Creatures of Appetite (6 page)

None of the other students involved, including the abused girlfriend, would step up on her behalf, and without witnesses willing to come forward to testify. there was nothing to be done about criminal charges.

Whenever she saw the star basketball center on campus after that, he never failed to flash her a satisfied smile, a sneer that spoke. “I did it once and got away with it,” the smile said silently to her, “and I could do it again whenever I want.”

It was then that Emma Kane ceased being overly social with members of the opposite sex, in fact, stopped socializing with almost everyone.

A charming, outgoing young woman up until that point, she withdrew within herself, afraid of the cold spike of fear that pierced her chest whenever she was reminded of what happened that night. And she was reminded every single time she saw swaggering, muscular young men walking as though they owned the world. She saw them and she shook with fear.

Kane despised herself for the feeling and she despised those who caused her to feel that way. Her anger and fear grew to the extent that she knew that she absolutely had to do something or else it would destroy her. She chose to do two things. She signed up for a karate class on campus and she switched her major to law.

Her parents had not been pleased with the switch but consoled themselves that a career as a lawyer was almost as reputable as that of a doctor. What they didn’t know was that their darling daughter never had any intention of going to law school, instead dreaming of a life in law enforcement. Unfortunately they never found out, either.

One afternoon during Kane’s last semester of college, while driving home from the local grocery store, a drunk driver with a suspended license ran a stop sign and slammed into the Kane family station wagon, killing himself and both of Kane’s parents.

A state trooper came to her dorm to deliver the sad news. Any lingering doubts about a career with a badge dissipated for good when she opened her dorm door to the man in uniform.

A year later, Kane found herself clad in her own uniform and driving the streets of Washington DC, a city with one of the highest crime rates in the country. Her very first week on the job began auspiciously. Kane and her partner responded to a disturbing the peace call from a local bar late one night. A large drunken man rampaged within the establishment, voicing his displeasure at being cut off by the bartender by tossing barstools through the plate glass windows of the front of the bar.

Her partner at that time was Brady, a muscular, overbearing man who waited all of ten minutes before making a pass at Kane on her first day. She was pretty sure he was on steroids, but aside from the mistaken belief that he was God’s gift to women, he was a pretty good cop and knew the street well. Together they confronted the rampaging drunk.

Brady, police baton in hand, first tried reasoning with the big man, which only resulted in a stool tossed in the direction of Brady’s head. Brady dodged the stool, stepped in and swung his baton right for the man’s skull. Though drunk, he wasn’t slow, and the big man caught Brady’s arm with the baton in mid-swing. The drunk picked up Brady by the belt and tossed him right over the bar with a crash. The barflies watching the show responded with cheers at the sight of a cop flying through the air.

Instinctively, Kane leaped to her partner’s aid without a second thought. The big drunk swung a meaty fist in a vicious swipe at her face and Kane bobbed right under it, kicked the drunk in the crotch and when he howled in pain, hooked his left foot with her police baton and pulled, yanking his feet right out from under him. The big man hit the ground with a huge thud. When he next opened his eyes, the drunk found himself staring at Kane’s pistol, drawn and pointed directly at his face.

“Don’t move a fucking muscle,” Kane said, her voice and aim steady as a rock.

Brady climbed back over the bar, blood dripping from a cut over his eyebrow, said, “Welcome to our nation’s capital,” and kicked the drunk in the floating ribs before rolling him over to cuff him.

“Good work, rookie,” Brady said. “Are you having fun yet?”

Kane offered her partner a polite smile but inside, inside she was grinning her ass off. It had been fun, but not for any reason Brady could have known. The fear that had been given birth to on that night in the dorm during her junior year, the cold shaking dread that had followed her for the past three years and had been her constant companion, it was gone. The fear was gone.

It would stay gone for the next ten years, in the face of many a sticky situation, both on patrol as a uniform and later as a detective in Homicide. Kane would do her job with great pride and skill, never suspecting that it would be any other way for her. Never believing it was possible to feel the fear as she had when she was a young girl.

Never knowing it would all change one day in a van on a highway. After The Van Incident, Kane’s hands and heart shook no matter how she fought it.

T
he other thing
that Kane realized about herself was that she did not sit still very well. This wasn’t actually new information, Kane had always known it about herself but always conveniently forgot about it until the next time she had to sit and twiddle her thumbs, be it on stakeout or flying a desk in an office.

Right now it was obvious that the locals were letting the feds stew in their own juice for a while. Kane flipped through the most recent forensic files on her desk, helpfully dropped off by a wide-eyed rookie cop who looked like he would be ready to shave any day now.

Thorne had taken charge of a large desk in one corner with a view of the map on the wall, plugged in a CD player and set up a travel chessboard. John Coltrane blared as Thorne considered the chessboard in front of him and moved one of the white pawns on the board. He still hadn’t said much of anything about anything and it was beginning to irk Kane.

“Have you seen the latest forensic report from the Frederickson house?” Kane asked.

Thorne glanced up at Kane. He took the report from her, gave it a quick look and set it on the table next to his chessboard.

“So what do you think?” Kane asked.

“What do I think about what?”

“What do you think about the forensics report?”

“It’s about what I expected,” Thorne shrugged.

“Thorne,” Kane said after a minute, clearly exasperated, “aren’t you interested in it at all?”

“Not really, no.”

“So you’re not interested in catching this creep?”

“Forensics is not, in this particular case, how we’re going catch this ‘creep,’” Thorne moved a black pawn and turned the board around so that he could play the white side.

“How are we going to catch him?”

“By figuring out where he’s going and beating or meeting him there.”

“So where’s he going?”

“If I already knew that, swivel-hips, would I be sitting here wasting my time talking to you?”

“York isn’t far from here, maybe we should go take a look at the Frederickson house?” Kane asked.

“What for?”

“What for? To get a feel for it, get the picture of how our subject got in and out, see it with our own eyes. It’s still a fresh scene.”

“No.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because it’s not fresh, it was fresh the moment it was discovered and that moment has passed. Because timing is everything, Kane. And because I said so. Now go away and stop bothering me,” Thorne made a move with a white pawn, turned the board around and considered the game from the black point of view.

“What are you doing?” Kane asked after a moment.

“I’m playing chess.”

“Who are you playing?”

“Me. I’m playing me.”

“You’re playing with yourself?”

This comment earned Kane an ugly look from Thorne. She settled back into her chair and gazed up at the wall. The grade-school pictures of all the victims, posited next to what post-op photos there were to be had, chafed at her intestinal tract like nails on a chalkboard. Gilday and Scroggins approached.

“How long is Captain Asshole going to let us cool our heels here?” Kane demanded.

“Could be quite awhile, he is the captain, and he’s probably paying you back for Riggs,” Scroggins said. “Norm told us he was sending his guy over to brief you on the latest.”

“In all fairness to Captain Asshole, that Riggs was a real piece of work, it was a nightmare, guy was totally out of his gourd,” Gilday said.

“You ever work with Riggs?” Scroggins asked.

“Don’t know him. Thorne?” Kane leaned forward in her chair.

“What?”

“Did you know Riggs?” she asked.

“I didn’t know him, I knew of him.”

“And?”

“Fuck up from Day One.”

“How did he even get into ISU in the first place?” Kane asked.

“Same way you did, sweet-cakes. Affirmative Action.” This comment earned Thorne a return ugly glare from Kane.

“Forsythe’s got a couple of registered sex offenders he likes, but no hard evidence on anybody,” Gilday said.

“Captain loves registered sex offenders, sounds really good when he says it on television,” Scroggins added. “Other than that, the sum total of who we like for this is jack fucking shit.”

“Jesus Christ, over twenty kids and there’s nothing?” Kane shook her head.

“Look, I don’t want you to think we’re not taking this serious,” Gilday said. “Believe me when I say that we’re pissed off and busting our asses here.”

“And there has been a fucking parade of people coming to Nebraska to try and tell us how to do our job,” Scroggins said. “We’ve had independent profilers, psychologists, psychics, investigative reporters from both print and television who want solve this before we do and none of them have done anything other than slow us down. We even had some dumb shit, this plumber who was working on a book, he used his own daughter as bait to try and catch the Iceman and get rich off of it.”

“We busted him on child endangerment laws and now his ex-wife has sole custody,” Gilday said. “You name the fruitcake, we’ve gotten it.

“I mean, Captain Asshole is an asshole, make no mistake about that,” he continued. “And he likes reporters. But he’s covering all the bases, crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s, he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing. If he wasn’t, he would have been gone by now.”

“We got over a hundred men working this from every angle all over the state, forensics teams double-checking each other and uniforms knocking on every door there is. We’re doing everything that we can do. That’s one of the reasons Jeff and I are here,” Scroggins said.

“Our boss wants us to make sure that everything that can be done is done to catch this killer, but this guy is a fucking ghost,” Gilday said.

“It’s like he can walk through walls without leaving evidence,” Scroggins added.

“There’s a lot of resentment against the feds by the folks around here right now,” Gilday said. “Part of it is that fuck-up Riggs that was here first, and part of it is the fact this Mercy Killer is running around the country killing everybody, we’re all watching it on television and you all haven’t done a damn thing about it.”

This got Thorne’s attention and he perked up, leveling an even gaze at Gilday.

“But as far as Gerry and me are concerned, and everyone working here, we only want this fucker caught, we don’t care how it’s done,” Gilday continued. “If it’s you guys or Captain Asshole or Spider-Man who does it, we don’t care. We want to catch him. If you can help us, we’re with you. If you can’t, then stay out of the way. That’s what it comes down to.”

“Pretty much. So what do you think, Thorne?” Scroggins asked.

“About what?”

“Can you help us with the Iceman?” Gilday asked.

“Eventually.”

Thorne returned to his solo chess game. Gilday and Scroggins waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t and this confused them. They looked to Kane for help but she didn’t have anything more to offer either. Scroggins and Gilday glanced at each other and shook their heads in unison, pretty sure that they had another federal cuckoo on their hands.

B
etty shoveled snow
from her driveway while keeping an eye on her eight year-old daughter Janis as she played in the snow with the family dog, a chocolate Labrador named Pooh. Pooh was named by Janis after the famous Disney bear, though the name took on an added dimension as Pooh the Labrador demonstrated, at an early age, an amazing ability to produce prodigious amounts of excrement almost at will. Betty’s husband never failed to see the humor in that, though he rarely had to clean up after the damn dog.