Elysium Dreams

Twelve

"Ten to one, he's a poacher," Xavier said.

"People," I shook my head in the dark.

The city was deathly quiet. Our car was the only one I saw on the road. In a city this large, there should have been traffic, even at this hour. The fact that there wasn't proved something about the fear level of the city. I had only seen it once before, in Colorado Springs, once the sun went down, the town closed up. Their killer had been pretty stealthy, sneaking up on his victims and slitting their throats as they walked down the street. His mistake had been an ATM camera. Once we found the picture, it had only been a matter of time.

We arrived at the police station a few minutes later. Gabriel and Lucas went into the interrogation room. Xavier and I sat in a different room.

Despite what people see on TV, interrogation rooms do not have large windows that allow you to see everything going on. Instead, we were shoved into a room with two other people, one of them Agent Arons, and a small TV. The camera for the TV was inside the interrogation room, a room that was overcrowded with just three people. Lucas was wide enough for two or three normal people.

The suspect sitting in the chair opposite the Marshals looked like many things, including a Viking warrior or a Russian muscle man. He was well muscled with a beer gut. His clothes looked slept in or worse. I imagined he didn't smell very well. He hadn't shaved in ages or by the looks of it, washed the beard that had grown in. I would have guessed him homeless and a car thief before our meticulous skinner.

Deciding this guy was guilty of poor taste and maybe a few other things, but not our serial killer, I turned to our surroundings. Something told me this had once been a janitor's closet. It was five foot wide by seven foot long. The walls were a strange muted yellow color. The TV sat on a skinny folding table. Our seats were metal folding chairs that were missing their rubber coated feet. They made horrendous noises when they were scooted across the linoleum tile floor.

A uniformed officer came in with four cups of coffee. The coffee looked strong and smelled stronger. Growing up in a house with a serious coffee drinker meant I loved the smell despite hating the taste. It also meant that I could tell the strength of the coffee based on the smell. It wasn't quite Snow Dogs thick, but it was getting close.

"Sugar? Cream?" The officer asked me. I shook my head and put the coffee on the table. Some would consider me a germ-o-phobe. I wasn't, but the thought of drinking coffee from a coffee mug that had been in a police station for an unknown number of years, bothered me. All those lips and hands of strangers made me not want to touch the cup. It wasn't about the germs, it was about the strangers. I had the worst case of "stranger danger" on the planet.

On the monitor, Gabriel and Lucas stood up. We followed their lead and met them in the hallway. Gabriel was shaking his head. Lucas was trying not to smile.

"You might check him against other open murder cases, I'd bet he killed someone, but he isn't our serial killer," Gabriel said.

"He had a bag full of bloody clothes!" Arons protested.

"But no skins and he's not coordinated enough," Gabriel answered. "This guy couldn't kidnap and then skin our women. He's a barely functional alcoholic. He's already starting to detox. He's dirty, smelly, and his mental state is a mess, but he isn't our killer."

"However, I wouldn't rule him out as a killer in general," Lucas jumped in. "He probably killed a guy or girl that pissed him off and is trying to figure out what to do about it. That's probably why he ran the light. Not only is he detoxing but he seems to be in a state of mild shock. I associate that with people who have done something out of character. In this case, he said something about trouble at home. You might check his girlfriend or wife or any of their lovers if they exist."