Succulent Prey

The detectives showed up the next morning and sat in the back of the lecture hall during Professor Locke’s lesson. Their presence unnerved him. He felt as if he were the one under investigation. The professor stumbled over his words and lost his train of thought in midsentence on more than one occasion. He knew that he probably looked guilty and wondered if that was why they were here. Had they shifted the focus of their investigation? Did they now think he was somehow involved?

Maybe they thought he was hiding Joseph Miles somewhere or that he knew where the man was? In fact, he did know where Joseph was, or at least suspected. He was somewhere in Tacoma, Washington, preparing to break into a state mental hospital and murder a patient. He still wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell the detectives, though. They had been right about one thing. He had fucked up. He should have known how disturbed Joseph was. He should have known how dangerous he was.

Joseph had come to him looking for help and he had failed him. He owed it to the boy to try to find a cure. He owed it to himself and his reputation as a criminal psychologist to stop him.

The lesson ended and Professor Locke turned his back on the class and began erasing the blackboard as they filed out of the room. He heard twin pairs of footsteps heading down the aisle and approaching him. There was no doubt in his mind who the footsteps belonged to.

‘Professor?’

‘Detectives. What can I do for you today?’ Professor Locke kept his back turned as he continued erasing the words of Bertrand Russel from the board. He paused for a second to examine the last quote before scrubbing it away. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent all lies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live …

‘Do you believe all that stuff, Doc?’ Detective Volario asked. He was wearing the same suit he had on his last visit and it didn’t look like he’d cleaned or pressed it.

‘All what stuff?’ The professor wiped the quote away and finally turned to the two detectives.

‘All that stuff you said in your lecture about religion retarding progress and science rising up to replace it.’

‘If I didn’t believe it, I’d be a theologist instead of a criminal psychologist. I minored in philosophy as well. To me it’s just another way to study the human condition. When you ask what motivates a man to kill or rape or steal or, more importantly, what would keep a man from doing these things, it isn’t very far from asking what it all means. What’s the true meaning of life? What sense can be found in all this chaos? You look into the minds of serial sexual predators day in and day out and you have to wonder.’

‘Why not hard science? Philosophy always struck me as a halfway point between science and mysticism for those who couldn’t make up their minds whether to believe or not to believe,’ Detective Montgomery chimed in. Something about the large black detective’s expression instantly put the professor on guard. The man was absolutely intimidating.

‘All the sciences began as philosophy. Once a philosophical theory is proven it becomes the property of science. But without philosophical speculation, astronomy, psychology, biology, physics, and even quantum theory would never exist. Someday the search for the meaning of life will leave the realm of philosophy as well and become a science and when it does I’ll go with it. Now I know you two didn’t come all this way to discuss my atheism.’

‘I entered all the information I had on Joseph Miles and his unique killing signature into the national VICAP computer and I got a hit today. A young man from right here in the Bay Area was found in a park in Oregon, roasted on a spit and partially cannibalized. We went to his apartment on a hunch that he might somehow be connected with Miles and we found links on his computer to a cannibal-sex message board. We found the same link on the computer shared by Joseph Miles and his roommate. It’s a pretty safe bet that Miles is the one who ate him. Your boy is out of control. Why do you think he’d be going to Oregon?’

Because it’s on the way to Washington, where the man he believes passed this curse on to him lives. ‘I have no idea,’ Locke said.

‘Well, we have an idea. You’ll have to tell me if you think this one is apodictic.’ Detective Volario stepped closer to the professor as if he were about to grab him and shake him. The professor took an involuntary step back. ‘We think he’s going home. He grew up in Seattle. We think he’s headed back there. What we don’t know is why. He no longer has any family there. His parents moved to the Bay Area when he was twelve. They live right over in Hayward. I doubt he’d still have any friends there. That was almost ten years ago and none of his phone records indicate that he’s kept in touch with anyone from that state. So why do you think he’d run there, Doc? ‘

Professor Locke thought hard before answering. They’d come for his professional opinion both as a forensic psychiatrist and criminal psychologist and as someone familiar with the suspect. If he feigned ignorance they’d immediately suspect him of covering something up. If he told them everything, then Joseph would be arrested and put to death, his reputation as a criminologist would be forever tarnished and he’d never get a chance to test his cure.

The professor had his own reasons for wanting to cure Joseph. If he were able to treat the young man’s murderous addiction with serotonin inhibitors it would be a major breakthrough in the treatment of sexual predators, a breakthrough that could inject new life into his career. The rule of the blackboard jungle was publish or perish and he hadn’t published anything groundbreaking in years. A paper on the treatment of serial killers with medication would put him on top of the heap, and if he could both prove that the serial killer phenomenon was caused by viral transmission and document a cure for it, he’d be almost assured a Nobel Prize. Too many possibilities to put it all in the hands of two ignorant cops. But he had to think of a suitable lie. He’s going to kill that man in order to break the curse, Professor Locke thought.

They were obviously offtrack. They hadn’t yet discovered the connection between Miles and Damon Trent, the serial child killer. So they wouldn’t be looking for Joseph in Tacoma, where Trent was locked up. They naturally assumed he was on his way back to the city he was born in. All the professor had to do was reinforce that belief to keep them on the wrong track.

‘There are many reasons why he might be headed back to Seattle. There’s the possibility that his delusions are actually centered around a particular childhood fantasy, a person that he was attracted to who he perhaps fantasized about eating. During puberty he could have easily gotten his sexual urges confused with his hunger response. Perhaps it was a babysitter who wore a particular fragrance that reminded him of food and triggered a Pavlovian response. Maybe a waitress at a restaurant his family frequented. It could even have been the cashier at the local donut shop.’

‘Then he would be going back there …’

‘To live out that fantasy, yes. He would be going back to eat her.’

‘Okay, that’s one theory. Why else might he be going back?’ Montgomery asked.

‘He may also have suffered a schizophrenic break and could be regressing back toward childhood. He might be fleeing back to a time when things were safer and simpler. Back to a place where he felt safe. This behavior isn’t unusual for signature killers. If I were you I’d warn whoever now lives in the house he grew up in. If he gets there and doesn’t find his mommy and daddy like he’s expecting, things may turn violent.’

‘We’ve already contacted the family and we have the house under surveillance,’ Detective Volario responded.

‘Well, I’m afraid that’s probably all you can do.’

‘What about his virus theory? Could he be going to Seattle to search for a cure? Maybe there’s a clinic or something there he’d go to?’ asked Detective Montgomery. His eyes were narrowed, as if he suspected the professor of hiding something.

‘If he really did cook and eat that guy in Oregon, then it’s probably safe to assume that he’s no longer interested in a cure.’

Professor Locke hoped that this wasn’t the case, but that response seemed to satisfy the two detectives.

‘Okay Doc, if you think of anything else we’ll be around.’

‘Around here?’

‘Yeah, just in case he shows back up.’

‘But you just said he was in Washington?’

‘No, you said he was probably going to Washington. All we have is the very strong suspicion that he was recently in Oregon killing a man he may or may not have kidnapped from the Bay Area. They may have just gone on a camping trip and he came right home once he was full. We’ve alerted the Washington and Oregon police departments, and if they catch him then we’ll drive up there to claim him. Until then we’re staying right here.’

The detectives didn’t smile when they shook the professor’s hand. They whispered to each other and repeatedly glanced back at him over their shoulders as they walked up the aisle and out the back door. Professor Locke suspected that there would be a car in his rearview mirror when he drove home tonight and perhaps a milk truck filled with surveillance equipment and bored undercover cops parked across the street from his house. He hoped that Joseph wouldn’t call him again until he could figure out how to shake the suspicion off of him.

Professor Locke left the lecture hall and dashed out into the misty steel gray morning. The damp early morning fog crept beneath his clothing and chilled his skin as he made his way toward the Sociology Building where Professor Douglas was just finishing classes.

‘Douglas.’

‘What’s up, John?’

‘Those detectives were back in my classroom today.”

‘What did they want?’

‘It looks like Joseph has killed again. They found a body in Oregon roasted on a spit. It was a guy from the Bay Area. That black detective said the guy had frequented the same website that Joseph did and that they had more than likely met each other there. It was a cannibal website.’

‘Jesus! Roasted alive?’

‘Apparently so.’

‘And do they have anything positively linking Joseph to the crime? Any DNA or forensic evidence?’

‘Not that they indicated, but who knows? They probably wouldn’t have told me anyway.’

‘Did you tell them about your theory? That you think he’s going to Tacoma to confront Damon Trent?’

‘No. And I’d like to ask you not to mention it either. ‘

Professor Douglas’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Oh, and why not?’

‘Because I think I can cure him. I’ve been doing more research on serotonin reuptake inhibitors and I think this will work.’

‘Yeah, that’s if he really does have an impulse control disorder. If he’s just a sick fucker and it isn’t some addictive disease then it won’t do a damned thing and you’ll be guilty of harboring a fugitive, and possibly aiding and abetting. You might even find yourself an accessory to murder if he kills again while in your care. And have you thought of the possibility that you might be putting yourself in real physical danger by confronting him? The kid is huge. How do you think you’d stop him if he decided to add you to his menu?’

‘I don’t think that will happen, and just in case, I’ll be armed.’

‘This is starting to sound real sketchy, John. You’re going to go out armed with a gun to confront a murder suspect whom you’ve already aided by deliberately misleading the police? I want no part of this.’

‘Before you say that, think of what would happen if we were right. What happens if the inhibitors work and we cure him? Think about offers of tenure from Ivy League universities. Think about making history. Thousands of dollars on the lecture circuit. Magazine articles. Think about the Nobel Prize.’

‘The Nobel Prize? really?’

‘It’s that big. We would go down in history if we could find a cure for the pathology of serial murder. And think of how many lives we’d save. They estimate that more than three hundred people a year are killed by serial murderers. That’s nothing compared to the thousands that are killed every year in this country by drug gangs and street violence, but consider that that’s more than the murder rate for the entire country of Great Britain. Consider all those families who have to live with the image of their loved one spending their last minutes on earth being tortured and mutilated by some lunatic stricken with a mental disease that we could have cured. Think about Joseph Miles out there adding to the body count when we may have the power to stop him.’

‘Okay, John. I’ll keep my mouth shut.’

‘I need more from you than that, Douglas. I need your help in capturing Joseph. I can’t do it by myself. You’ve got some vacation time coming up, don’t you? Let’s go to Washington.’

‘You’re crazy. There’s no way I’m going to actively participate in this.’

‘I need you, Douglas. When was the last time you took a risk and did something daring? No guts, no glory. You lecture about the hero’s journey in mythology every day, but you’re unwilling to take that journey yourself? We’re not getting any younger. Soon the most heroic thing we’ll be able to do is sign a ‘do not resuscitate’ order so that our loved ones don’t have to watch us waste away in a hospital bed for months on end. This might be it. Our last chance to make a mark on the world.’

‘I don’t know, John.’

‘Come on. The Nobel Prize, man! No guts. No glory!’

‘All right, you got me. Where do we start?’