"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 kil ers. 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 surveil ance," Detective Volario responded.
"Wel , I'm afraid that's probably al 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 real y 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'l 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. Al we have is the very
strong suspicion that he was recently in Oregon kil ing 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
ful . We've alerted the Washington and
Oregon police departments, and if they
catch him then we'l 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 fil ed with
surveil ance equipment and bored
undercover cops parked across the
street from his house. He hoped that
Joseph wouldn't cal him again until he could figure out how to shake the
suspicion off of him.
Professor Locke left the lecture hal and dashed out into the misty steel gray
morning. The damp early morning fog
crept beneath his clothing and chil ed 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 toay.
"What did they want?"
"It looks like Joseph has kil ed 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 tel 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 wil work."
"Yeah, that's if he real y 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'l be guilty of harboring a
fugitive, and possibly aiding and
abetting. You might even find yourself an accessory to murder if he kil s 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 wil happen, and just in case, I'l 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 dol ars on the
lecture circuit. Magazine articles. Think about the Nobel Prize."
"The Nobel Prize? Real y?"
"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 kil ed by serial
murderers. That's nothing compared to
the thousands that are kil ed 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 al
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'l 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 unwil ing to take that journey yourself? We're not getting any younger. Soon the most heroic thing we'l 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!"
"Al right, you got me. Where do we start?"
Thirty-eight
Alicia lay shivering atop the
bloodstained mattress with Joe lapping
the blood off her exposed rib cage. Her blood pressure was plummeting. She
was going into shock.
"You said you wouldn't hurt me. You promised," she gasped as she watched the big predator chew and swal ow the
last of her once
voluptuous bosom. His
body shook with an orgasm. Some of
his semen landed on her face and she
licked it from her lips as it dribbled down her forehead onto her mouth. She stil
relished the taste of him. She stil loved watching him cum. Despite her feelings
watching him cum. Despite her feelings
of betrayal, she loved the fact that it was her flesh that had given him this
pleasure. Some twisted part of her stil loved him, even though she knew that
she would be dead soon if she didn't get to a hospital. She was losing a ton of
blood.
Her voice seemed to snap him out of his rapture. He looked down at the ruin he'd made of his beloved Alicia and his heart crashed to the floor like a stone.
"I-I ... I didn't mean to. I didn't want to-to ... I'm so sorry."
His eyes fil ed with tears.
"I'm dying."
"But you can't. You can't die!" Joe's eyes were wild with fear as he realized that he could see her exposed rib cage. No one
could live in that condition.
"Get me to a hospital." Her voice was weak, barely more than a whisper.
"Okay. Okay. I'l do it. Hold on. I'l take care of you."
Alicia blacked out. Her eyelids slammed shut with the finality of a stage curtain at the end of the final act. Joe scooped her up in the blood-soaked blanket and
carried her limp body out to the van. He knew exactly which hospital he would
take her to.
Minutes later, Joe pul ed up outside the state hospital. He sprinted across the
parking lot and into the emergency ward with Alicia cradled in his arms, shivering from the massive loss of blood and
fading in and out of consciousness.
"Help! I need help!"
Two nurses came rushing from behind
the desk and an orderly raced down the
hal pushing a gurney.
"What happened to her?" asked a petite young Asian RN as she rushed to Joe's
side.
"She was attacked by two pit bul s right outside our apartment. They almost tore her apart."
"Get her into surgery! She's lost a lot of blood."
"Is she going to be okay?" Joe asked, careful to keep his curiously sharpened, bloodstained teeth tucked behind his
lips lest he immediately make himself a suspect. Alicia was now lying on the
gurney with blood stil pumping steadily from the massive wounds in her chest.
The other nurse, a tal formidable-looking black woman with shoulder-length hair
extensions and a wandering eye that
made her look almost sinister, pressed
two handfuls of gauze and a towel to
Alicia's chest in an effort to staunch the flow of blood. Alicia's eyes rol ed up in her head and she began to convulse as
she went into hypovolemic shock. Saliva foamed from her lips and sweat bul eted down her face.
"Oh no! No!" Joe reached for her and the slight Asian nurse seized his wrist and managed to turn him completely
around with almost no effort at al . She then placed an arm on his shoulder in a reassuring embrace as if to conceal the fact that she'd just used a very effective aikido move on him that had almost
shattered his wrist.
"You just wait here. We'l take care of her. We need to contact the police and you're going to have to file a report."
"Okay, just take care of her," Joe replied, a look of genuine concern on his face
even as he rubbed his wrist.
Joe backed away as they rushed Alicia
down the hal and into surgery. He hadn't meant for it to happen like this. It wasn't supposed to be her.
His plan had been to tear into a stranger and to use her or him to gain access to the hospital, but seeing Alicia lying there looking so delicious, he had lost control and grievously injured, perhaps even
kil ed, the one thing in this world he truly loved. He was completely out of control now and even more convinced that he
didn't want to spend the rest of his life this way. He was becoming little more
than an animal. Even now, with his heart col apsing beneath the weight of his guilt and sorrow over the harm he'd caused
Alicia, he was stil sizing up every nurse who passed, imagining how the meat of
their triceps, the fat of their hips, the muscle and sinew on their thighs and
buttocks would taste as he tore it from their quivering bones. Even as he
mourned he could feel the monster
awakening.
He hoped Damon had done his part and
gotten himself admitted to the hospital as wel . The only thing left to do now was for Joseph to find him and get him out of the hospital where they could have their heart-to-heart and he could rid himself of the curse and love Alicia as a man was
supposed to rather than as the monster
he'd been since puberty.
There was only one elevator that went to the third floor. That's where Damon had told him that most of the in-house
patients were treated. It sat at the end of the hal and you had to pass another
reception desk to access it. Two
overweight nurses sat behind the desk
wearing hardened impassive
expressions. As soon as the nurses took Alicia away, Joe slipped into the elevator and rode it to the third floor. Joe's pulse rate increased, his heart drumming
against his chest as the elevator
ascended.
The third floor was pandemonium.
Shrieks and cries reverberated as the
insane vied for the attention of the
voices and phantoms in their own heads. How far am I from winding up in a place like this? Joe wondered.
An obese elderly man took off naked
down the hal , drooling like a rabid dog, and tackled a pearshaped middle-aged
nurse. From his thighs to his shoulders his entire back was covered in feces as he mounted the wide-bottomed nurse
and began thrusting his pelvis furiously against her. The security guards rushed to restrain him and Joe stepped out of
the elevator.
Joe strode purposely down the hal ,
peeking into each room, wincing at the
foul cocktail of odors wafting from the mad denizens within. Medicine,
disinfectant, vomit, urine, excrement, and blood. More than the smel of the sick, it was the stench of insanity, the noxious perfume of the shattered mind. Joe's
nostrils flared and a growl roiled deep in his throat. He wanted to latch onto it and rip it to shreds, to kil the disease in each of them, just as he sought to murder the disease within himself ... to murder
Damon Trent.
Some of the doors on this floor were
locked, but most of them stood wideopen with their occupants unrestrained. He suspected that the patients who had
been locked in were those with a history of violence. The average schizophrenic
or jol y old child molester had free reign of the place. Joe wondered how many of
them just up and walked out.
"Hey! What are you doing up here? No civilians are al owed on this floor." Behind Joe, a smal nervous-looking
orderly who looked like he was fresh out of high school advanced on him with a
mop in his hand, wielding it like he
meant to brain him with it.
Joe looked around to make sure the
security guards were stil busy with the naked guy, then across the hal at the
maintenance closet the man had just
stepped out of.
"Do you hear me, man? You've got to leave this floor before I cal security." Taking one last look around, Joe
charged across the hal and tackled the diminutive orderly, driving him into the maintenance closet. He clamped a hand
over the orderly's mouth and the other
around his throat and squeezed until the man's eyes bulged out of his head.
The man struggled and tried to bite
Joe's hand. Joe bit back, tearing the
man's throat out with jagged teeth that sank al the way down to the cervical
vertebrae. When he jerked his head from side to side, ripping through the
esophagus and larynx like a shark in a
feeding frenzy, he nearly decapitated the man. Joe sat for a moment as the
ecstasy of his fresh kil washed through him in staggering waves. Even kil ing out of necessity brought an immediate
sexual thril .
Joe thought about what Trent had said
about losing that lush and delirious
sensation if he managed to cure himself, yet stil longing for it, seeking one weak substitute after another in an effort to reclaim this feeling. He remembered
when he used to stalk the sex clubs
before the urges got out of hand and he would see the jaded libertines who had
so dul ed their senses with excess that it took electric shocks, whips, and blood
play just to get them aroused.
He remembered an old guy named Jack
who used to hook wires to his nipples
and send shocks through himself while
being beaten with a two-by-four in order to get an erection. Joe didn't want to be like that. He knew that for him it wouldn't be what he needed to do to himself in
order to get off that would reach such
extremes, but what he needed to do to
others. Right now he maimed and
occasional y kil ed, but it was just for the taste of the flesh. He kil ed to eat. The kil ing and the pain was just an
unfortunate side effect of his appetite. He had no real love for torture and
murder. But what would happen if the
flesh lost its appeal? Would he then kil just for the sake of kil ing? Would he cut into his victims just to hear them scream and beg? Would their pain be the only
pleasure left to him?
What if this works? What wil life be like for me without this ... this passion?
Joe stopped in the middle of his
preparations, unable to continue further. Blood from the orderly's ravaged jugular and carotid artery continued to spurt
from the hideous throat wound, creating a dark pool around his convulsing
corpse. Joe stared in a daze at the
fountain of blood as if mesmerized by it. It was beautiful and stirred his appetite anew.
His hunger rose, growling and snarling in the pit of his stomach like some