Happy that I no longer needed to flee the country, that I could stay and carry on the renewed relationship with my mother, I unpacked the suitcase and returned it to the closet. Then I went downstairs and had dinner at the table with my mother before heading out to dispose of the body in my car.
As I tossed the macabre tarp from the Chouteau Bridge under the cover of darkness, listening as it splashed into the Missouri River below, I felt a little sorry. I’d been so angry at my mother for her relationship with Fred and I’d brutally taken it out on this prostitute. Now that things were okay between my mother and me, I felt bad for what I’d done. Not to the whore. She deserved what she got. No, the small trace of guilt I felt was because what I did to the hooker—in my mind anyway—I had done to my mother. It wasn’t the whore that I’d beaten and dismembered. In my mind, it was my mother. It was for that reason alone that I felt bad.
The guilt vanished as quickly as it came. Smiling broadly, I got in my Ranchero and drove home with the windows down and the radio up, singing loudly and proudly even though the only way I could’ve carried a tune was if it came in a bucket.
13
By the spring of 1977, I’d added more bodies to the river, more mementoes to my sock drawer. Though I’d lost count of all the women I’d killed, I guessed the number to be around 25 or 30 by now. Maybe more. Some were unmemorable while others stood out from the rest. Besides, keeping count was pointless. It wasn’t like I could brag to my friends about how many women I’d murdered. Not only did I have no friends to brag to, but murder was against the law. To brag would be to slam the door closed on my own cell and rot in prison, so I kept my mouth shut and didn’t even try to keep track of how many women’s lives I had taken.
I was glued to the television that year, watching the news as David Berkowitz became famous for his crimes. He murdered people and gained notoriety for it, which was great if what he was looking for was fame. The Son of Sam gained a morbid sort of celebrity status in return for his freedom. I had no doubt that for years to come—most likely decades, if not centuries—people would still be talking about him and what he’d done.
That was the exact opposite of what I wanted. I never wanted anyone to find out about my crimes. It was my dirty little secret. It was mine and mine alone. No one knew and that’s the way I wanted to keep it. I didn’t want fame and notoriety. I didn’t want people talking about me for years to come. I wanted to be what I’d always been. Obscure and forgotten.
Still, I watched the news each evening, taking in every detail about the things Berkowitz did and how he’d been caught. I paid close attention to what happened to him after his arrest in August of that year, fascinated by it all. When it was all over and I’d decided that I didn’t want to be like him, I put Berkowitz out of my mind and carried on with my life.
My lawn maintenance business was thriving. Rightfully I could’ve—and probably should’ve—hired some help. But that would mean not only sharing the money, but also having someone else around all the time. I wasn’t willing to do that.
I still lived with my mother and our relationship was still good, though not as good as it had been when I was a child, before The Blond Bother came along and ruined everything. But I couldn’t complain about the way things were between us. We had dinner together every night of the week, over which we would talk about current events or things we’d done that day. Whatever was on our minds. She still spent the weekends with Fred and strangely enough, I didn’t mind. When she was with him, I had the house to myself and the ability to do what I wanted, which was kill.
Never would I have thought I’d be bored with murdering women, but that’s how I found myself late in the year. With the arrival of fall and cold weather, a melancholy feeling settled over me. Killing had become so routine, so habitual, that I hardly enjoyed it anymore. While some people might argue that I could’ve taken this as a sign to stop, they would be wrong. I took it as a sign to change the way I did things. Make murder more interesting. Instead of strangling the women, maybe I should do something else, something more exciting.
I remembered when I stabbed that hooker as she was bent over the tailgate of my Ranchero. I also remembered the rush of excitement I’d felt as the knife sunk into her flesh. Maybe it was time for me to take another stab at.
It was early in October when I picked up a hooker who stank of body odor and stale semen. It seemed that’s the way they all smelled, and why wouldn’t they? They spent their days and nights having sex. There really was no other way for them to smell.
This girl didn’t offer up a name and I didn’t ask for one. I didn’t care to know anything at all about her. I knew all I needed to know just by looking at her. From her haggard and withered body, I gathered that she’d been on the streets for a long time. That meant that if there had ever been any family members or loved ones searching for her, they had long since given up the hope of ever seeing her again. Her demeanor told me that she too had given up, both on the hope of one day meeting a man who would whisk her away to live a happily married life in blissful suburbia, and on life in general.
Instead of driving to my house, I drove to a secluded spot on the banks of the Missouri River. It wasn’t just for a change of scenery that I picked this spot. I was going to experiment with her and I didn’t want to have to clean up the mess when I was done.
When I parked the car, we sat in silence. I looked at her while she studied her hands, which lay limply on her lap.
“So,” I started. “How do you want to do this?”
She shrugged, putting as little effort into the movement as possible.
“Whatever you want,” she said quietly.
Her lack of enthusiasm was irksome. I’d given her thirty bucks to do what I wanted. I’d assumed she would work up at least a little excitement. This was her job. To entertain me in whatever way I chose. Not to sit there like a lump on the passenger seat.
I sighed and rubbed my hands over my face, unsure of what I should do next. Though I had been horny when I picked her up, my erection had waned in the time it took to drive to the river. It was probably due to her lackluster attitude. Well, that and the smell of old sweat and the ejaculate of a dozen other men. They were bad enough on their own but when coupled together, they were a sickening combination, guaranteed to turn the stomach and kill the mood.
Unable to stand the stench another second, I said, “Wanna take a walk?”
Another half-assed shrug.
I rolled my eyes and got out of the car. She was just getting out of the passenger door as I came around the front of the Ranchero.
When she shut the door, she didn’t even put enough force behind it to close it all the way. The latch caught, but barely. She didn’t seem to notice. Or care.
“Let’s go,” I said.
She followed me, walking slower than I would’ve liked. The urge to forge ahead was strong, but I remembered what happened the last time I turned my back on a whore. That wouldn’t happen again, so I walked just as slowly as she did in order to keep an eye on her.
When we were far enough away from the car, maybe fifty feet, I stopped and turned to her.
“This is good.”
She kept her head low, her eyes to the ground.
“Take your clothes off.”
As if this was a routine she’d performed thousands of times in the past, which it surely was, she removed her clothing. With no bra and panties to mess with, the process didn’t take long. She dropped her clothes to the ground as if she didn’t care a thing about them. Most women would’ve taken the time to create a pile, possibly even fold and stack them. Not this one. She dropped the shirt on the ground to her right and the shorts she wore were tossed to the ground on her left.
Outside the car, the smell wasn’t bad. There was a slight breeze which carried away the odors that had previously turned me off, leaving hardly any smell at all. Without this deterrent I was left with a woman who stood before me naked and vulnerable, ready to do whatever I
told her to do. A woman completely under my control.
With my erection back in full force, I took off my clothes and got what I paid for.
After half an hour, I rolled off of her and onto my back. A little further and I was on my side, pulling the switchblade from my jeans pocket. I considered rolling back over fast to face her, surprising her with the blade as it sunk into her chest. But I decided against that method. Instead of surprising her quickly, I thought I’d taunt her slowly with it. You know, just for fun.
I straddled her, each knee digging into the grass next to her hips. Under the pale light of a half moon, I saw her face, just as expressionless as it had been ever since I’d picked her up.
Slowly I raised the knife, turning it in my hand so she could see what it was and recognize what was about to happen to her.
This garnered no response from her. I know she saw it. She looked up at me, at it, and had to see the knife. Yet she remained still, not moving a muscle or saying a word.
Thinking maybe she couldn’t see it after all, or at least couldn’t register what it actually was, I put the tip of the blade to her throat and lightly pulled it down her chest and belly. There was no way she could mistake the cold steel tip for anything other than what it was.
Still nothing.
Confused, I thought maybe she still didn’t understand that I was holding a knife to her chest. I turned the knife so that the sharpened edge was against the naked and vulnerable area between her breasts, where it was literally skin stretched over the breast bone. I pressed down with the knife and dragged the blade slowly, opening a two-inch slit in her skin that oozed a stream of blood.
The blood trickled down her abdomen and pooled in her navel, yet she still didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even flinch. She remained still, looking up at me in silence. I knew she wasn’t dead because she blinked and breathed. But why wasn’t she screaming or crying, or even flinching?
It all became clear when she said in a quiet, serious tone, “Just do it.”
For a second, I was too shocked to speak. I’d expected a fight from her, a struggle to save her own life. Not this. Never this.
“What?”
“Just do it. Make it fast.”
“You want me to stab you?”
“Yeah. I don’t care.”
Well if she didn’t care, I didn’t care. A fight would’ve made it all more exciting, but this was sort of an experiment anyway, so none of it really mattered. I was just trying to spice things up for me. I didn’t care how she felt about it.
I didn’t argue with her that life was worth living. I wasn’t big on telling lies. Besides, she clearly wanted to die. I was really just doing her a favor by killing her. She’d given me the okay to do it, not that I needed her permission.
Quickly, I raised the knife over my head and brought it down, ramming it into her chest all the way to the hilt. For a moment, I left it there, enjoying the feeling of her skin tearing open. Then I did it again. And again. And again and again, not stopping until I was exhausted. Then I fell back on my ass and scooted away from her.
As I caught my breath, I stared at her naked and torn blood-soaked body. It was sexy to see her like that. I guess sexy wasn’t the right word because there was nothing sexy about the mess that was sprawled out before me. She was ripped open in dozens of places and drenched in her own blood, spilling more by the second. The metallic odor was strong and left a bitter taste in my mouth. Sexy was definitely the wrong word. Arousing was what I meant. It truly was arousing to look at her. She was dead because of me. I did that. I took her life. The thought excited me and made me want to kill her again, but I couldn’t because she was already dead. That was disappointing.
When my breathing slowed and the surge of adrenaline began to fade, I looked at the knife, still clenched tightly in my right hand. Not just the blade but the entire knife was red, covered in the blood that dripped from the blade in thick droplets, creating a small puddle on the grass beneath it. Then I saw that my hands were also covered with blood. As were my arms. And my chest. And my legs and feet. Even my dick was doused with the sticky red liquid.
I suddenly felt sick. I tried to stand but ended up on my knees, lurching forward as I threw up on the ground between the dead whore and me.
And just like that the thrill of the kill was gone. I no longer saw her as arousing to look at. She was disgusting. Vile and sickening.
I needed to put on my clothes and go home, where I could try to erase the images of her tattered body from my mind. But I wasn’t about to put on my clothes while I was covered in her blood.
Eager to be rid of the gore, I ran down the bank and dove into the Missouri River, where I threw the knife as far as I could before frantically scrubbing my face and body. I tried not to think about it, tried to pretend I was just skinny dipping in the moonlight, but I knew. I knew that when I got home, I’d find dried blood caked thick under my fingernails. I’d find it in my hair and in the wrinkles of my testicles. I couldn’t deny that it was there. All I could do was scrub harder and hope I got it all.
When I was satisfied that I’d washed away all traces of the whore’s blood, I walked out of the river and returned to my pile of clothes, taking great care not to look at her body. Using my t-shirt, I dried my legs before putting on my jeans and shoes. I pulled the wet t-shirt over my head and carried my socks back to the car. I drove home, eager to be away from the mess I’d created.
I was waiting at a red light, trying not to think about what had just happened, when headlights appeared in my rearview mirror. It wasn’t unheard of to see other traffic out, even this late at night, but I was in the left turn lane and so was the guy behind me. That was a little unusual.
When the light changed, I made the turn, forgetting all about the passenger door not being latched until it swung open wide, nearly hitting a car parked along the side of the street. Fortunately I had my wits about me and was able to avoid the collision, but I couldn’t avoid the guy behind me seeing what happened and flicking on his red and blue beacons.
“Shit,” I muttered. “Shit shit shit.”
I pulled over, stretching across the seat of the car and pulling the door closed.
The officer walked up to my window and asked for my license and registration, which I handed him with trembling hands.
“I pulled you over because of what happened back there.”
My first thought was to panic. He knew I’d just killed a hooker. That’s what he was talking about. He knew. Then I realized that he meant the door swinging open.
“Yeah. That was crazy, wasn’t it? My girlfriend got out of the car earlier and she must’ve not shut the door.”
“Your girlfriend, huh? What’s her name?”
“Julia.”
“Where’s she live”
“Over on Vine. She has an apartment there.”
“Is that where you’re coming from?”
Seeing as I was on Washington Street, heading toward Vine, I knew better than to say yes.
“No.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“I was over at a friend’s house playing basketball.”
“Little late to be playing basketball, isn’t it?”
“That’s what his wife said.” I smiled, though my insides had shriveled up in fear.
The officer chuckled. He handed my license and registration back to me and said, “You have a good night. Try to keep that door closed, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I sure will.”
My heart raced the rest of the way home. That was close. Too close. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. Every time I came close to dozing off, the memory of being covered in blood popped into my head and I was wide awake once again.
It was there, in the darkness of the wee hours of the morning, that I decided to never, ever under any circumstances do that again. It was too disgusting. Too messy. It made dismembering that other hooker look like nothing. She had been dead for a while. Her blood had th
ickened to the point of only oozing out slowly. It didn’t spatter and run all over the place. And the hooker I’d stabbed while she was bent over the tailgate had been different too. I stabbed her neck, which was too far away from me at the time to cover me in the gore. No, I wouldn’t put myself through that again. I no longer found strangling boring. I found it clean and satisfying.
14
It was the day after Thanksgiving when I brought home a hooker named Candy. I don’t for a second believe that her mother actually named her Candy. The name was probably something she’d labeled herself along the way, something she thought of as exotic and different, maybe even special. One thing I’d learned about the whores was that they all saw themselves as secret princesses waiting for their princes to show up and whisk them away to live a glorious, charmed suburban life full of love and affection and wealth. This one probably thought the name would set her apart and make it easier for her prince to find her sooner. All it did was label her as a whore. Strippers were named Candy. Not housewives.
She was plain-looking, not pretty but not ugly. Her hair was a dirty shade of blond and hung in frizzy strands down to the middle of her back. Though her eyes were blue, they were lifeless and dull, with no sparkle or shine to them whatsoever. Tall and thin, she seemed fragile. I could tell from her eyes and her demeanor that her spirit was broken. Her body appeared to be on the verge of following.
When she got in the car I had no intentions of killing her. I was feeling kind of down because it was the day after Thanksgiving and I was alone. My mother was with Fred and I had no friends and no girlfriend to spend the holiday with. I just wanted some company. Even it was that of a prostitute.
My intentions were good. I promised her a meal of leftovers, which wasn’t an empty promise. I had all those things at home in the refrigerator—turkey, dressing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, biscuits, green beans, and her choice of either apple or cherry pie—and I was more than willing to heat it up and eat dinner with her. After that, we would go to bed. Maybe she would even spend the night with me. Hold me. Fuck me again in the morning before I took her back to the streets. Good intentions.
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