Monster Hunter

Angel Johnson didn’t think she’d get the orgasm she desperately needed tonight.

Todd Mercer the Third talked a good game at the hotel bar. He wore an expensive suit, was well-groomed, smelled nice, and kept eye contact with her as he carried out an intelligent conversation. Angel learned was thirty-four and divorced, a lawyer, and a little older than her twenty-eight. She’d kept up hope that he would extend that attention to her when he asked her up to his room.

Todd was from Chicago, in town for a seminar on tax code changes. Angel was “in government service.” It was easier that way.

Todd had a few drinks, while Angel stuck to bottled water that she opened herself. He didn’t need to get her drunk as she readily agreed to join Todd in his room. They’d been all over each other in the elevator. Angel was panting with need by the time the door opened to his floor. They were pulling their clothes off before the hotel room door even closed. Angel tossed her clothes onto a chair, covering her purse, and turned to find him already lying in bed, stroking his cock like it was God’s gift to women. It wasn’t; it was as long and thick as a hot dog, not even a bratwurst. He’d better know how to work it. “Suck it,” he ordered her.

Angel wanted her bootie trifecta; oral attention, athletic sex, and a clean goodbye. As she walked towards the bed, her brown hair down to the middle of her back and her lingerie accenting her athletic form, she thought she could salvage something. It was too late to find another partner tonight. She crawled onto the bed, taking it from him and giving him a lick from base to tip. He moaned in pleasure, and Angel grew more frustrated as she went. His hands were in her hair or by his side. He didn’t caress her, play with her hard nipples, or pull her over into a sixty-nine. At least he didn’t have the equipment to choke her.

She had to work for a minute to get him to full hardness. Then, with no warning, his cock pulsed and started shooting cum into her mouth. She kept her lips around it, swallowing it before coming off of it. “Sorry,” he said. “You were so fucking hot that it snuck up on me.”

“The night is still young,” Angel said as she moved up his body. When she tried to kiss him, he turned his head aside. “What?”

“Can you brush before you try and kiss me?”

Angel rolled her eyes; it was good enough to fill HER mouth without warning, but he couldn’t taste it on her lips? “Yeah, it must be gross or something,” she thought. Angel climbed off the bed and walked to the bathroom. She found a Scope bottle by the sink, and she took a swig and swished it around before spitting it in the sink.

When she opened the door, he was asleep. “I sure can pick them,” she mumbled to herself. “Never date a Todd.” She stood there in her garter and bra, debating whether to wake him or leave when her cellphone rang. She pulled her phone out of her purse and answered it. “Special Agent Johnson,” she said.

“Angel, it’s Mark. He’s done it again, two victims this time. Boss wants us out there now,” he said.

Fuck. “Can you pick me up?” She gave him the name of the hotel, and he was thirty minutes out.

“Tell the locals not to process the scene until we arrive,” Angel said. If it is the Monster Hunter, our FBI Task Force will take over from the Annapolis Homicide detectives.

“I won’t. We rescued one girl, Angel. She’s five, and she was drugged and sexually abused. The ambulance is taking her to the hospital now.” This task force had been eye-opening for Mark; he usually worked kidnappings, few of which took turns like this case.

“Did those guys suffer?” Angel hoped so. The fuckers who hurt children were the lowest of the low, and she’d seen it all in her time in the Human Trafficking and Sex Crimes divisions.

“Let’s just say I hope you haven’t eaten lately,” her partner replied. “They sounded relieved when I told them to hold the perimeter and wait.”

That was a yes. Angel couldn’t help but wonder what he’d come up with this time. “I’ll be out front in twenty minutes,” she told him. “Bring my laptop.”

Angel finished dressing as Todd watched her. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, then put on her shoulder holster with her duty weapon over the white blouse and hung her FBI shield on a chain around her neck. The skirt and heels would have to go, but that’s why she kept a change of clothes in the trunk of her car.

“You’re a cop,” he said.

Angel rolled her eyes. What gave it away? The Glock Nineteen, or the shiny gold badge? “FBI,” she said. “I have to go.”

“Can I have your number?”

“No.” Angel walked out without looking back. She was still horny and frustrated, but she told herself that at least she didn’t compound her mistakes. Men were a means to an end, and it was better not to get emotionally invested in someone who would hurt you. She’d never gone past three dates, and that third date was a mistake. Other agents would ask her out, but she always turned them down; she didn’t want to mix business and pleasure. It was better if they thought she was gay than for them to know the truth.

Angel took the elevator to the garage and made my way to her car. She pulled a pair of dress slacks and rubber-soled low black heels out of the bag in the trunk. Kicking off the four-inch heels, Angel pulled the pants up under her skirt before taking that off. Then she slipped her feet into the work shoes and packed her club clothes away for the night. She grabbed the FBI-logo windbreaker out of the back seat and took the elevator back to the lobby.

Special Agent Mark Prentice pulled in five minutes later in a silver Chevy 300S sedan. Angel settled her five-foot-nine frame into the passenger seat and buckled in. “Where are we going?”

“Falls Church,” he said. Mark pulled out onto the freeway, turning on the flashers to move faster through the late-night traffic. The navigation system took us to the suburbs in Virginia and a single-story house at the end of a quiet street now filled with police cars. Mark parked the car, flipping down the visor to display the “FBI” logo through the windshield.

They showed their identifications to the uniform at the crime scene tape and ducked underneath. “Who’s in charge?”

“Lieutenant Perkins, over there by those bushes,” one of the men said. Looking over, they could see a woman in a pantsuit throwing up at the corner of a neighbor’s house.

When seasoned cops were throwing up, you knew it wasn’t going to be good. “Toss me one of those water bottles,” Mark said to the EMT waiting by an ambulance. He caught the bottle and brought it over just as the woman was wiping her mouth.

“Thanks,” she said before swished her mouth out with the water. “Detective Lieutenant Mandy Perkins, Falls Church Police.” Angel’s sharp eyes caught sight of the Marine Corps tattoo on the arm of the veteran officer as they shook hands.

“We’re with the FBI task force on the Monster Hunter,” Mark said, using the name the media had given the serial killer. “Do you think this is him?”

“No fucking doubt in my mind,” she said. “The girl we took out of here had been held and abused, probably for years. We’ve made an identification on one of the victims. His name is Daniel Jackson, age fifty-two, a convicted Level III sex offender from Pennsylvania who disappeared off the radar there a decade ago. The home belonged to his late mother. Daniel never registered in Virginia, and the neighbors say the usual things about him.”

“Let me guess,” Angel said. “Nice man, quiet, kept to himself, can’t believe he’d do something like this?”

She nodded. “Sounds like you’ve been down this road before.” She was more right than she knew; for five years, she’d been dealing with the scum of the earth. Nobody ever came up to her after and said they’d reported the guy and nobody listened to them. “As for the victims, they were hung up, gagged, and tortured. I’ve never heard of anything like this outside the Mexican cartels. This Monster Hunter of yours knows how to inflict pain and suffering on those bastards.”

“We need to see the scene,” Mark said. “The FBI crime scene people are on their way. We’ll work with your people to get the statements and continue the canvassing of the neighborhood.”

“You can fucking have this one,” Mandy said. “Come on.” She led us past the uniform at the front of the house. We donned Tyvek suits, booties, and gloves, then went to the basement. Angel noted the heavy-duty basement door sealed against the frame, keeping light and sound from passing. The door could be locked from both sides, ensuring the perpetrator wasn’t interrupted while doing his thing. “I’ll wait here for you,” she told them.

The stairway turned to the right and into a dimly-lit bondage dungeon. Mark and Angel stopped in shock; they’d seen this equipment before, but not on this scale. Daniel built all the equipment in the room to restrain and abuse children.

In the center of the room, hanging from the steel I-beam along the center, two dead white males hung in the air from chains padlocked to their wrists. Blood pooled underneath them, making its way to a floor drain nearby.

“Jesus,” Mark said. “It’s him. The Monster Hunter flayed them this time.”