Yet this one felt different. There was a pall cast over the green rolling fields.
It was official. His mojo was back.
* * *
Nicole tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. “What are we doing here?”
The doctor smiled as he circled her. “I think it’s clear. I am pitting myself against a worthy opponent.”
“We don’t have to pit anything against anything,” Nicole said. They had gone down into a sub-basement below the barn. Why was it always a dank, smelly sub-basement? There was another steel-barred cage in the corner. Had he brought other women here?
She knew from the lack of defensive wounds that Wallflower certainly hadn’t let them fight. As a matter of fact, he had taken the others like he had Megan. A blitz, a surprise attack.
This killer certainly was evolving quickly.
“Oh, I think I do,” Rodden said. “I read the file. Special Agent Harbinger called me impotent. A coward. A serial killer groping to find his identity. Well, I think I’ve found mine.”
Nicole remembered Kent putting those taunts in the file. He believed that the killer had inserted himself in the case and wanted to bait the guy. It had been brilliant, of course. Unfortunately, Nicole was going to pay the price for antagonizing the killer.
“We aren’t exactly evenly matched,” Nicole said, trying to buy time. “You outweigh me by fifty pounds and I’m still weak from the sedation.” Oh, and the thousands of fly eggs floating around in my belly.
Rodden shook his head. “Please, detective, I am a doctor. The sedative effects burned off hours ago from all the adrenaline coursing through your body. And I might have the weight advantage, but you have the experience. I think we are perfectly matched.”
So this was happening. She really was going to have to fight a serial killer with her bare hands. Wouldn’t Kent be so smug, always going on and on about how she over-relied on her gun.
Nicole hoped that all the training Kent had given her had sunk in. One of the first things he’d taught her was to keep the opponent distracted and, hopefully, off balance.
“So what happened, Rodden? You were a normal-looking guy until last year.”
The doctor tsked at her. “Detective, you don’t think that I read up on the mind games you were going to try on me?”
Nicole suppressed a smile. By answering her at all, she had done her job. Kent would have completely ignored her. Engaging at all was keeping Rodden distracted.
“Usually, there is a trigger of loss,” Nicole went on. “Clearly not your job. So family. Home. I take it from your using a hooker that you weren’t married. So who died?”
Rodden threw a punch, missing wildly. Nicole ducked under it easily. The miss-aim told her that she’d struck a nerve.
“Father?” Nicole asked, but got no response. “Mother?”
Oh, that got a sharp intake of breath and a dilation of the pupils.
“Your mother died? What did she mean to you? What did she do to you?”
Rodden charged, arms spread to tackle her, but left himself vulnerable. Nicole straightened her arm, hitting him in the solar plexus. The guy never got the chance to close those arms around her. She danced back out of the way.
Nicole was really guessing here, but what did Kent always say? Guessing was your subconscious’s way of expressing itself. She was going to trust her gut here.
“Were you her little man?” Nicole asked, making sure that Rodden got the intimation.
The doctor ground his teeth. So her gut was right. Early sexual abuse was perhaps the most common marker for a serial killer who preferred sexually mature women. It would explain a lot.
Nicole had done a fair amount of work with abused children. She knew the complex relationship they had with their abuser. On the one hand they were terrified of them, but on the other they loved them. They were their parents. Many times, they lied, defending their abusers. If they lost their abuser, who would they have?
“How did it start?” Nicole asked.
Rodden came at her, this time his arms tight across his chest. Nicole stepped out of the way, kneeing him in the groin. The doctor doubled over, sputtering.
“I can do this all day long,” Nicole said, trying to channel the profiler. Of course, she couldn’t do this all day. Nicole gauged that maybe she had another hour, tops, before he finally wore her down.
Where in the hell was Kent?
* * *
Kent charged up the steps to the farmhouse. He knew that he didn’t have a warrant, or even probable cause. All he had was sheep. But you know what? He’d take it. He’d cracked cases on less.
Just as he went to kick down the door, he heard a pounding. And sobbing. Was that sobbing? If ever there were exigent circumstances, it was now. Kent leapt over the steps and hit the ground running. He circled around the farmhouse to find a trap door for a storm cellar.
Someone pounded on the doors from the other side.
“Nicole?”
“No,” a sob came. “Megan.”
The missing girl. Kent grabbed the pin that was holding the lock together and pulled it out. A young woman stumbled from the cellar, raising her arm to shield her eyes.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Kent said.
The young woman wrapped her arms around him. “You must be Kent?”
“Yes,” he answered. “How did you know that?”
“Nicole said you’d find us. She swore it.”
Kent allowed the girl to put all of her weight onto him. She seemed on the verge of collapse. But he needed answers before she swooned.
“Where is Nicole?”
Megan shrugged. “He took her a few minutes ago.”
Kent felt dampness on Megan’s side. “Did he inject you?”
The girl nodded, sobbing again.
“Did he inject Nicole?”
Sobbing harder, Megan nodded again.
Kent pointed to the hillside where the sheep were just now cresting. “Head over that hill and there is help.”
For a moment, she didn’t let loose of him.
“Go!” Kent urged, giving her a good boost in that direction. The girl got her feet under her and headed toward Ruben.
Kent surveyed the landscape. There was a large barn to the left, a smaller outbuilding to the right, and what looked like a carport for a tractor. Farms.
He chose the barn. In a few strides, he was to the barn. There didn’t appear to be anything here, but that’s how the house had looked, as well. Kent stared at the floor.
“Nicole!”
* * *
“Kent!” Nicole yelled back while avoiding a roundhouse kick from Rodden.
Instead of being upset, a smile spread across the serial killer’s face. “Finally. I feared that your Kent wasn’t quite as proficient as his book made him out to be.”
From his pocket, Rodden pulled out a knife and brandished it toward her. Nicole flew back. “How is this fair?”
He slashed at her, forcing her deeper into the corner as Kent kicked at the ceiling above her. Nicole had no other option than to back into the small cell. Once there, Rodden eased up and closed the cell door with a clang. He then locked it.
Nicole tugged at the door. “What are you doing?”
“Did you really think that I was going to be satisfied by taking you down?”
She really should have been insulted by that, but at this point, feeling the creepy crawlies in her belly, she was more than happy to be protected by the bars.
“Oh no,” Rodden said. “My dominating you will come in the form of forcing you to watch me kill your boyfriend the preeminent profiler.”
A board came crashing down from above, streaming sunlight in. Another kick and Kent had another board out. Soon, very soon, he could fit through the hole.
“Don’t!” Nicole yelled. “It’s a trap.”
Kent kicked again, then jumped through the hole, landing gracefully before her. “Of course it’s a trap,” he said with that smile of his
. “It’s always a trap.”
“Behind you!” Nicole yelled as Rodden slashed at Kent’s back.
The profiler stayed low, spinning on his heel, sweeping his leg out, knocking the serial killer to the ground.
“He’s got a knife,” Nicole warned Kent, but he seemed to already know that, as he took off his jacket and wrapped it around his right arm.
Rodden came up swinging, but Kent blocked the blow. The blade sliced through his jacket, but did not draw blood.
“The trigger was his mother’s death last year,” Nicole informed him as the two circled one another. “And it seems that she sexually abused him.”
“Oh how pedestrian,” Kent said with a roll of the eyes. “Abuse, blah, blah blah.”
Rodden swung and missed because Kent had read the intent and stepped out of the way, then punched the doctor so hard that his head snapped to the side.
“You serial killers are so maudlin,” Kent said, dancing out of the way of another swing. “You all have to build your little drama plays and act them out.”
Another swing, but this one left a line of blood across Kent’s chest. “Seriously, if you guys would just audition for some actual plays, you might get some of this melodrama out of your system.”
Rodden’s cheeks flushed red as he charged forward. Nicole hoped that Kent knew what he was doing. There was keeping a suspect off balance, and there was just enraging him.
* * *
Kent’s primary emotion wasn’t fear, or even relief that he’d found Nicole alive. It was pride. Pride in his girl. Despite having a belly full of pre-maggots and being attacked by a vicious serial killer, she’d kept profiling the suspect. Now that had taken some stone cold balls.
He wanted to rush over and heap Nicole with praise, but, you know, he was facing the same vicious serial killer with a knife, so there was that.
Whatever doubt Kent had had before melted away. A psychopath in a basement? That, Kent could do. Even against a knife, with his eyes blindfolded.
Time to turn up the heat, though. They needed to get Nicole to the hospital as soon as possible.
“So was she a whore?” Kent asked. That got a good eyebrow raise from Rodden.
“No,” the man said, but that was a lie. His expression couldn’t hide the shame and guilt.
“And she took you with her on her tricks? Is that how rural whores roll?”
Rodden’s jaw clenched. Another affirmative.
“You watched?” Kent asked, already knowing the answer.
“Dirty sheep,” Rodden spat.
Kent was assuming that wasn’t a metaphor, but actual dirty sheep. He’d met a few of them himself. “What about the sheep?”
“No,” Rodden blurted. “You aren’t going to psychoanalyze me.”
“Sorry, buddy, but I already am.” Even Rodden’s denial helped him build the profile.
The killer’s eyes glazed over as they always did. As much as they hated their pasts, the events created the perfect storm of psychosis so that they couldn’t help but want to share their story.
“When Mother would go on her dates, she would take me along and have me play with my trucks on the other side of the ridge.”
So that was the rural equivalent to stuffing the kid in the closet while you turned tricks.
“But, one day I heard her crying out and ran over…”
Rodden didn’t need to describe what he saw. They all knew.
“I ran, ran as far as I could,” Rodden said. “Then found one of the missing ewes. She’d been dead for several days…”
Again, Kent could fill in the blanks. A young child’s first sexual images wrapped together with a bloated, rotting corpse. So much dovetailed together.
“And you somehow think that justifies what you’ve done?” Kent challenged.
The man’s eyes cleared and he smiled. “What else could I do?”
“Besides not kill people and inject fly eggs into their belly, oh, I don’t know. A lot,” Kent said as he continued to circle the psychopath. “Look, yours is a sad story, no doubt, but go to any women’s shelter or sexual abuse hotline and you can hear a hell of a lot worse. Abuse doesn’t equal killer.”
“Ah, but you must admit it does forge us. Gives us our particular flare.”
That, Kent couldn’t argue with. Would Rodden have turned out like this if his mother hadn’t been turning tricks out on the back forty? Would he have been as traumatized if he hadn’t stumbled onto that carcass right after he saw his mother having sex? Would he have hated women as much if his mother hadn’t taken him into her bed?
Probably no, to all those questions. But Kent believed in self-determination—otherwise, they were all in trouble.
Rodden lunged with the knife thinking to catch Kent off guard. Hardly.
CHAPTER 20
Nicole watched as Kent avoided the knife yet again. How did he do it? And while, at the same time, agitating the hell out of the suspect?
After hearing Rodden’s story, Nicole could almost sympathize with him. Almost, but not quite. Not as her belly rumbled. Was it hunger, or the newly hatched maggots? Nicole was going with hunger. When was the last time she’d eaten?
Serial killers were seldom big on room service. Not that she would have eaten anything that Rodden had given to her.
“You and I,” Rodden said to the profiler, “are one and the same.”
“You guys always say that,” Kent said, cocking his head. “Yet here I am, always the only one with a badge.”
“Underneath, though—underneath, we are the same,” Rodden insisted. “I knew from the moment they brought the nasal swabs to me that I had a target on my back. I’ve read your file. I knew you were coming to kill me.”
Kent snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. I came to neutralize you.”
“See, we are the same. You can’t even admit to what you truly are—a state-sanctioned serial killer. Just because you kill serial killers doesn’t make you any different from me. You stalk us. You kill us. What’s the difference?”
Kent pointed to Nicole. “The difference is I never want to see the look that Nicole is giving you. Never.”
At this point, though, she wouldn’t mind Rodden just a little bit dead.
“So you aren’t going to kill me?” the doctor asked.
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Kent replied. “We’ll just have to see how this rolls.”
Kent undid his belt and then, holding onto the buckle, lashed out, using it like a whip. Rodden jumped back, surprised by the maneuver. That was classic Kent, though. Rule number two was use your surroundings, with the codicil that you use what you have.
Kent cracked his belt again. “Okay, now this officially just got fun.”
* * *
Ruben waved the patrol cars to the area just outside the barn. As the uniformed police piled out, Ruben pointed to the house “I need every square inch of this property searched.”
The men stood and stared at him for a moment. “Now!”
The cops scattered.
Ruben turned. Did he hear a scream on the breeze? Searching out over the farmland, he found a young woman coming over the crest of the hill, sobbing and crying. Ruben raced across the grassy pasture and caught her just before she fell.
“Megan?”
She was covered in dirt and mud. Her blonde hair was plastered to her face and there were tear streaks down her grimy face.
“How did you get out?”
“Kent came,” Megan said with a gulp.
Of course Kent came. Last Ruben had seen, he was following some sheep. But then again, of course the sheep led him to the victim. Didn’t they always?
“Where were you?”
Megan had to swallow several times before she could answer. “The farmhouse just over there.”
Ruben waved the nearest beat cop over. “Get your men to that house. And get me a bus.”
If Kent had found the victim, where was Nicole? “Where did Kent go?”
“To find Nic
ole,” Megan answered, sinking deeper into his arms.
Why in the hell hadn’t Kent called it in? Why hadn’t he called for backup? Unfortunately, Ruben knew the answer to that all too well. Kent wanted to be alone when he found Rodden. He wanted the fewest witnesses possible to see what came next.
What Kent liked to call “saving the taxpayers’ money.”
Kent’s belief was that serial killers were unredeemable. That truly there was something broken inside. The only way to neutralize their threat was to kill them. And Ruben had no problem with the death penalty in cases like that—however, he didn’t believe any one person should be judge, jury, and executioner.
Ruben waved the next cop he saw over. “Make sure she gets treatment, ASAP.”
The man nodded, taking Megan off of Ruben’s hands. He drew his gun, heading over the ridge. Whether he would have to use it against the suspect or Kent was yet to be seen.
* * *
Kent let Rodden take another swing. The guy sure liked his knife. Kent cracked the belt, catching the doctor on the cheek. A thin line of blood drizzled down his cheek. Rodden dabbed at it, then stared for a long while, as if he couldn’t believe he’d been bloodied.
“How does it feel?” Kent asked.
“Exhilarating,” Rodden replied.
“Yes, we know,” Kent said. “You are all superior. Beyond the concerns of ordinary mankind. You are the next step in our evolution.”
“See?” Rodden said. “How can you understand us so well if you aren’t one of us?”
Nut jobs, man. They all roll the same.
“Repetition,” Kent answered. “Rote learning. You hear the same grandiose speech enough times, you can simply repeat it.”
“If that’s what you need to think,” Rodden said. “I’ve read your papers, you know. Put them all together, and do you realize that they sound a lot like a manifesto?”
Rodden was getting on Kent’s last nerve.
Time to give the good doctor what he so desperately wanted.
Kent faked a charge to the left. Rodden responded by guarding his left. Kent snapped the belt, wrapping the tail end around the doctor’s knife arm. With a jerk, he brought them face-to-face, yet Rodden’s knife was out of commission. Before the pollen expert could process what had just happened, Kent grabbed the hilt of the knife, twisted it around, and buried it in Rodden’s belly.
The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection) Page 54