Flawless Dreams

by Hadena James

  After using all the disinfectants in his house along with gallons upon gallons of water, the floors were clean. The smell was gone. The shoe prints and trails were gone. The giant puddle of blood, fecal matter, and vomit was gone. His house smelled of bleach, a smell he could live with after the other.

  He began to remove his clothing, intent on burning them, when he had a revelation. He was not interested in the story of Thomas’s bones anymore. The killing and cleanup had spoiled whatever secrets he might find beneath the flesh. Keirnan finished undressing and tossed his clothes into a metal barrel behind the house. He showered and tried to convince himself that the story was worth it. The bones of Thomas would tell something interesting. However, while he brain said it, his heart failed to believe it. He sighed as he turned off the water. He was tired. He hurt. He felt a little ill. Yet, he had to get rid of Thomas’s corpse and he had to do it before he slept if he was to get any peace of mind.

  With his body shampooed, soaped, scrubbed, and rinsed repeatedly, he stepped out of the shower and wrapped in a towel. He wanted to go to bed. He wanted to hang a sign on the door and tell everyone he was sick and was going to spend the day in bed. Of course, he couldn’t, at least, not yet. He had to get rid of that damned body. He dressed in some old ratty clothing that had once belonged to his father and went back to the barn.

  The hidden drawer was much heavier with Thomas’s corpse in it. He was still fresh, meaning he still had flesh. His skeleton would have been much lighter. Unfortunately, he wasn’t working with a skeleton. One more reminder to never kill like that again. The drawer opened and he pulled out Thomas’s body. The piece of his intestine that he had cut off fell into the drawer, but Keirnan didn’t care about it. The dermestids would take care of it quickly. Once again, he heaved the body over his should and shut the drawer with his foot. He left the barn, loading the body into his father’s old truck and drove away from the house. Once the body was gone, he’d come back, tell everyone he’d been at the ER because he’d been throwing up part of the night, and then he’d go to bed. It would be blissful to sleep in his bed.

  Sixteen

  Fiona had struck gold. Her search had come back to a car found just two days ago in a bar parking lot. The owner was listed as missing. A young lady people described as shy and quiet. She had expected to meet friends at a bar for a concert. However, her friends had problems getting there, leaving her alone.

  She could have fallen victim to a lot of scary things, but I had a hunch that she was easy prey for a psychopath. Our psychopath. He had probably bought her some drinks and said all the right things. He had romanced her and somehow, the shy, quiet girl had come out of her shell a little and taken a chance.

  Cathy Morris was pretty in a homely way. She smiled in her pictures, but never wide or enough to show her teeth. She wasn’t the sexy girl next door type. She wasn’t even the sexy farmer’s daughter type. She was a handsome farmer’s daughter though. She had probably been mildly popular in high school, had managed a date to prom, but for the most part, she wasn’t going to be the pretty girl in the group.

  In short, she reminded me of Fiona. I heard learned a great deal from Bella Stewart, Fiona’s older sister, who was a knockout. Fiona could have been Cathy or vice-versa. Of course, Bella was a serial killer and had done Fiona a favor that Fiona resented, but killing your sister’s fiancé is usually frowned upon, even if he is a jerk.

  Ditched by her friends and alone at a concert, in a bar, Cathy Morris had probably considered leaving. She wouldn’t have wanted to stay by herself in that crowded, darkened room. Yet she had. Someone had attracted her interest enough to stay. Someone like their killer.

  She had one more thing going for her, her skin was perfect. There wasn’t a single visible scar on her arms, legs, or face. According to the report, she only had two small scars. A few years earlier, her appendix had ruptured and been removed laparoscopically. They wouldn’t be visible in any clothing, she didn’t strike me as the type to wear midriffs and tube tops with hip huggers, if people even wore tube tops anymore. In some ways, I was still stuck in the 1980s, knowing what was fashionable was one of them.

  Caleb and Xavier were currently trying to look at security video from that night. I was interviewing bartenders and waitresses with the help of Fiona and Rachael. They asked the questions and I just watched the faces of those responding, trying to gauge their answers. Almost no one remembered the wallflower. One waitress said she had brought drinks to the table late in the evening and that Cathy had been with a good looking guy. She remembered only because she thought the good looking guy was too good looking to be hitting on Cathy.

  By the time we left, we had a description. It mostly consisted of a “good looking guy with blondish hair and blue eyes who was fit but not muscular and paid with cash.” Essentially, that didn’t help us. The cameras on the parking lot did though. They confirmed that Cathy left with the guy, who wore a hoody as a he left and got into the same truck we had seen in the video near the kill site of Christian Hunter.

  This meant two things: our bone cleaner probably was a witness to Hunter’s murder and Hunter’s killer had once again, disappeared into thin air. Other than that, we had zilch to go on. His face never appears on camera, not even a side angle. Caleb and Xavier even found him walking into the club and paying the door charge without showing his face.

  He was good. He seemed to know all the places that had cameras. Either he had installed them or he was very observant. We returned to our bunker in the FGN.

  We hadn’t finished checking on the insect farmers, although I still doubted a legal insect farm was going to be storing corpses. Fiona was now searching for the companies that had installed the security cameras at the bar and searching for more missing persons. I was sitting on my haunches, not something I enjoyed doing.

  “We should expand our missing persons search,” I announced, but looked at Rachael. “Says you were an analyst, any good with computers?”

  “Adequate, I was a psychological analyst more than a computer analyst. However, if there’s a database, I can probably bumble through it.” She said. Caleb stopped what he was doing and went to help her get into the system.

  Normally, the local police or state police handled the information we gave them. They made sure that it was passed along to other agencies and departments. However, we were not working with other agencies at this time. We were based in Missouri for a lot of reasons; it was centrally located in the US, we could fly anywhere except Alaska and Hawaii in under three hours. The federal court system had been set up here because the Fortress had once been a Missouri Penitentiary that the state couldn’t afford to maintain and so had been turned over to the Feds to house the worst of the worst. However, the final reason was the biggest shocker; Missouri held around fifty active serial killers at any one time. Technically, New York, Florida, Texas, Michigan, Illinois, and Nevada were the only states with more active serial killers than us. That was a feat unto its own.

  As a result, Missouri had given the SCTU the same status it would have given a local law enforcement agency. We could pretty much go where we wanted and do what we wanted. If we needed assistance, there were four FBI offices and four US Marshals offices on the federal level as well as a slew of local and state law enforcement agencies. Missouri created serial killers as most as prolifically as it grew corn and soy beans.

  This also meant that we were in charge of keeping other agencies in the loop. Right now, I was working on putting out information regarding our bone cleaner, based on the description we had gotten from the bar. Every cop in Missouri would have it shortly. They would all know that an insect enthusiast with blond hair and blue eyes was wanted in connection to it. I also put the sparse information we had about the truck. It was a 1970s model Ford blue and white with rust spots on it and no registration. After a moment, I sent the information to the state of Kansas as well. They were less obliging than Missouri, it was almost as if the Border Wars from the 1800s continue
d between the two states, but they would keep an eye out. No one wanted a serial killer in their backyard. It was bad for morale and peace of mind.

  By the time, I had finished, so had Rachael and Caleb. She looked visibly paler than when she started. I wondered if she needed a snack. Meals were irregular and we kept weird hours. She’d get used to it, but it would take time. I’m sure my early morning phone call and text message had interrupted her sleep. On top of that, the guards had brought us bagels, but that was hours ago and the only food we’d had. I considered ordering something, but I didn’t know what everyone liked, so I didn’t.

  “That’s staggering,” Rachael whispered quietly to Caleb.

  “The metro area has a lot of missing persons,” I commented, realizing that was probably why she was pale. “Some disappear on their own, others run afoul of drug dealers or mobsters, some serial killers, some their spouses, etc. We have the second largest Russian population in the United States and with it comes the Russian Mob. When they have turf wars break out, parts of the city turn into a war zone. They are far worse than cartels and gangs.”

  “In the last three days, there are have been 56 people reported missing,” she told me.

  “Now imagine the ones not reported yet,” I answered. “Any of them young, without noticeable blemishes, who lead low risk lifestyles?”

  “About 12,” Caleb told me.

  “Well, he hasn’t taken twelve victims in three days unless he has really accelerated his pace,” I shook my head. “Does that include Cathy Morris?”

  “Yes,” Rachael answered.

  “Any others with cars found in bar parking lots?” I asked.

  “Most of them,” Caleb said. “So do we have multiple serials working on that premise or do we just have a lot of people hooking up and forgetting to go home?”

  “Who goes home with someone for a one night stand and then forgets to go home?” I asked. “Most likely, we have two serials, but finding the second will be hard if there aren’t any bodies. That’s still too many victims in three days though. Something else is happening to them.”

  “Seven of them were at a single bar,” Rachael offered.

  “Now that is useful,” I told her. “Tell me it is in city limits.”

  “It is,” Caleb said.

  “Even better,” I dialed Ivan and told him about it. He said he’d check it out. I hung up the phone with him. Then I had another thought. “Order some lunch, I need to go make a private call.”

  Seventeen

  Everyone in Kansas City knew if you needed protection or to talk to a mobster, you went to Nadine Daniels. When you needed an investigator, you went to her cousins, Alex Zeitzev and Kenzie Reynolds. Kenzie had given birth less than a week ago, not that it mattered, I like both women equally well.

  “Unexpected,” Alex answered.

  “I have a dangerous thing that I need investigated quietly.” I responded.

  “And you thought of me,” I could hear her smiling over the phone.

  “Well,” I considered my answer carefully. “I have a stalker. I need something looked into very discreetly and very carefully and I would feel better if you had more than just Sebastian with you when you did.”

  “What kind of stalker?” Her voice had dropped into a hushed whisper.

  “Did you hear that Christian Hunter was murdered after he was broken out of a prison transport?”

  “I heard a little bit about it,” she answered.

  “I think my stalker broke him out specifically to kill him. At the same place I was conducting a stake-out. He then broke into an impound lot, stole my car, managed to follow several members of the SCTU in my car, before setting it on fire in the middle of nowhere, which is where we happened to be, all without anyone seeing him.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “The weird part is that he just vanished. Caleb and I could both sense him watching us when my car was burning, so I called in search teams and we didn’t find him. It’s like he appears, does the damage, and disappears. He kept Hunter several days and no one found him until the man was dead and leaning against my car in a parking lot. I don’t want you to find him. I don’t want you to go anywhere near this guy. I’m hoping he’s gone back into the void he appears out of for a while, but just in case, take no chances with him. If you accidentally stumble on him, shoot him until you run out of bullets. Take extra bullets and people. What I want you to do is go to the place where he set my car on fire and see if you can figure out what happened to him. He had to go somewhere. I don’t believe he turned invisible and watched us from the hilltop. He had to be somewhere and then go somewhere from that spot. It’s mostly fields and pasture land. There aren’t even a lot of houses, barns, out buildings, or car ports to hide under. The key is, he had zero time to plan the burning of my car. There is no way he built a blind to watch from that we didn’t find or had an underground tunnel to escape into. We were out there to look at a farm and it wasn’t planned. He had to follow us and then he had to go somewhere.”

  “Do you have any idea what he looks like?”

  “Not really, taller than Malachi and built about the same. I can’t tell you eye color, hair color, nothing. He probably doesn’t talk though.”

  “That’s odd for a person with no description.”

  “He killed Hunter using a Claymore sword. It’s a long, heavy sword that takes some serious strength to use. He also managed to use it to pierce the metal on my car when he stabbed Hunter with it. And he pulled it back out. Having the strength to do that, well, I don’t think he’s your run-of-the mill psychopath with a thing for me. Most super psychopaths suffer from some genetic mutation that makes them big, physically, but causes some mental impairments. The results are huge psychopaths that lack speaking abilities.” I thought for a moment. “However, I could be wrong and he could speak just fine. Malachi, Patterson, and Eric are all super psychopaths that have no speech impairments.”

  “Malachi I’ll give you is big, but Patterson and Eric aren’t.” Alex countered.

  “But Patterson and Eric don’t seem to age. My nearly ninety-year-old grandfather is as spry as a teenager and looks fifty.” I thought for a moment. “My father didn’t age either. I seemed to have missed that gene.”

  “You aren’t a psychopath in the traditional sense,” Alex said. “Okay, so you want me to go search a large area with several people and lots of bullets, then report back whatever I find, even if it’s that this guy disappeared into thin air?”

  “Exactly,” I told her.

  “Ace,” Alex paused.

  “Don’t worry, it will pay well, plus hazard pay and damage pay.”

  “I don’t want your money,” Alex told me. “Any killer that spooks you needs to be caught and I will do everything in my power to make sure it happens. I was going to tell you to be careful. I don’t know what you did to get his attention, but now that you have it, I think it’s going to get up close and personal real fast.”

  “I think so too, which is why I need this information. If I can figure out how he eluded us yesterday, I can figure out how to deal with him when he comes at me.”

  “Of course, I’m still going to send you a bill. Mostly because I’m going to have to take Daniels’ Security with me and Nadine and Zeke are out of the country.”

  “Take Melina, maybe she can badger him into submission,” I cracked a smile and heard Alex laugh. If there was an antichrist, Melina could badger him into submission. That woman was determined. Considering what she had dealt with over the years, I could understand. I hung up with Alex and made another phone call.

  “I was wondering when you’d call,” Apex said.

  “You heard about Hunter?” I asked.

  “Yes, How bad is it?”

  “I don’t know. Just know that if something happens to me, this guy is involved. I have Alex Zeitzev looking for some information. If I’m not here to get it from her, you need to do it.”

  “Why not just ask me to come watch your back?�
��

  “Because I have the feeling you are currently watching someone else’s and I appreciate that.” I sighed. “Speaking of which, him and I are going to have a serious conversation when he leaves protective custody. I have some questions that require answers.”

  “Do you know anything about him?”

  “I think he’s a super psychopath and that his stalkerish behaviors escalated very quickly. I need to get this case solved before he pops up to meet in a face to face.” I waited for him to say something and was rewarded with silence. “Apex, the guy vanishes into thin air. Neither of these are places he could have reconned and yet, he just vanished. I’m beginning to wonder if demons aren’t real.” I hung up.

  The sun was high in the sky by now. We’d been underground too long. I lit a cigarette and leaned against the building. Ivan was right, I had a boogeyman and he existed only in the shadows. I kept waiting for someone to tell me he wore a giant floppy hat that kept his face hidden in shadows and a trench coat. That would have been pretty close to perfect. Forget about shadow people, ghosts, psychopaths, and even demons. My nightmare was a man in a floppy hat with no face and a trench coat. I’d been afraid of that image since I was a kid. I couldn’t even remember where I had seen it, but I had, somewhere, and it had filled me with dread.

  I had been back downstairs for maybe fifteen minutes when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID; it read BLOCKED. I almost didn’t answer it, expecting it to be Apex or my stalker, neither of whom I wanted to talk to. Lunch had been ordered and would be here in minutes. I sighed and hit the talk button.

  “US Marshal Cain,” I said into it.

  “This is Sheriff Vic Elway and I have a body I think you need to see.”

  “We are already working on one serial killer case.” I responded.

  “That’s what the message you sent out said. We got here about two hours ago and haven’t been able to make heads or tails of it, until we got your message.”