by Hadena James
There was a soft, polite rap at my door. The knocker gave it twenty seconds and pushed it open. Gabriel looked tired. His face was pale, making the spattering of freckles more noticeable. His normally kind and sparkling eyes were dull.
“Stop being mean to John,” he told me taking a seat at the table. I pulled out my headphones, despite having turned the music off the moment he knocked.
“That is a monumental task,” I answered.
“Ok, consider it an order,” Gabriel met my gaze and held it, daring me to look away.
“Fine, I’ll consider it an order, it will still be a monumental task.”
“Just because he’s new and you haven’t learned to trust him?”
“I still feel like he’s an interloper. He isn’t half as entertaining as Michael and he doesn’t like me much.”
“How incredibly perceptive of you,” Gabriel smirked, keeping eye contact.
“I know I’m a pain in the behind.”
“If I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t like you very much either.”
“Yes, yes,” I waved dismissively, breaking eye contact. I could be defiant to the ends of the earth and he knew it. Giving up just a little bit, letting him be the dominant, kept the group working harmoniously and I preferred the harmony. I could get into a pissing contest with Gabriel, but it would upset the balance, things would slide into the rabbit hole that I still secretly feared.
“Good,” Gabriel continued to sit.
“What’s on your mind other than my being an ass?” I asked after several minutes of quiet. Gabriel and I had a rapport. It wasn’t the same that I had with Xavier or Lucas. Lucas watched out for me, feeling some need to play knight to my damsel. Xavier treated me like a co-conspirator, in an elaborate spy-ring or some such adventure. Gabriel was my equal. He understood he was alpha only because I wanted him to be. He respected what it meant to both of us and treated me accordingly.
“I’ve been thinking about what Xavier said, about building up the muscles in the jaws,” Gabriel frowned. “How long would that take?”
“It would depend on a lot of factors. Someone with dentures could do it faster, because they wouldn’t have sensitivity in their teeth. Starting out young would help, because the teeth that they broke while building up those muscles would be replaced by stronger, permanent teeth. If they started young enough, by the time their adult teeth started growing in, they’d be able to rip out good sized chunks from just about anything. Also, chewing on leather or some other material would help. Part of the reason dog toys are made of rawhide is to help them keep their jaw strength.”
“Well, I have a crazy theory,” Gabriel said. “What if the kidnappings and murders from twenty-five years ago are related to our current case? What if he was kidnapping children and feeding them to his pet jaguar, but found a child the jaguar didn’t kill for whatever reason?”
“Jaguars don’t live long in captivity. In twenty-five years, he could easily have gone through four if not five jaguars. How do you keep acquiring jaguars that don’t kill a human interloper, but has no problem eating other people?”
“The human would have to be a pretty successful survivor,” Gabriel sighed.
“Someone like Malachi,” I pursed my lips together. “Under the right conditions, a human can become feral. It’s normally with dogs, wolves, apes, pack animals, but a single female jaguar is more willing to allow another female to live in its territory. Especially, if the female is not the alpha, a condition that could happen if the person was a psychopath. A few fights for dominance, the human wins, the animal becomes the submissive. However, it would be nearly impossible to create a feral human.”
“Nearly impossible.” Gabriel repeated the phrase.
“It happens, but it happens in nature, not artificial environments. For every one feral child, there are dozens, if not hundreds, that are killed by whatever finds them. To create one in an artificial environment would require no human interaction. Meals, medicine, even watching them, results in some interaction. The child would grow up stunted, I can think of a famous case of this, in Germany, but the child wasn’t feral.”
“The famous case in Germany?” Gabriel pressed.
“A boy was locked in a room all his life, feed through a door, given sparse toys, he grew up to be timid of humans, but he recognized himself as such. He was eventually released from his prison and quickly integrated with society, until he was stabbed to death. We’ll leave it at that because that’s where facts give way to conspiracy theories. But a feral human wouldn’t recognize themselves as such, they’d relate more to the animal that raised them. Of the few feral humans ever found, they did poorly in human society, because they are more animal than human. Proof that we are all just one step away from devolving.”
Eighteen
There are rarely places to sit in a morgue, this one was no exception. The overly bright room that reeked of antiseptic had two stools on rollers. I sat on a stainless steel table that had been covered with a clean sheet. There were other tables in the room, but they were all filled with decaying body parts. The smell of decay permeated the antiseptic, giving the room a terrible odor. My nose had peppermint balm under it, making my upper lip tingle and keeping me from getting a migraine from the mingled scents.
Xavier and the odontologist were working on bite marks. I was not, however, my presence seemed to be required, so I had stacks of folders in front of me. I’d spent the morning sorting them into piles by age and sex. They were all the missing persons reported in Boone County, Missouri over the last thirty years. I had to admit, there was a staggering number.
Mostly, I was looking for young children and teens, of both sexes. Everyone else went into a different pile. So far, I had over a hundred case files sorted into the “important” piles. The stack had gotten smaller, but it didn’t feel like it had dwindled much.
Technically, this was a “John Job.” He was the geek that searched files and did magical things on his computer to sort them by relevancy. However, someone had decided it needed a more hands on approach, so I had hard copies of the files to look at.
“I’m not sure I’ll get a good impression from any of these bites,” the odontologist said loudly. His voice held a pitch that said not only was he frustrated, but horrified.
“Why?” I asked, ready for a break, however brief.
“They aren’t clean bite marks,” Xavier answered for the odontologist.
“Ah, more like worry marks than bite marks,” I sighed. “I could see that.”
“If she could guess that from sitting on a table looking at God knows what, why am I here?” The odontologist asked.
“Because I can’t make bite impressions,” I answered. “Besides, I didn’t know they were going to be worked out instead of just torn out, I’ve never eaten a person. But now that you’ve said it, it makes sense. Even strong jaws would require a little work to tear through skin, muscles, ligaments, nerves, and tendons. Neanderthal might have been able to accomplish it, but Homo sapien sapiens, probably can’t.”
“Who says the sapien twice?” Xavier asked.
“I do,” I answered.
“Yeah, only you,” Xavier shook his head.
“I am technically correct.” I frowned at him. “Try on a thinner area, where teeth would scrape bone, like the face or arms.”
“Teeth scrapes on bone do not give a good impression,” the odontologist told me.
“Maybe not, but if teeth scrape bone there, you might be able to find a good impression nearby where teeth collided with bone. Like when you eat ribs.” I offered the only example that came to mind. “You don’t mean to bite the rib bone, but sometimes it happens.”
“Oh, the scapula might have something,” Xavier became animated. I left him and the odontologist to it and went back to looking at files.
I opened one and just stopped. The picture that stared back at me was of a smiling young girl missing one of her front teeth. She had a large bruise on her chin and a scrape near
her hairline. Long brown hair was pulled up into a loose braid, strands had begun to break free and framed her face. Large brown eyes sparkled with a smile that was both genuine and happy. The file had been marked “Gennifer Evans,” but the photo was of me. I had been a cute kid, but I didn’t remember ever being that happy. I didn’t know Gennifer Evans, she had gone missing after I had killed Callow and was a few years younger than me. I wasn’t sure how my picture had ended up in her folder, but I removed it. I’d already found my case file, wedged carelessly into another, one that had never been found but was suspected of being a victim of Callow.
“Whoa,” Xavier said from over my shoulder. “Add a few scars, some frown lines, and a tan and that could be you.”
“That is me,” I told him.
“Really?” Xavier looked at me. “Huh, you’re right. You had a lot fewer scars, but what’s with the bruise?”
“I fell off a bicycle, scraped my face and scalp, bruised my chin, and all two days before picture day. I went missing the following week. I have no idea how this picture even found its way into a file, let alone the wrong file. My parents wouldn’t have had it when I escaped.” I thought about it, then looked at the folder again. “If I had to make an educated guess, I would say my father did it, but I do not know why. I didn’t know the girl whose file I found it in and my case file was in another folder.”
“Why would your dad do that?” Xavier asked.
“There are many things I don’t know about my father, his work life is one of them,” I answered. This wasn’t because my father was enigmatic, but because my father had gone off the deep end. I had once been his “little girl,” but things had changed after Callow. Our relationship had gotten cold and distant after I returned home, now a killer at the tender age of eight. I had never dwelt on it before, but it had changed. There were no more bedtime stories, he didn’t pray with me at night or encourage me to find faith and meaning. He hadn’t taken me anywhere or allowed me out of his sight when he was home. While my mother was encouraging me to make friends, my father was banning them from the house for sleepovers or even birthday parties. The rotating poker game my father had loved had stopped rotating and become a permanent fixture in our house. He became overbearing and oppressive at times, monitoring my movements with every resource he could muster. He never called me his “little girl” again. Perhaps he hadn’t been protecting me, but protecting the world from me.
“I got one!” The odontologist suddenly shouted. Xavier jumped. I turned to stare at the man like he had just manifested maggots from thin air. One thing about being a sociopath, I didn’t have much of a startle reflex. I was more annoyed that he had interrupted my reverie.
“Great, what does it tell us?” Xavier asked.
“Well, if you can find a person, I can tell you if it’s a match,” the odontologist answered. “Otherwise, it’s just a piece of evidence. One molar is chipped, but not badly. They could use braces.” He gave me a sideways glance at this. I took out the dentures on top and frowned.
“Braces always seemed like a waste,” I answered, putting the dentures back in. “I’ve lost a lot of teeth over the years. Straightening them would have been pointless.”
“Are you always combative?” He asked me.
“Yes,” I answered flatly.
“It isn’t personal,” Xavier stepped in. “She’s like this with everyone until you get to know her really well, then it’s worse.” Xavier smiled at his own joke. I raised an eyebrow and said nothing.
“I see. Well, that’s about all I can give you. An educated guess says that all the bite marks are from a single person. You can see evidence of the chipped tooth in a couple of different places, the size is roughly the same and the way they worked loose the flesh with their teeth is similar.”
“Similar, not exact?” I asked.
“It will never be exact. If you gnaw on a hundred bones, each will be slightly different based on the size of the bone, the amount of tissue adhering to it, the effort you put into the bite, and honestly, your overall mood can impact it.”
“Close enough?” I pressed.
“It’s all very close, I’d give it a 97% chance that all the bites were made by the same person.”
“I’ll take 97%,” Xavier jumped back into the conversation, steering it away from any doubts I might have. “Thank you for taking the time to help with this.”
“You’re welcome, I hope you catch him soon,” the doctor nodded at me and shook hands with Xavier. I gave a small wave.
“Did you learn anything from the files?” Xavier came back over to me.
“Maybe,” I answered cryptically. “There are a lot of missing persons in the county. If we widened the search, I can’t imagine how much larger the number would grow to be. I can tell you that over the years, there have been increases in missing persons all around the same age and gender. It goes on for a few months then it stops.”
“How so?” Xavier asked.
“Well, we have the group of girls, progressively younger, from twenty-five years ago, then we have another cluster, this time boys, progressively younger about twenty years ago. In the interim, there are boys and girls that go missing and might or might not be related. Then we jump ahead and sixteen years ago, a group of girls went missing again, this time they were about twelve when they went missing and got progressively younger. So, it goes in spurts. Some could be attributed to other killers, but the progressively younger bothers me. Also, there’s been a handful of feet found in the county with no bodies. Some have belonged to boys, some girls, some young children, some teenagers, one had a tattoo on it, and so I’m guessing that one was a little older. It’s almost like he’s experimenting to find the right age and sex.”
“Meat ages different,” Xavier said. “You don’t want a steak from a cow that’s got one foot in the grave.”
“Crude, but accurate,” I said. “I think the deviation is about finding the right age and gender that produces the best food.”
“By the way,” Xavier quickly snatched the photo of me. “You were adorable.”
“That inspires me with terror,” I climbed down from the table.
Nineteen
Twenty-nine file folders were spread out on the spare bed in my hotel room. Twenty-nine folders that held significance to my father, but I didn’t understand why, yet. Each had a notation somewhere within the folder. The abbreviation for August. However, only one of them had disappeared during that month and it wasn’t the first missing persons’ case.
August had been the month my brother had been born. My niece, Cassie, had an August birthday, but Cassie. I stopped. I couldn’t remember whether Cassie was born before or after my father died. Honestly, I couldn’t remember the exact month my father had died. My brother had climbed a tower a few years after his death, but a few years, could mean that Elle was pregnant with Cassie when my father died.
The trial had been long and drawn out. They’d filed multiple motions to change the venue because Boone County didn’t have a proper jury pool. A crack addict killing a pair of cops with an AK-47 after killing two women, one of whom he had beaten to death, had been major news. After the venue was changed to Greene County, there was a fiasco with mental competency. He’d seen doctor after doctor after doctor. He’d been declared incapacitated, then fit, then incapacitated again, finally, a specialist had signed forms saying that being high wasn’t enough to impair his judgment and make him think that killing was socially acceptable. After a year and a half, a mistrial was declared and another one set. A year after that, the bastard had walked on a technicality. Something about evidence tampering, I never got the full story. Two days later, my brother had climbed to the top of a building outside the Greene County jail and began picking off prisoners.
Now that trial had been quick. Six weeks to send my brother to the Fortress, two and a half years to let a cop killer go free. The world didn’t make much sense.
I tried to remember how old I was when my father had bee
n shot. I couldn’t pinpoint an exact date, meaning I wasn’t sure how old I was. I called Malachi.
“What’s up?” His voice was gruff, I had interrupted something, again.
“How old was I when my dad died?” I asked.
“Thirteen,” Malachi answered and hung up. Thirteen explained why I felt I had immediately gone to college after it had all ended. I texted a “thank you” to Malachi.
So, I had been thirteen when my father had died. Cassie was fourteen years younger than me or maybe she was only thirteen years younger than me. I thought about last summer, I had thought she was fourteen, I had been twenty-eight. However, time wasn’t exactly my friend. If people didn’t tell me how old I was, I would forget. She hadn’t been driving a car, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t old enough to drive a car. I hadn’t gotten my license at sixteen, I’d just started college and there were enough changes going on in my life without worrying about driving. I’d gotten it on summer vacation after my freshman year.
It was issues like these that I kept secret. Nyleena was aware that I couldn’t hold onto the passage of time. But she was alone in that respect. She reminded me every year how old I would turn on my birthday and sent me reminders of other birthdays and the ages of the birthday celebrators.
Figuring out what August had represented to my father was maddening. I stared at the notations, trying to will it to give up its secret. The twenty-nine cases held their tongues. The first group of girls was in it, the second group, all boys, was in it, but there were others. The others were missing persons of different ages and genders that were sporadic.
I tore my gaze from the pictures and names and stared at the ceiling. Eliminating the eleven that were clustered left me with eighteen. I double checked, two disappearances a year were marked with the Aug. reference. One in January, one in July, every year that my father had been making cryptic notations on the files. I pulled the other case files back out and began searching for missing persons in January and July each year. There was a cluster. I’d found the pattern. I could pull out missing persons for each year for the two months. Only problem was they were completely different victims from those in the clusters. In my father’s files, every January it was a homeless person that went missing, gender and age, meant nothing. In July, it was a male, but the ages were going up. Two years ago, it had been a 22 year old male, the year before that, the male had been 21. They all had similar features; blonde hair, blue eyes, athletic build. I didn’t know what that meant, but it had to mean something.