The Contestant E-Book

C.j. Lea

• Herausgeber: C.j. Lea
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

"Dark, twisted and seductive--it's hard not to be drawn in by THE CONTESTANT."--Simon Wood, author of PAYING THE PIPERRaymond is a serial killer - brilliant and resourceful. Once a respected behavioural analyst and profiler, a hit-and-run accident five years ago left him confined to a wheelchair, and now he scratches out a living with online contests using fake or stolen identities.A $10million online treasure hunt could be his salvation.But the moment he registers for the competition, the first email arrives - someone out there knows him, knows who he is, and where the bodies are buried.Now, in Raymond's sick and twisted mind, there's only one way to find his blackmailer and put an end to the threats: play the game, follow the treasure hunt clues ...... and find the one person who can stop him.(Warning: Contains graphic violence)

Leseprobe

The Contestant

Copyright © 2014 Catherine Lea

Published by Brakelight Press

The Contestant is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover Design: Deanna Dionne at CustomIndieCovers.com

Cover Concept: Lynette Eklund

Formatting: Polgarus Studio

Editing: Sara J. Henry, Linda M. Au

Author Blog:

Prologue

Melvin Krantz knew he was in trouble. Someone was after him and he knew why.

For the past three weeks he had stayed in his apartment with the door bolted and the blinds pulled down. He’d stopped using the phone a week ago. It had rung every two hours until he took the receiver off the hook.

The only times he’d been online in those three weeks were to send out the email under his username, DeadPainter, telling those assholes to leave him alone, then to confirm delivery for a prize he’d won.

Now he didn’t know why he’d bothered. He didn’t even want the prize. All he wanted was to go back to life the way it was before.

At one point, he’d considered going to the police, but what the hell was he going to tell them? That a crazed bunch of on-line competition addicts were trying to kill him? That he was being threatened by some mysterious online maniac? That they were inside his apartment, watching him? He’d be thrown in the nuthouse.

It wasn’t until he found the note slipped under the door that he thought the nightmare was coming to an end. It read:

“I know what you’re going through. I went through the same. There’s a way out. I can help. Meet me downstairs in the lobby at two o’clock this afternoon. And don’t worry, there’ll be people around.”

It was signed, “‘A Friend.’”

Melvin read the note several times. He had to assume it was a trap, but if there were people around—and people were always around at that time of day—what could happen? Nobody was going to step out and kill him in broad daylight in front of witnesses, were they?

He decided to chance it. He couldn’t stay locked in his apartment forever. He hadn’t showered, hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten properly for weeks. All he could do was stare at the damned door in case someone tried to get in. He had to move.

So, Melvin gathered up his bag, his lists, his money, and his rule book, and headed downstairs.

When he got to the lobby, he did a 360-degree scan. People were entering and leaving the building. No one seemed like they were there to meet him.

A guy in a black business suit came out of the elevator to his left and started towards him. Melvin squeezed his eyes closed and held his breath. Sweat prickled on his scalp, but the guy walked straight past and out the front door.

After an excruciating five minutes—nothing.

Just as he’d suspected. Some comedian was playing him for a fool. He hugged his bag tight to his chest and hurried back to the elevator. The instant the doors parted he shoved his way in and huddled in the corner while he waited for his floor.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, he rushed to his apartment, unlocked his door, and slipped inside. He quickly bolted the door, then leaned his forehead against the cold wood panel and let out a long sigh.

He wasn’t going out there again. Melvin had no idea what the letter writer had in mind, but he had made it back alive. He was safe. All he could do now was ride it out, make the best of the situation.

But when he turned, there was a guy in his living room. Maybe six-four, hair in a buzz cut, military-style jacket and pants over compulsively shined boots, he was perched, half sitting on the sideboard and holding a coil of electrical wire. He gave Melvin a lop-sided grin.

“Hello, Melvin,” he said. “I see you got my message.”

PART ONE

Chapter One

Raymond

Three emails arrived all at once. Raymond watched as they popped up, one, two three—all from a guy using the online name DeadPainter, and addressed to members of the online competition club Raymond had joined two years ago and never managed to extricate himself from.

The message read: “IF ANY OF YOU ASSHOLES COMES ANYWHERE NEAR ME, I’M GOING STRAIGHT TO THE FUCKING POLICE.”

No salutation. No signature.

Raymond didn’t need one. The username was enough.

Two weeks prior, he’d had an altercation with DeadPainter over a laptop bundle, of all things. The guy had accused Raymond of stealing his winning entry in the “Laptops for Everyone” competition. In his day-to-day business of acquiring goods and selling them online, Raymond could have been accused of being many things: a psychopathic genius, an insatiable perfectionist, an authority on psychological profiling, a murdering despot, perhaps. All of which may have been quite accurate, but he was no thief.

The result of DeadPainter’s accusation had been a flurry of communications back and forth with the contest organizers, after which officials had declared DeadPainter the rightful winner. Consequently, Raymond had been blacklisted from Eastern Jade’s competition site—the prime source of his income.

Raymond was not one to forget.

“You go spreading slanderous remarks about other people, you deserve whatever you get,” he told the computer. He swept the cursor down the page, highlighting the messages and deleting them. Then he hit the “Empty Trash” icon. But just as the message came up asking if he was sure he wanted all these messages deleted permanently, he paused.

He had an idea.

He dragged one of the messages back, then copied the address into a new message, heading it, “Congratulations, DeadPainter. You’re a Winner.” In the body of the email, he formulated a letter advising the guy he’d won …

… A cell phone …

No, not big enough.

… A refrigerator …

After the delivery ordeals Raymond had experienced with white goods? The guy would be wise to run a mile. Finally he settled on,

Your own little Smith & Wesson Sigma Series 9mm pistol in your choice of black or NATO green frame.

After all, the incentive had to appeal to the subject on several levels. Otherwise it wasn’t an incentive. It was simply white noise. And if a handgun didn’t make this jackass crawl out of the woodwork, nothing would.

Sure enough, two minutes later, he received a reply saying DeadPainter would be away from his office and unavailable to take delivery between two o’clock and three, but the parcel could be left in the lobby. Raymond was still amazed that people could be taken in like this. The guy obviously hadn’t even bothered to check whether he’d entered such a contest. Talk about candy and babies.

Raymond opened up a map of the district and went to work.

Tracking DeadPainter down was easy enough. His username had cropped up numerous times in the online competitions. Raymond consulted the database of identities he’d compiled over the last two years, scanning all the ZIP codes associated with DeadPainter’s username. Seemed like the guy moved around a lot. However, the last prize he’d won had been delivered to Shaker Heights in Cleveland, so using the delivery details and a simple process of elimination, Raymond narrowed the last known address down to an apartment building just on the other side of town.

Already he could feel the tingle of anticipation, the thrill of the chase.

But a glance at the clock in the corner of his screen told him DeadPainter wouldn’t be leaving for another forty-five minutes. That was his window. So he settled down and got back to earning a living.

Boring as it was.

The auction on the ice skates he’d acquired last week had just closed and so had the iPod. He’d hesitated about putting the iPod up for sale because this one was so much better than his old one. But sometimes you have to make a call. After all, he couldn’t live on fresh air.

The auction for the TV hadn’t yet closed, but already bids were up near the retail price. He still had trouble believing that people were this gullible. They were happy to go online and pay retail, sometimes above retail, for a product they could buy just down the road from a reputable dealer, complete with service warranties and free delivery. Taking people to the cleaners had never been so easy.

And that’s what he counted on. The consequence of people’s stupidity meant he was doing very nicely, thank you. The net result of just this morning’s work was a profit of $583.56, and the exhilaration of a job well done.

When Raymond had started his operations four years earlier, it was in a moment of desperation. With his finances decimated by a year in therapy, his position as lead analyst in Behavioral Studies at the university suddenly gone—not to mention a murder investigation snapping at his heels—his circumstances did not make for an ideal future. After fleeing the state and disappearing underground, he needed a steady source of income and anonymity. The online contest circuit had seemed like the perfect solution.

Of course, he hadn’t been naïve enough to think that luck won these things. Like everything worth having, it was all down to hard work. Working smart, however, greatly improved his success rate.

He began with an email database using scarlet-assassin-999 as his base username and added to it until the number of identities had reached almost two thousand.

He was doing very nicely until the marketing whiz kid at Myron Advertising and Promotional Ltd. caught up with him. Two weeks into the Cash and Cars Sweepstakes, the guy cottoned on to the fact that around twelve hundred of the entrants had email addresses that were not only sequential, but attached to the same delivery details.

Bad mistake.

Next thing, Raymond got an email advising him that his actions were in direct violation of the Terms and Conditions of entry, which clearly stated “one entry per person.” They had denied him entry to any future giveaways and threatened legal action.

What legal action? Raymond had sneered. But the last thing he could afford was to invite scrutiny into his affairs—into his identity. So, with much regret, he changed his base email address to Orange-Ninja-9—or its equivalent, Orange-Ninja-Nine. He would only use these for high-end acquisitions. It was a pride thing, after all.

But the episode with the guy at Myron had left a bad taste in his mouth. In response, Raymond had linked the now defunct usernames to the “whiz kid’s” personal email address, then leaked a selection of the serial emails to the company Marketing VP. As a result, the guy got fired and the company brought in the heavies to investigate what looked like a very serious fraud he’d been operating. It was a pity Raymond never got to see the guy’s face.

So take that for your legal action, Raymond had thought. Then he’d gotten straight back to business, picking up where he had left off.

Next on his list for today was West Valley Wineries. A message had come in advising him he’d won another case of wine.

The third this week.

Didn’t matter how many cases he won, it still gave him a thrill. Trouble was, he had so much he didn’t know what to do with it. He had case upon case stacked up in one of his storage units. Eventually, he set up a fictitious wine cellar company and started selling it on eBay at $15 a bottle. The proceeds would go into the “company” bank account, and then be recycled for “company purchases”, in case any other whiz kid executives decided to take a look into his private affairs.

He copied and pasted his excited “letter of acceptance” along with his delivery details into a reply to West Valley Wineries, then checked his watch.

Perfect. Time to go.

He collected his bag, locked up his apartment and wheeled himself towards the elevator. He had a date with a laptop and didn’t want to be late.

Chapter Two

Raymond found DeadPainter’s building without difficulty, but because the entrance was off a backstreet alley, it took him an additional three-and-a-half minutes to locate it. The second he saw it, he recognized the façade. The Games Club had sent out a selection of coupons when he first joined, offering discounts at a variety of retail outlets and cut-price rents at certain apartment buildings. This place had been one of them.

It looked nothing like the photograph. The place was a fleapit. It amounted to twelve floors of apartments you wouldn’t abandon a cat in. Trash bins lined up out front overflowed into the street like a New Delhi slum transported to the middle of Cleveland. The place was even worse than the building Raymond lived in, and that was saying something. It did have one redeeming feature, however—convenient access for the disabled in the form of a concrete ramp located at the side of the building, something the architects of Raymond’s building could have put a little more thought into.

Adjusting his green canvas bag on his lap, he clamped his mouth shut, and wheeled himself past the trash cans, up the ramp, and to the front door. Inside was no better. The place had the air of an eighteenth-century asylum.

Worse yet, there was a constant flow of people wandering in and out the front door. That meant witnesses.

Raymond hesitated. Rule number one on his survival list was “Do Not Take Unnecessary Risks.” The atmosphere made his skin crawl. His gut was telling him to leave. But the thrill of outmaneuvering DeadPainter and relieving him of his precious laptop bundle—that was incentive enough, so he pushed on.

Raymond found two elevators in the rear of the lobby. He wheeled himself across to discover that one was out of order, and smelled like it had doubled as a restroom. The other was currently on the sixth floor. He leaned forward, depressed the elevator call button, and waited.

One single functioning elevator for a twelve-story building. Little wonder DeadPainter was coming unglued. Living in a place like this, any sane person would off themselves in two minutes flat. Maybe Raymond should stick around until DeadPainter returned. Maybe offering an inventive exit from such a pitiful existence would be doing the guy a favor.

After several minutes, the elevator clanked and groaned to a halt, the doors clattered open. Raymond wheeled himself in and hit the button for the eleventh floor. Just as the door was closing, another guy appeared from nowhere, grabbing the door so he could also step inside. Raymond held his breath while the guy spent some seconds studying the panel of buttons.

Terrific, he thought. Stuck in an elevator with a guy who can’t count.

“I’m sorry about this,” the guy said. “I left my glasses at home.”

“It’s no problem. Truly, take your time,” Raymond replied.

“Appreciate it,” the guy said.

Raymond pressed his lips into a thin line, and let his gaze drift from the back of the guy’s head down to the heels of his shoes. Five-eight, a hundred and fifty pounds. The scuffs on the back of those shoes said, “Loser.” Worn patches in the backs of his sleeves and the shiny patch in the ill-fitting pants said he worked in an office. A menial position—call center, perhaps.

The doors juddered and clanked open on the second floor to let the guy out, and were almost closed again when a girl in a long skirt and puff jacket yelled, “Hold the elevator.” Raymond jabbed the open button while the girl squeezed between the doors and stepped in.

He slipped a look at his watch. He’d already lost two minutes waiting for the elevator. Now this. He smiled and indicated the panel. “I did try.”

“Yeah, thanks. These stupid elevators never work the way they should,” she said, and pressed the basement floor button.

“Excuse me, but this elevator is going up,” he told her smoothly.

“Yeah, but it’s the only elevator. It’s not like I’m going to wait for another one, is it?”

Raymond’s eyes went to her throat. His fingers tingled.

The elevator shuddered and stopped again. His eyes remained locked on her while two more people entered the car and turned to face the doors. Seven months and no kill. The creamy flesh around her neck, the mental image of arterial blood jetting into the air. Adrenaline surged in his veins and his face flushed hot.

When one of the two men turned and eyed him, Raymond smiled amiably, then dropped his gaze to his lap while he waited for DeadPainter’s floor and for his pulse to slow.

Another seven minutes. The car stopped on every floor. By the time the doors opened on the eleventh floor, Raymond was practically hyperventilating. So much for stealth. So much for caution. Then again, this being the only elevator, it was bound to happen.

He exited the car into a long, dim hallway where the only lighting was a single panel flickering in the ceiling. It looked even worse up here than it did downstairs. He rolled along, counting off the apartments until he came to a door numbered 1148, the one he’d narrowed DeadPainter down to. He pulled to a halt, checked the hallway back and forth, then knocked. Nothing.

Perfect.

Two skinny youths with dreadlocks and leather jackets walked past. Even from behind, Raymond felt the stares boring holes into his back. He ignored them and knocked again, this time a little more urgently. He had to be sure.

Still nothing.

Checking the hallway once more, he blew out a breath and tried the handle. It turned and the door cracked open.

Jesus! Raymond froze. Given the paranoid state of the guy, you’d think he’d have the place locked up like Fort Knox.

Sweat flashed across his scalp and a shiver went down his spine. He was sitting there wondering what to do next, when a couple of girls passed by. He pulled the door closed, smiled and nodded in greeting, then waited until they’d vanished around the corner. As soon as the hallway was clear, he angled his chair around and pushed the door open to a dimly lit living room. From here he could see a dinner plate sitting on the table, pots and cooking equipment strewn across the counter in the kitchenette.

Raymond remained at the doorway and leaned into the room. “Hello.”

Emptiness echoed.

“Anybody home?” he called.

Still nothing.

So he turned his chair, wheeled himself inside, and closed the door.

The place stunk of body odor and stale garbage. For a moment he sat looking around and listening.

The silence was palpable. The place was like the Marie Celeste. It looked as if DeadPainter had just up and left in the middle of his meal.

Raymond was alone.

He wouldn’t be for long. So he got straight to work.

Normally, he followed a procedure. He’d take care to observe every step because without a systematic approach, something vital could be overlooked.

Not this time. Any second now, DeadPainter could burst in the door and find Raymond going through his personal effects. So he went straight to the computer on the table and turned it on. In less than a minute he’d scrolled through DeadPainter’s inbox and located the email from Eastern Jade, advising the guy he’d won the laptop.

It was from the VP of Marketing at Eastern Jade Promotions and was written in one of those overly-familiar tones that Raymond hated getting from people who didn’t even know him. Worse yet, it had been sent out via the guy’s iPad, the pretentious twerp. It read:

“Hey DeadPainter, congratulations, that was a great entry. Head and shoulders above any of your rivals.”

Raymond’s lip twitched. He’d put in two bona fide entries that were far better than DeadPainter’s piece of literary hogwash. He hunched down in his chair and continued reading.

“Thanks for the prompt reply. Your laptop bundle of an HP laptop, tote bag and a whole bunch of extras will be on its way to you within the next few days. Congratulations.”

And it was signed: “Clinton Everard III, Marketing Director, JD Harvey Computers and Peripherals.”

What a faggot, thought Raymond. People who put numerals after their name think they’re descended from some kind of royalty and that they’re better than everybody else. For the briefest moment he imagined reducing the guy’s numerals by a couple of digits.

But time was ticking. He had an email to compose, and a delivery to organize. So he hit the reply tab and typed in:

“Dear Clint, further to our communication below, please note that I am going away on business for the next couple of weeks. Therefore, could you please have my prize of the laptop delivered care of the following address …”

And he put in an address for a drycleaner located two blocks from his apartment building. While he waited for the message to send and the dialogue box to close, he picked up the phone and dialed.

The drycleaner was run by an old lady who had not only saved some change from his pants pockets, but had replaced a missing button on one of Raymond’s shirts, so he knew she’d keep the prize safely under wraps until he could organize the final delivery. He told her that he’d had a fire in his apartment and because of the damage he had nowhere to have things delivered. He told her he was expecting an important package and the only person he knew he could trust was her.

Even over the phone he felt her sense of self-pride inflating. She was more than willing to help him out. She even suggested he could rent a room with her if he needed to. It always amazed him how gullible people were. With a level of gratitude and humility that turned his stomach, he declined her offer and gave her the number of one of the disposable cell phones he’d picked up earlier in the week so she could call him once the package was delivered.

It was a lot of work just to teach DeadPainter a lesson, but sometimes it wasn’t about the prize, it was about how you played the game. Next time, DeadPainter might give a little more thought before making false allegations about the supposed theft of his precious prizes.

So, mission complete. Time to go. But just as Raymond closed the last file, he noticed a folder on the desktop titled, “Competitions and Shit.”

“You dunce,” he muttered. He checked the time. It would take less than a minute. So he clicked on the folder.

It opened to an Excel spreadsheet detailing all the competitions DeadPainter had entered in the past eighteen months. Intrigued, Raymond leaned in, studying each line.

Deadpainter had titled the columns: Date, Competition, Competitors, Gone, and Won/Lost, with the last column displaying a running percentage figure. Under the Competitors tab were listed several usernames Raymond recognized as members of the Games Club. It wasn’t until he scrolled across to the end of the final column that he heard himself gasp. It showed that DeadPainter’s success rate in the competitions was a whopping thirty-two percent!

“Jesus H.,” Raymond said aloud. His own success rate ran at around sixteen percent, and he only went for prizes he knew he had an excellent chance of winning.

The guy’s first win was a Harley Davidson Thunderbird Storm in March. Raymond had briefly considered entering, but in the end he had decided his time was better spent elsewhere. Now, seeing this schmuck had won it, he was beginning to wish he’d thought a little more carefully.

Next on the list were a ten-day Caribbean cruise, a $50,000 diamond ring, and a $10,000 kitchen makeover—the guy must have won over six figures on this page alone. He clicked back to the previous page—same story. Right back to the middle of last year when he’d started.

Raymond’s mouth dropped open. How could a guy like DeadPainter have scored all this without even breaking a sweat?

Nothing made sense.

It doesn’t matter, Raymond told himself. DeadPainter wasn’t in his intellectual league. His success was due to nothing but luck. Raymond’s targets were selected using his own carefully constructed formula, his operations planned to the nth degree.

“Sayonara, bean-brain,” he said, and positioned the cursor to delete the file. “I’ll take good care of the laptop.”

Then he paused.

If the guy had enjoyed this kind of success, was it smart to delete all this information? Better to copy it, take it with him. He searched the desk to find a flash drive, slipped it into the USB slot, noting the time on his wristwatch as he did so. But when he opened the flash drive, it already contained a file marked “TCTH.” No matter. There was plenty of room, and DeadPainter could be back any minute now. So he copied all the relevant files, extracted the flash drive, and closed down the computer.

Done. Finally.

He turned and was just rolling towards the front door, when he noticed the bedroom. The door was slightly ajar and even from here he could see the drapes were still closed and the room was dark.

Raymond hesitated.

What if there was something in there he had missed? It would take less than one minute. So he wheeled himself across, and pushed the door.

The instant it swung wide enough, he saw him. He didn’t even have to go inside. The guy was hanging in the center of the room, suspended from a bolt in the ceiling by a length of electrical wire tied expertly into a hangman’s noose. He couldn’t have been there long because urine was still dripping from the bottom of his pants into the puddle on the floor beneath him.

From where Raymond was sitting it looked like suicide. But he would have bet the Timex he’d won last Tuesday it was murder. And although in awe at the speed and efficiency with which the guy had been dispatched, it was those very aspects that sent a chill through him.

He leaned in, pulled the door closed and wiped down the handle.

Do not panic, he told himself.

He’d survived worse situations. It was exactly the kind of unexpected development his years of practice had prepared him for.

Ignoring the twist in his gut and the overwhelming urge to flee, he calmly locked up the apartment, moved casually back to the elevator, giving the buttons a quick polish as he did, then headed back to his car.

DeadPainter wouldn’t give him any more problems, that was for sure.

But Raymond wondered if his murderer might.

Chapter Three

Back home, Raymond turned on his computer. The image of DeadPainter seemed to be indelibly etched into his brain. Flashes of the body dangling from the bolt looped over and over in his mind.

Who would have killed him? And why? Lynching him would take someone of considerable strength. That bolt would have had to go directly into a beamor a joist or whatever, so whoever did it would have had to bring along specific tools for the job.

The logistics of such a feat fascinated him. But after almost half an hour of speculation and running through various scenarios in his head, he turned his attention back to business.

Hed won a vacuum cleaner, a set of pearl earrings, and a set of crystal wine glasses.