Maniac, p.1
Maniac, page 1
Necessary Evils
Unhinged
Psycho
Moonstruck
Damaged
Headcase
Mad Man
Lunatic
Maniac
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CONTENTS
Prologue
1. Thomas
2. Aiden
3. Thomas
4. Aiden
5. Thomas
6. Aiden
7. Thomas
8. Aiden
9. Thomas
10. Aiden
11. Thomas
12. Aiden
13. Thomas
14. Aiden
15. Thomas
16. Aiden
17. Thomas
18. Aiden
19. Thomas
20. Aiden
21. Thomas
22. Aiden
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
MANIAC
necessary evils book seven
Copyright © 2023 Onley James
www.onleyjames.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction and does not represent any individual living or dead. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover and Interior Formatting by We Got You Covered Book Design
Trigger warning: This book contains discussions of child abuse, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, suicide, and torture of bad people who totally deserve it.
SUBJECT: AIDEN
After years of single-handedly raising a small group of psychopathic children, Dr. Thomas Mulvaney was rarely surprised anymore. But sitting across from Marshall Kendrick in his large stately home in Annandale, he had to admit, he was taken aback by the man’s audacious request.
“This is a blatant abuse of your power,” Thomas said, doing his best to keep his voice even.
Kendrick sniffed, shoulders raising at Thomas’s admonishment. “Maybe so, but I’m doing it anyway, and you have far more to lose than I do.”
That wasn’t exactly true. In the grand scheme of things, Project Watchtower was probably worth more to the government than the man sitting across from him, but beneath Kendrick’s defensiveness, Thomas could sense his fear. So, he didn’t call him out on the validity of his statement. Besides, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued.
Instead, he shook his head. “But he’s your son.”
Kendrick set his jaw, shaking his head before Thomas even finished his short statement. “Whoever that is in there? That’s not the boy I raised. That…thing… He’s a monster.”
Thomas stared at Kendrick, eyes boring into him, like if he just studied him long enough he might glean whatever it was inside that would make him say such a thing about his own child. “What happened?” When Kendrick hesitated, Thomas pushed. “I won’t take him if you’re not honest with me.”
“He beat a kid to death with a fifty-pound weight,” Kendrick said, voice raw, eyes welling with tears he quickly pushed back.
That was aggressive. A blitz attack most likely. Something born of fury, not a well-thought-out plan. “Why’d he do it?” Thomas asked.
“Does it matter?” Kendrick spit back, looking at Thomas like perhaps he was a monster, too.
That was a question many who knew the real him had likely volleyed about several times over, but the truth was, it didn’t actually matter. Part of Thomas felt life would have been easier for him if he’d lacked guilt or empathy. Unfortunately for him, he had both in spades.
Thomas rephrased his question. “Did you ask him why he did it?”
“He won’t speak to me,” Kendrick said, digging his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids, like he was hoping he could just make the situation disappear if he rubbed hard enough.
Making a dead kid disappear was damn near impossible without the proper backing, but Kendrick had the government on his side. “What can you tell me about what happened?”
Kendrick dropped his hands to his desk, then found his glass, slugging back whatever clear liquid was within before saying, “He did it in my garage. We were all home. He didn’t care. He walked into the house covered in blood. Scared the shit out of his mother. He just walked right past us and went to take a shower. Left the kid’s corpse where he killed him.”
“Kid? You keep saying kid. If he murdered a child, I’m not taking him, Watchtower be damned.”
Kendrick’s hand flailed. “Not an actual kid, but a kid to me. He was nineteen. Three years older than Aiden.”
Aiden. The A name wasn’t lost on Thomas. All his sons had A names. Was this fate? Kismet? Perhaps. Or maybe Kendrick’s son was just a hot-tempered monster who’d beaten someone to death for no reason.
But none of this would matter if Kendrick hadn’t taken the necessary steps to shield his son. Thomas shifted in his seat, propping an elbow on the arm of the chair. “What kind of damage control has been done?”
“Once I managed to calm my wife down and prevent her from calling the cops, I called in professionals. They disposed of the body, sanitized the garage, and got rid of Aiden’s clothes. I did manage to get him to admit he and the kid weren’t friends or even associated in any way people knew. Also, it’s been over ten days and the family hasn’t even filed a missing persons report. I’m not sure what to make of that but it bodes well for us.”
There was no ‘us.’ Not to Thomas. He wasn’t taking Aiden off Kendrick’s hands until he knew exactly what had caused the boy to snap. It was easy making a child in the foster system disappear and reappear but Aiden was sixteen, almost seventeen. He had friends, high school transcripts. A social security number. This was going to take more than a few phone calls to make Aiden his.
But if this was an isolated incident, something that happened in a moment of anger, Aiden should be punished by the law, not taught to kill others. He didn’t fit the code. But it was clear Kendrick would never allow Aiden to be punished properly. Not that it was Thomas’s problem. If the boy had snapped, he wasn’t right for Thomas’s…program.
“I want to speak with him,” Thomas said.
Kendrick nodded grimly. “I figured you would. He’s in the dining room.”
Thomas got to his feet, and Kendrick let out a deep breath before doing the same. Thomas followed the man, trying not to lose his patience at his cadence. His footsteps were glacial, like the cars in a funeral procession.
When they reached the formal dining room, Thomas found a boy slumped in his chair, the hood of his white Quiksilver sweatshirt pulled low over his eyes, hiding all but his lips from Thomas’s view. Those full lips were parted, his chest rising and falling slowly.
He was sleeping. Interesting. To sleep that peacefully after taking someone’s life took a special kind of person. Often a psychopath. But psychopaths rarely acted in haste. Perhaps he was a sociopath. So many questions.
He had kicked his feet up on the antique dining table, his long legs stretched out before him. He wore ripped, faded denim jeans and a pair of well-worn but expensive high-top sneakers. He was skinnier than Thomas had envisioned given Kendrick’s large stocky frame.
It took a lot of strength to beat someone to death. Or a lot of rage.
Kendrick marched to where his son reclined and kicked the chair, causing the boy’s feet to fall, startling him awake. Kendrick snatched the hood off the boy’s head, glaring at him. “Wake up. This isn’t a vacation.”
The boy sneered at his father but then seemed to realize they weren’t alone. He turned ocean blue eyes to Thomas, and a shock of awareness rocketed through him. A sullen expression replaced his look of confusion, then he folded his arms over his chest.
Thomas blinked, trying to force his brain to focus on anything other than the boy’s looks. But it was hard. Aiden was…pretty, objectively speaking. That was the only word that came to mind. Model pretty with chiseled cheekbones, full lips, and a shock of wavy blonde hair that fell messily into his eyes.
Thomas swallowed as Aiden gave him a thorough once-over that made him feel a bit uneasy inside. When they locked eyes, Thomas couldn’t look away. He wasn’t even sure he blinked until Kendrick cleared his throat.
“Aiden, this is Dr. Thomas Mulvaney. He’s going to talk to you about what happened. You will answer his questions. Understand?”
Aiden’s gaze flicked to his father, releasing Thomas from the prison of his far too interested stare.
“Sure, Dad,” he said, infusing the words with as much sarcasm as he could seem to muster.
Thomas sat to the boy’s left, clenching his fists in his lap when Aiden returned his full attention to him. Thomas had been face to face with a number of killers in his day. Hundreds, in fact. Some very young, others with a body count that spanned decades, but looking at this boy had him shaken. Literally.
“Leave us,” Thomas said to Kendrick, unwilling to break eye contact with Aiden.
Kendrick hesitated but finally relented. Still, Thomas waited another moment or two before finally opening his mouth to speak. Before he could, Aiden’s tongue poked free of his mouth, licking over his teeth in a gesture that Thomas found both fascinating and disturbing.
“So, you’re him, huh? The psychopath wran gler?” he said, every bit of sarcasm he’d given his father still dripping from his words.
“I am raising a group of children with a very specific psychopathy,” Thomas agreed carefully.
“‘A very specific psychopathy,’” Aiden mocked. “How careful you are, doctor. Are you really even a doctor? You barely look older than me.”
“I assure you I’m far older than I look,” Thomas lied.
“Well, I’m not a psychopath,” Aiden said with an authority Thomas found confusing. “So, you probably wasted a trip.”
“How do you know that?” Thomas asked.
Aiden shrugged, slouching farther in his seat. “I checked.”
Thomas’s lips twitched, amused. “Checked how?”
“I’ve read a lot of books on psychopathy, behavioral profiling. John Douglas, Robert Ressler. I don’t…fit. I can experience guilt. Remorse. Empathy. I have feelings, Dr. Mulvaney.”
“Are you sorry you killed that boy?” Thomas asked, propping his elbow on the arm of the chair, then placing his chin on his fist, studying him.
Aiden once more looked him dead in the eye. “I’m only sorry he didn’t suffer more.”
Thomas blinked at him. “What?”
“He died too quickly,” Aiden said. “I’d hoped to hear him scream. To watch the life drain out of him.”
Goosebumps rose along Thomas’s arms. “Tell me why you did it.”
Aiden shrugged. “Because he wasn’t a good person and he deserved to die.”
Thomas tilted his head. “Why do you believe he wasn’t a good person?”
“Because I’m the one who had to carry the guy he raped and beat near to death to the hospital.”
Thomas processed this information. “How do you know it was him?”
“I saw him. I scared him off. I would have killed him if I caught him, but I had to make a choice: help the guy bleeding to death or kill the guy who caused it. I chose the first one,” Aiden said, jaw muscle twitching. “Not that it mattered in the end.”
Thomas’s brow raised. “Why’s that?”
For the first time, Aiden broke eye contact, gaze floating somewhere over Thomas’s shoulder. “He’s been in a coma for months.”
“Months?” Thomas repeated.
“With what he did to him, they said they’re lucky there’s any brain activity at all,” he muttered. “Considering what the guy did to his body, I think I’d prefer to be brain dead.”
“Why didn’t you just tell the police?” Thomas asked.
Aiden looked at him as if he was stupid. “I did. They didn’t care. They said it’s a gay thing. High risk lifestyle. The kid was from a poor family. There was hardly any evidence since he used a…since he used an object to rape him. My description was vague at best. It was dark. We were on a street with broken lights. It’s not like Brett can tell anybody what that piece of shit did to him. The cops tried to imply it was some kind of romance gone wrong. Not even Brett’s parents wanted to pursue it. They were too humiliated.”
“Brett?” Thomas questioned.
“The victim.” Aiden shook his head. “What that guy did to him wasn’t romance. It was rage. He… I’ve never seen someone do that to a person before. It was brutal.”
Thomas felt something unknot in his chest. It was interesting that Aiden had named the victim but refused to call the man he’d murdered anything but ‘that guy.’
Aiden definitely wasn’t lacking in empathy. His face was pale, his eyes haunted. What he’d seen had scarred him for life. The human part of Thomas wanted to hug the boy, but the scientist in him wanted to pick his brain. How did Aiden differentiate the horrors that happened to Brett from what he’d wanted to do to his abuser?
Thomas sat up a bit straighter. “How did you find him?”
Aiden shrugged. “I took the police sketch and showed it around. Went to gay clubs. Places close to where he’d attacked Brett.”
“Why gay clubs? You think Brett was targeted because he was gay?” Thomas asked.
Aiden’s gaze darted upwards, and once more, that arc of electricity jolted through Thomas’s whole body. “It seemed like the best place to start. Like I said, what he did to him…it was meant to hurt, to inflict as much pain as possible. He wanted him to suffer. That level of rage and evil usually comes from some kind of self-hatred. No?”
Thomas blinked in surprise. Clearly, he had been reading up on psychopathy as more than just a passing fancy. “Seems likely.”
“Brett was small, frail. There were rumors he was gay, but who fucking knows. It’s high school. It’s not like the rumors have to be true for anybody to believe them or spread them. I asked his friends, but they said he didn’t really have prospects from any gender. That he was kind of a weirdo.”
“How did you know you had the right guy?” Thomas asked. “How can you be sure the kid you killed was the same one who hurt Brett?”
“Because I watched him stalking his next victim for weeks. Luckily, he never had the opportunity to act on whatever he wanted to do. But he was definitely ready. I was ready, too. If he’d tried to hurt someone, I would have done what I had to do.”
Thomas didn’t ask him to clarify. “How did he end up in your garage?”
“I followed him, started hanging at the same pool hall he did, played a few games with him, overheard him saying he was looking to buy a Playstation 2. I introduced myself and told him I had one for sale. I gave a ridiculously low price, and told him I was getting a Gamecube instead. Gave him my number. When he called, I invited him over.”
“But your parents were home,” Thomas said.
Aiden shrugged again. “Yeah, that was unfortunate.”
Unfortunate. “Did you plan to kill him?”
“Yeah. Eventually. I was hoping to have more time with him. But he knew something was up. I don’t know what I did that gave it away. I’ve been thinking about it since it happened, but I can’t figure out where I went wrong.”
“Why?”
Aiden frowned in confusion as if the answer was obvious. “So I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“You do know that you’d be in jail right now if not for your father, right?” Thomas asked.
Aiden scoffed. “Please, if you believe my father’s ego would ever allow him to have a murderer for a son, you’re not as smart as he thinks you are.”
“Do you know what I do, Aiden?” Thomas asked.
“You train psychopaths to kill bad people,” Aiden said.
“Did you know that before you killed that boy?” Thomas asked.
Aiden’s smile was cold. “Sure. But don’t tell my father. He thinks a locked door keeps his secrets safe from the rest of us.”
A chill shot through Thomas. Had Aiden…had he planned this? All of it? Right down to this moment? No. That wasn’t possible. That would mean he was playing a master level chess game, guessing his father’s movements from the very first moment Aiden’s world had collided with that boy, Brett’s. Thomas found himself momentarily speechless at the notion.
“Do you want to be part of my program, Aiden?” Thomas finally asked.
“If the alternative is prison, sure,” he said, like he didn’t care either way.
“My other sons have been with me for quite some time. I’ve raised them from an early age to follow my orders without exception. Can you follow my rules, Aiden?”
“Yeah,” he said, tone bored.
Thomas sat forward, closing the distance between them until they were almost nose to nose. “Listen carefully. I’ve had years to instill the fear of God into my other children, but since you’re almost an adult, I will be blunt. You do as I say when I say it. You go where I tell you when I tell you. You never go off-book. You never waver from the plan. You never take matters into your own hands. Ever. There’s no pass or fail in my program. You follow my rules or you disappear just like that boy did and I never waste another moment thinking of you. Understand?”
