by Hadena James
However, Patterson had regained control before lashing out at the man. Besides, his real rage was not aimed at Lee, it was at Gertrude. He held a piece of paper in his hand that made him shake with the rage. It was an unnotarized birth certificate with the name Tennyson August Unger, Junior on it. His sister had actually considered naming her son after her rapist. If Patterson could kill Unger all over again, he would. It was also the reason he was back on the Unger farm. The registrar currently had the deed registered to Tennyson Unger, Junior.
Night had descended upon Patterson hours ago. He had been leaning against a tree on the far side of the property for several hours trying to decide what to do. Obviously, the Marshals knew that August was alive and suspected he was responsible. He was waiting for them to come bursting through the trees and take down August. Yet, they weren’t coming. He’d left a message at the hotel for Aislinn.
He wanted to kill August, but he didn’t want to get caught. He had other things to do. It disturbed him that even with Nina’s help, Aislinn wasn’t charging in to capture the bad guy and possibly, kill him. Why wasn’t she responding to his messages? That nagged at him more than he had ever thought possible.
The answer was obvious. In his own way, Patterson had come to know Gabriel Henders, Xavier Reece, and Lucas McMichaels. He didn’t know the new guy. He suspected the new guy was intercepting all of his communication attempts with Aislinn.
Patterson dug out his cell phone and dialed a number. The line rang and went to voicemail. He immediately redialed the number.
“Hello?” Lucas McMichaels’ voice came over the line. He sounded wide awake.
“Hello, Marshal McMichaels,” Patterson answered. “This is...”
“Patterson Clachan,” Lucas answered. “Malachi told me a few days ago that you were The Butcher. We all know by now.”
“Yes,” Patterson said. “I suppose you do. However, that isn’t why I’m calling. I believe there is a problem within the SCTU. A very serious problem that if not addressed will become monumental.”
“The SCTU is fine,” Lucas answered curtly, but didn’t hang up.
“How often have you known Aislinn to ignore my communications when I have passed along tips to her?” Patterson asked. Lucas was silent, it spoke volumes. “Exactly. I have attempted four times to contact her and tell her that August isn’t dead. Yet, she didn’t find out until today. This means that my messages never reached her. In the past, the SCTU has encouraged her to communicate in an attempt to track and identify The Butcher. Now, I am suddenly not getting any responses. Have orders changed? If so, is the SCTU ready to take responsibility for another dead body at the hands of August Clachan? Because he has killed since I sent the first message to her.”
“When was that?” Lucas asked.
“The day the feet were found hanging on the wire.” Patterson answered. “I wanted her to stay uninvolved in this, I had planned to take care of it. You see, I found out about it within the same week. So, I was going to make the problem go away. However, she became involved and well, I can’t walk into his house and slaughter him then hope she finds the surviving victims. Out of necessity, I left a message at the hotel for her this evening, telling her that I thought I knew where August was hiding. I’m here. The SCTU is not.”
“Where are you?” Lucas asked.
“I have been trying to make this easy for the SCTU and I have gotten no response. Until you clean house and fix your problems, I’m done. You may deal with August on your own. Tell that leader of yours that if Aislinn dies because of this, I will personally come after all of you.” Patterson thought for another second. “And I won’t just stop with team members. I will hunt down loved ones as well. I might be old, but I am not incapable.”
“I am well aware of what you are capable of,” Lucas sighed. “We found your work today, tied to a recliner, his organs strung about his house. We haven’t told Aislinn because she doesn’t remember George Killian and we aren’t sure how it connects to her, we just know that you did it.”
“Then I’ll tell you, George Killian has been stalking Aislinn since Alaska, killing people to frame her. He tried to kill her in high school in a drive-by shooting, but failed. It took me a while to connect all the dots, but I have nothing but time on my hands and Eric helped.”
“You’re in contact with Eric?” Lucas asked.
“He reached out after he was sent to The Fortress. He was worried that only Malachi and Nyleena would be looking out for Aislinn. She is capable of getting in her own way and Malachi is both a positive and negative influence on her. So, yes, I have been in contact, sporadically, with Eric.”
“I will investigate your claims. I’m guessing you came to me because you knew I wasn’t with the team.”
“That is correct. I would have gone to Blake, but he has other issues to deal with right now.”
“Will you tell me now where August is holed up?” Lucas asked.
“No, you can call it petty, but I have always been helpful to your cases when it was needed and now, when it is needed the most, I don’t even rank high enough to have my messages passed along to my granddaughter.” Patterson paused. “On another note, I have found your sniper. The SCTU can’t go after him, it will look like revenge when you kill him. So I am doing it for you. You may thank me later.”
Patterson hung up. He stared at the house. The lights were still on. He had a feeling that August was still awake. Rushing in would be a mistake and he knew it. He could beat August, but August liked dangerous pets and he didn’t think he was a match for any predators that might be skulking around the house. He was well past his best days, he didn’t think he could break the neck of a boar hog with his bare hands anymore.
Besides, Nyleena had picked up Nina today. He had to return home to carry out his sister’s last wishes.
Thirty
Xavier had an oogling buddy. The two stared at the animal skins spread out on special tables in the University of Missouri’s zoology department. In reality, they only stared at one skin, the one that Xavier had held up in the basement. He still hadn’t told us why he was so horrified to find it in the basement. There were endangered leopards, but tigers were considered more critically endangered if that made sense.
“You were right,” Dr. Ritter told him.
“I’ve seen one before,” Xavier said. “In the wild. I spent a summer in Siberia when I was in school.”
“For those of us playing the home game,” Gabriel interrupted, annoyed by the suspense.
“It’s the skin of an Amur Leopard,” Dr. Ritter told him. Alarm bells began to go off in my head. “In 2012, it was estimated that there were only about thirty left in the wild. It isn’t just critically endangered, it is practically extinct. There’s about 170 in captivity that are being used to breed for reintroduction, but so far, no luck. Owning this pelt is very illegal. I’d be very interested in knowing how the person came into possession of it.”
“So would I,” I told Dr. Ritter. “Let’s go find out.”
“Um, Ace, there’s a problem with that,” Xavier said.
“Yeah, I can’t beat it out of her because she’s old,” I was still heading for the door.
“No,” Gabriel grabbed my arm. “We don’t have her in custody. We don’t know where she is.”
“Oh yeah,” I stopped.
“Do you have any idea where she might be?” Gabriel had turned me so that I was facing him.
“No. I can’t imagine the family is protecting her now that Lee is dead and Joe is in custody for killing him. You heard Kyle, crazy is one thing, but murderously crazy is a whole different can of worms.”
“What about friends?” He asked.
“I don’t know if she has friends. Her own husband called her evil. Does Satan have friends?” I thought for a moment. My back was still tender. I’d already been shot three times and I didn’t have a serial killer in custody or my evil great-aunt who was hiding a suspected serial killer. This was not a good week.
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br /> “Would anyone in your family know?” Gabriel pressed.
“You seemed to have failed to grasp the concept of my family relations. I talk to Nyleena. Once a year, Nina calls me. I have more contact with The Butcher than I do my family. Although, I guess, technically, The Butcher is my family. I wonder what Lee meant about telling me how my grandfather always knew where I was?”
“Oh boy,” John sat down. “Here comes a tangent.”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I can guess that Gertrude has been feeding my whereabouts to him, but how did she know? As far as I know, the only people that would have been privy to that information would have been Nyleena and as it turns out, Nina. Nina wouldn’t have told Gertrude and Nyleena has about as much use for Gertrude as she does for a two-headed cow. Lee also said that my grandfather had been the murder weapon, not the murderer when it came to my grandmother’s death. And that The Butcher had tried to kill me before. Yet, I can’t remember an old man breaking into any place I lived to try to kill me.”
“This is a tangent,” John said.
“No, I don’t think it is,” I told him. “I think it’s all related, literally. What if August and I have more DNA in common than cousins should have? What if Gertrude is pulling The Butcher’s strings because August is his son?”
“There goes another fork in the family tree,” Xavier giggled.
“Thanks,” I shook my head. “My grandmother was killed in the sixties. After August was born. Gertrude does something to wind him up and he goes home and slaughters my grandmother.”
“Why not kill Gertrude?” Xavier asked.
“I don’t know, because they’re siblings or because Gertrude has more on him than just August.”
“That might make sense,” Gabriel cocked his head to the side. “You don’t remember being attacked by The Butcher because you weren’t. Grandpa sees that you are like him and he relates to you like a kindred spirit, but he has to keep Gertrude quiet, so he lies to her. He tells her he’s tried, but you were too much for him, age is making him slow and weak. He sends the creepy mail because it’s his way of keeping in touch with his granddaughter, but to Gertrude, it would appear like he was trying to psych you out.”
“But that doesn’t help us find Gertrude or August,” I sighed. “Or The Butcher for that matter.”
“It does make a stronger case for serial killing genes to be hereditary though,” Xavier offered.
“That’s true. If my grandfather really is August’s father, that’s a child and a grandchild that has followed in his footsteps. Granted, Eric is more mass murderer than serial killer, but for the sake of argument, I won’t split hairs over it.”
“Does this help?” John asked.
“Sometimes you just have to follow her logic along,” Xavier said. “There is the very real chance that it will lead somewhere.”
“If we could somehow let The Butcher know that Gertrude and August were wanted for murder, he might help,” I said to Gabriel.
“You want me to start posting their pictures on the news to lure The Butcher into helping us?” Gabriel looked skeptical.
“It might kill two birds with one stone. If my grandfather wants revenge, he’d do what he could to make it possible for us to capture her and her deranged son. While we’re working the case of the jaguar and feet,” I slapped myself in the forehead.
“That looked like it hurt, a lot.” Xavier winced.
“August is missing a foot. Well, not really missing it, we know where it is. He keeps it in a jar. He lost it as a child to a hog. From what I hear, the beast bit right through the bone and started munching on it.” I sat down and hung my head. “But there’s more to the story than that. He was with my grandfather at the time, he might have been three years old, maybe younger. Lee happened to be nearby. He heard August scream and rushed over. When he arrived, he had a pitch fork. Lee was stabbing the hog when legend says my grandfather grabbed hold of the thing’s tusks and broke its neck. The hog let go of August and the foot fell out of his mouth. For some reason, Gertrude kept it. Then August kept it.”
“That is a very disturbing story,” Xavier said. “I’m not Lucas, but I can pick out four aspects immediately that render it a horror story.”
“At least four,” Gabriel looked at me. “What’s your thoughts on it? True or legend?”
“True,” I told him. “I think my grandfather tried to feed August to a hog, I think he got caught and in a psychopathic rage broke the neck of a full grown hog, which says all sorts of things about him. I think August remembers it. And I think it probably was the straw that broke the camel’s back and August became a serial killer because of bad genes and childhood trauma. Also, I think I’m an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. I just never believed the story, not really.”
“Why do you believe it now then?” John asked.
“Because it explains everything,” I answered. “My grandmother was murdered a week later. What better way to wind up a serial killer than threaten to tell his wife about his inbred, illegitimate child that he tried to kill? He might not have been able to kill Gertrude at that moment, for whatever reason, so he goes home, grandmother does something to piss him off, he’s already in full psychopath mode and the house gets redecorated in her body parts.”
“And now you think you can lure him out of hiding by offering up your aunt and August as bait?” Gabriel asked.
“While we are concentrating on Gertrude and August, because the woman has to know her son is killing all these people, Malachi and the VCU can concentrate on The Butcher,” I told Gabriel. “Would you be okay with the FBI taking down The Butcher?”
“If the story is true and my grandfather broke the neck of a hog with his bare hands,” I didn’t finish my sentence.
I was just fine with that. I might have some of the psychopathic abilities, but I wasn’t Malachi Blake. Malachi could do things that I couldn’t. Even as an old man, I had a feeling that The Butcher was probably a force to be reckoned with and Malachi would have a better chance than me. Plus, if he killed Malachi, I’d have to put a bullet in his skull, maybe even six or seven. I was sure he was aware of that fact.
Thirty-One
Within a few seconds of the news airing a photo of my Great-Aunt Gertrude and her possibly inbred and deranged son, tips began to pour in. The switchboard was overwhelmed and crashed at the five minute mark.
However, in that five minutes, we had learned that August being alive was a badly kept secret. All sorts of people knew him, including a grocery store clerk that had sold him groceries a few days earlier and a guy on Highway WW that sold him gas a couple times a month.
I was familiar with the area, my childhood home had been near there. WW sort of ran parallel to Interstate 70. It ran from Columbia to Millersburg and from Millersburg to Fulton. There was a lot of road there. Most of it was still rural, city expansion had gone south, not east. However, some of Columbia’s elite had huge mansion estates out there.
August wouldn’t own a mansion estate. It was just an indication of how much land was available in the area. The land was worth a ton of money, buying it wouldn’t have come cheap. It was also a long way from Hoop-Up where most of the family lived.
However, you didn’t stop at the same gas station several times a month, unless it was convenient. John was busy cross-referencing land ownership with names of my family. So far, he’d come up with absolutely zilch.
Malachi was surprisingly composed. He sat on a table in the conference room while I paced the floor. It took about two hours to drive from Kansas City to Columbia. The VCU had made it in under an hour. They were all calm, composed, waiting patiently for a call to come in from the elusive monster that had stalked me for years. My own team was also calm, while John typed furiously on the keyboard looking for a place for August to hide.
My pacing was annoying me, I was sure it was annoying everyone else. However, I couldn’t stop. When the tip line had crashed, I had come unglued. Rage had surged into
me and the adrenaline was still pumping strong and hard through my veins. I wanted to catch the entire lot of them. They could all go sit with my brother in The Fortress until their skeletons turned to dust.
For this reason, no one spoke to me. No one spoke at all. The only noise came from the heating system and John’s fingers clacking across the keyboard. Both seemed extremely loud. The urge to break John’s fingers was overwhelming and I kept my hands stuffed in my pockets as I paced to keep from acting on it.
“Why don’t you go have a cigarette?” Xavier suggested after a full twelve minutes of me pacing. “And maybe a sedative. I suggest Ketamine.”
“You want me to take a horse tranquilizer?” I glared at him.
“Yes, before you kill one of us as a surrogate for your rage,” Xavier said.
“I’ll go smoke,” I grabbed my coat. The door opened.
“The switchboard is back up,” Detective Russell told us. “It’s still lit up like a Christmas Tree. Crimestoppers has never had this many calls before at one time. We need more operators.”
“We’ll help,” Gabriel stood. “Not you,” he pointed at me. “You are definitely not manning a telephone right now. Your soul might be pissed enough to reach through a phone line and strangle the person on the other end.”
“That’s impossible,” I told him.
“Maybe,” he gave me a very pointed look. I frowned as the word came to mind. Until meeting Gabriel, I’d heard the term wendigo before, but I had never really grasped the concept until Gabriel told me a story about his childhood. He believed he had encountered a wendigo while growing up. It was very hard to argue with superstition and even harder when the person making the argument was Gabriel. If it had been Xavier, I would have dismissed it outright, but there was something to the way Gabriel told the story that told me it still haunted him. He truly believed in them.
