The Suicide Killer

by Zach Lamb

  It started with Danielle on the side, but quickly changed to Emily being on the side. Emily didn’t suspect he was dating somebody else, and even if she thought there was somebody else, there was no way she’d ever confront him about it. For four months everything went well until he took Emily out to eat for her birthday. Danielle sat two tables away with a few of her friends.

  She didn’t cause a scene. When he saw the hurt look and tears welling up in her eyes, he thought she would come to their table and blow his cover on everything. Instead, she finished her meal with her friends and left. Mike didn’t know how to handle that response. No woman had ever reacted, or not reacted, that way before. It was an open defiance against him and made him want her more. Emily’s birthday dinner ended with her crying for some reason, but he couldn’t remember what happened.

  When he finally got in touch with Danielle three days later, she told him she didn’t want to ruin the night for the girl he was with since she looked so happy. He told her they had been together for a long time, but the relationship had been over for a while. He was having trouble trying to tell her that because he didn’t want to hurt her. She told him she wasn’t going to do it for him and wouldn’t be waiting for him on the side until he grew the nerve to tell the poor girl. Then she stopped answering his calls. She wouldn’t answer her apartment door, and if he tried to talk to her at work, she would be straight to the point with business matters and ignore any personal conversations he tried to have with her.

  He tried to move on, but couldn’t stop thinking about her. The situation with Emily only got worse. He didn’t tell her about Danielle, but he blamed her for everything and started taking it out on her. Then he met Amy. There was no special connection with her, but she reminded him enough of Danielle that he decided to pursue her, anyway. When Emily caught them together, it lifted a huge weight from his shoulders. He tried to stop Amy from leaving, but didn’t try too hard. His heart wasn’t in it. The entire time he thought that maybe this would be his chance to get back with Danielle. Emily would leave him as soon as she got home and the problem would be over. It took a lot not to run behind Amy and go straight to Danielle’s desk, but he didn’t want to seem too eager and held back. When Emily ran off into the woods, he thought she would go to her spot for a while and cry, and be home later to get her stuff. He never thought she would kill herself.

  Now, Mike sat in his car outside of Danielle’s apartment. She never knew Emily or her name, so she wouldn’t know she was dead. He could just tell her there was nothing to worry about. Emily was out of the picture. There was no need to tell her all the details that led to her being gone. He would have to sweet talk her, but he was sure he would be able to at least talk to her now. That would be a start, and then he could work on dating again. The light in her apartment turned on, and he opened his car door.

  Before he could take a step, another car door swung open and slammed. The dark figure stalked up the stairs. Mike hit the hood of the car next to him. There wasn’t enough light for him to see who was going up the stairs. He didn’t even know if they were going to Danielle’s apartment. He went to the Bronco the person jumped from. D-7 in faded yellow could barely be made out on the pavement behind the rear tires. The person was either with Danielle right now, or they didn’t care whose spot they parked in. Mike kicked the back of the vehicle, putting a small dent in the lift gate. The lights were on in her living room, but no silhouettes moved across the shaded wall. He thought they could be in the kitchen, then the worse thought of them in the bedroom crossed his mind, and he kicked the gate again.

  Mike paced between his car and his rival’s, trying to decide what he was going to do. He wanted to run up there and beat on the door until somebody answered and then beat on the guy who was in there with her. But, if he busted in and beat up her new boyfriend, he would never get another chance with her. And they may call the cops. The cops were the last thing he needed to deal with now.

  A dog’s bark echoed into the breezeway and a door slammed. Was that Charlie? Mike had never heard Charlie, bark. He assumed Danielle had one of those bark collars on him. The apartment door swung open, and Mike ducked behind a car. The person ran to the Bronco and jumped inside. Mike stood in time to see Bobby’s face as the vehicle sped away. Mike fell back against the car behind him. She was dating the guy from the coffee shop? He couldn’t believe she would have anything to do with that guy. He was weird. The few times Mike had been in the coffee shop he could tell there was something off about the guy.

  He was running away, so maybe she told him to get lost. Mike looked up the stairs. Light from Danielle’s apartment leaked through the open door. He was in such a hurry that he didn’t even close the door, but she didn’t close it behind him either, and the dog was barking earlier.

  Mike crept up the stairs. His boots felt heavier with each step he took. His stomach burned with anticipation with what he would find behind the door. Danielle curled up on the couch crying and just in time for him to swoop in and comfort her. That would be nice. Or Danielle laughing hysterically at that weird guy’s advances and ready for a real man to show up. That would be even better. When he pushed the door open, the dog started growling again.

  Something dark pooled on the counter and ran red down the side of the cabinets. Mike’s body went numb. Charlie ran around the counter. Blood covered his snout and matted the fur around his neck. He walked toward Mike in a crouched position like he was preparing to strike. Mike jumped at the dog and stomped his heavy boots on the floor. The loud echo of the second story floor scared the dog, and he ran out the front door whimpering.

  Mike eased around the counter. Danielle lay in a puddle of blood. He froze. His entire body felt like it was full of ice chips being crushed together. Mike stumbled to Danielle and fell to his knees, blood soaking into the worn denim. There was no pulse and her skin felt clammy.

  She was already dead. He bowed his head and cried. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. While he was in the parking lot picturing her with another guy, he was up here killing her. People always told him he overreacted to most situations, but the one time he hesitated somebody killed Danielle. If he came up here instead of waiting for the guy to leave, Danielle would still be alive, and it would be the other guy lying dead on the kitchen floor.

  Bile rose in his throat, but he forced it back down. Now was not the time to be sick. Through blurry eyes, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. His finger hovered over send. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t call 911. Earlier in the week, he led police to the body of his missing girlfriend, and they hounded him over it. They kept asking questions like they thought he killed her when she obviously did it to herself. If he called the police again and told them he found his ex-girlfriend dead in her apartment, they would never believe him. Even if he told them he knew who it was. He would have to prove he was innocent before they would ever listen to him about who it really was. An anonymous phone call, maybe? They would figure out it was him and think he was trying to blame it on the weird barista who worked next door to her and still come after him. Somebody else would have to call, but he couldn’t tell anybody. She would have to wait until somebody at work missed her.

  Anger soared through Mike’s body. The burning sensation melted all the ice. He was ready to take care of the problem himself. Barry. Billy. Bobby? Whatever his name was, the barista needed to pay. He took her away. She couldn’t have done anything bad enough to him for him to kill her. The apartment complex didn’t have security cameras anywhere. He would get away with it unless Mike stopped him.

  Mike didn’t know where he lived. The only option would be to wait for him at the coffee shop and follow him home. But first, Mike needed to get out of the apartment complex without anybody seeing him. It wouldn’t be good to rush out in a fit looking for retribution, only to be seen by the old cat lady, and end up in jail. He looked down at Danielle’s face one last time and brushed her hair from her face. He fought the urge to look toward her blood-c
overed stomach and the gaping hole that monster put in her. The last glimpse of her needed to be how she actually looked before the mortician created a caricature out of her.

  Mike slipped out the door, quietly shutting it behind him. He walked down the stairs on the tips of his toes and tried to look as natural as possible walking across the parking lot to his car. Bobby wouldn’t be at work until morning at the earliest. He pulled out of the parking lot but didn’t go home. Instead, he drove around Crystal Valley most of the night in hopes that he may pass Bobby’s Bronco by chance. After four hours he gave up and went home, but didn’t go to sleep. He lay staring at the ceiling, thinking of all the different ways he wanted to kill Bobby. None of his ideas seemed brutal enough to fit his crime.

  Mike wanted to be at the coffee shop as soon as it opened. Being there that early, waiting for Bobby to show up was not a good idea. If he saw him, he may not be able to hold himself back and end up attacking him right there in front of anybody who happened to be around. He’d end up in jail. Worse still, he could survive and point the finger at Mike for Danielle’s death. There was a good chance Mike left more incriminating evidence at the scene if Bobby went over there planning to kill Danielle. On the other hand, if nobody was around he could grab him and dispose of him before Emily’s funeral that afternoon.

  Options weighed, Mike stayed at his house, pacing from the living room to his bedroom. He didn’t need to call his boss and fake sick. He’d already given Mike a couple of weeks off when the police found Emily. His boss told him to take all the time he needed while he grieved. He wondered if it would have been better if he were still working. He could go in and distract himself from Bobby and leave early for the funeral.

  By eleven o’clock Mike could no longer stand being cooped up inside his house. He dressed in the black suit he last wore two summers ago to his mother’s funeral. While looking for his left shoe, he took notice of Emily’s clothes hanging in the closet. Her side of the closet was full of the summer dresses she was fond of wearing when she wasn’t clad in the pink and gray uniform scrubs she wore to work. His first thought was that he needed to get rid of her stuff. Her parents weren’t coming near him, so he would probably end up donating everything to charity. His thoughts drifted back to her parents. He never really cared for them, but that was mostly because they didn’t like him and tried to get Emily to leave him. Now, he thought about them buying new clothes for her. The clothes would be the first things they bought for their daughter since they stopped talking to each other, and they would be burying her in them. That is, unless they picked out her casket first. He pushed Emily’s parents from his mind. They were the last people he needed to be thinking about while Danielle’s killer was loose. He would be busy trying to avoid them soon enough.

  He left his house with the intention of driving around town looking for Bobby’s Bronco on the chance he was off of work or called in sick after what he’d done last night. How could anybody go to work after slaughtering such a beautiful person? With no destination set, Mike drove straight to the coffee shop and parked across the street. He had trouble seeing through the tinted glass, but after a few minutes, he made out Bobby’s face beside the window, wiping down the tables. He didn’t even pause at Danielle’s table.

  Mike gripped the steering wheel tight. Last night, he stabbed Danielle and left her dead on the kitchen floor like she was nothing to him. And today, he’s back at work. Acting like nothing happened. Just a normal day making coffee and cleaning the table the woman he killed sat at every day. Mike’s clenched teeth throbbed. The pain pulled him out of the death stare he gave Bobby, and he reached for the handle. He pulled himself out of his car and walked across the street. He was going to throw him through that window and cut his throat with one of the pieces of broken glass, so he could see what it felt like to be left dying on the ground with nobody to help him.

  Mike burst into the coffee shop. The bell above the door swung up on the length of its rope and hit the wall behind it. The girl behind the counter jumped, dropping the customer’s drink she was making. Foam shot into the air followed by hot coffee. The frothy liquid splashed onto the counter and the employee’s apron, shielding her from the scalding hot liquid. The customer gasped and shook her head in his direction. Mike focused on his mission to find Bobby and hardly noticed any of the commotion in the shop.

  He charged into the men’s restroom, kicking in the one stall. He pushed into the woman’s restroom and kicked in the stall doors as well. Fortunately, they were empty of customers. He would have a hell of a time explaining the situation to the police what led to his mania and him kicking in the door on some little old lady or somebody’s child. He went back to the front of the shop. The employee had the phone in her hand, preparing to dial.

  “No, no, no. Don’t call the police. I’m just looking for somebody.”

  “You scared the hell out of us. You should have asked, instead of running through here like you’re insane. I think I’m still going to call,” she said.

  “Please, don’t do that. I’m sorry. Here let me pay for this woman’s drink and the one that I made you spill. I’m very sorry. I just need to find Bobby.”

  Mike pulled a wad of crumbled bills and threw it on the counter. He wasn’t sure how much money he threw on the counter, but knew there was plenty enough to pay for the drinks and leave a nice tip for the barista.

  A concerned look crossed the girl’s face. She looked at the customer who now seemed calm and willing to take his apology and allow him to buy her drink.

  “You just missed him. He said he had somewhere to be and asked if I would come in early.”

  Mike’s drive left him in his next breath of air. It felt like a gut-punch. He had just missed Bobby, again. It was for the best, but now he would have to come back and hope he was at work tomorrow. He thought about asking the barista if she knew where Bobby went. That would be a bad idea. It already looked bad enough that he burst in on her looking for him like a madman on a rampage. When Bobby turned up dead, the only thing this girl would remember, beside Bobby leaving earlier, was Mike tearing through the store looking for him.

  He didn’t want to push his luck with her. Besides, the look on her face told him she had given him all the information he was going to get. Hopefully, she wouldn’t warn Bobby about this incident and spook him. Mike looked at the clock on the wall. He didn’t have time to think about any of that. He didn’t want to be late to Emily’s funeral.

  ***

  Mike pulled into Pine Grove Cemetery and gunned the throttle. He wasn’t sure where her grave would be. The funeral directors tried to give him directions when he called, but the only thing he understood was that it was somewhere in the back, in a newly cleared area. The small roads twisted their way through the property. There were places the roadway was just wide enough for one car to go through at a time. These small areas seemed to be all the places that people decided to park and walk to their family member’s graves. Mike used it as an excuse to rev his engine as he passed these cars. The low rumble and then growl of his flat black Chevelle scattered the birds in the low-hanging trees. Mourners snapped their heads up like a herd of gazelle finally noticing a predator was near. Their glassy-eyed stares were lost on Mike. They were in his way. Keeping him from getting to a funeral. So was he really the asshole in the situation? They had lost their loved one in the past, but everybody trying to drive to the back of the cemetery was experiencing new loss.

  Mike found the small gathering of cars and parked on the edge with his car pointing toward the exit so he could make a quick escape. All the people attending the funeral heard his arrival at the front gate. He received dirty looks from faces with running mascara. The fact that his entrance and loud engine revving was considered rude didn’t bother him. Emily’s parents had no doubt told everybody salacious lies about him. Not wanting to give them the satisfaction of blaming him, Mike stayed back from the small crowd and stood on the opposite end from Emily’s parents.


  When the preacher began his service, Mike tuned out. He did rejoin the service a few times to see if it sounded like it was winding down. The preacher shared a lot of stories given to him by her family and a few friends. They were all old stories, from a time before she ever met Mike. The few he heard were all new to him. The preacher seemed to draw these stories out longer than needed, and there were a few more songs played than Mike remembered hearing at past funerals.

  It had to be hard for the preacher to give a message full of hope and promise of redemption to the family of a girl who committed suicide, when he expected she was more apt to be tanning by the lake of fire than in the loving embrace of her savior. Mike didn’t believe either one of those scenarios was possible and decided it would be best to ignore it, considering the only thing currently on his mind was revenge and murder and both of those would put him on the same beach as Emily if he were inclined to believe in any of that.

  The final song ended and the loud sobs of Emily’s mother roared over the preacher’s final prayer. A comforting arm went around her shoulder and pulled her closer. Mike wasn’t able to tell who the person was, but the shaggy black hair was not her father’s strawberry blonde. It had been years since Mike had seen anybody from Emily’s family, so not recognizing somebody when he couldn’t see their face didn’t surprise him.

  Still, there was something familiar about the person, and it made Mike uneasy, and he started shifting position to see who was comforting Emily’s mother. He leaned forward as far as he could without sticking out too bad. Other faceless family members blocked his view, and Mike leaned back on his heels for another angle. The mystery person’s face almost came into view a few times. Every time he thought they were about to turn his way, they would move away again. It was like the person knew he was watching and was playing a game with him to see how long he would continue to bend and twist to see their face. Mike’s face flushed with irritation and exertion. He was about to give up and hope to catch a glimpse of the person before he lost them amongst the other people. Emily’s mother shifted in her seat, and Mike saw the face of the comforter.