Apex Predator

by J. A. Faura

  Loomis took in every detail. The tools were cutting tools and surgical instruments, scalpels, forceps, a variety of surgical scissors and what Steven recognized as orthopedic surgical drills. There was a tray with other hardware he couldn’t make out. To his left he could see two side-by-side top-loading industrial freezers, and as they came through the plastic curtains that separated each area, he saw the first thing that hit him and hit him hard, it was a staged little girl’s room with a white four-poster bed dominating the space. His eyes were immediately drawn to each of the four posts. There was a set of handcuffs attached to each of the posts. As he looked around, he saw a small vanity and shelves and shelves of dolls, Barbie-type dolls, some complete but most of them in various stages of being disassembled or being put together. There were doll limbs scattered all over the shelves. Based on everything else in the warehouse, it was the strangest and most surreal scene Loomis had ever seen, and it didn’t take him long to put together what had gone on in this pit from hell.

  He had seen similar places in other parts of the world, but they had been used for other reasons on other people, not on little girls. He didn’t betray any emotion, however.

  Grady walked over to the industrial freezers, “This is where he kept the remains of his victims.” Grady hurried along, went on to walk toward the upright refrigerators and continued debriefing Steven.

  For his part, Steven had stopped at the top-loading freezers and stood there staring at them. Before Grady noticed Loomis was not right behind him, Steven had started to open the lid of the first industrial freezer. As Grady turned around and noticed where Loomis was standing, he hurried back toward him and could only get “Steven…” out before Loomis had opened the lid to the freezer and looked inside.

  So far, all the scene processing had involved cataloging where things were, taking pictures, collecting any and all objects that could hold any DNA, and processing the van, along with taking a preliminary inventory of all the power tools that could not be moved right now.

  All of the forensic evidence related to the actual victims had not been moved yet, however, so when Steven Loomis opened the first freezer the first thing he saw was his daughter’s severed head, eyelids and eyes missing. He held the lid open for just a half a second and then let it slam shut. He had seen what he needed to see. It was as if the air had been let out of the room and he felt faint for just a beat. The image was far beyond what he had ever imagined or thought about. He thought he had prepared for anything, but now faced with the reality of his loss and with the horror that his daughter must have endured, something went off inside Steven Loomis.

  He never betrayed any emotion and was once again composed by the time Grady made it over to warn him. His eyes were cold and distant, but still processing everything around him. He didn’t need for the investigation to be completed to understand what had happened to his daughter in this hell. Grady looked at him and became immediately concerned by what he saw from Steven Loomis, which was absolutely nothing. No screaming, no crying, nothing. All Grady could manage was, “Loomis, are you okay?”

  Steven looked at the freezer for a few seconds more and then at Grady, “Yes, I’m fine. I just felt a little faint for a moment.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence between the two men. Grady didn’t know what to say. What could he say to someone who had just witnessed what Loomis had? He finally said, “I’m sorry, Steven, I am really sorry for your loss.”

  Loomis looked back at him, “Thank you. And thank all your guys for all the work. I know how hard this must be on them. So a chemical spill is what tipped you off?”

  Grady looked at him, a bit puzzled, as if to say ‘you know damn well it was.’ Instead he just nodded and said, “Yeah, night watchman called it in. He also talked about some sort of dart sticking out of his chest.”

  This was Grady’s way of letting Steven know about the only thing they had that no one could really account for or even relate to everything else, that and the steak with tranquilizer for the dog.

  Loomis didn’t flinch, “Oh, what’s that all about?”

  Grady responded, “Probably nothing, the watchman forgot about it once the warehouse was opened. He figured whoever did this had probably done that to him and his dog. He thinks he was lucky.”

  He was sure Loomis was catching his drift, but as Grady was relating the story his tone let Steven know that he knew that Steven and his people were responsible.

  He continued, “With everything else we have to process, it’s something that’s likely to fall through the cracks.”

  Once again Grady let Steven know without saying anything that this would remain between the two of them. He didn’t think it was necessary to bring Mark Mullins into the mix. Steven looked at Robert Grady for a few seconds, nodded slightly and nothing else was said about the chemical spill again. Grady was still concerned. Steven Loomis’s demeanor had not changed one iota since he lifted the lid to that freezer. Grady had seen reactions like these before from some of his officers, reactions that spoke to a quiet rage, an internal mechanism that triggered something in the individual. Usually, however, the reactions Grady saw were almost catatonic. This was different. It was complete control. It was a look and a demeanor that spoke of purpose.

  To Robert Grady, Steven Loomis had been pondering how to proceed, and lifting that freezer lid and seeing what he saw provided him with the answers he was looking for. Little did Grady know just how right he was about that.

  Steven Loomis himself wasn’t completely aware of exactly what he had gone through. He just knew that in the middle of the horror he was seeing and experiencing and the grief and sadness he was feeling, he had found a certain answer, an understanding he now knew he had been looking for. He now felt something had fallen into place. His training and experience allowed him to separate emotion from action.

  Grady knew Loomis wasn’t going to be going off on some sort of rampage and he came across as being very much in control, without emotion and with a purpose, all of which made Grady very nervous, more nervous than had Loomis lost it.

  He felt he had to say something to Loomis, if for nothing else than to just check off that box in his own mind, “Steven, I can’t imagine what this must feel like, I really can’t, but he’s done, he’s off the streets, and now we really do need to play it by the book. None of us want any technicality or screw-up at the lab to delay this in any way.

  “The eyes of New York are going to be on all of these departments and everyone will need to be on their A game. It’s over. We got him and he will not hurt anyone again.”

  Steven looked at Grady with an almost curious expression, like a parent listening to the logic of a child and just going along with it. Still, he didn’t lose his composure and didn’t want to give Grady something else to think or worry about. He himself still needed to come to terms with what it was he was feeling, how this would all affect his family and what if anything he was planning on doing about all of it.

  Something was beginning to take form in his mind. It was nothing new, nothing he hadn’t pondered about over the years, but it was something that the scene he found himself in had begun to crystallize in his mind.

  He looked at Grady again and stuck his hand out, “Thank you, detective, thank you for all the work and for everything else. Now I just need to go take care of my family. Like you said, this is going to be all over the news, and Marybeth is not doing well. I’m assuming you have him in custody by now?”

  Grady nodded, “Yeah, he is being held at the station. He is with his lawyer right now.”

  Loomis nodded, gave one last squeeze to Grady’s hand and walked away. Grady was left standing there looking at Loomis walk away, and as any good detective would have, he felt a pang of unease. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but he had learned to listen to his gut instincts long ago.

  Steven Loomis was deep in thought as he headed home. He had been thinking about what to say to his family. Christopher was to
o young, but Bethany was old enough to understand and he knew how cruel kids could be sometimes.

  Marybeth had been in a world of her own for weeks now, going in and out of bouts of deep depression and manic energy. She and Steven had not really communicated with each other since this all started, and now he had to go home and not only confirm what they were almost certain of, but he had to give her the details of what had happened to Tracy, as much as he thought she could handle, anyway.

  With everything happening in the past weeks, Christmas had come and gone almost unnoticed by both of them. It had been only his in-laws that had made one even possible for his kids. New Year’s had also come and gone like any other day.

  This was going to be everywhere for a while and Steven knew Marybeth was going to fall apart. He had to convince her to go to her parents’ house and he was going to need his mother-in-law to help him convince her.

  The bigger question was what he was going to do. He had already accepted his daughter’s death and had begun the mourning process that he knew would come. He thought he was ready for anything, but clearly what he had seen tonight was nowhere in the realm of what he had considered.

  In his former life he had seen carnage, had seen children blown apart, sometimes by weapons deployed by his own country. He knew the horror and psychological trauma that seeing a child in that condition could do to a parent, so it wasn’t the graphic nature of what he had seen that had landed a blow straight into his psyche. It was that there was just no reasoning behind it, no reasoning he could understand.

  In all of the experiences he had in the service, as horrific as they might have been, he had been able to discern a line of thought, of rational thought that had led to the moment. Greed, religious fanatics, political dissidents, there was always an undercurrent he could recognize, but not here. All he had found at the warehouse was foreign to him; it had no purpose, no notion of a cause as misguided as that cause might have been. Even in genocide there was a belief, a shared belief, as completely misguided and wrong as it was, that what was being done was being done for the greater good of a people. Individuals had taken advantage of that belief for the sake of power or money or devotion, and he knew there was an element of insanity in every one of those individuals, but once again this was different to him.

  In all his experiences, Steven Loomis had never been able to truly believe or actually feel the presence of evil, pure evil, not until tonight. What he had felt and seen tonight didn’t fit into anything that he had learned through a lifetime of war, violence and tragedy. To Steven, whatever had compelled Riche was outside the parameters of what he had drawn for humanity, and those were some wide parameters. Ironically, it was precisely his experiences that had made sure his view of humanity was very pliable and broad in what could be defined as human behavior and motivation. No matter how he turned it, no matter how he tried to relate it to the things he had seen before, Loomis just couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that a human being had done this and had done it on purpose, with dedication and care.

  There had been instances before where he had questioned the sanity of some of the enemies he had encountered, where he had pondered whether there might be something out there, something that just didn’t fit into what he had been taught was within the realm of humanity. He had certainly considered that possibility before. He had wondered what the purpose or mission was for people like Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, or Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, and now he had his answer.

  They weren’t people at all. They didn’t fit into the realm of human parameters. He could not bring himself to accept that he belonged to the same species of animal that could engage in this kind of cruelty, this kind of predatory behavior.

  Now what he had started researching, what he had read about, a different species beyond what could be defined as a psychopath, became real for him. It wasn’t just that he understood it, it was that he felt it. There were those that researched things like this, people who tried to explain the why of things, but all the explaining in the world meant nothing until you felt it inside. He likened it to being told about the power of the sea, about the immense vastness, all told by men that had more salt water in their veins than blood. As a young Navy officer he listened and understood and tried to learn, but it wasn’t until he saw, until he felt 50-foot swells in the Atlantic tossing an aircraft carrier around like a toy, that he truly understood that power and the fear that it brought with it.

  He had come face-to-face with evil tonight, not the kind you hear or read about or the kind people write books about, but the kind that grips your heart and turns everything you thought you knew about the world around you upside down. There was enough introspection left in him to know that he was going to do something about it. Maybe he didn’t have all the answers and maybe he wasn’t trying to come up with any, he just knew that right now, in this case, with the animal that had taken and butchered his daughter he was going to do something.

  He thought he knew what he had to do, but everything was still too fresh, and he knew better than to make decisions without considering everything. Like all good spec ops officers, he understood that in any situation there were tactical considerations, but always in pursuit of a strategy, of a bigger endgame.

  Tonight, in the drive between that hell hole and his house, he had come up with the outline of a tactical plan.

  The car finally got back to the house. Steven paid the driver and got out. He had been so engrossed in his own thinking throughout the drive home that he had not yet figured out what he was going to say to Marybeth. Maybe that was better; maybe if he just went with his instinct, it would be better than something that sounded made up and insincere.

  As he walked in the door, he knew immediately he would not have the chance to bring it up himself, the television was on and Marybeth and her mother were sitting in the living room watching it.

  After he took off his coat and before he could come into the living room, Marybeth met him in the hallway, “Is it true? They know what happened?”

  Steven put his keys down on the table and paused for a couple of seconds before answering, “Yes, honey, they know what happened and they know who did it. Well, they think they know who did it.”

  Marybeth, her face streaked with tears, was once again close to the breaking point and as her mother was coming to try to help, she finally let go, “What does that mean? What do you mean they think they know who did it? Do they or don’t they?! How can you not know about something like that! Can’t you do something, can’t you ask someone?!”

  Her mother tried to hold her, but Marybeth shrugged her off and kept on, “What happened to her, Steven? You tell me what happened to her! She was my baby, damn it, and she was alone, and it was my fault! Please, please let me know what happened to her!”

  Steven stepped forward and put his arms around her without saying anything. Marybeth struggled at first and tried to break free, but eventually she just broke down into deep sobs and allowed her husband to comfort her.

  “Shh, it’s okay, honey, she is at peace now, they all are. Just let it come, baby, let it out.”

  She could not stop sobbing and crying out, “She was alone, Steven! She was alone when she died, I wasn’t there for her, and he took her and I wasn’t there for her!”

  Steven just held on, “You were there for her, you were always there for her. Now you just have to let her go, be at peace.”

  Lucy, Marybeth’s mother, put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders, she was also crying but was keeping it under control for the sake of her daughter. “That’s right, honey, you are a wonderful mother and your other children need you.”

  Marybeth looked into Steven’s eyes with disbelief and for the first time, resentment, “What’s the matter with you?! Our daughter is dead! She is gone and all you have to say is that I have to let her go! He took her from us, took her from me, don’t you see that? Don’t you care? How can you just stand there and tell me to let her go?!�
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  Her mother put her arms around her from behind and tried to soothe her, “Beth, you need to calm down. You have two other children that need you. They are going to look to you to figure out how to deal with this, especially Bethany.

  “Now, let’s go in the bedroom and take your medicine, honey, you need it right now.” Marybeth let go of Steven and walked away from both him and her mother.

  As she walked away, she turned back just long enough to respond to her mother, “What kind of a mother am I going to be for them? I couldn’t take care of my little girl, how am I going to take care of my other two children?”

  With that she walked into the bedroom and slammed the door.

  Steven stood in the middle of the hallway, head hung, his own tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. His mother-in-law walked over to him and also hugged him as she let go and started crying herself, “Steven, I am so sorry, so, so sorry.”

  Steven hugged her back and talked softly to her as they held each other, “Lucy, she won’t make it through this. It is going to be everywhere. You already saw it on TV and they haven’t even finished processing the scene.

  “This is ugly, Lucy, the loss of Tracy and all the other little girls is horrible enough, but it is much uglier than that and it will break Beth. She is already on the brink and if she keeps hearing what everyone has to say, what the experts have to say, and you know that there will be pictures and blogs on the Internet, she won’t make it. Do you think they can go back with you and Tom?”

  She pulled back and wiped the tears from his face, “Of course, dear, of course. I have already been talking about it to her and I think she understands. Bethany’s school is aware of the situation. They completely understand and will do whatever they need to when she comes back.”

  Steven looked up into her eyes and felt a sense of relief, a sense that his family was covered. He had always taken pride in believing that he was the one to provide that security, that cover, but now he knew he wouldn’t be able to care for his wife the way she needed to be cared for, not right now.