Joe walked into the bathroom and stared into the mirror. Even though he had not fed, his face was covered in blood from where Damon's severed veins and arteries had sprayed him as he worked the meat free from his bones. The eyes that stared out at him from that grisly crimson mask were feral, the eyes of some ravenous beast. Joe ran water into his cupped palms and splashed it over his face again and again. He lathered his arms, face, and hair with liquid hand soap and washed it away until his handsome Clark Kent face reemerged from that gory fright mask.
He took a deep breath and watched as al his features settled down, the beast within him slipping away, leaving him alone in the bathroom of a hospital room with a child murderer's eviscerated corpse bleeding out on the mattress and his own clothes stil dripping with blood.
"I've got to get the hel out of here." He slipped out of the bathroom and out of Damon's room, casting one last look at his mutilated corpse before shutting the door behind him.
"Rot in hel, you son of a bitch." Before anyone could notice his grisly hulking form tracking blood across the immaculate hal way, Joe slipped into another room directly across from where Damon's corpse lay bleeding out onto the floor in great bucket-loads. He was lucky to find an obese elderly woman lying catatonic in her hospital bed. With considerable effort, straining beneath the weight of rol s of bil owy fat, Joe rol ed her over so that he could remove her hospital-issue dressing gown.
Suppurating bedsores had leaked their pus onto the mattress, forming a gooey adhesive that stuck her loose, moldy flesh to the even moldier bed. There was a wet, sticky, ripping sound when Joe peeled her off the bedspread, leaving bits of her flesh stil clinging to it. The back of the dressing gown was caked with pus and gore and stained with urine and feces. Joe peeled it off of her. In this filthy gown he would fit right in. Joe faked a lumbering stagger as he made his way down the hal. There was an emaciated teenager with tufts of hair missing and black scabs al over his scalp where the hair had been yanked out by the roots. He staggered down the hal in a similar fashion just ahead, and Joe caught up to the disoriented youth and linked arms with him. Together they made their way up the hal toward the reception desk.
The kid smel ed as bad as the dressing gown Joe was wearing and his eyes were dul and flat as if his mind had long ago fled and his body was merely fol owing a preprogrammed ritual back and forth through the antiseptic hal ways. The only indication that he was at al aware of Joe's presence at his side were the occasional giggles, his left hand firmly planted on Joe's rock-hard buttocks, and the erection growing beneath his gown.
The guard was no longer in front of the elevator. The nurse was not at her station either. Joe heard a radio squawk and an excited voice shouting breathlessly.
"We've got a 187 on the third floor!
Officer needs assistance!"
Joe stumbled down the hal and looked down the adjoining hal way where he had left the janitor's body. He could see that the blood had seeped out into the hal way, which had no doubt alerted someone that there might be something amiss in the closet. The door was open and two corrections officers were kneeling in the blood, leaning over the body as if there were anything they could do for him now. Three nurses, including the one from the front desk, stood around gasping in horror and chatting in excited whispers as they peered in at the janitor's corpse, unable to resist their own morbid curiosity.
The guard was looking up and down the hal, searching for something out of the ordinary. A suspect. Joe clutched the haggard teen tighter as they continued past. The guard had luckily looked right past him, assuming he was just another patient. As soon as they reached the other side of the hal and were out of sight of the guards and nurses, Joe let go of his teenaged camouflage and sprinted for the elevator. He pressed the down button and the door opened right away. The hal way was stil empty when
Joe slipped quickly inside the elevator. The mauled and murdered janitor was apparently too fascinating for the guards to tear themselves away.
Joe tried to catch his breath as he rode the elevator back down to the first floor. Adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, lighting his nerves on fire. His muscles were bulging through his clothes as if he were about to burst out of them like the Incredible Hulk. He looked completely insane. If the doors opened right now, anyone with half a brain would know he was a kil er. He had to calm down.
The elevator descended to the first floor and Joe closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He let it out slow and wil ed his muscles to relax. He let the satisfaction of final y avenging the loss of his childhood seep into his body.
When the doors opened he was the picture of serenity.
Hospital guards and policemen were running everywhere. Joe slipped unnoticed from the elevator. By taking
Damon's advice and waiting until half the hospital staff was on lunch break, the big musclebound predator had found just the right amount of wiggle room to get in and out of the hospital's detention wing unnoticed. Now he had to do something even harder. He had to get out of there with Alicia.
Alicia was stil in Emergency fol owing her surgery. Her chart showed her listed in critical condition. Joe slipped into her room and knelt down beside her bed.
Her chest was covered in bandages.
There was a morphine drip feeding into a pulsating vein behind the elbow on her left arm.
"My God. What have I done to you?" There was no way he could take her out of the hospital in this condition without causing her further pain or death. He would have to leave her.
"I'l be back for you. Don't worry. I won't leave you like this."
Joe thought he saw a smile creep across her face at the sound of his voice.
He removed his bloody smock and walked out the front door of the hospital as police officers began to swarm the place. He stalked across the parking lot and slipped behind the wheel of his van. Minutes later he was back at the motel listening to the prostitute next door get her head banged against the wal by her latest trick.
Chapter Forty-two
After driving for hours without stopping, Professors Locke and Douglas pul ed up outside the state hospital only to find it swarming with police and news media. They were too late.
They parked the car in a parking lot across the street from the hospital and walked across the four lanes of slowmoving traffic, making their way through the crowds of onlookers and newshounds to get to the police officers. Professor Locke ran up to the yel ow crime scene tape, ducked under it, and seized the nearest officer. Professor
Douglas was right behind him.
Douglas was right behind him.
"You there! Officer! What happened here?"
"Who the hel are you? Get back behind that barricade! "
"I'm Professor John Locke and this is Dr. Martin Douglas. We're here looking for a murderer."
"Wel, take your pick. There's about a hundred of them locked up in that hospital. Now please step back."
"What's going on here?"
"Nothing that concerns you. Now get the hel back behind that tape!" The exasperated officer be gan forcibly pushing the two professors back into the crowd.
"I need to know what happened. Has there been a murder? Has someone been arrested?"
"If you don't step back, your ass is going to get arrested!"
"But we may know something that could help you," Professor Douglas spoke up.
"I'm real y not interested in what you know."
"Oh, but I am." Detective Montgomery stepped forward, flashing his gold shield. The faces of the two professors fel in defeat.
"Is your captain around?" he asked the flabbergasted patrolman.
"Uh, yeah. Who are you again?"
"My name is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco Homicide. I'm here investigating a series of murders that I believe may involve your fair city. I also believe these professors may be material witnesses. Now, would you please do me a favor and arrest these two gentleman for withholding evidence and interfering with the course of an investigation an
d whatever else you can think up, then take me to see whoever's running this show?"
"I'd be happy to," the officer said, glaring at the two professors with an everwidening grin.
"We haven't done a thing wrong! You can't detain us!"
"Yeah? Wel, we'l see about that. I want them to be available for questioning.
There's a kil er on the loose and I think they know where he is."
Another officer took Montgomery to meet the captain in charge of the investigation. He was a stocky, middleaged man of medium height, with thick, weathered skin from too much time in the sun. His eyes were hard but jovial. He looked like an old cowboy or farmhand, like he would have been just as at home on a horse as in a squad car.
"Captain Marshal. This is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco
Homicide."
They shook hands and leaned back against the captain's vehicle.
"So what brings you al the way up from San Francisco?"
"I'm looking for a man named Joseph Miles. He's kil ed two people that we know of and he's going to kil a lot more if we don't stop him. I have reason to believe that he might be here in your town and that he might be responsible for whatever happened here tonight. Uh
… what exactly did happen?"
"A janitor was kil ed. He had his throat ripped out. The ME says it looks like his larynx was bitten through and the bite marks look human. We've also got a dead inmate. He was carved up, vivisected. There's pieces of him al over his room."
"Are there any pieces… uh… missing? I mean… is there any evidence of cannibalism?"
"Not as far as we can tel." The captain's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Maybe you'd better tel me what you know about al this."
"Unfortunately, I don't know a hel of a lot, but the two professors that I fol owed up here might. They're with a couple of your officers right now awaiting questioning. I have a feeling they know a lot more than they're tel ing. One of them used to be a profiler with the FBI. At the very least he may have a theory."
"I think we'd better go talk to them then. Oh, and there's something else. You said your boy was a cannibal?"
"Yeah, his last two victims were both partial y eaten. One of them he roasted alive."
"Wel, a woman was brought into the hospital earlier today in critical condition. The man who brought her in told the emergency room nurse that she had been attacked by pit bul s. He disappeared before he could be questioned. Both of her breasts were missing. Bitten off. The surgeon that treated her said the bite marks looked human."
"Christ."
"Her ID says her name is Alicia Rosales
… from San Francisco."
"Has anyone questioned her yet?"
"She's stil in critical right now. We'l talk with her as soon as she regains consciousness."
"Was the nurse able to give a description of the man who brought her in?"
"Yeah. That's the funny thing. She said that he looked just like-"
"Superman?" Montgomery asked knowingly.
The captain paused, staring at
Montgomery in disbelief and what looked like disappointment. "Shit. I was hoping you were wrong about al this.
Yeah, she said he looked just like the comic book character. I guess this real y is your boy we've got here. Looks like we'd better see what those two eggheads have to say."
The two professors were stil seated in a patrol car with the officer who'd arrested them, doing his best to ignore their whining when Captain Marshal and
Detective Montgomery approached the car.
"Get them out of there!" the captain barked.
"Now see here! You can't hold us like this! We haven't broken any laws!" Locke was yel ing almost at the top of his lungs. His face had turned a bright pink and thick blue veins pulsed in his forehead.
"Then tel us how you knew that Joseph Miles would strike here. Why you two drove al the way from San Francisco straight to the scene of your student's latest murder? You're either witnesses or accomplices. It al depends on how you answer our questions." Montgomery stood nose to nose with Professor
Locke, glaring at him as if he were a schoolyard bul y shaking him down for lunch money.
"I don't have to answer a goddamned thing!"
"I think we'd better tel them what we know," Professor Douglas croaked meekly, the unlit mahogany pipe dangling from his trembling lower lip.
Locke whirled on him, eyes blazing with righteous indignation. "We don't have to tel them shit!"
Captain Marshal stepped up beside
Montgomery, almost knocking him aside in his eagerness to confront the two professors. His face was beginning to color from the effort of holding in his mounting temper. It was obvious that
Locke's self-righteous attitude was rubbing the grizzled lawman the wrong way. He shoved his finger into the professor's chest as if he were trying to stab him with it.
"Let me tel you something, Professor. There's a serial kil er loose in my townmy town! He just snuck into a hospital and tore apart an inmate and a janitor. There's a girl in there fighting for her life with her breasts eaten down to the rib cage. Eaten! By the man you two are protecting! So I don't care what laws I have to stretch or even break. I'm going to find out what you two know and you both wil rot in a jail cel until I do."
"Put him back in the car," Montgomery said, pointing to Locke. "We'l talk to Dr. Douglas here."
"Don't tel them anything. You hear? We can do this ourselves! We can stil do it!" Douglas shook his head, staring at his friend with a newfound understanding and pity. The man was desperate for his one last great act, his last chance at fame and immortality, and he was wil ing to risk lives to do it. Dr. Martin Douglas wasn't quite so desperate.
"What do you want to know?"
"How did you know Joseph Miles would show up here?"
"The patient he murdered… his name was Damon Trent, wasn't it?"
"And how the hel would you know that?" Marshal asked.
"Because Damon Trent is the man who assaulted Joseph when he was a child.
Trent kept him locked up in his basement for three days, raping and torturing him repeatedly. Joseph was
Trent's first victim, the only one who survived. Joseph believes that Trent was some type of vampire or werewolf or something and that he passed his curse on to him when he attacked him. He thinks that by kil ing Trent he'l cure himself of his own homicidal impulses."
"A fucking whacko!"
"Wel, Captain… maybe not."
"What are you saying? That Trent real y was a vampire?" Montgomery tried his best to stifle the smirk wriggling its way onto his face. Sarcasm leaked into his voice despite his best efforts.
"I know it sounds far-fetched…"
"Fucking loony is what it sounds!" the captain interjected.
"That's what I thought. But you'd have to understand how the human brain works.
I'm not a scientist. Actual y, Dr. Locke could explain it better if he were so inclined. But basical y there is a specific area of the brain that controls our rage impulse responses, our sex drive, and most of our animal instincts. If a virus were to attack that area of the brain and create an imbalance of some sort, it could cause the type of confusion of the rage impulse and the sexual impulse displayed by sexual sadists and murderers. Not exactly causing someone to grow hair and fangs, but effectively turning them into a monster."
"Is there such a virus?"
"Right now it's only a theory, but that's why we wanted to study him. To prove the existence of the virus and to find a cure for it."
"What if this theory's wrong and this guy just tore you apart like he did those in there?" Captain Marshal asked. "Did you two geniuses ever consider that?"
"Okay, so enough with al the bul shit. If you know where he's going now then you'd better give it up."
Douglas looked from Montgomery to
Marshal to Locke, whose eyes were pleading with him to remain silent. He let out a huge sigh and his shoulders slumped as his eyes sw
ept the ground.
"I honestly have no idea. If he thinks his cure worked he might disappear forever. He might disappear even if it didn't work. Shut himself away from the rest of society and live as a hermit or something. I'm not a psychiatrist. That's John's field of expertise. I'm just a professor of sociology. Any ideas I have would be based on history and cultural myths and legends, which would make them not a hel of a lot better than yours."
"Get him out here too!" Captain Marshal barked in obvious exasperation, pointing at Locke, who stil sat handcuffed in back of the squad car, straining to hear what was being said between the two policemen and his col eague.
The uniformed officer opened the door to the patrol car and helped the professor out of the backseat.
"We want to know where you think this lunatic wil strike next," the captain barked.
"Who says he'l strike anywhere next?"
"Come on, Professor," Montgomery said, calmly draping an arm over
Locke's shoulders like they were old pals. "We know al about Joe's little theory. We know that you guys came up here on the hopes that he wasn't crazy and there real y is a virus that creates these monsters. Now, if I arrested you for withholding evidence you'd probably beat it, but think of al the damage it would do to your reputation. What would your col eagues think if they knew you were protecting a serial kil er? If you don't help us, then we'l make sure that everyone knows it. Now, you know as wel as I do that kil ing Damon Trent ain't going to do shit for Joe's pathology.
Those old urges are going to start coming back to him any day now. What I want to know is what he'l do when they do come back."
"He'l feed on whatever's handy.
Wherever he might be at the time. And my guess is that his appetite wil be much worse this time. I don't think you'l have any trouble recognizing his handiwork."
"But how can we catch him before he attacks again? Where is he going now?" Captain Marshal interrupted.
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