by Hadena James
Malachi smiled at me; a genuine smile. I had, in fact, Tasered Malachi more times than either of us cared to remember. Most of them had not been because he was physically out of control, it was almost always a mental thing with him. Like all good psychopaths, he could be charming, devious, and manipulative. I hated the “charming” Malachi more than I hated the “manipulative” Malachi, but it was the manipulative Malachi that sometimes needed to be Tasered. It was a reminder that real people had feelings and pressing their buttons could cause them emotional pain and turmoil. When you didn’t feel emotion, and Malachi felt less than I did, physical pain was the only thing that penetrated the darkness.
“We have a reprieve from Patterson, but I believe it is a short reprieve. How do we use it to our advantage?” Malachi asked after a few minutes.
“Beats me, you know more about him than I do. I get that I’m a weakness, but I do not believe it is the same type of weakness as yours. If it was you, I would set a trap at the hospital, because you would come see me. However, Patterson has never attempted to visit me in the hospital. Did you get the crime scene photos for me? Did you figure out the Freon leak?”
“Yes and yes,” Malachi pulled out a folder from under the table. “The Freon leak was coming from the basement. It would appear that our pedophile was a little paranoid. All the windows were taped. Not just the bottom sill, but the entire window frame. And I know you’re going to give me what for about it, but there’s another interesting aspect. Our victim claimed to see a UFO a few nights ago. He reported it to the police.”
“Did the paper run the story?” I asked, not yet opening the folder. I could eat and look at crime scene photos, I’d even adjusted to eating around dead bodies. However, when I had a choice, I didn’t mix the two.
“They did. It was the headliner for four days. It appears several people in the area spotted a UFO and then the cattle mutilations turned up, then Patterson turned up.”
“Well, I do not believe Patterson is connected to the UFO sightings or the cattle mutilations. That would require him to be an alien and my DNA is on file. If part of the DNA was extraterrestrial, I think someone would have said something. However, that could be how Patterson found the victim.”
“You think he’s scanning newspapers for headlines of UFO sightings?”
“No, but I think he’s well-read and I believe he keeps up on current events. Also, he probably does internet searches for the names on his hit list. The real question then becomes, why did he suspect our victim was a pedophile?” I asked.
Despite having vocalized the question, I knew the answer. Either Patterson had a personal connection to the pedophile or he had one with a victim. Even in a world where philanthropists were just as likely to be serial killers as crack addicts, people never really suspected their neighbor of being capable of such atrocities. When they did get suspicious, they still didn’t voice it for fear of being wrong. You didn’t tell people you thought your pastor was a serial killer unless he was captured, then you said things like “I always thought there was something off about him” or “he’s such a nice guy, I can’t believe he could be responsible.” Either were acceptable answers that eliminated any responsibility on the person with the suspicion. I’d heard both statements so often, they irritated me. If I had a quarter for every time I’d heard that, I’d have been a billionaire.
Finding out whether Patterson had known the teacher or a victim was the key. With this in mind, I opened the folder with the crime scene photos. I had to give kudos to Patterson, all his crime scenes were bloody, gory, and gruesome. The ceiling was the only thing without spatters of blood. The restraint system on the recliner was very similar to the restraints that had been on the bed of James Okafor. The last picture was of the basement where several window air conditioner units were sitting on the floor. Fluid had pooled around a few of them. I held up the picture.
“Perhaps he hallucinated the UFO and Freon poisoning can lead to paranoia.” I suggested.
“The fact that there’s still liquid on the floor rules that out. If it had been punctured several days earlier, it would have evaporated. It seems that the victim was in the process of working on them the day before and then Patterson came into his life sometime during the night.”
I shrugged and went back to the pictures. Crime scene photos can only give up so much information. There was nothing frenzied about the attack, the lack of blood on the ceiling proved that. Castrating a person is a bloody affair. In most cases, there would be arterial spray. Arterial spray is high velocity spurting that can go ten or fifteen feet into the air or across a room. With the victim in a reclining position, it seemed almost impossible for the spray not to hit the ceiling, unless Patterson had done something to ensure it didn’t.
The missing arterial spray bothered me. We knew the victim was alive when he was castrated, so how had Patterson not gotten spray on the ceiling? And why had he bothered? The answer dawned on me slowly, as I stared at the photo of the ceiling. The spray would have landed on him.
It was one thing to get spray from the neck or the thigh on yourself. It was messy, but it was just blood. The same could not be said if the spray came from the penis. If I was Patterson, I wouldn’t want that on me.
Thirteen
Another day passed with no corpses turning up. The press was all over the story that I was in dire straits at the hospital from Freon poisoning. It still seemed to be working. Patterson kept calling my cell phone and Malachi kept answering it, at which point Patterson would hang up.
Rollins was still debating our next move. With Patterson not killing, he didn’t know where to go. Malachi and I were no help there. I was of the opinion that he would be home, most likely in Kansas City, waiting to find out if I was out of the hospital and out of danger. Malachi believed he was holed up wherever his next victim was located.
Without knowing what alias Patterson was using as his full time identity, it was impossible for either of us to really know. We couldn’t track his movements and we didn’t know whether Patterson was dirt poor or ungodly wealthy. Our best lead was the crappy identi-kit sketch that made him look like Howdy Doody.
For the first time, I considered that. There were no photos of Patterson. They’d found none in the belongings of his sisters or any of our other family members. His military photo was missing from the records. Even his driver’s license photo from before the time he’d killed his wife was gone. Changing your name was easy in comparison to erasing every photo ever taken of you. I wasn’t sure how a person could do that.
My book had lost its appeal. I’d been reading a book about Russia in the Middle Ages. It was a good book, but my mind kept interrupting with thoughts of Patterson. Malachi sat across from me at the little table in my room. He was also reading a book. Both of us had jumped on the eBook revolution. Like me, Malachi could read twenty books a week, even with a busy schedule. It was impossible to lug that many books around from chase to chase. Currently, Malachi read on a tablet.
“What are you reading?” I asked, giving up on Russia.
“A book,” he replied curtly.
“My mom, Elle and the kids need to go into protective custody,” I informed him.
He looked up from his tablet and stared at me blankly for a few moments. I could see his mind running over what I had just said, attempting to figure out the reason why. He put the tablet on the table, face up. He was reading a book about UFOs. This didn’t really surprise me.
When we were children, Malachi and his family went on vacation in Arizona. He swore he saw a UFO one night from his hotel room. The next morning, the news was buzzing with stories about a massive disease outbreak on a ranch that had killed almost all the cattle. To Malachi, the two became a single event. In his mind, the UFO had caused the cattle deaths and if they could do that to cattle, they could do that to humans. In our teens, he had tried to convince me that extraterrestrials were responsible for most human plagues throughout history. Becoming an FBI agent had only g
iven him more fodder to support his theory.
This was the real reason I watched shows like Ancient Aliens and UFO Hunters. It gave me a foundation to work from when Malachi started talking about ancient aliens and UFOs. I didn’t disbelieve him, but I didn’t agree with him. I believed he did see a UFO in Arizona all those years ago. I didn’t buy the theory that they were mutilating cattle or spreading plague. However, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility either. There were lots of things humans just didn’t understand yet. One of my medieval history professors had thought the same as Malachi, the Black Death could be explained, but only partially.
“I give up, why does your family need to go into protective custody?” Malachi finally asked.
“If Patterson finds out I’m fine and this was all a ruse, he is going to be pissed. Pissed off serial killers are far more dangerous than just serial killers having a good time.” This was true, pissed off serial killers tended to go on sprees. Technically, Patterson was on a spree, but it was a controlled spree. He was finishing his list before he got caught, died or whatever was going to happen when this ended.
“Point taken.” Malachi began to type furiously into his phone. “Done. The VCU is moving them now.”
“Great,” I frowned at him.
“Don’t comment on my reading material.”
“You’re a big boy, you can read whatever you want, Spooky. That is not what I’m thinking about. How did Patterson erase his driver’s license photo and his military ID photo?”
“It’s been fifty years, they don’t check those things very often. Any good hacker could have done it.”
“You think my eighty-six year old grandfather is a hacker?”
“No, I think he paid someone to do it.”
“Oh,” I sighed. “I’m tired of sitting here. We should be doing something, busting down doors and making an arrest.”
“You tell me where to go and we’ll do exactly that.”
“Bah, details.” I got up and began to pace the room. “Hasn’t our crack forensics team learned anything yet?”
“There was some dirt on the floor, but it could have come from anywhere. Someone showered and left black hairs in the drain, but we expected that. Fingerprints match some cold cases that were already attributed to Patterson. We don’t know where he lives or where he gets his money.”
“But we know that Joe, Gertrude and August are probably on his hit list.”
“So?”
“So, Gertrude and August are in federal custody in Kansas City, but my Uncle Joe is in the Boone County Jail.”
“You think Joe is next on his list?” Malachi asked.
“Could be,” I shrugged.
“Let me get this straight, he drives to St. Charles, kills three men there. Drives down here to Sikeston, kills the teacher. Now he’s making his way back to Columbia? And he started in Kansas City. Why not kill a closer target?”
“Does he have a closer target?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know who he intends to kill. The list could be six names or it could be six hundred names. We don’t know enough about him to make that call. No one does.”
“I believe there is one person who does,” I replied.
“You want to interrogate Gertrude?” Malachi frowned.
“No. I want you to interrogate her, with your new FBI buddy. I’m just going to watch from a different room.”
“Why me?”
“Because you can be scary as hell.” I answered. “It’s either you or Brent Timmons, but I think letting the Tallahassee Terror interrogate my great-aunt is illegal.”
“Why him?” Malachi asked.
“Because, at the moment, I cannot think of any other psychopath who wouldn’t mind roughing the old lady up.”
“I’m not going to rough up your great-aunt. She might be evil, but we need information, not speculation.”
“She is evil.” I agreed with another, longer, heavier sigh. “Someone should rough her up.”
“I should put my family in protective custody,” Malachi suddenly grabbed his phone and started typing furiously again.
“You didn’t think of it when I did?” I asked.
“No,” Malachi admitted.
I let that drop. Malachi’s family was rarely his first thought. They were rarely his second or third thought either. He attended holiday and birthday celebrations with them, called every week to talk to his mother, but it was mostly a courtesy call to let them know he was alive and doing fine. If they spent more than fifteen minutes on the phone together, it was unusual.
“I need air,” I announced.
“You may enter the hallway, it’s been secured, but you can’t leave the floor,” Malachi informed me, picking his tablet back up.
Grumbling and rolling my eyes, I entered the hallway. Hotel rooms aren’t the worst places on the planet, hotel hallways are. They were always depressing. The lighting was bad, there were peculiar odors, ones even I couldn’t identify, but attributed to the mass of people that traversed them and hide behind the locked doors. The carpets were dirty with tracks where the maids ran carts through them every day. Even the walls were dreary, covered in a drab paint that was supposed to be a neutral color.
I leaned against one of these horrid walls, trying to clear my mind. My normal logical mind seemed to have deserted me. I hoped it was temporary.
A short older man walked out of his room, pulling his door shut behind him. The man had dark hair, a touch of gray at the temples, but nothing more. He turned and began walking away from me, a silver handled cane in his hand. Surely it wasn’t that easy.
“US Marshal, stop,” I ordered. The man kept walking. I shouted the order again, this time louder. The man continued towards the elevator. I had my doubts about him being Patterson, but it wouldn’t be the first time I had been stalked up close and personal. I began moving down the hall at a fast walk to catch up with him. He looked over his shoulder just a little and took off.
For an older man, he was quick. I had to push myself into a run, shouting for him to stop. My options were tackle him or Taser him. Because of his age, I wasn’t really sure about Tasering him. The electric shot could trigger heart attacks and nerve damage, with the way mine was set, it would probably cause his heart to explode.
I tackled him, putting my weight into it, we both tumbled to the ground. He kicked and made strange noises. I frowned as I got him flipped over. He did resemble the identi-kit sketch, but I doubted he was Patterson Clachan. The strange noises were him trying to vocalize, probably telling me to get the hell off of him.
Doors were opening and Malachi appeared next to us. I stood up, held out my hand to the poor man I had tackled. He gave me the finger, which I admitted I deserved, and struggled to get up on his own. Malachi reached down and gave the old timer a hand, practically pulling him to his feet.
He gestured wildly at me. I hung my head. Malachi signed back. He’d run because he’d thought I was crazy. He hadn’t heard me shouting for him to stop. I had assaulted a deaf man. Now, I was really glad I hadn’t Tasered him.
Missing
Patterson sat in his hotel room, pissed at Malachi. He knew he shouldn’t be mad at Malachi, it wasn’t his fault that the FBI was lying to everyone. He was following orders. It was required for him to keep his job, but he was still angry. Something told him that Aislinn was fine, grandfather’s intuition maybe, but Malachi kept answering her phone. If he wanted to talk to Malachi, he’d call Malachi.
As if to confirm his suspicion, a few hours earlier, a van had pulled up in front of Malachi’s family’s house and ushered the entire group inside. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was a protective move and that the men and women in masks were part of a federal extraction team.
He cruised the streets, not really looking for anyone. Joe had a scheduled court appearance tomorrow. He would be in attendance, at least for the transport. Last night, he’d readied his spot near the sheriff’s department which housed the j
ail.
Sadly, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself in the meantime. He’d considered carrying out another revenge, but that would alert the police to his presence. He’d made an art out of not being discovered. A serial killer couldn’t kill for fifty years without learning the art of concealment and moderation.
But as he cruised the streets, he wanted to kill. No, needed to kill. The urges he’d been fighting for over half his life were all he had left. Some people enjoyed weddings and the birth of their grandchildren and if he was being honest with himself, he had enjoyed these events. Without Lila though, they had seemed hollow, like something was missing. Unless someone kidnapped Aislinn Cain and forced her into marriage, those events were also over. She would never willingly marry. She would never have children. If Nyleena lived, she might, but Nyleena was forty. Whatever biological urges she had to reproduce were being overwhelmed by the passage of time.
He stopped at an all-night diner near Broadway. Inside was a varied crowd; drunken college students, old people who couldn’t or didn’t sleep anymore, and other people that looked tired but unwilling to give into the callings of the Sandman. He ordered a hearty breakfast. Age might have been trying to suck him into the abyss, but he kept himself fit, very fit, meaning he could still indulge in a hearty breakfast once in a while without adding to his waist line.
Another group of drunken students entered the diner. Patterson checked his watch. The bars were just starting to close. He wasn’t sure what day it was, he had never been very good at keeping track of them, but he guessed it was a weekend from the number of people in the diner.
Behind the drunken students, a group of younger kids came in from the cold to partake of the after-hours ritual. Patterson watched them all as they found booths and tables. They were loud, annoying. He didn’t like young people. They frittered their life away on trivial things; fights about boyfriends and/or girlfriends, partying, trying to be popular. In his eighty-six years, he had discovered none of these things were important. Family was important. Being yourself was important. Being happy was important. Drunken people felt happy, but a chemically induced happiness wasn’t the same as real happiness. Popular people often hid who they really were so that everyone would like them, especially girls. And most college students were more interested in their parents’ money than their well-being. This last one, could be changed, most grew out of it, but it required them to graduate college and begin their own families for them to appreciate their parents.