by Hadena James
“Well, your arm isn’t off, but it’s a little more than a scratch. If the wound hadn’t sucked itself closed and started clotting, I would be able to see through it.”
“Yes, but it did both of those things, so it’s fine.”
“You are the most stubborn person I have ever met.”
“Gabriel is going to be pissed.” I looked at the body. “Not only did I just empty my clip into a guy, I emptied it into a cop.”
“For the record, the guy shot me first.” Lucas shrugged.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Gabriel’s voice suddenly said.
“Hey, Kemosabe.” I took a step back from Lucas so he wouldn’t be involved in the shouting match. I couldn’t see him, but I didn’t really need to see him to know he was not happy.
“How many guys did you kill tonight?” Gabriel’s face was turning red, his freckles disappearing as they blended in with the rest of his skin.
“One, I killed only one,” I said. “And in my defense, he shot Lucas in the chest, first.” I looked at the cop I had hit with the baton on the backside. “I did maim a few others.” He had crawled a short distance and had stopped screaming, but he was still whimpering with the pain and he still seemed to be bleeding.
“If you only killed one of them, why aren’t the others moving?” Gabriel asked.
“Because I am practicing the art of knocking people unconscious as opposed to killing them,” I told him.
“My job sucks.” Gabriel hung his head. “Are you sure? This guy doesn’t look very alive.” He nudged the guy whose arm I had broken and got a groan from him. “Okay, he’s alive.”
“See, I maimed, I didn’t kill,” I repeated.
“You say that like you should get a gold star.” Xavier giggled.
“That’s not a bad idea!” I told him. “We could do a monthly chart and every time I don’t kill someone, I get a gold star, and when I do kill someone, you can take it off.”
“Did I mention my job sucks?” Gabriel looked at me.
“Yes, but I’m trying to make it better by maiming people,” I said. “Do you need a hug?”
“What?” Gabriel suddenly looked confused.
“It’s a stressful situation. I’ve been reading a book about...”
“Please stop.” Gabriel held his hand out to me. “Don’t hug me, that would be weird and you’d get blood on me.”
“But the book...”
“Ace, I order you to stop reading that book. I don’t know what it is, but anything that suggests you hug people is obviously a terrible book.” Gabriel watched as a paramedic began attending to the guy with the crushed tailbone. “However, we will discuss the gold star thing. If you can get excited about gold stars, it might be worth it.”
“We didn’t start it,” Lucas said.
“You don’t have to start it. You guys finished it, and while I’m glad you are both alive and really no worse for the wear, you were supposed to be interviewing prostitutes. So why is there a dead guy and several maimed guys lying on the sidewalk?”
“Cops working as pimps,” I said.
“Tell me they aren’t really cops. Please tell me you didn’t put ten bullets into a cop,” Gabriel pleaded.
“I didn’t put ten bullets into a cop,” I told him. “I put sixteen. I have the 15 capacity clips in the Berettas, plus I always keep one chambered.”
“Get some stitches in your hand.” Gabriel turned and started walking away. “This is going to be a disaster.”
Eleven
The ER doctor had told me there was little to be done for my hand. A nice, hard scab had formed over the hole by the time that I arrived and got a doctor. Broken bones had trumped my piddly little stab wound. He had left the room. Xavier had grabbed my hand, ripped off the scabs and then hollered to a nurse that I was mysteriously bleeding again.
They had put stitches in after that. Xavier had been quite pleased with his work. He’d saved me from a jagged, nasty scar, leaving me with a wound that would heal into a nice and neat scar.
I was less pleased. It did keep me away from Gabriel. He had looked like he was going to blow a gasket when he showed up on scene. The idea that I now had to talk to him, face to face, about the incident filled me with loathing.
I was shoved into a tiny room that looked suspiciously like an interrogation room. Someone had been nice enough to bring me a cup of water, but after that, I was the only person I had seen since I had gotten in the room. When the door did open again, Gabriel and another man walked in. Gabriel looked fine. The other man looked like he might explode.
“Marshal Cain, this is Chief Lutz of the Detroit Police Department. I’m going to level with you. This is a good news/bad news situation,” Gabriel said to me.
“What’s the bad news?” I asked him.
“Chief Lutz is going to take your baton,” Gabriel told me. “And the Justice Department is currently trying to find enough hackers to scrub the internet of the video someone made and posted to social media of the incident.”
“The good news?” I asked.
“The good news is that the video clearly shows that you and Marshal McMichaels identified yourselves before the situation escalated into a gun battle on the street. Also, you didn’t kill a cop, you killed an imposter. He and his partners all had fake badges. They will be facing multiple charges including the attempted murder of a federal officer. The other piece of good news is that we have hookers lining up to talk to you, but they will only talk to you,” Gabriel said.
“Which is a big fucking problem for my department!” Chief Lutz finally broke into the conversation. “We invest thousands of man hours trying to rid the city of prostitution and we can’t even take down their street names because they will only talk to the SCTU.”
I bit my tongue, literally, until I tasted blood. I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to take the baton off my belt and beat him with it before I gave it to him.
“Actually, Chief, the biggest problem is that you have a handful of serial killers running around your city and a whole lot of gang warfare and you are devoting thousands of hours to a far less important crime like prostitution. Maybe if you put resources towards SWAT instead of vice squads, you could take control of your city,” Gabriel told him in a flat tone. “Also, if you had dedicated that much time and effort to getting rid of prostitution, why did my Marshals get into a shootout with people proclaiming to be cops? Why hasn’t your department discovered that imposters are in charge of at least some of the prostitution?”
“You are guests here,” Chief Lutz reminded Gabriel.
“Not anymore,” Gabriel told him. “The moment the SCTU became engaged in a firefight, it became a federal case. We are no longer guests, you are. And if I find out our estimates are off for this city and the number of serial crimes is higher than we think, I can recommend you be relieved of your position and a federal task force can move in and take over control of this police department. You will have so many departments with different acronyms, they’ll have to change the name to Alphabet City.”
Chief Lutz turned a darker shade of purple. If he didn’t have a drink or take a nitro pill soon, he was going to have a heart attack. He stormed out of the room. Gabriel sighed.
“Some people just don’t know when to be thankful,” he said as he sat down. I stuck my tongue out, touching it to identify how badly it was bleeding. “If he’d kept talking, you probably would have tasered him and that would have been bad for his blood pressure.”
“He should take a pill,” I agreed.
“Did you bite your tongue on purpose or by accident?” Gabriel finally looked at me.
“On purpose, the alternative was beating him with my baton, which he forgot to take with him.” I shrugged.
“It worked better than a nightstick. We might all be getting them, thanks to that video.”
“I hate that everyone on the planet has the ability to record us,” I told him.
“In thi
s case, it saved your ass a little. If they hadn’t gotten the shooter standing over Lucas and firing into his chest at point blank range, the Justice Department might have considered your behavior overkill.” Gabriel stared at me for several minutes. “You did well, no one wants to admit it, but I will. The prostitutes refuse to come here to talk though. We are arranging for a secret meeting place where the Detroit police are not invited. It does appear that the department is more concerned with its prostitution rate than its murder rate. And that’s just bad for the city.”
“Well, we could leave them to it. Let it get to the point where serial killers outnumber ordinary citizens. Hell, we could even start shipping them in. It might be more of a deterrent than The Fortress. Get caught by the SCTU and go straight to Detroit. Do not pass go, do not collect $200,” I told him. “We could use the operating budget for The Fortress to move all the normal people to other places. It would be like The Walking Dead, but with serial killers instead of zombies.”
“How would you contain them?” He asked.
“Microchips that explode when they try to cross the city limits,” I answered.
“Even for you that’s twisted.”
“We all need hobbies. You garden, I think of ways to cut back the serial killer population.” I shrugged.
“Lucas and Xavier are out getting ready for the meeting, giving out information to the working girls,” Gabriel changed the subject.
“What about the working guys? I noticed several male prostitutes when I was out there last night.”
“Them too,” Gabriel assured me. “You get to go back to the hotel, grab a shower, and get some sleep.”
“Do I have my own room?” I asked.
“Not yet.” Gabriel sighed again, heavier this time.
“I’d rather be out on the streets then.”
“You look like you just stepped from the gates of Hell. I can’t have you out on the streets.”
“Well, I guess I am off to the sage burning and weird chanting.” I stood up.
“Take the SUV.” Gabriel tossed me the keys. “Try not to kill anyone on the way there.”
“I make no promises.”
The drive was uneventful. When I came into the room, Fiona was typing away on her computer. I didn’t need a mirror, I could tell by her face that I looked worse than normal. It was a mix of revulsion and superiority. She never got dirty. I wanted to run a blood-smeared hand across her perfectly put together hair, but that would have been childish and all the blood was dry anyway.
The harsh bathroom light put me in stark relief against the mirror. My face was pale with dark bags under my eyes. There was blood in my hair and a streak of it down my cheek. Another streak ran the length of my nose. At some point, while the blood was still wet, I had run my hand through my hair and down my face. I didn’t remember doing either, but they were unconscious gestures, so this didn’t surprise me. I popped my upper dentures out. They fit well enough that I didn’t need paste or creams to hold them in and I could still eat an apple. Most of the time, I even slept with them in. I took them out when I showered to clean them.
Without the dentures, my upper lip fell in against the barren gum. The lip became wrinkled and the size of my mouth appeared to shrink. I looked even older without them. The frown lines were more distinguished. Today, I probably could have gotten the senior citizen discount at any restaurant. I put the dentures in a glass, filled it with water and dropped in a cleanser tablet.
My shirt was stuck to me in places where blood had soaked through and dried it to my skin. It was almost as good as superglue. The dried blood yanked at the very fine hairs that covered my arms and stomach as the shirt peeled away. Despite the use of cocoa butter and shea butter lotions, my flesh was becoming one giant scar of differing intensities.
My hands would now bear matching scars. I’d been stabbed in the other hand in the past. It looked like a faked case of stigmata. Instinctively, I touched the scar at my neck. It was the least horrifying to look at, but it had come the closest to killing to me. It was small and flat, shiny and pink, the result of a burn mark being placed over a torn vein in my neck from a broken needle. A souvenir from a serial killer in Alaska.
I turned on the water and stretched while the bathroom steamed up. My tendons and ligaments were getting tight from the years of abuse. Even the scarred flesh attempted to impede movement. If I didn’t stretch every day, I’d die from a blood clot in my legs breaking loose or I’d wake up one day and not be able to move. Humpty Dumpty had nothing on me.
The water ran over my body until it suddenly became freezing cold. The blood had long ago swirled down the drain in a mix of pink bubbles and red water. My suitcase sat on the bathroom counter. I pulled out my pajamas, got my teeth from the cleanser and rinsed them, then dressed and exited the steamy room.
“Since you’re here, I’ll go ahead and tell you, the knee belongs to a woman named Gwen Corner. She has a long rap sheet for prostitution and distribution of a controlled substance. Her knee was replaced a few years ago after someone took a baseball bat to it,” Fiona reported.
“Good, I’m talking to prostitutes tonight. I’ll ask about her.” I grabbed my earplugs and put them in. Then I slipped on a sleeping mask and curled up under my covers. This deprivation of senses was new. I was still adjusting and it took a while to fall asleep. However, once I did, I slept like the dead. It was not a good way to stay alive, but if someone broke into the room, Fiona would make enough noise for a dozen people.
Twelve
Over a hundred prostitutes showed up, and surprisingly, a handful of pimps. Some others were also there that worked with homeless people and the mentally ill. All of them came equipped and ready to share information.
Fiona had been forced to attend. Her fingers flew over the keys at lightning speed as she fed information on cars and possible suspects into her laptop. The pimps and prostitutes were giving us details about cars they don’t recommend getting into and johns that are known to be deviant. They also had a very long list of missing prostitutes.
The social workers, nurses, and religious leaders in attendance gave us lists of other missing people. They gave us names of people that had been known to be violent towards others.
However, the most surprising pieces were the photos. Everyone with a cell phone seemed to have at least one picture to share with us. Some were of cars, some people, some were dead bodies, which were by far the most gruesome, and a few caught my attention as I downloaded them onto a second computer.
We spent all night and into the next morning with the group. It seemed they were grateful that someone was finally going to take notice of the things they had been seeing for months and years.
The hotel had been nice enough to let us use their largest conference room for the gathering. Xavier and Lucas were going through the photos of the dead bodies, trying to group them based on common injuries and patterns that only Lucas could find. I was looking at reports of violence from the prostitutes, trying to figure out which ones just liked to be violent and which ones were fledgling serial killers. Gabriel was trying to get a task force together. This wasn’t an easy feat. We needed Marshals, FBI, ATF, DEA, and anyone else that might have the right to arrest a person in the United States and very few of them liked to play with serial killers.
“One of these is not a serial killer,” Xavier announced as he stood up with a handful of 8x10 photos. “We might need game wardens or animal control. It looks like dog attacks, but I’d bet it’s a feral dog pack and not just a single dog.” He handed the pictures to Gabriel, who handed them to me. The one on top pictured a woman sitting on the ground. Her face was missing along with her hands, feet, and there were chunks taken out of her torso, arms, and legs.
“That is a terrible way to die.” I handed him the pictures back.
“I know,” he answered, taking them. “The most recent victim was time stamped four days ago. This pack hasn’t gone dormant. It attacks petite women and they look homeless.
So, they would be weakened by malnutrition and disease.”
“Predatory animals aren’t that different from serial killers.” I closed my eyes and thought. “Predatory animals don’t attack humans unless they are forced to do so. However, with each successful attack, they become bolder. If it is a feral dog pack, then they will also have enough food sources to start breeding. More food creates better survival rates for pups, better survival rates require more food, but it’s a sustainable cycle. Especially, since they will become more adept hunters and make more efficient kills. The only problem is that feral dogs tend to be scavengers, not hunters. They survive by digging through garbage. There must be another dynamic. Perhaps a hunting dog or a trained attack dog is leading the group. Or they could have been adopted by a solitary wolf in want of a pack. A wolf would understand how to hunt and be able to teach feral dogs. However, where you’d find a wolf in Detroit is beyond me.”
“I don’t know who to contact to eradicate a feral pack of dogs,” Gabriel told us.
“Me either,” I told him. “If Xavier’s right, then something needs to be done with them. They will start attacking children and then small, but nourished humans, then larger humans in good health, until they are at the top of the food chain. They shouldn’t have survived this long and become organized enough to start killing, but since they did, they are a serious problem. Unless we are wrong and they are eating dead bodies.”
“Not a chance.” Xavier pointed at the photo. There was a large pool of blood around the body. There were no paw prints in it. “There are paw prints leading away from the woman, but not in the blood, which means she was alive for it. The blood stayed warm enough to pool the entire time they fed.”
“I might have something here,” I told them. “I’m looking at these descriptions and I got seven women with similar stories. They go for a date, and then they wake up in the hospital without nipples. Do we have any dead bodies without nipples?”