Glimpse

  That made me mad, incredibly so. I paced up and down and wanted to punch a hole through something. I would have too, if I didn’t value my hand so much, and had something thin enough to be able to do it to. I was always going to make Rick pay, now he would pay an even higher price. I shook my head to myself, knowing I would have the last laugh, and Rick wouldn’t know what hit him.

  I had always yearned for the day when everyone knew my name, like they did all the famous serial killers. I would no longer be the man who everyone walks past and doesn’t notice, the man who has been bullied since childhood; I would be famous!

  Once I had cleaned up the mess and disinfected every surface with steaming hot soapy water, I went down to the local shopping center and bought some toys. After all, I was going to have a child as a houseguest and I wanted to give her some things to amuse herself. I am many things, but I am not, heartless.

  I dressed in one of my favorite disguises. I’d been to her school several times, and watched her mother pick her up. Like a lot of others, including my own before she left me, Juliet is self-centered and lazy. She waits for little Amy outside the front gates of the driveway. There she stands talking away, with mothers like her, like a gaggle of geese. But Amy’s classroom is around the rear of the main administration building. I wouldn’t be seen by her from the street when I made my move.

  Now, before I can tell you of my plan, it’s time to let you, dear reader, into one of my biggest secrets. But, to tell you it, I must first take you back in time

  When this phase started with my uncle, I hated it, like everything he did. But, it’s funny how things work out. These days I love that one thing that he made me do all those years ago.

  I will not go into the details of the sex acts between my uncle and myself, suffice to say they were as hideous as they were relentless. He showed no quarter, gave no mercy and I had no choice in the matter. What made it worse was he always, but always asked me if we were having fun yet. That was his saying, and he used it every time he raped me. Was I having fun? Of course, I wasn’t.

  Long hair was fashionable then, and when mine was sufficient, he liked to brush it for me. Next came the dress ups. He brought home this very frilly mini dress, a teenagers training bra, and girls under pants. These were the kind of things you would expect a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl to wear. Naturally I refused, and he punched me in the face and when I raised my hands to staunch the flow of blood from my nose, he kneed me in the stomach, and I dropped to the floor.

  “How fucking dare you say no to me,” he screamed at me as I lay writhing. “I saved you from the orphanage, and you will fucking do anything and everything I tell you to do or I will take you straight back there. Once I finish telling them all you are nothing but a raving queer boy, your life will be hell in that place.”

  I had little doubt in the front part of my brain that he wouldn’t send me back there, he had way too much fun with me. But then again, if he did and he told those lies about me, just how bad would my life get then? I was not a queer, but at Parkerville, there were several strong boys who were gay and violent. To be used and abused frequently by people like that and be too small to fight back would be more than I could bear. There is a saying in Australia, ‘Hobson’s choice.’ It means you have no choice at all, and, I had, no choice either. The devil I knew could be a lot better than the devils I didn’t.

  So, I put the bra, panties, and dress on, after I washed the blood off my face, and then faced the inevitable.

  The only good thing I can say about that night was that the sex didn’t take long. But of course, as you can imagine, it didn’t stop there. There were more clothes, and the underwear got sluttier, school uniforms, French maids, and then came the make-up. I was expected to not only wear young girl’s clothes, but to be made up so I became a young girl, and if I do say so myself, I realized one day, I looked pretty. At first that thought was abhorrent to me, looking like a girl, but, over time, I adjusted, and after a while, I thought I looked, well, can I say hot?

  I remember one night after I was ready for the usual, I stared at myself in the mirror, and I suddenly ‘got it.’ To all intents and purposes, I was a girl. No one would be able to tell that I wasn’t. I had always been small and slight, but with long hair, make-up and wearing girl’s clothes I almost fancied sex with myself. I was beautiful, and I did not look like a boy any more. All I needed were breasts, but that didn’t seem to bother my uncle, he liked me to act pre-pubescent.

  From that day forward, while I still did not like the sex, I began to enjoy dressing and looking like a girl, and later, like a woman. It was somewhere to retreat to, where I could feel better about myself. Once I got into it, I did appear to have breasts because of the padded bras I wore. Now, I don’t want you to think dressing up for me was about sex, it wasn’t. If men choose to do that for those reasons, that’s their thing and I mean no disrespect. For me it was more like, well my life had been hell, and this was a chance to be someone else who hadn’t had an awful life. It was a pretend world, and a harmless one.

  After my uncle died, I came up with a name for when I went out like a woman: Charlotte Bingham, I took the first and last name from characters in movies I saw. It was so refreshing that people noticed me, where they never had before. Men looked at me, not that that had an appeal, but when I was just me, women never looked. It was liberating to feel noticed, and liked.

  So here is my big secret: the reason they never got a decent witness statement about me? Most of the time I was dressed as a woman.

  I watched the cops interviewing people and it was always: ‘did you see a man…’ Honestly, I nearly wet myself. I even let them interview me at Lake Monger, and the stupid policemen wrote my name down as Charlotte Bingham. He asked for identification and I made an excuse, that when I jogged in the park I didn’t take ID with me, and I watched his eyes closely. He didn’t have a clue.

  Even my voice: I could make it sound very feminine. In fact, I don’t believe anyone talking to me, would think I wasn’t who I was pretending to be, even if they knew me. I proved it once by dressing up in ‘my best’ and going shopping in the supermarket where I worked. It was dangerous, I know, but I spoke with Hazel on the checkout about the weather, and what she was doing that night, and she had no idea it was me.

  ****

  And so, I went to Amy McCoy’s primary school, looking prim and proper, as if I belonged there. I walked right in through the side gate, from the staff car park, and waited just outside the administration building for little Amy to come out. Once I saw her I called her name and waved to her. She looked perplexed, but because I looked like I belonged there she came straight over.

  I squatted down so I was eye to eye with her. “Amy, mummy sent me to pick you up, she isn’t feeling too well, I work with your daddy. My van is out the back here, let me take you to her.”

  I stood up and held out my hand, and like a little lamb she took it. We sang songs all the way back, and I promised her chocolate milkshakes and biscuits when we got there. I swear, it almost broke my heart when I locked her in the cool room, because she was so sweet.

  ****

  I knew he would cause a kerfuffle. He was a policeman after all, and his daughter had been kidnapped, of course he would flood the school with cops. But really, what could anyone say? Amy was taken away by someone who looked like a school teacher. That’s always assuming anyone saw me at all, which I doubted. It was finishing time and kids were running everywhere, I honestly didn’t see anyone give me a second glance. I was just one more woman picking up a child.

  It would have been a shame if anyone did see me, because the cat would be out of the bag. But, I was planning my endgame, and I had just one or two more jobs to do before I handed myself in.

  I left Amy to play in the cool room with her new toys, of course by then she was crying and wanted her mummy, which was tiresome. I knew right then I wasn’t cut out for parenthood. I tried to tell her mummy was coming for her later, but the li
ttle smarty-pants then questioned why I’d told her she was sick.

  In the end, I pushed her in the cool room and shut the door so I didn’t have to put up with the whining any longer. I had to go and buy a mobile phone; I had never had need of one before.

  Still dressed as Charlotte, I drove to the city and got there in time to find a phone shop in the main mall. I flirted outrageously with the young man as I got him to show me everything about the phones that came with a pre-paid SIM card. I told him I was buying them for presents, so didn’t want to do any paperwork for ownership. He explained that with these types of phones, none was necessary. When the SIM card ran out of credit, it could be re-charged at any participating shop, so it was anonymous. Wonderful technology, isn’t it?

  I bought three, and had so much fun licking my lips, and touching the man’s arm, I even offered him my ‘fictitious’ phone number, which he wrote down, no doubt thinking he could screw me anytime he wanted. Oh, aren’t men just so dumb? I toyed with the idea of luring him to his death, but with Amy in the cool room, and getting so close to my confrontation with Rick, I decided against it. He is a very lucky man. He even put some charge into the batteries for me, so that they could be used straight away.

  You may be wondering: why three phones? Well I had befriended a guy about my age in the Midland phone shop when I had sat next to him in a lunch bar. I had done it quite intentionally to get information about mobile phone technology, and the traceability of them. I was aware that at the end of nineteen ninety-nine the analogue phone network had finished, and we had joined the digital revolution. I thought that meant that mobile phone use could be tracked; and I was right. Over a lunch of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, my new friend told me all about it. Phone carriers could trace a phone while it was on air, so if I hadn’t done my homework they could have found me when I used the phone. Therefore, my intention was to make a call to Rick, then dispose of the handset immediately, then use a second for the next call.

  I knew I wouldn’t be calling more than three times, probably only twice, but it always pays to be careful. I’ve got where I am today by forward thinking, after all.

  I went to a little bar called Solo’s, to kill some time. I wanted Rick to suffer, so I was in no hurry to phone him and give him his ultimatum. I sipped a glass of white wine, in my most feminine way, and thought about how he would react

  I watched the bulletin on the TV, mounted high on a wall bracket. I even comically put a shocked hand over my mouth as I watched the breaking news story about the little girl abducted from her school. Everyone in the bar shut up and listened; I suppose there’s nothing like a little lost child story to get people’s attention. Even Rick, bless him, begged for her safe return. I swear it warmed the cockles of my heart to see him so upset.

  It was while I was eating some crumbed Whiting fillets an overweight, office worker, whose tie was crooked, and shirt untucked offered to buy me a drink. Well, my blood ran cold. The wedding ring on his finger clearly showed he was married, yet here he was trying to pick me up and have sex with me. I smiled my best smile, as I pictured sticking my knife, which was hidden in my handbag, into his throat and twisting the blade. Well, I thought, it could pass the time, so long as I don’t get his blood on my nice clothes.

  Over the next hour, I let him think he was Don Juan, and charm me out of my underwear. He kissed me, but I stopped his hand traveling too far up my leg under the table: “No, not here.”

  “How about we go out the back, let me show you a good time, you’ve got great tits.”

  Seriously, this guy is making my skin crawl. “What makes you think I’m the kind of girl who would go down a dark alley with someone I’ve just met?” I whispered in his ear, trying to sound a little husky.

  “Well, I think you’re the kind of girl who would love a good fucking, and out the back is pretty dark, no one will see us.” His hand squeezed my thigh and started heading north again, so I grabbed his wrist and pushed it down, more firmly.

  “But you’re married, what about your wife?”

  “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” He took my hand and put it on his crotch, which I must admit was impressive, and throbbing. “There’s plenty of meat for both of you. Come on, you know you want to, why else did you come into a bar by yourself?”

  “I only came in for a meal, and to kill some time.”

  “Come out the back with me, and we can pass some time together. Come on, live a little, I bet I can make you cum like a freight train.”

  Oh, my God. Cum like a freight train? I will be doing not only his wife, but the entire female population of Perth a huge favor by killing this idiot. I looked at the dainty watch on my wrist. Yep, it’s just about the right time now.

  “All right, you talked me into it, let’s go.” I finished my drink, picked up my handbag and stood up.

  The fat pig downed his beer, and I watched as he waved to his mates, gloating, no doubt about the easy lay he had picked up.

  You should have gone home to your wife; honestly, you should have.

  I followed him out the door, then around to the right. At the corner, he turned and waited for me, probably to make sure I didn’t change my mind. I smiled, trying to look like I was gagging for it. When he turned back I slipped the knife out of my bag and turned the handle upside down so the blade didn’t catch what light there was.

  I took my jacket off and put it on a windowsill; I wasn’t going to risk getting blood on that, it was my best one. I kissed him a few times, just for fun. He was breathing like a pig; grunting and groaning. Once again, I stopped his hand going to my crotch. “It’s the wrong time of the month for me; let me go down on you,” I whispered.

  Even though it was dark, I could see his eyes glaze over as he must have thought all his Christmases had come at once. It could have been the darkness, or he was distracted, because he didn’t see that I had turned the knife around. Mind you, he was frantically undoing his belt and zipper at the time. Once he exposed himself, I pirouetted like a ballet dancer, and as quick as a cobra strike, I cut his throat.

  That’s when the fat man got his filthy blood on my arm, which only made me angrier. I followed him down as he fell, stabbing, non-stop. He died quietly, spluttering and wheezing, rather than screaming. I suppose it’s quite hard to scream with your throat gaping wide open. I decided his wife would be better off without him, and it took all my willpower not to kick him in the face; the disgusting, unfaithful, pervert that he was.

  Quite calmly, I turned on my heel, and walked away, feeling as calm as ice, stiletto heels echoing the noise against the alley walls.

  ****

  It was just after eight-thirty, and I was standing outside the Myer’s Department store, leaning on a convenient rubbish bin to drop the phone in afterward, I made the call I had been looking forward to. I smiled as the number chimed its ring tone, and I heard three or four sirens in the distance. They found the body, excellent.

  I put on my deepest voice when I heard the man himself answer his phone: “McCoy.”

  “Hi, Rick, it’s PPP. I’ve got your daughter, Amy, isn’t it?”

  Chapter 19: The Ultimatum

  Within six minutes of Juliet’s phone call police cars converged on the school. What few parents were left there were asked to wait to answer questions, though a frantic Juliet had already run from person to person asking if they had seen her daughter, so they were aware a child was missing.

  The teachers completed a search of the grounds and buildings, confirming that Amy was nowhere to be found. The headmistress, Ms. Stanza, generated a list of all children’s parents with addresses and phone numbers, and was checking off names of parents who were still hanging around, so that those who had left earlier could be phoned or visited by the police for witness statements.

  Rick’s car skidded to a halt and he was out of the car running to Juliet before it came to a stop. She burst into fresh tears when she saw him. They clung to each other, her sobbing into his should
er.

  “Where has she gone, Rick? Who would do this to us?” Juliet wailed.

  “We’ll find her, Jules, we will, I promise.”

  He was torn. He wanted to go and conduct his own investigation and start questioning people, bang heads together if he had to, but he knew he was in no fit state to objectively hold interviews. Amy was the light of his life, and if he caught up with whoever took his little girl, their lives would not be worth living.

  His thoughts of revenge were interrupted, “Mrs. McCoy, my name is Patricia Holmes, please call me Pat, I’m so sorry for what you are going through, if I can help in any way, I’d like to do that.”

  She didn’t answer, her face stayed buried in Rick’s shoulder and he ran his hand up and down her back. He had not spoken a word to Pat, all the way there in the car, though she had tried to talk to him. Each time she had he had held his hand up to silence her, so he could concentrate on driving as fast as he could make the car go, with its siren blasting a warning to other road users.

  “Babe, in your handbag, do you have a recent photo of Amy?” he asked, gently. She shook her head that she didn’t.

  “Okay, I’m going to send you home with Pat, here, and two officers to get one. One officer and Pat will stay with you, just in case Amy comes home, or there is a phone call from a parent that has taken her for a play date. The other cop will bring the picture back here so we can circulate it and see if anyone saw her. If we have two, please send them both, one we will get copied for the patrol cops to have to search the area, the other we will get on TV. Jules, I promise I will do whatever it takes to bring her back home, trust me.” Juliet nodded her acceptance.