Max Dunne: Hunted

  MAX DUNNE: HUNTED

  A.R. ZANE

  Copyright © 2019 by A.R. Zane

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication or the information in it may be quoted from or reproduced in any form by means such as printing, scanning, photocopying or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For any question or cooperation please contact the author at ARZaneBooks@gmail.com

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  Contents

  The Disappearing Act

  Runts

  Oakland Drive

  Fortune 8

  Switched at Bar

  Dark Alley

  The Web

  Smokescreen

  Alpha

  Omega

  The Disappearing Act

  The shrill cry of the bedside phone brought him up to a start. First of all, he was grateful for this phone call because he had been having a terrible nightmare that had been threatening his sanity; then secondly, he was surprised to see the phone ring. The phone had not rung in weeks, nobody had ever thought about calling him. And the strangest thing was that the phone was ringing very early in the morning – 4:30am. Who could be calling at this early time? he wondered. As he picked up the receiver, he knew that something terrible had happened even before he placed it against his ear.

  “Who is this?” he spoke soberly on the phone. Whoever was at the other end, he didn’t want to give them the idea that he had been sleeping. That kind of sign was not good for business, he had thought. And his job as a Private Investigator came with the perks of receiving call at odd hours, but the calls had stopped coming for almost a month, until now.

  “He’s gone!” An agitated voice at the other end of the line lamented. “He’s gone! He has disappeared!” It was a woman’s voice.

  Max did not understand what was going on. “Calm down.”

  “I can’t find him anywhere!”

  “Calm down, ma’am,” he realized that the caller was hysterical. “Have a deep breath. Take a few seconds. Breathe in and out, in and out.”

  There was silence now; the lady was doing what he told her. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Is this Detective Max?”

  “Yes, I am. How may I help you, madam?”

  “My husband has disappeared!”

  “Disappeared?” It sounded ridiculous to Max Dunne. Husbands don’t disappear, he thought. They either get tired of their wives to live with another woman. Eventually, they will turn up as soon as the fling is over. This caller must be a very naive woman, obviously. “How do you mean he has disappeared?”

  “He didn’t come home last night.”

  On hearing this, Max nearly wanted to give the lady a good cleaning of the eardrum. How could people be so silly? You came home and didn’t meet your husband and the next thing for you is to panic?

  “I’m sure there’s nothing wrong,” he tried to sound cool. “He probably stepped out to get something. I don’t think you have anything to worry yourself about.”

  “You’re not getting me,” persisted she, “He’s really gone. Everything is in disarray. There are signs of violence.”

  That was enough. He lived for something like that. “Give me your address.”

  ***

  It was when Max reached the entrance of the house that he realized he did not even know the name of his caller. So unprofessional. He pressed the bell and the door was opened almost immediately. A woman stood at the doorway; her face was a mess, her tears and the vigorous wipe with her handkerchief had done injustice to the makeup she wore. Now she looked like someone in a Halloween party.

  “This is Detective Max. You called my line about an hour ago.”

  “Oh yes, yes. Please come in,” she stepped aside for him to step in. max entered the house warily. His hand pressed against the gun in his side holder. The holster was already released for easy access to the weapon. The abductor might be lurking somewhere in the house, waiting for the right moment to strike once again. Of course, this was unlikely but Max was not one to be careful about thing related to safety. When he was sure that the house posed no threat, he relaxed.

  Truly, the room was in disarray. The TV had been smashed, the furniture overturned, wallpapers ripped to pieces, picture frames broken and books littered everywhere. The house was practically a dump yard. Max wondered what had happened in the room. With his gloves on, he flipped over one sofa and sat down. His guest went to the kitchen and brought him a steaming cup of coffee. He accepted it thankfully. What he actually desired was a cold beer but he was on duty.

  “How long have you been married, Mrs. Jocovich?” he said, having found out the name from one of the wedding posters at the top wall.

  “Oh, please call me Brenda,” she said, waving her hand. “We have been married for six months.”

  Six months. Interesting.

  “Tell me about your husband.”

  “He’s the most caring man I have ever known. He worships me like a queen. He’s everything I had ever wanted in a man. He’s –”

  “What does he do, Brenda?” Max wasn’t interested in all those nonsense about what a devoted man her husband was. He believed six months of marriage was too early for couples to know exactly the person they had married.

  “He doesn’t work.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s our agreement. He’s to stay at home and take care of the house while I go out there and make the money.”

  “Really?” He found this interesting too. “And what do you do?”

  “I work in a Fortune 500 company.”

  The wife works and the husband does nothing but watch TV and play video games all day. He was beginning to see a pattern. The gears in his head had started working together, well-oiled with the lubricant of deductive reasoning. He suddenly got up and walked around the room, checking all that he had seen again; the overturned furniture, the smashed electronics, the broken frames, and a lot of other things. He bent over some objects and carefully examined them then placed them exactly where he had picked them. Then as he was about to rise up, he saw a shard of glass that attracted his attention. He picked up the shard and brought it closer to the light. His suspicion was immediately confirmed. There were traces of blood on the glass. He turned around to face the wife. “Did you find the door locked when you stepped into the house?”

  She nodded vigorously.

  He nodded knowingly. He had started seeing a pattern; at this juncture, he could guess what had happened. But conjectures alone were not enough. He had to confirm the facts. The blood on the shard of glass had been wiped off but the person had done a bad job; the person was most probably in a hurry and had no time to make absolute sure there was no traceable evidence. He searched further around more carefully and came across more wipe marks. His suspicion was confirmed.

&nb
sp; He reached into his pocket and brought out a mobile phone. He first called the police, then he dialed another familiar number. “He Scott, I need your help. I’m coming to the lab right now. I have something for you.” He cancelled the call and faced the wife. “I think I have a pretty good idea about what has happened to your husband. Just stay here. The police will be here soon. But I can’t wait; I have something very important to do. I hope I am not too late already.” He rushed out of the room.

  He was excited about the job. It had been a long while since he had investigated a crime as sensational as this. He missed the rush of adrenaline that usually came with this kind of investigation. He drove as fast as he could to the lab; the shard already sealed in a nylon bag. The little trace of blood was enough. Soon, he would know whose blood it was.

  He spent almost an hour in the lab as Scott ran the necessary tests on the little blood scraped from the glass. As he had initially guessed, the blood was not Mr Jocovich. With this confirmation, he was sure about what had happened in the room. It had been staring at him in the face since he heard that the couple had been married for just six months. It was a simple case of an old fling coming home to roost. The dear newly-wed husband had found a new woman who could take good care of him and he had thus deserted his old girlfriend. Wait! He suddenly thought. It just occurred to Max. The truth, oh the truth!

  It was more than that. Mr. Jocovich was already married before meeting Brenda! And he had left his wife, probably with kids, to marry Brenda in a faraway state. The wife, Jenny, had found out what really happened and had sought out her long-lost husband. Perhaps this was the same trick he played with his first wife. He had disappeared one morning to be with Brenda. Jenny Holloran must have reported her missing husband too to the police but he was not found. He had hidden his tracks well, First of all, he had successfully moved around with various fake identities. Yesterday he was Holloran, Today Jocovich, tomorrow probably Hollovich. What a man! What was he hoping to gain with all these? Max refused to believe promiscuity was the only reason. There must be something deeper, something darker. Max was bent on finding out what it was.

  He left the lab about an hour later and sought out the address of Mrs. Holloran in Maryland. It was a long journey, he knew. He took the tube and he was in the city before noon. The address he located was already occupied by another family; there was no trace of Jenny. Apparently, Jenny Holloran had moved about a year earlier, and the new occupants had no idea about where she lived now.

  Max was confused about the next course of action to follow. He had sincerely hoped that by locating where Jenny lived, he would be able to trace the location of the devious Craig Jocovich, the name he recently bore. Now Max had nothing to go on with. He would have easily traced the man’s phone but the phone was left at home, Brenda had it. He left it at home, of course, he wasn’t taking any chance.

  “Where are you, Craig?” Max asked, “Where have you taken Jenny?”

  Jenny’s number!

  The last opportunity he had. He stared at the document that contained information about Jenny. He flipped through pages and located the last number she used. To his surprise, it wasn’t a Maryland number at all; it was, surprisingly, a Wisconsin number – the same state he had left. He could have kicked himself had it been humanly possible. Why didn’t I think of this in the first place?

  He took a tube back to Wisconsin and traced the number, not by home address, but by GPS. He tracked the number to a location not very far from the Jocovich home. Wherever Jenny was, there he would find the bastard called Craig, or whatever his true name was. By 4pm, he arrived at the GPS location of Jenny’s phone. It was an old house in a quiet place. The next available house was about another block away. It seemed like Craig had chosen this location specifically for carrying out the evil he had probably done.

  Max brought out his pistol and walked carefully into the compound of the strange house. It seemed like a haunted place; and Max would not be entirely shocked if he saw ghosts coming out of the walls. Everything about the building was creepy. He took careful steps, dry twigs cracked under his boots as he moved closer to the house. The door was unlocked. He stepped into the dark apartment, it was empty. He started hearing thudding sounds. It was coming from outside, from the back of the house. Max came out quietly and walked to the backyard.

  There was a figure in hood; it was digging what seemed like a grave. “Freeze!” Max screamed. “Drop the digger and turn around!” He knew this was Craig.

  The figure paused what it was doing and slowly dropped the digger.

  “Turn around now!”

  The figure did.

  Max was shocked. He was staring at a woman; she was smiling at him.

  “Jenny?” He was finding it hard to believe; and on the floor beside her, apparently dead, was Brenda.

  He felt a shadow loom behind him and he reacted very fast. He turned swiftly and skidded a foot away from his initial position. There was a hooded man holding an iron rod over his head. If the weapon had landed, Max would possibly have suffered a cracked skull. He gave a swift kick to the man’s solar plexus but the kick didn’t land hard enough, but it pulled off the hood shielding the man’s face. He was staring at Craig. But the latter acted faster than him. He turned around and disappeared round the corner. Max wanted to go after him but thought better of it. He didn’t need to pursue Craig.

  He turned around, walked up to Jenny and put the bracelets on her. “You’re under arrest.”

  Runts

  Contrary to what Max thought, Jenny was unable to provide Craig’s whereabouts; but she was unable to shed some lights to the mystery, at least. His real name was Marcus Linderman, and he had been taking on various different identities for almost six years. He was a sociopath who delighted in killing women; but not just any women, the ones who loved him enough to marry him. He would marry them and then killed them. For the past six years, he had killed over a dozen wives. Jenny, too, whose real name was Patricia Linderman had the same fetish with her husband. While Marcus married a woman and killed her, Patricia married a man and did the same thing; but she had more counts than Marcus. She married almost every month; after killing one husband, she moved on to the next. Killing was the only thing that gave them true joy, but their victims must be their legally wedded spouses.

  Patricia Linderman had confessed to all their crimes without coercion. She had requested to speak with Detective Max Dunne. She had revealed all the plans to him. Everything had been planned out from the start. When Marcus was ready to murder Brenda, he created a red-herring. He had left Max’s number with Brenda two months before the incident. Marcus had told his wife to call that number in case of emergency. And so when her husband had not come home the night before, which was very strange, she immediately called Max.

  But before Marcus left the house, he and Pat had sprinkled blood, which he drew into a syringe, all around the sitting room. They had later cleaned it up and had overturned the furniture and broken some photos and wine-glasses to leave the idea that a struggle had occurred before Marcus disappeared. As they had expected, the blood had led max away from the city to another city; this had given them enough time to actually return to the house and kill their original victim – Brenda.

  But Max had to return so quickly; he had to discover Patricia’s new number and had to trace her down to this place, foiling their perfect plan. Pat knew she had made a mistake and it was all her fault. So she had decided to bear the whole burden without having to give up her husband. She confessed to it all. She had believed that the confession would make her popular but her crimes had been successfully kept away from the press. She cooperated with the cops, however, she gave up the location of Marcus but the man was long gone before the police could get there. Actually, he had disappeared before his arrested wife got to the station. Someone a lot more important than any other person in the world was protecting him. He would never be found.

  Max knew the police would never catch Marcus; he most probably
had left the city now to pitch his tent in an entirely new place, to continue his legacy. Max felt sorry for any woman who would be unfortunate to encounter someone as evil as Marcus Linderman, the same person with the name Craig Jocovich. Max preferred to call him Craig.

  But Max never stopped searching for Craig; even after Pat’s case was closed and she had been sent to life imprisonment, he continued looking for the elusive Craig. Two days after Pat was sent to jail; she was discovered dead in her cell one afternoon. The autopsy report was that she suffered a massive cardiac arrest. Max didn’t believe any of that bullshit. Craig was behind her death, surely. Max knew he must catch the bastard; he had to prove to himself that he was a lot more intelligent than the criminal, that he was smarter. But he had no lead; there was no single thread to follow.

  Two weeks after Pat’s death, Max got into a fight at a bar. A huge guy had tried to bully him. He hated bullies, and within a few seconds he had put the big man to sleep; but his companions had retaliated by crashing various bottles of beer on his head. Max had passed out.

  ***

  Max woke up in the hospital after three days. How he got there eluded him for almost six hours. And when he eventually remembered, he was ashamed of himself. He had let personal emotion controlled his decisions; rather than doing the right thing, he did what he wanted and he had paid dearly for it. He had barely recovered when news reached him that his mother was dying. The cancer had spread and she had just a few days left. And she had been admitted in the same hospital as he. His mom had not stopped calling his name; she wanted to see her only child before her death. She had something very important to tell Max.

  Hearing about his mother’s condition, Max jumped out of bed and located his mother’s ward immediately. He was shocked at what he saw. The graceful woman he had grown up to know had been reduced into a shadow of herself. It seemed as if the cancer had been feeding on her. Her eyes were sunken and her bones threatened to break out of her thin flesh. How did things get so bad? Max wondered. He had grown up into a loving family. His father had been the best dad in the world until he ran his car into a speeding Man Diesel truck. His mangled remains had been brought home in a sack and his mother had wept so badly that she had to be put under pills. The funeral had been attended by everyone in the neighborhood. They had all talked about how great a cop Officer Axel Dunne was. Everyone had called his father a hero, and at six years old as he watched his father’s casket being lowered into the ground, Max decided that he was going to follow in his father’s footsteps.