Steven James - The Rook

He gazed at me and licked at the hot blood on his lips. “It feels good, doesn’t it, Detective? It feels really good.”

It feels good, doesn’t it?

And the thing I’ve never told anybody, never mentioned in any of my reports, was that it did. It did feel good when I hit him. A rush of fire and anger and power. And, to a certain part of me, it would have felt good to grab the scalpel and keep going, to give in to the primal drift in my soul. Part of me would have enjoyed the savagery.

I didn’t answer him that day, but I think my silence spoke my thoughts.

Later, Basque told the interrogating officers that he’d broken his jaw when the meat hook hit him in the face. And that’s what went in the case files and I didn’t correct them. So for the last thirteen years, by his silence and mine, we’ve shared a secret that has frightened me more than any killer I’ve ever faced. The secret that it felt good to take a step in the direction of evil. Yes, it did.

I found out later that the woman’s name was Sylvia Padilla. She was his sixteenth victim.

At least, that’s how many we know about.

And that day, as she died beside me and I saw the extent of the horrors one human being could do to another, a cold shiver burrowed its way deep into my soul and has wormed around inside of me ever since.

A shivering reminder of how close I came to becoming what I hunt.

Tessa’s comments in the restaurant and on the beach had struck a nerve, because this month, after more than a dozen years on death row, Richard Devin Basque was being retried as the result of some DNA test discrepancies. And since I’d only caught him at the scene, not in the act of murder, the case wasn’t going to be a slam dunk.

My buddy Agent Ralph Hawkins would be testifying tomorrow.

The trial would probably go on for months, and eventually I would be called in to testify too. But that’s not what was bothering me as I sat beside my stepdaughter. I was thinking of the secret I shared with Basque.

That, yes, it felt good.

“You’re not like them, are you?” she’d asked me.

And I’d told her no.

But maybe I am.

Sitting beneath the pale moonlight, Tessa and I watched the hungry waves lap at the shore. And for a few moments it seemed like we had always known each other, that she really was my daughter, that I really was her father, and that we had a lifetime of shared memories stored up someplace, ready to take us through whatever rough times might lay ahead.

But the feeling lasted only a moment. Then it was gone. Sea mist entwined us and the cold spaces between the distant stars landed on the beach all around us. I felt a chill. Maybe it was the wind. Maybe it was the deep night creeping slowly up the shore.

“I’m getting cold,” Tessa said.

“Me too,” I said. “Let’s go. It’s still a long walk back to the car.”

As we stood, she gazed at the world’s only ocean one last time.

“Being here, right now, with the wind and the night and everything.

It reminds me of something I read once.”

“What’s that?”

She gave the moonlit waves a steady, thoughtful stare. “‘It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty.’” And then, looking toward me, she added, “Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher.”

“That’s eerie,” I said. “And beautiful too.”

“You’re right,” she said. “It is. It’s both.”

I thought for a moment about reaching over and putting my hand on her shoulder, but I decided not to. The wind blew salty gusts in from the ocean, and somewhere above us a gull screeched its way through the night. For a moment, the gull’s cry sounded like a human scream stretched out across the water.

Like a woman’s scream echoing off the concrete floor of a slaughterhouse.

I reached into my pocket, and as I pulled out the car keys, I remembered where I’d placed them on the table, behind the salad bowl.

“Come on,” I said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

“What’s that?”

“The future.”

Creighton Melice parked his car in front of one of the bottom-feeder bars in a gang-infested neighborhood of southern San Diego. He figured that at least half of the people in the place would be carrying, so he made sure he’d chambered a round in his Glock before stepping out of the car.

A few women who’d ignored the cool weather and were wearing skin-tight wisps of clothing propositioned Creighton on his way into the bar, but he just brushed them off. He wasn’t interested in their kind.

He wanted a girlfriend with a little more class.

Some of the gangbangers lurking around the tables stared at Creighton as he entered. A few of them eyed his face and hands, focusing on the array of scars and burn marks he carried, but most of the bangers were probably just wondering if he was a cop. The attention didn’t bother Creighton. He knew how to act around bangers. After all, he’d been one himself back in the day.

In a gang, it’s all about respect. So instead of staring down or provoking the little punks, he just gave them each a casual nod as he walked past.

They seemed to accept that and, one by one, drifted back to their murmured conversations, keeping one cautious eye on him as he took his seat at the bar.

Creighton ordered two beers and let his eyes browse the room.

The woman sitting by herself beneath the Bud Light sign looked a little too drunk. Pass.

The African-American woman who was checking him out from the booth by the end of the bar appeared a little too eager. Never a good sign.

He took a long, slow drink and found his attention drawn to an attractive, dark-skinned brunette sitting alone at a table beside the window. She didn’t look like an untraceable, undocumented immigrant, but she was appealing to Melice for other reasons. She looked bored and was apparently confident enough not to feel the need to dress like a ten-dollar whore to find a guy.

Hmm. Interesting.

He grabbed the two beers and maneuvered through the crowd to her table.

Being confident. That’s the key. It’s all about confidence. If you’re confident enough, people will go wherever you lead them, believe whatever you say. That’s how Jeffrey Dahmer did it. Complete confidence. He once convinced two cops that the drugged, naked guy in handcuffs wandering around the streets was his drunk lover.

So the officers dropped the guy off at Dahmer’s apartment, where he promptly killed and then ate him. Another time some cops came to his place to investigate the smell seeping through the walls of his apartment, and Dahmer convinced them that it was just the aquarium he hadn’t gotten around to cleaning. They didn’t bother to check his bedroom, or they would have found the rotting corpse on his bed.

So.

Confidence.

Creighton set both beers on the brunette’s table. “I need some advice.”

She looked at the bottles of beer and then gave Creighton a slight grin. “Oh yeah? What kind of advice?”

Over the years Creighton had discovered that people are more suspicious of you if you offer them something for nothing. The kinder you are, the more they think you want something from them. People trust need, not charity.

He leaned his hand against the chair beside her. “I’m new around here. I need someone to show me around the city.”

A raised eyebrow. A little sarcasm. “Do I look like a tour guide?”

“You look like someone who’s tired of all the scumbags in this hellhole leering at you. You look like someone who knows you could do better for tonight, if only the right guy wandered into your life.”

So.