by JN Lenz
After being in the room a little more than fifteen minutes the door swung open in front of Clyde who was standing just behind the door at the time, the door remained a good half dozen feet in front of him. The opportunity provided him a real time chance to determine how close he should stand behind the door, for the day he would wait for Lance. As the door opened into the room it concealed everything behind once open, allowing plenty of room for Clyde to hide from view from Lance. The automatic closer that pulled the door back shut was far too slow, even the old lady who had entered the garbage room would have time to turn her head back before the door was out of the way.
If the old lady had time to turn to see Clyde approaching, then certainly Lance would be quick enough to do the same, giving him a chance to defend himself against an attacking Clyde. Following the arrival of the old lady in the disposal room Clyde hustled past her and dumped the bag of garbage (which was a few soda cans and some crumpled newspaper sheets) and walked out briskly past the woman without looking at her. Chances would be that there was little fear of her recognizing Clyde without the baseball cap and thick beard and mustache he was wearing, the old woman had done Clyde a favor in showing him a weakness in his planning.
On the Friday afternoon visit into the garbage room Clyde would make sure to measure the distance between the closed door inside the room and the edge of the large metal box which housed the chute to the bin in the basement. When Clyde returned back to his country home that night he would cut a piece of wood to match that same distance. When he returned to the rented apartment with the piece of wood on the following Monday, it would mark the fourth week of the rental and sixth week of following Lance.
His return to the apartment late on Sunday, October tenth followed an evening in which Clyde would have dinner with Lilly, Sid and I. Unless he was out of town he usually spent Sunday dinner at our house, it was expected that Clyde would make the journey from his farm to the old McGovern mansion each and every Sunday to have dinner with the three of us. That date in particular stuck in my mind for some reason, I’m sure it had something to do with a Moto GP race we had been watching. Valentino Rossi, who always rode the number forty six had lost the race and had no chance at clinching another championship that year which would have been ten world championships, in the year two thousand and ten. How often had Clyde spent Sunday with us joking, drinking and eating, acting as casual as an old pair of jeans, all the while knowing he was about to end someone’s life in a matter of hours.
Returning to the rental apartment after dinner that Sunday, Clyde would bring the piece of wood he had cut which matched the distance between the garbage room door and solid metal chute. There would also be a duffle bag containing gloves, a fish fillet knife and a small handgun with an attached silencer. Following our first business purchases in the United States, the time Clyde spent in America resulted in his purchase and smuggling of dozens of guns back into Canada. He had bragged to me about the number of guns he was bringing back home with him when he traveled there. When I asked what he wanted all the guns for, Clyde always provided the same simple answer that he had become a collector. The acquisition of an AK-47 that he brought back in pieces over a few trips had him particularly excited.
He never said much to me about hand gun purchases, but based on the ones I had seen on display in that back room Clyde had purchased plenty of those as well, including the small Berretta he wrote about packing on that Sunday in October. Clyde would spend that Sunday evening removing the camera from the door of the rented apartment and replacing it with a normal Peep hole viewer. Next he removed all evidence of his existence in the apartment before placing everything into the back of the rented car in the apartments parking late Sunday night. The futon mattress and the folding chair would be left behind the next day when Clyde would leave the rented apartment and that building for the last time.
The following Monday morning Clyde remained close to the apartment’s door, frequently watching through the peep hole into the hallway. The footsteps of approaching tenants was easily heard from behind the door, allowing time to watch as they entered and left the garbage room. Waiting in the now stripped clean apartment until just after ten that morning when a tenant had just left the disposal room, after he could hear the thud of the neighbor’s door Clyde left the rented apartment for the final time.
Looking down the empty hall before completely exiting the apartment, he headed straight for the waste disposal room. With the metal door closed behind him, he pulled the filleting knife with its razor sharp thin blade from the sheath on his belt. Holding the knife firmly in his left hand, Clyde checked the position of his pistol which was held in place under his shirt and on his back. The harness allowed the gun to be removed by both the right of left hand, with the straps holding it in place secured over both shoulders. Standing directly behind the door with only enough distance to allow the swinging door to open unimpeded, Clyde began to wait for Lance’s Monday morning garbage run.
Watching his wrist watch it would be sixteen minutes from the time he left the apartment until he could hear the sound of approaching footsteps. Raising his arm up level with his shoulder, his elbow bent. The blade pointed directly in front of his face as he prepared to lunge onto Lance the instant he was fully in the room. The lever on the door moved down, followed by the door swinging toward Clyde, the instant a blue sweat shirt appeared from behind the door he pushed hard on the open door throwing the incoming body into the room.
Lunging forward he instantly had both arms around the shoulders of what he now realized was definitely not Lance, but was instead a girl in her twenties. The razor sharp blade was already around the neck of the young girl, with edge pressed against the crux of the chin and neck. Sliding the blade away from the woman’s jugular, Clyde secured his forearm under the chin of the woman and pulled back to hold her in place. With his right hand holding the waist of the now struggling young woman, he attempted to subdue her while his mind raced as to what to do with her. There was no need to kill her, but she was putting up a hell of a fight.
As Clyde moved his right hand up around the young girl’s mouth to stop her from yelling, which she had begun to do. Pulling his hand over her mouth muted the scream and prevented her head from its wild flailing motion. Instantly the girl began to scratch and claw at both of Clyde’s arms and face, after missing his face completely she did manage a series of deep scratches into his arms, drawing blood in several places. After the pair bounced off the walls and the door several times, Clyde finally managed to work his arms into a position to restrict the girls breathing and was able to place her in an unconscious state. This was one of the many martial arts skills that he had been trained in over the years.
Setting the girl on her ass in the corner, her head slouched into her chest with her legs straight out in front of her on the floor. Clyde hurried back to the door opening it just a crack and looked out down the long apartment hallway, he knew if Lance was coming this morning chances are he would be at the door shortly. The hallway was empty as he peeked out from behind the barely open door, he had been lucky enough that none of the other tenants had heard the noise coming from the garbage room. That, or none had been interested enough to come out in the hall and investigate what going on.
The worry now became what if Lance does not show up here soon, or not at all? What to do then? There was no way he could not return to the building, fake beard or not. I sensed the anxiety and fear he must have felt in that room waiting for Lance to arrive, worried the complete plan may need to be abandoned completely. Should Lance Lowey decide not to throw any garbage out that day the plan would be certainly be ruined, Clyde could not return to the rented apartment and risk being identified to the authorities by the lady he had attacked and knocked unconscious.
For the first time, Clyde admitted his carelessness could easily have had him arrested. Clyde had allowed his emotions to control the events that had led to that point in the disposal room. His obsession to exact Lance’s
murder in a most unpleasant way had led him to these mistakes. The thoughts rushed through Clyde’s mind as seconds passed like minutes behind the closed door of the garbage room, hoping the unconscious woman would stay just that way for a little longer.
His blood, skin and maybe even hair had been imbedded in the unconscious woman’s nails. There would be all the DNA evidence the authorities would require to convict him should he continue and murder Lance. Caught between waiting for Lance’s appearance, there was no time for him to scrape the skin out from beneath the pretty young ladies nails. If he went ahead with the murder, he could never be arrested on any charge in the future. If the authorities had not found his DNA on any of the previous murders he had committed, they would have his DNA and blood type now.
Clyde would write how he knew the safest thing for him was to kill the woman and slice her fingers off to remove as much of his DNA from the crime scene as possible. But there was no way he was going to kill her, he was here to murder Lance Lowey and no one else. Waiting silently behind the solid metal door Clyde continued to listen for the sound of approaching feet while staring at the slumping face of the young lady. He realized as he watched her that she was very attractive, even in her current state.
The fixation on the pretty unconscious girl would be interrupted six minutes after he had rendered her unconscious by the sound of approaching footsteps. Swinging back around away from the girl and towards the metal door, Clyde readied himself for who he was certain would be Lance to come through the doorway. As the handle moved downward on the metal door, Clyde readied the sharp filleting knife to the same shoulder height position he had previously held before grappling with the pretty brunet girl.
The handle of the door was thrust down much more aggressively this time, the mole on the back of Clyde’s neck pinched him sharply, and he knew then it was Lance. As the lumbering frame entered the room, Clyde remained behind the door waiting for Lance to remove his hand from the door. The instant Lance’s fingers drop away from the doors edge he lunged quickly from behind the door. Instead of pushing the door aside as he had in tackling the woman minutes earlier, Clyde now swung around the door with the point and sharp edge of the fishing knife leading the way. With his right hand firmly grabbing the handle his entire body swung around the door as the blade plunged into the side of lance’s neck.
The knife would slash into a shocked Lance’s neck, who had just transferred the bag of garbage he was carrying from his right hand to his left hand after releasing the metal door. With his left hand holding the bag there was no way he could react quickly enough to the incoming attack. Releasing the door handle Clyde slammed his right hand onto the back of Lance’s neck while he drove the filleting blade into Lance’s neck just below the vocal cords. The man’s throat would be sliced up and over to the right severing the perverts ability to speak or yell out in distress. Throwing the bleeding Lance face first into the accompanying wall, Clyde retrieved the section of wood he had cut days earlier and jammed it between the steel entrance door and the garbage chute.
Turning his attention back to bleeding mess on the floor, he was now on his hands and knees with his right hand covering the gash on his neck while his left held him up from the concrete floor. Kicking Lance’s left arm out from under him, Clyde pushed his weight onto the back of Lance crashing his face directly into the concrete floor breaking his nose and a couple of teeth along the way. Grabbing the back of the large man’s shirt Clyde pulled back with all his strength and pulled the man onto his feet, ordering him
“To stand the fuck up you fucking prick or I’ll slice your fucking cock off”. Pushing Lance over against the steel of the garbage chute once he had the man on his feet Clyde proceeded to do exactly as he had just warned lance he would do. Slicing the elastic and part of the top of the track pants that Lance was wearing enough that the pants dropped to Lance’s ankles, along with the pants Clyde had cut the front of Lance’s hip in a deep cut that extended halfway down to his knee.
In one quick downward thrust of the knife Clyde would sever his complete penis, balls and followed by all of it landing then on the concrete floor in a wet sounding plop. Clyde wrote how he bristled at the gagging fucker looking him straight in the eyes before slicing his cock off.
“That’s for all the boys whose life you ruined you perverted cocksucker” Clyde growled at Lance still holding the front of his shirt tightly. His eyes which had been wide open began to close as the sounds of gurgling blood and air continued to resonate from the open wound in his neck.
“Don’t you pass out on me you fucker” Clyde barked at Lance as he pushed him hard into the steel sides of the garbage chute in an attempt to wake the man out of the shock he was in.
“See you on the dark side of the moon you fucker” Clyde snarled looking Lance straight in the eyes as he plunged the knife deep into the belly of the collapsing man. Pulling the knife up hard, he would slice the falling Lance straight up through the liver and lungs. Thrusting the blade far up beneath the ribs the blade penetrated deep onto Lance’s heart before being withdrawn enough to pass over the center of his ribs as he continued to slice up meeting the wide gash across his neck. The lifeless body slammed to the floor as is slid from the edge of the knife, the deep red blood gushed from the body onto concrete floor.
Originally Clyde had planned to throw Lances dead body down the garbage chute, after killing him. He had hoped this would give him more time to exit the apartment building before the body was discovered, but that was before all this blood which covered everything. Not only was the floor awash in blood, but the walls, door and Clyde had been drenched in Lance’s blood.
There was no option but to leave the body now and get the hell out of the building, as Clyde swung himself around towards the steel exit door he caught the Blue eyes of the young woman he had knocked unconscious minutes earlier. She still remained propped up against the corner, but her head was no longer slouched onto her chest. Instead it was pushed back against the wall, her eyes wide open, her face in complete terror as she stared into Clyde’s eyes. Clyde would write that it would be the only time he would have the feelings of embarrassment after committing a murder. He stood there for a moment unable to look away from the terrified but still beautiful blue eyes that continued to stare back at him.
“Please don’t kill me “she would say quietly as the tears began to stream down her face.
“I have no intention of killing you provided you stay in for ten minutes after I leave, if I see you coming behind me that deal is off.”
“I won’t follow you, please don’t hurt me”
He would pull the piece of wood from between the door and the garbage chute before pulling the blood soaked door towards him. Following a quick look down the hall, Clyde would leave the beautiful young sobbing in the corner of the garbage room in a pool of blood.
Immediately after leaving the disposal room, Clyde shed the blood soaked sweatshirt and gloves he had been wearing and dropped them to the floor, he dropped the fishing knife as well.
There was already a pile of evidence he would be leaving anyway so fuck it he wrote before detailing his run at full speed down the length of the hall towards the door to the stairwell. The only person Clyde would encounter before reaching the staircase door would be that of a small child between the age of two and three, standing in the open doorway of an apartment crying for his mother. The boys blue eyes welled with tears as he wailed indignant of Clyde passing by him as the little boy searched for any sight of his mother. Clyde would race down the ten flights of stairs quicker than he thought possible, slamming into the push bar on the ground floor exit and continued running until he reached the blue Malibu rental in the apartment’s parking lot. With all the evidence Clyde had left behind he cared not if he had drawn attention to himself as he bolted from the apartment to the rental car. After starting the engine he squealed the tires loudly as he raced from the parking lot onto the side street and off down the road to a nearby ramp onto the freew
ay, disappearing into the congestion of the multi-lane highway.
Once the car merged onto the freeway, Clyde would reduce the cars speed to match the traffic flow and make his way back to the bunker beneath the funeral home where the rental car would be hidden inside the garage. Retreating to the basement, he would strip off all his clothing and gloves, placing all the contents inside the furnace before igniting it all to ash. The shower was next, as he scrubbed his bloodied skin clean along with removing the false beard and mustache in the process. The long hair on his head that he had been letting grow long for the past two months would be shaved using an electric clipper.
No question he looked to be a completely different man than the one who had slashed Lance Lowey open like a slaughtered pig. After cleaning himself and the blood left from the shoes on the tile floor in the basement chamber, Clyde would begin to detail the murders events writing down the words that I had just read. Whenever possible he liked to get the details down on paper quickly, before some of the details would be lost from his memory.
The TV and the radio had also been turned on so Clyde could hear when the news of the murder broke, wanting to know what details they would release about the murder. The media’s coverage of his murders was always of keen interest to him, he enjoyed listening to the speculations and the accusations that often spiraled out of control as the murders remained unsolved. The dead victims had no way of defending themselves from the onslaught of character assassination in cases where they had simply disappeared. This media coverage had become a magnet to Clyde, it was apparent the way he chronicled and detailed their coverage of each murder and disappearance that drew media attention.