Match Play

by Poppe, D. Michael

  Blood oozes from the meat with each swing, splattering the butchers’ white coats and faces as they lop off chunks of meat and toss them on the worktables. They are talking and laughing back and forth, but with the noise from the machines, David can’t hear what they’re saying. Their mouths move grotesquely as their expressions change.

  Occasionally, with a broad smile, one of the butchers swings at the other with the golf club and yells “Fore!”

  David is bewildered but not frightened by the scene, until one butcher hits another in the arm as he swings his club. The other man’s arm falls off and bounces onto the concrete floor and blood gushes from his shoulder.

  Suddenly everyone and everything looks to be a skinned carcass, but they are all still alive. The bloody carcasses are bellowing, the white coats are gone, and the butchers become a muscular system with a series of muscles to move the skeletons.

  They are jousting with one another, appendages are dropping everywhere, and the air is thick with blood.

  David turns to run but can’t move. Someone or something is clamping down on him…he is desperately struggling to get away…writhing, trying to tear himself from his clothing. He lets out a terror-stricken scream and sees his father.

  The shrill sound of a phone ringing jolts David out of his nightmare. It’s the front desk with his wake-up call. He jumps out of bed, glad to be free of the tangle of sheets.

  He feels better after showering. He orders breakfast and coffee and the morning paper, thinking he’ll eat on the balcony. He picks up his briefcase and removes the sheath of knives and inspects them to make sure they’re ready. Just as he is returning the knives, room service knocks at the door.

  David takes the tray from the man at the door and signs the receipt, blocking the man’s view of the room. He locks the door and carries the tray to the table on the balcony, uncovers the breakfast plate and pours coffee.

  He’s pleased that he has managed to include Marty’s friend, Amy, in his course management; now he can play the eighth and ninth holes tonight. It’s a pity the intruder in San Diego was too young, and Kate Stanley’s mother in New York was too old, otherwise he might have been able to play them as well and be done with the match by now.

  Two holes at once might just throw Lou Schein into a spin. David imagines the discovery of the crime scene, feeling quite malicious this morning. Dreaming about blood always brings out the worst in him.

  After breakfast, he carefully packs his briefcase. He is lacking a couple of scorecards from the Highland Meadows Golf Club and will stop for those on the way to Whiteford Country Club.

  

  He parks the Navigator on a side street and walks to the clubhouse. He spends the next two hours leisurely strolling or standing at a tee or near a green watching the second round of play of the Marathon Classic. The golf is great and the FBI surveillance is good; he sees agents everywhere. But they are not good enough. They never notice him.

  Finally, he picks up a couple of scorecards in the clubhouse and walks right past one of the FBI flyers on his way out, not bothering to look. Had he looked at it, he would have noticed it now says, “The suspect is believed to be driving a late model, dark green Suburban or Expedition with dark tinted windows.”

  Instead, he continues back to the Navigator.

  He feels ready to play the match. The eighth and ninth holes will have some variables he can’t control under the circumstances, but if he is playing well today, the ratio of risk to reward is manageable. As he nears the final turn to Whiteford, he can feel them working their way into his body.

  He is anxious to play.

  He meets Marty and Amy in the pro shop around two. Introductions are made and David exchanges niceties with the women; he’s finding it difficult to be cordial.

  They practice putting until they’re called to the first tee. Marty and Amy have decided to share a cart. David hasn’t planned on that, so out of stubbornness he insists he will walk. Another woman, Jennifer Collins, their fourth player, is sitting in her cart at the first tee when they arrive. He begrudgingly accepts her offer to share the cart.

  The women’s tee is further down the fairway, so David tees his ball first. He drives it so far down the fairway it rolls up into the group laying ahead of them. He yells “fore,” his playing trio all gasps and applauds.

  After moving to the women’s tee, Jennifer Collins tees off first, hitting a nice 3 wood a good distance down the fairway. Marty follows with a similar shot, and finally Amy Blair takes her driver and hits a crisp ball that is almost equal to his. He compliments all of them, joins Jennifer in the cart, and they drive after their balls.

  The round and the match are under way.

  David’s manner lightens after a few holes, and he buys beers for everyone when the canteen cart comes around. He is concerned about having a third woman riding with them as there is a danger she might notice him spiking the drinks. But he easily doses the drinks left on Marty’s cart when the three women walk together to the ladies’ tee.

  When they return, he is leaning against the cart and smiling. He compliments them on their drives.

  He can see the effects of the sedative mixed with the beer by the seventh hole. It is subtle at first, but becomes more pronounced after the second round.

  By the 14th hole, a par 3, he is worried he might be rushing things. Marty and Amy are becoming dull from the sedative and silly from the beer, laughing a little too much.

  “Do you girls want to hit, please?” They look at him and laugh.

  “Come on, please?” Jennifer pleads.

  They both hit, landing their balls on the green. David asks them to get serious when they reach the green, at least while they’re putting.

  It is starting to get cloudy by the time they reach the 17th hole. Both women have quieted and become more passive. Their behavior seems almost normal while their level of play is deteriorating. David keeps everyone moving, wanting to get them off the course before their behavior is noticeable to other players.

  Everyone is polite when they finish the round. Jennifer Collins seems relieved to be finished and quickly leaves. David carries his clubs to the Navigator and retrieves his briefcase, meeting the two women back at Marty’s car.

  They have freshened up in the ladies locker room and changed into clothing more suitable for a restaurant. They seem brighter but still impaired.

  After getting their gear and his briefcase in the car, they all discuss where to eat. David volunteers to drive and heads in a direction that will eventually take them back to Marty’s house. When they are halfway there, he pulls into a steak place.

  The women slightly resist, but he insists he wants a steak. Finally they agree. He asks the hostess to seat them in the dining room in half an hour, and then directs the ladies into a dark corner of the bar.

  Just as he hoped, as soon as they order their drinks, the women leave the table to go to the ladies room. When the waitress brings the drinks, David orders a bottle of champagne for dinner, waits for her to leave, then lightly spikes their wine.

  They carry their second round of drinks into the dining room. They order dinner, chat and drink. Both women are giving him more attention than he wants. They complain of being tired. He keeps the conversation and the champagne going through dinner, even ordering a second bottle, which they never finish.

  He encourages them to drink, but makes sure they don’t become obnoxious, attract a lot of attention, or pass out. The women are quite drunk when they finish dinner and he does not offer to buy coffee.

  “I really think I’d better drive you ladies home,” he offers when they reach the car.

  “Oh, do you?” quips Marty.

  “Yes, I do.” He opens the doors. “We’re halfway there anyway. I can take a cab back to the club and pick up my car.”

  When everyone is settled, he heads for Marty’s house. He knows exactly where it is. After a couple of miles, he turns the heater on high and bumps the fan to low. He can feel the
temperature rising in the car. It soon has the effect he is wanting. Both women are asleep.

  Chapter 59

  As he drives up to Marty Keeler’s house, he opens the garage with the remote on the visor and pulls in. Leaving the car running, he closes the garage door.

  The door into the house is unlocked but it has an automatic closer so he blocks it open, turns on the kitchen lights and returns to the vehicle. Marty is passed out in the front passenger seat. He opens the door and picks her up. She is a small woman and easy to carry. Once through the kitchen door, he puts his back to it and pushes it shut. David lays Marty on the couch in the family room and returns to the kitchen.

  When he opens the door to the garage, he can already smell the exhaust fumes. He opens three of the car doors and leaves Amy Blair asleep and leaning against the closed door.

  David gets his briefcase out of the trunk and returns to the kitchen, closes the door, making certain it fits snugly. Satisfied, he presses a towel to the threshold to insure that none of the carbon monoxide leaks into the house.

  He undresses and after taking the protective gear out of the briefcase, he puts it on, including gloves and cap. He takes his briefcase to the nearest bathroom and leaves it on the counter.

  David returns to the couch, chooses a pillow and slaps Marty until she opens her eyes. She stares at him with confused and glazed fear and, at that moment, David sees hate and his father all at once, smirks and quickly smothers the life out of her. He removes her clothing, takes it to the master bedroom and deposits it in the hamper. He sets her shoes with the others in the closet. He carries Marty’s body to the bathroom and cuts the carotids and slowly begins the dissection. When the nipples are excised, rinsed and safely transferred to the small jar, he sets it on the backsplash.

  After forty minutes have passed, David returns to the kitchen and finds a drawer of towels. He takes two and places them tightly over his nose and mouth, takes a deep breath and opens the door to the garage. The fumes burn his eyes. He hurries to the driver’s side and turns off the engine. The body in the back seat has a blue cast to it. Satisfied that Amy is dead, David leaves her and goes to the family room.

  After moving the furniture to clear enough area to layout the greens, he returns to the bathroom and carries the arms and legs to the master bathroom and arranges them on the floor of the shower.

  He carefully dries the torso and moves it to the family room. When it is oriented in the same direction as the fifth hole at Highland Meadows, he opens the food coloring and begins the first coat of green. He keeps the scorecard where he can see it, duplicating the shape of the green as closely as possible.

  He sets up the eighth hole to his satisfaction and lays the scorecard near the body. It is marked for the 5th hole at the Highland Meadows Golf Club; a 3 in a circle for the birdie and in the box above, 6 up.

  David stabs the number 8 pennant into Marty’s navel, rolls the ball marked with a bloody 9 across the floor, drops the newspaper scramble, watching it flutter near the green and is satisfied that the hole is finished.

  He is ready to play again.

  Amy Blair’s body is lukewarm and David does not like the blue cast to the skin. He wishes he had gotten to her before she died, because the moment he enjoys the most is when he looks into her eyes. That moment, the sensual quintessence of her soul leaving her body is what motivates him.

  He dissects her in the bathroom and lays out the green in the family room, near the eighth hole. He carries the torso to the family room and places it with the buttocks pressed to the wall. He settles himself on the floor and begins to paint the green. It is a close representation of the green for the 13th hole at Highland, which is located in a canyon.

  He punctures the abdomen with the number 9 pennant and places the Highland scorecard next to the body. It is marked for the 13th hole; par 4 and the box above, 7 up. He haphazardly drops the scramble to the floor and, with Amy Blair’s driver, he hits the blood-marked 10 ball on a high arch into the darkness.

  The holes are finished. A par and a birdie; David is satisfied.

  He makes a thorough survey of the house while turning off lights and puts everything back to normal.

  He picks up his briefcase and enters the garage. It is almost midnight. He closes and locks the door from the kitchen into the garage, starts the car, presses the remote to open the garage door and a few moments later he is on his way back to Whiteford Country Club.

  He reaches the parking lot and although he knew the clubhouse would be closed, he didn’t anticipate the bar gate closure across the entrance to the parking lot.

  He parks Marty Keeler’s car on the street, wipes down the inside, steps out with his briefcase, locks the doors and wipes down the exterior. He throws the keys into the bushes along the street and walks to his car.

  Fortunately, the parking lot is not fenced. He pushes his transmission into four-wheel drive and plows through the meadow-like long grass and flowering borders, and swerves around the bar gate and back onto the road.

  David is exhausted and aware of his body odor, a subtle mix of perspiration and plastic. But at the same time he is exhilarated by the progress of the match. He shifts into two-wheel drive and looks forward to a shower and sleep.

  FBI Violent Crimes Unit, Sylvania, Ohio, Sunday, July 21

  Chapter 59

  Lou Schein’s team is assembled in the conference room. Everyone is disheveled and exhausted after four months of chasing the match play killer, and especially so after the last twenty-four hours.

  Lou, tired of cheap pastries, called a delivery service and had juices, muffins and fruit brought in.

  Copies of two more autopsies have been distributed and the crime board has been updated to reflect the two murders discovered in Sylvania yesterday afternoon. Lou is examining the crime board and the visual monitor, trying not to appear beaten, but internally he is frustrated and discouraged over the eleven unsolved murders.

  He turns to the group with an anguished smile. “All right, people, you’ve got the details of the two Sylvania murders, discovered by a friend of one of the victims. You each have a copy of the autopsy, and Nancy will be reporting on that in a moment. The next LPGA tournament is the Women’s British Open in Scotland and, from what we can surmise from the scrambles, we’re confident our killer will not go to Scotland but will be in Colorado for the Solheim Cup. It starts August 16.”

  “We’ll all be here another week, then we’re on our way to Parker, Colorado.”

  At this point, Mary Gibson wishes she could just have a cigarette and get some sleep. Roger Payne is tired, but the challenge and the chase have electrified him and he seems to have more energy with each murder. Bruce Phillips takes off his glasses and rubs his face. He’s tired of hotel rooms and fast food and wants this to be over. Nancy Cochran had no idea this assignment would take so long, and she misses Phoenix and her companion but she is dedicated to helping Lou and the rest of the team catch the psychopath.

  Lou is scrutinizing his team, making sure they are alert and attentive. “We’ve definitely got to slow this guy down. He won’t stop, not until we catch him or he finishes his game. By our calculations, he would have won the nine hole match at five wins, so he is definitely playing eighteen. That means potentially, two more murders, and he has the rest of the season to commit them. I don’t think he is likely to strike here again, but he’s unpredictable and we can’t take a chance considering today is the last day of the Marathon Classic.”

  Nancy Cochran, too tired to stand, starts her report. “Once again our killer has deviated from the norm, or his norm, and has killed two women and displayed them in the same room.”

  “Marty Keeler, victim one, was drugged and smothered. Amy Blair, victim two, was also drugged but died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Forensics have surmised he left her in the car, in the closed garage with the engine running, while he killed victim one. Both victims’ blood alcohol levels were high. I have detailed the murders in the autopsy, but s
ince the dismemberment and the placement of the bodies is so similar to past murders, I really have nothing more to add. Bruce has more information about the scrambles and scorecards.”

  Bruce Phillips, the master of the scramble, began his report. “The eighth hole victim was transformed into the 5th hole at Highland Meadows. The scorecard is marked 6 up with a birdie on a par 4. She was forty-three years old. The scramble spells out: FIND YOUR BALL IN THE CUP. Looking at the tour schedule, I’m almost certain he’s sending us to the Solheim Cup, but I wasn’t sure until I saw the second scramble: THE CUP SPILLS BLOOD.

  “The scorecard for the ninth hole victim is marked a par four, 4;4, 7 up. Victim two is forty-four years old, and she is positioned as the 13th hole at Highland Meadows. The longer I looked at the two scrambles the one word that stood out was CUP. Now I’m sure they’re a reference to the Solheim Cup in Parker, Colorado, in 3½ weeks.”

  Phillips looks down at his notes and then continues, “Marty Keeler’s car was found back at Whiteford Valley on Saturday morning. Our killer must have used it to drive the victims to Marty Keeler’s house, then drove it back after killing the women. Nothing new there either, he is meticulous with every detail. His car was actually locked in the clubhouse parking lot that is blocked with a bar gate. He drove through the landscaping to get out. It’s another missed opportunity; the last person to leave the club locked the lot. He said there was a dark SUV in the lot, a green Lincoln Navigator, but he didn’t pay a lot of attention to it because he figured it would be there in the morning. We did get some castings off the tire tracks.”