by Wayne Purdy
“I had a witness who was able to identify you.”
“Bullshit. No one ever knew about me. I was careful.”
“Not that careful. Why’d you kill Tiff? You had to have known you would get caught.”
Nowak shrugged. “I didn’t know Cutler was going to kill himself. I thought he’d get blackout drunk and wouldn’t have an alibi. I could pin this one on him too, but I couldn’t just leave her alone. She was ready to transform. I couldn’t pass on that.” His voice was rising. I could hear the agitation in it.
“You almost got away with it,” I said, taking a few steps closer to him. “You probably would have, if it weren’t for Katherine Chosuk.”
Nowak stared at me with a blank expression on his face. “I have no idea who that is.”
This struck me. She had devoted her life to capturing him. She moved to the other side of the world. She put herself in a position to cross his path, and he never knew who she was. “You probably remember her as Kitty,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”
“Kitty?” Then he chortled. “Kitty? I haven’t thought of her in years.”
“She’s never stopped thinking of you,” I told him, closing the distance between us slowly. He was now only six feet away from me. I could make a lunge for him if I had to. He still had the gun haphazardly pointed at me and it made for a hell of a deterrent.
“She loved Gina,” Nowak said, as if finally understanding Katherine’s hatred. “I did too.”
“You killed her,” I said. “That isn’t love. Nothing you do is love.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nowak said.
“Just put the gun down, Bob. We can talk about it. You can tell me everything. Enlighten me.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Heck. No. No, I don’t think so.” He raised the gun at my torso, concentrating his aim at me. His voice was confident and cold. I launched myself towards him and he fired. The bullet tore into my side as I collided into him and knocked the gun from his grasp. It scattered across the floor coming to rest under a table. We both toppled onto the ground. Now, his hands flailed. Most of the blows were grazing, but I knew I couldn’t take too many of them. I was in danger of bleeding out. If we were standing, I would have had the advantage. I was taller, my reach greater, but on the ground, things evened out. He used the momentum of our fall to roll us over and climb on top of me. His hands grabbed my neck, and his legs had my arms pinned. He squeezed and my airflow constricted. This was how he preferred to kill. He was practiced at it. I tried to break free, but my strength was fading. The last sight I saw was Nowak’s contorted, angry face before the void took me.
26
Hazel
Hazel woke up. Her head was pounding and sticky. She tried to remember what happened, but her memory was coming back blank. Gingerly, she looked around. She could hear voices, but they seemed so distant. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to focus, trying to shake out the cobwebs. Hazel turned her head despite the pain and turned to follow the voices. Her vision was fuzzy, no doubt she had a concussion. She saw Heck on the ground, leaning against a wall. He looked groggy. He was holding his belly but was his hands were slick with blood. Nowak stood over him. She could see a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants.
“What happened?” Heck asked, his voice was weak. Confused.
“Stay with me, Heck. I choked you enough to subdue you, not kill you.”
“I don’t understand, Bob. Why did you do it? You say you loved them, so why kill them. Why kill Gracie?”
Nowak paced back and forth, stopping in front of Heck. “I did love them,” he said. “I didn’t kill them though. I set them free.”
“You keep saying that. What does that mean.” Heck’s voice was sounding stronger. Hazel didn’t know if he was or if it was for show. She suspected the latter.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he said arrogantly. “You only saw her for what she was. Not what she could be.”
“So, you were trying to help her reach her potential?” He asked, unable to keep the scepticism from his voice.” Hazel saw the pain etched onto Heck’s face.
“You don’t believe me, but it’s the truth. Gracie came to me. She was confused. Angry. She was like a wounded animal, lashing out at everyone. At first, I tried to help him, before he became Gracie. Mark was troubled. I advised Cutler to wash him out. Send him home. Cutler didn’t want to. Not at first. He thought it was his responsibility to turn him into a good soldier. Mark Telford was never a good soldier. Then, Mark came to me. He confided in me his confusion. He said that he always felt like he was trapped in a prison. His body wasn’t his own. He was a woman. I couldn’t believe my luck. I always felt like I overreacted with Gina.”
“Overreacted?” Hector asked. “You fucking killed her. That’s more than an overreaction, isn’t it?”
From her vantage point, Hazel struggled to follow the conversation, but she was having a difficult time concentrating. Who was Gina? What had Hector found out?
“I could have handled it better,” Nowak acknowledged, as though he were talking about a bad break-up rather than a murder. “What can I say? I was young and immature. I had a lot of growing up to do.”
“You had an affair with Gracie?” Heck asked, changing tack, trying to keep Nowak disoriented but talking. “You were the officer that she was having an affair with?”
“We did,” he agreed. “Our relationship had to be a secret. The army had rules against fraternisation. She began to experiment with other men. She became quite promiscuous, but I didn’t mind. It kept attention away from us and I couldn’t have that come out. People wouldn’t understand. I insisted that she start transitioning. I’m not gay. I needed her to be a woman.”
Hazel could see Heck nodding his understanding. “You encouraged her to come out as trans.”
“She needed someone to support her. No one else did. Not her family. She didn’t have any friends. She didn’t have anyone. She was alone.”
“Instead of helping her, you exploited her. Took advantage of her to satisfy your own needs. You never loved her, you used her.”
“I saved her,” Nowak yelled, spittle spraying from his mouth. “She was trapped, and I fucking set her free.”
“The butterfly,” Heck said, recalling the two-sided blanket that Gracie was found in.
“I didn’t think anyone would ever notice,” Nowak said. “Yes, she was a butterfly. Before she met me, she was ugly. I made her more than she was. She transitioned, but she also transcended. That was because of me.”
“So, you did her a favour?” Heck asked, his voice strained.
“I don’t except you to understand.”
“But why didn’t Cutler just send her home after she started leaking? It couldn’t have been ego. Secrets are sometimes leaked out. Its never seen as a weakness of the commanding officer, especially if he deals with it accordingly. It sends a message to everyone else, that it won’t be tolerated.”
Nowak shrugged. “I was his adjutant. I had his confidence. I convinced him that we could handle it in-house. Eventually, he agreed. When he ordered the assaults, I got mad. I loved her. I didn’t want her to be hurt. That’s when I had him though. What he did was illegal. I’ve had him in my control ever since. I was never able to climb any higher in the ranks, but I’ve been in command a long, long time. The old man took me on all his postings. He didn’t have any choice. If you looked around, you’ll find other, similar butterfly releases all over the place.” As he spoke, Hazel noted the pride. Bob Nowak was proud of it all. Everything. She noticed that Nowak never referenced his actions as killings. She wondered if he thought what he had done was even murder. It didn’t seem like it.
“You didn’t go through all the ritual with Gina,” Heck said. “Was she the first one?”
“You have to understand. That trip to Thailand was a turning point for me. I was young. My friends were all going off to university, but I didn’t have the grades or money for it
. My life seemed to come screeching to all halt. What was I supposed to do? I was young and rudderless. I spent that summer drunk, stoned, and chasing pussy. I knew that I had to find a purpose, to find some meaning in my life. The only course I could plot was in the army. That Thailand trip was my last hurrah before I joined, and I wanted to make the most of it.”
“When I met Gina and Kitty that night, it was just like every other night I had spent in Bangkok. We danced and partied. I couldn’t believe I had these two beautiful young women on my arms. I didn’t think life could get any better. That’s before I knew what they were. I knew about ladyboys, of course. My friends and I joked about it the whole time we were there. I just thought that they would be easy to spot. Some of them were, but Gina was different. She was so petite and soft. I never imagined that she wasn’t a natural woman. We spent the day together, swimming at the beach, dinner, drinking, clubbing. We connected. I told her about my dreams. My plans. I told her everything about myself and she said that could do whatever I wanted. Can you imagine? She believed in me even when I couldn’t.”
“When we got back to her place, she tried to tell me, but I was so overcome with lust that I didn’t want to talk anymore. I just wanted her. I wanted to taste her sweet kisses, I wanted to explore her body. God, I just wanted her. We fell onto her bed, and I began taking off her clothes. She had the smallest, pert little breasts, and I fell upon them with a hunger I’d never experienced before. As I worked my way down her flat stomach, she held my head in her hands and whispered, almost pleadingly, ‘no.’ I paused for a moment, thinking that she was just being shy, and then I carried on, pulling off her panties,” he paused and looked at Heck, deciding whether or not to keep talking. He was confiding some intimate moments but must have known that Hector wasn’t going to be leaving the building alive and continued. “Trans girls tuck their penises backwards behind their legs to hide the crotch bulge. Did you know that? I didn’t. Her panties were tight. I remember that. When I pulled them down, her cock sprung up like a coiled spring. The damn thing nearly hit me in the face.”
Hazel sat up. She was out of Nowak’s sight. Her head was spinning, and she had to swallow down a rising surge of bile. The exit was clear. She could probably make a bee line for it before Nowak even noticed she was missing. She could call the police and put an end to this nightmare before anyone else got hurt. Hector watched her climb up, resting her weight on a coffee table. He looked from her towards the door and intuited her plan. He nodded his head imperceptibly. Run, Hazel! Run! He prayed that she would know what he wanted her to do.
“I don’t know what happened next,” Nowak continued. “Everything becomes a red blur. I remember sitting beside Gina’s body. She was dead. Stabbed over and over. The knife was in my hand. I don’t know where it came from. Then I looked down and I saw it. The offending organ,” he sneered. “Her cock. She was almost perfect. Almost. I took the knife and grabbed the cock and cut it off. ‘There,’ I thought. ‘Now you’re perfect.’ I didn’t know what else to do with it, so I stuffed her penis into her own mouth. There seemed to be a sort of karmic justice to it at the time. Now I know that was wrong. The penis was part of her prison. I should have destroyed it. What can I say? I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”
“So, what did you do with Gracie’s penis? And Sandra’s?” Heck asked. Hazel was still resting against the table. She seemed unsteady on her feet.
“You saw Sandra’s,” Nowak said laughing with childish glee. Hazel heard Nowak speaking, but his words came to her muffled, like she was listening through a layer of gauze. Heck’s expression was one of abject confusion.
“I didn’t…”
“The first day you came to see me on base. Remember. I had Major with me. Fed him while you sat at my desk,” Nowak coaxed the memory from Heck.
“You fed the dog,” Heck said. His eyes widened as the realisation hit him. “Chicken pieces, giblets. A turkey neck.”
Nowak laughed. “I’m sure its not veterinary approved, but a steady diet of cock and balls does wonders for a dog’s health.”
“You’re sick,” Heck murmured. Hazel already felt queasy. Now she was fighting the urge to retch.
“I’m not. I assure you. This was all planned to perfection. Cutler was supposed to take the fall.”
“How did you do that?”
“Like I said, I had him for ordering the assault on Gracie. She had become too unpredictable. She had to go, but first I needed to help her transform. I knew that if she turned up dead after he ordered her beatings, well, that wouldn’t look good on him. He was mine forever. Wherever he was assigned, I would follow. I would always request to be transferred with him. As his adjutant, I had access to all the personnel files. I fed you the names of men I knew could point you back to Cutler. I knew Irwin Bobb had beaten Gracie. She told me one night after we’d had sex. Estes beat her too, but that man was always something of an animal. I certainly knew that Bello beat her. He made no bones about it.” he said, without a trace of irony. “I also used my access to the computer to include my name on the flight manifest. My mother did die, but the funeral was after Gracie died. I caught a lift on the same flight that carried you out. I never thought to scrub my name from that manifest. I guess I didn’t think that it would matter. That was sloppy.”
“Your friend over there spotted the error,” he gestured towards the spot where Hazel was with a cock of the head but didn’t turn to look. Heck couldn’t see her either. He left out an inaudible sigh of relief. She had gotten away.
“Cutler was becoming erratic. I think he started snooping around, started noticing the bodies that we left behind. The guilt was too much for him. He was an honourable man once. He lost sight of that, but I think there was something of him left, like a vestigial limb. He had vestigial honour. His drinking got out of control. That made him unpredictable. He started to talk about regret and mistakes. The sort of talk that I didn’t need to hear. I pushed forward with my plan to frame him. Cutler was always going to be my fall guy if I started to feel the heat. I trailed you. I have the same car, mine’s a couple years older, but they look the close enough. You’ve got to love German engineering. I had to make it obvious, so you would notice. You’ve only got one eye, but you make it count. Good job on that.”
“And the knife?” Heck asked.
“That was meant to be the coup de grace. I planted it in his Cadillac, I hid it but not too well. I wanted you to find it. If you found your prime suspect with a bloody knife, surely that would be enough to have him arrested., but in true Hector Collins style, it wasn’t enough!”
“It didn’t feel right,” Heck replied. “It felt like it was being handed to me, and that never happens.”
“You’ve managed to botch it up,” Nowak said. “I had it all planned. Cutler was going to take the fall.”
“Sorry I fucked things up for you,” Heck said. His voice was weak.
“I’m sorry it has to come to this,” Nowak said, removing the gun from his waistband. “You may not believe it, but I really like you.” Nowak pointed the gun at Hector’s chest.
“Bob. No!” Heck said.
Hazel rose behind Nowak, an animalistic roar bellowing from somewhere deep inside, her foot caught him between the legs. Nowak buckled and turned to face his attacker, but Hazel was ready. Her feet were squared, and she clutched the Bamiyan Buddha in one of her hands. She swung it with all her strength, catching him on the nose, brought her hand back into her chest and lashed out again. The limestone statuette exploded into tiny shards. Nowak’s eyes widened and an ‘O’ of surprise formed on his mouth. Before he had a chance to register what was happening, Hazel’s hands balled up into fists and she hit him again and again, feeling his nose give away from the impact. Nowak spun around, clumsily pointing the gun towards Hazel. She wound up and punched him with all the strength she could muster.
Nowak stood for a fraction of a second. His face was battered and bleeding, his nose little more than a smear. He was missing
several teeth. Then, like a tree that has been cut but hasn’t fallen yet, he swayed and dropped to the ground. He couldn’t even raise his hands to break his fall. Hazel didn’t just see the face of Bob Nowak anymore. She saw Brent Turner. She saw Raj Patel. She saw every unworthy man she had ever given herself to and the ones she hadn’t, the ones who took what they wanted from her by force, or manipulation, or honeyed promises. She saw every drunk who touched her with anything more than a lecherous gaze. She saw Eddie.
Hazel fell on top of Nowak, screaming as she grabbed a handful of hair and slammed his face into the floor over and over.
“Hazel,” Heck yelled. “Stop. You’re going to kill him.”
She stopped. Tears were running down her face, and she pulled herself off Nowak’s body, and crawled towards Heck, panting heavily, and putting a swollen hand over his gunshot wound, applying pressure. “Hit first. Hit hard. Hit often,” she said, between sharp breaths.
27
Hector
I looked over to the passenger seat. Hazel had a bandage on her temple covering the stitches she’d gotten after Nowak had cold cocked her, and a cast on her right hand. She’d broken it punching Nowak. A week later, she still had concussion symptoms; headaches, nausea, and a sensitivity to light, the latter she managed by wearing an oversized pair of sunglasses. I had been patched up after having several blood transfusions. The bullet went through me without hitting any organs. We would both recover. Bob Nowak wasn’t so lucky. He was arrested and charged although he was still in the hospital in a deep coma. There was no clear consensus when or if he’d recover.
“You don’t have to come,” I told her.
She looked at me, “who’s going to save you when you get yourself into trouble,” she said, a wry smile on her face.