Page 74 of Foxy Filthy Omega

The chemical smell used in morgues and funeral homes weren’t usually that big of a deal, but it couldn’t quite cover the smell of what I could only describe as sweet, rotting chicken.

Soren held up the phone to record the head from as many angles as possible and all I could do was stare at the face of a man whose skin was starting to sag under his eyes.

There was no residual blood either which made the churning in my stomach worse.

I could see why they’d thought it was a bad prank at first.

What normal person would think a disembodied head this clean was real?

I turned slightly to watch the forensics team do their thing and took another breath before refocusing on Soren.

Three heads without bodies with no visual similarities in appearance other than their brown hair.

Considering there wasn’t any blood dripping down the tree stump, it made me think there wasn’t any blood left in that thing at all.

Whoever put this here had removed the head from the body, drained all the blood, and cleaned it off the skin.

Why someone would do that…I don’t know.

Yeah, I was a behavior analyst and I knew more about criminal psychosis than most, but understanding what made a person like this never really explainedwhydoing this satisfied those urges.

Why this specifically?

Was killing the person really not enough? Did they really have to torture them too?

I knew why they did it. I understood that it was partially for their perceived survival, and partially as a way to ‘get back’ at the person they were afraid of but it was just kind of…lame.

Of course, it was disturbing, but once you stripped away all the horror, the motive was truly childish.

There was this one serial killer over a hundred years ago who trapped people in his hotel and murdered them in secret rooms. That hotel had been his playground and the things theyuncovered in there were truly horrific, but his only motive was the thrill of it all.

None of his victims had anything in common other than the fact that they’d stayed at his hotel and the things they’d learned about the killer’s victims reminded me a lot of this one.

Whoever was behindthisatrocity was still in their infancy when it came to murder if the jagged cuts on the neck were any indication. That or they were crazed in a way that would make it really fucking hard to blend in to society.

Soren stood and I turned away, taking another deep breath as I headed for Garcia. “Now what are you going to do?”

“Study the tracks.”

I turned to look back at him, shocked enough by his statement that I couldn’t hide it. “You can track?”

He nodded and studied the ground again. “It’s not going to be easy with everyone walking all over the trail, but if the killer went unseen, they probably didn’t use the main trail. If we can figure out how they left, it would narrow down some of the possibilities.”

“Did the military teach you that?” I couldn’t help it. I was intensely curious about this new fact.

Tracking wasn’t one of the skills listed on his resumé even though it would be considered valuable for this line of work.

“No, they didn’t.” Soren cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck – one of his tells, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it meant yet.

“Really? Then who did?”

“Before I joined up, I was an Eagle Scout,” he admitted. “Tracking and hunting were my specialties. Navigation was my secondary skill.”

“You got badges for that right?” I was impressed despite myself. “Isn’t that shit hard?”

“It’s not easy, but you get used to it.” Soren glanced at me, clearly unsure if I was fucking with him or not. “I can take a look around the crime scene while you talk to whoever you need to talk to, but I’d like to come back after we go to the office to take a look at the areas off the trail.”

“Sure.” I just stared at him like an idiot, shocked that he was being so assertive. And helpful. “Just stay where I can see you.”

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