Dead Cell Read online

  This week was one of those times and Debbie had driven the eight-hour drive to Statton just three days ago.

  Debbie negotiated the car out of the cinema's underground car park and onto the street. A few spits of rain hit the windscreen, and she flicked the wipers on.

  "So what did you think of Jennifer's bum?" she asked Tyrone, grinning.

  He laughed. "Yeah, she's got a nice one all right. They just don't show it enough in the movie. What did you think of it?"

  Something Tyrone missed most with Debbie away at Uni was when they used to always talk about girls. Tyrone was happy with his sister being lesbian as long as they weren't pursuing the same girl. That irked him, and he didn't like the competition either, but it was a double-edged sword. His sister was gorgeous herself, but he liked how she served as a good wingman, and he did the same for her.

  "She's not too bad for a white chick," Debbie laughed.

  Her mobile phone beeped as it received an SMS, and Debbie picked it up without thinking to read the message.

  Tyrone looked horrified, seeing someone crossing the street in front of them. "Hey! Eyes on the road, sis!"

  Debbie looked up, slowing enough to let the pedestrian cross between the parked cars at the side. "Stop stressing, little bro," she said. "You worry too much for a sixteen-year-old. Has anyone told you that?"

  "That's because I want to live to be seventeen, bitch!" he said.

  She slapped him with the hand that held the phone. "Don't call me a bitch, you little bitch. Besides, I can multi-task. I'm a woman."

  "Still," Tyrone answered. "You shouldn't be doing that. You could kill someone."

  "You need to get laid," Debbie quipped, brushing off his comment by changing the topic.

  Tyrone looked out the passenger window through the raindrops, noticing two girls he recognised from school.

  "Which one of them do you have the hots for?" Debbie asked, looking back for herself.

  The phone beeped again before Tyrone could answer. Debbie picked it up, read the message and began thumb-texting an answer back. Tyrone was unsure what happened at first; Debbie's scream caught him by surprise. When he looked, he saw someone else in the car with them; it was a man dressed in a kind of black robe. Where had he been hiding?

  The man was sitting in the back seat, reaching between Debbie and Tyrone. A loud slapping noise came to Tyrone's ears through Debbie's screams, and he thought he felt something hit his foot. He looked and saw Debbie's phone, its screen lit up on the Facebook App, and then he looked back at the man. The stranger gripped Debbie's right wrist, forcing it to the console behind the handbrake, and his other hand gripped the top of Debbie's head by her long hair.

  Tyrone heard the sound of Debbie's hair ripping as the stranger pulled it by its roots. He steeled himself, her screams of pain filling his mind, and he reached around to fight the man away. He noticed the blank expression on the man's face, and he heard the steely voice from his grey lips, which remained still. But he couldn't catch the words. The stranger spoke again, words just as intelligible, and forced Debbie's fear-contorted face to the steering wheel.

  Tyrone punched towards the man's head, impeded by his twisted position in the passenger's seat, and felt surprised when his fist passed through the man's head. Instead his fist slammed the driver's seat, wracking his wrist with daggers of pain. He didn't even see the stranger retaliate or flinch from Tyrone, but Tyrone sure felt the impact as his nose exploded with copper-flavoured blood. The stranger moved that fast. Tyrone pushed through the pain, and kept flailing, trying to reach the man's body to force him away from his sister. He had trouble seeing from the punch, but Tyrone discovered the car was out of control. He could hear Debbie's screams. They were now screams of pain, punctuated by the hard impact of her head against what must have been the driver's door and window. The stranger was slamming Debbie against them.

  "Leave her alone," Tyrone roared out, trying to grab Debbie's shoulders to keep her away from the door. But it was too late.

  A loud cracking sound filled his ears, paralysing him with a knowing dismay. Debbie slumped in the seat, unmoving. He couldn't remember what happened to the man. The next sound he heard was the car hitting another car.

  And he blacked out.

  COGAN WATCHED TYRONE as he finished telling the tale. Tears streamed down his face as he told it all, recalling how he tried to save his sister.

  "I knew she was dead when I heard that loud crack, Detective Ma'am," he said. "That was her neck breaking, wasn't it?"

  Cogan felt the waves of compassion rush over her. She had seen action in Afghanistan herself during her time in the Army before joining the police. The pain of losing friends, and even family, felt familiar to her, and this kid had seen more than he should have seen by witnessing his sister's death. But she also knew no one else had been in the car apart from Tyrone and his sister Debbie. Witnesses had not mentioned seeing anyone leaving the scene, and that was not a detail likely to escape notice or mention. Either shock was affecting Tyrone's recollection, or he was lying. She had seen teenagers lie before, having been one herself, and she believed this was more likely to be shock.

  The detective nodded, not wanting to say the words to answer Tyrone's question. Cogan was about to stand and thank him for his time when Tyrone's next words startled her.

  "You won't be able to catch him, you know?"

  Detective Cogan hesitated, measuring her response. "We usually do. Why do you say that?"

  Tyrone's eyes remained closed and his voice confident when he answered. "You don't catch men like him."

  Cogan stood, taking in his confident words, and walked out the door with the boy's words playing on her mind.

  Chapter 4

  It was Friday morning and half an hour had passed since the sun first poked its golden head above the horizon. The early morning traffic was in full swing as people made their way to work to start the day. But the observer was working already, watching the traffic with eagle eyes as it passed him. He watched each of them; some of them looked awake and others looked half-asleep still. One caught his eye, and he moved to get a better look at a beaten up Toyota Corolla hatchback across the street. It seemed to move much slower than the rest of the traffic, much slower than the limit. He focused on the driver and felt no surprise when he saw the damning evidence. Why don't they ever learn?

  He took in the car's details as it slowed a little more before turning left. Its turn was too sharp, and its rear left tyre jumped up on the footpath's edge. Pedestrians waiting at the corner had to jump back to avoid it, yelling at the car's jerk driver to watch what the hell he was doing. But the car's ignorant driver took no notice and kept driving. The car's rear wheel crunched back to the road as it left the footpath.

  The car looked like it had seen better days. A blanket of pockmarks covered its faded black paintwork; signs of being in a hailstorm. Another car had crashed into its once, leaving a sizeable dent in the right-hand back passenger's door. A criss-cross patchwork of faded silver duct tape covered the dent, holding something together. Even the duct tape was lifting from the car as it peeled. The engine sounded like it needed professional tuning too. So the driver could not afford repairs or was too lazy to take the time to visit a panel beater.

  The silent watcher's eyes, like those of a hunter, narrowed as he took in the car's registration number from its dented plate. He almost felt sorry for the driver who had signed his own death warrant. The observer didn't know the driver, not enough to decide if he liked him, but he knew enough to decide this was the next target.

  Inside the Toyota, Marc seemed oblivious to the man who slipped into his car while he waited at the traffic lights. Thoughts about the latest online video game he planned on playing with his "Clan" were foremost in his head. Secondary to that thought was the argument he had with one of his housemates. Marc held the lease on the house and he had taken on two housemates, a young married couple who were saving money to buy a house of their own. The husband was
a pain in the arse, he felt. Sure, there were lots of things wrong with the house he rented. It's an old house but Marc didn't have time to be seeing the landlord about the things that needed fixing. He only cared about the video game he played online; that is where his friends were, his real friends. He had never met them before, but he considered them his friends because they loved playing the same war game. Besides, if he spoke with the landlord about the repairs, the landlord would chase him for three months of unpaid rent. The last time the landlord asked him about the rent, Marc lied by telling him the housemates hadn't paid their share yet. It seemed easier to blame them, but he hadn't expected the landlord to suggest getting the money from them or face eviction. That meant he had to go without buying another video game, just to pay the rent. Why did life have to be so unfair? Marc knew he couldn't evict the housemates because they always paid their money on time. He only hated that they were so responsible with things, and he wasn't. The threat of eviction scared him too because he had stored almost every possession accumulated in his life under the house. No one could walk under there without tripping on something. The housemates called him a pack-rat for keeping so many things he didn't or wouldn't use but he couldn't bring himself to part with things. Anyway, he never knew when he would need them again at some point.

  Maybe he needed to plan a budget? Nah, that could wait until later after his next meeting with the Clan online.

  Marc's phone rang again. Why couldn't his mother just stop ringing him? He picked the phone up, checking the caller ID. Shit. It was his mother... again.

  Marc didn't get to speak. His steering wheel jerked about in his hand, and he felt an icy sensation on his wrists as though something had gripped him. He fought to grip the steering wheel and pull it back straight, but the icy feeling had numbed him so much that gripping the wheel proved difficult. His mother's voice floated to him from the phone's speaker but distractions made it difficult to understand her words. He needed to concentrate so he could control the car.

  He pulled the wheel to the right, trying to keep it from moving to the left where the bridge's railing waited for him. The bridge was old and needed repairs, maybe as much as his home or car did. He doubted it would stop him. The wheel jerked back to the left again.

  Marc screamed, "Mummy!"

  Her voice answered from the phone's speaker, sounding worried. "Marc. What's happening, honey?"

  Then he felt the unseen fist hit his head. He saw stars, felt dizzy.

  He tried to take his foot from the accelerator. It was no use.

  Something was making the car hurtle faster, its car's engine roaring as it brought him up on the verge. Marc's heart beat faster as he fought the invisible thing that now controlled the car. He could do nothing, but scream, as he felt the impact when the car scraped on the bridge's rails.

  The car's steering wheel twisted more and then he felt his stomach drop. The car's radio turned on and Marc heard the dark voice through its speakers.

  "Bye bye, Mummy's boy!"

  Marc was dead before the car splashed in the hungry river with the crunching force that broke every bone in his body. He didn't hear his mother's voice crying through the phone, asking him to talk to her. He may have been in his thirties but he was still her little boy.

  The assassin watched from the bridge as the black Toyota sank into the murky river's brown depths. Its swift current, from the recent floods, carried the car away. A hint of satisfaction welled inside him but nothing showed on his face. He turned to leave. Traffic was slowing to stop, and people ran from their cars to investigate the scene. One onlooker removed the mobile phone from her pocket to call the police. Another took photos and video of the carnage. A siren wailed in the distance, about ten blocks away, getting louder as it approached. It was slow, due to the traffic choking its progress.

  BY FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Detective Cogan felt knackered on both physical and mental levels. The previous night's interview with the Samoan boy Tyrone kept playing in her dreams, despite walking to the toilet and drinking water before going back to sleep. It came back again with Tyrone's voice saying, "You will never catch him."

  She didn't believe there was a "him" to catch unless it was Tyrone himself who had killed his sister. Cogan wasn't putting that past him either. Although he seemed a tame enough kid, and well-mannered, she wasn't a shrink to know if he had split personalities either. By the afternoon, she had a report on her desk to confirm no history of mental illness existed for Tyrone. Her dreams still disturbed her; one involved Tyrone's features melting away like hot wax as he told her she would never catch "the man".

  As if the dreams were not enough, Cogan's phone woke her when the Superintendent called her. Another accident had happened just before the early morning commuter rush. Why did they call it a rush when the traffic had slowed or stopped? She didn't know, but that accident was the second strangest she had seen, and there had been plenty of strange traffic accidents in the past week. The only thing different was it wasn't at East and Turbot Streets but at the bridge crossing on Cale Street. A car had jumped the verge with such speed it rammed through the bridge's railings as though they were ribbons. Witnesses reported it was so fast it flew through the air, appearing to hover a moment, before somersaulting to the river.

  "It executed a perfect tuck and pike before inward-twisting to the water with a belly flop," one elderly witness told her. She had to stop herself from laughing at that. The old man had the darkest sense of humour, and it came close to matching her own sarcasm.

  Cogan and her team had just finished with that scene when she received a call to another accident with yet another fatality. That one was even stranger than the diving car. For no clear reason, the car's hood had crumpled as though it had hit an immovable force, like a stationary truck, only there was nothing in front of it. The woman who called that accident in had been jogging at the time along the side as she did every morning. There were no sounds of brakes and the jogger saw the Mitsubishi's hood crush in on itself with a loud noise. It was so abrupt the driver's body smashed through the windscreen, landing ten metres away amidst showering glass, before rolling along the bitumen like a limp store mannequin. The cars behind it could not stop in time and soon there was a pileup of rear-enders. In the meantime, the Mitsubishi rolled forward further, stopping just short of crushing the driver's injured body. Cogan believed, or hoped, the driver died without suffering. She had not received the coroner's report on it yet.

  The first traffic incident involved only the driver, no other victims. But the jogger from the second incident mentioned seeing someone dressed in black sitting in the Mitsubishi's back seat. She couldn't give a full description as the other cars had piled into it, distracting her. When the jogger looked again, the man in black was nowhere to be seen.

  Cogan and her team found no evidence of a second person in the Mitsubishi.

  Why is it the worst accidents seemed to happen during commuter peak times? Redirecting the traffic was murder enough for the uniformed officers, but it was just a pain in the arse trying to negotiate packed traffic in her own vehicle; people can be so ignorant of police sirens.

  The morning was hectic and the rest of the day seemed not much better. Detective Cogan felt glad she had one of the administration staff who could transcribe her interviews for her. That gave her time to mull over the other things related to the incidents. The Inspector let her focus on them since Cogan convinced him there was a connection, considering the times and frequency at which they happened.

  She stretched at her desk, reaching up towards the ceiling, her fingers interlaced, and took a long deep breath before releasing it. A knock at the door surprised her.

  Cogan looked up toward the sound. A man somewhere in his late thirties with bright lively eyes and straight brown hair gelled to create a spiky look stood grinning at her. His face's skin looked smooth and his mouth formed a wide smile that made his eyes sparkle more.

  "Yes?" she said, taking in the sight of his attire - black dre
ss jeans, dark blue Ralph Lauren long-sleeved shirt and black leather slip-on shoes. He was on his way somewhere but she wasn't sure where.

  "Detective Brianna Cogan, I presume?" he asked, grinning more.

  Cogan stood to approach the office door, but the stranger invited himself in and offered his hand to her. His straight teeth seemed to glow. "I'm Craig Ramsey."

  Cogan didn't know how to take this personality right now although, after seeing so much recent chaos, she felt she could use the distraction. His cheeky demeanour showed he could provide welcome comic relief. She took his hand, noting its firmness, and replied, "How can I help you?"

  Craig Ramsey tipped his head a little, as though listening to something, and then returned his attention to her with solid eye contact. He smiled at something, not Brianna's words but more likely his inner voice. "I'm here to learn more about my niece and nephew's accident."

  Cogan released his hand, although she didn't want to as he felt good, and invited Ramsey to take a seat. "You have me at a loss. I don't remember any Ramseys although your name -"

  "Yes," Ramsey interrupted, looking about the office. "It is familiar but not for the reason I once enjoyed. You see, my niece was in -"

  "Last night's accident," Cogan replied. Ramsey's mouth curved a little at the end with another smile, his eye flicking to the left, as though he was smiling at a private joke. "What is it?" she asked. "Did I say something funny?"

  Ramsey was about to smile but let it slide. "You thought it was funny we were finishing each other's sentences."

  Cogan looked amazed, faltering a little. "Yes, but I -"

  Ramsey shook his head, looked to the side again, and answered, "It's not why I'm here. Finishing sentences, I mean. You see, I want to know what you have on my niece's accident last night."

  Detective Cogan hesitated. Who had let this guy in without at least paging her so she could prepare for him? The office looked a mess from the different reports and she felt she looked just as bad too. "How did you know to come ask for me?"