by Hadena James
“So, you have a pile of bones?” I asked.
“No, I have a young man who the coroner says has been dead less than twenty-four hours, but has enough beetles on him to make it look like his flesh is moving. I’ve never seen that in a person before.”
“We’re on our way,” I hung up. “We can grab lunch on the way there or the way back, but they say the flesh is literally crawling because of beetle activity under the skin.”
“I think I’ll skip lunch,” Fiona offered.
“Me too,” Rachael said.
“Fine, the rest of us will eat on the way there.” I grabbed the keys to the SUV.
Eighteen
The young man didn’t have any identification on him at the scene. His nude corpse had a giant gaping hole in its midsection. The sheriff had been right, beetles had infested his internal organs enough that his flesh was literally moving when they crawled around.
Several officers were puking their guts up in the bushes about two hundred yards away. I was sipping on a soda from Arby’s. Xavier was in exam gloves and squatting next to the coroner. They hadn’t moved him because they were afraid the insects had been attracted by some sort of bio-agent. Fiona and Rachael were talking to the officers that had found him. They had noticed his body as they drove past on routine patrol.
Whoever had dumped him, hadn’t bothered to try and cover him. He’d been tossed into a ditch only a few feet from the road. Granted, the average person would have just seen something fleshy toned, but even they might have realized it was a body. Or they might not have because people tried to be oblivious.
Sheriff Vic Elway had seen his share of dead bodies. This was obvious by his demeanor. He stood next to me as Xavier and the coroner poked at the body. He didn’t look pale or even bothered by it.
“A few years ago, we had a girl show up in a similar manner. Her lower body was just bones being held together by a few ligaments, but her upper half was infested by flies. Think it could be your guy?” Sheriff Elway asked.
“Sounds about right and he would have needed to practice to get this good, even with insects.”
“We’ve had a couple of murderers over the last twenty years or so that were serials. Most of them were caught pretty quick, I’m guessing this is one of those that fell through the cracks.” Sheriff Elway spoke as if he was remembering things. “When I was younger, there was a guy in the next county that came here to get his victims. Always women. They never caught him. He just stopped one day and we never had another person go missing without an explanation or found another body until that girl. She wasn’t from around here though. She was from somewhere else though, not a local, we were just the place he decided to dump her. We never got an identification for her from Missouri or Kansas. I always felt bad for her. Her bones showed stab wounds on her legs, fresh ones. Cause of death was a puncture wound to her liver though. Internal bleeding is a painful way to die.”
“Do you know what caused the puncture wound?”
“A bolt gun. Smashed a couple of ribs as it went into her flesh.”
“So he disposed of her because he realized he had caused damage,” I said to Xavier.
“He’s gotten a lot more sophisticated,” Xavier pulled on the wound, exposing more of the internal section. “Part of his bowel is missing. But I don’t think he would have gotten rid of her because he damaged her bones. I think he did it because she, like this poor guy, would have bleed copiously on the outside. We haven’t seen a cause of death in most of his victims. Looking at this wound, it makes sense. If he stabs upwards, missing the bone and then only pulls out the knife from the exact same angle he put it in or if he waits until they are dead to do it, they aren’t going to bleed much externally. Cause of death in all of them would be exsanguination from a perforated bowel and possible puncture to the liver, stomach, spleen, or kidney. A large hematoma would form under the skin, but only a small amount of blood would leak out. Using a bolt gun would ensure lots of blood, just like this wound. For whatever reason, once he stabbed this guy, he jerked the blade out at a right angle to the wound. He would have bleed out externally. Killer, victim, floor, everything would have been covered in blood and fecal matter. Intestines would have come out of the wound, it’s a miracle he didn’t lose any internal organs.”
“You think the killer doesn’t like blood?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what I think. Explains the cleaning method too. There are ways to clean flesh from bones, but it’s a lot messier. They’re also faster and easier. This guy might have been inside a tank of beetles for a couple of hours, but it would have required a lot of beetles. They were laying eggs when he was taken out. The adult beetles and their larva are in this corpse. The larva are all newly hatched. He changed his mind. Probably after cleaning up the mess.”
“Hey, Cain!” Caleb shouted my name. He was standing near the road. “Think you need to see this.”
I was fairly certain that whatever he wanted to show me, I didn’t want to see. I walked over there anyway. Near Caleb’s foot there was a small spot of grass that was disturbed. It looked wet and was slightly yellow. I turned my head as if that would make the smell go away.
“Did someone throw up here?” Caleb asked. His sense of smell was bad, like most psychopaths.
“Um, yeah, can I go now?” I tried not to gag. Few things smelled worse than bile. My eyes started to water. I preferred decay.
“Sure, I’ll have tech people scrape it.” Caleb answered. I nodded and walked back to the body.
“Killer’s?” Xavier asked.
“How should I know?” I asked him. “Maybe a rabbit happened upon the body and got sick.”
“At least the rabbit was nice enough not to throw up on the body,” the coroner said and I couldn’t help but smile. It was exactly the sort of joke I would have expected from Xavier. I dug out a card.
“You ever want a career that pays more and ensures you’ll die faster, call this guy,” I told him.
“You have to have a pretty twisted sense of humor to do this job every day,” Xavier told him. He nodded. “Ready to load him and move him?” Xavier asked.
“Sure, how do we keep the beetles in?” The coroner asked.
“Triple bag him,” Xavier shrugged. They both nodded and I felt like I was staring at Xavier’s soul mate. If the coroner had been a woman, they would have been perfect for each other.
We had our own forensics team and I called them. About twenty minutes later, a helicopter landed and people in what appeared to be HAZMAT suits got out. Our forensics unit was always on standby and they had very interesting jobs. It was nothing like the movies. I knew none of them by name. I didn’t even know what they looked like under their suits. It was about anonymity. They were the only place not hit when someone organized an attack on law enforcement and federal court system last fall. I was sure it was because no one knew where they were or who they were. They began walking around dropping markers on the ground and two people carrying multiple body bags came over to us.
We all stepped away, including the sheriff and the deputies, state police, and the coroner. The crime scene techs did their thing. They even marked where the officers had been tossing their cookies in the bushes. They were incredibly thorough. I never wanted their job, ever. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know someone that worked there.
“Someone come look for tire prints,” a guy in a HAZMAT suit shouted. It sounded tinny and fake, like he was using some sort of voice alteration equipment. This was why we stood back. They were like magical beings who could find things we never imagined existed.
“I’ll send you the files for the girl we found a few years ago,” Sheriff Elway told me.
“Thanks,” I answered. “Flies and beetles.” That meant something. What it meant was beyond me at the moment, but it did hold significance. If we figured it out, we might be closer to finding out who did this. “Xavier, are we talking haemophobia or just a severe dislike of blood?”
“Dislike would
be my guess. Haemophobia and he wouldn’t be stabbing them at all, the stab wounds are probably smallish, but they are still going to bleed.”
“What about the flies and beetles?” I asked him.
“I’m not an entomologist, I’m a medical doctor who sometimes has to deal with insanity,” Xavier responded with a quick giggle.
“Fine, how common is haemophobia?” I asked.
“Rare,” he answered. “However, people who dislike blood are fairly common. It makes people feel queasy to see it. People who pass out when they see blood are most likely haemophobes, but people have all sorts of reactions to blood. When I was a resident, I saw a girl who every time we had to treat someone who needed stitches would turn white and start puking. I don’t know why she decided to be a doctor.”
“But there was no blood here,” I said. “Someone else found our crime scene. I’ll be damned and they drove away from it. The entire thing might be contaminated.”
“The bile doesn’t belong to our killer because he’d already had his little meltdown and just needed to dispose of the body. It wouldn’t have made him sick,” Fiona said. “I’ll see what I can dig up about traffic on this road this morning.”
Nineteen
It was dark when we started back towards the city. I let Caleb drive. My mind was preoccupied with the beetles and flies and the knowledge that another victim, this one older. One of his first, a mistake and for whatever reason, another mistake. He wouldn’t need to be a haemophobe to dislike blood. Was that the quest for the bones? He didn’t want to see the blood of his victims because it bothered him? Questions questions questions and no answers or at least, not any complete answers.
Mistakes and dumb luck were how serial killers got caught. However, in this case, I wasn’t sure what the mistakes meant. We would have all the lab results back in the morning and hopefully, identities for our two victims. Identities might help the most. Especially the newest one, if we could identify him, we might be able to figure out who saw him alive last and where.
Something caught my eye. I tried to slam on the brakes and remembered I wasn’t driving. I hit Caleb in the arm and shouted at him. He slammed on the brakes, disturbing the passengers in the back. They protested as I jumped from the SUV, guns drawn, eyes scanning the darkness for any shadow that moved.
It felt like the earth had quit turning. A few birds sang in the distance and a few insects buzzed, but it was still too early for most insects. Those were the only noises besides the people in the car. Even I was holding my breath.
I let it out slowly as everyone else joined me on the shadowy road. They had their guns drawn and like me, they were pointing them at the trees. I’m not sure any of them knew what I was looking for, but I had seen it. It wasn’t visible from this side, but I didn’t want to go to the other side and point it out. So I stood and watched, waiting, praying for anything to move. If it did, I was liable to shoot first and ask questions later.
He was close. I could feel him, somewhere in the darkness, he was there, watching us, watching me. Had he stumbled upon the body? Probably not considering the mess he had left of Hunter’s corpse in the parking lot against my car. Most likely he had followed us. Yet, how had he known we would go this way when we left? We came in a different way. How had he gotten ahead of us?
This guy was really starting to piss me off. Eventually, I had to exhale. As I did, Caleb lowered his gun.
“He’s gone,” Caleb’s voice was little more than a breathe, as if he had been holding his as well. He was right, I couldn’t feel him anymore either. I didn’t lower my guns, but I took a few steps away from the vehicle and sighed heavily.
“Why’d we stop?” Xavier asked. I nodded towards the small bridge we’d skidded under as Caleb had been trying to stop.
“A bridge? We stopped because of a bridge?” Rachael’s eyebrows were drawn together and her face puckered as she looked at me.
“No, we stopped because of what was written on the bridge.”
We walked as a group. I eventually lowered my guns because I felt stupid keeping them up. Once on the other side, I pointed up.
The paint was still running from the letters that were well written, but obviously written by someone who was doing it upside down. They were large red letters.
“That’s not possible,” Xavier said as he stared at them.
“I know,” I answered.
“What’s a wendigo?” Rachael asked.
“A demonic Native American spirit that possesses people and turns them into cannibals.” I answered as I stared at them. “It’s fairly uncommon, used more by the First Nations in Canada than by tribes in the US. Most famous case ever, a little boy claimed his best friend had been eaten by a wendigo back in the 1980s. Kid just appeared in a remote region of Canada with that story. He led them back to a cabin and found the body of his friend, obviously gnawed on by an adult.”
“Gabriel Henders was never able to put a face on the guy who ate his friend, he could only describe him as a wendigo,” Xavier added. “While the case got news coverage, they never released names and there’s probably only twenty people that know it was Gabriel in that cabin. The majority of them are SCTU members and the board that monitors us.”
“So how the fuck did my stalker find out?” I asked. The anger was spreading through me. It was the first time in a while and I welcomed it. “And where the hell did he go, again?”
“Well,” Xavier stopped speaking.
“There is not a centuries old cannibalistic demon stalking me. He isn’t disappearing into the never never. He’s going somewhere. He can’t be that familiar with the areas we’ve been in, so what, he gets here and wings it?” I shouted. He was a survivalist and he knew about Gabriel’s wendigo. Pieces fell into place. It couldn’t be the guy who had eaten Gabriel’s friend, but psychopathology ran in families. It could be his son. What if Gabriel was supposed to be eaten that day too and escaped, like I did, but because his killer was inexperienced and being taught by someone else? That made a lot of sense to me. It didn’t explain why the guy was now stalking me. Maybe he had come here expecting to find Gabriel, but Gabriel wasn’t here. I dug out my phone and called him.
“Do not, I repeat, do not return to Missouri until my stalker is caught. Keep your head down and I mean way down,” I said very calmly to Gabriel. “Your wendigo isn’t a myth and he’s here. I think he’s stalking me to get to you.” I hung up. If he thought he was a centuries old demonic cannibal, I could deal with that. It was crazy, even by my standards, but who was I to judge.
“This is a problem,” Xavier told me. I nodded at him, but kept my eyes locked on Caleb. “Your father knew more about Gabriel’s case than anyone else. You have to know something.”
“You realize Gabriel is older than me by seven years right?” Caleb asked.
“I have no idea how old either of you are.” I reminded me.
“Gabriel will be forty this year,” Xavier said. “He’s was in the academy when most of us were still in high school. Hell, you should have been in junior high. He was nine when it happened and he doesn’t even remember it that well. He’s not you.”
“Thirty-one years ago, someone tried to kill him and he has blocked the memory for whatever reason and replaced it with a wendigo. We need to figure out why or I have a feeling, he will be taken by the wendigo again.” I told them.
“It can’t be the same guy, Ace. He’d be old. They were adult teeth marks on the body of his friend.” Caleb reminded me.
“Right, but what if Gabriel got away because the person that was supposed to be killing and eating him was in training? What if it was a kid? Maybe that’s why Gabriel blocked it. What if it was a kid he knew?” Gabriel’s grandparents lived in Canada. His father had been a RMCP until he met his wife to be, who was an American tourist. They fell in love, he gave up his life in Canada and came to the US where he got a job as a Texas Ranger. Gabriel and his siblings grew up in Texas. However, they spent a month or so every year with the
ir grandparents in Canada, which is where Gabriel went missing for six whole days. It was a bit of an international incident because the kid with Gabriel was the son of another Texas Ranger.
“Do you know where it happened?” Caleb asked me.
“Not really,” I answered.
“Snell Grove Lake,” Caleb answered. “It’s mostly hunting and fishing cabins. You can’t hike in and get to a cabin, you have to arrive by sea plane. Gabriel’s grandparents had a cabin up there. Gabriel and his friend were fishing when they went missing. My dad thought someone in a boat had taken them. His siblings were out fishing in a different area with their grandfather when the two boys disappeared. The nearest cabin was forty miles by foot, maybe a little less over the water. Somehow, Gabriel got away, found a boat and managed to drive it back to his grandparents’ place. When they finally got police up there, the cabin was empty except for the body and someone had trapped a bear in it. It was owned by a guy, but he hadn’t been there in a few years and the RMCP were able to confirm it.”
“I know the name Snell Grove Lake,” I frowned at him. “Seems like it has something to do with Bigfoot.”
“Probably. There’s a MonsterQuest episode about Snell Grove Lake and Bigfoot. It sounds like a show right up your alley.” Caleb told me.
“Malachi made me watch the alien episodes, I probably watched the others on my own,” I nodded, remembering the marathon. “The good news is the killers didn’t hike out of there.”
“Nope, he had to take a plane.” Caleb answered.
“No, they had to take a plane, most likely a father and son team. Dig through your dad’s files and see if you find anything about a man and son being interviewed or seen but left before Gabriel was found.”
“Are you going to solve the bone cleaner case while I do that?” Caleb asked.
“Yes.” I told him. “Also, you could just call your father and ask him about it.” Nathan Green was alive, but retired. He lived in a neighborhood not unlike our own in California. I had met him once. He was different.
