Head Shot

by Dan Ames

  Now, she sat back and tried to close her eyes, but the rumbling in her stomach forced them open. A bag of pretzels was just not doing the trick.

  A tormented scream caused Carrie to jump. This baby is going to be an opera singer, she thought to herself.

  Chapter 12

  They choose themselves.

  He had very little say in the process. Oh sure, he thought to himself with a smile, he wasn’t exactly an innocent bystander. But ultimately the selection process began and ended with them. Maybe they chose to display their bodies in a certain way, inviting judgment on their morality, or they showed up just when his gnawing hunger couldn’t take it anymore.

  That’s why some of them apologized to him. A few of his girls had used the very last moments of their time on Earth, the few scant breaths they had left in their lungs, to apologize to him, to accept the responsibility for everything that had just happened, and what was destined to occur at the brutal end of their short lives.

  If they didn’t have a say in the matter, then why did they express remorse?

  Joe shrugged his shoulders, loosened his neck muscles. He was hungry. Lisa Young no longer did it for him. She was old news.

  Now, he arrived at a quaint little park, stopped the car and waited a moment, studying the houses on the other side of the park. He saw a few lights but no one was out and about.

  The dome light was long gone. He’d removed it years ago so when he opened the door the car remained dark.

  He shut it quietly and didn’t bother locking it. The car was so ordinary and unimpressive that no one would think of stealing it. Plus, he didn’t plan on spending a whole lot of time here. He’d get what he needed and be gone.

  Only one dog barked at him, a little toy dog from the sound of it. Not loud enough to attract any real attention. He made his way to the house, to the address he had discovered quite easily.

  The key to everything he had learned was confidence.

  Act like you belong.

  And people will assume you belong.

  It was all about the walk. Shoulders back, head up. A bit of a swagger, even.

  He turned casually into the driveway and walked to the back of the house. There was no motion light. He already knew that from previous reconnaissance trips.

  Joe slipped along the back wall and stood near the small patio that led to the back door.

  This was the only tricky part.

  His next girlfriend, as he liked to call them, was no stranger to crime. It was quite possible she had an alarm system. And he hadn’t been able to determine if that was the case.

  So now he slid along the wall and looked through the windows for any sign of a keypad.

  There was a small kitchen table, a hallway with a bench and an umbrella holder. No lights. No keypads.

  He slid his sleeve over his fist and punched out the lowest square near the back door, his body tense for the sound of an alarm. Nothing happened.

  He reached through and undid the back lock. Joe stepped quickly through the door and shut it behind him. He paused a moment to wait for any sign of an alarm or a neighbor’s light suddenly coming to life.

  After a few moments, he decided no one had seen him make his entrance. He went back to the door, and cleaned out the broken pieces of glass. Joe knew from his research that she typically entered the side door, ignoring the front and the back. The house had no garage, so she parked, opened her car door, and went directly into the house via the door on the side.

  But he rarely took chances so he cleaned up the broken glass, relocked the door and moved inside the house.

  The smell of perfume, mixed with a slightly tangy scent of female habitation, aroused him.

  There were plenty of shadows in the house.

  She wouldn’t notice one more.

  Chapter 13

  The law and plenty of cannabis made life worth living for Harriet Bednarski.

  Candles flickered in the dark living room of the lower flat on Milwaukee's East side. Delicate swirls of incense smoke wafted across the room and along with the bouncing rhythm of the Grateful Dead.

  Harriet was somewhat fond of her neighborhood, but of course, she hadn’t come to Wisconsin by choice, that was for sure. She had tried to pass the bar exam in four different states but failed miserably in each attempt. Finally, Harriet succeeded in passing Wisconsin's, which had a reputation among struggling law students as being one of the easiest in the country.

  Harriet lit her bong and inhaled the bitter smoke from the weed in her pipe.

  She was looking forward to seeing her best friend Carrie who was flying in from New Jersey. Harriet knew she couldn’t get too high, as she had to be able to drive to the airport and pick her up. But with a few minutes to spare, she sank into the cushion on her futon and crossed her legs. She felt the faint buzz of the high-quality pot surround her brain.

  She was tired from chasing clients all day. She handed her card out on buses, at bars, parties, to neighbors, anyone she ran into her card was out and in their hands in a matter of seconds. Her father, himself a successful lawyer, told his wayward daughter that any good company always has a solid business plan which would also include a good marketing plan.

  Harriet had come up with such a plan.

  It consisted of hanging out in seedy bars whose patrons most likely had or were likely to have brushes with the law, in which case they could turn to someone they knew, trusted, and got high with on a regular basis. In many cases, Harriet was just the gal they were looking for. Not some stiff, starched corporate boy in a dark suit and slicked back hair. They wanted a lawyer who could tell them what to say to the judge and then go out in the courthouse parking lot and roll a big doobie.

  She unfolded her legs and slowly stood, the buzz now graduating to gently rolling waves. If Harriet Bednarski had her way, the phrase would never have been "to get high," it would've been "to float one," because that's exactly what it felt like to her.

  She floated her way across the room and turned the stereo up slightly to compensate for the deeper buzz she was getting and then stepped into the kitchen.

  Her bloodshot eyes never saw it coming.

  A fist lashed out of the darkened doorway, smashed into her mouth, crushed her lips, and sent blood spurting out and down her chin. A second blow connected on the point of her chin and she saw blackness and heard her head hit the floor.

  A face leered down at her, a face with one eye looking off slightly in the wrong direction.

  It was a face she recognized.

  A kick to the ribs forced Harriet Bednarski to close her eyes as she felt something give inside and she knew she was seriously hurt.

  She felt the intruder tie her legs together, and then she was pushed onto her stomach and her hands were tied behind her back. Her heart raced inside her chest and she spat out a mouthful of blood.

  She felt anger rising inside her through the cloud of marijuana still fogging her brain as she kicked and struggled to get loose but the rope binding her arms and legs held tight. Another kick to the ribs and she groaned inwardly, sensing what was to come.

  Harriet felt a hand on her head and then she was jerked upright by the hair as a fist slammed into her mouth again, sending blood gushing from her nose. Her head slumped forward and her chin sank onto her chest.

  The music was still bouncing along on the stereo and Harriet felt each beat of the bass drum reverberate painfully in her head.

  She lifted her head up and looked at the man now standing before her.

  "Joe..." she said.

  Harriet saw the man flinch at the sound of her voice.

  "Joe...why are you doing this, what do you want?" she asked.

  The man stepped forward and placed a hand on top of Harriet Bednarski's head, then caressed her hair and ran a hand down the side of the young lawyer's face.

  A finger trailed down and outlined Harriet’s lips, caressing them.

  From behind her assailant's body, Harriet saw a blue-handled needle
nose pliers emerge, held tightly in the man's hand. At the same time, she felt the hand on top of her head tighten in an ironlike grip as her head was pulled violently backward. As she felt the metal grip of the tool clamp her lip against her front tooth, Harriet Bednarski prayed to a God she didn’t believe in that she would pass out.

  She did.

  Eventually.

  Chapter 14

  Carrie DeMarinis stood outside the baggage claim with an expression that caused other travelers to give her a wide berth.

  Harriet Bednarski was her best friend, but she also loved to party. Carrie knew that. But she was surprised that her friend had apparently forgotten about her.

  She used her cell phone to call Harriet again, but there was still no answer. Carrie blew out a long breath, trying to calm herself, and not think about the fact that it had been almost an hour since she'd gotten off the plane.

  Slowly, her anger began to turn to fear. What if Harriet had overdosed? What if she was lying face down in her own puke, some hashish on the table, her face pale and eyes staring blankly at the carpet?

  Carrie pushed the vile images aside. The sign ahead had arrows directing passengers to ground transportation. She followed them and walked down another long sidewalk to an escalator that deposited her in front of a long row of rental car booths. She looked to her left, spotted a taxicab sign and walked through a set of automatic doors to a row of taxis waiting on the street.

  A slight breeze stirred Carrie's long black hair as she got into the nearest cab, gave the driver the address, then settled back into the seat, pulling out her pocketbook to make sure she actually had enough money for the fare.

  One time, she and a friend had gone into Manhattan and taken a cab across town only to be shocked by the thirty-three dollar fare. They were left with six dollars between them and a long walk back to the bus station for the return trip to Newark.

  The taxi merged onto I-94 headed downtown.

  They passed over neighborhoods of small houses packed together, and they reminded Carrie of her own neighborhood back home. They topped out on a bridge and Carrie got her first glimpse of Milwaukee. Not a bad skyline, she thought, as well as the beautiful blue of Lake Michigan to the right.

  A smell like sour bread wafted into the window and the driver told Carrie it was from a factory that made yeast for the breweries in town. The smell made Carrie's stomach churn.

  They exited the freeway and made their way to a quiet street lined by duplexes with the occasional single family home nestled between their bigger neighbors. The taxi pulled up outside the address Carrie had given him and she thought she saw a person moving around inside.

  The fear instantly vanished and anger took its place. She couldn’t believe Harriet. Too stoned to remember to pick her up.

  Carrie paid the man and got her small bag from the trunk. She walked up the sidewalk leading to the house, set her bag down, and rang the doorbell. There was no answer.

  She could hear the stereo going inside.

  "Harriet," she yelled, "open the goddamn door!"

  Nothing.

  "You are pissing me off!” she yelled.

  The door remained shut.

  She tried the doorknob and it turned all the way. The door cracked an inch and she pushed it open.

  The smell of pot attacked her senses and she stepped inside.

  "Harriet, what the hell–"

  Something shot out from behind the door but Carrie yanked her head back instinctively, and the blow merely grazed the point of her chin.

  She grabbed the arm and pulled it toward her and her right hand automatically bunched itself into a tight fist. The man behind the door was pulled off-balance and Carrie threw everything she had into an overhand right that hit its target on the mark, the bridge of the man's nose, and he sank to his knees.

  Still holding his arm, she reared back and kicked him as hard as she could in his solar plexus, the sharp point of her pump sinking in hard, and she heard the whoosh of air being expelled from his lungs.

  And then she saw Harriet lying in a pool of blood, her face a mess of blood and torn flesh, and she ran.

  Her heels pounded down the pavement until one shoe flew off into the air and she kicked the other one off. She didn't know if the man was chasing her but she imagined she could feel his hot breath on her neck.

  Halfway down the block she saw a house that had its light on, and she saw through the living room's picture window an old man and an old woman watching television. She pounded on the door, then took a chance and tried the latch.

  It was unlocked.

  She sprang into the house just as the old man, in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, jumped out of his chair as his wife began struggling to get up from hers.

  Carrie slammed the door shut behind her, found the dead bolt and rammed it home.

  She pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911.

  Chapter 15

  He thought about burning the place down. Joe had read once that Mafia criminals did that when they killed someone. Just torched the whole place. But Joe hadn’t killed anyone at his apartment. Well, technically he hadn’t, but he’d had a few trophies here from time to time, he thought. Besides, if the cops showed up at his place looking for evidence, it was already over.

  Standing in the bathroom, he looked again at his face in the mirror. The bridge of his nose was only slightly swollen from where that bitch had sneaked in a punch. There was maybe a slight discoloration under one eye but he knew his nose hadn’t been broken.

  Just a bruise, same as the kick in the stomach he’d gotten. Who would have guessed that a friend would drop by the lawyer’s house? Joe had scouted the place and knew the woman kept strange hours and he’d never seen her once have people over to the apartment.

  More proof that his hobby was not a perfect science and that there would always be risk, no matter how much preparation was involved.

  In the end, he didn’t feel like burning down the apartment. He would have to go get some gasoline, douse the whole place, and what if a cop just happened to be driving by when he touched it off?

  No, that wouldn’t work.

  But he would be sure to take the most damning items he had.

  Ferkovich gathered a few of the items in question, and brought them out to the vehicle he had borrowed from work.

  His car was no longer an option.

  Ferkovich dumped the boxes into the back of the truck with more force than he had intended. He realized he was suddenly very angry. Why were they doing this to him? It wasn’t his fault, none of it was.

  The rage bubbled inside him and he flexed his hands as he walked back into his apartment.

  He would need to find another girl as soon as possible. The satisfaction from the last one hadn’t lasted as long as the others.

  It was because of the pressure.

  Now he had to disappear.

  But look on the bright side, he said to himself with a smile.

  New territory meant new hunting grounds.

  Chapter 16

  Ray Mitchell slammed the phone down and grabbed his sport coat, hitting his office door at a dead run. It took him less than thirty seconds to get down the staircase to the main doors of the police station, and in another thirty he was speeding down Wisconsin Avenue in his unmarked squad car, the bright cherry red flasher bouncing light off the old buildings of the historic Third Ward.

  A woman had called 911 saying she'd just escaped from a man who had killed her friend and tried to kill her. Officers had quickly been dispatched, and the woman, although badly frightened, had been able to provide a description that sounded remarkably similar to the description of the man last seen at the Java House shortly before Lisa Young's disappearance.

  Ray took a hard left and heard his tires squealing.

  If this man turned out to be the same one who killed Lisa Young, then Ray Mitchell knew he had a serial killer on his hands.

  Although Milwaukee was considered a small city, it was no stran
ger to serial murder. In 1994 there was Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial murderer who killed, dismembered, and sometimes ate the flesh of his victims. Those murders put Milwaukee on the map, and for a brief time, the case hung like a black cloud over the city.

  But Wisconsin's ties went even further back to the 1950s, when the infamous Ed Gein began killing his neighbors and hanging them in his barn, after he butchered them to look like dressed deer. News of Gein's attempts to make lampshades from human skin and a necklace made of human nipples shook America at the time. Psycho, the Hitchcock thriller, was based on Ed Gein.

  With the eyewitness description of the perpetrator, this could be the break that would provide Ray's escape route from the shitstorm his life had become following the discovery of Lisa Young's body.

  After Nancy Bishop had broadcast her story, Ray's office had been inundated with calls from civic groups, the mayor's office, and one especially angry message from his chief. No one wanted a repeat of Dahmer, in which the Milwaukee Police Department's performance in the case had gotten poor marks from the public. It didn't help matters that the chief's right-hand man, Lieutenant Soergel, was probably right now sticking a knife into Ray's back over his handling of the case. Soergel played the political game to perfection, and certainly had something to do with the bug currently residing up Chief Trimble's butt.

  Political ambitions aside, everyone involved wanted this killer caught, right now.

  Mitchell raced through a red light and turned onto Lisbon Avenue. All of the people putting pressure on him for fast results had apparently forgotten that catching a murderer usually required a substantial amount of legwork. Ray knew the mayor and his chief were far too old to be a part of the younger generation's constant quest for instant gratification, but they sure as hell weren't acting like it.

  Their attitude was hey, screw the whole painstaking police procedure crap, just catch the guy, now. Period.