I excused myself to use the restroom and then followed him to his car. I had to dispatch him quickly. He smiled when he saw me behind him. Brad waved at me. He was happy to see me. “What’s up, dude?”
I looked around. It was already getting dark by that point, and he had done me a favor by parking by the back fence where there was no light. I was sure no one could see us. I smiled.
“I forgot to tell you something,” I said, and then I punched him as hard as I could.
I felt the jolt travel up my arm at the moment of impact, and he just dropped like he’d been short circuited. I picked him up. Picked up his keys. Unlocked his car door, and dragged him inside. If someone had spotted me at that point, he or she would have thought I was just helping a drunk friend into his car.
Once we were in the car, I pressed my thumbs into his eyes, puncturing them into his brain. He screamed and fought for a couple of seconds before falling silent. Those screams. How do I describe them? They were the most terrified sounds I’d ever heard. Shrill, piercing. He even sobbed. It was like the cries of a child knowing his father was coming to punish him.
I had never felt so powerful before.
I could hear his thoughts slipping away. Once he stopped screaming, once he knew he was dead, the fear lessened. That was the peculiar thing. He was at peace even as I dug my thumbs into his brain matter. The things he lamented were as trivial and petty as you would have expected. Never getting married or having kids or buying a house. Never having the opportunity to visit Europe. Pathetic.
I checked for a pulse. None. I wiped my bloody hands off on his clothes and walked casually back to the bar. But not before checking his vehicle for some kind of weapon to use against the others. Nothing. I hoped the two grad students didn’t leave together. That was going to be hard.
The freshman kid left next. I was waiting for him. I pulled him into Brad’s car and choked him unconscious on the back seat and then held my arm across his throat, squeezing until he stopped breathing. I held the choke until I was certain he was dead and then shoved his body down behind the front seats. I was practically panting. My head felt light. The exertion and the adrenalin rush were taking their toll. My nerves were jangling like live wires when I walked back into the bar.
“Where’d you go, man? We thought you left.”
“I helped Brad into a taxi. He was way too drunk to drive.”
“Yeah, I’m getting pretty wasted myself. I’ve got to try a case in the morning. Big corporate finance scandal. I can’t talk about it, but I’ll bet all of you have their products in your homes right now.”
“Hey, thanks for the shots, man. Are you guys going to stick around for a while?” I asked the two graduate students. “Next round’s on me.”
“Hell yeah, then.”
“Let me walk Henry to his car. I need to ask him something. Don’t worry, I’m not going to hit you up for free legal advice. I just want to see if you think I need to hire a lawyer and if this is something you would handle or maybe you could recommend an attorney.”
Henry squinted suspiciously at me, but then his ego took over and he shook his head and smiled. “Sure, Adam. Let’s talk. What’ve you got goin’ on?”
We headed toward the parking lot. “My father is a genetic engineer.”
“Uh huh.”
“He has isolated a few strands of DNA. My DNA. He has found, for example, the exact genetic strand that determines an individual’s height. This is a find that could make him millions. The problem is that a recent Supreme Court ruling determined that you can’t patent genes. I’d like to challenge that ruling.”
“Wow. That’s a pretty big case. Going up against the Supreme Court. That’s . . . wow. You said it could be worth millions?”
“Hundreds of millions. Here. Walk with me to my car. I’m leaving too.”
It was too easy. I knew exactly what bait to set to lure him in. Money. That’s all it took. He followed me to the back of the parking lot, to Brad’s car. Again, I looked around to see if anyone was watching us, but it was completely dark by now.
This one didn’t go as smoothly. Henry was a fighter, and he knew some kind of martial arts. Jiu-jitsu, I think. I punched him hard in the jaw. I felt it unhinge. I was pretty sure it was broken. He staggered but didn’t drop. I tackled him, tried to lift him off his feet, take him to the ground, so I could get an arm around his throat and choke him out. It wasn’t that easy. Henry knew what he was doing.
We scuffled there between two parked cars. I punched him several more times, splitting his nose and swelling his left eye. He never yelled for help, never screamed. He was confident right up to the end that he could take me. He almost did.
He had his legs around my neck and was hyperextending my arm in some combination—I’ve since learned—of a triangle choke and an arm bar, when I picked him up and slammed him down on the concrete. He almost broke my arm before I bashed his head open on the ground. His head struck one of those little concrete parking curbs and blood sprayed from the wound. His eyes rolled up in his head. The whites of his eyes shined in the moonlight. I grabbed him by the head and smashed his skull onto the curb again and again until it split open. His brains spilled out like someone had broken a casserole dish filled with spaghetti. That’s what it looked like to me, anyway. Like spaghetti.
I sat there for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I considered just leaving him lying there. I was so tired by this point. But those two students. There was no way I could let those two idiots live. Besides, fighting and beating Henry had been so satisfying. I was ready to take on those two guys.
I searched Henry for his keys after I dragged him into Brad’s car, and then I went to his car, a red Jaguar convertible, and searched it for weapons. I found the gun in the glove box. A couple was climbing into the big SUV parked next to it. They were a professional couple. You know the type. They probably met at work and started a kind of office flirtation that had just now blossomed into some drunken romance. They both looked over at me as I pulled the Glock 9mm out and shoved it in my waistband. I smiled at them and waved, hoping they hadn’t seen the gun. I considered shooting them both. The only thing that prevented me was the noise and the very high likelihood of being caught, and I still needed to kill the two grad students and get back to the sperm bank to destroy all those donations and replace them. The couple smiled back at me and gave me a halfhearted wave that likely saved both their lives.
The two grad students, Roger and Charles, were both staggering off their bar stools when I walked back into the bar.
“Sorry I took so long. You guys still up for that drink?” I smiled excitedly and I could see them hesitating, considering it.
“Naw, we both have classes tomorrow. Fucking Saturday classes.”
“No problem. I understand. Hey, can you guys give me a lift back to my car? I left it back at the clinic.”
I patted them both on the back and draped an arm around their shoulders, warm, friendly, inviting.
“Sure.”
The minute we were out of the parking lot, I pulled the gun. I ordered them onto a side street. I wanted them off the main street where they might be able to signal a passing cop.
“We don’t have any money, bro,” Roger offered immediately.
“I’ve got $20,” Charles said. “It’s yours, dude. Just don’t hurt us.”
I didn’t reply. I just aimed the gun at his forehead and pulled the trigger. I blew the entire top of his head off. Blood sprayed the windshield, the passenger window, me, and Roger. The sound of the gun going off inside the small car was deafening. My ears rang. Roger was freaking out. He tried to get out of the car while it was still moving. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt, pulled him into the car, and shot him in the back of the head. The bullet exited through his face and shattered the windshield.
I reached over, put the car in park, and then hopped out to walk back to the clinic. I was only a couple of blocks away. I wiped off the gun and the one door handle I had
touched and left the gun in the car. I didn’t need it anymore. It would just be more evidence. The reality was, even my prints would be useless. I wasn’t in the system anywhere. I had to be arrested for something before they could find a match.
The clinic was closed when I made it back. I broke in after doing a search on my smartphone on how to disable alarm systems. I was able to find information on the exact brand and model the clinic used. I shut it down in fewer than five minutes and picked the back door lock in fewer than two. Then I spent the next two hours destroying and replacing sperm samples. I don’t know what I would have done without Kent’s DVD. You know, there really were 2,013 cum shots on there.
***
This is the first interview with Maria Horrowitz, mother of convicted serial murderer Adam Horrowitz. We are at her private residence. The date is July 15, 2014.
Can you tell us a bit about Adam’s childhood? Tell us about his father. All we have is Adam’s recount of his father, who seems a bit cruel, though Adam doesn’t seem to think so. Maybe you can paint a better picture of your husband. (He shuffles through his bag, takes out some pocket tissues, and hands them over.) Here, these will help. Wipe your tears. Take your time. When you are ready, tell me.
I don’t want anyone to sympathize with my husband. If anyone deserves sympathy, it would be me. Me. You know I’ve always wanted another child, right?
I was raised Catholic. My parents were strict, always enforcing their traditional values. I never thought there could ever be parents worse than them. When I turned eighteen I left the house and the religion, almost certain I’d never look back. If I ever acted in a way that my parents or God, apparently, didn’t agree with, I’d get beat. So I received a ton of beatings. More than I’d care to remember. I grew up hating God, in all his hypocrisy and evilness, and envied my friends at school with atheist or nonreligious parents. I promised myself I’d never raise my child Catholic. I thought there was nothing worse. I was wrong.
When I was young, I fell in love with a scientist, Victor. He was so charming. He swept me off my feet. I knew he was the one, so I married him, without my parents’ blessing.
When I was pregnant, we agreed he’d handle raising the child. I didn’t want any influences from my upbringing affecting how I raised my own kid. So I let him take care of it. That was my first mistake. I shouldn’t have given him that much control. It ended up taking over his life. He became obsessed with making little Adam the best he could be. It was awful. He was always doing these experiments on him. Oh, I couldn’t explain them in the least to you. It was all way over my head. I just knew Adam would always run into my arms crying. He was so young.
Victor made me do something I thought I’d never do again. I started going back to church. I needed to get out of the house. I needed an escape. I fell back to my roots. I turned to God. For a long time, God had no answers. He was silent. But then he told me to bear another child. That it would complete the family and save Victor from his spell, his evolutionist nightmare. It’s funny how God told me that. I remember I used to draw pictures in my diary when I was a child of my future self, living in a big house with a loving husband and two kids.
When I proposed the idea to my husband, he was outraged. Of course, I never revealed I was going back to church because then he might have actually hit me. Every time I’d bring up the idea of having another kid, he’d throw a fit. We’d argue for hours. He’d yell at me, saying I wasn’t beautiful enough, smart enough, strong enough to bring another being into this world, and that it was selfish of me to even think of it. He’d curse himself, that he wasn’t perfect enough. That he would always be doomed to create babies with the same faults as his. He refused.
This is the man I loved, that I thought was the greatest person to enter my life, and he dismissed himself as if he were the world’s litter. I am the woman he loved, the object of his fantasies and desires, and he scorned me like I was just some filthy slut looking for a lay. And poor Adam would sit and listen to us argue, and as time went on, I think he began convincing himself that he was ugly, dumb, weak, and needed to be fixed. As time went on, he began allowing his father to experiment on him. He didn’t argue. He never disagreed with his father.
It was terrible. I stopped having sex with Victor. I figured that if he didn’t do what I wanted, I wouldn’t do what he wanted. And that bastard hated me for holding out on him. If he was so fixed on the natural order of things, that religion is unnatural, then why wouldn’t he create life with me? That’s the most natural thing there is. Contraceptives and birth control are artificial, manmade. Just like religion. The hypocrisy goes both ways. But men will be men. They only have one thing on their mind, those animals. Our relationship was stripped of all love, only held together by the mutual desire to care for Adam, and the not-so-mutual desire to fuck. Every night at ten o’clock, Victor would stand next to me at the bathroom sink, arms folded, foot tapping, and watch me as I swallowed down my birth control pill. Some nights he’d lead me to the bed, slowly sliding the bands of my nightgown off my shoulder, as he pulled down his underwear. He’d always keep his shirt on because he was self-conscious of his scrawny physique. There was a time when I loved him and didn’t care about his appearance. But he ruined that feeling. He’d whisper things to get me in the mood. But not like he used to when we were young lovers. He’d whisper that it was my wifely duty, that I was expected to sleep with him if I truly loved him. He sounded exactly how my dad did to my mom. There was no difference between that radical Catholic man and this radical Darwinist man. He’d pretend to love me only when he wanted to get into my pants. But I wouldn’t fall for his advances anymore. The foreplay was forced and there was no fire in the bed. I couldn’t get wet for him anymore. He’d make me suck him off, either that or he’d lather himself with the strawberry lubricant he kept in his nightstand drawer. Then we’d have bland, impassionate sex for a couple of minutes.
I’ll censor that part.
No, I want you to publish it. I want to humiliate my husband. He deserves it. Just like I was humiliated in front of all my church friends.
How did he humiliate you? If you don’t mind my asking.
I started replacing my birth control with placebos. Eventually I was blessed with the second child I always wanted. At first I was afraid to tell Victor. But I finally worked up the courage to tell him. I thought he’d understand, be kind again. When I told him about Adam, my first pregnancy, he was so happy he almost cried. I expected the same reaction. But this time was different.
“How could you?” he screamed. “How could you be so selfish?”
I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t believe he could hate something most people would consider a miracle.
He trudged over to the bathroom and ripped apart the packaging to my birth control. “Where is the phone number to this damn company? I’m suing.” He had so much trust in modern science, it was almost cute. He always insisted on finishing inside me, it was some weird fetish of his. I would have gotten pregnant sooner or later. He was so naive for how smart he claimed to be.
“It was me. Not the company.”
He fumbled with the folded up white paper with the instructions. “What? No, I watched you take them. We followed the directions precisely.”
“No, I’ve been replacing the pills with sugar pills. I haven’t been on birth control for a while now.” It was too late to take back my words.
He grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me through the house. I was glad Adam was at school and didn’t see his father act like that. His grip was tight and left my skin red when he let go like it was sunburned. He dragged me out to the car, opened the passenger side door, and tossed me in.
“We’re going to the abortion clinic.” He started the car and backed it out of the driveway before I could voice an opinion.
“What? No, baby, no!” I remember holding my belly, even though there was no noticeable size to it yet. “I can’t!”
“Well, you damn sure are!”
He drove silently, ignoring my protests, just staring out of the windshield.
We arrived at ABC Women’s Help Center. “Get out.”
“Let’s talk about this first,” I begged.
“Get. Out.”
He yanked the parking brake and then folded his arms over his chest, just like he did when he waited for me to swallow the birth control. He had no intention of leaving. At least not until the mistake was removed from my body.
I quickly walked across the sidewalk with my head down. This was against my moral code. I was a God-fearing woman. I was being forced to sin.
When I entered the clinic, the stale scent of an overly sanitized hospital room hung drearily in the air. The waiting room was typical, office chairs lined the wall, fake plants, old magazines. No one else was there, so I walked directly to the woman at the reception desk.
“Maria?” the woman asked.
“How did you know my . . . oh my god!” It was a woman from my church. I’d seen her every Sunday. What was she doing here?
“You’ve come to get an abortion?” She spoke carefully, almost hesitantly.
“Yes. Yes I have.”
The woman looked down and sighed. She looked disappointed. “Come with me,” she said.
There was something off about the clinic. I didn’t get it right away, so I let her lure me into the back room. I walked down a hallway with other patients’ rooms, and it looked like an average doctor’s office.
A doctor greeted me at the end of the hall. He looked strangely familiar. He asked me to take off my pants and wait for him inside the room. I really didn’t know what was going on. It didn’t even click that it wasn’t common procedure—no paperwork signed or anything. I was still shocked that my own husband had kicked me to the curb in front of this damned place. So I did what the doctor told me.
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