SKA: Serial Killers Anonymous

by William Schlichter

  Nurses are not always careful about or forget about watching what they say around someone when they become a fixture in the hospital. They were pissed the cops had to allow the little girl to return home with her green-haired mother. They almost wanted to bet on how long it would be before the poor child would be back for more medical attention. They had other sessions involving her physical wellness. One had even hot-lined and—nothing. Mom would keep her from the doctor for minor events to prevent documentation of constant abuse. When she did bring her back the next time it would be horrid.

  I left again. Retired, I had income and was about to have a windfall in insurance money.

  Money wasn’t enough. I wanted to use it to help this little girl, but she was a minor, so anything I did financially the mother would have access to.

  I drove past the house on my way to the hospital. It was on my second lap the unshaven man in the wife beater on the porch spotted me. He must have figured this white suburbanite was wanting drugs, but hadn’t the stones to ask. The shiny Nissan’s a dead giveaway I didn’t belong in this part of town.

  Driving away made me question what I was doing. What could I do? If I protected her tonight what about tomorrow?

  The little girl needed to be removed from her mother with no chance of returning or she would never escape her life.

  Remaining vigilant over my granddaughter gave me thinking time. My thoughts now had focus. I formulated how to make it better for the little girl. To do so would bring her hardship but if I didn’t she would forever be lost. If I did this successfully then I would take steps to make sure there were no more little girls in comas. I devised a brilliant plan even if it seemed a bit fantastical.

  I didn’t want to use the son-in-law’s 9mm in case it was traceable. It wouldn’t take more than an afternoon drive to locate a gun show and buy a gun.

  I didn’t want to use it, but I knew I needed protection. Next, I bought a junker car for three hundred dollars. It blended better than my Rogue. As long as it got me away from the house I didn’t care how long it lasted. It may have even been stolen. The seller did have paperwork, but left the plates.

  I acted that night before I lost my nerve.

  “What the hell do you want, old man?” The bearded wife beater clad man demanded of me from the door of his house.

  He wasn’t expecting me to slap his face with the gun barrel.

  With a broken nose, he dropped to a knee, blood pulsing from his nostrils. I kicked him and he fell inside the threshold. I followed the gun quivering in my hand. Luckily, the dealer’s eyes watered badly, and he had no clear vision to spot my nerves.

  The green-haired mother was sacked out on the couch next to a table of needles and what I assumed was other drug paraphernalia.

  I’m not sure she even knew I was there.

  The man lunged at me. My grip tightened. I cocked the hammer of the revolver. It didn’t have to be cocked to fire, but the noise created the desired effect. The man dropped back to his knees begging for his life.

  He offered me money.

  I was glad I had remembered to buy a revolver, so I wouldn’t have to police up any casings.

  “How much more dope you got?” I’m sure I sounded ignorant.

  “You want to score, you didn’t have to hit me.”

  “I want you to inject her.”

  “Dude, she’s had enough.”

  I found my balls.

  “Inject her again or I inject you.” My arm stiffened with no shaking as I pointed at the center of his forehead.

  “Take it easy, grandpa.” He prepared the syringe and stuck it in her arm. “She’s going to die. Nice and blissful, but dead, just the same.”

  I didn’t care. Worse, he didn’t seem to care.

  “Where’s the daughter?” I poked his nose with the barrel.

  “In the back bedroom. Are you some kind of pervert? You want mom dead, so you can foster the girl and have her all to yourself? Man, I would have sold her to you. No legal paperwork and no one checks on her.”

  “Are you related to her?”

  “No. Just keeping Mom to fluff me. She makes a little on the side with her daughter. Bitch sells the little girl to get her drugs. Hell, some months she lets her stay with the landlord for the weekend to cover the rent. Guess I’ll have to find another meal—”

  Half his face painted the wall. I could take no more.

  Glad some part of my brain stayed on its toes, I was against the wall just inside the hallway entrance when the naked man ran in demanding to know about the shot.

  His brains decorated the opposite wall.

  I knew what I would find if I entered the bedroom. A naked little girl not even old enough to have had a period. I couldn’t witness it.

  “Little girl!”

  No answer.

  “Little girl, you just stay in the room and you don’t come out. Don’t you dare come out!”

  No one should have to witness what I did.

  The car did get me to the playground park where I had stashed my Rogue. I wiped down the interior and the door handles to remove my DNA. I thought about burning it. If it was stolen maybe the real owner would get it back.

  I returned to my vigil over my granddaughter.

  The story was in the newspaper the next day. Drug Deal Gone Bad During Child Sex Ring! was the main assessment of the media. The girl who was left nameless was removed from the home her after mother’s overdose. None of the facts were accurate. Nothing reported matched anything that occurred. It didn’t even line up with the way the bodies were discovered. The two men were said to have killed one another over the drugs and the abuse of the little girl, all while the mom drifted to death on heroin.

  Do you know how much insurance money your entire family is worth? I set aside an anonymous scholarship for the little girl. It wasn’t much after I buried my family, but I figured her mother had nothing to leave her. Others added to the funds. She would get an education. She would need years of therapy to recover from how her mother used her.

  XIV

  “JACK, YOU ARE nothing like the master ripper.”

  “You’re more Jack the Ripper than I, Ed. You do kill prostitutes.”

  “Did,” the truck driver corrects.

  “I was thinking Dr. Jack Kevorkian,” remarks the old man.

  “Dr. Death?” Jane praises, “Good choice. He helped people to the other side. You do rid the world of the unnecessary. But so did the first Jack.”

  “We no longer have the luxury of considering our victims unnecessary. They are people. People with family and names and we must no longer steal that away,” Al says.

  “I just sought to rid my town of those who took my family. To do so, I needed to remove the drug peddlers,” Jack says.

  “The cops never glance twice at an OD. Drug use rates just above prostitutes.”

  “The cops are understaffed, not stupid. When it quacks like a duck they don’t check for feathers.”

  “You just saved a little girl from a terrible life,” Jane says.

  “Only if she stays in therapy,” Jack hangs his head.

  “Maybe you should be Paul Kersey,” Robert says.

  “Who?” Jesse asks.

  “Now we know he’s young,” Al says.

  “My youth has little to do with it. Our youth is when we killed insects first. A puppy. What did you go after first before you graduated to prostitutes?” Jesse snaps.

  “You are correct. It is a deeper process than sharing a few stories the first time.”

  “I never harmed anyone. Not even when I served in the Army. What I did I did to avenge my family and to save dozens of others. It was when I enjoyed the killing, when I needed to kill that I turned to this group. God how I enjoyed ending such bastards. None of you are any better than those I killed. The problem is that I’m no better. No stones from this old man.”

  “At least you know you’re no better than the rest of us, old man,” Robert snaps.

  Jane sta
nds as if to interject her physical self between any of the others ready to get physical. She never expected them all to mesh and become friends during the first meeting. “We have gained some trust though this will not heal us after one meeting. And I know what we desire—to prevent another killing is a difficult monster to quell.”

  “It is a big leap, like AA buttons. We do this one day at a time.”

  “We have all shared, we should end our meeting. I want to build trust,” Jane says.

  “I ain’t fucking holding hands,” Ed says.

  “We’re drawing to a close. What you heard, and saw, and who you met here stays here. We must keep our trust,” Jane says. “I will contact you with another safe location.”

  “How does this heal us?” Kenneth asks.

  “Asking for help is the most difficult step. Your desire to be here is the start,” Al says.

  “Maybe we should come up with some guildlines like at AA.”

  “I’m not praying.”

  “And I’m not sure we should share phone numbers, yet.”

  “The chat room works if one of us has an urge and must talk,” Jane says. “I will clear us another meeting time. Before you return to our next meeting remember to destroy your trophy collection. It will be difficult, but it is a major step in recovery.”

  “What if we’re unable to?”

  “If you can’t then we must address it and help you. Let’s process what we’ve heard today and next time line up how we help each other stay on this path of sobriety.”

  I

  “JOHN DOUGLAS, FORMER chief of the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, and author of ‘Mind Hunter,’ says, ‘A highly conservative estimate is that there are between 35 and 50 active serial killers in the United States.’” Professor Arnett allows those numbers to sink in. His back remains to the auditorium classroom full of innocent young faces. Unlike many in his fellowship, he doesn’t make it his goal to scare students away on day one just to have fewer papers for some TA to grade. The career itself will weed out those who are unable to handle dealing with the dead. Writing implements scrawl on paper or fingers peck on keys to record the numbers he expounded.

  He continues, “Many of these killers are difficult to track because they will exercise a ‘cooling-off’ period between kills. This period may stretch into years for some. As you study in this course you will find there are other experts who think the FBI numbers are conservative and there are many more active demented predators—a number reaching over a hundred—all actively and currently operating.”

  Pencils go down and laptops close. He’s captured the class and he knows it. Arnett will separate those only fascinated with the macabre and those worthy of catching these killers. He over exaggerates his limp as he marches in front of the desk at the base of the curved rows of chairs with the half-folded desktops.

  Jesse’s pencil hovers over his note paper. Writing anything down might cause him to miss something pertinent his teacher reveals.

  “Why don’t we have an exact figure? Why don’t we know more about these killers of at least three people or, in most cases, many more? A person can’t be a successful murderer without being secretive, and often the successful murderers are nomadic. The most successful have never been caught, nor their true number of killings known.”

  Arnett again allows his inquest to sink in among the fledgling minds. So many believe killers are fascinating in books and movies. Some might even enjoy slowing down to view a car accident, but they have yet to understand the depth of conviction needed to examine a crime scene. To stand over a two-year-old with a slit throat covered in her mother’s blood. To find a four-year-old with her genitals pried open with a screwdriver because she was too tight to be raped and then had her eyes dug out with the same screwdriver. To sit in an interrogation room while some father explains how his eight-year-old daughter performs fellatio on him better than his wife. No, they have yet to develop a stomach for such a scene. What he won’t share—he never could stomach such tragedy. Somehow, he escaped his first career without beating one of those bastards to death for what they did to the innocent and defenseless.

  His job—weed out those who will never handle it.

  “More active killers won’t even be identified. Get those CSI/NCIS fantasies out of your head. Real police work rarely reflects television. Sometimes you know who the killer is and the DA won’t proceed because he fears a lost case. He won’t risk tarnishing his perfect conviction record because some trailer trash whore was found bloody in a ditch.”

  Now some offended students grumble because they still view all people as human. “A killer never sees his victim as a person. They are disposable and easily replaced. Many killers live in a fantasy world and suffer delusion. Some believe their victims enjoy being tortured or enduring forced sexual congress. These are the people who selfishly believe their heinous acts are justifiable. Others murder the same person over and over and over again. Make no mistake, they have no remorse. Much like the wolf, the bear or the tiger, once they get a taste for human blood they never cease the hunt.”

  One female student leaves the auditorium. Arnett contemplated flashing crime scene pictures on the giant screen to sicken those who couldn’t handle the carnage.

  “Many killers are nomadic—truck drivers. At least four active serial killers prowl the highways in Texas interstates right now and they target lot lizards. Prostitutes are popular marks because no one cares about them.”

  He allows the usual affront to wash over the students. The female students especially are offended over his perception about sex workers having no value. Some students might even report their butt-hurt over his words, but as his Dean knows, as he also spent more than a decade on the force, prostitutes are not considered people. Not by cops, doctors, the johns or worse, many families forget them.

  Reiterating his point, he speaks aloud his thought, “No one cares about a prostitute. Be offended all you wish, but they’re never a high priority on anyone’s radar for any crime committed against them. Even when they are runaways, and have a truly loving family searching for them, they are never going to top the caseload of an overworked detective. As long as this is true, many serial killers will continue to act with impunity. Before police departments were linked by national Internet databases, no one even suspected these girls were killed by mass murderers.”

  Arnett hops onto the desk to remove the weight from his bad leg. “Let’s get to it. I was a police officer for thirteen years before I was shot in the line of duty. I have since earned my doctorate in criminal psychology and have worked on several FBI task forces involving possible serial killers. No, I won’t speak on active cases beyond why information is pertinent to educating you in this course. I like to start day one with your questions. Tell me your name and your major and ask your question.”

  It’s always a girl—pretty—and wanting to be in the FBI, no matter which one he calls on initially. Maybe he should select an ugly one, but they never stand up first. He points to the attractive brunette about five rows back.

  “Sherly Nackberth, and I want to work for the FBI. Have you caught any actual serial killers?”

  “I arrested three murderers when I was an officer, including the one that shot me. I’ve assisted on several cases involving possible serial killers. I’ll share some of those cases throughout the semester.”

  More hands shot up. He’d bet now they will be about his wound.

  Arnett diverges from his normality of calling on a male second. They want to know about guns and where they are allowed to carry. He calls on the masculine girl clearly into man-hating and questioning her sexuality.

  “How can you say prostitutes are not people?”

  He could have guessed her question.

  “Right or wrong, you have to accept the stigma people put on someone willing to sell their bodies for sex. Even men who frequent brothels are ashamed. American society has branded them less than human. We have very childish and taboo views of sex. Ask
yourself, have you ever considered a woman a slut because she enjoys sex, or had several partners she never married? You think she is immoral—evil—full of sin. Now, following such logic, a prostitute is a horrid creature. Even the most well-intentioned crime solvers sometimes don’t see these victims as people. Or worse, because of a lifestyle choice they are less than human. Not every one of those girls...or young boys, had a choice. I’ve arrested many boyfriends of runaway girls who force them to turn tricks to show how much they love them. We will cover more of this as we progress. But when you think like our killers you will know, all of you in your seats right now, prostitutes are not human to them.”

  His answer never pacifies those who maintain a resting bitch face. He points a finger at a male.

  “What’s it like to be shot?”

  Professor Arnett finds himself back on track. “At first I didn’t even know I had been hit. My adrenaline was pumping. We had to stop this guy before he put any more people in danger. It was after we brought the guy down I noticed the wet—warm wetness. My leg was sticky and warm. Blood, as it coagulates, becomes gummy. And it’s slick unlike any other liquid, even oil. At first, I actually thought the guy had pissed on me. When I realized it wasn’t urine and wasn’t a fluid from him I reported to the ambulance. They cut my new pants open and the white-hot burn overwhelmed me as soon as I saw the hole burbling gushes of red from this finger-sized hole in my leg.”

  Jesse soaks in the story, evaluating what kind of man his teacher is. Studying the criminal mind will better steer him towards his goal.

  The professor continues, “I think I screamed. I know I screamed in my head though it may have been out loud. Memory is funny. It hurt. My leg was on fire like someone had taken a pot and dumped coffee all over it. The bone throbbed—vibrated. I was immobile on the gurney. The bone moved inside me as the muscles contracted. The tendons would twist and pull, but there was no bone to stabilize. I cried. Later, I learned the femur was shattered. The doctors had no idea how after being shot, with nothing supporting my leg. I was able to run this guy down. I don’t have an answer, but I just knew if this guy got away someone would die. I could not live with that. It is some of the most difficult days on the job—when a suspect you know is guilty gets away. And kiddies, it happens—it happens a lot.