Maybe that was when things clicked, when my fate was set in stone. I wasn’t scared, though—more like enthralled, so much so that I didn’t bother to call the cops for over an hour. All I could do was think about the headless man. Who was he? Who killed him? And why had they taken his head?

Somehow, I knew instinctively that the head wasn’t in the area, and when the cops arrived I told them my theory. They laughed, patted me on the head, and said I’d make a great detective.

That pretty much set the tone for the rest of my life: bizarre crimes, laughing cops, and me in the middle. Like I said, I’m a magnet for the weird, so I did what the cops told me all those years ago and became a detective. Now I really get on their nerves.

Anyway, Blout’s supported me, helping with cases and sometimes with bail. I’ve tried to return the favor whenever something strange comes along that normal police investigations and procedures can’t touch. And believe me, they hate to admit when they need help—especially from the likes of me.

There was this case a few years back where body parts of young boys and girls were being found all over the place—tragic, but not altogether uncommon. What was odd was that the limbs and other body parts hadn’t been crudely chopped off, the norm in a hack-and-slash case. Instead, they were removed with almost surgical precision. The killer took his time with these kids, lots of time. Even weirder, the parts were rubbed with strange oils and exotic herbs. The cops waited almost six months before they came to me. If not for Blout’s insistence, they may never have.

Once they showed me everything, I knew immediately that we were dealing with something of voodoo origin. The herbs and oils were commonplace in Haiti and New Orleans, even certain parts of New York. But the accuracy behind the removal of the limbs had me stumped until a day or so later. I was walking through an alley on the way to the corner liquor store, when I spotted an illegal chop shop—a garage where stolen cars are cut up for parts. It hit me like a ton of bricks, or better, a ton of bloody body parts.

I suggested the cops check the Feds’ files for plastic or transplant surgeons of Haitian descent from the New Orleans area that had been fired in the past five years and had relocated to the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area. Second—and this even creeped me out—hit the files for stalking investigations on the Internet, specifically cases involving adults seeking teenagers.

On a hunch, I told them to check out a guy I’d seen on the news, name of Francis Lazar. He headed an organization that actually believed young children, and I mean young, were capable of consenting to physical relationships with adult men. The organization was called ManChildLove. I remember when I saw Lazar on CNN I quickly lost track of what he was talking about and concentrated on his eyes. In them I saw mania. The guy was a sick, twisted freak hiding behind his rhetoric.