Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (6 page)

“Great background check,” I comment sarcastically.
“I hope he doesn’t work the children’s ward.”

I had a gut feeling that whoever was doing this would not be in any of our files. It had all the earmarks of a new criminal
, new but experienced
. “Send out some feelers cross country to see if there have been any similar missing girl cases will you?”

Lew cocked his head and looked at me. “
You t
hink he’s new to the area?”

I shook my head
uncertainly. “Maybe new to the area, but I’d bet my retirement that he’s killed before. He’s too thorough.
I’m betting he’s had lots of practice.
”

Lew chuckled. “At the rate the economy’s going, your retirement won’t get you a grass hut in Costa Rica.”

“Ha. Ha. Our
boy has
to have some place to dispose of the bodies and I suspect
it’s
nearby. What do we have in the area?”

I turned at the sudden silence behind me.
Lew
was staring at the photos. “You
know
they’re dead,
don’t
you?
”

I looked at Lew.
I hadn’t realized he still held out hope for the girls. I nodded. “Yeah
.
”

After a moment, he looked down at his list
.
“Three warehouses, all of which have been checked thoroughly, numerous empty lots likewise checked and a few abandoned houses that are still being searched.
Oh, here’s one. A
n old
monastery
,
abandoned about
fifty
, sixty
years
ago
.
I don’t think anyone’s been there yet.
And of
course,
there
’s
the bay
, b
ut i
f he’s dumping them there, none
ha
ve
surfaced
yet
.
Want to check out
the
monastery
?”

A
monastery
, I thought.
It would take a real pervert
ed bastard
to
desecrate
a
monastery
–
l
ike someone who kills young girls and carts off their bodies over roofs
. “Yeah, let’s give it a look. My ex-wife always said I needed to go to church more often.”

“
Oh?
The one who
left you for the butcher or the one who’s shacking up with your ex-girlfriend?”

I threw
Lew
a dirty look. “The first one. I don’t speak to my last ex. I’ve never forgiven her for coming between me and my girlfriend.”

This drew
a chuckle
from Lew. My esteemed partner never knew when I was telling the truth or lying through my teeth. I enjoyed embellishing tales of my failed marriage
s
for his entertainment. This miniscule amount of joy was more than
my short-lived
marriage
s
produced, the reason I
remain
a devout bachelor.
I can’t place all the blame on my two exes, but they certainly didn’t make life any easier.

I grabbed my coat and filled my travel mug with coffee from the unending pot just outside the captain’s office.
I think he placed it there deliberately so he could see who was goofing off.
I waved my mug at his scowling face as I left.
He motioned to me but I pretended I didn’t see him and rushed out.

Lew drove. It was his turn and I had more thinking to do.
I sat back in the passenger
seat of his Ford Explorer, noticing the
radical
change of viewpoint from my Acura. Now, I knew why Lew drove so aggressively. It was like riding
high up
in
a piece of
heavy equipment
, looking down on all the other drivers
.
It g
ives
the driver a sense of aloofness.

Aloofness –
I could safely pin on our perpetrator this one characteristic
. He held other people, especially the authorities
,
in contempt. He did
n
o
t
fear capture
;
therefore
,
he
did
n’t
feel the need to curb his lust for killing. He was an intelligent person,
arrogant
, agile
and strong
with a penc
hant for
helpless young women
.
This made him doubly dangerous.

I had investigated far too many young girls’ deaths to let one case
get under my skin
, but it was
. I guess it was
because
I could
n’t
place myself inside the killer’s mind. What was his motive – perverted sexual pleasure? That didn’t fit
the evidence
.
Sure,
the girls were all pretty, but
there were prettier girls
much
easier to
abduct
.
The city was full of them.
No, I didn’t see the sex angle here nor was he the collector type, a trophy killer. If so, why take the entire body?
Trophy killers usually took small souvenirs, body parts or articles of clothing.

T
hen there was the problem of
the blood? A clever murderer would clean up after himself. Girls go missing every day. No one would even be certain there had been a crime committed. It was as if he wanted us to know
about the crime,
or
, what was worse
did
n’t
care that we knew. This last bothered me deeply. A killer with contempt for the law had no remorse, no conscience. He could be a very dangerous man. He would strike again under our very noses just to play his perverted games.
Such killers drew their own boundaries and played by their own set of rules. This one seemed to have decided to work within a confined area of the city. This went against most criminal thinking that widening the crime area
increased
the search area. Even so, we had had no luck with either neighborhood stakeouts or walking patrols.
A bit of
old-fashioned
luck would come in handy.

“We’re here
,
”
Lew announced
, interrupting my thoughts
.

I looked up expecting to see an old church like the Catholic cathedral downtown.
Instead, we parked in front of a
massive
walled compound.
A gaping wound where
enormous
wooden
gates
had
once
hung provided the only entrance into the compound.
Rusty metal hinges with shards of weathered wood
, all that remained of the gates,
dangled from rotting frames
.

I turned to Lew. “I thought you said
monastery
.
This looks like a fort.
”

“It’s an old Jesuit monastery built in the late 1700’s
… 1780s, I think.
They liked their privacy.
The Jesuits
abandoned
it
in the late 1800s. The
Catholic
Diocese
built a church here
around 19
4
0
but
closed it down in the 50s when the neighborhood changed.”

I looked at my partner with
more respect. “You’re a veritable fount of knowledge.”

He shrugged.
“I
did some research
on the internet. You could too if you knew how to turn
on
a computer.”

“That’s why I’ve got you,” I retorted.

I
exited the
SUV
and stood looking at the
monastery.
Its blank stone walls and massive gate
only reinforced my first impression of an old fort
ress
. I
t sat apart from the surrounding neighborhood, across a
bridge
that spanned
a dried up river bed
, almost as if intentional
ly removed from the neighborhood
.
Through the
gaping wound of the
entrance
,
the newer attached Catholic
church
had that majestic façade of churches of that era –
plastered concrete block
construction, bell tower thrusting
heavenward
topped by
a weathered leaning cross
. L
arge arched
,
stained glass window
s
fram
ed
a wide
,
wooden double-door entrance
fronted by
broad stone steps
.
Empty n
iches
in the
pockmarked
wall
once held
marble
statues of saints
but
were
now
the resting spots for beer cans
, a pathetic Columbarium wall for dead dreams
.
Grotesque
stone
gargoyles
heaped with
decades of
bird
droppings
squatt
ed
on the roof
,
doubl
ing
as rainspouts
, returning my
gaze
with cold, patient eyes
.

Over the centuries, the
monastery
adjoining the church
had fallen into
wretched
disrepair.
Many of the outbuildings
were
now
mounds of
weed-grown
rubble.
The
new
er structure
added by the Diocese
during
WWII
attached to the old
er stonework of the monastery by some
Frankenstein
ian
surgical procedure.
The
crumbling
, faded
plaster
walls clashed with the weathered, native gray stone
of the monastery
. The newer structure bore none of the architectural details of the old
monastery
, its box-like design a pae
a
n to
the
speed
of modern construction
rather than finesse
of earlier times
.
At that time
,
the
neighborhood had been predominately
middle
-
class
Irish
, but over the
years,
it
had fallen on bad times.
Waves of Eastern European immigrants, displaced Russians and Greeks
after WWII
gave way to
latecomer
Latinos, Koreans and Somalis
who
now comprised
the majority of the population. Attendance had dropped
and
the Diocese
had
reassigned the priest and
closed the doors
about
sixty
years ago
.
Vandals had
mercilessly
riddled the windows
and walls
with
bullet holes
. A chain
and padlock
secured the
front
door
s of the church and the
main building of the
monastery
and
local gangs had tagged
the steps of both structures with
colorful graffiti
and gang signs
.
The entire compound l
ooked dark and uninviting
,
much
like the
surrounding
neighborhood
.

In contrast
to the depressing
, dilapidated structures
, a tangle of
rose bushes grown wild from lack of pruning fronted the monastery wall
, their
rampant
vines
awash with
delicate
pink and crimson blooms. Their strong fragrance masked a host of more disagreeable odors
emanating from piles of feces, both human and animal, and the decaying corpse of a small animal, possibly a
large dog.