by Hadena James
He shook himself from his memories. The house he watched was going dark. The occupants headed to bed. If Aislinn hadn’t been in town, he would have slipped inside and tortured the information out of them.
However, with Aislinn and the Marshals in town poking around, that would raise more questions and possibly, more ghosts. Instead, he wrote a note stating that August was alive and Gertrude knew how to find him. He drove back into town.
Maybe he could get the Marshals out of town quickly. He reached their hotel and, pulling on an older suit jacket, walked inside. His age was never a hindrance. Most people thought of him as a harmless old man, if a bit eccentric. They didn’t realize he could overpower most healthy, young adult males.
“May I help you?” The woman at the desk asked.
“Yes, I’d like to leave a note for Aislinn Cain,” he said.
“I believe she’s in, sir, if you’d like I can call her.”
“No, it’s just a note, no need to wake her. If you could just give it to her in the morning that would be fine.” He slipped the envelop across the desk. He’d printed Aislinn Cain in large, flowing letters on the front and sealed it.
Tomorrow, this would all be over. She’d get the note, they’d go track down August and take him into custody.
Five
I had never been in a morgue in Columbia. I was sitting in one now at the University of Missouri. The chief medical examiner hadn’t been happy to have Xavier stroll in and request a room, but he hadn’t said much, just scowled. I wasn’t known for my ability to be diplomatic, but sometimes, Xavier was worse than me. This was one of those times.
Like every other large morgue in the country, this one was stainless steel. It was cold, not just the steel, but the air itself was chilled. My behind was planted on a stool that rotated. There were times when I was capable of spinning slowly and carefully on one without setting off vertigo. Today, I was doing my best to keep it from moving at all.
“You’re very pale,” Xavier said as a technician brought in a bag. The bag held the feet we’d found frozen and slung over the wire earlier in the day. Of all the things we had endured together, those feet brought me dread. The technician left and returned a few minutes later with a few more bags.
“Do those all contain severed feet?” I asked.
“Six sets,” Xavier said. “The others were stored because the case is ongoing.”
“I need to go do anything but this,” I left the room. The memory was still nagging at me. My mind couldn’t quite capture it. It was like the memory needed a reboot to retrieve it. I walked away from the building and lit a cigarette in a secluded alcove. For as long as I could remember, feet had bothered me. I didn’t want to see them, touch them, or anything else. I didn’t even like it when people wore sandals in my presence. The memory had something to do with it.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember it. I’d been trying since we saw the socks on the line. Proving that the thought was important was a different story, I was willing to bet it wasn’t, but stranger things had happened.
“What’s up?” Xavier asked.
“I just have a thing about feet,” I answered.
“I know, but it seems to be more pronounced at the moment.”
“Severed feet are worse than attached feet.”
“Well, I have something interesting if you think you can get over your foot phobia.”
“How interesting?” My curiosity peeked.
“Incredibly interesting.”
I stubbed out my cigarette and put the butt in my pocket. Xavier led the way back in. I followed at a slower pace, trying not to shuffle my feet like an obstinate child.
“Well?” I asked once we were back inside the cold, stainless steel room.
Xavier pointed to all the feet. To my untrained eye, they were just feet. I didn’t see his interesting revelation. I raised an eyebrow at him.
“You don’t see it?” Xavier frowned.
“Um, no,” I answered.
“This one has an injury, none of the others do. I examined it a little closer and I found something twisted inside the wound. Look here,” he pointed at a monitor. The wound had been enlarged. The wound was a gaping hole where the tissue had been removed. Small nicks were visible on the bone where the flesh had once been.
“Ok, I see the marks, but wouldn’t they be caused by removing the tissue?”
“That was my first thought, then I really started looking at them. There are two in particular that are deeper than the others.”
I examined these marks. The nicks were deeper into the bone and conical shaped. I looked at Xavier.
“Are you an expert on the teeth marks of predators?” I asked him.
“No, but I’ve called one,” Xavier was grinning. “I think he’s feeding them to something large and scary.”
“Then why leave the feet behind?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
The memory slammed into me. I sucked in air, suddenly unable to breathe. My eyes closed as vertigo washed over me. The table was hard beneath my hands.
“They’re jaguar teeth marks,” I told Xavier. “Columbia has seen it before.”
“What?”
“I was young, very young, this was before Callow kidnapped me. I might have been four, I wasn’t in school yet. They found a set of feet next to the river. No body, just the feet, something had gnawed on them. My dad occasionally brought home work and I found the pictures by accident.” I stopped talking and tried to push the feeling of vertigo away. The feet had been horribly mangled. Next to it, my father had written the word “jaguar” in bold lettering. As far as I knew, they had never solved it. However, that had been a one-time incident. It hadn’t been a serial killer.
Her body was found a year or so later. It had been dismembered and shoved into a grain silo. It had also been gnawed upon by the predator. It hadn’t been decomposed. My brain found her name among the details I had peeked at in my father’s folder, Sarah Anderson. She’d lived across town, in a poorer section. That was all I knew about the girl in the silo.
“Gabriel and a zoologist from the University are on their way here,” Xavier informed me. I nodded slowly and got up. My legs felt unsteady. After twenty-four years, why would the killer strike again?
“The feet look a little large for a young girl,” I said as I exited the morgue.
“That’s because they belong to a boy, all of them do,” Xavier entered the hall with me. “Teens by the looks of it. The feet aren’t fully developed, indicating the person hasn’t finished puberty yet, but they aren’t consistent with girl feet. Unless our killer is specifically targeting girls with very large, masculine feet.”
“So, our killer from a life time ago hasn’t returned,” I sighed, feeling a sense of relief.
“I didn’t say that,” Xavier said. “While it is unusual for a killer to change his victim preference, it isn’t unprecedented. The disposal of the feet raises some red flags. If the bite is from a jaguar it will raise even more. So, how did you get exposed to the severed feet that traumatized you into adulthood?”
“As I said, my dad occasionally brought home work that wasn’t really his, this case was one of them,” I answered. “I’m not sure why it bothered me, but seeing them, in little dress shoes, with pink socks and part of the severed leg sticking out of them horrified me. Somehow, I forgot the memory, but not the feelings associated with it.”
“Defense mechanism because you were young?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered. “There’s more, but I haven’t remembered it. I’m sure it’s in the case files though.”
“More little girl feet in dress shoes and pink socks?”
“No,” I answered quickly. “It was a one-off. Her body was found a year or so later, shoved in a grain silo and not decomposed. She was held somewhere for a time. Aside from the animal bites, she was healthy when she died.”
“Did she die of the animal bites?”
“Yes. The jaguar cr
ushed her skull, its teeth piercing the brain.”
“Jaguars are the only cat to do that,” a man said as he walked down the hall. “I’m Doctor Bob Ritter, I specialize in predatory cats.”
“Doctor Xavier Reece and Doctor Aislinn Cain with the US Marshals Serial Crimes Tracking Unit,” Xavier held out his hand. Dr. Ritter shook it. I did not extend the same courtesy. “You’ll have to excuse my colleague, she doesn’t like to touch people.”
“I know, I was in seventh grade with her,” Dr. Ritter answered. “Her name was Clachan back then.”
“Sorry, I’m terrible at remembering people,” I told him.
“I know that too,” Dr. Ritter smiled at me. “I sat behind you in seventh grade science. I was pretty shy and you were even more introverted.”
“Still am,” I gave him a fake smile. “So, do you remember the case of Sarah Anderson?” I was young in seventh grade. I imagined Dr. Ritter was three, possibly four years older than myself.
“It was my uncle’s silo,” Dr. Ritter answered. “It’s why I became a zoologist.”
“Well,” Xavier led the way into the room. “We need an expert opinion on some very unclear evidence.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Dr. Ritter began his examination of the feet with the missing tissue. I stood back, leaning against a counter. Gabriel came in and stood next to me, he was very quiet, not even introducing himself to the expert. John was conspicuously absent. I was dying to ask, but didn’t.
After an hour of silence on our part and muttering on the part of Dr. Ritter, he stood up and rubbed his eyes. His spine popped as he moved. He looked older than he had when he first arrived. It was probably my imagination.
“All I can tell you is that they might be teeth marks of a large predator. I can’t tell you it was a jaguar or any other cat, I can’t even rule out it being a dog. Whoever extracted the tissue, scraped the bone to try and hide the marks.” Dr. Ritter spoke to Gabriel despite the lack of introduction. “They are teeth marks though.”
“Ok,” Gabriel sighed. “So, it could also be a psycho with dental implants.”
“It could, but,” Dr. Ritter frowned. “I’m not sure dental implants would hold up chewing through bone. The human jaw just doesn’t have the strength. While the marks look like the teeth just nicked them, the bone was drastically altered by the scraping. I’d bet the teeth didn’t just graze it. They pierced and crushed it. Several dog breeds would have the strength, as would any predatory cat native to North America and any imported cat.”
“Why would a large predator eat the feet?” I asked.
“I’m sorry?” Dr. Ritter turned his attention to me.
“Assuming it is a predator, even if it isn’t a jaguar, don’t they usually go for the softer, fleshier areas first, like the unprotected areas of the torso?”
“They do,” Dr. Ritter agreed. “I’m speculating here, but I’d guess it was to move the person.”
“I thought they carried prey by the throat,” Gabriel spoke for the first time.
“Usually they do,” Dr. Ritter frowned so hard I thought his face would break.
“Unless something already has hold of the other end,” I said. “Hence the piercing of the bone. The predator would want a firm hold and a foot isn’t a good place for that.”
“That would be the best explanation. Not the only one though,” Dr. Ritter answered. “It is possible that the animal was just toying with it.”
“The foot was alive when it was bitten,” Xavier added this detail. He’d been playing that particular card close to his vest, probably out of respect for me.
“Then the theory of the person being a plaything becomes more likely,” Dr. Ritter said. “Cats will play with their food before killing and eating it, if they know they are in a secure location. We see the behavior in partially domesticated predatory cats as well as housecats.”
“Like a cat playing with a cornered mouse,” I didn’t bother to hide the disgust.
“Yes and if the cat has a partner that they share with, it is even more likely. However, the majority of predatory cats are solitary. Canines though don’t really play with their food unless training offspring to hunt.”
“Thanks, Doctor,” Gabriel held out his hand. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Any time,” Dr. Ritter left the three of us.
“Don’t ask,” Gabriel stopped me from asking about John. “So, what becomes a companion for a large cat?”
“In captivity? Anything it decides not to eat,” I answered.
“Are you an expert?” Xavier asked.
“Not in the least,” I answered. “But a predatory cat isn’t much different than a predatory human.” I looked at the feet and shivered, “good grief, why couldn’t he be leaving severed heads or something?”
Six
The folder was dark brown. A corner of a sheet of paper stuck out the edge, yellowing with age. Black ink in a familiar scribble was on the front of the folder as well as the tab. The folder had once belonged to my father. This kept me from opening it.
Ten minutes earlier, I had discovered that this case had broken my father. Until then, I had always believed he was just a cop with a squad car. This was not the case. He’d been a detective, a detective that had turned in his shiny detective’s shield and gone back to being a cop with a squad car because of Sarah Anderson’s case.
There was a genetic component to Anti-Social Personality Disorder. It was what made a sociopath or psychopath with ASPD different than one with Borderline Personality Disorder. ASPD meant a person was born with it while Borderline Personality Disorders were created. Nature versus nurture at its best, meaning my type ran in families.
My mother was a warm, caring individual who could love easily and readily. My father had been more aloof. While my siblings would argue that I was his favorite, I couldn’t actually say that I had ever heard my father tell me that he loved me. He’d been a distant man, hard to know and even harder to understand. Sometimes, I wondered if he had been a sociopath as well. If so, he was more functional than I was, but there were different levels of sociopathic tendencies.
“Hey,” Gabriel said quietly, “if you don’t want to do it, I will.”
“I’m fine,” I countered, determined to learn the secrets within the folder, like if my father ever had a suspect. My eyes scanned the lines of handwritten notes, my brain processing the information as fast as I could read it.
There had only been one suspect. A store owner in town with a penchant for exotic animals. At the time, he’d owned a jaguar, a black bear, and a wolverine. Unfortunately, he’d died during the investigation when the wolverine attacked him from a tree branch and suffocated him. No evidence had been found at his house to link him to Sarah Anderson. And aside from owning a candy store, there was no real reason to think he’d ever crossed paths with the little girl. While Columbia wasn’t the size of Kansas City, it did have a population over 100,000, meaning it certainly wasn’t an “everyone knows everyone” kind of town.
Besides the permanent residents, the city housed the main branch of the University of Missouri, plus two other, smaller colleges; Columbia College and Stephens College. This made for a mobile population of students. My own experience in college had proven that serial killers existed even among the young and hip crowd of college attendees.
However, there wasn’t a zoo in the city. There was a wildlife refuge north of town that housed a variety of different animals, although I had never heard of them housing a jaguar. I had seen and heard lions there before, as well as less dangerous animals like camels and zebras. It wasn’t open to the public and access was restricted. I had only seen the animals because I’d had a relative that lived close to the sanctuary.
“There are currently no registered jaguars near here,” John Bryan informed us. “There are a few other feline predators though. I have permits for four tigers, three lions, six mountain lions, two lynxes, a caracal, an ocelot, and perhaps most terrifying, a clouded leopard.”
“That’s one of the most endangered cats in the world, why is there one here?” I asked.
“Some sanctuary,” John frowned. “About half the permits are registered to it.”
“North of town,” I sighed. “It’s a good sized refuge, but they must have expanded, because they wouldn’t have had the room for all those cats at the old location.”
“It says they have over 100 acres,” John informed me.
“They’ve expanded a lot,” I tried not to sigh again. I didn’t know the owners. I knew they’d been in trouble once or twice when I was a kid for poor enclosures and things, but if they had expanded, they had obviously fixed that problem.
“How sure are you that it was a jaguar the first time?” Gabriel asked.
“Sarah Anderson’s skull was crushed, but more importantly, there were four puncture marks and some other teeth impressions on the bone,” I answered. “I may not be a wildlife expert, but I know jaguars are the only cat that does that.”
“Why do you know that?” Xavier asked.
“My dad bought a huge book on wild cats when the body was discovered.”
“And you read it,” Gabriel answered.
“It was a book, what was I supposed to do with it?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“It doesn’t mean this attack and the Sarah Anderson attack are related, it’s been how many years?” John Bryan asked.
“Twenty-four or twenty-five,” I answered. “However, it’s the feet. Sarah’s feet were found a few days after she went missing. They’d been severed just above the ankle bones, shoved into a pair of white socks, then Mary Jane’s and left by the river. They didn’t know how she died until they found her body. People do not randomly cut off feet and leave them places. Especially not dressed feet. It would be an astronomical coincidence if they weren’t connected.”