Blood dribbles onto the carpet, onto the desk. It speckles the walls.
“I have money. Take whatever you need. I don’t—”
A flick of the beast’s wrist and it sounds like it’s starting to rain in the small room.
The doctor chokes on his own blood. Grabs at his throat.
The beast merely watches. Sees through the red.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
There is still light in Eichmann’s eyes when he crumples to the ground.
Good.
It would be a shame if he missed this.
* * *
The beast found Eichmann’s wife asleep in their shared bedroom. Her blood is now cool against the beast’s skin, sticky under its clothes, knotted in the hair on its arms. She had awakened with the first cut, which had fortunately preempted her screams. The beast had derived no pleasure from the deed. It had simply been a scene from a play that had been written for it many years ago, one that it had enacted as if it had already performed it a thousand times before and knew its role by rote.
The beast drags its bloody palms down the walls to make sure its message will be received loud and clear.
The Eichmann’s granddaughter looks nothing like the doctor. The beast does not wonder why she is staying here, if it is for the weekend or for the summer, if she arrived that day or if she was leaving the next. The beast does not wonder about any of this. The only thought on the beast’s mind when it climbs up onto the bed beside her and rolls her onto her back is that the dried blood on its face is making its cheeks itch.
The girl’s eyes snap open.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
It covers her mouth and hears her muffled scream.
Her eyes are wide.
So wide.
They open wider and wider.
Open wide like doors.
Open so wide he sees infinity.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
The beast has the key in its hand, inserts it above the girl’s eyes, pushes down gently as he has been taught.
And releases eternity.
He understands.
Understands everything now.
Infinity. Eternity.
They are words. Concepts.
Names.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
This girl. This child. She too is a word. A concept.
She too has a name.
As he is The Beast.
She has a name, as well.
A name that only The Beast knows.
A name by which she will be called in a place far greater than she and through time immemorial.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
The Beast smiles and calls her by her name.
One.
She is the first.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
She is Number One.
The Present – Millington, Tennessee
Over the next few days, Jeffers plotted his strategy to find Aaron, squeeze a confession out of him, and then eliminate him. He orchestrated a couple of discreet, daylight “drive-by’s” of the young man’s residence in Munford to get “the lay of the land,” so-to-speak, even though he was somewhat familiar with the area, since he had once followed Craven himself from his house just three doors away to Little Rock twenty years ago. On one of Jeffers’ passes, he was fortunate to spot a late-model Chevy Malibu sitting in the driveway, from which he was able to glean a TN license plate. He immediately called in the tag number to a friend of his in the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, who quickly confirmed, to Jeffers’ dismay, that the vehicle was a rental car. Despite the disappointing news, he had no desire to cancel his game plan.
Jeffers huddled with McIntosh a couple times during this period, as well, as he wanted to keep his close friend apprised of his upcoming plan. On the afternoon of the night he intended to confront Aaron, he met with McIntosh in a small diner a few blocks down from his store.
“You sure about this, Mal?” McIntosh said, rubbing his hands nervously around a frosty glass of sweet tea.
“Yeah, I gotta do it. If it is him, who knows how many lives I’ll be taking out of harm’s way?”
McIntosh sighed. “I guess so,” he said with a shake of his head. “Any funny feelings lately?”
“No, it’s been pretty quiet. He must be laying low.”
“If it was him spying on you, my question is: How did he find you? I mean, he was only eight years old when you first provoked him---how would he remember?”
“I’m not sure…I guess he memorized my face, maybe researched all of his dad’s kills, and searched newspaper archives or something for photos of the surviving families and relatives at funerals and what-nots. Be pretty easy, if you ask me. Guess he’s pretty motivated.”
“I’d say so,”
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Jeffers said, manufacturing a smile.
“Be careful, and call me when it’s done.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
A little after midnight that evening, Jeffers glided silently down Aaron’s street, observed that the rental car was once again perched in the middle of the driveway and all of his house lights were off, before turning a corner and pulling up to the curb some distance down the side road. Garbed entirely in black and wearing a lightweight pair of gloves, he quietly exited his late-model SUV and eased the door shut behind him, locking it. He was carrying his customary B & E tools and a few other items, including a small flashlight, a couple pairs of flex-cuffs, and his reliable Sig Sauer semi-automatic handgun.
As he moved briskly down the sidewalk, keeping to the shadows as an unusually chilly breeze for this time of year caressed his face, he experienced a moment of déjà vu when Jack Craven’s house materialized like a wraith in front of him. He wondered, strangely, who lived there now. With a rash of goose bumps ruffling his long sleeve-bedecked arms, he nevertheless continued on to Aaron’s residence.
Hunched over now, he moved swiftly to the side of the two-story dwelling and edged around to the rear of the house. No lights anywhere, he thought, glancing inside after he had sidled up the back steps and over to the kitchen door, a standard, glass-paned affair. The barking of a neighbor’s dog caught him by surprise. He held his breath for a long moment, greasy warm sweat trickling down his forehead. His sixth sense radar suddenly cried out to him.
Shit! he thought. Continue or discontinue? Damn!
But the dog stopped barking, and despite the warning bell ringing in his head like a claxon, Jeffers unsheathed the tools of his trade along with his flashlight, and meticulously worked at the back door knob with his lock picks. Within thirty seconds he had sprung the tumblers and put away his tools, shifting the flashlight from his mouth to his left hand.
He carefully eased the door open, almost certain there was no alarm to circumvent. Creeping into the kitchen on his rubber sneakers, he familiarized himself with his gloomy surroundings, noting the location of the refrigerator, sink, stove, and other necessities, before spying a couple of doorways, one probably leading to the living room and the other to a hall, he guessed. He slipped out his P229, tucking it close to his right side, and inched over to the doorway he hoped would guide him to a hallway and a stairs to the second floor, where Aaron’s bedroom would most likely be.
Poking his head around the corner, he looked both ways before noting the stairwell to his left. As he tiptoed steadily in that direction, a faint, musty aroma invaded his nostrils, perking his ears up. Continuing onward, nevertheless, it suddenly struck him that it smelled like a man’s aftershave. And even as he felt the slight movement of air behind him, carrying the advancing scent, a deep, sharp pain burrowed into his right shoulder blade, dropping him to his knees and face-first to the floor, the semi-automatic tumbling out of his hands.
Oh shit! he thought, incongruously. Now they got the other shoulder.
Jeffers slowly rolled over to face his attacker, dropping his flashlight and using his free hand to reach around his neck and over his shoulder, trying
to stem the flow of blood and stop the burning pain. A large knife was imbedded high up on his back, and as he fumbled at the bloody shaft, a light flicked on in the hall, blinding him momentarily.
“Malcolm Jeffers,” a voice said. “My last stop.”
When his eyes finally adjusted to the bright glare, Jeffers found himself staring ten feet away at a tall, lean young man, very similar in build to his late-father. The once-boyish face that he remembered charging at him twenty years ago with a switchblade in his hand was now marred by a network of scars surrounding his nose and lining his forehead. And this time, Aaron Mitchell held a gun in his grip, pointed directly at his face.
Jeffers continued to claw at his upper back, trying to reach the knife jutting there, as his right hand rummaged inconspicuously in his pants pocket.
“Trying to even the score?” Mitchell said.
“What do you think?” Jeffers grimaced, still worrying at the blade in his back and glancing at his semi-automatic, lying at least six feet behind him.
“Funny thing is,” Mitchell began, “you killed my father, thinking he killed your wife and son, when it was actually me who killed them.”
Jeffers could do nothing more than glare in shock and agony at the younger man, all the while still probing deep in his pocket.
“My father was training me, and after watching him a number of times, I convinced him to let me do them as my first and second kills. So, guess what? You shot the wrong guy!”
“Who says I won’t have another chance?” Jeffers replied, finally extracting the small canister of pepper spray he always carried from his pants pocket and firing a long burst directly into Mitchell’s shocked face.
Screaming in agony as the powerful chemicals attacked his eyes, nose, mouth and respiratory system, Mitchell blindly cranked off a couple of wild rounds as Jeffers rolled sideways and scrabbled backwards to retrieve his weapon.
Oblivious to the pain radiating in waves from his right shoulder, Jeffers plucked his semi-automatic off the floor, turned to face Mitchell while still proned out, and pulled the trigger three times, catching him squarely in the chest and dropping him almost instantly.
Breathing heavily, and still hurting intensely, Jeffers slowly gained his feet, gun trained on Mitchell, while he pulled out a handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth from the residual effects of the spray. He bent down over Mitchell’s body, dropped his handkerchief, coughed a bit and felt for a pulse at his neck. A long moment later, he sighed. Is it finally over? he thought.
He knew he had to leave quickly, especially with shots fired and concerned neighbors itching to dial 9-1-1. But he couldn’t leave just yet. He tucked his gun under his belt at the small of his back, retrieved his handkerchief, and stood up. Reaching behind him again, he was finally able to grasp the hilt of the blade stuck in his shoulder. Gritting his teeth against the imminent acute pain, he tugged the knife free, almost blacking out in the process. Folding his handkerchief in a rough square, he wedged it like a compress under his shirt and jacket to temporarily stop the flow of blood, the coppery odor only adding to his mild nausea. Blade in hand, he crouched over the lifeless form of Aaron Mitchell and knelt down.
“I may never know what you and your father were searching for in their eyes,” he whispered, “but I know he didn’t get to see infinity, Aaron. And neither will you.”
Swiftly, his gorge rising nevertheless, he inserted the knife into each of Aaron’s eyes and excised them both, calmly dropping the glistening orbs off to the side. Then, completing the part of the killers’ signature that had never been revealed to the public, he carefully and deeply carved a sideways figure 8 around Aaron’s eye sockets---the Infinity sign.
Dropping the blood-slicked knife on the floor next to the body, Jeffers staggered to the back door and trudged to his waiting car as sirens warbled in the dark distance.
EPILOGUE
July 8, 2011 – Millington, Tennessee
Wearing a threadbare raincoat, Jeffers stood solemnly beside the headstones of his wife and son, hunched over against the chill rain sprinkling down from the dark gray, moisture-bloated clouds dominating the overcast, mid-morning sky. His left hand gently clutched a simple floral arrangement, while his right arm hung limply within a makeshift sling.
After he had killed Aaron Mitchell and fled the scene earlier in the week, he had driven straight to Dave McIntosh’s house, where his best friend’s wife, Jackie, had done her best to cleanse his deep wound and sew him back up; there was a good chance he had suffered muscle and nerve damage, but that remained to be seen. She had then improvised a sling out of some old bed linen to temporarily immobilize his arm. Jeffers and McIntosh had fabricated a story about him being injured in a disagreement outside of a bar, but she wasn’t buying it; thankfully, she didn’t press them for the real reason.
Once local law enforcement and the feds had arrived at the crime scene late that evening, they realized something very unusual had transpired. Not only had their search uncovered a small cache of preserved eyes, similar to the original Infinity Killer’s treasure trove twenty years before, they had also discovered the lifeless body of, apparently, the current mid-south serial killer. He had been shot and killed by an unknown assailant, his face also disfigured in a fashion once used by the Infinity Killer of 1991. Investigators still didn’t completely know what they were dealing with, especially when several shady military-types had shown up, but, collectively, they breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that a further killing spree had undoubtedly been averted.
Jeffers bent down and carefully placed the fresh-scented bouquet of flowers between the pair of gravestones, the tears trickling from his eyes indistinguishable from the falling rain. He slowly stood up and clasped his hands together in prayer.
“Thirty years, honey,” he whispered. “If you and Joey had been alive we’d be married thirty years today. I miss you so much…miss the both of you.” He gritted his teeth against his anguish, tears continuing to course down his cheeks. “I finally took care of the one who killed you and Joey. It took twenty years, but I finally did it. The ‘Infinity Killer’ and his son are gone. And all I can say is that one day…you, me and Joey will all be together again…and we’ll have infinity to look forward to. I love you, baby…and I love you, Joey. I’ll be back…”
Sniffling, he turned away, the rain falling harder now, cleansing his face and purging him. He quietly set off toward McIntosh, who was patiently waiting for him in the grass, halfway between the gravesite and his new Chevy. When Jeffers reached him, he gently patted his injured friend on the back and escorted him to his car. McIntosh unlocked the doors, paused for a moment while Jeffers clambered into the passenger seat, before climbing behind the wheel. He started the engine and slowly pulled away, the two of them heading for home…and the remainder of their short, finite lives.
THE END
Infinity Twice Removed Page 6
