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  “We have someone inside. Don’t know who, if they’re armed, or what. They know we’re out here. Beth caught a glimpse of someone looking out the window. We just needed some backup before we did anything,” I said.

  “You guys have a bullhorn?” Beth asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Tom said.

  “All right. I’m going to try to call whoever is inside out, and if that doesn’t work, we’re going in,” I said.

  “Do we want any local support on this?” asked the agent crouched next to Tom. I’d seen him the prior day at the Kirkwood property but couldn’t recall his name. From what I could tell in his crouched state, he looked to be my size, around six feet two or three, yet he may have had a few pounds on me. His hair was dark, and a mustache hung over his top lip. He held what looked like a Heckler & Koch MP5, the same weapon Tom carried.

  “Hell no,” Beth said. “Think about it. How many local deputies are going to want to help the FBI take their boss into custody?”

  “Good point,” he said.

  “Okay. Get a position. I’ll make the call,” I said.

  Beth went to the hood, brought her pistol up, and put sights on the house. Tom and I took the roof. His other agent took the trunk.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth. “FBI! Whoever is in the property, come on out! Hands where we can see them!”

  We waited. No one came. I repeated myself, yelling at the side of the house another four or five times. No one was coming.

  “Screw this,” I said. “We’re going in.”

  Tom turned toward his men at the other two cars and waved them over.

  “We’re going to need to put a couple on that front door and the side,” Beth said.

  We put together a loose plan on the fly. Tom, Beth, and I would take the back door and gain entry into the home. Two of Tom’s men would stay on the front door, one would take the far side of the house in case someone did opt for the two-story jump, and one would stay with the vehicles and watch the side of the home where we’d parked. We split up and went to our positions. Beth, Tom, and I went up the back stairs onto the patio. I reached down for the doorknob with my left hand while my right held my service weapon ready.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Beth said.

  “Ready,” Tom said.

  I tried twisting the doorknob—it turned.

  “It’s open. Here we go,” I said.

  “FBI!” I announced. I pushed the door open and took a firing stance to the right. Beth and Tom followed me in. We stood in a kitchen. My eyes went left and right, searching for people—I saw no one.

  “We have blood on the counter,” Tom said. “Shit, it’s everywhere.”

  My eyes went to the countertops. The brown granite had pools of blood everywhere. Some of the blood had rolled over the counter’s edge and puddled on the floor.

  I pointed into the home. Straight ahead was a ten-foot-wide walkway that stretched to the front entrance. To the right of the front door was some kind of a sun room filled with plants. A stairway went up off to the left of the front door. The section of the house between us in the kitchen and the front door spread off to rooms on the left and right. I spotted the edge of an end table, a lamp, and the arm of a brown couch in the area, so I figured it to be the living room. I could hear a television playing. We continued ahead slowly. With each step forward, I caught a bit more of the living room area as it came into view. I saw a portion of the back of a recliner. With another step, I saw someone sitting upon it, leaned back with their feet up.

  “FBI!” I said. “Hands in the air!”

  The man didn’t budge. I motioned for Beth and Tom to get their aim on the guy. I took another step toward him and was about to round his chair into the living room when I stopped cold. My eyes shot to the right. On the couch I spotted two more people. They only took a second to register as dead—the one didn’t take even that long. A corpse, mostly skeleton, brown, dried, and decayed was propped on the couch nearer to me. The far body was that of the chief deputy. Whissell’s body sat in a pool of blood that hadn’t soaked into the brown leather couch. His left leg had been removed at the hip. The rest of him, including his right leg, was still clothed in his sheriff’s uniform. My eyes shot back to the man in the chair.

  “Hands in the air!” I said again.

  The guy adjusted himself in the chair. He still didn’t comply or say a word. I rounded the chair and brought the sights of my gun center mass on the man. He was huge. His long black-and-gray hair rested on his shoulders and mixed in with his long beard of the same color. The man was who I’d seen speaking with the prostitute. His eyes were closed. His left arm looked as though it had a makeshift splint around it and was resting on his chest. His right arm was at his side, and I couldn’t see his hand—that changed in a flash. In a single motion, he rose from the chair and yanked a ten-inch hunting knife from his hip. I heard two shots as he began to swing the blade. I lunged backward, midsection first. The blade tip ripped through the bottom edge of my suit jacket as the man dropped to his knees at my feet—the knife bounced a few feet from his hand.

  “Keep a gun on him,” I said.

  I holstered my weapon and kicked the blade out of sight. I went to the floor immediately to mount the guy’s back. Blood leaked from two entry wounds in his upper back from either Beth’s or Tom’s shots—I didn’t know who had fired. Tom called for his other agents.

  I grabbed the man’s right wrist and tried to pull his arm back to get a cuff on it—his arm didn’t move an inch. He was still very much alive and very much resisting.

  Tom and Beth came to my sides to assist. I could hear the pounding footsteps of the other agents entering the home.

  “We haven’t cleared the rest of the property,” Tom said.

  One of his men instructed the others, and they split up.

  Tom put a knee over the back of the guy’s neck and joined me in pulling his right arm behind his back. The man bucked back and forth in protest. Beth clicked on a cuff that barely caught the last few teeth. I put my full weight onto the guy to try to keep him pinned while Tom and I went for his other arm in the splint.

  The man gave up the splinted arm without protest, but due to the width of his back, the cuffs wouldn’t reach. Beth pulled another set, linked his left wrist, and then joined the two pairs of handcuffs. I lifted myself from the man, stood, and let out a breath.

  “We need paramedics in here,” I said.

  “I’ll make the call,” Tom said. He pulled his phone from his pocket.

  I looked at the man lying face down on the wooden floor of the home. “Are you Richard Kirkwood?” I asked.

  The man coughed. “Yeah,” he said.

  “You killed all those women?” Beth asked.

  I glanced to my right. “And the chief deputy?”

  “Yes, I did,” he said. He turned his head, coughed again, and spat blood across the floor.

  “Who is the corpse?” Beth asked.

  “She’s my mother.”

  Tom put his phone back in his pocket. “We have paramedics on the way. Ten minutes or so.”

  I nodded. “Who was the chief deputy to you?” I asked.

  “My brother,” he said.

  The guy was answering each question asked flat out, which made me wonder why the hell he tried to stab me if he was planning on being so cooperative.

  “Why did you just try to stab me?” I asked.

  “Because I’m not going to jail,” he said.

  “I assure you that you are,” Tom said. “And I hope you like the color orange because you’ll be wearing it for the rest of your life.”

  “No. No jail for me. You guys are going to kill me.”

  “I don’t think we are,” I said.

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Kirkwood started yanking back and forth on his handcuffs. With each pull, his motions became more violent. While he was a huge man, I didn’t have any do
ubt that the cuffs would hold.

  “You aren’t going to get anywhere doing that,” I said.

  Kirkwood jerked his right arm again—hard. I heard what sounded like a click or a snap—the sound didn’t come from the cuffs. His left wrist, cuffed, was at the center of his lower back. He continued to tug with his right arm against his cuffed, splinted, left arm. He let out a deep wail. The splint seemed to move, and then I saw blood begin to stain the paper towels red. More blood began to soak the lower back of his white shirt. With another wail and yank, his left forearm seemed to lengthen by a couple of inches. I stood unsure of what I was actually witnessing.

  “Shit, he’s pulling his damn arm off! Get on him!” Tom shouted.

  “What?” I asked. “Pulling his arm off?”

  Tom shouldered past Beth and me and sprawled down on top of Kirkwood, who screamed again and bucked Tom from his back. Tom fell into the coffee table and scrambled to get his feet under himself. I saw Kirkwood’s arms come up from his back. His right arm went beside his chest, palm down as if to push himself up. I followed the chains of the cuffs still attached to his right wrist to the other cuff securing a hand and severed forearm spilling blood. My eyes shot to what remained of his left arm, pooling blood and swiping at the wood floor—the makeshift splint was still duct taped around his elbow. I couldn’t wrap my head around what I was looking at—the guy had just ripped his own arm off. Kirkwood turned himself over and brought a knee under himself. I reached into my jacket and pulled my weapon. Tom and Beth had already drawn.

  “Don’t you move!” Tom shouted.

  Kirkwood didn’t pay any mind to the order. He brought his other knee under him and brought himself to his feet. He swayed a bit before regaining his balance.

  “On the ground! Now!” Beth shouted.

  He let his arms hang at his sides—they both formed spreading pools of blood beside his feet. The severed arm dangled from the cuff below Kirkwood’s right knee—he swung it up by the handcuffs’ chains and caught his left hand with his right. Kirkwood stared straight at us and smirked. The sight of us three with guns on him apparently did nothing. More of Tom’s agents came to our sides. I assumed they’d heard Tom and Beth shouting from wherever they were in the house.

  “I always wondered what this would be like,” Kirkwood said. He lifted his severed forearm and hand up to his face. Then he jammed it into his mouth and ripped at the bloody forearm side with his teeth like a dog. He yanked his head to the left and began chewing. He laughed as blood spilled from his mouth. “It could use a little salt,” he said through a mouthful of his own flesh. Kirkwood chuckled and tore off another piece with his teeth. “Tastes like my brother.”

  I heard the sound of someone becoming sick behind me. I couldn’t think of anything in all of my law-enforcement training that suggested how to deal with what I was looking at. He wasn’t putting our lives in danger at the moment, so shooting him again was out of the question. We couldn’t take him down and cuff him. However, if we let what was going on continue, he’d bleed out from his injuries within minutes. He needed to be restrained until he could be treated by paramedics. That guy needed to be in a straitjacket, yet even if someone had one, it wouldn’t fit.

  I glanced back over my shoulder. “Anyone have a Taser?” I asked.

  “In the car,” one of the agents said.

  “Get it, and get something to tie this son of a bitch up with,” I said. “Check the shed if you have to.”

  “We have something in the car,” the same agent said. He and two more of Tom’s agents left the living room.

  “Hey!” Kirkwood said. He pointed at me with the finger of his bloody hand holding his chewed-up, severed forearm. “You don’t talk about my mother like that. She’s a fine woman.” He looked over at the corpse on the couch next to the dead chief deputy. “Right, Mom?” Kirkwood looked back and smiled. “She said you better watch your mouth.”

  “This guy is nuttier than squirrel turds,” someone said in a low voice over my shoulder—it wasn’t Beth or Tom, so it had to have been one of his men.

  I glanced over my left shoulder for a brief second, looking for whoever had said it. I assumed it to be the agent who quickly dropped his head. My eyes went back to Kirkwood—my gun sights never left his center mass. The agent’s comment echoed in my head. I couldn’t help but think his comment, besides being inappropriate for our current situation and liable to antagonize the psychopath standing before us, couldn’t have been more dead on—Kirkwood was nuttier than squirrel turds. A moment later, Tom’s men returned with the Taser and a yellow tow strap from one of their cars. I held my hand out for the Taser, and the agent passed it to me.

  “Be ready with that strap,” I said.

  I took aim on Kirkwood and fired. I wouldn’t waste my breath asking him if he’d allow us to tie him up. The probes on the wires connected with his chest. The confetti-like AFID tags, used to identify the gun that was fired, flew through the air. The yellow plastic probe covers landed on the floor across the room. Kirkwood went stiff and fell to the floor. Two agents rushed from behind my back and wrapped the tow strap around him, securing his biceps at his sides. Kirkwood was bound before he regained function.

  “Let me get something to tie that arm off with,” Beth said. “We don’t need him bleeding out before the medics get here.” She went to search.

  Kirkwood, bound and being held to the ground by a pair of agents, started whistling, and the song sounded vaguely familiar. As much as I tried to tune him out, the melody registered in my head within a few more verses. He was whistling the theme song from a soap opera that my wife Karen watched.

  I shook my head.

  Beth returned a moment later with some cable ties she’d found in a kitchen drawer away from the blood and mess. She connected a few and pulled them tight around the area, just below the elbow, that he’d ripped his arm from.

  “Any clue there on how this nut just pulled his own arm off?” I asked.

  Beth stuck her face close to the arm where it was severed. “I don’t know. All I see is blood.”

  Kirkwood chuckled. “I had a little accident yesterday with a hacksaw.”

  I noticed that his voice was noticeably softer than it was a moment prior—he was bleeding out.

  “Um,” Beth said. “She stood from her crouched position and took a step toward me. “We have something going on in that kitchen.”

  As soon as she said the words, a smell filled my nose. I imagined the smell had been growing since we’d arrived in the house—something was cooking, and I had a feeling I knew what it was. I felt my mouth filling with saliva and jammed my index finger and thumb up my nostrils to block the smell from entering my nose.

  “I’m going to need a minute,” I said in a nasal voice. “Have one of Tom’s agents take care of whatever is going on in there.”

  I left the living room quickly and walked from the front of the house. I paced the front yard, trying to breathe fresh air and not become sick. When the feeling finally subsided, I put on my game face and started back for the front door. The sound of gravel crunching came from behind me, and I looked back to see an ambulance coming down the driveway. The paramedics parked near the front door and came toward me.

  “One inside that requires immediate medical attention,” I said. “Two gunshot wounds to the upper-left side of his back. He also has a severed arm just below the elbow. He’s currently bound, and it would be best—for everyone involved—if he stayed that way. Also, two deceased inside the home.”

  The EMTs confirmed and made their way into the house. I began to follow them but caught a whiff of whatever was cooking wafting from the home. I still needed another minute, so I pulled my phone and dialed Ball.

  “Ball,” he answered.

  “It’s Hank. We, um, I guess found the chief deputy, who is dead. We have Kirkwood, though.”

  “What? Really? What happened?”

  I gave him the story.

  Ball let out a breath and s
aid a single word. “Damn.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Are you ready?” Beth asked. She stood in the open doorway of my hotel room.

  “Um, yeah, one second.” I waved her in while I went to the shelf and gathered my notepad with the list of questions I’d been working on. I slipped it into my inner suit-jacket pocket and grabbed the car keys for my rental.

  “You’re driving?” Beth asked.

  “You’ve been driving since we got here. I figured we may as well get a little use of the second rental.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  We left my room, stopped for a quick coffee at the hotel restaurant, and made our way out to the parking structure. Beth and I hopped into my rental and pulled from the lot.

  I stopped just outside the parking structure at the curb. “Which way is the hospital?” I asked.

  “Hold on. I’m looking it up now. We had to get out of the parking structure for my GPS to work. I know it’s downtown here somewhere.” Beth clicked on the screen of her phone with her fingertip. She looked over at me and tucked her brown hair behind her ear. “Two point two miles. Forward to the first street and make a right.”

  “Got it.” I cranked the wheel and pulled from the curb. “Who did you talk to there?” I asked.

  “The agents that are keeping Kirkwood under guard are from the Nashville resident agency—an Agent Boone and an Agent Ebron. I spoke with the people over at their home office a little bit ago and told them that we’d be heading over.”

  “Did you talk to anyone on the medical staff there and see if he’s even capable of speaking with us?”

  “Way ahead of you,” Beth said. “I spoke with a doctor named Mitchell who has been attending to Kirkwood. He says it should be fine to speak with him, but we’re supposed to ask for the doctor when we arrive.”

  “Okay.” I clicked on my turn signal and made the right hand turn.

  “Did you want to pop over to the property afterward and meet with the Memphis agents?” Beth asked.