Free Warrior in the Shadows by Marcus Wynne Page A

"I'll keep the assholes off your back. But make something happen soon, huh?"
    "Thanks, padre. Go take a break. I got the ball."
    "Dig for this boy, Bobby. Whatever you need."
    "I got it. I'll let you know how it develops."
    Bobby Lee watched Oberstar lumber away, hitching his baggy suit pants as though he were still wearing a patrol uniform and equipment belt. Then he turned back to his desk and flipped through the case file again, turning over the photographs as though he might now be able to see through the scramble of blood and innards strewn across his desk to the face that had to be behind it, and through that face to get some insight into the mind there.
    He'd never worked a case like this before. He'd filled out the detailed questionnaire the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit sent to local law enforcement agencies requesting help for profiling serial offenders, but he knew what kind of backlog those harried and overworked agents had to deal with. He didn't have a serial killer yet.
    Yet.
    Bobby Lee's street smarts had stood him in good stead during his years on patrol, and working homicide hadn't taken the edge off that at all. He stayed tuned up and kept his senses sharp. He had a feeling about this guy, and he'd learned to trust his feelings. He was going to see this guy's work again.
    But there was something about the choice of the victim. Madison Simmons wasn't right. The banker wouldn't be the usual prey of a serial offender; this smacked of a hit, someone with a grudge, business or personal. This kind of anger you sometimes saw in sex-related crimes. Gay? A hooker? Something there? There wasn't the element of disorganization you saw in a rage-induced murder, though. Simmons had been butchered, but not in a frenzy. It had been systematic and efficient, not hate-filled hacking. Madison Simmons had been taken apart the way a good hunter took apart a deer in the field, even down to preparing the kidney fat for a snack.
    "That's some silly sick shit for sure," Bobby Lee said.
    "You ain't kidding," said one of the uniform officers passing his desk.
    "Caught me talking to myself," Bobby Lee said.
    "Just don't start answering yourself," the patrolman said.
    Bobby Lee laughed and went back to his pictures and his rumi-nations. The hunter, for that was what Bobby Lee was starting to call him, had used materials on the scene to stage it, but he'd brought his knife, and the club he'd used to kill the banker with him. The forensics team said the club was heavy, similar to a baseball bat but with a heavy bulbous head, maybe a walking stick. The blow that most likely killed him had shattered his skull and opened his brain pan. The hunter would be a strong man, strong as hell. The angle of the blow indicated that Simmons had been below and at an angle when the killing blow was delivered, probably sitting in the recliner with the hunter facing him. Everything else, the evisceration, hanging the body, that was all postmortem.
    It had been messy, and it had taken time, but the scene wasn't rushed. The hunter hadn't been afraid of being discovered, or he just didn't care.
    Bobby Lee felt sure that the hunter had stripped down to avoid getting blood spatter on him. Analysis of all the water traps in the showers and sinks showed that he hadn't showered or washed, at least not there. The traces of paint and minerals they'd taken from the image on the wall were still undergoing analysis.
    That painting disturbed him. It was carefully drawn with its hellish palette of paints and provided a clear message about the hunter's mind if he could only translate the meaning, find some way to go where the killer's mind went. Where did all this go? What was this all about, the killing, the eating, the painting? He wracked his brains about that, but he knew he'd have to get some help elsewhere for insights into that image, and he hoped Charley, with his unconventional thinking, would take him where he needed to go.

1.9
    "Please move it to the right,