Binge Killer

by Chris Bauer

  Rosie didn’t find her straw, instead found the fifty Randall had left for her tip. It rolled back up easily for her. She unzipped the plastic bag. The traffic light was still red.

  “Wait,” Randall told her, eyeing Mr. Challenger, who was still texting.

  “Huh? It’s right turn on red, Howard. You can turn now.”

  Randall ignored her, glanced at the red light, smiled big time at it and Mr. Challenger and the streaming cross traffic. Randall released the brake, punched the gas. The Cadillac lurched a few feet forward before he jammed the brake pedal again.

  The Challenger reacted, jackrabbiting into the intersection. An RV crossing left to right in a hurry to beat a yellow light clipped the Challenger’s front end, twisting it sideways. Its bumper tore free at impact, skittered ahead of the RV and was crushed by both sets of the RV’s tires. Both vehicles screeched to a halt.

  Randall’s stoplight finally turned green. The Caddy signaled its turn, made a right, threaded itself around the accident and cruised slowly away.

  Rosie leaned back over the seat for a look at what was left in their wake. “You are sooo bad,” she said, her mock-scold preceding a teasing poke at his arm. She returned her attention to the coke.

  She would do fine, Randall told himself.

  The Caddy settled into an even speed on the straightaway. She did a quick bump off the small mirror she kept in her purse just for this purpose. Her head raised, her eyes closed, she absorbed the rush. “Mm-mm-mm. Loving that. Up ahead a mile you’ll turn right, lover, then two miles to my house on the left.”

  “Husband or boyfriend?”

  “Single. At the moment,” she said, laughing at herself. Another scoop of the coke. She shuddered, her top-heavy chest heaving with additional air intake. “Oh my. Wow-eee is that good, Howard. If we bring this shit inside, I am so gonna fuck your brains out.”

  Yes, you are, Randall thought. Then there would be a question-and-answer session.

  Wow-eee indeed.

  It was over. Front, back, up, down, over, under, every orifice utilized, Randall’s as well as hers. The coke and some Viagra helped. An hour of wired and depraved sex, in Rosie’s bedroom, on the living room sectional, the kitchen center island under recessed lighting, the plush carpet that gave her rug burns. Drugs, food, and condoms, the condoms at her insistence, at least at first. Then the coke and meth took over and she didn’t give a shit. She had a nice place, and they had messed it up pretty good.

  Exhausted, she lounged in a T-shirt on the sectional, eating an apple and marveling at his penis from across the room, limp below his paunch, but still ever so magnificent in length and girth.

  “You’ve got a python there, Howard. Been in any movies?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, it’s awesome. And this was so much fun. Now I need to freshen up so I can go back and finish my shift. I had a great time, sweetie. Stop by the diner when you’re next in town. We’ll do this again.”

  “I don’t think so,” Randall said, his face long, sweat-soaked. He raised his naked girth from the chair.

  “What? You didn’t have fun? You sure looked like you were having fun…”

  She’d insisted she didn’t know a Regina Briscoe or a Juicy Luster, but there’d been a slight tell, a hesitancy. He’d beat it out of her if he had to. “The woman I’m looking for”—he arrived alongside her—“I think you know her.”

  “I told you. I don’t know no Regina Briscoe or no Juicy nobody. Case closed. Sorry.” Rosie slid away from him, across the sofa, making him suddenly aware of her interest in a messy end table, or what was in it.

  Her place was about to get a lot messier.

  He reached across the sectional, took a firm grip of her arm. “We’ll do it again, right now.”

  “Howard, baby, sweetie, I can’t. I’m tired and sore and I need to take a shower. The next time you’re in Rancor—”

  “No next time. Now.”

  “Howard. No…”

  He pinned her beneath him, his python stirring yet again, this time while he wrapped her bra around her neck. She squirmed, one hand in his face, the other desperately reaching for a drawer in the end table, connecting with the knob. He grabbed the hand doing the reaching, started folding it backward—

  “You know Regina! Where is she? Where?”

  She screamed, her fingers now folded the wrong way, close to the top of her forearm.

  “WHERE—THE FUCK—IS SHE?”

  Bones crunched then her wrist snapped. She screamed in agony, her arm and wrist dangling. He tied the bra off and pressed his face hard against hers, her breath starting to leave her—

  “Bowling… bowling alley! Please, Howard, no—”

  He needed a few final, euphoric thrusts to finish, him cursing her and her genitals, her one fist pounding him, her hot, apple-juicy, beseeching, terrified last breaths wafting into his nostrils, the last of the last giving him a rush better than all the coke and sex of the past hour combined.

  He suddenly felt like eating some fruit. Then he’d take a shower.

  A lead. Finally.

  30

  Andy’s fondness for his mother, tonight’s bowling league finals, idle chitchat, coffee, rice pudding—it was all good. Except for Mr. Stavros and his large handgun. I did however see his point about dessert quality control. Best rice pudding I’d ever tasted. I was on my second dish.

  Andy, still sharing: “If you take Mom to a bowling alley or hand her a scalpel, you’d never guess she sometimes has trouble dressing herself.”

  The proof, as he laid it out for me, was Andy’s bowling team, started decades ago by Charlotte, the team’s anchor at the time. “The Fighting Cadavers. Nurses and doctors, past and present. Mom’s now our head cheerleader and coach, and a major trash-talker.”

  Andy went maudlin for a moment, traveled to a far-off place, left the diner behind, present company included. He rallied, pulled himself back to the here and now. “So. Arterial red bowling shirts, and our team name scribbled in longhand across the back, in a black stitch that oozes like zombie blood. You can’t miss us. Our match starts at eight tonight. If you’re not busy, stop by.”

  Yes, sure, hope to get there, I told him. We slid out of the booth, hugged like we were cousins, but at this point I couldn’t help myself. I held his shoulders and gently pulled him closer. He ignored the intimacy, kissed me cordially on my cheek. His lips then moved to my ear and lingered there long enough to whisper, “Please, Counsel, no, it’s too… complicated.” The sensuality and the warmth of his gentle delivery of the words did not make up for the message. He cupped my chin then left the diner to pick up his mother. Bummed, I sat back down to nurse my coffee.

  A black Crown Vic pulled into the space Andy’s Jeep vacated. Two guys in charcoal gray suits climbed out. Had to be feds. They wandered over to my van, pressed their faces against different windows, passenger side and rear. Tess’s head popped up. She sniffed, gave Fed Number One an inquisitive head tilt, stayed calm. The van’s rear end suddenly bounced as Fungo left his crate, reacting to Fed Number Two, a big ugly dude too close to the back window for Fungo’s comfort. The second fed backed off. Both turned their heads up, now interested in me, the woman staring back at them from her booth inside the diner, drinking coffee.

  I left the booth, paid the bill at the cashier. They were waiting for me at the bottom of the cement steps, their badges blazing.

  Fed One: “Agent Van Impe. FBI. This is Agent McQuarters. Is this your van?”

  “Yes,” I answered with my best smiley face. “Is there a problem?”

  “We have a few questions. Can I see some identification?”

  I knew the drill. I told them my name, also told them immediately that I was carrying a concealed weapon, and I showed them my empty hands. I let the second agent take the Glock from my holster in back, under my shirt. These pleasantries delivered, I opened my wallet. My driver’s license, my Fugitive Recovery Agent’s license, my old PA state trooper ID, my permi
t to carry, all were lined up opposite my credit cards.

  “Former state trooper,” Agent Van Impe said, impressed. Agent McQuarters examined my gun.

  “Retired,” I said.

  “The dogs?”

  “On the job with me.” I told him Tess was a former working dog, then I went for some levity. “The larger one’s a shepherd rescue turned trained assassin.”

  Neither agent smiled. Assembly line cookie-cutter goons in suits. J. Edgar would have been proud. Fuck ’em if they couldn’t take a joke.

  Agent Van Impe: “You say you’re on the job. Tracking whom?”

  Whom. Even his grammar was good. J. Edgar, you rock. “A bail jumper from Allentown by the name of Stephen Linkletter. Wanted for attempted rape of a minor.”

  Agent Van Impe’s face gave nothing up, as in no recognition that we were on the same case, until: “So tell me, Miss Fungo, what’s your next move?”

  “What?”

  “Your next move. A simple question. Where will you look for him next?”

  He was fishing. Ha. They had shit on my bounty. Emphasis on shit, not had.

  Fuck this. I saw no reason to share tonight’s bowling alley plans.

  “After I billet my canine deputies for the night, I’ll find a bar, maybe try to get lucky. Tomorrow I’ll do more canvassing.”

  I told them where I was staying, asked, “Why the interrogation?”

  Agent Van Impe again. “Your van keeps turning up. The touristy pothole park, the car dealer… We felt it was time for a chat.”

  “So I guess we’re after the same guy. No big deal. A healthy competition never hurt anyone. Let me have your business card. When I catch him, I’ll be sure to give you guys a call.”

  Oops. Too smug on my part. My comment apparently roused Agent Van Impe’s partner, the sleepwalking giant.

  “This ain’t no fucking competition, Miss Fungo,” Agent McQuarters growled, a neck vein popping.

  He was around six-five. His suit was too small. His tie was loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned. Dark circles under his eyes, pockmarks on his cheek. And his grammar was poor. Sorry, J. Edgar, a miss with this one.

  My left hand twitched. I needed fur. And things had been going so well.

  “Look, I do need to deliver him to someone if I catch him, is all I’m saying.” My hand felt for my belt loop. Nice fuzzy doggie. Soft fuzzy doggie. Happy fuzzy doggie. “And since you guys are here visiting Rancor, the collar’s yours if you want it.”

  Sleepy fuzzy doggie…

  Both agents saw the twitch. They watched my fingers and thumb gently caress my talisman. Agent Van Impe’s eyes shifted between my face and my waist; he was processing this. He was close to getting it, that this was only a harmless tic that needed controlling. Fuckface McQuarters, not so much.

  “What the hell is that? A dog dick? You jerking off a dead dog?”

  The disease gripped my subconscious with no spoiler alert for my interrogators, was about to get me into trouble, again. Fuck this fucking thing—

  Some choice words for him entered my head: Ram this up your ass, McQuarters. That’s right. My fist. Your ass. Right the fuck up there, with a big twist. Except I wasn’t just thinking them, I’d said them. Or some of them, because the Tourette’s wouldn’t let me get past the key words.

  “—fist fuck—your ass—ram it ram it ram it—

  “—fist fuck—your ass…”

  My gesturing left hand didn’t help. An uppercutting middle finger nearly connected with McQuarters’s chin. Agent Van Impe pinned my arms to my body from behind and attempted a takedown.

  I was wrong. McQuarters was six-eight if he was an inch ’cause he was in my face now, looking down, about to tear off my nose with his gritting teeth. I was still on my feet, the smaller agent wrestling me but not able to get the right leverage. I didn’t pull back, my face and McQuarters’s face inches apart, him for sure smelling my meat-loaf breath, his breath smelling like unwashed penis and semen. I told him this, loudly, in a major Tourette’s outburst, and it was true as all fuck because I knew that smell from my travels.

  That sealed it. Down I went, the two of them on me, my hands forced behind my back. They cuffed and stuffed me into the perp seat in the Crown Vic. Tess and Fungo almost devoured themselves trying to get out the passenger side window of my van.

  I was going to be late for tonight’s bowling match.

  31

  Randall had marked his territory in here but good. Satiated, he showered and dressed, was now noshing on microwaved leftover pizza at Rosie’s kitchen table, but he was also feeling sorry for himself. He wandered through her bungalow looking for cash and valuables, a force of habit. What he found: two engagement rings, four hundred bucks in a bedroom dresser, and in her purse, the rolled-up fifty he’d left her as a tip. He’d held each of these things in his hands, didn’t want them, wouldn’t need them. Which made him uncomfortable about being in here now.

  Back in the living room he eyed the body again, the twisted, broken wrist dangling inches away from the end table next to the couch. The end table drawer, of major interest to her during their struggle, was partly open. He slid it open all the way.

  “Wow.”

  He lifted out the biggest, heaviest handgun he’d ever seen in the possession of a woman. Rhino .357 Magnum, it said under the four-inch barrel. Black and ugly, and distinctive because the barrel was aligned with the cylinder’s bottom bullet chamber, not the top. And it was loaded. This, he decided, he would take.

  Her body in here with him wasn’t what was causing his discomfort; this actually excited him. He’d thought about doing the unspeakable, the body half-naked and defenseless and sprawled on the sectional sofa like a drugged college coed at a frat party. But he’d been there, done that already, many times, considering how many victims he’d stayed with, stayed inside, sometimes needing to still work it, work it, work it so he could climax even after he’d already snuffed out their pilot lights, after the muscles—muscles that only moments before had been molded around and grinding his throbbing hammer—had all suddenly relaxed at the same time, turning everything to dead meat. He knew not to kill them before climaxing but occasionally he wasn’t able to control himself. It was the fight that he liked. The life that wanted to go on living that he extinguished with extreme prejudice. Life expiring in front of his eyes. Quite the rush.

  He had no reasonable explanation for why he’d killed so many people, other than maybe he was a death junkie. When caught, they’d label him sick. Sociopathic, maybe psychotic. He planned on living through it all. He’d enjoy the hype, the fame, would take the media and medical and psychiatric professions for all they were worth, intended to feed them, nurture them, tell them what they wanted to know about his depressing upbringing and his depraved life. The death penalty? It would cure his disease, but he’d just as soon avoid it if possible, thank you. Prison was the preferred alternative. Prison would be fun, given how physically gifted he was. They’d love him and revere him in prison, maybe help him beat this disease.

  But only after he found Regina and her kid. His kid.

  This town was the end of the line for him. His final destination as a free man.

  She already stank, bodily fluids and multiple sphincter releases and all that. The smell sealed it. He needed to leave.

  It was almost eight p.m. He’d head to the bowling alley. Slot machines, a bar, undersexed grannies, and maybe, somewhere in the mix, Regina.

  Things he knew now: Regina was nearby, and short of a threat of death, the people of Rancor wouldn’t give her up.

  No more photos or missing person questions asking about her whereabouts. No more telegraphing his intentions. New approach: lead with information that she had money coming to her.

  32

  About the unwashed dick comment: I now knew more about Agent McQuarters than I cared to, including the science experiment going on inside his piehole, the kind of bad breath that came from poor dental hygiene.

  Agent
Van Impe had accepted my apology for the Tourette’s episode, told me I “checked out” wherever it was that FBI agents went to confirm that a person wasn’t on any watch list or criminal database. I knew this was bullshit. I was on a list somewhere; multiple lists were more like it. Someone didn’t flip off a college recruiter, get manhandled by the cops for doing it, get 302’d, then not end up with at least one file somewhere. Chances were it was out there and working to my advantage, validating my Tourette’s, my State Police service and—gag—my pedigree as daughter of a former senator from Pennsylvania.

  Agent Van Impe took off my cuffs but hadn’t let me leave the perp seat of their car, maybe more for my sake than theirs, considering McQuarters was still seething. I had just outted him as liking guys. He knew I outted him, and he knew I knew that he knew. His FBI agent partner knew now, too, if he hadn’t known already.

  Live and let live, as long as it was between consenting adults. I held no bias. Still, having my disease was like coexisting with a child inside the same skin, an extremely brash, uncontrollable, questioning child. Kids. They said the darnedest things.

  It was eight o’clock give or take. Andy’s bowling match was getting underway, and I expected to be fashionably later than I had anticipated. The door to my seat in the rear of the Crown Vic opened.

  “Get the fuck out,” McQuarters growled. He eyed my keychain still attached to my belt loop, suffixed his grunted order with “How’s George, Lenny?” and a mocking smile, finishing with “You fucking retard.”

  A funny guy, McQuarters was. Fucking hilarious. Hidden behind the bluster and bone-headed-ness was at least one positive J. Edgar attribute, for which I commended him: “Wow. Of Mice and Men. You can read. The classics, even. I’m impressed.”