Chapter 68

Chapter 68
He let out a ragged sob, a pathetic sound that tore at something deep inside me. But I pushed it down. He needed to hear this. He needed to understand the full extent of my control, of his own unwitting complicity.

"You want to know how I avoided being caught?" I asked, a faint smile touching my lips. "It was easy, David. Because you never looked for me. You looked for a ghost. A phantom. A 'him,' a 'stranger.' You looked for shadows, for someone lurking in the dark alleys. You never looked for the person sitting right beside you. The person sharing your meals. The person you loved."

His eyes were wide, filled with a new kind of madness, a horror so profound it threatened to shatter him completely. He was lost in the wreckage of his own reality, destroyed by the truth.

"I was always there, David. Always watching. Always one step ahead. Because I knew every move you'd make. Every thought you'd have. Because I was the one pulling the strings. And now," I whispered, leaning in close, my voice barely audible, "now you know. And knowing is your final torment. Because the hero detective, the man who was supposed to save Newport City, was just a puppet in the Killer's game. My game."

His body went limp, then shook violently again, a silent scream of utter despair. His eyes glazed over, fixed on me, but not seeing me. Not anymore. He was truly gone. Just a shell, emptied by the truth. My final victim.

David was a broken doll in that chair. His eyes stared, but they didn't really see. His chest hitched, gulping for air that just wasn't there. He shook, a steady tremor vibrating through the ropes. The pain on his face, that silent scream of pure hurt—it was everything I'd aimed for. I'd smashed his world, piece by piece, and now he was just drowning in the mess.

"You're quiet now, David," I said. My voice, clear and cold, filled the huge, dusty room. That raspy fake voice was gone, replaced by the one he knew, the one that used to whisper secrets in his ear. "No more questions? No more ideas about some unknown killer? Just the plain, ugly truth, right in front of you."

He tried to talk, but only a choked sound came out. His mind was fighting something too big, too awful to grasp. Good. He needed to feel every single bit of it.

"You wanted to know how I got away with it," I began, my voice even, like I was just reading from a book. "You always looked for the usual stuff. Fingerprints, DNA, camera footage. Rookie mistakes. I never made 'em."

"Before every hunt, I studied the target's moves, sure. But more importantly, I studied their turf. The cameras on their street, inside their building, even the ones on traffic lights. I mapped out every single angle, every single dead zone. I knew which camera blinked, which one had a crack, which one the guard checked every fifteen minutes, and which one he just ignored. Most of them are just for show anyway, especially in the older parts of the city. Being lazy, that's a killer's best friend."

I walked over to a rusty metal barrel, tapping it lightly. The sound echoed. "Sometimes, it was simple. A loose wire. A 'power surge' just when I needed it, knocking out power in a whole block for a bit. Other times, it was trickier. A tiny piece of shiny tape on a sign, bouncing light back at the lens just enough to blur my face at the key moment. Or a tiny, almost invisible chip, stuck right on the lens, messing up the recording just enough to look like a 'tech problem.'"

"You always thought the Killer was like a ghost. And in a way, I was. I moved through the shadows you didn't even notice. I used ordinary things, stuff people overlooked. A delivery truck parked just right. A sudden blast of steam from a manhole. A fire alarm pulled at the perfect time, making everyone run out, or pulling attention somewhere else. All of it carefully planned, perfectly done. Because chaos, David, is just order you haven't figured out yet."

His jaw was slack, his breathing still rough. He was hearing the chilling truth of how his own careful watch had been fooled, every night, right under his nose.

"And then there was how I did it," I went on, my voice getting clinical, like a doctor's. "That single stab. Right to the heart. Clean. Quick. And always, always when they least expected it. You wondered how they never saw me coming, didn't you? How guys like Thorne, or Jenkins, or even Davies himself, could be taken down so easily? It wasn't just being sneaky, David. It was messing with their heads."

I paused, letting that sink in. "These men… they were full of themselves. Powerful. They thought nobody could touch them. They lived in the dark, yeah, but they were also loud about it. They knew people feared them. They probably even liked it. They lived in a world where they were always in charge, always hurting others, always catching people off guard."

"They saw me, David. Oh, they saw me. But they didn't see the Killer. They saw a distraction. A quick shadow. A nobody. Or, sometimes, they just saw what they wanted to see. Someone weak. Someone easy to fool. Someone they thought they could use, just like they used everyone else."

"My secret weapon was how sure they were of themselves, how much they looked down on anyone they thought was below them. They never saw the quiet one coming. The one who seemed harmless. The one who looked like Gracie Reed. My face, my way of acting, just me being me was the best disguise. It made them drop their guard. They let me get close."

I made a quick, precise stabbing motion with my hand. "A fast, sharp, exact strike. To the heart. It's a small target, but if you know where to aim, if you move with conviction, it's over in a flash. No time to scream. No time to fight back. Just a sudden, sharp pain, and then… gone. The lights just shut off. They stood there, thinking they were safe, thinking they were in charge. And then, in a blink, it was done."

"The knife itself was simple," I explained, waving my hand. "A small, custom-made blade. Balanced. Easy to hide. Easy to clean. No weird poisons, no complicated traps. Just a precise tool, in a steady hand. The shock, the speed, the total surprise… that's what ended them before they even knew what was happening. They died with that smug look still on their faces, never understanding that their biggest weakness was how big they thought they were."