“Has all that bravado deserted you already, buck?” asked Luka. Suddenly, his hand lashed across the black man’s face like a whip, sending Aten over on his back.
Luka stepped forward and squatted over Aten’s chest.
“Look, that blonde bitch—”
Luka’s finger pressed upwards under Aten’s chin, closing his mouth with an audible snap. “Don’t call her that again,” he said in a cold, hard voice. “Maybe I’ll eat you slowly, keeping you alive between meals. Maybe I’ll keep you conscious while we dine.” His tone was hateful, nasty.
Aten couldn’t meet his gaze. “Mister, I…” His eyes went toward the other man’s. “My brother don’t have no part in this.” His voice shook like a child’s.
“Oh, no, buck. You don’t get to make any rules here.” Luka glanced at the other man and then back at Aten. “But don’t worry. It won’t happen now. Not out in public like this. No, that would not be healthy at all.”
“What?” asked Aten.
“What? What? What?” sneered Liz. “Is he retarded, Luka?”
“Are you really that stupid?” asked Luka. “That’s the fourth time you’ve asked that question. Aren’t you listening to me?” He slapped the man on the cheek. “Wake up, little sambo. Pay attention.”
Liz cackled and clapped her hands. Luka was a master at this.
“Let me spell it out for you, buck. I’m going to come for you later. You’ll try to hide, but you can’t hide from me. I’ll come to where you are, and you will try to run. You can’t escape me. No, don’t even think it. I’ll take you, and you’ll try to fight me, but we both know you stand no chance.”
“And if you do fight him,” said Liz, “I’ll come for your brother over there.” She let some of the pent-up rage seep into her voice, making her sound cold and cruel. “I’m nowhere near as nice as my friend here.”
“There you go, buck. Better not fight if you love your brother.”
“What—”
“Oh, do shut up, dumbass,” said Liz.
“I’m going to hurt you. After I’ve hurt you a little, I’ll start eating you. Just a snack, really. Maybe my queen will have a few bites before dinner. Who can say?” Luka glanced at Liz and waggled his eyebrows, then glared down at Aten. “Then, I’m going to kill you, buck. I’ll take your liver, your heart, maybe even your kidneys. For later.
“I’m going to put you in a dark, dank place and let the rest of you molder away to nothing. You won’t get a burial. No one will speak over your grave. No one will find your corpse. I’ll keep you forever. In. The. Dark.” Luka patted Aten on the head and stood, beaming a sunny smile down at him.
Aten looked up, first at Liz, then at Luka.
He looked like a lost child, terror-filled eyes, quivering lips, the works. Liz loved every second of that forlorn glance.
“Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you have much time to live,” said Luka. “Because you don’t, buck. You really don’t.”
“You can’t mean all this, man,” said Aten in a weak, fear-filled voice. “You are just trying to scare me.”
“Oh, no,” said Liz. “He means every word, boy. I cook a wicked liver and onions.” She laughed. “And you are already scared, kitten.”
“Can’t be serious,” the man muttered.
“Don’t think that, buck. Never in life.” Luka stepped away from Aten and opened the door of the Lincoln. “I’m a doer, boy. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it. You can take that to the bank and invest that shit.”
“Look, it was just a stupid fight, man. Road rage—”
“Buck, no. Don’t be lily-livered.” Luka glanced at her with a silly grin on his face, and she cackled at his dumb joke. “You motherfucked me, buck. You sucker punched me.” Luka glanced at the back seat. “You scuffed my beautiful Italian leather.” He took a deep breath and looked down at the man, his expression turning hard. “Worse for you, buck, you motherfucked her. You called her bad names. You impugned her honor and made dispersions about her worth as a courtesan—”
“Plus, old,” cackled Liz. “He called me old! That alone is worth a liver, isn’t it?”
Luka winked at her and nodded. “Plus, you called her old, which is just rude, and you really have no idea, anyway.” His grin turned feral as he turned back to stare into Aten’s eyes. “But that’s not the worst of it. No, not the worst by a long shot.” Luka shook his head as if he couldn’t fathom anything worse. “You spit on her.”
Luka slammed the door and took two quick steps back to Aten. His booted foot arced back and then slammed into Aten’s side. “She is a queen!” His boot thudded into Aten. “She is a queen, you motherfucker, and I will absolutely not have it!” His voice rose with each word, betraying the rage that lurked under his silly comedy. The raw, brutal malignancy of his hatred leeched into his expression.
Aten turned his face away and closed his eyes.
“It might have been just a fight to you, buck, but it wasn’t for me. Honestly, you should have known better.”
“You can’t threaten to… You’ve got to be—”
“Oh, no, sambo. I’m as serious as death.” Luka straightened and turned slowly, his eyes marking each person watching. “I’d prove it to you right now, but there’s plenty of time.” He looked down at Aten. “I’ll see you soon, and that’s a solemn promise.”
“Mister, my brother don’t have no part in this. This is my fault—”
“Don’t worry,” said Luka, glancing toward the other man. “I kind of like your brother. He reminds me of one of my own.”
A horn blew down the line of cars that had stacked up behind them. Luka stood up tall and glared at the cars. After a protracted moment of silence, he folded himself back behind the wheel of the Lincoln and started the car.
“Bye, boys,” said Liz in a sing-song voice. “Have a good afternoon!” The expression on Aten’s face made her cackle long and loud as the Lincoln roared away, bumping up over the curb and then back down into the street.
Nine
“I built a case against those two based on that street fight. Both men they fought that day ended up in the hospital. The two men were named Aten and Marcus Kennedy. In the middle of the night, Aten disappeared from the hospital. No one saw anything, of course, and the next morning, Aten’s body turned up inside the cave. He’d been tortured and then eviscerated.
“Somehow, Hatton had gotten by several officers and troopers who were tasked with keeping the dump-site secure. He did that while carrying Kennedy’s body. No one saw a thing. No one suspected a thing. It was like magic.”
I shook my head. “My boss, Lieutenant Gruber, was furious. He started an internal investigation and demanded that the Sheriff’s office do the same thing.” I glanced at Meuhlnir. “I tell you, though, I believe those officers when they say no one got past them.”
He smiled and nodded. “It sounds perfectly sane on this side of the proo, Hank. It would be a simple matter, in truth.”
“The only upside was that they found a passage in the rear of the cave. There had been a cave in, and it looked intentional to the engineers.”
“And what was on the other side of the cave in?”
“More bodies. A lot more,” I said. “The cave complex was huge, but the first chamber was small and dank. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get inside…”
Ten
I got down on my knees and peered into the cave. It was everything I’d expected it to be—dank, earthy and smelling of stale mold and decayed flesh. At least someone had already strung up some lights. “No time like the present,” I muttered and squeezed my shoulders inside the cave. There were downsides to being a powerlifter, and small cave entrances were right at the top of the list.
I could see the subtle depressions where the first bodies found had lain. Each depression was marked with a little flag, numbered one to six.
I felt like a bull wedged into the branding chute, and a part of my mind wanted to get out of there as fast
as possible. I don’t mind tight spaces, but something about that cave freaked me out. There was something about the place—something that felt evil.
I ran my hand through my buzz cut, expecting to feel spiders crawling around. I hated spiders almost as much as I hated small, dank caves.
“Did you notice where the slide in the back of the cave was?” asked Jax, squeezing into the cave behind me.
“Yeah. That’s where Aten Kennedy’s body was dumped.”
“I’d make a joke about lucky number seven, but…”
“Yeah,” I said. The day that had felt so warm a short time before now felt cold and bleak. Funny how learning the extent to which a mind can be twisted does that.
I glanced at Jax and motioned for him to go through the portal that the slide had hidden. I followed on his heels. The technicians had set up two more of the short-legged trestles in the tunnel at the back of that first chamber. Lights were being strung up and coming on in the space behind the short passage.
The air smelled sharp and spicy. It was almost a pleasant odor, but I knew what we would find in the rest of the cave. Mummified skeletal remains. Or worse.
The second chamber was much larger than the first. It was tall enough to stand in, for one thing, but only just, and we both got to our feet while ducking our heads. The chamber was roughly rectilinear, maybe sixty yards by forty. There was an obtrusive, inky blackness at the far end of the chamber.
Human remains in various stages of advanced decay lined both walls of the chamber and extended into that murky darkness on the remote end. Two aisles led deeper into the cave, and each was lined with remains on both sides.
Jax whistled. “How many are here?” he muttered.
“To put it technically, a metric shit ton,” quipped one of the forensics guys.
I counted the visible remains. There were seventeen per row, so thirty-four visible victims, per aisle. Sixty-eight more victims to add to the first seven. I shook my head. “This one’s been busy.”
“How far back do you think this cave stretches?” murmured Jax.
“There is a passage at the end of this chamber. We haven’t gone back there, so your guess is as good as mine,” said the forensics technician.
“One way to find out,” I said, turning on my flashlight.
“Do you think that’s safe?” The technician was peering into the darkness.
“Not really,” I said. “Don’t try this at home, kids.”
The man nodded at me, more than a little uncertain. “Be careful,” he said and then shivered. “It feels weird in here tonight.”
I patted the butt of my service weapon. “We’ll be fine.” I watched the technician fiddle for a moment. “I thought you guys didn’t get jumpy at crime scenes.”
“We don’t,” he said. “I don’t. But, still…” He shrugged.
Jax flipped on his flashlight, too. “No time like the present, Hank.” He started forward, his steps resolute and steadfast.
We walked toward that black hole in the back of the cave, our flashlights sending fruitless beams of light in cones ahead of us. After we’d walked for ten minutes, we could see the floor of the cave begin to slope downwards.
Jax stopped. “This is…”
“Cockeyed? Insane? Preposterous?” I said in a low voice.
“Yeah, all of those and a few four lettered cousins. This guy has to be the most prolific serial killer ever. I mean how many did that Russian guy get?”
“The Red Ripper? Chikatilo?”
“Yeah, that guy that killed people on the trains,” said Jax. He ran his flashlight over the row of bodies lining his side of the cave.
“Mid-fifties, I think. But the South Americans have him by a huge margin. I think the most prolific killer was from Columbia. There’s a guy there that has over 300 victims, though he only admitted to 147 of them.”
“I’m willing to bet the body count in here is higher.”
I scrubbed my face with my right hand. “I want to disagree with you, but…” I stared into the murky blackness of the passage in front of us and wondered what kind of world I’d brought Sig into. “He’s already at seventy-five victims, so even if the rest of the place is empty, he’s toward the top of the list.” I drew in a long breath and let it whistle out between my teeth. “Ready for this?”
“Absotootly,” said Jax with a bravado that rang false.
I nodded and started walking. My flashlight beam bounced ahead of us, lighting the aisle in the middle of the passage. Jax played his flashlight across the left side of the cave, briefly throwing light on the line of skeletons on that side. Water trickled down the rough stone walls.
I’d like to say it didn’t give me the creeps, but that would be a lie. Something about the meticulous placement of the bodies, the clean center aisle, gave me a serious case of the jitters. Somehow, this part of the cave felt colder than the previous chamber. “You don’t suppose this guy comes back to see all his trophies, do you?”
Jax shrugged, and in the dim light, it was something I sensed more than saw. “I’m sure he does. There must be a reason for this aisle.”
I ran my flashlight over the row of skeletons on the right side of the path. “Have you noticed anything different on any of these remains?”
Jax played his light on the bodies to his left. “No. I see what looks like bite marks in some of the bigger bones, but nothing that looks like an edged weapon.” He pursed his lips. “It’s kind of disquieting to think that someone can bludgeon over a hundred people without leaving a single witness.”
“I agree. Beating someone to death makes noise—a lot of noise.” I said.
“Then he’s got a kill room somewhere.”
I nodded. “This is much too…tidy to be the actual scene of these murders—as creepy as that thought is. The murders themselves are disorganized…like he’s in a frenzy.”
We continued walking.
“I don’t understand this,” I said.
Jax grunted. “It’s too weird. Why keep all these bodies? If he just wanted to hide the bodies from sight, burial would have been a better option. Hell, dumping them out in the middle of Lake Ontario would’ve been better.”
“This is not about hiding these remains. This is a trophy room. It has to be.”
“A very large trophy room,” said Jax. “He comes back here and walks through these chambers. He gets off on this.”
“These corpses remind him of the kills. He can relive the murders here.” I scratched my head. “Even so, this seems…different. This doesn’t feel like it’s just a trophy room.”
“Couldn’t we clear out and set up surveillance here? Maybe catch him coming back for a peek?”
I shook my head. “Too late for that. He’s not coming back here.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He’s already been back to dump Kennedy’s body. He knows this place is blown. That was his message in dumping Kennedy in the front chamber.”
“How can you be sure, boss?”
“Call it instinct. I don’t know how or why, but I’m sure of it.”
We had walked three hundred yards into the passage. Up ahead, a fork in the cave structure loomed out of the darkness. “Can you see that branch ahead?”
“Unfortunately, I can.”
“This part of the cave could turn into a maze. We should have some kind of fluorescent marks or lights to blaze our trail.”
Jax snapped his fingers. “The DayGlo paint troopers use to mark-up accident scenes.”
“That would work. Good thinking, Jax.”
“I’ll go get some from one of the troopers standing post.”
I nodded. “I’ll wait here. Maybe I’ll take a closer look at some of these bodies.” The truth of it was that I just wanted to stand there and see if I could somehow crawl into the mind of the killer. The cold precision of the cave seemed at odds with the brutality and frenzy shown by the bodies. Maybe the man from the car did the killing, and the woman did the arranging.
>
Despite what I’d told Jax, I didn’t think the reason for the aisle was just to facilitate looking at trophies. That seemed too trite of an explanation for the sheer volume of victims. But why else keep them? Serial killers didn’t do things like this without a reason.
“If I were a serial killer, what would be worth this kind of risk? Especially with such an unsecured place,” I muttered. “There must be something I’m not seeing.”
All these complete bodies laid out on display didn’t really make sense. Serial killers might take trophies, but they didn’t tend to keep the whole body—they buried or dumped or burned them.
“There must be a reason.” I’d gotten over feeling self-conscious about talking to myself. It was just part of my process. “Wilkes said there were chunks of flesh—bites—missing from the victims. I wonder if Wilkes can figure out whether the bites were pre- or postmortem.”
Bites of flesh. The thought swirling around my head was lurid. Are you eating them? Is this your buffet? Do you come back here to feed? Are you like an alligator? You prefer carrion to fresh meat?
The almost peaceful silence amid all those corpses was ended by the sound of something scraping on stone in the left fork. I felt ten years old again, scared of the dark. A hinky feeling of being watched by a predator of some kind started screaming in the back of my mind. “Would you come back here to see who’s looking at your food?” I murmured.
The scraping sound came again, sounding closer this time. I pulled my Glock out of my holster. I held the pistol near my right thigh, pointing at the floor of the cave with my trigger finger resting along the side of the gun. “Are you watching me right now? If you are, come on out and let’s have a friendly little chat.”
I stood still, listening for that telltale sound again, taking shallow little gulps of breath. I was still standing there listening when I heard Jax come up behind me. He stopped a little behind and to my left. I glanced at him and saw he also had his pistol out and was staring into the darkness ahead of us.
“What is it?” he breathed.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 9