The Cannibal's Daughter

By Mitchell Nelson

Caroline Gillespie is nineteen years old and going nowhere. She has a dead end job, no friends, no family but her distant mother, and no reason to expect things to improve.

And then her father—the supposedly dead serial killer known as Keeling the Cannibal—shows up at her front door. Years ago, Keeling stole, cheated, and killed his way into a vast fortune. Now, the money is lost, and he believes that the key to its recovery is hidden in Caroline's head.

Caroline leaves her mundane life behind to join her violent, unstable father in a search for her long-lost inheritance. But nothing is simple when money's involved. Caroline's journey into her father's past will put her against killers and madmen—and even if she survives, her life will never be the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mitchell Nelson
• Release date: Jun 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310493737

Mitchell Nelson

Mitchell Nelson lives in Oklahoma. When he's not writing, he spends his days playing music, drinking coffee, and looking for new stories. He does not have any pets.

Book preview

THE CANNIBAL'S DAUGHTER

MITCHELL NELSON

YELLOW INK PRESS * OKLAHOMA

The Cannibal's Daughter

By Mitchell Nelson

Copyright 2014

Smashwords Edition

You can get a free copy of Untold, the second book in the Caroline Gillespie series. Just tell me where to send it.

Find out more HERE.

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

About the Author

Thanks For Reading

THE CANNIBAL'S DAUGHTER

ONE

THERE’S A ROOM in a prison in Huntsville where they take people to kill them. The state does this. The room is a color between blue and green. A color between mint toothpaste and avocado. You get this sense of grunginess just looking at it. Not that the room is dirty, it’s actually sterile. It’s this other kind of grunginess, like you can just picture hundreds of screaming prisoners clawing their fingernails to stubs against the unrelenting brick, their teeth and nails gouging permanent scratches into the walls.

That doesn’t really happen, of course. All the murderers and rapists and cannibals get strapped to the gurney so they can’t fuck up the walls. The grunginess is in your head.

There’s also a window beside the gurney, and on the other side of the window there is another room. Metal folding chairs lined up on a raised platform. This is the viewing room. Attendance varies.

On the day they execute Hank Keeling (aka: The Pork Chop Killer; aka: Keeling the Cannibal), the executioner has drawn the curtain over the window. Adrian Busby is the executioner today. He drew the short straw. For a while they had a guy who did all the executions, one after another, a real workhorse, but that asshole quit last minute because he didn’t want to do Keeling and the warden wouldn’t let him out of it. There is a bonus for doing the dirty work, though, so Adrian doesn’t mind much.

Adrian leans against the wall and picks at a peeling sliver of paint. He can see the shapes of Keeling and Keeling’s guards coming at him down the hall. They’re late. Underneath the paint is another layer of paint.

The door opens up and the guards lead Keeling into the room. Keeling’s got a nice suit on. A belly full of pork chops. Keeling said, when he put in the request for his last meal, that he chose it because pig flesh tastes so much like human flesh. That’s the rumor, at least. Maybe he just likes pork chops. Last time Adrian had pork chops was so long ago he can’t remember.

Okay, lose the shirt, Adrian says.

While the guards remove Keeling’s cuffs, Adrian unspools the first IV line. There are two lines. One for each arm, in case one gets clogged up. Or in case some dumbass executioner misses the condemned’s vein and sticks the needle in the soft tissue, like what happened to that poor fucker down in Florida. The guy still dies, but it takes an hour. So you want to have backup.

Keeling is fumbling with his buttons like a little kid. One of the guards, the big bald one, has to help him. The younger guard is holding Keeling’s jacket.

Adrian looks over his equipment like he was told to do. It all looks good to him. Not that he would know a flaw if he saw it.

He’s thinking: I need a drink.

He’s thinking: I need a girl.

Don’t wrinkle that, Keeling says to the younger of the guards when he hands over his shirt. That thing cost me seventy-five bucks.

Adrian’s wondering: Is there some spin you can put on your executioner status that gets you laid? Not that he’s going to turn into some kind of alpha male immediately after inserting the needles into Keeling’s arm, but maybe there’s the pity angle. My job is the worst, he can say to some hot brunette with sad eyes. She’ll have sad eyes, his will be more melancholy. I mean, he can say, the shit they make me do. And she’ll be asking what, what do they make him do? And he won’t tell her for a while, make her use her imagination.

Keeling, bare-chested, climbs onto the gurney. He’s looking right at Adrian with big sheep eyes. If he thinks he can save himself by looking pitiful, he’s never met a prison guard. His chest is hairless and narrow like a little kid’s. The IV needle might go all the way through those skinny arms, if Adrian’s not careful.

The big guard, the bald one, fastens the straps around Keeling’s legs.

Adrian puts on gloves. So protected, he stretches Keeling’s left arm out along the crosspiece and straps the wrist down. He swabs a cotton ball soaked in alcohol over the site of the injection. He selects the first cannula and brings it to the arm.

This is the tough part. The delicate part. Adrian’s never actually put an IV in someone’s vein before, but they gave him some pretty specific instructions. You find a long vein, fairly straight. You use a tourniquet to make it pop. You insert the needle at an upward angle.

Adrian is thinking about that fucked-up execution in Florida when he stabs the needle into Keeling’s arm. Keeling inhales sharply. What was the name of that guy? Adrian can’t remember.

The bald guard is still doing the straps around Keeling’s waist when Adrian finishes with the needle.

Adrian goes around to Keeling’s right side, where the arm remains unstrapped-down for the moment. He unspools the second IV line.

Hey, Adrian says to the younger guard, who’s not contributing except to hold on to Keeling’s spare clothes. Go ahead and open up the curtain.

You’re not supposed to open it until you get the needle in, the bald guard says.

It’ll be two fucking seconds, Adrian says.

Adrian reaches for the strap that will secure Keeling’s arm to the crosspiece, and he sees that Keeling’s hand is clenched in a fist. And bulging. He’s got something in his hand.

The curtain rings squeak a track across the curtain rod.

He’s not supposed to have anything in his hand. Hell no.

Hey, Adrian says. What do you have there?

Keeling’s eyes, which were placid sheep eyes a second ago, get wide and alert. What? Nothing.

Adrian thinks: Grenade. It’s the perfect plan. You pull the pin and clench the grenade in your hand, and when you die your fist unclenches and the lever releases, and your executioner gets blown to hell. Vengeance.

Open your hand, Adrian says.

But instead, Keeling folds his arm over his torso and clutches his fist to his bare chest.

What do you have? Adrian says. He looms over the condemned. Come on. Open up.

Keeling shakes his head furiously. The tube sticking out of his right arm jiggles.

Open. Up.

Come on, Keeling. Now the bald guard has abandoned his strapping-down task to stand on Keeling’s other side. Just cooperate and it’ll be easier for everyone.

No, Keeling says, and tucks his hand right up under his chin.

Adrian wonders if it’s too late to stick the needle into the soft tissue after all. He brandishes his fist over Keeling’s face. I’m warning you, he says.

Keeling shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut. He’s not going to budge.

All right, Adrian says. He delivered a fair warning, right? He grabs Keeling’s forearm. His hand goes all the way around. He can feel the shape of those bird bones underneath the flesh. Give it up, he says.

No, says Keeling.

Keeling’s still got his fist clenched underneath his chin. Adrian yanks hard.

Keeling, startled by the yanking, punches himself right in the chin. Something goes crack and Keeling shouts. He’s got blood on his lips.

Come on, Adrian growls. He digs his fingers in between Keeling’s fingers. There’s something metallic in there, in Keeling’s fist.

Keeling takes a swing at Adrian’s face, his fingers hooked like claws. Adrian is already hauling on Keeling’s arm, so Adrian’s own strength is working against him. Keeling’s claws hit him in the eye. He feels a fingernail scratch across the bridge of his nose.

Fuck.

He lifts one fist and hammers it into Keeling’s skinny chest, a stab without the dagger.

Keeling gasps.

Holy shit, man, says the bald guard.

Adrian grimaces. Keeling’s skin felt like the dirty leather seats in a family minivan, all sticky and damp and fever-warm. Adrian’s gloves are not enough to protect him. He grimaces again when he yanks Keeling’s arm out across the crosspiece.

Strap him down, Adrian says.

The bald man does so.

Adrian pries open Keeling’s fist. He retrieves the object. The blood pounding in the back of his eyes prevents him from focusing on the object now in his palm.

Um. This from the younger guard.

Adrian turns.

He forgot about the open curtain. Nine pairs of eyes watch him. Among the nine are the warden, his boss. The county sheriff. Two reporters. One of the reporters is taking notes and smirking. The other is filming with his cell phone and also is smirking.

Oh shit.

Turn that camera off, Adrian hollers through the window.

He looks down. He is not holding a grenade. He is not holding a poisoned needle or a gun. He is holding a shiny silver dollar.

Adrian plays the last few seconds back through his head, but from the outside. He can see his big, hulking fist crashing down on that skinny chest. That sledgehammer fist that basically is the thing that’s kept him employed in this field for so long. And Adrian may not be a genius, but he can figure out that the grainy quality of the cell phone video will only add to the underground nature of the thing. It’ll be like Rodney King. Or like the guy from Florida.

Adrian thinks: All of that’s on Youtube already. He’s probably not getting laid tonight. He’s probably not even going to have a job tonight.

The warden has his hands over his face and he’s shaking his head. The sheriff is mimicking him. Both the reporters keep on smirking, and the one with the cell phone doesn’t lower the cell phone. Adrian wonders if he’s going to lose his bonus.

The silence continues. The warden coughs. Adrian drops the silver dollar in his pocket. He picks up the second needle and searches for a suitable vein in Keeling’s extended, strapped-down arm. The show must go on.

Keeling looks up at Adrian with those pathetic eyes. His glasses are askew. Just promise me you’ll give it to my daughter, okay?

Yeah, Adrian says. Does Keeling even have a daughter? Not that Adrian cares: he’s losing his fucking job over that damn silver dollar. Yeah, whatever, he says.

In his head, he’s already explaining himself to the warden. He’s telling the warden in no uncertain terms that Keeling attacked him. He was defending himself. And while he’s explaining himself to the warden, he sticks the needle right through Keeling’s vein and into the soft tissue.

The guy in Florida, who took an hour to die, was named Angel Diaz.

I heard Hank Keeling took fifteen minutes to die. I’ve also heard he didn’t die at all. At least one of those statements has to be a lie.

TWO

HERE’S HOW I find out what everyone else in America already knows.

I’m leaning against the back wall of Parthenon’s Coffee, between the dumpster and the back door, picking at the paint while I smoke a cigarette. My apron is the same blue as the wall, so I blend right in. I’m watching the cars go by on the elevated highway behind the cafe. And I’m thinking about Derrick, and how much I’d like to wrap my skinny little fingers around his big fat neck and squeeze for a while.

It must be a windier day than I thought, because I feel the sting of tears in my eyes. I take a long draw on my cigarette and relish the burn in my chest.

The back door screeches open and Grant comes outside with a black trash bag slung over his shoulder.

What’s up, he says.

Hey, I say, and when he’s not looking I wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand.

If you believe Shakespeare, life is mostly pretending. All the world is a stage and all that. For me, most of the time I’m pretending to be okay. I’m good at it. I could be an actress. If I lived in Los Angeles and knew the right people, I could do it.

Grant slings the bag into the dumpster. It arcs beautifully up and over the high edge and crashes onto its cousins inside. He looks at me. He looks at my cigarette.

Is that your last one? he says.

It isn’t. I fish the pack out of my back pocket and offer him one, and he takes it and lights it and joins me in watching the cars speed by on the highway.

I think about the lunchtime line and how it stretched all the way from the cash register to the front door. How in the time it took Grant to make one cappuccino, I made four lattes and two mochas and three macchiatos and two espressos and an americano. How Derrick yelled at me for being too slow anyway. How much my feet hurt.

I watch Grant smoke my cigarette and I don’t say anything.

Grant is taller than me, and he has a square jaw and big arms. His hair is thick and wavy. If he were an actor, he’d play the unflappable, incorruptible hero.

The door pops open and Derrick comes outside. He is wearing the same blue apron as the rest of us, but where his name is stitched over his left man-tit, he also has his title: Manager. He looks from Grant to me to Grant again. At the dirty habit we’re both partaking in.

Grant, he says, and nods. Caroline, he says, and doesn’t look at me.

I blow smoke generally his direction but he doesn’t notice.

You got another? he says to Grant.

Grant jerks his thumb at me.

I offer Derrick a cigarette. I offer him a lighter, too, but he pretends not to notice and asks to borrow Grant’s.

Derrick is shaped like a fat barrel. His face sort of melds with his neck. His skin is albino-pale and his buzzed hair is so blond it’s just about invisible.

Who’s on the register? I say.

No one’s come in, Derrick says. He puffs on my cigarette. Hey, did y’all see that fudge-up video? The fudged-up execution?

Yeah, Grant says.

What? I say.

What a mess, Derrick says. But I mean, he had it coming.

I don’t think they should have made it public like that, though, Grant says.

What? I say. What are you talking about? I say.

You didn’t see it? Grant says. He puts his hand in his pocket and digs around for a minute. His whole body leans into it, like his pocket is deep as the ocean, and when he straightens up he’s got his cell phone in his hand.

Derrick coughs into his elbow and sniffs. Yeah, it’s kind of disturbing. Remember that video of the one guy eating the other guy’s face?

Ew, I say.

Same kind of thing, Derrick says.

Here it is. Grant hands me his phone. He’s got a video player open, and inside of a spinning circle is the word buffering.

What is this? I say.

Just watch.

I don’t want to watch anything gory, I say.

It’s not, Grant says.

The title of the video is You Will Be FURIOUS At What This Prison Guard Does!

The video begins. It’s grainy, but you can make it all out well enough. There’s a window, and you can see the faintest reflection of a handful of ghostly faces. On the other side of the window there’s a big man standing with his back to the camera. He seems to be shouting at someone, and he’s waving his fist in the air.

In case you can’t make out what he’s saying, his words pop up in yellow at the bottom of the screen.

I’m warning you, the man says.

The timestamp in the upper right-hand corner of the screen says the video was shot on April 17th of this year. At 7:13 PM. This happened three days ago.

I must have had something bad for breakfast, because I feel like I’m about to puke. Like I did when I woke up on the 17th of April.

So, apparently, the guards got sloppy and let this guy get all the way to the chair with something in his hand, Grant says.

On the video, the big man’s voice is translated into text, is spelled across the bottom of the screen. All right. Give it up.

He moves and you can see that there’s a gurney in the room, half of it angled upward so it’s shaped like one of those chaise lounge chairs you see at the beach. The man on the chaise lounge is skinny and dark-haired, just like me. One arm is strapped down but the other is still free. His fist is clenched and clutched to his chest.

The skinny man has just shouted No.

So then this guy — Grant taps the screen where the fat guy is waving his fat fist. — this guy just freaks out.

So this…this went big? I say.

Oh yeah. Derrick laughs around his cigarette.

One of the guards got the video and put it online, Grant says.

I heard it was the warden who got the video, Derrick says.

Okay, the warden, Grant says. And it went viral in like, ten minutes.

The prisoner takes a swing at the fat guy, and the fat guy responds in kind.

I don’t want to watch this, I say, and I push the phone at Grant, who takes it.

Bunch of bleeding hearts liberals are making a big deal out of it, Derrick says. But how mad can you get, y’know? Guy was a serial killer.

And a cannibal, Grant says. He’s still playing the video, and I can hear shouting.

Yeah, he literally ate people, Derrick says. Their, their frickin’ brains.

My stomach is getting weird, that feeling when you have too much coffee and forget to eat breakfast. I clear my throat and say, What did he have?

Like, a coin, I think, Grant says.

I nod. I mute myself by putting a cigarette between my lips.

He said it was for his daughter, Grant says.

It must be warmer outside than I realized, because my cheeks are hot and I feel sweat beading up along my hairline.

Oh, I say.

I don’t think he even had a daughter, Derrick says. Before they caught him, they called him the Pork Chop Killer because he pinned pork chop recipes to his victims’ faces. How fudged-up is that? Who’d even sleep with a monster like that?

And I cannot help but imagine Derrick himself bent over, his fat folds jiggling while the skinny man from the video takes him from behind. This appears in my mind in the form of grainy cell phone footage. I want to puke, and it’s got nothing to do with food poisoning. I drop my cigarette and grind it out under my foot.

I haul the door open and say, I’m getting back to work. You two have fun.

When I go inside I can see all the way to the front counter, where a man in a black suit is looking at