Perfect Killer

by Robb T White

  The scratching at the back door made him jerk up on the caught. His hearing became acute: the sound again, then the chrome handle turning with a click.

  Someone coming in. A thief …

  Wöissell’s hands gripped the cot’s sides; he could vault off it faster than the fuzzy shape outlined against the door could take a single step in his direction.

  ‘Ted?’

  Her. Oh fuck me.

  She walked toward him, more distinct now, her hands fluttering to either side like a blind person walking in a strange place. She said his name again. He stayed quiet, feral, watching her come forward an inch at a time, groping with her hands, thinking of his options; some were too bloody to put names to, one was not, and he chose it.

  ‘Reggie, is that you?’

  ‘Fuck, Teddy, I can’t see shit in here. Where you at?’

  ‘Take two steps straight ahead of you,’ he said.

  ‘Ouch, fuck. What is that?’

  ‘It’s the metal leg of the table,’ he said. ‘Move to your left and take one more step. I’m on a cot with metal sides. Bend down, you’ll feel something,’ he said.

  Wöissell smelled the fruity alcohol of her breath.

  ‘Oh fuck, you weren’t kidding about something hard,’ Reggie said.

  Wöissell felt himself gripped by her hand. She gave his member a stroke to improve the erection and he thought his spine would crack from the strain. Sweat popped out on his forehead and his brain never even put up a fight. He was helpless, weak, at her mercy.

  She squeezed until tears welled up in his eyes.

  ‘I came over to apologize but … but I think I’ll just do this …’ she said.

  Her mouth took him in. Her hair tickled his stomach and he lost his senses altogether—a man floating off into darkest space—until he set his hand on her neck and let the motion of her bobbing take control.

  The ejaculation was prolonged; a final spurt drained everything from his spine to his brain.

  ‘Damn, I think I broke it,’ she whispered and kissed the head of his cock. He heard her laughter in the dark.

  She asked for a towel. She said something about not going home smelling like sex.

  He woke with the sun in his eyes. He looked down to see his member had shrunk back to its flaccid size as if last night had been a dream.

  I need to leave now, he told himself. Right now—

  Fuck you, you can’t leave now, his ratcheting brain said, firmly back in control.

  Chapter 19

  ‘HOW MANY IS THAT NOW?’

  ‘I’ve lost count,’ Jade said.

  She pointed to three stacks of disks in her carrel marked Done, Motel, and CCTV. She’d had every motel between McKees Rocks and Pittsburgh send her DVD copies from their lobby cameras. Then she did the same for every Dairy Mart, Dollar General, and strip mall with closed-circuit cameras in a radius of two miles from DeShonte Baker’s street send her theirs for the day before, of, and after the murder of McDuffy.

  The one video she wanted wasn’t much good. The motel where the white truck and the neatnik lodger had stayed had limited views of the motel and the back portion of the L-shaped building was out of view of the camera’s range. The cheap surveillance video itself was grainy, one that automatically erased and re-recorded. You could tell old from young, men from women, but that was about it. Every male looked stunted from the overhead angle and the facial features, if visible, were distorted. The unsub she was calling ‘Sandwich Man’ wore a baseball cap and sunglasses. All she knew for sure was that he was average in every respect: ‘normal,’ ‘ordinary’ as her two best sources had said, the McKees Rocks pizza store owner and young DeShonte.

  Pete Grandbois had shown Tiedman, the taco foreman, hundreds of models, shapes, and sizes of canteen trucks so she was sure she knew what he was driving. Yet he never got a look at the sandwich man outside his truck—just a short conversation through the plexiglass window. The man stuttered and seemed shy. That’s all he remembered.

  But, Jade knew, bringing him out of the shadows was the primary goal at this point. With a face, she could get a name—possibly. Nobody hides forever.

  If the bastard had kidnapped somebody on his way out of town, she could summon a hundred agents to pore through municipalities and records offices, searching their databases for a license issued for food permits. But nothing like that, no APBs or anything remotely possible until she had more data on the person she sought.

  She checked her watch. DeShonte was due home from school in a half hour. She had his grandmother’s permission to interview him one more time. That ‘squeaking’ business was sticking in her craw and she wanted to get it out of the way before she did anything else.

  ‘You have time for lunch?’

  Shaughnessy was on her way past, looking frazzled.

  ‘Raincheck me, Cee,’ Jade said. ‘I’ve got to see a boy about a horse.’

  ‘God, you’re not going to interview that kid again, are you? That old lady will be filing a restraining order on you before too long.’

  She flashed her a quick smile, lifted her blazer from the chair behind her, grabbed her purse, decided to leave the Glock in the drawer for once, and hit the door at a fast trot. Nolan was moving on to other cases and she knew her time to use him was running out. Anything she could do to move the investigation forward was all right with her.

  DeShonte was waiting on the front steps when she arrived. He gave her a wave as she stepped out of the car. She made the climb two steps at a time.

  ‘I can do all the steps from the sidewalk to here three at a time,’ he said.

  ‘Wow, you’re good,’ Jade said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘My grandma says I have to talk to you out here.’

  The sky was pewter. Massive clouds spanned the skyline. She remembered reading a history about the coal industry in the Monongahela Valley, the tough Czech and Irish immigrants who flocked to Carnegie’s mills and made him America’s first millionaire. Pittsburgh was described by journalists of the day as hell without a lid on it.

  ‘That’s OK,’ she said. She took a seat on the porch beside him. She opened her purse and took out a small recorder. ‘I want you to listen to some voices and tell me which ones you think the man in the street sounded like. Is that OK with you?’

  ‘Yes’m,’ he replied.

  ‘Good. We’ll start with this one …’

  It took a half hour. She saw how he screwed up his face and really concentrated. When he was through, she asked him if it was all right if she gave him some money for a treat.

  ‘No, ma’am. My gran says never to take money from strangers.’

  ‘Your grandmother is a smart woman, DeShonte. Maybe we can be friends someday. May I shake your hand?’

  Back in the car, she breathed in the stale air of the car and felt good. This was progress. She was convinced of two things now: that stutter was pure fakery. Who stutters to throw people off if you don’t have something much bigger to hide?

  It was the second thing that made her heart skip a beat: Sandwich Man had a real disorder; he was afflicted with Tourette’s. It was like having a giant black arrow come down from the sky to help point him out for her.

  Sick eye-gouging bastard, keep your twisted motive. I’ll have you when I get your name.

  Chapter 20

  HIS LUCK WAS IMPROVING. He’d found a small area of three older buildings, small manufacturers with fewer than a dozen employees each, all tucked cheek-by-jowl in an older part of town. All three owners said they didn’t care if he served their workers; no one asked to see a license. No one ever did; he could serve burgers and dogs or speckled dace and steak tartar for all they cared as long as he didn’t poison anybody. He was told to park behind the alley and wait for the noon hour break. It was just enough business. Wöissell had turned down business in some places when it got to be profitable and kept him too busy. This wasn’t about money. They could pay him in rupees for all he cared.

  The older couple
near him had moved on, and their space was still vacant. He had not seen his midnight succubus since that night and postponed plans to move out. Danny’s car left early morning and came back late afternoon, he wore the same mud-spattered coveralls, and remained inside—no more loud fights. No sign of either outside their camper lately. He peered out of his back window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her working on her tan in the chaise lounge.

  Discipline, he cautioned himself every time he caught himself looking.

  It was early but not a record for him. He’d had one magical day in Las Cruces five years ago he still savored: set up by six a.m., serve the yahoos their sodas and snacks between noon and one p.m., encounter the one by three, arrange transport by four, follow the one by five, confirm the one, surveille, approach, finish the task, return rental, haul out by nine p.m., exit state by midnight. It was reckless, beyond anything he would attempt now—but what a rush. It was as close to perfection as he had ever attained.

  He had a rental car already. Two candidates were already vying hard for his attention. He would know which was the right one when the time came.

  He was Charon, the River Styx boatman, who took eyeballs instead of coins.

  Their camper door slammed hard against the metal siding.

  Stupid Danny, that mutt. Charley tried not to give him any more thought than a shark about the remora under its belly. He heard his engine cough, start, then turn over with the usual juvenile revving and gunning: signaling his distress with something Reggie must have done. The distance the gravel spat backwards from his exits suggested the degree of his anger. Sometimes he heard her come in or go, often not. She was erratic in the mornings. Once he caught her jumping out of a Silverado an hour after her hothead boyfriend had gone to work. The man driving had a lean face like a fox, a long ponytail and beard.

  He thought of going to watch her dance some night. He had followed men to clubs, bars, and strip clubs. He did not like to pick his targets from such places. They were havens for the despair, violence, and boredom life dealt them, especially for the women who danced—generally a lower-class type, far less glamorous up close than under the stage lights, often riddled with

  STDs or saddled with kids, husbands or loser boyfriends like Dan.

  Wöissell intended to recon each ‘candidate’ today. He refrained from writing anything down but often it was unnecessary because people were creatures of habit. They did the same things, married the same people, got the same jobs, and went to the same places every day. When he plucked them from their miserable lives, they were often surprised: This was it. There was no more.

  He drove his truck to the alley and waited for the noon hour; he spent his time flexing with the grips and re-reading passages of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein a philosopher he refused to abandon to the nihilism of his soul. The first proposition was elegance itself: The world is everything that is the case … The sixth was the Matterhorn of logic. He’d spent hours trying to understand logical nor, Pierce’s arrow and Boolean logic, the Sheffer Stroke—pondering these made him feel more than understand truth. He didn’t comprehend very much but it suspended the gnawing anxiety of his work and mortality, a gnawing rat despair and hopelessness.

  Wöissell finished with the final sentence of Wittgenstein’s last proposition to calm himself: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

  ‘Hey, man, can I get a hamburger with ketchup and relish?’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  Wöissell put his paperback down and began to serve his batch of customers.

  An hour later, he was riding in an Uber taxi to the E-Z Time Storage facility on Genesee Street north toward the airport. He headed for his unit and lifted the metal folding door. The beige Camry had no distinguishing nicks or features to make it stand out. He liked Toyotas for that reason, a Malibu otherwise. Cars that blended in, neutral colors. Important when he went trolling used-car lots, junkyards, and parking lots for plates to steal.

  Candidate A was ‘Dog Pounder’; he located him from a back item in the newspaper someone left on a table in the laundromat at the campgrounds. He was a 23-year-old male, Sonjid Choptum, living in a town full of Polish-Americans. He was featured in The Buffalo News as third-place finisher in Nathan’s annual Coney Island Hot Dog Eating contest, men’s division. His grinning smile beamed out from the two female ex-champions surrounding him, Chikako Sasaki and Guinness Book champ, ‘Arizona’ Rita Logan. Choptum described his starvation diet before a match to a reporter for the paper. ‘What did it feel like to consume thirty-three hot dogs in ten minutes?’ he was asked. ‘You try not to think about it while you’re doing it,’ Sonjid told this reporter with a smile.’ Charley hoped he had skill in Muayi Thai as well as stuffing his face like an American glutton.

  Candidate B was ‘Coffee Fiend.’ He followed him from the Starbuck’s near Elmwood Village two days earlier when he decided to check out the summer concert series. The man made a big fuss over the scanty amount of cream in his espresso macchiato to the barista. Wöissell stood behind him in line. He followed him out the door and watched him get into a white Escalade. Wöissell gave him one chance: if he turned left at the intersection, he would ignore him; if he turned right, he’d follow him. Wrong choice, fucko.

  The big Caddy was easy to tail even in heavy rush-hour traffic. Wöissell watched him turn into a Del Webb community entrance and his heart soared. Coffee Fiend was gaining an advantage over Dog Pounder. He liked the greater challenge people with money presented, and it had been a long while since he had indulged this bias. To be fair, he would pay each candidate one more deciding visit.

  He backed into his space around seven that night; it was another gorgeous late summer night, a real beauty with a banded red sky and a soothing breeze full of birdsong and cicadas.

  As soon as Wöissell heard the shouting next door, he felt it all come undone. That morning, the manager stopped him on his way past and asked him if his neighbors were causing any trouble for him.

  ‘No, no trouble at all,’ he said and tried out a thin smile.

  ‘Well, I been hearing things—you know, fights and whatnot,’ the manager said.

  ‘No, everything’s fine. They seem like a nice young couple to me,’ Wöissell replied.

  Now this. He was moving on to his next project and he didn’t have any more time to give to those two.

  Back in his slot, he set up his meal prep for the next day; the tapping on his door stopped him abruptly. When he let her in, he saw her right eye was bruised and her torn blouse, her bra strap loose. She didn’t bother to cover up, and he wondered if she was concussed.

  Throw her out, his instincts said.

  ‘Sit down, over here,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you some ice for your eye.’

  He wrapped the ice in a clean towel and held it for her over her eye.

  ‘That’s too cold,’ she said, ‘it hurts.’

  ‘Cold first,’ he said. ‘Bring down the swelling. You don’t want blood rushing to the area too fast.’

  ‘You’ve had a lot of black eyes, huh, Teddy?’ Said with scorn for the milquetoast.

  ‘I had a lot of sprains when I was young.’

  Stop talking to her, fool. Can’t you see trouble’s coming …

  The pounding on the door cued to the internal: Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Told you so … Dan’s Morse code.

  He straightened up and looked down at her.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  ‘I know you’re in there, cunt! Better come out, right fucking now!’

  ‘Don’t let him in!’ Reggie pleaded. ‘Please, he’ll kill me!’

  You asked for this, he chided himself. He didn’t need cops taking names.

  You’re fucking up, again, like that kid in McKees Rocks. All you had to do was give it up and go back. Oh no, you couldn’t do that, you stupid putz.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ Wöissell said. ‘I’ll go talk to him.’

 
She tried to clutch his arm, hold him back, but her hand slipped off his forearm with a move so expert she didn’t notice.

  He opened the back door.

  ‘Hello, Dan, what can I do for—’

  The sucker punch to the solar plexus hit that ganglia of nerves; it would have incapacitated most street brawlers.

  Dan stood there admiring his work. Wöissell feigned injury but the punch did take some wind from his lungs.

  Nothing for it now. He’d let Dan work it out and try not to take too many punches.

  Dan tried to enter the truck. Wöissell barely touched one shoulder and dipped him slightly; then he used a leg sweep to put Dan flat on his back.

  ‘What the fuck, you stuttering fuck! You kicked me—’

  Dan wasted more seconds reeling off a litany of trite curses learned in middle school.

  Charley said, ‘I think it would be a good idea if you calmed down before the police are called.’

  The haymaker Dan threw was telegraphed from the hip. Charley side-stepped it at the last second, allowing it to graze his jaw. He knew how to break his falls.

  ‘Let’s talk about this calmly, Dan, please,’ he pleaded, adding fear to his voice.

  ‘Fuck you, Teddy. I know you fucked her. She told me.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Wöissell saw curtains parting in the trailer across from him. People were drawn to fights; soon there’d be a crowd. He had to get this over with. He glimpsed the manager’s son sitting on his four-wheeler with a vacant look.

  ‘Can’t we talk about this, Dan? Look, people are gathering.’

  A wounded dog is the most dangerous dog, one black-belt instructor told him. Dan’s uppercut caught him flush under the jaw in a well-thrown punch. His bottom teeth cut his tongue as his head snapped back. Charley didn’t go down. He spat out a gob of blood while Dan paused to take in the damage.