by Thomas Laird
I grabbed him by the back of his hair when I reached him. He thrashed his arms wildly and tried to connect a blow to my head, but I had him from behind and then I dunked him. When he went under, his mouth had to have been opened, gasping, because he was spitting water and choking when I brought him up. I was able to stand in the water. It was perhaps five feet deep here, where we struggled.
I dunked him again and held his head down. This time I held him under a long time. I could hear him gurgling beneath the surface. I brought him up again and made certain that he was Samsa. There was no mistaking his pale, gaunt visage. I dunked him yet again, although he was weak and the submerging wasn’t necessary.
I could save Cook County and the City of Chicago perhaps a half million to a million in court costs if I held him down long enough. Drowning would be a just way for Samsa to disappear. It was slow and painful, just like the deaths he’d perpetrated on all those young women.
The sound of his gurgling grew fainter and fainter. It was light enough to see in the cold lake water that his oxygen was about used up — the bubbles decreased in number drastically. I could be his judge and executioner. Think of all the pain he had caused me, I remembered. Think of the humiliation this murderer had dished out to me and to my partners.
He was a high profile killer. The newspapers loved him. I thought of all the publicity he’d generate from all the media. I’d have to endure his picture every day — in the newspapers and on television.
I had his hair at the crown and it took little to no effort to hold him under.
Then I hoisted him up. He gasped for air and then spit out more lake water. When he had his air back, he looked at me as if he wondered whether I were going to put him under yet again.
I had him by the hair with my left hand. He stood up straight. He was a few inches taller than I was, so my left hand elevated higher. He looked at me and I thought he was trying to show me his teeth. As if he were attempting to snarl at me like some cornered dog.
I smacked him with my free right fist, and his head jerked back. I stood him straight up again, and it appeared that some blood oozed down his oversized canines. I could see that I had broken one of his fangs. He spit the shattered tooth into the water.
I wanted to smack him again, but he didn’t show me any more teeth. He almost fainted. He went limp on me, so I had to drag him back to shore. The water made his body more buoyant than if I’d had to drag him across the sand, so we made it back to shore quickly.
Doc grabbed hold of him and lugged him onto the sand. He flopped him down on his face, flat on the beach, and then he cuffed Samsa.
My wife read Maxim Samsa his rights.
Samsa turned his head toward Natalie and gave her a weak snarl. You could see the blood and the remnants of his ruined fang.
‘You say a word,’ I told him. ‘Any word at all. And I’ll take you back into the lake and finish the job.’
Doc and I hauled him to his feet. Natalie walked behind the three of us. And then we escorted our prisoner toward the Ford Taurus, down the block.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The trial of Maxim Samsa was due on the docket in about three months. I interviewed The Count in our well-used interrogation room downtown.
Doc stood outside the famous one-way mirror and watched as I talked to the self-proclaimed vampire by myself.
‘You’re aware of your rights,’ I said.
‘Sure,’ he grinned. He showed me only one whole fang — the other I’d broken.
He wasn’t quite so pasty-faced without his Goth make-up. But he was pale enough to look unhealthy. Creepy. Spooky. Whatever it was that he wanted to cultivate with his appearance.
The grey Cook County jumpsuit didn’t add to his vampire persona, however. He looked like just another slick, headed to the joint.
‘You have not confessed to the murders you’re accused of, so I assume you’re pleading not guilty.’
I had asked him again, before we sat down, if he wanted an attorney to be present. He said he was going to be his own counsel, even though the judge warned him that it wasn’t wise to be your own lawyer.
‘We don’t have much of a case history about you, Mr Samsa. We have plenty of your DNA from the tape you used to keep the vics quiet. We have a few hair samples from the last two murders. And we have the testimony of Matt Cabrero — who can’t wait to flip you. He’s trying to cut a deal with our Prosecutor, but he’ll be doing a long stretch. And he’ll probably get life for the shit he’s done. You, on the other hand, are looking at lethal injection. Personally, I’d prefer hanging, in your case. But the Supreme Court doesn’t agree with me ...
‘Nobody seems to really understand what it was that provoked you to kill these women the way you did. I mean, you didn’t make all that much money on draining them, did you?’
He was manacled at the waist and on the ankles as well. His long thin fingers drummed the table top, and the handcuffs clunked a bit as he drummed. Doc thought we should have muzzled him like they do biting dogs, but I refused to allow it.
‘You don’t know me,’ he began. ‘I ain’t anybody you ever knew. I didn’t do those killings. You can take your DNA and ...’
He smiled weakly. Then he looked up at me again with that broken-fanged, snaggled smile.
‘There’s more under heaven and earth than —’
‘I read Hamlet, too, cheesedick. You’re not going to startle me with your jailhouse intellect. You’re a poorly educated piece of white trash who’s garnered some notoriety because of the terrible things you did to a bunch of women who didn’t have it coming. You watched them die slowly and you didn’t show any pity. That’s why I’m going to be there when they put you to sleep like the diseased mutt you are.’
‘They can’t convict me if I’m crazy.’
‘The court psychiatrist doesn’t think you’re legally insane, and neither do I.’
‘I’d have to be crazy to do what I done, wouldn’t I, Lieutenant Parisi?’
‘You’ve been watching too much TV. Old movies, Maxim. Insanity, temporary insanity, is past its prime. Juries like to burn down killers like you. You should’ve turned off the cable and read the newspapers. You’re going to die, my man. You planned each of these killings. They weren’t spur of the moment or heat of passion numbers. They were cold blooded. Like the snake you are.’
‘I been around people like you all my life, Lieutenant. Parole officers, cops, social workers. All those pricks from St Charles. They all wanted to know about my sad-assed childhood. I didn’t have no childhood. Been on the streets since I was twelve, and I ain’t looking for any understanding, from you or nobody else. I looked out for myself. You had to be the meanest dog or you didn’t eat. Course you wouldn’t know about that kind of life.’
‘I’ve seen meaner sons of bitches than you. But not many as pitiless.’
‘Pity is weakness. You ever become someone’s street bitch, Lieutenant? I’ll bet you haven’t. Livin’ in boxes, in sewers, in terminals — wherever it’s warm. Then you finally get caught by some bigger, meaner son of a bitch who likes to do you in the ass in some public toilet. He tells you if you try to run off he’ll catch you and cut you so your manhood ain’t going to be an issue no longer. He’ll castrate you if you run. So you bend over like the bitch he thinks you are and you take it. You take it til the day he goes to sleep before you do, and then you use the box opener you found in the street, and you stab him where the big ole jugular vein is, and when the blood jets up outta him you cut his throat from ear to ear and finish him. You waited six months to do him. Gettin’ up the will to cut him open like some fish.
‘And then the blood ain’t as terrible as you thought it was gonna be. You watch in fascination as the red shower covers his face and chest and puddles on the ground underneath him. You want to do to him what he threatened to do to you, but you can’t bear to touch that thing he’s used on you again and again ... you just squat in front of him and watch him try to stanch the flow by gr
abbin’ his neck. But it don’t do no good. The blood sorta pulses out between his fingers, and he reaches out toward you with his other hand, but you don’t make a move. You let him squirm. You let him wriggle while it’s all leakin’ out of him onto the blacktop. You’re in an alley with dogs and cats and rats. They come on up to him once he’s still. A few of them dogs lap his blood, but I shoo them off because I want to watch his eyes. They’re still open. When somebody bleeds to death they just look tireder and tireder until the lights go out in their eyes. You oughta see it. It’s like nothin’ else in the world, Lieutenant.’
‘So you got an excuse. You’re going to cop that plea? Poor little abused street orphan. Took his vengeance out on a bunch of helpless women —’
‘They wasn’t helpless. They was alone. Just the way I was. And along come someone who was stronger than they was. Of course I didn’t kill none of them ... I’m just talkin’ hypothetical, you understand.’
‘You were incapacitated because of the trauma you endured in your youth. Is that about it?’
Samsa smiled.
‘And you tormented the vics’ relatives with the verses you left behind.’
‘Boy, whoever did do them. That was a nice touch, dontcha think?’
‘You may not get the injection after all.’
His face went serious momentarily.
‘Say again?’ he asked.
‘They’re talking about suspending the death penalty. They’ve made numerous mistakes that DNA has overturned — but sometimes they were too late.’
‘You sayin’ that I might get life after all? Even though you know I’m not your man, of course.’
‘Yeah. It’s possible ... But if you think about it. If you use your imagination. Think about being confined in a relatively small cage for, what, sixty, maybe seventy years? You’re pretty young. Healthy enough. You might live a long, long time.’
His eyes focused on his drumming fingers.
‘You won’t qualify for parole. See, that’s the little twist, recently. It’ll be life without parole. You can make book on it.’
He tried to show me a grin, but he wasn’t up to the effort.
‘Why’d you mess around with those kids? Those Goths? They weren’t your kind of people, were they?’
‘They’re a bunch of phony little suburban white kids with too much money and time on their hands ... I would’ve done a couple of those cunts. But I never killed nobody, like I told you.
‘It would’ve been sweet to take a few of them out the way whoever it was did those women you’re accusin’ me of burning ... yeah. Gold Coast cunts. Cunts in training. I let a few of them blow me, but I never planted my wick in any of them. They thought they were ... special. I had nigger and spic whores who were better on their backs than any of those white bitches. From the rich hoods. Bored bitches. Lookin’ for a rush. That’s why they went and did them “alternative” lifestyles. I just dressed up for them because it was good for business. I admit that I supplied them the blood, but I was just the middleman, Lieutenant.’
‘You’re a really incompetent liar, sweetheart.’
He tried to jump up at me, but his chains kept him seated.
‘Don’t never call me that,’ he hissed.
‘How about I unlock you, tell Doc out there to take a walk, and then you can jump out from that chair at me again?’
‘You think you bad, huh, Lieutenant?’
‘Want me to get the keys?’
He looked at me carefully, and then his smirk slowly dissipated.
‘I should’ve drowned you when I had you under.’
‘But you the man, boss. Good guys don’t do none of that executioner stuff. Am I right?’
I watched his eyes, but they glanced away from me.
‘They said you were a pretty fair student, at St Charles.’
‘That what they said at that chicken factory?’
‘Chicken’ was a euphemism for the prison slang word ‘bitch.’ Bitch as in the unwilling male mate in a homosexual pairing behind bars.
‘They said you scored very well on your aptitude exams.’
‘I shoulda taken the SAT and become a real lawyer, huh?’
‘You were pretty good in math, especially, they told us.’
‘Count all that fuckin’ money in some dude’s multi-million dollar company. Become a king of fuckin’ white collar crime.’
‘Do you have any idea, any clue as to the misery you caused those young women, Samsa?’
‘Oh, I see! You lookin’ for admission of guilt again. You wanna know if I feel regrets for what I already told you I didn’t do. Y’all are big on remorse, huh? You want to know if I feel sorry for what I done, but I can’t, now can I, since I ain’t did what you say I done. That seems simple enough to a under-educated homeless man like me.’
‘We found thirty thousand in cash in that flop you were using on the near north just before you went wading in the water.’
‘Yeah, but I was all dressed up with nowheres to go since you police officers made up your minds that I was the perpetrator of these terrible deeds which I never did.’
‘You can spend the thirty K on some quality reading materials while you’re doing life in high security somewhere.’
‘Thirty K. That was just chump change to those Goth twats I hung with. They got all hung on blood rituals and black Sabbaths. I read up on that shit so I sounded — whattayoucallit — conversant about the devil shit, and I tell you what, Lieutenant Parisi, that shit kinda gets into your system after a while. It’s kind of a turn-on. They’d take the vials I brought them and they’d drink the shit and pour it all over themselves, you know their titties and everywhere ... Hell, I always came home with a sore and depleted dick after a few of them black Sabbaths. Drawing pentangles on some stone floor in some deserted farmhouse or wherever it was that they’d located a place to meet.
‘But they weren’t really serious about the ritual. I mean I don’t think they ever really expected Satan himself to appear among us. It was just a nice excuse to get wild and suck a few jalones and ball some of their boyfriends near an altar laced with some fresh blood from the murder of a beautiful young woman.’
‘That’s what the poetry was about. The Poe.’
‘Yeah. They all read him. Poe kept saying the most poetic subject was the death of a young bitch. I started to read him. Some of the stuff wasn’t bad. But he had a bad habit of fucking babbling. Fucker died in the street. Some son of a bitch lays a flower on his grave once every year —’
‘I know. I read it somewhere.’
‘I didn’t kill any of them women. And if I did, I was crazy at the time and didn’t even know I was doin’ them. You see? Either way, I wasn’t responsible. So if you’re lookin’ for any kind of statement about me being the guilty party, Lieutenant, you’re rattling the wrong door knob.’
He showed me his teeth.
‘Why’d you bite them?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. These big canines was for show. For my little white-faced Goth gashes. That’s all. I never used them like that.’
‘We’ve got your saliva. It’s part of the DNA package.’
He tried to appear unconcerned, but it looked like he was weakening, just slightly.
‘I think your quarter’s spent, Lieutenant. I’m tired. And I gotta rest up for my big trial. Pm my own counsel, you know. And you know what a formidable intellect I got, by now, so if you don’t mind —’
‘You’re a stupid man, Samsa. Anybody who kills a human being is stupid by definition because the odds are truly rotten you’ll get away with it. Most of you killers are braindeads. But then you watch TV, maybe the movies. You see the brilliant killer do his thing in multiples and you see him baffle the cops, and only a miraculous twist of fate gets these TV geniuses caught. You think you’re a player, but you must not know the odds against players on the Strip. The house wins, asshole. You don’t beat the house. That’s why you’re living in a hovel, running l
ike a jackrabbit, not knowing the hour and day that you wind up right where you wound up. Shitty odds, Maxim.
‘You’ll get your picture in a few magazines and daily newspapers, and in three months no one’ll remember your fucking name. You’ll be behind big grey walls, and it’ll be the highlight of your week to see blue sky and yellow sun. That’s where you’re headed, dumb fuck, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’
‘Vampires can’t die. They’re immortal. How can you be so sure that I won’t rise up from the grave and suck the blood out of you and your whole fucking family?’
I smiled brightly at him.
‘Because I’ll be the guy who pounds the wooden stake through your fucking heart before they bury your sad, lame ass.’
I got up, called for Samsa’s escort, and the interview/interrogation was over.
*
Of all possibilities, the Redhead and I sat on our couch long past midnight watching the original Dracula, with Bela Lugosi.
‘This poor prick was buried in that cape,’ I told my wife. Natalie jumped when I interrupted her concentration on the archaic horror classic.
‘Goddammit, Jimmy! You about gave me heart failure.’ She went back to watching the movie, chomping occasionally on some semi-burned microwave popcorn.
‘Jesus God, you about loosened my bowels.’
‘You scared?’ I asked her with a smile.
‘Of course not,’ she said. Somehow it lacked conviction.
‘There are no vampires,’ she said.
‘No werewolves, fairies, goblins or ghouls either.’
‘That’s right. Now shut up.’
‘I would’ve shot Drac with a silver bullet from my Bulldog. Blown his heart right out onto the Carpathian Mountains.’
‘Jimmy! Shut up!’
‘Yes, my love.’
I sat silent while Bela Lugosi as The Real Count hovered over one of his victims. The sights of the crime scenes from Samsa’s murders did a slow rerun inside my head.
