I Hear They Burn for Murder

by J L Aarne

  Lance ordered cheap beer until he realized Rainer was paying for it. Then he switched to a slightly more expensive beer.

  Rainer had a whiskey and soda. He was still on his first drink as Lance was finishing his third beer though. He drank it before it got warm and ordered another just so it wouldn’t seem weird that he wasn’t drinking.

  The music the band played was a little too country twang for Rainer’s taste, but it was old country at least. Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt, Gary Allan and the like, which wasn’t so bad. He even had a couple Reba McEntire and Johnny Cash records of his own at home.

  “Man, I’m sorry,” Lance said at one point.

  He was on his seventh beer and a little tipsy. Not slurring or falling down drunk, but just drunk enough to be maudlin and say dumb things.

  “What for?” Rainer asked.

  Lance made a vague circular gesture with one hand. “You know. I get so mad. I don’t know why.”

  “It happens,” Rainer said. Because personality disorders, he thought. You have one.

  “You’re a cool guy though,” Lance said. “I didn’t think so at first, but you’re cool, man.”

  “Thank you, Lance. That means a lot to me,” Rainer said. He smiled and Lance smiled, too.

  Lance drank a few more beers and conversation turned to his useless, piece of shit, mooch of a son and his son’s skank girlfriend.

  “That bitch ain’t no good, either,” Lance said. He gestured emphatically with his beer bottle. “She’s trash from her painted toes to the end of her fake ass blond hair. And I tell him, ain’t no ass in the world worth that kind of trouble. She’s some kind of stripper, you know that? Everyone knows them pole dancer girls fuck on the side and besides, she’s only got a few more years on her before don’t nobody want to see her shaking those titties and then what? Then nothing. By then, she’ll probably have five kids, all of them like doorsteps and what you want to make damn sure of is ain’t none of them doorsteps yours. That’s what I tell him. ‘Cause a bitch like that’ll suck you dry in more ways than just the one.”

  Betty, the bitch in question, had always seemed like a cool enough girl to Rainer. He didn’t know her well, but she didn’t seem like she was hanging around Caleb waiting for him to strike it rich or knock her up. Rainer did not disagree with Lance though. Rainer was Lance LaRoche’s new buddy and buddies did not defend women they hardly knew. Bros before hos and all that stupid, hyper-masculine chummy shit.

  Rainer nodded sympathetically and finished his drink. When the waitress came to ask if he wanted another one, he said no. Because he was polite and his mother raised him right, he also said thank you.

  “Like a goddamn leech,” Lance said. He was still talking about Betty—and women as a species in general—fastening onto a man like a parasite and sucking the life out of them. “Or vampires. Vampire leeches.”

  “Vampire leeches,” Rainer repeated. “Yeah, those are some nasty bitches.”

  Lance pointed at him with both hands. “Yeah. Yeah, man. That’s what I’m saying. I try to tell that kid, but he’s an ungrateful little fuck anyway. Probably ain’t even mine, truth be told. Don’t look a thing like me and what kind of son calls the fucking cops on his own daddy? For a lying, whining cunt like that Laurie? Go and call the fucking cops on me. And you know what’s worse? Little son of a bitch fucking stabbed me! No, shit. I still got a scar. Then they go and arrest me!”

  “That’s not right,” Rainer said. Privately he thought it was a shame Caleb had been too young to understand that a paring knife was inadequate to the task of patricide. “What did they do to the kid for stabbing you?”

  “Fucking nothing, man,” Lance said. “He’s a kid. What can they do? Arrest him and send him to toddler prison?” He laughed at his own joke and called to the waitress for another beer.

  Lance drank a few more before Rainer suggested he drive him home.

  “I guess so,” he said with a sigh.

  He did not want to go home. Surely Laurie, that lying, whining cunt would be there lying in wait for him. Rainer paid the tab and got up, leaving no room for argument from Lance. It was getting close to closing time at The Lam anyway.

  Lance swayed as he walked and stumbled a little bit, but he wasn’t blotto drunk. He wasn’t loaded. He would probably remember most of their conversation at the bar, one-sided as it had been, tomorrow.

  Except Lance wasn’t going to remember anything tomorrow because Lance was going to be dead.

  Rainer started the car and let it warm up. The CD in the dash stereo was a mix and the song that played while Lance fumbled with his seatbelt was “Sebastian” by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. Lance reached over and turned it off when he was finally situated.

  “What the fuck is that shit?” he muttered.

  “Some people call it music,” Rainer said.

  “Some people are dipshits,” Lance declared.

  Rainer smiled. “Yeah.”

  Rainer pulled out of the gravel parking lot and drove back toward the city. He wasn’t taking Lance home, he was taking him somewhere abandoned where no one would hear him scream. He knew many such places. It was necessary for The Lamplighter to pay attention and remember places like that. If one place became occupied, there were others. One always had to keep that in mind and have a Plan B.

  At a red light, Rainer felt a hand on his leg and looked down to see Lance’s fingers there. He had nice, long fingers with rough, blunted nails. Lance was not unattractive. On the contrary, he was very good-looking. Yet, despite Rainer’s jibe at him about prison when they’d first met, he would not have expected that.

  Lance noticed him looking at him and smiled. The booze had definitely lowered his inhibitions. He had gone from blustering homophobe to optimistic rough trade between his last beer and the car.

  “You know I like you, right?” Lance said.

  “You have a very funny way of showing it,” Rainer said. “But I may have suspected.”

  “You talk funny. All smart and fancy, like you’re better than me. Maybe that’s why,” Lance said.

  “Why you like me?” Rainer asked. He raised his eyebrows.

  Lance snorted a laugh. “No. Why it set me off. Way you talk. Fucking smartass.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rainer said.

  “No fucking respect,” Lance said.

  “Lance, you’re getting sidetracked. You were telling me how much you like me,” Rainer prompted.

  “Right,” Lance said.

  Then he didn’t say anything for a moment. Rainer was tempted to remove Lance’s hand from his thigh. He decided to let it remain there and see where this was going.

  “You got a fucking mouth on you though,” Lance said, abruptly continuing in the same vein. “Don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me. Laurie’s the same way.”

  “Perhaps you just have bad luck,” Rainer suggested. “Or bad taste.”

  “Yeah, maybe so,” Lance agreed. “But I like you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So?”

  The light turned green and Rainer stepped on the gas, ignoring the hand that remained on his leg. “So, what?”

  “You wanna go somewhere?”

  Rainer glanced at him and pretended to consider it. “Go somewhere…?”

  Lance looked a little uncomfortable and took his hand back. “You know what the fuck I mean. Don’t play with me.”

  “That would be cruel. I wouldn’t do that, Lance,” Rainer assured him. “All right. I know somewhere.”

  He drove out to the slums, to a motel where he knew prostitutes and their companions used to conduct business and no one would ever dream of calling the cops because they heard some strange noises. He parked in the back and they got out of the car. While Lance stood in the alley looking around, blinking drunkenly, Rainer walked around the side of the motel and looked along the patio walkway to see if anyone was outside who might hear them.

  There was no one. Then a door opened at the end and a tall, attractive guy wi
th dark hair in tight clothes staggered out. It took Rainer a second to realize he was weeping. Not crying loudly, not wailing, but silently weeping the way you did when you didn’t want anyone to ask you why. Then another man exited the room with a big mastiff dog on a leash. He reached over and smacked Crying Guy on the ass.

  “Thanks. That was a good time,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Crying Guy choked out.

  Rainer didn’t have to be a fly on the wall in that room to know what had happened there. He grinned and turned back to see where Lance had got to.

  Lance still stood beside the car. He had his hands shoved in his pockets and he looked nervous.

  “Second thoughts, Lance?” Rainer asked, walking back to him.

  “No,” Lance said. He frowned at the end of his shoe and scuffed it in the dirt. “Maybe. No. I mean, I wanted you since first time I saw you.”

  “Yeah?” Rainer said, flirting a little with his voice. “That’s sweet, Lance.”

  Lance smiled uncertainly.

  “I gotta get something out of the trunk,” Rainer said. He went around the car. “Why don’t you go see about a room?”

  “Ah… Yeah, okay.” Lance stood away from the car and took a few steps in that direction.

  Rainer slammed the trunk closed and hefted the bat in his right hand. “Hey, Lance?”

  Lance turned back toward him and Rainer swung the bat. He caught Lance a hard blow to the jaw and felt the crack of breaking bone and teeth hum right up his arm. Lance slammed to the ground with a whoop of breath and immediately tried to crawl away. He was dazed, but he still possessed enough instinct for survival to get away from the thing that was hurting him.

  “Wha’ th’ fuh?!” Lance shouted. “Nnnn!”

  “Don’t you want me anymore, Lancey?” Rainer asked.

  “Nnnn! Ahhh!”

  “You want me, you got me, baby.”

  Rainer swung the bat and took out Lance’s left kneecap. It made a cracking sound like the snapping of a thick branch. Lance screamed and clawed his way across the gravel away from him, but Rainer followed him down the alley behind the motel, keeping pace with him. He swung again, caught Lance in the side, heard and felt the snapping of ribs. Lance heaved and screamed and dug at the gravel, pulling himself along like a slug.

  Finally, to shut him up, Rainer brought the bat down on his head. The skull did not shatter or break apart like a melon, but there was a hollow cracking sound as Lance’s head was battered between the bat and the hard packed ground. He was unconscious and that was unfortunate, it took a good deal of pleasure out of the kill for Rainer, but sometimes small sacrifices had to be made for a cause.

  Rainer walked around Lance’s prone body, hefted the bat in one hand, gripped it with both and went to work.

  Chapter 32

  Ezekiel once again kept Rainer company Monday evening. Rainer made them toasted ham and cheese sandwiches on hoagie rolls. Rainer did not cook, he did not even try, but he made damn fine sandwiches.

  They watched Criminal Minds and discussed it. Rainer wondered aloud why they always went into dark buildings in the middle of the day with their guns and flashlights drawn and walked right by the light switches every time. Ezekiel explained that actually that was not wrong, that the electric overhead light blinded them and it took less time for their eyes to adjust to the beam of the flashlight. He still didn’t like the show, especially the more recent episodes because the stories had only become more inaccurate and implausible with the passage of time, but they both got a kick out of confession time.

  As the show was ending, Pogo, who had been sniffing around Ezekiel all evening, finally decided to get a closer look at him. He hopped up into Ezekiel’s lap, sniffed him, got up on his hind legs and licked him.

  “Hi, kitty… Oh, goddamn it. He just stuck his tongue in my mouth.” Ezekiel dumped the cat on the floor.

  Rainer laughed. “He stuck his tongue up my nose yesterday,” he said.

  “Gross.” Ezekiel wiped at his mouth with the back of his wrist.

  “Yeah. He also licks his own crotch and asshole,” Rainer said.

  Ezekiel picked up his cup of coffee off the table and took a mouth-scalding drink. “Thank you so much for that,” he said.

  Rainer smiled sweetly. “You’re welcome. So, hey, I was in the grocery store today. The most annoying fucking Christmas song has up and regained popularity.”

  “’Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer’?” Ezekiel guessed.

  “Yeah. I hate that song.”

  “I’ve been hearing it everywhere, too.”

  They watched an episode of The Closer then it was time for the evening news.

  “The body of a murder victim discovered early this morning near the Travel Light Motel has been identified as that of Randall Lance LaRoche. Authorities are looking into a possible drug connection. Anyone with any information is urged to call the number appearing on your screen. Information can be provided anonymously.”

  “Right,” Rainer said.

  “Is that our friendly neighbor, Lancey they’re talking about?” Ezekiel asked. He sat forward to get a better look at the blurry smiling photograph of a much younger Lance that appeared on the TV for half a second. “Imagine that.”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe anyone would want to kill him,” Rainer said dryly. “He was such a great guy. Charming, funny and what an intelligent conversationalist.”

  “I can tell you’re really broken up about it,” Ezekiel said.

  “Not hardly. If I knew who did it, I’d send that guy a fruit basket,” Rainer said.

  Ezekiel smiled and sat back. “I’d like to go through the killer’s laundry hamper myself,” he said.

  Rainer frowned at him. He made a mental note to do laundry after Ezekiel left.

  It was the week before Rainer’s holiday break, which for students meant final exams and papers. For him it meant a week of grading hell, soon to be rewarded with three weeks of freedom. Mostly. He would still have some grades to give out the first week as he finished grading tests and papers, but he wouldn’t have classes and he could do that from anywhere. He envied the teachers who could get away with multiple choice tests and Scantron sheets. As an English teacher, he almost never had the luxury of such lazy, hands-off testing.

  Thursday afternoon, he went by Cosra’s house to deliver his Christmas gift and visit with him for a little while. Cosra unwrapped the box containing the bottle of whiskey Rainer had bought him, warmly thanked him and poured half of it into a large plastic Big Gulp cup. He drank from it throughout their visit. Cosra gave Rainer a very nice fountain pen in a case with a bow on top.

  They discussed their students as always, but conversation at some point shifted to the English language in general. The abuse of it, the metamorphosis of it and archaic words and phrases that had fallen out of favor for no discernible reason. Cosra brought up the word “tittup” (to move in a lively prancing way) and they joked about that until they were laughing too hard to speak. They commiserated over their hatred for the abuse of commas and apostrophes and their disgust at some young people’s casual substitution of numbers for parts of perfectly decent words.

  Cosra was lonely and Christmas was a horrible time for such people. Rainer would have invited him to stay with him for part of the holiday, but he was going home to San Francisco with Thomas as always.

  Friday before Thomas picked him up, Elijah and Erzsé dropped by bearing gifts. Rainer was polishing a tooth—Lance’s tooth—but he put it aside when the knock came on his door and let them in. He hadn’t expected to see them before he left, but he did have gifts for them, so they exchanged.

  For Elijah, Rainer had had a copy of his graduate dissertation on Jack the Ripper finely bound in soft leather. Elijah had expressed a desire for a copy earlier in the year and Rainer had pretended to forget about it.

  “Look at this, darling, isn’t it wonderful?” Elijah showed the book to Erzsé. “It’s a very snooty piece of academic writing. I love it.”


  “It’s very nice.” Erzsé said. She pushed a rather large wrapped package into Rainer’s lap. “Here you are, dear, this is from me. I know you’ll love it, but it’ll also look smashing on one of your walls somewhere. Which, if you don’t mind me saying so, Rainer, darling, are a touch drab. Due, I’m sure, to your complete lack of artistic culture. It’s odd, too, considering your father’s profession.”

  Rainer smiled to himself and began unwrapping the package. “Yeah, I guess I could hang a few pictures,” he said.

  “Your problem is you don’t know what you like,” Erzsé said.

  “Oh, I know what I like. I just don’t...”

  “Care,” Elijah finished for him. “It’s sad, really. You are in so many ways a remarkable young man; educated, cultured, well spoken, well read, good breeding for an American in this day and age, but really, Rainer. Art is so vital to a well rounded person, not to mention persona. Everyone likes art. Even the cattle and sheep.”

  “I know,” Rainer said. He got the package open and inside was a box, inside of which was another box, but this one contained his gift. It was a carved and decorated shadow box containing a bronze sculpture of a heart made entirely of clockwork. He took it out and discarded the wrapping on the floor. The clockwork actually moved by some magnetic means, the gears turning and jerking silently, mimicking the beating of valves. “Cool.”

  “You like it,” Erzsé said with a delighted clap of her hands. “Look, love, he likes it. It is wonderful, isn’t it? We went to an art show in New York last month and this artist makes the most amazing things. I asked him if he could make a human heart and he hedged with me until I told him money was no object, which always works wonders in such cases. People who claim they cannot be bought are not very self-aware, are they?”

  “No, indeed,” Elijah said. “All right, is it my turn? I think it’s my turn. Here you are.”