Road Test by David Wickenhauser (most read book in the world .txt) 📕

effort to clean up. He shoplifted a pair of shorts and a polo shirt from a local boutique. He ripped off a bicycle from the cruise ship docks. He found a drunk college kid on the beach and pilfered his flip-flops.

All in one day.

That night, he snuck into a hotel room while the housekeeping team wasn’t looking. He hid in a closet until they were gone. He took a shower, dressed, and studied himself in the mirror. He’d lost a ton of weight. Every tweaker did.

He pushed his shoulders back and tried to stand straight with confidence. The skin sores on his chest revealed themselves through his polo shirt, so he returned to his customary slouch.

He smiled and said to his mirrored self, “Hello, sir. I’m Marty Kantor. I’d like a job.” His smile revealed his decaying teeth and gums indicative of meth mouth. Kantor quickly closed his mouth and scowled at himself. This was never gonna work.

Plan A, finding a job that could support his habit, wasn’t a viable option. So he moved on to plan B. He recalled a saying from when he first discovered puberty and began to show an interest in girls. They’re all hot at 3:00 a.m., referring to women in a bar at closing time.

Plan B was simple. Try to stay presentable and search for unsuspecting women, or men, in the dark recesses of the local bars at the end of the night. Key West was a party town, and it was full of inebriated something or others interested in a sexual encounter for the night. Marty Kantor was just the guy for the job, although the crystal meth had taken its toll on his manhood, a fact he considered irrelevant. He just wanted their valuables. Cash, credit, or payment in jewelry was all acceptable.

That night, Kantor went to work. He found the perfect bar, well off the beaten path of Duval Street, where the parrothead revelers tended to congregate. His head was in a good place that night, and he easily hooked up with a woman, or at least he thought she was.

The two shared a bottle of vodka and jumped in the target’s car. Kantor didn’t care where they were going because he was getting drunk. They shared a joint. They laughed about stupid shit. They drove and drove up A1A until his new friend suddenly slowed the car and pulled down a sandy road into Curry Hammock State Park. That was when the whole dynamic of plan B changed.

One minute, Marty Kantor thought he had the upper hand and was ready to make bank from this unsuspecting loser. His mind raced as he thought of the diamond-shaped crystals ready to take him away to another dimension. The next minute, he found his head forced down into the woman’s crotch—only, it wasn’t a woman.

Kantor had had enough. He tried to pull away from the guy dressed as a woman. He even threw up the contents of his mostly empty stomach as a defensive mechanism. This prevented him from committing the sexual act.

It also ended his life with a swift, brutal blow.

The man, dressed as a woman, thrust a knife into the base of Kantor’s skull and twisted and twisted before pulling it out. By the time he was done with the meth-head-turned-grifter, the body was unrecognizable.

Human scum. Detective Mike Albright of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department studied the crime scene from a distance. He’d trudged through the wetlands and slopes surrounded by the stands of hardwoods that covered the island. The evidence trail was a hundred yards long, and the low-lying palmettos still showed blood splatter. There were body parts everywhere. Some were missing, either to the wildlife that inhabited the hammocks or because the killer had decided to take them as trophies.

It didn’t look like any body he’d seen before. The corpse was naked. The upper body had been stabbed dozens of times. Appendages had been sawed off, including the man’s genitals. Even its hair was gone, with only a few patches of bloody scalp remaining. What the brutal murderer had done to the victim’s face was unimaginable. The crime was sadistic.

Mike knelt down over the corpse and studied what remained. Where would the medical examiner even start? Did it really matter what the precise cause of death was? He supposed it would in the event the perp decided to go to trial. He tried to imagine what a jury, many of whom might be friends or casual acquaintances of the Albright family, would think of the photographs the forensic team was taking.

The ME approached him. “Mike, the killer has escalated his rage. The MO on this victim is the same as the other except for the obvious increase in body mutilation post-mortem.”

“Any sign of the murder weapon?”

“Part of it,” the ME replied. He handed Mike a Ziploc evidence bag with the handle of a knife inside. “It appears to be spring-assisted. The handle is roughly three and a half inches long. Perfectly legal.”

“What about the blade?” asked Mike.

The medical examiner shrugged and turned toward the body. “In there somewhere, I suspect. I’ll get to work this afternoon and let you know what I find.”

Mike grimaced as he thanked the ME. He’d seen enough. The forensics team would do their level best to gather evidence, but most likely, since this was the second murder in the last two weeks, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, FDLE, would get involved.

The Florida Keys wasn’t exactly the murder capital of the world. It wasn’t even a murderous county. They were few and far between. Most cases that Mike investigated related to assaults, robberies, and the occasional rape.

These killings were disgusting. Demented. Psychotic. Unlike anything he’d seen or heard about in his lifetime. And they were becoming more brutal.

Chapter Six

Friday, October 18

Havana Jack’s Oceanside Restaurant & Bar

Marathon, Florida

Mike balanced his empty glass on the edge of the teak bar, waiting for the bartender to refill it with Jack Daniel’s and a