The Serenity Murders Read Online Free Page A

wasted no time posting messages, half of which were filled with useless clues; the other half, however, were promising.
    My eternal fan and rival, Jihad2000, who had recently becomemy friend as well, had sent me three messages, the last of which was clearly marked “urgent” in the subject field. I read that one first.
    “What’s going on? What are all these threatening messages pouring in for you? If there’s anything I can do, I’m at your disposal,” it read. What threatening messages was he talking about? What was pouring in? I knew he liked reading my messages. Although he had promised several times never to do it again, he was incapable of controlling himself, or of reining in his curiosity, or of restraining his sense of rivalry. And so he hacked into my account and logged in to read my messages before I had a chance to do so myself. Although this did give me a sense of protection, it also annoyed the living daylights out of me. I had a few addresses he still hadn’t managed to access, but with his talent and patience, he’d access those too soon enough. Of that I was certain.
    Jihad2000’s other messages pointed to the source of the threat. The psycho viewer who had called the show had found my e-mail address and sent me a threatening message every hour. Apparently there was no room on this earth for me and my kind. He was going to wipe us out. Those who influenced me, those who had made it possible for me to achieve inner peace (this bit he had typed in capital letters and put in quotation marks), would get their due too. He had copied all the names I had published on my Web site, and heralded the fabulous news that he would murder someone each week until I found him.
    The one sent at 3:16 in the morning was a notification of his accomplishment.
    “Strike one! I shot Süheyl Arkın, the closet-case faggot who flaunts you and your kind in front of the public as if you were some kind of hot shit. I’ll have more news for you soon!”
    A cramp gripped my stomach as I read his words. What a truly wonderful start to the day. I headed straight for the shower. By the time I got out, my remaining coffee was cold.
    Still wearing my bathrobe, I sat back down at the computer. My stomach was growling, but my curiosity outweighed my hunger. First, using classic hacking methods, I tried finding his address, his connecting computer. Our psycho was smart. He had connected from a different area, with a different computer, each time. Clearly, he was using Internet cafés. That’s what I’d do if I were him: the best way not to leave a trace. The messages had been sent from providers such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Freemail, and so on, where you could create an account easily without providing any sort of personal information whatsoever.
    “Let’s see if you have the guts to find some ‘inner peace’ now,” it said. He addressed me as an “enemy of peace,” which I didn’t believe I deserved at all. “It’s you and your kind that disturb the peace.”
    My head had started to ache. I looked at the list of names; it was a veritable who’s who of my illustrious life. On my Web site, besides those whose names I had mentioned on the program, I had listed the names of people I didn’t know, of whom I was just an admirer or whom I held in high regard. Instead of taking the easy route and simply copied and pasted the list, he had actually examined it and copied one by one only those names he deemed appropriate targets for his cause.
    My site was actually dedicated to Audrey Hepburn. It had her photographs, biography, filmography, in short, everything about her. John Pruitt was also prominently featured as the ideal man. Besides these two, there was of course my Reiki master Gül Tamay; my aikido tutor, the tai-chi master Sermet Kılıç; my gushing fount of love and joie de vivre, Zekeriya “Ponpon” Güney; and the one and only hypnotherapist in the country, NLP 1 expert Cem Yeğenoğlu, who was only on there because he had