It was the biggest goddamn fly he had ever seen. Not a horsefly, not a green fly, but a frigging housefly so big that Officer Robbins thought it must be a goddamn mutant, what with all the pollution & shit in the air. & why was it, in un-flylike behavior, still out making its rounds in the dead of night…?
Now he’s staring into the bloody cavern that the fly disappeared into a moment ago. That’s what the gaping wound in the girl’s chest reminds him of—a raw cavern. Christ! It could be two girls, Robbins thinks, the way all the body parts are hanging there, oozing all that gore & shit, the hand jammed up her ass so it looks like she’s shitting a fucking severed arm, & the head, oh Jesus, the head clamped between the thighs like she’s giving birth to her own fucking head. Some sicko had a field day with this poor babe. From what’s visible of her face she was probably a looker. Before the butcher worked her over.
A guy in a business suit steps up for a better look at the mutilated thing twisting a little on the rope as the salt-edged breeze in from the shore seems to invest it with a momentary, mocking breath of pseudo-life.
“Get back,” Robbins orders the wide-eyed suit. “Something drops off her, you get it smack in the face.” He turns to the small crowd of onlookers & closet ghouls & says, “Everybody stay back. This ain’t a sideshow. Jesus!”
He lights a cigar & waits for the homicide boys to arrive. While he waits, he watches for that goddamned mutant fly to come out of that bloody fucking cave.
[ 39 ]
He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword…
& it is true. That “VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE.”
(But there sure seem to be a Helluva lot of flies in the collective ointment of the existential lately, ehhh…?)
It’s only a short walk down the block & into an open alleyway’s mouth between the darkened storefronts of BILL’S ARMY SURPLUS & SUTTERS AUTO PARTS EXCHANGE, perhaps sixty or seventy feet down the alley, then ’round the back & into the service walkway into the motel’s courtyard for the white-halter-top-&-short-shorts-clad Julie to rendezvous with Mal & Snuff in Room Fourteen.
But she has to take a detour. To pick up a few things that Mal had said He needed. Down to the end of the block & across the street to a late-night drugstore that in its better days had boasted a REXALL sign in neon, but now simply has a pair of spots shining on a painted “RX” on the wall above the smeared & BB-holed glass of the once-pneumatic swinging doors.
The three-&-a-half-inch heels of Julie’s sandals click noisily on the asphalt as she crosses at the stoplight, careful to avoid the temptation of jaywalking the corner…
Being a “good little girl” as usual, avoiding any possible infraction of wildly varying state laws & city ordinances for a mere citation that might link her legally to place & time…
&, after all, she does look like some teenie-bop slut out hookin’… No reason to attract further undue attention…
Behind the counter is a grossly fat black woman with a yellow bandana tied around her head. Her huge hips & buttocks seem to be melting down over the sagging seat of the stool she’s perched on in vast floes of blubber & the riotous Bird-of-Paradise-patterned fabric of her size XXXX mumu. She’s reading some story about aliens from Aldebaran & two-headed babies in The Weekly World News, & it’s pretty obvious that she’s one of those “enquiring minds that really want to know…”
The only other customer is an elderly, emaciated-looking man wearing a grey tweed coat that hangs on him at least five sizes too large & a fedora in the same tatty tweed. He looks like a scarecrow with the straw fallen out or an aging horror writer back from a six-month stay at the Dachau Hilton. His choice in reading matter seems pretty weird, as well. He’s got a TEEN Magazine in his hand & a Hustler, a Penthouse & a Swank on the counter. Along with a Garfield doll, an enema bag, a jar of Vaseline, & two dozen Trojan rubbers…
The pharmacist who’s helping him reminds Julie of that wired druggist from the old Fridays TV show, the one who used to tug at invisible cobwebs on his face & kept shrieking, “I can handle IT!…”
By comparison, Julie thinks she must come on like a “straight.”
She waits until the perv leaves, then steps up to the counter with her own purchases: two plastic drop cloths, a pack of Gillette Super Blue Blades, a roll of micropore bandage, & a packet of assorted-sized sewing needles.
“Fffuckkkkk!” she curses under her breath, they were all out of goddamn duct tape… Mal is bound to whoop her ass good for not bringing back everything He’d asked for.
She hands the pharmacist dude a ten dollar bill, then wriggles the change down deep in the skintight slit of her right front pocket.
Julie struts out onto the neon-jittering street, carrying her odds & ends in a plain brown shopping sack.
She looks over her shoulder for a moment. Thinks she sees a shooting star in the southern sky.
She waits impatiently for the light to change. Then crosses.
Her route back to the motel is already planned, but there’s a pink Continental parked right in front of SUTTERS AUTO PARTS EXCHANGE, & there are two big black bucks in leather jackets trying to drag a struggling peroxide-blonde bimbo in a faux leopard coat into the back seat of the car. The bimbo is drunk or stoned, she’s staggering & shouting obscenities at her two assailants? Companions?
Julie decides to cut through the alley in front of her, exactly one block down from her intended access.
She’s only about twenty-five feet in when she realizes that she may have made a first-class mistake:
This alley either deadends or turns a corner up ahead, & it’s one Helluva lot longer than sixty feet. It’s like a filth-strewn box canyon of brick & concrete & there are three black youths entering after her, blocking any hope of exit or escape in that direction
& she lent Mal her switchblade—
fuckin’ goddamn shit on my luck, she berates herself, was I ever a friggin’ asshole for not following plans…!
Julie knows she can’t risk bringing attention to herself by screaming for help. Her only alternatives seem to be: WALK. Or RUN…
She considers running. But she’d have to take off her shoes or she’d trip for sure. & the ground is littered with jagged shards of broken glass, glinting in bright slivers as they catch a stray ray of light from a passing car outside.
She’d rip her feet to bloody shreds before she got halfway…
She decides to walk.
Faster.
She scans the near-pitch black darkness of the alley for some makeshift weapon. If she gets really desperate, she can slash at them with a spike of glass. But she’s not into slicing her own hand to ribbons on it.
FFFucKKK! Another one just stepped into her path from out of somewhere—a doorway…?
FUCK is right! That’s EXACTLY what these skells are planning for her, she thinks— Oooohhhhh! SHIT! gangbanged by four hopped-up niggers if I’m LUCKY… if not… then…
Julie’s normal cool dissolves into a flood of cold sweat reeking of fear pheromones…
[ 40 ]
Detective Sergeant Clarence Carter is one damn fine, hard workin’ cop: that’s how Frank tagged him after their abbreviated partnership during their ill-fated investigation of the brutal slayings of the elderly antique-dealing husband & wife, nearly two decades ago.
They had formed the kind of immediate, intense bonding, that “friendship-under-fire,” born of two professionals whose strong mutual respect & smoothly syncing teamwork have seen them through their own shared private slice of Hell.
Clarence Carter is the type of bright, dedicated, caring law enforcement officer that any precinct should be proud to claim among their ranks. He’s a stocky, broad-shouldered man who, although technically overweight, looks like he was born to wear that bankers’ grey business suit.
For Frank, the strand-perfect sculpting of his fashionably short black hair has always triggered momentary olfactory delusions of just-sprinkled Bay Rum, time warping nostalgic visions of candycane striped barb
er poles & razor straps.
On the infrequent occasions when Frank catches the CBS program, “This Morning,” the handsome, jovial black weatherman, Mark McEwan, instantly reminds him of a could-be brother—far balder but slightly younger version of his friend, Sergeant Carter. Down to his short, impeccably trimmed mustache.
But this morning, the detective’s normal MO of warm, easy humor has been replaced by a grim clinical determination that Frank finds genuinely unnerving. The newly discovered fifth face of Mount Rushmore. “Good morning, Frank, it’s great to see you again.” Clarence says, extending his left hand to bestow an almost-painfully firm, lingering shake. “I just wish—” he hesitates, & Frank notices the hint of a tic in the musculature of Carter’s cheek, just below his right eye. “—this were under other circumstances.”
The hollow semicircles of bagged flesh beneath Clarence’s eyes do not go unnoted, either.
“Bad, huh?”
“Bad? No. The goddamned worst, Frank. This sex fiend…just just couldn’t believe that even the sickest of sickos could do anything that Jesus-bleedin’ brutal to some innocent little kid!”
“I don’t mean in any way to dismiss the horror of what you’re feeling, Clarence—” Frank bows his head slightly, staring at the toe tips of his boots, “—but I’ve seen some shit in the last ten years that literally could drive you nuts if—”
Frank & Clarence discuss the Jefferson case with the pathologist, a bland, expressionless man of medium height & medium build. His only distinguishing mark is the absurdly large, oval wire-rims that he wears, lending him the appearance of some looney “Toon” from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
But the autopsy report is serious. Dead serious. & even the anticipated norm of sick humor that is perhaps the most vital part of most forensic pathologists’ basic survival skills is uncharacteristically absent as Offenbaur (?) Oppenhagger (?)—the man’s name is as unmemorable as his appearance—recites the disgusting clinical details that cannot hint at the tragedy of this young, innocent child’s senseless, brutal murder.
[ 41 ]
“We just want to have sex with you,” Mal explains to Heather. “You have had sex before haven’t you?”
Heather tries to mumble something in answer, but the words she thinks are articulated by a novocaine-numbed tongue, filtered through the cotton wadding stuffing her mouth, & issued through lips similarly injected with the pain-killing alkaloid.
The sound emitted carries no coherent meaning, “mmmethhmmmnnohhhhrrrthhheee…” The pretty blonde teenager only succeeds in helplessly drooling out of the corners of her mouth.
Hot tears well from her blue eyes. Not as blue as the deep sky color they had flashed when the girl had first entered the waiting Olds. No. The flood of tears she has already shed has washed the artificially enhanced brilliant blue of her contact lenses away, the soft, pliant disks lost along with the relative innocence of her dreams…
Now her eyes are the pale blue of pure terror. Her pupils exaggeratedly dilated from the fear & the side effects of the painkiller (the procaine hydrochloride in its standard 1/10 ratio with saline solution, the duration of its activity boosted by the addition of epinephrine to the infusion). The tears roll down her cheeks, trickle down her chin, tickling the smooth, warm, trembling flesh.
“Just nod your head if the answer is ‘yes,”‘ Mal says to her. “If you do exactly what we tell you to, you won’t be hurt.”
Heather is huddled on the carpeting at the foot of the twin bed nearest to the door. Her left wrist is handcuffed to the metal bed frame. The carpeting is frayed & soil-stained, originally a nondescript shade of red with ticking of darker threads running through it. The cheap synthetic fiber chafes & rubs at the exposed flesh of her shapely thighs & calves.
“I said ‘You have had sex before, haven’t you?”‘ Mal repeats. “Nod if the answer is ‘yes’.” Snuff has the TV turned on to cable, the volume up to create a background mask of noise—some movie on Cinemax or HBO or SelecTV with Charles Bronson about a gang of young toughs who are raping his Hispanic maid…
Heather nods her head up & down several times.
She blushes & tries to avert her eyes from His penetrating gaze that seems to stare into the dark depths of her very soul.
Mal bends, grabbing her chin painfully in His strong, surgical-gloved hand. He relishes these games of cat-&-mouse, the rush of POWER in controlling completely another human being. The front of His trousers bulges, stimulated by His total domination of this helpless teenager from the Bible Belt, & by the humiliation He is subjecting her to.
“Look at me when I speak to you,” He orders, His voice never shifting from its almost inflectionless monotone.
Truman Gilmore lies on his back atop the covers on the other bed, groaning occasionally. The bondage device is still strapped across his face, the hard rubber ball between his teeth rendering him incapable of speech.
Snuff has his Levi’s unzipped & is slowly stroking his thick, dangling penis to ever-swelling erection as he listens to Mal’s intimate questioning of their so-sexy blonde captive. He stands behind her, & to her right, on the far side of the bed. She is as yet unaware of what he’s doing. Too mesmerized by her fear of Mal, the cold gaze of His eyes, to notice the faint rasping sound of Snuff’s zipper.
“Do you let boys ‘get into your knickers,’ you know, fondle your privates & push their fingers into you—down here—?” Mal stoops, His finger gesturing to the bulging furrow at her thigh’s junction.
She hesitates, failing to respond to His sexual interrogation.
Mal slaps her hard on the right cheek, jerking her head with the force of the blow.
“I told you that you wouldn’t be hurt. If. You do exactly what we tell you. Now. Nod or shake your head. But don’t you dare lie to Me or it will go very hard on you.”
Heather nods her head.
“Do you let the boys fuck you?”
She hesitates again.
Again He gives her a resounding slap.
“Do you like to be. FUCKED?”
By now she has the routine down pat. She nods her head to avoid punishment.
(Yeah. B.F. Skinner would be proud…)
[ 42 ]
Frank & Clarence Carter sit at a corner table in the motel restaurant, hunched over their steaming cups of java, absorbed in deep conversation while awaiting the tastebud-rush of generic diner fare, oblivious to the merry-go-round swirl of straight john clones, rednecks, retirees & the scammers & jammers flaunting leather & denim…
“& you think this kill might be the work of a still-active Zodiac & your postulated ‘family’ of slayers? Pretty wild theory, Frank, pretty damn wild. I read your Satan and Serial Violence… what’s the rest of the—”
“…An occult conspiracy…”
“Yeah. Been quite a while. Pretty controversial stuff, but I know it made you a bundle, right…?”
“It’s no scam, Clarence. Believe me. I’ve spent the best part of the last thirty plus years takin’ it all apart & seein’ how it works… This is no phantom clockwork we’re talkin’ here…”
“Okay, so I remember, it wasn’t all that many years back that not only the public but all save a few true believers in law enforcement thought the whole concept of ‘recreational killers’ & witchcraft & Devil cults & even the kiddie-porn-&-snuff underground was pure pulp Horror & boogieman B.S. So humor me with a quick refresher course in Hawkes 101…”
[ 43 ]
“So. You have had sex. With whom? Your boyfriends?”: She nods her head.
“With anyone else?”: She nods. Blushing furiously.
“With your cousin? With a brother?”: She shakes her head; then nods twice.
“With your brothers?”: Another nod.
“Anyone else?”: She nods again.
“Have you ever had sex with a grown man?”: Nod.
“Did you let your own father fuck you?”: She starts to nod, then shakes her head.
Mal eyes her carefully, considering
her reaction. “He raped you?”
Another nod & head shake.
“Hhmm… Did your stepfather rape you?”
Heather nods & begins to sob softly.
“Is that why you were running away?”: She nods.
“Have you ever sucked cock?”: She refuses to respond.
Mal slaps her again. Even harder than before: She nods.
Snuff moves forward, circling the corner of the bed, coming into Heather’s field of vision. Just as Mal asks, “As big as this one—?”
Heather’s eyes nearly pop at the sight of Snuff’s hugely throbbing penis. Her face blanches ashen pale.
Mal reaches down, clasping her chin in His hands & pries open her mouth, tugging out the cotton wadding. “Remember, do exactly as we ask, & you shall not be hurt. Make one cry, & I shall make you wish you had never been born.”
[ 44 ]
“…the SFPD & the FBI & every other acronym we had involved in the Zodiac case freely admitted the likelihood of probable occultist motivations. Hell, Clarence, if you accept as fact, as most of us did, that His first actual ‘hit’ was the female stabbing victim at the library, near midnight on Oct. 30th of ’66, the so-called ‘Z-signature’ killing, & not the couple in Vallejo on Dec. 20th of ’68—by the way, that one was just minutes before the Winter Solstice, again, heavy occult stuff—then he started his rein of terror on All Hallows Eve of Year One, as the legitimate ‘religion’ of Satan according to LaVey would have it—”
Duet for the Devil Page 10