For some reason he found himself remembering his boyhood. The neighbors had all been different then; he could remember all too well his father’s anger when the first black family moved in across the street. Now there were so many different ethnicities present he had a hard time even recalling the years when it had all been white families.
How old had he been when his father died? Twenty? The old man had died on the job. He had been a Union man, a plumber and he had had to move back home from college and get a job to support his mother. She had always been frail; after her husband passed away she had withered and slid into the shadows. She had clung to life though, for seven more years.
He went to his bedroom. It had been his bedroom when he had been a boy, the twin bed sitting under the windows had been his and he poured himself into it, curling up so he would fit. The curtains billowed in the puffs of soured air coming up from the vents and he tucked his thumb in his mouth, trying to find some solace.
When he began to drift off to sleep he got up and returned to the kitchen and took the head out of the vase. He put it into his case with careful movements; there was a slightly squashed indent on one cheek that disturbed him so he turned it slightly.
“Kiki, Janice, Lorelei, Mary Grace and Pamela. My oh my…look what I caught in my little web. Such lovely little things you are.”
He chuckled, a phlegmy rattle that made his chest hurt. He rubbed it and closed the case. He leaned his head against the cold glass, thinking about the woman who had seen him drop Pamela’s head to the sidewalk.
“Thousands of people see crimes and don’t report them every single day.” He said to the heads of the women he had killed. “And if she does, it won’t even matter because she didn’t see my face.”
Still, the fear had come back. He had lost sight of her, she had run like a gazelle and he had far greater things to worry about – like bringing his trophy home safely.
He went into what had been his parent’s bedroom. The ruffled pillow shams on the dress pillows made him feel slightly queasy. He tossed them to the floor and clambered into bed, the cold sheets rubbing against his hairy, nak*d body.
“The Creeper,” he said in a wondering, dazed voice and began to laugh helplessly.
***
Sophie drank coffee and tried, repeatedly, to tell the officers, including Kane, who kept offering the cute little canine bits of hamburgers or steak sandwiches, that Sassy was not hungry, just determined not to miss out on a treat. Eventually she gave up.
The sketch artist finished the drawing and Sophie looked at it, she was tired and the events of the night had taken on a strange and surreal turn. The toe of her shoe had blood on it after all, according to preliminary test but there would have to be a lot more tests done before anyone knew for certain what else they would find there.
The sight of a murdered woman’s severed head followed by the sight of the bound woman enjoying sex had taken a toll on her emotionally and physically and Kane saw it. He knew she had become tired; her patience was wearing thin as well and she had begun to snap out answers instead of speaking them.
“I want to go home,” she said finally. She had decided she was likely safe; the killer had probably not hung around to track her, as Kane had said.
“I’ll make sure you get home.” Kane stood, his back ached and his eyes felt grainy, he decided he would drop her off and head home himself.
Before he could get out the door another officer stopped him. “They just found a body. The woman’s roommate came home and found her. It’s definitely the Creeper.”
“How can you be sure?”
“She was beheaded.”
“Where?”
“Down by Seventh.”
Sophie stood by quietly but her face had slowly lost all of its remaining color. Tears leaked from her eyes as she thought about what she had seen. A human being had died and her head had been taken and stuffed into a tote sack like it was nothing more than trash.
Kane commandeered a car, personally driving her home. Her apartment was on the tenth floor but she had a working elevator and the hallways were all well lit and quiet.
She unlocked the door and paused, Sassy peeking out of her sack at him with her earnest brown eyes. “I could have done something.”
“She was already dead. No one could have helped her.”
“Will you catch him?”
I hope so. “Yes.
“Good.”
Before he could say anything else she slid inside the door and shut it firmly behind her. He heard multiple locks sliding home and he stood there for a few minutes, listening to the silence and wondering what it was about her that invoked his protector side as much as it stirred his long suppressed desires.
***
The apartment was clean, except for the room where the woman had died. She had been a fighter, lamps were knocked over and a long tear in the sheets offered up a long red fingernail, it had been torn from her hand while she had desperately fought for her life.
“Her name was Pamela Skinner, also known as Pam Skin. She was a singer in a punk rock band that was fairly popular in the mid-nineties. This guy, he kills people who almost made it.” Lynette turned toward Kane, her brow furrowed in thought. “You’re the former FBI guy, you call it.”
Kane winced; he hated to be reminded of his time at the Bureau. “You just did,” he said and walked into the living room to talk to Pam’s shaken roommate.
***
Kane was frustrated beyond words long before he staggered into his apartment for a quick nap and a shower. He was certain that the dead woman was somehow connected to Sophie’s sighting. He was, in fact, utterly positive she had seen the victim’s head, the serial killer, and that she was lucky to be alive.
He lay in bed, exhaustion settling into his bones as he played over the details of the case in his mind, looking for clues into the killer’s mind, seeking out any sort of a pattern.
What am I not seeing?
Kane had been on the fast track at the Bureau, and when he had made the decision to leave in order to join the police force in New York it had shocked everyone. He could have told them why, but he had felt like it was his decision and he owed no explanations.
He had been exposed to a lot of the best minds the Bureau had on tap as well as some of its most violent cases. He had worked hand in glove with profilers and he knew that there was always a pattern, some underlying commonality when it came to the people that were selected by serial killers. The key was to find it.
But what had all the women had in common? None of them had the same hair or eye color or were the same age. They all had the same lean and attenuated bodies; they had all been semi-famous in some way or another, those were the only things that were the same. What was it about those two things that set the Creeper off? Kane wondered, or did they have anything to do with the killings at all?
He knew it would just be a matter of time before the FBI got called in and he knew that the only reason Captain Ross was putting it off was because he was hoping his detectives could solve it, and that he could take the credit.
Kane doubted that they would be able to. The Creeper’s kill rates were accelerating. He had killed three women in two weeks and Kane knew one thing about serial killers, once they started accelerating they rarely slowed down.
He closed his eyes but their faces remained. Seven women, all of them killed violently and without reason. He shut his mind off deliberately and went to sleep.
***
There were seven heads. He counted them and blinked. He knew five of the women, only five. He counted them again and scratched his head. The oddly desperate feeling that seemed to always be right below the surface returned, swarming under his skin like a horde of angry bees.
Where had the other women come from? That was a ridiculous question, he had killed them. But why? He poured milk onto his cereal and stared at the heads. The latest had a deep dimple in her chin that would have elevated her face from merely pretty to incredibly striking by virtue of its being so unusual.
The milk tasted sour and the cereal was dried out and flavorless. It crunched grittily between his teeth, but he didn’t notice. The one his eyes kept being drawn back to stared at him with a seeming reproach, he could almost feel the contempt coming from her.
Appetite gone he dumped the bowl into the sink, making sure to clean it out afterward. He had become obsessive about neatness the year before and he was simultaneously aroused and sickened by the frozen patches of maroon colored blood that clumped around the ragged stumps of their necks.
His hand crept toward his crotch but his body refused to respond. Anger swelled instead of his member and he clenched his fists in rage as he stared at the face of the first of his victims.
Her hair had been shining and soft in life, but in death it hung in a limp straw textured clump around her cheeks, her face was patched with frost and ice crystals and her blue eyes had developed a film over them, giving her the appearance of someone who was aging and developing cataracts.
His eyes closed but the red streaked darkness behind his eyelids offered him no answers.
Sighing he turned and left the comfort of his home, like any regular guy on his way to work.
***
Sophie was beyond grateful that she had a couple of days off from work for she was thoroughly exhausted. Sassy’s small heavy weight rested near her right hip and she relaxed as she picked up one of the thin novels that sat in the cardboard box under her coffee table.
The cover showed a woman with eyes too big for her face and a thin gown standing on a snow bank. Wolves circled around her slight figure while a dark haired man seated on a large black horse were featured in the background. Everything about the book screamed cheesy romance and she gave a happy sigh as she opened the pages and began to read.
Barbara Cartland had been a name she had known as soon as Geoff had said it. Her mother had had shelves filled with those books, at twelve she had still been too young to read them and when she had been taken in by the system she had not been allowed to keep her parent’s possessions, they had owed money and creditors had swooped down to claim their home and belongings to offset those debts. Besides, the foster system only allowed her so many possessions. The worker had packed all of her things into black trash bags rather than the suitcases that had been in her parent’s closet.
The books made her feel close to her mother again but they also made her wonder what it would be like to be so in love that there was no risk not worth taking.
She closed the book, suddenly restless. Her mind kept going back to the scene she had witnessed at the club that she had been in with Kane. Was that love? How could that woman have trusted someone so much that she would allow herself to be tied up and used so openly? That memory brought heat to her face and between her thighs.
She had never known lust, never known the throb of excitement that accompanied sex until she had seen that couple and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. Sex, in her experience, was painful and frightening. Susan had traded sex for money and drugs and so she had also seen it as a commodity, something fast and cheap and easily forgotten. None of that appealed to her.
But what she had seen in the club had excited her; she couldn’t deny it. She turned the thoughts off as best as she could and buried herself back in the book but the memory kept seeping back in, as did the heat.