by Tom Schreck
“You screwball,” Rocco said.
Kelley was in his usual spot, turned away from the Foursome. ESPN Classic was showing that old home-run derby show and Hank Aaron was up against Moose Skowron.
“Hey, who’s on the mound?” I said.
“Please … ,” Kelley said.
AJ slid a Schlitz to me and a Coors Light in front of Kelley.
“Any news about Howard?” I asked.
“No, they don’t have anything new.”
“I think it might have something to do with that prison overdose. Dr. Pacquoa said that around the same time that the inmates died, a graduate intern abruptly stopped coming to the prison.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Rudy knows a guy who did some psychiatric consultation in the prison during that time and I went to talk to him. He’s a Filipino doc and he told me about some things.”
“Oh really?”
“Maybe you could suggest to Morris and his bunch that they should look in to that?”
“Maybe you should go screw that Bond girl—what are you, nuts?”
“Hey—I’m just trying to help.”
“That’s the problem. Once again you’re out of your league and in over your head. They have no interest in proving Howard is innocent; they’re interested in finding him as fast as they can. Until kids stop showing up dead, the cops and the general public don’t find Howard a terribly sympathetic character,” Kelley said.
Clearly, Kell wasn’t in the best of moods and I didn’t feel like getting scolded, so I shut up for a while. I went back to drinking my beer and AJ flipped the TV to Channel 13 for the news. The local stations were milking the hell out of the murder story with nightly updates even when they had very little new information.
“New developments in the Crawford Slayer case,” the pretty rubberized female anchor said, starting the news. “Toxicology reports indicate that victims Connie Carter and Alison Mann both had traces of illicit drugs in their system. The State Laboratory did not recognize any of the drug’s metabolites and they did not fit any of the usual drug categories.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I said.
“It usually means that the subjects were using a designer drug like ecstasy, except it’s a new version or some sort of derivative,” Kelley said.
“Hmmm …”
“What ‘Hmmm’?”
“Well, what do you think that does to the case?”
“The fact that a high-school kid was getting high? I don’t think it does anything. High-school kids being high, when did that become news?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
I decided that I had gotten my recommended daily dose of Schlitz and started to head out. On my way to the door, I couldn’t help but hear the Foursome looking for some sort of resolution to Cal Ripken’s problems with Kevin Costner.
“That’s why he played in all those games,” Rocco said.
“Because his wife was doing the guy from The Untouchables?” TC said.
“Apparently, he wasn’t untouchable in real life,” Jerry Number Two said.
23
Al, the long-eared alarm clock, went off at just after five on Sunday morning. In between the steady stream of WOOFs there was the familiar thwack sound.
“Good morning, Billy,” I said as I stood on my front stoop. It dawned on me that it had been a couple of days since I put the kid through his paces, which probably accounted for his early morning visit. He was throwing his stars into my tree from about forty or fifty feet. The kid couldn’t throw a kick without landing on his backside and he couldn’t string together more than ten pushups, but he was pretty accurate with the stars.
“Sir, yes sir.” He snapped to attention when he saw me despite the fact that I was wearing ratty old sweats and a dirty wife-beater. Today’s zit was at the point of his chin and he had a dollop of Clearasil on it. “Sir, we haven’t trained in a few days.”
“Sorry about that, Billy.” The kid looked at me with a face sadder than Al’s. “We can train tonight if you want.”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“One ‘sir’ is more than enough, kid.”
“Sir?”
“Never mind. Meet me at the Y tonight, but not in our usual place. Let’s meet in that aerobics room on the second floor around eight.”
“Sir, yes sir.”
“Geez … Hey, Billy, let me ask you a non-karate question.”
“Sir.”
“How has this crazy shit going on in school with the killer affected things?”
“Sir, kids are scared.”
“Did you know any of the kids at school?”
“Sir, I keep mostly to myself. The girls that were killed were cheerleaders.”
He said it like the fact that they were cheerleaders made him unworthy to be in their presence. I remembered what high school was like for guys like Billy. Teenagers weren’t a kind, accepting bunch, especially if you were a little goofy—ask Howard Rheinhart—and Billy was more than a little goofy.
“I’ll see you tonight, kid,” I said. He bowed and ran down the street.
I brought Al with me to the Y and took advantage of his low profile to sneak him past the front desk. The disinterested teenager knew I was a regular and didn’t look away from the TV as I waved to him. I had seen Smitty’s car was in the lot, like it always was, but I wasn’t ready to say hello yet. Smitty was a lot of things and in many ways a complex man, but he didn’t trouble himself with small talk. He didn’t care for bullshit ambiguity and I was ambivalent about just about everything going on in my life. He would look at me and I’d divert my eyes and stutter. For the time being, I decided to avoid him.
The Y was a sniffer’s paradise, and the combined aromas of bad BO, talc, and liquid soap had Al a little overactive. There was just a bit too much for him to process, so by the time we got to the aerobics room he collapsed on a mat, rolled over on his back, and started to snore with his four legs in the air.
It was five after eight and my karateka was no place to be found. Billy had never been less than half an hour early for anything. When he was fifteen minutes late I started to worry, and at half an hour, I began to panic a little bit. Something was wrong.
While I sat there and grew more anxious, it dawned on me that I knew very little about the kid. His dad was dead and his mother worked a lot, but I didn’t even know an address or a phone number. Whenever I gave him a lift he asked me to leave him a mile from his house so he could run home. I don’t know what that was all about—maybe he was embarrassed about his house or his mom. Shit, maybe he was embarrassed about me. Maybe he just wanted to run. I swear, working in human services screws you up for life.
It wasn’t like I ever needed to contact him—God knows, Billy made himself available. At eight forty-five I figured he wasn’t coming, and I left the Y more than just a little nervous.
As we walked out Al pulled me all over the Y, once again overwhelmed with the sniffles. When we hit the parking lot he was like a burning man who had jumped in a swimming pool. He seemed to relax and say “Ahhh …” We walked past Smitty’s Olds and were headed toward the Eldorado when we came upon Mitchell and Harter’s SUV. At first Al paused like he didn’t want to encounter the pit bull, but then he proceeded over to it.
There was no barking, so the pit bull probably didn’t take the ride that night. Al was back, sniffing like a mad hound. He went up one side and down the other and then focused his attention on the back gate. He got up on his hind legs and sniffed all over the handle, pulled back, and barked twice. Then he sat at attention staring at the back of the SUV.
I pulled him and he strained his neck, but he wouldn’t leave his position. There was no point in looking in the vehicle because the windows were tinted. I called to him and pulled h
ard enough to shake him out of his stance, but he continued to resist to the point where I nearly had to drag him. As we walked away, he whimpered.
I knew something was up the second I got to AJ’s. The Foursome weren’t talking and they were riveted to the TV screen. Kelley was there too, but no one paid any attention to me when I walked in. The TV was on MSNBC and they were in a special report.
“… It is a sign of ritualized murder, a thought-out process and one in which the murderer is expressing more confidence. He’s actually thumbing his nose at the authorities trying to apprehend him,” the head profiler said.
“The draining of blood from the bodies, is that a particular sign of something?” the anchor said.
“Draining a human body of blood takes a level of expertise. It takes a particular commitment to totally drain the life out of an individual, if you will, and it also indicates to everyone involved that he has the power to control others.”
“Holy shit,” I heard myself say.
“Two more teenagers. Throats slit, blood drained from them and discarded in a field. This is getting beyond sick,” Kelley said.
“This isn’t Howard. This is something else,” I said.
Kelley didn’t say anything, which told me a lot. All of AJ’s sat in silence for a long time, which gave everything an even more surreal feel. AJ’s and silence just didn’t fit together. When my thinking got back to normal I thought of Billy and got scared.
I borrowed Rocco’s cell phone and called my machine. There was a message from Marcia asking me why I haven’t called and just because we weren’t going out anymore we could still be friends, but that was it—nothing from Billy.
Then I called Jamal. He was never without his cell.
“Jamal.” It was the way he always answered.
“It’s Duff, J. Salami and bacon,” I said.
“Salaam alaikum … Why you got to fuck with Allah?”
“Sorry. Hey, tonight Al did something really weird.”
“Duff, that all that hound ever do.”
“He sniffed all over this car, jumped up sniffed the handle, barked twice, and then sat at attention. He wouldn’t move.”
“Uh-huh. You remember what I told you Al was trained for?”
“He sniffed explosives.”
“Yeah, but he was trained as part of the Fruit of Islam’s security team.”
“So, what’s that mean—he guarded Al Sharpton’s pomade?”
“Nope—it means the crazy-ass hound knows how to sniff out illegal drugs.”
24
I went in and out of sleep that night, worried about Billy. Sure, he was a goofy and annoying kid, but I didn’t want anything to happen to him. I also didn’t know what to make of Howard, his life in prison, and what if any role this Blast shit had to do with anything. Then there were the karate guys, their drug dealing, and why a God-loving guy like Abadon would hang around with them. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that he trained with them; after all, I’ve boxed with some of society’s real pariahs and enjoyed my time in the gym with them. People are rarely one thing and I do my best to see them that way. Don’t forget, Hitler loved dogs.
Of course, I don’t know if he put up with them barking at five a.m. like I did. Al rousted me out of my restless slumber with his attention to the door. I was hoping it was Billy, but this was a bit on the early side, even for him. Then Allah-King spun around and sat, relieved to know it was the karate kid he was familiar with. I opened the front door and there he was, at attention and looking kind of pale.
“Sir, my apologies for not making practice, sir. No excuses sir, and I will do one hundred pushups as a suitable discipline,” Billy said.
I looked at him closer and what I thought was a pale pallor was really a mess of Clearasil on the whole left side of his face. I stepped off my stoop and walked toward him to get a closer inspection.
Billy dropped into his knuckle-pushup position and began to count out.
“One … two … three …”
“Kid,” I tried to interrupt him at four but he kept on going. “Attention—on your feet!” I tried to give it as much authority as I could.
Billy stood in front of me, hyperventilating from the pushups. I wiped at the Clearasil with my thumb and as a big goop of it came off Billy winced. The whole side of his face was black and blue.
“Who did this to you?” I said, almost to myself.
“It was an accident.”
“Who did this to you!” I returned to my karate command voice.
“Uh, sir …”
I could feel the vein in my neck twitch.
“Who?” I realized I was shouting.
“Jake, my mother’s boyfriend.” A silent tear ran down Billy’s face.
“This isn’t the first time, is it?”
Billy shook his head and more tears came down his face.
“To your mom too?”
Billy nodded and sniffled the accumulating tears back. His cheeks were streaked.
“What does Jake do for work?”
“He works out of town, construction. He’s only around some weekends.”
“Is he in Crawford this week?”
“No, he’ll be back on Friday.”
I took a second to think. Billy had stopped crying and was standing at attention.
“Meet me at the Y tonight at eight, you understand?”
“Sir, yes sir.”
I bowed and dismissed him, and he did his usual run down 9R.
The vein in my neck wouldn’t stop twitching. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to do it, but I was going to make sure that Jake never harmed Billy again.
I chose to look at my suspension as a semi-retirement. One of my heroes, the fictional Travis McGee from John D. MacDonald’s pulp novels, used to say he was taking his retirement on the installment plan. He also lived on a 110-foot houseboat and had endless chicks and a best friend who was an economist. I lived in a 27-foot Airstream, got dumped regularly by women in therapy, and my best friend was a short-legged, long-eared slobber machine. Me and Travis had a lot in common.
I poured some coffee and flipped to MSNBC. They were doing their daily update on the “Crawford Slayer,” which they did every day regardless of whether there was new information. The former FBI profiler was talking via satellite to the blonde, very attractive, but not very intelligent anchor.
“With the second and third victim’s toxicology reports indicating drug use, is the evidence now pointing to cult involvement?” the blonde asked.
“We’re talking about a repeat serial killer, and we often see feelings of grandeur and delusions of almost godlike qualities. I think it’s a very real possibility that these killings, especially with their gruesome characteristics, and now drug use, could be pointing to cult involvement,” the profiler said.
“Does the evidence point to Rheinhart as the cult leader, and what role do drugs play in a cult leadership?”
“Drugs become addicting or at least pleasurable, and cult leaders use them as a way to control followers. The ritualistic slayings further indicate that the murders mean something to the killer.”
“How so?”
“The decapitation, the writing with blood, and the draining of blood demonstrate anger and a complete dehumanization of the victim. The fact that the high-school students met such a dramatic end may suggest that they were involved in the cult but lost the approval of the leader. That, or he no longer had any use for them.”
The pretty head continued with more of the same nonsense banter that I just couldn’t buy. First of all, I don’t think I ever met anyone who was less of a leader than Howard. He was a painfully shy loner who freaked out for a few days thirty years ago—this Hannibal Lecter shit just seemed like bullshit to me. The fact that high-school kid
s had drugs in their system just didn’t seem at all like news to me. I would’ve been shocked if a cross section of high-school kids didn’t have drugs in their system.
The question I wanted answered was where was Howard and why was his blood spilled in the park. Who was he afraid of and why would they want to get him?
25
With a bit of forceful prying on Billy, I found out his mom’s BF was Jake Sofco. And with Kelley’s help, I found out he’s a two-time felon with a history of assault, DWI, and drug dealing. With even more pressure on Billy, I learned that Jake hangs out at a roadhouse called the Insideout just past the Crawford county line. He’d get primed there and show up at Billy’s mom’s apartment and start terrorizing them.
Not having enough to do is probably dangerous for me. My mind isn’t a place I should head into on my own, but that’s exactly where I found myself, thinking all week that this man had to be stopped and I was the one to do it. Billy let me know that Jake drove a red Chevy pickup with rusted fenders and a gun rack, so I figured if I just hung out at the Insideout on a Friday afternoon, eventually Jake would show up.
On Friday afternoon, I got to the parking lot around four o’clock, brought a box of eight-tracks, a six-pack of Schlitz, and Rudy’s cell phone. The Schlitz would make doing what I had to do easier, the eight-tracks would get me psyched, and the cell phone was just in case I needed to call Kelley.
Elvis was singing the “Where Could I Go But to the Lord/I’m Saved” medley, and I was looking down at my fourth empty when I saw the red truck pull in. Both sets of knuckles went white around the steering wheel and my neck began to spasm. Jake was a big boy with a mop of curly hair, a fat face, and a layer of hard fat that pushed out his flannel shirt just over his belt. He had the build of a pretty good Division III football guard, ten years out of the game. He could’ve been Michael Strahan and it wouldn’t have mattered tonight.
I slammed the door to the Eldorado and headed toward the entrance. The gravel kicked up as I walked, and I became aware that both my hands were balled into fists. I thought of Billy, a goofy-ass kid without a dad, and what it would be like for him to watch his mom get slapped around. Sofco couldn’t get beat up enough.
