The Feeder (7 page)

There was no doubt in my mind that the man I’d seen drive away was Camille’s cop boyfriend, AKA Diamond Vinnie. I was positive Cammie would be alone in the room so I had no reservations about opening the door with the key.

I flung the door open and burst into the room.

“Cammie! Let’s go!”

Camille was there, but she wasn’t going anywhere.

The hotel room door swung shut behind me and latched with a deafening
CLICK
in the silence of the room.

I just stood there at first, unable to process what I was seeing because it was just so wrong.

The room looked like a slaughterhouse.

Bright splatters of blood sprayed the wall above the bed, the lamp, and the nightstand. The pillow was saturated with red. I looked down at my feet. I was standing in a red smear that led into the bathroom. A scarlet handprint on the doorframe became a bloody streak as it slid to the floor.

I inhaled the coppery scent of fresh blood as I stepped into the bathroom.

Camille sat slumped on the floor beside the toilet, clutching a towel against her chest as if trying to stem the flow of blood. The towel was far from adequate because her throat had been slit.

“Cammie?” I squeaked.

I knew she was dead even before I touched her. There was no point in attempting CPR because she was gone, slashed beyond repair. Her body was still warm but she had been bled out. Even if an EMT team had been present with enough units of blood to refill her they would not have been able to save her.

She was nearly decapitated, her throat had been cut with such force. A vision of Nicole Simpson flashed through my mind.

As it turned out, her throat wasn’t the worst part.

I gingerly pulled the blood-soaked towel out of her hand and recoiled in shock. Her nipples had been sliced clean off, along with a good portion of the flesh from the front of her breasts. The perfect pair of 36Cs that Camille had been so proud of were now half of their original size.

It looked like Camille had been attacked by a person in a violent rage. A rage
I
had provoked with my phone call.

I felt a scream rising in my throat and squashed it before it could escape. Camille was dead and I was currently standing in the middle of a crime scene. I needed to get the fuck out of there and do it quickly.

I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her goodbye; to sob my heart out on her cooling shoulder. To tell her how sorry I was for killing her.

Sobs hitching in my chest, I stroked my sister’s cheek one last time.

“Oh Cammie… I’m so sorry,” I choked.

Her head fell to one side and for one sickening moment I thought it was going to fall off, it had been cut so very deeply. Her jaw fell slack and something red fell out of her mouth.

What the fuck?

It looked like… flesh.

Upon closer inspection I saw that it was one of the missing nipples that had been sliced from her chest. I tentatively turned her head, using one corner of the towel and saw the other one in her mouth, rammed halfway down her throat.

That sick fuck.

I will hunt you down, you cocksucker. You will learn what pain is
.

I don’t know how I managed to remain so calm and controlled for those few minutes following my discovery of Camille’s grisly murder scene.

The mind has a way of helping people cope when confronted with a crisis situation. Typical emotional reactions shut off until the crisis is over and one goes into survival mode.

A suitcase lay open on the floor. From the girly clothing that spilled out of the bag, it was pretty obvious it belonged to Camille. I grabbed a pair of her socks and slipped them over my hands before opening each of the dresser drawers, looking for other things of hers. They were mostly empty, except for a bit of lingerie. I stuffed it into the suitcase and zipped it shut.

I checked the nightstand drawers for anything else of hers, such as another journal. I found nothing except for the token copy of the Bible, which I was pretty sure had been placed there by the Gideons.

There was no men’s clothing or other evidence that her killer had been staying in the room with her. He must have been shaving and changing clothes elsewhere.

I was no forensics expert but it wasn’t hard to piece together what had happened from looking at the room. The bastard had turned on Camille in a rage after I hung up on him. He slashed her throat, nearly decapitating her. She managed to flee into the bathroom as the life was draining from her severed blood vessels.

Cutting her throat hadn’t been enough for the sick bastard. He’d actually taken the time to slice her tits off and feed them to her.

My use of Camille’s old room at the White Surf Motel had made him think she was connected to whatever secret he thought the caller was threatening to reveal.

Making that phone call was a mistake – the biggest mistake I’d ever made, and my little blunder had cost Camille her life. I had murdered my own sister as surely as if I had wielded the blade myself.

Suitcase in hand, I climbed out the window and down the fire escape, keeping the socks on my hands until I was on the ground.

I made it back to my room at the Cobalt before I lost my mind. Once locked securely in with the door chained and the curtains drawn, I turned up the TV to full volume and locked myself in the bathroom.

The scream I had been holding at the back of my throat since I found Camille finally escaped.

I crumpled to the floor and screamed.

And screamed.

~ Chapter 9 ~

Losing my Marbles

I don’t know how long I lay on the bathroom floor, curled into the fetal position after my screams gave way to chest-splitting sobs. I had no voice left, but the tears showed no sign of stopping. Time stood still as I lay on the cold, grimy tile floor and bawled my heart out.

I wanted to be dead. I had killed my sister, my sweet Cammie. She was the other half of me; the good half.

The normal half.

Cammie made me feel like I was normal and gave me a reason to live. Without her I was nothing. I was a freak, a half-person.

Without Cammie, I wanted to be dead too. I deserved to be dead for what I’d done to her.

If only I hadn’t made that phone call. If only I hadn’t been so fucking stupid.

If only I had never been born.

I wasn’t sure if I had dozed off or simply shut down for a while but at some point I became aware of the need to piss. I slowly rose to my feet, stiff and sore from hours on the cold floor.

I caught my reflection in the mirror and faced Camille’s murderer for the first time.

The face that stared back at me had eyes nearly swollen shut from crying and the imprint of the tile floor on one cheek, but it was still
her
face.

Camille’s face.

I wanted to slash that face to ribbons so I would never have to look her in the eye again, but it would be too much like slicing Camille up all over again.

My punishment for killing my sister was having to look at her face every time I looked in the mirror, for the rest of my life. How much longer that would be – well, that remained to be seen.

I was a murderer. I was condemned to burn in Hell, if I had believed in that sort of thing.

Luckily, I didn’t.

I turned away from the mirror before removing my clothing so I wouldn’t have to look at myself. I stepped into the shower, turning the water up as hot as I could bear. I stood under the spray, allowing the scalding water to punish me from head to toe as I scrubbed every trace of Camille’s blood from my body.

After my shower I forced down a can of Red Bull and a few Doritos, then sat at my window seat and assessed the situation.

It was past midnight.

Camille’s room was dark. The asshole obviously had no intention of returning to the scene of the crime, but I couldn’t stop watching the room. It became some sort of fucked up obsession, as if watching it long enough would make the day’s events become nothing more than a dream. Maybe the light would come back on and Camille would stick her head out the window and flip me the bird. It wasn’t going to happen, I knew, but hoping for a miracle helped keep reality at bay just a little longer.

I needed to decide what my next move would be. The logical thing to do was get my ass on a plane as soon as possible and get the hell back home where I belonged. Right then, home was the last place I wanted to be. Even though Cammie hadn’t visited in more than two years, I knew it wouldn’t feel like home knowing she was gone.

Things couldn’t have gone any more wrong than this. I had stormed in trying to be the big hero and executed my sister’s rescue with all the grace of a frozen turd.

I watched the darkened window across the alley. Camille was in that room. I imagined her, lying in a pool of blackened, drying blood, stripped of her dignity – and some of her skin – by a psychopath whose wrath
I
had ignited. Somewhere in this vast city, a violent murderer was walking free while my sister lay cold and as yet undiscovered in a seedy hotel room.

I couldn’t call the cops to report her murder so they could remove her body from that awful bathroom floor because I didn’t know whom I could trust.

I also didn’t want her killer to know anyone else had seen her the day she died. Too many hours had passed not to raise a whole lot of questions. They would want to know who had been in the room and why the murder hadn’t been immediately reported. I didn’t want to reveal myself, partially out of fear of being implicated by the crooked cop who had murdered her and partially because I felt I needed the element of surprise.

A new plan began to form.

As far as I knew, Cammie hadn’t told anyone she had a twin. It might be possible to use that fact to my advantage. I didn’t know how long it would take before she was discovered but maybe I could learn the identity of Camille’s killer by pretending to be her.

I went back into the bathroom and looked at my reflection once again. I hadn’t brushed my hair since my shower, and it hung in a tangled mess around my face. I slowly ran my fingers through my shoulder-length golden locks, carefully working the knots out before brushing my hair smooth and straight.

My hair wasn’t quite as long as Cammie’s. Hers had reached the middle of her back and she preferred bangs while mine was all one length. I started letting mine grow after my father died. Messing around with haircuts suddenly seemed like too much trouble and I found it was easier just to tie it out of the way in a ponytail.

I didn’t have any scissors. Using my hunting knife, I began to create some bangs in my hair. I worked carefully, slicing off one tiny strand at a time to avoid making a mess of it. I figured a mistake would be harder to detect if I cut a little bit at a time.

When I was finished, I was amazed at what a good job I’d done. It was downright eerie. It looked as if Camille had decided to go to the hairdresser and have about six inches of hair cut off the back. Nobody would ever guess I had cut my hair myself.

The only time I’d ever given a haircut in my life was when Camille and I were seven years old. I gave both of us buzz cuts so we could play soldiers. Boy, did I ever catch shit for that one! I gave my head a hard shake to stop the stinging tears that threatened with the memory.

Cammie was gone and now I was trying to look like her. All I was missing was some makeup.

I went into the other room and retrieved Cammie’s purse from the floor beside the bed. I’d seen some makeup in there. I grabbed the magazines for inspiration. I paused for a moment to admire the picture of Lady Gaga on the cover of Vogue magazine. I liked her because she was freaky as well as sexy and it appealed to me, being somewhat of a freak myself. I flipped through the glossy pages, examining the models’ faces and skimming the ads for various cosmetics. It was fascinating how much thought and effort went into all of this. Cammie and I had played dress-up when we were young and I’d allowed her to paint my face on Halloween, but there was a lot more to makeup than I’d ever imagined. It truly was an art. It was time to see what kind of artist I was.

When I was finished, the result was pretty amazing but it wasn’t quite the look Cammie used to have. She was much paler, with dark, smoky eyes. I added more black eyeliner until I achieved the desired result.

I took a step back to see what I’d done and my throat immediately swelled. Tears spurted from my eyes when I saw Cammie staring back at me from the mirror. Within seconds I had ugly black streaks running down my face.

Shit!

I tried to wipe it away with some tissue but just smeared it more until my face looked gray. I scrubbed harder, making red blotches appear behind the charcoal smudges on my cheeks.

Oh for fuck’s sake!

I was pretty sure Camille probably looked better than I did at this point, slit throat and all. Of course, I’d never know for certain because I was never going to see her again. The thought made me cry harder. I gave up on makeup and curled up on the nubby bedspread and sobbed myself to sleep.

I slept until nearly noon. I guessed I must have been more tired than I’d realized, which wasn’t terribly surprising, considering the circumstances. I scrubbed my face clean and decided to give the makeup thing one more try. If my plan was going to succeed, I had better get used to wearing the shit.

I couldn’t bring Camille home and nothing I could do would bring her back.

My mission had changed. I was going after the fucker who had killed her – Diamond Vinnie.

~ Chapter 10 ~

Safari

I was an experienced hunter.

It was simply a matter of applying my knowledge to a new situation. Los Angeles was an unexplored hunting ground with a type of prey I hadn’t hunted before.

It would be like going on an African safari… in California.

I had gone on a safari once, with my father. For my twenty-first birthday, he took me on a hunting trip to Africa. The guided safari was an amazing experience. The deal was, we paid a price to hunt the local wildlife and take home hides and heads as trophies. All meat was donated to the local villages for food. It was one of the most memorable trips I’d ever taken, and the last major hunting trip I took with my father. He died of a stroke eighteen months later.