azombiewrites: (The Magnificent Seven)
[personal profile] azombiewrites
Title: A Murder Hunt
- Sequel to ‘A Murder Mystery’
Rating: PG Bad Language
Fandom: The Magnificent Seven
Category: Four Corners Detectives AU
Main Characters: Ezra and JD
Disclaimers: The guys are owned by CBS, MGM, Trilogy Entertainment Group, and The Mirisch Corp.
Notes: The April 2005 Challenge (the Mystery Challenge) - offered by Jesfrealo. Write a story where a mystery plays a key role in the story. Have one or any combination of the guys be the detective(s). It can be funny or serious and in any open universe. Extra points if you make an unusual pair of the guys work together to figure out the mystery (so not Chris and Vin or Buck and JD...). Have fun!!
Summary: Detectives Standish and Dunne hunt for a killer
Spoilers: None


Author's note: A BIG thank you and a bear hug to the person who nominated this story for a 2008 & 2009 MoM award!

Warning: Josiah Sanchez is the bad guy in this story!


Part Six


Josiah Sanchez sat with his back against the wall, one leg stretched out before him, the other bent at the knee. His arms rested in his lap, the fingers of both hands silently playing out a tune only he could hear. He began to hum, as eyes that held a hint of madness, traveled the length of the Detective’s body, finally coming to rest on the face he assumed some women would call handsome. Sanchez liked what he saw – a man physically incapable of protecting himself . . . he was going to have a lot of fun before he killed this man.

Standish lay on his right side, facing the killer, his knees pulled toward his chest and arms still bound behind his back. Blood dripped from his mouth, creating a pool of dark liquid that had spread out before him on the dirty floor. The blood that covered the right side of his face had dried and cracked, some of it peeling away like skin.

Sanchez watched in anticipation, a smile playing at his lips, when Standish’s body shifted, the legs stretching and then becoming still once more. Leaving his chin to rest against his shoulder, Standish rolled onto his back, pain causing the facial features to crease and then relax. His eyelids fluttered, opened, closed, and then opened again.

Green eyes stared back at Sanchez, who had modified his humming until he was singing, his voice soft, the lyrics whispered but clear enough for anyone who was listening to understand, “I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel . . . I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real . . . the needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting . . . try to kill it all away, but I remember everything . . . what have I become, my sweetest friend . . .”

Standish closed his eyes against what he thought was a six foot two Neanderthal singing a country and western song. He took a deep breath, the blood in his mouth escaped down the back of his throat, causing him to first choke, and then cough. Droplets of blood splattered across the floor, merging as one with the blood that he had already lost.

Sanchez let out a sigh and shook his head; what little patience he had was quickly running out. He stood up to his full height and made his way over to the man who was now struggling to roll back onto his side. Kneeling down, he pressed his knee into Standish’s chest and gripped the man’s jaw within his large hand, forcing it to open. With his left hand, he reached toward the open mouth, “Bite my fingers and I’ll break yours.”

Standish stared back at him with pain-filled eyes.

He began to probe Standish’s mouth with his fingers. “If you’ve got a punctured lung, I may as well kill you right now, but if you’ve just . . .” His fingers weren’t gentle as they passed along the gum line and then the tongue. Standish coughed. Sanchez gagged when blood and saliva landed on his wrist. He strengthened his grip on Standish’s jaw and smiled at the resulting groan of pain. Sanchez nodded when he felt the small crater in Standish’s tongue and said, “You bit your tongue . . . guess you’re going to live a bit longer.” He pulled his hand from the Detective’s mouth and used it to slap Standish’s cheek, leaving blood and spittle on the sweat covered skin. “You with me, Standish?”

“What . . .”

“I said,” Sanchez released the jaw, took his knee off Standish’s chest, grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair and pulled him upright so they were eye-to-eye, “are you with me?”

“JD?”

“Do I look like Dunne to you?”

“JD?”

Sanchez growled between clenched teeth and shoved Standish back into a horizontal position. “You’re not going to be much fun like this.”

“Where’s JD?”

“Probably visiting his mother by now.” Sanchez stood up and began to circle his prey.

Standish blinked as his eyes tried to follow Sanchez’s movements. “But . . . JD’s mother is dead. She died two years a . . . oh.”

“Yeah . . . ‘oh’.”

“You killed him?”

“I killed him, just like I killed the old guy.” Sanchez stopped in front of Standish and smiled down at the man who stared back at him with eyes full of pain, anger and hatred. “With a bullet to the back of his head. You should have seen it, brains ever--”

Standish swung out with his right leg, kicking Sanchez’s legs out from under him. Sanchez fell hard, the sound of his skull hitting cement filled his ears and the breath fled from his lungs as though the devil himself were chasing it. He could hear Standish struggling to get up and knew that if the wiry man managed it, he would start using his boots against his skull and then it would be all over for the killer.

Sanchez lifted his head and through the spots that danced across his vision, saw that Standish had made it to his knees. He kicked out with his own foot, the heel of his boot slamming into Standish’s chest, sending Standish onto his back with his feet twisted beneath him.

With a large smile spreading across his face, Sanchez allowed his head to fall back to the ground, but grimaced at the pain it caused. He used his fingers to search his skull and found the injury Standish had caused. Holding the hand in front of his eyes, he saw the blood dripping from the tips of his fingers.

“Fuck!” Ignoring the pain in his skull and back, Sanchez pushed himself to his feet and in two long strides, was standing in front of the man he had underestimated – a mistake he didn’t intend to make again. “Get up! If you want to fight me, get on your damn feet and fight me!”

All Ezra Standish heard was garbled gibberish. He was too busy struggling to breath to care about what Sanchez was saying. Pulling his knees to his aching chest, he rolled onto his side and curled into a ball, the position hindering his attempts to take a deep breath. Pain exploded in his lower back when Sanchez placed a well-aimed kick to his right kidney, not once but twice.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Sanchez pushed Standish onto his back and hit him with a right hook, splitting the younger man’s bottom lip. Sanchez smiled as he anticipated Standish’s next move. He grabbed the ankle before it could make contact with his balls and twisted it until he heard the hoarse cry of pain come from Standish’s mouth. “Teach you to fight dirty, you piece of shit!”

Standish felt as though his ankle was going to break, knew that if he could see it, the toes of his foot would be pointing in the opposite direction. “Uncle!”

Raising an eyebrow at the man below him, Sanchez laughed, “What?”

“Uncle,” Standish said through clenched teeth. “Uncle!”

Sanchez gave the ankle one last twist before letting go. He stared down at the features now contorted with pain. “You’re a piece of work, Standish, you know that.”

Standish licked his bottom lip, and grimaced at the sting of pain and taste of blood. “Get me on a good day and I’d kick your ass.”

“Is that so?” Sanchez said as he stepped back.

“Got my hands cuffed behind me, a headache that would make your head spin, and I still knocked you on your ass,” Standish smiled.

Sanchez hit the smiling features and said, “Cocky son-of-a-bitch!”

Standish shook his head in an attempt to clear it but the movement only caused the light to darken. He laid his head down, closed his eyes and waited. Pain caused his muscles to constrict and loosen – the feeling was nauseating. Swallowing the rising bile, he opened his eyes and looked up at Sanchez. He didn’t like the way the man was looking at him.

“Are we going to do this all day, or are you going to get it over with and kill me, because I think death would be preferable to the way I’m feeling at the moment?”

“Got to have my fun first.”

“Like you did with JD and Old man Henry,” Standish said. “You didn’t have to kill them.”

“Yeah . . . I did.”

“Henry Potter was sixty-two years old.”

“What can I say,” Sanchez was smiling. “I like to kill, gives me a feeling of power, of control.”

“It makes you debauched.”

“What?”

“Morally wrong, depraved, immoral . . . “

Sanchez smiled. “I like you, Standish, really I do but you can be extremely annoying.”

“So I’ve been told . . . by better men than you.”

“And who would that be?” Sanchez sat down in front of Standish – close enough to see the man’s eyes, but not close enough for him to lash out again – and crossed his legs. “Chris Larabee, Orin Travis . . . your father?”

“You want to talk about family?” Standish asked the killer. “Do you want me to ask about your father, your sister?”

“Touché.” Sanchez nodded.

Silence filled with tension surrounded the two men. Standish took the opportunity to take in his surroundings. The room was small, empty of furniture, the windows covered with curtains so thin they allowed the sun to shine through into the room. Something about the room seemed oddly familiar to him but his pain-filled mind couldn’t register what that familiarity was.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere we won’t be disturbed.”

“Where people won’t hear me scream?”

“I don’t like to hear people scream while I kill them, Ezra.”

Standish grimaced at the use of his first name.

“I like to see the life go out of a person, not hear it.”

“You shoot people in the back of the head, how do you see the life leave them?”

Sanchez shrugged and explained, “I don’t kill women that way . . . however . . . a bullet to the back of the head . . . you can see the life leave them when their brains burst out from the other side of their skull. Brain matter that once produced thought, produced feelings, create--”

“You are one sick son-of-a-bitch!”

“Maybe, but I enjoy what I do.”

“Then please, by all means, enjoy yourself when you shoot me in the back of the head.”

“Oh, I’m not going to shoot you,” Sanchez smiled at the man before him. “I’m going to kill you in a more personal way.”

Sanchez got on his hands and knees and crawled to Standish’s horizontal form. The smile he wore grew when Standish flinched away from him, and using his legs, began to push himself backwards, away from his abductor. Sanchez grabbed one ankle, and then the other before Standish could raise it high enough to kick him.

“I’m going to warn you once, Standish. You try and kick out at me and I will break your legs.”

“If you think I’m just going to lie here and let you--”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Standish. The only thing I’m going to do to you . . . is kill you. Nothing more, nothing less.” Sanchez moved forward, his movements quick. His hands pressed down against the Detective’s thighs, hips and stomach in an attempt to keep him still. He took enjoyment from the fear that was radiating within the smaller man’s muscles. “Remember, kick me and I’ll break it.” Sanchez quickly lifted a leg and before Standish could do anything, swung it over the man’s body so he was straddling the Detective. He let all of his weight bear down on the man’s hips then leaned forward, and with one hand on the heaving chest, he wrapped his right hand around Standish’s throat and began to squeeze. “You . . . I want to see the life leave those pretty green eyes of yours.”

Standish closed his eyes.

Sanchez removed his hand from the chest beneath him, closed it into a fist and slammed it into Standish’s face. The hand then returned to its original position. “Open your eyes, you fucking coward.”

Standish began to buck beneath the larger man in an attempt to throw him off, but Sanchez was too heavy. When Standish raised his knees, Sanchez forced them back down by shifting his weight and changing his position until he was sitting on Standish’s thighs.

Sanchez began to apply more pressure, his fingers digging into the flesh of Standish’s throat. The Detective’s struggles began to weaken. Sanchez could feel his own heart pounding painfully within his chest, pumping the adrenalin through his veins. This was his favorite part; taking another person’s life was the best feeling in the world. He relaxed his hold, allowing Standish to take a few breaths before tightening his grip once more. Sanchez waited until he thought Standish was about to pass out and removed his hand from the throat. He smiled when Standish began to suck the air through his mouth into his starving lungs.

“You know what would make this even better?”

Holding the man down with both hands, he pushed his knees in-between Standish’s legs, forcing the legs to separate, then rested his knees against the man’s thighs to keep Standish in place.

Eyelids flashed opened revealing terrified green eyes.

“Keep those eyes open, Standish, or I might change my mind and go that one step further.”

Sanchez reached forward again, but this time, instead of wrapping his hand around the exposed throat, he placed his hand over Standish’s mouth and nose, squeezing until Standish could no longer breathe. It only took a few seconds before Standish began to struggle, arching his upper body off the ground. Sanchez pushed him back down, placing more weight on the Detective’s chest to keep him parallel with the floor.

Standish closed his eyes. Sanchez slammed his knee into the groin beneath him, causing Standish to scream behind his hand.

“Open your eyes, Standish! If you don’t, I’ll make this quick, then go and get my fun from someone else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Standish opened his eyes and exposed his emotions to the man who leant over him. Pain, fear and anger blended as they fought for control, each emotion wanting to be stronger than the other.

Leaning forward – close enough to feel his own breath on his hand – Sanchez allowed his left hand to travel the form under him, the fingers gliding against the exposed skin of Standish’s flat stomach. He felt Standish flinch beneath the touch and his struggles grow stronger, but Sanchez wanted more. The hand continued downward until the fingers reached the Detective’s groin. He filled his hand, gently squeezed and then began to fondle his victim.

Standish closed his eyes, forcing a tear out into the open, exposing it to Sanchez and his struggles weakened in their intensity before finally stopping altogether.






Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven


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