Bottom Feeder

by Matt Cole

  Sheriff Hill headed back upstairs to head off the growing number of reporters lining up outside. Chapel stayed downstairs; now armed with a flashlight, he searched in the haze for more answers. In the area under the stairs, the kitchen, he looked at the stove and noted an aluminum pot. The inside was scorched and covered with a yellowish, slimy material. In the open oven he saw a metal roasting pan that was charred on the inside and contained a piece of bone that looked suspiciously like a rib. On the counter was a heavy-duty food processor, obviously used. He opened the freezer and, right there on the front shelf, was a human forearm.

  That was too much for even the veteran Chapel. Feeling the bile rise in his throat, he ran upstairs and gulped the fresher air inside the house, trying mightily to keep from vomiting.

  Chapter 20

  When the forensics team had completed cleaning out the basement, especially the “kitchen”, they discovered the gruesome “list” of body parts found in the man’s kitchen included: two forearms, a bicep, two knees and accompanying thigh segments, complete with muscle tissue and skin. Some twenty-four pounds of human remains of frozen limbs packed in polythene bags that had been carefully stored in Frank Marsden’s refrigerator, all with skin, muscle and soft tissue still clinging to the bone.

  All had been cut with an electric saw. A food processor containing traces of human flesh stood on a bloodstained kitchen top.

  In the dungeon-like basement, the only furniture was a portable toilet and two mattresses. Each piece was being carefully bagged so as not to contaminate any physical evidence as they were shipped to the FBI’s headquarters in Quantico, Virginia and the Harrisburg’s Bureau of Police Criminal Investigation Unit.

  And, in an oven dish, they found what looked like the burnt remains of human ribs. The scorched cooking pot on the blackened stove contained a foul-smelling fatty substance.

  It was the boiled up remains of a human head.

  He had been boiling, frying and roasting other body parts and was able to breathe in and live with the horrendous stenches this created. He had been pulverizing human meat and more than likely dining on some of the proceeds himself, as well as preparing it in meals for others.

  Gary Chapel and the forensic team felt ill. With their noses covered by heavy-duty, industrial respirators, they stumbled around the basement, finding more blood and bits of flesh and bone everywhere. The place was a charnel house, a sexual abattoir that had witnessed the most unspeakable things–murder, rape, torture, electrocution, savage beatings and cannibalism.

  Over several days, police searched the house and yards, detailing every piece of paper and material they found. They excavated the front and back yards but did not find any further human remains. In the house they found a closet full of pornographic magazines all of which featured black women.

  In interviews with the neighbors like the Kesters next door, many complained to Chapel and other officers of strange odors sometimes wafting from the brick house, yet they said nothing before now to the police.

  Mr. Kester went as far as to say this to Chapel. “The smell was likened to burning flesh. Then there were the odd noises: hammering at all hours, and what sounded like an electric saw and other power tools. Heavy-metal music blared day and night. But no one suspected the horrors that anything of this nature was happening right under our noses.”

  Another neighbor described Frank Marsden as, “an affable, offbeat sort.”

  In other interviews with friends, neighbors, family members and doctors it was said that the suspect, Frank Marsden, who had a history of mental illness, sometimes retreated behind a wall of silence. But they said he was often gregarious to them.

  A former girlfriend from high school had this to say about Marsden: “‘He had a nice smile and he made you laugh,’’ said Julie Lindhardt, who went out with him regularly for years, attending concerts and shows. “He seemed normal back then.”

  * * * *

  Deena and Maggie were dressed and ready to go down long before it was time to go. But they stayed upstairs in the guest bedroom Deena was using for the time being, and waited—hoping—Deena supposed—for some miracle. Also they had the notion that if by some freakish chance she’d decided to come, and was on her way up just as they were starting down, their sudden appearance might scare Arlene off.

  By six forty-five they could contain themselves no longer. So together—Deena in jeans and a cardigan sweater that hung loose around her arms, whooshing about as she moved, and Maggie in flowing gabardine, a dressy smooth twill weave fabric, that swooshed more than whooshed.

  Downstairs, at the front door, they looked around timorously like strangers arriving at a party too early and fighting the impulse to bolt. Deena stared at Maggie and gave a slight smirk. They made miserable attempts at conversation, at being cheery and casual.

  Deena thought the painful faculty of recollection was upon Maggie, too, that evening. She kept harking back over the past month or so. How had their relationships with Arlene changed so suddenly and abruptly?

  They shot the breeze with a lot of bogus nostalgia about winter, Christmases past and how they had spent them. Now sitting there by the door that night with the snow falling silently outside, they knew in their hearts that all of those past Christmases were as false and empty and faithless as the one that was fast approaching. With the revelations coming out that Frank Marsden had been captured and presumably having killed seven women and one man in the basement of the home that Arlene had rented to Deena, Christmas was the furthest thing from either of their minds.

  After a while they abandoned all efforts at lively chatter. Instead, they sat listening to the fire in the hearth hiss and crackle and sipped their hot chocolate and gave themselves up to despondency.

  There was no sign of Arlene Balleza at seven thirty, and so, the moment the minute hand of the grandfather clock brushed the six, they rose as if by prearranged signal. Maggie took Deena’s arm, and with the solemnity and grandeur of a funeral march, together they strode through the parlor and the library to the dining room, where they mutely took their places at the table. Willard would be home shortly, having some errands to run, and he had promised to pick up dinner on his way home.

  The only question that remained unanswered was would dinner be for three or four?

  They heard the doorknob turn. Then the hinges of the front door squeaked open. Footsteps whispered across the floor. Just outside the dining room there was a moment of total suspension when they no longer heard the person. Time seemed to stop. Nothing happened. Their hearts abated. Then she was there.

  Arlene stood in the doorway to the dining room, a dusting of snow across her hat and the shoulders of her jacket. She shook some of the precipitation loose and began removing her gloves.

  Deena and Maggie didn’t look up at her. Instead they continued to stare at each other’s eyes—neither sure what to say—Deena still smiling that enigmatic smile, Maggie with her cup of hot chocolate still poised in midair.

  It was only after she took her place and started to speak that Deena looked at her and realized that the person Deena was looking at she had never seen before. It wasn’t the Arlene Balleza she’d met on her return to Strafford—that church going, impeccably dressed late fifty’s, with curiously direct eyes and the endearing shyness woman. To see Arlene now one might have thought she was younger and most definitely not a real estate agent.

  Deena found the person sitting beside her was not Arlene Balleza, the former abused housewife and kidnapping victim of a deranged psychotic killer, because that person was truly unrecognizable to Deena as the person who had come to pick her up at the airport when Deena had left her husband, Joseph, nearly six months prior, and had come to sit at Maggie Swader’s dinner table. It was Arlene Balleza, of course, but the figure seated to Deena’s right now bore scarcely any resemblance to that somewhat ambiguous and unremarkable woman she had known.

  There were still a few vestiges of that woman, some lingering shadows of a former presence,
but that presence was now almost wholly erased and transformed into a new presence, as far apart from the former as the moth is to the caterpillar when that creature sheds its skin and steps from one stage of existence into the next. The only thing Deena recognized about Arlene was the clothing and other items of jewelry Arlene wore, save her wedding band which was absent from her finger. The rest was all new and strange to Deena.

  Chapter 21

  As the grisly search continued, Frank Marsden sat facing the sheriff and some detectives at the downtown police headquarters.

  Tall, broad-shouldered, and brooding, with a dark moustache and beard, Marsden was the epitome of pious hypocrisy.

  Dauphin County Sheriff Lindsey Hill thumbed through his record. The suspect was well known to the law.

  Research revealed that Frank Martin Marsden was ex-army, a psychopath with a string of convictions, mostly for sex-related crimes. He had a passion for nubile black women, evidenced by the stacks of porno magazines and videos found in a cupboard. But this was no sad, down-at-heel loner.

  He was the monster he claimed committed all those unspeakable acts on the victims, seven women and one man, as far as they knew now. The media was speculating if the body count would rise once a thorough search of the house, basement, and surrounding areas was executed.

  Detective Sergeant Patrick Townsend and Sheriff Lindsey Hill walked out of the interrogation room and huddled in the hall.

  Townsend spoke first, “You think he’ll claim the insanity defense?”

  Sheriff Hill smirked and nodded. “Someone who puts human remains in a food processor...and calls it a gourmet meal...has got to be out to lunch.”

  “Or just fucking nuts!” Townsend replied.

  * * * *

  At last! A damned break in the weather!

  Dauphin County Detective Gary Chapel eyed the clearing skies with satisfaction. After a record long month and more of this damn snow, sleet, sub-zero forecast, he was finally able to climb into his car without having to shovel his way to it first.

  The ride to work was run of the mill for a change. Chapel turned the corner and was only minutes from the station house when he saw them.

  The media had returned.

  In full force…

  Swooping back to Strafford with a vengeance, as if the sheriff’s department had intentionally duped them with what everyone hated to admit, but now knew, Frank Marsden was a serial killer.

  When the story broke, the news media went wild. There were so many lurid details to cover; reporters were not sure which way to turn first. The crimes in themselves were gruesome enough: murder, rape, bondage, torture, dismemberment, and cannibalism. Race was involved. Plus, swirling in and around the basement where this all took place was a horrendous odor that was worse than the smell of death. It was a case of overload for the media; there were too many sensational elements for any newspaper to handle at once. But they tried. The intensity and breadth of the media coverage could prove to be an issue when it came time to select a jury to try the case, Gary Chapel reasoned. That is if Frank Marsden could be found sane enough to stand trial. With the news coverage of the case any lawyer worth his or her weight in salt could have no trouble digging up plenty of evidence to show that the whole world knew about Frank Marsden’s crimes.

  Chapel pulled into the department parking lot and noticed vans from two TV stations based out of Harrisburg and another one rolling down the street, with a logo he did not recognize. Fucking great, he thought, pulling his keys from the ignition. The media blitz is turning into a goddamned circus!

  He managed to lock his sedan and make it inside without being approached by any reporters. Counting himself lucky, he peeled off his jacket and threw it over the back of his chair, then continued toward the kitchen where he heated water in the microwave and located the lone remaining bag of tea: Earl Grey—it would have to do. He was growing tired of coffee—right, like a cop and a homicide detective to boot could ever tire of coffee!

  “Sorry I’m late, had to fight through the crowd outside” Debbie Wells, the receptionist remarked flying into the room with a shopping bag filled with groceries. Dressed in a powder blue overcoat, black—knee high boots, and a red scarf, she was always the most impeccably dressed woman in the station. “I thought I’d beat everyone here this morning. I can make you something else, coffee, if you wish?”

  Chapel shook his head—refused to give in to the urge to surrender to caffeine once more. He did not want to get addicted to it again. He liked his sleep. And the last thing he needed right now was Debbie Wells trying to mother him. “I’m good, thanks.”

  The once-over Debbie gave Chapel suggested he appeared no better than death warmed over, or so the saying went. “You still have that awful cold?”

  Chapel did not respond, just opened the wrapper of the tea pack and poured it into his hot water.

  He peered inside the bag of groceries. It was filled with pastries, dried candy, four cans of coffee, and Christmas decorations for the station house.

  Obviously Debbie Wells wanted everyone to get into the holiday spirit.

  Chapel silently said, “Bah, humbug!” The department had learned that a local resident, Frank Marsden, had killed eight people right under the noses of the department.

  That did not put him into the holiday spirit.

  Now there were reports from neighboring countries and cities claiming that perhaps some of their missing person cases could be traced back to Marsden. Chapel doubted it, Marsden had a pattern, except for killing Joey Fischer, it seemed. The other victims had all been hookers or druggies looking for anyway to pay for their fix. Then there was the other exception, Arlene Balleza. Frank Marsden had kidnapped her and inexplicably let her go, unharmed. She was older, maybe that was the reason why, but then why kidnap her in the first place?

  Detective Gary Chapel was giving himself a headache.

  “You okay?” Debbie questioned.

  “I really don’t know.” With that Gary Chapel started to make a quick exit.

  “Well, perhaps you should take it easy and rest more,” Debbie suggested out of sheer kindness only Chapel had no time or place for such useless sentiments.

  “Take it easy! Rest more! What the fuck do you think has happened around here? We have eight homicides all committed by one madman; how the fuck am I to take that easy?” Chapel slammed his cup of tea on the table and stormed out the kitchen.

  He immediately crashed into Dauphin County Detective Sergeant Townsend.

  “Whoa, where’s the fire chief?” Townsend said.

  “Move!” Chapel bellowed.

  “Chapel!” All three turned to see Sheriff Lindsey Hill demanding Chapel’s attention.

  “My office, now.”

  He dutifully marched across the station house that had slowly begun to fill up that morning without Chapel noticing.

  Inside the sheriff’s office, she closed the door and motioned for Detective Chapel to take a seat.

  “What’s eating at you, Gary?”

  “Oh, I don’t know; eight deaths maybe,” he remarked, knowing immediately it came out with way too much smart-ass attitude attached to it.

  “Good,” Sheriff Hill responded, taking her seat behind her desk. “I’m glad that those deaths bother you, but neither Debbie Wells nor Detective Sergeant Townsend is responsible for any of them.”

  “I know, sorry,” Chapel sheepishly affirmed.

  “All right, now take a deep breath,” Hill said. “I need you on this case, Chapel. With Marsden as crazy as they come, we won’t be getting much useful information out of him. That means there could be more victims out there. And I want bodies to give closure to the families of the victims, dammit!”

  Chapel could understand the sheriff’s position. He wanted to find the bodies of the seven women as much as anyone. So far a thorough search of the basement under the house at 1420 South Douty Street had yielded only one body—that of Joey Fischer—and the blood of the seven women. With the conditio
n of Mr. Fischer’s body having been carved up and cooking on a stove, it was assumed that Marsden had eaten the women.

  “So you want me to go over the missing person reports that are coming in from all over, see if I can find anything that may connect them to Marsden?” Chapel asked, desperately wanting to bury himself in his work at the moment.

  “Yes,” Sheriff Hill replied. “And Mike Leopold wants to talk to you. Well, not just you, me really, but what with all the press outside…”

  “You don’t want to be seen talking to the local nutcase and have it caught on camera,” Chapel voiced.

  “You got it.” Sheriff Hill smiled with her remarks. “I knew you were the right man for the job.

  * * * *

  When Deena looked into Arlene’s eyes there was no longer a trace of Christian reticence. She no longer kept her eyes down and riveted to her plate. Instead, Arlene’s eyes were direct, falling gently upon the group, which now consisted of Willard—not all defiant, but rather accepting and beautifully serene.

  And yet, Deena was sure, there are many who would have looked at her and felt revulsion. There was, of course, no filth. Deena could not deny it for a moment. It was something off about Arlene. Deena was not certain of what exactly it was, but it wasn’t her hair, her skin, her clothes, or even her voice.

  The four friends sat at the table and no one spoke. Arlene took her place there just as if nothing had transpired the last month, doing precisely what she had always done when she’d come over numerous times before. Her responses were automatic, and natural, like a muscle reflex. There was little if any conversation the entire meal. And curiously enough did not seem strange, either, but completely natural. It was as if conversation was superfluous. All vain and empty chatter.

  But the most curious thing of all was Arlene to Deena. After the initial response of seeing Arlene comes over for the first time in a week or more, Deena was so hopelessly and irretrievably stunned that she was virtually speechless.