6/6/66

by JN Lenz

  Pushing the dolly against the base of a large tree, Clyde would run to the edge of the gravel road and check both directions for any sounds while searching for any dust clouds from approaching vehicles, there was nothing. Racing back to the van he would throw open the side door which faced the bush, before running to retrieve the dolly holding Stanley Curtis. Pulling the cart to the edge of the side door, Clyde jumped up into the van and pulled the cart up onto the floor. The metal vertical rails on the back of the dolly allowed the cart to slide up onto the floor of the van easily, once inside the side door was slammed shut.

  Inside Clyde had a cheap casket which he would load Stanley into before closing the lid, this would be the first file where Clyde had made reference to having a casket waiting in the back of the van but would not be the last. As I continued to read several other murders would make use of a casket to transport a victim back to his bunker, the rented vans would always be stripped of all exterior magnetic logos before the day of the murder.

  Caskets always made people squeamish, cops were no different. In the event one of them pulled Clyde over he would have the fake business cards for a funeral home and director that did not exist. That, along with a forged death certificate would get him thru any roadside questioning by Police.

  Before leaving the side of the gravel road Clyde would, he would roll up the plastic and tarp which had become soaked in blood and placed them in a thick plastic bag. Using a pair of towels Clyde quickly cleaned the remaining blood from the floor of the van and the dolly, also stuffing the towels in the zippered bag. The last item in the bag would be the removed leather gloves, sealing the bag before shoving it into a false floor at the base of Stanley’s feet inside the casket.

  Climbing from the back of the van, Clyde would return on what would be an uneventful drive to the hidden garage doors at the back of the funeral home. As so many times before, the murder was carried out without interruption. Each murder I would read continued without so much as a close call, perhaps there were plenty of close calls that Clyde had no knowledge of. Regardless, Clyde once again returned to his secret bunker unimpeded, the early morning killing had allowed plenty of time to get the body into the furnace before the scheduled cremations in the furnace above in the funeral home.

  It seemed that whenever possible Clyde preferred to fire his furnace in tandem with the scheduled burns taking place on the floor above. Having left Stanley in the same cheap casket it would be loaded into the furnace, the towels, gloves and wire also still housed in the base of the casket. By lunch time the fires of the oven had reduced all evidence of the murder to dust.

  News on the disappearance of Stanley Curtis hit the television news broadcasts that evening; papers ran headline articles about the missing money man in the business sections the following day. Speculation was rampant that Stanley succumbed to the pressure of the pending litigation against him, and had vanished to some hidden gem in the Caribbean or Central America. Leaving his wife and two grown children behind without as much as a note, they too would always question the where abouts of Stanley, who was never to be seen again. So intense was the speculation in the media that the ex-president of the largest corporate failure in the Nation had skipped out of town, the Police investigation focused solely on finding a trail to a hiding Stanley Curtis, than for the clues to his disappearance.

  The Police would walk the trail Stanley’s wife told them he would use most frequently for his morning runs, the Police investigators would find nothing to suggest that there had been a struggle anywhere along the trail. Only one trip would ever be taken by the Police through the jogging trail, they were convinced that Stanley had not run through the bush at all that morning, but instead ran to a waiting car to disappear to begin a new life under an assumed identity.

  Had they simply used a team of search dogs to comb the trails they would have quickly discovered the blood that had led from the trail to the ditch, then on to the side of the gravel road where the body had been loaded into the back of the van. There would be not a single visit from authorities to the side of the gravel road where the long grass remained pushed over from the tires and underside of the van for more than a week.

  The Police investigation had never even considered the case one of kidnapping; certainly there was nothing to suggest a murder. Instead these lead investigators believed the millions of dollars Stanley Curtis had been accused of earning through years of grossly inflated earnings reports, remained hidden in some foreign bank account. How long the authorities would work on the disappearance of Stanley Curtis would be anyone’s guess. With the court cases against him being of a civil and not a criminal nature, the Police had little vested interest in his where abouts.

  Inevitably they came up short because he was never to be heard from again, the media soon dropped coverage with the lack of developments. The questions on the disappearance of Stanley Curtis and his current where abouts would never be answered, his family removed themselves completely from the media spot light soon after the disappearance of Stanley.

  Mrs. Curtis had always refused to comment to the Media in regards to her husband’s disappearance, she would live the remainder of her life in the same large estate home with the millions Stanley had left behind. Mrs. Curtis would never disclose if she believed her husband to have been murdered or whether she had resolved herself to husband moving to a tropical island and was enjoying the last years of his life with a woman half her age, as so many others had speculated the case to be. That Mrs. Curtis would never reveal to the world the story she believed to be true, the interest in her husband’s disappearance was soon replaced by the trial of the remaining board members of Yotel.

  A class action law suit was still filed against the executive team and the board members of Yotel, the litigation would go on for years. After years of litigation and a pair of appeals, the judge of the third trial could not prove guilt. There was no smoking gun that led directly to the executive team or the board of directors to prove they misled investors about the company’s financial health. By this time in the year two thousand and eight, media coverage had turned to the financial crisis that engulfed the entire planet. The financial bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the US housing sector that year grossly overshadowed any story of Stanley Curtis and the demise of Yotel.

  Sid would be two years old that year; I remember how he would race around the wide hallways of the old McGovern mansion like a mad man. It would be the same house Lilly and I would grow to love, we remain living there to this date. A year after killing Stanley, Clyde would begin to spend more and more time with little Sid.

  Lilly and I would dress like Sid up like a little Elmer Fud with the red hat and a pop gun riffle he could swing over his shoulder, when he spent the day with uncle Clyde. It would piss Clyde right off, but he let us away with it for the first while. By the age of six we would allow “uncle Cwyde” to purchase Sid a BB gun, having succumbed to the little boys pleas.

  During these same years of financial turmoil we would realize a loss in our real estate value for us from the handful of Funeral Homes we had purchased in The United States. In the years the grow houses were operational we had no investment outside of Canada, not be until the grow op had been shut down had we to invested in America. When the grow op was still operational there was no way we wanted any ownership in America, with all their harsh penalties and laws surrounding trafficking that made the potential returns not worth the risk.

  Once Fitch had been arrested and the decision had been made to end our growing operations, it began to make sense to invest in purchasing Funeral Homes in the United States. Through the early years of the millennium, we rode the increasing property values and cashed in on the extra frills customers began to demand. The binge on credit occurred not only in the Malls of America but also in the Funeral Parlors as well, with the purchase of high end services when burying loved ones.

  The American acquisitions proved to be an immediate success, matching the revenu
e we had been generating from our Canadian locations in six short years. But the fallout from the financial crisis would devastate the real estate values on a handful of the Funeral Homes we had purchased in the Southern States. In many of these areas of the States, many people could no longer afford a Funeral for a family member, let alone one with some Bling. The profit in these locations plummeted along with the property values, as the majority of the services provided turned into no margin government supported disposals, or the cheapest service available.

  In the decade following the financial crisis of two thousand and eight, I would begin selling these southern locations off one by one. The only Funeral Homes we held would be the ones residing in the wealthy areas of America; it would be a strategy I would pursue for the next twenty years. After that year our business would focus solely toward the twenty percent of the wealthiest individuals in both America and Canada. I would eventually sell all our Funeral Homes whose clientele resided outside the high dollar margin per service criteria. The proceeds from these sales being directed to upscale full service Nursing Homes, and the purchase of Funeral Homes located in upscale neighborhoods across both countries.

  Funny, back then when the world was going to shit and I spent my time worrying about our financial future, Clyde had been more concerned about who he was going to murder next. Even when we had a few tough years where we went backwards on a handful of our American investments, Clyde had always remained that rock in the stream that you could not dislodge. No amount of bad financial news seemed to bother or stress him in any way; he just supported my business decisions, right or wrong as they were.

  That fucker had thick skin when it came to the stresses of life; nothing ever made him come unglued. I guess he always agreed with the direction I had taken the business because I don’t think he really gave a shit. He had long ago acquired all the money he would ever need; I don’t think any of the monies beyond that meant a thing to him. Unlike anyone else I knew including myself, money was not all important to Clyde.

  Perhaps it was the time he required for the multitude of murders he had committed that he left the finances in my hands. In setting down the forty forth file, a murder he had committed two years after his fortieth victim, I realized his yearly murder rate had begun to decline.

  Return to Table of Contents

  Chapter 14

  Looking up from the file, my eyes tried to focus on the arms of the clock on the far wall past the stainless table; typically the time read six minutes after nine. I was only minutes away from having spent the past eleven hours down here, scouring these murder files. I would need to be out of the bunker and on the road by eleven PM at the latest, to allow enough time to return back home in time for Sid’s phone call. This was one of the scheduled calls we had arranged with each other before Sid had departed for the Andes Mountain range with Clyde. This, the last of the three planned calls Sid would make back to me from the bottom of the world, I needed to hear his voice more now than at any time in my life. Sid had called before they left the base camp for the summit, the last call coming at the summit of the mountain.

  The climb up the mountain had gone well and the weather had cooperated all the way to the summit. He told me of the news they received from the base camp prior to reaching the summit, warning them that bad weather was approaching. The call would be a short one, the entire climbing entourage planned to spend little time at the summit. The approaching bad weather had the team traverse down off the summit after little more than a quarter hour at the peak; the Sherpa’s objective was to reach a shelf on the opposite side of the mountain before the storm hit.

  The Satellite capable phone cracked ever so slightly, distorting the last words I would hear my son speak. Turned out the team had used the bulk of the oxygen they had brought, for the final push to the summit. The descent would require them to contend with the thin air, without the tanks of compressed oxygen. Through the bouts of static I listened to Sid as he assured me they all would be fine, the Sherpa’s they had hired as guides knew the mountain like the back of their hands he contended. Sid promised he would call me once they reached the base camp in a few days, that day was tonight, the call coming at midnight, Eastern time.

  My eyes had begun to tire from the day of reading, this still would not deter me as I jumped ahead a few files and I settled on file number forty seven, this kill coming in the year two thousand and ten. By this time, Clyde had been spending more and more time with Sid, it would serve as the foundation of the incredible bond that the two of them would develop for each other. Clyde looked upon Sid like the son he would never have, he compensated for the times I did not spend with young Sid.

  The two years that had followed the murder file of Stanley Curtis in two thousand and eight had been busy indeed for both of us. Although we had both reduced the time spent running the business, I had become obsessed with the rationalization of several of the Funeral Home properties we had purchased in America earlier in the decade.

  I had managed after several months of negotiations, to rid us of our locations in the depressed markets of the southern American states. Most had all been sold at a loss; in total I ditched sixteen properties in United States. Once these underperforming locations had been sold, I spent the proceeds on six new properties, a combination of Funeral Homes and Nursing Homes which catered to the rich. These acquisitions gave us a total of twenty six premier Funeral Homes and Nursing locations in America. By two thousand ten they would be returning a higher margin back to us than the thirty six American properties we held before the financial crisis of two thousand and eight.

  I turned my attention back to file number forty seven, the contents detailing the final days in the life of one Lance Lowing. Turns out the man was a real piece of shit, having just been released from prison on pedophile charges from a neighboring county. There would be reference in the media reporting the release of Lance Lowing, whose incarceration from the conviction on sexual assault and sodomy on a pair of young boys, had come to an end.

  The sentence of eight years Lance received for his crimes was the second conviction for his predatory acts against young boys. The man’s first conviction resulted in only a two and a half year sentence. The media raised the specter of the convicted pedophile being granted parole and full release back into the public, a full year before his sentence had been completed.

  The first page of file number forty seven recounted the media’s details on the original crimes and Lance’s release from prison. Once again there was no mention as to why Clyde had decided on Lance as his next victim, could have been as simple as taking one sick sex predator out of circulation. Maybe it was the thought of some piece of shit like Lance laying a hand on a childlike Sid, which may have been enough to target him for elimination, he had killed for less.

  With the media providing the date of Lace’s release, Clyde would begin to track him the same day he would be released from prison. The file would note the excessive amount of research he had gathered on Lance, a man he had never laid eyes on him.

  “Perhaps the most research I had completed on anyone, certainly the most before seeing who I was planning on murdering.”

  This the final entry in the file before his description of seeing Lance Lowing for the first time, and how he would go about hunting and murdering the pedophile . It would be at the front gates of the Penitentiary, there had been a group of reporters also waiting for the release of Mr. Lowey. A pair of Police officers stood between a handful of Community watch activists holding “Not in our neighborhood” signs and the door used for the release of inmates. Clyde had parked around the block and walked to the gates, he purported to be a newspaper man making his way to alongside the two real reporters waiting along the freedom side of the gate.

  After waiting for the bulk of the morning, both of the reporters and a few protestors scrambled to surround the doorway which had just opened. Throwing their microphones in front of them, the reporters jabbed into the air within an inch of Mr. Lo
wey’s face. The released pedophile raised his forearms up to shield his face and began to push the microphones from the reporters away from him, forcing his way towards the curb and a waiting taxi cab. The protestor’s shouts drowned out the reporter’s questions as the group shuffled along beside and behind Lance, by now pulled a hood up over his head

  “Not in our neighborhood you scumbag”

  “Mr. Lowey, one question. Have you been rehabilitated, are you no longer a threat to the public?”

  “Rot in hell you piece of shit”

  “Your thoughts on being released Lance?”

  “Sick mother fucker, stay the hell away from our kids”

  “Mr. Lowey, what are your future plans?”

  “They should have castrated you in there you disgusting pervert”

  As Clyde watched Lance push his way through the crowd, listening to both the jeers from the crowd and the pleas for answers from the reporters he would yell a question of his own to the escaping Lance

  “Are you afraid for your safety?” Clyde yelled from the sidewalk as Lance pulled open the door to the waiting Taxi.

  “You should be” Clyde answered himself in a quieter voice.

  Soon any questions would be completely drowned out from the jeering and screaming citizens, seemingly becoming more enraged as the Taxi set to depart.

  Clyde made note how much larger Lance appeared in person, compared to photos he had studied from old TV news footage at the time of his arrest. It would appear that the harsh realities of life in prison required Mr. Lowey to bulk up or face extinction; the man looked nothing like the thin buttoned down creeper that they had sentenced seven years ago. The six foot frame which had entered prison somewhere around a hundred and sixty pounds looked more like two sixty all of which was muscle, and he was bald now. If he now shaved his head or had lost the black curly hair he had at the time of his arrest Clyde would not mention other than to say the man was now completely bald. Lance looked like he had aged beyond the year’s in which he was incarcerated, looking closer to fifty than the forty he actually was.