Sex and Murder

by Douglas Allen Rhodes

  See, cops are like motor oil. When they’re new they’re slick and clean but the longer they keep the machine running the dirtier they get. I’m not talking dirty like mob bribes or O.J. frames; no, the average cop is an entirely different sort of scum. A lot are petty tyrants, bullies, brown-shirts; the analogies go on and on. Maybe some stay clean—but not many that I’m aware of.

  At some point, whether early in their career or later on, their power corrupts them. If they were decent to begin with (and I doubt that too many of them were—after all, the kids in your high school who wanted to be cops were kids who got picked on, kids who were abused, or kids who had something to prove to everyone) they change quickly to adapt to their surroundings. If they were fairly to really fucked up to begin with, they finally find a home, acceptance, and an outlet for all their hatreds and pains.

  That’s when they get the mentality, a weird little Nazi mindset, and they begin to look down on everyone. They start to see criminals—which, by the way, includes anybody from the kid with a joint to the serial murderer—as sub-human, something to get rid of. What’s worse, civilians begin to look like nothing more than potential criminals, or simple, brainless sheep, incapable of functioning without the all-knowing hand of John Q. Police to guide them.

  Why is this, I wonder? Are they driven to feel this way because they are—as they so often love to claim—soldiers in a never-ending and thankless war on crime, always hindered by soft judges and weak laws, thrown daily against overwhelming numbers of gun-toting psychopaths?

  No, they just need their excuse. They need to feel right.

  Beneath their derisive veneer they know that they’re pitiful, undereducated, civil servants. They know that movies mock them, that thousands of songs have been written for the sole purpose of ridiculing them. They know full well that they’re not respected. They know this all—deep down. To admit that they know it, though, even to themselves, to face up to the truth, is to be no better than anyone else; or worse, to be less.

  Denial becomes delusion. Now they have to go on treating everyone like trash because their entire artificial self-worth hinges precipitously on the faulty thesis that everyone is trash.

  That’s my opinion—and I’m right.

  Steve Largent was no different. Well, that’s a little off; he was somewhat different. He had a higher rank. That meant that, in addition to the myriad other beings he got to look down on, he also displayed derision towards the street cops as well.

  Whatever else he was, though, he was one thing that almost caused my downfall: he was Robby Benson’s cousin.

  Before I get too far ahead of the story, let me fill in the details.

  My first double murder stumped the cops. No one saw me enter the house and no one saw me leave. They found prints all over, but only one that didn’t match up to a family member, victim, or friend—and that one didn’t have a criminal record.

  The lack of leads frustrated the hell out of Largent, and he spent day and night looking for some small clue, some unnoticed shred of evidence that could point him in the right direction. He didn’t do it for some Dudley Doright, must-get-my-man, type of reason. Naw, he had more of a Captain’s-on-my-ass-cause-the-dead-guy-is-Joe-fuckin’-suburbia-and-people-might-get-scared kind of reason.

  Forensics did their bit, pouring over the house in minutia, but they didn’t find much of anything more than the cops. Sure, there were hair samples, dirt samples, shoe marks—all that Columbo-type shit—but, without any suspects to match the stuff to, they were useless. By the third day of the investigation, everyone involved knew that there’d be no resolution.

  That’s the day that Largent got the call from his Aunt Vicki that caused all my trouble. He hadn’t heard from her in years—and that suited him just fine. But as he picked up his phone’s receiver and said, “Largent speaking,” he heard her loud and clear (emphasis on loud).

  She wailed about how his cousin—our good friend Robby Redneck—had been found dead, the apparent victim of a lover’s quarrel turned gunfight. The police, she told him, had already decided that the case was open and shut: Robby’d shot his girlfriend—our much better friend Janine—and she’d returned the favor.

  Well, what then, he asked, did she want from him?

  “Oh, Gawd, Stevey,” I imagined her replying, “I jus’ know they was murdered. Jus’ last week Robby-boy tol’ me he was gonna marry that girl. Cain’t you—I don’ know—jus’ look around a little? Please, Stevey….”

  In my mind, here she breaks down in thick, religious sobs. The whole thing is just too damn much for good old Largent—who was pretty damn hungover to begin with—to handle, and pretty soon he not only agreed to check things out but also went so far as to call up the Sheriff of Robby’s former town and get permission.

  Why not, I guess he thought to himself, the case I’m on is a dead end anyway.

  An hour later, he arrived at the trailer.

  Once there, it took just a glance around to convince him that—God Almighty, is it possible—Aunt Vicki was right. Maybe it was the way Robby had all of his guns laid out like he did when showing them off. Maybe it was the superfluous lone beer can situated on the other side of the couch from where Robby had made his trademark pile of empties. Maybe it was a lot of little things only a family member would notice, but one thing was for sure—a third person was involved.

  He turned and bolted for his car. Hopping in, he sped to the Sheriff’s office.

  From there on out, things snowballed. The Sheriff ordered an autopsy of the bodies. In Janine, they discovered semen from someone other than Robby. Next, they fingerprinted the trailer, paying special attention to the gun collection and, especially, to the lone Pabst can. Numerous prints showed up—all belonging to the same person. Finally, Largent checked out Robby’s gun inventory.

  And that’s the pisser right there—the fucking gun inventory.

  Oh, sure, the .45 was unregistered. Hell, yeah, its serial markings had been removed. But, damn it all if that drunk little redneck bastard hadn’t kept a personal inventory list of each and every single weapon he owned, from semi-automatics right on down to hunting knives. And, it’s from that list that Largent learned that a .45 was missing.

  So, there he was, his pocket full of evidence, his Aunt Vicki ecstatic, and his side case turning out to be more successful that his main one. Then the most out and out incredible piece of luck he’d ever had occurred.

  It happened right after he’d run the third party’s prints through the computer. He received nothing but negative results from the local, state, and federal databases, convinced that he’d hit upon another dead end in yet another case. Out of disgust, he slammed the photo enlargements of the prints down on his desk and prepared to leave for the day.

  Suddenly, he stopped, unable to believe his eyes. By sheer chance—if you believe in such things—he’d laid the trailer prints next to the enlargements of the one from the scene of his Going Nowhere murder case.

  Lo and behold, they matched.

  He checked them against each other, marking the mandatory points, finding fifteen. Fifteen points of correspondence—way more than enough for a positive match. He called his captain, he called the sheriff of Robby’s old town, he called the boys in the lab. Pretty soon, he’d linked the two investigations and got them churning away at a fevered pitch.

  That night, he drove out to Robby’s favorite watering hole. After a couple of dead ends, he spoke to some folks who saw Robby and Janine on the night they died—and, more importantly, saw the stranger they left with.

  By comparing all the different stories, he gained a pretty good description of me. He took down the names of the witnesses—they would need to speak to the precinct sketch artist.

  Happy, satisfied that for once in his life things were going right, Largent sat on a stool at the bar and got shit-faced drunk.

  Six o’clock the next morning, the irritating buzz of his cheap alarm clock tore him away from the comforting depths of drunk
en slumber to the all too painful realities of the morning-after hangover. Groaning, he cursed everyone who ever so much as assembled a clock radio, and got out of bed. Thirty minutes of near-scalding shower water later, his head no clearer, he tried eating.

  He made toast, but two bites into it, gave up on solid food and drank some juice instead. The phone rang.

  At first, he let it ring; after all, if it was important, he’d either find out about it at the office or tonight when he arrived home.

  Four rings sounded, then five.

  Still, he waited it out.

  Six rings, seven, eight….

  Enough, his mind screamed.

  He snatched up the phone. “What?” he yelled into the receiver.

  “Steve? Hey, it’s Johnson,” his partner’s voice announced. “Man, you’re not gonna believe this; there’s been a fucking massacre at a hotel in Coshocton.”

  “What the hell…?” he started.

  “I’m serious, man; it’s fucking crazy, like something out of a horror flick. Six dead, killed all sorts of ways, but guess what, Steve? See if you can guess what caliber handgun three of ‘em were shot with.”

  “Jesus!”

  “That’s right, man, forty-fucking-five. I think we got a psycho out there. Anyways, Captain’s already on this. You’re expected down at the motel, place called Sunnyside Inn.”

  An hour later, Largent reached the hotel, his head still pounding to beat the band, his body sweating twenty-proof. All he could think about was the case, this atrocious, beautiful case.

  He’s gonna be famous. Talk shows, books, magazines; shit, maybe even Howard Stern. Fuck, yeah—Stern, he’s always pulling for the cops. Of course he’d want Largent on the show. After all, he is just about to track down the real life version of Freddy-fucking-Krueger. The thought of it all plastered a huge, dopey grin across his face.

  Still smiling, he parked in front of the hotel and walked towards the local sheriff. He still smiled when the sheriff briefed him on what they knew so far. He still smiled when they toured the area and arrived at room 305. When they stepped inside, however, his smile vanished.

  Largent was no rookie, he’d seen his share of bodies over the years, but the sight of the crack dealer’s mutilated, stinking corpse, combined with the lingering effects of the previous night’s indulgence almost coaxed his stomach into surrendering what few secrets it managed to squirrel away that morning.

  He swallowed back bile and strode over to the body. “Jesus H. Christ. Are they all like this?”

  “Naw, thank God. Just the black kid,” the sheriff answered. “Seems whoever did this had a serious hate-on against that boy.”

  “Any clue who he is?”

  “Yup, Tarrell Roberts. He’s got a record a mile long, mostly drug shit—crack. Anyhow, his prints checked out.”

  They moved to the other rooms one by one, comparing notes and discussing the different scenes of murder each one offered. Slowly, it all fell together in Largent’s mind. He figured out the whys and whens (as he saw them), gathered what evidence he felt was important, and made sure all the prints and DNA samples were sent to the right departments.

  After he made the proper parting courtesies and ensured that everything was in order, Largent climbed back into his ‘94 Taurus and drove to the last known address of Tarrell Roberts. He took some Polaroids from the crime scene and a huge, overstuffed parka.

  The next five and a half hours were anything but easy. No one in the ghetto likes a cop—especially not a white cop—and by the middle of his second hour asking questions, Largent’s splitting headache returned. By the third hour, the ache morphed into a party thrown by the headache for several of its noisiest friends, all of whom kept doing keg stands.

  Finally, his Polaroids—of Tarrell post mortem—did their trick. A young kid named—or, rather, calling himself—‘Boo’ gave Largent the information he sought. Yeah, Boo remembered the guy who picked Tarrell up. Yeah, he could describe him. Yeah, he could describe the guy’s car too: a red ‘87 Cadillac DeVille with a cream-colored mock-rag.

  Boo’s description of the guy matched the one that Largent got at the bar: brown hair, white skin, around 5’10”, medium build, clean cut. The only thing that wasn’t the same was the guy’s blue eyes. Boo didn’t see no eyes.

  Largent left the city, hot on his perp’s trail. By the time he got back to the office, the second shift was on. A manila folder sat atop his desk, a yellow Post-it note on the front beckoning to him as he entered.

  Steve,

  Here’s the lab work and print matches.

  Johnson.

  Even though he knew exactly what the contents of the folder would tell him, Largent read through them.

  Just as he figured, the prints from the hotel doors, the registration book, even the old doctor’s body, all matched up with the prints of his mystery killer.

  The dopey grin he’d sported at the hotel the day before found its way back to Largent’s face and stayed there the whole night through. He left the office, visions of book deals and Stern interviews dancing in his mind, and made his way to the bar to celebrate.

  Unfortunately for our boy Largent, he failed to notice the Harley Davidson that pulled behind him and tailed him all the way to his favorite watering hole. He missed seeing it when it tailed him home, too, but hey, by then he was pretty drunk.

  Bright and early the next morning, Largent was off and running. He pulled up the names of all the owners of red, ‘87 Cadillac DeVilles in the area and cross-referenced them with their driver’s license photos, comparing each one to the police sketch that his witnesses turned out.

  Out of the eighty-odd license photos he checked, seven came close enough to be matches. Largent smiled at the thought of catching the killer (and rapist—can’t forget to toss in that word) and printed out the personal information on the seven. About to leave his office and investigate them, he heard his partner, Johnson, calling his name from somewhere down the hall.

  “Hey, Steve. Hey, hold on, man. Got another murder.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Largent spun round and met Johnson halfway.

  Shit, yeah, another murder meant a higher body count, and a higher body count always meant a lot more media interest.

  “Where at?” he asked.

  “This one was in town, over on Railins Street. College kid, twenty-one, named Matt Williams. He was found dead, shot in the chest at close range.”

  “.45?”

  “No, 9mm. Still, it could be—”

  “Fuck it, this guy’s got a .45 thing going on, he’s not gonna trade guns now.” Largent gave his partner—a rookie with only two years in—a condescending glare. “You gotta think like these fucks, Johnson. Serial killers are creatures of habit.”

  “So you don’t think it could—”

  “Hell,” Largent eased up on the guy, “I don’t know. Right now, though, I got me a lead to follow up on.”

  For the rest of the day, Largent interrogated folks from his list. By the time six p.m. rolled around, he’d made it through the first five names on the list, with nothing to show for his time besides four airtight alibis and a recently deceased to scratch off. He called it a day and drove home, figuring that he’d check the remaining two names out the next day.

  The seventh name on that list was Randolph Sanders.

  The sixth was mine.

  That’s how close he came. He had me, dead to rights, name in hand. All he had to do was confront me. He came that close.

  That was the night that I torched my house and fled town with Rachel and the heads.

  Largent heard about it the next morning—just as he started brushing his teeth—from the morning news on 106.9. The report didn’t say much about the specifics, it simply told him that three bodies had been found dead in a house fire at 2405 21st Street South West and that there was suspicion of arson. Police, it said, were conducting a thorough investigation.

  Hmmmm, Largent must have thought, another one. H
ouse this time. (There had been a couple of businesses that had been burnt down recently: a Ponderosa, an Outback, and a factory among them.) Wonder if we might not have us a serial arsonist on the loose at the same time as my serial…?

  It hit him then. Some part of his mind, whose sole purpose was to remember odd connections at just the right moment when an odd connection most needed remembering, flashed a red light.

  That address…what was it again?

  2405 21st Street SW, the special part of his mind answered. You were heading there this morning. It’s the home of suspect number six.

  Jesus Christ. He rushed out of the house, forgetting to rinse his mouth.

  I imagine he sped the whole way from his apartment to my old house, fuming over the fact that he hadn’t been contacted about the fire.

  Shit, I presume he thought. I didn’t let anyone else in on what I’m up to, didn’t even come close to giving out the names of my suspects so someone would’ve known to contact me as soon as the fire was discovered. No, this had to be my case, my chance at the big time. No way on Earth am I letting anybody steal this collar from me, not with a Howard Stern interview riding on it.

  Fuck!

  The charred remains of my old place came into view, and an ugly, vicious little thought must have struck him: there might not be any collar now. The killer—Largent’s ticket to stardom—could be nothing more than a pile of charred and blasted ash right now.

  The thought of it didn’t sit too well with him—not too well at all.

  No sooner did he scramble out of his car than he located the fire marshal in charge of the site. He got the rundown on what happened: three found dead, two assumed to be Rachel and me, the other one—judging from the registration to the car out front—was Rosa Osborne, a friend of the other two. As best as they could tell, the three victims were tied together, murdered, and then left to burn with the house.

  “Wait a minute,” Largent cut in. “What do you mean they were murdered and then left to burn?”