Rubble and the Wreckage

by Rodd Clark

  Bennett had been guzzling beer, sitting on his worn and frayed throne of a Lazy Boy lounge chair. He had been unusually quiet for the whole of the day, and now, watching TV with Chrissy Church sitting on the couch and Gabe lying on the floor, his mood seemed a dark, quiet presence in the recesses of Gabe’s memory. Gabe was a year older than Chrissy. She still had that pigtail innocence that Bennett had yet to blemish with his angry outbursts. Lying there on his elbows in the glow of the Zenith, he should have been captured by Jack Lord’s version of the stalwart Steve McGarrett. Instead, he felt the tug of frightening pressure building, and his chest became encased in something too tight to measure. It should have been an alien sensation, he was a just a boy of eleven and in the comfort of his family home. But it was there nonetheless, and the boy turned his head slightly to see if his father’s beer had awoken a grizzly without warning.

  It was clear, that subtle yet disturbing look, as his father seemed focused on his daughter sitting so sweetly across the room. An unfamiliar glimmer sparked Gabe’s concern. It was a look he didn’t recognize. But he’d learned quickly to be more wary of those flashes from his father that he didn’t understand. Trying to describe the look now to Maxwell wasn’t easy; he fumbled with the words even though both men understood the sense all too well. Gabe wanted desperately to convey the childish innocence gained by his eleven years of life, it was pivotal to his account. Bennett’s hand went absently to his jeans as he repositioned himself unaware. Young Gabriel had seen the gesture, understood instantly what it meant, and panic seized every fiber in his soul.

  What the pre-adolescent Gabe couldn’t have known were the secrets from his parents’ bedroom. The lackluster sexual activity Sissy suffered as a curse or the manipulations of hungry yet uninvited hands. He couldn’t have known how Sissy had suspected the overwhelming sexual drive of her then boyfriend, how she had forced that image from her mind when she heard him propose marriage. Or that a picture of wedded bliss could sometimes make a woman forget what she should have remembered most before accepting her vows.

  There was a heartrending wisdom within young Gabe that day. He recognized it would only take time before his father found his daughter to be a desire he couldn’t control. He wondered where he would be when it occurred, taken it was a given that it would come to pass unless Sissy found the strength to change that fortune by leaving Bennett. Lying on the living room floor watching Hawaii Five-O was the first time he assured himself that one day he would kill Bennett Church. Of this, there was a certainty.

  Gabe never allowed Chrissy to be alone with their father after that. Whenever she needed a ride and Bennett was her only transportation, Gabe could be found close by, begging to go with them. Even when Chrissy would be dropped off at her girlfriends’ homes for a visit, Gabe would create some pretense of riding along, agreeing to walk the remaining distance to the mall or the movies. He wasn’t sure if Bennett ever suspected his true motives, but he figured he did. It became the unwavering resilience and bravery of a little boy against greater odds and created both a sadistic killer and the man who wrapped loving arms around a writer in a downtown hotel room. It was pieces of the puzzle Chris was assembling for future readers, as much as he was for himself.

  Gabe had finished his story. There were no more painful reminders he wanted to unearth that evening. He turned his gaze toward Chris, who was filling his pad with furious writing.

  “I want to go to bed,” Gabe said, a smile glimmering just below the surface. He was back in the Mayflower now, and his baggage remained at the train depot sitting like a lonely traveler waiting for the next five o’clock and headed to parts unknown. He watched as Chris laid the legal pad on the table and took in the full image of him like it was his last bit of refreshing breath. Desire tugged at his heart and substantial lower organs. He sat with one leg tossed over the armchair, naked and welcoming. His grin flashed suggestive cravings that mingled with Christian’s temptations. There was a strong moment between the two—it couldn’t be shattered or disturbed—that lay there ominously as each second turned into hours.

  The only chance where that moment could’ve been violated was with speech, and it was left to Maxwell to do the betrayal.

  “Sounds like a plan, mister.” He stood up at the same time Gabe did; however, neither turned to go. Both faced each other, as if some unspoken dare had found its naissance; birthed there between them was a mixture of excitement and sweet hesitation. Eventually it was Gabe who broke the atmosphere by reaching over and grabbing Maxwell by his hand then pulling him behind him into the bedroom.

  There was another round of sweaty sex to finish their long evening, but it was the comfort of having another body to encircle that rested there the strongest. It was something that had been years in the making for Gabe, and longer for Christian. The steady breathing and faint heartbeats acted like a metronome, lulling them into satisfied slumber. It was a critical time for both men in imperceptible ways. A closeted writer had found his footing, and a killer had found a reason not to kill. This wouldn’t be apparent to him for a significant time, but it was there, embers in the ash waiting for a burst of oxygen to stir life anew.

  Chapter Ten

  HER NAME WAS Jane McCullough, a married mother and a nurse at Kindred Spirits Medical Center, specializing in the cardiology ward, a job she’d held for over fourteen years. Her daily schedule kept her running at a harried pace, but she had grown accustomed to the demands of her profession, labored against those of a doting mother with teenage children and a husband with equal burdens. She couldn’t have imagined she would have encountered a man like Gabriel Church. It was out of the realm of possibilities she might run across a serial killer who became noxiously drawn to her. It would’ve been surprising news for her to learn she had been swaddled in white radiance. She lived an ordinary, tediously mundane existence in her own eyes. Gabe would find her determined and strong. He would feel great admiration for her as his knife sliced a bloody grin-like gash in the softest line around her neck. And he would feel great sadness at the loss of her.

  It had been like all things tragic: ironic and accidental. It was an encounter with horrific outcomes, but for Gabe it seemed pre-ordained. Six months had come and gone since the two strangers had chanced to meet. Jane had made the deadly mistake of passing Gabe in a supermarket isle as she stopped to pick up necessities for a quick dinner, intending on a family celebration for some ordinary event in her daughter’s life. Maybe it was when her girl had joined the drama club, or maybe it had been cheerleading. The details would all fall unnoticed whenever her husband or children revisited the circumstances. They were life’s particulars that no longer mattered once the bigger picture came into a hazy focus.

  Jane and Gabe came from different places, and they were separated by unique conditions. Both held individual passions and their points of view were unique, depending upon which side you stood. They couldn’t have been more dissimilar, and yet they became indelicately tied together for reasons that should never have been. To watch, as an outsider, such a small and insignificant event blossom into such vast tragedy was without comprehension. Jane absentmindedly pulling cans from shelves and reading the ingredients from the back of boxed dry goods, and Gabe walking past as he headed to the pharmacy in the back of the store to pick up aspirin. The two strangers would be only feet apart, and for mere seconds, but it was a close enough proximity to alter Jane’s life for the worse. It was such a diminutive moment, such a minor twist that would place Jane McCullough in the same supermarket at the same hour as Gabe, as inconsequential as the occasion, yet so horrific for Jane’s family and friends.

  As Gabe looked up and saw her standing there casually immersed in that familiar glow, he was struck silent and immobile. It was that same building anxiety he’d felt whenever he came across a white lighter. It was a strange sensation of heat and tension creeping from his stomach and eventually gripping his heart in a tight, vice-like grip. Forcing himself to pass her as inconspicuously as he cou
ld, he rounded the isle and turned to follow. Gabe followed Jane into the parking lot. She was still wearing scrubs from her earlier shift at the hospital. She was easy to follow and surprisingly easy to abduct as she loaded packages into the passenger side of her Audi. If Jane had committed any offense, it had been shopping in the vicinity of a serial killer, and for that she would pay the ultimate price. She struggled, naturally, but was no match for the stronger Gabe. Coming up from behind her with lightning speed, he placed his hand over her mouth to stifle any scream then forced her into the Audi. Gabe had learned early just how much a victim’s astonishment could become his greatest implement in his cause of murder.

  It would be many months before Gabe would meet his biographer, Christian Maxwell, but as he struggled to control the middle-aged nurse in her own vehicle, his breath would be warm on her neck. The only difference between his time with the writer and with Jane was her terror and the inevitable outcome. Had he met Christian before Jane, the aftermath may have had a different resolution.

  Jane fought hard to survive. Gabe noticed her car keys dangling in her hand. There was a key ring fob with a tiny photograph wrapped by a plastic edge. It illustrated a color image of what appeared to be a loving family captured in film. His eyes dawdled over the image while he wrestled with the woman to gain control. The car keys became Jane’s only weapon in her arsenal. One she used to try to make it home to see her husband and children once again. She was strong, able to free one arm and drive the keys into Gabe’s neck with all her might. There was blood, but she hadn’t victoriously nicked an artery. Her nursing skills proved effective but not sufficient to save her life. There was a flash of sharp pain that Gabe felt but didn’t break his grip. Even through the discomfort, and the wet saturation of draining blood, Gabe felt closer to the woman in that moment, suddenly admiring her honorable efforts to survive. She fought harder and was tougher than many had been—she’d nearly ended his long train of murder.

  When Chris had asked Gabe about the victims he remembered, his mind sparked on the image of the nurse and her parking lot death. He remembered all of them. There would never be a single face he wouldn’t see in his dreams.

  The next morning both men woke, still naked and wrapped like a cocoon in each other’s arms. It had been glorious. For Gabe that occasional fuck with women he’d met along the way was satisfying, but he had never awoken the following morning still in their company. He preferred getting it up then getting it down before ultimately making it out. It was a personal mission statement for him—to never get closer than the singular act required.

  He was surprised at how comfortable stirring from his sleep could be while in bed with a man. It was natural and comforting to him. It had been Chris’s irregular breathing and increasing movements as he roused from sleep that brought Gabe back to life. The moist heat of their combined bodies created a shift in his blood stream, sending much of it southward to a twitching penis that had awoken simultaneously.

  THERE WAS coffee and breakfast and even a shower where the two men stood side by side under a warm spray of water. Christian phoned the front desk that morning to extend his stay, requesting the same suite if possible. With his accommodations made, he dressed in the same outfit as yesterday, knowing that he would eventually have to make a run back to his loft for more clothes and any overnight paraphernalia. Throughout it all he wasn’t yet comfortable with Church knowing where he lived, and he understood without asking that Church felt the same. If they stayed longer in that hotel room, it would prove an indelicate maneuver, separating so that each could retain their own secrets of where each called home.

  The oddity of such trivialities, when both men had done lascivious sexual acts on each other, wasn’t lost on them. But there were bigger considerations: Church was a killer on the run from getting caught, and Christian wasn’t confident enough to allow Church greater access to his life. Church wasn’t exactly the boy one brings home to meet the folks, and Christian had already seen the transformations occur from one side of Church’s personality to the other.

  Their earlier lovemaking had made them both famished, so they decided to grab a late breakfast at a nearby diner. Church ordered a large plate and ate like a hungry dog, forgoing any semblance of manners and etiquette. He shoveled forkful after forkful into his mouth and drank at least four cups of coffee. Christian’s mind gnawed at the notion of what it would be like if Church wasn’t Church or he was the type of person he could introduce to family and associates. If only things could’ve been different.

  “Slow down, Gabe, there’s plenty of food in the back if you’re hungry.”

  “They don’t serve breakfast in hell you know. There are no biscuits or eggs when you’re surrounded by the rubble of your own sins . . .” he said. “You should get every plateful when you can . . .while you still can.” His grin was slathered with wetness and a small trail of gravy still hung at the corner of his smile.

  Christian had to fight the urge to wipe it away with his finger or the bigger desire to lick the gravy away with his own tongue. How was it possible this man-child could be such a dark thing, with even darker stories, as he’d described in their time together? His youth may have been torturous in a fashion, and he’d chosen to give back every single pain he had endured in kind. But there were other more horrific stories, more sadness by other victims who hadn’t chosen to murder, hadn’t taken out their frustrations against an unworthy society with homicidal means. Loner students with guns had become a part of our culture, a calamity we were learning to cope with. Marathons in Boston where sick people destroyed lives and movie houses where crazed men opened fire at the innocent, but these were gratifyingly rare. Christian was sitting at a table eating eggs with a side of ham steak with one of those outsiders—it seemed as pretty as peach pie.

  An elderly man was eating near their table. He was sitting across from a lovely woman in her early twenties, and Christian hoped secretly it was his granddaughter. The old man was wearing an ugly green suit, the likes of which he had never seen. It was outdated, atrocious, and gaudy, but the pretty blonde girl seemed unconcerned with his attire. She smiled sweetly in the old man’s direction, craning over her plate to hear him, yet keep their conversation from becoming too disturbing to other patrons. It was obvious to the writer, from what he gleaned from their conversation, this was a rare outing in public, and it was entirely possible that his cantankerous mood had developed after his wife had passed some years before.

  Their casual conversation hit Christian’s ears, and he surmised it was indeed a grandchild taking her favorite relative out for the chance to see an outside world. Apparently she was as honeyed as her hair and worthy of a long grand life. Christian wondered how similar she might be to any other of Church’s victims. He wanted to lean close and ask Church if someone like her could be cloaked in that fucked-up illumination he’d spoken about. Instead, he changed his mind. He didn’t want that other Church to reappear, and he was having too nice a time to spoil it with him.

  The killer had prying eyes of his own, they flashed inquisitively in all directions, and he was taking everyone in who sat beside him. It was an innocent look, mindless in a way, but as Christian watched, he felt it laced with overtones. Was he seeing someone he would call prey? Was it curiosity or quarry? Nothing seemed easy in Church’s company.

  It was nearly midday in Seattle. For the tourist trade, it could prove to be a fresh adventure, too late to thoroughly enjoy the farmer’s market at Pike’s Place on the waterfront, but still early enough to see the space needle or to stand in the shadow of the great Mount Rainier. Deciding to walk off their breakfast, Church led the way, bounding ahead as he did—like a dancing Jack Russell terrier excitedly pulling at his leash. It was anything but indistinguishable from the man who’d stepped out of the shower earlier with Christian. Someone who had explored his wet body like a horse trainer sizing up the flanks of a quarter horse about to race, running his hand through every nook and cranny of Christian’s ass an
d thighs, just as if it were the sensual touch of a stallion’s mane and withers.

  Church was a riddle that was certain. Maybe it could be considered a functional form of schizophrenia, but Christian doubted the illness ran that deep. He could be a man of many faces but one never over-shadowed the other or blocked the other personalities from access. He was a sexual beast, and he was a child; he was clearly methodic and at times rational and lucid. He had love in his heart, a benefit few psychotics could offer.

  You could tell his excitement didn’t originate from the busy streets of downtown. Gabriel for one had seen too much life to be amazed at the newness of it all. It was Christian’s company that made him smile, and the writer was beginning to feel the same. The sun was high overhead, and he was thankful he was in the Northwest where the constant rain kept it cool and clean and the winds from the ocean always blew stronger, pushing back the oppressive humidity he hated. Church wanted to visit Pioneer Square. He claimed he’d never visited the underground tunnels and thought it might be an enjoyable distraction for the afternoon.

  In its heyday, Seattle was a chaotic place to live. After the Great Fire of 1889, city planners wanted to raise the streets and improve the drainage and sewage problems that were abundant prior to the fire. Travelers to the city could usually locate walking tours and visit the submerged storefronts and dilapidated sidewalks, taking a glimpse into what life was like during the late 1800s. It could be fascinating, but Christian was surprised to see Church so interested in the historical aspects of the city. They didn’t have a guide, and didn’t know when the tours were scheduled, but they headed off in the direction of Pioneer Square nonetheless, hoping they might stumble onto a tour. If not they would have fun in the journey.