Apex Predator (31 page)

Steven held the man’s eyes and he noticed the intensity in the man’s voice and in his eyes. He knew, had known before they’d even began their conversation. Whatever it was that Leonard believed or was speculating about, he had not spoken to the police or to any of the investigators assigned to the case. Now as he was saying goodbye to Steven, Leonard wanted him to know he had figured out he had something to do with what happened to Riche.

Leonard let go of Loomis’s hand and before opening the door and before Steven had a chance to explain or say anything in response, he concluded their conversation, “Mr. Loomis, you seem like an intelligent and considered individual, and I know from what I’ve read about you that you have a beautiful family and a thriving career. I hope that the choices that you have made were not made in haste or in the pursuit of something as banal as revenge. You don’t strike me as that type of person, but tragedy can bring out unbecoming qualities in people.”

Now Steven did respond, “You’re right, tragedy tests us in ways that we would never imagine, and you are right, I do have a beautiful family and that’s something that I would never put at risk. Rest assured that I have not made any decision without understanding its implications or how those implications might affect my future and my family.

“I have run operations in almost every continent, professor, and I have seen violence and some of the worst that humans inflict on one another. Revenge and senseless violence were trained out of me long ago, if they were ever there in the first place.

“Your work has informed my decisions, but it has not driven them. I am not made to be guided simply by others’ work, even someone as accomplished as yourself. It’s just not in my DNA, so don’t worry about our conversations, this one or the one we had before. Again, thank you for your time and for your concern.”

Leonard’s face was transformed by that engaging smile that just seemed to materialize on his face without any effort whatsoever and he went back to the same affable personality with which he’d first greeted Steven. “It’s my pleasure, Mr. Loomis. Like I told you before, I am always happy to talk about my work. Good luck to you.” And with that their conversation was concluded.

As Steven had expected, his conversation with Leonard had provided clarity and understanding and with that a better sense of what he had to do.

Steven hailed a cab and headed back to his condo. He had reached out to Jim Scoma, the scientist in California that Leonard had referred him to, and had scheduled a call with him for later that afternoon. Once he got to his condo, Steven settled in, emptied his bags and made himself something to eat. They were simple tasks, but it felt good to be back at home and to get back to even a semblance of normality. He sat down at the small kitchen table with his laptop and as he ate his sandwich he read about the research that Leonard and Schultz had done.

Like everything else that he had found, this was fascinating and at the same time absolutely chilling. He imagined the chaos, pain and damage that these individuals could cause. Technology had allowed humanity to make discoveries that had seemed impossible just a decade earlier and those discoveries had benefited countless numbers of people, but technology also provided a glimpse into worlds that had before simply gone unnoticed, maybe unimagined.

This was such a glimpse, a glimpse of a world where humans were prey and the predators hunting them were among them, blending perfectly, using their weaknesses, their vulnerability to ensnare them. This wasn’t a world of zombies, or aliens or other fantastic monsters that human imagination had given birth to since the time that men had gathered around fires to tell their stories and tales of conquest. These monsters were much, much more dangerous, far more frightening than anything ever imagined or invented. These monsters went unseen and unnoticed; they used their appearance like a tiger might use its stripes to blend into the jungle around them. Steven thought about all of this and could not help but to think about his own daughter, about Riche and how he had probably hunted her and the other children, how none of them recognized him as the monster that he was, and it was that thought that gave him the most regret.

These thoughts were inevitable and he knew it, whatever else he was, whatever else he might become, he was still a grieving father.

His conversation with Leonard had done exactly what he thought it might. It had clarified why it was so important that he let the world know about the new species, about the science and about the danger that it presented to humanity.

People lived their lives, day in and day out, with a vague awareness of the dangers that might await them around any corner. At cocktail parties people lamented senseless violence and the decline of humanity, but they all lived with a sort of self-woven security blanket, a comfort that if they did not drift into an undefined underworld and if they took normal precautions and were vigilant then nothing untoward was going to happen to them, nothing was going to rip up their lives. Security alarms, neighborhood watch programs, guns and even law enforcement were the embodiments of how society dealt with the dangers it envisioned.

These predators were nothing like the dangers they imagined, however. They didn’t wait for their prey in dark alleys and abandoned, drug-infested buildings. They were not driven by greed or jealousy or drug-induced paranoia. These beings
thrived
in the places that seemed to offer humans the most safety, places like churches and schools and even their own homes. These predators relied on the ‘security’ these places offered; they relied on that false sense of security and order to ensnare their prey when they least expected it. His daughter hadn’t been taken from a dark alley or a deserted park covered by darkness. She wasn’t taken by a deranged lunatic where nobody could see it was happening, she was taken from her mother, in broad daylight with dozens, probably hundreds of people around and she was taken without a single cry for help being uttered. Steven had read the case file and that had been the case with every one of the girls. All of them had been taken from places where they should have been safe, all of them taken without warning and without a single trace of what had happened to them.

Riche had looked like a harmless, decent and educated individual. He had functioned among people with ease and had established a complete persona, an identity that had accomplished exactly what he’d hoped, to lull his victims into a feeling of safety or confidence, to allow him to go unnoticed and unchallenged.

Steven had also read the file on Riche and what hadn’t been in the file the media had already reported on. His early childhood had been troubled, although not extremely. His mother had left him when he was nine, but she’d never abused him. After that he’d lived with relatives, all of them had been decent families that had provided a sense of stability and care, if not love. They’d been supportive of him in everything he’d undertaken. Everything in the file let Steven and every other expert that had read it know that Riche had not been made by his environment, he had simply been born that way. Upon reaching adulthood he had understood that in order to engage in his brutal crimes, he would have to blend in, he would have to hone his hunting skills, and he would have to build a life that presented him to the world as a harmless and gentle soul.

As Riche had grown older, Steven imagined, he had refined his techniques, his predatory instincts to a point where he had become an almost perfect predator. There had been no evidence that there were more victims out there, but Steven and every expert studying the case believed that these last nine had almost certainly not been his only victims. Some people, Steven included, believed that there were more victims. A few of the experts and profilers had theorized that he had most likely been perfecting his techniques before he took the girls, and that meant he had most likely taken and murdered many more victims before he’d begun working on the last nine girls.

Stven finished his lunch and closed his computer, wondering how many others like Riche might be out there, but he stopped himself before he could get very far. He knew it might cause him to lose his focus and his objective might once again become unclear.

He went into his study and dialed the number for Jim Scoma. His research had let him know that Dr. James Scoma was genius-smart, but most definitely an eccentric. He had graduated from high school at the age of 15 and had obtained his first PhD in organic chemistry at the age of 19. He held three other PhDs, including one in philosophy, one in psychology and one in mathematics, and as if that wasn’t enough, the man had a medical degree with a specialty in forensic psychiatry. He had published no fewer than a 103 papers on a variety of topics including the expected extinction of the bees, global warming and the correlation between chaos theory and the evolution of social media. He had done revolutionary work on parallel systems programming and how it related to biological systems and evolution.

For the past 10 years, Scoma had been conducting research on genetic mutations and on evolutionary theory projections as it related to human cognition and sensory abilities. Most of what the man had written was way over Steven’s head, but what he had been able to understand was that Scoma believed that evolution had not stopped at
Homo sapiens
, it had continued to march on, at first with small, unnoticeable mutations within the human species, but eventually establishing a separate and distinct species from humans, perhaps more than one.

Leonard had been right. His work did not concentrate on the fringes of aberrant human behavior, but rather on other areas of the spectrum Leonard had explained to Loomis.

Steven dialed the number and Scoma picked up the phone on the third ring.

After saying their hellos and engaging in the requisite small talk, Steven got down to business, “Dr. Scoma, I have spoken with Dr. Leonard and I think I have a pretty good understanding of his work and his findings. I was hoping to also understand the work you are doing, how it’s similar to his work and how it might be different.”

On his end, Scoma smiled, sat behind his desk, put his feet up and proceeded to answer, “Sure, no problem. I have to warn you, though, once I get rolling I tend to get excited and just ramble on. If it starts happening, just stop me and ask me to rewind.”

Steven responded, “Fair enough, I’ll be sure to do that.”

Scoma went on, “Okay, so, you know about Leonard’s
Homo sapiens predator
and how he got there. He employed some of the same theories on evolution that we have, but given his area of focus, it was clear that whatever evolutionary step he was going to run into would be at the ‘bad’ end of the scale, for lack of a better world.

“We have simply not concentrated on the behaviors on his end of the scale, but rather on behaviors and abilities present in other individuals, behaviors and abilities that were clearly beyond what we, science, had established as human norms. We focused on abilities such as a hyperdeveloped sense of smell, auditory sensitivity far beyond what we had defined as humanly possible, same thing with eyesight and with every other one of the human senses. Synesthesia was a natural field for us.

Steven interrupted, “What’s synesthesia?”

Scoma answered without slowing down, “It is when the neural pathways in the brain that control each of our senses become entangled or overlap. People see sounds or they taste what they see, not figuratively, mind you, but literally. We are starting to find more and more people who have more than two senses that are interacting – seeing
and
tasting sound, that kind of thing. It was something virtually unknown previously, but it is definitely becoming more common.”

Steven interrupted again, “So it’s an indication of evolution?”

Scoma went on, “Well, there’s a lot more to it, but essentially, yes. It lets us know that this adaptation is becoming more common, which is not surprising given the amount of stimuli our brains have to deal with today. We also paid particular attention to every one of our subjects’ cognitive processes as they relate to morality. Before you ask what we mean by that, I’ll tell you. It is what people might commonly call their internal ‘moral compass.’ We were looking for clarity, for a defined and clear point of view as it related to their view of the world.

“It was fascinating stuff. We looked at philosophers, artists, clergy, anyone who adhered to a very clear idea of what they believed humanity should be.

“Don’t get me wrong, we were always of the opinion that humans, well, most of us anyway, naturally develop a sense of right and wrong. That basic construct is what guides parents when they are raising their children. It is something we found to be true in various cultures around the world, not just here in the US.

“When we did research among natives in New Guinea, the Indonesian islands, even in the remotest Amazon villages and corners of Africa, parents always instill in their offspring a clear idea of what they believe to be right and what is wrong. So killing an innocent person for no reason is something that is ‘bad’ regardless of where it happens and protecting and nurturing your family is always good. That didn’t mean their idea of a reason meshed with ours. A man in Papua, New Guinea might kill his wife for speaking to another man without an elder present. That would clearly be appalling to us, but it is a
reason
nonetheless, a reason they’ve been taught is enough to warrant killing.”

Scoma was going too fast for Steven. He was indeed captivated by the science he was researching and was talking more to himself than he was to Steven.

If he was going to get the information he needed, he had to focus the man and ask the questions he had, “Whoa, hang on there, professor, let me process what you are saying.”

Scoma chuckled on his end of the phone, “I told you I might get rolling. I apologize, it’s just that with Tyrone’s breakthroughs and some of the stuff we have come up with on our own, it is an exciting time for our field, a very exciting time indeed.”