A Troubling Turn of Events

by Darrell Maloney

  Charlie got in his own truck and went in the opposite direction, and the solitary figure dissolved into the darkness.

  -15-

  They say everybody is good at something; that everyone has a claim to fame.

  Jeff Barnett was the worst kind of human being. He was a scum bag extraordinaire.

  It was really the only talent he’d ever shown.

  He was a bully in elementary school until he dropped out in the middle of sixth grade.

  He figured he wasn’t going to pass anyway.

  It wasn’t just the fact he was failing every subject and doing so miserably.

  It was also that little matter of attendance.

  He’d missed ninety-one days that year. It was a school district record. His guidance counselor was never able to find his parents to ask them why.

  They were usually in jail, in the back bedroom high or passed out drunk, or just in no mood to answer the door.

  On one of the rare occasions when Jeff decided to grace the school with his presence, the counselor asked him the question himself.

  “I only come in on the days when the hunger gets to me,” he said quite honestly.

  It seemed the school offered free breakfast and lunches to impoverished students. And that sometimes he missed so many meals at home he’d attend a school he hated just to get a bit of food in his belly.

  When the principal told him the authorities were coming to his house to pick him up, he asked why.

  “They’re going to place you in a home for boys, for truancy.”

  “Tell them to go to hell. I ain’t goin’.”

  That was the day he ran away from home for the first time.

  His folks never even missed him. Never even knew he was gone until the cops came looking for him and they realized they hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks.

  And when they found out he was gone, they didn’t really care much.

  They never wanted him to begin with.

  Jeff decided he liked living on his own.

  Yes, it was a pain to sleep on park benches or under overpasses, but at least he had nobody on his back.

  He met a pimp who rented him out to sadistic men.

  He hated what he had to do, but made good money.

  Enough money to buy beer for twice the listed price from a wino. And pot and meth.

  Lots of pot and meth.

  Oh, he got caught several times. A twelve year old kid on the streets attracts a lot of attention from the cops and from concerned citizen busy-bodies who were always sticking their noses in Jeff’s business.

  Each time the cops or Child Protective Services grabbed him and sent him back home he just ran away again.

  When they started sending him to the School for Boys he kept escaping.

  Finally the system gave up on him too.

  As he grew the cops started hassling him less and less. He was tall for his age, and life on the streets gave him a hardened and grizzled look.

  By the time he was fifteen the stores stopped asking him for ID. He passed easily for twenty one.

  He told the wino to take a hike and started buying his own beer.

  He started doing harsher drugs like crack cocaine and heroin.

  Then LSD and PCP.

  By his twentieth birthday his brain was fried.

  Seriously fried.

  He remembered his own name on a good day.

  But couldn’t recall any other details of his miserable life.

  It was funny, though, for he knew the name and address of darn near every drug dealer in the city of Dallas.

  He still sold his body for cash from seedy men, but had grown to accept it.

  It was his lot in life.

  And it mostly kept him out of jail, for he didn’t need to shoplift or burglarize houses to buy his drugs, as most other dopers did.

  He was blessed with movie-star good looks. It was perhaps the only thing worthwhile his parents ever did for him.

  But like a model who made a living on her beauty, knowing someday it would fade and she’d have to find a Plan B, he knew there would come a day when his services would no longer be wanted.

  He had no backup plan, but that didn’t concern him much.

  He didn’t expect to live that long anyway.

  Most of the drug people he hung around with had been popped and were in prison before the blackout hit.

  Or overdosed and were dead.

  His parents were both doing hard time, one in north Texas and one on the Texas coast.

  Not that he cared much.

  After the blackout the crack supply dried up for several weeks.

  He killed for the first time in the midst of that shortage, when he was undergoing withdrawals and was in constant agony.

  And he found out something he never knew about himself.

  He liked the way it felt to take another life.

  Killing was a high of its own. It gave him a thrill unlike any drug.

  He decided to do it again.

  He’d killed several people in Dallas and the surrounding area. Mostly women but a couple of men as well.

  Some were fellow druggies, some weren’t.

  All were stupid, for they’d let their guards down and therefore deserved to die.

  At least in Jeff’s warped mind.

  He finally killed the wrong person: the little brother of the biggest drug lord in Dallas.

  His ass, if he stayed around Dallas, was toast.

  It was as good a time as any to leave and look for greener pastures.

  For four months he wandered the highways, blending in with scores of other nomads eating off tractor trailers or stealing from the vulnerable.

  He still managed to find dope, for it was common for nomads to shoot up to escape the realities of a very harsh world.

  The killing?

  He did without it for a long time.

  But he missed the high he got tremendously.

  Then he landed in Kerrville.

  -16-

  Katie wasn’t Jeff’s first victim in K’Town. His first victim was a seventy year old woman on the opposite outskirts of town.

  She’d died because of her humanity, pure and simple.

  She’d been sitting on her front porch, reading a classic Steinbeck novel: The Grapes of Wrath.

  She’d read it half a dozen times in the past, but a great book is one which can be read again and again.

  She’d seen Jeff Barnett walking up the road.

  She decided, for whatever reason, that he looked thirsty.

  And she offered him a drink of water.

  By doing so, she signed her own death warrant.

  Her crime was being kind to a total stranger. For Jeff Barnett didn’t recognize her offer for what it was: a simple act of kindness.

  No, Jeff Barnett saw her offer as an announcement of vulnerability. And maybe one of stupidity.

  In Jeff’s addled mind her act was akin to her holding up a big banner.

  A banner which read:

  HEY, LOOK AT ME.

  I’M TOO STUPID TO RUN INTO MY HOUSE AND HIDE FROM STRANGERS.

  I’M TOO STUPID TO LIVE.

  I DESERVE TO DIE.

  Jeff accepted her offer, and followed her into her house.

  He killed her with one punch to the jaw, breaking her neck.

  He was so impressed with himself he thanked her for making it so easy.

  And for being so ridiculously stupid.

  He tortured his previous victims in different ways.

  He didn’t want his high to diminish because he got bored with the same old way of doing things.

  The torture was what made his killings so gratifying.

  The old woman’s dying so quickly was therefore a disappointment for him.

  But there would be more.

  He strung her up by the ankles, dangling from the ceiling and slowly spinning around in circles.

  Then he cut off her clothes and stood back to admire his work.

>   But he wasn’t yet satisfied; that wasn’t quite enough.

  In her garage he found an assortment of paints.

  He selected a pink rose enamel. For no real reason, really, other than he thought it was pretty.

  And he used a brush to paint her head to toe a bright pink.

  Once finished he tried to set her on fire, but she wouldn’t burn.

  He cursed her and kicked her, but she didn’t feel it.

  By that time she was in a much better place.

  He set fire to her house instead.

  Her neighbors came running, for she was a kindly old soul and had a lot of friends.

  But by the time they got there the house was fully engulfed.

  No one could go in after her for fear they’d be burned alive.

  By the time the ashes had cooled two days later, and a brave neighbor dug through the charred wreckage to retrieve her body, she was charred black.

  All signs of the pink paint had been burned away.

  None of the neighbors or friends were arson investigators.

  They didn’t have a clue the fire had been intentionally set, or that she’d been hanging from the ceiling upside down when it was set.

  The ceiling collapsed in the fire, the hemp rope had burned away.

  Jeff Barnett lit the fire out of rage. He hadn’t intended to cover up all evidence of his crime.

  It just worked out that way.

  What was left of the kindly old woman was given a proper burial in her back yard.

  Hymns were sung, prayers were said and a cross was shoved into the ground.

  It was assumed she’d placed a lit candle too close to a curtain, or put a lit cigarette down in the wrong place.

  She was mourned for awhile, then quickly forgotten.

  In a place where death occurred far too often, people grieved and then moved on.

  Jeff had watched the funeral from a distance.

  He never even knew her name.

  Not that it mattered much.

  And truth be known, he was a bit pissed at the lack of outrage. Upset that they didn’t even realize the crazy old woman was murdered.

  He was determined that wouldn’t be the case with the next victim.

  That next victim, as it happened, was Katie.

  He’d made a mistake with Katie, though.

  Some dumb bitch in a Sheriff’s pickup had seen him leaving after he went back to visit Katie’s dead body.

  Some dumb bitch who could identify him.

  He’d eventually leave Kerrville on his own, once he was bored of it.

  But he’d do it on his own schedule. Not because he felt the heat of the law breathing down his neck.

  The dumb bitch in the pickup truck had to go.

  Finding the Sheriff’s Office in Kerrville wasn’t hard.

  All he had to do was ask around.

  He knew she’d show up there sometime.

  And she did.

  He’d use an old stalker technique to find out where she lived. It was a tried and true method he’d used several times before.

  It required a bit of patience, but then Jeff Barnett was a patient man.

  And he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  -17-

  “What happened to your leg?” Julio asked as they walked down the ninth floor corridor.

  “My what?”

  “I didn’t stutter, you young fool. Your leg. Your leg. You walk with a limp. What happened to your leg? Somebody shoot you in the knee for being a dumbass?”

  Julio laughed, thinking he was clever.

  John was starting to wonder why he was so curious about this old man he’d subject himself to such unrelenting abuse.

  But he had to admit Loco Julio fascinated him.

  Instead of answering he merely raised up the leg of his jeans to reveal his prosthetic leg.

  “Oh. You a veteran?”

  It was, John thought, the first question Julio had asked of him that didn’t include an insult or a derogatory name.

  “Yes. I was in the Marine Corps for six years.”

  Julio stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Really? Me too.”

  To prove it he pulled up the sleeve covering his left arm, revealing a tattoo of the USMC emblem on his bicep.

  “1st Marines in Da Nang. I got this baby in Okinawa.”

  John showed off a similar tattoo on his own bicep.

  They had something in common.

  And it seemed to serve as a bonding experience between the two. John steeled himself for the insult that was inevitably coming, but it never came.

  Instead, Julio said, “Semper Fi, brother.”

  Julio’s attitude changed after that.

  United States Marines are brothers. Even when separated by generations and geography, the Corps bonds them together through mutually-shared experiences. Sometimes only Marines can understand other Marines.

  “Come on, friend,” Julio said. “Let me show you the rest of my place and introduce you to my missus.”

  Now it was time for John to pay back a bit of the grief Julio had been dishing out.

  “You actually found somebody who’d marry you?”

  Julio laughed uproariously before stating, “Hard to believe, ain’t it?”

  Maria was, in a word, an anti-Julio.

  She was everything he wasn’t: kind, sharing, polite.

  If there was ever a solid case to prove opposites attract, this pairing was it.

  She stood when Julio walked in with an unannounced guest and went through great pains to try to smooth her rumpled dress, flatten her flyaway hair.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. I must look an awful fright.”

  John turned on the charm he was famous for.

  “Nonsense,” he said as he took her hand and kissed it. “You are a beacon of beauty on a troubled shore.”

  He’d used the same line on many women over the years who were concerned about the way they looked.

  He truthfully didn’t know what it meant. And odds were the women didn’t either. It was just something he made up one day and the women seemed to eat it up.

  So he kept using it.

  Maria blushed. It had been years since a man kissed her hand.

  Julio rolled his eyes and said, “Oh brother…”

  Maria said, “I will hit Julio over the head with a frying pan later for bringing in a guest without warning me ahead of time. But that’s later. Right now, tell me about yourself, Mr. Castro.”

  “Please, call me John.

  “And there’s not much to tell, really. Julio and I met a couple of weeks ago when he asked my assistance in tying his rope to his water coolers…”

  “You mean when he yelled and cursed at you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” John said as Julio snickered in the background.

  “I apologize for his behavior. He’s about as well behaved as a mongrel dog, I’m afraid. For forty one years I’ve tried to turn him into a civilized human being. I suppose I should have given up a long time ago, but I still have hope.”

  John laughed.

  “I assure you I wasn’t offended by his words. I’ve been called worse. But he piqued my interest, and I wanted to check out his story. To see if there was a reason for him to live so high above everyone else.

  “And honestly, to see if it was safe for him here. And to help him find a more suitable place if need be.

  “Now that I’ve seen how you’re living, I no longer have any concerns. It seems to me the two of you are living much better than everyone else.”

  “We like it here. It’s quiet and people tend to leave us alone. Looters are lazy people by nature, you see. None of them are willing to climb nine flights of stairs to steal something that’s available somewhere else on the first floor.

  “We’re above all the trees which provide wonderful shade, but which also block the sun needed to grow our vegetables. Situated the way we are, the balconies get several hours of direct sunlight each day no m
atter which side of the building they’re on.

  “And we don’t have to worry about anyone stealing our tomatoes or beans, so we don’t have to guard them each night the way many others who tend to gardens do.”

  “So you grow everything you eat? You’re vegetarians?”

  “Oh my goodness, no. I guess Julio hasn’t taken you up to the roof.”

  “The roof?”

  “We have a chicken coop up there.”

  “Now I know you’re pulling my leg.”

  “Oh, no. Perhaps it’s time we gave you the grand tour.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean you tend to chickens on the roof? But that means you climb all the way to the top of the building every day. This building must be twenty stories high!”

  “Twenty one stories, actually. And it’s not easy. But we manage.”

  -18-

  “The catholic church took over the Alamo grounds a few days after they determined the blackout was worldwide and permanent,” Maria said as they walked up the steps to the hotel’s roof.

  “On the grounds themselves they set up an orphanage. There were a surprising number of people who were so distraught they killed themselves and left their children behind. Other parents were murdered by marauders and thieves.

  “The sisters do a good job of taking the children in and finding them homes.

  “In the chapel itself, what most tourists call the Alamo, they pass out food every day. One meal a day to anyone who needs it, regardless of religious affiliation.

  “Since the earliest days, two years ago, Julio and I have walked down the steps and over to the Alamo to get our meals.

  “Many people pick up their meals and take them home to eat. We always sit beneath one of the gazebos on the terrace and eat our meals there. That way we don’t have to carry them back.

  “Instead we carry other things. You see, we always take our backpacks with us. We carry them out empty, or perhaps full of empty bottles. And when we come back they’re always filled.”

  “Filled with what?”

  “Oh, all kinds of things. For three months we filled them with dirt.”

  “Dirt? But why?”

  “For the roof, mostly. And for the planter boxes.”

  “Okay, I understand the planter boxes. But why did you need dirt for the roof?”