MESSAGE COMPOSITION AS MMS
BODY OF TEXT:
I KNOW WHERE HIS EARS ARE. YOU’LL HAVE THEM SOON. MY GIFT.
END OF MESSAGE.
“What the hell is this?” Luke asked no one in particular.
“Oh,” John said. “That same kind of thing popped up when he called Ellie’s phone. Her phone number showed up along with all these numbers and then went away when the call ended.”
“He just sent this text message to this phone,” Luke said pointing to the screen. The telephone number bothered him. He knew he’d seen it before and wondered if the killer was playing games with other kids. He looked down at the business card and saw his mistake.
“What the hell?!” he said.
“What’s wrong?” Ellie said.
“He just sent that message to Jaxon’s phone.” He held up the card so they could see.
“What?!” Ellie came up and looked at the card, then the computer screen, then back at the card in disbelief. “Why would he be texting Jaxon?”
“Apparently to send this message,” Jimmy said.
“I wonder what the hell it means,” John said looking over their shoulders. “Whose ears is he talking about?”
“We need to call Jaxon now!” Ellie said.
“Right,” and Luke dialed the number. It went straight to voice mail. “Crap! It went to voice mail! What do I say?”
“Tell him to call us right away,” Ellie said.
Luke did just that. “Now what?”
“We wait and watch, I guess,” John said.
“Dammit! Turn that thing off, Jaxon!” Victoria chided. “I thought you knew better.”
Jaxon stood there staring at the message. He looked up at Victoria and his face must have betrayed what he felt because she came over to him and said gently, “What? What is it?”
He showed her the message. She looked like she had been slapped.
“Is this from him?” she said.
He nodded. He was afraid to speak. Not because he felt like he couldn’t. He was scared to hear what his own voice would sound like right now.
“They’re about to move in,” Scoggins said. “What’s the deal, here. You two gonna stand there gawking at each other or do your jobs! Let’s go!”
Their earpieces came alive. “Moving in…Now! Now! Now!”
Jaxon finally spoke. “He may know we’re here.”
“Shit!” Victoria said. “Come on!” She turned and ran across the street with Jaxon, Sally, and Scoggins in tow. “And turn that thing off!”
Luke sat and watched the blip on the screen waiting for Jaxon to call back. It had only been a few minutes but it felt like hours. Jimmy was using the bathroom and John was talking to Ellie while they waited and watched.
Another window popped up on the screen and Luke said, “He’s doing something on the phone again.”
John and Ellie walked up and looked over his shoulder. The window filled with letters and numbers they couldn’t understand.
201106172017 OUTGOING MESSAGE SENT 015552319000
MESSAGE TYPE MMS
BODY OF TEXT: EXECUTE *##*
END OF MESSAGE
“Where did that one go to?” John asked
“I have no idea,” Luke said. “I wonder what ‘EXECUTE’ means?”
“Maybe he’s getting ready to kill his next victim,” Ellie said.
“But he hasn’t moved,” Luke said.
“I don’t get it,” Ellie said.
Neither did Luke. “Come on Jaxon! Where the hell are you?!”
The swat team had just entered the structure as Jaxon was crossing the street at a run. He trailed behind Victoria, Sally, and Scoggins, in that order. Victoria was just about to the front door when the house self destructed and a giant fireball filled Jaxon’s world as he was tossed backwards into the street. The concussion knocked the wind out of him, his ears ringing from the blast.
Jaxon lay on his back, dazed. Things swam in his peripheral vision, but the world around him remained eerily silent. The stars above winked down at him as an orange glow began to wash them out. Suddenly a face was above him, the lips moved, but no sound escaped them. Another face appeared next to the first and Jaxon recognized the two detectives from the van. One was gesturing frantically at something beyond Jaxon’s vision while the first continued to shout something at Jaxon he could not hear.
A low roaring began to rise in his ears and faint voices bled through the noise. Jaxon tried to sit up, but pain in his back forced him back down again. He realized he hadn’t taken a breath in a long while and opened his mouth, breathing in. He choked on something and spasms racked his body as he coughed uncontrollably. He rolled over on his side, gasping for air and saw the destruction laid out before him.
The shack was nothing but a burning pile of rubble on the ground. Fire shot up in a plume thirty or forty feet in the air and Jaxon’s mind was having a hard time wrapping itself around what it was seeing. Maybe a ruptured gas line? One of the detectives from the van shouted in his face and Jaxon barely made out “…alright?!”
Jaxon nodded and tried to sit up again taking it slow. Pain shot up his back but it was bearable. Something was laying across Jaxon’s legs and when he realized it was a severed arm clad in black with the words ‘SWAT’ stenciled on it, he kicked at it frantically, ignoring the pain that shot in spasms up his back. He saw blood dripping on his shirt and realized it was coming from somewhere on his head. Reaching up, he felt warm liquid ebbing from his nose, though he could not feel his fingers touching it. His face felt numb. He went to a kneeling position and tried to stand.
“Don’t think you should try that, Detective,” a voice said, faintly, through the roaring that continued in his ears.
He tried his voice. “Victoria?”
“What?” the detective yelled, but to Jaxon it sounded like he was whispering through cotton.
“Where’s Victoria?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t found her yet. It’s chaos. Are you ok?”
He nodded and stepped toward the burning wreckage. He had to find Victoria. The detective grabbed his arm, trying to hold him back. “No Sir! It’s too dangerous!” Jaxon shook him off and stumbled through the debris toward the fire.
“Vick!” he shouted, but his voice sounded so far away. “Victoria!” He tripped over something and saw a leg protruding from under a piece of siding. Ignoring the searing pain in his back, he bent and flung the siding off to find Sally staring face up at him, her eyes open and vacant. Her face was calm and unharmed. No dirt, or soot, or even a scratch could be found, but the lower half of her body was a mangled mess. Jaxon knelt and retched to the side. She was gone.
“Oh shit! Sally! Dammit!”
Scoggins was just to the left of where he and Sally were, or at least what Jaxon thought was Scoggins. He looked back down on Sally’s face and a feeling of emptiness swept through him. He could not believe how wrong this had all gone. This son-of-a-bitch had set them up and led them right into the lion’s den and now Sally lay dead
