Conduit (9 page)

Despite having never taken someone
from their home, let alone in the middle of the day, David found taking Jillian
quite easy. Walking to his car, she didn’t make a sound, call for help, or
attempt to fight him. Persuaded at gunpoint, she climbed into his backseat
without argument, where he administered the Ketamine to keep her out for the
duration of the car ride.

Although he was at his best, the top of his game since he
started, the ease with which he stole Jillian away from her home was more than
a well-executed plan. It was fate. He was meant to take her and she would get
him closer to Emily.

Back at his farmhouse, Jillian waited for him in the
soundproof basement. David took a short glass out of the cupboard next to the
kitchen sink and placed three ice cubes in it. He poured Maker’s Mark over the
ice, filling the glass. Sitting down at the kitchen table, he lifted the glass
to his lips, the start of his pre-killing ritual. The whiskey burned his throat
and warmed his insides with the peace that always came before the kill.

He sat the glass down on a napkin on the table and picked up
the knife he had placed there earlier. David twirled it back and forth in his
fingers, mesmerized by the glint of the sharpened blade under the yellow glow
of the kitchen light. In a few hours, the knife would slice against Jillian’s
skin, occasionally burying itself into her body. For now, Jillian sat in the
cold, dark basement in solitude. The fear of what could happen to her would
build inside of her until it bubbled over in unrestrained emotion and
controlled her every thought. Only then would it be time for him to continue the
task of connecting with Emily.

David didn’t start out as a killer, nor did he ever intend
to be one. In middle school he embraced his darker side, one he explored
through vivid fantasy, but he never thought his fantasies would seep into his
reality. The fantasies were just that, and killing a person was something other
people did. People who were much different than him.

His psychic abilities came to him very early, at the young
age of eight. His successful father was too busy with his career as a
neurosurgeon to notice or even care that anything was amiss with his only child.
His mother’s social escapades kept her away from the house and out of David’s life
for most of his childhood.

The absence of his parents didn’t bother him much. A popular
child at the exclusive private school where his parents enrolled him, he spent
his days in the company of his many friends. His popularity surprised him given
that he didn’t like his classmates. The only time any twinge of emotion penetrated
his stoic life was at night alone in his bed, engulfed in his fantasies.

As he grew older, David learned more about his psychic
abilities. While very powerful, they were stunted in growth. Even though he
kept his gift hidden and didn’t know anyone else like him, he practiced his
talents on a regular basis. He tried to connect with friends at school, with
girls he thought were cute, even with perfect strangers passing by on the
street. Each time, he fell far short of his potential.

During his senior year in high school, he one day inexplicably
heard the thoughts of his mother without trying. His father had been in the
middle of a complex surgery, one that he had bragged would launch him into the
annals of medical history, when his heart decided it wasn’t time for him to be
a hero surgeon. The heart attack turned the doctor into a patient, and he was
rushed out of the operating room while another surgeon took his place at the
table.

As they sat in a sterile waiting room for news on his father’s
condition, David’s mother reached for his hand. When they touched, he heard
something. He thought he was mistaken when he heard her speak, since her mouth
did not move with the words. The sound, however, did not resonate in his ears,
but in his mind.

Before that moment, he could sense the occasional emotion, but
now he heard thoughts, and the thoughts of his mother surprised him. He had
always assumed her relationship with his father to be a sham, one of
convenience and of monetary worth only. What he heard contradicted everything
he believed.

She continued holding David’s hand tight until a doctor,
whom David recognized as a regular guest of the parties in their home, came out
to give them the news of his father’s death. They had tried everything, but the
damage to his heart was too great to save him. The doctor was sincere in his
apologies, but David was not sincere in his grief.

His mother gripped his arm for support. With her hysterical
tears came a blizzard of thoughts he latched onto. Distressed by his father’s death,
she didn’t know how she would live without him. The discovery that his mother
loved his father came second in surprise to being able to read her thoughts. It
didn’t take long for him to understand what triggered this sudden growth in his
abilities: extreme emotion.

He had been around emotional people countless times, but it
was extreme emotion that made his gift everything he knew it could be. He had
to explore this aspect to reach his potential, and he soon figured out how to
make the most of his gift.

Two weeks after his father’s demise, David’s mother demonstrated
just how much she couldn’t live without him. The day after his anticlimactic eighteenth
birthday, David found her in bed with her wrists slit. Her blood dripped into growing
pools under each wrist, red drizzling down the comforter and onto the carpet.

He sat in her plush, rose-covered reading chair for several
hours and watched the blood current stop flowing. A glaze formed at the top of
the puddles, like gravy sitting too long in the china boat at Thanksgiving
dinner. The blood fascinated him, forcing him into a hypnotic state while he
stared at it. The only place he had seen so much blood was in his mind, entrenched
in a wonderful fantasy.

Watching his mother’s lifeless body grow cold, his lack of
emotion after his father’s death and throughout much of his life continued. Staring
at her body stirred no grief. No remorse surfaced for not getting enough time
with her. No surge of excitement overcame him at being free of both his parents
to do as he wished. Just the thrill of studying the alluring blood.

Before he called 911, he gathered emotion into his voice. He
had learned over the years to create emotion by mimicking others, and he spent
countless hours watching television shows and movies in order to learn emotion.
If he didn’t display the appropriate reaction to situations, others would find
him odd and might even suspect him of doing bad things. Duplicating what he saw
others do in various situations worked well for him.

His tactics helped him succeed in school, not just with a perfect
grade point average, but in making friends and having girls follow him in hopes
of being his girlfriend. Throughout high school, he only dated a few times and
never kept a steady girlfriend. Even though people surrounded him, he could
never get too close to anyone and risk them finding out the truth about his
faux life.

After high school, David disappeared. He withdrew from the
world, determined to hone his abilities. He didn’t need to go to college or
find a job, a benefit that left him plenty of time to begin his experiments. His
parents both came from old money and his mother hadn’t managed to spend even a
tenth of it. They left him enough to last several lifetimes, and David didn’t require
much to survive.

He traded his childhood home in Los Angeles for a secluded location
in Montana. His work required solitude, and rural Montana provided just that.
He paid cash for a ranch, though he gave no thought to ever farming vegetables or
raising cattle. With the closest town over thirty miles away and his ranch
sitting on almost one hundred acres, he had plenty of privacy.

For the next five years, he stalled at developing his gift.
He only ventured out when he needed groceries or supplies. These little trips
into town did not allow him to feed off emotions of others. From time to time,
he picked up a girl for a one-night stand to satisfy his physical needs, which
in turn sparked his gift, but he had no other use for women.

He conducted research on the Internet about psychics, but
mainly found farce websites with vague horoscopes and readings he could get for
$1.99 per minute. Unable to find anything about real psychics, David tried to
live a normal, solitary life and not think about his gift. He focused instead
on criminal justice, learning everything he could about investigations, crime
scenes, and forensics. He wanted to be prepared in case he ever needed to carry
out one of his fantasies.

One evening, while heading back from town with a car full of
groceries in anticipation of an imminent winter storm, David stopped off at a
rest stop. He didn’t need to use the facilities, but an invisible force drew
him there. He parked next to the only car in the parking lot and followed his
intuition.

When he saw the young woman’s long hair glow red under the
dimly lit entrance to the restrooms, he knew what called him to stop. She
turned her head back and forth, studying the map encased by hard plastic on the
wall. From his many stops at this place, David knew the plastic container over
the map had long since eroded with weather blemishes, making it difficult for
anyone to decipher the mishmash of roads on the paper underneath. This girl
would never find her desired route on that map.

David acted like he didn’t notice her. He breezed past her
and walked into the men’s restroom. He waited a few moments inside the stale
bathroom with his hand pressed to his nose to block out the myriad of
distasteful smells, then flushed the urinal to keep up appearances.

As he ran water over his hands in the stained sink, his
stomach knotted, but he couldn’t determine the source of his anxiety. The
prospect of interacting with this woman who he sensed from a distance aroused
his dormant gift and excited him. Even in the restroom, he sensed her thoughts.
Though skewed and difficult to read, her thoughts formed a picture in his mind
of the girl staring at the map for answers to unknown questions.

He tugged open the heavily graffitied door and exited the
restroom, happy to see the girl still standing there. She turned to him, and he
gave a polite smile, but did not speak for fear he might spook her if he initiated
conversation.

“Excuse me, sir?” The woman’s strong voice was void of any
timid strains, despite being in the company of a strange man in the dark of
night at an empty rest stop. Urban legends and warnings given to young women
about the dire things that occur at rest stops didn’t seem to frighten her.

“Hi,” David said, leaving his smile in place.

The girl smiled back, with a bit of sensuality lurking
underneath the ordinary gesture. She moved toward him with purposeful, catlike
movements. “Are you from around here?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, adding a bit of Southern twang to his
tone. Women tended to trust men with a Southern accent. If she believed him to
be a good old boy, she would have no reason to be afraid.

She tilted her head and gazed at him with wide, dollish
green eyes, a look that probably worked on many men in bar settings. “Do you
know of any hotels around here?” She twirled strands of her hair between her
fingers. “A motel would work fine, too. I can’t afford much right now so a
motel might be best, just nothing too dirty.”

David knew of at least three motels about fifteen miles up
the interstate. All were clean and most likely in her price range. He had
visited all of them in the past after picking up a girl at a bar. “I’m afraid
there’s not too much around here. Maybe about an hour or so from here.”

The girl pursed her lips in a sorrowful, yet attractive
manner. “The radio says there’s quite a storm heading in and I’m afraid I might
be stuck if I can’t find anything.” She dug her cell phone out of her coat
pocket and waved it at him. “Not much in the way of cell service, either.”

There was no cell service anywhere between here and his
ranch, though David didn’t bother with that technology. The absence of cellular
phones in his life helped keep him off the grid. “Where are you headed?” he
asked.

“Out to Seattle.” A girlish, flirty laugh floated his way. “I
know it’s a dreadful time of year to drive this part of the country, but my
friend is getting married and airline tickets were too pricey given the
bridesmaid dress I had to buy.” She inched closer to him. “Besides, I thought
the scenery might provide some interest.”

“It’s sure beautiful right here,” David said, looking her
over. He wasn’t lying. At about 5’3, even with her heavy winter coat on he
could tell she didn’t weigh much over 105. A beautiful girl, she knew how to
use her looks to get what she wanted. Right now, she wanted him.

But there was something he wanted much more from her than a
one-night stand at a motel. His abilities raged inside of him, fully awake for
the first time since his mother’s death. This frail beauty standing in front of
him, staring at him with lust-filled eyes, brought life back into his veins. He
had to get her back to his ranch and learn why she had this effect on his gift.

“The storm is coming quick,” he said. “I was just making the
long journey back from town with enough groceries to ride it out.”

“I’m not sure what to do. I might have to sleep in my car
tonight and hope to make it out of here tomorrow.”

David extended his hand. “My name is David,” he said.
Despite inserting his introduction in an odd part of their conversation, he decided
to disarm her of any lingering suspicions before suggesting she come to his
ranch.

She slipped her slender, gloved hand into his and said, “I’m
Julie.” Even through the leather, her touch made his powers stronger. He could
only imagine what touching her skin would do for him.