Hi everyone!
Sorry I haven’t replied to nearly as many comments in part 6. I’ve been busy. Extremely busy. So much to do today to prepare.
I’ll get back to where we left off.
I honestly don’t remember most of the night after the car crash. I only have glimpses of memories, and I won’t try to coherently express them here.
I got my bearings back after I’d slept off the shock. My higher functions kicked back into gear after I’d gone to a grocery store and bought a small amount of food. The amount of hunger that shock can induce is extreme.
I had rifled through the backpack and found exactly what David had said: shoes, a pair of clothes, $2,000 cash in $100’s and $20’s, and a road atlas booklet. I still have that atlas and use it when I’m moving on.
Once I had food, water, and an inventory of my belongings, I could start to plan and work.
I dumped my jail clothes in a dumpster, and paid for a haircut to try and alter my appearance. Yes, I washed the blood off my face and hair before going in.
When I looked in the mirror afterwards, I still recognized myself so I paid the hairdresser to dye my hair too. I know there are self-dying kits that cost way less, but I had nowhere to do it.
I knew I couldn’t stay in this town because David would know exactly where to find me. I had no idea how long this truce would last, so I had no intention of staying here one more night. I bought a bus ticket to an adjacent state and arrived only a few hours later.
The town I chose was larger than the one I had come from. This was intentional so that I could have anonymity and a better selection of services for the homeless. This town had a soup kitchen that I could use to cut down on costs as well as a homeless shelter.
I knew I couldn’t live long on the already dwindling $2,000, so I started going to the library and searching online for odd jobs. I had to find something that wouldn’t run a background check, if at all possible, because of the manhunt that was probably going on for me. I saw nothing about it in the news yet, but it had only been a day.
After a week of searching, I found a job at a seedy telemarketing place that paid cash under the table. You’d be surprised how many of these there are. I hated the work, but I was out of the sun and making some money.
Before I found a run-down and half-empty apartment complex to live in and pay weekly, I slept in the homeless shelter. I could have just stayed there and saved a lot of money, sure, but I hated going there and avoided it as long as possible when nighttime came. The money I spent on the apartment was well worth it.
I had some semblance of a life set up and now I could get the real work done.
I had gone to the mall and bought the cheapest prepaid android phone they had and signed up for a monthly subscription that gave me unlimited data as well as texts and calls. I’d need to find a store to pay cash and top up every month, but it wasn’t an expensive plan. And I needed Internet when the library was closed.
During the days, I’d spend my time in the library with a cheap notebook I’d bought, doing more research similar to what I had done in the Walmart parking lot. I also spent a lot of time working out and trying to get stronger. Before I had the apartment, I’d paid for a gym membership and showered there instead of at the homeless shelter. I decided to keep the membership and use their machines to get a more effective workout.
The plan at the time had been to stay alive and away from David and the cops. I stayed inside the day the news broke of my escape in the other state. The police finally admitted to needing help in finding me and went public for a request for information. They listed off the crimes I was accused of as well as a request to question me in regards to the two dead policemen. I wrote down every detail of the investigation, though none of it proved useful other than as background knowledge. I kept up with the sporadic news releases so I could stay as far ahead of the cops as possible.
For the next six months, I stayed in this city.
During that time, I learned a lot. Living on a tiny budget, home repairs when the landlord wouldn’t fix something, hiding when you suspect you’re being followed, and navigating the streets at night all became second nature to me.
I also continued to study computers and networks. I am by no means any kind of licensed professional. I learned by deciding what I wanted to know how to do, and then practicing it over and over.
One day, I was at the library when the news was published online. David Fucking King was suspected of murdering the two cops. I was ecstatic and couldn’t believe my luck. David King had finally made a mistake that had cost him. The news story did not specify why the police suspected him, but I didn’t care. David was going to get what he deserved.
A month passed with still no news on whether David had been captured or not. I found myself tempted to call Detective Hernandez and ask what he knew. But I didn’t. I learned a lot of self control and risk assessment during those seven months. Risk analysis was built into my daily decisions.
After checking for news on David for the third time in a week, I decided that I would no longer be a bystander waiting for David to be caught.
I decided to begin actively hunting David.
Since I knew he was good with computers, the Internet was the best place to begin looking for traces of him. I searched hundreds of forums, scouring for a list of keywords that I thought David would either post or look for. I won’t include that list here.
In only a couple weeks, I found one of his online accounts on StackExchange. I took notes on everything he commented as well as his account activity. Fortunately, he had kept the same account for several years. Granted, it was under a pseudonym, but he’d kept it. He still uses it today, actually. I just checked. He was logged in 7 hours ago when I wrote this.
Once I found one account, it held clues to many others. He slipped out information accidentally that I could use to locate his other accounts. Posts like “I’ve asked this question on this other forum and got no response, so now I am asking it here,” would link two accounts and reveal yet another goldmine of data for my study.
I spent weeks gathering pseudonyms, post records, and ip addresses he’d used: anything I could find with the tools I had available. Some pseudonyms he used more than once, and others he created as throwaway names.
The research gave me invaluable insight into the way David thinks, talks, and acts. I got to know him on a level I could never have hoped to understand from just being his friend in high school. It made my hate for him grow, not diminish.
I didn’t only check the regular web either. Some people claim the deep web is a terrifying place where you can get killed at every turn, but it isn’t if you don’t act stupid. I installed Tor and began doing the same data mining in the deep web. The results were fantastic. I found catalogs worth of information. I was able to identity a lot of his false identities online and then map them to the fake social media pages he had created for them when he might need a cover up.
And all of this came because he insisted on using the same usernames over and over again. Why did he do that? Because he wanted people to know who he was when they interacted and respect him.
Weakness.
One day, just for the hell of it, I sent him a message as myself to one of his accounts. I made my email address visible on purpose. He’d need it.
The spam mail started instantly after that. The response was so childish and brash that I was smiling that whole day. I knew that I could get to him.
I also tried calling the psychological institute where David’s records should be. If I was lucky, I could get my hands on another copy of his evaluation and study it with new eyes. There was no such luck, however. David had called them and told them not to send copies to anyone because he was the current victim of fraud. How ironic.
I was able to use his accounts that were used the most to track down his location. Sometimes he used a VPN, and sometimes he didn’t. Recently, last week actually, he moved to a nearby city. He seemed to be following his own instructions to his partner to move along after only a couple of days. He was jumping from city to city, but not crossing the entire country every time he moved. He was making a snake-like trail throughout the country.
I went over to this town he’d moved to and walked the streets for hours, hoping for a glimpse of him. It was just my luck that he walked out of a grocery store just as I was walking in. He didn’t notice me, but I followed him back to where he was staying. For a couple of days, at least, I knew where he was.
The next few days were spent in surveillance. I watched him day and night, following him everywhere. I saw no sign of Katie being with him, though, which made sense. His partner only came to visit once. He stayed for only ten minutes before leaving in a car I hadn’t seen him arrive in. I blew my only opportunity to follow him since I had no car of my own.
When David moved on, I followed him. I slept on the streets again, unwilling to let him leave my sight. I followed him around and learned so much about him from his routines and habits. I had learned so much about my enemy and my nemesis that I was finally ready to confront him for the last time.
And now, everyone, we come to the crux of the story. This is the focal point that this entire series has led up to.
Hello, David King.
I know you're reading this. I see you check it during your morning coffee routine at Starbucks. It took you a few days to find it, but I knew that if I told the story through to the end, and gained enough popularity, you'd find it. The more people who became interested, the more likely you were to see it.
And now here you are.
I’m sitting here, watching to see your face when you read this part. This has been the build-up of the entire series. I wrote all of this for this one moment.
You've read every comment. I've seen you scrolling through them and opening sub-comments to see what they say. You’re very invested in what everyone has to say. And the one thing you can conclude from the comments is this: EVERYONE HERE HATES YOU.
Every. Last. One.
Hundreds of people now hate you. Many of them have offered time, talent, and cunning towards your complete destruction. I have refused their help until now.
I want Katie back.
All my stalking hasn't told me what really matters: where she is. So, I'm using this thread to get to you. Either you give Katie back, or I release everything about you to all these people who hate you. I know aliases, addresses, phone numbers, comments admitting to illegal activity, social security numbers, drivers licenses, passports, online account names, everything. The police will have it all too.
I've been tracking you for so long, David.
The first few lines of every post? Where I said, for example, that you'd almost found me? They were lies. I've been watching from afar during the entire publication of these posts.
Right now, as I am about to press submit, you just bought a sandwich at Jimmy John's. The meatball sub. It's currently Saturday, July 2nd, 7:32 PM. There’s your proof that I’m nearby.
Convinced yet?
Bring Katie to Welles Park at 10 PM tonight and leave your partner behind.
If you don't show, I will release all of the information I have, dedicate the rest of my life to updating that information, and releasing it to anyone here who wants to do something about it.
I’ve set up a timed release of the information. It will be automatically posted via private message to everyone who ever commented on these threads. And they will spread it even further.
The timed release will occur at 3 AM tonight unless I'm there to stop it. You need two people to stop it, each one with their own password. No, I won’t tell you who the other person is.
For everyone else here on the thread, I will have another post up in at least 48 hours. I’m giving myself a time buffer to respond in case David tries anything stupid. If I don't write an update, and the information has been released, you'll know what happened.
You have all asked what you could do to help me. If you receive the information, do what you need to do.
See you soon, David.
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