Apex Predator (2 page)

Marybeth Loomis had a long day by any standard. After doing what early Christmas shopping she could do, she ran errands that had been on her to-do list for over a week.

It was just bad luck that the sitter had cancelled on her tonight, because she had planned on being home by noon, making dinner and waiting for her husband to come home. Christopher was also starting to get cranky.

She really couldn’t blame him after three hours of sitting in a stroller. Tracy, all of six now, wanted to stop at every window and tell her mother what she would be asking Santa Claus for, but Bethany had shown remarkable restraint in the things she had asked for the entire day.

So when the two girls asked to go skating, even just for a little while, Marybeth could not bring herself to say no. As usual, Bethany, unable to control her excitement, ran far ahead to the rink in order to ‘pick the best skates.’

Marybeth did her best to keep up, but pushing Chris along slowed her down. Trinity watched from across the street and saw all the things he needed to see. He made note of exactly what the mother was wearing, the names of the children, listening for the names of the girls as she called after one of them when she was running ahead. His van was not ideally parked, but it was hidden by a dumpster and near an intersection, which would allow him to do what he needed to and to get out of the area quickly.

As he watched, the expected scenario unfolded in front of him almost exactly as he had predicted. Mom, pushing Christopher and running and calling after Bethany, would glance back every few minutes to make sure that Tracy was following along, which she was, but at a farther and farther distance from her mother. She was stopping at every other store window to look at dolls or toys.

The group crossed the street to Trinity’s side and began making their way back toward the rink, still in their disorganized procession. As mom rounded the corner, Bethany tripped and cried out.

Her mother rushed to catch up to her, leaving Tracy around the corner. Distracted by Bethany’s skimmed knee and Chris’s crying, she did not realize Tracy was not with them.

Trinity made his move, “Did you see how pretty that doll’s dress is when it lights up?”

Having been taught not to talk to strangers, the six-year-old hesitated for all of half a second, “No, which one?”

Trinity now covered her with his own form as he answered, “The one in the blue, like the one I have in my van.”

Tracy looked suspicious, “You really have one like that in your van?”

He smiled a disarming smile, “Yes, and many others with other dresses. Would you like to look at them? The van’s just right there.”

Tracy had been warned at school and by her parents about bad men, men who would hurt little children. Like almost every child who heard the stories, Tracy thought of monster-like creatures that would come and steal them in the night.

The man in front of her was wearing a suit like her father wore, his hair was combed and he wore glasses like her mother. She looked her mom’s way, but Trinity knew how to seal the deal, “Don’t worry about your mom, she’s wearing that bright blue coat, so we’ll be able to find her and we’ll be right along. Besides, she’s probably just catching up to Bethany right now and you know how hard that is, pushing your little brother along.”

Tracy smiled at that, “Yeah, she gets really upset. Okay, but only for a minute.”

And in just a blink of an eye they were lost in the New York bustle, walking to his van hand in hand. He knew not to look hurried or nervous and instead looked down at Tracy as a father might look at his daughter, with care and concern.

To anyone who might have seen the two, it was simply a father and daughter out for a stroll. When they got to the van, Trinity made sure no witnesses were around and opened the back where there were indeed many different dolls with pretty dresses.

Tracy’s eyes lit up as she saw the dolls, but Trinity stopped her, “Oh, honey, you have a runny nose. Here, let me wipe it.” Completely unfamiliar with chemical odors, Tracy never recognized the chloroform he used to put her to sleep. The whole process had taken just under three minutes. 

He looked around and, seeing no one, put her in the van.  He taped her ankles and wrists and bound her mouth, although she shouldn’t be waking up for another few minutes. Now that she was accommodated in the van, Trinity could take pleasure in the fact that he could begin working on his true mandate, his calling, just like he had done time and time again.

Marybeth did not notice Tracy was not behind her until she had caught up with Bethany. Expecting to turn and see the bright red overcoat as always, enthralled, looking at windows. Failing to find her sent off the first of many red flags in Marybeth’s head. She hoped she had walked close to a window that had flagstone around it, which was why she couldn’t see her.

Her next instinct was to yell out her name several times to make sure she didn’t just happen to be standing behind someone. In spite of having gone through these rituals like all mothers who could not spot their child right away, Marybeth knew something was seriously wrong. She had never lost sight of her little girl for this long, and looking at the sea of people strolling the streets of New York, she felt a sense of helplessness.

The first thing she did was to look for a policeman, luckily finding one at the far corner. “Excuse me, excuse me, officer, but I can’t find my little girl!”

It was most definitely not the first time Officer Allen heard this from a frantic mother, especially at this time of year. Most of the time it turned out the little girl went into a store or was with another relative, so Officer Allen remained calm and asked all the pertinent questions. Was there another relative with them? Had she lost her before? Was there a favorite place the little girl might want to go to nearby, an ice cream stand, a toyshop?

Having gotten a negative on all pertinent questions and seeing the true panic on the mother’s face, Allen put out a “be on the lookout,” or BOLO, call on his radio for the missing little girl, giving her physical description, her last known whereabouts and her possible locations.

After two hours of not locating the girl, an all-city bulletin went out over the police band turning this from a lost girl into an actual missing person report with a possible kidnapping involved.

Every officer out there looking for the little girl had the same thought, but none dared speculate about it. There had been six other little girls, same description, same M.O., that disappeared in the past three weeks, and although no one wanted to think it, most were already counting her as number seven.

Trinity pulled his van into his rented warehouse and workshop. He had been careful to rent it in an industrial area where waste was dumped and processed at all hours of the night, negating the need to soundproof his space or bother with the odor.

Walking into it, one might think they were walking into a movie set. Behind plastic curtains was what could almost be called an operating room, complete with IVs, surgical instruments, an operating table of course and a cabinet full of drug vials.

Next to this was a curtain that separated the “clinical” part of the space into what anyone seeing it would describe as a typical little girl’s bedroom, a small bed with four posts and a white frilly cover on the top, a dresser and two nightstands with small lamps. Then the observer would most likely notice that there were dolls, dozens of dolls, arranged all over the stands and the dresser in the middle.

Nothing strange about dolls in a little girl’s bedroom, except these dolls were in various stages of disassembly. Some had the eyes cut out, others had no arms, and yet others were nothing but a torso with a head. Each had been carefully arranged to fit in with other dolls in a similar state. The dolls with no eyes were all arranged together, the ones with no arms likewise, and so on.

Another vast difference between this and any other little girl’s room was the handcuffs attached to every one of the four posts, each pair having left bloodstains on the part of the bed it was on and on the post it was attached to.

The final part of this make-believe world was also divided, but by plastic curtains only. It could only be described as a chamber of horrors.

In the corner of the space near the entrance, there was an actual workshop with a table saw, various tools hanging on the wall, and a carry pack with various forms of cutting instruments as well as tools for machining fine parts.

Even the best crime profilers in the business could not have imagined a more disparate and sick space.

He headed over to the cabinet with all the drug vials, selected the appropriate vial and loaded a syringe, not too much though, she must be compliant but not fully unconscious; no sir, it would not do at all for her to pass out or worse, stop breathing, like the one before her.

He already knew what he would take, those eyes, those sparkling blue eyes now looking at him in sheer horror. After he applied the injection, Tracy’s eyes took on a faraway look and she stopped struggling.

Gently, he picked her up from the van and placed her on the bed where he cuffed her hands and feet. Tracy would indeed be the seventh, and although she didn’t know it yet, she would leave this world in a haze of horror and fear that a six-year-old mind would not be mature enough to comprehend.

Trinity walked over to the van, lifted her from the floor and placed her on the operating table, whispering, “It will all be over soon and you are being so good. I hope you know how much you are helping me, helping us, really,” and with that he started an IV line on her.

To anyone who knew him, Donald Riche had been as average a child as there could be. He never picked on other kids and he never did anything that might cause his mother to be angry with him.

Had anyone been paying close attention, they might have noticed that young Donald was
too
average. He never showed interest in toys or comic books like other boys his age. What Donald did have an intense interest in was small animals. He would catch them and then, as best he could, he would take them apart using tools he found or knives from the kitchen. He didn’t torture them, he simply wanted to see how they worked.

Donald knew he was not like the other kids, knew he didn’t think the same way. He knew of adults who took children and did things to them, but rather than fear, such thoughts engendered curiosity in the young boy.

His mother had been decent enough, but she’d met a man, had left Donald with relatives when he was nine and had never returned for him.

His relatives gave him as much love and support as they could, but never as much as they gave their own children. Still, they encouraged him and showed him they were proud of his small accomplishments. His childhood should have been filled with happy memories of holidays and school events where he was treated like the other children in the family, but it wasn’t.

Even in his early childhood, he’d understood that his interests were not normal for his age and that some of the things he did might attract unwanted attention; therefore, he was always cautious and meticulous in everything he did. As he became an adolescent and a young adult, his interests grew in intensity and he found that he had to be even more careful now that he was an adult.

Through high school, he participated in some student organization, never in a leadership role, but just as a member, a fly on the wall. He began to recognize that the more he adhered to the rules and the more he did what was expected, the less attention he was likely to draw to himself.

When he went away to college, he took his required course work, but he also always took electives in physiology, anatomy, biology and anything else that could assist him in his activities.

He began to dress better and take better care in his appearance. He bought stylish clothes and glasses and began grooming himself with more care. He also began to realize that there were people out there who had nothing and no one to care for them or to even know they were alive.

He trolled neighborhoods where he found such people simply lying on the street or against a doorway. It had not been too difficult for him to lure them with the promise of a meal or more alcohol. He was, as always, very careful not to go to the same place more than once, and he never did anything near where he lived.

Never curious about religion, he was nevertheless interested in the concept of the Holy Trinity. One individual, but three entities, he found it fascinating and decided that he too was a Trinity, one made up of intelligence, purpose and destiny.

By the time he graduated from Wisconsin University, Donald Riche had made more than 18 people disappear. He was never considered a suspect nor even questioned.

He moved to New York where he worked as a runner for a Wall Street firm, was well liked by his coworkers, had a nice apartment, which he kept in meticulous order, and he dressed the part to perfection.

After he began taking care of himself, he became not a bad-looking man. His suit and his poise attracted a fair share of female attention, but he had no sexual inclination whatsoever.

He had gone on a couple of dates, but more out of curiosity than because of any real sexual desire. He wanted to learn, to study, to see if he got the same sense from grown women that he got from the girls. In his mind, he believed women and adults were too far gone, too imperfect and could not be corrected, but still he wanted to test his theory for himself.

Both dates had been pleasant enough. After dinner they had gone for a nice stroll to let their food settle, and as they approached Donald’s van, he had made sure no one was on the street and overpowered them with the chloroform.

During one of these episodes, Donald had come dangerously close to being spotted, when a young couple happened to be walking by as he held the woman’s arm around his neck and pulled her to the van.

But it was New York, and when the couple looked, he simply said, “She couldn’t hold her Chardonnay…” The couple smiled and kept on their way, as they could relate to having a bit much at a wine tasting.