Belladonna Dreams Read online

  Cause of death for all nine women was unknown. The victims were all in their twenties, but varied in looks. Of course, that didn’t mean much except they all looked different. Killers had types, but they weren’t fanatical enough to stick with it, unless it was incredibly important. So far, I had never really found a killer that was that determined only to kill brunettes with green eyes and big behinds or tattoos of daisies.

  For starters, that made for an incredibly tiny victim pool. It was unrealistic. Most of them just worked off a few basic requirements such as body type, age, and ethnicity.

  “By the way, nice jammies,” Fiona said to me.

  “Thanks, Badger peed on me when I got home, so I had to change. In theory, I was not going back out today, so pajamas won out.” I shrugged. “Okay, so the new victims match the old victims. The manner of death is similar, but these killings are definitely not sexual, which was the theory on the old ones.”

  “Maybe they got it wrong the first time,” Fiona shrugged this time. “We’ve come a long way in twenty years. Maybe the first time he was just more energetic, so he disposed of the bodies instead of letting them go home to die.”

  “That is possible,” I took the computer from her. I sent the article about the mass grave back to the Deputy Director of the FBI. I included a small note that just said, “Returned?” This case was not one that I wanted. Since it was the FBI trying to gather information, I had a feeling I knew exactly where Malachi was going when he woke up.

  “Are you going to have to change again when you go home?”

  “I have no doubt,” I told her.

  “Want to hang out here for a while? We’ll order dinner, eat on the back porch, and feel sorry for the guys. They are going to feel like hell when they wake up.”

  “Sounds like a plan. When I go home, maybe you can come with me and toss my dog into the backyard so he does not pee on my pajamas.”

  “Is he marking his territory?”

  “Not a clue. I think he does it because he does not like me. He ate my laptop. I am going to have to explain that to someone.”

  “I’ll put in the request for a replacement. We’ll tell them that it got damaged when we were in Florida last week.”

  “Oh, good plan.” I kicked back while she ordered pizza, vegetarian with extra mushrooms. Sometimes, even Fiona had good taste.

  Four

  Sioux Falls was the largest city in South Dakota. I knew because the SCTU was currently waiting for our standard issue sport utility vehicle in black. It turns out that the Lakota Nation has some issues with the FBI, so instead of the VCU being sent to South Dakota, we were.

  It was actually quite pretty. A river ran around the outskirts and there was indeed a waterfall. The buildings were a mix of modern and antiquated architecture that gave the place a kind of charm.

  Not surprisingly, it also had a low crime rate. There just weren’t enough people to have a high crime rate. Finding five girls, all dead was a bit shocking, and the newspaper headlines were still screaming about it four days after the incident.

  A detective in an SUV was giving us a tour of the town as we meandered our way to the police station. In theory, our government issued SUV was waiting for us there. He pointed to a road that wasn’t really a highway and told us the bar where the girls had last been seen was down that way.

  It had taken me about ten seconds after stepping off the plane to realize that I should absolutely not talk to anyone about anything. The urge to use words like “mosey” and “pardner” were very strong. Since I doubted the people of South Dakota talked that way, it was better if I did not open my mouth. My insensitivity level occasionally rose to monumental proportions and I didn’t need to create an incident between the US Marshals and the people of South Dakota.

  Having a serial killer was scary enough without having the SCTU or VCU in town. I had seen how people reacted to us. Our presence just reinforced that they had a problem that wasn’t just going to go away. At times, I made the process more difficult. Less than a month earlier, I had eviscerated a killer, letting her entrails fall to the ground as she gaped at me, unable to do anything but attempt to shove them back in. It had been on the national news. There weren’t any pictures or videos, but it had been mentioned a few times.

  The Serial Crimes Tracking Unit were both rock stars and social outcasts. We had fan clubs. Most normal people knew who we were on sight. Their reactions towards us varied depending on their mood, the time of day, the weather, and possibly, the cycle of the moon. Sometimes we were welcomed with wide-open arms and asked for autographs. Sometimes people crossed the street to avoid us.

  It wasn’t just limited to citizens either. Cops, from local to federal, had the same varied reactions. When Michael was murdered, the US Marshals Service had come out in full support. In Alaska, they had done their best to give us a wide berth.

  I wasn’t sure how they were feeling towards us right now. It wasn’t just that they didn’t really understand what we did, it was that we were always covered in blood. Apparently, this was not how real cops worked, the Marshals Service included, unless they went back in time a hundred and thirty years and worked the wild, lawless west, which was the other problem. The SCTU operated under different laws, laws that would have worked well in the Wild West, but caused strife in modern times.

  Our status aside, every one of us had a job and we did our jobs well. It was why we were allowed to operate on such questionable laws. It was even why people were avoiding us. However, this left the population in a quandary; they weren’t happy to see us, but they also weren’t entirely unhappy to see us either. We got results. Bloodshed occasionally demanded more bloodshed and most people didn’t have the stomach for the job.

  Reminding myself of this helped. It made me feel less annoyed at the press for splashing my face on TV and telling the world that I had gutted a killer. It wouldn’t deter other killers, but it would make them think twice when we knocked on their door. If it stopped another incident like we had with Michael, I was willing to start carving out the hearts of a few serial killers a year.

  “You’re grinding your teeth,” Lucas said to me. His voice was low, quiet. His face was searching. I unclenched my jaws. They hurt. I had been doing it unconsciously for who knew how long. It was a side effect of biting back on my frustration. Our guide was droning on about the sights of Sioux Falls. Gabriel was listening attentively. Xavier was rocking out to something on his MP3 player. Fiona was on her laptop. Lucas was reading a book on human sexuality and its role in development. I was glaring out the window, frustrated that our serial killer had gone to ground for nearly twenty years.

  If it was the same one as before, it made me curious. I knew what Patterson had done during the years he had disappeared. He had moved, killed, and built buildings over the bodies. Our killer might have gone dormant. Maybe he had married or had children. Maybe his life had become so blissful that he hadn’t needed to kill to get a kick of euphoria.

  That was the key, euphoria. I felt it when I killed. It didn’t matter whether it was legal or not. It was a rush. The adrenaline kicked into high gear. The brain started to function on a different level. The world slowed down. And as the blood spilled, euphoria overtook me.

  Some said it was a sexual release. It wasn’t for me. There were no orgasms, mental or physical involved. There was sated lust. It was about pure euphoria. Euphoria wasn’t an emotion I could describe. Either you experienced it or you didn’t. Most killers had the same rush as me.

  Something had changed. The euphoria was no longer an attainable goal for the killer or he wouldn’t have started killing again. Plus, the killings themselves seemed strange. I couldn’t obtain euphoria without a hands-on approach. It seemed to be enough for this killer to know that his victims were on the downhill side of life. This put us in very different categories. Poisoners were still a small mystery to me. They didn’t need to watch their victims’ faces or feel the life pass from their bodies. It was enough to know th
at they had done it.

  “You’re doing it again,” Lucas poked me. The dark thoughts in my brain were the cause. I had started thinking of myself as a killer, not just a monster fighting bad guys, but a cold-blooded killer. I had always enjoyed it. I still didn’t crave it. There shouldn’t have been a difference in how I thought of myself, but there was.

  I wanted to snip at him, but didn’t. It wasn’t his fault I had decided to have an identity crisis in Sioux Falls. This was my second or third one since I had started with the Marshals. Perhaps, I was playing too close to the monsters. Perhaps, I needed to step back for a short time, when I wasn’t licking my wounds, and just take a moment to breathe. I had chosen this life. Or rather, this life had chosen me, when I was young. I didn’t know if I had ever really processed any of it. It was just something that happened, something I had gotten used to, something I did.

  My jaw clenched again. I forced myself to relax it. What would my mother say about me grinding my teeth in public? Frankly, she would be appalled. Xavier tapped my shoulder. In his fingers was a small yellow pill. His head still nodded up and down and the other hand beat a quiet rhythm on his leg. Like all good doctors, he could dispense drugs without talking to the patient.

  I took it. I did not have a drink, so I dry swallowed. An injection would have worked faster, but I doubted he carried many injectable anxiety meds.

  “You’re just stressed,” he leaned forward and shouted in my ear. His music was obviously much louder than he thought, because he gave me a conspiratorial wink. I was sure everyone in the car had heard him. It was possible that people in the cars next to us had heard him.

  “He’s right,” Lucas shook his head at the head-banging doctor. “You’ve had three months to deal with a brain tumor, your mother moving in, coming back to work, reconciling with Patterson, Malachi, an outbreak of Bubonic Plague, and getting a puppy. It’s a lot.” He said the name Malachi as if it were bitter.

  Maybe they were right. Maybe I was not having an identity crisis. Maybe stress was getting to me and a stressed out sociopath was bad. They had a tendency to kill people, literally. The clonazepam I had popped would help if it ever kicked in and I did not fall asleep.

  “I’m not entirely sure how we can help,” Gabriel finally said as we turned onto what appeared to be a Main Street. Shops were all independent stores. People walked the sidewalks or sat in front of cafes. It was a holiday after all.

  “I’m not entirely sure how either,” the detective said.

  It was going to be one of those cases. I held my hand out to Xavier. He handed me a pill bottle from his pocket. There was lint in the ridges of the cap. The label was peeling off. If my head had not been starting to throb, I might not have looked.

  Amber

  Her shift wasn’t due to start for two more hours. She couldn’t believe she had to go in early. Not all of it was bad though. Joe, her boyfriend, had refused to take her to work after finding out that she had to go in and talk to cops. Joe didn’t have a great record with cops. Aside from the normal bar fights and shouting matches they had, he’d been caught stealing a few times as well. A man’s past had a way of hanging around.

  This suited her just fine. It meant that she wouldn’t have to argue with his drunk ass when he picked her up tonight. It could wait until she got home. She knew she should leave him. The thought echoed in her mind once a day, as she was getting ready to leave work. She could walk out the door and disappear; go somewhere with warmer winters and less snow.

  Having the car brought the thought to the forefront of her mind and it wasn’t even dark yet. She could just drive right past the bar and into oblivion. Settle down somewhere new. She had some savings, so she could take it all out and start fresh.

  She could get a job where drunken men didn’t grope her ass. That would be nice. Or work some place where her boss wasn’t dealing drugs out of the back rooms. That would also be nice.

  Unfortunately, she loved Joe. That was why she stayed. Despite the arguing and the drinking, she loved him. He was her biggest weakness, so she stayed in her despicable job where drunken men grabbed her ass and left shitty tips and Kevin dealt drugs out of the back rooms. She saved every penny she could so that when she stopped loving Joe, she could get the hell out of South Dakota and go to places that were warmer and find a job that didn’t mean shaking her ass or wearing low cut shirts to increase tips.

  The bar looked sad in the daylight. It sat just outside of the city limits. A hangout for everyone from college kids to bikers, depending on the night. It was a place that didn’t always card and everybody was too busy dancing to notice the drugs floating from hand to hand. She really hated the place, but it was a job and those were harder to come by in Sioux Falls than most people realized.

  A black SUV was already parked at the curb. Two people stood outside of it; both smoking. The man wore a cowboy hat, a dress shirt with a jacket, jeans, and heavy boots. He had a few days’ worth of stubble on his face that was brown sprinkled with red. The woman was smaller than he was by several inches. She wore even heavier boots, black leather, with almost no decorative trimmings. She also wore jeans, but her jeans were more faded and worn out than his. A T-Shirt was visible under a short-waist black denim jacket. Her hair was pulled up in a very severe ponytail, but strands had come loose and fell around her face and ears.

  There was a moment of hesitation as she pulled into the parking lot. The man gave a quick wave with his smoking hand. The woman’s expression didn’t change and she couldn’t tell what it meant. These two didn’t look like cops. The guy might have passed, but the woman was downright freaky. She’d seen more expression in fish eyes than the woman’s. Today would have been a good day just to keep driving.

  “Hi, may I help you?” She asked.

  “US Marshals Gabriel Henders and Aislinn Cain.” The man shook her hand. The woman did not. “Are you Amber Braun?”

  “Yep.”

  “This should not take long, Ms. Braun,” the woman spoke and her voice was higher than Amber expected. It was polite, but cold, like her expression.

  “Sure,” Amber went to the front door and unlocked it. Normally, the staff used the back, but she’d been given orders not to let the Marshals Service in the back. “Billy should be here soon, he’s almost always late.”

  “That’s the bartender that was working last week, yes?” Marshal Henders asked.

  “Yeah,” Amber agreed, pulling the door open. Both of them stubbed out their cigarettes and entered. Amber went in behind them, turning on lights. Few people saw the bar in real light. It wasn’t attractive. The floor was permanently stained, despite the dark color. The front of the bar was scuffed. The tables were outdated. The place was the last stop for a lot of people. They came to forget and listen to the live bands. Kevin did know how to book bands. “Can I get you something while you wait?”

  “No, thank you,” Marshal Cain answered.

  “I’m good, thanks,” Marshal Henders also declined.

  Amber grabbed a large glass and filled it with tea that was hidden in the cooler behind the bar. She kept it around for her and the other servers. People were always trying to get them to do shots, but they had found they could substitute tea when it was dark enough. They’d even taken to keeping it in a special whiskey bottle. It had too much sugar or something in it. That’s what she got for letting Billy make it. It was almost too sweet to drink. She would make a new pitcher after the Marshals left.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” Billy rushed through the front door. His sudden appearance made Amber jump, neither Marshal moved. They looked at him, frowning.

  “Mr. Hamilton,” Marshal Henders stood up. “I’m US Marshal Gabriel Henders, this is Marshal Cain. We just have a couple of questions for both of you about last week. Why don’t you get something to drink, collect yourself and then join us at that table?” Marshal Henders was obviously in charge. He pointed to a table. Amber moved instinctively towards it. She took a seat. Henders also sat. Marshal Cain
stood.

  Billy got some tea. He made a face as he took the first drink. Amber smiled, it was too sweet even for him, and that took some doing. He had a hellava sweet tooth. He managed to get the second drink down without the face.

  “Did either of you notice anything out of the ordinary? Was the crowd rowdier than normal?” Marshal Henders asked.

  “It was a Thursday, right?” Billy asked. Amber wanted to slap him on the back of his head to see if it jump started his brain cells.

  “Actually, I’m interested in all week,” Marshal Henders said.

  “Oh, not really,” Billy answered.

  “The crowd was like it usually was. We get a lot of regulars, but because we run specials just about every night and have music, we get college students, tourists, the entire lot of humanity walks through these doors,” Amber answered

  “On Thursday, did any one person stand out more than the others?” Marshal Cain asked. “It may have just been that you noticed them when normally you wouldn’t have.”

  “Thursday is Ladies’ Night, and we offer half-price flavored margaritas, frozen or regular. We also usually have a local band playing until eleven. Last Thursday, most of the crowd was female and young. Our regulars were here of course, but it would take a bomb to get most of them to move off their barstools. The table of girls were all in their twenties; I ID’d them before serving them. We have to be a little more careful on Ladies’ Nights, because underagers from the college try to slip through. Four of them were on the dance floor most of the night, one stayed at the table. A couple of guys bought them drinks or tried to buy them drinks. If the guy wasn’t buying for the whole table, they weren’t accepting.”

  “Do you remember who they did accept drinks from?” Henders asked.

  “Not really,” Amber shrugged. “On Ladies’ Night, there are so many guys trying to buy the ladies’ drinks, it’s hard to remember them all.”