The Suicide Killer

by Zach Lamb

  The shovel pierced the soft red clay. It was in a floodplain, but it had been years since any of the rusty lakes had breached its banks, and had never happened in Bobby’s lifetime. Most years the banks seemed to grow. He dug a hole two feet deep and five and a half foot long and pushed his hair from his eyes. Sweat soaked through his shirt and pasted it to his body. He pealed it off and threw it. The shirt made a sick plopping sound as it landed on the trunk of Emily’s fallen tree. It reminded Bobby of the sound Mike’s intestines made when they fell from his belly and landed on the plastic-covered floor. He stared at the tree, lost in thoughts of the previous night. Mike wasn’t his typical subject, but he knew Bobby had killed Danielle and was a threat. It was obvious he hadn’t told anybody what he knew because he tried to kill Bobby. Mike was dangerous. The only option for dealing with him was death. Mike may not have been the norm for Bobby, but he definitely enjoyed dissecting him.

  A bolt of lightning shook Bobby from his trance. The hole needed to at least be another foot deep. He would need to double his pace to finish before the rain came in. The clay became harder and more compact the deeper he dug. The blade of the shovel glanced off the side of a rock.

  Bobby picked it up and held it to the sky. In the pale moonlight, he could barely see the color of the rock. He washed it in the water on the banks of the lake and looked at it under the flashlight of his cell phone. It looked like a rose quartz rock the size of a worry stone found in any store that sold polished stones. The only blemishes on the pallid rose color of the stone were the veins of a mineral Bobby didn’t know that ran across parts of its surface. He pocketed the stone and continued to dig.

  He gently placed Danielle in the hole and uncovered her face. He brushed the back of his hand across her face and pushed her hair behind her ear. Then he kissed his hand and pushed it to her forehead.

  A harsh voice floated across the lake.

  Bobby…what are you doing?

  He looked across the lake, and in the middle saw a ghostly figure in white. Her hair blew in an invisible wind, floating around her stark white face. The white gown she wore fluttered in the same indiscernible wind. Large black orbs stared at him. Her mouth moved, and she reached her hand out toward Bobby. Her shimmer transfixed him.

  Bobbbby,,,what are you doing to our place?

  Bobby shook his head, and the figure faded. He covered Danielle’s face and jumped out of the hole. Raindrops fought through the forest shroud and plopped on his head. He wanted to hurry up and leave before the woman on the lake came back. The figure was Emily, but she didn’t look the way he remembered. Wrinkles covered her face and arms, like she had aged fifty years since he last saw her as she sat against the tree. The memory of her and her hold on Bobby was starting to fade. He dropped the last shovel full of clay on Danielle’s resting place and drug the shovel across the top to smooth it out.

  Before he went back home, he carved Danielle’s initials into the tree beside the destroyed heart that once symbolized Emily and Mike’s love.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Why? Why did you have to bring her here, Bobby?

  This was supposed to be our place where we could be together no matter what was going on outside. She is the reason they took me away from you. It was all her fault, and now you bring her to our spot and bury her where we first met.

  I thought I meant more to you than that. How could you violate our spot, and me? It is now forever tainted with her disgusting, rotting body, while my body lies in the ground, surrounded by people I don’t even know. I don’t know where I am right now.

  I feel lost without you. Sometimes I can see and talk to you, and other times I’m confused by what I see, even though it is familiar. It looks like the lake where you found me, but it is so much darker and colder here. I can barely move any part of my body. It doesn’t sound like the beautiful forest I once loved. The only thing I can hear is the water rushing around me. Sometimes I think it is rising and will eventually pull me under and take me away to a place that is always quiet and dark. It scares me to be in this place.

  Am I here because I killed myself? Is this my hell? Destined to be alone while the man I love ignores me and acts like I’m not there while he is with his new woman. I bet she won’t ever come to see you and take care of you. It doesn’t matter that you’ve hidden her. She will never come to you. She is probably with somebody else right now.

  I know you saw me tonight. You could only see me for a short time before I disappeared again. I felt it when you looked at me. There was hate and contempt in your eyes, and I don’t know why. All I have ever done is to be there for you. We still have the same connection as before. I can feel it. We can still be together, but you have to help me again. I’m feeling weak. I don’t want to leave forever. I will need somebody else soon. You act like you are trying to forget about me and what you need to do.

  Now, I think the only thing you enjoy is killing. But you need me, Bobby. Without me, you’re nothing. Nobody will want you. You’re damaged goods, just like me. I am the only one who can help you. Soon you will see how much you need me.

  Bobby rocked in his grandfather’s chair on the porch, staring off into the woods.

  “You’re wrong, Emily. I don’t need you anymore, and I never did. I now know who I am, and it’s time that I did stuff for me. You were right about one thing. I do enjoy killing. You have led me astray from what I have to do. I have killed three people because of your lie. Mike deserved to die, and his death doesn’t bother me. The man in the parking lot? Wrong place, wrong time. But Danielle never should have died. She is gone because of you. She didn’t tell the police anything. It was Mike. I am done with you. Do not try to contact me again.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Morgan woke to a light clinking noise that sounded like somebody was about to make a toast at an important dinner. It was three in the morning. Most of the time, she slept like death, nothing could wake her, but now her house seemed quieter than normal. The stillness in the air made her uneasy. Her heart started beating fast as adrenaline poured into her system. She didn’t want to move or make any sound by rustling her comforter. Instead, she strained her ears to try to focus them on any sounds in the house, but heard nothing. She lay back on her pillow and forced her head deeper, covering her ears with a soft fluffy shell to protect them from any other outside disturbance.

  As a child, she was scared of the dark. Any sound the old, creaky house they lived in made would wake her up. Some nights she would lie in bed staring at the ceiling, covering her ears and telling herself there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. On other occasions, her fearful whimpers would wake her twin sister Amanda, who she shared a room with. Amanda was not afraid of anything and would walk around the room and down the hallway and back to show there was nothing to be scared of. She would then climb into bed with Morgan and stay with her until morning. Having her sister with her always calmed her down. As she thought about her sister, her heart rate slowed. Then the toastmaster dropped the spoon.

  Morgan bolted upright in bed with her arms down at her side like a vampire rising from a coffin, ready to feed. She listened again but heard no sounds. She wished Amanda were here to walk through the house and check it for bad guys and come back and tell her everything was okay, that she was imagining things again. But she wasn’t here. A bad guy took Amanda away from her. Morgan would have to do it on her own.

  Quietly as she could, she slipped out of bed and grabbed the baseball bat leaning against the wall beside her nightstand. She pulled her bedroom door open as far as she could before it would make that horribly loud squeaking noise. She cursed herself for not putting WD-40 on the hinges yet as she sucked her body close to the frame and stepped out into the hallway on tiptoes. In the open hall, she froze. What in the hell was she doing? It was never a good idea to go check strange noises in the dark.

  She hadn’t been this scared in years. Flipping on the light in this situation would be bad, but not knowing what awaited her felt
worse. She walked on the balls of her feet to make less noise. The bat rested on her right shoulder. The voice of her old softball coach yelling at her to get the bat off her shoulder, she wasn’t going to hit anything standing like that thundered through her head. She adjusted her grip on the bat and carried it with both hands together, extended out in front of her. The kitchen light beckoned her. She didn’t leave the light on, did she?

  A strong whiff of coffee hit her nose. The aroma confused her. Nobody would break into her house and make coffee. The coffeemaker started brewing at the wrong time. She probably bumped it getting one of yesterday’s cups and changed the timer. Her grip on the bat relaxed and she walked into the kitchen.

  “Ah. I was about to come and wake you, but I didn’t want to scare you to death. Here, I made you some coffee. This may take a while.”

  Morgan’s body stiffened, and her breath caught in her throat. She felt like she had a giant bubble trapped in her airway, and she would suffocate. The man dressed in all black and wore a black mask over his face.

  “Just sit down and relax. I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t need you stroking out on me,” he said. “Oh, go ahead and leave that bat against the wall. I wouldn’t want you to get any crazy ideas and end up getting one of us hurt.”

  She leaned the bat against the wall. She wobbled to the kitchen table on rubber legs. With shaky hands, she pulled a chair out from under the table. The wooden legs jumped and scraped across the tile floor. She fell into the chair, never taking her eyes from the man. He pushed the coffee mug toward her.

  “Really, there’s nothing to be frightened of. I’m going to need you to get over the shock factor here so we can proceed.”

  She reached out for the mug and brought it to her lips. She wanted to show him she would comply with what he wanted so he wouldn’t hurt her, but she stopped when she thought about what he may have put in the drink.

  “You think I did something to the coffee, don’t you?” He grabbed the mug and took a sip. “There, nothing in the cup beside the horrible house blend dreck that you bought. And you do that to yourself.”

  He walked to the kitchen sink and poured his coffee down the drain.

  “I think I’ll just have water for now.”

  “Wha … what are you going to do to me?” she asked.

  “Do to you? Why I’m not going to do anything to you. I promise. I need you to do something for me.”

  She shifted in the chair. If he thought she would do anything sexual for him without a fight, he made a mistake approaching her like this. The bat wasn’t too far. If her legs would stop bouncing, she could reach it before he made it to the table.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to interview me. It seems like nobody has really been paying attention to me, and I think it’s time that this town had something to fear.”

  “What if I refuse?”

  The question came out before she had time to think about it. She didn’t want to do anything to provoke him. Typically, she was only brash when she knew she had the upper hand. Perhaps she was responding to his promise of not hurting her. Who did he think he was for people to be afraid of him? This guy obviously had a screw loose with visions of grandeur, but an interview wouldn’t provide that. But he would let her live, as long as she went along with his ploy. She didn’t even know who he was yet. He could just be a nut who has nothing better to do than frighten people in the middle of the night, or he could be serious with his threat of terrifying the entire city. Now was not the time to be calling him out to see which one he was.

  “Refuse? I don’t know why you would want to refuse an exclusive interview with me. That’s just crazy. However, I did plan for this, and if you refuse or renege, then I will kill your mother. I would say that I’d kill your sister too, but it looks like somebody beat me to that one.”

  “You asshole,” she yelled and jumped up from the table and took a tentative step toward the baseball bat.

  “Sit down,” he pleaded, but she acted as if she didn’t hear him. “I said sit down!” he yelled and slammed his hand on the counter.

  The anger and rage she felt quickly dissipated. The red color faded to a pale white, and she sat at the table once again. Maybe he was crazy, but he also sounded dangerous. Threatening her mother, she expected, but bringing up her sister meant he knew her or did his research.

  “Now, you’ve made me lose my temper once. That’s all you get. The next time I will go straight to your mother’s house at 7799 Pine Crest Court, slit her throat and bring you her head on the end of that baseball bat. Do you understand me? Say yes.”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t hurt her. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I said, say yes.”

  “Yes,” she said, and looked down at the table.

  “Now,” he said, wiping imaginary lint from his clothes. “Now that we know your sister is a sore subject and that I’m serious about your mother, we can move on. Here, take this notebook.”

  Morgan knew the only thing she would be able to do at this point is whatever he told her to. She didn’t want to risk her mother’s life by angering this guy anymore.

  “What do you want me to interview you about?”

  “See. This is my point. You don’t even know who I am, and you write the news. I am the one who killed those two girls using the suicide tableaus.”

  Morgan opened the notebook. It was brand new, but the black cover had a large white N scratched or rubbed into it.

  “Yes. I know about them, but the cops are being really secretive with any details on those cases. That’s why there has been little press about them. So far there have only been two murders, and they didn’t want to tell the city prematurely that there was a serial killer and cause panic.”

  “Only two? I guess I have to knock off a few more before I get a higher distinction,” he said, and playfully threw his hands in the air. “Of course, I’ve only killed two like that.”

  “How many people have you killed total?”

  “Five.”

  Morgan could feel herself falling into the story. She had to be careful. This guy wasn’t like the law enforcement and victim families she usually dealt with. This could be a career-defining article for her. That is, if she lived through it. Why did he pick her? She wrote this question down and circled it to remember to come back around and ask. Right now she was going to let him lead the interview in whatever direction he wanted.

  “Why do you kill? Are you angry at them or somebody else for some reason?”

  “No. I’ve only killed once out of anger,” he said.

  He looked her directly in the eyes when he said this, and a cold chill ran down Morgan’s spine. The brown iris’s darkened as he spoke. Out of all the murders he committed, the one who enraged him enough to kill seemed to bother him the most. She didn’t know if it was because of the life that he took or the reasoning behind why he was mad that bothered him the most. She sat back in the chair and wrote her notes closer to her, so he could not see them unless he really tried. She didn’t immediately ask a follow-up question to see if he would continue talking about the subject.

  “It wasn’t his fault. He just caught me at a moment of weakness. But the other guy, he deserved it.”

  “What other guy? I thought you only killed out of anger once? Why do you think he deserved it?”

  He hesitated and looked her up and down, assessing her.

  “Yes, that is what I said. I guess I’ll need to clarify. Anger has only been the cause for me to murder an innocent person one time. The other guy who pissed me off broke into my house and tried to kill me first, but he was a lowlife who didn’t deserve to live anyway.”

  “Sounds like he knew you and had a reason for trying to kill you. Did he see something he shouldn’t have?”

  Morgan thought she saw his eyes flicker and give him away. Now she was beginning to feel like herself, in control of the situation and the interview. She didn’t let him answer the question; his eyes already
gave her the answer she was looking for.

  “So you’ve killed more without your signature or tableau, as you call them. Why’s that?”

  “Look at you getting all psychological on me with these questions. The simple answer is because I haven’t had enough time. I’ve been busy dealing with other issues. But now that I am free from those obligations, there will be more.”

  “Why do you like to kill?”

  “I’m sure you want something grisly, but the truth is it has never been about the killing. It’s always been about the possession. They have been used as vessels of possession in this life from the next. I’m not sure all of that is mine, but I doubt anybody will sue for plagiarism.”

  “Rachel Martin and Laura Cline were both young, pretty blondes. Is that the type you like to use as vessels?”

  Morgan attempted to throw him off by mentioning the girls by name. She wanted him to see them as people, not just vessels for whatever sick game he thought he was playing. He only smiled.

  “That certainly helps, but really it was because they left their doors unlocked. It was like they invited me in. Like they wanted to die, and only I could provide an out for them. They could not do it themselves. They just needed a little assistance. If those women locked their doors, I would have gone somewhere else.”

  Morgan hadn’t done extensive research on either of the victims yet, but there were no signs that either one was depressed or unhappy with her life.