Eleven (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

Hogan’s Alley originally named after a comic strip from the late 1800s is a mock town used by the FBI in Quantico, Virginia as a training ground for future special agents. Placed on ten plus acres, the government built it with the aid of Hollywood set designers. The fact that Jack mentioned it by comparison rendered me silent.

I latched eyes with him before studying the size of the hole. It was just large enough to fit the freezer through if turned and taken in lengthwise.

“This guy did a lot of planning,” Paige said. She moved closer to the tunnel entrance. “He definitely didn’t want to get caught and probably never thought he would. That could be the elevated thinking of a narcissist.”

Jack watched her speak, and something about the way his eyes fell, tracing to her lips, made me wonder about the nature of their relationship.

“Well, I’d definitely peg him as a psychotic too. Narcissists usually only kill if it’s the result of a personal affront. But this man gutted his victims and grinded their intestines. Who knows if he ate them?” A visible shiver ran through Paige, and for some reason gauging her reaction intensified the severity of the situation
.

For the last while, the training had taken over. I had cataloged the victims as fictional, not once living and breathing individuals. With the snap back to reality, I became aware of the presence of death and the way it hung in the air like a suffocating blanket. My stomach tightened and I felt sick.

“Question is, did these people threaten him in some way? Were they random? Or were these planned kills? The patience he seemed to execute with the cutting and burial indicates he was very organized. I’d almost lean to believe that they were planned, not random,” Zachery said.

“It could be they reminded him of one person who wronged him. That’s not uncommon,” Paige offered.

I was frozen in place, unable to move and incapable of thinking clearly.

The CSI hunched over and shone a flashlight into the opening. “It spreads out after a few feet. It almost looks as high as it does in here.”

“I want to know what happened to the intestines.” Jack made the blank statement. “Slingshot, any ideas?”

“The guy knew he was going to prison and had them cleaned up?”

“But why?”

I wanted to say,
what do you mean why?
I thought the answer was obvious, the question rhetorical. But I reasoned on the two words Jack spoke. There was little risk that this room would be discovered even if the bodies were. And if the bodies were, what was a little ground-up human intestine? Another toss of my stomach brought bile into the back of my throat. “I’m not sure.”

An ominous silence enveloped the room as if we were all absorbed in contemplating our mortality. The human reaction to death and uncertainty, of wanting to know but not wanting the answers, of sympathy for those lost yet relief that it wasn’t us.

The CSI made his way through the opening. His flashlight cast more light in the dimly lit space. I followed and heard the rest of them shuffle in behind me.

After a few feet, I was able to stand to full height.

The CSI looked up at the lit bulb. “The guy thought of everything.”

The electricity that had been run down here was basic and minimal. A band of wire ran from the
meat room
to here. But it wasn’t so much the electrical that garnered my attention.

To the side of the room, there was a stretcher with metal straps and stirrups. Beside it was a stainless steel tray with a single knife lying on it. Just like the table and meat grinder, light refracted off it. A tube of plastic sheeting stood vertically beside the bed.

“This just keeps getting creepier.” Paige took up position beside me.

“Say that again,” Deputy White said. “’Cuse me.” A hand snapped up to cover his mouth.

Jack was the last to come through the tunnel. I swear even he paused when his eyes settled on the items in the room. “What do you make of it, Kid?”

I put both hands on my hips. The one near the gun wanted to pull it on the man, but my control won out.
Why was it only me who needed to provide the answers?

“He killed them here.” I pointed back to where we came from. “Ground up their intestines in there.” I felt sick.

“Whoa nicely put, Pending,” Zachery said.

“And how did he get them down here?”

“Well, there’s got to be another way in. The freezer alone discloses that, and I mean obviously he wouldn’t be able to make the victims go down the ladder, past the meat grinder.” I took a deep breath.
Tell me this is the worst we will ever have to deal with.
I wanted to say the words audibly but knew it would be construed as a weakness. “There has to be another way in here, a passageway that connects to the burial sites.”

Paige said, “Bingham—”

“You assume,” Jack corrected her. “Maybe he worked with someone from the start. They picked the victims and brought them here.”

She disregarded him. “Bingham brought them down through the passageway that comes off the cellar. Maybe he drugged them or held them at gunpoint—”

“Or knife point.”

Paige rolled her eyes.

I looked forward to the day I could express myself in that manner to the
Supervisory Special Agent
.

“Whatever. The point is he had a system worked out. Bring them down, bring them in here, cut them, kill them, gut them—”

“You’re assuming he didn’t gut them while alive.”

The deputy tightened the placement of his hand over his mouth and swiveled his hips to the right.

“You said kill them, and then gut them?” Jack asked.

“Either way.” A large exhale moved her hair briefly upward. “Gut them to kill them. There you happy? He’s one sick son of a bitch either way.”

“And he just went away on a fluke charge, killing cows and assaulting a neighbor.” I knew once the words came out I should have thought them through. Deputy White looked capable of hauling me to the field and flogging me.

“Cattle are a v-very important investment ’round here. Farmin’ is what we people do. It’s to be respected an’ so is the livestock.”

The hint of a smirk dusted Jack’s lips. My discomfort brought him happiness. I felt my earlobes heat with anger.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then what did you mean?” Both the Kentucky-bred deputy and the local CSI kept their eyes on me.

“He has ten bodies buried underneath his property. Ten
human
bodies. There’s a freezer which seems to have been used to hold the unspeakable.” My arms pointed in both directions. “Numerous passageways, all the secrecy. Who was this guy really? And don’t say a killer. Because I think he was more than that.”

“What are you saying, Slingshot?”

“He didn’t kill them like this for no reason.” I gestured toward Zachery. “Maybe it’s something to do with that coinherence symbol of his, or maybe it has something to do with the health profession, but whatever it is, it was for a reason. This guy had something to say.”

Zachery stepped toward me. I moved back. He said, “The killers always have something to say.”

“Well, I believe this one has more to say than most.” All of them watched me as if I were about to shed light on the case. I wish I were.

CHAPTER 4

They say when you’ve seen as much as Jack nothing surprises you anymore. The cruelty and evil of the world hold no impact, but I swear even if it was just a glimmer in his eyes this case affected the man.

The rumor was Jack came to the FBI as a former Sergeant Major of the 7th Special Forces Group. In the 1980s, he had played a critical advisory role in the training of the Salvadoran military to deal with counter-insurgency. His last deployment had been
Operation Just
Cause, also known as the
Invasion of Panama
in ’89. When he retired from the military the following year and came to the FBI, he was given a pass straight to Supervisory Special Agent.

“So the guy gets his victims down here, but how? I mean there has to be a connection between this room and the burial sites,” the CSI said.

Jack fished out a cigarette. “That’s an obvious observation.”

The CSI held up a hand, pointed at the cigarette. “Not down here please.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed, and he perched it unlit in his lips. “Well, I suggest you and your CSI buddies get on finding the connection between the rooms. It’s got to be a large enough opening that the freezer could fit through it—”

“Could it be this easy?” I left the group, following the wiring on the ceiling and rounded a bend to the left.

“Slingshot, don’t go wandering off—” Jack came up behind me, his words dying on his tongue as looked on what I had found.

Smoothed concrete filled a space in the wall the size of a doorway.

“This location would line up with the tunnel that seemed to lead nowhere,” Zachery said.

Did I actually sense excitement in his voice?
My chest tightened and my next breath stalled. I needed out of this place. I needed to go above ground.

“This would make sense,” the CSI said. “In the tunnel that’s a dead end, the wire disappears up into the dirt.”

“Hmm.” Jack glared at the investigator. “The killer knew we’d catch on to what he had going. If the last murder was done after Bingham was in prison, his apprentice—” Jack glanced at me, and Zachery smirked. “—He came back to clean up the mess. He knew that Bingham’s sister died and the property would be reclaimed.”

“But why not close off access to everything?” I asked the question. “Why not cover over the empty grave? Why not block off the entrance from the cellar?”

Jack’s lips curled upward. “You have to ask that?”

“He had a message to send,” Paige said, stepping forward. “This isn’t over yet. The unsub plans to kill at least one more, and they want us to know it.”

“But why wouldn’t they just keep up the payments. He had something going here,” I countered.

“It was time to move on. Maybe the apprentice isn’t from this area but traveled here? With Bingham in prison, they could have started to kill in their hometown?”

“So this other killer has money for travel. It fits the profile for a serial killer—mobile,” Zachery observed.

“And by all appearances the unsub plans to kill again if he hasn’t already. They saw merit in what Bingham had done and respected him. Someone like that would want to let Bingham know. They’d likely be in contact. We’ll need to get a copy of Bingham’s visitor log at the prison.” Jack passed a glance to the CSI and flicked his lighter.

“Please, don’t—”

Jack put the lighter back in his pocket but continued to let the cigarette bob on his lips as he spoke. “We’ll get a media blackout in place and call it a night. We don’t need details of the find getting out. It would cause panic, and worse case, scare off the unsub. He’ll lay low, and we’ll never find him. In the morning, the kid and I will go to the prison. I want you two,” he addressed Paige and Zach, “to talk to the man Bingham assaulted.”