All the devils creatures.., p.1
All The Devil's Creatures: A Jack McDermott Serial Killer Thriller, page 1
ALL THE DEVIL’S CREATURES
A JACK MCDERMOTT SERIAL KILLER THRILLER
OLIVIA BROOKWOOD
Copyright © 2023 by Olivia Brookwood.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
Description
Also By Olivia Brookwood
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
About the Author
Also By Olivia Brookwood
DESCRIPTION
Jack McDermott wrote a bestselling book on serial killers… and now a madman is using it as a how-to guide for murder.
Jack led an easy-going life as a college professor until FBI agent Andrea Valenti walked into his classroom. She has evidence that a serial killer is not only a fan of Jack’s book… but that he’s using it as inspiration for his grisly crimes.
Now the two of them are plunged into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a psychopath whose twisted plan involves something even more horrible than the murders he’s committed. Jack must confront dark secrets from his past involving a serial killer in his own family…
Before he becomes part of the madman’s final masterpiece.
A heart-stopping psychological thriller in the vein of Mary Stone’s Winter Black series and James Patterson’s novels, ALL THE DEVIL’S CREATURES will kill keep you reading frantically until the very last page.
ALSO BY OLIVIA BROOKWOOD
All The Devil’s Creatures
All The Devil’s Monsters (coming soon)
1
The killer watched the girl through his binoculars as she returned home from class.
Meredith Housel, 21. Senior. Business major at the University of Georgia. Lived in downtown Athens on Mommy and Daddy’s dime in an apartment on the 4th floor…
All alone.
That last part was key.
After he had CHOSEN her, the killer had spied on her for weeks to establish her comings and goings. To find her rhythm.
So he could decide on the absolute best time to DO IT.
He finally figured it out:
3:14 PM on a Monday or Wednesday, 24 minutes after she finished her final class for the day.
Today was Monday, and she was walking home from the northern part of campus where the business school was located.
Downtown Athens was really only about eight blocks of shops – clothing boutiques, fast food restaurants, and LOTS of bars – along with an assortment of apartment buildings that had sprung up in the last few years.
She’d stopped in a Starbucks on her way home, as usual, and drank her coffee while she walked home.
Pedestrian traffic was light at this time of day.
At night, the bars were packed and spilling out onto the streets – even on a Monday.
More potential witnesses.
Another reason to do it NOW.
This is it! he thought with giddy excitement. THIS IS IT!
He knew the rest of her routine like clockwork.
She would go upstairs…
Dump her bookbag by the front door…
And then peel off her clothes and slip naked into a terrycloth robe as she made a snack for herself before jumping in the shower 7 to 10 minutes later.
She never showered in the morning before class. She always wore sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt during the day, then showered when she got home.
He’d tracked eight other women before this one but had given up on them when logistics proved too difficult.
The first time he’d seen Meredith Housel shower after she got home, he knew she was the one.
He felt it in his bones.
Seeing her do it another half-dozen times only confirmed it.
The downstairs neighbor wouldn’t get home until 6.
No one to hear the body hit the floor.
The neighbors to the left were a young couple with day jobs. They wouldn’t be back until 7.
The neighbor to the right was a college boy, but he played video games with headphones on whenever he was home, so the killer didn’t expect too much of a problem there.
And the 4th floor was the top floor.
Nobody above the girl’s apartment.
No one to hear.
Perfect.
Time to go.
The killer ripped the sheets of newsprint off the windows and dropped them onto the bare concrete floor. He’d taped the paper to the glass two weeks ago and waited to see if someone would notice.
If they had, they never investigated.
The building was in the final stages of construction, but something had stalled. Maybe money problems with the developers. Who knew.
But there had been no workers around – making the building the perfect sniper’s nest these last two weeks. It was simple enough to get inside if you knew how to pick a lock, which he did.
The killer had never been in the apartment without latex gloves on, so he wasn’t worried about fingerprints.
And the killer wanted them to find the newspapers.
In particular, wanted HIM to find the newspapers.
It would be the perfect clue.
Enough to make HIM think that HE was onto something.
That HE had the killer all figured out.
Wouldn’t HE be surprised when HE finally realized that, no, it was the other way around.
The killer exited the building, his white KN-95 mask and baseball cap in place.
People had long ago given up on COVID-19 protections – and Georgia had been one of the states to take them the least seriously to begin with – but if anyone ever gave the killer a second look with his mask and latex gloves, he just faked a hacking cough. That was usually enough to make busybodies scurry away and not give him a second glance.
His long-sleeve t-shirt under his short-sleeve polo guarded against the early February chill. And with a delivery company emblem on both his hat and shirt, he didn’t arouse much suspicion. The khaki pants completed the image of mundane, vanilla boringness.
Nobody special about him.
Nothing memorable, other than the mask and gloves.
But he needed the mask and gloves in order to DO IT…
…and because of COVID, they could easily be explained away.
He walked over to the grey van he’d bought in Virginia last year, climbed in, and drove around the block. He’d stolen local plates from another grey van that morning in Atlanta, an hour and a half away. No more out-of-state license plate for anyone to remember.
The owner of the other vehicle probably wouldn’t notice, either, because the killer had swapped out his plates with yet another set he’d stolen. They both had the same peach logo as 90% of all the other cars in Georgia. It would be days or even weeks before the van owner noticed the numbers were different.
All planned out to the smallest detail.
And now everything was ready.
The killer drove clockwise around the block, away from the girl’s apartment building… then back towards it, circling in on his prey. Like a shark.
There wasn’t any parking along her street – the spots were always taken – so he stopped by the fire hydrant in front of her building, just as he’d planned. He’d only seen traffic cops once during his two weeks of surveillance, so he was reasonably sure he wouldn’t get ticketed – and even if he were, they would be writing a ticket for the wrong license number.
But he doubted it would come to that.
He wouldn’t be in the building that long.
He was on a schedule.
Once he parked in front of the hydrant, the killer grabbed a small cardboard box from his dashboard and bounded out of the van, a nervous excitement in his step.
He had a handheld tracking device in his right hand, one he’d bought on the internet. Small but heavy, it would make an excellent weapon.
There were several college students strolling along the street an d an older lady walking a dog. None of them gave him a second look.
He ran up the building’s steps to the glass front doors and paused in front of the call box. HOUSEL was printed on a small piece of paper next to a silver button. He had found out her name 12 days ago by standing behind her in line in Starbucks and seeing what was printed on her credit card when she paid. Once he had her name and address, discovering everything else about her had been simple.
There weren’t any security cameras outside the building – he’d made sure of that days before. Even still, he kept his head down and let the bill of his baseball cap obscure his face.
This was the part where it could have potentially all gone wrong, had he not done his homework.
What if she’d come down to the front door to meet him?
Everything would have been ruined.
But he knew from two weeks of surveillance that she was just finishing up her food and about to go jump in the shower.
Naked under her robe.
There was no way she would come down to the lobby to sign for a package.
The killer steadied himself. He was surprised at how hard his heart was beating. He had thought he would be calmer… less affected.
But it wasn’t fear.
It was excitement.
He pressed the button on the call box.
There was a pause, then a staticky voice said, “Yes?”
“Hi there – delivery for, uh…” He paused like he was reading her name on the package. “…Meredith Housel? I need to get a signature.”
“Oh…”
He could tell she was thinking how annoying this was, how inconvenient –
“…I’m in 405, the top floor. Just go up the elevator in the lobby.”
Then there was a metallic buzzing as the door lock opened.
He was in.
He didn’t take the elevator. The odds were low that anyone would be on it at this time of the day, but he didn’t want to take the chance. He could just imagine someone coming up from the parking garage and riding up several floors with him. He didn’t need some idiot starting a conversation and getting a close look at what little of his face was exposed.
Instead, he took the stairs to the fourth floor. He was in good shape, but his heart was pounding when he got to the top. He took a moment in the stairwell to rest and finally decided it was excitement rather than exertion.
Time to do it!
NOW!
He exited the stairwell, walked over to 405, and knocked.
No one else in the hallway. No security cameras.
About five seconds later, the door opened a few inches. Brown eyes under blonde wisps of hair stared at him through the gap.
“Meredith Housel?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
She had to open the door wider in order to sign. As she did so, she pinched the top of her white terrycloth robe with her left hand to keep her chest and neck covered up.
She was pretty.
That was part of the reason he’d chosen her.
The killer handed her the package – totally normal, totally expected, and yet an excellent distraction at the same time.
After she took the package, he pulled the pen off the signing device –
And deliberately fumbled it.
It hit the fake hardwood floor and slid a few feet behind her into the apartment.
Perfect.
“Oh man – sorry – it’s these gloves,” he apologized.
“No problem.”
She turned to get the pen, crouching at the knees to bend and pick it up, keeping the door open with the hand holding the package.
He glanced left and right. No one in the hallway.
That’s when he made his move.
He barged through the open door, knocking her over.
She cried out in surprise as she fell face-first onto the floor.
By then he had the door closed.
“WHAT THE HELL, DUDE?!” she shouted as she turned to look up at him.
She wasn’t afraid yet –
That is, not until she saw him with the signing device lifted in the air like a club.
He swung it down hard on her left temple, THUNK.
She immediately collapsed on the floor, out cold.
No blood. The rounded plastic edges of the signing device hadn’t been sharp enough to cut the skin.
The killer had seen an old episode of CSI where one of the characters had explained that with blunt force trauma, there was rarely any blood from the first blow – only from the second.
The first one’s for free.
He quickly locked the door and turned around to look at his prize.
She lay there on the ground, legs splayed out, mouth gaping open like a fish.
The spot where he’d clocked her was already red and would turn into a nasty bruise.
Not as bad a bruise as if she lived, though.
But we can’t have THAT now, can we?
He thought about opening her robe to look at her body –
But this wasn’t about that.
This was something pure.
This was a mission.
Don’t get distracted.
He positioned her flat on her back, straddled her, and pinned her arms to the floor with his knees.
He didn’t want her to be able to claw at his face – though he seriously doubted she would wake up.
A real pity.
He would have loved to watch her eyes as the light left them forever.
The killer put his hands around her neck – so small, so fragile…
And realized this was the part he really wanted.
Watching her eyes flicker out would have been nice, but this was even better.
He giggled a little – a high, unnatural sound – as he began to grip her neck.
He felt something pop beneath his thumb, but he kept pressing.
Harder.
HARDER.
Her body began to spasm, her limbs struggling to protect her even in unconsciousness –
And then she stopped and lay still.
The killer kept going.
After another 45 seconds that left him trembling from exertion, he lifted his hands from her neck and checked her pulse.
Nothing.
His heart was pounding like an engine piston.
Again he thought about opening her robe, exposing her – touching her –
No.
He still had work to do, and he had to get out before someone reported his van next to the fire hydrant.
Two minutes… starting NOW.
The killer pulled out the plastic baggie from his pants pocket and removed the object inside.
Time to place the first clue.
2
The college lecture hall was huge – big enough to accommodate over 300 students. The chairs were arranged in stadium seating so that everyone could see no matter where they sat. Everything was dim, with recessed lights illuminating alternating patches of the room.
Only the bottom level was well-lit, with its wooden podium, table, and giant whiteboard.
Professor Jack McDermott strolled leisurely across the floor of the college auditorium as he spoke. His voice was deep, and it carried just fine without a microphone or loudspeakers.
“In a lot of ways, American attitudes toward serial killers parallel much older, European stories of the boogeyman. A dark, terrifying figure who’ll ‘getcha’ if you’re bad. Basically, stories to tell naughty children to make them behave. Naughty children – like you.”
The audience of college students chuckled in amusement.
