab onto him.
He throws the nine-year-old, loudly yelling kid across his shoulder and he starts kicking wildly at the four young kids grabbing onto him. He hears the crack of a bone when he kicks a boy of seven in the shin, and the girl rushes off to help him.
Richard bellows in an authoritarian voice, “Unless you want to spend the next few days in jail, step away. This young fellow is wanted for questioning.”
The remaining two kids step away from him immediately and the boy in his arms stops thrashing. The kid screams infuriated, “What questioning, I haven’t done anything wrong!”
Richard ignores the child and walks out from under the bridge. The two kids who stepped back afraid when they assumed, he was a police officer, run after him. Richard sees Gareth duck under the dashboard in the front of the van. From the corner of his eyes, he sees the one kid’s lips move as she tries to memorize the license plate.
He walks around the van and then he pushes the child into the back of the van, after he swings the door open, preparing to knock the black kid back should he decide to make a run for it.
The black kid is still in the same position he was in when Richard threw him in earlier on.
Richard walks back to the front of the van and then gets in. Gareth is lying down on the seat, and Richard sits with his thigh pressed into the top of his head.
The bright headlights from the van blind the kids standing in front of it, as he switches it on. Their arms fly up to shield their eyes.
Awkwardly, he shifts the gears into reverse, and then eventually he gets the van turned around and he drives up the incline and onto the tarmac.
Gareth sits up and worried he says, “You’ll have to get rid of this van.”
“I am going to the cabin now and I will stay there. It means I have to skip my class this afternoon, but I suppose I can make a little sacrifice for fame.”
“When you get to the cabin, drive it in between the trees. For the rest of the week, we can drive around in your Jeep. Give me your keys and I’ll drive up with it tomorrow.”
Richard smirks amused. “It was good thinking on your part when we bought this van with my dead father’s identification.”
“It helped that I paid cash, otherwise they would have made credit checks.”
Richard laughs amused. “As if the motor dealer where we bought this van would have even bothered with such technicalities. He saw the cash and everything else disappeared for him.”
Gareth laughs with him and thirty minutes later Richard drops him off in front of the dorm.
Still in good humour, Gareth says, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bring beer and food.”
“Okay. I’ll bring enough supplies for the week. How is the dog food, do we need any more?”
“Yeah, buy another big bag.”
Gareth smiles widely and then he walks away.
Richard drives away from the university and then he follows the, by now, familiar road out to the cabin.
When he stops in front of the cabin, he sits quietly for a little while, enjoying the hushed tranquillity of his surroundings.
In the darkened basement, Sarah wakes up groggily. She tries to pull at the metal cuff around her wrist and a sharp ache flashes like a white searing light through her brain. She groans softly in pain and then she hears the soft wailing.
She asks hopefully, her voice hesitant and croaky, “Is there someone there?”
The crying stops abruptly.
Sarah asks again, “Hello?”
Emily sniffs. “I want my Mommy.”
Sarah can hear the youthfulness of the voice. “Where’s your Mommy?”
The little girl starts to sob. “I am scared of the dark. Will you please put the lights on?”
Apologetically Sarah replies, “I can’t. I am tied to the floor.”
The volume of the sobbing increases. Sarah hears a door slam from a distance away.
She implores urgently. “What’s your name?”
Emily hiccups as she tries to swallow her sobs. “Emily.”
“Okay, Emily, listen to me. It is important. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
Sarah can hear a door opening from somewhere above her. “Pretend to be sleeping. Close your eyes. Now.”
Emily starts to say, “I can’t”
The light above them flicker on and Sarah slumps down onto the cold cement floor.
She keeps her eyes open to slits and she sees the dark shadow walk past. The tall, muscular boy is carrying a child of about nine across his shoulder. With a sickening thud, she hears a body make contact with the floor and then she hears the scraping of metal across the concrete floor. She hears a metal spring jump into place and then the dark figure walks past again. She listens as she hears the footsteps on the stairs leading up and when the door slams shut, she whispers loudly. “Emily? Are you still there?”
The voice is soft. “Yes.”
“You were such a good girl. When you hear the footsteps coming down again, you must not say anything. You must be quiet.” Sarah waits for a reply. Several seconds tick by. “Okay?”
Emily whimpers, “But I am scared.”
“I know, but you are not alone. You must be brave, and if you are, your Mommy will be proud of you.”
Sarah hears the door creak open again and then she hears two pairs of feet coming down the stairs.
Urgently Sarah begs, “Hush. Pretend to be sleeping.”
As the dark shadow falls across the wall of her cubicle Sarah suppresses the urge to scream. The boy from earlier is pulling another teenage boy across the room. The boy is thrashing on the floor, but the dog training choke chain is biting into the flesh around his neck and he pulls uselessly onto it with both his hands, the gurgling sound erupting from him is agonizing.
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