PSYCHOlogical: A Novel Read online

  Psychological

  Scott Hildreth

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Also by Scott Hildreth

  To Chuck Griffith.

  Thank you for making an otherwise terrible experience enjoyable.

  You’re an asset to the Bayerische Motoren Werke community.

  Author’s Note

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION.

  All names, incidents, and occurrences in this book are a figment of the author’s imagination and are depicted in a work of fiction. Any likeness to fact is pure coincidence. The Office of the DNI doesn’t have a killing force of former military men that I am aware of.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, are coincidental.

  PSYCHOLOGICAL 1st Edition Copyright © 2018 by Scott Hildreth

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author or publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use the material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Cover concept by Jessica Hildreth

  Cover design by Golden with FuriousFotog www.onefuriousfotog.com

  Follow me on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/sd.hildreth

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  Follow me on Twitter at: @ScottDHildreth

  Prologue

  A late-model sedan came to a stop alongside the curb. The vehicle’s headlights went dark. The driver gazed through the side window, toward the two-story brick house that faced the Woodbridge, Virginia street. Illuminated by the porch light, the numbered brass plaque fixed beside the home’s front door was easy to read.

  2400 Five Fathom Circle.

  The car’s door swung open and a figure stepped into the dark. Pizza in hand, the driver sauntered up the concrete walk.

  The occupant of the home pulled the draperies to the side and peered outside. Upon seeing the pizza box in the delivery person’s hand, his muscles relaxed. Simultaneously, he let out a sigh of relief.

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’m coming,” he said, his tone laced with frustration.

  He opened the door. The shadowy figure’s face was obscured from view by the brim of a baseball cap pulled low on the brow.

  The occupant reached for the wall-mounted porch light switch and flipped it, twice. To his surprise, the porch remained dark. It doesn’t matter, he told himself. Relax. It’s nothing but a pizza delivery.

  He reached for his wallet.

  As the homeowner thumbed through the bills in his wallet, the shadowy figure’s right arm extended from beneath a loose-fitting jacket, producing a semi-automatic Sig Sauer pistol fitted with a government-issue silencer.

  The occupant of the home looked up, only to find the pistol’s barrel inches away from his face. He’d spent his entire career mentally preparing to die. Now that the time had come, he realized he wasn’t ready.

  His eyes shot wide. “You?” he exclaimed, struggling to speak through his tightening throat. “It’s you?!”

  The specially formulated 9mm hollow-point bullet crashed through the vertical plate of the occupant’s skull, an inch and a half above the bridge of his nose. After tearing through the soft tissue of his brain’s frontal lobe, the bullet splintered into multiple fragments before coming to a rest in the parietal and occipital lobes.

  His fingers twitched. The wallet fell to his feet. His knees, no longer receiving a signal to stand, gave way to his body’s weight. Like a puppet with its strings severed, his body crumpled to the floor.

  The killer slipped an object into the homeowner’s front pants pocket, then picked up the wallet and the twenty-dollar bill. Satisfied, at least for the moment, the shadowy figure turned toward the street.

  Three down, three to go...

  Chapter One

  Briggs

  Detective Boyle removed his sweat-stained cowboy hat and swept the palm of his free hand over the few strands of hair that spanned the width of his sun spotted scalp. He then released the hat and allowed it to sit loosely on top of his head.

  Beneath an unbuttoned crumpled tweed jacket, a powder-blue button-down shirt was stretched tight over his distended belly. The thighs of his khaki-colored slacks were splotched with greasy fingerprints.

  In a matter of minutes, the phone would ring. Immediately following that call, I’d be released. When Boyle realized I was walking out and there was nothing he could do to keep me, he’d grow angry. That anger would gnaw at him. It would likely cause him to question his own existence. Ultimately, it may force him to consider an early retirement.

  I offered him an expressionless stare. Seemingly unaffected, he looked me over before giving the hat’s brim a sharp tug and walking out the door.

  While Boyle did whatever detectives do when they left their suspects to dwell on the inevitable, I surveyed the ten by ten concrete room. The pale-yellow walls were supposed to comfort me; make me want to talk. I laughed to myself at the thought of it.

  Adorned with nothing more than a steel table and two matching benches, the windowless interrogation room was as no-frills as it could be. I glanced at the camera fixed high on the adjacent wall and wondered who—if anyone—was watching. While I pondered the actions that brought me to being handcuffed to a table in Fuckwater, Texas, Boyle reentered the room.

  He placed his thick-fingered hands on the edge of the table and flexed his aging biceps.

  “I can’t find a damned thing about you in the system, so I’m guessin’ this is your first run-in with the law,” he said in a slow, southern drawl. “Let me explain how this works. I’m gonna ask questions, and you’re gonna answer ‘em. I need you to help me understand what happened. You slip her some dope of some kind? Gave her somethin’ that killed her, that’s for damned sure. Tell me how this all came to be, will ya?”

  I hadn’t spoken to him yet, and I had no plans to start.

  “You gonna talk, or just keep starin’ up there at that camera?” he asked.

  I dropped my gaze until our eyes met.

  “Murder isn’t somethin’ we take lightly in Texas.” He crossed his arms. “If you tell us the truth at this juncture—the entire truth—the prosecutor will recognize that you were willing to cooperate. He’ll consider it at sentencing.”

  There was nothing he—or anyone else in his police department—could do to keep me. I knew it. He, on the other hand, didn’t.

  He brushed the underside of the hat’s brim with the pad of his thumb. His wiry brows knitted together. “If you continue to sit there with that smug look on your damned face, the prosecutor will make sure you’re on death row before this year ends. If you cooperate, you’ll get to spend the rest of your life with the prison’s population, eatin’ zoom-zooms and wham-whams.”

  I stared blankly, knowing no matter what response I gave, he wouldn’t like it.

  His fist came crashing down onto the table. “Do you not understand the mile of shit you’re in, son? Right now, you get to pick your destiny. Life, or death. Which will it be?”

  Death. I was no stranger to it. Administering it was my specialty. In my days on earth, I’d witnessed the dying draw their last breath more than sixty times. Sixty-six, to be exact. Even so, there were questions that rattled around in my head when it wasn’t filled with thoughts of lackluster police departments in dusty little west Texas towns.

  Beyond the last heartbeat, the human brain can survive for four minutes. I wondered if the fear of dying dissipated during those last few ticks of our life’s clock. When the realization of death was so certain that we could taste it, did a calmness wash over us? Or, did we mentally thrash about no differently than if we were drowning? Was man’s will to survive during those final seconds as strong as it was throughout the lifet
ime that led him to that moment of dying? Each time I took a life, I pondered those same thoughts.

  I glanced at my watch.

  Despite his statement in support of the contrary, my destiny wasn’t in Boyle’s—or the prosecutor’s—hands. Before the sun sank behind the Mesquite-lined horizon, he would unlock my handcuffs and release me without a single criminal charge being filed.

  The door opened slightly. A gray-haired man poked his head through the opening. His paper-thin eyes peered in my direction. He exhaled an audible breath and met the detective’s curious stare.

  “I need you to come out here for a minute,” the man said, his drawl just as thick as the detective’s. “I’ve got a...” He cleared his throat. “There’s something I need to explain to you.”

  Boyle gave me a lingering look and turned away. After the door closed behind them, bits and pieces of a muffled one-sided conversation could be heard.

  “Release him?” Boyle bellowed, his voice echoing throughout the corridor. “Let him go?”

  “You can uncuff him or I will, but he’s walkin’ out of here.”

  “I don’t give a shit if word came from the President of the United fuckin’ States,” Boyle retorted. “I ain’t lettin’ him go, Griff.”

  “I can’t begin to act like I know what’s going on,” the gray-haired man explained. “Because I don’t. Ain’t got a damned clue. But, if that man isn’t walking out of here in the next five minutes, I doubt either one of us will be collecting a paycheck next month.”

  “So, we’re just supposed to act like he didn’t do it?” Boyle asked.

  “He didn’t do it,” the man responded. “I don’t know much, but I know as sure as I’m standin’ here that it would behoove the both of us to come to believe that.”

  Chapter Two

  Doctor Rhoades

  Vincent Briggs was the most fascinating man I’d ever met.

  His profession was killing.

  When he entered a room, people within eyeshot either feared him, were fascinated by him, or a little of both. His walk was precise and sure-footed. Confidence radiated from his being. His alluring honey-colored eyes commanded the attention of anyone fortunate enough to look into them.

  If he chose to speak, he did so in as few words as possible. He was methodical, extremely neat, and had no living parents or siblings, making him a perfect choice for the government’s clandestine New Dawn program.

  The program used specially-trained Marines that were detached from the military. They dressed as civilians, wore their hair much longer than standard regulations allowed, and didn’t carry military credentials. In the eyes of the military, they didn’t exist.

  Yet, one of them sat on the other side of my desk, gazing blankly through my window and into the parking lot.

  My relationship with Vincent was professional. I wondered if I’d simply met him in passing if things would be different between us. My list of clients that shared his profession included five others with comparable qualifications. The similarities between them stopped there.

  Vincent differed from his colleagues. His counterparts all shared the same diagnosis—antisocial personality disorder. The disorder allowed them to kill without feeling remorse.

  Simply stated, they were psychopaths.

  To them, killing was no different than walking to the mailbox to retrieve the mail. There was no mental, psychological, or emotional repercussion associated with murder. Drinking a can of soda evoked the same range of emotion as taking a human life.

  I’d learned in the three years that I’d known Vincent that grandiose sense of self, superficial charm, sexual promiscuity, and pathological lying were things he knew nothing of. He was humble, sexually inactive, valued women, and accepted responsibility for his actions.

  Despite my desire to categorize him as completely off-limits, I often thought of him in my idle time. I was fascinated that he accepted humanity’s greatest crime as a necessary part of his duty to protect the nation from harm. The fact that he did so without outwardly wallowing in guilt was contrary to every textbook I’d studied.

  “Did it bother you that someone believed you’d done something wrong?” I asked.

  He gave me a puzzled look. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking, Doc.”

  “You indicated you suffered from insomnia following your assignment in west Texas. After completing the mission, you were arrested. It was the first time you’ve been questioned for suspicion of a crime. Did having someone suspect you of wrongdoing bother you?”

  “No.”

  I crossed my legs. “Why not?”

  “Should it?”

  “There’s no right or wrong answer,” I explained. “We’re just talking. I’m trying to find a way to get you back on track with your sleeping.”

  “It frustrates me that I was arrested.” He shifted his eyes from me to the window. “But that’s not the problem with my sleeping. The target was a woman. I think that’s what’s troubling me.”

  Discussing his true feelings made our sessions rewarding. The manipulative behavior, half-truths, and canned responses expressed by my other clients provided little satisfaction that I was being of any assistance to them. Vincent’s willful offering of the truth was a nice change of pace.

  It didn’t surprise me that having a woman target troubled him. Having never received a woman’s approval as a child, he yearned for it as an adult. Subsequently, harming a woman was completely out of character for him.

  Vincent was often left for days—and sometimes weeks—by his mother, who was a prostitute and drug addict. His only known address as a child was the strip club where she worked. He slept on the streets, considered her coworkers his family, and looked at her “clients” as fatherly figures.

  His upbringing, when combined with the fact that the normal human mind needs to feel threatened to justify murder, left Vincent feeling uneasy about his last mission. Killing a woman who wasn’t perceived as a threat went against the grain of his very being.

  “Would you like to explain what frustrates you about being arrested?” I asked. “We’ll discuss that portion first.”

  “The same thing that would frustrate a professional basketball player if he missed the game-winning free throw.”

  I uncrossed my legs and quickly crossed them again. “Feelings of incompetence?”

  He winked playfully.

  I blushed a little.

  I hadn’t mastered the ability to completely conceal my feelings while in his presence and doubted I ever would. Vincent’s ability to evoke emotion with nothing more than a wink of his eye was one of the reasons I found him so fascinating.

  I placed my hand on his file. “The field report stated a neighbor armed with an assault rifle held you at gunpoint. It also states he was a former Army Ranger. He had Special Forces training. You weren’t duped by a seventeen-year-old high school kid with his dad’s shotgun. I don’t see where incompetence—”

  He chuckled. “I should have seen him.”

  “You find that amusing?”

  He shook his head lightly. “Not at all.”

  “You laughed.”

  “I was thinking about the detective that questioned me. He was sloppy. I don’t want to end up like that.”