Apex Predator (14 page)

After making sure there was no one else there, Pruitt made short work of the side door and walked into the place with Demers close behind. They put on their night vision goggles. The low-light devices allowed them to see clearly, although everything appeared through various shades of green. There were several barrels with hazardous material signs on them in the first room they walked into. They could also now see where the van had been this whole time, and they could see that the warehouse was divided into separate spaces and that, once again, everything was spotless.

There was a long plastic curtain like the kind used in beef freezers and slaughterhouses. It was about a quarter of an inch thick and a grayish white. It went almost the entire width of the warehouse but stopped just short of the wall.

The space Demers and Pruitt were in looked like a machine shop. There was a table saw, a lathe, a band saw, all spotless, but arranged awkwardly. They moved on to the space beyond the plastic curtain and were absolutely shocked to find something that looked like an operating table. It clearly wasn’t one but had been dressed up to look like one. On a bench that stuck out from the wall were all sorts of surgical instruments, scalpels, forceps and devices neither operative had ever seen.

All of them appeared to be either already sterilized or being sterilized in a machine used to do just that. There were also other nonsurgical cutting tools hanging from the wall, perfectly organized. Some of the tools were missing, but an outline in marker let them know they were probably in the sterilizing machine.

The two operatives had been all over the world, each had years of experience in the field and in some of the most dangerous and difficult situations anyone could be faced with, and yet neither one had felt the unease they felt now. This was a bizarre space, and the smell of cleaner, sterilizer and alcohol made it even eerier.

As they looked down the bench, they could see an industrial sharpener and beyond it two industrial-sized, top-loading freezers sitting side by side. They walked in the direction of the freezers and just as they got past the space the van was occupying, they came upon a scene that would stay with both of them for the rest of their lives.

Upon first inspection it looked like a typical little girl’s room. There was a four-poster bed with decorative swirls. Around the room were shelves full of dolls of all shapes and sizes, most of them were Barbie-type dolls, some were complete, but most were in some state of disassembly or taken apart, some had the eyes cut out, some had arms or legs missing. There were four sets of handcuffs, one attached to each of the posts.

Demers and Pruitt were standing completely still and in complete shock trying to take in what was in front of them.

On the other side of the bed were two refrigerators standing side by side along the wall that ended at the corner of the wall the top-loading freezers were up against.

As both men stood without a clue as to what all of this meant, they both seemed to get just what was in front of them at the same time.

Demers asked Pruitt to turn on the overhead light, “Vic, you know we can’t…”

Demers didn’t let him finish, “Goddamnit, Travis, turn on the light, I don’t give a shit who sees it! You know what’s in here. Jesus Christ, I don’t want to look at what I know is there, but we have to.”

Pruitt headed to the light switch, “I know, Vic. I’ve never even come close to this type of shit.” Both took their night vision gear off before the lights turned on.

He made it to the light switch and turned it on. After their eyes adjusted, they picked up on a few things they had missed: a tall garbage can that appeared to have linens in it, a chain hanging from the ceiling, and vials of various drugs that they recognized as paralytics and sedatives. There was an IV stand next to the bed and a stainless steel table next to that, beyond that were the two upright refrigerators. Demers and Pruitt decided they would look at the industrial freezers first.

As Demers got to the first one, he could see there was a padlock on it. He pulled out bolt cutters and cut off the lock.

Somewhere in the dark recesses of their minds, the two operatives knew what it was that they were going to find in the freezers, but no amount of imagination could prepare them for what they saw once they opened the lid. Inside of the first freezer, looking up was the head of Tracy Loomis. It had been cut with incredible precision and her eyelids and eyes were missing. Next to her were the heads of two other little girls of roughly the same age, one without a scalp. Underneath the heads there were various body parts, arms, legs, a small torso, all neatly stacked.

Nothing in the freezer had been just tossed in. It had all been neatly stacked; every part had a place for it. Judging by the number of body parts and the depth of the freezer, they guessed there must be about four bodies in it. All Pruitt could manage to whisper was, “Holy God…” before Demers just let the lid slam shut. Both of them felt lightheaded and had to take several deep breaths to quell the nausea that was hitting them.

Once both men had composed themselves, they checked the other freezer, which was stacked in the same way as its twin, although not as full. Once they closed the second freezer they went to the two upright refrigerators, feeling more steeled for what they might find, but once again, whatever they had expected to find in the two refrigerators did not come close to matching what they actually found.

Pruitt opened the first refrigerator this time and once he did, he thought he had found a life-sized doll. A little girl stood there, dressed in a frilly blue dress. She had curly blond hair and her open eyes were a light blue. Except there was something wrong with the way her hair sat on her head. It was as if it had been placed there, but not quite straight enough.

Demers came from behind Pruitt to take a look and from behind him said, “Oh, my God, look at her neck.” Pruitt directed his attention to the girl’s neck and what he saw actually made him dizzy and he swayed on his feet. Had Demers not been behind him he might have actually fallen straight back.

The head on the girl didn’t belong to the rest of the body. There were stitch marks around the neck and upon closer inspection they could see that the skin tone of the face did not match the skin tone on her arms. As they continued to examine the girl, they also noticed that the wrists had similar stitching and that the skin tone on the hands also had a different hue to them. The stitching on the other hand was not completed, it was about three-quarters of the way around, and through the open wound Demers could see a shiny object. He bent down to get a closer look and realized that it was a polished, stainless steel rod.

All of a sudden everything in this pit from hell made sense.

The son of a bitch was assembling this girl. He was taking whatever parts he wanted from the other girls and putting this one together, and Demers would bet anything that they would find the exact same thing in the other refrigerator. He couldn’t keep these bodies frozen because he needed them to be more pliable, but he knew a standard refrigerator at above freezing temperatures would not slow down the decomposition enough, which is what he probably used the chemicals and the dry ice for.

Pruitt closed the refrigerator door and put his hand on Demers’ shoulder, “C’mon we found what we needed to find. Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to stay in here one more second.”

They both stood without saying a word for a few seconds. Demers finally broke the silence, “We can’t. The police have nothing on this guy, and if any of this evidence is tainted in any way it could jeopardize the trial. They can’t come in without probable cause, but the owner of the place can open it if there’s some emergency.”

Pruitt looked at him, puzzled, “What are you saying? You want to set fire to the place?”

Demers was already on his way to the barrels they saw when they first came in, “No, but I’m sure some sort of chemical spill coming from inside the warehouse is going to catch someone’s attention. They’ll have to open it for safety reasons.”

Pruitt was nodding now, “I got you. Let’s tip a couple of these over and make sure they run under the bay door into the alley.”

Demers was already prying the lid from one of the barrels, “Exactly.”

Pruitt paused for a moment, “What about the van? We haven’t even looked in it.”

Demers stopped what he was doing and looked at Pruitt with a perplexed look on his face, “Are you serious? Do you really have any doubt about what is most likely in the van? No, we’ve got what we need. Once they open the place, there will be more than enough probable cause to look in the van. We’re done here.”

Pruitt nodded and without another word began to pry the top from the barrel next to the one Demers had already gotten open. One of them was almost certainly formaldehyde, the other one was clearly some sort of caustic agent. Both had a pungent and strong chemical smell.

They both spilled the barrels making sure that the chemicals ran under the bay door and into the alley. They made their way out of the warehouse and were satisfied that once the guard came to he would immediately smell the chemicals and probably associate it to whatever had happened to him. Whether he did or not, he would almost certainly call the fire or police department to report the chemical spill, which was clearly coming from warehouse 11.

After storing their gear and once they were back in their vehicle, Demers and Pruitt sat in silence for what seemed like hours, each processing what they had seen in their own way. Both were seasoned operators and thought they had seen everything there was to see about what human beings could do to each other, and both had their notions of evil completely redefined tonight.

After taking a moment for themselves, Demers thought about the inevitable question, the one they both had been thinking about and dreading the most. What were they going to say to Steven? What were they going to say to their boss, their friend? How do you tell a father that you saw his little girl’s severed head in a freezer? A little girl they both knew. They knew they couldn’t avoid him, and they also knew they had to tell him something before the police found out and told him in their own way. They also knew that he was waiting for them, for their report.

As Victor Demers had these thoughts swirling in his head, he could feel tears welling up. He wasn’t a father, but he could imagine the devastation, the immense loss not only for Steven but also for the families of all the little girls. It was that thought and the sheer outpouring of adrenaline that had the hardened operative on the verge of tears. He didn’t need to turn to see that Travis was having a similar reaction.

Demers finally broke the silence and said, “You know he’s waiting to hear from us. Jesus, Trav, I just don’t know what the hell to tell him.”

Travis had already composed himself and knew the answer to that question, “We just tell him that he’s the guy. We keep it professional, but we warn him that it’s not going to be pretty. Steven already knows that, he knows his little girl is gone, and that is what will hurt him the most in the end. What this fucker did with her body doesn’t have to be a part of his pain.”

Demers was on board immediately. He had been thinking along those lines already, so hearing Travis articulating the thought was a relief. After sitting in their car for a minute or two without saying a word, Demers turned the key to the ignition of the black Lincoln and started driving back into the heart of the city.

Neither man said a word the entire drive. There just weren’t any words that could be said that would make any sense.

Demers, realizing if they were going to handle this as professionals they had to get back in operational mode, said, “Did you notice how fucking clean the place was? Not a spot anywhere. And the son of a bitch was smart enough to pick an industrial warehouse where he could drain whatever chemicals he was using and mix the blood in with them without raising any red flags.”

Pruitt was nodding, “Yup, I was thinking the same thing. I just can’t imagine how you detach yourself to be able to do something like that. I mean, we do what we have to for the job, but even then there are things that are hard to swallow, you know? Things that leave a mark for good.

“Just seeing what we saw left a mark that will never go away, so I can’t imagine how you actually do it, how anybody could do it.”

Demers responded, “People like that…they’re different, you know? I mean different in a way we can’t understand, and I would be willing to bet my life savings that this guy was this way from the day he took his first breath. Someone doing something like that…they didn’t learn to think the way they do, there is something different in their brain.

“This guy never saw the world we do. He lives in some fucked up version of the world we live in and he sees that as normal. It’s the only way he could do something like that, it has to be, otherwise, Trav, everything I know…everything I thought I knew…about the human race has been a complete farce.”

Travis Pruitt actually felt some relief listening to Demers. He had a sardonic grin on his face, “If that guy wasn’t born with a brain wired differently, then you better move over and make some room for me in that world of yours. I get you, Vic, and yeah, the guy was born a predator.

“I’m not a shrink, but if one saw what we just did and didn’t immediately know the guy was some sort of freak, he should have his license pulled.” Both men knew they were being redundant, but it helped to talk about it as an op.

Steven Loomis left the office late. He had been reading all of the research he had found and had been completely engrossed by it. He was amazed at how much information there was available on cases similar to this one. There was information on the investigations, on the various law enforcement organizations, on the victims and what he cared about the most, the perpetrators.

There were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of reports about the people that were ultimately found to be guilty of the crimes. Aside from the thousands of police reports, opinion pieces and sensationalistic journalists, he found that the forensic psychiatric community was the best source of the type of information he was looking for.