Venator

  Venator

  written by Lee Fields

  copyright 2004

  1

  Cold. Joel's bones felt like lead bars and he couldn’t move. His breath puffed out of his nostrils in white clouds. Joel's head was swimming and his eyes were bleary. All he could make out was his shadow lazily swaying from side to side against an old concrete wall. He was bound to a chair with a heavy swatch of duck tape over his mouth.

  How on Earth had he ended up here? This morning he had gone jogging, as always, down through the park and breezing past the sleeping bums covered in wrinkled newspaper. Saul was with him and had commented on going to his parents' place first this Christmas. That was fine, he liked Saul’s folks, they were very pleasant and accommodating to their son’s lifestyle.

  What had happened to interrupt their morning routine? They had been running, chatting about the holidays and looking forward to a quick breakfast at Godiva’s. Then it would be off to work.

  A high pitched screeeeech interrupted Joel's thoughts. It was metallic and hungry. And it was approaching him. Joel struggled with the constraints but it was no use. He was trapped. But that had been his whole life hadn’t it? Trapped in a body that wasn’t his. His family didn’t understand. His father disowned his faggot son and his mother only cried. But he had found Saul and in him, Joel had found a life.

  His shadow began to sway in larger arches on the wall. Something big was coming, he could hear it breathing. Joel felt everything that he had fought for slipping away. He saw a black shape hulking up next to his, he screamed into the tape and almost gagged. This had to be a nightmare but deep down in his primal self, Joel knew that the end was at hand.

  He thanked God for Saul as the monster’s shadow fell on him. Joel looked up at the thing's pale bone face and gapping jaw and he knew the exact moment that his mind, thrashing around like a wounded animal, realized that the face of death was grinning manically down on him and snapped like a dry twig.

  2

  An unmarked police cruiser careened down route 360 at nearly 80 mph. The rural landscape slurred by like an abstract painting, small one family ranchers set leisurely off the road, fenced in fields that framed grazing horses, children safely at play miles away from the city. The inside of the cruiser had the faint smell of day old fast food and a large to-go cup perched precariously next to the radio. They were running with sirens for right now until they got near the suspect's neighborhood.

  Emily Sanderson checked the rearview mirror from the passenger seat, her face looked puffy. It had been an early morning, Detective DeJesus had arrived at her home at six in the blessed a.m. She hadn't been up so early since she was a child growing up on a farm in the rural pastures just outside Chester Springs. Every morning on her parents farm had been an early one, especially when Roscoe made sure everyone was awake at 4:30. Roscoe was the rooster, and a blind rooster to boot, so the dumb bird didn’t have the manners or sense enough to wait for dawn, he screamed and protested as only a rooster can do until Mom or Daddy went out to feed him. Emily would be outside first thing, no matter how cold it was, and feeding the chickens. Daddy would already be in the barn with Mabel, the cow. And that had become the soundtrack of her childhood mornings, Mabel mooing happily.

  From a farm to a police cruiser, Emily thought. That was an odd transition. She’d always dreamed that she’d be a veterinarian. But the cold truth of it was she never had the confidence to pursue it. Interestingly, that’s how she fell into police work. She started out as a dispatcher, hiding behind the microphone. It was easy to be confident when no one was looking at you. Then dispatching led to analyst work, again hiding behind a computer suited Emily just fine.

  Detective DeJesus was driving like a bat out of hell and it made the reflection of the vehicles following them jump. There was an unmarked suburban, a dark van and two other cruisers, one burgundy and one silver.

  Emily was now the county police department's intelligence analyst. In layman's terms, she was a an unsworn civilian who played detective over the computer. She used a vast array of compiled information to connect criminals to other unsolved crimes and to each other. She had developed quite a reputation for herself with other local law enforcement and most recently, with the FBI. She liked to joke that she was as good as any of the detectives on the force and she never had to leave the office.

  However the county’s most grisly murder spree to date had Emily and the rest of the department baffled. Someone was abducting 20 something white females and letting them loose in the woods only to hunt them down with a police style 9mm. Ballistics hadn’t returned anything of note, there was nothing connecting the victims other than their skin color and gender and the department had found itself left chasing down hundreds of dead end leads.

  Emily snapped to when the sirens abruptly stopped and they approached a small cluster of townhouses that sat off the road. Hopefully, today’s bust would help morale and cast the department in a more favorable light, at least until the next girl was found nude, raped and shot to death in the back woods of Chesterfield County.

  DeJesus drove into the quiet neighborhood without much fanfare, the suburban hung a right and then a left. The two other cruisers were gone now too as DeJesus and Emily ventured deeper past the small, slightly disheveled homes. Emily could just make out the dark van which was now a street or two over. It pulled into a driveway, blocking in an old thunderbird. DeJesus applied a little pressure to the gas and they quickly swooped in to find a better vantage point.

  Emily saw a K-9 officer with his dog sprinting across neighboring backyards toward the house. A swat officer, dressed in workman's coveralls, nonchalantly got out of the van and made his way to the front door. Everything was timing out beautifully until Booger stepped out of his front door with a glock and shot the undercover swat officer between the eyes.

  Emily’s world was in slow motion. Booger disappeared back inside. DeJesus screamed into his radio for all units to converge. A heavily armored swat team plowed in through the front door. DeJesus un-holstered his weapon and left Emily alone in the sedan, shaking like a leaf.

  The swat team tackled a woman running toward the back door with her children. A heavy knee ground into the small of her back and her face smashed into the cheap vinyl floor as she screamed in Spanish. The children were corralled in the corner and covered by an M -16. Booger raced down the back hallway into his bedroom. He ripped open the top drawer of his dresser and pulled out his gold plated Uzi. Two burly swat officers slammed him to the ground and wrenched his arms up behind his back. Booger stared through the stinging sweat in his eyes and saw a German Shepard enter the room.

  Osa meant bear. And Osa was one of the biggest dogs on the force. She looked eagerly up at her master, hungrily awaiting the command to attack the bad guy. But instead she got the ‘find it’ signal and quickly went to work.

  DeJesus passed Booger, who was being escorted down the cramped hallway by the two swat officers. The rank stench of must coming from the suspect nearly overpowered the detective. He found his way into the bedroom and watched Osa work.

  It took Emily three tries to successfully open the car door because of her sweaty palms. As she walked toward the house, Emily was sure her knees would buckle. There were officers attending to their fallen comrade and as Emily passed them she said a silent prayer for the man’s family.

  As she entered the house, Emily saw members of the swat team questioning a Latino female. She noticed a tattoo of a wolf on the woman’s left breast. A gang tatt of the Los Lobos, the wolves. She smiled inwardly at a job well done. It had taken Emily six months to track down Juanita Sanchez. She was the sister of Juan "the bull" Sanchez, leader of los lobos. With the sister’s location finally nailed down Detective DeJesus was confident he could coax Juanita to rol
l on her brother and his lieutenants, in effect, kill the wolves by lopping of their collective head.

  Emily made her way into the bedroom in time to see Osa leaping on top of an unkempt king size bed. The big dog jumped around and barked like a deliriously happy puppy.

  DeJesus shrugged his shoulders, "What the hell is she doing?"

  "Come!" The K-9 officer commanded, "Sit!"

  Osa did as she was told and her master climbed onto the bed. There was a giant mirror placed on the ceiling. The officer thumbed two latches and the mirror swung down like an attic door. Emily looked at DeJesus and smiled in astonishment. The officer hauled himself up.

  "It’s like the freaking North Pole up here and I don’t mean its cold either," he said as he tossed down a brick of cocaine.

  Emily knelt down and rubbed Osa’s head, "Good girl, Osa-bo!"

  Osa licked Emily’s face and DeJesus smiled in spite of himself.

  3

  The hunter frowned as the smell of rotting garbage oozed up from the alley below. The bricks that made up the rooftop ledge under its feet were slimy and filled with decaying cracks. It would be a shame to fall from this height wouldn't it? Just when there seemed to be a new quarry on the horizon, the hunter would accidentally snuff itself out. No, that wouldn't happen, the hunter had been around too long, had been too careful to have it end like that. The hunter had its eye on someone, someone very special and very soon now they would meet. The hunter salivated at the endless possibilities, would they fight? Would its prey run away in fear? Or would it want to play? Endless possibilities, indeed.

  The hunter slithered over the ledge and dropped onto a rickety iron fire escape, while taking a moment to admire its reflection in a dirty window pane. Gleaming moonlit eyes sat perched upon its dripping red face, delicious. The hunter sunk back into the pitch, back into the filth of the city to hide for just a while longer. That night, as blood flowed from the hunter's veins and it howled in pleasure, the angular white face of its next victim floated and grimaced in its mind.

  It was now only a matter of time.

  4

  Special Agent Provo left her small apartment at 4:30 am for her morning jog. She started down the cobblestone block passing large upper middle class houses with perfectly manicured lawns; homes of semi-successful lawyers, doctors and the like. She turned the corner and deftly leapt over an early morning dog walker who had stooped down to clean up after their pet. The dog barked and Provo smiled back over her shoulder, "Sorry."

  She jogged over a modest bridge that allowed a meandering bolder-filled stream to pass below the street. The bridge marked the end of the congested homes and gave way to a half mile stretch of woods. Provo relaxed into her groove and let her mind wander. Tad hadn’t called last night which was fine with her, she’d worked late anyway. Tad was an agent for some sports star, which was all he talked about. That is unless he wanted to get her in the sack, then he was nothing but complements and fake, self absorbed interest in her life.

  Provo was a special agent with the FBI in DC. Her specialty was serial killers. Not the kind of sparkling, "Hi honey, how was your day?" conversation to be had over dinner but she wasn’t that kinda girl. Provo loved the fact that she was fiercely independent and anti-social. She enjoyed her solitude, unless she wanted sex and then she’d happily listen to Tad drone on about touchdowns and signing bonuses. It wasn’t a bad life, Provo thought. She loved her work, in fact, immersed herself in it day and night. She lived and breathed serial killers, which is what made her so good at her job.

  Provo had spent last Christmas working the Santa Slayer case. Magnus Magnusson, a German defector with ties to the viscous Japanese Yakuza crime syndicate, had come to the states to hide from his bosses. Having embezzled millions in drug money, Magnus choose New York City as the perfect hiding place, and it had been until he started getting that itchy feeling again. Magnus was a professional hit man for the Yakuza and he began to miss the killing.

  Magnusson was also a closet pedophile, so when he began combining his two loves, molesting children and cold blooded murder, the Santa Slayer was born. Magnus would cruise the city as the jolly old elf and coax kids away from their parents. He would then abduct them and take them back to his Manhattan high rise with its private entrance and photograph them nude. He would then molest the children and kill them. The bodies would eventally turn up, ice cold and nude in Central Park.

  That had been a difficult assignment and in the end, Provo had nearly lost her life. But looking back now on that case and others, Provo knew that it was what she lived for. Nothing made her feel more alive than getting inside a killer’s mind, figuring them out and bringing them down.

  Provo left the forest and came onto the main drag that was populated with trendy eateries, a drug store, gas station, an upscale deli and health food market. She breezed by a few more dog walkers and played hopscotch over stray droppings. She had run every morning since, since before she could remember. She and the General, up before reveille and running across whatever military base they were calling home that month. The General, as he liked to be referred to, was her father but she never called him that. In fact, she never spoke to him at all. He was always immersed in his work and she, in her studies. The only time they did talk would be when he berated her for her 6.2 GPA, or why her 40 meters time was only a 4.3. So often during one of these talks, she found herself wanting to scream at him, to tell him she was doing her best, tell him that she was the smartest kid in school and was faster and stronger than any of the boys. She could take on the whole damn football team and kick all of the asses. But she didn’t open her mouth. She only sat there and listened to him rant about how she would never amount to anything and rave about how well the base was shaping up with him on board. Provo would sit and let her mind drift away until his voice became a soft slur. He would finally run out of steam and she would sulk away, defeated with her pent up aggression festering in her belly.

  Provo would then use that energy and spend all of her free time running, or biking, or working out in the gym. She loved losing herself in books and working her body beyond exhaustion. But the only thing that brought her pleasure more than improving her mind and her body was the martial arts. Provo had been involved with them ever since she could walk. She progressed through the various belts quickly and was soon defeating opponents three and four times her size that where ten, twenty and sometimes thirty years her senior.

  Growing up, while constantly moving from base to base, suited Provo just fine. She enjoyed her solitude and had no desire to make friends. Therefore she was constantly feeling the need to prove herself, especially to the bigger boys. Even in the three different high schools she attended, the boys learned to give her a wide berth. Not much had changed since then.

  Provo caught her reflection in the passing store fronts. Still that same page boy haircut, now died blonde, hair pulled back in a scrunchy, big blue eyes and rock hard body. She was still proving herself, the new agents often mistook her for petite and frail, so much like the primates she’d knocked heads with in school. But they learned quickly.

  Just yesterday she took off after a suspect on foot. It was during rush hour downtown and traffic was stopped bumper to bumper. The suspect tried to weave his way across the street and Provo had elected to run across the hoods of the grid locked cars to close the gap. She caught up easily enough and tackled the man as he crossed onto the sidewalk. They both went careening into a newspaper stand. The 300 pounder got on top of her, face to face, and began to strangle her with his him meaty hands.

  Provo had Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a teen and decided to wrap her legs around his waist. She slapped her right hand over his left wrist and snaked her left arm over his left shoulder. The suspect was strong and began driving all his weight into her chest. So Provo took her left hand and pushed his face away from her as far as possible. She rotated her body, sliding her right leg up his back and under his chin. She pushed him away with her right leg in order to get her
left out from under him. Now she found herself mounted on his left shoulder. Provo released his wrist, grabbed his belt, pushed her left leg away and broke the man's shoulder with an omoplata.

  Provo proved her point once again, as she had been doing her entire life, she was better than her male counter parts and in them, though she would never admit it aloud, she saw her father. Somewhere deep inside, Provo knew she was only trying to impress him by screaming as she’d always wanted from the rooftops, I’m better than all of them and I’m better than you!

  Provo found her way into Speedies bagel shop at about quarter after five.

  "Morning, Provo." The man behind the counter said. "Figured you’d already be at work."

  Provo furrowed her brow at the man, "Say again?"

  He leaned back and turned up the television behind him.

  "... authorities will not confirm if this abduction is in any way related to those in North Carolina and Virginia. But witness’s say that a black van was seen in the park only minutes before Saul Salvatore was found bleeding and unconscious and his running partner Joel Thomas was abducted. If you have any information concerning this crime or have seen this man, Joel Thomas, please contact Alexandria county police at..."

  "You want your usual, Provo?" the man asked her.

  "Yeah, and you better make it to go."

  5

  Furman Frye drove his black Eureka Concours hearse away from town and towards home. Death needs a holiday, he thought and grimaced. His back was tightening up again. The old reaper had really done a number on him last night.

  Frye turned down old route 13, which was nothing more than a dirt driveway and headed south. He rumbled along at 30 mph, any faster and he risked a head on collision with another vehicle. Route 13, or as locals referred to it, Snake Mountain Road, did indeed snake around through tangled trees and thick vegetation. There was however no mountain.