Sex and Murder

by Douglas Allen Rhodes

  Mac took the bowl from Paul and took a long pull off of it.

  “I gotta head home soon,” Paul said. “How long you plannin’ to be there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Why you in such a hurry to get home? Mel ain’t workin’ tonight?”

  “No, she’s working, but my mom and Hal are watching Mikey. They were gonna bring him home later.”

  “So call ‘em,” Mac choked out. “Ask if they’ll watch their grandson til tomorrow. They won’t mind.”

  Paul thought it over for a minute, grabbed his cell phone, and started for the door. He stopped in the doorway and turned towards us. “All right then. First round is on you.” He went outside to phone his parents in privacy.

  Mac offered me the bowl. “You got any bud?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You wanna match?”

  He agreed, and we set to breaking up weed for joints.

  That’s what makes the pot smoker unique among the myriad other druggies in the world—at least in my experience—we match up. I’ll throw in a joint, he’ll pack a bowl, and somebody else’ll roll a phat blunt. The important thing is that everyone who’s got bud chips in, and we all share together. It creates a communal sense, and it makes for a better time all around.

  After Paul returned, we smoked the joints then rolled down to Ida’s Pub, a small bar in the industrial section of town, one block up from the steel factory and about eight blocks down from the oil refinery. Drinks are cheap there, and the bartender is the janitor at the elementary school Mac and I went to. All in all, it’s a good place.

  We drank Jack and Cokes (and the occasional shot of Jagermeister), shot pool, and bullshitted until a little after eleven. Paul’s wife called him, and I only had to watch him talk to her for about a minute to realize what direction the conversation had taken. Unsurprising to either Mac or me, he hung up the phone and announced, “Shit, man. I gotta go home.”

  I laughed. “I’ll get hold of you tomorrow, buddy.”

  “Yeah.” He left, and Mac followed him out to conduct a bit of last minute business.

  I walked up to the bar for a drink and ordered yet another Jack and Coke. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to see who it was. The most beautiful and compelling set of eyes I’d ever seen stared at me. I couldn’t tell you exactly what color they were, but they were a literal treatise on beauty. When I say they were compelling, it’s because I lack a better word to describe the commanding sort of way that they looked at me. They carried an innate and absolute authority in them—one that demanded obedience.

  The equally striking man they belonged to stood around six foot four in an immaculate white button down shirt (his collar undone) and black slacks, all beneath a knee-length, black leather coat. Lean, but well muscled, he carried himself with confidence—with the practiced assurance of a warrior. He’d combed his hair back, and his clean-shaven chin gave an almost movie-star-like quality to his overly handsome face. Above all else, though, beyond any of his features, his eyes demanded attention. They held me captive until he chose to speak.

  “Hello there.” His words rolled out, the tone ethereal and somehow both beautiful and horrible.

  I shuddered under their weight.

  “Would you care to join me for a moment?” he asked. “There’s something I would like to discuss with you.”

  The bartender set my drink down and walked away, forgetting to ask for my money. I picked it up and followed the man to a table, sitting where he gestured, in the seat opposite of him.

  “I don’t believe I know you,” I said, the weak sound of my own voice surprising me.

  “We’ve met,” he said, brushing the matter aside. “What I want to talk to you about, however, is your work.”

  Whatever intoxication my two hours of drinking had brought me left immediately, the meaning of his words striking home. I sat upright in my chair and leaned forward.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked.

  A small smile crossed his lips, and he let out a light chuckle. “Who indeed. Forgive me, I can be rather blunt at times. My name is Louis.”

  He pronounced it ‘Lewis’ and held out his hand for me to shake. I grasped it, shocked to feel the power in his grip. He wasn’t squeezing my hand roughly, like some sophomoric bar-tough, but rather, he had a sense of restrained might about him, as though he could have crushed it easily had he chosen to do so. I withdrew my hand far too fast to have seemed anything but intimidated.

  “As for who I am….” He smiled, giving me the impression of a cat playing with its food. “I’m what you might call a fan of yours. I know of your recent, shall we say, nocturnal adventures; and I must tell you, I’m impressed.”

  Uneasy, I shifted in my seat, and his smile deepened.

  “You must believe me,” he continued. “I’ve no intention of doing anything to stop you. Quite the contrary. In fact, I’d like to offer you whatever help I can. You see, I think you’re destined for greatness. You have a passion for the work that I’ve very seldom found. On the other hand, you’re sloppy.”

  He reached into his coat and pulled out what I at first thought to be a credit card. He tossed it across the table to land in front of me. A driver’s license, issued in Illinois, to one Robert Parker. Where Mr. Parker’s photo should have been, mine sat instead.

  Louis continued speaking.

  “As I said, Mr. Parker, up until now you’ve been very, very sloppy. You’ve left a trail behind you that any rookie detective could follow. In fact, I fully expect the police to arrive at your house by sometime tomorrow. When they do, I suggest that you be long gone.”

  He stood to go, leaving my mind in the midst of attempting to make sense of what had happened.

  “What…?” I began, then stopped and changed questions. “Why are you telling me this?”

  A twisted parody of affection graced his lips. “Because, as I’ve told you, you’re destined for greatness. You’ve known it from the start. I’m just ensuring that the artist isn’t prevented from becoming a master.”

  He turned away, and I watched him go for a second and almost followed him. Mac stopped me, though, coming up at that moment and sitting down at the table. I slid the license into my pocket and took a sip of my drink.

  “Who was that guy?” he asked, craning his neck towards the door Louis had just walked through.

  “Just some guy I know from work,” I said and tossed back the rest of my drink.

  * * * * *

  Troubled, I drove home from the bar. Questions by the hundreds assaulted my mind, each demanding an answer that I didn’t have: Who the hell was Louis? How did he know anything about me?

  Of course, I still had the biggest question of all to answer, the question that I knew would be the hardest yet most important: Should I take his advice?

  Still trying to sort through everything that had happened, I reached my driveway. Rosa’s car sat out in front, and I cursed her, wishing she wasn’t there so that I could talk to Rachel about the bar.

  Oddly, no lights shone in the house. They had to be upstairs, maybe at the back of the house. After all, they couldn’t be in the basement.

  I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. Darkness and silence greeted me.

  “Rachel? Are you home?”

  No one answered me. I called her name a few more times. Still no answer. I flipped on the lights and called out one final time. A slight noise coming from the basement caught my attention. Faint, almost inaudible, I strained to make it out. Sobbing. I recognized it in sudden clarity; the sound of someone crying.

  I rushed downstairs in concern.

  Rachel sat on the basement floor holding her best friend’s body and crying. She looked small and fragile—like a child. Her friend’s head rested in Rachel’s lap, its long blonde hair spread out over her legs. Its eyes stared lifelessly towards the ceiling, seeing nothing. A small, thin trickle of blood ran out of her mouth and dripped from her chin.

  Over and over, Rachel stroked he
r friend’s hair, shushing her and crying like she comforted a sick baby who might die at any time. I looked closer and, for the first time, saw the cut across Rosa’s throat and the bloody towels heaped in the corner.

  “Rachel,” I said, my voice soft. “Babydoll…what happened here?”

  “Shush,” she whispered. Rocking back and forth, she stroked Rosa’s hair. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she trembled all over from her sobbing.

  I walked over and crouched down in front of her. “Rachel?”

  No reply came. She didn’t even look at me, continuing instead to rock and shush, petting Rosa all the while.

  I reached out to her and lifted her head by the chin until her eyes met mine. They had nothing in them at first but confusion—she seemed unable, or unwilling, to recognize me. A sudden clarity flooded into her eyes, though, and she knew me then.

  She screamed, a horrible sound, like that of a child who finds his mother dead from suicide. Revulsion and horror filled her eyes, and she scrambled away from me, screaming until her back reached the wall and she curled up into a ball, covering her face.

  I ran over to bundle her up in my arms, but she wouldn’t let me. She flailed, wild, striking out at me and clawing at my face. I couldn’t gather my wits fast enough to restrain her, and she hit me several times and slashed my face around my left eye. Coming to my senses, I caught hold of her and pulled her close, forcing her arms tight against her sides.

  She shuddered and wailed, choking out a word or two, but making no real sense.

  “It’s ok, baby,” I said, trying to sound comforting. “It’s ok.”

  Eventually, her wailing subsided, and she rested her head on my chest and cried. The area around my eye burned, and my face flushed, hot from having been hit. I continued to hold her for about an hour, rocking her and kissing her forehead. She never looked up the entire time; she kept her face buried against my chest, sobbing until there were no more tears to cry.

  She pulled away from me a little and looked up at my face, her eyes red and puffy from crying. Her lower lip trembled, and it struck me again how child-like she seemed.

  “Babydoll,” I said, testing her reaction, “what happened here?”

  She started to speak, stopped, exhaled deeply, then started again. “We came in to smoke some bud. I…I went to use the bathroom…I guess she…she decided to use the one in the basement…. Oh, God…. I heard her scream….”

  Tears filled her eyes to overflowing, and for a moment I lost her again to her grief.

  “She found the body?” I asked, already guessing the answer.

  She nodded. “I…I came running down, and she was…she was just standing there, screaming, staring at the body. I tried to explain, but when she heard me she just turned and stared at me like I was the Devil. I tried to calm her down, but she said she was going to the cops. I tried to stop her, but she just wouldn’t listen, so I…I….”

  The words, which had just started flowing, failed her, emotion stopping up her voice. I didn’t need to hear anymore.

  “Rachel,” I said, turning her head to face me, “listen to me, babydoll. We’ve got to leave town tonight. We’ll have to make it look like we’ve been murdered too.”

  Her vacant eyes stared back at me, showing no sign of comprehension. She seemed unable to pull herself away from the thought of what she’d done to Rosa. I realized that inside her head the gruesome scene replayed itself on a perpetual loop, tormenting her with what she had done. I shuddered at the thought of it and placed my hands on her, taking her by the shoulders. Her young girl face portrayed her mind seeking comfort from the nightmare. For long, wordless minutes, she stared back at me. Slowly, she came around. Even after she’d regained her composure I waited, giving her just a little more time to gather her wits.

  I broke the silence. “Listen to me, babydoll. We have to leave town—maybe for good—and we’ll need to throw everyone off of our trail permanently.”

  “W-why?” Her feeble sounding reply demanded.

  “I think the cops might come here looking to question me. Before they do, I want to be gone, but I also want them to think that I’m gone for good. I want them to think we’re dead.”

  Her eyes grew wider. “But how? How can we do that?”

  “I’ll cut the head off of him,” I nodded back towards the Jeep boy’s corpse, “and we’ll cut off Rosa’s head….”

  The mention of her murdered friend elicited a fresh moan of pain from Rachel, and for a minute she floundered in the torment of her conscience. I left her long enough for her to start crying again and then shook her, calling her name.

  “Rachel!” I snapped. “Rachel! Listen to me. We need to get a third woman, too, one about the same size as you. We’ll cut her head off as well, then we’ll put the three bodies together and douse them and everything around them with gas. We’ll take the heads with us and burn the bodies and the house. It’ll look like we were victims too. It has to. So we’ll have to leave everything.”

  I was ranting. The words of my plan spilled out so fast that they even surprised me. “We can probably take a couple changes of clothes, but that’s it. We’ll have to leave all our personal things here to make it look convincing.”

  I laid out my plan, step-by-step, and Rachel stared hard at me, her mouth opening wider and wider.

  “How can you?” she screamed, slapping me hard across my face.

  For a second, I froze in confused indecision. My cheek burned where she’d slapped me, and I felt the outline of her handprint. I reached up and rubbed my cheek.

  “Don’t you see?” she continued screaming, “This isn’t a game anymore.”

  “It’s never been a game to me.”

  She gasped at the bluntness of my words and tried to slap me again. I caught her by the wrist and then snared her free hand before she got any other ideas.

  “Look,” I said. “I know you feel like shit for your friend, and if I had time to let you wallow and cry I would. But we don’t have time. We have to leave tonight. Now, you decide what you want. Do you want to stay here mourning a corpse until the police come or do you want to get out while we can? Damn it! Think for a second.”

  I let go of her hands—throwing them down in disgust. For a long minute she sat in silence, staring down at her hands, and I thought that she would start crying again. Instead, she reached up to rub the print she’d left on my cheek, her cool fingers feeling like ice against the warmth of the mark. I looked into her eyes and found them different—hardened, consigned.

  “I…I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.” She paused in thought. “Where are we gonna get the woman?”

  Chapter Eight

  Eventually, and for lack of a better idea, we decided to pick up a hooker. Deciding turned out to be one thing. Finding one who had the right body shape and height was another matter. By the time we found the right one and got her back to the house it was almost two a.m., which left us in a rush.

  Rachel disappeared into the bedroom to get us packed, and I took the whore to the kitchen—to kill her. With no time for fun or finesse, I stabbed her with my Spec Plus—a fighting knife I picked up in the Corps, patterned after the K-bar but a little thicker and longer. I stuck it through her throat, then set the blade on the counter and dragged her body downstairs.

  Outside in my tool shed, I collected my gas can and hacksaw and took them down to the basement so I could set to work cutting off our replacements’ heads.

  I had the easiest time on the whore’s—I guess the saw blade must have slid between the vertebrae of her neck—but Jeep Boy and Rosa proved a serious pain. More than once the blade got stuck and I had to muscle it through. Wet and clotted clumps of blood covered me by the time I’d severed both heads.

  I laid them together. For fun, I set Rosa and the whore’s up so it looked like they were making out, but the thought of what Rachel’s reaction would be convinced me to move them apart. I situated the bodies so that they all sat, b
acks together, in a small circle.

  I poured the can of gas over the bodies. About two thirds of the way to emptying it, it occurred to me that I should turn off my furnace’s pilot light. Smiling at my own ineptitude, I set down the can, ran to the furnace, shut it off, and blew out the flame. I spread the rest of the gas around the basement and up the stairs, leading a trail to the kitchen.

  By the time I finished, Rachel had packed a duffel bag for each of us. I checked mine and found two pairs of everything I’d need for the trip, two issues of an independent comic book I’d written and co-produced in high school, a bag of toiletries, and my freshly cleaned Spec Plus. I took the bag of toiletries out and zipped the duffel shut.

  “We’ll have to leave these behind. We’ll get some when we get where we’re going,” I said.

  She unzipped her own duffel, pulled out a much larger bag of items, and handed it to me. “Where are we going?” she asked, following behind me to the bathroom.

  I replaced all the toothbrushes and deodorants.

  “I don’t really know. I guess we could head to California, check out the scene there.”

  “How about Canada?” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see Niagara Falls.”

  “Ok, Niagara Falls it is. You ready to go?”

  She threw her head back and laughed. It shocked me to hear it so soon after her despair.

  I cocked my head to the side and raised an eyebrow at her. “What’s so funny?”

  “Don’t you think you should maybe…I don’t know…change clothes and grab a shower?”

  An impish smile formed on her face, and I gained a sudden, acute awareness of being drenched in blood.

  “Good point.” I laughed and made my way back down to the basement. “Be right back.”

  * * * * *

  The trek to Canada ended up taking longer than I originally planned. We’d intended to grab seats on a Greyhound and head into New York by bus, but changed our plans by the end of the first leg of the trip. The bus ride was excruciatingly long, and by the time we reached the first stop in Pennsylvania, we’d both had enough.