6/6/66

by JN Lenz

  “Bbbllluuhhhhh.” The sudden urge could not be stopped as I puked heavily into the metal trash container, sitting at the side of Clyde’s desk. The uncontrollable urge had pushed the contents of my stomach up into my throat with lightning speed; I barely had time to dump my head into the trash can.

  “Fucker” I yelled to the deaf ears of the concrete. I tried telling myself I should hate Clyde, but I knew I didn’t. I loved the guy; he had been family longer than anyone else in my life. He was a serial murderer and we owned a business together that facilitated many of these killings, fuck my life.

  “You make me puke” I yelled half-jokingly wiping the last bit of the puke from my face with a handful of post it notes. Luck was on my side as the trash tin had a plastic bag lining the inside, I tied the corners to seal the top off eliminating that nasty smell. It was bad enough to make me want to do it all over again. One small bonus, I had eaten lightly up to that point of the day.

  As the nausea subsided I began to look up and down the row of neatly arranged white file boxes. I ran my hand across the top of the file boxes debating if I should jump to one at the end of the row, or continue on to the next file box following the first seven murders. There had to be between sixty and seventy murders all neatly catalogued here I thought to myself. Sliding the lid from the end box at the end of the row, I pulled out the file to the far right in the box. Pulling the file clear from the box I flipped it over to read a similar font size on number sixty five, it was written on the same stock paper as files numbered one to six.

  “Sixty five Clyde, holly Christ man. More than a murder for every year you’ve been alive” I began to talk out loud to myself again

  Clyde had slain another fifty eight people following his murder for money plan, without me knowing and without getting caught by the authorities. Why would my oldest friend and successful business partner want to kill another fifty eight people? How is it possible that I was too dumb to figure that fact out earlier? After he had told me about those first seven murders we never spoke of murder again. I was happy to be able to forget, which I had more or less done until today. When Clyde never mentioned it again, I thought he just wanted to forget about it just like I did. The not talking about it made it a lot easier to forget about the whole thing.

  Each one of the murder’s Clyde performed was chronologically catalogued from murder number one to sixty five. It would be these following fifty eight files that would change how I had remembered life, a true revelation of my best friend that perhaps I chose not to know. One thing was for sure, Clyde left no question about his guilt in the murders of which he had written here. Everyone, especially the authorities needed to be kept from this place at all costs. If anyone else ever makes it inside these walls we would not only go to jail for the rest of our lives, but Lilly and Sid would likely lose everything.

  Clyde certainly has presented the police and prosecution with an open and shut case should they ever make it inside these walls. All the documentation and detail on every murder would result in a conviction in any courtroom, and in record time. I was amazed how detailed his record keeping had been for all of his murders, meticulous down to the smallest of details.

  I was equally shocked that after being so careful all these years when committing the crimes, why would he incriminate himself in such detail? Looking back now all those times that Clyde would just disappear for days at a time, when he claimed to be hunting or hiking. I guess he was not completely lying maybe just a little disingenuous that he was not hunting wildlife, but humans instead. Clyde had been disappearing into the bush since he was a kid so what was there not to believe. If his excuse was not hunting it would be that he was away on business, or traveling which he had done extensively over the last twenty years. Once Clyde gave up the day to day operations of the Funeral Homes he would still travel extensively around Canada and America, dropping in to our various locations along the way.

  Replacing the file numbered sixty five back into its file box, I had decided instead to return to the start of the file boxes to the far left an read the files from the box next to the box with the first six files, as I pulled the first of the files from the left hand side of the box the number on the same blank cover page would read eight. Turning over the cover page the file would begin with Clyde’s explanation of why the file following number six was instead marked number eight, due to the double homicide at the Eldridge’s there were in fact seven homicides to date.

  Reading the name of Clyde’s eighth victim as I scanned partially down the first page, the name Bruck Myers instantly placed a visual memory of the man. Even though it had been almost forty years since I had seen him I still remember the cop who attended funerals in uniform years ago in Largo. Bruck was a cop on Largo’s small Police force and was a regular at the Funeral Home before he died, or I guess before he was murdered. I could remember asking Fred why that cop always showed up to the Funeral Home in full uniform.

  “It’s some honor guard or some damm thing, he told me the first time he showed up looking like that. That was years ago and he has been doing it ever since unless he is working during the service.” Fred would tell us both

  Apart from that conversation I can’t remember Clyde ever mentioning much about the guy, we would make small talk with the guy but that was about it. The entire town was convinced Bruck Myers had died in that car accident, even after the carnage the destroyed car reeked of alcohol, which was no surprise to anyone. After reading Bruck’s name, realizing he was a cop and Clyde killed him right after the first murders my queasiness turned into a need to read the remainder of the file. Clyde must have had to kill that cop; Bruck must have known something about the murders.

  I remember Bruck Myer as an average guy, loved his uniform I guess. He certainly had a reputation around town for being a drunk; it was this inability to control his alcohol consumption which impaired not only his career but also the confidence of his peers. The Police force and the town’s residents felt the alcohol hindered his abilities as a policeman, many suspected he was drinking while on duty.

  They had practically all witnessed a drunken display by Bruck Myer at some point in the past, not while he was in uniform but still the rumors swirled of his drinking on the job. The town and the Sheriff had lost confidence in many of Bruck’s abilities as a Police officer; sure he could be trusted to run a radar gun or to handle the petty theft calls and the like. But for any of the heavy lifting investigative police work in Largo (which there had been very little) Bruck had long ago been left on the side lines. To all these people, Bruck for as much as they liked him was first and foremost a drunk. In their eyes he was a drunk first and a cop second.

  The events of drunken adventures by Bruck about ten years before his death had solidified his inabilities in everyone’s mind. It was a warm Saturday in June, Bruck had been seen drunk throughout the town from Friday evening straight through to Saturday. Having being a member of the local force for over sixteen years, Bruck’s seniority allowed him to have the shift of Tuesday to Friday. This provided Bruck with Saturday to Monday off the majority of the time; he would maybe work six to eight weekends a year. With no work to report to his weekend drinking binges had been witnessed at one time or another by the entire town. On this particular weekend in June the town of Largo was filled with residents taking part in the annual ‘Float your Boat’ event.

  This Saturday like many others for Bruck meant he would make his regular trip through each one of the town’s four bars. The night usually ended at the small little joint out on the highway past the edge of town. Bruck had divorced after only a handful of years, the reason was rumored to be primarily due to his excessive alcohol consumption. His son lived with his ex-wife who had won sole custody of the young boy, so for Bruck there no reason to go home early to an empty house every night. The confidence tipping point for Largo’s residents and the Police force came after a night of heavy drinking and a late night discovery by Bruck of a dead body in the Cray River, which ran
through the center of Largo.

  Bruck alerted the discovery of the dead body to a pair of his fellow Police officers and half the residents of the town, he would run directly from the river to a pair of uniformed officers walking the main street of town whose sidewalks and streets were still full from the “Float your Boat” festival. After the two cops and dozens of the people from the street quickly scrambled behind Bruck down to the river’s edge, here they discovered that the dead body was nothing more than a half-submerged log that had drifted close into shore and wedged itself against the river bed. The fallen trees had two remaining worn limbs which reached out of the water, at the end of the log which was just above the water, the force of the passing water created a dome shape on the end of the log as the water rushed over its surface.

  The Sheriff had seen enough and suspended him for a week, that cleaned Bruck up for a while and it was the last time he would make an outright fool of himself in front of the whole town. From that point on Bruck kept his drunkenness better muted around town, he was more likely to be seen after that weekend late at night muttering into his glass in one of the local watering holes.

  Despite this lack of confidence from his peers, the uniform he continued to adorn would always transform who Bruck Myer’s was. To him that was the soul of his being; he was a man in uniform and had wanted nothing more from life since he was a little boy. The uniform had to be respected when it was worn; Bruck noted the difference in how people responded to him when he was in uniform, the reality was Bruck was never drunk while in his uniform. There was no chance he would let himself spiral that far out of control to corrupt his commitment to the uniform.

  Bruck used every opportunity available outside work to wear those damm police drags, at town parades, civic events and of course funerals. To Bruck, having a uniformed policeman at your funeral was his versions of a National send off for every cadaver. Thanks for being a national of this great country, for that he saluted them. However whacked it seemed Fred claimed the guy attended most every funeral for the hundred and ninety two months he had been a cop. Fred provided us with the low down on the funeral cop, the whole quirky drunk tale. For me at the time it was conversation, for Clyde I guess it was research.

  Maybe it was the outward display of misery at the funerals that Bruck was drawn to, all these people releasing the sadness and sorrow that he held so deep inside himself. Here among the misery he could immerse himself in plain sight dressed in his starched uniform and short haircut, shiny shoes, sporting his understanding stolid glare. A man in uniform had to be respected in these circumstances, for that Bruck was certain. That was reason enough for him to be here each week, a witness to the misery and sadness.

  It would be in the front hall at the Shackles Funeral Home where both Clyde and I came to meet Bruck Myer for the first time; soon after Fred and the locals would inform us that the man was a drunk. The story of his misadventure with a log in the river would be told to us by a variety of people, his tale had become town folk lore by the time we moved to town. At first the guy seemed fine to both of us I guess, or as much as either of us could like a cop. The fact that he was a drunk sure as hell did not matter to either of us; unlike the majority of the town we had not yet witnessed one of his drunken performances first hand. Although at first neither Clyde nor I gave Bruck Myers more than a glancing thought, Clyde would soon learn that Bruck did not care for the two of us one bit.

  Apparently there would be something about the two of us that rubbed Bruck Myer the wrong; he had alluded to as much before Clyde murdered him. The investigative instinct within him that no one else believed in had a hunch about the two new arrivals in his small town, a gut feeling that the pair of us was bad. Bruck would watch the both of us during funerals initially prodding Fred for info on the both of us, questions about where we had come from and how we had the money to buy the funeral home.

  Fred told him only what he knew about the two of us, which in reality was not much, we had made sure to keep it that way. Besides Fred was not about to divulge the inner sanctum of an illegal gaming ring to a nosey cop, Fred was smarter than that. He was already in hock with the mob; there was not a chance that he would become a Rat. The loss of one finger was painful enough, Fred would have been certain that the punishment for being a stool pigeon would be significantly worse. Apparently Bruck grew bored from the limited information he could gather from Fred, the questions about the pair of us ended after a few weeks.

  Following the information dead end with Fred, Bruck decided to come directly to the source asking both Clyde and I the questions Bruck felt he needed to have answers to. The last thing Clyde and I wanted was to get chummy with this fucking cop so we gave him a little info so he would fuck off, or so we hoped. We both blew some smoke up his ass about coming from way out east, our parents were all dead and they left us enough cash to buy the Funeral Home and not much more than that. There was no way we were going to tell him the town we actually came from so he could go snooping around there too, although we both knew he could find all that out if he really wanted to.

  Late afternoon on the Saturday following the killing of Macy Mae, Bruck would show up at the Funeral Home unannounced and in search of a chain saw. Bruck knew Fred still had a chainsaw out back in the garage as he had borrowed it on several occasions in the past. I would not be at the Funeral Home at the time, having gone with Fred after the morning service to pick up a body down at the hospital. The latest customer would be a fifty six year old heart attack victim whose heart the doctors in emergency could not restart. Clyde was upstairs in the apartment of the Funeral Home and had not heard Bruck entering the front door.

  After walking the main floor of the Funeral Home and finding no one Bruck descended the stairs to the basement, he had been throughout the entire Funeral Home for years having known Fred and his family for his entire life. After searching the embalming room Bruck headed for the upstairs apartment where Clyde was having a bite to eat. Clyde would write how he knew Bruck had been in the embalming room as a pair of his scalpels had been moved out of place on the tray.

  Upstairs in the apartment Clyde sat in his jeans with no shirt on the stool at the breakfast bar, he had taken off the large bandage on the side of his face to allow some air to get at the three long scratches on his left check. He sat with his right side to the kitchen and his left to the doorway to the main hall. As Clyde crunched on the cereal in his bowl he was unable to hear the approaching Bruck who casually walked into the apartment kitchen like he had been called for.

  “Holly Fuck” Clyde spit half the mouthful of cereal and nearly choked on the rest as he blurted out

  “You always walk into people’s homes without fucking knocking, seriously like what the fuck dude” Clyde wrote how it was all he could do to prevent himself from exploding he was however unable to control all of his anger. For one Clyde knew his bandage was off and sure as shit this asshole cop was going to be asking about the deep scratches on the side of his face. The words slid from Bruck as he used the doorways frame to steady his stand as he began slurring some form of apology to Clyde

  “I’m really sorry, I forgot Freddie lives in the back right, soorry man I’m just after the chainsaw. Can I borrow that for a couple of days? I got this big branch you know”

  “That’s right Fred lives out back not up here, in the future this is a private residence to be fair. You head out back and I’ll meet you there is a second”

  “Oh thanks a lot buuddy, soorry for barging into you place like that. Hey what happened to yoour face maan, I saw you had that bandage on tooday at the service?”

  “Happened, nothing really just a scratch. Like I said I’ll meet you out back in a couple of minutes”

  “Hell of a scratch, what happened?”

  “A buddy’s dog scratched me by mistake, listen the chainsaw is in the garage, sorry but if you don’t mind like I said I’ll meet you out back and I would appreciate a knock next time” Clyde stared directly into the eyes of Bruck
with his dead pan glaze, looking Bruck straight in the eyes he doubted the off duty cop was as drunk as he was pretending to be. Clyde was starting to hate this fucking cop was almost ready to tell him to get the fuck out, but he knew better and cooled himself down.

  “Of course, whose dog was it? I can make sure it is locked up if it was running around town loose”

  “Don’t worry about it the dog does not live here, friend from school in Toronto with a big German Shepherd.”

  “Should have a doctor take a look at that, you might need to get a shot of something, thanks for the saw”

  “No problem” Clyde would reply before closing and locking the door at the top of the staircase straight after Bruck passed through. This visit from the friendly neighborhood cop was more than just a social visit to borrow a chain saw Clyde was certain of that, what exactly was Bruck up to Clyde was not certain. The sight of the nosey cop would not unhinge Clyde enough to prevent him from murdering Gladys’s McGovern twenty six hours after the visit from Bruck.

  Later that week Bruck would read in a Toronto paper that the murderer of Macy Mae may have been scratched as the coroner had found an amount of skin under her nails. The skin that was under her nails was not her own, suggesting that the murderer could have significant scratches inflicted by the old lady. Bruck instantly put the scratches together with those on the side of Clyde’s face; Bruck had been drinking by that Saturday afternoon in the apartment, but nowhere near the amount to make forget that. The scars for sure were there on the side of Clyde’s face, Bruck had never seen the Funeral Home busier in all the years he had been attending services as they had been since the pair of us arrived in town.

  Could these guys be killing their own customers Bruck must have thought to himself, or he believed Clyde to be a killer and he would try to prove it to the entire town. Bruck must have decided after that day in the funeral home apartment that he needed to investigate all he could about both Clyde Drexler and Jack Smyth. There would be no way he could mention this to his fellow officers and for sure he could not say a word to the Sheriff, Bruck’s investigative skills in the eyes of the small towns Sheriff was as dead as that log in the river that night. If in the end Bruck was wrong this time around after going to the Sheriff, it would cost him his job. He would first prove without a doubt our guilt before revealing us and redeeming himself as a true officer of the law in the eyes of the residents of Largo.