It was a long process, and that was why he usually checked out at least a day after his crime. He had plenty of blood on his hands, but only in the philosophical sense, and he made sure no physical evidence of his cold-blooded murders was left behind.
Eight hours later, with the windows still wide open, the flat seemed as clean as it was the day he first rented it, if not cleaner. He took a quick look around and was relieved, proud of his accomplishments. He picked up his bag with the bucket inside, along with the two smaller garbage bags, then left. He dropped the first bag, about few pounds of Jane remainders and rubber, into a nearby trashcan. He dropped one of the smaller bags a street away, then continued on his way to dispose of the remnants of poor Jane.
The girl was ultimately dumped in a Parisian sewer. For that part of the plan, he dressed like any other guy his age, with fine black leather gloves to avoid any fingerprints. Rather than disposing of those gloves, he kept them, as any sane person would have, knowing that no one would be the wiser. After dumping Jane, he enjoyed a nice early dinner, a stroll in the city, and a leisurely walk back to the flat.
With the exception of Prague, after dumping his victims, he cared less about food. Generally, he would grab a quick sandwich and head back home. However, the delightful, enticing aroma of a pizza place near Prague’s old town center grabbed him, so he had to sit down for a slice. The taste of that pizza left him with no regret. It was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, with an ideal amount of cheese. The peppers, mushroom, and tomatoes were delicious and fresh, but to him, the chicken was supreme.
In Paris, he did not need much convincing. He sat down at a restaurant in the Latin Quarter area, facing Notre-Dame, a perfect setting; the gothic structure seemed fitting for the macabre actions he’d been up to. Without a shred of remorse, he grabbed a book and looked around him to take in the view. What he had done the night before was constrained to a small part of his brain. Years of committing such gruesome feats had taught him to manage and control his feelings, and he was a master at locking them away for good.
He had a glass of red wine, the house specialty. At five Euros, the 2009 pinot noir was a good deal. The aroma was a bit dull, but it was soft on the palate and refreshing. He was tempted to order another, but he knew he had to keep a clear head. Matt loved chicken and fries, one of the few things he and his wife never shared. Lisa was a vegetarian, but he was definitely a carnivore, and chicken was at the top of his list. There was no better place than Paris to have some poulet frit, chicken and fries the French way.
An hour later, he finished his meal, smoked two cigarettes, paid the bill, and made his way back home on foot. He had to get to bed early so he could wake up promptly at six a.m. He would check out of his flat and leave at noon to catch his three p.m. flight. Then, once he left Paris, he would not visit the fair city again, at least not for many, many years to come.
* * *
Seven the next evening, he was back in his own mansion. He had been gone for six days, and his Paris excursion had followed Milan by exactly thirty-eight days.
It had been two years of ongoing madness, and the urge was still there. A small part of Matt had tired of it and wanted to stop; despite the satisfaction the killings brought, they did nothing to ease his hatred or his pain. He wondered if it really had anything to do with losing his wife or not. He wondered if something else was truly fueling his hatred and anger.
Over the last few months, his nights had been haunted by more and more nightmares about his childhood, sleepy, blurry recollections of events that seemed to have happened before, things he had forced himself to forget. He recalled his drunken father beating him and his mother, using a thick brown leather belt with a metal buckle. He harbored dark memories of covering up the bruises when he went to school, of enduring pain and humiliation for years. That all stopped the day his father died in his sleep on the sofa, when he succumbed to a sudden heart attack after falling drunk. There were six beer cans and an empty cheap gin bottle lying on the floor, next to his feet. Matt was twelve at the time, and he found his father dead when he woke up. He recalled screaming for his mother, but he couldn’t remember much beyond that.
Following that day, for the next year or so, Matt was a quiet child who opted to play and eat alone. His mother tried everything to break him out of that shell. She invited other children to their home, took him to fun places, and continuously scheduled visits with the family doctor and school counselor, but the boy’s condition never improved. She assumed it was the result of his father’s death, of finding his body on the couch, and everyone agreed with her that it was all too much for a twelve-year-old boy and had likely done much damage to his psyche.
Strangely, one day, he suddenly became better and returned to his normal behavior. Matt’s mother found that bizarre, that he snapped out of it so quickly, but it was a relief to her, and she didn’t bother to question it.
* * *
Now, all those horrible memories about Matt’s father were starting to come back to him, and far more frequently. While Lisa was alive, he dreamt of it several times and was startled awake, drenched in sweat. He never told his wife what the dreams were about, but now he was dreaming them at least once or twice a week and had no one to talk to about it. Matt felt as if something was very wrong with him, but he wasn’t sure of the root cause. Are the killings affecting me? Is there more to my madness than Lisa’s murder, something from…way back?
He unpacked his bag, changed his clothes, and went for a bike ride to the hilltop near where he lived, a place where he could get some fresh air and rid his nostrils of the stink of deteriorating flesh and lye that tended to linger far after the killings were over. An hour later, he returned home, took a cold bath, and was dead asleep before ten.
For Matt, the old adage, “Tomorrow is another day,” was a way of life. He awoke feeling fresh. He brewed some coffee and ate a slice of toast, then headed to his office. There, he opened his agenda and saw that he had a meeting the next day with his tax lawyer. He had made over $800,000 the prior year, mostly royalties from the apps he had created, as well as some kickback on investments he had in the stock market. Prior to his all-day meeting with the lawyer, he had to prepare all the documents and bank statements, for the last thing Matt wanted was to be investigated or arrested by the authorities, for tax evasion. He was always ready and extra careful, and he never shared anything extra with his lawyer or anyone else. With a hobby like his, he had to be very smart and keep some things to himself. Money was one of them.
Preparing everything for the meeting would take the whole day, but the only other thing on his weekly agenda was to tend to some software tasks to keep his apps up to date. He only spent about four hours a day on his apps, and that wasn’t much work for the high figures he was earning, but Matt really didn’t care one way or the other. To him, money was just another tool, something he needed to carry on with his adventures. In spite of what everyone tried to say, money really could buy everything and everyone, and he knew it could buy them easily.
Barcelona
Three weeks passed by, and apart from his nightmares and the panic attacks that followed, now at least three times a week, Matt’s life carried on normally. He casually met friends, played sports, and worked from home. It was usually three or four weeks before he began to crave a new murder, but this time, that urge came a bit earlier, on the first day of the third week. He made his mind up that it would be Barcelona this time, a lively city with easy, fresh catches, beautiful architecture, and he could catch a live game while he was there. Easy killings had begun to bore him, and he yearned to get more fun out of it, for it to be a bit more of a challenge.
He made the checklist and ticked the items off one by one. He bought some from his local area, as he had in the past, and he would purchase the other goods closer to the scene of the crime. “No sense trying to fix something that isn’t broken,” he said, as his plans had worked out pretty well in the past and did not need to be changed.
He arranged to fly to Madrid ten days later, then take a train to Barcelona. He never landed at the city of the crime or departed from there. Transportation was easy, and he had the time and money to do all the globe-trotting he wanted to. Paris was the only exception, as he knew that when he went there, he would be easily lost in the mixing pot of travelers, since it was the jewel of tourism.
Matt’s visit to Barcelona was just in time for him to watch El Classico, a face-off between Barcelona and Real Madrid, arguably the biggest soccer match of the year. Getting a ticket to such a prestigious event was no problem for a man of his wealth, for he could easily buy one from one of the scalpers just outside the stadium, the famous Camp Nou. There was no harm in having some fun, and it would make for an excellent alibi if, God forbid, he was ever caught.
His papers, fake identities, and bags were prepared, and he packed the night before. This time, the most important item in his luggage was the pack of ultra-quick-acting barbiturates stuffed into a small brown cup, carefully placed with some other medicines in his black Samsonite bag. The pills would knock any average adult out in minutes. They were prescribed by his very own doctor, to help with the sleeping disorders he’d suffered since his wife’s death, but they were German in origin, so there was no way the police or any other authority could trace it back to him if discovered in the body of one of his victims.
Matt had used the pills for his first three murders, followed by poisonous injections. Despite his training on animals, at first, he was not so confident with his knife-wielding abilities, so he wanted to do things an easier way. Although that method did not satisfy his needs or tame his ego, it got the dirty job done, which was his prime goal at that time. It was not until much later that he became more insistent about making his victims suffer.
Pam, in London, did suffer for the entire minute and a half he took her life, as he choked her with a belt he had bought earlier that day for three pounds. While he doused her with lye, he sang, “Farewell, three-quid Pam…” He was pleased by the pain he had caused, lost in some sort of primal bloodlust. By the time Pam died, her eyes were nearly popping out of their sockets, and her face was rippled with bulging red and blue veins. As he thought back to her, he made a decision: “No belt this time. Maybe a rope, a knife, or a hammer to the head. Hmm. I’ll decide that later, I suppose.”
As usual, he booked a flat in Barcelona, for four days, in an area called Vila De Gracia, just north of all the fun. It was in a quieter area, and the building was a bit old, just as he preferred. The one-bedroom flat was equipped with all the necessities, a good bathtub, and a nice-sized balcony. Once his accommodations were all set, he went to bed at 8:00 p.m., as his plane was scheduled to depart at 7:40 a.m.
The next day, he arrived at the airport early, completely disguised to match his chosen fake ID. This time, Matt’s hair was curly and black, nothing at all like his natural soft blond. His eyes were the same, though hardly recognizable behind glasses, which he did not typically wear. His nose was slightly different, and in preparation, he had allowed his mustache to grow and had colored it black to match his hair perfectly.
As was usually the case, he passed easily through security, without so much as a second glance. He boarded the plane and sat calmly, waiting for takeoff, casting friendly smiles to the flight attendants and other passengers every now and again. Matt chose an aisle seat, as he always felt suffocated if he had to sit next to the window. He did not like feeling trapped, penned in with no escape, and the aisle gave him more freedom to move.
He had just fastened his seatbelt when a lady was shown to the seat next to him. Matt unclicked the belt and got up to let her by. When he was face to face with the tall, chubby, but elegant lady, a sudden sense of déjà vu seemed to consume him. He had never seen her before but, flashes of Katrina came back to him; there were many similarities. He quickly let her sit, put on his belt, and looked away. He felt as if he had seen a ghost. The woman had the same hair, skin color, and figure as Katrina, and that made Matt feel quite uneasy and frightened. He always tried to remain calm, so as not to rouse any suspicions, but she had totally caught him off guard. He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else, but his brain had other ideas and dragged him right back to that night in Warsaw seven months prior.
* * *
Out of all his victims, he remembered Katrina, his fourth, most vividly. She was chosen by fate. Matt was at a bar, as always, but his charm had failed him with two other young ladies already. It was getting late, and Matt had begun to think his mission in Warsaw would be a failure.
Just as he was about to give up and leave, Katrina walked in. It was obvious from the look in her eyes that she’d already had a few drinks somewhere else. They bumped into each other as he was leaving the place. She dropped her bag in the collision, and Matt quickly apologized in English. He was surprised when she replied in nearly perfect English, albeit slurred. They had two tequila shots within ten minutes, and Matt then asked her to join him at his place.
Katrina was from Pionki, a small town of nearly 25,000 inhabitants, located in the northern part of the historic province of Lesser Poland, 65 miles away. She was in Warsaw for her master studies in biology. She didn’t really fit the profile of a biologist nor that of his typical victims; Katrina was from a small town, and those kinds of people were more prone to being missed if they disappeared. Still, Matt’s other efforts had failed, and she would have to do. Katrina was his last chance in Warsaw. She was a tall brunette, a bit full, with snowflake-fair skin, speckled with a few freckles on each side of her nose. She was a cute young lady in her late twenties, fun to talk to and full of life, a life Matt would greedily take in less than two hours.
They entered his flat and had a few more drinks, though his were quite watered down. When Matt felt she inebriated enough, when she was no longer in control of her thoughts or faculties or inhibitions, he took action. He went to his room and retrieved the knife he’d bought the day before from a fisherman’s shop in Warsaw, a location he’d found online. The shop owner had told him, in broken English, that the blade would slice a shark like a warm knife through butter.
Weapon in hand, Matt went back to Katrina, who was almost passed out. He brought her a glass of water, kissed her on the cheek, and asked her to go into the bathroom. The moment she stepped foot on the tile floor, he began to move the knife into position to cut her throat, while she had her back to him. Unfortunately, just as he was about to slice her, she turned around to kiss him. Her shocked eyes met his scared ones, and in a panic, the killer stabbed her once in the shoulder and again in the chest. With blood gushing from both wounds, she fell on the floor in agonizing pain, about to scream. He quickly jumped on her and covered her mouth. For a split second, Matt was exhilarated; somehow, it was like his first kill, a different and new experience, since his three previous victims had been killed in their sleep. In that instant, he made up his mind.
Seconds earlier, Katrina was alive, but now she was dead as a rock. He stabbed her thirteen times. His mad rage took control after the first few blows, and he only stopped when he had absolutely no physical strength to keep stabbing. By the time he finished, not even her parents would recognize her.
Katrina was the lesson Matt needed, the catalyst to him becoming a truly remorseless, coldblooded killer, the monster he now was. In many ways, she was his dark epiphany. He had managed to keep her from haunting his mind for months, but the familiar-looking stranger on the plane brought all those memories back in vivid detail. He was no longer at ease, and his trip to Barcelona started off on a very bad foot. During the trip, he did his best to keep from looking at the painfully reminiscent woman next to him.
* * *
Two hours later, he was in Madrid. He went directly to the train station and headed to Barcelona. He knew that city was hiding something for him, even though he didn’t know what it was. He sensed something different there, right from the very start.
The flat was just like the
photos he’d seen online, nothing more and nothing less. It was 900 square feet, with funky, outdated furniture and several contemporary paintings adorning the walls. A nice guitar was lying against the wall on the right. The kitchen had all the basics, but Matt really couldn’t have cared less about any of those humble amenities. He only needed to know that it was clean, with no cameras or voice detectors, and that the bathtub was adequate. The flat had a big balcony, and that made him feel better, as it would ensure faster air circulation.
Matt took a quick bath. It had been a long morning already, and the three-hour, bumpy train ride from Madrid had afforded him no sleep. He was ready for a fresh change of clothes, and he still had to go out and buy his magic potion, the lye that would cover his tracks.
Later that night, he went for dinner just off Las Ramblas Street at a small restaurant. He wasn’t that hungry, but he couldn’t resist the patatas bravas (salted, fried potatoes covered with spicy red sauce), flambe chorizo (spicy sausages), and stuffed mushrooms, paired with an excellent wine choice.
In all his previous trips to some of the world’s most beautiful cities over the past two years, Matt had been focused on one thing: committing a crime without getting caught. Taking the life of some unfortunate lady soothed him, satisfied a deep need within him. This time, though, his mind was a bit of a muddled mess. The nightmares were taking their toll, and he felt he needed some sort of change. Perhaps it is getting too easy, he thought, or perhaps I’m just getting…bored with the whole routine.
Matt admired grand architecture, and Barcelona would not disappoint, particularly because of Gaudi. Since he needed to clear his head and regain his focus, he decided that the next day would consist of checking out Gaudi’s handiwork. After that, there was El Classico to attend. He had two days before he would commit his crime, and he hoped his evil mind would be stable by then.
Matt: A Matt Godfrey Short thriller Trilogy Page 2
