Billy talked to her about what he had done over the years. Then told her how he had killed the man in the car. Finally he relived with her the moments when he became a man in his own mind, his raping of her. As he talked, he became hard with lust. His anger flared as he watched the rotted corpse seem to move in the flickering light. He wanted her but couldn’t consummate the act with the corpse.
Billy flexed his hands, wishing he had been the one to kill her, to break her flesh, to see the terror in her eyes. He stood up and staggered. His feet had slipped through Julie’s rotted flesh and to the bottom of the coffin.
The body seemed to fold in about his feet trapping him. In panic, he reached down and pulled her ribs apart with his fists. His feet free, he climbed out of her coffin. Safe, he looked down on her corpse. The frenzy and the beer had worked on Billy’s bladder. He opened his fly and pointed the yellow stream across Julie’s face in retaliation. The weak lantern light and the haze from the yellow spray changed the features of the rotted corpse to someone living.
To Billy’s beer soaked mind the face behind the haze became a young girl, a young girl with large boobs. A girl he had raped before. A girl he would fuck again. Only this time, the girl had a different name, Jenny.
On a quest, Billy climbed out of the hole, his hand clutching at the earth. Pulling himself up, he found he had a stick in his hand, only it didn’t feel right. He brought it to his truck. In the cab light he saw it was part of a rib. He pulled the rotted flesh and cloth away until the white bone gleamed in the light. Billy placed the bone in the middle of the seat. This would be his talisman on his quest. The quest to completely possess Julie/Jenny again.
He had to get complete and total control of her again and this time he would decide on how it would end.
Starting the tractor, he filled in the grave. He backed the tractor up and headed back to where he had taken it. In the tractor’s headlight, he saw another stone. He racked the teeth on the backhoe’s shovel across the stone, putting three large gouges through the name Shermon. He left the backhoe there. Its shovel buried deep into the grave, the ground soaked with oil from a busted hydraulic line.
The next day, the local police released a report that drunken vandals, probably kids, had hot-wired a tractor and damaged some headstones at the cemetery. The police refused to believe what they found. It had to have been kids, anything else was too sick.
Billy polished his talisman until it gleamed white. In a supply closet at the back of the school building, he would drink beer and rub his talisman against his body. He was there when he overheard Kawalski talking to Pike.
“You know, Pike, we have a lot of old-time teachers in this school.
First-year teachers are easier to control. They also miss more of what is happening around them. Don’t you think it would be much easier if one of those teachers who always seems to be around checking on things was replaced by someone new?”
“Sure would. Who do you want me to get this time?”
“We can’t do the fall down the stairs again this year and we can’t set someone up with drugs, cause they just might check up on the whole school.
Now, Makinen has been divorced for a few years. He’s not dating anyone.
Everyone would believe he fooled around with a high school girl. Do you think you could handle it?”
“Easy. You’ll get what you want but it’s going to cost you…”
Billy never caught the rest of the conversation that day but the next day, he saw Pike talking to Jenny. He saw Pike and Jenny watch Makinen while they talked. Their smiles and laughter told him what they were planning. The following day, he watched Makinen lust after Jenny from the balcony. Makinen’s name was added to his list.
Billy had to kill Makinen. He had to kill Lori. How dare Makinen change his mind, ignoring the beautiful Jenny to go after that skinny bitch, Lori?
How could that small-breasted little bitch be more alluring to Makinen than Jenny? They both had to die in pain. If he could get them together, he could
… The talisman wasn’t enough anymore. He reached into his pants. He masturbated in time to his rocking, until his white semen stained the white bone.
The day started for Henry with a sticky stillness. Nature as well as man seemed to sense something was going to happen. At the station, everyone was jumpy. Vernon and the other BCA agents had been told to wrap up the investigation. They were needed in Minneapolis. No one wanted to leave.
Everyone did their job as slowly as possible.
In a fog caused by lack of sleep and worry, Henry sat at his desk. He tried to fill out overtime forms and other backlogged paperwork. Instead of reading and filling in blanks, he found himself staring at the walls. Where will Billy show up next?
James, Lori, and Jeffrey spent the day trying to decide what to do next. The VFW boys had gone to their homes for some rest now that Billy had disappeared. Lori wanted to go back to her apartment. James argued against it not want her to be alone. His fear communicated itself to her father. Finally by the end of the day, they convinced Lori to stay through the week. Lori couldn’t stand the troubled look on her father’s face.
Click. In the silent darkened room, the hands reach for the card.
A horse charges across the card. His armored rider’s sword is raised in challenge.
The hands hold no hesitation when they turn off the light. The footsteps leaving the room are swift and sure. For one brief second, a silhouette is seen in the doorway leaving the room.
––—
CHAPTER 20: The Knight of Swords
James woke refreshed. It had been another quiet night. There was a feeling of safety with the VFW boys still keeping watch at night and the killer, Billy, being on the run. James’s mind was actually clear. He saw Lori walk into the living room. He was still using the couch for his naps between his perimeter prowls. For possibly the first time, he saw her in complete clarity. She was not beautiful, but in the morning light she was so pretty it hurt. The precise delicate features, the curls of hair framing the face, the slight squint of the eyes from behind her glasses to the following shadow of a smile on her lips seared his mind with their intensity. In his mind, she didn’t walk across the room but flowed in an undulating rhythm. His clarity of vision was lost as his eyes filled with moisture.
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” Her hands brushed his cheek. She smiled.
Paralyzed with the intensity of emotions, James sat there unmoving.
Her hand tousled the hair on his head. Smiling she said, “Breakfast.”
James watched her turn to leave. As he marveled at how she moved, his mind locked in to the last time he sat watching the sway of her body as it walked away. The cold anger of the preacher’s sermon and the pride in Lori’s dignity and strength washed through his paralysis. He got up to eat.
During the meal, he watched her eat. He never knew what he consumed but knew about each and every bite of toast, eggs and drink of milk that went past her lips. He never realized how intensely he was watching her until the laughter from her father across the table and the resulting red flush that traveled from Lori’s cheek to the curve of her jaw.
Jeffrey wistfully said, “I remembered looking at your mother the same way … Lori you have a big decision you need to make. This man loves you.
“Jim, you better not ever hurt her…”
Jeffrey left the table with tears in his eyes.
Lori opened her mouth to say something and then closed it. She opened it again and closed. She sputtered. “I can’t talk here. I need fresh clothes from my apartment if I’m going to stay here another week. Come along and we’ll talk.”
Lori yelled as they left the house, “Dad, I’m going to my apartment for clothes. Be back in an hour or so.”
On the drive down, neither spoke. Although both had left the house to talk, neither could start. At the apartment, James followed behind Lori. He was still enthralled with her movement.
Henry woke to the day confus
ed. What would the killer, Billy, do next?
That was the trouble with serial killers. They were not quite sane.
When Henry was little, he remembered hunting with his father. His father always said, “Think like what you’re hunting. If you’re hunting a deer, be a deer. What would you like to eat? Where is a good place to sleep? How would you travel between…”
Henry had used that technique many times before. A young child lost in the woods, a drunk trying to hide after a car wreck, a series of burglaries at some lake cabins, it had always worked. But how do you understand insanity without becoming insane yourself? Insane. Insane! Tom Peterson! Tom Peterson was insane. Lori Waithe and James Makinen were the rocks that Tom dashed his soul upon in his single-minded attempt to destroy them. They had not been phased by his assault. Their indifference had hurt him even more then his failure to harm them. He still wanted to see them destroyed.
The killer had wanted to destroy them as well. He had failed. It would burn in him. He would try again.
Henry called. “Hi, Mr. Waithe. I would like to talk to your daughter or James … Not there now … Uhh huh. When will they be back? No, no, nothing wrong … Just need to talk to them … Her apartment … Thank you … talk to you later.”
For the first time in days, Henry felt he had a handle on the situation. He hummed while he drove.
Billy had been rocking in the same chair for three days. The back corner of the room where he sat had the stale musty smell of a confined animal. Every time he returned to the corner after eating or going to the bathroom, he would inhale deeply the smell. He would imagine that a component of the smell was the decaying flesh of the jawbone that he carried. Frank’s jaw had become his second most important trophy, after the portion of Julie’s rib.
His pickup was hidden in the woods a quarter mile from where he was now waiting. In order to preserve his other trophies, he had carried his twenty-quart cooler through the thick scrub brush surrounding the town to the apartment. By the time he had placed his prizes in the refrigerator, he was covered with scratches and little flakes of blood. The sting of sweat dripping into his open cuts was a delicious inducement for his plans. Unlike what had happened to Pike, he hoped that the next victim would be lucid during his death.
A car finally pulled up to his ambush site. From his vantage point in the corner of the room, he was able to see who it was. He picked up an axe he had placed next to the chair and stood silently in the shadows of the room.
The key rattled the door. Steps traveled across the room. Finally, they saw each other.
Billy was filthy, unshaven, smelly, and standing in the shadows with an upraised axe. There should have been terror, screams or escape coming from the victim. Instead, calm eyes dissected his appearance and a soft voice said,
“James, Billy finally showed up.”
The calm eyes filled his vision. For the first time since his father’s beatings, Billy felt physical terror. The eyes moved aside replaced by an even more assured pair. Billy had trouble catching his breath. With a scream of anguish he attacked, swinging his axe.
Beyond all reason the calm eyes locked on his. Somehow the swinging axe stopped its forward motion. Numbness traveled down his arm. Billy heard the axe rattle to the floor. He stepped forward and a powerful blow threw him into the wall. He tried another swing with his fist and found himself on the floor.
He looked up and saw the two sets of calm eyes watching him. He felt the broken jaw bone gouging his leg where he fell on it. He felt for the rib.
He got up from the floor, clutching his talisman. With all of his strength, he tried to move against those eyes. Instead he whirled, diving through the window. Landing in a heap in the postage stamp sized front lawn he picked himself up. Looking through the broken window, he found the eyes still watching him. With a scream, he turned to run.
Deputy Sheriff Henry Hakanen was standing there. His gun was out, pointed directly at his head. Billy wanted to turn but he felt those eyes watching. With another scream, he lunged at Henry. Billy watched the flash of light come from the muzzle of the gun. He felt a blow, then his face was on the ground. Grass stubble scratched his face. His ears rang from the explosion. As darkness came, he finally lost the sense of being watched by those eyes but then other eyes started to examine him, Julie, the unknown driver, Jenny, the cop … He tried to escape in the blackness but the eyes followed.
Henry was shaken. He had never before killed a man. What the hell happened? Billy had been crazed with fear. He looked up at the apartment and saw James and Lori. He saw the two touch hands, love. He felt good watching them but his eyes then turned to the body at his feet. What had happened?
Henry called for backup. When the deputies started to arrive, he went inside to interview James and Lori. He tried to do a thorough interview, but the two kept sneaking looks at each other. Henry felt like a voyeur. Finally, he called Jeffrey to come and take them home.
James sat on the Waithe’s couch. Its softness encased him like an old friend. He had stumbled into the home barely able to keep his feet under him.
The energy surge that had coursed through his body during the confrontation with Billy had finally subsided. His muscles felt weak and rubbery. He must have been hyperventilating because he felt his balance go with every deep breath.
He heard in the background Lori and her father talking but didn’t have the presence of mind to understand their conversation. His mind continually played back the confrontation with Billy.
He followed Lori into her apartment, watching the sway of her body. He knew something was wrong when she stopped. He saw her muscles tense through her clothes. Her voice telling him that Billy was there was anticlimactic.
He stepped forward. He saw his left hand in slow motion brush Lori’s shoulder and move her aside. There was no fear but just emptiness as the wild-eyed Billy attacked. He stepped inside Billy’s swing, blocking it with a speed block against the nerve center in the forearm. The axe went flying, with Billy staggering backwards. Billy lunged again and this time James delivered a snap kick to the chest. Billy bounced away from the blow and was flattened into the wall. During the replay of what had happened, Jim realized that he couldn’t remember any sound of the struggle, no clanging of the axe on the floor, no gasping for air. The eerie silence brought back the memory of each move and countermove with a surreal clarity.
Billy’s mouth opened in some unknown utterance and he lunged again.
This time James caught his outstretched arm with his left hand. He pivoted on his center of gravity, bringing his right hand behind Billy’s back. The Aikido throw was perfectly timed and Billy flew into the far wall and slid to the floor. For the first time since Billy started his attack, Jim saw Lori. He stepped to her, brushing her hand with his fingertips. They watched Billy struggle to rise. When he finally got to his feet, Billy’s crazed looks had changed to fear. He jumped through the window.
Jim and Lori held hands as Billy turned to attack Henry. The sound of Henry’s gunshot broke the silence of Jim’s recall. He saw again the hair fly up as the bullet passed through Billy’s head. His hand tightened its grip on the couch’s armrest. In slow steps, Jim relaxed his grip finger by finger. He rubbed the feeling back into his cramped fingers as he relived the last few twitches of Billy’s dying body.
And then the scene played back again, and again, and again…
Jim finally forgot when he felt his head being eased upon a soft shoulder by gentle hands.
The solitary light eases back the darkness. The hands silently turn over a card.
A dark-cloaked man stands, head bowed. At his feet, three cups are spilled. Behind him are two cups still standing. In front of the man is a small stream. There is a bridge with a small keep on the other side.
––—
CHAPTER 21: The Five of Cups
Shermon packed up his new used car. A quick stop followed at the office of Jack Andrews, the school board’s attorney, for his severance check.
/> He thought the term severance was a joke. Why didn’t everyone use the term for what it was, blackmail? It was common practice to give a principal or superintendent a large check when they were fired. He never understood why the public never complained about the cost. Shermon knew he had to leave before the police found enough evidence for an indictment on embezzlement. With Kawalski dead, he would skate free on the other charges.
He had very little bargaining pressure with the school board. He had started by asking for one hundred thousand dollars. Andrews countered with twenty-five thousand. Shermon then came back with the statement that both Andrews and the school board should have known about the loss of funds.
After all, they signed all the necessary papers. Andrews then came up with the offer of fifty thousand.
Shermon thought for a while that he might have to settle for that when he remembered that Amy, Kawalski’s secretary, had also signed all the paperwork. After reminding Andrews about the readymade scapegoat they had in Amy, he agreed to seventy-five thousand.
Shermon had insisted on a cashier’s check for the money. He would drive out of state before cashing the check. He decided on South Dakota. The state had weak banking laws and a couple of the banks there were trying to get into interstate banking. Shermon knew he could use the bank to hide most of the money and keep only enough cash to let him disappear. Maybe, he should use a few thousand to hire a detective to try to find Nicole. She did have most of his savings, besides he wanted to see her one last time. She needed to be punished for running out on him. He knew exactly how he would punish her.
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