by Dan Wells
I stacked some kindling carefully at the base of the leaf pile and lit a match in its heart. Flames caught and grew, sucking in air, and a moment later the pile was roaring with heat, the bright fire dancing wickedly above it.
When the fire burned out, what would be left?
That night the killer struck again.
I saw it on TV during breakfast; the first death had attracted a little out-of-town attention purely for its gory nature, but the second—just as gory as the first, and far more public—had caught the eye of a city reporter and his camera crew. They were there, much to the consternation of the Clayton County sheriff, broadcasting distant, blurred images of a disemboweled body all across the state. Someone must have managed to take the picture before the cops covered it up and pushed the bystanders back.
There was no question now. It was a serial killer. My mom came in from the other room, her makeup half done; I looked at her, and she looked back. Neither of us said a word.
“This is Ted Rask coming to you live from Clayton, a normally peaceful town that is today the scene of a truly gruesome murder—the second of this nature in less than a month. This is a Five Live News exclusive report. I’m here with Sheriff Meier. Tell me, Sheriff, what do we know about the victim?”
Sheriff Meier was frowning under his wide, gray mustache, and glanced up testily as the reporter stepped toward him. Rask was famous for sensationalist melodrama, and from the sheriff’s scowl, even I could tell he wasn’t pleased about the reporter’s presence.
“At this time we do not wish to cause undue distress to the victim’s family,” said the sheriff, “or needless fear in the people of this county. We appreciate the cooperation of everybody in remaining calm and not spreading rumors or misinformation about this incident.”
He had completely dodged the reporter’s question. At least he wasn’t rolling over for Rask without a fight.
“Do you know yet who the victim is?” asked the reporter.
“He was carrying ID, but we do not wish to release that information at this time, pending notification of the family.”
“And the killer,” said the reporter, “do you have any leads about who that might be?”
“We have no comment at this time.”
“With this incident coming so soon on the heels of the last one, and being so similar in nature, do you think the two might be connected?”
The sheriff closed his eyes briefly, a visual sigh, and paused a moment before speaking. “We do not wish to discuss the nature of this case at this time, to help preserve the integrity of our investigation. As I said before, we appreciate everybody’s discretion and calm attitude in not spreading rumors about this incident.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” said the reporter, and the camera swung back to the reporter’s face. “Again, if you’re just joining us, we’re in Clayton County, where a killer has just struck, possibly for the second time, leaving a dead body and a terrified town in his wake.”
“Stupid Ted Rask,” said Mom, stalking to the fridge. “The last thing this town needs is a panic about a mass murderer.”
Mass murder and serial killing are completely different things, but I didn’t especially want to start an argument about the distinction right then.
“I think the last thing we want are the killings,” I said carefully. “Panic about the killings would be next to last.”
“In a small town like this, a panic could be just as bad, or worse,” she said, pouring a glass of milk. “People get scared and leave, or they stay at home nights with their doors locked, and suddenly businesses start to fail and tensions go even higher.” She took a swig of milk. “All it takes then is one small-minded person to start looking for a scapegoat, and panic turns into chaos pretty quick.”
“We can’t show you the body in detail,” said Rask on TV, “because it truly is a gruesome, terrible sight, and the police won’t let us get close enough, but we do have some details. Nobody seems to have witnessed the actual murder, but those who have seen the body up close report that the scene of death is much more bloody than the previous killing. If it is the same killer, it may be that he is becoming more violent, which could be an ominous sign of things to come.”
“I can’t believe he’s saying this,” said Mom, folding her arms angrily. “I’m writing a letter to the station today.”
“There is a patch of oil or something similar on the ground near the body,” Rask continued, “possibly from a leaky engine in a getaway car. We’ll bring you more details as they come in. This is Ted Rask with a Five Live News exclusive report: Death Stalks America’s Heartland.”
I thought back to the stain I had seen behind the Wash-n-Dry—black and oily, like rancid mud. Was the patch of oil next to the new victim’s body the same thing? There were deep currents in this story, and I was determined to figure them all out.
“The central question of psychological profiling,” I said, staring intently at Max as he ate his lunch, “is not ‘what is the killer doing,’ but ‘what is the killer doing that he doesn’t have to do?’ ”
“Dude,” said Max, “I think it’s a werewolf.”
“It’s not a werewolf,” I said.
“You saw the news today, the killer has ‘the intelligence of a man and the ferocity of a beast.’ What else is it going to be?”
“Werewolves aren’t even real.”
“Tell that to Jeb Jolley and the dead guy on Route 12,” said Max, taking another bite and then continuing on with a mouth full of food. “Something tore them up pretty good, and it wasn’t some pansy serial killer.”
“The legends of werewolves were probably started because of serial killers,” I said. “Vampires, too—they’re men who hunt and kill other men, and that sounds like a serial killer to me. They didn’t have psychology back then, so they just made up some crazy monster to explain it away.”
“Where do you get this stuff?”
“Crimelibrary.com,” I said, “but I’m trying to make a point here. If you want to get into the mind of a serial killer, you have to ask ‘What is he doing that he doesn’t have to do?’ ”
“Why do I want to get into the mind of a serial killer?”
“What?” I asked. “Why would you not—okay, listen, we need to figure out why he does what he does.”
“No we don’t,” said Max, “that’s what police are for. We’re in high school, and what we need to figure out is what color Marci’s bra is.”
Why do I spend time with this kid?
“Think of it this way,” I said. “Let’s say that you are a big fan of . . . what are you a fan of?”
“Marci Jensen,” he said, “and Halo, and Green Lantern, and—”
“Green Lantern,” I said. “Comic books. You’re a big fan of comic books, so let’s say that a new comic-book author moves into town.”
“Cool,” said Max.
“Yeah,” I said, “and he’s working on a brand new comic book, and you want to find out what it is. Would that be cool?”
“I just said it was cool,” said Max.
“You’d think about it all the time, and try to guess what he’s doing, and compare your theories with other people’s theories, and you’d love it.”
“Sure.”
“That’s what this is like for me,” I said. “A new serial killer is like a new author, working on a new project, and he’s right here in town under our noses and I’m trying to figure him out.”
“You’re crazy, man,” said Max. “You’re really, head-on collision, insane-asylum crazy.”
“My therapist actually thinks I’m doing pretty well,” I said.
“So whatever,” said Max. “What’s our big question?”
“What is the killer doing that he doesn’t have to do?”
“How do we know what he has to do?”
“All he technically has to do,” I said, “assuming a basic goal of killing people, is shoot them. That’s the easiest way.”
“But he’s tearing them up,
” said Max.
“Then that’s our first thing: he approaches them in person and attacks them hand-to-hand.” I pulled out a notebook and wrote it down. “That probably means that he wants to see his victims up close.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. What else?”
“He attacks them at night, in the dark,” said Max. He was getting into it now. “And he grabs them when there’s nobody else around.”
“That probably falls into the category of something he has to do,” I said, “especially if he wants to attack them personally—he doesn’t want anybody else to see him.”
“Doesn’t that count for our list?”
“I guess, but nobody who kills really wants to be seen, so it’s not a very unique trait.”
“Just put it on the list,” said Max, “it doesn’t always have to be just your ideas on the list.”
“Okay,” I said, writing it down, “it’s on the list: he doesn’t want to be seen; he doesn’t want anyone to know who he is.”
“Or what he is.”
“Or what he is,” I said, “whatever. Now let’s move on.”
“He pulls out his victim’s guts,” said Max, “and he stacks them in a pile. That’s pretty cool. We could call him the Gut Stacker.”
“Why would he stack their guts in a pile?” I asked. A girl walked by our table and gave us a weird look, so I lowered my voice. “Maybe he wants to take time with his victims, and enjoy the kill.”
“You think he takes out their guts while they’re still alive?” asked Max.
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I said. “What I mean is, maybe he wants to enjoy the kill after the fact. There’s a famous Ted Bundy quote—”
“Who?”
“Ted Bundy,” I said. “He killed thirty or so people around the country in the seventies—he’s the one they invented the term ‘serial killer’ for.”
“You know some weird crap, John.”
“Anyway,” I said, “in an interview before he was executed he said that after you killed someone, if you had enough time, they could be whoever you wanted them to be.”
Max was silent for a moment.
“I don’t know if I like talking about this anymore,” he said.
“What do you mean? It didn’t bother you a minute ago.”
“A minute ago we were talking about guts falling out,” said Max, “and that’s just gross, not scary. This stuff is kind of messed up, though.”
“But we just started,” I said. “We’re just getting into it. It’s a serial-killer profile, of course it’s going to be messed up.”
“It’s just kind of freaking me out, okay?” said Max. “I don’t know. I gotta go to the bathroom.” He got up and left, but left his food behind. At least he wasn’t leaving for good. Not that I cared if he did.
Why couldn’t I just have a normal conversation with someone? About something I wanted to talk about? Was I really that screwed up?
Yeah, I was.
5
There is a lake outside of town, just a few miles past our house. Its real name is Clayton Lake, predictably, since everything in the whole county is named Clayton, but I liked to call it Freak Lake. It was about a mile or so across, and a few miles long, but there wasn’t a marina or anything; the beaches were marshy and full of reeds, and the water filled up with algae every summer, so nobody really went swimming there, either. In another month or two, it would freeze over, and people would go skating and ice fishing, but that was pretty much it—every other season of the year, there was no reason to go there at all, and nobody ever used it for anything.
At least that’s what I thought before I found the freaks.
I honestly don’t know if they’re freaks or not, but I have to assume there’s something wrong with them. I found them the year before, when I couldn’t stand being home alone with Mom for another minute, and I hopped on my bike and pedaled down the road to nowhere. I wasn’t going to the lake, I was just going, and the lake happened to be in the same direction. I passed a car with a guy in it, just sitting there, parked on the side of the road, watching the lake. Then I passed another. A half mile later I passed an empty truck—I don’t know where the driver was. A hundred yards down there was a woman outside of her car leaning on the hood—not looking at anything, not talking to anyone, just leaning there.
Why were they all here? The lake wasn’t much to look at. There wasn’t anything to do. My thoughts turned immediately to illicit activities—drug handoffs, secret love affairs, people dumping bodies—but I don’t think that was it. I think they were out there for the same reason I was out there: they needed to get away from everything else. They were freaks.
After that I went to Freak Lake whenever I wanted to be alone, which was more and more often. The freaks were there, sometimes different ones, sometimes the same, arrayed along the lakeside road like a string of rejected pearls. We never talked—we didn’t fit anywhere else, so it was foolish to assume that we’d fit any better with each other. We just came, and stayed, and thought, and left.
After Max’s outburst at lunchtime, he steered clear of me the rest of the day, and after school, I rode out to Freak Lake to think. The leaves had long passed the bright orange phase and faded into brown, and the grass on the side of the road was stiff and dead.
“What did the killer do that he didn’t have to do?” I said out loud, dropping my bike in the dirt and standing in a warm patch of sun. I could see cars, but none were near enough for people in them to hear me. Freaks respected each other’s privacy. “He stole a kidney from the first one, but what did he take from the second?” The police weren’t talking, but we’d get the body at the mortuary soon. I picked up a rock and threw it in the lake.
I looked down the road a few hundred yards to the nearest car; it was white and old, and the driver was staring out at the water.
“Are you the killer?” I asked softly. There were five or six people here today, at various points on the road. How long before Mom’s prediction came true, and people in town started blaming each other? People feared what was different, and whoever was the most different would win the witch-hunt lottery. Would it be one of the freaks who escaped to the lake? What would they do to him?
Everyone knew I was a freak. Would they blame me?
The second body arrived at the mortuary eight days later. Mom and I had spoken little about my sociopathy, but I’d made sure to try harder in school as a way of throwing her off the scent—making her think about my good traits instead of my disturbing ones. Apparently it worked, because when I came home to the mortuary after school and found them working on the second victim’s body, Mom didn’t stop me from pulling on an apron and mask and starting to help.
“What’s missing?” I asked, holding bottles for Mom as she poured formaldehyde into the pump. Margaret had only a few organs on the side counter, and she was busily sticking them with the trocar and vacuuming them clean. I assumed the rest of the organs were already inside. Mom had covered the body with a sheet, and I didn’t want to risk looking under it while she was standing right there.
“What?” asked Mom, watching the marks on the side of the pump tank as she poured.
“Last time there was a kidney missing,” I said. “Which organ is it this time?”
“The organs are all there,” she said, laughing. “Give Ron a break—he’s not going to lose something every time. I talked to your sister about the paperwork, though, and how she needs to read it a little more closely and tell me about any abnormalities she finds. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with that girl.”
“But . . . are you sure?” I asked. The killer had to take something. “Maybe it was the gall bladder, and Ron just thought this guy’d had it removed already, so he didn’t notice.”
“John, Ron and the police—and the FBI, I should point out—have had this body for more than a week. Forensic experts have gone over it with a fine-toothed comb looking for everything they can find that will let th
em catch this sicko. If there was an organ missing, they would have noticed.”
“He’s leaking,” I said, pointing at the body’s left shoulder. A bright blue chemical was oozing out from under the sheet, mixed with swirls of clotted blood.
“I thought I patched it better than that,” Mom said, capping the formaldehyde and handing it to me. She pulled back the sheet to reveal the shoulder stump, tightly bandaged, the bottom half soaked through with blue-and-purple slime. The arm was gone. “Bother,” she said, and started hunting for some more bandages.
“His arm is gone?” I looked up at my Mom. “I asked what was missing, and you didn’t think to mention his arm?”
“What?” asked Margaret.
“The killer took the arm,” I said, stepping up to the corpse and pulling back the sheet. The abdomen was torn open, like before, but not nearly so grotesquely; the gashes were smaller, and there were fewer of them. The dead farmer—Dave Bird, according to his tag—hadn’t been gutted. “The eviscerating and the piling up the organs—he didn’t do that this time.”
“What are you doing?” said Mom harshly, snatching the sheet from my hand and covering the body back up. “Show some respect!”
I was talking too much, and I knew I was talking too much, but I couldn’t stop. It was like my brain had been cut open, and every thought inside was spilling out on the floor.
“I thought he was doing something with the organs,” I said, “but he was just sifting through them to find what he wanted. He wasn’t organizing them or playing with them or—”
“John Wayne Cleaver!” Mom said harshly. “What on Earth are you raving about?”
“This changes the whole profile,” I said, willing myself to shut up, but my mouth just kept going. My new discovery was too exciting. “It’s not what he’s doing to the bodies, it’s what he’s taking from them. Pulling all the guts out was just an easy way to find a kidney, not a death ritual—”