by Hadena James
Victor Jones was unprepared for me to burst through his front door. It shattered and cracked as I put my full weight against it. The hinges squealed as they were pulled out of the frame. Victor had a belt raised over his head, caught in mid-strike, he didn’t know whether to follow through with the motion, drop it, or change his target.
I didn’t give him time to make a decision. My shoulder caught him at diaphragm level and my momentum picked him up. His feet dangled for a moment, before he slammed into the wall behind him. The sheetrock cracked and caved in where his body landed. I drew back and landed a blow squarely on his jaw before he could gather his breath. He yelped. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, twisting it around my hands, and yanked him out of the broken wall.
Lauren Jones rushed into the room. She grabbed her mother and the two huddled together near the chair I had vacated minutes earlier. They both sobbed. I looked at their tears and felt nothing.
Victor struggled to get his footing, as I jerked him around by his shirt. He tugged against me in futile spastic motions. His hands flailed at my face and arms, trying to stop me from manhandling him. I grabbed one of those flailing arms above the wrist. It twisted in my hand and I yanked, feeling the bone snap beneath my hand. Victor cried out in pain, his flailing becoming more desperate. His hand, limp and useless, was already showing signs of swelling. The remaining good hand clawed at me, raking dirty, broken fingernails across my skin. They created welts, but didn’t draw blood.
I punched him again, this time connecting with his ribs. The air exited his lungs with a great whooshing noise. His knees buckled and his back arched. I landed another body blow that forced us both to the ground. My hand untangled from his shirt, letting me stay on my knees as he curled into a fetal position. I stood up and stared at him. He was injured but not bleeding. The darkness wanted blood. Without thinking, I raised my steel-plated boot up and brought it down on his lower leg. There was a snapping noise followed by a scream. When my boot hit the floor, it left a bloody footprint. The bone stuck out of the leg. Blood and marrow oozed from it.
Gabriel touched my shoulder, cautiously. I turned and glared at him for a moment. Then the darkness lifted as Victor Jones began sobbing at my feet. He blubbered unintelligibly through snot and tears. Emily and Lauren stood up, both seemed afraid to approach. They clung to each other.
“I don’t think he’ll be hurting either of you again.” Gabriel took them outside.
I stooped down, getting as close as possible to Victor.
“Not so big and tough now. You got your ass kicked by a girl. The front page tomorrow will read, ‘US Marshal Aislinn Cain takes down abusive husband’, and it’ll have a photo of you, being wheeled out on a gurney, and me, standing beside the gurney, putting you in handcuffs, you son of a bitch. I know you didn’t kill your son, but you created the circumstances that made him vulnerable to attack. Every time you even think about raising your voice let alone your hand, I hope you remember how much that broken leg hurts. Because next time, I’ll break open your fucking skull and scoop your tiny, warped brain out with my bare hands.” I stood back up, checked my clothing for blood, and made room for the paramedics.
“Wow,” one said as he looked at Victor’s leg.
“He resisted arrest,” I answered.
“Did you kick him with lead boots?”
“No, I stomped on him with steel-plated boots.”
“Sir, I’m going to roll you onto a board,” the paramedic said. I’d seen it done plenty of times, but never as roughly as these two did it. When Victor cried out in pain, I would have sworn one of them gave a small smile. I guess I wasn’t the only one that thought he had gotten what he deserved.
Eight
“Feel better?” Lucas asked as we sat in a police conference room.
“Are you talking about the chunk of brain they removed, or breaking Victor Jones’s leg?”
“Both.”
“Yes, much,” I answered. “However, my favorite part of this neurological roller coaster has been the return of my ability to break someone’s leg and enjoy it.”
“He deserved it,” a detective said as he entered the room. “Police are called out there every couple of months because of the beating he has thrown someone in the house. We are always told they fell down the stairs or something ridiculous like that. I don’t believe anyone is going to feel sorry for him. If you’d broken both his legs, we might have thrown a parade in your honor.”
“Must not be a lot of abusive men in San Marcos,” Lucas stated.
“Oh, we have a few, but none like Victor Jones. You’d never know it now, but Emily was homecoming queen and very popular when she was in school. Then she went to college, fell for Victor, and the rest has been a train wreck. Victor made her drop out of college, and then they moved in with her parents because she got pregnant. We suspect Victor killed her parents for the life insurance, but we could never prove it.”
“How’d they die?” I asked.
“Car accident, on their way here to report him for abusing their daughter. His sister has been trying to get charges filed, but Emily always told a different story. We’ve always figured it was because he had threatened to kill her, too. Now, she can get away from him. He’ll be going to prison for a long time, possibly for the rest of his miserable life.” The detective sat down. “We haven’t been introduced, I’m Ben Hight, I was the detective called out to find the bodies, and you need no introduction, Marshal Cain, and that was before you got hold of Victor Jones.”
“How’d you guys find the bodies? The report says the well was abandoned,” I asked.
“It was. The Hawthornes decided to have it filled in because their dog wouldn’t stop barking at it. However, before it could be filled in, they had to make sure it hadn’t become contaminated and that’s when the inspector found the bodies,” Detective Hight told me.
“How long had the dog been barking at it?”
“Off and on for the last year, but non-stop for the last month, according to the owners.”
“So, he’d bark as the bodies decomposed, then stop, then start when a new one went in,” I told Lucas. Lucas just nodded. “About a year, off and on, so the first body went into the well about this time last year and the newest one went in a month ago.”
“Don’t suppose you can get a list of all abandoned properties, wells, barns, sheds, etc. in the area?” Lucas asked.
“I can ask people to report it, but we don’t keep those kinds of records, why?”
“None of our bodies had hesitation marks on them,” I told him. “A serial killer doesn’t just start out and have perfect kills. The first one or two or five, usually show some signs of hesitation, because they want to do it again, but they aren’t as committed to doing it as they are after they’ve been at it a while without getting caught. Also, the killer got lazy during the disposal of a body, and that’s something that is gained through experience and confidence.”
“In other words, there are more bodies, somewhere,” Lucas told him.
“I’ll get some maps and show you everything I know of,” Detective Hight left the room.
“Five a year, for an unknown number of years, that could get pretty high,” Fiona commented from the corner of the room. She was currently running Xavier’s dental x-rays against all the x-rays in the missing persons’ database.
“I think we found five, because five was all they could put in the well. It wasn’t very wide, getting bodies down it was not ideal. However, it is close to a small road, one that rarely gets used. You pull up, and it’s maybe five steps, drop the body in, and pull away, all without being seen because there’s a big shed blocking the view of the well from the house and no neighbors.” I remembered the pictures Xavier had sent me. “My full thoughts are that the killer has been at it longer than a year and has been rotating disposal sites.”
Detective Hight returned with maps of the area. He unrolled them on the table and pulled a red marker from his pocket. He circled a
small area.
“This is the Hawthorne place. The only thing on their property was the well.” He began to circle other areas. Sometimes empty fields, sometimes arrow-like symbols, and occasionally he scribbled a note next to it. We watched him mark twenty-three different spots.
“Great, good thing I brought my boots,” I said looking at the maps. “We’ll have to search all of them and we should have Gabriel do something to find other areas.”
“You really want to search all these areas?” Detective Hight asked.
“Yes. Do you have access to any cadaver dogs?” I asked.
“I’ll call the Rangers,” Detective Hight left.
“Yeah, they’re busy searching for UFOs that abduct young women,” I said to the door as it closed.
“What?” Lucas asked.
“Nothing,” I shook my head. “If I’m right about the rotating sites, we probably won’t need the dogs.”
“Think you can out-sniff a bloodhound?” Lucas smiled.
“No, I can’t smell cancerous growths under the skin, but I do pretty well at finding decaying flesh.”
“Dogs will be here tomorrow,” Detective Hight returned.
“Good,” I answered, looking at the maps. “We still have daylight left, so we’ll check some of these today. The bodies aren’t being buried, just shoved in things, which will work to our advantage.”
“Follow her nose,” Lucas stood up and shrugged. “Where’s the smallest place? We’ll start there.”
“Abandoned shack on the outskirts of town.” The detective looked at Lucas reluctantly.
“Ace has a super sniffer. She can smell decaying feet shoved in socks and half frozen, hanging from an electrical line.” Lucas smiled. I frowned at him.
“She damn near killed me for burning sage,” Fiona added. “In her defense, I didn’t realize how sensitive she was to smells, or that she could smell the residue for days afterwards.” I turned and frowned at her.
“Frowning won’t help,” Lucas told me. “Neither will Tasering us.”
I walked out instead. Lucas and Hight followed, as I knew they would. Detective Hight jumped into a car, the first I had ridden in since arriving in Texas, and started the engine. I shoved Lucas, with his long legs, into the backseat.
We drove in silence. There was less traffic and less scenery as we exited San Marcos onto a two-lane blacktop road. The grass was a vibrant green, lush and full looking. Trees were covered with leaves. Heat shimmered off the asphalt. We crossed a river that looked like a very big creek and were instantly surrounded by pasture and cropland again. The farms were plentiful, but modest. The spring rains had been good to the ground and early planted crops. Hight turned off the highway and onto a gravel road.
Dust kicked up behind us. The rains had been less kind to the gravel; parts of it had washed out. The car bucked and jerked over the washboard like dirt. Hight lowered our speed, before turning into a driveway.
Calling the place a shack was generous. It was a single room building, a little bit larger than a shed, with an outhouse. The wood was dark from years of weathering without paint. The small porch creaked with the gentle breeze that blew. It lacked windows or even frames for windows. The doorknob was rusted and flaky.
A large crow squawked from a nearby fence post. We all turned to look at it. Its black feathers looked glossy in the sunlight. If I had been superstitious, I would have considered the crow a bad omen. I should have been superstitious.
Detective Hight pulled against the door, not the knob. It gave an audible pop. The air rushed out to surround us in its pungent aroma. Lucas and Hight fought the urge to gag. I rubbed peppermint balm under my nose. It tingled, but kept the smell from invading my nostrils and sticking in my throat. I passed it around.
The body inside was bloated. The eyes stared at the doorway, as if it were expecting company. Blood had covered the shirt and the wall above the body’s head. The gun lay between the legs.
“Not ours,” I said, turning away.
“Probably a suicide,” Lucas said, “but Xavier should look at him anyway.”
“It’s Greg Collins,” Detective Hight said. “He lost his job about a month ago, went out drinking with friends and never came home.”
“How old?” I asked.
“Thirty-nine, has a wife and two kids.”
“Not our killer then, he’s too old.” I watched the crow. It returned my watchful gaze. The breeze ruffled its feathers and the bird appeared to shiver before taking flight. My eyes followed it until it had disappeared. Some legends consider the crow an evil bird. Some considered it a messenger of doom. Others believed it was one of the few animals that could cross between the spirit realm and the world of the living, and so ferried lost souls to the other side.
For the briefest moment, my mind wondered if his soul had been trapped in the shack, watching his body rot, while the crow waited to take his soul to whatever awaited us after life. It was hard to believe in things I couldn’t see. It was just as hard not to get wrapped up in wanting to believe. Facts could prove or disprove just about any argument, and there were always two sides. Knowing both without forming an opinion was a slippery slope. It was just as easy to believe aliens were mutilating cattle for food as it was not to believe, once you understood both arguments.
The lowing of a cow, very close by, shook me from my reverie. The beast had lumbered within a hundred feet of the shack, held in by the pitiful fence where the crow had sat. I giggled.
“What’s funny?” Lucas asked.
“I was just thinking it was a good thing aliens liked to eat cows. It would be really difficult to track down serial killing aliens.”
“Occasionally, I worry about your train of thought.” Lucas started walking towards the car. I snickered one more time at the cow, and then joined him.
Nine
Being alone in a dark room, in a strange place, can be unsettling. I was fine with that. It was the dark, strange room, and not being alone that bothered me. My gun was trained on the silhouette of a man as he moved towards a lamp.
“You were talking in your sleep, loudly,” Xavier said as the light came on.
“So you thought you’d sneak about in my room? That doesn’t sound like a very intelligent thing to do.”
“I didn’t think about it before I did it,” Xavier agreed. “I did bring Lucas, just in case.”
“Did I say anything interesting?”
“I’m fairly sure you were arguing with God over serial killing aliens and adopted puppies.”
“Too much time spent with Malachi and my mother,” I sighed and lowered the gun. “I agreed to read a list of recommended books he put together. Some he obviously put on the list to irritate me. Others were meant to persuade me to the dark side of animal mutilations and aliens. I agreed to let my mother move in and she adopted us a puppy. Obviously, I was easy to manipulate during the first couple of days after brain removal.”
“We didn’t remove any of your brain. We removed a mass of damaged cells that had rapidly grown due to repetitive brain injury. You did get really good drugs afterwards though. You’re the one that suggested your mother move in with you. I think it was because Malachi was still insinuating the two of you move in together,” Xavier said.
“I should Taser him just on principle.”
“Yep,” Xavier agreed. “Do you want us to leave you alone to go back to arguing with God?”
“That would be nice.”
“I want to check your head first.”
“It has been almost two months. My head is fine.”
“You’re talking in your sleep.”
“I’ve always talked in my sleep. Want to try another reason?”
“No,” Xavier walked over to me and moved my hair around. “We’ll go with, you have to have my approval to stay working, so you’ll let me look at it all I want. I just want to make sure your scalp is growing back and that you haven’t developed a soft spot.”
“Fine,” I sighed, as
he gently moved around the area where they had removed my skull and sewn my skin back over it. “Well?” I asked as he finished.
“It’s healing well,” he answered. “The bone seems to be hardening just fine.”
He’d already checked my reflexes and thinking ability. For the first month, he’d required weekly blood tests to check the levels of epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine. All had returned to normal. Aside from Xavier’s nagging, I thought I was as healthy as ever.
“Good, go away, so I can go back to sleep.” I adjusted my pajama pants; glow in the dark moons with mice chewing on them. My mom had given them to me for Easter and yes, at twenty-eight, I still got an Easter basket. That said, the candy had been eaten mostly by her, I had mainly wanted the pajamas.
They both said goodnight and left. I laid back down, but couldn’t fall back asleep. Then my mind latched onto the idea of another female psychopath. One skilled enough not to hit ribs while stabbing her victim, but strong enough to bury the knife not just to the hilt, but also with the force needed to leave the button mark. Yet, she hadn’t been able to carry some of her victims farther than a few feet. To me, it meant the weight wasn’t the issue. It had to be the awkwardness of the dead weight. It would be like carrying an oversized box or trying to drag a half-stuffed mattress.
I was considered average in build and height. At five feet, three inches tall, I weighed 132 pounds, but could lift significantly more than my own body weight. However, moving Lucas or Malachi would be awkward because of the sheer size difference. I might be able to throw Malachi over my shoulder, but his feet or head would drag the ground. There was no way I could toss Lucas over my shoulder. Dragging either of them would be easier, but only if they were totally unconscious. They would have the center of balance to fight me if they were awake, taking my feet out from under me.