Shifters: A Samantha Reece Mystery Book 1 by Jaime Johnesee (libby ebook reader txt) 📕

we broadcast about Grisly we'll just end up panicking people who aren't in his victim pool, anyway. Understood. So, what do we do here?"

"I am of the opinion that involving the media—without outing the super community at large—is impossible. I say we talk with the whores and spread the word through them. I mean, Grisly had to start somewhere and I doubt it was with killing. I'm willing to bet even money there's a victim out there that got away. A victim that doesn't even know she was in the hands of a guy like Grisly."

When he said that a chill clawed its way up my spine. He was probably right. Quinn had been working serial killer cases for almost two decades. He understood how the mind of a killer worked better than most of the serials understood themselves. I remember him telling me about a case where an ex-girlfriend of a serial helped catch him because of something similar. He'd been strangling women all over town, women who looked eerily similar to his ex-girlfriend.

Then, when Quinn found a link between all the women and her (they'd all been clients of the same dry cleaner her ex had worked at), he went to speak to her about it. During their talk the question of strangling came up and she recalled how her ex had tried strangling her when they'd been playing around one night.

She had stared him right in the eyes and saw this look of hatred that scared her to death. She was sure he would have killed her, but her dog barked outside and it seemed to shake him from whatever he was thinking. He let go of her neck, apologized, made some feeble excuse, and left.

When Quinn went to speak with the young man he found earrings taken from each victim in plain view. They were lined up on the mantle above the guy's fireplace like trophies, which was exactly what the guy later said he had thought of them.

The freak was arrested and confessed to killing all twelve of the girls. Based on what Quinn had uncovered in the man's diary, he had enjoyed strangling his ex and knew it would have only been a matter of time before he killed her, so he left her alone and, instead, killed surrogates. It was the only bit of love he'd ever shown.

Over the years we'd been partners, I learned a lot from Quinn about these sorts of creatures. I realize, though, that I still have so much more to learn. Psychopaths are so very different from what you'd think they'd be like. Even their scent differs from other people. They are predators, but not in the way an animal is. No, they enjoy the act of murder itself, quite unlike those who kill out of necessity.

I learned through Quinn that although these types of killers seem completely inhuman, their issues most often stem from the most human of emotions. They just want to feel loved, needed, and important to someone. A normal person feels those things and then reaches out to a fellow human to connect and meet those needs. A psychopath cannot. They prefer to sever other people's connections rather than make their own.

It often reminds me of how I learned—through my zoology studies—that jaguars are solitary cats. They come together to mate, but then they live their lives apart. Their territory occasionally overlaps with their mate's, but they only meet on rare occasions. I've always preferred solitude to company.

I guess, in my own way, I can relate a bit to these aberrant humans. They, much like me, strive to make connections, but know deep down they are better off alone. As I coated my toast with grape jelly, I realized I was looking far too deeply into myself and the nature of people like Grisly. In order to catch him I may need to think like him, but not just yet. I don't like getting lost in the mindset and I wanted to be in a less bleak state of mind when we interviewed the priest.

It's not always the same mentality, don't get me wrong, every single killer is different in regards to what sets them off. Each of them has a different victim type, a different set of circumstances that brings out their evil, and I needed to realize that it is not for me to fully understand these beings. My job is to make sense of their urges and behaviors. I needed to remember that my duty is only to stop them and not to empathize with them. It doesn’t matter if they’d been horrifically abused as children or not.

I tended to empathize with these people because I’d had a similarly horrid childhood and I understood what it could do to a person. It takes immeasurable strength to move on from the pains of our abuse. Some souls just went dark, some may have just been evil to begin with, and they lived forever in a place of pain, only feeling peace when others were hurting. It was sick and demented, but those were the circumstances in which these monsters thrived.

The only circumstances I needed to come to terms with, and thrive in at the moment, were those involving my own particular beast and what I meant to do about my maker. I didn't doubt I'd see him again. There was something drawing me to him and possibly him to me. It was like those cheap romance books I used to laugh at on the rack at an old five and dime store. I hated myself for that.

This intense connection the man who bit me and I shared had to have been powered by some sort of sire bond. I was sure of it. I remembered reading Dracula, and the thrall Stoker spoke of in his immortal work was similar to the feeling I had when I saw the man who’d turned me.

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