CHAPTER TWO
“I’d like to state once again for the record that I’m vehemently opposed to this entire thing,” Lieutenant Ronald Maddox said as Hadley walked alongside him through the dimly lit corridors of Coffield Unit, the state correctional facility a little over an hour south of Dallas. “It’s risky to allow a civilian in the maximum-security wing in the first place, but to even think about putting you in an interrogation room alone with a sadistic killer…” He shook his head, gray eyes glancing her way. “It boggles the mind that you’d even consider it.”
Hadley didn’t say anything. Maddox, the senior correctional officer in charge of security at the prison, had been complaining from the moment she and FBI agent, Silas Ferguson, had stepped through the front door of the facility. The warden, Maximo Burnett, a heavyset man with a friendly face, seemed interested in getting on the FBI’s good side, so he was going along with the plan without too much fuss.
“Once again, Lieutenant Maddox, I must remind you that Dr. Delacroix has extensive experience with sadistic killers, as you call them,” Agent Ferguson said from behind them. “She’ll be fine.”
Hadley ignored the silly pissing contest going on between the two of them, instead focusing on getting her mind right as they moved deeper into the maximum-security wing. She’d been making visits to prisons like Coffield for years, and the one thing she’d learned was that you couldn’t let the inmates know how scared you were. If you couldn’t face that fear, they’d eat you alive. And in the case of her latest subject, being eaten alive might actually be a real possibility.
So, she put on her game face and acted like nothing in here bothered her. Not the lieutenant suggesting she couldn’t hack it. Not the occasional shouts that echoed off the concrete walls. Not the rancid odors that were probably a result of a few bodily fluids she didn’t want to think about.
A few minutes later, they reached a steel door marked with a plaque that said Observation Room. Burnett opened it and motioned them inside. Ferguson set his briefcase on the table in the center of the room and pulled out a chair.
“This is the man you’ll be meeting today, Dr. Delacroix,” the dark-haired agent said, taking a folder from his briefcase. “His name is Eugene Strickland and to say he’s a cold-blooded killer would be an understatement.”
Hadley sat down across from him, glancing at the two-way mirror on the far wall and into the empty interview room beyond for a moment before turning her attention to the photo the FBI agent placed in front of her. The man in the picture was handsome with dark hair, dark eyes, and features she’d describe as almost aristocratic. There was certainly nothing about him that screamed killer, but she’d been dealing with murderers long enough to know that she couldn’t judge a book by its cover. In fact, she’d concluded a long time ago that the most twisted people sometimes came wrapped in the prettiest packaging.
Ferguson spread more photos across the desk, all of them disgusting enough to make her stomach clench. That was saying something, considering how many serial killers and sexual predators she’d been in the same room with over the years thanks to her job as a consultant for the FBI and Dallas PD.
“Two years ago, Dallas PD was called out to an apartment complex in Westover Hills after neighbors reported hearing screams,” Ferguson said. “When the police finally entered the apartment, they found Eugene Strickland standing in the bedroom naked, covered head to toe in blood.”
The FBI agent slid the gory photo of Strickland in Hadley’s direction. From the corner of her eye, she saw Maddox watching her face closely. Like he expected her to blush. Or throw up. Maybe both.
While she was disgusted at the sight of all that blood, she sure as hell wasn’t going to let the correctional officer know that. And if Maddox thought she’d start squirming at the sight of an erection—yes, Strickland was aroused in the photo—the lieutenant had another thing coming. She wasn’t embarrassed by it. In fact, she’d seen worse.
There was something in the picture that immediately drew her attention though. At first she’d thought Strickland had a big stomach, like a weight lifter, but then realized that wasn’t it at all.
“What’s wrong with his stomach?” she asked. “It looks like he swallowed a bowling ball. Several of them, actually.”
Strickland’s belly was grossly bloated in the photo, as if he’d spent hours stuffing himself at an all-you-could-eat buffet. But more than that were the strange shapes poking against the inside of the man’s stomach. Like he’d ingested several two-by-fours.
“Not quite bowling balls,” Ferguson said, placing several more photos on the desk.
Maddox’s face went pale at the sight of them.
Cursing under his breath, Burnett stood and moved across the room so he wouldn’t have to look at them.
Hadley didn’t blame him. The pictures were of a marble-tiled bathroom with a large bathtub against one wall. Unfortunately, the focus of every one of the photos was the contents of that tub. It was enough to make anyone want to hurl.
“After two years, neither the Dallas PD nor the FBI forensic labs have been able to identify the remains in that tub,” Ferguson said.
From where he sat beside her, Maddox looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pass out or throw up. Hadley was fully on board with either decision. She’d seen a lot of horrendous stuff, but this was definitely the worst.
“Are you telling us that used to be a person?” Maddox asked.
“What’s left of one.” Ferguson’s brow furrowed. “Strickland was in the process of eating his victim when the police interrupted him. Skin, muscles, most of the internal organs, teeth, the ribs, and some of the larger arm bones ended up in Strickland’s stomach, which explains the weird distention you noticed.”
“He ate the bones?” Burnett said hoarsely from the far side of the room where he’d been staring intently at the telephone attached there. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” Ferguson admitted. “I’ve had a few doctors and CSIs attempt to tell me how he might have done it, but none of their explanations seem even remotely feasible. It appears he swallowed the bones whole, or at least in really big pieces.”
Hadley knew Strickland displayed cannibalistic tendencies because it had been mentioned in the news stories she’d read, but she hadn’t realized he’d consumed the victim’s bones.
“You mentioned you couldn’t ID the victim,” Hadley said, looking at Ferguson.
“Not yet. As I said, most of the skin was gone,” Ferguson said, flipping through several pages in the folder. “That means no fingerprints or facial features to identify the person. The teeth were gone as well. Unfortunately, Strickland doused the remains in the bathtub in some kind of acid that totally corrupted whatever was left so we couldn’t do DNA testing.”
“Some kind of acid?” Maddox frowned. “Are you saying you don’t even know what kind he used?”
