Creatures of Appetite (2 page)

“Fuck you,” spit one of the men, following that with a torrent of obscene Spanish.

“Fuck you right back,” Kane replied in Spanish as she cocked her pistol. “Next time you get the urge to grab the ass of a woman you don’t know, bear in mind that she is also somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister and someday somebody’s mother.

“Would you like it if somebody grabbed your mother’s ass?” Kane twisted the big man’s wrist to underline her point and he grunted in pain.

The men held up their hands and backed away slowly. Kane released the big guy and stepped back. He crawled away from her until he was able to stand and join his friends, rubbing his wrist painfully. Kane kept her weapon trained upon the three men.

The point of her pistol wavered and shook noticeably. The men noticed, exchanged knowing grins with each other before they turned tail down the street.

“Pricks,” Kane took a deep breath and holstered her weapon. She looked at her still-shaking weapon hand. She took another deep breath and gritted her teeth, willing the shakes to stop. Finally her hand stilled. Kane returned to the sedan.

It’s kind of funny, she thought, I used to like pimp-slapping punks that deserve it. Punks like them. Not now.

Now it just gave her the shakes.

Now it only brought her back to a place she’d rather not recall.

I
nside the auditorium
, a silent but very engaged audience observed a massive chess tournament that had just begun. Two long rows of tables and chessboards ran parallel to each other on the auditorium floor, each board with its own player, seated on the outside, perched and ready to rumble, chess style.

The Grandmaster, a spry old man with long grey hair held back in a ponytail, walked the center of the floor, going down one row of boards and up the other, making fast moves against opponents who were obviously no match for him.

On his third lap around, near the end of the second row, the Grandmaster stopped, disturbed by the layout he saw on that particular board. The Grandmaster thought about it, and then slowly sat down at the chessboard to give the situation his full attention.

An excited murmur raced through the audience. This never happened, the old man never sat down, never. Heads craned to see who the Grandmaster’s opponent was.

Jacob Thorne watched the Grandmaster calmly from across the chessboard, chewing bubblegum. Thorne, in his late forties, was unremarkable in appearance, enough so that once you saw him you were apt to forget what he looked like almost immediately. Unless Thorne opened his mouth and spoke. Once he opened his mouth, he usually made a very memorable and lasting impression. Very pleased with himself, Thorne blew a bubble and winked at the Grandmaster.

Come on, old man, Thorne thought. Come get the candy.

Something caught Thorne’s attention up in the audience stands. A man in the bleachers stared plainly at Thorne and held up a large white tablet.

Printed on it in black marker, the words “I NEED YOU.”

Thorne shook his head at the man in the stands and focused back on the board. The Grandmaster finally made his move and stood back up. Thorne countered immediately and the Grandmaster sat back down to consider the new situation.

Thorne glanced up again. This time the tablet read: “IT’S IMPORTANT.”

The Grandmaster made another move and Thorne countered immediately. The Grandmaster moved again and Thorne countered yet again, putting the Grandmaster on the run. The Grandmaster sat quietly a moment, stumped. Thorne didn’t want to look up at the audience but couldn’t help himself.

On the tablet, the word “PLEASE” printed in very large letters. Thorne sighed and cursed silently under his breath. With a shrug, he tipped his king over and ceded the game to The Grandmaster. A murmur went through the watchful audience. The Grandmaster, surprised, stood and held out his hand to shake but was spurned as Thorne walked out of the auditorium without a backward glance.

The man from the bleachers, Peter Viera, found Thorne waiting for him in the lobby. Viera held up the tablet again. It read “THANK YOU.”

“Cute,” Thorne grunted. “Cute, deliberate and slick as shit. Ivy League nickel-and-dime-store pysch-fuckery, as usual.”

“Worked though, didn’t it?” Viera tossed the tablet to one side.

“We’ll see. What do you want? This better be important. You know how long I’ve been waiting to trap that gray-haired prick in there? This better be rock-star fucking important.”

“Would I come all the way here by myself if it wasn’t important?”

“You might, yes.”

“You haven’t returned our calls or emails. Most of the time we can’t even locate you.”

“I don’t want to be located. What do you want?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been a little busy ourselves.”

“I haven’t noticed, Pete, I don’t care anymore.”

“If I really believed that, I wouldn’t have come all the way up here on my own just to talk to you.”

“You really think that you’re here alone? If that’s true, then who were the two guys in the auditorium watching you watch me?”

“My shadows. I figured you’d make them. But officially, I’m the only one here to talk to you, no one else. The feeling was that, if we sent anyone else, you would have just said no without even hearing them out.”

“And who says I won’t do the same to you?”

“You might. But it’s been noted that you tolerate me more than most and I hope that you will at least talk to me.”

“I’m talking, aren’t I? What do you want? I’ve asked you three fucking times.”

“Jake, we want you back.”

“We do? We-who? WE as in you and a couple guys who want a consult on something or WE as in the director, MacVey and the Bureau? Which kind of WE are we talking about here?”

“We as in the Bureau.”

“The Bureau wants me back, the whole fucking Bureau, the whole house of cards, that’s the WE that wants me back?”

“The WE that makes these kinds of decisions do,” Viera replied. “They want you back with a badge.”

“Why? You don’t need me, you’re loaded with profilers, psych-shrinks and forensic specialists.”

“Not like you, you’re different. You’re ahead of the curve. That’s why I badgered the director into bringing you back.”

Thorne fixed him with a look that, Viera would later swear, was a hell of a lot more intimidating than any polygraph he knew of. Thorne sniffed.

“And he said yes?”

“He said yes. He wasn’t happy about it, but he said yes.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t happy. Prick.”

“You did tell him to go fuck himself, Jake.”

“Say I do come back. To do what?”

“Case in Nebraska called the Heartland Child Murders.”

“Not the Mercy Killings?” Thorne asked.

“The Heartland Child Murders.”

“Never heard of it.”

“You’re serious, you haven’t heard anything?”

“I don’t read the papers or watch the news. I told you, I stopped caring once I got the gold watch.”

“It’s a bad one. It’s taken a backseat in the media from the insanity of the Mercy Killings, but it’s there and it’s real bad. Twenty-two kids missing, nine confirmed dead, all little girls, ages five to twelve.”

“Kids, huh?”

“Papers are calling him the Iceman.”

“Whose bright-eyed fucking idea was that?”

“Some dickhead television reporter, I don’t know, the name stuck and there isn’t anything we can do about it.”

“Iceman,” Thorne snorted.

“He’s definitely got balls, of that we have no doubt. He waltzes in and takes kids right from under their parents’ noses. He’s done this without breaking a sweat or losing his cool. We don’t even find any trace of them most of the time. We have remains on nine of the victims, but even then they’re not whole, he leaves a leg here or an arm or head there.”

“You sure it’s a he?”

“You tell me. Most profilers agree our subject is male, but you tell me, that’s why I want you on this. Talk to me, could it be a female?”

“Don’t know. Won’t know until I get a look at the file, if I decide I even want to.”

“It’s a nasty one, he snatches them, parts them out and leaves little forensics when doing so. Jake, this is not even funny, it’s evil and ugly and it absolutely has got to be stopped. We’re behind the curve on it and we need help.”

“The Heartland Child Murders,” Thorne mused.

“I need you, Jake, I need you to work your magic on this case.”

“I was working my goddamn magic on the Mercy Killings when MacVey and the director shoved a gold watch up my ass, Pete.”

“I know they did and you know how I felt about it at the time. That’s why I’m here now. I need your game on this, Jake, it’s turned into a real fucking hairball. The Task Force commander is a homegrown corn-fed cop who can’t find his ass in the dark with both hands; all he’s thinking about is press conferences and who’s going play his part in the movie version of this whole shitstorm.

“The local profilers are lost and the agent we had advising them, Riggs, was nursing a divorce and a drinking problem that we didn’t know about. He had a breakdown and fucked the whole thing up. I need you on this. Take the badge and bring them home.

“You may have stopped caring but I bet you haven’t stopped missing the chase. You miss it, Jake, I know you do. You know you’re the MAN on this kind of show, you’re my star and I need you in the game. Catch this sick bastard. We can’t let this turn into another JonBenet Ramsey fuck-up, this is over twenty kids we’re talking about here. It’s as big or bigger than Atlanta ever was.”

“Big but not the biggest.”

“What do you want, Jake?”

“What do you think I want?”

“All right,” Viera said after a moment, “take the Heartland Child Murders, help them close it and close it fast. You do that for me and I’ll get you what you want. I’ll get you back on the Mercy Killings.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“No way MacVey would ever agree to that, he wouldn’t even let me in the same fucking room as him, no way.”

“MacVey’s dead, Jake.”

“Dead?”

“Dead. Got it same way as Mueller and Cosmo.”

“Holy fucking shit,” Thorne had to sit to think about this. “Okay. Now you have my attention.”

“Nobody, NOBODY knows about this, we’ve kept it out of the media, it’s even kept out of the official reports by order of the director and the president himself, story is just like it was the first time, we got their families cooperating, everything. This goes no farther than you and me. When it’s over and done and we got the fucker, then we’ll bury our own proper. Until then we say nothing. We have a national frenzy going on as it is, if word got out about this it might lead to a complete breakdown.”

“So who’s running the Mercy Killings now?”

“I’m the new SAC. The director and the president want the Mercy Killings closed fucking yesterday, top priority. I’m going to do that. But I need you to catch this Iceman, he’s killing goddamn little kids, Jake. Even the Mercy Killer doesn’t target kids. I need you to stop him right fucking immediately.”

“I close the kid case, I get another shot at the Mercy Killings. Your word?”

“My word,” Viera said. “If I don’t close it first, you get your shot at it.”

Thorne stood and offered his hand to Viera. They shook hands.

“I always liked you, Pete.”

“Just catch him, unleash that Jacob Thorne voodoo and catch this cute cocksucker. I got a plane waiting for you, let’s go.”

“First Mueller and Cosmo, then MacVey,” Thorne picked up his coat and followed Viera out of the lobby. “You’re up at bat. That what the shadows are for?”

“We have shooters watching me everywhere I go, I am watched constantly, I can’t even shit by myself anymore. The director is hoping that if the Mercy Killer is tempted to make a run at me next, we’ll nail him.”

“How nice, a big fucking target on your back, you gotta like that. Where would you rate your ass-pucker factor these days?”

“On a scale from one to ten? Eleven.”

T
horne and Viera
exited the front doors of the auditorium and made their way to the street where Kane stood against the sedan.