2014 Novel Series #4: Hunter

I'm trying to catch up on these and be more active, really. Life gets distracting and tiring plus I like to just sit and write when I go home. Writing is a different kind of thinking than what goes into these blog posts and I'd rather think like a writer.

Anyway, this was book 4 of the year which was started and finished in March. It's also book 6 of the Mystery Series.

Hunter carries on the story of the same main characters found in the prior books of the series: Face Snatcher, Hanger, Dryer, Witches, and Car Jacking. The details:

Genre: Mystery/Thriller fiction

Word Count: 71,825

Prompt: I think it had something to do with an alternate method for the killer in Face Snatcher keeping the faces. Someone mentioned beheading them and mounting them like animals and well, yeah.

Main Characters: James Reeves, Mia Liu, Lucy McGregor, Michael Brown, and our killer.

Minor Characters of Note: Patterson, Chief of Police, who still doesn't have a first name. Sable Abella, Knight, and Steel. Knight and Steel also don't have first names for some reason. I've no idea why.

Summation: Homosexual couples found in mattresses in local dumps with no heads and shot through the heart. Yep.

High Points: Abella

Low Points: Lucy and her girlfriend Anne

The World: Ours.

Memorable Lines:

The smell of rotting refuse was strong in the mid-morning sun. James squinted against the sun and took a light breath as he, Mia, Lucy, and Abella were led deeper into the dump. The call had come half an hour ago and Patterson assigned them to what would be the new case.
One of the workers at the Bin There, Dump That dump had become suspicious of a mattress. It looked lumpy, weird things were leaking out of it, and it smelled worse than other things. James had no idea how the man could tell how horrible the mattress in question smelled being surrounded by garbage but he didn't question it, not yet.
James winced as he had to step over something brown and unidentifiable. They took a turn around a mound of garbage and there it was. The mattress in question had been dragged down from a pile and cut open. Inside the man had found a human arm. That was when the man called his boss and the boss had come down then called the station.
The operator at the station passed the call to Patterson who immediately called James. Now here they were on a cool September 10th, walking through a dump to see what was left of the human body in a mattress.

"This was a shot gun blast, single shot, precise so the unsub is a hunter of some description. As for the removal of the head, that was done after he drained the body of blood via this cut through the throat. Again: another hunter's tactic. The head was removed cleanly, no sawing or hesitation. I'm going to guess that he's mounting the heads after doing some kind of modified taxidermy on them." Lucy explained.

"Why do people always take heads as trophies?" James asked.
"To establish dominance over the victim, you know, prove their power and prowess in battle." McGregor said.
She smirked when he looked up at her and nodded. The half-amused, half-exasperated look on his face told her that he knew it all ready. It had been a rhetorical question. McGregor had a thing for answering those.

"So we've got a homophobic hunter killing homosexuals because someone he loves came out and he thinks homosexuality is for lesser beings?" (Yes, yes you do.)

"I said "no," what part of that don't you understand? The 'n' or the 'o'?"

"It doesn't matter how much martial arts you know when you're faced with a 12 gauge shotgun bullet."

"We talked about how many hard-asses who swear in Japanese are allowed to be on this team." Mia said.
"I'll take my punishment later. We've got to meet the Sato's soon." James told her.

"That's a heart-attack waiting to happen." James commented.
"Yeah but it's so good. And hey, I'd rather die happy than resort to eating non-greasy health food." Brown said.

"That is one big mother fucking mug."
James looked up to see Mia with still damp hair and a look of jealousy on her face. She was staring at his mug.
"Thanks. It holds a pot of coffee." James told her.
"You're going to be so wired later." Mia said.

"Kuso." Mia muttered.
"Faku." Lucy murmured.
"Mierda." Abella added after a beat.
James wanted to laugh when Mia and Lucy looked at Abella so quickly that he was sure they might have whiplash.
"Did you just swear in Spanish?" Mia asked.
"Yes? Everyone else was swearing in their mother-tongue, so, yes." Abella said.
James leaned back and watched with a grin on his face. He was almost glad it was close to 6PM. Suddenly Lucy started chuckling and Mia joined in. Abella looked relieved then stared at James.
"You didn't." Abella said.
"I'm not allowed to be the other hard-ass that curses in Japanese. That's apparently reserved for Lucy. And I'm too muddle-blooded to have a "mother-tongue" besides English." James said.
"I never actually asked your ethnic background. Is it bad that I feel bad?" Mia asked.
"Nope. My mother's side is from Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. As far as I know my father's side was Polish, Russian, and Norwegian." James told her.
"All blond and blue-eyed. That's really kind of creepy." Lucy said.

"It's all CSI's fault. That damned show raised a generation to think this job is glamorous when you're normally ankle deep in some kind of shit and start thinking that if you don't smell death in a week it's been a bad week, job wise. Most of them drop out in first year when they see pictures of actual wounds. If they make it to graduation, they drop out of mentoring because god-forbid they deal with a real dead person. Urg. I hope Anderson gets them (new students) both."

"That would be me. Hacker-God, Dragon-God, knower of all things tech." Brown said.

"Homosexuals, why did he have to go after people like me? Why couldn't it be someone normal like you? Why is it always the weird, fucked up ones that society hates? Why can't people like me be happy for once. Just fucking once. I've had enough of life beating the shit out of me. It's fucking bullshit."

"Abella, hey. Oh great, you broke my assistant. You're going to have to buy me a new one." Lucy said.

"Um, there's a whip in here." Abella said.
"Neither owned a horse." McGregor mentioned.
"GAH!"
McGregor turned to see that Abella had dropped the whip and was blushing furiously. Abella took a breath and McGregor shook her head.
"How can you stare at a maggot and not get grossed out but freak out at the mention of kinky sex?" McGregor asked.
"I'm so glad you didn't say kinky fuckery. And maggots, well, they're not gross. I don't know. It's not the thought of sex it's just, weird? No, that's not the right word. I'm not, well, that experienced and stuff, so yeah." Abella explained.
"Kinky fuckery?" McGregor asked. (I love how that's all she gets out of the explanation.)

"God never reveals his secrets. It'd blow up the universe."

James waited until Mia stood beside him. They shared a glance and knew this would be the most dangerous chase of their entire careers.
"I only have six bullets." James said.
"You fucking idiot." Mia told him.

"You can dress him up and clean him up all you want but I don't think we can ever integrate him into normal society." Lucy said (about Brown).