Relative Sanity: Chapter Five

Story by Fayin on SoFurry

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#5 of Relative Sanity


After her chat with Frank Geniva went to her quarters and took a hot shower, glad that she had managed to get in and out without anyone else showing up. She returned to her room with a large towel wrapped around her body, moisture sliding down her legs to leave neat little footprints on the short carpeting in the hall. Closing and locking the door behind her, Geniva let the towel slip from her body in favor of the boy shorts and tee she usually wore to bed. She ran the towel through her hair and followed it with her fingers, casually tousling it. She didn't put much stock in blow driers.

Seating herself at her desk she pulled out the files that had been given to her on her patients. Reading them hadn't done her much good. She had gone into her meetings knowing the facts, not the patients themselves. Elliot had given her hope. She thought that she had been doing something right in getting him to talk to her, but her other patients hadn't been so forthcoming. She realized her mistake in thinking that they would be easy cases to crack.

But Geniva wasn't going to give in so easily. She'd messed up her first round of meetings with four of her patients, she admitted. She could redeem herself. She had other tools at her disposal. Besides, she still had two patients left to meet, one of whom was just down the hall from Elliot. At least she'd get to visit with him tomorrow; he had, by far, been the most enjoyable of the patients she'd dealt with, perhaps because his only problem was that he hated humans and she wasn't human.

Well, it's not his only problem, she reminded herself, thinking of the photographs he had taken. I do need to remember that these aren't patients in a hospital that I'm dealing with. They're violent, prone to fits of rage, and Elliot, particularly, doesn't care who gets hit in the cross fire. For all he pretends to be my friend he'd as easily stab me in the back as the flirty Bianca or the flighty fox would.

Geniva pushed the image from her mind. She didn't need to be thinking about what Elliot would be like if he had a full rack of antlers, how easily the tips of those could pierce her flesh, how quickly his hooves could come crashing down on her skull. She couldn't help but doubt that he'd ever turn on her in such a way, due simply to the fact that she wasn't human, but she'd be wary in future dealings with the sociopath.

From the bottom of her bag Geniva pulled out her notebook and pen and set them on the desk. She had some research to do regarding a few of her patients. She booted up her laptop, glad to see that she'd managed to get Internet access in her room; she recalled the warden saying that it wasn't always stable.

What to search for first? _Geniva wondered as she opened up her web browser. _Elliot basically told me everything there was to know about his crimes. He knows exactly why he's here, though he fails to see the harm in it. Besides, he talks to me. Running a search on him would be a waste of time.

Geniva considered Kunwio for a moment, but she didn't have a last name. As far as she knew "Kunwio" was the only name he went by, and while searching that name alone certainly had its merits, she wasn't particularly interested in his case right now. Bianca or Mist were always options, but Geniva's mind continually returned to the girl that had been locked away at the tender age of thirteen. What had she done to warrant such cruel treatment? She seemed like such a sweet, innocent child, though her obsession with hands was rather...disconcerting.

Geniva typed Kitty's name into the browser and hit search. She was luckily one of few people with that particular last name and it didn't take long for Geniva to find a promising hit: a news article from the Chicago Times, written in 1995.

Family Found Butchered

Earlier this week Chicago was witness to one of the most heinous crimes of the decade. The anthropomorphic Crusox family was found inside their home, each lying in pools of their own blood. Their tails were ripped offf at the base and wrapped around their necks, though police say that strangulation was not the cause of death.

There was one survivor of the ordeal. The youngest child, Katherine Crusox, was found sitting next to her mother's corpse when police finally arrived at the scene two days after the initial murders. Police Chief Raptnur was unavailable for comment on why it took so long to find the family. Katherine was unharmed.

Rumors are circulating that this is some sort of hate crime...

Geniva continued reading the article. It didn't give very specific details on the death of the Crusox family, though it did mention that at the young age of five Kitty wasn't under suspicion. She had been sent to live with an aunt in Pennsylvania and would be receiving therapy to overcome the shock at seeing her family butchered. Apparently she never said what happened; she had simply blinked her eyes when questioned and didn't seem to understand that her family was dead and not coming back.

After she'd finished the first article Geniva returned to her search. After the initial piece there hadn't been a lot of information put into publication about the crime. Snippets had been posted here and there talking about the lack of leads that investigators had, but eventually the murders had slipped off the radar. The case had gone unsolved.

Because police totally care about what happens to us anthros, _Geniva thought bitterly. She wasn't surprised that there hadn't been any witnesses or that the neighbors and employers had taken their sweet time reporting the case. At the time anthros were still considered second-rate citizens. Geniva wouldn't have batted an eye to learn that the police themselves had organized the butchering. _Well, maybe not that.

The next article of interest that Geniva came across was written in '00, five years after the Crusox family murders. It detailed the death of a child that Kitty had attended school with. Apparently she had been enraptured with the boy, though he, like others in his class, had called her a freak and avoided her. He was found dead on the playground at school, his hands crudely removed from his body. Bite marks and scratches had marred what remained of his wrists. When police had questioned Kitty on her whereabouts they'd scraped her nails and teeth, finding traces of the boy's skin.

As an anthro Kitty hadn't had many rights. The fact that her victim was human did little to brighten the girl's prospects. She had been placed in a hospital and tested extensively, her psyche under constant evaluation. Her time at the hospital wasn't detailed, but Geniva could imagine the type of testing they did on an anthro killer.

Apparently Kitty hadn't done well in the general hospital setting. In '02 she had lured an orderly into her room at night and removed his hands, watching him bleed to death. She spent a year in a juvenile prison that did nothing to better her situation. Small for her age, she was often picked on, bullied, and physically abused by older inmates until she was sent to her current resting place where she would be looked after and attended to by doctors who had experience dealing with emotional distress and mental disorders. She had been promised her own room and individualized care.

After her transfer to the asylum Kitty hadn't made the news. Indeed, Geniva wondered why the transfer had been newsworthy in the first place, though she supposed it had something to do with the outbreak of anthro rights movements at the time. She vaguely recalled a news segment detailing the shopping habits of a rather popular fur.

That's American news for you.

Kitty's fondness for hands had never been explained, though that was hardly something that reporters would be interested in; it wasn't as if the girl were a serial killer. Nor had any of the articles mentioned her curiously child-like mindset, which could very well be considered passing strange. Had the murders of her family put some sort of mental block in place that kept the child from developing, or would she have been like this anyway? Autism was always a possibility, though Geniva's own cousin suffered from that particular malady and it wasn't entirely the same. At eleven years of age he neither spoke nor wrote and still looked like he was a toddler. He could make himself understood well enough by pointing or grabbing a stray hand and pulling someone toward what he wanted; he had, at one time, been practicing sign language with his mother and seemed to have grasped the concept. He still used the sign for "ball" and other everyday items when he desired them, but the daily use of signing had drawn to a halt. Like Kitty, he showed a fondness for the arts, though his particular interest was music.

Geniva didn't think that the two cases were the same. Her cousin had never shown any inclination toward violence; perhaps Kitty really had been shattered by the events of her past and she coped the only way that she could by retreating into herself and presenting this guileless facade to the rest of the world. Witnessing violence at such a young age had probably taught her to be violent herself. Geniva would look into it. Understanding what had happened at the house would be a good first step to take; she made a note to call the Chicago police department and get some information. Even with all the questions that she now had, she was glad to learn that Kitty had at least been given a chance in a juvenile home.

Geniva moved on from Kitty. She had gleaned a good bit of information from the simple web search and had ways of obtaining more. She picked up her files and leafed through them until she found her two remaining patients. One of them she had glimpsed briefly on her way to Elliot's cell - the aging gazelle that had been curled in on himself. Blackhorn, wasn't it? The name rang familiar but she couldn't put her finger on it.

Her last patient was named Kure. Geniva idly wondered what it was about crazies and single names. Mist, Kunwio, Kure. Just call me Madonna.

Geniva flipped open Kure's file and scanned the information. He had been admitted in 2000, the first anthro patient that the asylum had taken. Maximum security, no ground privileges, not allowed outside his cell unless under heavy sedation with an armed escort and the warden's express permission. Serial rapist, killer, and cannibal.

She recalled the photographs that the warden had shown her in his office on her first day. That had been Kure, then. She could still see the limbs scattered across the carpet against the backdrop of the blood-spattered wall, teeth marks evident on the limbs. Kure hadn't been able to finish his procedure on that victim, scared off by the prospect of pursuit. Geniva wasn't sure that she wanted to see what his victims looked like when he was finished with them. The warden had the photos anyway; leafing through the rest of the papers only revealed testimonies from Kure's court date in late '99. He'd been put in secure holding during the trial and shipped to the asylum after his plea for insanity had gone through. No other place had wanted to deal with him.

Was it worth running a search on him if he didn't have a last name? There was always a chance that she'd find something. Besides, his name wasn't the only information she had to go by. She had the dates of his arrest, court trial, and incarceration, as well as the cities that he'd terrorized before being caught. Geniva decided to give it a try. She typed Kure, Atlanta, and 1995 into the engine and hit search.

Immediately her screen filled with websites directing her to newspaper clips, online articles, and videos. Titles jumped out at her.

Terror in Atlanta

Two Women Found Dead

String of Murders in Georgia

An image of Kure popped up next to one of the articles. Geniva wasn't surprised to see that he was a wolf, though she'd hardly imagined him with pristine white fur. He'd been glaring balefully at the camera when the photo was taken, his blue eyes smoldering with hatred. His lips had been parted in a silent snarl, saliva dripping from his chops.

She didn't click on any of the links right away, choosing instead to broaden the search. She removed the name of the city and the date and once more watched her screen fill with references on the killer.

Serial Killer Abroad

Police Have No Leads

Killer Crosses State Line: Feds Called In

Victims Now At 20

Half-Eaten Remains Found, Investigators Fear Cannibal

Kure Strikes Again

No One Is Safe

Victim Found Alive

Geniva clicked on the last link and was taken to the website of a Cleveland newspaper. The top half of the page was taken up by the picture of the woman that had managed to escape, her face bloodied and bruised from her time with the killer. Her nose was quite painfully broken and one eye was hidden behind a patch. She was staring blankly from the screen, whatever spark she might have had gone from her remaining eye. Geniva scrolled down to read the article.

Victim Found Alive

Cassandra Buler, 22, was found yesterday morning on the side of the road near the Carnegie Ave entrance ramp to Interstate 90. She had been reported missing by her parents three days previously and, while her discovery was a blessing, it came with the knowledge that Kure, the serial rapist and cannibal, is in the immediate area.

Cassandra was rushed to nearby Lutheran Hospital and placed in their intensive care unit. She is still in critical condition, but sent word to speak with the local police department. When she named her captor as Kure they called in the federal agents assigned to the case to hear her story.

"It was awful," Cassandra began, tears in the one eye she had remaining. The other, she said, had been torn out by Kure's own fingers. "He took me when I was walking home from class. He hit me in the back of the head with something and the next thing I knew I was in some sort of basement. He held me down and he did terrible things. I remember thinking 'I wish he'd just kill me.'"

Cassandra described the three days of torture that she endured at the hands of this madman. Rape, sodomy, torture. He broke every bone in her hands with a hammer, used a screwdriver to puncture holes in her abdomen and urinated in the open wounds, and used the same screwdriver to gouge out her eye.

Frankly, it's a wonder she's alive...

Geniva scanned the rest of the article. She could taste bile in her mouth, her stomach turning circles at the thought of what the girl had gone through. The girl never mentioned how she escaped or how she had managed to drag her broken body outside where she could be found. She pointed her finger at the serial killer at large, Kure, and the authorities had canvassed the area, thoroughly searching any building that sounded similar to what Cassandra had described. They hadn't found Kure in Cleveland.

There were more articles to read, each more gruesome than the last. Some included pictures, which Geniva studied in a sort of morbid fascination. Sometimes limbs had been cut away from bodies, bones cracked open and marrow sucked out, but most of the corpses remained intact, at least insofar as arms and legs went. Kure had taken the time to tear out the throats of many of his victims, their flesh showing signs of teeth marks. Other body parts had been munched on as well, and every one of the victims had been thoroughly raped, her body torn to pieces by Kure's brutality. He had only ever killed females. Young, attractive females, white when human, though he'd gotten his hands on an anthro a time or two.

_Funny how so few of the anthro cases got more than a few sentences, _Geniva thought bitterly. Kure's spree had taken place when anthros still hadn't had rights and had been seen as secondary citizens. The fact that their deaths had made the paper at all was a wonder in and of itself.

Geniva continued reading.

By the time Kure had been captured his total victims numbered 35. He'd been brought down while in Florida; authorities claimed that he had been trying to flee the country at the time. It had taken ten men to subdue him and bring him in, and he'd only been allowed in the court room in a straight jacket and heavy sedation. Some reports noted that he'd barely been able to hold his head up during the proceedings.

His lawyer was a young hotshot with a winning record, though this had been his first case representing an anthro, let alone a serial killer. He'd gone with the only defense that could keep up his winning record: the insanity plea. He managed to convince the judge and jury that Kure wasn't mentally sound, that he didn't know what he was doing and, with the help of bleeding-heart animal activists, avoided the death penalty. Kure had been sentenced to life in the asylum with no chance at parole. His lawyer was murdered three weeks later.

Geniva pushed herself back from her computer, staring at the screen. This was what was waiting for her tomorrow? A serial killer. No, not even that. She could handle serial killers - she'd managed with Elliot well enough. This was a serial rapist, a man that preyed on women, that tortured them and beat them and eventually ate them. How could she possibly handle something like this? She could only think of what it would be like to be in that situation, to see this large, hideous wolf looming over her, holding her down as he forced himself inside of her, his claws raking down her body and teeth encircling her neck, tearing out her throat as he had with so many of his victims. Would she feel anything? Would he keep her alive until he'd finished with her, struggling to get free, or did he prefer his women a little more cold and stiff?

It would have been better if she hadn't done the research and had seen him tomorrow not knowing what he'd done, not knowing that he'd only see her as another potential victim, just another girl to rape and murder.

She felt sick.