by Hadena James
Fifteen
I slept, but I didn’t sleep well. My dreams kept waking me, dreams of dead teenagers, stacked to the ceiling in a barn and smelling like flowers and decay because they had been covered with lavender essential oil.
It was my brain making connections between different types of funerary rites and historical events. In London, during the middle ages, cemetery space had been at a premium and more than one church had filled its cellars with the dead and attempted to cover up the smell. They could do little about the coffin flies that occasionally became aggressive towards living people. Those flies and the smell had put a stop to the practice. However, most of the bodies had been moved to the Thames for disposal. Not very ceremonial or hygienic. That was before the plague had happened and the invention of plague pits.
My day was going to be spent interviewing teens. Lucas had prepared a set of questions for me to ask. I couldn’t browbeat or intimidate them. At least, I wasn’t supposed to do that. That too was interfering with my sleep.
In theory, I should have been able to relate a little more with teens. Teens were very egocentric. They were immune to the dangers that stalked the world, at least, in their minds. They suffered from low impulse control and a lack of appreciation for extended consequences. Essentially, they were all sociopaths as they waited for their brain to finish developing.
I suffered these same problems, to an extent. My intelligence and the network of Jiminy Crickets I had developed in recent years kept me from behaving like a full-blown sociopath. Life was like a game of chess to me and each action was weighed before being taken, if I had the time. When I was in foreign moral territory, I turned to Nyleena or someone similar for advice.
My body struggled to go back to sleep, but my mind was determined it needed to be kept awake. It just couldn’t remember why. I shined the flashlight from my phone on my toes and wiggled them. I hadn’t stretched for a day or two, and I could feel it in my legs. Catching sight of my pajamas reminded me of what I was supposed to do. The pants had puppies napping on chew bones and said “bone tired.” It was almost dawn according to my phone, and Malachi would be awake.
“It’s about time,” he snapped at me.
“I forgot, I have my own serial killers to chase,” I informed him. “So, do you really believe your suspect is a werewolf, or is it a person pretending to be a werewolf, or is it a person suffering a delusion that he’s a werewolf?”
“Our biggest clue is wolf hair found on all the victims and he’s taking chunks out of them with his teeth. However, he doesn’t have normal teeth, he has fangs. A double set on both top and bottom based on the bite marks.”
“There are cases of people wearing wolf pelts and attacking people because they believed the pelts made them werewolves. The most famous was the werewolf of somewhere in France. He was hanged, but went to his grave proclaiming to be a werewolf. The area you’re in does have legends of Dogmen. Sightings are mostly by townsfolk, which is sort of weird, but the native tribes in that area believed that a race of Dogmen lived in the area. Strangely, werewolf sightings are not that uncommon. People are more inclined to see werewolves than any other mythical being with the exception of Bigfoot. There are plenty of documented cases of people with mental illnesses proclaiming to be werewolves. Talk to fetish clubs that specialize in blood play. They will know if one of their members has a set of dentures to fit the mold. They’ll also know if anyone likes to dress up as a wolf. Unfortunately, lycanthropy is indeed, a sexual fetish and if he has started killing, it’s because he isn’t getting the release from sex that he used to.”
“What about the Dogmen?”
“I’ve never met one, but if you do, they don’t conform to European werewolf myths. They die like normal people; a few bullets to the head will do the trick.”
“What kind of killer are you chasing?”
“The kind that kills teenagers. I actually get to spend the day interviewing them. So excited.”
“Don’t kill any of them,” Malachi hung up. I dressed and read a book while waiting to start the day. I had grabbed one on killer teens. It was confirming my theory. Killer teens were disorganized. They were filled with emotion, which also meant the crime scenes were covered in blood. Even the most thought out crime by a teen had included slitting the throat of his victims. His forethought had been to stand behind the victims, minimizing the amount of blood he got on himself. However, it was also just easier to slit someone’s throat from behind, so that wasn’t necessarily done because he was thinking about blood spatter.
Armed with some new information about serial killers, I was almost ready to tackle the task ahead. We wouldn’t find our serial killer among the partiers, unless there had been someone older there, but maybe we would get a lead.
“Last time I saw Shawn he was looking for Becky.” The sixteen-year-old gum chewer said between bubbles. I desperately wanted to choke the shit out of the little brat. The gum was annoying. The answers were unhelpful. The witness was worse than most. He was obviously still a little drunk.
“When was that?” I asked for the third time.
“I dunno, after dark. He spent some time talking to another girl, her name is Jessie, and then he went looking for Becky,” the kid answered, yet again. Each time he added onto what was happening, but he seemed oblivious to the existence of clocks on the planet.
“You didn’t check your phone at any time during the party or a clock?” I huffed.
“Sure, I got text messages all night. I have to keep up with the ladies. I got a booty call about midnight and left around two. I went to Marsha’s, got off, then went home and crawled in bed, which is where I was when my parents told me I had to come here.”
“Did you see Shawn around the time you got one of these text messages?”
“Nope.”
“Here’s the deal,” I finally snapped. “You are going to drink several bottles of water, spit out the gum, and we are going to try this again when you’ve sobered up a little.”
“Does that mean I get to go home?”
“No,” I slammed the door behind me. I should have kept the clothes. I could have left them with the gum chewer for a while. Maybe if he vomited uncontrollably for several hours, he’d be sober enough to figure out his buddy was in serious danger of being dead.
“Getting anywhere?” Lucas asked.
“Nope. What the hell is wrong with teenagers?”
“You were a teenager once. You don’t remember what it was like?”
“Lucas, I do not believe my time as a teenager is comparable to other teenagers. I did not get invited to parties. I did not crash parties. I did not even have many friends. I was not just a social outcast, I was non-existent. I did not like teenagers when I was one. They were immature and brain dead.”
“Teenage brains...”
“Stop, I don’t care,” I told him. “The physiological and psychological status of teenagers is more abhorrent than watching grass grow. I feel like my own ability to think is dampened by their disconnected reality. Dissociative disorders have a greater grasp on reality than a teenager.”
“Cassie included?”
“Cassie included. She talks about boys, a lot. She drinks alcohol. She has sex. She’s relatively normal, and I cannot connect with her as a result. Sometimes, there’s a spark in the pan and I think we make a connection, but those are few and far between and possibly, completely unreal. I feel like I’m in a soap opera; Shawn liked Becky, Becky likes Matt, Matt likes Liz, Liz does not like Matt, she plays softball, like that means anything to the killings. Who cares if Liz likes softball, our killer isn’t using a softball.”
Xavier giggled, softly at first and then they overwhelmed him. The high pitched madman’s giggle that creeped people out. I stared at him, daring him to continue. I had not said anything funny. Gabriel was smirking, so I glared at him instead. He looked away.
“Um, Ace, that’s a polite way of saying that Liz is most likely a lesbian,” Lucas told me.
“There is a stereotype that all female softball players are lesbians,” Lucas said.
“That’s dumb,” I sighed. “How many are left to be interviewed?”
“None,” Gabriel said. “We’ve interviewed everyone. No one remembers Shawn leaving. No one remembers anything unusual. He just vanished at some unknown time.”
“Can I still force this kid to drink a bunch of water and stay in the room until he grows a brain?” I asked.
“Technically, no. He answered the questions, in his own way, like everyone else, he can’t pin down the time he saw Shawn because he was drinking. Unfortunately, we can’t charge them with underage drinking,” Gabriel said. “The locals can, but won’t, because too much time has elapsed and they weren’t caught in the act.”
“Unless you want to consider him a suspect in something other than teenage drama,” Lucas teased.
Sixteen
Young was standing too close to me. I could hear his heart beat over my own. It was beating harder and faster than mine was. His breathing was shallow and unsteady. My own was working at a very slow fifty-five beats per minute, and it wasn’t working hard to do it. Young’s was closer to a hundred and twenty beats per minute. His pulse made his neck jump as his heart pushed the blood through his veins.
Nails was sitting in front of a barn door. I didn’t need him to tell me that I was about to find another body or three. I could already smell it. The air was ripe with the scent of decay. Whatever was behind the door wasn’t in the advanced stages of decomp. The smell still had a tang to it, meaning the body was fresh.
Neither Young nor I had moved towards the closed door. I was fine with finding bodies. I just wasn’t sure Young was up for it. He worked mostly with Search and Rescue, not serial killer victim hunting. Even a victim that wasn’t beaten to a pulp or partially eaten was considered awful simply because they had died at the hands of another human being. I had no idea why the human brain made the distinction, but Lucas had pointed it out to me on several occasions. Now, my mind had just accepted that it was worse to find a murder victim than someone who got lost in the woods and died of exposure.
“When you get ready, I’ll go in first,” I reassured him. We didn’t have anyone else with us today. No one had wanted the job of tagging along with me, except Young and Nails. I was pretty sure Young had thought we wouldn’t find a second set of victims. Nails didn’t seem to mind. Young swallowed loudly.
“Go ahead,” he finally said.
I walked up to the door. Nails looked at me, as if expecting a treat. I didn’t have one for him and I didn’t know if he was allowed treats anyway, so I ignored him. In many ways, I understood dogs better than humans. I still wasn’t the pet type, but dogs were simple to understand. They wanted love, approval, food, and a comfortable place to sleep, especially when it was raining or cold. Humans wanted a lot more than that and they were subtle about it. I had never learned the art of understanding subtle clues.
The door worked on a pulley system. It opened and the smell increased. Nails sat still. I frowned. With the door open, I could smell something else, something that wasn’t human. Wet fur or hair was mixed with the scent of decay.
Nails was right, there was a cadaver in the barn. There were actually two of them. A horse that had been in the process of giving birth and a foal. They were both very dead.
“Horses,” I shouted to Young. He timidly walked into the building. From several feet away, he craned his neck to peek into the stall, as if there was a chance I had lied to him. The problem wasn’t the manner of death, as that was evident. The problem was that people tended to keep a close eye on animals giving birth in their care, particularly larger animals like horses and cows. They were worth a lot of money. Letting the mare and foal die was costly. We were also in a large barn with no other animals. It seemed a little strange to me. The house was abandoned.
Nails gave a loud bark. I drew my gun without thinking. Young jumped.
“Hallo?” A man’s voice with a thick accent entered the stagnant air in the barn. My guess was that Nails was keeping him outside.
“US Marshals Service, Serial Crimes Tracking Unit,” I shouted back. “Come around the corner, slowly.” I took a position against the stall.
“The dog won’t attack?” The voice asked.
“No,” Young found his voice, but it had a slight tremble in it.
A man in his seventies or eighties shuffled around the corner. His hands were in the air. He looked very tired.
“Do you have identification?” I asked.
“Yes,” the man slowly reached for his wallet and threw it at my feet. I kicked it to Young. Nails entered the barn.
“Edgar Barnes,” Young told me.
“You live around here, Mr. Barnes?”
“I do, my house is just across the field.”
“Are these your horses?” I asked.
“Unfortunately,” he sighed, “I was in the hospital part of last week and the mare gave birth while I was there. My grandson was supposed to be watching out for them, but he forgot. I haven’t gotten around to disposing of them yet.” He wore a bandage around his leg. It was barely noticeable through the pant legs of his overalls. “The vet was going to do it, but he’s had other matters to attend to, I guess.”
“What happened to your leg?” I asked.
“Snake bite,” Edgar Barnes shook his head. “Damn silly thing to do. I wasn’t watching where I stepped and was struck by a rattlesnake. I managed to get help, but it put me in the hospital for four days.”
I holstered my gun and gave the barn one last quick glance. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
“Why don’t we go outside, where the air is a little fresher,” I told him.
“Sure,” he shrugged as if he didn’t smell it and maybe he didn’t. Age was funny about things like that. Young seemed relieved. Nails sniffed the stall and then walked out ahead of us.
Once outside, I shut the barn doors. They clacked against each other. The smell receded some. Aside from Young’s vehicle, which was clearly marked as being a police vehicle with a canine, there were no other vehicles. Edgar Barnes must have walked the field as he’d done countless times before. I’d met men like him before. Men who wouldn’t give up and kept going, regardless of what was wrong with them. This brought my grandfather to the forefront of my mind and I had to push the thought away. Maybe they hadn’t gotten all the tumor.
“Mr. Barnes, have you noticed anything unusual lately?” I asked.
“Not really; my grandson seems to have his head up where the sun don’t shine, but otherwise, everything’s been normal.” He thought for a moment. “Except the dead kids they keep finding. Is that why you’re here?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Considering the location of where the first bodies were found, we are checking out properties that aren’t located near any houses or anything. Hence, my looking in your barn.”
“He’s a good for nothing,” Edgar spat on the ground. It was black. He was chewing and very good at hiding it. Normally, I noticed things like that, but to look at him or listen to him speak, one would never have known.
“Who, sir?” Young asked. I already knew the answer. The mare had been a Belgian, a workhorse, probably used to steer livestock.
“My grandson, but he’s about the only family I got left. So, I reckon I have to live with that, but he’s still worthless.”
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Thirty-two, can’t find a job, can’t keep a woman, and can’t drive a car without wrecking it. I think he’s on drugs, but his mother disagrees. So, I keep my mouth shut about it. I don’t need my daughter-in-law cutting ties with me. She’s the only other family left.”
“Why didn�
��t she check on the horses?” I asked.
“Wheelchair,” Edgar said. “She and my son were driving back from San Antonio one night and hit a cow that had gotten loose. Killed my son, paralyzed her. Terrible thing.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told him. “So, what did you herd with that big mare?”
“Nothing anymore. She was the last one I had. Sold all my cattle about ten years ago and most of the horses, but I kept her mother and father. Her mother was a beaut, just like her. Couldn’t bring myself to sell her mother or her, once she was born. I imagine her foal would have been just as pretty.”
“Quite likely. Why don’t we help get rid of the horses for you?” I offered. My father had been a cop, my grandfather a serial killer, but a lot of my family had been cattlemen. Horses and cattle just went together. Even in the early stages of decomp, she was a pretty mare. Her foal would have been worth a great deal to a horse breeder. Belgians weren’t known for their agility, but they were even tempered and didn’t spook easily. They were good, hard workers.
“That would be mighty nice of ya. With this bum leg, I’m having some difficulties running any equipment.”
“So, what are you doing now that you aren’t in the cattle business, Mr. Barnes?” I asked as we started walking through the field.
“Gettin’ bit by rattlesnakes,” he gave me a wink. I couldn’t help but smile. Young and Nails followed. Nails seemed pretty happy with the situation. Young didn’t. However, I wasn’t going to leave an old man in need when I could help him. “Got an old John Deere, have ya ever run one?”
“Yes sir,” I answered. “What model?”
“A 5020,” he said.
“Wow, that is an old Deere, but I can run it.” I assured him. One of my great uncles had owned a 5020, it was from the 1960s. He had refused to upgrade to a newer tractor because it did everything he wanted.