Flawless Dreams

by Hadena James

  She managed to track him for just two more cameras, at which point he hopped on an interstate and was gone. I tried not to frown even harder. No one spoke. This is why I hated investigating. You’d get a tip and start running with it only to be shut down. Who the hell drove around without a license plate? Someone up to no good.

  “Could he be the guy that killed Hunter?” I asked.

  “Not unless he got shorter,” Xavier was staring over Fiona’s shoulder. “I mean this is just a rough guess based on the shadow of him sitting in his seat, but I’d say he’s under six feet tall and Hunter’s killer was a whole lot taller.

  “How much taller?” I asked.

  “He’s either taller than Malachi or he can put a lot of force into a downward strike in a short amount of distance.” Xavier pursed his lips. “And I do mean a lot of force, possibly superhuman strength.”

  “Then he’s taller than Malachi,” I answered.

  “Or he’s a super psychopath that is somewhat functional.” Caleb offered. “Like Eric.”

  “Caleb,” I turned to face him and leaned in. “I would be willing to bet that Eric is a fully functional super psychopath. Let me tell you what I realized in the last couple of months while I was suspended; my brother is in prison because that’s his ideal victim pool.”

  “Wow, that’s messed up,” Xavier said. “And it totally makes sense.”

  “I guess get some sleep and tomorrow, we’ll go knock on the doors of the bug farmers and hope we get lucky,” I sighed not sure what else to do.

  Thirteen

  After seven hours, we’d visited only three bug farms out of six. We had learned a lot about insect farms, none of it was ever going to be useful to me. Mostly, I’d learned that insect farms stank and that it would be nearly impossible for even me to find a dead body in one. Then there was the fact that insect farmers seemed a little lonely. I didn’t know if that was because they smelled like that when they left the house or because it was very hard to start a conversation with “I farm insects.” Saying that was possibly more awkward than saying “I hunt serial killers” as a conversation kick-off point.

  I had also made a mental list of restaurants to never eat at in Kansas City and the surrounds because insects were their primary food staple at them. I understood logically that insects were full of protein and cheaper to farm than cattle, but I had come across some decomposed bodies that were more insect than human and it made me feel off to think about eating bugs. The idea that an insect farmer might be behind our current killings didn’t help. Was it cannibalism to eat insects that were grown on dead human tissue? I wasn’t sure it was, but the image was still in my mind.

  I had driven to the first three. Caleb was driving now. I didn’t trust Xavier or Rachael to drive, for completely different reasons; Rachael was new to the area and Xavier was just a bad driver. Fiona would probably drive tomorrow because it didn’t look like we were going to make it to all the insect farms in a single day. Since I didn’t believe that a legal insect farm was feeding their bugs on the rotting corpses of victims they had killed, I didn’t want to knock on any doors after about seven in the evening.

  Every farmer we’d met so far was a talker and they had talked about their bugs. I was certain more than one person in my group of tough-as-nails serial killer group was going to have nightmares. Part of me hoped they all woke up and called Xavier. He was better at that than I was. The other part hoped they didn’t have nightmares, mainly so we could all get some sleep after the last couple of days.

  Our black sport utility hearse pulled up in front of a driveway on a back road in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere might have been generous for this place though, the gravel road didn’t even have a number, let alone a name. Every house we’d passed on it looked like a fresh coat of paint would just make it look sadder.

  There was no way someone lived at the end of this drive. There was no way it had even been used in the last decade or so. The gravel was filled with weeds. A part of the roof that covered the porch had collapsed and hung by determination alone. The barn was a heap of rubble that might have once been nice, but now wasn’t even salvageable. The GPS said we were near Harrisonville on County Rd 387, but we might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. There hadn’t been a car in a while and the house showed no signs of life.

  I didn’t even bother turning down the driveway that was still attempting to cling to life. If someone lived there, I doubted I wanted to meet them. Furthermore, they probably didn’t want to me. It was the kinda place where a good horror movie could be filmed, but otherwise, it was unusable. I rolled down the window, just to see what the air was like here.

  It wasn’t city air, that was for sure. It had a bite to it, not blood, not decay, not insects, maybe old dirt and loose rock. Either way, I had never smelled it before. Of course, I had never been anywhere that was completed deserted either. If desertion had a smell, this was it. My brain catalogued it for later reference.

  “Well, do we call it quits for the night? Head back to civilization and grab some food and some sleep?” Caleb asked.

  “Sure,” I shrugged and left my window down as I maneuvered the SUV around and headed back the way we came. We were almost to the black top before I smelled anything different. Then it was exhaust fumes and smoke. Not cigarette smoke, it didn’t have the pungent tobacco aroma. It wasn’t smoke from a wood fire either, meaning it wasn’t a house or brush or even a field being burned off in anticipation of the harvest. It smelled of melting vinyl and foam with an acrid sting that only happened when metal burned really hot. In other words, there was a car fire nearby.

  This was the perfect place to burn a car that you didn’t want. There weren’t a lot of people, despite being near towns. The blacktop wasn’t well used and the asphalt showed that it had been a while since it had been laid down. We couldn’t do anything if someone was illegally burning their car; take a description and send it to cops that could do something, but it was possible that it was an accident and people were in need. That we had an obligation to investigate.

  I turned towards the direction where I could smell the smoke. It took maybe five minutes for it to become visible above the tree line. After topping a hill, we could see the car sitting on the side of the road at the bottom. It was completely engulfed in flames and there wasn’t a single person nearby.

  I pulled off to the other side of the road, stopping near the stop and engaging the emergency brake. The paint was blistered, the windows were gone, the seats were mostly ash and metal, in spots on the hood and trunk, the paint and primer was even missing. The plates were still attached, but they were blackened and peeling.

  The car on fire was a 1969 Dodge Charger, painted flat black with Dodge Orange racing stripes down it. The elegant pinstripe-detail around the key hole in the trunk was obliterated. The tires, which had cost a pretty penny brand new, were completely flat. The plate was going to read QM43H2 and be Missouri tags. I knew all of this as I shut off the SUV and got out.

  I checked the road and braved the heat to get closer. It smelled of gasoline and something else, kerosene maybe. It was hard to tell with the foam inside the seats melting. Searing heat blew my hair back from my face and I took a step back. My body banged up against someone. I didn’t turn to look at them, I just stood there, not moving.

  Someone had just declared war on me. Someone had managed to steal my car from a police impound lot, follow five US Marshals, set it on fire, and then just wait for us to find it. They had to be close still. My eyes instantly began to search the trees and fields that surrounded us. Despite my search, I found no one. This guy was bigger than Malachi and moved like a shadow. I couldn’t imagine how that was even possible. Apex had nothing on this guy’s hiding skills. He had to be watching us even as I stood here, but I couldn’t find him.

  “Hey,” Caleb whispered quietly. “I feel him, but I can’t find him.” His breath tickled my ear. He was concealing his mouth against my head. The gesture looked intimate
and for Caleb it might have been. For me, it was annoying and Caleb was right, I could feel him too. That’s when I realized Caleb was leaning into me. He was not standing behind me. I finally turned and looked. Xavier’s smaller frame was pressed up against me. His eyes didn’t meet mine, they were slowly looking at the tree tops.

  It was March, there weren’t a lot of trees with leaves on them. The majority that had them were evergreens and nobody climbed up those things if they could help it. Sap was not a criminal’s friend. It grabbed onto DNA, hair, and anything else loose on a person, leaving too much evidence behind. It would even capture finger prints and shoe marks, all the while, transferring to the body of the suspect. It was hard to clean off, harder than blood in most cases, it was too risky to climb an evergreen, even in March.

  However, as far as I could tell, he had to be in one of those damnable trees. Cedars and pines are the most common forms of evergreens in Missouri. Even worse, they were common forms of trees in general. About half of the trees in this area were evergreens. We could call for help and search them, but I had a feeling even that wouldn’t be fool-proof. It was getting late, the sun was already starting to set. It didn’t matter if we brought dogs and night vision goggles, our phantom would find a way to escape. I pulled out my phone and hoped I was doing the right thing.

  “Ivan, we have a problem,” I told him as he answered. “I’m standing on a blacktop road in the middle of nowhere near Harrisonville watching a car burn. Thing is, this particular car was impounded as evidence because someone was murdered and leaning against it. We found it within minutes. I don’t think he’s got a partner or a friend helping torch a car.” I left it unsaid.

  “I will get the State police there and anyone else I can dig up. I will also go figure out how the car was stolen.” Ivan paused. “Sorry about the car.”

  “It is what it is,” I hung up, not wanting to talk about it. I’m not a sentimental person by nature. That car though, that had value like nothing else in my life. My father had started working on it when I returned from the clutches of Mr. Callow. He had told me it would be my car when I got older. After he was killed, my brother Eric took over the restoration. I had helped as much as I could with the build, even letting Eric talk me into the god awful orange. The blood and sweat of three Clachans, two of whom would never work on another car again, had gone into it. I had hoped to give it to my nephew Kyle when he turned 16, since so much of his father went under the hood. Now, someone had torched it. Most likely, the same someone that had sprayed Christian Hunter’s blood on it. When I found him, he’d be lucky if I put a few bullets into him.

  Suddenly, CO2 shot at my car. The flames fought back and a second canister joined it. I didn’t know where Rachael and Fiona had come up with fire extinguishers, but they were fighting a losing battle. I didn’t tell them this. If dowsing the car in CO2 made them feel better, then so be it.

  Aside from the commotion around the car, it was deadly silent. No birds chirped, no small animals moved about, and it caught my attention. Missouri doesn’t become devoid of life during the winter. Several species of birds do not migrate at all. Small animals had been hibernating less because of the mild winters the last few years and this one hadn’t been an exception. There should have been wildlife around and there wasn’t.

  “Notice the quiet?” I asked Caleb and Xavier.

  “Yes,” they answered in unison. I nodded once.

  “My guess, whoever set the fire, did so with a bang. Maybe they intended for us to hear it happen and we didn’t.” Caleb offered.

  “Agreed.” I looked around again, hoping to find something a new; a broken branch, a spot in the mud that was disturbed, a tree that leaned a little awkwardly. Any sign that our arsonist was nearby would be sufficient, well, anything but the quiet. Quiet didn’t normally lead very far.

  “Shit,” Fiona’s fire extinguisher crashed against the ground. It hadn’t been doing much to put out the flames. “It’s empty.”

  “Mine too,” Rachael announced.

  “It was a good try, but it will have to burn itself out or be hosed down by some serious water pressure in massive quantities.” I told them. I could hear sirens coming from the distance. It was probably police and not fire, but I wouldn’t know until they were closer. My sense of smell was very good, but my hearing was barely average.

  Fourteen

  There were too many distractions. I sat on my living room floor with nothing surrounding me. I needed to find someone who was killing people and cleaning their bones, not chase after a phantom. If it kept up, I’d be pulled off the case, both cases. I didn’t want that. I wanted to solve the bone cleaner today. My phantom could wait until tomorrow.

  All we had to go on was a truck with no registration information and bugs. I didn’t know much about bugs, which was a problem for me, my tablet was currently open to an entomology encyclopedia. I was flipping the pages about half my normal speed. Not because bugs were difficult to understand in their basic form or because I needed to process the material, but because I kept thinking about the fruitless search that had taken place after the burning of my car.

  He had disappeared. Just gone. We didn’t find any trace of him in a tree, in a bush, even walking on the ground. He had no way to know we were headed out there, so he could not have planted a car beforehand. There was nowhere for him to go and yet, we hadn’t found him. It was impossible. Demonic possession was more probable than vanishing into thin air. At the moment, I was even willing to give more credit to Gabriel having a real encounter with a wendigo.

  Which is why I picked up my phone and dialed the number that I knew I needed to dial, but didn’t want to.

  “Xavier told me, how you holding up?” Gabriel asked me.

  “It was a car,” I answered. “Nothing more. However, I officially have a stalker and not the kind that messes around with dead rodents in the mail. I think I need help here. I cannot focus on both cases.”

  “He vanished into thin air. Do you want me to find you a paranormal expert that deals with that?” Gabriel asked.

  “I was talking about relieving me from the bone cleaning case.” I snipped at him.

  “Why? So you can obsess about a man who seemingly disappeared into thin air?” Gabriel countered with another question and I was finding the conversation irksome.

  “What if he comes after one of the team next?” I asked.

  “That would be stupid,” Gabriel answered. “We aren’t talking about a group of civilians. We aren’t even talking about a group of cops. We are talking about SCTU members. You do not directly attack them. That’s why he burned your car and not Xavier or Fiona. You are not the only badass on the team. Caleb, Fiona, Xavier, and even Rachael, come from very distinguished backgrounds that are not going to be easy to get the drop on. On top of that, there are men like Patterson and Apex running around the country side. They seem to have a vested interest in keeping the SCTU whole and working. Whoever he is, he is going to realize soon that he bit off more than he can chew. We aren’t talking about one psychopath or even two. We are talking about five of them and at least one of them is what you like to call a super psychopath. If he’s lucky, Apex or Patterson finds him first, because if we do, he goes to the Fortress. At that point, we can just ignore the amount of psychopaths he is going to encounter, because there is really only two he has to worry about; Eric and Turkish Jack.”

  “Turkish Jack?” I asked Gabriel.

  “You didn’t notice?”

  “I remember him nearly killing us,” I reminded him.

  “Please, I saw the footage, Eric and him kept nodding at each other. Your brother seems to be friends with him and it was all staged for a good show.”

  “So, how do you know him?” I finally asked the burning question.

  “I was involved in his capture. He didn’t fight us. He surrendered by laying his sword at his feet and putting his hands behind his head. When we went into the hotel room to secure him, there were nine severed heads
lined up on the dresser and his tongue lying on an end table. He knew we were coming and he cut out his own damn tongue as a result. The heads I could deal with, but cutting out his own tongue, not so much. Do you know how we captured him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “An anonymous tip from a guy, but your brother kept eluding to the fact that he knew where to find him.” Gabriel paused. “In the thirty minutes before we received the tip, Eric was visited by his lawyer, he then made a phone call, and we then got the tip.”

  “My brother orchestrated his arrest with his permission.” I let that sink in.

  “Your brother has been instrumental in the capture of over three dozen serial killers. He just suddenly found them and turned them over or he’d see his lawyer and suddenly an anonymous tip would come in. I think he was filling the Fortress with allies.” Gabriel sighed. “I think Patterson and him set up Patterson’s capture. I’m not sure about his escape, but definitely his capture.”

  “Gabriel, Eric defended himself at his trial, he has never had a lawyer.”

  “Yes he does, guy’s name is Joseph Stram and he seems to exist only on paper and security footage. He’s never tried a case, has no other clients, and if I had to guess, his identity came from an agency that makes new identities for fun and profit.”

  “My brother has no work history, despite telling me he was a teacher. Elle won’t talk about it. I’ve always thought he was CIA or NSA, it’s the only way to explain the money and his abilities. I know he is a psychopath, but one does not just take up a sniper’s perch on a rooftop and make twenty kills in twenty-one shots because of luck.”

  “So, as I said, continue to work the case. This bone cleaner has got to be stopped. He’s too methodical and precise and he’s starting to claim victims faster than we can track missing persons’ reports. Your stalker is going to have a lot more to worry about than just you if he continues.” Gabriel hung up on me.