by Paul Seiple
George eased the .357 away from Bill's forehead. "Too easy. I have plans for you." He slammed the butt of the gun into Bill's temple.
Thirty-One
"Are you sure you're not making this up to get into my pants?" Rebecca asked, running her fingers through my hair.
"You're not wearing pants," I said, trying not to be conspicuous as I watched the muscles in Rebecca's sculpted legs flex as the skirt rode up her thigh. "But no, I'm not making this up."
I opened the door to my apartment and stepped to the side to let her in first.
"I purposely didn't wear pants," Rebecca said, pressing her fingertip against my chest. "Too much time wasted taking them off."
What had I gotten myself into? My brother was on the streets murdering women. When he wasn't killing, he was stealing my dreams, taunting me with death. And all I could think about was kissing this woman.
"Not a bad place for a cop," Rebecca said.
She kicked off her heels. Hot pink toenail polish. I wasn't surprised. She seemed like a pink kinda girl. "Want a drink?"
"I'll have a whiskey and coke. Skip the coke."
"Make yourself at home," I said, before heading to the kitchen.
Two minutes later I nearly dropped the drinks when I walked into the living room. Rebecca was sitting, cross-legged on the couch, wearing only a white T-shirt.
"Hope you don't mind. You did say make yourself at home. And since I'll be spending the night."
"Not at all." The words barely made it by the lump in my throat.
Rebecca patted the couch. "Come sit beside me. I don't bite."
The smile she punctuated her sentence with told a different story. This woman was a lioness. I probably looked like a wounded zebra to her. Rebecca took the glass from me and sipped the whiskey.
"Not bad," she said, licking her lips. "So tell me, why does Reid Hoffman show up looking for you?"
Was the seduction a thinly veiled, disguised attempt to pump me for information? It made sense. Maybe she lied about not sleeping with people to get the story. She lied about not biting, I knew that for sure. And once a liar.
"Three kidnappings in a week is a cause for alarm," I said. The bland generic answer to a reporter fishing for a story.
Rebecca took another sip of the whiskey and sat the glass down. She slid her leg just enough so that my T-shirt rode up her thigh exposing her pink panties. "So, you think it's just kidnappings?"
I took a gulp of whiskey. The burn raced toward my stomach like a brushfire. The way that she posed the question led me to believe she knew more about the crimes. But by this point I doubted everyone. I needed to start trusting again. "There isn't much out there to let us know what's going on. I'm hoping Reid can shed some light on things tomorrow."
I wanted to trust Rebecca. I wanted to tell her the truth. But better judgment told me to wait. I'd tell her. She would leave in the middle of the night while I slept and the story would be all over the news in the morning. Reid would be pissed. My brother would know that we were on to him. The killings wouldn't stop. Either that or she would leave and my brother would be waiting for her. Both scenarios had the common denominator of more death.
Rebecca laughed, leaving doubt hanging on the cliff of my thoughts. "I'm so stupid. Look at me. I'm sitting here practically naked asking you questions about the case. You probably think I'm feeling you out. Sometimes I can't turn the reporter off."
There was something about the look on her face. Something genuine. Something vulnerable. I didn't respond with words. I leaned in and kissed her. The hint of strawberry on her lips with the faint taste of whiskey on her tongue was a cocktail that became an instant addiction. She flung her leg over my thigh and pulled her body against mine. There was no twelve-step program for this. Kisses grew deeper. Heat melted any space between us and we became a tangled heap of lust. Rebecca tore at the collar of my shirt, sending buttons across the room. I felt her grind against my hip.
"I don't do this," Rebecca said. Her words jagged between shallow breaths.
"Do what?"
"Fuck on the first date," she said.
I believed her. I would have believed anything she told me.
"So, this is a date?" I asked.
Rebecca started to laugh, but it turned into a moan when she bit my lip. I felt her hand between my legs. Grabbing me. Stroking me. I put my hands around her waist, lifted her up, and carried her to the bedroom. I pressed her against the doorframe and kissed her. She grinded against my hardness and whispered in my ear. "You must not have planned on getting lucky tonight. Your bed is a mess."
The comforter was on the floor. Sheets were bunched and twisted like a contortionist. I knew that I didn't leave the bed that way, but at the moment I didn't give a damn. "I told you I wasn't asking you over here to get in your pants," I said, kissing her again.
Rebecca placed my hand on the wetness between her thighs. "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not wearing pants? Feel for yourself."
Rebecca's head rested against me, listening to my heartbeat, which if it spoke anything, it was contentment. She twirled my chest hair around her index finger. The smell of coconut from her shampoo eased the pain of tension being placed on my skin from pulled hair. I closed my eyes and let the smell take me to a place with brilliant blue skies, a matching ocean, not a care in the world, and that annoying Pina Colada song by Rupert Holmes playing in the background. The white-sands beach was quiet. Rebecca was with me. We were sitting in lounge chairs at the edge where land met water, sipping, of course, piña coladas from hollowed out coconuts. There were no dead girls. No killer. I felt normal. For the first time in years, I didn't feel like being one dream from nesting with the cuckoos. I started to doze.
Rebecca alternated between laughing and singing every other word to the song, stringing together a line about getting caught in the rain. Then it stopped — the laughter, the singing replaced with haunting silence. Her smile retreated behind an expression of fear. She pointed up the beach. The sun reflecting on the pure sand made it difficult to see. Squinting, I made out a giant-sized silhouette walking towards us. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, he was standing in front of me. My brother. Behind him were long, wavy lines of drag marks in the sand from the girl he was pulling, by the hair, with his right hand. In his left hand was the head of another girl. Blood dripped onto the white sand like pitter-pattering raindrops. The girl my brother was dragging had her mouth sewn shut. He tossed the head next to Rebecca's chair. Rebecca tried to scream but only produced a muffled plea. I looked at her; Rebecca's mouth was sewn shut as well. Crimson tears streaked down her face.
"I got a little hungry, but look." My brother jerked the girl up by her hair. She grabbed his wrists and flailed. "I saved this one for you."
"I'm not going to kill her," I said. "This is a dream. It's not real."
"Of course you're not going to kill her. I am. Do you think I would give that kind of gift to a brother I haven't seen since he couldn't stop pissing the bed? And this is very real."
My brother jabbed a hunting knife into the girl's neck. He hit the jugular. Blood spurted in all directions like a bursting water pipe. I lunged at him. Then I felt it — a crippling piercing in my left side.
"Sorry, brother, but you have to die so that I can truly live," my brother whispered, leaning in and grabbing my head, smearing blood all over the side of my face.
I jerked, nearly bucking Rebecca off the bed.
"Sorry," she said. "Did I hurt you?" She held her index finger straight like a knife.
Rebecca was referring to the hair. Pulled hair was nothing compared to being gutted with a ten-inch hunting knife. "A little," I said, wrapping my arm around her, bringing her back to my chest.
"I thought cops were tough. Don't tell me I'm falling for a wimp." She smiled and kissed me.
"Do you ever have bad dreams?" I asked.
"Bad dreams?"
"Yeah, not like, 'Oh no, what am I going to do? It's a bad hair day…'
"
Before I could finish, Rebecca pulled my chest hair again. "Don't make me hurt you again."
"Don't make me subdue you," I said, grabbing her wrist.
"Tease."
"Seriously, do you ever have nightmares?" I asked.
"I rarely remember my dreams. But I bet you have some humdingers given the stuff you see."
"Sometimes," I said.
The clock read 3:30 am. Only four and half hours before we had to meet Reid. "Let's get some sleep," I said, closing my eyes and inhaling deep, hoping the coconut smell from Rebecca's shampoo would send me back to a place where people weren't into yoga and made love at midnight at the dunes by the cape.
Damn the Pina Colada song.
Thirty-Two
Reid Hoffman eyed the clock. This was nothing new, just part of the nightly mating ritual he performed with sleep. Reid tried every way he could imagine to seduce sleep into wrapping its arms around him, embracing him. Sleep shunned his advances. It was an unhealthy relationship, but one he still had to try to save.
Dreams weren't the D word that kept Reid awake. His weakness was determination. A determination to avenge his mother's death. There was no official record of her death, but Victoria Hoffman was dead. If she were alive she would be celebrating her sixty-third birthday in two weeks. Well below the average life-expectancy for women in the United States. But Victoria was dead. She died not long after she disappeared in 1955. Reid knew it and he had spent every year since Victoria vanished trying to prove it.
Reid was fifteen when Victoria kissed him on the cheek and told him she would be back soon after a trip to the corner market. A trip that Victoria made three times a week. But this time she never came back. Just like two other women who disappeared on the same day in the fall of 1955 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Lack of evidence and a police chief that questioned whether there was even a crime sent the case to the freezer faster than usual. The unwritten rule was a case became cold after a year of no new evidence. Press labeled the case The Three Wives' Tales. A play on words that never sat right with Reid. Given the odd circumstances of the three women disappearing on the same day, Chief Hayes's official answer was the women weren't happy at home so they devised a plan to run away together and start new lives. There was another explanation ricocheting off gossiping ears in the city. The three women were witches and left Charlotte to start a coven in New Orleans. Of the two, the latter seemed less asinine to Reid. Victoria was happy at home. She loved Anthony Hoffman with all of her heart and adored Reid. There was nothing that could keep her from them. Nothing but death.
In the fifties, the term serial killer wasn't regular fodder for the evening news. America was wholesome. Bing Crosby serenaded the airwaves with a soothing voice that could calm any hostile. Then the Vietnam war happened, and the hippies turned America's apple pie into a shit sandwich. At least that's what Reid's grandfather would tell him.
Speaking of war, it was upon his return from Vietnam that Reid heard the words 'serial killer' on the evening news more regularly. The times were a changing. Fear was replacing Bing. It wasn't that serial murder didn't exist before then. The media learned that glamorizing murder meant better ratings. Starting in the late fifties with Harvey Glatman, who the media dubbed 'The Lonely Hearts Killer', serial murder was a jewel in the news mine.
In 1963, not long after returning home, Reid became a cop in Charlotte. Vengeance for his mother still fed his drive. Joining the police force wasn't a choice; it was the only way of finding justice for Victoria. Reid wanted to learn what made killers tick, but more importantly, how to catch them. Lessons came early after Norman Wallace was named a suspect in the murders of five women in Charlotte.
Reid studied Wallace. Not the killer himself so much, but the victims. He looked for anything the women had in common that drew Wallace to them. Mary Sue Bell, Wallace's first kill, was a twenty-three-year-old stay-at-home mom with two kids, a two-year-old boy and a six-month-old girl. Teresa Crowley, Linda Arden, Ruth Hayden, and Dolores White were also stay-at-home mothers with small children. Could that have been the link? It was possible, but Wallace's last victim, the one that got away, Jane Kilby didn't have children. She was a third-grade school teacher. And she wasn't married. If Wallace looked for a specific type, stay-at-home moms were probably not the trigger point.
Reid looked at the age of the victims — all in their mid- to late-twenties to mid-thirties. Reid didn't think that was a strong enough trigger point, or else there would have been more victims. There had to be something more specific that made Wallace choose these women. Reid placed a picture of Mary Bell next to a photo of Jane Kilby. Both were brunettes. Both wore their hair short with tight sides. The style was called poodle cut. It was hard to tell height in the photos, but from autopsy reports, both women were five-foot-five and in the one-twenty- to one-thirty weight range. The most glaring similarity was both women looked like Elizabeth Taylor.
Reid spread the photos of the other victims out. Same hairstyle. Same weight range. All could pass for Elizabeth Taylor's double. There was something else oddly familiar about the photos to Reid. It was if he had met the women before. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a picture of Victoria Hoffman. The corners were bent. A crease ran down the right side of the black-and-white photo of his mother, not daring to tarnish her beauty. Reid placed his mother next to Wallace's victims. She could have been their sister.
The link mocked Reid with an unspoken "What took you so long." Norman Wallace's trigger was white women with short brunette hair, around five-foot-five and a hundred and twenty pounds in an age range of twenty-two to thirty-six. He pulled photos of the other two women that went missing in Charlotte the same day as Victoria. They matched the profile.
The similarities were too loud to ignore. Reid was convinced that his mother had been an unclaimed victim of Norman Wallace. He spent every spare moment from that point forward pursuing Wallace. Trying to find anything that linked unsolved murders and missing females to the hands of the serial killer. Wallace went dark in 1963. Seventeen years without one sighting. He had enough money to disappear, but his bank accounts remained untouched. Reid stopped checking for activity ten years ago, convinced that Wallace had money stashed and no one would ever find it.
Reid refused to believe the official statement on the status of Norman Wallace — dead at the age of thirty-eight from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. The body wasn't found until 1968. Years of decay and feasting insects made identification difficult, but dental records matched Wallace and a suicide note that simply read, "Tired of running" was enough to close the case on The Morning Star Killer. Wallace never referred to himself as the Morning Star Killer, but the words "The Morning Star will rise" were written on the inside walls of his cabin. The media latched onto the title and ran with it.
Reid, was still learning, but he knew enough about serial killers to toss the suicide to the side. Wallace didn't kill himself. His ego wouldn't allow it. But Wallace had become an apparition. The gnawing in the pit of Reid's stomach and his mother's pleas for revenge, in his ears, wouldn't let him stop chasing the ghost that had haunted him for twenty-five years.
Reid looked at the clock. Fifteen minutes had passed. Fifteen of the slowest minutes of his life. It wasn't chance that he stumbled onto Michael Callahan. Reid knew for years that Michael was the son of Norman Wallace. It wasn't until women started missing in Winston Salem that Reid decided to reach out to Michael. The possibility that Michael was the killer crossed his mind. When Reid entered the Twelfth, there was still doubt, but spending a few minutes with Michael was all it took for Reid to prove Michael's innocence. Reid was that good at profiling. That left Wallace. The kidnappings didn't meet Wallace's profile. So attention turned to Michael's twin brother. George disappeared with Norman Wallace. There had been no trace of him since. If George was alive, Norman was still alive.
Another five minutes passed. Reid told himself before lying down that he would stay in bed until six am,
no matter what. He planned to fight insomnia tooth and nail. But that would have to be another night; he wasn't mentally prepared for the fight.
He left the bed and stared out the hotel window at the flashing Budweiser sign atop a distribution plant in the distance. Reid's mouth watered for the poison. He couldn't tell if it was from thirst or that rush of saliva one gets just before vomiting. The two were so closely related that it didn't matter. Succumbing to alcohol would end the ten-year battle with sobriety. A war that Reid was winning. But as tempting as drowning his thoughts in a river of cheap booze sounded, it wasn't worth it. When his mind cleared, the thoughts would be back, mocking him for falling off the wagon. It had happened twice before.
"One day at a time," Reid said, repeating what his sponsor used to tell him, as the flashing neon waved at him, beckoning him with a come hither glow. "One day at a time." Reid turned away from the sign, shunning its advances. The clock read four-forty-six am.
He grabbed a towel and turned on the water. A cold shower to wash away the dirty thoughts of getting drunk. He thought about something else his sponsor used to say. "When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away."
Michael Callahan was the answer to Reid's problem. Callahan would lead him to the problem — Norman Wallace.
Thirty-Three
I woke ten minutes before the alarm was set to salute me with an instrumental rendition of Three Dog Night's "An Old-Fashion Love Song." Technically, it wasn't a cover, the bass line was replaced by horns and the three-part harmony couldn't carry a tune, but, just like a shot of black coffee, it did the trick pushing me out of bed. Usually, I hated hearing it after sleepless nights. But this morning was different. Instead of cursing the faceless musicians who ruined a perfect pop song, I heard the words in my mind. The song was about finding new love. For the first time since I started having the dreams I felt alive. Rebecca was the kick of life to recharge my dying heart.