by Terry Hayden
He began thinking about the type of job that he would look for when he had reached his new place of residence. A lot depended upon whether he relocated on the coast or inland. If he stayed on the coast, and he was leaning heavily in that direction, he was sure that he could get a job on the docks again. If he moved inland, he wanted some kind of an outside job. He loved to feel the Sun on his body. He wanted to feel the sweat running down his back, and he liked seeing other people, especially men, sweating too. It was exciting and sensual like other thingsthat he did with men.
He bypassed Georgetown without even stopping. He knew that a shipyard was there, but the city itself was not large enough to suit his needs. It was much too difficult to maintain any degree of anonymity if the population was not at least 25,000 people. He almost decided to drive through the city to see if it was as pretty as Myrtle Beach, but he wanted to get to Charleston before it was too late to look around.
He stopped just outside of the little town of McCellanville, to fill up with gasoline and stretch his legs. The young man who was pumping his gasoline was trying very hard to strike up a conversation. He asked William where he was from, and where he was going, and what he did for a living, and an endless series of what’s, and where’s, and why’s, and how comes, and what fors. William grew quite tired of answering questions.
“Why are you asking me so many questions kid?” William finally blurted out, interrupting the boy.
“Its for school.” he said. “ I’m doing a paper for civics class about the reasons why people travel the highways.”
“What do you mean traveling the highways?” Williamasked.
“You know. Where did they start from? Where were they going? What was their preferred method of transportation? If they ever picked up hitchhikers?”
“Why do you ask if they pick up hitchhikers?” Williamasked.
“Because I need a ride to Savannah, and I figure that if I ask enough questions to enough people, that I will finally get a ride with someone that I can trust.”
“How old are you kid?”
“I’m almost fifteen. Why do you ask?”
“Why does a boy almost fifteen need to go to Savannah?”
“To see my girlfriend who moved there two months ago. I miss her so much that I can’t sleep.”
“I see you problem kid, but do you have any idea how dangerous it is to hitchhike?”
“That’s why I ask so many questions. So are you going as far as Savannah?”
“No.” William replied. “I’m only going as far as Charleston.”
There was no way that he could have bothered with the kid, even as far as Charleston. The boy had a way of grinding on William’s nerves, and he would hate to have to kill someone so young, and innocent, and ignorant of the ways of the world. He paid for the gasoline and left the boy standing beside of the pumps. The boy would never realize how lucky that he was.
William never got the chance to study the roadmap back at the service station. He hoped that Charleston was not too far away. Before he had even driven ten miles a road sign came into view. It read Charleston, 37 miles. He would easily be there before dark.
A dark cloud was approaching the city from the north. Charleston was about to get a taste of the same medicine that William Hill had prescribed for Wilmington. God help them.
***********
Chapter Eight
William drove toward the city of Charleston like a conquering hero, and he was more than ready to claim his prize. He could tell as he approached from its outskirts that Charleston was going to be a beautiful city. It looked old but very well preserved. It looked historic but with all of the modern conveniences of Wilmington. Natural instinct guided him toward the water. Once there, he would be able to get his bearings and come up with a tentative plan.
He found himself in a section of the city called the Battery. He was surprised and impressed by the things that he saw. People were milling around everywhere in a carnival type atmosphere. If it was this festive on a week night, he could only imagine how exciting Charleston would be on the weekends. It might prove to be a perfect place for him to get lost in the crowd and play to his heart’s content.
With all of his worldly possessions William checked into the Blue Jay Motor Court to spend a few nights. He would look for a more permanent residence after he found a job. The motel was located in a part of the old city that had once seen better days, but he was not really concerned about safety because he had the great equalizer hidden in his boot. It was well after dark by the time that he was settled in his room, but pangs of hunger sent him back into the blackness of night. At first he decided to walk to a restaurant but the only faces that he saw outside his room were black. For the first time in a long time he felt out of place and uncomfortable. Even though he was carrying his gun in his boot, he decided that it might be best to take the car to find a restaurant. He had nothing against people of color, but he was not used to being the one who was in the minority. He finally found an all night diner with almost as many white faces as black faces showing through the windows. He hurried inside, ate a quick hamburger, and drove straight back to the motel. Once he was safely inside his room, he bolted the door and pushed the dresser against it for extra security. He decided that the first thing that he was going to do the next morning was to find another place to stay, even if he had to pay more money.
He tossed and turned and when he finally did nod off, his sleep was strained and restless. As the Sun’s rays were peeping through his window the next morning, he was out of bed and getting ready to leave. The car was packed and ready before the motel’s office opened. He was glad that he had only paid one night’s rent because he did not want to wait around for a refund. As he drove out of the motel parking lot he made up his mind that if the day did not vastly improve over the night before, that he would be having second thoughts about settling in Charleston.
He drove straight to the part of the city that made him feel the most comfortable, the Battery. All of the way there he thought about Wilmington. Suddenly he missed the security of his old room at the boarding house, and the familiarity that he had acquired for the city that had been his home for well over a year. He could hardly believe that he had been there so long because the time had passed quickly. It was in that city that he came into his own understanding of the ways of the world, and his best means of dealing with his problems. If he lived to be an old man he would always look back upon his time in Wilmington as being the good old days.
He hoped that it was only the newness of Charleston that was making him feel so ill at ease. He had forgotten that he felt the same way when he first arrived in Wilmington, and Wilkesboro before that. Maybe all that it would take was a little time and patience for his feelings to improve.
He parked the car close to a crowded, bustling city park because he felt like it was a safe place to leave his belongings. He wanted to walk around so that he could get a better feel for the city first hand. He wanted to feel the heat from the Sun on the back of his neck, and to smell the pungent aromas that bombarded his nose, and hear all of the different noises that competed for his attention, and taste the salty air of the city that was close to the ocean. He would never admit that he was a bit of a romantic, but deep down he wished that he had someone like Mona to share his new experiences. Suddenly the realist side of his psyche took over and suggested with the growling of his stomach that it was time for him to get something to eat, and then look into the job situation. Even though he had enough money saved to take his time in finding a job, his frugality would not allow him to dip very far into his nest egg.
He stepped inside a coffee shop to get a quick breakfast and read the local newspaper. He skipped the headlines and went directly to the Help Wanted ads. He was pleased to find many jobs available on the docks, and wages that were higher than in Wilmington. He discoveredthe reason why wages were
higher when he skipped over to the section of the paper with rooms for rent. Rentals were at least a third more expensive as they were in Wilmington, and four times more than in Wilkesboro.
As an experienced dock worker, he could expect to be paid well in Charleston. He went to the busiest dock in the harbor first. It was bustling with activity and William thought that he knew the reason. He read the newspaper every day and he knew that the world situation was getting deadly serious because of Nazi, and Fascist, and Japanese aggression. He soon found out that ships were leaving the Port of Charleston, bound for Europe and the coast of Africa with crucial supplies that could not be attained anywhere else but America. There was a constant threat of attack to the ships from the Axis powers, but especially Hitler’s Navy.
When he inquired about a job he was met with subdued interest. There were plenty of jobs available but only to applicants with impeccable records. Any kind of history of crime or mental illness or drug or alcohol abuse, or any kind of deviant behavior would automatically disqualify any potential applicants. He was asked point blank before he was even allowed to fill out an application, if he fell within any of those particular high risk categories. He of course answered absolutely no to all of the categories. Then he was asked where he was from. He said Virginia. He was asked if he would submit to having his fingerprints taken and submit to a polygraph test. Reluctantly he agreed to having his fingerprints taken, but he emphatically said ‘no’, to a polygraph test when it was explained to him what a polygraph test was. He told the man that he did not need a job that badly. It was explained to him that the reason for all of the added security measures was fear of sabotage or espionage, and even though the United States was thousands of miles away from military aggression, there was a constant fear of enemy spies and terrorists. There had already been arrests in New York and Los Angeles, and Charleston was not immune to potential criminal activity.
The dock manager agreed to let William fill out anapplication because he had a good feeling about him. The man thought that William had an honest looking face and he knew from experience that men from Virginia were usually very hard workers. The application form was very easy to fill out. After all, they were looking for men who could use their arms and backs and legs, not necessarily their brains. His interview was conducted before he filled out the application, and he knew that he had a job immediately after he signed his name on the dotted line. When he was asked if he had a preference about first, second, or third shift, he chose second. He would start work the very next day at three o’clock in the afternoon. The two men shook hands to seal the deal, and William left the docks with a big smile on his face. His next mission would be to find a room. He almost felt at home already.
Chapter Nine
Time passed even faster in Charleston than it did in Wilmington for William. Before he knew it 1939 was drawing to an end. William loved Charleston. He loved his job, and he even liked his expensive room at the boarding house. Working second shift had proven to be his very best choice too. He had the best of both worlds at work and after work. The city never went to sleep from the docks to the Battery to the downtown business district. He felt just like a kid with a new toy.
Not even two weeks passed before the first man disappeared from the Battery. He was very similar in appearance to the men in Wilmington whose lives ended so abruptly, but he died in a much different manner. When the authorities found his body, he had been beaten and strangled. His naked body had been in the water for at least three days prior to its discovery, but nothing about his disappearance or death led the police to even suspect that the waterfront killer had moved from Wilmington.
Meanwhile in Wilmington things were relatively back to normal. The extra night patrols had ceased since anescaped mental patient from Raleigh had been captured about two weeks after William left the city. Even though they never found a gun, the man’s actions and statements convinced the police that he was the waterfront killer. He admitted to everything that they asked him and he made a perfect scapegoat. He was never given a trial and hardly anything was printed in the newspapers. William never read anything at all about the captured man. He would have really enjoyed the story.
The editor of the Charlotte newspaper was not convinced that the killer had been found and the reward was never paid to anyone. But the killings had stopped and the people who made the decisions, made damned sure that the escaped mental patient never again saw the light of day. The case was closed on the Waterfront Killer in Wilmington, North Carolina. None of that really mattered to William Hill because he would never be back to their fair city again.
************
The holiday season of 1939 brought feelings out in William that he had kept hidden for years. He saw a poor family walking down the street, and the children were lined up like little stair steps behind their parents. He suddenly thought about his own family, and he felt sentimental about his childhood and adolescence in the mountains of Virginia. On a whim he purchased two Christmas cards with family themes on the covers, with the intention of mailing them to his own family. He sent one to Jewel Ridge Mountain, the other to Alleghany County.
He would have never sent the cards if he had known that his daddy and Eunice had been reunited. When Josh and Joseph visited their father over the holidays, they took the Christmas card to show him. Alan could not go because he was tied down at the general store. When that card was placed beside of the card that was received by Eunice and Samantha, everything down to the signatures and the notes were identical. It was a complete revelation to the entire family. Tom Hill wept tears of relief to know that his youngestson was alive and well. Josh and Joseph were surprised that William was not dead or in a mental institution. But Eunice was the most shocked of all the family. She discovered that the boy that she knew as William Blevins was actually her long lost nephew from Virginia. She could not understand why he would keep such an important fact from her, because she realized that he had to know that she was his aunt.
There was no return address on the envelopes, only a Charleston, South Carolina postmark. The family hoped that since he had finally made contact with them, that he continue to do so.
************
Another historic event took place in December of 1939. The movie Gone With the Wind, opened to packed houses in theaters all across the country. The lines outside of the theaters in Charleston were long for every showing. William had every intention of seeing the highly acclaimed movie on a lazy Saturday evening, but the highly suggestive behavior of a stranger that he met on the way to the theater, completely changed his plans. A walk to the Battery led to a walk under a lonely pier, which led to the violent death of an otherwise lonely stranger who was looking for companionship on a lazy Saturday evening.
William never saw the movie. It seemed that distractions or diversions of some sort or another always interfered with his plans. He did come up with an alternate title to his own little theatrical performance however, on that lazy Saturday evening. Instead of Gone With the Wind, his performance could be titled Out With the Tides, because the stranger’s body was not found for several days after his violent death.
It would take the discovery of a total of five bodies over a period of the same number of months before someone in the Charleston Police Department realized that a vicious killer was on the loose in their fair city. When an investigator finally lined up the morgue photos of the five dead men, he realized that all of the victims looked very much alike probably before, but definitely after they were killed. The patterns of their injuries were almost identical. Each of the men died approximately one month after the last victim, or one month before the next victim. The revelation sent shock waves throughout the police department. They wondered how long it would be before someone in the press figured out the patterns too.
It happened with the next appearance of a body. The badly beaten, nude man washed ashore just as a group of school children were v
isiting a city park. It was a sight that most of the children would never forget even after they grew to adulthood. The teacher of the class was the wife of a reporter with the Charleston Gazette newspaper, and when he did a little bit of digging around, he dug up a prize winning story.
The newspaper stressed the point that the police had to have known about the pattern of similar murders for months, but no effort was made to inform the public. Lives might have been saved according to the article, if the police had been more conscientious in their duties. The Mayor and the Police Commissioner were embarrassed and humiliated to have been kept in the dark by the police. Heads would surely roll if an arrest was not made in the near future.
Again, just as before, William was very flattered by the article. He wondered if they would give him a catchy name like the one that he earned in Wilmington. He began buying the newspaper everyday again to enjoy with his breakfast. It was just like old times, except in a better place.
When the authorities in Wilmington read about the killings in Charleston, they were sympathetic to the victims and their families. However, there was no possible way that they were going to reopen the case of the Waterfront Killer. They were completely satisfied that their killer was behind bars. They emphasized that even though the victims and circumstances were similar between the two cities, the killer’s methods were totally different. If there was a connection at all, it was because the killer in Charleston wasa copycat who got the idea from the stories out of Wilmington.