Creatures of Appetite

by Todd Travis

  “You got a print?” Forsythe bulled his way over to the desk.

  “Off of the Frederickson’s girl left eyeball; it’s only a partial thumb print, but it’s a good one we can run. He touched her eyes, just like Thorne said, with his bare fingers. It’s going through VICAP and CODIS now, if he’s ever been arrested or printed for anything for any reason, we’ll know it in seconds!” Gilday hunched over the computer, excited, as everyone except Thorne crowded him.

  “Run it through the state and federal database as well. If he’s employed as we are, it’ll flag,” Thorne said. This possibility quieted the group.

  Thorne stared at his chessboard, concentrating for a moment, and then looked up at the map of Nebraska on the wall. The computer beeped.

  “Oh my God. We got a hit. We got him!” Gilday said. “Bart McNeil.”

  “Bart fucking McNeil?” Scroggins asked. “I know him, I once arrested him for beating the shit out of his wife!”

  “I know him too, I busted him for DUI once. Bart McNeil, forty-five, ex-Marine, divorced now, big drinking problem,” Gilday read information on the screen. “Lives in Crete, that’s only ten miles away from Denton. Get this, he’s taken the cop test three times and failed, he’s a volunteer on the neighborhood watch and he drives a Schwann’s Ice Cream delivery truck; his route covers half the state of Nebraska.”

  “Ice cream. Iceman,” Kane said.

  Everyone turned to look at Thorne, who stared at the map on the wall. Thorne, feeling everyone’s gaze, finally stirred from his funk.

  “How soon can you get a warrant?” Thorne asked Forsythe.

  “I can get one five minutes ago.”

  After a moment, Thorne sighed. “All right, Captain. Go get him.”

  Forsythe jolted into action, Hairston close behind as usual. “Norm, call the judge and wake his ass up! Bill, get the SWAT boys geared up, we’re moving and we’re moving right now! Let’s go!”

  Men and women in uniform all over headquarters were galvanized into movement. Scroggins and Gilday checked their weapons and grabbed their jackets. Thorne stood and stopped them with a gesture.

  “You two going in with them?” he asked.

  “Hell yes!” Scroggins replied.

  “Then do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?” Gilday asked.

  “Take him alive. I want him to get the needle, so take him alive, all right?”

  Gilday nodded after a moment. Scroggins looked hard at Thorne, not saying anything. The two men hurried off. Kane grabbed her jacket, watching Thorne, who sat down at Gilday’s computer and calmly printed out the file on Bart McNeil.

  “Are you coming?” Kane asked.

  “I am definitely coming,” he replied.

  34

  Less than an hour later, SWAT policemen in riot gear quietly surrounded the house of Bart McNeil. Crete was, if anything, an even smaller town than Denton. The house was dark and rundown, with untrimmed hedges and a driveway covered in snow that hadn’t been shoveled at all, only driven over. A Schwann’s Ice Cream truck sat in the drive. A light was on somewhere deep in the house.

  Hairston drove an unmarked police van with its lights off down the street and parked a half a block away. Forsythe turned to Gilday and Scroggins, geared up and heavily armed, sitting behind him. Kane and Thorne sat in the back behind everyone.

  “He hasn’t been to work in a couple days, called in sick,” Forsythe said. “His machine is picking up, but he’s probably screening calls. His truck is in the driveway. Unless he’s walking, he’s in there. Which one of you knows him better?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. He’s about to wish he didn’t know me at all. Jeff?” Scroggins said, adjusting his headset mike.

  “I’ve run into him enough he knows my name.”

  “Are we going in?” Kane asked.

  “Not a chance,” Forsythe said, “this scumfucker is OUR bust.”

  “Cops first, fibbies second,” Scroggins said.

  “But the girl might still be alive in there …”

  “Cops take the door, Kane, we’ve been shot at enough,” Thorne said.

  “It’s our job, Emma. You all pointed us at him, we go get him,” Gilday added.

  Forsythe spoke into the radio on his shoulder. “Command One to all teams, secure perimeter, key headset twice when in position. Wait for my go, repeat, wait for my go.”

  “Scroggins,” Thorne put his hand on Scroggins’s shoulder, leaned forward and spoke into his ear. Gilday listened in.

  “What?”

  “If you run in there now and shoot him right in the face, he won’t ever know that you caught him, he won’t know you won, he won’t even know that he’s dead,” Thorne said. “That’s not what you want, you get me?

  “You want to hear dead and screaming, you should see these fuckers once we get them strapped on the gurney and shove the needle into their arm. They scream, they beg, they piss their pants like a baby. I’ve seen it, more than once, and it’s very fulfilling. It’s much more satisfying than just blowing him away, you hear me?”

  “Takes too long, though, don’t it?” Scroggins said quietly.

  “Takes awhile but it’s totally worth it. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t start lying to spare your feelings at this point, would I?”

  Scroggins and Gilday glanced at each other.

  “Hell, Thorne, we all know what a tactful bastard you are,” Gilday said.

  “No easy mental time, right?” Scroggins asked Thorne.

  “No easy mental time. He’ll get the needle, quicker than you can say Timothy McVeigh. No judge or jury has patience for a killer of children. They’ll put him on the gurney. Just bring him back alive, gentlemen, if you can, alive.”

  “Okay,” Forsythe turned back to them. “Let’s do this.”

  “Ready?” Gilday asked Scroggins.

  “Can’t fucking wait,” the two men bumped fists with each other, slid open the side door of the van and jumped out.

  35

  Gilday and Scroggins cautiously made their way up the sidewalk to McNeil’s house. Armed policemen flanked them from the shadows surrounding the house. Gilday stepped up to the front door and pressed the buzzer. Scroggins stood to the side, weapon drawn. Gilday pressed the buzzer again and banged on the door with his fist.

  “Bart? Hey Bart, it’s Jeff Gilday! Open up, man!” Gilday banged on the door harder.

  “He’s not answering, boss,” Scroggins whispered into his headset.

  “Crack it. This is a Go signal, repeat, this is a Go signal.”

  Scroggins nodded to another policeman, who stepped forward with a battering ram. The officer smashed the front door in and Gilday and Scroggins bolted through it. Simultaneously, other officers broke through the back door and the bedroom windows.

  “Police! Don’t move!” Scroggins screamed.

  Both men ran down the front hallway, which was cluttered with trash and old newspapers. Gilday and Scroggins fanned out, other officers following behind them. One group went down a hall into the kitchen, the other cut through the dining room. The noise of a television set could be heard from somewhere in the house.

  “Bart? Bart, if you’re here, speak up, man!” Gilday shouts.

  “I got him! I got him!”

  Scroggins stood at one end of the living room. A television, tuned to the Discovery Channel, played a program on lions. A man sat in front of the television in an easy chair with his back to Scroggins.

  Scroggins aimed his weapon at the back of the man’s head. Gilday appeared at the other side of the living room. The man didn’t move and his arms sat comfortably on the armrests of the easy chair. The two men approached the chair cautiously.

  “Bart! Bart, show me your hands!” Gilday yelled.

  “PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP, MCNEIL!” Scroggins screamed.

  More officers joined Scroggins and Gilday in the living room, their weapons trained on McNeil. Everyone saw what was in McNeil’s hand and it crank
ed the ass-pucker factor right up.

  “Gun, he’s got a gun!”

  “Right hand!”

  “Drop it! Drop it!”

  “MCNEIL, I am going to FUCKING SHOOT you in the face if you don’t drop the weapon and show me your hands RIGHT FUCKING NOW! MCNEIL!” Scroggins screamed.

  Gilday and Scroggins took three slow steps and moved quickly around the front of McNeil on either side of the chair with weapons raised, ready to open fire.

  They managed to hold their fire, but they didn’t lower their weapons at their first sight of Bart McNeil. Gilday did, however, gag in spite of himself.

  Some time later, Thorne and Kane navigated their way through the cluttered front hallway of McNeil’s house to the living room, where Forsythe and Hairston stood in front of the body of Bart McNeil. McNeil, a squat man in ratty boxer shorts and a T-shirt, sat comfortably in his easy chair, at least, as comfortable as a dead man could be. Scroggins and Gilday stood off to one side of the room, out of everyone’s way, and stared at what was left of Bart McNeil.

  The top of McNeil’s head had been blown away and in his right hand he held an automatic pistol. Blood spatter covered the front of his shirt, but remarkably his face was untouched. A TV tray sat to one side of the chair, a bowl of dried stew and a half-empty bottle of Budweiser rested upon it. Forensic technicians scurried everywhere, taking pictures. Thorne and Kane kneeled down for a closer look at the body.

  “Piece of shit saved us the cost of executing him,” Forsythe said to them. “That’s a forty-five in his hand. Stuck it in his mouth and blew the top of his head off. He must have figured that we were on to him.”

  “He was eating the children,” Hairston said, still not quite believing it himself. “There’s a pot of stew on the stove with fingers in it.”

  “Fucking sick fucking animal,” Scroggins said. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Captain, there are body parts in the refrigerator and in the freezer on the back porch,” this from one of the other cops. “Fucking loads of parts.”

  “Nobody touch nothing, leave it for the techs.”

  “Did you see what was on top of the TV?” Hairston asked.

  “What?” Kane stepped carefully over to the television. A plastic baggie with some coarse dark hairs enclosed within it sat on top.

  “Don’t touch it,” Forsythe barked. “I’ll tell you what it is, it’s hair, and I’ll bet a year’s salary it’s pubic hair belonging to our DOA Boyd, this sneaky fucker got it and planted it.”

  “How convenient, left right out in the open for us,” Thorne remarked. “How did an ice cream truck driver get the pubic hairs of a black man that lives fifty miles away?”

  “Maybe he blew him in the back of some queer bar, who knows, who cares?”

  “What about Darcy Mullens?” Kane asked.

  One of the technicians, wearing rubber gloves, entered from the kitchen and held up a small pink snow jacket, a nametag sewn into the back collar.

  “That’s her jacket,” Scroggins said, very grim. “Fuck me.”

  “What about her body?”

  “Don’t know. Won’t know, until forensics can sort out the frozen food,” the tech said.

  “He’s also got loads of trophies from other victims, shoes, clips of hair and jewelry,” Gilday added. “Thorne?”

  Thorne looked at him.

  “Did you know he was eating them?”

  Thorne didn’t answer right away.

  “You knew, didn’t you, and you didn’t say anything. You knew this guy was eating kids.”

  “He won’t be eating any more of them,” Thorne stood.

  “It looks like we won’t be needing either of you anymore,” Forsythe said to Thorne and Kane. “We got our guy and we got a shitload of evidence to process. Why don’t you do me a favor and get your ass clear of my crime scene?”

  Thorne looked at Forsythe for a moment, expressionless, before turning to Kane.

  “Let’s go, Kane. This scene is dead.”

  “A fucking cannibal,” Scroggins grimaced as Thorne walked by him. “Just like Jeffrey Dahmer, right, Thorne?”

  “Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dahmer didn’t kill himself. Come on, Kane, shake a leg. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  Thorne disappeared down the hallway. Kane stared for a moment at Darcy’s pink snow jacket before following.

  36

  Thorne exited the McNeil House and stood in the front yard, surveying the scene before him. Lights, cars and police personnel were everywhere, surrounding the house and covering the entire street.

  Kane joined Thorne in the yard, zipping her jacket all the way up to her chin to protect herself from the bitterly cold wind, or so she told herself. She didn’t remember being this cold before entering McNeil’s but she definitely felt the chill now.

  Bill Johnson, stitches still fresh on his forehead, borrowed a smoke from another officer out on the front lawn, both of them stamping their feet from the cold.

  “Johnson!” Thorne barked, which caused the younger man to jump yet again. “Car keys!”

  Johnson fumbled for the keys and tossed them to Thorne, who caught them easily. Johnson pointed at an unmarked sedan and Thorne walked slowly toward the car. Kane followed and then made a quick detour to some bushes in the neighbor’s yard. She threw up. Thorne watched her as she retched.

  “Come on, Kane, stop fucking around,” he said after a moment. Thorne climbed into the sedan.

  Kane wiped her mouth, embarrassed, and got into the passenger seat. Thorne put the keys into the ignition but did not start it. He pounded the steering wheel several times with his open hand.

  “Something bothering you?”

  “A lot of things bother me, Kane. You, for one.”

  “What is it?”

  “Never mind,” Thorne started the car, an angry glint in his eye.

  “What is it?”

  “Kane, shut your pie-hole.”

  “You didn’t think he’d kill himself, did you?” Thorne didn’t answer her. “You didn’t profile him as a suicide, right?”

  “No, I did not. And do you know why I did not profile him as a suicide?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s not a fucking suicide, that’s why,” Thorne put the sedan into gear and spun out on the icy road, dodging police cars and news vans.

  “He fits the profile, though, right? Except for that one thing, he’s exactly what you said.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Thorne, did you see what was inside that house?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “If he’s not the Iceman, how do you explain what we found in his fucking kitchen?”

  “I’m not trying to explain it, I’m just telling you what I know. The Iceman is not a suicide. End of story.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong on your profile.”

  “What have I told you about that?”

  “Everybody is wrong once in awhile.”

  “Everybody but me.”

  Neither said another word to each other on the drive back to Lincoln.

  37

  Kane walked down the hallway of cubicles at headquarters on her way to her desk to file yet another report. It seemed as though the three days since the discovery at Bart McNeil’s house had just flown by in a media-drenched whirlwind of activity and her superiors were in the process of drowning her in paper and electronic reports.

  Every aspect of the case was examined in minute detail again and again, not only by law enforcement agencies but also in the papers and on television across America. The air in the whole city, the state, maybe even the entire country, had lightened considerably. Laughter, actual laughter coming from people not inhabiting a sitcom, was heard in the hallways of offices and schools everywhere.

  For certain, everyone mourned the children lost to the killer and felt for their families, but folks everywhere were almost weak with relief now that the ordeal wa
s finally over. For a few days, Kevorkian and his Mercy Killings were put on the news back burner in favor of the events in Nebraska.

  Kane kept her eye out for Thorne, whom she’d barely seen the past three days. Thorne was around but somehow managed to disappear into the background. He came in, stared at his chessboard for awhile, ordered take-out and watched television before heading back to his room.

  He wouldn’t entertain any conversation about the case, or anything, for that matter. If asked a question, he would answer in as few words as possible, if at all. He left all the after-action reports for Kane to do on her own, something that still rankled her when she thought about it.

  Thorne also avoided any media and managed to never be mentioned in print or on television. Kane had been through this before on the DC shooting and was a little more adept at dodging the press, though her picture still managed to find its way into the papers upon occasion.

  Thorne just effortlessly sidestepped any and all attention, not that there was a lack of volunteers willing to step forward and speak in the national spotlight. Forsythe was at the head of that line and clearly enjoying his time in front of the cameras.

  It was hard to even turn on a television without seeing Forsythe’s meaty face going on about “the chase for the Iceman.” There was gossip around the watercooler that he was already negotiating a book deal and was considering the possibility of retiring to pursue a career in radio. Rumor was that Forsythe had big plans to stretch his fifteen minutes into hours, days, weeks and hopefully years. Forsythe was one happy camper.

  “Hey, Emma,” Scroggins said, pouring himself coffee from a fresh pot in the break room. “Coffee?”

  “Sure, black with lots of sugar,” Kane joined him. She hadn’t seen much of him or Gilday in the last three days either, though she caught glimpses of them in the hallway and occasionally on television in one of the many reports that played the Heartland Child Murders nonstop. “You’ve been pretty busy.”

  “You know, it’s funny, while we were chasing this fuck, the captain kept Jeff and me outside the loop as much as he could. Now that we caught him, Captain Asshole doesn’t want us out of his sight, wants us at every briefing, every meeting with Justice, you name it. He can’t fart without us catching a whiff.”