Summoned Dreams

by Hadena James

  She shoved a gag into Kayla’s mouth, and then put on the painter’s smock. Bill put on a rain poncho. Rita stayed back, standing outside the curtained off area. Kayla’s shocked, muffled screams said she had woken up. Bill was becoming an expert at this. So many women had difficult births, births that required C-Sections.

  Rita waited, impatiently. Her son was taking his dear sweet time. Didn’t he realize that every minute she spent down here, was a minute not spent looking for more mothers to fill the home? They were only at half capacity. They had room for about twenty pregnant girls. Now that Kayla was giving birth, they would have another free spot.

  She checked her watch. The cries were becoming fainter. What was taking Bill so long? Normally, he could have the girl cut open and the baby out in a matter of minutes. The minute hand ticked past twelve again. This one was at the ten-minute mark. She tapped her foot, rapidly beating it against the floor.

  Finally, her son emerged from behind the curtains. He had a baby, all pink and covered in fluids. Rita took the bulb she had been holding and suctioned the baby’s mouth. For a second, nothing happened. Then the first cries of the infant could be heard.

  The alarm sounded in the basement. Someone was here. She frowned at her son. Surely, he hadn’t really called an ambulance.

  “Take the baby, wrap it and get it warm. Dispose of the body via the usual methods.” She handed the little girl back to Bill. As she walked up the stairs, she ripped at the smock. Once all the snaps had given, she deposited it on the stairs. Bill could clean it up later. She had to get to her office.

  She was a tall, heavyset woman in her sixties, but she moved like a ballerina. She glided across the floor of her son’s bedroom in just a few steps. Silently, she entered the hallway and then her office.

  Voices were coming from the foyer. Men’s voices. The house didn’t allow men to visit, unless they were the girls’ fathers, but that was only during regular visiting hours. She worried over the voices.

  One jumped out. It was a woman’s voice. The woman sounded strange. Rita couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was almost like she had heard the voice before. However, the police weren’t into raiding homes for unwed mothers. They had other issues to deal with. Rita knew they thought her place was a safe haven, a way for the wretched souls that lived around here to get away.

  The voices grew louder. Her door was opened. A short woman with dark hair walked in. Rita not only knew the voice, but the face. She wasn’t sure why she knew her though. A few small scars were visible on the woman. She looked both young and old, depending on how the light struck her.

  Then it came to her. She had seen the woman on the news and in the papers. US Marshal Aislinn Cain of the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit was in her office, and by the looks of the Marshal’s face, Rita was convinced the Marshal wasn’t here for a social visit. She composed herself, drawing herself up to her full height. She would tower over the woman.

  Despite her efforts to intimidate the younger woman, the marshal looked unimpressed. Rita was the one who felt fear. It was her stomach that knotted and threatened to disgorge its contents.

  Aislinn Cain pushed past Rita and sat down at her desk. Rita hoped that Bill wouldn’t come upstairs. She hoped he didn’t do anything to draw attention to them. She hoped she didn’t end up in jail.

  Seventeen

  Gabriel’s team was doing better. By the time we pulled in front of Blessed Hearts Home for Unwed Mothers, they had hit all three stash houses. Lucas was relaying information between the stash houses and us. They had found huge scores of guns, drugs, money, and gang members. They had even figured out the location of the gang’s leader. It seemed that when crazy federal agents shoved guns in faces, things got done.

  Of course, gang members were used to cops and criminals. They weren’t used to serial killers and Malachi Blake. People talked to Malachi. It was the safer option.

  My six-man team got out of the SUV and walked through the front doors of the Blessed Hearts Home for Unwed Mothers. Three very pregnant women sat in a sort of lobby, playing cards. Another was watching TV.

  “Hi,” I waved to them. “Who runs this place?”

  “Who wants to know?” One of the pregnant women asked.

  “US Marshals service,” I told them.

  “Rita Campbell, she’s probably in her office,” the one watching TV said without looking up.

  “Great.” I looked at Green. “You get to come with me. Everyone else gets to interview the residents, except Hunter, who gets to stand and look thoughtful, near the front doors.” It wasn’t just that Hunter was a psychopath. He was small, unintimidating, but intelligent. My opinion of him hadn’t formed yet, but I felt he was dangerous.

  I walked down a short hallway. There was a kitchen on one side, a dining area next to it, and an office marked “Private” across the way. I knocked and pushed the door open. So many people didn’t bother to lock doors when they were inside. Rita Campbell was no different.

  Rita Campbell was a heavyset woman. Her brown hair was heavily streaked with grey. Glasses sat skewed on her nose and she was squinting at a piece of paper.

  “Rita Campbell?” I asked. She looked up, startled.

  “Who are you? Can’t you read?” She stood, anger washing over her.

  “US Marshal Aislinn Cain, this is Special Agent Caleb Green with the FBI. We would like to talk to you.” I sat down in the chair she had just vacated and surveyed the messy desk. Paperwork was everywhere.

  “What about?” She shut the door, glaring at me. Green stayed standing, his eyes watching her every move. Female serial killers were rare. Female psychopaths were even rarer. Of course, she could be neither or she could be both. For the time being, I was going with both.

  “Do you work with an adoption agency?” I asked her.

  “I work with several. Many of the women in this city want to get their children as far away from the crime and violence as possible.” She snatched at a piece of paper I was picking up. “That is not illegal.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I agreed. “However, I’ve been told that you pay women for their offspring.”

  “Also not illegal,” she pointed out.

  “I agree with that too. I’m sure those mothers-to-be in the lobby will be able to use the two grand or so that you pay them for their unwanted children. It’s the mothers-to-be that never get paid that I want to talk about. We’ve been told that not all the mothers-to-be leave this place after they give birth.” I went with semi-blunt.

  “What a woman does after she gives birth is her own business. I imagine most take the money we give them and stick it in their veins. Nine months is a long time for them to go without using,” she snapped.

  “If only that were the case,” I told her. “Let’s not beat around the bush. I’m not just a US Marshal. I’m a member of the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit and I’m getting reports that instead of paying some of the mothers, you’re killing them. At this moment, I don’t have proof of that, just hearsay, but I thought I would let you explain to me why half the city’s women are terrified to come here.”

  “Rumors spread by gang bangers and crack whores,” Rita Campbell informed me. “Do you know this place sits on turf claimed by the Detroit Thugs? They expect me to pay them every month to keep my place safe.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “I do not give into the whims of thugs,” she informed me.

  “A woman who isn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right, I like that,” I told her. “Well, the good news is that you won’t have to deal with the Thugs much longer. We recently rounded almost all of them up. There are a few stragglers, but we’ll have them in custody by tomorrow. Unfortunately for you, we are hearing a different story from them. They told us they attempted to extort you, but you wouldn’t have it. At the time, the member that came to collect failed to return. They attempted a full on assault, but that failed as well. They tried to send a woman in who was pregnant, but she also never came back. So
, now they give you a wide berth. What do you think of that story?”

  “I think you can’t believe everything you hear.” Her voice had gone from heated to cold. So had her expression.

  “Is it Ms. or Mrs. Campbell?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Campbell, I’m a widow,” she answered.

  “Mrs. Campbell, as we speak, someone with more technical savvy than me is currently going through all your computer files looking for irregularities. What do you think they are going to find?” I asked her.

  “You can’t do that without a warrant.” She spat the words out like acid.

  “Actually, I can. That’s the privilege of being a member of the SCTU. I don’t need a warrant for anything, just probable cause,” I told her. “Sadly for you, a dozen reports of missing women counts as probable cause. So, do you want to start over and tell me what you did with the missing women?”

  “I know nothing about any missing women,” she said.

  “I hear that a lot. So does Agent Green. Just about every time I search a suspect’s home, as a matter of fact. Do you know that ninety-nine percent of the time, they do in fact, know exactly what I’m talking about?” I told her. “However, today is your lucky day. I’m feeling generous, so I’m just going to place you in handcuffs and put you in custody for suspicion of multiple murder. Which means you don’t have to talk to me again, ever. I’m going to hand you over to someone else while a forensics unit searches this place from top to bottom. If I’m wrong, you’ll be free to go in a few hours and you won’t have to worry about the gangs anymore. If I’m right, we’ll charge you...”

  There was a gunshot from the next room. Caleb Green was out the door. Rita Campbell followed at his heels. I took the little device that Hunter had given me out of my pocket and placed it next to the computer. It was the thing transferring information to Fiona.

  In the hallway, there was a dead man. He wasn’t an agent of the task force. A shotgun was near his head, his hand still holding the butt of it. Blood seeped from a wound in the front of his head. A larger puddle was pooling under his head. The guy had an axe and a hammer affixed to positions on his cargo jeans. The axe head had buried itself into his leg, but that wasn’t going to be a concern for him.

  “What the hell?” I asked anybody.

  “He came out of nowhere,” DSI Lingon said. “He fired his shotgun, Ballard returned fire.”

  “I only heard one shot,” I answered.

  “It was fast,” DSI Lingon looked like he was going to throw up.

  “Care to explain why someone with a shotgun was in your building?” I asked Rita Campbell.

  “We’ve had trouble with gangs,” she answered. She didn’t seem bothered by the dead body. That bothered me.

  “Our jackets denoting us as federal agents should have been a clue that we weren’t part of a gang,” DEA agent Franklin said. Green was going through the dead man’s pockets. He’d magically produced gloves to do so. I always forgot the important things like gloves and what day it was.

  “I’m guessing, since you are a widow, that Bill Campbell is your son?” Green asked Mrs. Campbell.

  “He is,” she answered.

  “Wow, that’s cold,” I told her, “even by my standards. Most psychopaths at least mourn the death of their children.” I slapped a cuff on her wrist. She threw an elbow that clocked me in my ear. I hated women who were taller than I was. I jerked her arm, satisfied by the popping noise it gave and managed to get her free arm into the other side of the handcuff. I handed her to Ballard and waved as she was dragged from the building, saying things that would make even the most seasoned sailor blush.

  “What about him?” DSI Lingon tried to nod at the dead man without looking at him.

  “Well, you’re the guy who has to say the shoot was good or bad,” I answered. “If Ballard isn’t going to have to turn over his gun and badge to you, then we get a forensics unit in here and figure out why Billy-boy tried to shoot someone. If Ballard does have to turn over his badge and gun, we have to find another team member, and then have a unit in to tell us the motive.”

  “It was clean,” DSI Lingon answered. I nodded and called the forensics team.

  They were still busy digging up bodies at Mr. Daniel Jacobs house. We began the search without them. Franklin and Ballard took the pregnant women outside to be picked up by Lucas. The rest of us started in the kitchen. The number of cannibals never ceased to amaze me. As I went to open the fridge, Green handed me a pair of gloves. I sighed and put them on. I was a terrible investigator. I was much better at making people uncomfortable or shooting them.

  Surprisingly, the fridge contained only healthy foods that had been purchased within the last week at a farmer’s market. The meats all had stamps from a grocery store. There were no severed heads or identifiable pieces of human. I was glad that they weren’t feeding pregnant women other women. That would have been really horrific.

  Down another hallway, we found another door marked “Private.” This one was locked. DSI Lingon indicated that the guy with the shotgun had come from there. That knowledge filled me with unease. It could be nothing more sinister than a bedroom, but in this line of work, that was rarely the case.

  Ballard moved forward. He had a specialized tool that essentially broke the doorknob with a blast of cold air. The door swung open to reveal a bedroom. There were girly posters on the wall. There was a bed, a closet with a door, a dresser and a wardrobe in the room. I frowned at the wardrobe. It seemed out of place in the room with half naked women. I walked over and pulled open the doors. Male clothing hung from the bar. If there was guy’s clothing in the wardrobe, what was in the closet? I didn’t know, but we were about to find out. I nodded to Ballard and he turned the knob. It was locked. Nothing good ever came from behind a locked door.

  Ballard hit this door with his magic doorknob killer. The door opened. There were stairs leading down.

  Basements are good for all sorts of things. They make excellent storm shelters, places to keep extra canned goods, and unused furniture. They also made good torture dens. The roof of the stairs was lined with foam. The door was lined with foam. The walls were lined with foam. It was never a good sign to find foam padding on walls. It was the primary material for soundproofing. You didn’t soundproof a room because you were hoarding canned goods.

  About halfway down, I stopped to let my eyes and nose adjust. I could already smell cigarette smoke and blood. The problem was that dried blood didn’t have a smell or at least not much of one. Dried blood tended to smell like decay. Fresh blood smelled coppery. This basement smelled a little like both.

  “I hear something,” Green whispered to me. I did too. It made me feel sick and got my feet moving quicker. At the bottom of the stairs and to the right was a section wrapped in plastic. It was this sheeting that smelled like fresh blood. It stung my nostrils.

  I pushed it back with a gloved hand. On a table lay a woman, her abdomen sliced open. Her eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling. Blood had drenched the table and the floor around her. Next to her was a plastic basket on a rolling cart. It was from this basket that the noise emanated. A tiny pink fist shot up in the air followed by another gurgle.

  “Someone, get the baby,” I told them. Franklin rushed forward. He struck me as the fatherly type, despite the biker appearance. He picked up the little pink alien and cooed at it. “We’ll need the coroner to tell us if it was a natural or unnatural death.” I wanted to close her eyes, but I knew they wouldn’t stay closed. Her body was still warm. I checked for a pulse, but found nothing.

  “I don’t think we’ll have to wait for a coroner,” Hunter pointed at the woman’s chest. Under all the blood was another hole. This one went straight into her heart.

  “Are you ever wrong?” DSI Lingon asked.

  “The SCTU has never entered a house only to find out that the occupants were indeed innocent,” I told him. “Personally, I’ve been wrong, but as a team, no. Everyone we suspect of being a serial killer turns o
ut to be a serial killer. Sometimes we are told that because all we work with are serial killers, everyone looks like one. But the truth is, we are just very adept at identifying and finding the patterns of a serial criminal. It’s our thing.”

  Phil Marks

  Phillip Marks was average in every way. He held a job at one of the car factories as a janitor making just enough to survive paycheck to paycheck, as long as he didn’t splurge. His mother and father both lived outside the city in a nursing home that sucked their pensions dry. His sister lived in Portland with a husband she hated and three kids she adored. His brother lived in New Jersey, but worked in New York City. His brother was divorced with two kids that he only saw on weekends. They both chipped in when they could afford it to give their parents a treat.

  At some point, everyone had stopped calling him Phillip and had begun calling him Phil. He didn’t like Phil all that well, but he wasn’t going to argue with everyone about it either. There were worse things he could be called.

  He’d gone out the night before and picked up a woman. By morning, she had been mostly gone. The useful pieces of flesh were cut out before the rest of it went into the warehouse district. It would be weeks, if not months before she was found. Decomposition, insect and animal activity would have covered his nefarious deeds.

  It was a good way to supplement his dietary needs. Meat was expensive on his wages. Besides, he liked the taste.

  Figuring out that one liked the taste of human flesh was a convoluted trail. It had started as a biting fetish. He liked to bite. He liked feeling his teeth clamp down on a body part, usually the legs or the behind. However, the rush wears off after a while and the person has to start biting harder. Biting harder will lead to breaking the skin, which creates its own high. Eventually though, that begins to wane as well. The person has to start breaking skin every time they bite. Then one day, you bite someone and a chunk comes out and you swallow it. It might make you sick. The thought of the raw flesh sitting in your stomach. You might run away, find a corner and puke until your stomach hurts so bad you just wanted to die. Then time passes and you realize it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t the worst thing on the planet. It actually didn’t taste half bad. Maybe a little bland, but that’s fixable with salt, pepper, and other seasonings. So, you bring someone home one night and instead of biting them, you kill them. You take off a piece, season it, fry it and eat it. It tastes like any other meat now. It goes down easy. After a while, you don’t even think about it anymore. It’s just food.