Just One Bite

by Jack Heath

  Timothy Blake, ex-consultant for the FBI, now works in body disposal for a local crime lord. One night he stumbles across a body he wasn’t supposed to find and is forced to hide it. When the FBI calls Blake in to investigate a missing university professor, Blake recognizes him as the dead man in his freezer.

  Then another man goes missing. And another.

  There’s a serial killer in Houston, Texas, and Blake is running out of time to solve the case. His investigation takes him to a sex doll factory, a sprawling landfill in Louisiana and a secret cabin in the woods.

  As they hunt the killer together, FBI agent Reese Thistle starts to warm to Blake—but she also gets closer and closer to discovering his terrible secret.

  Can Blake uncover the killer without being exposed himself?

  PRAISE FOR JUST ONE BITE

  “Jack Heath’s writing is tight, twisted, and terrific. He’s given us a monster to root for, a monster who makes us laugh, a monster who will follow you around well after you’ve finished reading. Keep the lights on at night and you should be fine. Maybe hide the cutlery too.”

  —Paul Cleave, international bestselling author of A Killer Harvest

  “I devoured Just One Bite. Jack Heath is alarmingly skilled in all things dark and sinister. Luckily he is also bitingly, outrageously funny.”

  —Sarah Bailey, international bestselling author of The Dark Lake

  PRAISE FOR HANGMAN

  “Jack Heath’s writing grabs you by the throat, gnaws on your bones, and washes it all down with a hefty dose of funny. Sick, twisted, violent, and oh so good.”

  —Emma Viskic, award-winning author of Resurrection Bay

  “Hangman is a perverse, twisted take on a crime novel—and I loved every page of it. What a rarity to find a thriller as dark as a Palahniuk and as compulsively readable as a Patterson. Two well-chewed thumbs up for Hangman.”

  —Gregg Hurwitz, New York Times bestselling author

  First published as a teenager, Jack Heath is the award-winning author of Hangman and more than twenty fiction titles for young adult and middle-grade readers. His books have been translated into six languages and adapted for film. He lives in Australia.

  jackheath.com.au

  Twittter: @JackHeathWriter

  Instragram:@JackHeathWriter

  Facebook: JackHeathWriter

  Also by Jack Heath

  Hangman

  Just One Bite

  A Novel

  Jack Heath

  For my family

  Contents

  QUOTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Standing on the corner with a dollar in my hand, honey

  Standing on the corner with a dollar in my hand, babe

  Standing on the corner with a dollar in my hand

  Standing here waiting for the Crawdad Man

  Honey

  Baby

  Mine

  —Civil War–era folk song

  CHAPTER ONE

  What has a neck but no head?

  If Charlie Warner wants you dead, first she steals your shoes.

  Not in person. She has people all over Houston.

  One of them is James Tyrrell, a pudgy guy with Coke-bottle glasses and scar tissue on his arm where the number 88 used to be. A coded white-supremacist tattoo—H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. The 88 means Heil Hitler. “I’m no Nazi,” I heard him say once. “But if you want to survive Huntsville prison, you gotta pick a team.”

  Tyrrell will open your front door with a police-issue lock-release gun and go to your bedroom wearing latex gloves and a hairnet. He’ll steal your most expensive pair of shoes. Usually black, always shiny—the kind you might wear to a funeral. He’ll take some socks, too, but won’t touch anything else on his way out.

  Two more guys will drive a white van with stolen plates to wherever it is you work. Their names are Jordan Francis and Theo Sariklis. They both have thick necks, square jaws and crew cuts. It took me a while to tell them apart. Sariklis is the one with the drooping eyelid and the Ramones shirt. He’s been working for Warner longer than me. Francis is new—just moved here from San Jose, California. He’s the one who cracks jokes. Even in winter he wears a wife-beater to show off his biceps. He might go to the gym after killing you.

  Francis will park the van next to the driver’s side of your car. Sariklis will open the sliding door on the side of the van and wait.

  You’ll walk out of the office and approach your car. When you go to open the door, Francis will grab you and drag you into the van. It takes seconds. He’s had plenty of practice—in San Jose he worked for one of the Sureño gangs. You won’t even have time to scream before Francis shuts the van door.

  You’ll know who they work for. Warner doesn’t target bystanders. They’re here because you stole from her, or lied to her, or informed on her. Or maybe you didn’t pay your tab at one of her businesses. An underground casino, a bordello, a drug den.

  They’ll ask you questions. The first few are a test; they already know the answers. If you lie, Francis will hold you down, while Sariklis forces a water bottle into your mouth and pinches your nose shut so it feels like drowning. They do it like that because they’re still in the parking lot. There aren’t many quiet ways to torture someone.

  Just when it feels like you’re gonna die, Sariklis will take the bottle out. You’ll throw up. Then Sariklis will ask you some more questions. The real ones. Whatever Warner needs to know. Who have you told? What are their names? Where do they live? Show us the messages.

  The final question is always about the PIN for your bank account. You’ll answer that one gladly. You’ll think it means they only want money. You’ll think they’re going to let you go.

  After you give them your PIN, Sariklis will stick the bottle back in your mouth. This time he won’t let up. He’ll drown you, right there in the parking lot. Three minutes until your heart gives up, four until brain death.

 
Francis will stay in the van with your body while Sariklis takes your car, your phone and your wallet to an ATM. He’ll withdraw as much as he can, then drive to a secluded stretch of beach in Galveston.

  There he’ll meet Tyrrell, who has your shoes. Sariklis will place your shoes side by side on the sand, your wallet and keys tucked inside like frightened mice. Tyrrell will do a factory reset on your phone, switch it off and hurl it into the sea. They’ll abandon your car on the side of the road, within sight of the gray ocean, and take Tyrrell’s car back to Warner’s office to give her the cash.

  I’ve only been to Warner’s office once, and I had a bag on my head for the whole journey. But I was memorizing the turns, and counting the seconds. Afterward I got them to drop me off someplace else, and I memorized that journey, too. Later I looked at a map, and narrowed it down to four city blocks near Market Square Park.

  They usually take you on a Friday. If you live alone, you may not be reported missing until Monday. The police will find your car and shoes around Wednesday. Some of them will say you drowned accidentally while swimming. Others will suggest that it was suicide. The shoes are too classy for a normal swim, they’ll say, and there’s no towel. Plus, your bathing suit is still at your home.

  Because of the ATM withdrawal, still others will say that you faked your death. You did have some powerful enemies, after all. Your missing phone lends credence to this theory. But anyone who suspects Warner will be smart enough not to say so.

  All this is assuming you’re one of the lucky ones, and Warner doesn’t want the credit for your death. Sometimes she kills someone to send a message. No stolen shoes, no water bottle. The body turns up in dozens of pieces, each removed from a living person.

  Once upon a time Warner’s men would have just thrown your body into the ocean. The water in your lungs would make sense on the autopsy report. But the bruising around your lips and wrists, plus the damage to your gums, might raise some eyebrows. Now they have a better way.

  While Sariklis and Tyrrell bring the cash to Warner’s office, Francis will take the van onto State Highway 12, alone. Your body will be in the back under a sheet, slowly going cold. Francis will drive through the dark, watching the buildings disappear and the trees get taller and taller.

  Then he’ll see a beat-up Toyota Corolla parked on the shoulder, miles from anywhere. He’ll pull over. Despite what he’s seen and done, he’ll shudder before he gets out of the car.

  Then he’ll slide open the van door, and give your body to me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  What flies without wings and cries without eyes?

  He’s late.

  I pace up and down the shoulder, watching the road for headlights. The trees whisper secrets in the gentle breeze. My breath makes clouds in front of my face. It’s not snowing, but the sky is seriously considering it. People think Texas is hot, but in early December it falls below fifty.

  Normally I’d stay in the driver’s seat, working on riddles. Strangers mail them to me, and I solve them for twenty bucks each. This started out as a money-laundering scheme, and surprised me by becoming an actual job. But tonight I have to get out of the car. A diet of primarily meat, stale bread and salted coffee has ugly side effects. I’m having stomach cramps.

  I check my phone, squinting at the tiny screen. It’s two a.m. The phone is a burner, small and cheap. Warner told me to keep it switched on and with me at all times. The battery never lasts long, so I know she installed a hidden tracking app. She probably assumed I’d figure that out, but she also knows I’m smart enough to play dumb.

  My guts gurgle, twisting in my belly. I need a bathroom break. But if I’m not here when Francis arrives, I don’t know what he’ll do.

  I take deep breaths. That only makes it worse. I try to think about the van instead, cruising toward me with the body inside.

  The dead man is named Aaron Elliott. An investment banker. He hit one of Warner’s call girls, leaving her with a busted nose. Now she can’t work. Warner said it would be bad business to let something like that go unpunished.

  The body is supposed to be big. Six foot, two hundred pounds. Might be a challenge for me to dispose of.

  The pressure from my insides is getting unbearable. I take one more hopeful look at the road, but there’s still no sign of the van, so I scurry into the woods.

  Living your whole life in the city, you forget how dark it gets beyond the edge. Even when I was sleeping on the streets, there was always light around. A fizzing streetlight here, the glow of a gas station there. No trees to block the moonlight. But this far out there’s nothing but the smell of earth and the buzz of insects. An eastern screech owl trills somewhere above me. I fumble through the foliage, using the flashlight app to find a good spot.

  Then something stops me. The scent of meat.

  I’ve always had a good sense of smell. Starvation does that to you. I turn around, slowly. Taking rapid, sharp sniffs, like a dog. It’s not cooked meat, but it’s also not a dead animal. There’s none of that farmy, furry odor. And it’s...this way.

  Curiosity has taken my mind off the stomach cramps. I push through the brush, branches scratching at my legs and arms, until I reach the source of the smell.

  It’s a dead body.

  The man is naked. Thin, short—not Elliott. Facedown, with one arm outstretched, as though he’s swimming. His other hand is trapped under his torso.

  I sweep the phone over him. The glow illuminates his face. He’s white, midforties, with a short beard and gray-flecked hair. His eyes are wide, his teeth bared. Pained, enraged or terrified—can’t tell.

  People with hypothermia sometimes take their clothes off right before they die. Their body temperature gets so low that the air feels hot around them, and they start shedding layers. But even in winter, it would take at least an hour to die of exposure, and he’s barely fifty feet from the road.

  In the dark, it’s impossible to know which direction he came from. But there’s nothing out here—that’s why Warner picked this spot—so I assume a car dropped him off. Sometimes the police do that. Take your clothes and kick you out of the car, miles from anywhere in the freezing cold. Murder by weather.

  But in that scenario, he would have stayed on the road in case a car came by. He wouldn’t have run into the woods.

  So he was trying to escape from the driver. Maybe he even threw himself from a moving vehicle, although I don’t see any grazes on his palms or his knees. His skin is pristine. I touch it. Soft, too. He hasn’t been dead long. A day at the most.

  Don’t do it. It’s the voice of Agent Reese Thistle, my old FBI handler. I haven’t seen her in months, but I still hear her in my head. She’s what I have instead of a conscience.

  Walk away, she says.

  Ignoring her, I squeeze the man’s upper arm. It’s the perfect mixture of fat and muscle. I squeeze it, and lean in close. My heart rate is through the roof. I can hardly breathe.

  Are you kidding me? Thistle says. You don’t know who he is, where he came from, how he died or who might be looking for him. Plus, you got another body on the way. You don’t need this.

  She’s right. But she’s too late to stop me. It was too late the moment I saw the body.

  Just one bite, I tell myself, and rip a chunk out of his arm with my teeth.

  He screams.

  I rear back, but it’s not him. Something else has screeched—maybe that owl from before.

  A flashlight flits between the trees in the distance.

  Holy shit. I duck down, gore dribbling from my mouth. I’m not alone in this forest. Someone is here, probably tracking the dead man. Maybe the driver of the car he escaped from. Or a cop, doing search and rescue. Either way, the person with the flashlight will be armed, unlike me. Boots trample the undergrowth, closer every second.

  I could run back to my car. But when the tracker finds the bo
dy, he or she will notice the fresh bite, clearly made by human teeth. The tracker will start looking for me. If they are with the police, they’ll call in reinforcements. The forest will be surrounded, the highway blocked off. The cops will stop me, see the blood on my face, and it’s over.

  So I can’t let the tracker find the body.

  I heave the dead man over my shoulder. He weighs maybe a hundred and sixty pounds. Less than me, but still it’s hard to walk with him on my back. My feet sink deeper into the undergrowth with every step. Leaves crunch, branches rattle. Hopefully the tracker won’t hear me over his or her own footsteps.

  Soon I’ve reached the edge of the forest. I look around. No sign of any cars on the road other than mine. I hustle out of the forest and run over to my Toyota. My fingers are shaking as I open the trunk, leaving blood on the handle.

  Headlights in the distance. Engine noise. If that’s anyone other than Francis, I’m in trouble.

  There’s a thirty-gallon plastic tub in the trunk. I stuff the dead man in and slam the lid. I keep my face turned away from the car as it passes.

  The car slows down, but doesn’t stop. I’m not sure how much the driver would have seen. Even less sure how likely they are to report anything they did see.

  One more thing before I go. I pick up a rock about the size of a deck of cards and pitch it as far as I can, over the tops of the trees. It crashes down somewhere in the distance. I can’t see the flashlight, but I can hear the tracker changing direction, moving with renewed urgency.

  I wait until the sound fades. Then I start the engine, release the parking brake and pull out onto the highway.

  * * *

  My house is a dilapidated two-bedroom, one-bathroom thing in a bad neighborhood just outside the loop. The rent is surprisingly high for such a crummy place. Ideally I’d split it with someone, but I ate my last roommate. It’s safest for everyone if I live alone.

  I reverse the car into the carport, jump out and open the trunk. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not always darkest before dawn. Already a cold blue glow is starting to spill across the street. The sun will be up in an hour. I need to get the body inside before someone—