6/6/66

by JN Lenz

  Before this first real look at Lance, Clyde had been picturing a thin creepy shadow of a man. I knew by the effort Clyde had taken in researching Lance Lowey, meant he was planning on making the fuckers death an unpleasant one. Before watching Lance depart the jail, Clyde had given thought to using a Taser gun to immobilize him enough to get him back to the basement chamber to torture the diddler prick. After seeing him walk from the front gates of the Prison and watching Lance Lowey climb into the back of that cab he was not so sure the man could be taken down so easily.

  This in no way showed any fear by Clyde towards the larger more muscular Lance, the decision made solely by the wise hunter Clyde had always been. After all, he was getting older and there was more than one way to taking down his prey without undue risk to himself, he had learned that much in his years of hunting.

  There would be no need for Clyde to follow the taxi cab carrying Lance Lowey from the gates of the prison to his new place of residence, that information was available through an online sex offender registry. Clyde was already well aware that the newly released convict would be residing in a one bedroom apartment, in a fifteen story apartment building. The building was one of four identical structures placed around a common park area in a low income part of town. It would was easy to watch Lance come and go from the apartment, Clyde had thoroughly checked out the area even before Lance had been released from Prison. The area the apartment was located in was a busy one though and confrontation with Lance on the streets would certainly be witnessed by a multitude of people Clyde would note.

  Watching Lance come and go from the apartment complex Clyde would debate on the best way to remove him permanently, he ruled out the possibility of tranquilizing him with one of his specialized big game hunt riffles. There were far too many people milling about at all times of the day in and around the four apartment complex, in order to tag him then load him into a van. The tranquilizer gun was a no go, along with the close up Taser gun attack, one by one Clyde ruled out ways to eliminate Lance Lowey.

  How would soon realizing it may be near impossible to bring Lance back to the bunker to kill the prick up at his leisure, the guy stuck close to his apartment. After several days of watching for Lance, Clyde would discover that he simply did not leave his apartment very frequently. How or where Mr. Lowey received enough money to survive on Clyde could not find out, perhaps he had saved enough cash to live modestly like this before his incarceration.

  Regardless of the means of his support, short of the weekly mandatory visit with his probationary officer, Lance would visit a neighborhood grocery market a couple times a week and that was about it. Not that Clyde spent twenty four seven watching the entrances to Lance’s apartment building, but he was there enough to establish any prevalent routine. The guy did not leave the building enough to provide a good opportunity to kill him; Clyde gave thought to shooting him from a roof top or a window. It would be an easy shot from one of his high powered riffles, cut Lance down as he waited for the bus to take him down to the probation office.

  “I ruled out the riffle, I need to be closer when I kill that fucker”

  Clyde wrote.

  The six weeks Clyde spent tracking and killing Lance Lowey, I had believed him to be half way around the world. He had told me he was returning to one of the few remaining tracks of India which still held Bengal Tigers to tranquilize one again. Sid would get so excited on the Sunday’s when uncle Clyde joined us for diner, telling him long stories of the jungle and hunting down the Tigers, how he could hear the Tigers breathing and growl through the sides of his tent one night, or how he shot a male Tiger who was within seconds of jumping onto Clyde from a ridge several feet above his head.

  At the time I had no reason not to believe Clyde was not in Asia, he had been there before sending us regular pics of his adventures. There was even the footage filmed by his guides of him up close to several unconscious predators, including Bengal Tigers.

  During those years our conversations were often brief, being the one willing to travel extensively to all our facilities whenever he was needed, I had always preferred to stay closer to home. Because he was willing to travel and never made an issue of me staying in Largo to handle the books, I often lost track of where he was. There would be so many years that he was either traveling to some remote country or traveling for business. When he was in Largo between his travels, Clyde was more interested in talking to Sid when he made that weekly call than anyone else.

  The year two thousand and ten would be the first year of Pre School for little Sid, Lilly and I had decided to send him to the small Montessori School in Largo for the first couple of years then transfer him into the regular Public School in grade one. The boy had always been energetic and was completely ready for the challenges and friendships of a classroom environment. It’s hard not to think your kid is smart and I would be no exception, Sid was certainly not a slow learner. How at that age he would begin to hang on every word of Clyde’s hunting stories. Over the next sixteen years Clyde would take Sid on several multi week holiday’s, a reward to Sid for passing school each year.

  Lilly and I repeatedly told Clyde he was spending much on the boy, none of which was required from him to be considered a good uncle.

  “What else am I going to spend my money on? Besides, who better to show the kid the world but me?”

  That same rhetorical response would always be provided to the two of us by Clyde whenever we brought the topic up, hell we both knew Clyde and Sid loved each other dearly. The pair of us always felt fortunate to have such a good friend able and willing to step in to take care of Sid in the event something fatal happened to the two of us. Plus Sid got a chance to see so many parts of the world neither I nor Lilly had any interest in visiting; one or two weekly vacations to the sun would be all that the two of us cared for in a given year.

  More prone to being settled, the two of us felt the most comfortable at home. This resulted in us traveling less than our finances allowed. For me it was the proximity to the business, which I ran from that grand office in old lady Preston’s former Mansion. For Lilly, it was the charities and daily visits with friends that kept her close to home. Together it was the grand old mansion that kept us grounded in Largo; we would spend our life together in and that sleepy town and raise our son.

  Sid’s first holiday all on his own with Clyde would take place the following year, after he had graduated from Jr. Kindergarten. The pair flew down to Florida and spent the entire time at Disney Land.

  It was still hard to really get a grip on the reality that through all these times, Clyde continued to plan and carry out murders as he interacted with our lives seamlessly at the same time.

  That same year we had rationalized the number or locations in America to sixteen, Clyde traveling to all those Funeral Homes several times. There would be visits to those locations that we would ultimately sell and the few high end properties that we would buy as well. Despite the losses we suffered from our southern locations for the three years from two thousand eight to two thousand and eleven the business as a whole continued to produce a heavy profit to both Clyde and I.

  We made sure to take time to celebrate our good fortune from time to time. I remember this was a very prosperous and busy year for the both of us, how Clyde found the time over and above everything else he had going on to plan and murder Lance in that craziest of years, when did he have time to sleep!

  The building of my garage at the back of the old Mansion was my high light of two thousand and ten; the original small two door garage from when we purchased the mansion from the McGovern estate had never been built to accommodate large vehicles.

  The original building was more of a storage area for garden tools than a building made to house vehicles, its low roof line and sagging roof would be leveled. In its place rose a garage large enough to hold six cars, plus a post and beam coach house rose above the garage bays. I was tempted to move my office into the above loft but had decided against the mo
ve, if my office was over there as well I would only be in the house to sleep.

  Even without having my office in the loft of the garage, I would spend a pile of time in that place. I could get lost for hours out there tinkering away on my motor bikes and cars, some of which I had always dreamed of owning. Not one to buy the best example of any particular vehicle, I would prefer to purchase something that required a little repair work to get them back on the road. Of course the pollution tax on running the old ones like the Porsche Three Fifty Six meant you could only afford to run them a few times a year, the gas at twenty three bucks a liter was the cheap end of enjoying my old German relics.

  Everything on the road today was controlled by electronics, from the electric and hydrogen vehicles on the roads today that override the whole driving experience if you ask me. Certainly there is no question some of the safety features like the anti-collision systems had saved countless lives (which is not doing our business any favors) but we have all lost something else along the way.

  Apart from the late model Mercedes fuel cell I drove during the week which was part of the Funeral Home, all my personal rides were of the pre two thousand and sixteen models. Any electronic driver aid system could be switched off and there was no mandatory satellite tracking system which became mandated that model year. That said the Mercedes would have the built in Blackberry had I have brought it, I should have brought my other Blackberry with me today but I hadn’t.

  Drivers of today allow the navigation systems to take us to our destinations, merge us into traffic and park all without touching anything more than a touch screen or speaking into a voice activated on board system. This task free existence many of us now lived was stealing the life right out of us I always thought, I could even see it in the disconnect many residents had with their homes. The proliferation in the last ten years of the artificial intelligence running our homes, from the AI maids and gardeners who removed all work requirements from the homes owners. The more we had become connected on every level electronically, the more these same technologies began to isolate and fragment the society from each other.

  There were the AI Robotic armies which were being produced in record numbers, the rhetoric between America and China ratcheting ever higher. The more advanced the technology to the world became; the less society had the ability to control the outcome of these same technologies it seemed. Oil still controlled the world after all these years, being a kid back in the seventies when the middle east plunged the world into an oil crisis you would think that almost sixty years later the world would have reduced its dependency instead of becoming more dependent like the world is today. Unlike then, North America produced more oil now then the Arabs, reversing decades of political and military support for that region of the world.

  I continued to drift off in thought of the past years; a new story replacing what I thought was my life. My life told through the diary of a serial murderer, nothing was ever as it seemed in life.

  Pulling myself from my memories I focused back on the file that lay open in front of me, I must discover how it is that Lance Lowey’s life would be ended. As I returned to the file and began to read further into Clyde’s details around his surveillance of Lance, discovering his decision to rent an apartment on the same floor as Lance. That decision surprised me, not that anything I read here should be surprising me anymore but it was a complete departure from the other murders he had committed. Why he would risk the chance of being identified by other residents of the building? Clyde had expressed his desire to get up close and personal with Lance Lowey, looks like he had found a way to accomplish that.

  Clyde even described the apartment availability sign that had been posted beside the front door of the apartment; it was the sight of the sign that turned the light on for Clyde. Turned out a single mother of a young boy had no intention of remaining on the same floor as the convicted pedophile and had moved out within days of Lance Lowey moving in. When Clyde had inquired about the vacant apartment the landlord had disclosed all the information on Lance and the reason for the availability of the newly vacant apartment. The old man had been a building superintendent for long enough to realize non-disclosure on items like that would come back to bite him in the ass and end up being a greater burden down the road. One of the few items the old man superintendent asked of Clyde was if he had a job and if he would be moving in with any children, the answer being yes and no.

  Using the identification from one of the deceased vagrants he had murdered years earlier for the lease of the apartment, Clyde assured the landlord the history of the other tenants in the apartment building was of no concern to him. Clyde would pay the land lord the first and last month’s rent in cash and assured the Superintendent the next month’s rent would be on time. To match the appearance of the identification he was using, Clyde would maintain the fake mustache and beard from the photo whenever he stayed in the rented apartment.

  The apartment Clyde would rent sat at the end of the hall closest to the garbage drop off room, the door into the garbage room where a large chute sent the debris into a large steel container in the basement. Both Lance and Clyde’s apartment were located on the eighth floor of the building but situated on opposite ends of long hall which smelt of bad cooking and poor cleaning. Clyde wasted little time in moving in the few articles he would need to occupy his new rental, the landlord had let him move in straight away instead of making him wait for the beginning of the month.

  A futon mattress, a folding chair and a small TV with a recording device would be all Clyde would move into the vacant apartment. The first order of business once in the apartment was the installation of a camera, into what appeared to be a peep hole in the apartment’s door. The camera was wireless to Clyde’s laptop so he could view the hallway inside or out of the rented apartment. The camera was directed towards the metal door which accessed the room containing the garbage chute; he would record everyone that used the garbage chute including Lance.

  For the next three weeks Clyde frequented the apartment regularly to match the visits to the garbage disposal room by Lance, he had discovered a similarity in the times Lance Lowey would dispose of his garbage. The mornings would be when Lance chose to dispose of his single white bag of garbage, usually every two days with the exception of the weekends. In the past three weeks the pattern repeated itself with Lance visiting the garbage disposal room each Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

  After the second week of watching Lance entering the garbage disposal room from inside his rented apartment, Clyde arrived at the apartment early on the Monday of the third week to confront the man face to face for the first time. As he watched the monitor that morning looking for the big frame of the convicted pervert to pass by the tiny camera in the door he would watch only a handful of other tenants using the garbage room. Shortly after ten thirty Clyde watched as Lance made his way down the hallway towards the garbage room, the camera could be manipulated to scan up or down the hall. Watching as the large man passed by the door, Clyde wanted to throw the door open right there and then and plunge a knife into the fat pricks throat. Restraining from his desire to slice Lance wide open right there in the apartment buildings hallway Clyde remained behind the closed apartment room door waiting for him to enter the garbage room.

  Once the door closed Clyde would grab a bag of garbage and head towards the disposal room, as he pushed open the door Lance would be hunched over the garbage chute.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” Clyde offered to Lance, who had swung around quickly to observe who had entered behind him, he was a giant of a man.

  “K thanks”

  “Man this room stinks; glad I don’t need to spend much time in here”

  “Right”

  “You new to the building?”

  “What’s that?” Lance replied as he let the chute door slam shut, still keeping his eyes focused on Clyde

  “Just move in?”

  “I guess, who’s asking?”

  “J
ust me, Stan Brown’s the name” Clyde replied extending his hand out to Lance

  “I’m not looking for any new friends, Stan Brown” Lance snapped back as he made his way to the door while still watching Clyde closely.

  “No problem man”

  The door had begun to close as Lance disappeared without another response to Clyde.

  Clyde would return to the apartment realizing he would need a surprise attack on Lance or risk being crushed by the massive man.

  For the remainder of that week, Clyde would arrive at the rental early in the morning on both the Wednesday and Friday. On each of the two mornings Clyde watched Lance visit the garbage disposal room shortly after ten thirty in the morning on both days. Clyde was encouraged that with all the visits that the tenants on the eighth floor had made to the garbage disposal room over the past three weeks, not once in that time would two tenants use the garbage chute at the same time. The closest time between visits that he had recorded turned out to be six minutes apart; this still did not mean it could not happen.

  The good news was based on the digital recording of the garbage room Clyde had made over the past three weeks; the chance of that happening during the few minutes Clyde would need to kill Lance should be very remote. During the afternoon on the third day, of the third week, Clyde would walk over and into the garbage room in order to study the layout inside. Carrying a bag of garbage in one hand in case another tenant showed up in the room at the same time as Clyde, he would stay inside the garbage room for close to thirty minutes. On the following Thursday afternoon, Clyde would walk back over to the garbage room with the same bag of garbage in his hand to act out the murder.