Evil Season

by Michael Benson

  “It doesn’t matter. They could paint me as a beast with ten horns and ten dragon heads, and it would not matter.”

  “Well, do you have ten horns and ten dragon heads?”

  “I might have. It was my destiny, predestined thousands of years ago.”

  Grant said, “Everything you’ve done, you’ve pretty much messed up. . . .”

  “Always,” Murphy concurred.

  “The only thing you managed to do with any degree of success was kill this woman, and that’s the one thing you won’t talk about.”

  “Umm-hmm,” Murphy said. “It’s none of your business. It is only the business of those who are blessed.”

  “Are you among the blessed?”

  “Yes. That is why I have the authority to say what I say.”

  “And that’s why you can decide who lives and dies?”

  “If need be.”

  “A blessing is supposed to be something good. This blessing you’ve acquired is kind of like the plague.”

  “Yeah, a plague and a curse. A blessed curse.”

  “You said you had the power to cause people to have a heart attack. When you were cutting hair in jail and afraid of getting beat up, why didn’t you just give those guys a heart attack?”

  “Once, in a Tallahassee jail, one person pissed me off and he died in his cell that night.”

  “Was that your will?” Grant asked.

  “I didn’t wish it, but it happened. Pretty much every person I ever cursed in my mind, things happened to. If I want, I can take your soul.”

  “Is that what you did to Joyce?” Glover asked.

  “Joyce who? Who are we talking about?”

  “You are bad with names?” Grant asked.

  “What’s your choice, and Joyce rejoicing about? Are we rejoicing today as somebody’s heaven?”

  “Why don’t you want to talk about that?”

  “This is my way of talking. Jesus talked in riddles.”

  “Are you equating yourself with Jesus?”

  “Well, I’m just using him as an example.”

  Murphy said he believed in chaos circles, like Ping-Pong balls bouncing around. One second here, the next there. Pattern-free. Purely random. No way of knowing where it would be next. Mortals could guess all they wanted, but they could never be right.

  Glover noted, “Charles Manson used to talk a lot about chaos.”

  “Oh, how ironic,” Murphy said.

  Glover pointed out that Murphy had had his first marriage annulled by the Catholic Church, and Murphy said that was because Mary Border was a Catholic. The annulment was so he could marry her.

  That pissed him off. The idea of other men deciding whether or not he could marry a Catholic girl. He got so fed up with everything Catholic that he ended up not marrying the girl at all, in the long run.

  Murphy explained that Catholics and Baptists weren’t in God’s family. To be in God’s family, you have to be born into it, to have the correct DNA. And if you had it, you had it. It didn’t matter what you did in life—you still received your reward.

  Just another reason why Murphy didn’t have to follow rules, why Murphy could hurt people without conscience.

  Glover became impatient with the rhetoric. He asked when Murphy was going to get around to telling the whole story. Murphy said that wasn’t going to happen. There were just going to be more “riddles and games.”

  After more sparring regarding Murphy’s incoherent philosophy, Grant said it reminded him of reincarnation mumbo jumbo.

  “Well, that is part of the program,” Murphy said. “I’ve lived many lives.”

  Glover asked if he’d been successful in any of his lives.

  “Oh yeah. I killed Julius Caesar,” Murphy boasted. He didn’t remember why, but he did it.

  “That’s why you like the Brutus thing,” Grant said.

  “That’s why I was given that name,” Murphy replied.

  Grant added, “And that’s why you like knives.”

  “I use steak knives to cut steak,” Murphy responded.

  “You like collecting stuff. What are you collecting in jail?”

  “You would be surprised. It might be souls.”

  “You got some of them before you came here.”

  “I might be harnessing yours as I speak.”

  Glover asked, “Where do you want to see this go?”

  “I don’t give a damn. I’m going to wind up dead.”

  “Do you think you are going to die while in prison?”

  “Certainly a possibility. It’s a big possibility.”

  “Elton, what would it take to be truthful about the Joyce Wishart case?”

  “Joyce who? Who in the hell is Joyce Wishart? Brutus doesn’t know who Joyce Wishart is.”

  “Sure, he does. Brutus is the knife guy.”

  “He doesn’t give a damn about Joyce Wishart—just as much as I don’t give a damn about Joyce Wishart.”

  “You want more coffee, Elton? Anything else we can get you?”

  “A flight to Hawaii?” the prisoner joked.

  Glover returned to the DNA. He told Murphy he had an FDLE report. The State of Florida’s Convicted Offender DNA Database indicated a match between Murphy’s DNA and that found at a murder scene in Sarasota.

  Glover said, “That match would indicate that Elton Murphy killed a defenseless sixty-one-year-old woman. That’s the Elton Murphy that I’m seeing here. You pick on people smaller than you.”

  “The weak,” Grant added.

  “And now you tell us that due to your spiritualism, none of this is going to be explained until sometime down the road. Truth is, you attack the weak and meek, and you can’t even bring yourself to talk about it. It’s ridiculous.”

  “I know,” Murphy said with a laugh. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  The detectives made it clear they found nothing funny. At least Murphy had stopped claiming he’d been framed and that his DNA was planted.

  Glover said, “Elton, Elton, what would be your reasoning for rubbing your penis up against a woman while you’re supposed to be cutting her hair?”

  Murphy was silent.

  Glover continued his questioning. “What would be your reasoning for killing a sixty-one-year-old woman in an art gallery?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “What would be your reason for removing a body part from that woman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have the balls to talk about it.”

  “Oh, I have a couple of them.”

  Grant said, “He can’t talk about it. He’s too scared to talk about it.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Murphy said.

  “You are double-talking.”

  “It triggers a fatality in the future,” the prisoner said. “You’re going to have nightmares because of me. Just you wait.” Murphy again laughed.

  Grant said, “You can’t even think of a decent explanation why your DNA is at the crime scene. You can’t handle the memory of what you’ve done.”

  “Yes, I can. Sure, I can. I laugh about it.”

  “You laugh about what you did?”

  “I laugh at what you say I did.”

  “Face reality,” Glover said. “The reality is that your DNA is in that gallery.”

  “Match up another hundred DNA from somewhere while you’re at it. Connect me to another three hundred murders. I don’t care.”

  Grant said, “You don’t have enough balls to commit three hundred murders, but nice try.”

  Glover added, “You know how this is going to play out in a courtroom?”

  “I don’t give a damn. I already told you, I don’t give a damn.”

  Grant said, “I thought you would stand behind your work, but you can’t even speak about it. You probably sleep in a fetal position.”

  “I sleep very well,” Murphy said.

  “Tell us what happened on January sixteenth.”

  “I don’t even remember January sixt
eenth.”

  “Sure you do,” Glover said. “You killed Joyce Wishart.”

  “Joyce who?” Murphy said.

  “You’re scared,” Grant said. “You can’t bring yourself to say it. You’re scared of a sixty-one-year-old dead woman. Good God, man, get ahold of yourself.”

  “I’m not afraid of Joyce Wishart or any other Wishart.”

  “So, why don’t you tell us what happened that night?” Glover asked.

  “I refuse to tell you anything that I don’t want to tell you.”

  “Tell me what it was like after she was dead, with her lying there in the gallery?” Glover prodded. “The lights are on. It’s dark outside. You have her back there in that little alcove. You start doing what you did. Didn’t you worry about somebody walking by and seeing you?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, first of all. What art gallery?”

  “You know damn well. You were in the same place your blood and skin were,” Glover said.

  “You’re scared,” Grant added. “You want someone to come in and hold your hand? You need a pillow? What do you need?”

  “I need you to bring me some beautiful chick. I’ll hold her hand,” Murphy said. “It’s a damn shame somebody killed that woman. I don’t give a shit about Joyce whoever. All I’m saying is whoever killed her, she deserved it.” He laughed.

  Glover asked why she deserved to be killed. Murphy said he didn’t know. Glover asked who told him to kill her. Grant said Murphy needed to be strong enough to face the things he’d done.

  “I hear ya,” Murphy said.

  “I got your DNA,” Grant stated.

  Murphy shot back, “Why you asking me questions, then? You got DNA. Conversation over. Pack your bags and go back home. You said I could end this conversation whenever I want. I’m ready to go back to my facility.”

  That ended that interview. Murphy, however, was not taken to his old facility, but rather he was taken to a different jail in Houston. He was locked into a one-man confinement cell—a cold room with a concrete bed. After a few hours he was given a mattress and a blanket. He was there for a week.

  The SPD wasn’t through with Murphy, however. Not by a long shot. They were just resting, getting in a week’s worth of investigation—coworkers, Shade Avenue tenants—before starting in again.

  Murphy was again pulled out of his cell so he could be questioned by detectives. Same interrogation room. Detective Grant was back, but this time with Detective Opitz rather than Glover.

  Grant apologized for the redundancy before informing Murphy, yet again, of his Miranda rights. Grant wanted to fill out the bio and asked Murphy about his life. Murphy discussed growing up in Hardee County; how his dad had died when Brutus was twenty or twenty-one; that he grew up in the country woods on account of his daddy having an “acreage” with an orange grove and ten acres of swampland converted into pastureland. His childhood had been one of hard work. No play. The second he got off the bus, he went to work in the fields. His mom and dad ran a nursery business, growing shrubs and palm trees. Daddy drank a bit, but overall a solid, normal, happy childhood, Murphy said.

  “What was the best part of your childhood?” Grant asked.

  “Being exposed to the country, away from the city.”

  “I’ve seen your school records. You were a pretty good student.”

  “Except for math,” Murphy said, and everyone shared a laugh.

  “And what was the worst part of your childhood ?”

  Dad drank; Mom and Dad fought; they divorced. Dad, who had been on the wagon and was doing good, started drinking again. A year after that, he was dead.

  Murphy told the detectives about scuba school and going into the navy for the first time to be a photographer. Served five years, was out for awhile, re-upped to become a SEAL. The second time he only served a year and a half. He skipped the messiness of the AWOL and court-martial.

  “They, uh, let me out early,” Murphy said.

  His first marriage took place during his first stint in the service. They lived in Bermuda and then split up. After they broke up, she once called collect with a new name. He didn’t accept the charges. Once, after he was out of the navy the first time, she called or wrote a letter. He couldn’t recall which. Other than that, there had been no contact since the breakup.

  Murphy burned through this part of his bio: cut hair at Gateway Mall, met Paula, became a haircutting team, owned his own barbershop, moved to a worse location, went to work for Regis for seven years, had kids, broke up with Paula. . . .

  Grant asked why his marriage to Paula broke up. Murphy explained that it was his fault. He spent too much time “doing stuff.” They got into a habit of not listening to each other.

  Grant wondered whose idea it was to go their separate ways, and Murphy admitted it was hers. But he blamed the metal sculptures, his obsession, for making him a bad husband. Paula was pissed off because he was so busy tinkering that he couldn’t go with her and the kids to the beach, or talk to her and her girlfriend.

  Did he make any money on his sculptures? Murphy bragged that he had a little display area built in his hair salon and sold a few small pieces. Said he sold them for $300 apiece, but Grant made it clear that he didn’t believe him. Murphy then admitted that he gave most of them away. “You like it? It’s yours,” he would say.

  He had a big-time case of the blues when he and Paula broke up. He moved away, an attempt to remove himself physically from the painful memories. As if . . .

  Grant asked, “How close did you and Paula stay in touch after that?”

  “Well, we really didn’t have a relationship after that,” Murphy replied. When he came to see the kids, it was just “hi and bye” with Paula.

  “How often did you visit your children?”

  “Not that often. Three, four times a year.”

  “Did you guys have a child-support agreement?”

  “I paid her more than she asked for. I went way overboard. It was supposed to be six-fifty a month, but I paid seven hundred fifty dollars for four years. I always made sure the kids got a lot of extra money.”

  He paid as long as he could. After he fled Tallahassee, he lived in Brandon for five years. He stayed there until 2001. His job at Regis was very stressful, a demanding job. He was their “master stylist” and their “highest moneymaker.”

  He cut the hair of the biggest clientele, and a lot was expected of him. So he went back to Tallahassee and worked at the Seminole Barber Shop, where work was easier. He wasn’t in Tallahassee for long before he got arrested for some “little stuff” he did. Trespassing. He was scrounging one day for metal to supply his welding habit. He was near Florida State University and saw some metal scrap he liked. He picked that up and was in the process of checking the Dumpster for anything else interesting when the cops showed up and arrested him for being on some company’s property.

  There had been another trespassing arrest, something about being on a roof, Grant noted. Murphy told the story. He was just trying to help the guy clean his roof. Cops were called.

  Grant thought that was pretty interesting and wanted to hear about some of the other good deeds Murphy might have done while in his Good Samaritan phase.

  “I’d rake a lawn, pick up garbage, stuff like that.”

  “Was there an event in your life that led to you becoming a Good Samaritan?”

  Murphy said no, it was just “spiritual awakening.” It was also around that time, he volunteered, that he’d spent about four months in jail on trespassing and burglary charges.

  Grant asked what he had burgled. The actual items had slipped Murphy’s mind, but it was probably just some garbage or “some metal shit.” Supplies for his art.

  Grant asked if, maybe, Murphy had ever gone through somebody’s house in search of supplies for his art. Murphy agreed that could’ve happened.

  Murphy admitted that his art was suffering during those days. Not only did he lack supplies, but equipment as well. He had go
tten rid of his welding equipment. He was collecting equipment and supplies for his art. That might have been why he was going through a house.

  “You did four months in Tallahassee?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Probation or anything?”

  “One-year administrative probation. I had to let them know when I moved. I also had to go to counseling,” Murphy said.

  “Mental-health counseling?”

  “Yeah.” Murphy found the counseling unfulfilling. So much so, that in retrospect he wished he had served an extra couple of months in jail and skipped the counseling. First he went down south; then he started counseling. He liked the guy—White, Waite, he forgot his name. But nothing ever happened. His counselor never made a diagnosis; he never said Murphy was okay.

  (Grant came to learn that when Murphy lived in Tallahassee, he’d received mental-health treatment from a provider known as Personal Growth and Behavioral Health, Inc. His counselor was Dorothy Hahn. Later, while on probation, Murphy received mental-health counseling from Michael White.)

  “Did they try to put you on meds?” Detective Opitz interjected.

  “No,” Murphy said.

  At the time he was living in a “a place near the water, Port of Tampa. Stayed there for a few months.” It was a little house, to begin with, and had been walled up into a duplex. He had a little red car, a Geo Metro, and still worked sometimes at Regis, cutting hair.

  After that, he moved in with Dave Gallant, a guy he’d met in a bookstore, Barnes & Noble, Brandon Town Center. They had a common interest in books and started talking.

  “He told me his story and about his mental—not mental, spiritual—stuff that he had an interest in, and he said he had all of these books I should see. He invited me.”

  The detective noted the Freudian slip.

  The bookstore guy told Murphy he had people in and out of his house all the time, renting space, cheaper than what he was paying, so Murphy moved in with him.

  Murphy was still being the Good Samaritan. A large reason he moved was because he could tell this guy needed the rent money. Normally, Murphy wouldn’t have gone for such an arrangement.

  “I don’t do well living with guys. I’d rather it be a woman, you know?” was how he put it. “I might be in jail with ’em, but I don’t like living with ’em.”