Apex Predator

by J. A. Faura

  Leonard went on, “I was disheartened and angered by it when I was young and naïve, and I vowed that my discoveries would be so monumental that the world would not be able to ignore them. Now I know better.”

  Loomis had another question, “Why go on then, professor? Why continue to do the work and the research if you know that the fruits of your work are being ignored, that the world is bound to suffer because of their ignorance? It seems like it would be incredibly frustrating to do what you do.”

  Leonard, looking a bit forlorn and sad, responded, “Because, Mr. Loomis, that’s what scientists do. We do the work and we come up with our findings and hypotheses in the hope that someday, when humanity is ready, it will all make a difference in people’s lives.

  “Throughout history, every time mankind has evolved, taken a step forward, you can always trace it back to science. It is a scientist’s job to do the research and find the truth. It is humanity’s job to take the science and do something with it. Doctors, explorers, aeronautical engineers, they are the doers, the ones who bring the science to the masses and the ones that make it matter in a concrete way.

  “I have to be honest and say that we also do it for the love of science, of discovery, because when we run up against walls, when the answers seem to elude us, it is only that love that drives us.

  “Einstein put out his theories of relativity and special relativity knowing that most people of his time would dismiss his work as nonsense, as the imaginations of a young theorist looking to shake the foundations of his field. He also knew that many of his hypotheses would not be validated until he was long gone. It was his internal curiosity, his desire for the truth of reality, that drove him, and I suspect it is that same curiosity that drives most scientists.”

  Steven listened intently. Leonard could tell that he was trying to process everything that he had just shared with him.

  He got up from the table they were sitting at, walked over to the shelf, picked out a book, and gave it to Steven as he came back to sit down at the table, “Here, this is a book written by Dr. Samuel Grossman. He is a professor of forensic psychiatry at Columbia University. He has also done significant research on the same topic.

  “I believe I told you about him when we last met. His approach involves more of an abstract approach than an evolutionary one. He has actually developed a scale to measure the level of deviance of those he studies. He has come to establish the concept of ‘evil’ as an empirical measurement that he uses on his scale.”

  Steven was a bit confused, “I remember the name, but I would be lying if I said I remembered his work. I read so much that it’s hard to keep it straight now. What do you mean he uses ‘evil’ as an empirical measurement?”

  Leonard explained, “I mean exactly that. The different levels on his scale determine how ‘evil’ someone’s actions are. So, for example, the lower levels on the scale represent a very low level of ‘evil.’ Usually, it is people in the throes of a fit of rage or who display a gross disregard for safety that end up on the lower levels of his scale. Where our work intersects is at the highest levels on his scale. Those levels represent planned, sadistic and cruel murders, the type of behavior that also draws out attention.

  “The book I just gave you outlines his work in detail. Although his approach is different from ours, the basic conclusions are the same. The three highest levels on his scale define behavior that is not within human norms, that does not fit within any recognized standard for deviant human behavior.

  “He also has a show on public television that features most of the levels of his scale, but not the three highest levels. I imagine the types of crimes that define those highest levels are too much for a television audience.

  “Anyway, there are a lot of us exploring this science, some of us take an evolutionary and philosophical approach, while others concentrate more on the physiological and genetic elements, but all of us are working from similar, if not the same, hypotheses.”

  Steven was absorbing everything that Leonard was sharing with him. It was precisely the type of information that he had been looking for.

  He had one last question for Leonard, “Thank you, professor, again you have been more than generous with your time. I have one last question for you. You told me before that there were physical differences that you had been able to establish during your research. I read some of your papers and you explained in them that the differences were in some areas of the brain, are there other physical differences that you have been able to identify?”

  Leonard’s smile brightened up again, “You mean are there differences you can readily see, differences that don’t require a microscope to find, is that it?”

  Steven now let a small smile appear on his face, “Yes, I suppose that’s what I am talking about.”

  Leonard paused for a couple of beats, trying to think about the type of work Steven was asking about. “Well, there is a researcher out of the University of Nebraska, Dr. Allen Schultz. He and I were introduced about three years ago by one of my assistants. He has been doing work on involuntary physical triggers. He is one of the foremost experts on interrogation techniques and on lie detection. He has been nicknamed The Human Lie Detector by some of his students.

  “Anyway, he has identified 44 involuntary indicators when someone is trying to be deceitful. Things like involuntary movement of the eyes, minute shakes of the head or tightening of the facial muscles. He has studied thousands of subjects, using the most sensitive measuring equipment to register every minute change in intonation, pitch, modulation, everything, and he has discarded every element that could potentially be controlled or suppressed by his subjects. That’s where the 44 indicators come from. Every one of them is something that he has over time determined cannot be controlled by even the most skilled liar.

  “He has worked with professional interrogators, former CIA agents, military intelligence specialists, every type of professional whose work demands that they know how to deceive and how to control their responses, and not even those professionals can suppress the indicators he has identified. So when one of my assistants found out about his work, she thought we might be able to collaborate.

  “We met and agreed to work together, testing both of our hypotheses through several sets of controlled interviews. We utilized 22 of our most promising subjects, individuals we were certain were Homo predaer, and we set up all of Dr. Schultz’s measurement equipment. Every one of our subjects was either able to suppress the indicators or the indicators were simply not present. None of our subjects were told what the indicators were, so the most likely explanation is that they simply did not have the same physiology as the subjects that Schultz had researched.

  “He was completely astounded by our findings and decided to explore them along with us. Remember, he had developed these indicators after interviewing and measuring thousands of people over many, many years. He had been certain that his indicators would revolutionize the science of lie detection, and now he had to reconsider those findings.”

  Steven nodded in understanding; that was precisely the type of thing he was looking for, something that could be identified without looking through a microscope, something that had real-life weight to it. He understood the scientific aspect of Leonard’s work, but he was looking for something that regular people, everyday individuals, could relate to, understand and perhaps even internalize. It was also a perfect example of how the world was simply not equipped to deal with Homo predaer. Human lie detectors would be useless on them.

  He got ready to wrap up their conversation, “Thank you, professor, you have been incredibly kind with your time. I don’t want to take up any more of your day.”

  Both men stood up from the small table. As they were shaking hands to say goodbye, Loomis felt the academic’s hand tighten as he proceeded to almost floor him, “Goodbye, Mr. Loomis, I hope that I have given you the answers you were looking for, but I also hope that my work is not responsible for the p
ath that you have chosen to pursue.”

  Steven held the man’s eyes and he noticed the intensity in the man’s voice and in his eyes. He knew, had known before they’d even began their conversation. Whatever it was that Leonard believed or was speculating about, he had not spoken to the police or to any of the investigators assigned to the case. Now as he was saying goodbye to Steven, Leonard wanted him to know he had figured out he had something to do with what happened to Riche.

  Leonard let go of Loomis’s hand and before opening the door and before Steven had a chance to explain or say anything in response, he concluded their conversation, “Mr. Loomis, you seem like an intelligent and considered individual, and I know from what I’ve read about you that you have a beautiful family and a thriving career. I hope that the choices that you have made were not made in haste or in the pursuit of something as banal as revenge. You don’t strike me as that type of person, but tragedy can bring out unbecoming qualities in people.”

  Now Steven did respond, “You’re right, tragedy tests us in ways that we would never imagine, and you are right, I do have a beautiful family and that’s something that I would never put at risk. Rest assured that I have not made any decision without understanding its implications or how those implications might affect my future and my family.

  “I have run operations in almost every continent, professor, and I have seen violence and some of the worst that humans inflict on one another. Revenge and senseless violence were trained out of me long ago, if they were ever there in the first place.

  “Your work has informed my decisions, but it has not driven them. I am not made to be guided simply by others’ work, even someone as accomplished as yourself. It’s just not in my DNA, so don’t worry about our conversations, this one or the one we had before. Again, thank you for your time and for your concern.”

  Leonard’s face was transformed by that engaging smile that just seemed to materialize on his face without any effort whatsoever and he went back to the same affable personality with which he’d first greeted Steven. “It’s my pleasure, Mr. Loomis. Like I told you before, I am always happy to talk about my work. Good luck to you.” And with that their conversation was concluded.

  As Steven had expected, his conversation with Leonard had provided clarity and understanding and with that a better sense of what he had to do.

  Chapter 15

  Steven hailed a cab and headed back to his condo. He had reached out to Jim Scoma, the scientist in California that Leonard had referred him to, and had scheduled a call with him for later that afternoon. Once he got to his condo, Steven settled in, emptied his bags and made himself something to eat. They were simple tasks, but it felt good to be back at home and to get back to even a semblance of normality. He sat down at the small kitchen table with his laptop and as he ate his sandwich he read about the research that Leonard and Schultz had done.

  Like everything else that he had found, this was fascinating and at the same time absolutely chilling. He imagined the chaos, pain and damage that these individuals could cause. Technology had allowed humanity to make discoveries that had seemed impossible just a decade earlier and those discoveries had benefited countless numbers of people, but technology also provided a glimpse into worlds that had before simply gone unnoticed, maybe unimagined.

  This was such a glimpse, a glimpse of a world where humans were prey and the predators hunting them were among them, blending perfectly, using their weaknesses, their vulnerability to ensnare them. This wasn’t a world of zombies, or aliens or other fantastic monsters that human imagination had given birth to since the time that men had gathered around fires to tell their stories and tales of conquest. These monsters were much, much more dangerous, far more frightening than anything ever imagined or invented. These monsters went unseen and unnoticed; they used their appearance like a tiger might use its stripes to blend into the jungle around them. Steven thought about all of this and could not help but to think about his own daughter, about Riche and how he had probably hunted her and the other children, how none of them recognized him as the monster that he was, and it was that thought that gave him the most regret.

  These thoughts were inevitable and he knew it, whatever else he was, whatever else he might become, he was still a grieving father.

  His conversation with Leonard had done exactly what he thought it might. It had clarified why it was so important that he let the world know about the new species, about the science and about the danger that it presented to humanity.

  People lived their lives, day in and day out, with a vague awareness of the dangers that might await them around any corner. At cocktail parties people lamented senseless violence and the decline of humanity, but they all lived with a sort of self-woven security blanket, a comfort that if they did not drift into an undefined underworld and if they took normal precautions and were vigilant then nothing untoward was going to happen to them, nothing was going to rip up their lives. Security alarms, neighborhood watch programs, guns and even law enforcement were the embodiments of how society dealt with the dangers it envisioned.

  These predators were nothing like the dangers they imagined, however. They didn’t wait for their prey in dark alleys and abandoned, drug-infested buildings. They were not driven by greed or jealousy or drug-induced paranoia. These beings thrived in the places that seemed to offer humans the most safety, places like churches and schools and even their own homes. These predators relied on the ‘security’ these places offered; they relied on that false sense of security and order to ensnare their prey when they least expected it. His daughter hadn’t been taken from a dark alley or a deserted park covered by darkness. She wasn’t taken by a deranged lunatic where nobody could see it was happening, she was taken from her mother, in broad daylight with dozens, probably hundreds of people around and she was taken without a single cry for help being uttered. Steven had read the case file and that had been the case with every one of the girls. All of them had been taken from places where they should have been safe, all of them taken without warning and without a single trace of what had happened to them.

  Riche had looked like a harmless, decent and educated individual. He had functioned among people with ease and had established a complete persona, an identity that had accomplished exactly what he’d hoped, to lull his victims into a feeling of safety or confidence, to allow him to go unnoticed and unchallenged.

  Steven had also read the file on Riche and what hadn’t been in the file the media had already reported on. His early childhood had been troubled, although not extremely. His mother had left him when he was nine, but she’d never abused him. After that he’d lived with relatives, all of them had been decent families that had provided a sense of stability and care, if not love. They’d been supportive of him in everything he’d undertaken. Everything in the file let Steven and every other expert that had read it know that Riche had not been made by his environment, he had simply been born that way. Upon reaching adulthood he had understood that in order to engage in his brutal crimes, he would have to blend in, he would have to hone his hunting skills, and he would have to build a life that presented him to the world as a harmless and gentle soul.

  As Riche had grown older, Steven imagined, he had refined his techniques, his predatory instincts to a point where he had become an almost perfect predator. There had been no evidence that there were more victims out there, but Steven and every expert studying the case believed that these last nine had almost certainly not been his only victims. Some people, Steven included, believed that there were more victims. A few of the experts and profilers had theorized that he had most likely been perfecting his techniques before he took the girls, and that meant he had most likely taken and murdered many more victims before he’d begun working on the last nine girls.

  Stven finished his lunch and closed his computer, wondering how many others like Riche might be out there, but he stopped himself before he could get very far. He knew it might cause him to l
ose his focus and his objective might once again become unclear.

  He went into his study and dialed the number for Jim Scoma. His research had let him know that Dr. James Scoma was genius-smart, but most definitely an eccentric. He had graduated from high school at the age of 15 and had obtained his first PhD in organic chemistry at the age of 19. He held three other PhDs, including one in philosophy, one in psychology and one in mathematics, and as if that wasn’t enough, the man had a medical degree with a specialty in forensic psychiatry. He had published no fewer than a 103 papers on a variety of topics including the expected extinction of the bees, global warming and the correlation between chaos theory and the evolution of social media. He had done revolutionary work on parallel systems programming and how it related to biological systems and evolution.

  For the past 10 years, Scoma had been conducting research on genetic mutations and on evolutionary theory projections as it related to human cognition and sensory abilities. Most of what the man had written was way over Steven’s head, but what he had been able to understand was that Scoma believed that evolution had not stopped at Homo sapiens, it had continued to march on, at first with small, unnoticeable mutations within the human species, but eventually establishing a separate and distinct species from humans, perhaps more than one.

  Leonard had been right. His work did not concentrate on the fringes of aberrant human behavior, but rather on other areas of the spectrum Leonard had explained to Loomis.

  Steven dialed the number and Scoma picked up the phone on the third ring.

  After saying their hellos and engaging in the requisite small talk, Steven got down to business, “Dr. Scoma, I have spoken with Dr. Leonard and I think I have a pretty good understanding of his work and his findings. I was hoping to also understand the work you are doing, how it’s similar to his work and how it might be different.”