by Hadena James
She glared at the worthless appendage. It had betrayed her by breaking. She’d fallen on it before playing volleyball and it hadn’t broken. The memory of the aluminum bat shaking in her hands came back to her. Was it possible that the bat had injured the bone and the fall had finished it off? It was something she hadn’t considered before. Hitting bone was much harder than a baseball. The bat had recoiled with a great deal of force. It seemed at least plausible that there had been an injury at that time.
Getting dressed was frustrating. There was a great deal of wiggling, jumping, and grunting involved. It was harder work than playing volleyball.
Twenty
My email was downloading slowly. It didn’t help that I had a principal, my team members, and four other police officers staring at me. Technically, I was waiting for the chief of police. The emails were for another aspect of the case, but since I had time to kill, I had decided it was a good time to download them.
The principal had a stack of papers in front of him. His face told me he was wondering what he was doing with them. It also said he was considering changing his mind. I hoped the chief showed up quickly.
Politicians work on a different schedule than most of us. When he did show up, he had the mayor in tow. I wasn’t happy about that, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“Principal Barton, could I please see the enrollment sheets you brought,” I asked politely. He slid them to me. I held them up. “Our serial killer is somewhere in this stack of papers. We’ve been chasing the wrong age group. We thought our killer had to be a college kid either pre-med or med. Last night, I got to thinking about the jewelry that my niece makes. The details are intricate and precise. It doesn’t look like a sixteen year old made it. Now, a very smart high school student with an understanding of anatomy and chemistry could in fact make the precision stab wounds that we are looking for. Furthermore, it explains why none of her victims found her threatening. She was their age. Normally, we associate rage with killer teens, but all evidence points to her having Antisocial Personality Disorder with psychopathic tendencies. She wouldn’t need to kill because of rage. ASPD psychopaths have extra dopamine receptors and create excessive amounts of norepinephrine and epinephrine. Killing stimulates the excretion of dopamine as well as the two natural types of adrenaline. The bodies have been in clusters, but we’ve figured out that at least two of the victims in the well and two of the victims in the shed were killed around the same time in late November. If you check school calendars, December is when most teachers schedule mid-terms. Most psychopaths admit that when they are high on adrenaline, they can hyper focus. She’s killing when she has exams or papers due because it helps her to focus. Her different disposal methods are being used because she can. She hears about what all these nifty things do in her chemistry classes and she is putting them to good use. Except the shed, which was taken from a TV show or movie, I don’t remember which, but I do remember my niece asking me if that was what really happened to people who decomposed in hot, humid climates. She has a car, so she has to be older than sixteen. When you consider two of her victims were younger females, I’m thinking she’s closer to sixteen or seventeen.”
“While that’s an interesting theory, do you have any proof?” The mayor asked. “Last I heard, you needed more than gut feelings to get warrants and arrest people.”
“Technically, we don’t need evidence,” Gabriel reminded him. “However, at this time, we only have the theory. We are not going to start dragging in teens and interrogate them based on a necklace and the fact that our killer is short and female.”
“Then we’re done,” the Chief of Police announced standing up. “This was a mistake.”
“The meeting or calling us in?” Gabriel stood up as well. He was taller than the chief was and more intimidating. Not because of his height, but because of his voice and the way he held himself. Gabriel, like Malachi, commanded attention. Gabriel could see a whole pack of wendigos and I would still follow him into the pits of hell to catch the next bad guy.
The chief and mayor said nothing else; they just left. Principal Barton didn’t leave. He didn’t even stand up. He looked pale.
“You think one of my students is a serial killer?” He asked with a slight quiver in his voice.
“Yes,” I answered, “but before you start giving me the names of every juvenile delinquent in attendance, I should point out that our killer will not be a troublemaker. As a matter of fact, if they stick out at all from their peers, it’s because of their achievements.”
“Do you have any idea how many females in our school are overachievers? We’re a satellite city. Most of our students are middle class or better. They vie for positions of academic rank and community service merits. There’s greater division between the males, where the world of sports is commended,” he told me. “If you were looking for a male, I’d have a list of ten right off the top of my head. But a female, even the bad girls aren’t flunking classes.”
“Well, we have one piece of evidence that might be helpful,” I pulled out the picture of the necklace. Unfortunately, he didn’t know who it belonged to. Frustration was starting to set in.
“We do have some artisan jewelry stores. They might be able to help you,” the principal said. My frustration decreased a small amount. If it was bought locally we might have an identity for our killer.
“Thank you, that’s most helpful,” Gabriel said. No one else had bothered to mention the shops. A slip of the mind or lack of understanding to be sure, but that was still irritating. “Aislinn, you’re the most knowledgeable; take Lucas.”
“Aye, aye,” I saluted as I stood up. Lucas and I left the principal behind to deal with the idea that a serial killer was roaming the hallways of his school.
Walking around San Marcos’s downtown area was strange. It was a mix of urban and rural lifestyles. Older men in overalls sat on benches, younger women in the latest fashions pushed strollers into small shops. The town wasn’t just a satellite for the two major metropolitan areas that existed along the interstate; it was also a community in itself. Farmland touched conservation areas. The city was bustling, but designed as a small town. I was finally beginning to understand it. It wasn’t the bedroom communities they talked about on TV; it was a town of blended amenities, catering to both groups of people that called the place home. It was progressive, but wouldn’t give up its small town roots.
I could appreciate that. I had grown up in a similar town. Farm boys mixed with the sons of college professors. Stetsons were just as common as Doc Martens. Kids went to the movies as well as hanging out on the backroads.
The first store was a little new age. Crystal pendants hung from the ceiling. The place smelled of patchouli, a special type of hellish incense designed to kill people like me. I tried to hold my breath, but it was hard to talk without breathing.
“Hi, may I help you?” The woman behind the counter was in her fifties. Her smile faltered as she eyed me, within a millisecond it was back. If I hadn’t been watching, I might have missed it.
“Hello, US Marshal Aislinn Cain, this is US Marshal Lucas McMichaels,” I introduced us as I pulled out my badge and the photo. “We were hoping you knew who made this necklace.”
The woman examined the photograph. Glasses materialized out of her shirt. She pulled the picture closer to her face.
“I did,” she finally said. “If you look at the clasp, you can just make out my trademark stamp.”
“Do you remember who bought it?” I asked.
“It’s been a while,” the woman pursed her lips together. “I only remember because I thought of how grown up that necklace was for her. She’s a high school student here. She comes in with the Mayor’s daughter once in a while.”
“That is very helpful,” I told her, taking back the photo. Lucas said good-bye and we left. Once outside, Lucas glared at me. I stared across the street at a diner. The day’s special was pulled pork with French fries. I didn’t care about the pull
ed pork, it was what was under it that caught my attention; extraterrestrial burger with onion rings. I didn’t know if that was different from a regular burger, but I did have a weakness for onion rings.
“I feel like we’ve been transported to New Mexico,” Lucas said as he caught sight of the sign.
“UFOs in Texas are rather common. It has one of the highest reported sighting rates of any state; only California has more. The UFO seen in Austin a few nights ago was also seen here and in San Antonio. It makes sense that they would capitalize on it and poke fun at it. I’m just hoping it comes with cheese.”
“Are you hungry?”
“We are going to track down the mayor’s daughter and find out which of her friends bought the necklace. Food seems like a good idea. I’m thinking we get burgers and take them back to the police station, while Fiona searches for the daughter and then checks her social media to find names of friends.”
“Yeah, I am feeling a little peckish myself,” Lucas agreed as we crossed the street.
Twenty-One
Fiona’s search of Becky Childs’ email confirmed that teenagers were idiots. At the very least, they were all miniature sociopaths. Aside from having over a thousand friends listed, the girl, who was sixteen, was a prolific post writer. The girl posted about her meals, her plans to go to the party where Shawn Steiger had gone missing, and there were a ton of pictures of her and another girl. The world didn’t need three hundred pictures of Becky Childs and Jessica Blanks. I was informed these were called “selfies.”
The better term would have been narcissism. If they had been ancient Greek, some enterprising deity would have turned them into flowers. Nyleena and I had been friends for around twenty years and only had about thirty pictures together.
Becky Childs’ entire teenage life was documented by status updates and selfies. If she had a stalker, they would always know where she was, what time she was leaving, what she was doing, and with whom. There was even a selfie, with Shawn and Jess, from the night of the party.
That was particularly interesting. We had been told she wasn’t at the party. No one had interviewed Becky Childs or Jessica Blanks. I wondered who had removed their names from the list of guests. It had to be someone within the police department. My money was on the chief of police. It seemed like something he would do. I imagined the mayor and the chief were close.
Gabriel was already on the phone, shouting at someone. I kicked back in my chair and texted Malachi. I had a few minutes while we arranged to meet with Becky and Jessica.
How’s the hunt going?
Do you know how many people reported werewolves and Dogmen in the last month? He texted back.
Two. I offered up the random number, knowing that at least one person was crazy in Ohio and Indiana.
Forty-seven!
I had to think about that. That was far more than expected. The suggestion that Malachi go checking on it had been a snipe hunt. I had figured he’d find one or two, go talk to them, find they were batshit crazy and leave me alone while he hunted his phantom werewolf. Finding that forty-seven people had reported seeing one in the past month made me question my tactics. If forty-seven people had reported seeing a werewolf, there might actually be only one crazy person and they were running around in wolf’s clothing, literally.
“Forty-seven people have reported seeing a werewolf near the Indiana/Ohio/Michigan border in the last month. Does that seem like an exceptionally high number to anyone else?” I randomly asked.
“Yes,” Lucas answered, “especially for a tristate corner. I imagine that’s the total number reported in a year in the entire US.”
“There are medical conditions that make people very hairy. Perhaps someone with hypertrichosis is running around, killing people,” Xavier suggested.
“You’d think with as rare as that is, people would know if someone in the area had it,” Lucas said. “However, clinical lycanthropy has been known to make people put on furs when they attack people. Are the victims being eaten?”
“Eaten? I don’t know. I know they are being bitten and the person doing it has very sharp teeth that I think are cosmetic.”
“That rules out clinical lycanthropy. Someone with those sorts of delusions would not plan such a physical alteration, because they would believe it would happen naturally. It sounds like he has a crazy guy running around the woods, wearing a fur coat and fake teeth, because he likes chewing on people,” Lucas told me.
“You should tell him that,” I told Lucas.
“Sure,” Lucas hit a few buttons on his phone and began texting. He had some fancy smart phone that was more complicated than my iPhone. I had attempted to use it a few times, but had given up because it sucked. Or I did, I wasn’t sure which.
“Well, the Mayor is stonewalling,” Gabriel said.
“Fine with me, I don’t mind putting my shoulder to his door,” Lucas answered.
“There is nothing worse than a pompous ass who thinks that just because he’s a politician, he’s above the law,” Xavier added. “The mayor of San Marcos seems just such a man.”
“Those types of men tend to be verbally abusive to underlings and children. Wonder how he feels about his daughter?” Lucas commented. “Especially since she seems to be attracted to guys without a brain. Judging by her photos, she has a thing for that kid, Matt Dover. I had the pleasure of interviewing him, it’s a good thing he has money and a pretty face, because he isn’t going far on his brain power.”
“His buddy, Simon Westbrook, has the same problem. I keep wondering if Cassie’s life is this dramatic. Surely it isn’t, she’s a smart girl,” I said.
“It is,” Lucas informed me. “Teen girls, and boys for that matter, lead dramatic lives because they are all mentally underdeveloped. This makes just about everything a crisis. When everything is a crisis, life is dramatic.”
“I don’t remember this sort of drama in my teen years.”
“You are asexual and were extremely mature for your age. There was no need for your life to be in constant crisis and, therefore, it was less dramatic,” Lucas told me.
“Let’s go,” Gabriel started out the door. I didn’t know if we were headed to William Childs’ house to interview his daughter or the Blanks’ house to interview their daughter. For the most part, I didn’t care. I was ready to do some hard-core interrogating and if I got to bust down a door or Taser someone, well that was a bonus.
The house was a nice two story, with blue vinyl siding and a large window on the front door. These doors were incredibly unsafe and I wouldn’t have owned one if my life depended on it. Of course, there were times when my life probably had depended upon it, which proved my point.
A middle-aged woman with blond hair and blue eyes answered the door. She smiled at us, but it didn’t look real. Her make-up was light and perfectly understated.
“Mrs. Blanks?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“US Marshal Gabriel Henders; this is the SCTU team. Is your daughter, Jessica, friends with Shawn Steiger and Becky Childs?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Have you been made aware that we found Shawn deceased yesterday?”
“No, I hadn’t been,” she paused. “Oh, that’s why, yes, I see now. Um, what can I do for you?”
“We’d like to talk to you and Jessica if possible. We just discovered that she was at a party Saturday. That was the last time that Shawn was seen alive. We’ve interviewed everyone except her and Becky Childs,” Gabriel informed her.
“Of course, come in.” Mrs. Blanks held open the door. “I’m not sure how much help Jess will be though. She had a volleyball game this afternoon and broke her arm. They have her pretty heavily medicated.”
“It won’t take long,” Lucas reassured her. Her shoulders relaxed, her face changed a little. Despite being the size of a very large ogre, Lucas had that effect on people.
Normally, we didn’t use three people to do an interview, but this was a special c
ase. Since all teens did indeed exhibit symptoms of sociopathology, Lucas and Gabriel couldn’t always figure out if they were just being teens or if they were really on the downhill side of becoming the next Ted Bundy. Xavier stayed by the car. I sat down in an uncomfortable chair while Mrs. Blanks called to Jessica. Lucas and Xavier sat on the couch. There was only one seat left, so I stood. I wanted Jessica and Mrs. Blanks to sit; they would be at the disadvantage if they were seated.
“Jessie, this is US Marshal Gabriel Henders and he wants to talk to you about the party on Saturday. I’m sorry; I didn’t catch the rest of your names.”
“Sorry; US Marshal Lucas McMichaels and US Marshal Aislinn Cain,” Gabriel introduced us. I didn’t smile, it would have been upsetting.
“Jessica,” Lucas began, “do you remember seeing Shawn on Saturday night?”
“Yeah, of course,” Jessica Blanks sat in the chair I had vacated. “Everyone calls me Jess or Jessie though. Is Shawn all right?”
“I’m afraid not. We found him yesterday.”
“He was murdered?” Jessica asked.
“We’re not sure yet,” Lucas lied through his teeth. Her voice caught my attention, there was a tone to it, something that wasn’t right in the way she posed the question. The sun was setting on Texas and Xavier’s form was starting to blend into the surrounding area. My teeth grated as my other two teammates asked Jessica questions. Finally, I pulled the picture of the necklace from my jacket.
“Are you familiar with this piece of jewelry?” I asked her.
“Yes, I bought it a while ago, for a friend.” She made no expression.
“Does your friend have a name?” I asked.
“Esperanza Pena,” Jessica answered. She still hadn’t mentioned that Esperanza was missing. This struck me as odd. You’d think a teenager with one friend dead and another missing would have something to say. So far, the only name released was Nathan’s. We’d kept the other identities secret.
“Why did you buy it for her?” I continued.