by Mic Palmer
Facing Jack from two tables away was a scrawny young girl in a sweatshirt and jeans. Appearing somewhat nervous, she was sketching the person seated across from her – a rather foppish, excessively chatty, middle aged Indian gentleman. Clearly interested in more than just his portrait, he appeared fixated on the girl’s social situation, asking such questions as what she did for fun, whether she liked to dance, what food she enjoyed, and most importantly, whether she was seeing anyone.
Studying her subject with determined brown eyes, she politely answered his questions with as few words as possible – except for the one about her boyfriend, who as it turns out was not only a Fulbright scholar but an All American wrestling champion.
“What a surprise,” Jack thought to himself, as he unfolded his napkin. Although it had been years, the young woman gave him an idea.
“So where is he?” said the older man. “I hope he’s not the jealous type.”
“He knows he can trust me.”
“Where does he go to school?”
“NYU.”
“Right up the street, while you’re doing my portrait? I don’t know if I like that. Does he have a problem with your working with men?”
“Frankly, it’s never come up. You don’t find a lot men looking to have their portraits done.”
“So who do you usually work with?”
“Kids mostly.”
“Good for you,” thought Jack, as he worked on his own sketch.
“Well I’d still prefer he weren’t so close,” chuckled the man, without seeming to understand what she was driving at.
“Oh oh,” Jack whispered, having taken a look at the girl’s finished product.
With straight features and smooth brown skin, her subject was just good looking enough to think he was beautiful, but this was not at all how he was depicted.
Leaning over to take another peak, Jack felt she had captured the man, but made him look a bit shady, which under the circumstances wasn’t particularly surprising.
“Is that really how you see me?” said the girl’s patron. “I mean I look so serious, almost like a criminal.”
“I’m sorry,” apologized the girl.
Although polite, her subject was clearly dissatisfied. “Well I don’t see how I can pay for something like this, but maybe if you want to try again, perhaps over dinner.”
“That’s alright,” said the girl. “I’m meeting my boyfriend. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.”
“Ok,” offered the aging Lothario. “If you change your mind, you have my number.”
“Thanks,” said the girl, holding back tears.
Walking out the door, the man did his best to appear not only unfazed but ebullient. The truth, however, was revealed when he turned to give the would be artist one last glance. Thoroughly wounded, he had the wistful look of a teenage heartthrob at a thirty year reunion.
“What do you think of this?” Jack whispered to the girl.
“Nice,” she effused. “She’s beautiful.”
“It’s her,” said Jack, pointing toward the waitress.
“Oh,” said the girl, somewhat surprised.
“I could have made it perfect.” smiled Jack. “But why in the hell would I want to do that?”
The girl laughed.
“People don’t know what they look like,” Jack went on, “and frankly they don’t want to know. What they’re interested in is looking good; so widen the eyes, broaden the smile, square up the chin, raise the cheek bones, and before you know it, you’ll have yourself a nice little business.”
“Thanks,” said the girl, as she stood up and dropped a few bills on the table.
“You’ve got talent.” went on Jack, “Just try not to be so truthful.”
“What was that all about?” asked the waitress, as Jack took his seat.
Pulling the napkin from his pocket, he dropped it on the table. “We were comparing notes.”
“Is that me?”
“I hope so.”
The waitress was in an absolute state of wonderment, as if something magical had transpired.
“Well?” he inquired.
Speechless for a few seconds, she appeared thoroughly touched. “I love it.”
“Here, take it.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“My name’s Cassandra, by the way.”
“I’m Jack.”
“Jack the rabbit.”
Just then one of the patrons called out for her.
“I’ll be back,” she told him.
Feeling rather satisfied at this point, Jack decided to check out some on-line newspapers, and just like that he was back where started. “Son of a bitch!” he grumbled. “Can’t I have one minute of peace?”
What upset him so was the fact that earlier that morning, at about 5:30 AM, another body had been found – this time in a cheap nylon canvass.
“Cleopatra Runs Out Of Rugs,” read one of the more insensitive headlines.
But the big news was that the canvass was soaked with milk, which just so happened to be the preferred bath product of a certain ancient queen.
Other than this, not much was offered, and yet Jack’s whole outlook had changed. How could it not? His whole theory was based on the idea that the killer had Moroccan carpets to burn. One deviation from the pattern was an anomaly; two were a paradigm shift.
Mechanically walking out of the coffee shop, without even bothering to say goodbye, he suddenly felt the overwhelming need to sleep and before long was back at the hotel, within a nap so deep, he dreamt he was dreaming.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Although he hadn’t thought of her in years, Jack for some reason began dreaming of the chubby little girl who had given him his first kiss, which at first was quite pleasant. Smelling of strawberry bubble gum, she was all smiles, but then he went to embrace her and found that she was nothing but a shriveled carcass.
“Ahh!” he cried out, as he spasmodically sat up. Now awake, he heard her name coming from the television, along with other details concerning the last murder.
Leaping from the bed, he felt as though he was spinning. “No,” he told himself, resting his palms on the cheap pressboard desk. “It must be someone else.”
But then he saw her parents and felt as though a chisel had been pounded into his sternum.
Janet Callenback was dead, her only crime being that she had dated Jack in high school. Having been smothered, her body was carefully placed on the back steps of PS 141, just blocks from Jack’s apartment.
Not knowing whether to feel sad or angry, Jack walked to the bathroom and rinsed off his face. Clearly, someone was setting him up, but who? Someone from high school? Someone from work?
Then again maybe he was wrong. If the purpose was really to frame him, why commit a whole series of murders, when one would have achieved the same purpose?
Perhaps he wasn’t the target at all. As is often the case with television shows, maybe someone thought he’d hide an ordinary murder by pretending it was the work of a serial killer – Janet’s no account ex-husband for instance.
“Don’t be stupid!” Jack quickly responded, as if debating himself. He had lost two female acquaintances in less than two weeks. Was it really possible that they were killed by two different people, independently of one another?
Jack’s next thought was that perhaps the serial killer had witnessed Michelle scratch his face and thought he’d take advantage of the situation by making him his patsy, but this was way too complicated. Even if the psycho did happen to see him out with Michelle, how would he possibly know about Janet?
No. The only possibility that made any sense was that the killer was an acquaintance of some sort or at least someone who knew him well enough to delve into his background, but this raised an interesting question: Were Michelle and Janet killed by the serial killer or someone pretending to be the serial killer?
Jack’s head was throbbing. “Is it possible that I’ve somehow
ruffled the feathers of a sociopath? I must have. Who else would be doing this?”
Still pacing, he considered the myriad claims he had denied and the numerous people he had caught faking their injuries; nevertheless, he couldn’t recall a single confrontation or threat, and why would he? As a claims representative, most of his dirty work was done through the use of letters or forms, and as an investigator, through anonymous skullduggery. As a result, he never really got to see how he affected people.
“Poor Janet,” he sighed.
In his mind’s eye he could still imagine her as she signed his high school yearbook. With a gusty wind shifting back and forth, her cherubic face was repeatedly lashed by the thick blue tassel hanging from her oversized cap. Even today he could picture her big loopy handwriting, which covered not only her photo, but the one below it. “Stay away from the Tequila, except when you’re with me!”
Jose Cuervo used to make Jack crazy, but she loved it when he was like that. Never more himself than under the influence of fermented agave sugar, he’d become whimsical, puckish, even imaginative. Secretly presenting him with a bottle at his graduation party, they decided to take off for the duck pond, where after a half dozen shots, both mind and body joined in what seemed to them an almost mystical union, the upshot of which was that they vowed never to be apart.
Within three months, however, she was off to Albany, to become a doctor, and he to Mexico, to become artist. When last he heard of her she was teaching biology at their old high school.
“Why her?” he repeated over and over again, and then it dawned on him.
There were only two people in the world who knew of both his internet date and high school sweetheart, and that was Bundy and Gomez. Having seen the photo of Michelle on-line, they were the ones who encouraged him to go out with her in the first place.
As to Jan, they had gotten a glimpse of her in his yearbook that one time they came over to kill some time before a nearby stakeout.
Bundy was especially taken by her. “I bet she had big tits,” Jack recalled him slathering. “I can tell by her cheeks. Was she a cheerleader?”
What kind of man was Bundy anyway? At once miserable, covetous, and nasty, he never had a kind word to say about anyone, no less his wife, who to hear him tell it was about as cold and demanding as one could get. Then again, who could blame her, what with him spending half his time in bars and strip clubs?
The funny part was that Jack had never even seen him approach another woman, which got him to thinking about why.
Was it a loyalty issue, a confidence issue, a health issue? With a nose like a cocktail cherry and the rest of his face the same color as the dead end of one of his cigarettes, who was to say he could even get it up?
Having no kids, no pets, and as far as Jack could see no hope of ever being happy, Bundy soon became his prime suspect, but just as quickly he began to consider Gomez, with all of his talk of faith and religion. Where were his beliefs during his confrontation with Bundy, when his eyes flashed with murder? Had Jack not been there, who knows what he would have done?
Otherwise he was just too caring, too abstemious, and all around too good, prompting Jack to seriously wonder whether he was for real, but then he recalled the argument he had witnessed between Gomez and his son and knew that he was wrong. Could a serial killer be that tender, that forgiving, that concerned for his child?
Beyond that Gomez just didn’t have what it took to be a successful criminal. Namely, he couldn’t keep a secret, not even if his life depended on it. Possessing absolutely no internal filter, he’d offer up just about anything that popped into his gigantic head, no matter how personal or inappropriate. That’s just how he was, and as far as all the talk about God and The Book, well maybe it worked for him.
Bundy on the other hand had never once expressed any sense of standards or boundaries. Rather, he actually promoted himself as a kind of heretic and made no secret of the fact that he often rooted for the very malingerers and cheats he was investigating, not because he liked them or sympathized with them, but because he just loved the idea of someone getting away with something, of cheating, of not giving a damn. It reinforced his belief that people were basically evil and that despite the righteous murmurings of his colleagues, he was for the most part no different than anyone else. While others played by the rules and pretended to care, he readily boasted of the fact that he was no better than some feral cat, scraping and clawing for anything he could get. His only consideration it seemed was getting caught, and if that didn’t make him a sociopath what would?
On the other hand, what were the chances of two serial killers having the same name, even a rather common one like Bundy? But maybe it wasn’t a coincidence.
There was that one time Gomez had called him Teddy, and Bundy nearly lost it. “It’s Eddy dumb ass. Or would you like me to call you Terry from now on!”
The fact was, however, that his birth name was Edward, meaning that as a child he very well may have gone by Ted.
“Yes,” Jack thought to himself, “now it was starting to make sense.”
The reason he had gotten so upset about Gomez calling him Teddy was because the name had become an issue with him, probably during his formative years, in a mind so nebulous that no possibility was beyond consideration, even when it involved something as dubious as a doppelganger.
Like all young men, Bundy was no doubt insecure, resentful, and most of all confused, meaning that sharing his name with a serial killer might have been just enough to launch him on a downward spiral of existential inquisition. Perhaps he thought he resembled him or shared the same ancestors. More likely, however, was the fact that he already possessed some of the same ugly tendencies. Maybe he had impulse issues. What youth doesn’t? Perhaps he had bad thoughts, bad ideas, bad desires. Already concerned about who he was and of what he was capable, he suddenly found himself confronted with Ted Bundy, the killer, and before long became obsessed with the notion that perhaps they weren’t so different.
“Stop it,” Jack shouted. Without knowing a thing about the man’s youth, he was again constructing a full-fledged narrative. Nevertheless, Bundy was now the prime suspect.
All the psychobabble aside, it remained that there were only two people who could have known about both his date and his high school sweetheart, and Gomez just didn’t seem like the type to go around chopping people up.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
While considering what to do, Jack suddenly recalled the image of red ink and beautiful words.
Susan Alden, his second and last girlfriend, had also signed his yearbook. “I”ll always wish you the best,” she wrote, “no matter what. Whether you’re here with me or a thousand miles away, you’ll always be in my heart, and somehow, someway I know we’ll meet again.”
Always a bit of a witch, she was right. After nearly fifteen years, they wound up working together, not only in the same building but just several offices down from one another, at Inter Oceanic Insurance.
Feeling the weight of fate pressing down upon him, Jack immediately felt the need to escape, even while he found himself drifting back into her arms. “Not again,” he thought.
Their first go around began during his junior year of high school, just as he and Janet began to tire of one another. After what seemed like a thousand petty melodramas, Jack looked to Susan like a breath of fresh air. Quietly insouciant, she almost made him feel that life would be easy, but teenagers are fickle and before long he was again pining over Janet. For despite all of the tearful accusations, forced spontaneity, and excruciating bouts of cathartic excess, things always burned with her, making life that much more interesting, especially in retrospect.
Suddenly their infantile squabbles were Homeric, their derivative ideas profound, and their rather fumbling love making well executed flights of intense passion.
Susan just couldn’t compete, but as well as she took it, she swore that they’d one day reunite, and sure enough they did. Catching sight of her with
in the grey halls of Inter Oceanic Insurance, Jack at first thought it was a look alike. Having lost almost all of her baby fat, she appeared lean and leggy. With hollow cheeks and enormous light brown eyes she was seductive, enchanting, magnetic.
Despite her denials, Jack was fairly certain that she had taken the job knowing full well that he had worked there. Nevertheless, he couldn’t resist her and before long they picked up where they had left off. The outcome, however, was never in doubt, and just like before, he soon began to grow weary of her. She was a beautiful beach with no surf, a rainless spring, a leafless fall. She was just a bit too happy, too agreeable, too complaisant – so he left. For him it seemed he was always leaving, but this time there was no prophecy. Having fallen for someone else, she never looked back, but the past wasn’t so forgiving.
Two girls had signed his yearbook and one was dead. He was not about to let Susan be next.
Chapter Forty
Worried that she might already be under surveillance, Jack threw on his clothes and ran to a phone bank on the other side of town.
Picking up the receiver, he had butterflies in his stomach. In addition to the whole serial killer issue, he hadn’t spoken to her in years, causing him to feel a bit awkward. Nevertheless, he punched in the numbers and after an interminable number of rings reached his former receptionist.
“Damn.” he grumbled, having learned that she had already left.
Soon she’d be on the train, which like the streets of Manhattan would be crowded, but once she reached Astoria, she’d have to walk twelve lonely blocks, unless of course Jack could beat her to the station.
His only concern was the police, who at this point may have very well been tailing her. Nevertheless, he decided to risk it. The area she’d be walking in was fairly secluded. If there was anything out of the ordinary, he’d notice.
