Succulent Prey (15 page)

bleach, then dragged the bucket into the bedroom. He thought it would be wise to clean up a little before trying to drag Alicia out of the bathroom. He didn't

know how much she had seen through

that little crack in the door, but he could at least spare her the further trauma of seeing the aftermath of his passions.

Emma Purcel 's mauled and masticated

remains disappeared into a plastic

bedsheet and a cheap area rug. She

was then dragged into the next

apartment where her corpse would sit

and decompose until Joe could figure

out what to do with it. Al evidence of her death in that dingy little bedroom was

scrubbed with ammonia and washed

down the sink. When Joseph turned

toward the master bath door, the room

looked even cleaner than it had before

he kil ed Emma. The acrid pungency of

ammonia and bleach had completely

masked the smel of fetid blood.

The beautiful Spanish girl with the ful red lips, the caramel skin, the luxurious

mane of curly black hair, thick meaty

hips and thighs, ful breasts, and fat

perfectly rounded ass, sat in the bathtub shivering. She rocked back and forth

moaning quietly.

"Alicia?"

At the sound of his voice she began to

scramble like a trapped animal, trying to claw her way through the shower tiles.

Her wrists were stil bound but somehow she had gotten her arms from behind her back to the front. Her shoulders were

turning blue and Joe suspected that she had dislocated them. Cautiously he

approached his traumatized victim. He

reached out and careful y removed the

bal gag from her mouth.

"Alicia ... I'm sorry that you saw that. I didn't mean for you to-"

"You ate her! You ate that woman! She was screaming and you just kept biting

her!" She began to tremble convulsively as the image of this gorgeous man that

she'd once been so excited about

sleeping with, cracking open that

woman's rib cage and ripping her heart

out as if he were shucking an oyster

from its shel flashed through her mind. She recal ed his face, covered in an oily red mask of blood and tissue, his eyes

wild with an unfathomable bloodlust. This man who she'd almost forgiven for

chaining her up and biting off her

nipples, who she'd begun to fantasize

about curing of his psychotic dementia

and living happily ever after with.

"Alicia, I'm trying so hard not to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you, but the hunger was getting so strong. I-I was afraid I wouldn't be able to control myself. I had to do

something!"

Alicia curled up into the fetal position at the bottom of the tub and began to cry. Joe reached in and lifted her from the

tub. He brought her back over to the bed and chained her up again.

Joe scrambled some eggs and made

bacon and toast but Alicia would not eat it so he left it by the side of the bed along with fresh water. He emptied the

bucket that sat alongside the bed and

replaced it, just in case she needed to use it while he was gone.

"I have to go. I'l be back later." It was far too early for class so Joe

walked across campus to the gym,

getting there just as the wrestling team was finishing up their weight training and the footbal players were starting to pile in. Joe was bigger and stronger than

most of the players on the team. He

knew they thought he was crazy for not

playing, but he had more important

things to do than run up and down a field chasing a weather-beaten pigskin.

Ignoring the loud laughing and joking

from the players, Joe began stacking

weight onto the bar. He loaded 225

pounds onto the weight bench to begin

his warmup and then proceeded to do

two sets of fifteen reps with it. He ended by bench-pressing 405 pounds, doing

nearly five hundred on the decline press and 365 on the incline. He then did

some curls with 180 pounds and finished with five hundred stomach crunches.

With every grueling set of exercises

Joe's mind went inexorably back to

Trent. He couldn't get that damned

pedophile out of his mind. He had to find him and kil him and that meant he

needed to get a car, preferably a van so that he could transport Alicia without

having to lock her in a trunk. He had the librarian's wedding and engagement

rings and about forty dol ars from her

purse. The engagement ring was a huge

solitaire, at least three carats. Her last husband had probably purchased it for

four or five grand. Joe thought he might be able to get seven or eight hundred for it at a pawnshop but more than likely

he'd have to settle for five or six hundred, an eighth of its value. That meant some very cheap transportation. If he went to a used car lot it would probably be enough fora down payment.

Joe grabbed a forty-five-pound weight

and placed it on his chest as he groaned and strained his way through another fifty crunches. When he stood, his abdominal

muscles were wound up tight and

starting to cramp. He stretched

backward as far as he could to loosen

them up before he went to hit the

showers. By the time he had undressed

and stepped into the shower it was

empty. Everyone had hurried to finish

washing before he stepped in. He made

them nervous. Joe knew that as soon as

someone found the librarian's body he'd be the first suspect.

He doubted that anyone had seen him

going in and out of the abandoned

apartment building. The building was

located in a commercial area that closed up at night and he never went there

during the day. There were nothing but

derelicts and drug addicts down there at night after al the businesses closed and they would not be inclined to speak to

the police. That's why he had chosen it. He didn't have to worry about nosy

neighbors. Stil , everyone knew he

stayed at the library late almost every night and he was sure Emma had told

others about the type of stuff he read. Besides that, he just hadn't done a very good job at concealing his sexual

peculiarities.

No one knew for sure just what his

malfunction was, but the general

consensus was that the huge psychology

student definitely wasn't quite right. His sexual deviancy shone like a beacon

whenever he stepped into a room. In

many cases it had worked for him,

attracting women looking for a new thril , but now he was sure it would work

against him once they found Emma's

half-eaten corpse in the apartment next door to the one he was squatting in.

Everyone would point the finger at him. Before he left for his trip, he would

meticulously wipe down everything in the little apartment and then burn the whole thing to the ground. Everything would be okay. By the time the cops sifted enough evidence from the ashes to connect him

to the crime he would be long gone.

Joe started to whistle as he made his

way across campus to his psychology

class.

Chapter Eighteen

Everyone turned to look at him as Joe

walked into the room. The cops had

been there. He could tel . They had been asking questions about the librarian and his name had come up. That meant they

would be back.

Joe slipped down into his seat and

stared defiantly at the professor, waiting for him to begin his lecture. They had

nothing on him, not yet anyway, so he stil had every right to be there. The

professor stared back at him with an

expression that was ful of questions and suspicion. His hand shook as he raised

it to scrawl on the blackboard.

it to scrawl on the blackboard.

The eyes of his fel ow students crawled over Joe's flesh. He imagined he could

feel each of their curious stares like a legion of worms trying to wriggle their way into his mind to harvest his thoughts. It made him itch. He scratched the back of his neck as if to rake their stares from his skin. The professor kept looking

back over his shoulder at him as he

wrote on the chalkboard. Joe knew he

had burned that bridge. It was obvious

that everyone, including Professor

Locke, suspected him of having done

something to the librarian. Professor

Locke had spent most of his career

profiling and apprehending serial kil ers. If anyone could spot the monster in their midst it would be him. There was no way the professor would help him now.

"There have been many theories that have tried to link the compulsion to kil to brain abnormalities. There was once a

theory that murderers possessed an

extra Y chromosome. This was, of

course, disproven. There have been

theories that have sought to link early head trauma to violent criminal behavior. Neurologists have even presented CAT

scans that actual y showed increased

brain activity in the limbic region of

violent sexual offenders and decreased

activity in other areas of the brain. They have found that most signature sex

murderers were themselves victims of

physical or sexual abuse or at the very least mental y abused, but then there

were others, like Ted Bundy, who had

very normal and happy upbringings. And

then there are, of course, people who

have been abused, who have had brain

traumas, and who have active limbic

systems that don't grow up to murder

strangers. So what makes them do it?" The professor turned to look directly at Joe.

"Are they just evil?" the professor asked. Joe raised his hand and he felt the

students on either side of him flinch.

Professor Locke stared at Joe's rising

arm then looked around the room as if

seeking the class's approval before

cal ing on him.

"Yes, Joseph?"

"Is it possible that it is an evolutionary mutation?"

"A what?"

"An evolutionary mutation, part of natural selection. Man is the only creature on the earth without a natural predator, except other men. Perhaps as our population

explodes Mother Nature has felt the

need to select certain individuals to act as population control. Perhaps giving

them drives and instincts that other

humans don't have, which genetical y

predisposes them to mass murder-to

cul the herd, so to speak. In the wild the weak and the helpless would have died

off, kil ed by other animals, other

predators, but civilization and our

technological advancements have made

for the possibility of even the weakest human beings surviving and flourishing. As a result, a world that was adequate to support smal tribes is now populated by nations of mil ions, smothering the earth and draining it of al its resources; kil ing it like a cancer. Just three hundred years ago there weren't even a bil ion people on the planet and now there are six

bil ion. There are more people alive right now than have ever lived. Perhaps

nature is just seeking a remedy for the plague. Isn't it possible that murderers are the natural antivirus?"

Joe didn't care about the stares and the whispers. After today he would have to

get out of town. This would probably be his last opportunity to pick the

professor's brain before the cops came

knocking on his door.

"Wel , Joe, if what you suggest is true and signature kil ers are just men who

are higher up the food chain than us, not a glitch but an advancement in the

natural selection process, then there

would be no hope to cure these

individuals. There would be no need for the psychiatrist, only the policeman and the executioner."

"Perhaps that's why no one has ever cured one," Joe replied.

"I think I liked your virus idea better. At least that one contained a little hope."

"Yeah, I liked it better too." The class ended and Joe left the lecture hal and walked quickly to his sociology class. He scoured the campus for signs

of police. They had no evidence that the woman was even dead, just that she was

missing. Someone probably cal ed when

she hadn't shown up for work and they

couldn't get an answer at her apartment. He'd parked her car down in the projects at Hunter's Point and caught the bus

back home. By the time they found it the car would probably be completely

stripped and they would assume she'd

been the victim of a carjacking. Except that half the fucking campus was

probably tel ing the cops that Joe hung out at the library every night and he was sure a few of them had seen them at the coffee shop. If they somehow found his

apartment they'd find the body. But by

then he'd be in Seattlekil ing Damon

Trent.

Chapter Nineteen

Joe's sociology class seemed to be

exploring darker and darker subjects.

His constant questions were certainly a major impetus behind the trend but he

could not take sole responsibility for it. They'd begun by talking about Indian

folklore and the subject of the Wendigo had come up.

"Both the Chippewa and Ojibwa tribes tel a similar story of a fierce warrior who would cut off a piece of his enemy's flesh after defeating him in battle and eat it to gain strength. This warrior soon

developed a taste for human flesh and

began to prey on his own tribe. He

began to prey on his own tribe. He

ceased to hunt animals and sustained

himself solely on other humans. So the

Master Of Life, the Great Spirit, decreed that if he chose to live as a savage