Succulent Prey

After driving for hours without stopping, Professors Locke and Douglas pulled up outside the state hospital only to find it swarming with police and news media. They were too late.

They parked the car in a parking lot across the street from the hospital and walked across the four lanes of slow moving traffic, making their way through the crowds of onlookers and newshounds to get to the police officers. Professor Locke ran up to the yellow crime scene tape, ducked under it, and seized the nearest officer. Professor Douglas was right behind him.

‘You there! Officer! What happened here?’

‘Who the hell are you? Get back behind that barricade!’

‘I’m Professor John Locke and this is Dr. Martin Douglas. We’re here looking for a murderer.’

‘Well, take your pick. There’s about a hundred of them locked up in that hospital. Now please step back.’

‘What’s going on here?’

‘Nothing that concerns you. Now get the hell back behind that tape!’ The exasperated officer began forcibly pushing the two professors back into the crowd.

‘I need to know what happened. Has there been a murder? Has someone been arrested?’

‘If you don’t step back, your ass is going to get arrested!’

‘But we may know something that could help you,’ Professor Douglas spoke up.

‘I’m really not interested in what you know.’

‘Oh, but I am.’ Detective Montgomery stepped forward, flashing his gold shield. The faces of the two professors fell in defeat.

‘Is your captain around?’ he asked the flabbergasted patrolman.

‘Uh, yeah. Who are you again?’

‘My name is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco Homicide. I’m here investigating a series of murders that I believe may involve your fair city. I also believe these professors may be material witnesses. Now, would you please do me a favor and arrest these two gentleman for withholding evidence and interfering with the course of an investigation and whatever else you can think up, then take me to see whoever’s running this show?’

‘I’d be happy to,’ the officer said, glaring at the two professors with an everwidening grin.

‘We haven’t done a thing wrong! You can’t detain us!’

‘Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that. I want them to be available for questioning. There’s a killer on the loose and I think they know where he is.’

Another officer took Montgomery to meet the captain in charge of the investigation. He was a stocky, middleaged man of medium height, with thick, weathered skin from too much time in the sun. His eyes were hard but jovial. He looked like an old cowboy or farmhand, like he would have been just as at home on a horse as in a squad car.

‘Captain Marshal . This is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco Homicide.’

They shook hands and leaned back against the captain’s vehicle.

‘So what brings you all the way up from San Francisco?’

‘I’m looking for a man named Joseph Miles. He’s killed two people that we know of and he’s going to kill a lot more if we don’t stop him. I have reason to believe that he might be here in your town and that he might be responsible for whatever happened here tonight. Uh … what exactly did happen?’

‘A janitor was killed. He had his throat ripped out. The ME says it looks like his larynx was bitten through and the bite marks look human. We’ve also got a dead inmate. He was carved up, vivisected. There’s pieces of him all over his room.’

‘Are there any pieces … uh … missing? I mean … is there any evidence of cannibalism?’

‘Not as far as we can tell.’ The captain’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Maybe you’d better tell me what you know about all this.’

‘Unfortunately, I don’t know a hell of a lot, but the two professors that I followed up here might. They’re with a couple of your officers right now awaiting questioning. I have a feeling they know a lot more than they’re telling. One of them used to be a profiler with the FBI. At the very least he may have a theory.’

‘I think we’d better go talk to them then. Oh, and there’s something else. You said your boy was a cannibal?’

‘Yeah, his last two victims were both partially eaten. One of them he roasted alive.’

‘Well, a woman was brought into the hospital earlier today in critical condition. The man who brought her in told the emergency room nurse that she had been attacked by pit bulls. He disappeared before he could be questioned. Both of her breasts were missing. Bitten off. The surgeon that treated her said the bite marks looked human.’

‘Christ.’

‘Her ID says her name is Alicia Rosales … from San Francisco.’

‘Has anyone questioned her yet?’

‘She’s still in critical right now. We’ll talk with her as soon as she regains consciousness.’

‘Was the nurse able to give a description of the man who brought her in?’

‘Yeah. That’s the funny thing. She said that he looked just like─‘

‘Superman?’ Montgomery asked knowingly.

The captain paused, staring at Montgomery in disbelief and what looked like disappointment. ‘Shit. I was hoping you were wrong about all this. Yeah, she said he looked just like the comic book character. I guess this really is your boy we’ve got here. Looks like we’d better see what those two eggheads have to say.’

The two professors were still seated in a patrol car with the officer who’d arrested them, doing his best to ignore their whining when Captain Marshal and Detective Montgomery approached the car.

‘Get them out of there!’ the captain barked.

‘Now see here! You can’t hold us like this! We haven’t broken any laws!’ Locke was yelling almost at the top of his lungs. His face had turned a bright pink and thick blue veins pulsed in his forehead.

‘Then tell us how you knew that Joseph Miles would strike here. Why you two drove all the way from San Francisco straight to the scene of your student’s latest murder? You’re either witnesses or accomplices. It all depends on how you answer our questions.’

Montgomery stood nose to nose with Professor Locke, glaring at him as if he were a schoolyard bully shaking him down for lunch money.

‘I don’t have to answer a goddamned thing!’

‘I think we’d better tell them what we know,’ Professor Douglas croaked meekly, the unlit mahogany pipe dangling from his trembling lower lip.

Locke whirled on him, eyes blazing with righteous indignation. ‘We don’t have to tell them shit!’

Captain Marshal stepped up beside Montgomery, almost knocking him aside in his eagerness to confront the two professors. His face was beginning to color from the effort of holding in his mounting temper. It was obvious that Locke’s self-righteous attitude was rubbing the grizzled lawman the wrong way. He shoved his finger into the professor’s chest as if he were trying to stab him with it.

‘Let me tell you something, Professor. There’s a serial killer loose in my town my town! He just snuck into a hospital and tore apart an inmate and a janitor. There’s a girl in there fighting for her life with her breasts eaten down to the rib cage. Eaten! By the man you two are protecting! So I don’t care what laws I have to stretch or even break. I’m going to find out what you two know and you both will rot in a jail cell until I do.’

‘Put him back in the car,’ Montgomery said, pointing to Locke. ‘We’ll talk to Dr. Douglas here.’

‘Don’t tell them anything. You hear? We can do this ourselves! We can still do it!’ Douglas shook his head, staring at his friend with a newfound understanding and pity. The man was desperate for his one last great act, his last chance at fame and immortality, and he was willing to risk lives to do it. Dr. Martin Douglas wasn’t quite so desperate.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘How did you know Joseph Miles would show up here?’

‘The patient he murdered … his name was Damon Trent, wasn’t it?’

‘And how the hell would you know that?’ Marshal asked.

‘Because Damon Trent is the man who assaulted Joseph when he was a child. Trent kept him locked up in his basement for three days, raping and torturing him repeatedly. Joseph was Trent’s first victim, the only one who survived. Joseph believes that Trent was some type of vampire or werewolf or something and that he passed his curse on to him when he attacked him. He thinks that by killing Trent he’ll cure himself of his own homicidal impulses.’

‘A fucking whacko!’

‘Well, Captain … maybe not.’

‘What are you saying? That Trent really was a vampire?’ Montgomery tried his best to stifle the smirk wriggling its way onto his face. Sarcasm leaked into his voice despite his best efforts.

‘I know it sounds far-fetched …’

‘Fucking loony is what it sounds!’ the captain interjected.

‘That’s what I thought. But you’d have to understand how the human brain works. I’m not a scientist. Actually, Dr. Locke could explain it better if he were so inclined. But basically there is a specific area of the brain that controls our rage impulse responses, our sex drive, and most of our animal instincts. If a virus were to attack that area of the brain and create an imbalance of some sort, it could cause the type of confusion of the rage impulse and the sexual impulse displayed by sexual sadists and murderers. Not exactly causing someone to grow hair and fangs, but effectively turning them into a monster.’

‘Is there such a virus?’

‘Right now it’s only a theory, but that’s why we wanted to study him. To prove the existence of the virus and to find a cure for it.’

‘What if this theory’s wrong and this guy just tore you apart like he did those in there?’ Captain Marshal asked. ‘Did you two geniuses ever consider that?’

‘Okay, so enough with all the bull shit. If you know where he’s going now then you’d better give it up.’

Douglas looked from Montgomery to Marshal to Locke, whose eyes were pleading with him to remain silent. He let out a huge sigh and his shoulders slumped as his eyes swept the ground.

‘I honestly have no idea. If he thinks his cure worked he might disappear forever. He might disappear even if it didn’t work. Shut himself away from the rest of society and live as a hermit or something. I’m not a psychiatrist. That’s John’s field of expertise. I’m just a professor of sociology. Any ideas I have would be based on history and cultural myths and legends, which would make them not a hell of a lot better than yours.’

‘Get him out here too!’ Captain Marshal barked in obvious exasperation, pointing at Locke, who still sat handcuffed in back of the squad car, straining to hear what was being said between the two policemen and his colleague.

The uniformed officer opened the door to the patrol car and helped the professor out of the backseat.

‘We want to know where you think this lunatic will strike next,’ the captain barked.

‘Who says he’ll strike anywhere next?’

‘Come on, Professor,’ Montgomery said, calmly draping an arm over Locke’s shoulders like they were old pals. ‘We know all about Joe’s little theory. We know that you guys came up here on the hopes that he wasn’t crazy and there really is a virus that creates these monsters. Now, if I arrested you for withholding evidence you’d probably beat it, but think of all the damage it would do to your reputation. What would your colleagues think if they knew you were protecting a serial killer? If you don’t help us, then we’ll make sure that everyone knows it. Now, you know as well as I do that killing Damon Trent ain’t going to do shit for Joe’s pathology. Those old urges are going to start coming back to him any day now. What I want to know is what he’ll do when they do come back.’

‘He’ll feed on whatever’s handy. Wherever he might be at the time. And my guess is that his appetite will be much worse this time. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble recognizing his handiwork.’

‘But how can we catch him before he attacks again? Where is he going now?’ Captain Marshal interrupted.

‘I’m a psychologist, not a mind reader. But maybe if I could speak to that girl he brought up here from San Francisco. She might know quite a bit about what’s going on in Joseph’s head. It seems that he’s taken quite a liking to her.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because she’s still alive.’