Sex and Murder

by Douglas Allen Rhodes

  The fire marshal gave him a tired, semi-patient look. “Just what I said. Seems whoever set this fire took a few minutes to cut all three of their heads off first.” He paused and shook his head in disgust. “Some sick fucking people in this town.”

  He went on to say several more things about the state of our world, but Largent wasn’t listening. He stumbled around the site, looking for the head detective. You can bet his mind raced over the things he’d heard, fingering each separate fact that it’d learned and all that they implied, like a wound that won’t heal. No head means no positive ID—no real way of knowing for sure who the victims were.

  I love to imagine his next thoughts.

  The fucker cut off his own trail at the source, covered his own tracks for good. Damn it, I was so close.

  From there, the rest of the morning went downhill for Largent. The detective in charge of the site informed him that they’d ID’d the victims. Largent croaked out a “How?” and was told about the wedding bands on my wife and me and a documented leg fracture on Rosa.

  No, there weren’t any guns recovered in the house—or what was left of the house, anyway. No, the neighbors didn’t see anything or anybody. No, the victim’s car wasn’t there. Seems like the killer must have stolen it.

  Largent, his head screaming, left for the precinct. Thoughts of book and movie deals, forever gone, chased each other around his mind, each warring with the other for domination. He spent the rest of the morning sulking at his desk, drinking coffee, chain smoking cigarettes, and sneaking nips from the small flask of Wild Turkey he kept hidden in his bottom desk drawer.

  Largent, just about to walk to the Captain’s office and explain—Jesus, Aunt Vicki’s never gonna quit punishing me for this one—that he’d lost his lead and honestly didn’t expect the trail to pick back up, stopped when Johnson rushed in, excitement dripping from his pores.

  “Steve,” he called, panting, “shit, man, I’ve been looking all over for you, man.”

  “What is it?” Largent snapped.

  “Whoa, who pissed in your Wheaties? Look, man…remember that kid I told you about? The one who got shot with the 9mm? Well, it turns out that he wasn’t alone. His parents say he was with a friend, a Todd Vernon, when he left that night. Vernon’s parents back ‘em up and say they haven’t seen the kid since.”

  Slowly, Largent shook his head back and forth and winced, his eyes scrunched tight. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  Johnson faltered, looking down like a kid who’d asked for a hug and gotten a smack in the mouth for his trouble.

  “Well…I don’t know, maybe…,” he stammered, “well, I was thinking that maybe this Vernon kid could be the guy we’re looking for—the guy you’re looking for.”

  “He’s not,” Largent barked, waving Johnson away with an angry, dismissive gesture.

  I bet he didn’t want to tell Johnson that he already knew who the goddamn killer was, or that he’d managed to not only let him get away but fake his own death in the process.

  Faked his own death and left a body in his place.

  Largent’s eyes widened. “What day did this happen?”

  “What…?”

  “The goddamn murder,” he snapped. “What day was it?”

  “Uhhmm, last Friday. Why?”

  Largent didn’t answer. In his mind, he was probably already running down the dates. Monday, double murder; Tuesday, Robby and his whore, double murder; Wednesday, nothing—doesn’t matter, something will turn up; Thursday, fucking hotel massacre; Friday, no murder linked to the killer. But, then, there was a murder—sure, the .45 wasn’t used, but then again, maybe he had picked up a new gun along the way, maybe from another victim.

  I can just picture him as he breathed in sharply.

  Oh shit, the black kid; blacks love 9mils.

  “Let me look over that file until tomorrow,” Largent demanded, surprising himself (and Johnson) with the fierceness of his voice.

  “Sure, Steve,” Johnson said and handed him the file. “You ok?”

  He received no answer. Largent was already moving—first to his desk to gather up several other folders and printouts, and then out the door to go home. He intended to spend the rest of the afternoon working the kinks out of his theory, getting it airtight and perfect so that when he presented it to the captain on Monday, he wouldn’t seem like some damn conspiracy nut grasping at straws.

  Rushing to his car, he climbed in, cranked the engine, and headed home—for the final time.

  Largent made it to his building without incident and scrambled for the door. For a brief second, he paused in the parking lot to admire the beautifully maintained classic Harley parked there. He wondered whose it was—no one in the building that he knew of rode—and decided that it must belong to the latest in a never-ending line of one night companions for Miss Elder up in 94B.

  Reaching his apartment’s door, he fumbled for his keys beneath the mound of paperwork he cradled in his arms. After a minute, he managed to get the door open and stepped inside, shutting the door with his ass.

  A harsh and sudden impact struck Largent’s wrist, scattering his paperwork. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he looked down, but, whatever it was, it definitely involved his hand still being attached. In shock, Largent realized that his left hand was missing and, what’s more, blood splurted in great, scarlet sprays from the stump to which his wrist had always been attached.

  Horrified, desperate to locate the source of his anguish, Largent looked up.

  Just in time to see a large axe proceeding towards his neck.

  It was the last thing he ever saw.

  The next day, Largent’s body was discovered, decapitated and missing its left hand. He’d been stripped and castrated, bizarre tribal markings carved into his skin along the entire length and width of his body. Similar markings—identified as Norse Runes—were drawn on the walls throughout the apartment in the detective’s blood.

  It took the boys at the FBI less than an hour to arrive once the description of the murder scene was reported. Turns out these ego signatures aren’t anything new. In fact, they’ve already appeared over forty-five times throughout the U.S. and have come to be known as the calling card of one of the country’s most prolific (and least publicized, due to government intervention) serial killers. The FBI refers to him as Erik the Red.

  Erik the Red (nicknamed in part because of his Viking motif but also because of the overly bloody nature of all his killings) had taken—along with Largent’s life—every single file, printout, and scrap of evidence Largent had on the recent string of murders. To everyone involved, that seemed to clear up the motive behind the detective’s murder and, in short order, it was decided that the other murders were most likely the work of the infamous killer as well.

  The FBI assumed jurisdiction for the case and meticulously debriefed everyone involved. No one was to speak about the murders to anyone. Erik the Red’s actions are not now, and never will be, public knowledge if the FBI has its way.

  By four-thirty the following day—just as I was letting off steam at the rest stop—the FBI closed up shop and left town. With them, they took all evidence pertinent to the murders, a series of signed nondisclosure agreements from everyone involved, and all responsibility for the investigation of my murder spree.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We had a wonderful time in Canada that December. The falls completely froze over creating a dazzling effect. The entire waterfall appeared to be sculpted from crystal. Below the falls, the river had become a frozen jigsaw of ice plates, some as big as fifty feet in diameter, that unrepentantly ground against each other in a masterpiece of primordial power. Our hotel room sat situated to provide us with an unobstructed view of the falls, and Rachel and I spent many an hour lounging on the balcony and staring out, entranced, at the wonder of it all.

  All things considered, it was a great vacation, but by the third day we grew restless. Rachel brought it up firs
t, mentioning it one day as we lay, post coital, holding each other in bed.

  “Are we hiding out?” Her words, a whisper, ripped the silence of the room like thunder.

  “What’s that, babydoll?”

  “I said, ‘are we hiding out’?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess you could call it that—laying low for a while.”

  “How low?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Well, how low? I mean…I don’t know…are we done killing?”

  I rose up and leaned on my elbow. Rachel rolled to face me.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know.” She ran her hand along my chest. “I was kinda hoping we weren’t.”

  “Oh really?” I smiled.

  “Yeah.” She stretched the word out like a sunbathing cat, and tugged at my nipple ring. “I’m starting to miss it.”

  “My, my, aren’t you getting bloodthirsty.”

  I may have been teasing her, but in truth, I missed it too—and pretty bad at that. Murder is like that. If you enjoy it, it becomes a stronger drug than any chemical could ever be. It calls to me at night, keeping me from sleep. I can hear its voice behind the annoying drone of the masses. Murder is the ultimate insatiable lover, never satisfied. She always wants more, always stroking and teasing until I get up again and go another round with death.

  “I’m serious.” She pouted, trying her best to look serious, but failing. “Are we gonna do it again?”

  “Well, yeah.” I pulled her closer. “I always planned on it. I just thought…well, that you might want a little break. Y’know, ‘cause of Rosa.”

  “I’m over Rosa,” she stated, her tone matter-of-fact. “We haven’t really been close since I got married. I was just…I guess it’s just…it made the murder real to me for the first time. I wasn’t just killing someone I didn’t know; I was killing someone who was real to me. It kinda fucked me up for a minute.”

  She paused to kiss me on my neck, her breasts pressing against my chest.

  “Anyway, I’m better now. I understand more. I’m not just playing at some game here, I’m actually stopping a person’s life, a real, living person with friends and family, someone with wants and dreams.” She looked down in thought. “I know that now. It makes it better. I can’t explain why, but it does. I feel powerful, I feel…I…I can’t explain it. I know you understand, though; you’ve understood it since your first—maybe before.”

  We kissed, and all talk died for the moment. I bit her bottom lip.

  “Yeah, it’s always been real to me,” I said. “I’ve been chomping at the bit these last few days; I’m dying to kill again.”

  “Good, then. Tonight.”

  She delivered her pronouncement decisively, hooking her legs around me. I started to say something about whether tonight was too soon to start again, but never got around to it. Rachel cut me short by pushing me, somewhat roughly, to the bed and climbing on top of me. Any objections I had fled before the onslaught of her sex, and I surrendered, losing myself in the moment.

  Tonight it would be.

  * * * *

  Around eight that evening, we left our room to begin the night’s hunt. I took my Spec Plus and the .45, Rachel armed herself with the scalpel, and together we scoured the Falls for just the right victim.

  For a long while, our search proved fruitless. No one fit the mold we were looking for—too many families and honeymoon couples and not enough of the fun scum. Finally, after an hour and a half of searching, we settled on style over substance, deciding in this instance that killing someone in a cool way would be preferable to spending the entire evening seeking out someone we found innately offensive.

  With that idea in mind, we walked to the Hollywood Wax Museum. We paid their five-dollar admission price and made our way to the horror section. The place wasn’t very busy at all and, even though the lack of visitors afforded plenty of time to search out a suitable ambush spot, there were still enough of them to keep our failure to exit within a reasonable time from being noticed by the management.

  We agreed on the Manson Murders exhibit being the right place for our next kill and hid ourselves behind Sharon Tate’s couch. Minutes ticked by, and our first victims strolled into view—alone in the room and ripe for the picking.

  They both looked to be in their mid-twenties and pretty affluent—another of those honeymoon couples that frequent the falls year-round, always seeming to be everywhere at once. They walked the museum halls, doting on each other, and stopped to paw and kiss in front of the Manson exhibit.

  We waited while they finished their passionate little interlude. They turned to go on, and Rachel and I crept from our hiding place to move up behind them. With a quick thrust, I stabbed the man at the base of his skull, sending my blade deep into his brain. Rachel reached around the woman, and, plunging the scalpel into her throat, she slit her from ear to ear.

  My guy died almost instantly—his body dancing on my blade for a second before slumping down to hang lifeless. His wife, however, refused to go so easily. She stumbled forward, gurgling and rasping, and turned to face us. Her eyes stared, accusing the two of us, full of shock and horror and hate, while blood splurted from her throat. In the final instant of her life, her gaze left Rachel and me and came to rest on her now dead groom.

  Slowly, she knelt. I could almost see her hopes and dreams spill from her, as her new life, just started, came crashing down to its end.

  My blood burned hot as the feeling of perfection flooded back across my senses. I grabbed Rachel with my free hand and pulled her to me, kissing her with a fierce hunger. The woman at last succumbed to the inevitable and plopped forward to lay dead at our feet—her husband still dangling from my knife.

  Over the next two hours, we killed eight others, ambushing them each time from the same display. For a fleeting moment, I got paranoid and searched for security cameras. Thankfully, they hadn’t seen fit to put any in.

  Instead of hiding the bodies, we placed them around the Manson exhibit, turning it from the Tate-LaBianca murder scene to something more gruesome. No one seemed to notice the difference; chalk it up to Chuck’s bad rep.

  Before we left, we searched the bodies and collected a total of seven room keys and a little over five hundred dollars.

  For the rest of the night, we pilfered the victims’ hotel rooms, turning up an additional five thousand dollars and a leather jacket for Rachel before we called it a night.

  We trudged back to our own hotel room, exhausted from our evening’s work, and climbed into bed. Within minutes, we fell fast asleep.

  We slept in late the next morning, and by the time we got up we’d already missed the pandemonium. The cops had been swarming all over town, doing their best to ferret out seemingly guilty individuals while doing their damnedest not to scare the tourists. They failed at both.

  The newspapers had already learned of the “Wax Museum Massacre” and plastered the story across their front pages. The end result of it all was that most of the other tourists’ vacations ended prematurely and, for the better part of the day, Queen Victoria’s Falls became pretty much deserted.

  Rachel and I took it as an opportunity to do some sight seeing without having to fight the crowds. It was a fun time.

  My favorite jaunt of the day was at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum. Inside, a scale model of a hollowed out section of a Redwood tree caught my attention—being about the size of a small room and rather tacky-looking in its obvious fakeness. On the inside walls of the tree model, hundreds of people had signed their names and written little messages. Just for kicks, I wrote a small confession on the wall, admitting to all the murders we’d done before coming to Canada, listing names wherever possible. At the bottom of the confession, I signed my real name.

  I don’t know if anyone ever took the time to read it, but if they did, they can’t have told anyone important.

  I don’t think the falls are capable of staying deserted for very long. By that evening, a whol
e new batch of tourists arrived.

  We stayed at the falls for ten more days before we decided to ditch town. Every night we killed. With our new victims, however, we were far more careful, cleaning out their hotel rooms and moving their vehicles so that it seemed like they’d just gone home.

  On our fifth night there, we began a game to spice up the murders. We worked separately, coming up with a competition to see who could kill the widest variety of nationalities, using their passports and IDs as proof.

  I lost.

  I got a Germany, two Frances, a Sweden, Japan, America, and Canada (hey, they count). Rachel won with a Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan, England, America, Denmark, and Canada (yeah, she thought of it too).

  On the tenth day (two days after Christmas), we opted to go back to America. It wasn’t an easy decision to make—Canada had become pretty cozy—but it was a necessary one. We’d been leaving a trail of bodies behind us for nearly two weeks by then and sooner or later we’d have been caught.

  That’s one of the drawbacks to being a serious murderer: you’ve got to keep moving. Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, all those half-asses who dabbled—erratic and demented—in murder always stayed put. As a result, every one of them got caught. Those of us (and, as I came to find out later, there are a lot of us) who are serious about making murder our life’s vocation, stay on the move. It’s the first lesson that the good ones learn, and if they don’t learn it quickly they get caught.

  I figured that the Cadillac’s original owner had probably been found (or at least reported missing), so as a precaution I’d kept the car of the American guy I’d killed. I parked it in a busy lot across town, near enough to be reached in a rush while still being far enough away from its rightful owner’s motel room.

  I planned to ditch the SUV somewhere in town where it wouldn’t be noticed for a while, then switch over to the dead American’s car in order to get back across the border. Its former owner—Chip Jacobs, according to his driver’s license—had been from Illinois and, since I had a fake ID from Illinois, I took advantage of the coincidence. We’d seem less conspicuous if we ever got pulled over. To make the car an even better gamble, I took great pains to ensure that Chip’s body wouldn’t be discovered anytime soon—if ever.