by John Maclay
It has, as usual, worked out well for me. My vacation was due last month, but Mr. Kintell was sick and I had to delay it until now. Taking vacation time for the purpose meant that I could get the woman’s schedule down pat, allowing me to complete my scheme without a problem.
As I work on Saturdays, I take Tuesdays off. Craddock will disappear from the grocery’s parking lot next Tuesday evening. This late in the year, it is almost dark by a quarter to six. Simplicity makes for efficiency, I have found; nobody has ever seen anything when I took my other victims.
* * * *
The parking lot is dark already, and the vapor lights are obscured by a light mist of rain. Just right for my purposes. Craddock’s car is parked three down from mine, and beyond it there is a gap of four spaces. I hope no one drives up just as she comes out—no, there she comes, that pile of hair unmistakable, even in the dim light.
She’s putting groceries into the back seat. Now I slip along the line of cars and approach from her right. A push, and I have her face-down in the back seat of her own car, legs kicking at me with surprising force. She’s wriggling forward, but it’s too dark in the car for me to see what her purpose may be.
I bend and catch her around the waist with my left arm, reaching for her face with the hand holding the chloroformed pad. With a snakelike twist, she turns in my arm—something is glinting in her hand.
There is a terrible noise....
WIDOW OF MURDERED MAN KILLS ATTACKER
Celeste Maines Craddock, 57, whose husband Benjamin fell victim to murder almost a year ago, was attacked in the parking lot of John’s Cash Grocery on Tuesday, November Nineteenth, at seven o’clock p.m. The attacker, Clarence Venstetter, of 1033 Gary Drive, Clarkman, Texas, was employed as a clerk at Painters’ Prize Art Shop in Clarkman.
An automobile parked near that of Craddock was identified as belonging to Venstetter, and in its trunk were cans of paint similar to that used in the bizarre murder-dismemberment of Benjamin Craddock. A search of Venstetter’s duplex in Clarkman revealed clothing and personal items belonging to Craddock, as well as to four other people, all deceased and now believed to be Venstetter’s victims.
Mrs. Craddock revealed that she had given a challenging statement to reporters at the funeral of her husband, hoping it would tempt his killer into attacking her. She had concealed handguns in her automobile and on her person, and only that saved her from suffering a fate similar to that of her late spouse.
Police say that no charges will be filed in the death of Venstetter. A letter of commendation has been offered to the feisty widow for bringing the deadly career of this killer to an end.
After her initial interview with reporters, Craddock refused further comment; media representatives report she has turned down a multi-million-dollar offer for rights to film her story.
No next of kin can be located for Venstetter; his parents died in a house fire two years ago. He has no siblings.
THE ANTHOLOGIST
Serial killers make me angry. This is something I wish could happen to at least one of them.
He loved to walk in the park at twilight, watching his potential prey. In summer, the scents of the trees and flowers almost overpowered him, and the glimpses of young men and women walking hand in hand beyond the shrubbery made him feel young and vigorous again. Even the children playing or protesting at being called to supper and to bed made him smile.
In such places, at such times, he added to his collection.
In a strange way, he considered himself an anthologist, though only at the onset of his periodic dilemma did his scholarly background lend itself to such whimsy. Then he would murmur to himself, “I am one who gathers flowers, indeed, as the roots of that word imply. Anthos legein—to gather flowers—most appropriate.” And his smile would be a frightening thing to see.
He loved tender blossoms, and since early spring he had gathered a bouquet of eleven. They were not such blooms as could be pressed between the leaves of books or preserved under glass, of course. Yet eleven slender, fragrant flowers had joined his collection, and he lacked only one to make his perfect dozen.
He sighed with pleasure, remembering, and the park patrolman, checking the last of the home-bound children, smiled as they passed on the walk. They often saw each other in the twilight, for the anthologist had visited this area for a month. He took care to appear well dressed and innocuous, and he roused no suspicion in anyone, he knew.
This was a night perfect for collecting, he mused, as he strolled. And, leaving through the scrolled iron gateway, he saw a perfect American Beauty ripe for the plucking, just on the verge of opening fully to dew and moonlight.
He followed her at some distance, moving casually down the quiet residential street. This routine was a familiar one, and for half of his adult life it had never failed him.
Ahead of him, the girl paused to gaze into a shop window. He slowed, pretending interest in a display of garden implements. Could she suspect that she was being followed? Surely not! But he remembered the sunny gleam of the dress in that window. That had to be the thing that caught her eye and held her there.
He had perfected his imitation of a man trying to kill time until a reasonable hour for going home. He knew that fellow well, for he had invented a persona—a life and a job and a location for him. His family were all dead, and his respectable job paid him fairly well. He had never married, and he lived a lonely existence. He knew that man and felt vague contempt for him.
She was moving again, turning up a side street. A dead end, if he remembered it correctly. He glided more quickly, yet without seeming to hurry, to cross the street. At the corner he was just in time to see her go up the steps of an apartment house at the end of the cul-de-sac.
His head went up warily, as he paused. The place was familiar—he had hunted here before, to garner a daisy from the house nearest the corner. It had been several months—was it dangerous, now, to cross his own track?
He frowned into the dusk. It had been a long while, and he had been cautious. He never left a clue to his identity with his parting gifts to his victims.
He quickened his pace, for she was now inside the apartment house. He arrived at the steps in time to see her silhouette through the pebbled glass panel beside the door.
She remained in the vestibule for a moment—checking her mail, he thought. He waited patiently, glad of the thickening darkness, as she turned to go up the stairway.
There was nobody in the street. He listened, but could hear no one stirring in the house. It was early, and most of the tenants were probably out for the evening. He picked the lock with expert ease and went into the narrow hall.
There was only the sound of the girl’s heels, tapping their way up the stairs. He flowed up after her, catlike, keeping just beyond each angle as she moved past the floors.
On the fourth landing, she left the stair and moved away down the corridor to the right. He risked an eye’s width around the corner and watched as she stopped at the third door on her left. Her keys jingled; the door opened and closed behind her.
Now she was at home, safe and sound for the night. He grinned until his cheeks pulled taut. But the outer door opened below, the sound carrying up the stairwell.
He looked about, saw a door leading into a fire stair, and slipped into it. From its cobwebs and staleness, he knew that it was seldom used. He could hide until the proper time arrived.
He relaxed against the wall, his fingers losing their tension, his heart slowing to a regular thud. He was never nervous when he stalked his prey. Not even when others were about, interfering with his hunt. He had learned patience over the years, and as the minutes ticked past he dozed lightly.
The house stirred subtly about him, as its tenants came and went and came, at last, to remain for the night. After hours, he stirred and looked at the illuminated face of his watch. Midnight. Still too early. He doz
ed once again.
At eleven minutes past two he woke again. The house was silent when he opened the door to listen. Except for the creakings that all old houses held, there was nothing to be heard.
He crept down the hall and stood before her door, his crepe-soled shoes soundless on the worn wood. He put his ear to her door, but there was only the sound of a big clock that ticked loudly.
In the distance, a siren shrilled. A dog barked frantically in the street beyond the cul-de-sac. Something clinked and rattled in the street below the hall window. All were normal night sounds, and he disregarded them as he bent to work with his lock-pick.
In five minutes, he circumvented three locks to open the door separating him from his last blossom. In his buttonhole was the rose that he had brought, knowing tonight’s hunt would be successful.
The apartment was tiny and immaculate, full of the fresh scent of growing plants, which made lacy designs of the light coming through the window where they filled a wicker stand. He could sense bookshelves along the walls, and the indefinable scent of well-loved volumes touched his sensitive nostrils.
He nodded to himself. A woman of taste, this one. Stimulating. He paused as a soft breath sounded from the bedroom. She must have turned in her sleep.
He drifted toward the door, his hand freeing the knife from its sling at his back, beneath his jacket. He dropped his clothing as he went, his shorts landing silently beside the door into the bedroom. When he stood at her bedside, he was nude, and the knife shone softly in the dimness.
He reached to touch her, to wake her to terror and to his own ecstasy—but he found that her eyes were open, regarding him, though she remained motionless.
Frozen with terror, he thought, disappointed. It was far more enjoyable when his victims struggled and fought and tried to scream. He touched her neck with the chilly blade.
“Be very quiet,” he breathed into her ear, as he moved to position himself over her.
He sighed, anticipating the wonderful release, the ecstasy of the next few moments—but her arms were suddenly around his torso, jerking him down so quickly that he could not thrust with the knife. When he tried to strike her with the blade, he could not reach her, for she was protected by his own flesh, which covered her from head to heels.
The arms tightened about him even more, and he loosed the knife and gasped, beginning to struggle. There was a tearing pain at his neck, a trickle of warmth, and he realized with horror that her teeth were in his throat.
He tried to wrench himself free, but she clung like a leech, her legs twined about his, her arms holding him fast, her incisors fastened onto his jugular. His hand scrabbled for the knife, found its narrow shape. He stabbed at the sheets, the mattress, but it was no good. To kill her, he had to roll her over, and that seemed impossible.
Her cheek was hard against his neck, and her hair was clogging his eyes and his mouth. With utter horror, he realized that he could not move her at all.
For the first time, he knew what it was that his flowers had felt as he plucked them from life. It had been this way for them when they, too, were helpless, bleeding, dying in the darkness.
The blade slid from his hand. He was growing weak—how could he lose so much blood so quickly? He made a great effort to move once more, but no part of his body responded to his will.
And at last she moved, slipping from beneath him as if he were a featherweight. The knife was now in her hand, but she did not use it. She sat on the side of the bed, naked alabaster in the tenuous light of the street lamp outside. His blood patterned her mouth and her skin with dark streaks and blotches.
He gasped, tried again to move. Her eyes shone faintly in the dim light, as she sat quietly, waiting for him to die.
Now even his fingers refused to twitch at his command. Who and what was this person who could use him so? He was the predator, not the prey! She should have been his victim!
Exerting his will, he managed to gasp, “Who?” He kept his gaze fixed on her narrow face, which looked...much like that of the daisy he had gathered here early in the year!
She smiled, leaning over him, her black eyes gleaming. “You are a lover of flowers. I have followed your career, since you took my sister. I have read the poetic notes and seen the blossoms you left with their bodies. A delicate touch, naming each after a flower.” Her teeth shone briefly.
“But you did not dream that there might be another of your kind, I suspect. I too am a collector...of predators.” Her laugh whispered through the dim room.
“You have never before tried collecting a tiger lily, have you?”
Now she laughed aloud, the sound echoing through his head and away into the distance that was forming inside him, as he felt the darkness coming into him in an irresistible tide.
He had found his twelfth flower, on this mild summer evening. And she was a blossom entirely too terrible to gather.
CROWHEART
On our research trips through the West, my husband and I frequently passed a wonderful butte on our way to and from the Tetons. The historical marker named it Crowheart Butte—and it spawned a story.
Wears-Many-Feathers looked with satisfaction across the long reach of the valley lying along the river. On each side were mountains, which fed the river watering the land, and along its silt-rich course grew many useful plants and enough grass to support numbers of deer and elk, as well as small herds of buffalo. While the meat was a fine addition to the diet, the women of his band valued the roots and plants, the withes for making baskets, the birds and their eggs, even more, for those kept the people from sickening in winter.
Although his people sheltered in the mountains in winter and hunted there often, this was their principal summer camping ground. Even now, he could see the distant dots that were women and children, who were busy gathering foodstuff that would be dried for winter use.
A group of very young hunters was almost at the southern end of the valley, out of eyeshot now. His son Raking-Tree Bear had joined them today for the very first time.
He sat before the tipi and chipped carefully at flint, making small, neat arrowheads with which to shoot birds and rabbits. Several that were roughed out lay in the coals of his small fire, and from time to time he sucked water into a quill and dripped it onto the hot shape of one of them, making the stone split along its flaws.
The heavier arrowheads for deer and the great long ones for buffalo were always chipped first and set aside for his sons to bind into shafts or fletch with feathers. He made these more delicate ones for the children to use learning necessary hunting skills. Besides, the birds they brought down added flavor to the pot.
He laid the last of the fluted chips in the deer hide bag kept for such matters and stood to stretch his long legs. Before he was upright, he heard wild yells from the direction in which the boys had gone.
Those were not cries of excitement or pursuit. Those were warning yells, and almost before the realization struck him he was running for his horse, which was confined in a pole pen behind the tipi.
“Hi-yi-yiiiii!” he shouted, vaulting onto the paint and turning him with his knees to jump the low fence.
Other warriors had heard already. Even those who had not, now grabbed their lances and their bows and leaped onto their own mounts. Before he was beyond the loose circle of the summer village, forty men, all mature warriors whose skills had been honed in battle, were behind him.
The people working in the valley were already heading for the village and their own duties in time of attack. Grandmothers herded small children toward the rough line of bluffs and ravines edging the valley, where they would conceal them and wait for whatever might come. Mothers and daughters and very young sons headed for home to grab their weapons and melt into the brush. If this was an attack, they would fight to protect themselves. Absaroka did not run from battle.
More warriors joined him, coming f
rom the group fishing in the river that ran along the middle of the valley. When the excited youngsters came yipping toward them in a cloud of dust, Wears-Many-Feathers’s keen ears caught the rumble of hooves behind them.
“Ai!” he called. “Raking-Tree Bear! Who comes?”
There was no reply, and Skins-Deer, the oldest of the group, pulled his roan to a halt and kneed him over to the leader of his band. “Shoshonni!” he gasped. “They took Raking-Tree Bear. He may live. We could not see, though we heard his cry of warning. Then we rode to warn the people.”
“Go back and help the others,” the chief told him. “You have done well. Now ride!”
Without waiting to see their instant obedience to this sensible order, he kneed his paint again and swept, with his warriors close behind, away from the cloud of dust that marked the progress of the Shoshonni. To allow another tribe to hunt in this valley was unthinkable, for in a poor year it could spell the death of his own people by starvation. But to attack with insufficient numbers would be foolish.
The Shoshonni were a constant worry. They often came through the cut where the river ran down from the mountains and raided for horses and women and children. Although his own people did the same, that did not weigh in the mind of Wears-Many-Feathers. This was the way he had known and his fathers had known since the horse came to his people, generations ago. And now the Shoshonni had his son!
Gritting his teeth to keep from crying out, he rode desperately, his knuckles white from his grip on his lance, his knees pressed into the sides of the paint so hard that he felt the ribs digging into his flesh. Finding a hillock, he pulled up the paint and looked back toward his pursuers, still distant but now distinguishable. Once he saw the number of warriors pounding toward him from the south he knew that he had been wise to retreat; now was not the time to regain his son.
There were many hands of Shoshonni, at least twice the number of his own band. Riding into death meant that his people would be enslaved, taken from their own place into the dark country beyond the mountains.
