“It’s another damn woman,” I sighed at the ceiling. My migraine was gone. My identity crisis was solved. Our serial mutilator was a woman, which said all sorts of things about the serial killer population in general. And I was still questioning the encounter from the night before. I would have sworn the man walking towards us had been carrying a short knife blade. It was too hot for long sleeves, yet he’d been wearing them. I was also pretty sure the guy on the balcony had saved me from being stabbed. A killer might have been able to take Lucas, but he wouldn’t have gotten to the witness on the balcony before the cops were called. Why some random person on the street would try to stab me, was an entirely different matter. Of course, I had a question or two about the guy on the balcony as well. He’d been terribly focused on Lucas. I had wanted to shout out that Lucas was a taken man, but that seemed rude.
“Hello? Did you forget about me?” Nyleena’s voice came through the speakerphone.
“Yes,” I admitted. “So, I’m a little pissed at my mom because she has always known that Patterson was The Butcher.”
“Do you think it would have made you feel better to know that your serial killer stalker was your grandfather?”
“Probably not.”
“Then why are you pissed about it?”
“Because it seems like I should have been told.”
“Yeah, because you do so well with that kind of information. You’ve spent your entire life trying to prove you aren’t going to become a serial killer. Finding out your grandfather is a serial killer who is alive and stalking you is probably not information you could have handled when you were younger.”
“I’ve always known that Patterson was a serial killer,” I reminded her.
“Yes, but not that he was The Butcher.” She sighed. “Let’s face it, Aislinn; you were so busy trying to survive your teen years that finding out Patterson and The Butcher were the same person would probably have gone badly for you. And all that work you put in to not becoming a serial killer would have gone up in a puff of smoke.”
“So you think she did it to protect me? She could not stop Patterson from writing me, but she could control some of the information.”
“Yes,” Nyleena nearly exclaimed.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“So, my mother is misguided, but a good person.”
“You almost sound disappointed.”
“I can Taser people who suck.”
“You would not Taser your mother.”
“No, no I would not, but it sounded like a good way to deal with it.”
“The best way to deal with it is to tell her how you feel. I know you aren’t comfortable with talking about feelings, but it’s your mom and she would walk through the fires of hell with a smile on her face to help you.” Nyleena repeated Lucas, almost verbatim, which was irritating. “Now, you’ve had many revelations, including one about a serial killer, so I’m going to hang up. Good session, we’ll talk when you get back.”
“Now you sound even more like Lucas.”
“Lucas is a smart guy and a good psychiatrist.”
“He is a smart guy and a good psychiatrist.”
“And you definitely need a good psychiatrist, even if you are a highly functional sociopath.”
“Point taken, sociopaths should not look into their own psyche. Go do work stuff and I will go do work stuff. By the way, I hate female serial killers almost more than I do men, because they are a giant pain in the ass to capture. Guys give up after a couple of gunshots, women always want to appeal to your better nature.”
“That is a terrible gender bias and you do not have a better nature to appeal to, so it’s moot.” She hung up on me. I continued to stare at the ceiling in my hotel room. Nyleena had a lot in common with Jiminy Cricket, particularly their ability to point out faulty logic and be annoying. She was right about both my mother and my decision that women serial killers were harder to capture than male serial killers were. This was a fallacy, to be sure, but it sounded good in my head. I also didn’t hate female serial killers any more than any other type of killer. I was just tired of dealing with them. I’d dealt with four in the last year, which was about three more than usual. Also, not a single one of them had been normal in the sense of being predictable.
Women were less likely to kill with a lot of blood and gore. Historically, they liked poisons. However, it had started in the spring with two separate female serial killers in Texas. In the defense of one, she was using poison of a sort, well, bubonic plague, but that’s kind of like a poison. The other had been a teenager that had started by stabbing her victims and ended with beating them to death. Beating someone to death requires a lot of energy and adrenaline. It also demanded that a person not be squeamish. For these reasons, women did not beat people to death, even with baseball bats. They were more likely to shoot them than beat them.
I think mostly I was tired of dealing with weird cases. Why mutilate a person but not kill them? Where’s the fun in that? And what’s the trophy for, if the victim is still alive? I understood serial killers a lot better than most serial killers.
“Wakey, wakey.” Xavier knocked. I groaned and he opened the door. He carried a large bottle of Mountain Dew. I required caffeine in huge quantities. I don’t really sleep much without it, so I might as well be good and caffeinated for the hours I’m going to be awake.
“We have another female assailant,” I told him, taking the bottle of soda.
“Yeah, we were discussing that about ten minutes ago,” he told me. “There’s breakfast in the meeting room if you want anything.”
“Good.” I slipped out of bed. Today I was wearing pajamas, KC Chiefs pajama pants and a sleeping shirt with a bear on it and said, “Hiburrnation Rocks.” I agreed with the statement, I wouldn’t mind hibernating either. “Is everyone up but me?”
“No, Caleb had a hard time sleeping last night. I finally gave him a sleeping pill around two in the morning.”
“Orange lights when he closed his eyes,” I stated, remembering the night before. “And possibly a funky odor.”
“Yes, stop doing that to him, it’s mean.”
“Yes it is,” I agreed. “So, no vital sign checking this morning?”
“Your blood pressure is normal, pupils normal, reflexes normal, and you slept the drugs and migraine off.”
“How do you know?”
“Lucas told us about the guy on the street and the guy on the balcony,” Xavier answered. “The fact that you were able to comprehend the dangers while stoned has me scratching my head a little bit.”
“So, Lucas thinks he had a knife too?”
“Yes, he’s pretty sure of it.”
“Good, I wasn’t hallucinating then.” I stood up and looked around. My offensive Gogol Bordello shirt was gone.
“It’s with my luggage as are your jeans and undergarments.”
“So, I can remember telling Caleb to see bright orange, but I don’t remember undressing?”
“Fiona assisted with the undressing, and no, you practically passed out when you came into the room after you chain smoked four cigarettes and drank an entire jug of 5-Hour Energy.” Xavier frowned at me.
“Ah, that’s what this is about.” I didn’t remember the energy drink either.
“You know how that stuff impacts you,” Xavier said.
“I do not know why I drank it or where I got it,” I admitted. “Some parts are fuzzy. Probably the parts when the drug was strongest in my system. You dosed me with oxymorphine.”
“I was out of other things.” Xavier shrugged. “It worked.”
“Stop experimenting on me.”
“No guarantees.” Xavier stood up and left the room. I got dressed. They already knew our attacker was a woman and I wasn’t sure I could add to that. Thankfully, that wasn’t in my job description. I was just required to think like the psychopaths and sociopaths, kick down doors, and try to convince people they should just surrender to us. I was really good at two of these things.