Binge Killer

by Chris Bauer

  I hefted an olive-colored duffel with wheels out of the van. Standard road trip stuff, jeans, pullovers, underwear, toiletries, some skirts and blouses, and two handguns. Tess inched over to an open window in anticipation. I cupped her sweet brown-and-white Bull Terrier face in my hand. Her expectant look encouraged me to give a good account of myself when I got inside. My hope as well, Tess, my hope as well.

  4

  Andy’s croissant appetite was gone. His stomach acid churned from his last sip of coffee. An eighth grader from an inner-city elementary school in a tough section of Philadelphia was the reason for his focus on the People article. To’Nay Witherspoon’s entry in the magazine’s nostalgic “What I Did Last Summer” essay contest had taken top prize. According to the “Safest Towns” piece Andy was reading, her entry was what had opened the eyes of the People editors.

  Is Rancor, Pennsylvania, for real? read the title of the magazine piece.

  He had it open on the B&B’s secretary desk in the parlor, with him leaning over the desktop while he read. A cheerful article with good intentions, and it accompanied the safest-towns list along with excerpts from the girl’s contest entry. Brutally honest feelings about gang-terrorized urban life eloquently stated by a thirteen-year-old, showing her extreme yearning for, and appreciation of, the closeness and the safety that this small town in upstate Pennsylvania had embodied for her during multiple years of girls’ summer camp there. To’Nay hailed from Philly’s tough inner-city projects, one of a number of minority kids bused in to commune with kids in upstate Pennsylvania for two overnight weeks in July each of the past three years. The camp showcased events and games with positive themes, team-building sports, and creative crafts, but of most interest to her was the coal mining folklore around the campfire, and children’s silly stories of guardian angels and benevolent boogeymen. Bullies, parents behaving badly, an occasional domestic spat, mischievous teens: in Rancor, per local lore, they’d all be taught lessons, have their tables turned by anonymous spiritual zephyrs who evened scores when necessary, and made kids and their families feel safe. Even a boogeybitch, the Rancor kids mentioned to To’Nay, this whispered nickname generating snickers and rib pokes from eleven- and twelve-year-olds sitting on tree stumps eating s’mores and other gooey marshmallow treats around the campfire. The essay was an impressionable at-risk child’s perspective about growing up scared and anxious versus her need to feel safe and protected.

  To’Nay hadn’t flinched at the harsh language her essay had related. Bitch, f****** bitch, motherf***** and worse were all part of her own vernacular, all “street,” yo. No, To’Nay had been more intrigued that there walked among these fabled Rancor equalizers an empowered, superhero woman delivering beatdowns whenever and wherever the need. A need that was infrequent, incidents often separated by years, yet they had fostered the campfire folklore. In her essay, To’Nay harbored hope that someday the women in her neighborhood, in all neighborhoods, would rise up and do the same. That, plus she liked the handmade crazy quilt each camp attendee received as a gift, courtesy of a local Rancor quilting club.

  To’Nay’s words compelled the magazine’s editors to look closer at Rancor for their top ten safest towns article. They were blown away: Rancor had no reported violent crime in five decades—“and with a police force of one!”—the italics theirs. Rancor, according to People, had a capable, persistent town watch, a robust self-defense program, a tough coal-mining heritage, and generation after generation of close-knit families. A town that relied on word-of-mouth exchanges at pie-eating contests, bowling alleys, and bingo halls as much as on Google searches. A 1950s-America throwback.

  The stairs behind Andy creaked. A couple on their way down the steps was getting an early start to their day. He straightened up, greeted his guests, and closed the magazine.

  Guardian angels and altruistic boogeymen: the long-time Rancor residents let these campfire legends coexist along with the town’s less spiritual, more practical history, a history that had an Aunt Kitty, an incendiary kind of woman. Its crime-free legacy began with her, with the bank robbery trial’s miscarriage of justice as its catalyst, after which Kitty had decided to make a difference.

  Andy eventually learned the clandestine history about his aunt. In the beginning, after the trial for the bank robbery and murder, Kitty Buchinsky née Prudhomme had been a one-person equalizer. Equipped with a no-bullshit attitude, a few small caliber antique guns her hunter father had left her, a robust sexual appetite, and a body men found appealing, she used each of these tools to even the odds and right wrongs. Aunt Kitty hadn’t been just any boogeybitch, she was the boogeybitch from whence the myth was born. Near her end, however, her age and hard living had taken their toll, and her boogeybitch vigilantism died with her.

  Squeaky springs on the B&B lobby’s screen door protested its opening then snapped it shut after a woman entered. Andy’s mosey down memory lane ended.

  “Good morning, Andy.”

  “Hi, Ursula.”

  At seventy-seven, Ursula was a town mainstay with generations of Rancor family history preceding her. Spry, spandexed legs, a summer blouse, and a rinsed white perm with a black hair bow dead center, Ursula exuded an active older adult persona, all except for what she carried: a quilt and a quilting supplies bag, the quilt ready for final embroidering.

  “Your mom joining us today, doll?” Ursula asked him.

  He’d forgotten. Today was a quilt-finishing session on the enclosed side of the B&B porch, where Ursula and his mother, members of the Piece-Makers Crazy Quilt Club of Rancor, would stitch themselves silly, entertained by an old TV and fortified by a few afternoon manhattans and martinis.

  “I’ll bring Ma out in a minute,” Andy said. He tucked a side chair out of the way, clearing a wheelchair path for his mother. Ursula stepped outside the lobby, onto the front porch.

  Ursula and Aunt Kitty: the best of friends while Kitty was alive.

  The town’s no-violent-crime legacy in the earlier years had remained intact because Kitty had no respect for criminals, and was also pretty much a cheat when it came to dealing with them. Her brand of justice: the end justified the means, don’t play by the rules, and do so as invisibly as possible.

  5

  “Do you know her?”

  Lunchtime at a strip joint in Scranton. The two pictures Randall showed the hostess were all he had left of her. The first was a glossy glamor shot, Regina at twenty-one. Tits with no-quit cleavage topping a rock-star-thin body, and a cute pout-and-a-half face, the photos taken pre-Randall. Also pre-Randall: casting couches, drugs, and some rather tasteless skin flicks. Nothing she could ever show her hometown friends. The photo shoot had cost her all her money after her arrival in Philly, as in it ultimately put her in a homeless shelter for women when things hadn’t worked out. When her money dried up, as her story to Randall went, she’d been too embarrassed to admit defeat and go home.

  Each dancer he asked said she’d never seen her before.

  In the second photo, Regina wasn’t smiling because she wasn’t happy, and she wasn’t happy because she was more than a little strung out. But what she was those many years ago was alive, and Randall could take credit for that. He’d been every bit her protector—her savior. Food, shelter, new clothes. Money. Drugs. And a new life—for her, and for the baby growing inside her. Except her opinion of him on many of those nights they were together had been extremely south of flattering.

  One night, everything went sideways. Masked gun- and bat-wielding strangers ambushed him behind a Bristol, Pennsylvania, pub. They spirited her away, a liberation that was, for her, apocryphal, but for him, apocalyptic. Regina had bit the hand that fed her, had dimed herself out. A triggered pump-action shotgun left him and his upper torso, including his face, to bleed out on a sidewalk. The attack and his convalescence retired him as a player on the street. He, too, then disappeared into the night, and when he reemerged he’d reinvented himself—new identity, new face, same big dick, same charm, but now
always on the move; also now terminally ill.

  The dancer on the stage was in midsquat, her gyrating lady parts inches away from the top of his drink glass. Some guys got off with so suggestive a positioning; Randall wasn’t one of them. She straightened up, tucked his folded ten-dollar bill into her G-string, did a slow twirl for him, told him to put away the pictures.

  “For a girl to admit”—her hips seesawed—“that she knows a girl like the one you’re describing”—another twirl—“the guy doing the asking”—a slow bend at the waist, her hands on her knees, with ass then taint thrust eye-level to him—“needs to be asking someone who actually gives a shit.” A tousle of her bottle-blonde hair and her direct eye contact ended with her bouncing away from him, over to the next bar customer, her stilettos click-clacking on the stage.

  The translation: pay me, old man, and maybe I’ll give the shit you want me to give and answer your questions.

  On her return spin, Randall asked, “How much?”

  “A hundred bucks gets you an answer, nothing else, tiger.”

  She leaned over, advertised ample cleavage that her barely-there dance top showcased, a suggestion that the nothing else that he wasn’t going to get might be worth paying extra for. Randall knew better, that it wouldn’t be worth it, considering she was the oldest dancer on the stage—someone who had a better chance at having a longer memory.

  He hadn’t been the kindest of boyfriends to his prospective baby momma. He knew this, but that was the nature of his street persona. In his heart he’d loved her, something he thought Regina knew. She apparently hadn’t, so when the cavalry arrived those many years ago, a trio of masked avengers, she ran.

  The money changed hands.

  “She got a name, sweetie?”

  “Regina Briscoe,” which was what her driver’s license showed when Randall took it from her. Could have been a fake; Randall had multiples for himself, too. Except she’d been a teenager with no money; it was likely her real name. “Her stage, screen, and street name was Juicy Luster.”

  “Cute name, but no, never heard of her,” the dancer said. “And I know ’em all around here, at the other clubs, on the street, everywhere. If she’s twenty years old in that picture, she’s never been one of the girls in play anytime during the past ten to fifteen years. How about you, lover? You got a name?”

  He’d had many. “Things are complicated. Maybe some other time.”

  He experienced the same zero luck at a second club in Scranton as he’d had at the first, other than to learn that his real destination, nearby Rancor, was a wholesome family town with a small population and no similar risqué outlets. If Regina was alive and living nearby, she was no longer in that life.

  The strip club visits had stirred his juices. The question was, what now to do about it. Find another whore? Not appealing at the moment. He craved something a lot younger.

  One block away, Cheesus H. Christmas, a holiday-themed, franchised pizza restaurant popular for kids’ birthday parties, open year-round. Shitty pizza, beer, wine, kids’ amusements, and parents who often weren’t paying attention.

  The People article had closed the deal: no reported violent crime in over fifty years in this small town in upstate Pennsylvania.

  He’d rebuffed the Scranton dancers, instead acted on opportunity and impulse by molesting then strangling an unattended little girl at the pizza restaurant, and stuffing her boney birthday-girl body into a restaurant toilet. Randall was now in need of a good muscle stretch, some greasy bar food, and a pint of whatever Irish beer the Rancor bowling alley bar had on tap.

  Randall studied the People magazine on the seat next to him. He was parked near where the pictures on the cover were taken. Inside the article was a photo of the bowling alley, the alley shiny from a sun not quite directly overhead, the sky a cobalt blue behind the building’s marquis of sequentially flashing Vegas-style lighting. He climbed out of the car.

  “That’s a lot of fucking lights,” he murmured midstretch. “Podunkers and their bowling. Made for each other.”

  He checked out a white message board’s boast at sidewalk level beside the bowling alley’s front door: Mon-Tue-Wed, Day-Evening Senior Leagues. New in Pocono country: Dollar slots!

  Anything between eight and eighty, blind, crippled or crazy. A cliché he’d heard as a horny teenager; his motto for the last thirty years. Yet now he typically stayed at the farther ends of the motto’s spectrum: defenseless kids, defenseless senior women. Considering his diagnosis, the more defenseless, the better.

  He knew the psychology of it; he wanted to get caught, just not until after he found his kid. The trail left in his wake so far—Loretta, and now the innocent little birthday girl—said as much. Except now that he’d arrived in Rancor, the thrill had returned. The safest town in America. A thrown gauntlet just too damn good not to pick up.

  Senior women, slot machines, hopefully his ex, hopefully their child, who was hopefully a boy. If so, and if Randall could make the connection, he’d die a happy man.

  He eyed the classic Chevy. Old and beautiful, but too conspicuous once someone found Loretta’s body. He needed to get rid of the car.

  6

  It hadn’t taken long. Ninety seconds, a hundred cobblestone feet, a set of porch stairs, and one sentence.

  The proprietor had led with “You must be Miss Fungo,” when greeting me as I entered the B&B parlor, his comment suffixed with a killer smile. Attractive guy.

  Yes, my nod told him. Then I opened my mouth and entertained him with the bane of my existence.

  “—I’m on the hunt please kiss my cunt, on the hunt, kiss my cu-cu-cu…”

  An embarrassment, sure. Sad to say not my worst, but all too common regardless. And subconsciously not embarrassing enough for me to not repeat it at least four more times before I squeezed the fuzzy dog keychain hanging from my belt loop. My frequently opinionated left hand and rat-a-tat brain needed to stay occupied. The fuzzy keychain helped, a life hack courtesy of my older brother, that eased me away from many a meltdown.

  No “Excuse me?” or “I beg your pardon” from the proprietor, not even a flinch. Now he was waiting me out, giving me a chance to redeem myself.

  “Tourette syndrome,” I said. “I’m so sorry. If you’re uncomfortable having me stay here, I’ll understand.”

  He studied me, studied my face, my eyes. He didn’t blink. “Andy Prudhomme,” he said. “I fill in at the state psychiatric hospital in Scranton as a nurse when I can.” He smiled, letting the coincidence sink in for me. “Your secret’s safe with me, Miss Fungo, although I’m sure it’s anything but. You’re checked in. Tomorrow’s breakfast menu is posted on the chalkboard on the porch.”

  I exhaled, my tension gone. He did good. He did real good.

  Six-one or two, with a dark complexion that set off his indigo eyes. Wiry. Flat stomach, lanky, smartly trimmed light brown hair. Could make it as a T-shirt and jeans model. On the B&B website there’d been no reference to a proprietor wife or partner.

  I needed to quit my gawking or I’d embarrass myself again. My fingers stroked the keychain. Over his right shoulder, on the wall behind him, a framed vintage WW2 poster read Coal is good for America. Other coal posters and prints hung elsewhere in here, this parlor serving as the B&B’s lobby.

  “You’re in room five, Miss Fungo,” Mr. Prudhomme said. “It has fewer antiques and less chewable trinkets. I ask that you keep your dogs leashed if you bring them inside the parlor, and when wandering the house and grounds. Do you need two keys?”

  “No.”

  “You’re good to go, then. We’ll serve tea and lemonade and some homemade snacks around three or so. Hope to see you then. Otherwise, I’ll see you at breakfast. Enjoy your stay.”

  Room Five. My guns stayed in the duffel. Guns for the room and guns for the van, plus I carried a Glock semiauto .45 in a holster against the crook of my back, covered by my untucked tee. I moved my clothes from rolling duffel to drawer and closet. My bag of toilet
ries and other necessities went to the bathroom. I was unpacked; took all of thirty seconds.

  I paged through a scrapbook on the antique white bureau. It gave some stats about Rancor, a population of twelve hundred, its elevation, seasonal festivals, etc., but it was filled mostly with pictures of coal miners and former coal miners, some I recognized from the B&B website. Stills in black and white from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, the more recent shots as good as anything I’d ever seen in LIFE or Look. If you lived in this region, you and your family had taken your lumps, no pun intended. Mining was its staple, generation after generation, unless it killed you. Depressed, dirty, and dangerous. No new news here, discounting a recent anniversary of sorts for Centralia, Pennsylvania, a half-hour drive away. Fifty-plus years ago a fire started in the town dump and moved into the rich coal veins near the surface, then it spread deeper underground. It was still burning. The streets of Centralia, what was left of them, were buckled and hot to the touch. Fifty-plus years. A few of the Centralia residents refused to leave.

  Three non-mining pictures. One of the old Rancor police station in black and white, taken in the fifties. Beside it, a photo of it now as a bingo hall, in color but barely. There was only so much you could do with gray cinder blocks and windows crosshatched with iron bars. A wooden crucifix was affixed to each of the hall’s two front doors. A repurposed real estate sign planted on the lawn read St. Possenti’s: Bingo Mon-Sat. Six days a week was a lot of bingo, even for a church. The third photo was of the new police station, now an unimposing, small storefront next to a barber shop in the middle of town.

  Bingo and bowling. Rancor was one fun-loving, rockin’ town.

  One other picture, black and white and grainy, stood out, not much more than a stereotype: a head and shoulders shot of a coal miner. Sweat-stained with a coal-dusted face, his eyes half-closed but their whites pronounced because of the grime around them, a pickax resting on one shoulder, a shovel on the other. No smile. It was special because it was the only labeled photo in the collection.