Eleven Read Online Free

“Ground up their intestines in there.” I felt sick.
    “Whoa nicely put, Pending,” Zachery said.
    “And how did he get them down here?”
    “Well, there’s got to be another way in. The freezer alone discloses that, and I mean obviously he wouldn’t be able to make the victims go down the ladder, past the meat grinder.” I took a deep breath. Tell me this is the worst we will ever have to deal with. I wanted to say the words audibly but knew it would be construed as a weakness. “There has to be another way in here, a passageway that connects to the burial sites.”
    Paige said, “Bingham—”
    “You assume,” Jack corrected her. “Maybe he worked with someone from the start. They picked the victims and brought them here.”
    She disregarded him. “Bingham brought them down through the passageway that comes off the cellar. Maybe he drugged them or held them at gunpoint—”
    “Or knife point.”
    Paige rolled her eyes.
    I looked forward to the day I could express myself in that manner to the Supervisory Special Agent .
    “Whatever. The point is he had a system worked out. Bring them down, bring them in here, cut them, kill them, gut them—”
    “You’re assuming he didn’t gut them while alive.”
    The deputy tightened the placement of his hand over his mouth and swiveled his hips to the right.
    “You said kill them, and then gut them?” Jack asked.
    “Either way.” A large exhale moved her hair briefly upward. “Gut them to kill them. There you happy? He’s one sick son of a bitch either way.”
    “And he just went away on a fluke charge, killing cows and assaulting a neighbor.” I knew once the words came out I should have thought them through. Deputy White looked capable of hauling me to the field and flogging me.
    “Cattle are a v-very important investment ’round here. Farmin’ is what we people do. It’s to be respected an’ so is the livestock.”
    The hint of a smirk dusted Jack’s lips. My discomfort brought him happiness. I felt my earlobes heat with anger.
    “I didn’t mean it like that.”
    “Then what did you mean?” Both the Kentucky-bred deputy and the local CSI kept their eyes on me.
    “He has ten bodies buried underneath his property. Ten human bodies. There’s a freezer which seems to have been used to hold the unspeakable.” My arms pointed in both directions. “Numerous passageways, all the secrecy. Who was this guy really? And don’t say a killer. Because I think he was more than that.”
    “What are you saying, Slingshot?”
    “He didn’t kill them like this for no reason.” I gestured toward Zachery. “Maybe it’s something to do with that coinherence symbol of his, or maybe it has something to do with the health profession, but whatever it is, it was for a reason. This guy had something to say.”
    Zachery stepped toward me. I moved back. He said, “The killers always have something to say.”
    “Well, I believe this one has more to say than most.” All of them watched me as if I were about to shed light on the case. I wish I were.

 
     
    CHAPTER 4

     
    They say when you’ve seen as much as Jack nothing surprises you anymore. The cruelty and evil of the world hold no impact, but I swear even if it was just a glimmer in his eyes this case affected the man.
    The rumor was Jack came to the FBI as a former Sergeant Major of the 7th Special Forces Group. In the 1980s, he had played a critical advisory role in the training of the Salvadoran military to deal with counter-insurgency. His last deployment had been Operation Just Cause, also known as the Invasion of Panama in ’89. When he retired from the military the following year and came to the FBI, he was given a pass straight to Supervisory Special Agent.
    “So the guy gets his victims down here, but how? I mean there has to be a connection between this room and the burial sites,” the CSI said.
    Jack fished out a cigarette. “That’s an obvious observation.”
    The CSI held up a hand,