Chapter 47
O’Reilly and Sergeant Miller arrived at the Taylor shack a little past three in the afternoon. As soon as their plane had touched down, they thanked the pilot once again and raced to their car. It seemed like an eternity to get to their destination, but in fact it was little more than an hour. As they got near, a police officer stopped them and approached the car. As soon as O’Reilly showed him identification, the officer let them pass.
There were police cars all over the place and the local media was there as well, but they were being held behind police barricades. O’Reilly pulled the car to the side of the road and he and Miller got out.
The sun was beating down, causing heat waves to rise in the distance. There was a stink to the air that made O’Reilly’s nose twitch.
"That’s the smell of death in the air, Sergeant.”
"Yes sir, it surely is.”
Sean braced himself, and then entered the building. The stench from in there was much stronger, and the buzzing of flies seemed to be like a motor humming a constant irritating noise in the room. Cooper had been right in his saying that it was like a war zone. Besides the three dead Taylors, it seemed that body parts were strewn everywhere that the eye could see. At closer examination, the remnants appeared to have bite marks in a good number of them. O’Reilly wondered what animal may have caused these but he suspected that when examined, it would become clear that they were in fact caused by human, or what was supposed to be human.
Sean thought he had seen it all in the years on the force, but just when he thought that, something would happen to change his mind. How the hell in this day and age could anyone find pleasure in consuming another person. He shook his head. The world was surely a fucked up place.
They continued roaming about the “war zone” until they spotted the man who appeared to be in charge. He was bent over one of the bodies and was talking to, Sean assumed, the forensic expert. O’Reilly went over and introduced himself.
"I’m Chief Inspector O’Reilly and this is my assistant Sergeant Miller.”
The man stood up and shook Sean’s hand. "I’m Detective Harrison, Inspector. This is our local coroner, Doctor Sumner. Welcome to Kentucky. We were notified of your coming and were told to cooperate as best we could.”
"That would be appreciated. We think that whoever caused the deaths of the Taylors is a suspect in an on going investigation. What can you tell me about their deaths?”
"It appears that the first was bitten by what looks like a rat to the jugular vein and bled out. The old man and the other appear to have been attacked and bludgeoned with what is most likely the tire iron on the floor over there. Their faces, or what is left of them, are nothing more than bloody pulps. Whoever did this has a lot of rage inside of him. He really beat the shit out of these two literally. The old one is lying in his own excrement. His bowels must have let loose before he died. It just adds to the horrific stench already present from all the dead body parts.”
"Yeah, this is one for the books, that’s for sure. Our suspect’s M.O. fits these crimes pretty well. He has killed, we think, several people, starting with his mother several years ago, in much the same way that these victims died. These three seem to be vile creatures and he may have done the world a favor by killing them, but the point of the matter is, he’s at large and we have got to find him before more innocents meet the same fate.”
"I agree. Anything that we can do to help let me know.”
"The first thing I would like you to do is set up a police net in a ten mile radius. It doesn’t look like these men have been dead for a great deal of time, and with a little luck, we may catch him nearby.”
The doctor stood and after a moment spoke.” Inspector, you might be on the right track. The murders appear to have happened no more than a few hours ago. If whoever did this is on foot, he couldn’t have gotten too far.”
"Thank you, doctor.” Harrison spoke. “Chief Inspector, we’ll get the net set up with every available officer from my office and all surrounding vicinities. We’ll help you catch him, you can be sure of that. We’ll set it up and start making it smaller and smaller until we snare him like a wild animal in a trap.
"We didn’t see any tire tracks around so it appears that he probably is on foot. The woods around here are so thick that he won’t be able to have traveled too far. There’s nothing around here but the occasional hunter’s cabin and a ranger station or two. We’ll get officers out to all of them to check those out as well. Any thing else that I can do, just let me know.”
"Thanks, I appreciate it. I feel our luck is about to change and we’ll get a break. Let’s hope so. What about all these body parts around? What do you make of it?”
"It is bizarre, I agree. We had reports a few years back about an occasional disappearance of people and we talked to the Taylors back then, to see if they knew anything about it. They said that they had seen nothing and everything seemed in order out here. We even searched their place a time or two when more people went missing. Again, nothing was found. We did find an old still or two and wrote them up about it, but other than that, everything seemed in order.
"Over time, they must have started getting careless, because no body parts had been found, obviously. If they had, the three would have been locked up. It appears that they just didn’t care whether they left remains around or not. I don’t know.
"They were one fucked up family, that’s for sure. Cannibalism seems to be unbelievable, I agree, but it sure looks like they were involved in that or some ritualistic slaughter. We’ll get all the remains back to the morgue where the doctor can examine them further and maybe we’ll be able to identify some of them. There are quite a few scattered about.”
Just then, a uniformed officer came in and spoke to Harrison. “Sir we just found body parts in amongst the potato patch out back. It seems that these were the same potatoes that they were making their moonshine from.” A disgusted look was on the officer’s face.
"Thank you officer.”
At that, the officer went outside, and from inside, he could be heard throwing up. The smell of fresh vomit added to the already unbearable stench surrounding them. He came back inside and said. “Sorry sir, I tried to control myself but it’s just too much for me.”
"It’s okay son, we all feel the same way. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
"Thank you, sir. I’m alright now.”
He left and went to check the property further. “Poor kid. He’s only been with the force for a few months and then he ends up in the middle of shit like this. I hope he doesn’t quit over it. He’ll make a good officer.” Detective Harrison reflected and then fell silent.
"He’ll probably have nightmares for sure, like a lot of us had when we were starting out, but like most junior officers, he’ll be able to harden himself to the sickness and just get on with the job as best as he can.” O’Reilly added.
"I hope you’re right. It’d be a shame to lose him.”
Just then, another officer came in and asked that they come out to the shed. He said that it looked like a torture chamber out there. They followed him out back and opened the door to the shed. A stale smell of urine and shit hit them as they entered. Blood covered most of the floor and was splattered along the walls.
"What the fuck.” Harrison swore. “It looks like this is where they butchered their unfortunate victims.”
"Yeah it does.” O’Reilly agreed. “Caulder, our suspect, must have come across the Taylors when his car broke down and they probably locked him in here. They didn’t realize what type of animal Caulder was, and he must have managed to get loose and killed the two of them. They would have been distracted when the one got bitten by what looks like a rat. It was the chance that Jake needed. He took it and struck out with a vengeance.”
"You say that he killed his other victims in a similar fashion?” Harrison asked.
"That’s what it looks like.” O’Reilly stated. He proceeded to relate Jake’s sordid past and all his recent murders that they suspected him of.
"Man, he seems like some kind of unstable son of a bitch. Let’s get that net set up and hope that we catch this mother fucker before he causes more grief for any one else.”
"I agree with you 100%.” O’Reilly stated and Sergeant Miller nodded his agreement as well. With that, Harrison went to phone to get things going to help O’Reilly and Miller catch their man.
No comments:
Post a Comment