The Serial Killers Club

by Jeff Povey

  “Now it’s down to you and me.”

  “Mano a mano.”

  “You got it.” I nod, not having a clue what Agent Wade just said or even what language he spoke it in.

  I glance at the bargain bucket, look at the smiling face of that white-haired ex-army colonel depicted on the side—the face that says, “Come and dine with me, and I’ll tell you all I know about war.”

  “Dougie?” Agent Wade’s voice interrupts my reverie.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got a gun pointed at your groin.”

  Agent Wade makes me drive across town, all the way back to my apartment. We park, and with the gun in his jacket pocket, aimed at the small of my back, he makes me walk inside. I’m still not scared, though, and know I can get out of this—just as soon as I come up with a decent plan. Which for the moment seems to be eluding me.

  The front door shuts behind me.

  “Take a seat.”

  I go toward the sofa but feel myself pushed toward one of the wooden chairs that sits at my dining table.

  “Sofa’s mine.”

  I allow myself to be shoved forward, watch Agent Wade drag the chair out with his foot, and I sit down. The bargain bucket is dumped unceremoniously on the table in front of me. Agent Wade crosses to the sofa and slumps down, the gun aimed at me the whole time.

  He reaches for his briefcase, searches around, and then produces a tiny handheld tape recorder—one of those things businessmen recite into while they sit at their desks trying to look important enough to keep their jobs. Agent Wade sets the recorder on the coffee table, presses “record,” and glances up at me. “I’ll type it up later.”

  “Type what up?”

  “Your confession.”

  I’m not altogether sure that I understand. Agent Wade sees this and spells it out, his words pronounced slowly and definitely. They hit home, as if he were jabbing me in the chest with them.

  “I want to hear it all. Every little thing. Don’t leave a word out. Just tell me—in your own time—how and why you became the Kentucky Killer.”

  I have met many crazy people over the last four years, but Agent Wade beats them all hands down.

  “What!?” I almost laugh, this is so ridiculous.

  “In your own time, Dougie.”

  My mind starts to clear, and I suddenly see it all. “Oh . . . I get it now. You’re running interference. Pinning it on me to give you some breathing space. Well, I’m not saying a word.”

  The gun is raised, the trigger eased back. “Dougie . . .”

  “Uh-uh.” I shake my head, meaning what I say. “Uh-uh.”

  “I’ll shoot your balls off. One at a time.”

  I instantly stop shaking my head. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Just start from the beginning.”

  “You’d better tell me when that is, then.”

  Agent Wade reaches across, angrily swipes the recorder from the coffee table, switches off the record button, rewinds, and starts all over again. “For chrissakes, Dougie!”

  “What?”

  “Just tell the damn story!”

  “You want me to make it up, is that it?”

  “I want you to tell me what happened. How it started, why it started, how come you’ve stayed free for so long. A guy like you can barely tie his shoelaces, so how the hell you managed it I really don’t know.”

  I think I’m missing something. There’s a piece of the jigsaw that disintegrated before I could even get the box open. “You’re making a big mistake here. I’m not the Kentucky Killer.”

  Agent Wade’s eyes blaze with exasperation. “Dougie, you killed James Mason and stuck a carton over his head. You killed Myrna Loy and Chuck Norris and stuck cartons over their heads. You killed two Mexicans and stuck cartons on them as well. You posted ads in the paper, and you turned up at the Club the night KK said he would. Only no one knew it was you. I should have guessed when you got so wound up about not contacting KK. Should have known I was getting too close for comfort. You pretend to be this dumb-ass jerk-off, but I know better. It took me some time to cut through that low-rent personality of yours, but I got there in the end. So come on, Dougie, just share it with me, huh?”

  “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “Why’d you kill the members? Is it because you want to be the only one? Or is it that they mess it up for you, detract from your glorious crusade? Maybe they were just plain stupid and irritated you—a brilliant killer like you lumbered with trash like that.”

  I’m not a psychiatrist, but anyone could see what’s wrong with Agent Wade. “It’s a split personality thing, right?”

  “Huh?” Agent Wade loses focus for a second.

  “Schizophrenia. That’s what it is. You’re schizoid, yeah?”

  Agent Wade looks at me with a deep frown. “We’re talking about you here, not me.”

  “But are we, really?” I say in my best psychiatrist manner.

  “Dougie, this gun is loaded.” Agent Wade has heard enough, aims straight at my groin, but I’m on a roll now.

  “Maybe it’s the chicken, maybe they put something in the secret recipe that you’re allergic to. You should have tests.”

  Agent Wade wearily snatches the recorder, rewinds the tape, and starts again. He sets down the recorder with a loud bang and glares at me, teeth gritted. “Last chance, Dougie. You can do it with balls or without. It’s your call.”

  I try my best to put myself in the shoes of the Kentucky Killer for a moment. I scratch around inside my brain, trying to pinpoint the things I know about him so that I can reel it off and then be done with it all. The bargain bucket sits there, Colonel Sanders’s grinning face mocking me. I stare hard at the face—so hard, in fact, that he turns into Santa Claus and I hear the thud of his body as he jumps down my chimney and lands hard in the grate.

  “It was Mom. She made me do it.”

  The voice doesn’t belong to me. I know this because I’m not a woman, and this particularly sardonic voice definitely belongs to someone of the opposite sex.

  “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy . . . ,” the voice sneers in contempt.

  I turn.

  Betty stands in my bedroom doorway, looking more beautiful then ever. A vision.

  I smile broadly, knowing I’m looking at an angel, understanding that there is life after death, and certainly after this amount of death, heaven has to be teeming with life.

  “Betty . . .”

  “Hi, Dougie.”

  She floats toward me, moving with grace and elegance, skipping past the prostrate body of Agent Wade as he lies on the floor, a pool of blood spreading like the Dark Angel’s crimson wings around him. Betty removes a glinting silver rod of truth from his back and brings it up, wiping a liar’s stain from it.

  “One bargain bucket and two heads. Not a good equation.”

  Even in death she retains that strong canine aroma, and it wafts around me, seasoning my very existence.

  “I tried to save you, Betty. I did, I swear it.”

  “And I saved you, Dougie. Till last.”

  I look up to find that Betty’s eyes are now hazel, her hair is much shorter, and she wears very little makeup. She looks like she has been under a tanning bed too long, as she is now as brown as a cup of milky coffee. I figure heaven must be closer to the sun, which actually makes a lot of sense.

  “You did me proud, Dougie. Wading through those pieces of garbage like a guilt-free lumberjack in a rain forest.” Betty lights a cigarette, inhales deeply. “Like what I did to your bedroom, by the way?”

  I’m fascinated, because Betty has cotton wool wedged into her mouth to make her cheeks look plumper. Maybe she’s been eating lumps of cloud.

  “I heard about the Club from Tony. He loved it so much, he was busting a gut to tell me how great it was. I had to join. But there was that weird thing about KK. No Kentucky Killer, thank you very much. I kept asking him how come KK couldn’t join, but he said it just wouldn’t work out. I figured
he was scared KK would make him look small time, maybe even take over the chairmanship. So I invented this new killer—little prim and proper Betty.”

  Agent Wade groans, tries to raise his head. Betty glances at him, tuts to herself. “That was something I hadn’t counted on. A federal agent, of all people. You never told me about him, Dougie.”

  “I was too embarrassed. Imagine what the Club would’ve said.”

  “That fucking Club. How dare they not invite me! There you all are, having this great time together, and there I am, lonely as hell, wishing there was someone I could talk to, someone who would understand me and appreciate my efforts. All I wanted was to be one of the gang.”

  Betty’s cigarette smoke swirls around me, hypnotizing me, tendrils dancing like snakes.

  “But then I thought, If the Club doesn’t want me, then I don’t want the Club. And boy, was I gonna make them pay. Course, soon as I realized what you were doing, I figured what the hell, let midget britches do it for me.” Betty’s voice has a rancorous edge that I’d never detected before. “I tried my best to keep you out of the shit. Jumping in every chance I got to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot. Though I thought long and hard about letting them get you after what you put me through in that motel with those Mexicans. I soon got my own back on them, though.”

  I look again at Betty, staring harder at her, seeing her pale flesh, watching her chest rise and fall with her breath. There’s something almost human about her.

  “Have to admit, killing Jimmy and the sign language lovebirds was unavoidable. Couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

  Finally it sinks in.

  Betty’s not dead!

  She’s alive, and she’s standing here, right in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch her.

  “He didn’t get you! Agent Wade didn’t kill you.”

  My hand reaches for Betty, and my fingertips brush the soft skin of her face. She’s warm.

  “Tony’s dead, Betty.” I say this gently, brushing a strand of hair from Betty’s eye. “He’s not coming back.”

  “Saved me a job, I guess.”

  “Dougie . . .” Agent Wade starts to crawl toward me, pulling himself onto his elbows, doing his level best to get to me.

  Betty fishes a sheet of paper and a small staple gun out of her jacket pocket. “Real handy you had a typewriter.”

  “Dougie . . .” Agent Wade miraculously raises himself higher, only to get a savage boot in the face from Betty that sends him onto his side, his neck jerking back so hard that for a minute I think she’s broken it.

  “I’m talking here!”

  Betty positions the typed note against my forehead, lines it up so that it sits squarely, and reaches for the staple gun.

  “Don’t move now, Dougie. . . .”

  The staple gun is pressed against my forehead, awaiting Betty’s downward pressure.

  “Know why I kill like this?”

  I offer a faint shrug, careful not to move my head for fear of ruining Betty’s carefully positioned note. “Your mom?”

  “Clever boy, Dougie. You got a brain in there after all.”

  “To be honest, it’s always the mom.”

  Betty is about to staple the sheet to my forehead when she suddenly has her feet dragged from under her. She slides down, smashes her chin on the edge of the table, and falls toward Agent Wade, who grips her ankles with all his might.

  “The gun, Dougie! It fell under the sofa,” Agent Wade screams at me before Betty turns and kicks hard at him. But he hangs on for grim death, and at long last I get the chance to do something right for once in my life. I take a run and dive for Agent Wade’s gun, skidding along the carpet, my arm snaking under the bolted-down sofa, my hand closing on the fallen revolver, fingers reaching for it, stretching, grasping, knowing that if I was just a couple of inches taller, I’d have it.

  Betty kicks hard at Agent Wade, manages finally to get free of his grip.

  But I am tall, I know I am. I’m bigger than everyone thinks, I know it.

  My fingers inch along under the sofa, my arm is almost out of its socket as I stretch as far as I can.

  Betty grabs her knife and comes for me. “Bye, Dougie.”

  I’m bigger than anyone. I tower over people; my shadow blots out skyscrapers. They’ve had me wrong all these years.

  I Am Someone.

  Betty’s knife flashes through the air, its razor tip driving toward my heart. The bullets get home first, though—blowing Betty to kingdom come in the process.

  AMERICAN HERO

  THE TYPED NOTE READS:

  Number 303.

  Betty couldn’t even come up with a secret recipe for me. Just a stupid number, making like I was a statistic instead of the hero I am.

  I wanted to bury Agent Wade, but there was no real way of doing it without attracting a lot of attention. Instead I laid him on the sofa, switched on the television—some Randolph Scott movie, where he aims his weapon at seminaked Indians—and cupped his arm around the empty KFC bucket. Couch potato heaven. Betty I dragged into the washroom and dumped there. I don’t really know why, but I just didn’t want her sharing the same room as Agent Wade. She didn’t deserve to.

  I have finally found the security camera still, the photo of me killing Errol Flynn. It was wedged under the loose tiles in my kitchen, the same tiles that I myself had tried to uproot in my desire to escape Agent Wade all of two months ago now. As I look at the photo again, I realize it is nearly impossible to make out anything at all—it looks more like a picture of E.T. poking his long red finger into a sack with a bra wrapped round it—but just for good measure I tear the photo into tiny pieces and dump them into the waste disposal. I feel like a free man.

  A new man.

  GERONIMO

  EPILOGUE: FEDERAL AGENT

  So there you have it. My story. At least the story so far. Chicago’s just one of many places I intend to visit. I drive Agent’s Wade car everywhere now, flash his shield, and get free parking practically anywhere I want to. Even in spaces reserved for the disabled. In fact, I often lie in wait as they approach their allotted parking spaces, only to floor the accelerator and dart in right in front of them. Waving the FBI badge in their angry, righteous faces has become one of my all-time favorite gags.

  I have changed my name again. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is no more. I am now called something else, and I think it is perfectly suited to my new mission in life.

  Only yesterday I knocked on the door of someone I thought could develop into a serial killer, given time. The woman, easily well into her sixties—you’re never too old, is my motto—and lame, peered at me with a real look of what could only be called guilt. I flashed the FBI badge at her. “Hi, I just thought it fair to warn you that I know what you are planning to do. Your murderous intentions have been noted, so take heed. Because I am watching you.”

  “Whassat you say? You’ll have to speak up. . . .”

  “Make one wrong move and I will be in your face faster than you can say Elizabeth Taylor.”

  The woman tried her best, but there was no way I was going to let her fool me, and I think she knows that now. When you’ve spent the amount of time with skillers that I have, spotting one is like second nature.

  I have decided to pay a visit to every single would-be serial killer I can find. I am going to warn them all that I am on their case. Sitting in the trunk is Agent Wade’s typewriter, and every month I make out a report and send it to FBI headquarters at Quantico, just to let them know that I’m out there keeping this country safe. I was born for this life.

  I switch off Agent Wade’s mini tape recorder. All this talking has made me thirsty, and I take a long, refreshing sip of Bud. I sit back in the two-man booth where—in what feels like another life—Roger and Rock sat. I glance over to the corner of the room where the Club first met.

  I can almost see cigarette smoke rising in clouds to the ceiling. Familiar faces appear, laughter erupts, there’s a scuffle, hand ges
tures to a waitress, someone does a magic trick. I catch snatches of dialogue from voices I will probably never forget.

  “I kill, therefore I am.”

  “Hey, Larry’s got a new tie. Someone’s birthday, by any chance?”

  “Sweet Jesus, that bitch was askin’ for it. Beggin’ me, ‘Do it, do it, do it.’”

  “It’s in his kiss, that’s what it is.”

  “I turn people to stone. Not literally, you understand, but I kinda replace their blood with plaster of paris. My wife thinks I’m at pottery class.”

  “Hey, Dougie . . .”

  “Yo, Dougie . . . big man. Hey, good to see you.”

  “Dougie, over here . . . saved you a seat.”

  “Dougie . . . this Club would be nothing without you.”

  “Dougie . . .”

  “Yo there, Doug . . .”

  “Dougie’s here! Hey, everyone! Dougie’s here! The fun starts now, folks.”

  “Dougie, you are hilarious. . . . You kill me, you really do.”

  A waitress steps into my view and breaks my concentration. The voices and faces fade away, and the grin on my lips slowly shrinks. I let my eyes rise the length of the waitress’s body and meet her jade green eyes. She smiles and awaits my order, pad and pen ready. I glance at the menu, trying to find something remotely appetizing. I eventually close the menu and hand it back to the green-eyed waitress.

  “I, uh . . . I guess I’m not hungry.”

  “Nothing there takes your fancy?”

  “I’m a fast-food guy at heart.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The waitress shrugs, collects the menu from me, and turns to go, but I suddenly catch her arm, taking her by surprise. I swear to God, there’s something about her.

  “Hey—hands off!”

  Jesus Christ, they’re everywhere.

  Green-Eyes glares at me as I flip out my ID and shove it under her nose. “Federal agent Kennet Wade. Got something you want to tell me?”