First the positives. You’ve got a great writing style. Grammar and format were excellent. Your narrative flows and you don’t over do your descriptions. Very tightly written format wise.
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The Negative:
Where’s your conflict? What is the problem that Jason is forced to solve during the story? He’s got everything going pretty darn good for him up until your twist at the end. He’s feeling good about his vigilante exploits, the girl he’s loved since boyhood is back in his life. There’s no sense that he’s on the verge of losing anything. There’s no conflict within him over what he’s doing to these criminals. The Police aren’t on his tail thinking that the vigilante and the killer are the same person (he doesn’t even have to hide from the police until that last 10 pages and even then all he does is duck behind a tree and then flee the scene without being spotted, chased, almost captured or anything else). He’s not in danger of losing Casey over the things he’s doing. Also, since he’s elsewhere at the time (with the car vandals) there’s no sense that he may be the killer with some kind of split personality or some other mental issue.
The murders don’t really even come into play until the third part of the script. Even then they don’t amount to much. I’d have the murders come in earlier. Have Jason try to stop the masked (since you don’t want to give away who the killer is) killer only to fail and see the victim die before his eyes, have Jason spotted at a murder scene, have him go on the run to find the killer and clear his name. This is the drama. Now he’s in danger of losing his life, losing his girl, losing his freedom. OR have Jason investigate the murders only to find that there are gaps in his memory and the evidence he uncovers seems to point to him. Now he has to prove to the police AND himself that he is not a murder. That would be drama. As this is there’s just no conflict to pull the reader in. He has nothing to solve and nothing to prove.
Imagine the film Out of Time (with Denzel Washington) if he wasn’t racing against the other members of the force to cover up evidence (all of which pointed to him as the killer) and find the real murder before his department finds evidence against him and arrests him. Imagine instead that for 85 minutes he just went about his daily life and duties in Law Enforcement, he goes home to his personal life. Then in the last 10 minutes of the film he starts racing against time (and the investigating detectives) to clear himself of the murders. Would you want to watch that film? Would it hold your interest? Unfortunately that’s what you’ve got here at this time.
It’s an excellent start, but the story needs to be tense and interesting. We need conflict to move the story forward and to keep us interested.
Best of Luck and Life,
Jerry W. Hawkins
http://www.HawkinsFilms.com