Flawless Dreams

by Hadena James

  He drove all the way home. He had other bones he could display. He was starting to get a stockpile of them. People were easy victims when a man was attractive and charming. He’d always heard that beautiful women have easier lives, he was sure the same was true of handsome men, like himself.

  Inside the barn, he swapped duffle bags. Everybody had a story to tell and each would get their turn. Some were more special than others though. Plus, not leaving them in the order they disappeared was actually a great countermeasure to forensic analysis. He’d recently watched a show about forensic detectives that had given him the idea.

  He picked a closer park to the southern part of Kansas City. The drive wasn’t nearly as long and he knew it well. He’d come here on multiple occasions when he was child and his mother had taken him out for day trips, before his father had turned into the monster he had become.

  Very carefully, Keirnan unzipped the bag and began to layout the bones. There was a pattern to it. The largest bones first, meaning the spine went on bottom, then the femurs were laid out next to it. The ribcage was placed beside the right femur and the skull was placed inside of it. Then came the smaller long bones of the arms and legs, and the bones of the torso like the collar bones, shoulder blades, and pelvis were arranged in a circle around the largest bones. The tiny bones that made up the ear, fingers, toes, and a few joint pieces were all put into a bag and sealed before he brought them here. This bag was placed beside the left femur.

  It was a beautiful sight to behold when he finished. More importantly, he was getting much faster at it. It had only taken him ten minutes to lay them all out this time. He smiled with pride and headed back to his car.

  The news would probably feature the bones first and then the man killed by a sword. That still bothered Keirnan. He’d been able to take his mind off of it while he worked with the bones, but now that the entire task was done, he was curious about it again.

  The more Keirnan thought about it the more he remembered and the more he realized it didn’t make sense. The tall man had stepped into the light once. Keirnan should have seen features. Instead, he had seen a skull and black robe.

  But Death had always used a scythe, not a sword. If the guy had wanted his imagery to make him look like Death, the giant sword wasn’t working. So maybe it wasn’t Death he was trying to emulate. Maybe it was something else. Or maybe he just had bad fashion sense.

  Keirnan shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. He wanted to drive back by there. He wanted to see if it had been a hoax or if he had seen something wrong and his mind was filling in blanks with false details. He focused back on the bones. Not the ones he’d just placed, but his father’s skeleton.

  They’d shown him many secrets. Just like his overly-eager young lady, his father’s bones had shown massive damage. The same type of damage that Keirnan’s bones would show if he ever needed an X-Ray. Keirnan had never met his grandfather. George Janson had died before Keirnan’s parents had gotten married.

  Keirnan was sure he knew why. His father hadn’t always been a monster. He had changed sometime after the birth of William. Until then, Myron had never even shouted at Keirnan. After William was born though, Myron began to abuse both boys regularly. He was repeating the pattern. He was torturing his children and making them suffer just as he had suffered.

  After looking at Myron’s bones, Keirnan had understood the suffering his father had endured. William had been a sickly child. He was in the hospital several times in just the first year of his life. The financial and emotional stress had been too much on Myron and he had snapped. He had taken to beating Keirnan. He had taken to drinking too much. And he had murdered his own son.

  None of these revelations made Keirnan hate his father any less. It just meant that Keirnan knew he had followed in his father’s footsteps. He too had eventually given in to his darkness and snapped. Now, he lived there, with only his rage and the stories of others as company.

  Rachael

  Rachael had headphones in as she attempted to remember what she was supposed to be doing. She’d seen bodies before, but this one had been different. Never had she come across someone that had died so violently. It made her feel ill.

  It didn’t help that she had known Christian Hunter a long time ago. He’d been a kid back then, a hacker with a set of skills and already on the NSA’s radar because of his father’s power, income, and arrest. If someone had told her then that he would grow up to be like the man he had shot, she wouldn’t have believed them.

  The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. That could be said for all of the SCTU members though. Most specifically, Aislinn Cain, she was going to be a hard one to get a handle on. Rachael had been unprepared to meet the woman. She had expected something else, someone else. It wasn’t something she could vocalize or put her finger on exactly, it was just that Aislinn Cain didn’t seem like the woman that made newspaper headlines covered in blood.

  She was somehow smaller and scarier than the one from the papers and TV news. Rachael sorta liked her, which she hadn’t expected. Aislinn didn’t mince words and she had completely admitted that she would have killed Hunter a lot slower. It made Rachael’s job more difficult. Somehow she had to contribute to the SCTU and stay unattached to them. She had taken the assignment believing she could do it. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

  Her phone rang and her boss’s name flashed on the caller ID. The NSA boss, not the SCTU boss. She sent it to voice mail. He’d just have to wait. She couldn’t answer to him right this second. She was supposed to be combing through notes written by the different police that had responded to the body calls, but Xavier had given her a sedative to help with her shock and she was feeling the full affects.

  Her phone rang again and again, her boss’s name showed on the caller ID. Again, she sent it to voice mail. She’d been with the SCTU two weeks, she didn’t have anything to report. As far as she could tell, they weren’t a threat to national security nor were they breaking the laws that governed them. It made her stop and think. Why exactly was she supposed to be reporting on the SCTU?

  Her phone began ringing for a third time and again it was her boss. She hit the answer button and didn’t say anything.

  “Stop sending me to voice mail,” her boss sounded annoyed.

  “I’m busy,” she let her own annoyance filter through to the him. He let the silence stretch for a full minutes.

  “Well, anything?” He finally asked.

  “I’m not sure I understand the assignment,” she admitted to him.

  “It’s simple, is the new SCT unit going to work or not?” He asked.

  “I think so, I mean, everyone seems capable.” She answered.

  “Good, consider yourself permanently transferred,” he told her.

  “What?” Confusion suddenly welled up in her.

  “What?” He asked.

  “I don’t think I understand.” She wondered if it was the sedative.

  “You are now a full time member of the SCTU, if you want,” he answered.

  “I don’t know, I mean, I don’t.” She paused.

  “I heard about the Hunter murder. Do you think Aislinn Cain did it?” He asked.

  “No, if she had, I think she would have said she did it.” Rachael answered.

  “You learn fast. Aislinn Cain is sadistic, narcissistic, scary, and a sociopath, but she’s loyal and tends to be honest. Malachi Blake is a little less scary and a psychopath, but again he’s loyal and honest. Do you think you can work with him and not end up in his bed?”

  “That will not be a problem. He’s arrogant and conceited.”

  “He’s a psychopath, that’s part of his charm.”

  “I do not find it charming.” Rachael answered.

  “In time, you might, he’s bedded some mighty strong willed women in the past.”

  “Sir, I feel like you know this group very well. Why am I here?”

  “I do know them well, I am on the governing board of the SCTU. I tapped yo
u for this assignment because I thought you could handle it. Now that you’re in, I know the SCTU needs members they can trust. You would fit that bill as well. Malachi Blake becomes your boss, you become a member of the SCTU permanently, no spying for the NSA or anything else for that matter. You’d chase serial killers full time. Are you interested?”

  “Does it get better?” Rachael asked.

  “No, it gets worse, then it gets better, then it gets worse again. Then someone happens to do something incredibly stupid to Malachi or Caleb or Aislinn and all hell breaks loose for a few weeks and then you go back to chasing serial killers and trying not to die.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because most people can’t handle it. I think you can.”

  “I had to be given a sedative today.”

  “It was your first real kill. It will stick with you,” her boss told her. “You’ll find ways to cope.”

  “If I don’t?”

  “Then hopefully, you’ll realize it before it drives you mad and you put a bullet in your brain.”

  “Like my father did,” Rachael said. It was answered by silence. “I’ll take the job.”

  “Good, the pay is better and you’ll do fine, I would not have asked you to join if I didn’t think so.”

  “Maybe it’s the sedative, but I’m still confused by the entire thing.”

  “It’s very simple, you made a mistake at the NSA. You got involved with a superior. It didn’t end well. He’s going to have you fired the first chance he gets. It will be bad for your resume. I think you could do wonderful things for the SCTU. It will require some training and some work, but you could be an excellent asset for them. I put you there as a spy, hoping you’d make a connection to at least someone there and want to stay.”

  “I like Fiona, Gabriel, and maybe Aislinn. I haven’t quite decided on that one yet. She’s not what I expected.”

  “She wasn’t what I expected either,” he said. “She grows on you, usually. Or you’ll absolutely hate everything about her right down to the way she doesn’t notice color if it isn’t important.”

  “Thank you, I think.” Rachael said to him.

  “In six months, you can thank me. For now, just try to stay alive. The good news is that you are chasing your first full blown psychopath with Aislinn Cain. That will help you stay alive.”

  “What’s the bad news then?”

  “You’re chasing a psychopath. This isn’t exactly the first assignment anyone chooses. You’d be better off chasing a psychopath with borderline personality disorder than ASPD, but you get what you get.”

  “How do you know he has ASPD?” Rachael asked, remembering the acronym that Lucas had explained to her.

  “I’ve read the reports and I know a thing or two about psychopaths. Consider this your new start. I’ll check in on you from time to time, as a friend. I wouldn’t throw you to the wolves alone.” He told her.

  “Was he really going to have me fired?” Rachael asked.

  “Yes, he already made the petition stating a lack of productivity and attention to detail,” he told her.

  “Then I appreciate you looking out for me, Peter. I didn’t realize it was this bad.” Rachael sighed.

  “Kid, it was way worse, this makes it go away completely,” Peter West told her. “I’ve saved the best for last. Malachi knew your father, he was Malachi’s trainer at Quantico. Once he figures that out, he’ll trust you without question and he’ll always have your back.”

  Ten

  While I sat at home and pretended to be investigated for Christian Hunter’s murder, a new bone pile showed up. I hadn’t spent my time at home twiddling my thumbs or trying to figure out what color to paint the bedroom. That would have been pointless, since I was pretty sure I was color blind to some degree. Either that or there was a lot of grey paint in the world.

  Instead, I had been trying to figure out what I was missing. Serial killers were fairly easy places for my mind to enter. I understood the desire to kill, I just tried not to act upon it without a good reason. A good reason for me was much different for the average serial killer, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t figure out their reasons.

  This one though, I hadn’t been able to figure out his reason for killing. It could have been love or hate or narcissism. Yet, none of those fit the pattern since he seemed to be non-gender specific and non-race specific. Narcissism might have been a good enough reason, but the exact manifestation of that narcissism wasn’t evident in the way he killed.

  That lead me to believe the narcissism wasn’t about the kills. It was about the display. Being about the display meant that our killer wasn’t killing for the thrill of the kill. That was secondary, at best. Essentially, the murders were a means to an end and his end was to collect bones, clean them, and display them. The average adult has 206 bones and each time they had found a bone pile, all of them had been in there. That was a feat. Small bones from the knuckles and things tended to get lost, even by professionals. Either he was showing off his skill and diligence with cleaning and preserving all the bones or he was showing off that he was smart enough to clean and preserve every bone thereby, affirming his superiority.

  None of the team had liked my theory, except Xavier. They all thought it was out there. I didn’t disagree with them, but serial killers had killed for far less than ego. Xavier claimed to like my theory because it was the only way to explain what he was finding.

  Which is why I was currently sitting on a counter top in the morgue waiting for him to reveal all that he had discovered about the bones. He was taking his dear sweet time. It was annoying me. However, this was a me problem, not a Xavier problem. He wanted to present his findings in a way that would somewhat wow his audience. I just wanted him to get on with it.

  “Ok, so the first five victims were probably dead when he found them. Their bones show advanced diseases that are commonly treated. I’m thinking they were homeless people. The three after that had nicks and scratches on the bones that I would associate with stab wounds. The next four only had one indicator of death, a nick on the bones of the spine. So he stabbed a few and then refined his technique. None of the others show these injuries, which leads me to believe he learned not to cut as deep and that a well-placed blade to the abdomen would do a great job.” Xavier started.

  “Slitting their throats is faster, that fits with my idea that it is less about the kill and more about the display.” I commented.

  “Now. for the most interesting part, he’s using insects to clean them,” Xavier ignored my suggestion. “I thought at first the pupa casing that was found in one of the bags was an accident. Flies get into everything, but I found signs of dermestid beetles. Again, not significant in a general sense, as dermestidae are commonly found feeding on carcasses, but I also found a small amount of substrate in one of the earlier victim’s joints. The substrate is a vegetable matter that is commonly used in insect farms. The staining on the bones indicates that they were in the substrate, being feed on by insects for a decent amount of time. However, they were not found by any large predators.”

  “That seems very slow work,” I sighed.

  “Obviously, you’ve never seen the deer carcass footage,” Xavier told me. “Using time lapse footage, they discovered that a deer in the wild can be reduced to nothing but bones in less than a week if it is only fed upon by insects. Decomposition is slowed by large scavenger activity because they eat the insects as well as the carcass. Meaning left to their own devices, insects really are nature’s best bone cleaners.”

  “So are we talking about a colony of like a hundred flies?” I asked.

  “No way, we are talking tens of thousands of insects.” Xavier answered. “However, if you have the right conditions, insects reproduce incredibly fast, so a colony of 100 could easily become a colony of tens of thousands in just a few weeks if they have no predation. Think about it this way, fruit flies only live about 24 hours. That is their entire life cycle. If you start with ten fruit flies, eve
n though they die quickly, you can get to 100 fruit flies in just 2 days. They reproduce exponentially.”

  “Have you talked to an entomologist about this?” I asked.

  “Yes and he agrees. Although, it was just to back up what I had already found. I spent a summer at the body farm in Tennessee studying decomposition as part of my SCTU training,” Xavier shrugged.

  “Then Ace is right, this is about narcissistic perfection,” Caleb frowned. “Don’t suppose we know of any large insect farms in the area?”

  “There are several,” Fiona answered. “However, it’s unlikely to be a registered insect farm. They get random inspections.”

  “This is the part where you tell me there are unlicensed insect farms,” I made it a statement not a question.

  “Yes, but they aren’t exactly listed on Google.” Fiona agreed.

  “I’m going on record right now and stating that I hate this case.” I looked at Caleb. “Who gave this guy a psychopathic diagnosis?”

  “The FBI.”

  “And we have evidence to support that?” I questioned him.

  “Do you think they’re wrong?” Caleb countered.

  “I do not know yet,” I pursed my lips together. “Narcissism does not always mean a psychopath or a sociopath.”

  “He is a serial killer and if your theory is right, a narcissist with perfectionist traits. Sounds like a psychopath to me.” Xavier answered.

  “Perfectionism and psychopathology doesn’t always go together,” Caleb offered. “Obsessive compulsive disorder coupled with another mental issue could also create a killer.”

  “How many serial killers have we captured in the last three years that weren’t either sociopaths or psychopaths?” Xavier asked.

  “One,” I answered without hesitation.

  “Who?” Caleb asked.

  “That guy in Detroit, the one that had PTSD after his tour in the Middle East. He was neither. You can’t get PTSD if you are a sociopath or psychopath.” I offered.