Morbid Curiosity: Erter & Dobbs Book 3

by Nick Keller

  William smiled ridiculously. “As you stated, if said crimes are unsolved, there’s no way to tell if today’s crimes aren’t being committed by yesterday’s bad guys.”

  “Okay, then at what point does the heinous nature of the crime determine where that funding goes?” the opposing player said.

  Milo looked back at William giving him a desperate look. Maybe William had been right all along. They should have researched heinous crimes. He invited William to continue the cross-examination. William cleared his throat and said, “The heinous nature of crime itself does not identify that crime’s legality. Theft is theft. Murder is murder.”

  “Oh, is that so?” the opposing player said with an arrogant quality. “Then what would you say to this?” He spun his binder around and stood it up on its spine for the entire room to see. It was a photocopy of a crime scene. Unlike William’s grainy photocopies, this one was a full-size, starkly-colored image, clear as day under the iridescent lighting of the classroom. A family on a couch. Father’s arm around mother. Her head on his shoulder, mouth slack. Two young children, one to either side. Dead eyes. Sleepy faces. Blood everywhere. The shock slapped the judges across the face. DeAnna gasped audibly and put her face into William’s shoulder. William froze. His ears went cold. His heart stopped in midstroke. He went dizzy. Everything faded. His opponent’s mouth continued moving, but he couldn’t hear his words. The heart in William’s chest reengaged. It went WHAM! He felt it bring him back. Color slammed back into him. Sound returned. So did the kid’s words.

  “… if this photo doesn’t suggest the need to reallocate funding from unsolved crimes to current crimes, then nothing will, ladies and gentlemen. It was released at the behest of the FBI as a public awareness campaign and to gain any potential knowledge from the public at large. This photo was taken just last week of a whole family murdered as they slept. It was sent to the FBI field office.”

  William’s eyes went huge.

  The kid finished his sentence, “In Boca Raton, Florida.”

  Boca Raton, Florida.

  Boca Raton.

  Boca fucking Raton.

  William stumbled around on his feet as if drunk. He straightened. There was only one thing left to do. Run.

  The trip home took nearly two hours. His mind played against him the whole way. He tried to justify a lie—this is impossible, there’s no way, it can’t be. But the truth was the truth. There was no running from it, no hiding. He was reviving every piece of gut-churning paranoia he’d spent the week forcing down. Dad was a killer.

  Turning onto Verduga View slammed home the idea that his life might be in danger. He pulled up to the house ducking under his dashboard looking for dad’s Lexus. He shouldn’t be at home. He was supposed to be at work, but it was possible he might be leaving his office soon. Yep. No Lexus. No dad. He had very little time, thirty minutes, tops.

  William parked his new Tahoe and stormed into the house. Mom was watching daytime TV. She looked up. The first signs of her daily wine numbing were beginning to show.

  “Hi, dear,” she said. The edges of her words were soft.

  William stormed up the stairs thudding as he went, into the upper hallway and came to a stop at dad’s home office. He tried the nob. It was locked, but it was cheap. He wrenched it hard and the whole thing snapped, turning in his hand and opening the door. The rolltop desk was before him. Inside was the key ring with that one alien key and those tiny numbers. They meant something.

  He threw up the roll away top, yanked open the drawer and picked up the key ring. The paper tag, those numbers.

  O6-01-84.

  William gasped. It hadn’t connected with him before. It did now.

  06-01-84.

  June 1, 1984. Portrait Killer’s first kill. Chicago, Illinois. This was a lock combo. Where was the lock? What did it hide?

  William unlocked his dad’s file drawer and began rifling through paper files, reading tabs. His dad was organized, meticulous. But William pulled up a file marked Personal. This was it. His answers were in here.

  He sat on the floor flapping the folder open. There was a small stack of payment receipts like monthlies. They belonged to a storage unit. Triple A Storage. His dad had paid on it for two years before dropping the account, 1987 to 1989.

  William threw it aside, picked up the next. Same thing. Just a stack of monthly payment receipts. L.A. Lock & Key. 1989 to 1992. He threw it aside. There was another stack, then another. William began painting a picture in his mind. His dad had rented storage units moving from one to another every few years. Why? What was he hiding?

  He flipped to the final stack of receipts. A U-Haul facility over in Culver City. Unit B-201. The last payment had been made only three weeks ago. That was it. Something was there. He had to find out.

  He stuffed the papers back into their file, then slid it back into the drawer. A shadow showed on the wall. Someone stood behind him. His blood chilled. He screamed slamming the drawer shut and spun around. Mom was at the doorway looking in, holding a glass of blood red wine.

  William collected himself, bringing his pulse back down. He could feel his blood pressure thudding inside his ears. He stood before his mother, neither of them saying anything. Her eyes filled with tears, but she wouldn’t let them fall. She only said in her soft way, “You shouldn’t be in here, William.”

  He held up the key ring with its alien brass key and those tiny, printed numbers. “I’m going to find out what this is, mom.”

  “Whatever you’re doing, don’t,” she said.

  “Why not?” he exploded. “Is it because you know for sure what he is, or is it because you don’t know for sure what he is?” He slid past her through the doorway and went to the stairs, but stopped. He turned around and asked, “Or is it because you think he’ll kill me?”

  She gave him a deeply painful look, but said nothing. William stormed downstairs and toward the front door, but his mom’s words stopped him. “William?”

  He looked up at her.

  “Your father loves you.”

  He felt the dagger of her words slide into him, made him wince, made his eyes fill up. He turned and pounded on the door, pounded until he thought his hands might bleed, pounded until he thought the door would shatter. When he stopped pounding he stood there heaving mad, tears striking down his face and muttered, “You know what sucks the most, mom? I love him, too.” He opened the door and left.

  The drive to Culver was faster than the drive from Irvine, but rush hour was fading. The day was dying, and before he reached his destination, the sun slipped beyond the horizon. Dark was falling. At one point he pulled over, opened his door and vomited out onto the street. It hurt, emptied him, made him spasm. He wouldn’t stop, though. This had gone too far. He was taking it all the way.

  The U-Haul facility was easy to spot, just off Venice Boulevard. He banked across oncoming traffic, squealing the tires and bumping into the parking lot. Headlights looked angry. He circled around eyeing the facility. It was a two-story building with a utility elevator. William didn’t want anyone seeing him. He pulled into a back ally and went into the adjacent shopping strip. He parked in the shadow of night and got out. He would walk, or rather sprint, from here.

  A gate to the first-floor entrance showed a combo pad. He punched in 06-01-84. The pad showed error. Not the code. He went back to the swinging gate and forced it open just enough to squirrel through. He was in.

  The door to the facility was steel and double-bolted. He tried the unknown key and it worked. He stepped into a narrow hallway, very lonely, very long. Hanging strip lights on the ceiling made everything stark and white, but it deepened shadows. His high school dream occurred to him and made him dizzy—long hallways, everything surreal, a nightmare. He swayed, bracing himself against the wall. Had to blink, shake his head, slough it away.

  Looking up, he found a narrow stairway to the left. He took it up to the second floor and to another door. He opened it slowly, peeking in. He was in a hall
way across from the utility elevator with its steel grate, slide-open doors. An adjacent hallway opened up just to the left. He went there, peeked around the corner. It was long and went seemingly forever until he could hardly see the end of it. Roll-open garage-style doors were placed incrementally along one side. Storage units. The other side of the hall had long, dark-frosted windows that looked out over the parking lot and Venice Boulevard. William checked the closest unit. B-250. His heart sank. B-201, his dad’s unit, was the first one on the level. It was way the hell down at the end of the hallway.

  He took a breath as if to gird his loins for battle and started jogging down the hallway. His footsteps echoed off cement walls and a cement floor. The high ceiling gave him a lonely sensation. He was tiny, venturing into something much bigger than himself.

  The unit numbers counted down as he moved by. B-230. B-225. B-220. His stomach started to churn again. Vomit built up inside him. He licked sweat off his upper lip, wiped sweat off his brow. B-210. B-205. B-204. He could see his dad’s unit. It was right there, coming nearer. B-202. He stopped. There it was. B-201.

  William looked down at the slide bolt. There was a padlock with a spin wheel. Numbers. A combination. He shook his hands bringing blood into his fingers. Okay, here goes. He tried the alien numbers.

  06-01-84

  And jerked. The thing popped open making him stagger back. He took a look way down the hallway. No one was there. He was alone here. He looked back and pulled the lock away, then slid the bolt free. Taking a final, full breath he yanked the door up opening the unit all the way. The sound was loud and echoey making him cringe and look back down the hall again. Still, no one in sight. He looked back at the open storage unit.

  The place inside was dark, gaining very little advantage from the hallway lights, but he could make out one square shape directly in the center, sitting on the floor. Above was a pull string to a hanging light bulb. He pulled it and the light showered a cone down over a single, large footlocker. There was another lock securing it. William knelt by it rubbing his jawline thoughtfully. Another lock. He toyed with it; it didn’t budge. It would require a key, but he didn’t have one. Growing curious, he hefted the footlocker up. It was strongly-built but lighter than he expected. It shifted over uncovering another key. He picked it up, eying it. He tried it on the footlocker and the lock popped free.

  William swallowed hard. This was it. Whatever was inside that thing would tell him all he needed to know. It would show him the man his father was—monster, father, husband. He looked behind. He hadn’t opened the footlocker yet. It wasn’t too late. He could leave it alone, ignore it, forget about it, put it away forever as his mother had. Trembling, he reached for the lid and hesitated.

  What to do. What to do.

  He shook his head, no. “I have to find out,” he whispered, and threw the footlocker open. It sat open like a hungry mouth wanting to eat him. He was afraid to look inside, had to force himself. He leaned forward slowly. There was a silver box. No lock.

  He pulled it out, closed his eyes, and lifted it open. Holding his breath, he looked down inside and began to cry. It was a photo. The Boca Raton family. He reached down and lifted it up. Other photos were stacked underneath it. He looked down. The Kalowitzes from Cincinnati. Next, the Mearlmans from Buffalo. The next, Wichita Falls. Then Phoenix. He flipped through them knowing what he’d find, but needing to see. With each photo, the nightmare became more real. His head pounded. His mind raced. There was chaos. He could hold on to nothing. It overtook him until he couldn’t stand it anymore. These were his own dad’s trophies.

  His murders.

  He stuffed them all away and slammed the box. Dizziness took him. He stood and walked backward out into the hallway. Someone had to know about this. Who would he tell?

  Blinded by his tears, he slammed down the roll away door and sprinted madly down the hallway. A flash of light stopped him cold. He looked out through the window over the parking lot. They were headlights. A car was pulling off Venice Boulevard, entering the U-Haul facility. He looked harder. It was a Lexus. William felt his blood freeze like ice. The world went silent as he stared down, waiting.

  The car parked and the door opened. It was his dad, Portrait Killer.

  William made a tiny, desperate sound and leapt back against the wall hiding himself from view. He didn’t know what to do. How would he explain being here? HIs Tahoe was hidden in the next parking lot. His dad didn’t know he was here. Maybe he could sneak away.

  He shot a look to the end of the hallway. The elevator was over there. He couldn’t take it. He’d run smack dab into dad. He’d have to hide and wait. But where?

  The elevator light blinked making his eyes go huge. Someone was coming up. He scurried like mad back toward the far end, back toward his dad’s unit where the ceiling lights ended. It was dark down there, everything shadowed. Once there, a tiny sound emitted from faraway. It was the elevator door, slipping open. He spun around. Oscar stood there. William was perfectly exposed. Only the darkness and the distance shielded him. His father looked directly at him, but he couldn’t see him.

  William faded quickly down the adjoining hallway, stepping light as a feather. No sound. He had to be silent. There was a fire extinguisher on the wall. Across from it was a maintenance closet. He closed his eyes, said a tiny prayer. Please be unlocked. He tried it. The knob turned. William threw open the closet door, sank inside and shut it slowly, silently, locking the knob. He submerged himself in total darkness, except for the silvery light under the door and waited, holding his breath.

  Those clicking footsteps came nearer and nearer. Finally, they stopped at B-201. A shot of panic put a sharp pain in William’s chest. Had he locked the unit door? Oh, Jesus—was the lock hanging loose from the bolt? He heard something rattle. His dad was palming the lock, checking it. He grunted curiously, said, “What the.”

  William made a tiny whimper and threw his hands over his mouth. He jerked when he heard the roll away door scream upward in its track. There was a pause. His dad was out there inspecting the unit. Someone had been there. William closed his eyes.

  The door slammed down like a cannonade—WHAM! The sound blasted up and down the hallway followed by a hellish sneer. “Who’s here! You’re playing a game, a dangerous little game! My game!”

  The sound of his father’s voice put needles into his skin, stung his very bones. The voice was not the same. It was twisted and changed on some deep, fundamental level. It was Satan.

  Silence fell. William waited catching his breath, refusing to so much as blink. Footsteps started. He could hear them, slow, full of intention. They were approaching, getting nearer. William gritted his teeth, scared. He looked down at that silvery light under the door.

  No, please, God, no no no…

  A shadow eclipsed it, and stopped. William could hear breath slipping out from his dad. It was haggard and insane. Everything went still.

  Then the doorknob rattled making William go dizzy. He heard the monster outside chuckle low, like a devil. Then it took a breath and roared, “I’m gonna rip you to pieces!” William smashed his hands over his ears, slammed his eyes shut. It was too loud. The words banged around in his head like shrapnel. He couldn’t take it. Wanted to scream. Wanted to faint.

  Something went KAWAM!

  It was that fire extinguisher. His father smashed it against the knob, slamming the knob into pieces. It clattered to the ground. “I’m gonna eat your guts!” his father snarled.

  The door flew open making William put his hands out protectively and scream a loud, child’s sound. His dad stood in the doorway silhouetted by the hall light, hands clenched into fists, chest and shoulders rising with breath. “I. See. You.” He said through a snaky, cold voice. He reached into the closet and slapped the light switch. Light blasted William, and he screamed again pressing himself against the far wall. He glared up through terrified, bleeding eyes and saw his dad—saw him standing there staring down at him through a deadly face, mo
rbid eyes, teeth bore out like an animal. It was the look of madness, it was reckless, shallow but deep, full of malice. The man was evil. This was pure evil.

  Then he changed. First, recognition, then a moment of confusion followed by realization. His features slumped, everything relaxed, fists unfurled slowly.

  The old man grinned. He fucking grinned at him. It became a smile, large and satisfied. Then laughter spilled out of him, low at first, guttural and resigned, but then turned deeper. He turned around on his feet waling with hysterical, uncontrollable laughter. He leaned a hand on the doorjamb balancing himself sucking breath, deep and full. Those eyes drifted over to William, beaming pride. The laughter settled and he groaned running fingers through his hair. He finally said, “Jesus, boy, you scared the shit out of me. What—what’re you doing here?”

  William blinked, tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry.

  His dad gave a moan and leaned a shoulder against the wall, as leisurely as a guy at the ballpark. He was figuring something in his mind, William could tell, then he said, “I suspected you knew, you know. Thought Mathis got to you. Did he?”

  William only gawked at him still too numb to react. Mathis—who the heck is Mathis?

  His dad saw the confusion in him, said, “Mathis—you don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?”

  William shook his head, no, his arms still held forward in a defensive posture.

  His father chuckled, “You figured this out all on your own?”

  William’s eyes went right, left.

  Oscar put his head back in disbelief, “I’ll be goddamned. Mathis—he’s going to owe you for this.” He covered his mouth, eyes smiling down at him proud and fulfilled. “I always knew it’d be you, son.”

  William finally lowered his arms and groaned, “Me?”