Captain Marshal stepped up beside
Montgomery, almost knocking him aside in his eagerness to confront the two professors. His face was beginning to color from the effort of holding in his mounting temper. It was obvious that
Locke's self-righteous attitude was rubbing the grizzled lawman the wrong way. He shoved his finger into the professor's chest as if he were trying to stab him with it.
"Let me tel you something, Professor. There's a serial kil er loose in my townmy town! He just snuck into a hospital and tore apart an inmate and a janitor. There's a girl in there fighting for her life with her breasts eaten down to the rib cage. Eaten! By the man you two are protecting! So I don't care what laws I have to stretch or even break. I'm going to find out what you two know and you both wil rot in a jail cel until I do."
"Put him back in the car," Montgomery said, pointing to Locke. "We'l talk to Dr. Douglas here."
"Don't tel them anything. You hear? We can do this ourselves! We can stil do it!" Douglas shook his head, staring at his friend with a newfound understanding and pity. The man was desperate for his one last great act, his last chance at fame and immortality, and he was wil ing to risk lives to do it. Dr. Martin Douglas wasn't quite so desperate.
"What do you want to know?"
"How did you know Joseph Miles would show up here?"
"The patient he murdered… his name was Damon Trent, wasn't it?"
"And how the hel would you know that?" Marshal asked.
"Because Damon Trent is the man who assaulted Joseph when he was a child.
Trent kept him locked up in his basement for three days, raping and torturing him repeatedly. Joseph was
Trent's first victim, the only one who survived. Joseph believes that Trent was some type of vampire or werewolf or something and that he passed his curse on to him when he attacked him. He thinks that by kil ing Trent he'l cure himself of his own homicidal impulses."
"A fucking whacko!"
"Wel, Captain… maybe not."
"What are you saying? That Trent real y was a vampire?" Montgomery tried his best to stifle the smirk wriggling its way onto his face. Sarcasm leaked into his voice despite his best efforts.
"I know it sounds far-fetched…"
"Fucking loony is what it sounds!" the captain interjected.
"That's what I thought. But you'd have to understand how the human brain works.
I'm not a scientist. Actual y, Dr. Locke could explain it better if he were so inclined. But basical y there is a specific area of the brain that controls our rage impulse responses, our sex drive, and most of our animal instincts. If a virus were to attack that area of the brain and create an imbalance of some sort, it could cause the type of confusion of the rage impulse and the sexual impulse displayed by sexual sadists and murderers. Not exactly causing someone to grow hair and fangs, but effectively turning them into a monster."
"Is there such a virus?"
"Right now it's only a theory, but that's why we wanted to study him. To prove the existence of the virus and to find a cure for it."
"What if this theory's wrong and this guy just tore you apart like he did those in there?" Captain Marshal asked. "Did you two geniuses ever consider that?"
"Okay, so enough with al the bul shit. If you know where he's going now then you'd better give it up."
Douglas looked from Montgomery to
Marshal to Locke, whose eyes were pleading with him to remain silent. He let out a huge sigh and his shoulders slumped as his eyes swept the ground.
"I honestly have no idea. If he thinks his cure worked he might disappear forever. He might disappear even if it didn't work. Shut himself away from the rest of society and live as a hermit or something. I'm not a psychiatrist. That's John's field of expertise. I'm just a professor of sociology. Any ideas I have would be based on history and cultural myths and legends, which would make them not a hel of a lot better than yours."
"Get him out here too!" Captain Marshal barked in obvious exasperation, pointing at Locke, who stil sat handcuffed in back of the squad car, straining to hear what was being said between the two policemen and his col eague.
The uniformed officer opened the door to the patrol car and helped the professor out of the backseat.
"We want to know where you think this lunatic wil strike next," the captain barked.
"Who says he'l strike anywhere next?"
"Come on, Professor," Montgomery said, calmly draping an arm over
Locke's shoulders like they were old pals. "We know al about Joe's little theory. We know that you guys came up here on the hopes that he wasn't crazy and there real y is a virus that creates these monsters. Now, if I arrested you for withholding evidence you'd probably beat it, but think of al the damage it would do to your reputation. What would your col eagues think if they knew you were protecting a serial kil er? If you don't help us, then we'l make sure that everyone knows it. Now, you know as wel as I do that kil ing Damon Trent ain't going to do shit for Joe's pathology.
Those old urges are going to start coming back to him any day now. What I want to know is what he'l do when they do come back."
"He'l feed on whatever's handy.
Wherever he might be at the time. And my guess is that his appetite wil be much worse this time. I don't think you'l have any trouble recognizing his handiwork."
"But how can we catch him before he attacks again? Where is he going now?" Captain Marshal interrupted.
"I'm a psychologist, not a mind reader. But maybe if I could speak to that girl he brought up here from San Francisco.
She might know quite a bit about what's going on in Joseph's head. It seems that he's taken quite a liking to her."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she's stil alive."
Chapter Forty-three
Joe sat on the blood-soaked bed, hugging his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth. The room was completely dark. Headlights from passing cars spun shadows around the wal s like a puppet show. Joe's thoughts were also dark and spinning madly along the inner wal s of his skul. He knew he wasn't cured. Kil ing Damon had done nothing to assuage his hunger. The pants, groans, and passionate shrieks and cries from next door were awakening the big predator's murderous libido. He could smel the thick musk of semen, sweat, blood, and stool from the semen, sweat, blood, and stool from the aggressive anal penetration taking place beyond his bedroom wal. In Joe's pants, the monster rose and stiffened. It was hungry again.
The hooker's ecstatic outbursts continued in rhythm with the pounding of her skul against the headboard. The animalistic grunts of her brutal trick were making Joe jealous. Another predator intruding on his turf. Joe squished his toes in the blood stil leaking from the saturated mattress. Alicia's blood. The outline of her body was clearly visible as a rustcolored stain. A tear ran down
Joe's cheek as he rose from the bed, gnashing his terrible teeth, and headed for the door.
The whore hadn't bothered to close the blinds to her apartment and Joe could see her being crushed into the mattress by a long, lean, muscular body saturated in sweat, muscles taut and straining with each violent thrust. The man's eyebrows were knitted together in concentration. His lips curled into a ferocious snarl. His eyes stared straight ahead at the bedroom wal. The look on his face resembled fury rather than pleasure. He didn't look like a normal trick. There was something too possessive about the way he handled the whore and something too passive about the way she received him; not struggling despite the violence being done to her by his savage lovemaking.
One of his long, muscular arms had snaked beneath the transvestite's chin and was squeezing tight, choking off her screams of pleasure as he punched his engorged penis deep into her bowels.