Dreams and Reality Set 3: Cannibal Dreams and Butchered Dreams

by Hadena James

  “Fruck,” I muttered. The first squad car arrived. I shook my head at Malachi. “Rollins, come here.”

  “What?” His voice was full of indignation that I hadn’t considered him a superior. As far as rank went, he probably was, but I had more scars.

  “I’m going to break open the back door, you and handful of officers will enter and search the house,” I told him.

  “We can’t do that, we have no probable cause.”

  “I do not need probable cause, at least not much of it. Okafor has taken the trees out of his front yard, that’s a sign of paranoia, a trait often exhibited by serial killers. The shoe print is too small to be his, so someone obviously was walking around his house in recent days, signs of a stalker. He is not answering the door, despite the belief that he is at home. That’s all the probable cause the SCTU needs. He displays characteristics of both a serial killer and a victim, which would fit with what Patterson Clachan claimed.”

  “You can’t do that, you’re not in charge,” Rollins grabbed my arm.

  “Neither are you, Patterson Clachan is because he knows who the third victim is and he knows who he is going to kill next. We’re just cleaning up his mess. I cannot believe you are so uptight that you will not even let me go jiggle the hand to see if the door is unlocked.” I didn’t yank my arm away. I stared him down, he released it on his own.

  “Fine, go jiggle a handle, nothing more Marshal Cain, do you understand?”

  “No, I do not speak English,” I snarked.

  “Was that supposed to be funny?” Rollins asked Malachi as I crept up to the side door.

  “No, that was her being very polite while she called you a jackass.” Malachi answered as I tried the knob. It was locked.

  “It didn’t seem very polite.”

  “Wait until she Tasers you,” Malachi said as I rounded the corner to the back.

  Seven

  Rollins and Malachi followed me to the back of the house. It didn’t take much for me to realize that something was wrong. There were two large doghouses contained within a huge chain-link fence. There weren’t two large dogs to go with it. There wasn’t a single large dog. There wasn’t even a single small dog.

  Malachi frowned at the sturdy kennel. He let out a long sigh as his gaze found what I had missed. Blood at the entrance to one of the dog houses. I wasn’t much of a pet person, but I still thought killing dogs was wrong.

  “There’s your proof that something wicked came this way, G-Man,” I pointed towards the small puddle of blood. It was congealing into a brown gelatinous goo.

  “Stop butchering Ray Bradbury for your odd sense of humor,” Malachi was walking towards the kennels. “We do have permission to search dog houses, right? Or do you want a warrant for that as well?”

  Rollins made a face and nodded his head. Malachi opened the kennel while I drew my Taser. Of course, at 250,000 volts, it was likely to kill any dog that might be inside, but given the paranoia I’d seen, I wasn’t going to take chances with Malachi’s life. I already had one person in the hospital.

  As he reached the door, he knelt down slowly. His face became level with the hole, after another second, he stuck his head and an arm inside. When he withdrew, he held a Styrofoam container that had been chewed on. The container was dripping a brownish substance that disappeared on contact with the ground. He put his upper body back in the dog house and pulled out a small puppy. I holstered the Taser and moved around the fence to take the animal.

  The German shepherd’s heartbeat was fast. His chest heaved and fell without much effort. He didn’t make noises, like most puppies while they slept. Malachi emerged with a second pup, roughly the same age.

  “How old?” I asked Malachi.

  “A couple of months, maybe,” Malachi answered. “Newly acquired, probably siblings, most likely twelve weeks and picked up from a breeder very recently. There are toys, but they aren’t chewed up like most puppy toys. And they enjoyed the Styrofoam just as much as the steak that was inside of it.”

  “Why give the puppies steak in Styrofoam?” I asked.

  “Patterson is a vegetarian, because he has trouble with meat. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you at another time. I don’t think he could stand the steak. He gave it to them in the Styrofoam to keep from having to look at it. I’m not even sure how he got past the smell.”

  Malachi looked like a nice, good guy cradling the puppy. It was pure perception, he was anything but. It was a good thing he was holding it or I would have Tasered him again. He was keeping more secrets.

  “So, he drugs the dogs and goes into the house to kill the owner but he’s can’t look at a steak?” Rollins asked.

  “I once heard that Patterson fainted when the women were killing chickens. People he can kill, animals not so much,” I answered. “I’m not sure why, but Malachi knows.”

  “During The Great Depression, Patterson’s father put Patterson’s talents for killing to good use. It was his responsibility to kill farmhands, which their mother then cooked to supplement the family’s meager food rations.” Malachi blurted. I stared at him. “Don’t you dare Taser me again. Nina told me. She told Nyleena, too, before this thing started.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. It bothered me more that Malachi knew this information and I didn’t, even more than the idea that cannibalism seemed to run in my family. Cannibalism I could understand to some degree, keeping information about my family being cannibals from me, I couldn’t.

  In my head, I heard Lucas tell me to stop rationalizing cannibalism and start focusing on the real problem. We were behind Patterson Clachan with no idea of his agenda. His next victim might be Uncle Joe or it might be someone I had never heard of that lived in another state. I tried to listen to that voice. I wished it was Nyleena’s, but her voice had gone terribly silent in the last few days.

  Trying to ignore Nyleena’s mental absence, I headed for the house. As I reached to jiggle the handle, I realized I was still holding the puppy. It was roughly fifteen pounds, making it strange that I had forgotten about it. I looked at it for a few seconds, trying to decide what to do. A uniformed officer came around the house and I motioned him over using the dog. Without any explanation, I dumped the drugged dog into his arms.

  Hands freed, I gently touched the handle. It gave under the weight of my fingers and the door swung open. I had another moment of doubt. Why would someone who was paranoid keep a handle-style door latch? They were easier to break into for starters and any burglar with half a brain could do it. On the flip side, what sort of idiot broke into the house of a serial killer?

  The answer was pretty obvious. I was the sort of idiot who broke into the houses of serial killers. It must have been a family trait, because my grandfather also seemed to enjoy it. I stood in front of the door, unable to move. I was having a small identity crisis. I had gone from just waiting for attackers to actually hunting them down. It seemed counterproductive, Nyleena was proof of that.

  Thankfully, the smell of blood brought me back to the present. Not just a little, but a lot and beneath the strange, coppery scent was the smell of feces. It was a smell I never got used to. I could stand knee deep in blood and brain matter, but the relaxing of the sphincters in the body made me gag. I fought the urge. It wasn’t my crime scene or my victim, although, it was technically my killer. My sniper was dead in the house. I knew that just as sure as I knew I was breathing. I would not get the revenge I longed to experience.

  I stepped away from the door, allowing Rollins and the St. Charles Police to enter the house. The officer handed me back the puppy as he drew his gun. Those inside the house were shouting out their identities, like it made a difference to the dead man inside.

  “He dead?” Malachi asked, he was scratching the puppy he held behind the ear.

  “Yes,” I told Malachi. “I feel annoyed that I am not going to get to personally kill this guy.”

  “Then Patterson really did do you a favor. You should thank him when you meet him.” M
alachi said.

  “Should I also thank him for shooting Nyleena in the face?” I growled.

  “No, for that, you should break his arm. This makes twice in a week you’ve been saved from the dark side.” Malachi shrugged. “It should earn Patterson some points, when we finish all this stuff with Patterson, you should really have a sit down visit with Lucas. You’ve come very close to crossing the line lately and you’ve been saved from yourself. What happens when no one is there to save you?”

  “This coming from a guy that would just as soon torture that puppy as pet it?” I snarked.

  “I don’t torture animals, there’s no sport in it.” Malachi answered. “Humans yes, dogs no. I actually like dogs. They’re good natured and kind hearted as long as they are treated well.”

  I considered that. Malachi could love a puppy or a dog. I couldn’t. What did that say about me? Was I really beginning the spiral into madness that had consumed men like Patterson? Maybe a sit down with Lucas was in order.

  Rollins and several officers rushed out the back door. They were all coughing, a few were gagging. I turned away and put the dog up to my face to block out the sounds of vomiting. I couldn’t imagine what was so bad that the police had rushed out of a crime scene to throw up. I knew it happened, but it wasn’t common, especially not with a beating death. If Patterson had gutted him or draped his entrails throughout the house, I could see it, but he’d claimed to beat him to death. My curiosity was piqued.

  “May we?” Malachi asked, finding someone new to give his dog to. He took mine too and handed it to the woman. She looked stoically blank.

  “What’s going to happen to them?” I asked.

  “They’ll be tested for temperament and put up for adoption,” she answered.

  “Thinking of getting a dog?” Malachi asked.

  “What would I do with a dog? I would forget to feed it and it would eat my face off when I got home.” I looked at him. “I was thinking of Nyleena. She could use a dog.”

  “Does she want a dog?” He asked.

  “Does that matter?” I returned the question.

  “It probably would to her.”

  “I hear it helps with healing and shit,” I told him.

  “Even when you are trying to do good things, they come out a little twisted.”

  “How so?”

  “You want to get Nyleena a dog, because it might help her recovery, but she can’t have a dog in the hospital and you don’t even know if she wants a dog. But you’d get her one anyway, because it would help you.”

  “You are judging me?” I raised an eyebrow as we entered the house.

  “Nope, if it were you in that hospital bed and I thought a puppy would help, you’d get a whole litter. But you’re playing with a few cards short right now and the people that keep you somewhat sane are in Tennessee. I feel like I should be trying to help hold you on the sanity train.”

  “That is rich,” I answered, ignoring the smells that were clogging my nostrils and filling my sinus passages with a familiar scent that wasn’t entirely unwelcome. Sometimes, even the most morbid things become tied to feelings of being home.

  “You should ask your mom about the dog thing before you do anything drastic,” Malachi told me. “Where’s our booties?”

  “What?” I frowned at him.

  “Our booties? I forgot to put them on. So did you. We’re going to contaminate the crime scene. How could we forget?”

  “You sound like Xavier and his stupid gloves. We know who killed him. We know why he killed him.”

  “But there still might be evidence like where he’s been and where he’s going,” Malachi said.

  “Well, Hell,” we had only taken about two steps inside the doorway. There was no mud on our feet and our footprints couldn’t be seen. We both backed out.

  “It’s gruesome,” Rollins said, dabbing at his mouth, “isn’t it?”

  “I do not know,” I told him. “We forgot to put on booties.”

  Malachi shrugged at him as someone in a white suit magically appeared and handed us booties for our shoes. I looked at my feet as I slipped them over my shoes. They covered the entire shoe on me. Malachi’s feet were a lot bigger, they didn’t cover as much of his cowboy boots.

  “Is that one of ours?” I asked, as we prepared to re-enter the house.

  “One of our what?” Malachi asked.

  “Our crime scene people,” I was talking in hushed tones, like I might offend the dead.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never seen our crime scene people. When they do come into the field, they wear suits.” Malachi shrugged and motioned me forward.

  I did as instructed. The smell began to grow stronger. I followed my nose into the bedroom. At the doorway, I stopped. Gruesome was a good way to describe it. Hellish would have been better.

  Eight

  When Patterson Clachan had said he’d beat a man to death, he had way undersold it. Nothing was untouched by blood spatter; from the ceiling to the floor. It was slung across photos, the dresser, a bookcase, the walls, a chair, and everything else in the room.

  The skull wasn’t just battered, parts were smashed and the bones under the skin looked odd. An eye had come out of its socket and lay on the pillow, the optic nerve keeping it attached. Bones in the legs and arms protruded from the skin, like sharpened stakes.

  There was enough blood to make me wonder if he had really died from the beating or if it had been blood loss. Thankfully, the light had been flipped on, allowing all the drying gore to be visible under the naked bulb in the ceiling. One arm and both legs were restrained, but the other arm had been pulled free. The hand was shaped like a club, not a hand.

  “His fingers are missing,” I said to Malachi.

  “I’d bet a twelve pack of Budweiser, that he’s a lefty,” Malachi said in response. I looked at the left hand, with the missing fingers. Patterson had broken his hand and then plucked the fingers off, pulling and pushing until they broke off. It had created broken shards of bone that poked out from where the fingers met the hand.

  “Could you do that?” I asked Malachi.

  “Yes.” Malachi answered.

  “I do not think I could,” I told him.

  “Your false humanity would stop you,” Malachi agreed. “That and you just aren’t that big on torture. Sure, you’d rough him up before killing him, but you wouldn’t torture him and you wouldn’t beat him to death. You’d put a bullet in his brain.”

  Malachi had a point. There was nothing satisfying in torture. I didn’t mind getting in a few good, well deserved blows, but actual torture grossed me out. I would prefer putting a bullet in the skull to breaking off fingers. Maybe I was a little less monster than I thought.

  With this revelation in mind, I adjusted to the scene, to actually look at it. Not just observing the brutality and gore, but actually looking at it, with something other than my eyes. Some killers I got. Others were a mystery. Patterson Clachan was somewhere in between.

  Damaging his sniper’s hand I understood. Beating him to death with this sort of brutality, I didn’t. It wasn’t just about the amount of energy expended, he had literally tortured him. The victim was restrained, as Patterson went through the process of beating him. It was very likely that the weapon was the cane he carried instead of his fists. It better explained the broken bones and bruises. It also explained the puncture marks that could be seen in various places. I hadn’t seen it, but it was possible that the head had made the puncture marks.

  Mentally, I catalogued the injuries. A puncture mark on a foot, but both feet were misshapen. One of the bones in the right shin was poking out, another puncture mark was near it. The left hadn’t faired any better and it had bones jutting out in two places. I shook my head and looked at Malachi.

  “Why the overkill?” I asked.

  “He enjoyed it.” Malachi said.

  “Patterson is not a sadist.” I countered.

  “That’s true.” Malachi looked at the body. “I’m guess
ing that after the victim was restrained, Patterson started at the feet and worked his way up. Yet, he isn’t a sadist, he’s a killer.”

  “He is a sadist,” I argued, thinking back to what he had done to my grandmother.

  “No, no he isn’t a sadist,” Malachi stopped me. “He kills by cutting people open, it’s very painful, but it’s quick. It’s the ritual that causes the pain, not the joy of the pain itself. So, back up. He isn’t a sadist.”

  “If he is not a sadist, why inflict this much damage?” I repeated the question. “If it is not for the enjoyment of his suffering...”

  “Enjoyment of his suffering,” Malachi repeated the words as if he were chewing on them. “Maybe it was about suffering. Patterson doesn’t normally enjoy the pain, but maybe in this case, there was a reason for him to want the victim to suffer. Maybe because he almost shot you?”

  “Hundreds of people have almost shot me,” I shook my head, still not grasping it. My nose had become blind to the scents in the room. I stepped inside and spun in a slow circle. There was so much blood. None of it was arterial spray, it was all spatter and cast-off from him swinging the weapon.

  “His name is James Okafor,” Rollins joined us in the bedroom. “A rifle was found in the other room along with clippings of all the bombings, the killing of the Marshal and VCU agent in Kansas City this summer and a news story about his daughter dying at a fair when a stage collapsed while she sang the National anthem.”

  “Bummer,” I responded, still more interested in the blood than the sniper’s life story.

  “Do you want to hear the rest?” Malachi snapped at me, causing me to focus on what was being said.