No Mercy Read online

  JOHN BURLEY

  No Mercy

  Copyright

  AVON

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

  Copyright © John Burley 2014

  John Burley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780007559480

  Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007559497

  Version: 2015-06-23

  Dedication

  For LG

  and

  MNGB

  There is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.

  —Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

  What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part one: The Young Man in the Black T-Shirt

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part two: To Witness the Dead

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part three: The Girl

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part four: Pieces

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part five: Discoveries

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Part six: Terms of Survival

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  About the Publisher

  This is not the beginning.

  Up ahead, a young man sporting jeans and a black T-shirt walks casually down the concrete sidewalk. He hums softly to himself as he ambles along, Nike-bound feet slapping rhythmically on the serpentine path he weaves through the late afternoon foot traffic. He is perhaps fifteen – not truly a young man yet, but certainly well on his way – and he walks with the energy and indifference of one who possesses the luxury of youth but not yet the experience to appreciate its value, or its evanescence.

  The predator watches the young man turn a corner, disappearing temporarily from view behind the brick exterior of an adjacent building. Still, he maintains a respectable distance, for although he has an instinct for how to proceed, he now relinquishes control to something else entirely. For as long as he can remember he has sensed its presence, lurking behind the translucent curtain of the insignificant daily activities of his life. The thing waits for him to join it, to embrace it – observes him with its dark and faithful eyes. But there are times – times like this – when it waits no longer, when the curtain is drawn aside and it emerges, demanding to be dealt with.

  The young man in the black T-shirt reaches the end of the street and proceeds across a small clearing. On the other side of the clearing is a modest thatch of woods through which a dirt trail, overgrown with the foliage of an early spring, meanders for about two hundred yards until it reaches the neighborhood just beyond.

  The predator picks up his pace, closing the distance between them. He can feel the staccato of his heart kick into third gear, where power wrestles fleetingly with speed. The thing that lives behind the curtain is with him now – has become him. Its breath, wet and heavy and gritty with dirt, slides in and out of his lungs, mixing with his own quick respirations. The incessant march of its pulse thrums along eagerly behind his temples, blanching his vision slightly with each beat. Ahead of him is the boy, his slender frame swinging as he walks, almost dancing, as if his long muscles dangled delicately from a metal hanger. For a moment, watching from behind as he completes the remaining steps between them, the predator is struck by the sheer beauty of that movement, and an unconscious smile falls across his face.

  The sound of his footsteps causes the boy to turn, to face him now, arms hanging limply at his sides. As he does, the predator’s left hand swings quickly upward from where it had remained hidden behind his leg a moment before. His hand is curled tightly around an object, its handle connected to a thin metal shaft, long and narrow and tapered at the end to a fine point. It reaches the pinnacle of its arcing swing and enters the boy’s neck, dead center, just below the jaw. A slight jolt reverberates through the predator’s arm as the tip of the rod strikes the underside of the boy’s skull. He can feel the warmth of the boy’s skin pressing up against the flesh of his own hand as the instrument comes to rest. The boy opens his mouth to scream, but the sound is choked off by the blood filling the back of his throat. The predator pulls his arm down and away, feeling the ease with which the instrument exits the neck.

  He pauses a moment, watching the boy struggle, studying the shocked confusion in his eyes. The mouth in front of him opens and closes silently. The head shakes slowly back and forth in negation. He leans in closer now, holding the boy’s gaze. The hand gripping the instrument draws back slightly in preparation for the next blow, then he pistons it upward, the long metal tip punching its way through the boy’s diaphragm and into his chest. He watches the body go rigid, watches the lips form the circle of a silent scream, the eyes wide and distant.

  The boy crumples to the ground and the predator goes with him, cradling a shoulder with his right hand, his eyes fixed on that bewildered, pallid face. He can see that the boy’s consciousness is waning now, can feel the muscles going limp in his grasp. Still, he tries to connect with those eyes, wonders what they are seeing in these final moments. H
e imagines what it might feel like for the world to slide away at the end, to feel the stage go dark and to step blindly into that void between this world and the next, naked and alone, waiting for what comes after … if anything at all.

  The cool earth shifts slightly beneath his fingers, and in the space of a second the boy is gone, leaving behind his useless, broken frame. ‘No,’ the predator whispers to himself, for the moment has passed too quickly. He shakes the body, looking for signs of life. But there is nothing. He is alone now in the woods. The realization sends him into a rage. The instrument in his hand rises and falls again and again, wanting to punish, to admonish, to hurt. When the instrument no longer satisfies him, he casts it aside, using his hands, nails and teeth to widen the wounds. The body yields impassively to the assault, the macerated flesh falling away without conviction, the pooling blood already a lifeless thing. Eventually, the ferocity of the attack begins to taper. He rests on his hands and knees, drawing in quick, ragged breaths.

  Next time, I will do better, he promises the thing that lives behind the curtain. But when he turns to look the thing is gone, the curtain drawn closed once again.

  PART ONE

  The Young Man in the

  Black T-Shirt

  Chapter 1

  Although it was Friday evening, Ben Stevenson found the traffic along Sunset Boulevard heading west out of Steubenville particularly heavy during his commute home. Dr Coleman’s case had finished earlier than expected, and the last specimen of Mrs Granch’s partial thyroidectomy had been sent to the lab at 4:40 p.m. The surgically resected margins had been clear of cancer cells, and he’d placed a call to the OR.

  ‘OR Three,’ the circulating nurse’s voice answered at the other end.

  ‘Marsha, this is Dr Stevenson. Can I speak with Dr Coleman, please?’

  ‘Oh, hello, Dr Stevenson,’ she replied. ‘One moment – I’ll put you on speaker.’

  There was a brief pause, then Coleman’s voice, sounding slightly distant and metallic over the speakerphone. ‘How does it look, Ben?’

  ‘Margins are clear, Todd,’ he replied. ‘Looks good from my end.’

  ‘All right,’ the surgeon responded. ‘That’s all I’ve got for you today. I’m closing now.’

  Closing. That was welcome news on any day, but particularly on a Friday when your eldest son’s high school baseball team was scheduled for a game. Thomas had started the season as a center fielder, but the strength of his arm had drawn the coach’s attention and Thomas had quickly proven to be an even greater asset on the mound. Tonight was his turn in the pitching rotation. The game was scheduled for a 6 p.m. start time, and Ben did not intend to miss it.

  He spent the next ten minutes closing up the lab. When he was satisfied that everything was in order, Ben grabbed his jacket, locked the door behind him and headed for his car. Pulling out of Trinity Medical Center’s parking lot, he flipped on the XM radio and began to hum along with the Beatles, as John Lennon proclaimed, ‘Nothing’s gonna change my world.’

  He passed John Scott Highway, and now the traffic began to slow as he approached Wintersville. Ben had moved his family to this small town from Pittsburgh thirteen years ago. He’d met Susan during medical school at Loyola University in Chicago. They’d graduated together, and had both managed to secure residency positions at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He’d trained in pathology, while Susan had pursued a program in family practice. At the end of their first year, they married – a small ceremony attended by immediate family and a few friends. They’d spent the following week hiking and kayaking through a good portion of upstate New York – Susan’s idea, actually – before returning to the exhausting, gut-wrenching grind of medical residency. The week had suited their needs perfectly, providing unhurried time to spend exclusively with one another, far removed from the constant demands and commotion of residency. It had felt good to exercise their bodies, which had already started to become soft with neglect. The fresh air and vibrant green foliage had rejuvenated their senses, and they’d talked with excitement about their plans for the future. Nights had been mostly cloudless, as he recalled, and they’d made love under the stars nearly every evening before retiring to the thin, nylon shelter of their tent. Ben had finished the week with more than a few mosquito bites on compromising areas of his body. Susan had come away from the week pregnant, although they would not realize it for another six weeks. Thomas was born nine months later.

  That had been a difficult time for them, so early in their marriage. Medical residency was not the ideal time to try to raise a newborn, of course, and the hospital didn’t lighten the already exhausting work hours simply because there was a crying three-month-old infant at home to attend to. Neither of them had family in the area, and Susan simply couldn’t bring herself to turn Thomas over to day care after her very brief maternity allowance had ended. Ultimately, she’d decided to take a year off to spend with the baby, which, in retrospect, had turned out to be the right choice for all of them.

  Canton Road slipped by on his right, and Ben realized just a little too late that he probably should’ve turned there to detour around some of this congestion. Sunset Boulevard, which had now become Main Street, was the primary connector between the towns of Steubenville and Wintersville, small midwestern flecks on the map, lying just west of the Ohio River. Fifty miles to the east was Pittsburgh, and approximately 150 miles to the west was Columbus. Aside from a parade of small towns with equal or lesser populations, there wasn’t much else in between. Certainly not enough to warrant traffic like this – one of the reasons they’d decided to leave such cities as Chicago and Pittsburgh behind them in the first place.

  Must be an accident, Ben thought. A bad one from the looks of this backup. Inconvenient and frustrating, of course – and for one guilty moment he resented its presence in yet another way. An accident causing this much of a standstill could mean fatalities. And that often involved a coroner’s investigation, which meant he might be making a trip to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office this evening or, by the latest, tomorrow morning to perform an autopsy. Great. Absolutely perfect, he thought to himself, and immediately felt another pang of guilt. Life as a small-town pathologist meant one-stop shopping when it came to coroner investigations. There was him, and then there was the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office and Forensic Lab in Pittsburgh, fifty miles to the east. But he had known that, he reminded himself, when he’d signed on to the job here.

  The Beatles had yielded to The Band, who were sailing off into the first stanza of ‘The Weight’ – an ominous sign, Ben thought. He switched off the radio. Traffic had slowed to a crawl and he could now see the entrance to Indian Creek High School just ahead on the right. This seemed to be the source of at least some of the congestion. He could identify two police cruisers, an ambulance and a news truck in the school’s parking lot. On the right-hand shoulder, two cars had pulled off the road to exchange insurance information, apparently the result of a low-speed rear-end collision caused by a little rubbernecking. The drivers were involved in a heated discussion, and a sheriff’s deputy approached to intervene before things escalated further.

  Up ahead, the traffic dissipated, and Ben accelerated slowly toward home. There was still enough time to make Thomas’s baseball game, although things would be a little tighter than he’d initially anticipated. He flipped back on the radio and smiled to himself. The Band was finishing the final chorus, and just like that, ‘The Weight’ was over.

  Chapter 2

  The first thing Ben noticed as he approached the house was that Susan had beaten him home, her gray Saab already parked in their driveway. He pulled in behind her, got out, and retrieved his briefcase from the trunk. Having heard him drive up, his wife had stepped out of the house and was walking down the front steps to greet him. Even after all these years she was still beautiful, Ben thought, with dark black shoulder-length hair and chestnut eyes he had difficulty looking away from. Her tall body had remained slim and
agile, despite the two children she had carried. And although Ben himself was of similar athletic build, the years, he felt, had taken a harder toll on him, the responsibilities pulling steadily at the corners of his eyes, his brown hair now speckled generously with strands of gray. He smiled up at her, but the smile faded as she drew nearer.

  ‘Tell me you’ve spoken with Thomas this afternoon,’ she entreated, her hands clutching at the sides of her dress.

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’ he asked, his mind automatically flipping through a list of the most catastrophic possibilities. Something was very wrong indeed, he realized as he studied her features. Susan was afraid – but she was much more than that; she was on the brink of hysteria.

  ‘There’s been a death at the school,’ she blurted out. ‘One of the high school kids, they think.’

  Ben looked at her, dumbfounded. ‘What?’

  ‘Someone was killed this afternoon,’ she advised him. ‘Initial news reports said it was one of the high school kids, but they don’t know for sure.’ Susan’s voice shook. ‘Where in the hell is Thomas?! He should’ve been home an hour ago!’

  ‘He has a baseball game at Edison,’ Ben reminded her. Edison High was located in the neighboring town of Richmond. A bus was scheduled to transport the team after school. But there were other, more pressing details to be considered. He was still trying to work his mind around what Susan had just told him. ‘What do you mean someone was killed? There was an accident?’

  ‘An accident? Don’t you listen to the radio?’

  ‘On the ride home,’ he answered. ‘But they didn’t say anything about—’

  ‘Honey, it wasn’t a car accident.’ Susan’s voice continued to waver as she spoke, as if it were riding precariously along on one of those small-time roller coasters erected at carnivals. ‘One of the high school kids was murdered on the way home from school – in the woods along Talbott Drive. Ben, he was stabbed to death and just left there to die. They don’t even know who he is yet.’