by Brian Hodge
"Soon." She repeated, busying herself with fluffing napkins into a wooden holder cut into the shape of a blue duck. Her nails had been painted coral, but the color was chipping away on each finger. "Would either of you gentlemen like some coffee? Mountain Grown, the best kind."
She said this with a smile as Stelfreeze glanced towards the hallway, pushing herself away from the subject of her daughter's man friends. Mama Tomei busied herself at the counter.
Rexer looked at the tablecloth of fractal images, discovering several profiles of what could be construed as silver men smoking corn cob pipes.
"I thought times like these were made for Taster's Choice," he said to himself. On the television, the ending bass strings for Barney Miller, the shot of the Manhattan skyline. The WGN announcer then related how Davenport recalls the first time she met Furillo, in the next devastating episode of Hill Street Blues. Late night reruns.
Rexer suddenly wanted the evening to fast-forward. "I have to use your bathroom, Ma'am... Mama." He cleared his throat.
She told him "firs' door on left, down hallway."
There was a mirror above the kitchen sink; passing it, Rexer looked at his reflection, seeing grey hairs like cobwebs in his mustache for the first time.
Let Stelfreeze sweat it out of her, he thought as he moved down the hallway, the walls bare on either side of him. Yet he still tried not to focus on any single direction for fear of whatever hellish scene the darkness held. She thought his partner was of high recommendation and maybe Stel could be casual about it.
But Rexer was downright claustrophobic.
The hall floor was carpeted a sickly orange and magenta, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the slim cop saw shadows of branches dancing against living room bay windows. Again, as is expected in northside apartments, the bathroom light was a metal chain dangling to the right of the medicine cabinet. The pull chains always reminded him of the dog tags he wore around his neck, as a member of the Air Force Reserves. Rexer always felt a sense of security when he touched those tags.
He turned into the bathroom, reaching for the right spot. The white bulb flickered on, and he looked at himself in the mirror briefly. The toilet seat was broken, and frayed, yellowed tape was wrapped around the connective pieces.
He urinated in silence.
But he also noticed the muted amber light, a hazy cone above the stairwell landing. Then he heard a soft moan from upstairs. A female moan.
It took him less than a second to decide. Turning the bathroom light back on, he gently closed the door with hopes that Mama Tomei might think he was simply having a slow bowel movement.
Assuredly looking forward to the excitement, is all.
Rexer counted twelve steps and turned right at the top of the landing, finding himself facing several of those infamous velvet dog paintings where they all stared at you with their mournful eyes, lost dogs who gazed upon Rexer in a way that made him think of old Polish women praying the stations of the cross at St. Mary of Naz.
The upstairs hallway was L-shaped, and the slice of the room visible to Rexer put the woman on the bed in profile from the knees up. She was nude. The room itself was immaculate and the woman on the bed, Mama Tomei's daughter, had a head growing out of her emaciated ribcage. Rexer had to bite on his palm until he drew blood.
Her body was so pale that he wondered if she had ever seen daylight, felt the direct sun on her stupefied body.
Celandine Tomei's face was not pretty. High cheekbones and thick hair in a widow's peak, a crooked nose and mouth that resembled a paper clip twisted by someone with caffeine nerves.
A sound from deep within her grimaced mouth told him that someone else was indeed in the room. The grunt was nowhere near what he had heard from the stairwell below. Was it Valent...?
But he couldn't step into the room farther, he could only stare at the head. It had sparse black hair and was almost a pinhead, as if part of the connective skull plates were missing. The head rested against Celandine's breasts as though they were deflated pillows. He could smell Valent's cologne, damnit!
The head turned towards Rexer, not of its own volition. It simply fell into the crook of the girl's arm. Orange drool formed around the mouth's gum line. Then everything started happening fast, the worst of it being the sound of a man's slacks being zipped up just beyond sight in the room. That sound would keep him awake at nights for weeks to come.
He backed up, his palm against a small display case. The movement disturbed the doily dangling over the edge. Looking down, Rexer dry-gagged as he saw rows of gelatin eyes displayed in a cheap jewelry case. Some of the pupils had gold flecks, other were solid blue or hazel, and he knew he had to get out of there.
Moving down the stairs as quietly as he could, Rexer almost shrieked when he saw Stelfreeze standing in the hallway.
"Let's go." Was all he said, not even bothering to nod at Mama Tomei as they moved past her to the door. Rexer thought she looked ashamed.
The thing was: Valent wasn't getting payoffs. He was going there to do what everybody else did, only at cheaper rates. Because he was a cop and could close it up anytime he wanted.
It was like having your cake and eating it too. Have sex with Celandine and strangle the head, tear at the skin, ravage the face. All without killing anything, because the Tomeis' decency was long buried.
Rexer thought of the jewel case of eyeballs. They passed a row of two-flats that displayed either plastic palm trees, plastic crucifix, or election photos of Richard M. Daley in the front windows.
Thunder rolled in the distance.
"The money mostly goes for reconstructive surgery," Stelfreeze said. Both wondered what they would say to Valent. The heavens suddenly opened and the April rain came down.
Chicago:
12 May 1994
The Land of the Free
This should not be construed as a cautionary tale, nor is it a complete work of fiction. I might embellish at times, but I stick to the facts. I've murdered thirty-seven people in three states without any real pattern. But I'm living in the Midwest, and Illinois police don't even know the area codes for Indiana, of this I'm certain.
But I digress. I tell you early on that I, shall we say, enhance certain aspects of my serial murders because I am going to one day write my memoirs. I don't have any fancy catch-all name, as I said, the police haven't even connected the shotgun murders of the Hammond gas station attendants with those in Milwaukee. So, when my memoirs come out, everyone will know me by my serial killer name.
Every Mother's Son.
I have held several jobs in my life, and currently I do skip-tracing and field collections for a prominent law firm in the Loop. Doing the field work takes me to the places that I can find my victims. The skip-tracing is something that fascinates me, pure and simple. I'd do that even if it was my only career. If you are unfamiliar with the term, the job I do for my boss is find the people who skip out on their bills or court dates, whatever. I run credit checks, lie to their family members, scamming them outright by offering them a free credit card. Like that. The greedier someone is, the more information he will give up. Any lawyer will tell you this.
Now, I'm not a thrill-killer, mind you. I'm not quite sure what my motives are, or what my "deep-down" pattern is, the one that only infamous prison psychopaths can discern. I am assuming that writing my memoirs will help me decipher it all.
For a while now, I have had a specific motive in my killings. And this also involves greed. I mention that you will have to take what follows at face value, because the anger behind my motivations, that end of it never seemed to reach the media. Not my murders, no. The money lovers in the land of the free. I'm talking about the women who thought that their military husbands were going to be killed during the recent Gulf War.
They could care less if the government provided death benefits or not, the women simply accepted power of attorney on their beloved's allotment, which included first, imminent danger pay, and then, combat pay. Minus a
small amount taken out for C-rations.
They didn't use the money to pay their bills. Some went back home to mommy and daddy, others fucked the first guy who claimed he had a hard-on. Just a few days ago, the Tribune ran an article about a guy from the 101st Airborne out of Fort Campbell, he came home and found his wife screwing a National Guardsman and shot them both dead in some trailer park in Tennessee. Bitch had the decency of writing him a Dear John letter first. Just never expected him home so soon, if at all.
I think too many people expected the ground war to go on a lot longer than it did. Myself, I thought that Tel Aviv was sure to be nuked. And don't get me wrong about getting down, as it is, on women as villains. I just never heard any stories of nurses on the HSMS Comfort coming home to find their husband shacking up with some truck stop mavis.???
No, I kill whoever I damn well please. Don't you know me, I'm the guy next door. Every Mother's Son. Let me backtrack. I am a very stable man. Maybe a bit emotional at times, retrospective and wistful when
Hollywood celebrities who were always a part of my life had died. Sammy Davis Jr. Michael Landon. I am also very steadfast in my beliefs.
Not hypocritical, the way bus stop zealots are about their religion. I believe in jungle justice if the death penalty is not good enough. Sure, there's a one percent chance that the guy is innocent, but shit does happen. Someone's going to have to eat it sooner or later. That guy who might get out of killing the cop on the north side last Mother's Day, some bullshit about a coerced confession, they let him free on a technicality, I'd kill him. In a New York minute.
Or that guy from the sixties, the one who made it a girl's night out for the eight nurses. I'd put pins in his eyes and I'm not even one of the family members.
This is not the land of the free. Everything has a price.
And patriotism. Now that is a funny thing with me. I'm certainly not a redneck, but I hold the concept of the American flag dear. I sing the national anthem at Wrigley Field, hold my cap over my heart, even though the cap says THE JOHN DILLINGER DIED FOR YOU SOCIETY on the front. I was completely against that kid who made the flag part of his exhibit at the Art Institute, to be stepped on by the curious and the frustrated. Step on this, you dumb fuck.
The flag is like, well, like talking political parties or religion or abortion. Everyone is set in their ways on certain times. The televised death penalty thing, too, but that's changing. The American public is gruesome. In private, they are greedy and I can always find ways to make them suffer.
And the only way you can get a Pepsi drinker to buy a Coke is if he can't buy a Pepsi at the fast-food place where he's dining.
Patriotism. I believed in the Gulf War. Old men sending young men to die, same as always. No way you could change that either. I wanted to see Sodamn Insane blown to bits. Or jerked to Jesus by his own people.
I use a lot of different names at my skip-tracing job. It makes the lie come that much quicker when you're dealing with different clients, different deadbeat accounts. Henry Desmond, Sid Degnan, Jerry Sinclair. Hell, on the ones with meat, I even try out the name Scott Fitzgerald on them, like they've read literature. I'm whoever you want me to be, just like a table-dancing Cal City hooker.
There was a specific set of accounts my employer had with a client who sold CLEP books and Officer's Testing manuals to young couples in the various armed forces. Eighty percent of his business was to men and women who barely qualified as E-3's, Private First Class, and they were expected to pay forty-seven dollars a month when their gross income was hovering around ten thousand yearly.
I was Henry Desmond on these accounts, age and marital status varying according to which sympathetic, pathetic soul was on the phone. They said the salesman pressured them, I said impulse buying is a disease. My wife blows money on the Home Shopping club and what am I going to do with a ceramic pig flower bucket? I say it like my wife buys this shit. I'm not married.
But I'm a noble guy at heart, just trying to do my job. Like the guys who went to the Persian Gulf to fight and maybe die. The partners in the firm thought of all these debtors getting combat pay bonuses tacked on to their measly five hundred a month income, and shit, we were in the catbird's seat.
No more listening to someone whining that you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. We'd maybe be getting lump payments, possibly BIFS — balance in fulls — from the front line men from Camp Pendleton and Fort Huachuca. The Signal Battalions were the first called up last September, after the infantry grunts. Hell, I was hearing about things before it hit the newspapers, a guy's wife at Point Mugu, California, told me how the Navy gave him three day's notice and a form will and testament to fill out.
I started calling the country Saudi America just for kicks.
Let me jump ahead a bit, save you from reading a lot of piddling details. There's an account we're sitting on, the principal alone is close to two thousand, because the guy's due to return from the Gulf any freaking day. They have a manifest office that you call, they have updates every forty-eight hours on arrivals, kind of like ships berthing at a naval shipyard. The wife has blown the trailer park they were living in, the guy was stationed at Fort Monroe, Kentucky. I felt sorry for the guy, the credit bureau I pulled from TRW showed that he was even behind on Leroy Jewelers. Engagement ring or wedding ring, you know the account wasn't for dinner cuff links.
Once there's a return, the individual gets shuttled around until a unit is reactivated. Lot of phone work, busy signals, yet another number to try, finally bingo. He's at the one-five-forty deuce, I get him on the line, he tells me — well, he tells Henry Desmond — that's he‘s filing for a ten thousand dollar debtor's loan with the help of base legal. Wife cut out, like I already knew. Told me that she was living with an old high school friend in Gainesville, Florida, which was something I didn't know.
Coincidentally, that wasn't me down there in Gainesville, killing all those college kids last summer. I think I know who did it, though. You pick up on how people in your line of work handle things, where they might show up. Seems to me, he's in New Orleans these days. Hey, wouldn't it be a pisser if the real killer was the ghost of Ted Bundy? He was executed only a few miles away, you know.
That guy at Fort Monroe, he told me that another guy had his girlfriend do the same thing to him. A first sergeant had to convoy it into Kuwait city to tell him he was getting a new asshole ripped out. I told him to tell the other guy to slap his girlfriend around a few times for me, even though there was no money to be collected from it for the firm. Shit, the bitch deserves every crack.
I mean, myself, I'll maim or kill anybody I damn well please. And I wasn't fighting a goddamn war, like these boys were. Short as the war in the Gulf was, its ramifications will continue. Of this, I am certain. And the country might gain a few more serial killers and mass murderers. Of this, I am equally certain.
Over the next few weeks, I heard more sad songs, Henry Desmond heard more sad songs, that is. Jimmie Dvorak, the guy who is Every Mother's Son, had other plans and therefore didn't hear the songs.
All these women thinking that America is the land of the free. Some of them only sixteen when they signed the contract. Younger than Penthouse centerfolds.
A month back, I had to go out to a suburb of Detroit for a wedding. I really wanted to garrote a few hitchhikers along I-94 near Paw Paw, but my heart wasn't in it. I was still thinking this shit was making the paper, about the spouses not paying the bills. It was all welcome home, yellow ribbon, these colors don't run shit. Well, blood runs. I had to deviate from my pattern, that was all there was to it.
That guy I mentioned I think is working out of New Orleans now, there's been a few mutilations near Gretna that give me the heebie-jeebies because it's just the thing he would do. A young hustler named Willy Sid, sometimes thrills with a gal goes by the name of Lisa Sestina.
Think I'll stop by and look him up, he usually stays at the Clarion. Compare notes, do the old drinking buddies routine. Ask him if he's still sendin
g vulvas to a Baton Rouge detective named Remy Petitt. Talk some trash.
But along the way...
There's this girl in Leesville, she had power of attorney on her husband's checking account. Cleaned him out better than Imodium Deluxe. I picked myself up this cute little tool from a guy in the projects. A big silver tube with three separate prongs on it, the gang members use it for abortions and castrative reprisals.
Maybe I'll bring along something to give Willy Sid to mail on to his detective friend. Wonder if she'll make any noises if I don't shut her up first, with a gag or otherwise.
I mean, they think it's the land of the free, right? Shouldn't it also be the home of the brave?
Chicago:
30 September 1991
Every Mother's Son
I was surprised to hear from her, I'll tell you for true. Chanyn Kimble. My boy, my boy. Chocolate eyes with flecks of gold or beige was the first thing everybody always noticed. Then the nose, the flaring nostrils. Adamant chin. Chanyn Kimble, just saying the name aloud, this twenty-six-year-old vixen, was like listening close to the graceful arc of a wrecking ball into an abandoned tenement, brought back the memories.
Left a message on my beeper; I was cruising the Stevenson, didn't recognize the callback number. Pulled off at Damen, more out of curiosity mixed with boredom, called from the Joan of Archer bar. "Hello, Chanyn Kimble," she said. Jesus Las Vegas, I thought.
Chanyn told me that she had heard from McClellan that I was back in town. Bob McClellan was the one who had initially introduced us, this was back in '87. I was barely a novice at my current profession; back then, some might have shook their heads in disbelief, others, more involved spiritually with their work, could easily have laughed off my activities as a type of hobby. A thrill killer who gets bored, like I was there on Interstate 55, says fuck it, and chalks it up to a fling with infamy, acting cocky, the ultimate one-night stand.