by Hadena James
Women like Aislinn Cain and Rachel Caldwell were useless. They wouldn’t be having children. They wouldn’t be getting married. They wouldn’t be contributing to society in positive ways. Tyler had gotten into a couple of fights because of Rachel. She had been pretty, and like most pretty women, she used her looks to her advantage. She and her uppity friends, they had all deserved to die. They were too busy with careers to be home. They were too busy stabbing their colleagues in the back to have children. These weren’t the kinds of women the world needed making babies anyway. They wouldn’t raise them, they’d just create another generation of latchkey kids, who didn’t understand the concepts of love and nurturing enough not to become serial killers. Those children would grow up resentful of their mothers. They would take their frustrations out on good women, women who were raising their children.
He should get a medal.
Fifteen
Despite my body’s reassurances that I wasn’t dead, my eyes remained shut. It was cruel and unusual punishment to shoot someone point blank in the chest, even if they were wearing body armor. Maybe more so than if they weren’t wearing body armor. My sternum felt broken, breathing hurt, my heartbeat hurt. It was like having a migraine in my breastbone.
When my body did manage to convince my brain to get up off the ground, someone was going to be tasered. I didn’t know how long that process was going to take, I just knew it was going to happen, like the tides being controlled by the moon. As if I didn’t think people sucked enough.
“You dead?” Xavier asked.
“No,” I answered, still unable to open my eyes. “I have never had the feeling of a migraine in my chest. I am just lying here, taking it in, cataloging it for later. What about the asshole that shot me?”
“Lucas tackled him.”
“Awesome,” I answered, picturing the bigger man crushing the smaller guy under his momentous bulk. “I hope it hurt a lot.”
“It did.” Xavier answered. “Want me to help you get up?”
“Are there people watching?”
“Yes.”
“Then no, my pride has taken all the hits it can handle for a while.” I slowly began to open my eyes. A month earlier, a sixteen-year old female psychopath had kicked my ass because I had allowed myself to be human. I had compared her to my niece, who she wasn’t, and she had made me pay for it. My ego was still recovering from that. Being helped from the ground with a crowd of on-lookers wasn’t going to speed up that process.
Xavier turned out to be inches from my face, flashlight at the ready. It instantly blinded me, first in the left eye and then in the right. I wanted to bat his hand away, but doing so would be petty.
The atmosphere had changed. It had been palpable earlier, a seething anger running through the crowd. It was gone now, replaced by shock and awe. Watching someone being shot at point blank range was worth a little shock and awe. To watch that person stand back up from it was worth a little more. It didn’t matter that the crowd knew I was wearing body armor, I was a woman. It earned a few more shock and awe points.
Tonight, around dinner tables, they would talk about it. The women would point out that it only made sense that, since women give birth, being shot with body armor was easy enough to shake off. It would be more proof that women were the superior gender of the species. Men would point out that I had been wearing body armor or I wouldn’t have gotten up. They would compare me to Lucas, saying he would have gotten up without the armor.
Considering where the slug was positioned in my chest, they were wrong. Without body armor, Lucas wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without a team of trained medical staff. Neither would I. It was about an inch below the center of my breasts. Without the armor, it would have punctured my diaphragm. My lungs would have struggled to inflate. Someone would have had to breathe for me.
Of course, on Lucas, it would have been in the abdomen, given he was a foot taller than I am. It would have shredded his intestines, releasing toxins into his system. If he hadn’t bled out, there would have been a very high chance of him becoming septic. So, they could talk about it all they wanted, neither of us would have walked away if not for body armor.
Paramedics were treating the shooter, which meant I couldn’t walk over and Taser him, even Gabriel would frown upon that. My hope was that Lucas’s bulk had broken a few bones. That was the best-case scenario. If it had broken some bones and damaged some organs that would be bad. I didn’t want the guy dead, just in pain. Even I had moments when I could be merciful.
The bullet was still in the vest, and the vest was still under my shirt. My shirt not only had a big hole in it, but several small burn holes where the hot gunpowder had hit it. I was lucky the T-Shirt hadn’t caught fire.
“Where’s the tall guy?” I asked.
“Lost him in the melee.” Xavier shrugged. “Did you notice anything strange about him?”
“Maybe, but I thought it was just a knee jerk reaction because he was nearly two feet taller than me.”
“You don’t normally suffer from height envy.”
“It was not envy. It was the thought that if I had to take him down, I was going to have to spider monkey climb up his body, and then hope when he fell, he did not fall on me.”
“Take out his knees, like you do everyone else taller than you.”
“He had a limp.”
“I didn’t notice a limp.”
“Well, he did. I am not sure the cause of it. Taking out a titanium knee has been a problem in the past. Unless I am going after him with a chain saw, it might be a problem.”
“So, you intend to spider monkey climb him and do what exactly?”
“I don’t know. I have not thought past the spider monkey climb.”
“At least you are thinking ahead.” Xavier frowned at me. “I think you should go to the hospital.”
“I am not bleeding. My head is fine. You just checked me for pupil dilation. There is no need.”
“You might have cracked your sternum.”
“I did not.”
“And you know this because you’re a doctor.”
“No, I know this because you are a doctor. If you really believed that bullet had cracked my sternum, you would not have offered to help me up. You are concerned I hit my head harder than you thought, but you do not want to say that.” I frowned back. “However, I think we should be working really hard on finding this killer or the city will implode. I cannot find him, if I am getting CT scans and MRIs.”
“You won’t find him regardless.” Gabriel came up behind us, startling Xavier.
“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” I snipped at our team leader.
“That isn’t what I meant. You won’t find him, unless you are processing evidence and that really isn’t your thing. You prefer dealing with bad guys over fingerprints. What I need you guys to do is go to the reservation,” Gabriel informed me.
“Yeah, that’s an awesome idea. We know how much the tribes like feds sniffing around,” Xavier answered.
“Two of the first victims were Native Americans. I want to know if any of them had a beef because it wasn’t solved,” Gabriel said.
“Um, all of them,” I answered. “The feeling will be that, because they were natives, they were not important.”
“Did you call them natives?” Lucas asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Wow, don’t do that around them.” Lucas shook his head.
“I was just shortening the term,” I answered.
“It was still offensive,” Gabriel scolded.
“Well, I do not think you should send me then.”
“You are kind of my last choice,” Gabriel said. “Fiona is busy, Xavier has a body, Lucas is scary, and so that leaves you and me.”
“Get one of the liaisons, or whatever they call them, to go with you. I will search for the tall man,” I answered.
“Do you have any leads on the tall man?” Gabriel asked.
“Obviously, he is not re
gistered as having a driver’s license in the state of South Dakota. So, he is new or he is a truck driver,” I answered.
“Or he’s a Native American,” Xavier offered.
“Why wouldn’t he have a driver’s license?” I asked.
“Alejandro didn’t have one; said he didn’t need it, since he was a Native American.”
“I do not think Alejandro knows what he is talking about,” I paused. “Is it possible he lives here?”
“No, he was Lakota,” Lucas answered.
“Yeah, but, he is not registered as living anywhere. He does not even seem to get hospital care anywhere. Doesn’t that seem weird to anyone else? The man suffered muscle necropsy in both legs. He has to get treatment for it.”
“Maybe he uses his Indian name,” Xavier suggested. I waited. Then waited some more. No one said anything.
“Okay, so I cannot call them natives, but he can call them Indians?” I glared at Gabriel.
“Everyone just expects Xavier to be mildly offensive,” Gabriel shrugged.
“You people suck. I am going to go change out of my T-shirt with the stippling and bullet hole.”
“Good, they will want it for evidence.”
I removed my jacket, exposing the shoulder holster, and handed it to Xavier. I removed the shoulder holster and handed it to Lucas. Finally, I removed the T-shirt and handed it to Gabriel. With the vest, you couldn’t see much of my bra anyway. It covered more than most shirts did anymore. I then took back my outer layers one piece at a time and put them on.
“You realize reporters are filming this, right?” Gabriel asked.
“I am not bleeding, so it will not be the lead story.” I shrugged as I buttoned the jacket.
Sixteen
It was indeed the lead story. Not the whole getting undressed thing, but my being shot. The media was nice enough to use my undressing in the story segment though. They used the recall as the follow-up story, proving their priorities were off.
The hospitals were indeed overflowing. Thankfully, I was not there. I was not friendly enough to deal with the public. I would probably end up tasering people.
Gabriel and Lucas were heading out to the tribal lands. I was stuck with Fiona and Christian Hunter going through surveillance from the million and a half gas stations in Sioux Falls. The conversation was kept to a minimum, most likely because of me. I needed a lead on the tall man. He just raised my hackles, and I did not know why.
The tape from the store where I bought my soda was on a seven-day loop. This meant that every seven days, it began writing over itself. We had started with the first day available and were working our way forward.
A lot of people loitered in front of the soda section. Most of them seemed to be weighing the consequences of their soda purchases. I had always believed that people had brands and preferences. Some did, but most seemed to buy whatever was on sale. The video proved that people were more loyal to beer brands than soda brands. To me, this said caffeine addicts were far less picky than alcoholics were. Of course, not everyone buying beer was an alcoholic, but a few of them were sure to be.
“Wait; stop and rewind,” I said. “Was that yesterday?”
“Yes,” Fiona answered.
“Okay, see the guy that walks in,” I waited, “now?” She paused it.
“What about him?”
“Did you interview him?”
“He doesn’t look familiar, but I don’t remember the face of everyone we interviewed.”
“Okay, let it play, but slow it down a little,” I told her.
The man walked over to the soda aisle. He fidgeted around doing something that included several bottles of soda. I watched the slowed seconds tick by. Finally, he picked up a two-liter and walked to the front where he checked out, but not before looking at the camera.
“That was odd,” Christian Hunter said.
“That was an auto injector,” I answered. I had some experience with auto injectors before. You press it against your skin, hit a button, and the medicine is delivered. Epi auto injectors were different from other kinds, as they required brute strength. However, some migraine meds that used auto injectors did not. They were push button, because who the hell wants to force a needle into their skin using serious momentum when you have a migraine? Most people can’t get up the strength to do it. They are too busy puking their guts up and trying not to pass out. Of course, I wasn’t sure why epi injectors worked that way either. In the middle of an allergic reaction, who wants to muster up that kind of strength? But with epi, it was more about keeping from accidentally dosing oneself.
“The time stamp must be wrong.” Fiona began rewinding it, searching for the time stamp of the day we entered the store.
“I don’t think it is,” I told her. “Remember, Gabriel said his room felt off and his shampoo was all funky. It smelled weird. That is the same night I found the soda bottles in my room leaking. I had the feeling something was off as well, but I figured it was the dark spots forming on the carpet. I think that was meant for us, but he decided to target the general population as an afterthought. So, he breaks into our rooms, tries to poison us, and then realizes that will look really suspicious, so he begins poisoning other things too.”
“I didn’t find anything in my room,” Fiona said.
“That is because he could not find it.” I frowned at the rewinding tape. “He knows our procedures. Normally, we are all in a couple of adjoining rooms. This time, you guys got non-smoking rooms while Gabriel and I got smoking. This put you further down the hall and on the opposite side, so he did not have time to search for yours.”
“But how would he have found yours and Gabriel’s?” Hunter asked.
“We opened the windows when we arrived. It is a habit that we both do to air it out before we start chain-smoking our way into oblivion. He has been watching us and not just here. These are things someone would have to learn over time.” I frowned a little harder. “He might have also been watching the FGN and VCU.”
“Malachi makes enemies all on his own,” Fiona reminded me.
“Yes, he does, we even have a few common enemies. The real kicker is figuring out how to get a bomb into the FGN. That was not an easy task.” I stood up.
“Where are you going?” Fiona asked.
“To have a cigarette and text Gabriel, because I think they might be in danger.” I left the room. I could hear Fiona coming after me. My phone was already out. My fingers were flying across the touch screen keyboard. I hit the send button.
“Danger from who?” Fiona asked as she caught up with me.
“Let’s not talk in here,” I answered. We left the Marshals building, hiding ourselves in a small alley along the back of the building. I scanned the parking garage on the other side of the alley, looking for suspicious behavior.
“Okay, what’s up?” She asked.
“I joined the SCTU when a serial killer began using medieval methods of torture to kill their victims. It turned out to be an enemy that Malachi and I shared, someone from our past. However, the killer was a woman and blamed me more than Malachi. She did not come at me directly, but as an expert on torture and serial killers, she must have figured the SCTU would reach out to me. The team leader was a man named Alejandro Gui, big son-of-a-bitch, a little more than seven feet tall, stocky, but not like Lucas, and a Native American. One of her little traps was to leave some bodies in a hotel room wearing head cages. Her little cult then dropped in rats. As if the rats were not bad enough, they also covered them with arsenic. Alejandro picked up a rat, got bitten, and the arsenic went into his blood stream. It did not kill him, just disabled. One of those Native American women from the first group has a very similar facial structure to Alejandro. He blames Malachi and me for his disability. He knows the inside of the FGN, because he used to live there. The only thing I cannot figure out is how he would be up and walking around. The arsenic caused damage to some organs as well as muscle death in both legs. In some cases, muscle death can be over
come, but not well, and in his case, I would say, not at all. But that tall guy showed up at the press conference and I am pretty sure it was the same tall man on the surveillance video. So, he is wearing a mask of some sort. This means, we do not actually know what our poisoner looks like, but given his height and his attempt to kill us before the rest of the public, I would say it’s Alejandro. Only, I cannot prove it. Even if I find Alejandro in this state, I will not be able to prove it.”
“You think he also sent the bomb to Malachi.”
“It is the only thing that makes sense.”
“Is he serial killer material?” Fiona asked.
“Oh, hell yeah,” I answered. “I would not be surprised to learn that he killed the first group of women found up here, except that he was not here at the time. He was in training for something classified.”
“On a scale of one to ten, with Malachi being a ten, how crazy is this guy?”
“About a thirty and he really hates women. He hated them before I joined the SCTU, so our relationship was rocky to start with.”
“Could it be wishful thinking? Could you be projecting your dislike of Alejandro onto another tall man?”
“I could, I have discovered there are times when I am very human.” I looked out at the parking garage again.
“But I should find this guy and figure out where he is, just in case you aren’t having a moment of human weakness.” Fiona finished her sentence and stared at my cigarette. “Sometimes, I miss being a regular person. This moment calls for a joint, but I can’t smoke one because I’m a US Marshal.”
