by J. D. Barker
I shook my head. “They’ll know.”
I still had nightmares about last year.
The roar of the engine.
The impact.
We told Auntie Jo someone stole my bike from school. I bought Willy’s old one, a black BMX with silver stripes. Not quite as cool as Dunk’s but way better than the one I had. I could have bought a new one. The envelopes arrived every month, and I had over sixteen thousand dollars hidden away, but I didn’t. Willy’s old bike suited me just fine.
So, on Tuesday, August 8, 1989, I rode my new used bike through the evening heat, up the road at the cemetery gate, and left it sitting in the grass beside the mausoleums, then walked over to the bench and took a seat, my chest, back, and arms covered in sweat under the thick leather jacket with the gun in the pocket. I sat there and waited. When six o’clock rolled around, I waited longer. When seven came and went, I began to think Dunk and Willy had followed me and were hiding in the trees, somehow frightened Stella and the others off, but when I turned and looked, I didn’t see anyone. By eight o’clock, I had only seen two other people, an older couple a few hundred feet away, down the hill, placing flowers at a grave. With the approach of nine, and the loss of the sun, now gone more than thirty minutes, I stood from the bench, retrieved my bike, and rode home where Willy and Dunk waited impatiently, and had waited the entire time.
2
1990 saw the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the arrival of the Furby, and the discovery of the most completed T. Rex skeleton in South Dakota. Paleontologists named it Sue. My days were filled with thoughts of Stella. I filled sketchbook after sketchbook with Stella, finding drawing to be the only way to erase her from my mind, if only for a little while. My nights brought the dream more times than I could count, and I became obsessed with the box my father handed to Auntie Jo. I tore our apartment to pieces looking for it. I even asked Auntie Jo about it once, and she said, and I quote, “Your father was such a selfish prick, he wouldn’t have given me a cold. I don’t know nothing about no box.”
Stella didn’t come to the cemetery that year, either. I decided I’d leave the gun at home next time. Maybe they somehow knew about the gun.
With 1991 came the death of Freddy Mercury, the start of Operation Desert Storm with the invasion of Kuwait, and Boris Yeltsin became the first elected President of Russia. Something called “the Internet” arrived—it would change the world, we were told. Auntie Jo said it would just be a new way for the pervs to find their porn.
No Stella that year, either.
I wouldn’t see Stella Nettleton again until August 1992.
PART 2
“In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
August 8, 1992
Sixteen Years Old
Log 08/08/1992—
Interview with Dr. Helen Durgin. Subject “D” appears aggravated but in control of his emotional state.
Audio/video recording.
“I want to see her.”
“You know the drill. You do as we ask, then you get to see her. That’s the rule.”
“Another phone call?”
“Another phone call.”
“Phone calls can be traced, Doc. Maybe you should take me there this time.”
“You know we can’t do that.”
“Then bring the person here. Let me see their face when I do it. Is it a man or a woman this time?”
“Does that matter?”
“No, just curious.”
“A man.”
“Why him? What did he do?”
The doctor said nothing.
“And after, you’ll let me see her again?”
“That’s the rule.”
“How long?”
“One hour.”
“I want two.”
“One hour, and if you push again, I’ll see that she is only here for thirty minutes. Maybe less.”
“Sorry, Doc.”
“Doctor Durgin.”
“Sorry, Doctor Durgin. It’s just, I don’t get to see anyone. Only you and her. I look forward to her visits.”
“But not mine?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t, David. Why don’t you explain it to me.”
“You talk to me because you have to, it’s your job. She talks to me because she wants to.”
“And you wouldn’t hurt her? Like your parents? Like the others?”
“You mean, like the phone calls?”
“Yes. Like the phone calls.”
“No. I’d never hurt her.”
“Do you love her?”
Silence.
“David?”
“I’m not sure I know what love is. I only know love from books.”
“Love is caring for someone more than you care for yourself. Think of it this way—if killing me meant you’d get freedom, would you do it?”
Silence.
“You can answer, David. You won’t get in trouble. Would you kill me to get out of this place?”
“You’re deaf. I can’t kill you.”
“But if you could, if I could hear you, would you kill me?”
“For freedom?”
“Yes, for complete freedom.”
“Yes.”
“No hesitation? No remorse? We’ve known each other for a long time.”
“You keep me in a box. I’m only permitted out of my box if I wear a mask. I’m your prisoner, you’re my jailor. I’m nothing more than a lab rat to you.”
“And Stella, would you kill her? If ending her life meant you could taste that exact same freedom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think you do. You’ve spent countless hours with her, and she can hear you, and you’ve never hurt her. You’ve never even tried, not even as a child.”
“And that means I love her?”
“I believe it does, yes.”
David said nothing.
“Let’s take it to another level. If I told you to kill her, instructed you to kill her, and said that if you did, I would guarantee you received that same freedom I mentioned earlier, would you do it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d be lying. You’d never let me go.”
“For argument’s sake, let’s say that I would.”
“I don’t think I could hurt her.”
“Because you love her.”
“I suppose I do, if that’s what love means.”
“More than you loved your parents when you killed them?”
“I was a kid, I overreacted.”
“And if it were to happen again today, you wouldn’t hurt them?”
“No, I can control it now. I understand how it works. I rule my emotions, I don’t allow my emotions to rule me.”
“That’s good, David. Very insightful.”
“So I can see her, then?”
“After we make a phone call.”
“Okay.”
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
“Have you been here all night?”
Detective Faustino Brier must have drifted off. He hadn’t heard Joy Fogel come in, hadn’t heard her get coffee, and didn’t notice when she planted herself at the desk facing his. She sat there now, a steaming mug of coffee resting between her hands, leaning back in her chair, her head tilted a little to the left. She tended to do that when she asked a question. Over time, Faustino noticed the tilt went left when she already knew the answer to her latest query, and to the right when she did not.
Faustino sat up straight in his own chair, looked at the empty coffee mug in front of him, and smacked his dry lips. “What time is it?”
“Four twenty-three in the morning,” she said, without missing a beat.
“That’s a neat trick. You just know that?”
“I can see the clock in interrogati
on room two from here.”
Faustino twisted his head around and glanced behind him. His neck let out a series of pops and creaks. He could make out a white blob hanging on the wall of the small interrogation room, but that was about it. His vision had gradually gotten worse in the past decade or so. Now forty-three, he had eleven years on his partner. Sometimes that mattered, most of the time it didn’t. This was apparently one of those times it did. Vision went with age, and he wasn’t getting any younger.
Considering the odd time, Fogel looked wide awake and together. She wore little makeup, just some eyeliner. Her blonde hair was pulled back in the usual ponytail, still damp.
She wasn’t a large woman. In fact, she was downright tiny, only about five-two , but she spent most of her free time in the department gym. Over the three years they’d been partners, Faustino had seen no less than five other officers comment on her petite size and had also seen her take down those same five officers with relative ease within hours of said comment. “Meet me in the gym after your shift,” was not something you wanted to hear from her, and it became a running joke in the department. As new officers cycled in, it was only a matter of time before they said something about her—a comment on her short stature or her looks—and the person would soon find themselves staring up at her from one of the mats in the gym, little birdies dancing around their head as they tried to piece together what just happened. Her father insisted she take Taekwondo beginning at eight years old, and at last check, she now had her third black belt. She also took jiu jitsu and yoga (to relax, she said).
There had been a time early on when Faustino thought the two of them might actually try dating, but they quickly moved past that. He found her to be attractive, same as the other guys. She had seen something in him, too, but they spent so much time together they quickly shifted from that mutual attraction to something more like a sibling relationship. In the few instances when Faustino had actually gone out on a date with other women (typically women he met through a dating service—homicide detectives rarely encountered live women through work), Fogel studied each one closely and offered her “unbiased” opinion—none were particularly right for him, but they were right for now. If Fogel dated, she didn’t talk about it, at least not with him. That was okay, too.
“I got in a little after midnight,” Faustino told her. “Couldn’t sleep. How about you? What are you doing here so early?”
She glanced up at the large bulletin board on wheels next to Faustino’s desk. “It’s August 8. I knew that would be coming out. Wouldn’t miss it.”
The bulletin board spent most of the year tucked in the far back corner of the Pittsburgh PD homicide division’s pen, gathering dust, the side with clippings, photographs, and notes turned to face the wall, the blank side out. Most of the detectives were too new to know much about it and left it as is. The older detectives had written it off long ago as Faustino’s personal project and also left it as is. At one point, someone had written, FAUST’S WALL OF WEIRD across the top in red chalk, but that had slowly faded away.
“Do you want to walk me through it?”
“Are you sure you want to hear it again?”
Fogel nodded. “A refresher is good. It’s been a year.”
Faustino stood, scooped up his coffee mug, and went to the machine near the door to get a refill. The coffee was lukewarm and tasted like shit, but he felt the caffeine working through his cells even before he got back to his desk. He set the mug down on the corner and went to the board—sixteen dead in as many years.
“Do you want me to start with the most recent and work my way back, or the other way around?”
“Your call.”
Faustino turned back to the board. “Backwards it is.”
For each of the sixteen victims, the board displayed a photograph of the deceased, and in many cases, a secondary photograph taken when they were still alive, necessary because of the state of the bodies when found. Above each photo was a strip of tape with the date. The earliest contained the full date—August 8, 1978, as did the six that followed, but by 1984, they only listed the year. With all the murders taking place on August 8, it seemed redundant to keep repeating the same date.
Faustino, along with all those who didn’t refer to this case as the Wall of Weird, called these murders the August Eights. Aside from the date, the condition of each body linked them all together.
Faustino went to the bottom right of the board, to the most recent murder. “Arden Royal, twenty-seven-year-old male, found behind a Dumpster in Upper Saint Clair one year ago today, August 8, 1991. Same condition as all the others. No apparent motive, no evidence of value collected at the scene. Like the others, we’re confident he was killed somewhere else and dumped here.”
“1990, we’ve got Tama Krieg. Sixteen years old, a member of the South Side Bandits. She had a couple of arrests, petty stuff, mostly. Sounds to me just like a kid trying to fit in under poor circumstances. Her mother said her grades were solid before she dropped out of high school. I checked, Cs and Ds, mostly, but passing. She was found behind a Burger King downtown.” He paused at the crime scene photo, her body lying on the ground, unrecognizable, then went on to the next two, pointing at both.
“1989 and 1988, both male, both unidentified. 1989 was dumped behind a warehouse. 1988 was left right on the sidewalk near Three River Stadium under a blanket. He was there for two days before someone realized he wasn’t just some homeless guy sleeping it off.”
“Were they robbed?” Fogel asked.
Faustino shook his head. “We don’t think so. Even though their wallets were missing, if they carried them at all. We found wallets on many of the other victims, cash still inside. The motive here isn’t robbery. It’s possible someone took the wallets after the bodies were dumped, but I honestly don’t think anyone would be that brazen. One look at the condition of the bodies would be more than enough to scare away someone out for a quick buck.”
“Tell me about the cause of death.”
Faustino exhaled, his eyes shifting over the photos. “At first glance, they all appear to be horribly burned. Like they were soaked in an accelerant, then lit up.”
“But it’s not fire, right?”
“Nope. They look burned, but the Medical Examiner is confident that is not the case. The burn-like marks cover every inch of their bodies, even between fingers and toes, their tongues, internal organs—every cell evenly destroyed by whatever this is. Their clothing is untouched.”
Fogel took a sip of her coffee. “Redressed after?”
Again, Faustino shook his head. “I’ve touched them. The skin was completely dried out, almost like powder, no moisture left at all. With the slightest pressure, it cracked and flaked away. The wind picked it up. We did significant damage just getting them into body bags. There is no way someone did this and then got fresh clothing on the bodies after the fact, no way. They died in these clothes. Whatever happened, somehow started on the inside, at the cellular level.”
“I’ve heard some of the guys say this is spontaneous combustion.”
Faustino crossed back over to his own desk, drank some coffee, grimaced, and set the mug back down. “I looked at that early on, researched the hell out of it. I didn’t believe any of that shit going in, but I found a lot of evidence to support it’s a real phenomenon. There’s even video—people super heating from the inside, sweating, then bursting into flames. It always seems to start at the mouth—smoke coming from the mouth, then the nose and ears. Freaky shit, but that’s not what we have here.”
“How do you know?”
“In each of those cases, the fire spreads. The clothing goes. Many of them set their surroundings on fire. It happens so fast, the fire is usually contained, but there is external damage of some sort. We’ve got none of that here, not on a single one of them,” Faustino said.
Fogel nodded back at the board. “1987. Andy Olin Flack. I remember that one, it made the news for a few days.”
Returning to
the board, Faustino tapped at Flack’s photos—a before and after. “Thirty-three years old, from Bethel Park. Serious pervert. We found piles of child pornography at his house. He was found a few miles from home in an alley off Brownsville. This is one of the few crime scenes where we did find something.”
“What?”
Faustino crossed back to his desk, tugged open the top metal drawer on the left, and rifled through the contents. He located a legal size manilla folder and opened it on the top of his desk. The folder didn’t contain much—about ten pages of typed paper and a few photographs clipped to the inside flap. He studied the photographs for a second, then slid the folder to Fogel. “This guy was carrying a wallet, and we were able to lift prints that did not belong to him.”
“I’m guessing they weren’t in the system?”
“Nope. We think our perp pulled it out to get a look at the ID. He or she didn’t touch the cash or the credit cards. From what we can tell, nothing was taken.”
“Ballsy move, without gloves.”
“Or panicked, or just plain stupid. Who knows?”
Fogel studied the images, three in all. The first was of the wallet, a black leather bifold opened to the center, driver’s license on the left side, a Visa and a few other cards on the right, everything covered in white fingerprint powder. She frowned. “How big were Flack’s hands?”
“Caught that, huh?” He tapped at the photograph. “The larger prints belong to Flack, the smaller ones are the ones that came back as unknown.”
Fogel thought about that for a second, then looked at the other two photographs, both shoe prints on the grimy alley floor.
“We think those belong to a kid. They’re a size four.”
“Could be a woman.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“A kid didn’t do this. Size four would put them around, what? Ten or eleven years old? Way too small to move a body like this. What did Flack weigh?”
“One seventy-three.”