Dreams and Reality Set 3: Cannibal Dreams and Butchered Dreams

by Hadena James

  My mind kicked into overdrive. My brain searched for the memories of my childhood. They were easy enough to find. I had been a boring child and had grown up to be a boring adult, with the exception of serial killers, rapists, and mass murders sending me flowers, candy, severed fingers, dead prairie dogs, love letters, and occasionally, following me home. Although, since moving into the Federal Guard Neighborhood, I hadn’t had one follow me home, which was nice, but made for quiet nights.

  I found no memories of feet being discovered, with or without their body. The file said something about missing children, but they had all happened before Sarah Anderson and their bodies, including their feet, had never been found. Of course, that had stopped by the time I was old enough to walk to school and started again a few years later when Callow began preying on children. Despite being a pedophile and a serial killer of children, Callow hadn’t owned a jaguar. He’d lived two streets from my house. Our yards were barely big enough for medium sized dogs. There was also the matter of him being dead, he couldn’t be tying feet into tube socks and throwing them over utility wires.

  “We have a pattern,” John suddenly announced, breaking my concentration. Gabriel looked at him expectantly. John cleared his throat, suddenly feeling the weight of all our eyes on him. “So, there are a handful of teen boys listed as runaways. They all fit into Xavier’s age range of twelve to sixteen and none have been found.”

  “Are they DNA testing the feet and comparing them to samples from the runaways,” Gabriel asked.

  “No, that costs money,” John answered. “And getting a DNA test takes a lot of time and money when you aren’t a US Marshal.”

  “I’m on it,” Xavier jumped from his chair. Aside from being borderline nutjobs, we had access to resources that police departments didn’t. As much as I liked to think that our capture rate was because we were just that damn good, the truth was, we had an entire forensics unit dedicated to serial killers. We could get DNA in a few days, sometimes less. Crime scene techs collected evidence and it was overnighted to Kansas City to our special lab. The work was done and the report magically appeared on all our computers. I’d never met our dedicated crime fighting forensics unit, but I was willing to bet they were extremely good at their jobs and possibly, a little crazy.

  The only downside was that we had to share the forensics unit with the FBI’s VCU. However, we had never jockeyed for position. I had no idea how they did it. One day, I would send them pizza or something.

  That made me think of Malachi. I dug out my cell phone. It rang four times before he answered, sounding out of breath and irritated.

  “Blake,” his voice was husky and I knew he was in the middle of a case or sex. I didn’t really care either way, I needed to pick his brain.

  “Hey, I’m in need of some info,” I told him.

  “Can it wait?” He asked.

  “Maybe, but more teen boys will die.”

  “Will they really die or is it just a possibility?”

  “Mostly, it’s a possibility. Did I interrupt?”

  “Well,” there was a strange grunting noise and I heard Malachi yell at someone. He was on a case, by the sound of the noise, he had just broken someone’s nose. “Ok, we’re good. What do you need?”

  “Suspect handcuffed?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, then I can have your full attention for a moment. So, I’m in Columbia. Do you remember the Sarah Anderson case?” Malachi was four years older than me and had a better memory.

  “Girl, killed by jaguar, stuffed in grain silo, feet found much earlier by the river, I believe your father was one of the detectives,” Malachi answered.

  “That’s the case. I was young when it happened. Do you remember a string of child disappearances before Sarah Anderson?”

  “Yes,” Malachi paused. It wasn’t for effect, it was him accessing his memory center. Malachi had a didactic memory. It meant he never forgot, anything, unless he wanted to forget. “Five girls went missing in the space of four months.”

  “That’s all you’ve got?” I asked.

  “I was like eight,” Malachi answered. “One of the girls was in my class. Her name was Joan Ferris. They never found her. Joan Ferris was the second to go missing in February. The first was another girl, about the same age, went to a different school. In March, a third went missing, that one was a grade younger. In April, there was another, a grade younger than the third. In May, Sarah Anderson went missing, she was the youngest at six.”

  “The file says she was eight.”

  “The file is wrong,” Malachi answered. “Her brother was a year older than me. We went to high school together. She was six when she went missing. There was something shady about the disappearance, the family, everything. Her brother was abandoned and the family returned to their native country after Sarah’s body was found.”

  “What was shady about them?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But they were from Argentina and Anderson isn’t a real common name for that part of the world.”

  “Ugh,” I put my head on the table. “Anderson with an ‘o’ isn’t, but with an ‘e,’ kind of is.”

  “You know something about Argentina and Andersons that I don’t?”

  “Lots of Germans fled to South America after World War II.”

  “You think they were Nazis? That’s farfetched, even for you.”

  “Well,” I pursed my lips together. “Shady family from Argentina, Sarah was definitely not Hispanic. She’s a red head with blue eyes. Sounds like German origins to me.”

  “Not everyone is a war criminal,” Malachi informed me.

  “I know, some are serial killers.”

  “I’m sure for you, that’s logical. For me, it’s a stretch. What does missing little girls have to do with dead teen boys?”

  “We found feet. They had teeth marks in them, like fang marks. The feet belong to a teenaged boy.”

  “Eerily similar, but you don’t change your pedophilic preferences from little girls to teen boys.”

  “That’s true,” I answered. “But what’s the chances that it’s a coincidence?”

  “It’s been twenty-five years. What has the killer been doing for twenty-five years?”

  “Breeding jaguars illegally and raising a family,” I suggested.

  “Ok, that makes more sense than your fleeing Nazi theory. Hold on,” there were loud noises on Malachi’s end of the phone. “Ok, I’m back.”

  “Who are beating up?” I asked.

  “Some jerk off that thinks he can take the VCU,” Malachi answered.

  “What’d he do to attract the attention of the VCU?”

  “He killed thirty-two women with a sledgehammer. Serious overkill on all of them, their bodies were mangled and gruesome. Do you know the kind of damage a sledgehammer will do to a body?”

  “I can imagine.” Unfortunately, I really could imagine. Bloody, bashed heads filled my imagination. Brains and gore leaked from them along the concrete floor that my brain had put into the thought. Fragments of bone were lying several feet from the anonymous dead body.

  “You probably can, stop thinking about it. Being eaten by a jaguar is pretty gruesome too.”

  “There are different kinds of gruesome,” I told him. “Yours is gruesome in a different way than mine.”

  “Is that all?”

  “For now,” I answered.

  “Good, I have a suspect to haul into the FBI office and try not to kill along the way.”

  “Good luck,” I said and hung up.

  “Well?” Gabriel asked.

  “I do not know,” I answered.

  Seven

  Malachi was right. Pedophiles didn’t go from attacking little girls to attacking teenage boys. While one might argue that he wasn’t a pedophile, there is an intimacy to watching someone being eaten. There was actually a whole fetish devoted to it. A serial killer in Germany had placed an advert once, asking for volunteers to be eaten. He’d gotten several r
esponses and although it had theoretically been consensual cannibalism, the German government tried and convicted him on murder, desecration of a body, and cannibalism charges.

  I didn’t think watching a jaguar eat your victim qualified as cannibalism, but I’m sure there was a psychological term for it. We’d already caught one cannibal in the year and a half I’d been a Marshal, but only one. He’d been fond of neighborhood barbecues, even had a huge spit that he cooked the meat on. True cannibals were few and far between in the United States. Eating people just wasn’t acceptable, even among serial killers.

  Then there were the superstitions and folklore associated with it. I’d heard tales of Satanists, Voodoo Priests, zombies, and wendigos while on the hunt for the cannibal. I had never met a Satanist or a Voodoo Priest, but I was fairly certain that most of them did not practice cannibalism. As for zombies and wendigos, I wasn’t willing to rule them out, but they lived more in the realm of chupacabras and werewolves, so they weren’t exactly my prime suspects either.

  Five girls, progressively getting younger, one with a fake birth certificate and Argentinian origins. My mind was definitely leaping to conclusions. As far as I knew, jaguars weren’t real common in Argentina and neither were Nazi war criminals. History had proven that some Nazi war criminals had fled to South America, but it wasn’t like other Germans weren’t fleeing there as well. Furthermore, all sorts of people lived in South America, Germans were a small portion of the population and birth records weren’t always easy to come by if the village was rural enough. Despite the two year difference, a smart child could pass as being older, but petite. I had.

  I filed away the information about being from Argentina and the theory that her family were Nazi war criminals trying to sneak into the United States. So, they had moved back to Argentina, without their son, after their daughter had been found dead. It was dodgy, but not the most confusing thing I’d ever heard. The son had probably been raised by relatives here, his parents wanting him to get an American education. They had probably gone back because the Land of Milk and Honey had turned out to be tainted with blood and death. If they had wanted their daughter eaten by a jaguar, they could have gone on vacation to the Amazon and gotten the deed done faster and easier with fewer questions.

  So, we were back to the five girls who were progressively younger, until they reached six years old. Sarah Anderson was an outlier, not because of her birth and family history, but because her feet and body had been discovered while the others had not. One side of my mind told me I was grasping at straws, wanting the death of the girl who had rocked my father’s world to mean something more. The other side told me I was on to something, if I could just focus long enough to grab it.

  Unfortunately, my stomach had started to think about Shakespeare’s Pizza. It growled loudly, forcing me to check a clock. It had been seven hours since I had eaten Sub Shop. A little pizza might re-energize me and make the connection that half my brain said was there. Or it might make me sleepy because I had no willpower when it came to good food.

  “Dinner?” I asked. The guys turned to look at me. I wondered how long I had been quietly locked inside my own thoughts and what they had been discussing while I was there.

  “Sure,” Gabriel stood. “I could go for pizza. Tomorrow, we go knocking on the door of the animal sanctuary.”

  “Whatever,” I stood and stretched. Everything felt stiff. The damage to my body required movement. I had definitely been sitting in one place, probably one position, for far too long.

  We picked Xavier up at the University of Missouri Hospital and made our way downtown. It was bustling despite the cold weather and snow accumulations outside of the city. Shakespeare’s was even busier. Families, college kids, adults out for a night on the town, were all inside, waiting at the tables for their orders. Getting a table for four was nearly impossible. A table of teens, obviously finished with their food and now just enjoying each other’s company, occupied a table near the interior. I wanted the table. It would be warmer than one by the windows or in the upper room.

  Shakespeare’s doesn’t really have an upstairs, but there is a small set of steps that lead up to a raised room that leads to the patio. Tables in this room are a little more crowded than on the main floor, a feat, considering there was hardly any extra space in the main dining room.

  “Stop glaring at those kids,” Gabriel told me.

  “Sorry,” I looked away, staring out the window. “They have a good table and they aren’t eating. It’s just habit.”

  “This place is packed,” John said. “Maybe we should get it to go.”

  “Absolutely not,” I answered. “The first time you have a Shakespeare’s Pizza, it should be inside Shakespeare’s, not take out. The atmosphere is almost as important as the pizza. We should get a Masterpiece and All-The-Meats.”

  “You won’t eat a pizza that just has meat on it,” Xavier said.

  “That’s why we need a Masterpiece, it has everything. I’ll pick off the sausage and ham.”

  “What about the pepperoni?” Gabriel asked, knowing that I rarely ate pepperoni because it was a pork product.

  “If you order nothing else on a pizza, you have to have pepperoni here. I’ve ordered the veggie and had them add pepperoni. It comes from The Hill in St. Louis and is probably the best pepperoni in the world. They get all their meats from The Hill. Maybe we should order that as well,” I thought about it.

  “Three pizzas?” John asked.

  “Three large pizzas,” I answered. “You won’t regret it. You’ll be eating the leftovers for days.”

  A table became available. I sent John and Xavier to grab it. Gabriel and I walked to the counter. I ordered three pizzas, three beers, and a Mt. Dew. Gabriel gave me a strange look.

  “You’ll thank me later,” I said as I handed him a beer from a local brewery. I didn’t drink beer or any alcohol really, but I had been told the beer was almost as good as the pizza.

  “This place is packed,” Xavier shouted over the din of everything that defined Columbia on a Friday night. “It’s hard to talk.”

  “I’m fine with that,” I answered. “We only talk about death and the occasional football game, but John’s a Denver fan, so football’s out.” Two of us, meaning Xavier and myself, were Kansas City Chiefs fans. Gabriel was a Chicago Bears fan. We could tease Gabriel, but talking football with John had led to at least one Tasering incident. Surprisingly, I had not done the Tasering or been the recipient.

  I slouched in the chair, lacing my fingers together behind my head. I didn’t have the attachment to my hometown that a lot of people had. There was no sense of nostalgia when I visited, no yearning to be home, no desire to reconnect with the people that lived here or that I had once known. However, I did enjoy sitting back and just taking in the sounds, smells, and sights at Shakespeare’s. It was a sensory symphony.

  My name was announced over the loud speaker, telling me my order was ready. Gabriel and I stood up. For perhaps the first time, no one really turned to look at us. A few did, but we were used to getting stares and sometimes, glares, from a crowd. Xavier appeared at our heels and we carried the three large pizzas back to our table.

  “Holy hell,” Xavier set the one he was carrying down. “That thing is loaded.”

  “A pound of meat, a pound of veggies, a pound of cheese, and those are the weights after they are cooked. You get what you pay for here and most of the meat is super fresh because it was delivered from St. Louis,” I took a slice that was so hot it burned my fingers and the cheese stretched to my plate, dragging toppings with it, as I set it down on my plate.

  Xavier and Gabriel both risked burning their mouths as they took the first bite. John was more civilized. He got up, found the silverware and came back with a fork and butter knife. He attempted to cut it into bite sized pieces. A smile formed as I watched Gabriel and Xavier struggle to close their mouths around the piping hot pizza.

  “Um excuse me,” a woman stopped at our tab
le. Her hair was in a ponytail, she looked like a student.

  “Yes?” Gabriel swallowed hard without chewing much of his first bite.

  “Are you here about the missing boys?” She chewed on her fingernail.

  “No, we got stuck here in the storm,” Gabriel told her.

  “Oh, well,” she seemed to be unwilling to leave the table. “Could you look into it? We’ve had several boys go missing over the last year.”

  “Is there any reason to think they are anything other than missing?” Xavier asked.

  “They’ve been finding feet,” the color drained from her face. “My brother went missing a few months ago, he wouldn’t have run away like the police say and he was on his way to the park.”

  “Which park?” I asked.

  “Cosmo,” she frowned. “He was headed to the skate park there. I was supposed to meet him, but I got held up at work.”

  “Where do you work?” Gabriel asked.

  “Here,” she answered. “I’m a student, I live on campus, but my family lives in town too.”

  “How late were you?” I asked.

  “Twenty minutes, maybe thirty, not much. His skateboard was at the park, but he wasn’t and no one could remember him being there. But his skateboard was there. He loved that thing.”

  “How old was he?” Xavier asked.

  “Thirteen,” she answered.

  “We kind of need the police to invite us,” Gabriel lied. “However, we’ll see if we can get any information for you.” He passed his card to her. She took it and walked away.

  “You lied to her,” John said.

  “Sometimes, it’s necessary,” Gabriel answered. “Most people don’t want to know we are in town working. It makes the serial killers real. Besides, the grief stricken tend to break down when they find out we are investigating a case. They lose hope and automatically think their loved one is dead.”