by Hadena James
My grandfather had beaten my grandmother to death, chopped her into small pieces, strung them throughout the house, and then disappeared into the ether. It turned out that he had been living under his brother’s name in Nevada and making a very nice living as a construction contractor. He’d only come out of hiding to trim our family tree. That was something I didn’t hold against him, our tree had needed some trimming.
Fourteen
I had contemplated The Missing for as long as possible. My skin had gone all pruny and white by the time I stepped from my shower. Dressing had been an easy affair, as I mostly wore jeans and T-shirts with a lightweight jacket to cover my guns when I was in public. The lax dress code for us was nice, and I would have hated to have to throw away a suit such as Malachi wore.
My T-Shirt had a chemistry joke on it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually purchased a T-shirt for myself. People, particularly my team and Nyleena, picked up T-Shirts for me. Sometimes as gifts, sometimes just because they saw it and thought of me. It was a good thing, as I went through a lot of them. Between helping in the morgue, which could get fairly dreadful, and being injured, I lost one or two every time we went after a killer. Trevor disapproved of the constant T-Shirt wearing, comparing me to Xavier, but I never looked like I had slept in mine, so I ignored his complaints.
Dinner was held in a restaurant, a real one, not a chain. It was a mix of Tex-Mex and burgers. I could live with that and ordered quite a large meal. My stomach growled as I waited for my two enchiladas and two tacos to be delivered. I restrained from eating the chips and dip, or I’d get full on that and still force the enchiladas and tacos down my gullet.
Young had been invited to join us. Nails wasn’t with him, which made me wonder if he lived close. I considered asking him, but that would open up more inquiries into my personal life.
Our cell phones all started going off about the time our food arrived. This meant more bodies had been found. I sighed and asked for a to-go box. My dinner companions did the same. Gabriel was the only one that bothered to read the text message.
“Good news, we can still eat at the police station,” Gabriel put his phone away. “They had two teens reported missing tonight though.”
“Missing teens,” I frowned. I hadn’t voiced my hair-brained idea that it might be a teen doing the killing. Killer teens weren’t this organized. They didn’t have the experience to plan ahead like our killer. Now, I was glad I had kept the thought to myself.
“Is it possible that Aislinn’s theory of multiple killers is correct?” Xavier asked.
“Possible, yes. California’s had as many as five serial killers on I-5 at the same time. Is it probable is the real question, and I-35 isn’t I-5. There’s a reason that road is notorious for serial killers; it’s a good hunting ground. This interstate has too much traffic for that sort of behavior, so I’d say the probability is low,” Lucas answered. “In other words, I refuse to give a firm answer on the matter. It could be multiples or it could be one. I’ve seen nothing to indicate more than one serial killer, but I also can’t be sure, because most of the bodies are in an advanced stage of decomp when we find them. I do agree with her about the whole science fair technique being used to accelerate decomp. It is abnormal.”
“Wishy washy psychobabble,” I smiled at him. Lucas had issues. He didn’t like to be called a profiler, but he was. There was no other way to put it, and the BAU would have loved him, if they were still capable of catching serial killers. Unfortunately, they were old school and to them, every serial killer was still motivated by a sexual urge and killers didn’t just stop. The SCTU and VCU both worked on the basis that very few serial killers were sexually motivated, and that they did in fact, just stop, from time to time, for very long periods of time. The BAU still existed, but their role had changed drastically in the last decade and serial killers were not their primary focus anymore. They were more useful in determining acts of terrorism and whether it was homegrown or imported.
“Why are we going to investigate missing persons’ reports?” Fiona asked.
“We aren’t, we are going to listen in and see if we can figure anything out,” Gabriel told her.
My food was lukewarm by the time I got the container open and began eating it. I was forced into a cramped room with too many people and not enough elbowroom. However, I was used to that. I wasn’t used to trying to eat in the supply closet turned surveillance area. It made me wish that the interrogation rooms from TV were real. We could have pulled in folding chairs and sat like normal people as we watched through the one-way glass instead of attempting to glean tiny bits information from a small TV monitor with crappy speakers.
One was a sixteen-year-old girl. Sabrina Reeves had been missing since Wednesday. I was fairly certain that today was Sunday, although, there was the possibility that I was wrong. Even if I was a day off, she had been missing for a couple of days before her parents decided to report her. I was not a parent, nor would I ever be, however, my own experience had taught me that my parents had reported me missing within six hours. Perhaps it was my age or my father’s profession, but it seemed like these parents had waited a very long time to file the report.
The other was a boy; he’d gone missing the night before. At seventeen, Shawn Steiger wasn’t a high-risk runaway type. He was a good student with good grades. He’d last been seen at a party. From there, he had just vanished. Originally, his parents thought he might have slept over at the host’s house, but when he had not returned by lunch, they had called. He hadn’t slept over and no one had seen or heard from him since last night.
Since our killer had no gender preference, it was possible that one or both of them were now deceased. We really didn’t know a time pattern, if one existed, so it was impossible to know if this was acceleration or just opportunity. For all we knew, our killer might be killing twice a week for the last four years and the city of San Marcos was not only stuffed with bodies, but the surrounding areas might be as well. There were too many variables and not enough constants to develop a good working theory.
I was not good with variables. I preferred constants. Mostly because I was not an investigator, I was an action taker. At this moment, I realized I was going to be interviewing high school students again. My last interaction with this special breed of humanity had happened in March, not counting my own family, which did not require interrogation. Their names were long forgotten, but I still remembered them as Ditzy and Dumb, high school seniors that had seen a man dumping bodies into a lake in Minnesota. I had wanted to Taser them both just to see if it would kick start their brain cells and stop them from saying, “like, you know.”
The phrase had been popular in the 1980s and early 90s. It should have died a slow, quiet death as teens evolved into adults in the mid and late 90s. Apparently, it hadn’t, at least not in Minnesota.
As I shoved the last bit of cold taco in my mouth, my phone rang. The caller ID proclaimed it was Malachi. The phone stopped ringing and a text message appeared before I could put it away.
Need you was all the text said. A few seconds later, it started ringing again.
“I’m busy,” I answered in hushed irritated tones.
“You like to make jokes about werewolves in Wisconsin, what do you know about them in Ohio?” Malachi asked.
“Do you have a werewolf in Ohio?”
“Possibly; we have what appears to be a werewolf on the border of Indiana and Ohio.”
“What part?”
“Northern area,” Malachi said.
“Let me call you back, grab some silver bullets.”
My parting shot to Malachi got me some looks from people in the room. I had mostly forgotten about them. Xavier grinned at me.
“Malachi having werewolf problems?” Xavier asked.
“He isn’t ruling it out which, in itself, is sort of strange. Malachi doesn’t believe in that kind of mumbo-jumbo,” I answered.
“Why call you?” Young asked.
I frowned at him. Not for answering the question so much as saying the words out loud. Everyone I knew was at least a little crazy. Malachi believed in UFOs visiting earth and mutilating animals. Nyleena believed there was a giant laser cannon in space. Gabriel had seen a wendigo. Lucas believed in ghosts and had seen them on more than one occasion, if you asked him about it. Fiona was a pagan who believed in magic. Xavier believed in demons and demonic possession. It was hard not to be interested in that sort of stuff.
My phone went off again. Another text.
How long?
Couple of hours probably. Read up on Dogmen of Michigan.
Not in Michigan.
Read it anyway. My fingers flew across the keyboard of my iPhone, typing as fast as Malachi responded. Ohio and Indiana both touched Michigan. However, I wasn’t sure the Dogmen of Michigan qualified as werewolves. Sightings of them went back at least a hundred years, and Native Americans that inhabited that area had legends of the Dogmen that went back a lot further. However, if someone thought they were a Dogman, it was possible that they could outfit themselves with the proper gear.
At the moment, I was fighting with my brain. It was trying to recollect and spew forth everything it remembered about Dogmen, while I needed it to concentrate on listening to the interviews with the parents of the missing teens. While werewolves were interesting, they were not important, at least not to me, at the moment.
I crossed my arms over my chest and focused on the screen holding Sabrina Reeves’ parents. They were currently explaining that she was often a runaway, so they hadn’t immediately reported it. They had expected she’d be back in a few days. I sighed heavily.
“Currently wishing you were chasing suspected werewolves wherever Malachi is instead of preparing to interview teenagers that attended a party last night?” Xavier whispered to me.
I didn’t answer. I did wish I were chasing suspected werewolves in Ohio and Indiana instead of preparing to interview partygoers. Life was brutally cruel sometimes.
Studying
Jess finished writing her paper after the party. Becky was only sort of helpful because she’d drank too much jungle juice to be a lot of help. She kept mumbling about red scarves and letters. Jess had decided to tuck her into bed and then studied for her advanced chemistry final.
Chemistry was one of her favorite subjects. The world of chemistry was a fascinating place. She could do without all the formulas and memorization of said formulas, but the rest of it was cool. It had helped her quite a bit in the last year. She’d learned about the corrosive properties of several household materials.
There was still two weeks of school left. She had finals in six of her classes. Most of them were this week. She had no idea what the point of the last week was. She wouldn’t be learning anything. Seniors would be skipping classes, pulling pranks, and getting away with all of it. Their last hurrah before heading off to college or the service industry.
For those who were not seniors, the week would be spent having yearbooks signed and watching silly films. It was the prerogative of the teacher to decide how to spend the last week. A few of her advanced classes would probably give an overview of what next year would hold, but those were definitely the minority.
However, she understood that the teachers needed a week or so to grade finals, get them entered, and submit the grades to the school. Seniors would need to know if they had to attend summer school because of one stupid grade. Summer school would be tailored to meet the needs of the seniors.
Understanding it didn’t mean she had to like it. Her summer would be busy. She would still have volleyball practices. She would be working in her mother’s office part time as a file clerk. It would be her job to make sure all the charts were accurately filed, duplicate files would be merged, paperwork from hospitals would need to be added, and any referrals her mother made would need follow up. When she wasn’t doing that, she’d be entering immunization records, they were her mother’s bread and butter during the summer, along with sunburns and insect bites.
It wasn’t a glamorous lifestyle. Many people thought doctors took lots of vacations and drove expensive cars. Some did, but not her mom. Jess’s mom worked long hours with overbearing parents and sensitive kids. Outside of work, her life consisted of Jess’s volleyball games and Saturday night dates with her husband.
That was why Jess wanted to be a doctor. She wanted a simple life and she wanted to help people. Being a doctor would provide both, and if she were an ER doctor or a trauma surgeon, she’d have the touch of adrenaline that kept her happy.
Besides, success was a given in the family. Her older sister was in law school at Harvard. Her brother had gone to MIT and then joined the military. He did something that he couldn’t talk about because it was highly classified. Jess couldn’t imagine bucking the family tradition and doing something like running a daycare. Running a daycare was for silly women who couldn’t pass real college classes. The kind that majored in art and squeaked by with a C.
It was why Jess studied so hard. She was going to be successful. She was going to graduate next year as valedictorian and have her pick of undergraduate schools. She was going to win scholarships for both meritorious work and volleyball.
It was also why Jess hadn’t gotten as drunk as Becky at the party. Not only had she been the designated driver, but a minor in possession or a driving while intoxicated charge would not look good on her college resumes. She’d limited herself to just two cups of jungle juice.
Becky had been letting off steam. Not just from finals week, but from her father. Becky’s father, William, was a world-class asshole. Technically, he was the town’s mayor. He was serving his fourth term as such and he thought he owned the world as a result. He dictated everything Becky did to keep him from looking bad. Of course, that hadn’t worked with his wife either, and she had left when Becky was young and William was serving his first term as mayor.
Jess was sure that William didn’t care about Becky, except in her capacity to prop up his image. With Becky, he looked like a dedicated, hard-working family man, raising a daughter on his own. Most of the town was oblivious to the fact that Becky had pretty much raised herself, and when she’d needed a parent, she had gone to Jess’s mom, not her own father.
Becky’s determination was the part that Jess liked most about her. She was stubborn and determined, just like her. Jess felt protective of Becky; it didn’t matter that Becky was a few months older. It was one of the reasons that Jess had considered killing William. Her family would take Becky in for senior year. The two girls were already as close as sisters were. Sharing a roof would only bring them closer. They were even talking about applying to the same colleges.
Jess sighed. She was running a little late on the application thing. She should have applied early, and she’d already taken both the ACT and SAT and scored really well on both. However, she was still hoping to improve in volleyball, so she had held off. Her parents never mentioned it to her, but she knew they had expected it. Her sister had done it. Her brother hadn’t, but there had never been any doubt that he would be accepted to MIT. His seventh grade science project had been to build a power plant that combined wind turbines and solar panels. He’d used it to charge a car battery. Needless to say, the judges had been impressed.
Jess’s seventh grade science fair project had not been as amazing. Although she had received high marks for her use of a subsonic sound to attract insects to a plant, a bee had stung one of the judges. It wasn’t exactly the kind of impression she had wanted to make, but bees, especially Africanized bees, were unpredictable.
Suddenly, she struck on an idea. She shook her head, astounded that she hadn’t thought of it sooner. She could install the subsonic insect attractant to Becky’s house and wait for Africanized Bees to start
building a hive. Texas was full of the deadly bees. It would only be a matter of time before they went after William. Becky would give them a wide berth if she knew they were there. William was dumb enough to prod them with a stick.
It would be a tragic accident. Even people not allergic to bees died from being attacked by a swarm of Africanized bees. William would think his position as mayor would keep the bees from stinging him. He was just that sort of person.
Jess would do it this summer. Her family was going on vacation in July for a week. They were going to visit her grandparents in Colorado. Her sister was supposed to meet them there. Becky was going too. Jess would just accidentally leave the attractant at Becky’s. No one would think that Jess had meant to do it. She’d forgotten the contraption in the past and the school had needed to be shut down for a week while the exterminators worked to clear the bees.
She’d studied, written a paper, and solved a problem that had bugged her for a couple of years now. It was a productive night. Becky was snoring in the bed. Jess turned out the small desk lamp and snuggled up with her friend. Her friend gave a snort and settled back to sleep.
Jess listened to Becky’s heartbeat. It was slow and steady. She counted the beats, concentrating on the sound of the other heart instead of the feel of her own. It took effort. It was a challenge Jess did every time Becky stayed the night. It helped her focus on the exterior parts of her life. That heartbeat was incredibly important to Jess. It helped keep her stable in moments that might otherwise have been problematic.
Plus, ignoring her own heart to listen to Becky’s required concentration. It was a skill that Jess was honing. She wanted to be able to hear heartbeats other than her own, especially as they faded away. If she could feel that over her own beating heart, she would be able to conquer the world. Her own body being background noise to whatever was going on.