Consumed (18 page)

“Who?”

“What the hell do you mean
who
?” Richard asked.

“What are you doing with that saw?”

Richard glanced over his shoulder at his brother standing in his sheriff’s uniform in the doorway.

Mark approached from the side. “Jesus, Richie, what the hell are you doing!” Mark lunged for the saw, grasped it, and tried to pull it away. “Give me the damn saw!” Mark shouted.

“Or what? You’re going to kill us both?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Richie. Now give me the damn saw!”

“He’s going to kill us!” Richard heard his father yell. “He’s going for his gun!”

Richard dropped the saw to the bed and went immediately for the hunting knife on his hip. He yanked it from the sheath and swung it backhand at his brother’s chest. Mark stumbled backward, holding the handle of the blade that came from his heart.

“That’s exactly what you deserve,” Richard said.

Mark collapsed to the floor near the door of the bedroom. Richard grabbed the saw from the bed and turned his head back to continue sawing at the cuff’s chains—though he didn’t see cuffs or an arm attached to them or his father. Richard saw blood and a hacksaw blade with bits of flesh stuck to the teeth. He looked at his left arm holding the bed frame and pumping blood. He’d cut three quarters of the way through the bones of his left forearm.

Beth and I stood a hundred feet from the side of the smaller house, staring up into the sky. She held her head in her hands to keep her hair from whipping about. A black helicopter was descending onto the field of the Kirkwood property just a hundred feet away. Beth had received the phone call an hour prior that Memphis was sending a
bird
, as they called it, with a full forensics team—apparently, the call from Ball had gotten the troops we needed.

I looked back at the smaller of the two homes we’d been inside. Tom had another four or five agents standing around with him—there was nothing for them to do inside the homes until our forensics team had a crack at them, yet they’d spent the better part of the last half hour marking blood in the grass as evidence, from the smaller home up to the older of the two. We’d pushed the local sheriff’s department deputies back off to the street and had them set up a checkpoint a half mile down in each direction. We didn’t know where Richard Kirkwood was, and his coming back home was a definite possibility. With the checkpoints in place, he would be spotted coming through. I gave the deputies orders to go after anyone who turned away from the checkpoints as well as to be on the lookout for a Datsun pickup truck.

The helicopter landed with a light touch of each landing skid before coming down completely. The side door slid open, and five people exited—all carried large gray plastic boxes. They crouched as they moved away from the wind of the rotors. Beth waved the group toward us. We exchanged introductions with the team over the noise of the helicopter lifting off again. The four men and one woman were the forensics unit we’d requested. The helicopter headed to the west, back the way it had come.

“What are we looking at here?” one of the men asked. He’d said his name was Tony, and the lead, during our round of introductions. Like the other three men that accompanied him, as well as the woman, Tony wore khaki pants with a long-sleeved blue shirt that read FBI Evidence Recovery Team in yellow letters across the back.

“We have remains in both properties,” I said. “They’ve both been cleared but have been untouched aside from that.”

“The nature of the remains in the houses?” asked the woman, who’d introduced herself as Carmen.

I pointed up to the older home in ruins. “Dismembered body in that one. Signs that multiple murders, or at least dismemberments, have happened in there—lots of older-looking blood. We also have blood in the grass leading up to that property that has been marked off with evidence cones. Inside the home, there is a padlocked door in the property that we did not access. Whoever goes in, mind your footing—the place isn’t in the best of shape, structurally.” I turned and motioned toward the smaller home beside us. “In the kitchen of this one, we found severed arms, legs, blood, and um…” I ran my hand over my hair. “A slow cooker that’s on and cooking something in there.”

For a moment, the only noise was from the helicopter, which could still be heard a ways off in the distance. The forensics group stared back at me after my last comment about the kitchen but didn’t respond.

“Yeah, probably what you’re thinking right now,” I said.

Tony spoke up. “Okay, I’ll take this house here with Jim and Eddie. Carmen, take Rob with you up to that old house. Let’s do a thorough process of everything that’s visible, and then we’ll try to get into that locked door once that is complete.” He looked at me. “We’ll need a quick swab from anyone that we know was in the properties, to rule them out. Prints for anyone official we should already have on file.”

I nodded. “Just a little FYI. We believe that the victims were prostitutes. I’m not sure if the possibility of diseases affects what you guys do, but there is a lot of blood in both areas.”

“Okay. Appreciate that information,” Tony said. “From the sounds of it, we might need a biohazard removal team of some sorts, but we’ll do what we can to collect whatever evidence we can and then address that.”

“Sure, just let me know,” I said.

The forensics group geared up in white clean suits and dispersed to the two houses.

“What do you think?” I asked Beth.

She shrugged. “We need to find this guy. The way the chief deputy talked about him, he shouldn’t be able to do any of this, much less be able to avoid apprehension.”

“I’m not putting much stock into anything Whissell has told us. The guy had a serial killer under his nose the entire time.” I thought for a moment. “Whissell said that this guy had people coming over, bringing him food, and taking him back and forth to church. Things like that.”

“Yeah,” Beth said. “How would nobody ever notice this? Unless nobody ever went into the house.”

“I don’t know, but it’s not out of the question that this guy could have an accomplice. Someone local damn sure knows something about this guy—what he drives, where he goes, something. Aside from that, we can get a good description from someone and see if it matches up with the guy I saw. I’m going to call Whissell and see if he can give me some names.”

Beth nodded. “I want to see what we can get on that vehicle. I’m going to give Ball a ring back and see what we can come up with on registered Datsuns in the area.”

“Can we search by that?” I asked. “I know, as far as DMV records, if you don’t have a plate number or name, you’re pretty much screwed as far as them searching their database.”

“The twins will get us something,” Beth said. “They’ve got me things in the past that I figured they’d never be able to find.” She pulled out her cell phone to make the call.

“Fair enough.”

I dialed the sheriff’s station. The receptionist answered right away with the same greeting I’d heard in my last few calls, asking me if I had an emergency.

“No, ma’am. This is Agent Hank Rawlings. I’m looking to speak with Chief Deputy Whissell.”

“Um, I’m not sure if he’s in. Hold on, I’ll try transferring you back to his office. If you get his voice mail, hit zero, and it will bring you back to me. I’ll try putting you through to his mobile phone then.”

“Sure,” I said.

I held, received Whissell’s voice mail at his desk within a few rings, left a message, and pressed zero to be reconnected with the receptionist.

“No answer at the chief deputy’s desk,” I said.

“Okay, yeah, I haven’t seen him all morning, but he’s usually pretty scarce around here on Sundays. Let me transfer you to his mobile.”

“Thank you.”

She put me through. The phone rang in my ear nine or ten times before I reached the voice mail on his cell. I left another message that I was looking to speak with him and hung up.

Tom walked to my side. “What do you need my guys on?”

I thought for a moment. “Forensics is going to be busy with these two places for a bit before we can go in and have a look around. Let’s see what we can do about getting a news crew.”

“You want this on the news?” Tom asked.

“Not necessarily what is going on here. I want them for a different reason, getting the word out that Kirkwood is wanted and finding anyone who knows anything about Kirkwood to come forward. We need to know something about this guy. Right now, we don’t even know for certain what he looks like.”

“Okay. I’ll see what we can do. Any station that you’re looking for in particular?”

“Whoever can get here and get it on the airwaves the soonest,” I said.

“Got it,” Tom said. He turned and walked toward his men.

Beth left the car and walked back toward me. “Ball says he’ll get the twins going on the pickup truck.”

“Anything on Kirkwood?” I asked.

“Not yet. The guy is really off the grid, apparently. What did Whissell say?” she asked.

“Nothing. I never got him on the phone. The receptionist said she hadn’t seen him. I got put through to his desk and cell phone. No answer at either.”

“Maybe he’s in that meeting with his superior.”

“Maybe,” I said.

One of the forensics guys that had gone into the smaller of the two houses stepped from the back door and waved us over.

Beth and I walked toward him—he wore a white clean suit with a hood and a mask. The man pulled the mask from over his nose and mouth—he was the guy who’d said his name was Eddie.

“We’re going to need that biohazard team in here,” he said. “This place is bad. We found more human remains in the refrigerator.”

My stomach turned. I felt another gag coming from the smell wafting from the doorway of the home. “Let me get one of the local agents and find out who we need to call.”

“Thanks,” he said and rounded the corner back into the home.

Beth and I found Tom, and we got in touch with the people at the Medical Science building in Nashville—they recommended a private company they work with for the removal of the remains and cleanup of the bodily fluids. Tom made the call to them and told us they’d be out within a few hours.

Beth nodded toward Carmen, the forensics woman, approaching from the old house. Carmen’s mask hung from around her neck on its straps, and the hood that covered her hair had been dropped. She came up to us.

“Any idea on who to call around here for mass remains removal?” she asked.

“Mass?” Beth asked.

“The padlocked basement. We broke through and went down. First count was over twenty.”

“Bodies?” I asked.

She nodded. “Some look like they’ve been there for a while. Years. There may be more that we didn’t see.”

The status of our investigation wasn’t exactly improving. I ran my hand through my hair and pulled my cell phone from my pocket. “Let me see who I can call.”

I glanced at my watch. It was pushing two o’clock in the afternoon. Tom had gotten hold of a Nashville news station that broadcasted throughout the Clarksville area—the news crew was to arrive at the sheriff’s checkpoint at any moment. I pulled out my phone and dialed Ball—that would be the fifth or sixth call we’d had in the last few hours. He answered within a couple of rings.

“Ball,” he said.

“It’s Hank again.”

“Any good news?”

“I’d be yanking your chain if I said there was. I’m watching a crew of people load body after body into vans like an assembly line.”

“How many total?” he asked.

“I think they said twenty-four.”

“Geez,” he said. “Were there more in the basement of the second house?”

“Not a one. The only thing odd was an empty hole dug in the dirt floor.”

“Maybe he was getting ready to bury someone,” Ball said.

“Maybe.”

“The company I gave you the name of was right?”

“Yeah, Safe Disposal. I guess they work with the Medical Science outfit in Nashville. All the bodies are going back there for analysis,” I said.

“You know that entire place is probably going to have to be excavated. That’s going to get kicked over to the Memphis branch, though—everything will as soon as you and Beth leave.”

“That’s kind of what I figured,” I said. “Okay, real quick, the reason for the call—did we get anything new on Kirkwood? I have this news team that’s going to be here any minute.”

“We’re not getting anywhere on him. We even started looking into the utilities on the address. Can’t get anywhere there, either.”

“Yeah, I saw a generator on the side of the house while I was puking earlier. I’m guessing that’s how he’s getting power to the home.”

“I’m not going to ask. That chief deputy never got back to you?”

“No, but I’m about to call him again. Nothing on the pickup truck, either?” I asked.

“Nothing so far, Hank. It might not be registered, judging by how this guy is.”

I let out a breath. “All right. I just wanted to check one last time before I go on the air here in a second. I need to get down to the street, where none of this is visible, to do the interview.”

“What’s the plan there, again?” Ball asked.

“I just need anyone who knows the guy to come forward. As soon as we have a description that’s accurate, we can distribute it. It would damn well be nice if someone had a recent photo.”

“Well, like I said earlier, I’ll make sure you know the second we get anything. The forensics team is still working?” Ball asked.

“Yeah, they said they got a bunch of prints. Once they are done, they’ll head back to Memphis to begin processing everything. They said I should expect a phone call in the morning.”

“Sure,” Ball said.

“Okay. Let me go and stand in front of a camera and ask for help. I’m sure we’ll talk in a bit.”

“Sounds good.”

I clicked off from Ball and motioned Beth and Tom over.

“News team?” I asked.

Tom glanced at his watch. “Should be any minute. They said two o’clock.”

“Okay,” I said. “Beth, I’m guessing you want to be the one in front of the camera this time?”