by Terri Reid
The Rolling Stones played in the background as he scrubbed the blood from his fingers. There sure was a lot of it, much more than he’d expected. The woman—he had not read her ID yet, so he didn’t know her name—had bled out fast. Too fast, actually. She was already cool to the touch, and was it his imagination or had rigor mortis already begun to set in?
What the hell did he know? He wasn’t a doctor. She was dead, that was good enough. Well, almost. It would have been better if she’d lasted a little longer. He blamed it on first time nerves. He would do better next time.
From his CD player, Mick Jagger complained about satisfaction. Until a short while ago, he could relate. But not anymore. Now he had found what he needed.
That there would be a next time was certain. This couldn’t be it. It just couldn’t. For the first time in years the constant, painful pressure in his temples was gone. He stood in the bright light of the bathroom without pain, without anxiety. He finally felt human again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so whole and undamaged.
No, this could not be the only time.
But he would have to wait a while. Once the police found her body, the investigation would begin. Those bastards would start looking for him. They would find nothing, of course, but it would still be prudent to wait a bit and give the trail a chance to get cold. No sense giving them two cases to investigate at the same time. If he waited long enough, they might not even connect the next one to this one.
Hands clean, he walked over to the table where she lay, her body stiff and cooling in the early Spring air, and sat on a stool next to the shower door. He’d set his workspace up in the oversized shower to make clean up easier, and now he was glad he did. The blood had slowed, but there was still a steady drip, drip, drip from the table to the floor. The blood pooled a bit around the drain before vanishing through the grate into the sewer. The coppery smell of it filled the air, mixing with the scent of her perfume and taking his mind back to that moment. The expression on her face when his knife broke her skin for the first time…her eyes had opened so wide he could almost have driven his car into them. They were still open, staring vacantly at the wall behind him. The blue had just begun to turn glassy. Her mouth was still open, which reminded him of the way she had gasped for breath near the end, like a fish dying on the shore, her lipstick forming a bright red O in the middle of her face.
He found himself getting aroused, which was odd considering he had gone through the entire death without so much as a twitch from his nether region. But now, in the afterglow, he was getting excited. Very excited.
“Why not?” he asked aloud as he reached for his zipper. After all, it wasn’t like he had to worry about her seeing him.
When he finished, he found himself staring at the gaping wound in her chest. The red stains around the pink flesh were like a magnet for his eyes, and he wanted to remember this image for the rest of his life. For a moment, he was tempted to take out his phone and snap a picture, but then he remembered that he’d left his phone at the house. His phone had GPS, and while he didn’t know if the police could use that against him, he hadn’t wanted to chance it.
The song had started over several times, and now Mick was singing about men and cigarettes. It reminded him that he hadn’t had a smoke since he picked up the woman, and suddenly he needed one badly. He zipped up his pants, then walked over to the table and grabbed a cigarette. What kind of cigarettes did Mick smoke, anyway? Not that it mattered. He brought a Marlboro to his lips and lit it with a match. Lighters were for pansies.
He inhaled deeply and watched as the smoke swirled in the air between him and the woman. Even the dripping had slowed by now. The steady pat pat pat of blood on the floor was gone. His heart had finally slowed to normal. Even the twitching in his hands and fingers had stopped. He finished the cigarette and tossed it into the small pool of red under the table. It landed with a low hiss as the burning cherry touched the coagulating blood.
Mick’s voice continued to fill the small bathroom.
She wants you to come back next week. Huh, Mick? He thought. Screw that. To hell with the woman and her ‘next week’ crap.
“You just don’t know, Mick,” he said aloud. “You just don’t, man.”
Maybe if Mick had experienced the kind of thrill that he’d discovered tonight, he would be less worried about cigarettes and woman who told him to come back next week. Maybe this song would never have been written at all.
Maybe Mick would have some satisfaction. Finally.
Screw Mick.
He stood up, walked over to the CD player, and switched it off.
He grabbed his hacksaw from the table. Time to start cleaning up. This part was crucial to his future success. He couldn’t just dump the body somewhere. The cops would find it soon enough and would start looking around. He’d be extra careful, and he would scrub the hell out of everything, as well as burn the woman’s clothes and identification. But still, it never hurt to take extra precautions.
He walked over to the body, set the blade of the saw on her wrist, and got to work. His plan was simple. Fifteen pieces: wrists, feet, shins, forearms, thighs, arms, head, and two pieces for the torso. He’d save them in his deep freeze, taking out one piece every week and driving it a hundred miles away to dump it in the woods. The police would never find all of them, if they ever found any at all. The face and hands would require more attention, of course. He’d burn them along with the clothes, then dump the bones out in the woods somewhere. There would be no identifying the remains even if they were discovered.
In short, he’d thought of everything. He was confident that, using this method, he would be able to operate in safety for a very long time.
The radio was off, but inside his head, Mick was still whining about not getting any satisfaction. Stupid ear worm!
The hell with Mick. Keith, too. Hell with them all.
Satisfaction was easy to find, as long as you were willing to take it.
April 30th
It was supposed to take fifteen weeks to dispose of the last body, but it had only taken four. The first week, he took her skull out into the woods and dropped it off, then he settled in to wait for the next dump day. But the waiting was hard. Much harder than it should have been. Then the pressure started to build inside his head again, making things much more urgent. He knew he needed to be careful. Rushing things would be a great way to get caught. But still, the pain in his head would not let him be.
The second week, he’d gone out three times, taking the charred remains of her hands and one foot out to three separate locations, all of them over fifty miles from his city. He realized that it didn’t really matter how much time passed between drops, just as long as he made sure they were spaced very far apart so no one could connect the pieces to each other, so to speak.
He laughed every time he thought of that pun.
The local news programs had yet to mention her, which struck him as a bit odd. Perhaps they considered her a runaway? Who knew? In any case, it didn’t hurt his feelings to know that the police weren’t looking for him. Yet.
The third week, he’d taken the other foot, both shins, and both thighs. He’d gone out five times that week, and his gas tank was feeling the pinch. But the pressure in his head kept building. He had thought he would have more time before it became painful, but by the beginning of the fourth week, his head felt like it was moments away from splitting open and spilling his gray matter onto the sidewalk.
By Wednesday of the fourth week, he had dumped every single piece. He’d spent hours and hours in his car in those few days, making three drops a night for two nights straight to get rid of the last six pieces. True to his plan, he didn’t keep a single souvenir.
That’s how people get caught, he told himself.
Now here he was, barely four weeks out from his first kill, stalking new prey. Mick and the gang were in the CD player again. Same song. Right now Mick was singing about the radio and useless information. He
sure seems to complain a lot for a guy worth millions.
Useless information, indeed. They weren’t even talking about the girl on the radio. The local news was full of juicier gossip about the mayor’s alleged affair with his secretary. Having met the mayor on numerous occasions, he did not doubt the rumors. He could spot a fellow predator from a mile away, and the mayor was always on the hunt for young, nubile women to screw. To each his fetish. After all, he wasn’t in much of a position to judge.
There! There she was. Like the last few nights, she closed the door to the diner and crossed the parking lot to her car. She always parked in the same spot, which was usually the farthest one from the diner’s front door. He assumed this was because the diner’s owner did not want the employees to take up the good parking spaces. Not that it mattered. Her space was on the far side of the lot and there were no windows on that side of the diner. In addition, the lighting was poor, which would make sneaking up on her relatively easy.
He watched as she got into her car and drove away, keeping his eyes on her taillights until they disappeared around the bend. Her right taillight was out, which would make her easy to follow. All he had to do was start the car and go. Fast. Right now, before she got too far away for him to catch up without drawing attention to himself.
The pressure in his head mounted, and he fought back the urge to peel out of the parking lot and follow her.
No, he told himself. Who knows where she’s going or when she will stop? No, this needs to happen on my terms, not hers.
A bright flash of pain sliced through his head, and he almost cried out. He put his palms on his temples, pushing them inward in an attempt to keep his skull from splitting open. God, his head hurt! He needed this. He needed her. Otherwise, where would he be?
Mick’s voice hit the chorus again. He almost punched his radio.
“Tomorrow,” he breathed. Tomorrow night. The pain in his head eased as he confirmed it to himself. Tomorrow night, he would take her.
“That all right with you, Mick?” he asked the CD player. The song ended as soon as he finished his question.
“I guess that settles it…”
May 3rd
“Tomorrow, my ass,” he grumbled as he rinsed his hands. The pink-tinted water splashed into the sink, then swirled away down the drain.
“Two days. Two damn days!”
The girl hadn’t shown up for work on May 1st, then again on May 2nd. The pain in his head had been so bad that he almost hadn’t gone in on the 3rd, but he simply couldn’t imagine starting all the way over from zero. He’d been rewarded for his perseverance when she had gone in to work. As he stood there at the sink washing her blood and skin from his hands, he chastised himself for being shortsighted and missing the obvious. He should have foreseen that she might have some days off. He hadn’t watched her long enough to get a full sense of her schedule. That was not a mistake he would make again.
He finished washing his hands and turned to face her. He’d wanted to slow this one down and savor it. The first woman had died too quickly, he realized. That was probably the reason the pounding in his head had returned so soon after. As such, he had planned to slowly bleed the waitress out, savoring her death like a fine glass of wine. But by the time he’d wrestled her out of her clothes and strapped her to the table, his adrenaline had been pumping through his body like a jackhammer. His pounding head felt like a log under a splitting maul, and before he could stop himself, he rammed his hunting knife through her chest.
Then he did it again, and again, and again. He didn’t bother to count the number of times he’d stabbed her, but to judge by the amount of blood all over his clothes and the shower wall, it must have been a lot. Looking at the mess of his sanctuary made the heat rise in his neck, and he slapped himself across the face.
That wasn’t the plan. He needed to get control of himself before the next time, or he’d probably mess everything up.
Losing control is how you get caught, he reminded himself.
“I gotta be more careful,” he whispered.
Mick was on the radio again. How long could one guy complain about not getting any satisfaction? Forty years or more, apparently.
“Go to hell, Mick,” he growled.
At least the pain in his head was gone. He stared at her still body, at the bloody, gaping wounds in her chest, and was not surprised at all to find himself hard as a rock again. He unzipped his pants and let his hands go to work. When he finished, the pain in his head was completely gone.
Peace, at last.
He’d screwed up last time and dumped the body parts too fast, but he would not do that again. No way.
As he fetched the hacksaw, he promised himself that next time, he would be patient. Next time, it would take a good, long while for the woman to die. He switched off the CD player just as Mick got to the chorus.
“Satisfy that,” he said as he walked back to the body.
May 14th
One week. One lousy, stinking week. Then the pressure in his brain was back and Mick and the Stones started singing their damn song again. This was probably Mick’s fault, the bastard. Who the hell can sing on and on and on about not getting what they want? Maybe he should just toss the CD out the window…
No, he couldn’t do that. The song was part of the ritual now. Still, Mick’s voice was as annoying as a canker sore. How had the Stones gotten so huge with that whiny jerk at the helm?
He had fully intended to follow through on his original plan to dispose of the body over a period of fifteen weeks. But when he drove out to the neighboring county that first night, he’d accidentally brought the skull and both feet instead of just the skull by itself, as was the plan. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed something so crucial, but figured he might as well toss the other pieces out since he already had them with him. At least he’d driven another twenty miles between pieces. It wasn’t the fifty mile radius he’d been wanting, but it should still be plenty.
The next night he’d gone out ahead of schedule and dumped a few more pieces. And the night after that he dumped the rest of them. He couldn’t help but be a little irritated at his own lack of patience, but he figured as long as he kept up his habit of driving around to dump them, the timeline wouldn’t matter. Besides, the reports on TV hadn’t said anything about foul play yet, although one news station had apparently shown the pictures of both women side by side to compare them, along with a number to call if anyone should happen to see them somewhere.
That’s when he realized he’d made a mistake in his selection. Both women were young, attractive brunettes. Thankfully, one had blue eyes and the other had hazel, so they probably weren’t quite sure about a pattern. Not yet. He’d have to keep it that way.
He sat in his car and watched as Number Three left the jewelry store and walked to her little blue Mini Cooper. Her hair was much lighter in color than the first two. That should throw the police off a little. The cops in this tiny little town were dumb as dog turds, anyway. It was unlikely they’d make a connection, especially since no bodies had been recovered.
And they won’t be, he thought. He was far too careful for that.
She was almost to her car. His head pounded. He was surprised she couldn’t hear the sound of his headache from where she stood. It felt like a blaring, bright orange beacon in his mind. A red-hot poker in his brain.
He really should wait.
Mick’s voice poured from the speakers, filling the inside of his car with his whining.
Shut up, Mick!
Get reckless and you’ll get caught.
I don’t care what you can’t get, Mick. Shut up!
Not tonight.
Fine! I’ll show you satisfaction, asshole!
A hard stab of pain. Right behind his eyes. Enough to make him whimper.
He opened his car door and got out. Tonight was as good a night as any.
May 15, Early Morning
Damn it!
Holy friggin’ crap, that hurts!
He scrubbed his hands under the sink, the water so hot it almost burned. Clouds of steam rose into the air, fogging up the mirror and making it difficult to breathe. He reached up and touched the scratches on his face. They were deep, and they stung like hell. Probably leave a scar, too. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain them in the morning when he went to work.
That bitch!
She’d fought him like the devil. How the heck was he supposed to know she knew karate? Or was it Tai Kwon Do? Hell, he couldn’t tell the difference.
You would have known that if you’d bothered to do any recon first.
“Shut up,” he said aloud. He’d spent no time learning about this one before going after her. Another mistake. And one he wouldn’t repeat. And this time he would wait the fifteen weeks, by God. No more screw ups!
Screwing up is how you get caught.
From his CD player, Mick sang about white shirts and guys on TV.
He looked down at his shirt, which was white when the night began, but now looked like a Jackson Pollack painting. Splatters of blood covered it. Most of it was hers, but some was his. He’d have to make sure he removed any trace of DNA from her fingernails. Although, burning them should take care of that, shouldn’t it?
He walked over to the hacksaw and got to work. It didn’t occur to him until after he was done that the sight of her body hadn’t given him an erection this time.
Mick wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get any satisfaction, it seemed.
“Screw you, Mick,” he grumbled.
May 20th
He could barely see her past the wall of pain. He wouldn’t be able to wait. Tonight. It had to be tonight. Right now.
He tossed the trash bag with the blonde’s feet and forearms in the back. He’d have to wait and dump them later. He’d driven fifty seven miles from home with the intent of dumping the pieces in the woods of the next county, but the pressure was already back, making it hard to concentrate on driving. Then he’d seen her, walking out of a small gas station/tourist shop. He’d pulled in and parked on the north side of the station, near where she was fishing her keys out of her purse. She was distracted.
