Creatures of Appetite (9 page)

“With this guy’s other four homicides, you found the body within forty-eight hours. He’s impatient as hell and that means this one will turn up soon and not far from where she was abducted,” Thorne said. “He parts them out, but not nearly to the extent that the Iceman does. You’ve found most of the parts buried not far from the bodies on these four. Never happens with the Iceman, when you find part of a body, that’s the only part you ever get. You never recover anything else after the initial discovery. Most of the Iceman’s vics you never recover. You’ve gotten every Brainard girl.

“Two more major differences,” Thorne continued. “First one is the panties. This guy loves to play with the panties, once they were tied to a tree nearby, once stuffed in her mouth; he likes to be funny with the panties. Iceman doesn’t do that. Second major difference is that Mr. FunnyPants doesn’t like to be watched. He covered the eyes of his victims with something, all four times. He has to. That’s his signature.”

“Jesus Christ, why didn’t somebody say something before this?” Scroggins asked.

“Why didn’t you notice it, sport?” Thorne asked.

“Hey …”

“You’re right,” Gilday interrupted Scroggins before he could get going, “we should have caught that. What else do you got?”

“This guy, FunnyPants, he lives in the area. You’ve probably interviewed and looked at him already. He’s white, eighteen to twenty-five, unemployed high school dropout. History of depression and probable suicide attempts, he’s been in a mental institution at least once and currently taking prescription medication. No driver’s license, probably lives with a single relative who looks after him. I would say he has a deformity on his face, a cleft lip or a scar, something significant that draws negative attention.”

Scroggins and Gilday looked at each other.

“Holy shit,” Scroggins said under his breath, “that sounds like …”

“Someone you know?” Thorne asked.

Scroggins’s cell phone rang and he answered it.

“Yeah,” Gilday replied, “someone we looked hard at. He had a rock-solid alibi, though.”

“What? No shit?” Scroggins exclaimed.

“What is it?” Thorne asked.

“They found the Jacobson girl’s body already,” Scroggins hung up the phone, “right outside of Garrison.”

“That was fast,” Kane said.

“Fastest recovery yet, this one is nuclear-hot,” Scroggins said.

“Garrison is only five or six miles from Brainard,” Gilday said.

“Then that’s where we go first,” Thorne said. “Johnson! We’re going to Garrison and stop riding the brake; we want to get there sometime tonight.”

Kane noticed that the dynamic had shifted and there was no doubt as to who was in charge now. She found that interesting, to say the least.

I
n a cornfield
a mile outside of Garrison, searchlights lit up the sky and a tarp covered the dumpsite to protect it from the heavy snowfall. Uniformed men and vehicles surround the site and cordoned off the area with police tape. A forensics team took photos and searched thoroughly for trace evidence as Scroggins and Gilday observed. Kane viewed the body for a long moment before rejoining Thorne, standing off by himself away the group.

“Are you going to take a look?” Kane asked him.

“Nope.”

“Why not?’

“I’m looking at other things.”

“How could somebody do that to a child?” Kane asked, looking ill.

“HOW is easy,” Thorne replied. “HOW is always easy. Why, why is what’s important.”

“Then why, fucking why?”

“Why do you think?”

Kane thought on that, realizing that Thorne was again testing her.

“He’s angry.”

“Who isn’t angry? We’re all angry, Kane.”

Kane caught the disdain in his voice and it cut her. She struggled to think but images of the dead child cluttered her mind. Gilday joined them.

“Throat cut, perp was standing behind her when he did it. Flesh cut off from the back, buttocks and legs, similar to the Iceman. Arm and foot missing.”

“But she wasn’t killed here,” Thorne stated.

“No,” Gilday admitted. “No spray. She was killed somewhere else and left here.”

“Time of death?”

“Rough estimate till they get her on the table, but they’re saying hour or two, tops. Not long at all. We got lucky, one of the town cops out looking for her spotted the body. Quickest recovery time yet and there’s a lot of trace left at this one that they were able to get to before the weather did.”

“Panties?”

“Panties tied around her head, covering her eyes,” Kane answered for Gilday.

“Hello, Mr. FunnyPants,” Thorne walked around and looked at the dark empty Nebraska fields and farmland surrounding him. “Why here, why did the body end up here?”

“You all right?’ Gilday asked Kane.

“No. I’m pretty fucking far from all right,” she answered.

“He doesn’t drive, he didn’t walk. Why here? Can’t tell what kind of tracks he left because the falling snow,” Thorne continued. “Does it ever stop snowing in this shithole?”

Scroggins joined them. “Jesus Christ, every time I have to look at one of these it burns my ass. You puke again, Jeff?”

“No, shut up.”

“He always pukes whenever we have to look at bodies,” Scroggins said. “Are you holding it in?”

“No, shut up, dickhead.”

“What? It’s not like I blame you,” Scroggins replied.

“Wake up, kids,” Thorne interrupted. “What’s that over there?”

They all looked in the direction Thorne pointed to, off in the darkness. By the shadows cast from the spotlights, an extremely large building could be seen just on the edge of town, about a half a mile away.

“Grain silo,” Scroggins said.

“A what?” Thorne asked.

“A grain silo,” Kane said.

Thorne started walking toward the grain silo. Everyone reluctantly followed him.

“Okay. What the hell is a grain silo?” Thorne asked, wading through the snow. Everyone hurried to catch up to him.

“A grain silo is where they store grain. Grain is harvested all fall, stored here most of the winter until it’s sold. Sometimes it’s called a grain elevator, that’s what we called it,” Gilday said, “grain elevator.”

They all trudged along silently for a bit, the flashing lights and sirens fading in the distance. Thorne reached the foot of the grain silo and stopped, staring up at it. It was a large, round, cement building, rising up almost three hundred feet in the air. A dark forbidding granite presence that stood large in the night. Kane felt small before it.

“Big bastard, isn’t it? I’ve been seeing these buildings all over the place and wondered what they were.”

“You’re in Nebraska, Thorne,” Kane said, snippy. “That’s what they do here. That’s why they have all those things called farms that we saw when we flew over. What are you doing?”

“I’m seeing the sights, this is my first time in Nebraska,” Thorne pointed to a ladder going up the side of it. “You climb that ladder, all the way to the top, you could see for miles, right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t do it when it was this cold and icy,” Scroggins replied. “But yeah, you could.”

“And who gives a shit?” Kane said. “What are we going to do now?”

“What’s your problem?” Thorne asked.

“My problem?”

“Your time of the month, is that the problem? You riding the cotton pony this week or what?” he asked.

“Fuck you, Thorne, I tend to get a little cranky whenever a little girl gets killed!”

Gilday and Scroggins looked at each other, uncomfortable. Thorne was untouched by her outburst.

“You want to know what’s really interesting?” Thorne asked after a moment.

“What?” Gilday asked.

“That,” Thorne pointed his finger. “What’s that there?”

They all turned and looked in the direction he was pointing. About twenty feet away, mostly hidden from view, was a steel trapdoor not far from the foot of the silo.

“That goes under the silo, to the gallery,” Scroggins said.

“Gallery?” Thorne asked.

“Gallery, it’s uh,” Scroggins fumbled, “it’s like a network of support tunnels underneath the silo.”

“I never knew they were called that,” Gilday said, “we just called them the tunnels.”

“I spent a summer working on silos in high school,” Scroggins said. “I know a lot more about them than I’d like to.”

Thorne threw the steel trapdoor open all the way and descended the ladder to the depths below.

“Well, you know what they say,” Thorne winked at Scroggins before he disappeared into the dark.

“What’s that?”

“Knowledge is power, young Jedi,” Thorne said.

A
t the foot
of the ladder, down inside the gallery, everyone turned their flashlights on and splashed the light around. The cement walls were pitted and covered with obscene graffiti. Old empty beer cans and cigarette butts littered the floor. The tunnels seemed to go on and on into the ground. Thorne almost slipped on the snow under the ladder, catching himself just in time.

“Fuck! This fucking snow.”

“You better get some good snow boots,” Gilday said, “otherwise you’re going to be sliding all over the place.”

“I am not planning on being here long enough to need snow boots.”

“How far does it go?” Kane asked as she walked down the tunnel, disappearing into the shadows.

“Long ways, it’s like a maze, there’s different stairs and levels, bunch of different exits,” Scroggins said.

“That trapdoor up there, it’s never padlocked?” Thorne asked.

“Can’t, fire code or something,” Scroggins answered. “Kids come down here all the time to, you know, drink or make out, least we did in our town.”

“Bunch of us used to go down and play Dungeons and Dragons in the tunnels underneath our elevator when we were kids,” Gilday said.

“Yeah, D & D, that and Empire Strikes Back, remember that, Jeff?” Scroggins added. “That was fun.”

“So what, you two were geeks, is that what you’re saying?” Thorne asked. “I had you pegged as jocks.”

“A little bit of both, I guess,” Gilday said.

“You think Mr. FunnyPants came in here?” Scroggins asked.

“I think this is his kind of place,” Thorne answered. “Every town has a building, a silo, like this?”

“Big ones like this, yeah, some have more than one. There are smaller silos on some farms, but they don’t usually have the gallery underneath,” Scroggins said.

“Do you want to take a look farther down?” Kane asked.

“Go ahead, Kane, knock yourself out.”

Kane slit her eyes at him and investigated farther down the tunnel.

“Who’s this guy that you know, the one that fits the FunnyPants profile?” Thorne asked.

“Kid by the name of Ryan Robertson, twenty-two, lives with his grandma right outside of Brainard. Fits your profile to a T. Unemployed, doesn’t drive, mental, everything. And the face?” Gilday said.

“Kid has really bad acne, I mean his face is a pizza with the works, anchovies, the whole deal,” Scroggins added. “But his alibi was rock-solid, I’m telling you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Thorne sniffed, “he fits the profile, he’s the one.”

“But …” Gilday said.

“Thorne!” Kane called from the darkness farther down the tunnel. “Thorne, get over here!”

Scroggins and Gilday ran to where Kane was crouched at an intersection of the tunnel. A small bloody snowsuit lay torn on the hard floor and silenced the Troopers. Kane played her flashlight on the wall of the tunnel. The wall was covered in blood.

“That’s spray,” she said simply. “We’ve found our kill spot.”

Thorne, joining them, glanced at it and caught Gilday’s eye.

“Call CSU, get them down here and started on processing this evidence,” Thorne said, “and then call Johnson, tell him to get his head out of his ass and fire up the van, we gotta full-tilt boogie out of here right now. We don’t have much time. I’m betting he stayed to watch us work the dumpsite and took off when we headed this way. He’s probably heading home now and I want to beat him there.”

“What?” Kane stood. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see Mr. FunnyPants.”