by Hadena James
with my eyes. The living room was empty except for a couple of beer cans and a moose head mounted on the wall. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. I entered another room.
This one was brighter. The kitchen was done in yellows and browns. It reminded me of 70’s sitcoms. It was also clear. I could now hear movement over my head. I reentered the living room, found the stairs and started up them. Gabriel was now moving with me. He watched the bottom of the stairs as we moved upwards into more darkness.
There was a tangy smell in the air. The smell of copper and iron and something darker, it made my nostrils flare. The darkness washed over me. The smell of blood triggering it.
“US Marshals!” Lucas bellowed below. I heard another door crash in. He’d entered the house and was now sweeping the downstairs. Xavier would be watching the back door. Michael the front. They would stand at opposite corners to watch the sides. They would come in only if gunfire erupted.
Gabriel motioned me towards a door when we reached the stairway landing. It was the only one closed on the floor. I took position to one side and knelt down. Gabriel mimicked me.
“Open the door!” Gabriel shouted.
Another scream. Definitely female, definitely from the other side of the door. She sounded like a wounded animal. I imagined the tortures he was inflicting on her at the sound of our voices. Lucas moved up the stairs and joined us.
“Break it down,” Gabriel said. Lucas was the only one wearing a bulletproof vest. Not that I thought he needed one. I wouldn’t fire a gun at him and I was crazy.
The door shattered. The hinges screeched as they pulled away from the wall. On the other side, the handle came loose and little bits of metal and wood tinkled as they hit the floor. The frame was torn from the wall, breaking the drywall, sending cracks down either side. It fell to the floor in two pieces with a terrible thunking noise.
I looked in. Henry Small held a woman in front of him. He had a knife to her throat and blood was dripping onto the floor from different cuts he’d made on her. Her body was a roadmap of scars and new wounds. He’d been slicing on her for a long time by the looks of it.
“Fruck,” I whispered. “He’s not our killer.”
“No, but he’s an asshole,” Gabriel stood up. “Let her go Henry and we can talk about this.”
“No one can talk to you, you’re all fucked up. A bunch of psychos pretending to be cops,” he spat at Gabriel.
“And what are you?” I asked, motioning towards his hostage. “A normal happy family man?”
“She likes it,” he spat at me.
“It didn’t sound like it,” I entered the room.
“Don’t come any closer.”
“Or what? You’ll kill her? I think not. If you kill her, I kill you. It’s that easy,” I said.
“No, you won’t.”
“You just called me a psycho with a badge and then doubt that the moment she’s dead, I’ll put a bullet in your brain?” I shook my head. “You’re logic has serious holes in it.”
Gabriel gave me a slight nod. I rushed forward, tucking my gun, I wrapped one arm around his hostage and the other around him. He tried to push me away, but his arms were pinned between us. Lucas came forward. He grabbed the girl, jerked her from Small’s grasp. I grabbed the wrist with the knife and heard a satisfying pop as he dropped the weapon. His teeth dug into my cheek.
“Son of a bitch!” I kneed him in the groin, his teeth let go. I jerked away from him. Gabriel came up, put his gun to Small’s head.
“Don’t even think about getting up,” Gabriel told him. “You are under arrest.”
I sat in an ambulance with a paramedic applying crap to my cheek. It smelled bad but they told me it would prevent infection and highly recommended I go to the hospital. I declined.
“How’d you know it wasn’t him?” Gabriel walked up to me.
“He wouldn’t have been holding the victim the way he was if it had been him. I stabbed him in the shoulder and at least dislocated some joint on that side of the body. I also stabbed him in that arm. He wouldn’t have been able to control her if he’d attacked me.”
“You realize that when I nodded to you, I didn’t expect you to rush him,” Gabriel continued.
“I know, but it was the best case scenario. He wasn’t expecting me to be dangerous, he was expecting problems from the two of you. He might have said we were all psychos, but he gave away that he wasn’t including me when he told me I wouldn’t shoot him.”
“He’s still claiming it was consensual.”
“What’s she claiming?”
“Nothing, she isn’t talking. Lucas is trying to get through to her, but I think she’s been pretty traumatized. No one in the State Trooper’s office knew he was married.”
“Well I guess we can mark that up as a win then,” I sighed.
“It is, just because he isn’t our killer, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have been eventually. He’ll be charged even if she says it was consensual based on the degree of trauma she seems to have sustained.”
“Great, now if only we could find our killer. Why do we always find the wackos?”
“What do you mean?” Gabriel looked at me.
“We found Norman Bates’ family and a sadistic state trooper and I’m sure if we looked a little harder, we could find a few more nuts in that stack of seventeen we had earlier. But we can’t find the psycho that is skinning our victims. Where the hell is he? And what the hell is he doing?” I asked.
Healing
Henry couldn’t believe Marshal Cain had fought him that hard. She was feisty. It would make killing her that much sweeter. If he made it that long. He was currently in bed. He’d called work to say he was sick. He was waiting for his wife to leave so he could slip downstairs to his office and check the wounds.
He’d come home yesterday claiming to be ill. He’d used pneumonia as his excuse. He’d caught it from the Marshals. Everyone had believed it, even the Marshals.
The first task had been to relocate his elbow. Once that was done, he had passed out. When he came around, he removed the knife with half a bottle of whiskey and serious willpower. He didn’t have anything that would work as a local anesthetic at his house. The knife had really hurt. She’d plunged it all the way in, until the hilt had bruised the skin. His shark suit had lost lots of rings, he’d had to dig a few of them out of the wound before stitching it up. Then he’d set to work stitching up his arm.
It had been grueling work. His hands had shook. Sweat had poured from his forehead. His entire body had felt like it was being electrified. The stitching wasn’t very even, but it worked. He’d stopped bleeding.
Today he was hoping to redo the stitches, make them look more professional. Scars were easier to explain when they looked like they’d been fixed by a professional. He had hoped he had at least caught her lung.
No luck, the worst damage had been done with the hypodermic needle tear in her neck. She’d never gone into shock, never seemed to react to the medication. He didn’t know why. It had worked on everyone else. But not her.
But he had gotten the halogen lights and his spare key for the morgue back. He didn’t even realize he’d dropped the key until he’d gotten home. Luckily, the bitch reporter hadn’t turned it over to the police.
Henry finally heard the door downstairs close. Of course his wife didn’t come check on him, she was afraid she’d catch something. He got up and crept downstairs.
He unlocked and entered his office. Bandages and bloody water and rubbing alcohol were sitting on the desk. It was a good thing his wife demanded it stayed locked. One more rule for him to live by, but at least it was a good rule.
He took out the contacts that he’d been wearing for the last day. It had been too much of a bother to take them out earlier. No one had come in to check on him. Grace had tried, but she’d been stopped by her mother at the door. Grace didn’t need to catch what Henry h
ad.
With all his effort, he snipped the stitches and replaced them. The pain came back and brought a wave of nausea with it. He waited for it to pass. He’d gotten sloppy and this was the price he was paying.
It took him over an hour to get the stitches redone. They announced over the radio that the Marshals had raided a State Trooper’s house during that time. Cain was with them, so obviously, he had gotten the worst damage.
She’d set his plan back or rather, he had, by getting greedy. The opportunity to kidnap her had seemed perfect. His son would have done it. And then it had gone all wrong in just a matter of seconds.
Henry knew he’d been sloppy with Gentry. He had expected to enjoy it, but he hadn’t. Despite her appearance and her sometimes snippy attitude, she was always nice to him. It had been a fluke, a spur of the moment decision. One that he regretted. In some ways, Gentry had reminded him of Grace.
He ignored his wife’s rule and lit a cigar in the house. His mind flowing backwards to the chance encounter that night. He’d stopped to get cigars and Gentry had been in there grabbing a bottle of booze. The good stuff too. She’d invited him over for a glass. He’d accepted. At that time, he hadn’t intended to kill her, just have a glass of Scotch with a colleague.
Then Gentry had told him about the encounter with Cain the night before. The migraine, the vomiting, the sorrow and sympathy Gentry had for Cain, doing that work day after day with the threat of a migraine always looming.
