Page 33 of A Simple Mistake (Deadly Mistakes #1)
THIRTY-THREE
Liam
Present
Getting into the chief’s home is easier than one would think. When the killer is already in his house, what does he really have to fear? The chief and his wife are asleep in their bedroom and their old deaf dog is curled up at their feet.
The wife had her hip replaced a few months back, resulting in them moving the main bedroom downstairs, which means her precious murderer son is upstairs on the other end of the large house.
The stairs don’t even make a peep as I head up them. They’re obviously on my side. I reach the room he sleeps in and turn the doorknob with ease. I mean… who would lock their bedroom door when they think they’re the worst person around?
I push the door open with a gloved hand and shuffle back quickly as Tobias tries to cave my head in with something heavy. I drive into him, moving quietly and carefully as I push him forward and knock him back. He drops what looks like a solid glass trophy, and I catch it before it hits and breaks.
“Quiet now. We don’t want to wake your loving father up, do we? He’s really working hard to cover up your mistakes,” I say.
“You think you can stop me?”
I softly close the door behind me. “Tobias, I’ve taken everything from you. I’ve taken your first kill and I’ve taken your obsession. He cried to me today, telling me that he never wanted to be with you. That you kept him locked up in your basement, and you tortured him and fucked with his mind until he started to think that the only way out was to obey you.”
“You fucking liar, he adored me.”
“They’re going to condemn him for everything you did,” I state as I take a step to the right. As I do, he turns to face me and that’s when I rush in. He scrambles for whatever weapon he has hidden, clearly not liking his chances against me without something in his hand, but he’s already fucked up because what he doesn’t realize is that I was already in his room earlier today.
“I found all of your photographs, Tobias,” I say as I toss one at him. “Every. Single. One of them.”
His eyes drift down, and his attention on them is all I need to grab him and shove him down to his knees. Rage crosses his face as he tries to elbow me in the side where I’d been shot.
“NO! No, no, no! How the fuck did you?—”
“You and your father were out having a good time. Enjoying your last meal together.”
But fury is fueling him and he’s moving blindly as I push him down so he can get a closer look at the photographs I’d thrown onto the ground. I’m careful, not wanting him to make any unnecessary noise.
We really don’t need any guests.
I grab him by the throat, but I don’t want to squeeze hard enough to bruise him. I hold him to the ground as I yank his arms back and throw a thin towel over his wrists before I start taping them together, followed by his legs. I definitely don’t want there to be any marks on his arms or legs.
“I’d be careful making too much noise. Are you going to show your daddy all of these photos? I mean… I bet he knows some of what you’ve done, but I can’t fathom he knows everything . Gabriel already has copies of them and knows I was coming here. If something happens to me, he’ll know just who did it.”
Tobias is panicking now. One wrong move and it’ll all be over. He thrashes and struggles, but panic is eating away at him as I start tossing his precious Polaroids everywhere.
“Here’s the thing, Tobias. I’m going to kill you. Now this isn’t generally my style. My style is not to make a show—it’s to make someone disappear. But I’m going to do things a bit differently this time. I’m going to make you shoot yourself in the head. And then I’m going to call the police as a concerned neighbor and claim I heard a gunshot. But here’s the real kicker. Your father is going to rush up here and he’s going to see these photographs and get rid of all the evidence I painstakingly placed all over. He’s going to blame me for your death. He’s going to claim my allegations caused you so much stress that you shot and killed yourself because you were unable to live with the idea that you could be seen as such a horrible person.
“But here’s the thing… you pushed to see how far I’d go for Gabriel,” I continue as I kneel down in front of him. “I want to see how far you’ll go for William. He is going to be convicted for all of your crimes. Your father is doing a fantastic job feeding nonsense to the police and media, which will be the very reason William will spend the rest of his life in prison atoning for the things you did. He will never see the light of day again. He’s not strong enough to thrive in prison. He’s going to fold in on himself, and the men in there are going to pick him apart until there’s nothing left. He’s a pretty handsome guy; they’re going to enjoy every part of him as he suffers for what you’ve done. It’s not going to matter to you. You’re already dead. Why not do one last thing for the one you love?”
Tobias is shaking with rage. “I will kill you.”
“It’s not looking like it,” I say as I drag him over to his desk chair that I toss him into before turning the laptop on. Then I set up the camera so it’s facing him. “If you say a single thing about me, I’ll delete the recording and shoot you in the head, and William will rot in prison. You ready?” I ask, making sure it doesn’t show that Tobias is bound. “You’re going to tell them everything you’ve done. It’s your time to shine.”
I’m such a phenomenal director that I even count it down for him before the recording starts.
For a long moment, he just stares at his own face being recorded. He seems to have some kind of idea that if he goes along with what I say, there might be an opportunity for him to kill me. Especially since I told him that he will be the one killing himself. That will require his arms to be untied and will likely be when he plans to attack.
“I killed a total of eleven men and women over the past nine years, starting with a young woman who I loved very much. She was so alone, so I took great care of her once she was mine, but she didn’t want to be mine. I did so much for her, and it still wasn’t enough… it’s never enough for people like that. Even when she rejected me, I continued to love her, but unable to love her properly from such a distance, I later moved closer to her resting place, which is where I met William. There was something about him that drew me to him, but I didn’t take him yet. Instead, I continued to help people that no one would notice or care if they disappeared. Many were never even marked as missing because no one fucking cared about them like I did. They didn’t love them like I did. I tried to save many, but most didn’t want to be saved until I found William. He trusted me, he knew I could save him from the hell so many others had inflicted on him. But that’s also when the police took her away from me. She is not theirs. So if they could so easily take from me, I would take from them. I would push them to their limits to show them that they too would go to great lengths to protect those they loved. They condemn me, yet in the same breath are willing to fucking shoot someone or kidnap someone if their own loved one is put in danger.
“How the fuck could none of you see that I was simply showing you that you all are the same as me! The moment I told that woman I had her daughter, she’d have gunned the whole goddamn precinct down to save her. I did not kidnap Dean Li, Gabriel Hyde, Carlos Hernandez, or Rick Hughes. They were brought to me by the weak parasites that you trust to be your officers. But still, they mock me and ridicule me and condemn me when they are the same as me . All of you are parasites who will do anything to protect those you love. Just like I would to protect the ones I love.”
Seems a bit different when the ones he loves end up as dead bodies who never actually loved him back.
And because he actually does care about William, he ends with, “William never killed a single person. He is innocent in all of this.”
I stop the recording and give him a smile. “You should have been an actor. So much raw emotion. Makes it almost seem like you’re not an emotionless asshole.”
Tobias snarls at me, but I simply smile, and when he throws himself away from the computer, I catch him before the chair can fall and clatter. I think his hope is to kick the computer and use the distraction to get away or get his parents in here with me. But I gently drag the chair back.
I pull a thick piece of paper out of my pocket where it's been tucked between two sheets of plastic to keep even the edge from being bent. Then I take his finger and press it against the ink pad I brought.
It isn’t an ideal ink, but I need it to easily wipe away before I'm done with him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Tobias growls as he fights against me, but he can’t ruin it. It has to be perfect.
I force his finger down on the paper, rolling it from one side to the next, leaving behind a perfect fingerprint. It really does look nice against the cream paper.
Long after Tobias is gone, long after time eats away at his body, his fingerprint will still have a home with me. “You’re fucked up, you know that? You’re really fucked up.”
“Aren’t we both?” I ask as I safely slide the paper into its protection, knowing I'll have plenty of time to appreciate it later. I wipe his finger clean of the ink so not even a trace of my presence is left and give him a smile.
“Are you ready for the grand finale?”
He grins at me; clearly his confidence can’t even be fucked with. I go over to where he’d headed toward when I first arrived and find his gun tucked near his headboard. I carry it back to him as I notice that during his flailing he’d knocked a pen on the ground. The poor foolish man really does seem to think he’s going to be able to reach it and stab me. He’s even used his foot to tuck it closer to him.
“Are you ready?”
“Fuck you.”
He’s so certain he’s going to get out of this that he hasn’t even tried screaming for help. Yeah, his parents would find out what he’s done, but does it even matter? His stepfather already has to know at least something. Perhaps he doesn’t know to what extent, but it’s not going to matter if he’s dead at the end of it.
I walk over to the computer as he watches me input multiple email addresses. What does he think? That his father can make the video disappear? That he can tell someone I held a gun to his head and made him say those things?
How cute.
“Well, that was enough fun for today,” I say as I pull out a knife and the gun. In one quick movement, I slice the knife through the tape, careful not to nick his skin. The cloth falls away, taking the tape with it, and as he goes for the pen, I drop the knife to grab the top of his head and press my gloved fingers into his eyes.
Tobias reels back, slamming into the chair as the pressure increases enough that he’s not even aware that the gun is in his hand until I wrap his fingers around it. Honestly, it’s not my fault he’d lifted his hand up for me, believing he could pull my hand from his face. He tries to push his hand down, but his brain is too busy responding to the pain in his eyes. As his other hand tries to reach up to stop me, I press the gun against his head and pull the trigger.
It’s really quite anticlimactic for a man who seemed quite determined that the last place he was going to end up was on the floor.
I don’t know if he actually sees me as he dies, but I swear his eyes catch mine as he hits the ground. “I told you that you’d never fucking touch Gabriel again,” I say as I cut the tape around his legs and stand up.
It goes against my nature to leave a body behind, but I’ve been careful. Not a single trace of me being here will be found. There are no cameras in the house—why have them when they could show evidence that Tobias was gone when he was fucking with us? There’s nothing to tell that I was here. And honestly… when they watch his final show, no one’s going to try to save the image of a man who doesn’t deserve to be saved.
I slip out to the hallway and into a room as I hear footsteps racing up the stairs. His mother sees him first and screams. And I know I should feel guilty, but how many mothers and fathers cried over the men and women he’d killed? He claims no one missed them, but who is he to decide such a thing?
As they go inside, I simply move through the hallway and down the stairs. The older dog I’d made friends with earlier rushes over to greet me as I give him a pat and let myself out onto the street.
I pull a new phone I’d gotten just for this purpose out of my pocket and dial 911, which is immediately answered by an operator.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Oh my god! I was walking my dog, and I swear I heard gunshots. I know I heard them!”
“Can you tell me the address where you heard the gunshots?”
“491 West Lark Boulevard. Please! Someone is screaming.”
And with that I hang up, get in my car, and drive home.
The door is locked, so I unlock it and nearly run into Gabriel who is frantically trying to open it.
“Liam,” he says, but it comes out like a whisper.
“I’m the one who did all the work, and you look like you just went through a marathon.”
“I was stress pacing and petting,” he explains as he hugs Lucy Fur to his chest. He’s covered in cat hair, but I’m confident he could pet her bald and she wouldn’t mind. “I was so afraid. I should never have sent you out there.”
Lucille jumps from his arms—likely disgusted by my presence—as I slide in and cup his face in my hands. “He will never touch you again.”
“You… you did it?” he asks as his dark brown eyes flick to mine.
“He’s very much dead.”
“You really killed him?” he whispers.
“I promise he’ll never touch you again,” I say as my phone begins to ring. I want to ignore it, but Gabriel pulls it out, and when he sees it’s Michaels, he puts it on speaker.
“Michaels,” he says.
“Hyde?” Michaels asks.
“I’m at Liam’s.”
“Right, I forgot you were staying with others so you weren’t alone. Guess you can move back home.”
“W-What do you mean?”
“You won’t fucking believe the email I just received where Tobias confirms he was the killer. And not only that, emergency services just got a call about a gunshot, and it’s been reported that Tobias appears to have shot himself.”
“I better get a fucking ‘Liam’s right’ cake,” I say. “I want an ice cream cake. A sheet. But I don’t want to share. I want all the people who didn’t believe in me to watch as I eat it, which means that only Gabriel can eat it with me, so only bring two forks.”
“I’m not getting you a damn cake.”
“I figure out your killer, and I don’t even get a damn cake? Is this because you’re jealous that you didn’t believe in me? You even tried to persuade me not to pursue the true killer and because of it, I got shot .”
Michaels sighs. “Fine, you can have a fucking cake.”
I’m quite pleased by that and hang up on Michaels because… honestly, does he really have anything else interesting to say?
“You… staged it?” Gabriel asks. “Wasn’t it risky leaving a body?”
“Quite. But now William won’t go down for Tobias’s deeds… and let’s be honest, I really wanted to walk into the department tomorrow and tell everyone ‘I told you so.’”
“That was… nice of you.”
I grimace a little. “I didn’t do it because I’m nice. I did it because I wanted to rub it in their faces, Gabriel.”
“You saved William from a life in prison.”
“Shhhh,” I say as I grab him and try to pick him up until he smacks me off him.
“You were shot . You are not picking me up and tearing your stitches!”
“I’m tough. I’m like the tough men in action movies who chew pills instead of swallowing them, remember?”
“I remember, but I also care about you, and I’m not going to let you tear your side open because you’re stubborn. Also… I think it’s our duty—well, mostly yours since I technically wasn’t supposed to get wound up in the case—to go see the scene.”
“I already did. I can tell you quite clearly where everything is,” I assure him, positive I’d rather whisk him off to bed.
“Liam.”
“Fine,” I say with a groan. “Fine, fine. Anything for you, my sweets.”