Killer Nashville Noir

by Clay Stafford

  Then he whispers, and his voice is moist, “Please.”

  You don’t want him to speak, it makes this even harder. “Shh,” you say, and you try to make it sound consoling, but it’s hard seeing him like this, knowing where it’s all going to lead. “Quiet. Just rest.”

  “Help me.”

  “It’s too late.” There’s no spite in your words. They’re simply a statement of fact. Despite how badly you feel about all of this, it is too late and there’s nothing anyone can do about that.

  Not here in this cabin. Even if you did have cell phone service this far up in the mountains and you could call for help, on those roads it would take over an hour just for the ambulance to get here. And with the extent of the bleeding—

  “Please.” Brian’s pleading intrudes on your thoughts. “Help me.” His words are urgent, but weak.

  So weak.

  “I can’t,” you reply truthfully. You just want this to be over so you can get back to the city, back to Melissa.

  In a small and barely visible way, Brian shakes his head. “No. Help me…” He pauses, regroups, grabs a breath. “Die…Help me die.”

  You struggle with how to respond. He isn’t supposed to be asking you something like this. He’s supposed to be cursing you or threatening you or praying, or maybe saying something memorable and profound and final. Or, ideally, confessing. An acknowledgment of what he did. Contrition.

  But here he is, not asking you to forgive him, but asking you to finish what you started, and to finish it quickly.

  Mercy.

  “Kill me,” he whispers in that disturbing voice, wet with the blood deep in his throat. “Finish it. Please.”

  Maybe it’s the look in his eyes or maybe it’s the earnestness in his voice that gets to you.

  For some reason it doesn’t seem right to use the knife again—too cruel, too barbaric—so you leave it on the table and kneel beside him. You try to reassure yourself: He’s the third one. There is only one more. This is almost over.

  Just one more time that you’ll need to go through this, watching someone die. And then things will be back to normal.

  Then Melissa will be satisfied. Justice will be done.

  You squeeze Brian’s nose shut with one hand and place the other over his mouth.

  It’s not ideal. You quickly realize that even though his mind has decided that he wants to die quickly, his body knows of no such decision. Whenever you pit instinct against will, instinct will win every time. He’s too weak to raise his arms, but he jerks his head to the side, trying to shake your hands free, but you squeeze tightly, securely, holding on, until at last, the struggling slows.

  And then it stops.

  Stillness.

  You can feel the tense muscles in his face relax beneath your hands, but just to make sure, you keep them in place while you count off twenty more seconds.

  His eyes are still open, and he stares at you with a glazed, blank look, but he is finally calm and gone and for this you are thankful.

  You close his eyes with a brush of your hand. Then you mentally rearrange your life, your humanity, so you can dispose of the body in a way that it will never be discovered.

  He is not a heavy man and you would feel disrespectful dragging him, so you decide to carry Brian Peterson’s body to the shed where you keep the tools.

  • • •

  Two days later now.

  You’ve been putting this one off.

  The last one.

  The woman’s name is Julie Richards. You see her car parked in front of the bar as you approach the building.

  This is it. Then it’ll be done. Then it’ll all be over.

  The first three were all men, and that seemed more fair to you somehow. More just. After all, they were the ones who’d committed the crime, and this woman simply watched. True, she did nothing when she could have called for help, could have filmed it with her phone and then turned that in to the police—but she wasn’t involved in the actual events.

  “Why does she need to die?” you’d asked Melissa when she told you the story.

  “She could have helped me. She just stood there and watched, did nothing. If she’d screamed, gone for help, anything, it might not have happened.”

  “And that makes her as guilty as the others? In your eyes?”

  Melissa glared. “Don’t put it that way, making me seem like the monster.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “She’s guilty, yes. As guilty as the others.”

  A pause. “Okay.”

  “So take care of her.”

  “Okay.”

  Maybe it was the finality, the certainty in Melissa’s words that convinced you. But still, you’re uncomfortable with this because you’re strong and the men seemed more physically matched to you and ever since you were a child, you’ve been taught that a man needs to respect a woman. Needs to be a gentleman.

  You enter the bar and look around.

  Julie is seated at the counter nursing her drink as if she’s taking this as slowly as possible to stretch out the night. She has a broken look about her, and you sense that she has been hurt herself in the not so distant past. And here she is now, in a bar full of people, but drinking all alone.

  Maybe she’s waiting for someone, or maybe she’s hoping that someone will find her here and she won’t leave alone.

  You take a seat beside her and enter the soft, lavender-scented aura that surrounds her. She used too much perfume and so you guess that, yes, she is here hoping to meet someone tonight in this bar.

  “Can I getcha?” the bartender asks you. He’s bald and overweight and his shirt sags yellow and damp in the armpits.

  “Whisky. Neat.”

  Without a nod or a word he turns toward the bottles behind him.

  You struggle with what to say to Julie, the woman you’re going to kill as soon as you can lure her to your apartment. You’ve never been good at pick-up lines, at flirting or at verbally jousting your way into someone’s confidence. But Melissa demanded that you do this one close to home, here in the city, and you thought the best place would probably be at your apartment where you’d be able to clean up without any fear of being interrupted.

  For the last couple of days you’d been hoping to catch Julie alone somewhere, but that hadn’t happened and Melissa was impatient, insistent, wanted it all done now. So that’s what led to tonight, to having to convince Julie to come with you back to your place.

  You know what you’re planning to do to her and that gives an added awkwardness to every word you consider saying, but Julie saves you by speaking first. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  Her comment tells you that she comes here often and knows who does not.

  Other regulars will too. Others might recognize you.

  A thought strikes you: You’ll be the first one they look for when she disappears, after she leaves with you.

  Yes.

  Leave now, don’t do it. Find another way.

  But, no, this has to happen. It’s the only way to finally move past that night frozen in time—Wednesday, July 20th—the night everything happened in the parking garage as Melissa was on her way to her car after leaving the office.

  For the chance to see justice done, you will risk everything. In the name of love, you will kill this woman.

  “First time,” you say to Julie. And then you make up a name. “I’m Todd.” You offer her your hand and she takes it, grasps it daintily.

  “Julie.”

  She lets go and lays her hand gently on the counter. A small silence drifts between you, but it isn’t uncomfortable. You sense that she wants to like you.

  You notice her gaze shift toward your left hand, which is resting on the edge of the bar. You wear no wedding ring and apparently she notices and you sense her, almost imperceptibly, edge closer to you.

  She sips at her drink, a milky concoction you don’t recognize, but as she lifts it to her lips you catch the scent of coconut. She’s close
enough for you to notice that.

  Yes.

  And as your eyes meet, you realize that she is lovelier than you’d thought at first. More attractive—

  —Even than Melissa.

  You berate yourself for that thought, for letting another woman, even for a moment, sneak into your heart, wisp through you like that, leaving the trail of her presence behind.

  But here you are, sitting beside a charming woman. And you’re a man who’s attracted to beautiful women. So it’s just natural.

  The bartender slides a shot glass of whisky in front of you, sets a napkin next to it rather than under it, then gives his attention to the widescreen television mounted above the bar where a baseball game is in extra innings.

  You lift the glass and tip it in Julie’s direction. “Cheers.”

  She taps her glass to yours. “Cheers.”

  That is the beginning.

  • • •

  For the next two hours, she saves you from the burden of inventing trivial things to talk about by taking the burden onto herself. The room steadily purges itself of patrons. Though you were the one with the agenda when you took this seat beside her, she seems even more motivated than you are to make sure the two of you leave together.

  However.

  It’s still up to you to convince her to come back to your apartment, just four blocks away. That’s really the part that matters most.

  As you consider how to do this, your phone trembles in your pocket and you know it must be Melissa, the only person who would call you at this time of night. Perhaps she’s checking on you, seeing if things are completed, if it’s safe to come over to the apartment. You let the phone joggle until it stops.

  Julie doesn’t seem to have noticed.

  You smile at her. “So.”

  “So.”

  She waits expectantly for you to go on.

  The more you’ve spoken with her, the more she has impressed you. The more you feel drawn to her.

  Your move.

  In her eyes you see a brokenness, a loneliness, a deep need. She doesn’t seem like someone who would watch three men rape another woman, who would stand idly by as if waiting at a bus stop. She seems kind. Caring. Like the sort of woman who would run, call for help, do all she could to stop the barbarism.

  A question flashes through your mind, a question you haven’t allowed yourself to ask because the implications are unthinkable: Could this be the wrong woman? Could Melissa have made a mistake? After all, it was dark in the parking garage. It’s possible.

  Possible.

  “So?” Julie says again, her voice fading into resignation. She’s starting to doubt this night will have a happy ending.

  “Can I walk you to your car?”

  “That would be nice.”

  You leave the bar with Julie Richards.

  The night is cool with a stillness intruded upon only by the occasional blurring thrum of distant traffic.

  It has to happen now.

  You quiet the scribble of doubt that you had a moment earlier. Put it out of your mind.

  “My place isn’t far,” you say. “Just a few blocks.”

  And she takes your arm in hers.

  • • •

  Never goes as planned.

  At your apartment door you fumble momentarily with the keys. Your heart is tugging at you, a knot in your chest. It wasn’t this way with the others.

  Julie stands beside you patiently, slightly fuzzy from the drinks she had at the bar. That’ll help. She’ll be easier to control.

  You manage to get the door open.

  Lead her inside.

  A loft. Nothing fancy. The bed, visible from the doorway, the kitchen, open to the living room which holds only a black leather couch and matching chair and a TV that you almost never watch.

  You go to the cupboard. “Can I get you anything? A drink?”

  Poison. That’s what you’ve chosen. Something more befitting of a woman than the violence you leant to the men. You’ve read that when women kill themselves they most often choose drugs. In this statistic you see a clue as to how Julie would prefer to die tonight, if she were to have been given the choice.

  She’s looking around your place. “What do you have?”

  “Not much. Vermouth. Vodka.”

  “Vodka.”

  You find the bottle and remove two wine glasses from the cupboard.

  Small talk doesn’t seem fitting anymore, now that she’s in your apartment. But you realize that moving quickly into more personal, more intimate matters seems wrong since you’re about to take her life.

  You pour the vodka.

  “It’s nice,” she says, obligated, as it were, to compliment your less than noteworthy apartment. “I like it. Simple.”

  “Thank you.”

  With your back to her, you retrieve the powder from the cupboard.

  Love is a dark thing, you realize, to move someone to such extreme measures.

  The love of a woman requiring you to take the lives of her attackers, and the life of the woman who could have perhaps stopped them but did not. Such a prerequisite, such a terrible tradeoff. Four times. Death and death and death.

  And death.

  All for love.

  Your love for Melissa.

  It’s almost over.

  Discreetly, you pour in the powder. Stir.

  But your heart writhes in your chest.

  You realize that you like Julie and really don’t want her to die.

  From the corner of your eye you see her taking in the room. She picks up a bronze horse that Melissa gave you last year. Because of its weight it takes both of her hands to hold it. She doesn’t notice the powder you mixed into her drink.

  You turn, holding the two drinks, one in each hand, thinking to yourself—left is right; right is wrong. Keep them straight. Don’t get them mixed up. This is not something you can afford to be careless about.

  You mentally repeat it again, glancing at your hands: left is right; right is wrong.

  She sets down the horse.

  And that’s when you hear the key in the lock of your front door.

  Melissa.

  Oh, Please, no.

  A flutter-beat of your heart. “I’ll get that.” You start for the door, but you’re not going to make it in time to stop anyone from coming in.

  Never as planned.

  Julie looks at you expectantly, a slight head tilt and eyebrow raise. There’s more than mere curiosity there. Disappointment, as if she already knows it’s another woman even before the door opens and Melissa steps inside, swinging the door shut behind her. “Well, is it—”

  “Over?” you expect her to say, but she does not. She simply stops abruptly and stares at Julie. You’re standing at the edge of the living room, drinks still in hand, the breakfast counter beside you.

  “Oh.” She forces a smile where there should not be one. “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Julie replies.

  It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

  Not like this.

  You realize that this opportunity with Julie will not come again. There’s no time for the drinks. Something else. Something quick to end it.

  Your eyes land on the bronze horse. It’s heavy enough. It’ll work.

  You set down the drinks on the counter and take a step toward the end table.

  “This is Melissa,” you explain to Julie. “A friend of mine.” Then, “Melissa, this is Julie.”

  “A friend,” Julie says in a tone that’s impossible to read.

  Melissa shifts her weight. Steadies herself. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.” But it’s not an apology, more of an accusation: You were too slow. Finish this.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  Oh, this is bad.

  Why did you come over, Melissa? Why did you have to come now!

  She stares evenly at Julie, who’s going for her purse. “We’ve met. Actually.”

  “We have?”

  “Earlier thi
s year.” Melissa’s words have turned to ice. She hasn’t stepped away from the door but stands in front of it. She’s holding her ground.

  Julie has her purse now. “I’m sorry.” A strain in her voice. “I don’t remember. I should probably go.”

  Melissa looks at you expectantly, and you know what she’s telling you with her eyes: Do it now, my dear. Hurry.

  “In the parking garage,” Melissa tells her. “On Fourth Avenue.”

  You take two wide steps to close the distance between you and Julie.

  “It was you.” The words are so fragile and hollow. Fear has edged into Julie’s voice. She’s moving toward the door, but you are quick. “So…”

  You snatch the horse from the table, raise it high.

  She turns and faces you just as you bring it down.

  It connects with Julie’s skull with a sound that is somehow both moist and hollow at the same time.

  The force of the impact sends her reeling, collapsing toward the end table. Her forehead collides with it and she drops, quivering, to the floor.

  But she is not dead.

  Never as planned.

  You sense Melissa stepping close to you, but all you can think of is the brutality of what you have done, of what you have become in the name of love.

  You stand quiet and unmoving beside Julie, holding that bronze figure, your heart racing like a quick terror through your chest. “Finish her,” Melissa says.

  “She wasn’t the one.” Your words are taut. “I could see it in her eyes.”

  “She was the one.”

  Julie is trying to get to her knees, to crawl toward the door.

  “Go on. Finish her.”

  “You told me it was dark in the parking garage. It’s possible—”

  “It was her.”

  Never.

  Julie collapses and moans softly.

  Goes.

  Then she speaks: “Raped. She was—”

  As.

  “—the one.”

  Planned.

  “Give me the horse,” Melissa says from behind you.

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  You set down the blood-wet horse and lean close to Julie.