“Because raw meat is so incredibly hard to chew, humans tend to cook it first,” Xavier said, cutting into a steak that bled profusely. “Seasoning, tenderizing, and cooking, all make meat more palatable. Otherwise, the muscles in our jaws would be very powerful, like a tiger or crocodile. However, they aren’t, so we’ve had to invent ways to eat meat.”
It had been John’s suggestion to go for steak, so I had obliged and taken him to George’s Pizza and Steakhouse. Columbia, like most cities, had a no smoking policy in all public buildings, including bars and restaurants. However, George’s was just outside city limits and much to everyone’s chagrin, you could smoke before, during and after your meal. But they had good pizza and good steaks.
If I had been slightly less of a jerk, I would have taken them to G&D Pizza and Steakhouse. It was all owned by the same family, but you couldn’t smoke in G&D. Of course, G&D would have been busier, as it was, there were only a handful of people, most of them men, hanging around the restaurant.
I was eating a pizza. Gabriel and John had ordered steak. John had since pushed his well-done hunk of sirloin away and was looking a little green. Gabriel kept at his, not letting Xavier’s conversation bother him. Although, he had ordered his steak medium well, which was unusual for Gabriel.
“Also, given the number of bites,” I continued. “The person has to be feeding. We counted ninety-two on one victim, not counting the predator bites. That is not a person with a fetish, that is a person enjoying a single meal. On average, a person takes one hundred bites a day. If you only eat one meal a day, then it would make sense that the person gorged at the single feeding.”
“And it isn’t like the person woke up one morning and decided that eating raw human flesh was a good idea,” Xavier interrupted. “They’ve been at it for a long time. They must have massive jaw muscles. Humans have to develop those muscles to get to the point where taking that many bites of raw meat is even possible. Not to mention chewing the stuff.”
“Is this a theory you’re working with?” Gabriel asked.
“Everything’s a theory until it isn’t,” I answered. “Of course, there are some problems with the theory. For example, we think the human and predator are feeding at the same time and I can’t imagine why. Most large predators are not keen on sharing food, unless they’re pack animals, but cats tend not to be pack animals and the skull crushing kind of leads away from dogs. A bear or crocodile might do it, but a crocodile wouldn’t leave such neat bite marks. A domesticated bear might share, but honestly, I can’t think of a single predator that I would want to share a meal with, especially not that close. That’s like eating off the same plate.”
“Another problem is the length of time it would take to build up jaws strong enough to take chunks of human flesh out, chew it, swallow it, and go back for more,” Xavier jumped back into the conversation. “We agree that this would take conditioning. This person didn’t start out eating people, they started out eating other things and moved up to people.”
“How does this jive with the case from twenty-five years ago?” Gabriel asked.
“I’m not sure, according to the notes I’ve read, there were no human bite marks on the single body they found. Of course, if the river was the dump zone then too, there’s no telling. The river hides most sins, at least for a while.” I thought back to a rash of drownings that had happened in the Missouri River during the same time. Six people in three months, it didn’t seem like a lot, but it had been to me. All the victims had been young, like I had been, and it seemed disproportionately high compared to the number of swimmers. However, the current was strong and swift, the bottom littered with debris, both natural and man-made, in hindsight, it seemed easier to go missing than survive a swim in the muddy Missouri.
“We have experts coming in tomorrow to give us more information about the human and animal bite marks,” Xavier finished the conversation as he polished off the steak.
“Anything you’d like to add?” Gabriel looked at me.
“The pizza’s good,” I answered.
“I should have ordered a salad.” John groaned.
“You get used to it, eventually.” I smiled at him.
After dinner, we returned to the hotel. As I have said many times, I would rather be busting down doors and breaking skulls than investigating. Investigating required patience and finesse, I had neither. We’d made preliminary identifications on two of the victims dragged from the bottom of the river. However, we weren’t handling the notifications, we weren’t exactly “family friendly.” Families thought we were cold, callous, and occasionally, crass. Once in a while, Gabriel would have the hellish task of dealing with families, but for the rest of us, families were off-limits. I was fine with this. I didn’t understand my own family, understanding other families was impossible. I tended to find the faults and ugliness just beneath the surface of grief and poke at it until it reared its mean head. I’d done that in Alaska and found a serial killer, but I’d done it in Mobile, Alabama and nearly gotten shot by a woman who had been aiming at her husband after he had molested her daughter. A daughter that had run away because of the abuse and that I had taken all of about three minutes to figure out once inside the family. Monsters came in all shapes and sizes, I brought out the worst in them and they couldn’t hide behind their masks for very long when I was in a room.
There was a soft, polite rap at my door. The knocker gave it twenty seconds and pushed it open. Gabriel looked tired. His face was pale, making the spattering of freckles more noticeable. His normally kind and sparkling eyes were dull.
“Stop being mean to John,” he told me taking a seat at the table. I pulled out my headphones, despite having turned the music off the moment he knocked.
“That is a monumental task,” I answered.
“Ok, consider it an order,” Gabriel met my gaze and held it, daring me to look away.
“Fine, I’ll consider it an order, it will still be a monumental task.”
“Just because he’s new and you haven’t learned to trust him?”
“I still feel like he’s an interloper. He isn’t half as entertaining as Michael and he doesn’t like me much.”
“How incredibly perceptive of you,” Gabriel smirked, keeping eye contact.
“I know I’m a pain in the behind.”
“If I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t like you very much either.”
“Yes, yes,” I waved dismissively, breaking eye contact. I could be defiant to the ends of the earth and he knew it. Giving up just a little bit, letting him be the dominant, kept the group working harmoniously and I preferred the harmony. I could get into a pissing contest with Gabriel, but it would upset the balance, things would slide into the rabbit hole that I still secretly feared.
“Good,” Gabriel continued to sit.
“What’s on your mind other than my being an ass?” I asked after several minutes of quiet. Gabriel and I had a rapport. It wasn’t the same that I had with Xavier or Lucas. Lucas watched out for me, feeling some need to play knight to my damsel. Xavier treated me like a co-conspirator, in an elaborate spy-ring or some such adventure. Gabriel was my equal. He understood he was alpha only because I wanted him to be. He respected what it meant to both of us and treated me accordingly.
“I’ve been thinking about what Xavier said, about building up the muscles in the jaws,” Gabriel frowned. “How long would that take?”
“It would depend on a lot of factors. Someone with dentures could do it faster, because they wouldn’t have sensitivity in their teeth. Starting out young would help, because the teeth that they broke while building up those muscles would be replaced by stronger, permanent teeth. If they started young enough, by the time their adult teeth started growing in, they’d be able to rip out good sized chunks from just about anything. Also, chewing on leather or some other material would help. Part of the reason dog toys are made of rawhide is to help them keep their jaw strength.”
“Well, I have a crazy theory,” Gabriel said. “What if the kidnappings and murders from twenty-five years ago are related to our current case? What if he was kidnapping children and feeding them to his pet jaguar, but found a child the jaguar didn’t kill for whatever reason?”
“Jaguars don’t live long in captivity. In twenty-five years, he could easily have gone through four if not five jaguars. How do you keep acquiring jaguars that don’t kill a human interloper, but has no problem eating other people?”
“The human would have to be a pretty successful survivor,” Gabriel sighed.
“Someone like Malachi,” I pursed my lips together. “Under the right conditions, a human can become feral. It’s normally with dogs, wolves, apes, pack animals, but a single female jaguar is more willing to allow another female to live in its territory. Especially, if the female is not the alpha, a condition that could happen if the person was a psychopath. A few fights for dominance, the human wins, the animal becomes the submissive. However, it would be nearly impossible to create a feral human.”
“Nearly impossible.” Gabriel repeated the phrase.
“It happens, but it happens in nature, not artificial environments. For every one feral child, there are dozens, if not hundreds, that are killed by whatever finds them. To create one in an artificial environment would require no human interaction. Meals, medicine, even watching them, results in some interaction. The child would grow up stunted, I can think of a famous case of this, in Germany, but the child wasn’t feral.”
“The famous case in Germany?” Gabriel pressed.
“A boy was locked in a room all his life, feed through a door, given sparse toys, he grew up to be timid of humans, but he recognized himself as such. He was eventually released from his prison and quickly integrated with society, until he was stabbed to death. We’ll leave it at that because that’s where facts give way to conspiracy theories. But a feral human wouldn’t recognize themselves as such, they’d relate more to the animal that raised them. Of the few feral humans ever found, they did poorly in human society, because they are more animal than human. Proof that we are all just one step away from devolving.”