by Hadena James
With my feet under me, I could move better. I jerked on the cuffed arm using my body weight and felt my shoulder slide back into socket. It hurt worse going in than coming out. My baton fell to the floor and rolled across the ground.
Gabriel came up behind George and hit him in the head. The big man staggered. I jumped to keep from falling under him again. He didn’t fall. I moved, yanking his arm behind him and then forcing it up. It moved in unnatural ways. The baton had dislocated the elbow. Once his arm was behind him, I jumped onto his back and wrapped an arm around his neck, squeezing as I did. His other arm grappled at my body. Fingernails tore at my coat. This guy just wouldn’t go down.
“No, don’t Taser him!” I shouted as Gabriel pulled his Taser. He gave me a strange look, but put the weapon away. George took a large step, catching Gabriel as he put away the Taser. His hand went to Gabriel’s throat and he lifted the man off his feet while squeezing his neck. I bit his ear, knowing that I would hear jokes about it later.
He held onto Gabriel despite my teeth ripping through the cartilage. I spit a small amount of tissue out. Gabriel was turning purple. I sank my teeth into his neck, worrying them as if chewing a bone. He dropped Gabriel, but Gabriel didn’t move.
I needed another strategy. I’d wrestled with psychopaths before, but not like this one. His hand found purchase on my coat and he began to pull me. My grip on his throat loosened. He was going to pull me over his head, regardless of the fact that we were attached at the wrists. If I shot him in the head from this close range with handcuff burns on both our wrists, it would look like an execution. However, the monster was going to keep going until I either knocked him out or killed him.
There was no other option. I grabbed a gun and shot him in the shoulder. He continued to pull on me, so I shot him a second time, then a third. His hand was losing its grip on my jacket. He charged the wall, slamming himself head first into it. I let go of him, sliding down his back at the last second. The sudden loss of momentum made me fall into his back. I shot him one more time, this time taking out his knee. He slumped to the floor. I wasn’t sure if he was conscious when I shot him in the knee and I didn’t care. I didn’t want the behemoth getting back up.
We were all on the floor. I was the only one sitting up. Xavier was propped up, the busted TV in his lap. There was no visible blood running down his head, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t bleeding internally. Xavier had a bleeding disorder. Gabriel’s chest rose and fell, his eyelids twitched. He was out cold. Lucas was still groaning. Blood soaked the floor below him.
“Lucas, you mobile?” I asked, searching my jeans for my handcuff keys. “Lucas?”
He didn’t answer. I dug in the other pocket and didn’t find it there either. My eyes scanned the room and I saw it lying on the floor near Xavier’s feet. Despite what happens in the movies, it is nearly impossible to shoot through a handcuff chain. It moves. It’s made of steel. It hurts like hell. It’s easy to miss.
My cell phone was near the handcuff keys. I felt more alone than I ever had in the past. Everyone could die while I was handcuffed to a serial killer suspect. My options were limited. I could scream and hope someone helped. I could cut off his hand so that I could get away, but that would be very hard to explain, or I could try to drag his dead weight across the floor. I wasn’t sure I was capable of the last one, especially since his head was in the wall.
Lucas groaned again. I shouted his name. His head rolled to the side. I shouted his name again. He didn’t respond to me. Xavier slumped over, his body falling against the floor. The TV shifted on his lap and clattered next to him.
Blessed sirens could be heard now, over Lucas’s groaning. The neighbors had called the cops because of the gunfire. They faded away. I swore loudly and took my can of mace out of my utility belt. I thought for a moment, and then threw it at Gabriel. It hit him in the chest. He groaned and moved. I nearly yelped at the progress.
“Call for backup and ambulances,” I shouted to the semi-awake Gabriel. His eyes were unfocused as he looked at me. His face was blank. I swore again, raised my gun and started firing it into the rafters. I aimed at an interior corner of the house to ensure that they wouldn’t exit the building and hit a bystander. I emptied the clip, drew the second Beretta and fired all the bullets in it. I tugged at the serial killer next to me, but he didn’t budge.
“Stop,” Xavier moaned.
“Thank God, grab my phone and call for help,” I told him.
“I already did,” he told me.
“Are you hurt? Are you bleeding internally?”
“I don’t know,” Xavier responded.
“Can you kick the keys to me?” I asked him. He rolled his head. His eyes were bloodshot. Blood leaked from his ear. “Oh shit.” I tugged harder, but the bulk still didn’t move. Sirens again, this time they did get closer. Xavier groaned and tried to move.
“Just sit still,” I told him. “Help should be here in a minute.”
“Why did you handcuff yourself to him?” Xavier asked.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. In hindsight, it is the stupidest thing I have ever done.”
“Detroit Police!” Someone shouted as they neared the front door.
“In here, officers down, need ambulances and handcuff keys!” I shouted back. “Suspect in custody.”
Several paramedics poured through the door. I sighed, grateful to see them. The officer that had shouted through the door came in. He looked at all of us and brought me a handcuff key. As soon as I was free, I slapped it on his other wrist.
“He’s a big guy. You’re going to need some help getting him out of here,” I told the cop.
“You’re right.” he looked at me. “He’s dead.”
“I shot him in the shoulder and the knee! How can he be dead?” I asked. The cop pointed at the wall. Now that George Gooder wasn’t stuck in it, I could see the nail sticking out. It was several inches long. White tissue was stuck to the end of it. Goo dripped from George Gooder’s eye. He’d impaled it through his eye and the socket, landing it in his brain. “He charged the wall himself.”
“Well, he killed himself doing it.” The cop looked at me. “How badly are you injured?”
“I don’t think I am,” I told him.
“You’re bleeding,” he answered.
“Really?” I frowned and my mouth hurt. “Oh, no, it isn’t my blood. I bit him.”
“You bit him so hard that you managed to cover your hand in it?” The cop asked. I looked down at my hand. The stitches were gone.
“Well, hell.” I stood up. My wrist had blistered from the electric burn. The cuffs had rubbed the burnt flesh off and it was now bleeding too. “Get them help first.”
Fourteen
They found a dead, nipple-less body in George Gooder’s house. She had been there less than a day. Had we gotten the information one day sooner, we might have saved her.
I didn’t dwell on this. Gabriel was sleeping. Fiona was trying to figure out victims that might belong together. Lucas and Xavier had been kept by the hospital. Lucas had somehow split open the back of his head. Xavier had to have surgery to fix a ruptured blood vessel in his brain. He wouldn’t be back to work anytime soon. Lucas would be back tomorrow.
My hand had been re-stitched. My wrist had been bandaged. I was long overdue for some sleep, but every time I closed my eyes, I pictured Xavier bleeding or Lucas bleeding. I had never cared about so many people in my life. It was exhausting. I had no clue how normal people managed.
Since I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t help Fiona without raising her ire, I was sitting in Lucas and Xavier’s room. A folder sat on the table in front of me. Inside was a stack of unopened envelopes. Some from Eric, some from Patterson, all of them dated in the weeks that had passed since Patterson’s capture.
By definition, both men were vigilante killers. They killed in the name of justice. One serial killer, one mass murderer, both Clachan men directly related to me. My family tree didn’t
just need to be trimmed, it needed an intervention program to stop the sociopaths and psychopaths from growing up to be killers.
I had been avoiding them. To think about them would require me to look at myself and I didn’t like introspective thinking. For a sociopath of my makeup, it was dangerous to look inwards too much, too often. I couldn’t find a justification for men like George Gooder, but I could for Eric Clachan and in some ways, I could for Patterson Clachan as well. Even the murder and dismemberment of my grandmother could be justified. Patterson had contained the violence as long as possible while being manipulated by someone who was truly evil.
That was the crux of the problem. I blamed Gertrude for my grandmother’s death, not Patterson. In my mind, Gertrude might as well have walked up to my grandmother and shot her in the head. The woman had known what Patterson was, and she had still lit his fuse and when he did exactly as expected, she made sure to hold him responsible.
If I let my thinking go in that direction for too long, I knew that it would drive me crazy. I opened the first letter from Eric and read it. Then I read another one and another until his stack of letters was complete. He only mentioned Patterson in a handful of them. He was glad he was finally getting to know the man behind the monster.
Unfortunately, I already had a pretty good idea about the man behind the monster. He was a kindly man, willing to go to extreme lengths to protect his family. He would have made a good grandfather if he hadn’t been a serial killer. Of course, he might not have been the same man if he hadn’t been a serial killer. I shook my head trying to push that thought away.
More hesitantly, I opened the first letter from Patterson and read it. Another letter followed and before long, I had finished all of Patterson’s letters. They didn’t ask me to visit. They asked how I was. I frowned at them and grabbed my cell phone.
“What’s up?” Nyleena asked me. Nyleena was my cousin and my best friend. Patterson had shot her in the face some months earlier. It had resulted in a coma that lasted almost, well, I didn’t really know. I couldn’t keep track of time like some people did.
“Lucas is in the hospital. He’ll be released tomorrow. Xavier had to have surgery for a brain bleed. He will not be released tomorrow. Gabriel is recovering from being strangled by sleeping off the headache. I’m supposed to be napping, but I couldn’t sleep. Do you know why I couldn’t sleep?”
“Because everyone is injured! Oh, my God, what happened?”
“A serial killer happened, but that isn’t why I couldn’t sleep. Sure, we nearly had our butts handed to us by him, but that happens more than we want to admit. I couldn’t sleep because I’ve been carrying around a folder full of letters from Eric and Patterson. I know I refuse to talk about our grandfather. Today, I decided to read them.”
“That’s good. That’s progress,” Nyleena commented.
“Yes, we’ll have to wait and see about that. This whole caring business is rough. I find myself often exhausted from it. I have never had this many people in my life that I care about as I do now. When I was shooting my serial killer this morning, hoping that I hadn’t reacted too late and let everyone die, I realized exactly why I didn’t have real friends before now. My life makes it difficult to care about people because it’s very easy for them to die. I get that death is a part of the master plan, but it sucks.”
“Okay, so this is a philosophical conversation regarding the point of it all?” Nyleena asked.
“No, I just went off on a tangent there. I get that I can no better understand the plans of the universe than I can the inner workings of your brain. I’m fine with that. What bothered me was that I read all of Patterson’s letters. He asked me how I was doing, but he didn’t ask me how you were doing. At first, I thought it was just a psychopath pretending to care, but then I remembered when you were in the hospital, he called me every day that I was there to see if there was a change in your condition. I don’t believe he would suddenly not care about your well-being. The only solution I can come up with is that he knows, and if he knows how you are doing that means, someone told him. I don’t believe my mother would pass along that information without your consent and I considered calling her, but then I had a more logical answer. You are corresponding with him.”
“That sounds accusatory.”
“It might be. This man is everything we fight against and yet, you are talking to him. How does that work?”
“Just because I bring killers before a jury doesn’t mean I can’t have a relationship with our grandfather. That’s why you have trouble with it. In your world, there aren’t many grey areas and Patterson falls into a grey area. He’s a serial killer, but he’s also our grandfather. I can detest what he did and still love the man that helped give me life. You are going to have to learn to do the same or you are going to have to keep hiding from it. You manage with Eric, but it has taken you years to get there. You’re going to have to make the same concessions for Patterson or it’s going to eat you alive.”
“I get a little crazy when I think about it,” I admitted.
“You two have a lot in common and I know that bothers you, Aislinn. I do get that. You are convinced that it could just as easily be you behind those bars. I don’t see that in you. I see in you someone who can change the world, one serial killer at a time. You have control of yourself, even when you think you don’t. Patterson doesn’t have that and it’s a weakness. You only want to see the monster in him and being forced to see the man is making you crazy. And I understand that too. You only deal with the monsters. You see the bodies of their victims. I only see the pictures. You talk to the monsters’ families and I only see them if they are sitting in the courtroom. But the monsters are people with lives and Patterson forces you to face that too.”
“I will need to think about that.” I hung up on her. As usual, Nyleena was correct. I did see more of the monster than the human when hunting serial killers and their happy family lives just made them all the more monstrous. About half of all the serial killers we caught had families. They weren’t abusive. They weren’t molesting their children. They attended PTA meetings and helped with fundraisers. They had jobs and friends. They were normal, except for their obsession with killing.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t think about those things. If I started seeing them as human, I would suspect they had human weaknesses. Psychopaths weren’t weak. They were apex predators, no different from bull sharks or crowned eagles. Their only real weakness was their belief that they were indestructible.
Thinking of the man behind the killer in Patterson didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse. How could I do my job effectively if I was willing to overlook this glaring flaw, just because he was my grandfather? Then again, I had been doing it effectively despite my relationship with my brother. I kept the two separate in my mind, a distinction that I wasn’t sure was deserved anymore.
Of course, my brother hadn’t butchered any of our family members. Patterson had on multiple occasions. I didn’t particularly care for my extended family, but I didn’t believe they all deserved to die horrid, painful deaths either.
With nothing mentally resolved, I turned my attention to the list of people the prostitutes avoid. One was a place and not a person. I found that curious. It was called The Blessed Hearts Home for the Unwed Mother. Next to it, in Lucas’s handwriting were the words “money’s good, if you don’t disappear.” That was a strange thing to say. Homes for unwed mothers didn’t pay their residents to stay there. Also, people didn’t usually disappear after taking a room in them.
Two conclusions could be drawn. Either the place was a baby farm for private adoption firms or it was cheaper and easier to kill the residents than take care of them while they waited to give birth. People would pay huge sums of money for healthy babies born to mothers that didn’t want them or couldn’t raise them. However, it was very expensive to feed, clothe, and get medical care for a pregnant woman.
My mind conjured up old photos of women put to deat
h for killing infants during the baby farming boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was more prolific in England and Australia than the US, but the US had baby farmers and serial killing baby farmers. Finding one in the modern age was more than a little unusual, but I was beginning to believe that I lived in a world where only unusual things happened.
I had seventeen long hours before I could do anything about a visit to The Blessed Hearts Home for Unwed Mothers or the list of suspicious “dates.” We were down two men. There was back-up coming, but it would be tomorrow before it arrived. In the meantime, we were supposed to be compiling information to decide who would track down what.
It was only our second task force and it didn’t involve Homeland Security. That was a positive. The negative was that no one really wanted to work with us, unless they were insane and there just weren’t that many insane law enforcement officers.
Gabriel was pretty serious about cleaning up Detroit. The gangs and drugs were problems to be sure, but the real problem was that it was a breeding pool for violent serial offenders. And with the bad guys masquerading as cops and the population’s belief that they were really the problem, there was no way to stem the violence without bringing in people to specialize in the different types of crime.
I got the distinct feeling that I was about to probe unknown waters of law enforcement. My status as a member of the SCTU gave me rights that other cops didn’t have. It also limited my area to violent criminals, so I couldn’t arrest prostitutes for plying their trade or burglars for ransacking houses. However, I could push open the door of a suspected gang hang out without a warrant, as long as the gang was considered violent. I could break down the door of a stash house without anything more than the appearance of too much traffic because stash houses had loaded weapons inside.
