           Sam Ped in:
           "THE WRONG FOOD GROUP"
           Pedro Vila 


           PART I

   "What are you doing here? My father could call the cops on you." She said.
   Her eyes blazed. Focused onto mine. The had the color of the deep end of a hotel swimming pool and I needed a life preserver. Missy looked back into the house nervously from the front door she was behind, and I was still stuck on the outside of it from her.
   "Yeah, I know." I said back. "I just had to have one more look at you. Then I'll go." I went nowhere.
   "Sam." Missy said softening. "You know we can't do this. We can never have a future together. You have to go now."
   "What makes you think I came to talk you into anything?" I acted casual. Missy gave me the look that saw right through me. I was caught. Of all the girls I've ever known, I have to fall for the one that can read me like an X-Ray. "Yeah, okay. You can't blame a guy for trying."
   I stepped Back and before I turned to walk away, I could see that door shut behind her eyes and I knew it was locking in the part that wanted me to take her away. I could have turned and done just that but Missy would have stopped me no matter what was inside. She was strong like that.
   I didn't turn around when the door shut. I just kept walking away.
   I was going to be lousy company for awhile.

   My office smelled. It smelled of bad liquor and misery. It jumped me like a mugger and left me to lay hurting. No cases. No money. Nothing to take my mind off the stinking world. Just a hole in my gut where something used to beat.
   I should have been happy for her. I did what I had to do to make her life better. I knew what I was doing. I mean, What chance could we have had? Where could we even go? We were two different people from the wrong sides of the calender. I knew it was the right thing to do, staying away. It just wasn't pleasent.
   I don't know how long I slept. It was long enough to make me hurt worse. I hadn't bothered to lock the door and woke to what I thought was a hobo camping out in my only other chair. I sat upright and looked him over. He sat up when he saw me move and looked ready to talk to me.
   I wasn't ready though. That didn't stop him.
   "Mr.?" He asked. "Mr. Ped sir? I din wanna wake ya. It's awright that I waited, right?"
   He looked too inbred to be related to Jed Clampet. He might have been hiding a banjo behind him. Who ever he was, he didn't look like he had a cent on him. I decided to give him my detective speech.
   "What do you want?" I asked.
   "Well, uh, you see, uh, it's ma daughter." He stammered. I perked at the mention of daughter. "Ya see, uh, she uh, she done disappeared. Ya see?"
   The information just was pouring out of him. "So?" I said.
   "Well uh, well you see, I don't have anywhere ta turn. She been gone fur a week now, uh, an we's gettin pretty worried. Ya see?"
   I hit him with the hard stuff. "You got any money?"
   "Well, uh, no. Can't say as I do right now. But we'd work off every penny till we paid ya." He didn't stop long enough for me to get rid of him, but put a picture on the desk as he started to tell me about his child being gone. He said nothing important about where she was last seen or what she was wearing or what color her panties might have been. I tuned him out and looked over the photo.
   Her name was Esther and she looked about as inbred as her father. Except on a seven year old it looked more appealing. Kind of like a twist on the farmers daughter thing. I imagined her being married to her older brother already and felt a lower part of my body waiting to buy tickets to that show. I closed the theater and cut off Mr. Deliverence.
   "Hey, buddy. I know it's hard but I need cash up front to grease the wheels. I don't have a bill to my name and information costs money." I could see his face start to break and knew what was coming. "Tell you what. I can make a few calls and ask where it's free to ask. Who knows. Maybe you might get lucky. But don't get your hopes up. It's a big city." The last part was for him. I guess I felt for him a little.
   I know what it's like to lose a little girl you love.
   I did make those calls and even called a favor but I came up empty handed.

   It was a month later that I started to see a pattern in the dissappearence of little girls and thought of the inbred guy from before.
   It happened every week like clockwork. A professional job. No witnesses. No deaths. No specific area. But in every case it was a little girl of about 7-9. Mostly white and not to well connected to society. I started to get concerned then. This could really stir up trouble for people as the law started to get desperate to stop the kidnappings.
   They had no leads either. No ransom notes. No motives. I checked through a few sources and found no increase in child porn or slave trades in and out of town. That many girls taken would have showed up somewhere to the right people, but the whole underground community was just as confused as I was. They were expecting the girls to show up somewhere too and were disappointed at seeing nothing new to trade.
   It was a big city, but we were a small community.
   When the first skulls were finally found, we all started to get angry. Some of us because we didn't want to see children hurt or at least dead. Others because they felt cheated out of sharing what must have been an ultimate fantasy for them. Either way, the result was the same. We united.
   If this didn't stop soon, we would all be rounded up and shot by fanatics.
   I started to spend clout with a few police officers hoping I could help. I didn't feel very welcome there, but they didn't turn me away either. Because of this, I was able to gather a little profile of details of the kidnappings and bones found.
   I felt a hole in my gut larger then the one Missy left when I found human teeth marks on one of the bones. Word wasn't out on it, but somebody was eating little girls. And not the good way either.

   The police have the best crime labs for this sort of thing so it was dumb luck that I stumbled on a kidnapping and was able to stop it. I got a good look at one of the guys and a rough shape of the other two. He looked like a cross between a Samoan and a Neandrathal.
   The police grudgingly called me a hero for about a minute and then I spent over thirty six hours trying to describe in as many different ways as I could what happened in that thirty seconds of kidnapping. In the end, they were frustrated at how little I had and started to think I was in on it. I clammed up then and they let me go when they couldn't charge me with anything.
   No good deed goes unpunished.

   The police had questioned every kidnapped childs parents except one. That was the country type from my office. Turns out his name was Hank McGill. His wife Hillery and their missing daughter Esther McGill. She didn't have any brothers. I showed them the police sketch of the man I saw. Hank looked lost in thought and answered, "Yep. I remember them types a few months ago. Strange people. Didn't talk very well." This coming from Hank might have meant they couldn't talk at all. Hanks eyes went wide and he stuttered, "You don think them ones had sometin to do with Esther, do ya?" This guy was right on top of things.
   The McGills didn't have much else except to say there were five of them and they all looked like the drawing. They could have been a tribe of some kind. Maybe got into the country and were just carrying on a tradition from their homeland. Yeah, sure. A lot of cultures eat their young.
   I went with them being from another place and checked everywhere immigrants might have lived, worked, and submitted evidence of themselves. There was nothing though. Nobody had seen anybody looking like these tribesmen.
   I went back to patrolling likely spots for kidnappings and bid my time.
   I would get lucky again. But I'd wish I hadn't.

           PART II

   It was in an alley near the elementary schoolyard that I found the boogyman scoping out candidates for abduction. Without looking at me, he suddenly walked in the opposite direction from me and I had a gut feeling he knew I was onto him.
   He tried to loose me and he had pretty good instincts for it too, but this was my city and I knew all the angles. After a while at cat and mouse, he gave up on trying to loose me and turned around to charge. He looked like a gorilla or a wild type of simian but I was ready for him just the same.
   I ducked to the side at the last minute and landed a blow to the back of his head as he passed by. He shook it and turned to charge again. I tried the same move and everything went according to plan, or so I thought just before I blacked out. Whatever he did, it was quick.

   I awoke on a chair with my hands tied behind me and my feet to the chair legs. It was a good job. I couldn't move. I seemed to be sitting in a kitchen with a large grill and a wooden table in the middle. I got shivers when I remembered what this case was about. I wondered if they only ate little girls or if I would be an exception. There was a small open cage to the side and a broken doll sitting in it.
   My blood was beginning to boil. I tried the ropes some more. I couldn't get any slack though. My mind started to spin at the thought of crying little girls waiting to be eaten. It made me half crazy. The other half was ready to kill these freaks of nature.
   I examined everything in the room hoping for a loose knife or something to free myself with. I was at a blank far end of a kitchen like room which looked converted from a garage. There were no windows though, and only one door. In the middle of the room was a heavy looking pine table with four chairs around it. I was on the fifth. Nothing fancy, but solid looking. Beside the table on the right was a resturant type of grill. It was off.
   Across the table from me was a cabinet with a padlock on it. Probably cooking knives were in there. I'd have to find a way to break that lock.
   To my left was a 4X4X4 foot cage with the broken doll inside. It was open and there was no padlock on it It looked solid as well. The doll looked halfway towards me with a broken eye, like it was blind and trying to find the sound of my voice. It didn't have an owner anymore.
   I craned to look behind me. Nothing. No wait! A rusty nail sat in the corner! I couldn't move my feet but I could hop the chair over. I figured I could knock myself over to grab the nail sideways if I could just get it away from the corner. I didn't have anywhere else to go right then so I just kept on trying. I couldn't get the chair leg close enough with my arms and legs bound to it like I was.
   I seemed to be going at it for hours and was getting pretty ranchy from the extra sweat. By luck I was able to hop over the head and it went flying out from under me. I hopped over and tilted over near it. A few more sideways hops and had it.
   I jabbed at one spot repeatedly hoping I got a major load bearing part of the rope. I didn't know how long it would take me or how far I was along, when suddenly the door opened.
   In came five boogymen wearing black and carrying two large sacks all together. They saw me laying and I jabbed the nail into my cuff fast when a couple of them came over to grab me. I got a closer look at them. They were dark skinned and big nosed. They actually looked less like cavemen and more like pictures of Mayan people from long ago. Or maybe like some twisted Nazi cartoon depicting a jewish person. The two righted me and went back to the bags.
   They talked amongst themselves in some language that sounded like Hyenas. Then I noticed the bags had bumps on them that moved. I spotted it just before they put the contents of the bags in the cage. Two young girls appeared with tape over their mouths and their hands taped behind their backs. They were both in there underwear. Both blonde. Looking like sisters with one older. I'd put the older one at eleven and the younger one at seven years old. They were beautiful to look at but I turned when I heard squeeking coming from the grill.
   The boogymen were turning it on. I turned back to the girls in sudden realization and felt terrible for thinking about them the way I just did before. The older one saw me and tried to say something to me. It all came out a muffle though. I tried to twist about but couldn't hardly move still. I shook my head at her to say I was helpless and she just started crying again. The little one was crying too.
   I cried out also. "You fucking bastards!!" They all turned to me and one smiled.
   Smiley came over to me and said in perfect english to my face, "You shouldn't knock it until you've tried it." He slapped some tape over my mouth ,then stepped back smiling still. I pulled out my nail and felt for the spot I'd been trying to cut through. I found it and started jabbing again.
   I looked at the door and waited for Captain Nickles and the whole police force to come barging in to stop it. Captain Nickles must have missed his stage cue and they didn't come.
   I figured the grill would take at least fifteen minutes to heat up and I pocked as fast as I could at my rope. Satisfied with the grill, they all walked to the cage and pulled the older girl out and carried her struggling to the table. They held her good like they were used to this sort of thing. Then each one in turn stepped away to strip. When they were all stripped and erect, they yanked off what was left of her clothes and did a one potato two potato thing to pick who would be first. I didn't think it would matter who was first since they all looked identical to me.
   Then I watched in horrid facination as the poor girl was gang raped by these boogymen from where the fuck ever they came from. I wondered how many more of them there were in the world. Not too many if they eat their own children.
   The spasming girl was held to the table on her back and her arms behind her made her flat chest thrust upwards. Her hair was sticking to her eyes from it being wet from sweat and tears. Her slim white legs looked whiter with the darker things gabbing and pawing at her weaker body. She was passed around them at least four times and was starting to bruise and tire out. Her young skin glistened with the sheen of sweat.
   I had parts of myself that was secretly enjoying this. The rest of me tried to vote them off the island. Her sister in the cage refused to watch. I couldn't blame her. But then, I knew how this was going to end. Or at least I thought I did.
   They picked her up from the table and she was too weak to struggle any more. I wish she had because they were then carrying her to the grill. Nobody had a knife or hammer and any tools what so ever. Oh shit!
   THEY WERE GOING TO COOK HER ALIVE!!!
   I tried to turn my head away. There was no part of me that wanted to see this, but I couldn't look away. I couldn't yell. I turned to the door one more time and hoped somebody was knocking on the dressing room door for the policemens cue.
   The boogymen held the girls legs apart wide and lowered her crotch down to the grill. The girl started to feel the heat and struggled harder then she'd ever struggled in her short life. They held her down hard to the grill and I heard a sickening sizzle. The child was held fast to the grill but jerked uncontrollably enough to make random hands slip off of her for a second here and there. But she couldn't concentrate as her crotch and legs burned with a torturous intensity and wasn't even aware of having slipped hands off of her.
   I had to work hard not to puke into my mouth so much I would choke to death. I felt some relief as the poor girl finally went unconscious. The smell could have made my stomach growl had I not known where it just came from. Then the boogymen pulled her off and laid her on her back on the table with her legs still spread. The whole underside was dark brown and had patches of blood running down from cracks running where she wiggled herself.
   I never saw a knife or fork. They all just bent down and bit large bites of the little girls cooked flesh off and chewed like gourmets. Her chest was still heaving. I sat dazed as I stared at the horror movie scene in front of me. I felt a sudden jab on my wrist and realized I'd stuck myself with the rusty nail. That snapped me out of it and my arms started to drop.
   I was free!
   I didn't bother to hide my hands, I just bent down to undo my legs as I kept glaring at the cruel things in front of me. They didn't even bother to look at me. They were in there own little heaven. I was about to show them hell.


   That was the last thing I remembered. I blacked out and when I came back, I was holding a phone and a voice was saying, "Stay on the line. We'll be right there."
   I looked around and saw the door to the place I last remembered. I dropped the phone and went back inside. It was a mess. There were five bodies laying on the floor with pools of blood by some. Then girl on the table wasn't breathing anymore and I threw my coat over her. I probably could have given her CPR, but I thought this was better. She would be crippled physically and emotionally. I turned to the child still in the cage. She was in shock and I carried her out of the room.
   I gently pulled off the tape from her mouth and arms and held her. She was lovely to hold and I felt nothing sexual for her. Those demons were still there in me, but they were in moarning from the loss of the other beautiful creature back in the room. They left us alone.
   When the cops did show, the tiny girl had put her arms around me and held me tightly. Nobody tried to pull her away.
   When Nickles came up to us, he was smiling slyly. "Your a hero, Sam. Front page news. Your picture is going to be plastered all over this city. They're going to know everything about you."
   Yeah, everything. The pedophile detective. Hanging around and protecting your children. Yeah, you can trust him. Except allot of people think it's worse to fuck children then it is to kill them. I would be just as bad as those sick fucks in the room behind me in their eyes. No way.
   Nickles started to walk away. "Nickles." I called him back. "I don't want to be the hero here. I just wanted to save the girls. Lets keep this quiet, okay?"
   Nickles was smiling hard now. Like a cat who had just caught the mouse. I figured it out. He knew I couldn't stand up to public scrutiny. He was going to take all the credit for capturing the boogymen and I was getting nothing. No credit and no money. He knew it'd be like that all along.
   A social worker took the clinging little girl from my arms and she clung to her then and that was the last I saw of her.
   "Tell you what." Nickles said to me. "You get out of here right now and we won't charge you with anything."
   "Charge me with what? Doing your job?" I countered.
   Nickles dropped the smile. "Do you know how you killed those men in there? Let's just say it wasn't your normal style. You don't want to be connected with with that sort of violence now, would you?"
   I didn't tell him I couldn't remember anything. It didn't matter. If it was that bad, it'd be best not to have anyone know I was capable of such things. I needed my record clean if I was to be the kind of detective I neede to be.
   I left.
   The office still smelled and I remembered my heartbreak over Missy. I was numb and it seemed like nothing now. I went to sleep.
   Tommorrow was another day.



FINISH