by Hadena James
Fourteen
Normally, we would be helping the locals canvass neighborhoods or talk to the families of victims. Unfortunately, we didn’t even have the identity of the victim. I was holed up for the second day in my hotel room with my electronic reading device. Xavier and Dr. Baldwin had finished with the bodies the day before. I hadn’t been necessary. I made Dr. Baldwin uncomfortable.
I was fine with that. My room had good air conditioning and the hotel had good room service. There was also a plethora of new books on my Kindle that I hadn’t read yet. I was naturally a book hoarder, the Christmas present from Nyleena last year, had been a God-send. Also, there were tons of free and cheap books that could be downloaded and read at my convenience.
The paperback lay on the dresser, daring me to read it. I picked it up twice and put it back down. In theory, it was a murder mystery, which was why I had bought it. However, after staring at the cover for a few hours, I had decided true crime was probably more interesting. It would go on my shelves at home, I had an entire book case of books marked “to be read” that I hoped to get to before I died. It would be in good company.
While it seemed redundant, I was currently reading a book on cannibalistic serial killers. The book documented only twelve cannibals. This seemed inadequate, since we had chased down two in the past year, but I wasn’t a writer and didn’t know what the public deemed interesting.
I did know that the cannibal we had captured only seven weeks earlier had all the monsters in this book beat. He’d used a giant spit in his backyard and served up his victims to neighbors at barbecues. We knew he’d claimed at least thirty victims, but the number was probably higher. However, most of the evidence had been eaten and he’d been caught only because someone noticed that the large pig had a tattoo on its roasting skin. The neighbor had called the health department. The health department had called us. By the time we got there, the cannibal’s house was on fire and he was determined to stay inside. My suggestion had been to let him burn, but Gabriel had reminded me I wasn’t Judge Dredd, so we had escorted four firemen into the burning structure. Our killer didn’t put up much of a fight, he made a half hearted attempt to handcuff himself to the toilet. Sadly for him, we all had handcuff keys.
The neighbor that made the report to the health department, was actually only worried about tainted pork. After all, farmers and ranchers mark their livestock all the time. I was amazed at how oblivious he had seemed. Of course, our killer had removed the heads and limbs of his victims, that made them look a little more like pork. And the spit did a good job of making the flesh unrecognizable as human, but still, I would have thought you would have noticed the odd taste. Or maybe humans tasted like pork.
I closed the cover on my e-reader and flopped over onto my back, daring the ugly ceiling to fall down on top of me. It was pink and every time someone walked around in the room above me, I waited for plaster dust to fall on me. Right now, it sounded as if two large cows and a group of dogs was running around above me.
My newest hotel room was done in the same desert motif of my last hotel room. The walls were a brownish color. The floors were a lighter brownish-pink color. The wood all seemed to be laminate. There was a king sized bed with a “Native American” pattern that I was sure no Native American would have claimed as their own. The drapes were a strange color that I could only compare to adobe. There was a zigzag border on the ceiling and floor that was done in pinks and reds that I was learning to hate. There was a wardrobe that held a TV and very little room for clothes, but no closet, so my stuff was wrinkling in my suitcases.
My towels in the bathroom were even brown, instead of the standard white. However, they sucked as towels, wicking away only a small amount of the water that accumulated during a shower. I was using two or three towels every time I showered and I kept having to mop the bathroom floor. I wasn’t sure whether this was coming from my body or if there was a miniature crack in the tub and the bottom wasn’t sealed properly. Either way, the tiles, which were of course, brown, got very slick when wet. I kept waiting to slip on them and crack open my skull.
This hotel was definitely not getting a good rating if I could be bothered to rate it when I left. I didn’t even have stationary. However, I did have a smoking room. It was the first in a long time. I yanked the patch off my arm, dug around in a small travel case, found my cigarettes and dug one out. With any luck, I could chain smoke my way into a different colored room.
Then there was a knock on the door. I glared at my cigarette, there were moments when I was sure Lucas was psychic. He always seemed to show up, unannounced, when I didn’t want him around. Another knock. I got up and opened the door.
It was not Lucas, but Gabriel that stood in my doorway. He looked at my cigarette for a moment. Gabriel switched between smoking real cigarettes, chewing tobacco and smoking an electronic cigarette. By the way he gazed at my cigarette, I was guessing the other two were not working for him.
“Do you want something or did you just show up to ogle my cigarette?” I finally asked.
“I came to smoke,” Gabriel pushed into the room. “The problem with sharing a room with Michael is that I can’t smoke. He won’t even let me smoke my electronic cigarette. He says the water vapors make his sinuses run.”
“Did you bring cigarettes or are you planning on mooching?” I closed the door as he pulled out a pack and lit one. “Never mind.”
“How are you holding up?” Gabriel knew that patience was a virtue I was severely lacking.
“I’ve decided to repaint the room with cigarette smoke and I’m reading a book on cannibals,” I told him.
“A cookbook?” Gabriel grinned and sat down at the small round table that seemed standard in most hotel rooms.
“I don’t think cannibals would taste very well,” I commented, “after all, you are what you eat.” This earned me a larger grin.
“Do you want to know how Michael is doing?” Gabriel asked.
“Meh,” I shrugged. “He’s out of the hospital and driving Xavier nuts, so I figure he’s good.”
“That’s true,” Gabriel said. “But he seems to be of a weak disposition.”
“You say that like he’s a woman from the 1800’s.”
“He has been rather whiny lately. He’ll make a full recovery. About those thugs,” Gabriel jumped topics.
“I had due cause to shoot them,” I defended myself automatically.
“I didn’t say you didn’t,” Gabriel shot back at me. “I was going to say that the police have rounded up the entire gang and are holding them for the attempted assassination of a federal officer and a number of conspiracy charges. They will get lifetimes, not years behind bars. But you might have to testify.”
“Did you remind the prosecutor that I was not a likable witness?”
“I did, he said you still might have to testify.”
“That sucks,” I stubbed out my cigarette.
“Yes it does, luckily the case doesn’t hinge solely on your testimony. Malachi finished up with the bodies, since none were his and headed home today.”
“He also sucks,” I said.
“Yes he does,” Gabriel seemed to lose himself for a moment. “Can I ask...”
“About Malachi and I?” I finished his sentence.
“Yes.”
“If either of us was capable of romantic love, there might be something. However, we are who we are. It would be better if he’d stop lying about being smarter than me. I’ve seen his IQ and I am actually one point higher than him. His just seems to have more logical uses. Since we don’t differ much, we use it as a source to prod each other. I let him think that I don’t know about the lying and he lets me think that he doesn’t know about some of my stuff,” I stopped abruptly.
“Stuff?” Gabriel pinched his lips together. “Like your lack of need for human contact?”
“That is one of many that Malachi pretends to not know,” I said.
“Why does he pretend to not know?”
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“Malachi and I are closer in mental make-up than either of us are willing to admit. Lucas rarely comments, but he knows I’m more than just a sociopath,” I said.
“We all do. I’d put money on you over Malachi any day.”
“So would Malachi,” I stated.
“And he pretends that it isn’t a factor, that you have more humanity than him to ease your mind?”
“Something like that. We are both complicated people, pretending to be things we aren’t, feel things we don’t. When we are together, we can drop all of that and just be us; cold, unfeeling beings who existed inside a void. Of course, we never stay there for too long. But it is a solace for both of us.”
“Ace, you don’t need to pretend to have extra emotions with us,” Gabriel said.
“I know you guys don’t require it, but the outside world does and since our work includes the outside world,” I spread my arms wide.
“The world sucks,” Gabriel said.
“Yes, it does,” I smiled at Gabriel.
“A genuine smile, we don’t see those very often,” Gabriel stood.
“How do you know it’s real?” I asked.
“Your eyes sparkle when it’s real,” Gabriel left the room.
I sat for a long time at the table, absorbed in the occupation of not feeling. This was easier than one would imagine, but it wasn’t something I did very often. It was what made me different, I forced myself to find emotions and exaggerate them until they seemed real to the world around me. However, alone with just the whirring air conditioner and no one around, I could drop all that. It required energy and thought. Without trying to hold onto those emotions, I could think more clearly, more logically.
We didn’t have a puzzle, not yet. We had some tantalizing evidence, but no pieces to play with and arrange. My mind focused on the mummies. Weeks or months or years to create, the thought swirled around me. Where could you hide a body with almost no humidity and a bunch of salt without anyone seeing for weeks, months or years at a time? And if it was months or years, how large would it have to be to hold multiple bodies?
My brain inventoried all the stored information about Las Vegas. It was a city riddled with crime, but tourism hadn’t died just because crime had risen. If anything, it had increased. It wasn’t the most violent city in the country right now, that honor belonged to Detroit, but there were at least three active serial killers in the area. However, Death Valley and the Racetrack Playa were a three hour drive from Las Vegas, so the city wasn’t necessarily home to our current serial killer. He could live in California or Nevada. He could live in a large city or a small town. He might even reside near a ghost town or he might reside in the middle of nowhere.
This area was sparsely populated once you got away from the cities, but it was still populated. Individuals determined to live on the fringe of civilization, prove they were more rugged than the harsh environment they inhabited. I’d seen some of this in Anchorage, bush pilots that spent half their time away from the city, alone in the wild white wilderness. Here it wasn’t the white wilderness, but the desolate desert. The Mojave was capable of swallowing whole parties of campers and hikers foolish enough to challenge it. The only real difference I could see between Alaska and Nevada was that one was frozen and the other on fire.
I dreamed of fiery snow cooking vats of mercury that night. I didn’t need a shrink or Lucas to tell me that I was internalizing my work and should stop reading about cannibals.
Unknown
Kyle Summers looked at the picture next to his computer. It was a beautiful picture of his adoring wife taken just weeks before she had suffered a seizure and drowned in their swimming pool. Her hair was swept away from her face and fell in an awkward cascade down her shoulders and back. Brilliant blue eyes sparkled out from under lids that were dark and heavy from natural eyelashes. She hadn’t needed make-up to be gorgeous. The first time Kyle had seen her, she had taken his breath away.
A year later, they had been at a party together and Kyle had finally gotten up the nerve to ask her out. Their first love making session had provided them both with a wealth of information. They were both into pain with their sex, extreme pain. Not just sado-masochism or bondage, but hard core pain. She had cut his skin with a knife that night, watching him bleed had made her orgasm so hard her juices had flowed over his hips and onto the ground.
They had begun killing together the following year. Picking up young run-away girls when it was Kyle’s turn or burly truck drivers when it was Mindy’s. Life had been good back then, they had decided to go to college together. The year they graduated, they had also married. His degree was in art history, hers was in mathematics. She’d immediately been offered a job in Las Vegas after getting her teaching certificate and they had moved, no questions asked, to the house that Kyle still lived in.
They had spent those first years living off of trust-funds. They both had one and used most of it while they waited for Kyle to get his big break and Mindy to get tenure at the local community college.
In a blink of an eye, everything had changed. Now his artwork was their legacy, keeping them both alive. He went to get a glass of tea and found the pitcher empty. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t been shopping in two weeks or more and everything was about empty.
The grocery store was busy, it was a Saturday morning, after all. Young mothers and crying children walked past aisle after aisle of food, trying to figure out their meal plans for the next week. Kyle didn’t need to figure out his meal plans, he cooked for one. He filled his cart with TV dinners that would have made Mindy shake her head and finger at him. A woman, about forty bumped into him. Her face was heavy with make-up, trying to hide the black eye. Her hair was falling down from its complicated style on top of her head and the red hair was giving way to grey. For the briefest moment, Kyle could see the beauty she had once possessed.
He managed to get into the check-out lane behind her. There was something indefinable about her. Something only Kyle could replicate with his art. Her lost beauty could be recaptured and Kyle knew how.
Her items slid across the scanner, beeping annoyingly each time. Kyle was working on auto-pilot, taking the items out of his cart and putting them on the conveyer belt. The woman ran her debit card, took her bags and headed to the parking area. He needed to work fast, very fast, but he had to do it without arousing suspicion. He knew that bringing attention to himself was dangerous.
The check-out girl seemed impossibly slow. His TV dinners beeped across the machine and Kyle found himself gritting his teeth at the length of time he was standing there.
“Your total is $98.34, how would you like to pay?” The teenager with braces asked him. He swiped his credit card. Transaction complete, he took his bags and shopping cart into the parking lot. His gaze swept over the area, searching for her in the sea of cars and people and asphalt.
As his eyes scanned the area, he become more desperate. He had to have her. She was his next muse, he felt it in his soul. Yet, she seemed to have disappeared.
Kyle began walking to his car, head down, his mind consumed with the thoughts of his loss. Every time a new muse slipped away, it was like losing a part of him. It was a piece of art that would never be finished and art was all Kyle had ever loved as much as Mindy.
He packed the groceries away in his trunk, tucking the frozen and cold foods into a special cooler he kept for grocery shopping. Groceries could thaw quickly in heat like this and a whole week or two weeks’ worth of food would be ruined.
Frustrated, he scanned the parking lot one more time looking for his muse. He didn’t see her. He turned on the SUV and backed out of his parking place, nearly running over a woman with a cart. She was also not the muse he had misplaced. He cursed the check-out girl for being so damn slow. He hadn’t had that many items in his basket. He should have been able to catch her.
A couple of blocks from the grocery store, he saw her. She sat in a little car next to him, a pink Prius to be exact. He thoug
ht that somehow this matched his image of her. It just seemed right and it was an easy car to follow.
The pink Prius pulled into a driveway in front of an adobe exterior house. Kyle looked around, he saw no neighbors, despite it being summer and school being out of session. He got out and approached the woman.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Kyle got her attention, startling her into dropping one of her bags. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He began helping her pick up the spilled contents.
“Can I help you?” She asked, taking the refilled bag from him.
“Yes, ma’am, my name is Kyle Summers and I’m a local artist, I was wondering if you would mind doing some modeling for me,” Kyle produced a business card and handed it to her. “You will be compensated for your time.”
The woman chewed on her bottom lip. Kyle was used to this response. It wasn’t easy to convince people that you weren’t a nut trying to kill them when you just randomly walked up and handed them a card.
“Um, thank you, but I don’t think so,” the woman had an accent, something southern maybe. Kyle couldn’t quite place it.
“Are you married?” Kyle knew that appealing to vanity, usually that of the husband, was the best way to acquire a female model.
“Yes,” she seemed puzzled by the question.
“I’ll do two creations, one on canvas, one in clay. When I’m done, you can give the painting to your husband,” Kyle added to the monetary offer. It was a symbol of status to have a Kyle Summers original. He was the Jackson Pollack of 21st Century.
“I don’t think he’d like it,” the woman took his card. “Thank you, I’ll talk to him about it.”
Taking his cue, Kyle returned to his vehicle, somewhat defeated. The day had seemed so promising and it was quickly going down the drain. His muse was unloading groceries and taking them into a large two story house that looked a lot like a mansion. Kyle surveyed his surroundings again.