Consumed (24 page)

“I think my dad buried some. I might have buried one or two. Probably by the old barn. Now that I think about it, I know there is at least a couple back there. I used to play with them when I was a kid.”

I shook my head and went to the first question I had written down. “Why have you been doing this? What made you do it?”

“Nothing made me do anything. I did what I did because I could and I wanted to.” He paused for a moment. “Plus, I like the taste of people.”

Kirkwood’s answer was direct, quick, and had conviction. It seemed he’d thought about it before.

“Can you describe for us your relationship with Chief Deputy Whissell?” I asked.

“Relationship? At the end there, I guess you could have called it a man and his dinner.” Kirkwood chuckled. “He was my brother, Mark. Mark Matheson. I’m not sure where he ever picked up the August Whissell name. He was an asshole. Always called me names.”

“You’re saying that the chief deputy was Mark Matheson?” Beth asked.

“That’s what I just said. Changed his name and left town a year or two before my father got caught. I guess he thought he could get away from everything and be a different person. My mother tried the same shit, gave me her maiden last name.”

“The chief deputy knew what you were doing?” I asked.

“He helped get rid of the girls. Dumped them somewhere where they wouldn’t be near me,” Kirkwood said.

“You mean the side of the road?” Beth asked.

“No. I did those when Mark wouldn’t come and pick them up. He took what was left of some of them and got rid of them somewhere. Couldn’t tell you where, though. It’s not good for me to keep them around.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Let’s just say they aren’t happy after I kill and eat them,” Kirkwood said.

“They talk to you?” Beth asked.

“Some do. Some don’t,” he said. “The talkers have to go. I have a hard enough time dealing with my mother.”

My eyes went to the next question on my list. “How long have—”

“Commercial is over,” Kirkwood said, interrupting me. “Shut it.”

I looked at the remote control in his hand and debated taking it from him to get on with the interview, but he was telling us everything that we wanted to know, at least during the commercials, so I decided to let it continue that way. The more I thought about it, I realized I’d never really had someone who’d committed such terrible acts sit and explain himself. Beth and I waited while the talk show played. The talk show was testing the paternity of a woman’s child. Three different men sat alongside her on stage, waiting for the results. Kirkwood yelled through his mask at the television when the results came in that none of the three men was the father. The show went to commercial again.

Kirkwood’s eyes came back to Beth and me.

I crossed my arms over my chest and went back to the question on my list. “How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“What? Eating people? Or killing people?” Kirkwood asked.

“Both,” I said.

“As long as I can remember, on the eating. Dad would bring home the meat, Mom would fix it up, and the four of us would sit around as a family and eat. Mom would flick the fingers and toes to Bandit, our collie. Our mother had a couple recipes that were out of this world.” Kirkwood smacked his lips and then continued, “She used to make this shepherd’s pie where she would cut the meat from the girls in little—”

“Enough.” I didn’t need to hear the family recipe for human shepherd’s pie. “When did you start killing people?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a while.”

“Do you remember when you started picking up prostitutes?” Beth asked.

“Probably when I got a car.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Fifty-nine.”

“So you’ve been doing this since you were what, sixteen?” Beth asked.

“Around there.”

“How often?” I asked.

“Whenever I felt like it.”

“How many?” Beth asked.

I heard Kirkwood scoff under his plastic mask. “That’s like asking someone how many hamburgers they’ve ate in their life or how many times they’ve had eggs. Who the hell knows,” he said. “Shut up. Show is back on.”

Beth and I stood quietly while the talk show came back on and the host discussed what was going to be on the next show, along with the preview. Kirkwood laughed at two women pulling wigs off of each other as they fought. The credits for the program rolled.

“What happened to your father?” Beth asked.

“Don’t know. I think my brother might have killed him,” Kirkwood said.

“And your mother?” I asked.

“That I did. It was an accident.”

“How did it happen?” Beth asked.

“Well, I sometimes get a little confused, and it happened when I was having one of those times. I put an ax through her chest.”

“You said it was an accident. How do you accidentally put an ax through someone’s chest?” I asked.

“I was outside chopping wood and kind of daydreaming. Next thing I know, I’m in the living room, and she’s on the living-room floor with an ax through her chest. All I remember about it, really. Like I said, I must have been a little confused as to where I was, and well, that’s that.”

Kirkwood’s voice didn’t have an ounce of anything that sounded like remorse in it.

“When did this happen?” Beth asked.

“October sixteenth, nineteen ninety.”

I found it odd that he knew the exact date but didn’t question it.

“You said the corpse in the chief deputy’s house was your mother. You’ve been taking her around with you since then?” Beth asked.

“When Mark helped me buy the old family land back from the bank, we brought her from where I was staying and buried her in the house I built. She didn’t stay in the ground long, though. She doesn’t like it in there.”

“Doesn’t like it in there?” I asked.

“She gets lonely. So I take her out every now and then so we can spend some time together. She forgave me for killing her years ago. The old woman can sure annoy the heck out of you, though.” Kirkwood chuckled again. “It’s always something with her. Don’t know what they did with her, do you? I was thinking that maybe they’d let her sit in here with me.”

“Um, no,” I said. I looked at Beth, who opened her eyes wide.

Beth and I stayed in Kirkwood’s room for another half hour before leaving for the Kirkwood property. He continued in the same fashion for the remaining time we were there, talking between commercials and answering every question we threw out to him.

We’d been driving for the better part of an hour and were just minutes from Kirkwood’s house—the trip had been mostly silent aside from the phone call to Agent Clifford to meet us there. I imagined Beth was going over the interview in her head as I had been.

“Ever take any psychology courses?” Beth asked.

I looked over at her sitting in the passenger seat and leaning against the door. “Sure, in high school and a bit in college. Why?”

“Kirkwood would make a hell of a study for someone in the profession. I’m betting they could learn a lot,” she said. “The guy is unusually open.”

I shrugged, slowed the car, and flipped on my turn signal for the road Kirkwood’s property was on. Beth’s mention of him being open to talk stirred another thought in my head. “This shithead is going to be famous,” I said as I made the turn.

“What do you mean?” Beth asked.

“Think about it. You put that guy in a courtroom with a camera crew, and he starts talking about everything. You won’t be able to get away from the coverage. His little in-and-out of crazy every couple of seconds. A halfway normal answer followed by him talking about the corpse of his mother annoying him. The media will eat it up.” I was quiet for a second. “Sorry, poor choice of words.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Beth said. “I don’t think there’s really anything we can do to avoid that, though. Whatever. We’ll see what happens when the time comes, I guess. I’ve been thinking about something else.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“He said the chief deputy was getting rid of the bodies for him. What do you think he did with them?”

“It looked like Whissell had a good amount of land. He could have been burying them on his property,” I said.

“Maybe we should have that excavation crew take a look around over there as well.”

“Probably wouldn’t be the worst idea,” I said.

I saw a pair of sheriff’s cruisers blocking the center of the road up ahead—to both sides of the roadway, along the gravel shoulders, were news vans parked bumper to bumper. Each van had its mast raised—television crews walked about filming.

“Looks like the word is out,” I said.

“You think?”

We passed a couple of the vans and slowed when we approached the sheriff’s cruisers. I glanced to my left—a couple of the vans were from Nashville, and I spotted one that appeared to be a Memphis affiliate.

I clicked the car into park and waited for one of the four deputies leaning against the sides of their cars to come over. After a few seconds, one did, about fortysomething, in uniform, and wearing a campaign hat snugged down low on his head. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. From the bit of his face visible, he didn’t look familiar. I pulled out my credentials and lowered my window.

“Agents Rawlings and Harper,” I said.

The deputy looked at my ID briefly and motioned for the other deputies to move the cars. He dipped his head a bit to look at me through the window opening. He didn’t remove his sunglasses, so I stared at my reflection as the man said, “You guys have some production going on over there. Earth movers came around seven o’clock. Been going strong since. Helicopters in and out all morning.”

I didn’t really have a response for him or know if his comments required one, so I said nothing. The cruisers moved so we had enough space to pass.

“We have to be as thorough as we can on an investigation like this. Keep in mind, each victim is somebody’s loved one,” Beth said from the passenger seat.

I looked back at the deputy, who nodded his head, turned, and headed back toward the other deputies. Beth and I drove through the opening the cruisers created and toward the Kirkwood property, half a mile up. By the time we were within a quarter mile, the house came into view, as well as two helicopters in the field behind it, a number of construction vehicles, and countless people. Both sides of the road were lined in more cars—they were all dark and looked government issue.

“Looks like Memphis sent everyone,” Beth said.

“Appears so.”

I parked behind the line of vehicles on our right, a few hundred yards from the driveway of the home and we got out. Tom was standing near the road’s edge, waiting for us.

“Babe?” Karen asked. “Do you want me to pack your swim trunks?”

“Swim trunks?” I asked.

“Well, they’re on the lake. What if you want to take a swim? I’m taking my bikini.”

I whistled a cat call. “Sure, what the hell. Toss them in the suitcase.” I snugged my tie in the bathroom mirror, ran a comb through my hair, and brushed a few creases from the front of my suit jacket. I put my back to the mirror and looked out into the bedroom at Karen.

She stood in front of two open suitcases she was packing on the bed, wearing a small pink T-shirt and a pair of jeans that hugged her legs. She pulled her dark hair back and tied it in a ponytail with a band on her wrist. Karen looked over her shoulder and saw me staring at her.

“See something you like?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said.

Her mouth turned to a smile, and she walked to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Do you really have to go in today? I thought Ball gave you the day off.”

“He did, but I just want to get some of this paperwork from the investigation taken care of. I don’t like the thought of leaving it until Monday.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Karen said.

“Is Ken still going to take Porkchop?”

Karen nodded. “I’m supposed to drop him off at noon. Speaking of which, I need to get all of his things together.”

Karen let her arms drop and left the bathroom. I followed her out and down the stairs to the first floor. She went to the kitchen and started getting some of Porkchop’s treats and toys from the bin beside the refrigerator together.

I pulled my sleeve back and glanced at my watch. “I need to get going. I’ll be home before two, and we can head over to the airport. Did you talk to Callie?”

“Yeah, she said Carl would pick us up from the airport when we landed.”

“All right. I’ll see you in a few hours.” I walked to her and gave her a kiss.

“Say goodbye to your furry son.”

I smiled and called the dog.

A second later, I heard a thump on the floor upstairs.

He must have been on the bed behind the suitcases.

After a controlled fall down the steps, he slid to a stop at my feet. I knelt and gave him a minute or two of petting, leaving him with the instructions to be a good boy as I walked out the door of our townhouse.

Thankfully, the drive to the office was traffic free for the most part. I pulled into the lot just before eight and was at my desk a few minutes after—I, as usual, was the first one there. I set down everything that had been gathered when we were in Tennessee and headed for the lunch room—I noticed Lewis, one of the tech twins, was taking a seat at his desk. I must have passed him in the office without noticing on my way in. I rapped my knuckles on the door and stuck my head inside.

Lewis spun in his chair toward me. He wore a standard blue polo shirt and khakis. His short blond hair was styled in a bit of a mohawk deal, which was new.

Maybe he’s trying not to look like his twin, Marcus.

“Morning, Hank,” he said. “Just get back?”

“Late last night,” I said.

“Hey, sorry I couldn’t get you anything on that Datsun. Marcus and I looked everywhere, trying to get something on it, but we just couldn’t find anything.”

“Nope. Don’t worry about it,” I said. “The plate on it was stolen. We had the VIN run. The truck hadn’t been registered since the eighties. It belonged to Mark Matheson, who as it turns out, was our chief deputy from the local sheriff’s department, going by a different name.”