Dysfunctional Dreams

  By Hadena James

  Copyright:

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.

  Copyright © Hadena James 2020

  All Rights Reserved

  Digital Edition

  Also by Hadena James

  Dreams and Reality

  Tortured Dreams

  Elysium Dreams

  Mercurial Dreams

  Explosive Dreams

  Cannibal Dreams

  Butchered Dreams

  Triggered Reality

  Summoned Dreams

  Battered Dreams

  Belladonna Dreams

  Mutilated Dreams

  Fortified Dreams

  Flawless Dreams

  Demonic Dreams

  Ritual Dreams

  Anonymous Dreams

  Dysfunctional Dreams

  Buried Dreams

  Competitive Dreams

  Copycat Dreams

  Nephilim Narratives

  Natural Born Exorcist

  Oh My Wizard

  Demon Boxes

  Movement in the Shadows

  Summoning Trouble

  Codex Pandemonium

  The Brenna Strachan Series

  Dark Cotillion

  Dark Illumination

  Dark Resurrections

  Dark Legacies

  The Dysfunctional Chronicles

  The Dysfunctional Affair

  The Dysfunctional Valentine

  The Dysfunctional Honeymoon

  The Dysfunctional Proposal

  The Dysfunctional Holiday

  The Dysfunctional Wedding

  The Dysfunctional Expansion

  Standalone

  Terrorific Tales

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also By Hadena James

  Dedication

  The First

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  The Second

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Another Night, Another Nightmare

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Suspects By Nadine & Zeke

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Lydia Rolf

  Grant Williams

  Donald Mathers

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Phillip Cross

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  The Infection

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Edgar Randolph

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Steak Dinners

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  Also By Hadena James

  Dedication

  For my father, who taught me that it is okay to not always like your family as long as you love them with all your heart. And who never understood that you couldn’t just start any of my series on the most recently released novel and understand the dystopian world the characters exist in.

  The First

  He parked a little way down the road. He checked the magazine and chamber in the Glock. He had 16 rounds. He’d only need four, but better to be safe than sorry. Hanging out of the front pocket of his cargo pants was a clump of fake hair. The hair was attached to a rubber mask just in case the house had upgraded the security system to include cameras; it had been a long time since he’d been here.

  He took a deep breath. If there were cameras, he’d only have three or four minutes. He set a timer on his watch for two minutes. Ring the doorbell and fire the first shot within seconds of the door opening. That was the plan. In and out, fast and smooth.

  He’d been planning this for weeks. He’d done some reconnaissance and made blueprints from his watching of the house. He’d show Nadine Daniels that she couldn’t get away with meddling in other people’s business. He’d make sure she regret all of her meddling.

  He’d taken out the streetlight near the house two weeks ago, and they still hadn’t fixed it. Imagine that; another town too busy with its own silly projects to worry about things like blown-out streetlights. Well, they’d regret that, too. Towns were supposed to serve their citizens, but Raytown was too busy catering to the sports teams to worry about something like streetlights. The Royals had won a World Series, the Chiefs had won a Super Bowl, and KC Sporting had won the US Open Cup all within the last five years. Now Raytown was too busy repaving the roads around the stadiums to care about the people that lived within the city limits.

  Just two minutes.

  If you are waiting on a bus or a sandwich, two minutes feels like a long time.

  When you intend to kill three people in two minutes, it feels like the blink of an eye.

  He pulled the mask from his pocket and put it on. He’d considered using either a Michael Myers mask or a Ghost Face mask, but he was intending to make a statement, not get famous off the work of others. In the end, he’d bought a generic demon mask. The face was greyish-black with black hair that reminded him of thick thread more than hair. It looked like Nosferatu had mated with a cenobite.

  He turned up the walk to the front door and started the timer on his watch. It was 15 steps from the sidewalk to the front door. He rang the doorbell. A man in his forties opened the door with a “hello.” He fired the gun, and the bullet entered the man’s head just above the left eye, causing him to fall forward onto the doorstep. He stepped around him, immediately firing a second headshot into another man who had jumped up from a chair, a bottle of beer in his hand. The man fell forward, bottle still clasped in his hand as he landed on the carpet, staining it with blood and beer.

  A woman was sitting on the couch, crying hysterically and rooted to the spot. He fired at her. Her head jerked as the bullet entered her skull, then her body slumped forward slightly but did not fall. Another adult was standing between the kitchen and the living room. Another woman. He fired, and a glass of wine fell from her hands as her body collapsed.

  He started toward the hallway. The first door was locked, and he could hear a girl shouting from the other side. He drew back and mule-kicked the door. It popped open. The girl was on the floor with her back against the wall, a telephone in her hands. He shot her, she fell to her right, blood streaking across the wall behind her head. He walked over and shot her a second time as blood bubbled out of her mouth. The phone was on the floor, the display reading 9-1-1. He stepped on it, grinding it under his boots. There should still be one more teenager in the house. The couple had two kids, 15-year-old twins; a boy and a girl. . They’d both been home a few hours ago. He knew because he’d been sitting out in his car for a couple of hours.

  He left the girl’s room and grabbed for the doorknob across the hall. A gunshot splintered through the door, striking him in the arm. He took aim at the door and fired four shots into it before he kicked it open. Inside were two teenage boys. One was bleeding from a chest wound. The other had his hand over his mouth, trying not to scream hysterically. He popped off a shot into both their heads. He walked out of the room and heard a baby scream. He stopped. He hadn’t expected a baby to be in the house. It didn’t sound very old. Even he had limits.

  He turned and walked away from the screaming child. Stepping around the dead body in the doorway, he walked outside and stood in the air for a moment. Blood dripped from the tips of the fingers on his left hand. One of the teens had shot him. Damn. He walked to his car. People were coming out of their houses; he randomly fired shots at the open doors and brightly lit windows, scaring everyone away from them.

  It had taken just one minute and eight seconds to kill four adults and two teenagers. Not bad. But he’d need to be faster and not get shot next time. He got in the car and drove away. He’d parked his own car at the stadium complex, which did have its uses beyond just football, soccer, and baseball after all. He wrapped up his arm in a second shirt he had and put the mask in a bag in the back seat with gym clothes. Then he grabbed and lit the prepared Molotov cocktail and dropped it in the stolen car, on top of the blood that had started to soak into the carpeted floorboard. It whooshed into flames. By the time he got to his car, the paint was starting to bubble and peel on the car he’d stolen two days ago for this purpose.

  One

  “Good morning,” Gabriel said to me as I walked into the conference room that served as the planning and war room of the SCTU.

  “Sure,” I shrugged at him. “It’s two in the morning, hardly a sign that we are going to have a good day.”

  “We are just consulting, so that should help,” Gabriel said to me as Xavi

er and Fiona shuffled into the room.

  “I’m not sure I’m awake enough to look at dead bodies,” Xavier said, taking a seat.

  “Well, you might want to get ready,” Gabriel told him, “Because the Raytown coroner is expecting you soon.”

  “Another serial killer in the metro area? Are they fucking moving here for fun now?” I snipped, opening a Coca-Cola. The office only had Coke products and I was out of Mountain Dew at my desk.

  “At the moment he isn’t a serial; but he is a family annihilator, hence the reason they want to talk to us about it,” Gabriel said.

  “How many?” Fiona asked.

  “Seven, left a baby alive, but killed everyone else,” Gabriel said.

  “A baby too young to identify him?” I asked.

  “Yes, it’s not a year old. Judging by the blood trail, he didn’t even go into the baby’s room.”

  “That’s weird,” I said.

  “It is a little weird, but the baby wasn’t the family’s, so he may not have known it was there,” Gabriel said. “Let’s get into it. Brandon Mercado is 44, an independent contractor that specializes in building custom bathrooms. His wife is 40-year-old Connie Mercado, a third-grade teacher; and they have 15-yr-old twins, Angie and Clay Mercado. The Mercados are the homeowners. They had friends over for dinner; 45-year-old Jim Pittman and his wife, forty-three-year-old Leeza Pittman. Their son, 16-year-old Lionel Pittman, was also at the Mercado’s home. According to Lionel’s girlfriend, it was his night to have their eight-month-old baby. Neighbors say a man wearing a mask walked through the neighborhood at a little after seven last night, and walked up to the Mercado house. From there, it appears he rang the doorbell and shot Mr. Mercado in the head, then entered the house, killing the other three adults, all with headshots. Angie was on the phone with 911 when he shot her in her bedroom. We know the order they were killed because Clay managed to get to his father’s gun and shoot the intruder. The killer then shot through the door, hitting Lionel before entering the bedroom and shooting both Lionel and Clay in the head. He then walked out and took a few seconds to stand on the walkway leading to the sidewalk. Neighbors were calling emergency services and heading outside to check on the gunshots; he opened fire on the houses he was walking past as he walked to his car. A few responding officers noticed a fire at the Truman Sports Complex as they drove to the Mercado residence. The car was found there engulfed in flames. It was stolen in Liberty two days ago from a gas station, and the thief was not captured on video. We don’t know whether it was Lionel or Clay who shot the intruder yet, as the gun was found on the floor between the two boys. Lionel had been shot once in the chest before being shot in the head. Whichever boy shot him, hit him through the door and he returned fire through the door, putting four bullets through it before kicking it open and walking in and killing both boys. According to the outside surveillance camera, he was in and out in less than two minutes.”

  “That’s efficient,” I said. “Contract killers don’t normally kill entire families, though.”

  “That was my first thought as well. Right now, no one knows why a contract killer would have been hired to take out the Mercados or the Pittmans.”

  “Is the security company being cooperative, then?” I asked thinking about the fact that the video footage was already in police hands.

  “The security company is Daniels’ Security. Zeke says the Mercados hired Daniels’ Security to install their security system seven years ago, because Connie Mercado caught another teacher at her school molesting kids and someone started sending her death threats. They traced them back to the accused teacher’s wife and decided not to cancel their contract with Daniels’ Security, even after all of those involved went to jail. And yes, they are cooperating. The detective I spoke with said that Daniels’ Security had given them a month’s worth of surveillance video from the Mercado Residence.”

  “Not that it did them any good tonight.” I sighed. “One minute and eight seconds, seven people dead, seven headshots, and one body shot. Did any of the adults run?”

  “As far as police can tell, they did not run.”

  “Four people dead in less than 30 seconds,” I narrowed my eyes and felt the frown line in my forehead appear.

  “Why less than 30?” Fiona asked.

  “On average, it takes a person’s fight or flight response to start pumping adrenaline and their feet to start moving 20 seconds.” I replied. “He rang the bell, dropped Mr. Mercado and immediately began shooting the other adults he could see before their fight or flight responses could send them running or ducking for cover.”

  “You said 20 seconds,” Fiona responded.

  “You have to account for the time it took to kill Mr. Mercado and step into the house,” I said. “I imagine the adults heard the pop, the adrenaline started, but they didn’t realize they were all about to be shot until he stepped through the front door. So, 30 seconds. Of course, if Mr. Mercado didn’t die instantly, it might have been closer to a minute.”

  “He did,” Xavier said, holding up his phone for me. There was a picture on the screen. The back of a man’s head or what was left of it.

  “That’s a big hole,” Fiona said.

  “Yes, it is. Definitely not a .22 or .38.” Xavier stood up. “Heading to see the coroner, I’ll call you when I know something beyond, ‘that’s a big hole.’”

  “Is Raytown sending a liaison?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes, he is on his way. He’s bringing us evidence and pictures and things.”

  “Oh good, show and tell,” I snarked.

  “I’m excited,” a female voice said as she entered the room with a US Marshal that played sentry for the building at night.

  “She says you’re expecting her,” the Marshal said.

  “Hi, Nadine,” Gabriel said. “She’s fine, leave her with us.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but your clients are dead, hasn’t your job ended?” I asked her.

  “Boy, you are really cheerful at 2:39 in the morning!” she said, standing at a chair. “Please tell me one of you has a cigarette and will go outside and smoke with me.”

  “We have a cigarette and a smoking area in the building,” I told her, standing up. Come with me.” Our smoking area was a well-ventilated closet on the sub-basement floor 1. It was complete with sprinklers with foam-spraying capabilities and three fire extinguishers. But the building had apartments and those apartments weren’t non-smoking, so they let Gabriel and I hide in the closet to smoke when we worked. We took the back elevator down to the super sub-basement of the FGA and SCTU headquarters.

  “It’s like heading to the bat cave,” Nadine said about a third of the way there.

  “Yeah, but the bat cave has better lighting.” I punched the code into a code-locked door and it opened to reveal our tiny smoker’s area that held two chairs, a cooler that I was sure hadn’t had the water in it changed since it had been installed, an ashtray, and three fire extinguishers attached to the concrete walls.

  “This might be the most depressing room ever,” she said, going in. I flipped on the lights and it became even more depressing.

  “I think it’s meant to encourage us to stop smoking,” I told her. “However, in truth, most of those that use it are just shocked it exists at all instead of making us stand out in the rain and snow and heat.”

  “Let’s see, having you, Gabriel, and Malachi stand outside a building day after day smoking in the weather would probably demoralize the residents of the apartments.”

  “Huh, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “You know, your guys couldn’t have reacted fast enough to save them unless they’d been in the house already.”

  “We know,” Nadine said, holding out a hand. I gave her a cigarette. “He was in and out in a minute.”

  “You think it was a professional, too?”

  “I did,” Nadine shrugged. “At first I thought it had to be, but now I’m less sure. I’ve watched the video a dozen times and his random firing at the end isn’t something a professional would do. Also, he parks too far away for it to be a professional. He knew the bullets were going to bring out the neighborhood, so why not park closer? He’d be in and out of the car much faster, making it less likely the neighbors would see anything.”