Diary of a Serial Killer

by Ed Gaffney

  How pathetic, Steph thought. Lying here, in a puddle of her own drool, listening to the psychopath in the next room eating her pizza.

  And planning to murder her.

  Monster

  HE DIDN’T USUALLY LIKE PIZZA WITH EVERYTHING on it, but today, he had to admit that it tasted excellent.

  He was standing in the dining room, holding the slice of pie he had taken from the box in the hallway and a can of soda. He took a plate out of the china cabinet, put the pizza on it, and set it and the soda can down on the dining room table. Then he walked into the living room, where Mrs. Giordano sat, taped immobile, staring at Stephanie as she lay on the floor.

  Poor Steph was not looking her best, lying there in her own saliva.

  Well, she was going to be looking a whole lot worse very soon.

  He took out his roll of duct tape, tore off a piece, grabbed a handful of her hair, yanked her head back, and slapped the tape across her mouth. Then he dropped her head back down to the floor and dragged a second chair into the living room. He hoisted her limp body up, and dropped her into the chair. She was starting to moan. He wrapped tape around her wrists, binding her to the arms of the chair.

  And then he tore off several more strips, and bound her ankles to the legs of the chair.

  When he was done, he straightened up, and said, “I don’t know about you ladies, but all that did was whet my appetite,” and he went back into the dining room to finish his slice of pizza.

  THIRTY-SIX

  VERA’S GPS SYSTEM IDENTIFIED 54 QUEEN AS the house on the corner of Brookings. According to the display on the screen, she was still over a mile away. At least another minute or two. And the local cops had sent all available units to the courthouse shooting. Vera was on her own.

  She knew that the killer had announced that he was not going to act until 2:30, but she couldn’t trust him. She needed to be there and now.

  The speedometer said she was already going fifty miles per hour, and this road was barely safe at twenty.

  She urged the car faster. Fifty-five. Sixty.

  Sixty-five.

  And then, brake lights. Tons of them.

  Vera slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt, and barely avoiding a collision with the stopped car ahead of her. What the hell?

  A gigantic piece of construction equipment was entering the intersection ahead, probably lumbering its way up to Northampton and that disaster up there.

  Vera waited until the oncoming lane was clear of traffic, and then pulled around to the left of the cars stopped ahead of her.

  And then, incredibly, two cars ahead of her, a pickup truck and a minivan both jumped out into the lane in front of her. As if possessed by some mad inclination to completely block the road, a third car—a Chevy—cut into the lane in front of the other two.

  The pickup truck slammed right into the Chevy, and the minivan promptly rear-ended the pickup truck.

  The road was now totally blocked.

  Vera pulled her car onto the nearest lawn, jumped out, and started to run.

  “Let me give you a preview of what’s about to take place.”

  Stephanie’s heart was racing. She was beginning to feel herself regain some control over her body, but her mind was frantic with panic. What difference did it make if she was no longer limp as a rag doll? The tape made it impossible to move her arms or her legs. The best she could do was to swivel her head and watch as the madman took something out of his pocket.

  As he approached he resumed his speech. “Think of these as evidence of my admiration. I hope you don’t mind—I took some unauthorized portraits.” He held one up in front of her eyes. “I actually think this one’s quite good.”

  Oh my God. It was a picture of her.

  A picture of her, naked.

  “Here’s what you look like now. Let’s call this the Before photograph.”

  She was standing, completely undressed, in front of her bedroom mirror. She was holding her hairbrush in one hand. She must have just come out of the shower. The way the picture had been taken, you could see her from behind, and the front of her in the reflection of the mirror.

  How in the world did he have a picture of her like that?

  He must have been spying on her.

  Humiliation, terror, and rage began a battle for control over Stephanie’s emotions. But when he showed her the next photograph, terror won.

  “And here’s what we’ll call the After picture.”

  He was displaying what was obviously a computer composite of the original picture of her standing nude in front of the mirror. Grotesque injuries had been superimposed over the photograph, on her face, her torso, her rear end.

  With the amount of adrenaline already pounding through her body, she didn’t think it was possible that her heart could beat any faster or harder.

  She was wrong.

  She looked up at the face of the man who had been stalking her for—how long? Days? Weeks? Had she been a target of this murderer since the beginning of his sick rampage?

  He was smiling at her. What kind of twisted person would do this to someone like her?

  And to Mrs. Giordano? Oh God. Poor Mrs. Giordano. What was going to happen to her?

  As if he could read her mind, he said, “I really wouldn’t worry about her right now, Stephanie. Don’t you think you’ve got enough on your plate? I mean, when you consider the very next thing I have in store for you. I’d like you to take a closer look at this one. I realize it might be a little, say, uncomfortable, but try to just pay attention to the detail I’d like to discuss. Your right index finger.”

  Steph looked at the picture, and this time she saw what he wanted her to see. With all the gore displayed on every other part of her body, she had overlooked the fact that he had also removed from the image her right index finger.

  She looked back at him, and in his other hand he now held a pair of pruning shears. She inhaled and snapped her head back in horror. Oh my God. He was about to cut off her finger with that thing. Oh my God.

  Right then, he raised his other hand, and a camera appeared, taking a flash picture, which momentarily blinded her. “Stephanie, that was awesome,” he crooned. “If you can guarantee that you’ll have that kind of reaction as we go through this together, I guarantee that I will make sure that you stay alive for as long as possible before I have to end your pathetic little life. Deal?”

  Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She couldn’t help it. Not only was she crying—she was also now visibly shaking with fear. But it wasn’t just fear. There was anger in there, too.

  The monster smirked, and took another picture. Clearly, he was eating this up. Which only made her more angry.

  A slight change surged through her when she realized that. When she focused on the anger, some of the other stuff, like the paralyzing terror, got pushed further back in her mind.

  She knew that it didn’t really change anything, but she liked it better, so she tried to stay angry.

  “You know what?” The monster was now holding another photo. She refused to look at it. “I didn’t think I did a real good job on the finger thing with your photo, so I brought some others to show you.”

  She kept her gaze steady on him. There was no way she was going to stare at whatever awful thing he was holding. She didn’t need to see anything this pervert had to show her.

  “Oh, I don’t think defiance is your best play here, Stephanie,” he said, in a somewhat menacing voice. He grabbed a handful of her hair and shoved her face toward the image. “I went to a lot of trouble taking these pictures. The least you can do is have the courtesy to look at them. C’mon. I know you’ve seen one of the fingers I cut off already. What’s the big deal? I’ll understand if you don’t like them. Art is always a matter of taste, don’t you agree? But goddammit, you will look at these pictures!”

  He was getting so enraged that he was yanking her head back and forth by her hair. Even if she’d wanted to look at his horrendous
photographs, she couldn’t possibly. Her eyes were filled with tears from the pain.

  “Fine!” he shouted. “Let’s just do this.”

  He flung the pictures to the floor, picked up the pruning shears, stood directly in front of her, and grabbed hold of her right hand with his left.

  As he brought the gardening tool closer, she started to writhe. Her wrists and ankles were taped to the chair, but her hands and fingers were unrestrained. They couldn’t move away from where they were pinned, but they could move around.

  She balled her right hand up into a fist, refusing to give him easy access to her fingers, and began to thrash around frantically in the chair. He wasn’t going to do anything to her without a fight. A major fight.

  “Okay,” he said, somewhat quietly, releasing her and stepping back a few feet. “I see how we’re going to have to do this.”

  The change in his attitude was alarming. Mere seconds ago he was so enraged that he was shoving her face, literally, into a picture of what she assumed was a severed finger.

  Now he had gone back to the dining room, and he was returning with the duct tape. He walked around behind her, and then there was the sound of the tape being pulled off the roll.

  Then there was a tearing sound.

  Stephanie tried to twist her head around to see what he was doing back there, when all of a sudden he was reaching over her with a long length of the tape. He pulled it over her head and brought it down high across the front of her chest. Then he pulled back on it, and wrapped it tightly around the back of the chair.

  He was pinning her body to the chair so she couldn’t fight him anymore.

  Another wave of panic crashed over her. She was in control of almost nothing. She could move her fingers and lean forward and back from the waist, but she had little else as it was.

  And he was going to take that away from her.

  And then cut off her finger.

  The first piece of tape he had used had already reduced her mobility considerably, but he continued to wrap more pieces around her, each one slightly lower than the last, first across her biceps and breasts, then down, near her bent elbows and stomach.

  By the time he was finished, she was lashed tightly to the back of the chair. She couldn’t bend forward from the waist at all. The best she could manage was to move her head up and down.

  Now he moved around to her front. What else could he possibly tape? Her entire upper body was pinned to the back of the chair. Her wrists were taped to the chair’s arms, and her ankles to its legs.

  He tore off a small strip of the gray tape, and said, “Now I want you to open your right hand.”

  He wanted to tape her fingers apart.

  He was going to make it impossible for her to resist when he chopped off her finger with the pruning shears.

  Like hell he was.

  She shook her head back and forth, making a strangled noise of anger from behind her gag, and kept her hand tightly fisted.

  He sighed, heavily, dramatically, and disingenuously.

  “Okay,” he said, shrugging.

  Then he went back to the dining room, and returned with the stun gun, and shot her.

  The pain was fast and brutal, raging through every one of her nerves like an electric current of liquid fire and broken glass. The muscles of her back convulsed, and had she not been so securely bound to the chair, she would have arched her back so severely that she probably would have injured herself.

  The muscles in her arms and legs were in uncontrollable spasms. Her teeth chattered, tears ran from her eyes, and then, it was over.

  The pain continued to pulse through her long after the electric current had stopped flowing, but more important, she was completely incapacitated. Her muscles were completely out of her control. Her head hung down to her chest, her mouth lolled open.

  And her right hand was no longer in a fist.

  He was returning with the tape, and there was nothing she could do.

  “I really wish I didn’t have to do this,” he said, as he took the short piece of tape he’d already cut from the roll, and used it to wrap around her right thumb. “I like it much better when you aren’t drooling.”

  Then he taped the thumb down to the arm of the chair.

  He tore off another small strip. She looked, helplessly, at her rebel fingers. Close, she ordered them. Resist this monster.

  They lay lifeless, as if disconnected entirely from her nervous system.

  He squeezed together her middle finger, ring finger, and pinky, and pulled them slightly away from the thumb he had already taped down. Then he wrapped the new piece of tape around the three digits, and affixed them to the arm of the chair.

  He bent down, picked up the pruning shears which he had dropped to the floor earlier, and took hold of her index finger. Then he slid the tool into position, so that the V of the blades surrounded the digit just below the middle knuckle.

  He looked up at her face. She wondered what he saw there. She had no idea what expression she wore. Whatever it was, he wasn’t satisfied. He squeezed the handle of the tool so that the blades came even closer.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Don’t you fucking close your eyes, bitch,” he said.

  It was a small victory—more like a tiny one, actually—but moving her eyelids was about the only thing she had control of right now, and she’d be damned if she didn’t use it.

  “I said open your eyes!” he screamed, his breath warm and disgusting from the onions and garlic of the pizza.

  She didn’t obey.

  “Fine,” he said, again using the ominous tone that promised something awful. “I’ll just shoot your neighbor here until you open your eyes.”

  Stephanie immediately opened her eyes, and tried to focus on Mrs. G., but she was out of Steph’s field of vision. The killer was still standing in front of Stephanie, but had turned toward Mrs. G., and was pointing a gun in her direction.

  “You know what?” he said, his voice laced with false sympathy. “You can’t even move your head yet, can you? You probably couldn’t even look scared if you wanted to.”

  What a despicable jerk. He was getting off on how terrified she looked. This whole nightmare was just getting worse and worse. Steph started to feel control coming back to her body. But she carefully avoided moving. She simply let her head hang there limply, mouth open.

  “Tell you what,” he said conversationally. “I could use another slice of pizza. So why don’t you just sit tight? I’ll be right back.”

  On a good day, in running clothes, Vera could do an eight-minute mile.

  But wearing work shoes, long pants, and carrying a weapon was going to slow her down. She was going to have to improvise.

  Once she cleared the traffic mess, Vera ran right into the middle of the street. She was heading down Connecticut now, probably still five or six minutes away. She took her shield out, and held it in her hand as she kept running.

  The key was to breathe. In, out, in out. Never stop, never gasp. Don’t sprint, or you’ll burn out, and get there slower than if you just ran at a good, hard, steady pace.

  She was sweating freely now, breathing hard. Probably four minutes to go.

  And then, finally, a young woman driving an oldish Toyota began to pull out of her driveway ten feet ahead. Vera bolted to the driver’s side window as the woman straightened the car out before driving away, banged on the car door, and flashed her shield. Then she pulled open the door, and shouted, “Get out of the car, ma’am! I’m a police officer, and I’m commandeering your vehicle. Now.”

  Monster

  HE STUCK THE GUN AND THE SHEARS IN HIS pockets, picked up his empty plate and the stun gun from the dining room table, and headed into the kitchen. He needed another drink, which he grabbed from the fridge. He wondered for a second if he should get some ice from the freezer to slow the blood loss after he chopped off Stephanie’s finger, then decided against it. She wasn’t going to bleed to death from that wound. And he certain
ly didn’t want to dull any of the pain.

  He moved into the entry hall, put the soda down next to the pizza box, opened it up, pulled a slice onto the plate, closed the box, and turned back toward his two waiting victims.

  Wait a minute. Was that scraping sound one of them trying to move one of their chairs?

  He hurried into the room where he’d left them. Mrs.G. hadn’t moved, but Stephanie was definitely a little closer to the old lady.

  More importantly, her left hand was free, and she was hurriedly trying to untape her right hand from the arm of the chair.

  He dropped the pizza and the soda, and held his stun gun out. “You know what, Stephanie?” he said, striding quickly toward her. “You are really pissing me off right now.”

  But she kept pulling the tape off of her right thumb, as if he hadn’t even spoken.

  Well, fuck her. As he approached, he really let her have it with the Taser. Her body jerked with the current of electricity he blasted through her.

  This bitch was going to learn to obey.

  And then suddenly, just as he passed in front of Mrs.G., there was an unbelievably fierce, white hot flame of pain searing through his left thigh, ripping its way down to his knee, and the stun gun was flying through the air, and he was falling forward, almost directly on top of Stephanie.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  STEPHANIE HAD BEEN HOPING HE’D COME to her.

  She was counting on the fact that he’d be so upset that she’d managed to get a hand free, that he’d walk right by Mrs. Giordano.

  And although the devastating effects of the stun gun were tearing through her when it happened, she was still able to take a great deal of satisfaction in the tortured shriek of pain that her attacker uttered as he fell to the floor beside her.

  She also thought she might have heard a siren, but that might have been just a ringing in her ears.

  Because as she lost consciousness, it, along with all other sounds and sensations, just faded away into the dark silence.

  Finally. The corner of Brookings and Queen.