Dead Last

by James W. Hall

  Frustrated with the lack of response from Shane and other administrators in the school system, Rusty organized students and parents to pressure the Monroe County school board into offering an accredited course in outboard engine repair. Though on repeated occasions the board dismissed her appeals, Rusty persevered, gathering petitions and organizing her fellow students and their parents. Because boating plays such a central role in the Keys economy and its history, Rusty felt the school system was failing to prepare students for island living by neglecting a marine studies curriculum.

  Her resolve paid off. In the fall of Rusty’s junior year, an outboard engine repair course was offered to students at Coral Shores for the first time. “Nobody had any idea how popular that course would be,” said retired principal Shane. “Nobody but Rusty.”

  After graduation, Stabler devoted herself to building her charter fishing business into a thriving enterprise. According to Ron Marden, president of the Upper Keys Chamber of Commerce, Stabler became one of the top fishing guides in the Florida Keys. “You always got your money’s worth when you went out with Rusty. Her rig, Sunny Daze, wasn’t the slickest skiff out there, but by god, her anglers always caught fish, even when things was dead, and nobody else was getting a bite. That girl just had the gift.”

  “When she started out, Rusty was the first girl guide in Islamorada, and the guys on the dock weren’t pleased,” said Captain Harry Sanders, a guide with sixty years’ experience in the Keys. “They hazed her, made her life hell. If it bothered her, she never let on. She had a quiet, modest way about her. She wasn’t some pushy women’s libber, which helped, but what finally won over the guys was the way she put her clients into fish. Day after day Rusty kicked the other guides’ butts. That gal could outfish anybody I ever run across.”

  Through Rusty Stabler’s continued efforts and financial contributions, today that single course at her former high school has grown into a complete program consisting of more than two dozen classes in electronics, navigation and marine science. Attracting master mechanics and nautical engineers and university professors from around the globe, many of them Rusty Stabler’s fishing clients, Coral Shores High School has developed one of the premier marine vocational studies programs in the nation.

  Rusty was spearheading a fundraising campaign that brought in $600,000, all of it designated for a new wing at her alma mater, space which will be used exclusively for the program her efforts brought to life over three decades ago.

  For the last few years, Rusty had put her charter fishing business on hold while she accepted a new challenge as chairman of the board of Bates International. Based in Sarasota, Bates International, the largest family-owned agribusiness in the U.S., is the second-largest landowner in Florida, where its holdings include phosphate mines and sprawling cattle ranches in the central regions of the state. “In a very short time Rusty accomplished some amazing things,” said Jill Montrose, a longtime Bates board member. “Ms. Stabler was turning BI into one of the worldwide leaders in ecologically responsible food production. She had to fight for every inch of gain she made, but she had amazing grit and dedication.”

  “Rusty was as strong-willed as anybody I’ve ever met,” said her friend Laurence Sugarman, a Key Largo security professional. “Even towards the end, when things were darkest for her, Rusty was still upbeat. She believed she’d had a magical life. Far richer than anything she ever expected. Her only regret was that in the last couple of years her work with Bates kept her off the water. That was where she was most at peace. Out in her boat.”

  In accordance with her wishes, Rusty Stabler’s remains were cremated and her ashes spread at sea after a sunset celebration at the home of her husband of less than a month, Daniel Oliver Thorn.

  TWO

  ON YOUR WAY TO THE kill, you slip into second person. This happened naturally at the start and felt comfortable, so you stayed with it.

  At these moments it becomes the way you think. There’s you and the other you. You speak calmly to yourself, and you listen calmly to yourself speaking. The you in the mirror conversing with the other who stands before it. The two of you doing this together. Both halves of an echo.

  After this many times, the process should be easier. But no, you must rehearse, talk your way through each step. Remind yourself to watch the ball, concentrate, stay loose. You are the coach, you are the player.

  In most ways each new one is more challenging than those before. As if you’ve used up something you had at the outset, the commitment, the inspiration, and now you must work harder to manage each step. To conjure the act. To keep from fucking up.

  These are not thrill kills. Committing the act, watching them die, there is no dark ecstasy. This is, in fact, a challenge beyond anything you’ve ever attempted. But it must be done. When the obituary appears, you wait the proper interval, then go. It is your calling. Your way forward.

  This journey is the longest you’ve undertaken for this purpose. You’d rather keep your murders local, but that’s not your choice. The targets are selected for you. There is no free will.

  In Dallas you retrieve your checked bag. You find an alcove, unzip it, check to see that the weapon has not been tampered with by security. It hasn’t. The paper sack is still stapled shut, the cash receipt undisturbed.

  You take the airport shuttle downtown. Go inside, buy a paper, find a seat, pretend to read. You could be a guest, or waiting for a guest to arrive. It is unlikely that anyone will recall you, but it’s possible that a video cam will capture your image and one day the detective pursuing you will attempt to read your purpose in that lobby.

  Your goal is to confuse someone you have never met. Of course you know that one day soon they will uncover your crimes, find links between the murders. And they will be on your trail, using computer searches and TSA security videos and all the high-tech procedures that track killers. You know all that, but it neither frightens nor deters you. You prepare for that day. You welcome it.

  You’re like a film actor who understands full well that his every action and gesture will be viewed and dissected in a dark room in some not-so-distant future. This is your art. You are the director, you are the star. You disappear into your part, and watch yourself disappearing.

  After a while you exit the hotel, hail a cab, tell the driver to take you to the airport. At the rental car counter you use the second ID you’ve obtained to rent a vehicle. You pay by credit card, using the one you bought on the streets of Miami. These are simple measures, what any smart killer would do. Zigging and zagging, appearing to do one thing but doing something else.

  The Lyrca suit is folded up among the clothes in your bag. It compresses to the size of a hardback book. The weapon is still inside the manufacturer’s box, and that box is inside the paper sack from the sporting goods store in Miami where you purchased it. All perfectly legal.

  Across the desolate countryside you drive the rental car. Eventually there are signs for Broken Bow, Antlers, Heavener, Blanco. Pioneer names for redneck towns. Farmland, rolling hills, few trees. A scrubby landscape, more browns than greens. You buy gas with cash. You stop for a late lunch at a fast-food place along the highway. You studied the maps, memorized the route.

  You arrive at the small town in Oklahoma, drive through the decaying business district, swing by the white frame house where your target lives. A woman in her sixties. She should present no serious physical problems.

  You’ve studied the street names from an Internet map. Now you note the streetlights, their locations along the route you’ve chosen. You observe the trees, how densely leaved they are, picturing how much light will be cast along the path you will take. It will be brighter than you’d like, but not as bright as an open city street. The moon is new, so its glow is not a factor.

  Because it is hours before dark, you circle back to the interstate and cruise north, then pull into a Wal-Mart parking lot, slump in your seat as if napping, and watch to see if anyone pays attention to your car. If they do, yo
u will leave. They don’t.

  When the sun sets, you drive back to the area where your victim lives. Because it is a small town, you park your rental in a location where you are least likely to be noticed, where strangers congregate. Tonight your staging spot is a country music bar called Blue Heaven. Five blocks from the target’s house.

  In the parking lot, a half-dozen pickup trucks and several family cars, a tow truck and two panel vans. It’s a popular place on this Saturday night. There was no way to know that in advance, but you’re glad it’s busy. You park beside a dark pickup truck. On the other side of your car is a Dumpster.

  From your suitcase you take out the Lycra suit.

  Wearing it on these occasions makes you strangely beautiful and free. But there is obvious danger. On only your second outing, you were stopped by a cop in an Atlanta neighborhood. It was dark, but his headlamps caught you in their flare and he pulled over and hailed you, keeping you in the blinding lights. You were wearing the suit, and you carried a butcher knife inside a paper sack.

  Your heart was seizing, but you didn’t run. You kept your voice under control and told the officer you were simply experimenting by walking around in the suit to see how it felt. A harmless prank. A dare. You pretended to be embarrassed. You were submissive. I didn’t know it was illegal, you said.

  The officer was a country boy, a know-it-all eager to show off his mastery of law. Drawling as he explained the suit itself was not the problem, it was the hood. You were in violation of Title 16, Chapter 11, Section 38 of the Georgia statutes—the anti-mask law. It was unlawful to wear a mask, hood, or device that concealed the identity of the wearer. Exemptions were made for traditional holiday costumes and persons lawfully engaged in trade and employment or sporting activity for the purpose of ensuring the physical safety of the wearer, or because of the nature of the occupation or trade. A person could wear a mask intended for a theatrical production or masquerade balls.

  Are you, he asked, on the way to a masquerade ball or a holiday party or a sporting event? No, sir, you confessed, you were not.

  Didn’t think so, he said. Hellfire, boy, what were you thinking?

  You don’t know what to say, so you say nothing.

  It’s not just Georgia, he explained. Other states had similar statutes, growing out of anti-KKK laws.

  You told him you understood. You didn’t realize it was a crime.

  He ordered you to remove the hood and without hesitation you pulled it off, showing him the face you prepared for just such an event. You held your hand in front of your eyes to shield the glare of the headlights. You tilted your head just so, and shifted your feet to angle yourself sideways. In that moment you realized how this situation could work to your advantage. This could be the break you need.

  You apologized. You intended no harm. You were doing it as a lark. You keep that open hand in front of your eyes.

  He could have detained you for prowling. He could have demanded to see your ID. Asked to examine the contents of your shopping bag. But his radio was squawking and he was distracted by it. Bigger fish elsewhere.

  After a silence, he accepted your explanation, and you were allowed to walk away in your black suit.

  Two weeks later, here in the parking lot of the cowboy bar, you strip out of your clothes. It requires limberness and patience. You’ve learned to bend and stretch around the steering wheel. Shoes first, pants, then underclothes, and last your shirt. You arrange them on the seat beside you, stack them in a tidy pile. When you return in a while you will be jangled and it’s important the clothes are organized. Seeing them will calm you.

  When you’re naked you wriggle into the suit. Some people refer to it as a unitard or a catsuit, but the proper name is Zentai. A Japanese word that simply means “bodysuit.”

  The stretchy material is skintight, nonreflective black. The hood assumes the shape of your face and skull. There are no eyeholes or mouth slits. The material is sufficiently thin at those places so your vision is only slightly impaired and breathing is easy. When the suit is in place, you fit on the special shoes. And you are ready.

  Your hand is on the door latch when you hear voices, and look into the rearview mirror. A couple is crossing the parking lot. In the outside mirror you watch them stagger, heading toward the pickup beside you. The man wears a string tie and a cowboy hat and the girl a low-cut top and a miniskirt. They are clinging to each other, kissing and groping.

  You could duck down and try to hide, but you don’t because this encounter might also prove useful. You’re running out of time. Such risks are becoming more necessary at this stage, so you remain motionless in the seat behind the wheel and wait as they approach. They stop at the tailgate of the cowboy’s pickup and share a sloppy kiss. Then they separate and the girl in the silver skirt and dark top comes down the aisle between the pickup truck and your car.

  You take your eyes off the mirror and wait for her approach. You hear the truck’s door open and the cowboy saying something drawly. “Get your sweet ass in my truck right now, woman.” The woman answers: “I don’t know if I like the way you’re speaking to me, sir.”

  You turn and look out your window. Her butt is an arm’s length away.

  She climbs into the truck and reaches back to close the door, but stops.

  She leans toward you. She’s seen something but doesn’t know what it is. It’s dark. She’s drunk, she’s sexed up.

  She stares at you for three seconds, four. The cowboy says something you can’t hear. Then she slams the door. The look on her face has changed. She’s not sexy anymore. She’s not drunk. Her mouth is open, eyes large.

  The truck starts. It has loud exhausts, a throaty rumble. He backs out of the space, and you turn your head to see her again, staring at you, at the black shape in the front seat of a car, her eyes squinting through the dark.

  The two lovers head off into the night. She doesn’t know what she saw. But whatever it was, it scared her.

  You have infected her evening. She won’t be able to get you out of her mind. If she tells the cowboy what she thinks she saw, he’ll have a good laugh. He’ll call her loony, a drunk. He’ll screw her anyway, but it won’t be as pleasurable as it might have been. You’ve invaded her imagination and she won’t be able to get rid of you.

  You take the weapon out of the suitcase, strip away the packaging. Some minor assembly is required, no tools necessary. You tear the cash receipt into pieces and ball up the brown paper sack. You get out and throw the trash in the Dumpster. You know, of course, this act is sloppy and could lead to your undoing, but you do it anyway.

  The parking lot is quiet. No one around, just the thump of the jukebox inside the cowboy bar. As a precaution you decide to relocate your car. You don’t think a cop would take the woman’s story seriously and send a prowl car to the bar. She’s drunk. But you play it safe.

  It is one thing to be discovered, quite another to be caught.

  You get back in, drive a mile east, and park near a school you noted earlier. The white rental car is a common make. It has Texas plates. It blends into the neighborhood.

  You open the car door, step out. You absorb the darkness, and the darkness absorbs you. You can feel the warm night air brush across the suit. You are naked but you are not naked.

  You listen to the crickets and the call of a distant owl. You reach into the car and take out your weapon. You carry it like a warrior marching into battle. Through the darkness you walk the short distance to your victim’s house. No traffic passes. Most houses along the way are dark. A few have a single light burning inside in this early-to-bed town.

  When you reach the house, you find it dark as well. You are energized. Naked in the night. But also concealed. An unseen spirit gliding through the summer air, hearing only distant cars, the yowl of a tomcat jousting with a rival, the hum of the power lines, crickets answering crickets. Bats flicker through a streetlight.

  You are alive with the fever of the moment.

  You cir
cle the house. You are looking for signs of other occupants. Potential trouble. There is only one car in the driveway, an old Volvo. The yard is unkept, grass long, bushes overgrown. No yard furniture. A light glows in a single window. You hear no noise from inside. You return to the front.

  You mount the steps, slip inside the small screened porch.

  You were planning on ringing the doorbell or knocking. To wake the woman, draw her to the door groggy from sleep, then barge through and do your quick work. But as astonishing as it seems, the door is unlocked. A lazy backwater way of life is still flourishing—at least for one last night. Tomorrow this town will know fear. Locksmiths will be busy.

  You step into the stuffy darkness of the foyer. The scent of fried food is in the air. Cigarette smoke, booze. You have formed no image of the woman you’ve come to kill, but these odors make you picture her as fat, wearing curlers. You see her feasting on Doritos and rum and Coke while chain-smoking and watching a late-night talk show.

  You dissolve that image. It interferes with your clarity of purpose. It confuses the issue. You do not care about these people. You don’t build a case for them or against them. You don’t interact or engage. Keep contact to a minimum. Kill and leave. These people are pawns. They are nothing.

  You locate her bedroom from the slit of light beneath the door and the density of cigarette smoke. You open her door slowly and step inside. By her bed a radio plays classic rock tunes quietly. A brass ashtray is overflowing. Her bedspread is littered with file folders and yellow notepads. She’s propped up on pillows. She looks at you from behind a sheaf of papers that she’s been reading. Gripped between her lips is a ballpoint pen. Purple ink, purple scribbles in the margins of the papers. Her hair is loose, streaked with gray, and it hangs down her back. She wears reading glasses. For someone her age she is attractive. Slim body, alert eyes. With those glasses and the pen in her mouth, she looks scholarly, not the kind of woman you’d expect in this hick town.