by Hadena James
harping at him for years. He never did anything right according to her. He also knew that Grace was not his biological daughter. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out; Grace had genetic features that couldn’t have existed if she had been his daughter. Hilary still didn’t know he knew. She still thought she had cuckolded him. She was wrong.
Grace would be his only regret when it was all over. He had written a new will, one that stated Grace was to go live with his brother and their family. His brother had been concerned when he got the call, but it had been shortly after the death of their son, so his brother had dismissed it. Henry remembered that conversation vividly.
His brother had kept reassuring him that nothing would happen to Henry or his wife. Henry had been insistent that bad things happened all the time. They could have a car accident or something equally tragic and Grace wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
So his brother had relented and Henry had set about to do his son’s memory proud. The twisted world in which he had grown up had turned him into a killer. Henry could relate to that. He found himself capable of it when he had dispatched those damned cats. He hadn’t turned it on people though until four years ago. He had killed a homeless woman, stabbing her six times.
She had been the first to stoke his rage. It had been October. The winter had descended early with huge snowfalls. He had been walking from the doctor’s office to the coroner’s office when he saw her. He offered her a dollar.
The homeless woman had made a snide comment about how he could do better than a dollar. She deserved more than that. It would barely buy a cup of coffee and she needed the warmth and the food in this cold.
He had agreed, lured her to his car with the promise of a hot meal and a place to stay. They had arrived at the cabin only twenty minutes later. He had walked her inside and stabbed her. The release had been euphoric.
All his stress and worries had melted away in those few minutes. He had held her and watched the life drain from her. For the first time he had felt free. He had done it a few times since, always with the homeless and never the same way. There were computer programs to detect that kind of stuff. There was never a pattern.
Until now. His son had given him a pattern and a purpose. The release each time was just as euphoric. He had control over these stupid women that had beaten him down to a shell of a man.
In high school, Henry had been the man going places. He’d been voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” And he had. He had just started his practice when he met his wife. She had come in with a kitchen knife injury. Chopping onions or something, the knife had slipped. He had thought she was about the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.
Six months later, she was pregnant and they were married. Their lives had been hell since the wedding rings slipped onto their fingers. She had done nothing but berate him since then. But he would get his own back. He was determined to find the man that might still reside in the shell.
He wanted to see her skin gone. Wanted to listen to her cries and screams as he removed her evil skin. However, killing her was a huge risk now that he had screwed up and smashed all those pictures. If his wife died at the hands of the skinner, someone might take notice of his little girl smiling from the picture.
The first swatch caught his attention. It belonged to a girl named Amanda Turner. She had been pregnant when his son went overseas. She gave the child up for adoption and told his son she never wanted to see him again during a Skype conversation.
His son had been devastated. When he got back, he went to talk to Amanda. Henry wasn’t sure what happened after that. His son had spiraled into a darker and darker mood until finally, the police had knocked on their door. It had taken over a week to find her body. They ruled him out as a suspect. A week and a half after that day, another girl had been found. Then another. Then his son had butchered himself, slicing into his flesh over thirty times before slitting his own throat and bleeding to death in the cold, white snow.
Three days after Christmas, Henry had agreed to go through his son’s room. That’s when he found the album he was now holding. And the names and swatches of skin inside.
He stubbed out his cigar and returned to his den. The radio he kept in there was chattering. The secure line was talking about a patrol officer pulling over a driver for running a light. They had found bloody clothes in his trunk. They suspected he was the serial killer.
Now would be a good time, Henry thought. While the Marshals and FBI wasted their time, he could go out and find himself a woman to fulfill his needs. But he still had a flat tire and it needed to be there in the morning. If it wasn’t, his wife would nag him about going out so late and was he having an affair. She kept all the finances, she would notice him paying for the tire.
She had caused him social impotence with her strict checkbook balancing and money management. She even did the finances at his office. She knew exactly how much he got paid and it went into their joint account every week.
The same was not true of hers. Her money went into a private account. He didn’t know what she did with hers. He guessed part of it went towards hotel rooms with her lover, Grace’s real father. He didn’t know why she just wouldn’t give him the divorce. He had asked once, she had responded over her dead body. Henry thought that was ironic.
His mind still jumbled and screaming at him, he gave up on the night. Sliding the album into a hidden drawer in his large desk, he put his second greatest treasure away. Finally, he turned out the light and went to bed.
Thirteen
Another day staring at whiteboards, I thought as we trudged into the Marshals’ office a little after ten in the morning. We had slept in because of our early morning call. So far, patrol units hadn’t found a body. Another delay in his pattern.
Agent Arons and Agent Gentry both sat in the room, watching us. I didn’t know if they were waiting for us to pull a rabbit out of our hat or what, but I was pretty sure they weren’t going to get it. Another Marshal stuck his head in the door.
“Uh, Marshal Henders,” he said.
Gabriel was technically not a Marshal. I gave him a smile. He was supposed to be a suit and tie man with black shoes polished to a high shine. Working with us made him an Extra Special Agent, but most people just identified him as a US Marshal.
Gabriel stood and left the room. We all stared at the door like our grip on reality had just walked out of it. In some ways, this was true. Of the five of us, Gabriel was the least nuts.
Michael Giovanni walked into the room looking like warmed over death. He sat down and flipped open his laptop. Then he sneezed.
“Should you be out of bed?” I asked. “You’re complexion matches the carpet in this room, like a turkey that has been baked in a pizza oven for six days by an incompetent fry cook.”
“At least I am color coordinated. Just don’t expect me to do miracles,” Michael answered.
“I always expect miracles out of you,” I told him. “That’s why you are the computer guru and I’m just the gunman.”
“Gunwoman,” Michael corrected. “And I think we should go with computer emperor, since I’m here with pneumonia.”
“Are you still contagious?” I moved away from him.
“No, he hasn’t been contagious since yesterday. We all know about your issues with germs,” Xavier told me.
“Do you have a legally binding document that says that?” I asked.
“You have my expert opinion as a doctor,” Xavier answered.
“Oh great, we are all going to die from pneumonia or Plague,” I said.
“Is this relevant?” Arons asked.
“Does it matter?” Lucas looked at him. “Are you in a hurry to return to the land of death? If so, perhaps you should seek a therapist.”
Arons sat there for a moment, looking at Lucas. Lucas stared back, face set in stone, not cracking a smile. Finally, Arons sighed and looked away. Lucas had won
the staring contest. I tried not to giggle.
“I’ve been keeping up with things and everything is tenuous at best,” Michael brought us back into the land of death. Then he stopped. Agent Gentry offered him a mask. Michael waved it away and winked at me.
“Who is this?” Michael asked, then coughed. Agent Gentry gave up offering and tossed the mask at him.
“Special Agent in Charge Fred Arons and Special Agent Fiona Gentry,” Lucas informed him.
“Feds,” Michael said it with a grumble.
“We’re feds too,” I reminded him.
“We’re different kinds of feds,” Michael said. “Where’s Gabriel?”
“Doing Gabriel things,” I said.
“Do I wait?” Michael asked.
“Do you have world-altering news?” I asked.
“Not really,” Michael sighed. “I do have the geographic profile built. It’s a mess.”
He hooked some stuff up to his computer and we were suddenly staring at a map of Anchorage on the whiteboard. In the corner was a “key”. Red dots were kill sites, blue dots where the victims lived and green dots where they worked. The dots were speckled all over the place.
“If we try to find a center and draw a circle, it is nearly impossible. If we draw a square, it works better, but you have to use the FBI office as the center. If we draw an oval, the center changes to the hospital. So, I drew a free form. There is no way to encompass all the dots and
