Succulent Prey (22 page)

"You've got my attention. So go ahead and ask."

"You don't seem very surprised that we're here. Any reason you think your

son might be involved in something like this?"

"Something like what? You haven't told me what you think he's done yet."

"We found a librarian from his school murdered. Mutilated and sexual y

assaulted. He was the last person seen

with her before she disappeared."

The detectives were shocked by the

expression that burst onto the old man's face. His chest swel ed up and it was

obvious that he was struggling to

suppress a smile. At first Montgomery

was perplexed. Then he realized what he was seeing on the man's face. It was

pride.

"No, Officers. There's no reason I would think my boy would be capable of

something like that. Joe's soft. He used to wet the bed when he was a kid. He

ain't no kil er. Don't let al those muscles fool you. His momma spoiled that kid

rotten. I'm surprised he ain't turn out to be one of them faggots you see run-nin'

al over town, kissin' and holdin' hands. Now if you excuse me, the missus'l be

home from the market anytime now and

she's not real fond of visitors."

"Wel , thanks for your cooperation," Volario replied with a look of

disappointment.

The detectives walked out of the house

and were not surprised when the door

slammed shut behind them.

"Man, that guy was creepy as hel . Maybe we should be looking at him for

this? Did you see al the knives and shit on his wal s?" Volario's eyes were wide and he was breathing hard. His hands

shook as he raised a cigarette to his lips and groped in his pockets for his lighter. He looked as if he'd just been in a

gunfight.

"If Joseph Miles is our guy, then I can certainly see where he got it from," Montgomery added, looking over his

shoulder.

Thirty-two

The Tacoma skyline fil ed the windshield as Joe rol ed into town with Alicia curled up in the front seat, looking wel fed and content just as the first nine-to-fivers were beginning to scramble from the

nest to catch the early worm. Joe

stopped the van at a gas station and ran in to get directions to the psychiatric hospital.

"You visiting someone or checking in?" asked the long-haired, flannel-shirted, grunge-rock reject who worked the cash

register. He had beautiful greenish blue eyes like seawater. Joe wondered how

those vibrant orbs would taste and

those vibrant orbs would taste and

imagined sucking them out of his skul

like boiled oysters. The boy waited for a response to his little witticism and

seemed to grow nervous when Joe

merely continued to stare into his eyes.

"Uh, okay, yeah. The hospital's down past the airport heading toward the

center of town. You can't miss it." Joe smiled, turned, and walked back out to his van.

Joe drove the five miles into the center of town and had no trouble finding the

hospital. He drove past and continued

farther into the city. He needed to find a place to hide Alicia.

Alicia snuggled up beside him. She was

stil bound but Joe had al owed her into the front seat. He trusted her more now. Even as her heart fil ed with an affection that she assumed was love for the

monstrous predator beside her, shame

colored her cheeks. She had eaten a

man and enjoyed it.

She didn't know if Joe was right.

Perhaps he had somehow passed his

sickness on to her when he had bitten

her. But she doubted it. She had eaten

Frank only to be closer to Joe. She

wasn't exactly hungering to bite into

anyone else. There wasn't that

al consuming appetite working within her the way it had worked inside Joe,

twisting his guts as if he were starving. She couldn't have reached orgasm just

from tasting poor Frank's flame-broiled cock the way Joe had, not without Joe's organ pounding in and out of her. She

wouldn't have tasted Frank's flesh at al if she had not wanted to get closer to Joe, to understand the passions that drove

him and perhaps to share them, if he

hadn't made it look so sensuous. If he

hadn't looked so powerful and sexual as he stroked his huge cock and crammed

pieces of Frank into his mouth. If she

hadn't been such a slut to have lusted

after and now possibly to have fal en in love with the murderous psychopath,

there was no way she would have eaten

poor Frank.

Why do I let myself do these things? she wondered, and was shocked when Joe

answered as if he had been in her head

listening to her doubt herself.

"You know why you get off on being with me? Because you're a slut. But that's

why I love you. I'm a slut too. We're both whores and so what? We are what we

are. Fucking makes you happy so why

shouldn't you fuck? Why should you feel guilty about it? Is there anything that makes you feel more alive than having a fat cock between your thighs? No.

Nothing except maybe having one in

each hole. And what's wrong with that?

You've let society make you hate yourself for your appetites. You hate yourself for enjoying life. That's stupid. Be a slut and be happy," Joe said, waving his hand at her dismissively.

Alicia was shocked. Part of her wanted

to listen to him and to know the type of freedom he was talking about. The other part was appal ed and wanted to slap

the shit out of him.

"I'm not a slut!" she hissed, eyes glistening with outraged tears.

"Yes you are, Alicia," Joe replied without taking his eyes off the road. "And I love you for it. We could never be together if you weren't."

"Bul shit! This fuck-society crap is just another way for you to justify giving in to your own appetites. Eating people,

people that you know and claim to love!" Her eyes raged over his face as if

seeking a way into his head. Joe held

his eyes fixed on the road as if afraid to face his accuser. "You're just saying al this shit because you don't real y want to change! You're starting to like it. You're addicted and you're afraid of how boring life would be without the high you get

from eating other human beings. I know. It's the same way with me and sex. It's the only thing that makes life worth a

damn to me and I can't imagine living

one night without it. And you're afraid. Now that you're here you're scared to

death of confronting that crazy man

again."

Joe's face darkened and his jaw

tightened. The muscles flexed as if he

were biting down on something too hard

to penetrate. Now that she was real y

looking at him, his jaw real y did look like it had gotten bigger.

Thirty-three

Professor Locke had been on the

telephone for hours and was amazed at

what he was hearing. "You mean it's possible?"

"Theoretical y? Yes. But there's simply no proof. And you say a col ege kid came

up with this theory?"

"He claims to suffer from it."

"Fascinating."

"They think he may have kil ed someone. Ate them alive."

"My God!"

Doctor Wilfred Dougherty worked in the

Neurology department at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Locke's cal had been transferred to him after the

professor had been laughed at or hung

up on by nearly everyone else.

"You know, there was a police forensic psychologist who put forth a theory that brain trauma in the early developmental years could be found in as many as 73

percent of al serial kil ers. You could see increased activity in the limbic system of the brain. It even showed up on CAT

scans."

"So what happened with that?"

"There were an equal percentage of normal, non homicidal people in the

community who showed the same brain

abnormalities. Almost every kid fal s off a swing or gets hit in the head with a

basebal at some point. But they don't al grow up to be serial kil ers. But this is the first time I can recal hearing a theory of a bloodborne pathogen that affects the

limbic system so severely that it

stimulates the human prey-drive,

basical y creating a human predator. It's like something from a horror novel."

"But you say it's possible?"

"Wel , the area of the brain that we cal the limbic system, actual y the limbic

basal-ganglia thalamocortical circuit or visceral brain, controls our flight-orfight emotions as wel as our sex drives. It's involved in storing memories and

creating emotions and is thought to play a central role in processing al impulserelated information. A disease that could affect the limbic system and increase

serotonin levels in the amygdala, the

rage center, could lead to severe rageimpulse related disorders perhaps severe enough to account for ninety-nine percent of al serial kil ers. Add to that the trauma of having been assaulted by

a serial kil er in the first place, with the virus that his body fluids passed on to you affecting the hippocampus where

that memory is stored, and you could

easily have a situation in which one

serial kil er creates another simply by biting him. But al that hinges on the

existence of a disease that could affect the amygdala in this way. So far there's no proof that such a thing exists."

"Shit." It was al the professor could think to say. "Could it be cured? I mean, if it existed?"

"The brain is a tricky place. Brain cel s are the only cel s in your body that don't reproduce. Once they're dead they're

gone for good. This fragility tends to

make any changes to the neurological

system rather permanent."

"You said that an increase in serotonin levels might be responsible for the

violent sexual behavior? It's an impulse-control disorder, in fact an obsessivecompulsive disorder. Only in

this case it's the compulsion to kil . They use serotonin inhibitors to treat other addictive compulsive behaviors, drug

abuse, alcoholism, even compulsive

gambling. This is basical y another

addiction we're speaking of, an

addiction to sadistic sexual homicide.

Why couldn't it be treated the same way as other addictions?"

"I thought of that, and theoretical y it would work. If the rest of the theory held up, then the administering of serotonin reuptake inhibitors should do the trick. Unfortunately, the success rate at

treating addictions with psychotropic

drugs has not been encouraging. Like al recovery techniques, we found that it only works if the subject wants it to. But like al addictions there's a reward attached to it. Drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual

addiction, compulsive shopping or

gambling, and serial homicide. In the

addictive personality, these behaviors

give them a high that's almost

irreplaceable. They do it because it feels good. In many cases it's the only thing in their lives that feels good to them. We would in effect be asking them to give up that feeling of euphoria for a life of

relative boredom. They may not want to

do that, no matter how many drugs you

pump them ful of."

Professor Locke thanked the doctor and

hung up. He sat in the dark for hours

wondering what to do. Then he sat down

at the computer and began trying to find out al he could about Joseph Miles.

He began by logging on to the university database and searching through his

school records. He wasn't sure exactly

what he was looking for, but if Joseph

believed that he was afflicted with this disease then it fol owed that there must have been a point at which he would

have contracted it, meaning he himself

must have been victimized by a serial

kil er.

It didn't take the professor long to locate the anomaly he was searching for. It was in his elementary school records. Back

in fifth grade, Joseph Miles had been

excused from school for three months

due to ". . . severe medical and

emotional trauma ..." The professor then went to the website for the local

newspaper, the Seattle Ledger, to check for any articles that might coincide with that date. He found the connection in a sensational headline that electrified the hairs on his neck.

TEN YEAR OLD BOY SURVIVES

CHILD MURDERER!

Last month, a ten-year-old boy, whose

identity is being protected due to his

age, was discovered bleeding badly

from several stab wounds, apparently

the victim of a violent sexual assault. Police now have a man in custody that

they say matches the description the

young boy gave to the police.

Seventeen-year-old Damon Trent was

arrested yesterday on suspicion of the

rape and murder of six other young boys in the Seattle, Washington area. When

the police entered Trent's home to

execute a search warrant the remains of three of the missing boys were found in his basement in what witnesses

described as "vats of blood." Further investigation uncovered several

containers fil ed with blood as wel as a bottle in which blood had been

combined with red wine apparently to

improve the taste.

It is now believed that the boy who was attacked last month may be the only

surviving victim of this vicious child kil er. In a press conference fol owing the

arrest of Damon Trent, Detective Wayne

Wil iams stated that the ten-year-old boy was ". . . most likely the kil er's first victim. His savagery increased with each subsequent attack." When asked about reports that Trent claimed to be a

vampire who gained power by drinking