Apex Predator Read online

  The seventeen remaining fraternity brothers nervously awaited Fitch’s return. The entire time Donnelly stared down the shivering pledge, Donnelly’s mouth slightly open as he breathed harder in anticipation, sharp canines protruding.

  Herbert stared at Donnelly’s big teeth, fighting against the pressure in his rapidly filling bladder.

  After several moments dimly heard footsteps gave way to Fitch marching into view, a foot-long wooden box in his shaking hand.

  “Sir I—” Fitch began.

  “I’ll do it, you pussy.”

  Fitch handed off the box. A shiver of fear danced along his scalp at the sight of his chapter president’s dilated pupils. They were black, inhuman. Fitch stepped back.

  “Turn around, and bend over,” Donnelly said to Herbert while rolling up his sleeves.

  Herbert complied.

  Murmurs swept through the room. Fraternity brothers glanced to their left and right, furtively making eye contact with each other, wondering when Donnelly would stop.

  Struggling not to stare too hard at Herbert’s wide swept hips and fleshy white backside, Donnelly opened the box. The fraternity brothers fell into a silenced shock, staring at the object Donnelly removed and held in his hand.

  It was a long Coco-Cola bottle thick dildo.

  Fitch gasped, breathing heavily. The look on Donnelly’s face was sickening. His lips had skinned back from his teeth, making them look bigger than he remembered. Even worse, Donnelly was leering at Herbert’s quaking body. Each time Fitch looked at Donnelly a feeling of something slithering along his skin prodded him to back away further.

  Donnelly held the rubbery dildo up like a long lost artifact, barely controlling his volcanically broiling excitement. Though many of the watching fraternity brothers appeared anguished, several of their peers leaned forward excitedly.

  Herbert risked a glance over his shoulder, shock registering on his face.

  Donnelly’s onrushing tunnel vision focused in on Herbert, a long suppressed memory of his screaming baby brother momentarily sending exploding lights dancing behind his eyes. He felt impossibly powerful, his consciousness straddling two worlds, senses alive. Then the darkness swept in. Donnelly’s arm thrust forward violently, eyes dulling over as a jolt of pleasure shot from his toes to his balls.

  Herbert’s first bleating screams pierced the room.

  Outside the old Victorian fraternity house, a blood moon hung low and orange in the night sky.

  ------------------

  August 2016 – Detroit’s Western Suburbs

  Brody turned into his old neighborhood, feeling a twinge of anxiety. He was wasting time and knew it. Even so, just being there made him feel safe, reminding him of a pleasant childhood before he discovered the awful truth of what the world—

  His sentimental journey hit the brick wall of reality, a foreclosure notice fluttering on the front door of the third home he drove past. On the driveway, a woman in a tank top filled an aluminum framed lawn chair. It’s frayed green, white, and blue webbing barely supported her prodigious weight. Two children played in a sprinkler on a patchy front lawn dotted with dandelions.

  He guided the car down the street and around the bend where his childhood best friend, Chris Granger, had been raised. Chris’ parents, retired school teachers, had lived there since 1977 when it had been built. Past their house loomed his first girlfriend’s old place. A leggy brunette who loved alternative music, she had taken his virginity and provided him a four year relationship that lasted two year’s too long.

  Brody braked and pulled into the next home’s sloping driveway. A flat expanse of garage door took up half its brown bricked width. He stepped from his car, peeking over his shoulder. Across the street and behind a single row of houses a quarter mile strip of woodland and parks separated his neighborhood from the next one to the west. His mostly joyful youth had included endless hours in the wilderness playground that on only three occasions ever caused him to feel frightened.

  The first time he discovered the world might not be as safe as he thought had been when he and Chris swore they found Bigfoot footprints. In the late 1970s, it seemed to any sensible kid the beast was genuine. Leonard Nimoy’s tense, creepy In Search Of spoke of it while the next night the Six Million Dollar Man battled the creature. Meanwhile, the Saturday afternoon horror movie of the week’s eerie Led Zeppelin scored intro all too often led into another TV showing of the Legend of Boggy Creek. Brody’s smile turned down as he remembered the second time the forest put a shock into him…

  By nine years of age, he knew every trail, creek, and gulley crisscrossing the woods. Not coincidentally, one cold winter day he and Chris discovered a fort. But it wasn’t just any fort. It belonged to Frank Castro. Every kid feared the big teenager and his gang. Sundry humiliations, scams, petty robberies; Frank and his buddies loved shaking down weaker kids. They always got away with it.

  Brody’s anger at the injustice of Frank’s predations had resurfaced that day they found the ground level fort. An anger usurped by the opportunity posed from Frank’s arrogant decision to secure the padlocked door with outside hinges. Wielding the matching Swiss Army knives he and Chris had received from their parents for Christmas, they unfolded the screwdriver attachments and methodically dismantled the door. Inside they found a treasure trove of early 1980s burnout paraphernalia - candles, incense, Heavy Metal music, and weirdly decorated pipes nothing like what his dad stuffed with sweet tobacco for an evening smoke.

  Brody harbored no illusions as to how Frank’s crew stocked their funky fort. Their parents gave them whatever they wanted. If that wasn’t enough they used the money they stole to buy up everything else. It was payback time. He and Chris helped themselves; cassette tapes, matches, lighters, and a switchblade. With their coats stuffed, they had headed home. However, not two minutes later they ran into trouble - three ugly teenagers led by Frank Castro brandishing a pellet gun. To the quaking kids, the teenagers seemed gigantic.

  “You see anybody out here?” Frank said, his friend’s Todd and Craig glowering around his shoulders. Todd’s beady eyes stared out of his porcine face with a creepy intensity that had caused Chris to turn paler than the back of his grandma’s arms.

  “Back that way,” Brody said as he pointed over his shoulder. “Two guys in a hurry and headed toward the other sub-division.” Had he left it at that it might have been enough, but he couldn’t be sure, especially with Chris looking like this was all news to him. He threw in the kicker, “We can help you find ‘em if you want.”

  Chris nearly fainted.

  “Alright,” Frank’s accusatory glare disappeared. “Holler if you see anything.”

  Brody nodded, needing to pee.

  The big teenager’s gang plunged down the trail.

  “Let’s go,” Chris said.

  “Are you kidding me?” Brody shot back. “If we don’t do this right, we’ll pay.”

  In retrospect, their outfits had probably saved them, the winter jackets matched in their bulk by coordinating ski pants. The combined effect not only hid their bulging pockets underneath but may have thrown off Frank’s crew when they confronted the clammy faced boys. Brody moved off a few steps into the forest. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a pipe and tossed it down. Brody glanced at Chris, who nodded his understanding and dropped the best prize of the day - the knife.

  “We found something!” Brody yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth.

  Within moments Frank and his toadies appeared, Frank swiping the pipe off the ground, eyes wide in recognition.

  “Holy shit, look at this!” Chris said from down the path, his voice sounding convincingly surprised.

  “Hey, it’s my switchblade,” Frank snarled as he shouldered past Brody.

  Brody couldn’t believe their luck. But then, and to his horror, he realized the path also showed the tracks they had left a
n hour prior in the fresh snow, footprints moving toward the fort.

  He gulped.

  They were pinched.

  Instead, Frank took one glimpse at the tracks and lumbered off, “C’mon. They might be headed back.”

  Frank’s cronies tore after their leader, as Brody and Chris used the distraction to make good on their escape…

  Brody’s frown deepened as he thought of the third time his woods had put the fear of God into him.

  Not now.

  Chapter 9

  August 2016 – Detroit’s Western Suburbs

  A door slammed. Brody turned toward the white and gray split level across the street. A For Sale sign listed forlornly on the front lawn.

  “Lookie, here,” The owner, a burly man named Matt Potter, said as he marched down his driveway.

  Brody smiled but he didn’t have time for small talk. However, as Matt’s ruddy face broke into a grin Brody relaxed a bit, gesturing at the sign, “Retiring already?”

  “I lost my job,” Matt said, his smile disappearing. “Ford is moving the plant to Mexico.”

  A breeze kicked up like a blast furnace had opened in Brody’s face. Sweat trickled down the small of his back.

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it? The cost of moving the machinery alone is insane...”

  Brody listened. What could he say? That guys like Matt didn’t have a chance unless they put it all on the line? Nobody wanted to hear that.

  Shadows flitted across the road.

  “My former supervisor told me I should go back to school,” Matt said. “What does he expect? People don’t just change who they are.”

  Brody nodded empathetically but distracted by the shadows, glanced up. Two hawks wheeled high above.

  “I’ll tell you something. Karma is a bitch. What goes around comes around.” Matt brought Brody back to ground level.

  “Yea, well,” Brody sighed. “I’ve seen plenty of bad people do what they want, and get away with it.”

  An awkward silence followed.

  “I got an appointment with the realtor,” Matt said, sticking out his hand.

  Brody took it, Matt’s grip tight.

  “I hope you remember what it’s like to not only give a shit, but to do something about it before it’s too late,” Matt said, releasing Brody’s hand and marching off.

  After a long moment, Brody turned and walked up his parent’s driveway. Having called ahead, he yanked open the screeching screen door without knocking. His dad was a spry seventy-five but his mom had been battling rheumatoid arthritis for decades. Brody greeted his parents and followed them into the kitchen where the TV caught his attention: “Jimmy Donnelly is testifying on Capitol Hill in conjunction with yesterday’s announcement that his bank has agreed to a $1.92 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The bank had been fighting against claims that it laundered billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels.” The screen cut to a live feed of a congressman pontificating for the cameras: “Your latest settlement is in response to at least the third felony admitted to by your bank in the past four years—” Another voice cut in, “Let me explain something you’re missing.” The screen switched to the smiling face of Jimmy Donnelly.

  “Could you please turn that off?” Brody said as he sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Sure, hun,” His mother said. Her once dainty hands were curled into gnarled hooks. Even so, she managed to not only get the right button on the remote, but quicker than one would have thought possible threw together a bologna sandwich and fizzing glass of Vernors ginger ale.

  “Anything new to report?” She asked, shoveling some chips on the plate, nearly dropping it as she set it in front of Brody, “Maybe you’ve got someone new? Like that nice girl you brought over for Christmas that one time? Any fool could see—”

  “Enough mom,” Brody said with a sigh as a long suppressed memory jogged loose… He was in Vermont, riding up a chairlift. The woman pressed in next to him gleefully kicked her boots over the thirty-plus foot drop to the snow below. He had always been nervous about heights, but something about being with her made him confident. He remembered how he had leaned in, her hair cool, smelling crisply of the outdoors, the blood pounding in his heart—

  “You hear about the Grangers?” His dad said, waving the cat off the table.

  Brody tore off a corner of his sandwich and tossed the prize in a soft arc. The agile feline caught it with ease as Brody shook his head ‘no’ in response to his father’s question. The Grangers had always treated him like a second son. For that, and innumerable other reasons, he would forever be grateful.

  “They’re losing their house,” Brody’s Dad said. “They were cooking dinner. A grease fire started. The fire department ended up hosing the place down like it was the Towering Inferno.”

  “They didn’t have insurance?”

  His dad told him how the insurance company rebuilt the house. Meanwhile, the Grangers and their insurer had requested a ten day payoff from the bank servicing the loan. The bank said to suspend the monthly auto withdrawal. Then the insurer sent the bank a check along with a letter requesting they pay off the mortgage. The bank cashed the check upon receipt and put the money in a suspense account. The Grangers, having always been financially prudent, discovered the mortgage still in effect. The collectors wouldn’t leave them alone, calling day and night. Then the bank asked if the Grangers could fax them another payoff request. The Grangers did. The bank said they never received it. The Grangers faxed them again and emailed a scanned copy to be sure. It didn’t matter. The bank collectors wanted nine grand in fees plus the monies they claimed past due, even though the bank had cashed the insurance company’s check.

  Brody listened, knowing whose bank not only held the Granger’s mortgage but had decided to strong-arm certain people into paying more fees. People that he had let down all because—

  “Tell me someone is investigating this?”

  “It’s complicated,” Brody responded, fidgeting in his seat.

  “Fraud is just lying to steal. How complicated is that? It’s the same as if someone broke into their house with a gun. If that happens then you’ve got every right to—”

  Brody’s ringing smart phone saved him from the lecture. He jumped up from his chair and stepped outside onto the concrete patio leading to the swimming pool. At one time at least a third of the neighbors had pools. Now most couldn’t afford it. He answered the call.

  “Doctor Timothy Martin speaking, the Detroit medical examiner told me to get ahold of you. I’m head of the Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health at Michigan State University. I’ve finished my analysis of the sample that was sent.”

  “So whaddya have for me, Doc? Rottweiler, Pit Bull, or what?”

  “Uhhh, no,” Martin cleared his throat.

  “Come again,” Brody said. The smart phone felt hot against his ear, a sickening buzzing feeling making him feel queasy.

  “Maybe we could discuss this in person?”

  “Ok, let’s meet out in Brighton,” Brody said. “It’s halfway, and there’s a little pub downtown, a bit of a dive but known for its hamburgers—”

  “I know the place,” Martin said. “I’m on my way.”

  ------------------

  July 1988 – New York City, New York

  Mary Jackson’s world crumbled as her husband Dan raged at the young bank manager.

  The banker sat behind his desk, a degree from Yale framed on the wall behind his impassive head. A plastic name plate shined under the ceiling’s harsh fluorescent lighting. The manager’s name “Jim Donnelly” embossed in white lettering. At initial glance it all checked out. Yet, something about him seemed off.

  Mary was trying to place the source of her discomfort when Donnelly’s gaze flickered across her ample cleavage. At the same time his lips parted to reveal
unusually large teeth. A long, lolling tongue slipped past those teeth. The tip pointed toward Mary for just a moment before it slithered back inside as the right side of Donnelly’s mouth curled up in a sneer, his eyes glittering with hunger.

  Dan didn’t see any of it, though he wouldn’t have noticed a meteor hitting her on the head. That was because Donnelly had denied their request for a loan they desperately needed to expand their newly thriving auto garage, and a loan that represented perhaps their one chance to make something better of their lives. Donnelly had responded to Dan’s hostility with a maddeningly paternal tone, calmly explaining that without a regular verifiable income, or without putting their house up as collateral it wouldn’t work out.

  “I’m done with this asshole,” Dan said, jumping to his feet as he waved his hand at Mary. “I’ll see you in the car.”

  He slammed the door behind him, the office walls rattling.

  Mary, a cocktail waitress at a sports bar, knew she had to do something. She hesitated, the office feeling that much smaller with Dan’s protective presence gone. Donnelly’s ogling gaze devoured her chest once more. Mary shook off her fears, knowing how important this was and responding as she had with other men easily manipulated by her physical charms. Nevertheless, she overlooked one important fact. Donnelly wasn’t like most other men.

  “Gee, Mister Donnelly. I’m awfully sorry about my husband,” Mary said, cautiously smiling. “It’s just that this loan is so important.” She leaned forward as she spoke, her breasts practically spilling from her form-fitting dress.

  “Loans are complicated things, Mrs. Jackson. There’s risk and not much upside.” Donnelly stood, his smile becoming even more wolfish. Trying to control his dizzying emotions he hurried to the door, clicking it locked. An electric energy pulsed within him as his lips pulled back from his teeth, “On the other hand, I’m finding myself open to a change of mind.”

  Mary, who had brightened with the thought Donnelly might be an easy play, quivered anew at the sight of his teeth. His expression more frightening than similar stares she had seen before from men like him. Most typically at work, when a certain type of guy would walk into the bar and offer her fifty bucks for the panties she had been wearing throughout a grimy eight hour shift. The kind of guy that when she said no upped the ante to one hundred bucks if she would let him smell her pussy. As bad as those guys were, however, Donnelly exuded danger in a way every day perverts could never hope to match. Yet, Mary suppressed her instincts.