Succulent Prey (24 page)

street corner and darkened corridor.

"May I help you, young man?"

"I'm here to visit one of your patients."

"What ward is he in?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. He was pretty violent at one time. They might have him in

isolation."

"If he's in isolation then they won't al ow him to have visitors. What's his name?"

"Damon Trent."

"Trent? What's your name, sir?" The old crone's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"My name is Joseph Miles."

"Are you on his visitors list?"

"I should be. I'm a relative. I'm his cousin. We grew up together." Joe smiled wide in an effort to reassure her, but her eyes remained hard and distrustful.

"Give me a second to check."

The octogenarian receptionist turned her profile to him and began tapping her

profile to him and began tapping her

spindly arthritic talons on the computer keyboard, cal ing up Trent's patient

information. As she did so, she cast a

glance at the two armed prison guards

who stood chatting idly by the elevators. Instantly they stood at attention and

began taking notice of the large wel groomed young man with the physique of a professional bodybuilder. Despite

the smile he kept plastered to his face, they could sense danger from him.

"Oh, here it is. I'm so sorry, it seems your name is on his visitors list. It was added just two days ago. I'l stil need to see some ID."

Joe fished into his pocket for his

California driver's license and handed it to her.

"You say it was added just two days ago?"

"Yes. Mr. Trent requested the addition himself. Had his lawyer cal the head

nurse."

She handed him a visitor's pass and

directed him through the metal detector and over to the elevators.

"Trent's room is downstairs. Wait a second and I'l have one of our orderlies escort you."

Joe was stunned. Two days ago he had

first left San Francisco. Somehow

Damon had known and was expecting

him.

The two corrections officers continued to watch him as he shuffled nervously from foot to foot, waiting for an orderly to come and lead him downstairs. Joe kept

his eyes straight ahead. He was used to being stared at, but the thick animal

musk of testosterone wafting from the

two guards was maddening. They were

chal enging him and his alpha-male

instincts wanted to take up the

chal enge. He was already calculating

the number of strikes it would take to

bring them down before they could draw

their weapons. The elevator doors slid

open and a short, fat, black orderly

stepped out and ushered him inside.

"You here to see Damon Trent, right?

Step on in."

He held the elevator door open for Joe, smiling like an idiot. Joe smiled back at him, bristling inside.

Joe stepped inside, casting a furious

glance back over his shoulder at the two officers. His lip curled into a snarl as his eyes locked with theirs. They started

forward to confront him, unsure of why or what they would do. The doors closed,

severing the fierce tension and leaving Joe to focus on the man waiting for him in the basement. He would have felt

much better confronting Damon with a

stomach ful of meat from a fresh kil , warm blood drenching his skin like war

paint. The two toy cops upstairs would

have made the perfect prey. Their deaths would have made him feel stronger,

better prepared for the coming

madness. The orderly would have turned

his stomach. He looked too greasy.

"So what do you want to see Trent for?

You a fan or a relative?"

"I'm his cousin."

"Yeah. Uh-huh." The man continued to stare at Joe suspiciously. Joe wondered how many people snuck into this place

to talk to the many serial kil ers housed here out of some perverse hero worship

or to get interviews for newspapers. He wondered how many had come to see

Damon Trent. Stil , there was more

behind the fat orderly's stare. The man acted as if he knew something. The

doors slid open and they stepped out

into a dimly lit hal .

"Here we are. He's right down this hal way."

A row of fluorescent lights flickered

eerily in the empty hal way that led to Trent's room, casting swift shadows that chased each other across the

institutional green wal s. Joseph stepped out of the elevator and his nostrils flared with the aroma of insanity and disease, urine, feces, blood, sweat, and

medication. Moans and screams,

giggles and mad cackles seemed to

come at him from al directions. He could hear someone shouting at the top of his lungs to tel Jesus he was here while

someone else laughed uncontrol ably in

response and stil another person hurled a foul stream of invectives at him. Joe felt his anxiety increasing, as the wal s of the madhouse seemed to close in on

him.

This is where I'l wind up if I don't cure this thing, he thought.

"So why did you decide to come visit yooour ... cousin after al this time?"

"None of your fucking business," Joe replied, tiring of the little man and his innuendoes. They stopped outside two

large double doors that were locked with a keypad. A sign on the door read

SEXUAL OFFENDER MAXIMUM

SECURITY WARD. To the left of the

doors an enormous black guard sat

behind a desk reading a magazine.

"Yeah, fuck you too. Empty your pockets. We've got to make sure you ain't got no drugs or weapons on you."

The guard rose up from behind the desk

and began patting Joe down without so

much as an introduction.

The huge black corrections officer was

even larger than Joe. He stood nearly six foot eight and had to be over three

hundred pounds. Hard, blueblack

muscle rippled beneath his uniform,

which seemed to be struggling to

contain his Herculean mass. His head

was shaved as if to accentuate the scars on it, no doubt the result of street fights. Joe didn't want to imagine what it would take to bring down a man that size. Even without the Glock .40 on the guard's

waist and the Monadnock PR24 baton

dangling from his hip, he would have

been a handful. He was an inmate's

worst nightmare. The star of many a

prison rape nightmare. His biceps

looked like smal hams. He had

obviously made good use of the workout

equipment the patients were probably

too heavily medicated to appreciate. He slid his hands from Joe's shoulders

down to his ankles and then up between

his thighs, even grabbing at his crotch. Joe passively submitted to the rough

and invasive search before being

al owed into the patient's ward. The

guard turned al of Joe's pockets inside out, withdrew his wal et and keys, and

placed them in a manila envelope. Then

he sauntered back over to his desk and

hit a button that unlocked the doors.

"You can pick up this stuff on the way out," he said, kicking his feet back up on the desk and going back to reading the

sports magazine. The orderly pushed

open the double doors and they entered

the asylum. Joe could hear his own

breaths and heartbeat as if amplified

through a speaker.

The Sexual Offender Maximum Security

Ward was nothing like the prison Joe

had been expecting. Al the doors stood open except a few where the patients

had no doubt been confined for

transgressions against whatever rules

regulated life here. The rest wandered

the hal s gibbering to themselves or

gleeful y relaying their crimes to other inmates, comparing atrocities in

breathless whispers, their lusts

undisguised, eyes aflame with passion

like old men reliving lost youth. Some sat hol ow-eyed in chairs or on floors,

perhaps staring backward at the

childhood abuses that had first broken

them and led them to destroy others.

"Most of these freaks here are child molesters and serial rapists. We don't

get that many kil ers here. The state likes to see the kil ers go to death row. It

makes the citizenry feel safer, you know what I'm sayin'? They don't like the idea that a kil er might someday walk up out of this place because some fool doctor

declares him sane, only to cut somebody else up. If they're locked up for life or taking that lethal injection then no one has to worry about that. Me, I'd worry

more about the child molesters they're

letting out of this place every day. There's no curing them. They al wind up right

back here again and those are the guys

that create the kil ers. Most every kil er that's ever been in here was raped as a child."

Joe remained silent.

"Yeah, your cousin is kind of a celebrity around here. He's the most famous kil er we've got."

Joe was relieved when they final y

stopped in front of one locked door and the orderly pointed at it and grinned.

"Wel , here he is."

Adrenaline spurted into his bloodstream and quickened his pulse as he

approached the bul etproof window, and

stared in at the pudgy little man sitting on the single bed in a dingy straitjacket. The guard opened the door and ushered

him inside. Joe hesitated, noticeably

shaken.

"You've got fifteen minutes. I'l be right outside this door, watching. If you need help or want to leave early, just wave. Do not touch the patient. If you attempt to pass anything to the patient you wil be removed and arrested."

"Thanks." Joe hadn't taken his eyes off Damon once. He shuffled inside the

musty, claustrophobic little room and it was like stepping through a time

machine. Al the old emotions came

flooding down upon him in one great

avalanche that pounded the air from his lungs and weakened his knees. Al the

fear, the pain, the confusion, and then the murderous rage. The rage grew and

grew until it obliterated al else and

dragged the abused child this demon

had violated back to the surface. Joe

flexed his muscles and rol ed his

massive shoulders as if to remind

himself that he was no longer a child. He was a man now ... a very large and

formidable man. A superpredator. The

guard closed and locked the door

behind him and Joe winced.

Damon Trent hadn't changed much since

the last time Joe had seen him, grinning at him from across the courtroom at his murder trial more than a decade ago.

Then, he had stil seemed like some

misguided delinquent. Everyone except

Joe had found it difficult reconciling the awkward fat kid with the murders he was accused of, but the evidence had been

irrefutable. Damon was found "not guilty by reason of mental defect" of six counts of first-degree murder after less than an hour of deliberation, then sentenced to this maximum security mental facility

when state psychiatrists agreed that he suffered from psychotic delusions that

impaired his ability to distinguish right from-wrong.The years spent locked in his six-foot-bysix-foot cel , staring at the antique white wal s, baring his soul to a procession of disinterested shrinks, ingesting

antipsychotics with his morning orange

juice, didn't seem to have altered him

much, but instead had settled and

hardened his features. What was once

baby fat was now elephantine rol s that smothered his neck and torso in layers

of superfluous flesh.

His face was likewise round and pudgy

and erupting with the same acne that

had been there at the age of nineteen.

His oily hair was stil long and feathered back like the heavy-metal geek he'd

been in high school. Nicotine-stained

teeth gave his smile a monstrous

gargoyle aspect. Stil , he looked far too out of shape to be dangerous, like an

oversized toddler. But Joe knew better. Shivers crawled under his skin as

Damon's piggish little eyes gleamed out at him with a terrible cunning, fol owing Joe as he entered the room and took a

seat opposite him. The sadistic

pederast's thick cheeks pul ed back into a cherubic dimpled smile, hideous for its ironic resemblance to his chosen prey:

young children. When he spoke, his

voice squeaked as if he were stil in the hormonal chaos of puberty.

"Welcome back."

"Fuck you, Damon."

"Okay. So if you aren't a fan then what brings you here?"

"You know who I am and you obviously know why I'm here."

"To kil me? How do you intend to do that with me locked up in here? That is,

without trading places with me? I assure you, this is no place for a predator." Damon winked at him.

Joe's eyes widened.

"How do I know? How do I know what you've become? What you've done? The

lives you've taken? How did I know that you were coming here? Because I'm

inside of you, little Joseph . . ." He patted his stomach and licked his lips. "... and you are inside of me."

"And that's why I have to kil you."

"So kil me! The COs here are rather overzealous, though. Especial y that big black son of a bitch. He nearly broke my arm once trying to wrestle me into a

straitjacket. He doesn't know his own

strength. If he didn't snap your neck like a twig, the other guards would shoot you dead the minute they saw your hands on

my throat." Trent's dark beady eyes narrowed as his smile widened. He

watched the veins in Joe's forearms

protrude, his biceps bulge, wound with

tension.

"My, you've grown! You're quite a big boy now. Not real y my taste but I might be inclined to make an exception." Trent continued to tease, feeling safe with so many guards standing just beyond the