Carnal Prey

Chapter 1

His alcohol induced coma was abruptly shattered by the sound of musical chords somewhere seemingly miles away. As their intensity increased, the haze reluctantly gave way to semi-consciousness. Light began to seep between his crusted eyelids as the pounding in his head intensified with each chord. He struggled instinctively to reach for the sound still unsure of where it was or even what it was. Reluctantly he rolled toward the sound and forced his eyes to open against the stark light streaming through his bedroom window. The familiarity of his apartment began to take shape as his addled brain slowly brought him to life. It was his alarm, on the nightstand, still chiming its overtly happy chords. As he reached to shut it off, the full extent of his hangover became suddenly obvious. Despite the dizziness and throbbing pain deep inside his head, he stumbled to his bathroom. As he stood there staring at the man before him in the mirror, the true depth of his condition struck him. The middle-aged man was unshaven and completely disheveled. His slightly balding salt and pepper hair was a greasy mess. He was fully dressed in wrinkled clothes stained with sweat and wreaking of body odor. As he stooped to splash cold water on his face, he searched his mind for the details of the preceding hours, some explanation for his sorry state.

These days Dillon Haywood was a wreck. For all his adult life, he'd never been much of a drinker and at 48 was pretty much a light weight in the policing community when it came to holding his liquor. He was far too passionate about to the details of his work and the integrity of his profession to squander any brain cells on alcohol. He'd worked too hard gaining the respect of his peers in the Forensic Community to let anything get in the way. The work had become his life. He'd spent the last 15 years working toward the goal of running his own forensic section at a major metropolitan police service. The countless hours of study and endless crime scene examinations over the years had all culminated in his current position as the head of forensics for the Omaha Police Department. This was no New York or LA but it was a highly respected department in a beautiful mid-west city. He loved his job and he truly enjoyed the city.

That was the case, at least until three weeks ago. What had started as a random act of violence toward a vulnerable young woman had clearly escalated into something far more sinister. Within a matter of weeks, the grueling pace of the casework had begun to take its toll. The entire department was being mobilized and the Forensic Bureau was at the epicenter of the investigation. Despite endless hours spent at each crime scene, there was still precious little that had been developed. The lab was working at capacity to process every minute piece of evidence. What was even more troubling though was that Dillon had seen this all before and he knew, all too well, where it was headed. Maybe that was why he had begun to hit the bottle so hard lately. He, more than most, knew the kind of evil he was up against and what it would take to stop it.

It was a pattern Dillon had seen before and it never ended well. Homicides fall roughly into two broad categories. There are killings where the suspect and victim are known to each other and there are stranger killings, where the victim is a random target. Stranger killings are by far the most difficult to solve. Motive is ambiguous, they lack traceable links between them, plus they're generally calculated and executed without passion. Factor into that scenario, victims who are on the fringes of society with sketchy backgrounds and few relationships. This was going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

Dillon had already seen more carnage in his career than most people could imagine in their lifetime, but that was to be expected. It was all part of the job. He had learned to compartmentalize his life into little manageable pieces. You do the work, no matter how gruesome. You leave it at the office and you go home to your real life. One never crosses over to the other. That's the only way to survive in this line of work without a major train wreck. It all works quite well when the work comes to you in manageable bites and so long as you can remain detached from the horror of it. That, however, was not the situation Dillon and his team were facing right now.