Demonic, p.1
Demonic, page 1
Demonic
Jeff Strand
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books By Jeff Strand
Demonic copyright 2023 by Jeff Strand
Cover art copyright 2023 by Lynne Hansen www.LynneHansenArt.com
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.
For more information about the author, visit http://www.JeffStrand.com
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Chapter One
Quinn Fielding didn’t manipulate me into trying to kill her husband. I was sure of it. I’d replayed every relevant conversation in my mind dozens of times, and I was one hundred percent confident that the decision was entirely mine. I wasn’t some lovestruck, gullible idiot.
Okay, I was definitely lovestruck, and I’ve been an idiot on many, many occasions. But the way things went wrong—and holy freaking crap did they go wrong—wasn’t something I could’ve ever anticipated. When I knocked on their front door, with a gun in my pocket and a knife strapped to my wrist, I’d planned things out from what I thought was every conceivable angle.
The gun was only in case of an emergency. I needed to do this quietly, even if the knife was messier.
I wanted to kill her husband long before I planned to kill him, if that makes sense. I’d sit in my cubicle fuming as she came in with a black eye, explaining that she walked into a door. I wanted to ask how you could give yourself a black eye walking into a door, but I didn’t. I never questioned her excuses. If she hadn’t gotten really drunk at the holiday party, and we hadn’t gone outside to get some fresh air, she may never have told me the truth.
“Do you need to throw up?” I asked, as we stepped out of the building.
She shook her head, though she looked unsure.
“It’s okay if you do. I won’t tell anyone.”
“I’m fine. I’ll let you know if it changes.” She stuck her tongue out to catch some of the falling snow. I did the same.
I was pretty sure Quinn was older than me. I’d just turned thirty-one, and I figured she was mid-thirties. She looked forty, but I was deducting a few years because of her obviously stressful home life. I didn’t mind that she was older than me; my acceptable dating ages ranged from nineteen to Helen Mirren.
To be clear, I wasn’t actually trying to hook up with her. She was married and a co-worker. I’ll admit that I’d made an exception for each of those in the past, but Quinn had given absolutely no hints that she was interested, and I certainly wasn’t going to push the issue. I was—how can I best say this?—not lonely. Not a man-whore, but not lonely. I believed very strongly in the idea of “enthusiastic consent,” because I didn’t want anybody waking up next to me thinking, “Oh, Jesus H. Christ, what have I done?” But I didn’t spend my nights wallowing in self-pity, wondering when I would finally know the touch of a woman. I’m not saying this to brag. It’s a fact: I can be a very charming guy.
Some people tell me I look like a young George Clooney. Some people tell me I look like a young Christian Slater. The fact that George Clooney looks nothing like Christian Slater doesn’t stop these two comparisons from coming up over and over. I don’t see either of them, to be perfectly honest, but I get it a lot and thus I’m passing that information on to you. Thick black hair. Dark complexion. Crooked smile that I’m told is endearing. Tall, if you consider six-foot-one tall. Not the best body—I need to get more exercise.
My relationships were brief and superficial, but I wasn’t the kind of guy who would gaze at the moon and long for something more. Though I figured that a streak of romanticism was coming, I wasn’t there yet. And Quinn, though perfectly nice, was a very professional, all-business, no-gossip type. She was my type, because “my type” cast an extremely wide net, but she wasn’t the kind of person for me to become infatuated with. We’d worked together for three years, and I didn’t picture her naked any more than I did my other co-workers.
And then the holiday party happened.
Quinn hadn’t attended the previous two. She showed up to this one in a cute red dress and plush reindeer antlers. Those antlers really worked for me. I’m not saying that I want to bang Rudolph—what I’m saying is that I was suddenly very attracted to her, but not in a bestiality way. I think it was more that the antlers seemed to be her way of saying, “Screw it, I’m going to have fun tonight,” and that was a major turn-on.
She did have fun. She danced. She laughed. She drank too much.
Quinn shivered. “It’s cold.”
I would have offered her my jacket, but I wasn’t wearing one. And I wasn’t going to be sleazy by offering to put my arm around her. “We can go back inside,” I said.
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Still think you might puke?”
“If I tell you something, would you promise to keep it a secret?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“I mean it. You can’t tell anybody.”
“Not even the FBI? Have you been stealing money from the company?”
Quinn laughed. “No.”
“Are you sure? Because I get a strong larceny vibe from you.”
“I’m being serious.”
“Yes, I promise. Your secret is safe with me, even if they try to pry off my fingernails.”
Quinn’s energy level suddenly disappeared. Her shoulders slumped, and she looked as if she was going to cry. “Vic hits me. A lot.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I kind of figured that’s what was happening.”
“It’s not my fault. I don’t do anything to deserve it.”
“Of course you don’t. Nobody deserves to get hit by their husband. Does it happen when he’s drunk or something?”
“No,” said Quinn. “He doesn’t drink. And it’s not like anything sets him off. I had a friend whose husband would scream at her if dinner wasn’t ready on time, but there’s no trigger for Vic. He just hits me for no reason.”
“Asshole.”
Quinn nodded. “Yeah.”
“So, I’m going to ask the obvious question, and I’m asking out of curiosity, not because I’m judging you. Why are you still with him? Why not leave him?”
Quinn didn’t answer.
“Is it because you still love him?”
“No. That’s long gone.”
“Then...?”
“I’m scared of what he’d do to me.”
“Okay. That’s reasonable.” I suddenly felt much colder than I had before. “I haven’t really had this kind of conversation before, so I don’t want to act like the solution is oh-so-easy. I’m just asking questions. Why can’t you just have the police take him away? You don’t have to call them from home. Call them now.”
Quinn smiled. “Oh, sure, I’ll make a domestic abuse call during the Christmas party.” She stumbled a bit over “domestic abuse,” but was overall speaking quite articulately for somebody who was that drunk.
“I mean, not now, but…”
“I know what you mean.” She was silent for a moment. “It’s not like they’d put him away for life for slapping me around. He’d get out. Probably the same day.”
“Right. So a restraining order.” I was beginning to feel like a jackass. It’s not like she was going to say, “Oh my God, I never thought of that! How silly of me not to think of getting a restraining order! Your brilliant advice has changed everything! You’re a genius, Corey Black!” At least not without a tone of withering sarcasm.
Quinn shook her head. “He’d destroy me.”
“What do you mean, destroy you?”
“That’s what he told me. He’d destroy me.” She sighed. “There’s a lot more to it.”
“I’m listening.”
“No, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have said anything. We’re supposed to be having fun.”
“No, no, no, you can tell me. Our secrecy pact is still in effect. I wasn’t having fun at the party anyway. It is, objectively, a truly shitty party, with shitty music and shitty food. You’re saving me from the misery.”
Quinn didn’t seem amused. She shivered. “I shouldn’t have burdened you. That’s why I don’t drink. It’s all fine, really.”
The door opened. “Hey, you two boning or what?” asked Larry, who worked in Reconciliations and was the kind of guy who didn’t fear being reported to Human Resources.
“Classy,” I said.
Larry gave me a drunken salute. Everybody was making the most out of the open bar, probably from the standpoint of “If they aren’t going to give us a pay raise, we might as well score some free booze.”
We went back inside.
I’d seen Vic a couple of times, when he’d picked Quinn up from work. Big bald dude. In a fair fight, he’d kick my ass. And now I hated that guy…which was weird, because Quinn hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already pretty much know. Of course he hit her. And fear of retribution, irrational or not, was often part of the package. But now I loathed him.
Not enough to kill him.
And I wasn’t going to call the police on her behalf. Maybe she had a legitimate reason to be afraid. Maybe the whole “there’s a lot more to it” part was really important. It wasn’t up to me to decide when she should have that son of a bitch taken away in handcuffs.
The end result of that talk was that Quinn and I became actual friends. We didn’t see each other outside of work hours, and we didn’t call, text, or interact on social media, but she did become my default lunch partner, usually just the two of us.
We didn’t talk about Vic. The conversation was almost always either lighthearted discussion about movies, books, or food, or it was venting to each other about work. Working in the office was better than coal mining, but we could fill an entire forty-five-minute lunch break with frustrated rants, no problem. Though she didn’t show up to work with any visible marks, her office attire showed very little in the way of bare skin, so I had no idea what she might be hiding. One day she showed up with a mild limp and said that she’d tripped.
After a few weeks, I started to realize that I was developing feelings that one should not have toward a married co-worker whose husband has anger issues. I didn’t act on those feelings, not even in a way that I could pass off as a joke. Our time together was one hundred percent flirt-free. If she was envisioning crawling over the table and ravishing me with the animalistic passion of a neglected wife, she sure wasn’t showing it. There were no hugs, no physical contact at all, though I did get plenty of smiles.
I had an occasional fantasy where I’d show up at her place, beat the shit out of Vic, and carry her out of her miserable life. Okay, it was a frequent fantasy. And sometimes I broke his neck with one quick twist.
I’d always had success with dating apps, if by “success” you don’t mean “long-term relationships.” I realized, to my surprise, that I hadn’t bothered to check my accounts in over a month. Nor had I tried to strike up a conversation at a coffee shop or any other place I hung out when I wasn’t at work.
Fine. I was falling in love with Quinn.
But I’d never complicate her life by telling her how I felt. All I could do was hope that she whacked that douchebag over the head with a frying pan and left him.
One day, in the middle of March, she showed up to work looking positively sick to her stomach, far worse than she did at the party where I thought she was going to throw up.
“You okay?” I asked, standing by her cubicle.
Quinn nodded. “I’m fine. Stomach flu, I think.”
She was lying to me, but I didn’t call her out on it.
Patty and Stacey, a pair of middle-aged women who, yes, I’d had impure thoughts about, both individually and together, walked into the department with their morning coffees. “Does pepper spray go bad?” Patty asked.
“I can’t imagine that it does,” said Stacey. “I’ve never heard that you need to do routine maintenance on your pepper spray. I’ve got a Taser.”
“Are we allowed to have a Taser in the office?”
“Of course we are. Sometimes we have to walk through the parking lot at night.”
“Hey,” I said, “if you need somebody to walk you to your car tonight, or any night, let me know.”
“Thanks, Corey,” said Stacey. “That’s very sweet.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” said Patty. “They really should have a security guard doing it. It’s ridiculous that there’s not better lighting out there.”
“Did something happen?” I asked.
“They found another body.”
She didn’t need to explain further. And we were in Toledo, Ohio, which doesn’t exactly have a low homicide rate.
This had been going on for about five years. Every six months or so, a new body would be discovered. Always a young woman. Always in horrific shape—shattered bones, organs torn out, a limb or two missing, burn marks, and bites taken out of their skin. The bodies were never hidden. They were simply dumped somewhere. The time before this, an unfortunate father had gone out to get the mail and found a mangled, naked woman splayed out right on his front lawn.
When the first victim was found, the press had theorized that it could be a bear attack, but the teeth marks were quickly determined to be human. Thanks to the bites, the authorities knew that the first nine bodies were all victims of the same killer.
If he’d just go in for a dental exam, they could catch him.
The killer was dubbed the Toledo Trasher. There was controversy over this name, which was considered disrespectful to the victims, but I guess the press liked alliteration in their serial killer monikers.
Quinn bent over, pulled over her wastebasket, and dry heaved.
“It’s okay,” Stacey told her. “We’ll watch out for each other.”
Ten minutes into lunch, Quinn hadn’t taken a single bite of her BLT.
“Maybe you should go home early,” I said.
She violently shook her head.
“If I ask you a question, do you promise to tell me the truth?” I asked.
“Not necessarily.”
“Can I ask anyway?”
“Sure.”
“Did your husband kill those women?”
Quinn burst into tears.
Chapter Two
The server thought that Quinn and I were having a fight and gave me a death glare. I decided that a crowded restaurant was not the best place for Quinn to bare her soul about what she knew, so we got a to-go bag for our sandwiches and sat in my car in the parking lot.
For several minutes, all she could do was sob. I didn’t say anything or try to comfort her. I just gave her time.
Finally, she spoke. “Yes.”
“Yes, Vic killed them?”
Quinn nodded. “And a few more that were never found.”
I’m a good conversationalist, but this was a tricky one to navigate. I tried to make sure my voice was soothing and non-accusatory. “How long have you known?”
“A long time.”
“Since the beginning?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
“He needs to do this. He’ll have this cooling off period where he’s really sweet. Then it’ll wear off and he’ll start taking it out on me, and then he’ll need to do it again.”
“Okay.” I supposed I should say something more substantial. “I promise I’m not judging you, but why didn’t you turn him in?”
She cried for a few more minutes before she could answer. “I was scared. He said that he’d do worse to me. ‘I’ll make what I did to her look like a backrub’ is what he said. And I believed him. Believe him. He said he’d make it last until I died of old age. Hell on earth.”
“Okay,” I said. “But this isn’t like hitting you. He’s not going to get out on bail. They’ll match his teeth to the bites, and that’s the end of him.”
“They weren’t his teeth.”
“What?”
“He made me bite them. Made me...take a bite out of them. Called it his insurance policy.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah.” She wiped her nose on her shirtsleeve. “Good thing I don’t need a root canal, huh?” She looked like she tried to smile at her joke but couldn’t quite make her mouth cooperate.
