6/6/66

by JN Lenz

  Instead of retribution for my past indiscretions, I had been rewarded with the birth of my son. With the baby being born in the later part of Lilly and my life, it made the birth all the more special for the two of us. The pair of us had long past the vanity and self-centered days of our youth, and there was no big night life in the town of Largo to sacrifice once the baby came along anyway.

  The arrival of Sid most likely saved our relationship, the organization required to juggle both the corrupt and legitimate businesses exacted a very heavy toll over the years on Lilly and I. Before Sid came along I spent the bulk of every single day immersed in the business, the two of us remained in love but we had certainly drifted apart. I was forever focused on the business, while she occupied her time helping at the hospital and heading a trio of local charity organizations including the local branch of the Cancer Society. The end result being we eventually spent less and less time together by the time we hit our late thirties.

  The business had always come first in so many ways for me; it had too there was so much at stake that I could not afford to make a mistake. The numbers had to checked and double checked, every modified entry required some form of back up. The drop off of the harvests, the pickup of these same crops, working the cash through the system, handling and stashing a portion of the cash after each crop, the attention to detail so paramount and stressful, after sixteen years of looking over my shoulder I was glad it was finally over. The cash was so good that none of wanted to be the first to say

  “Let’s shut it down.”

  Deep down that is what all of us needed. Having the Police shut the place down turned out to be the best thing that could happen to us, we had all the money we needed by then anyway.

  With the baby due in the middle June of that year I decided it was time to hand over the entire book keeping functions to an accounting firm. With the flow of illegal cash no longer coming into the Funeral Homes, there was no need for me to be the sole administrator and director of our properties financial ledgers. Over the years I had kept the number of Funeral Homes receiving illegal cash to a minimum, for the Funeral Homes not receiving any of the illegitimate funds I had their books completed by an outside firm already. By the end of that first year in which Sid was born I had almost removed myself completely from the day to day operations of the business we had spent the last twenty years building. It would be time for all of us to enjoy life to the fullest.

  Even Clyde came across less focused and intense that year, forever the operations manager, of the two of us he had always been the hands on owner. More than a few staff over the years in several of the Homes feared the unannounced arrival of Clyde and his top to bottom inspections, a sterile embalming room and what was basically a white glove walk through in the entire facility from top to bottom. Clyde would carefully look over any on site cadavers inspecting the quality of the embalming, chastising those who had performed a subpar procedure.

  There would be a series of metrics he would gauge each location by, any disorganized locations or one with a dirty embalming room had best run for cover. If Clyde discovered a body whose appearance looked like that of a cheap B movie stiff it would incite him into a prolonged vetting to the accompanying staff about the need for quality and attention to detail.

  There was always that side to Clyde; he had the ability to scare the shit out of you when he was pissed off. But after that year when we both turned forty the confrontations between Clyde and the staff he had deemed lack luster in abilities and execution diminished , this partly due to his new found passion in hunting wild game in remote parts of the earth with a tranquilizer gun which started in that same year.

  Then there were the twins, Jessie and Oliver. After narrowly escaping the long arm of the law and a multi-year jail sentence, the pair certainly lived with a new lease on life after forty. Their fresh start in the Grand Caymans began anew life and soon enough a pair of new wives as well. The pair had had enough of the manual labor involved in operating four grow houses and would spend the first couple of years in the Caymans doing absolutely nothing but party and relax. Although not discovering love as quickly as his twin brother, Jessie would find romance within months of Oliver, both finding their mates in one of the many island bars.

  With the constraints on my time almost completely removed, I began to once again realize why I had fallen in love with Lilly so many years earlier. Her caring ways and gracious easy demeanor, we once again would have real conversations that would last for hours. This would be in sharp contrast to the past several years, when all too often the discussions between the both of us had become brief and to the point. The first few months in the year two thousand and six, when all that weight of cooking the books had been removed from my shoulders had for the first time in years, allowed me to spend more than one consecutive week on holidays. All those extra weeks around the house, that extra time I spent with Lilly, watching her stomach grow. The whole experience convinced me to scale back my involvement in the business, spend more of my time enjoying my wife, and soon to be born child.

  I now listened more intently to her conversations and her convictions, most would be directed towards a certain charity, or how we needed to be involved with in the community. I had rediscovered the genuine care and goodness that radiated from Lilly; she truly was a very caring woman. I could not fathom her ever finding out about the completely eruptible acts that Clyde and I had been involved in, it would sicken, if not kill her. I know it would kill me, should she ever find out. There would be no way she would ever look at me the same way again, after discovering we had both been involved in murder.

  Lilly had become such good friends with the twins, how she would view them after discovering their wealth came from the growing of pot? What would she think of the lot of us, if our true past emerged? Very little I suspect. I had always tried to block the thought, she could never find out the man I truly was. I was never able to breath a word about any of it to Lilly, not at the beginning, not when we turned forty, not ever. For me it would never be worth the risk of losing her or my son to tell her. To continue with the lye was the most decent and caring thing I could do for Lilly’s sake, she had deserved so much better than me.

  That year on particular, I could see the difference in Clyde more than any of us; he began enjoying life more, spending more and more time pursuing self-interests, instead of the company ones. Beginning that year, Clyde would also scale back the amount of time he spent in the various Funeral Homes. No longer was he the total hands on operations manager at our properties. He would make visits to each of our many locations a minimum of two times a year. That is what is the most surprising in reading all these murder files, through all those years Clyde acted as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  The longer I sat here; I began to realize how many of these murders had occurred close to celebrations and events that involved all of us, including Lilly. I could remember quite clearly many of the social events, the time spans which coincided with some of these murders. The whole time he never displayed any anguish or nervousness around either of us. Before reading all these files, there was just nothing that made me think Clyde would still be killing. Number one was usually in a great mood, the type of guy that would usually be the first to offer a

  ”Good morning”

  Is that how a typical serial killer acts? I questioned myself.

  Chances are he could be planning a murder right now, as he climbs the mountainside with my son. Maybe his next victim will be a Sherpa, one that had pissed him off before he throw’s him off a cliff when no one is looking. Having already checked to the last file for a total, there are sixty five files of murder and Clyde and I are both sixty six this year. If I was a betting man, I’d put my odds on him adding one more murder before the close of the year to make it an even sixty six in sixty six.

  That tinniest of voices in my head continued to remind me that my only son was on a mountain with this pathological killer right now, the voce only drowned out
by my heart. I just knew how much Clyde loves Sid, there was simply no doubt that he would never hurt that kid;

  Sid will be safe with Clyde. Even with the knowledge of all these murders Clyde had committed in complete secrecy, I still trusted him more than any other man alive. I made no real attempt to stop him for the first six times he murdered so how could I sit here now and judge Clyde.

  To think less of him now would mean I could critique my own deplorable past, and that I was unable to do. He would always remain my only family outside of Lilly and Sid; it would take more than this to ever change any of that now. The initial shock from the discovery of all these murders had begun to wear away, I was now more concerned how I would ever approach him about it. I had to find out why he continued to murder for all these years, how had he determined the criteria for his murder candidates?

  I had no idea how I would approach him, there are reasons he did not want me to know. There was a real chance my approaching him with this knowledge would impact our friendship severely, he had after all gone to great lengths to ensure the murders remained a secret from me. Perhaps I would never make mention of my visit here, we had both accomplished so much together and had remained very close; I could not lose all of that at this age.

  My eyes were beginning to go a little blurry from the hours spent starring into the files; suddenly I just realized that my bladder was screaming at me. I pushed the high back leather chair away from the desk with the pile of files and stood up for the first time in hours. My legs felt stiff as they fought my efforts to stand fully erect, having been bent in place since this morning. I shuffled along in search of the bathroom; there were only three doors to check. With a total of four identical commercial grade metal doors dotted the walls of the underground hideaway, I had entered from the stairs through the door to the left at the far end of the room. There was a door between where I had entered from the stairwell and the far wall, to my right past the stainless table resided the last two doors. The wall directly behind the desk had no doors at all.

  As my legs came back to life I quickened my pace the best I could under the circumstance towards the pair of doors to the right, my bladder stopped screaming at me and was now jabbing me in the groin with pain. How did I not notice this earlier?

  “Bingo!”

  I yelled aloud in relief as I opened the door to a full washroom, including a shower and deep soaker tub with jets. Leaving the bathroom fully relieved following a five minute piss, I decided to take a closer look around the underground bunker. I stopped first at the next door along the wall to the right of the desk; I opened the door and began checking for a light switch with my left hand. Finding the switch, I pushed the switch up causing the fluorescent lights to flicker to life.

  The lights revealed a good sized room, to the right the walls lined from top to bottom and end to end with various uniforms, and various articles of clothing. A pair of shelves held a number of foam heads supporting fake beards, wigs and mustaches. There would be a table full of makeup and a large array of bottles and packages sat on another pair of shelves. The same large table had three mirrors with the center one being the only one flat against the wall while the other two tilted out and away from the wall on each side, direct pot lights shone down into the area.

  A large photo graphic light on a tall stand sat across from the makeup desk, pointing towards a white canvas on the wall. A camera sat to the side of the light on a black tri pod, the camera lens pointed to the same blank canvas far corner wall of the room. Directly to the left and beside the photo area a number of weapons sat displayed against the wall, each gun, knife and even a pair of cross bows held perfectly in place by custom mounting brackets.

  I picked a few of the guns up and aimed them at targets around the room, it was the first time in my life that I had ever picked up a pistol. A couple of the ones Clyde had were heavy; I thought they would be lighter than that. Maybe he just liked the heavy ones, what the hell did I know about guns. A few of them had sinister looking silencers on the end; even though I was not a big fan of guns they looked impressive. There was even an AK-47 mounted up high on the wall, I’ll have to read on to see if he used that to kill someone. I have my doubts he machine gunned someone down, like Al Capone or some mobster from the thirties.

  It was the room of a professional killer, all the resources required to murder could be found in that room. There were the tools required to create an identity, cameras, lighting, and laminators for use in making false identification to supplement the false government identification. Clyde could choose a variety of occupations that best suited the planning and observation stages of his murders, then change appearances for the actual murder itself. Perhaps in one instance it is best to portray a cop or a municipal inspector, a phone repair guy, whatever worked.

  Like Oliver and Fitch when they worked the grow houses, Clyde would always carry only a fake identification when pursued his prey. All the weapons to carry out any murder, drawers contained thin razor wire with leather holders on each end, sharp single bladed razors , even a collection of baseball bats and bowling pins sat neatly stored in rows in the lower cupboards that sat directly below the wall mounted weapons, it was all here. Clyde certainly adhered to executional excellence in his planning department for murder, it was clear he was an extremely talented killer who happened to be best friends with someone that can’t stand the sight of blood. I can hear about it fine, watch the horror flicks no problem, but stick me right in front of the blood and guts, forget it.

  I’d most likely pass out eventually, I would be feeling faint for sure right off the hop, or I would puke which had happened a few times. That’s why I stayed out of the embalming rooms when there were bodies on the tables, I always felt queasy even if the blood was not being drained from the body if I had to be in one of the homes embalming rooms which was very seldom. I guess opposites attract in friendship as well, when it came to the view of blood and guts for us anyway, Clyde and I could not have been further apart.

  I left the wardrobe and weapons room to check what sat behind the last of the four doors at the end of the room, not bothering to stop at the drawers that lined the wall next to the large stainless cadaver table. The table looked similar to the ones we had purchased for some of our newly built Funeral Homes. I was confident the cabinet would be full of surgical tools and devices, it reminded me of the tools on hand when Clyde re opened the body cavity of Harry Winslow after the body had been released to our Funeral Home after the autopsy by the Coroner.

  Clyde did a better job than the coroner, in sowing Harry back together after he was done looking around. He had told me the next day after sewing Harry back up, this being would be one of the few times I did venture into the embalming room to see for myself. The still naked body of Harry Winslow with rows of neat stitching running across his chest, it appeared to be very well done. If Clyde wanted to know back then where the bullet had gone within the body and what the coroner had been looking at then surly he had not changed now why else would he have this here.

  I continued past the shiny stainless steel cadaver table with the matching steel cabinets that surrounded it, into an open area of the room which measured roughly ten feet sat beside the table with both the staircase door and the last unchecked door opening into this open area. As I opened that last door lights came on from within the room on its own, set off by either a motion detector or a switch on the door, the lights would reveal another small room ten to twelve feet square. Housed on the left wall a set of elevator doors sat directly in the center of this room, a wide plain metal door resided on the right hand wall. The door was a custom install as it was equal to a normal door and a half in its width, the wall that faced you as you entered the room was painted cinder block with no doors.

  The room was completely bare of any furnishings, the block walls painted an off grey while the floors were unique from the rest of Clyde’s bunker. In this room unlike the white tile of the surrounding rooms, the floors are covered in deep d
ark grey slate flooring. The large metal door to the right mimicked the floors colour, and a unique latch door handle assembly cast in a black metal sat half way up the height of the door. After examining the exposed handle section on the fat door, I realized it was similar in appearance to a water tight door used on ships.

  The heavy looking handles were perhaps a little fancier, the pair of handles turned in unison to lock and unlock the door. The metal brackets attached to the handles on the front of the door could not be seen from this side of the door, meaning they were either inside the door shell or on the other side. Grabbing both the handles and pushing counter clock wise with both hands I could hear the sound of the metal latches releasing the door from their grip. The opening door provided a slight whoosh sound as the door nudging open towards me by a few inches.

  Pulling the heavy door towards me, the lights inside and behind the opening door came to life. I could see as the metal door swung past me the back of which housed the heavy metal brackets which had kept the doors locked into place, a series of visible bars and gears made to completely secure the heavy door were mounted on the back of each metal door. Pushing the doors to the side I entered the room, now facing a wall of deep red clay brick which extended from the floor to the ceiling, covering the entire wall.

  The brick wall stood not more than a half a dozen feet from the pair of open metal doors. Directly in the center of the clay brick wall there was a large cast iron door, the bottom of which was about four feet off the ground. The cast iron door was about four feet square, with the top having a gentle curve that pitched up in the center. The door appeared to be very thick, the hinges and duel latches used to lock it into place were big and secure in appearance.

  Although I had spent little time in the crematorium locations we owned, Clyde had always been the one to handle the location specifics but I did know enough to know this had the appearance of a custom cremation oven. The cast iron door was dark in colour and matched the slate flooring which ran to the edge of the red clay brick wall which housed the furnace. The venting must be funneled through into the existing upstairs system I thought. Clyde was burning them to ashes right here, the homeless he had picked up with their last meal, the victims that he had taken along with him all brought here, never to be seen again. Once inside the bunker Clyde would have all the time in the world to study the cadaver’s facial features, allowing him to match their features for government photos for his fake identifications.