by Hadena James
“Did you ever kill another lion?”
“No, I never came across another beast as pitiful as that one, and it was pitiful; rejected, dejected, prideless in more than one sense of the word. I was its last great white hope, and it fell in the attempt to conquer. That is more than most people ever manage. There was no reason to feel sorry for the creature though, it died nobly enough. ”
“I knew that,” I said, “about lions, I mean. They used to fight lions and bears on the frontier, as a spectator sport. I have never heard of the lion winning because the bear’s natural fighting posture is to swipe at the head. In the case of a lion, that powerful swipe was all it took to end the fight.”
“That is just one of the areas where you surpass me,” Patterson said. “For everything I am, have been, and will be, you will always be ahead of me. You’re smarter, faster, capable of a degree of compassion, and manage to be both human and monster at the same time. It makes me very proud of you.”
“Compassion?” I asked.
“You feel for the lion, both in my story and in your own. Perhaps it is easier to feel for animals because they work on instincts and people do not. I don’t know the answer, but I saw your face and you cared that I had killed a lion.”
“He was just doing what lions do.”
“Do you regret that I killed him instead of the other way around?” Patterson asked. I thought for a long time before I answered.
“No, but I can still feel like the lion was short-changed,” I finally said.
Two
Sometimes, all a girl wants is a little peace and quiet. I had not received much of that in the last month. Someone snitched to my mother, Elle, and Nyleena, about them putting a hole in my skull. Xavier swears it was me. I don’t believe him, but I had no evidence to the contrary, I had been on really good drugs immediately following the cranium cracking. Ativan for the panic I had experienced during surgery and then Demerol for the pain. Combined, the two drugs had removed the filter between my brain and mouth and made me forget most of it.
Thankfully, no one was holding it against me. I had said some things I would not have normally said, like telling Trevor he reminded me of a more flamboyant Elton John, or even thought of telling Xavier that he needed to find a nice guy to settle down with. I remembered these things only after being reminded of them, as the gang had joked about them.
It turns out that my blood disorder is great at healing wounds of the flesh. They heal a little faster than average, but not as wonderful at healing wounds in the bone, they heal a little slower. The remodeling on the circle cut in my skull was about a week behind.
“How was your visit with your grandfather?” My mother asked as she scurried about the kitchen, cooking lunch. My unit was out on a hunt, tracking down a serial killer in New Jersey. I felt this was more of a lost cause than tracking down serial killers in Detroit, but that was just me. I didn’t like Jersey. I’d been stuck in their airport overnight on one too many occasions.
“It was a meeting of psychopaths, the entertainment flowed like wine,” I told her.
“Aislinn Cain, don’t sass me.”
“It’s true. He told me a bullshit story about a lion. I told him I was returning to active duty as soon as possible. Psychopaths lie, that’s kind of their thing. Even if you ignore my predisposition to psychopathic tendencies, I am still a sociopath and they lie. It’s kind of their thing too. So, we lied to each other and managed to fill the hour and then I came home. I considered plotting world domination, but the guards were there and they would have heard.”
“You are impossible.” My mother threw her hands into the air. “However, he wasn’t lying about the lion.” She giggled at the word play. “He has the scar from it. It was during the war.”
“I’m sure he lied about other stuff.”
“I hope you are giving him a chance. He’s not a terrible person.”
“He’s a serial killer.”
“Well, there is that. He wouldn’t win any humanitarian awards, but he’s always been good to us.”
“Please tell me that you have not been taking money from Patterson.”
“Okay,” my mother shrugged.
“Jeez, Mom.”
“Sometimes, it was tight after your father died. Patterson wrote me a check every month. One of the many times he used his powers for good.” She put her hand on her hip and pushed it out. I knew that stance. “You and he have that in common too. You use your powers for good.”
“Mom, I love you and at this exact moment, I’m considering burying you in the backyard. Can we not talk about Patterson? I am trying to come to terms with it and establish a relationship with him. If we talk about it, I start questioning my motives.”
“Fine,” my mother went back into the kitchen.
“What are you cooking? You’ve been in there for an hour. Did you have to slaughter the cow or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” My mother’s voice came from the kitchen. “Xavier requested a low fat, low sodium diet for a while. I am making veggie taco pizza, and it takes a while to get the crust just right. It should be crispy and thin, but not cardboard.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s better on crispy crust.”
“No, not that. Why did Xavier request a low sodium, low fat diet?”
“Because of your migraines, dear.”
“Oh,” I said as if that explained it all. It explained nothing. It seemed an arbitrary request and I would have to ask Xavier about it when he wasn’t shooting at bad guys.
“Why don’t you work on that case thingy you were working on? It sounded interesting.”
The “case thingy” was busy work. Our computer system was designed to catch patterns between multiple murders across many states. However, it had a flaw, it couldn’t account for evolution or devolution. A left-handed serial killer might slit the throats of five victims, which is a very messy crime, and they would be linked as a possible case. However, if another victim shows up, eviscerated by a left-handed knife wielder, it wouldn’t be linked, but it was probably the same killer. Signatures always stay the same, but killing styles can and do change. So sometimes, human eyes and logic had to go through the database to see if any kills could be linked, despite the different kill pattern.
The work varied. At times, it was interesting, other times it was dull. It was also imperfect, just because I saw a link between left-handed knife wielders, didn’t mean one really existed. However, I was uniquely good at putting cases together and having them right. I understood serial killers much better than I understood the average person.
My living room had been turned into a war room for these activities. I was technically on the disabled list, assigned light duty. When you chase serial killers, there isn’t much light duty work. Whether I went through the database or not, I was getting paid. This just filled the hours that I would normally spend working, and it was helpful. Our Jersey killer had been thought to have six bodies under his belt. I had identified seven more possibilities.
The Jersey killer was raping his victims before chopping off their heads. Beheadings are interesting for several reasons. First, they are hard work. Despite what the movies say, it takes work to get through the spine. A weapon can move easily through the throat, but then it hits the spine and all bets are off. Rumor says it took seven tries to behead Anne Boleyn. I believe that is probably correct. Beheading didn’t get perfected until the invention of the guillotine. Second, it is really messy. It is messier than cutting a person’s throat. Cutting a throat creates arterial spray from the arteries and veins that feed our brains. However, when you cut the spine, there is more arterial spray along with spinal fluid. Most of the time, the spinal fluid leaks from the wound, but once in a while it will spray out as well. Finally, there are more near beheadings than true beheadings. It takes a while to figure out where to cut to get through the spine. Beheaders usually have practice victims before the first canonical victim. In this case, four practice
victims matched the pattern. Another three had their heads removed, but the killer used different tools, trying to figure out the best one. The other six were much cleaner removals, with the sixth being the best. Based on the level of skill of each beheading, it isn’t difficult to go backwards and find the early work. Our killer had settled on a chainsaw, but it had taken a while to get there. He’d tried several other saws first, including a jigsaw and a Sawzall.
Having assisted the team, I was now looking for serial killers in Kansas City. There were three that we knew of, but there were probably three more that we didn’t. Cities like Kansas City had a dark side that was easy to hide, most notably in the Missouri River. Few waterways had the notoriety that the Missouri River held. It was true that serial killers often dumped bodies in rivers, but they were usually found.
The Missouri was different. The current was swift with very strong undertows. The water was dark brown, because the mud and silt never really settled with the current. Large scavengers, like catfish, were plentiful and there were some very large catfish in the river. It was polluted and smelled, keeping most people from swimming in it. There was a limit on the number of fish that could be eaten from the river because of pollution, but the best cover was that it just wasn’t a great place to hang out. People did it, but they weren’t plentiful. This meant a body could float and still not be found for days or weeks. When bodies turned up they were scavenged, decomposed, and a lot times no longer in the Missouri, but caught in a lock and dam on the Mississippi River.
For the tracking of Kansas City serial killers, whiteboards had been dragged into my living room. My mother had a strong constitution and didn’t object to the crime scene photos, or my scribblings unless Elle and the kids were coming over, then she draped sheets over them.
I had been staring at one whiteboard for almost an hour. It bothered me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why, yet. During that time, my mother had been making veggie taco pizza and humming in the kitchen, interrupting me whenever she liked. That wasn’t the reason it bothered me, it just kept me from figuring out why it bothered me.
The deaths were all gunshots. A few were double homicides. Neither of these things was particularly interesting. There was a list of suspects, seventeen to be exact. That was far too many suspects, especially since they all had alibis, but it was the list I stared at.
“Pizza’s done,” my mother called. I got off the couch and went into the dining room. My mother had instilled in me a sense of right and wrong, and it was wrong to eat anywhere but the dining room at the table. I had a huge, hand-carved table in the garage. Patterson had made it. I refused to put it in the kitchen, but I hadn’t convinced myself to get rid of it yet.
“It’s good,” I told my mother as I took the first bite, “but we could do takeout. I have money and it isn’t that hard to get food delivered here. I cannot figure out why you insist on making all my meals.”
“Because you’re healing,” my mother said. “You know, I was thinking of the story about Patterson and the lion. While it did happen, it might be an allegory as well.”
“I thought we were not going to talk about Patterson.”
“This is my last thought on the matter. Patterson was born in early August, making him a Leo. Maybe it was about conquering himself as well as the lion.”
“That’s it!” I jumped up from the table. “You are a genius.”
“Weird,” my mother muttered.
“Are you busy?” I asked Malachi as he answered the phone.
“I was sleeping. It was a long night,” Malachi replied.
“Boozing or serial killers?” I asked.
“Hydrochloric acid tossed onto me by a Krokodil cook, followed by a genius trying to wash it off by hosing me down with water. I have some burns to my chest, stomach, and arms.”
“Switched to hunting down drug dealers?” Krokodil was the newest, worst drug available to illegal drug users. It had earned the nickname “Flesh Eater” because Krokodil cooks used hydrochloric acid and formaldehyde in it. Using it literally rotted the flesh on the bone while the user lived to find a different spot to shoot up at.
“It was an accident,” Malachi said. “We followed a suspect into what appeared to be a vacant house and found someone cooking Krokodil in the basement.”
“Did you get him?”
“After he tossed the acid on me, Green put seven in his chest.” Malachi was still in Detroit.
“I meant the serial killer.”
“No, but we start again tomorrow. After the acid burns have gotten good scabs on them. What did you want?”
“I need you to call the Kansas City PD. I found one of their serial killers. Homicide is calling him The Shooter, sort of mimics Son of Sam kills, but I found something interesting in the case file. They had a suspect named Thad Cozie; he’s the killer.”
“And you know this because you are psychic?”
“No, I know this because my mother is brilliant.” I answered. “So, who else did random shootings in the 1960s and 70s? The Zodiac was never captured. Thad Cozie is an anagram of The Zodiac. I think if they look a little closer, they will find some stabbings too. Also, as I stare at the murder book, I cannot help but notice that he has not left anyone alive, but I do not think it’s from a lack of trying. One victim was shot once, in the arm, it just happened to hit the artery and the guy bled out. In addition, near all the shootings, they have found the same ten-digit code. They thought it was a phone number, I think it’s a crude attempt to leave a cypher. Let’s be honest, cyphers are tricky business and creating one of numbers that looks like a telephone number sort of ruins the effect. No one got it, because it doesn’t make sense when you think of it as a phone number.”
“Did you crack the cypher?” Malachi asked.
“No, I didn’t even try. I think it will be gibberish, just like the cyphers of The Zodiac. That’s the easy part of a cypher, it isn’t hard to write down random numbers and letters and make it look like a code.”
“The Zodiac contacted the papers.”
“The Zodiac was forty years ago, when the papers cared. Besides, I’m not arguing that this guy is the original. I’m arguing he’s a copycat and an idiot.”
“Why am I calling?” Malachi asked. “You could call them.”
“You didn’t have a tumor removed a month ago from your brain. Even my bosses are having trouble taking me seriously. If it comes from you, they will investigate. If it comes from me, they will consider it jumping at shadows. It is possible that the strange ass name is real, but it seems unlikely given the nature of the killings and the anagram. Thad Cozie came to be on the list after an anonymous tip. I think he called in the tip. He might have been calling in to report a murder and lost his nerve, or he might be toying with the police, or he might just be an idiot. I don’t know. I know he has a solid alibi for two of the murders.”
“Solid alibi?”
“Yes, he was playing cards both nights.”
“I’m not sure how that works, Ace.”
“Locard’s Principle was created during a murder investigation in which the killer had set all the clocks forward an hour to create an alibi. You get some drunken 20-somethings together, change a clock, and even in the digital age, it’s easy to establish an alibi.”
“We have watches, cell phones, and tablets,” Malachi pointed out.
“We also have strong booze in a closed off room. One of the alibi witnesses commented that they went through seven bottles of whiskey. They all passed out in the room and woke up there the next morning, both times.”
“That’s thin, Ace. It’s not the early 1900s. It’s the digital age.”
“True, but when you are getting drunk with your buddies, how often do you pull out your phone and check the time?”
“I’ll call them. Tell them to check him out more thoroughly.”
Three
Sherlock Holmes, I was not. Despite my love for the fictional character, I wasn’t much of an armchair detective. H
olmes would have stared at my whiteboards and cleared up every case. I had eeked out a lead, sort of, on one. It would be chalked up as a win if I was right and Thad Cozie was a serial killer, but it still didn’t make me a detective, armchair or otherwise.
My meanderings through unsolved cases had brought a gun for hire to the forefront, but judging by the files, it was already known that he was a hitman. He was very good from what I could tell. There had never been a single witness, just the unusual bullet, shot from a Luger.
The bullet didn’t contain lead. They were made of tungsten carbide. No casing had ever been found, but the tungsten carbide was enough to pierce most armor. Tungsten carbide wasn’t common as the primary metal in a bullet, but was usually used for the jacket, and the most unusual aspect of the bullet was the markings. The metal kept it from mushrooming or deforming, keeping the stamp pristine as it passed through the body. They were all marked “Apex.”