“You mind if I take this? It’s important. I recognize the number—the FBI in Quantico. I won’t be long. I’ll be right back.”
I went to the rest-room area and used my cell phone. I called Kyle Craig in Virginia. Kyle had been a solid friend for many years, but ever since I had become liaison between the Bureau and the D.C. police, I’d seen way too much of him. He kept dragging me into the nastiest murder cases on the FBI’s docket. I hated to take his calls anymore. Now what had happened?
Kyle knew who was calling. He didn’t even bother to say hello. “Alex, do you remember a case you and I worked about fourteen months ago? A runaway girl was found hung from a lighting fixture in her hotel room. Patricia Cameron? There have been two murders in San Francisco that match up. Happened last night in Golden Gate Park. This is a very bad scene—the worst I’ve heard about in a while.”
“Kyle, I’m having dinner with an attractive, very nice, interesting woman. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ll call you. I’m off duty tonight.”
Kyle laughed. I amused him sometimes. “Nana already told me. Your date’s a lawyer, right? Listen to this one. The devil meets with this lawyer. Says he can make the lawyer a senior partner, but the lawyer has to give him his soul and the soul of everybody in his family. The lawyer stares at the devil and asks, ‘So what’s the catch?’” After he told his joke, Kyle went on to tell me more than I wanted to hear about the similarities connecting the awful murders in San Francisco to the one in D.C. I remembered the victim, Patricia Cameron. I could still see her face. I shook off the image.
When he was finished, and Kyle tends to be thorough if a bit long-winded, I went back to join Elizabeth at our table.
She smiled ruefully and shook her head. “I think I just figured out the catch,” she said.
I did my best to laugh, but my insides were already tied up in knots. “Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
It’s much worse, Elizabeth.
Chapter 6
IN THE morning, I dropped the kids at school on my way to the airport. Jannie is eight; Damon just turned ten. They’re really good kids, but they’re kids. You give them a tiny advantage, they take a lot, and then they take a little more. Someone, I don’t remember who, said that “American children suffer too much mother and too little father.” With my kids, it’s been the exact opposite.
“I could get used to this,” Jannie said, as we pulled up in front of the Sojourner Truth School. Helen Folasade Adu—Sade—was singing softly on the CD. Very nice.
“Don’t get used to it. It’s a five-block walk from our house to school. When I was a little boy in North Carolina, I used to walk five miles through tobacco fields to school.”
“Yeah, right,” Damon scoffed. “You forgot that you used to walk barefoot. Left that part out.”
“I did. Thanks for reminding me. I used to walk barefoot through those nasty tobacco fields to school.”
The kids laughed and so did I. They’re usually good to be around, and I’m always videotaping them. I do it in the hopes that I’ll have nice movies to watch when the two of them go bad in their teenage years. Also, I’m afraid I might get CRS someday—the can’t remember shit disease. It’s going around.
“I have a big concert on Saturday,” Damon reminded me. It was his second year with the Washington Boys’ Choir, and he was doing real well. He was going to be the next Luther Vandross, or maybe Al Green, or maybe he was just going to be Damon Cross.
“I’ll be home by Saturday, Damon. Trust me, I wouldn’t miss your concert.”
“You missed quite a few already,” he said. It was a sharp little dig.
“That was the old me. This is the new and improved Alex. I’ve also attended several of your concerts.”
“You’re so funny, Daddy,” Jannie said, and laughed. Both kids are smart, and smart-ass as well.
“I will be home for Damon’s concert,” I promised. “Help your grandma around the house. She’s almost a hundred years old, you know.”
Jannie rolled her eyes. “Nana’s eighty years young, or so she says. She loves to cook, do the dishes, and clean up after us,” she said, imitating Nana’s wicked cackle. “She truly does.”
“Saturday. I can’t wait,” I said to Damon. It was the whole truth and nothing but. The Boys’ Choir was one of Washington’s secret treasures. I was ecstatic that Damon was good enough to sing with the group, but most of all that he loved what he was doing.
“Kisses,” I said. “Hugs too.”
Damon and Jannie groaned, but they leaned in close, and I wondered how much longer they would be willing to give me hugs and pecks on the cheek. So I took an extra few while I could get them. When the good times come with your kids, you’ve got to make them last.
“I love you,” I said before I let them go off to school. “What do you say?”
“We love you too,” Damon and Jannie chorused.
“That’s why we let you embarrass us to death in front of our school and all our friends,” Jannie said, and she stuck out her tongue.
“This is your last ride to school,” I told her. Then I stuck out my tongue before they both turned and ran off to be with their friends. They were growing up way too fast for me.
Chapter 7
I CALLED Kyle Craig from the airport, and he told me his elite crew at Quantico was busy checking for related murders and biting attacks from sea to shining sea. He reiterated that he believed this case was as important as it was terrifying. I wondered what else he knew. He usually knew more than he told.
“You’re up early, Kyle, and you’re busy. This case has caught your full attention. Why is that?”
“Of course it has. It’s totally unique. I haven’t seen anything remotely like it. Inspector Jamilla Hughes will meet your flight if she can. It’s her case and she’s supposed to be competent. She’s one of two women in Homicide in San Francisco, so she probably is fairly good.”
On the plane trip from D.C. I read and reread the faxes I’d gotten that morning about the horrific murders in Golden Gate Park. Inspector Hughes’s preliminary crime-scene notes were precise and detailed, but most of all, gut-wrenching.
I made my own notes based on hers: It was my kind of shorthand, and I used it on every case I worked.
Male and female victims found dead at 3:20 A.M. in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Why there? Visit park if possible.
Victims hung by feet from oak tree. Why hung? To drain the bodies? Why drain the bodies? Rite of purification? Spiritual cleansing?
Bodies naked and covered in blood. Why naked? Erotic? Sex crimes? Or just brutal? Exposing the victims to the world for some reason?
Male’s legs, arms, chest severely gouged—victim appears to have been bitten repeatedly. Male actually died from bites!!!
Female bitten—but not as severely. Also cut with sharp object. Died from massive blood loss, class IV: Female lost over 40% of her blood.
Small red dots at the site of bindings to the ankles with which victims were hung. Called petechiae by the M.E.
Teeth marks on male appear to be those of large animal. Is that even remotely possible? What animal would attack a jogger in a big-city park? Seems far-fetched to say the least.
White substance on male victim’s legs and stomach. Could be semen. What game were the killers playing? Sado-erotic?
I remembered the related case in Washington. How could I forget it?
A sixteen-year-old runaway girl from Orlando, Florida, had been found dead and severely mutilated in a hotel room downtown. Her name was Patricia Dawn Cameron. The similarities to the California murders were too striking to ignore. The girl in D.C. had suffered savage bites all over her body. She had been hung by her feet from a hotel room lighting fixture.
Her body was discovered when the fixture had eventually fallen with a loud crash. Patricia Cameron had died of blood loss, another class IV. She had lost nearly 70 percent of her blood supply.
The first question was an obvious one.
Chapter 8
I WAS still thinking about the strange, terrible bites and all that blood as I walked off the plane and into crowded San Francisco International Airport. I looked around for Inspector Jamilla Hughes. Rumor had it that she was an attractive black woman.
I noted that a businessman near the gate was reading the Examiner. I could see the bold headline on the front page: HORROR IN GOLDEN GATE PARK, TWO MURDERED.
I didn’t see anyone waiting, so I began to look for signs directing me to public transportation. I only had a carry-on bag; I had promised to be home by Saturday for Damon’s concert. I had my marching orders, and I planned to keep all my promises from now on. Cross my heart.
A woman walked up to me as I started away from the gate. “Excuse me, are you Detective Cross?”
I had noticed her just before she spoke to me. She was wearing jeans and a black leather car coat over a powder blue T-shirt. Then I spotted the telltale holster under her coat. She was probably in her mid-thirties, nice looking, down-to-earth, pleasant for a homicide detective, who often come on a little gruff.
“Inspector Hughes?” I asked.
“Jamilla.” She extended her hand and smiled as I took it. Nice smile too. “It’s good to meet you, Detective. Ordinarily I’d resist any idea that originated with the FBI, but your reputation precedes you. Also, the murder in D.C. was awfully similar, wasn’t it? So—welcome to San Francisco.”
“Good to be here.” I returned the smile and shook her hand. Her grip was strong but not overly so. “I was just thinking about the murder in D.C.,” I told her. “Your crime-scene notes brought it all back to me. We never got anywhere with the murder of Patricia Cameron. You can add that to the file on my so-called reputation, the one that preceded me.”
Jamilla Hughes smiled again. Sincere. Nothing overdone about it; nothing overdone about her either. She didn’t particularly look like a homicide detective, and that was probably good. She seemed a little too normal to be a cop.
“Well, we’d better hurry. I’ve contacted a veterinary dental specialist, and he’s meeting us at the city morgue. He’s a good friend of the medical examiner. How’s that for showing you the sights of San Francisco?”
I shook my head and grinned. “Actually, it’s exactly what I came out here to see. I think I read about it in one of the tour books. When you’re in San Francisco, don’t pass up a chance to see the morgue.”
“It’s not in the tour books,” Jamilla said, “but it should be. It’s a whole lot more interesting than any trolley car ride.”
Chapter 9
LESS THAN fifty minutes later, Jamilla Hughes and I were inside the morgue at San Francisco’s famed Hall of Justice. We had joined the chief medical examiner, Walter Lee, and the dental expert, Dr. Pang.
Dr. Allen Pang took his time examining both bodies before he said anything to us. He had already studied photographs of the bite areas that had been taken at the crime scene. He was a small man, completely bald, with very thick black-rimmed glasses. At one point during his examination, I noticed Inspector Hughes give a wink to the M.E. I think they found Dr. Pang just a little strange. So did I, but he was very thorough, and obviously serious about the job he had taken on.
“Okay, okay. I’m ready to talk about the nature of the bites now.” He finally turned to us as he made this pronouncement. “I understand you’re making casts of the bite marks, Walter?”
“Yes, we lifted the marks with fingerprint powder. The casts should be ready in a day or two. We swabbed to gather saliva, of course.”
“Well, good. That’s the right approach, I think. I’m ready to state my piece, my educated guess.”
“That’s excellent, Allen,” Lee said in a soft, very dignified voice. He wore a white coat with the nickname Dragon stitched on one pocket. He was a tall man, probably six-two, and weighed at least two fifty. He carried himself with confidence. “Dr. Pang is a friend I have used before,” Lee told me. “He’s a veterinary dental expert from the Animal Medical Center in Berkeley. Allen is one of the best in the world, and we’re lucky to get him on this case.”
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Pang,” Inspector Hughes said. “This is terrific of you to help.”
“Thank you.” I joined in with the hallelujah chorus of gratitude.
“It’s perfectly all right,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure where to start, other than to say that these two homicides are most interesting to me. The male was severely bitten, and I’m relatively sure the attacker was, well, it was a tiger. The bites on the female were inflicted by two humans. It’s as if the humans and the large cat were running together. Like they were a pack. Extraordinary. And bizarre, to say the least.”
“A tiger?” Jamilla was the one to express the disbelief we were all feeling. “Are you sure? That doesn’t seem possible, Dr. Pang.”
“Allen,” Walter Lee said, “explain, please.”
“Well, as you know, humans are heterodonts; that is, they have teeth of different sizes and shapes, which serve different functions. Most important would be our canines, which are situated between the lateral incisor and the first premolar on each side of each jaw. The canines are used to tear food.”
Walter Lee nodded, and Dr. Pang continued. He was speaking solely to the M.E. at this point. I caught Jamilla’s eye, and she gave me a wink. I liked that she had a sense of humor.
Dr. Pang seemed to be in his own world. “In contrast to humans, some animals are homodents. Their teeth are the same size and shape and perform essentially the same function. This is not true of large cats, however, especially tigers. The teeth of tigers have been adapted for their feeding habits. Each jaw contains six pointed cutting teeth, two very sharp, recurved canines, and molars that have evolved into cutting blades.”
“Is that important in terms of these murders?” Jamilla Hughes asked Dr. Pang. I had a version of the same question.
The smallish man nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, of course. Certainly. The jaw of a tiger is extremely strong, able to clamp down hard enough to crush bone. The jaw can only move up and down, not side to side. This means the tiger can only tear and crush food, not chew or gnaw.” He demonstrated with his own teeth and jaw.
I swallowed hard, and found my head shaking back and forth. A tiger was involved in these murders? How could that possibly be?
Dr. Pang stopped talking. He reached up and scratched his bald pate rather vigorously. Then he said, “What completely baffles me is that someone commanded the tiger away from its prey after it struck—and the tiger obeyed. If that hadn’t happened, the prey would have been eaten.”
“Absolutely amazing,” the medical examiner said, and gave Dr. Pang a pat on the back. Then he looked at Jamilla and me. “What’s the saying—‘Catch a tiger, if you can?’ A tiger shouldn’t be all that hard to find in San Francisco.”
Chapter 10
THE LARGE white male tiger was making a chuffing sound, a muted, backward whistle. The sucking noise came from deep inside its wide throat. The sound was almost unearthly. Birds took flight from a nearby cypress. Small animals scampered away as fast as they could.
The tiger was eight feet long, muscular, and weighed just over five hundred and eighty pounds. Under ordinary circumstances its prey would have been pigs and piglets, deer, antelope, water buffalo. There were no ordinary circumstances in California. There were lots of humans, though.
The cat pounced quickly, its lithe, powerful body moving effortlessly. The young blond man didn’t even try to resist.
The tiger’s massive jaws opened wide, then clamped down onto the man’s head. The cat’s jaws were strong enough to pulverize bone.
The man screamed, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”
Amazingly, the tiger stopped.
Just like that. On verbal command.
“You win.” The blond man laughed and patted the tiger, which released his head.
The man then twisted sharply to the left. His
movements were almost as quick and effortless as the cat’s. Now the young man pounced. He attacked the tiger’s vulnerable creamy white underside, grabbing onto flesh with his teeth. “Got you, you big baby! You lose. You’re still my love slave.”
William Alexander stood off in the distance, watching his younger brother with a mixture of curiosity and awe. Michael was a beautiful man-child, incredibly graceful and athletic, strong beyond belief. He wore a black pocket-T shirt and powder blue shorts. He was already six feet three and a hundred eighty-five pounds. He was flawless. Both of them were, actually.
William walked away, staring into the distance at the rich, green hills. He loved it out here. The beauty and the solitude, the freedom to do anything he wanted to do.
He was very quiet inside—an art that he was still mastering.
When he and Michael were small boys, this whole area had been a commune. Their mother and father had been hippies, experimenters, freedom lovers, massive drug takers. They had instructed the boys that the outside world was not only dangerous but also wrong. Their mother had taught William and Michael that having sex with anyone, even with her, was a good thing, as long as it was consensual. The brothers had slept with their mother, and their father, and many others in the commune. Their code of personal freedom had turned bad and eventually got them two years at a Level IV correctional facility. They had been arrested for possession, but it was aggravated assault that put the brothers behind bars. They were suspected of much more serious crimes, but none could be proved.
As William stared off at the foothills, he marveled at the concept of the unbridled mind. Day by day he left behind the shabby baggage of his past life. Soon he would have no false morals, or ethics, or any of the other bullshit inhibitions taught in the civilized world.
He was getting closer to the truth. So was Michael.
William was twenty.
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