The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  The screaming stopped abruptly.

  I looked up at the monitor.

  Pryne had collapsed and lay motionless on the floor. Jackson and McKnight were leaning over him.

  I stood and walked to the monitor.

  “He’s conscious,” McKnight said. Then shouting to Pryne, “Can you hear me? Gordon?”

  Pryne balled himself up and began to weep, his body heaving with each tormented sob. He began babbling, this time in English. I leaned in, straining to hear the words.

  “Why can’t they leave me alone?” he said. “No, no, no. Leave me alone.”

  The man in the brown suit entered the room and said something to Jackson and McKnight. They left the interrogation room and came to find me.

  “Parkland’s coming,” Jackson said to me, without a hello. “Need to bring a stretcher through here.”

  “Should I…?”

  “If you could wait,” McKnight said. “We’ll have someone drop you back at headquarters. Couple of blocks from here. We’ll be about fifteen minutes or so.”

  He opened the door to the hallway and stopped a uniformed cop walking by.

  “Take Dr. Foster back to HQ and put her in the conference room on 5. And get her a cup of coffee or something, will ya?”

  I rode with the cop, parked myself in the conference room, and declined the coffee, which infused the entire area with a burnt, acrid smell—like it had been sitting there cooking on that credenza for days. I waited alone at the large oval conference table, until McKnight and Jackson appeared.

  They helped themselves to coffee and sat down at the table.

  “What do you make of that?” Jackson said. “He got the DTs or something?”

  I shrugged. “You mean delirium tremens. Maybe. He’s not a drinker, though, is he? You know anything about his alcohol habits?”

  “Uses everything else on the street,” McKnight said. “Assume he drinks. Would that explain it?”

  “I guess if he’d stopped drinking a few days ago, just cold turkey, maybe. But that wouldn’t explain the…personal nature of his behavior. He seemed to be responding to me. Literally to me. It happened the minute I stepped behind the mirror. I don’t know how else to interpret ‘Get her out of here.’ And the fact that he looked me straight in the eye and lunged at the mirror.”

  Jackson was shaking his head emphatically. “Gordon Pryne had no way of knowing you were in that room. No way. I didn’t even know you were back there. I just knew McKnight stepped out a couple of times and came back in. That’s it. Pryne had no access to that information. Zero.”

  “Not through the regular channels, anyway,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” McKnight asked.

  “Look, just…throw away all your logic for a minute. Everything you know to be true about the normal rules and regulations of the planet.”

  They looked at one another and then at me.

  “What’s your gut feeling? What did you see in that room? You were standing right there.” I waited. “Didn’t you feel it?”

  They were silent for a minute. The air in the room began to smell of sweat and tension.

  “Evil,” McKnight said at last.

  “Yeah,” Jackson said reluctantly. “That’s it. Evil.”

  “Okay. So you guys, between you, have done how many interviews over your years on the force?”

  “Hundreds,” Jackson said.

  “At least,” McKnight said.

  “Have you ever felt that before?” I asked.

  They both considered the question, looking down at their stained coffee cups.

  “No,” Jackson said at last. It felt almost like an admission, he was so reluctant to say it.

  McKnight nodded in agreement. He put his cup down and crossed his arms.

  “I seen some very bad things,” Jackson was saying. “Some very bad things. Heard some terrible stories. What people can do to one another. You have no idea. But that…that evil thing. I never seen that before. Never felt that.”

  “I think we’re dealing with something here that’s…beyond Gordon Pryne,” I said. “Something outside the bounds of…I don’t know…what you might consider normal reality. The ugly things people do to each other, as you say, that’s people doing it, right? Ugly, sick people, but people. But this thing, this thing that Gordon Pryne just showed us…that’s something else, I think. Something else entirely.”

  “What?” McKnight asked. “What is it exactly?”

  “I’m not sure it’s quantifiable in any exact sense. I think it might be—”

  “You mean, like paranormal. Supernatural,” McKnight said.

  “Something like that. Otherworldly, maybe. That might be a way to think about it.”

  “How do you know that?” McKnight asked. “I mean, how could that possibly be true?”

  “I don’t know. And if I hadn’t seen it myself, I would never have considered it as a possibility. I mean, the guy is just a serial offender, right? Just another in the long line of violent, angry people who shuffle through here, one after another. But didn’t you feel like you were watching something—”

  “Like that Exorcist movie,” Jackson said. “It was like that.”

  “Is it possible he’s just crazy?” McKnight asked. “Just crazy and loony and out of his mind from all the drugs and whatever other garbage he puts into himself?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Do you really think that’s what it is?”

  McKnight shook his head, kicked the conference table and shoved his chair back.

  “Anyone recognize the language he was talking?” Jackson asked. “Dr. Foster?”

  “No. I’ve never heard anything like it before.”

  McKnight got up and filled his coffee cup again, then put the cup down without drinking anything and paced the room.

  Finally, he looked up at me. “What do we do now? I mean, what would you recommend?”

  I shrugged. “Are they sedating him or something?”

  “Probably,” Jackson said. “They should call us here in a minute and let us know.”

  “They’re restraining him, I hope,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” Jackson said.

  “Do you guys have a chaplain?” I asked.

  They looked at one another and shrugged. “Martinez,” Jackson said at last. “I think his name is Martinez.”

  “You think I could talk to him?” I asked.

  “We’ll try to find him,” Jackson said. He nodded and McKnight left the room. Jackson excused himself after an awkward moment, leaving me sitting there alone again.

  I got up and turned the coffee pot off, then picked up the carafe in one hand and the rest of the machine in the other and walked down the hall, looking for a kitchen. I found one a few doors down and emptied the coffee into the sink. I peeled the wet filter away from the grimy plastic and threw it away, then searched the cabinets for something to scrub with. I found some crummy, industrial paper towels and a bottle of store-brand dish soap. Not my preferred weapons of choice, but sometimes you have to make do in a pinch.

  I turned on the hot water, holding my fingers under the stream until I was satisfied with the temperature, and started scrubbing.

  20

  I spent the next hour or so dissecting the video with officers Jackson, McKnight, and Martinez. As the tape began to roll, we stared at the dusty screen in silence, the grim, grainy images gripping us just as they had in real time.

  Pryne started the interview like any other offender. Innocent. Wide-eyed shrugs, a studied look of bewilderment, and emphatic, unequivocal denials.

  He didn’t know anyone named Drew Sturdivant. He’d never been to Caligula. Okay, maybe once or twice, but everyone goes to strip joints, you guys know how it is, and that don’t make you guilty of murder. That Arlington rap was a frame. He never broke into no apartment and he never raped no one. Some other dude must look just like him.

  “The evidence,” McKnight reminded him, “all points to you, Gordon. We got fi
bers. We got footprints at the scene in your shoe size. You wear a size ten shoe? ’Cause unless I’m missing something, you got a size ten foot. I can see ’em right there.” McKnight pointed at Pryne’s orange jail shoes. “Am I right? Want me to take a look at the size for ya?”

  Pryne scooted his feet farther under his chair.

  “You wear lug-sole boots, Gordon? ’Cause we got people tearing up your place right now looking for ’em,” Jackson said.

  “We got a witness that puts you with Drew Sturdivant right before she was killed.” McKnight put his hands on the table and stared into Pryne’s eyes. “You were the last person seen with her before she died, Gordon.”

  “That’s probably just a coincidence, huh?” Jackson said.

  A frame. Somebody was always trying to frame him. He’d never done anything like that in his whole life. Not in his whole life.

  “You were convicted of rape six years ago,” Jackson reminded him.

  A frame. He was never there. That woman made that whole thing up. Women are always trying to trap you. You have to watch out for women. All they want is to trap you. Everyone knows that.

  He didn’t own an ax. He wasn’t on Harry Hines that night. He hardly ever went down to Harry Hines. And he never killed no one.

  Denials, lined up and ready to go. Prefab, packaged up, and portable.

  The buzz of the coffee maker and the pall of the greenish flat lighting squeezed in on me as I watched the tape. I’d never seen a criminal interrogation before. It was more mundane than on television, of course, but also more depressing because it was real. I pressed my fingers into my temples to keep the headache out of my brain and tried to fight back the urge to give up entirely on any remnant of hope I held for humanity.

  It was Martinez who pointed out the first sign of change in Pryne. He paused the tape about fifteen minutes into the interview.

  “Anyone notice that?” he asked.

  “I did,” I said.

  “What did you see, Dr. Foster?” Jackson asked.

  “He’s getting agitated.” I turned to McKnight. “What was the last question again?”

  He rewound.

  “Watch his hands,” I said.

  Jackson’s voice came through the speaker. “You’re an innocent man, then? That’s what you’re telling us. What do you think of that, Detective McKnight? We got us the wrong guy, we’re so dumb.”

  We watched as Pryne began to twist his hands, the chains beginning to clink. His face contorted and he shuddered briefly but violently.

  “Right. That’s it,” he said, nodding quietly. “The wrong guy. It’s not me. Not me.”

  McKnight stopped the tape.

  “So what?” Jackson said to us.

  “He looked like he thought someone was behind him,” Martinez said.

  We watched it again.

  Sure enough, as his hands began to move, Pryne glanced back over his shoulder, just for an instant, and then turned back around and shuddered. He made a quick movement with his hands as if he was shooing away a pest.

  “Keep going,” I said, feeling the now-familiar sense of dread.

  As the tape rolled and the questions continued, Pryne began to deteriorate. I recognized symptoms of crystal meth detoxification. Twitchy agitation. Ridiculous grandiosity followed, rapid-fire, by quaking paranoia.

  “You know what’s interesting to me?” I said to McKnight and Jackson. “As Pryne decompensates, you guys are picking up the tension in the room. Like it’s contagious.”

  It was true. As Pryne became more agitated, McKnight, Jackson, and the cop guarding the door all started to shift uncomfortably. McKnight was the first to loosen his tie. Jackson began to pace, moving closer to the exit. The uniformed cop moved his hand to his gun and kept it there.

  Martinez stopped the tape. “Normally you’d get calmer, right? As he got more upset? To settle him down?”

  “Normally, yeah,” McKnight said.

  I looked at McKnight and Jackson. They looked at one another, then back at me.

  McKnight started the tape again. We all watched as Pryne’s distress intensified and the officers’ behavior mirrored right along.

  Pryne’s attention seemed focused on the back corner of the room. The cops started moving away from that same corner. An inch or two at a time.

  “What’s going on?” I asked at last. “Am I missing something?”

  McKnight paused the tape. He and Jackson looked at one another again. Martinez crossed his arms.

  “It seemed like it started getting cold in there,” McKnight said at last.

  Jackson nodded.

  “Cold?” I asked. “What do you mean, like temperature cold?”

  “Cold. And…I don’t know…empty. Like the air was almost leaving the room,” Jackson said.

  “Stuffy? Like someone turned the air off?” I asked. “Maybe the heat went off.”

  “No. Not stuffy,” McKnight said. “Dead.”

  “Dead,” I repeated. “I don’t understand what that means.”

  “It seemed like I got kinda nervous,” McKnight said.

  Jackson nodded. “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Keep talking,” Martinez said.

  “It was almost like a panic-type of a feeling. Like something you’d feel if—”

  “If maybe you heard someone break into your house,” Jackson said, “and maybe the noise woke you up in the middle of the night. Like something bad was about to happen. Something very, very bad.”

  “Or maybe someone stuck a gun in your ribs,” McKnight said. “That happened to me once. Like that.”

  “Could it have been a reaction to Pryne’s change in demeanor?” Martinez asked me. “Could they have noticed it and been responding to it subconsciously?”

  “Possibly, but that doesn’t seem sufficient to explain panic,” I answered. “You both felt it, right?”

  They looked at each other and nodded.

  “Did it feel like something came into the room with you? Is that why you’re scooting away from that corner?” Martinez asked.

  “Nothing came into that room,” Jackson said loudly. “The door was locked and guarded. We were in there alone. Look at the tape. For the love of Pete. Do you see anyone else in there?”

  “Why do you ask?” I said to Martinez.

  “My grandmother was from Mexico. Deep Mexico. Where you still have to kill the pig yourself before you eat it. She was a very superstitious woman. They’re like that in that part of the country. Real Catholic, but almost tribal about rituals and superstitions. Always running down to the curandero to ward off one spirit or another.”

  “What’s that?” I asked. “Curandero?”

  “It’s basically a magic shop. It’s got charms, incense, dolls, crosses—all like that—for getting rid of bad spirits or calling on one saint or another for protection, or maybe for putting a curse on someone. It’s from the Spanish, curar, which means to heal or cure. You see them in the barrios here in the states.

  “Some woman will be running the place and she looks like she’s four hundred years old, sitting there smoking a pipe and looking at you all suspicious-like. And when you pay for your stuff, she’ll say something really eerie like ‘Your girlfriend has had a change of heart,’ and you don’t know what she’s talking about. You were on an errand for your grandmother to get a St. Jude candle or something. And then two weeks later, the girl that just broke up with you will call you and want you back.” He grinned. “At least, that’s what happened to me one time.”

  “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?” McKnight asked.

  “I’m just saying I saw some funny things when I visited my grandmother’s house in the summertime.”

  “What’s your point?” Jackson asked.

  “Yaya used to say that you can always tell when a spirit comes into the room. The air gets cold and dead. Those were her words. Cold and dead. Or, technically, frio y muerto. She didn’t speak English.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. �
�Yaya?”

  Martinez blushed. “Mi abuelita. My grandmother. My brothers and I called her Yaya.”

  “That’s very touching,” Jackson said impatiently. “Can we move on?”

  “Hey, do you guys really have a witness that saw him with Drew?” I asked.

  “Six thirty the night of the murder. On Harry Hines,” Jackson said.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Name’s Skinny,” McKnight said.

  “Drug addict,” I said.

  McKnight nodded and started the tape again.

  Twice during the interrogation, McKnight’s cell phone buzzed and he stepped out. The first time to take my phone call. The second, to escort me into the station after I arrived.

  We watched him return the second time, leaving me behind the mirror.

  Pryne tensed immediately on his return.

  And then we watched the scene again. Pryne sniffing the air. Pulling at his chains. Screaming “Get her out of here,” at increasing volume. And the howl. That macabre, almost lupine howl.

  We watched the whole thing without saying a word.

  The tape continued to run, replaying Pryne’s collapse, his begging. Balled up there, on the bloodstained floor, crying and chained and snared like an animal, he looked small to me. Helpless. A wretched, pathetic little shell of a human being.

  McKnight and Jackson turned away from the screen and started talking with Martinez. I watched the video as the stretcher was rolled in and the paramedics worked to get Pryne stable, then chained him to the gurney and rolled him out of the room.

  Broken was the word that kept ringing in my head. The man looked broken.

  I joined the conversation at that point. No one bothered to turn off the tape. It ran as background noise, muffled voices mumbling in the distance as the camera stared at an empty room.

  We talked vaguely about Pryne, about evidence and forthcoming legal procedures, about the unlikelihood that he would confess. We discussed the particulars of methamphetamine withdrawal, but everyone knew we’d witnessed something far more ominous than that—something so grisly and disturbing that no one was up to talking about it at that moment. It had been a long, unpleasant day.