The Death Collectors

by J. A. Kerley

  “C and major. C major…HA! You want a chord? GET IT, CARSON? A CORD?”

  I was silent. He tittered, a musical note, high and sweet. “You’re losing your sense of humor, brother. I recommend a high colonic. Maybe telephones will wash out. They would around here.”

  “You can do it, Jeremy?”

  “You’re SURE you’re not using it to trap an adventurer?”

  “I’m simply trying to walk through the door of a man who sells such items.”

  “SELLS THE STUFF? THAT’S SICK, TWISTED, PERVERTED. HEARING THAT MAKES ME WANT TO VOMIT DOWN MY…What are the profit margins, Carson? What are the start-up costs? Can it be done mail order?”

  “Have you heard of such folks, Jeremy?”

  “Brother, if I could slip things out of here, I’d need an agent to screen the offers. But let’s cut to the matter at hand: you need something unusual, I need a phone recharger. Are you seeing a pattern here?”

  “I’ll get you what you need. What do I get, Jeremy?”

  “I DON’T KNOW, CARSON. It’s not like I’m sitting in a fucking Toys‘R’Us. I have to bring the subject up at kaffeeklatsch. I’LL GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT ONE, HAVE MY GIRL CALL YOUR GIRL. Speaking of the girlies, brother, how’s that lovely little cut-up friend of yours, Miss Ava?”

  “She’s in Fort Wayne, Jeremy.”

  “My, my. That’s what? A thousand miles away? Did she betray you, Carson? Run out on your love? You gave and gave and got nothing but a face full of spit. Did she hawk it from so far it was cold by the time it hit your eyes?”

  “Give it up, Jeremy, you can’t make me -”

  “Women always betray our love, don’t they, Carson?”

  A sound of satisfied laughter. He hung up.

  Chapter 15

  My phone rang at 7.12 a.m. I was jogging up the steps, returning from my morning run. I noticed someone had rented the Martins’ place to the west. There was a red Toyota sedan under the house, a couple of beach towels hanging over the deck rail in back, two pairs of flip flops, large and small. A few pieces of clothing hung on the line beside the house - a woman’s blouse, shorts. Beside them were several men’s tees, X-large at least, trumpeting Auburn University.

  I strode across my floor and grabbed the phone, still catching my breath.

  Jeremy said, “I think I’ve done myself proud, Carson, with that little request of yours. Naturally it’s not here, but I know where it is…”

  “Where…is what…Jeremy?”

  “You sound out of breath, brother.”

  “I just finished running.”

  “You sure you haven’t been marching the old soldier? Now that li’l Ava skipped out on you, it’s probably a regular occurrence, right? WHOOPS, IT’S SEVEN FORTY-THREE, TIME TO FLOG THE DOLPHIN! WHOOPS, IT’S EIGHT NINETEEN, TIME TO MILK THE MAMMOTH. WHOOPS, IT’S NINE OH-TWO…Eat to keep your strength up, Carson. And switch hands to help avoid carpal tunnel.”

  My brother’s sense of sexual innuendo had been frozen in the adolescent phase, about the time he murdered our father.

  “Can it. What have you got, Jeremy?”

  “It’s bigger than a breadbox, sharper than a hound’s tooth, and oh, the things it has seen in its short lifetime…”

  “Come on, Jeremy, I don’t have time for -”

  “The final mask of Trey Forrier.”

  I froze. Trey Forrier was a serial torturer and killer locked away in the same institution as Jeremy. Like many psychopathic killers - Hexcamp among them - Forrier preferred the personal involvement afforded by a knife. It wasn’t known how many victims he’d truly murdered over the years, there having been several unsolved killings with similar methodology.

  Forrier’s delusions had reached a strange point where he created a crude mask before each attack. Whether he wore the masks himself or preferred them to watch during the savagery was never known. Evidence at his small basement apartment indicated he’d created four masks, but only three had been found at murder scenes. No one knew what had become of the final mask, and Forrier only smiled wearily when asked.

  He’d been caught perhaps seven years ago. I was in college at the time, studying psychology, and followed the case. Forrier had worked for years as a sort of itinerant dishwasher and low-level restaurant help, and was described as a “total loner” and a “daydreamer”. He had no friends. I recollected that he had some form of physical malformation, but couldn’t recall it exactly. I also recalled his vigorous initial protestations of innocence, but when the death penalty had been lifted in return for life at the institute, Forrier acquiesced, smiling and avowing to whatever crimes the prosecution assigned him. It had been an odd case and I suspected the mask of Trey Forrier, wielded properly, would secure my entrance into the world of big-time collectors of serial-killer memorabilia.

  “You can’t be serious, Jeremy,” I rasped, my breath dry in my throat.

  “Brother, I am as serious as a shark in a kiddie pool. See you soon.”

  The phone clicked dead. I blew out a long breath and started to slump until I heard an insane shrieking outside my window.

  I bolted for the door, the sound outside horrendous. The door opened to a wheeling cloud of gulls, keening, swooping, diving. I heard a chuckle and looked down to Danbury’s Audi. She was sitting on the hood, a bag of bait shrimp in one hand, pitching shrimp into the air with the other. The birds were frenzied.

  Danbury tossed the rest of the shrimp, provoking a final shrill battle, then slid from the hood.

  “A familiar sight,” I said, stepping down the stairs.

  “You feed the gulls too?” She pulled off her sunglasses and dropped them into the pocket of a white linen shirt. Her blonde hair floated on the breeze.

  “I meant shrimp pecked apart by hungry, screeching critters.”

  She thought a moment, smiled. “Like the media on the attack? Goodness, that’s a metaphor, pogie. You never cease to amaze me.”

  “I’m real busy, Ms Danbury,” I said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got things to do.”

  “Can I come inside?”

  “No.”

  She wiggled her fingers at me. “I’ve got shrimp hands, Ryder. You’d make me drive all the way back to Mobile with my hands reeking of half-rotted shrimp? You’re more of a gentleman than that.”

  I pointed beneath the house. “There’s a hose beside the fish-cleaning table. A bar of soap, too. Good talking to you, Ms D.”

  Unruffled, she walked to the table, washed her hands. “Did you find out anything new on the woman in the motel? I hear she’s a nun. This case is turning weird, Ryder.”

  She looked at me for reaction. But I’d heard yesterday that Marie Gilbeaux’s name was being released by the authorities upstate. That was standard; it couldn’t be held tight anymore. The press conference was scheduled for this afternoon. I tried to look like a man stifling a yawn. “Everyone’s getting that news today. Your source didn’t give you much more than squat. Again.”

  Danbury finished washing and shook water from her hands. She studied the grungy towel hanging from a nail on the table, then wiped her hands dry on her walking shorts.

  “It’s out of my control, you know. What information I’m given. Or fed.”

  She looked at me for a comment. I wanted to ask, Fed? What do you mean? Instead, I stretched my back, said, “Where’s Funt?”

  “Funt?”

  “Your video monkey. Shouldn’t he be here taping all this exciting news?”

  “His name’s Borgurt Zipinski. Borg’s not my videographer, he’s the station’s. Freelance, really, but on retainer. The day I rate a fulltime videographer is the day I blow out of Mobile with stars in my eyes. Besides,” she said, smiling, “you’d probably make Borg do something colorful with his camera.”

  She walked to her car; it was a good walk. “We need to have a tête-à-tête soon, Ryder,” she said through the open window, dropping the sunglasses to her eyes. “Talk about this funny little case.” The white teeth smiled at me. �
��No comment, right?”

  “No comment.”

  Danbury slipped the car in gear. “You’re getting good at that no-comment action, pogie, making an art of it. Art. Now there’s an interesting word.”

  She laughed and sped away in a spray of sand and shells.

  Chapter 16

  I was twice stopped for speeding on my way to the institute - tucked away in the countryside west of Montgomery - but badged my way clear. I arrived before one p.m. and pulled through the outer gate, the guardhouse breaking the circling monotony of fence and razor wire.

  The main building was a brown, single-story concrete rectangle. The front third contained offices and kitchen facilities and had windows like slitted eyes. There were no windows in the “residential” section. A small exercise yard stood to the side, boxed in by walls topped with heavy mesh fencing. In the corner of the yard, facing the cream-colored wall, a tall and slender man stood with his back to me, appearing to conduct a symphony orchestra. He heard the sound of my vehicle and looked up. There was something wrong with his face, off-kilter. I passed by and pulled into the lot.

  Dr Evangeline Prowse met me at the door. In her middle sixties or so, Vangie - the only name she’d acknowledge - had a serene face beneath a neat cropping of silver hair. Her eyes were dark and shiny as polished walnut. She had the loose-limbed gait of a retired marathoner, and a handshake hard and tight as a brick.

  “Great to see you again, Carson. Jeremy’s been very calm of late, maturing, perhaps. I’ve been pleased to lift some of the restrictions on him, allow him more television, guests in his room.”

  We walked the long hall to her office. Every fifty feet or so a button was recessed into the wall at shoulder height, the word EMERGENCY stenciled beneath it. It wasn’t referring to fires.

  Vangie’s office was high ceilinged, with shelves bowed under books. There was another shelf behind the door, holding pieces of statuary, several drawings, a few pages in Plexiglas frames, a figure constructed of twisted pipecleaners.

  “I don’t recall these,” I said, picking up a crude eye-like shape seemingly made of hardened Play-Doh.

  “My curio shelf. Items created by residents.”

  The eye was uninteresting. I set it down to read from a framed poem scrawled in thick black pencil. It rambled about a dog and a carrot and a red sky. I held up the poem.

  “You’ve heard of folks who collect such things as a hobby; business, even?”

  Vangie said, “We’ve had collectors trying to get our employees to smuggle out items from the residents. More often than you’d imagine.”

  “What do you do when they try that?”

  “It’s not illegal to solicit such items. Our staffers tell me they’re being pestered, I contact the people making the requests, if I can, and imply legal action. The naïve are scared off, others just laugh.”

  “Ever heard of a fellow named Hexcamp?”

  She thought a moment; nodded. “Marsden Hexcamp, of course. Serial killer, ran with a band of outcasts? Mansonesque kind of communal set-up, if I recall.”

  “You don’t know much about him?”

  She smiled. “He died before being incarcerated any length of time. When they’re out and about, they belong to you folks. When they get to where they can be mentally dissected, they’re mine.”

  “You ever hear of something called the Hexcamp collection?”

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. What is it?”

  “No one seems to know. Something to do with art, I suspect.”

  Vangie picked up the pipecleaner figure, something an elementary schoolchild might create.

  “Most of what these folks call art is this kind of thing, Carson - simplistic, almost stunted, from an aesthetic point of view.”

  “Stunted like their personalities.”

  “Art is emotion, right? When you don’t feel normal emotion, you don’t create compelling art. These folks don’t create art, but mimic what they think art is. There are exceptions, of course. Now and then you’ll find a sample that’s interesting. I imagine there are a few pieces that are truly stunning - powerful, even.”

  “But they’d be rare?”

  Vangie set the twisted figure back on the shelf. “Oh my, yes, Carson. Extremely, I’d think. Are you ready to see Jeremy?”

  A guard escorted me to the rear of the building. The doors were thick metal, with small slatted windows of mesh-encased glass. We stopped before Jeremy’s door. I looked through the slat and saw him sitting on his bed, reading. Jeremy showed no sign I was outside his room, but I knew he had heard our approaching footsteps. My brother had been endowed with alert senses, and each progressive year of incarceration honed them further.

  “We want privacy,” I told the guard, meaning to keep the window slat closed. He nodded and opened the door.

  My brother sat on his made bed, appearing absorbed in the text of his book. His neatly combed hair was the color of straw. Jeremy had our father’s delicate features and pale skin, but lacked our father’s size. Though Jeremy was six years my senior, I suspect most people would have made him for about my age, if not younger.

  “What are you reading, Jeremy?”

  He turned a page, not looking up. His light hair fell across his forehead and he brushed it back with pale, slender fingers.

  “Black Sun. About a man and woman who destroy one another. It’s a comedy.”

  He read another page, finger following the print. “How are things at the house, Carson? Your house on the beach, the one you bought with the money Mama left you.”

  My heart sank. When my brother brooded about our respective places in life, it never boded well. I tried to wedge a smile into my voice.

  “Things at the house are fine, Jeremy.”

  He turned another page; I knew he was no longer reading the book. “No termites or structural problems? No sagging roofline or dry rot of the pilings? It does sit on pilings, doesn’t it? So you can look down on people?”

  “Yes, Jeremy, it sits on pilings. Like all of the houses on the beach.”

  “Do you think Mama left you the money to buy the house because you sat with her while she died?”

  “That’s probably part of it.”

  He threw the book aside, aimed the full fire of his blue eyes into mine. “Then tell me this, Carson: YOU WATCH ONE WOMAN DIE AND GET A HOUSE ON THE BEACH. I WATCH FIVE WOMEN DIE AND GET STUCK IN HERE. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?”

  “Jeremy -”

  “BY ALL RIGHTS I SHOULD HAVE FIVE HOUSES ON THE BEACH.”

  He grabbed my wrist, yanked me beside him on his bed, patting my hand while speaking in our mother’s voice.

  “Thank you so much, Cah-son, for watching me die, it’s been so en-tuh-tay-ning. Heah’s a big fat wad of money yo daddy made befoah he came home and beat the living shit out of Jeremy. Why don’t you buy yourself a nice house on the beach an’ if you ever get the chance, dear, dear Cah-son, please go piss on your brotha Jeremy for me. Bein’ dead ah won’t get the chance no more.”

  Jeremy jumped from the bed and paced the small room. He caught sight of himself in the soft Mylar mirror, his image imprecise, shivering. He winked at his reflection, then spun to me.

  “Tell me about li’l Ava. Why did she spit in your face.”

  “You know what happened last year. It was stress. She needed to get away for a while, Jeremy. That was all.”

  He grinned. “She was your first, right? I don’t mean the -” he pumped his hips at me like a hunching dog - “hunh-hunh-hunh kind of first: OH MY GAWD, HONEY, hunh, hunh, hunh, YOU’RE BETTER THAN A FISTFUL OF VASEL-INE! Hunh, hunh, hunh. I mean she was your FIRST LITTLE LOVE? Two hearts squishing together as one, all that stuff.”

  “We were close, Jeremy. We’re…still close.”

  He dashed across the room, jumped on the bed, sat cross-legged beside me. “But if it’s really LOVE, how could she forsake you like that? AH SURE DO LUB YOU, CARSON, BUT GOSH A WILLY I SURE GOT A NEED TO SEE FORT WAYNE
BEFORE I DIE.”

  He leaned over, cupped his hands around my ear, whispered, “They betray our love, don’t they? If she loved you she wouldn’t have left you. You know it, Carson. IF THERE WAS ANY THING TO YOU, SHE WOULD HAVE STAYED.”

  He was twisting our family horrors, using his blind and misdirected hatred of our mother.

  “Screw you. You don’t know love.”

  “I know BETRAYAL. Here’s all LOVE IS, Carson -” He jumped from the bed and stood in front of me, frantically jerking his hips as his head lolled to the side.

  “Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…”

  “Stop it, Jeremy.”

  “…hunh, hunh OH GAWD, BAYBEE, hunh, hunh…”

  “I said to stop it.” I felt anger flash through my cells like electricity, fighting it, not willing to let him do this to me again.

  “…hunh, hunh, hunh, OH PLEEEEASE, CARSON, hunh, hunh, hunh, I WANT TO COME ONCE MORE BEFORE I GO, hunh, hunh, hunh…”

  I stood and grabbed his shoulders, shook him. “You little bastard, I’ll…”

  I heard the door open and looked over. On the threshold stood the man I had seen gesturing in the air in the exercise yard. His face looked like he’d been pulled from his mother’s womb with Vise-grips, the left cheekbone indented where it should have projected. His skin was coarse. His hair was thick and black and uncombed. He stared at me like we knew one another and made a wet, amorphous sound.

  Jeremy squirted from my grasp, took the man’s elbow, pulled him into the room. “What perfect timing, just as Carson and I were discussing COMING, here comes my good friend. Carson, this is one of our most talented residents, a man you should meet…Trey Forrier.”

  The guard stepped through the door. “Earlier this morning, Mr Ridgecliff requested Mr Forrier be brought down for a visit. It’s a reward we allow your brother, since his behavior has improved the past couple of months. If you don’t wish Mr Forrier here, Mr Ryder, he doesn’t have to be. He’s never acted out in any way, if you’re concerned.”

  “Never acted out” was the guard’s way of telling me Forrier wouldn’t try to kill me the minute the door closed; a distinct possibility with many of the residents.