When Charlie awoke, his head pounded fiercely—so fiercely that he actually cried out in surprise. His sight had not yet returned and he had no idea where he was, but he could sense people nearby. Eventually, the fog obscuring his vision cleared and he was able to take stock of his surroundings.
Fortunately, taking stock was unnecessary, for he was in his own room at the Caribbean Beach. Unfortunately, he was not alone. In a chair by the compass-themed table sat a striking elderly man in a dark suit, calmly watching him with an almost clinical air, as if studying a lab rat.
“There’s a bottle of water on the table to your right, detective,” the man spoke smoothly. “Drink no less than eight ounces and the headache will subside shortly. The use of the sedative and subsequent stimulant in so short a time has dehydrated your brain. Do not speak—drink. There will be time for conversation yet.”
Seeing no harm in it, Charlie picked up the bottle of water. It struck him as odd, since it was made of glass and capped with stainless steel. Removing the heavy top and tossing it on the table, he swallowed half the contents in one long draught. He wasn’t sure whether it was an illusion caused by dehydration, but it was quite possibly the best water he’d ever tasted. A second long draught emptied the bottle, and he set it lightly on the bedside table.
As if reading his mind, the man spoke again.
“Purified glacier water imported from Antarctica,” he stated. “Expensive, but it is the single purest, most naturally sweet water on the planet. Perhaps I’ll email you a link to the vendor. Unfortunately, I haven’t come all this way to converse about beverage preferences. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
“First, tell me where my family is,” Charlie demanded, still feeling the effects of the drugs.
“I can’t tell you that, detective. What I can tell you is that they are perfectly safe, unharmed and—quite frankly—currently in better lodgings than yourself,” he stated, gazing around the small room with a look of disgust on his features.
“How can I be sure—”
The man held up a hand for silence. He reached into his jacket, withdrew a small photograph from his pocket and tossed it to Charlie. The photograph was a grainy surveillance shot of Meghan and the girls sleeping. It was zoomed in too far for Charlie to deduce anything other than that they were on a vaguely familiar-looking couch, and were indeed unharmed so far. It was better quality than the shot of Katie he’d received on the Blackberry earlier in the night, but only fractionally.
“Keep it,” offered the man. “It’ll be a good motivator for you. It was taken an hour ago.”
The man sat in silence for several minutes while Charlie’s eyes remained glued to the photograph. Finally, the young detective looked up.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Now that is the right question, detective. My name,” he spoke, pausing for decidedly cheesy dramatic effect, “is Spencer Holloway.”
The name sounded achingly familiar but Charlie couldn’t place it.
“Haven’t heard of me?” Holloway continued. “No matter. In fact, I should be proud, for it shows that I’ve done my work well. I suppose I can also say the same for you. You are also a man who does his job well—correct?”
“What does my job have to do with any of this?” Charlie asked, defensively. “Did I put your brother in prison or something? Is this your way of getting petty revenge?”
“Not my brother, detective...my son. And you didn’t put him in prison: you put him in the cemetery.”
In an instant, Charlie knew exactly who this man was. Spencer Holloway could only be the father of James Holloway, the only man the detective had ever fired his weapon upon. Instinctively, his hand felt for the scar on his throat. James Holloway had been the one to put the bullet in his neck, though the madman had met a far worse fate.
“James Holloway,” Charlie stated, incredulously. “He was your son.”
“Yes, but only in blood,” Holloway confirmed, dismissing the detective’s concern with a casual wave of a hand. “The boy was nearly useless, his crimes unacceptable for one who had such great potential. Don’t delude yourself with the romance of the situation, Walker; I haven’t come here to avenge my son’s death. What you did to James was a blessing. The world doesn’t need people like him. What the world needs are people like you and I.”
“I’m pretty sure you and I are nothing alike,” Charlie stated.
“I beg to differ, detective. Great minds are often inexplicably drawn to one another, and ultimately these minds seek to prove their dominance. They seek to destroy one another—to challenge themselves by hunting down and crushing others. We might not share the same views, and our goals may differ, but the way in which we approach a problem and devise its solution is one and the same.”
“You’re insane,” stated Charlie.
Holloway seemed to ponder this accusation.
“Oftentimes, true genius is mistaken for insanity; an entertaining notion, considering the accusation is thrown around only by the ignorant. I expected more from you.”
“I guess you set the bar too high,” Charlie countered. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“If the past is any indicator, I should say I haven’t set the bar high enough. You come from a rare breed, detective,” said Holloway, calmly. “Your mind chooses logic and reason over passion and emotion. You realize that emotion is nothing but the crutch of the weak and the dimwitted.”
“How can you say that?” Charlie asked. “I’m in this situation because I’m trying to save my family.”
“In your case, you’ve detached your personal life from your professional life, something that most people cannot ever hope to accomplish. This allowed me to use your wife and daughters as leverage. I believe that a great mind is within you, and I have come to test you.”
“You’re wrong—I’m just a normal guy,” Charlie said defiantly, hoping to lessen the false sense of grandeur that Holloway was placing on the moment.
“I’m afraid that is where you’re wrong. Modesty is for the weak, detective. Recognize your own strengths; celebrate them—do not deny them. I have seen your prowess. It is the reason that I am here. Think back to all those years ago, when you hunted down and killed my son. Reflect on it, and then tell me you’re just a normal guy.”
Charlie tried—and failed—not to think about that horrible ordeal in which he’d shot and killed the man the news outlets had dubbed the ‘Hollow Man.’ It wasn’t a very creative nickname but it fit the bill, and the public lived in fear of the Hollow Man for several months. The apparent lack of a soul within James Holloway made the fantastical moniker more fitting than anyone would have liked. The savage criminal was bold; his actual name was publicly known throughout the entire duration of his spree, as he had left a business card in the mouth of every victim. These usually contained a line of obscure poetry and each was different, though all contained the name James Holloway in bold, embossed print. Giving his real name seemed to be a direct insult to the police force since they had their killer’s real identity yet, despite their best efforts, could not apprehend him.
The whole ordeal came rushing back to him in the blink of an eye.
•••
For an entire summer, the citizens of Detroit had feared leaving their houses. Special news broadcasts had advised people against going out at night, urging them to travel in numbers. A total of twenty-three people had disappeared that summer—including children and entire families—only to have their bodies found days later in public places, mutilated beyond recognition and posed in grim and suggestive ways.
A particularly horrifying and brutal display occurred when a family of three—a father, a mother and their young son—were found skinned and hanging from a billboard in broad daylight near an exit of the I-94 freeway. The homeless man who had discovered the bodies claimed that one moment he was going about his business and—next thing he knew—the bodies were there, swaying in the summer breeze beneath the sign. The first responders dismissed the statement as the ramblings of a drunk, but the media took the claim and ran with it. Headlines like “Hollow Man Defies Reality” and “Hollow Man Kills in Broad Daylight” flooded the local papers for the next week, even though neither was true.
Charlie, having only recently become a detective, was not asked to investigate any of the Hollow Man crime scenes—he wasn’t even considered. The senior detectives in the precinct took precedent on high profile crimes. Charlie was shuffled to the bottom of the stack, forced to question homeowners about break-ins and stolen cars. He gave those cases no less effort than he would any major case, and most of the time he helped find these victims some closure, but greater things were waiting for him, and one day, they found him.
One of the department’s most highly regarded senior detectives, Rick Banks, was assigned to the Holloway case after the twenty-second body was found. By this point, the city was in a panic and the killing spree was gaining national media attention. The mayor’s office was leaning heavily on the police to find this monster and shut him down quickly—more negative publicity was the last thing Detroit’s politicians needed. Banks had a great track record, and the higher-ups were optimistic and hopeful that having him on the case would bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.
When a call came in about the abduction of a woman that bore similarities to Holloway’s other instances, the department reacted with haste. Banks’s partner was hospitalized with severe food poisoning, so he made his way to the scene alone—an act generally frowned upon. Parking his unmarked squad car in the driveway, he entered the house, officially the first responder. Carefully turning on the lights in all the rooms, he began a methodical investigation of the home while he waited for others to arrive.
After being in the house for no more than five minutes, Banks began to hear noises—voices and footsteps—from outside the front of the house. As he neared the door, a deep male voice called out.
“Who the fuck is in that house?” the voice bellowed.
Choosing not to present himself as a target and remaining safely within the house, Banks answered, “My name is Detective Richard Banks. I’m with the Detroit Police Department.”
“Bullshit!” roared the voice. “You’re the second stranger I’ve seen let themselves into this house in the past hour. Now get your ass out here before I put a bullet in you!”
Coolly, Banks crept closer to the front of the house and responded to what he assumed must be a protective neighbor. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to remain calm. I am a police officer. Any threat you make toward me is a very serious crime.”
Banks leaned out from around a corner and peered toward the front door, trying to get a decent view of the person outside. As soon as he did so, a shot rang out and shattered a mirror just a few inches away; the shotgun blast also tearing up a good chunk of plaster. Reacting quickly, Banks retreated around the corner and drew his radio to call for assistance.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” Banks yelled, rattling off the address of the house. “Officer under fire, requesting immediate assistance at my location.”
Unfortunately for Banks, the annual Fourth of July fireworks were just a few short hours away, taking place down by the riverfront. Recent changes to the event made crowd control an even bigger headache and, as a result, most of the city’s uniformed officers were providing extra security for the event. More often than not, it was the yearly scene of a shooting or stabbing. Hearing that backup was a minimum of fifteen minutes away, Banks began to worry.
“Who the hell do we have out this way? Give me anybody with a gun and a car goddamn it,” he snapped at the dispatch operator.
“One moment,” she responded, and he heard the clicking of a keyboard. “The only officers we have who are even remotely close are Detectives Walker and Harris; they’re a few miles away responding to a domestic dispute.”
“You’ve got the new guy and his partner responding to a domestic?” he asked, wondering why they were using a detective for what was clearly uniform work. Deciding that the department was stretched thin enough as it was, he decided not to press the issue further. “Whatever. Fuck it. Get the kid on the horn and get him over here, but tell him to watch his ass.”
“Understood.”
A few miles away, Charlie’s radio chirped while he and his partner, Tony Harris, were interviewing a woman who accused her husband of beating her with an eighteen-inch length of hard salami after she refused to go to the store to buy him more beer. They had nearly been forced to feign a coughing fit just to keep from laughing, but they was still determined to help this poor woman—the deli meat had left significant marks on her face and arms.
“Detectives Walker and Harris, an officer is under fire near your location,” said the operator, reading off the address. “You are the only officers in the vicinity. It’s requested that you cease all further action and assist Detective Banks. You are advised to proceed with extreme caution.”
Quickly apologizing to the irate woman, they left the house and hurried to their car. Fortunately, traffic was light on this side of town and they were able to make it to Banks’ location faster than anticipated. He could hardly believe his eyes when he reached the house.
On the porch steps laid a large black man, a shotgun lying next to him with a bright red shell casing not far away. Blood soaked through the man’s white T-shirt over his left shoulder. Charlie noticed that he was alive: his chest was rapidly heaving.
“What the fuck happened here?” wondered Harris aloud, drawing his weapon and carefully getting out of the car.
“I don’t know,” admitted Charlie, readying his own weapon. “Stabilize him if you can, then get an ambulance down here. I’m going inside to check on Banks. This doesn’t look good.”
“Copy that,” said Harris, his concern darkening his tone.
Charlie rushed to the house first, kicking the shotgun away onto the lawn and stepping around the injured man. Upon entering the house, he followed a thin trail of blood into the living room. Detective Banks lay at the end of this bloody streak, looking all the worse for wear. He had a close-spread shotgun wound on his upper thigh and hip. Oddly enough, it wasn’t bleeding as much as it should have been.
“Walker. Took you long enough,” Banks joked, wincing.
“What the hell happened, Rick?” Charlie asked, bending down to inspect the older man’s wound.
“It ain’t as bad as it looks, kid. I was in the house for a minute...then the fucking neighbor showed up—turns out the asshole had a shotgun loaded with rock salt. Stings like a bitch, but it shouldn’t even need stitches. My Kevlar took half the shot anyway. I fired on him after I was hit. I didn’t kill him, did I?” Banks asked, genuinely concerned.
“No, he’s still kicking,” Charlie reassured him. “Through and through on the shoulder, I think. He might not be a great tennis player after this, but he’ll live. Harris is out there working on him right now. Ambulance shouldn’t be far behind.”
“Good, good.” He swallowed and sighed, preparing to say something important. “Walker, let me ask you something—you been following this Holloway case?”
Charlie thought for a second.
“Yeah, I’ve looked over the files. It’s a strange thing. We know exactly who he is, but it’s like he’s invisible—he leaves no evidence other than that card, and even that means nothing. It’s an interesting case, for sure.”
“Right. Well, the house I’m bleeding all over belongs to a woman. And if we don’t bust our asses and nail this son of a bitch, it’ll be the former residence of the Hollow Man’s twenty-third victim,” stated Banks. “Now, obviously, the brass isn’t going to let me carry on. I’ll have to get dragged off to the hospital, but we honestly have a chance to get him this time, kid.”
Banks winced and attempted to sit up straight before continuing.
“So, neighbor across the street calls 911 just over an hour ago and says he saw our guy enter the house but never saw him leave. Not two minutes later, the lady next door calls in and tells us she saw some guy in the backyard carrying a tarp. Both callers gave Holloway’s description to the letter. There’s an alley that runs behind this place and he probably had his wheels parked back there. I’ll bet my pension that our girl was in that tarp. No way the neighbors could have seen the alley through those hedges back there to ID a vehicle though.”
“Why are you telling me this, Rick?” Charlie asked.
“I’m telling you because this is your case now, Walker. Pete tells me you’re a bright little fucker, so it’s time we stopped wasting your talent on all those B and E’s and you catch yourself a headline-maker. You’ve recovered a lot of stolen stereos, but now it’s time to move up to the big leagues.”
“Where do I start?” Charlie asked, not wasting any time.
“The way I see it is this: you’ve got just under five hours, give or take, before he kills this woman. Postmortem puts the time of death of most of his victims at around midnight on the night before they’re found. His last four victims died on the night of their abduction and were found on display the next morning. So we have a time. We need a place. What do we know?”
“A place...” Charlie thought aloud. “From what I gather, he has to work in the same spot every time. He’s not killing them in different places; he brings them to a central location. A lot of his work was done with surgical tools—specialized power saws and drills—not the kind of thing you’d carry around to carve somebody up in an alley. He’s got to be somewhere that he can access these tools and also maintain the privacy he needs to do his work.”
“Good, keep going,” Banks encouraged him, wincing as he adjusted himself once again to find a more comfortable position.
“Contusions on the cranium show blunt force trauma; I’m assuming he knocks his victims out and revives them when he reaches his location.”
“Common knowledge,” Banks stated. “Also—not relevant right now. Think more specifically. We know what happens when he takes them, but what happens when they reach his hideout?”
“Well, postmortems also show that he when he rapes the women, they’re alive, and signs of struggle show that they’re conscious. We’ve got friction burns on the wrists and ankles so they’re definitely tied down. We can rule out being drugged at any point though; toxicology always comes up negative. The fact that there are no abrasions in or around the mouth tells me that these women haven’t been gagged, so they’re likely to make a lot of noise. This place has to be somewhere that’s isolated—somewhere that these women won’t be heard.”
“Excellent, Walker. Good shit, but what else can we tell from this?”
“It’s in the city—his place. These people are found in elaborate positions, sometimes just a few hours after the time of death. It takes time to set something like that up, so he can’t be placing these people far from where he’s killing them.”
“Perfect,” grinned Banks. “Unfortunately, that’s where I’m lost. I came out here hoping that I could find something that would tell me more, but the place looks clean.”
Charlie racked his brain for useful data, kneeling next to the wounded detective in thoughtful silence. There had to be a way to narrow down the area, but how? Just then, Charlie spied an old, antique-style map that was a decoration on the wall nearby.
“A map,” he said.
“A map?” questioned Banks.
“Yes, a map! Let’s paint a picture of where this asshole has been. Sometimes you can know all this information, but when you actually see it, everything comes together.”
Charlie pulled out his cell phone and called Pete Valdez.
“Captain, it’s Charlie Walker,” he said. “I need you to do me a favor. Pinpoint every location where one of Holloway’s victims was found on a city map, scan it and send it to my car’s laptop.”
“What’s this about, Charlie? You’re not on the Holloway case,” scolded Valdez.
“I am now,” Charlie declared. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain. Get me the map as fast as you can.”
Charlie hung up his phone without another word.
“Damn, Walker, did you just steamroll the Captain?” Banks asked, with a small chuckle.
“He’ll get over it,” he said, dismissing the notion. “We can get this guy—we will get this guy.”
“What are you on to?” Banks asked, as a siren neared the house and the red and white lights of the ambulance lit up the room.
“My theory is this: the guy is smart—we’ll give him that. But what is the one thing that can pull the rug out from under even the most on-point genius?”
“You got me...” Banks replied with a shrug.
“The subconscious, Rick. The shit he doesn’t even realize he’s doing. If I’m right, then this asshole doesn’t realize that he’s literally drawing us a search perimeter. If this map looks like what I think it’s going to look like, the location of every victim he’s left on display will draw us a circle around where this guy is.”
“I see,” Banks agreed. “Put all the locations on a map, connect the dots, and we’ve got ourselves a narrow region where he could be hiding.”
“Bingo,” Charlie exclaimed. “The paramedics are on their way in. Take care of that leg, Rick.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Walker, go catch this idiot, will you?”
“You got it, boss,” Charlie said, making his way outside.
A couple of squad cars had shown up alongside the ambulance and uniformed officers were now cordoning off the area with yellow tape. Charlie ducked under the tape and hurried to his car. Harris was waiting for him inside, his face lit by the laptop screen he was looking at.
“Cap sent you a map,” he said.
“Show me.”
Harris handed the laptop over and Charlie nearly gasped when he looked at the screen. His map idea had worked like a charm. Right on the northeast side of the city, near the river, was a blob of twenty-two pinpoints, heavily concentrated. The perimeter wasn’t much more than a mile in diameter. It just goes to show that sometimes the brightest minds overlook the most obvious details.
“Son of a bitch,” Charlie exclaimed.
“What?” asked Harris.
“James Holloway. We’re going to find him,” Charlie said as he fired up the car and started to drive.
“James Holloway?” Harris asked, incredulously. “The fucking Hollow Man? Nobody can catch that guy and, even if they could, he’s dangerous. He’d never go down without taking a few of us with him.”
Harris looked at Charlie, who ignored him and stared straight ahead, a look of furious intensity painted across his features.
“You’re serious?” Harris asked.
“Deadly serious, Tony. He’s just taken another one—we can save her. Get the Captain on the phone and tell him to use that perimeter as a search area. Have him find us a list of every vacant building within it.”
Harris did as he was told and Charlie sped through the streets of Detroit, heading for the area on the map. When he was just a few miles away, the Captain’s search results returned showing only three vacant buildings in that area. Two of them were small stores, but the third was an apartment complex.
“The apartments,” Charlie asked. “Where are they?”
“Right here,” Harris pointed to a spot on the map that was almost dead center of the cluster of pinpoints.
“He’s there. He’s in that complex.”
Charlie was sure of it. The shops were too small and too close to operating businesses, but the apartment complex was tall—twelve stories. The sound of a person screaming inside the complex from one of the upper floors would never reach the streets below. It was the perfect location.
When the two detectives had reached the building, Charlie’s suspicions were reinforced. Charlie circled the structure using the alleys that surrounded it. The place had only recently been abandoned. The windows were still intact and all the doors hung firmly in their frames. No vehicles were present, but that didn’t mean much. A smart criminal wouldn’t park his vehicle nearby in case it was identified. Then again, a smart criminal wouldn’t leave his victims in a near-perfect circle around the place where he killed them all.
“Lemme get SWAT on the line,” Harris said as Charlie slowed the car to a stop by the front doors.
“Do it, but we have to go in now,” Charlie said, with an air of urgency.
“Charlie, we should really wait for the team. It might get dicey in there.”
“We’ve got to go in, Tony. SWAT will take thirty minutes or more to gear up and get here. This woman can’t wait that long. He could be torturing her while we sit down here waiting—a half-hour could make all the difference. No, we’re going in.”
Sighing, Harris nodded. “Go get the front door open. I’ll meet you there.”
Charlie ran to the glass double doors while Harris called in the cavalry. Charlie wanted to take a look at them before they made their way inside. Upon closer examination, he noticed small scratches above the keyhole. The brass on all sides was tarnished and darkened, but it was shining just above the lock. This told Charlie that someone had recently used a well-made lock picking on the door and the device had scratched the top of the lock, scraping away the layers of wear.
For the sake of science, Charlie tried the door handle—and it opened. Something was wrong. Holloway had left this door open, but why? He was more careful than any criminal in the city’s memory; locking a door behind him would have been second nature. Holloway must have been in a hurry. Had he known that the neighbors had seen him? No, that wouldn’t make a difference. His name was known and there had been witnesses to his past abductions. Clearly, Holloway didn’t think that the police could trace him, so he wasn’t worried about being followed.
As far as Charlie was concerned, Holloway’s reason for haste didn’t matter. All that mattered was that there was only one act that he could be hurrying to complete, and that was the torture and death of his latest victim. He was in a rush to kill this woman, and Charlie needed to get to her—now. Deciding to leave Harris to follow alone, he dashed in through the open door and drew his service pistol.
The lobby of the complex was free of furniture, and a healthy layer of dust covered every surface of the building. The place still had power, but it was just the basic amount; small security lights bathed the floor immediately beneath them, and dim red exit signs shown off in the distance, but other than that, the place was dark. Charlie turned on his flashlight and tried to decide which direction Holloway had gone.
Shining his flashlight on the floor, the layer of dust was disturbed and the young detective bent down to inspect the footprints: size eleven work boots by the look of it. The toe of the left foot dragged on the ground from time to time. Initially, Charlie thought it was from a limp, but then realized that, when headed inward, Holloway would have been carrying an adult in his arms. Assuming Holloway was part of the right-handed majority, he would naturally carry a body with the heavier trunk on his left-hand side, bearing the initial full weight of the person upon his right arm when picking the body up. Charlie was now absolutely positive Holloway was in the building. There were many footprints, most covered in varying thicknesses of dust, but the faux-limping trail he had observed was brand new.
Following the trail, he went straight past the elevators—which had no power—to the main stairs. Unfortunately, the glossy linoleum floors of the lobby and hallway gave way to porous concrete in the stairwell, and Charlie lost the visible dust trail he’d been following. Taking the stairs two at a time, Charlie stopped at each landing just long enough to check the doors for any recent signs of use. Winded after hitting the eighth floor landing, he paused for a moment to catch his breath. That was when he heard it—a woman’s voice. More specifically: a woman’s scream.
The cry had come from far off, possibly two or three floors up. Charlie tapped into a reserve strength he didn’t know he had, and flew up the stairs three at a time. Pausing at the tenth floor landing, he heard the scream again, this time much closer.
Taking a deep breath, Charlie pocketed his flashlight and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Slowly, he eased open the door and took a look at his surroundings. He was in the standard apartment hallway, with doors to the rooms on his left and windows overlooking the city on his right. It wasn’t difficult to discern his next destination. One of the doors was open, and bright light spilled from within.
After silently making his way to the doorway, he paused, listening for anything that could give him the location of the occupants within. The only noises he heard were those of a woman, quietly sobbing and praying. He smelled blood, and something else—but he couldn’t quite place what it was. Able to wait no longer, Charlie entered the room low; his pistol leading the way.
The room beyond was something out of a cheap horror movie and had no place in a rational world.
The room was lit by several workmen’s spotlights that were mounted atop bright yellow industrial stands and attached to car batteries. Along the walls were various medical tools—scalpels, bone saws, clamps and spreaders—as well as modern power tools like drills, jigsaws and chainsaws. Blood, fresh or dried, covered almost every surface of the horrible room. Some of it was so faded and black that it must have been there for months. How many people had died in this room? Charlie shuddered at the thought.
In the center of the room stood a crude operating theater. A woman in her mid-thirties lay shackled to a wooden table. Clearing the room, satisfied that Holloway was not present, Charlie holstered his pistol and rushed over to the victim, releasing her from her bonds. He helped the sobbing woman into a sitting position.
“My name is Detective Charlie Walker,” he told her. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“No!” she whispered hoarsely. “He’s still here! He’s still here!”
Before Charlie could look away from the terrified woman, he felt another presence in the room. Turning slowly, he found himself face-to-face with the infamous Hollow Man—the big man’s frame entirely filling the doorway.
“Welcome,” Holloway spoke.
James Holloway was exponentially more terrible than the reports had ever made him out to be. The man was more creature than human: his black hair wild, his massive beard unkempt and tangled. The ice gray eyes that looked upon the detective with such hunger nearly broke his resolve. Charlie was terrified, but he would never let this monster see it. His chance to prevent the Hollow Man’s latest massacre was handed to him on a silver platter, and he would die before he gave up.
“Holloway, you slipped up,” Charlie said.
“Did I, detective?” Holloway asked, his tone so neutral that he could have been goading Charlie or he could have been dead serious.
“Let me see your hands,” Charlie demanded.
“I’d like to see yours first,” the wild man replied.
Charlie didn’t like the look in Holloway’s eyes: it was dangerous and clearly foreshadowed violent intent. Charlie decided not to take any chances, and he quickly reached for his holstered weapon with one hand while pulling the defenseless woman behind him with the other. Unfortunately, Holloway had been ready; a silenced nine-millimeter held behind his back. The killer raised the weapon and fired once, catching Charlie in the neck, but the detective had already drawn his pistol and fired three shots. One found its mark and sent the infamous killer crashing backwards to the floor of the hallway, dead.
The few minutes before Charlie passed out were a blur. He recalled the woman screaming at the top of her lungs. He recalled Harris entering the room, removing his coat and pressing it onto his partner’s wound. Shortly after, Charlie lost consciousness. He awoke the next day with a tracheal tube down his throat and his pregnant wife looking down at him, holding baby Violet. Meghan’s eyes were red from crying, but she smiled brightly when she noticed he was awake.
After his recovery period, Charlie was honored by the mayor and the woman he’d saved, along with the families of Holloway’s other victims, in a special award ceremony held on the steps of the city hall. He graciously accepted the key to the city—which, until this point, he thought existed only in the movies. For the next week, he couldn’t look at a newspaper or turn on the TV without seeing his own face staring back at him. One headline, “Hero Cop Stops Hollow Man,” made him blush, perhaps because Meghan insisted upon framing it and hanging it in their living room.
Never had he thought that his actions that day could lead to an event as terrible as the one that was occurring now.
•••
Charlie shook his head, trying to clear the memories, and looked straight into the eyes of the elder Holloway.
“Your son was a monster,” Charlie claimed. “I did what any cop would have done in my place. It doesn’t make me different.”
“I suppose there’s no convincing you,” said Holloway. “Regardless, your actions have brought you to my attention. His case was only the tip of the iceberg. Since then, I have watched you. I have studied your methods. You are different. Your mind operates on a whole other level.”
Holloway paused, deep in thought.
“Sadly, you dedicate your life to the protection of other people,” he continued. “These disgusting commoners don’t deserve your help.”
“They deserve more than that,” Charlie declared.
“Again, you refused to be swayed. No matter. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the obnoxious do-gooders like yourself are destined to rule the world. Maybe you people are right. We will soon find out; you will be tested. The time has come to prove yourself, detective. Beat me at my own game and you will have won. I will be a scourge upon the world no more.”
“Why test me?” Charlie asked.
“For years I have looked for individuals with a talent for using their minds to achieve great ends. Some like you. Others less savory, like my son. I have tested them in a similar manner. None have survived. Do you not understand? I’m searching for the person who can defeat me. I can’t live forever but my legacy can. I’ve devoted the twilight of my life to scouring this planet for its greatest minds. None, so far, have even stood a chance.
“You, on the other hand, are exceptional. All the events that have occurred tonight, these seemingly random happenstances that have affected your psyche so profoundly, were all fabricated—by me. The PeopleMover, the Carousel of Progress, the bus tire, the false security agents—you saw right through all of these things. Your mind, though stressed, functioned as precisely as ever—perhaps more so. You are different, detective. Yours may be the mind that I’ve searched all these years for.”
Charlie stared at the man in bewilderment for a few moments before speaking.
“I’d call you insane again,” he said, “but you’ve already talked your way out of that one.”
Holloway laughed and stood, setting two Blackberry batteries on the table and then made his way toward the door.
“Get some rest, detective. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.” He paused before leaving and turned back toward Charlie. “One more thing. Your angels are safe but, should you decide to leave this room before you are told to do so, they will learn the true meaning of pain—my son was not the only creative sadist in the Holloway family. Goodnight, detective.”
Holloway gently closed the door behind him and Charlie heard his footsteps fading steadily into the distance.