by Tom Schreck
It had been a hell of a month.
I hit the button on the machine to see who had called and I had three messages. The first was a recorded sales message about aluminum siding, which I found particularly absurd considering I lived in a steel tube. The next message was from Marcia.
“Hi Duff, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve met someone new and very special, and even though my therapist thinks it’s too soon for me to get involved, I really feel something special for this man. I just knew you’d be happy for me. Take care.”
That really was special.
The third call was from Dr. Pacquoa.
“Duffy, I called an old colleague about our days in the prison. The graduate student who disappeared shortly after the deaths was named Victor Gunner, and he was in the doctoral program at the University at Albany. No one knows what happened to him since. Don’t know if this helps. Thank you.”
Hmmm… that felt like something important, though I wasn’t completely sure how or why. Suffice to say, between the evening’s events and the Schlitz I wasn’t firing on all cognitive cylinders at this point. Of course, it was nice to hear that Marcia had found somebody special. Geez.
I was drifting off on the couch when the phone rang. It was Kelley and it was now close to one in the morning.
“You up?” Kelley said.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Hey, this DWI you tipped me off to. The Foursome tells me that you gave them cash and drove them out to the Insideout to drink with him.”
“Yeah, so.”
“So, bullshit. Those four leave AJ’s every time there’s an eclipse. What’s up?”
“The guy’s abusive to a goofy kid I’m teaching karate to.”
Kelley paused. He didn’t know anything about me and Billy.
“The kid you teach karate to… let’s just leave that alone for a second. You knew this guy had a record of DWIs and drug possession.”
“Yeah, you told me that, remember?”
“So you get him drunk on the outside of town and call me when he’s on the road?”
“Yep.”
“I probably don’t want to know if his claim that the gun and the drugs weren’t his is true, do I?”
“Uh, Kell, the guy was regularly beating the kid and his mom.”
“You’re fuckin’ nuts, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah-tell me something I don’t know.”
I hung up and the next morning I woke up on the couch with my head using Al as a pillow. I was hungover but otherwise I slept pretty well.
27
According to the University at Albany, Victor Gunner graduated and got his license to practice psychiatry in 1997. There was no mention of his abrupt departure from the prison internship, and after he got his MD he went to a medical center in Seattle in 1998, then to a prison in North Dakota in 2000, then to a hospital in Mississippi in 2002, and then finally to another hospital in Wisconsin. Then it appeared he left the country. They didn’t have any further information than that on him.
When I Googled his name on Rudy’s computer, nothing came up. I checked into some serial-killer websites and was disturbed at the shear number of them available. Some of them were straight reference sites but others were like fan clubs for the murderers. Slashanddie. com had a listing of unsolved creepy murders by state and I checked in to the places Gunner had been to. In 1998 there were three murders of teenagers in Seattle in which the victims were drained of blood. In Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 2002 there were four slayings that involved the disfiguring of the corpses and sexual mutilation of teenagers, two male and two female. In Natchez, Mississippi, they found a teenager’s headless body drained of blood, and she had been sexually assaulted. There were four other teenagers murdered by puncture wounds who had lost significant amounts of blood.
A blood-drained, female, teenaged body was found in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, in 2003, and another was found in Waco, Texas, in 2005. The website didn’t speculate on whether any of these slayings were related. In fact, they listed blood drainings and decapitations as categories like they were hardware products or groceries. It’s a strange world.
The one section that did catch my eye featured pages of pages of copycat murders. There were at least eleven separate slayings that mimicked Manson’s work, complete with bloody messages written on walls, women with shaved heads, and weird devotion to the Beatles. Jeffrey Dahmer had some fans too, with eight different murders since his arrest in which the victim’s body parts were left in acid to decompose. Even that age-old favorite Jack the Ripper had scores of fans doing whatever they could to be like Jack. All of a sudden I felt pretty comfortable with my idolization of Elvis Presley.
I called the three medical centers in an effort to find out about this Dr. Gunner and asked their human resource departments for information. I claimed to be from a local college where Dr. Gunner had applied to teach. I did my best to sound like a disinterested human resource worker going through a formality. In both cases they gave the standard information that he was employed on such and such dates and that he was eligible for rehire. They wouldn’t give me anything else.
From there, I checked the New York State Department of Health registry and there was no record of a Dr. Victor Gunner at all. Ol’ sawbones Gunner had either died or quit the doctoring business and disappeared. Somehow Gunner was able to vanish from the face of the earth.
The stress of living and the stress of metabolizing Schlitz was getting to me. I needed to work out but I wasn’t quite ready to box. I wasn’t ready to see Smitty and the idea of preparing for a bout just kind of gave me a sick feeling in my gut. Still, it would be good to blow off some steam, so I decided to head to the Y to lift some weights. Weight training wasn’t my favorite, but over the years I mixed it in, especially when I was training to fight a heavier boxer who I’d need to push off me. It wasn’t the same release, but it was a place to channel some of my frustration.
Mostly, I didn’t go into the Y weight room because the bodybuilders and the power lifters got on my nerves. Sure, they could push enormous amounts of weight, but they couldn’t do anything useful with their bodies. They would do their bench presses and then they’d look in the mirror and scowl at the other people in the gym like they were tough. The thing was they weren’t tough and they couldn’t fight-they had huge muscles but those muscles were specifically trained to lift a bar, not throw a punch.
Every now and then one of these guys would drift into the boxing room and announce that he wanted to become a fighter. Then sooner or later he’d get in the ring and get his ass kicked by someone with a far less impressive body and you wouldn’t ever see him again. I took special joy in smacking around a guy who could bench press a refrigerator.
I headed to the corner of the weight room by one of the alcoves and brought some thirty-five-pound dumbbells with me. When I lifted I went for high reps with relatively little weight. This way I built some muscle endurance, which would help my boxing, when and if I ever got back to it. On the opposite side of the gym were four huge guys taking turns working on the bench and they were making a lot of noise, grunting and growling.
It was kind of like a bad car wreck in that I didn’t want to stare but I couldn’t help it. Luckily, my trance was shaken when I heard a familiar voice.
“Yo Duff, salaam alaikum,” Jamal said.
“Hey, J, what’s up?”
“You know, trying not to get too fat in retirement,” Jamal said. It was about the silliest thing he could say. Jamal had the body fat of an Olympic sprinter.
“Hey, shouldn’t you be down with the bags?” he said.
“Taking a break.”
“Sorry about that last one. It happens.”
“Yeah. Hey, how’s the high-school gig working out?” Jamal was currently a hall monitor and assistant football coach at McDonough.
“This weird sh
it with Rheinhart has made the adolescent years even more fucked up than usual.”
“How so?”
“Well, you got your kids who are panicked-that you could count on. You got your macho types sayin’ they’re gonna find Howard and fuck him up. But the strangest shit is the Howard fan club.”
“What the hell is that?”
“There’s a group who dress all in black-what’s the word they used for them crazy-ass Columbine motherfuckers? Disenfranchised? They got suspended for wearing pro-Howard T-shirts. This, while their classmates are getting murdered.”
“Holy shit…”
“Yeah, holy shit is right.”
“Are the cops looking at them?”
“I hope so.” Our conversation was interrupted by the four bovine weightlifters. They were grunting and groaning so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think.
“Ah, the juiceheads are here,” Jamal said.
“Juiceheads?”
“You know, on the shit. You don’t get that big from taking vitamin E, you know.” Jamal smiled. “Look at the jaw bone, the acne, and the foreheads bigger than a billboard. That ain’t powdered protein doing that.”
“Really? What the hell would these guys be doing that shit for-just to look good?”
“There you go, Duff. Ain’t no more complicated than that.”
“How hard is that shit to get?”
“You thinking it would help you in the ring?”
“Shit, no, I’m just curious.”
“You don’t have to go any farther than up those stairs to the karate room. The dragon brothers are taking care of everyone at the Y.”
“No shit…” Now Al’s parking lot behavior made sense.
“Oh yeah, no small market for it these days either,” Jamal said.
Well, there was another reason to hate Mitchell and Harter.
After a less than satisfying workout with the weights, I headed to AJ’s. Elvis made the ride easier with the 1960 post-army hit “Such a Night,” a tune originally recorded by Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters. It was one of the best swing numbers ever recorded, and an Elvis song you seldom hear on the radio. Besides that, anytime I could work the name “Clyde McPhatter” into a conversation, I did.
I pulled into the parking space just in front of AJ’s in the shadow of the cookie factory, which tonight was producing those sugar cookies with that little dollop of red goo in the middle. I could tell by the sickeningly sweet smell in the air. It made you feel like a molecule-sized being trapped in the middle of a sugar-cookie universe. Man, you start having thoughts like that and you know it’s time for a Schlitz.
I was flipping my keys around my index finger when a shadowy figure came around the corner in a bike. I really do mean shadowy because whoever it was was all decked out in black. As a reflex I could feel my posture brace up a bit and with it came a slight tingling in my neck. When the figure spoke I relaxed.
“Sir, good evening, sir,” Billy said.
“Kid, geez, you scared me. What’s with the outfit?”
“It’s my Evening Darkness Karateka Nu-Breath Ninja suit, sir. It helps me blend into the dark of night.” Tonight’s zit was where the cleft of Billy’s chin would be if he had a cleft. Billy was cleftless so the whitehead didn’t do anything to make him look like Kirk Douglas.
“It sure does, but be careful on your bike. You don’t want traffic to see you blending in with the night.”
“Yes, sir. One needs to be careful when stealth training, sir.”
“What?… Stealth-never mind.”
“Sir, will we train soon, sir?”
“Sure, tomorrow night in the aerobics room, if you want.”
“Sir, yes sir!” Billy said. Then he got off his bike to issue me a very official bow, but the bell-bottoms of the Stealth Bad-Breath suit caught on a handlebar and he took an ugly fall. He bounced right up and tried to hide the stinger in his hip.
“See you tomorrow, Bill,” I said. The Schlitz was going to taste extra special tonight. The first few steps brought me from the sublime to the ridiculous. Actually, I’ve never understood what that meant, and it was probably more accurate that it brought me from the ridiculous to the really fuckin’ ridiculous.
Rocco was down on all fours and Jerry Number One was on Rocco’s back. TC was on all fours facing the opposite direction. Jerry Number Two was out in front examining the weird formation like Monet must’ve when he stepped back from his water lilies.
“Still doesn’t seem right,” Jerry Number Two said.
“I told you this wasn’t it,” Rocco said.
“This doesn’t seem humiliating enough,” TC said.
“That’s ’cause you still have your clothes on,” Jerry Number Two said.
I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t hallucinating.
“Fellas, you’re scaring me a bit. Can you fill me in?” I said.
“We’re trying to recreate that pose in Newsweek of the Iraqis in that Camp McCrabe,” TC said with confidence.
“That’s the Abe Miban prison, the Israelis built it,” Rocco said.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Jerry Number One said.
“Why were we doing this?” Jerry Number Two asked.
“I forget, but my knees are killing me. I need a B amp;B,” TC said.
The human pyramid disassembled and I joined Kelley at the end of the bar. He was watching the Yanks and the Jays game.
“Didn’t feel like getting in the scrum?” I said.
“Nope,” Kelley said.
“What’s new on the street?”
“If you’re asking about Howard, not a thing, at least that I know.” Kelley sipped a new Coors Light. “Some kid from McDonough was taken to the hospital after OD’ing, and they have us interviewing kids, teachers, and administrators at the school. It’s a pain in the ass.”
“What did the kid get high on?” I said.
“Something new, that’s what has everyone extra worked up. They’re afraid that, whatever it is, it’s going to be the new crack.”
“Is the kid going to make it?”
“No, Duff, he’s already gone. Good kid too. Class president. What a waste,” Kelley said.
“What about these kids who are worshiping Howard?”
“Yeah, that’s some fucked-up shit.”
“You think there’s any chance they’re doing these murders?”
“Duff-you watch too much Court TV.”
“C’mon, Kell. There’s all sorts of copycat murders related to serial killers.”
“I’m sure it has dawned on the FBI. It’s a little outside my jurisdiction.”
I finished my beer and changed the subject. Thirty years ago one of Howard’s victims was the class president, and now another class president was dead. That, and there were a gang of kids who thought Howard’s killing spree was cooler than skateboarding. Too much had happened recently for me to figure out if all or any of that meant anything. It was easier just to go home.
28
All I wanted to do was avoid getting kicked in the nuts and go to bed. Before I hit the sack, I grabbed the mail, blocked Al’s assault, and hit the button on my machine.
“Duff, it’s me, Howard. I’ve been lying to you. I am the slayer and you need to stop looking into things or you may be next. It’s imperative that you stay away.”
So much for me getting some sleep.
That was all there was to his message and he hung up. I sat back on the couch and Al jumped up next to me. The silence we sat in made Al a bit uneasy and he started to hum. Howard’s message sounded different than the previous ones, more controlled, more calculated. I didn’t know what to make of the series of calls, but I also remembered my last encounter with Morris and the other cops and decided to call them.
The gang of them was there within fifteen minutes, and Al objected in what could probably be described as uncivil disobedience.
“AHOOOO… hmmmm… woof, woof… AHOOO… grrrr…,” Al said. He was staring at my friend L
arry Bird.
Morris directed the crime-scene guys to examine the machine and the phone. I wasn’t sure what they were trying to accomplish, and I hoped they didn’t believe that Howard lived inside my answering machine.
“AHOOOO… hmmmm… woof, woof… AHOOO… grrrr…,” Al said.
Morris asked me about the time of the call, if he had called any other times, and if I had called him. I told him the truth, that is, that I hadn’t. Bird was walking around the Blue, picking things up, looking at my mail, and generally being nosy. This didn’t please Al.
“AHOOOO… hmmmm… woof… woof… AHOOO… grrrr
… grrrrrr… grrrrrrrr,” Al said. The extra “grrrrr’s” concerned me.
Apparently, they concerned Larry Bird too, because he pulled a can of mace out of his suit jacket and aimed it at Al.
I broke away from my conversation with Morris.
“Whoa, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I said, with my neck tendons dancing.
“Your dog needs to-”
He didn’t get to finish. As Bird turned to yell at me, Al pounced and went after his shin like it was a TV remote. Larry yelped, Al increased the intensity of his bite, which made Bird sing in pain, and then everyone’s favorite white hooper dropped the can of mace. Al scooped it up and ran into the bathroom.
While the all-time greatest shooting guard was jumping up and down on one foot, holding his bloody pant leg, I went to the head, grabbed the mace from Al, and closed him in.
“Now, what was it you were saying, detective Morris?” I said.
“You son-of-,” Bird said.
“That’ll be enough, Mullings. Go out to the car and put something on that,” Morris said.
Larry gave me a menacing look behind his bright-red face and limped out of the Blue.
“We’re going to have to take the tape out of your machine. I’m sure you understand,” Morris said. He directed the crime scene guys to dust a few things and poke around here and they all left soon after that. Mullings never came back in. I let Al out of the bathroom and fixed him his dinner, treated with a few extra sardines.
